Disclaimer: The characters of Merlin (BBC) and the world in which they go on all their paltry adventures thoroughly does not belong to me.
Title: The Domino Effect
Word Count: 4745
Rated: T/PG14
Genre: Romance
Focus: Arthur Pendragon
Pairings: Arthur x Merlin, Guinevere x Lancelot, implied Guinevere x Morgana
Notes: Canon-compliant. Post-series fic, reincarnation fic, takes place in modern and futuristic early twenty-first century and briefly in (prologue) the WWII-era. Warnings: Arthur is the legal definition of a stalker in this story. It's mild, well-intentioned, and Merlin does not mind, but those sensitive to such issues should keep this in mind while reading. Rated for non-explicit descriptions of sex, sexual themes, brief allusions to violence. Comments, criticism, and suggestions gratefully accepted.
Summary: And one lifetime, Arthur remembers first, even though, in the end, it doesn't really change anything at all, just the way the dominoes stack up. No matter how many times they're reborn, some things will always stay the same.
Author's Statement: Written for a prompt on the Merlin Kink Meme, "Reincarnation fic with a twist. Arthur is the first to remember, instead of Merlin." A week or so ago, I added it to my to-do list, figuring that I'd likely lose interest in the Merlin fandom before I ever got around to writing it. Two other anonymous writers got to the prompt before me, though, and both their fills were so utterly amazing that I sat down, typed out the first paragraph, and suddenly couldn't stop writing. I am particularly proud of this; I wrote eight pages in six consecutive hours (on a school night), a feat unprecedented since my seventh grade days, when I was young, not nearly as self-critical, and much more prolific. Perhaps a greater feat is that I only wrote one draft of this; the resulting product actually satisfied me, knocking off about a week from the writing process. It's therefore not terribly surprising that I hold this particular fic close to my heart.
Now, if I could only do that with every story that pops into my mind at the most inopportune moments . . .
Happy reading!
It's always different, every time.
The differences change, too, in their own subtle different ways: Sometimes Gwen loves Morgana, and sometimes she loves Lance, and sometimes they know each other before their memories return and sometimes they spend sixty-odd years searching for the other, for that one missing link; sometimes Arthur grows up as Merlin's best friend, and sometimes Lance is that "one odd boy" that sits behind Morgana in third year and moves away in fourth, not to be heard from again until they are both twenty-three and she finds him crouching in the malaria-infested swamps of Africa, dutifully taking notes for his Postgraduate. Sometimes it's Morgana that remembers first, and sometimes it's Merlin, and in one memorable, incredible lifetime, it had been Uther, but no one speaks of that one anymore, because no one quite knows what to think of that one, least of all Uther himself.
Sometimes, it's clear as day. Other times - well, they prefer not to think about those times.
Eventually, they work out a pattern. See, the first time 'round, it was Arthur that died first and then Morgana and then all the pawns come tumbling after, and it's Arthur that Merlin finds last, and it's Arthur that remembers last, and it's Arthur who's glaring at Morgana, who is half-smiling from the edge of his bed as he demands and how long have you known?
It's all of them that're shocked when Morgana scowls and flushes at the same time and replies, two weeks, though, because after Merlin, Morgana is most powerful in terms of magic, and doesn't that mean that, after Merlin, Morgana is the one who should remember, Morgana is the second who should join the hunt?
It takes them a while to understand that power has nothing to do with it - at least not in the way that most people would expect. But the next lifetime, the dominoes fall in this order: first Gwen, then Lance, then Arthur, then Morgana, then Merlin. This is the way the dominoes stack back up again: Merlin, then Morgana, then Arthur, then Lance, then Gwen.
It gets easier after that. Not in the parting, but in that extra sense of certainty in reuniting. An extra detail, another shred of knowledge in a sea of uncertainty, goes farther than you'd think, and when they know that much more about rebirth - when they understand that much more about reincarnation, some of the fear, some of the wildness, some of the chaos is taken away, and some of the pain, some of the anger, some of the blackness loses its power, a little more, every time.
It's always different, but one thing is always the same: Merlin is always - always there to help all of the others. Always there to remember, even when everyone else has forgotten. Always last to die and first to remember (always the one left behind, because it's when sword and shield and dreams fail the others that his magic rises to protect him, and him alone, no matter how much he pleads, no matter how much he tries). Except for-
Once.
(Except for now.)
They prefer not to talk about that lifetime, either, but it's not with the silence of happy secrets, and it's not with the quiet unspoken promise to keep special (keep untold) the memory of that one time when Uther Pendragon showed them all that love is love, whether in pyres and axes for a martyred wife or in a bullet to the gut (a premature death, slow and spreading of infection, and a quiet realization - in the moment before all is fade to black - of lifetimes and lifetimes and lifetimes) for an eight-year-old son. But they can't stop themselves from remembering, can they? and once they begin - well. That's something else entirely.
This is what they remember:
The lifetime before is - hard. The one before that was fought in the trenches as well, but when the papers said never again, that crazy Jerry psycho said control the world, and now they fight in France and in Germany and all through Europe, and it sickens them, all of them, to know how much war has changed since the time of swords and bows and spells and beautiful, honorable death (because there is nothing honorable in this). Arthur is Flying Officer Pendragon and three days away from being Flight Lieutenant Pendragon when he remembers, and Merlin is Sergeant Major Emerson when they meet, on the beaches of Normandy. Merlin is trying to get Lance to a medic tent, and Arthur is gasping in pain from a bullet wound, and later, they will say isn't it funny, isn't it funny that they meet like this (even though there's nothing funny about it at all)?
Arthur gets two half-bullets picked from his thigh, miraculously survives the resulting infection, and somehow slips by his commanding officer to head out east with Merlin (and Lance, too, but he's not really thinking about that when he stumbles out from the medic tent, still fevered and still aware that he's going to get killed within a minute on a battlefield). Gwen is a nurse in the next company over when he sees her, Lance remembers somewhere between Paris and Guinevere kissing him, and then there are four, and all that is left is Morgana. When they finally do find her, she is the daughter of a Czech politician that never died and sent her to live with Arthur's father (he doubts the two men even know each other anyway), and she is living (ha, living) in Terezin.
He tries not to throw up, and succeeds. Lance tries not to throw up, and succeeds. Gwen tries not to throw up, and succeeds (though she does start crying hysterically, and only Arthur and Merlin are left while Lance tries to calm her down). Merlin fails, though, and as Arthur is kneeling beside him, pulling his hair back as he makes himself sick in the street, he thinks that this is another way that Merlin helps - when everyone else is too weak, too prideful to say what they mean and what must be said, Merlin does, even when it is inane and ignoble as this.
Morgana survives. He has only felt more thankful once in his entire life, and he can barely remember that first glimpse of Merlin the second time around, anyway.
Of course, Morgana heartily objects to being sent to England for treatment while all the others march east, east, always east towards Berlin, and Arthur and Merlin do a fair bit of wheedling, and in the end, the five of them end up pretending to be soldiers playing at war, all over again. And Merlin is on his left and Lance is on his right and Morgana and Gwen are at his back, and he has not felt stronger since he was young and a Prince and still possessed of that quality of forever, forever, forever.
And if Arthur's leg twinges every now and again - a painful reminder that he can't even run, much less pilot, much less fight, much less survive - well. He can't be fussed over if he doesn't tell anyone, right?
(It is a beautiful thing, to die surrounded by everyone you love. Arthur knows this. He knows it well enough to keep marching east, east, east - toward Germany, and toward victory.)
The funny thing is, it isn't Arthur that dies at Dresden. Arthur lives to the ripe old age of forty-nine years, two months, and eighteen days, upon which he finally gives in to the TB and the pull of old battle wounds. Morgana dies soon after, of health complications caused by malnutrition and exposure in the Terezin ghetto, and it is Gwen and Lance that outlive the rest for once, watching Arthur Morgan and Merlin Gaius (and wouldn't that be something he would laugh at?) du Lac grow to adulthood and then parenthood themselves.
Arthur survives Dresden and Berlin, and it is Merlin who looks at him with eyes gold of darkness, Merlin who leaves behind a lover shouting in the night-
Merlin who is found, fifty-six hours later, sprawled across the broken streets of Dresden so peacefully he could have been sleeping, if not for the ash on his face and the crater that lies nearby. (Merlin, whose magic is - for once - not enough to save him, and it is a terrible, terrifying thing all at once.)
This time, he is reborn as Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon and Ygraine du Bois, in a quiet suburb off of Leeds, and this time, Morgana really is his sister, and this time, Lance is the next-door-neighbor who regularly trounces him at football, and this time, Gwen is the bookish New Zealand girl taken under Morgana's wing that grows up to be a knockout for the brutes and Headmistress Leondegrance for the rest of the world. This time, Morgana plays college rugby at an all-girls school at night and studies population geography by day. This time, Lance finds his calling in the laboratory, twisting his brain for a permanent solution to malnutrition in Africa, instead of in skewering people with swords and spears - It's an improvement, Morgana says, while Arthur only laughs.
This time, Arthur ends up with a degree in literature that he has no bloody idea what to do with, and when he finally remembers, he almost laughs. He always ends up in the same situation, doesn't he?
Truth be told, it's not a crushing realization; it doesn't come with the force of a ton of crushing rocks, and it doesn't break over him like a wave, and it doesn't do any of those other things writers nowdays are including in their metaphors. It's not like he hasn't remembered before Merlin came for him before, it's not like he hasn't found some of the others on his own before, either. He thinks to himself, privately, that maybe he just has to wait a little longer. This is the way it's always worked before, after all, and he just needs to give him a little more time - because Merlin has always waited for him, and just because he's never died after Merlin before, and all he has to do is wait, and - and Merlin would never do this on purpose besides, what an idiot he is for thinking such a thing-
(Deep inside, the doubt takes hold.)
On his twenty-ninth birthday, the seventh anneversary of when he remembered, Arthur goes into a pub, stumbles out so utterly smashed that an officer's just as likely to arrest him for walking drunk as driving drunk, and tells himself that Merlin is not coming for him. He says his good-byes to the others the next day and leaves on a private jet, determined to find the boy he's been having wet dreams about before he even knew what wet dreams were (because honestly, some things never change, no matter how you stack the dominoes).
Two hours later, Arthur is looking out the window over the Atlantic Ocean at night, dreaming of thunderclouds and the reflection of storms on water and eyes just like it, gold or blue or gray. He looks for a moment longer (thinks of kingdoms and magic and a dragon's call of destiny) and turns away to shroud himself in darkness.
Arthur has gone back to England precisely fourteen times since he has left: some to check up on Morgana and Gwen and Lance; twice when Gwen (always Gwen, always sweet, sure Gwen) calls him and asks him to return because they miss him; once - a terrifying once that he doesn't like to think about - for an STD scare, and more times than he'd care to admit because it feels like the search has dragged on forever and even though it's not like he has anything else to do with his life but chase wild geese and squander the Pendragon fortune - sometimes he just misses them. (And it has.) He has spent two years and eleven months of his life at his last visit looking for Merlin, waiting for Merlin, jumping every time he sees a hint of dark hair and blue-gray eyes, reaching out every time he sees a half-familiar laugh. Wanting to hit something or cry every time he's wrong. Sometimes, he wonders if Merlin ever searched as long for him, and abruptly feels so selfish he can't even comprehend it.
Merlin has, after all, spent more time searching for him than he has spent (this life and the rest) searching for Merlin, and there are times like these when all he wants to do is find him and hold him and wrap around him so tightly he engulfs him and never lets him go, and promises never to make him wait again (but kings don't make promises they can't keep).
Then there are other times - the bad times - he just wants to give up, but he pushes these moments down, behind a wall of sheer royal stubbornness and a thousand lifetime's worth of memories and reasons why, and books the next flight out.
It is two years, eleven months, and thirty-one minus one days when he finds him, in the last place he really should have looked. He is in America, tossing slices of bread into some quaint lake named after a news reporter, and he is mistaken, he always is, when he catches sight of a head of dark hair and protruding ears bent over a sketchbook. He is mistaken, he always is, when his eye moves the wrong way, skips over the arc of earthbound processed wheat, and sees the way not-Merlin eyes the ripples on the water; he is mistaken when could-be-Merlin's eyes (gray and blue but missing that hint of gold, and something within him sinks) dart over the texture of the sky; he is mistaken when so-close-to-being-Merlin-(if-only) smiles that pale half-smile that he remembers most clearly about Merlin than anything at all. (Somewhere within him all is exploding in flashes of color and sound and sensation and memory, I could take you apart with one blow.) Merlin-that-could-have-been. Almost-Merlin. Merlin-almost. Because he has been searching for two years, eleven months, and God knows how many days, and Merlin is not sitting on the park bench opposite him underneath an arch of trees in a quaint little town in New England, because he is mistaken, he is wrong, because dominoes don't work like that, and he has thought this so many times, envisioned this so many times, and he is mistaken, because he always is-
He tells himself to shut the fuck up because he has saved the world enough that he deserves the right to hope, if only for a moment.
(Can it really be so easy?)
Merlin? he thinks and lets himself believe, for the first time in forevers. "Merlin?"
And (maybe-Merlin, Merlin-that-might-be, Merlin-who-could, Merlin - please?) looks up and answers, "Have we met?"
He whoops so loudly the ducks Merlin (Merlin!) had been drawing quack indignantly as one and rise up in the air. He doesn't even mind.
The next day is his thirty-second birthday. He spends it ignoring Merlin's awkward expression, being called a stalker, and, when he has finally irritated Merlin to the point of no return, being blasted into the wall of Merlin's apartment building (I could take you apart with less than that). After that, he squeezes Merlin until he is gasping for breath, and when he lets go, Arthur is beaming brightly enough to light up the stars.
It's always different, every time: Sometimes, Merlin will take one look at him, smile, and work his magic until he remembers; sometimes, Merlin will jerk him around on a chain a little before he lets him remember, and when Arthur wakes up he is mortified and infuriated by turns. Sometimes Arthur is the first Merlin seeks out and sometimes he is the last, and sometimes magic fixes everything and sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes, the dominoes fall so that Merlin is a pillar by himself, attempting to hold up the ceiling; and sometimes, they fall so that Arthur is the one left behind.
Sometimes, Arthur is a thirty-two-year-old unemployed man living off the grace of his parents' bounties, and sometimes, Merlin is a twenty-six-year-old art student living in America on scholarship, and sometimes, Arthur remembers first. Sometimes, Arthur is the one who goes looking; and sometimes - just sometimes - he understands why Merlin asks him whether he should laugh or cry upon their first meeting every time. Sometimes, Merlin doesn't remember when Arthur finds him. Sometimes, that doesn't matter.
Sometimes, he leaves Merlin alone for days or even weeks at a time, content to check on him every three or four days to make sure he hasn't gone and killed himself by accident, but mostly spends his spare time looking for a job that his credentials say he's qualified for (even though he's worked as, off the top of his head, a chef, a bodyguard, Louis Pasteur's assistant, a botanist, hotel manager, soldier - twice, an executioner, a researcher, a legislator, schoolmaster, prostitute, artist, writer, fencing instructor, and once - memorably - an actor in Shakespeare's troupe) and a flat he can afford quickly and leave quickly. Often, he shows up on Merlin's doorstep and invites himself over for tea and a free review of Merlin's paintings that he never appreciates, and occasionally, he just follows Merlin around in a manner that reminds him horribly of stalking, although Merlin never calls him on it. Sometimes, he contemplates the fact that he has no idea how to go about this, and sometimes he tells himself that it has never mattered before, not while Merlin is here, not when there is still this half of a sliver of a chance. Sometimes, he dreams of Merlin remembering, and wakes up intensely disappointed and half-hard. Sometimes, he thinks that getting to know Merlin all over again is worth it, and believes it.
Sometimes, Merlin doesn't look at him the way he mostly does, that sort of half-bemused and half-incredulous look he's been seeing for lifetimes now, and more. Sometimes, Merlin doesn't object to his presence as loudly as he should - sometimes, he doesn't slam the door in his face, and sometimes, he catches Merlin almost-smile out of the corner of his eye, when he has said something stupid and Arthur can't hold back the impulse to point it out and mock it for all that it's worth. Sometimes, he sees another expression on Merlin's face: a hint of surprise, or maybe softness, when Arthur says something or does something that is too easily connected to the old days. (Once, in 1856, Merlin had confessed that he loved Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor. The look on his face when he hears Arthur's ringtone for the first time is worth the effort it took to get a thirty-second cutting of it in the first place.)
Sometimes, it's Arthur that's surprised, like when he comes over one night and Merlin has a half-raw basil salmon terrine laid out for him, even if he denies it's for him, even when he can't possibly remember that certain half-whispered conversation in the fall of 1440. Sometimes, Arthur forgets what the difference between Merlin-who-remembers and Merlin-who-doesn't is, and realizes that he is astonishingly happy.
Sometimes, Arthur offers to take Merlin out to dinner. Sometimes he refuses. Sometimes he accepts. Sometimes, the two of them will meander down to the park together, stubbornly ignoring the fact that it's not quite natural to walk to the park on a casual date with a stalker, and sometimes, they actually do go out for dinner, and sometimes, they get on a train to nowhere and ride the full run of the lines until midnight and just talk and pretend and listen. (Those are the best times.) Sometimes, he doesn't listen to Merlin. Sometimes, he does. ("-don't know why. Stockholm Syndrome or something like that. Because I know you're definitely not all that great in the mentally healthy department but I can't - I can't think of you as a stalker, even though I should. You're not going to pull me into an alley one night and slit my throat, are you? Wait, wait, don't answer that.") And sometimes, he does and doesn't, and just sits beside him or across from him or next to him and thinks of how Merlin is always, always the same (kind and with a ruthless streak to match his own, always so passionate, always so loyal, always so quick to believe and quick to defend - and always with a horrendously misplaced trust in Arthur, even when he has no idea who Arthur is where he came from or what he wants, and it makes Arthur want to shake him and scold him and wrap around him until Merlin is engulfed in him, safe in him, protected forever from the rest of the world).
Sometimes they are an unhealthy spontaneous relationship, and sometimes they are friends, and sometimes they are more. Sometimes there are brisk evenings outside art museums and too-casual conversation in the window booth at an on-campus Starbucks, and sometimes, there are lazy evenings sprawled over Arthur's couch, limbs intertwined and Merlin's breath so close to his he could scream. Sometimes, there is nothing between them. Sometimes, there is everything.
Sometimes, there are breathless, heated nights, in which neither of them ask or give but only take, and the night is smooth curves on paper, a pulse of color on blank canvas, the contours of Merlin's face and the radiance of his eyes and whispered poetry in Arthur's ear, and sensory overload (soft gasps lying perpendicular to loud moans, sensation lingering long after fingers and lips and mouths have swept by, something faintly like lavender and laundry detergent and leather uniquely Merlin, the faintest linger of peppermint on his tongue, something beautiful, and maybe coming home), sweeping lines and smudges of darkness and intertwined forms caught forever in Merlin's sketchbook.
Sometimes, there are the parts after, too, and Merlin's head rests so perfectly on Arthur's shoulder, and Arthur's arm stays so familiarly flung across his back, and Merlin talks about growing up in the slums of London and the trust fund in the bank he sneaks a little out of every month or so to send to his ailing grandmother and the folly of being an artist, and Arthur thinks about Morgana and Gwen and Lance and home.
(Arthur likes these. And even though he'd never, not ever, not a million years repeat it, maybe - just maybe - he likes these most of all, and even though he's never said it - maybe Merlin knows that, too. Some things never change.)
Merlin does not remember when he first sees Arthur, no matter what Arthur wants to happen - it is a quiet day in the summer of '29, and he shouts at Arthur a bit for ruining his sketch, but through it all, Arthur is laughing like he has gone mad (and maybe he has, because Merlin always used to say people went a little mad when they were in love), and the sky is so blue and the world is keen and brighter than the hills, and Merlin is just this side of tomorrow, and he has finally come home. Merlin does not remember when he first smiles at Arthur, over a plate of potatoes and in the tentative flickering of the too-old bulb Merlin has hanging in the kitchen of his flat, even though Arthur swears to himself later he felt his heart stop and saw his life flash before his eyes when he saw it. Merlin does not remember when Arthur kisses him, on a night when both of them get terribly, wonderfully smashed and Arthur has maybe let just a few things slip about how amazing it is to fly a Spitfire, one of the originals, wooden frame and all.
Merlin does not remember when he falls in love, he tells him later. Though it is a close thing.
No. It is a Saturday, and the two of them are lying sprawled across the grass at the park where they met, the one named after the American reporter. The benches in the shadows of two trees that have long since grown together to make an arch are fifty feet away, and they are throwing bread to the ducks. There is a brief and easily resolved argument about the last slice, and when they are done, they shift into each other and stare up at the sky.
"Christie Porter."
"What? You get Christie Porter from that? Ha, yeah right. Definitely Julie Andrews."
"Like the old-timers, do you?" Arthur laughs, and the sound is disdainful and mocking, but Merlin only smiles - like he always does, like he always has. "Should I be surprised?"
"Should you be - hey! What do you think I am, a girl?"
"Wouldn't shock me. You act like one enough, and, I don't know, Merlin, last night-"
"Ha, ha," Merlin says, and props himself up on one elbow, grinning crookedly. "Seriously, Arthur, you can't just distract me from serious discussion of cloud-watching with inane remarks on my sexual performance. We were talking about-"
(And later Arthur will not recall exactly what happens, but it seems so slow, so unbearably slow to him now: the widening of Merlin's eyes before they shut, the way his hands have been shaking all afternoon that both of them ignore, the little cry of distress before he topples over and onto Arthur, like they are young and this is new.)
"Merlin? Merlin?"
(And Arthur only thinks - why-?)
When Merlin opens his eyes, they are burning gold and he is grinning and Arthur hits him, hard enough to bruise and he doesn't even care because it's been forever since he's seen that color and he thinks his heart might fall apart-
"Prat," Merlin says - and it is the most beautiful sound in the world.
When he was a child in Sicily, six or seven lifetimes ago, Gwen taught him how to line up ivory dominoes in rows and curves and columns so that they spelled out words. He practiced with Morgana, who was older and defter and less likely to knock all of the pieces over during the process of setting them up, and eventually became adept enough at it that by the age of twelve, he was able to spell out "Merlin Emerson is an idiot" in perfect, flowing, cursive writing. Even after he long gave up the pastime, he kept the first box of dominoes Gwen had given to him as a keepsake.
The morning after Morgana died, he went outside into the courtyard and wrote her name in painstaking script. When he was done, he asked the neighbor's child (a tiny little slip of a thing called Mordred, and maybe he might have hated him more if he looked less like Merlin) to knock them down for him, and ended up giving him the set.
The exact nature of the conversation they had fled his memory soon after, but there is one question he remembers with clarity as perfect as the contours of Lance's eyes, the gradience of the moonlight on Morgana and Gwen's intertwined hands, the lines of Merlin's smile as it presses into his shoulder. He remembers Mordred's gaze, blue-gray storms, the color of magic, and the quiet, too-still sound of his question in the air: But I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. How do I use it? He remembers asking Gwen the same question. He remembers her laughter then, and his then too, twisting and rising and soaring into the air until they sounded as one.
And this is what he said:
1. Have patience. (It takes forever to set up all of the little pieces, but that sliver of satisfaction when the whole thing goes tumbling down is always worth it in the end.)
2. Look everywhere. (An old washboard and lump of clay may not seem like much to make a good course, but if you look hard enough, there's exactly what you're looking for right in front of you.)
3. Sometimes, things don't work out as expected. And that's all right - because if things aren't always perfect, there's always another chance. And who knows? Sometimes, a mistake (a fault, a flaw, a change) may prove so much better than what you expected, and maybe even better than what you had before.
Like I said, absurdly proud. Even if I haven't quite broken out of that rather bad habit of mine of making the sentences too long. Notes:
"The one before that was fought in the trenches as well, but when the papers said never again, that crazy Jerry psycho said control the world . . . "
- This is phrased rather confusingly. The bulk of the story takes place in a twenty-first century lifetime that we'll get to later. Being addressed right now is the lifetime before our main lifetime (let's call this one minus-one), which took place in a WWII-era. This sentence basically refers to the part where, before minus-one, minus-two took place in a WWI-era. This note is phrased rather confusingly too, in fact, but I at least wanted to make an effort to clear that up.
" . . . that crazy Jerry psycho . . . "
- Jerry was a British slang word for "German" at the time.
"Flying Officer Pendragon . . . Flight Lieutenant Pendragon . . . "
- "Flight Lieutenant" is one rank above "Flying Officer," which are both ranks in the Royal Air Force. "Sergeant Major," as in "Sergeant Major Emerson," is the highest non-commissioned rank in the royal army.
" . . . beaches of Normandy . . . "
- D-Day. Really, I only included this because I still have D-Day on the brain from my Secret Santa gift at the US x UK community, but it seemed like a good, major turning point in history for them to meet at.
"Lance remembers somewhere between Paris . . . "
- Paris as in the liberation of Nazi-occupied Paris. On August 19, an uprising by the French Resistance took German forces off guard, and forces that had advanced from the successful Normandy landings arrives as reinforcements on August 24. On August 25, the Nazi forces in France surrendered, marking the end of the successful Operation Overlord and the beginning of general assault on Nazi forces (paraphrased shamelessly from Wikipedia).
" . . . Czech politician . . . Terezin . . . "
- Again, only because I still have Terezin on the brain from what my high school did for the One Act Play competition in ninth grade. Terezin is a Jewish ghetto, mostly a stop on the way to concentration camps and death camps, including the nearby Auschwitz. Many Jewish citizens and arguers against the Nazi regime living in Czechoslovakia were sent there, and a good deal fewer returned home after the war finally ended in Europe in 1945.
" . . . dies at Dresden."
- The bombing of Dresden by Allied forces still remains one of the most controversial decisions of the Allied powers in WWII today. The city was fairly destroyed by British and American forces, and the casualties numbered anywhere from 25000 to 35000, most of them civilians and citizens of Dresden. Some, however, were Allied soldiers.
" . . . upon which he finally gives in to the TB and the pull of old battle wounds . . . "
- TB is Tuberculosis, the single deadliest disease in the entire world and the most feared disease until an antibiotic was created somewhere around the WWII years. Streptomycin - along with other wonder drugs for treating TB, later put onto the market - saved millions and even billions of lives, and is generally considered one of medicine's crowning moments in history. Unfortunately, drug-resistant strains of TB soon broke out because of improper dosage and incomplete treatment (this is why it's important to listen when your doctor tells you to continue taking your medicine for six months, even if the symptoms are gone after two), and this is what I imagine Arthur dying from: a painful, very slow, horrifying disease that causes failure of the lungs, intestines, and bones (on a good case) and generally results in intense disfigurement and possibly blindness.
On that happy note, take your meds, children.
" . . . regularly trounces him at football . . . "
- Just a note for Americans: soccer. Lance regularly trounces Arthur at soccer. With an actual ball, not a gridiron pigskin.
" . . . to fly a Spitfire . . . "
- British WWII bomber. Yes, they were actually made out of wood, and pretty damn badass for it, too.
"'Christie Porter . . . Julie Andrews.'"
- This takes place in the future, remember, so Christie Porter is an American-British fictional actress supposedly born last year, and Julie Andrews is to them as Jodie Foster is to us.
"When he was a child in Sicily . . . Gwen taught him how to line up ivory dominoes . . . "
- Italy is generally considered to be the birthplace of modern domino games in the Western world, imported from China. I like to think that this is the lifetime where Arthur is a bodyguard, too.
As always: comment (they feed the soul!). Next up on my to-do list of fic, if all goes well: Merlin-esque Cupid and Psyche. (Hopefully. If I don't get completely destroyed by the story first.)
Yes, I broke my own rule about Author's Notes again. I can be forgiven, though; this delves into history as well as the future, and I'd rather know that things are explained well and my readers won't be confused than skimp on necessary explanation for the sake of brevity. I've always got to remind myself that not everyone pops open a new window and Googles every topic they don't know like I do .