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Merlin brushed a hand down her curls. He weaved threads of shimmering satin gold between her braids. The threads stood out brighter than her natural hair and sparkled under the gold candlelight. Noble ladies had reason to be jealous of their Queen. She was radiant and beautiful, like no other.
“My queen,” Merlin bowed as she turned. “Your people await.”
Guinevere raised a hand to her mouth and hid her smile. “Thank you, brave knight.”
Merlin gasped in mock offense. “Your majesty! You’ve insulted my honor. And you are gravely mistaken, I am no knight.”
“No?” Guinevere teased. She held out her hand for Merlin to kiss. “Well, for not being a knight, you are certainly quite noble. And bold.”
Merlin kissed her hand, keeping their eyes locked. “If it pleases my lady.”
A low grumble was the only warning he received before Arthur swatted the back of his head. “Stop flirting with my wife.”
“She started it.” Merlin straightened and leaned back into Arthur’s chest. “Or are you feeling all lonesome and jealous over here?”
“I am feeling like you’re boring me.”
“I can bother you more, if you’d like.”
“I’ll bother you.”
“Arthur,” Merlin chided. “If you want a kiss, you have to use your nice words.”
For that, Arthur tugged harshly on his ear. Merlin winced though it didn’t bother him all that much. Arthur’s lips pulled back -- more threatening than his normal smile. “I’ll put you in the stocks for that.”
Merlin snapped his fingers. “Oh, too bad. Looks like all the stocks have mysteriously vanished. What ever will the people do without their favorite form of violent entertainment?” He pretended to think about it. “Maybe we should host a tournament.”
Arthur shoved him in the jaw. “Can you be polite for even a moment?”
Merlin hummed as he considered how best to answer. “No,” he said honestly. Arthur pouted. Gwen giggled. Merlin kissed her cheek, then hovered his mouth over Arthur’s collar.
“You’ll make us late,” Arthur sniffed. Merlin snorted, turned, and straightened Arthur’s collar. He patted down his shoulders to ensure his cloak was neatly pressed and ready for the feast.
Merlin stepped back. As he turned, he threw back over his shoulder, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bit of a prat?”
“Yes, actually.” Arthur held out his arm for Gwen. Her smile hadn’t faltered, as she was all too amused by the regular insulting proceedings between the two of them. “Usually it’s my lousy court magician who says that, though he’s the laziest sod I’ve ever met,” Arthur griped. “Never does his work, always skipping important court meetings. And he made for an even lousier servant.”
“There’s just no pleasing you, is there.”
“He’s the King,” Gwen added helpfully. “He’s used to being spoiled.” Arthur groaned. Merlin threw his head back and laughed.
It was the sad reality of Merlin’s life that nothing good lasts forever.
As Camelot flowered, Arthur’s and Gwen’s marriage set a course for a new age, the arrangement between them and Merlin settled into something comfortable and warm, and Merlin slowly withered. Keeping secrets from the both of them tore him up inside, leaving gaping desperate holes desiring nothing but closure. A chance to breathe without drowning in lies. Acceptance. Peace.
The night he confessed everything was arguably one of the worst in his life. The magic they knew about, in bits and pieces. But the lies, the moments of unintended manipulation, the deceptive cloak of prophecy that shrouded Merlin’s equanimity -- it had to be cleared. Considering the number of near death experiences, actually (probably) dying, or watching others die, this was still worse than all of them combined. Heartbreak, Merlin thought, was always uniquely devastating.
His throat was raw by the time he finished.
A part of him shriveled up and ceased to be as Arthur and Gwen's silences grew longer.
"Say something," Merlin pleaded.
Arthur's throat ticked. "Leave," he ordered.
"I -- Arthur, I couldn’t --”
"Leave the city. Camelot. I don't wish to see you."
Merlin's stomach roiled. "Leave...Camelot? Forever?' His worst nightmares come true, really.
Arthur set his jaw. Refused to utter another sound. Guinevere cast her eyes vaguely heavenwards. Her lower lip tugged between her teeth. Guinevere said, gently, “I think we need some time apart.”
The request hit him heavier than any physical blow either of them could give him.
“How long?” He croaked.
Arthur pretended to have not heard him. Guinevere’s gaze flickered back to him. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it would be best if you...visited your mother, for a season.”
An ill feeling crawled up his stomach and into his throat. He honestly feared he might be sick for a moment, so he clamped his jaw shut and nodded. He left without another word.
The road to Ealdor was longer than he remembered. Though surely the length of his stride had not changed enough for that to affect anything. His mother’s house crawled towards him from a distance. He stood numbly, frozen, gazing out onto the dull grey trail of wooden houses. It was past the season to stand outside in such weather without a heavier cloak or the advice to seek shelter. The cold air was bracing and numb, so welcomed as it met the dulled inner core of where his hope surrendered to grief.
Inside, his mother embraced him, rubbed his eyes when the tears came, and held him close.
He stayed in Ealdor for months. His mother, as kind as she was, grew silently frustrated as he grew deeper into a listless depression. A year passed. Until a rider dressed in Camelot’s red and gold raced in after so many months of silence. Merlin recognized him even before his features became clear. Elyan dismounted from his chestnut mare and strode directly for Merlin, who stood shell-shocked outside the door of his mother’s house. Blinking in disbelief.
He’d dreamt of this day for months, but now it only filled him with a sick sense of dread.
“King Arthur requests your aid.” Elyan’s jaw was tight and his eyes were grim and hard. “The Saxons have breached our northern villages. Camelot needs you.”
There was no spare horse to borrow in Ealdor. Elyan hadn’t brought a second. “There was no time,” he explained. “I left so fast.”
Privately, Merlin wondered if Arthur expected him to refuse. The knot in his stomach clenched. He rode with Elyan on his sleek mare, his arms braced against the knight’s chest to keep himself from sliding off. He stared out across the landscape as it blurred, green and unfamiliar.
There was no time for reunions.
Arthur nodded at him when he entered the hall, though nobody was seated. In its stead hosted a war room of nobles and knights, feathered out from faces he recognized to the faces of boys who surely had no place planning for a battlefield. A flicker of recognition, surprise, and relief flashed across Arthur’s face before grim determination set in. Guinevere caught his eye and smiled faintly. Merlin returned it, lips pressed so tight together they color leached from his skin.
War was brutal and disinclined to the prayers of the people.
The Saxons came. Arthur fought them. Merlin helped, as much as he could, until his magic stuttered and faltered from overuse.
He held Arthur as the breath left his body and Excalibur fell from between his cold fingers.
The King said, “Thank you,” and nothing else followed.
Camelot’s lands were scoured and it’s people were slaughtered indiscriminately. Guinevere held out against the invading army for days until they breached the citadel walls. She surrendered bravely, on behalf of the people who would otherwise suffer needlessly and ordered their arms to stand down. Merlin, wrapped in the chaos on the battlefield, returned too late to be of any real assistance.
Merlin blew in with no real plan, full of fire and fury, and laid waste to the Saxon army in his path. Then, exhausted, crawled on his hands and knees to the great hall, where Guinevere lay gasping for air. She smiled as Merlin lifted her into his lap. Her smile turned to a pained grimace as he pressed his hands to her cheeks and begged with her, with the gods, with his destiny. His begging turned to curses as his pleas fell ignored onto deafened ears. Prayers meant nothing to gods that weren’t listening.
In a matter of days, the house of Pendragon was gone.
Hindsight was a most unwelcome companion. It haunted him no matter how doggedly he resisted, or how far he ran to escape it. Merlin wished, with every particle in his being, he made the time on that day.
Arthur thanked him as he died. There was nothing more cruel than forgiveness, it seemed, for someone who failed in all the ways that mattered.
Merlin returned only once after Camelot fell. Among the rubble of stone and cracked walls, the insides were stripped bare by scavengers and thieves. They were most inconsiderate about it, leaving pockmarks in stone where the useful metals were extracted from the very bases of their foundations.
His footsteps left echoes as he walked among the upper towns. The terrain was mostly sand, but occasionally his boots trod upon something fragile that shattered with an audible crunch under his weight. Perhaps the remnants of shattered glass trodden down to sand. It was all lost to history, now. Only ruins and figments of ancient memory that he barely recognized himself.
The great halls were gone. The towers were nothing more than mounds of pitted rock and stone. Even Camelot’s citadel walls were left with nothing intact.
He paused. The courtyard once existed in the very spot where he stood. The sounds and smells of the stables hovered to his left, replaced by an empty silent spot of rolled stones. A small shrub sprouted between two broken stones in the yard, grasping relentlessly up towards the sky. Nature reclaimed the citadel slowly and without consideration for what it took.
There was nothing to find. He wasn’t sure why he bothered to look.
His feet wandered aimlessly until stopped at the well.
Lifetimes ago he sat at this small stone fountain with Guinevere, tucking flowers into her hair and teasing Arthur. The aqueducts surrendered to age but the basin remained, collecting rainwater. And leaves.
His own gaunt expression peered back at him through the water’s mirrored surface. Guinevere opened her hand and beamed at him, bright and warm. Arthur smiled crookedly, the way he would before he opened his mouth to relay a taunt. The memories of ghosts always appeared to haunt him at the worst times.
"Leave me alone," Merlin told the water. The images flickered and resettled until only his reflection remained. “Stop following me. You’re not real.”
“We only want to help you.” Guinevere. Merlin closed his eyes. The voice wasn’t real. It never was. A hand settled on his shoulder, too light to be physically there, but it warmed Merlin’s skin like the sun in midday glancing through a window.
“It’s time to move on, Merlin.” Arthur’s voice. “You can move on without forgetting us. I know you will remember who we are. Don’t torture yourself.”
Merlin pinched his mouth closed before he could return the instinctual retort: I was never very good at listening to your orders then, either. He couldn’t dare open his eyes.
Beside him, Guinevere whispered, “We miss you.” Merlin whimpered before he could stop himself. Stop it, he begged, and squeezed his eyes shut. Stop it. Please. It wasn’t her voice -- after a thousand years Merlin couldn’t recall the exact tone or the delicate way she shaped her vowels. It wasn’t in the right language, either. Nobody spoke the way they used to. The tongue they all spoke from Camelot died out centuries ago. It wasn’t real.
Arthur said, “You’ll see us soon.”
Perhaps he offered a real warning. Perhaps true salvation. Or perhaps his mind playing out what he most desired to hear, but it remained a fantasy.
He opened his eyes. The breeze picked up, stirring up the dust and sand into his eyes. The empty ruins of Camelot remained. The green spokes of vines crept out along the remains of the western tower. There were no ghosts except his own guilt and grief.
Merlin picked himself up, dusted off his jeans, and started walking. The road out was winding and long, overgrown with tall weeds and grass. The direction didn’t matter anyway; it would never take him anywhere near where he most desperately wanted to be.