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The first few times Merlin died, he hadn’t really noticed.
It was in his sleep; as quiet and peaceful a death you could hope for. The only problem was, he didn’t stay dead.
It took him four days to get back to Camelot from Avalon, and at the end of each day he fell asleep, and slowly stopped breathing. By the next morning, he was revived, without having noticed his sojourn to the land of the dead. And he would have gone on not noticing, if it wasn’t for Gwen.
On the first night he was back in Camelot, after he had explained everything to Gwen, Gaius, Leon, and the rest of the knights and councilors, he was settling down for bed when Gwen knocked at the door and came into his room. Without saying a word she climbed into his bed, and they held each other, both silently crying for the man they had loved and lost.
Merlin came to the next morning to find himself not in his own bed, but on the cot in Gaius’ workroom, with a near-hysterical Gwen sitting in the chair next to him. She nearly had a heart attack when he sat up and asked for a glass of water.
He had been utterly and completely dead, Gaius told him, for at least 7 hours. From that day onward Merlin realized that he was dying every night, only to wake up alive the next morning. Usually it just happened in his sleep, but there were other, more traumatic, times when he had a heart attack, or a fatal accident. But without fail he still woke up the next morning, perfectly healthy and whole, no matter what injuries he had sustained in the previous day.
While the stress of dying every day certainly put a large mental strain on him, it did quite the opposite to him physically. After several years, Merlin slowly started to realize that he wasn’t aging. Gaius had passed away, Leon had gotten his first gray hairs, Gwen no longer looked as young and fresh-faced as she always had. But he looked exactly the same. While he died every day, he never grew a day older. When he approached Kilgarrah, looking for an explanation, the only thing the dragon told him was that it was his destiny to be with Arthur, the Once and Future King. When Merlin tried to ask him what he meant by that, the giant lizard merely glared at him and flew away. Within another year, Kilgarrah’s body had been found in the mountains outside Camelot, and Merlin nearly lost all hope of finding out why he seemed doomed to stay forever young while his closest friends lived out their lives.
It was thirty years before the first of his friends died, but within fifty only Gwen and Merlin were left. Gwen was 73, and still quite strong for an old woman, but Merlin still looked as young and handsome as he had the day Arthur died. He looked more like Gwen’s grandson than her best friend. It was soon her time to move on as well, and Merlin was left with the task of choosing a new ruler, as Gwen and Leon had never had any children.
As the years passed, great changes came to the land. New rulers, new religions, new names for the lands Merlin had always known. Soon the great kingdoms of Camelot and Mercia were replaced with England, Scotland, and Wales. Magic was forgotten. And so was Merlin.
No longer connected to a kingdom and forced to hide his magic again, Merlin travelled. He decided to see the world beyond his island home. He also went in search of an answer to the ever-present question of why exactly he died every night. Kilgarrah’s words still pressed on his mind, and he sought out wise men and women around the world as he travelled. He spoke with Muslim scholars, Buddhist monks, shamans in rural Kenya, high priestesses in the Siberian tundra, and royal historians in the Mughal court. Most knew nothing of what he spoke about, but every once in a while another would repeat the same words that Kilgarrah had said hundreds of years before. “He is the Once and Future King, and he is your destiny”.
After almost 1500 years of wandering, Merlin decided it was time to return home.
Eventually he made his way back to Avalon, and found a house for rent in the nearby town. He could see the ragged ruin of the tower through the mist when he looked out his bedroom window, and sometimes he almost convinced himself he could see a man with a red cloak billowing in the wind standing next to the crumbling rocks. But then he shook his head, and saw nothing else. His magic felt stronger, now that he was back in England. He tried to convince himself it was just because he was back in the land where he had been born, but a voice in the back of his head kept telling him that there was something else going on. That voice sounded suspiciously like a very cryptic dragon he had once known.
He hadn’t thought about Kilgarrah in quite a while. At least a few years. But something about being in England was bringing the dragon to the forefront of Merlin’s mind. He knew he was dead, he had seen the body himself and overseen the building of the massive funeral pyre in the clearing near Camelot. But something was telling him to go to the island. So, early one morning he rented a small motorboat from a local fisherman, and headed for the island he had known as Avalon. He hiked up the beach, and through the overgrown scrub that coated the small cliffs, and finally reached the tower’s ruins. When he got there he felt a surge of power course through him. It was like nothing he had felt in decades, and his limbs were shaking with the force of it. He knew what he should do. Taking a deep breath, he began to speak in a language he had not used in centuries,
“O drakon, e mala soi ftengometh tesd'hup anankes! Erkheo!”
At first nothing happened. Then he heard a familiar throaty chuckle behind him, and he whipped around to see…
Nothing. There was nothing there.
But he heard the laughter again, followed by a question.
“Looking for me, young warlock? Or, not as young as the last time I saw you, I’ll grant. How long has it been? Centuries, I’d guess.”
Merlin’s continued to look around, trying to find a place where a gigantic dragon could be hiding, but there was literally nowhere Kilgarrah could have been.
“Are you inside my head, Kilgarrah?”
The dragon’s voice laughed again,
“I suppose I am. My body is long gone, as you well know, but my spirit has always been here. As long as this land exists, so will a part of me.”
Merlin blinked.
“Oh. Well. That’s… cool, I guess. But why am I talking to you? What made me call you?”
More laughter.
“It is because you are ready, young warlock.”
Merlin frowned, looking up into the air at nothing, but still trying to find a place where he could direct his confusion.
“Ready for what?”
“Your destiny.”
And then came a gust of wind and a deafening roar the likes of which he hadn’t heard in centuries. The sound surrounded him, amplified by the whipping winds and he was forced to the ground because of the overwhelming force of it all. At the same time he felt a familiar surge of power, and found himself speaking in a language he had all but forgotten, words spilling out of his mouth. He knew his eyes must have been glowing, and it seemed that even his skin was, power rippling around him like a force field. And then, with a final crescendo and blast of magic, everything stopped, and he was panting heavily; lying on the ground in the fetal position, sapped of almost all his energy.
When he finally caught his breath, he pushed himself up and looked around.
And nearly fell right back down again.
He was no longer alone on the island. A chainmail clad, red-cloaked figure with familiar blond hair was lying next to him, chest heaving just as much as his own.
He nearly collapsed with joy, and had to restrain himself from tackling the king. It was only because he realized that Arthur would be as shocked as he was that stopped him from throwing himself at him.
“Arthur,” he said, quietly, not wanting to startle the other man.
Arthur turned around, slowly, taking in his surroundings, noticing every rock and leaf, and finally met Merlin’s eyes with his own.
“Merlin?” he croaked, voice obviously quite hoarse from fifteen hundred years of disuse.
Merlin nodded, trying to hold back the tears in his eyes, but failing spectacularly.
“How long have you been waiting here?” the once, and future, king asked.
Merlin smiled, and said, “I have died every day, waiting for you. It’s been well over a thousand years, Arthur. But I would have waited a thousand more,” and finally reached over and pulled his king into his arms.