A/N: I'll admit: I'm writing this as I go and have no clue where it's going yet. I just know that some friends got me back into Merlin after about four years away and I wanted to write some reincarnation/college not-actually-AU fluff haha

Title, of course, taken from the song by Christina Perri. Which reminds me of a warning: I'm going with the results of a quick google search that says King Arthur would have lived in the 5th or 6th century. I have no idea if the show follows that logic or not, because history is one thing that I am very, very bad at, but it honestly doesn't matter a whole lot either way. There are just small mentions of the time period. Also a warning for overuse of parentheses, but I promise that's only in this chapter.

...

One hundred years is a long time to live. Although, Merlin supposes, it isn't all that long by modern standards.

1500 years is a very long time to live, and still well beyond the scope of current medical advances.

He isn't sure exactly how long he's been alive anymore, but it's been long enough to do nearly everything humanly possible, as well as quite a few things that most people wouldn't consider humanly possible.

He's visited every major landmark in the world (and seen many of them while they were still being built). He's perfected many forms of magic and used them to heal the wounded and feed the hungry. (Once, his "miracles" even led to the people of a certain village worshipping him as a god. That was an awkward time.) He's tried his hand at music, at forging weapons, at art, at computer science, at medicine, and at manual labor. (That last one turned out to be pretty horrific when he realized that he was under constant supervision and couldn't use his magic at all.) He's read thousands of books and learned hundreds of languages, some of which are long dead now. He's met more people than he can count (though he's never stayed close to any for long out of fear of getting too attached and having to watch them die).

There are only two things that Merlin can think of that he hasn't done yet:

1. Learning through the formal education system rather than haphazard intake of whatever he stumbles across.
2. Dating. (After all, not many people would be willing to date someone who always looks three times older than them, regardless of their actual age. He's been perfectly content to keep it that way, but perhaps it's time to finally let go of the unrequited love he's clung to for all these years.)

So Merlin turns himself back into a 20-year-old and spends a full hour staring at the reflection of the man he was lifetimes ago. He whips up the necessary records with a few whispered words. He buys a decent-sized house in London with money earned fairly over the many years of wandering. And he applies to be a student at the nearest university.