If Arthur let himself, he could almost imagine that it was a hundred years ago, and that he was still the young prince who had hunted these woods with the serene assurance that life would continue to be kind. The two of them sat before a crackling campfire, as they had a thousand times before, drinking the same herbal tea as always, out of a battered pot that Merlin had drawn from the depths of an even more battered leather satchel. It couldn't possibly be the same one he'd used in the old days, Arthur mused happily, but it wasn't so very different, either. And he'd scolded Arthur about his wet boots, before tugging them off and setting them to dry by the fire, exactly as he would have back when maintaining Arthur's footwear was actually his problem.

And they talked, and laughed, trying to sum up a hundred years in as many minutes. It took Arthur a little while to notice that Merlin was asking a great many questions, but was skillfully ducking any Arthur asked in return, and volunteering little or nothing of any real import. That was also familiar from the old days, and it was not nearly as pleasant a memory. More secrets? Lies? Weren't they past this? And if not, why not?

After the third time Merlin had insisted, with a strange, pained smile, that no, nothing of any real interest had happened in the last half-century, Arthur's never-endless patience was wearing very thin.

"Tell me, what exactly are you trying to hide from me this time, Merlin?" he asked. "I know you're trying to keep something under wraps, and I warn you I'll find it out eventually. Might as well get it over with."

Merlin looked taken aback. "Didn't Freya tell you anything?"

"Not a word," Arthur said. "The last news I got was from Gwen."

"Oh," said Merlin, numbly. "I… I wasn't trying to hide anything. I just thought you knew, and I didn't think you'd want to discuss it. I thought they would have told you what's been happening here. And why you were brought back now."

"Well, they didn't. The Lady told me to ask you, in the hopes that you'd have some ideas. Which, obviously, you don't, so I suppose we'll have to figure it out as we go. And speaking of going… are we going straight to Camelot, or are there any little detours you want to make first?" Arthur asked.

Merlin went pale. Paler. "…Oh," he said. "Yes. Well. That's actually one of the things I didn't know you didn't know."

Arthur frowned. "Don't know what, exactly?"

"Camelot," he said. "It… Camelot's gone, Arthur. It fell."

Fell. Camelot fell. Camelotfellcamelotfellcamelotfell.

The words didn't make sense.

Somehow, Arthur, through no conscious will of his own, found that he had seized Merlin by the lapel of his jacket with one hand, and the other curled around that slender throat. "What did you say?" he hissed.

"Camelot fell," Merlin choked out, not even trying to defend himself. "A long time ago."

"And where the hell were you at the time, Emrys?" Arthur snarled. "At the tavern? Gathering 'vital supplies'?"

"Arthur, I'm sorry!—I'm so sorry—"

"You had one job, damn it! You were supposed to protect Camelot until I got back! What the hell were you doing when they needed you?"

"Arthur… please…"

Arthur forced himself to release his grip, his mind roiling as Merlin gasped for air, and he cursed his temper. He kept one steadying hand on the heaving shoulders for whatever comfort that might afford. "…I'm sorry. Gods, Merlin; I'm sorry. Breathe. Just breathe."

Merlin shook his head. "No—don't apologize," he rasped. "Deserved it."

"Never mind that. How did it happen? Where were you?"

He swallowed. And said the one thing that could have possibly made Arthur feel worse than he already did. "Imprisoned."

*.*.*.*.*

Baron Loholt had been, all things considered, a very good choice of heir for Queen Guinevere. A distant cousin of the Pendragons, he was intelligent, brave, a canny politician and a reasonable warrior, and there was no doubt that he cared deeply about the welfare of the country he knew he would someday rule. He was also married, to the daughter of one of the oldest noble houses in Camelot, with two healthy young sons. For a country that had, for decades, been ruled by a childless queen, the prospect of a clear-cut line of succession was a comforting one.

He was not comfortable with magic in general or Merlin in particular; that much was no secret, although his mild distaste for sorcery was nothing like Uther's implacable hatred. Merlin, who no longer especially cared if he was liked so long as he was useful, was perfectly willing to put up with a few sidelong looks, and was careful not to refer to the Heir Presumptive as 'Baron Low-Hope' when anyone besides Gwen could hear him.

(She had found the nickname quite amusing. They agreed that Arthur would have, too, that Gwaine would have figured out a way to twist the name into something far dirtier, and that Leon would have looked pained by the disrespect. Lancelot, Merlin thought, would have tried to look reproachful, but the twinkle in his eyes would have given him away. Gwen didn't think he would have bothered trying not to laugh.

Just to finish calling the roll, they theorized that Elyan would have snickered, Percival would have grinned, Morgana would have come up with a wittier insult and, moreover, used it in public, Gaius would have quirked a disapproving Eyebrow of Doom before chuckling himself, and Uther would have hanged him for lèse-majes té. Merlin had objected to that one, the first time they played the 'what would the others have done' game, challenging Gwen to come up with anything—anything at all—that Uther wouldn't have wanted to kill him for, including breathing. She couldn't, but insisted that it only proved her point, and from then on it was usually the coda to any such discussion.)

Loholt was an ambitious man, but a loyal one, and his behavior during Gwen's reign was, it had to be said, irreproachable. When she finally died—peacefully, in her sleep, a small smile on her face—he decreed a month of mourning, and only gritted his teeth slightly when the funeral pyre's intended occupant went suddenly and mysteriously missing. (They ended up spreading a velvet pall over a silk gown hastily stuffed with straw and leaving it at that. No one noticed.)

A day or two after the formal mourning came to an end, Merlin was in his workshop, frowning at his much-reduced stock of poppy and willowbark tinctures, and had just made up his mind to go to the woods and restock his pharmacopoeia—and, not so incidentally, get the hell out of the citadel for a while.

For a change, he mused later, he certainly got his wish.

He was meandering along the riverbank, his basket half-full of various herbs, when it happened. He never did see who, exactly, felled him with a heavy blow to the head from behind. He thought it might have been the king, but that was only a guess. He was, however, sure that the one who sank a dagger in his back to finish him off was either the queen or someone wearing her perfume. A perfume Merlin recognized, because he was the one who distilled it. For her alone.

He slid into darkness not even daring to hope that he could stay there. And he didn't. He came to, twice, finding himself draped over a saddle both times. The first time, he was promptly run through by whoever was leading his horse. The second time, he struggled into consciousness just long enough to strangle on the garotte looped tightly around his throat. He had time to think wearily that it didn't bode well for the third.

He woke in a very familiar cave, and, involuntarily, let out a whimper. No. Not here. Not this. Anything but this!

The Crystal Cave glittered around him. He was bound to one of the larger formations, bound in such a way that he could not look away from the crystals—showing the present, the past, the future, the might-have-beens, the might-yet-bes—that surrounded him on all sides.

"…Why?" he managed to rasp. There were two people standing just behind him, apparently making certain that the bindings would hold. A chain clinked as the last rune-inscribed shackle snapped into place, and it burned. It burned. "Why are you doing this?"

Loholt put a mock-friendly hand on his trembling shoulder. "Because, Emrys, you refuse to die. This is the next best thing."

"…I don't understand," he said. There were images forming in the crystals. Desperately, childishly, he closed his eyes. If he didn't have to see the crystals, maybe he wouldn't have to live with the memories of what they showed him. "Loholt, please. I… I have served Camelot all my life. I would have served you—"

"You would have served yourself," said the queen, her voice harsh. "You've been the power behind the throne for as long as anyone remembers, but that ends today. We are no puppets, sorcerer. You will not control us as you did poor Guinevere."

"I never controlled her!" It was so hard to think. Even with his eyes closed, he could see it, couldn't not see it, everything the crystals wanted to show him, and all of it was terrible. He opened them again, (it wasn't as though it made any difference,) and craned his neck as best he could, trying to meet the king's gaze. "I… I wouldn't. Never. I… my magic was hers to command, not the other way around. And now it's yours."

"In that case, I command you and your accursed magic to stay here and leave us alone," Loholt said. "Stop trying to force me to do whatever you think your sainted Arthur would have done in any given situation. The Pendragons are gone, Emrys. It's a new age. A new Camelot. This is an age of reason, not superstitious claptrap. The last thing it needs is you."

Death, destruction, despair, doom. Each crystal showed a different disaster. Everywhere he looked, Merlin saw the fields that would die for lack of the rain he conjured in times of drought. Travelers being devoured by the monsters he'd kept at bay for so long. The allies who counted on being able to draw on his magic turning aside. Reivers and plagues and war, war, war…

"I'll go. I swear to you, I'll go and never return," he said. His mouth tasted of salt. One small trapezoidal crystal, close to his right knee, showed him fire consuming the lower town. "I'll leave Camelot. I'll leave Albion entirely, if you'd rather. I'll do whatever you want. You'll never see me again, and I will never raise my hand against you. I swear it on everything I hold sacred. Just… Loholt, please. Mercy. I beg you, sire—mercy. Anything but this. Don't leave me here. Not here."

"I don't have a choice," Loholt said. He even sounded regretful. "The priests were quite clear. We both know you wouldn't really leave Camelot, and this is the one place they said could hold you."

Oh, gods, that was a child—a child—reflected in an oval crystal a bit to his left, the one showing him a famine-struck Camelot, and no matter how much Merlin wanted to tell himself that she was just asleep, and surely she'd wake up any moment now, he knew he was lying. And Merlin, a lifetime of experience notwithstanding, was not actually a very good liar.

If he didn't go mad within a day, it would not be for lack of opportunity.

He didn't notice that his disguise spells were melting away—iron-gray hair darkening to glossy black, the lined, careworn face smoothing to ivory. The king did, and he nodded in grim recognition. He hadn't really believed that part of the story, but obviously it was true; Emrys did not age and could not die. It only strengthened his resolve; this was the only way. If he did not rid himself of the sorcerer he'd inherited along with his throne, that throne would never be truly his. And Camelot would never be truly safe.

"Don't do this, sire. Please. Please, Loholt, for the love of the gods—don't do this," Merlin whispered. A jagged spike of crystal a foot or two away showed him storm-wracked seas and splintered boat-timbers washing up on shore. Splintered timbers and sea-bloated bodies. "Burn me. Hang me. Drown me. Anything. Just don't leave me here."

"Goodbye, Emrys," said the king softly. He was not, for the most part, a cruel man, and he took no pleasure in agonized terror, even in a man he genuinely feared. He took his wife's arm, and together they picked their way out of the cave.

"Loholt! LOHOLT! LOHOLT!" came the cries behind them. He set his jaw and kept moving. Just as they reached the cave mouth and stepped into the sun, the timbre of Merlin's voice changed, scaling up into a howl. He sounded desperate. Terrified. And not entirely sane. "AAAARRRRTHURRRR!"

The queen reached for his hand. Troubled, he took it. And both of them… reconsidered, trying to visualize the sort of monarchs they wanted to be, and trying to balance what they were doing against that ideal. Because they weren't bad people, not really. Misguided, perhaps; a bit ruthless when they thought the greater good demanded it, but that's not a rare trait in a monarch. And even so, they were humane enough to have second thoughts about what the greater good might actually entail.

It's just a pity that sometimes, second thoughts don't come soon enough to make any difference.

They turned around to see a smooth expanse of stone, with no indication that a cave had ever been there. Done was done, the cave seemed to be saying. They had wanted to be rid of their sorcerer, and now they had to live with the consequences of that decision. Whatever came next was on their own heads.

They rode back to Camelot without a word.

Another velvet-shrouded effigy—odd, how corpses kept going missing in Camelot—was burned with all due solemnity, his Sidhe-crafted staff atop the pyre where a knight's sword would have lain, while people said the appropriate things and pretended not to be, in an uncomfortable sort of way, a tiny bit relieved. Very sad, of course, but hardly unexpected, really; no one lives forever, after all. Old age comes for us all, and grief did funny things to a person, and it was fitting he'd followed his beloved queen, and he'd earned his rest, and so forth.

The servants knew better, (the servants always know better,) but nobody asked them.

The druids also knew better, but nobody asked them, either. Nor did they say a word. By ones and twos, they just quietly left Camelot almost before anyone noticed they were gone.

Camelot prospered, for the most part, for the next several years. Loholt was no great king, but he was a decent one, and no tyrant, either. If harvests weren't quite as bountiful as grandsires insisted they had been back in the good old Pendragon days, well, memory is always rosier than life. And if the odd magical beast came to wreak havoc, and a guard happened to mutter something to the effect that Emrys would have handled the matter with a snap of his fingers, well, the beasts were always defeated eventually, and any grumbling guard would be put on latrine duty for a month or two. If border skirmishes and raids were a bit more frequent, a bit more destructive, than they had been when the Round Table held sway… no one denied that these were dangerous times, and the important thing was to stay positive and trust their rulers.

It took nearly eight years before 'not as bountiful' turned into 'half-empty granaries,' before 'border skirmishes' turned into 'invasion,' before 'dangerous times' turned into 'utter devastation.' Before Camelot became a memory.

And Merlin watched it—watched all of it, because the crystals wouldn't let him do anything else. He watched the citadel fall; the few magics he could do from a distance, from inside the cave, inside the bindings, inside the crystal, could not prevent it. He saved what he could, who he could, as many as he could—in later years, there were a great many people who had no idea that their ancestors had proudly called themselves citizens of Camelot. Or even, as the years rolled inexorably onwards, that Camelot had ever existed at all.

Later, Merlin calculated that it had taken him roughly fifty years to break the bindings and free himself from the crystals. Which was about forty-five years too late to do any good, he thought bitterly, standing in the grassed-over meadow, still studded with chunks of stone, where the lower town had once stood. By memory, he followed what had once been the main road towards the ruined citadel. Tom's forge had been here, and the shoemaker, the one who had, in his first few years in Camelot, more than once, repaired his worn boots without asking for pay, had been there, and the apothecary, the one who knew to send Merlin the bills for the difference between what the poorer townsfolk paid for their medicines and what they actually cost, and, moreover, made absolutely certain that his customers didn't know, had been over that way, and, of course, the stocks were there. It was probably just his imagination, but it seemed as though the spot still smelt of rotten cabbage.

The city had been sacked, looted, burned out, and picked over for years. There was nothing of value left here. Even many of the stones of the citadel had been removed, hauled away for reuse in other, lesser, structures, and the timbers gone to feed cookfires. He did find a remnant of Gaius's workshop—a patch of medicinal plants that must have sprouted from the seeds of the dried herbs that had once hung in their tower. Sage, lavender, yarrow, motherwort, and half-a-dozen others grew in cheerful profusion, and, for some reason, that was the last straw, the one that shattered him.

Camelot was gone. Camelot was gone. There was nothing left to prove that it had ever been here at all. Nothing left to show that, for a few shining years, the Pendragons had brought them so damned close to the time of Albion that the seers had promised. Nothing remained but a patch of wildflowers and a warlock who had failed his destiny so profoundly that he didn't even merit the release of death or madness.

He'd spent sixty years in Camelot, and then another fifty in the Crystal Cave. And here he stood, with nothing to his name but the rags on his back, the flowers at his feet, and the hollow promise that someday, Arthur would return.

What was he supposed to do with himself until then?

*.*.*.*.*

Arthur didn't say anything for a long moment. Finally—"What did you do?" he asked.

"Harvested the herbs," he said, with a whimsical shrug. "Found an abandoned hut where I could hang them to dry while I put together a makeshift stillroom, and once I'd made up a few batches of basic medicinal potions, I walked to the nearest village and traded them for a few necessities like clothes I hadn't been wearing for half a century straight. I've been a wandering physician for the last ten years or so. I don't like to stay in any one place for too long, but wherever you go, there's always someone who needs medicine, so it's never too hard to earn a bed for the night."

"I see," said Arthur. "Why a physician?"

He quirked an eyebrow. "It turns out that 'Royal Advisor' jobs are a bit hard to come by, and we both know that I was about the worst servant in the Five Kingdoms. I had to fall back on my other skillset."

"I meant, why not a sorcerer?"

He winced. "Um. You know how Uther didn't much care for magic?"

"Yes…?"

"It turns out the new religion isn't exactly keen on it, either, and more and more people are following it these days. After the third time I had to leave a village in a bit of a hurry because someone decided that I was 'obviously' a demon, I stopped mentioning magic where anyone could hear me."

"Maybe that's why I'm back," Arthur said, his heart aching and his gut tight with fury. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair that after everything, Merlin had ended up right back where he started—alone, harried and hunted like an animal, condemned to a life lived in lies and shadows. Something was wrong with the world, he thought dimly. Morgana had begged him to help Merlin remember what it was like not to be in pain; Arthur was beginning to doubt that he'd be able to do so, because he was less and less certain that the warlock had ever known that in the first place. "After all. The prophecies said that the Once and Future King was supposed to restore magic to the land, and it sounds as though someone needs to. It's as good a goal as any, wouldn't you say?"

Merlin just looked at him with that terrifying devotion in his shining eyes, the kind of look better bestowed on a god or a hero, and Arthur knew that he was neither. "As my king commands."

*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: Some versions of the Arthurian myths include one or more sons born to Arthur and his queen(s). 'Loholt' is the name of one of those sons; I borrowed it for this version of Arthur's heir, if not his son.

There are, canonically, a number of different ways Merlin meets his end. Being sealed in a cave, or a stone, or a tree, by his pupil is probably the best known; some of the older material has him dying a triple death- falling, drowning, and stabbing, or other variants. Hence the triple murder on the way to the Crystal Cave. Merlin, no matter what version of the story you read, can never, ever catch a break.