Chapter Text
He awakes, unsure if up is down or down is up. All he knows is that he is drowning, once more, water filling his lungs while he helplessly gasps for air that does not come. He knows it is not supposed to be like this. He had peace. Where was the peace?
The peace, and the quiet and the beauty.
It had all been ripped away, and like the violence of being born again, he is thrust into the cold and the pain.
A hand is upon him suddenly, wrapped around his hands he is being pulled free of the water and his lungs gasp. This time air fills them, and he splutters and gasps some more, still blind like a newborn kitten. The light is too bright.
The hand thumps against his back letting him cough and splutter the water from his lungs, the air is cold and the water upon his skin is even colder. While grass is grasped beneath his fingers. Finally, he turns, wincing against the light, to look to his saviour.
He knows who it should be, who he had missed so desperately. Who he wanted nothing more than to hold tightly against his chest and to apologise to for being gone so long.
Merlin.
A stranger’s face stares down at him, questions are being asked of him in an unfamiliar tongue yet the questioner seems so intent. The misery is crushing. He wanted… “Arthur…” He recognises his name, and slowly, through the mist, he stares past the stranger’s face, he lengthens his hair and removes the beard and the strange clothing the man sports.
“Leon?”
The man’s face cracks in two, beaming, and arms come out to hug him and hold him tight.
Arthur recognises him now, can see the first knight once more as he pulls away. Still he speaks, but Arthur can only shake his head, “I don’t understand…”
There is a pull, to return to the lake, to its lady and its inhabitants. Already he is shivering. There was no cold and no pain in the beyond. His side aches from a wound that had long healed.
“Ah no, Arthur… wait!” The word falls unfamiliar from Leon’s tongue, as though it is a foreign language and Arthur recoils. He pulled something from his pocket, tapping it intently and placing it against his ear, before more words. All the while he kept a hand upon Arthur’s shoulder, holding him there, in that place, in that time. As though he were to disappear if Leon let go.
“Wait… five!” He held up his hand, “five!”
Leon was smiling still, like a mad man. The usual restraint was gone from his face.
“Eh… I miss… I…” He mutters something that sounds like a curse than an apology.
“You’ve missed me?” He supplied, watching as Leon pauses as though to parse meaning from the words before nodding, and repeating the words back to him.
There is a loud noise behind them and they both jump, Leon meets the figure halfway, who had practically ejected himself from the carriage, stumbling towards them. He stares, cupping his hand across his face to protect it from the still too-bright sun.
All he wants is…
“Merlin!”
He does not need to peel back the years or the changes with Merlin. He is Merlin, he would know him blind. He stands, feet unsure and unsteady, like a newborn colt, before tumbling back against the cold earth. All he knows is Merlin, Merlin, Merlin. He is everywhere. Arms tight around him, and both bodies are shaking, Arthur’s from the cold and Merlin’s from the tearing sobs that tear from his chest.
“No, no more crying, please. I’m here…” He is whispering unsure if the man before him knows his language any longer. But this only seems to make Merlin cry more.
Finally, Merlin pulls away, still touching him, hands upon cheeks.
“Does it hurt?”
Arthur wants to laugh. Of course it hurts, everything hurts, so much more than it did before. Each touch is like a burn, the cold eats through his skin, the light is blinding. But as he does laugh, large and booming, he beings to remember. This is just what being alive feels like.
The pleasure and the pain are one.
And all the more sweeter because finally Merlin is here. After all he had promised… promised that he would return. Finally they are together, and so he leans forward to press his lips against Merlin’s and he is whole.