Chrysalis by halotolerant
I was so pleased to find a flashfic comm for this fandom - hello all! I like to delurk with fic, so here it is:
Title: Chrysalis
Rating: R
Words: ~2,800
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Notes: For the Transformation challenge. Thank you to elfwhistletree for another ace beta in yet another fandom.
Summary: Transformation isn't painless
i.
It is perfectly dark. Arthur can’t move and he can’t breathe.
Pain twists through him; everything is askew, imbalanced, altered. His shoulders feel missing - what a strange thought, he thinks, and then thinks it anyway.
His mouth is full of something thick; he can’t cry out.
“Arthur,” Merlin says
Arthur can’t hear anything at all - there is no noise. But Merlin says “Arthur” all the same.
Merlin, Arthur thinks desperately. He tries to remember the day Merlin taught him to scream in silence.
Merlin.
ii.
“No, no, not like that.” Merlin giggled - no matter what he protested, it was a giggle, that high-pitched happy sound he made when Arthur lunged at him. “You’re just holding your breath and turning purple - ow! Stop that!”
Arthur rolled him over and tickled him again. They were lying in the warm grass on Alder Hill, waiting for a summer sunset. The western prospect of the hill faced away from the windows of Camelot; in years past Arthur had brought women here, until the scent of wild clover had become inextricably entwined with that of sweat and desire.
It was not so with Merlin, now. Arthur played - he fancied - like a large and powerful dog might with a kitten; his companion innocent of what might happen, should he wish it. Merlin smiled and laughed and made a show of fighting him and nothing in his expression ever betrayed an awareness of what it might mean to go and tumble down a hill with a Prince.
As a Prince, of course, Arthur should really have considered what it meant to tumble around in such an undignified manner with a servant, letting him make up stupid games about audible thoughts and allowing him to rap you on the head with his knuckles. But Merlin had never seemed like a servant, even when forced to act like one and Arthur felt somehow sure that he got more respect from him now, like this, than from any amount of orders.
Merlin turned them over again and pinned him; hands upon his wrists.
“Your highness,” he giggled over the title, then put on a serious face that made Arthur laugh even worse. “Try again.”
Merlin’s face was close and friendly, his mouth open and inviting. Arthur thought it was a show of great strength in him not to just kiss the boy then and there.
“You could, you know,” Merlin said, so softly Arthur was able to believe for half a second that he’d heard it only in his mind.
And then he’d realised that he had, truly he had. And yet truly Merlin had spoken to him.
Merlin’s smile widened as he watched Arthur’s reaction. He opened his mouth to speak and as he did, Arthur found that it seemed strangely lacking - after the penetration of those quiet thoughts - merely to hear sound.
“See, I told you you’d get there in the end.”
The hillside had turned chilly. Clouds were obscuring the sun. Arthur had anticipated that he might feel many things if he ever ended up in such a situation with Merlin - under him, close - but had never expected fear.
Pushing Merlin away, he sat up, then stood, hand going to his sword.
“How did you do that?” Fright turned over, cold and sour, in his belly.
Merlin stayed sitting. He drew his long legs up, bending his knees and wrapping his arms around them. He looked all his few years and less.
Merlin’s eyes stared at the ground.
“Do what?”
“Do not deny it.” Arthur could scarcely believe his own anger, how red it could blaze under every sensible concern. “You read my mind.”
“Only because you talked to me. Arthur,” Merlin did look up now, eyes wide and imploring. “Arthur, I had to tell you somehow. You already know, or would if you let yourself. But I had to tell you.”
Merlin reached out a hand to him then. The light was truly failing and Merlin’s skin seemed to be glowing.
Arthur had not known. But, oddly, as soon as Merlin started, haltingly, to voice it - as soon as Merlin’s voice broke over the word ‘magic’ - it all seemed obvious.
He sheathed his sword again, feeling nothing so much as foolish. His own skin was glowing too. As he moved closer to Merlin, this intensified.
Their lips came together. Arthur heard Merlin gasp; he sounded terrified.
iii.
Arthur must find Merlin. He cannot give up, although he does not know how long he has been trying now, straining insensate in the darkness.
There is stone above and below him. He knows this, knows also that it is thick and finely hewn, that it was quarried in Wales and dragged through wind and rain, and what blood ran over it in its travels until it rested here with him. Arthur knows these things because, under the echo of his call to Merlin, the stone is calling too; yearning for him. It is a sound he has heard before.
iv.
Full grim the night they came to it. Rain drizzle fetching cold and spry upon the Christmas air. The crowd and multitude silent, waiting, joy departed ere the four score had had their moment twisting upon it.
For it waited, still, glistening. Singing for those with ears to hear it, a sound that crawled through all the rock of all the country; the cry for a King.
From the waves that broke upon Tintagel to the mossy cliffs where the hulls of Vikings splintered, a desperate, weary plea for a united land.
Dead Latin roads reverberating, although their time had passed.
Under sea and river the killing-sharp flints - their murders old before any on the shore of Britain tasted wine - still quivering with it.
Arthur, peasant-shod and unheralded, felt a touch upon his hand. His companion had reached forth from his cloak woven of nettles and the hair of bumblebees, lifting Arthur’s hand to feel the girding stone and teaching him to hear the song converging on the sword.
It shook Arthur full to his core, deep inside him as a mortal blow. The mighty need of the call, the unquenchable yearning.
And in answer to it he said: I have come.
v.
There is some kind of noise now, a rumbling louder than a nest of dragons.
“Merlin,” he tries again, silently.
“Arthur. Wait.”
vi.
“Wait, Arthur!” Merlin ran along the corridor behind him. “Aren’t you even going to talk to me?”
“What is there to talk about?” Arthur kept his pace, even increased it a little.
“Arthur!”
“Sire. You call me sire.”
“No I don’t.”
Arthur rounded on him then, infuriated.
He realised his mistake too late. Merlin’s eyes were angry, but there was a haziness about them too that struck pain into Arthur’s face in unwished sympathy and threatened to crumble him.
“Merlin,” Arthur stopped his hands from reaching out. “Don’t you see that this isn’t a conversation we can have?”
“Arthur, I’ve realised something. When you kissed me on the hill just now. I...”
Oh, could this get any worse? Arthur made himself look away, forced himself to walk on. The corridor seemed longer and darker than usual - he glanced at it and saw fire-blackened stone and mould - as he should, indeed, they lost this when they lost control of her pyre...
He stopped, pressing his hands to his temples. The corridor was clean and light again and smelt of beeswax candles. “Merlin, what is happening? Are you doing this?”
“No. Yes, but... No I’m not.” Merlin was twisting the hem of his jerkin over and over, looking for all the world like a schoolboy without memory of his lessons; Arthur sought hard to feel anything but affection for him. Then Merlin looked at him, something oddly like pity in his eyes.
“What is it that you can see?”
Arthur frowned. “What is more important is that if you are... what you say you are then you cannot be with me. You cannot be here. I do not want to see you hurt - would do anything in my power, Merlin, believe me,” his arms did rise then, and his hands grasp Merlin’s shoulders, a habit too strong to break through mere reason. “But my power is nothing to my father’s.”
Merlin moved then. Caught Arthur’s chin in his hand and held it fast with a casual paternalism that was utterly alien.
“It has been and shall be,” he murmured, almost in a whisper, a penetrating gaze from his glowing eyes transfixing Arthur with an unexpected rush of heat through his belly. “Oh have I sorely missed you, liege.”
Arthur felt as though he stood on the edge of a precipice and had just missed his footing. He was aware of three competing feelings twisting in a skein through him; relief, horror and desire. None cohered with another; none seemed to make sense alone.
Only one impulse was overwhelming. For the second time he kissed Merlin, who seemed to be weeping.
vii.
Merlin’s presence arrives.
Arthur cannot see, still, and for Merlin to be touching him must be impossible - he is still trapped in some way.
But Merlin is there, at last. A golden hum of Merlin smoothing away the harsh and rough, edging away the pain, singing soothing songs that Arthur remembers more clearly than breathing.
viii.
An old man is not a fact but a perception.
An infant crawling over a cavern floor, pulling himself up with small grasps at parchments and skulls, Arthur listened to the old man’s song and chuckled to hide in his beard.
Older, striding fair and strong and resolute over moor and mountain towards a sword that meant more than a sword, he knew that the old man rode well, weathered storms and marches and could fight as limber as any.
Years later in the court, his knights around him, all of them young men of true and shining blood, fresh and eager for the fortunes of the day, Arthur saw his old man was still as he ever had been.
Camelot grew grey and stale, Arthur’s bones ached and his throne became too hard and cold for his old injuries.
The old man was young, by then.
He never spoke of it. He never spoke greatly on any matter.
Once there came a May Day when the knights danced rounds with the ladies of court, casting out posies and drinking upon each other’s eyes. Arthur laughed and kissed his wife and told her to join them, had she a will to. The voice of his companion, who was shifting in his chair and allowing the familiar scent of fresh honey to rise from his cloak, came to his ears.
“Youth is perhaps an indulgence of a fearless kingdom.” Hands not aged but old twisted on bread. “I did not live in such a world when I was in my first years; I fear I taught you not to. A crown held you before your sixteenth year, and I saw it as little shackle enough, remembering my own times.”
Arthur did not like to let him continue in that vein: “The country had need of me, and what else should I do?” He had smiled an old smile, one entrenched in his face that would keep him of glad countenance long after his Queen had ridden over the horizon at her champion’s back and young men born after the last dragon was slain, (cowering, run to earth in a copper mine) refused to believe the breed had ever existed at all.
The old man had said no more. That evening Arthur had wandered to his window and heard a song upon the midnight air, a dirge for a life lost with a tune half-maddened with grief. It was the old man’s song, the one Arthur knew in his heart, and yet he had never heard it so before, and could not guess for whom the words and tears were spilled.
When all others had fled the last battle, when all else was lost, in the last hour and minute of the last day Arthur had breathed the air, the old man did not leave him.
The last waking thought of King Arthur that they called Pendragon had been: Merlin is singing to me.
ix.
“Merlin!” Arthur calls.
In the darkness, a sensation answers. The old man - in his mind’s eye, Arthur finds himself seeing a young boy - is distressed as Arthur has never known him to be.
“How went the battle?” Arthur could not swear he has a heart to beat, but it ought to be at the recollection of that field, that terrible day. “How went the war?”
“Away.” Merlin is caressing him, in some manner. “It went away, long ago. The country keeps well enough for now. The hour of need has yet a while to fall.”
“I am not finished?”
Arthur feels a wave like horror.
“Sleep.” Merlin tends him carefully - Merlin serves me, Arthur thinks, distractedly, then: Merlin raised me, fed me sops and milk, then: I do not know. Merlin straightens bone and clears earth.
“Sleep. Dream quietly. I lost myself, I fear, and neglected what is necessary here to keep you at rest.” The sure touch trembles, just a little. “I thought myself beyond missing those persons and places - and she was never like that in life, was she? I have made her as we would have rather she had been. I thought myself beyond indulging in that of which I once had as little of as you.” Merlin smiles in a way Arthur is instantly aware of. An old man weeps and a young boy laughs, and Arthur pictures both together, rippling in and out of each other.
“I waited through the grind of millennia for your presence in the world,” Merlin continues. “What are these centuries now?”
There is a shiver and a waver in Merlin. Arthur reaches for him desperately.
Though it is dark, the glow begins again. Merlin is laughing. The rock and earth and more are trembling - the song is the sword’s, the rock’s and Merlin’s; the land and the man together until Arthur cannot tell them apart: I need my King.
“I must only remember what I am and what I can never be,” Merlin’s voice is fading again, and Arthur is slipping away into somewhere light and fresh, smothering him in life. “And recall what is real.”
Arthur is only truly sure just as he forgets about it, that he is lying in his tomb.
x.
Merlin drew away from the kiss first. His eyes were still bright and damp.
Arthur put a hand to his shoulder; to keep him close but also to steady himself - he felt oddly like he sometimes did at dull banquets, realising he had slept only as he awakened and with a small gap in his immediate memory.
“No.” Merlin’s voice was too loud, too strong and he seemed to notice this and blush. “No,” he repeated, in an insistent hiss. “You are right; we cannot.”He gave something not enough like a laugh before drawing his sleeve over his eyes. “I thought I had made sure there would be no temptation.”
“Temptation, I can resist,” Arthur ran a hand through his hair and tried to see his way clear through every competing feeling, instinct and memory - things nagged in the back of his mind in a shapeless way, troubling him. “But you... You’re like...” He’d given many flowery speeches, both pressing and rejecting love, before now, but he seemed only able to say, “I can’t imagine being apart from you, isn’t that odd?”
The glow in Merlin’s eyes heated. He looked at Arthur now as if he were... Arthur spoke each day to his knights of devotion, but that day thought properly on it - devote, votive, worship.
“We can all grow accustomed. A man may love his footstool because it is there. Or a dog, for needing him.”
Arthur’s head was still thick as if he’d spent a night in wine. “If we... I will do nothing that will risk having you sent away from me.”
“You cannot lose me.” Merlin’s voice had gone very low and definite.
Arthur couldn’t keep the grin from his lips - Merlin got them too easily from him. “And yet I cannot have you.”
Merlin did not speak for a very long time. His arms were crossed tight up against his chest, his lashes lowered as he regarded Arthur.
Finally, with a weariness beyond his years, he sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed past Arthur in the corridor, lips set in a determined line.
“It is night, my lord,” he said over his shoulder, in a voice almost steady. “For now, it is time for you to sleep."
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