Archive of Our Own ^beta

It all begins when Sir Leon, First Knight of Camelot and Consort to the Queen, knocks on the door of Merlin's quarters.

It's the morning after Gwen's forty-third birthday, five years since Gaius' death, eleven years since the birth of Gwen's son, twelve years since her re-marriage, thirteen years since she's repealed the ban on magic in Camelot.

Fourteen years since Arthur.

Merlin avoids thinking about that last one with little to no success.

He rolls out of bed, willing away his headache. Drinking has never agreed with him, but the queen's birthday feast isn't exactly anything he can – or wants to – miss out on; it's usually worth the unpleasant awakening. He throws on a robe that makes him look at least a little bit like the court sorcerer he's supposed to be and opens his door.

“Morning. If you're here for the hangover potion,” he tells Leon, because they're old friends and there's no need to be formal, “you should ask Eleanor, she's prepared a whole barrel of the stuff yesterday – ”

“I'm afraid,” Leon cuts in, “that this is nothing a physician can fix.”

Only now does Merlin notice how completely sober the knight looks. More than that – he's serious. Dead serious. Merlin steps aside to let him in.

“Sit,” he says with a vague gesture, suddenly aware of the chaos in his chambers. “Should I, ah, get someone to – ”

“I require nothing but your counsel.”

“That bad, huh,” Merlin mutters. The remark would have gotten an eye roll out of Arthur, but Leon gives no reaction. “How can I help you, then?”

Leon folds his hands on the table and leans forward. “How old do I look?”

“It can't be,” Gwen says later, when the three of them are sitting together in the counsel room. “There must be another explanation.”

“For why a fifty-year-old man looks not a day over thirty?” Leon sounds skeptical.

“Maybe you're just really lucky,” Merlin supplies in a weak attempt to lighten the mood.

“But you have no magic,” Gwen insists, sensibly ignoring him. “How could you possibly be ... immortal?”

“I do not know, my queen.” Leon squeezes her hand. “Could it be a curse, perhaps? A spell?”

“One that lasts for twenty years?” Merlin shakes his head. “I'd have to be the one who cast it, and even then it might not work. No, this is no ordinary magic.”

“Then what else can it be?”

Both of them are looking at Merlin now, equal parts expectant and helpless. He fiddles with the ring on his thumb that Gwen let him keep. Truth is, Merlin has a theory, but he doesn't like sharing theories unless he has at least some modicum of evidence. Old habit, he supposes, from a time where hardly anyone ever listened to him. God, he misses those days sometimes.

“I'll look into it,” he promises.

Turns out that looking into it is just as complicated and time-consuming as he suspected. There is virtually no solid information around about the Cup of Life and the effects of drinking from it, only legends and myths and bedtime stories; Merlin has half a mind to ask the druids about it, but ever since magic has been legal in Camelot, finding them has turned into a nearly impossible feat. He'd thought it would be the opposite, but maybe it makes sense for them to make use of their newfound freedom in this way. There are certainly days (or weeks, or months) where Merlin would like to just quietly disappear.

He doesn't, of course. He has to protect the people he loves, the people Arthur has left in his care. Curse that bastard for instilling a sense of duty in Merlin, after all.

Years go by, and it becomes more and more obvious that Leon really doesn't age a day. The three of them agree to put him under an ageing spell that will make him look as old as he should be, in order to stop word from getting around, lest people start panicking, or worse, feeling challenged. The relative peace in Albion has come with a lot of hard work from both Arthur and Gwen; the last thing they need is an unofficial competition over which king can kill Camelot's immortal consort first.

Percival is the only other one in on the truth; he doesn't say anything, but Merlin can tell he finds it kind of funny.

It's an embarrassingly long time until it occurs to Merlin to ask Kilgarrah for help.

He isn't sure he wants to, actually. He hasn't seen the dragon in a good while, and during their separation he's thought long and hard about many things and has sort of come to the conclusion that all of the advice Kilgarrah has ever given him has, in fact, always made things much worse rather than better. Still, he needs certainty on this issue – he owes Leon and Gwen that much.

“You have not spoken to me since the death of your king,” the dragon booms.

Merlin rolls his eyes, already full of regrets about this. “Tactful as ever, I see.”

Kilgarrah merely laughs. “All those years, and you are still mourning him? I told you, Arthur will return. Grief is to be felt for those who stay gone forever.”

“I'm not here to talk about Arthur.”

“Oh, that would be a first. What is it then, sorcerer?”

“Does the Cup of Life offer immortality?”

“Ah.” The dragon's eyes narrow; he leans his head down, a little closer to Merlin's. “I take it you have finally noticed the consort's … condition.”

“What do you mean, finally? How long have you known?”

“Longer than you, it seems.”

“And you never thought to tell me?”

“You never thought to ask.”

Merlin wants to groan in frustration. Maybe throw something against a tree. Possibly turn someone into a frog. Preferably a dragon.

“So. He's immortal. How do I reverse it?”

“You don't. What has been given by the Cup cannot be taken again.” Kilgarrah's mouth stretches into a grin, baring his teeth. Merlin forgot how long they are. “It would seem that you have found yourself a companion for life.”

“I hope you're really proud of that joke,” Merlin says before turning on his heels and walking away.

Leon stays in Camelot, of course he does. He stays until Percival falls by his side on the battlefield; he stays until Gwen dies of old age; he stays until their son is crowned king. On all three occasions Merlin sees him cry, albeit for different reasons. (As for Merlin himself, well, he thought he'd somewhat stopped caring but Gwen's funeral proves him wrong. The world loses a great deal of light that day.)

Leon stays until he's pushing the one-hundred-year-mark and the ageing spell makes the joints in his body creak and bend.

He stays until his son turns sixty and suffers a heart attack.

They can save him. Eleanor is a brilliant court physician and Merlin is a passable court sorcerer with truly great apprentices, and it's not long until King Elyan is on his feet again, continuing his rule like nothing happened.

Still, on the evening of that day, Leon knocks on the door to Merlin's quarters once more.

“No parent should watch their child die,” he says, voice raspy from simulated age. “No child should watch their parent watch them die.”

Merlin nods; this moment has been coming. He's just glad he's not the one to suggest it.

“Then it might be time for us to leave.”

Faking a death, Merlin discovers, is not as hard as he thought it would be. Nor is creating new identities for a wandering sorcerer and his knightly friend.

“This feels wrong,” Leon says, squinting at the forged seal of nobility.

“But you are a noble,” Merlin points out. “Just not that one.”

Leon opens his mouth to argue, but he has never been the best at arguing and they both know it. Either way, he is pragmatic enough to accept Merlin's solution.

“I shall bring honour to my new name, then.”

Arthur, Merlin realises, would have argued. Arthur would have challenged him at every turn, questioned his every decision, in fact; with Arthur, this whole plan would probably have been hell.

So, he says, “I'm glad you're not Arthur.”

Leon just raises his eyebrows at him.

The Saxons invade.

Shortly thereafter, Camelot falls.

Merlin can convince Leon to stay away from the citadel, to not throw himself into battle and defeat the entire Saxon army on his own, but it's a close call.

They settle into a strange sort of cycle.

Merlin picks a random direction to travel, since Leon knows all the maps too well and it would 'ruin the fun', as Merlin puts it. They'll walk, or ride on horseback, depending on their luck, until they happen upon a village or town, stay there for anything from a week up to five years (once it's five and a half, actually, when Leon has a debt to settle because he accidentally sets fire to an old man's house), offer their services to the local lord and townspeople, and leave when they feel the time has come. They do not always agree on when that time is, but usually, they get to a compromise.

Compromise, Merlin finds, is quite easy with Leon.

Decades pass quickly this way. Merlin keeps track of time in a scrupulous manner because he will always be a scientist at heart, and Gaius was obsessed with dates in his time, always knowing when veils between worlds would be thin, or when stars would align in certain ways, or when anything else like that would occur. It's also quite a neat way to anchor himself in the flow of time, lest he drown in the current and never resurface, which is a fear that lurks somewhere in the back of his mind. And of course, when Arthur comes back and asks, how much time has passed?, he must have an answer.

Still, it happens: he'll wake up and take a look at his calendar and think, already?

Already, Gwen has been dead for a century.

That is the downside of keeping track of time: Merlin remembers the deaths a little too well.

On the one-hundredth anniversary of Gwen's death, he gets a pitcher of wine from the best tavern in the town where they're currently staying (not his favourite place, but Leon likes it quite a lot so he'll deal with it for about a year more) and knocks on the door of the chambers Leon's rented. Merlin himself sleeps a few houses away, in a room in the back of the town's apothecary, which is wonderful because all he has to do to get to his work place is roll out of bed.

Leon opens and smiles at him in greeting; Merlin holds up the pitcher.

“A hundred years,” he says. “Thought we might need it.”

Leon's face grows somber in an instant. “A hundred years,” he repeats. “That is altogether too long for any person to witness.”

“I mean, you've already been around for about a hundred and eighty, so.” He pours each of them a goblet because he hasn't played servant in a long time, and it feels appropriate today. “Cheers.”

“It's strange, this kind of life,” Leon says when the pitcher is considerably emptier. “I feel like a young knight again, except back then I'd never thought I'd travel so much.”

“Oh, we haven't even seen all of Albion,” Merlin says, gesturing with his free hand. “We should go further east next time. Just be careful not to get caught up in any wars.”

“That seems like very good general advice,” Leon nods.

“Well, that's me. Court sorcerer and general advisor,” Merlin jokes, until he remembers that he isn't, really, and hasn't been for a very long time.

“You miss it.” It's not a question.

“Don't you?”

“What keeps you going?” Leon suddenly wants to know. It's a strangely personal inquiry; their companionship isn't normally about deep conversations. Then again, with so much time on their hands, Merlin figures they're bound to ask the tough questions eventually.

He swallows some more of his wine. “Don't know. Curiosity? The desire to watch my enemies burn?”

Leon raises his eyebrows in the way that means he isn't really having any of Merlin's bullshit.

“Alright. There's – well, there's a prophecy. About Arthur rising again, in Albion's greatest time of need.”

This time, Leon's eyebrows almost disappear in his hairline. “And you're telling me about this now?”

Merlin averts his eyes. It's true that he hasn't told anyone, out of some selfish desire to be the only one to know – the only one to wait for Arthur. Now he feels silly for it. It's Leon, after all; Leon has known Arthur for much longer than he has, was just as loyal to him. Really, Merlin has no exclusive right to this knowledge. “Wasn't sure when to bring it up.”

Leon frowns. “Then – shouldn't we prepare for it, somehow?”

“The prophecy doesn't say anything about when exactly that time will be, or even why. Could be anytime. Could be tomorrow.” Merlin swallows again. “Could be in a thousand years. Either way, I have to be around. And well, no use wallowing in self-pity until then, is there?” he adds with a sardonic grin, toasting with his near-empty goblet.

Leon mirrors his grin; it looks far more genuine on him. “You're right. This is good news, after all. Great news, even. We shall keep our eyes open.”

Merlin wishes he had that kind of optimism. He thinks he may have had it, once; he wonders where he left it.

Wonders whether Leon feels like a part of his heart has been carved out, or whether that's just him.

It has to happen, inevitably.

Their usual five-years-in-one-place are over by a good while already, and Merlin is itching to get away.

Except that Leon won't. Because Leon has fallen in love.

Frida is a great person, she really is. She's a Saxon noblewoman, which makes sense since most of the land is under Saxon rule nowadays; briefly, Merlin had considered staying in the Welsh kingdom, maybe razing a few of their enemies to the ground, out of principle, but without Arthur the notion of serving a kingdom feels strangely arbitrary. Luckily, the people of Wessex are rather welcoming, even though their kingdom is technically at war with the Welsh; Merlin supposes ordinary people have other concerns than the squabbles of their lords. It took them a bit of time to pick up on the strange language and customs – even now, Merlin's grammar isn't quite up to par, and Leon has a really funny accent – but they're not exactly in a rush.

In fact, Frida likes Leon's accent, she tells Merlin one day. Frida also likes his laugh, and his sense of honour, and his gentle honesty. She likes that he brings her flowers and that he listens carefully to what she has to say; she likes the way he tells her stories out of his own life, without any bragging or unnecessary detail, but interesting tales nonetheless.

Her father isn't quite as thrilled about her daughter being courted by a knight with no land of his own. Luckily, Leon isn't exactly poor, and Frida's father has more than one daughter (many say Frida isn't even the prettiest of them, and many more would agree – save for Leon). So, after a long period of courtship, of Leon proving his worth over and over and of Merlin chatting with and interrogating Frida until he's satisfied that she, too, is worthy, the townspeople are getting ready for a wedding.

Merlin stays through the ceremony. He casts an ageing spell over Leon. He looks at the couple one last time.

He's happy for them; his insides are screaming with envy.

Then, he leaves for Avalon.

The abandoned cottage on the lakeside is old, and broken, and small, not that Merlin cares. He repairs the bare minimum of it with magic, just in case, then sits on the grass by the lake, and waits.

Vikings invade, he thinks. Not him, personally, of course, but somewhere in Albion; it's the kind of thing that carries on the wind. In a strange, selfish way, he's actually rooting for them – maybe if they become enough of a threat to the lands, it will call Arthur back into existence. Then again, he thought that about the Saxons, and that didn't lead anywhere, did it?

So he keeps listening to the wind, and the grass, and the soft flow of magic through the soil. It's gotten weaker than before, and Merlin can feel his own magic fade, very, very slowly, like blood dripping from a tiny cut that refuses to heal.

He thinks of Camelot, of King Elyan's pallor when he suffered that heart attack, of Gwen's peaceful form on her deathbed. He thinks of Percival's lifeless body in Leon's arms and Gwaine's lifeless body in Percival's. He thinks of Elyan dying a pointless death in a dark tower, under the watch of an enchanted sister who might not have even loved him in that moment. He thinks of the last time Gaius smiled at him, and of the last time his mother embraced him. He thinks of his father. He thinks of Will, and of Freya, and of Lancelot, and of Morgana and Aithusa and Kilgarrah, and even of Mordred, a little bit.

He thinks of Arthur.

He thinks of all that Arthur's ever said to him, or at least, all that he remembers. Memories aren't made to last hundreds of years, but his time in Camelot stands out more starkly than anything that has happened since. It's been hard to get attached when he only ever spends five years at a time somewhere, which might be why he does it.

He thinks of all that has happened to them. Merlin believes no two people should ever have to go through that much, and not for the first time he wonders why it had to be them, and curses whoever thought destiny was a good idea in general. He curses his own stupidity, too, remembering all of the times he almost told Arthur about his magic and held himself back – first, out of fear of losing his head, later, out of fear of losing his best friend.

He's convinced he had to act the way he did, to hide everything until the very last moment; after all, there's no way Arthur could have known how devoted Merlin truly was to him, how much his well-being truly mattered. Still, it would have been nice to tell him sooner, to have more than a few hours of honesty together.

He thinks of Arthur just being alive instead of being dead.

He doesn't cry. He wishes he would, though.

After sixty or maybe seventy years have passed, he hears footsteps in the grass.

The very old, very familiar man sits down next to him, and Merlin knows at once that Frida is dead and her children are grey. He lifts the ageing spell without really thinking about it.

“I'm sorry,” he says – for his loss, for running away, for getting him into this mess because somehow, this feels like it's Merlin's fault, too.

For a day, Leon stays at his side in silence.

Then, he gets up, hauls Merlin to his feet, forces him to eat the meal he's brought with him, and drags him back on the road to their next destination.

Merlin has never been so grateful in his life.

Leon allows them one day at Avalon each year, one day of grieving.

And – well, in a way, it works.

Merlin wouldn't say that he's letting go of Arthur, because he's known for a long time that that's not on the table. He wouldn't even say that he isn't thinking about him as much, because – again, never been an option. But he feels a little less desperate, a little less heavy every day.

As he picks up his work as a physician again and notices how effortlessly he gets back into it, it occurs to him that there are, in fact, things to learn other than healing. He'd loved learning new things, back in Camelot, and now that he has no duties as manservant or court sorcerer or overall king-saver to fulfil, what's stopping him?

So, one day he mentions to Leon that he's considering a study of mathematics.

Leon shudders. “Mathematics? Out of your own free will?”

Merlin takes that as a sign of approval.

They make a point, from then on, to pick their destinations with a little more purpose. The places best suited for studying anything are those Christian monasteries that have been springing up everywhere, so they spend a good ten years up north with a small brotherhood in a valley between two looming mountains. Merlin holes himself up in their extensive library nearly every day to read and copy whatever he can get his hands on and discuss it with the monks, only coming out for meals and prayers, which he participates in mostly out of peer pressure (and, possibly, a slight infatuation with Brother Lucius' singing voice). Leon, however, follows their rigid schedule with exemplary discipline and enthusiasm, and nearly becomes one of them by accident.

Sometimes he joins Merlin in the library. Usually he goes for the religious texts; Merlin finds his earnest endeavour to understand these men and their strange beliefs quite admirable, and a little bit sweet, even though he'd never admit that to his face. Once, though, Merlin catches him with a different book.

He glances at the cover and raises an eyebrow. “Poetry?”

Leon looks back at him, completely deadpan. “I am a man of many hidden depths.”

That startles Merlin into a good laugh. He's really come to appreciate Leon's sense of humour, lately.

When it's time for them to move on, the brothers are strangely unsurprised, and let them go with a warm goodbye and a promise for them to always be welcome in their order. It makes Merlin wonder if there might be some merit to their religion, after all.

Merlin, it turns out, is not the only one interested in learning. Only, the things Leon wants to learn are a bit more, well, mundane.

“You want me to teach you how to cook?”

Their first lesson is a disaster. Their third one is actually not so bad.

On the sixth lesson, Merlin has to admit that the student may already have surpassed the master.

He's a little bit surprised, though, when he walks in on Leon plucking strings on a lute.

“There are some things,” he explains solemnly, “a knight has to know nowadays.”

They call it the Black Death.

Normally, Merlin would have rolled his eyes at such theatrics – except that this time, the name is frighteningly accurate.

He watches, helpless, as patient after patient succumb to the illness. Some of those in the earlier stages, he can save with magic, but he has to be careful about it; people have been increasingly unkind to sorcerers lately. So he stays up all night, trying to find out what on earth is happening and how to stop it.

He reads of a scholar who blames the heavens; three of the planets, according to him, have aligned in such a way that poisons the air around them. Merlin dismisses it out of hand – planets do not work that way; also he has read enough reports to retrace the disease's spread on his maps, and it doesn't follow the flow of the winds at all. What he does notice is that secluded areas, usually in close proximity to mountains and with very few people, seem to be spared from the illness that mostly targets big cities, especially those close to the sea. He tries out different mountain plants as remedies then, to see whether food has anything to do with it – the people living in the mountains might just be lucky enough to have found an antidote by accident?

It yields no result. Instead of discouraging Merlin, though, it only spurs him on. Somewhere along the way, he has started caring again.

He tries secluding patients in a separate house instead of coming to them in their home, in order to watch them more closely, allowing no visitors. Leon does his best to help him, talking to the confused next of kin and keeping the sick people's chambers as clean and orderly as his own rooms. The patients are still dying – however, Merlin notices a distinct change in pace. Normally, when a person would get sick and die, most of their family and neighbours would follow soon after; with his method of seclusion, in nine out of ten cases, the plague victim's entourage stays alive.

Merlin spreads this knowledge as best he can. However, he doesn't have the resources to separate all the sick from the healthy, and even though he's certain the disease somehow passes from person to person through physical proximity, he has no idea in what way exactly. And that's not even mentioning that he has still no cure for all those who are infected already.

Then, Leon's wife Agnes falls ill.

If Merlin was determined before, he is obsessed now. He doesn't sleep at all on the days and nights of her sickness, hardly eats anything, tries out potion after potion after potion, generously infused with different healing spells. He has to save her.

He can't. She dies after ten days of struggle, in Leon's arms. He stayed by her bedside the entire time; now that it's over, he kisses her forehead, gives her a burial worthy of a queen, and returns to his work as Merlin's temporary assistant.

“How do you do it?” Merlin asks, much later, when the worst of the plague is finally over and every place they come across is but a ghost town.

Leon looks up from where he's polishing his armour with a piece of cloth. “What do you mean?”

“Falling in love.” He swallows. “Even though you know they will die before your eyes, over and over.”

The knights considers it for a while, smoothing his palm over the clean breast plate. “I do not know. It isn't something I choose. No one decides who they fall in love with.”

Merlin raises an eyebrow. “Hadn't pegged you as such a romantic.”

Leon shrugs. “That's just how it is. Either way, I think it's worth it. Gwen was worth it, and Frida was worth it. And Agnes was worth it, as well. They still are. Love will always be worth it.”

“But – ” He swallows, again. Why is his throat so dry today? “It hurts so much.”

“It does,” Leon agrees. “It doesn't get less, either. But I don't regret any of it.”

That silences Merlin, and Leon looks at him then, with eyes that are suddenly far too knowing.

“You must know what I'm talking about. You must have loved.”

Merlin looks up at the ceiling, willing the tears away. “I do.”

That seems to be answer enough. For a moment, Leon goes back to polishing his armour, until he suddenly tosses the cloth away.

“I think, sometime in the next century,” he declares, “I would like to try living as a peasant.”

Merlin's ears must have stopped working. “A peasant? You?”

“Well, Agnes was a peasant, and hers was one of the best and kindest souls in the world. I wish to honour her legacy.”

Put so bluntly, the sentiment is more touching than Merlin can say. “You really are a romantic.”

Merlin gets a little bit restless in the late fourteen hundreds, when he reads all of those letters from famous people exploring the world and writing about it. He is skeptical, to say the least, about the amount of times he reads the word 'savage'; it makes him think of the way Uther used to say 'sorcerer', or maybe 'servant'. Still, he realises that the world is becoming a lot bigger than he ever thought it could be.

He's been writing letters of his own, too. There's that man in Italy who has found out the most interesting things by cutting open corpses in his spare time, and Merlin has traded messages with him for a while, strictly out of medical interest, of course. They're at a point in their acquaintance where the guy sends him suggestive sketches of what he thinks Merlin looks like, and Merlin criticises them ruthlessly while calling him 'Leo' in return, so he figures a personal meeting would be appropriate.

“I thought we could travel for a bit,” he tells Leon.

“On a horse?”

“On a boat.”

It's not that he's getting bored of Albion; the people he meets here are just as interesting as they always have been, and he's never come across the same person twice. However, his knowledge is stagnating, and his magic is dwindling, and maybe he can find a remedy for both somewhere else.

So, he and Leon embark on a ship to Normandy. Merlin wanted to go all out and head west, along the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean sea to Italy, but Leon doesn't feel that adventurous yet; they will have to build up to it.

As soon as the ship leaves the port, though, Merlin is hit by a sudden wave of nausea. He didn't know one could get seasick that quickly, but it doesn't subside, only gets worse the further away from the coast they sail. Leon tries to calm him down by reading him poems and playing on his lute, which immediately earns him the affections of the other passengers as well as a dozen invitations to dinner or to bed. Merlin is grateful for the attempt and learns more about literature and music than he ever thought he would; it doesn't help much with his illness.

He doesn't understand. He's never really been sick unless he was poisoned, at least never with this deep sense of discomfort, of wrongness. His heart is racing nearly twice as fast as it should be, there's a steady headache right behind his eyes, and he constantly feels like he's about to empty his stomach. It doesn't stop after they disembark, either; when they pick an inn to stay in, he curls up in his bed and doesn't leave it.

After five days of suffering, Leon puts his foot down. They sail back to Albion; the moment he's back on land, the sickness fades.

And there go his plans of ever getting away from here.

It seems that the bigger the world grows, the more people's minds narrow.

Merlin doesn't know why he's on trial, really. He doubts it's because of any actual magic he's done; he has been extremely careful as of late not to get caught. Perhaps one of the villagers has noticed that he doesn't go to church as much as the rest of them; perhaps another one has grown skeptical about his extensive knowledge of healing (because somehow for Merlin, saving people's lives always translates to being in league with evil). Perhaps someone saw him take that travelling bard back to his quarters last week – another thing he has grown to be extremely careful about.

Perhaps he's just an unlucky bastard.

Either way, he's on trial for witchcraft now. In a way, he can appreciate the humour of being caught a thousand years late, and Christ, has it really been that long already?

Mostly, though – mostly he's scared out of his wits. Not of dying, obviously, but of burning. They've shackled him in cold iron; a few hundred years ago, that would not have stopped his magic, but now he has no means of escape.

He takes a moment, just one, and imagines it. Imagines calling upon his magic, and lashing out. Imagines killing the judge, tearing apart the prosecutor, blasting the crowd away, flattening the building into the ground, all with a mere thought. Imagines making the earth tremble until not a single house is standing anymore, the ground covered in rubble and ruins. Imagines setting fire, burning all of Albion, like Albion is about to burn him.

He might have done it, if he'd been able to. At some point after losing Arthur, he might have turned into that person.

If Leon weren't there.

Leon is there, of course, vehemently defending him and testifying to his honour and his good intentions. The people here know Leon; they know him as a kind-hearted and selfless man who is polite and wise and helps them out wherever he can without expecting anything in return. They know him as a hard-working farmer and a brave fighter, never backing down from an occasion to defend the weak and the poor.

They also know him as Merlin's friend and occasional assistant, though, so when someone dares voice the suspicion that Leon might be in on it, as well, Merlin admits to everything. He claims he's in league with the Devil, that he has hidden all of his terrible deeds from his assistant, who is completely innocent and an upstanding citizen, throws in some sentences in Welsh and in the Old Religion's language for authenticity, and can they just get this over with already?

The smoke is the first thing that would have killed him. It takes a while for the flames to really spread, but the smoke fills his lungs instantly and makes him cough and wheeze until it feels more like drowning instead of burning. Merlin can almost pretend not to notice the heat creeping up on him, until the sleeve of his jacket catches on fire. He panics, tugging on his restraints; there shouldn't be any air left in him but it's enough for screaming. The pain becomes unbearable when the flames climb up to his head, and he knows he only has a few seconds left before passing out. He has no idea what happens to an immortal body when it's burnt, and he really doesn't want to find out.

Finally, his magic kicks in.

The iron is hot now, malleable; he tears through it almost easily. With the last scrap of his consciousness, he wills himself away, far away, anywhere but here.

Leon finds him in a ditch around the back of Merlin's cottage. He cools his burns, wraps him in bandages, lays him on his bed and lets him sleep.

When Merlin wakes up after two full days of slumber, Leon is there to gather him in his arms and, for a while, just holds him.

“I wonder,” Leon says, “whether there's anything that could actually kill us.”

Merlin tries to remember how many goblets of wine they've had that evening, and figures it's about the right amount for another round of Tough Questions.

“Nothing short of a sword forged in a dragon's breath, I figure. No bleeding, no drowning, no suffocating, no burning, obviously, no illness of any kind. Severing the head might do it, but then again it might just grow back on.”

Leon's eyes narrow in a way that makes Merlin think he hasn't drunk that much, after all. “You have given it a lot of thought.”

“It's all hypothetical,” Merlin lies because that's his new favourite word and they haven't talked about those sixty-odd years he's spent alone at the lakeside all that much. He rubs the marks that the iron shackles left on his wrists; they're fading already. “I'd never.”

And then he pauses, as the realisation hits him that Leon is the one single person on this whole world, in this whole existence perhaps, that might ever even have the slightest chance of coming close to understanding him. If he can't tell Leon, he can't tell anyone. The man deserves a little bit of honesty.

“Well. I have given it a lot of thought. Maybe more than thought.”

Now that the words are out there, he suddenly feels a lot better. Leon slings an arm around his shoulders; Merlin sinks into his side.

“You know that I'm glad to have you around, Merlin.”

He chuckles weakly. “Of course you are. You're rubbish at forging papers.”

They separate, a few times.

Leon will go and travel somewhere; he is still a knight at heart but he's getting quite proficient at playing various musical instruments and also has farming down to an art, which allows him to choose from a plethora of completely different identities. Merlin doesn't want Leon to be stuck in Albion forever just because of some capricious magical bond that has nothing to do with him, so he hugs him goodbye on the pier and listens to his stories upon his return. Ever the dutiful friend, Leon will bring him trinkets from his journeys – a lot of books, a few clothes, some rare herbs and spices, some pieces of art, sometimes even so-called magical artefacts that he buys from shady old women in dark alleyways.

(Once he comes back to Merlin's house and places an egg the length of his hand on the table. It's of a brighter blue than anything Merlin has ever seen in his – considerably long – life.

“Dragon's egg,” Leon declares.

Merlin strongly doubts that. Still, there's a treacherous flare of hope within him, hope that had been smothered with guilt over the centuries. He has never forgiven himself for Aithusa, never known how to feel about Kilgarrah's death; the sight of the bright blue egg scratches at a wound that has always been too old to heal properly.

“Where'd you get it?”

“Ah,” Leon says, having clearly hoped to avoid that particular question. “Guy in a pub in Constantinople. He was – well, quite deep into his cups, but I figured, if there's only the slightest chance of this being real – ”

Leon, Merlin remembers, had been the first to volunteer when they'd ridden out to fight Kilgarrah during his revenge upon Camelot. Leon, who knows that that disaster had been Merlin's fault in the first place, and also knows that he'd failed to save Balinor, failed to take proper care of Aithusa, failed in every way a Dragon Lord could fail. Leon, who still does everything he can to bring this weird blue egg to him, just on the off-chance it might be a dragon's.

It turns out to be paint and ostrich, in the end; they have a good laugh about it.)

Conversely, Merlin will be overcome with the need to get away from it all, every once in a while. He'll retreat into a cave in the Scottish mountains for a few decades or find a deserted seaside cliff to build a small house on. Left to his own devices like that, he has enough time to catch up on mathematics, medicine, astronomy, physics and literature – and there is a lot to catch up on, especially with the rediscovery of Ancient Greeks as the Next Big Thing (and isn't that a first, to read texts that are older than himself?). He sets about half a foot into philosophy when he realises that it's really not his cup of tea, even though Arthur would definitely have a field day with it.

He meets a woman in a forest somewhere in Wales who never tells him her name but teaches him meditation, and also which herbs to smoke in which particular order to achieve the perfect high.

He meets a man who plans to sail round the world, “just like Magellan,” he explains, “but without dying.” The man is reckless and self-absorbed and very very pretty, so Merlin lets him warm his bed for a few days.

And Merlin's getting better at that, too – being casual like that. Falling in love again and again as Leon does is out of the question, but that doesn't mean Merlin can't get to know interesting people and share an intimate moment once in a while. He doesn't need to be completely devoted to someone to like them; there's really only one person he wants to share everything with, and that person still refuses to show up, the selfish prat.

He thinks that maybe, if Arthur were here, he wouldn't need the time off from other people. Or maybe he'd need it even more, he isn't sure. Right now he thinks he'd be completely happy never to leave Arthur's side again, but that's easy to believe when he's spent a millennium missing him.

What he does know, though, is that he likes Leon a lot better after a year apart, and he means that in the best way possible. Their one day of grieving at Avalon has become an untouchable tradition; Leon never misses out on it, no matter where he's spending his lifetime.

They talk a lot about Camelot, on that day. Leon will recount tales of his youth as a young noble, growing up alongside Gwen and Elyan, and of his early years of knighthood under Uther and Arthur, and, sometimes, of Morgana. Merlin can mouth along by now but he likes hearing them all the more for their familiarity. In return, he'll talk about the many times he's used magic to get them out of a tight spot, or to make everything inadvertently worse, or just for fun. He also talks about what it was like to be a servant to Arthur, and Leon always sees right through his exaggerated complaints.

“You know, he has this really terrible way of brooding, when he gives you that look – you know the one? And then expects you to figure out what's wrong with him.”

Leon laughs into his cup of wine. “I remember that.”

“Drives me crazy. He used to do it while I …”

Merlin trails off, then, cold settling in his stomach. They usually talk in old Welsh with each other after Leon has reasonably pointed out that Arthur doesn't know anything else, so they had better keep the language alive at least a little bit for when he does come back.

“What?”

“I forgot the word.”

Leon covers his surprise very quickly. “No problem,” he says. “Can you describe it?”

“Like, when you clean something to make it shine – ”

“Polish?”

Obviously. “Polish. Sure.” Merlin runs a hand through his hair; it's shaking. “Fuck.”

“Well, that one you remember.” Leon sobers when Merlin doesn't react. “You do know it's alright to forget something.”

Merlin would like to explain in calm words what exactly it is that upsets him so much, but he can't. “No,” he snaps. “It's not alright! No one forgets this, because no one's been around to know it in the first place! If I don't remember these things then who will?”

Leon raises an eyebrow and points at himself. Suddenly all of Merlin's anger leaves him, and he's just old.

“God. I'm being an arse, aren't I?”

“Don't know what you're talking about,” Leon says, sipping on his cup.

Merlin has never been more certain that he doesn't deserve a friend like this.

Leon drags him to London, once. Merlin's stayed away from the big city up until now, convinced he'd hate the chaos and the people and the noise. He's right – he does hate it.

He also enjoys himself more than he has in a long time.

They go to the theatre first; Leon seems to know what he's doing when he takes Merlin to a play by Marlowe and one by Shakespeare and, in both cases, leads him into the back-stage area afterwards. Merlin's just a little bit surprised, then, when he introduces him to the authors, greeting them like old friends.

Shakespeare disappears within the minute to yell at one of his co-actors about a scene that didn't work out, but Marlowe talks to them for quite a long time, all the while glancing at Merlin with unmistakeable interest. He wonders how far they can take it with Leon here – it's not as if he doesn't know, but still, it seems a little impolite – however, when Leon excuses himself after half an hour and a pointed remark about how his friend doesn't know the city very well, and wouldn't it be nice to show him around for a bit, well, Merlin suspects that was rather the point.

He stays in London for longer than he planned to; not just because of Kit (and what a ridiculous nickname that is), but because he sort of starts to love all of the bustling life. To be completely unknown by the thousands of people around him brings along its own kind of freedom, one that he could never reach in isolation.

He has to leave again, though; the writer's and theatre's crowd is really getting on his nerves.

“You seem to like them well enough,” Leon says when Merlin complains to him about it.

“Yeah, you'd know. You're the one who set me up with Kit!” The accusation comes out without any real force, because obviously, Merlin is quite grateful for those months of easy companionship and sonnets. Dear God, so many sonnets.

Leon shrugs. “You need to get out more.”

He can't exactly argue with that.

“Say, Merlin,” Leon begins one day. “You can do an ageing spell, right?”

“Right,” Merlin confirms, unsure where this is going. His magic has diminished quite a bit but he still manages that much.

“What about other spells to change the appearance?”

“Depends. What do you want to look like?”

To give Leon credit, he barely hesitates before saying it. “A woman.”

Merlin pauses his writing to look up from his letter and raise an eyebrow.

“Not permanently,” Leon continues. “Maybe. I don't think. Either way, I'd like to try it.”

Merlin considers it for a moment, then nods slowly. Twelve hundred years of existence do put things into perspective quite a bit.

“Let's try it, then.”

In the end, it's not so different from any other identity they've created. It takes Leon, now Elizabeth, a little longer than usual to get the hang of it, but to be fair the dresses of this century do get pretty darn complicated.

It's strange when Merlin thinks about it; there was a time when he used to think of his friend as stuffy, uptight. Inflexible. The truth is that Leon is one of the most adaptable people he's ever known, fitting effortlessly into any place and period – it's Merlin who always sticks out like a sore thumb.

It seems that people like Leon belong in every time, while people like Merlin don't even belong in their own.

So, Merlin isn't exactly worried when he sends Elizabeth on her merry way and goes back to writing salacious letters to his new friend Isaac. He's thought up a joke about Newtonian fluids the other day, and really, it's about time he paid another visit to the library at the University of Cambridge (because apparently, universities are a thing now and Merlin still hasn't gotten over them).

Elizabeth comes back about two lifetimes later, when Newton's long dead and everyone has finally got it through their heads that the earth does, in fact, revolve around the sun and not the other way round (and really, Merlin could have told them that sooner, but when does anyone ever listen to him?).

She has a lot of stories to tell, about French philosophers who want to abolish kingship and nobility for the sake of letting the people rule themselves, about British colonies that won't bow to the crown any longer. Briefly, Merlin wonders whether this is the fight that Arthur was destined to come back for, though the longer he listens to Elizabeth's tales, the more he suspects that his king might not actually side with the monarchy on that one.

Being a king now is not the same as it once was, anyway. Merlin has watched from the sidelines as civil wars tore apart the land in the fifteen hundreds, not particularly inclined to help any of the leaders after being burnt at the stake that one time, knowing that each of them would gladly do it again if they could. He's watched the kingdom stretch and grow afterwards, spill over into an impossibly vast empire, invading and colonising and murdering all over the world. He still can't leave Albion, but the United Kingdom (and doesn't that name leave a sour taste in his mouth) is giant now. The people hardly know their king, and the king doesn't know his people – how would he? There's far too many of them to even begin counting. Merlin doesn't particularly care for politics; he likes to stay where he is, learn what he wants, heal whom he can and leave the rest to those who can be bothered to give a shit. He admits that the religious squabbles do hurt him a little bit; they make him think of the years he and Leon had spent with that brotherhood in the north, of their hospitality and support of each other, and wonders where along the way that idea got lost. Other than that, he stays out of it.

Elizabeth doesn't stay out of it, at least not in the way he does. It becomes evident through her tales that she cares a lot about the ways the world works, or should work, and her opinions are weighed and the product of intense reflection.

“Things are changing,” she says. “The time of kings might be coming to an end.”

Merlin shrugs. “They'll just get a different name.”

“I don't think so. You know about the Ancient Greek's political system, don't you?”

“Please. That was hardly as just as everyone makes it out to be.”

“I'm not saying the new times will be just,” Elizabeth clarifies. “I'm saying that injustice will be harder to spot, and harder to fight. We should tread very carefully.”

Merlin grins. “You mean, I should tread carefully. You're not a brash idiot like me, after all.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Now those are your words, not mine.”

“True.” He clears his throat. “Would you say you're a woman, then?”

Elizabeth looks out of the window, deep in thought.

“I don't think so. It was worth a try, but I'd feel rather more comfortable as Leon again. The dresses are great, though,” he adds. “Think I'm going to hold onto a few of those.”

The nineteenth century is terrible.

Not from start to finish, obviously, but overall Merlin thinks he could have skipped this one.

His magic is bleeding out of him at alarming speeds now. Merlin guesses it has to do with the dawn of what people like to call the industrial age, but it might as well be just circumstantial evidence because he has no clue why it's happening, really. All he knows is that it hurts. It's not the nausea that washes over him whenever he tries to leave Albion, but rather a feeling of being hollowed out, eaten away like a seaside cliff. At the end of the century, he is pretty sure he wouldn't be able to work another ageing spell if Leon asked him to. He spends more time in bed during those hundred years than he has during any other, reduced to lying in silence and blankly staring at the ceiling by his strange and persistent ailment.

Not even his studies can distract him from it. His usual method of just absorbing anything he comes across and adding it to the mounting pile of knowledge until there's nothing left he hasn't heard of doesn't work anymore, because there's simply so much being discovered all the time. Even the books he reads for fun are getting unbearably long, now that just about everyone and their mother seems to own a typewriter. He fears it's only going to get worse from here on out, and he might have to accept falling back in mathematics and chemistry if he wants to stay up to date on medicine, physics and astronomy. It irks him more than it should; he thought that after all those years he'd grown wise enough to embrace his limitations, but apparently he can't even do that.

There's other things he can't do anymore, either, namely, enjoy a casual night with a man back in his flat. Not that he has a habit of doing that often; there seems to be quite a lot going on amongst the writers but he mostly stays away from those. Still, the stories he hears left and right about people being arrested and sent into work prisons and asylums and rehabilitation camps are weighing heavily on his mind and heart.

He has a passionate but short-lived love affair with opium, which ends when Leon screams at him one night to get his shit together, and what would Arthur think of him? It's the lowest blow possible and they both know it; it's also the first time in thirteen centuries Leon has ever raised his voice at him. Unsurprisingly, it works.

Really, there are only three things Merlin likes about the eighteen hundreds: Jane Austen, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and the telephone.

He meets Jane completely by chance, when she comes to his hospital because she twisted her ankle while dancing a bit too enthusiastically. Her wit and biting sarcasm win him over immediately; on the last day of her recovery, he sneaks a bottle of wine into her room, they get drunk off their asses, and before he knows it he's told her his entire life story. She's delighted, probably thinking her doctor has a few very important screws loose – she believes not one of his words, of course, but they do write each other letters for a while after her release. Sometimes there's a first draft of a novel in the envelope, and he always sends them back with ruthless criticism; luckily she listens to none of his suggestions.

Leon, meanwhile, has always wanted to go to Russia. For this century, he's decided to concentrate on mastering the piano, although he can't stop himself from working at a farm on the side for twenty years before leaving it in the hands of a friend's son. Agriculture isn't quite what it used to be, anyway, so music it is, and apparently Russia is the prime spot for that.

He comes back after a while, his favourite composer in tow, insisting that Merlin absolutely has to meet him (which makes him suspicious immediately). When he introduces them, Tchaikovsky tells Leon in Russian that his friend seems nice, but would do well to brush his hair every once in a while; Merlin replies in the same language that he will if Pyotr promises to shave off that horrid beard.

They hit it off well. Very well, in fact.

Obviously, they argue all the time. Pyotr leaves his stuff everywhere and can't walk through Merlin's rooms without breaking at least two things; Merlin makes fun of his singing voice and calls him Peter, which drives him up the wall. It's quite fun, really, and he feels better than he has all century.

Peter never manages to shave off the beard; Merlin can't bring himself to care.

The only drawback is that Leon is unbearably smug about once again figuring out exactly what kind of person Merlin needed in his life and sparing no effort to get them to him. He doesn't rub it in his face (like Arthur definitely would), but Merlin can see it in his every gesture.

“You should try a career as a matchmaker.”

Leon pretends to consider it. Or maybe he really does consider it; the nineteenth century has done strange things to Merlin's friend. “You're not really looking for a match, though.”

“Dalliance-arranger, then.”

“That I could live with.”

Merlin likes the telephone, just to hear Leon's voice sometimes.

And then Leon goes and enlists in the army for the war of 1914.

He comes back, of course. He always comes back.

Merlin suspects it's the first time Leon truly hates his immortality.

He is very, very glad, then, that Leon has always taken such good care of him throughout the centuries, because now Merlin knows exactly how to return the favour.

Leon is different from Merlin, of course. Where Merlin needs solitude, Leon needs company; where Merlin needs distraction, Leon needs to talk about it. So Merlin makes sure to get rid of all the hidden alcohol reserves in their shared flat (save two bottles of good wine, for emergencies), then takes a glance at his practice's bookkeeping and figures he can afford to employ a war veteran as his assistant for a solid while. He sits with Leon in the evenings and endures the silence for as long as it takes for Leon to start talking about what he's witnessed, what he's done. Some evenings, that time doesn't come at all, and Merlin searches for something mundane or interesting to discuss instead (he still doesn't love philosophy, but he's getting there).

Some evenings, though – some evenings, Leon can't stop talking, even though there don't seem to be any words for the horrors he's describing. He speaks of explosions as loud as cannonballs fired inside his head, of gas that claws at his eyes and burns down his nostrils, of bullets riddling his limbs until they're heavy with lead, of an earth underneath his feet that shakes and crumbles and tears apart under the assault of mines and hand grenades. Of the thousands of lost soldiers, sleep-walking through the chaos.

“They all look the same, Merlin,” he says. “I tried to tell myself that they're different but they all look the same. We're all the same and there's no point to any of it.”

Merlin fiddles with the ring on his thumb, trying to draw some strength and wisdom from it. Truth be told, it sound like something he might say.

The work at the doctor's practice helps, at least a little. Merlin can tell Leon feels needed there, healing people instead of killing them. He still has this haunted look in his eyes more often than not: sometimes he spaces out in the middle of the day for minutes at a time, sometimes his leg gives out beneath him (a phantom injury, Merlin has started calling it); sometimes he wakes up at night and can't go back to sleep, sometimes he doesn't fall asleep in the first place. Merlin makes a point of leaving the door to his bedroom open at all times, an invitation to be woken whenever he might be needed. Leon takes him up on the offer quite often, and they spend many nights talking in the kitchen or on their living room floor. Merlin silently thanks whichever God has let this war happen in the first place that Leon isn't an idiot – like, say, Merlin himself – who thinks it necessary or noble to suffer alone.

He remembers how much Leon used to love theatre and takes them to the cinema for the first film of their fourteen-hundred-year-lives. It's unusual and weird and at first, Merlin almost regrets paying for the tickets; when the lights in the room go back on, they're both in tears.

He thinks he gets a little piece of Leon back, that day.

“Alright. Bed, wed, behead – ” Leon pauses, thinking hard. “Percival, Gwaine, me.”

Merlin snorts from his spot on the carpet. Recently, they bought some new furniture for their tiny hut next to where Avalon used to be; Leon insisted on having a coffee table, but the soft wool carpet was his idea. “Come on, that's ridiculously easy.”

“Let's hear it, then.”

“Marry you, obviously,” Merlin says, tapping the answers off on his fingers. “I've seen you married, you're a hundred-and-ten-percent husband material. And I know all of your terrible habits already, so I can circumvent them.”

Leon frowns. “What do you mean, terrible habits?”

“Next,” Merlin ignores him, “I'd behead Percival, because he has so much muscle on his neck that you wouldn't find an axe sharp enough to cut through it anyway. A bit of gauze and he'd be fine.”

“So you'd bed Gwaine?” Leon finishes, and Merlin really can't help the smirk on his face.

He leans in conspiratorially. “Or, you know, I might have already.”

“I knew it!” Leon exclaims, sitting up straighter with a start and almost knocking both of their wine glasses over. “I mean, I guessed it. Well, Gwaine practically said so, anyway.” He pauses for a sip. “He really liked you, you know.”

Merlin sinks back into the sofa cushion he's propped up behind him. The cushions were also his idea. “I really liked him, too.”

Leon nods. “Of course. He knew he'd never stand a chance against Arthur, though. I don't think he beat himself up about it too much, all things considered.”

“Arthur and I weren't,” Merlin starts to protest before he realises he's being an idiot. “Well. I guess I could have been a bit more subtle.”

It's Leon's turn to snort, then; Merlin hits him in the face with a pillow.

They spend the war of 1939 holed up in a cabin in the woods, designing a psychological rehabilitation program for veterans.

Their practice has been running for nearly twenty years since the end of the Second World War, as it's now called (inaccurately, Merlin finds; the world is much bigger than that, and cares much less). Merlin is sat at his desk, reviewing the results from their latest therapeutical experiments, while Leon goes over their bookkeeping.

Suddenly, an idea strikes him. He slaps his notebook shut; Leon flinches in his chair.

“Jesus, Merlin. What's wrong?”

“Let's be young again.”

Leon looks at him like he's grown a second head. He shrugs. “Sounds good.”

It occurs to Merlin that for all the time he's spent in universities, he's never actually been a student. He enrols in medicine and blazes through it, then in psychology, then in astrophysics with a side of quantum mechanics, and in Russian, and in geography, and in medieval history, just for the fun of it. (He hides a fond grin behind his hand anytime Isaac Newton is mentioned in one of his classes.) Leon, who is a well-travelled fourteen-centuries-old World War I veteran knight, feels a bit daunted by the prospect of having to assemble his own university time table, so after a few literature classes and a bit of dabbling in political science, he decides to stick to manual labour. Worrying about social spheres hasn't really occurred to either of them ever since the whole knight-and-peasant-thing lost its significance; Leon hangs out with Merlin's friends from uni, and Merlin hangs out with Leon's friends from the construction site (and later the instrument maker's workshop, and the bookbinding shop, and the toothbrush factory).

They smoke weed at home parties, and Merlin pretends he doesn't hate the smell and hasn't had much better highs from that woman in the Welsh woods, and Leon pretends he hasn't been using marijuana as part of his experimental PTSD-therapy for decades. They go to concerts, too; Merlin sort of regrets that Freddie Mercury wasn't around a hundred years prior, since it would definitely have brightened his century, and also it might have been easier (though terribly risky) to secure a date with him back then. Leon is so blown away by the Rolling Stones that he learns to play both the electric guitar and the drums within a year, and recruits three of Merlin's friends and a random person from the street to form a rock band. They never quite take off in a big way; Merlin still draws a banner with their logo to wave at potential future concerts.

(“So, one might say,” Merlin remarks when he visits Leon at practice and they're trying out some new song, “that this decade's music has … struck a chord with you.”

“Go away, Merlin,” Leon says mildly.)

They huddle around the radio when they hear of a man landing on the moon; Merlin has tears in his eyes, but Leon just looks disturbed.

They huddle around the radio, too, when there's news about the Stonewall riots in the States. Merlin's hands and stomach are tied into knots because he hasn't forgotten the fifteen hundreds, or the eighteen hundreds, or any other damn time before or after or in between, and he has a straight week of sleepless nights filled with memories of smoke in his lungs and fire in his hair before he finally decides that yes, he will join the very first Gay Liberation March in London. There's about eighty people demonstrating with torches in their hands; Merlin and Leon are two of them.

A couple of years later, London Pride march has grown to a size of two thousand people, and Leon shows up in a dress.

“Are you certain it's not magic?” Leon asks for the nineteenth time that afternoon.

“Certain,” Merlin answers, staring at the soft glow of the screen and typing in a few words. “How tall are you?”

“What does it matter?”

“I've told you, we're creating your online dating profile.” Merlin pauses, wondering how to best explain the concept – Leon's been a bit of a technophobe lately, but the twentieth century is coming to an end and Merlin has a distinct feeling that missing out on this internet thing would be a very stupid move. “You know, like the ads they put in newspapers, 'lonely lovebird looking for a nest building partner' – ”

Leon blanches. “I sincerely hope you didn't write that on my profile.”

“I will if you don't give me something to work with.”

“You've known me for one hundred and fifty decades,” he says slowly, like Merlin is the one being stupid here. “How much do you think I can tell you that you don't know already?”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Obviously. That's not what I mean. We need to pick an angle – some way to sell yourself. Not literally,” he adds at Leon's horrified expression. “Just, do you want to be the sensitive poet type? The mysterious heart-breaking rock star with a troubled past? The courteous honourable knight? The bluntly-honest-but-considerate blue-collar worker? The well-travelled revolutionary Englishwoman with a penchant for overthrowing governments?”

“Um,” Leon says. “All of the above?”

Merlin drums his fingers on the desk, thinking hard.

“I'll just write you like cats, then.”

“Why are we doing this, again?”

He swivels Leon's desk chair around, caging him with a hand on the armrest and poking his chest with his index. “Because you, my friend, haven't had a proper girlfriend in over a century, and I know your time in the army sometimes makes you feel like you don't deserve to be loved, which is okay, but it's also a load of bullshit. Also I still owe you for that truly incredible wing-manning you pulled with Kit and with Peter. It's the least I can do, really.”

Leon huffs out a laugh. “God, he hated it when you called him Peter.”

“Why else would I do it?”

“And … ” He pauses, hesitant. “You think this'll work?”

“I'm sure of it.”

“You won't be able to put me under an ageing spell, this time.”

“We'll figure something out. Leon, think about it.”

Leon thinks about it.

“It might not be the worst era for founding a family,” he finally allows. Triumph floods Merlin's chest.

“We'll find you the love of your life,” he promises. “Just you wait.”

A few months later, when Leon is writing strings of e-mails back and forth with a woman named Katherine, who also likes cats and the Rolling Stones and overthrowing governments, Merlin knows he was right.

Merlin startles awake at two thirty a.m., and he feels like he's back in Camelot.

It takes a moment for him to determine why: The dull, hollow, bleeding feeling in his chest that has been with him for a millennium and a half – it's gone. He extends a hand to the alarm clock on his bedside table. It explodes into pieces; in the mirror Merlin spots the golden flash of his eyes. He barely stops himself from tearing down the apartment building on the other side of the street, just to see whether it would work; he knows with a bone-deep certainty that he could do it with a mere thought.

On impulse, he cups his hands together and whispers nearly-forgotten words over them. An entire swarm of blue butterflies breaks free and fills his bedroom, settling on his dirty clothes, his books, his furniture, his excessive amount of house plants. The helpless laughter that pools out of him then is as much relief as it is exhaustion.

His magic is back.

Which means –

Which has to mean –

It's still about two thirty a.m., but Leon picks up on the second ring anyway because he's just that kind of guy.

“What's wrong?”

“Arthur – I think he's – No, I know – ”

Merlin has lost all ability to finish his sentences; he'll never finish a sentence again. Twenty minutes later, Leon is at his doorstep.

The drive to Glastonbury Tor hardly takes them two hours; Leon might be pushing the speed limit just a little bit. He's at the wheel, obviously, because Merlin is a mediocre driver on the best of days, and also a complete mess right now. His magic hasn't had time to settle and is buzzing right under his skin, making his own body feel foreign to him, like he's grown an extra limb and doesn't know what to do with it. Distantly, he wonders whether this is how a blind person might feel when they see for the first time, or maybe a new-born giraffe struggling to stand right after falling into the world.

Arthur would definitely compare him to that new-born giraffe, if he knew what a giraffe is.

Arthur.

Fuck.

The morning sun is just peeking over the horizon when they arrive at the hill. Merlin stumbles out of the car and starts walking, pulled into the mist by his magic, or his lack of sleep, or his general insanity, and what's the difference, anyway? Leon, who is luckily a little bit more sensible than that, grabs his jacket, his phone with GPS, a bottle of water and a thick blanket out of the car booth, locks the doors, and follows him.

At first, Merlin thinks it might be a Fata Morgana, because of how misty the air is today, and how fitting it would be for the name alone, and how he really doesn't want to get his hopes up. But when the hazy figure comes closer, he makes out chainmail, and wet blond hair, and a cloak in that distinct Pendragon red shade he would know anywhere.

Merlin watches, speechless, as Arthur's face breaks into an incredulous laugh upon recognising them.

“Merlin!” he calls, quite unnecessarily. “Leon!”

It's a bit of a pity that Merlin is frozen to the spot like that, overwhelmed with relief and nervousness and dread and a thousand other things, because he can hardly react when Arthur claps a hand to his shoulder and squeezes, hard. Leon, having the advantage of not being a useless idiot, is at his side in an instant, throwing the blanket around Arthur and clasping his arm tightly.

“It's – it's good to see you, sire,” he says, breathless.

“And you,” Arthur replies. “I'd never thought I'd – ”

He cuts himself off with a loud cough, and the part of Merlin's brain that is always running on medical autopilot recognises the sound of a common cold.

“You look like a wet dog,” he says, heading back into the direction of the car, and Arthur huffs and says, “Well, I wouldn't if someone hadn't thrown my body into a lake,” and Merlin says, “Ungrateful prat,” and Arthur says, “Still with the insolence, I see,” and “You haven't changed at all, have you?”, and it might not the best thing Merlin has ever heard but it's up there in his top five.

Arthur's mood dwindles quickly when he sees the car, and notices the strange fabric of the blanket, and the clothes Merlin and Leon are wearing, and just about everything else. He doesn't protest when they get him into the backseat, although he glares at the seat belt with apprehension. Merlin sits on the other side, unable to stop looking at him for more than a few seconds at a time; he feels a little bad about having Leon drive all the way to and back, but he'd probably land them in a ditch within a minute so it's for the best.

They spend the ride back to London in silence. Merlin doesn't want to overwhelm Arthur; he can practically see the multitude of questions forming in his mind, but he never voices them. Leon drops them off at Merlin's flat, under the unspoken agreement that Arthur will stay there for now (because it's what Merlin wants, and because it would be a bit much to spring on Katie and the kids at seven a.m. on a weekday).

“Call me if you need anything,” he tells Merlin, hugging him goodbye, and says once more to Arthur, “Good to see you, sire.”

And then he's gone, and they are alone.

“Right,” Merlin says, desperately reassembling his basic neurological capacities, “right. Let's – let's get you out of that thing – ”

He goes to his bedroom, hoping that Arthur won't destroy the flat in the two seconds that he's gone, and rummages through his closet for clothes that might fit. A faded green pokémon t-shirt from the actual, literal nineties and a pair of jogging bottoms are all he comes up with, but they will have to do for now; he's far too exhausted to think about anything else.

Arthur hasn't moved from his spot in the middle of the living room, dripping water onto the carpet. His hair has sort of dried during the ride back from Glastonbury, but the clothes beneath his chainmail are still soaked. Merlin flips on the light in the kitchen, figuring that the muddy water will be easier to clean from the tiles (not that he needs to worry about it because his magic is back), and pushes him into one of the chairs.

“Just so we're perfectly clear,” he says while loosening the clasps on Arthur's armour through sheer century-old muscle memory, “I'm not your manservant. I'm not anybody's manservant, in fact. Manservants aren't really a thing anymore; the trend right now is all about dressing yourself, you see.”

“I see,” Arthur echoes, clearly not seeing. “And my armour …?”

“Is also not really a thing anymore.”

“So you're undressing me out of principle?”

“I'm undressing you,” Merlin corrects, “so we can get you into the shower and then into clean and dry clothes before you get sick, because I have not spent fifteen hundred years waiting just for you to come back and die of pneumonia – ”

Fuck. Well, the cat had to get out of the bag sometime.

Arthur grows very still under his hands.

“Fifteen hundred years?”

Merlin smiles weakly. “More or less.”

“Maybe I haven't heard you because I've still got lake water in my ears,” Arthur says, slowly, “but just to be sure, Merlin – you're telling me that I've been dead for fifteen hundred years?”

“It's not going to get any less true the more often you say it, you know.” (He's tried.)

“How on earth can you be so calm about this?”

That gets a good laugh out of Merlin; it echoes joylessly around the kitchen. “Believe me, I'm really not.”

Arthur falls silent again; Merlin uses the moment to tug the chainmail over his head.

“So. I take it there's no one else left.”

“Well, there's Leon,” Merlin says. “And me.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Oh, how reassuring.”

Merlin would be angry – he really wants to be, in fact, because Arthur has no fucking clue – but he knows that the sarcasm is his way of dealing, so he bites back the reply and snaps his mouth shut.

“What about Camelot?” Arthur asks when Merlin is almost done tugging his boots off with a bit too much force.

“Gone,” Merlin says, unable to be gentle about it. “Gwen was a wonderful queen though,” he amends, “and her son made a great king.”

At the mention of his wife, Arthur's face goes blank; Merlin wishes someone would slap him so he stops saying all of these tactless things.

“Her son, King Elyan,” he pushes on, because it's too late anyway and he might as well put all of the cards on the table, “that she had with Leon. Her consort. She died happy, Arthur.”

Arthur nods, silent for a long while.

“You mentioned dry clothes?” he says eventually.

Merlin steers him towards the bathroom and shows him how to work the taps; Arthur seems deeply skeptical, but willing to accept the challenge of showering on his own like he would accept a mission to hunt down a dangerous magical beast. Merlin leaves the t-shirt and jogging bottoms on the heater, along with a towel, trusting that Arthur will manage to get out of his tunic and into these new clothes (which, he just now notices, aren't actually all that different, and maybe fashion is operating on a fifteen century cycle?).

He closes the bathroom door, pads back to the kitchen and sinks into one of the chairs. His hands are shaking, and he feels a headache coming on; other than that, he has no idea.

There seems to be potential for a tiny squabble when Arthur, fresh out of the shower and correctly dressed (but having forgotten how to turn off the tap, Jesus Christ), finds out that there's only one bed in the flat. Surprisingly though, he comes to terms with sleeping on the couch very quickly.

(“It's red, Merlin,” he says, “and it looks quite comfortable. Unless there's a bug infestation you're not telling me about, I don't see what's wrong with it.”)

It's almost nine in the morning when they call it a night.

Predictably, Merlin doesn't sleep. At all.

He half-considers just going to work like nothing happened, but in his state, he would probably kill all of his patients by accident, so he calls in sick. He answers some e-mails. He texts Leon that everything's fine (which it is, even though it feels like a lie). He makes himself more coffee than is reasonable, or even remotely healthy. He eats five biscuits and an orange. He might leave for a run to the grocery store; he's not quite clear on that. He picks up a book, several times. He cleans his flat with magic, and tries a few other spells to slowly get it back on track. He pointedly doesn't go into the living room.

Mostly, he stares into space and tries to process.

It's nearing ten in the evening, and he's busy going over the same page of his novel for the fifth time (Mansfield Park, first draft straight from Jane, pure comfort-read), when the door to the kitchen slowly creaks open. Arthur pokes his head in.

“I was just – could I – ” He clears his throat. “Some water?”

Merlin gestures towards the sink. “Help yourself. Glasses are in the cupboard on the left.”

Arthur gets himself a glass, then stands in front of the sink, motionless. He huffs in frustration. “Could you, maybe … ?”

It takes a while for Merlin to register what the problem is.

“Right,” he mutters. “Right – indoor plumbing – ”

He takes the glass out of Arthur's hands and goes to fill it. It slips out of his grasp, shattering in the sink.

“Fuck – I'm sorry – ”

Calmly, Arthur reaches into the cupboard and hands him another glass, his fingers brushing over the ring on Merlin's thumb. Merlin doesn't break that one, but it's a close call. While Arthur downs the water, Merlin grips the sink, hard, and tries not to lose it completely.

Arthur sets the empty glass on the kitchen table and looks at him, hovering close.

“Are you … ?” he says, and apparently the aborted question is all it takes these days.

“Fifteen hundred years,” Merlin hisses, and bursts into tears.

He hadn't wanted to, certainly not now, not with Arthur here – not that Arthur hasn't seen him cry on countless occasions, but really, couldn't he have gotten this over with literally any other time – but he can't exactly stop.

“Merlin,” Arthur says, a bit helplessly, and that's when it occurs to Merlin how terrible this entire day must have been for him, waking up in a world where nothing makes sense and everyone is dead except for his wife's second husband, and his manservant, of all people, who, during their last conversation, has revealed to him that he's lied to him for a decade, right before failing to not let him die, and whose flat he's now trapped in, while said former manservant has a breakdown in the fucking kitchen, like, he really could have picked a place with more comfortable seating options –

“I'm sorry,” Merlin repeats hoarsely. “It's – I know you've been through a lot – just give me a minute to – ”

“Merlin,” Arthur says again, and something in his voice stills Merlin. Arthur clasps a hand to the back of his neck; it's solid and warm and easily the best thing Merlin's ever felt, period. “I'm glad you're here.”

If Arthur thought that would make Merlin stop shaking, he's wrong.

When he pulls Merlin in for a hug a second later, though, it does help a little.

Merlin buries his face in Arthur's shoulder and grasps tightly at the shirt on his back; the familiar smells of both his king and his laundry detergent calm him into breathing regularly. The hand on Merlin's neck has slipped into his hair; the other one is rubbing soothing circles into his back, and he takes a moment to curse Arthur Pendragon for being excellent at hugging on top of everything else he's already excellent at. Granted, Arthur's nose is a bit cold against his skin, but nobody's perfect after all.

“I'm getting snot all over your shirt,” Merlin says when he finds his voice again.

“That's fine,” Arthur says, ever magnanimous. “It's your shirt, anyway.”

E P I L O G U E

“So,” Arthur says. “Would someone care to explain to me why we're making this trip, again?”

“To mourn you,” Merlin says, not looking up from his game console.

“Even though – in case it has escaped your notice, Merlin – I'm sitting right here?”

“It's a tradition, you pillock. Have some decorum. Also, you're not the only one who died.”

Arthur huffs, conceding that point. “And we're on this frustratingly slow train because … ?”

“Because Katie needs the car to take the kids on a camping trip, I'm trying to be mindful of the environment, the faster train options were really fucking expensive, it's too far for bikes, and the horses are not happening, Arthur, we've been over this – ”

“I'll convince you yet,” Arthur says confidently.

“I'd like to see you try,” Merlin shoots back. “Actually, no, I have seen you try. Please stop trying.”

Arthur, probably already planning the next step in his endeavour to bully Merlin into buying horses, gestures towards his console. “Are you done soon?”

“Just one more level.”

“What is this, anyway?”

“Knights of the Round Table: Quest for Camelot Part II,” Leon says from the other side of the booth, nose buried in his newspaper, because Arthur knows Merlin, but Leon knows Merlin.

“There's two parts?”

“This is the better one,” Merlin says. “I returned Part I because neither Leon nor I were in it.”

“That's ridiculous.”

He shrugs, which he finds is a remarkable feat given his current position. They're in one of those closed six-people compartments; Arthur and Leon have taken the window seats, while Merlin is lying on his back, sprawled across the two seats next to Arthur, feet in his lap. Their bags are on Leon's side, which may not have been the smartest move, if the growing stack of empty crisp packets in front of him is any indication. “The graphics are nice. For example, the king in those doesn't look like a complete cabbage head.”

“Fifteen hundred years and you still don't know how to insult me,” Arthur says, poking Merlin's feet.

“Hey, don't do that. You know I'm ticklish.”

Leon snorts, and Merlin realises his rookie mistake a split second too late – a split second before Arthur goes in for his attack. He kicks back immediately, struggling until Arthur gets a hold of his legs and pulls him closer. The console gives its disappointed game-over-whine.

“Great,” Merlin sighs. “I was almost at a save point, too.”

Instead of showing any remorse, Arthur snatches the console out of Merlin's hand, leans down and kisses him, which, well, Merlin's not complaining.

He grins into the kiss and cards a hand through Arthur's hair; he doesn't need to look to see Leon's dear-lord-you-are-actual-children eye roll. Merlin also knows that Arthur would be completely down to just make out for the rest of their train journey, but that seems a little impolite.

With a healthy amount of regret, he pushes Arthur off him and gets to his feet. “I'm going to the dining car for a coffee. Want anything?”

“I'm going,” Arthur says immediately, dragging Merlin back into his seat. “You'd just get lost on your way back.”

“There's only two directions,” Leon says.

“Your point being?”

“Think you can handle paying for the drinks?” Merlin teases, thinking back to Arthur's mildly disastrous attempt at buying the train tickets and getting confused over the various coins of different sizes and values. (Merlin's been there, himself, many times; doesn't mean he can't make fun of it.)

“Well, I never will if I don't practice.” Arthur tosses a confident, winning smile over his shoulder that Merlin absolutely hates him for. “If all else fails, I still have my natural charm to fall back on. Leon?”

“Green tea, please.”

“Fucking hipster,” Merlin mutters; Leon kicks his shin.

When Arthur has closed the door to their compartment, though, he looks up to see a wide grin directed at him.

“What?”

“You're even further gone than I thought you were.”

Merlin feels his face heat. “Well, I'm sorry if the romance has gone out of your marriage – ”

“It really hasn't,” Leon says, still grinning.

“ – but I've been holding out for this for a while, you see, so I'll be damned if I don't enjoy every second of it.”

“Yeah, no, you're right. It's just, well … ”

Merlin grunts, burying his face in his hands. “I know, okay? I know. Completely beyond rescuing.”

“Don't worry, we've all been there,” Leon says. “Sort of.”

In a show of solidarity, he takes the science section out of his newspaper and hands it to Merlin.

He's halfway through an article about the latest revelations coming from that particle accelerator in Switzerland (which, well, since his magic is back full-force, Merlin can't exactly say he hasn't dabbled in creating a tiny black hole or two of his own) when there's a knock at the door to their compartment. Arthur's standing outside with three paper cups in his hands and an impatient quirk of his eyebrow. Merlin's eyes flash; the door slides open quietly.

“Thanks,” Arthur says. “Also, there wasn't really much change to count because train food is ridiculously expensive, so I dodged that bullet.”

“Interesting use of expression,” Merlin comments.

Leon takes his cup of green tea from Arthur's hands with a grateful smile. “Thank you, sire.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “You're welcome, sir knight.”

“Ah, sorry. Old habits are hard to break.” Leon pauses. “Really old habits seem to be really hard to break. Arthur.”

The king shrugs. “Still better than any of the names Merlin comes up with.”

“Don't know what you're talking about,” Merlin deflects immediately. “Also, what took you so long?”

“There was a queue,” Arthur says, plucking the newspaper out of Merlin's hands, shoving the cup at him, and then climbing back over Merlin into his window seat. “Really, one would think that fifteen hundred years of waiting would teach you some patience.”

Leon laughs, turning a page in his paper. “Too soon, mate.”

“'Mate' is worse than 'sire',” Merlin grumbles. “And I did not wait fifteen hundred years. I travelled all of Albion and seduced Russian composers.”

Arthur hums. “You're really proud of that one, aren't you?”

“You had better shut up. I know for a fact that you love Swan Lake, and also you would have absolutely slept with him.”

“Not with that beard. I've seen pictures, Merlin.”

“You did kind of wait for Arthur, though,” Leon points out mildly.

“Thanks, Leon. What a great ally you are.” Merlin empties three sachets of sugar into his coffee and enjoys both of his friends' winces.

“Merlin,” Leon says, solemn, “you know I love you dearly, but this I'll never understand.”

Merlin shrugs. “We have a long night ahead of us.”

“Yes, speaking of which.” Arthur clears his throat. “So, what's the protocol for these – grief evenings?”

Merlin glances over at Leon, who picks this moment to take a slow sip of his tea, the bastard. “Well, it's – there's a lot of reminiscing – some crying – a bit of eating – ”

“And drinking – ”

“Yeah, lots of drinking – that's it, basically. We get really pissed and talk about the good old days. Sometimes we watch a film.”

“We play games, too,” Leon supplies. “There's a labyrinth board game in the cottage, and another one with tiny plastic rabbits and carrots. You'll like that one.”

“It's a bit like a funeral,” Merlin adds, “but also a bit like a sleepover.”

“Well,” Arthur says, clearly confused. “That sounds depressing. And fun?”

“You'll get the hang of it,” Merlin promises.

Just as Arthur has gotten the hang of everything else, so far. Merlin can't help the pride blooming in his chest when he thinks about how well Arthur's adjusting. His English is great (even though he still complains about how completely stupid this language is, and really, Merlin, how could you ever let it come to that), he can work a computer just fine, he figured out how to operate a food processor of all things, his driving skills are better than Merlin's, he's friendly with the neighbours and great with their kids, he rides his bike to his job. He has a job, for crying out loud, at a farm just outside of town run by one of Leon's friends and her wife (Arthur seems to share Leon's love for farming; they can talk about growing vegetables for ages while Merlin sits by and gets bored out of his mind). He sells produce on the market on Saturdays and goes out for a pint afterwards, either with some of the other vendors, or with Merlin's friends from the hospital, or with his own friends from the gym (he goes to the gym). He watches weird videos on youtube and cooks dinner for Merlin while they discuss philosophy – and Merlin was right, Arthur loves philosophy, and sociology, too, even though he doesn't think the world is quite ready for an Arthur Pendragon who has read Marx (“How do you know I haven't come back to life to start the communist revolution, Merlin? I think you don't”). Merlin takes him to a club, Arthur takes him hiking, Leon takes both of them to the museum.

Sometimes, they sit down in the kitchen, and Merlin talks. Talks about centuries upon centuries of living, whatever he remembers, whatever he thinks Arthur is ready to understand (or what he is ready to share). He talks about their time in Camelot, too – his version of it. Arthur doesn't speak to him for two days when Merlin finally explains the full story behind Kilgarrah's release; on the third day, though, Arthur tells him about some of the tough calls he's had to make, and that he may understand why Merlin did what he did, and that he might possibly have acted the same way in his position. (He is really angry with him about the whole Mordred mess. Then again, so is Merlin.)

Some mornings, Arthur wakes up with a haunted look in his eyes, just like Merlin does. Some of their days are difficult and heavy with all of the things they don't want to, can't talk about, yet. But at night they always falls asleep in each other's arms, and that's good enough for Merlin.

Right now, though, Arthur's staring at him weirdly, and Merlin realises he must seem like he's on the verge of crying, which he very well might be. He downs the rest of his coffee, along with the sugary sludge that has formed at the bottom, and wipes at his moist eyes like he's tired, like both of his friends aren't going to see straight through that shit.

“Anyway, it can't be long,” he says, getting back into his initial position of being sprawled across the seats. “Wake me when we're almost there, yeah?”

Leon nods absently, having gone back to his paper, but Arthur is tugging on his hand until Merlin gets it. He rolls his eyes, then swivels around to pillow his head on Arthur's thigh.

Arthur's hand relocates into his hair. “That's better.”

“You're messing up my hairstyle.”

“What hairstyle?”

Leon snorts.

“Fuck both of you,” Merlin says. Arthur grins down at him.

“I love you, too.”