AN: *pokes head in* Hello... you guys remember me? Not dead yet! PLEASE DON'T BE MAD... It was only... two months. :(( Sorry, dearies. I hate incredibly late updates, therefore I hate myself for this. I promise to never promise about the regularity of my updates EVER AGAIN. I promise. XD Since I have a couple of days off, I'll TRY to update another chapter by next week. TRY. Take note of that. So THANK YOU for sticking with this story despite its slow, slowdevelopment (particularly because of the slow, slow updates), and remember that I'm always open to suggestions. :D Enjoy! (Unbeta-ed, not properly proofread or edited, and I got some of the tenses wrong. Forgive me.)

Standing Resistance

Chapter 10

"It's just a tour around Europe, Merlin, not Africa."

Merlin rolled his eyes as he adjusts the leather case under his arm, catching the papers coming from inside before they hit the sidewalk. He settled with holding it tightly with one hand as he straightened his blazer and the blue t-shirt that came beneath it. When Morgana had came out of their room and seen his apparel, she scoffed, and said that after a millennium, his wardrobe colour scheme still never changed.

Says the woman who barely strayed from whites and crèmes and greens.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But seriously, you're just going to sew and make their costumes. Isn't that enough? I mean, can't they handle getting into some clothes themselves?" he said exasperatedly in reply. He glances at his watch and curses. Merlin hastens his steps as he tries to weave his way through the crowd, avoiding the streams of people that went against his way.

"Merlin, I have to make sure that they get everything right. May something go wrong, I'm there to fix it. If they need something, I'll be very conveniently there. Should I not approve of something or if they stupidly destroy something I—"

"Yes, yes, I know," Merlin rolled his eyes for what had to be the umpteenth time. "Isn't that what assistants are for? You can just assign somebody and teach them all that needs to be done, you know."

"What exactly is the problem in this?" Morgana asks with more irritation. "I'm only going to be away for a couple of weeks. It's not a big enough opera to go on for more than that. It's not like I'll go and run off and…"

Morgana was met by his silence.

"You think I'll run from you."

Another beat of silence that stretched too long for either of their liking.

"You should know by now that if I wanted an out from you and all of this I got myself mixed up in, again, I could have done it long ago, as I can still do so now if I chose to do so," Morgana spat.

"Morgana, really, that wasn't what I had meant. I just—"

"I don't have time for this. I'll see you later, if I don't decide to suddenly vanish from your life again." Morgana's words were bitter, and before Merlin had a chance to open his mouth, Morgana had ended their call.

That wasn't how he had wanted the conversation to go at all.

Merlin growled in frustration, putting the leather jacket back to be tucked under his arm as he typed away furiously, apologising to Morgana with as much creativity and persuasion as he could muster.

He glanced from the screen of his phone, catching the sight of a café, and deciding that he needed at least a dose of caffeine (if not alcohol), he shoved his phone into his pocket and made his way into the coffee shop.

Lining up, he was lost in his thoughts as he waited at the back of the queue just to get a cup of their local brew, or maybe a shot of espresso. Or two.

He couldn't deny what Morgana had just accused him off. There was no denying that there was a part of him, however so small, that thought that she would just walk out on him the moment she finds an ulterior motive, or just lost plain interest in toying with him once more.

But whenever he thinks so, his mind brings him back to that day inside a narrow closet, when he had first seen her face in so many decades, and he was so clueless and lost as to what to do, that all he could do was to go with his gut. With her face came an expression he had not seen in even a longer time, and it shook him. It made him believe in her, in her words, in her genuineness and sincerity, and made him believe that despite the years where all that came from her lips were lies, all that she said in those moments were but truth.

Those few moments of earnestness cannot set aside the entirety of her actions in the years, and all that he had done, in the past, however. She hurt him, used him, deceived him in spite of everything they have been through, in spite of the truths and secrets and heart-felt promises he whispered into her ear. All of it cannot simply be set aside to turn a blind eye.

Gwaine's words echoed in his thoughts. A millennium had passed, but Merlin had never forgotten, and never will, watching his friends grow colder and harder with mistrust and suspicion. He did the same alongside them, after all. And after over a millennium, none of it had changed. He wasn't any better. So really, he couldn't help it when Gwaine's warning had started to gnaw into what used to be unbreakable belief in Morgana.

It was in these moments when he specifically wished destiny hadn't prepared such a complicated path for him.

He mused over his thoughts in brooding silence as we waited for his turn on the cashier, following the shortening line as he glanced at his phone every few seconds.

The face he was greeted with at the counter was not one he was expecting. Not by a long shot.

"Hi, sir, what can I—"

"Gwen?"

She looked up from the screen in front of her in confusion and in a slight surprise, meeting Merlin's eyes as they were locked in their places.

"Merlin?" Gwen managed to stutter, her eyes as big, no, bigger than saucers. Merlin dropped his papers onto the counter and reached for her from across it, hugging her fiercely despite the awkward position he got them into.

"You remember," was all he whispered in her ear in a voice thick with emotion. "You remember."

•

Much to the dismay of his clients, Merlin had cancelled all of his appointments. Not that they could do anything about it, anyway. Merlin had all the cards up his sleeve, and the money, and he could pull the shots whenever he damn well pleases.

Persuading Gwen into taking a day off from her shift wasn't very hard, either.

"This is incredible! I've missed you so much!" he says in another hug he envelops Gwen in before they sit down by the window of the coffee shop.

"Me too," Gwen smiles back at him warmly. He observed her head of tight curls, the same as ever, frame a kind face of mocha coloured skin and chocolate brown eyes, and he was taken back to when he was just a boy, having not a week passing in arriving in Camelot before he found himself in the stocks with a pretty girl in front of him, one who would become one of his closest and best friends. But it wasn't a moment that lasted very long, his gaze going down to her lavender blouse, jeans, and yellow flats, her apron that she wore at the cashier discarded on the armrest beside her. The style of her clothes seemed right, but it all felt so wrong without her in long skirts and tight corsets.

"Do you…" he trailed off, clearing his throat before continuing. "Do you remember everything?"

Gwen's face darkened for a moment before she plastered on another smile, though one more hesitant than before. "If not everything, then, most definitely enough."

"I—" Merlin started, but he could not ask any more of her, the pain evident in his friend's eyes. Instead, he smiles back, coaxes her to relax by forcing his own body to do the same, and pretends that all was well in the world.

"How's your life been?" he inquires with an easy grin. "The twenty-first century doing okay for you?"

So far, in this life, Gwen had lived like any other ordinary person.

James wasn't Tom, not in a lot of aspects, but he was a good father.

Her father in this life was a mechanic, but he always dreamed of becoming an engineer. He was content with what he had, but that wasn't to say that he would let go of those dreams, so he passed on those dreams to his son, Elyan. Or at least, he tried to.

It was like how it had been back then. Elyan throws into a fit one day, and after walking out the door with a bag full of clothes haphazardly shoved in, he never came back. Hearts, hopes, and dreams were broken, but still she moved on with life as she had before. What mattered was that she had her father by her side, and Elyan still her brother, and that she can look for him, still, and to have the chance to see him once more. She believed—she knew that she would see him again.

She went on like any other normal girl: she had gone through school, she had helped her father with his shop, met some good friends along the way and had gotten herself involved with as few boys as possible, and pursued a scholarship on a four-year college course on history (after her brother, James had not forced anything upon her, and instead gave her his full support). During which, she took it upon herself to work as a barista after school hours at a local coffee shop to help with her and her father's finances, as well as helping around James' shop during the weekends. Busy life for a regular, city-girl like her, but incomparable to the life she used to live, over a thousand years ago.

Really, it all happened in a blur and in slow-motion at the same time. Time couldn't have gone any faster or any slower for her.

But now, her past has gone back to visit her, and she couldn't decide whether or not to rejoice in happiness or to be sick with worry. Because from what she has learned from her previous life, nothing happens without reason. And if Emrys, the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the earth, Merlin, one of her best friends, is once more sitting in front of her after the longest time, then that can only mean one thing.

Destiny's at the works once more.

But for now, she, the Once and Future Queen, Guinevere, Gwen, would set that all aside to talk to the man she has always held close to her heart, and always loved as if he were her own brother, and catch up with him like normal people, like the dear old friends they always had been, and always will be.

So she tells him what has happened in her second life so far.

From the moment they sat down at eight in the morning, the sun was already past its peak in the clouded azure skies when she had finished with her stories, which Merlin had insisted that they started with in their meeting.

"How about you, Merlin?" she asks, grinning at her friend as he reaches for a biscuit from his plate on the table. "Some expensive shirt and jacket you're wearing, huh. In fact, the pants and shoes are equally as posh."

His smile wavers a little. "Yeah," he answers, and it was the only reply she got at that tease of hers. "Had plenty of time to save up some money."

Gwen frowned. She had not seen Merlin since years after the battle at Camlann, when it had become very evident and clear that he had not aged, and would not age. He fled Camelot without so much as a warning, leaving his withering friends and family as he remained youthful and powerful, and Gwen understood. She let him go, knowing that it was he who knew what was best done in the delicate matter, and it was he who knew what he truly wanted to do about it.

"Really, Merlin," she tried with a smile as weak as his. She let her concern seep through her voice, for no matter how long it's been for her or for him in that matter, she will always try to be the caring friend she can't help but be. "How are you?"

It was a general question, really, and by the look on Merlin's face, it was a question with many, many answers. "Still waiting, is all," was all he replied, taking a nibble of his biscuit.

It looked like she had to take matters into her own hands.

If she wanted answers, she'll have to be as frank as she can without treading dangerous waters.

"Did you really wait through all those years?" she asked quietly, fearing the answer.

Merlin looked at her straight in the eyes, his gaze never faltering, and it froze her in her place. In the few hours she's been in his company, she couldn't figure out how she missed that look in his eyes… that look that she realises had been there the whole time, one hidden by a façade he wore too well.

His face never looked older than he did the day that her once husband, his best friend, his brother, had befallen in the hands of Mordred and Morgana. He barely ever looked older than the day she met him, for that matter. But his eyes… she never truly saw till that moment just how ancient they were. She wanted to kick herself for not seeing it before, to see the weariness and the loneliness that he had wrapped around the mask of a smile. She could see, but could not fathom entirely, the depth his eyes gained with the weight of the ages: decades, centuries, over a millennium of watching the world's endless cycle of death and rebirth over and over again. She saw how much wisdom he acquired from the unrelenting stretch of time he had lived through, but she could not see how much wiser he himself had grown. He had watched people and lives start and end in the blink of his eyes, while he had accepted his fate as an immortal, helping other people in their times of trouble and giving more than he could receive—she knew he had…

And it was then that she understood.

He gave her answer through a look that said more than a single word ever could, had brought down his barriers and walls to simply let her know, as his friend, just how much he went through, just how much pain he had to endure. Her heart reached out to Merlin, and it almost broke her to see just how hard yet broken he had become.

He nodded anyway, looking down into his teacup as he reached for it on the tabletop, and Gwen watched as his fingers rubbed the rim of the cup with a tiredness and resignation that was so unlike the Merlin she used to know in the earliest years of their youth. He would have laughed it off, brushed it from his shoulders like it was nothing, or would rant about it or talk with his words dripping with snark and sarcasm, or he would even lie about it… but he was never silent. He wasn't like this.

"What," she started, but her voice ended up breaking in the middle of the word, her wide, worried eyes glued to his. His gaze snapped back to her own, and he smiled reassuringly and nodded to her as he brought the cup to his lips, not commenting on how she sunk in deeper into her couch and on how she had wrapped her arms around her middle. "What happened to Camelot after we were gone?" she tried again, her voice but a whisper against the chatter of the people around them, who barely took notice of the pair.

When she knew and remembered who she was, she took on every book and website and class on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, on the Arthurian Legends, on everything she could find about them. She had laughed about the absurdity of others, was impressed by the creativity of some, smiled at the level of accuracy in few, but she knew what really happened.

She took it upon herself to know what happened next, just wanted to know if she would be able to figure out and follow through Merlin's hiding figure across history's table, and she knew she found him in some of the important events from continent to continent. She even suspected one of the other people she knew to be writing in stone some tales in history to be engraved in humanity's mind… but it just couldn't be.

For multiple reasons, she wanted to hear it all from Merlin's mouth.

Gwen would not relent when he answered curtly and shortly to her questions about what happened after Camelot. Merlin smiled inwardly at his friend. Really, she never changed. She was still as she used to be: loyal, kind, her good heart was unwavering until now. So what did he do when his Once and Future Queen would not settle with such insufficient and inadequate answers about his part?

He told her everything.

Well, as much as he could, anyway, in such a summarised manner, and leaving out some parts that he would rather discuss later than sooner. As much pain his memories had brought to him, there was still joy that peeked through each hardship he had braced and encountered, always something to think back to and smile and laugh about. But then, there were some parts that would take more than her stern look to pry from his lips. Especially those pertaining to the identity of a certain woman he had mentioned, but evasively had not mentioned the name of.

He would laugh at himself if he could. He wasn't only telling over a thousand year's worth of a man's life, but over a thousand year's worth of history as well.

No wonder his previous careers as a professor had gone ridiculously well.

After he had nearly finished his tales up to the present, Gwen's smile had softened and faded into a more sober look, and he could tell that there was a question on the tip of her tongue, one that she couldn't wait to ask him, and he had an idea what it was.

When he had finished, he learned that his suspicions were, in fact, correct.

"Why am I here, Merlin?" she asked softly after a beat of silence. "Prophecies had said before that Arthur," she paused and cleared her throat as her voice faltered at the name neither of them had mentioned until that moment, "would rise again in Albion's darkest time. I… I don't think I ever lived any other life than this and of that one I had before," she continued. "Are there any of the others back again, as of today?"

Gwen had leaned in closer to him, biting her lip, and settled for tying her hair up in a ponytail with a tie she kept in her pocket as she waited for his answer.

"Yes, actually," he said, and it didn't ease her expression any more than it made it tighten up more. "I met Gwaine again just a couple of years ago," he grinned, and that got him a weak smile from her. "You wouldn't believe it. The bachelor he used to be, right? Such a lady's man, he was. Would you believe me if I told you that he's found himself a lady after all these years?"

Gwen's eyes widened and her jaw went slack. "No way."

Merlin laughed. "Do you remember the Sidhe back in Camelot?"

Her eyes narrowed at him as she looked at him sideways with good humour. "Where are you going with this, Merlin?"

He looked like he was about to burst into another fit of laughter. "Do you remember Sophia?"

This time, Gwen's jaw really did drop.

"No."

"Yeah!"

"No!"

Merlin laughed all the harder when Gwen sunk even deeper into her seat as she buried her face in her hands with a groan.

When she peeked through her fingers and finally put her hands down, she looked off into space, evidently flabbergasted, and murmured, "That is just so uncanny. Good luck to him."

Merlin coughed into his hand before he could throw himself into another fit of laughter. "Yeah, he'd need more than a ton of it."

Gwen ended up chuckling herself, wondering on how in the world they met, but decided to leave it as another story for another day. "Anybody else?"

It was then that Merlin slowly closed off his expression from simple joviality to one devoid of any emotion. He could see the worry in her face once more, the tightness of her lips and the stiffness of her body, but he couldn't do anything about that anymore. After all, she's right to be apprehensive.

"Eira."

Gwen's eyes blazed for a moment before looking away and nodding.

Her memories of the blonde woman were definitely not good, as in the mind of everyone he knew had known her as a deceptive liar and a traitor. Sophia being back wasn't entirely a neutral ground, either. Some of the good people may be back, but others who weren't exactly categorised as "good" were alive, too.

There could be many others who were back, both on their side and on their enemies', and there was no telling who and how many of them had been brought back.

"Does any of this have anything to do with… with…" she swallowed the lump in her throat, unable to continue. It seemed that he got the message, anyway.

Merlin nodded. "Most probably." He looked out the window, observing the people, clueless and ignorant as they were, walk by and go on with their lives.

"Do you have any idea why—why now?" her voice lowered an octave, but she levelled and evened the look in her eyes with his when he looked back at her sharply. "Is… is Mordred back?" she asked, not daring to ask it any louder. "Morgana?"

There were emotions that crossed his face, disappearing too fast for her to discern what they were exactly, but she knew confirmed thing: Merlin was hiding something important, something that took him this far and long in their conversation to even give a hint of.

There was a moment of silence, then another.

"Merlin," she tried again.

He let his gaze go back to the world outside, thinking. The sun had begun to set at the jagged horizon of the city's tall buildings and skyscrapers, and the soft glow of the rose-coloured sky cast a light on his face that created a dance of deep and shallow shadows. He closed his hands into fists as he crossed his arms across his chest, clueless as to how to proceed from this point on.

Truthfully, he had not found anything about Mordred since he had died by Arthur's hand in Camlann, and it unsettled him. It was like waiting for an invisible storm, a clear and humid weather seeming to be deceiving. But about Morgana…

How was he going to tell her that?

For all she knew, she had died and stayed that way.

He looked back into his friend's eyes, and he knew he'd tell her at least a part of the truth, because he wasn't ready to tell all of it.

Even he couldn't completely understand what had happened. Even he had thought her to have died. Until…

"Morgana," he croaked out, his voice thick with emotion. He gave her a small smile, but it was sad, full of sorrow, and a different kind of anguish from any he had let her see earlier. "She had been with me through it all."

From Gwen's expression, he could tell that she had no idea how to react.

"Wh—what do you mean when you… when you…" she stumbled on her own words. Merlin looked down to the case of papers his lap, the expensive leather suddenly deeming to be very interesting to him.

"What do you mean when you say, 'through it all'?"

There was iron in her voice, one that left no room for argument and spoke volumes about her confidence in herself that she could, in fact, take on whatever he would tell her with as much maturity as she could muster.

And that was a rather lot. Maybe even more than he had.

"She—" he started, but shook his head. "I was never alone in all the centuries, Gwen," he said instead, and there was a look in his eyes that pleaded to her to understand, but understand what exactly, she couldn't pinpoint it, not yet.

"I had her."

AN: Please leave reviews! :) They're writers' food, you know.