ciircee | Day Three brings you Merlin fic!

Welcome to the Third Day! Also: To my very first Merlin fic! Now I can sit with the cool kids at lunch again! \o/

But! Before we move on to that fic I must say that I have the best f-list ever. No, seriously. I came back to birthday wishes and fic. AWESOME fic. Like, EVERYWHERE. If I weren't inundated with four extra teenagers and three extra pre-teens (all girls, mind) I would post links now. As it stands, it will probably be tomorrow. I ♥ you guys.

To Mend a Ragged Seam

Perhaps it was his age, but it took weeks of a tense-looking Gwen and several days of fruitless searching for Merlin to realize something about Camelot: "There are no toys in this city," he despaired quietly.

"Did you say something, Merlin?" Arthur asked, shrugging into a cream-colored shirt.

"No—" he scooped up Arthur's hauberk and then paused. "Yes. There aren't any toys in Camelot. Haven't you noticed?"

Arthur shifted beneath the fall of rings Merlin was helping him into. "Haven't you?"

Merlin was sorely tempted to make Arthur's sword belt tighter than necessary. "I know there are toys but what I meant is that there isn't any place to buy toys. No toymakers."

"If you're that bored, Merlin…" Arthur snorted.

"It's not me," Merlin returned. "It's Gwen. What? No biting comment about Gwen's boredom?" he asked when Arthur said nothing, merely raised his eyebrows.

"No, I like Gwen."

Merlin pulled the belt a notch tighter. "She doesn't think much of you," he said.

"Jealous, Merlin?"

"Not even a little. At any rate, Gwen has a friend who has a child, a little girl. Gwen was after fretting in the kitchens the other day because the girl's first birthday is today and she hasn't a gift to give her." Merlin frowned slightly, absently adjusting Arthur's scabbard as he remembered the unhappy tightness of Gwen's face. "Apparently the child hasn't any toys at all—something about being born very early and not expected to live and now the snow is thick on the mountains. Where are you going?" he asked as Arthur stepped out from under his hands before he could fasten the pixane.

Arthur went to the window, looking out at the winter lying heavy over the land. "The northern roads are probably all but impassable," he said quietly. "Right, then," he said suddenly. "Change of plans, Merlin," he said and proceeded to undo his weapon's belt and shuck his chain mail.

"What are you doing?" he asked, catching the armor as Arthur tossed it in his direction. "What are you doing?" he demanded as Arthur unsheathed his hunting knife and set it at his throat. "Arthur!"

Arthur's knife moved from collar to waist in near silence, Arthur's shirt whispering apart beneath the keen edge. "What?" Arthur asked as he slid the shirt off his shoulders.

"I—" Merlin shook his head. "I just mended that this morning," he said.

"Good," said Arthur, looking at the garment in his hands, "that means you still have a needle and thread somewhere close."

"On your own chest of drawers," Merlin told him crossly, going to fetch his kit from the top of the wardrobe. "You know, I did suspect you were going out of your way to make work for me." He turned back to Arthur and nearly dropped the sewing kit. Arthur had folded and laid the cut shirt on his floor and was hunched over it, tracing the tip of his knife over it. "Is that—" Merlin started and then stopped. He started over. "Is that a doll?" he asked as the small figure emerging continued to look human-shaped.

"Keen eye, Merlin," said Arthur, sounding amused. "No wonder your mother named you for a falcon."

"Shut up," Merlin said. "You're making a doll. Arthur Pendragon is making a doll."

"Arthur Pendragon," Arthur said, "hardly thinks a year-old girl child is going to want a horse and cart."

"A doll," Merlin repeated. He wasn't sure if it was glee or a vague horror making his brain shiver.

Arthur looked up, a slight smile—one that might have been almost fond in its exasperation—on his face. "There is a toy-maker, a traveling peddler, who comes to Camelot once every year. The wagon usually arrives in the autumn but Winter came early this year. With the snowfall, it's doubtful that he'll come now before the spring."

"All right so…" Merlin sat down beside Arthur and took the two pieces that Arthur handed him. "Why rely on a traveling man? Why aren't there any toymakers in Camelot itself?"

"Sew along the edges, starting at the feet," Arthur instructed. Merlin watched the prince busy himself with cutting the rest of the shirt into long strips. "My lord father," Arthur said quietly, rolling several of the strips together, "forbade the making of poppets." He looked up when Merlin said nothing and Merlin wanted to look away because the slight smile was still there but there was nothing fond to it anymore. "They're magic, Merlin, didn't you know? No poppets, no tin knights, no carved horses and carts—nothing that could be used as representation for a real person or thing is allowed to be made in Albion."

"And yet, you know how it's done," Merlin said, stitching absently while he watched Arthur fold the rolled tubes.

"When I was a child, I had a nursemaid who made them."

Something swam in Merlin's head, rippling his vision and he blinked, feeling like his lids were falling in slowed time. They rose slowly and he could see a small, blond boy with a trio of dolls sitting in front of him, across from him a kind-faced woman was sewing a red scrap of cloth into a cloak, which she draped around the largest doll. Merlin blinked again, agonizingly slow, and he could see the little boy flushed with fever. He couldn't hear anything but when the boy's mouth moved he knew he was asking for comfort, something to hang on to. The same kind-faced woman slipped the woman doll into the boy's arms. His eyes closing again, Merlin could see Uther—younger, stronger, his anger more heated—holding the smallest doll, shaking it so that one blue-button eye came loose and dangled over one rosy cheek.

Merlin opened his eyes. "Your father—" he said without thinking.

"Yes," Arthur cut him off. He took the mostly-sewn figure out of Merlin's hands and deftly turned it inside out, so that the seams were hidden. He stuffed the folded tubes into the legs and arms and filled the body and head with the other scraps. "She used to add vervain leaf," he said after a moment. "For the scent."

For protection, Merlin thought. It was the chief herb used in spells meant to protect the innocent. "Gaius might have some. But listen, Arthur," he began.

"Matters like this are brought to me, Merlin," Arthur said. He was studying the cord that held his bed curtains. His hunting knife separated the tassels from the ends. Merlin watched Arthur's fingers comb through the smooth, gold strands, laying the knots just under where the top seam would close. "I'm not my father."

Merlin met Arthur's eyes, seeing in his hands a golden-haired doll with blue-button eyes and a simple dress made from what Merlin knew was the lining of Arthur's best dinner jacket. "I never thought you were," he said softly. He stood hastily. "I'll go get the leaf. I'm sure Gaius has a store of it set by."

Arthur waved him off as though he hadn't heard and Merlin left pretending that he hadn't seen the way Arthur's shoulders had relaxed as though Arthur had let out a breath he'd been holding.