djiange:djiange:“You know I take no pleasure killing people, right? Sire?” based on a co
djiange:djiange:“You know I take no pleasure killing people, right? Sire?” based on a comic idea i came up with a while ago but didn’t feel like developing:When Arthur was five, he wouldn’t even kill a rat found in his chamber until Uther forced him to kill the dog he had petted for months. Later he began to tell others he had been trained to kill since birth. When Merlin was three or four, he used to torture birds and butterflies to death with his magic, just to see them lively and then not. Later he stopped doing it because he learned from hunith it wasn’t very nice.(Merlin always appears real chill when he kills, which makes me wonder if he is that kind of person who carries out acts of goodness only out of the cognition of ethical principles they acquire from others instead of empathy, and will decisively abandon their moral compass once a collision of interests happens.) a belated mention, i’ve inserted this idea in a fic of mine (if anyone’s interested):“When I was three, maybe three and a half, I used to torture butterflies with my magic, simply to see them lively and then not. I didn’t know why I did it, I just did. And later I stopped because mum said it was bad, hurtful. Then I realised I was different - a freak, magic-wise or else - so I began to watch and learn how others did it, how others lived their lives. I managed well, and they started calling me that ‘good little Merlin.’” He swallows, recalling the invisible constraint. “I didn’t have the nerve to tear off the 'good’ label once it was stuck on me.”Merlin knows Arthur would understand that, for Arthur must have felt the same, having lived under the expectations and assumptions of others.Arthur cocks his head slightly, face towards Merlin, seemingly knowing. But there is more. His gleaming, dark eyes bore through Merlin’s, grasping every single fibre of Merlin’s true being.“So you kept playing your role - 'good little Merlin,’ the hero - you saved me from the wicked.”His cool voice is awakening the numb sores, bringing them to their senses, which have been absent for so long that they have grown into grotesques, muttering for the impossible heal on the chafed soul.“You made me dependent on you. Got under my skin, kneaded yourself into my life. You used me because you knew I wanted to be good. You watched me fail and struggle.”Part of Merlin wants to screech, to wail like the thousands of wronged souls whose tears and blood soaked through every inch of the soil in Camelot, that it is so fucking unfair for you to say, Arthur Pendragon.It was you, this damned tyrant who assumed his father’s mantle of insanity, this man-child knight who indulged in his brittle little snow globe of sanctimony and conceit, insisting on responsibility and order, and fighting, and meanwhile skirting around the excruciating truths before him in favour of the perverse faiths behind him by virtue of not daring to loathe what had crowned him the very King Arthur of Camelot.You relied on me because you wanted to believe my lies, my lies of reconciliation and peace. Because I was convenient, I was your shadow, because I would never escape.Two can play this game.But, Yes.Merlin closes his eyes, worn out with the vanity of indignation over their irremediable past, or - given the rawness of this moment, he quits the act - the gloss on his descent into blithe disregard, a heedless heart.Yes. I needed you to need me, more than anything. I needed it more than my kin, my creed, my freedom. More than our unfulfilled love story, more than you yourself.For all those years he stayed silent, he never doubted that Arthur trusted him with his whole heart since their early days; it was not trust he wanted from Arthur, not really. There was a bit deep down inside him just so wretched, so ugly, secretly, ardently craving for Arthur reduced to mania as miserable as he was, whipped in a suicidal frenzy of excess, passing a life that didn’t belong to himself, but to a slave to passion, a prisoner of what he just couldn’t leave behind, couldn’t let go.Morgana called him out for his not willing to risk the disillusionment of a rendezvous. Gwaine only knew too well to ever ask.The silence was a form of eloquence for him, or a prophecy in retrospection.They were - they are meant to be like this, two sides of the same coin after all, forever backing on to each other. A pair of reliant yet paradoxically independent control freaks striking a preposterous balance in their mutual non-reciprocity, engulfed in their joint solitude.Arthur is now scrutinising his face. Merlin senses the weight of the it without opening his eyes.“You are better off without me.” Merlin whispers. And I would be better off without you, eventually. -- source link