Old March Men - MERLIN - G
Title: Old March Men
Author: anamuan
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Word Count: 393
Rating: G
A/N: I could not stand up to mycroftnext and roundaboutit.
“I’d like to rewrite us somehow, give us that happy ending,” he says slowly, wistfully, and Arthur thinks of old grey men, in springtime: March, when the buds are showing and everything around them is coming awake, but all they can feel is winter’s cold because their bones are old, and it’s in too deep to shake. “Of course, that’s impossible.” His eyes are that same bright blue they were when they met, all those years ago, but the expression in them is nothing like the ones he had then. They look like all the sorrow in the world, and Arthur thinks that maybe, after all that Merlin has had to see as he learned the things he needed to in order to save Camelot, that maybe, maybe it is.
Arthur can’t stand to see it, that look, how lonely and haunted it is even as Merlin stands in the pale sunlight on the balustrades, sharp breeze snapping the banners behind him. He knows their time is limited, that even with everything they’d done to keep the kingdom safe for as long as possible, it wasn’t enough, and Merlin can see their end rushing at them like crashing waves, the finish line to a race no one wanted to be running. He can’t stand to see how old it makes Merlin look--a specter of an old, bent man with a long, white beard and sad, dim eyes somehow hovering around the edges of Merlin’s still-young, strong frame--so he tries to offer hope, even if it isn’t his to give.
“What about in that- What about next time? That future you say we’ll get to make up for the choices that were forced upon us?”
Merlin’s eyes lose their focus for a moment, looking past him into the fuzzy futures that might be. Then Merlin turns his old, sad, lonesome eyes back on Arthur; Merlin looks through him, into him and Arthur gets that shuddering, shaking feeling from when Merlin is poking around in his soul. “No one can know that,” Merlin whispers. His voice is harsh, like the wind whistling hollowly around ruined edges of stone, moaning and full of mourning through the remains of what used to be a castle on a hill. It sends a chill up Arthur’s spine and suddenly he knows he was wrong to have tried.
Author: anamuan
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Word Count: 393
Rating: G
A/N: I could not stand up to mycroftnext and roundaboutit.
“I’d like to rewrite us somehow, give us that happy ending,” he says slowly, wistfully, and Arthur thinks of old grey men, in springtime: March, when the buds are showing and everything around them is coming awake, but all they can feel is winter’s cold because their bones are old, and it’s in too deep to shake. “Of course, that’s impossible.” His eyes are that same bright blue they were when they met, all those years ago, but the expression in them is nothing like the ones he had then. They look like all the sorrow in the world, and Arthur thinks that maybe, after all that Merlin has had to see as he learned the things he needed to in order to save Camelot, that maybe, maybe it is.
Arthur can’t stand to see it, that look, how lonely and haunted it is even as Merlin stands in the pale sunlight on the balustrades, sharp breeze snapping the banners behind him. He knows their time is limited, that even with everything they’d done to keep the kingdom safe for as long as possible, it wasn’t enough, and Merlin can see their end rushing at them like crashing waves, the finish line to a race no one wanted to be running. He can’t stand to see how old it makes Merlin look--a specter of an old, bent man with a long, white beard and sad, dim eyes somehow hovering around the edges of Merlin’s still-young, strong frame--so he tries to offer hope, even if it isn’t his to give.
“What about in that- What about next time? That future you say we’ll get to make up for the choices that were forced upon us?”
Merlin’s eyes lose their focus for a moment, looking past him into the fuzzy futures that might be. Then Merlin turns his old, sad, lonesome eyes back on Arthur; Merlin looks through him, into him and Arthur gets that shuddering, shaking feeling from when Merlin is poking around in his soul. “No one can know that,” Merlin whispers. His voice is harsh, like the wind whistling hollowly around ruined edges of stone, moaning and full of mourning through the remains of what used to be a castle on a hill. It sends a chill up Arthur’s spine and suddenly he knows he was wrong to have tried.