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He made his way back to Camelot one last time. He owed that much to Gaius, the man who had sheltered him and taught him and been his surrogate father.
Just as promised, his favorite meal was waiting for him. Gaius welcomed him with open arms and tears in his eyes, but Merlin couldn’t face him – he knew that Gaius didn’t blame him for what had happened, but he still blamed himself. Instead of joining Gaius at the table, he squeezed the old man’s shoulder and walked to his room, closing the door behind him.
He slept for close to a day, only waking once to hear raised voices. It was Gaius and…Percival, perhaps? He wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter, so he turned his face to the pillow and was asleep again in seconds.
It wasn’t until Gwen, pale and red-eyed, physically pulled him from his bed and into a hug that he considered leaving his room. Thankfully, she didn’t feel the need to talk; instead, she just clung to Merlin as though he was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth. The embrace lasted for minutes and was broken only by Gaius yelling, “You can’t go in there right now!”
As soon as Percival burst through the door, Gwen made an unintelligible excuse and was gone in an instant. The naked grief on Percival’s face was so much more than what Merlin expected to see – he imagined that all of the knights would be upset, but this seemed to be something more.
And though he never thought it possible, the broken pieces of his heart shattered even further upon hearing that Gwaine was gone. The two men sat in silence, Merlin knowing full well that nothing he could say would give his friend any comfort.
The loss of Gwaine, what should have been just one more drop in an ocean of tears, was ultimately what strengthened his resolve to leave and never return. How could he stay in a place where people – his friends – died just for following their hearts and doing what was right?
Gaius protested, but he could hear just how broken Merlin’s spirit was. They shared one final meal together, and though he thought he had none left, Merlin was brought to tears, sobbing in Gaius’ embrace as they said their goodbyes, both knowing they would never meet again.
There was one person Merlin needed to see before leaving Camelot for good, one person he actually wanted to speak with.
He found him in his quarters, sitting fully-clothed on his small bed, his head in his hands.
“Leon.”
The man spun around to face him, and Merlin knew that Leon’s eyes were a reflection of his own. The dark circles were so pronounced that they resembled bruises and his eyes were so red he could have been standing in a sandstorm for hours. But most shocking was the deadened stare, the complete lack of emotion or connection in his gaze.
“Merlin?”
Leon’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, gods – Merlin. You’re here…did he…how was…was he – ”
Merlin joined Leon on his bed, sitting so close that their thighs touched. This way, they could both face forward and speak without having to look at each other. Their shared pain was so raw that Merlin knew that the only way they could have this conversation without breaking down was to not add more to the other’s grief.
“Merlin, did…did you get to tell him?”
Merlin nodded.
“I told him about my magic.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. Did you get to tell him that you…that you love him?”
Oh, Arthur’s last moments. His hand on the back of Merlin’s head. It would have been so easy.
“I – I wanted to,” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. “But I couldn’t. It wasn’t the right time.”
It was becoming more and more difficult to hold back his sobs. Leon took Merlin’s hand in his, squeezing tightly. When he spoke, his voice was shaky.
“But he should have known. It could have comforted him. Made his last moments easier.”
“No!” He shook his head vigorously. “What if he was disgusted – what if it made him hate me?”
“Oh, Merlin, you know he could never hate you.”
“You never told him.”
It wasn’t an accusation, merely a statement of fact.
“No,” Leon sighed. “I couldn’t. He is – he was my king and I would have followed him anywhere. But my duty to Camelot was more important than my feelings. I fought for him because I loved him. That I knew it was enough.”
“And you don’t think he would have wanted to hear that? Would have wanted to go into that final battle knowing that your love for him was more than that of a knight for his king?”
Leon dropped his hand to clutch at his own chest, his body shaking with the force of his suppressed sobs.
“Oh, Merlin, he’s gone! What are we going to do without him?”
It was too much to bear – too much. Merlin wrapped his arms around Leon and allowed his own weeping to echo his friend’s.
For nearly an hour, the only sounds in the room were their sobs and harsh breathing as the two men shared their grief over the most important man in their worlds.
Merlin finally stood.
“Pack a bag. You need to come with me.”
Leon followed his instructions blindly, and the two men were ready to leave Camelot within a few minutes. They rode in silence for nearly a day before Leon finally enquired as to their destination.
“Arthur,” Merlin replied simply. “To Arthur.”
When they reached the shore of the lake, Merlin was finally ready to tell someone the story of Arthur’s last moments. He watched Leon’s eyes widen and his breath turn ragged as he pictured Arthur’s beautiful blue eyes closing for the last time.
Merlin had to turn away to regain his own composure. He wandered away from the lake, allowing Leon time alone with his grief and with the last connection he had with his fallen king and friend.
It felt like hours, but when he returned, Leon was still crouched at the water’s edge, his shoulders shaking with sobs. Though he certainly did not intend to eavesdrop, he heard Leon’s final words.
“And I am sorry that I never told you. You had come to rely on me so much that I feared it would damage our relationship. I am so sorry. I wish you had gone to your death knowing how I adored you – how I still do. I will never stop loving you, Arthur. May you rest in peace.”
He leaned over to drop a single flower petal onto the surface of the water before bringing a hand to his lips and whispering, “I will always love you.”
Merlin dropped to his knees beside Leon. He had been prepared to make his own confession to Arthur, but realized that his friend had said everything there was to be said. He simple dipped his fingers into the water and murmured, “You are my everything. I love you so, Arthur,” before pulling Leon up by his arm and leading him away from the lake.
After a few days, Merlin realized that Leon was still with him. He had intended to send the knight back to Camelot, but realized that Leon was quite literally the only person in the world who understood how he was feeling. Merlin extended his hand toward his friend, and they set off together to make something resembling a life.
They wandered through the forests and across the mountains, eating what they hunted and keeping warm with Merlin’s magic. They never spent much time in one place, preferring instead to keep moving – an unspoken agreement to keep running so that their past would never catch up to them.
The only time they ever disagreed on anything was when Leon suggested they visit Hunith. Merlin couldn’t bear the thought of his mother seeing the shell of a man that he had become, but Leon insisted. Ultimately, Merlin was glad that Leon had forced him back to Ealdor, but it was difficult to look his mother in the eye and promise that he would return when he had no intention of ever doing so.
It was years of silence – of just existing – before they realized that they were doing a disservice to Arthur’s memory by keeping hidden from the rest of the world when they could be helping. They began to move from village to village, Leon putting his muscles to use plowing fields and chopping wood while Merlin tended to sick children and set broken limbs. They accepted no payment, only food and shelter.
They began to talk, to smile, and to laugh again – perhaps reasoning that while they would never be able to be fully whole again without Arthur, Arthur would never want to see his best friends living in perpetual misery.
Merlin and Leon had lived together for so long, sharing the same campfire, food, and profound loss that it seemed only natural for them to fall onto the same bedroll one night, each man so tired of being alone that, even though they were both aching for the touch of one long-lost to them, they found comfort in each other.
Decades passed, and they noticed something strange: neither of them was aging at a normal rate. By all rights, they should both have been old and grey, but they did not seem to have changed much since they left Camelot. Perhaps Merlin’s magic was extending their lives – he did not know for certain. Their unchanging appearances were enough to unsettle villagers they had known years ago, so they took to the sea and left Albion behind.
It took them centuries to become old men, moving every few years to avoid suspicion. In countries that permitted the use of magic, Merlin made them enough money to live comfortably. And though they never stopped thinking about their fallen king, they had been granted a unique gift: the opportunity to live lifetimes and to see the world change in remarkable ways – with a dear friend.
They were living in Germany when Merlin first noticed the changes. Though it was winter, the cold wasn’t bothering him as much as it usually did. His joints hurt less when climbing the stairs. A year later, a stripe of red appeared in Leon’s white beard.
They were becoming younger. Slowly. After a few decades, they were approaching the ages they had been when Merlin had first arrived in Camelot.
Though they paid little attention to the world around them, it was impossible to ignore the impending war. Countries had been fighting for global domination for centuries, and improved weaponry suggested that the loss of life would be staggering. Deciding that they could not stand idly by, they enlisted. Leon fought bravely and quickly climbed the ranks to a command position, swiftly reverting to his former role as a leader of soldiers. Merlin refused to leave Leon’s side, using every bit of his magic to keep their men safe.
The war raged on for years, millions of soldiers dying for a cause that many of them did not believe in. Eventually, Merlin and Leon distinguished themselves enough that the king asked to meet with them.
As they waited in the palace, dirtying the upholstered chairs with their filthy uniforms, screams erupted around them. Merlin stuck his head into the hallway just long enough to hear that the king had been killed. They left, certain that there would be no meeting that night.
It wasn’t until three weeks later that they were once again summoned from the front to the palace. The prince, now king, sent an aide to present them with their new commissions: Military Commander and Grand Sorcerer. They sat, open-mouthed, as the aide left them to wait for the king, shocked at the realization that their lives had come almost full circle.
The door slammed opened and it was as though all the air had been sucked from the room. The king stopped dead and stared at Merlin and Leon, a hand covering his open mouth. Merlin and Leon were frozen in place, unable to speak past the lumps in their throats and their suddenly tight chests.
They would never know how long they remained there, suspended in time. It could have been minutes; it could have been hours. All any of them knew was that the spell was broken when Merlin whispered, “Arthur?”
The three of them fell into a messy tangle of limbs on the floor as Arthur attempted to bend down to embrace his friends and Merlin and Leon tried to kneel at their king’s feet. Before any of them could speak, they were all crying, but for the first time in millennia, they were tears of joy.
They were in the king’s bedroom before any of them even realized they were moving, Merlin’s magic instinctively finding them a private place. It was minutes before any of them could speak, but Arthur – always Arthur – was the first to regain his composure.
“I have been looking for you for my whole life. Where were you?”
Leon took Arthur’s hand and told him, “It is not important. We have time to talk about that later.”
Arthur grabbed Merlin’s hand and squeezed. When he spoke again, his voice was broken.
“Gods, Merlin. Leon. You’re here. I’ve been so lost without you. I worried about you.”
Leon’s free hand sought Merlin’s.
“We’ve been all right.”
Arthur’s eyes went wide, his gaze locked on their joined hands.
Merlin hurried to explain, not wanting Arthur to get the wrong idea.
“Arthur, do you remember anything about Avalon?”
Arthur refused to meet his eyes, only nodding slowly.
“I thought…I thought I could hear you. Both of you. But I’m sure it was a dream.”
“Arthur, that was no dream,” Leon hurriedly interjected. “We were there. I told you that – well, I told you everything. So did Merlin.”
Summoning all of his courage, Merlin pulled his hands away from the other men and moved them up to cup Arthur’s face, forcing him to meet his eyes.
“Arthur, I am not going to wait another minute to say what I was not brave enough to say in your lifetime.”
He swallowed, sure that this was the most difficult thing he had done in his exceptionally long life.
“Arthur Pendragon, I love you. I have for as long as I knew what it meant to love someone.”
Arthur’s eyes filled again with unshed tears. His voice was almost inaudible despite the silence of the room.
“Leon?”
Merlin allowed one of Leon’s hands to replace his on Arthur’s cheek. Leon turned Arthur’s head to face his and calmly said, “I love you, Arthur. I always have.”
Arthur couldn’t hold back his tears. His eyes darted back and forth between the two of them as though unable to choose who he wanted to focus on. Finally, he spoke, voice hitching with every word.
“When I awoke, my first thoughts were of the two of you. I have been obsessed with finding you – in fact, I’ve wasted a tremendous amount of government money attempting to determine if you were even alive.”
He paused, as if he were the one who needed to gather up courage this time.
“Had I but known you felt this way, our lives could have been very different. As it is, I don’t regret anything. You,” he turned to Merlin, “were the best and truest friend I ever could have asked for. And you, Leon, were my strong right hand for so long that there is no one I would have rather had watching my back in battle.”
Arthur stood, drawing the other men up with him and guiding them to the bed. He sat them on the edge of the bed and knelt before them.
“I love you. Both of you. I have loved you for centuries.”
He gasped, a sharp inhalation of breath, before continuing.
“Do we have a chance in this lifetime?”
In a maneuver that could not have been more perfectly executed if it had been planned ahead of time, Merlin and Leon pulled Arthur onto the bed between them, the three of them falling onto the mattress, each man practically vibrating with both centuries of want and the fear that any moment something would happen that would once again break their hearts.
Clothing disappeared as shaking hands set out to discover skin that had never been touched in such an intimate manner, the familiarity developed over millennia between Merlin and Leon causing them to move in tandem as they mapped each inch of Arthur’s golden skin.
Everything seemed hazy and surreal, blurred as it was through their tears. At one point, Leon’s eyes met Merlin’s over Arthur’s body as though seeking confirmation that it was real, that it was really happening. Merlin could hardly believe it himself, so he said nothing and bent his head to press his trembling lips to his king’s skin.
They moved together, worshiping each other with hands and mouths, each man seeking to provide pleasure to the others with no concern for himself and ultimately being taken by surprise when the joy overtook him, centuries of longing coming to a head in one glorious, near-simultaneous burst.
They laughed together, chests heaving and hearts pounding as the bed became damp with sweat and Merlin’s magic settled over them in a golden shroud. It was a variation on a spell that he had always been scared to use, but it flowed instinctively from him now.
He stopped time around them – stopped the planet from turning, stopped the sun’s burning, made the universe itself hold its breath. It couldn’t last long; he was terrified of doing serious damage. But he could give them this moment, allow them to forget the war and the world around them and just revel in the joy of being together at last.
With their bodies wrapped around each other, fingers stroking hair and faces as though they could never get enough, Merlin felt the snap of a new connection between the three of them – one soul divided between three bodies. Now that they had found each other again, they would never be parted. He would not allow them to be. They had a destiny to realize.