Work Text:
Hunith only has vague expectations when she sends Merlin to Camelot. She knows she might as well being sending the girl into the belly of the beast—magic is just as illegal in Uther’s realm now as it had been twenty years ago, a pyre or the executioner’s axe ready for anyone caught practicing it. (Or even just claimed to be, if some of the darker rumors are true.)
But for all that magic isn’t illegal in Essetir, Ealdor fears witches just as much. The people here have small lives and small minds; they wouldn’t accept Merlin if they knew the truth. They’d cast her out, or string her up. Will is perhaps an exception to that, but even then, Hunith fears—like could turn to hate in an instant, or die a slow, resentful death; a secret could be whispered in a drunken haze or bought for a high enough price.
So she sends her to Gaius, with no expectations except a faint hope that her brother could help her daughter learn to control her magic in a way that has so far proven elusive. All she wants is for her to be able to come home and lead a life free from the fear of persecution, her secret tightly under control.
Maybe, if all went well, Gaius might even apprentice her, like he once had Hunith. Women don’t become physicians, as Hunith and her wide-eyed ambition had taken so very long to accept all those years ago, but midwifery is an honorable profession, and a way to support herself without becoming a farmer’s wife.
What she doesn’t expect is to walk into Camelot months later and find that Merlin has somehow gained a position in the Royal Household. She’s personal servant to Uther’s son, Prince Arthur, and the proximity makes Hunith nervous.
Balinora is present in Merlin, if one knows how to look. If only Uther would open his eyes, he would see.
But he’s still just as her friend had described him all those years ago. She stands in his hall, a peasant in rags and bruises begging for help, and high up on his throne, he sits in furs and jewels and denies her.
He offers up possible war with Cenred as his excuse, pretending as though he would help if the threat didn’t exist, but she knows better. He chased Balinora across borders, his knights terrorizing innocent villages looking for a sorceress who had done nothing to him, and what thought had he given to war then?
Uther cares only for his own hate and paranoia, nothing else.
But Merlin is selfless, everything a mother could ask for. She can’t have any great love of Ealdor, but she insists on coming back with her to help defend it, willing to risk exposing her secret for the sake of the villagers who ostracized her.
There is nothing of Uther in Merlin. Hunith wonders if, perhaps, Balinora had betrayed him in this one way—if her child had been fathered by someone else, a better man.
Yet there’s Arthur to consider as well. He has no reason to, yet he defies his father and crosses Cenred’s border, intent on helping defend their village.
In many ways, he’s Uther’s son; he’s arrogant and stubborn and entitled, marching around giving orders and automatically expecting them to be followed. But he lacks his father’s indifference and that casual, selfish cruelty. He may not respect the peasants, but he makes a true effort at caring about their trouble with Kanan. He takes the time to train and organize them, encouraging them to persevere even in the face of impossible odds, to fight for what’s theirs instead of just giving up.
It gives her hope that Uther’s heir is capable of such kindness, though she knows he’s not doing it for Ealdor.
He’s doing it for Merlin—because it’s her home, because whatever her true opinion on it, she’s deemed it worth saving. Hunith hadn’t been sure what to expect of their relationship, but she quickly finds that it’s beyond that of master and servant. They bicker and insult, Arthur haughty and Merlin shamelessly insubordinate, but they do it with small, fond smiles on their lips and nothing truly scathing in their voices. She comforts him in his lowest moment, after Matthew’s death, and he takes strength from her, finding the will to not give up even when he realizes how very out of his depth he is.
And he’s protective of her. He sneers and glowers pettily at Will when he lingers around her for too long, especially after Hunith happens to mention to him that the boy had once been intending to court her daughter, plans that were ruined when she left. (And Will has never really forgiven Hunith for sending her away.) He tries to keep her out of the battle and forces her to wear chainmail when she insists on joining it. And in the midst of the fighting, he hovers around her, covering her, taking on as many of Kanan’s men as he can, just so she won’t have to.
Hunith could never have imagined that they would take to each other so well, but she’s happy that they did. In fact, she finds it kind of sweet: a big brother protecting his little sister.
She hopes they’ll never change.
.
Three years later, a man comes knocking on her door. He hurriedly introduces himself as Lancelot, a Knight of Camelot, but that does nothing to put her at ease: nowadays, there are two interpretations of that title, one of which she wants nothing to do with.
But he claims allegiance to Arthur, swears it, and begs her to trust him. He says they need to go, immediately—that Morgana’s forces are on their way to Ealdor, ready to raze it just to hurt Merlin in any tiny way possible.
She’s still hesitant, but he tells her he can take her to her daughter, so she agrees. They ride out of the village as the other Knights of Camelot ride in, bringing fire and death.
Hunith doesn’t turn in the saddle to look back, but she smells the smoke, and she weeps. Not just for her little home, her meager belongings, nearly everyone she’s ever known and loved in her life. The place where she was born and expected to die, just as her mother and father and theirs before them. She also cries for Morgana, that compassionate, lovely girl who no longer exists.
They ride through the forest for days, twisting down a weaving path that she can’t believe Lancelot is able to remember. Their destination is a cave carved by water into a rock wall, the type of cold, dank place she knows Balinora must’ve lived in after she left but tries never to imagine.
It’s a labyrinth inside, but still the knight seems to know exactly where he’s going, leading the horses through flooded passageways and chambers of bats clinging to the ceiling, waiting to awaken.
Then Hunith starts hearing the echo of voices. They dismount and walk the horses into a cavern, one so huge all of Ealdor might’ve fit in it. Inside are people and animals and tents, a bustling campsite made up mostly of men in chainmail gathered around their weapons or sparring with one another.
A young woman quickly comes to them, anxious yet relieved.
“You’re back,” Gwen says, smiling a bit. Hunith is happy to see her safe. “Just in time.”
“It’s begun?” Lancelot demands, startled.
“It started a while after you left.”
Hunith is confused, but lets herself be led to one of the tents, sitting off a ways from the others. She hears noises from within, groans and moans and a softer, soothing murmur.
Lancelot steps back, making clear his intent to stay outside, but Gwen enters with her.
The first thing she sees is her brother, looking older than he ever has. He glances over his shoulder at her when she steps in, takes her in with bloodshot eyes, but says nothing as he turns back to his work.
Her daughter is laid out on a makeshift bed of furs. Sweat has plastered her hair to her head, pain etching lines around her mouth and eyes as she cringes and grits her teeth. She’s only wearing a shift, clinging damply to the curves of her breasts and her hips and her belly, swollen with child.
“Push,” Gaius says, his hands propped on either of her knees.
“I just did,” she pants, voice thick and tired, dying off into a low, keening cry.
Hunith moves on automatic, rushing over and grabbing her hand.
“Mum?” she whispers hoarsely, eyes lolling towards her.
“I’m here.” She pushes a stray strand of hair out of her face, just as Gwen draws a dampened cloth across her forehead.
“I . . . was so . . . worried.” Her voice cracks with pain. “With Morgana—”
Her back arches, eyes rolling back into her head as she stifles a scream.
“Push!” Gaius repeats.
Hunith looks to him sharply, questioning. He meets her gaze but glances away, shaking his head.
“Is Sir Lancelot the father?” she asks anyway, not sure who she’s directing the question to.
Gwen answers with an amused laugh. “Oh, no.”
Then Merlin howls with pain, long fingers contracting around her palm, and the questions are momentarily forgotten. The pushing is hard and long, Merlin a vision of Balinora nineteen years ago as she endured the same pain.
Gaius coaches while Gwen bustles to and fro with supplies, a solicitous assistant even as she nearly trembles with nervous energy. Hunith prays, to any deity listening, for no complications. She’s seen so many women in the village succumb to bleeding or fever, and Merlin’s frame has never struck her as being particularly fitted for childbearing, now that she thinks of it.
Somehow, her prayers are answered. The child comes into the world alive and healthy, leaving Merlin aching and utterly exhausted but in no danger of death.
“It’s a boy!” Gwen declares joyfully, dashing to the opening of the tent and repeating the news to Lancelot.
“I knew it would be,” Merlin breathes, watching as Gaius severs the umbilical cord. He picks up Gwen’s discarded cloth and wipes off some of the blood and fluid into a water basin before swaddling the newborn in a fur and handing him to his mother.
“He’s beautiful,” says Merlin, raising a trembling hand to his face. Gaius doesn’t smile.
Hunith studies her grandson. She sees some of Merlin in his face, and a little of Balinora.
She sees a lot of Uther.
And she sees a fine dusting of blond hair across the crown of his head.
It hits her like ice, a sick thought twisting in her gut, pushing acid up her throat in a sudden jolt. She raises her eyes and Gaius meets her, holding her gaze, communicating without words.
For a moment, she can’t breathe.
And then the tent flap opens and Arthur bustles inside in a whirl of blond hair and red clothing.
He kisses his sister on the lips, fingers threading into the wet strands of her hair as he moves against her passionately, pulling back only to murmur his relief that’s finally over.
Merlin nudges the child up, offering. “A boy,” she says in wonder. “An heir.”
Arthur takes him, cradling him in his arms, and his expression is one of enthrallment. He loves this child he’s made with Merlin.
This son he conceived with his sister.
The bile rises into the back of her mouth, and Hunith wants to scream.
But she does not.
.
Eventually, Hunith will live to watch as Arthur and Merlin are coronated King and Queen. Man and wife, they kneel side by side as they take their oaths, and bow their heads as the crowns are placed. Arthur’s is gold, like a wreath of sunlight, while Merlin’s is delicate ivory, contrasting with her hair like the moon against the night sky.
You’re like two sides of the same coin, she had told her daughter once, so long ago it seems like the echo of a dream. (A nightmare, perhaps. Or the prelude to one.) You belong at Arthur’s side.
Merlin takes his arm as they ascend the steps to their thrones, fine velvet dress brushing his ermine cape. She’s ethereal in this moment, almost physically glowing with a power far beyond Hunith’s comprehension. Though usually clumsy in her gangliness, today she walks with the bearing of a high queen, pale face beautiful and untouchable in its benevolence.
She and Arthur lower themselves onto the thrones, those seats wrested with such difficultly from Morgana, the royal bastard scorned by her father’s perceived rejection.
Had the Queen’s throne felt familiar to Morgana when she sat in it that first time? Like coming back to a home she’d never known she’d been away from?
Is that what it feels like for Merlin now, as she smiles down at her subjects—her court by marriage, her kingdom by birth and blood?
The people have rejoiced at their ascension. They’ve brought peace to the land, freedoms and kindness that no one knew under Uther, and though the Queen wears blood red, she is temperate and merciful, never cruel like Morgana.
They love her almost as much as Arthur, who looks at his sister, his wife, with adoration whenever his haughty mask slips, drawing from her the moderation to rule with an open palm instead of an iron fist, to go against all those lessons taught at Uther’s knee.
Hunith has come to understand that to be what the people need, they must have each other.
So she will bury her knowledge, deep in her mind. She will forget Balinora, pretend that she never named a father, that Morgana was Uther’s only bastard.
This secret is her burden to bear, for everyone else.
For all their sakes, it is best if nothing ever changes.