A/N: Heh heh, I promised chap. 1 would be up very soon! Of course, I didn't think it would be this soon…but to tell you the truth, I actually typed up this chapter before I made the prologue. That's why it's so quick! And remember! Every time a reader reviews, a writer gets its wings!
"I started blurring the lines because I didn't care;
I started crossing the line because you were never there.
Nowhere to turn, no one to help—
It's almost like I don't even know myself."
—Loves Me Not, t.A.T.u.
. . . .
Sometimes it burns.
Sometimes, when I'm by myself and the weight of the world rests mercilessly on my shoulders, it sets my withered, over-used heart aflame just for the sake of roasting the nerves and coating the already ugly surface with soot.
Sometimes it's a weak flame, and others it's a raging fire that—whatever the degree of misery it's produced by—exhausts and agonizes me without rest.
Sometimes I can taste the misery: bitter and bland and as unforgiving as the world is unfamiliar to me now. A creature born of the Earth—the creature born of the Earth has never felt so out of tune with nature. So lost to the once green and beautiful and friendly surface of the forests and villages.
In a way, I'm curious about that every once in a while. In a way, I wonder why it feels so different now. Perhaps it's because, slowly, the familiarity of the world has been disappearing for years and years and years.
Presently, the forest near the spot where he died is a highway. The lake is still there, sort of, but the green trees, the berry bushes where he and I used to rest during the longer, more pain-staking hunting trips (for me at least—he never complained because he didn't have to carry the load), and the soft-grassed campsite that I innocently and with very much coincidental-ness would lead him back to every nightfall during those same trips: all gone.
Paved over by roads and stores and malls and the like.
That's okay though because I don't really think about that time a lot anymore now. Over the years I've learned that it's easier if I don't intentionally dwell on those memories. Not because it's too painful—though that's not to say it doesn't burn like hell—but because usually when I start to think about it too hard, I start to get lost in the melancholy memoir.
I can't help but drift from heart-breaking to crushing to destroying, until I'm left void of all emotion and all desire to go on. It makes it hard to breathe, and this is a problem not because I avoid feeling so lifeless (that's inevitable anyway), but because it's sort of inconvenient and draws attention pretty quickly when you abruptly start hyperventilating in public.
For some reason I keep counting the years since he left me. Since he left Camelot and left his friends alone. I don't know why I do it, since with every new year I end up drinking myself into oblivion and passing out on the too-big bed in my apartment with wet eyes and a broken will that just…doesn't have the strength to release tears.
I stopped crying over him after the first decade. Mostly because the interior of my body is so hollow and empty that there are no tears left to cry. The first year after he was gone was…rather horrific to say the least. A crushing…violent cycle of getting angry—looking determinedly for something, anything, to just bring him back to me—and then losing steam, sobbing, screaming, collapsing. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I never did any of this outside my own room, of course, except for one time. The knights were the only ones there, though. I guess I should have been thanking the Triple Goddess that Gwen wasn't in the room when I lost control like that. She…with the state she was in, she wouldn't have been able to handle seeing me like that.
It started with a brief, meant-to-be-cheering-up comment from Leon to all of the knights and myself that Gwen would still do a wonderful job of taking Arthur's place. And, very abruptly, my magic seemed to take control of my whole body and I was shattering things against the walls as the knights took cover, and I was standing there at the center of the chaos, eyes glowing gold, sobbing uncontrollably as I fell to my knees.
After a few minutes Percival was able to make his way to me, and at his grip on my shoulders all of the strewn objects dropped to the floor clatteringly. I started babbling incoherently about who knows what. Somewhere in there I was able to choke out something like, "N—nobody…nobody…ever…!" and was silenced by Percival's pulling me against his shoulder and shushing me gently.
None of the knights rebuked me that day. At first I thought it was because they were suddenly afraid of me (once he died, the whole truth had come out about my magic), but now I think it was because they all just felt terribly sorry for me. The only other person who had ever publicly displayed so much grief for his death was Guinevere.
And, boy, wasn't her life absolutely falling apart around her. With her husband gone, she turned to me for guidance. "The King would have wanted you at his side, and I will not fail his wishes." However, rather than doing all of the things that she'd hoped to do as the Queen of Camelot, I noticed a strong development of an Uther-like complex in her as the first years passed.
Probably because all the things she'd wanted to do, she'd wanted to do not as the Queen, but as his Queen. In reality she was a horrible leader without his reason and compassion for his cause. I could not answer the inquiries which she aimed at me, for they were questions that I could not answer. They were questions which she herself was just too scared to respond to.
"What do I do, Merlin?" She would often ask me this question with tears in her eyes and desperation in her tone. "Just tell me what I'm supposed to do!"
"My Queen, I've no better compromises than you,"
"Please, Merlin, help me!"
"I do not know, Gwen." At this she would break into tears in a collapsing heap and, after a moment of debating, I would leave her chambers and not come back for the rest of the evening.
Everyone was affected by his passing, not just Gwen and me. Even Gaius looked a little frailer in the following years. Nobody seemed to have the strength that they used to, and—even though magic was now freely circulating in Albion—it felt like nothing had been achieved.
It seemed an unspoken truth between all of us: Surely, surely Albion would fall without him here. How could this have been his and my destiny? Even today I wonder that. The dragon, the spokeswomen of the goddess, the Fisher King—so many people told me that we were meant to do great things and that we were to unite Albion and bring magic back to the land. But nobody had told me that he would…that he would leave me like that in the end.
All of them had known it would happen, all of them knew exactly how it would play out, but they didn't even warn me about that. Surely, they could have at least had the humanness to warn me of the suffering that would occur from all of it? Then again, I suppose if I'd known I would have completely disassociated myself with the whole destiny. Myself and him, that is. I might have even gone to the lengths of tying him up in a cave or something.
But I'd not been offered a chance to change the future at all, and I guess that's the reason for it.
All any of the prophets had cared about was the return of magic—He and I were just tools in the upbringing of it.
For many years, I watched as Albion began to build itself up and then slowly fall apart again—piece by piece. Gwen's previously pure heart had been so twisted by agony at his passing that she just couldn't hold on for very long. She always trusted me more than she should, and once more I was burdened with the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I guess, in a way, Guinevere sort of started to lose herself after a while. It occurred to her as she began to reach her mid-thirties, that she'd yet to produce an heir to the throne. Yet to re-marry. And, though it didn't really surprise me, I was more than a little put off when she finally turned to me once again. She'd always trusted me—as I said, more than she should—and she easily convinced herself that, if she had to be with anybody else ever again after him, I could be the only one.
I denied her as gently, but as forcibly as possible. It was at that moment in time that I realized how Gwen really was starting to lose it. And it was scary—to watch somebody that I cared so much about lose her senses to madness and loneliness. Eventually she settled for a neighboring lord, but there was no real affection in it. I think she merely did it so as not to completely destroy her late husband's legacy. The child born between her and the lord would not be of his blood, but he would at least carry on in ruling Albion devotedly—as he would have wanted.
More years passed…and then people I loved started to leave me. Unsurprisingly, Gaius was the first to go. That I was able to numb away with a few alcohol-filled days in the tavern. Next was Gwen, who everybody I think had seen coming. For so long had she been broken and incomplete—in a way, all of us were almost mournfully happy for her when she could finally leave this world so filled with pain for her, and perhaps she joined him at that time.
For some reason, I hope that isn't true.
I know it's cruel and selfish, but in a way, I hope that he is still a part of this world. I hope that he has become a part of the Earth just as I was born from it. The thought of his life force—of his essence—being in the very air I breathe is enough to get me through one day at a time. And other people shouldn't be a part of the Earth as he is.
Anyway, about half of Camelot joined me in the tavern on that day. Her son took the throne, young and nervous, and the fall of Albion was certain—to me, at least. I was the only one to give up faith in him so quickly. But all I could think as he commanded my king's land was that he had none of the true king's bravery, none of the passion or the strength or the mercy.
By this time, I was starting to realize that I was immortal in some way. I grew, I aged, but I didn't die. I sort of wish that I could, just because I'm curious as to where I would end up (Maybe, just maybe with him if I'm really lucky?), but it was strange because physically I didn't feel so weak as I did mentally. It was more so my body and mind that aged rather than my…soul, I suppose? My life force?
I did not stop practicing magic over the years and it was starting to really become clear to me how powerful I actually was. It sort of made me sick at this point. The aging spell now went in both directions and could be held easily on my part. There was no limit on time, no weakening from it, just a strange and raw kind of power that I had never experienced before. To this day it is that easy. In fact, I use that spell constantly.
So I just watched as my friends continued to fall, and I felt as inhuman as stone as they died heroically and proudly for the sake of a crumbling Camelot and I just tried to help in any way I could, as cold and nearly immortal as Morgana herself. A mortal blade could wound me, but never could it deliver a fatal blow.
Percival…Leon…eventually my mother, and the village people from Ealdor…In the next decade, everyone I had been friends with was dead.
I had to watch as Albion crumbled, slowly, slowly, painfully, and a new civilization started to form. I traveled aimlessly for centuries as the world started to turn into an unfamiliar, strange place. Eventually, magic faded from the world and I watched wordlessly as it all turned to legend. Magic…dragons…and eventually, Camelot…Morgana…him…
A dream-like notion that was inconceivable to any and all people around the world. A children's tale. Sometimes I amuse myself by looking at the artwork focused on Camelot and him. It's so incredibly inaccurate that I just giggle and people look at me strangely, but I just stand there like an average young man with my hands in my pockets, headphones hanging from my ears, messy ebony hair and dirty jeans but tired—no, exhausted—blue eyes.
How easy it was. How sickeningly easy it was to blend into the changing society of the world, to go unrecognized as the most powerful warlock to ever walk the Earth. It'd been a long time since I'd had to hide my powers. Since I'd gone unrecognized for my deeds. At least a century after the battle with Morgana—after he fell—there were still people bowing to me upon meetings on crossroads and coincidental bumps in town. Hell, people used to come to me to pray.
This was always quite awkward for me and I had absolutely no idea how to accommodate their prayers to me—despite the fact that I was perfectly (okay, mostly) human—and it wasn't like I had some divine power to make money fall from the sky or rouse loved ones from the dead (how well I know the deprivation of that ability).
But soon…people didn't recognize me in the streets anymore. People didn't take second looks at me and then start hyperventilating in awe and premeditated reverence. People didn't come to me in prayer or any other kind of pledging.
Oh, how quickly I changed from Emrys, the prophet-spoken man who saved Albion from destruction alongside the Once and Future King, to the good looking boy down the road who had always acted a little strange now that I think about it. And even quicker did I turn invisible and become a part of the scenery as an odd, ominous young man that really shouldn't even be bothered with.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. The translucence makes it a lot easier to hide my…abilities. I'm so comfortable with my magic that truthfully, I don't even need incantations anymore. If I concentrate hard enough and think very seriously about it, I can perform magic without even opening my lips. Sometimes it's harder to block the glint of gold in my irises when I do risky stuff like that, but I always manage one way or another.
After all, I'm still around after all these years and still undiscovered.
Sometimes I wonder how I made it this long. Not necessarily made it this long without being found out, but made it this long without…I don't know, giving up. If I wanted, I could have taken over Camelot—it's not like Gwen wouldn't have let me—and I could have raised the new world on magic and myth. But I didn't. And I'm still not quite sure why.
I've yet to move away from the general area where Camelot was all that time ago, and sometimes when I'm walking alongside the road and I look at the lake, I think of him. And I think of that wooden boat sailing away in the distance. That wooden boat sailing away with my dreams and my world and my life. My very will to love was taken away with the quiet movement of that little dingy.
Even in this very moment as I scurry through the cold down the side of the busy street, I glance briefly sideways towards the lake (the motion has become routine) and remember all too clearly the horrible sinking feeling as he was taken away from me by the gentle flow of the lake and the nearly irrepressible urge to run into the water after him.
All of the pain I'd ever been inflicted by his ignorance of my magic could not match the crushing defeat and self-pity I felt watching him drift away from me. As he'd been doing since he became King. Every day he'd been drifting a little farther away from me, and I'd let it happen, so maybe in retrospect it's my fault that I could not stop him from being as careless as he was.
However, that's not important right now. Irritated, I shake off the thought as I pause in the grass to check my buzzing cell phone. (You will never even begin to guess how long it took me to figure out the fundamentals of a cell phone.)
It's Tex again.
Are you coming back soon? I could eat an elephant, I'm so hungry.
Miffed, I stifle a laugh even in my own company on the side of the road and respond slowly (with clumsy fingers that press the wrong letters on the touch screen),
As it happens, we live in a temperate maritime climate, and there is a 0% expectancy that you will find an elephant anywhere near the apartment. So you really ought to keep your pants on and let me get back when I get back.
Don't be so proud of yourself with your little technical terms, Merlin. I learned all that maritime and temperate stuff in sixth grade: you're not super intelligent.
Oh yeah right, like you have any idea what a temperate maritime climate is.
Merlin, do you have any idea what a temperate maritime climate is?
Absolutely not.
She doesn't respond. Tex is about thirteen years old, and the only person in the world who knows that I'm a warlock. Who knows about my past and even begins to study the depths of my misery. I've been "taking care of her" since she was ten due to her drunkard father kicking her out of their house in Nashville, Texas (hence her nickname) which I happened to be passing through for about the fifty-fourth time in my life when I found her sobbing on the side of the road.
Funny enough, I happened to be good acquaintances with her great, great grandmother, Blythe Julian. When we realized this, for whatever reason, we just stared at each other and then broke out in hysterical laughter that lasted about a full five minutes.
She's lived with me in my apartment since then, which might be weird once she gets older, except Tex is pretty sure that she's lesbian (I find it best to not question the early decision of a thirteen year old girl's sexuality and to just go with the time flow—people in the 21st century are insane) and the very idea of "ugh…kissing a guy…" makes her cringe. So, there will be pretty much zero awkwardness in our living together once she's old enough to even consider sex. I not-very-secretly dread that day.
As I tuck the phone back in my pocket, I continue walking along the road towards the convenient store—the destination? The food isle. The objective? To buy the jumbo bag of candy bars on the second shelf. The motivation? Tex and I have been fricking starving all day, and candy seems the most appealing way to fix this problem.
On my way out of the convenient store, Tex texts me again and as I'm looking down at the little words on the screen, I start to notice some sort of headache right in the back of my cranium. That's probably what I get for dedicating a portion of my day to thinking about him, as usual.
Okay, seriously now, I'm going to die of hunger if you don't get back soon.
I sigh, suddenly feeling the exhaustion that the throbbing in my head often brings to surface.
I'm on my way.
And as I walk back towards the apartment, I glance once more at the lake—which seems to serve as his grave in my eyes—and allow myself the low whisper in which my lips barely move, "Miss you," I then continue on and don't look at the water again.
. . . .
"Finally! I'm so hungry!" Tex bursts the moment she opens the door and then yanks me inside hastily.
Grumbling indignantly, I slip out of my rain coat while she goes into the kitchen, dumps the whole bag in a bowl, and comes back into the living room. For a moment she pauses, looking at the red color staining my cheeks and fingers from the cold, like she only just noticed that I was even here.
"Do you want some tea or something? You look pretty cold."
"No, it's fine," I respond with a sigh, yanking a blanket off the couch as she settles down in front of the TV on the floor, leaving a space for me.
Supposedly I'm seven years older than Tex right now, and apparently (according to her rants about my bony body and uncomfortable, angular limbs) I'm supposed to be bigger than her so she can lean on me and stuff like that. However, she's only about a head shorter than me and I'm too skinny to be a very nice substitution for a cushion—after all, I'm pretty sure I wasn't born in the interest of becoming a nice head rest for the whiny teenager Temperance Mitchell.
So we just lean against the couch as she flips nonchalantly through channels, handing me a candy as she goes. "Now then, to continue our discussion: If you didn't have TV's and stuff in medieval times—and yes, I did know that, you smart ass—then what did you do in all your free time?"
I sigh once again—I swear, it feels like I've answered this question a million times for her. "There was no free time, Tex, and if there was I mostly used it to help out Gaius. And don't swear—I keep telling you, it's not lady like." It stings just a little bit to say his name, but I got over that a long time ago. Her next question throws me off completely.
"Am I anything like Gaius?"
"What?" This has nothing at all to do with her original question.
"Am I like your uncle at all?
"No." I answer instantly. "You have absolutely nothing in common with him, except maybe your tendency to overwork me."
She laughs, "Well, at least there's something, then."
"Why?" Usually she only asks sentimental questions like that when there's something bugging her. Usually that something never has anything to do with the question, but just the same.
"I dunno," She shrugs, going back to the television. "Just wondering." I wait for further explanation, but it doesn't come, so I eventually let it go and lean back, paying little attention to the display on the screen as I reach into the bowl.
After some time, when I'm almost asleep, Tex speaks up again. "So Addisyn is coming over tomorrow," Ah. So this is what's wrong. Her tone is meant to be laid back and not at all uncomfortable, but the awkwardness she feels shines unheedingly.
And yet again tonight, I sigh. "That's fine, I ought to actually go shopping tomorrow anyways."
"Are you sure? I mean…" She blushes, "It's not like you have to leave or anything—it's not like we're going to need privacy or anything…"
Addisyn is Tex's best friend and—Tex prays—a hopeful girlfriend in a few years time. The two attend middle school together and Addisyn seems a nice enough girl. I like her perfectly well, but the thought seems to be stuck in Tex's mind that I'm subconsciously homophobic and that, at a point, I'm going to start throwing up or something just at the thought of two girls together.
"Tex," I stare at her with serious blue eyes, "I don't mind your liking her. If you're happy, I'm happy and that's all there is to it. Though I do still think you're too young for a girlfriend…" For some reason it makes me feel warm when I say stuff like that. Probably because not only is it true, but it's a protective emotion that I was void of for so many years before Tex. I was void of it since he left me and never had anybody else I wanted to protect, so this, I think, is healthy for me in a way.
"I know, I know," She says angrily, as though irritated with herself, "I just…" She pauses and then starts mumbling. "Dad was fine with it too until he found out…" She's referring to her best friend in elementary school who, in fourth grade, also became her "girlfriend", if you can call it that. And she's referring to the incident that got her thrown out of her home in the first place when she was caught writing her a love note.
So, at the tender change of subject, I reply as impassively and submissively as I can. "Tex, if I caught you writing love letters to Addisyn, the worse scenario for you is that I will read it and never ever let you live it down. Honestly, that would be priceless."
Her cheeks flush, but she laughs nonetheless, and relaxes into my side, despite my "fricking body of a skeleton…"
A/N: Okay, so I realize that there was lots of angst and no Arthur! :( but be patient Merthur lovelies! He'll probably come in either in the next chapter or the one after. Soon! Also, thanks for the reviews I have gotten so far! They make me feel ooey gooey and special!
