Chapter Text
When the boat disappears from view and the water goes still, Merlin knows that it’s over: destiny, done and dusted. He’s failed. The knowledge buries itself in his chest, a sharp spark of cold pain in his heart. He feels sick.
Merlin lets himself sink to the ground, hands grasping ceaselessly at grass and dirt and stones as he tries to hold on.
It is three days before Leon and Percival find him, pain etched indelibly in their faces, their eyes rimmed with red from mourning that has only just begun. They look to him with a question that they already know the answer to, and he shakes his head, because there’s nothing more to be said. He gets up and washes the dirt from his hands. It swirls, silty, in the lakewater. It hasn’t settled by the time they start the journey back.
Camp that night is too quiet. There are too many empty spaces in the circle, too many servings of stew left in the pot, loss building up for years to strike at this moment. Percival volunteers to take the first watch. He sits on a fallen tree as Leon and Merlin curl up on opposite sides of the fire. Leon falls asleep immediately, the dark circles under his eyes too pronounced. Merlin stays awake, staring at the flames, missing the warmth on his left side.
“Gwaine?”
Percival stares ahead, and Merlin sees the glint of a familiar chain at his neck. “Morgana had a spy in Camelot. We crossed paths with her and…” he trails off, hand going to his neck. “She broke him. He’s dead.”
Merlin had known Gwaine was dead from the moment he saw Leon and Percival with a space between them that shouldn’t have been there, but it’s different to hear it, spelled out in the gloom. It steals his breath, pulls at the already cracking pieces of his heart, and he curls in on himself.
Percival meets his eyes, sad. “He said he failed. Right before he died.” He takes a shuddering breath, and Merlin sits up, steps over, takes the seat next to him. “He died believing that it was his fault that Morgana would find Arthur.”
Merlin feels the guilt in the back of his throat, tugging and twisting, bringing tears pricking to his eyes. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said. “She’d have found us no matter what.”
Percival nods. “I followed her. I wanted to kill her, I wanted her to suffer the way she made him suffer, but when I found her, she was already dead. Had been for a while.”
Merlin stares at the fire and thinks of swords and screams and other sharp things. “I killed her,” he says simply.
Percival nods again. “I buried her body,” he says softly, as if asking for forgiveness.
And Merlin thinks of the girl who came to beg him for help when she set her chambers on fire, the girl who stared back at Uther with icy conviction, the girl who brought swords to Ealdor, the girl who he poisoned and held as she choked. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Percival doesn’t say anything else. Merlin doesn’t sleep much that night, and when morning comes, they continue on.
When they reach Camelot, the knights go to the queen, and Merlin goes to Gaius. The old man sits him down and fixes him a bowl of stew. He barely touches it before a servant comes and tells him that he is wanted in the throne room.
Guinevere sits on the throne. Her face is set, but the stains of tears remain on her cheeks, and Merlin kneels in front of her, staring at the floor. Percival and Leon are near the door, but the room is otherwise empty.
“Sir Leon and Sir Percival have informed me that the king is dead,” she says, and Merlin nods, because he can’t say it.
Guinevere stands. “I would have you look at me when I speak to you,” she says, and oh, how Merlin longs for the days when they were just two servants on the periphery, laughing at the nobility and stealing the best honey cakes before they sent them out.
“The king is dead, your highness,” he says, and pretends that his voice hasn’t cracked. “I failed you, I failed Camelot, and I failed him.”
Guinevere looks past him. “Gaius said that you would bring him back,” she says. “He told me that you would save him.”
“I couldn’t,” he says helplessly. “I wasn’t strong enough.”
Guinevere’s hand goes to the royal seal hanging around her neck. “You’re dismissed,” she says.
Merlin leaves as quietly as he can, and braces himself for the storm that he knows is coming.
It comes that night, when Merlin’s bowl of stew still sits untouched on the table, when Gaius has gone out for his evening rounds. Merlin is sitting on the bench, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and when the door opens, he is reminded of a moment nearly a decade ago, when he sat here with the taste of poison lingering in his mouth and Arthur’s hand on his shoulder.
“Arthur–thank you.”
“You too. Get some rest.”
It isn’t Arthur who comes in, because Arthur is dead. It’s Guinevere, and there is fire in her eyes, so he stands and folds the blanket.
He’s not sure what all is said, because things go in and out of focus with the pain that ebbs and flows in his chest. But he can hear Gwen underneath her mask, and knows that the mask has broken when she screams “Why didn’t you save him? ”
“I tried,” he says, and he’s not sure if he’s crying or not.
“You should have done more,” she snaps, and the words cut so deep that Merlin gasps, because they’re the same ones he’s been repeating to himself over and over.
“I did everything I could–”
“If it had to be one of you, it should have been you.”
Merlin almost doubles over, because Gwen is the sweetest, gentlest person he’s ever met, and she’s breaking his heart all over again. When he finds the strength to speak, she’s watching him.
“Don’t you think I wish it was me?” he whispers, and Gwen opens her mouth to respond, but he cuts her off. “Don’t you think I tried? I begged every force in this world and the next to take me instead, but they decided that my life wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t enough to bring him back, and that’s one more thing that I failed at. So yes, it should have been me, but it’s not, and I can’t change that.” He turns away before Guienevere can see him cry.
“Merlin–”
“I’m sorry, Gwen.” He wipes his tears away harshly and turns back around.
“You keep saying that you did everything you could,” Gwen says, and there’s less anger in her voice. Less anger, and more pain. “But I keep thinking–” she shakes her head. “You’re Merlin. You’ve done everything that should be impossible, you’ve cheated death and saved all of us a thousand times. Why was this time different?”
“I’m not enough, Gwen. I don’t think I ever was.” He doesn’t look at her as he climbs the stairs to his room and closes the door.
Leon comes to see him later that night. For the first time in Merlin’s memory, he’s not wearing his chainmail, just a dark blue tunic and brown trousers. He sits quietly, and puts a hand on Merlin’s shoulder, and it’s all Merlin can do to stop himself from breaking down.
“She doesn’t mean it,” says Leon finally. “Everyone knows that if there was a way for Arthur to be saved, you would have found it.”
Merlins stares at the floor, his eyes glassy. “I just keep thinking,” he says softly. “If I were faster, or if I didn’t let the horses run away, or if Morgana didn’t catch me by surprise–”
Leon is already shaking his head. “Some things cannot be stopped,” he says.
“I know,” says Merlin weakly. “That doesn’t mean I won’t feel guilty about it.”
Leon sits there, quiet. “Gwen is grieving,” he says. “She shouldn't have said those things to you, but she’s–she’s in pain.”
And Merlin knows, because he knows grief like the back of his hand, like he knows the cobblestones in the square, like he knows the straps on a suit of armor. He knows grief like he knew Arthur’s eyes, like he knew Gwaine’s laugh, like he knew Morgana’s smile, long, long ago. Gwen is grieving, and he knows the anger that comes with it, knows it will pass. He just wishes that it wasn’t directed at him, even if he does deserve it.
“Thank you, Leon.”
Leon squeezes his shoulder gently and leaves. Merlin doesn’t sleep well that night. The breeze that comes through the window smells too much like the lake, and he stares at the ceiling and thinks of Arthur’s eyes sliding closed for the last time.
The next morning, Percival brings him breakfast, and he eats it because the man won’t leave until he does. They sit together for a while after Merlin has finished, and Percival wraps him in a tight hug before he leaves.
When Gaius gets back from his morning rounds, he steeps chamomile and lavender in hot water for Merlin, pours it into a fat-bellied earthenware cup with a generous dollop of honey and sits with Merlin as he talks as much as he can and swallows back his tears.
“He left this for you,” says Gaius, when Merlin has finished and is sipping his tea with shuddering breaths. He holds up a small leather bag and a sealed envelope. “Before he left for the battle.”
Merlin takes it. “Thank you, Gaius.”
“I’ll leave you alone for now,” he says, shuffling over to his table and picking up a phial.
Merlin takes the bag and the envelope to his room and sits on his bed. He breathes once, twice, three times before he finds the strength to crack open the wax seal and unfold the letter. Tears blur his eyes at the sight of Arthur’s writing sprawling messily across the page, but he blinks them back. He doesn’t want to smudge the ink.
Merlin,
If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. It means the battle is over, and whatever the outcome, I have not returned. I can only hope that you did not have to see what happened.
I am sorry for many things. The one that you need to know the most is that I am sorry for how I’ve treated you. I spent my whole life alone until you arrived in Camelot. You were so unlike anyone else–servant, noble, knight. You treated me like a person first, a prince second, and I can never thank you enough. I think you saved my life, Merlin. And I repaid you by holding you at arm’s length because I was too afraid to get close. I am truly sorry.
I need you to know that I cared for you. I still do, in any way that is possible from beyond this world. I never want you to be in pain. Please, if only for my sake, don’t grieve too long. I wish I could be there with you, more than anything.
Because I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t a clotpole, I am going to ask you one last favor: take care. Of yourself, of Guinevere, of Gaius, of Leon, of Percival, of Gwaine. You have the truest heart I have ever known, and I hope beyond all things that you can stay strong.
Your friend,
Arthur
Merlin sets the letter down, trying not to cry because it’s so very Arthur, the gentle way he would talk before stepping in harm’s way, the tenderness that barely escaped at the most fragile of moments. He weighs the tiny bag in his palm, then opens it.
It is a leather cord. He remembers it well, along with the reddish crystal that hangs from it. He hasn’t seen Arthur wear it in years, but looking at it reminds him of a time when things were simpler.
There’s something new on the cord though, and he looks at it more closely. His stomach clenches when he realizes that it’s Arthur’s ring, the one he spun on his thumb when he was nervous. It was one of two things that he had from his mother. Merlin had never known him to take it off, and supposes he hadn’t noticed it because Arthur never took his gloves off after the battle.
He hangs the cord from his neck, lets the cool stone and metal settle against his chest, and thinks of the crescent and ring that he knows Percival wears now, of Arthur’s mother’s sigil that he polishes every night, and he holds it all close to his heart. He doesn’t want anything to slip away, but he knows it will, as it has with Freya, Lancelot, and his father.
Gwen knocks on his door that afternoon carrying a plate of honey cakes. He’s feeling so sick with guilt and pain that the smell turns his stomach, so she sets them down on Gaius’s table and sits next to Merlin.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “For what I said yesterday. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“Even if it was true?”
“It’s not.” Gwen sighs, and there are deep circles under her eyes. “I was angry. Not at you, just–angry. And that doesn’t make it alright, not even close, but I needed to tell you.”
Merlin slips an arm around Gwen’s shoulders, and she puts her face in her hands. “Sometimes it feels like I doom people, just by loving them,” she says. “My father. Lancelot. Elyan. Now Arthur. I can’t keep hurting people.”
The words tear at Merlin’s heart, because how many times has he thought the same thing? “It’s not your fault, Gwen. I know it might feel like it–trust me, I know how you feel. But it’s not your fault.” He rubs a hand on Gwen’s shoulder, and she cries harder.
“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly. “It is my fault that Arthur died.”
Gwen shakes her head. “Why would you say that?”
“I wasn’t strong enough.”
Gwen sits up a little straighter. “Gaius said that there was a piece of a blade in his chest. He said he would have been useless. It’s not–”
“I should have healed him. I should have tried harder, or gotten him to the Sidhe–Gwen, I have magic and I couldn’t save him.”
Gwen startles, pushing away from Merlin. It hurts, of course, but she deserves to know, and after ten years of lies, she’s right to push him away.
“What do you mean you have magic?”
“It’s for–it was for Arthur. No one else. There had to have been some way to save him, it was why I had magic in the first place–” His breathing is too fast now, and the world is spinning out of control. He’s about to lose Gwen, too, because he’s such a liar and has been for years, and he looks up, desperate.
There are a hundred different emotions in Gwen’s eyes, but she approaches Merlin gingerly and lays a hand on his arm. He looks up at her, and her eyes are pleading. “Please tell me,” she says. “Tell me everything. No more hiding.”
And so he tells her everything. He tells her of a young boy who came to Camelot with hope in his eyes. Of knights and poison and monsters and dragons, of druids and sorcerers, of crystals and ghosts and witches. Of creatures, creatures who ensnare the mind, who send fire crackling through veins, who consume magic and leave coldness in their wake. And finally, painfully, he tells her of a king with a wound in his side, a king who marched to his death and clung to life for a few short days after.
“I told him before he died. About my magic.”
“What did he say?”
“He was angry at first. But he came around.” Merlin fiddles with the sleeve of his jacket. “Don’t know if he would have if he weren’t dying.”
“He would have,” says Gwen quietly. Merlin looks over at her and is surprised to see fresh tears on her face. “Gods, Merlin, I’m so sorry.”
Merlin isn’t sure what to do as Gwen wraps her arms around him and pulls him into the tightest hug he’s ever had. He should be feeling something, but telling Gwen everything has left him numb, like he left a part of himself on the shore of the lake.
“We should have been here for you more. All of us–me, Arthur, the knights–” Gwen eases Merlin’s head onto her shoulder and brushes his hair back, the same way his mother used to when he was little, when he had nightmares and woke up crying.
“I was born to serve,” said Merlin. To serve Arthur. “It’s what I do. It’s what I’m meant for.”
“Merlin, you’re meant for so much more. You are such a strong, wonderful, beautiful person, and you were not put here by some all-powerful destiny just to serve other people. Certainly not to serve other people at your own expense.”
Merlin rubs at his eyes, suddenly exhausted. He hasn’t slept properly since the caves. Gwen lets him go and starts rummaging around. Before he can see what’s happening, she’s wiped his face with a damp cloth, helped him out of his boots, given him a sleep shirt and a clean pair of pants.
She turns around for Merlin to change, but takes his dirty clothing and sets it in the laundry basket. It’s odd to see her like this, dressed in her red gown with the royal seal around her neck. She looks at once out of place and familiar.
“Lie down, Merlin,” she says. He settles back in his bed and Gwen draws the covers over him. “Get some rest.”
She smiles down at him, and for a moment it’s like being at home. She’s so good, so kind. “He said he loved you,” Merlin says. Gwen stops on her way to the door.
“What?”
“At the end. He said he loved you. He wanted me to tell you that.”
Guinevere smiles sadly, and her thumb brushes against her wedding ring. “Thank you, Merlin.”
He’s asleep before the guilt swallows him whole.
“It’s too late.” Arthur’s breath is fading, and his body goes limp against Merlin. “It’s too late.”
“No–” The chainmail is cold.
“All your magic, Merlin, can’t save my life.” Arthur’s hands flail around, one eventually coming to rest on top of Merlin’s.
“I can. I’m not going to lose you.” Merlin can’t find the strength to stand, and Arthur lost it long ago.
“Just–just hold me.” And so Merlin does, pulling Arthur tight to his chest. His hair brushes against Merlin’s cheek, and he takes a shuddering breath.
“There’s something I want to say…”
“You’re not going to say goodbye,” says Merlin, because he can’t bear it, because Arthur’s not going to die, not going to leave him–
Arthur’s head lolls against Merlin’s shoulder. “No, Merlin.” His eyes are hazy. “Everything you’ve done. I know now–for me, for Camelot. For the kingdom you helped me build.”
Merlin shakes his head. “You’d have done it without me,” he says.
Arthur laughs, and Merlin wants to hear it forever. “Maybe,” he says, and the smile fades as his eyes drift. Eventually his gaze returns to Merlin’s face, and he shifts closer. “I want to say–something I’ve never said to you before.”
Merlin leans closer, and Arthur’s gloved hand comes to rest behind his head. “I love you.”
Merlin’s breath stops at the same time as Arthur’s, but he takes another breath and Arthur never will.
Merlin sits up, shaking, and reaches for the water on his bedside table. His other hand goes to the cord around his neck, then to the bag where he knows the sigil rests.
He didn’t tell Gwen everything after all.
***
Gwen repeals the ban on magic. It takes three months to get it past the council, but the day it is announced, Merlin stands with her on the balcony. A group of druids enter the city, and Merlin goes with Percival to the place where Morgana is buried.
After a year of mourning, Gwen marries Leon. Merlin’s not sure if they truly love each other (the way that Guinevere loved Lancelot, loved Arthur, the way that Merlin loved–), but he knows that they both love Camelot enough to make it work. They have a son, and name him Stephen, after Leon’s father. Merlin tries to spend time with him, but there’s something deeply painful in his chest that won’t ease, because he’s only known one prince and he can’t know another.
Gaius dies five years after Camlann. Merlin grieves as he would grieve a father, but the edges are dulled. Gaius was old, had lived his life, had died peacefully in his sleep. The worst part of it is the guilt he feels for not mourning more.
The years pass, at once too slow and too fast. Fine lines appear at the corners of Gwen’s eyes, and Leon’s hair is shot through with silver, but Merlin never gets any older. No frost touches his dark hair, no lines crease his face, and he finds himself relying more and more on glamours to cast away suspicion.
Percival comes to Merlin some nights, seeking sleeping draughts even as the years go on and his brows grow lined. He tells Merlin one evening, as he waits for the herbs to steep, that he could hear Gwaine screaming before he died. Merlin sits with him, and they stare into the fire. He tells Percival, in a hushed voice, about the last days, down to the last moments, and Percival looks at him with understanding. They speak only of events, not of the dreams that spawn from them.
Merlin trains a new physician, a bright young woman named Amice. She learns the language of herbs quickly, has a knack for spotting imbalance. She is gentle and kind, stubborn when needed, and can raise her eyebrow nearly as sharply as Gaius. He is proud, and knows that he will be leaving the kingdom in good hands when the time comes.
Percival is the first to die, twenty-five years after Camlann. Merlin suspects that he never healed after Gwaine’s death, and he hopes that they find one another in Avalon. Percival’s death leaves something hollow in his chest, and he knows that it is just the beginning.
Merlin knows, irrevocably, that he will not find his friends (his family) in Avalon, because he will never get there. Age does not touch him, and death doesn’t stick. He dies once from a plague, coughs up enough blood to fill a bucket and feels his eyes roll back, but he wakes the next morning with his throat sore and his fever broken. He wonders, after that, how often he’s died before.
Leon sees it happen once–he joins the king on a patrol and takes an arrow to the chest, directly in the heart. He feels it struggle against the bolt for a few moments, sees the tears gathering in Leon’s eyes, and tries to reach up.
“It’s okay,” he croaks, but Leon shakes his head and clasps Merlin’s hand tightly. Merlin swallows the pain, closes his eyes, and is released.
He opens his eyes and he’s still on the forest floor. Leon is crying, the same quiet tears that he’d shed in private for Arthur. The arrow lies beside him, and Merlin’s shirt is stiff with dried blood.
“Leon,” says Merlin, sitting up.
The king stares at him in disbelief, and Merlin realizes uncomfortably that his glamour disappeared when he died, and Leon is seeing Merlin as he truly is, frozen in time just after Camlann.
“Merlin?” he whispers.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Leon pulls him into a tight hug.
“No,” he says. “I am sorry. I am so sorry, Merlin, for this burden that you bear.”
And Merlin looks at Leon, at the wedding ring on his finger and the lines in his face and the silver in his hair. “Thank you,” he says.
They return, as ever, to Camelot. Leon doesn’t tell Gwen what happened, because Merlin asks him not to, and life returns to normal. Long days and longer nights, the constant knowledge of a missing piece.
Merlin stops trying to distinguish between dream and nightmare, because he’s not sure there’s much of a difference anymore. Some nights, Arthur whispers that he loves Merlin. Sometimes he is already dead by the time Merlin gets to the battle. Sometimes he stares up at Merlin with blood gathering on the corners of his lips and says I hate you .
It is thirty years after Camlann that Leon dies. Merlin mourns him, and feels that he has lost another part of himself. It’s another cruel reminder that he will always lose everything and everyone, that someday Camelot will fall and Merlin will be left standing and that’s just the beginning.
Merlin is at Gwen’s side when she dies, three months later, and he takes off his glamour and lets her see him one last time.
“I wish you could come with us, Merlin,” she says, her voice weaker now than he’s ever heard it.
Merlin smiles at her through his tears. “So do I.”
She reaches for his hand, and clasps it in hers. “I know that there’s one more lie you told me,” she says softly.
Merlin stiffens, because he knows exactly what lie it is, but Gwen is on her deathbed and whatever she asks, he will tell.
“You said he wanted you to tell me that he loved me. That he was thinking of me when he died.” The next breath she draws rattles in her throat. “I learned to read when you’re lying after you told me the truth about your magic. And you were lying then.”
Merlin nods, lips pressed together, and Gwen continues. “What did he really say, in the end?”
Merlin bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, and Gwen’s brow creases. “I won’t be angry, Merlin. I just want to know.”
I love you.
“He said that he loved me,” Merlin whispers, and he knows it’s the right thing when Gwen smiles tiredly at him and reaches up to touch his cheek.
“Thank you,” she says, and closes her eyes.
In the months that follow, the kingdom mourns. Stephen takes the throne, the fourth king since Merlin set foot in Camelot. Merlin doesn’t stick around enough to see if he’ll be good at it. He packs his things–the scarves his mother made for him, the sigil that he still polishes every night, the knife that Lancelot tucked in his boot when he was unarmed on a hunt, the book of spells that Gaius gave him. He makes for Ealdor, because there’s one person left.
His mother has grown old. Her hair is white and brittle, her face lined. Her eyes have not faded, have not lost their shine, and he sits with her. His heart breaks a little, because he can feel death in the corners of their tiny house, and he knows he won’t see her again. She tells him that she is proud of him, and that he must be strong, and she closes her eyes.
Just like that, everyone is gone.
.
***
The years seem to blur together. Merlin decides early on that he has lost too many people, that he can’t bear to lose more, and he spends more and more time alone. He knows that the outer villages in Camelot tell tales about the strange hermit who lives in the woods. Myrddin Wyllt, they call him. He’s a bard, apparently, and a seer, a prophet who went mad after battle.
He can’t help but think that they’re not so far off.
Camelot falls nearly four centuries after Camlann, and Merlin stops paying attention. He watched Camelot from afar because of Arthur, because of his friends, but with Camelot gone and his friends gone long before, there’s no meaning in it anymore. He retreats deeper into the forest, and children whisper tales of Myrddin Wyllt, the mad bard who comes into town once a year to trade meticulously woven baskets and rare herbs for cloth and pots.
He hasn’t used his magic since Arthur died–isn’t sure he can, really, because his magic was always for Arthur–but the dreams continue, the prophecies fill his ears and he writes them down and stitches them into a book that he never opens.
He sees pain and death and loss and rage and love, watching from the periphery, and he hates the world sometimes. Hates it for reasons he’s not sure he can explain, so he bites down on his tongue and digs a garden. He fills his corner of the forest with flowers and doesn’t leave it. The first time he uses his magic after Arthur died is to fix the leaves of a fern that have gone dry and brown. He watches them uncurl and shine in his hands, and he laughs. It hurts his chest. He could save a plant, but he couldn’t save Arthur.
As the years go by, his magic seems to dwindle and wither, until he can barely stop a flower from wilting. The dreams become less and less frequent, and eventually, the magic fades from his clearing in the woods, and he ventures out.
Camelot is gone. He barely recognizes the kingdom that stands in its place, and cares little for the crown and nobility. He spends his time traveling through villages, sometimes as a physician, sometimes as a bard, always as whatever is needed. He steals from nobles frequently, and gives the money to the people who need it most (someone starts calling him Robin, and he doesn’t care enough to correct them–why bother, a merlin and a robin are both birds).
There are good days–days where he can almost smile, where the ache in his chest settles to his bones and he can breathe freely. More frequent are the bad days, where he wakes up with guilt so thick in his throat that tears come to eyes when he inhales, where he can’t get out of bed, where the memories are so strong that he can smell grass and the metallic scent of blood and hear his own voice laughing at him: not good enough not strong enough not fast enough never enough–
He spends most of the fourteenth century sleeping. He doesn’t think he leaves his house more than seven times, and the little time he is awake, he stares up at the ceiling and asks the world, silently, why him, why did he have to die, why wasn’t it me.
He travels, after that, afraid that if he stays still too long he’ll slip back into the haze of gloom and pain. He meets physicians and scientists and artists and politicians, learns all they have to teach and more.
He goes back to the ruins of Camelot after that, and sits on the lake shore for a while. He tells Arthur what he’s done and learned, and pretends like his voice doesn’t break as he speaks, like his tears aren’t mixing with the silt on the shore. The necklace still rests on his chest, ring and crystal. He still polishes the sigil every night.
He travels to the lands near Camelot–they call it England, now, and finds himself in a city called London. He likes it, likes the hustle and bustle, the shouts and carts rattling on cobblestones. It reminds him a bit of the lower town.
He finds himself in a tavern one night, sitting next to a man with a beard and ink smudges on his fingers. The man tells him about a play that he’s writing, about a prince and his father, his uncle who betrayed him. Merlin cries into his tankard of ale and tells the man (who introduced himself as William) about his prince, so noble and kind and sweet.
“He died,” says Merlin, words slurring slightly with the alcohol, and William looks at him sympathetically. “He died in my arms and I couldn’t stop it, and I couldn’t follow him. He told me to be strong though. Left me a note.” He also told Merlin that he loved him, but he doesn’t tell William that. It’s too precious.
Later, Merlin goes to see William’s play. The prince’s name is Hamlet, and he’s played by a young man with golden hair. There is another man in the play, Horatio, who holds the prince as he dies. Merlin has to leave and stand in the cool night air outside the playhouse, forcing the pain back down.
When boats start crossing the sea to a new world, Merlin stays firmly on the soil in England. He watches a king go mad and thinks of Uther, but it has been a long time since he stood at the side of a king, since he stood at anyone’s side.
Merlin sees social circles wax and wane, watches countless weddings and funerals. He sees gas lamps line the streets; sees them replaced with electric lights. He watches as horses and carriages are replaced with cars, watches as the cars change shape and become quieter, as they overwhelm the streets. He stays in London, because there’s nowhere that reminds him of Camelot anymore.
As the years slip by into the twenty-first century, Merlin finds himself working in a coffee shop. He likes the process of making drinks, the dusky smell of espresso as it hisses out of the machine, the whir of the frother as he foams milk. As ever, he is hollow and lonely, even as he spends less time alone and more smiling at customers and exchanging pleasant conversation with the other baristas. He’s decided that surely not every smile can be fake, and nearly convinces himself that the ache in his chest has always been a part of him.
Through all of it, the one thing that keeps Merlin going is Kilgarrah’s promise, the vow that Arthur will come back. He tries not to think too much about it, because the dragon always spoke in half-lies and he can’t bear the thought that he might be wrong. He forces it to become a truth, buried deeply in his mind with the last remnants of his magic: Arthur will come back.
He spends the early hours of the morning at the rickety table in his flat, drinking tea and reading the news. There is a part of him that is always looking, everywhere, for some sign of Arthur, and that’s why he thinks he’s imagined it when he sees the word Avalon on the BBC’s homepage.
His heart nearly stops as he scrolls to the headline: New Find at Llangorse Lake Points to Legendary Lake of Avalon.
His hands shake. There was a boat found at the bottom of Llangorse Lake. In the boat was a sword (markings on the blade suggest that it is the legendary Excalibur–have we found King Arthur’s final resting place? ), corroded plate armor, and a chainmail hauberk, wrapped around a skeleton. The article proclaims that new facial reconstruction techniques will reveal the face of this mysterious warrior, and Merlin can’t stop himself as he scrolls further down, knowing what he will find.
Arthur’s face stares back at him from the computer screen, the line of his jaw, the slope of his nose. The eyes are slightly too dull, the hair slightly too dark, but Merlin can do nothing but stare. This is a face that they’ve built from bones, from Arthur’s bones, because Arthur’s bones were at the bottom of a lake and they’ve dredged him up and he’s never coming back.
He’s never coming back.
Merlin falls out of his chair, unable to stop the anguished scream that rises in the back of his throat. Fifteen centuries of waiting for nothing. Arthur is gone, his armor and his reconstructed face the only things that are left. His breath is ragged, and he can feel tears on his face, agony breaking through the hollowness that has dwelt in his chest for so, so long. Arthur’s not coming back. Arthur’s not coming back.
In all the centuries of waiting and loneliness, Merlin was always moving forward. He didn’t always have direction, but he knew that he was headed toward something, that someday Arthur would be back and the world would work the way it was supposed to again. No matter how far he drifted, he would always be caught in the current, pulled toward Arthur’s return. It was something almost like hope.
Lying on the floor with the blue light of the computer filling the flat, Merlin truly loses hope for the first time in a thousand and a half years.