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Arthur is newly born. He is too young to understand why the whole castle is in an uproar and soon the whole kingdom will be. He doesn't know that Nimueh disappeared in a flash of light after Uther charged her with a spear, and he doesn't know that the family she didn't have time to take with her was slaughtered, and that their blood is even now being scrubbed from the floor by terrified maids.
He is too young to form a lasting memory of the bearded man that holds and rocks him gently while the dragonlord's brothers, some in power and some in blood, talk to him in worried voices. He is too young to know why the wet nurse who makes the mobile above him spin without touching it bites her lip and flees when his father comes in and roars.
He is too young to know that his birth has started a war.
Arthur is five years old. He does not recognize the man in the courtyard with the dragon, but the man recognizes him and smiles. The man is weary and scarred but hopeful, because he could never help but believe the best of his old friend.
Someone hurries Arthur away, but he hears the roars of the dragon later and the screams.
He has become almost used to the screams. He has heard so many of them in his short life. He does not remember a time when executions were rare and pyres unheard of. He does not remember a time when the people in the lower town didn't eye their neighbors with nervous suspicion and anything reflective with guilt. He does not remember a time when the citadel was happy and a good deal more filled with people than it is now.
He does, however, remember the hideous wounds on the men who are brought back to Gaius for healing after they come back from the front lines of fighting for the Isle of the Blessed. He never thinks to wonder if Gaius has always looked so weary and defensive.
His father announces later that the war is all but won.
Arthur wonders if that means his father will have time for him now. He hopes it does.
Arthur is ten. He has started training with weapons, and he is determined to be good at it, the very best. He will make his father proud.
He is starting to learn to hide his emotions, his loneliness and desperate need for his father's love. It is not fitting for a man to show these things, he's told, and he wants to be a man.
His father has no time for children, but he speaks to his men.
It is better to be proud, he learns. He is the prince. The world is his for the taking.
But he dreams of screams sometimes, and he doesn't know why.
He is fifteen now, and he has made his father proud. He should feel better about this. He has destroyed a druid encampment, and his father is proud.
His father doesn't know how he froze up, though. His father didn't see the children -
But they were just magic users. They didn't matter. They weren't real people.
He accepts the praise that comes his way and ignores the dreams.
Morgana is there now. He doesn't like her very much. She always gives him this look, and it makes his nightmares worse.
Arthur is twenty, and he's not lonely at all, or uncertain. Everything is as it should be. He can take care of himself.
Merlin drags that house of cards down around his ears. He hates him for that at first.
Until he notices that Merlin makes the nightmares stop.
The boy encourages him when the doubts creeps in, distracts him when the memories haunt, directs him when he's forced to make another one of those decisions that will make either his conscience or his father yell. Somehow he always feels safer when he's with Merlin, and isn't that a stupid thought?
He stops trying to get rid of him after that, although his attempts to be nice, he suspects, fail. He's never really tried before, and he's not sure how to go about it.
But something's working. Even Guinevere - Well, suddenly he rather likes Guinevere, and she smiles at him sometimes. He likes that.
Arthur is twenty-five, and his house of cards hasn't fallen so much as the cards have been obliterated.
His father is dead. Morgana is his half-sister, and she's trying to kill him.
He has his uncle, at least. And Guinevere smiles at him and gives him strength he never knew he had. He doesn't care about making a political marriage anymore. Nothing could strengthen Camelot more than having her on the throne beside him, except perhaps destroying magic once and for all.
Strangely, that last thought brings the nightmares back with Merlin featuring prominently. He ignores them, like he always does, but he's harsher with Merlin than he should be because he's terrified suddenly that he's going to lose the few people he has left.
But he has the knights too, even if there aren't enough of them. Too many have fallen, to magic, to enemies. Too many have been lost like Lancelot. Still, the ones that remain are the best of the best, and all of them keep an eye on Merlin. What could happen?
Thirty is too young to have lost everything.
He sits beside Percival's bed as Gaius tends to the burns that cover the left half of his body. He holds the large knight's hand, but he isn't sure if he's clinging for Percival's sake or his own.
There is no child. It has been five years to the day since they were wed, and there is no child.
Some have suggested he put Guinevere aside and take another wife, but in whispers they say other things. They say he was only conceived by magic, after all. They say another wife may not be able to bear him a son either.
He tells the "some" that talk of getting rid of the queen is treason, and the look in his eyes is enough like Uther's just before the Purge that they scurry back into their filthy shadows.
He goes to Gaius for the truth and doesn't like what he hears. Not because he learns he may never have an heir - alright, that's part of it - but also because Merlin had lied to him, and Morgause had told the truth.
He is angry, so he goes hunting, and he drags Merlin and the knights along with him. He is too busy being angry at Merlin to think clearly, so he doesn't sense the ambush until it's too late.
Leon is lucky. He is dead as soon as he hits the ground, his neck snapped.
Merlin falls too, but he is only unconscious, not dead.
Later Arthur would wish Merlin had died when he'd fallen. It would have been easier.
It was Morgana, of course, and she had help, enough to take them all captive. Enough to keep them captive as she woke his men up one by one.
Gwaine is first. He laughs when the cold water jolts his awake and asks her what he said about meeting like this and winks.
Perhaps that is why she took his tongue first. First his tongue and then his eyes. Infection takes him slowly and painfully.
Arthur begs her, first to leave him alone, then to help him as he slowly succumbs. To at least let him go to the knight's aid and do what little he can.
She tells him he can have that favor only once, and is he sure he wants to use it so early in the game?
If Arthur had thought there was the least chance they could be found and rescued in time, he would have said yes. But all his best men are here, so he weeps and curses her bitterly as Gwaine dies slowly, thrashing, in the dark, and alone.
Elyan is next, and for him she brings back what she calls an old friend, a small snake that has Elyan pulling at his chains the moment he sees it. Morgana laughs and Arthur thinks he has never hated her more.
He changes his mind rather quickly about that.
He doesn't know how long it takes for Elyan's heart to give out. He just knows that Morgana again offers him the choice, and he has to, this is Gwen's brother, but he can't, because he knows what's yet to come. He tells himself it doesn't matter, that Elyan is too far gone to notice whether he's there or not, but watching the blacksmith break shatters something in Arthur too.
This time, instead of cursing Morgana, he curses himself.
She is impatient when it comes to Percival. She burns him, but she doesn't seem to much care whether she's pushing him to his limits or not. It's plain she's looking forward to the finale, and she's never been good at waiting. He is still alive, still sane, when she casts him aside like a boring toy. She leaves him to die of infection in the cell next to Arthur's, and he prays that help will come in time to save him.
Percival is lost in a fevered delirium, and Arthur talks to him through the bars, desperately trying to get him to hold on. To hold on, but not to wake up, because Arthur knows what is coming, and there is no need for Percival to suffer through it too.
Arthur isn't sure why Morgana hates Merlin so much, but he has glimpsed the vicious malice she holds towards him when she has talked so lovingly of what is to come. There is a reason Arthur has held out this long. The knights were trained for this. They had known what might come of following Arthur. Merlin wasn't trained. Merlin hadn't signed up for this.
Merlin is, well, Merlin. Full of jokes and smiles and laughter that make the nightmares go away.
Now they've been thrown into one.
"He's just a servant, Morgana," he whispers as she drags him unconscious into the room. "What did he ever do to you? What could he ever do to you?"
"He knew I had magic," she spits. "He was the first to know."
Arthur hadn't known that, but it doesn't shock him like she seems to think it will. He had known that Merlin was soft on magic. Concealing it for a friend is entirely within his character, something he had done for Will back in Ealdor.
"It's hardly a secret now," he points out instead.
"I trusted him. He knew, and I trusted him, and HE POISONED ME!" She shouts the last few words.
That does surprise him, but he is exhausted, starving, and barely holding onto something resembling functional at the moment. He has grieved and raged and pleaded, and he has no spare emotions to waste on that. He doesn't know when Merlin poisoned her, assuming he actually did and this isn't just some delusion, and he doesn't much care. Knowing Merlin, it was either a complete accident, or it was necessary. Perhaps he had done it when he'd realized she'd been corrupted and had feared Uther wouldn't believe him. Perhaps he had done it to save Arthur somehow. He doesn't know, but if he doesn't always trust his servant, he has at least learned to trust his friend.
"I wish he'd succeeded," is his only comment. He feels the blood well up on his cheek as she lashes out, but he doesn't care. It's another moment that Merlin is safe.
But she has fastened the chains, and now she is waking him, and he can't stop her.
Merlin doesn't react like he expects.
His eyes open wide immediately, not sleepily as the others had. He grasps the situation quickly, but he doesn't seem afraid. Just tired. "This is what, the third time you've caught me?" he asks her. "Fourth? What's it going to be this time? Another snake? What is it about all the snakes, anyway? Why can't you have evil, torturing butterflies or something?" Then his eyes see Arthur trapped behind bars across from him and something hardens in him, something cold and furious. "Whatever you're planning, Morgana, I would rethink it."
"Why should I when it's going so well?"
"You should know by now that just because you've captured - "
"Gwaine and Elyan are dead," she tells him. "Percival will join them soon. You and your precious king are the last."
"You're lying." He looks at Arthur to confirm it, and Arthur plans to deny it, just to give him some hope, but Merlin sees the truth in his eyes.
"No." He shakes his head. "No."
"Now it's your turn," she purrs. Merlin glares at her, furious, and then his eyes gleam gold.
Arthur stumbles back, but nothing happens except that Morgana seems positively gleeful. "Thought I would remain ignorant forever, did you, Emrys? And now you've gone and revealed yourself for . . . nothing. Not while my chains trap you here."
Arthur has never seen Merlin so defeated.
Merlin, who has magic. Magic that corrupts.
But that took time, didn't it? Morgana hadn't turned evil overnight. Merlin is still Merlin, he convinces himself. And it's possible to stop, Gaius is proof of that, so if - he had stopped thinking when after Gwaine died - if they ever get out of here, Gaius can help him overcome it, and everything will be fine. Right now Merlin needs to know that if they're rescued he won't be taken straight to a pyre, so he steps forward again, as far as he can and tries to give him a reassuring smile that says this will all work out, somehow.
If he can only ignore how he'd already failed.
The smile doesn't come out quite right, but Merlin seems to find comfort in it all the same, so that's good. They can sort the rest out later.
If there is a later.
Merlin seems almost relieved when Morgana produces yet another snake. Arthur can't imagine why until he imagines their positions reversed. He would give anything to be the focus of Morgana's attention instead of his friends, and Merlin, selfless Merlin who cannot possibly be corrupted yet, feels the same.
That is the last relief either of them feels for some time.
Merlin starts shouting babbled nonsense words in another language that he guesses is magic, intermingled with names, only some of which Arthur knows. He throws himself against the bars although he knows by now that it's useless.
"Drakon!" The words are tortured and garbled, but Arthur knows that one and remembers the dragon and the dragonlord Merlin had wept over. The past has become confused with the present in Merlin's mind.
"Morgana, please," he begs, not for the first time. "Whatever sins he's done to you, he's paid for, please." He is on his knees behind the bars, and he is raw and broken with vicarious pain. He remembers ten years ago, remembers who he was then, and remembers how Merlin had been there to fix the broken things that had fractured his life. He remembers the first friend he'd had that had refused to run and had hidden his own pain with a smile and laugh.
He owes his kingdom twice over to Merlin and his life who knows how many times, and now he is failing him.
"Is he your choice, brother? A sorcerer?"
"Warlock," Merlin says, voice a scratchy whisper. It sounds automatic, words that are not a choice so much as a habit. "Wa'lock. 's different." Then he shudders, and his breath is hitching and far too much like sobs. The bite marks litter his arms and chest, and the venom still slices through his veins, burning him. The nathair, the nightmare snake, the shadow's bane, Arthur doesn't know all the names, but he has listened to Merlin scream from unbearable pain and his deepest fears, and he has never wanted anything so much as he wants to go back and scream at himself not to leave the castle, not to lead his men to this, not to watch them die, not to watch Merlin crumble into himself like this.
"Let me help him," he pleads. He lowers his head. "Please."
For a long, terrible moment, he thinks she will refuse him. She will walk away and drag him with her and leave him to scream and Merlin to slowly fade.
He doesn't know whether it is kindness or cruelty that instead has her vanishing in an explosion of shadows and his cell door creaking open so that he is free to run to his friend's side.
There is no point in running further. There are too many other locked doors. But he can kneel here beside a friend and gather him up gently in his arms while Merlin struggles not to cry out from the pain.
"Easy, easy," he whispers, the words nearly sticking in his throat. "Here." He has a bit of water, not much, but more than Merlin's had, and he gives it to him slowly so as not to choke him. "It's all right. You'll be all right."
"'m sorry."
"I know, I know. It's all right, it's all right. We'll work it out." He couldn't care less about the magic at this point. He just wants to get Merlin and Percival out of there alive and then lock them away somewhere they can never be hurt again.
"Don't hate me?"
"Of course not, you idiot." He half laughs, half sobs.
"Called the dragon. Don't think she noticed."
The dragon is dead, and he doubts Merlin would be able to call it even if it wasn't but that's not the point, so he tells him well done and asks how a dragon is going to fit in the castle. If it would distract him from the pain, Arthur would talk about just about anything.
"Dunno. Maybe he'll rip off the roof." Merlin frowns then. "I wanna go home."
"Me too. Me too."
He doesn't know how long they'll have, and he's scanning for a weapon to use in case Morgana comes back when he notices the change in Merlin's breathing.
"Merlin? Merlin! Stay with me! Come on! Come on, you idiot, don't do this to me! You didn't leave me when we faced a dragon, don't you dare leave me now!"
The gold is flaring in Merlin's eyes as the magic desperately tries to save its master and is pushed back.
Merlin isn't breathing. The gold fades.
"Don't you dare," he whispers brokenly.
By the time the dragon rips off the roof and plucks Percival, him, and what remains of Merlin up, he is too numb to feel much of anything.
Not even when Morgana is burned to a crisp.
"Sire, I'm sorry. Percival is unlikely to pull through. There's nothing more I can do."
"Not even with magic?" Arthur asks dully.
"I haven't practiced magic for thirty years now, sire, it's forbidden - "
"Then brush up on it! I'm legalizing it. Now. Where's parchment?"
"Sire - "
"NOW!" he roars, something hot and broken leaking out of him.
He will not lose Percival too.
Arthur realizes too late that he had not, in fact, lost everything. Not then.
Percival pulled through.
He is thirty-five now. He has a son.
Guinevere is dead. It is the curse, he thinks, of the Pendragon men, that they bring death to those they love. She did not survive the birth.
He had not gone to a mage for help, despite the raising of the laws on magic. It was a natural birth.
He lost her anyway. Gaius couldn't survive another loss. The old healer is gone too.
Nemeth is beleaguered by Odin's men. He has problems with Lot's. They propose an alliance by marriage.
Arthur's life is his son and his kingdom. His son needs someone who will remember to love him when he is lost in his grief. His kingdom needs more allies, and he has a promise to a collection of graves about uniting Albion that he intends to keep.
He agrees.
Arthur is forty, then forty-five. He is proud of his son. He has united Albion.
He does not love his wife, but he respects her and likes her and considers her a good friend. She is the mother to his son that he had hoped she would be.
This is not what happiness feels like. But his son makes him smile sometimes, and Mithian doesn't seem to mind that he still grieves for Guinevere, so perhaps it's close enough.
He hears Merlin calling him names sometimes. He smiles when he does. His court thinks he is finally healing.
Arthur is fifty when the bad days start, but they are easily hidden and rare. The court physician gives him bottles of something that tastes vile and makes him think of Morgana's nightmare medicines.
It's about as effective.
Arthur is fifty-five. The bad days are more common, but his son fills in the gaps. The kingdom will stay strong.
More and more details are starting to slip. He has to ask the court physician for his name again when he goes for more medicine.
Mordred, he is told. Mordred.
Arthur is sixty, and he knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he has become his father. Not the vengeance seeking Purge version of his father, but the broken man he had become after Morgana's betrayal. Somewhere it bothers him that he must be causing his son so much grief, and somewhere he worries that his son, too, will grow to suffer from this.
That somewhere is very far away most of the time.
Arthur is sixty-five. Than the is quietly changes to was, and they lay him out for a state funeral.
Arthur is newly born. The nurse comes out and tells his father that while it was close for a minute there, both mother and baby are fine.
Arthur is five years old. He has strange dreams he doesn't fully understand. He doesn't worry about them. Instead he plays with his toy knights while his parents worry about the bad news on the television.
Arthur is ten years old. He sees the screaming headlines in his father's paper at breakfast before it is hastily folded up, and he's driven to school. He knows things are getting bad in some parts of the world, but for now he is safe.
He has lots of friends, which makes him sad for his dream self, who has none.
He is fifteen when he wakes crying from a dream where he watched as children died.
He has begun to suspect that the dreams are real, but he doesn't tell his parents. His father is high up in politics and has enough to worry about.
Arthur is twenty when the riots break out just outside the university's gates. The students are told to get inside.
Arthur sees dark hair and blue eyes in the crowd and runs in the opposite direction. Leon follows him. They haven't talked, haven't said a word except for uncomfortable hellos, but Leon follows, and Arthur knows why.
Arthur grabs Merlin's arm and drags him away from the press of screaming bodies.
"Are you still a prat in this life?" Merlin asks, panting.
Arthur still hasn't let go of his arm. "Are you still an idiot?"
Merlin looks at him sideways. "I'm still Emrys." The way he says it, Arthur can tell he's worried that this will matter.
"So you are still an idiot," he says, and he laughs at the look on Leon's face. He laughs because everything's all right now, never mind the riot just two blocks away.
Arthur is twenty-five, and he has found everyone he wanted to and several that he'd really hoped he wouldn't. The world is on fire, but they're fighting the flames, and everything feels like it's bursting with glorious gold light.
Arthur is thirty, and Merlin is bleeding everywhere.
"Don't you dare leave me again, you idiot."
"You can't call a dying man an idiot," Merlin says petulantly.
"You're not dying," he insists.
"If you insist."
"I do."
For once, Arthur wins the argument. Merlin recovers.
It had been a hard battle. But this time, everyone came home.
Arthur is thirty-five, and the world is more or less saved, and somehow they all survived it. Now Guinevere is in labor, and he's wearing a hole in the floor.
"She's fading," Merlin says tensely, and his eyes turn a very bright gold.
A nurse comes out a while later with a tired smile. "It was tight there for a minute, but they're both fine."
Gwaine lets out a whoop. Lancelot, Leon, and Percival smile.
Merlin gives him a lazy grin. "Told you so, you prat. Now go see them."
Arthur is forty, than forty-five. He has everything he ever wanted.
He's heard Mithian has a family of her own. He's glad. They don't talk much, it would be awkward, but Merlin says she's happy. He's glad.
He is happy. That's enough.
He is fifty, and he starts to have bad days.
Merlin hands him a bottle that tastes like something Gaius used to make before he passed away smiling in his sleep.
The bad days stop.
Arthur is fifty-five. Gwaine starts teasing him about the grey hairs he's getting.
He raises an eyebrow and says it's better than going bald, and Gwaine runs off to make sure he isn't.
Merlin cackles and everyone wakes up bald the next morning except for a certain warlock, and that includes Arthur's twenty year old son.
They chase him until he gives in and changes it back.
Arthur is sixty, and he has grandchildren. He asks Merlin, hesitantly, if it bothers him that he never had children.
Merlin raises an eyebrow and says that after the horror stories he'd heard from his parents about raising magical children, he's rather glad he didn't have to deal with those pitfalls, and what did Arthur mean he'd never had to raise any children at all? He'd raised Gwaine and Percival and Arthur and -
Arthur steals Merlin's cane and whaps him with it. Then his grandchildren run over wanting sweets from him and magic from "Uncle Merlin", and life is still sweet and golden.
Arthur is sixty-five, and he stops dreaming of Camelot. He is the last to do so.
He starts dreaming of being a llama, and one look at Merlin's face has him chasing the warlock once more. His knees are getting a little creaky, though, so he gets his grandchildren to help him.
Guinevere just laughs.
Gwaine steals the cookies while she's distracted.
Arthur is seventy when Leon passes. Lancelot follows not long after that.
Merlin writes a will which Arthur is a witness to, no matter how much he doesn't want to be. He is surprised, though not opposed, when Merlin sets money aside and picks out a truly gigantic tombstone.
After checking to make sure the warlock didn't know something he didn't about the approaching need for one, he asks why. Merlin has never been overly flashy.
Merlin says he's combining two headstones into one since he didn't get one last time.
Arthur asks, what, exactly, made him think he didn't get one last time. It's the first time they've really talked about . . . that, for obvious reasons, but still -
"Well, it would have been illegal," Merlin says, like Arthur's the one being unreasonable.
Arthur can't quite manage to get out more than a few strangled sounds, so he drags Percival over there to explain that Merlin had gotten a knight's funeral and a very nice marker, and Guinevere gets this look on her face like she was about to yell at them for only now discussing their past issues, so they all wisely retreat to the kitchen to steal more cookies.
Merlin doesn't stop grinning for the rest of the day.
Arthur is seventy-five, and then is becomes was in the middle of a pleasant dream about dancing with Guinevere at a ball.
Guinevere dies the same night within five minutes of him.
Merlin attends the funeral and takes Excalibur. He, Gwaine, and Percival, go on a long trip.
Within a year, their graves are added to the graveyard. It's a nice one, right beside a lake.
In a place where age and time don't matter, they are together.
They smile. They laugh. They are happy.
It's enough.