Chances At Happiness
After the first couple hundred years, Merlin stopped counting how long it had been since the end of everything.
Kilgarrah had been wrong that day. He'd said that they'd accomplished what they'd meant to. And maybe they had, but Arthur was still dead, and there was nothing in the world that could make that better. Arthur was everything to Merlin, probably always would be. Magic had come back to the kingdom, and he should have been happy, but Merlin spent more time at Avalon then fulfilling his duties as Camelot's Court Warlock.
After ten years, he still hadn't aged a single day, and Merlin took his meager belongings and left.
He spent the centuries wandering. He lived in the courts of China and Italy, traveled the land of all habitable continents, spoke with everyone from the dark men of Africa to the pale ones of the far north.
Every twenty years, he returned to Avalon.
In 2009, Merlin broke the pattern.
It had been over a thousand years, and Merlin was tired. Tired of waiting, tired of loneliness, tired of just being. Some days he wondered if Arthur was ever coming back. Others, he wondered if it would be worth it.
So instead of returning to England (Albion, something scrambling to hold on to the past hissed), he stayed in Iraq, helping the locals as much as he could. Merlin healed the wounded and protected the defenseless. Magic was rarer now, with the human race's disassociation from the earth. Tales of an old man and a young boy who gave everything for nothing were spread through the desert by word of mouth.
The Arab Spring started in 2010, and Merlin moved with it, helping everyone he could. He was lost without Arthur (without his everything) but he could still help people.
In 2012, he felt a tug in his gut and a strength in his heart that hadn't been there for centuries. And instantly Merlin knew, he's back.
He had a long time to perfect teleportation spells, so it was easy for him to be in the village lying next to Avalon within the day. It wasn't a college town, so he couldn't take the form he prefers without garnering more attention then he really wants. Merlin shifted into wrinkles and long, wiry white hair. He has always preferred to blend into the background.
Merlin walks down the road toward the beach where he sent Arthur's body back to the land and returned Excalibur to Freya. A lorry passed him by as he reaches it. He looked out across the lake to the island and instantly, he knew. Arthur was no longer here.
He went to the library computer and googled Arthur Pendragon. He didn't know of he'd find anything.
The internet truly was a wonder. The third entry down was a Wikipedia article about the rising star of Camelot Enterprises, a tech company of some sort. Arthur Pendragon was the twenty-six year old Vice President, a clever businessman and a staunch supporter of the company's newest projects in the area of green energy.
Well then. Merlin had a fake identity to build and a job to get.
Changing the faces of childhood neighbors, shifting the memories if teachers and classmates, editing government databases - it was all shockingly easy. The decline of magic-users was well-known by the public, and it made them complacent to threats and security breaches from that area. In a week, he was twenty-three year old Merlin Emrys from the village of Ascetir, graduate of Cambridge with a BA in environmental engineering and marketing and communications.
(He had actually taken those classes, just not as recently as he should have and not as Merlin Emrys.)
As it turned out, this Arthur scared away all of his personal assistants within the week. (Why was Merlin not surprised?)
He'd sent in his résumé and was called to set the time for an interview by Leon Prince, director of human resources for Camelot Enterprises. Merlin was curled up in the corner of a tiny hole-in-the-wall cafe, sipping from his paper cup of lady gray and researching all he could about Arthur on his phone. So far, he seemed mostly the same; Ygraine died at birth, raised to work in Utjer's company, friends included the former Knights, Morgana was his paternal niece and the Duchess of Kent, he'd dated Guinevere Smith for six months before breaking it off and six months later came out as -
Wait, what?
Gay.
Well, that was certainly new. Merlin rubbed his throat, slightly sore from almost choking on his tea.
Merlin flushed as he remembered muscles rippling under sunkissed skin, cornflower blue eyes, teasing and friendly words alike. He'd made peace with his preferences and the fact that he loved a dead man who would never love him back over a thousand years ago. But this...well. Apparently some things were different.
And hey, maybe this meant Merlin could think about his own happiness for once, if only for a bit. He's more then just a bit broken, after spending eternities alone and unloved, but for now it's good enough to box it all up as best as he can and live in the moment.