#it started with the image of toddler arthur w/a wooden sword

[witchmd13]

okay but the image of toddler Arthur running around with a wooden sword won’t leave my head and I don’t know if I want to write it or it’s just there to torture me.

the sword is too big for him. he can barely lift it above his head, but his father had been training with his men all day and Arthur had been watching from the high window where his nursemaid was dozing off in the chair beside him, so Arthur tiptoes out of his room to the courtyard without anyone seeing him. 

unfortunately, when he arrives, training is long over and there’s no one but squires and servants cleaning and picking up training equipment. Except, Leon notices him trying to come near some of the swords put aside waiting to be returned to the armory, because Arthur has gone through a lot of trouble to get there, and he was bound to be in much bigger trouble when his nursemaid notices him gone, so he was going to get a sword all the same.

Anyway, Leon sees him. He’s a newly appointed (assigned? idk the proper word) squire and he almost has a freaking heart attack seeing the blond head of the  bloody prince, who can barely reach the tables where the swords are stacked, reaching over on his tiptoes to a very sharp sword twice his height across the table. Leon has no idea how he makes it in time to stop Arthur from grabbing the damn thing by the sharp end and nearly cutting his fingers off or, worse, his neck.

Leon gently takes Arthur aside and asks him what he was doing. Arthur answers that he wants a sword, trying to make his voice sound like his father’s as best as he could. He ends up saying it with a condescending royal tone that is totally ruined by an adorable lisp and an unsure end to his statement making it sound more like a question. 

Leon wants to ask, wants to tell Arthur that he was too young, that Leon, at 10, was still considered too young to train alone himself. 

But Leon isn’t an idiot, he could see how Arthur always tries to imitate the king whenever he was allowed on the training field, with his nursemaid, to watch. He could see how Arthur always tries to get Uther’s attention on those occasions, how Uther almost always dismisses him. So Leon smiles at the prince and thinks for a moment before he goes up to a few stacked wooden swords that squires use when they first begin, and grabs two, giving one to Arthur and the other to himself and starts teaching Arthur a few basic moves.

Of course, Arthur’s nursemaid notices and Arthur does end up in a lot of trouble for sneaking out like that, but he does end up being able to sneak out later and he does meet up with Leon again. After a while, when Arthur is a little older, at the age he was almost made a squire himself, Leon shows up one day not alone, another kid, a little older than Arthur, is trailing behind him, looking too uncomfortable to be in Arthur’s presence, and Arthur immediatly knows the kid is a peasant and he is taken aback for a moment wanting to ask what was Leon even thinking. Except then Leon introduces the kid as Elyan and it turns out Elyan can fight better than half the squires Arthur tried to swordfight before.

Elyan, Arthur, and Leon end up training together for years after. At least until Elyan leaves Camelot after his mother dies and Arthur joins the knights officially and makes a few new “friends” who were higher than Leon in status and according to Uther are much more agreeable company. Leon doesn’t stray away from Arthur’s side, their relationship turns a little official, but he’s still Arthur’s first knight. Sometimes, he glimpses his old friend under the exterior of the arrogant prince and he remembers how much of a better king he’ll make than Uther ever will and it’s enough for him.

It isn’t until later when Leon notices the new servant trailing after the prince everywhere and openly challenging him that Leon is hopeful his friend is still in there somewhere and might in fact come back. 

When Elyan comes back to Camelot, Leon immediatly finds him. They’re friends again before Elyan had even reopened the forge again.