All of these other flaws will lead to mine [1/1] [Merlin, 2008]
All of these other flaws will lead to mine [1/1].
PG13. Arthur/Gwen RST. Arthur/Morgana, Arthur/Merlin UST.
Future!fic. Major character death. 4277 words. 12in2008: 11/12, 12/12. No spoilers.
Conversations at the end. We did what was required of us, and it's abandoned us to Hells of our own devising.
He didn't want to use the tone and the title, invoking the full weight of years and rank, but he did it.
"I ask this final task of you, Sir Lancelot."
"With respect, Sire-"
Arthur heard Lancelot clearly enough, the man was only standing across the room, and his soft voice carried. Yet his eyes were fixed across the table on another pair. It was a mark of the years (though not as many as you'd suspect) that the queen kept silent.
It couldn't last long.
Hands apart and face down, Arthur's shadow lengthened across the table. He knew the sight was an imposing one: the king of Camelot pushing his hands into the map, into the face of the kingdom and history.
"Leave us," Arthur looked up with a curt nod, expression softening only slightly to Lancelot. The knights filed out.
Gwen stood still, hands by her sides and clenching by the scabbards of her sword and dagger.
It had to be ending. It felt like it was ending. Once, Arthur knew nothing of history. Merlin was the one obsessed with destiny and prophecy and other words that slammed in the air like cell doors. Standing opposite his wife and queen, thinking of times past when she had spoken before larger company in rebuke and had not spoken alone, Arthur let out a long breath. "Gwen-"
"You'll have to order me as well. I'm telling you now, you know, save you the time."
Arthur's head jerked up, the taut and nervous energy that had been keeping him functioning in the long war draining from his body in an instant. He felt the corners of his mouth twitch and grinned helplessly, eyes on her clenched fists.
Gwen walked around the table at a deliberately and almost desperately steady pace. Arthur knew the tone, knew that Gwen was cutting the argument to the quick because they had precious little time for it. Raising her chin as she reached him and raising her clenched fists, she placed them by the sides of his jaw and forced his head to turn to hers.
He let go of the table, the one he expected to be propping him up, and slipped a hand along Gwen's arm to spread his hand over hers. As he met her eyes, she tried for a smile, and so did he.
"You'll still have to order me. It's the only way I'm leaving you."
That it had come to this was ludicrous. It was irrational, idiotic and so far gone into mad that Arthur laughed and looked to the ceiling before meeting her eyes again. "I will, you know."
As he stood, Gwen spread her hands across his skin, her fingers almost meeting on the back of his neck. Now that she stood so close, Arthur could feel the slight tremors running along her limbs and didn't doubt she could feel the same in him.
"I care nothing for my reputation. You are to lead these men into battle. They cannot think you a cuckhold," Gwen's eyebrows tightened together and Arthur saw another look he recognised but only now realised he knew so very well. It meant she was worried about him -worried enough to attempt to reason with him.
And yet Arthur knew that in this meeting of mutually exclusive imperatives, he would not be the one to give. Gwen believed she had to stay; Arthur knew Gwen had to survive. One had to give and no one else was both constant and loyal enough to plant the seeds of the necessary lies in the coming years. Arthur felt guilt settle on him when he considered the life he was giving Gwen to - saving her from a death in battle beside him now meant little when she would be the last of them on this plane and the only one to truly shape the future to come.
"They follow. And the knights will know." Not everything. Not enough to do what needs to be done, he amended silently, that's yours. Head spinning through layers of memories, every word and look from the table to Gwen's hands stripping the years between then and now, Arthur took Gwen's hands in his own and held them between them. "I learned the lesson against pride before this, Gwen." His mouth quirked in a grin that felt tight like old clothes. "Besides. I don't give a damn about what the future thinks."
And somehow, looking at him the way she did, she knew.
The resistance fell away in the lowering of her shoulders and tightening of her hands. She shook her head, smiling ruefully with bright eyes. "Then blame it on us. But let me speak- lying sits on Lancelot like bad armour and it shows."
"He can't be worse than Merlin," Arthur retorted quietly, running a thumb across the back of her hand as he pulled her against him. He pressed his lips above her head. Merlin's steady presence in his vocabulary - his absence in their lives - worried Gwen. Arthur didn't want the last genuine expression he remembered her gracing him with to be worry.
"No," she answered brightly, "he really can't be. I'd take the stocks if it would suffice, though. I mean- no. I mean that." Gwen took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes.
Arthur let out a breath, knowing the events Gwen meant and seeing them all over again. It was unfair - he'd been born to Camelot, lived in it all of his life. Gwen was his wife and Morgana- he didn't think about Morgana. He didn't resent his destiny. It had worked and was working out well, just not for them, and he'd been warned about it often enough to choose another route. What he resented only very slightly as much as he prized it was Camelot's preservation in his mind. He could not see it darkened, he could not see it defeated and he could not see it without those long gone.
Gwen pulled him to her, his forehead against hers in the empty chamber of the round table.
Together, with others but always together, even before they had known it themselves, Guinevere and Arthur had built Camelot for present and future. Brick by brick, market by market, lie by lie, Camelot had been etched into the very land and all people within it. That beating heart had turned to a cancer, the idea imprisoned in the reality. Tomorrow, Arthur thought with a chill in his bones, they'd begin to tear down reality to set Camelot free.
*
They had played their parts to uncompromising, ruthless perfection - even Lancelot. The ache, sharp and laced with fierce pride, built in Arthur throughout the last court session and all he could do was contain it.
Gwen did not look back as she walked from the throne room on Lancelot's arm, 'banished' to a convent for adultery that would only take place in the gossip of centuries. Gwen did not look back and so Arthur sat, hands clenched on the arms of the throne, trying to ignore shadows that pricked at his vision and surrounded him. It was fortunate, he thought with grim irony, that the reactions of a man watching a beloved wife leave for the last time at the whim of fate and destiny were similar to those of a king cuckholded. The court could presume his anger was directed towards his queen and vassal if they so wished; Arthur had no further use of such a flimsy shield as reputation. He listened to the distant hoofbeats of Gwen and Lancelot's horses until he only imagined them.
The throne room had seen many configurations of thrones. He remained in the last glorified chair alone until dark, waiting as if his constant and absent friend would melt from the darkness to turn back the time.
*
"You waited."
The voice did as it always did in the now and as it never did in the then. Arthur's hand flew to the ever-present scabbard and drew his blade, leveling it at the shadow in the corner of his bedroom and swallowed.
"If I had known the events of today would flush you out, I would have banished them sooner. Or maybe not."
Morgana stepped forward from the shadows near the deep blue curtains, pushing her hood back and tilting her head with an edge of a smile. "It was a pretty pantomime, I'll give you that. I didn't think Lancelot had it in him."
"You don't believe Guinevere would betray me?" Arthur asked, question weighted on the very edge of sarcasm.
"No," Morgana answered simply, eyes flashing towards a chair.
"Unlike you, of course," Arthur retorted, nodding.
"Of course," came the reply. As Morgana sat, Arthur took the chair opposite at the small table and sat the sword in front of him.
"So if it's not the banishment, why do I have the pleasure of your company?"
"It's a social call," Morgana propped an elbow on the table and raised an eyebrow, "and I'm alone, if that's what you're fishing for."
Arthur hmmed and took an apple from the basket in the middle, carefully peeling it with the edge of his belt knife. "Get sick of Mordred so soon?"
Fifteen years. He took a sickening thrill in seeing her wince almost imperceptibly and pale under the smooth lines of ink from the corners of her eyes.
As if noting his gaze, she raised a hand self-consciously to her cheek and dropped it to her lap instantly. Her shoulders moved under her cloak and she drew herself to sitting up stiff and straight. "Our acquaintance was short-lived, but I required... time."
"You know," Arthur leaned forward and waved a hand towards her, "Merlin told me nothing saddened him more than you taking Mordred's marks. He never expected you to submit to a man so visibly."
It was another line directly from the past to the present- Arthur felt the room chill, just as it had whenever he'd pushed her too far and over a line he'd never been able to see when they had lived under Uther's roof.
"Then Merlin is a fool - and a coward. Where is he, Arthur? In a tree? Swooping down for breadcrumbs?"
Arthur closed his eyes in a long blink and opened them. "Not here. But he will be."
"He'll be back. He has no choice."
Arthur jerked his head up, hearing the soft tone in her voice and feeling the ghost of a touch along the back of his clenched fist.
The thin layer of normality - the need to lace every verbal lance with mockery and derision - broke under the strain of Arthur's tired faith. He'd always expected it to be her temper that did it.
"Does the seer tell me this?" Arthur clenched his hands together and met her eyes. "Or do you merely hope along with the rest of us now?"
Morgana smiled crookedly and shook her head. "It's a feeling. You know, one of those feelings I get."
"It's not an answer," Arthur replied, feeling himself match her smile almost against his will. As it slipped from his face, he asked with a wave, "What happened to you?"
"I sought power and gained it," Morgana answered, tone bland and eyes haunted. "This was both the price and the tool."
"When you-" He looked away, back and took a steadying breath, "when you came here last you-"
"Shh." She smiled sadly again and Arthur nearly grabbed the table to keep the room from spinning. "I'm better now, Arthur."
No, Arthur almost jumped to his feet and shouted, you're not. Having seen what lurked below her eyes, he almost preferred it to be on the surface. Her calm, still facade was a silence so all encompassing and deafening that it rendered the real hurricane mute.
"But I can't stay," Morgana continued, standing, still smiling sadly.
"You have an unparalleled ability," Arthur said unsteadily as he stood. Her eyes jerked to his and in them was a plea. He smiled, swallowing and taking her hand across the table. "No one else makes me feel seventeen and awkward the way you do."
She laughed and it would have almost been good, it would have almost been right again, if her eyes hadn't been so bright or her heartbeat so fast below his hand at her wrist.
Morgana let go of his hand in the same breath as she pulled up her cloak, a deep blue that settled by her eyes to meet those tattoos and her still-dark hair.
As her hand met the handle of the door, Arthur took a sharp breath. It was the end. It felt like the end. But he had to know.
"Why now, Morgana? You've been gone from Mordred and from us-"
She turned her gaze upon him and he felt the breath still in his throat. He had asked Morgana but he was answered by the seer.
*
Later that night, in a bed he was not used to having to himself and haunted by lives unlived, he invaded Morgana's province of fitful dreaming.
However, he saw the past, not the future, and he saw it as he had lived it.
They'd lost her, and he thanked the higher powers that neither Uther nor Gaius had seen her as she returned to them. The storm below the facade had been born in her beneath the tattoos. Over the table that night, they'd been deep and smooth, part of the skin she now wore. She'd stumbled into Camelot ten years before for exactly one month, cheeks scarred with blistering blue dye and eyes seeing a land beyond them all, one that she could not distill into mortal speech.
Merlin had slipped between her visions and called her back. Merlin had disappeared two days later, Morgana three, and whatever that unearthly place they'd both seen was, Arthur always suspected they'd left something irreplaceable of themselves there.
*
The snow blew across his face as he paused, signaling the men to move on forward. None of the men would realise, which made it relatively safe to pause. The snow disappeared into the damp ground and into the black-gloved hand Arthur held outstretched into it. Along the barely visible road, one could pass and go east and find a convent. If one went west, and if one happened to be highly trained and observant, one might come across a hermitage in the hills. Lancelot, Arthur knew, could hide thoroughly when he didn't want to be found.
A more distant memory lurked near the path. If one had gone there twelve years before, there would have been a village called Ealdor that had given Camelot a legend. Mordred had seen to that absence.
Arthur rode on.
*
Against the wishes of his servants, advisers and knights, Arthur camped privately near Camlann. His servants, advisers and knights had not looked into the soul of a seer and known what little difference it made to camp inside a ring of steel or outside it, and there was counsel Arthur needed to take that could not be heard from the centre of an army.
Using a handheld chunk of whetstone, Arthur sharpened his sword and kept his eyes focused on the trodden grass beneath his feet.
"You took your time."
"You're surprised? I'm always late."
Arthur looked up and met Merlin's eyes, the sorcerer standing opposite and with the general appearance of a vagrant.
"And you always forget to tell me things," Arthur remarked softly, standing.
Merlin shook his head erratically. "Not this time." He looked at Arthur earnestly, hands twisting. "I knew as much as you- maybe even less once it had all been mixed up in here. The wrong order, you know?" He tapped his temple.
"You saw what Morgana saw?" Arthur asked, motioning towards the seat across from the fire.
Tugging on his sleeve and warming his hands, Merlin shook his head. "Yes. I mean, no. I mean-" He sighed. "I saw through Morgana. My gift and hers. No mortal should see so much."
"You're still mortal?" Arthur grinned lazily and tossed him a bread roll.
"Ha," Merlin replied, pointing at him and eating the roll. "Funny. You're still funny."
"You're still an idiot talking with his mouth full," Arthur shot back across the fire. "Fifteen years to put it back together?"
"Eight of those I spent in worse lodgings than your current palace, sire."
Arthur snorted, looking at the small tent and raising an eyebrow.
Merlin seemed to shake off a memory. "A box of ice about-" Merlin gestured above his head and pointed at two spots in the air. Arthur blinked and sat back as an illusion flickered into view and disappeared.
Morgana sees in visions and Merlin speaks in illusions. What has this made us?
"Drink up. Warm up," Arthur jammed a small cup in Merlin's hand, mainly as a way to avoid answering him or acknowledging the way he cast spells off the way normal people cast off unwanted layers of clothing in a warm room.
Merlin clasped a hand around the cup and Arthur failed miserably at letting go, the slightly younger man looking directly up into his eyes.
"Go on. Ask."
"All right. I've asked."
"I don't know. I don't know if you should."
Arthur let out an explosive rush of breath and sat back down. "Morgana was almost certain. I could tell. She-"
"She visited you?" Merlin managed to sound faintly injured. "What about Gwen?"
"I don't know if she visited them," Arthur shook his head and pretended to consider it seriously before sobering. "Gwen is fine. Safe. Hidden."
"The convent plant." The sorcerer visibly relaxed and grinned cautiously. "There's something ironic about the final illusion being a habit."
"Listen to us," Arthur answered with a laugh. "We sound like boys after an apprenticeship who've been rubbish with letters, not sorcerers and kings. I have to say that this is pathetic, Merlin."
Merlin laughed with him and Arthur heard the same desperate relief as he'd heard in Morgana.
"Fight."
Arthur frowned, looking at his intermittently present and somehow still best friend.
"Destiny be damned," Merlin raised his head and gave Arthur the mullish, stubborn look that never failed to mean trouble. "We did what was required of us, and it's abandoned us to Hells of our own devising. You fight."
"What if it's the time?" Arthur asked, feeling the question hollow even as he grinned and shook Merlin's offered hand.
"Damn the time," Merlin answered, shaking his arm fiercely and grinning with a devil-may-care attitude that Arthur is pretty sure he stole from him in the first place.
"If I promise to fight, do you promise to stay out of it?"
Merlin dropped Arthur's hand. "What?"
Arthur nodded. "You have to be safe as well." He stated it mildly, as though the topic were the necessity of boots on a wet day.
"No," Merlin shook his head, "I fight with you."
Eyes on Merlin's, Arthur expressionlessly picked up a dagger and passed it through Merlin's skin. It made no impact, no sound, staying visible in the new translucence of Merlin's skin. "Where'd you palm the roll?"
Merlin ducked his head, muttering a harsh expletive. "Below the seat. I'll encourage the rats if you won't."
"How much does it cost you to be solid?"
"You're a right prat, have I ever told you that?"
Arthur grinned. "Frequently." He looked at Merlin across the fire. "Battles are places for the living."
"I'm neither," Merlin answered sharply, eyes a chill gold of a bird of prey. "I belong to no one and I take orders from no one."
As with Morgana, a chill descended around them, the fire decreasing in height in seconds. The only way Arthur could describe it was to say that something wild and old had gotten into their souls.
"You do today," Arthur grinned, trying his hardest this last time to be insufferable.
*
Arthur.
He heard it. Somewhere in the distance, someone was calling his name.
Arthur, don't-
The person wasn't just in the distance, they were high above. It was as though he'd fallen into a deep well and could only see the pale face at the top.
Arthur, listen to me.
There was a sound, a sound of drums that sounded like the very first heart beat. He didn't know why he thought that, but it struck him as poetical, and he wished he could tell someone that he occasionally thought in nice turns of phrase.
Arthur? Don't... don't listen to me.
The other voice was quiet against the drums and growing quieter. He fought to keep it, to keep the top of the well in sight, but it was getting higher and higher.
Arthur- soon. Okay? Soon.
What on Earth did that mean? Well, if he had to keep hanging around-
*
"Can't you just leave him?"
Merlin couldn't deny Gwen her grief, but he couldn't deny Arthur his destiny, either.
It had been the final move and the final deceit. He'd sent Arthur into battle, knowing it would cost the King his body, but Merlin had been privileging his soul. The final vision and the first shared vision. He would not let it happen.
Gwen and Lancelot stood by the hollow tomb a day and a half after the battle. Merlin had used all of his arts to move at speed after the body had been transported, but hadn't expected to find Gwen and Lancelot already there. It made sense, though, and for everything they never were, he was glad of it. Gwen could only invest her entire being in one person and Arthur had been more than a mere person. Merlin had already given his to saving Morgana as far as even he could.
"No," Merlin answered, looking up helplessly. "He's not done yet."
Lancelot made a sign to ward off evil and moved away, nodding in a way that suggested he'd be around if they needed him.
"He's dead," Gwen asserted forcefully, tears falling unmentioned down her cheeks. "Mordred is dead. It's done."
"And so will he be-" Merlin bit off a frustrated answer and took a breath. "Two sides, Gwen, we're two sides. Hard to believe there's much otherworldly in him, I know, believe me."
"I never suspected you of selfishness," Gwen shot back, posture stiff.
"Hear me out," Merlin held up his hands. "Two sides of us, two sides of Earth. We've always had one foot there and one foot here." Merlin deliberately waved a hand through her torch, wrapping a hand around it, focusing and tugging the flame through his chest. "I'm not one or the other. And he doesn't belong to here anymore."
"I don't understand." After a hesitation, Gwen moved out of the way, eyes fixed on the body in the deep red cloak. "Will I understand?"
"Thank you." Merlin pressed a kiss against her cheek and grinned. "Oh, yes. You most definitely will. It's going to be quite the party."
*
Morgana and three of the trusted ones were waiting at the shore. As the sun rose on the horizon, the red glow cast on all five figures and the fallen corpse of King Arthur.
Merlin turned sharply in the light to find Morgana staring at him. The first vision: Arthur dead, the very Earth awash in red. It had come to pass but not in the way they had fought to prevent. It had worked. It hadn't worked out well for them, but it had worked. The country had negotiated the crucible.
He summoned the energy to fill out his fading shell to touch the real once more, but found Morgana's hand on his arm. Shaking her head, she moved with the others and lifted the body of the king into the small boat waiting.
Merlin laid an arm across Morgana's shoulders and climbed into the boat, barely substantial and grinning madly.
"Merlin, you are-"
"-a genius?"
Morgana grinned and shook her head, laughing softly.
Merlin cast an eye to the setting sun and looked at her with a smile. "Cast us off."
She nodded and Merlin saw the tears held back in her eyes. The women pushed the boat into the water. As the tide tugged them out towards the channel, Merlin looked back to the shore. Three of the figures moved away, their work done, but one remained until the shore itself melded with the sea in the distance and all became grey.
He sat on the very thin edge of the boat for the Hell of it. It wasn't like he weighed anything and it was less creepy than sitting on a dead king's lap. Until, that is, the boat started tipping and a hand grabbed his sleeve.
"When will you learn not to be -"
Sitting up, Arthur cast his eyes over the grey clouds narrowing around them and the ocean that seemed to stretch out ahead.
"-stupid."
Arthur looked at Merlin.
Who grinned.
"It was time."
Arthur raised an eyebrow. "I'm assuming we're not stuck on this tiny boat forever. Because if we are, I'm flashing back to your whole 'private Hells' moment."
"There's an island," Merlin nodded, still grinning like an idiot.
"Oh?" Arthur looked around. "Where?"
"Oh," Merlin deliberately mimicked, "Somewhere. Out there. We'll get there. Do you like how we don't even have to row?"
"You don't know?" Arthur asked incredulously, muttering darkly and fixing a shoe.
Merlin shook his head. "Not a clue. I've never been here before. I've never even seen here before."
Arthur's shout of frustration was swallowed by the cloud banks before he settled against the back of the boat. "There are worse things. Maybe."
"I'm sure there are," Merlin grinned.
"Like you." Arthur narrowed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
"Oh, like you're fantastic," Merlin shot back.
The insults echoed across the water all the way to Avalon.
THE END.
PG13. Arthur/Gwen RST. Arthur/Morgana, Arthur/Merlin UST.
Future!fic. Major character death. 4277 words. 12in2008: 11/12, 12/12. No spoilers.
Conversations at the end. We did what was required of us, and it's abandoned us to Hells of our own devising.
He didn't want to use the tone and the title, invoking the full weight of years and rank, but he did it.
"I ask this final task of you, Sir Lancelot."
"With respect, Sire-"
Arthur heard Lancelot clearly enough, the man was only standing across the room, and his soft voice carried. Yet his eyes were fixed across the table on another pair. It was a mark of the years (though not as many as you'd suspect) that the queen kept silent.
It couldn't last long.
Hands apart and face down, Arthur's shadow lengthened across the table. He knew the sight was an imposing one: the king of Camelot pushing his hands into the map, into the face of the kingdom and history.
"Leave us," Arthur looked up with a curt nod, expression softening only slightly to Lancelot. The knights filed out.
Gwen stood still, hands by her sides and clenching by the scabbards of her sword and dagger.
It had to be ending. It felt like it was ending. Once, Arthur knew nothing of history. Merlin was the one obsessed with destiny and prophecy and other words that slammed in the air like cell doors. Standing opposite his wife and queen, thinking of times past when she had spoken before larger company in rebuke and had not spoken alone, Arthur let out a long breath. "Gwen-"
"You'll have to order me as well. I'm telling you now, you know, save you the time."
Arthur's head jerked up, the taut and nervous energy that had been keeping him functioning in the long war draining from his body in an instant. He felt the corners of his mouth twitch and grinned helplessly, eyes on her clenched fists.
Gwen walked around the table at a deliberately and almost desperately steady pace. Arthur knew the tone, knew that Gwen was cutting the argument to the quick because they had precious little time for it. Raising her chin as she reached him and raising her clenched fists, she placed them by the sides of his jaw and forced his head to turn to hers.
He let go of the table, the one he expected to be propping him up, and slipped a hand along Gwen's arm to spread his hand over hers. As he met her eyes, she tried for a smile, and so did he.
"You'll still have to order me. It's the only way I'm leaving you."
That it had come to this was ludicrous. It was irrational, idiotic and so far gone into mad that Arthur laughed and looked to the ceiling before meeting her eyes again. "I will, you know."
As he stood, Gwen spread her hands across his skin, her fingers almost meeting on the back of his neck. Now that she stood so close, Arthur could feel the slight tremors running along her limbs and didn't doubt she could feel the same in him.
"I care nothing for my reputation. You are to lead these men into battle. They cannot think you a cuckhold," Gwen's eyebrows tightened together and Arthur saw another look he recognised but only now realised he knew so very well. It meant she was worried about him -worried enough to attempt to reason with him.
And yet Arthur knew that in this meeting of mutually exclusive imperatives, he would not be the one to give. Gwen believed she had to stay; Arthur knew Gwen had to survive. One had to give and no one else was both constant and loyal enough to plant the seeds of the necessary lies in the coming years. Arthur felt guilt settle on him when he considered the life he was giving Gwen to - saving her from a death in battle beside him now meant little when she would be the last of them on this plane and the only one to truly shape the future to come.
"They follow. And the knights will know." Not everything. Not enough to do what needs to be done, he amended silently, that's yours. Head spinning through layers of memories, every word and look from the table to Gwen's hands stripping the years between then and now, Arthur took Gwen's hands in his own and held them between them. "I learned the lesson against pride before this, Gwen." His mouth quirked in a grin that felt tight like old clothes. "Besides. I don't give a damn about what the future thinks."
And somehow, looking at him the way she did, she knew.
The resistance fell away in the lowering of her shoulders and tightening of her hands. She shook her head, smiling ruefully with bright eyes. "Then blame it on us. But let me speak- lying sits on Lancelot like bad armour and it shows."
"He can't be worse than Merlin," Arthur retorted quietly, running a thumb across the back of her hand as he pulled her against him. He pressed his lips above her head. Merlin's steady presence in his vocabulary - his absence in their lives - worried Gwen. Arthur didn't want the last genuine expression he remembered her gracing him with to be worry.
"No," she answered brightly, "he really can't be. I'd take the stocks if it would suffice, though. I mean- no. I mean that." Gwen took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes.
Arthur let out a breath, knowing the events Gwen meant and seeing them all over again. It was unfair - he'd been born to Camelot, lived in it all of his life. Gwen was his wife and Morgana- he didn't think about Morgana. He didn't resent his destiny. It had worked and was working out well, just not for them, and he'd been warned about it often enough to choose another route. What he resented only very slightly as much as he prized it was Camelot's preservation in his mind. He could not see it darkened, he could not see it defeated and he could not see it without those long gone.
Gwen pulled him to her, his forehead against hers in the empty chamber of the round table.
Together, with others but always together, even before they had known it themselves, Guinevere and Arthur had built Camelot for present and future. Brick by brick, market by market, lie by lie, Camelot had been etched into the very land and all people within it. That beating heart had turned to a cancer, the idea imprisoned in the reality. Tomorrow, Arthur thought with a chill in his bones, they'd begin to tear down reality to set Camelot free.
*
They had played their parts to uncompromising, ruthless perfection - even Lancelot. The ache, sharp and laced with fierce pride, built in Arthur throughout the last court session and all he could do was contain it.
Gwen did not look back as she walked from the throne room on Lancelot's arm, 'banished' to a convent for adultery that would only take place in the gossip of centuries. Gwen did not look back and so Arthur sat, hands clenched on the arms of the throne, trying to ignore shadows that pricked at his vision and surrounded him. It was fortunate, he thought with grim irony, that the reactions of a man watching a beloved wife leave for the last time at the whim of fate and destiny were similar to those of a king cuckholded. The court could presume his anger was directed towards his queen and vassal if they so wished; Arthur had no further use of such a flimsy shield as reputation. He listened to the distant hoofbeats of Gwen and Lancelot's horses until he only imagined them.
The throne room had seen many configurations of thrones. He remained in the last glorified chair alone until dark, waiting as if his constant and absent friend would melt from the darkness to turn back the time.
*
"You waited."
The voice did as it always did in the now and as it never did in the then. Arthur's hand flew to the ever-present scabbard and drew his blade, leveling it at the shadow in the corner of his bedroom and swallowed.
"If I had known the events of today would flush you out, I would have banished them sooner. Or maybe not."
Morgana stepped forward from the shadows near the deep blue curtains, pushing her hood back and tilting her head with an edge of a smile. "It was a pretty pantomime, I'll give you that. I didn't think Lancelot had it in him."
"You don't believe Guinevere would betray me?" Arthur asked, question weighted on the very edge of sarcasm.
"No," Morgana answered simply, eyes flashing towards a chair.
"Unlike you, of course," Arthur retorted, nodding.
"Of course," came the reply. As Morgana sat, Arthur took the chair opposite at the small table and sat the sword in front of him.
"So if it's not the banishment, why do I have the pleasure of your company?"
"It's a social call," Morgana propped an elbow on the table and raised an eyebrow, "and I'm alone, if that's what you're fishing for."
Arthur hmmed and took an apple from the basket in the middle, carefully peeling it with the edge of his belt knife. "Get sick of Mordred so soon?"
Fifteen years. He took a sickening thrill in seeing her wince almost imperceptibly and pale under the smooth lines of ink from the corners of her eyes.
As if noting his gaze, she raised a hand self-consciously to her cheek and dropped it to her lap instantly. Her shoulders moved under her cloak and she drew herself to sitting up stiff and straight. "Our acquaintance was short-lived, but I required... time."
"You know," Arthur leaned forward and waved a hand towards her, "Merlin told me nothing saddened him more than you taking Mordred's marks. He never expected you to submit to a man so visibly."
It was another line directly from the past to the present- Arthur felt the room chill, just as it had whenever he'd pushed her too far and over a line he'd never been able to see when they had lived under Uther's roof.
"Then Merlin is a fool - and a coward. Where is he, Arthur? In a tree? Swooping down for breadcrumbs?"
Arthur closed his eyes in a long blink and opened them. "Not here. But he will be."
"He'll be back. He has no choice."
Arthur jerked his head up, hearing the soft tone in her voice and feeling the ghost of a touch along the back of his clenched fist.
The thin layer of normality - the need to lace every verbal lance with mockery and derision - broke under the strain of Arthur's tired faith. He'd always expected it to be her temper that did it.
"Does the seer tell me this?" Arthur clenched his hands together and met her eyes. "Or do you merely hope along with the rest of us now?"
Morgana smiled crookedly and shook her head. "It's a feeling. You know, one of those feelings I get."
"It's not an answer," Arthur replied, feeling himself match her smile almost against his will. As it slipped from his face, he asked with a wave, "What happened to you?"
"I sought power and gained it," Morgana answered, tone bland and eyes haunted. "This was both the price and the tool."
"When you-" He looked away, back and took a steadying breath, "when you came here last you-"
"Shh." She smiled sadly again and Arthur nearly grabbed the table to keep the room from spinning. "I'm better now, Arthur."
No, Arthur almost jumped to his feet and shouted, you're not. Having seen what lurked below her eyes, he almost preferred it to be on the surface. Her calm, still facade was a silence so all encompassing and deafening that it rendered the real hurricane mute.
"But I can't stay," Morgana continued, standing, still smiling sadly.
"You have an unparalleled ability," Arthur said unsteadily as he stood. Her eyes jerked to his and in them was a plea. He smiled, swallowing and taking her hand across the table. "No one else makes me feel seventeen and awkward the way you do."
She laughed and it would have almost been good, it would have almost been right again, if her eyes hadn't been so bright or her heartbeat so fast below his hand at her wrist.
Morgana let go of his hand in the same breath as she pulled up her cloak, a deep blue that settled by her eyes to meet those tattoos and her still-dark hair.
As her hand met the handle of the door, Arthur took a sharp breath. It was the end. It felt like the end. But he had to know.
"Why now, Morgana? You've been gone from Mordred and from us-"
She turned her gaze upon him and he felt the breath still in his throat. He had asked Morgana but he was answered by the seer.
*
Later that night, in a bed he was not used to having to himself and haunted by lives unlived, he invaded Morgana's province of fitful dreaming.
However, he saw the past, not the future, and he saw it as he had lived it.
They'd lost her, and he thanked the higher powers that neither Uther nor Gaius had seen her as she returned to them. The storm below the facade had been born in her beneath the tattoos. Over the table that night, they'd been deep and smooth, part of the skin she now wore. She'd stumbled into Camelot ten years before for exactly one month, cheeks scarred with blistering blue dye and eyes seeing a land beyond them all, one that she could not distill into mortal speech.
Merlin had slipped between her visions and called her back. Merlin had disappeared two days later, Morgana three, and whatever that unearthly place they'd both seen was, Arthur always suspected they'd left something irreplaceable of themselves there.
*
The snow blew across his face as he paused, signaling the men to move on forward. None of the men would realise, which made it relatively safe to pause. The snow disappeared into the damp ground and into the black-gloved hand Arthur held outstretched into it. Along the barely visible road, one could pass and go east and find a convent. If one went west, and if one happened to be highly trained and observant, one might come across a hermitage in the hills. Lancelot, Arthur knew, could hide thoroughly when he didn't want to be found.
A more distant memory lurked near the path. If one had gone there twelve years before, there would have been a village called Ealdor that had given Camelot a legend. Mordred had seen to that absence.
Arthur rode on.
*
Against the wishes of his servants, advisers and knights, Arthur camped privately near Camlann. His servants, advisers and knights had not looked into the soul of a seer and known what little difference it made to camp inside a ring of steel or outside it, and there was counsel Arthur needed to take that could not be heard from the centre of an army.
Using a handheld chunk of whetstone, Arthur sharpened his sword and kept his eyes focused on the trodden grass beneath his feet.
"You took your time."
"You're surprised? I'm always late."
Arthur looked up and met Merlin's eyes, the sorcerer standing opposite and with the general appearance of a vagrant.
"And you always forget to tell me things," Arthur remarked softly, standing.
Merlin shook his head erratically. "Not this time." He looked at Arthur earnestly, hands twisting. "I knew as much as you- maybe even less once it had all been mixed up in here. The wrong order, you know?" He tapped his temple.
"You saw what Morgana saw?" Arthur asked, motioning towards the seat across from the fire.
Tugging on his sleeve and warming his hands, Merlin shook his head. "Yes. I mean, no. I mean-" He sighed. "I saw through Morgana. My gift and hers. No mortal should see so much."
"You're still mortal?" Arthur grinned lazily and tossed him a bread roll.
"Ha," Merlin replied, pointing at him and eating the roll. "Funny. You're still funny."
"You're still an idiot talking with his mouth full," Arthur shot back across the fire. "Fifteen years to put it back together?"
"Eight of those I spent in worse lodgings than your current palace, sire."
Arthur snorted, looking at the small tent and raising an eyebrow.
Merlin seemed to shake off a memory. "A box of ice about-" Merlin gestured above his head and pointed at two spots in the air. Arthur blinked and sat back as an illusion flickered into view and disappeared.
Morgana sees in visions and Merlin speaks in illusions. What has this made us?
"Drink up. Warm up," Arthur jammed a small cup in Merlin's hand, mainly as a way to avoid answering him or acknowledging the way he cast spells off the way normal people cast off unwanted layers of clothing in a warm room.
Merlin clasped a hand around the cup and Arthur failed miserably at letting go, the slightly younger man looking directly up into his eyes.
"Go on. Ask."
"All right. I've asked."
"I don't know. I don't know if you should."
Arthur let out an explosive rush of breath and sat back down. "Morgana was almost certain. I could tell. She-"
"She visited you?" Merlin managed to sound faintly injured. "What about Gwen?"
"I don't know if she visited them," Arthur shook his head and pretended to consider it seriously before sobering. "Gwen is fine. Safe. Hidden."
"The convent plant." The sorcerer visibly relaxed and grinned cautiously. "There's something ironic about the final illusion being a habit."
"Listen to us," Arthur answered with a laugh. "We sound like boys after an apprenticeship who've been rubbish with letters, not sorcerers and kings. I have to say that this is pathetic, Merlin."
Merlin laughed with him and Arthur heard the same desperate relief as he'd heard in Morgana.
"Fight."
Arthur frowned, looking at his intermittently present and somehow still best friend.
"Destiny be damned," Merlin raised his head and gave Arthur the mullish, stubborn look that never failed to mean trouble. "We did what was required of us, and it's abandoned us to Hells of our own devising. You fight."
"What if it's the time?" Arthur asked, feeling the question hollow even as he grinned and shook Merlin's offered hand.
"Damn the time," Merlin answered, shaking his arm fiercely and grinning with a devil-may-care attitude that Arthur is pretty sure he stole from him in the first place.
"If I promise to fight, do you promise to stay out of it?"
Merlin dropped Arthur's hand. "What?"
Arthur nodded. "You have to be safe as well." He stated it mildly, as though the topic were the necessity of boots on a wet day.
"No," Merlin shook his head, "I fight with you."
Eyes on Merlin's, Arthur expressionlessly picked up a dagger and passed it through Merlin's skin. It made no impact, no sound, staying visible in the new translucence of Merlin's skin. "Where'd you palm the roll?"
Merlin ducked his head, muttering a harsh expletive. "Below the seat. I'll encourage the rats if you won't."
"How much does it cost you to be solid?"
"You're a right prat, have I ever told you that?"
Arthur grinned. "Frequently." He looked at Merlin across the fire. "Battles are places for the living."
"I'm neither," Merlin answered sharply, eyes a chill gold of a bird of prey. "I belong to no one and I take orders from no one."
As with Morgana, a chill descended around them, the fire decreasing in height in seconds. The only way Arthur could describe it was to say that something wild and old had gotten into their souls.
"You do today," Arthur grinned, trying his hardest this last time to be insufferable.
*
Arthur.
He heard it. Somewhere in the distance, someone was calling his name.
Arthur, don't-
The person wasn't just in the distance, they were high above. It was as though he'd fallen into a deep well and could only see the pale face at the top.
Arthur, listen to me.
There was a sound, a sound of drums that sounded like the very first heart beat. He didn't know why he thought that, but it struck him as poetical, and he wished he could tell someone that he occasionally thought in nice turns of phrase.
Arthur? Don't... don't listen to me.
The other voice was quiet against the drums and growing quieter. He fought to keep it, to keep the top of the well in sight, but it was getting higher and higher.
Arthur- soon. Okay? Soon.
What on Earth did that mean? Well, if he had to keep hanging around-
*
"Can't you just leave him?"
Merlin couldn't deny Gwen her grief, but he couldn't deny Arthur his destiny, either.
It had been the final move and the final deceit. He'd sent Arthur into battle, knowing it would cost the King his body, but Merlin had been privileging his soul. The final vision and the first shared vision. He would not let it happen.
Gwen and Lancelot stood by the hollow tomb a day and a half after the battle. Merlin had used all of his arts to move at speed after the body had been transported, but hadn't expected to find Gwen and Lancelot already there. It made sense, though, and for everything they never were, he was glad of it. Gwen could only invest her entire being in one person and Arthur had been more than a mere person. Merlin had already given his to saving Morgana as far as even he could.
"No," Merlin answered, looking up helplessly. "He's not done yet."
Lancelot made a sign to ward off evil and moved away, nodding in a way that suggested he'd be around if they needed him.
"He's dead," Gwen asserted forcefully, tears falling unmentioned down her cheeks. "Mordred is dead. It's done."
"And so will he be-" Merlin bit off a frustrated answer and took a breath. "Two sides, Gwen, we're two sides. Hard to believe there's much otherworldly in him, I know, believe me."
"I never suspected you of selfishness," Gwen shot back, posture stiff.
"Hear me out," Merlin held up his hands. "Two sides of us, two sides of Earth. We've always had one foot there and one foot here." Merlin deliberately waved a hand through her torch, wrapping a hand around it, focusing and tugging the flame through his chest. "I'm not one or the other. And he doesn't belong to here anymore."
"I don't understand." After a hesitation, Gwen moved out of the way, eyes fixed on the body in the deep red cloak. "Will I understand?"
"Thank you." Merlin pressed a kiss against her cheek and grinned. "Oh, yes. You most definitely will. It's going to be quite the party."
*
Morgana and three of the trusted ones were waiting at the shore. As the sun rose on the horizon, the red glow cast on all five figures and the fallen corpse of King Arthur.
Merlin turned sharply in the light to find Morgana staring at him. The first vision: Arthur dead, the very Earth awash in red. It had come to pass but not in the way they had fought to prevent. It had worked. It hadn't worked out well for them, but it had worked. The country had negotiated the crucible.
He summoned the energy to fill out his fading shell to touch the real once more, but found Morgana's hand on his arm. Shaking her head, she moved with the others and lifted the body of the king into the small boat waiting.
Merlin laid an arm across Morgana's shoulders and climbed into the boat, barely substantial and grinning madly.
"Merlin, you are-"
"-a genius?"
Morgana grinned and shook her head, laughing softly.
Merlin cast an eye to the setting sun and looked at her with a smile. "Cast us off."
She nodded and Merlin saw the tears held back in her eyes. The women pushed the boat into the water. As the tide tugged them out towards the channel, Merlin looked back to the shore. Three of the figures moved away, their work done, but one remained until the shore itself melded with the sea in the distance and all became grey.
He sat on the very thin edge of the boat for the Hell of it. It wasn't like he weighed anything and it was less creepy than sitting on a dead king's lap. Until, that is, the boat started tipping and a hand grabbed his sleeve.
"When will you learn not to be -"
Sitting up, Arthur cast his eyes over the grey clouds narrowing around them and the ocean that seemed to stretch out ahead.
"-stupid."
Arthur looked at Merlin.
Who grinned.
"It was time."
Arthur raised an eyebrow. "I'm assuming we're not stuck on this tiny boat forever. Because if we are, I'm flashing back to your whole 'private Hells' moment."
"There's an island," Merlin nodded, still grinning like an idiot.
"Oh?" Arthur looked around. "Where?"
"Oh," Merlin deliberately mimicked, "Somewhere. Out there. We'll get there. Do you like how we don't even have to row?"
"You don't know?" Arthur asked incredulously, muttering darkly and fixing a shoe.
Merlin shook his head. "Not a clue. I've never been here before. I've never even seen here before."
Arthur's shout of frustration was swallowed by the cloud banks before he settled against the back of the boat. "There are worse things. Maybe."
"I'm sure there are," Merlin grinned.
"Like you." Arthur narrowed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
"Oh, like you're fantastic," Merlin shot back.
The insults echoed across the water all the way to Avalon.
THE END.