#TBC maybe! inspiration pending as always

[panharmonium]

For Want of a Woodwright (Part 4)

aaaand we’re back with another slice of AU nonsense! 

(parts 1-3 can be found here; original idea is courtesy of this awesome anon ask)

today’s installment is gift-fic for @ragtag-band-of-murderers, whose generous reading and commenting last week brought me such joy and truly helped me in the midst of a tough moment.  here’s a little ficlet for you, my friend - featuring a bird’s-eye view of the city, more of our fave dudes just being themselves, and a minor reference to something you already read <3

THANK YOU, as always, to everyone who’s having fun playing in this sandbox with me - i hope you enjoy some more of the boys being alive and well in the Good Timeline :D

as before, the same disclaimer applies: this is VERY rough, not meticulously edited, and not even remotely close to a final draft.  it is hardly even a first draft, in fact.  the snippets in this series are not necessarily connected to each other, or in order, or part of any actual coherent plot, and they do not directly adhere to the plan laid out in lovely anon’s original post, either; they are just snapshots of images that refused to remain unillustrated once they’d occurred to me :)

with that said, if you’re looking for more AU fun (thank you again, anon, for this ‘verse!), hit the jump!

4. solid ground

Merlin drummed his boots against the wall beneath him, the stone battlements on either side of him providing some stability for his precarious perch atop the parapet.

From his seated position inside one of the inner curtain wall’s crenels, Merlin could see the entirety of the lower town, and the outer curtain encircling the urban crush, and the Sprawl beyond, a haphazard collection of settlements outside the reach of the city walls, the Crown’s cultivated fields and pastures transforming finally into wilderness, where the land was swallowed by forest.  Directly below, the King’s Works were in full swing, the framing yard at the base of the inner curtain a picture of hustle and bustle, numerous craftsmen unloading heavy timber from a caravan of carts lined up just beside the gate to the upper ward.  A number of other beams were laid out upon the cleared earth in a predetermined pattern, and something vaguely recognizable as a pair of roof supports appeared to have already been joined together at the other end of the yard.  

Merlin had been in the city long enough to know that once the beams for this mystery structure had been measured, cut, and framed, they would be disassembled and carted off to wherever the desired building was to be erected, but he could not have explained in any detail the specific tasks taking place down below.  One worker was marking some of the timbers with chalk symbols just as indecipherable to Merlin as the runes Gaius had recently set him to studying.  Another fellow was chipping away at a beam using something that wasn’t quite pointy enough on either end to be a pickaxe.  Two others appeared to be having some kind of animated argument over a set of timbers that looked all right to Merlin, but mustn’t have been, judging by the amount of arm-waving and indecipherable shouting taking place below.

Will probably could have told Merlin more about it, but Will had not climbed into the crenel.  He stood at Merlin’s back instead, staring determinedly ahead at the distant horizon, as opposed to peering down at the framing yard’s frantic scurry of activity.  

“High up, this,” Will said.

“Saddlegap’s higher.”

“Saddlegap’s up the side of a mountain, though,” Will muttered, his eyes firmly fixed on absolutely nothing.  “Not straight up, like.”  He drummed his fingers nervously on the sharp cut of the raised battlement.  “Never been up anywhere like this.”

Merlin looked at Will, fighting a sudden, surprised urge to laugh.  “Are you afraid of heights?”

“No!” Will retorted, instantly grouchy.  He redirected his gaze - with discernible difficulty, Merlin couldn’t help but note - down to the framing yard, where a pair of tiny figures in brown and white were rolling a log over to a deep depression in the earth.  Once suspended over the hole, the log could be sliced down the middle using a lengthy pit saw.  

Merlin hid a smile.  “Come and sit with me, then.”

Will looked nauseated, though he wiped his face clean of any such expression quickly.  “I’m not sitting in there.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no room.”

Merlin scooted as far over as he could, leaving a space between himself and the merlon to his right.  “There’s plenty.  Come in.”

“I’m not coming in there.”

“Just admit you’re afeared of the drop - ”

“I am not,” Will declared, and to prove it, he climbed into the crenel alongside Merlin, wedging himself into the space between Merlin’s side and the raised masonry of the merlon to their right, sitting there with his feet dangling in the air, upper body squashed between Merlin on one side and solid stone on the other.

Will’s frame was as stiff and unyielding as the log being hewn down below.  Merlin nudged him with an elbow.  “You see?  It’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad,” Will echoed through gritted teeth.  “Right.  You’re cracked, Merlin.”

“You trust me, don’t you?”

“I wish I didn’t.”

Merlin decided not to pursue the potential truth behind that statement, for all that it made him itch.  

Later.  

They could talk about it later.

Instead, he changed the subject, and pointed at a section of the lower town, where there was a dark gap in the layered patchwork of thatched roofs.  “We had a fire over there, the other week.”

Will was not really looking.  He appeared intently focused on a cloud floating at exactly the level of his eyes.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Little one.  Not so bad.  But now I can’t get pies from that fellow’s shop anymore, and that’s rotten luck, because they’re really tasty.”

“What sort?” Will asked, resolutely inspecting his cloud.  “Meat or fruit?”

“All sorts.  You’ve never seen so many pies in your life.  I’d have got you one if I could.”

Will shrugged in his best ‘life is like that’ way.  “Gods rest the pie man.”

“He’s not dead!” 

“Oh.”  

“Gods forbid, Will.”

Will rolled his eyes.  “Sorry, Merlin.  Didn’t realize you were so attached to the man who made your breakfast - ”

“He’s just closed down for a bit.  We’ll have him up and running again soon enough.”

“‘We’ who?”  

“Everybody loves the pie man, Will.  It’s a neighborhood effort, rebuilding him.”

Will tried valiantly to inspect the spot Merlin had pointed at, though his cheeks paled the moment he registered just how far down the pie man’s plot was situated relative to their own spot on top of the wall.  “Bad timing for it,” he said, averting his eyes after only a brief glance.  “For you.”

“Is it?”

Will pointed at the countryside beyond the Sprawl.  “Apples coming in and all.”

“Oof,” Merlin said, never having considered this fact.  “You’re right.”

Will smiled faintly.  “Apple season and no pie man to make Merlin’s favorites.  What’s a poor sorcerer to do?”

Merlin shrugged, affecting an abjectly mournful weariness.  “Die.”

Will snorted.

“Apple pie is serious business, Will.”

“Deadly serious.”

“Obviously.”  Merlin sighed and stretched out his legs over the drop, letting them fall back against the wall with a thunk.  “I’ll nick a few apples for myself, I suppose.  The Crown’s got orchards aplenty.  I’m no hand in the bakehouse - ”

“Too right - ”

“ - but I’ll trade a favor with Gwen, maybe; I reckon she knows what she’s about.”

“Who?”

“Gwen.  You met Gwen.”

“Which one was she?”

“The one in servant’s garb.  She’s got brown skin, curly hair to about here?” 

Will nodded.  Merlin searched the mottled sea of rooftops for Gwen’s house.  Just down the lane from her cottage, smoke rose over the forge, a cloud of fumes that never truly dissipated, even after nightfall.  The smell hung in the air day in and day out, clinging to the straw in the street and the wooden struts of the surrounding structures.  Even the building itself continued to radiate vestiges of heat long after Tom and his crew had gone home for the evening.  

“I think you’d get on with her,” Merlin ventured.  “Gwen’s lovely.  She’s the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

“Yeah?”  Will’s reply was some mix of absent and unconvinced.

“Yeah.  I mean, she’s nicer than you, anyhow.”

“Mm.”

“Not that that’s a particularly high bar to step over.”

“Thanks, Merlin.”

Merlin hesitated.  “Maybe I could introduce you to each other.”

“We’ve already met.”

“No, you haven’t, not properly.  You didn’t even remember who she was.”

“I remembered her.  I just didn’t know her name, is all.”

“Well, you didn’t talk to her or anything.”

“Why would I talk to her?  I don’t know her.”

Merlin squirmed in his seat, self-conscious.  “I don’t know.  I just think you’d like her.  She’s not...”  He gestured vaguely behind them, past the slope of the wealthier upper wards and back to the citadel proper.  “You know, she’s not silly like that sort.  She’s plain folk, like us.”

Will was staring straight ahead, past the crowded mess of the lower town and out to the country, beyond the Sprawl’s creeping expanse of civilization.  It was a clear enough day that one could see the hazy jut of the mountains looming in the distance, and - in Merlin’s imagination, at least - the border was there, too, and their home just beyond that, hidden in the foothills, nestled in a little valley behind the White Mountains’ far-reaching roots.

“Gwen helped me a lot when I first came here,” Merlin said.  “Taught me loads.”

“I’m sure she’s brilliant, Merlin,” murmured Will, his eyes locked on the horizon.

“I just thought since you’re here - ”  Merlin stopped himself, sitting up a bit straighter.  “I mean, not that you’re here-here, obviously; but - just staying, you know, not that you’re staying-staying, or anything, just - ”  Merlin forced himself to take a deep breath and exhale, unlocking his fingers from where they’d wound themselves into a knot.  “Since you’re here just now, I mean.  I just.  Thought maybe it would be good, you know.  For you to know some people.”

“I don’t think your friend there wants to know me, Merlin.”

“Why not?”

Will raised his eyebrows.  “She thinks I have magic, doesn’t she?”

“That’s - ”  Merlin faltered momentarily.  “It’s just Gwen, I mean, she’s - you’re my friend.  It wouldn’t matter.”

Will gave Merlin a skeptical look.  “Why haven’t you told her your secret, then?”

Merlin opened his mouth, then closed it again.  The breeze curling through the gap of the crenel was chilly, raising goosebumps on his arms.  

Will shook his head and returned his gaze to the mountains.  “Look, Merlin...if it really didn’t matter, she’d already know.  Let’s not court trouble, all right?  We’re in enough of that as it is.”

“You don’t have to be,” Merlin said, after a brief pause.  “You could go.”

Will did not reply, staring at the White Mountain like he was trying to climb it with his eyes.  Merlin wondered what he was thinking, Will with his closed mouth and his set jaw and his inscrutable frowns.  Did he wish he were back there?  Did he wish he hadn’t left in the first place?

Merlin shifted on the cramped crenel, but there was nowhere for him to go.  “I just thought...it might be good, you know.  For you.  To make friends.

“I’ve got enough friends, Merlin.”

“You’ve only got me.”

“That’s what I said.”

The line of Merlin’s body where it pressed against Will was very warm.  

So was Merlin’s face.  

Merlin was glad suddenly that there was no space on either side of them for either of them to scoot away.  He relaxed where he sat, solid stone on one side and solid Will on the other, the two of them squished and snug against each other in their shared seat.

Will’s frame was hard as a rock, though.  Merlin looked down at Will’s hands, one of which was fisted on his knees and the other of which was wrapped, white-knuckled, around the corner of the battlement.  

“You really don’t like it up here, do you?” Merlin asked, a surprised smile spreading over his face. 

“Hate it,” Will burst out immediately, with a vehement gust of relief.  “It’s wretched.  I can’t believe you’ve got me sitting up here, Merlin; of all the daft, foolheaded places for a person to be - ”

“We can get down,” Merlin laughed, climbing back over onto the walkway.  He wrapped a hand in the fabric of Will’s mantle and jostled him lightly.  “Go on, lean forward.  You’ll get to the bottom quick as anything.”

Will gave Merlin a dirty look and scooted himself very painstakingly out of the crenel, back onto the safety of the ramparts.  

Merlin, hands on his hips, evaluated Will with newfound curiosity.  “And here I thought I knew everything there was to know about you.”

“I’m not afraid of heights, Merlin,” Will said, turning to stride along the line of the wall toward one of the towers that would take them back to the ground.  

“Don’t get tetchy,” Merlin said, following him.  “Everyone’s afraid of something.”

“You’d know.”

Merlin did not argue.  Will, for all his formidable powers of perception, hardly knew how true his statement was - Merlin found something new to be afraid of every day, it seemed, now that he was in Camelot.  

“I’d never let you fall off, you know,” Merlin said, tugging open the door to the tower, the creaking hinges echoing down the darkened spiral stair within.

“Oh, aye?”

“Aye, so,” Merlin replied, ushering Will onto the staircase and nodding to a guard headed up in the opposite direction.  “And if you did fall, I’d catch you.”

“You would not,” Will scoffed.  “You’ve never caught anything so big in your life.”

“Not yet.  But I can do all sorts of new things now; I haven’t shown you hardly anything.  Gaius gave me this book - ”

Will groaned.  “Oh, Lugh, Merlin, no.  Not another book.”

“A great big one,” Merlin grinned.  

“Gods alive,” Will muttered.  “This again.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”  Merlin’s grin widened as he tripped his way down the stairs.  “Gaius has all sorts of books, dozens of them; well, you’ve been in his chambers, you already know - and he tosses them all over like it’s nothing; it’s mad; it’s like he doesn’t even care.  Most of them are physician’s texts, I mean, and that’s interesting enough, I suppose, but there’s more, Will, on the lower levels; there’s an entire library; it goes on forever, it’s got everything, it’s - what are you doing?  Where are you going?

Will had turned around and was heading back up the stairs.  He jerked his thumb upwards.  “Back.”

“What for?”

Will did not look round at Merlin, but continued to trudge determinedly up the stairs.  “I’ve decided to take the quick way down after all.”

Merlin snorted and snagged Will’s sleeve in his fingers.  Will, pulling away, put up a valiant show of resistance.  “Just let me jump, Merlin.  I can’t survive another round of this book nonsense.”

“Not on your life.  I’m not spending an evening scraping you off the paving stones.”

Will gave up and allowed himself to be pulled down the stairs, but his face wore the dark, surly look of a man marching to his own execution.  “If you try to read me anything, I’m crawling out your window.”

“Bit high up, that,” Merlin remarked mildly, “for a fellow who’s just discovered he’s afeared of heights.”

“I am not afeared of heights,” Will snapped.  Then, in his most stubborn tone, he added, “The higher the better.  I don’t want to suffer.”

Merlin laughed.  “You might’ve thought on that before you went running off to Camelot, William.”

Will’s face changed slightly.  “Aye, so,” he replied, a touch of something grim in his voice.  “So might you have done, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Merlin bit his tongue on an uncertain reply and shoved Will out the door at the base of the tower, out of the stuffy shadows of the staircase, into an overbright, sunlit afternoon.  

Later, Merlin thought, chivvying Will across what was supposed to be solid ground, though Merlin wasn’t sure, now, if they had really made it to the bottom, after all, for all that there was grass and good earth under their feet.

They could talk about it later.