Merlin Headcanons

This is What I Know (Part 2)

Author's Note: This is ridiculously long.

I'm not apologizing, mind, just saying.

If I missed anything you think Hunith would a) know about and b) comment on, please let me know. I nearly left out Uther's death which is, you know, mildly important.

This is what I know:

My son made me roses in the middle of winter and kept our hearth burning on nothing but air. He made the single small egg we managed to get from the chicken into one as large as his head, and the yolk was none the worse and lasted far longer for it. He made the sparks dance for me just as his father had whenever my eyes grew sad.

How can Uther say this is evil?

He heard the others speaking of it, calling it evil, and saying anyone caught harboring magic would be burnt, and he nearly killed himself trying to stop to keep me safe. He feared he was a monster.

I kissed his head and promised him he was precious and loved and told him not to fear for me.

This is what I know:

Even with his help, the years were hard. I had no husband to help in the fields, so our portion was small. I cut my own dinner in half to keep him fed, and still I feared his small frame would give up his beautiful spirit some cold winter.

I woke from nightmares that Cenred had taken him and twisted him into a weapon or that Uther had dragged him from my arms and had him drowned. I had never seen Uther before, so he remained a vague monster with flames for eyes.

When slavers came, I saw him bent under the weight of cursed shackles. When bounty hunters did, I drew him close and tried not to look at those filthy cages. I raised him to fear every stranger, to value his secret above all else.

I feared for him, but I never feared him. Not when he blew down a grove of trees in the forest in fit of childish temper. Not when he lit our hut on fire in the throes of a nightmare. Not when raiders came and he threw one into a tree.

I just held him close and kissed his tears away.

This is what I know:

My son learned his letters quickly. He gobbled them up as if they were the candy we could never afford.

He did not fight half so well as he read, but this didn't worry me. What did I care if my son couldn't wrestle as well as Frederic or swim as fast as Thomas? He was mine, and he was far more special than all of the others combined.

But when Will teased my Merlin about the worst hide and seek player he'd ever met, my heart seized with fear.

After all, my son would be playing that game his whole life long.

I dragged him to the woods and taught him to run. Every evening we would race through the trees, dodging under branches and jumping over roots. I told him to run faster. Always, always, I heard horses crashing behind us, their riders greedy for my son.

I taught him to hide, showing him every nook in the village I knew of and helping him to create more. I taught him where he could safely jump from the ridge to the river and where it would be a death sentence to do so.

Will did not understand why, but when he saw what I was doing, he helped do the same.

This is what I know:

Will was the only friend my Merlin really had. I was grateful to him for that and gave him the love and the care his own mother never seemed to.

That did not change my terror and my fury when I discovered he knew our secret.