In the Spaces Between [2/2]

[neathsunnyskies]

Previous

7.

“Where will you go?” Morgana asks, with an emphatic you that will never again be we, and as Arthur watches the flames catch, the smoke lazily writhing into nonsense symbols before evanescing out of existence, he wonders how many he’s lost by saving Merlin.

And looking at Merlin now - sitting away where the light can’t reach him, the darkness caressing his face, the moonlight too wary to approach this thing that wears Merlin’s face but can’t be Merlin at all, can’t be, because Merlin should be sitting too close for propriety, his thigh a long, lean line against Arthur’s, not thirty meters away, spilling silent sobs to the shadows - Arthur doesn’t know if he’s even got Merlin.

“Away,” Arthur says shortly. He’s tired, so tired, and he doesn’t want Morgana here, he doesn’t want any of them here: Tristan hasn’t stopped fingering his crossbow since Arthur led Merlin back down into the broken village, hand clasped around Merlin’s wrist and glaring hard at each one of them in turn; Bors has got his sword balanced reverently across his knees, and he and Tristan are whispering something - treason, probably, but no, that can’t be it, because Arthur is the one who’s committed treason, hasn’t he? He thinks that if he doesn’t leave with Merlin soon, Bors will murder him in his sleep, kneeling over Merlin and counting each breath, one, two, three, and letting his knife slide in at four, so graceful that Merlin’s heart won’t recognize death until five doesn’t come. Bors has always had too steady of a hand.

They’re not Arthur’s knights, after all. They’re Camelot’s. And tomorrow, sure as the sunrise, Arthur will no longer be Camelot’s crown prince.

“I won’t tell you that you’ve done something unforgiveable,” Morgana says, “since you must know that already.” She looks pale and ill in the firelight, her fingers casting spidery shadows onto the ground. She’s looked pale all day, actually, brave Morgana who’d tucked Arthur close when he was four and afraid of the malevolent darkness that hid in his chambers and came to life when his servants left him for the night. Brave Morgana, who’d sat upon her horse in that dead, abandoned village, trembling and then screaming herself hoarse.

He hates her now for being scared.

“I don’t know, actually,” Arthur says acidly, summoning anger because that’s all there’s left. This is Merlin, and this is how it’s supposed to be, Merlin at Arthur’s side, and maybe that huddled creature over there isn’t exactly Arthur’s Merlin but Arthur can make him be Merlin and everything will be all right, as it’s meant to be.

Morgana looks at him with slow horror. “Arthur, you can’t believe-”

“What?” Arthur says sharply and too loudly, apparently, because the squire - who’d been polishing Tristan’s sword with a cloth that isn’t quite clean - starts and drops the sword. “What?” he says again, quieter but no less fierce. “He wasn’t meant to die, Morgana! What was I supposed to do, just leave him there? Dead?”

“Yes,” Morgana says, her face suddenly infused with a burst of color. “Yes, that’s exactly what you were supposed to do! This isn’t - this isn’t like going on a quest to rescue a princess who’s locked up in a tower. This is real, Arthur, this is life and death, you can’t - you can’t expect to cure someone of death. You can’t think that everything is just all right now because that’s not how things work, that’s not how life works: Merlin died, he should be dead, he should have stayed dead!”

The silence afterward carries Morgana’s words into echoes that don’t quite fade.

Arthur looks at them: at Bors, whose jaw is held tight and unyielding; at Gwen, who wore flowers in her hair for Merlin and now won’t look at him at all; at Tristan, whose back is held in a careful arc, taut as his strung crossbow; and finally at the huddled shape of Merlin, all but vanishing into the shadows.

He wants to do something grand. He wants to show them how very wrong they all are because they have to be wrong, because if they’re not wrong, then Arthur has thrown away a family, a crown, a kingdom. And he would do something grand - if only Merlin were closer, eyes lit up by the fire, head tucked into the curve of Arthur’s neck, sleepily promising that he’ll move, just one minute, Arthur, before he falls asleep, cheek warm against Arthur’s skin.

But Merlin is far, far away.

So Arthur just stands and shakes out his bedroll. “You’re wrong,” he tells them determinedly. “You’re all wrong.”

***

In his dreams, Camelot burns.

The flames fold him close, warm and comforting and intimate as any cloak. They lick greedily at Arthur’s boots, at his tunic, lovingly heating his armor, his sword. They burn in his ear, whispering terror, and Arthur watches as Camelot falls, the stones giving way to dust, the colors surrendering to black. As soot and ash bury the dead in shoddy, inadequate graves of soil clotted thick with blood.

It is his fault; this, Arthur knows.

***

He doesn’t know why he wakes. Maybe it’s because the fire has died, leaving behind only sullen embers and the cold. Maybe it’s because Bors - who should be keeping watch - is snoring a bit too much for someone who is not supposed to be sleeping. Or maybe it’s because he can see Merlin’s hands, glittering pale in the moonlight as Merlin bends solicitously over Bors, close enough to sing him a lullaby.

Arthur’s first panicked thought is that he was wrong, Bors isn’t a threat to Merlin; no, Merlin is the threat here and how easy it would be for him to kill all of them, to spin Bor’s death into his ear. How very, very easy it would be for Merlin to set Camelot aflame with maniacal ideas of revenge and justice.

But then he realizes that no one who snores that loudly can possibly be dead and Arthur tries to breathe because of course Merlin would never do such a thing, this is Merlin, who would look away every time they went hunting and Arthur went in for the kill. This is Merlin, exactly as he was: gentle and too kind and most of all, Arthur’s.

Merlin contemplates Bors for a moment before leaning down to take something.

It flashes silver for a brief, horrible moment and Arthur realizes it for what it is: Bors’ knife.

No, Arthur thinks despairingly and scrambles out of his bedroll, feet getting caught up in it. He catches himself on his hands, falling too hard, and then he runs, wondering how much longer he has to chase Merlin because he’s tired and he just wants to be back in his chambers, with Merlin stretched out on the floor in front of the fire, cross save for the amused slant to his mouth because Arthur won’t stop talking, some of us have chores in the morning and are sleeping on the floor, and Arthur trying to stay awake because he likes the way Merlin’s hair falls across his brow, his skin shaded gold by the light of the fire.

That’s all he wants, and he’ll do anything - anything - to have that again.

He catches up to Merlin just as the moon retreats behind clouds that look wrong in the night sky, almost invisible patches that cover up the stars. “Where are you going?” he demands, and he thinks that if he has to chain Merlin to him, that’s what he’ll do, because Merlin can leave, but he’ll have to take Arthur with him because they’re a pair, aren’t they, a fallen prince and his not-quite-dead sorcerer? “You can’t just leave,” he says. “Look, we’ll leave tomorrow, I told you that, just wait until the morning, will you?”

He reaches out carefully and curves his hand around Merlin’s, which is clasped tight around the hilt of Bors’ knife. “What are you doing with that?” he asks, curling his fingers around Merlin’s knuckles. “Give that here.” He swallows, trying to chase away the thick taste of ash that coats his tongue. “Hey,” he says, stepping closer and pretending that he doesn’t notice Merlin flinch, his shoulders crumpling. “Hey,” he says again, trying desperately hard to be soothing. “Careful,” he says, not really paying attention to what he’s saying, only aware of how dangerous Merlin looks now, faced veiled in shadow and so, so quiet, clutching too tightly at the knife.

“I’ve seen you chopping up things for Gaius,” he continues, trying to let his unnatural smile bleed into his words but Merlin is so very still and he won’t let go. “You’re lucky you’ve still got full use of both of your hands, not that one would think so, based on how long it takes you to polish my armor.” He shakes Merlin’s hand, trying to startle him into dropping the knife, but Merlin’s holding onto it like it’s part of him, another hand or a foot, and so he says, frustrated, “Merlin.”

Merlin’s voice is harsh, harsher than any sound Arthur’s ever heard Merlin make. “I’m not him.”

Arthur goes still. “What?”

“I’m not him,” Merlin says, and tries to shove Arthur away, letting go of the knife in favor of pushing helplessly at Arthur’s shoulders. “You - you think you can do anything, can’t you?” he says, his voice wild. “It killed you, that you couldn’t save me. But Arthur, Morgana’s right.”

“No, she isn’t,” Arthur says fiercely.

“She is,” Merlin insists. “You can’t bring people back to life just as they were, Arthur. It’s not just wrong, it’s impossible. I - Merlin, your Merlin, is dead, do you understand? I’m not him.”

“You are,” Arthur says sharply. “Stop saying that, the magic-”

“Magic,” Merlin says, his laugh approaching hysteria, “can do a great many things. Wonderful things. But it cannot reverse death, not the way you want it to.”

Arthur grips Merlin’s upper arms, pressing until he can feel Merlin’s bones, hollow as a bird’s. “Stop it,” he says, like he can order this madness away. “You are him. There’s nothing wrong with this, the old man - he said that I was being given this and I chose you because you’re supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to die, I need you, and you should be happy because you died and now you’re alive.”

He slides his knuckles down the sharp curve of Merlin’s jaw, trying to soothe Merlin’s frantic pulse. The skin heats underneath his touch and he thinks that if he can just - just do this, then Merlin will understand, Arthur doesn’t know why none of them understand, magic is unnatural and Merlin can halt time and make things fly, and so why is this, bringing Merlin back, so unforgiveable?

Merlin shuts his eyes, shying away from Arthur’s touch and Arthur wants to tell him: he wants to tell him that he only did it because it was him, because if it were Morgana or Uther or someone else that he loves, he would’ve shaken his head and let them be. He would’ve buried them and mourned them and worn their memories like scars that he wouldn’t want to forget, but he would’ve moved on. But at some point they had stopped being Arthur and Merlin and started being ArthurandMerlin, inextricably linked, and he loves him, loves Merlin’s shy smile and his dark, messy hair. He loves the way Merlin wakes him in the morning, flinging the curtains open and singing a cheery Good morning. He loves the way Merlin helps him out of his armor, fingers light but reverent, like this is what he was born to do.

“You’re alive,” Arthur says, curling Merlin’s hair under his ear.

Merlin opens his eyes and throws this at him, sharp and swift as a spear: “I was happy.”

“I know,” Arthur murmurs, his breath warming Merlin’s face. “And we can be happy again.”

Merlin’s laugh is a broken sound, pitched with fear. “No, Arthur. I was happy. In that other place.”

Arthur stares at him. “You were dead.”

“I know that,” Merlin says, and pushes Arthur’s hand away from his face. “Do you think that I don’t know that? But I was happy. I would’ve - almost everyone that I love is dead, and everyone dies, and all I had to do was wait. One day my mother would be there and Gwen and - and you. I would’ve seen you again, just in another world, one where I was happy, one where the magic wasn’t secret, where I didn’t have to hide anything, I could just be - me. Merlin.”

Arthur can’t breathe. “You-”

Merlin tries for a smile, but it seems his mouth can’t curve like that anymore - sweetly. “I wish I were still dead.” He lifts a tired wrist, points at the knife. “Better for both of us, isn’t it? You can go back to Camelot; no one will say anything, Tristan and Bors love you, and they won’t tell anyone, not if you tell them you killed me because you realized that you were wrong. You will be king one day, Arthur. You don’t need me for that, you’re meant to be king. It’s written.”

“No,” says Arthur. “No, I won’t let you. I don’t - I don’t want this, Merlin, I don’t care about any of that, not anymore.”

“Maybe not now,” Merlin allows kindly. “Maybe not even tomorrow. But you’re her king, you were born to be her king. You’re upset, and I’m - I don’t - I’m pleased that I’ve meant something to you, but you’ll forget me. You will,” he says. “And that’s fine, you’re supposed to, I’m no one, in the grand scheme of it all. But you - you’re Arthur.”

“I won’t let you kill yourself,” Arthur says because he doesn’t want to listen to this, he doesn’t, there’s no reason that he can’t have both, one day, because Merlin’s right, he will be king and one day soon he’ll have to challenge Uther for Camelot and Arthur will win. And then he will have Camelot and Merlin and it makes so much sense, and- “I love you,” he says.

It’s not exactly a bold declaration of love, not in such bleak tones; Arthur’s never murmured love to anyone, not to Morgana or Uther or even Gwen, during their short, unsophisticated romance two years ago, marked by chaste touches in the kitchens and innocent kisses in the hallways and realizing it would never work because Arthur had always loved Camelot more than he could love anyone else.

Until Merlin. Because this is what love is, isn’t it? Needing someone the way Arthur needs Merlin.

He’s never dreamt of this, professing his love to anyone, needing them like air and water and sleep, but if he had, he’d never expected the other person to reel back as if he’d been hit. “I love you,” Arthur says again, because it’s true, and he needs Merlin to understand that it will never again just be Arthur, it will always be them, then and now and forever. “It’s not what I thought it would be like, I didn’t know what it would be like, but I know this: I saved you and you belong here. You can be happy here, I’m here-”

Merlin’s shoulders hunch in on themselves. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says hopelessly.

“Shut up,” Arthur tells him. “Just - shut up, I saved you and you’re just - you’re being ridiculous, I need you. And I won’t let you go.” He doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s got Merlin dragged in close, until he can feel the press of Merlin’s ribs against his, their bones aligning and knocking together. Merlin makes a strangled noise like he wants to pull away, but he has his hands fisted in Arthur’s tunic and his mouth is opening and all that’s left is for Arthur to kiss him, so he does, kisses him and thinks wondrously that he’s not very good at this, because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with his hands, restless because he wants to touch Merlin everywhere. And Merlin is not very good at this either, less kissing him and more biting him, teeth scraping against Arthur’s lip, fingers denting red half-moons into Arthur’s skin.

And later, when he’s got Merlin stretched out bare on the ground, Arthur’s hands mapping out the peaks and valleys of Merlin’s body, he realizes that he doesn’t know what to do, how to make this work. Neither of them know what to do, and it’s clumsy, this, trying to figure it out as they go along, but it doesn’t seem to matter, not with the need to keep touching, and even as the first of dawn glimmers over the horizon, Arthur doesn’t want to stop.

Merlin will wake everyone, he thinks, with his helpless, unintelligible moans and this simplest of litanies: Arthur, God, oh God. But Arthur doesn’t care; let them see, let them understand what Arthur is to Merlin, what Merlin is to Arthur. This is nothing new, wanting to touch and be touched, because Arthur knows the lines of Merlin’s body, has learned them over the years, and now all that’s different is that he gets to taste them, gets to kiss up Merlin’s throat and catch his wet, bitter mouth, gets to drag his hand through Merlin’s hair, baring his neck to lay a kiss into its curve.

They get it right, eventually, Arthur moving over and inside Merlin, staring down at him in awe and thinking that this must be magic, because he’s never, ever felt anything like this before. He whispers, “Tell me if it hurts,” and Merlin’s eyes are wide as a child’s as he says,

“I don’t care. I want you to hurt me.”

Arthur lets his head fall and his rhythm too. “Hurt me,” Merlin says, gasping out low, beautiful sounds, and Arthur wants to say I don’t want to, I won’t hurt you, I won’t I won’t I won’t, but he doesn’t.

Merlin wouldn’t believe him anyway.

***

The morning skies are colorless.

Morgana takes it upon herself to help Arthur into his cloak, and when she’s got it clasped around his neck, she strokes the fine reds, the gold velvets, and says softly, “Where will you go?”

Arthur doesn’t look at Merlin, standing by himself, pale in the pale day, save for the purple around his mouth, gathered angrily along his neck where Arthur bit down, spilling praise and love and other things that Merlin didn’t return. But Merlin is here, didn’t run off as Arthur crept back to his bedroll for an hour’s worth of fitful sleep, and so that must mean something.

Arthur just doesn’t know what.

“South,” he says, wrapping a long strand of Morgana’s hair around his fingers. “Be well.”

Her kiss is cool, but her hands are warm, and they don’t release Arthur’s cloak until the very last moment, when they have to part. “Take care of him,” she says without looking at Merlin, the only thing she’s said to him since Arthur brought him back. “He’s still your prince, even if he’s no longer Camelot’s.”

“Morgana,” Arthur says gently.

Her mouth makes a funny shape, like she doesn’t know whether she should try for a smile or if she should cry. She settles for somewhere in between, and then she reaches for him again, kissing his hands, his cheek, his forehead. “Goodbye, Arthur,” she says, her voice tremulous, like it’s forever.

But it isn’t, Arthur wants to tell her, because Arthur is still Camelot’s and Camelot is still Arthur’s. So he deliberately doesn’t watch as they - Morgana and Gwen and the knights and the hapless squire who’d been promised an adventure and got more than he’d ever wanted - disappear over the hill, bound for a home while Arthur is bound for exile. Instead, he looks at Merlin, who refuses to look at him, but when Arthur goes to him, Merlin leans toward him, like a flower turning its face toward the sun.

“Let’s go, then,” Arthur says quietly.

(Later, years later, he’ll have wished he’d held onto Morgana for just a second longer, stroked his fingers through her hair just one more time, because Morgana is right: he will never see her again.)

8.

Time slows, the farther away they get from Camelot, and Arthur had always known Camelot was the center of his world, but now he wonders if it’s the center of all the world, because out here, where Camelot ends and where the wild begins, time runs inconstantly. Long afternoons fade into short nights, the sun begrudging the moon its nightly reign.

They take a small house in a smaller village where the people speak in a strange language, a barbaric mishmash of Latin and some other language Arthur has never heard of. They regard Arthur and Merlin warily at first, eyeing their strange coins suspiciously and warning their scrawny daughters away. But weeks tumble into months and then they forget that Arthur and Merlin haven’t always lived here, Arthur with his slow, careful speech because he’s never been good at Latin, and Merlin who doesn’t speak at all.

Living with Merlin is a bit like living with a ghost, albeit a polite one. Arthur spends his mornings polishing his armor and a sword that he never uses. He clears out the main room and trains as best as he can, trapped within these four walls because it’s too dangerous to do this outside. They may be far from Camelot and these villagers may keep mostly to themselves, but word has a way of traveling over kilometers, over language barriers.

In the afternoons, he draws up plans, pouring his memories onto parchment: where Camelot’s walls are weak in the lower town; how to access the passageway that leads from the throne room to Uther’s chambers, a secret passage meant to protect Uther that will ultimately be his undoing; how Leon - because surely it will be Sir Leon to whom command of the knights will fall - will predictably arrange his forces if besieged.

He writes letters: cryptic, short notes. It takes two months for him to track down Lancelot, and an entire year to find Gwaine. Lancelot promises him a band of men and Gwaine promises three barrels of ale, but it will have to do.

He pays a girl to bring them cooked meals three times a day. At first, he asks her to bring two sets of meals, but Merlin disappears in the mornings before Arthur wakes and returns only when night sets in, darker here than it ever was in Camelot. He doesn’t tell Arthur what it is that he does, but Arthur assumes that he’s practicing magic in the forest that clings to the outskirts of the village, because he’s oddly pale for someone who spends so much time out of doors. He returns every night, though, and that is what is important, although there always comes a point, just as the sun vanishes beyond the horizon, that Arthur worries that today Merlin won’t come back, that he’ll vanish with the sun or be eaten up by the woods or captured by someone who has found out who they are.

But Merlin always comes back.

He comes back with bruises on his wrists, angry red gashes along his arms. Arthur never asks, just keeps a supply of salve in the cupboard and applies it carefully to Merlin’s wounds. Merlin wordlessly rolls up his sleeves, never hiding any but never offering any explanations either. Arthur gently massages the bruises, and the next night, all those gashes, all those bruises, will disappear, replaced with fresh, new ones. They leave behind no scars when they vanish, just smooth, unblemished skin, which Arthur knows isn’t due to any extraordinary healing property of the salve, but he applies the salve every night anyway, a terrible ritual that he doesn’t want to break.

Arthur lights a fire each night, even when the summer nights are thick with heat. He sits as close to Merlin as Merlin will allow, hoping that Merlin will fall asleep here, that his head will drop onto Arthur’s shoulder, that his breaths will settle into a shallow and easy rhythm against Arthur’s neck. But Merlin always keeps his elbows and his knees firmly drawn in, head lowered, unmoving save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. He doesn’t look at Arthur, doesn’t look at anything at all except for the fire, as if he’s entranced by it, as if the fire is promising him something that Merlin intends to see through.

At night they come together, and if Merlin is a stranger in the morning, in the darkness he becomes Arthur’s. They learn each other well, even without candlelight, moving helplessly against each other, Merlin saying Hurt me, hurt me, Arthur, which, most of the time, is all that he says to Arthur all day. Arthur kisses Merlin’s bruises, sliding his hand down along the flat plane of Merlin’s chest. He presses his mouth to Merlin’s eyelids, to Merlin’s perpetually downturned mouth. Merlin always tastes bitter, no matter what he’s eaten that day, and Arthur becomes addicted to that taste. He remembers it in the oddest times: in the middle of working through his training forms, as he pens a nondescript letter to Lancelot with treason hidden between the lines. Sometimes he goes outside to look for Merlin in the middle of the day, venturing into the forest, needing to taste him right now, but he never finds him.

He gives up looking.

When thunder rolls overhead, sweeping July into August, Arthur looks doubtfully outside and says, “Practice inside tomorrow. This storm won’t let up for at least a few days.”

Merlin says, “No,” and nothing else.

Every morning, Arthur wakes to an empty bed, the sheets to his left perfectly crisp, like he’d slept in it alone all night. And every morning, Arthur stares at a ceiling that will fall down one day soon if he doesn’t start patching it up, and he promises himself that today will be the day that he uncovers Merlin’s bright smile, long lost but never forgotten. Today will be the day that he opens his arms and Merlin comes to him. Today will be the day that, when he tells Merlin that he loves him, Merlin will say it back, low and sweet and truthful.

It never is.

Epilogue

All of their preparations come to naught, because the summer of Arthur’s twenty-third year, Uther dies.

It wasn’t magic, Leon writes to Arthur; his heart merely stopped sometime in the middle of the night, as if its burden had become too much to bear. Uther had never named another successor, possibly because he was still young and had thought there were still decades left to sort out the line of succession, or possibly because even in the face of such deep betrayal, he’d loved Arthur and couldn’t endure the thought of anyone else succeeding him. Either way, Leon says in his cramped, harried handwriting, Camelot is Arthur’s, and she still loves Arthur, has always loved Arthur, and she bows down before him.

Arthur rides into Camelot in the dawn of his twenty-third birthday, too young to be king, but king nonetheless.

Merlin rides behind him, his cloak drawn over his head. The townspeople line up to watch this dreary procession, some in awe, some in sorrow, most in fear. One man - drunk so early in the day, or perhaps still drunk from last night - jeers, but he’s hushed by the crowd. Another brave but foolish man throws a potato at Merlin, along with the cry of Devil! and Merlin barely avoids it. Gwaine deals with that man, dragging him off with a friendly smile and a friendlier knifepoint at his back.

On the third day of Arthur’s reign, he lifts the ban on magic. Camelot responds with unease, and Arthur’s councilors protest such a drastic overhaul to Camelot’s laws. So soon? they say, horrified. Sire, magic has been outlawed for years, and Camelot’s citizens fear it, we could have an uprising on our hands.

Arthur refuses to listen, telling them all that on this issue, he will not compromise.

Merlin, who spends his days in the topmost room in the northern tower, knows that for all of Arthur’s bluster about how magic can be good, can be useful, just like a sword - useful in the right hands and catastrophic in the wrong ones - that Arthur still fears magic as well. He knows that when Arthur lifts the ban on magic, it is for Merlin’s sake and Merlin’s sake only, a proclamation of love which Camelot fears to be a proclamation of madness.

A shrunken old woman in the lower town immediately declares herself to be a witch, seeking to capitalize on the lifting of the ban. She is strangled by her neighbor, a man who lost two sons to sorcery.

Arthur assigns three guards to Merlin’s person, but it’s pointless, really, because Merlin rarely comes down from his dark tower, practicing magic that he doesn’t want to use.

Merlin doesn’t want to walk these halls of this place that has so changed. Morgana is dead, died two years ago in her bath. Gwen had come in to see if she needed more hot water and had found her drowned, her hair a dark, lovely nimbus around her pale, peaceful face. Gwen had screamed and then not spoken for an entire year.

Gaius is dead as well, leaving behind only his musty books and bizarre potions. He died three weeks after Merlin, and the new royal physician is installed in the rooms opposite Gaius’ old ones, because Uther had forbidden anyone to encroach upon Gaius’ space.

And Merlin’s mother - she’s dead as well. Merlin sends her a message and receives a simple, black line on clean parchment. She died a year ago, alone and unhappy, knitting red neckerchiefs that her son would never again have need of. Arthur asks him if he wants to go back to Ealdor and Merlin says that he has no need of anything outside his tower.

He doesn’t tell Arthur that this is all his fault, that he would be with all of them - Morgana, Gaius, his mother, his father, Will - if Arthur had just left him in that other world. He doesn’t tell Arthur that he would be happy, free, instead of imprisoned here in this tower, because Arthur would tell him that he is free, but no, Merlin isn’t free, because there’s no one left, and Camelot has shunned him and one day, he thinks, Arthur will have to shun him too.

Arthur still comes to him every night, and Merlin lets him, wants him, even. His days are marked by Arthur, Arthur in his bed, Arthur leaving, Arthur’s smiles. When he undresses Merlin that first night of their return to Camelot, Arthur looks at his arms in wonder, clean of wounds, of bruises. “You’ve stopped hurting yourself,” Arthur says, his lashes so light, an almost invisible gleam against his skin.

Merlin wants to laugh, wants to say, “I’ve never hurt myself,” but he doesn’t.

He’s tried to, of course, every day, tried to feel, but there’s nothing to feel. He’d cut down, down until his muscle gave way, sliced open, but there was no pain, there hadn’t been anything. There were marks - red, glaring marks - but they were always healed by morning. Merlin suspects that if he tried to cut off a hand, it would be grown back by morning as well, fresh and limber as ever.

He doesn’t tell Arthur this. He just tells Arthur to Hurt me, Arthur, please, hurt me, knowing that Arthur can’t hurt him the way Merlin wants him to. Merlin’s pain is clasped tightly around his heart, if he has one anymore, and Merlin will never be able to cut it out.

***

The years pass quickly. Arthur reluctantly marries and then spurns his wife each night by going to Merlin’s bed. Merlin asks him how exactly he thinks he’ll get a child this way, and Arthur clutches him closer and tells him petulantly that he will, Merlin, stop bothering him, he’s starting to sound like Arthur’s councilors.

Each year, a new piece of Albion falls to Arthur, as Merlin had always known it would. After ten years, Albion starts to look a bit like a patchwork quilt, different cloths stitched together, strange-looking but fitting together perfectly. The queen gives birth to a stillborn boy who has Arthur’s golden hair and Arthur’s pink mouth.

For a month afterward, Arthur doesn’t come to Merlin’s bed.

Merlin feels himself going insane in his tower, throwing things, kicking furniture, lighting fire to his bed sheets, because Arthur’s all he has left, Arthur is the one who’s done to him, how dare he ignore him now? When Arthur finally comes, he says nothing, just tucks Merlin into his side and tells him he loves him, and Merlin sullenly lets him, lets Arthur kiss him, and he doesn’t tell Arthur that he loves him.

He doesn’t think that this is love, wanting to be hurt (and wanting to hurt, though he never admits that, either).

Gwen doesn’t talk to Merlin for three years until they come across each other in the hall and she haltingly says, “Hello, um, my - lord,” and then, “oh, this is stupid,” and she hugs him and tells him she loves him, and Merlin says, “That’s what I’m here for, apparently.” He loved Gwen once and wants to love her again, so he lets her bring lunch up to him, lets her sit with him and spin stories about the seamstress who’s taken a liking to Gwaine and deliberately sews his trousers too tightly so that he has to keep coming back to get them loosened.

Merlin listens, even if he doesn’t care.

Ten years go by, a decade that seems like only a year. Arthur throws a feast for Merlin’s thirtieth year and it’s a cheerful affair that everyone attends because they love Arthur and they love feasts and good food more than they fear Merlin. Merlin asks Arthur if he must go, and Arthur tells him loftily that they can hardly celebrate Merlin’s birthday without Merlin.

Lancelot sits down next to Merlin, catches a blur of a child that runs by, and settles her on his knee. She has Lancelot’s eyes and Gwen’s curly hair, and she speaks that language which all children seem to know and which is incomprehensible to adults.

“You hardly look twenty,” Lancelot observes, kissing his daughter’s upturned nose. “I’ve already started to lose hair and you look like you’ve barely even started to shave.” He looks woefully at Gwen, who is standing by the queen and glaring at Lancelot as he lets their daughter have a sip of his wine.

“He’s not wrong,” Gwen says later, peering up at him. She reaches out to touch the corner of his eye and sighs. “You’ve not got any lines, but I suppose that just means you don’t laugh as much as you ought to,” she tells him sternly. “Although if Lancelot would be serious once in a while, he’d stop getting so many lines,” she adds, but she’s smiling because she loves Lancelot and Lancelot loves her and she’s happy, ridiculously, buoyantly happy.

That night, Merlin looks at himself in the mirror, at the sharp curve of his jaw, at his smooth, pale skin, unmarred by time. At his hands, with its slim fingers and easy grace. At his frame, angular as a teenager’s. He can see Arthur in the reflection, in bed and watching Merlin with resigned amusement. Arthur is thirty-three and still handsome, will always be handsome. But there are lines around his eyes, deeper than Lancelot’s because to a king, one decade feels like three. Arthur has to use odd-looking lenses when he reads now, because the royal physician had insisted after noticing how Arthur squinted at some proposal or another. And Arthur has lost some of his muscle, a consequence of spending long hours on his throne. His leanness has given way to thinness, but where Merlin is angular with youth, Arthur takes on the angularity of the old and tired.

So this, Merlin thinks with dawning horror, is the price that Arthur has unknowingly paid.

He shudders with the realization, shutting his eyes and thinking no, no, no no no.

This is what he is now: a sorcerer who yearns for death, a sorcerer who will never die.

Arthur will. Arthur will grow old, will shrink into a shadow of himself. And so will Gwen and Lancelot and Gwaine and everyone else. They will die - soon, because if this decade has gone by so quickly, as it has for Merlin, the next few will go by even more quickly, because time has a way of speeding up as one ages, though Merlin will never age, and it’s a dilemma he doesn’t want to think about.

They’ll all die and Merlin will not. Merlin will watch as Camelot falls - because it will, without Arthur, and Arthur and the queen still haven’t managed a son, still haven’t managed a child - and as it takes Albion with it. Perhaps it will fall to the Romans, or perhaps to the barbarians across the sea, but it will fall, and Merlin will have to watch it. Centuries will go by, and the people a millennium from now will be very different than these, but Merlin will still be here, so very old but also so very young.

The world will shrivel up one day, because that will die before Merlin does as well. The skies will fade to black, the oceans to ice. Trees will surrender, the sun will grow hotter, larger, and man - persistent but vulnerable - will disappear. And still Merlin will be here.

“Merlin,” Arthur says in amused tones. “You’re growing vain in your old age. Come to bed.”

Merlin’s hands shake as he puts out the light.

He gets into bed and tries not to touch Arthur; he doesn’t need Arthur to hurt him tonight, Arthur has already done that, oh, how he’s done that.

Arthur slides a warm arm around Merlin’s middle, draws him flush against Arthur’s side, arranging Merlin as he likes him: with his cheek pressed against Arthur’s chest, with his fingers dipping low beneath Arthur’s shift. Arthur falls asleep almost immediately, always tired, but he’s allowed to be tired, Merlin thinks, because one day he won’t have to wake up, and then he can sleep forever.

Merlin turns his face into Arthur’s chest, unable to breathe, but it won’t matter, because he doesn’t need to breathe, does he?

That night, Merlin wakes to the sounds of his own screams.

Arthur, though?

Arthur doesn’t hear him.

finis