The reason SAS Captain Arthur Pendragon can't keep a communications specialist in Team Excalibur because none of them are good enough. And then Lieutenant Merlin Emrys gets assigned to his squad, and Arthur does everything he can to prove that Merlin isn't good enough, either. Except he is.

Canon AU -- Merlin's death is only the beginning; with no-one to protect the kingdom, Camelot falls to an enemy sorcerer and Arthur is forced to serve in the court that he once ruled. When an escape attempt goes horribly wrong, Arthur is rescued by someone he never expected to see again -- and it's their destiny to put things right.

Arthur stares at him. It's not the incredulous stare or the how-are-you-so-stupid stare or the Merlin,-sometimes-you-are-wise-and-it-unnerves-me stare.

It might, possibly, be the speak-quickly-or-I-will-kill-you stare.

Of all the many things Merlin had ever worried about getting arrested for, despoiling the king's ward hadn't been one of them.

"King Taranis is dead."

In which Prince Arthur meets Merlin and all hell breaks lose.

Merlin meets Morgana Le Fay at a support group for People With Freaky Unnatural Powers. Alright, it’s not technically called that, but it might as well be.

Pustilius is an idiot, but Arthur's seen him fight and he's dangerous. Of course, this is Merlin; Pustilius doesn't *need* to be dangerous. He can just be competent. Hell, he can *sit on Merlin* and end the match in slow, undignified suffocation.

"Merlin," it read in a very familiar and stern manner. "Stop defacing this book."

The king has been ever more obsessed since Merlin. Searching through the surrounding villages, posting guards at the castle gates to check anyone who enters. The executioner has been kept busy these last few months.

Merlin's mouth opened and shut a few times, no sound coming out. He replayed the conversation in his head, trying to work out what on earth Arthur thought was going on. If the entire Belton family had burst into the room naked and dancing a jig, he couldn't have been more confused.

But legend also speaks of the scabbard, woven out of the very fabric of magic. Protecting the sword and its bearer from all harm. A man who bore the scabbard would not bleed from his wounds and no strike could kill him.

In which there is a plethora of exceedingly incompetent bandits, Merlin spazzes, and Arthur fails at emotional comprehension.

So this is what it felt like to be normal. Merlin opens his eyes to the cool, shining metal of Arthur's unsheathed blade. "Sorcerer," Arthur spits.

He wasn’t supposed to find out like this. He wasn’t supposed to find out at all. But, Merlin thought desperately as his hands strained to hold together the seams of magic, if there was a way for him to find out, there was no better way.

Arthur was surrounded, fighting off three attackers at a time, but he couldn't battle them all. Merlin ran towards him, but he wasn't fast enough, and an axe glinted in the sunlight before bearing down on Arthur, death certain in a matter of moments--

Arthur gritted his teeth and drew his sword back. He was waiting for Merlin to throw him back with magic, or vanish, or choke him like the others even as he swung the blade back down.

Merlin was no expert, but the minstrel troupe's performance in the courtyard seemed to be going fairly well until the dragon landed on the roof of the Great Hall.

It is an unfamiliar feeling, but there it is, and once Arthur finds its name, he cannot unname it. Arthur is jealous.

The one way Merlin had never expected Arthur to find out about his magic happened one Friday afternoon, not long after lunch.

Merlin is sitting up, and Arthur realizes that he must be half-asleep, because he imagines Merlin's clothes are floating towards him. Dream or not, that won't do at all.

"What does it look like’s going on here?" Arthur tossed back, filling his voice with frustration and irritation, leaning down towards Merlin almost possessively. Merlin chose that particular moment to give a little whimper and flick his head. "Close the door on the way out, will you Father?"

He forces his magic through his limbs, opens the doors and lets it flow. His powers feel unfamiliar and raw, tinted slightly different. He lets it repair the damage the illness caused, lets the magic refamiliarize itself with his body. It seeps through his pores, drags the breath from his weak lungs, swirls in his gut. It's different. Merlin's certain of it now. A subtle difference, something new, something added. It feels warm instead of cool, thick and present. It feels like Arthur.

He had not even considered Merlin's execution an option, and the knowledge settles like a stone in his gut.

"I wanted you to tell me the truth and you couldn’t even do that in front of William’s pyre!"

Just as the thought crossed his mind, the road directly in front of them exploded.

Arthur is an Oxford Blue. Merlin is an Oxford cox. Lancelot is Merlin's romantic-dalliance-loving friend. Morgana is horribly clever; Gwen is cleverly waiting for Lancelot to grow up. Merlin and Arthur rub each other the wrong way, at first, but it soon becomes clear that Arthur is a university-class rower with a world-class heart (yes, I typed that). Clichés ensue.

When Merlin woke the next morning, he spent a good ten minutes staring at the canopy, trying to convince himself he didn't remember where he was and didn't remember exactly what he was doing there and how many times he had done it.

Uther was pleased when reports came that the hydra had apparently disappeared, if a little perplexed.

Arthur does not take it well when he discovers Merlin's magic.

It starts with dead goats. A dead goat morning never ends well.

"Arthur doesn’t know," Morgana said, too quickly, and for some reason Arthur felt as though the bottom had just dropped out of his stomach.

In retrospect, going collecting herbs and other assorted plants in one of the more isolated parts of the forest with only Gwen for company was a bad idea. Going on to investigate an even darker hollow without Gwen was an even worse idea, but as Arthur constantly reminds him, Merlin frequently forgets to make the distinction between good and bad ideas.

Fear is the resting place between relief and momentum. Merlin is fine. There is no poison. Merlin is falling. The cup was poisoned after all. Arthur has to get to Merlin; Arthur has to get Merlin somewhere safe; Arthur has to do something.

I keep wondering why your father would knight anyone you haven't put to the test, yet.

Everyone else is acting like it's yesterday all over again, like Morgana only just fell asleep, it's crazy. They're saying exactly the same things and doing the same things and okay my memories of last night aren't exactly crystal-clear but I'm fairly sure that bowl was broken when I left the room.

There’d been a time when Arthur, like his father, held grudges with an unyielding persistence. If Arthur felt he’d been wronged, no reconciliation was possible unless the other party was agreeable to groveling in abject subjugation.

It makes sense that Morgana finds out first. Of course, it makes it messier when Arthur does.

Ten times Arthur relied on Merlin's magic and one time he didn't.

The first time they end up in bed together, Arthur is crawling towards death with his fingers raked into the ground.

They walk back to Camelot in silence. Merlin doesn’t say anything about the blackened village behind him, doesn’t try to block out the screams in his ears. It’s alright, it will be, he’ll make it so.

Five ways the secret isn't revealed.

Morgana is transfigured, glowing with an unearthly power within. "I claim this island," she tells Nimueh.

Merlin, you smell. And if I have to tolerate your presence tomorrow, I will not have you defiling my air with that foul stench you carry.

Arthur thanked providence, or whatever looked out for fools and the princes that cared for them, that his father hadn’t sent anyone to check Merlin’s room for magical items. Yet.

"I’ve never done anything big, sire, leastways, not until two days ago. I didn’t think it would work, really, I’ve only ever done small things, like what you saw, mending, mostly. But, I heard the royal procession was to come through our village, and I thought—"

The first time Lt Arthur Pendragon properly met A1C Merlin Emrys, he was doing push-ups on the floor of the Fort Campbell weather station.

In which things don't stay buried. AU post-1x10.

"If he does not return within these walls before sunset, no mortal power can bring him back to Camelot, and he will ride with the Hunt forever."

There are some sacrifices Arthur's not willing to make.

"For the help I once gave you, I plead a boon in return of the kind only you can give. Please meet me in the lands of Lord Turquine beyond the woods of Perivale. Signed—" Arthur looked up at Merlin sharply. "Signed Lancelot?"

"Twelve sorcerors," he said. "All of them—" and the black smoke suddenly dived back into his throat and he stiffened, mouth and eyes frozen into rictus, and died.

Eight children – all under the age of thirteen – had disappeared from Camelot in the past six weeks. This little girl had been the first one recovered – dead and barely three years old.

Merlin dreams, Arthur finds out about that whole magic thing and is blackmailed, and a boar terrorizes Camelot.

They would pay any price that was asked, Nimueh whispered at the end, trembling with exhaustion, desperate, pleading, anything, anything at all. Just give her this child. Give her the son he stole from her.

Betrayal is one thing Arthur cannot live with.

"You know how some animals can only – they’re only fertile at certain times, and at those times they get very - they have to –"

"How long do you think it will be, before Uther learns the truth and both your lives are forfeit? Come with me and he will keep his life. By all the ancient gods I swear it."

One day you will make magic a controllable thing too. Sons should not repeat the mistakes of their fathers.

There’s a photograph of Arthur throwing his copy of Superman onto the bonfire; headlines screaming 'Ten Thousand Comic Books Burned,' news cuttings pasted into albums his father won’t look at but is proud of nonetheless.

In which Merlin is oblivious, Arthur is nobly repressed, Gwen knows everything, and Morgana takes matters into her own hands.

Getting up, Arthur opens the cupboard and pushes aside another shirt, finding it trapped innocuously between a treatise on medical herbs and Cicero, book dusty beneath it from disuse. So much for Gaius' insistence on education, Arthur thinks, taking it back to the bed and flipping it open, scanning the pages quickly. Magical creatures, a footnote in a different hand than the rest of the book, faded from age, not dangerous, it reads, and Arthur sighs, looking at the spell above it that brings sleep to any creature before putting it away with any and all memories of long hours reading Cicero's speeches and wishing heartily for the executioner's axe himself.

A different take on the ending of The Gates of Avalon, in which Merlin gives more than he intends, and Arthur starts a few fires.

Yes, Merlin understood Morgana. Because he knew all too well that before long he’d be following a similar path, and telling Arthur – no matter how tempting – was something he couldn’t afford to contemplate. It was for Arthur’s sake, and Merlin could not stand to be ordered to stay.

The thing about magic is that it's a lot like chest congestion.

Arthur squinted. On further inspection, it might have said 'Love, Merlin,' but love and Merlin resolutely did not go together, especially not with the letter 'I' in front of them, so Arthur made himself settle on the meringue. Perhaps Merlin had been feeling peckish at the time.

Merlin awoke with the odd feeling he’d forgotten something. Without opening his eyes, or doing anything that might signal to Arthur that he was, in fact, no longer unconscious and therefore available to service his princely (and not-so-princely, if last night had been any indication) needs, Merlin took stock of the previous day.

Like salt on a fresh wound, the unbearable burn of it was that Merlin had been so cautious, never using his powers inside the castle gates and only when Arthur's propensity for endangering himself forced Merlin's hand. With the passage of time, and in the most mundane fashion, Merlin had somehow learnt the meaning of restraint—much to Gaius's surprise as well as his own. That reckless rush of invincibility in his youth had been tempered with the years, honed by a growing understanding of the role he was meant to play and the wisdom and discretion required to truly protect someone.

Arthur lies to a sorceress and gets slapped with a truth spell. Awkwardness ensues.

When they reach the other side, all they find is another endless vista of burning fields and the same infinite stretch of road. The best thing you can have during the apocalypse is a healthy sense of irony. Or a decent car, infinite replenishing supplies and magical powers, but the irony helps.

Uther has faded, now, from the forefront of statesmanship, and though Camelot’s feasts and her knights are as worthy of envy and awe as ever, it is the promise of Uther’s leadership that has lost its shine — and the betrayal in that realization is an ache, a stone heavy and sickening in the pit of Arthur’s stomach.

There was no green shirt in with the blacks. There were no black shirts in with the greens. There were no shirts in any sort of wrong order. The string of curses that fell from his tongue was hostile and possibly suggestive of violence and might have continued to go on for quite a while longer had someone not elbowed him in the side and said: 'Oi, my mother’s here. Stop cursing like a bloody sailor.

"The sorceress has a destiny that must be fulfilled. She shall return. She will be called Nyneve, and she will be given another chance. Are we in agreement?"

In which there are aerialists, decorative metal flowers, prejudices, artsy books and magic. Obviously.

It was not lost to Merlin that seemingly all the major events in his life happened rather anticlimactically. Ironic, Merlin supposed, because so many of them were outside the realm of the ordinary, even in a world where magic still lurked around the edges.

1928, Cairo. Merlin Emrys is a special librarian and aspiring archaeologist. One day his brother, Will, brings him a new find of his: it could lead them to the fabled city of Amunhaptra, resting place of the pharaohs, and to some unforeseen adventures.

Arthur and Morgana are Metropolitan police officers drawn into a strange case involving robbery of ancient artifacts. Merlin is a graduate student at Imperial College studying the healing plants of Ancient Britain under Gaius – or at least that's what he tells everyone. Soon they, along with Gwen, Lancelot and Uther, will be facing a battle for the future of the country. Can they defend the realm from those who would seek to destroy it?

Uther fears his son's power, and Merlin has helped Arthur flee to escape imprisonment. Now the two of them must fight to regain Arthur's rightful place in Camelot.

Merlin is content, but not exactly happy, in Ealdor, so when his mother's friend Gaius' shows up with a tale of dragons under castles and priestesses and an exiled prince, Merlin is thrilled to listen. The reality, however, isn't so great: the priestess is a killer, the prince is a prat, and the dragon sure does have some curious ideas about them. But Gaius is saying it's Merlin responsibility -- destiny, even -- to help Arthur win back his kingdom, and to evade all the forces amassing against him on the way. This would, of course, be a whole lot easier if he could stand to be in the same village as Arthur for enough time for them to stop arguing.

A Merlin-Supernatural Fusion. After a bitter parting and four years of silence, Merlin is contacted by Arthur to help find Uther, who has disappeared on the trail of Nimueh. Merlin is drawn back into the hunt, criss-crossing Britain in a vintage Jag with Arthur at his side, tracking ghosts, spirits, fantastic beasts, and Nimueh, the being responsible for the deaths of Ygraine and Hunith, years before. As well as the hunt, they must deal with their own relationship, and Merlin's special gifts that have begun to re-emerge.