(love, or) A Feeling Like It (end)
Morgana stays over at the hospital, accompanied by Gwen, who assured him that he could go home if he wanted. He smiled at her because, by now, she knew about Arthur and Merlin and he knew that she was going to feel pity for him. He didn’t want her pity; it was hard enough have his own.
He goes from the hospital, in the February day, realizing that this is the month when he met Arthur. He can’t believe it, how it feels like days and days are passing him like he’s insignificant when he’s supposed to do that to them. A year ago, he only had the faintest idea of love and a vaguest outline of heartbreak. A year ago, he was almost normal.
What is he now? A man who’s lived, he decides. A man who’s loved and known the greatness of such a thing, a man who’s felt more emotions than he thought existed, a man who's fought battles with his own mind and, in the end, a man who lived. This is what life is, isn’t it? It’s just a collection of emotions and thoughts one feels in a time span.
So he doesn’t regret meeting Arthur because he made him live.
Merlin doesn’t go back home because that would be the easiest. He doesn’t want easy right now. He wants the truth. The truth to what he was supposed to understand when he was writing before. Until now, he doesn’t know what it is that compels him to write, to come back to the dreams and regard them as memories.
There’s still that nagging at the back of his head, like he’s forgetting something. Sure, he’s abandoned that story of kings and sorcerers and red capes with dragons on them but that doesn’t mean the story has abandoned him. It keeps trailing after him like a puppy, wanting to be fed or walked. The thing is, Merlin would willingly do what it needed him to but he doesn’t know what it is. He just wants it gone; he wants to be free of it.
He gets in his car and drives blindly to his destination. Before he knows it, he’s parking in the lot of the Camelot Academy on a school day. Arthur has classes right now, if he remembers correctly, so there’s a good chance they might not see each other which is what he wants. What he wants right now is for him to see Arthur and for Arthur to not see him.
The kids are all in their classes and the janitor just lets him pass (maybe because he doesn’t look like a pedo or something) through the hallways. The lockers are by the sides, as he remembers them, the corridors are empty just like he knows them to be but there’s that buzzing noise of murmurs kids make during class.
Merlin peeks through the small window of the door of each class. He sees a group of kids around a replica of a human skeleton, tapping the bones as the teacher tells them which is which, he sees them with their heads down and the teacher who looks like a modern-day version of Churchill watches them, sees their progress and, at last, Merlin sees a class of consisting of boys and girls, listening intently to the teacher in front of them. There’s the occasional laugh, the smile and the jotting down of notes.
The teacher seems to be holding their attention and not just because he’s a pretty face but because Merlin’s heard him talk, it’s kind of hard to focus on anything else. He has this presence that has to be known, no one can ignore it. He’s the leader of everything that makes everyone turn and look at him. He’s made of gold; Arthur Penn is, as a teacher and as a human being.
It’s no surprise, honestly; he was born that way, over and over again. Every time he comes around, he’s just made of gold. All the times he gets reborn, he has this presence no one can flick off and think nothing of it.
Wait.
West Coast - Coconut Records
He leaves his car in the parking lot of the Academy, he figures it’ll be safe there and his car isn’t the most important thing in the world right now. No, because he found out the truth he was supposed to understand. He was never supposed to really understand anything; he was supposed to remember everything.
He sits there, in the tube, and realizes just how much he’s supposed to remember.
He remembers an age of regents and royalty, they’re all dressed up in period clothing as if they just got invited to a Renaissance fair but they didn’t. They are the Renaissance fair. He remembers a boy, then, whom he thought he loved before Arthur woke up in the form of a duke, lording over him as he always did. It didn’t take him that long for him to remember who they were, then, it was easy. From that first kiss, Merlin remembered. There were fights with the opposite sides, as there always had been in their destiny, with swords and wit, and, as always in their destiny, they were fated to win, only to lose something bigger. This time, they didn’t lose a kingdom, like before, they lost each other.
He remembers a war, little toy soldiers dressed in green and equipped with weapons too big for them because they held them like toys and didn’t know how it operated. The nurses who reminded him of a life long ago and the general who took him in his unit, told him what to do and taught him how to use a gun, how to aim properly, how to kiss like a man.
He remembers being completely alone, one lifetime. He remembered so early on, then, without even his king, the one he’s waiting for, to trigger his memories. So that lifetime was spent waiting for him to show up so that he could have proof that every love he ventured into was not his. He never woke up, then, and Merlin lost himself, instead.
But, mostly, he remembers being in love but not in love at all. They were never together, the two of them, they were never fated because of time, because of obligation and responsibility, because of law. But they were in love. They were in love without being in love at all.
You can never love someone more than you miss them, Merlin realizes, but you can decide just how much you love them by how much you miss them. And he misses Arthur a fuck-ton.
He gets something in the mail, after classes, about a week after he last saw Merlin at the hospital. He thought it was losing his mind with all these nightmares but he couldn’t be or else he’ll be like Merlin and he’ll forget everything life has offered to him.
He ignored them at first, all the little flashes behind his eyes, like they were nothing more than a nuisance. But he’s getting to the point where he can’t. Because the nightmares are showing him the worst parts of the world, the parts he never wanted to see.
The deaths and murders, the blood and gore, the destruction and fall of something beautiful. They all show them over and over again until it all cuts to a big line of white. They always end like that, in a kind of serenity. It’s the reason he doesn’t really complain, the calm and everything in it. but, to get to that, he has to suffer all the images of him -because they all show him- fighting.
Arthur’s always wanted to fight, be a warrior, a soldier to those who needed help but he can’t do this, he can’t watch the outcome to a losing battle right in front of his eyes. It just makes him want to give up and not fight at all. He feels weak and vulnerable when something tells him those are all the things he shouldn’t be feeling at all.
He feels like someone, or something, bigger than him, bigger than all of them, is telling him that he has to face these nightmares. He has to get to the point where the calmness matters more than anything else. He has to, it’s like it’s fate or something. Like it’s destiny.
He opens the package in his flat, taking off his jacket, as well. Arthur breathes in but the breath gets caught in his throat. It’s pieces of paper, bound together, all typed out. The header simply says ‘A Story about How You Feel by Merlin Emrys’. It’s short, it’s probably for Cenred’s short stories. There’s a note attached to it, a Post-It, that has Merlin’s scrawny handwriting there. If you need help remembering because I think you do. Remember what you told me before you left? The last time? -M
Arthur skips a few pages, just for fun, and lands on one page. It’s been highlighted, told to be corrected but there are no corrections, at all. Like Merlin likes the incorrections, the wrongness in everything.
There’s a reason you feel the way you feel, obviously, there’s a reason. Your mother was one of those people who assured you that there was always a reason for everything, wasn’t she? She told you all those stories that had moral values in them, like never steal or don’t lie or whatnot. She lived in fairytales and she wanted you to, too. So she told you there was a moral and a reason for everything. I don’t know if you think she was right but I think she was.
What do you feel? Come on, tell me. Tell me like you used to tell me about your adventures in the playground though I keep thinking that those adventures were never yours. They’re the figments of your imagination, the cowboy or the spy or the superhero and you implant them in your life just to make it seem more interesting. You shouldn’t, though, because you’re already a cowboy and a spy and a superhero in your own right. Did I tell you that enough? I’m not sure.
So how do you feel? I bet you feel lost. I felt lost before, more than you, certainly, because I almost lost myself because of losing myself. Do you know how that feels? I’m not sure. How do you feel, my dear friend? How do you feel?
See, I dunno how you feel but I think I’ve felt it before.
See, I dunno how you feel but I think someone’s felt it before.
See, you don’t know how I feel but I think you understand anyway.
Don’t you understand, friend? Don’t you understand?
It’s the magic of feelings, the absolute truth of it all. Everybody’s felt what everybody’s ever felt. All your basic emotions -sadness, happiness, joy, grief, bored- have been felt by a majority of the human population. But it’s those feelings inside you that you think no one else feels. Someone does. I do.
You and me, we’re made of the same stuff. Maybe that means I can tell what you’re feeling. Maybe you’re feeling like your heart is being punched on because you’re frowning, maybe you’re feeling like your life doesn’t mean half as much as it did before because you won’t look at me.
Does that mean you know how I feel, too?
Does that mean you know how much I love you?
Because I wanted to tell you myself.
Crap.
The first thing he thinks about when he finishes reading is that, “How long has he been waiting for me?” There’s an answer to that. He’s been waiting for him for just as long as he’s been waiting for him. It’s those feelings he thinks no one else feels, but someone does. Merlin does.
The Story - Brandi Carlile
Merlin cleans up the apartment that feels so full of life since Henry came back. It’s the dark of night. Morgana’s fast asleep, along with Henry. The boy looks a lot like Leon, although Morgana insists that it isn’t true. But it is. There’s that same smile, the hints of a red hair on his head but maybe Morgana doesn’t see it because she doesn’t want to.
For weeks now, Merlin has held on to the hope that, one day, a letter will come through the apartment door, handwritten by Leon. He’s just been hoping for some form of acknowledgement that they were once family and there’s a new member and he acknowledges the presence of his son. His son. Merlin doesn’t even hope for an apology nor does he wait for Leon to come home and beg for their forgiveness.
He wonders if it’s too late for that, too late for their family to pick up the broken shards of themselves, he wonders if Leon ever came back, Merlin would look at him like the villain, abandoning his son and his pregnant girlfriend simply because he didn’t want the burden of it. He wonders if he could ever hate Leon. He can’t.
All the while, in between his job and his newfound hobby of taking care of little Henry, Merlin has managed to go to the library every few days. It’s not to pick out a book about philosophy or to discuss Plato’s theories with the kids that work there. No, it’s to peruse the medieval legend section. See, his memories don’t come in a cascade of flashbacks, they come in pieces of glasses that cut through him and they hurt. Slowly, he starts to remember Morgana and Guinevere, he starts to remember people and places he thought were only dreams. He starts to remember whole parts of himself that he was supposed to travel with, it was supposed to be strapped to him like a safety jacket at all times.
The universe can’t blame him, though; he’s been at this for two thousand years.
There’s a knock on the door. Merlin sighs and goes to put back Henry’s miniature cutlery in the cupboard, straightens himself up and answers the door.
“I told you,” the voice from the other side says as the door is opening, “that everything was going to be alright. I told you I’d be back.”
“And you never came back,” Merlin tells him. He looks down at the tips of fingers, like all the things he’s ever wanted to say is there in his calloused hands and would he please just hold him there?
“Fuck, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you,” Arthur closes the distance between them. He takes Merlin’s face in his hands like he’s something precious and fragile and he has to protect him from all the evil forces around him, instead of the other way around.
“Which one? The me’s you know before? Or this one?” Merlin asks.
“This one. This one. I missed you,” Arthur answers with absolute certainty. It’s like he’s never been surer of anything else in his entire life.
And that’s it, isn’t it? Because Merlin doesn’t miss the Arthurs he knew before. He missed this one, this one, he missed him.
He can live a thousand lifetimes, all of them containing Arthur in one way or another, and still not have him. But, somehow, in this one, where he’s too normal, where he just feels too fucking real to be the great Emrys, where he feels too much like himself to actually be himself, he can have him here.
He can love Arthur and Arthur can love him and he can be here and he can be there.
They can miss each other and fall into each other like normal, real people. They can forget their destiny and their previous lifetimes and forget to dwell on their future ones. They can not be the king and the sorcerer, like Merlin’s stories and dreams -and the truth, he keeps reminding himself- no, they can just be Merlin and Arthur.
They can fall apart and fall away, be reminded of their humanity and their morality. That’s it, that’s why they’re special this time. Not when they fought wars, when blood ran from their fingers like it was everlasting; not when they made the world go round; not when they fell in love with others; but now. Now, when they’re human. They’re human and they have every right to be what they are, what they were and not be reminded of what they are going to be.
They’re not soldiers or saviours or people to really look up to. No, they’re writers and teachers. They blend into the crowd. They count all their fingers and toes to make sure they’re enough. And they are. They’re enough for them.
Arthur asks him, slowly, what they do now and Merlin, for once, doesn’t have an answer.
Maybe they’re not supposed to do anything at all, maybe they’re just meant to lie here in Merlin’s bed of children’s sheets, surrounded by books, with Morgana in the next room, making sure her baby is okay. Maybe they’re supposed to be wondering what Gwen and Lance are doing and if they know, if they ever will, maybe they’re supposed to stay here and be Merlin and Arthur, just Merlin and Arthur.
There might be a small chance, a small possibility, that there’s no world to save this time. And there’s a hope, a hope that grows and grows along with the love in his heart, that maybe this life is for them and them alone.
END.
He goes from the hospital, in the February day, realizing that this is the month when he met Arthur. He can’t believe it, how it feels like days and days are passing him like he’s insignificant when he’s supposed to do that to them. A year ago, he only had the faintest idea of love and a vaguest outline of heartbreak. A year ago, he was almost normal.
What is he now? A man who’s lived, he decides. A man who’s loved and known the greatness of such a thing, a man who’s felt more emotions than he thought existed, a man who's fought battles with his own mind and, in the end, a man who lived. This is what life is, isn’t it? It’s just a collection of emotions and thoughts one feels in a time span.
So he doesn’t regret meeting Arthur because he made him live.
Merlin doesn’t go back home because that would be the easiest. He doesn’t want easy right now. He wants the truth. The truth to what he was supposed to understand when he was writing before. Until now, he doesn’t know what it is that compels him to write, to come back to the dreams and regard them as memories.
There’s still that nagging at the back of his head, like he’s forgetting something. Sure, he’s abandoned that story of kings and sorcerers and red capes with dragons on them but that doesn’t mean the story has abandoned him. It keeps trailing after him like a puppy, wanting to be fed or walked. The thing is, Merlin would willingly do what it needed him to but he doesn’t know what it is. He just wants it gone; he wants to be free of it.
He gets in his car and drives blindly to his destination. Before he knows it, he’s parking in the lot of the Camelot Academy on a school day. Arthur has classes right now, if he remembers correctly, so there’s a good chance they might not see each other which is what he wants. What he wants right now is for him to see Arthur and for Arthur to not see him.
The kids are all in their classes and the janitor just lets him pass (maybe because he doesn’t look like a pedo or something) through the hallways. The lockers are by the sides, as he remembers them, the corridors are empty just like he knows them to be but there’s that buzzing noise of murmurs kids make during class.
Merlin peeks through the small window of the door of each class. He sees a group of kids around a replica of a human skeleton, tapping the bones as the teacher tells them which is which, he sees them with their heads down and the teacher who looks like a modern-day version of Churchill watches them, sees their progress and, at last, Merlin sees a class of consisting of boys and girls, listening intently to the teacher in front of them. There’s the occasional laugh, the smile and the jotting down of notes.
The teacher seems to be holding their attention and not just because he’s a pretty face but because Merlin’s heard him talk, it’s kind of hard to focus on anything else. He has this presence that has to be known, no one can ignore it. He’s the leader of everything that makes everyone turn and look at him. He’s made of gold; Arthur Penn is, as a teacher and as a human being.
It’s no surprise, honestly; he was born that way, over and over again. Every time he comes around, he’s just made of gold. All the times he gets reborn, he has this presence no one can flick off and think nothing of it.
Wait.
West Coast - Coconut Records
He leaves his car in the parking lot of the Academy, he figures it’ll be safe there and his car isn’t the most important thing in the world right now. No, because he found out the truth he was supposed to understand. He was never supposed to really understand anything; he was supposed to remember everything.
He sits there, in the tube, and realizes just how much he’s supposed to remember.
He remembers an age of regents and royalty, they’re all dressed up in period clothing as if they just got invited to a Renaissance fair but they didn’t. They are the Renaissance fair. He remembers a boy, then, whom he thought he loved before Arthur woke up in the form of a duke, lording over him as he always did. It didn’t take him that long for him to remember who they were, then, it was easy. From that first kiss, Merlin remembered. There were fights with the opposite sides, as there always had been in their destiny, with swords and wit, and, as always in their destiny, they were fated to win, only to lose something bigger. This time, they didn’t lose a kingdom, like before, they lost each other.
He remembers a war, little toy soldiers dressed in green and equipped with weapons too big for them because they held them like toys and didn’t know how it operated. The nurses who reminded him of a life long ago and the general who took him in his unit, told him what to do and taught him how to use a gun, how to aim properly, how to kiss like a man.
He remembers being completely alone, one lifetime. He remembered so early on, then, without even his king, the one he’s waiting for, to trigger his memories. So that lifetime was spent waiting for him to show up so that he could have proof that every love he ventured into was not his. He never woke up, then, and Merlin lost himself, instead.
But, mostly, he remembers being in love but not in love at all. They were never together, the two of them, they were never fated because of time, because of obligation and responsibility, because of law. But they were in love. They were in love without being in love at all.
You can never love someone more than you miss them, Merlin realizes, but you can decide just how much you love them by how much you miss them. And he misses Arthur a fuck-ton.
He gets something in the mail, after classes, about a week after he last saw Merlin at the hospital. He thought it was losing his mind with all these nightmares but he couldn’t be or else he’ll be like Merlin and he’ll forget everything life has offered to him.
He ignored them at first, all the little flashes behind his eyes, like they were nothing more than a nuisance. But he’s getting to the point where he can’t. Because the nightmares are showing him the worst parts of the world, the parts he never wanted to see.
The deaths and murders, the blood and gore, the destruction and fall of something beautiful. They all show them over and over again until it all cuts to a big line of white. They always end like that, in a kind of serenity. It’s the reason he doesn’t really complain, the calm and everything in it. but, to get to that, he has to suffer all the images of him -because they all show him- fighting.
Arthur’s always wanted to fight, be a warrior, a soldier to those who needed help but he can’t do this, he can’t watch the outcome to a losing battle right in front of his eyes. It just makes him want to give up and not fight at all. He feels weak and vulnerable when something tells him those are all the things he shouldn’t be feeling at all.
He feels like someone, or something, bigger than him, bigger than all of them, is telling him that he has to face these nightmares. He has to get to the point where the calmness matters more than anything else. He has to, it’s like it’s fate or something. Like it’s destiny.
He opens the package in his flat, taking off his jacket, as well. Arthur breathes in but the breath gets caught in his throat. It’s pieces of paper, bound together, all typed out. The header simply says ‘A Story about How You Feel by Merlin Emrys’. It’s short, it’s probably for Cenred’s short stories. There’s a note attached to it, a Post-It, that has Merlin’s scrawny handwriting there. If you need help remembering because I think you do. Remember what you told me before you left? The last time? -M
Arthur skips a few pages, just for fun, and lands on one page. It’s been highlighted, told to be corrected but there are no corrections, at all. Like Merlin likes the incorrections, the wrongness in everything.
There’s a reason you feel the way you feel, obviously, there’s a reason. Your mother was one of those people who assured you that there was always a reason for everything, wasn’t she? She told you all those stories that had moral values in them, like never steal or don’t lie or whatnot. She lived in fairytales and she wanted you to, too. So she told you there was a moral and a reason for everything. I don’t know if you think she was right but I think she was.
What do you feel? Come on, tell me. Tell me like you used to tell me about your adventures in the playground though I keep thinking that those adventures were never yours. They’re the figments of your imagination, the cowboy or the spy or the superhero and you implant them in your life just to make it seem more interesting. You shouldn’t, though, because you’re already a cowboy and a spy and a superhero in your own right. Did I tell you that enough? I’m not sure.
So how do you feel? I bet you feel lost. I felt lost before, more than you, certainly, because I almost lost myself because of losing myself. Do you know how that feels? I’m not sure. How do you feel, my dear friend? How do you feel?
See, I dunno how you feel but I think I’ve felt it before.
See, I dunno how you feel but I think someone’s felt it before.
See, you don’t know how I feel but I think you understand anyway.
Don’t you understand, friend? Don’t you understand?
It’s the magic of feelings, the absolute truth of it all. Everybody’s felt what everybody’s ever felt. All your basic emotions -sadness, happiness, joy, grief, bored- have been felt by a majority of the human population. But it’s those feelings inside you that you think no one else feels. Someone does. I do.
You and me, we’re made of the same stuff. Maybe that means I can tell what you’re feeling. Maybe you’re feeling like your heart is being punched on because you’re frowning, maybe you’re feeling like your life doesn’t mean half as much as it did before because you won’t look at me.
Does that mean you know how I feel, too?
Does that mean you know how much I love you?
Because I wanted to tell you myself.
Crap.
The first thing he thinks about when he finishes reading is that, “How long has he been waiting for me?” There’s an answer to that. He’s been waiting for him for just as long as he’s been waiting for him. It’s those feelings he thinks no one else feels, but someone does. Merlin does.
The Story - Brandi Carlile
Merlin cleans up the apartment that feels so full of life since Henry came back. It’s the dark of night. Morgana’s fast asleep, along with Henry. The boy looks a lot like Leon, although Morgana insists that it isn’t true. But it is. There’s that same smile, the hints of a red hair on his head but maybe Morgana doesn’t see it because she doesn’t want to.
For weeks now, Merlin has held on to the hope that, one day, a letter will come through the apartment door, handwritten by Leon. He’s just been hoping for some form of acknowledgement that they were once family and there’s a new member and he acknowledges the presence of his son. His son. Merlin doesn’t even hope for an apology nor does he wait for Leon to come home and beg for their forgiveness.
He wonders if it’s too late for that, too late for their family to pick up the broken shards of themselves, he wonders if Leon ever came back, Merlin would look at him like the villain, abandoning his son and his pregnant girlfriend simply because he didn’t want the burden of it. He wonders if he could ever hate Leon. He can’t.
All the while, in between his job and his newfound hobby of taking care of little Henry, Merlin has managed to go to the library every few days. It’s not to pick out a book about philosophy or to discuss Plato’s theories with the kids that work there. No, it’s to peruse the medieval legend section. See, his memories don’t come in a cascade of flashbacks, they come in pieces of glasses that cut through him and they hurt. Slowly, he starts to remember Morgana and Guinevere, he starts to remember people and places he thought were only dreams. He starts to remember whole parts of himself that he was supposed to travel with, it was supposed to be strapped to him like a safety jacket at all times.
The universe can’t blame him, though; he’s been at this for two thousand years.
There’s a knock on the door. Merlin sighs and goes to put back Henry’s miniature cutlery in the cupboard, straightens himself up and answers the door.
“I told you,” the voice from the other side says as the door is opening, “that everything was going to be alright. I told you I’d be back.”
“And you never came back,” Merlin tells him. He looks down at the tips of fingers, like all the things he’s ever wanted to say is there in his calloused hands and would he please just hold him there?
“Fuck, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you,” Arthur closes the distance between them. He takes Merlin’s face in his hands like he’s something precious and fragile and he has to protect him from all the evil forces around him, instead of the other way around.
“Which one? The me’s you know before? Or this one?” Merlin asks.
“This one. This one. I missed you,” Arthur answers with absolute certainty. It’s like he’s never been surer of anything else in his entire life.
And that’s it, isn’t it? Because Merlin doesn’t miss the Arthurs he knew before. He missed this one, this one, he missed him.
He can live a thousand lifetimes, all of them containing Arthur in one way or another, and still not have him. But, somehow, in this one, where he’s too normal, where he just feels too fucking real to be the great Emrys, where he feels too much like himself to actually be himself, he can have him here.
He can love Arthur and Arthur can love him and he can be here and he can be there.
They can miss each other and fall into each other like normal, real people. They can forget their destiny and their previous lifetimes and forget to dwell on their future ones. They can not be the king and the sorcerer, like Merlin’s stories and dreams -and the truth, he keeps reminding himself- no, they can just be Merlin and Arthur.
They can fall apart and fall away, be reminded of their humanity and their morality. That’s it, that’s why they’re special this time. Not when they fought wars, when blood ran from their fingers like it was everlasting; not when they made the world go round; not when they fell in love with others; but now. Now, when they’re human. They’re human and they have every right to be what they are, what they were and not be reminded of what they are going to be.
They’re not soldiers or saviours or people to really look up to. No, they’re writers and teachers. They blend into the crowd. They count all their fingers and toes to make sure they’re enough. And they are. They’re enough for them.
Arthur asks him, slowly, what they do now and Merlin, for once, doesn’t have an answer.
Maybe they’re not supposed to do anything at all, maybe they’re just meant to lie here in Merlin’s bed of children’s sheets, surrounded by books, with Morgana in the next room, making sure her baby is okay. Maybe they’re supposed to be wondering what Gwen and Lance are doing and if they know, if they ever will, maybe they’re supposed to stay here and be Merlin and Arthur, just Merlin and Arthur.
There might be a small chance, a small possibility, that there’s no world to save this time. And there’s a hope, a hope that grows and grows along with the love in his heart, that maybe this life is for them and them alone.
END.