Gaius wakes him up in the early hours of the morning and convinces him to force a few sips of water and half a bowl of broth down his throat, then bumbles around clinking bottles together and restocking his poison table (Merlin has no idea why the very dangerous poisons are left out on a bench rather than in a locked cupboard, but to each their own) until Merlin drifts off into a fitful doze. When he regains consciousness again he's greeted not by a persistent physician, or at all really, actually, because the giant hulking statue that is Percival doesn't notice he's awake. In fact, he doesn't seem to notice anything, and Merlin seriously entertains the thought that perhaps this is a Percival statue for all of fifteen seconds until he finally turns a page in the book propped on his knees.

Merlin huffs a sigh of relief at the movement and the knight looks up, smiling and putting the book aside carefully. The cover reveals it to be one of Gaius's anatomy books, one that's no doubt filled with far too detailed pictures of naked men – although they're not quite as bad as some of the other books, and really why does Gaius have so many books depicting naked men in wrestling positions, it's distressing to say the least, especially because he hides them (or tries to) under his bed and refuses to acknowledge their existence to Merlin.

"Merlin!" Percival says, far too enthusiastically. Merlin frowns at him. Percival looks suitably chastised, and a little confused.

"You're the quiet one," Merlin informs him. He wonders why Percival doesn't know this already. "If you start being loud, I can't count on anything in this world."

Percival's mouth quirks into a small smile. He closes the book with a small thud and rests his hands atop of it. "I apologise," he says solemnly, "I won't forget myself again."

"See that you don't, Percival the Quiet." There. The balance of nature has been restored.

"What are you?"

Merlin shrugs, "Depends on the day. Some days, Merlin the Wise. Others, Dragoon the Great." Arthur and Gaius would probably claim that he was never Merlin the Wise and is, in fact, constantly Merlin the Idiot.

"And on all of them, Emrys," Percival says softly but meaningfully. He leans a little more towards Merlin, eyebrows creasing in anticipation.

Merlin waves a hand in the air dismissively. "I have a lot of aliases." Merlin has a vague sense that maybe he should be rather more anxious that they are speaking freely of what was, not too long along, a perilous secret. He just feels happy though, and pain-free for the first time in possibly the past century, or so it feels. Then he suddenly remembers something quite pressing, and quite terrible. "Oh, Percival, I have to go. It's Thursday, and Arthur has training with the knights. I must get him ready." He pushes off the bed, thanking Percival when his arm shoots out to steady him, and looks around for his trusty neckerchief. Nowhere to be found. That's what you get when you wake up late, Merlin supposes, a bare neck.

He walks determinedly towards the door, and then the room kind of spins a little, and somehow he's walking back towards the bed. Percival, hands firmly planted on Merlin's shoulder, marches him over and pushes Merlin to sit down. Belatedly, Merlin realises Percival must have spun him around, and feels a little insulted that Percival thinks he can just change people's direction without consulting them first. Typical knight. "You need to drink some more water," he insists, handing Merlin a cup. Perhaps if he drinks it, Percival will let him go, he thinks, so he drinks the entire thing in one go and swallows a cough.

"There. Now I must attend to the king." Percival looks like he's about to cut in and protest, but then the shaky wooden door (they need to fix it up, nobody will trust a physician to set their broken bones if he cannot fasten a hinge) swings open, narrowly missing hitting the wall, and Gaius limps in, managing somehow to look dignified still despite the stumbling gait. He regards the scene with an unimpressed eyebrow raise.

"Gaius, I have to go to Arthur," Merlin says firmly. Finally someone who will see sense, unlike Percival the Quiet. Clearly all of his brains are in his bulging arm muscles.

"You do not and you shall not," Gaius says, equally as firmly. Perhaps not, then. Maybe Gaius has lost his brain somewhere in that ridiculous hair of his. "Are you in any pain, Merlin?" he asks in a considerably gentler voice.

"I am not," Merlin announces proudly. Gaius smiles at him, clearly proud of him too.

"That explains it." He exchanges a look with Percival before returning his rather severe gaze to Merlin. "I gave you a strong remedy to dull any pain you might be feeling. Unfortunately, it seems to have dulled your mind too."

"That's rude," Merlin points out, because Percival won't, and someone has to keep Gaius in his place. He'd get too big for his boots otherwise and then who knows where they'd be.

"Hey, Merlin, what's Gaius's epithet?" Percival asks suddenly.

"Even mice can squeak," Merlin says, nodding to Gaius conspiratorially, who looks rather befuddled. "Percival, Gaius, Percival. He's the mouse, and – oh, never mind." He turns to the knight, who also looks confused, but rather amused too. "Gaius the Eyebrow, of course."

"Gaius the Eyebrow is ordering you to get back into bed," the physician says dryly, arching one of his famous namesakes and nodding towards the cot, hands on his hips. One of his hands is clutching his reading glasses rather precariously.

"But I'm bored," Merlin says petulantly. "I want to go and see my friends, Eyebrow, like the winged cave lizard. I miss him very dearly."

"I assume you're referring to the dragon."

"Yes. Kilgharrah the Cryptic. He killed lots of people," he adds to Percival, who wasn't in Camelot at the time, "and he speaks in riddles." Percival nods, looking grave. His mouth is shut rather tightly, as if he's trying to suppress himself from speaking, which is usually not such an issue for him.

"Bed, Merlin," Gaius says, in his best I-am-in-charge-here-and-you-will-listen-to-me-now voice. It is also his I-am-so-tired-why-can't-you-just-behave-for-once voice, as it happens. Reluctantly, Merlin swings his legs up onto the mattress and shuffles backwards, sitting against the wall at one end and glaring balefully at Percival when he moves to twitch the blanket up. He drops the blanket, looking suitably ashamed of his crimes.

"Can't sleep," he sulks. "Too awake now."

"Why don't you answer any questions Percival has about your magic? All the knights have been rather…curious about it." Gaius mutters darkly to himself as he begins fiddling with something on a work bench. It sounds like the words 'annoying' and 'far too inquisitive for their own good' are mentioned, but that could be because his brain is slightly foggy from the pain medication. That fog does seem to be clearing rather quickly with the topic of magic, though.

Merlin turns to Percival expectantly. The knight just shakes his head a little. "I don't have any problems with magic, and there's no point explaining how it works to me. If this book I was just trying to understand is any indication, I'm not one for academics."

"That book is meant for highly skilled physicians who have been studying for decades," Merlin points out. "I couldn't tell you how magic worked, anyway. I don't understand either." Gaius has gifted him several books upon the theory of magic, but he's only ever skimmed over them. The actual spell-books were far more interesting, and he's near unique in that his magic is a natural talent and didn't need any study of the concept before he could use it in practice, so he just shoved them under his bed like dirty socks. "It just does what I ask it to do. Most of the time," he adds with a wince, remembering the occasions where it absolutely had not.

"The druids," Percival shifts forward and drops his voice, "the druids said that Emrys doesn't have magic – he is magic." Furtiveness doesn't suit the large knight – someone with his stature has no hope of ever being stealthy – yet he's acting as if Merlin's magic is still a secret and they're the only two who are in on it. Then it strikes Merlin that perhaps Percival has never shared his experiences with the druids before, wandering from place to place before settling in Camelot, where he's learnt to quash and suppress all thoughts, let alone mentions, of the Old Religion, and he feels a little ashamed for being so quick and harsh to judge. Be as furtive as you want, Percival.

"I suppose," Merlin accepts begrudgingly. The druids are prone to near-worshipping him and he doesn't want the delirium to spread to his home. Arthur would never let him live it down, and he feels physically discomforted when anyone bows or kneels to him. "I still can't do a lot of spells without practicing them first. It's not as impressive as it sounds."

"You're the only sorcerer able to control the weather," Percival points out, far too reasonably.

"Only once, when I was really angry. I haven't been able to do it since then." Merlin can see Gaius ambling around in the background, smirking to himself at Merlin's unease. "I may have a great power, but it has to be honed with practice and discipline."

"The strongest man in the world could lose in a duel to a highly trained knight," Percival reasons. "I have the feeling that you're being modest, still."

"Perhaps a little," Merlin acquiesces. "I don't enjoy talking about myself. I much prefer the stories of other people's lives."

Percival, mercifully, takes the hint. "My life isn't anything interesting. I grew up in a small village in Essetir, and I never had plans to leave. Then one day while I was out ploughing the fields, Cenred's army raided the village." He swallows his grief before speaking again. "My entire family was killed in the time it took me to lead two oxen around some dirt. And…you've been around for the rest."

"Did you have a large family?" Merlin can't remember if Percival has talked about his life before he was knighted. Maybe nobody's given him the opportunity to. Even if the knights are more emotionally competent than Arthur, who in recent memory has comforted Merlin by punching him in the arm and putting him in a headlock, they still aren't exactly touchy-feely.

Percival smiles fondly, a wistful love clear in his eyes. "The entire village was basically my family. There were maybe fifty of us, and we all worked the land and cared for the animals. We would trade our food and animals for other goods with passing merchants. My family – my mother, my father, three brothers and four sisters – mostly took care of the wheat and barley fields. My aunts and uncles, and cousins, lived in the next village over, which was barely an hour's ride. They raised and trained carrier pigeons and falcons for the nobles, mostly." The lines on his face smudge into view when he frowns. "It was hard to lose them all, especially in one go." A poignant silence hangs between them before Percival realises how long he's been talking for, and asks, "What about your family?"

"Not as big as yours." A cough tickles up the back of his throat, and he gratefully accepts a cup of water from his friend. He takes several gulps before continuing. "It was just myself and my mother. She didn't have any family left by the time I was born." If Percival notices the conspicuous lack of a father, he doesn't so much as blink to show it. "Ealdor – my village – is small, and we all know each other well. We would never let anyone starve while we had food on our own table, or freeze when we had blankets at home. But it never truly felt like a family to me."

"Because of your magic?" Percival's eyes are keen and curious, and Merlin is reminded once again that the quietest people can be the most intuitive.

"Mostly," Merlin agrees. "They always sensed there was something…strange about me. Magic isn't outlawed or feared, as it is here, but in such a small, outlying community, it definitely wasn't understood. Anyone, or anything, that deviated from the norm was to be viewed as suspicious. I hid it, but I wasn't a normal kid by any stretch. Being a bastard didn't help, either."

Percival nods slowly, his face full of understanding. "I grew taller than everyone else," he says, somewhat guiltily, like he'd chosen to become the height of a small mountain. "My mother was shorter than the wheat we grew in our fields. My father was only a little taller than her, and nobody else in the village even came past my chest."

"They were scared of you?"

"Not scared. But…intimidated, I think. They would always flinch if I appeared unexpectedly, and young children would be warned not to come too close. As if I would snap them in half if I so much as brushed by them."

"You understand what it is to be an outcast." The thought comes with some relief. Gwaine purposely made himself an outlier, and enjoyed it that way until his knighthood; Elyan too, until he settled back down and was immediately engulfed within a familiar community. Lancelot grew up with a loving family, and Leon and Arthur both were born and raised as nobility. Even if the aristocracy have troubles of their own, loneliness and distrust amongst them, Merlin knows that they would never have understood the pain of simply knowing that you truly didn't belong.

"Not as much as you, I'd wager." Percival's gaze slides off Merlin, to the wall he's leaning against. He remains quiet, waiting for the knight's mind to organise itself into a coherent sentence. When it finally does, it's nothing that he was expecting. "The druids spoke of the pain and loss that would befall Emrys. I'm sorry you had to suffer through it alone."

The druids, for all that they are a generally wonderful people, do enjoy their fire-side story-telling rather too much. "They probably exaggerated," he tells Percival. "And I'd rather not dwell on loss, not when so much has been gained lately." Merlin can feel himself physically brighten at his own words. "I haven't been able to talk to Arthur yet, how is he?"

"Happy, actually," Percival considers. "I hadn't realised that he was so stressed, not until I saw him without it. He's been…unburdened, now that Morgana is dead. And I think that—"

"Morgana isn't dead," Merlin interrupts, chilled tendrils spilling down his back. He hadn't spared a thought for the woman recently, too preoccupied with healing and annoying Gaius. But now, thinking about it for the first time, he just knows. Morgana is still out there.

"She's dead, Merlin, we all saw her body," Percival reassures – or tries to, at the very least, Merlin isn't getting calmer. "There's nothing—"

"She is not dead," Merlin all but bellows. Gaius, silver head bent over some kind of concoction, starts and upsets his work. "We have to tell Arthur!" He tries to kick the blanket from his legs, but it gets tangled around his calves and slows him down enough for Gaius to hobble over.

"Sir Percival, perhaps it is best if you take your leave." The physician comes hurrying over with a vial clutched in his hand – no doubt some kind of sleeping draught, but like hell Merlin's taking that when Camelot is essentially defenceless.

"No, no," Merlin cuts him off, "you must find Arthur, he has to know of the danger."

Percival is looking between the two of them, internal conflict scrawled over his face like someone's taken a quill to his skin. Eventually, after a few seconds that crawls by as an eternity, Gaius says, "You'd better go and fetch the king, Percival, or I fear Merlin will try to teleport himself there himself." He ends his speech with a severe look at his ward, one that dares him to so much as twitch a single muscle until Arthur appears.

"I'll be as quick as I can," Percival promises, and nods his respect to both of them before he bolts from the room, nearly braining himself when he forgets to duck under the doorframe. Gaius shakes his head, probably calculating how many brain cells the knight has just lost in one fell swoop.

"She's not dead, Gaius," Merlin insists, "I can feel her, I know that she's still alive. Her magic is still alive."

Gaius purses his lips. "For all of our sakes, I hope that she isn't," he muses. "But, knowing your powers, I would hazard that you are telling the truth." He eases himself into the stool that Percival had just deserted, the stilted movement reminding Merlin of how many years Gaius had tucked underneath his belt. His wrinkled hand, warm and calloused, is more comforting than anything else in the world would have been at that moment in time when it covers Merlin's own and squeezes. "Breathe, Merlin. Just remember to breathe."

i have no excuses for the wait.

but maybe the next chapter won't take four years!

love y'all for sticking around. you're all better than i deserve.