The shores of Avalon were breathtaking. More so than ever, he thought, as his boat drew nearer and nearer to the beach. He'd grown accustomed to the grim scenery of a land at war, where it sometimes seemed that the only color to be found was blood-red. The gemlike blueness of horizon and water and the rich green of the vegetation was almost hard to comprehend by comparison. Arthur, uninterested in beauty just then, barely glanced at it; his attention was fully fixed on the Lady's calm face as his vessel gently beached itself on the sand.

"I want to go back," he said, making no move to get out of the boat.

"I know," was all she said.

"No. I need to go back. We weren't finished. Albion wasn't saved. The Saxons—"

"I know," she repeated. "You did what you could, Arthur. You did what you were meant to. And now it's over."

"That's just it. We hadn't finished what we were meant to do," he said. "I… I wasn't ready to die."

"Not many people ever are."

"He wasn't ready for me to die."

"Did you honestly expect that he'd ever be ready for that?" She fixed him with a quizzical stare, then relented. "He'll be all right. I told him what to expect. He'll be there when you return."

"Whenever that is. And how much of himself will he have left by then? What we're doing to him… he doesn't deserve this," Arthur said. "It's cruel."

"That's true," she said. "It is."

"He can't take much more of this. No one could. No one should have to."

"Also true."

Arthur glared at her for a moment. "You're not going to send me back, no matter what I say, are you?"

"Arthur, we've had this conversation too many times to count already. I would if I could," she said. "I can't."

He sighed. Sitting in a dinghy sulking like a child refusing to come out from under the bed wasn't going to get him anywhere, least of all back to earth. He stood up, stepped onto the shore, slightly amused to notice that he was wearing, not the coarse wool and ragged chainmail he'd died in, but the fine linen and leather hunting outfit he'd had on when he left Avalon more than eleven years ago. Rolling up his sleeve to test a theory, he saw that, as he'd expected, a healed scar from an ill-starred raid some six years previous was gone, as was a slight arthritic twinge in his shoulder that he'd been steadfastly ignoring for the last two. He had no doubt that, if he were to look at a mirror, the silver threads that had begun appearing in his hair would be gone. However, and this was the interesting bit, a small crescent-shaped mark on the underside of his forearm, the souvenir of an eight-year-old Arthur's encounter with a nursing mother dog, was intact, as, presumably, were the rest of the scars he'd taken over his first lifetime. Only his first lifetime. It was as though he'd never left at all; the timelessness of Avalon's eternal now had effortlessly folded him back in place.

On the one hand, it wasn't as though he missed that twinge in his shoulder or any of the rest of it, but the sudden erasure was disconcerting. It felt like they were playing a sadistic sort of chess game; the king had been taken—very well, reset the pieces and try again. Never mind that he and his companions were not carved wood, that they could hurt, could bleed, could suffer. Never mind that erasing the physical effects of trauma didn't make it not have happened.

"I believe the queen is in the solar," the Lady prompted him.

He managed to smile at her as he turned to leave. It wasn't her fault. She was as much a gaming piece as the rest of them, he reminded himself. The queen was the most powerful piece in the game, but even she could only move within the borders of the sixty-four squares of her kingdom. It was not reassuring to take that thought to its logical conclusion and remember that the king, though the most important piece in the game, was also the weakest.

"Wait!" she said.

Surprised, he turned back. "What is it, my lady?"

She looked wistful. "I promised myself I wouldn't ask. But… how was it?"

Arthur thought about it. Thought about the grinding, unrelenting pressure. The constant fear. The horrible weather and inadequate clothing and leaky tents and missed meals. The horror of watching friend after friend die in the churned-up mud. (Including Merlin. Three separate times. That he knew of.)

Thought about Owyn playing dancing tunes on a flute around the campfire at night and Einion's all but magical rapport with horses and Sym's ridiculous jokes, which really, really shouldn't have been funny, but somehow, even when life was at its grimmest, always coaxed a laugh out of them all. And, of course, he thought about snippy, sarcastic 'discussions' that had probably sounded like the prelude to a no-holds-barred knife fight and knobbly elbows that caught him in the ribs when he snored at night and cheerful humming that could just about drive a man to drink and the flash of golden eyes that had come to mean safety and security.

Nearly twelve years of war. Of death. Of having a real purpose.

"It was wonderful," was all he said.

Her smile was heartbreaking. "I'm glad."

*.*.*.*

Gwen was, as the Lady had predicted, in the solar, working on some sort of embroidery so intricate that it was probably magic in some way. She dropped it when he entered the room, and her face lit up as she hurried over to him.

"Arthur! You've come home!"

He kissed her, reveling in the feeling of her soft curves against his body, of the silken brush of her hair. Twelve years was a very, very long time. "Yes," he said, and ducked in to kiss her again. "I'm back."

Neither of them noticed that she said that he was 'home,' while he said that he was 'back.'

He kissed her again, and suddenly, selfishly, was glad to be back, glad to be with her again, here, safe and sound among nearly everyone he cared about. If only he could be in two places at once.

She ran a hand along his cheek, looking worried. She saw the weariness, the frustrated grief shadowing his eyes, and she didn't like what it implied. "I know I said I wanted you to come home quickly, but I didn't mean quite that fast. It's been barely a week. What happened?"

"Maybe it was a week for you, but it was more than a decade for me," he said.

"I see," she said. "Well. That's convenient. And you didn't miss anything much here. So… tell me all about it. How was Merlin?"

"He was… well, if I'm being honest, he was an unholy mess when I got there, and if I know him, he's probably a mess right now. But in between… he was Merlin. He was still himself, underneath all the mess. I'll admit that after your description, I hadn't expected that he would be."

She nodded. She hadn't quite dared hope that, either. "I'm glad to hear it. Is he still the court sorcerer for Camelot?"

Arthur stilled. There was no way to soften the blow; it still hurt when he let himself remember the fate of Camelot, and he'd had years to come to terms with it. "No, Gwen. He's not."

"Oh," said Gwen, disappointed. "Well, perhaps it's just as well. He deserved a rest."

That was one way of looking at it, Arthur thought, and changed the subject. Skipping over Merlin's past entirely, he gave her a brief, thorough description of his visit to earth, ending, perforce, with his death at Saxon hands.

It took a while. There was a great deal of laughter in the telling, and a great deal of sorrow as well; Gwen wept for people she never had—and never would—meet. Arthur didn't, but she knew him well enough to understand that the tightness around his eyes and the harsh rasp in his voice were stand-ins for the tears he could not allow himself to shed, and his long silences when even those were no help even more so.

The telling of nearly twelve years seemed to take nearly twelve years, although the candle on the table had shortened only a scant inch when it was done. It didn't matter. If there was one thing Avalon had in abundance, it was time.

Finally, she asked the question he didn't want to answer. "How is Camelot faring?" she said. "Have the Saxons reached it yet?"

For the first time, Arthur's vision fogged momentarily. Blinking away the evidence, he shook his head no. "They couldn't," he said. "Camelot… doesn't exist anymore. It fell."

She stared blankly at him. "How could that have happened?" she finally said.

"How? Your successor. Loholt," Arthur said, loathing in his voice. He'd known that he would have to have this conversation, and he'd promised himself he wouldn't let anger get the better of him, but it wasn't easy. "From the sounds of it, he happened; that's how. Gods, Gwen—why did you choose him as your heir? Why him?"

"I… I didn't, actually," she said. "It was a matter of lineage. Geoffrey traced the family lines, and he was the rightful heir. The whole Council approved of him, too, which made things easier. He was your closest blood relation, and he had ties, either by blood or marriage, to most of the other Great Houses. What did he do?"

"He ran the country into the ground, is what he did," said Arthur vindictively. "For a start."

She shook her head. "No," she said, more as if she didn't want it to be true than that she truly believed what she was saying. "That's not possible. It just isn't. Merlin would never have let that happen. He would have…"

"Merlin couldn't do a damned thing. Because Loholt had bound him hand and foot with enchanted chains, sealed him in a cave, and left him to rot," said Arthur, not even trying to deliver the news tactfully. If the memory of Camelot's fate was still an aching wound in his heart, the thought of Merlin's was a wound that still gushed blood. "No food, no water, no anything. Just a lot of magic crystals showing him visions of how bad things were going to get. For decades. Decades, Gwen."

Gwen's hand flew to her mouth, shocked. "No. No, that's not true. Loholt wouldn't do that. He didn't. I knew he was a bit afraid of magic, but he would never—"

"He did, Gwen. He did," said Arthur. "I saw the crystal myself. Merlin's still got one of them dangling around his neck, because the only way he could get out of the cave was to take part of it with him. It happened, Gwen."

"What happened?" came a voice.

The two of them looked up, startled. The rest of the Round Table had, unbeknownst to either of them, come crowding into the solar to greet their king. The anticipatory smiles on their faces had changed to various shades of concern.

"Camelot fell," Arthur said again. "Conquered. Destroyed. Forgotten."

That took them all aback, and for a moment no one said anything at all. It was Lancelot who finally found enough of his wits to ask, "And Merlin?"

"Betrayed by the people he trusted and locked away in a magic cave for half a century trying to keep himself from going completely mad."

"A cave?" Morgana asked, praying that the hollow feeling in her gut was wrong. "You mean the one under the castle? Where the dragon was?"

"No," said Arthur. "He said it was full of magic crystals."

Her face crumpled. "Oh."

"You know something about that cave." It wasn't a question.

"It's the birthplace of all magic. I tried to imprison him in there myself," said Morgana, bluntly. "Before Camlann."

"I remember. He made me bring him there," said Gwaine, and laughed bitterly. There were no good memories of those last few days, but Merlin's obvious desperation had been an especially hard pill to swallow. "He was scared spitless."

"Going to that cave was the only way we could think of to restore his magic," said Gaius, tactfully not going into details. "And he knew that he needed his magic if there was to be any hope of…"

"Saving Camelot," Arthur filled in for him. "And me, I assume? Well, half a success is better than none."

Gaius flinched. So did Morgana.

"The moment the last of us were gone," Arthur continued, his mouth twisting against the bitterness of his own words. "Practically that same day. He was quite literally stabbed in the back and left to torture himself as everything we all spent our entire lives trying to do burned to ash in front of him. And that was before the Saxons invaded to finish the job! He's wearing himself to a shadow trying to save us all, like always, but he's one man. I wouldn't place any large wagers on the likelihood of there even being an Albion for me to go back to. The rate they're going, the whole island will be a Saxon colony within a century."

"That's why you were sent back?" Gwen asked. "To help drive them away?"

"I suppose so," said Arthur. "For all the good that did. I don't have anything even close to Merlin's power; I'm one man with a sword. What was that supposed to accomplish? What was I supposed to do?"

"Exactly what you did," said Leon. "You fought for what was right. You resisted. And, if I know you, sire, you inspired others to fight for their homes alongside you."

"And got them killed."

"Men die in war," said Percival, very, very quietly. "Compared to losing your home, your loved ones… I've done both. Of the two, dying was easier. If you kept the invasion from burning one village, from sacking one town, if you saved even that many of your people, then the fight was worthwhile."

"And it's not always a matter of if men die, but how. I died twice," said Lancelot. "Once as a free man. Once as a slave; not even my mind was my own. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Better to fall fighting for your people than to live as a captive beast."

Arthur nodded—his knights were right, he knew that they were right. It didn't make him feel any better.

"What you said about not having Merlin's power… that's not quite true," said Gwen, some time later. "It may not be magic, but you do have an ability I've never seen in anyone else. You make people believe, Arthur. You make them believe in you, but more than that, you make them believe in themselves. You make them believe that they're more than they are, and so they become more than they ever thought they could be. We're all proof of that."

"Remember the hall of the ancient kings?" Gwaine said abruptly. "Most people would have seen a ragtag collection of misfits, runaways, ruffians, and drunks. You saw heroes, and it should never have worked. A minstrel trying to spin the tale of a deposed prince reclaiming his throne with only a handful of sellswords, criminals, and servants at his side would have been thrown out on his ear with his lute crammed up his bunghole. But you did it."

"That was him. Not me."

"No," said Gwaine, and one corner of his mouth quirked into a grin. "It wasn't. And this is me saying it, princess; since when do I give anyone credit they haven't earned?"

"He barely gives anyone credit they have earned," Percival said. "You're the one people follow, Arthur. It was true back in Camelot; I'm sure it's true now. It's what makes you the king you are."

"I'll admit I followed Merlin into a few situations I'd've preferred to avoid—Perilous Lands, anyone?" said Gwaine, in what was both a case of full disclosure and a way of lightening the mood. "But that was usually because I figured he'd get himself killed without someone to pull him out of hot water, not because I thought he had a chance in hell of actually getting anywhere."

"Remember the time he got himself mired in that bog?" Leon said. "It took three of us to pull him out."

Arthur laughed, then stopped. "It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what he was really doing that day."

"Do you really want to know?" asked Elyan.

"Probably not."

Arthur's mind spiraled back, not to the bog incident, but to a long, boring night on watch somewhere in Mercia. Merlin had been whiling away the time making figures dance in the sparks. By the time that palled, Arthur was bored enough to pull a flask from his pocket and uncork it. It was a bitterly cold night.

"Drinking on duty? I can just hear what you'd say to any of your men you caught trying to do that," Merlin said.

"Shall I take that to mean you don't want any?"

"Hell, no. Hand it over."

Arthur took a sip and passed it to Merlin. Merlin took a sip, gave it back.

They didn't get drunk—there wasn't enough in the small flask for that even if they drank it all, and neither of them were stupid enough to try. But they did get to that mellow, echoing place where the hard truths get spoken.

"You could have taken the throne yourself, you know," Arthur said. "After I died. Hell, you probably could have kicked me off the throne while I was alive. You'd've made a good king."

"Gods, Arthur… How much of that swamp water have you had?"

"Not enough," said Arthur, and promptly rectified the situation. "I know, I know, you wouldn't have betrayed me like that, but you could have. People would've followed you."

"Ha. They'd follow me straight to the stake to make sure I got there," said Merlin, with a snort.

"Don't be so dramatic," Arthur said. "The entire Round Table looked to you at least as readily as they looked to me. More, some of them."

Merlin sat up, concern wiping the humor off his face. "What? That's ridiculous."

"It's the truth," Arthur said. "If it had come down to it, do you honestly think Gwaine, or Lancelot, or any of the other knights wouldn't have… hellfires, they only followed me in the first place because you convinced them to."

Merlin didn't say anything for a moment. His voice was gentle when he finally answered. "Is that what you've been thinking all this time?" he asked. "Oh, Arthur… you really are an idiot."

Arthur, who had been expecting something slightly more sympathetic, stiffened.

Merlin just shook his head. "I'll admit that I'm the one that showed them where to look. I did that, and I'm proud of it. I showed them where to look. But that's all I did. All I could do. It's what they saw that convinced them. You, Arthur. Not me."

Arthur would have ripped out his own liver and worn it as a hat before he said anything as pitiful as 'do you really think so?' or a similar cry for reassurance. That didn't mean he didn't need a little reassurance now and then; everyone does. Even kings. Maybe even especially kings.

And Merlin knew it. He also knew that couching truth in humor was usually the best course. So he gave Arthur a sidelong glance, and said lightly, "If anything, I was a stumbling block—I'm pretty sure that at first, Gwaine wanted to protect me from you, because he really, really didn't want to trust any noble. And maybe that's why he originally came to Camelot, but if it came down to it, I'm also pretty sure that he would've tied me to a horse and spirited me out of the country if he didn't like what he saw from you."

"If I'd learned about… that, you mean?" said Arthur, tapping a finger over his own, decidedly not golden eye.

"More like if you didn't stop tossing me in the stocks every time you thought it would be funny to see me scraping pumpkin guts out of my hair," Merlin said. "I don't know how he would have reacted to finding out about… that," he said, mimicking Arthur's gesture. "I try not to think about it."

"You don't really think he—that any of us would've hurt you, do you? Or turned you in?"

"No one reacts well to finding out they've been lied to," Merlin shrugged it off. "I imagine there would have been some slight irritation if Camlann hadn't served as a bit of a distraction."

Arthur snorted. "Maybe," he conceded. "Not that losing your head would have kept you quiet for long."

"Yeah, but I didn't know that then, did I?"

Arthur frowned. "You didn't?"

"Not back then. Never say the gods don't have a sense of humor. It wasn't until I wanted to die that I found out I couldn't."

"Huh. I thought you knew, and that was why you were always so reckless," Arthur said. That meant, he thought, touched, that all those times Merlin had offered to die for Arthur, he really had meant it. And really had thought he was going to die.

"Nah. I'm just an idiot."

"Well, I knew that already."

"But you're not, right?"

"Of course not."

"Good. Remember that. Because I don't think the knights would have followed an idiot. And gods know Gwen wouldn't have married one."

Arthur noticed an acorn lying conveniently close at hand and bounced it off Merlin's sternum in lieu of coming up with any better argument. Merlin magically flung it back. Then they both had another nip at the flask to keep the night chill at bay and spent the rest of the watch speaking of inconsequentials.

He looked around the circle—almost everyone in the world he'd cared about. Maybe Merlin had told them where to look, and that was why they were at his side today. But Merlin had taught him how to look back, and that was why he'd wanted them there.

One thing he knew for sure. He had to get back to earth. Soon.