Disclaimer: Sadly Merlin and any of it's characters don't belong to me no matter how much I wish they did :(
Merlin always remembers first.
The memories come all at once for him – he just wakes up one morning and finds whole lives crammed inside his head that weren't there yesterday, whole histories that have weaved themselves into his memory while he slept. He can see everything as if it was yesterday – the sun rising up over the horizon through the window of the flat, Arthur stretched out beside him, hair shining in the golden glow, his own pale body stretched beneath the sheets – and yet it feels as though he's a hundred years older than he was when he lay down to sleep.
He knows that Arthur won't recall any of his lives like this, because it's never been that way. Instead, Merlin knows that Arthur's memories will come slowly, like drips through a leaky roof, steadily dropping tiny shards of the past into Arthur's mind. It takes months – years, even – before Arthur remembers it all.
Sometimes, Arthur can remember whole weeks at once, a set of days and nights that surface in his mind as though they've been there all along, just buried in a place Arthur never knew how to reach. Sometimes Arthur only remembers mere seconds – the way the light shone through the window of his chambers each morning, or the sound of his horse's hooves on the cobblestones of the courtyard. It's never the same, except for one thing. He remembers one thing each day, and the memory always, always comes at midnight.
If Merlin wasn't – well, if he wasn't Merlin, he'd think that it was something to do with magic, that midnight had some special significance to Arthur or to the way this sort of thing worked. But he was Merlin, and he'd researched it all quite thoroughly, and there didn't seem to be anything particularly special about that time of night at all.
"It's witching hour," Arthur would always say to him, to which Merlin would always reply that no, it wasn't, and that Merlin was probably more knowledgeable than Arthur on that particular topic anyway.
"I doubt it," Arthur would reply, which would then spark an intense discussion about just how much shit Arthur would have been in during most of his battles in his previous lives if Merlin hadn't been there to help him out. Arthur always stubbornly refused to admit that Merlin had provided any help at all.
But those conversations usually came up after Arthur had remembered everything, after that first memory had torn their relationship wide open and after the rest of the memories had filled it back in.
Merlin looks down at Arthur, still asleep with one arm flung over Merlin's waist and his face buried in the pillow. Arthur's memories haven't started returning yet, but they will, and fast. He's a different Arthur to the one he'll be tonight. This version of Arthur was impossibly rich and terribly handsome and an absolute prat, but this one has only ever seen a crown at a distance, he doesn't know what it is like to fight in a battle or mourn a fallen knight or stand alongside Merlin against sorcerers and beasts and kings.
Forgetting makes us young, Merlin thinks. Yet lying there, with Arthur warm beside him and a whole, brand new world painted bright and fresh inside his head, he's never felt so ancient.
Merlin comes to look forward to the evenings. He used to hate it at first, the waiting, wondering throughout the day what Arthur will remember this time and then wishing that he would just hurry up and get on with it already so that Merlin can go to sleep.
But after a while, when the first few weeks have come and gone and they're used to the soft darkness and the slow tick of the clock as it creeps steadily on towards midnight, Merlin forgets that he'd really rather be sleeping or that Arthur might remember something so huge that it'll take him days to recover from it (and those memories always come in the end).
He likes it – likes being curled up on one side of the couch with Arthur curled up beside him, both of them almost asleep yet too tired to force themselves to get up and actually go to bed, and there – there it is – a new memory, that flash of recognition that courses over Arthur's face as the clock ticks over to each new day. It's mixed in with sleepiness and that tiny smile Arthur sometimes wears at moments like these (the one he'll always deny if Merlin points it out), and Merlin is certain that he wouldn't be able to spot it at any other time of day, because it's on this peaceful, relaxed form of Arthur that it shows the most clearly.
He doesn't see them all, not always. Sometimes Arthur's working late, or Merlin is, or they're at a bar with Percy and Leon and Merlin forgets to look for that tiny moment of realisation. Sometimes he doesn't remember until later, when they're making their way back to the flat, and Arthur lifts his head off Merlin's shoulder and says we rode grey horses in the summer or there was a corner of the castle roof where you used to sit.
Merlin loves those moments best of all, because they remind him of the things he's forgotten, too. Arthur's memories come slowly, he can turn over each one in his mind before the next one arrives. Merlin's come all at once, piled on top of each other inside his head, an explosion of sound and life and colour that's impossible to unravel. He finds that Arthur's memories help Merlin order his.
As the months go by, Merlin forgets what it was like to live without those moments in the dark, where Arthur's world gets pieced together and Merlin's world gets sorted out. The bright warmth of the midday sun doesn't seem as real to him as the cool darkness of their room at midnight.
He's waiting, he realises after a while. He's waiting for the big memories to surface – the huge ones, the moments that shook Arthur as he lived them and left him a little different than he was before they'd occurred. Remembering those moments change Arthur. He's seen it happen – a dozen different memories that shape him into some new form just as completely as if they were happening for the first time.
He begins to recognise the sorts of memories from the look on Arthur's face in the dim light seeping beneath their bedroom door. He can see the way Arthur's mouth turns down at the corners when it's a bad one, or the way his body goes stiff and tight if it's one that's even worse than that.
Sometimes there are the memories that Arthur refuses to accept – the ones that send him pushing Merlin back, pushing Merlin's hands away, sending him out of bed and away from him, so that he can try to wrap his head around the way that his memory is telling him things should be. It's exactly what happened with Morgana, when he remembered her staring down at Uther from her seat upon his throne, her eyes cold and hard with disgust. Morgana doesn't remember that life, so she can't understand why Arthur looks at her differently when they next see each other, as though she's done something wrong.
"She's not that person anymore, Arthur, you know that she's not," Merlin tells him later that evening.
"I know," Arthur replies, but yet he doesn't return her calls anymore and Merlin starts to feel a tiny, curling sense of unease, because he's got secrets buried within Arthur's memories as well.
It also happens with the memory of Uther's death. Arthur turned up at his father's house at two in the morning on the day that he remembered that one, and returned home at three to sit beside Merlin and sob, his hands clenched tight into fists and his face buried into Merlin's shoulder. It's only the memory of loss but that doesn't mean it hurts any less.
Merlin can't change it – he's tried, he's searched every book he knows of for ways of softening these memories – but he can only be there for Arthur each time the man remembers, to pull him through and show him that it's okay, that the end of one life does not mean the end of all.
Merlin knows what it felt like to remember these things on his own, alone, torn between disbelief and fear and a deep, desperate sense of uncertainty at it all.
Arthur never will.
Sometimes people don't turn up, no matter how hard Merlin looks for them.
Arthur turns to Merlin in bed one night and says Gwaine? Why haven't we seen Gwaine? in a puzzled, sleepy voice and Merlin just shakes his head because there's no Gwaine this time.
Sometimes Arthur remembers too late, and he'll mourn for the men he didn't get to know in this life, the men that he forgot to find. Sometimes Merlin finds them before he finds Arthur, and loses them before he's got Arthur to hold him tight while he grieves.
It's Lancelot, this time. Merlin met him in a bar and befriended him and spent many long hours talking with him after midnight when they'd both had too much to drink and there didn't seem to be any point in trying to make it back to their flats before sunrise. He left the day before Merlin met Arthur, flew off around the world with a promise that he'd come find Merlin whenever he got back. Merlin remembered him as he once was – as Sir Lancelot, as a much older friend than he'd realised - mere days before Lance's plane went down somewhere over Tibet.
Merlin never knew if Lancelot ever remembered him completely.
Sometimes, Merlin wishes Arthur didn't remember them at all.
And then Arthur's remembered more memories, and Merlin can sense the end drawing near.
He begins to long for the night where Arthur won't remember anything, where they'll go to sleep and Merlin won't wonder how he'll have changed in Arthur's eyes when they wake up.
There are some days he spends wishing the sun will get stuck in the sky and night won't fall at all, he doesn't wish too hard, though (there might still be some remnants of magic tucked away inside him), and so night continues to fall and Arthur carries on remembering.
One midnight, when the ground is frosted white outside and there's the scent of ice in the air, Arthur remembers.
Merlin can tell that it's that memory, because he's been waiting for it longer than any of the others and he knows how Arthur will react.
He expects the shock, the anger, he expects Arthur scrambling back from him and just staring, his blue eyes wide with disbelief. He knows that Arthur will leave, not even bothering to pull on proper clothes, just grabbing a coat and bolting for the door because he can't understand the memory that's coursing through his mind. It's a centuries-old betrayal, the truth about Merlin's magic, but to Arthur's mind it feels brand new.
Merlin remembers that moment clearly, remembers the look on Arthur's face as Merlin brings down the beast with a golden-eyed look, remembers the way Arthur's fierce, cold expression had jolted hard through his chest.
Remembers the way Arthur had turned away from him, his body stiff with rage.
Merlin also remembers how Arthur had turned up at Gaius' chambers a few days later, when Gaius was halfway through his (repeated) speech on how they wouldn't have got into this mess if Merlin hadn't decided to reveal his secret in such a reckless manner. Merlin had been half relieved to see Arthur there, even if he'd only come to take Merlin down to the dungeons, because he was sure that any punishment Arthur could devise wouldn't be half as bad as sitting through another of Gaius' panicked admonitions.
Unless Arthur had come to sentence him to death.
That had seemed just as likely to be Arthur's decision as any other, and the thought stuck cold and fast in Merlin's chest all through those long nights before Arthur came to find him. He'd been afraid, but not like he'd thought he would be when that day came. It wasn't a fear of death, or pain - though that had surfaced when he thought of how Uther had dealt with sorcerers in the past – but rather a deep, bitter sense of how utterly wrong it would be for Arthur to continue without Merlin at his side. There were enemies out there that Arthur didn't know how to face, enemies who would look at his battle scars and his sword and his bravery and laugh, because those were all useless against magic. He would die, and not well, if Merlin was not there beside him, and that thought burned deeper and more painfully than all the others.
Merlin remembers how Gaius had knelt before Arthur and pleaded that Merlin be spared, and how Arthur had looked between the two of them and then told Merlin that he was never, ever to lie to Arthur again.
Merlin remembers how Arthur forgave him in the end, and how he'd appointed Merlin as Court Sorcerer some years after that.
But Arthur – this Arthur – doesn't, and so he walks away from Merlin, leaves him sitting in the darkness and goes to Morgana, perhaps, or to Leon, because there are some memories that Merlin just can't help him through.
Later, when he's curled on his side trying to soothe the deep, bitter ache in his chest, Merlin realises something. He thought that he'd remembered everything, but he hadn't remembered how much this would hurt.
Weeks later, when Merlin's almost convinced himself that Arthur isn't coming back, not this time, the man turns up on Merlin's doorstep sometime just past midnight.
"Why didn't you tell me, you idiot?" is the first thing he says. Merlin nearly laughs with relief, because Arthur's messy-haired and pajama-clad and there's nothing in the world that Merlin wanted more than this.
"You wouldn't have listened," he replies. Arthur shakes his head, exasperated.
He walks inside, drops his bag in the hall and heads straight for the kettle, and Merlin thinks that it's almost – not quite, but almost - as though Arthur had never left at all.
But there are deep shadows beneath Arthur's eyes and a fragile edge to his smile, and Merlin wonders what else Arthur's remembered while he's been away. Merlin can't remember Arthur's death – he's never been able to, not in any of his lives - so he supposes that maybe Arthur has remembered his.
There's only a few memories left after that – short, bright ones that Arthur tells Merlin about while they're pressed together beneath the sheets. They're memories of early summer, of winters spent by the fire with mulled wine, of hours spent laughing over George and his brass jokes or Gwaine's latest drunken adventures.
In between it all there are tiny moments when Merlin's curled up around Arthur, their legs tangled together and Arthur's arms warm around Merlin, and there's that dim sense of anticipation in his chest because it's the start of the weekend and Morgana's having them over for dinner the next evening, and it's close to summer and the moonlight drifting through their window reminds him of the sea – in moments like that, Merlin thinks that it's worth it, helping Arthur remember.
Especially when the clock beside their bed flashes twelve and Arthur whispers some tiny truth into Merlin's ear, his voice sleepy and a little bit surprised.
I loved you just as much back then, too, and that's exactly what Merlin's been waiting to hear.
Hey guys!
Basically guys this is my first Merlin fic so I have no idea if anyone will like it or even find it any good so I would really really appreciate your opinions to let me know if I did alright :)