Searching

Hunith heard the knock and quickly made her way to the door.

She opened it to see the king of Camelot standing there, and she dropped the bowl of food she was preparing. "Sire!" she said, and bent down to grab it.

"Sorry," he said, looking shy. More shy than she remembered him. "I didn't mean to surprise."

"Can I help you?" she said, recovering from her surprise and smiling kindly. "Do you want to come in?"

Arthur looked at the bowl in her hands. "No," he said. "No. I…" He stopped. "Is Merlin here?"

That had been her next question. "No," she said, slowly. "Is he missing?"

"No," Arthur assured her. "No, he's not missing, exactly. We were just near, and he wandered off a bit… You know how he is. I was looking for him."

She shrugged and said blithely, "No, Sire, but Merlin rarely wanders off without a reason."

He looked a little embarrassed and glanced at his feet. "Yes," he said, backing away from the door. "I'm beginning to realize that. Well, thank you, Hunith…"

"Tell Merlin I said hello," she said. "Tell him to come see me."

"I will," Arthur nearly whispered, and then turned and walked away quickly.

.~.

The fourteen year old was singing to herself, bouncing up and down as her mother's wagon went scuttling over the road, the horse clop-clopping along.

She wasn't quite sure what the song was, something about the morning, but she wasn't really paying attention. The girl's attention was focused on the trees along the side of the road and on the curls in her blonde hair, which she was playing with and trying to smooth away the frizz.

Her mother clicked at the horse and laughed as her daughter's voice shook due to the motion of the wagon.

The sun was warm, the day was bright—existence was wonderful and joyful.

And then the girl's eyes looked forward, and she jumped and gasped. "Ma!" she cried. "Stop!"

The mother pulled on the reins, stopping the wagon just in time to avoid running over the man who staggered out of the trees and collapsed onto the road.

.~.

Gwen put her head down into her hands, closing her eyes and wishing for silence. She felt a hand on her back.

"Don't worry, Your Majesty," said a girl's voice. "They'll find him, and then the king will come home."

.~.

"Next time," Arthur growled, clapping Percival on the chest as he walked to him at the edge of Ealdor, "you get to talk to the mother!"

"You didn't tell her?"

Arthur's glare shut him up.

"Well," said Percival, "hopefully Gwaine and Elyan are having better luck. Or perhaps Leon."

.~.

"Duck!" shouted Gwaine as he barreled out of the tavern.

Elyan, who had already made his escape, did duck just as the chair was thrown out of the open window over his head.

Alcohol splattered onto the ground.

Gwaine gave the tavern a disgusted look and wiped his hands on his shirt. "Not a friendly town."

"Perhaps you shouldn't have grabbed the barkeep by his shirt and yelled in his face," said his dark-skinned friend.

Gwaine flipped his hair and shrugged.

.~.

"Where will we put him?" the girl asked her mother as they pulled up to the house.

"He'll need a bed," the woman answered. "Help me get him to it."

The girl bobbed her head in agreement.

.~.

Leon walked in with a sigh, looking exhausted.

Gwen looked up from her breakfast, her forehead creased. "No word?"

Leon shook his head. "Not from the king or Percival, not from Gwaine or Elyan, and not from any of the men I sent out."

Gwen sighed. "Will he never be found, Leon?"

Leon wasn't quite sure it was appropriate – her being the queen and all – but she looked just like his old childhood friend right then, so he hugged her.

.~.

Arthur sighed and clenched his hand tighter on his rein. The horse responded nervously, shifting its weight, so he loosened his grip and took a deep breath. The animal could read his emotions like a book.

Percival glanced over at him but wisely didn't say anything.

Arthur closed his eyes briefly, shaking his head as the memory replayed itself. How this had happened.

Arthur killed the last man who fought him, growling deep in his throat from the pain in his hand, where he'd been cut. The rest of the men had run, but Arthur didn't care. He hadn't asked for this fight, and if those men hadn't decided to try to catch themselves a king and get the gold he had as a gift from some noble, there wouldn't have been a fight.

He wiped his sword but didn't put it away.

Turning towards his knights, he quickly counted heads and said, "Where's Merlin?"

They all looked at each other as though to see who was hiding him and eventually shrugged.

Arthur was exasperated. "He was right here!" he shouted, pointing a spot behind a tree. "I saw him not two minutes ago!"

"Sire," said Elyan, wincing, for he'd seen the whole fight. "I think… I think he ran."

Arthur blinked at him. Of course he did. Of course he ran. Nothing could ever be easy.

"Well," he said, "mount your horses. He couldn't have gotten far."

"Actually," inserted Gwaine, "I think he could have."

.~.

"Ma," said the girl, biting her lip and looking exceedingly nervous. "I… I think that he's an escaped sorcerer."

.~.

"Please," said Elyan. "You might have seen him… A tall man, thin, with big ears and blue eyes, dark hair… He might have gone this way."

"He might have on a neckerchief, too," added Gwaine.

"Would he be passing by or stopping here?" asked the matronly woman, leaning on the doorway.

"We're not sure," said Elyan.

The woman shook her head. "I cain't say I seen him," she told them, and they deflated. "No one much been through here recently."

Gwaine pursed his lips. "Thank you, then," he said, and she shut the door.

As they walked away, Elyan said, "This is probably hopeless. How do we even know he looks like himself?"

"We don't," Gwaine said. "But we search everywhere we were assigned anyway. We might find him."

"Even if he doesn't want to be found?"

.~.

He couldn't move. It was hot… He was too hot. Or perhaps he was chilly. He was having a hard time making up his mind.

He tossed his head back and forth, trying to get up the energy to move the rest of his body.

He didn't feel well. Not at all.

Memories were drowning him, burying him.

Arthur dispatched an enemy, and looked up, smiling, to meet Merlin's eyes in triumph.

But he saw.

He saw Merlin's eyes, but they weren't the eyes he'd been expecting.

Merlin saw his eyebrows snap together, dark over Arthur's eyes despite how fair his hair was. And Merlin's knees turned to liquid.

He flickered over that memory, moving on, thinking on the running… Running away for the first time. He'd always run to thing before.

And the leftover enemies. He hadn't known there would be so many. He hadn't known that he would stumble into them unprepared while he was unarmed.

He groaned in his sleep.

.~.

The girl put a cold cloth on his fevered forehead. "He looks like he got beat, Ma. Do you think that's what happened?"

The mother shrugged and kept cooking. "It's possible," she said. "Especially if he is a sorcerer, like you say."

The girl looked at his face. "Do y'think he's evil, Ma? He doesn't look evil."

"No," agreed her mother. "He doesn't, does he?"

.~.

Arthur and Percival dismounted when they saw the bodies scattered about the ground, most dead.

"Well," said Arthur, "that handiwork looks familiar. And so do those men."

Percival found one that wasn't dead – or even too badly injured, really – and within a minute or so they had a direction and a story.

And despite it, Arthur left the man alive.

"Time," he explained, and he left the man to find his own walking and his own medical attention.

.~.

"Maybe they'll come looking for him," said the girl, helping her mother with dinner.

Her mother grunted.

"But we won't turn him over if they do, will we, Ma?"

Her mother didn't answer.

.~.

Eventually, the man woke up. And there was such a smile on his face when he saw the people who'd healed him, there was no more doubt in the girl's mind: He was not evil.

He sat up, looked around, and said, "I don't suppose you need any help with anything?"

.~.

"Nothing," Leon told Gwen, putting down the paper in his hand.

.~.

"Nothing," Gwaine told Elyan, walking away from the building.

.~.

"That way," Arthur told Percival, pointing towards a street. "You take one side of the houses. I'll take the other."

.~.

The girl looked up when someone knocked on the door. Her ma was already on her feet and opening it, and a man's voice greeted her.

And then the girl's heart stood still as his voice said, "I'm looking for a tall, thin man—blue eyes and black hair. Ridiculous ears. I don't suppose you've seen him?"

Her mother looked back at her.

The girl's brown eyes were huge. She shook her head desperately, mouthing No frantically.

He was in the other room. If her mother just said no, then the man would leave and there would be no problem.

"What is your name, sir?" asked her mother.

"I'm Arthur Pendragon."

The king. The girl's heart sank. Please, ma, say no! He's not an evil sorcerer, you know he isn't…

"Yes, sire. I have seen him."

"Ma," she gasped.

"He's actually in the back room."

The girl groaned audibly.

.~.

"There's no where else to look, Gwaine," said Elyan. "We have to head back."

Gwaine shook his head. "We have to keep looking. What if something happened to him?"

"The only place else he could be is Lot's land or one of the places Percival and Arthur were looking," Elyan said. "We can't look in one and there's no point in looking in the other. What if they've found him? Use your head. We need to go back to Camelot now."

Gwaine poked his sword into the ground, playing with the dirt. He didn't like it, but he knew Elyan was right.

.~.

Merlin looked up when the door opened to see the doorway filled with King Arthur Pendragon's form, and he sighed. He knew it.

"Arthur," he said.

"Merlin," Arthur greeted him, looking him up and down. "You look awful."

Merlin grinned. "I look better than I did. Angry bandits."

"I know, we ran into the leftovers a while back."

"We?"

Arthur came in and sat down on the chair which Merlin had only built yesterday. "Percival and I. The rest are looking elsewhere, and Leon is back in Camelot, watching over everything and keeping track of where everyone is looking."

"Did you come to arrest me?"

"No, I didn't."

"Well, thank you."

"No problem. Thank you… for saving my life. All the time." Arthur cleared his throat. "I, uh, talked to Gaius."

Merlin looked down at the knife and the wood he was whittling in his hands. "Oh," he said. "Did he tell you everything?"

"Mostly everything he knew," said Arthur. "Though I guess that wasn't everything."

There was an awkward moment of silence, and when Arthur looked up, he saw that the little girl was standing in the doorway, watching them with a perplexed but suspicious look on her face. When she saw Arthur looking, she jumped and drew back.

Arthur looked at Merlin, rubbing his hands down the wood of the chair and giving himself a splinter. "Why'd you run?" he asked.

"I was scared." Arthur looked at him, and Merlin saw the offense in his eyes, but it was the truth. "I wasn't thinking too straight. I was going to come back. I was just about to… But then, the bandits." He shrugged.

Arthur nodded. "You shouldn't have run. I wouldn't have..." He paused, looking for the words.

"I know," Merlin said.

"Guinevere's worried sick," Arthur said, glad to have a way out of talking about his own feelings.

"I'm sorry," said Merlin.

Arthur nodded and stood up. "Well, you'll have to tell her that, won't you?"

Merlin pressed his lips into a thin line. "Let me say goodbye," he replied, standing up.

.~.

"No," Leon said to the two knights. "There's no word of him yet. But Arthur and Percival haven't come back yet."

"Maybe they've run into difficulties," Gwaine said. "We should go look for them."

"You just got back," said Leon. "Arthur's orders were to only look in your assigned—"

"Yes, I heard him as well as you," said Gwaine. "But if it speeds up looking for Merlin, then I say we—"

"Leon!" yelled Queen Guinevere from the steps. "Sir Leon! Three riders, and one of them is Arthur!"

Leon spun, and then he spotted them too, coming in the city on horses, but still too far for him to recognize. "Are you sure?"

"And there's Merlin and Percival," Gwaine said, turning around. "They're back!"

The horses slowed down as they approached the steps of the castle, and then they stopped as Arthur and the rest of them swung down off the horses, and Arthur absentmindedly clapped his hand on Merlin's shoulder. Merlin smiled at something he had said and looked up to meet everyone else's eyes.

Gwen smiled gently on the steps. "They're home," she whispered, and she pushed the skirt of her new dress aside so she could run down the steps and embrace first Arthur and then Merlin.

The others smiled and went to join her.

Gwen crashed into her husband's arms and he kissed her firmly, while the knights went immediately to clap Merlin on the back.

It was far from over, and nothing was decided yet. But everyone knew – from the overjoyed smile on Merlin's face if nothing else – that everything was going to turn out just fine.

A/N: Thank you for reading this far. This is an idea I've been wanting to write for a while, even if it's not very exciting. I feel like it wasn't quite as good at the end as it could have been, but oh, well... Any suggestions?

Anyway, tell me what you thought.