━━ ⦗the swan princess! ⦘
❝ you're beautiful!
thank you, but what else?
... what else is there? ... ❞
███████████ 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝
the courageous odette teaches the
once and future king a less...
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chapter three!
003. a dragon's call
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"HOW COULD you be so foolish?!"
Merlin stormed through the door into the physician's chambers, throwing his jacket onto the nearby table without little care of where it ended up. He heaved, trying to push back the tears that burned at his eyes and the aching lump in his throat. His back throbbed from each hit Arthur made with the broom, leaving bruises he was sure were black and blue, scarring him for a good week at least.
Gaius followed him, closing the door harshly behind him with a slam! Merlin gritted his teeth at his words, hands clenching tight at his side. He didn't understand▬no one understood what it was like to be him. Gaius said it himself: he was a mystery no one could answer, a boy who could manipulate the very magic around them without an utterance of any word. Pure, powerful, instinctual ability and all anyone would ever see him to be would be nothing more than a green boy who couldn't handle himself in a fight. He could take anyone down, he was sure of it, and yet he couldn't! Gaius just expected him to accept that?
"He needed to be taught a lesson," grumbled the sorcerer, slowly coming to a stop by the foot of the steps leading up to his room. He glowered at the door, hearing Gaius's footsteps storm up to him.
"Magic must be studied!" stated the Court Physician. "Mastered and used for good, not for idiotic pranks!"
Idiotic▬Merlin was sick of that word. He heard it all his life. He was nothing to everyone, and yet he knew deep down he was something far more▬and no one could ever know. It tore him up inside. Spinning on his boots, Merlin pointed a seething finger at his guardian, "What is there to master?!" he demanded him, and he didn't want to admit how desperate he was for Gaius to hold an answer. "I could move objects like that before I could talk."
"Then by now you should know how to control yourself!"
"I don't want to!" Merlin raised his voice, flushed at the cheeks in his anger. "If I can't use magic, what have I got?"
He watched Gaius falter at those words, and he hated it. He wanted him to tell him: here, this is what you've got, but the physician was tongue-tied▬not even he could understand Merlin's fate. And perhaps that was it: it'll forever be Merlin's destiny to be alone.
The tears brewed again, and the young warlock's anger fell away. What replaced it was a weak choke: "I'm just a nobody ... and I always will be. If I can't use magic ..." Merlin set his jaw and had to look away, turning to march his way up the stairs into his chambers, "... I might as well die."
He didn't wait to hear Gaius say anything else▬he didn't even glance over his shoulder to see the look on his face. He could feel it; Merlin could feel his sympathy like a cloud weighing heavy over his head, turning the sky grey. He didn't want sympathy. Merlin wanted answers▬from the moment he could understand what he could do was different than anyone else's. From the moment he was told to hide who he truly was from the people he grew up with, from the villagers that he thought he could trust with his life for the fear of each and every one of them turning on him just because he was thrusted a power upon him he never got the choice to have.
