Archive of Our Own ^beta

Reaching out for you

It's been so long since I was last here. I did not have the strength to return in this land for many years. The pain is still vivid and burns inside of me like it was yesterday. As if it had only been a few moments since I pushed your lifeless body in the middle of the lake.

Everything around me has changed over time. Centuries have altered the appearance but not the essence of this sacred place that still makes my magic shake into me. Avalon.

The land that took you away, condemning me to this solitary existence. The land that hides your soul and keeps it away from this mortal world. Keeps it away from me.

Yet a feeble perhaps silly hope forced me to move forward. The hope that the Dragon's words left in me. The hope to see you again one day. To see your smile, hear your voice yelling my name with playful annoyance. A hope that every day is consumed by this waiting that seems endless.

I don't know what has dragged me here tonight, what has brought my body, young at people's eyes but so old inside, to walk again on this grass that is so as dear as painful to me. A dull ache, now echo of the past and the memories.

Maybe I'm ready to let you go. To bury the bitterness of my failure. To declare myself defeated by destiny and finally bring peace in my heart after all these years in which I lived alone with my magic, unable to love again and having to lose everythign dear to me. Slave of my immortal state.

Now I am here, in the same spot where your body collapsed on the ground, dragging me along, and I try to focus in the attempt to hear if there is some other sound apart from the drops falling from the sky and merging with the sheet of water in front of me. Because perhaps, before leaving the pain in the past, I still hope that you will return to save a Camelot that now belongs only to ancient legends.

Nothing.

Then my gaze gets lost in the horizon and with bitter longing I tell you the story of a valorous king and a powerful sorcerer. My voice is just a whisper and the words come out of my mouth like a spell long known but never pronounced. I speak of your queen and how the legends wanted her to be. So different from how we have known her, but always with her same good soul. I speak of the Round Table and his brave knights, of how Camelot alloweded and admireded magic. They do not know how much we had to fight for this dream land to come alive. They do not know that your life was the price to pay for the Camelot they see and know. And then I ask you, eventually, in a final attempt, if you will ever come back to me. If you're still searching for me as I do for you. If the coin will find again the most shining and bright part of itself.

So I wait.

What is this place? I don't understand. I don't know where I am and I how I got here.

I don't remember anything.

All around me all is so quiet and peaceful. Ethereal. As if a cloud of white mist is covering every thing and blurring the edges of it, preventing me to discern where the water ends and the sky begins. Where does the grass end and the forest starts.

All around me trying to calm me down, to welcome and soothe me as if I were a son of this land. As if I were part of it. Maybe I should just abandon my thoughts and indulge in this serenity that I did not even know to desire.
Yet something is wrong. This is not my home. I do not remember my home. I do not even think I've ever had it.

I do not even remember if I ever existed. Maybe I'm not part of anything. Maybe part of everything. Maybe I am just pure essence.
My thoughts confuse me.
Then I try to move, looking for answers to questions that I did not think could be born in my mind, and for the first time I realize I have a body. I had not seen it until now. I did not even know what a body was. But now that I look at my hands and my feet it seems so obvious that I have it.
What am I?

And right after I ask myself, without knowing how, if I'm alone in this ethereal light. I never wondered it until now. Yes, I am alone.

The notion grabs my mind. I feel lonely. I miss others like me and I realize that I am part of a whole. An exemplary of a species that has other elements. Others like me.

And a face enters my thoughts.

I cannot see him well and I do not know who he is. He's only a picture faded and blurred. But this face gives me hope. I know I have to find him because he will give me the answers I seek. It is a face that I knew and belongs to my past. I have a story. I have memories. I was somebody.

Who am I?

And who are you?

Suddenly I'm afraid. I understand that I should not ask myself these questions. I understand that I should haven realized that I exist. Because I'm just a soul, and souls ask no questions and do not understand things. They do not know they are souls.

I'm scared.

I start to run but I realize that I'm not going anywhere, because there is no space and no time in this place.

Please, friendly face, find me and take me away.

And when I think of his face I hear a voice. It seems sad and old. It's just a whisper and I can not make out the words, but I want to hear them and the will alone makes me hear. They speak of places that I do not know yet they create a nostalgic feeling inside of me. They talk about people and battles and magic. They talk about a friendship cut short by death and about a long wait.

I'm sorry you are so sad, friendly voice.

I want to reach you and comfort you, erase your pain. Pain that suddenly is also mine.

I look at my hand that is trembles as tears run down my face. I do not know who you are, but I know I have to find you. Because feeling your sufferring causes a pain in me that I cannot stand. I do not know how to reach you and I act without thinking, believing that my simple gesture can get me close to you. I extend my hand and close my eyes.

And then I feel your touch and I remember.

I remember who I am.

And I remember who you are.

"I'm sorry I made you wait this long, Merlin."

On my old friend's face, wet from the rain and from what I know to be tears, I see a smile widen. And while he rushes towards me, running with all his strength into the lake to meet me and hold me in a pained embrace, one vague memory of the long centuries spent in the land of Albion stays in my mind: a friendly hand that stretching toward me grabs and squeezes my hand firmly then pulling me with it towards a new life.

"Welcome back, Arthur."