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Arthur startled awake in the dark, to a trumpeting blare. He sat upright in bed, and swallowed his stuttering heart down from his throat. He had been dreaming of the battlefield, of the cold unfeeling of Mordred’s sword through his gut.
On went that trumpeting.
Oh, that’s just the neighbour’s car alarm, said Merlin’s voice in his head—he’d said this a week ago when the same noise had jolted Arthur awake in Merlin’s house. Damn thing’s broken and they couldn’t ever afford insurance. Stray cats set it off all the time.
Car. That was a car. The trumpeting—the noise of a machine malfunctioning. Arthur swallowed again, managing to get his heart down and out of his throat, but not managing to stop it from stuttering.
He fumbled with the sheets, and eventually threw them back. Bare feet on rug, bare feet on wood floors. Arthur crept to the window, and pulled back the curtains.
It was night, but the street was yellow. Cane-shaped lamps buzzed long after the sunset. That was something he was still getting used to: it never got dark here in the future, and he could never see the stars. Arthur missed the dark—was that stupid, considering the thousands of years he had apparently spent in it?
But it was always light here.
Always awake.
Merlin, what happened to the stars?
Too much light pollution, Merlin said, using another mixture of foreign words and concepts Arthur was too proud to ask clarification on.
In the dead of night, he still had a clear view of the unnatural, slabbed road, and the so-called neighbour’s-car parked across on the curb. Its tail-light eyes blinked at him red as it trumpeted on. A beast, a creature.
A car.
Merlin’s bright, smooth voice cut through Arthur’s mind and said:
“I wrote you letters.”
He had a knack for that sudden brightness—bounding into Arthur’s mornings, waking him long before Arthur wanted to leave the envelopment of his bed. And he was there when Arthur woke for the first time after a series of ages.
Merlin was good at moving fast.
Rise and shine!
Arthur dared open his eyes, saw a flash of steel and brick. Through curved glass: the moving picture of a city made foreign with thousands of years. He quickly shut his eyes again and his vision became a reddy-orange light pressing against his eyelids.
Riding in Merlin’s car made him dizzy.
“Letters?” Arthur repeated.
He didn’t like how cars moved: speed without grounding rhythm of a saddle, but Arthur didn’t complain—he wasn’t about to let Merlin make fun of him.
“Mm-hm.” Merlin went, like all of this, too fast for him.
Arthur clenched his jaw and pretended not to be bothered.
“What for?” Arthur said.
“For when you came back.” Like that was the natural answer. Like he should have known.
When Arthur opened his eyes again, he saw Merlin had on a wide smile that he didn’t know how to keep up with.
“It was only a few at first,” Merlin continued, not looking at him—focusing on driving—“but it sort of got away from me, and now I’ve got them in books.” He laughed. What exactly was supposed to be funny?
“That’s…” Arthur didn’t know what it was, actually.
“Helpful.” Merlin supplied the word for him, a beat late. “I thought it would be helpful—to catch up on everything you’ve missed.”
And what is that? Arthur didn’t ask.
“How prudent of you, Merlin.”
Merlin told Arthur to wait on his sofa, once they got to his house.
Merlin’s house: brick-made, white-glass, mess-strewn in a way that was unmistakably Merlin. In every other way, it was a collection of modernity that made an interloper of Arthur.
There was a rug on the floor, and Arthur’s gaze dropped to it, anchoring there. He could see the pattern of its weave—where it had once been stretched over a loom. It, Arthur knew, and understood—unlike the ticking plate of numbers on the wall, and the frame of black glass mounted atop Merlin’s cabinet.
He felt profoundly stupid to be looking at Merlin’s rug of all things, and thinking thank god I know what this is.
“Here they are!” rang Merlin’s voice.
He came back down the stairs in a rush—almost tripped over his own tangle of legs.
Haven’t become anymore graceful, Arthur almost quipped.
Merlin’s arms were laden with a stack of hardcover books. He presented them to Arthur like he used to bring papers and speeches to the desk in Arthur’s chambers.
Here, my lord, said Merlin in his memory, the most recently signed treaties. And—I’ve written your opening remarks for tomorrow.
“Thank you, Merlin,” Arthur said, faintly.
Mordred’s sword threatened Arthur away from sleeping, so he read Merlin’s letters instead of dreaming. He came to wonder if the letters weren’t worse than nightmares.
Were cities so big now, that you could no longer see the edge where they met the wild, not even from the tallest battlements? Was wealth a virtue in itself more powerful than valour, or wisdom, or honour? And when had that happened, Arthur wanted to ask—no, demand. It was his right to know. When had that changed?
The letters started where Arthur knew: with the Darkling Woods, the citadel and its flagstone, with fields of tilled earth. Camelot fell against the ink strokes of Merlin’s pen. New kingdoms sealed themselves against the earth and played host to plagues and art and wars and revolutions. Words appeared and Merlin never bothered explaining what they meant. Was it worth anything to ask?
Did Merlin realize how fast this all moved? Did Merlin see that the world had started blurring as his letters straightened out into stamp and print?
The letters were full of echoes.
Arthur was in bed, in the morning. Turned on his side, lip of the quilt pulled up to his neck. He’d left the curtains half-open the night before, and now dawnlight was spilling through that gap. It clutched misty fingers at the trunk in the corner, where Arthur had put his things. His sword was balanced across the strap tabs, at rest.
He imagined throwing back the lid—as he had done many mornings, the hardwood on his knees. Inside were his plates of armour, mail, gambeson, cotton tunic, wool trousers, and the smalls he’d had on underneath. His cloak was folded crest-up on top: Camelot red, gold dragon embroidery.
He’d close the lid, and his eyes would drag down by some gravity, and his forehead would bow to touch the steel of his scabbard. Then, he would be there longing, letting the cold from the metal spread over his skin. He would close his hands over the pommel and just breathe, and wish he could put on the things in the trunk.
Then he would hear Merlin scolding him, laughing, telling him he couldn’t wear that—
Someone will think you’re a LARP-ing fanatic.
And Arthur didn’t understand what a larping fanatic was, but he understood it was an insult, and there was so little he understood here. His new clothes didn’t fit right—they were thin, and had too much give. Arthur felt near-naked in them.
He shed the quilt, got out of bed, and put them on anyway.
Merlin was downstairs, sitting in front of that black frame again, with the glass front—that television, in which moving images and sound radiated. His feet were up on the low table. Arthur was honestly astounded—and disturbed, although he was trying not to be—by how openly Merlin was using magic.
His foot hit a creaky step, and Merlin looked over his shoulder—noticed him.
For the smallest of seconds, neither of them spoke, and then Merlin reached for something beside him on the sofa. Before Arthur could track what was happening, the pictures in the glass disappeared.
Merlin smiled.
“Good morning, Arthur.”
“Good morning,” Arthur said. He hovered at the foot of the stairs.
“Sleeping in again?” Teasing. Then, like he was remembering—“You always were hard to drag out of bed.”
Arthur forced a trailing laugh.
“The, um, neighbor’s car-alarm woke me again.”
“Ah—yeah, me too,” said Merlin, making a face of sympathy.
Arthur studied his countenance, looking for something… a lie? Merlin had always been strange, but even more so now. It was his choppy cadence, the way he did his hair, the clothes that suited him and didn’t at the same time. A new world and a New Merlin. Everything about him spoke in a different accent.
Why do you sound different? Arthur didn’t ask.
Now Merlin was looking back at him, curiously, like he could hear the melody of a question but not the words to it. They were there in a lock before Merlin sprang up to break the awkward silence.
“Here,” Merlin said, “sit. I’ll get you breakfast, sire.”
“Oh,” Arthur said, “thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Merlin replied.
He sat on Merlin’s sofa, and pointedly looked away from the fone Merlin had left on the armrest. He didn’t like its dark crystalline face and its cut-bone edges. Was it a feature of New Merlin that he kept so many magical objects around, or had Arthur just been blind to it before?
He watched Merlin putter about in his kitchen, producing heat and cold without saying so much as an incantation.
How much of this is magic? Arthur didn’t ask. How much of this is time?
Merlin made up a plate for him, with a stem of grapes, bread, and some slices of warm ham. He brought it to the living room and traded it for his fone, which he scooped up and sat with, gazing into it from the armchair on the other corner of the low table. Arthur saw its colours reflected in Merlin’s eyes. It concerned him.
“Merlin—” Arthur started.
The fone made a noise—a chime, like a bird and a bell—and Merlin’s face changed.
“Oh—damn. I’ve got to go,” he said. He stood up, rushing to the hall closet, fishing out a thick, dark jacket Arthur had the instinct to call way above his status.
“Go?” Arthur repeated.
“Yeah, I’m really sorry,” Merlin said. “They need me at work, just for a bit. Will you be alright here, alone?”
Arthur pretended to be offended at the suggestion, even though he very much had no idea what was going on, and he didn’t actually want Merlin to go at all.
He scoffed, performative.
“It’s your living room, Merlin. What do you imagine will happen?”
Merlin smirked.
“Alright—sorry, my lord. I’ll be back around six by the latest.”
“…six,” Arthur heard himself repeat.
“Yeah,” Merlin said. He was finding his keys from the dish by the coat rack. “I’ll bring back dinner.”
He paused in the doorway. Arthur caught a look of his, one he was still unravelling. Longing… fear, maybe? Like Merlin was trying to memorize something. Like he was trying to memorize Arthur?
“See you tonight,” Merlin said, with startling quiet.
And then he went out.
To work? Arthur realized he had no idea where Merlin went when he went to work. Did he have another lord? Did he go somewhere and serve? Who was New Merlin?
He watched the door for a long time. Minutes. It wasn’t normal to feel so stock-still once he was alone… was it?
Finally, he made himself move: to set aside his breakfast. He wasn’t hungry.
Across from him, the television reflected his haggard face, and his body draped in strange clothes. Arthur stared. If only he knew how to make it begin showing images—it didn’t reflect when it was like that, and Arthur didn’t want to look at himself. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. Draped his weighted hands over his hair.
He struggled against something. Was it a scream? Was it tears?
Steel conducted cold; it chilled through his mail, and gambeson, and tunic, and touched Arthur on his skin. He collapsed between two dead men at Camlann, one of them with wide, red-veined eyes. And he lay there, bloody soil against his cheek turning grey with tremoring vision.
He relived this moment thousands of years after it occurred.
He tumbled into it night after night, and in every second blink, feeling at the numb patch in his torso with gloved fingers, waiting for the wound Mordred had dealt him to hurt.
“Where do you go for work?” Arthur asked Merlin. Merlin, with his opulent clothes and cabinet full of exotic spices. New Merlin. “You’re not a servant.”
“No,” Merlin said. “I work at the hospital—I’m a doctor.” A doctor? “A physician, my lord.”
“Still?” Arthur said.
He made Merlin laugh—hadn’t meant to—and heard the sound echoing off narrow canyon rock.
“What do you mean, ‘still’?” Merlin said.
“I mean—thousands of years, you said.” Thousands of years asleep.
He’s had enough for a hundred lifetimes, some agent of fate must have said, let him have no more.
“You were Gaius’s apprentice when…” When-unfeeling. When-cold-and-steel. When-death.
“Oh, right,” Merlin said. “Yeah, this is recent.”
How recent is recent? Arthur didn’t ask.
“I’ve done hundreds of jobs,” Merlin went on, prattling. His words washed over Arthur before he could take meaning. “A doctor a few times, though. I keep coming back to… physician-ship.”
Arthur hadn’t the first clue what to ask someone as old as Merlin. He lay on his back in a field of dead men, with the sound of a car-alarm racketing in his ears. He grieved for his friends. He mourned Guinevere.
“Oh,” said Arthur. He couldn’t seem to make himself feel anything. Relief? Surprise? Anger? He searched with his leather-dressed fingers, and couldn’t find anything.
Arthur hadn’t managed a full night’s rest in three days.
At night, he tried to remember the smell of his wife’s hair, and the fit of her hands in his. And when he couldn’t, not completely, not properly, he would feel himself sinking into some cold place. It was not unlike that suspension between life and death that he’d known for a good long time after his eyes had closed, before death had truly taken him. All weightless. All numb.
Guinevere died long ago. She died accomplished, and strong. She lived to be very old. Camelot flourished with her leadership.
This, Merlin told him when he asked. But the details Arthur pressed for, Merlin didn’t remember.
How did she look grown old? How did she look once her hair was silver? Where did her laughter lines form? How did her voice sound, changed with time?
His Guinevere, what became of her?
The problem was: Merlin remembered everyone in broad strokes, but for him it had been thousands of years. He was not as good a grieving partner as Arthur had hoped. He didn’t remember the way Guinevere bit her lip when she was embarrassed, or how Leon would polish the pommel of his sword with the edge of his sleeve. Merlin didn’t remember how Gwaine and Percival always had some new wager they were trying to entice the others to partake in. He didn’t remember the songs their friends used to sing at the tavern. Everyone they had loved together was only a eulogy in Merlin’s mind.
“You speak differently,” Arthur said one night. “I’m sure you haven’t noticed.”
He was standing by the living room window, watching the street at dusk. Watching cars roll by, carrying miniature storms inside their wheels. The street lamps were coming on as the sun went down. Behind him, Merlin was watching the television.
Why was he saying this? Perhaps he just wanted to see what Merlin would say, to see if he’d noticed.
Arthur heard the television mute, and he turned around, closing the curtains as he did. Merlin was looking at him, from the couch, his brow furrowed.
“What?” Merlin said.
“See—that’s what I mean,” Arthur said. “You haven’t noticed.”
A man in the television’s glass was mounting a horse—Arthur could see him in the side of his vision.
He’s holding the rein wrong.
“What’re you talking about, sire?” Merlin said, studying him. Arthur didn’t like being studied. He didn’t like that New Merlin seemed to have incredibly keen eyes, and always on him.
“Just—different,” Arthur said. He nodded sideways, “Like the people I can see through the television. There’s a different sort of…” accent? Vernacular? “…rhythm.”
He was met with a blank look, like Merlin had never considered this. But Arthur would have thought it obvious. Wasn’t it? When Merlin started fitting gilded puzzle pieces like, my lord, and, sire, into sentences where they didn’t belong?
“You continue to use my titles,” Arthur said, at Merlin’s silence. “Why? You don’t use titles with anyone else, do you? No one does. I can see that.”
Phrases were choppier now—sharper. Merlin put contractions on words Arthur had never thought to contract. He watched Merlin process.
“…I guess I’m a little out of practice,” Merlin admitted, and tried to laugh, but the sound was weak.
Arthur stared at him. He’d been right—no one used proper address anymore. Except Merlin. For him.
“So, why?” Arthur demanded. A hot anger kindled in his chest. “You’re mocking me, is that it?”
Merlin gave him a sharp look.
“No,” Merlin said. “No, I—what? Arthur, no.”
He didn’t know where the fire in him had come from, burning in the same place as his death-wound, splitting open the numbness Arthur had felt for weeks.
“Tell me why,” Arthur ordered. Merlin looked at him like he’d gone mad.
“I was trying to make you more comfortable,” Merlin said.
“More comfortable.” Oh, that was rich.
“I thought this must be a shock—all this change,” Merlin said. “I was trying to—to make the transition easier.”
“A brilliant job you’ve done of that, Merlin,” Arthur said, scathing.
Merlin reacted like Arthur had struck him. Arthur almost felt bad, but he held onto his anger—at least he was feeling something.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin said. His crumpled expression was so offensive. What right did he have looking like that, like Arthur had hurt him? What right did he have to be so horrified? Had he really not noticed the change in himself?
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Merlin said, “I… I don’t…”
“What am I even doing here?” Arthur snapped.
Whatever Merlin had been about to say fled, and he looked at Arthur, blinked at him.
“…what?”
“What,” Arthur spat, “am I doing here?”
Arthur wanted to scream at Merlin, for the blank look he had on his face. He was—what?—thousands of years old by this point? There was so much Arthur didn’t ask, Arthur never asked, but he was asking now, asking this, and it made him furious that Merlin wouldn’t answer him.
“You say I’m supposed to change the world—” Arthur said, crossing the living room, standing over Merlin, “—that my return was predestined. Why? What am I supposed to do here? You say I’m the, what? The—the—”
“The once and future king,” Merlin mumbled.
“But I’m not, am I?” Arthur raised his voice. He saw Merlin flinch. “I’m not a king, I’m not your lord—I don’t own any godforsaken land. I don’t rule any damned people. What exactly am I the king of? What exactly is my purpose here other than to prance around, out of my depth, like an idiot!?”
His words rang out. Merlin’s silence increased tenfold. He looked up at Arthur, afraid.
Arthur thought, what right does he have to be afraid of me?
And then he saw Merlin realize it at the same time he felt it: what he was feeling, burning in his stomach, wasn’t anger. Anger and fear were so close together and Arthur’s heart was in his throat. A sword was through his gut. His hands in leather gloves were clawed around his own sword hilt and he was twisting the blade with the knowledge that even still, this further damage to Mordred would not save his own life.
Merlin was looking at him, speechless.
Arthur thought, I’m going to cry.
Then, I can’t, not in front of Merlin.
But he was—his eyes were stinging hot. He took a step back, flinching from Merlin’s keen eyes, and he made for the stairs, to hide.
“Arthur—” Merlin’s voice chased him.
“No,” Arthur said. “Just—just leave me, Merlin, just—”
He didn’t make it to his room. He didn’t make it up the steps because in his haste, his foot missed the edge of the stair and he tripped. Fell. Ended up on his knees in Merlin’s hallway, and he was crying.
There on the hall rug, he was unraveling. Arthur started to sob. Merlin was coming to him and Arthur bent over, touching his forehead to the bottom step like it was the steel of his scabbard. Dug his fingers into the loom-work of the hall-rug, trying to ground himself. He remembered looking at the floor in Merlin’s living room and thinking, thank god I know what this is. There was something so damning about it being a bloody rug of all things.
The ground had dropped out beneath him, and there was no helping it—he plummeted towards a bottom he couldn’t see.
Arthur made a noise—it welled up in him and wrung out like lake sludge from his cloak—a scream, but hoarser. A scream that carved his throat raw.
It was worse than one loss, worse than ten, worse than what Arthur had always thought of as the benchmark for pain when it came to loss: his father. This was worse than that. It was being ripped out like a dismembered limb. Every nerve of his severed, every connection to anyone he loved ripped raw, ripped-gone. Utterly alone here, barely afloat in this bizarre, terrible Now that was so different from his home, where he could never go back. Was it any wonder the way he clung to Merlin, the only tenuous remnant of who he was, who he knew how to be? Was it any wonder he was also angry that he was forced to pile his grief, his salvation, everything he’d not only ever loved but simply ever known into one man?
“Arthur,” Merlin’s voice caught him.
His hands were covering his face. His knees were on the floor. His shoulders—shaking—were in Merlin’s arms.
Just hold me. Please.
Merlin did.
Merlin took him out into the country. Far, far out into the country. Where everything was less loud, less awake. The city around them shrank, buildings shed their size, until they were out on an open road, surrounded by an open view. Beside them, a metal serpent on wheels slithered by impossibly fast.
A train, said Merlin.
And then, eventually, they were in a place Arthur recognized. Fields, long and vast: crawling away until they touched the horizon. Small houses in the distance. Hills that rolled by, carved into the sky. And Arthur felt at peace.
He fell asleep on the drive, exhausted from the night before. And for the first time, he didn’t dream at all.
When he woke up, everything felt blearily new. They were somewhere different. Arthur was getting used to that—falling asleep, and waking up with everything around him changed and confusing. It seemed he’d been asleep for hours.
A muffled thump woke him, and he saw Merlin closing the boot of the car.
“…Merlin?” he muttered, sleepily.
“It’s nearly dusk,” Merlin said. “Come on.”
Arthur stepped out of the car, his boot crunching into the gravel. He looked around, at a stretch of dirt road. Was it possible that they had traveled a distance and somehow traveled time as well?
“It looks like home,” Arthur said, quietly, and he looked at Merlin, realizing. The look on Merlin’s face was soft and fond.
“That’s the idea,” Merlin said. And he gestured with his head—an endearing sideways nod—to a pathless entrance into the trees. Arthur followed him.
They walked, for hours and hours, deep into the woods, until they couldn’t see the car anymore, or the road, until they were engulfed by brush and soil and the smell of fresh rain. The forest held them in her arms, in her belly. Arthur felt like he was walking back through time.
Breaking through the treeline, onto a cresting hill over a valley. The kind of place that made Arthur wish he could paint, to capture its beauty. The view was unparalleled.
“How did you know about this place?” Arthur said.
There was still some part of the world that was the same—even if it was small.
“I did some reading, sire,” Merlin said, and slung off his backpack—brown leather, metal buckles. It hit the grass with a soft thump. “Here—unpack. I’ll find some firewood.”
Arthur looked over his shoulder at the pack on the ground and then went to it. He found a cloth bundle of bread, hard cheese, and dried fruit, as well as blankets and two bedrolls, flints, and canisters of water: the usual fixings of spending the night after a hunting trip.
You remembered, he almost said, but Merlin was already disappearing into the woods. Arthur watched his back: startled, and touched.
The flints struck once, and twice, then thrice. Merlin’s sparks kept scattering and wouldn’t catch. It was ridiculous to watch, Arthur even found himself laughing—he told Merlin to use his magic. Merlin did, then they had a fire. It licked its way around the wood Merlin had forged, melted warmth into their camp.
The night settled gentle around them like an inky velvet.
“Where are we, exactly?” Arthur said.
“Leagues from the city,” Merlin said. “It is quieter out here.”
Arthur looked up, sharp—struck—viewing Merlin through the twitching frame of firelight. It took him a moment to realize what it was—it was the cadence. Not what he’d said, but how. He didn’t sound so much like strange New Merlin anymore. Under the collar of his smooth wool jacket he could still sound like the bony, reckless, worst-servant-Arthur’s-ever-had, loyal-friend, lopsided-smile, ridiculous-neckerchief, secret-sorcerer Merlin whom Arthur had known for a decade before his face was the last thing Arthur had seen as he died.
Arthur blinked at him, furrowed his brows.
“…Is this all a farce to you?” he said, sadly. “A game?”
Merlin blinked back at him, his mouth setting into a frown that Arthur pegged as wounded.
Merlin swallowed, and looked at his knees. Tossed a twig into the flames.
Was it such a ridiculous question? Wasn’t Merlin here only pretending for Arthur—pretending like he was still the age he looked, and not however thousands of years old he must have been?
“No,” Merlin said, a long moment between his words. “No—it’s no farce. Not… not like pretending.”
“No?”
“No,” Merlin said. Then, “It’s like… a native language. Like getting to speak it again.”
Arthur continued frowning at him, reading for a lie—but was that a fruitless endeavour? Merlin had proven very well that Arthur couldn’t determine if he was lying or not.
“Feels like home,” Merlin added, quietly. They met eyes.
Merlin had never been easy to peel away, to make vulnerable. The years must have changed that, because he looked so exposed, now, like he was asking Arthur to understand and believe him. The same way he’d cried and said, I have magic. So much older than Arthur was, now, but still awaiting his judgement.
“…you’ve been alive for a long time,” Arthur said.
He knew that, obviously. He’d read Merlin's letters, but he realized what that meant: how slow this all was for Merlin. He’d gotten Here, in this weird alive Now, the long way, the slow way. He lived it all.
“I suppose,” Merlin said.
“Alone,” Arthur said, meaningfully.
Merlin nodded.
They shared a home that was distant, and Merlin had been unable to return home for even longer than Arthur had. Neither of them would see the white flagstones of the Camelot citadel again. Fiercely, Arthur’s chest ached. He could see the pain in Merlin’s eyes, but there was companionship there. A shared loneliness, a shared mourning.
“Well,” Arthur said, his voice blue-velvet-soft, “I’m glad I’m not.”
They had each other—they had this fire. And then Merlin’s lips quirked up, and Arthur had Merlin’s lopsided smile, not weathered by a day. And they had these woods. Out in the woods it had always been different. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a king.
A breeze, like a sigh, combed its gentle fingers through the treetops, and parted the dusty blue clouds overhead. Merlin turned his face up to the moonlight, and Arthur followed the direction of his smile, to see what he was looking at.
Oh—there. Up above: they had this, too.
Arthur could finally see the stars.