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adhd-merlin · 10 months

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Vignette III: Butterflies

Gen, 3k words. | Technically Merwenthur but can be read as an Arwen + Merlin standalone.

Summary: In which there is a baby and two extremely tired parents. Oh, and a wizard.

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It’s not long after the second bell when Merlin slips into the servants’ passageway leading to the royal chambers. The king and queen don’t especially like to be disturbed in the morning these days, not when there’s no pressing appointment to prepare for, but they make an exception for Merlin. They usually do.

He’s the only one with the keys to this passage now, apart from Iona, the wetnurse who relieves Gwen of her motherly duties for part of the day.

Not that Gwen’s especially happy to be relieved.

She still insists on keeping Ygraine in her chambers and nursing her herself at night. In truth, even some days she prefers to keep Ygraine with her at all times. Merlin suspects that Gwen's reluctance to be parted from her daughter goes beyond the normal attachment of a mother to her first child, and is perhaps tinged with the apprehension of a parent who struggled for years to conceive.

Even Arthur — who, unlike his wife, has been raised in a royal household, and shouldn’t find it too strange to hand one’s offspring off to servants — seems to struggle with it. His fierce protectiveness is now mixed with a sort of helpless anxiety. The first few times anyone but Gwen held Ygraine in his presence, he would hover and watch them like a hawk, as if she were made of glass and might be dropped at any moment.

He’s more relaxed now. At least around Merlin. He still doesn’t like to leave Ygraine to nurses and servants anymore than Gwen does, which is why he hasn’t complained about their current sleeping arrangement. If any of the servants finds it weird, they have the wits to keep quiet about it, at least in Merlin's presence. But Arthur’s disregard for convention is hardly a secret: he married a commoner, knighted men with no title or asset to their name and called them brothers; and made a confidant out of his strange manservant. That he should be a little odd about his daughter, too, shouldn't come as a surprise.

Merlin hears the crying as he approaches the door. No point in being quiet, then. He lifts the latch, pushes the door open and steps into the bedroom.

Arthur is standing in the middle of it, wearing nothing but socks and his night tunic and a vexed expression, and bouncing his daughter in his arms in a manner clearly meant to be calming, but that Ygraine seems to find increasingly aggravating. Her hands are balled up in little fists, her face scrunched up in misery, and she is crying at the highest volume her small lungs will allow — which, it turns out, is surprisingly loud.

“Good morning,” Merlin says, mainly to alert Arthur of his presence.

He tries to keep his tone as neutral as possible. These days, Arthur can get snappish if Merlin greets him in the morning in a way he perceives as excessively cheerful, as if it were a personal affront.

He must have failed in making his greeting sound sufficiently bland, or perhaps the words themselves are disagreeable to Arthur today, because he doesn’t even bother to reply. The glare he directs at Merlin says it’s evidently not a good morning, and it won’t be, and how dare he insinuate otherwise.

Ygraine, who had briefly paused for air, resumes her wailing.

“Someone woke up in a mood,” Merlin mutters under his breath, walking to Arthur to peer at the unhappy bundle in his arms.

“Woke up implies she slept at some point during the night,” Arthur says — that, too, with unjustified hostility, though it’s not clear if directed at Merlin or at his own daughter.

“I wasn’t talking about her,” Merlin says. He reaches out to touch the tip of Ygraine’s nose, which interrupts her crying for a handful of seconds. “Hello there. So grumpy. You truly are your father’s daughter.”

Before Arthur can say anything, Gwen emerges from behind the bed curtains. She’s in her nightdress, barefoot, her hair braided rather than loose but looking oddly dishevelled, as if she slept on it.

“Give her here,” Gwen tells Arthur in a resigned tone, walking to him with her arms outstretched, and he carefully transfers Ygraine to her, with an air of defeat.

“Hello, Gwen,” Merlin says.

Gwen holds Ygraine close to her chest, and gives Merlin a thin smile. It hits him, when she turns to him — the tiredness in her eyes, that goes beyond mere physical exhaustion; the fatigue exuding from her movements, screaming of several sleepless nights, rather than just the one. She looks exhausted.

“You look exhausted,” Merlin says.

Gwen’s smile shrivels on her lips. “Thank you.”

“I mean,” Merlin goes on, unable to help himself, “you look about to fall over.”

“Yes,” Gwen snaps. “I heard you the first time.”

Arthur shoots Merlin a look. It’s a warning one, but there’s no hostility in it this time. It’s the look of one brother-in-arms to another, cautioning him to tread carefully.

Merlin shuts his mouth.

As they both watch in silence, Gwen starts rocking slightly side to side, making meaningless soothing noises at Ygraine, until the wailing slowly subsides, replaced by whines and displeased little hiccups. It’s clear that the rocking motion helped to placate Ygraine; it’s just as clear that Gwen has been doing it for most of the night, and would like nothing more than to lie down and sleep.

“I could take over for a while,” Merlin offers, quietly — partly not to upset Ygraine, partly because he’s not sure if he’s venturing into dangerous territory again. “If you’d like.”

At his side, Arthur snorts loudly, as if he had just said something amusing.

"She has strong feelings about being handed to other people today,” Gwen explains, sounding sorry about the fact, though Merlin can’t tell if it’s for her own sake or his. “She wouldn’t stop shrieking when I tried to hand her to Iona.”

“It’s true,” Arthur confirms. “She almost screamed herself hoarse.”

Merlin doesn’t have a great deal of experience with babies, present one excluded, but it’s his understanding that shrieking is what babies do, mostly — when they are not sleeping, or nursing, or soiling themselves. He refrains from pointing it out.

“You don’t think there’s something wrong with her, do you?” Gwen asks Merlin, with sudden worry. She presses her cheek against Ygraine’s forehead. “She doesn’t feel warm. She's drunk her milk as normal. It’s just… the crying.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Merlin reassures her. He holds out his arms. “Come on. Let me have a go.”

Arthur eyes him doubtfully. “It won’t work,” he says.

“Worth a try, isn't it?” Merlin says, with perhaps unwarranted optimism, and wiggles his fingers at Gwen.

After a moment’s hesitation, Gwen peels Ygraine off her chest, and Merlin goes to take her. He picks her up and holds her with her head cradled in the crook of his arm, so that she's looking up at him.

They all hold their breath as Ygraine's big, brown eyes set on Merlin’s face. She blinks a few times and goes still, and seems to study him for a moment.

“Hello, little lady,” Merlin says, and she opens her mouth to let out a happy gurgle.

“Oh, great,” Arthur says, in the misleadingly pleasant tone he sometimes adopts when feeling extremely peeved. “She hates me.”

“She doesn't hate you,” Gwen says. The way she says it makes it clear that it’s a sentence she had to use on him before, and one she doesn’t care to repeat.

“Well, clearly she does. Look at her.” Arthur gestures to Ygraine, now looking disrespectfully content in Merlin’s arms. His eyes travel up to Merlin’s face, and he narrows them at him. “Is it magic?”

“No!” Merlin says, a bit insulted at the idea that Arthur could think him capable of using magic on his baby. On any baby, really.

“I wouldn’t be upset if it was,” Arthur says. “I might even be happy to hear it.”

“It’s not magic.” Merlin laughs despite himself, although Arthur looks worryingly serious. “Sorry. Just my natural charm.”

“Perhaps it’s just seeing a new face,” Gwen ventures.

“A new face? She saw him yesterday.” Arthur steps towards Merlin to frown down at Ygraine. “And surely she can't be tired of my face already, it's only been two months.”

Merlin takes the chance to turn and stare at Arthur’s face, as if to examine it closely. “It takes some getting used to, to be fair. Give her a bit longer.”

Arthur gives him a withering look. He’s apparently too tired to come up with an appropriate comeback, which only seems to irritate him further, and Merlin’s quite sure that the only thing saving him from being thumped over the head is the fact that he’s holding his daughter.

Something small hits Merlin in the chest. He looks down. Ygraine brings up her fist again and gives him another bump. Then she opens her fingers, and closes them around a small handful of fabric — not quite grasping Merlin’s neckerchief, but with the clear intention of doing so. Her determination is greater than her dexterity, by a long mile.

Merlin smiles at her, and then looks at Arthur and Gwen. “Why don't you two lie down for a while? You look exhausted.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Merlin. We've just got out of bed,” Arthur says. “Some of us can’t lie about all day doing nothing.”

Behind him, though, Gwen sits down. Merlin’s not entirely sure she meant to do it.

“Not all day,” he says. “Just for a candlemark or two. You still have time until your meeting with the…” he trails off.

“Bakers’ guild,” Arthur supplies, sounding as if it pains him to remind him.

“Yes. That.”

Arthur rubs his hands over his face, as if to scrub the sleep away, and then runs one through his hair for good measure.

“I need to go over the latest grain reports before then,” he says.

His tone lacks conviction. He hates reviewing reports that are not about patrols or battles. So does Merlin. But Arthur’s hair sticks up in a way that makes him look forlorn and lost, and Merlin can’t help saying:

“I’ll have a look at them for you. See if there's anything noteworthy.”

Arthur looks at him. A brief battle plays out on his face — between his sense of duty, and the sweet call of sleep. But tiredness has weakened his resolve, and there’s only so much suffering a man can willingly inflict upon himself.

“Well,” he says, graciously, as if he were doing Merlin a favour in relenting. “If you’re sure.”

Ygraine, having failed to pull Merlin’s neckerchief to her mouth, has apparently decided that bringing her mouth to his neckerchief is the best course of action, and is smashing her face into his chest, as if looking for a nipple to latch on. At last, she closes her mouth around a fold of fabric and starts sucking on it, with an impressive amount of inquisitiveness and slobber.

“Thank you, Merlin,” Gwen says with a smile — a genuine one, this time. “If she starts crying again…”

“You’ll hear it,” Merlin interrupts. “I’ll be right here.”

* *

He continues to gently rock Ygraine where he stands for a while, waiting for Arthur and Gwen to fall asleep, which Arthur does almost immediately. Merlin knows this because he can hear his not-so-gentle snoring shortly after he’s hit the bed. He can hear Gwen turn and shift about for a little longer behind the bed hangings, but eventually the soft shuffling noises cease.

Having finished examining Merlin’s neckerchief with her mouth, Ygraine has now moved to a joint tactile and visual examination. She is scrunching her little hand in the damp flap of red fabric and staring at it with intense focus, as if it held all the secrets of the universe.

With a flick of his wrist, Merlin summons the reports lying on Arthur’s desk. The parchments roll up into a neat scroll and land into his open palm. He moves to the chamber adjacent to the bedroom, followed by Arthur’s floating inkwell and quill. They land on the dining table with a soft thud as he pulls out a chair with his foot. He sits down tentatively, and he re-settles Ygraine so that she’s lying half on his lap and half on his arm, freeing up his right hand.

Something about the move disturbs her. Perhaps it’s the new position, perhaps the new surroundings — but she suddenly looks up at him with startled eyes. She looks almost betrayed, as if Merlin had tricked her into calming down, or snatched her away from her mother by deceit.

“Hey,” Merlin starts, as her mouth twists threateningly.

Ygraine gives a half-hearted sob. It’s only small, as if she weren’t entirely convinced she should cry, but she is definitely considering it. After a moment of reflection, she seems to decide to go for it.

“Hey, hey,” Merlin repeats in a frantic whisper, as Ygraine breaks into little whimpery noises. “None of that.”

He grabs the quill and uses it to tickle her nose. It’s a bit of a gamble.

It doesn’t pay off.

Ygraine swings her arms about and turns her face away from the offending quill, and lets out a proper sob.

Merlin drops the quill.

“Oh, look!” he says, in the awed tone of someone who's just had a revelation, and holds his closed hand right in front of her face.

Ygraine forgets about her unhappiness for a second, and her eyes refocus on Merlin’s hand, so rudely re-introduced into her field of vision.

And Merlin hasn't decided what it is she should be looking at. That part, admittedly, was a trick. But he can tell from Ygraine's face that he only has a few seconds to come up with something, and it had better be worth the interruption.

"Look here," he says, and unfurls his fingers.

Sitting in the middle of his palm, there is a butterfly.

Not an especially remarkable butterfly. Its size is entirely normal. Its wings, fluttering open and closed, are a cornflower blue, dotted around the edges with orange specks. It looks common enough. Nothing about it marks it as a creature conjured by magic. Merlin probably drew from his own memories of butterflies seen fluttering about the meadow in spring, without even thinking about it.

Ygraine is absolutely mesmerised by it.

“Yes,” Merlin says, encouragingly. “Isn't it pretty?”

It occurs to Merlin that this is probably the first butterfly Ygraine’s seen up close. Maybe the first one she’s seen at all, because she’s only left the castle a handful of times since her birth, and was never taken very far from it. It is strange to think about — that she is experiencing something so simple, and so beautiful, for the first time.

The butterfly takes a couple of tentative steps, twitching her antennae, then it takes off with a flap of its petal-light wings. It flutters away — where, Merlin does not know, because he’s looking at Ygraine, who’s looking at his empty hand, as if she, too, could will a little creature into existence just by staring hard enough.

Merlin keeps his hand open. He calls to his magic, feels the warmth and pull of it in his hand, and this time he actually puts some thought into what he’s conjuring.

There’s a glow, and another butterfly appears in the same spot as the first one. It’s bigger than the other, with shimmery, fiery red wings, and specks of gold.

Ygraine coos in delight and wiggles her arms. The red butterfly flies off Merlin’s palm and lands right in the middle of her forehead.

Ygraine goes still. Then, she lets out an excited squeal, and shifts her head side to side, as if trying to catch sight of it. The butterfly walks across her forehead, triggering other high-pitched sounds of enthusiasm, and flies off and away.

Ygraine turns to Merlin again. She swings her fists around, knocking them — almost certainly by chance, rather than by design — against Merlin’s hand.

“All right, all right,” Merlin says, as if she had actually issued a command, rather than haphazardly wriggled about. “Another one.”

He lets the magic pool into his hand again. His palm glows with the same amber-gold that he knows must be flaring in his eyes.

“Watch closely,” he says.

* * *

Arthur’s peaceful sleep is interrupted, some time later, by the feeling of something crawling across his face. He jerks himself awake, his arm shooting up to slap at it, but landing on his pillow instead.

The thing crawls off him. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the light coming in through the narrow opening in the bed hangings.

In the space above him and Gwen, something flutters.

“What…?” he mutters under his breath, and reaches to the side to pull back one of the curtains.

Gwen groans as the light hits her face, and rolls to her other side. Arthur stares at the small blue thing over his head. It’s a butterfly. As he looks at it, another one flies in through the curtains. And then another. And then another.

He swings his legs off the bed and gets to his feet. Pulls the bed hangings closed. Another butterfly, bigger than the others, hits him in the face. He swats it away with a splutter.

“Merlin?” he calls.

There’s no reply.

He walks to the chamber adjacent to the bedroom, and stops under the archway.

It is a swarm. Dozens and dozens of them. Perched on furniture, flying aimlessly about, in different sizes and shapes and colours, some of which Arthur has never seen — some of which, he’s fairly sure, do not even exist in nature. Blue butterflies, and green, and red, and orange, and silver and gold; butterflies with long billowing tails, like birds; with leaf-like wings, or large, fuzzy antennae.

He looks at a butterfly as it lands on his arm. It opens and closes its tremulous, half-transparent pink wings, starts to fade before his eyes, and vanishes.

Merlin, for some reason, is sprawled on the floor, close to the table. His head rests on a tasselled cushion he must have grabbed from a chair, and Ygraine is lying on his chest, anchored by one of his arms, her head half-tucked under his chin. She is asleep, moving with the gentle rise and fall of Merlin’s chest as he breathes with his mouth open, almost snoring, but not quite.

A puffed exhale from Merlin’s mouth disturbs the two butterflies perched on Ygraine’s curls. They fly off, their bright-green wings gleaming in the late morning sunlight. As they twirl around each other, they are joined by a third.

It has red wings — red like the capes of Arthur’s knights. And if one were to squint, and look closely, they would see, when the light hits the wings just right, golden speckles shimmer in a pattern much like the shape of a dragon.

#since ao3 is still slow and laggy #“what an original title!” yes thank u i came up with it all by myself #merlin fanfiction #merwenthur #mergwenthur #don't tell me this wouldn't be the most spoiled baby in the universe #even by royal standards #THE SPOILEDEST.#also i think i accidentaly recreated that scene from tarzan #do you like descriptions of butterflies? you do??#oh boy. you're gonna love this #(unrebloggable bc i might have to edit stuff)#*

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