a/n: because asdfskfldsjlsla feelings.
disclaimer: oh the things I'd do to own Colin Morgan.
Gold
or
The Artist's Hand
It was not supposed to be like this.
The sounds filling the air were meant to be the clanging clash of sword on sword; his chanting of forþ fleoge: metal and magic, fighting side by side, not the shouts and heckling catcalls of shaven-headed youths, mimicking him as he trudged past.
They might understand, one day. When they had seen what he'd seen; lived as he'd lived. It changed a person, cradling the ones they loved in their arms as they died, seeing the light leave their eyes and their souls twirling into the air and rising to the cloudless sky.
Freya, and his father; and Arthur. Gaius.
After his mother it'd got too painful, and even though he'd taken himself off to hide at the foot of the Feorre Mountain in the cave where his father before him had hidden, he'd heard about Gwen's passing, and it hit him in the stomach with a dull blow that spread down to his toes and up to his heart. He mourned for Camelot, who had lost a great queen, but more he grieved for the girl who had been his first and almost-closest friend in the kingdom, who had the kindest heart of anyone he knew, who had bought him flowers and stood by him in the stocks and who had kissed him, once.
Sometimes he'd steal away to the Castle of the Ancient Kings to remind himself of Lancelot and their victory over Morgana and Morgause, and how Arthur had knighted the four common men who had given everything they had for him, though they were but ruins now. The castle's majestic magnificence was reduced to a crumbling tower and the incessant whoosh of cars with the occasional honk of a horn on the dual carriage way running along one side of the land.
On a few painful, fleeting moments, he'd considered returning to the Fisher King's realm, awed and humbled by the man as he had been while the gifts had been given, and then Arthur had come storming in in that obnoxious, charming, wonderful, stupid way of his, Gwaine not a second behind him, but the longing and loneliness would double him over.
"Where you goin', old man?"
And the truth of it was overwhelming. He was old, so old, and born of magic itself, which was older than nearly everything of the earth, especially everything surrounding him now. The concrete structures twisted up around him as he walked, street lamps blinking down and providing half-light so unlike the filtering of dawn and dusk he used to spend with Arthur on night hunts or quests.
Merlin ignored the lads flipping him the finger and, withered hands on weak thighs, sunk onto the chipped-paint park bench. The wind rustled past the bitten leaves on the trees and blew long grey strands of hair into his face.
It was not supposed to be like this, he thought, hunched, decrepit, melting into the unloved bench in the unkempt grass. There was still so much anger in the world. He was born of magic in an unforgiving time; the patterns weaving through the history books as he lived sewed the same threads over and over. Men still traded parries and blows and the only thing that had changed was the strength and suddenness of the weapons in their hand. There had been so much blood shed on the land beneath his feet, and still it was only earth: had always been and would always be earth. Cold yet bursting with energy; soil and rocks and dirt and dust; capable of seeding growth and keeping death. And amongst all the fighting, there were still people like him losing the ones they loved.
Merlin sighed.
It was not supposed to be like this at all.