"Merlin."
– That was your name once, you remember. Over time, those little things just slip away, bit by bit, until your mind is a gaping hole where your memories should be.
"Merlin."
– Might have been your real name, your first name, if you can stretch that far back enough. You've slid into many names, many faces, but this one, this Merlin feels safe, feels right, when you roll it across your tongue.
"Merlin, please."
– Names never meant very much, though, changing them often as you did, shedding skins and cloaking yourself in a new disguise whenever the issue of not aging caught up with you once again, just like it always did.
"Merlin, can you hear me?"
– The voice in your ear was loud and clear, begging and pleading, confused, hopeful, despairing all at once. You hadn't been paying much attention to the speaker or their words, but now a question has been posed and you've always liked questions, always been good at questions, always knew the answers. You listen more intently.
"Please, Merlin, please answer me."
– You would, the realization shocks you. You would respond to this voice, this – this person, this human being. Long since the time passed when you spoke to another who wasn't your head or whispers from your past, voices that you could no longer recognize but were still soft and warm against your flesh when they murmured their messages into you.
"Merlin?"
– Who is this voice, this voice who knows your name, who cradles your heart in their hands? That's what they're doing, they're holding you close not with hands but with words. And suddenly, a violent urge strikes you, you need it to be hands, too, you need this human like you need nothing else – not air, not water, you can survive without those, but not without this voice.
"M-Merlin –"
– "Stop."
"…M –"
"I know my own name."
You say, even though you don't.
"I don't know yours," you continue on. "I don't know yours, but I want to – isn't that curious?"
"Y-You don't know me?"
"No," you tell them, and it's harsh and cruel and snapping, and you want to take it back.
"Can you even see me?"
"No," this time it's gentler, you're caressing the person, holding them carefully in your arms so as not to break them, as you so often do.
"Then…why don't you open your eyes?"
You need to, you need to do as he asked, but it's been so long, too long, and your eyelids are sewed shut and you've long since forgotten their color. There has never been anything to see, other than pain and suffering and heartache, and you decided in an unreachable time that it would be best to just close your eyes forever.
Like sleeping, except without dreams.
"You haven't told me your name yet," you tell them – no, tell him, the voice is male, you haven't forgotten that much, not yet, though someday you probably will and that will be the day that you have truly lost your mind.
Yourself you lost long ago, in the man without a name – that one last tangible thread that leads you home. The man who you know nothing of, not anymore, whom you can barely think of without your barely beating heart squeezing the life out of you.
"Merlin – It's me, it's Arthur. Please, I know you haven't forgotten me, not entirely. I know – I know you. Merlin, would you please just open your eyes?"
You stop breathing when he says Arthur.
The shortness of the a, curling sound of the r, it all rushes over you like a waterfall – no, like wildfire, like every inch of you is burned alive, cells lit aflame by the empty places in your head that scream at you, beat at your brain 'til it's bloody, you can't breathe.
Out of desire, out of shock, out of whatever is rushing through your bloodstream – you open your eyes.
Blond hair and a strong jawline, blue eyes and a long a nose, crooked teeth and broad shoulders, looking at you like a lost lover, and you know.
"Arthur," you croak. "You're here. You came back."
A smile, white and crooked.
Suddenly, the empty spaces aren't so empty anymore.