A/N: Post series finale, so beware spoilers! Written for Trope Bingo, 'immortality/reincarnation'. Title from the poem 'Waiting' by John Burroughs.
my own shall come to me
Merlin doesn't die.
He wants to, sometimes, and never more so than the day Arthur… the day Arthur sailed to Avalon. He remembers watching the boat drift into the distance, carrying Arthur to where Merlin couldn't follow, and feeling as though he'd lost a part of himself, the best part of himself. He remembers standing on the shore for ages, until the last rays of light were leeched from the sky, and long after that. He remembers the way he had finally curled up, cold down to his marrow, thinking he had never been so alone in his life.
He'd dreamed of Arthur.
They were on horses, and Merlin could feel the wind whip through his hair. Arthur was ahead of him and Merlin spurred his horse faster, faster, but Arthur remained always just too far out of reach. There was a tower in the distance, glimmering in the light of the sun and rising up into the clouds. Arthur stopped in front of it, swinging nimbly out of the saddle.
Arthur turned back to look at Merlin and Merlin felt like someone was reaching into his chest and pulling his heart out because he knew if Arthur went inside Merlin could not follow him.
"Arthur, please," Merlin said desperately. Don't leave me, don't go where I can't, don't leave, don't-
"Merlin, wait for me," Arthur said and vanished through the doorway.
When Merlin awoke tears were dried on his face but that was the moment he realised what he had to do. He had to go on and if he did, he would find Arthur. He would wait for Arthur, as Albion waited for Arthur.
From that point on, no matter how low Merlin got, he always remembered one thing.
Arthur would return to him.
Merlin doesn't go straight back to Camelot.
He knows it's selfish. He knows that people are waiting for him, knows they're waiting for Arthur. But he can't. He can't face Gwen's grief and he can't face the disappointment, not when the weight of his own is heavy enough to bear him down. He needs to be alone with his own sorrow and then he needs to not be alone, but not with anyone in Camelot either.
First he goes to Ealdor.
He goes to his mother.
Merlin is of a mind not to say anything but he looks into his mother's worn, weathered face and it all comes spilling out. "Arthur,"he says. Arthur, Arthur. He cries and rests his face in his mother's lap and she strokes his hair, murmuring soothing words like she did when he was a child, scraping his knees and falling out of trees.
He thinks he's earned the right to fall apart, to be young, to need his mother, just once.
Camelot doesn't feel like home in the same way it used to. It should, it should feel safe in a way it never did, as magic is slowly reintroduced. (Merlin never tells Gwen about his magic but somehow she knows, she knows anyway.)
Merlin doesn't fear for his life but he still longs for the old Camelot, the old Camelot that was his, when Arthur sat at the round table. Gwen makes a wonderful queen, as Merlin had known she would. She is gracious and wise, compassionate and fair, and Merlin loves her.
She can't help that she isn't Arthur.
He travels a lot. He leaves Camelot for weeks or months at a time and doesn't tell anyone where he's going. Most of the time he doesn't even know himself; all he knows is that he can't be there.
When he returns, he always stops at the lake where he lost Arthur. It's like an anchor pulling him inexorably back and no matter how far Merlin goes, he never escapes the need to return. He feels close to Arthur there, there at the lake, and he knows that he will never really leave.
Merlin doesn't age, not in a way people can see, but he makes it appear as if he does. It's easier that way. It's easier to look like everyone else, to add grey in his hair to match the grey in Gwen's, to let his face show a spider-webbing of lines like Leon's.
It's easier to pretend he is like everyone else, even if he isn't. It's what he's done his entire life.
When Gwen dies, Merlin doesn't bother to change back.
The world changes but people don't, not really. Not on the inside, not where it counts. They laugh and they shout and they fight and they love and they kill. They find so many new ways to hurt each other but the reasons are always the same. Merlin comes to believe that most everything comes down to fear. Fear of what's different, fear of what you can't understand, fear of losing what is yours, or what you think is yours.
Every new catastrophe leaves Merlin wondering how can it get any worse? How can it be worse than this?
But Arthur never wakes.
The people tell stories of King Arthur, the once and future king.
Merlin reads every one and he watches every film. The stories twist with age and he marvels that they could get it so, so wrong.
Somehow, it doesn't matter. What they do get right is Arthur. They tell of Arthur's great deeds, amazing feats that Merlin knows Arthur never did, but he could have. The stories sing with Arthur's courage, Arthur's strength, Arthur's nobility.
Every story is a product of its time and Arthur morphs along with them, sometimes unbelievable in his perfection and sometimes stooped with flaws. Merlin knows that the real Arthur, his Arthur, was somewhere in between, but his Arthur still shines through in every flimsy, paper shadow of him.
The loneliness is what is hardest to bear.
Merlin finds it difficult to be close to people, after Gwen, after Gaius. After Arthur. It's difficult to make connections and after a while he realises that mostly he doesn't want to. He was never going to find anyone who measured up and he doesn't want to go through the pain of losing someone he cares about (loves, someone he loves, why couldn't he have ever-) again.
But he watches strangers go by and sometimes (all the time, maybe) he envies them. He envies them their friendships and their loves, he even envies them their arguments and their misunderstandings.
(But not their heartbreaks. Merlin has known enough heartbreak to wish it upon no one.)
It isn't that Merlin never talks to anyone. That would be silly. He even has acquaintances, sometimes, people to pass the time with and people to remind him what it feels like to smile just when he thinks he might have forgotten. But in the long, long years of Merlin's life, after he loses Gwen, he can't think of a single person he could truly call a friend.
Whenever he feels like the loneliness might break him, Merlin thinks of Arthur. He thinks of Arthur waking, alone, the world turned strange in his absence. He hears Arthur's voice echoing in his head, wait for me.
Merlin waits.
He starts to look for Arthur in the people he meets. At first, he keeps it shallow. The young man with hair that shines in the sun, the knight who wins the jousting tournament, the boy with slightly crooked teeth.
But he looks deeper, too. He looks at the people around him and he finds Arthur's arrogance and Arthur's goodness, Arthur's stubbornness and Arthur's desire to always do what was right. He watches boys tease each other and misses Arthur with an aching need.
He sees Arthur in the football player strutting down the pavement, laughing with his mates and certain of his own prowess. He sees Arthur in the woman passing out fliers, trying to right injustice all by herself. He sees Arthur in the little boy holding his father's hand and begging, Daddy, see me, look, look what I did, even if that isn't what he is actually saying.
Merlin sees Arthur everywhere and he tells himself, soon.
It's enough. Barely, but it's enough.
Merlin is asleep when it happens.
One word echoes in his mind, and Merlin knows.
Merlin.
Arthur is awake.
Arthur is awake and Merlin goes to him.
Arthur looks the same as he did all those years ago, his golden hair gleaming in the light of the moon, his eyes as blue as the sky at midday, young and strong and beautiful. Merlin drops the glamour without even thinking about it. He had forgotten how it felt to stand tall and unbowed.
Merlin isn't a poet but nevertheless he knows it isn't only years that have just fallen away from him.
Arthur looks dazed, his head tilting and body turning about as he takes everything in, but when he sees Merlin all he does is smile. "Merlin," he says, grinning with that same exasperated fondness he always had. His teeth are still slightly crooked and Merlin still wants to kiss the breath out of him. "What took you so long?"
Merlin can't even speak, he just steps forward, unable to look anywhere but at Arthur's face, drinking him in. In his head he knows something terrible must be happening, something terrible is about to occur or maybe it already has, something so awful that the world needed Arthur again.
But all Merlin can do is look and look and see Arthur there, right there, returned to Merlin where he belongs.
"Merlin," Arthur says again, resting his hands on Merlin's shoulders.
Finally Merlin finds his voice. He raises his hands to clutch Arthur's wrists and thinks that he would like to never let go. "I've been waiting for you," he says.
End