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Chapter Text

Prologue

Merlin cried from the moment of his birth. 

A crying newborn is nothing unusual, and his mother applied all the typical remedies which had effectively comforted babies since time immemorial. When these failed to produce the expected result, the midwife declared him colicky and said he would grow out of it. 

But days, then weeks, then months, then years passed, and Merlin wept still. 

When he was old enough to articulate himself, he tearfully explained that he wasn’t meant to be here yet, that he was early, that he was displaced, that he was wrongly in the world. 

The unprecedented magic he displayed made his neighbors nervous, but his unending tears made them wary. It was a strange time to have magic in the land that would one day be Albion. Magic that used to serve healers and teachers had grown unstable; magic that used to answer to wicked and cruel whims grew weak. His control, more than his power, made people leery. Beasts and monsters both magical and mundane were wandering more freely and attacking more savagely, and the fear seemed worse after Merlin, weeping, drove them away. There was a sense of endings in the air, of loss and of something beautiful slipping away that none could articulate but all could feel. 

People whispered and wondered and frowned more and more deeply, and when Merlin walked into the forest one day in his tenth year and never came back, there was more than one quiet sigh of relief, though his mother mourned bitterly for her strange, inconsolable child. 

He didn’t simply vanish, of course. He walked until he found a group of druids, who knew him for what he was and taught him all they knew of the world’s fading magic and ancient legend and vague prophecy, and kept their pity and discomfort for his tears to themselves. 

In his twentieth year, Merlin walked out of the druid camp, going deeper still into the forest, guided by some instinct that had always lived at the bottom of his heart, that came from the same place as the weeping. He came, at last, to a clearing where the sunlight filtered through the foliage to shine down on a stone, and, secure in that stone, a sword. Merlin was not very good at smiling, but he did it, because the feeling of this place was of patience, and waiting, and hope. 

He stepped closer, and the wrenching despair that had dogged him all his life sloughed away. He went to his knees by the stone and wrapped his arms around its warm, mossy bulk and laid his head down on it. And as he slipped into sleep, a sleep of patience and of happy anticipation and of relief, the tears finally ebbed and stopped. 

He dreamed of a golden man in a golden crown, who would lead the land into a golden age. 

Chapter Text

Many upon many years later….

The light was golden and the sword was golden and the motes of magic in the air were golden, and the sleeping man was curled around the stone like a lover. 

Arthur was eight, and until that moment he had been sure of all the plain and simple things in life: Sir Ector was his guardian, and a good man; riding horses was fun; he wanted so badly to be a knight that he dreamt of it often, but being an orphan meant he couldn’t. 

But now he was certain of something big and strange: the magic, the sword, and the man were for him. 

He didn’t understand that certainty. Magic was a dismal echo of the legends now, reduced to hedgewitchery and hocum potions sold to the gullible—so said Cook, anyway—and how could such a lovely sword be for him when Kay sometimes wouldn’t even let him use his old cast-off with the nicked and battered blade? It made no kind of sense. So instead of pondering, he listened to Sir Ector explain to him and Kay what he knew of the man. 

“He has slept here since the time before my own grandfather was a boy,” he said, sounding unusually meditative. “No one is certain of exactly how long. He cannot be moved, and nothing wakes him: not inclement weather, not loud noise, nothing. Legends say he is waiting for the King.” 

“Which king?” Kay asked. “King Uther died! King Cenred? King Caerleon? King Rodor?” 

“No, none of those,” Sir Ector replied, seeming suddenly ill at ease. “A king who hasn’t come yet. The man who will unite all of Albion and bring prosperity and joy to this broken land.” Arthur and Kay—and, truly, Sir Ector—were too young to understand how shabby the world had become. They saw the poorness and illness and greyness and thinness of things as natural, if sad. “The Once and Future King, as the legends have it,” Sir Ector harrumphed, regaining some of his usual aplomb. 

Kay made a game of coming up with the least likely person to be king, ending with, “King Kay! No, King Wart!” at which point he fell down from laughing, but Arthur felt wonderfully comforted. He didn’t know about being a Once and Future King, since he couldn’t even be a knight, but the rest couldn’t be so hard, surely. He would unite the lands of Albion, and make sure all her people were happy and rich and well fed. And then he would come back for the man. 

Chapter Text

When enough seasons come and go, when enough breaths pass in and out, when enough hurts are mastered and forgot, boys become men. 

Arthur returned to the sleeping man in the clearing. He had come back many times in the eight years since Sir Ector had brought him and Kay there for the first time, especially as he got older and his lengthening legs shortened the journey to less than an hour. 

It was a dim and gloomy autumn, and Arthur was sixteen and rangy. He stood awkwardly in his ill-fitting chainmail and patchy cloak, pack slung over his shoulder, battered old sword at his hip. He felt awfully self-conscious, for all that he was effectively alone and completely unobserved. The man still slept, cheek pillowed on the stone his arms were wrapped around, just as always. He didn’t shiver in the chill of the wind, the scrap of green robe fluttering over his shoulder providing no sort of protection from the elements whatsoever. Crunchy leaves in orange, umber, and gold collected around his knees and even reflected a bit in the blade of the sword. There was an inscription on the sword, but it was in the runes of the old tongue, and he couldn’t read it.

“I’m, erm, leaving,” he said. His voice cracked hard, and he scowled. “I have to go out into the world and begin helping people if I’m to have any hope of reviving Albion someday.” He shuffled his feet, a much-loathed habit of boyhood which he was trying desperately to break. But as he’d grown older, he’d become more and more aware of his meager position in the world and the distance between himself and his ambitions, and speaking them now, to the sleeping man who figured so centrally in his hopes for the future, felt absurd and embarrassing. He was only Arthur, orphaned ward of Ector, brother of Kay by oath rather than blood. He was good with a sword, and patient with the gaining of new skills or knowledge, but those few attributes in no way qualified him for the destiny he had chosen as a child. He thought, many times, that he ought to give up the dream. Surely there were other men out there, better prepared, and better qualified, and just better , who would do the things that needed doing in the world. 

But then he would visit the sleeping man, and feel again the sense of… well, ‘ownership’ was too coarse a word for it, and ‘kinship’ wasn’t right… Perhaps it was ‘fidelity’? And likewise, the man, the sword, the magic, all laid a sort of claim to him, he felt, and that was a true comfort, and prevented him from giving up. 

“I know I’m meant to wake you up,” he said slowly. The certainty had grown with him, developed from a thought to a suspicion to a fact, but equal to the certainty was the knowledge that he was not yet ready. He could feel that state of readiness, waiting far off in the future beyond all the accomplishments he would have to achieve, and over the years had imagined all sorts of scenarios where he made his triumphant return, dripping accolades and victories, and pulled the sword out and woke the man up and lived happily ever after. 

He blushed to have thought such a foolish thing so earnestly. The world didn’t have happily ever afters anymore. It had bandits, and famines, and poxes. And it had Arthur, who was stubborn as a stone, according to Kay, and who knew, deep in his heart, that whatever he did would be for the sleeping man, and that therefore he must do his very best. 

“I will, eventually,” he swore, feeling it etch into his heart, his bones. “I’ll come back when I’ve done all I can, when I…” He couldn’t quite say it aloud, even with the quiet, even with this being the last time in who-knew-how-long that he would see the man, but he felt the shape of the words in his throat, and hoped the sleeping man would somehow hear them anyway. 

When I deserve you.

Chapter Text

The wind tore between the trees, ricocheting and splitting and singing its howling paean to the winter. It pulled the snow with it in a wild dance, spinning and rushing in the bare branches, and with the bitter cold flakes went snatches of flame from the torch Arthur carried, whipping sparks along the path he was following up the final hill on the way to the clearing.

He had rarely ever gone to the grove of the sleeping druid during winter, for just the reasons he was presently struggling with, but it felt urgent that he go now. It had been well-nigh two years, and so much had happened; he felt beholden to the sleeping druid to explain, as well as he could, how his destiny was coming along. 

He felt a bit scornful of himself for still using such a naively starry-eyed term. ‘Destiny’ sounded like something that should come and sweep him up for grand adventures and quests and derring-do, but so far, it had been a lot of hard work. He’d fought a fair number of bandits and beasts, yes, but he’d also ended up solving a number of disputes between villages or individuals, everything from a stolen chicken to a ‘stolen’ wife, and sometimes just lending manual labor for a few days or a week at a time, to dig a well or thatch a roof or plow a field. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done on Sir Ector’s land, and he was glad to lend aid where it was needed, but… 

The wind gave a particularly vicious yank at his cloak, seeming to shove him another step along the path. It tickled the remains of his youthful whimsy to wonder if the sleeping druid had missed him as well, and that this impatient wind might not be a magical symptom of his eagerness to see Arthur again.

But all the same, it was bloody cold. 

The remainder of the trek was made grimly in the light of the gamely fluttering torch, and the little flattish spot on the hill where the stone and sword and druid slept almost took him by surprise when he arrived to it. 

Most of the ground was covered in a deep layer of snow, though the topmost layer skirled in the wind. The area around the stone and sword were clear though, an island of dull green grass, and the sleeping man was as bare as in any other season, wearing nothing but his flimsy scrap of a robe. The snowflakes that landed on his arms or back simply slipped off, and even those caught in his hair somehow vanished after only a few seconds. Still, Arthur shivered at the sight of his bare skin, dressed too thinly himself to not feel the bite of the cold. He hadn’t really taken the time to do anything but wrap himself in his cloak and barge out into the storm, and now he regretted it, if only that an extra layer could have been left for the sleeping man. Though he obviously didn’t need it. 

He just slept on, serene and unchanging, even with the wind seeming like it was trying to tear him from the stone itself. The wind which still swept in from Arthur’s back, pushing him closer and closer until his shuffling feet crossed the barrier between snow and grass and nearly touched the stone. It was strange, looking at the sleeping man up close for the first time in two years. For all the maturity Arthur had perceived in himself at the time, he had been a child with little idea of what the world could be like. He had measured himself against Kay, and his dreams and aspirations against stories and legends. Now… 

Sighing heavily, he turned around and sat down directly opposite the sleeping man, with his back to the stone. Perhaps if he didn’t look at him, this would be easier to say.

“Sir Ector says I’m really King Uther’s son,” he announced without preamble. The words felt strange and heavy on his tongue, like they didn’t want to be spoken. “I came home—here, I mean—to see him—see Sir Ector, I mean—because he’s so ill that Kay thinks…” He sighed again and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Kay thinks Sir Ector is going to die. I think Sir Ector thinks so too and that’s why he told me…. I just… What does that mean, really? King Uther died years ago, and no one who talks about him ever says anything of a son. If no one recognizes me as his heir, then I’m not, really, am I? And Camelot itself is a mess, overrun with bandits and petty lords in every nook and cranny, so I don’t think being a… a prince, being Arthur Pendragon, would make the work any easier. I think it might unite people against me faster, honestly, because they’ll think I want to conquer back Uther’s kingdom.” He paused, throat tight. “And Sir Ector raised me like a son, and I love him like a father, even though he lied.” 

He wept for a time then, despite being a man of eighteen summers and having many feats of strength and even some of wisdom to his name. He wept because things had once been simple, and now they were not, and he feared he was not equal to the task of meeting them. He wanted so badly to do well, for the land’s sake, and the people’s, and his own, but the path of better valor was completely obscured to him. 

The confusion did not pass with the tears, and Arthur looked up with a last heavy breath and realized that the wind had died to little more than a faint breeze. The snowflakes were falling in a curtain of shimmering white. It was gentle and beautiful and somehow comforting, even though it was as cold as ever. He looked around at it, his breath emerging in tiny clouds, and thought that if he woke the druid, surely he would have some idea of what Arthur should do, wouldn’t he? He was still deeply, inexplicably certain that the sword and the man and the magic clearly contained in them both were for him . 

But he thought of waking the man into a world so difficult and confusing and bleak, where Arthur had accomplished so little. He and the few men he had persuaded to join him had taken over the dilapidated castle Tintagel and were protecting a small farming village nearby, and would often venture out to handle whatever creature or mercenary band was at large in the surrounding area. But that was a far cry from creating a country—a kingdom?—that he could be proud of. No one knew how long the druid had slept here, waiting, and he deserved something grand when he awoke. Some one grand.

Arthur knew he was not yet ready. He could still sense what it would feel like to be ready, and knew he would reach that state one day. 

But not yet. 

Chapter Text

The air was soft with springtime, the grass was a fresh and vibrant green, and the birds sounded amazed that they had made it through the winter, though Arthur knew that was a foolish thing to think. 

Just over three years had passed since Arthur had been to the druid’s clearing, and he was shocked to see the sleeping man and think that he looked young . He had always seemed timeless, beyond such petty concerns as age or chronology, and, above all, older than Arthur. But now that Arthur had lived twenty-one years, he recognized it in the druid too. They could easily be the exact same age. In whatever far back era of time he originally hailed from, the druid had only been a young man when his sleep began. He was hardly more than a youth. 

It was a strangely painful thing to see, as though Arthur had lost something. 

He hadn’t, he knew. The druid was as he had always been. It was Arthur who had changed. He had accomplished much in recent years, and what losses there were—Sir Ector’s death chief among them—had been grievous, but not devastating. He was… well, he was doing well , by some miracle. The kingdoms were far from united, and there were still beasts and bandits, but many fewer than there used to be, and the famines were much less severe than they had been because people were actually able to use the roads for trade, and the poxes had grown rarer because people were eating better and were able to keep warm in winter, and if people weren’t exactly rich, they weren’t destitute anymore either. Magic was scarce, but what little there was was being turned to the aid of others, rather than their harm, which was a beautiful thing to see. 

And yet, he still didn’t feel ready for this.

He had told the others to wait with Kay at the manor while he ventured into the forest. “I don’t know quite what’s going to happen,” he had said. “I’ll be safe, I’m certain of that. Just, not the rest.” 

His men—his knights, as people had taken to calling them—had resisted this, particularly Leon and Lancelot and Gareth, but he was firm with them. He had been looking forward to this moment for more than half of his life, and it wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted an audience for. It felt too private for that. 

He stood in front of the stone and the sword and the sleeping man, hands clenching and opening as he tried to work up his nerve. He felt in his bones that this was the right thing to do, but was it the right time? The land was still a mess. Yes, his alliances with Rodor and Annis had solidified the south and west, but Cenred was still cruelly oppressive to his people in the north, and sent his men raiding over his borders at every opportunity. And now there was this new wickedness Morgana dreamed he was cooking up, which she had sent Arthur sword-fetching for. “That sword is the only way Cenred shall be defeated,” she insisted. “If he is not stopped, all you have labored for will be for naught, and Albion shall never see its golden age.” 

He still hadn’t learned how to resist her when she got all wide-eyed and earnest like that. 

On top of that, the Perilous Lands were still a source of beasts and malignant magics and diseases. Gaius theorized that there was some great wound in the middle of the Perilous Lands and that was the source of all the trouble of the past age, but there was no way of saying for certain without going there to see. Not even Morgana’s powers were strong enough to dream of it.

Arthur shook himself. None of that was the material point right now. The material point was that he needed the sword, so the question of whether he was ready could not matter as much as it felt like it should. He could not worry about whether the man would be disappointed in him, or if Arthur had somehow been wrong all those years ago when he felt the sudden jolt of certainty that the sword and magic and man were for him. He could not fear. 

Forcing a deep breath to the very bottom of his lungs, he reached out and grasped the hilt and drew the sword cleanly and smoothly out of the stone. 

There was no great burst of energy, or magic, or anything else. There was no sudden shift in the world. 

There was the sharp gleam of sunlight on metal, the weight of a perfectly balanced blade in his hand, and birdsong. 

And a quiet sigh. Arthur’s gaze had been fixed on the man from the instant the tip of the blade cleared the stone, and he saw the lift of the man’s bare shoulder, the flex of his fingers. The flutter of his lashes as he opened his eyes in who-knew-how-many years. Decades, at least. More than a century, perhaps. Arthur couldn’t breathe. 

The druid pushed himself away from the stone with all the sleepy ease of someone waking from an afternoon nap, blinking and stretching and looking about himself in mild bemusement. His eyes caught on Arthur’s legs, and slowly rose over the naked sword and Arthur’s chest to come to rest on his face. Arthur couldn’t breathe. 

“Oh,” the druid said softly. His eyes were blue as rivers, as robin eggs, and wide as the sky. His smile was slow and total and consumed his whole face. “You’re here.” 

Arthur shifted on his feet, overjoyed and overwhelmed and painfully awkward with it. “I’m Arthur,” he said helplessly. “Pendragon.” The people he led were insisting he use his father’s name now, so he did, but it still didn’t feel natural. 

“Arthur,” the druid repeated, smile growing even wider, somehow. He stood up, and Arthur found they were exactly of a height with one another. “My name is Merlin.” 

“Merlin,” Arthur repeated in turn, amazed to have a name to call the sleeping man after all these years, and stricken to never have thought that he would have one. It suited him, though. 

Merlin was still looking at him, unabashedly fascinated and clearly more than thrilled. His eyes were wet even with the smile threatening to split his cheeks, and when the tears escaped, he wiped at them with the backs of his hands and kept smiling even then. “Oh, stop, no,” he scolded himself, laughing a little. “I’ve cried enough, this isn’t—Oh, no. Is this how it feels, to be in the world properly? To belong? Oh, I hope this is how you’ve always felt. This is wonderful.” 

Arthur, flummoxed by that but still too excited to do anything about it, circled back to what Merlin had said first. “Cried enough?” he asked, concerned. 

“Oh, just—” Merlin said, wiping his face one last time, that smile still shining through. “When I was first alive—or, well, before I slept, I suppose—I felt… out of joint. That I didn’t yet belong, because something too important to even name was missing. And so I came here, and slept…” For the first time, Merlin looked around at their surroundings, taking in the new spring growth, the riot of life which lay so sparse across the rest of the land. “I dreamt of you,” he said at length, and it was clear he meant Arthur even though he was tracing the progress of a squirrel from tree branch to tree branch overhead. “And that was a relief and a joy. But how long…?” He looked at Arthur again, brow crimped a bit, and Arthur saw again his youth.

It made him think of the boys who came from distant farms on the strength of a beautiful rumor, wanting to be knights so that they might help Arthur shape the land into something free and good. It didn’t cross his mind to lie, but he hoped with a feeling like a claw in his throat that the truth wouldn’t damage Merlin.

“Since before the time of my great-grandfathers,” he said. “No one knows for certain how long. You’re a myth, really.” He restrained himself from rushing out all the feelings that had consumed him since his eighth year, the certainties and decisions that had led him to this moment. It was not the time.

Merlin’s smile dimmed somewhat as he took this in. “That is a very long while.” He was silent for a few heartbeats. “I’m glad I slept.” The smile hitched itself halfway back up. “Being awake for all that time without you would have been terrible.” 

Arthur lost the fight against his better judgment. “From the very first time I saw you, I was certain that you were—that we would—that there was something binding us together.” There was no helping how grand and romantic it sounded, and the nervous flipping of Arthur’s heart wasn’t helping anything. He hoped he wasn’t blushing too hard. 

The smile returned in full force, and Arthur found himself smiling in return. There had always been a part of him, he realized, that doubted, or at the very least felt that it should doubt, the feelings that had been with him for so long. But pulling the sword and speaking to Merlin this way had finally allowed him to lay that part of himself down for good. He didn’t just believe: he was certain.  

“Do you want,” Arthur began, feeling like his heart was trying to leap out of his mouth. “Do you want to come with me? To meet the others? We have a great deal to do.” 

“Yes,” Merlin said, stepping away from the stone, and the spot bare of grass where he had slept the long ages away. He didn’t take his eyes off Arthur, and they were shining with joy. “I want to go with you.”

Chapter Text

The dozen knights Arthur had brought with him were amazed to see him walking back out of the Forest Sauvage with an unfamiliar druid beside him. They were ranged throughout the central yard, running desultory drills or just lazing about talking. But they all jumped up at the sight of Arthur, and the sword, and Merlin. He had told them what he hoped would happen, and Kay would have said more while Arthur was gone—indeed, Kay looked gobsmacked—but the reality was surely much stranger. 

“My lord?” Lancelot called uncertainly. 

“Men,” Arthur said, and gestured proudly to the figure beside him. “This is Merlin.” 

A little silence met this, until Kay burst out with, “So you were bloody right all this time!?” 

Arthur really couldn’t help the little jab of smugness he felt. Kay used to make no end of fun of him for what he said about the sleeping druid—Merlin—and it was nice as anything to be vindicated. “I was right.” 

“And… the sword,” Leon said, ever practical. 

Attention diverted from childhood arguments, Arthur looked down at the blade, which, despite being the thing they had ostensibly made the journey for, seemed much less important. He lifted it and held it across his palms. There were runes carved in gold along the blade, and he knew how to read them now. Take me up. “I hope it can do everything Morgana says it will need to.”

“It will,” Merlin said, and they all turned to face him. He was still smiling broadly, brilliantly really, even if it was at odds with his serious words. “It’s a thing like me, but much older. A thing made of magic, to help the world when it is needed.” 

Arthur regarded the sword anew, suddenly wary. He had pulled it from the stone and immediately focused on Merlin as he woke and spoke and smiled, but if what Merlin said was true, the sword he was holding was an ancient artifact of immense power. 

“Well!” Gwaine declared, clapping his hands together and stepping forward. “An unmitigated success, is what this sounds like! Kay, my good man, do you lay any good mead by for thirsty travelers? I do not think we will leave until tomorrow, and I have a powerful thirst to quench.” 

There was no reasonable argument against mead, since they did indeed plan to stay the night, and Kay led the way into the manor, soundly ignoring Galahad’s mutter that Arthur should go first because he was the king.

***

The soil around the manor was relatively fertile, unlike the land further north which struggled to bring a harvest each year, and the forest provided game, so there was food aplenty for everyone. And Arthur and the knights had brought some rarer treats from Tintagel, and shared them out eagerly. 

The hall was as dear and familiar to Arthur as the rest of the manor, though sitting at the high table, when he and Kay had always been relegated to one of the low tables when they were boys, made the space seem larger than it had before. He sat between Kay and Merlin, with Gareth on Kay’s other side and Gwaine on Merlin’s. Arthur tried to pay attention to Kay and the conversation about the estate and how things had been going since Arthur’s last visit, but his mind and his eye were drawn continually back to Merlin. Merlin, who, even with Gwaine engaging him in conversation, always seemed to know when Arthur was looking at him, and returned his looks, and smiles. It made Arthur feel meltingly warm, and in the end, he gave up on listening to Kay and turned to Merlin properly. Merlin turned to face him as well, face open and anticipatory and glad. 

He found his throat clogged with questions as soon as he opened his mouth. Now that Merlin was, here, awake, there was no end to the things Arthur wanted to know about him. But what to ask first? 

“Have you ever eaten a date?”

Merlin shook his head, and Arthur smiled at the chance to show Merlin something new. He suspected that Merlin, with his magic and strangeness and ancient origins, was going to be showing Arthur a lot of novel things in the quite near future, and he was happy to have the chance to preemptively even the scales a little. 

He reached over and snagged the bowl from in front of Kay, ignoring his aggrieved cry, and held it out for Merlin to hesitatingly select one of the little fruits. He nodded encouragingly when Merlin gave him an uncertain look, and watched him raise it to his lips and take a small bite. His eyes went wider and wider as he chewed, until he declared in joyful amazement, “It’s good!” 

Arthur grinned so widely he thought he might never stop. “What about a plum?” 

Merlin, who had just shoved the whole date in his mouth, looked at him goggle-eyed. “There’s more?” he demanded. 

Many fruits and other foods were novel to Merlin, but he absolutely knew his way around mead. When he’d exclaimed his way through half the vegetable matter and a good portion of the meat on the table, Gwaine plunked a tankard down in front of him, calling, “See how you get along with some of this!” Arthur had been about to protest, intent on protecting Merlin from Gwaine’s rather uncouth manner of friend-making, when Merlin had plucked up the tankard, sniffed it, said, “Oh, yes of course,” and swigged the whole thing down in three-four-five long swallows. He thunked it back down on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s very fine,” he said appreciatively, at which Gwaine whooped and gave him another. Merlin also quickly drained that one.

“Your man’s got a belly in him!” he cheered to Arthur, leaning around the grinning Merlin. “He’ll do us proud, alright!” 

Arthur didn’t know what to feel. He was still beyond thrilled to have Merlin awake. Watching him try so many foods he’d never had before had been a rare joy. Watching him practically inhale the really-quite-strong mead was something else again, and it didn’t sit wholly comfortably alongside Arthur’s lifelong image of Merlin as serene and almost holy. This laughing, drinking, vivacious man was not serene. 

But he was amusing and captivating and giddily alive, and that, Arthur decided as the evening went on, was far better. Merlin didn’t talk very much, but he listened with a wide-eyed attentiveness, following the conversation with the kind of focus Arthur generally only used when hunting elusive game in winter. He did sing a couple of times though, lovely, strange songs that no one had ever heard before. Perhaps some druids still knew them somewhere. Arthur hoped so. 

But best of all, every time Arthur looked at Merlin for more than a couple of seconds at a stretch—which was many times—Merlin would glance back at him too, and smile at him. And that warmed Arthur better than the mead. 

***

Dinner went late, as such things are wont to do, and the night was nearing its darkest hour as the knights stumbled off to their accommodations and Kay told them all good night, and that he did not envy their hungover hours on horseback on the morrow. Arthur led Merlin from the hall, not weaving too badly as the mead steered his feet, but they were both still laughing at Leon’s last story about the twin knights and the twin horses and the three pigs, so their progress was meandering. 

Arthur had grown up in the manor, had known no other home until he set out into the world at sixteen, had run along these halls at midnight more often than even Kay knew, and yet tipsily walking them in moonlight with Merlin made them new somehow. 

“I want to show you my room,” he announced, aware, in some part of his mind, of how that sounded. But his dominant, drunken mind only cared about seeing Merlin, alive and awake, in the same space as where Arthur had spent so long dreaming of this very eventuality. Would Merlin being there make it strange, too? Or would it help Arthur reconcile that this was actually real? 

“Alright,” Merlin said happily, and Arthur took his hand—for this was logical and fine for him to do—and led the way along a hallway and up some stairs and along another hallway until he came to the narrow door that opened to his bedroom. It was the same one he’d slept in as a boy, with a narrow bed under the window and a battered old wardrobe and a rusty suit of armor in the corner and some boxes the steward put there once and forgot. His panniers sat on the floor by the bed, the sleeve of a spare tunic trailing out like a mountain stream. 

This had been his room each time he came back to visit, too, at first as a sort of knight errant, minus a knighthood, and now as… a lord, through his claim by conquest of Tintagel? A prince, by his father’s bloodline? Or would he always be the boy called Wart when he came back here? Even now, with his druid awake and his sword at his hip and his destiny stretching away in front of him? 

“This is your room?” Merlin said from over Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur startled, realizing he’d got lost in thought when he opened the door. Got rather maudlin, in fact. 

“Yes,” he said quickly, stepping inside and out of the way so that Merlin could follow him in. 

Merlin being in his room did make it strange, but it also made it real. Was this really the same day as the one that had started with Arthur riding into the estate with his dozen men—knights—and trying to hide his nerves as he told Kay that he needed to see the druid? Wake the druid? He still wasn’t certain he deserved this. He hadn’t united Albion, or fixed whatever was wrong with magic, or any of the other things he had told himself he would do before waking Merlin. But he couldn’t bring himself to regret it either. Merlin, in the moonlight, looking curiously around his childhood room, seemed right in a way he couldn’t articulate, especially not tipsy as he was. 

But, tipsy as he was, he was going to try. “Merlin,” he said, and Merlin turned and looked at him, all smiling and happy. “I’m, well,” Arthur fumbled, wishing he had learned to speak well instead of learning swordplay. “I’m really—” 

Merlin saved him by stepping forward and lifting his hands to hold Arthur’s jaw. A sizzling shock went out from the points of contact, down Arthur’s back and down his arms and legs. Merlin leaned in and all of Arthur’s blood rushed with a question—Was—was he—

All he did was lean their foreheads together, and Arthur’s pulse settled back down again, although his skin still prickled with proximity, with contact. 

“You’re better than I dreamed you’d be, Arthur,” he said, and Arthur understood, suddenly and entirely, all those fools in tales who went haring off on some stupid doomed quest at one idle word from their paramours. Merlin was half in moonlight, half in shadow, one eye silver, one eye evening, and so close to Arthur that he couldn’t look into both at once. He had never been so close to another person. He had never wanted to be closer still, the way he did now. “I know all the prophecies and how great they’re going to say we are, but I’m just grateful that you’re here. I’m so grateful,” he whispered. 

Arthur knew that there were things he had to say—important things, desperately important, about how Cenred had enslaved a dragon and they needed to free it and defeat him, and did Merlin have any idea how to fix what was wrong with magic, and how could he have such faith in Arthur when he didn’t even know him yet. 

But he could think of no harm it could do to stand in the moonlight a little while longer. They would be able to take on anything the world threw at them now that they were together, and the destiny that had always been so opaque to Arthur now shone in welcome.

Chapter Text

Their defeat of Cenred and freeing of the Great Dragon Kilgharrah came simultaneously two months after Merlin woke. The organization of aid and alliances afterwards took a further half year, but it was well worth it to have the north at peace. 

Arthur got to watch as Merlin made a home in Tintagel. He was an immediate favorite of Morgana and Guinevere; made jocular, but still sincere, friends with all of the knights; and was pretty much adopted by Gaius, to his evident pleasure, and confusion. 

They were all intensely busy, rarely all together, but Arthur was the happiest he had ever been.

***

“I think people like me?” Merlin said, about a year after waking. He’d allowed his hair to grow into a mop of cowlicks and curls, and wore a set of new clothes the womenfolk had determinedly gifted him, made up of fine doeskin breeches, and a layered tunic of different shades of blue. He still used his green robe as a cloak of sorts though, pinned up at his shoulder by a bronze pin shaped like an oak leaf, so it only fell a bit past his waist. And he smiled more widely now, like he was getting comfortable with it, and it made Arthur warm every time he saw it. 

“Of course people like you, Merlin,” Arthur retorted, feigning a gruffness that made Merlin grin. 

In his day-to-day doings, Arthur did not try to seek Merlin out, however much he sometimes—well, pretty much always—wanted to. Merlin needed to have the space to make his own life here. The destiny they shared, the feelings Arthur was sometimes nearly sure were reciprocated, could not get in the way of Tintagel running smoothly, of the protection and service they owed their people. 

And it was alright, since sometimes they ended up alone together, after everyone retired from the evening meal, and they would sit together, and talk. They spoke of anything, for what mattered was the speaking, not the subject. Long spools of language traded back and forth, as Arthur was not accustomed to speaking with anyone else. He loved those nights, those conversations, because they strengthened the certainty that had lodged in the center of him now that Merlin was awake. 

He didn’t have a ready name for it, this deep, abiding glow tucked in around his heart. It was more than surety, more than faith. He didn’t think it was just destiny. Whatever it was, he knew Merlin felt it too. 

***

“I like it here,” Merlin said, two years after waking.

“It took you this long to ‘like’ it?” Arthur asked, deeply, shockingly hurt. 

“No!” Merlin replied, affronted. “I’ve always liked it here. But it was… passive? Somehow? I haven’t ever really belonged anywhere before, not in the village where I was born, and not with the druids who educated me. But now… I have the magical community here, and real friends, and… and you.” He turned rather damp, earnest eyes on Arthur, who immediately repented his offense. Of course Merlin hadn’t meant anything derogatory about the last two years. Arthur saw every day the difference Merlin made, the lives he touched, and how happy it made him. He had  become the leader of the burgeoning magical community, in cooperation with Morgana and the local druids, and begun to train with Gaius as a healer, along with another youth named Edwin. Arthur sometimes saw the three of them, often plus Morgana, with their heads bowed in earnest conference, and knew they were discussing the problem with magic they still had not identified.

“I…” Arthur rarely struggled to talk to Merlin, but he struggled now. They still had those winding, reassuring conversations, but they had lost some of that urgent fervency that had characterized their early days together. As Merlin got used to society, and Arthur got used to Merlin, they had become, ironically, shyer of each other. But this was important, so he made himself say it even though it made his heart pound. “I’m happier too. With you here.” His face filled with dull heat, and he found himself shuffling his feet on the floor, that long-since defeated boyhood habit making a resurgence in the wake of his discomfort. He stopped as soon as he realized it, but still couldn’t bring himself to do more than glance sidelong at Merlin.

But Merlin was beaming, all crinkled up eyes and dimpled cheeks and happy bouncing on his toes. “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m…” He appeared to be reaching for words he didn’t have, not that that dampened his mood. “I’m happy that you’re happy. You make me happy.” And then it was both of them blushing, and Arthur’s heart was flopping around like a fish on a line. He couldn’t bring himself to look Merlin in the eye for two days after that, but the warmth in his chest lasted far longer.

***

“There’s something wrong with magic,” Merlin said, three years after waking. 

Arthur blinked up at him. He’d been sitting on the ground by the archery range, meditatively cleaning his chainmail, and had to haul his mind back from a long way off to understand what Merlin had said. “We’ve known that for a while,” he agreed. “Wait, do you know what it is?” 

Merlin twisted his lips and plopped down cross-legged in front of Arthur, plucking at the sleeve of the chainmail and fiddling with a couple of the rings. “Maybe? It took me ages to see it, I think because it’s been so constant for so long, since before I slept even, but I’ve noticed something since I started helping Gaius more.” 

“What do you mean?” Gaius was a font of all sorts of odd knowledge, but surely he would have mentioned something as momentous as this if he had known it? 

“It’s something I feel when I help with certain births.” 

What? “Everything you’ve said so far has been a complete non sequitur, in case you aren’t aware.” 

Merlin swatted his knee, and Arthur grinned and gestured for him to go on.

“I know this is only true for me, but I have a sense of all of the magic in the world, whether it’s in a tree or a charm or a potion or a person. And there have been several babies who I could tell would have a lot of magic—or a lot of potential for magic, anyway, but it’s complicated, it doesn’t matter—when they’re born, but as soon as they are born, that potential, that capacity, that light just… fades. Something is leaching their magic away.” 

Arthur had long since lost his grin. “Have you felt this happening to you at all?” 

“No.” Arthur felt guilty for the rush of relief that went through him. “But I’m different, Arthur, you know that. I don’t have magic, I’m of magic. I’m less like, say, Morgana and more like Excalibur.” As intensely as Arthur disliked that comparison, it did bring him some relief. “Whatever is doing this, it can’t take my self away. But it is robbing others of their potential, and it’s painful and unjust. We have to do something about it.” 

They had known for a long time that there was something amiss with the magic of Albion. Gaius and Morgana had floated many theories over the years, but none of them provided any actual solutions. This new observation of Merlin’s provided a clue that might finally lead them to a resolution. 

“Can you tell anything about what might be doing this?” Arthur asked. 

Merlin shook his head regretfully. “Not really. But I feel like it’s related to the Perilous Lands somehow. That’s where all the monsters and beasts come from, and people from the borderlands up there say that the blight and desert are spreading year to year.” 

“So we go north,” Arthur said decisively, relieved to have some action to take, at last. “I’ll tell the knights to prepare. Do you think Gaius and Morgana and Edwin and some of the druids should come too? What about—”

“I don’t think they’d be able to help,” Merlin interrupted. 

“Then…?” Arthur said uncertainly. 

“You and I should go together. Alone. And I think we should go soon.” 

Arthur felt his back straighten under this new responsibility. Soberly, he nodded, and Merlin nodded back, wide-eyed and uncharacteristically serious.

***

The knights, predictably, raised a fuss when they learned they wouldn’t be going to the Perilous Lands with Arthur and Merlin, and Gaius raised his eyebrow portentously, but Morgana held her tongue and met Arthur’s gaze evenly when he sought her out in the crowded hall. Her slight nod was enough for him to call for silence, and, eventually, he got it. 

“Merlin has said that he and I will be able to handle this problem on our own,” he called sternly. “If you trust him, then be assured. The same arrangements shall stand here as at any other time when I am away from Tintagel. Sir Leon, you shall lead the knights in their duties. Gaius and Morgana shall jointly lead the council. If there are no further concerns, Merlin and I shall depart forthwith.” 

Some of the knights still grumbled, but more out of grumpiness over missing the adventure than real insubordination, and Arthur was satisfied. Preparations were made quickly, and he and Merlin set out at dawn the following day. 

The air was fresh and cool on his cheeks and in his hair, and the sun was bright on Merlin’s smile, and despite the seriousness of what they had set out to do, Arthur couldn’t help the swell of giddy excitement in his breast. It was exciting, to have Merlin to himself, to be on the cusp of something grand, to feel that the destiny he had had such an indelible sense of for almost two-thirds of his life was finally coming to some fruition. He couldn’t help but grin at the world. 

But the land grew less and less wholesome the further north they traveled, and the grin faded. Arthur thought again of the reports that the Perilous Lands were spreading. He should have investigated the issue much sooner, and he prickled with guilt at having shirked his responsibility. Merlin grew more somber too, and eventually even the welcomes they found in the villages they passed through weren’t enough to rouse him to a real smile. They camped, most nights, rather than stressing the resources of these scant settlements, and in the night, across the fire from each other, they talked. 

“The earth feels like it’s… nauseated,” Merlin said one night, frowning, his hand pressed hard into the dirt where he sat. 

“What do you mean?” Arthur asked, peering nervously at the ground. 

“I mean—” Merlin broke off with a huff, but Arthur knew he was more frustrated with his inability to explain than with Arthur for asking. “I mean, when you’re ill but you still have to get up and do things, there’s like… a kernel of awfulness in the middle of you that kind of drags everything around it into it, right? It’s like that, but huge. The size of all the land.” 

Arthur found this metaphor slightly suspect, but he knew to trust Merlin’s opinions about such things, and he also knew that there weren’t always easy explanations for magical matters. He’d grown used to it, over the years, and took it in stride now. 

“But we are going in the right direction? Do you have a sense of what we’ll have to do?” 

“We’re definitely going the right way,” Merlin said readily. “As for what we’ll have to do… No, not at all.” 

***

It took a week of travel to reach the Perilous Lands. 

They stood on a low hill and looked out over the wasteland, seeing for themselves what people meant when they said the Lands were spreading. All of the vegetation within a quarter-mile of the border was ailing and wilted, and the border itself was marked by fallen trees that hadn’t been down long enough to rot away. Further in was bare, dun-brown dirt, broken only by boulders and ponds of unhealthy-looking copper-colored water. There were few birds in the trees around them, and Arthur saw no signs of any other wildlife. This was a blight the size of a kingdom, a problem several orders of magnitude larger than bandits or serkets. It made his heart throb sickly.

“Good thing we’re going to fix it,” Merlin declared.  “This will be blooming by tomorrow.” 

Arthur aimed a wobbly but grateful smile at him. For a moment, upon seeing the scale of the problem, he had doubted that anything they could do would ever be enough. But even if Arthur was just a man like any man, Merlin was so much more. Even if all Arthur could do was stand by while Merlin solved everything, he would do it wholeheartedly. He was always sure of Merlin. 

So he firmed his smile to show that confidence, and said, “I know we will. Do we want to cross over now, or camp the night and start in the morning?” 

“Someone’s heritage is going to his head,” Merlin laughed and kicked at Arthur’s ankle. “I can’t say what we want to do, Your Majesty, but I want to go now. Soonest begun is soonest done, as Gaius is always saying.” 

Arthur laughed too, and felt lighter for it. “Fine. I also want to start now. But I would hate to bring the horses into that place. Do you mind walking? It will take longer.” 

“I know how walking works, Arthur. But, yes, I agree. The horses wouldn’t be happy in there.” 

Thus agreed, they backtracked to a stream they had passed a little while before and tied the horses in the area with the best grazing—though none of it was very good—and filled their waterskins and reorganized their packs to be more easily carried before setting off. 

Within an hour, they had crossed that line where the trees died and were picking their ways over the maze of fallen trunks and upthrust branches. As if even in death, the trees sought the sky. The air was hot and harsh on Arthur’s skin, and the straps of the pack seemed to dig into his shoulders even through the layers of his tunic and cloak. They were following no compass or map except Merlin’s strengthening feeling of wrongness, and part of Arthur thought he should be worried about getting lost or of running out of supplies before they arrived. 

But he wasn’t. He was with Merlin. 

They walked all through the day, breaking only briefly to eat and remove the stone that had somehow gotten into Arthur’s boot. “Are the rocks magical here?” he complained jokingly, shaking his boot upside down. 

“You never know what’s magical,” Merlin replied, which was a strange answer and left Arthur confused and tongue-tied. 

By the time the day was waning, they had just spied a tall, narrow prominence on the horizon. “It’s a tower,” Merlin announced, magically enhancing his vision so that his eyes glowed gold. “It’s in exactly the direction I’ve been sensing all this while.” 

“So that’s where we should go tomorrow,” Arthur surmised. 

“Right,” Merlin agreed as his eyes faded back to blue. Arthur nodded, about to ask him to make the fire while he got food out, when Merlin grimaced and pressed two fingers to his temple. 

“Are you alright?” Arthur asked. Merlin was not demonstrative about illness or pain, did none of the moaning and carrying on some men performed for attention or leniency in training. If Merlin was showing discomfort, he meant it. 

“Yes,” said Merlin, though he sounded distracted. “For a second, I felt…” But he shook his head. “It’s fine,” he told Arthur’s worried frown. “I understand a bit better now. It’s fine.” 

This didn’t really make Arthur feel better, but he also couldn’t think of a tactful way to press for more when Merlin seemed so reticent. 

The camp they made was still and quiet as night fell, save for the occasional distant roar of some beasts Arthur thought might be wyverns. 

“I’ve asked them to stay away,” Merlin said when he saw Arthur fingering Excalibur’s hilt in unconscious wariness. “We’re alright, Arthur.” 

Arthur let out a long breath. “Thank you,” he said. 

They watched the fire together for a while, taking comfort from the snap and pop of burning wood, hypnotized by the sparks rising. 

“Do you think this is it?” Merlin asked softly, not taking his gaze from the flames. It made his eyes seem golden again, like when he did magic, and it made Arthur remember his strange grimace when he’d done that spell earlier. 

“Do I think what is it?” he asked distractedly. 

“Whatever the matter is here. Do you think solving it is the reason for… us being us?” 

“I…” He trailed off, realizing he had no real idea how to answer. He had had his share of doubts about the whole destiny thing, but far less once Merlin woke up and affirmed them all. He’d never really got around to wondering about a why. It was enough, for him, that they were. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s why the world, I guess, made us, but… I think we’re still us for, you know, us.” His face burned, ashamed of his clumsy tongue yet again making a mockery of his intentions. He meant to reassure Merlin that even if this was the culmination of their destiny, he was still happy that he was himself, and Merlin was Merlin, and they were alive together in the world. Even moreso if they solved whatever the problem was and were able to live as just themselves for the rest of their lives. Hell, maybe Arthur would finally find the nerve to say something about the way Merlin made his heart squeeze and swoop whenever he smiled in that particular way—

“I hope that’s true,” Merlin said softly, apparently unfazed by Arthur’s bumbling. “I’ve been so happy since you woke me up, but… I’m excited to see what it’s like to live just for myself. Does that make me selfish?” Arthur peeked up at him and found him smiling that smile and his heart swooped dangerously and there was nothing there to provide a distraction— 

“No,” he said roughly. “I don’t think so.” 

Merlin just smiled more widely still. “Good. I don’t think I would change my mind even if you said it was.” 

***

The following morning found them both awake with the dawn. Merlin had set wards so they hadn’t needed to keep watch, but nothing about the Perilous Lands lent itself to restful sleep. The wyverns hadn’t ever stopped their screeching, and there were closer sounds, rustles and creaks and croaks that niggled at Arthur’s awareness all night. Merlin didn’t look any better than Arthur felt, and they set off after a quick breakfast with scant conversation. 

The tower they had picked out on the horizon grew larger bit by bit over the course of the morning. The terrain was treacherous and they saved one another from unfortunate tumbles more than once. The wyverns made themselves known as well, daring to circle in closer and closer, though whatever Merlin had said or done kept them from outright attacking, for which Arthur was grateful. 

The castle, when they came to it, was ringed in walled, maze-like courtyards into which Merlin cast a little magic light to guide them. The walls were crumbling and covered in sinewy brown vines that made Arthur shudder when his hand brushed one by accident. He was beyond glad to pass inside.

The interior was not in better shape, and the cold silence felt somehow unnatural. “What do you feel?” he asked Merlin, whispering for no good reason. 

Merlin was looking at the ceiling, his fingers digging into the cloth of his old robe and new tunic in an apparently unconscious show of pain. “Up,” he said. “Let’s find the stairs.” 

Arthur tightened his grip on Excalibur and led the way. 

The turret stairs were narrow and crumbling, covered in moss and cobwebs and the detritus of centuries, but they supported his and Merlin’s weight as they climbed. Arthur’s heart was rabbiting with trepidation and anxiety, knocking his ribs so hard that he thought the sound of it must echo on ahead. Merlin was a silent presence at his heels, his little floating light making their shadows flicker and dance on the walls. 

The door at the top was unassuming and plain and heavy, just as laden with dust and cobwebs as everything else, but it opened uncomplainingly when Arthur pressed his palm to the wood. A long, dim hall with a rather low ceiling met them, empty save for a high-backed chair set halfway down beside the only window, facing away from them. 

Merlin made a small whimper of sound and Arthur turned and found him pressing the heels of his hands to either side of his head, eyes screwed shut. 

“Merlin?” he asked urgently. 

“There’s so much pain here,” he whispered. 

Some of the fear eased its grip on Arthur’s throat, but not all of it. “Do you need to go back downstairs?” 

“No, I mustn’t,” Merlin said, opening his eyes with evident effort. “We have to fix this.” 

Arthur hesitated, hating to do anything that would cause Merlin pain, but in the end knowing the words to be true. Whatever was wrong here would definitely need Merlin’s help to resolve. So, reluctantly, Arthur stepped through the door, Merlin following. But as soon as they were both inside, he reached and took one of Merlin’s hands in his own, and gripped it firmly. Merlin clung back, and Arthur felt, through his boney hand, the way whatever this pain was was making him shake. 

The little light followed them in, but rather than hovering over their heads as it had been doing, it began a slow and rather ominous drift towards the chair by the window. Merlin, inexorable as wind and sunlight, followed, and Arthur went with him, even though his throat ached with the tension of fear. 

The man in the throne—for it was a throne, that much was clear now—surpassed anciency. His skin was grey, his nails long and yellow, his eyes white and rheumy. He wore a crown and fur-lined cloak and gem-studded chain across his fine blue tunic, but over all of that lay layers and layers and layers of cobweb and dust. Yet his chest moved, and the shreds of cobweb in front of his lips drifted with the soft inhale and exhale of breath. He lived. Arthur couldn’t fathom how this was possible. 

“You’ve finally come.” The words were a mere suggestion of sound, less than the flap of a butterfly’s wing. 

Merlin stepped forward, past Arthur, and Arthur reflexively clutched just a bit tighter to his hand. And when he looked at him, it was to see there were tears coursing freely down his face. Arthur’s heart lurched in uncertain fear. 

“It’s you,” Merlin said softly, to the king. “You’re the source of the pain and the problem.” 

“Yes…” the king sighed, softer than a breeze over stone. 

Arthur didn’t understand enough about magic to know what happened next: Merlin went entirely too still for a long, long moment, even his pulse seeming to stop in the hand that slipped out of Arthur’s grip, even his tears seeming to freeze; and the king sucked in a deep, rattling breath that nearly brought some of the cobwebs in with it. 

Owl-like, Arthur turned his head between them, unaccountably terrified. Merlin was powerful, surely too powerful to be threatened by an old man in a chair. But the old man in the chair was the source of the wasting that had ruined the Perilous Lands and spawned all the beasts and sucked the newborns dry of their magic. If Merlin was life, the old king was the slow, wearing drag of death, and even the fiercest life knew death eventually.

But before he could become truly alarmed, Merlin returned to normal, and the ancient in the chair subsided. 

“He wanted so badly to save you,” Merlin whispered. There were tears on his cheeks again when he looked over at Arthur. “Arthur.” He sounded utterly heartbroken, and the alarm Arthur had avoided before assailed him now. 

He stepped quickly to stand beside Merlin, wanting to help, in whatever way he could. The hand not holding Excalibur hovered uselessly over Merlin’s shoulder, wanting to give comfort, not knowing how. 

“He was hurt,” Merlin said, voice wobbling dangerously. “In battle, in defense of his people. And his… his companion couldn’t stand to see him die, and… he tied his king’s life to that of the land. He hasn’t been able to die over all these centuries because the vitality of the world sustains him.” 

“So, the Perilous Lands…” 

“Are drained of that force. It will take eons, but the whole world will look like them someday if he is allowed to continue as he has.” 

Arthur looked upon the ancient king with new horror and new pity mingled in his heart. The king, even with cataracts blinding his eyes, was looking straight back at him, and his expression was sorrier than any Arthur had ever seen. 

“He took my sword from me,” he said, a whispering rasp. “The only weapon in the world that might break the spell and end my life. The very sword you bear, young king.” 

Shocked, Arthur looked at Excalibur. The blade gleamed in the wan light from the window. Cast me away, the old runes said. They had never wondered overmuch about how Excalibur came to stand in the stone, so long ago that even Merlin thought of it more as a natural phenomenon than an artifact with a history. But now the unasked question had an answer, and that answer gave a very clear, very painful solution to the problem they had come here to solve. 

“Return it to me,” the king commanded. 

Merlin caught his breath, evidently realizing the same thing Arthur had. “Arthur,” he whispered. “We can’t.” 

“We have to,” he replied in the same low volume. “He may not mean to, but he’s killing all of Albion. All of the world!” 

“No, I know, but… the spell on him is meant to save him from a mortal wound. Wouldn’t inflicting another just make the spell worse? I mean, make it draw more power out of the land and the people?” 

“I don’t know…” Magic was thoroughly Merlin’s domain, and his uncertainty made Arthur nervous. “Can’t you tell, somehow? Like with the other things?” He’d seen Merlin handle magical objects to find out what they did, ‘reading’ the spells on them, but perhaps that wouldn’t work for a person. 

Merlin looked doubtful for a moment, but then dipped his head in acquiescence and stepped up to the throne. Arthur only had a moment to regret his suggestion before Merlin reached out and put his hand on top of the ancient king’s. Instantly, his head fell back, his eyes flared gold, and he screamed such a gut-wrenching scream that Arthur lurched forward and seized him by the shoulder and yanked him away. Merlin staggered a few steps and collapsed, and Arthur, clumsy from trying to keep Excalibur out of the way, barely managed to support him enough that he didn’t hit his head on the floor. 

“Merlin!” he shouted, unable to hear past his pulse thundering in his ears, unable to see anything beyond Merlin’s bone-pale face and fluttering eyelids. “Merlin!” 

“Mughh,” Merlin groaned, batting at Arthur’s arm, weak, but intentional and aware. “‘M alright. I’m alright.” 

“You are not!” Arthur cried, furious in his relief and fear. “Merlin, what was that? What did he do to you?” 

“Wasn’t him,” Merlin explained muzzily, grappling his way up Arthur’s side until he was sitting up, holding his head in one hand with his eyes pinched shut. “Was the spell. But I understand now. I was right, about a second mortal wound. The spell would just pull everything out of the land that much faster.” 

Arthur’s heart was still racing, but the fact that Merlin was moving around and talking went a long way toward reassuring him. He was able to focus at least a small part of his mind on the matter of the spell. “So… what do we do?” 

When Merlin opened his eyes, they were blue again, and resigned. “You’re not going to like it.” 

“What,” Arthur asked flatly, unwillingly. 

“If I make myself the, the source of life and magic, instead of the land itself, I’ll—”

“No.” 

“Arthur—”

“No! Are you mad? I’m not letting you do that again! Two seconds of touching him had you screaming!” His voice broke a little and he gathered himself before repeating, “No!” 

“Arthur!” Arthur crossed his arms and tried to put steel in his gaze, the way he did when he had argued Annis into the treaty that had brought the entire west to peace. Merlin merely rolled his eyes. “It won’t be that bad,” he said. 

“How do you know?” 

“Because I understand it better now. It’s not… pleasant, but I’ll have better control of what I let it take. Once I am the spell’s only source, you can use the sword to… well, end it.” He ducked his head, seeming to recall that they were speaking of ending a man’s life, and that that man was sitting right there listening to them. Even if this was what he purported to want, it was not a comfortable feeling. 

And besides, Arthur’s fears were not allayed. Not in the least. “But if you are the source for the spell, won’t it just—just drain you to maintain his life? The way it has drained the land outside?” 

Something flickered over Merlin’s face before an expression of determination clamped down on it. “It will be fine.” 

“Merlin—” 

“It will be,” he said, and he sounded just as sincere as when he told children that their scraped knees would get better. His eyes were wide and intent on Arthur, blue as rivers, as robin eggs, and wide as the sky. “I promise. This is what I’m for, remember?” 

Arthur wanted to argue back, to disagree, to say that Merlin was for many things, and giving up his magic or his life to end an ancient curse did not even break the top ten, not as far as Arthur was concerned. 

But he knew that his own heart was only one heart, and that he was a king now, even if he kept refusing the crown his people pressed for him to wear. A king could not put his own heart above the wellbeing of those who relied on him. Even if letting Merlin risk himself made him feel like he was going to shrivel up and die, it ultimately wasn’t even a choice. It was a duty. 

And so he nodded, tight-lipped with unhappiness and fear, and Merlin nodded back. Together, they turned to face the ancient king. 

“My heart,” he said to Arthur, and Arthur’s fingers spasmed briefly around Excalibur’s hilt. And to Merlin, he said, “I’m sorry.” 

Arthur’s mouth climbed into his throat and swelled until he could hardly breathe. 

Merlin looked to him, and Arthur, instinctive, looked back. He couldn’t say a word, not with his heart in the way, but he tried to put all of his feelings into his eyes for Merlin to see, so that he would do whatever he had to do to keep the spell from killing him in its drive to save the ancient king. He tried to show how desperately he needed Merlin to survive this. 

Whether Merlin saw all of it or not, he nodded briefly and gave a slight smile. 

Then he turned back to face the ancient king, took a deep breath, and reached for his hand again. 

He didn’t scream this time, but his face crunched down into a horrible grimace, and sweat broke out across his brow. Arthur raised Excalibur, aiming it at the ancient king’s heart, but Merlin gasped out, “No, not yet. I’m not quite...” 

Sweat dripped cold down Arthur’s back and sides, filling his nose with the smell of fear. His muscles were aching and trembling with the effort of holding the blow at bay. He had no love of killing for its own sake—truly, he pitied the ancient king grievously—but this was what needed to be done for the good of all of Albion, and he’d be damned if he didn’t do it. 

Merlin made an involuntary sound of pain through gritted teeth, and Arthur nearly sobbed with the need to help him, to destroy the source of his suffering. “Nearly,” Merlin gasped, and Arthur saw that his eyes were turning gold again, and that the air around where his hand clasped the king’s was misting with fine golden particles, flowing from Merlin into the king. 

“Please, Merlin,” he whispered, not even knowing what he wanted. 

“I’m—almost—there—” he whimpered, tears that glowed gold sliding down his cheeks. His eyes blazed now, and the mist nearly obscured their joined hands. Fear was throbbing through Arthur’s body in a hot flood. What if Merlin was wrong? What if Merlin couldn’t actually control things as well as he thought he could? What if the price of resolution, the price of peace, the price of destiny, was Merlin’s life? How would Arthur be able to go on after that? How would he ever forgive himself? 

It was the ancient king who said, “Now.” 

It took Arthur a second to understand, and then another to firm his grip and thrust the blade home. 

It went in without resistance, as though the flesh and bone had become insubstantial over the long centuries of stolen life. The breath he released, though, was as weighty and relieved as a crumbling weir. His eyes opened wide for the first time, and they were blue and bright. The cobwebs sloughed away, revealing a body untouched by the ravages of the years, young and strong. It must be how he had looked when he was injured, when his companion had performed the spell intended to save him, which had doomed him instead. He smiled, face filling with such gratitude it was near to reverence. 

“Thank you,” he breathed, and closed his eyes. 

Between one moment and the next, his body transformed into grey stone. He was gone. It was over. 

Merlin moaned softly and slid to the floor, bent forward over his knees at the stone king’s feet. 

“Merlin!” Arthur yelled, releasing Excalibur’s hilt and rushing to kneel by Merlin’s side. “Merlin!”

He was shaking like a leaf, dark hair obscuring his face so all that Arthur could see were his shaking back and clenched fists. Then, as though some terrible force had grabbed him, he shook, his whole body quaking with it. 

And all around them, the tower, the very earth, shook with him. 

The stonework around them groaned, dust and grit raining from the ceiling, and Arthur threw himself across Merlin’s back in case any larger pieces fell. 

But they didn’t. The rumbling stilled, and silence filled the air as the dust slowly settled. 

Coughing, Arthur sat up and tried to blink his eyes clear, but all of his focus and fear was on Merlin. He tried to say his name, but his voice clogged in his throat. His hands moved aimlessly over Merlin’s prone back, terrified to find it still and cold, but needing to know, needing to see… 

“A’thur…?” Merlin rasped, and Arthur sagged in relief. 

“You’re alive.” It came out as a half-choked sob, and he delicately grasped Merlin’s shoulders and drew him upright. Merlin seemed dazed, and sat slackly, so that Arthur couldn’t let him go for fear that he’d collapse again. His hair was full of little bits of debris, and his face and shoulders were covered in a fine layer of dust. It made him look too much like the king who had become stone, but there was a fine tremor in his hands. “Merlin, you’re alive,” he repeated, because this was a profound relief to say aloud, and it helped loosen the fear that had gripped him so hard. 

“Course I am.” He grinned shakily. “I’m for you.” 

Arthur’s heart squeezed. “I—I thought we could live for ourselves now that we’ve…” 

“Right.” He seemed steadier already, and he reached to gently lay his hands on Arthur’s shoulders. “We can do what we want. And I want to be yours.” 

“Merlin…” He had been through too much that day to rally any sort of coherent response. The fear of losing Merlin still clung to him, and the death of the ancient king still reverberated through him like a struck bell. He couldn’t believe it was over yet. But he couldn’t remember if there was a reason not to tell Merlin that he felt the same. 

So, carefully, he placed his hands against Merlin’s jaw and leaned, slowly, forward to press his lips to his. Merlin made a helpless little noise and pressed in as well, and he was warm, and soft, and alive, and Arthur’s heart broke under all the joy of it. 

But he was inhaling dust off Merlin’s cheek, and tasting it in his own mouth, and feeling it trickle out of his hair down his neck, and they soon parted, coughing and laughing and smiling at each other til they were fit to burst. 

“I want to go home,” Merlin said, and Arthur loved that he called Tintagel ‘home’, loved that they got to return there together and live lives full of whatever they wanted. 

“Me too,” he said, and Merlin beamed. 

He had regained enough of his strength to stand with Arthur’s help, and said a resonant word that made all the grit and dirt shiver off them. The last of Arthur’s fear unclenched. He really was alright. 

They stood together and regarded the stone king, smiling softly with the sword through his heart. 

“I think I should leave it,” Arthur said, hoping it didn’t make him irresponsible. There were other swords for other fights, and Excalibur had always been meant for something grand. Now grandeur was done, and Excalibur could rest at last with its first master. 

“Yes,” Merlin agreed. 

They turned from the throne and retraced their steps out of the hall, down the turret stairs, and through the courtyard. 

But they stopped dead when the Perilous Lands came into view. 

When they had arrived to the tower, the land had been desolate, a dried crust of a plain without even the memory of life to animate it. 

Now it was green, verdant, overflowing with lush grass and wildflowers as far as the eye could see. 

“That’s what that was,” Merlin gasped, and stepped reverently forward into the greenery. 

“What what was?” Arthur demanded, following him. 

“The shaking,” Merlin said, still looking outward, as though drinking in the sight of so much life. “I was too confused and overwhelmed to understand, but for that moment, I was a conduit for the force of life returning here. It’s not healed yet, not nearly, but it will be, if it’s given time to rest.” 

Arthur looked out over the sea of waving grass, and knew, at last, that they had done it. “Good,” he said quietly. 

They stood together for a minute more, until Merlin broke out into a brilliant, ringing laugh. “Race you!” he shouted, and took off running down the hill. 

“Hey!” Arthur yelled, and careened after him, throwing his head back in a laugh of his own.