Chapter Text
Merlin.
Arthur’s body is heavy.
It’s not really his body, although it is, but it’s also all the armour and the chainmail and every godforsaken bit of silver Merlin’s ever complained about polishing. Under that it’s all the muscle and the fat, the evidence of how hard Arthur’s worked to survive, to live, to flourish, all for naught. The weight of his lost days is even heavier.
When he lays him out in the boat, Merlin thinks that in another life, on another day, they might have joked about it. What do you call this? Arthur would say, climbing into his narrow coffin. Lancelot got flowers, I know he did, and you’re going to send your king off to the depths with barely a hint of comfort? Honestly, Merlin.
You’ve all the cushioning you need, sire, Merlin would say, and then Arthur would shove him or pull his hair and they’d probably end up sinking the boat, and Arthur would say Now look what you’ve done.
Well, Merlin’s looking, and oh, does he regret it.
He stares down at Arthur’s corpse for another moment, and then he climbs into the boat beside him, sitting cramped by Arthur’s legs. After all, what else is he to do? He already promised Arthur he’d follow him into hell.
The boat quivers and shakes underneath him as it begins its tremulous trip across the seas, and Merlin’s face quivers alike. Arthur’s hand slips a little atop his chest, his gloved fingers trailing over his chainmail, and Merlin doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do. His whole life is dead in this boat at his own doing, and it isn’t fair. He doesn’t want a destiny if the bargaining chip is this.
Crying in earnest, now, Merlin buries his face in his hands, trying to determine where it could’ve gone so wrong. The dragon’s promises feel far away, even impossible. That Merlin could ever have thought— that he could ever have hoped—
And what about the others? What about Morgana, and Gwaine, and Lancelot? What about Gwen? Merlin can’t tell her. He can’t go back to Camelot and look her in the eye and have her know that he failed, he can’t. She’s lost so much, sacrificed almost as much as him, and to go home and tell her she’s lost Arthur, that Merlin couldn’t save him, he can’t do it. He won’t.
It isn’t possible that they got it all so wrong, it isn’t what Merlin was promised. If he had only listened, and in turn listened less, if he had only done this instead of that, if he could have only known from that very first day in Camelot, rather than to have wasted so many years not knowing that it was Arthur, always Arthur, that he ought to have been protecting instead of the dream he thought he’d bring about. He’d damn Albion itself if it would only bring him back, if Merlin could only fix it—
Merlin closes his eyes, and the world burns gold.
Morgana.
The sword goes into Morgana’s breast and she thinks: finally. Merlin lowers her to the ground and it is fitting, really, that it would be him to strike the blow. Perhaps she should’ve let him succeed the first time, and saved them all the trouble.
When she wakes up, she wakes alone, and when she does, a voice slinks in beside her ear and says: No peace for the wicked.
The bed-hangings are white and gauzy, the room is elegant and familiar. She sits up. She goes to the window. She’s not surprised to see herself in hell.
Uther raises his arm, the axe falls, and though Morgana reaches instantly for her magic, for the right words to stop the blade and save the life, nothing comes to her. She is a well and there is no spark at the bottom, not an inch of justice or of faith, only death.
She has doomed herself anew.
Gwen.
Something has happened, thinks Gwen, upon waking. Something is so terribly, terribly wrong.
She rolls to the side, unable to open her eyes, and presses her face into her pillow. There is no Arthur beside her, there never will be again, and she is not sure that she can bring herself to acknowledge that wound afresh. Her lovely, foolish husband, arrogant and conceited and so very, very dear to her, so right and just, the kind of king she always knew he would be, always hoped he would be, and underneath such a very good sort of man—
She presses her lips together, bringing her hands up to her face to stifle her sobs. She has to get up. She has to get up, she has to go forth into the world and do something, she has to make Camelot a place for Merlin to come home to because otherwise he will not, and Gwen has always wanted to be Queen but never like this.
A hand reaches gently for her shoulder, settling warm and steady atop the sheets, and a voice Gwen never thought she would hear again says: “Gwen?”
She gasps, stills. If she does not move—
“Gwen, my little child, it’s alright. You’re only dreaming.”
Gwen has been brave so many times in her life, but this is one of her bravest. She opens her eyes, and she is home.
“Father?” she says, and he smiles down at her, alive and warm and safe. It’s so shocking that for a moment she cannot think, cannot comprehend, cannot begin to even imagine what this could be, though it must be magic, it must. His hand runs over her shoulder as he soothes her.
“Who else would I be?” he asks, and Gwen throws her arms around him, sobbing and laughing in earnest.
“Father!”
“Oof!” says her father, but catches her. His hand strokes the back of her head. “That must have been some dream.”
“I don’t understand,” she says, pulling away and holding him at length, so young. “How— how is this even possible? You—”
But she trails off, looking around the room, their house. This is a bed Gwen has not slept in in years, sounds she has not woken to in an age, with a father who has been dead since she was a girl. Gwen looks at the hems of her sleeves, rough white linen, at the hands that clutch her father’s arms. Her fingers are worn, her nails are broken. They are not the hands that helped shape a kingdom. They are not the hands of someone in a position to mend.
“I have to see Arthur,” she says, and pulls her father close again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I have to— I must go— I’m late—"
“Of course,” says her father, and smooths back her hair. Gwen leans into his touch, closes her eyes, and nearly sobs again.
“I will discover what is happening,” she promises, and kisses him. “Father— oh, Father—"
She presses his hands and then stands, picking up her tunic (folded ready on the table just as it used to be, dear lord) and pulls it over her smock. There is a loop of cord exactly where she expects it to be, and as she ties it around her waist, she has the unsettling feeling that it feels like a noose.
Gwaine.
Gwaine’s afterlife is a really pitiful excuse for one, if he’s being honest. Two coins for a jug of beer and a terrible headache besides, and not even anyone decent around to be chatted up. It’s appalling. Where’s Merlin when you need him?
“Alright, alright,” says Gwaine, pulling himself off the table and batting Mary, lovely Mary, away. He might’ve decided to get a bit drunk, but what else is a fellow to do, having had a Nathair wriggling about in his brain? Elyan had nearly been catatonic after his own encounter. At least Gwaine still has his wits about him.
Mary grabs him by the hair and pushes him to the side, and Gwaine throws up in the helpfully planted bucket at his feet. Good lass, she is.
“You, Madam Mary, are first class,” mumbles Gwaine, wiping at his mouth. His head is pounding. “Exceptional service, honestly.”
“Pay the tab,” barks Mary, and Gwaine sways side to side, no Percival anymore to hold him steady.
“Aye, aye,” says Gwaine, and closes his eyes.
Lancelot.
“Well,” says Nimueh, “That is interesting.”
“What is?”
She smiles, as much as any of them can smile here, and waves her hand through the air, plucking the clouds apart and turning them to fine silver thread. “Your favourite is causing quite a stir.”
Lancelot sits up straighter, his hand drifting to his sword, chainmail and armour adorning him as he fashions himself anew, her address giving him form. She looks over with a knowing glint in her eye, and Lancelot’s heart starts to quicken in his breast.
“Arthur?” he asks, and Nimueh rolls her eyes. “Merlin? He is not—”
“Oh, he’s not dead,” she says. “Not exactly. You have to give it to him, the boy is tenacious.”
“Show me what is happening,” demands Lancelot, crossing to her. “I must help, I must aid him.”
“I’m sure you will. Here.”
She takes the string and loops it around his finger, tying a neat bow above his knuckle, and it gleams and shines behind the veil. Something strange is happening to Lancelot’s head, to his body, he is becoming so solid, and Nimueh is fading away, becoming ever more incomprehensible, though he admits she has never been particularly so, his fairy queen.
“Good luck, White Knight,” she says, and kisses his cheek. Her smile is wry when she pulls away, Lancelot spluttering in her wake. “I believe you will need it.”
Arthur.
Fate, it would seem, is either incredibly cruel or thinks she is terribly funny.
For a moment, Arthur thinks that he’s survived, impossible though that is. His mind supplies him with all the times Gaius has conquered the impossible, suggests to him that perhaps Merlin might’ve pulled off a similar miracle, especially with all of those newly-discovered talents of his. For a moment, Arthur thinks it’s going to be alright.
And then someone who is not Merlin opens his curtains.
“Good morning, sire,” says the servant, someone almost familiar to him but certainly not one of his own, because Arthur’s made sure to know all their names. Unless he’s been unconscious long enough for Guinevere to have replaced the staff, but even if he has, why isn’t it Merlin—
The servant clasps his hands behind his back and Arthur has an unpleasant queasy feeling of oh, yes, this is how it’s meant to be, and tries to sit up.
Pain in his chest sends him back down.
“My lord?” says the man, Maurice or Mordred or something else like that. Arthur frowns, then thinks that can’t be right. It’s not Mordred, never Mordred. Good god, Arthur’s chest hurts.
“Help,” he says, and Probably-Maurice pulls him up and out of bed, professional concern written into his brow. Arthur gets halfway to raising a hand to flick the concern away before realising that he cannot do that, and also, his body is too small. Has he wasted away?
“What’s going on?” demands Arthur, and Maurice helps him over to the breakfast table.
“Your father sent me to rouse you, my lord,” says Maurice, and Arthur knocks over a goblet with an almighty clatter. “I said you had asked not to be disturbed, but he was insistent.”
Oh, god, thinks Arthur, as dread overtakes him. He thinks of Merlin, his hand curling around that horrible, magic-made dragon, his face curdled up into the worst kind of pain. He thinks of his own thoughts, that moment of terrible clarity, and the one prevailing wish that they’d never even met, because anything would’ve been better than Merlin’s betrayal.
Surely not, thinks Arthur, terrified. Surely, surely not.
And yet here he is, in his own chambers with a servant that isn’t his and a father who is still alive, and a Camelot that has never seen Merlin.
He wishes he’d stayed dead.