[August 26th, 2007]
Who left the curtains open? Whoever it is, Arthur is going to find them, pummel them, and—and—stab them with whatever is driving through his skull at the moment. Yes, he'll do that… just as soon as he can open his eyes without jabbing that thing in his skull deeper into his own brain. Good God, just how much did he have to drink last night?
And who…?
She's my sister.
Morgana.
For a moment he doesn't move, hardly even breathes. Over him the ceiling is white, and he fixes his eyes on the blank expanse of it, watching the sun play patterns on the plaster. Outside he can hear the buzz of cars in the streets, the muffled honking of horns. It's what it always is—people just beginning a new day. Nothing is out of the ordinary.
But everything has gone to Hell anyway.
A head of dark hair on the pillow next to him, cream-colored skin, and an unnerving gaze hidden by closed eyelids and sooty lashes. He knows what he'll find if he turns over. And words, hatred, betrayal—will he find those too?
Blood will only take you so far.
His sister. He slept with his sister. Morgana.
But he didn't know—he never did—his father never mentioned….
Moaning—and then choking it down, because he is so entirely not ready to have her actually open her eyes and look at him—he rolls over, ignoring the pounding in his head. That could be a hangover, but as colors and scenes burst behind his eyes, flooding into his mind, he's more inclined to think it's memory.
And it hurts.
It's okay. It's all right. Just breathe. It's hard, though, chest constricted, probably about like asthma. But it's not that—it's just the memories. There are soft sheets—best that money can buy—right under his hands, and the mattress is his own, but it's not grounding when there are pictures running through his head, a reel of thought playing out onto the cinema screen—his screen, his mind—while he observes it all, conscious of it to the point where it's too real.
You have no right to the throne!
No, but I do. I am your daughter, after all.
Morgana.
She's there next to him, still asleep, blissfully unaware. One hand to his forehead, he chokes down his breath and watches her inhale and exhale softly in a sleepy rhythm. She's turned away from him, and like this he can see the rolling curve of her hip, merging down into the gentle cradle of her waist in soft, flowing lines. A woman's body is beautiful, and Morgana—she's something else entirely, almost not quite human, and so spectacularly flawed. But not in this. Not in the physical. She's his sister, but still, still, just for a moment, he wants to reach out and touch, stroke the pads of his fingers over her skin, draw patterns there in the sunlight, leaving them to sink in, down onto the perfect basket of her ribs.
Morgana. His sister. And one of the worst betrayals he's ever known.
Drawing back, he slips against the sheets, turning away before he can think more. His sister, and hasn't he already ruined this situation to its maximum degree? He slept with his sister. He did. And he won't compound it now by—by… wanting… things.
Gwen.
Gasping, he pitches forward. Head to hand—somehow, since he hadn't actually planned to do that, but it's good, because he's dizzy. Gwen. His—his wife. And where is she? She'll be here, his Gwen, who betrayed him, not as badly as Morgana, because Gwen never stopped loving him—he's sure of it—but still enough to keep him pacing the floors at night and wondering just how much more of man Lancelot was that he could satisfy her when he—the king of Camelot—could not.
Do you remember the first time I kissed you? That's the memory I want to take with me.
Take with him through the centuries, it seems. The memories are him—he is the memories, and if he'd known, if he had just known—
It is your fate to be the greatest king that Camelot has ever known.
Behind him, Morgana stirs. No. He can't—he can't face her. It's too much; he stumbles out of bed like he's still drunk—oh, and doesn't he wish that he were?—heading for the door, barely managing to snag some sort of clothing on the way. Thank God his fingers find the doorknob, scrabbling over the metal until he bears down and clenches his hand around it, forcing it open. Because that's what he does, isn't it? He conquers. Makes things bend to his will. A door. A kingdom. Time itself, apparently.
"Who am I?" spills from his lips as he shuts the door, tucking Morgana away for a few minutes more.
You're a prat.
Yes. Hell, yes. Merlin. Yes. Merlin would answer like that. How had he ever forgotten Merlin? If anyone else remembers this, it will be Merlin. The idea alone eases the ache, and he finds that even the plaster of the wall feels less chilly on his bare skin when he leans into it, relaxing, his head falling back to further open his throat for the gulps of air he drags in.
In, out, in, out. It feels normal. Stunningly so. Here he is, standing in the hallway of his home, bare feet on the carpet, old pants from Uni riding low on his hips. If he goes to the cupboard, there will be cereal, so long as his maid has remembered to do the shopping (and she better have, considering what she gets paid), and the water in the tap will be warm, there will be some trashy program on the telly, and if he opens the newspaper he just might see his father.
This is his life. He hasn't lost that. But he… is something else…
He is someone that he no longer is but can't ever really stop being. It's all a loop. King Arthur. Arthur Pendragon. Prince Arthur of England. Just Arthur. Years don't change that, and the memories only smooth at the edges until the loop—maybe an ellipse, maybe an oval, whatever—is fashioned into a perfectly formed circle.
But Merlin will know. Merlin will help. He always does.
Destiny, right? It's always destiny. That hasn't changed. But what is that here? His circumstances aren't so different. He's the Prince in this age too. Still royalty. But what does that even mean now?
Pushing off from the wall, Arthur drags himself forward down the hallway. The walls are spinning, far too much like that one time he went to a carnival and managed to wander into a funhouse where the floors shifted. Walking… is not a good idea.
Tea, though. Tea is a very good idea. Caffeine. Actually, alcohol might be the best idea, but it's not even ten in the morning yet, and getting a pint out of the fridge just seems like an admission of weakness. Has he really deteriorated so far that he needs liquid courage just to face… face what? A whole life come back to haunt him.
The alcohol looks pretty damn good, actually.
At some point, though, he's already gotten the tea bags out… and there's water boiling—when did he do that? And so he might as well just go ahead with his first plan. He can always spike the tea. Or jump out the window. The second is looking more and more appealing with each passing second.
Right, okay, no. Deep breath. Deep. Breath.
Somehow, that actually works. The room stops spinning quite so fast, and he's left standing at the counter, tea bag in hand, staring down at the dark marble countertop. The water in the kettle is beginning to boil in the background, bubbling comfortingly—almost smoothing over his nerves, or at least scalding them until he can't feel them anymore anyway. Yes, all right. This will be fine.
Sure. He slept with his sister, he thinks blankly, tracing an imaginary pattern onto the counter with his fingertip. And he's actually Arthur Pendragon of Camelot. No problem. He can handle both those things. The first—it just won't happen again. He'll… he'll have to get the truth out of his father, obviously, then find some way to get him to admit it to Morgana. Obviously, it'll be worse than just ignoring that period in Camelot where they both fancied each other a little more than siblings ought to have, because that—it had only been staring and eye contact that had lasted a bit too long. And bickering. Always with the bickering. But they'd gotten over that. They'll get over this too. Somehow.
They'll get over him banging his own sister. Yeah.
And the whole legendary king thing. Well, who wouldn't want to find that out about themselves? Hey, you're the fictional King Arthur! Downright exciting, yeah? Oh… yeah.
At some point, Arthur's head has dropped back down to the counter. God only knows when he did that, but as best as Arthur can guess, his body is attempting to convey something through its movements that his mind is trying to deny. Funny how the poses he keeps ending up in seem a lot like despair.
To his left, the tea seems to be done, and so he reaches out with slightly shaking hands, fumbling for a mug before sloppily pouring some of the boiling water into it. A bit of it splashes, and he jumps back, burned; a few quick jerks of his hand are sufficient to shake out the pain. That's nothing compared to the utter chaos he's about to face.
But, no, it doesn't have to be like that. He'll make tea for Morgana, and then he'll see her out. Or—Or maybe he'll just leave and wait for her to make her own way out. And then he'll confront his father… somehow.
And Merlin.
He's got to find Merlin.
But, he thinks gloomily, reaching for the sugar, who is Merlin now? And, more importantly, does Merlin even remember?
[Camlann]
"I'll give my life for his!"
Arthur. Arthur. It wasn't supposed to end so terribly. Arthur. His blood. There is so much blood on the ground. If a payment is what it'll take to sew this all back together, it's a small thing to ask.
"You know I'll never die, and that'll do it. If I give it for him!" How raw his throat is, aching with every word, though never with the word he just won't say. Dead. One word. Just one harsh syllable, short and sharp, the drive of a nail into a coffin. And he won't say it. If he does, raw will be the least of his worries—that one word would be a barb, raking up his throat on the way to his mouth. If he has to say those words, it'll be the last thing he does.
"It's my destiny, Morgana!" he snarls.
She's not unfeeling, but she might as well be for all the concern she shows. She's sitting in a pool of blood, letting it soak through her black dress—better to hide the stains, yeah?—just holding her brother like he's already gone. He's not. He's not.
"And if Arthur is gone, you have nothing left to do. Is that it, Merlin?"
Furious, he sinks his fingers into the ground. Control his breathing. He's got to. Loosing it now won't help.
"Is it, Merlin?" she asks again.
Maybe it was once. It might still be, at least partly. But seeing Arthur sprawled haphazardly, half on the ground, half on Morgana's lap, his eyes closed, face bloodless and white as the corpses that Merlin has seen too many of over the years—it's not about destiny. It's not even about being suddenly adrift in an immortal life that was, until this point, anchored in purpose by Arthur. It can't be any of that in the face of the pain splitting up Merlin's chest—the kind of pain that steals his thoughts and runs with them, circling around and diving forward, narrowing in on the smear of blood on Arthur's cheek, on how his chest has ceased to move. Dead. Maybe those things matter. But now—right now—nothing matters so much as—
"You love him, don't you?" Morgana asks slowly. Her eyes were never so dark as now, in how he frantically searches—something, there has to be something there like compassion. "His destiny is done, Merlin. Fulfilled." Her stare sweeps over Arthur's body, and after a moment's hesitation, her fingers follow, brushing gently down to Arthur's palm. She begins to trace circles there, soothing a dead man. "But that doesn't matter to you, does it?" Jerking her gaze back up to Merlin—and, achingly, her eyes are soft. "You don't want to save him because he could still do great things—you want to save him because he's your dearest friend and you love him."
Yes, fine, whatever. If it'll wake Arthur, he'll admit it. He'll admit anything, do anything, but it just can't end like this… "Damn you, HELP HIM, Morgana!" he finally just screams, lunging for Arthur's body.
Panic has made him slow, or maybe just clumsy—Morgana catches his chin in her hand, so oddly gentle that it shocks him into stillness. Most of him, at least. Not his hand, because that just keeps going until it collides with Arthur's face, hovering there, and then tentatively drifting over the skin. Cold, it can't be cold, not like it is—fingers catching in the strands of hair on his forehead, even if Merlin isn't looking. Morgana—he can't look away from her. "You'll trade," she says, "But you need another sorcerer to mediate the transaction." The way her mouth trembles, forming words that never come to fruition—the sense of grief she shouldn't feel but that reads clear in every line of her body—he feels with her, because Arthur is so cold.
"Please," he chokes out.
"It will cost—"
"Damn it all, Morgana, you know I'll pay it, whatever it is. Now do it!"
And she does. She honest to God does, without so much as another glance at him. If she disagrees or has an idea of what the price will be—and, honestly, he probably would too if he just took some time to think it out, if he had that time—she doesn't show it. There are no words of caution, no ominous prophecies or spat syllables dripping with hatred. Rather, nothing but a quick inhale, enough to shift Arthur's body with it, pushing his face just that bit more up into Merlin's hand.
And then Morgana begins chanting.
[December 13th, 2013]
"ARTHUR!"
Already the bed is a mess of terribly tangled sheets, knotted around Merlin until every kick and thrash just binds him more tightly. They're good sheets—expensive ones. Better than anything Merlin would have had before, and here he is fighting them like he fights everything else. Figures. He's not the kind of prisoner that Arthur would ever tie down, but Merlin, stubborn as he is, apparently feels the need to make it seem that way. Melodramatic to the last.
And what Arthur would give for that to be all it is.
"Hush, damn you," he tries to say as he approaches Merlin with his hands out in front of him. Theoretically, that ought to help him catch the flailing limbs, but a fat lot of good that theory is doing him when Merlin just keeps crying out, thrashing like his life depends on it.
If Arthur had gotten his way, it wouldn't have been like this: Merlin's been alone for far too long.
"Whoever's been looking after you has done a piss poor job," he mutters, finally just giving up and grabbing the nearest limb. A wrist, as chance would have it. Strictly speaking Merlin probably won't thank him for the yank he bestows upon it, but it does the job: jerking Merlin forward in a slide of comforter and sheet, closer over to Arthur, and years ago this would have been absolutely humiliating, but, honestly, there's only so much you can go through with someone—by now, whatever embarrassing situation he gets into with Merlin, there's a pretty good chance that they've faced something worse. Waking Merlin up from a nightmare certainly ranks below that incident with the dress and the—right. Well, it just ranks below that.
And honestly, Merlin might have already lived a life, but he was never made to be self-sufficient, no matter how many years he's lived. Not in all the ways that counted. He was always just a little bit too soft to take the kinds of hurts destiny ensured he'd be dealt, and, even now, as he gives one last feeble little thrash against Arthur's chest, his lips are tightly shut, barely letting the sounds sneak through. Whatever has him like this, it'll have to be pried out—he'll never give it up willingly, and, well, isn't that why Arthur is here? No one will ever understand better than he will—no one else even remembers the things that make Merlin who he is.
One more pained moan, and Arthur just catches his name at the end of it—and that's all it really takes. Merlin is no seer. It was never a talent of his, but he's boneless against Arthur now, breath short and sharp and hitched, the way it always was after Arthur'd had a scrape with danger. No big mystery what the nightmare was about.
Camlann is rather hard to forget.
"Open your eyes and look at me, Merlin," he orders softly, shifting so that Merlin is mostly on the bed, propped up against his shoulder.
Merlin does. Shows just how awake he isn't—he'd never be so quick to obey orders if he were fully conscious.
Goodness, though, dead sleep might be kinder. Someone—there's got to be someone who can pay for this—for the way Merlin is just a bit too light against him, thinner than usual. Arthur could deal with that, though. What he can't abide is the way Merlin, still too groggy to realize the openness he's radiating, looks up at him with rounded eyes that are fogged with sleep… but glazed with something else that's deeper, more worrying. If there's even a name for it, Arthur will be surprised. Sometimes words aren't enough to describe something that's so deeply carved into a person's being by years of ache and loneliness.
Jerkily, Merlin blinks, still staring. The corners of his eyes crinkle, and he wrinkles his nose and sniffs, half an inhale and half indignation at apparently figuring out where he is. "Arthur?"
Yes. Always. It's not like they have a choice. And it's not like they want one. Not really.
Still, inevitability is only an excuse not to answer or explain, and Arthur never much liked those: but Merlin doesn't seem to want anything more than an excuse. Actually, he doesn't seem to want much more than what he's already doing himself: Arthur's mouth, though half-open, closes when Merlin lifts his own hand, splaying his fingers out; he lays it on Arthur's chest, directly over his heart. Normally, Arthur would at least ask what he thinks he's doing, but the tiny hitches in Merlin's breath, like a child still in the midst of a nightmare, stop him. A good decision, apparently—gradually, Merlin's breathing evens, calming to the point where a bit of color seeps back into his face and he relaxes a fair amount. Even then, though, he doesn't pull away from where he's propped against Arthur's shoulder, nor he doesn't drop his hand: he only pulls it back a scant few inches, his fingertips lingering, dragging out contact and wrinkling Arthur's nightshirt.
Merlin looks up at him. "You weren't breathing."
"What?" And then—oh. Merlin—he'd been matching their breathing.
Some part of that is disconcerting, at least in the implications of what it means Merlin saw in his sleep. Though, it does tell just about everything Arthur needs to know: as Arthur raises his gaze to stare sightlessly over the top of Merlin's head into the dark, he almost wishes it didn't tell him. His arm—the one around Merlin's back, holding him against his side, tightens, as if any firm grip could protect from this. Because knowing—knowing is a solid ache. And Arthur does know. He knows exactly what's eating at Merlin.
Even Merlin probably doesn't know what that is—not entirely.
But Arthur couldn't fail to know.
"It's your breath anyway, Merlin," he says softly, reaching down and taking hold of Merlin's wrist. Carefully—not angrily, because he doesn't mind Merlin's actions and never could—he removes the hand from where it's still tracking his breathing and quite possibly his heartbeat. "I think we both know that."
Fervently, Merlin shakes his head. "No, Arthur." So like Merlin to protest the inevitable. "It's not—no. You can't know that."
"And you're feeling guilty for it, aren't you?"
It's not all that shocking when Merlin wrenches away from him, but it is undoubtedly pointless. Foolish, stupid, and completely superfluous. Where's he going to go? Ironically, that's the heart of this whole thing—he might as well be trying to walk away from his own shadow.
If Merlin shakes his head any harder, he's going to hurt himself. As if the nightmare weren't enough—curse him, though, when Arthur reaches out to try to stop him, Merlin jerks back as though burned. "You can't know that."
"Know what?" Arthur asks. Stupid Merlin, stupidly stretching this out, but, damn it, Arthur can't see a way out of playing this game if he wants any hope of getting Merlin to be the one to drag the real problem out into the light. Oh, it's one thing for Arthur to know what it is, but it's quite another for Merlin to acknowledge it. "Know that I was dead at Camlann?"
More frantic shaking, sending black tendrils of hair spraying in every direction. "No. You weren't—"
"And now you're just lying. Or maybe you really believe it. Not sure which is worse, actually."
A deep breath, enough that Merlin's chest heaves visibly under his shirt. For now, he's dressed in a spare shirt of Arthur's, as well as a pair of his trousers. It's not ideal, but who could really blame him for not being quite ready for Merlin's arrival? He's been rather busy—mostly with things Merlin has mucked up for him, actually—in the recent days.
"You can't have been. Once life is gone—"
"A simple life isn't quite enough to bring it back. I'm aware, Merlin. You've explained it to me. Raising the dead is dark magic."
"You weren't gone yet—"
Now that's just annoying—Merlin, trying to duck away off the other side of the bed, that is. Arthur will tolerate a lot, but never any sort of cowardice: Merlin will face this head on. There's no alternative—obviously, hiding from it hasn't done him much good. "And, yet, I think I was."
"No—"
Grabbing Merlin's wrist, he yanks him back to the center of the bed, ignoring the slight hiss of pain. It's not as though Merlin would have gotten far anyway, what with how he's tangled in the sheets still, but it's just the principle of the thing—of trying to slink away from a question he very clearly has tried to obliterate from his mind.
"But you weren't offering an ordinary life in exchange for mine, were you, Merlin?" A sharp shove from Merlin's free hand follows. "Oh, stop that—" All that squirming Merlin is doing is making keeping a hold of him difficult and—there. A hand on his neck, not squeezing, but just holding. It at least stills him. "You offered your life for my life—expect you're immortal, which mucks up the balance, doesn't it? You tied us together. You live; I live. You die; I die. And neither of us stays dead. Reincarnation is kind of a bitch, though, wouldn't you agree?"
"Let go of me, Arthur."
A warning. Well, to hell with that. When has Arthur ever heeded warnings? "My life, your life, a bit one in the same these days. And that is why you've been so uncharacteristically diligent in hiding from me, isn't it? You feel responsible. Everything I've done, you feel responsible." Pausing, he slips his pointer finger up onto Merlin's pulse point, resting it there against the steady rhythm of Merlin's heart. The beat is the same as his own. "And may I just be the first to tell you what utter bullocks that is?"
Merlin scowls. "Go ahead. And while you're at it, well and truly shove off."
"I made my own decisions, Merlin. You tied my life to yours, yes, but all that did was give me breath. All my decisions are my own. Don't you try to walk around with my guilt as well as your own."
That is, apparently, some sort of trigger. Quite the impressive glare Merlin has, all narrowed eyes and pursed lips, and, really, he must have learned from Gaius how to make his eyebrow convey that degree of disapproval. "You've twisted this so far past redemption, Arthur, that I don't even know where my guilt ends and yours begins. A bit like our lives, actually."
A good point. "We do seem to have blurred, don't we?"
"I did that—"
"To save me—"
"And I think I was wrong."
Ah. Well. Well.
Here they are, he and Merlin sitting on a bed in the dark, enclosed by a building that is the finest money can buy these days, and yet everything still hinges on them. Merlin is blinking, watching Arthur with eyes reflecting the moonlight, and Arthur can feel his pulse under his hand—the grip Merlin isn't trying to get out of. Nothing about this is typical, but even now, they could never be separate. Destiny or loyalty or whatever word describes it.
But Merlin wishes he'd let him die.
That shouldn't feel so much like a punch to the gut, but, really, it does. Arthur finds his hand flexing on Merlin's neck, not choking—when has he ever really wanted to hurt Merlin? Never, and that's what's made this whole cat and mouse game so very stupid. Merlin never should have run from him at all.
Running. Oh, yes. This new dimension of Merlin's personality that looks a lot like cowardice is not endearing, Arthur does have to admit. Oddly, it's one of the few things about Merlin that isn't.
"So why did you save me then?" he asks tonelessly, watching the shadows play off of Merlin's face, burrowing down into the bags under his eyes. "Knee-jerk reaction? Just gotten so used to doing it?"
The words are hardly out of his mouth before Merlin's hand shoots up to grip Arthur's wrist. A hint of nail digs down into his skin, but the real attention-grabber is the way Merlin nearly bares his teeth, clenching his jaw down so hard that Arthur could swear his cheekbones could actually cut the skin laid over them. It morphs his face into all jagged angles, catching and trapping the moonlight, radiating it back in the reflection of his eyes in a rather disturbing picture that could, for all intents and purposes, be a poster for a movie on slowly progressing insanity. Whatever it is that Merlin has got, it's tearing him apart from the inside out. What it is, though—Arthur can't entirely say.
And so instead he just watches, waiting, hardly even breathing when Merlin swallows and—good God—smiles.
"I said I was wrong," he murmurs, sounding for all the world like this is the bitterest concept his moral palate has ever had the misfortune to taste. "I said I was wrong-not that I regret doing it."
As they both know, that is something else entirely.
Arthur drops his hand from Merlin's throat. "Well." God help him—he can't—what can he even say to that? You tore the world apart, but I'm glad I saved you anyway, Arthur. There's just—there's no reply for it.
"Yes," Merlin agrees. He looks away then, his breath skittering out in a broken wheeze. "And what kind of person does that make me?"