Hello! This fic's been in my mind for a while now, so I finally wrote it down... Here it is! Pretty short, but eh. Too lazy to write more.

Set sometime in Season 5 when Arthur is king and Gwen is queen.

Summary: Sometimes Gaius thinks Arthur doesn't deserve it.

He loves Merlin.

He always has, always will for the rest of his life.

And sometimes he can't help but think that the King doesn't deserve all that Merlin suffers for him.

"What happened, Merlin?!"

"Just some bandits. And a witch. And her very big bodyguard."

"Come sit, boy, that head wound looks bad…" Gaius hisses as Merlin flinches at his gentle touch.

"It's nothing, Gaius, I'm fine," he says, looking exhausted and haunted and so tired.

"Merlin…"

"I'm fine, okay? I know what a concussion feels like, God knows how many times I've had one, and this doesn't feel like it. It's just a scratch, and I just want to sleep now. Gaius?"

He breaks his gaze from Merlin's old, old eyes and starts to clean up the table.

"Of course, Merlin. Go to sleep, I'll tell Arthur you'll be late tomorrow."

"Thanks."

And Gaius wonders if the Merlin that came bounding through his doorstep that day all those years ago is still in there.

Not anymore, he thinks. Not anymore.

He loves Arthur, too. He does.

But Arthur has people surrounding him at every corner, Gwen, the knights, Merlin.

And Merlin doesn't. It's as simple as that. Gaius is the only who knows about Merlin's magic, the only one left alive, and hell if he doesn't know that that fact torments his ward every single day.

As Arthur remains oblivious, as the knights grow more and more distant, more aware of the status that separates them, Merlin watches them make flimsy excuses to avoid him. As Gwen embraces her role as queen and forgets that she was once a servant too, Merlin watches as she waves away his protests and shouts at him for being late on a bad day.

They don't deserve him, Gaius thinks disgustingly, he's too good for them, he thinks as Merlin eats his dinner methodically and quietly, too quietly, at night.

Arthur bursts into his quarters late at night with his faithful knights, as he always does. At first, he isn't sure what the bundle is in his arms, but years of experience in this sort of situation, especially with Merlin, causes him to quickly realize it was his ward.

"Sire? What happened? Is Merlin okay?"

"I don't know, Gaius, we came back as fast as we could, a-after the bandits attacked us in camp and the stupid idiot got injured trying to save my life!" Arthur yells, frustrated.

"Come, lay him down here and get me some water, a cloth, and the poultice on the table over there - no, not that one, the one next to it! - and I need everyone to clear the room."

No one moves.

"NOW!" He emphasizes.

Gaius turns back to look at Merlin, at his sweet boy, properly at last.

"Oh, my boy…" He moans, "Why must you be so good?"

And for the first time since the Purge, he weeps.

Merlin is too forgiving.

Too forgiving as he says it's okay to Arthur after saving his life yet again by pushing him out of the way of a speeding crossbolt.

It's okay, he says to Gwen after she apologizes vaguely for shouting at him.

It's okay, to Gwaine as he picks up the drunkard's tab at the tavern for the 10th time in a row.

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

It's okay, he says to Gaius when he asks Merlin if he's too tired to get some herbs for him from out in the woods on a rainy day. It's okay.

No, it's not, my dear boy, no it's not.

THE END

Thanks for reading! Review and tell me if you like it!