so still he sleeps, and does not care to wake;
but merlin saith, at length a day shall break
and ripen onward to another noon
when, master of his fate and blithe and whole,
and all renewed in body, mind, and soul,
king arthur, with his knights, shall come again,
to weild excalybur, and not in vain.
{king arthur in avalon; sara hammond palfrey.}
Arthur wakes.
The first thing he's aware of, prosaically enough, is the smell.
"Pah," he says, and wrinkles his nose. Mildew and damp and iron are not, perhaps, the most refreshing of scents to wake up to after several centuries of sleep, but he doesn't have much time to fixate on the stink when he is hit with the sudden knowledge of a heavy pressure on his chest. Slowly, carefully testing that his limbs still work, Arthur pushes himself up to a sitting position; there's an awful crick in his neck and his head throbs abruptly at the sound of the sword and shield that have lain across his heart for too long crashing to the floor but he seems to be all right, which is a significant improvement over the condition he was in when they brought him here.
Yes, that. When they'd brought him here. What's the last thing — what did he —
Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose wearily, feet dangling off the edge of the great stone slab. There is a rushing noise in his skull, a million thoughts and memories pulsing anew behind his closed eyes. The last thing he remembers —
Arthur frowns. Everything in his mind's eye is both dim and fire-bright, new and terribly old at once. He recalls hearing lapping waves against the hull of a boat, the sound muted and distant. Seeing Morgana's hair tumbling over him as she leans forward, the set of her lips troubled as his vision goes hazy with pain and he swallows the blood that fills his mouth and threatens to choke him. Smelling for the first time the cool dankness of the cave, listening to the maddeningly steady dripping of water as it echoes close to his ear. Everything fading mercifully to blackness. And before that?
Arthur's stomach twists
(the stench of death at Camlann and Mordred's eyes blazing with hate through a sickly grey mist; the torture written across Gwen's features as she wraps a supporting arm around Lancelot, who is battered and filthy and resigned to his fate; Nimueh's brittle smile of triumph and Merlin, God, Merlin, face chalk-white and distorted against the dark mud, his mouth slack and eyes irrevocably closed as the great roots of the tree lift and close around him)
and he decides not to dwell on that just yet, reaching instead to the ground where his sword has fallen. His hands are young again, he sees, unscarred and steady, and his blade as bright and clean as the day it was wrought; that gives him pause for a minute, but then he straps his scabbard to his hip and rolls his shoulders.
"Right," Arthur says.
It is perhaps appropriate that Merlin's face is the first one he sees in this strange new world.
He's standing in the mouth of the cave, form silhouetted against the light. Arthur doesn't recognise him at first; he squints, shadowing his face with his shield — after all this time, anything but utter darkness burns his eyes.
A voice rings out, wry and amused. "Finally decided to get up, did we. Still lazy as ever, I see, your Majesty."
At that Arthur drops his shield with a muted thud on the cave floor because, it's Merlin. He steps forward slowly, eyes stinging in the muted evening sunlight, not quite believing what he hears: but it's him, it's definitely him. He looks the same as he did when Nimueh trapped him under the tree, aged and wise, hair and beard streaked liberally with white, but still his daft self, his daft big-eared self, and anyway those blue eyes could never grow old —
Merlin smiles; Arthur says, "Liar, you were the lazy one, worst excuse for a servant I ever had," and adds, "You thick prat, you stupid raging moron" and he pulls Merlin against him in a fierce hug, fists balled up in the heavy rough cloth of Merlin's cloak.
Then he slaps Merlin upside the head, for old times' sake, and Merlin grins that happy idiotic grin at him and Arthur just shakes his head, smiling back at him helplessly.
"Well, what are you doing here?" Arthur says. "I thought Nimueh's spell couldn't be broken, we tried everything — "
"Morgana came for me," Merlin says, smile fading a bit. "She figured I just needed the right push. The end of the world will do that to you, apparently."
"Yeah, funny, isn't it?" It's not, but Merlin smiles again, almost preoccupied, and Arthur gives him a sidelong glance as they slowly pick their way down the side of the steep rocky hill. "Morgana, huh?"
Merlin nods down to the base of the mountain, and Arthur starts.
It's Morgana, he knows that right away, looking pale and distracted as she leans back against a rotting fence, gazing into the distance. Arthur's not quite sure how long he's been asleep, but knows it's been a fair bit (it's the air, he thinks, the air that's different, stale and suffocating and heavy with the stink of corrupted magic, the sky above him a queasy yellow-grey); Morgana, though, she doesn't seem to be a day older than the last time he saw her. Her features might be slightly different, blurred with the passage of time and many different bodies inhabited, but her hair is as dark and thick and her wrists are as slender and elegant as ever.
And after everything between them, he still finds himself unspeakably glad to see her here; he won't soon forget the kindness she did him by bundling him into that boat.
She notices him, finally, and the worry on her new face clears.
"About bloody time," Morgana calls up to him, "thought I'd have to take care of this whole lark by myself," and he waves a dismissive hand at her.
"Alright," he says, "shut up, I'm coming," and she pushes herself off the fence to join them.
When they meet halfway up the hill, she smiles, a little uneasily, hair lifting in an errant breeze. He looks her over; this close he can see that her jaw is more curved, her nose longer, but her eyes are even paler and keener than they were then — before.
"Morgana," he says.
"Be nice," Merlin mutters, and Arthur elbows him.
Her eyes are bright. "You're really back," she says.
He gestures wide, demonstratively, and clears his throat.
"So I understand," Arthur says, "that Albion has need of me."
Merlin raises his eyebrows, surveying the landscape. "Cutting it a hair close, aren't we?"
Arthur looks around himself, really seeing for the first time. "My god," he says involuntarily. The countryside is scarred and burned; in the distance he can see black smoke rising from a wasted village, and when the teasing wind shifts he can just smell the stink of smouldering flesh —
"It was in the water," Merlin said abruptly. "Not a disease, nothing they could cure, but proper magic — old magic. By the time they figured it out, it was already in the soil, in the crops — and anyway there was nothing they could do. There's only a handful of people left, little pockets here and there. Another rainfall might wipe them out."
"This is sick, Morgana," Arthur says, staring at his hands as he tries to fight down the blind proprietary rage that rises up in his throat. "Who's done this?"
Morgana doesn't respond; when Arthur finally glances at her, she looks white and tired, and he sees rather than hears her say Nimueh because a furious roaring is sounding in his ears.
His knuckles are white when he finally regains control enough to speak. "We finished her, Merlin. After what happened to you, we — she died. I know she did. I killed her myself," he says, felt her go slack and still, cleaned her unnatural blood off the blade of my sword —
"Clearly," Merlin says dryly, "these things are negotiable."
They set off together across a scorched field, making their way toward the crumbling causeway that is the only way off the island.
It is a long time before Arthur speaks again. None of them are in a particularly conversational mood.
"So, how long have you been waiting, exactly?"
Morgana smiles, but there's not a lot of humour in it. "It's been more than a thousand years since we put you in that cave," she tells him, "and only a little less than that since I died."
"Huh," Arthur says. There's not much else one can say to that.
"I didn't remember who I was," Morgana says, fingers worrying at the cuff of her dark woollen sweater. She squints at the horizon. "For a long time. It wasn't me, it was Moira. And I was happy, but then the dreams started again, and then everything starting collapsing, and my parents died in the first wave — "
She shrugs. "So that was that," she says, boots scuffing in the charred grass. "I did what I could, but then I thought, if I was back, and remembering things, it must be bad enough that it was time to come fetch you two. And here we are."
Arthur hitches his shield.
"Where are we going, anyway?" Morgana asks.
Arthur's mouth opens, then closes.
"Uh," he says. "I was hoping you two had a plan."
Merlin opens his mouth to speak, but Arthur holds up a hand to forestall him —
"Home, I think," Arthur says simply; there is a hook behind his navel that tells him Camelot is at the root of this mess.
"Ah," Merlin says.
"Hopefully we'll find a car tomorrow, I don't really think much of walking the whole way there," Morgana says, and then she pauses and frowns. "You do know what that is, don't you?"
Arthur rubs at the back of his neck. "Sort of," he says. "I was dreaming, you know. When I was asleep. The whole time. Well, not really dreaming — listening, I guess you could say. It's a bit mixed up, but it's all there, more or less. Those Normans. Oliver Cromwell. Margaret-bloody-Thatcher. Chips. Telly. The lot of it."
Behind Arthur, as he walks, the parched and scrubby dead grass springs back to life green and tall.
They sleep that night in an abandoned little two-room cottage. Edgy and restless, still tired but unable to relax, Arthur prowls around and pokes buttons on the blender and coffee-maker. The electricity, though, has long since been cut so instead he gluts himself on three months worth of yellowing newspapers as Merlin, muttering darkly to himself, shaves off his beard by candlelight at the kitchen table. The years are starting to drop away from him already; his face is looking less lined, his hair darker. Arthur looks up from old dire reports of vandalism and riots and watches Merlin making faces in the grimy mirror propped up against a tea canister while Morgana makes them cheese-on-toast.
They make hasty beds in front of the fireplace, a jumble of blankets and pillows, and Arthur turns to Morgana; "What about Gwen," he says quietly, and the words and Lancelot are on his tongue too but he bites them back, still unable to let go of the jealousy and regret.
Morgana shakes her head, stretching her arms under her pillow. Her pale eyes look weird and fey in the firelight. "I'm sorry, Arthur. I've been looking, but I haven't been able to find them, and I don't think they would remember who they were anyway." If they're still alive, she doesn't say, and the bitterness in her voice fades as she reaches to pat his hand in a startlingly kind way, her thumb rubbing his briefly, adding, "I'm sorry, I really am."
Merlin doesn't say anything, his face both restrained and sympathetic.
Arthur is awake before the others. He gets up silently and pads barefooted outdoors, where he sits on the buckling front stairs and watches as the sky lightens from grey to white over barren fields.
He recognises the footsteps as Merlin's instantly; he turns his head slightly as Merlin sits on the step beside him and holds out a cup of conjured water, but takes a moment before he speaks.
Arthur sighs shortly. "I dreamed of her," Arthur says, wrapping his hands around the cup. "Last night. She was laughing at me."
Merlin's thumbs hook in the fraying sleeve of his shirt. "It's funny," he says. "I never thought it'd be like this. Something massive and horrific, not a — a slow slide."
"A rot," Arthur says, and Merlin nods. Arthur's body tenses. "It doesn't seem her style. Why would she want this?"
"I don't know that she does," Merlin says thoughtfully. "I mean, poisoning the water, again — not much of an original thinker, is our Nimueh, I suppose. I wonder — "
But he trails off, looking distant. Arthur doesn't say anything, knowing that Merlin understands the twisted workings of Nimueh's mind far better than he does.
Not that that's any sort of comfort.
Inside, Morgana wrenches herself out of sleep with a frightened gasp.
They take the old grey car that sits rusting in the front garden.
"Do you know how to drive this thing?" Arthur asks Morgana, a trifle nervously, tossing his shield and scabbard in the boot.
"Yes," Morgana says, sounding superior, and then her voice falters. "Well, for a given value of knowing, that is — "
"Oh, God," Arthur says as he slams the door closed.
"Um," Morgana says, grimacing at the dusty row of dashes and dials. "That's not — I didn't even think about petrol."
"Oh, God," Arthur says.
In the backseat, Merlin laughs. "Don't worry about that," he says. "Just keep it pointed in the right direction. I'll keep it running."
They drive.
Two days out, and on a narrow road carved out through the dense forest where Arthur once hunted they are stopped by what looks like a man-made roadblock.
"I really don't like this," Morgana says, and Arthur watches her face worriedly. "We need to — "
A loud crack booms overheard, and though they're in the car they all duck instinctively.
"Oh, bollocks," Arthur says. "That's a gun, isn't it?"
"Gold star to King Arthur," Morgana says.
Arthur resists pulling a face at her.
"Right!" the man holding the gun says outside the car, rapping sharply on the window, voice muffled. "You lot, out of there."
Arthur looks back to Merlin.
"Last people left in Britain and they want to kill us," Merlin says, and sighs. "Well, let's see what's up, then."
They get out of the car, hands raised innocently. Arthur hopes that the scabbard at his belt is out-of-place enough to be unrecognisable.
"Are you wearing a sword?" the man says incredulously.
"Yeah," Arthur says, reckless and on-edge. "That's right. Excalibur. Ring a bell?"
"You're mad," the man says, and coughs, pressing a hand to his mouth; his fingers come away red.
Arthur reaches for his shoulder. "Are you all right?"
The man's face is grey, his eyes red-rimmed. "No," he says, smiling bitterly. "I'm not at all."
"How did you manage to survive this long?" Morgana asks softly.
He jerks his head back, towards the woods. "We were doing research. Underground facility, shipped-in water." He holds out a hand. "Eoin Thomas."
"Arthur," he replies, grasping the man's hand, and Eoin just shakes his head in disbelief.
"Whatever gets you through the day, son," he says.
Morgana squints up at the sky, and Arthur follows her gaze; great ugly black-and-yellow stormclouds are gathering above them.
"It's going to rain," Morgana says, horrified.
Eoin turns to Arthur. "I can't let you go," he says pleadingly. "There are so few of us left, we need help — "
"I'm so sorry," Merlin says. "We can't stop."
A spasm of ugliness flashes across Eoin's face.
"For pity's sake, man, we're trying to stop all this, don't you see?" Arthur says, hand twitching towards his scabbard when he sees Eoin shift his hands on his gun.
"Arthur, now," Morgana says, voice rising unsteadily.
"I can't hold it off, Arthur," Merlin says at his back, sounding strained with the effort. "Not for long, it's too much."
Eoin's red eyes close briefly, then open again.
"Go," he says.
Camelot's ruins overlook what is now a small university town, normally bustling with life but now an empty eerie shell of its former self. They make their way upwards, driving through winding, narrow streets in the pounding rain —
"This is weird," Arthur says fervently, and Morgana smiles tightly.
It is, though. He recognises this place, the slope of the hill, the roll of the land, his bones ache with remembering, but it's just off enough to throw him at every turn, a copse of trees here razed to the ground, sprawling houses and stores where there were once wide fields —
In what feels like both no time at all and far too long, they are there. Arthur feels sick as he peers out the window; where white walls once towered there lies nothing but battered foundations, stones littered over the ground.
He does not want to be here, in this place that was once his home, a shell of its former glory. It makes him itch.
Lightning splits the sky as thunder cracks and rumbles; the storm is directly overhead.
"Right," Arthur says, turning to the other two when Morgana turns off the ignition. Their faces are pale and washed out in the dim light as the sick yellowing rain streaks across the car window, but they both look resolute and ready. "I suppose this is it, then."
Merlin offers him a half-smile, and Morgana nods firmly.
When they open the car doors and make a run for it, the rain immediately soaks them to the bone, and here's the thing: this rain hurts, it seeps into every pore of Arthur's being and jabs like tiny knives.
"Follow me," Merlin says, and Morgana and Arthur do so, not asking how he knows where to go. They stumble over fallen columns and weave their way through ruined walls, trying to keep up, but he moves too fast for them —
When they find him again, Arthur's hand goes to his sword immediately, but it is ripped from his belt and thrown far from his grasp.
"Nimueh," Morgana says, voice low with fury.
She sits on a throne of broken stone that rises out of the mud, her diseased and unnatural water pooling around her feet. "Nimueh," Merlin is saying, facing her, carefully keeping his feet out of the water, and she spasms when he says her name, white body jerking in the rain.
Arthur's eyes widen. She looks, he realises wrong. It's Nimueh, but Nimueh through a warped and ugly glass, as though she's been broken and put back together imperfectly, without reference or design. Her blue eyes shine with a blind, unseeing hate; Arthur isn't certain if she even knows that they're standing here.
She is panting, blood dripping from her nose. "You," she says. "I got rid of you, Merlin Emrys. Why are you here?"
"Nimueh, make it stop. Put it right," Merlin says, voice ringing with power. "You have no idea what you're dealing with here, you'll only destroy yourself too."
Her twisted face is shadowed and hunted. "I didn't mean for this to happen," she says, and she looks up to meet Arthur's gaze; her eerie blue eyes neither ask for mercy nor offer apology. She laughs, and the sound grates across Arthur's fraying nerves. "What's the good of ruling a world if it's in ruins?"
"Merlin," Arthur says, and he shifts aside as Merlin walks past him, eyes blazing gold, splashing through the water unheedingly.
"You will not touch me," Nimueh says passionately, but Merlin leans in near to her, hand closing over hers where it grasps stone. Her eyes flash with fury and then flutter closed in resignation as he leans in to whisper, soft, in her ear; Arthur can't hear what he says over the roaring of the rain, but a bright light flares between their entwined fingers and grows and grows in strength and brilliance until the world is awash in blinding white. Morgana cries out beside Arthur, and he flings a hand up to shield his eyes —
Nimueh screams.
When he opens his eyes again she is gone, leaving no trace that she ever existed.
Merlin sighs shakily, leaning heavily against the broken throne. The rain continues to drum down around them, pain tightening like a vise around Arthur's skull.
Arthur finds that his hands are unsteady. He looks to Morgana; she is staring between them both, wide-eyed and white.
Arthur gathers his wits to speak. "Did I ever mention that you're really freaky when you go all omnipotent and powerful like that?"
Merlin smiles, but there is blood between his teeth. "You might've a time or two, yeah," he says.
Morgana grasps Arthur's forearm. "The rain," she says. "It's not stopping."
She's right; as Merlin's blue eyes go aghast with realisation and then narrow, the thunder rumbles again ominously —
"Right," Arthur says. "Hold on, you two. "
He stretches his hand out before him and twists something, and as the fabric of the world roils and swirls around them Arthur grabs for Morgana's hand and seizes a fistful of Merlin's sleeve —
Arthur snorts, dizzy and giddy.
"Not funny," Merlin says, looking green, "so not funny" as he braces his hands against his knees. Morgana pushes herself up to a sitting position, hand slipping in the mud —
But no, that's not right at all. There's no mud, no water, no trace of what happened here. The sky above is blue and clear, and the air, the air feels right again.
"Look," she says. "It's gone. It's all — it's all gone."
Distantly, Arthur can hear a faint roaring; he tenses, but then realises it's nothing but vehicles and the normal sounds of life in the town below.
He lays back in the grass and laughs and laughs.
Arthur turns, staring wonderingly at the traffic on the bridge, at the buildings, shining and new, nearly getting himself run down by a cyclist in the process.
"Look out, you," Merlin says, pulling him out of the way.
"God have mercy," Morgana murmurs. "King Arthur in the 21st century. I'm sensing a musical coming on."
They're walking slowly down the pavement, more slowly than the rest of the pedestrians who move briskly past them — a young woman bumps into Arthur's shoulder as she walks hurriedly by.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she says, and when Arthur absently raises his hand in a gesture of negation she smiles apologetically and turns to leave.
The sunlight hits her face, and his heart stops. He knows the slim line of her waist like the fit of his sword hilt in his hand, could recognise the curve of her neck if his eyes were torn out, and he just barely manages to chokes out, "Gwen?"
The girl spins and lifts her sunglasses. "Sorry?"
Arthur can feel Merlin go very still beside him. Those are Gwen's bright eyes, that's her curling dark hair — his fingers itch to tuck away the flyaway wisps that drift over her ears, to shake her and say it's me, Gwen, why did you let me go, but this is not his wife, this is not the Gwen he knew and loved and lost.
She bites her lip. "I don't know you, do I?" she says a little ruefully. "Sorry, it's terrible of me, mind like a sieve — do we have classes together? Oh, you're probably one of Lance's friends, aren't you — "
That's like a blow to the gut, and it takes enormous strength of will to smile at her and say, "Yeah, that's it. Lance." He can't look at Merlin and Morgana, just sets his jaw stoically and folds his arms behind his back and tries not to scare her off by acting all emotional and intense.
"Aha," she says, and her face lights up. "Thought I recognised you! Yeah, you coming down to the match this weekend? Lance is trying to arrange drives for everyone, you know him, more team spirit than the rest of the college put together — "
"I don't know," Arthur says, doing his best to keep his voice level. "I'll see."
"Studying," Merlin cuts in mercifully. "And stuff. You know."
She nods. "Well, ta, then," she says cheerfully, giving the three of them a sunny smile, and turns once more to leave.
Arthur leans heavily against the railing, out of the way of traffic, watching her go. Merlin stands before him, head lowered; Morgana grips Arthur's shoulder, as much to steady herself as to reassure him, her eyes wide and more than a little shattered. "She's not our Gwen," she says, and her voice quivers, the lilt more pronounced than ever. Arthur remembers, now, that Gwen was their friend before he ever took notice of her. "She is, but she's not. They wouldn't remember, either of them."
"I know," Arthur says. "I get it."
Morgana's face is closed off and absent for a brief moment. "They'll be happy together, Arthur," she says, pulling herself back to the present with great effort. "I can at least tell you that. And they have you to thank for it."
"Go on, twist the knife," Arthur mutters, but he's starting to shake it off now and he can even smile a little. "It never ends, does it?"
Merlin gives him an evaluating look. "No," he says. "It really doesn't."
They set off across the bridge, towards town, blinking against the bright sun. "So what now?" Morgana says, squinting, one hand over her eyes.
"Well," Merlin says speculatively, "I really doubt that Nimueh's gone for good. We should stick around for a bit, keep her from doing any mischief. I'm sure we'll find other minor apocalypses to avert."
Arthur nods very seriously. "That cave is kind of bleak," he says, and adds a bit desperately, "And I don't much fancy sleeping for another few centuries."
"Oh, I don't know," Merlin says, and when Arthur glances at him he seems to be trying very hard to keep his lips from twitching. "I think it did wonders for your temper."
Arthur favours him with a stern, kingly gaze. "Shut up," he says, and Merlin ducks his head, smiling outright.
Morgana shakes her head despairingly, but her lips are twisted wryly like she's trying hard to not to smile too. "Fair enough," she says, and her voice turns quite solemn. "We could go to that match, you know, Arthur. If you wanted."
He nods, his face carefully neutral. "Maybe," he says. "We'll see."
Morgana tucks her arm through his, and Merlin's elbow knocks into his side as they walk. Arthur breathes deep, closes his eyes briefly, and nods again.
He smiles.
It's going to rain soon.