The One Where All The Knights Love Fem!Merlin

All Good Things...

Ever since the Lamia incident, Arthur was acting protective of Merlin- more so than usual. If one of the knights got close to Merlin, Arthur would give them a disapproving stare and keep an eye on them until they left. The others noticed this, of course, but they did not mind. They knew what they did. 

Merlin also noticed. She was both thankful and exasperated. She was thankful because sometimes she could not get the malicious and angry expressions that the knights had made when they were under the lamia's spell out of her head, but exasperated because she knew that that they intended no harm and felt guilty enough, without Arthur making them feel worse. On top of that, she had been feeling down lately. With each passing day, it got closer to the anniversary of Balinor's death. 

Leon knew this. As far as he knew, he was the only one who knew and longed to be of some sort of comfort to her. Sadly, he did not trust himself, nor did Arthur trust him, to be near her. Leon feared every day that lamia still had some sort of affect on him and he would lash out and potentially harm her.

Mordred also knew. All of the druids felt the death of the Dragonlord. Mordred did not know that Leon knew. He also thought that he was the only one who knew the reason behind Merlin's obvious sadness. However, unlike Leon, Mordred did have a way of cheering Merlin up. 

He made his first move during training. Specifically, during the short break. 

Gwaine was speaking to Merlin, still desperately trying to make up for what happened. As per usual, Gwaine was eating his favorite snack- a juicy, shiny, delicious, red apple. Mordred knew that this was going to be risky because of Arthur's watchful eyes that were focused on Gwaine, but Mordred hoped that because of that, he would not notice what Mordred was about to do.

"....walk in the garden sometime?" Gwaine was saying. "Particularly when Arthur isn't staring holes into my hea- HEY!" Gwaine dropped his apple.

From his position, sitting alone on a bench, Mordred snickered.

Gwaine bent down to pick up the apple, but it rolled away. Gwaine chased the apple all the way to the other side of the training field. 

Merlin covered her mouth to hide her laughter at the sight. She glanced around, trying to figure out why Gwaine's apple was behaving that way. Her eyes landed on Mordred and she raised an eyebrow. "Is this your doing?" Merlin asked telepathically.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Emrys." Mordred replied with a huge grin.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Mordred."

"It's funny..."

"Yeah." Merlin smiled. "Yeah, it is."

-

Sometime during training, it had begun to rain. Arthur insisted that they continue, despite the weather, because they need to be able to fight in all kinds of environments. This gave Mordred an idea. 

"Y'know," he said to Merlin, once again telepathically, "Sir Leon has very curly hair."

Merlin, from the other end of the field, tilted her head. "Yes... He does. Why are you telling me this?"

Mordred did not reply. As he sparred with another knight, he wracked his brain, trying to remember a spell that one of the druid women used every single day. As he blocked a strike from Sir Bedivere, it came to him. He quickly disarmed Bedivere. While the man was distracted, he glanced at Leon and muttered, "riht haar tempus." The effects of his spell would not be noticed for a while, but they would be enjoyable.

Sure enough, hours later, when everyone was completely dry, Merlin knew why Mordred commented on Leon's hair.

It was completely straight. There was not even a single wave. Everyone was quite perplexed at the sight, but none more than Leon. Without his natural curls, Leon's hair reached his shoulders- In fact, it was longer than Gwaine's.