Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The fires were still blazing in the lower town, and Merlin was bleeding from a stab wound in his side (not even to mention his gushing head wound from when Morgana had thrown him into the castle gate), but none of that was new territory, necessarily.

Not especially since Merlin had officially become Court Sorcerer and Arthur had legalized magic two years ago (although, Merlin supposes, that isn’t quite accurate; he and Geoffrey had compiled some data just last week, and attacks and sieges on Camelot had gone down by thirteen percent since magic’s legalization, and that was nothing to snuff at, even Gaius agreed).

No, what was new territory that day was the middle-aged bearded man claiming to be Arthur standing in front of him, blocking him from the entrance to the throne room, where he knew Morgana was fighting with the real Arthur.

“Merlin,” the bearded man said, in such an exact replication of how his king said his name that Merlin flinched. “I know how it seems, but you’ve got to hear me out. You can’t go in there.”

Merlin attempted to straighten up, to look like the formidable warlock that he was always trying to convince himself that he was, but doing so made his wound pulse painfully. He exhaled a painful gasp and slouched further to the left, clutching his wound.

“Move out of the way, whoever you are, “ Merlin huffed. “Or I’ll move you.”

He outstretched his right hand, shaking much more heavily than he would have preferred, but he was proud of himself for staying upright, at the very least.

One of the man’s blonde eyebrows cocked in amusement, yet his eyes clouded with concern—for Merlin? Merlin couldn’t justify this worry to himself, and so he elected to ignore it.

The man twitched, as if resisting the urge to step forward and help keep Merlin upright—and once again, Merlin felt a shiver of familiarity, a sixth sense (his magic? Merlin couldn’t tell what the feeling was) telling him that he knew the man in front of him, despite knowing that this couldn’t really be an older version of Arthur, that it was surely another trick of Morgana’s trying to stall Merlin from stopping whatever nefarious plot she was enacting.

And yet, if that were true, why hadn’t Merlin just thrown the man out of his way? He could still manage that much magic, even injured as he was. He supposed he was trying to conserve his energy for the inevitable battle with Morgana herself, but Merlin knew that that same sixth sense was what was actually holding him back.

“Very threatening, Merlin,” the man in front of him said, his voice deeply sardonic—and worried, too. Merlin found it confusing and recognizable. Ye gods, he wanted to scream at the sheer insanity of it all. “I’m practically weeping in fear at the sight of you. Now, why don’t you just lean up against the wall there, and I’ll—”

From the throne room behind them came a high-pitched shriek of irritation, which Merlin recognized as Morgana’s. Both Merlin and the faux-Arthur’s heads whipped around at the sound, and Merlin met the man’s gaze when he turned back to him, both of their eyes communicating grim displeasure.

Another yell followed Morgana’s scream, and Merlin recognized his king—the real Arthur, without the beard and the wrinkles and the patronizing attitude (well, still that, sometimes)—yell out, “MERLIN, NO!”

Which was confusing, as Merlin was quite certain he wasn’t doing anything at the moment that warranted Arthur yelling at him. In fact, he wasn’t doing anything at all, except taking the older man’s advice and leaning against the wall nearest him, giving his dizzy brain a moment’s reprieve. He could feel the trickle of blood from his head wound sliding down his forehead.

At the sound of Arthur in distress, however, he wobbled back to standing, staggering past the older man in front of him, flicking his right hand at him lazily when the man tried to stop him. Normally—if Merlin wasn’t seeing double (his head wound was going to be a nasty bugger to heal, later, he could already tell), bleeding out, and rather distracted—that gesture would have sent an attacker flying against the nearest hard surface, but all it did was cause the man to stumble backwards. Damn, Merlin really needed to pull it together if Morgana was in the middle of some whole magical dog-and-pony show, as she certainly would be. He couldn’t even muster up a decent magical shove.

Merlin reached for the massive door handles, beginning to wrench them open, when the older Arthur-lookalike stumbled forward to shove the door closed.

“Merlin, don’t! It’s not yet time!”

Merlin wheeled to face him, irritation overriding his strange instinct to trust the man. “Listen, whoever you are—”

“You know exactly who I am, Merlin, that’s why you won’t hurt me. You have to trust me, that I’m trying to protect—”

“Whether you’re him, or not, or some bizarre hallucination or Morgana trick or time traveler, I don’t have time to deal with you, not when—”

“Merlin, if you go in too early, she’ll kill you—”

“Merlin! Sire! There you are!”

They turned to see an exhausted-looking Gwaine, blood smeared across his forehead, helping a limping Percival hop along towards them. Lancelot came dashing around the corner behind them a moment later, his head looking behind him, as if watching for attackers.

Gwaine helped Percival to sit against the wall, before turning around to look quizzically between Merlin and the man he had mistaken for Arthur.

“You’re not who I thought you were,” Gwaine said, squinting his eyes at the stranger. He moved closer. “Or are you?” He peered around the man to look at Merlin. “Is this an aging spell?”

He seemed to register, then, Merlin’s sorry state, because he moved forward to grab Merlin by the shoulder.

“Christ, Merlin, you alright?” Gwaine asked, his brown eyes wide with worry.

“I should be asking Percival that,” Merlin said, in an effort to deflect. Not a great plan, really; Percival was a man of few words on a calm day. The only response Merlin got from the man was a thumbs up and a roll of his eyes.

“Where’s Leon and Elyan?” Merlin asked in another effort to deflect.

Gwaine grunted in response, stepping closer to lift a sticky lock of Merlin’s hair away from his head wound, hissing in sympathy. Lancelot stepped to Merlin’s other side, also peering at his wound, and leaning his shoulder against Merlin’s, making it slightly easier for Merlin to hold himself upright.

“Last we saw them, they were still down at the front gate, fighting Morgana’s men,” Lancelot answered.

“Percy saw you run off after the witch,” Gwaine piped in, dropping his hand from Merlin’s head to turn to their friend on the ground. “Got himself a nice slice on the leg trying to follow you, though.”

Percival smiled tiredly. “Thought you might need some help up here.”

“MERLIN! WATCH IT!” Arthur’s voice—his Arthur—bellowed from the throne room, and all three knights in front of him jumped to attention, Percival wobbling his sword forward clumsily.

“Funny, that, Merlin,” Lancelot began, moving forward towards the door--he had seemingly elected to entirely ignore the fake-Arthur. Merlin frowned, as it was harder to hold himself upright without Lancelot to lean on. “Sounds like Arthur’s yelling at you in there, but you’re out here. With us. Does that explain whoever this fellow is, and why you haven’t gotten rid of him for us?”

All three knights looked to Merlin, then, as if he could provide some sort of answer to the confusion, which Merlin certainly could not. Merlin looked at the fake-Arthur, who, inexplicably, was grinning at them, as if delighted to see them all bloodied and half-collapsed and attempting to rally for a fight against a mad witch.

“Something amusing you, then?” Merlin asked fake-Arthur.

Fake-Arthur’s grin stretched wider. “I’d forgotten what Percival looked like without a beard.”

Percival’s head shot up at this, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the man before him, his eyes darting to Merlin’s face after, patiently awaiting an explanation. Merlin ignored him.

“It has to be time, now,” Merlin spoke again to Fake-Arthur, growing antsier by the second, wondering about what could possibly be going on in the throne room between Morgana and Arthur and who, Merlin was beginning to fear, was himself from another time, probably doing something that would be very, very stressful for him, later (he wasn’t exactly sure how much later—but judging by the look of old-Arthur, probably a decade, at least. But still, Merlin disliked knowing when stress was coming--he preferred to just happen upon his stressors, with no warning. Better for his overall health, that way.).

Fake-Arthur gave a small shake of his head. “No, you told me to wait until—”

The doors to the throne room burst open behind them, apparently from the force of Morgana having been thrown at them, as her bedraggled form came tumbling from out of the room.

Fake-Arthur smiled. “Well, for that.”

Through the now-open doors, Merlin could see Arthur, sword hanging at his side as he stared in confusion at a man standing next to him. It was himself, standing next to his Arthur, Merlin was certain of that. The man, lanky—more broad-shouldered than Merlin was at the moment, though perhaps it was the man’s intimidating pose making him think so (and not trying to be intimidating, either; Merlin felt the power rolling off the man in waves, though perhaps that was because his magic’s sixth sense could recognize itself, but...grown, he supposed, though he knew that wasn’t quite the right word for it, only that something was bigger and brighter about his older self’s magic) standing in front of Arthur with arm outstretched, clearly responsible for throwing Morgana out the doors. He had a closely-cropped beard (more of a five o’clock shadow, Merlin thought), bespeckled with gray. He was wearing a rather finely cut tunic, the color of the night sky, though it was torn—Merlin noticed a particularly jagged, dagger-shaped hole in the fabric over the man’s abdomen on his left side, and the part of Merlin’s brain that still thought as a servant couldn’t help but fret over how difficult that would be to mend. His hand drifted subconsciously to his own wound, wondering at the fact that he and himself seemed to be bleeding from the same spot.

The man—his older self—lowered his arm, his gaze losing its ferocity as he looked at younger Merlin and—he had to admit it now, he supposed—older Arthur. A grin broke across the man’s face.

“Good timing, you two,” he said. “It’s almost like we’ve done this all before.”

He strode forward towards them, walking stiffly, as if trying to hide an injury—Merlin saw the half-skipping movement that he himself did when he didn’t want Arthur or Gaius to notice that he had a broken rib. Young Arthur trailed after him, a puppy-dog, lost look on his face, the likes of which Merlin had not seen in many years.

“Merlin—” his Arthur began, but Merlin’s older self waved him off.

“Relax, prat,” the man said irritably. “Go take care of me, over there.”

“Merlin,” the older Arthur spoke his name like a warning.

Merlin was only half-certain that he was speaking to the older Merlin. Merlin’s dizziness from his wounds was catching up with him again, and quickly. He stumbled to the side, reaching his hands out, hoping to catch hold of the pillar that had supported him earlier.

“Merlin!”

“Bloody hell, Merlin!”

“Look out, mate!”

The concerned voices of his friends blurred together, as blurred as his vision was growing, and he felt himself collapse. Someone caught him roughly by the shoulders before he hit the ground.

The last thing that blinked in his vision before he lost consciousness was his own blurry face.

“Ye gods, Merlin, now there’s two of you running about, getting injured, like an idiot,” Arthur muttered under his breath, grunting as he and Gwaine readjusted their grip on the unconscious younger Merlin, whose head lolled forward, his mop of dark hair obscuring the blood running down the side of his temple.

Worse than a girl’s petticoat, even. Didn’t even bother listening to his concern for him. Had to go and get himself absolutely bludgeoned. Arthur peered closer at his friend’s wound, hissing when he saw fresh blood appear. He and Gwaine exchanged glances—both of them feigning that the other one didn’t look alarmed—and, without speaking, lowered Merlin to the ground, sitting him up against the pillar Merlin had been scrambling for before he lost consciousness.

They knelt on either side of him. Gwaine pulled Merlin’s bloodied tunic to investigate a small stab wound, which, luckily, had stopped bleeding. Gwaine put both hands over the wound to put pressure on it.

Fie-and-damn, Arthur hadn’t even noticed that his Merlin—younger Merlin—had been stabbed. Probably by Morgana, as well—just as the mysterious older Merlin had been. In the same spot, it looked to Arthur. He wondered if that had anything to do with anything.

The older Merlin. Fie-and-damn, indeed. The Merlin who was confident and powerful and intimidating. The one who was still his friend, underneath all of that—cracking the same jokes, blue eyes twinkling with the same mirth. The one who had appeared out of thin air and stepped in front of Arthur, and was stabbed in the same spot as his Merlin, on his left side.

Arthur’s gaze flicked over the older Merlin and Arthur, who stood next to each other. Arthur’s older self—a beard? Really? And he looked a little thicker around the middle, too—attempted to support older Merlin, who swatted him away, and instead clapped Lancelot on the shoulder. Merlin muttered some comment to the knight, making the man grin.

“Oy,” Gwaine said, nudging Arthur.

Arthur twitched back to look at him, the normally high-spirited knight looking grim.

“What’s all this about? He’ll need Gaius soon—I’m worried about his head. And he’s not awake to heal himself.”

“I have no idea,” Arthur said, though he knew the knight was right. “Only, I think it might have all happened before. And that it’s got to do with Morgana, somehow.”

Gwaine didn’t look surprised. He readjusted his grip on Merlin’s side, making the unconscious Merlin twitch and mumble something incoherent. Gwaine watched him for a moment, before his dark eyes flicked back to Arthur. “Those two are...you two? From the future?”

Arthur nodded, unable to keep his eyes off the older Merlin—who looked paler, now, kneeling next to Percival, who sat across the narrow hallway from them, seemingly having a dialogue about Percival’s injured leg.

“Here, let’s move him by Percival,” he said to Gwaine, once he saw the older Merlin wobble to his feet and approach the older Arthur, the two dialoguing in fierce whispers—more on the part of his older self than on Merlin’s.

The knight nodded his assent.

“Lift him on three, and keep him steady now, Gwaine—one, two—”

Both men grunted as they lifted their friend between them, Arthur holding him under his shoulders and Gwaine carrying his legs. They carried him as swiftly as possible to a position next to the injured Percival, who was turning away from the older Merlin to watch their journey with a worried frown, his lips and forehead both forming grim lines.

He waved his hand in the air, gesturing for them to rest Merlin’s head on his shoulder. Merlin let out a moan of discomfort even in his unconscious state as Gwaine arranged him against Percival’s side, and Arthur felt a swoop of panicked concern flood through him.

“They have the same wound,” Gwaine remarked, staring down at Merlin with the ferocity of concern that Gwaine only seemed to carry for Merlin. “Have you noticed?”

“Must mean something,” Percival said. He paused. “I haven’t seen Merlin like this since—”

“Yes,” Arthur answered shortly, not wanting to relive the memory that Percival was conjuring, or liven the same concern in his own gut. “I know.”

The older Merlin had been stabbed by Excalibur—Morgana had managed to seize it from him during their fight, and had been about to deal Arthur a mortal blow, before the older Merlin appeared. And Arthur knew only too well that his sword—forged in dragon’s breath as it was—was the only blade that could inflict a wound that magic could not heal. Could the younger Merlin have been stabbed by Excalibur, too, in the battle, and Arthur hadn’t seen it? Did that explain whatever was going on?

He had learned, two years ago, at the time when Arthur had learned of Merlin’s magic—the same time as when Arthur had accidentally stabbed his own father, when Uther had been about to execute Merlin and Gwen for witchcraft (accusations which had been Arthur’s fault in the first place). Merlin hadn’t been able to save Uther then—though he had tried. Arthur didn't know what might happen to older Merlin—perhaps the man’s advanced magic, another decade of training, had taught him how to survive being cut by Excalibur’s blade?--but he had a feeling that it would be nothing good.

And what did all of this mean—their older selves sudden appearance (Arthur had been fastidiously ignoring his older self, possessed with the same terror that a warped looking-glass had inspired in him that he had seen at the All Hallow’s Eve Fair when he was a child—he had no interest in seeing himself as anyone but himself), the Merlins having same stab wounds? Had Morgana brought them here? Or worse—had an older Morgana brought them? Was she mucking about Camelot, too?

Arthur’s train of thought was interrupted by his older self drawing his sword and advancing quickly down the hallway (and were there two Excaliburs here, now? How did that affect things?).

“Arthur!” the older Merlin called after him. “Leave her be!”

“She stirs,” his older self said grimly, continuing to advance towards Morgana’s crumpled form further down the corridor—ye gods, Arthur had entirely forgotten her.

“She’s not the concern, dollophead,” the older Merlin cried, hobbling after the older Arthur in the way that Arthur’s Merlin did when he was trying to hide an injury. “Or don’t you remember? I wasn’t even awake for this part, so it’s me who would have the excuse of faulty memory, not you.”

Arthur felt a headache forming as he processed what the older version of his friend was saying.

“Who is the concern, then?” he asked.

Merlin paused in his hobbling, and looked down at Arthur, still kneeling by the younger Merlin’s side. “Morgana, of course,” he answered.

“But that’s Morgana,” Arthur said, pointing down the hall, in the direction that his older self had been striding.

Still looking at Arthur—a grin beginning to spread across his face, that Arthur could not make heads or tails of—the elder Merlin said, “And isn’t that exactly the trouble!”

Merlin leaned around Arthur to call out down the hallway. “You can’t kill the younger one, Arthur, we’ve been over this!”

Arthur turned to look over at his older self, who held his sword raised above the still-unconscious Morgana, as if preparing to strike.

“But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

Arthur could not tell if his older self was joking or not.

“It’s the older Morgana who brought you here, isn’t it,” Lancelot said, a grave look on his face. He had moved to stand over Percival and Gwaine kneeling beside him.

“She lives another ten years hence?” Percival asked, his brows still furrowed. He touched the unconscious Merlin’s forehead gently—resting on his shoulder—as if to ward off the idea of being plagued by Morgana for another decade.

“Ye gods, we’ll never be rid of her,” Gwaine grumbled, standing to his feet. “Say, old Merlin, how many more times will she stab one of us between now and whenever you’re from?”

The older Merlin chuckled, and moved a hand to his own wound on his side. “More than a few and less than a dozen, Gwaine. I’ll let you work the math out on that on your own.”

Gwaine grinned at Merlin, who returned it. “I’m glad to see you growing old, mate. And I like the beard. Very manly.”

Both men laughed.

“Modeled after your own, of course,” Merlin said.

Arthur felt that pang—not jealousy, as if he would ever be jealous of Gwaine—he always felt when Merlin and Gwaine had one of their moments. Apparently not even a ten year age gap made a difference between them.

Arthur cleared his throat. “So where’s this older Morgana, then? We must defend the citadel against her.”

Merlin’s grin faded. “Oh she’ll be here shortly. There’s something here she wants.”

The older Arthur, still hovering over the young Morgana, moved away suddenly, marching back towards them, looking every inch the commanding king that Arthur never felt like.

“We agreed to try and stop this, Merlin,” he said in a low voice—as if the older Merlin was the only one in the room. “I was sick with worry. And you nearly—”

Merlin’s eyes flashed toward Arthur, and his older self trailed off, as if heeding some unspoken warning.

“We will stop this,” Merlin said slowly. “By letting it play out, and changing the rules at the last moment. That’s our only bet, and I’m sticking to it.”

There was an intensity to the conversation that Arthur didn’t understand. He exchanged a confused glance first with Gwaine, then Lancelot—neither of the knights understood the context of what the two men were discussing, either.

The older Arthur looked furious, his nostrils flared. He adjusted his grip on Excalibur, and the magic blade gleamed, nearly blinding Arthur. “I don’t like it, Merlin.”

The elder Merlin’s eyes darted to meet Arthur’s own, looking almost nostalgic. “And yet you knew it was going to happen.”

There was a loud crash through the window from behind them, a splattering of glass sending both Arthur and Gwaine ducking and covering their heads.

Arthur stood immediately—from the corner of his eye, he saw his older self do so, too—regripping his sword to face what came.

His sister stood in the empty window frame—how she could have gotten up there, he would never know—her hands outstretched. In both palms sat a sickly green flame, whose sulfuric scent Arthur could smell from here.

She was older, indeed—and madder, if possible, her green eyes hollow of feeling. Her dark, tangled hair was streaked with silver and coiled over one shoulder. Her once-porcelain face was now wrinkled and lined.

“Oh, good,” she said. “You’ve all already acquainted yourselves.”

She narrowed her eyes at the older Merlin, who had stepped forward towards the window. He had been the only one of the knights and kings gathered not to duck in an attempt to shield himself from the shrapnel of the explosion Morgana had caused. His magic, Arthur saw now, had shielded him—a nearly-transparent shield that encompassed them all, threads of gold and blue pulsing throughout the shield. The rippling effect was mirrored in the strange gold-and-blue glow of Merlin’s eyes, the glow of his magic melding together in a way that Arthur had never seen before. Despite the powerful display of magic, he leaned heavily to one side, his hand still pressed to his wound.

“Not feeling well, Merlin?” Morgana asked, pouting in mock sympathy. She glanced over near where Arthur and Gwaine stood over the younger Merlin and Percival, and laughed. “I suppose that goes for both of you.”

The older Merlin looked deadly serious, in a way Arthur had only seen a handful of times on his friend. “You should know how this ends, Morgana,” he said. “After all, we’ve done this before, haven’t we? Why go through with it all again?”

Still hovering in the window—above Merlin’s shield—Morgana smiled, tossing the green flames between her hands. “None of us knows how it ends, Merlin. That’s what’s got you so scared.”

“Enough, Morgana,” the older Arthur commanded, stepping away from the still-unmoving form of the young Morgana to stand next to Merlin. “There’s been enough pain, enough hardship.”

Morgana seemed to see both Arthur and his older self for the first time, her eyes narrowing. It made Arthur want to stand with his older self, to trust the man who had been king ten years longer than he, who knew how to talk to a sister so lost that she could not be found. He stepped to the other side of the older Merlin.

“My dear brother. You never learned the lesson I was always trying to teach you; that the pain and hardship will never stop until a wrong is righted. Until I finally rule Camelot and undo your’s— and our father’s—tainted legacies.”

“There is a taint to the Pendragon legacy that can never be removed, Morgana,” Arthur spoke up, stepping forward next to himself. “Not by me, no matter how I try, and certainly not by you. We can only try to build anew.”

Morgana was grinning again, reminding Arthur of when they were children, playing cards—the smile his sister would give when she was about to play her full hand. “We will see, brother,” she said. “We will see.”

“On me!” Arthur and his older self shouted simultaneously, both anticipating her attack mere moments before it came. Gwaine and Lancelot, the only two able to stand, drew their swords without hesitation.

Morgana tossed her green flames at Merlin’s shield, which pulsed a bright light as it blocked the spell. Merlin yelled out, presumably from the effort of upholding the shield. With the hand not clutching his side, Merlin held out his hand, and the older Morgana toppled out of the window frame, tumbling forward into the hall. She landed in a crouch, and was back up launching spells immediately.

Arthur could not keep up with the volley of spells between the two sorcerers—warlock, the little Merlin that lived inside Arthur’s brain piped up—and only realized what was happening when Merlin’s shield collapsed, the soft gold-and-blue glow of it zapping out, as Merlin fell to his knees as a result of Morgana’s casting.

The older Arthur leapt at Morgana with a roar as soon as the shield dropped, and Arthur followed his own suit, swinging Excalibur at his sister, though she dodged both of their blades with relative ease. She swept out her hand and threw Arthur against the far wall, knocking the breath out of him. He slid to the ground near where Percival still sat.

“Alright, sire?” Percival asked, leaning heavily over the unconscious Merlin to rest his hand on Arthur’s shoulder.

“Fine,” he gasped, unable to tear his eyes from his older self, who was still standing, somehow.

His older self swung his sword towards their sister, and Gwaine and Lancelot stepped behind her in tandem, spreading out to surround the witch. Arthur watched his older self land a blow on Morgana’s side, her attention split between fending off the three expert swordsmen. Arthur was mesmerized, for a moment, at watching his best knights follow his older self’s lead, struck by how his knights knew him so well, even aged, that he would use the same dodging tactics in ten years that he used now, during training.

He staggered to his feet, twirling his sword in his hand as he readied to reenter the fray. He swung his sword at Morgana’s back, which she ducked out of the way of, though Arthur had no idea how she could have anticipated it. Morgana swept her arm wide, knocking Arthur, his older self, and the two knights to the floor.

Arthur was quicker to his feet after being knocked down a second time than he was the first time, but it had no consequence—the older Merlin let out a roaring spell, conjuring a ball of fire that blasted the older Morgana into the throne room behind her.

Arthur held his breath, assuming she would leap back to her feet instantly, but all was still.

Arthur moved forward to touch his decade-older friend on the shoulder, feeling the grin split his face.

“You’ve gone and bloody done it, Merlin,” he said. “Congratulations. Maybe you’ve finally ended her tyranny, here, now.”

The older Merlin looked even more aged than before, a weariness drooping his eyelids, though he still managed to return his grin. “Don’t go and jinx it, clotpole,” he scolded.

Arthur watched as a sudden, unexplainable spasm of pain flashed across the older Merlin’s features. He hunched over, moaning as he did so. Arthur bent with him, seizing him by the elbow and wrapping his arm around him, allowing him to support his friend.

“Oh, God, I had forgotten what it’s like,” the older Merlin choked out.

“What? What’s wrong?” Arthur asked.

A terrible, heart-wrenching scream echoed through the hallway, a sound like nothing Arthur had ever heard before. A sound like someone’s soul being pulled out with rusty shears. Arthur’s moment of doubled confusion was that he knew, instinctively, whose voice it was: his best friend’s.

But not the best friend whose eyes he was looking into. It was coming from somewhere else, though the pain the older Merlin was feeling seemed to be connected.

Arthur whipped around to see what was happening behind him. The younger Morgana—bloody hell, he had forgotten about her twice—knelt over the formerly-unconscious form of his Merlin, holding her hands over the wound on his left side and whispering a spell —Morgana had dragged him from his position against Percival. Merlin writhed on the ground in pain, his head tossing back and forth against the castle floor, his eyes bright gold but unseeing, and Arthur couldn’t determine if it was because he was performing magic—there was none that he could see.

Arthur watched as a glow—at first more gold, then bluer, like the shades of Merlin’s magic—began to rise from the wound at his side. Against his own side, Arthur felt a warmth rising. He looked down to see the same blueish-gold glow forming around the older Merlin’s wound, making the older Merlin’s knees buckle. Arthur couldn’t hold him up anymore. The older Merlin hit the ground on all fours, body braced against whatever agony was occuring.

And, suddenly, Arthur’s nightmare, twice over: two Merlins howling in pain as his evil bloody sister sucked something—their magic? Their souls? Arthur didn’t know— of them out, with Arthur helpless to stop it.

“Merlin!” Arthur and his older self’s voices rang out together, and Arthur didn’t have time to worry about whether they both sounded equally as desperate and terrified.

Percival struggled to move forward from his wall position, grunting as he went, and knocked himself into the witch, sending them tumbling to the side and succeeding in momentarily stopping the spell. The blueish-gold glow remained, however, and Arthur was paralyzed as he watched his friend continue to squirm, his face contorted in pain. With everything he had learned about his friend in the past two years—that he was the most powerful warlock ever to live, that he was the last dragonlord—Arthur had gotten so used to his friend’s power that seeing him powerless made Arthur feel hollowed out, useless.

“Put it back! Put it back! The sword’s in the stars, not the stone, Arthur, look out for the stars,” the younger Merlin mumbled, his head still rollicking.

Arthur didn’t think he was awake fully, even after the spell. Arthur felt something rush by him, and was startled to see Gwaine and Arthur's older self storming towards Merlin—he felt rather than saw Lancelot kneel next to the older Merlin, inquiring if he was alright.

Gwaine knelt by the younger Merlin’s head, pulling it into his lap and whispering assurances, while the older Arthur stood menacingly over the younger Morgana, his sword drawn and his stance protective over the vulnerable Merlin.

“I’d kill you now if I could,” the older Arthur spat at her, pointing Excalibur at her. “For what you do to him. For what you do to me. All of the chances he’s given you, for you to try this? To destroy time itself, to try and steal something that can never belong to you?”

The young Morgana smirked up at him, green eyes narrowed to slits at the blade leveled before her eyes. “He’s getting what’s coming to him, old man. Same as will happen to you. Don’t blame me for acting on behalf of destiny.”

His older self seemed to consider her for a moment. Then he raised Excalibur over his head and brought it down to strike.

“Astrice!” Morgana shrieked, knocking Arthur’s older self backwards into Arthur, sending him stumbling backwards.

Arthur watched in horror as she lunged towards Merlin’s laid-out form.

“NO!” Arthur yelled in unison with his older self, finally snapping to his senses and lunging to intercept Morgana.

But both of them—of him—were too late. The young Morgana had one hand firmly grasping the younger Merlin’s shoulder, and was muttering what Arthur now recognized from his past two years with Merlin as a transportation spell. A cyclone of wind surrounded Morgana and the splayed-out form of Merlin, slowly stripping them away until they disappeared, as if they had never been.

Chapter Text

Arthur collided with his older self, both of them unable to counter the weight of the other. 

“Damn!” Arthur mumbled against his elder self’s chainmail. Old Arthur mumbled a curse as well. 

Arthur staggered away from himself and leaned against the pillar nearest him, fighting to regain his breath and his sense of control. How could he have let Merlin be taken? He had promised himself two years ago when he had heard about all that Merlin had done to protect him, that he would protect his friend from harm. But he had failed. 

Arthur turned at the clanging sound of a sword being thrown against a wall. He was not particularly surprised to see it had been his older self, who was letting out a string of expletives so alarming that it raised even Gwaine’s eyebrows.

 Gwaine still sat where Merlin had lain mere seconds before, his face reflecting the horror-turned-anger Arthur was trying to suppress.

“Blast it all to hell!” his older self continued. He walked over to retrieve Excalibur from where he had thrown it. He turned to face Arthur, his face livid and bright red. Arthur had to stop himself from retreating backwards—no matter how formidable, he couldn’t allow himself to be intimidated by himself. That was too confusing and embarrassing. “We were supposed to save him, you idiot!”

Arthur, rather than feeling angry at his older’s self’s words, could only feel a hollow worry. “Where did he go? Where has she taken him?”

Old Arthur waved his hands in the air. “If only I knew! Merlin’s refused to tell me before now, and she’s already gone and tried to steal his bloody magic through his bloody soul.”

“His soul ?” Percival sounded horrified.

Instead of responding, Old Arthur threw Excalibur against the wall again. Percival and Gwaine flinched.

“What does that mean?” Gwaine asked. “How could she steal Merlin’s soul?”

 “Dark Magic—the Lasc Ama. A horrible spell that can only be performed if the same person is somewhere twice, with the same wound from a dragon’s breath sword,” Old Arthur answered. “Merlin didn’t tell me the details. I just know that it has to do with his magic, too.”

The blue-gold light and the pain it caused Merlin made more sense with this knowledge. Arthur’s stomach swooped at the thought of Morgana ripping Merlin’s soul out through a wound his own sword had made. It was so… wrong. A betrayal. Arthur felt guilty that his sword should nearly have rended his dearest friend in two. 

Arthur paused. Had his sword nearly destroyed Merlin, or destroyed him entirely?

 “But she did not succeed,” Arthur spoke aloud slowly, afraid to hear the answer. “Right?”

Old Arthur’s eyes glowed fiercely. “No. No, I will not let it.” He shook his head. “Anyways, she hadn’t had time to finish it. She took Young Merlin as hostage. She can’t complete it unless she has—”

Old Merlin screamed, and both Arthurs turned to their friend. 

Old Arthur beat him to Merlin’s side, and Arthur kneeled down opposite him. Merlin’s skin was wan and slick with sweat, and the blue-gold light—Merlin’s soul, Arthur thought with sickening realization—still hovered over his wound on his side. Lancelot cradled his head, which twisted back-and-forth in Merlin’s semi-conscious state. 

Lancelot looked up to Arthur, the knight’s dark eyes bright with panic. “Sire?”

Arthur knelt next to Lancelot, shaking his head to convey his uncertainty. The blue-gold light flared brighter, and Merlin screamed again, higher-pitched and unlike any noise he had heard his friend make in his decade-long friendship—and Arthur had seen his friend in all sorts of injured states, though luckily fewer in the time since magic had been legalized. 

Arthur looked up to his older self. “What can we do?”

Old Arthur’s expression was half-concern, half-irritation. “He—he never told me.”

“But you’ve done this before,” Gwaine said angrily, coming to stand next to Old Arthur. Gwaine gestured at Arthur, and he almost felt offended. “You’re right bleeding there, after all. Don’t you remember fixing him the last time?”

Old Arthur was shaking his head. “We—the point to which I remember, we had not—”

“I don’t understand,” Gwaine interrupted. “You’re here from the future, and you can’t help us save this Merlin or ours, who’s bleeding out somewhere with half his soul-magic ripped out of him and alone with a psychotic witch. Then what’s the point of you?”

Old Arthur growled and stood face-to-face with the knight. “Damn it, Gwaine! Do you think I wanted this to happen? That I planned all this?”

“Well, what can we bloody do then, Princess?” Gwaine stepped even closer to his older self, getting in the bearded man’s face. Arthur felt his first genuine shiver of deja-vu, watching the familiar irritation and strange edge of competition he felt when bickering with Gwaine wash over his older self’s face—and even weirder to not even be feeling that irritation with Gwaine as he usually would have. He couldn’t fault Gwaine for being upset with his older self—Arthur felt the same way. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that he could know what would happen to Merlin—could feel the way he felt right now—and squander the opportunity to stop it, when it came around again. 

“Enough!” Old Arthur snapped. “Ye gods, to think ten years from now your lack of respect only gets worse— ”

“Couldn’t we just put it back in?” Lancelot, ever the diplomat, suggested, clearly wanting to cut the tension between Old Arthur and Gwaine. “His soul, that is? Wouldn’t he be restored to normal?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Old Arthur said, turning to face Lancelot. “But it’s not so easy as shoving his soul inside. It requires…something. A spell.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Arthur asked, not caring if his voice sounded desperate, gripping Merlin’s wrist. Merlin’s hand—consciously or unconsciously—gripped Arthur’s wrist in return. “We can’t leave him like this. He’s—it’s torture.”

The thought of his Merlin, going through this with Morgana, who would delight in making any torture more painful, made him shiver. They needed a solution. Now. 

“Shh!” Percival interrupted. He had crawled closer to where Merlin lay, writhing in pain. 

“What, Perce?” Gwaine asked. 

Percival’s head was nearly resting on Merlin’s chest. “He’s saying something.”

They all quieted, listening attentively to Old Merlin’s mutterings. 

“I’m only hearing ‘sword and stars,’” Gwaine said eventually. “Anyone else?”

Arthur remembered what his Merlin had been mumbling, before Morgana had taken him. He turned to his older self—though he still couldn’t quite meet his own eye. “That’s what my Merlin said to me,” he said. “He kept saying, Put it back! Put it back! The sword’s in the stars, not the stone .” He looked around—at his weary and worried knights, at his older self who he couldn’t seem to really face, for fear that it wouldn’t be the future he wanted for himself. “Any guesses about that?”

Everyone shook their heads. “Gaius might know,” Lancelot said. “We should take Merlin to him, shouldn’t we? Morgana’s men had retreated when we followed Merlin up here, so he’ll be busy tending the wounded, but—”

Don’t be daft, Arthur, something in the back of his mind whispered to him. Only you can bring me back. Both of you.

Arthur knew Lancelot was right, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t move to help Lance and Gwaine carry the older Merlin. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the golden-blue orb hovering just over his friend’s wound. It reminded him of something he had seen long, long ago—on another terrible night, when Merlin had been poisoned. Merlin had been much as he was now, pale and sweating and quivering in pain. But Arthur remembered the difficult climb to fetch the plant that would heal his friend, and the golden-blue orb that had guided him there. How Arthur, even before he knew what Merlin was—when he had been raised to hate magic with every fiber of his being—had trusted that blue-gold magic. Had known it to be good, that it would lead him to safety.

And looking at that same blue-gold magic again—knowing it, now, to be his friend, Merlin’s soul— he couldn’t well ignore the whisper in the back of his head. 

“Sire? Shall we take him?”

He tore his gaze from Merlin’s soul-magic and, ignoring Lancelot’s question, looked at his older self, who had lowered himself to kneel on Merlin’s other side. For the first time, he forced himself to look himself in the eye. He knew that would be the only way to make himself trust him, and to listen. 

“I want to try something,” he said to his older self. “But I’ll need your help.”

To his surprise—or, really, perhaps not to his surprise, considering that the Older Arthur had done all this before—his older self was nodding, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. 

“Yes,” his older self murmured. “Yes, I think you’re right to do it. I couldn’t quite remember what we’d done, but it’s coming back to me—Merlin, blast him, did some sort of memory spell on me, perhaps to prevent me from changing history, he was always going on about all that—that any ideas had to occur to me, well, you, organically, not because I tell you what happens, despite that putting him in danger…”

“Sounds like him,” Arthur supplied. “Making everything more difficult for himself.” 

They exchanged a grin—their first moment, really, of togetherness. Something sung in the air between them, a noise almost like that of a sword being unsheathed from a scabbard, but Arthur wasn’t sure if it was just in his mind or not.

“You know what I’m thinking of?” Arthur asked his older self. “It’s a little crude, but…”

Instead of responding, his older self held his hand outstretched towards Arthur, Merlin’s body between them. Arthur released Merlin’s wrist and took his hand. He offered up his empty hand to his older self, who took it. Their joined hands hovered together over the blue-and-gold orb, and Arthur wasn’t sure if he saw the orb glow a bit brighter, or if he was imagining things. 

Together, they pressed their clasped hands over the orb and Merlin’s still-leaking wound. The blue-gold light throbbed, hot and sharp, against their hands.

He looked at his older self, waiting for him to begin. His older self nudged his chin forward at him, indicating that he wanted him to start talking. 

Arthur cleared his throat. “Alright, Merlin. I don’t know if you can hear us—I sure as hell have no idea if this will do anything at all, as I’m not magic and neither am I ten years in the future—” his eyes darted to his older self’s bearded face, who shook his head no in confirmation “—but I just have one of your funny feelings, I suppose, that makes me want to try. To, well, tell you to come back to us. Please,” he added on. 

When nothing happened, Gwaine groaned. “Ye gods, Princess, do a bit better than that,” he said. “I would be surprised if he would’ve gotten up at that if he’d only just decided to take an afternoon nap.”

He scowled at Gwaine. “I’d like to see you do better, trying to get his soul to get back where it belongs.”

Gwaine rolled his pointer finger in a circular motion, a clear get-on-with-it gesture. 

Arthur cleared his throat again. “Fine. Gwaine has some complaints about the way I’m asking, but—Merlin. It’s Arthur, and, well—really there’s two of me here, and we both need you. Very badly.” The blue-gold magic grew hotter beneath their hands, and Arthur looked at himself with hope. “We need you to come back to yourself, so that we can save the other you. The you that’s mine, or, well—ye gods, I don’t know.” He sighed, but knew he had to keep going—he felt Merlin listening, somehow, in the growing heat of the magic they held pressed against Merlin’s slick skin. “Merlin, if you don’t come back to yourself—if we can’t get your soul back where it belongs—I’ll be lost. Forever. I have told you before, Merlin, and I shall tell you again. I will not do this without you. Come back.”

Though Arthur had said the same words before, when he repeated them again, he felt their power—they echoed strangely throughout the room, as if it pinged off the walls of Camelot and into the ether beyond. 

“You heard me, Merlin,” his older self said softly, looking at their friend’s unconscious with a tenderness that made Arthur’s face heat, worried that that might have been his own vulnerable expression moments ago. “ I will not do this without you.”

Arthur locked eyes with his older self, and together they said, “Come back!”

As soon as they spoke the words, blue-gold light exploded from beneath their joined hands and danced around the room, bouncing from one corner to the next, scattering sparks and light like a shooting star. Despite the shattered windows, the room warmed as the magic’s glow grew brighter, and Arthur couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his face as he watched the magic twirl about. He saw the same euphoria light up in his friends’ faces, and even Gwaine locked eyes with Arthur and laughed with him. It was so Merlin. It was magic.

After a few moments, the blue-gold magic—now so bright Arthur had to lift his hands from Merlin’s side to shield his squinting eyes—darted back to Merlin, and disappeared, the glow fading along with it. 

No one dared to say a word in the silence that followed, as the temperature dropped again and the long shadows returned to convey the leaving of the day. 

Merlin sucked in a great breath and sat up so quickly that his head collided with Arthur’s. They both cursed and ducked away from each other.

“Damn!” Arthur exclaimed, rubbing at his now-throbbing forehead.

“Watch it, Arthur!” Merlin gasped, his chest heaving rapidly as he rubbed at his own forehead, shifting to the side to lean his weight on his elbows. “To think one only comes back from the dead once or twice in this life, and always your big head is in the way of mine.”

Arthur gaped at the older Merlin for a moment, marveling at his return to almost-normalcy after being apparently on the brink of death, or something worse than death. Other than the signs of aging—the closely-cropped beard, the slight wrinkles at the corners of his eyes—Merlin looked normal, his eyes no longer entirely gold, and instead the strange blue-with-flecks-of-gold he had observed in the older Merlin earlier. He still looked paler than normal, and like he was trying to hide some discomfort, but otherwise looked himself. Arthur had feared him—his friend—lost. 

He wanted to grab Merlin by the neck and hug him, as he had that day he and Gwaine had recovered a missing, muddied Merlin in the Valley of the Fallen Kings. But his older self beat him to it.

Merlin emitted an audible oof when Arthur’s older self lunged forward and wrapped his arms around him, squeezing the older warlock tightly. Merlin managed to feebly raise his arms and pat Old Arthur’s back.

“Oh, I’m alright,” Merlin said in a low voice to the elder king—somehow privately, despite Arthur and the knights obviously sitting near. When Old Arthur did not release the warlock right away, Merlin continued in a tone close to scolding. “Arthur, really. It was just my soul. And you both put it back, so—”

The older Arthur released his grip on Merlin and pulled back to look at him, his face steely and not a little bit frightening. “Merlin, I forbid you from doing something like that again.”

Merlin mustered a weak chuckle. “Arthur, I really didn’t—”

But Arthur’s older self was shaking his head, his brow scrunched determinedly. “No, Merlin. I forbid it.”

Something like irritation jumped across Merlin’s weary face. “Forbid! Back to forbidding me from doing things, are you? That’s been known to work—when was it? Right, never!” 

Gwaine snorted, which seemed to give Merlin some momentum forward. “And it’s like I told you, Arthur—this had to happen. If things don’t happen as they should, time wobbles and shatters and bad, bad things begin to happen.”

“Something bad did happen,” Old Arthur snapped.

 “Believe me, I didn’t want to go through that all again,” Merlin said. “But there was nothing to be done.”

Old Arthur was quiet for a moment before replying. When he did speak, he spoke  slowly and deliberately, the solemnity making everyone sit at attention almost automatically. 

“I would ask you, then,” Arthur’s older self said. “To think about being in my place. For you to watch me have my soul ripped from a wound your blade has drawn. And you tell me how you would respond to me telling you, this had to happen.”

Merlin’s face softened, just as Arthur watched Gwaine’s sharpen. “Arthur—”

“You did not hear yourself scream,” the elder Arthur continued in his frightening low whisper. “You did not hear what you sounded like. The agony.” His older self cleared his throat. “Even through the forgetful spell—don’t deny it, Merlin—you cast ten years ago, I remembered the sound of your scream.” His older self stood. “And now I have heard it twice. Something we could have prevented, together. ”

“Arthur,” Merlin repeated, part concerned and part irritated, and he shoved himself forward to his knees, wobbling one foot up, then the other, Gwaine and Lancelot at either elbow, offering silent support that Merlin used to pull himself to his feet. “That’s hardly fair. I was the one screaming, first of all, so don’t lecture me about agony. I felt it. And as I’ve told you—don’t walk away from me, Arthur Pendragon—” Merlin’s voice, though still spoken in a tone both lilting and irritated, gained a gravity when he spoke Arthur’s full name that made Arthur want to stand, too, and he did “—I’ve told you I can’t change the past. That had to happen. But we’ve gone through it, as I knew we would. And now, well—welcome to the present.”

Merlin splayed his arms out on either side of him, wobbling a bit as he did so, as if encouraging them all to behold the destruction surrounding them. 

“As glad as I am that you’re back from that hell, mate,” Gwaine said to Merlin, still hovering at the warlock’s elbow as if in fear that he would collapse. He rested a hand on Merlin’s shoulder. “What do you mean by that?”

Merlin looked at Gwaine. “I mean, I don’t know what happens next.”

“How?” Arthur asked, more sharply than he intended. He well understood where his older self’s means of expressing concern had come from—annoyance was easier to express than relief that Merlin was alive and himself. “You must cast the forġietan spell on me—on us—at some point, so you know what happens.”

The older Merlin looked at him then, his eyes twinkling with some emotion Arthur couldn’t decipher. “Yes. I mean that I wasn’t here, in this room, the last time this happened. I don’t know what will happen next.”

The sickening dread—briefly forgotten with Merlin’s return to consciousness—dropped back into Arthur’s stomach. His Merlin was not with him. His Merlin was in the worst possible situation—injured, likely unconscious and vulnerable, and alone with their enemy who wanted him dead so badly that she meddled with time, and her own life, to end it. Arthur felt a chill, and he wasn’t the only one—both Lancelot and Percival, still sat against the wall, shivered, and a vein in Gwaine’s jaw pulsed.

“But we have to think of it this way,” Lancelot said, trying to sound optimistic. “You’re alive ten years in the future, aren’t you, Merlin? We can all see that. So the young you, our friend—he can’t die today. Otherwise you wouldn’t exist.”

Merlin nodded at Lancelot’s words, though his eyes never left the turned-away back of the elder Arthur, who stood at a distance from the group still. “Yes, that’s right. Though I hate to complicate things even further by telling you what worries me next.”

Gwaine groaned. “I’m already confused.”

Merlin’s ghost of a smile returned. “Right. Well, let’s think of it this way—what Morgana is doing is playing with time. Time, you see—we think of it like a line, no? We start somewhere and move forward until we end somewhere else. It’s helpful to think of it this way, but in a lot of ways, time is like a circle—we can overlap with ourselves. Like how Morgana pulled us from our future and brought us here. When that happens—it’s unnatural, to do that, and it requires such powerful magic that it often can lead to…ripples. Disruptions. And my fear: altered timelines.”

Merlin was right; his explanation did over-complicate the matter. Arthur could feel a headache forming at the base of his skull. But beyond that—and more into what he knew about his friend—he got the feeling that Merlin was dodging around his meaning.

“What are you not saying, Merlin?” Arthur asked. 

Merlin’s eyes were twinkling a little brighter. “Well, I’m afraid that Arthur and I’s timeline, ten years in the future, is only one of many possible future realities. We’re a result of very specific actions being made by specific people for specific reasons—such as the younger me staying alive, for example. I’m worried that it might be possible for the timeline to change, if we do things differently than before, or if we don’t behave as we normally would.” 

Lancelot’s brow was knit together. “So, you think there’s a possibility that our Merlin actually might die today.”

“That’s why you cast the forġietan spell on Arthur,” Percival spoke up for the first time, and all heads swiveled to face him. The quiet knight looked impassively at Merlin. “So that things would run as they had before, without an Older Arthur telling anyone what to do, or messing anything up. So he wouldn’t kill you inadvertently, if he misremembered something.”

“Exactly right, Percival. I owe you a cask of ale at the tavern later on. Be sure to remind my younger self, barring we get him back.” Merlin smiled sardonically, his eyes still on the turned-away back of Old Arthur. “I know it wouldn’t make any difference at all to you, clotpole, but I cast the spell on myself, as well. I don’t remember anything after Morgana’s kidnapping. All we have now is our own ingenuity, and perhaps some deja vu.”

Old Arthur whirled around quickly, his face stony. Ever since his arrival, Old Arthur had been formidable, fiercer and more unpredictable than Arthur felt himself to be, and he had no idea how his elder self would react to this news. “You had no right to do this spell without my permission. Without the permission of your king.”

Merlin’s face was that of a mischievous angel, chin tilted down, eyebrows shooting skyward. “And if I told you, sire, that you had agreed to it, but have now forgotten?”

Old Arthur growled, moving forward so suddenly that no one had the time to react. He had Merlin by the collar and backed him up against the wall upon which Percival sat, his forearm across Merlin’s throat. Merlin’s head collided with the stone, and he grunted audibly. 

Arthur and Lancelot tensed and moved forward, but neither were as swift as Gwaine, who was at Old Arthur’s side in a moment, gripping the arm holding Merlin against the wall. 

“Down, princess,” Gwaine said tensely, his words only just tipped with irony.

Old Arthur paid his knight no attention, his eyes locked on his sorcerer’s face. 

“You should not have,” Old Arthur said gravely.

Merlin, for all the manhandling of him, looked entirely unconcerned, his attention entirely upon his king’s. There was an obvious unspoken communication moving between the two, but even Arthur was clueless as to what his older self and his older friend were thinking. Arthur had to wonder if that was how they always looked together, how they were with one another—that he and Merlin were always at such a level of intensity, that it formed a bubble around them and shielded all others out. Even younger versions of themselves. 

“You told me to,” Merlin said softly to his king, his gold-blue eyes dull with exhaustion. “When I told you what was at stake. I’d not lie to you about this, Arthur.”

Old Arthur considered Merlin for several moments, his eyes scanning up and down his face, as if the truth were written there, in the sorcerer’s nose and bearded chin and bloodshot eyes. 

Gwaine gave another half-hearted tug at Old Arthur’s arm, though Arthur was confident that Gwaine knew that Old Arthur didn’t intend on hurting the sorcerer.

“You will not die,” Old Arthur said eventually. His words were firm and exacting, all that a king’s speech should contain. “Not you here, nor you there. No matter how difficult a task you insist on making it for me. I will not do this without you.”

At these words—the words that had brought Merlin’s soul back from wherever Morgana had nearly dragged it off to—Merlin’s face lit up with a grin. To Arthur, it made him look a decade younger. 

“I heard a rumor akin to that,” Merlin said lightly. “And I have no intention of having you go it alone, sire.”

Old Arthur’s eyes scanned Merlin’s face once again, as if reading the pages of a book in Geoffrey’s library. Once he had done so to his satisfaction, he released his hold of Merlin against the wall and immediately stooped down in order to throw one of Merlin’s arms over his shoulder, so that Old Arthur was helping to bear the brunt of Merlin’s weight. 

“Time for Gaius,” Old Arthur said sternly, as if he hadn’t just restored the soul of his best mate and then immediately tossed him against the wall. “Lancelot, Arthur—help Percival stand. Gwaine, I’ll need your help with—”

Merlin was already squawking a protest, as Gwaine ducked a nod at Old Arthur—their earlier squabble forgotten in the face of helping their friend—and came to Merlin’s other side. Gwaine backed off, hands raised, when Merlin swatted him away with his free hand. “I was going just fine on my own!”

Old Arthur ignored him completely. Meanwhile, Arthur had heeded his older self’s direction and had one of Percival’s giant arms around his shoulders, while the other arm was around Lancelot. Arthur counted to three, and he and Lancelot lifted the larger knight, both men grunting as they took the weight of their friend. 

“Ye gods, Perce!” Arthur grunted as they shuffled awkwardly after Old Arthur and Merlin through the decimated Great Hall and into the corridor without. 

Percival chuckled, and they moved slowly through the castle, until the large knight lurched to a halt, making all three men stumble. Arthur looked up to see what caused the commotion. 

Merlin’s legs had folded beneath him, his form lurching to the ground and making Old Arthur stumble until Gwaine—hovering at the ready nearby—easily tossed the man’s arm around his neck and lifted him again. 

“What’s happened?” Lancelot called ahead. 

Old Arthur turned his head to the knights behind him. “Oh, the idiot’s gone and fainted,” Old Arthur said, something like humor coloring his voice. “Saw it coming a mile away.”

Arthur wrinkled his brow in confusion and readjusted his grip on Percival’s arm. “I thought you said you couldn’t see the future?”

Old Arthur laughed. “I can’t. Hardly needed magic to know what was coming. I just saw that expression in his eyes. Tell-tale sign he was about to sink like a ship in a storm.” Old Arthur looked back and winked at Arthur. “It’s no wonder, I suppose. Not many days you travel back in time, kill a High Priestess of the Old Religion, get stabbed by Excalibur, and get your soul sucked out and back in again. He was bound to drop any second. Here, Gwaine, let’s shift.” The two men rearranged themselves so that their movements less aggravated Merlin’s injury. 

Old Arthur turned his head and spoke again. “Best get to Gaius, and fast. He’s our only hope for getting our young Merlin back. Gaius is sure to have his hands full with all of the other battle injuries from this day, but we don’t have a moment to lose.”

There was unspeakable pain, and then he was walking in twilight. He didn’t have another word to describe it, the deep purple-blue that surrounded him on all sides, no geography to speak of, no landscapes or trees or castles or any such thing, only color about him. He knew nothing except putting one foot in front of the other.

The only disturbance in the blue was, on occasion, a diamond flash of something above him, or sometimes beside him. He had no idea what these flashes meant, or when or if the twilight would change. He just knew to keep walking. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew if he were to stop, he would die. Even farther back in his mind, something told him that there was a very important reason for him to stop walking and to pay attention to the flashes in the twilight. 

Another large diamond flashed before him, forcing him to come to a halt. The flash made his heart race, and brought something—not a feeling, not a memory, not magic—but a word, just a word, to mind. Star.

Stars. He knew the stars, the pattern of the sky above his head. He could trust the stars—they were always bright in the dark, and they always remained where they were. They had shape and meaning and fixedness and a name. 

Another flash of a star sliced before him, and he jumped back. His heart still raced, and something like feeling, like memory— how long have you been training to be a prat, my lord? I will not do this without you —tapped the inside of his head, making him dizzy. 

The slice of the star, its silver glimmer, its diamond shape. It wasn’t like the star, glimmering and fixable and faraway and impossible to hold. It had another word for it. A word like something that could cut, could bleed, that was cold and real and magic and that he knew he had to be afraid of. 

Excalibur. That was its name. But what was it the name of? Why was Excalibur a flashing star in his tranquil twilight? The word conjured light, and a gray stone—a landscape—and people, one person…a name. A name? He didn’t know names, except for Excalibur. But there was another. Arthur.

A sound like something he could not describe—singing, maybe? Singing of metal on magic—filled the twilight, reverberated through it, over and over and over again. 

He—who was he? He had no answer, but he knew he was splitting, dividing—dropped to his knees, covering his ears with his hands. He had stopped walking, and now here was something bad happening to him: this singing, over and over, driving him mad. He screamed, but knew it wouldn’t make a difference; someone was drawing the sword from the scabbard, over and over and over again, and his screaming wouldn’t stop them. 

He didn’t know how long it was before he realized he had remembered the word. The word for what Excalibur was. Sword. 

The singing metal ceased. He stood, but did not walk again. This was important, he knew; perhaps the most important thing. He did not know this twilight realm and he did not know who he was and he did not know why it mattered, but he knew this: the sword was not in a stone. The sword was in the stars. The sword was in the stars, in those magic flashes all around him. He needed to tell someone—that the sword was in the stars, that the sword’s magic was needed—but there was only himself and Excalibur and Arthur, and they were just names, but even so, he told them over and over and over again. He knew he was disappearing—could feel it, as his legs began to pull him forward once more, further into the twilight. Soon there would be no flashes of stars or swords or magic, and soon there would be no himself, and so he kept on. Theswordisinthestarstheswordisinthestarstheswordisinthestars—

And then, the stars began falling. Bright lights, in the blue-dark, swinging swords arcing towards him, and with them came words, words from somewhere else, somewhere outside of him, and with the words came memories and faces and names and love, love, so much love that it nearly brought him to his knees again.

A sword-star swung by his face, and with him the words, disjointed, as if part of a larger speech— I just have one of your funny feelings, I suppose, that makes me want to try —and with it came the memory of himself in a wood, with two men, one blond and royal and one with longish brown hair and a mischievous glint in his eye, and the three of them were laughing. And there was a snap of a branch in the woods, and he, himself, saying, I have a funny— and the blond man rolling his eyes, finishing his sentence for him, yes, Merlin, I know to trust your funny feelings, even as he stood and drew his sword to face the wood. 

When the blond man in the memory spoke his name—Merlin—he knew it. He knew it. And once he had that word, once he had himself, words exploded into his mind—knights, maids, stocks, dragons, physicians, despotic rulers, rightful kings, friends, family. There were faces, names, people attached to the words, shimmering just out of reach.

Laughing with a girl with dark curly hair. Cheering alongside a knight with dark hair. Eating at a table with an old man. 

Another sword-star— Merlin, if you don’t come back to yourself—if we can’t get your soul back where it belongs—I’ll be lost. Forever— exploded near him, and this time, rather than a memory, it was merely the blond man’s face, vulnerable and pleading. Arthur.

It was Arthur, wielding the sword-stars.

And then, just as stormclouds release their torrent slowly, then all at once, the sword-stars showered down around him, their messages shorter and repetitive and impossible to ignore. 

I will not do this without you. 

Come back!

Come back!

Come back!

And Merlin did.

He came back to the world with a gasp, not entirely sure when he had left it. He jerked forward automatically, though something held him back. His head—and side—both throbbed too hard for him to wonder why that must be, at least for the time being. He let his head sink backwards, half-expecting to hit a pillow, and he hissed when his head struck hard stone. 

Above him was the night sky, a smattering of stars twinkling above him. The air was cold and harsh in his lungs, tasting like firewood and stagnant water and acrid magic. There was only one place that smelled like that, that Merlin had ever been to, and it was not a place he had ever planned to visit again. Not after what happened last time. 

“Welcome back to the Isle, Emrys,” a woman’s voice purred from behind his head. “Did you miss it?”

He tried to sit up again, to see who had spoken, but was once again impaired by a restraint across his chest, pinning him to the large slab of stone he laid on. 

Chains, he realized belatedly. He was chained to the stone. 

Even in his dazed state, he reached automatically for his magic, mumbling the first spell that came to mind, hoping it would lend power to the force of his magic, which felt as scattered and weakened as his memory. “ Unspanne þás mægþ.”

As soon as he spoke the words, a thunderbolt struck his head, pounding and reverberating and banishing all thoughts other than a sharp dizzying pain in the back of his head. He moaned involuntarily, his head rolling back-and-forth on the stone beneath him, trying to shake off the pervading wrongness. The chains binding him glowed golden briefly before returning to their normal state.

The woman, still unseen, laughed. “Careful there, Emrys. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.” He felt someone’s hand grip one of the chains running across his bare chest. “These were specially made to hold you, you know. You should be complimented. I’ve been told these chains can restrain a warlock’s magic for over a day. But I don’t think we’ll be in each other’s company for that long.”

The pain lifted, but the dizziness remained, disorienting him and making the stars above him swim and spin. His breath was coming out too quickly. He squeezed his eyes shut, desperate to regain some sense of control. 

The problem was, Merlin was having trouble remembering how he had even gotten to the Isle with the woman—shouldn’t he know her, too? He knew her identity was obvious, and yet his mind, like his magic, felt as scattered as the stars above. How could he begin to free himself —or help Arthur, for surely if Merlin was imprisoned and weakened on the gods-forsaken Isle, then Arthur must be in terrible danger—if he couldn’t remember?

His breathing increased. What did he remember? A fight at the castle. He was stabbed at some point, he knew that, and he knew it had been Excalibur. But who had wielded it?

And then—too strange to be believed—was the vision of two Arthurs. His Arthur, young and stupid and brave, and an older one, fearsome and fiery and brave…and bearded? The only thing Merlin could clearly remember was the older Arthur stopping him at the door, because his older self was inside.

His older self. Also terrifying and bearded. Dear Gods, as if his head wasn’t pounding before. 

The woman’s voice was in his ear, then, too close, too familiar. “What’s wrong, Merlin? Not feeling well? No well-aimed barbs at my sanity? No curses for what I’ve done to Arthur?”

A piece slid into place for him, the most obvious one of all. He opened his eyes. “Morgana.”

Morgana cooed, still in his ear, her fingers tracing his jaw, leaving jolts of pain in her wake, until she cradled both sides of Merlin’s face. He tried to shake loose of her grip, but she tightened, vise-like, wrapping a finger into a lock of his raven-dark hair. 

Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, not pinned manically atop her head as it usually was. It shielded Merlin’s face and torso from the chill night, the ends of her hair tickling his goose pimpled skin. Swathed in her hair and pinned in place as he was, Merlin had no choice but to look at her face. At her cruel grin, at her wide green eyes, void of everything that had been there when he had first known her—the empathy, the joy, the love. It was all gone, that Morgana—gone somewhere Merlin could never call her back from. He knew, because he had tried.

Morgana’s finger in his hair curled tighter and tighter, pulling at the roots of his hair until he gasped in pain. A chunk of raven-dark hair came away in her hand. 

Morgana smiled at her fistful of hair, obviously pleased, then turned away to whatever was behind Merlin’s head. Merlin had to blink several times to readjust his eyes from the darkness of Morgana’s hair to the blue-dark night sky. If he tilted his head downwards, he could see the gray ruins that pocked the Isle, as well as a tall fire blazing in the clearing beyond his vision. There were figures moving near the fire, though his dizziness prevented him from being able to count them, or to discern who they were. Likely her sorcerer followers, who, even after the legality of magic, still followed Morgana.

He tilted his head up, and he could just glimpse an upside-down Morgana working a spell at another stone table, a yellowed vellum scroll unfurled and held in place with two rocks. 

“Thank you for this, Merlin. I supposed I could have cut a lock away while you were experiencing the effects Lasc Ama— though you’ve but I much prefer taking it while you’re awake. More painful for you, of course, and all the more satisfying for me.” She sighed. “I’ll grant you that you’ve impressed me by pulling your soul back into yourself, though I don’t know how you did it. It’s not meant to be possible, once I’ve started the process. Now I’ll have to do it all over again, once your irritating older self arrives on the Isle to join you.”

Merlin’s heart skipped a beat. It explained the twilight world he had been trapped in, and why he felt like he had lost himself and only just barely had himself together again. She had nearly succeeded in ripping his soul right out of his body.

“The Lasc Ama,” he echoed unwillingly. “Dark magic. The kind that rips people apart, both caster and victim. Morgana, you shouldn’t have. It’ll destroy you—it’ll destroy Camelot. It’ll destroy everything. It’s not worth—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Morgana’s hand was gripping his chin and pushed his head back against the stone, forcing his jaw open. He struggled, but she shoved a large object—soft and rough—into his mouth and immediately began binding it in place with a piece of dark fabric, wrapping it around his head twice before tying it so tightly that the hinge of his jaw pulsed painfully. He tried to protest, but his voice was successfully muffled by her gag. He prodded the object in his mouth with his tongue—it tasted bitter, and like a homespun cloth, though the cloth was bundling something.

His magic rose up again automatically, making the chains light up once more and sending more spikes of pain through his skull.

Morgana’s face hovered above his once again, much closer this time. Merlin would have described her expression as almost wistful, had he not known that she had lost her senses entirely. She laid a hand on his cheek gently, brushing a few stray tears away. He jerked his face away, the intimate gesture almost more of a violation than all of the violence she had done to him. 

Morgana tutted. “Oh, Emrys. Of course it’s worth it. How could it not be? To finally destroy you, who has been the sole reason I don’t sit upon Camelot’s throne? And to have access to your magic—your power, which is as rightfully mine as Camelot is? If it takes ripping myself in two to achieve all I’ve ever desired,” she leaned in closer still, her voice dropping to a whisper in his left ear. “ Then I shall do it. ”

Merlin’s breathing, obstructed by the gag, came out even more quickly than before, and he struggled to bridle his panic and racing heart. In his panic, he reached unconsciously for his magic again, and let out a muffled cry as the pain and dizziness overtook his senses again. Morgana giggled, seeming to understand what had occurred, and then she did something he never would have expected from her, not in a century—she kissed him lightly on the cheek. 

Again, the intimate gesture repulsed him worse than all else she’d done, for all the reminders that kiss gave him of the friend he had, who had been Morgana, once. She had once kissed him on the cheek; she had once gone to battle for him. She had once told him her strange dreams; they had once laughed together. She had been his friend. He didn’t want to remember that friend, that girl who had been so brave and so good, as she sought to destroy both of them from the inside out.

She straightened, and Merlin’s tension eased a fraction, to have some distance between him and her. She strode down towards the tall fire and back again, carrying a torch. One of her followers trailed her, a girl with yellow hair and green eyes and a sullen expression, who avoided looking at Merlin. 

“Don’t take offense at the gag, Merlin,” Morgana said almost pleasantly as she approached, resting the torch in a makeshift sconce of two rocks leaning together. “It’s not that I don’t want to chat. It’s just that I didn’t have time to feed you the juniper and hemlock and your hair earlier, and this seemed the simplest way to bind the ingredients to you for the rest of the spell. And as I mentioned, this won’t be for long. Now, we just have to wait for your future self to come bumbling into the trap we’ve laid for him.”

Merlin felt the trap closing in, and for a moment was all panic. He thrashed against the chains across his chest, making them pulse golden briefly before they faded back to normalcy, his head spinning round and round. The lack of his magic was as almost a bad a loss as his soul had been.
“Now, Merlin,” Morgana’s voice continued in its falsely pleasant tones. He strained his head back to see what she was doing at the table, but she was just out of view, until she returned to hovering over him, with a small, haunting smile on her face. “I know this is frightening. I imagine you’re very confused still, from that bleeding head wound and the premature soul rupture. Not many people survive the restoration of the soul, and the ones who do rarely come back sane, you know. You should be grateful you still know your own name.” Merlin’s head was already spinning too much to process her words, and he clenched his eyes closed and opened them again, hoping to regain some sense. If he had nothing else—no magic, no defenses—could he call the Dragon? Would he even be able to? He tried to remember the words for the call, but they slipped just out of his mind’s reach. “And I’m sure the Excalibur wound pulses painfully. And the chains—well, only you would know how that feels. But I imagine it’s unpleasant.” She tilted her head, faux-sympathy pouting her lips. “But worst of all, I imagine, is knowing you’re powerless to stop me.”

Merlin had felt a lot of emotions about Morgana, in the time he had known her: respect, love, friendship. Envy, too. Later on, betrayal and guilt. Recently, anger, burgeoning into hate. 

But he had never feared her. Not totally, not with his magic. 

But looking at her now, fear—real, true fear—unfurled in his gut, as he began to grasp how suddenly vulnerable Morgana had rendered him. His whole life, Merlin had never been truly defenseless—his magic had always been right there, supporting him, even if he didn’t use it. He was supposed to be the most bloody powerful warlock of all history. But with barely his soul intact and with magic and body chained, Morgana had proved all the prophecies about him to be what he had first suspected them to be when he’d heard them: pure poppycock.

There was much to sort out in the castle and in the lower town, and so Arthur told the other knights—asides from Old Arthur and Percival—to split up to offer help and return to Gaius’ room in an hour. That would be long enough to let Merlin rest, and to hopefully see to all the immediate concerns to restore Camelot’s safety.

When the hour was up, Arthur wearily left George in charge of cleaning the Great Hall and to arrange for it to temporarily house the town’s residents whose homes had burned down and stumbled his way into the physician’s chambers. He collapsed onto Gaius’ worktable without even mustering a greeting, letting his head fall into his hands for a moment. 

“A way to greet your wife, my lord,” A woman’s voice said wryly. 

Arthur’s head shot up at the sound of his wife’s voice. “Gwen,” he said with relief. “I thought you were still helping in the lower towns.” 

“I came upstairs once Leon had told me what happened to Merlin,” she said skeptically. She looked at the still-unconscious figure of Old Merlin, whose face, in repose, looked serious and—though he’d never say it to a conscious Merlin—warrior-like and fierce, not words he would usually use to describe his youthful friend. He also noted that the sorcerer looked much paler than he had a couple of hours ago. “Though I don’t think Leon had the whole story. Even Merlin can’t grow a beard this quickly.” 

Gwen stood near Merlin’s cot near the fireplace, wearing one of her old purple homespun gowns from her serving girl days, which she saved for when her assistance was required in situations such as the day’s attack and sturdiness and comfort were more important than style and elegance. There were a number of herbs laid out on the table in front of Arthur, and he figured she must have been helping Gaius make poultices for the injured. Aside from the unconscious Merlin and his wife, the room was empty. The injured were being treated in the reception hall below, as Arthur had directed Leon to organize earlier.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Well? Are you going to tell me who this is? Because it’s not my friend, at least not totally.”

Arthur sighed and held out his hand to her, and she stepped towards him and took it, holding his hand to her heart for a moment. He closed his eyes briefly, letting himself absorb the peace Gwen always managed to grant him. When he opened his eyes, her head was tilted, searching Arthur’s face for an answer and eyes brimming with worry.

“It is Merlin,” Arthur said eventually. “It’s just Merlin who has aged ten years.”

Gwen released his hand, puzzlement creasing her forehead. “He’s an older Merlin? Did he age himself by accident?”

“Not exactly,” another voice answered, just as Arthur opened his mouth to say the same.

Both Arthur and Gwen turned to see Old Arthur ducking through the physician door, looking, for all his ferocity, rather bashful. 

Gwen gasped and took a step backwards from the table, bumping into Merlin’s cot. She grabbed the side of the cot as if to steady herself, her other hand covering her mouth.

Old Arthur smiled widely, and bowed. “Queen Guinevere,” he rumbled. “You are as lovely now as you ever were.”

Arthur felt a bite of jealousy, seeing his older self flirt with his wife, which he realized made no sense at all. He cleared his throat. “Gwen, meet, well, myself.”

Gwen lowered her hand from her mouth, dipping a curtsy automatically in response to Old Arthur’s bow. She blinked rapidly, looking from Old Arthur to the resting Merlin behind her. “From ten years hence, I presume,” she said carefully.
“You’re handling this much better than I did,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “But, yes. Essentially, Morgana’s done a spell to bring the future selves of me and Merlin to the present.”

Gwen nodded, looking vaguely ill. “Right. But why?”

“To steal Merlin’s soul,” Gwaine provided cheerfully as he ducked into the room, followed by Lancelot and Leon. Gwaine bit an apple he was carrying and smiled at Gwen. “Or steal his magic. I’m unclear on the difference at the moment.”

All eyes darted to the unconscious Merlin. 

“But if this is the elder Merlin,” Gwen said slowly, a look of horror dawning on her face as she processed Gwaine’s words. “Then where is our Merlin?”

“Well, that’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?” Arthur scowled at Gwaine, who clapped a hand on Arthur’s shoulder jovially. “Don’t worry, mate, we filled in Leon here when we brought Percival down to the reception hall. Perce is determined to come with us, though I don’t think he’ll be getting far with his leg.”

“Elyan’s said the same thing, though Gaius was binding his chest for broken ribs downstairs,” Lancelot added. 

“Is that where Gaius is? I’d just gone out to look for him. He hasn’t been upstairs, and I want him to look at Merlin. I didn’t want to venture too far, in case I confused some servants who spotted me on the way,” Old Arthur said. He leaned against the stairwell up to Merlin’s old room, as if to render himself nonthreatening to allow his younger friends to sort themselves out before involving himself. 

Leon, normally unflappable, blinked several times at the sight of Old Arthur, looking swiftly between him and Arthur. 

“Your beard,” Leon choked out eventually. “The beard is strange. I can’t adjust to it.”

Old Arthur scratched his chin thoughtfully. "You've told me recently that you liked it." He paused. "Well, recently to me, at least."

Lancelot and Gwaine laughed, and Lancelot threw his arm around the first knight. “Wait till you see Merlin’s,” Lancelot joked. “It’s bizarre.”

“I would like to return to the matter of our friend Merlin,” Gwen said sternly, looking around at the men around her. The knights sobered at their queen’s tone. “And where he is, and how we might find him.”

Arthur stood and reached for her hand again, squeezing it. “Morgana’s taken him, but we don’t know where. We need to talk to Gaius.”

Gaius chose just that minute to bustle into his rooms, his bushy eyebrows leaping towards his hairline in surprise at the gathered group, though he didn’t pay them much mind.

 “Sire,” he said to Arthur. “Have you seen Merlin? I thought he’d be with you.” Gaius shuffled past the knights, who parted for him easily, and shuffled around the table to Gwen’s side. Old Arthur remained in his shadowed corner, and Gaius paid him no mind. “Gwen, my dear, I’ve come to gather the poultices.” 

“Gaius, it’s Merlin—” Arthur began, but Gaius had frozen in place, hovering over Merlin’s unconscious form in the bed. 

Gaius’ expression was difficult to read at the best of times, but the tenderness in his expression was undeniable as he beheld the elder unconscious Merlin—who remained still as stone throughout the knights’ spirited conversation, utterly dead to the world. Gaius’ hands hovered over Merlin’s form for a moment, as if unsure where to begin his inspection of his ward’s injuries, or as if he was using his magic to sense what was wrong, Arthur couldn’t be sure.

“Oh, my boy,” Gaius said gently. He smoothed Merlin’s hair back from his forehead, the gesture so paternal—so unlike his own relationship with Uther had been—that Arthur turned away for a moment, unable to watch the intimacy too closely. “What did you do?”

Gaius turned to Arthur. “What’s happened?”

Old Arthur took that moment to step forward, making Gaius jump in surprise. Old Arthur swept the elderly physician into an embrace, surprising everyone in the room, including Gaius, telling him how pleased he was to see him. 

Meanwhile, Arthur recounted the day’s events, explaining that their Merlin was missing and that both Merlins had been stabbed with Excalibur. He also explained about the Lasc Ama, and about the strange phrase he had heard his Merlin muttering, about the sword being in the stars, not the stone.

Gaius paled at the mention of the Lasc Ama. He immediately turned away to begin assembling a salve and poultice for Merlin’s wound. 

“Do you know anything else about the Lasc Ama, Gaius?” Arthur asked. “That we might not know?”

Gaius continued working for a few moments before responding. “It’s Dark Magic. Amongst the most vile spells known. As you said, it required the same person, at different ages, to be in the same place, at the same time, with the same wound. And, as you’ve said, it’s meant to tear out the souls of both the victim and the caster.”

Lancelot’s face was pale with shock. “You mean, Morgana’s going to rip her own soul out? Why would she do that? We’ve seen how painful it is for Merlin. How could she be so willing to pay such a dreadful cost?”

“There is a way to return one’s soul to the body,” Gaius said thoughtfully. “As, apparently, Arthur and Merlin proved earlier today. Perhaps Morgana has figured out a way to restore her soul, once the spell is complete. But it’s a tricky, unreliable magic, and often results in those whose soul is returned losing their minds. You said Merlin seemed himself, before he fainted?”

Both Arthurs nodded determinedly, but it was Old Arthur who spoke. “He was as annoying as usual. If he was sane before, which I’ve always doubted, he’s sane now.”

Gaius looked at Old Arthur thoughtfully. “And what was this about the sword and stone? It was stars, both Merlins mentioned?”

Leon answered. “Everyone knows the story of Excalibur,” the knight said primly. “Arthur pulled the sword from the stone. I was there, and so was Merlin. Perhaps his memory was confused, when Morgana was—well, stealing his soul?”

Gaius' head was tilted, his gaze falling to Merlin’s unconscious face. “Perhaps that is the case,” he said carefully, in what Arthur knew to be his doubtful-Gaius voice.

“It was more like he was warning me,” Arthur jumped in. He wasn’t convinced that Leon wasn’t right. Perhaps it had been merely some nonsense that Merlin’s semi-conscious state had produced, but if Gaius thought it was important, as he seemed to, he wanted to contribute what he could. “He kept telling me I needed to put it back—but not into the stone, into the stars.”

“Perhaps it’s a sort of prophecy,” Gwen suggested, resting her own hand gently on the crown of Merlin’s head. “Maybe Merlin saw something about Morgana and the spell and the sword, and this was a way of warning us.”

Gaius still looked puzzled. “Perhaps that is the case, too. I can’t be certain, unless I ask him myself.”

He turned back to Merlin, checking the stab wound and lifting up Merlin’s eyelids. “He’s exhausted, and the wound from Excalibur is a dangerous one to heal, even for a warlock such as Merlin. Normally I would suggested letting him rest for the next few days.” Gaius gaze flew up to Arthur’s, eyes flicking between him and Old Arthur, one eyebrow cocked. “But I imagine, with the time constraints—no pun intended—being what they are in restoring our young Merlin back to us, I will need to rouse him. Though I tell you, sires, that this goes against my official advice as Court Physician.”

Old Arthur nodded grimly, his jaw set. “If we had time, Gaius, I would let him rest. But if we’re going to save his life, then we need him.”

Gaius sighed. “Very well then. Gwen, would you help me with the salts? I have a suspicion it will not be easy to awaken him.”

“Always a deep sleeper, our Merlin,” Gwaine joked. 

Gaius and Gwen uncovered the smelling salts and held them beneath the unconscious Merlin’s nostrils. 

What happened next occurred almost too quickly for Arthur to process: there was an explosion of bright light that forced everyone to turn away and cover their eyes, and there was Merlin sitting up and flinging himself off the cot and onto the floor, sending both Arthurs and Gwen and Gaius stumbling. And there was the sound of a sob—just one—from Merlin, a wrenching sound unlike Arthur had heard before, though he had seen his friend cry on more than one occasion.

“Merlin!” Arthur shouted, still covering his eyes against the bright light exuding from his friend. “Merlin, the light! Turn it off!”

Arthur felt rather than saw Old Arthur move past him to kneel next to Merlin. He squinted his eyes open, watching Old Arthur reaching for Merlin’s shoulder, past the blinding light. 

Old Arthur hissed in pain, recoiling from Merlin and clutching his hand to his chest, leaning against the work table bench. “Damnit, Merlin! You’ve burned my bloody hand!”

“Merlin!” Gaius shouted. “My boy, you’re alright! It’s alright!”  

Arthur wasn’t sure what did it—Gaius’ familiar voice, or Merlin’s realization that he’d harmed Old Arthur. Whatever the reason, the bright light dimmed significantly—not fading entirely away, but manageable to look at, surrounding the crouched Merlin like a transparent golden sphere. 

Merlin’s chest was heaving rapidly, and he let out another pained gasp. His golden-blue eyes were wide with panic, locked on something beyond his friends surrounding him, his entire body taut with tension.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin muttered, one of his hands rising to claw at his chest. Arthur could do nothing but watch, deeply unsettled at his friend’s raw panic. “I’m sorry, it’s not mine. It’s not mine.”

Gwaine was the first of the knights to straighten from their crouched shielding position and approach Merlin, resting on one knee before the sorcerer. “Mate, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I doubt there’s anyone else in the world that could’ve been.”

Merlin shook his head vehemently, not seeming to notice when his head collided with the bedpost of his cot. His eyes had not lost the wild look in them. “No, no. You don’t understand. It’s mine—of course it’s mine—but it’s not mine. ”

Arthur and Gwaine exchanged glances. A flare of fear bloomed in Arthur’s gut. Arthur had seen Merlin in all sorts of states over the years, but never had he been so shaken, and so completely nonsensical. What if the restoration of his soul had affected his brain somehow?

Gwen, kneeling just over Merlin’s shoulder, reached a tentative hand forward, reaching as Old Arthur had to grasp Merlin’s shoulder, her face etched with concern. “Oh, Merlin—”

“Don’t!” Merlin recoiled violently from her touch, stumbling to his feet and upending several potion bottles as he staggered away from the group. He made it halfway up the stairs to his old room before he sat heavily down on a step, clutching his still-heaving chest. The glow of his body was bizarre and almost divine, as if he was coated in sunlight. The knights and Gaius formed a small semi-circle at the bottom of the steps, while Arthur and Gwen hung further back, sensing the need for space. Old Arthur stayed in his position leaning up against the work bench and clutching his burnt hand, looking at Merlin as if he had never seen him before. It hurt Arthur, to see that expression on his face. He hoped his own did not mirror it.

Gaius murmured Merlin’s name, taking a step closer to the stairs. Merlin held out a warning hand. “Don’t!” he shouted again.

Merlin took a deep, shuddering breath, and when he spoke again, it was at his normal level. “Don’t. Please don’t. It’ll burn you if you touch it, and I don’t know how to turn it off.”

Gaius made a puzzled noise. 

“Doesn’t it work the same as the adjustment you just made?” Gwaine asked. “You dimmed the brightness. Why not turn off the burn-y trick, and we can get you sorted, mate?”

Merlin growled in frustration. “Because it’s not my spell!”

Arthur took a step closer to the stairs, understanding tickling the back of his mind. “Not your spell, but it’s your magic. Is that right, Merlin?”

Merlin’s eyes locked to Arthur’s. Some of his initial panic had seemed to dissipate. But it was strange, watching him tense with fear, in the place where he had lived for so long. Arthur couldn’t make sense of it. 

“Yes,” Merlin said. “Yes. Exactly. It’s not my panic, either. Or, at least, not totally.” He groaned, dropping his glowing face into his glowing hands. “Ye gods, I need a moment.”

Not his panic? This puzzled Arthur further, but light dawned on Gaius’ face. 

Gaius turned to Arthur and the knights. “He’s not gone mad. He’s linked to the powers and emotions of his younger self. It must be a result of Morgana’s aborted Lasc Ama attempt earlier.”

Lancelot seemed to catch onto Gaius’ meaning first. “You mean, it’s younger Merlin doing the spell?”

A familiar dread filled Arthur, making him shiver. “And it’s younger Merlin’s fear, that Merlin’s feeling. Gods, Merlin.”

Gwen reached for Arthur’s hand and squeezed, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Poor Merlin.”

Older Merlin didn’t lift his head from his hands. 

Old Arthur stood and approached. He spoke to Gaius. “Why would the younger Merlin’s spell appear here? Why did he not cast it where he is?”

Merlin raised his head infinitesimally, just enough to look at his king. “He—I— can’t.” 

“And why not?” Old Arthur’s unpredictable fierceness had returned. 

Arthur hesitated and placed his hand gently on his elder’s shoulder, hoping his own self would understand the signal to stand down and give Merlin a moment to collect himself. Arthur imagined fighting a panic that wasn’t really your own must be very strange. He felt Gwaine’s eyes resting heavily on him as he did so.

But Merlin answered his king immediately, apparently not needing Arthur’s protection as he had thought, though Merlin’s eyes went to Gaius as he spoke. “She’s bound his magic. My magic. It’s why—I think that’s why I’m—why he’s so afraid. No one’s ever been able to—Gods, Gaius, I’ve never not had my magic. Never. ” 

Merlin’s breathing started coming faster and faster again, the wild look returning to his eyes. 

Old Arthur inhaled sharply. Arthur knew, without looking, the horror that would be etched on his friends’ faces, on his own decade-older face, that was surely on his own face. A Merlin without magic was a terrifying thing. Even though Arthur had only known the truth for two years, magic and Merlin and goodness were so wrapped up together in Arthur’s mind that unraveling them proved impossible.

“Merlin, it’s alright. We can stop her,” Gaius said slowly. “He could call the Dragon.”

Merlin shook his head, eyes unfocused. “He doesn’t remember the call—hells, I don’t remember the call. My mind—our minds—things are still sorting themselves back. It took him a long time to remember who Morgana was.” He shook his head. “I don’t even understand how I know that.”

Gaius' face was still unperturbed. “That’s fine, Merlin. If we know how she’s done it—”

“But I don’t. I don’t know how she’s done it. I—forgot. When I did the forġietan, I forgot all about this. How could I—why would I make myself forget she’s bound my magic?” His blue-gold eyes seemed to glow a little brighter as they looked at Old Arthur. “You were right, Arthur. I should never have done it. I never should have done it. All that nonsense about time—what do I know about time? Arthur, I’ve told you, I’ll burn you if you come too close!”

Old Arthur now sat a step out of reach of Merlin’s pulsing golden sphere of magic, his face calmer than Arthur had seen it. “Merlin, heal my hand.”

Merlin blinked at the command, some of the panic fluttering away as a result. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Old Arthur said calmly. He extended his burned hand—the fingertips and palm a painful, blistering red—towards Merlin, hovering just outside the golden sphere. “And I think you will.”

“Why?” Merlin asked, sounding incredulous.

“Because I asked you,” Old Arthur said simply, staring at his friend with a gravity and meaning. Arthur sensed the intense, nonverbal communication between the two of them once again. 

Merlin nodded faintly, looking as if he was only half aware of his surroundings. He reached forward and grasped Old Arthur’s extended hand with both of his, the golden sphere dimming and receding and reforming in a swirling circle over Merlin and Arthur’s hands.

A moment passed, and then the glowing magic flared and disappeared. Merlin released Old Arthur’s hand, fully healed, and sighed, leaning his head back against the bannister, looking exhausted but normal, the tension seeping out from his limbs. 

Old Arthur flexed his healed hand once, twice. “Good as new,” he declared.

Merlin opened his eyes, a teasing gleam present, a half-smile faintly lighting up his face. “I should think so.” 

Merlin grasped the railing, hauling himself to his feet and down the steps. Everyone in the room tensed, only to relax again when Old Arthur also stood and offered Merlin his arm. Merlin grasped his forearm, and Old Arthur’s his, and they shook. 

“Better?” Old Arthur asked nonchalantly. 

Merlin’s eyebrows danced up and then down again. “More myself, at least. Better is a relative term.” To the room at large, he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite realize the consequences of being unconscious when my younger self  is being tortured by a mad witch. You wake up with a host of problems. I won’t be making that mistake again.”

Gwaine grinned and clapped Merlin on the back. “I love a good light show, mate. I’ve always said that.” Lancelot elbowed him, and Gwaine squawked. “What? I have!”

Merlin seemed to notice Gwen for the first time. He exclaimed joyfully. “Oh, Gwen! You look radiant!” He swept her up in a hug, which she returned tightly.

“Careful, Merlin,” she said when they released their hold on one another. “Your side!”

Some of Gaius’ wrappings had fallen away, and a dark splotch of red could be seen through Merlin’s blue shirt. 

“Yes, my boy, do sit down,” Gaius swept Merlin over to the cot, where Merlin sat with a sigh. 

“It’s fine, Gaius,” Merlin said testily, trying to block Gaius’ hands as the physician removed his bandages and began replacing them. Gaius huffed indignantly and slapped Merlin’s hands away, making the sorcerer laugh. Gaius grasped one of Merlin’s hands and squeezed it briefly, and Merlin smiled at the old man. This time, Arthur couldn't restrain a smile at the affection between the physician and his ward.

Once Gaius had finished his tending, Arthur cleared his throat. “I’m wondering something, Merlin.”

Merlin raised an eyebrow. “Always a dangerous activity.”

Gwaine snorted, which Arthur ignored. “Younger Merlin shared his magic and his fear of losing it with you. Did he share anything else? His location, perhaps?”

Merlin’s lips pressed flatly together, and nodded. “He’s on the Isle.”

Gwaine groaned, and Arthur nearly joined in with him. There were many frightening magical places in or near Camelot, but he had always had a particular distaste for the Isle. 

Old Arthur grunted, crossing his arms. “Well, then I suppose there’s no time to lose. How long will it take Peter to rally the horses for us?” he looked to Arthur for this question. He didn’t respond, which seemed to make Old Arthur even more agitated. “Judging by Merlin’s reaction upon waking, there is no time to waste. Younger Merlin is in danger. We should have already left.”

But something—call it one of Merlin’s funny feelings—made Arthur hesitate to follow his elder self out the door. Luckily, Gaius spoke for him. “Arthur, wait.”

Old Arthur turned to Gaius, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Gaius, he doesn’t have his magic.” The words contained a great deal of feeling, though Arthur wasn’t sure what. 

Gaius spoke quietly. “I want Merlin returned safely as badly as you do. But you’ve been king for a time now, Arthur. You know what happens when you rush into danger with no plan. We must think, if we want to outwit Morgana.”

“Two Morganas, technically,” Gwaine said. It was Leon who elbowed him this time, and Gwaine gently shoved the older knight. “Even if one’s dead, two made the plan, right?”

“And it’s a trap,” Merlin said, rubbing a hand over his beard and neck contemplatively. “She needs me there to complete the spell, and she knows Arthur will come for me.”
Gwen smiled softly and leaned her head on Merlin’s shoulder. “And wherever Arthur goes, you follow,” she said. Merlin smiled at her, and entwined his hand with hers. 

Arthur supposed it should’ve made him feel strange, seeing his wife and best friend’s open affection for one another, but Arthur had never once felt strange about their friendship—Gwen and Merlin had been friends before Arthur really understood what friendship meant. Their sibling-like relationship always brought Arthur a quiet joy—it made him feel like he was part of a family, again. And a reminder of what he and Morgana had been, once upon a time. 

“So we know she wants Merlin,” Lancelot said. “And that she has a way—sorry, Merlin—of binding his magic, but no idea how. So how do we plan for what we can’t anticipate, when we know we have to play into her hands?”

Merlin shook his head, still seeming frustrated with himself about the forġietan spell, even after him and Old Arthur’s silent concession about the matter. “My only plan is to do what I would usually do,” he said. “Which is improvise.”

“If it’s worked this far, mate,” Gwaine said. “Then it’s good enough for me.”

“Merlin, do you remember what you said, during the Lasc Ama ?” Arthur blurted out. 

Merlin released Gwen’s hand and crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head, curiosity glittering in his swirling storm eyes. “I don’t. Why?”

Arthur shook his head in return. “I don’t know. We wondered if it might mean something. You kept telling me to put something back. And that the sword wasn’t in the stone—it was in in the stars.”

Merlin sat up at attention. “That’s what I said?”

Arthur nodded. “You kept saying it. The sword’s in the stars, not the stone.”

Merlin grinned, his face alight with something Arthur hadn’t seen in his friend in some time: hope.

“Alright, then,” Merlin said, mischief twinkling in his eyes. “Perhaps I do have a plan, after all.”

Chapter Text

When Merlin woke again, he was in the past.

It had been a year since Arthur and the rest of his friends had learned about his magic. Merlin, before the discovery of his secret, could only have dreamed about the happiness, the freedom, of his life now that magic was free, now that his friends really knew him. There were even some sorcerers living in Camelot, now—Gilli had returned, and Merlin and him had struck up a closer friendship, and had been discussing how to encourage more sorcerers to come to court. It had been one of Gilli’s sorcerer friends who had warned Merlin and Arthur that Morgana was gathering her supporters on the Isle. That was why he and Arthur and Percival and Gwaine had gone scouting.

He was still on the Isle, that was for certain. And he was, much like the present, captured by Morgana. Though here, in the past, he wasn’t alone—Arthur was with him, as was Gwaine and Percival. He had his magic, too, though he was weakened by some vile potion one of Morgana’s  sorcerers had forced down his throat when their camp had been attacked in the night. That same sorcerer, Merlin suspected, had been the same one who had bludgeoned him up the back of the head with a rock. This was a consistent problem for himself, Merlin observed; he often was so focused on defending himself from magical attack that he forgot that something as pedestrian as a stone could incapacitate him as well as a complicated spell would. 

 The potion made the world around him move slower than should be possible, and whenever he tried to focus on something—a pair of brown eyes, dark with anger, or the silver gleam of the dagger one of Morgana’s minions held before them, the sliver of the night sky he could glimpse through the tent flap—everything suddenly moved at double the pace it normally did, making him so dizzy that he was forced to close his eyes until it passed, and things moved slowly again. He knew it was likely his imagination, but he felt a dark and toxic liquid flowing through his veins, making him feel nauseous and shaky.

He reached for his magic, but doing so made the world spin and tilt even faster. He felt himself slump forward, making those around him shout, though he couldn’t understand what they’d said. Something sharp jabbed him in the chest—someone’s shoulder, he knew, though he had his eyes squeezed shut—stopping him from hitting the ground face-first. Another shoulder, on his other side, nudged him upwards again, and his head lolled onto the person’s shoulder. He appreciated the weight lifting from his neck having to hold up his head, and he tried to thank whoever had caught him.

More words arrived then, but with his eyes closed against the wrong-moving world and the throbbing in his head eased slightly now that he was not working so hard to keep his head up, he could make out their meaning, though they came at him too quickly.

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know, he mumbled something.”

“What’s the matter with him? He’s not conscious, I don’t think.”

A curse. “I can see the back of his head, Arthur. There’s blood.”

“Fie and damn. We need him. She’ll be here soon.”

Merlin understood this—understood that his friends needed his help, desperately, though he was having trouble remembering his friend’s faces and couldn’t distinguish their voices from one another, and opening his eyes only confused him further. 

But he opened them anyway and tried for his magic again. Once more, it spun in woozy circles out of his reach, and he felt his muscles tighten involuntarily and his stomach churn. His ears and mind filled with a sharp ringing, like the sound of a sword being drawn from a scabbard. He moaned—the noise was unbearable, and so loud—and he made to cover his ears, which he found impossible, his arms trapped behind his back. He tilted forward again, his balance thrown off again.

“Woah, Arthur, there he goes again! Watch him!”

He was caught, again, roughly, on both sides. His head—heavier than it had ever felt—lolled forward. He squinched his eyes close, focusing all his energy on not vomiting on the floor in front of him.

“I think they gave him something,” a familiar voice said grimly. He knew who had spoken, this time, could picture a golden crown upon his head. Arthur. “A potion. This is more than a head wound. I saw his eyes glow, but nothing happened. I think he’s trying for his magic, and something’s stopping it.”

Someone swore, and again, he knew who had done so, knew it was the friend whose shoulder held him up, a devil-may-care grin and warm eyes. Gwaine. 

The names helped ground him, and solid facts—not moving fast or slow, but simply known to him. He knew it was his magic, granting him some understanding of what was happening. 

This was what Merlin knew: they’d been scouting for Morgana’s encampment, Merlin and his friends, based on a rumor that she was on the Isle. They had been attacked in the night, and been subdued and taken. They'd been taken further into the Isle, to what seemed to be a large encampment, more than a dozen tents arranged in the quasi-shelter of the ruin of an old temple, that the four of them had been brought into the largest tent and forced to their knees. He knew their arms were bound behind their backs, and he knew Arthur had broken a rib, because his breathing was shallower than normal. He knew Percival’s nose was broken, and that Gwaine’s wrist was sprained and swollen to twice its normal size. He knew there were twenty-seven other people—Morgana’s followers—at the encampment. And he knew something was coming, something to do with Morgana, something to do with Arthur, something to do with the sound reverberating through his head, of a sword pulled from a scabbard. Something he would have to stop, or maybe something he would cause; he couldn’t tell which.

He had retreated so far into himself that he didn’t notice that someone else  was present until he felt fingers entangle in his hair and yank him forward. He tumbled forward, unable to counter the sudden movement. Before he hit the floor, however, another arm seized him around the middle and spun him around, at which point Merlin was so disoriented that he couldn’t understand the movements of himself or those around them until he felt the cold bite of the knife at his throat.

A woman was hissing the Old Tongue in his ear, the words indistinguishable but harsh, and again, a name flew into his crowded and swirling mind, dark hair, green eyes, flashing with madness and humor and affection and wielding a silver sword: Morgana. 

The dark poison Merlin felt pounding in his blood seemed to increase, and the dizziness and strangeness swirled and sharpened and burned his way through his body. He felt as if someone had shoved him into a lit pyre, flames licking all over his body. He cried out, wanting Arthur to put the fire out—he hadn’t wanted to lie to him, he swore, and he was sorry, so sorry, for everything, for Uther, for the dragon, for the death he hadn’t been able to stop.

Through the fire and the pain, he vaguely knew that people were talking, shouting—Morgana and Arthur, and Gwaine—but he couldn’t understand them. He couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t do anything except look further into himself, searching, desperately, for his magic, for what it could help him with.

The burning receded, just enough for him to gain some understanding of reality, though he couldn’t tell if he was looking with his eyes or his magic. One of Morgana’s hands was still knotted in his hair, and she had yanked his head back so that his throat was exposed. In her other hand was a gleaming dagger, which, when she noticed him watching her, she pressed slightly against his throat, making blood bubble to the surface. They faced his three friends, who kneeled in a row with their arms bound behind their back, two hulking guards standing above Arthur and Percival. All three of his friends wore similar stony expressions, their eyes locked on Merlin. Arthur’s eyes were wild and feral, and Merlin could see his lips moving as he shouted something, though Merlin couldn’t hear what he spoke.

In front of him was a silver pewter cup. Even through the burning, the dizziness, it reminded him of something he had glimpsed in one of the Dark Magic spell books he and Gaius had found in the Vault. The potion, the dagger at his throat, the pewter cup ready to catch his spilled blood: Morgana was attempting to sacrifice Merlin and steal his magic in the process, via blood transference.

Dread dropped in his gut, a leaded weight.

“It won’t work,” Merlin said with difficulty. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the blade. “That’s not how my magic works, Morgana. Or yours.”

He addressed Morgana, but he spoke to Arthur directly, trying to convey—well, he didn’t know what he was trying to convey. Arthur’s eyes never strayed from Merlin, his gaze locked on the knife at his throat. 

Morgana laughed. “It hardly matters to me, Merlin. If it works, I’ll have your magic. If it doesn’t, then you’re dead. I benefit no matter the results.” 

“Morgana, don’t do this,” Arthur said, his voice half commanding, half desperate. And then, as if he recognized the look in Morgana’s eyes, he shouted again. “NO!”

She slashed the blade across Merlin’s throat. 

And Merlin exploded time. 

He didn’t know exactly what he did, but he did it all in the time it took for him to feel his blood gush, sticky and warm, down into the hollow of his throat and over his neck.

It was pure magic, instinctive and uncontrolled, directed just vaguely by the direction of his thoughts. 

He thought of many things: he thought of Arthur, and Camelot, and the future, and the past, and his friend, and how they were supposed to have more time. For all that Merlin had suffered, he felt entitled to more time to build the future with his friend. He deserved more time. Arthur deserved more time. And if he had to forcibly take that time back, then he would. 

And he thought, too, of Morgana, who had been his friend, who had been, years ago, in the past, so sweet and so brave and so true. And he wanted her back, that girl she had been. He wanted, more than anything, to pull that girl into the present, with him, and blast the Morgana that had slit his throat from existence. 

Merlin didn’t know much more than that, magic-wise; these were things that he was thinking as he bled out, and then there was a bright light, and the sound, again, of the sword in the scabbard, and Merlin whited out. 

When he came to, he was in a field of flowers. Daisies, of different types, their petals both yellow and white. The sun shone down on them brightly, and there was hardly a cloud in the azure sky above them. He couldn’t say where the field was; he would have guessed, if he had to, that they were in the Valley of the Fallen Kings, near the Crystal Cave, but he didn’t know why he felt that way. 

The terrible slow-and-fastness of the world, the dizziness, the dark poison he had felt coursing through his veins, were gone, as was the rope that had bound his wrists. But he felt strangely hollowed out. Not entirely present. Content to simply open his eyes and stare at the cornflower blue sky above him and let himself breathe. 

He could sense Gwaine and Percival and Arthur laid near him, though Percival was already beginning to stand, and Arthur was lifting his head, eyes blinking rapidly. 

Gwaine grunted and rolled over. “What the hell?”

“Merlin,” Arthur said simply, and scrambled towards him. Then there were Arthur’s hands all over Merlin’s throat, pawing and pressing down on a wound that was no longer there.

It was still slick with his blood—sticky and drying, now— but the wound had closed, somehow. He couldn’t remember what he had done, but he knew—his magic knew—that he had done something that he should not have done.

“Merlin,” Arthur said again desperately. As if he thought Merlin was dead. As if something had happened that he needed—and couldn’t—undo. As if he had lost someone he could not afford to.

 Merlin forced himself into action, when he heard that, because he understood that horror. That exact horror, that fear, of when you think that half of yourself is gone from you, when you were not ready to lose them.

He grasped his hands around Arthur’s wrists, forming light circles with his fingers. “Arthur,” he said softly, his voice muffled against Arthur’s frantic movements to staunch blood that wasn’t flowing. “Arthur, I’m alright.”

But piercing Arthur’s shock couldn’t be done so easily. “Merlin! Merlin, dammit, your blood, it’s—”

“I’m not bleeding,” Merlin said, still not quite feeling present in his body. He sat up, very slowly, his head feeling as if it could float away. “It closed. It healed. The blood’s just…leftover.”

Arthur pulled back, then. He grabbed him by both shoulders, staring into his face, his blue eyes wide and panicked, processing Merlin’s breathing, his aliveness. Some of Merlin’s blood stained Arthur’s cheek. 

Arthur exhaled, the worry not quite disappearing from his face, even as he acknowledged what Merlin was trying to tell him. 

“It closed.” Merlin said again. “And we’re here. We’re away from her.”

Gwaine was there, suddenly, crushing Merlin tightly to his chest. Merlin’s throat thudded against Gwaine’s shoulder in the hastiness of the embrace, and it throbbed painfully as a result. 

Gwaine pulled back, the relief obvious in his eyes. Merlin could see Arthur’s face over Gwaine’s shoulder: his shocked expression had faded slightly, but he still looked paler than normal, and his eyes were hollow as if he had seen a ghost. And perhaps he had, Merlin thought, his hand drifting to his own throat when Gwaine released him. 

“And where is here, mate?” Gwaine asked. 

“I have no idea,” Merlin said, rubbing absentmindedly at where Morgana had cut his throat. What did it mean that the wound had healed, but still ached? That there was still blood everywhere? What had he done? “Away?”

Gwaine cupped a hand briefly around Merlin’s cheek, and he released just as quickly. “Ye gods, you look like death warmed over.”

Merlin raised his eyebrows. “I feel it, too.”

“What’s happened, Merlin?” Percival asked. He sat close by, scanning the field of daisies around them. 

It was a moment before Merlin could gather words to respond.

“I did something,” Merlin confided, his hand still at his throat. He watched the treeline across the field from them, a stark and dark contrast to the field of bright yellow light surrounding them. Could he be certain that this was real, in the first place? “I don’t know what.”

Arthur and Gwaine exchanged a glance, and Merlin sensed the duality of the emotions of his two closest friends: concern and wariness. 

It was the wariness Merlin couldn’t stand, and he wasn’t much tolerant of concern for him, either. The wariness—he couldn’t allow himself to call it fear, to address the fact that his friends feared him—bothered him much more, because he knew they were right to fear his magic. Merlin didn’t know what he was capable of, so he could hardly wonder at his friends feeling the same way. But it didn’t stop the fact that every time he noticed it, it made him feel like a monster.

This was particularly sensitive with Arthur, for a myriad of reasons. At the forefront of it all, though, was the death of Arthur’s father. Uther had created a situation in which Arthur had to choose between a friend who had lied to him and a father who never cared for him, and Arthur had made his choice. Merlin, for all the happiness he had felt for the past year, regretted the way in which Arthur had discovered his secret, and regretted that it had cost Uther his life. For all that Uther would have killed Merlin—and had intended to do so, and Gwen, too—without hesitation. Merlin was sensitive to this with Arthur, but he never felt he and his friend could discuss it, and he felt there would always be a part of Arthur that associated Merlin with the loss of his father. And that made Merlin feel like a monster most of the time, too.

“Something,” Arthur echoed. “Something like what?”

Merlin couldn’t look at him when he answered them, not wanting to have to face their suspicion head on. “I think I opened something, when I pushed us away.”

Gwaine gripped Merlin’s shoulders, as Arthur had done earlier, forcing Merlin to look at him. Merlin, reluctantly, studied his friend’s face, full of worry and inquiry. 

When Gwaine spoke, he spoke slowly, as if he was trying not to spook him. “Opened what, mate?”

Merlin blinked several times before replying, sorting through his magic and his memory to try and answer his friend. “Time.”

Gwaine and Arthur exchanged another glance, and then Arthur was there again, holding the sides of Merlin’s face, eyes darting across Merlin’s face as if he was searching for something. 

Merlin could never be sure what, exactly, his friend was looking for, or if he ever found it, because that really had been the end of it; his friends had taken him home, and they had not told anyone else the whole story of what had happened. Merlin had worried that he had accidentally shifted the four of them into a Camelot of the future—or even the past—but upon their return, they found out that only a day had passed since they had left for the scouting mission. 

He thought he had scared them, even Arthur—with what he had said, what he had done, the way he had not been able to explain himself. 

And it wasn’t until now, that Merlin understood: when Morgana had slashed his throat, Merlin had played with time and space—intuitively, unintentionally, but still. He had rewound time—or maybe he had fast-forwarded, somehow, since he still had the scar from the throat wound—and moved them to safety. 

And Merlin had suspected, but had never been sure, of what else he had done: he had attempted something he never should have—he had tried, in a moment of panic, in remembering his kind friend in contrast to his evil enemy, to replace one with the other. 

Quite simply, he had tried to switch them back. To pull the kind Morgana from the past to his present, and to shove the cruel Morgana deep into the past. Instead, he ended up pulling in an even crueller Morgana from the future into the present. 

Somehow—through some terrible stroke of luck—this had resulted in the two Morganas collaboration. Which caused, in turn, the Morganas to pull Merlin and Arthur from the future into the present.

That is to say, everything about this time mess was all his fault.

“I have a plan,” Old Merlin said again. His eyes twitched around their circle of friends to Arthur’s face, the bright fire in Gaius’ fireplace casting Merlin’s face in shadow. There was a nervous glint in his eyes, Arthur thought. “But I have something I need to confess, before I share it.”

As soon as Merlin looked at him, Arthur knew exactly what he was going to mention. “This is related to what happened at the Isle last year.”

Merlin’s hand drifted to his throat, tracing the jagged diagonal scar—now a further ten years faded than Arthur was used to seeing—that ran across it. “Yes.”

“The Isle?” Gwen’s face was compressed with sweet confusion. “What happened on the Isle?”

Arthur looked to Merlin. His friend wore a haunted expression that was very near to the one he wore on that horrible day a year ago. The day Arthur had watched his own sister slash his friend’s throat.

Arthur hated to think of that day, and was generally successful at avoiding it: the terror, the grief, the sense of a cavern opening widely beneath him. Waking up in an unfamiliar field to find his best friend alive but traumatized, coated in his own blood. 

What was most persistent in his memory of that day was the vacant expression in Merlin’s eyes, normally alight with humor as they were. His blue eyes had been hollow of humor, hollow of anything at all. It was as if his friend had died and came back and wasn’t sure he had made the right decision. Arthur had tried, every day since, to prove to Merlin that he had.

As for the exact magic required that Merlin had done to save them—Arthur never thought of it at all, except to thank it for restoring to him something he could not part with. 

Merlin’s eyes, in the present, lit on Arthur briefly, before shifting to Gwen. “A year ago—a year ago for you all, that is, more than a decade for me—on the scouting trip to the Isle, when Gilli told us Morgana was to be found there—” here Merlin paused, to see if Gwen remembered the trip, and her head dipped slightly to indicate that she did “—our camp was attacked. We were captured and taken to Morgana. Then…” Merlin paused again, an unreadable expression on his face, and Arthur thought he could see his friend trying to reorganize the events into something less frightening than what had been. 

Merlin cleared his throat, his long fingers tracing the scar there. “Then, well, Morgana tried something.” His eyes darted to Gaius. “A blood transference.”

Gaius sucked in a breath. “Merlin,” he began sternly. “Why would you not tell me this before?”

“I’m sorry,” Merlin said, with genuine remorse in his voice. “It frightened me, what I did that day. I wanted to forget it ever happened. Telling you would have made it real.”

“A blood transference,” Gwaine echoed, his tone much more somber than it normally was. “That’s what she was doing?”

“What is a blood transference?” Lancelot asked. 

Merlin’s eyes were on the floor as he spoke. “A blood transference is an old and dark and foolish way of one sorcerer stealing another’s magic. The idea is much simpler than the Lasc Ama —all it requires is draining and drinking the blood of the sorcerer whose magic you desire.”

Gwen covered her mouth with her hand. “She tried to drain your blood?” She looked at Arthur, betrayal darkening her eyes. “You never told me this, either.”
Arthur raised his hands in surrender. “I hadn’t the words for it. It was Merlin’s story to share.”

Merlin plowed onwards, clearly wanting the story to be done. “She slit my throat, and that was when my magic reacted. I did something.” He gestured at Old Arthur—who had been uncharacteristically quiet as Merlin spoke— and himself. “I did all this.”

“Slit your throat!” Gaius exclaimed. He swatted the back of Merlin’s head. “Merlin!”

“You told us, that day,” Arthur said slowly, remembering the day: the field of flowers, Merlin’s empty eyes, his odd words. “That you opened time.” 

He felt Gwaine’s gaze rest heavily on him, and Arthur met the knight’s eyes for a moment. He and Gwaine had never spoken about what had happened that day, but Arthur knew that the knight had been as frightened for Merlin as Arthur had been.

Merlin’s eyebrows jumped towards his hairline. He looked weary. “And I did, I think. I ripped some kind of hole in the patchwork of time, when she killed me. All Morgana had to do was find that hole and tear it wider, to suit her needs.”

Merlin paused, mouth ajar, as if he was going to say something further, but then he closed his mouth. Arthur thought Merlin was going to say something further, but thought better of it.

Arthur wasn’t sure what was most difficult to process: that Merlin, his friend had died that day, or that his friend’s own magic had manipulated time itself, seemingly of its own volition, in order to reverse it. What did it mean, to have that kind of power? And how had Merlin managed to blame himself for all of it?

Old Arthur growled. “Is that what all of this needless suffering has been for, Merlin? You feel responsible, and sought punishment?”

Merlin’s eyes blazed. “It’s my mess, Arthur. It’s up to me to clean it up.”

Old Arthur opened his mouth to respond, but Gwaine cut him off.

“I don’t understand,” Gwaine said slowly. “How could you have done this, Merlin? I remember that day—one moment, Morgana slit your throat, and the next we were in the field. There was no spell. Not that I remember at least.”

Merlin looked almost bashful. “I wasn’t in my right mind—I barely remember the tent, but—”

“She’d given you something,” Arthur recalled, his brow furrowing as he remembered that terrible day. “A poison. Percival and Gwaine and I never determined what it was, but we could hardly keep you upright.”

Merlin nodded, looking vaguely ill. “I was barely conscious. But when Morgana did what she did…her violence, I suppose, startled my magic into an instinctive reaction.”

“Merlin, it wasn’t your fault,” Gwen said. “Whatever you did, I’m grateful for it, since it means you didn’t die that day.” 

Merlin smiled. “Thank you, Gwen.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Gaius said. He sounded horrified. “My boy, what did you do?”

Merlin’s eyes darted to his mentor’s, looking almost pleading. “I don’t know, exactly. That’s the problem. Even after years of consulting every spellbook in the vaults and in Geoffrey’s library. I’ve not found any record of such a spell being attempted. It was something only my magic could have done.” 

His eyes danced briefly around the circle of his friends. “But, because of that, I think I have an idea of what we may need to do to solve everything, even if I’m not clear on how I caused it.”

“Which is?” Arthur asked.

“First of all, has anyone seen Gilli? Or Ros? We might need more sorcerers when we go. I’ll be distracted from the get, and I’d like you all to have some magical protection going in.”
“Gilli’s helping heal the injured downstairs,” Gaius said. “I’d left him in charge.” 

“And—well, Merlin, who’s Ros?” Leon said. 

 Merlin’s head tilted in confusion. “A friend.” His eyes danced to Old Arthur. “Funny. I remember her being here already. Don’t you?”

Old Arthur, for a reason elusive to Arthur, smirked. “I do. But I’ve never been able to pin down when I first met Ros. I’ve told you that.” Old Arthur cleared his throat and shrugged. “Perhaps it’s more of your messing about with time. Or the forġietan. ”

Merlin’s face was full of wonder. “Strange. I thought I sensed—” He shook his head. “Nevermind.”

Arthur wondered who they were talking about, and what Merlin was about to say, but Leon spoke. Arthur decided that, much like all his realizations and contemplations about the future, would have to be shelved until a later date.

“Gwaine and I can go and find Gilli, at the least,” Leon volunteered, his gaze bouncing between Merlin and Arthur.

Arthur ducked a nod, and Gwaine and Leon both half-bowed and made to leave the room. Lancelot made to follow them.

“Lancelot,” Arthur called as the men began to duck through the doorway.

The knight paused, turning to look at him. “Yes, sire?”
“Ready the horses,” Arthur said firmly. He glanced at his older self, and his older friend. “We ride to the Isle as soon as we’re ready.”

Nobody liked Merlin’s plan, but it was to no one’s surprise that it was both Arthurs who refused to take part of it. The knights peeled off as soon as Old Arthur threw the potion bottle against the wall, Lancelot to ready the horses and Leon and Gwaine to find Gilli and Ros. After a few minutes bearing witness to the shouting match between the two Arthurs and Merlin, even Gaius and Gwen slipped out, muttering quiet claims to needing to check on the injured.

“I’ve told you both, that it won’t kill me—or other me,” Merlin said calmly, looking between the two Arthurs.

Old Arthur made an unintelligible noise. “At the moment, Merlin, I don’t trust your word on this particular issue, as you seemed to have assigned yourself the role of the martyr.”

“I know I usually call you an idiot, Merlin, but I think this is a time when I really do mean it,” Arthur said. “I’ll not risk—and definitely not be the cause—of more harm to you or my own friend, knowing what he’s going through at this very moment.” 

He had been attempting to reign in his anger about Merlin’s foolish plan since his older self had expressed the same feelings much more explosively—literally, in the case of the fiery potion Old Arthur had thrown at the wall, only put out by Merlin’s quick-thinking magic—but he couldn’t let Merlin off the hook entirely.

Merlin rubbed a hand over his face, up and down. “Ye gods, this is much more annoying when there’s two of you.”

“I’m not going to do that to you, Merlin,” Arthur said. “End of story. New plan.”

“It won’t hurt me, I’m telling you,” Merlin insisted. “It’s the only reversal to the spell I can think of that will allow me to live.”

Old Arthur crossed his arms over his chest. “You could swear to that, Merlin? This isn’t guilt over something entirely out of your control?”

Merlin dropped his hand from his face, his voice snappish. “It should’ve been in my control, Arthur. It’s an abomination— I’m an abomination—”

Old Arthur moved quickly, seizing Merlin’s hand so aggressively that Arthur first registered the gesture as a blow, rather than a clasping of hands. “Merlin. I will not hear you say that again.”
Merlin avoided Old Arthur’s gaze, his gold-blue eyes locked on the now-dimming fire in Gaius’ hearth. “I shouldn’t be able to do that, Arthur. No one should be able to do what I did. And it happened when I didn’t even mean to. Imagine what might happen if I actually tried. It shouldn’t—I shouldn’t be allowed—”
“Merlin,” Old Arthur said slowly, yanking the sorcerer’s face closer to his own, so that he had no choice but to look Old Arthur in the eye. “You didn’t mean to do what you did—warp time, or whatever. But if you hadn’t done that, you would be dead, and Morgana would have your magic. And what would have happened to me? Or Gwaine or Percival or Lancelot? Or Camelot itself?” Old Arthur’s voice dropped to a whisper. “If you had not saved yourself that day, we would all be dead. No matter what, I will never regret that you did what you did. And I will not stand for you to regret it, either.”

There were many emotions flashing across Merlin’s face, and Arthur couldn’t begin to name them. Tears glistened in his blue-gold eyes. “It’s too much power for one person, Arthur.”

“That is why you have it,” Old Arthur said simply. “Because you are the only person responsible enough for it. I trust you with it.”

The simple words— I trust you with it —seemed to snap Merlin’s senses back to him, as Old Arthur’s words earlier— I will not do this without you— had snapped his soul back to his body. Merlin blinked and sat up straighter. “Right. Then trust me again, Arthur. This is what we need to do.”

“Can you promise you won’t be hurt?” Old Arthur asked.

Merlin was silent for a moment, but when he spoke, his words were earnest, and Arthur, at least, felt a pull to believe him. “I can’t promise that. But it won’t kill me.”

Arthur felt the weight of Old Arthur’s gaze on his face, and he met the older man’s eyes. He realized, with a satisfied jolt, that Old Arthur was waiting to hear his opinion, and Arthur was surprised at how much that gratified him. 

“It’s not like we have much of a choice,” he said to his older self.

Old Arthur ducked his head in acknowledgement of Arthur’s words. His eyes shifted back to Merlin. “But there’s more at risk, ten years in the future. There’s…more people this will affect, than there are here.”

Merlin’s eyes were solemn. “And I have every intention of protecting them, Arthur.”

“And yourself,” Old Arthur said warily.

“And myself,” Merlin repeated. 

Old Arthur watched him for a minute, and sighed. He looked at Arthur. “Then we ride.”

Gwaine never really knew what to make of Gilli. If he had to find a word to describe him, he would’ve used the word slippery . 

The sorcerer always seemed nervous around Gwaine and the other knights, and while Gwaine knew this likely had to do with the fact that until very recently, a knight of Camelot would have killed a sorcerer like Gilli, simply for existing (not Gwaine, of course—he had always had a rather laissez-faire attitude about magic, in that so long as no one was getting hurt, it really wasn’t any of his business), Gwaine suspected Gilli’s disposition to be inherently nervous and hesitant. Not ideal for battle circumstances, and certainly not ideal for a potentially doomed rescue mission involving time travel. But, beggars can’t be choosers. 

Merlin seemed to trust Gilli, at any rate, which was almost as good as Gwaine trusting him. Especially since the ten-years-aged Merlin had seemed to trust him, and he had known him ten years longer. Perhaps Gilli, like certain wines, simply needed to be aged into liking. 

Gwaine and Leon found the young sorcerer arguing with Percival, down in the front hall where the injured were being treated for the attack—about a dozen knights and a handful of men from the lower town sat or laying down on pallets on the floor. Percival was laid out on a pallet, though he was making great efforts to stand, despite his bandaged leg. Gilli was pushing him back down to the pallet.

“I’m fine enough, Gilli,” Percival growled, more irritation than was usual for the knight coloring his words. Gwaine was surprised—there were few things that could irk his friend.

“You’re not,” Gilli replied, almost as snarkily. Gwaine was almost proud of the timid man’s confidence. “I’ve only just healed the wound. You shouldn’t walk on it for a day, and definitely not riding for another week or so.”

“You’ve just said Merlin’s in ‘mortal peril,’ Gilli,” Percival said. “Your words exactly, in fact. He’s my friend, and I must help him.”

“Now, Gilli, how did you know our Merlin’s in mortal peril?” Gwaine drawled. 

Both men turned to face the two knights, Gilli taking a nervous step backwards and ducking his head, as if in deference, which Gwaine couldn’t abide. “No need to be nervous, mate. It’s just us. We were just coming to ask if you’d come along on a certain rescue mission.”

Gilli looked up swiftly, his strange pond water eyes bouncing between Leon and Gwaine and Percival on the floor. “Co-come with you? To—to that place?”

Leon crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Yes, if you were willing. Arthur and Merlin have asked for you.”

Gilli paled, if such a thing were possible in a man white as a banshee to begin with. “I’m not sure I’m the man for the job.”

Gwaine grinned and clapped a hand on Gilli’s shoulder, the smaller man stumbling slightly at the gesture. “Mate, you’re the only man for the job. Our only sorcerer on deck, remember?”

Gilli gulped. 

“But I am curious about the answer to Gwaine’s question: how do you know Merlin is in danger? And know where he’s being held?” Leon asked.

Gilli looked at Percival. “I felt it. When she did the spell. I don’t think any creature with magic in the kingdom didn’t feel it. What Morgana did…it wasn’t just Dark Magic. It tapped into—the root magic. The source magic that connects all magical beings to one another.” Gilli looked between the knights again, watching to see if they were following him. “Merlin’s told you about his magic? How it’s different from mine—or anyone else’s?”

Gwaine’s eyes flicked automatically to Percival. His friend was already looking at him, and Gwaine knew that Percival, despite not having heard Old Merlin’s confession in Gaius’ chambers, was thinking of that day a year ago on the Isle. When they thought they lost a friend one moment only for the world to completely change on their heads the next. 

Gwaine, frankly, had never understood Merlin’s magic, and what was more, didn’t particularly care how it worked. Magic was simply a part of who his friend was—without it, Merlin wouldn’t be Merlin. But Merlin also wouldn’t be Merlin without his clumsiness or his way of blushing when he’s had too much to drink at the tavern, and Gwaine didn’t really need to know how those things came to be. They simply were.

So when Merlin’s magic did something truly remarkable and impossible—a nearly everyday occurrence in the past two years—Gwaine took it as par for the course. He expected Merlin’s brilliance, and therefore wasn’t surprised when it was delivered. 

But Gwaine did worry when Merlin worried, because, after years of friendship, Gwaine had learned that the sorcerer usually had a very good reason to be worried about something. And beyond his concern for his friend, that day on the Isle had worried Gwaine because it was the first time he had seen Merlin afraid of himself.

“Sort of,” Gwaine answered, still making eye contact with Percival. “Not in so many words. We’ve picked up on a few things.”

A crease formed between Gilli’s brows. “Oh. Well, I’m not sure it’s quite my place to say, but since he’s in danger, maybe knowing will help—he’s something known as a warlock, not just a sorcerer. Sorcerers can use magic, but warlocks are magic.” At Leon’s puzzled expression, Gilli continued. “Think of magic as a flame. Sorcerers know how to light a torch—but warlocks are the flame itself. He doesn’t pull magic from anywhere. He is magic.”

Gilli looked around again at each of them. “That’s why Merlin can do the things he can do.”

Leon made a puzzled noise. “That’s why the Druids call him Emrys? Because of this unique magic?”

Gwaine wondered how Leon knew that, but Gilli nodded. “There’s more to the Emrys namesake, but in a way, yes. In any case, because Merlin is a warlock—a being of magic—when Morgana tried to rip the magic out, all of magic felt it. It’s like—she tried to rip a tall oak right out of the ground in the forest. When something like that happens, it affects everything that grows around it—from birds to blades of grass to crawling vines. When she did that, I felt the reverberations of what Merlin felt.”

“And this has happened to every magic practitioner?” Leon asked, sounding horrified. Gwaine supposed it was frightening, to think of so many people experiencing Merlin’s panic and fear, especially after what they had seen feeling his younger self’s emotions do to Old Merlin upstairs. 

Gilli shook his head, looking bashful. “Everyone felt the horror of what Morgana attempted. But when I sensed it was Merlin—well, I…pushed into it.” He spoke more quickly, as if he thought the knights would condemn him. “I wanted to see what had happened, if he was alright. Merlin—Merlin’s my only real friend here. And when I felt how frightened he was—I wanted to reach him. Talk to him.”

“And did you?” Gwaine asked. “Reach him?”

Fear had overtaken Gilli’s features again as he nodded. “Yes. I was telling Percival, because he’d asked. I can see him, feel him, though I don’t think he can hear me.”

Gwaine rolled his pointer finger in a circular motion, wanting the nervous man to get on with what he had to share. “Well?”

Gilli nodded. “Right, right. Well—he’s bound by magic-restraining chains on the Isle. He can’t use his magic, and he’s badly injured, and Morgana’s given him something else—he thinks it’s whatever she gave him when she slit his throat, but I don’t understand what that meant.” Gwaine and Percival looked at each other sharply, both remembering Merlin’s mumbling semi-conscious state. “He’s—confused, and panicking. A lot of the same message, over and over again—I don’t think he’s conscious, totally, that’s how I’m managing to see so much, his defenses are down— my magic, my magic, my magic.” 

Leon’s expression reflected a similar nauseated feeling in Gwaine, at hearing the torture their friend was going through. “Anything else?” Leon asked, partly sardonic, partly horrified.

Gilli’s face lit up. “Oh! And he thinks Morgana’s going to kill him as soon as we show up.”

Gwaine sighed. “This is going to be a long night.”

“It's already been a long night,” Leon corrected. 

“Might as well get it over with,” Gwaine said cheerily. “Let’s go get out boy.”

Percival wobbled to his feet. Gilli looked about to protest again, but Percival scowled at him, and Gilli shrunk away. “I’m coming. I’m not my fighting best, but I can help more than I’ll hurt.” He grinned. “Plus, Elyan has already sneaked out of here and is waiting to meet everyone at the stables to ride out. I won’t be able to live it down if he went and I didn’t.”

Gwaine swung an arm around his large friend’s shoulders. “Happy to fight a low-odds battle with you any day, Perce.”

“Are you coming with us, Gilli?” Leon asked. 

Gilli gulped again. “I—I feel like I ought to. For Merlin’s sake. For magic’s sake.”

“And what better reasons than that are there?” Gwaine asked. 

Elyan was, indeed, waiting at the stables and saddling a horse when the three knights and Gilli arrived. The five of them only had to wait a few minutes before Old Merlin, flanked on either side by the elder and younger Arthur, arrived. 

Old Merlin stepped forward immediately, a smile cracking his face, and embraced Elyan, the two exchanging pleased greetings. 

Then Old Merlin turned and grasped the spooked-looking Gilli’s forearm. “Gilli! I’m glad to see you.” He looked around at the knights. “You’re very brave to join us, you know.”

The knights had only just begun to explain the situation with the younger and older Merlins and Arthurs, and Gilli’s mouth hung agape at the sight. “Merlin—you’re—”

“Old,” Old Merlin answered. “I know it. Gray hairs, and all.” He rubbed a hand at the back of his head. “Not yet losing any of it, though, like some people.”
Old Arthur casually shoulder-checked Old Merlin as he approached a horse and checked his horse’s stirrups. “I don’t care for your implications, Merlin. Perhaps I’ll ask Gilli to be my new Court Sorcerer, if you keep up this attitude.”

Gilli’s eyes widened at the prospect, even in jest. 

“Court Warlock, you mean?” Gwaine said, adjusting his own horse’s saddle, though he darted a glance at Merlin. 

Old Merlin’s head turned sharply to look at him, his eyes narrowing. Gwaine raised his eyebrows at his friend in response, in challenge. 

Old Merlin’s eyes darted to Gilli. “Been hearing stories from Gilli, have you?”

Gilli flushed. “I thought they knew already.”

“We should have,” Gwaine said firmly. 

Gwaine loved his friend—always would—and wanted to support him, but he hadn’t realized how much Merlin had still been keeping from him. Learning that Merlin had magic a year ago hadn’t been that surprising—there had been many signs, not least of which the many convenient falling branches during bandit attacks, and there was of course the troll at the bridge who had quite literally referred to Merlin as “magic”— but Gwaine couldn’t deny that he had felt a little hurt that his friend hadn’t trusted him with the information (and that Lancelot, of all people, knew before him). Gwaine couldn’t help but wonder if he had done something to make Merlin doubt him—especially now, since there seemed to be even more information that Merlin had withheld.

After a moment of looking at one another, Merlin nodded. “You’re right. You should’ve known. I’m sorry, Gwaine. Secret keeping is hard to break, even after all these years.”

Gwaine nodded. “Thanks, mate.”

 Merlin. frowned. “Though, really, it’s the younger me you should be having this conversation with. I thought I remembered it happening sometime next year…” Merlin shrugged. “The closer we get to the spell, the more I’m getting mixed up in time.”

“Are you two done having your heart-to-heart?” The younger Arthur said. He had already mounted his horse. “Or should we delay rescuing Merlin so you two can braid one another’s hair?”

Gwaine smirked. It never failed to satisfy him when Arthur got jealous of he and Merlin’s friendship. “We ride with you, princess.”

Merlin grasped Gwaine’s shoulder and squeezed, and Gwaine clapped his friend’s shoulder in turn, before they both mounted their horses. 

“The Isle,” Arthur began in a low, serious voice—his kingly tone, as Gwaine thought of it as— “is a dangerous place. But, gentlemen—” he looked around at the seven mounted men, and grinned “—I ask you to remember, that so are we.”

Merlin wasn’t sure what brought him back to consciousness: the pain or the sound of fighting. 

As soon he opened his eyes, he was aware of his heart pounding so fast that he could feel it reverberating against his chest, and he felt sweaty and ill and so wrong.  

There was so much that Merlin’s magic brought to his attention on a normal day. It was his sixth sense, warning him of danger or if another magical being was nearby, or even something as mundane as what bread the cook was baking in the kitchens that day. Its loss was crippling, as if Morgana had blinded him. It only made his panic worse. 

“Look at that, Merlin,” Morgana’s voice came from somewhere behind him. “Your older self, arriving just on time.”

His older self had walked into the trap Morgana had set. If his older self had done so, Merlin knew that the elder Arthur was most likely with him, too. And probably Merlin’s Arthur, as well. And Merlin couldn’t abide the thought of Arthur so endangered. He reached, once again, for his magic, this time reaching even further into himself, despite the pounding in his head. The magicked chains flared the brightest gold yet, searing a burn across his chest wherever the chain met his skin. He screamed, the sound muffled by the gag. 

Morgana was speaking again. “Quick, Reagan—ready the shackles for the old man. We’ll need them soon enough—”

There was the sound of a scuffle, and Morgana cut off abruptly. Then, an unfamiliar face hovered over Merlin’s.

 It took him a few moments to recognize the sour-looking yellow-haired girl who had been following Morgana earlier. Merlin had taken her for one of Morgana’s followers. 

The girl was not really a girl at all—she was older than he had first thought, maybe a handful of years or so older than Merlin. Her expression was nonplussed, her brows knitted together as if she was put-out by a complicated puzzle. She also held a knife, which made Merlin nervous about what she planned on using it for.

“Alright there, Emrys?” The girl asked, sounding more nonchalant than Merlin felt was appropriate for the situation. She clucked her tongue. “Not your best day, is it?”

Even if he could have responded, Merlin wouldn’t have begun to be able to know how to answer either question.

 The girl slid a finger beneath the tightly-wound fabric of the gag and carefully wedged in the dagger to slice the gag free, somehow managing not to nick Merlin’s cheek as she did so. She yanked out the bundle Morgana had jammed into his mouth, tossing it unceremoniously over her shoulder. 

Merlin gulped several deep breaths that dissolved into a brief coughing fit. He was relieved that at least his jaw had stopped aching, and that he no longer tasted a wad of bitter poisonous herbs and his own hair. He wanted, desperately, to rinse his mouth out with some fresh water, though he feared it would be a long time before he would have the chance to.

“Thank you,” Merlin gasped, once he had gotten his breathing closer to normal. 

The girl—Reagan?— ignored him, and placed the dagger on the stone table near Merlin’s arm. She ran her fingers lightly over the blistering-hot chain that bound him across his chest and arms, her face hovering close to Merlin’s bare chest. “Ach! These burns will be difficult to heal. And this—” She tapped one of the chain links  “—will be trickier to remove than the gag.” 

Her cat-like green eyes darted up to his own. “Is there a chance you were awake when she put them on?”

Merlin tried and failed to sit up. “No, I wasn’t.” He attempted to tilt his head backwards to get a glimpse of Morgana, to no avail. “Is she dead?”

Reagan snorted, still running her fingers lightly across the chain, her eyes glowing gold faintly before fading. “I doubt it. I smashed a rock against her head, though, which should keep her down for a moment or twenty.” 

Her tone was joking, and her eyes returned to his face, as if wanting to share the joke with him. She frowned, however, when she looked at him, as if registering his lingering panic. She smiled softly—unnatural on her sharp feline features, but pleasant all the same— and grasped his hand with one of her own. 

Her touch was cool and gentle and, somehow, familiar. “Gods, you look so…” 

She trailed off, as if unsure how to finish the thought. 

Merlin, though, wanted to know what she’d say. “What?”

Reagan sputtered a laugh, though it was weighted down, as if it could dissolve into a sob at any moment. “I don’t know. Frightened? Young? Hurt? Vulnerable, as I’ve rarely seen you?”

When he had no response, she squeezed his hand. “You’ll be alright, Merlin.”

Merlin’s mind was moving slowly for a multitude of reasons, but even if things were functioning normally, he suspected that he still would’ve been baffled by everything this girl had said and done. Especially by the familiar way she had said his name. 

His brow furrowed. “Who—who are you?”

She released his hand, fingers returning to the chain, whispering something softly under her breath before answering, her eyes shifting from green to gold and back again. “A friend.”

Merlin mouthed the words to himself silently, before echoing them aloud. “A friend?”

Her lips danced into a smile, though she didn’t lift her gaze from Merlin’s restraint. “Yes, Merlin. A friend. Don’t sound so surprised.”

“But I don’t know you,” Merlin blurted. Or did he? The more he looked at her, the more familiar she seemed. “ Do I know you? Are you a Druid?” 

Then, his mind, slow-moving as it was, made a connection: “Try Abricaþ benda. Or Unspanne þás mægþ.”

Reagan scowled. “I’ve tried those already, you prat. They didn’t work.” She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “And yes, I was a Druid, at one time. I left when I was a child. I’ve long since been what I like to refer to as a ‘witch-errant.’ I use magic when it suits me, and where. I’m no acolyte of the cult of Emrys, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The girl’s words made him laugh—they reminded him of Gwaine, somehow, when they’d first met him— even if they puzzled him further. “A witch-errant. Named Reagan?”

The girl snorted again. “That’s the name I told her, when I pretended to join her band of vengeance-seeking rogues. But it’s not my real one.”

“Then what is your real name?”

Not-Reagan huffed a breath, her fingers brushing against the tender skin near the magicked chain. “Impatient, aren’t you? You’ll find out soon enough.”

Said differently, the words would have been ominous, but coming from her, they seemed almost friendly—merely stating a fact, that Merlin would know her soon. “If you didn’t save me because I’m Emrys—why did you save me?”

She exhaled sharply. “I haven’t saved you yet, have I? I can’t get these bloody chains off.”

“Arthur will get them off,” Merlin said confidently, though he didn’t know what made him so sure. Something of Arthur that had been whispering in Merlin’s subconscious— I will not do this without you— filled him to the brim with the faith that his friend would find him. “You don’t need to worry. You helped me. If it’s all the time you have, then you should go before you’re missed.”

Again, Merlin didn’t know what made him say the words—just that, with so many of his typical defenses down, his mind and mouth and intuition seemed to be operating together, without any consultation with him. 

It pleased him, a bit, to see the girl’s mouth drop open in shock and her eyes widen. It was a strange, familiar feeling, one he only had with a few people in his life: as if she were someone close to him, that he delighted in teasing. 

Her face dropped into a frown. “How could you—”

“I don’t,” Merlin interrupted. “But I’m Emrys, remember? I figure problems out, even if the solution doesn’t even make sense to me.”

She smiled, though it was a brittle one, tinged with frustration. “Don’t invoke the Emrys excuse with me, Merlin.” She sighed, giving the chains a tug. “I meant to free you. I don’t like it when your magic is caged like this. I can feel it—we can all feel it, even where I’m from. It’s wrong .” Her words were soaked with anger.

An idea occurred to Merlin. “You weren’t supposed to come. But you did anyway?”

Conflicting emotions battled in her green eyes: ferocity concealing worry. When she spoke, she spoke as if she was bracing for an argument. “And so what? Yes, I did it anyway. You’re in danger here. So I came.” 

Before Merlin could really wonder at the implication of her words—that she, this girl he didn’t know, cared enough for him to attempt what seemed to be a dangerous mission—there was the sound of sword meeting sword, and an angry shout of a spell, and  Merlin could only just glimpse past the circle of decaying stones around the table a large bonfire exploding high into the air. 

Not-Reagan turned to watch the pandemonium, then quickly turned back to Merlin. “We’re out of time.”

“Me?” Merlin asked woozily. The sight of the fire—and the effort of holding his head up while talking to Not-Reagan— had made him unreasonably lightheaded, and he hissed as the back of his head once again collided against the stone. “Or you?”

A series of movements, too quick to track: Not-Reagan moving forward, strands of her long yellow hair tickling his cheek, carrying the scent of lavender and woodsmoke, soft lips against his forehead—so different from Morgana’s earlier gesture, though they were the same— a whispered magic so softly spoken he didn’t discern the words. 

Much of the headache and dizzy nausea he had been experiencing lifted away, as if his mind had been cleansed of Morgana’s taint, and he blinked rapidly, his vision feeling clearer. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Emrys,” Not-Reagan’s voice drawled in his ear. “Or the next day, or the next day, or the next.”

And in the same breath, the girl was gone, as if Merlin had dreamt her up entirely. 

Chapter Text

The sound of his own name snapped him back to reality, away from the realm of the girl half-dreamt.

“Merlin!”

Merlin jerked his head up. He couldn’t see his friend yet, and so he shouted in response, though his voice was hoarse from all the screaming he had done. “I’m here!”

And then Arthur—his Arthur—was there above him, where Not-Reagan had stood seconds before, his hands grasping Merlin’s shoulders and trying and failing to lift the chain that bound him. 

“Ye gods, Merlin, you’re alive,” he gasped. He sputtered an incredulous laugh, a hand running through his sweat-damp golden hair. “I half thought we’d race here just to find you dead. Are you alright?”

His friend’s face was gaunt, and dark shadows gloomed beneath his eyes, but relief slackened the hard edges of his face as he registered that Merlin was moving.

“I’ve been better,” Merlin gasped. He squirmed beneath the taut chain—now that Arthur was here, his magic was even more impatient to be free.

Arthur frowned and gave a light pull on the chain, as Not-Reagan had. “How do I remove them, Merlin?” He paused, and his next words were dismayed. “Gods, did they burn you?” 

“Only when I tried to use my magic,” Merlin answered snippily. “Morgana’s thoughtful that way. And I don’t know how to break them. The girl already tried the usual spells, and they didn’t work. I thought, maybe, Excalibur?”

Arthur’s eyes tight-walked from horror to confusion. “Girl? What girl?” He looked up and around. “Is she the reason for the unconscious Morgana?”

Merlin nodded. “She—I don’t know who she was. I’ve never met her before—or maybe I have? I don’t know. A witch-errant. She took out Morgana and tried to free me.”

The speech couldn’t have made much sense, but Arthur nodded anyway, as if he had grown accustomed to confusing circumstances in the last twelve hours. “She’s gone now?” He looked up from Merlin, to someone behind Merlin’s head. “He’s alive, but we can’t remove the magical restraint.”
“Haven’t you tried Excalibur?” Merlin’s own voice drew from somewhere overhead, though Merlin hadn’t spoken. It was a moment before he could work out the solution to the predicament: his older self had spoken. 

Then Merlin’s own face—older, grizzled, bearded, exhausted—was hovering over him. Merlin couldn’t stop the curse that slipped out of his mouth at the sight.

His own face briefly lit with amusement, a half-smile curling. “No need for strong language.” His older self turned to Arthur. “Morgana’s band of ruffians has mostly scattered. The knights and my king are seeing the rest off. Even Gilly is doing well for himself. I thought I’d be of more assistance here.”

Arthur had a thoughtful expression on his face as he listened to Old Merlin that Merlin had not seen before. Merlin wondered, vaguely, what had happened since Morgana had taken him, for his headstrong friend to look so considerate. 

“Mate!” 

There was hardly a moment’s pause between Merlin registering the word and Gwaine’s grinning face appearing between Old Merlin’s and Arthur’s. There was a smear of blood—not Gwaine’s, Merlin thought—across his forehead. His face gleamed both with relief and, Merlin suspected, with his friend’s delight of a fight. 

Gwaine tousled Merlin’s hair before leaning down and smacking a kiss on the top of Merlin’s head, making Merlin laugh and Arthur scowl. “Good to see you with soul intact, boy-o.”

“I’d say the same,” Merlin said. 

Gwaine’s eyes ran up and down Merlin, his brows pinching when he glimpsed Merlin’s reddened bare chest and the glowing chains. He cursed, his eyes darting to Arthur. “What’s our plan, princess? He needs to be getting out of that.”

“Keep an eye on Morgana, over there, Gwaine.” Gwaine nodded and moved out of Merlin’s sight. Arthur unsheathed Excalibur, the sword glinting in the torchlight and making Merlin squint. Arthur twirled the sword lightly in his hands. “Are you sure about this, Merlin?”

“No,” Merlin and his older self spoke in unison.

Old Merlin continued speaking, eyes darting down to make contact with Merlin’s briefly. “Call it one of our funny feelings.” Old Merlin moved, touching the chain by the edge of the table at Merlin’s right side gently. “Just try bringing it down right here.” Old Merlin looked between Arthur and Merlin. “And try not to slice him on the way down, alright?”

Arthur snorted, passing the sword between one hand and the other, his eyes locked on the spot Old Merlin had indicated. “I’ve had a sword in hand since I could walk, Merlin. I can handle striking a chain.” He paused. “Although, try not to wiggle about.”

Merlin wasn’t sure if Arthur was kidding or not, but a sudden panic made that feel unimportant. “Wait! Wait, my magic—” He wasn’t sure how to articulate his fear, wasn’t sure if they would understand what had happened when his magic had been trapped, and how his panic and fear in the past several hours had fed into that. “My magic—I don’t know if—”
Arthur’s face crumpled in concern, and he paused, Excalibur’s tip resting on the ground. “What about your magic, Merlin?”

Merlin shook his head. He looked to his older self, hoping he would be able to better explain it, but the man was watching them silently, his eyes roving quickly back-and-forth between them, looking as if he was doing some calculation in his head. 

“I don’t know what will happen when you release it,” Merlin got out eventually. “It—it’s—”

“It’ll explode,” Old Merlin finished, sounding rather tired. “You think it might explode, and injure us, once it’s released.”

Merlin closed his eyes against the words, and nodded, the back of his head grating against the stone beneath him. He wanted to hide from it—the truth of himself, that he was a danger, an explosion, a thing powerful and out of control and was maybe safer for everyone caged. He couldn’t look at Arthur and see his friend know that about himself.

“Well,” Arthur said. “We’ll duck. Hold still, Merlin.”

Merlin opened his eyes at his friend's words, just in time to see Arthur raise Excalibur over his head and bring it down on the chain at the table’s edge, without any further warning. 

And all hell broke loose. 

The chain snapped and fell to the ground, and Merlin took his first real breath since he fainted in the Great Hall of Camelot. With the inhale was his magic, his and his alone, blue-and-gold light exploding around him. The three men surrounding him dropped to the ground and shielded their eyes. 

As he exhaled, he felt everything, as if for the first time—the cold air, the wind rushing through the forest floors and quivering the limbs of the old oaks and turning the heads of the nymphs and fae and water spirits and ghosts and winged creatures and others he had no name for that lived there, the bright flares of souls surrounding him on the Isle and throughout Camelot and everywhere . He could smell pine and the ozone-y burning acridity of magic and woodsmoke and lavender and lemons and wet dirt and baking bread and the spiced incense of Gaius’ chambers. He heard, far and away, the dragon’s roar. And again and again, the noise that had been haunting him since Morgana had slashed his throat a year ago: the shivering sound of a sword being unsheathed. 

His magic’s blinding light moved and danced around him. He felt it take stock of his injuries as if it was another being, rather than a part of him: the burns on his chest, the stab wound, the bludgeoned head now healed, the panic and fear clogging his mind, the darkness of Morgana’s aborted attempt to rip out his soul. Magic—pure magic, light magic—wrapped around him, cocooning him, purging away the fear with its sheer existence, with the joy that Morgana had not taken his magic from him, not really. He felt safe.

Merlin wasn’t sure how much time passed before he heard Arthur call his name. “Merlin!”

And it was only then that Merlin remembered—the blinding light of his magic, how it could be affecting his friends, how he wanted to keep them safe. With great effort—his magic wanted to relish its freedom, still, after being caged so long—he pulled his magic into himself, and the light extinguished. 

Pain and reality returned to Merlin’s body. He ached all over. With great effort—and a good deal of groaning—he swung his legs over the side of the table and hurled himself onto the ground, knees striking the earth first. He scrambled away on his hands and knees, the burns on his chest and his stab wound throbbing painfully as he did so.

Despite the pain, he did not stop crawling until he reached one of the large standing stones surrounding the table in a circle he could lean himself on. He needed to be as far away from the stone Morgana had chained him to as possible—something dark and dreadful clung to the table itself, as if the dark magic Morgana had planned to use to steal his soul had infected it. It made him want to get away from it as fast as possible. He used one arm to prop himself up on the dirt and wrapped the other arm around himself, pressing his hand against the stab wound, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.

And then Arthur was there, his arm around Merlin’s neck, nearly sending him toppling backwards. Merlin let out a noise of surprise.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Arthur said in his ear, quietly enough that Merlin didn’t think the others would have heard him.

 It was just the opposite of what Merlin had feared he would say, after what he was sure had been a frightening display of magic, that Merlin laughed, though doing so made his chest ache. “I wouldn’t leave you, you prat.”

 Arthur released him, looking at his face, a look of incredulity blooming there once he had a moment to look. He grasped Merlin’s chin, tilting it up. “Gods, Merlin, your eyes!”

Merlin jerked his chin out of Arthur’s grasp—he had had enough of people touching his face without his say-so that day. “What about them?”

Gwaine was there, then, just over Arthur’s shoulder, a look of wonder on his face. “They’re like his!” Gwaine waved vaguely behind him, clearly indicating Old Merlin, who was squatting over the still-unconscious form of Morgana, looking puzzled. “Gold and blue, together! What did that?”

Merlin shook his head. “I dunno. When my magic came back just now? Maybe?” Though Merlin wasn’t convinced by that, himself. He looked at his elder self.

Old Merlin shook his head, still looking at Morgana with confusion as he spoke. “No. It was the Lasc Ama. When our souls returned. Our changed eye color is a side effect of the restoration. I couldn’t say why, exactly.” 

He looked up at Merlin, a bizarre expression of longing on his face. “Was someone here?”

Merlin remembered—or imagined, he was struggling to tell the difference since arriving on the Isle—the girl’s clever green eyes, her yellow hair, her familiarity with him, her intense determination to help him. How she wasn’t meant to come but did anyway. 

He didn’t say anything, just met his older self’s eyes as he continued to try and catch his breath. He felt as if he’d run from Camelot to here and back, and he could still feel the phantom weight of the poison herbs that Morgana had given him at the back of his throat.

His older self’s face shifted as understanding dawned. He scowled. “So that’s why I thought she was already at the castle. She shouldn’t have done that. Time is fragile enough as it is, without her bending it, too. She could have gotten trapped here. Or worse.”

Arthur looked confusedly between the two Merlins. “Who? Who are we talking about—who was here?”

He remembered what Not-Reagan had called herself, when he had asked who she was, and said the same words to Arthur, Merlin’s eyes sliding to his. “A friend.”

Merlin couldn’t bring himself to say anything more, watching the strong emotions on his older self’s face. He felt the urge to protect the girl—woman—and had the sense that talking about what she’d said would overcomplicate things. 

“Right,” Gwaine said, his eyes bouncing between the three of them. “So a friend was here and left. That’s that. What do we do now?”

Merlin looked to Arthur, who tilted his head and raised a brow at him, as if expecting him to answer. Merlin shook his head. He had no idea what to do from here: neutralize Morgana as a threat? She was already down—Not-Reagan had seen to that. Send the elder Arthur and Merlin back to their own time? Merlin may have been responsible for the whole messing-about with time, but that had been accidental. He had no idea how to manipulate time purposefully.

Old Merlin stood. “Now, we have to close the wounds, so Arthur and I can go home.”

Merlin blinked. “Close the wounds?”

Old Merlin nodded grimly. A look of dread came over Arthur’s face. Gwaine still fidgeted, his attention divided by his king and two sorcerers. 

“It’s the only way to seal off the damage the Lasc Ama wrecked on us, on our souls,” Old Merlin said. “Arthur—both of them—restored our souls to us, but when Morgana wrenched that door open—well, there’s a gap there, that wasn’t before. If we don’t do this, I’m not sure what might happen to us.”

“My soul—ours—could slip out, again?” Merlin asked hesitantly. He didn’t quite understand the mechanics of the Lasc Ama, beyond his emotions as it had happened to him. He knew it was the darkest sort of magic, soul severance, but not much beyond that.

Old Merlin’s eyes were shadowed in the flickering torchlight. “Or something could slip in.”

Merlin shivered at the thought, the hair at the back of his neck rising. 

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Gwaine said. 

Old Merlin nodded. “Neither do I. Which is why we need Arthur to stab us again.”

Merlin sighed and dropped his head in his hands. Considering how things had been going, of course this was the only solution. “This has been a long night.”

 Once Old Merlin explained his reasoning, it made more sense, but Arthur still hated this plan. Especially as his Merlin could barely keep his eyes open.

“I’m not getting back on that table,” Merlin said determinedly. 

He was still sitting against one of the many jutting-out pieces of stone that littered the Isle, his head leaning back over the stone so that his throat—and the scar from what Morgana had done a year ago—were exposed to the night sky. Merlin’s arm contorted so tightly around himself that Arthur wouldn’t be surprised if his friend accidentally squeezed himself in two, and his chest rose and fell too rapidly, as if he hadn’t yet been able to catch his breath after running a great distance.

Gwaine was crouched beside Merlin. Arthur had taken over his vigil over the unconscious Morgana, though Arthur’s attention was distracted in favor of his injured friend. 

“No one is making you get back on the table,” Arthur said. 

He could understand his friend’s revulsion for the large stone tablet, centered between the other pieces of decayed temples and stone surrounding it in a circle. Even if Arthur hadn’t found his friend chained to it, half-dead, the sight of the sacrificial table on this dreaded Isle filled him with some instinctive repulsion. 

But Merlin only had eyes for his older self. “I won’t get back on the table.”

Old Merlin was busying himself over Morgana’s makeshift preparation table, another flat-ish stone littered with different herbs and scrolls. He looked up from one of the scrolls—which, Arthur noted, he was careful not to touch—when his younger self spoke to him. 

“I didn’t say you had to,” he replied, sounding almost sardonic. 

It was only then that Merlin closed his eyes and sighed in relief, as if it were all up to Old Merlin what happened, and not Arthur at all. Arthur felt annoyed at this, even if he knew that it was true. 

“This doesn’t feel right,” Gwaine spoke to him, though his gaze rested on Merlin. “Our best chance is for you to stab him? Look at him. He’ll be out as quick as a candle before your old arse even gets up here.”

Merlin squinted an eye open. “I’m not asleep.”

“Aye, mate,” Gwaine agreed amiably. “You’re the spitting image of alert.”

“I’d scowl at you, Gwaine,” Merlin said, letting his eye close again and rearranging his position slightly against the stone he leaned against. “But I’m conserving energy.”

Gwaine scoffed a laugh and gestured from Arthur to their friend, as if that demonstrated his point.
“I don’t disagree with you, Gwaine,” Arthur said. 

“Would you rather I get possessed by the ghost of an evil sorcerer in two months, because we left the back door to my mind open?” Old Merlin asked. “Because that’s what’ll happen in the best case scenario—I’ve gotten rid of the ghost of an evil sorcerer before.”

“And what would be the worst case scenario?” Gwaine asked. 

Old Merlin tilted his head. “A demon?”

Merlin groaned, his eyes closed. “Don’t say that.”

Old Merlin nodded, still examining Morgana’s spell. “Exactly right! Don’t give either of me a bigger headache than we already have, and close off the siphon to our life force that Morgana opened.” He looked up from the stone table. “Speaking of, Gwaine, is she still—?”

It was then that Lancelot and a limping Percival bounded into the circle. Old Arthur followed behind them, looking properly murderous and warrior-like. He gave Excalibur a proper wrist twirl before he sheathed it as he came upon them. 

“You’re alive!” Lancelot exclaimed happily. He rushed forward to kneel by Merlin’s side, opposite Gwaine, coaxing a small smile from Merlin in response. 

“Always the tone of surprise,” Merlin responded, though he was still grinning as he said it. 

Percival limped after Lancelot, taking the opportunity to rest a hand on Merlin’s standing stone to rest his injured leg. “Don’t take offense, Merlin,” Percival said. He reached down with his other hand and ruffled Merlin’s hair, as Gwaine had done earlier. Merlin’s smile widened. “Your older self believed you were alive, even when the rest of us doubted it was true.”

Merlin let out a breath of laughter. “Now what in the name of the gods would make you think that that would make me feel better?” 

Percival laughed.

 With a slow-moving, great effort, Merlin sat up from his leaning position and reached a hand up, which Lancelot seized and pulled Merlin up to standing. Lancelot murmured something to Merlin, unintelligible to Arthur, and Merlin dipped his head forward in acknowledgement. Lancelot, in an easy movement, looped Merlin’s arm—which he hadn’t released since assisting him up—around his neck, effectively supporting Merlin. 

A slight jealousy twinged in Arthur, even now. For all that Merlin meant to him—for all that Arthur knew he meant to Merlin—there was a physical and emotional ease to Merlin’s relationship with the knights that he and Merlin struggled to overcome, on occasions like this. He cursed himself for not going to his friend’s aid earlier, for not being the one to support his friend.

Perhaps his older self was thinking along the same line of thought as Arthur himself, because it was at that moment that Old Arthur cleared his throat, his stance straightening, a strange expression on his face. “Merlin.” 

Merlin’s eyes flickered and landed on Old Arthur for the first time. He flinched backwards, as if the sight of Old Arthur offended him. He would have toppled backwards again, if not for Lancelot’s support. Arthur twitched forward, as if to help, as if to intercept the strange tension between his older self and his friend.

“Sire,” Merlin said simply, eyeing Old Arthur in an evaluating manner. Had it not been for the fact that Merlin could not stand on his own, Arthur might have said the look in his friend’s eyes was almost intimidating. Merlin shrugged Lancelot away, as if wanting to face his king on his own two feet.

“Ah,” Old Arthur said. “So you believe me, now?”

“I always believed you,” Merlin snapped back sharply. There was still dried blood on his forehead, Arthur noticed. “You were just being a prat.”

Old Arthur barked a laugh. To Arthur’s horror, he saw tears in his older self’s eyes. “So you’ve long said, my friend.”

It was difficult for Arthur to observe his older self, the strange blend of gruffness and open emotion. Like trying to stare at the sun. 

Old Arthur stepped forward quickly, reaching the wobbly Merlin in two strides. 

He paused before Merlin, and dropped to one knee before him.

 Arthur blinked in surprise at the gesture of fealty—it was so earnest and humble a gesture that he felt his own face flush, embarrassed at his older self’s vulnerability. 

Merlin’s mouth formed a perfect circle, looking as shocked as Arthur felt. The knights’ faces reflected the same surprise.

 “Arthur,” Merlin said, in a tone almost scolding. “Stand up.”
“I’m sorry, Merlin,” Old Arthur said, his head bowed. 

“What on earth for, you prat?”

Old Arthur looked up at Merlin slowly, and a terrible dread plummeted through Arthur even before the strange, cat-like smile stretched slowly across his older self’s face. The face that, itself, was already altering slightly: eyes growing rounder and greener, beard hair receding as his cheekbones narrowed and his jaw slimmed, the hair darkening and lengthening. 

“What else for, Merlin,” Old Arthur’s still-kneeling figure spoke, but the voice speaking was higher–pitched and all-too familiar. “Than for  the delay in finishing what I started?”

Several things happened all at one time: Old Arthur—Morgana, of course, in some terrible trick, and Gods knew where the real Old Arthur could be—lunged forward, fast as a viper, hands glowing a dreadful green as they grasped Merlin; Merlin’s sharp yelp of pain as Morgana’s magic connected with the wound at his side, still unclosed; Arthur throwing himself forward, hoping to tackle his sister before any serious damage was done; his colliding with Merlin and Morgana both, the three of them falling in a tangled mess of limbs to the ground before the sacrificial table; the deep commanding voice of Old Merlin, incanting in the Old Tongue; the sound of Gwaine and Lancelot and Percival shouting; an explosion of blueish white light, so blinding that Arthur had to close his eyes, leaving him to blindly fumble to pull Morgana and Merlin apart. 

When the light finally faded, it took Arthur several moments to realize that he was now somewhere else entirely.

The world was twilight, and nothing else. 

Arthur’s mind couldn’t understand it: the standing stones and table and altar and fire and mists were gone, as were the knights. In place of everything was just a mist of navy-purple light, and a sort of a silver twinkling that Arthur could only see out of the corner of his eye, that reminded him for some reason or another of the Crystal Cave. The only remnants of the Isle were Morgana and Merlin. 

The three of them stood in a circle, no longer grasping each other as they had been only moments ago. Standing on what, Arthur couldn’t have said, as when he looked down, there were only more translucent twilight hues. For a confused and oddly peaceful moment, the three of them merely looked at each other, each struggling to regain their breath.

“Where are we, Merlin?” Arthur asked eventually, though he was nervous to break the silence in case it set Morgana off in some way. But for whatever reason, Arthur had a strange sense that Morgana wouldn’t be able to harm them here—wherever they were. And she didn’t react, after all, as she looked around with a confused dread.

Merlin shook his head. “I couldn’t really say.” His head tilted back as he examined the lavender haze surrounding them. “I was here before, I think. When you called me back.”

Arthur frowned. “When she—” He couldn’t finish the thought, not in this strange in-between place, not when he was standing within a meter of his sister for the first time in years without one of them trying to kill the other. 

It was then that Morgana’s venom returned, and she whirled on the two of them, hands outstretched by her sides. Her hands flexed several times, and when no green magic illuminated her palms, she looked down in confusion, and then horror, and then hate.

“ You. You’ve done this—imprisoned me somewhere in my mind—taken my magic somehow—and to think I was nearly rid of you—”

She lunged at Merlin, hands clawing, and Merlin flinched backwards. Arthur stepped forward to intercede, but there was no need: just as Morgana should have in the mortal world made contact with Merlin’s chest, here in their twilight realm her hands passed through him, as if she were a woman made of mist, or as if Merlin were merely a shadow. 

In any other circumstance, Merlin’s shocked expression when Morgana’s hands passed through him would have made Arthur laugh. But Morgana’s howl of anger when she realized she was unable to injure his friend sobered him quickly.

“What have you done ?” Morgana howled again. She swiped at Merlin’s face again, but the gesture was half-hearted, as if she was resigned to her transience. She screamed when her hand passed through them, as if needing to let out her frustration in some capacity.

The astonishment had not entirely dissipated from Merlin’s face. Strangely, there was a kind of hope illuminating his face that Arthur couldn’t understand. Merlin stood taller, as if he had been unburdened of something—or, perhaps, as if the injuries to his mortal body had no effect on him here. 

His gold-blue eyes were incredulous and almost delighted as he squinted at Morgana. “Me?” Merlin laughed. “It can’t have been me. At least, not entirely. You’re the one who attempted and botched the Lasc Ama just now. You’re the reason we’re here.”

Arthur couldn’t understand Merlin’s lightheartedness. “Merlin—”

Merlin’s eyes found him then, and seemed to register his misunderstanding. “Don’t you see, Arthur? The three of us—we are the only three whose younger and older selves have been brought together. And now we’re here, the three of us, our souls, in the place between times, and it wasn’t my fault. ” 

A grin stretched across Merlin’s face as he spoke.

Arthur’s brow wrinkled, and he crossed his arms across his chest—he was able to make physical contact with himself in this spirit world, somehow, but not with others. “Merlin, I know you feel responsible—overly so—for the goings on in Camelot, but I find it difficult to understand how you could have believed Morgana’s scheme to steal your soul was somehow your fault.”

The words came out harshly, which Arthur regretted, but he truly did find Merlin’s constant guilt and sense of responsibility for everything and anything going awry frustrating, especially as it was Arthur who was king, not Merlin. Arthur was the one meant to carry the burden of his peoples’ safety, not his friend.

But Merlin was shaking his head, as if Arthur still didn’t understand. “I thought—that day on the Isle, when Morgana—” He paused, eyes darting to her and back, before clearing his throat and continuing. “When the knife sliced my throat—I wasn’t totally honest with you, Arthur, about how everything happened.” Merlin began speaking more quickly, as if he was nervous. “Not about the fact that I don’t understand how I saved us, because I really, truly don’t, but I remember thinking three things: that I didn’t want to die, of course, and that I felt I—we—deserved more time to try and make this world better.”

A lump was forming at the base of Arthur’s throat, which he swallowed hurriedly—and what tears could he really conjure in this strange spiritual bardo? “And the third?”

Merlin’s eyes darted to Morgana, who had been watching their conversation quietly, her green eyes sharp as daggers as they darted between Arthur and Merlin. 

“I wanted my friend back,” Merlin spoke to Morgana, though he answered Arthur’s query. “At the moment of you killing me, Morgana, I just wanted you back as you were. As you had been when I met you. The brave and kind and funny girl who would never have harmed an innocent. Who knew what was right and was willing to fight for it.” Merlin paused, and took a step closer to Morgana, who seemed frozen in place at Merlin’s words. “I missed you, who you had once been, so badly that I worried that I had somehow been the one to fiddle with time and bring a future you to the present.”

The silver light in the corner of Arthur’s eyes seemed to glow brighter.

A flicker of shock lit up his sister’s face before her mask of angered indifference fell back into place. “How dare you, of all people, try to invoke some sort of common feeling with me. To try to make me remember what has been. When it is your fault I am the way I am. When it was you killed me first. It was you who betrayed me before anyone could ever have accused me of doing so. When I thought you were my friend.”

Pain spasmed across Merlin’s face. “I never wanted to hurt you, Morgana—Morgause’s sleeping spell, you were the locus point. The only way to break it—”

Morgana laughed, the sound high and cold. “Was to kill me? Yes, Merlin, keep telling me your tales of you and Arthur’s goodness, when you were ready to sacrifice me at the first instance—”

Merlin took another step towards Morgana, this one in anger. They were close to one another now, face-to-face, a breath apart, and the silver light in the corner of Arthur’s eye was not only growing brighter but gaining a shape. 

 “I brought you back!” Merlin shouted, despite his proximity to her. He took a deep breath, and then released it. “I brought you back,” he said more softly, his gaze intense upon Morgana’s face. “And I’ve regretted hurting you everyday since. If there was something I could have done differently, I would go back and do so in a heartbeat. But there was Camelot, or there was you, and I did my best to save both.”

Morgana’s mask had melted away, her expression stricken and almost vulnerable. If Arthur thought it possible, he would have said there was a glistening of tears in her eyes. “Whatever your reasoning, Merlin, you killed me. And have tried many times since to see me dead again. There is only one path forward, for me, and it is the throne.”

The silver light’s shape—Arthur still couldn’t look at it directly, as it disappeared when he tried—gained definition, narrowing and sharpening, with a glean almost like the steel in sunlight. Could it be a star?

Merlin sighed. “If you’d let me, Morgana, I’d make peace between us. You’ve seen the prophecies. You know that your quest is doomed to fail. Arthur is destined to better Camelot, Morgana. Magic is legal now—there’s no more threat to oppose. Uther is dead. Why not let things go?”

Morgana’s eyes spat fire at Merlin, her chin tilted as she looked into his face. “Uther may be dead, but I am his daughter. The throne is my birthright. Prophecies lie, and Arthur is his father’s son to the last. Magic will never be safe until I rule.”

Arthur felt frozen, watching Merlin and his sister lobby hurt at one another—it was almost more difficult than watching them fight with spells. 

Merlin had explained to him before about the sleeping spell and how it was broken, but it was stranger and strangely humanizing to see Morgana still upset about what had happened, even if he knew his friend had had no choice. Before this, he had honestly believed his sister’s sanity to be too far gone to have such a conversation. And to hear his friend offer peace to the woman who had kidnapped and tortured and poisoned and tried to kill him only filled him with further amazement. 

And the silver light was now, almost certainly, a sword.

How or why or what of it, he couldn’t say—but it filled him with an explicable hope. And it nudged him to do what he knew he must, what Merlin had already attempted. 

Arthur didn’t know how to enter the fray of words—but knew he must speak. 

“How could you say that of me, Morgana?” Arthur asked. Merlin and Morgana turned simultaneously to look at him, as if they had forgotten he was there. “That I am Uther’s son to the last, when it was me who killed him because of his injustice?”

Morgana scoffed. “Oh, please,” she said. “You killed Uther to save your bride and your servant, not out of any sense of true injustice. If it was really a matter of your ethics, you would have stopped Uther’s slaughter long ago.”

“You’re right,” Arthur said. “I should have stood up to my father sooner.”

For the third time, real surprise flashed across Morgana’s face. This time, it lingered. 

“And I did only stop him when the lives of those I cared for were in danger,” he continued. “And that wasn’t right. Because I knew I was to be king, and I still was too cowardly to make a choice that my father would not approve of.” He paused. “But if it had been within my power, I still never would have killed him.”

He felt, for the first time in many years, that he was talking to his sister, and not someone who used to be his sister. Her eyes were wide and as green as the grass that had grown in the Camelot gardens, where he and Morgana had played as children.

 The sword of light hovered just out of reach, closer than ever.

“Because I loved him, as you did once,” he continued slowly. When Morgana’s face squinched in distaste, he hurried to continue. “I know, I know, Morgana. I know you think he would have killed you. And perhaps he would have. But—what I have been trying these years to convince you of, though you never gave me a chance to demonstrate—is that if he had tried to kill you, I would have stopped him.” He stepped closer to her. “I would have done for you what I did for Merlin and Gwen. Without a second thought.”

He spoke firmly, surely, needing to convince her of the honesty of his words, for some reason, even when he knew they would have no effect on the outcome of the future—the existence of Old Arthur and Old Merlin proved that Morgana remained their enemy ten years hence. He knew his sister’s end—had borne witness to it, only yesterday. 

But hadn’t Old Merlin, when he and Old Arthur restored his soul, said that even he didn’t know how time worked? Wasn’t fear of changing the timeline what had driven Old Merlin to cast the forgetting spell on himself and Old Arthur? What was it Old Merlin had said to him? I’m afraid that Arthur and I’s timeline, ten years in the future, is only one of many possible future realities. We’re a result of very specific actions being made by specific people for specific reasons. 

Specific actions made by specific people for specific reasons. Arthur had thought a great deal over the past several years with remorse and guilt, fine-combing his memory to find where he had gone wrong. What he could have done to save his father, to stop his father earlier, to stop Morgana going down the path she had done. 

And what else had Old Merlin said? I’m worried it might be possible for the timeline to change, if we do things differently than before, or if we don’t behave as we normally would.

Perhaps that was where Arthur had been going wrong. He had been behaving normally, as he had been expected to, for so much of his life. What his father expected of him, what the court expected of him. When he thought about it, the really remarkable parts of his life were when he had gone against those expectations. 

Old Merlin had been worried about them changing the past and destroying the future. But in his worry, he missed the beauty of the situation: didn’t that prove that there was still time to change things for the better? 

And anyways, Arthur couldn’t be bothered with what Old Merlin and Old Arthur now considered the past. He only knew how to build towards the future. 

He took another step towards Morgana. With one hand, he reached to grasp her hand. She didn’t even flinch away from the gesture, expecting his hand to pass through hers as hers had through Merlin. She gasped when his hand squeezed hers, the warmth of their palms meeting the only real thing in the twilight they were trapped in. But, though she did not squeeze his hand back, she did not pull away. 

With his other hand, he reached blindly to his left and grasped his hand around the pommel of the silver sword of light, forcibly pulling it into the center of his vision, blade down. Merlin gasped, somewhere behind him.

“Morgana,” Arthur said quietly. “I don’t know what, if anything, it would take to prove to you that I am not my father’s son in matters of justice. Nor can I say that I am a perfect man, but that is something you have never been shy to tell me. If I have wronged you, I am sorry.  All I can say to you is that I, not now or ever, have wanted you to be my enemy. And I hope, more than anything, that you could release these old and tired and fruitless hates and injuries and be again my friend. My sister.” 

He paused, and Morgana looked at him, her green eyes still glistening, though the expression in them was unreadable, almost hesitant. 

He knew anyone else hearing him would think him foolhardy and insane, but he said it anyway. “Join us in Camelot. Help us restore magic to this land. Rule with us.”

He released her hand and grasped the silver sword’s pommel with both hands, then flipped the sword horizontally, so that it rested across both of his palms. He presented it to her, holding it out for her take, bowing his head slightly to her.

There was a silence more fragile than any Arthur had known before. Without raising his head, he let his eyes appraise Morgana. She looked terribly, terribly frightened. A single tear ran down the course of her cheek, the curve of her chin, the base of her throat, as he awaited her response. 

“It’s late,” she stuttered eventually, her voice choking with emotion. “It’s too late for any of that, Arthur, you fool.” The words were almost affectionate. 

“It’s not,” Merlin said gently. He had approached slowly, and stood by Arthur’s side. “It’s never too late for forgiveness, Morgana. There is still time. Hasn’t this whole mess proven that?”

Morgana didn’t look at him as Merlin spoke, though she flinched at the words. A modicum—but only that—of her old bitterness returned, though it didn’t dilute the feeling from her voice. “Forgiveness? I see. So you’d take me back in open arms, but only if I repent. Cowed and bowing and calling you ‘my liege.’ Is that it?”

Arthur shook his head. “No. No, Morgana. There’s been too much hurt on either side to ask anyone for an apology. I’d ask you nothing but that you are willing to try it together.”

Morgana’s eyes blazed brightly, even through her tears, as feisty as the girl he had known so well when he was younger. “How would such a thing even work?”

Arthur shook his head. “I don’t know.”

A laugh, muffled and broken. “And if it doesn’t work?”

He shook his head again. “I don’t know.”

Something like a smirk twitched her mouth. “You don’t know anything. You’ve just thought to offer a truce and a return home, damn the consequences?”

He smiled. “Damn the consequences.”

She snorted. “Typical. The same as when you tried to steal the holiday cake from the kitchens and swapped the cake for a mud pie.”

“Father’s face at the feast made it almost worth the week spent in my rooms,” he said, a strange elation filling him at remembering the long ago day.

 She examined him uncertainly. “You might regret it. You might not, of course, but likely you will.”

“I’ve never been one to count odds,” Arthur said. 

“I imagine you thought me insane.” Her eyes returned to his face, darting back-and-forth, scanning his face for a response. “I was grieving Morgause, and I wanted to hurt you the way I had been hurt.”

Arthur wasn’t sure how to respond to this (was it an apology? Or merely an explanation?), so he didn’t.  

“And what is it you expect me to do with the sword?” She continued. "You'd hand me a weapon?”

“I’d expect you not to kill me,” Arthur said. “But that’s the end of my expectations, I think. It’s just what I feel I ought to do.”

Morgana made an incredulous noise, but still didn’t reach to take the sword.

Merlin screamed, falling to his knees. Arthur and Morgana both turned to face him, just in time to see Merlin flicker out of existence entirely.

“Merlin!” Arthur shouted, gripping the starlit sword by the pommel, as if he could slash Merlin back into existence.  He turned in a circle, scanning for his friend in the vanishing purple haze. He looked desperately at Morgana, who looked as confused—and, perhaps, just the slightest hint of concern— as Arthur felt.

Merlin reappeared as quickly as he had disappeared, on all fours, his chest heaving rapidly as he sought to catch his breath. Arthur knelt beside his friend, attempting to place his hand on his friend’s shoulder, though it passed through him. 

“Merlin?” he asked tentatively. 

Merlin’s eyes shot up to meet his, looking panicked. “It’s the Lasc Ama, Arthur. It’s pulling me away. It’s—it’s—” 

Morgana had tentatively followed Arthur, and she knelt slowly, as if Merlin was a colt about to bolt away at the slightest provocation. “How? I’m not there to finish the spell.”

Merlin’s eyes darted to Morgana’s face briefly. “It’s too late for all that. It doesn’t need you, anymore, to take my soul.”

An indefinable expression shadowed Morgana’s eyes. “It was too far. I know—I knew that.”

It was close to an apology. Closer than Arthur would have ever expected from Morgana—and Merlin clearly felt the same way, judging by the way his mouth opened and closed again, as if he was rendered speechless. 

Merlin tilted his head towards her. “Morgana—”

Merlin flashed out of existence once again. Morgana and Arthur exchanged another glance, this one much more certainly filled with worry. 

“We’re running out of time,” Morgana said. 

“Time for what?” 

Morgana scowled at him. “For his life, you idiot. For our lives. For this idiotic future of forgiveness that you’ve been babbling about.”

Arthur wasn’t sure how, exactly, to take her words, unable to decipher from her tone whether she desired that outcome, or abhorred it. But he hoped. Ye gods, he hoped. “Morgana—?”

Merlin popped back into existence, this time reappearing curled up on his side, pain contorting his face. He groaned and struggled to sit up.

Morgana slid closer to him, her words coming out quickly, as if she was in a hurry. “Tell me, Emrys. You’d let your precious Arthur offer me the sword?”

Arthur half-turned to watch Merlin’s expression, which was inscrutable and confused, as he still tried to catch his breath. His eyes watched Morgana carefully. “I trust Arthur’s feeling to trust you, if that’s what you mean.”

Arthur was honored to hear Merlin say that—that he trusted him, despite this potentially insane trusting act. Morgana, it seemed, was not.

“No,” she said testily. “No, that’s not what I mean.” She inched even closer to Merlin, turning her back to Arthur and the starlit sword. “I mean, would you arm me?  After the blood transference. After I—” She cut herself off, her voice catching. She cleared her throat. “After the Lasc Ama. ”

Her words were layered with meaning, betraying how she knew, then, the scale of the horror she had subjected Merlin to. More amazingly, to Arthur, was that Morgana seemed to mind that horror. That she, in her own way, seemed to want absolution not just from Arthur, but from Merlin, despite her many speeches expressing the opposite. 

There was something complicated to Merlin and Morgana’s relationship as magic-users, Arthur knew, that he would never fully grasp; the two of them were friends, before Morgana turned, just as all of them had been. But some new intensity made their animosity flare more brightly between them, ever since Merlin’s magic had come to light. As if each other’s betrayal of the other was that much more bitter and cutting, because of their abilities that the world had taught them both were burdensome and shameful. It brought them closer, even as they tried to tear one another apart. It would not be an easy relationship, if Merlin made the choice to forgive.

Merlin’s nonplussed mask was splintering, and something like longing was escaping beneath it, creasing his forehead and filling his blue-gold eyes with emotion. Arthur knew, in that moment, that his friend hoped, too.

Merlin’s eyelashes fluttered as he looked at Morgana. “Yes, I would,” he said. “For all of that, Morgana. I would.”

Morgana looked at him a beat longer, her pale, beautiful face framed by purple twilight. Eventually, she nodded faintly, just once. 

“Very well, Merlin,” she said. She turned to face Arthur again. “Arthur. I make no promises. But—” 

 Without finishing the sentence, Morgana reached forward and gripped the hilt of the starlit sword. The world exploded into blinding light.

And they were back. 

Arthur came back to his body with such a force that he began to understand the explosive joy of Merlin’s magic, when they’d freed him from the magical restraining chain. His spirit reentering the world—being bound once again by a body, not floating in a purple twilight—brought back everything lovely and hateful about the world: his sore and aching muscles, the icy feeling of cold air entering his lungs, the smell of the wet earth and pine needles and the ozone-y scent of magic, the bright blue sky, pocked by silver pricks of starlight. 

He gave himself half a moment to breathe before bolting upwards. 

Leon was there, clasping his arm, a wide grin splitting the bearded knight’s face. “Sire!” 

Arthur grinned, fumbling for Leon’s shoulder and squeezing it affectionately. 

“Leon,” Arthur said, his relief coloring his voice. Leon must have heard it, because he tilted his head, his brow creasing in confusion.

But Arthur couldn’t explain his relief: he could only feel it. Morgana, redeemed. Morgana, seeking forgiveness. He had forced himself to consign the story of him and his sister to tragedy. But for the first time in a long time, the heavy burden of that tragic end was off his shoulders. He wouldn’t stop grinning for a long, long while.

Or, at least, he thought so, until he was able to take in the rest of the scene around him. Until he saw the desperate look on Gwaine’s face, on Lancelot’s face, on Percival and Elyan’s; on the face of himself, ten years hence. Of how they surrounded two prone figures, motionless, the two Merlins both still as corpses. The younger Merlin’s head rested in Gwaine’s lap, while the elder Merlin’s rested in Old Arthur’s. Gilli, looking puppy-dog like and fretful, dashed back-and-forth between both Merlins, muttering to himself as if trying to remember a certain spell.

And then, of course, was the figure of Morgana, standing far away from their circle—she, it seemed, had revived from the spirit world as Arthur had—holding the starlit sword, the tip resting on the ground. One her face was an expression that Arthur didn’t understand.

“Arthur!” Gwaine shouted, desperation coloring his voice. “He’s not breathing!”

The words spurred Arthur into action, and he scrambled to his feet and over to where Merlin lay, his heart racing. The world, so recently fresh and revived and wide-open to possibility, began to close in.

He couldn’t stop himself from shaking his unconscious friend’s shoulder in an attempt to rouse him, even though he knew that it wouldn’t work. “Merlin!”

 He looked up at Gwaine, and then up to Gilli, who had ceased his fretting walk and hovered over Gwaine’s shoulder. “I don’t understand. He was with us just now—why didn’t he come back?”

Gwaine shook his head, his dark eyes bright with dampness. “I don’t know, Arthur. What do we do?”

“I’ve tried everything I could think of, spell-wise,” Gilli said anxiously. “Nothing’s worked.”

They looked down at Merlin’s unconscious face. There was no yellow-gold magic glow around his wound at his side, this time. There was no sign of magic at all.

Both Arthur and Gwaine’s heads shot up at the sound of swords being drawn from their scabbards. Percival, Elyan, and Leon both stood, swords drawn, facing Morgana, who hadn’t moved. She still didn’t shift into a defensive position, even as the knights approached her, though her eyes tracked their movements.

“Morgana!” Arthur shouted, emotion straining his voice. “Morgana, he’s not breathing!”

All three of the knights—and Gwaine and Lancelot, as well—whipped around at Arthur’s words, incredulity and betrayal coloring their expressions. 

“Arthur,” Lancelot said slowly, looking at Arthur as if he had sprouted a second head. “That’s Morgana.”

Arthur only had eyes for Morgana. Morgana watched him, as well, her gaze heavy and conflicted. 

“Yes, I know that,” he said irritably.

“As in, the Morgana who did this to Merlin in the first place,” Gwaine said, speaking as slowly as Lancelot had done.

“I know,” Arthur growled. Then, he spoke to his sister again. “Morgana, please!”

Gwaine cursed. “Did you hit your head, or something?”

Leon, Percival, and Elyan exchanged confused glances, as well. Leon jerked his head in signal, and the three knights took another step closer to Morgana. 

“No!” Arthur shouted. He began to rise from his kneeling position. “Stop—stop!” 

He rushed forward, stepping between the knights and Morgana, making Leon curse and try to pull him backwards, towards the relative safety behind the knights’ defensive line. Arthur shrugged him off. 

It was Elyan’s turn to curse, this time. “Arthur, have you totally lost your mind?”

Arthur couldn’t answer; there wasn’t time, not when he remembered Merlin’s flash-and-gone disappearing act, the expression of pain on his friend’s face as he told him that he was getting pulled away. His friend’s soul was gone, he knew that much. Some instinct—call it one of Merlin’s funny feelings, as his servant used to say a long, long time ago—told him that his sister and that sword of starlight were the only chances they had at bringing him back. 

“Morgana,” he said again, not bothering to hide his pleading. “Please. He needs help.”

Morgana was still frozen in the same position she had been standing in, as if caught in some strange amber between the current world and the spirit realm, or as if the choices she had been offered weighed on her still, rendering her in a dreamlike state. Arthur’s words, his sudden proximity, seemed to jolt her back to the present.

“I made you no promises, Arthur,” she said reluctantly. “I told you that, when I took up the sword. I didn’t say I’d help you. Or him.”

The budding joy he had experienced upon first waking back up in his body began to wither. 

“No, you didn’t. But you did say that you know you went too far, this time.” And many times before that, Arthur thought, but now was not the time to say so. “So no, you’re under no obligation. You need not come with us afterwards, though I’d still wish that you would. But you could walk back the too-far steps you’ve taken, at least with Merlin today.”

Morgana’s head tilted, and she idly twirled the starlit sword in her hand. The sword’s glow made it difficult to look at directly.

“Arthur,” Leon said in warning.

Arthur knew that there wasn’t time to lose; that Merlin might be lost to them, already. He reached forward and took Morgana’s hand. She flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“Arthur!” His knights chorused, but he ignored them.

“The past is the past, Morgana,” he said. “There is no changing it. But the future is ours, once and forever. It just requires a single step in the right direction.”

Morgana’s eyes flickered over his face, as if trying to read the pages of a book written in a language she could not read. Then her eyes danced over his shoulder, to where Merlin lay. 

She moved quickly, before Arthur had time to process the fact that she had made her choice. She shoved the starlit sword’s pommel into his hands—gripping it in this world made a strange, cold tingling run up his hands and arms—and was somehow past Leon, Percival, and Elyan and standing over Merlin and Gwaine before Arthur had time to register that she had moved.

He—and all the knights— stared after her, open-mouthed. 

“Well, come along, then,” she snapped at him. “Before I change my mind.”

Arthur crossed to her in two long strides, pushing past his knights, who seemed paralyzed by shock. When Morgana crouched down beside the younger Merlin, peering at the wound at his side that she had given him, Gwaine growled and Lancelot stood up quickly, his hand on the hilt of his sword, sheathed at his waist. 

Morgana rolled her eyes, and looked up at Arthur with a sardonic expression that he remembered well from his youth, conveying the simple message of: what a pair of idiots. 

“Stand down, Lancelot,” Arthur said. Lancelot’s dark eyes darted to Arthur’s, full of doubt.

“Sire, it’s madness to let her near either Merlin,” he replied. Lancelot turned to Old Arthur, who had been strangely silent since Arthur and Morgana’s return from the spirit realm, seemingly absorbed in trying to revive Old Merlin. “Sire, please tell—well, yourself—that this is mad.”

Old Arthur looked up from Old Merlin’s face to meet Arthur’s gaze. It was his own pain, his own hope, his own folly, his own worry looking back at him. “Trust me, for a moment, Sir Lancelot. Just for a moment.”

Lancelot scoffed, but removed his hand from his hilt. Morgana, moving quick as a cat, darted to where Merlin’s head rested in Gwaine’s lap, lifting open one of Merlin’s eyelids and peering at the eye for a second before letting it fall closed again. Gwaine grumbled his displeasure, and she sat back and looked up at Arthur.

“There’s no magic,” she said flatly. “His soul isn’t here.”

“Is it where we were?” Arthur asked.

She shook her head a fraction. “I don’t know. I—we didn’t complete the Lasc Ama. It would’ve torn my soul in two, as well, had it worked. But with this kind of magic—”

“The dark kind, you mean—” Gwaine interrupted.

Morgana continued on, ignoring him. “—with this kind of magic, there’s a great deal of room for error. Souls are slippery, bright things. Each is unique to another. It’s impossible to know how an individual soul might respond to another in a rendering spell like the Lasc Ama . They can have all sorts of unexpected responses. Like slipping away.” She paused, tilting her head. “Or hiding.”

“What can be done?” Arthur asked. He was beginning to let his desperation eat away at him, and he knew he had to stop that if he could. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“I don’t know, Arthur. I don’t know where his soul went. And we might already be too late in trying to restore it.”

“You don’t have any guesses about where it could be?” Arthur needled.

Morgana scowled, again reminding him of arguments they used to have as children. “Damn you, Arthur, how could I? There are countless realms—he could be in Avalon already, for all we—” Her eyes shifted from Arthur’s face to the starlit sword, which he still idly gripped in his hands, the tip resting on the ground. Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

“What?” Arthur looked down, taking the first close observation of the sword since entering the mortal world. The color of the sword had changed—now it glowed golden, then glowing blue. It retained its shape well—it looked indisputably as a longsword, identical to Excalibur even in its weight—but its edges were blurred by an intensity of bright light. As he looked, the sword seemed to shoot a jolt of energy up his arm, the light softly emanating off it flaring brighter for a brief moment before returning to its softer glow.

“Oh,” Arthur remarked, rather intelligently, he knew. “I suppose I should have known that the sword was traveling with us from beyond the vale for a reason.”

The sword flared brightly again, as if it was, in its own way, making some sarcastic remark about how brilliant an observation that was. Very good, you clotpole. Someone should make you a king, that’s how clever you are. 

“I don’t understand,” Lancelot said confusedly, looking between Arthur and Morgana. “Where were you? And what does the sword have to do with anything at all?”

Old Arthur spoke, then, a wry smile cracking his stoic expression. “Merlin said to me once, ‘My magic is yours. It is your weapon, to take up when you have need of it.’ I thought he was speaking symbolically. Figures he would take the opportunity to make that literal.”

Arthur’s brain was moving more quickly than normal, beginning to slide the strange puzzle pieces of the last twenty-four hours into place: that, somehow, this starlight sword was Merlin; that in his dazed, injured and almost-soulless state, Merlin had been trying to warn him that Merlin’s soul could be found in the stars of the spirit realm; that, somehow, in their conversations with Morgana in the spirit realm, in their first open and honest plea to their friend to put the past and hate away, Arthur had been able to call Merlin’s soul to himself, to make it a sword; that in doing so, he was, responsible, somehow, for the strange flickering out and disappearance of his friend while in the spirit realm; to offer Merlin’s soul-sword to Morgana, freely and openly, that which she had done the Darkest of magic to obtain; that somehow, (he hoped) (oh, he dared to hope) that it had been this offer that had offered Morgana a view of a world unplagued by hatred and death; that, in her taking up the soul-sword, she had broken the Lasc Ama. 

“So when he told us we’d have to stab him with the sword,” Arthur mused to his older self. “He meant this sword, not Excalibur.”

Old Arthur grunted. “The idiotic Forgaitan. He couldn’t remember the whole of what we’d done to save him—just that it involved stabbing him with the sword, and that he might be hurt, or worse.”

Gwaine’s expression would have been laughable, in another circumstance. “Wait a moment. You’re telling me that Merlin’s soul is that bloody glowing sword? ”

Percival and Lancelot sputtered disbelieving laughs. Even Leon—normally so nonplussed— looked doubtful. 

Morgana stood swiftly and gripped Arthur’s wrist. “We need to move fast, Arthur, if it’s going to do anything at all, or else you might as well give it up.” Shocked that she had initiated physical contact, Arthur startled, before swallowing the lump in his throat and nodding. “Good. You’ll stab him, in the wound on his left side—”

“But what about my Merlin?” Old Arthur asked. “There’s only one sword.”

Morgana scowled. “Well, he’s only got the one soul, hasn’t he? If we do this correctly, both Emrys’ will revive.” She knelt again, by Merlin’s side. “While you do that, I’ll do my best to reverse what I had begun of the Lasc Ama and close the wound. It’ll be pointless to put his soul back in again only for it to slip out again.”

Gwaine held up his hand. “Don’t touch him, witch.” 

“Gwaine,” Arthur said sternly. 

Gwaine glared defiantly at Arthur. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Arthur. Trusting her ? To help save Merlin? What could have possibly happened in whatever loony spirit place you were in to make you do this?”

Arthur sighed. “We don’t have time for this, Gwaine. Do you trust me, or not?”

Gwaine stared at Arthur, his dark eyes scanning his face—probably for any trace that he was under a spell. “You better know what you’re doing, Princess.” 

An or else was implied in his words, and he knew that Gwaine did not make idle threats when it came to the safety of Merlin. But Arthur nodded at him, once and firm. Gwaine nodded back in the same manner. 

Gilli, who had been cowering by the standing stones during the confrontation about Morgana, stepped forward then. “I can help, with the spell to heal Merlin’s side.”

Arthur, surprised but glad that the nervous sorcerer had stepped up, nodded at him, and Gilli knelt across from Morgana by Merlin’s side.

He looked at Morgana. “Okay, Morgana. On your signal.”

A brief flash of surprise crossed Morgana’s face—not expecting, perhaps, that Arthur would so readily respect and trust her enough to lead this longshot effort—before it was replaced with a look of intense concentration. She nodded, and held her hands over Merlin’s wound, her eyes flaring gold, muttering under her breath in the Old Tongue. Arthur fought down the fear that he had no idea what spell she was saying, the fact that she could have been casting anything. 

Magic—green, as hers always was, but less sickly and poisonous looking than before, more sage than sickle—emanated from her hands, coating Merlin’s wound in a balming glow. Gilli, after a moment, began to repeat her words, and a weak orange magic began to emanate from his hands, as well.

To Arthur’s shock— to his current and future self, to his knights, maybe even to Morgana herself—he saw Merlin’s wound begin to stitch itself back together again. 

“Now, Arthur!” Morgana snapped. 

He closed his gaping mouth and, gripping Merlin’s starlit sword of soul, he raised the point of the sword over his head and brought it down, aiming for the glowing green magicked area, where Excalbur pierced his friend earlier that day. 

As soon as the starlit sword made contact with Merlin’s wound, it dissolved from Arthur’s hands, dissipating like the mists of Avalon. Merlin’s golden-blue magic seemed to melt and meld with Morgana’s own at the wound site, the magic flaring brightly before seeping away slowly. Morgana continued her mutterings, the wound shrinking smaller and smaller.

Both Merlins, still unconscious, took a sudden and deep inhale of breath.

Arthur dropped to crouched position next to Merlin, hovering over his friend as Gwaine did, Lancelot elbowing his way in between them. Gwaine and Arthur looked at one another, exchanging with the other the same hope and exhaustion.

Arthur looked at Morgana, who had ceased her mutterings and sat back, breathing heavily and looking at Arthur with weary, wary eyes. 

Old Arthur also watched Morgana, his attention divided between her and Old Merlin.

There was a moment, as there had been in the throne room of Camelot, where there was only the sound of everyone’s haggard breathing. And then, just as had occurred before, the suspense was broken by both Merlins sitting up abruptly, and colliding with their respective Arthur’s heads. 

“Damn!” Arthur exclaimed, rubbing at his now-throbbing forehead. “Again, Merlin?”

“Watch it, Arthur!” both Merlins gasped in unison. The two sorcerers looked sharply at one another, exchanging out-of-breath glances of surprise at seeing the other. 

Merlin looked at Arthur, an amused expression beginning to bloom on his face. “I’ve got the feeling this has happened before.”

“Always with his big head in the way,” Old Merlin said, grinning at Old Arthur, who smiled grimly and slapped him on the shoulder. Old Merlin looked at Merlin. “When we come back from the dead, that is.”

Merlin felt leagues better than he had before—his stab wound was healed, firstly, and he felt whole for the first time since before Morgana had attacked the castle. 

What he didn’t totally understand, however, was how he had been healed in the first place. The last thing he remembered was Old Arthur morphing into Morgana, and the searing pain of her magic colliding with his side. 

Now, his three closest friends were all grinning at him like they had just seen him resurrected from the dead, which he supposed they had. And over Gwaine’s shoulder, crouched nearby, was Morgana, watching them with her sharp green eyes. What he couldn’t puzzle out was why or how she wasn’t trying to kill them.

Gwaine was saying something to him, clapping him on the shoulder, but Merlin shook him off, only having eyes for Morgana. There was something different—saner, if not sweeter—about her presence, about her magic itself. He could see it—Morgana’s magic had always been familiar, to him, and he could recognize it unconsciously, as one recognizes the way a friend walks or knows a loved one by their laugh. Merlin figured that was likely just another plus of his warlock-nature, that he saw Morgana’s magic—pale bring green when he had first know her, like a budding flower in springtime, before Morgause had moved in on her and started her down the darker path, when her magic had darkened into a sickly, almost fluorescent lime color. Now, however, her magic appeared a more stable and serene evergreen. It reminded him of something, the evergreen magic—not of Morgana, but of something or someone else, just out of the grasp of Merlin’s memory.

  Merlin pushed past his friends, wobbling to kneel closer to Morgana, still feeling woozy-headed. Morgana startled back from his intense gaze, but still didn’t curse him, or cast a spell.

Arthur was saying something to him now, also gripping him by the shoulder, as if planning to haul him off—to defend Morgana? He couldn’t work it out. He shook Arthur off, as well, needing to look at Morgana, to put his finger on what exactly was different about her. It really was different, her aura, her magic, itself, even—but somehow as familiar, as the back of his hand. Merlin couldn’t precisely identify how.

Morgana met his gaze frankly, not shying away from his examination—though something clouded her eyes. If it wasn’t impossible, Merlin would have guessed that it was guilt that he saw. 

“You’re different,” he said eventually. And it was true. She was. Something had happened; something, ye goods, actually good. A fork in the road had appeared, and they were on a new path. His magic told him that. 

“You helped me,” he said, though it sounded more like a question.

She looked at him for a moment. “Yes,” she said simply.

Merlin sat back, in awe. 

“If you hadn’t hurt him in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to help him,” Gwaine said snarkily. 

Merlin shook his head. Gwaine was missing the point, even if Merlin appreciated his friend defending him, even if he was right. The point was that she had changed. She had done her first truly surprising act. 

“Why?” Merlin asked, knowing his voice reflected his amazement.

Morgana’s eyes darted to Arthur’s, just behind and to the left of Merlin. He understood, then, that something had happened, somewhere else—but where? He couldn’t remember. Where had they gone, when Morgana had attempted the Lasc Ama ? Avalon? The Crystal Cave? Somewhere else , wherever it was. Somewhere that had allowed them to talk, really talk, for the first time in years, in an equal playing field. And, somehow, miraculously, it had been enough. Arthur’s goodness had been enough, just as Merlin had always known it could be.

Morgana opened her mouth and closed it, at a loss of words. Merlin could imagine so: what words were there to say, for the many years of pain, of suffering, of malice? For the years of friendship, of love, of sacrifice? What words for the future? And how could redemption happen, with the pride they each had, the grudges? When the dead Old, vengeful Morgana who still existed in the future, somehow? How could this Morgana have helped him, have changed as she seemed to, when the future Morgana was still their enemy? Merlin didn’t understand it.

He turned then, to his future self, who sat next to Old Arthur, their future selves both watching solemnly. “How?” Merlin asked desperately. “Is it really possible?” 

Merlin knew his older self would understand what “it” was—Morgana’s redemption. The long hoped-for saving grace, long discarded as a dream. His heart’s wish, which he had believed had caused this whole time mess in the first place.

Old Merlin looked at him, his gold-blue eyes wide. He seemed speechless, as well. “I don’t know,” his older self said eventually. “I don’t see how it’s possible.”
“But it’s already happened,” Arthur said confidently. And Merlin supposed that it had.

Arthur stepped forward, to Morgana’s side. “Come back with us, Morgana. We’ll make it right.” He offered her his hand, to help her stand.

Morgana looked at it, evaluating, then pushed herself to her feet, ignoring Arthur’s offer. Merlin wobbled to his feet, as well. “I made you no promises, Arthur. I keep trying to tell you that.”

Arthur’s face was so open, so yearnful, that it made Merlin’s heart twinge. “You can’t slink back into the forest after this, Morgana. You’re my sister. You made choices, but so didn’t all of us. I offered you a place on my court, and I meant it. I offered you forgiveness, and I meant it.”

Morgana’s mouth twitched into a frown. “I know that, Arthur. But I can never return to Camelot. You must know that.”

But Arthur wouldn’t take this answer. “But Morgana—”

Leon stepped in, then, ever the loyal First Knight. “She’s right, Sire. The people of Camelot would not readily accept the return of Morgana to Camelot.”

Arthur scoffed. “The people of Camelot didn’t readily accept Merlin and magic, either. That didn’t mean it wasn’t right to ask them to.”

“It’s different, Arthur,” Morgana spat, some of her old venom seeping into the words, even if they seemed more sorrowful than spiteful to Merlin. “You know it is.”

Arthur looked desperately between Morgana and Leon and Merlin, not wanting the answers they were giving him. “My war with you is done, Arthur,” Morgana added, her voice sad and low. “If that’s what plagues you. I’ve seen what the future awaits me down the path I was on. And—” she broke off, looking at her brother. “I know you to be a good man. But I could not show my face to the place where I—” She broke off again, as if unable to continue.

Morgana’s words, my face, echoed in Merlin’s head, for a reason he couldn’t discern. 

“I don’t want this to be the way that this ends,” Arthur pleaded. “There’s got to be a way to—for you to come home again.” He turned to Merlin. “Merlin, tell them.”

Merlin couldn’t tear his eyes from this new Morgana, not even for his king. “It’s up to her, Arthur.”

Morgana didn’t look at either of them, just crossed her hands over her chest. “A fresh start, Arthur. That’s what is best for both of us.”

Arthur’s perplexed expression was almost childlike in its pure desire to rectify. “But what would you even do?”

Morgana shrugged. “I’m not sure. Find the Druids, like I did once before?” She sputtered a laugh. “Become a witch-errant, perhaps. Doing good with my magic through the kingdom.”

Her words made Merlin’s blood run cold in his veins. Merlin’s mind was moving quickly, reconfiguring memories of the night: Not-Reagan’s sudden appearance and rescue; her strangely familiar magic that he felt he recognized; her cat-like green eyes, so like Morgana’s; her witty retorts, so like Morgana as when he had first met her; Morgana’s changed magic after her choice, familiar to Merlin once again in a strange sort of deja vu.

Yes, I was a Druid, at one time. I left when I was a child. I’ve long since been what I like to refer to as a ‘witch-errant.’ I use magic when it suits me, and where. I’m no acolyte of the cult of Emrys, if that’s what you’re thinking.

Yes, Merlin. A friend. Don’t sound so surprised.

“Ye gods,” Old Merlin said, just before those same words left Merlin’s lips. Merlin turned to his older self, and saw that he was pale as the mists, looking at Morgana as if she was a ghost crossing back over from Avalon. “It’s you. ”

“Of course I am. Who else would I be?” Morgana frowned at him. “Mind moving a little slower than usual, Emrys?”

“It is her,” Merlin said, in lieu of his older self. There had been a lot of things that had happened in the past day that Merlin wouldn’t have thought possible, but finding out that Morgana adopts a new name and face and identity in the future—that that version of Morgana cared enough about him to travel to the past to rescue him from herself —took the top prize. Merlin felt dizzy, again, all of a sudden, and sat down again. 

Old Arthur put it together next, looking back-and-forth between both Merlins. He looked incredulously at Morgana. “ Ros ?” he exclaimed. “Morgana is Ros. All of this time?”

“All of this time,” Old Merlin echoed, sounding hollowed out and vaguely perturbed—perhaps remembering, as Merlin was, the experience of being dazed and magicless and bound to the table, experiencing torture and gentleness in kind from two different women who, it turned out, were the same person, all along. “Ros was Morgana.”

Old Arthur shook his head in amazement, running his hand over his beard. “I told you that I could never remember when I first met her, Merlin.” He paused and raised his eyebrows at his friend. “I guess now we know why.” His brow creased, as if a disturbing idea had just occurred to him. “Hold on, Merlin. You and Ros are—”

Old Merlin held up his hand, as if warding off Old Arthur’s words. His other hand supported his forehead, as if this information had made the weight of his head unbearable. “Don’t, Arthur. Please. My head aches enough as it is.”

Merlin didn’t want to think about the implications of their conversation, and so he elected to ignore it.
Morgana, it seemed, had had enough of the confusion. “I’m not ‘Ros,’ or whatever name you said.”

Old Merlin looked up at her, eyes bleary with weariness and dawning realization. “Well, not yet, anyway.”

A flash of Morgana’s old petulance sparked at that. “Who is this Ros, anyway?”

Merlin answered. “A friend.” He looked at Arthur. “The friend who rescued me from you earlier.” He looked to Morgana again. “The person who hit you over the head with the rock.”

Morgana’s brows creased together. “How on earth could that have been me?”

“Because,” Old Merlin spoke up this time. Merlin appreciated that they could take turns having to explain this time paradox to the others. “There is, in fact, a way for you to have a new start, and come with us to Camelot. But it would mean two things: one, we work together to give you a new face and name and identity. And two, I cast the Forgitan and make sure that none of us remember how any of this happened.”

Arthur seemed to finally understand. “So Morgana could have the chance for a fresh start with us, if we change her appearance and name, and have her come to court as if she was a witch seeking to join a growing Camelot?”

“And give her a false backstory,” Merlin piped up. “That she was a Druid. And later became a witch-errant.”

Arthur turned to his sister. “Is that something you would be interested in, Morgana?”

She looked wary, but her head tilted at the question. “It is a fresh start, that I want. And going home, to Camelot…” She trailed off. “Perhaps a new face and name would let me begin again in my home. Rebuild relationships from the ground up.”

“But is that fair?” Old Arthur asked. “To trick everyone into trusting Morgana—no offense—without giving them all the information?”

“That’s why the Forgitan is necessary, I think,” Old Merlin said. He looked at Morgana and smiled softly. “It’s a real fresh start. A real chance to build something together, no grudges, no pride in the way.”

Morgana’s mouth twitched into a small smile in response. “I’ve always wanted to leave this world better than I found it. I’ve forgotten that, these past years. But I want to leave my grudges and mistakes and anger behind. I want to start something new.” She cleared her throat. “I’d like to do it.” Her eyes darted around, even including the knights. “If you would be willing, as well.”

Gwaine spoke up. “I’m all for second chances. Even third or fourth ones. But I feel I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that according to the elderly couple—” Old Arthur scowled “—Morgana still plagues us ten years hence. Is this the right thing to do, if we know we have an evil Old Morgana in the future anyway?” He paused. “And if this is like what Old Merlin was talking about earlier, where we’re in an alternate timeline or what have you, because people made different choices—how does Ros exist in the elder’s universe? Does that mean there’s two Morganas running about, one evil and trying to kill us, and the other good and disguised and living with us?”

“I am loathe to agree with Gwaine, but I don’t understand that, either,” Arthur confessed.

Old Merlin’s head tilted, his eyes bright with his quick-moving thoughts. “That’s an excellent point. As I’ve tried to explain to you all, time is a complicated and temperamental web. It contradicts itself at all sorts of points, and it doesn’t take much at all to tear it apart entirely.”

It occurred to Merlin, however, on remembering the crazed Old Morgana from the attack in the throne room, that the answer might be much simpler than that. “How certain are we that it was Morgana at all, earlier today?”

Old Merlin’s eyes darted to his. “Implying, what? That someone else had the same idea as we are having at this moment, to change their face and figure to look like Morgana’s? Whatever for?”

“Power,” Leon said. All heads whipped to him, which made the knight nervously adjust his footing and look anxiously to his king. “Well, Morgana has a great deal of followers, as we well know. She is the rebel figurehead against Camelot who people, sorcerer or no, go to if they would advantage if Arthur was off the throne.” He paused, and looked at Morgana. “Is that a false assumption?”

Morgana, looking surprised to be addressed, shook her head no.

Leon continued. “Yes. Well, I imagine, should Morgana suddenly disappear—as she would if this plan went ahead—there would be a vacuum of leadership. I imagine anyone who could take the helm of a band of sorcerer-rebels would be a powerful person indeed.” He cleared his throat. “And I imagine that it would be much easier to take the helm if you’re clever and have magic and could make your coup simple by appearing to be the very leader believed to be missing in the first place, who has a viable claim to the throne and a reputation of terror gaining her respect.”

Gwaine whistled. “Good on you, boy-oh. That’s quite the sound theory.”

Arthur turned to Morgana. “Is there anyone you could imagine doing that, should you disappear?”

Morgana raised her eyebrows. “Oh, countless.” She paused, thinking. “A girl named Kara, in particular. She’s terrifyingly clever, and hates you, Arthur.”

“Well, then that is a more than likely explanation for the multiple Morganas debate,” Old Merlin said. “And perhaps settles my timeline concerns: we are on the very same one, after all.”

“But if we think Kara might plague us further into the future,” Elyan began slowly. “Why should we not find her, this very night, and be rid of her?”

“Well, we don’t know for sure, that it will be Kara who adopts Morgana’s visage,” Old Merlin said. “In fact, we aren’t sure someone will do that at all. Perhaps it’s a Morgana from elsewhere. Maybe she betrays us anyway, even after this second chance.” He grinned, looking at Old Arthur with genuine gladness in his eyes-relief, Merlin recognized, at no longer having to carry the burden of what was to pass in the future, to be wildly, freely present. “It’s the future, we’re talking about, after all. Anything could happen.”

While both Merlins were exhausted and would have benefited from a week’s long rest in Gaius’ chamber as soon as possible, it was agreed that the sooner they did the spellwork to alter Morgana’s appearance, cast the Forgitan, and send the elder Merlin and Arthur home, the better. 

As dawn broke through the trees, illuminating the standing stones around them, Merlin expressed concern about the potential complications of the  latter spell, which turned out to be an easily resolved problem. 

Morgana, it turned out, had the spell of traveling through time in her vellum spellbook. She handed it over to Old Merlin with an embarrassed expression on her face. “My older self—or, whoever she was—gave it to me, in case something happened,” she explained. 

The first spell, however, required some brainstorming. Arthur dazed off a bit in the ensuing ten minute debate between the two Merlins about what would be the most long-lasting spell, but he snapped back to attention once they had decided to cast. 

“Now, we need to be picturing the same face, almost exactly,” Old Merlin said slowly to his younger self.

Merlin looked slightly annoyed. “Yes, I remember what she looks like,” he said petulantly.

Old Merlin looked skeptical. “Are you sure? You’re in quite the state.” 

Merlin scowled. “ You’re in quite the state, you prat.”

Old Merlin raised his palms in surrender. “Alright, no need for name calling. Are you ready?”

Merlin nodded. They both looked at Morgana, who nodded as well. She looked calm, calmer than Arthur could remember her being. He thought, with a pang, that after this moment, he would not recognize his sister’s face as her own ever again. Things would be very different, in the future—but of course, there could be no returning to the past. It made a bittersweetness twist in his gut. 

Both Merlins began casting, chanting loudly, their eyes flaring gold. A gold mist began to gather around Morgana, swirling and condensing until she was not visible. It remained there for a few moments before it began to dissipate once more. 

When it had disappeared entirely, there was a new woman standing before them, rather plain-looking and ordinary; Arthur’s eyes would have skipped over her in a crowd. She had long hair the color of wheat, flowing over her shoulders, and a sour expression, as if she was displeased with something. The only feature remotely akin to Morgana were her eyes, which were the same vivid green, alight with amusement and emotion, as they always had been. 

“I should’ve known by her eyes,” Old Merlin murmured cryptically. 

Morgana patted her new hair tentatively. “Well?” she asked.

The men were speechless for a moment, before Gwaine finally responded. “You’re different,” he said simply, which Morgana appeared to accept as a compliment. 

“Now, that that’s settled, is the matter of the Forgitan ,” Old Merlin said, turning to make eye contact with every member of the Table. “It’s a spell that doesn’t erase memories entirely—more like it jumbles and stores them away. You’d each remember that something strange to do with Arthur and I time travelling here happened, and that it involved Morgana somehow, but that’s all. Weird details—phrases and the like—might pop up now and again, randomly, sparked by something you see or a conversation with someone. But details of the last day will be impossible to recollect.” Old Merlin tilted his head, as if considering something. “Maybe a little less than a day. Arthur will need to remember to stop my younger self from entering the throne room when me and Morgana and the younger Arthur are in there, and that didn’t happen until the mid-morning yesterday, and it’s only just dawn.” Merlin looked around again. “Do I have everyone’s permission for this spell? I won’t cast it if someone wishes against it.”

The knights and Morgana nodded, as did Merlin.

Arthur frowned. He was troubled by the use of the Forgitan —he had seen firsthand how much not remembering had endangered Merlin’s life, and it had looked even less enjoyable enduring it for a second time, judging by the Older Arthur’s reactions. But he knew that it was the only genuine hope for a fresh start for a Camelot with Morgana.

“We’re with you, Merlin,” Arthur said. 

Old Merlin looked at him, a small, sad smile on his face. “Thank you, Sire.” He turned to everyone again. “We’re in a bit of a predicament here: we must cast the Forgitan before we return home, but in order to not forget the spell itself, Merlin and I will have to cast it immediately after the Forgitan , so that we can get both spells done without any confusion. So we should say our farewells now, then.”

There was a pause, everyone shifting awkwardly. No one, it seemed, Arthur included, had considered the matter of having to say goodbye. 

Gwaine, as to be expected, was the first to recover, reaching for Old Merlin’s arm and pulling the older man into a hug, and whispering something unintelligible to him and making the sorcerer laugh. He clapped Merlin once on the back before releasing him. Lancelot was the next to hug the older sorcerer, the knight's eyes closing briefly in the embrace, as if he was relieved Merlin had made it through the next ten years, after all. 

Arthur watched Gwaine approach Old Arthur, the knight’s smirk falling into a more stony expression as he approached the older king.

Gwaine held out his hand. “You’re a good king, Arthur,” he said firmly. “I look forward to seeing you become a great one.”

Old Arthur’s expression was difficult to read, and Arthur thought for a moment that he wouldn’t take Gwaine’s hand because of the knight’s words. But then a smile cracked through, and he shook Gwaine’s hand vigorously. 

“Step-by-step, Gwaine,” Old Arthur said. “We’ll get there step-by-step. Even with you hounding at my ankles all the while.”

Old Merlin, during this time, had seemingly said farewell to all of the knights and Gilli, and now approached Arthur. “Thank you, Arthur,” Old Merlin said, in that genuine and candid tone Merlin only got sometimes, when he sensed Arthur needed a pep talk. “For your help. And your trust.”

Arthur allowed himself to study the older and unfamiliar—and yet, simultaneously, so well-known—face of his best friend for a moment. Arthur let himself mask in it, for a moment: the golden, bathed-in-sunlight (as they were now, as the sun continued its ascent over the Isle) feeling of the great prospect of the future, of the redemption that was possible, even if he wouldn’t remember it entirely. The hope, the freedom, the justice that was only possible because of the man standing in front of him. 

Arthur didn’t know how to express it, the sudden rush of love and gratitude he felt. So all he said, simply, was, “Merlin, I can’t believe you’re still such a girl’s petticoat, after all these years.” And he pulled Old Merlin into an embrace.

They broke apart just in time for Arthur to catch a glimpse of his older self and Merlin breaking apart from a similar embrace. 

“Okay, then,” Old Merlin said, approaching his younger self and clasping him by the shoulder. “Are you ready, Emrys?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Merlin drolled, making Gwaine snicker. 

The rest—the Merlins chorused chanting magic, the sudden high winds, the bright light—Arthur couldn’t recollect at all, because soon enough, he found himself lying dazed in a field surrounded by his friends in a similarly horizontal-and-dazed-but-conscious states of being. Gwaine and Percival were groaning; Leon was grumbling to himself, but already on his feet; Lancelot was rolling over to Merlin, who sat up clutching his head, inquiring something of the sorcerer; Gilli, on all fours, looked like he was trying to egg himself on to be sick; Elyan sat up and tilted his head up at the bright blue sky above them, blinking confusedly. 

They were in the center of the very green field, which was filled with butter-yellow daisies. Some distance away, the dark line of the forest loomed menacingly, but couldn’t touch them where they lay, in the bed of grass and flowers, bathed in sunlight. 

Arthur had the strongest sense that he had been there before. 

“We’ve been here before,” Percival said, vocalizing Arthur’s thought. “When Morgana almost killed Merlin last year. Remember?”

“Yes,” Gwaine said with irritation, rubbing the heel of his hands aggressively into his eye sockets. “But how did we get here?”

Everyone’s head swiveled to Merlin, expecting, as usual, an explanation for the unexplained from the sorcerer. Merlin was still clutching his head, looking much worse for the wear for reasons that Arthur couldn’t remember but knew meant he needed to get him to Gaius. 

“Don’t look at me,” Merlin said. “How am I supposed to know?”

“There were your older selves,” Lancelot said slowly. “There was Morgana, and danger…but they’re gone now? All of them?”

Arthur looked around. “They seem to be. But where were we before this? Not here, but…”

“Somewhere else,” Elyan finished, though he sounded just as perplexed as Arthur did.

None of them could remember exactly what had happened, or where: just that there had been an older Merlin and an older Arthur, and that they had fought Morgana.

Arthur stood, brushing blades of grass off his breeches. “We can figure this out later. We need to get Merlin to Gaius. He looks like a strong wind could knock him straight over.”

“Hey!” Merlin protested, though he was the only one still sitting, obviously biding his time before he stood. Arthur offered him a hand, which he took, and wobbled to his feet. 

“Woah!” Arthur said. “You’ll not be able to walk all the way, I don’t think. And we haven’t any horses.”

“Haven’t you?” 

They all turned at the sound of the woman’s disembodied voice. Standing just past the treeline, holding the reins of nine horses— their horses, from Camelot—was a woman that Arthur had never seen before. She had a rather sour expression, and long wheat-colored hair, bound back in a braid, and rather vivid green eyes. Something about her coloring and her mischievous expression reminded Arthur of a playful barncat that used to live in Camelot’s that he and Morgana used to feed. 

Merlin shifted away from Arthur, turning so that his shoulder blocked Arthur partially, a quasi-defensive position that Arthur always found both endearing and annoying. “Where did you find those?” he called to the woman.

The woman grinned. “Why, they were just grazing here,” she replied, pointing to the trees behind her. “I figured they must belong to important people, judging by the expensive saddles, and thought I’d make myself useful and take care of them until their owners came back.”

She approached with the horses, Merlin watching her warily. 

She smirked at Merlin—she only seemed to have eyes for him, in Arthur’s opinion—and handed him the reins of Merlin’s horse—though how she knew that was his steed, Arthur couldn’t have guessed. 

“Your horse, Emrys,” she said pleasantly, though Arthur thought he heard a hint of teasing there.

Merlin frowned. “Where did you hear that—?” Merlin cut himself off, his gold-blue eyes—and when had that happened?—widening as he looked at her. “Who are you? Have we met before?”

The girl still smiled sweetly. “I don’t believe so, Emrys. But even so, I hope you’d consider me a friend—if not now, then sometime in the future.”

Merlin tilted his head at her inquisitively. “You have magic?”
Instead of replying, her eyes flared gold, and yellow daisies began plucking themselves from the earth around them, as if an invisible hand was picking them, and gathering in the woman’s waiting hand. 

As she had with the rein, she handed the bouquet of daisies to Merlin. The wariness had fallen away from his face, and instead with a vulnerable expression of awe and admiration, that Arthur had never seen on his friend’s face before.

“You’re a Druid?” Merlin asked.

She shook her head, her grin widening. “For a time, I was. It’s a long story, but I always thought of myself as a sort of witch-errant…”