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Arthur felt the loss keenly in days like these, where the cold seeped into his chambers and soiled every warm lit candle dripping in candle wax. Where the snow buried the ground in white blanket of cold, where the sun never seemed to light the sky for more than a few hours at best. He always saw a gangly figure and a mop of onyx black hair rushing through the snow, tripping over his feet and disappearing before Arthur could even call out his name, not even leaving footprints behind that let Arthur know it wasn’t real.
It was never real.
He felt the fleeting warm touch of a gentle hand in the curve of his wrist fade away and the steady, unwavering presence of his most trusted friend at his back. When he would turn around there would be nothing but the breeze of the earth, mocking him for his selfish wishes. His selfish need to be encased in such comfort again, where he felt no worldly problems could ever dare touch him in such warm arms.
His eyes would always drift to deep blue in these days, be it a noble’s robe or the hardback cover of one of Geoffrey's library books, his soul always seeking its other half. But it would never be the right shade, it never was and never will. There was no shade like it, his eyes. Dark as the sea and rich as its depths, swirling with such an unwavering love and loyalty for its sovereign it was engraved into Arthur’s soul as much as his name was. Spelt out in big, bold letters.
Merlin.
The absence was a burning wound on his body, a deep hole in his heart and an emptiness in his soul. The loss of him was staggering, and Arthur felt it everywhere he went, in every step he took and every breath he bore. On a regular day it would be an agonising ache in his chest, a throbbing pain in his head and a dull sword hanging from his belt. When it snowed, when the sun didn’t shine as bright as it had before, Arthur felt the loss as if he were reliving it everyday, and the effort of holding back tears became more and more difficult with each breath.
Because he will never forget how the bright colour of Merlin’s blood stained Camelot’s snow with a dark, bold red.
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Lancelot heard the rough shuffle of metal as he entered the armoury, thanking God silently that the training drills had finally ended. He’d meant to stay behind with Arthur, who looked at the training dummies with such intense anger he’d felt it from across the training grounds. But he’d seen the snow and known to back off.
He heaved the door to the armoury open with a tired hand, briefly hearing a familiar echo of laughter through the corridors. He snapped round, and after scanning the corridor with a fragile hope that quickly wilted, he sighed and stepped inside.
Arthur was not the only one suffering from haunting memories.
Inside the armoury, Percival was seated on one of the benches, shrugging off his shoulder plate with a practised maneuver. Elyan was standing to his right, chatting about some irrelevant topic or another. While all the knights had grown close after the Knighting of the Round Table, Percival and Elyan hadn’t known Camelot as well as the others did. Gwaine had already established a good relationship with Arthur and Leon and Lancelot hit it off with him, especially when they had realised they’d both known Merlin before… well, before.
Percival and Elyan had taken it amongst themselves to explore Camelot as two strangers to the kingdom (although Elyan did have a slightly upper hand, since he’d lived in Camelot until he was fifteen summers).
“...afraid of snow. Have you seen how gloomy he gets when it does? Who would’ve thought the King of Camelot was so sheltered he’d flinch every time he sees as much as a speck of hail?” Lancelot heard as he mindlessly undid the straps on his chestplate. His eyes darkened significantly as he looked up at Elyan, who was sliding off his left gauntlet. “I mean, I don’t mean that in like a treasonous way, obviously. But the man acts as if the snow personally killed his best friend. Don’t you think, Lancelot?”
Elyan looked up and visibly startled at the fiery glare Lancelot bore. The du Lac had to take a deep breath to calm himself and consciously try to keep his voice steady. “Because it did, Elyan.”
“Did what?”
“Kill his best friend.”
The room went deadly silent in a heartbeat, so silent you could hear a pin drop. Or someone’s awkward shuffling-- No, Lancelot snapped to himself as he pressed his thumbnail into his palm. I’m not going to think about him.
Elyan’s face was painted in poorly concealed horror and mild curiosity. “Shit, I didn’t know--”
“That’s the point.” Lancelot interrupted, curtly removing the rest of his armour plates before shuffling out of the hauberk. “No one was supposed to know to prevent anymore pain for anyone who knew him.”
There was an awkward pause, one filled with shame and guilt before, “Did you know him?”
The Cuban knight nodded. “I did. He was my best friend, too.” His voice cracked at the end, and he turned his gaze away in shame.
It was Percival this time who moved to talk, condolences and questions on the tip of his tongue when the armoury doors slammed open. In walked a widely grinning knight who had already drunk from the wineskin clutched in his hand, and clasped Lancelot on the shoulder. The brown haired man knew that there was a whirl of grief under that grin, if the wineskin right after training was anything to go by. “What are you lazy tossers gossiping about?”
“Apparently the snow killed the king’s best friend. Did you know about that?”
Gwaine’s grin slid off his face as he shot Lancelot a mildly betrayed glance. The hand on his shoulder slipped off and Gwaine stepped back. Percival’s sharp eyes didn’t miss this and looked at Gwaine expectantly. The knight growled but did nothing else as he threw the skin to the ground.
“So you did. Did you know him too?” The giant asked, tone gentle and understanding. This did nothing to lighten Gwaine’s mood, however, and there was no answer apart from the aggressive tearing of clasps and clinking of armour plates. Everyone could feel the anger pouring off the knight in waves.
A few seconds passed, then Gwaine answered, his voice painstakingly fond.“‘Course I did. Hard to miss a grin that genuine.”
Elyan’s brows furrowed. “So what happened?”
Lancelot looked down at himself, armour half taken off and hanging off him by threads. He thought it was oddly reminiscent of his current collected mood, hanging off of him by mere threads. “He met the same fate everyone did who chose Arthur over Uther.”
“And that was?”
Neither knight responded.
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Now that Elyan knew what to look for (hints of grief), he saw it in almost everybody he knew, particularly Gwen. This new detail about Gwen sparked a sense of guilt and unease in Elyan’s stomach, for he felt bad that he hadn’t realised his sister was in mourning. Gwen had always been good at hiding her grief. When their mother had died, Elyan had only seen her cry over it twice. Once, when she had died on her bed in the morning and the second when Elyan had accused her of not caring. Gwen had taken over the motherly role of the family, taking care of Elyan even though he was older than him, and she had snapped and cried and sworn at him with so much agony Elyan could still hear the screams ringing in his ears if he tried hard enough.
Every night after that day, he’d stayed up later than he usually did and had finally heard the soft, devastating sobs of his sister late in the night. When once he had yearned to hear them, just for proof she did care after all, he’d sworn that he would never let her cry like that again.
Though, as he watched her now, setting the table as he was tasked with taking the chicken out of the cauldron where it was frying over the fire, he saw a small tremor in her hands, a falter in her step when her eye caught a blue neckerchief hanging over her bed. He knew, deep in his heart, when the town went silent for the night and wolves howled, Gwen would sob and cry with heart wrenching grief.
The worst part of it all, though, was the fact Elyan did not know how to help her.
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Percival understood now. He understood why servants strayed from the king, how even the king’s manservant was shooed away at the earliest times when he snowed. He understood why the king’s clothes were washed as quickly as possible and why the king’s favourite shirt was not touched. He’d heard rumours that the king washed it himself because he could not bear anyone’s hands on it but his own. And, well, the king’s best friend.
Percival had always thought the king’s best friend had been Leon, Sir Leon of the house of Dellensheart, the king’s most trusted advisor and his right hand man. Now, he was receiving contrasting stories of a manservant who served under the prince (then king) of Camelot with the most unwavering loyalty the kingdom had ever seen. He had the prince’s ear and had almost died for him on countless occasions. Now that he thought about it, Lancelot had once mentioned with pride when they first met that his friend had the ear of the prince and was protecting him with all his might. Percival didn’t know how true that was until he’d asked the Cook, who mentioned three different occasions of when the servant had saved the prince’s life.
He heard stories of a kindhearted man, a well loved and famous citizen of Camelot favoured even by visiting nobles and lowly merchants, and the man who was in the prince’s pocket. But from what he had seen, Arthur had been in the man’s pocket too.
But never, did he ever receive a name.
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Leon shut his eyes against the blinding snow at his door. Flashes of screams, tears, raging kings and dark, bold blood on the snow tormented him when he shut his eyes in this weather, for the jolly holidays had ceased to be just that, jolly holidays. From where knights, nobles and townspeople rejoiced alike at a time where the entire kingdom was free of stress and responsibility and full of family and love; there was instead an insistent cloud of grief hovering over every close friend of the king’s manservant.
It clouded Leon’s judgement, his skills and his focus during this time of year. For despite popular belief, Leon had been a close friend of the king’s manservant as well. Leon had gained a little brother, one who used to brighten his day with a simple smile or a hearty laugh. He had cherished him like one would with a blood family, and the sudden loss felt like a loss of limb.
There were remnants of his grief everywhere, highlighted by the cursed brightness of the snow. In his step, in his fights, in his breathing and his focus. Unlike the others, though, he’d learnt to keep the grief locked away so it wouldn’t affect him daily. But the snow dragged it out of him like a fox dragging its dying prey, slow and painful.
For on that fateful day, Sir Leon had not lost the manservant to the prince, but his little brother.