Chapter Text
Gold.
He blinked, and his body was not his own. He was thin, so thin, bones harsh and wrapped tight under skin, sallow and gaunt. His hands were pale, bone and skin and veins. And he knew, now, that he was not himself. He was another man, somehow, and he knew that he was not in the dungeons of Camelot, but somewhere else. His actions were not his own, he had no control. It was as if he were watching through someone’s eyes while they acted, and he remembered. Here he was Merlin, though he did not know why. He was in a house, still smoldering, the scant possessions flung around the room, as if they had been robbed, or attacked. And through Merlin’s eyes, he looked down. Two people, bleeding out on the earthen floor of the ramshackle house, light fading from their eyes. “Merlin.” The man rasped, clutching his hand with one that was gnarled, thin and weak and hardened by a lifetime of labor. “Promise. Promise you will care for them. As if they were your own.” He felt the tears run down Merlin’s face, felt his hand wipe them away as his breath rattled in his chest. “Always, Peter. They will always be cared for. I will love them as my own. I promise.” And Peter breathed his last, and Merlin choked back a sob.
He watched as Merlin sobbed, for only a few minutes, before stifling them, shoving a fist into his mouth and wiping furiously at his eyes. His heart ached, as he watched. They had cared for Merlin. They took him in, gave him a home and a purpose among their small family, loved him as if he were a brother, and not a stranger that had stumbled onto their small plot of land. How he knew this, he wasn’t sure, but he did. He had never been quite as close to Merlin as Gwaine or Lancelot, or Arthur, but he was his friend. A good friend. And he wanted to wrap him in his arms and tell him that their deaths were not his fault, because he too knew what it was to lose family, to see the life drain from their eyes and to know that they would never come back. To have to carry on, holding that, for the rest of your life. How the grief stabbed you in the chest over and over, never truly fading, sharp and jagged and raw as the guilt, the pain, consumed you. How even years later you would catch yourself trying to find them in a crowd, or just around a corner, and your heart would break and shatter all over again when you remembered that they were gone, never to return. But here he was not a participant, only a spectator. So he watched, and prayed that he would be able to find Merlin and let him know that in some small way, he knew. He understood.
Merlin stumbled to a small bassinet, where for the first time he registered the sounds of toddlers crying, desperate for their parents. They were thin, emaciated creatures, pink and wailing from wet, red mouths, terrified and alone. These were the children that Merlin had promised to protect. Given his oath to a dying mother and father, who had trusted that Merlin would love and nourish where they could not. They were starved, all of them were starved. And he knew, just as he knew who the dying couple were, that this was no isolated incident. A famine. The Great Famine, as it would come to be called, where crops all over the lands failed, livestock died, and people starved in droves, dropping like flies. He shushed the small children, picking them up with shaking hands and cradling them to his chest. He saw how they calmed under his touch, trusted him, loved him. “Hush now, Mary, Peter. Uncle Merlin is here. Mummy and Daddy- can’t come back, but I- promised I would look after you. I will always be here, my little ones.”
He watched, horrified, as Merlin stumbled out the little house, the ground saturated and thick with mud, on weak legs that could barely hold his own weight up, let alone two thrashing children. “Please, Mary, Peter, please, shhhh, hush now, all is well.” He tried to soothe the children, weakly bouncing them on stick thin arms, as they wailed and sobbed for their parents. They would pass people, sometimes, ghastly and stretched, as if they were walking corpses. Their eyes were inhuman, almost, driven to their most animalistic by their hunger, empty and dull as if they were already dead and had not realized it quite yet. He stumbled through the night, with two sleeping toddlers on his shoulders, every trembling muscle aching with exhaustion and his heart wrung out with grief. And yet he carried on, with a single minded focus that was breath taking, awe inspiring. The love of a parent, given to him with a final breath. Tears trailed down his face, smeared with soot and ash and mud, as flashes of broken memory passed by. A meal at a table, simple and meager, with Peter and Mary, tiny and helpless, their parents lovingly keeping watch. Playing with them, making little bursts of magic pop and sparkle over their crib, peals of squealing baby laughter the result. A happy home, destroyed by starved villagers, desperate and mad with it, ravaging in search of something, anything, to eat. And in shocking clarity, he realized that if they were to return to the house, the corpses they had left would be stripped of flesh and organs, consumed by their neighbors.
Merlin stopped at a stream, trickling lazily in its bank. He dropped to his knees, bones rattling against the ground, and he lowered the sleeping twins to the ground. “Peter, Mary, wake up. Water will help.” He murmured, his tongue a paddle in his mouth and throat dry. He gulped the water with his hands, fighting through cramps as he clutched his stomach. “Please, wake up.” He begged the children, shaking them until they roused. He scooped small trickles of water into their open mouths, their wordless wails quieting for a moment. They stared at him with wet, round eyes, full of grief and horror that no child should know. He wanted so desperately to reach out, to join Merlin in his memory, to care for these children that had lost everything, to rock them to sleep and protect them. Their crying resumed, subdued but still present. Soft, sniffling sobs, as if they were terrified of making sound, if they had grown twenty years in the blink of an eye. He watched, as Merlin, with trembling hands, brought out a knife, and fear filled his chest, that he would break his promise, and would slaughter two children in cold blood. But instead, he felt the smallest touch of magic, a fire popping into existence, and heard the muffled screams as he cut chunks of flesh out of his thigh, cooked them, and fed them.
The scene shifted, and Mary and Peter were slightly older, and they were in a house. As if the magic that bound him here had spliced two memories into one complete story, the pretext given just before. The children were talking, and they looked almost healthy. No longer skin and bones, but a little fat, not enough but more than there was, filled them out. Merlin’s hands were still gnarled, the tight wrap of skin still the same. And he knew that Merlin had fed them from his flesh, to make them strong, and healthy, given up his own body to nourish them, to keep them alive. He wanted to sob, to tear his eyes away, because he could still feel the slice of a blade cutting into his thighs, his calves, his arms, anything he could give to feed them. Because Merlin could not die, but they could, so he gave them pieces of himself to stay alive, to live and grow until he could no longer keep them from Death’s door. How Merlin loved, and loved, and loved. He had never realized, even across worlds, how much the man was willing to sacrifice, most of all himself, for those that he loved. He cut himself open, night after night, because he had made a promise to the two people in the world that had loved him, and he would not break his oath.
“Give Uncle Merlin just a second, alright, loves? I’ll be just outside.” He told the two children, their bright, clear eyes looking up at them. They nodded, and he turned and went outside. He left the door open, to hear the children better if they called for him. He pushed his fingers into the mud, and oh. He had never felt magic himself, never had any talent with it, but it was- unfathomable . The swell, the connection, the gentle energy of the world tethered into a web that covered the earth beneath his feet, to the furthest reaches of the sky. He felt as fingers stroked the tired land, coaxing it to life, commiserating with the exhausted soil as it labored, waterlogged and starved just as the men that walked it were. Waves and waves of calm, gentle, love, soothing the earth back to what it had once been, dark and luscious and full of life. A few small plants pushed up, rapidly growing to harvest, wild berries and wheat. He carefully stripped the gifts of the land of their fruits, whispering his thanks for what it had provided, kneeling back down and pressing energy into the land, letting it spread past the fields, into rolling hills and beyond. Magic was balance, he realized. Merlin had taken, and returned.
“Look, my loves! Look what Uncle Merlin has found!” He called into the small, titled house, and he saw as Mary and Peter’s eyes lit up with delight. “Eat! Eat!” They cheered, swarming around his legs with dark eyes full of love. He pressed kisses to their heads, setting his small bounty on the table and beginning the long process of cooking. He carefully ground the wheat into a rough flour, tugging open a few cabinets until he found a little jar of oil, barely more than a vial, a lone egg and a battered bowl. He poured the small measure of oil into a pan over the fire, crackling and sizzling as it heated. He mixed the rough flour with the egg and a little water, creating a dough with the consistency of paste. He crushed the berries into the dough, staining it red as he folded them into little pockets. He dropped them into the oil, frying them quickly. It was a special occasion, he realized. He was giving Mary and Peter something special, because they were small and defenseless in a cruel, cruel world, with only the love of Merlin to keep them safe.
Mary and Peter were standing up in rickety chairs, talking excitedly in words broken by squeals as they waited for their supper. He carried the little cakes out to them, and they cheered with high pitched words, clapping and laughing, acting like children and somehow able to see past their own tragedy. “Happy birthday, my loves.” Merlin murmured to them as they shoved their birthday gifts into their mouths, as he let himself starve further just to give two toddlers the best birthday he could provide. To see the devotion, the love of Merlin, was the most powerful thing he had ever witnessed. He could see the greatest feats of magic, the greatest storms and the elements under one man’s control, but he knew that this was strength unfathomable, the strength that warriors could only dream of. The strength to sacrifice yourself over and over, because there was someone weaker and smaller, and they needed you.
And it was then that it felt as if hell had crawled from the depths and poured onto the land, as voices crested over the wind, harsh and cruel and grating. Merlin stiffened, fear lancing his heart as he clutched onto the two children, trying his best to calm his racing heart and not let them realize they were once again in danger. But Mary and Peter were intelligent, having seen this once before and knowing the outcome. Mary’s dark brown eyes filled with tears and her small frame shook with silent sobs, but she covered her mouth with her hands and stayed silent. Peter tucked his face into his little tunic as if he could hide, trembling and shaking. And he could feel Merlin’s heartbreak at the sight, that two children could know how to hide, because they had watched their parents slaughter, and he tucked them under his chin as if he could protect them. And that was when hell descended upon his home.
The door was shoved open, and Merlin stumbled backwards, clutching his children. He saw what looked like skeletons wrapped in paper pour in, a group of five shambling, starving beasts, chasing the scent of meager food, of blood and fat and muscle. The one at the front, a ragged man leaning heavily on a walking stick, torn and shredded vestments hanging off his emaciated frame, brandishing a torch and leering at Mary and Peter as if they were pigs fattened for the slaughter. “Warlock.” He murmured, as his hollow eyes darted around the room and saw the remnants of their celebrations. “Damned warlock. You, who sold your soul to the Devil, fed these children with the seed of the Wicked, fattened them up for sacrifice.” And he knew, though he still did not know how, how the man quoted that which he did not understand, a book used to condemn because he wanted, he craved, and would do anything to get his hands on it. He craved fat and bone and flesh, hollowed and gutted with hunger that pushed him and those who followed to depravity.
Merlin shook, with his fury, his fury wrought from his love, his hands tightening around his son and daughter, the very last of that which he could call his own. “They will be as Isaac was to Abraham, Warlock. With their blood we will cleanse the land of your damned filth, their blood will water the soil and bring back our harvest.” He was crazed, with his hunger, and those behind him chittered their echoes of his words, a cacophony of murmurs, passed between thin and cracking lips, rusted and brown with dried blood. He saw those who called him damned and thought that this was what damnation was, to twist that which was sacred into that which condemned, which justified the hunt and destruction of innocents. And he heard as Merlin’s breath turned ragged, jerking and shaky inside his chest, and felt the swell of magic, the unfathomable fury of his protection, of his devotion. He would not let them take his children. He would burn them to the ground, would tear their throats out, would kill anyone who threatened that which he loved. And he heard the jagged, desperate scream, and a flash of light blinded them all. And where five walking corpses had stood, only ash remained. Merlin fell to his knees, and sobbed over his children, who he would kill for, would die for, would cut himself into pieces over and over for. They would only know love for the rest of their days. He would make sure of it.
A voiceless whisper, soothing and gentle, wrapped around him, as he left the memory, returned to his own body. To now know how deeply Merlin had loved, over and over. Every day of his life, he had loved, his entire being brimming over with it, desperate and feral. His love was a gift, bestowed on them all, unworthy and undeserving, yet they received it anyways. He would never, for the rest of his life, let that love be wasted. He had been given the love of a god, the love of Magic itself. Never again would he let that go. He would honor that love until the end of time.
Will you shoulder his burden ? He was asked.
Yes, I will. He responded.