Chapter Text
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!
Shakespeare, King John
My All The World
The court had walked on eggshells for over a month. The king had been distant and impatient, full of a poorly-concealed rage that, to his credit, he kept safely contained. The queen had been composed and dignified, her grief as obvious as her husband’s fury and as rigidly controlled. The king’s… well, these days no one quite knew how to categorize Merlin, but whatever he was, the strain was showing on him, too; he’d lost an alarming amount of weight and the hopeless, trapped-animal misery in his eyes was hard to look at. He didn’t talk much anymore.
The maids had openly wept as they’d cleared out the rooms that had been so lovingly prepared. The contents, by royal decree, had been either destroyed or discreetly given away, going to people who could use them, safely out of sight where the royal couple would never have to see them. If they ever needed that sort of thing, and there was not a soul in the kingdom who didn’t pray that, someday, they would, they could get new. Everything in their monarchs’ personal lives might have been reduced to ash and regret, but Camelot as a whole was prospering. They could afford it.
It was well into autumn before the queen broke the stalemate. The air was crisp, smelling of dying leaves and year’s end. The sun was still almost summer-warm; the wind nearly winter-cold, nipping sharply at exposed ears or fingers. Gwen found her husband where she’d expected to—atop the tallest tower, looking out over the battlements at the lower town. His hands were tightly fisted at his sides, and he was, as usual nowadays, starkly alone. She walked to stand at his side.
“He’s not a god, Arthur,” she said quietly. It was time, and well past time, for this conversation to happen, and if she still wasn’t sure she was strong enough to endure it, that was simply too bad.
“I beg your pardon?” Arthur said.
“You heard me,” said Gwen. “He’s not a god. It wasn’t his fault.”
“Ah. No, you’re right. Of course he’s not a god. Just the all-powerful, immortal incarnation of magic itself. Silly of me to get that confused,” said Arthur.
It was hard to argue with that, actually. Gwen, not entirely sure herself where the line of demarcation between human and divinity actually lay, tabled the question and returned to the one thing of which she was certain. “This still isn’t his fault, Arthur.”
“Whose, then? Yours? Mine? The gods? Who can I blame, Guinevere?” His mouth tightened. “Who did this to us? And why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wretchedly. She didn’t. She wished she did. She wished she had someone to blame—almost any scapegoat would do. She longed for some way to drown out the drumbeat of my fault, my weakness, my failure, my deathblow, broken broken broken that filled her mind whenever she let herself think about it. It would be so much easier if she could hang the guilt around Merlin’s neck.
It would hurt so much less.
He would let her, and never say a word in his own defense.
Maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “I don’t know, Arthur. But… I do know that Merlin didn’t kill our son.”
Arthur’s voice was harsh. “You’re right again. He didn’t.” He turned away, back towards the battlements and the people below. “He just chose not to save him.”
*.*.*.*.*.*
To say that Camelot rejoiced when the news that the queen was with child began to spread would be an understatement so vast as to be laughable. The older generation remembered, vividly, the long, uneasy years of watching Igraine’s figure remain slim and delicate as the succession grew more and more uncertain, and nobody wanted to see history repeat itself. A king with no heir was a kingdom inviting chaos. And, too, they remembered the golden prince who had been the one good thing to emerge from the dark years after Igraine’s death. Year by year, as the greasy smoke indelibly darkened the cobblestones in the citadel, they had watched him grow, a bright-eyed scrap of sunshine in red velvet and miniature armor, giving them a reason to hope.
There were those who simply wanted the next chapter in the romance to begin—the handsome young king marrying the beautiful maidservant was the stuff of fairy tales, and what happily-ever-after could possibly be complete without a way to carry on the story? A new generation of brave princes and ravishing princesses would mean stability for the country, as well as vicarious romance and adventure for the people. Most maidservants would not marry kings, and most stableboys would not be awarded seats at the Round Table and the hand of the princess to boot… but they could always dream that they might.
Some—mostly the denizens of the citadel itself, but not entirely—were happy for the royal couple for the same reasons they would have been happy for any other childless pair. They rejoiced because they had seen, or intuited, the increasing longing in their queen’s eyes when she saw children running to and fro, or the melancholy gentleness with which their king gave wide-eyed young page boys their first real training bouts, which invariably ended with the boys gingerly picking themselves out of the mud, beaming with slightly dazed pride as the king told them that they’d be fine knights one day.
The king and queen had been married for seven years. The country had been at peace for two. And the nursery remained empty, and seemed likely to remain so.
Until the day that all changed.
Arthur and Gwen spent the first few months of her pregnancy happily tussling over potential names. Not that everyone they knew didn’t feel entirely free to offer suggestions, most of which were dismissed with extreme prejudice. Gwaine’s suggestion that ‘Prince Gwaine Pendragon the First’ had rather a dashing ring to it, for instance, earned him an extremely long night of polishing boots. He stuck to his conviction that the name would have been one to go down in song and story, but did eventually concede that perhaps it was best saved for a second son. Percival suggested ‘Robin,’ which didn’t go over any better; the king, with a smirk, said that he thought having one member of his court named after a bird was already one too many. Merlin’s response to that nearly had him polishing boots alongside Gwaine, and the fuss neatly covered Percival’s reaction to the king’s witticism. Not many people knew that Percival’s long-gone son had been named Robin; Merlin was one of them.
They had all lost loved ones, and that meant an inordinate number of possible names of people they would have liked to honor. Even Arthur had reservations about naming any potential sons ‘Uther,’ but he did eventually admit that if the child was a girl, he very much wanted to call her ‘Igraine.’ Once they’d settled that, it wasn’t so very difficult to decide that ‘Thomas’ would be a fine name for a boy.
(Later, after everything, the stonemason, who, naturally, had not been privy to any of the discussions, asked quietly what he ought to carve on the monument. Arthur, his voice rough, told him ‘Tristan.’
“After the smuggler?” Gwen asked, when they were alone again.
“No,” said Arthur. “And not after my uncle, either, although most people will probably assume it was.”
Gwen had almost forgotten that Arthur had once had an uncle by that name. She remembered the wraith; Tristan du Bois had died, twice, trying to kill Uther Pendragon, and had murdered several good men along the way. All things considered, she preferred the idea that her son would bear the name of the brash criminal who had helped them retake Camelot. “Then why?”
Arthur wouldn’t look at her. “…Because the name means ‘sorrow,’” he finally said. “If… if that’s all right?”
That made sense. She liked it, insofar as she could like anything, anything, about all of this. She nodded, her throat too tight for words. But not tight enough, as it turned out, to suppress a small sob. He put his arms around her, and she buried her head in his shoulder, and nobody said anything more for some time.
The finished monument was beautiful.)
*.*.*
The pregnancy, arguments over names aside, was completely uneventful. Gwen had the finest medical care in the five kingdoms; Arthur would have tolerated nothing less. Gaius, of course, was her primary physician, but he consulted regularly with his most learned colleagues, the most experienced midwives, the most revered healers, and they all agreed—the pregnancy was as normal and untroubled as it could possibly be.
Until the day it wasn’t.
The pains began out of nowhere, ten full weeks before term, and when her water broke, it was red.
Arthur was hovering by the door, his face white, when Merlin came barreling down the corridor, a bag of instruments over his shoulder. He opened the door and handed them off to an apprentice to be boiled in the cauldron already steaming over the fireplace. Arthur seized him by the shoulder before he could go in himself.
“Merlin!” said Arthur. “Merlin. I know she…”
“She’s going to live,” Merlin promised recklessly. “She’ll be fine, Arthur. I swear it.”
Arthur tried not to think about the last time Merlin had promised to cure a family member. “I know, Merlin. I know you’ll do everything you can. The baby…”
Merlin’s face crumpled. “I don’t know, Arthur. It’s too early. There’s… well, I guess there’s a chance, but I don’t think you should—”
“Use the spell,” Arthur blurted out.
“What?!?”
“The one Nimueh cast on my mother,” Arthur got out. “My life for his.”
Merlin stared at Arthur as though he’d never seen him before. “Arthur, that spell is—”
“It could be his only chance,” Arthur cut him off. “I’ve been on borrowed time my entire life; it’s only fitting. Do whatever you have to do, but save my son, Merlin. Please. Save him.”
Merlin’s voice was almost inaudible. “I’ll save him if I can, Arthur.”
“Thank you, old friend,” Arthur said. It sounded like the farewell it was, and Merlin didn’t answer; just nodded, looking older than Gaius, and went in.
Then there was only the waiting. Waiting for news. Waiting to hear a cry from the sumptuous bedchamber. Waiting to die.
The sun was touching the horizon when the door, slowly, opened again. Gaius, his robes splattered with blood and his face grim, stepped into the hall. “It’s over, sire,” he said heavily. “The queen is resting; she will be weak for some time, but I expect her to make a full recovery.”
Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thank the gods,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “And thank you.”
The old physician put a paternal hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “Of course, sire,” he said gently. “But, Arthur… you must be strong now. For the queen as well as for yourself. The prince… was lost. I’m sorry.”
Arthur stared at him. “What?”
“The baby did not survive. There was nothing to be done for him.”
“But Merlin was going to use his magic,” Arthur said, as if Gaius might have been missing that fundamental point.
“And he did. But no magic could save the baby. I’m sorry, Arthur… but at least you still have your wife.”
“No,” Arthur said. Nothing made sense. “He… he was going to… he promised…”
“I said I’d save the baby if I could,” Merlin said quietly, coming out of the room. He looked drained. “I tried, Arthur. I tried. I failed. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that,” Gaius said sharply. “Your powers saved the queen; I could not have done it alone. There are things not even magic can do.”
Arthur ignored that. “The spell,” he hissed. Somewhat to his own surprise, he noticed, as if it were happening far away and to someone else, that his hands were twisted tightly in Merlin’s collar, and that he had pinned the sorcerer hard against the wall by his throat. Arthur’s knuckles were white. He didn’t quite know how that had happened, but it felt so right that he didn’t question it. “You were going to use the spell! You were going to—”
“I couldn’t,” Merlin got out between gasps, not even trying to defend himself. “It wouldn’t work.”
“Arthur—stop this!” said Gaius, his old hands tugging vainly on Arthur’s wrists. “Let him go!”
Arthur resisted just long enough to show that he could not be persuaded, then dropped him. “You killed my father,” he said, as Merlin bent double, trying to drag air back into his lungs. “You killed my uncle. You killed my sister. And now you’ve killed my son. I told you—I ordered you—to trade my life for his. What, you couldn’t bring yourself to do anything that might risk your cursed prophecy, is that it? Am I the only Pendragon whose life you give a damn about?”
Merlin shook his head no. Arthur ignored it. “I’m not even surprised,” he heard himself snarl. “You’ve never listened to a word I say. Oh, no; the mighty Merlin doesn’t obey orders, and to hell with what anyone else wants. You never had any intention of trading my life for his, did you? Had to preserve your precious Once and Future puppet, didn’t you, Emrys?”
Merlin shook his head no again. “I tried to make the trade,” he rasped. “Arthur, I tried.”
“Then how did you muck it up so badly? I’m used to your utter incompetence, but magic is the one thing you’re supposed to be good at!”
“I still can’t break the fundamental laws of magic,” he said. “You don’t understand. Do you really believe that I hadn’t prepared for this? That I didn’t walk in there ready and willing to do anything…” he stopped short, set his jaw in the familiar stubborn line. “Crush my windpipe if it makes you feel any better, but there was nothing I could do for him. I’m sorry, Arthur. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You’re always sorry,” Arthur said, something very like hatred in his eyes as he shoved his way past the other man and stalked to the door of Gwen’s room. “Get out of my sight, sorcerer.”
The queen was deeply asleep, her face ashen and drained. He sat down beside her bed and took her limp hand in his own, and waited, his eyes fixed on the spot where the blanket rose and fell, rose and fell. He didn’t know what he’d say when she awoke, and he almost dreaded the moment he’d have to find out.
He was pitifully grateful that he wasn’t going to have to find out how he would have reacted to being placed in his father’s precisely opposite situation. If he had lost Gwen…
No. He would not think about that. He didn’t have to, gods be thanked. Merlin had kept his word on that score, at least. He had saved Gwen.
And let his son die.
*.*.*.*.*.*
Author's note: Many stories in the wider Arthurian canon assert that Arthur had at least one son aside from Mordred, and possibly several. Not much is known about them, but one, called Amr or Anir, had a tomb built with the magical inability to be measured. No matter how often you tried, you would come up with a different measurement each time. The ninth century source describing this magical tomb also says that Amr was killed and buried by his own father; we don't know why or under what circumstances.