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He must remember that the man who stands beside him is not the one he remembers. Gwaine is never sure of what to say or do when he's with Merlin these days, like a boy on a first date who doesn't know what to do with his hands or what kinds of jokes to make. 'So, what did you do during the Black Death?' isn't a good question to ask and something like, 'Read any good books lately?' seems utterly inane. And according to both Arthur and Gwen, Merlin hardly remembers their lives in Camelot. So what, then, do they talk about?
For once, he opts for nothing. A rare pleasant day is taking shape around them: blue skies, puffy white clouds, comfortable temperatures. He's happy just standing there by his old– very old– friend and watching the mares cavorting in the pasture with their gangly new foals. It's idyllic. If he let himself, he could imagine that this is the whole of his life. Good weather, happy animals to watch, and a good friend at his side.
If only it wasn't for the rest of reality and the questions from his old life he desperately wants answers to and knows now will never get.
Beside him, Merlin laughs.
Gwaine looks over, studies him for a moment. He can see the young man he knew once, the hapless servant Merlin had pretended to be back in Camelot. Obviously. The face has barely changed despite the floppy hair, the neatly-trimmed beard, and a few lines around his eyes.
But those eyes– they are what has changed. Right now, they are clear and sparkle with delight in the sunshine as his gaze follows the horses. Sometimes, though, in darker hours, he has seen them cloud over and crack like old windows and he wonders what the weight of ages has done to his old friend.
He looks away again. He doesn't want to be caught staring. It has always felt like Merlin can see right through him, both then and now. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes to enjoy the sunshine and waits. Clouds pass over the sun and cast shadows over the land for a while, then the brightness returns.
Unexpectedly, Merlin asks, "Are you ever going to ask those questions?"
"What?" Gwaine jumps and nearly loses his balance.
"You have questions. You all do. But none of you wants to ask them because you think I'm going to fall apart if you ask them. I've been through a few things, and I'm not made of glass. I think Arthur put you on edge about me more than he should have."
"Maybe. He's concerned for you. For all of us, really, but especially you. He doesn't want to lose you again."
Merlin smiles, but his gaze goes distant. "He never lost me," he says faintly. "I lost him."
Gwaine winces. He keeps saying all the wrong things. "Stay with us, then. We'll try not to let him get lost again."
"Yeah," Merlin breathes, the sound of it nearly lost before it reaches Gwaine's ears. He goes still then, hardly seeming to breathe. Is his mind wandering away now, to places or times best forgotten? And will he come back from there without prompting? He'd left Merlin alone once before and never found out what came of it. He'd trusted Merlin then, but this cracked look had not been in the young Merlin's eyes, once upon a time.
"What was your favorite thing? From. . . " He trails off, unsure of how to say it.
It is a while before Merlin stirs again, drawing a sudden breath like a swimmer coming up from the depths. "From the past?" Merlin asks eventually, a faint smile on his lips.
"Yeah. Surely you traveled a bit. You had some time on your hands," he says a little too flippantly.
Merlin laughs, and for a moment it's like they're young again in Camelot. Gwaine smiles, and some of the tension slides away from his shoulders. "I did travel. Eventually. All over the place, though I was a bit limited. Only a little."
"By what?"
"I can't travel much over deep water. I need that connection to the earth, and running water disrupts it."
"Disrupts it how?"
"Did you know it used to take days to cross the channel?" Merlin asks. "I felt it the first time I stepped on the boat. I thought I was just nervous about being on a boat for the first time, tried to convince myself it was a bit of seasickness, but almost as soon as we were underway, I collapsed. I spent the rest of the voyage shivering in the hold, too sick to keep down water. I think they worried I might die, but . . . " Merlin shakes his head and gives a little laugh.
But you don't have to worry about death if you're immortal. Gwaine does not say this aloud. He knows, in the abstract, that Merlin is deathless, but saying it aloud is a different beast. That makes it real. He shivers. "Where did you go?"
Merlin shrugs. "I don't know. Wherever the wind took me. Everything was new to me then. Paris, maybe? They were all muddy little backwaters then. Baghdad was a jewel. I loved the sunlight. And Cairo, too." He frowns and rubs his temple. "Or maybe I'm mixing them up. I know I went to both, and stayed for a time in each place. It all melds together after a while, though the light," he smiles and taps his forehead. "The light stays up here. It's not so much the city I remember, it's the light. That's a little different everywhere you go. I had a little house overlooking the Huanghe. The Yellow River, I think you'd call it now. The light there was so soft. I could spend all morning watching shadows move along the walls. I'd have stayed longer, but there was a flood." He smiles wistfully and sighs.
"When, uh. . . When was that?"
"It was just before the first– no, the second plague. I came back to Europe with the plague. I felt like a harbinger of doom. Again. . . " he trails off, and his expression turns bleak. Like he's remembering the end of the world.
Was it the Black Death? If so, it must have felt like the end of the world.
"Tell me about something happy," Gwaine says abruptly. He doesn't want to go digging into the traumas that only the passage of decades can soften. "It couldn't all have been bad. Surely you had some fun."
"Fun? There was that." His head tilts, and a line appears between his eyes. "I came back to England for a while. The crossing wasn't so hard then. I can't remember who was on the throne then. Just that London had grown. It was so small when I left, and I came back to this busy place overflowing with people." Merlin looks away, a nostalgic look on his face. "It was colder then, too. Sometimes the Thames would freeze over, and if it stayed frozen long enough, people would go out on the ice and play games or set up market stalls. It was fun to go out there when you normally couldn't and forget your problems for a while. You could just go and be happy for a while. Enjoy the novelty of ice and feel like a child again."
"That sounds nice." Gwaine has never seen the Thames frozen over. He's never been ice skating. He doesn't know if a skating rink has been open in this country in this second lifetime of his. The government deemed them a waste of water and electricity and closed them all. To go out on a frozen river and play like a little kid for an afternoon sounds like heaven.
"It was," Merlin says softly.
The conversation dies then. They watch the horses, who have stopped running around and are grazing by the far fence. Sunshine still washes over the fields, though Gwaine thinks the clouds will return soon. The bright hours never last for long.
"You have something on your mind," Merlin says. It is a statement, not a question. "It's been there for a while, hasn't it? Since before I got here."
Gwaine feels like he's been punched in the stomach. Of course there's been something on his mind. Something that haunted him to his grave. Something neither Arthur nor Percival nor anyone else has asked him about, though in the dark hours of the morning he desperately wishes they would, if only so the truth of his ancient betrayal might stop weighing on him. He still remembers his last words when Percival found him, when it was too late to make amends.
'I failed.'
Merlin can do nothing about any of that, though.
"Arthur told us you don't remember very much about Camelot."
"Not really. Some things, now and then. It was a long time ago. Even my memory is faulty."
"Do you remember . . . us? I mean, like what we did together." Gwaine frowns and shakes his head. He's making it sound like they were a couple back then. Merlin is looking at him blankly. "I mean. I don't know. I'm not sure how to phrase it."
"I won't be angry at whatever it is, if that's what you're afraid of. After a long enough time, most emotions lose their edges."
"Most?"
"Most," Merlin says with a smile. He does not explain.
"Most. Right." Gwaine blows out a breath and gathers up the shreds of his courage. "Do you remember, back then, before that last battle with the Saxons?"
"Only dimly. In fragments. Why?"
He looks down and bites his lip. "I wonder a lot about those last days. My last days. God, it sounds so weird to say that. Those days before I died. I sound crazy."
"Madness is relative." Merlin says that so calmly, like he's stating that it's about to rain. Gwaine hazards a look up at him, but his eyes are clear, his gaze steady.
"Right." He laughs nervously. "The last time I saw you, back then, you'd asked me to come with you. You said you needed to find something, but the whole trip there you wouldn't say what it was. But you were scared. I'd never seen you so scared before. Even on the way to– well, maybe you don't remember Daelbeth or the Isle of the Blessed, but you weren't even scared then. But I followed you to a cave in the middle of the woods, and the whole way there you were terrified. Barely holding yourself together. And when we got there, to that cave, you said you didn't need me there anymore. That you had to go on alone. And I trusted you, so I left. But then, well, then I died and I never found out if you'd found what you were looking for. And I wonder– I wonder a lot about those last days, but I don't think I can ask you about all that. But did you find what you were looking for?"
Merlin fixes him with his gaze. It's almost a physical sensation, like he's a moth being pinned into place for study. They remain there for a long moment. It feels as though time has been paused. Then the sensation lifts. Gwaine shivers.
"What was I looking for?" Merlin looks away, his eyes narrowing in thought. "It was . . . " he tilts his head in thought, then says softly, "Yes, that was it."
"What was?" Gwaine asks. He leans toward Merlin like he's expecting him to whisper a secret into his ear.
"There was a creature of some kind. I don't remember what it was called, but I do remember what it did. How it all happened has faded, but the creature attacked me one night. It . . . stole? No, blocked, I think is a better word for it. It blocked my magic. It tried to steal what I was. A plot of Morgana's, I think."
"Sounds like something she'd have done," Gwaine grumbles. "So that's why you were so scared? Because you couldn't defend yourself anymore?"
"It must have been. There wasn't a lot that frightened me then."
"Why'd you take me to the middle of the forest, then? And then send me away?" There is a long ignored ache in his heart that resurfaces when he says that. He'd have followed Merlin to the ends of the earth, and it had stung when Merlin had told him to go, however he'd tried to hide it. "I guess if it had to do with magic, you couldn't tell me, could you?"
"No, I couldn't." Merlin closes his eyes and lifts his face toward the sun. "In the middle of that forest lay the Crystal Cave. It was said to be the very source of magic in this part of the world. I went there looking for restoration."
Another long pause, as though Merlin has forgotten he was in the midst of a conversation. "Did you find it? I mean, obviously you found it. Or did you?" Like any other kid, he'd grown up with the King Arthur stories and the tales of his knights and Queen Guinevere. He remembered running through the streets with his friends when he was ten, pretending to be a knight vanquishing evildoers. How strange it had been, when the memories of his old life had begun surfacing in his dreams. He'd thought he was recalling the days of his childhood, not remembering the facts of a previous life where he'd actually been one of King Arthur's knights.
And now, he stands next to Merlin the magician. Few of the stories that came down through the years got him right.
"I don't think I'd ever lost it. Not really. I was born of magic," Merlin says softly. "He and I both were. But even that didn't help. As fast as I could travel, as much as I could do to drive off the Saxons, I still couldn't help him. I failed him in the end. I never forgot that."
Gwaine starts to say something, then stops and looks down at the grass. What can he say to that? How do you comfort a man who's had a millenium and more to ruminate on the worst day of his life? Next to that, Gwaine's failures must seem petty.
A cloud passes over the sun. A stablehand shows up to take the horses back to the stable in case of rain. The day suddenly grows dreary.
"I spent a long time thinking of how our lives could have been different," Merlin says. "There are so many things I would have changed if I'd had the chance. So many things I would have said if I'd had the courage to tell the truth. If I'd only been a little braver on this day or that, maybe Arthur wouldn't have met his death at Camlann. Maybe we'd have had more time."
"It wasn't your fault. You shouldn't have spent all that time blaming yourself."
"Nor should you." Merlin opens his eyes and looks over at Gwaine again, and that same sensation of being pinned in place washes over him again. He couldn't walk away if he wanted to.
"I don't–" he breaks off and closes his mouth so fast his teeth clack.
"Yes, you do. I don't know what you think you were guilty of doing all those years ago, but your sin is not what sealed your fate. Or Arthur's, or anyone else's."
Gwaine laughs nervously. "I thought you didn't remember much about back then."
"I don't. But I've had a long time to learn to understand people. You feel guilty about something you did. I don't know if you want absolution or punishment for it, but I can't give you either of those things. All I can say is, if we want to blame someone for Arthur's death, we might as well place the guilt on my shoulders. All the things I did to try to avoid his death only hastened it. Morgana's fall, Mordred's betrayal. Those things might not have happened if I had done this thing or that differently. If I had only known then what I knew later, I'd have done things right. If, if, if." Merlin's gaze goes distant again. "I had many chances to do it all right, and somehow, I didn't manage it."
"You were so young then," Gwaine objects, thinking not of the quiet man next to him but of the restless boy Merlin had been. "You couldn't have known. But me? I was old enough to know better and still . . . " he shakes his head.
"And still?"
"I–" It is hard to admit such things, even now. "I let something slip to the wrong girl, and she told Morgana everything."
Merlin looks back at him, his expression so serene he starts to wonder if he spoke aloud. Finally he says, "Is that all?"
"Is that all?" Gwaine huffs. "I gave information to our enemy. Is there anything worse? If I'd kept it in my pants or at least kept my mouth shut, things would have been different."
"Maybe. One slip of the tongue isn't so great a sin, though," Merlin says. Gwaine starts to protest. "No, it isn't. You can blame yourself if you want, but what you did was far from the worst that was done in Camelot. If we were to be weighed down by our sins, I would never be able to stand. Do you know what I did?"
Gwaine shakes his head.
"I made Morgana. I made Mordred. I made them into what they became. I could have been honest with them about everything, but I didn't. I thought I was keeping Arthur safe, but I did the opposite. My every action, all the death I caused, it all led to his death. To the ultimate ruin of Camelot. And I had to carry that with me through the ages." Merlin's smile is sad. "So compared to that, what is one slip of the tongue?"
"It's not a contest," Gwaine mutters. He stares down at his hands like he expects to see blood on them. "I did other terrible things, too."
"I know. None of us is free from guilt," Merlin says. "Telling someone about it helps, but it doesn't make it go away. The only thing I can tell you is that someday, long after you've grown sick to death of ruminating on it, you'll discover that your burden has grown lighter. The next day it will be lighter still, and the next and the next until one day, it won't seem so heavy. It'll still be there, but it won't trouble you so much. It'll have scarred over by then and just be part of who you are. It won't be a gaping hole in your chest anymore and you'll start to feel like you can live your life normally again."
"That's not very comforting."
"Did you come to me for that?" Merlin asks archly.
"I guess not."
"Confession is one step. There are plenty more to go, but unless something truly strange happens, I'll be here if you have anything else you want to talk about." Merlin straightens and rests a hand on his shoulder. "Now, unless you have something else you want to tell me about, then go my friend and sin no more. Whatever you think 'sin' is, in these late days. At the very least, we should go in. It's going to rain soon."
The sky is the clearest it's been all day, but he's not going to doubt Merlin's weather sense. Despite Merlin's own misgivings, Gwaine has never doubted him. "Alright. We'll go in. But if Arthur complains that something didn't get done, I'm blaming you."
Merlin laughs, and they walk in silence for a time. Gwaine takes a deep breath as a cool breeze rises out of the north, and he smiles. The difference from ten minutes ago to now isn't much, but his heart does feel a little lighter. Confession, it seems, is good for the soul after all. He slows. "Merlin?"
"Hm?" The sorcerer looks back over his shoulder.
"Thanks. For everything. Then and now."
Merlin smiles and walks on.