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Chapter Text

Midday bloomed cold and fathomless across the stop-gap sky. Arthur watched as the first arch of sun crossed the boundary of the water. There was no wave of relief, no renewed sense of purpose, just a quiet, aching kind of determination that sat heavy in the pit of Arthur’s stomach. 

He had fallen asleep sometime after midnight last night, and not woken until well after dawn. He had found Merlin crouched by the dying fire, face palely impassive. Paper skin. A thin-pressed, painful mouth. He would not meet Arthur’s eyes. Would not speak. Would not eat or drink. Arthur had sat down next to him.

Even with a few inches between them, Merlin’s body felt rigid, his muscles wound into a tight and snarled knot. His fingers were white where they gripped his elbows. 

Around them, the knights were gathering up their things. They worked slowly— much more slowly than Arthur had trained them to— but at last they could not delay any longer. 

“Sire? We’re ready.”

Arthur stood hastily, and glanced at Merlin. “I don’t know if—”

“It’s alright,” said Merlin faintly. “We should travel while we can, yeah?”

He got to his feet. His movements were jerky and stuttered, like Arthur was seeing him by the light of a guttering candle. 

“Yeah,” Arthur repeated. His hand hovered by Merlin’s elbow. “But we could wait. Rest, you know, until tomorrow.”

It was something Arthur had said to countless injured and stubborn knights, and it had no place here. They couldn’t wait. Merlin couldn’t rest. He knew that. He knew, before he’d even finished speaking, that it would only make him seem naive, make him seem ignorant. But these were the only kind words he knew. The only ones his father had thought worth teaching him, and the only ones he’d ever bothered to learn. 

“Sounds boring,” Merlin sniffed. He smiled when Arthur laughed. 

It was a small smile, a little threadbare, but it settled something in Arthur. He took his hand, and guided him to the northern side of the clearing. The knights gathered behind them. Shuddering, the water parted. 

A bead of blood formed beneath Merlin’s nose, and he swiped it away. It left a pinkish smear on his cheek. 

They walked. The ground was softer today, like it was in the outside world after a night of rain. It smelled of distant rot, and clung to their shoes if they stood still too long. 

There were, by Arthur’s estimate, a little over three miles between them and the shore. It took over an hour to cover one. The lake gave up ground only reluctantly. The clearing grew smaller and smaller as they went, and Arthur hoped it was lighter this way, easier to move, but by the time they had walked that first mile, Merlin had stopped bothering to wipe the blood away. It trickled, startlingly dark, down his lip, down his chin, down to the growing stain on his neckerchief. 

Arthur drew his arm across his shoulders, and Merlin sagged wordlessly against him. Didn’t protest. Didn’t tease him. 

This close, Arthur could see the light shifting uneasily beneath Merlin’s skin. A slick of gold around his cheekbone, skimming the delicate bones of his hand. His eyes, when Arthur saw them, glowed so bright that the whites were swallowed up in the flare. He tightened his grip around his waist, his wrist, and pushed forward. 

Two miles. The water bowed and warped around them, curling like a snake about to strike. Blood seeped from Merlin’s eyes. The water loomed, but did not fall. 

Three miles, and Merlin’s knees buckled. He crashed to the muddy ground. 

“Merlin!” Arthur demanded. He shook him. “Merlin, look at me.”

Merlin grasped clumsily at his wrists.

“The shore,” he gasped. “How far’s it?”

“Not far,” Arthur promised. “A quarter of a mile. Just a quarter of a mile and then we’re out.”

Merlin shook his head. Slowly, jaggedly, he levered himself upright. Arthur reached out to steady him, but he brushed his hands away.

“Gwaine,” he said, “Leon, how are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Gwaine bit out. “I’m fine.”

“Leon?”

“I’m alright. But Merlin, what—”

“Merlin,” said Mordred carefully, and Arthur wanted to tell him to stop, to shut up, because he could already hear the fear in his voice, he already knew that this would wreck him. “Merlin, are you… dead?”

And the world cracked in two.

“I am.”

His voice was level. Arthur, trying to hold the world together, heard only that— the solemnity— for several long, lonely heartbeats. And then the meaning hit him. 

“No,” he rasped. 

“I’m sorry. It just— I just— I’m so sorry.”

Arthur’s jaw ached. His hands shook as he reached for Merlin’s wrist, and maybe that is why he let him take it. Let him press two calloused fingers to his pulse point. 

The skin was warm. Soft. 

Still.

Arthur let go, and Merlin curled his hand protectively to his chest. 

“But you’re— you’re here,” Arthur said weakly. He sounded like a child. “You’re talking, you’re—”

“I told you,” Merlin interrupted. “My magic will keep me going. But I don’t know how much magic I have left.” He smiled. Tried to smile. Wiped the blood from his eyes. “So I’m going to open a road now, alright? And you’re going to run.”

“What do you mean, you? You’re coming with us.”

“I need to stay here.”

“No. No, Merlin, you can’t ask me to do that. You can’t ask me to leave you.”

Merlin pulled him into his arms. Arthur held him tight, like if he were only strong enough, only head-strong enough, he could put them back together. There was a sob caught halfway up his throat. He could barely breathe around it. Merlin’s hair was soft against his cheek. 

“Arthur,” Merlin whispered. “My Arthur. I’m not asking.”

And he stepped away. He spread his arms wide, and, with a cry, wrenched the water apart. A path, straight as an arrow, shot north towards the shore. 

His eyes were blinding. Blood streamed down his face, streaked with gold so that it was a molten thing. Terrible. Beautiful. Arthur’s cloak flowed from his shoulders, soaked in the gold and the blood, and whipping in the sudden, frenzied wind. 

Arthur stood transfixed. 

“Run.” 

The ground trembled at his voice. Leon grabbed Arthur’s arm and hauled him forward. The king and his knights stumbled up the road, shoulders knocking, heads down, as the wind wailed and the water heaved. Beside him, Leon wheezed, arm braced around his ribs; Mordred dragged Gwaine along. Mud tugged at their feet. In the water, long strands of drowned things danced madly. 

The ground rose sharply, and just beyond its crest, a jagged line of trees. Safety.

“Go,” Arthur panted. “Go, get to shore.”

And he turned, and ran back the way he’d come. Arthur could hear the others calling for him, but he ignored them. Ploughed ahead. The mud was up to his ankles now, the water closing in. Ahead of him, Merlin was a beacon. A bonfire. A candle in a child’s darkened room, like all the light in the world was gathered in his being.

The ground shifted and writhed. Underfoot, mud coalesced into wriggling, dry-drowning fish that twisted themselves into seals, into baying hounds. A wolf broke from the ground and fled, whining to shore; a boar; a snake; a hundred scuttling, new-made things. 

It was Merlin. Merlin’s blood, and the rich, dark, lake-fed earth. At his feet, where the gold and the blood fell into the clay, life burst and bounded and howled forth. 

Arthur stopped before him. His lungs burned. His heart was a sparrow’s heart. 

“Merlin,” he breathed.

Merlin’s mouth twitched. “Arthur.”

Smoke poured from between his lips. Ruddy flames licked at his throat, his hair, his arms. Arthur reached out and put his hand to Merlin’s burning cheek.

“Don’t,” said Merlin. “The fire—”

“I don’t care.”

“You can’t be here,” Merlin hissed. “You can’t. You’ll drown. You’ll burn.”

“There is nowhere else I could ever be,” Arthur said, “but at your side.” His hand blistered and cracked. He pressed his forehead to Merlin’s. “This,” he whispered, “is one of the other times. Now tell me how to save you. Tell me how to bring you home, because I’m not leaving without you.”

Merlin sobbed.

“Please, Merlin.”

“The cuffs,” he forced out.

Arthur’s heart went cold.

“No, Merlin,” he said hollowly. “No, not that. You’ll die. Your magic’s all that’s keeping you here.”

“I’m already dead. Don’t make me kill you too. I don’t think I could bear it. At least now— at least now you could bring me home.”

“Merlin—”

“Please, Arthur.”

And Arthur was weak. He could not deny him anything. Even if it broke him. He nodded. Stepped away. The cold-iron cuffs were still at his belt, heavy and damning. With shaking hands, he opened them. 

Merlin offered him his wrists, and it was so like, so unlike, that morning with the robbers that Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. 

“Ready?” he managed. 

And Merlin kissed him. Driving rain, and lightning wound like yarn, and the endless, untouched, private dark. He smiled against Arthur’s mouth, and it was dizzying. There was blood on his lips, on his tongue, and fire, and something bright and pure and good that could only be his magic. 

The cuffs clicked shut. The water rushed in, and in the second before it closed around them, in the whirling, tight-furling light, Merlin’s eyes flashed a brilliant blue. 

The waves broke into silver, pearled bubbles. Sand kicked up glittered in their wake. Arthur and Merlin hung suspended in the shining green. Heads bent, hands clasped. The lake fell around them like a favourite blanket. Slowly, slowly, they sank into the dark. 

Then Arthur pulled Merlin’s limp body close, and struck out towards the rippled, distant, sunlit surface. 

He swam.

Water between his fingers, beneath his palms, in his mouth and ears and eyes. Merlin’s head against his shoulder, above the water, though he did not breathe. Could not breathe. Would never breathe again. 

He swam.

He pulled Merlin along. The horizon shattered against the waves, fractured in Arthur’s jagged gaze. He gasped. The lake was sweet in his lungs. 

He swam.

His knee split against a rock. Broad hands gripped his arms and dragged him to shore. Across the stones and the rough-hewn sand, through the tangle of clinging, grasping water-weeds. They tried to take Merlin away, but he could not let them. 

They were all speaking at once, the voices of the hands, but their words slid together into a low, whirring hum. The key. The cuffs. Bare, reddened wrists. Unspeakably still.

He fell into the hands, into the waiting arms, and cried. 

West of the lake, black hills rose to enfold the sun. The last few rays of light were a burning, gold-drenched red. It would be fine tomorrow. 

Tonight, Arthur washed Merlin’s body. He wiped the blood and the dust from his face. His arms. His hands. His chest. His legs. His feet. He picked the dirt from beneath his fingernails. He combed his hair until it shone. 

He dressed him again in his own poor servant’s clothes, cleaned and dried by Mordred’s magic. The neckerchief didn’t look right. It was too tight. The folds were too deep. He tied and untied it a dozen times before Gwaine made him stop. 

There were rabbits roasting on make-shift spits. Arthur ate, because Leon handed him a portion on a wide, flat leaf, and it was easier than saying no. Better, too. He knew it was better to eat. He had lost men before. 

He had never lost Merlin before.

He ate. His skin ached. He did not think of pyres. 

They went to their separate corners while light still lingered, and lay in blunt, sleep-like silence. Night spread her cloak across the sky. One by one, the stars flickered on. Someone began to weep. Muffled it in knuckles and clenched teeth. The moon broke free of the treeline. Arthur reached out, and took Merlin’s hand. 

“I was— there was a girl, last summer. Young. Nine, maybe. She had magic, and I… let her go. She was playing with a stray cat, making lights for it to chase. It had a— a black spot on its left ear, and a sort of grey one on its back. The girl wasn’t hurting anyone, but my father would have had her killed for less. My father would have had me kill her for less. And I’ve been thinking, since then. I’ve been thinking that maybe, if my father was wrong about this one child, then maybe he was wrong about— everything, really.

“I didn’t like thinking about it. Because there’s a difference, you see, between Uther my father and Uther my lord. And I’d much rather think that I was just a bad son than that he was a bad king. But he was, wasn’t he? To you, to that girl, he was. But I didn’t want to think of it, so I didn’t. And maybe— maybe if I had thought about it more, I would have been kinder to you, when I found out. No, not kinder. It’s not kindness, is it? Not being cruel? Better, I suppose. I should have been better to you.”

He tried to press warmth into Merlin’s hand, but this wasn’t another cold night, another hunt in winter. There was no living blood, no beating heart, beneath Merlin’s skin. There was only Arthur. He might as well have tried to warm the moon. 

“Doesn’t feel like enough to wish,” he whispered. “Or want. It’s a need, I suppose, but even then. I need you. It’s not heavy enough, is it? Even love. It’s so much more than that. I don’t need myself. I don’t love myself. I just— am. I am you. But you aren’t me. Not anymore.” Up above, the stars bled like spilled ink. Arthur wiped roughly at his eyes. “You know, this— this is why I have you read my speeches over. I don’t make any sense without you.”

The next day, they walked. Arthur and Mordred took turns carrying Merlin. They had wrapped him in Arthur’s cloak. It kept slipping. 

“In the hills over Camelot,” Arthur told Merlin that night, “there’s a clearing. It’s ringed all about with birches. Pale, but not very sad. In the moonlight, they look like they’re made of marble. And it’s all— in the spring, it’s all covered over in flowers. I used to go there, when I was a boy. When I needed quiet. When I felt alone, or when I needed to be.”

They lay shoulder to shoulder on the cold ground. Their hands did not touch.

“I haven’t been there in years.”

Even so, Arthur could feel the emptiness. The absence of warmth, of life.

“I was thinking,” he said softly, “that you might like it. To sleep there, beneath the flowers, with the birches and the moonlight and the brook. And I could— I could come, to visit you. To talk with you, if you wanted me to.”

He closed his eyes. The red glow of the fire beat dully against his eyelids. 

They’d reach Camelot by sundown tomorrow. Gaius would be waiting. Gaius, with his weathered face and steady hands. The courtyard was a wide, empty space. A hundred windows opened onto it, a dozen doors and arches and alleys. Servants everywhere, merchants, courtiers. They would see. They would talk.

Gaius’s heart would break before Arthur could even tell him why. 

“But I will tell him,” Arthur promised. “I’ll tell him what you did. How brave you were.”

Gaius would hate him for it. Or, worse, he wouldn’t. 

He stretched his fingers out, and found the rough, raised skin where the cold iron had touched Merlin’s wrists. He turned his mind to that. To the seam of clear skin and burned. To the guilt, the self-hatred. 

These were comfortable things. Familiar things. Things, Arthur told himself, that he could work into weapons. Things against which he could brace himself. Break himself. 

It didn’t work. The flare of anger, hot and aching, did not come. Bitter hatred did not pool on Arthur’s tongue. 

Because Merlin’s hand was cold, but it was still his. 

Look, he had said once, on one of Arthur’s darker days, there’s no point hating yourself. I already hate you more than you ever could, so you’re just wasting your time. It had startled a laugh out of Arthur, and Merlin had grinned. Worry had pinched at the corner of his mouth. 

It should be harder to hate, he had said earnestly. It is so ugly, so dangerous, so— so hungry, and it demands so high a cost, but it is easy. It’s always right there at your elbow. You can be sad, you can be angry, but Arthur, you must put a name to it, or hatred will do it for you. 

“I don’t know how to mourn,” Arthur whispered. ”I don’t know how to be sad, how to miss you, without telling you about it. But I’m not meant to mourn you. I’m barely even meant to know your name.”

And yet, if you took a knife to Arthur’s heart, if you split it open, it would be Merlin’s name that came spilling out. 

“It’s like I’m only real because of you. When I’m with you. Because I don’t exist, you know, really. Kings never do.”

He opened his eyes, and turned to trace Merlin’s profile. Stark and white now, but he knew it softened with compassion, with sympathy, flushed with righteousness and anger. Creased with a teasing smile, or solemn and startlingly wise.

Arthur could never be frightened or indecisive again. Never wrong, never hasty, never reckless. He couldn’t afford to be, with Merlin gone. Couldn’t afford for anyone else to see him. From tomorrow until the day he died, he could only ever be King Arthur. And in King Arthur’s heart, there was nothing but blood, and it ran Camelot red.

Arthur wanted to drown in it. Wanted to want to drown in it. He tucked his head against Merlin’s shoulder, and tried to breathe. 

And then.

And then, on the very edge of Arthur’s senses, a single, unsteady beat. 

Arthur sat up. In his throat, his heart was a beating drum. His fingers brushed over Merlin’s wrist, over the scarred skin and the smooth, and hesitated over the divot at the corner of his palm.

“Please,” Arthur choked out, “please.”

His hand shook. He curled it into a fist. Arthur knew how to pray. His father had taught him, his nurses, his tutors. He knew the plain prayers of a child, and the ornate ones of a king. He reached for them now, the beautiful words and the old, and found only three. 

“I love you.” 

He opened his hand.

“I love you.”

Put his fingers to Merlin’s wrist.

“I love you.”

And waited.

The forest fell around him like heavy velvet. No sound but Arthur’s stumbling heartbeat. No air but the air he forced in and out of his lungs. 

There.

Pale as a raindrop, faint, hushed, but there. There.

Dizzy with relief, Arthur sagged forward to press his forehead to Merlin’s chest. His hands were shaking. His bones were hollow as a bird’s. 

Another drop. A halting step. 

It would beat in Arthur’s fingers, in his ears, for the rest of his life. He pressed a trembling kiss to Merlin’s wrist. And he found another prayer. The oldest one.

“Thank you.”

He drew himself up. His heart clattered at his ribs, fast and frantic and terrified, and Arthur wondered distantly if it was his heart that was pulling Merlin’s forward. 

“Leon!” he called, feeling slightly mad. “Gwaine, Mordred!”

As the night wore on, life trickled back into Merlin’s body. Piece by piece. His heartbeat, slow and faltering at first, began to quicken. Hours in, as the moon began to droop, he took a breath. Shallow. Hallowed. 

“There are… stories,” Mordred had said, after the disbelief, and the pity, and the grim resignation, and the sudden, dazzling hope. They’d sat around Merlin’s sleeping body and watched him come to life, and Mordred had folded his hands in his lap, and said, “There are stories, about Merlin. Emrys, the druids call him.” 

And he’d told them. Dredged up the prophecies, and the oldest rumours, and handed them like a hangman’s rope to Arthur. And Arthur had sat, and listened. He had not let go of Merlin’s hand. 

Dawn came, and the knights left in search of horses. They had no money, but they had their swords and their armour. It would be enough to buy five horses. 

Arthur stayed in the glade, with Merlin. He sat very still. A statue of a man holding vigil. Light poured down through the trees, and washed over Merlin’s face. There was colour in his cheeks again, deepened by the newborn sun into a heady, stained-glass red. 

His eyelids flickered.

“Merlin?”

A sound like a cracked rib. Pain. Fear. It was on his face, too, all tight and wretched. 

“I’m here,” Arthur promised, seizing his hand and holding on tight. “I’m right here.”

“Arthur.”

“Right here,” he whispered. 

“’S cold.”

“You were— you were gone for a while,” he said carefully. 

His hand in Merlin’s was clumsy with warmth, rough and bruising in its unabashed life. Merlin made a soft, broken sound, and curled his hand weakly around Arthur’s.

“Never been gone so long before,” he murmured.

The implications of that caught in Arthur’s throat. 

“Do you— do you remember it? Being gone?”

Merlin shuddered. “Yes.”

There were tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, slipping down his white temples into his midnight hair. Gently, Arthur wiped them away. 

And Merlin opened his eyes. 

His lashes brushed against Arthur’s palm. His eyes looked like— like Merlin’s eyes. That was all. Not the sky or the sea at noon, not a field of forget-me-nots or bluebells or cornflowers. They were the eyes Arthur woke to every morning, and the last ones he saw at night, and the ones he met over a thousand campfires and desks and training-grounds in between. Nothing in the world was like them.

Shakily, Merlin raised his hand to Arthur’s face. Traced the shadows beneath his eyes, the tear-tracks, the burns.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. 

Arthur caught his hand. “Don’t be.”

“I hurt you.”

“You came back,” Arthur said. “That’s all that matters. You came back.”

“For you,” said Merlin wryly.

And it was— it should have been— enormous. Incomprehensibly vast, and heavier than any crown. But it made sense, really. Arthur had been living for Merlin for years. He had lied for him, defied his father for him, fought for him. Merlin’s eyes were a keen and weary blue, and Arthur knew he would always be looking for them. He knew that he could be dead a thousand, two thousand years, and would drag himself out of whatever heaven, hell, or warriors’ field he found himself in if Merlin only asked. 

His thumb skimmed the curve of Merlin’s cheek.

“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

“Better. Alive. But it’s— it’s a strange kind of life, now that I’ve known the other. Small, you know. And…”

“And?”

“Well. And nothing.”

His jaw had hardened a little. He wouldn’t quite meet Arthur’s eyes, but was staring steadily at a point just above his left eyebrow.

“And your magic?” Arthur guessed. Merlin nodded tightly. “You can tell me, you know. If you want to.”

“I can’t, though, can I?” said Merlin bitterly. “It wouldn’t be fair to you, because you— I can’t. I can’t make the king party to treason.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

Merlin stared. “What?”

Arthur blinked back. “I didn’t mean to say that. Or— well, I did. But not like that.”

“You’re… lifting the ban?”

“I’m going to try. For you.”

Merlin tried to sit up, and failed spectacularly. Arthur caught him before he hit his head. 

“You can’t do that,” he said as Arthur tucked the cloak around him.

“You don’t want me to?”

“Of course I want you to!” Merlin snapped. “But I— I am not reason enough to upend your kingdom, Arthur, to undo everything your father worked for. I have done… awful things, I’ve— and this cannot be for me, for what I’ve done this week. It has to come from you. It has to be for all your people, not just—”

He coughed, curling in on himself as his shoulders jerked and twitched. Arthur took the waterskin from the ground beside him, and held it while he drank.

“Thank you,” Merlin rasped.

“I misspoke,” said Arthur, capping the waterskin. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it because of you. Because you are honest, and you are good— you are, Merlin— and because you are everything I want for Camelot. Everything I dream Albion could be, if we just gave it a chance. Because I am the man you’ve made me more than I am my father’s son.”

Merlin’s cool fingers pressed against his chin, and he let himself meet his eyes. Merlin scrutinized him. 

“You really mean it,” he said at length.

He sounded startled. A little awed. He let his hand fall. 

“I do,” Arthur said earnestly, taking it. “I really, really do.”

Merlin grinned up at him. “Well then,” he said. “My magic.”

“Your magic.”

Merlin laughed giddily. “My magic. Like we say it every day.” He sobered, casting his eyes down to their joined hands. “It’s… I don’t know. It aches, I suppose.”

“Badly?”

“No, not very badly. It’s just— not there. Like a missed step.”

“Will it come back?”

“I did. It will, too.”

“Like— like a pulled muscle, right? Or a sprain. You’ve stretched it too thin, or twisted it too far out of shape, and it needs to settle before you use it again.”

“Yeah,” said Merlin, soft, surprised. “Yeah, like that.”

“So I,” said Arthur, affecting a tone of pompous magnanimity, “shall grant you a day off.”

“A whole day, sire?” Merlin said. “I’m honoured.”

“You should be,” Arthur informed him. He brushed the hair off Merlin’s forehead. “Really, though. Take as long as you need to recover. Fully recover, mind you. Not like last year, with the cold. And— and you don’t have to come back to work at all, if you don’t want to.”

“Trying to get rid of me, then?”

Arthur laughed. It didn’t sound quite right. “Trying to let you go.”

“Don’t bother,” Merlin said, and his tone was light but his eyes were suddenly quite serious. “I’d only come back.”

“Would you?”

“Every time.”

“Doesn’t feel right, you doing my laundry.”

“I don’t actually do your laundry. I bring it down to the laundresses, and then I bring it back.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes. I do. But I like it, you know. I like taking care of you, and not just with— giant serpents and things. I like making sure your shirts are mended, and your floors are clean, and your bed made. I like bringing you your meals. Hearing about your day. That’s what I was most afraid of losing, when you found out.”

“Me too,” Arthur said. “Terrified.”

“But we can still have it, can’t we?”

His voice was blurring at the edges, all soft and drowsy. He was— lovely, like this. In this light, in this life, in this moment. Gingerly, Arthur stretched out beside him, lying on his side so that their faces were only inches apart. Their hands were clasped loosely between them.

“Anything,” he whispered. 

Merlin’s palm was growing warm against Arthur’s. With his other hand, he circled the ridge of Arthur’s knuckles. 

“And do you think…”

“I try my best.”

“Hush.” Merlin tapped his wrist. “I’m being serious.” He tilted his chin up to meet Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur’s breath caught. “What you said in the lake, before I went,” he said slowly. “Could we have that, too?”

And Arthur was— weak. He was a coward. And his weakness and his cowardice choked him, so that all he could say, shattered and thin, was, “Merlin.”

“It’s alright,” said Merlin gently. “If you can’t say it, or if… or if you don’t want to say it, it’s alright.”

He meant it. Arthur could tell he meant it. He was offering him oblivion, absolution, and Arthur could have taken it as he had taken so much before. 

“No,” he managed. He gripped Merlin’s hand tightly. “No, I have to say it. I must say it, for you. You are… braver than I will ever have to be. You have given me your life. All I have to offer you is my heart, and even then I’m terrified. I— care about you. More than I can say, I always thought. But I owe it to you to try.”

Merlin pressed their foreheads together. His breath was warm on Arthur’s cheek.

“Go on, then,” he said.

Arthur took a steadying breath. Merlin’s hand curled a little tighter around his.

“I love you,” Arthur said shakily, “with everything I have. And even if I had nothing, that nothing would love you too. You are my favourite madness, and the only thing that keeps me sane, and the days you were dead were the loneliest I’ve ever lived.”

“I love you, too,” Merlin whispered. “I love you in every way I know how to love.”

His smile was a soft, delighted thing. Arthur tucked a kiss into each sweet dimple, into the laughing, intoxicating corner of his mouth. 

Soon, the others will be back with the horses. Soon, they will be on the road again, and Camelot’s towers will bloom across the horizon. Soon there will be laws to pass, treaties to amend, council members to convince and to placate. 

A kingdom to run. A golden age to usher in.

Now, though, the trees are whispering together, heads bent, and the clouds sway down to catch their secrets. Arthur’s cloak is thick and warm.

Soon the world will catch up. But for now, for the first time in a long time, it does not snap at their heels. Sun-drenched, hand in hand, they watch it lope towards them, and speak drowsily of what it will bring. They share lazy kisses. They press open palms to beating hearts. They make promises they never thought they’d make, but always knew they’d keep. 

The world is coming. But they have time.

They have time.