Chrysalis by halotolerant

[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

Comments

[dolique]

god knows the line between the obvious & the oblique isn't always easy to walk! i certainly struggle enough with it in my own writing.

i've thought about it a bit, though, and i think my confusion here was really arthur's-i mean, i'm familiar with the traditional canon, it's just that you've placed the reader so far into arthur's head here that as he's adrift, so must we be. all of which is to say that the weave does come together at the end of the piece, and a reread clarifies the ambiguities, so well done!

and reexamining this, i adore the language, my god. “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.” the eyes (and homoeroticism!) of the show, the language of legend: this sentence pairs them perfectly. and arthur's glad countenance could be right out of malory.

and then this! Merlin tends him carefully - Merlin serves me, Arthur thinks, distractedly, then: Merlin raised me, fed me sops and milk, then: I do not know. tends is seriously the perfect word choice there, encompassing as it does both the serves and raised of the coming phrases, and i love the triad those italicized phrases form, of dream and past and liminal confusion.

Arthur is only truly sure just as he forgets about it, that he is lying in his tomb. you could've ended it on this, it's strong enough. i can't quite decide whether it makes the situation better or worse that arthur won't be aware of it, but then that's probably as it should be: the uncertainty enriches it.

if you had, though, we wouldn't have had the final section, which manages in two lines of dialogue to articulate the central tension of the piece: “You cannot lose me.” / “And yet I cannot have you.” nnnngh their codependency: like a binary star, they orbit one another but with a fixed distance between them, which is at once their fascination & their tragedy. and then the actual last line, in which merlin is both the manservant chivvying his prince to bed & the wizard returning his king to a living death: “For now, it is time for you to sleep." the joy of the show's camelot and the sorrow of the legends' camlann are so inextricably entwined throughout this piece, and the combination is so much stronger than either strand would be individually.

aaaaaand i'll shut up now. i plead a combination of insomnia & enthusiasm; hopefully you'll choose to be flattered, rather than frightened. i'm not *quite* certifiable, i promise! ;)

[halotolerant]

Put your mind at rest, I'm very flattered indeed! Really, thank you for this, you've seen so much of what I wanted to say (and credited me with some things that were more like happy accidents of writing!) and it's what I always want to try and deal with in this fandom - what you call the 'joy' and 'sorrow'. I know the show has already played with canon, but when I see Arthur and Gwen together I can't help thinking "You are going to marry her and then try to burn her at the *stake*" and so on for all the characters. Arthurian legend is so tragic, and that's where I got the idea for this fic - what if the happy vision we see in the show is something Merlin is trying to give Arthur, something he never had?

I'm delighted that you enjoyed this, thank you so much for letting me know *g*