They had lived a hundred lifetimes…
The first was that of legend. An epic tale of hellos, goodbyes, heartbreak and tragic, restrictions, denial, battle, a dark span of years interspersed with just a few moments of a golden age of glory and a great king with his trusted sorcerer by his side. An age of peace that started with tragedy and death and a scourging war and ended with the same. Their golden king and age fallen beneath the sword of the dark prince. The risks they had taken, everything they had survived, lost to a moment of weakness, to the salvation and rescue of a young boy with piercing eyes and the memory of death and betrayal.
So their king fell, was vanquished, died and the sorcerer? Well, the sorcerer lived on for many years, awaiting his king's return.
He didn't come back, centuries past and so the sorcerer was said to have vanished. In a way, he did. Lost and alone, his soul screaming for its mate, he was easily manipulated by a bewitching sorceress, his student. Her betrayal… and his mind shattered by another broken promise, another unfulfilled destiny. She traps him with the very magic he teaches her, plots while he dreams and encases him in wisps of threaded power. He can't bring himself to protest and instead, he lets himself fade. Fade away from the mortal realm and fall from mortal memory. His existence and his king's nothing but legend and myth. He fades…
He awakens in a child. A young loved child. If the child happens to be a little odd, if he shies from his father as though he were unknown, if he speaks great words and his imagination is vast, far vaster than any normal child's… Well, it's nothing that isn't fixed by a good swat to the rear and more chores.
Their neighbours are kind people, very much in love and absolutely enchanted with their young son. A miracle, the village whispers and the child doesn't understand until later on, when they've grown to be the best of friends two could be, when they've just reached that awkward stage between adolescence and maturity. He looks into the boys eyes and sees unending blue, so deep as to drown in and sees his king. His friend looks back and sees a different blue and the power to raze kingdoms all for him. All that power under his command. They see them, the king and sorcerer and the boy realizes, that yes, his friend is very much a miracle. And unknowingly at the time, his friend realizes the same.
They live a quiet life together and in a town that small, filled with poorly-hidden secrets, they're obvious. Them together. But even a small town filled with simple people, those people can feel the sense of right about them. So when others ask, there are finely-weaved lies, tales of bad marriages and death and two friends together now in accepted solitude, each consoling the other. It's anything but the truth, they're just together, but when you ask the people, the stories have spun so vast and wide like a spider web that no one but the two remembers what truth is and what fiction is. It's a fragile delicate web of lies that would only take one misplaced word to sweep away but it's a small town. A very small town and few people ask the right questions…
They die rescuing villagers in a fire. Bright and flaring and scorching the skies with smoke and raining soot and ashes.
The third is a more complex life of young nobility. Unlike the second, this is not a small town, but a court is little different from a town in its ability to lie, to spin truths and half-truths. The servants know the truth, why their masters meet so frequently and so often. Not because of good friendship, something more.
But that's servant talk, who would believe them? And besides, every court, every castle, needs a little intrigue and though no one knows this, the story is just as compelling to these people as it was to the servants of the first life and servants keep their masters secrets.
The two of them share talks of the king and sorcerer but also of the young village boys. They spend their time, relearning each other again and don't notice the bitterness of their wives who plot and scheme behind their backs and kill them brutally together in their bed.
The fourth and fifth are similar, war and early deaths, bitterness and crying. Pain, terror, heart-wrenching anguish and souls wailing in misery… back, bring him back! Don't take him from me… Please! Damn you! Don't take him!
The seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, they start with that same feeling of destiny and end in betrayal and pain and death.
Still they continue on, each life added onto the next in their memories like an ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit.
Too many memories, too many regrets, too many deaths.
One of their final lives, they meet broken and scared. They cling to each and babble nonsense that is real, and insanity that speaks truth and take comfort in the knowledge that the other is here and they can be deluded together. Always together.
The one after that, they meet in the hospital. Both of them considered lost cases but sympathetic nurses leave them together. There's a small modicum of piece for the two of them together, they think and don't realize they're witnessing legends crumble and fall into dreams of nothing but death and blood. Death and blood always the most vivid. Can't remember sunshine and soft words and softer mouths, not unless they're together and eventually even that isn't enough.
The mind is a fragile think, just like their spider webs of old and both of them break to the point of madness and everything, their lives, their destiny is forgotten. Brains full of remembrance just shutting down, pushing back, forgetting. When they meet the next time it is new. It is intriguing and it's another beginning. A slate chipped, cracked and finally shattering before being replaced.
After all, there are so many more centuries to live and they must keep going. But they don't know this, will never know this. It will continue, again and again and again. Until they can get it right. Because he is a king and he is a sorcerer and they are each other and together and they must save the world. Someday, someday they will get it right. Not that they'll ever know what they have to get right, not that they'll know of their destiny. Because there is no dragon now, there is only them and together they hold the fate of the world.
Their next life is new, filled with fragments of the old, though it is the new first but they don't know it, and they meet and think "this is him, this is it" not even realizing what they've stepped into yet again. What they've started again.
The life after and the life after and the life after, more and more and more, they begin again. And it continues ever onwards, the deep dark spiralling descent into madness.
They have lived a hundred lifetimes…
And they'll live a hundred thousand more until they get it right.
I've read plenty of rebirth fics. One in particular stuck in my mind where Arthur, Merlin, Morgana and Gwen remembered bits and pieces of their old lives and there was a comment something along the lines wishing they could remember more and I wondered exactly what would happen to a mind filled with that many memories?
Anyways, read, review if you have time and I hope you enjoyed it.