Chapter Text
Restless nights were not unfamiliar to Merlin these days, but it felt especially dire tonight. Sleep evaded all of his attempts to shut his eyes and shut out the world, with the hope of letting rest overtake everything else. Today should have been a normal day. It was a normal day, until Gwen collapsed just hours ago. It came out of nowhere; she had been in perfect health since Arthur’s death.
Gaius had been attending to Gwen from the moment Percival carried her into his chambers, a large welt on her head where she had hit her head after falling in the stairwell.
It had immediately reminded Merlin of Morgana’s fall in the same stairwell. How different things would have been if he had let her die that fateful night. Maybe Gwen would have still met this fate regardless, and this had nothing to do with the events that followed after Merlin saved Morgana’s life.
Merlin had lost track of the hours by the time he heard a knock at his door. He looked up at the sound and saw Gaius already starting to enter the room.
“What is it?” Merlin asked, his voice so quiet it barely filled the volume of the room.
“The queen is dead,” Gaius said.
“How is that possible?” Merlin asked, furrowing his brow. “She was doing so well a week ago. You never would have seen this coming.” He knew eventually his mind would catch up to reality and he would begin to understand that one of his dearest friends was now dead, but for now, shock propelled him forward as if nothing happened.
Gaius shrugged. “Based on an initial assessment, I fear it is beyond my expertise. Perhaps if I have more time, I might be able to confidently determine the cause…” But that didn’t make it feel any more real for Merlin
“You think magic was somehow involved in her death?”
“I never said that, but it’s never something I will rule out. I just need time to thoroughly investigate it. This is our queen, after all. Like you said, she was doing so well until all of a sudden she wasn’t. The cause of her death could be anything, magical or not.”
Merlin was not satisfied with that answer, but he also knew that if Gaius knew something, he wouldn’t withhold that information from him. Of all the people in Camelot, Merlin knew that Gaius wasn’t afraid to be honest with him. When it came to magic, he always trusted that Merlin would understand.
“And what becomes of Camelot now that there is no monarch to rule?” Merlin asked, throwing his hands in the air.
“There is a possibility that Arthur has living relatives who could inherit the throne from him,” Gaius said. “You know, cousins or any distant relative of the sort. I don’t know of any. If there were any, it seems Uther wanted to keep them a secret. Perhaps he hoped that Arthur would be able to sire enough sons to guarantee his direct lineage would remain on the throne for generations to come, but there’s no way for us to know that for sure at this point.
“We would have to go into the archives to search the royal family tree. Uther had no siblings… Ygraine had Sir Tristan as a brother, and we know what became of him… But perhaps there are other uncles or cousins, or somebody who could lay claim as the next Pendragon heir. Anything that would prevent war would be ideal at this point.”
Merlin didn’t feel confident about a random Pendragon relative taking the throne simply because of their bloodline. But it was no longer Arthur’s throne, for Arthur was long gone. It had been a year since he fell and Gwen took the throne as sole ruler. She had been the kind of leader Camelot needed after Arthur. She was grounded and ensured that peace remained in Camelot. The only issue was that she had refused to remarry and this all but guaranteed she would have no heirs to inherit the throne.
“Merlin, I know it’s far from ideal, and I know how much Arthur meant to you…” Merlin bit his tongue, knowing that Gaius could never really understand. “But I’m sure you understand that this goes beyond your personal feelings. The very foundation of this kingdom is at stake without a ruler to lead the people. We must investigate the royal records and confirm if Arthur has any living relatives who might be able to lay claim to the throne. If we can avoid a succession crisis entirely, that would be the best outcome, even if it means the person who takes the throne may not be the most ideal person for the job.”
“And if there’s not that we know of, then the alternative would be war?” Merlin fought a shudder at the mere thought of it. The kingdom had already seen enough conflict for a generation. Morgana had made sure of that in her failed quest to take the throne for herself. Merlin hoped that there were no more relatives in Arthur’s family who were so power-hungry, but could rule with a more level head. But the alternative, no living relatives and uncertainty about who could or would lay claim to the throne, seemed far worse.
“We cannot know for sure what would happen, but yes, that is what I fear. You remember what happened after Morgause murdered Cenred.” Merlin knew all too well. It was a miracle his men could come to any agreement about who would rule the land. And that was after months of turmoil, fighting, and death amongst themselves.
Before they could bury their heads in further worries about this, they had to confront the more urgent matter of informing Leon and Percival of the queen’s death. It would be best to tell only them first before considering spreading the word to the rest of the court and the kingdom at large.
Merlin knew he would have to go. There was no way Gaius would be able to leave the queen’s body unattended, even for a second. If there had been any inkling of foul play, magic or otherwise, the queen’s body would hold the answers to what had happened. Even if there wasn’t, and she had truly dropped dead out of nowhere, then there was the issue of ensuring nobody else found out about this. Not yet, at least.
It felt fitting that it had been storming throughout the night, like the weather had known what would come to pass in the walls of the palace. Merlin felt out of place knowing that he was the only person in the palace who was awake, besides Gaius and the guards patrolling the grounds. He knew it would be easier if he found one of those guards and told them the news, allowing them to spread the word. But he knew it would be more important for Leon and Percival to know first. They were the only living knights who were especially close to the queen, for they were knighted by Arthur and fought with him before he died.
Merlin suddenly felt nervous when he entered Leon’s chambers. It was clear Leon had not been able to sleep either, awaiting news from him and Gaius about Gwen’s condition. And now Merlin would have to say that the worst outcome had become a reality.
“The queen is dead,” Merlin said, knowing that it would be better to get straight to the point. Dancing around it would do nothing for either of them.
Leon’s face did not betray his feelings right away, but Merlin noticed the light in his eyes fade quickly, giving away the devastation that must have been filling him from within.
“We must tell Percival,” Leon finally said after a few minutes of silence passed.
Merlin nodded in agreement and led the two of them out of the room and toward Percival’s chambers. Percival was asleep, but quickly awoke at the sound of Merlin knocking at the door.
It seemed as if he knew what was to come before he even opened the door. He did not look relieved to see Merlin and Leon waiting for him at the other side of the door.
They relayed the news to Percival and his expression made Merlin think he was not surprised to find out about this. Percival gestured them to come in before they continued the conversation further in the corridor, where the guards who stood awake through the night could overhear.
“What do we do now?” Percival asked once the door was shut behind the three of them.
“Everyone will find out eventually,” Leon said, straining to think as he spoke, trying to fill the air so there wasn’t a thick sense of silence. “But that doesn’t mean we have to tell the entire kingdom right now. We will need to inform the knights, though. They will be able to keep the people at bay right now. But how will we move forward?”
“We can’t tell anyone,” Merlin said, panic settling in his voice. “Not yet, at least. Gaius and I worry what would happen if people found out that Camelot not only has no ruler right now, but no heirs to follow.”
“Well, what can we do?” Leon retorted.
“Gaius is going to investigate the cause of death. We should not act until we know for sure what’s happened to Gwen and how we’re going to deal with the aftermath of her death.”
I fear what will happen if this information left the walls of the palace so soon after her death, Merlin thought.
***
Although no one else had been told of Gwen’s death, to Merlin it felt like happiness itself had died with Gwen during the night, for the palace felt diminished when morning finally came. He imagined this was what it must have felt like for those closest to Arthur after he died; Merlin hadn’t been around to experience those feelings for himself. He had been the one to deliver the news when he returned to Camelot alone, but in the weeks that followed he took every chance he could to spend time away, sometimes even for days at a time. Sometimes he pretended to be on errands for Gaius, other times he couldn’t even bring himself to make an excuse.
Even with the most supportive people around him, spending time in the palace was painful for Merlin, the reminder of what he had lost constant. He lost more than his king and his friend.
Merlin could not feel the full weight of devastation bearing down on him due to Gwen’s death, but he knew it was there. He didn’t know if this sense of dulled emotion was part of who he was now, or if the intensity of it all would drown him at once at some later point. Before Arthur’s death, he would have been able to spend time alone and really process what happened and feel the grief. But Arthur’s death had blunted all of his emotions. The highs and lows of life no longer felt so strong anymore, and not even the death of one of the closest friends he had ever known was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
While Gaius spent the day examining Gwen’s body in the hope of determining a cause for her death, Merlin decided it was best if he stayed out of the way. He wandered out into the lower town to get some fresh air and watch life continue on around him as if nothing had changed inside the palace walls. On his way back to his chambers, he ran into Percival.
“Gaius wants to see you,” Percival said. He didn’t need to elaborate for Merlin to understand why Gaius would need him urgently enough to have Percival deliver a message.
Merlin headed straight back to Gaius’s chambers. Gaius appeared focused on his work as if nothing had happened.
“Have you found anything?” Merlin asked.
“Nothing that I can see,” Gaius replied with a sense of defeat in his voice. “And you’re sure you didn’t sense any magic in her condition when she was still alive?”
Merlin shook his head. “I’m absolutely sure. And I have not sensed any magic since then. This had to be something entirely natural.”
“I dare say you must be right. What could it possibly be, then?”
“It’s as if her heart just gave out one day,” Merlin said slowly. “Perhaps her grief for Arthur finally caught up to her.”
Gaius pondered this. “That seems the most likely explanation. I’ve never heard of a case of someone dying of a broken heart, but I’m sure it has happened before. Not all who suffer such loss are as strong as Gwen. To hold out for over a year before the grief caught up to her is a massive feat for someone in her position.”
Merlin shrugged. “It would make the most sense. She hid her grief well, but I know it was not easy for her.” Merlin lost count of the times he passed Gwen’s chambers and heard the sound of her softly sobbing, thinking she was out of earshot of anyone. “What do we do now?”
“We must talk to Leon and Percival. Let them know what we’ve discovered, what little at least. And decide what we ought to do next. You have told them, right”
“Yes, and I told them to not tell anyone.”
“Good. Once the information is out there, then it’s out there and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
***
That night, Leon and Percival called Merlin and Gaius into the throne room for a private conversation, one where Gaius could share his findings to the knights.
The throne room felt too large for the four of them. Without the presence of a monarch to sit upon the throne, it felt needlessly large and overbearing, and uncomfortable in its emptiness. The feeling was nothing new to Merlin; being in here always felt strange since Arthur’s death. Gwen was a capable ruler, but she could not fill the absence of Arthur in Merlin’s mind.
“Have you figured out a cause of death?” was the first thing Leon asked after the guards shut the door behind Gaius and Merlin. Percival stood next to Leon, standing tall and trying to hide the depth of his emotions.
“We have not been able to reach a definitive conclusion yet,” Gaius said, much as he had explained to Merlin mere hours before. “We need more time.”
“And time you shall have,” Leon said. “That is not my main concern right now; I want to make sure you have enough time to make sure your findings are accurate. We don’t need to share those out with the kingdom yet. What we need to worry about first is who will take the throne.”
“As we know, Gwen left no heirs, so the next in line would be Arthur’s closest living kin,” Gaius said. “But I do not know who that is.” There was a pause and Merlin could sense everyone’s relief that Arthur no longer had any living siblings. Despite the circumstances, they were at least safe from the wrath of Morgana. “We would have to look in the archives to find the Pendragon family tree and determine who that closest living kin would be, and find them.”
“Then that is what we must do,” Percival said, “and right away.”
“Percival is right,” Gaius continued. “Camelot is vulnerable right now without a leader. In an ideal world, we would have a strong leader to guide the people through this time right now, but we need any leader, before the kingdom descends into a lawless land. We as knights hold no power if we aren’t backed by a ruler who enforces the rule of law.”
Merlin knew this meant that they would be spending their night in the archives, searching hopefully for the answer that would be able to bring all of this uncertainty to a definitive end. Merlin’s mind wandered and thought about sleep. It felt like a far and distant thing. How long had it now been since he last slept? He tried to close his eyes for brief moments here and there through the day in the hopes of being able to sustain his body for longer, but he wasn’t sure how effective that had been. This felt like the ultimate test of how little sleep his body could handle and how much his magic could compensate for that.
None of the archivists were awake at this late hour when they arrived. It came as no surprise to Merlin. He had lost track of time, but all he knew was that it was late. In ordinary circumstances, it would be too late to visit this place.
Leon went to wake Geoffrey from his sleep so they could enter the archives without having to break the locks. Merlin would have been more than happy to use his magic at this point, but it was something he preferred to keep to himself. After Arthur’s death, there was now an unspoken understanding of Merlin’s having magic, but that didn’t mean Merlin liked to show it off now.
Merlin only heard snippets of the conversation between Leon and Geoffrey—Merlin assumed Leon had come up with an excuse for why they had to go in at this hour, some request for the queen. Luckily, the conversation didn’t last long and soon Leon returned to the group with keys in hand, waving them in the air as he walked. He unlocked the doors to the archives and he let everyone else step in front of him. Percival moved to enter ahead of Gaius and Merlin entered behind Gaius.
The room was dark, with only Percival’s torch lighting up the space. It provided a dim aura that only lit up the path in front of them. There was a desk near the doors with candles on it, and they used the flame from Percival’s torch to light a few candles so the group could split up. They had no idea where the Pendragon family tree was, and Geoffrey in his half-awake state had not provided them any guidance that would prove to be useful.
Merlin was the first to peel off from the group, eager to take a moment to away from the prying eyes of the others. He picked a row of books and then strode into the stacks, scanning the shelves for anything that stood out as a book that would contain a family tree in its pages.
This went on for many minutes, with Merlin taking his time to examine each book with great care, fearing how long they would be in here if one of them was careless for even a moment and walked past the book that would hold the information they needed.
After what felt like at least half an hour—but for all Merlin knew, it could have been as few as ten minutes—Merlin heard Gaius shout, “I think I’ve found it!”
Merlin turned on his feet and followed the echo of Gaius’s voice, hoping he could retrace the steps he took. He hadn’t noticed which row Gaius had chosen when he passed the old man as they split up to investigate the stacks.
Gaius had brought the book to the desk where they found the candles. Merlin was only a couple steps behind Leon and Percival as they crossed the room to join Gaius, who had already opened the book and brought his candle as close to the page as he safely could.
“This is the one, yes,” Gaius mumbled, mostly to himself, seemingly confirming his suspicion now that he could read the page more closely under the light.
The four of them hovered over the page and tried to make sense of all the names tying everyone to Arthur.
First, they realized Arthur had no living aunts or uncles or living cousins, so they had to look farther, to Uther and Ygraine’s cousins and their children. There were a number of distant cousins once they branched out far enough on the family tree. Merlin didn’t recognize many of the names of these distant relatives, people that Arthur might have only met once or twice over the whole of his life. Gaius seemed to recognize all the names, though, and one by one he eliminated each of them. Some had been dead for many years. There finally came a name Gaius didn’t immediately recognize, but their hopes for that one had been quickly squashed too.
“Gwen received news of his death not even a week ago,” Leon noted. “Another dead end. Literally.” Percival and Merlin chuckled a little at the joke, finding joy in the smallest things when they could, but Gaius did not share their amusement.
“Does this mean that Arthur has no living relatives?” Gaius questioned. Merlin could tell he was trying to hold back a defeated sigh.
“I’m afraid it does, unless there is more to this family tree that we don’t know about,” Merlin said, grabbing the book and flipping through the rest of the pages. The pages they were looking at appeared to be the only contemporary family tree. They were at the end of the book, and the preceding pages only showed the family tree as it went back over the previous generations of Pendragons. Merlin’s eyes glossed over the names and thought about how these were Arthur’s ancestors. They were names on a page now, but at one point they had been real, living, breathing people whose very existence eventually led to Arthur’s birth. And yet, despite all the generations that had passed between those ancestors and Arthur, it seemed that the Pendragon line had now died out with Gwen’s death.
“It’s as I feared.” Gaius whispered the words so quietly that only Merlin could hear him. Merlin closed the book and returned it to the stacks, hoping he could find the gap where the book fit without having to consult Gaius, who now seemed more consumed in his own thoughts than what was going on around him.
***
“You should rest,” Gaius said when he and Merlin returned to their chambers.
Merlin didn’t try to fight, even though he had the feeling that the sun was going to come up before either of them knew it and deprive them of the many-needed hours. He would do it for Gaius’s sake, who, regardless of the circumstances, needed the sleep more than he did.
Merlin settled into his bed and found it surprisingly easy to doze off. When he awoke, he knew he hadn’t slept for long, but at least it was something. It was better than all his other attempts at sleeping since Gwen’s collapse in the stairwell had been. When he looked out the window, he could tell the sun was going to come up soon, but it was still early enough that he didn’t want to wake up Gaius. He knew there was no way he would be able to fall asleep again, not so soon after his little nap, so he sat up in bed and let his mind wander.
What were they to do if Arthur indeed had no surviving relatives? It seemed like the only outcome would be that the kingdom would descend into turmoil and strife as men vied for control of the kingdom.
Merlin was shaken out of his thoughts when he heard footsteps in the main room. Gaius was awake. It would be more productive to try to talk to him about these thoughts instead of keep them all to himself.
He opened his door slowly as if he were afraid of startling Gaius. He found Gaius boiling some water in front of the water.
“I should not be surprised that you’re awake,” Gaius said when he looked up to see Merlin. “Did you sleep at all?”
“A bit,” Merlin said. “It felt sufficient.”
“That’s something, at least. Come, sit.” Gaius gestured to the seat next to him in front of the fire. Now that Merlin was standing up he realized how chilly the room was and welcomed the chance to warm up in front of the fire. He told Gaius of the thoughts he was having about the situation.
“Have you spoken to the dragon recently?” Gaius asked. The question should not have surprised Merlin, but the truth was that he had not thought about Kilgharrah in a long time.
“I have not seen him since the day Arthur died.”
“Ah, that explains it. I would have thought you would take this information straight to him and see what he says.”
“I don’t even know if he’s still alive. What good would it be to send me off to find the dragon, who could be dead for all we know, when the situation here could change at any moment?”
“What alternative do we have? We may have no other way forward besides turmoil if we can’t find a solution to the succession issue. You and I both know that Arthur having no living relatives opens far too great an opportunity for any sort of people to try to stake a claim to the throne, legitimate or not.
“You ought to leave soon, Merlin. I fear we may have another storm on the horizon and that would make travel conditions far more hazardous.”
***
Merlin made haste to leave that same morning, before Leon and Percival could notice his disappearance or the fact that he had taken a horse without Gaius having a chance to make an excuse to cover for him. Gaius likely already had something up his sleeve, though, and Merlin had to hope it wasn’t another story about how he was going to the tavern.
Once Merlin was past the city boundaries, he wasn’t sure where he ought to go to find Kilgharrah. As a dragonlord, he could call Kilgharrah from anywhere he wanted as long as he was far enough away from the city that he and the dragon wouldn’t be seen; that wasn’t the hard part. He wanted to find a place that he felt like he could find the answers he needed. Somewhere more magical.
He would go to the place where he had last seen Kilgharrah. He would go to the place where Arthur had died.