Merlin sighed, adjusting the strap of his nap sack by pulling it further up on his shoulder, and frowned. His day had been unusually bad. Well, not unusually bad. All his days were bad, awful even, ever since. . . .
No. Merlin never thought about it. He couldn't. How could he?
Merlin thought about it every day.
The day Arthur had died. In his arms. The prat had the nerve to die in his arms. It was bad enough that he had to go and get stabbed by Mordred, but he had to die in Merlin's arms.
Every time Merlin got angry, it disintegrated and was immediately replaced with sadness, a rich, deep, true melancholy that never went away.
Arthur had to go and die. In Merlin's arms.
Merlin didn't allow himself to go out into public much. Every person he saw reminded him of the faces he watched fade away and die back in Camelot. All happy. Laughing. Able to move on from every heartache they suffered.
The opposite of Merlin.
Lately, anyway.
As much as Merlin hated thinking about . . . Arthur, and Gwen, and Gaius, and Gwaine, and Leon, and Lancelot, and Elyan, and Percival. . . . He liked thinking about how many times he laughed. He used to laugh all the time. Everything made him smile.
Those were the days.
So Merlin didn't allow himself to go out into public much. But he did that day. He felt a strong push from the Earth to pack his nap sack and venture out into the world of the humans.
Ever since Arthur . . . left, (for he really was coming back . . . hopefully), Merlin hadn't the opportunity to talk much. (The only people he talked to were . . . well, in the direction of Avalon was where Arthur was, so he talked to the lake.) He tried to make friends, but after the first generation of friends he had died, he realized that he couldn't lose anybody else. Not anybody else. He couldn't handle losing anybody else.
Of course, none of them compared at all to Arthur.
Merlin sat on the bench in the park, ignoring the usual mutters that followed him wherever he went.
("Mummy, who is that? How come he doesn't talk?"
"Hey, Colin, stay away from that guy; I hear he kidnaps kids and takes them back to his cave and eats them!")
Merlin watched the birds fly around each other in circles and the squirrels racing one another up trees. A blue bird flew over to him and sat on his shoulder, nuzzling him gently with its beak and Merlin smiled.
Almost.
The grass was the green, the children were laughing, and the sun was shining brightly. But Merlin was cold. He couldn't feel that urge in the pit of his stomach to laugh until he cried, or that nagging happiness that made him want to smile until his jaw unhinged. Until Arthur returned, those days were over.
Merlin sighed, and the sound was so hopeless that the blue bird looked at him in sympathy, but flew away.
Merlin rose to his feet and stretched. He remembered when he could stand and not feel sore, back when he was young and limber. He still could be, all it took was a simple potion that was well within his power, but there was no point. Without Arthur, and the fierce protectiveness that came with the pratty king, Merlin had no need to be young.
A while back, Merlin had made that potion, and he told himself that it was for just in case. Just in case Arthur suddenly appeared and Merlin needed to be young again; needed to protect the big, stupid, stupid, stupid Pendragon. On the days that the loss of Arthur felt heavier than others, Merlin would roll the small glass bottle in his fingers, fantasies of his having to drink the potion unfortunately clear in his mind.
Something deep in the ground whispered to him, quietly, but audible enough,
Be young and let youth heal you.
Merlin had learned his lesson long ago, and had since made habit of listening to what the Earth told him. It was always right, even if he didn't like it.
Merlin sighed, reached into his nap sack and pulled out a small bottle and popped out the cork with a couple incomprehensible words uttered under his breath.
He swallowed the contents whole, cringing at the horrible taste, and immediately the potion started effecting his body. Merlin, with all the time he had on his hands, had concocted faster-acting potions than the ones Gaius had developed, and they worked like a charm. The one draw-back, however, was the taste. Worse even than the troll medicine he took. Well, was forced to take.
Merlin sighed again. Memories always attacked him at unbearable times.
The strange sensation of his body shedding it's old age gradually came upon him, so he stood up and hobbled over to a large oak tree, on the outskirts of the nearby forest. As much as he didn't care, he knew that he couldn't allow the public to see. That just lead to unnecessary complications that he didn't really want to deal with.
Merlin shuddered, a slight tingling feeling wracking the muscles in his body. It was virtually painless, but it felt peculiar nonetheless.
After a few moments, Merlin looked down and saw his familiar young body, dressed in the rags he had adapted to wearing in his old age. He rested his head against the tree, tossing around the desire to recluse to his own solitary home, deep in the forest.
As if it could hear Merlin's thoughts, the Earth whispered to him,
Stay, Emrys.
Emrys. What a joke. It felt like a hoax. Nobody knew him as Emrys anymore. Nobody knew him as Merlin, either. But that was just as well. If nobody knew him, that meant there was nothing wrong.
Yeah. Nothing wrong. If that's what the Earth called nothing wrong, then Merlin would allow it. Nothing much he could do about it, anyway.
As Merlin was about to turn back to sit on the bench once more, (as the Earth had told him to), a voice made him stop. A familiar voice.
Merlin wasn't used to familiar voices. Well . . . not familiar in that sense.
"Oy, don't run away!"
It was lined with laughter and giddiness and it made Merlin want to smile.
But this had happened before. He had mistaken a complete stranger-of-a-nice-young-man for Merlin's nice young man, and paid dearly. Both by a punch in the face, and a year's worth of tears.
No man is worth your tears.
Yeah, and Gwaine was sober every Friday night.
Merlin turned around so fast that he was dazed on his feet, his excitement getting the better of him. He told himself he wasn't getting his hopes up; he couldn't be; Merlin made sure that he understood that there was a very large chance that it wasn't going to be Arthur, because, really? After all these years, Arthur was just going to show up, hardly a warning, hardly a feeling in his gut, nothing?
But no.
Finally, after a thousand years, perhaps more, there he was.
The Once and Future King.
The other side of Earth's coin.
Merlin's boss.
Merlin's best friend.
Merlin's more-than-friend-but-was-never-allowed-to-tell-anybody.
Merlin's Arthur.
Merlin's eyebrows quirked at the sight of him, feeling almost confused that Arthur was actually here. With Merlin. And he wasn't a daydream. Or a hallucination. "Arthur?"
The young man smiled brightly, nudging one of the equally muscular men who was standing on the side of him. His hair glowed in the sunshine, his eyes bluer than the sky.
Merlin smiled so wide he thought his cheeks would fall off.
"Arthur!" he cried out, sprinting toward the blonde-haired masterpiece and wrapping his arms tightly around his muscular frame.
"Hey, hey, hey, buddy, do I know you?" Arthur asked rudely, crumbling slightly under Merlin's crushing and passionate weight.
"Shut up, prat," Merlin said, his smile glued to his face, and tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Merlin didn't want to cry. He'd done enough of it, so he just closed his eyes, and forced the tears away.
"Excuse me?"
The voice was no longer amused. It was no longer sarcastic, even. It was rude, offended. And it was not at all like Arthur.
"Arthur?" Merlin asked cautiously, releasing him and stepping back.
It was indeed Arthur, but he didn't look happy anymore. Arthur folded his arms, a look of complete and utter blankness on his face. "Can I help you?" A young boy, sitting the dirt beside Arthur's feet looked up in fear at Merlin, and took the warlock's presence as a chance to run away.
Merlin watched the boy run, but decided to over look it. It could have meant a dozen different things. Merlin had been alive long enough to know not to make assumptions. "It's Merlin," Merlin said in a weak voice, pointing at his face. "Remember?"
"No, I don't remember, Merlin," Arthur said, his face lighting up again as he elbowed one of his friends as if to say, Get a load of the idiot!
Merlin felt that in his stomach. Sharp and painful. And it was only hearing Arthur say his name, sarcastic, amused. There was no fondness there. It was like the first day they met and Arthur truly was the biggest prat Merlin had ever met and he was surrounded by dim-witted goons that followed Arthur's orders no matter what they were.
"But, Arthur . . . it's Merlin," Merlin repeated, gathering all his hope and pushing it into one wide smile that lit up his eyes and left his lips wide open, exposing his teeth. The smiles that Arthur always said he loved to see. The smiles that Arthur had always tried so hard to put on Merlin's face.
Something flickered across Arthur's face, and Merlin clung to the idea that it was recognition. Arthur remained silent for a moment. His face looked confused, lost, almost in pain, like there was something on the tip of his tongue that he just couldn't get to.
Arthur's friends pushed each other and jostled Arthur awake from his stupor. Arthur put a fake smile on his face and nodded along with whatever they were saying, but he still looked slightly spooked.
"Merlin," Arthur said again, feeling the sound of the name in his mouth. His face reminded Merlin of when he fed Arthur rat stew, and there was a moment of pure confusion as Arthur tried to decipher what kind of meat his servant had served him.
But, of course, Merlin wasn't meat.
And Arthur didn't think he was disgusting.
You could tell by the look on his face. Mildly interested and slightly surprised.
"Merlin," Arthur repeated with more confidence.
Merlin nodded readily, his smile widening. (If that were humanly possible.)
"That has to be the most . . . idiotic name I have ever heard! I mean . . . Merlin!" Arthur laughed, long and rude, just like that first moment Merlin had laid eyes on the prince. Arthur put on his best impersonation of Merlin and said in a weak voice, "Hi, I'm Merlin! Remember me, Arthur? Remember me, Arthur? I'm Merlin!"
Merlin's smile fell. This was not how he had pictured his reunion with Arthur. The reunion he imagined, (dreamed of, actually), had a lot more passion and a lot more . . . well, kissing.
Arthur pulled Merlin into a headlock and tussled his hair. "I like you, Merlin," he said with a laugh. "You're going to be a lot of fun to play with."
Merlin grunted and tried to pull himself out of Arthur's grasp. He knew he could; he could easily, very easily. Arthur could be dead right now if Merlin wished it.
But Merlin didn't. Even if Arthur didn't recognize him, he was still Arthur. They would still get to know each other, and one way or another, Arthur was going to fall in love with Merlin.
He had to.
Arthur released Merlin and Merlin stumbled backwards. Arthur chuckled and turned away.
"I wouldn't do that again, if I were you!" Merlin called angrily.
Arthur turned back, an amused smile still on his face. "And why is that?"
"Because I could destroy you if I wanted to," Merlin said, practically seething.
"You could destroy me?" Arthur said, incredulously. He nudged one of his friends. "You hear that? He could destroy me!" Arthur laughed, looking back at Merlin. "Well, go ahead, I'm standing right here!"
Merlin growled, running forward and tackling Arthur to the ground. Arthur called out in surprise, but quickly reacted to Merlin's attack by, (quite easily), pushing Merlin off of him, and switching their positions so Merlin was on his back and Arthur was straddling his hips.
Merlin all but howled, spitting up at Arthur, "I've waited for you for a thousand years, and you don't even remember me!"
Arthur loosened his grip on Merlin's wrists. "What did you say?" he asked, blinking down at Merlin, a comically-stupid expression on his features.
"You go and die and leave me here, and you don't even remember me! That's what I said! How's that fair? You got to go to paradise, you got to live in luxury in Avalon, while I had to stay here and watch everybody die, and now you're back, happy-go-lucky, with friends, family, and popularity, and no memory? How is that fair?" Merlin yelled up at him.
The Earth whispered to Merlin, the grass caressing his skin,
Stop, Emrys. He cannot know. There is a time and a place, just like last time. You cannot tell him.
Merlin growled, but it ended with a suffering sigh. All the energy had left him and he fell limp on the ground.
Arthur looked down at him, but he was no longer mocking him. He looked at him like he was genuinely spooked. He swallowed, and rose from Merlin's body, taking a few large steps away.
"My father told me to stay away from drugs," he said, chuckling to cover up how uneasy Merlin knew he was, and he walked away. "I suggest you do the same."
Merlin collapsed in on himself, but he wouldn't cry. Not in public.
Merlin didn't like going out in public.