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Chapter Text

For the Druid legends are true: Merlin is Emrys. A man destined for greatness, a man who will one day unite the powers of the old world and the new and bring the time that the poets speak of: the time of Albion

– Gaius (4x7, The Secret Sharer)

Merlin sat on the edge of the lake. Mud clung to his clothes in the same was dried blood still crusted his hands, even the never-ending rain failing to rinse him of it. He looked at it. It spoke a truth Merlin could do little with – not accept, not deny. All he could do was sit in the numbing downpour of rain and hope that eventually, he would drown in it.

There was nothing left.

Nothing left to get up for. Fight for. Just a resounding emptiness that was consuming him inside to out, every breath driving it deeper and deeper, no matter how long Merlin held his breath. The rain never ceased to fall, the pain never seemed to stop. If the rain was all that was left, there was little point in finding shelter, taking that away as well. Merlin sat there, in the rain, paralysed by the growing wound that made healing seem impossible. He hoped it never would.

<<>> 

The rain still hadn’t stopped. The Queen stood at the top of the stairwell, staring at her own solemn reflection in the window that overlooked Camelot. The raindrops raced down the panes of glass, the sky still weeping for what she could not yet prove. A shuffling behind her had her turning her head to face the source.

“Gaius,” she said, eyes wide. “Has there been any news?”

“I’m afraid not, my lady,” the old man said, shaking his head. Gwen let her breath leave her slowly, trying not to let it shake her shoulders. “I’ve come to talk to you about... well it’s a delicate matter.”

“Please, Gaius. We’ve been through enough together.”

“There’s been talk of... It’s been a week, my lady. The people are shaken, a great many men were lost to the plain, and with such unsurety, well...”

Gwen sighed. “Camelot needs its King.”

“Queen, Gwen. Camelot needs its Queen.” Gaius looked at Gwen as she ducked her head, biting her lip. She pressed her chin to the heel of her hand as she fought the tremors once more. “The council is calling for a coronation, and at the very least a royal decree. At least to placate the people and Camelot’s enemies.”

“This wasn’t how it was meant to be, Gaius. He’s meant to come home,” her voice finally cracked, “Arthur’s going to come home.”

Gaius reached for her hands, holding them in his own. “My lady... when I saw him...”

She lifted her head and looked the old man in his eyes. “I will not usurp my husband while there is no evidence to tell me he is gone. As long as there is even the chance that he breathes, his kingdom remains his own.”

Gaius sighed. “I would not suggest otherwise, my lady. But I fear that if no action is taken, the crown will not fall on the head of any Pendragon for much longer.”

Gwen stared at him, brown eyes deepening as she considered her options. Neither was acceptable, and as of then she was still Queen. As such, she would find an option acceptable.

“I need proof, Gaius. I need you to tell me where Merlin was taking Arthur.” Gwen squeezed his hands, begging the old man. She needed to know the world’s truth before she could know her own. “Tell me where Merlin is.”

Gaius hesitated, until he shook his head. “It’s an arduous ride, especially in these conditions,” he gestured to the weeping sky, “A day at least, three at most.”

“But you know how to get there?”

Slowly, he nodded.

She squeezed his hands gently once more. “I’ll notify Leon and Percival. If you’d prepare some maps?” Already, her voice was stronger, more assured.

“I will, but... My lady, it’s been a week. With nothing but rain such as this...” he trailed off, and Gwen frowned.

“Tell me.”

“Merlin, he wouldn’t have stayed away this long if... I fear that you may not find Merlin in the state we remember him. If at all.”

She swallowed, pressing her lips together. “And if I am unable to find him?”

“I’m afraid that it will still be the answer you are looking for.” A bright bolt of lightening flashed outside of the window, and only a moment late thunder rang through the sky, shaking the citadel beneath their feet. Gwen looked at Gaius and nodded, before pulling her hands from his grasp and striding away from the window and down the corridor.

<<>> 

She’d found a servant to summon Percival and Leon to the royal chambers, and she was pouring herself a goblet of wine when they knocked on the heavy door.

“Come in,” she called, the open door revealing both knights. Each of them had dark under eyes that told stories of sleepless nights, but it was nothing compared to the droop in their shoulders, the missing light in their eyes. She put down her goblet to face them.

“I’ll go,” Leon said just as she opened her mouth. Percival nodded beside him, stoic.

She smiled sadly. “Camelot needs – I need to know. Definitively. So that the next step can be decided upon. I hate to ask this of you but-”

“You don’t need to ask, my lady,” Percival interrupted her.  “We’ll find the truth for you. For all of us.”

She closed her mouth before starting again. “Gaius will provide you with directions, I’ve already ordered horses and supplies to be readied, but there is something more you need to know...”

They frowned, and Leon tilted his head.

“Merlin... he... Well, it is not my place to tell you his business. But I would ask that no matter what you find, you remember all that Merlin has done for us, for Arthur. That you’ll never look at him with something other than friendship, which is all that he has offered each of us.” Gwen spoke sternly, looking both of their puzzled faces in the eyes.

Leon and Percival shared a confused glance between them, but she was relieved to see them dip their heads to her.

“You are our Queen. And Merlin is our friend. You have our word,” Percival said, and she nodded.

“Thank you.”

She turned and walked further into the bed chambers, and heard the oak door open and close, footsteps leaving the room. Without further ado, she ripped open the chest she kept at the end of her and Arthur’s bed, digging through it to produce her old riding pants and warm furs.

“Gwen?” She slammed the chest down, spinning with her hands holding it closed behind her back.

“Leon? I thought you left to get prepared.” He pressed his lips together in silent apology before his brows began to draw together. She sighed. “I’m coming with you,” Gwen admitted.

“My lady, I really don’t think-”

She held up a hand to silence him. “Neither you nor anyone will stop me from going to search for my husband. If there are answers to be found by a lake, then I will see them for myself.” She stared at him, daring Leon to challenge her on this, to tell her that she should stay in the citadel like an idyll wife playing at being Queen.

He relented before he said anything. “Should I order another horse be saddled?”

“I did so when I ordered yours.”

Slowly, Leon nodded. “Then I will leave you to prepare, my lady.”

He turned and exited the chambers. Gwen turned back and opened the chest once more, finding her gloves, thick socks, and old leather boots. She wasn’t a queen searching for her king, she was a wife – a blacksmith’s daughter – searching for her husband. For the man she loved, and would love no matter his ranking, nor his fate.

<<>> 

She met Leon and Percival in the courtyard, all of the wrapped in the red wool of Camelot cloaks. She climbed onto her horse, and looked at each of the men. “Are you ready?” she asked.

Both of them looked like they wanted to say no.

She clicked her horse forward anyway, her ‘me neither’ lost to the wind and rain that rushed past her as Camelot’s Queen and two knights cantered out of Camelot, and towards everything she feared.

Chapter Text

Despite the wind and rain, the crackling skies, they rode hard towards the lake Gaius had directed them towards. Gwen adjusted her hood over her head once more as the horses continued to trek through the mud. Ahead of her, Leon’s mount marched on, while Percival trotted up beside her.

“Are you alright, my lady?”

She looked him over. “I could ask you the same question.”

Percival pursed his lips, but said nothing more. They had spent the night under an embankment in the Darkling Woods, and had been riding since. The rain was yet to give up, and Gwen was beginning to fear the flooding of crops through the kingdom would only worsen their troubles. She told herself Arthur would know what to do, when she found him.

Ahead of them, Leon stopped his horse suddenly, holding up a hand and dismounting. Percival was quick to follow, and Gwen wasted no time doing the same.

She stepped through the mud, leading her horse to where Percival and Leon looked over something on the ground. They made room for her as she approached. “What is it?” she asked. The knights shared a look.

“A grave,” Percival said grimly. “Fresh, and marked.”

Gwen felt her throat grow tight as she swallowed roughly.

“It’s no more than a few days old,” Leon added. She heard what was left unsaid. They were close to the lake, if Gaius’s maps were correct. The timeline fit. She shook her head slowly. Gwen watched as Leon raked his eyes over the ground, fresh dirt laid beneath a tower of rocks, surrounded by a concentric spiral of stones. He narrowed his eyes. “Why are the rocks laid out this way?”

“It’s traditional by the Old Religion for graves to be marked this way,” Percival said. “This is a sorcerer’s grave. Or a follower of their ways, at least.”

Gwen, despite herself, let out a breath of relief. This couldn’t be Arthur’s grave. She closed her eyes in desperate thanks.

“Hold on,” Leon said, and Gwen opened her eyes. “There are markings on the keystone, beneath it.” He stepped forward to reach out, Gwen stopped him.

“Should we really disturb this place?” It felt... wrong. She couldn’t explain it, but standing here over this grave, in the wind and the rain, it felt like something was here.

Percival frowned. “Perhaps it’s a name.”

The knights looked at her, waiting. She glanced back at the stones – the inscription beneath the crowning rock creeping over the side. Reading the name would hurt no one, she told herself. Gwen waved a hand, and Leon again reached for the stone.

They watched as he lifted it from the pillar and turned it over. Leon blanched.

“What?”

Leon looked up slowly and spun the stone so that they could see it. Gwen blinked as she read over the small, neat writing that nothing short of magic could have inscribed on a rock.

“Here lies Morgana Pendragon. Foreewestran andcwisse ealdorlegu ic i ċīeġe” Leon read softly. Gwen looked back at the grave, in shock.

“Do you think its real?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Leon responded. Gently, he replaced the stone to the pillar. Percival watched them, and shrugged.

“We need to keep going,” he said roughly. Gwen nodded, though she couldn’t quite steal her eyes from the grave. The knights turned back towards their horses, but Gwen stayed still for another moment, standing in the perpetual drizzle.

Morgana had been so full of hate – so bitter. But they had also once been friends. Closer than friends. Gwen shook her head. Morgana was the reason for all of their pain, all of their suffering. She hoped it really was her, laying beneath the dirt. She hoped it was.

Gwen finally ripped her eyes from the grave – Morgana’s grave – and mounted her horse. Percival was right, they needed to keep going.

She clicked her horse forward, and they followed the final stretch towards the lake.

<<>> 

Merlin hadn’t moved. He hadn’t really cried, either – not since it had started raining. Crying meant he had to accept it, and that felt unimaginable, and inexcusable. So he sat, on the muddy shore of a lake that had stolen so much of him, and he let the cold engulf him.

There wasn’t anything running through his mind, just a reverberating dullness. He hadn’t thought, hadn’t looked at more than the clouded distant tower and the blood-soaked, dirt encrusted fabric that cloaked his legs. Merlin clung to himself, to his legs, to his head. He didn’t wait.

He just sat by the water, and wished it would take him, too.

<<>> 

Through the trees ahead of them, Gwen finally caught glimpse of grey water, rippling and lapping at the edge of the forest. She pulled in a breath, and jumped from her horse. The knights followed her down. Gwen walked a few steps forwards before she faltered.

Leon and Percival stood either side of her. No words were spoken, but she let herself close her eyes, centre herself. She would return tonight with an answer. And she had to face it, no matter what it was.

She nodded, and they led their horses to the edge of the lake.

“Which way do we search first?” Gwen asked, working to keep her voice, and herself, steady. Strong.

Leon looked both ways. “We should split up. My lady, you and Percival can search to the left. I’ll head right.”

“What if we find something?” Percival asked.

“Shout.”

He nodded, and they each began their search. Percival offered a hand to Gwen as they climbed over a fallen branch. “We’ll find them,” he said, when she got her skirt coat caught and quickly became flustered, tugging and pulling until Percival calmly unhooked the fabric from a spur.

She thanked him with he eyes and took his hand to get over the branch.

They kept walking, leading their horses along the lake front. It was still wet, the perpetual drizzle meaning Gwen’s usually regal white gelding looked a sadder grey, with brown mud sticking to his coat up to his knees. Every once in a while, she would call out Arthur’s name, and each time she would wait for a response. The thought herself a fool when he never called back.

The brush gave up after a small while, the shore becoming more open and plain. Percival took the opportunity to swap the gloves he’d ripped while trying to clear a path for the horses with a fresh pair. Gwen watched as he did so, and saw the angry red marks still burnishing the skin of his wrists. She winced, and caught hold of his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She didn’t mean for the scars that would be left.

“It’s not your fault.”

Gwen released his hand. Gwaine’s funeral had been held the day before last, but it had felt surreal. As if it couldn’t really be Gwaine on that funeral pyre, wrapped in Camelot’s red. They had all lost enough people to know that the delusion was part of the price of love.

They continued their search. With every step, the hope leached from Gwen’s heart. Until they heard Leon’s voice calling over the sound of the slow rain on the lake.

Percival and Gwen shared a wide-eyed look, and then spun, dragging their horses behind them as they ran and scrambled as fast as they could. They re-entered the woods, passed the point they had separated from Leon earlier, and soon they were out of the woods once more to another open clearing at the lake shore. In the distance, they could see Leon. Each of them clambered onto their horses and urged them forwards, as fast as they could go. Percival’s mare was faster and soon pulled out in front. Gwen pushed her gelding forward, rushing towards where Leon had called for them.

Ahead of her – while the wind and rain stripped her face – she saw Percival launch from his horse to where Leon was kneeling. Gwen wasn’t far behind, and it was barely seconds before she could see a small figure next to Leon. A figure.

She leapt from her horse towards where Percival and Leon were now standing, but just as she saw that it was only Merlin, curled in the mud, she collided into Leon’s arms.

And then she screamed.

It was only Merlin.

That was answer enough.

Leon held her tightly and tried to spin her around, take her eyes away, but she fought and struggled against him. “No, Leon, let me go. No. Leon! No. Let me go! Leon! No!” she cried, but she only rocked her, side to side, as she pounded her arms against him and the realisation of what they had found – or not found – came crashing down around her. It was only Merlin. Merlin, but not Arthur. Not her husband. Not Arthur. Only Merlin. It was mere seconds before she couldn’t see because her eyes stung too much, but she looked anyway.

Gwen looked at the way Merlin hadn’t so much as moved a finger. He hadn’t looked even looked at Percival, who knelt in front of him. She looked at the way he saw nothing. “No,” she sobbed again into Leon’s shoulder as rocked them from side to side, arms tight around her torso. She didn’t have it in her to feel thankful, even as she crumpled, and the only thing that stopped her from hitting the ground was him.

She didn’t know how much longer she stayed in his arms, but eventually, Leon let go. When he pulled away, the wetness on his cheeks could be blamed on the rain, but the redness in his face and the water in his eyes had no explanation other than the fiery sting of tears.

Leon blinked, and fell to the grass beside Percival, in front of Merlin. Gwen fell to her own knees, unable to do much else.

“Merlin?” Percival asked softly.

“He hasn’t said a word to me. He hasn’t even looked at me,” Leon said quietly to Percival.

“We’re going to have to bring him back. We can’t leave him here.”

“He can ride with me.”

“Do we need to look around?”

He shook his head. “I did while I waited. And- ”Gwen saw Leon glance back at her. “look.” He whispered, and she watched as he pointed at something on Merlin’s pants. She blinked her eyes clear and let out a sob. It was blood.

Percival nodded his head, solemn, and placed a hand on Merlin’s shoulder. “We’re going to move you onto a horse, Merlin,” he said quietly, and nodded to Leon, who placed his own hand beneath Merlin’s shoulder. Together, they lifted, getting to their feet and bringing Merlin up with them. Gwen still knelt on the ground in the rain, and she saw the moment Merlin’s eyes truly opened.

“No,” he said, quietly at first, stunning the knights. They paused, but didn’t let go of him. “No!” he said, louder, pulling himself from Percival and Leon’s grips.

“Merlin?” Leon asked, but Merlin was shaking his head side to side.

“No, you’re not taking me back.”

“What?”

“Are you deaf? I’m not going back to- There!” Merlin shouted, falling back to the ground and grabbing his legs, returning to his huddle.

“Merlin you have-”

“No.”

The knights looked at each other. “We can’t leave you here, Merlin,” Percival said. “We’re taking you home.”

Again, they pulled Merlin up, but this time he thrashed and screamed, crying and wailing that he wouldn’t leave, he wouldn’t go back to Camelot. He flung his head back as he fought to escape Percival’s grip, hitting him in the cheekbone with an ugly noise. Percival dropped him and swore over the pain. Merlin was still hysterical, scrambling to evade Leon.

The knight begged him. “Please, Merlin, we just want to get you out of the rain. You’re our friend.”

Merlin still refused.

Gwen – from where she knelt – finally got to her feet, trembling and nauseous. She crept towards Merlin and grabbed his face in both of her hands, despite the knights’ protests. She held his face and looked him in the eyes, tears in hers as she faced the pain in his. “We need to go home, Merlin,” she said, her voice hoarse and ugly. Raw.

He looked at her, and still he shook his head, but it was calmer. Less desperate. “I can’t.”

“Please.”

“Camelot was never my home. He was,” Merlin said, and the crack in Gwen’s heart only cleaved further apart. More tears ran down her swollen face.

She swallows and nods quickly. “We need to go to Camelot, Merlin,” she tried again, pleading him silently as she cupped his face, stroking his cheek. “To Camelot.”

Merlin didn’t do anything for a moment, until he started to shake his head once more. Tougher than before. He wrenched himself out of her grip. Then he pushed her away.

Gwen stumbled backwards, looking up at Merlin, before she heard a resounding thud of skin against skin, bone against bone. When she steadied herself, Leon was catching Merlin from falling to the ground, and Percival was shaking his hand. She gaped at him.

“He wasn’t going to agree,” Percival said quietly. Gwen pressed her lips together. They couldn’t stay out in the rain, no matter how much she didn’t want to leave. She turned her back to them and looked out into the mist covering the lake, filtering the light. She wanted to storm in and take back her husband – to grab him by the ear and pull him back to the land of the living. She wanted the whole lake to disappear. Gwen sniffed.

“Put him on a horse. We ride for Camelot.”

Chapter Text

Merlin rose to consciousness against the familiar texture of his bed linens – just as he had the past decade. The room is dark, and no sounds of the city drifted through his window, only Gaius’s usual snores. Slowly, silently, Merlin turned over in his bed, nestling further against the pillows and adjusting the blankets. Drowsy with sleep, Merlin paid little heed to the fact that Gaius’s snores were sounding from the chair beside him, rather than the next room. Merlin tugged the blanket a little more until Gaius let out a loud wheeze, sitting up straight in the chair.

“Merlin! Are you awake?” Merlin heard Gaius ask. He peeled his eyes open once more and blinked the sleep from his eyes as he shifted in his bed, sitting upright. When he finally opened his eyes, rubbing them with one hand as Gaius lit a candle by his bedside, Merlin realised where he was, and what had happened.

“No,” a hoarse whisper escaped his throat. “No, I’m not meant to be here. I can’t be here,” Merlin cried. He fought to free himself from the tangle of blankets – of which there were far too many – and scrambled out of his bed, fleeing to the doorway.

“Merlin-” Gaius tried to catch a hold of him, but the old man was not quick enough to his feet as Merlin dashed for the door. When he opened it, he came face to face with Leon.

“Leon, you have to let me go,” he said breathily. “Let me through, I can’t be here. You know I can’t be here. Please,” Merlin begged, all while Leon ignored his pleads. Merlin battled against Leon’s strong hands on his shoulders, guiding him back towards his bed without a word. “No, you have to let me go. This isn’t right. I need to go,” he cried again, pointlessly. Merlin was distraught as Leon forced him back down.

“Merlin,” Gaius’s voice seemed distant, even as Merlin could see his mouth moving only a small distance from him. “Merlin you need to breathe. Deep breaths, Merlin,” Gaius’s voice drifted towards him. Merlin focussed on it against the swift beating of his heart, his chest rising up and down at a rapid pace. “Slower, Merlin. Hold your breath for a few moments,” Gaius guided, and Merlin listened to him, his still-tight grip on Leon’s tunic starting to loosen, the white of his knuckles started to fade. “That’s right,” his voice slid into the foreground more with every breath Merlin took, as he started to lean further back against the pillows, his body succumbing to the weakness that he felt flood his body.

Leon helped him back onto some pillows gently, propping up his head a little. Leon squeezed his shoulder gently before stepping back, nodding to Gaius muttering something that Merlin didn’t bother to catch. They were keeping him here, and there was nothing he could do. Not like this.

Gaius placed a hand to Merlin’s forehead. “You’re feverish, my boy. You’ve contracted a lung infection, and your body is fighting it. You need to rest.”

“I can’t. Not here.”

“In your state, you won’t make it out of Camelot.

Merlin lolled his head to look at Gaius, and hesitated. His heart clenched. “Fine, I just-”

“No,” the old man didn’t let him finish. “I’m going to fetch some herbs for your fever. I’ll be back in a second, Merlin, rest.”

Merlin watched as Gaius shuffled towards the door, and as it opened, Merlin caught a glimpse of Leon, sitting on the steps down to the main chamber.

He didn’t feel the time pass, and soon Gaius was coming back through the door with a tincture in hand.

“Drink this,” he said softly. “It will help.”

Merlin had no energy to fight him. He said nothing as Gaius pressed the cup to his lips and tilted it, and Merlin swallowed the solution. Gaius wiped his bottom lip when he was finished, and placed the cup aside. Merlin looked up at him and watched as the world began to spin.

“I added a sleeping tonic to help you rest. So you can recover.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” Merlin slurred, “I want to get out. I’m not allowed here.”

He felt a gentle hand cupping his face, and Gaius smiled softly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re allowed here, Merlin. It will be alright eventually.”

Merlin’s eye’s fluttered as he fought to lift their weight, eventually succumbing. In the darkness, he whispered. “You’re wrong, Gaius. It will never be alright again.”

<<>> 

The next time Merlin woke, it was to the sound of muffled voices drifting in from the main chamber.

“-need to see him, Gaius,” a soft voice spoke.

“Percival tells me you’ve been awake all night. You need your rest, my Lady,” Merlin heard Gaius say.

“So many people I have loved have been taken from me cruelly. My father, Lancelot, Gwaine, Elyan, Arthur...” she trailed off. “I don’t want to wake and find that he has gone as well, without so much as a goodbye.”

“Merlin wouldn’t leave you without saying anything-”

Their conversation trailed on, but Merlin couldn’t let his mind follow anything said following Gwen’s list. He lied still in his bed, unmoving. Gwaine. Why did she list him too?

Gaius had told him. He had told him that none of his friends but Arthur has sustained life-threatening wounds. Merlin stared at the wall across from him. A single, lonely tear ran down his face and soaked the pillow beneath his cheek. It couldn’t be true.

He didn’t know how long it was before a door opened and shut, followed by Gaius’s familiar breathing as he cracked open the doors to Merlin’s room. Merlin squeezed his eyes shut against the light’s assaulting brightness.

“Merlin? Are you awake?”

Merlin didn’t look at him. “Gwaine too?” he asked.

Gaius sighed. “He and Percival went after Morgana, alone. His funeral was held a week ago.”

Merlin said nothing. The grief didn’t feel the same as it used to when he lost somebody. Now it was as if the emptiness only got vaster, deeper, wider. One more person he loved, dead because of him. Since it was always because of him. Gaius was still breathing beside him, and Merlin could feel his eyes on him.

“Are you going to drug me again?”

“Do you want me too?” Merlin had no answer, and Gaius placed a small bottle on the bedside table. An offer. “You should talk to Gwen.”

Merlin stiffened immediately. “No,” he said resolutely. “No. I can’t.”

How could he face her, after what he had done?

“Eventually, you need to. If not for your own sake, then for hers.”

“I need to leave.”

Gaius sighed and moved back towards the door. “You can spend the rest of your life regretting a decision. Or you can spend it regretting many. It’s up to you, Merlin, but I won’t spend the rest of mine regretting the moment I let you walk out that door. You’re not going anywhere until your lung infection has cleared, physician’s orders.” Gaius walked out the door, and shut it behind him. Merlin swallowed at sat up in the old man’s wake.

He looked at the tincture sitting on the table beside him in consideration, before he grabbed it and pulled the cork out with his teeth, emptying the contents into his throat.

Sleep took him soon after.

<<>> 

Rain was still punishing the roof of the citadel, and a particularly loud clap of thunder pulled Merlin from his induced sleep. For the first time, when he woke up, there was light pouring in through the window, though dulled from the clouds.

He blinked his eyes open as he recognised the sensation on his hand – another holding his own. He tipped his head over to find the culprit. Guinevere, squeezing his hand as he slept.

“Merlin!” she exclaimed, and he sprung up, fighting the sheets and her grip on his hand in his effort to get away. Her forehead creased. “Merlin, it’s just me. It’s Gwen.”

“Please leave me,” he begged. He didn't look at her, staring instead at the wall that he’d pressed himself against. He didn’t really know why he’d done so, but he knew he couldn’t see her. Feel her. “Please.”

“Merlin-”

“I don’t want to see you,” he said coldly.

There was no response for a short moment, until he saw her straighten from the corner of his eye. “Look at me,” she said. Ordered. As a queen. “Look at me.”

Slowly, Merlin turned his head, still pressed against the opposite wall. “I can’t-” he tried, but she cut him off.

“This isn’t fair, Merlin.”

“Gwen-”

He watched as her queenly composure faded once more, leaving the girl he’d known only as his friend. His best friend. It hurt to look at her and see the pain that welled in her brown eyes.

Something softened inside of him. She was dressed simply, as she used to. Still in fine silks, but not in courtly attire. Her hair was pulled back, messy, and the rings around her eyes were deep. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. Weeks, more likely. Looking at Gwen, the fight started to drain out of Merlin. He remembered Gaius's words from before.

“I’m sorry.”

Gwen breathed heavily. “It’s not your fault.”

Merlin winced. “I’m so sorry, Gwen. I- I failed you. Him. Everything. It is my fault, and if you knew the truth, you would not be in this room with me.” His voice shook but was scarily clear.

“I know about your magic, and I’m still here. I know you, Merlin. You would never do anything to harm me, or anyone you loved. Not without cause.”

Merlin's eyes snapped up. “You- my magic?” he stumbled over his words.

She walked towards him, slowly, and reached for one of his hands. His mind was swirling with to many thoughts to pull away from her touch. “I’ve suspected in the past that there was more to you. Gaius confirmed it recently. Merlin-” She squeezed his hand as his breaths became more rapid. “It changes nothing.”

Merlin searched her eyes, emotions fighting for dominance for the first time in what felt like years. “I’ve always wanted to tell you Gwen, I-” he finally whispered, quietly. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

She pulls him into her arms, and he tentatively crossed his own around her back. After a few moments, he buried his face in her neck, like he had so many times before. “There is nothing to be sorry for. You’re my best friend. Nothing could change that.

Merlin shuddered and held her tighter. She did the same.

They stayed like that, holding each other and listening to the rain fall for ages, until Gwen finally pulled back. She had remorse painted across her face as she opened her mouth, hesitating. Merlin knew.

“I need to hear it from you, Merlin,” she said softly. “Please.”

For her, he’d face those words. For her, he would do so many things.

“For all my magic, Gwen, I couldn’t save him.”

It was Merlin’s turn to hold Gwen up as she buried herself into his chest. Wordlessly, his planted a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

Chapter Text

A week had passed since Camelot had raised its black flags. Every night since, bells rang loud and clear – a tone for each year of prosperity the late king had brought his kingdom. Merlin did his best to drown them out each time, though he could never escape their echoes.

Gwen had been crowned Queen of Camelot at the start of the week. Merlin, despite Gaius’s pleads, hadn’t attended. He stayed in his room, simmering over the latest dilemma.

“My magic is gone.”

Gaius had looked up from the bench to see Merlin standing at the steps leading from his chamber. “Merlin?”

“My magic. It’s gone,” he’d said, dryly. “The same as before. With the Gean Canache.”

“That can’t be right,” Gaius had frowned. Merlin held out a hand, eyes fixed on a medicine book beside Gaius.

“Strangath,” he said.  There was no gold, no warmth or the familiar spark. There was nothing.

Since then, Merlin hadn’t really left his room.

There was a knock on his door, and it opened to reveal Gaius, with a heavy tome in his grasp. “I managed to find this in the library’s secret room, with Geoffrey’s help. I believe it shed’s some light on the issue with your magic.”

Merlin said nothing, and Gaius sat himself on the end of Merlin’s bed beside him. “At first I thought it must have something to do with Morgana’s earlier attack. There are no written records of anyone ever regaining their magic following an encounter with the Gean Canache, as it does not only steal one’s magic, it devours it. But somehow, you regained yours in the Crystal Cave.”

“Emrys is magic itself. As long as there is magic in the world, so I will be. As long as I am here, magic will exist,” Merlin said, not bothering to detangle his words from the cryptic web. Gaius blinked at him for a moment before carrying on.

“This text writes of magic as being something of the heart. When the heart is broken, so too is your connection with magic,” Gaius explained slowly. “It is my theory that your inability to access your magic is a trauma response.”

Merlin swallowed. Gaius said it so optimistically, and Merlin could not for the life of him see why that was a good thing. “What are you so happy about that?” he asked bitterly.

“It means that there is a strong chance it’s temporary. You are the only thing standing between you and your magic – when you wish to reach it, it will be waiting for you.”

Merlin stared at the book glumly. Temporary. Nothing about this felt temporary.

“There has to be another way,” he said.

Gaius looked at him, unsure. “If it is as I suspect, then it is in your hands, and nobody else’s.” It always was, wasn’t it. Merlin bit back his tongue. Gaius sighed. “To change the subject, your lung infection has cleared away nicely. You should be back to full health within days.” The words sounded positive, but Merlin knew Gaius wasn’t stupid. He knew what that meant.

“I have to leave, Gaius.” Merlin looked the old man in the eyes as he said it. “You know I do.”

His shoulders slumped. “I know,” Gaius said, resigned. “I wish you wouldn’t, that you would stay with those who love and care for you, but I will not stop you.”

“There are so many that haunt these halls – I don’t want to do the same.”

There was a short silence before Gaius placed a gnarled hand on the side of Merlin’s face. “I do understand, my boy.” He took his hand away. “Where will you go?”

Merlin shrugged. “I don’t know.”

<<>>

That was the first night Merlin left the infirmary. Night had fallen over Camelot, and the rain had slowed to a quiet drizzle across the kingdom. Merlin navigated the empty halls like he always had, until he arrived at the heavy doors of the library, the torches still burning bright, even at the late hour.

That’s where Gaius said Gwen would be.

Sure enough, when he pulled the door open, the warm glow of the library flooded him and stepped inside, finding Gwen, Leon, and Percival sitting around a table they’d nestled between some shelves.

They looked up, and the knights greeted him, though he refused their offer for a seat. Gwen looked up from her page and smiled at him, though there is no happiness behind it like there once was. She was dressed in all black.

“What are you doing?” Merlin asked curiously.

Gwen quirked an eyebrow. “Research. I’m lifting the ban on magic.”

Merlin stumbled back, unable to help himself. She said it so simply, he was sure he had heard her wrong. “What?” Percival and Leon hid their smiles as Gwen repeated herself. “Really?” he asked, still in shock.

“Yes, really. Honestly Merlin, what did you think?”

“I- I’m not sure what to say,” he admitted. Percival and Leon sat in silence.

He knew Gaius had told them of his situation, and since they hadn’t said anything, he had figured they were still processing the realisation. Merlin, as much as he wished he did, couldn’t really bring himself to care what they thought, after all that had happened over the past weeks.

“How about a toast,” Percival finally broke the silence, raising his goblet over the table. “To all that magic has done for us over the years.” He looked at Merlin with acceptance in his eyes, but Merlin forced his smile. Leon too raised his glass, and Merlin nodded with respect and thanks. He was, through it all, grateful for them.

“To all that he’s done,” Leon toasted, and Gwen joined in, giggling softly for a moment.

Merlin realised that was the first sound of joy that had left Gwen’s mouth for weeks. Shame filled him. He cleared his throat and straightened.

Gwen breathed out, putting her goblet down. “You’re here to tell me you’re leaving.”

He looked at her guiltily. “Gwen, I...”

“You needn’t explain yourself, Merlin. I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my own mind, once or twice,” she said. Merlin stared at her, the tragic Queen of Camelot. Beside her, Percival and Leon nodded their own agreements. Gwen rose from her seat, closing the book in front of her as she did so. She wrapped her arms around Merlin and he reciprocated, pulling her tighter in their embrace. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

She pulled away, wiping a stray tear. Merlin stole her hand and gripped it firmly, one final comfort.

Leon and Percival started to discuss the logistics, asking him what he required for his travels, whether he needed a horse or an escort, where he was going. Merlin smiled at the both of them – he knew they cared, even after learning of his magic, and that was all he could really ask for.

<<>> 

Merlin was settling in for his final night spent in Camelot. He had eaten his supper with Gaius at the table, as they had thousands of times before, and now he leant over his window, staring out over the flickering lights in the hearths of Camelot. The rain had paused, but still there was no moon visible through the clouds.

His head whipped away from the view when he heard the door creak open. Gwen crept through the door. “Gwen?”

“You didn’t think I would let you go so easily, did you?”

He huffed, but came to sit beside her as she settled, cross legged on his bed like they used to spend their evenings, years ago. In front of her sat a wooden box emblazoned with the Pendragon crest.

“I thought you might want these – in the years to come.” Her voice wobbles, but she was not crying as she pushed the box towards him. Merlin looked at her for a short second before tentatively reaching for the small chest, and opening the latch.

He gasped as his eyes fell upon what was tucked inside of it.

“Gwen... I can’t take these,” he said as he thumbed through the items she had prepared. Arthur’s crown. The pendragon sigil. His mother’s ring. A red tunic that Merlin had washed by hand countless times, lay delicately folded at the bottom. Merlin thought he could smell the familiar scent of him just as he stared down into the chest.

“Don’t be silly. I have his whole castle. His kingdom. Everything he grew up loving, everything he owned. This is the least I can give you. And look-” she reached into the bottom of the box, pulling out a small pendant he had missed. Gwen opened the locket to reveal a pressed purple flower – just like the ones they used to exchange – concealed inside. “This is so you don’t forget me,” she said softly.

Merlin gulped. “I could never forget you,” he replied quietly, head hanging close to hers. She moved forward to press their foreheads together as they sat across form one another.

“Are you sure you want to leave,” she asked. “I- I don’t know how I’ll do this without you.”

The familiar shame bolted through Merlin once more. He knew he was being selfish. “I can’t stay here. But you, you’re the strongest, bravest, kindest, smartest, most amazing person I’ve ever known. You have Gaius, Leon, and Percival. Your people love you. You’ll be fine. I know you’ll be fine.”

“What about you? We love you – need you.”

“You’re a better person then I’ll ever be, Gwen,” he said, avoiding her question. She breathed out, and stopped fighting it.

“Will I ever see you again,” she asked, pulling back to look him in the eyes.

There was a long silence.

“I promise you will. One day.”

Gwen stared at him, but ultimately resigned. Merlin gently closed the latch to the small chest of Arthur, and placed it on his bedside table. Gwen moved, laying down on one side of the bed with her head on the pillow, and Merlin followed her down.

They fell asleep clinging to each other, in that tiny bed.

<<>> 

 The sun was fresh in the sky as they all gathered in the courtyard the next morning, the rain pausing briefly but a cool breeze still ruffled their hair. Merlin stood on the steps of the citadel as Leon approached with a horse beside him. Arthur’s mare, Llamrei.

“You’re the only person who can ride her,” Leon said. It was true – the mare had a strong spirit and had carried Arthur faithfully, but she never let many ride her without trouble. Merlin supposed he was the only one left.

Leon has packed the saddle bags, and Merlin had slipped the wooden chest Gwen had given hm the night before into one of them, saving it from the elements. He’d also had Gaius cast simple preservation spell over the items that morning. A bedroll was strapped to the back of the saddle, and Merlin breathed deeply. It was time.

Before a single word could leave his mouth, Gwen pulled him in for a fierce hug. “I love you,” she muttered into his neck. He repeated it into hers, before pulling away and placing a soft kiss onto her cheek. She embraced him once more before pulling away.

Once they’d parted, Merlin moved to shake Percival’s hands, a thanks for all that they had been through together. Percival had used his outstretched hand to yank Merlin into his own crushing arms, patting him firmly on the back before letting him go.  When he released him, he pressed something into Merlin’s hand.

“It was Gwaine’s. He’d want you to have it.”

Merlin looked at the trinket he now held. It was Gwaine’s necklace – the chain that held a ring and a crescent shaped pendant. Merlin had never seen him without it. Merlin closed his hand tight over it, nodding in acknowledgment. Percival did the same.

Merlin wasn’t sure why they were all gifting him things, but he couldn’t refuse them. For Leon’s turn, and he handed the reins to Percival for the moment, he unbuckled the red cloak around his shoulders and draped it over Merlin’s.

“Good luck,” Leon said, before clapping him on the shoulder and ruffling Merlin’s hair one last time. Merlin smiled softly, batting him away only to run his own hand through Leon’s hair as revenge. Though he laughed, Merlin could see the wetness starting to pool in Leon’s eyes.

Gaius was the last.

“Promise me something, Merlin,” Gaius said.

“What is it?”

“Find something to live for, until Arthur returns. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me – us. The people who love you. Live for something.” Merlin didn’t say anything, he just stepped in Gaius’s arms and squeezed him close.

“You were the best father I could have asked for,” he said at last.

“And you, my son,” Gaius murmured back.

When they finally parted, Merlin climbed onto Llamrei’s saddle. His friends stood together on the steps leading up to the castle. Gwen was between Leon and Gaius, head leaning on the old man’s shoulder. Percival’s hand gripped Leon’s shoulder. Merlin knew they would be fine – after all, they had each other.

He turned his head away from them to look around the courtyard, empty at the early hour. He had spent so many years here, and he had so many memories. When there were four of them, Arthur, Gwen, Morgana, and himself, and memories of when there were seven. He could almost see Elyan helping him with his chores, Gwaine dragging him by his arm, or Lancelot laughing. Arthur walking by his side. He could almost see it.

He looked back once more at his friends, and smiled sadly. Merlin turned his head from them, and clicked his horse forward, out of the courtyard and towards Camelot’s gates.

Chapter Text

Merlin sat atop Llamrei, standing on the crest of the main trail to Camelot. The sun had risen further into the sky as Merlin gazed at the waking castle.

“I can’t stay,” he told her.

To Camelot, he whispered his goodbye.

He clicked, and Llamrei began to walk forward, and Merlin left Camelot behind him. He didn’t look back as it fell out of view.

<<>>

Merlin rode all day, only stopping for short intervals to allow his horse a rest and a drink. Night was already beginning to fall as Merlin arrived at the head of a familiar valley. The rain had come back in full, blustering force hours ago, and the thunder crashed often over the mountains. His hair was plastered to his forehead and he huddled under Leon’s red cloak. He pushed Llamrei forward until night had fallen entirely and they had reached the centre of town. Merlin breathed in the air of his childhood home. Ealdor.

Mud squelched under his boots as he opened the barn door, and Merlin led Llamrei out of the rain. The small barn was warm with straw and the sweet, familiar smell of his mother’s chickens, goats, and the old donkey. He unsaddled the mare and slipped her into the stall in the corner. It was small – his mother had never had a need for horses, but had wanted a stall for when she cared for the neighbours horse, when Merlin was a child. Merlin left his belongings in another corner, and stepped back out into the rain, walking a little further to his mother’s front door.

It took a moment after he knocked for the door to be pulled open, Hunith appearing in the doorway, wrapped in a woollen blanket.

“Mum?”

The rain falling on the thatched roof was loud, but Merlin couldn’t have missed the excited squeal Hunith made as she dragged him into a tight squeeze before manhandling him through the door and into the inside of the house, warmed by the small fire in the hearth.

“Merlin, you’re soaking!” she exclaimed, making quick work of the buckle holding the cloak over his shoulders and replacing it with the blanket from over her own. “You must be freezing, what were you thinking, riding out in such weather?” She tsked, continuing to babble.

Merlin didn’t say a word, allowing his mother to fuss over him, until she frowned. Hunith draped the sodden cloak over her arm and looked up at him. “What is it?”

Merlin’s voice – and his entire body – finally cracked.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

It had not been two weeks since the end of it all, and none of the pain had lessened. None of the emptiness had receded – in fact, it had only grown. Merlin had tried his very hardest to keep his mind on smaller matters, for Gwen’s sake while he was in Camelot, and for his own through the long journey to Ealdor, blocking any thoughts of him from his mind. He hadn’t shed a tear his first night in Camelot.

They had to come out eventually.

Tears welled, and Merlin’s hand began to shake. Concern flooded Hunith’s face. She grabbed his hands in her own, stilling them. “Why are you here?”

Light from the fire danced against his face. “I had to leave, I- I couldn’t stay there. Not without him,” his voice shook.

His eyes squeezed closed against the stinging, and when he opened them his mother was burying him in her arms. He pressed his face into her shoulder.

“The battle...” she murmured.

“There were no winners.”

Merlin stayed shaking in his mother’s arms. He barely noticed when she moved them towards the bed so that they’re no longer standing. He tipped forward, and she pulled him closer to her chest.  Slowly, the shuddering and tears morphed into violent sobs and Merlin struggled for breath against them. She held him for a long time.

“It’s okay,” Hunith said softly, holding him tightly, like he’s a child. He shakes his head against her. “It’s okay,” she repeated, pain obvious in her own voice.

“It’s not,” he cried between sobs. “It hurts.” He felt her press her head against his hair.

“I know... I know it does.”

Thunder struck outside of the cottage, and the rain continued to fall as Merlin sobbed into his mother’s arms. He cried for all that he had lost – Arthur, and everything else that his destiny had stolen from him. Everything that he had given to be sitting there, back in Ealdor on a stormy night.

Hunith tucked the blankets around his shoulders and rocked slowly, murmuring gentle words of comfort every so often. Eventually, Merlin cried himself to sleep with a hoarse throat and unsteady breathing.

<<>> 

Merlin woke up tucked into an unfamiliar bed, covered by a mountain of blankets, despite the absence of the sound of rain hitting the roof for the first time in days. He sat up and looked around the room. Leon’s cloak, his boots, and the pack he’d left in the stables were all in front of the fire drying, while his mother stood beside them, boiling a pot on the hearth.

“Mum?”

Hunith looked at him quickly before abandoning the pot and walking over. “How are you feeling?” she asked gently, lovingly stroking his face.

He frowns, looking around at his things by the fire. “Did you sleep?” he asked.

“Of course I did,” she tutted, and while Merlin didn’t believe her, he decided to let it go.

“I’m sorry for showing up like I did last night, I should have sent something in advance, or-”

“Don’t be silly Merlin. You know you’re always wanted here,” Hunith walked back to tend to the pot on the hearth. “I’ve made some soup, you look like you’re wasting away. Change into some fresh clothes and eat,” she said. “It will help,” she added in a gentler tone.

Merlin didn’t think much could help, but he began to do as Hunith instructed.

After changing into some of the clothes he’d packed, Merlin sat on the bench at the table, eating the soup his mother had prepared. In some strange way, it did help. He was staring into the bottom of his bowl when Hunith sat down beside him. They indulged the silence for a long while, before his mother started to speak.

“It gets easier,” she said at last. “to live without them.”

He looked over at her, sullen questioning in his eyes. Hunith sighed. “When your father left, I knew – I hoped differently, of course – but I knew I would never see him again. And the pain broke me, for a while.” Merlin swallowed. “I thought I would never live again, never be able to find the beauty in the world like I had with him. And that was true, to some extent. My life was and never will be the same, but after a while, I found new things to love – new beauty in the world.”

“How?” Merlin asked hollowly.

She smiled sadly. “All of a sudden, I had something to live for,” she patted his leg. “You.”

Merlin blinked. Her words sounded eerily like Gaius’s from the day before, and Merlin felt a pang in his chest.

“How can I live for something other than him?” Merlin said miserably. “Everything I did, I did for him. My destiny – my whole life – was for him.”

“The heart is resilient like that. It’s what makes us human.”

Merlin’s gaze moved back to the bottom of his bowl. Human. Was he even considered that anymore?

“I was Emrys. I was the last Dragonlord. Magic. I was Arthur’s manservant, his protector. His friend,” his voice was low. “And yet I still failed him. The worst part is that I knew. I knew before anyone else, that Morgana would turn out like she would, or that Mordred-” He cut himself off. “I knew. And I still failed.” The lump in the back of his throat grew, and his heart stung.

Hunith gazed at him. She reached for his hand and squeezed tightly. “You didn’t fail,” she said. Merlin, despite himself, huffed an exasperated laugh. Hunith was lost for words, and they fell into a long silence.

Eventually, she squeezed his hand again. “You were always meant for great things.”

Merlin didn’t quite know what to say to that.

His mother sat beside him for all of the time that passes, stroking his back of his hair or squeezing his hand. She didn’t try to make him talk to her anymore. Merlin felt guilty that she had to see him like this, but it was only added to his long list of regrets. They sat together until Merlin’s tears started to fall once more, and the shudders returned. His mother didn’t leave his side once.

With the hand Hunith was not holding, Merlin wiped at his eyes. Listlessly, he looked across at his mother. “I think I loved him,” Merlin said slowly. “In the way you loved my father. In the way he loved Gwen,” he admitted. His heart broke itself into a million fragments, each of which stung him deeper than the last.

“You love him in the way he loves you,” she said, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “That love is eternal, Merlin. Nothing will ever change it.”

“I loved him,” he repeated, the painful epiphany crashing harder onto him as he said the words out loud. His voice cracked, and his mother quickly drew him into her arms, pressing him against her as she had the night before. “I loved him.”

“I know,” she said, caressing his neck with her thumb as Merlin cried against her. “I know you do.”

Chapter Text

Merlin stayed for a while, in Ealdor with his mother. It was easier to lose himself in the village life. The monsoon had finally ceased, and the villagers had held festivities to celebrate. Merlin hadn’t attended, but the music from bard’s lute and sounds of laughter and mirth could still be heard from his childhood home.

On good days, Merlin would do his mother’s chores, helping to herd the chickens or fixing the leak in the roof now that the rain had finally let up. Without his magic, they took longer than he remembered.

On bad days, his mother would help him through the tears and screams. She would hold him and not let go until he gathered himself again. Merlin tried – he really did – to protect her from it, but when his dreams were harsh or the memories bit, there was little he could do against the tide of his emotions. Gaius would have said it was a good thing, that he could still feel at all. Merlin thought differently.

He missed them. Gaius and Gwen, Percival and Leon. But he also missed Arthur. Gwaine. Even his magic. He missed them so much it hurt. Sometimes when he thought of them, Merlin would cry until he threw up his last meal into the bucket in the corner. All Hunith could do was stroke his back until he had finished.  

Some part of Merlin realised that this was what he had been hiding from, all these years. Every time he lost somebody – Will, Freya, Lancelot, Elyan – there was no time to grieve for any longer than a few days, before there was something else. Now, there was nothing else. Only time.

And there were only so many things in Ealdor that could keep Merlin occupied.

Late one night, after Hunith was snoring quietly from the bed, Merlin crept up from his pile of blankets on the ground. Quietly, he lit a candle and moved to the other end of the cottage, silently drawing the curtain between where his mother slept and himself. Merlin placed the candle down on the bench and reached into the pack that had been sitting untouched since the day he arrived in Ealdor, beside Leon’s cloak.

From it, Merlin pulled out the small wooden chest Gwen had given him the month before, when they’d said goodbye. He stroked the Pendragon crest that was seared onto the top and opened the latch. He took a breath before he decided to open the box.

Inside still lay the same items, but Merlin reached only for the red tunic that was folded at the bottom. It felt stupid, the comfort he felt in touching the fabric. Thanks to Gaius’s preservation enchantment, it even still smelt of Arthur and the soap Merlin used to clean it. He held it in his hands gently, staring down at it, his breathing shallow and quickening.

He startled when the curtain he’d drawn was pulled back suddenly, Hunith creeping through. “Merlin, are you okay?” she asked, concern lacing her words. “Do you need the bucket?”

“No, no I’m fine,” Merlin placated. Her shoulder’s relaxed, and she walked over to him, though he was still staring at the tunic. His mother looked at it too, and then at the box. In the candle light, a hint of a smile formed on her face.

“Is that...?”

“Yeah. It was. Gwen gave it to me.”

Hunith lifted a hand, but before she reached into the box she looked at him, raising an eyebrow. He nodded as permission, and she reached into the box.

She drew out a small metal disk – the du Bois sigil. Merlin had slipped it into the chest before he left. “What’s this?”

“It was his mother’s. Like the ring.”

“He gave it to you?” she asked.

Merlin nodded quickly. “When we faced the Dorocha, he thought he was going to die. I thought I was going to die in his place. He gave me this the night before.”

Hunith didn’t say anything, only looking back at the metal disk before gently replacing in the box. She picked up the Pendragon ring. Merlin knew there were more than one hidden away in Camelot, but this one, with the nicked edges and slightly warped shape, he knew was Arthur’s. Hunith tilted her head as she looked at it, before pressing it into his hands and telling him to wait a moment.

Merlin frowned and replaced all the items in the chest. Just as he moved to close the top, the candle light glistened off of the small locket that lay inside. The one Gwen had given him. He dragged it out of the box and shut it, latching it again. Quietly, as he waited for his mother, Merlin slipped the necklace over his head.

He’d only just finished tucking it into his sleep shirt when his mother reappeared. In her hands, she clasped a wooden figurine – similar to one he’d once owned himself. She lifted it close to the candle, so that they could see it better. It was a dragon.

“Your father, Balinor, made this for me when he told me that he was a dragonlord,” she explained, smiling fondly at it. “I didn’t know, at first, why he was on the run from Uther. I had just assumed he was a magic user – I had no idea dragons even really existed. He told me that he wished I could meet one of them, that nothing compared to the feeling of being atop a dragon’s back as it soared,” Merlin couldn’t help the soft upturn of his own lips at her story. She was right, there was nothing that compared to it. “Of course by that time, there were no more dragons. Balinor gifted me this, and told me that it would have to suffice.”

Merlin watched as she subconsciously stroked the small dragon. “He did love dragons.”

Hunith smiled. “I’m glad you met him. Even if it was only for a short time- I never thought you would.”

“I’m glad I met him too.”

She patted his cheek. “It’s late. We should try to get some sleep.”

Merlin nodded, sliding the chest back into his pack. Against his chest he could feel the warm presence of Gwen’s locket and Gwaine’s necklace. He unconsciously lifted a hand to hold them as he walked back towards his blankets.

Hunith carried the Candle behind him. “Goodnight Merlin,” she said sweetly as he covered himself again.

“’Night,” he responded, and she blew out the candle.

<<>> 

By the time the sun rose over the village the next morning, Merlin knew what he had to do.

He sat down with his mother as she served breakfast. “I think I’m going to leave Ealdor,” Merlin said quietly.

Hunith didn’t look surprised in the least. She pressed her lips together. “Are you sure? If you want to stay longer... until you feel better-”

He sighed. “I just- I can’t stay in Ealdor forever.” She nodded knowingly.

“Where will you go?”

Merlin looked at her with wide eyes. “I’m going to go find someone. Someone who... knows more about me than I know about myself,” he said, waiting for her judgment.

Hunith only smiled. “You know I’ll always love you. Nothing can change that,” she said.

“I love you too, Mum.”

They finished their meal before Merlin got up and began to pack his things into the saddle bags he arrived with. His mother helped ready clothes, food, and water as he went to get Llamrei ready for the next part of their journey. Soon, she was all packed, and ready for the long road ahead.

Merlin turned to his mother when he finished tying the bag onto the mare.

“I know I’m in no position, but...” he started, and she tilted her head. “Will you take care of Llamrei, or find someone who will? She deserves a good life after all she’s done.” Hunith cooed.

“Of course I will, Merlin. But,” she frowned, “How will she find her way back?”

A tiny hint of amusement drew onto Merlin’s face. “I enchanted her years ago so that she would always go where she was told. Usually to Camelot, or Arthur. She also made up for the fact that I was never very good at reading maps,” he said. Hunith chuckled, reaching out a hand to stroke Llamrei’s dark neck.

“I’ll take good care of her,” Hunith said, and Merlin smiled.

After one more lingering embrace with kisses on the cheek and murmured ‘I love you’s’,  Merlin finally climbed onto his horse’s back.

“Good luck!” His mother called as he clicked and urged Llamrei forward.

He waved goodbye, and set out on the road leading from Ealdor.

<<>> 

Merlin didn’t really know where he was going.

He had no place in mind, no maps or even Llamrei, having whispered his good bye to the loyal mare at the foot of the mountains, sending her back from Ealdor. They’d travelled together for three days, but when Merlin got sense of where he was headed, he had decided it would be better for he to turn back here, rather than risk her life in the steep and blustery slopes of Isgaard.

Merlin had no explanation for the feeling he was following. It was indescribable – not so much a feeling, but a hint. Only a hint. While he hadn’t caught up with the rain from the months past, the wind seemed to get fiercer with every step Merlin made up the rocky trail. Merlin barely felt it. Whether it was because of his magic, or he was simply hurting too much on the inside to notice that on the out, he didn’t care.

Merlin just kept climbing, step after step, mountain after mountain.

He was tiring.

He’d eaten what little food his Mother had packed for him over the last few days, garnered only a small amount of sleep behind rocky outcroppings that hid him from the wind and whatever other dangers hid in the mountains. Merlin had been hiking for days, following nothing but a gut feeling that for all he knew was leading him nowhere. Perhaps it was just a trick of the mind. The fact that he was still standing felt like some kind of cruel joke.

Despite it, he kept moving forward. For days on end, until he scaled the final cliff.

Merlin emerged on a ledge guarding the entrance to a harrowing cave.

The opening stretched far above him, but beyond the filtered light, the cavern was darker than the mountain nights. For reasons unbeknownst to him, he took a step towards it, until he was walking into the cave. If nothing else, perhaps he could sleep sheltered from the wind that night.

He didn’t walk very far before he came upon a large figure, exhaling warm air with steady breaths. Even before Merlin’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he knew what – who – it was.

Merlin abandoned his weathered pack on the floor and approached the sleeping dragon. His heart dropped. In the last steams of light that made it that far into the cave, Merlin could make out the golden scales. He reached out a hand to gently stroke them, feeling their silky roughness as warm air rolled against him as Kilgharrah breathed. They were laboured, and Merlin could feel he cracks in some of his scales. It was as the dragon had said – he had seen many centuries.

Time didn’t seem to exist there, in the dark of the cave. Centuries, days, seconds – they all blended together. Merlin couldn’t tell how long he stood there, silently running his hand along the dragon’s cheek. He just knew that he did, until the scaled eyelid opened without warning, and Merlin found himself staring into a familiar golden eye.

“Young Warlock!” Kilgharrah roared as he tossed his head back, thrashing his neck. Merlin stumbled back. He watched as the dragon’s eyes narrowed. “Do you hate me so badly that you cannot even leave me to die in peace?” he thundered. “What reason do you have to disturb me here, in my chosen resting place?”

Merlin didn’t respond.

Kilgharrah brought his head down so that his snout was metres from Merlin’s chest, and opened his mouth. He let Merlin watch as the back of the dragon’s throat began to glow fiery orange, and burning heat washed against his face. Merlin didn’t flinch. He didn’t even straighten his back.

He stood unaffected by the dragon’s angry display until Kilgharrah had had enough, and pulled back once more to stare down at him. “You cannot even be bothered to explain yourself?” he snarled. “After awakening me in this place?”

“You already know why I’m here,” Merlin said, his voice sullen and empty.

“Ah yes,” Kilgharrah mocked cruelly. “The King is dead. As I told you before, there is nothing you, nor I can do.”

“I have questions.”

He curled his upper lip. “You always do.”

Merlin ignored the quip. “How much do you know.”

“About what, young Warlock?” Kilgharrah leered. “I know many things.”

“Emrys.”

He hummed. “I am a dragon. We’ve traded in stories since the beginning of time. You may want to begin with a question.”

“Who is Emrys?” Merlin said. It wasn’t the first time he’s asked the dragon this, but this time he was determined to get an answer.

Kilgharrah laughed. “Why, you are, young warlock. Perhaps a better question would be what is Emrys?”

“Well go on then,” Merlin said impatiently.

“Emrys is the prophesised. His name has been written in the stars - the child of the earth and its magic, the man destined to save Albion from its own undoing. He is what will save magic. He is you.”

Merlin frowned up at the great beast. “I did none of those things.”

Kilgharrah peered down at him. “I said he will do those things, not that he already has.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have told you before Merlin, no man can know his destiny.”

“You know my destiny.”

“You are mistaken. I know only the fragments the creatures of magic pass between one another. The Goddess’s plans are her own, and beknown by none. Instead, you should be more interested in what Emrys means.”

In the dark, Merlin raised an eyebrow expectantly.

It was deathly quiet in the room as Kilgharrah brought his head down to look Merlin closely in the eyes.

“Immortal.”

Chapter Text

Merlin stared up at the great dragon in front of him.

“Immortal,” he repeated, the sour taste of the word singing his tongue.

Kilgharrah snorted hot air in his face and pulled his head back. “Is that not what I said?” Merlin was unsure how to respond, staring up at him. The dragon huffed impatiently.

“I- I...” Merlin stumbled over his words. “I can’t.”

“I have told you previously that you would see Arthur again. Such things do not come for free.”

“No,” Merlin said. Even in the dark, his vision was blurring. Nausea licked up the back of his throat and he grabbed his stomach as the words settled upon him. “I can’t.”

Large golden eyes stared down at him, watching his reaction. “Destiny is not concerned with what you can and cannot do.”

Merlin’s breathing was quickening again, like it had so many times in the past weeks. His skin was burning and the roiling in his stomach only got worse as he shook his head over and over as he repeated his denials. Moments over the years flew through his mind with unrelenting fury. He knew. He’d known.

He should have known.

Kilgharrah’s words by the lake. Balinor’s in the cave. “...you always will be.”

Every person or creature who had referred to Arthur as the Once and Future King.

Had Mordred known, when he’d called Merlin by his god-given name the first time they met? Did the druids know? Had they looked at him with pitiful eyes?

Every near death experience Merlin survived. The dorocha. The poisons. Every knock to the head that would have killed anyone but him.

When the Serket venom roared through his body with fury.

He’d known.

He should have known.

Merlin was breathing but no air was coming in. He felt like he was going to empty his stomach again, but nothing came up. His skin felt too tight, the lump in his throat too big. But none of that mattered.

What good was air when one couldn’t breathe? Life when one couldn’t live?

Merlin’s legs collapsed beneath him, but the sharp stone didn’t hurt him. After all, nothing could. He looked up a Kilgharrah with eyes more red than blue.

“Why me?” he whimpered. The dragon peered down at him with an unreadable expression.

“That, I cannot answer,” he said simply.

Merlin spoke against the heaving of his chest. “I lost it all. I have already lost everything, but it’s still not enough?” The dragon had no response. “I gave it all. I sacrificed every single part of me, and when that wasn’t enough, they took more from what scraps were left over.” Merlin looked up at Kilgharrah. His voice broke as he knelt on the hard ground. “I have nothing left to give.”

“Your life has been-” the dragon started.

“My life was stolen from me the day I stepped foot in Camelot, as has any chance at the peace I may have found in death,” Merlin uttered, cutting Kilgharrah off. “I have nothing left.”

Merlin stared at the ground, so he couldn’t see the expression that melted through Kilgharrah’s features. When the dragon next spoke, it was with pitiful sorrow. “You still have your magic,” he said.

Merlin didn’t lift his eyes, only shaking his head. “They took that too,” he said. His weeping was the only sound to fill the room. “My magic is gone too,” he repeated. He hadn’t had much chance to grieve the loss of it, not when so many others took priority. But still he missed its warmth and familiarity – in its absence there was only cold. “Everyone, everything I have ever cared for or loved is gone. All that I have left, I am fated to watch wither away while I remain.” Merlin finally looked up. “Even you.”

The great dragon stared down at him, heavy silence lacing the cavern for any stretch of time. Only Merlin’s moans broke it as he sobbed into the unforgiving stone. He was never going to die.

“How?” he spoke gutturally. “How did you survive, when Uther took all the other dragons in his purge? When he took your family – your kin. How did you survive knowing you would be alone?”

Kilgharrah puffed hot air onto him. “It is quite simple, young warlock. I did not have the choice.” He brought his head down to place his eye beside Merlin’s curled form. “There is no great secret. When faced with the unbearable, there is nothing left to do but bear it.”

“Living things are made to endure,” the dragon said. Merlin watched as Kilgharrah heaved with the effort of movement, unsteady on his old bones until his large golden form encircled Merlin, leaving him in the space between Kilgharrah’s wing and where his tail wrapped around. “You will find, Merlin, that even a broken heart continues to beat.” The dragon took a deep breath and blew onto him. Merlin recognised tingle of magic through the air, and the scent of Kilgharrah’s power – like smoke and flame filled with lightness, rather than the headiness of fire. It smelt like magic older than fire itself, back when flames meant life rather than death.

Merlin felt his eyes begin to droop, and he could do nothing to stop the way he collapsed back against the dragon’s shoulder, slowly losing his mind to the magic and darkness.

<<>> 

When Merlin awoke next, light was streaming in through the cavern’s entrance. He blinked against its abrasive brightness until the world focused and his head stopped spinning. He moved his head slowly before pushing himself up from where he was lying.

Merlin blearily assessed his surroundings. Golden scales filled every direction, until Merlin came nose to nose with their owner. “Welcome back, young warlock,” Kilgharrah said. His old voice was unusually soft. Merlin could almost be fooled into thinking the dragon cared.

Merlin scrunched his nose against the noise. His head throbbed.

He didn’t say a word, but Kilgharrah used the tip of his tail to nudge Merlin’s pack towards him. “Drink some water,” he said. Merlin didn’t bother arguing as he continued trying to gather his wits.

They came back to him as he drained the canteen of his remaining water.

Kilgharrah had used a sleeping spell on him. Merlin frowned.

“How long has it been?”

“What does it matter?”

Merlin supposed it didn’t. He wiped his mouth of water and stared at the eyes across from him.

Kilgharrah rumbled, and Merlin felt it reverberate through his own body. The dragon was still curled around him like a hen to an egg. “I told you that dragons trade in stories?” he asked, moving his head to stare wistfully out of the cavern.  Merlin followed his gaze.

Once, Merlin might have been blown away by the view that laid ahead of him, with snowy peaks piercing the sky – a deep blue Merlin hadn’t seen for as long as he could be bothered to remember. Below the cavern, in the valley, a matching lake sat, lapping at the edges. He turned his attention back to the dragon. “Yes.”

“In the time of dragons, it was the poorest men that were considered the wealthiest. They carried tales of woe and anguish, love and endurance more than any man worth his weight in gold.” He spoke quietly and Merlin listened lazily, allowing his thoughts to be swept away in Kilgharrah’s tale. “Dragon Lords would travel the lands, searching for new stories to bring back to their kin, and we did the same. Great or small, we would listen. But none were so prized as a prophecy. A story from the Goddess’s mouth could be exceeded by none. So when a dragon was born alongside a prophecy, they were celebrated.” He sighed. “I was one such hatchling.”

Merlin blinked at him.

“Indeed. I was called to my life by a Dragon Lord from many thousands of years ago, as he gave me my name, and my own destiny was shared.” Merlin frowned. “My name, in the dragon tongue, was the word for Albion before such a thing even existed.

“Kilgharrah means Albion?”

He nodded. “When I emerged from my egg, a golden dragon, the story of my birth spread through the storyteller’s of the time. I was the prophesised Golden Dragon, with a name of significant meaning.” Kilgharrah peered down at Merlin. “Much like you, I was destined to have hand in the Golden Age of Albion.”

“The prophecy of Emrys and the Once and Future King predates mine, but it was considered an honor, to not only be born with a prophecy, but to be adjacent to such a significant destiny – There was a reason I was referred to as the Great Dragon, despite not being much different to my kin.”

Merlin stared up at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

Kilgharrah raised a scaly brow. “You would deny a dying dragon a story?” Merlin waved a hand and the dragon released a rumbling chuckle. “You have faced a great destiny, young warlock, and you have suffered great loss at its hand. It is your fate to continue on, just as it is mine to help you on your journey to greatness.” Kilgharrah watched him carefully. “Each of us have a path to walk, but no where does it say we must walk it alone.”

Merlin shook his head at the dragon. “I don’t understand.” Kilgharrah chuckled. It was breathy with effort. Merlin knew he was weak, but to see him like this, reminiscing with good faith rather cryptic recitals... Even the bond between them flickered softer than ever before.

“We are kin, you and I,” Kilgharrah said with more softness than Merlin had ever heard from him. “There was a time when I thought I lost all of those.” Merlin looked at the golden dragon with confusion painted onto his features. “I have lived a long life – one of loss and selfishness. It is you, young warlock, who said that some choices are easy, whilst others stick with you forever.” Kilgharrah took a deep breath. “For you, I will choose a selfless one.”

The cryptic ramblings of a dying dragon were lost on Merlin. “What are you talking about?”

“The bond between a Dragon and a Dragon Lord is stronger than you can imagine. With an ancient spell, you can replenish me. You can bring me back to health.”

Merlin stared at him in silence. He searched the dragon’s eyes for the ulterior motive, the plot. The trap. “At what cost?”

Kilgharrah’s eyes were alight with learnt amusement at the suspicion lacing Merlin’s face. “Energy. Those who completed the restoration spell are drained, physically and mentally. Slumbers of many years follow, but when both wake up, they are as strong as the magic will allow them to be. There have been cases where the magic rejects any restoration, and the Dragon Lord has woken up alone, but it is rarely the case.”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

“I have told you why. Any other motives are mine alone,” the dragon said. Merlin glared at him, until Kilgharrah sighed, annoyed. “Do not let me die the last of my kind, young warlock.”

Merlin gazed up at Kilgharrah, who bowed his head awaiting response. He was asking, Merlin realised. He was asking Merlin’s permission to continue in life, but he was also offering it. It was an offering of companionship through the years. His own words from the night he arrived in the cave floated through his head. “Everyone, everything I have ever cared for or loved is gone... Even you.”

And then Merlin’s broken heart fell through his chest.

“I have no magic,” he said. “I can’t do as you ask.”

Kilgharrah watched him with curiosity. “Your magic encircles and flows around you no differently to how it always has. Any creature of magic can sense it. However, this spell does not require your earthly powers – it asks only for your draconic magic.”

“What if I can’t use that either?”

“There is no force in the world that could take it from you.”

Merlin took a deep breath, and clambered to his feet, facing Kilgharrah. “I want to do it.”

A fearsome look of pleasure appeared on the dragon’s face. He bowed his head once more. Lower this time. “Thank you, Emrys.”

Merlin flinched. “Don’t call me that,” he said sharply. The sound of the name made his stomach flip uncomfortably.

Kilgharrah nodded with acknowledgment before lifting his head once more. “There is no telling how long we will sleep,” he said tentatively, testing the waters.

Merlin looked up at him. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear on his face that he did not care. What good was being awake when he had nothing to do but simmer in his own grief until it swallowed him whole. “What’s the spell?”

“It is not traditional magic, young warlock. You do not need a spell. The bond between us resides within you. All it takes is intention.”

Merlin nodded slowly, before he closed his eyes. He did as Kilgharrah said.

He searched for the bond. The one he had formed with the dragon beside Arthur’s unconscious form, Camelot aflame. The bond he had used to call upon him, and the one he followed endlessly through the mountains. It flickered with recognition when Merlin brushed against it. It was a piece of Kilgharrah’s soul, sewed to the frayed edges of his own. He let it consume his thoughts.

And then he pushed.

All of the emotion of the past weeks and months. Years. All of the magic Merlin had lost, of the love that had ebbed and flowed through him. The golden strands tangled with fiery orange of Kilgharrah’s, until Merlin was pushing all that he had through it.

Until the bond between their souls glowed as brightly as the rest of him.

It wasn’t like his magic. It wasn’t warm of comforting – it was blindingly hot, fire and brimstone that burnt through his body. But what was left over when the fire storm past wasn’t singed and blackened – it was renewed.

When it was finished, Merlin opened his eyes.

His head felt weightless and the light was bleary, but the room carried the distinct scent of dragon magic. Kilgharrah was settling once more, and without so much as a thought Merlin joined him. He tucked himself against the dragon, beneath its wing.

It was the strong and steady beat of Kilgharrah’s heart that finally sent Merlin to sleep.

Chapter Text

Their slumber was unlike any sleep Merlin had ever had.

It was a drowsiness that enveloped his body, his mind – but not his soul. That was left to wander through his memories and dreams in the same fashion a dragon wove through clouds as it grazed the sky. But there was no pain, no joy, no emotion at all.

He woke, barely lucid, for short periods of time. He would fetch water or find a more comfortable position, but it was no different to when he was asleep. There was no feeling, only weak mindless movements as magic continued cycle through him and into the sleeping dragon.

In the back corner of whatever this realm was, he knew Kilgharrah was experiencing the same. Occasionally, he would open his eyes to find golden ones staring back at him. Vacant, just like his. Time didn’t matter there. Nothing mattered there.

Until it all started to come back.

His heart sharpened with every beat like sword through a whetstone, each breath closing the distance between all the pain from before and blessed nothingness from the slumber. Merlin wanted desperately to cling onto something – anything, but the fabric of his soul was already in slivers.

He fought to stay, just a little longer. Just so that he didn’t have to go back to the agony of before. To the sadness and the loneliness. But even Merlin could not fight the tide.

When his eyes opened next, there was no going back.

<<>> 

Kilgharrah, Merlin thought, was far too high on the flavour of youth for his own good. He sat on the ledge ahead of the cave entrance, legs dangling over as he faced the blue sky. Ahead, the great dragon was swooping through the great valleys, circling the rocky peaks. Merlin had never seen him so golden, his scales shimmering under the midsummer sun.

Kilgharrah landed in the valley beneath Merlin’s feet. He was still large enough that his line of sight matched Merlin’s. “Aren’t you afraid that a weary traveller will see you?” he asked tiredly.

The dragon brushed him off. “I have not been young in thousands of years. It is refreshing, to say the least.” Merlin didn’t respond, instead choosing to look past him to the mountains beyond. Kilgharrah looked upon him. “You cannot stay here forever, young warlock.”

Merlin glared at the dragon. “Why not? It’s safe, quiet. Plenty on mountain goats to feed on. What else could you want?” There was plenty more he could want for, but there was nothing to be had from wishful thinking.

“There was once adventure in your heart.”

“Not anymore,” he said glumly. “I’m not keeping you here, Kilgharrah. I’ve said it before – just put me back to sleep and go do whatever it is you wish to do. There is no point in me being there.”

Merlin had been asking since they woke up – weeks, if not months - now. He’d begged Kilgharrah to send him back into the slumber. Again and again, the dragon refused. No amount of tears or pleading would change his mind.

“What you have experienced in your short time has indeed been difficult, but acceptance-”

Merlin looked up at him blankly. “I have accepted it. Arthur is dead. My magic is gone. I’m immortal. I don’t have to be happy about it.”

Kilgharrah considered him for a few moments before sighing. “Time passes slower when you count down the seconds,” he said, before backing away and taking off. Merlin didn’t bother watching as the dragon disappeared behind the mountains, simply getting to his feet and returning to the cave.

<<>> 

Days later, Kilgharrah’s patience runs out. Merlin crossed his arms. “I told you, you’re free to do as you wish. I won’t stop you.”

“It has been far too long since I laid eyes on the world beyond these shores. You will accompany me.”

“I told you no.”

Kilgharrah huffed hot air in Merlin’s direction. “You will. I decided to remain on this Earth so that you would not be so alone in the face of your destiny. Do not take that for granted.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. “You have your own motives,” he said quickly.

“This is one of them. You wish for me to leave?” The patronising tone made Merlin’s hackles rise. “Order me away,” the dragon hissed at him. “Tell me to leave you here alone for the rest of your days.”

Merlin shot him a dirty look.

“That’s what I thought,” Kilgharrah said smugly. Merlin didn’t look at him. “Albion is but a tiny fragment in the vastness of this realm,” he told him. “And magic thrives in every corner of it. You cannot imagine the wonders that await. It will be good for you.”

He sighed. Merlin was never going to win against him, and he couldn’t be bothered of fighting him any longer. He was tired from it. “When do you want to leave, then?”

Kilgharrah had a scarily human expression on his face as he lifted a scaly brow. “Now.”

“What?”

“What is keeping us?”

Merlin stumbled over his words for a moment, before considering the great dragon ahead of him. Phantom hands were holding him in place. “How long will we be?”

Kilgharrah peered down at Merlin from above. “Both you and I are closer to the true meaning of immortality than any other creature on this earth. What does it matter the length of time that passes?”

Merlin looked away, back over the mountain scape. “I still have friends, family here. I made promises to them.”

Kilgharrah took an exaggerated moment. “What kind of promises?”

Merlin stared up at him. “That I would return,” he said quietly.

The dragon laughed exasperatedly but in the end said nothing, only nodding his head in acceptance and offering Merlin an opportunity to climb onto his back. Merlin shook his head, squirreling back into the cave.

When he emerged, his old, ratty pack was slung over his shoulder. It hadn’t been touched since the day he found the dragon, broken and dying within the mountain’s dark mouth. He squeezed it with an arm behind his back. He could feel the wooden chest within.

Kilgharrah huffed impatiently, and Merlin could hear his own heart thumping within his chest. Leaving. They were leaving. But firstly, and more importantly, they were doing what Merlin dreaded.

They were returning to Camelot.

Chapter Text

It was Merlin’s mother that told him it had been near five summers since Merlin had left. He’d shook his head in disbelief – he’d known time passed as he and Kilgharrah had slept, but he couldn’t have guessed it had been over four years.

Grey hairs had long ago begun to sprout in Hunith’s dark hair, and the lines on her face had deepened. Merlin hadn’t noticed at first, when she had tucked her face into his neck with desperate arms, but when she pulled away... it was his first glimpse into what was to come. To others, but never to him.

He’d only stayed with his mother a night. Kilgharrah was getting more and more impatient every minute that passed – an annoying quality for a creature to have, if he was meant to live for millennia. Merlin had told his mother of the dragon’s plan to show him the world beyond Albion’s ocean borders. She, in grief stricken love, understood what it meant without him having to say it out loud. A wordless goodbye. Hunith had not let go of him for more than a second until she saw him into the woods. When he once again climbed onto Kilgharrah’s back, they flew low over Ealdor. On his mother’s face as she watched him and the dragon, he saw a smile painted on her face – something he vowed he would never forget the look of.

Merlin’s heart was thudding in his chest when Kilgharrah landed in the old clearing outside of Camelot. He could see the citadel, and his hands began to shake. The dragon peered down at him.

“We can leave now, if you’d prefer,” he said, noticing Merlin’s reservations.

He swallowed. “I made a promise.”

The familiar walk between the clearing and the citadel passed quickly, but no amount of time could have prepared him for what he faced when he passed through the open gates.

A market, but as he walked through, in awe, he realised it was far more than that. Stall owners that bore the druidic markings openly on their wrists and sold rune-covered wares. Another seller announcing loudly that for a small price he would perform a spell to cure to any number of aesthetic ailments. Merlin felt that he could barely breathe. The sound of spells being spoken, the golden glow of many eyes.

This was magic.

As he stumbled forward, head turning in every direction, he came upon a woman standing in front of a group of small children. A bucket at her feet, she was juggling globes of water, before sending them swirling in strands around her and finally, towards the children. Screams of shocked joy abounded from them, but soon her eyes flashed gold, and sodden braids turned dry again. They laughed, and ran back to find their parents.

No amount of blinking changes the landscape in front of his eyes. Merlin watched as magic painted the lower town. There was no terror, no soldiers poised for attack. He was half convinced he was still dreaming, far away in that cave.

Before long, as Merlin span up through the town, an unknown face appeared before him. “Emrys?” she said, though her lips did not move. He looked at the woman with her dark hair and even darker eyes blankly, before shaking his head slowly. She looked at him curiously, but Merlin moved around her, up through the city toward the citadel.

The colourful sight and sound of magic dissipated slowly as he walked through, into the upper quarter and out of the market. Still, its presence remained. Trinkets of protection from the old ways littered the odd doorstep, or a broom sweeping the porch with no one to hold it. Merlin took all of it in.

It even felt like magic. Like life itself. It was all consuming, and it called to him, warm and enticing. Like it used to when his magic had bubbled up within him.

When Merlin finally reached the castle, he was so drunk on the taste of magic that he nearly forgot his dread from before. He walked through the square, towards the steps with the guards standing vigil. Merlin stood in front of one of them.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m... I’m here to see Gwen- uh- the Queen?” He sounded like an idiot, but too many thoughts were swirling in his head for him to sound otherwise.

The guard looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Her Majesty will be taking petitions tomorrow,” he dismissed.

Merlin blinked. “I’m an old friend, I used to be a servant here-”

“Look, if I let every stranger that came in looking for the Queen, I wouldn’t be very good at my job, would I?”

“Anyone that meant real harm to Gwen probably wouldn’t ask the guards?” Merlin responded. The other man looked at him and shook his head. Merlin sighed. “Fine.”

It must have been something about being back in Camelot, but old habits did die hard. He started to turn away when he jumped back, spooked. “What was that!” he yelled. The guard took a step forward to look out over the courtyard.

“What?”

By the time the guard looked back at Merlin, he’d already disappeared into the familiar halls.

It struck Merlin how little had changed. The banners and the flags remained the same. The bustle of the corridors with servants and nobles alike, all moving around the castle as they always had. Folding into it was a skill that stuck. He knew the castle like the back of his hand.

Merlin kept his head down as he ran up the stairs and through the halls. He wasn’t sure where Gwen would be at this time of the day. Perhaps the council chamber? He turned the corner and found himself in front of the heavy wooden doors that lead to the main hall. He pushed them open, not sure what he was expecting.

The hard wood floors hadn’t changed. Neither had the round table, still set up form an earlier session. On the dais ahead, a singular throne sat overlooking the room, the Pendragon colours. Merlin took a few steps toward the round table. He reached a hand out towards the carvings on the wood. Tentatively, he traced them with his fingers. In the language of the old religion, they spelled out the roles of those who sat in the seats of the council.

Merlin couldn’t take his eyes off the inscription where Arthur used to sit. A chair sat beneath it, but there were no signs of recent use – no scraps on the floor beneath the seat, or chips in the varnish. Merlin stared at it.

“Oi! You can’t be in here!”

A voice pulled Merlin out of his trance, and he whipped his head up at the sound of it. It was the guard from before. “Don’t you know who I am?” Merlin asked. There had, after all, been a time where he’d known the name of everyone in the palace, and they’d all known his.

The guard lunged at him, but Merlin darted sideways, and ran back towards the door. The man – young, fit, but not quite as used to running from people in the halls of Camelot – gave chase. Merlin ran through the corridor towards the staircase leading to the royal quarters. “Oi! Get back here!” the guard’s shout came from behind him.

Merlin dodged a few servants and various other people, when the bell in the tower began to ring through the castle. “Ah, shit,” he muttered. He passed the next person in front of him – this time wearing familiar chainmail.

“Hey! Stop!” Merlin felt a strong force grab his arm, pulling him back. Merlin span to face the offender, when he came face to face with-

“Merlin?”

He looked at him with wide eyes. “Leon?”

Leon was shaking his head, a grin starting to form on his face. “Merli-”

“Ah, great! You caught him!” His pursuer from before skidded to a halt beside them. “I’ll take it from here, my lord.”

Leon blinked. He looked back at Merlin. “Are you the reason the bells are ringing?”

A small, stupid smile arose on Merlin’s face – the first one on a very long time. “Are you going to put me in jail?”

The guard looked between them, obviously confused.

“Joseph, this is Merlin,” Leon said. “He’s a friend to the Queen.”

“I told you.”

“I-” The guard – Joseph, hesitated, before he bowed. “My deepest apologies, my lord.”

“It’s fine, Joseph,” Leon said. “Return to your post.” The guard nodded slowly, before slinking back down the hall. Leon turned his gaze to Merlin.

“... Hi?”

<<>> 

“I can’t believe you broke into the castle,” Leon said as they climbed the stairs towards the royal chambers.

“Well, I’ve seen things harder to believe today,” Merlin responded. Leon’s eyebrows lifted.

“Did you enter through the lower town?” Merlin nodded. “Ah.”

Before the conversation could go any further, they arrived in the royal quarter. Merlin made to knock on what had once been Arthur’s door when Leon shook his head.

“Her majesty lives in the Queen’s chambers, to be closer to the nursery,” he said as he knocked on the door.

Merlin frowned. “The what?”

Leon didn’t answer before a painfully familiar voice called ‘come in!’ and Leon pushed the doors to reveal Gwen, looking up at them from over a cradle. Merlin stood there in shock. Gwen did the same.

“Merlin?” she asked quietly. His eyes drifted up from the cradle to meet Gwen’s. She let out an incredulous breath. “I don’t believe it.” The disbelief quickly cleared up when they met in the middle of the room, Gwen enveloping Merlin in a crushing hug. Merlin did the same. “You came back,” she said into his neck.

“I promised you I would.” Gwen laughed, choked with emotion. She pulled back, her hands still on Merlin’s arms, biting her lip.

Merlin smiled. “Are you going to introduce me, or...” She frowned.

“Oh!” Gwen lit up. She took Merlin’s hand and led him over to the crib where they peered down at a tiny baby. “His name is Thomas,” she said softly.

Merlin smiled down at the child. “After your father?”

She nodded. “His second name is Arthur,” she added quietly. Merlin swallowed. He kept his eyes on the baby looking up at him with large brown eyes.

“You re-married?”

Gwen laughed, and even Leon chuckled behind them. She reached into the cradle to lift her son into her arms. “No no. A girl – barely more than a child herself – sought audience with me a few months ago. She was so scared, so young... she had nowhere to go. I promised her that I would take care of her, but she didn’t make it through the birth,” Gwen looked at Thomas, who she was bouncing softly in her arms, “I promised her I would take care of them,” she said.

Merlin nodded slowly. “Is he your heir?”

Gwen smiled at him. “Someday. A Pendragon will sit on the throne after my reign ends.”

<<>> 

 It wasn’t long before they were joined by Percival, having heard wind of Merlin’s arrival. Another embrace and strong pats on the back, Gwen suggested they take a picnic out in the King’s Wood. Merlin agreed slowly, and soon they were tying their horses to an old tree in a clearing that was all too recognisable.

Merlin was overwhelmed with information. Gwen’s reign, magic returning, Thomas. Leon held the position of the Queen’s hand, and Percival had taken over his duties as Knight Commander. Even more interestingly, Percival had a new lady-friend that led Gwen to elbow him and waggle her eyebrows.

“I’ll be hosting a wedding soon, I hope.”

Leon chuckled. “When he finds the courage to ask her.”

Percival glared at both of them.

Merlin was lost in the... tranquillity. It wasn’t the same as before – it was far emptier – but there was some comfort to be found in the familiar banter and conversations with people he still considered his family.

“How about you, Merlin? You’ve told us nothing about you,” Percival said, ignoring Leon’s comment on the change of subject.

Merlin pursed his lips. “There’s... there’s not really much to tell. Not like you.”

And really, what was he to say? That he was immortal? That he was waiting behind for a dead man? None of that was fair to concern them with – they were his own burdens to carry.

“Come on, it’s been almost five years since we saw you,” Gwen prompted.

Merlin shook his head. “I- well, I spent a few weeks in Ealdor, right after. And then... um.”

“What?”

Merlin looked at Leon, guiltily. “Do you remember when the Great Dragon got loose?” Leon nodded slowly, carefully. “Arthur didn’t kill him.”

Sounds of disbelief sounded among them. Merlin nodded. “I learnt during that time that I had inherited my father’s powers – that of the Dragonlords. I ordered the Great Dragon from Camelot.”

Leon blinked slowly. “Pardon?”

“Well, we’d been... acquaintances of sorts since the day I arrived in Camelot – because of the magic thing – and then stuff happened and-” Merlin rambled on until Percival cleared his throat pointedly, bringing Merlin back around to his point. “-I did a spell to extend his life but it drained both of us so we slept in a cave for four years,” Merlin ended up saying. Inelegant, maybe, but there were so many thoughts swirling in his head.

His friends blinked. Leon opened his mouth to say something but Merlin cut him off. “We’re leaving. He- Kilgharrah wants to show me the world beyond Albion, and he won’t let me say no.”

They succumbed to silence for a few moments, before Gwen broke it. “So this is goodbye?”

Merlin looked at his hands in his lap. “I- I can’t stay in Camelot, Gwen.”

She pursed her lips. “I know,” she said finally. “I just want you to be happy.”

“We all do,” Leon jumped in, Percival nodding along. Merlin smiled weakly.

“My bastard lizard is convinced travelling will do that,” Merlin said flippantly. They laughed, albeit a little forced. Percival lifted a piece of bread in the air, a faux toast.

“Let’s have today then.”

Leon smiled. “To today.”

Gwen reached over and squeezed Merlin’s hand. “To today,” they said together.

<<>> 

They’d spent the rest of the outing sharing stories – ones that Merlin missed in the past years, and the ones they did. None of them could get enough of hearing Merlin’s stories from their earlier years from his perspective, filled with magic. They laughed, they talked, they sat in comfortable silence after eating heir fill, Gwen’s feet in Leon’s lap and her head next to Merlin’s. Percival leaning up against a tree.

It gave Merlin time to think. To realise. They were all happy. They were happy, they had good, exciting lives filled with new love and adventure. They still grieved for all that they had lost, but they didn’t mourn it – they celebrated it. Him. Them. Merlin realised, with immense relief, that they did not need him.

Camelot didn’t need him.

At last, the kingdom was at peace – not only that, but it was thriving under the reign of Queen Guinevere. Magic had been restored at last, and while Gwen spoke of the trials that they had faced and still faced in dismantling the prejudice Uther had built, what Merlin had witnessed in the town that morning had convinced him that they were well on their way to success.

For the first time in maybe his entire life, Merlin did not have a duty to fulfill.

He did not need to feel guilty, about leaving them here like this. It saddened him of course, that he would likely never see them again, but that was a thought Merlin drowned in his many others – it was not one he sat on for fear of the feeling it evoked.

He was free.

They made plans to reconvene in a later hour when they made it back to the citadel – Percival was needed at home by his love, Gwen was desperate to see her son after the hours apart, Leon accompanying her. Merlin thought any child would be exceedingly lucky, to be so loved by people like them, because as much as Leon might never admit it, he fell into the role of Thomas’s father far too easily.

Merlin, thought, did not sit idle. Instead, he found himself climbing a familiar tower – one that he could walk the stairs with his eyes closed and still never miss a step. The little wooden sign still hung on the wall. ‘Court Physician’.

Merlin stood outside the door. He knocked.

The face that greeted him when it was opened was not one he knew.

“Can I help you?” A woman with fiery red hair and kind, weathered blue eyes asked when she answered the door.

“Uh- Does Gaius still live here?” She tilted her head before nodding slowly, squinting at him.

“Are you Merlin?” She asked.

“Uh, yes. I am.”

She smiled. “I’ve heard so much about you! Please, come in.”

Merlin entered the physicians’ chambers. Much of it was the same – the smell of dusty books and brewing potions and tinctures piled precariously on lopsided ingredient chests – but much was different too. The way charms sat on the window sill, and the slightly different position of the table. Merlin looked back at the woman.

“I was-”

“You’re Gaius’s ward, I know. I’ll just go fetch him!” Merlin watched as she crossed the room and banged on the door. “Gaius! You have a visitor!” she yelled. Merlin couldn’t help the slight smile that slid across his face.

She turned back towards him. “I’m Avery by the way. I’m the court physician.”

Merlin smiled. “Who trained you?”

“Gaius did! I only finished my training this past year, but he’s still here to look over my shoulder if I need him too,” she grinned. “There’s still so much to learn though, I’m not sure I’ll ever know all of it.”

Merlin opened his mouth the respond when the door to what was once his own bedroom opened to reveal Gaius, hobbling out down the stairs. When he looked up, the old man’s eyebrows nearly reached the ceiling.

“Hello, Gaius,” Merlin said, smiling.

“Merlin!”  Gaius started towards him but Merlin walked faster, and Gaius wrapped his arms around Merlin’s torso. “My boy!” Merlin smiled into Gaius’s robes. The old man still smelt of medicine and book worms. Gaius pulled back, “What are you doing in Camelot?”

“Visiting. I have things to tell you.”

Avery’s voice rang through the room. “I’m just running a salve down to Lord Ershire, I’ll leave you two too it,” she said, before exiting the room. Merlin looked back at Gaius. “She seems nice.”

“Yes, Avery is quite skilled at the craft – a quick learner, much like you. Except she showed interest from the start,” Gaius quipped. Merlin snorted softly. “So, tell me. Where have you been?”

Merlin did tell him. As always, it was easier to confide in Gaius. He told him of his immortality, Kilgharrah, and the dragons decision. Gaius sniffed. “I didn’t think he had a selfless bone in him.”

He shrugged. “It was his decision.”

The old man was very intrigued in Merlin’s plans from here on, asking all the questions Merlin couldn’t answer. Gaius just muttered how he’d once wished to see the lands beyond the sea, when he was younger. He said he was glad Merlin was seeing them for him.

Merlin liked that idea.

He sat there with Gaius for a while, talking of any number of things – he learnt that Alice and Gaius had been sending letters again, and that he was enjoying retirement.

“I have much more free time now. I’m far too old for all the work Avery does,” he said. Merlin laughed.

Later, Merlin helped – or tried to help, Gaius just swatted him away like he was a misbehaving child – him down the stars and to the courtyard. The sun had set a while ago, and the only light was from the torches lit around them.

It reminiscent of the last time Merlin had left, standing in this very courtyard with the same group of people, saying goodbyes for what everyone feared would be the last time. This time, they knew it.

Each of them embraced Merlin, and in Gwen’s ear, Merlin whispered his thanks. There were no words, for what she had done. She only squeezed him tighter, unwilling to let go until Percival and Leon joined, and the four of them held each other for a moment.

This time, when Merlin walked away from the citadel, from his friends and family, his entire life, for the last time – Merlin knew that he was leaving them in happiness. And that meant more too him than most things in the world.

<<>> 

Kilgharrah didn’t say much more than a biting remark on Merlin taking his time, when he called him down from the heavens. Merlin didn’t dignify him with a response, only climbing onto his neck until he was sure he wouldn’t fall off. Merlin swallowed.

When the wind began to soar through Merlin’s hair and tickled his ears, he looked back. Camelot’s lights glistened against the dark backdrop - a peaceful kingdom glowing. He supposed, its golden age had finally come to pass.

When they glided over a still lake and an even stiller tower, crumbling in the centre of the lone island, Merlin wished Arthur could have seen it.

Chapter Text

The skies unfolded around them.

Merlin... knowing that the world was more than just Camelot was a completely different thing to seeing it. Merlin sat atop Kilgharrah as the dragon beat his wings soundly, and they simply did not stop. The stars lit up the sky above them, and the moon reflected off the clouds below.

While the morning sky was orange, they were crossing a great ocean.

When it finally turned blue again, the view had changed once again.

Fields of green ensconced the landscape, small villages dotted along the coast and beyond. From their altitude, he could make out the roads connecting them. Kilgharrah didn’t stop, only gliding lower through the clouds. “When are we stopping?” Merlin called over the wind.

“When you wish too,” the dragon responded.

Merlin hummed, and they continued over the expanding world.

<<>> 

The stopped a few hours later, Kilgharrah folding in his wings beside a large lake. Merlin slid off of his back, stretching muscles he had only just realised were aching. “What now?”

The dragon peered down at him. “You may do as you please,” he said nonchalantly, “I intend to hunt beasts I have not tasted for some centuries.”

Merlin grimaced. He’d seen Kilgharrah hunt the mountain goats whilst they were in the Mountains of Isgaard – only a few days ago, though it feels far more distant – it was not a pretty sight, nor smell. Merlin did not see how the aroma of burning fur and flesh could do anything but turn one off their meal, but he was not a dragon, so perhaps he could not understand.

“I...” Merlin frowned up at him. “You’re the one who pulled me along on this journey. And now you’re going to leave me?” he demanded. Kilgharrah did the closest thing to an eyeroll Merlin thought possible for a dragon.

“For what do you wish from me? I cannot accompany you into the cities. Go. Learn. Experience. You might even enjoy yourself,” the dragon nudged him with the tip of his tail. “When you want to move on, or share with me what you have learnt, you need only to call.”

With that, Kilgharrah opened his wings once more and launched himself into the sky.

“How am I supposed to know where to go?!” Merlin shouted up at him, though he trailed off at the end. He may as well as the same question to an empty sky. He looked out over the water, bluer than he’d ever seen it. “Great,” he muttered, and started to trace the edge of it with his footprints. He’d seen a town near the edge of the lake when Kilgharrah had made his descent from the clouds – of what size, he couldn’t say. Every thing looked smaller on dragonback.

Fortunately for Merlin, lakes were most often round, so which direction he walked in did not matter.

Unfortunately for him, this was a very large lake.

His bag slung over a shoulder, Merlin walked around the edge of the water for what must have been hours before any buildings began to become visible. But slowly, they did. Odd huts that must have belonged to fishermen and hunters crawled closer together, homes were densely packed around crowded streets that were dotted with signs advertising in a language Merlin could not recognise.

Night was beginning to fall when Merlin found what appeared to an inn of sorts, or at least a large building with a tavern. Men and women alike were strolling in and out of its doors, hiccupping and laughing in their strange clothes and accents. Merlin went inside.

As expected, throngs of people were pushed into a room that might’ve been spacious once, but was now suffocatingly small. Unfamiliar music was played on unfamiliar instruments, and people danced and moved to the beat of it. Merlin fought his way through them to the bar on the far side of the room.

A burly woman shouted at him from over the counter. He blinked at her. She repeated herself, obviously frustrated. “Do- do you have a room?” It was her chance to look at him cluelessly. He gave her a helpless look. Suddenly, he pointed at the keys dangling from her neck, miming laying his head to rest on a makeshift pillow of his hands. She nodded in understanding, before she held out a hand.

That was a gesture Merlin understood well enough.

He had no money, no gold. Nothing to barter with. He shrugged, and the inn keeper turned away from him as she realised he nothing to give her. Even in the foreign tongue, he understood well enough what she snapped at him before calling over another customer was anything but polite.

Merlin fell back into the merriment, until he found himself pushed into a table. The man sitting shot him a look, but soon left to join the dancing. Merlin looked at the half-filled tankard left on the table, and where the man had now disappeared. He sighed. Drowning his sorrows in a strangers cup would harm no one, he supposed. Merlin took a swig of the liquid, before he spat it back into the cup, cringing. It tasted nothing like the liquor from home – it was nothing like mead. It was an ale of some kind, but far worse.

After that, he decided to call it a night.

Merlin fled from the busy bar to the far quieter streets of the town. Quietly, he found his way into an empty stable, with only rats and rotting straw to keep him company. At least if it was in disuse, he was less likely to bear the consequences of trespassing.

He placed his bag against the wall and leaned against it, letting his head loll backward. So much for the enjoyment Kilgharrah had promised him. So far, it had been miserable. Really, what had he been expecting? Left alone in a strange place with no concept of the language or customs, nor any gold or even food. Glorious.

Staring at his boots, Merlin let his thoughts simmer beneath the sounds of the night. Until a familiar hooting sound caught his attention. Merlin looked up into the rafters, to find a recognizable face peering back down at him. A barn owl.

Merlin stared back at it. At least there was one thing the same between here and there. The owl hooted again, and then once more, before it spoke. “Why do you stare at me?”

It took him a moment to realise that the owl had just spoken. Merlin’s eyes were larger than the full moon. “Uhh...?”

“It is polite to answer when asked, Emrys,” the owl said. Merlin swallowed at the call of his name.

“How do you know who I am? How do you speak? How can I understand you?” He asked, rapid fire. His mind was twisting and turning, trying to figure out what the creature was, if not a barn owl.

“Those are a lot of questions from someone meant to be answering.”

“What was your question again?” Merlin asked, almost apologetically.

“I asked, why do you stare?”

“Because an owl is talking to me.”

“And before?”

“Because I am in a land I do not know, and yet I know what you are. Or I thought I did.”

The owl sniffed, obviously satisfied with his answer. “An answer for an answer. And you answered two. I know who you are because of your name, and I speak because I am able to.” Merlin had to physically stop himself from rolling his eyes. Great, just what he needed – another cryptic creature of magic. “I have come to grant you a favour,” the owl said.

“Why?”

“You have not yet earnt that answer, Emrys. I offer you a single favour – to broker a bargain between us. Whatever you may need, I will provide you, given that you provide me something in return.”

Merlin waited for the creature – which he had decided could not be an owl, because owls could not speak – to continue.

“All I ask is for you to tell me something no one else knows. Something you have kept from all but yourself. Perhaps even yourself.”

Merlin raised his eyebrows. “Why do you need that?”

“Why do you consider it? We all want things, Emrys. Sometimes they are inconsequential, and sometimes they are not.”

Merlin considered it. He did need several things. Gold, for one. The ability to communicate, for another. He looked up at the owl. “I accept your offer.”

The creature hooted in satisfaction. “Then what is it you desire?”

“Am I correct in assuming you are some sort of fae?” The creature blinked its round eyes in what Merlin considered to be confirmation. “Then I want an enchantment that allows me to understand and reciprocate any language I come across, no matter when or where.”

The creature looked down at him and twitched in what resembled a nod. And, while Merlin thought his night couldn’t get any weirder, he watched as those round eyes glowed a familiar gold, and an enchantment fell into place. Merlin nodded in acceptance.

“Now it is your turn, Emrys.”

Merlin thought for a moment. Gaius hadn’t taught him much about the fair folk, but some key points stood clear in his mind. One was to never, ever, give them exactly what they wanted.

“My least favourite colour is blue, because it is too close to grey.”

The creature tilted its head, looking at Merlin curiously. “You must be sad whenever you look to the skies, then,” it said.

Merlin shrugged, and the owl nodded its head once more. Merlin looked down at his feet for only a moment, and when he looked back, the creature was gone. He had not even heard the beat of its wings.

Such was the way with owls.

<<>> 

The next day, after an uncomfortable sleep in the stable, Merlin emerged into the town once again. This time, though, he understood all that was said around him.

People gossiped and traded stories, they negotiated wares and wages, and Merlin understood all of it. His bargain had proven true.

Merlin strolled through the centre of the town. Soon, he came across a small shop with an array of strange herbs in the window. Above the door, a wooden sign hangs with chipped paint spelling out words. Merlin is surprised to find that he knows what they mean. ‘Robrecht’s Remedies’

He pushed the door open and entered the shop, which smelt of dusty tomes and moths. It reminded him of Gaius’s chambers, just a few days prior. Merlin looked at all the herbal specimens lined up along the shelves, each with finely written labels.

“Can I help you?” a wiry old man appeared in front of him. He was short – shorter than most – with a scrappy beard nearly taller than he was.

“Robrecht?” Merlin guessed, his tongue shaping the sounds perfectly without so much as a thought on his behalf. The man nodded. “I’m looking for employment...”

<<>> 

With the coins Merlin made that day, he was able to buy himself a bed in the inn. Not a room – a bed. When he laid in it for the first time, Merlin realised he had not thought of Arthur at all for the past two days – two days longer he ever thought such a feat possible. He stared up at the ceiling, drooping with the weight.

Perhaps Kilgharrah wasn’t entirely senile, after all.

Chapter Text

The town, Merlin soon learnt, was called Soignis. He didn’t really know what to do with that information, but it was nice to have anyway.

He spent the next few weeks garnering coin in Robrecht’s shop, in exchange for running the old mans errands and reaching the top shelves. Merlin took the opportunity to learn the new herbs and their properties, should they ever come in helpful. Some had abilities Gaius would only dream of, able to fight off infections and settle fevers like nothing Merlin had ever seen. 

He used his coin for food and board, and during the evenings in the tavern, he ventured downstairs to the lively crowds that danced and sung. Every few nights, he would find himself pulled into the movement, and he would copy others until he felt the beat through his veins. Other, quieter nights, he would listen to the conversations of others and occasionally, make some if his own.

One night, he asked about a talking owl. A burly man had just shook his head and cursed the elven.

After the weeks in the city, Merlin decided it was time. He wandered into the forest, far from the closest people, and shouted up at the sky. Mere minutes passed before a large shadow enveloped his chosen clearing and Kilgharrah landed in front of him. “Are we to leave so soon?”

“Where the hell have you been?!” Merlin demanded, not bothering with niceties. Kilgharrah huffed hot air at him.

“Around,” he answered, looking down his long snout at Merlin. “Do you bring me any stories?”

Merlin frowned up at him, slightly taken aback. Stories. Is that really what the dragon wanted? “A few.”

Kilgharrah chuckled. “Then can tell me while we travel.”

Merlin climbed onto the dragon’s shoulders, and using a stolen piece of rope, tied his pack securely to a spike protruding in front of him. “Is that why you demanded I come? To find stories where you can’t?”

“You are a dragonlord. How do I benefit from your power if not to use it to gorge on your tales?”

Merlin considered it. He supposed he did have the power to command him. It seemed like an almost fair trade. “Where to next?” he asked as Kilgharrah leapt into the air.

“Wherever we are when we see the next dawn.”

<<>> 

When they landed, they were surrounded by towering mountains capped in snow. Next time, they were in an arid desert, where water was more valuable than gold. Dense forests and open plains, crystal seas and deep oceans, cities of all sizes and languages of all sorts. Each time, Merlin was grateful for his gifted ability to understand them.

Each time, Kilgharrah would send Merlin on his way, and take off to do whatever it is the dragon did whilst Merlin spent his days exploring the new locale. He would sample foods with flavours that danced along his tongue unlike anything he’d ever had, learn dances to music with instruments he’d never seen. He learnt of peoples religions and their gods, he went with them to worship.

Merlin even made friends.

Some friendships were short, when he was only in one place for a few weeks. Others were longer, when he lingered for months or even years before moving on. Some were dalliances with handsome women or beautiful men that reminded him of something he didn’t want to think about.

Merlin’s curiosity was perhaps most piqued by the magic that followed him wherever he went – or perhaps he was following it. The way it ebbed and flowed in different kingdoms and cities, how the people showed him new ways to wield it that he had never known possible. Spells to conjure rain, or to banish it. Offerings to different gods that yielded unknown healing Merlin could not believe possible. Magic used in every corner of the world, in ways he’d never seen.

One man Merlin met after many years in the east claimed the stars told the future. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard of divination – he knew better than most the realities of seers and foresight – but it was the first time he took it upon himself to learn it.

Though he’d tried, Merlin hadn’t felt the familiar lick of his magic since he’d sent Arthur from the shores of Avalon. He’d visited doctors and practitioners of all kinds over the years, even the inhuman sort. Those that didn’t know his story shrugged their shoulders. Those that called him Emrys without more than a single step through the door asked for his patience. Merlin wished they’d tell him something different.

But the stars... the stars were tangible. They were real. So Merlin asked the old master in the observatory if he would teach him.

The master asked for gold, and Merlin dropped a leather pouch on the table.

“Training comes at the cost of two secrets,” the man told him. Merlin frowned. He’d gotten far better at trades since the commencement of his travels.

“How will knowing my secrets benefit you?” he asked.

“You are asking for one of mine, are you not?”

Merlin considered. “I’ll give you one secret, because I gave you the gold.” The old man stared at him, but did not object. Merlin sighed. “I’m scared to go home,” he said, and the old man raised his eyebrows, but did not ask any questions.

“Come then, and I will teach you the stars.”

<<>> 

“Haven’t I warned you about the dangers of divination?” Kilgharrah boomed as they floated above the clouds.

“This was different. It was using the stars to tell the best time to make decisions, or the best time to make a declaration of love, or whether it was the wrong time and you should wait a month. It makes sense,” Merlin explained. He was once again on Kilgharrah’s back, though he’d grown far more comfortable through their journeys, and so he laid on his front, legs trailing down the Dragon’s thorny back. “It was fun.”

“So you say,” Kilgharrah responded, and Merlin huffed.

“Don’t you want to hear my stories?”

“If I didn’t, I would leave you behind.”

“You always were a bit of an arse.”

<<>> 

Eventually, they ended up in Rome.

Merlin wasn’t sure why it took them so long, what with the Empire’s influence in so many places, but he finally decided he would pay the grandiose cite a visit.

Some parts of it, he loved. Others, not so much – there was a certain brutality to the city that cautioned those who visited. Magic was not as widespread here, people instead relying on the developing technology to get by where magic would have once done the job. The art, however, Merlin thought was absolutely exquisite. Their libraries, even more so.

But today was not one to spend appreciating what he did like about the city.

Merlin was roaming the cobbled streets when he felt someone shove him aside. Merlin swung to get a look at the offender, but noticed that his shoulder was noticeably lighter. His pack. His bag. Alarm bells began to ring inside his head.

The thief disappeared through the crowd.

“Hey! Stop!” Merlin called, taking off after the thief. That was the pack with the chest from Gwen. Mentally, he cursed himself. He knew he shouldn’t have been carrying it through the street, but he’d just been evicted from his last guest house and had had no choice. He was starting to lose his breath as he gave chase, but it did not stop him.

He followed the thief through the streets, darting through alleys and shop stalls. Merlin thought he was finally catching up until the thief disappeared down some stairs hidden beneath a building. Merlin didn’t stop to question it, only following.

He found himself in a dimly lit room that stank of filth and men. It was tightly packed and though he had to fight through the crowd of people, so did the thief.

Merlin reached out a hand and found the offending man’s collar. He wrenched his bag from the thief’s grip, before pushing him back into the throng of the crowd. Merlin’s hear was racing. He felt inside the pack – the chest was still safely tucked within below his clothing and other belongings. He let out a breath of relief.

Finally, Merlin took a moment to look around the room... really look. The room was crowded, but only because it was so small. In reality, there were only around thirty people filling the room, trying to get a glance or a seat near the centre. This was an auction.

Merlin slinked through the bodies until he was able to disappear behind a curtain into an adjoining room. He looked around. This was obviously where they were keeping what was going to be auctioned. Artifacts of all sorts were scattered around, many obviously stolen from unassuming people on the streets – they would have been overjoyed to find what was in his pack had they succeeded, he thought.

He rand his fingers along the objects until he came upon a larger display, covered with a woven fabric. Merlin frowned. Quietly, he felt the fabric between his fingers before he lifted it to peek beneath.

Merlin couldn’t quite contain his gasp.

He hadn’t thought there were anymore left... he’d thought Aithusa had been the last. Kilgharrah had thought the same.

But there, awaiting a shady auction in the underbelly of the Empire’s capital, stood a lone dragon’s egg, tear shaped and radiant. There was nothing like it. Merlin gaped.

Tentatively, he traced his fingers against the shell. It was warm. His heart skipped a beat. Merlin dropped his bag on the floor and began throwing the clothes and food from it, until all that was left was the chest tucked in the bottom. Ever so carefully, Merlin lifted the egg.

He tucked it into his pack, along with the cloth to cushion it. Merlin looked down at it. A dragon’s egg.

 Now all he had to do was make his exit. Merlin peeked out from behind the curtain. The men all seemed to be distracted, there was he chance. He slipped out from the alcove and joined the mingling crowd. Weaving through the bodies, the door got closer and closer. He hoped no one else could hear just how fast his heart was beating. Only a few more steps now.

“Oi, you! Boy!”

Merlin didn’t bother waiting to make sure they were yelling at him. He sprinted towards the door and darted out, climbing the stairs into the streets. He could hear angry footsteps chasing him. Merlin clung to his bag. There was no way he was going to escape with it, not with so many people chasing after him.

Merlin made an executive decision. He tilted his head to the sky.

“O drakon, e male so ftengometta tesd'hup'anankes!”

He didn’t have to wait long until a huge shadow began the cover his own as he ran through the streets of Rome. People screamed. Others stared. Kilgharrah only lowered himself enough the use a grisly talon to pluck Merlin from the streets, before retreating to the safety of the skies. Merlin clung to his bag.

“Care to tell me what that was about?” the great dragon asked.

“You won’t believe what I just found.”

Chapter Text

Kilgharrah stayed silent for a moment.

“Kilgharr-”

“There’s another egg?” he asked, voice rumbling despite its uncertainty.

Merlin still clung to his pack, now sitting atop the dragon rather than hanging beneath him. Inside, he could feel the tear-shaped egg radiating warmth. “That’s what I said.”

Without anymore hesitation, Kilgharrah began to descend from the clouds, the forests beneath rapidly approaching. Merlin clung to his scales and his bag tighter.

The dragon landed on the forest floor with a thundering boom.

Merlin frowned. “What are we doing?”

“Let me see it.”

He huffed. “Since you asked nicely...” he said as he reached into his bag and carefully withdrew the egg, holding it as though it might break at the touch of a hair. It wasn’t white, like Aithusa’s had been. Instead, the egg was the color of rubies. Kilgharrah stared at it.

“Is it still alive?” Merlin asked.

Kilgharrah let out a puff of hot air. “It is more than alive, young warlock,” he said finally, laughing. “It is only waiting for your call.”

Merlin smiled and felt the warmth of the egg seep through his hands. He supposed if it was anything else, it would have burnt him by now, but the egg did no such thing. He wondered if it was because he was a Dragonlord.

Kilgharrah peered down at him. “Are you going to hatch it?” he said, impatiently.

Merlin blanched. “Here?”

“Where else?”

Swallowing, Merlin looked around. They were in the middle of an unknown forest, in an unknown place. Merlin had no telling the threats that surrounded them.

He thought of the last time he hatched a dragon – Aithusa – in a different forest, leaving her in Kilgharrah’s care while he returned to Camelot. He had failed her, he knew. Merlin should have heeded Gaius’s words – the egg had been safe in the tomb of Ashkanar, protected. Instead, thanks to his trust in the great dragon and his own selfishness, she had ended up with Morgana.

He hated thinking of her.

He hated what he had done to her.

How was this one going to be any different? Merlin was going to hatch the egg, and leave the hatchling with Kilgharrah, who would leave Merlin in another city while he went about doing whatever it was that he did – and when Merlin called him back, the dragon would be gone. Off on its own. His heart lurched.

“I can’t,” Merlin said into the clearing they stood in.

Kilgharrah’s head reared back. His golden eyes were blazing. “What did you just say to me?”

“I can’t,” he repeated.

“You can’t or you won’t?” he roared, wings splayed. “It is your duty as the last dragonlord to-“

“Exactly!” Merlin yelled back. “It is my duty! And look how I handled that last time! When was the last time you even saw Aithusa? Before she sided with Morgana? After? Do you know that she can’t talk, that she can barely even fly because she spent years trapped in a well?!”

Kilgharrah was taken aback.

“I- We had a chance with a hatchling once before. I will not hatch another in the same conditions.”

The dragon sneered at him, cruelty and spite painting his features. “I did see Aithusa, after she sided with Morgana. Because I told her to do so.”

His words rang through the forest.

“What?” Merlin whispered.

Kilgharrah bared his teeth. “We are no humans. We do not feel the same emotion as you – nor the same loyalty. Even at her young age, Aithusa had the hunger for stories. So I told her how to hear one.”

Merlin felt that he could barely breathe. “You sent her to Morgana’s side,” he muttered, more to himself than to the dragon. He looked up at Kilgharrah with anger in his eyes, lip curling. “You sent her there to find you stories.”

The great dragon said nothing.

“She was a baby! More than that, she was your only living kin! She didn’t know, how to-”

“Dragons are not human children!” Kilgharrah snapped at him. “They do not need raising. They need protection until they are large enough to hunt and protect themselves. That is all.”

Merlin glowered. “Did you? Did you protect her?”

“I have always remained neutral-”

“Lies!” Merlin shouted up at him. “How many times did you tell me to kill Morgana? What about Uther? Were you neutral when you were burning Camelot to the ground?” He took a breath. “Do you think you protected her?” Kilgharrah only stared at him with hatred and rage simmering in his eyes.

“Drakon! Pes mou tin alítheia,” Merlin hissed. Tell me the truth.

The dragon reared back, wings splayed “How dare you-”

“Do not make me order you twice.” Merlin’s voice was deathly. A muscle ticked in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

He watched as Kilgharrah fought his order, teeth bared and the smell of rancid smoke was beginning to become prevalent through the clearing, a clear indicator of the dragon’s rage.

“No,” the dragon spat. “No, I don’t.”

Merlin sat back on his heels.

“Then how do you expect me to trust you with another one?”

Kilgharrah said nothing. Merlin lifted his chin, and the great dragon lowered his, ever so slightly.

“I’m not hatching this egg here. We’re going back to Camelot.” Kilgharrah opened his mouth, but Merlin cut him off. “And I will not name this dragon until I find Aithusa.”

His voice dared the dragon to challenge him. Kilgharrah’s stare suggested he was considering it.

They stood in the clearing together, facing each other down. Merlin against Kilgharrah’s pride.

The dragon never lowered his head.

But he did turn it, offering a shoulder for Merlin to climb onto. It was a weary concession, a draw. Merlin accepted it.

There wasn’t another word spoken as they flew towards the setting sun.

<<>> 

The Camelot Merlin returned to wasn’t one he recognised.

It was hard to know how many years had passed since he’d left, knowing that in some cities he’d spent many years, and he’d been to many cities. He knew it had been long enough that there was no one left, and even their children’s children had come and gone.

But he could still feel his friends there, in the air. In the heart of the land.

Merlin didn’t bother visiting Camelot. There was nothing for him there anymore – he was simply a relic of the city’s history, and he didn’t want to linger. Merlin’s destiny was no longer there.

Merlin left the unhatched egg with Kilgharrah in the Mountains of Isgaard – the same that they had slept in so many years ago. On horseback, Merlin searched for the White Dragon.

He supposed it was a sort of wishful thinking, to hope that Aithusa remained in Albion after so long, but there was something inside that told him it was true. Merlin hoped it was something to do with his being a Dragonlord, rather than wilful delusion.

He followed the pull all the way into the Valley of the Fallen Kings. It stuck Merlin that, although he had not been here in over a hundred years, it looked exactly the same. The trees might have been slightly wider, taller, but they were the same trees. The statues had not moved. Even the scent flooded his brain with memories that were dwindling.

Merlin swallowed and led his horse through the craggy terrain. Soon, the feeling he’d been following began to pull more strongly, until he could no longer make out a direction. He searched the sky and the caves, looking for her.

“Oh drakon,” he called, the harsh language burning his throat, “apokalýpste ton eaftó sas.”

Merlin raked his eyes over the forest surrounding him, searching for movement, a flash of white, anything at all that would suggest she was somewhere near.

The hairs on his neck began to stand on end. Merlin held his breath.

He didn’t have time to consider his next actions when he found himself pressed into the forest floor, a heavy weight on his back keeping him down. Merlin fought for air beneath it, struggling and kicking in an attempt to get out of his attacker’s grasp.

It wasn’t until black spots were beginning to fill his vision that the pressure was alleviated, and he was allowed to gasp for breath.

Merlin heaved, cringing at the sharp pain it induced – at least one broken rib, if not more. He couldn’t focus on anything but the sense of cold air washing over him and filling his lungs. When he caught his breath, he finally rolled over to face his opponent.

She was far larger than the last time he’d seen her.

“Aithusa,” he rasped, a hand clinging to his hurting chest. The white dragon stood in front of him, and while she was not yet nearly the size of Kilgharrah, he knew she had only been pressing a fraction of her weight onto him seconds ago. A tiny fraction.

Her horns and scales had grown in, but her jaw remained misshaped, as did her wing and her spine. Merlin struggled to keep his outward indifference as he took in her strange posture and the way she favoured her back leg. He wondered if she could even take flight.

Merlin felt sick to his stomach.

Is that why she was still here, in the Valley? Because she couldn’t fly? Or at least not well enough to cover any distance worth noting. As Merlin looked at her, he noticed how skinny she was. With her jaw in the way is was, he doubted Aithusa could hunt with great accuracy. And dragons primarily hunted by scorching their prey from above – if she couldn’t fly, and she could barely use her teeth... Merlin was starting to think it was a miracle he found her at all. She glared at him, mouth open and fiery brightness was beginning to glow within it.

“Aithusa...” he said again, his voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. He didn’t need to wonder about the hatred that cooled in her stony eyes. “Let me help you... Please.” He didn’t care that he was begging.

She made a guttural sound – a clear rejection. Merlin scrambled to his feet, ignoring the flashing pain in his ribs and chest.

“How can you live like this?” Aithusa narrowed her eyes. “I- I know its my fault, but please, Aithusa, let me help you.”

“N...o.” The horrible, strangled sound tore from her mouth. Her voice – if one could even call it that – was warped and mangled beyond recognition. Merlin imagined it came from her screams as she tore her vocal cords trapped in the Amartan well. He wanted to cry.

“If I heal you, at least you can tell me to leave. At least you can leave,” he begged.

She stared at him with a curled lip. He wasn’t a friend to her.

Merlin reached out a hand. Aithusa didn’t move. “I’m going to leave. But I promise I’ll return. And I’ll help you. I promise.”

He had promised her once before.

Merlin knew she couldn’t trust him, and he didn’t blame her – but he needed Kilgharrah’s knowledge and expertise before he could help her, if she would even allow him close enough. Merlin looked around, realising his horse had disappeared, spooked by the dragon.

Perhaps he wouldn’t need to go back to the mountains after all.

Chapter Text

He called down Kilgharrah to the plains surrounding the edge of the valley.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” the dragon asked, slight hostility still lacing his voice.

Merlin crossed his arms. “She’s broken. She can barely fly, she can’t talk... I’m not even sure she can hunt,” he explained. He couldn’t help but bear the responsibility for her state. He asked Kilgharrah whether the same slumbering they had entered would help, but the dragon simply shook his head.

“Aithusa has no shortage of magic, Merlin. She can be helped with a few healing spells, though I am sure not everything can be restored to perfection.”

Merlin considered that. He wasn’t even sure Aithusa would bear his presence long enough for him to speak the incantation, and if he couldn’t even promise to heal all her wounds... Merlin’s chancer were slimming by the second.

“I have to try,” he decided. He’d promised her he’d be back for her.

Kilgharrah lowered his nose. “Would you like me to be there? To draw her out here?”

Biting his lip, Merlin hesitated before he shook his head. “I have to do this on my own.”

The Great Dragon huffed slightly. “Alone is not the way of humans,” he said. Merlin ignored him – it wasn’t the first time the dragon had recited those words to him.

Merlin allowed Kilgharrah to gift him the spell, shimmery dragon-magic landing over him. The fiery touch of it burned nicely.

“Aithusa?” he called, returning to the last place he’d seen her after traipsing back into the woods and leaving Kilgharrah to his own accord. “I can help you,” he said softly into the forest. Only the trees creaked in response.

Merlin swallowed. “I’m not asking for forgiveness Aithusa. I’m not asking you to listen to my apologies, or for you to be trapped by my side. I just want to set you free. And you can go- you can fly away, and hunt, and live your life. I want that for you.”

The bushes rustled. Slowly, dappled sunlight started to bounce off white scales as they appeared from her hiding place. Merlin looked at her. He didn’t know how she had even survived this long. He searched her eyes for consent.

Aithusa’s body stood small and tense, not backing down from his offer, but not yet accepting it. She faced him down, and he could almost hear her weighing her options. Merlin kept his mouth shut, until she bowed her chin, just the tiniest fraction, but permission enough.

Merlin did not reach out a hand to touch her, though he longed to. Instead, he searched for the bond between them – the same one he’d called upon the day he’d hatched her from the egg. His was the first face she’d seen.

A terrible squawk trembled through her throat, and Merlin swallowed. He took a long breath, reaching into the charring magic that felt more of Kilgharrah than himself. He let it burn him.

“O drákon, épathes ti zoí kai antécheis tin katastrofí tis,” his voice morphed into a gritty scream as the magic engulfed him. “Afíste ti fotiá na sas apeleftherósei apó ti flóga, o kapnós na sas gennísei xaná. Afíste sas na xypnísete san chóvola ston ánemo,” the last of the incantation lingered on his tongue, and he waited for the fresh relief of cool air to soothe his singed throat. Merlin let it wash over him before he was ready to open his eyes.

When he finally did, the dragon standing ahead of him was not the same creature, with crippled wings and nothing to her.

Aithusa’s wings flared out behind her, larger than ever, and radiant in the scarce light filtering through the trees. They were magnificent – scales that shone with silver iridescence, and talons on their peaks poised for slicing through the sky. His eyes raked over them, before landing on her face. That to was nearly unrecognisable, her jaw aligned and covered in the same glistening white scales, lacking their earlier dullness. Her entire form was better, too.

And then Merlin’s eyes landed on her hind leg, the one she had favoured.

It was not comparable to her other three.

Aithusa didn’t hesitate. She launched into the sky, parting the trees above her. She was near invisible in the air, and soon she was entirely out of sight.

He blinked. Merlin didn’t understand. He’d done the spell – exactly as instructed by Kilgharrah. Why hadn’t it worked entirely? The injured leg had hung by her hip, nearly entirely wasted away. Even as she had taken off, moments ago, she had not stood weight on it.

Merlin replayed the spell in his mind over and over as he dredged himself out of the valley and back toward the plains. He called down the Great Dragon.

“So?” Kilgharrah asked as he descended, his golden eyes wide.

“It didn’t fix everything,” Merlin said, his face still stuck as a frown. “Her leg... the spell didn’t fix it. It made it worse, maybe.”

Kilgharrah nodded. “I thought that may be the case. Can Aithusa fly?”

“She lifted off before I could ask any questions,” Merlin said, still puzzling over what the dragon had just said. “Hold on- what do you mean you thought it might be the case?”

The dragon sighed. “Rare is a dragonlord, rarer is one not in possession of individual magic. As long as you refuse to return to your magic, some spells will not execute as perfectly as others.”

“I’m not refusing.”

“I sense your magic swirling around you, stronger everyday with maturity. Every creature of the old ways can smell it on you. It is only yourself keeping you from it.”

Merlin crossed his arms. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried – it was quite the opposite, he’d tried everything. Hypnosis, enchantments, herbs that almost made him believe he’d regained it, only for him to wake up half-clothed in a well without the ability to do so much as a spell. He scowled.

“It’s been over a century. Don’t you think I’d like to have my magic back?”

Kilgharrah rumbled, but said nothing more on the subject. “It is possible that it would not have worked even with excess magic. Nature always demands a price,” the dragon said as he presented a shoulder for Merlin to climb up.

“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled as he scrambled up to sit atop Kilgharrah. He leapt into the skies, wings beating the air.

<<>> 

Only the moonlight that streamed in from the clear night lit the cave in which Merlin and the Dragon sought shelter. Merlin sat awake, leaning against the mighty creature that was curled for his slumber. In the darkness, his blurry vision was fixed on the bag that leant against the wall, only a few metres from him.

It wasn’t the same bag as the one he had left with – no, that one had reached the end of its days in Normandy about half a century ago, when the strap got caught on a passing branch and that was all the encouragement it had needed to fall apart. Merlin had bartered some of Kilgharrah’s glistening shed scales for a new one from a local merchant.

Despite it, the contents always remained the same.

Some food, maybe a blanket. Some gold, which he had discovered to be a universal currency. But at the bottom, a wooden chest, emblazoned with the Pendragon Crest of Old. The very same he remembered Gwen placing in his lap. He only looked inside it to make sure everything was still intact, but Gaius’ spell of preservation seemed to be holding up.

Merlin stared at the pack. Now, he thought, it held something new. The dragon’s egg, radiant and warm like a harsh summer noon. The great dragon would expect him to hatch it soon.

Merlin waited until Kilgharrah was sleeping soundly, his heavy breaths echoing through the dark chamber high in the mountains, before he set off down the rocky goats’ trail that led from the cave. He knew Kilgharrah wouldn’t have cared, had he known Merlin’s plan, but it felt correct to attempt his journey alone.

He left the pack safely tucked in the cave, beside the sleeping dragon.

He walked until he came across the small mining settlement that overlooked the Ridge of Chemary – it hadn’t existed back in the time he remembered, but it had proven useful. He bartered a mount, and was soon back on his way traversing Camelot, toward a place he hadn’t seen in an exceedingly long time.

One hundred and fifty-three years since Merlin had been on the shores of Avalon.

Merlin’s heart was stuttering, struggling to beat as it should when he dismounted his borrowed horse, leading her through the trees. Over a century and a half since Leon and Percival had pulled him from the mud – though if Merlin was honest, he didn’t remember it. Whether it was because of his age, or otherwise, he didn’t know.

Merlin swallowed as he reached the final part in the trees, before the forest opened to reveal a grassy field, abruptly interrupted by the blue, unforgiving waters Merlin despised so much. The tower stood tall in the centre, no more crumbled than one hundred and fifty years ago.

He dropped the reins.

Merlin stood facing the lake, his throat trembling and his hands cold.

“Hello, Arthur.”

Nothing greeted him back.

Chapter Text

The sound of crickets humming and the water’s gentle lapping at the shore surrounded him, and yet Merlin felt he could not hear anything but the echo of his own voice as he stood at the edge of the lake, every breath filling him with the water’s chill.

So long since Merlin had muttered Arthur’s name, it burnt his throat as he spoke it, when once it soothed it like the sweetest honey. Merlin swallowed. He didn’t know what to say.

“I didn’t think I would ever come back,” he said into the darkness. “It’s easier not to think of you when I am elsewhere, in places you have never heard of.  And I never want to think of you.” Merlin took a breath. “It hurts too much, to feel the breathlessness that comes with the memory of your face, of your voice. Of your heart. It hurts me even after all these years, but I still can’t help but miss you. I miss you so much that I’m standing here, even when I have no right to be.”

He stared down into the shallow water. Merlin leant down and traced his fingers over the dark reflection of his features, the ripples marring his face.

“I lied to you. I betrayed you, even when you trusted me with everything you were. I used to tell myself that it was because I wanted to protect you from anything that would hurt you – even if that was me – but I was only protecting myself. From things I was never strong enough to admit.”

“How could I have been honest with you if I was never honest with myself? I loved you, in more ways than you were ready for, back then. I loved you so much that I would have died for you, Arthur. I wanted to die for you, so much so that I killed myself. It’s my own blood that paints my hands, and that’s what killed you. I killed you.” Merlin’s voice was quiet in the night, silent as he lifted his fingertips from the cold water and watched the remaining droplets run down his fingers and pool in his hands.

“I have no choice but to live with that now. But you... to you, I owe only an apology, Arthur. I’m sorry I never gave you the chance to prove yourself what I knew you to be. I’m sorry for how it all ended, and I’m sorry that I can do nothing to undo it. It doesn’t matter what words I use, because you will never hear them. I’m sorry for it all.”

Merlin stood again, stepping back from the water. He leant down again to sit on the shore, holding his knees to his chest. “I just hope that you’re not alone, down there. And I hope that you can forgive me, even if I don’t deserve it.”

<<>> 

Merlin didn’t remember closing his eyes, or falling asleep. Nor did he remember watching the sun arrive to replace the moon over the horizon, yet there he was, laying on the grass beside the lake beneath a blue sky. He sat up, his head dizzy from the motion. Merlin looked around, when a ripple in the water caught his eye. He scrambled to the edge, but there was nothing to be seen in the watery depths of Avalon.

Merlin drank from cupped hands before sitting back to where he was the night before, cross-legged in front of the crumbling stone tower that watched from a distance.

“You know, I once met a man that claimed to be descended from you. ‘Frygir, made from Pendragon blood in the centre of Albion’. I told him he was full of shit, and a darn sight uglier than any Pendragon I knew. I think you’d have enjoyed watching him hand my arse to me, but in my defence, I wasn’t wrong,” Merlin said cheerfully. “A right ugly bastard, that one. Smelly too. And wait until I tell you about the stories he was spreading about your round table-”

<<>> 

Merlin spent the day regaling the empty lake with tales of his travels, and occasionally of those he’d hidden from Arthur a century and a half ago. He spent the day afterwards doing much the same, and the day after that.

On the fourth day, Merlin’s voice had run out, so he laid on the shore in silence and watched the clouds pass by. On the fifth, Merlin went for a swim.

Eventually, he lost count of the days by the lake.

What had started as a tent created from a few stray branches had become a small structure built from stones and mud with a roof made from thatched leaves and grasses. It could hardly be called a hut, given it only had three sides and where the fourth wall should have been was only a large empty space facing the lake. Merlin thought it good enough to keep him in condition – the elements had not bothered him in some time, nor had hunger and thirst.

“Sometimes, I wonder if I am still human,” he told the lake one day. “If humanity is defined by mortality, then surely I am not. But then what does that make me?” As usual, neither Arthur nor the lake had any answer for him. Merlin sighed. “I think I am losing my mind.”

More time passed, and still Merlin lived on the shore of the lake. His hair grew, and his beard covered his face entirely in course dark hair. When he caught sight of his reflection in the lake’s never-changing waters, he barely recognised himself. He laughed.

Eventually, the autumnal winds began blowing cold enough that Merlin’s shelter could no longer keep the cold from reaching him. He wondered if perhaps it was a sign, that he had been here too long. That maybe, he had lost himself in the lake for a second time. The thought was fleeting, and Merlin built himself a fire with the dried reeds that grew around the lake.

<<>> 

Winter had barely arrived when Merlin realised that perhaps he would never leave the lake again. However, it seemed that he was not the only one with such a realisation.

Yet another chilled morning had arrived on the shore of Avalon when a blustery wind disturbed the flames of Merlin’s small fire. It was a wind he recognised.

The air parted to make way for Kilgharrah’s massive form as he landed in the mud that surrounded Merlin’s shelter. Golden eyes peered down at him, and though the dragon did not speak a word, Merlin suddenly became conscious of his state. Looking down on himself, he noticed for possibly the time the tattered state of his old clothes, and the way his hair blocked his view. He noticed the way his shoes had holes right the way through their leather, and how his skin was reddened and scaly when even he could not escape the elements. Merlin looked up at Kilgharrah’s waiting face.

“I don’t think I know how to leave,” he said quietly.

“It would seem that you do not, young warlock,” the Great Dragon replied. He said nothing else, only offering a shoulder for Merlin to climb onto. Merlin looked at it, before turning his head to stare out at the grey lake. How easy it was, to live out his days waiting for Arthur to miraculously crawl from those waters, sacrificing his mind as payment.

Deep within his mind, an old man’s voice rang out.  ‘Promise me something, Merlin. Find something to live for.’ Merlin looked over the icy waters.

“I promise, Arthur. I promise I’ll be here when you return.” But until then, he could not stay. Turning away, Merlin climbed onto Kilgharrah’s scaly back, holding onto the familiar thorns as the dragon took to the sky. As they rose, his tail lashed, crumbling Merlin’s stone shelter to a pile of rubble on the shore of the lake.

“Everything that you lose is a step you take,” the dragon rumbled as they flew.

Merlin sighed. “Even if it’s my mind?”

As they flew through the sky, Merlin looked down into the clouds below them. To his surprise, he caught a glimpse of something white and iridescent, dancing through the clouds... trailing them. He frowned. It appeared they had a follower.

Chapter Text

Kilgharrah, though he tried to hide it, kept a closer eye on Merlin when they returned from the lake. He kept the fire alight, brought food down from the mountain... even lumps of ice to melt into fresh water for Merlin to drink and bathe with. The dragon doted on him through the guise of burden, and Merlin let him. If Kilgharrah truly did not want to do so, he would not bother.

Not too much time had passed before Merlin looked up at the Great dragon one night, in between mouthfuls of his mountain goat stew, and asked if he knew of any hot springs in the surrounding peaks.

“These mountains are riddled with deep caverns and pools that have lain untouched since their creation. It will only take looking to find one.”

“...I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are quite a few mountains around here,” Merlin said dryly.

Kilgharrah peered down at him, but relented nonetheless. “The wind chatters of one only the next peak over.” He moved his great head to look in the direction of the neighbouring cliff face, no than hard rock and sharp ice. Merlin winced just thinking about it.

“I don’t suppose you could...” he started, but cut himself off when he caught the look in the dragon’s narrowed eyes. “Not a horse. Point taken,” Merlin sighed. No matter, he would just climb over and search for any openings in the rock face. Really, it wasn’t like he was going to kill himself doing so.

Merlin finished his stew – leftovers from the night prior that filled him nicely in the chilled alpine mornings – and rifled through his pack, careful not to disturb the egg still emanating a restful warmth. He shoved a knife, a rag, and a wrapped bar of soap into his jacket pocket before wrapping a scarf over his face. It was one he’d picked up in one of the colder portion of his travels, far up north where the night sky lit up with dancing blues and greens. The fabric was much thicker than the rags he used to wear, and longer – it kept the wind from biting his skin too much.

He set off, then. The day wasn’t too offensive, even though it had every right to be in the middle of winter. It was the kind of morning that left you cold to the bone, only to later reveal a warm sun in a clear sky. Above him, he could see Kilgharrah circling, doing whatever a dragon did with its day. Merlin began along the rocky goat’s path.

<<>> 

It wasn’t a pleasant scramble up the mountain – in fact, Merlin regretted it several times – but when he arrived at a small hole in the side of rock face, the feeling of relief was worth every second of it. He climbed through, and as soon as he breathed in the cave air he knew he was in the right place. Humid, warm air that smelt of ancient salts and minerals. There had to be a hot spring within.

Though it was dark, the entrance to the cave let in enough light to allow Merlin enough view of what lay before him. Dark water lapping at the stones, stalactites clinging to the roof of the cave. Merlin didn’t waste any time. Eager, he stripped off his clothes and emptied his pockets before stepping a toe into the water – he groaned happily. It was warm.

The pool deepened quickly, and soon Merlin was floating in the warm water, perfectly content. He hadn’t had a proper bath in months, and it was long overdue. The warm water reminded him of the ocean, in places where the water was clearer than crystals and bluer than the sky. He sighed into the damp air, allowing himself to enjoy it for a while longer before he waded back toward the stone edge and pulled his body out so that he sat on the edge and left his legs in the pool.

The cool air nipped at him, and he longed to get back into the water. Instead, he reached over to grab the bar of soap, unwrapped it, and began to work it into a lather. Merlin washed the layers of dirt off of his skin, allowing the foamy bubbles to slip into the warm water as he rinsed. He scrubbed at his face, and his hair... his entire body, before sliding back into the pool. In the small amount of light, he could make out his faint reflection in the water- gods, he needed a shave.

The warm water engulfed him, and he let himself enjoy it. Perhaps he could convince Kilgharrah of helping him here every so often.

Merlin stared up at the stalactites that hung from the ceiling, listening to the gentle drips that echoed through the chamber as droplets ran down their sharp points and into the pool. He wondered how old some of them must be, and whether he might be older than any of them. Maybe some of the really small ones. There was some comfort to be found that even though time passed and he stayed still, he wasn’t the only thing. Nature stayed with him.

He continued to ponder the cave when the light flickered, as though something had moved between the entrance of the cave and the sun. He tried to ignore it, but soon the feeling of being watched prickled his neck, and it became apparent that he was not as alone as before. Merlin took a deep breath and dived under the water, kicking through the darkness until he arrived at the edge once again. When he resurfaced and cleared his eyes, he was met by a stream of burning air being blown into his face.

He grimaced – dragon breath was hard to get used to. “Aithusa?” he asked.

The white snout pulled back and Merlin found himself looking into the grey eyes of the younger dragon. She blinked. “Emrys,” she croaked, her voice still rough.

Merlin kept his eyes on her as he emerged from the pool, getting back into his clothes before he sat down in front of her. “Why did you come here?” he asked simply. He’d known who had followed them back from Avalon’s shores, and who owned the stray wingbeats he heard when he slept beside Kilgharrah, sharing his warmth in those exceptionally horrendous winter nights. He was sure Kilgharrah knew too, but the older dragon hadn’t mentioned it, so neither had he.

“I want to know.” Aithusa said, and he quirked his head in response.

“Want to know what?”

“Why,” she rasped. “Why you killed her, why you left me. Why you linger. I want to know your tale.”

Typical of a dragon to seek stories. Merlin looked up at her with heavy eyes. He’d tell her, of course he would, but he knew there would be a deeper cost, to only himself. Merlin leaned back on his arms, the humid warmth filling his lungs as he took a deep breath.

“The Morgana I knew was different to the one you did. I loved her, everyone loved her, and she had a heart that beat stronger than anyone else’s. She remains one of my biggest regrets, alongside a few others. Including you.”

Aithusa, though she couldn’t entirely fit through the cave entrance, shuffled, getting comfortable. Her guard was still up, Merlin noticed, but she settled in the entrance to the cave, he keen eyes still watching him.

“Everyone loved her,” he repeated, “but perhaps no one loved her in the way she needed, in the way she deserved. In the way I was uniquely situated to do so, but chose not to for fear of myself, and what I had been told her destiny entailed. We were young then, and I didn’t know what was set in stone and what wasn’t, and in a world that burned people like us for the way we were born, it was a terrifying time to be alive.”

Merlin continued on, weaving the story of Morgana, entwining it with his own. He told Aithusa of his countless betrayals, of her actions that painted her as a traitor to some and a rebel princess to others, until she went too far. Of how she had defended her people until they had needing defending from her, and how they had unwittingly played right into the hands of fate, until they had all met their ends in the foothills of the Lake of Avalon.

There were tears that felt acidic as they fell, burning his eyes. His hands trembled in his lap as he recounted his greatest failure, and when he had to meet Aithusa’s stare once more, and admit that had failed her, too. That he did not expect her forgiveness or her pity, only that she would now be able to live as she was supposed to. To ride the winds across Albion as the dragons were always meant to do.

Aithusa considered him for a while, her hot breath filling the chamber. “You loved her?”

Merlin ducked his head. “Yes, for a time.”

“But not as much as you loved him.”

“No.”

Aithusa’s nostrils flared slightly. “There is an error in your story,” she said carefully, as if she herself was wondering why she was telling him at all.

Merlin stilled. “What?”

She blinked at him. “You believe that the once and future king will return when Albion requires him most,” Aithusa said. He nodded in response. She shook her head. “The prophecy speaks differently. Those who translate the Goddess’s signs claim that only when the world is once again worthy of him, will the once and future king rise again. Not when Albion needs him, but when they have earnt him.”

Aithusa’s words echoed around the chamber as Merlin’s heart began to beat out of his chest. Questions swirled within his mind, but before he got a chance to ask them, the white dragon withdrew her upper body from the cave, and took off into the mountain winds. As if she had never come.

Chapter Text

Merlin used the hike back to he and Kilgharrah’s cave to think about what Aithusa had told him. ‘Not when Albion needs him, but when they have earnt him.’ His chest was tight from more than just the exertion from the climb. When they earnt him. When he earnt him. He didn’t understand. How did Aithusa know? Did Kilgharrah? Was this just another of the great dragon’s schemes, another lie, another manipulation?

Merlin collapsed on the ledge when he finally arrived back at the hollowed peak of the mountain. Kilgharrah must have seen him, and descended from whichever part of the sky he’d been haunting, settling beside Merlin.

“Young warlock?” the great dragon asked, golden eye fraught with... it could almost be called concern. His thoughts a thundering storm within his mind, Merlin took one glance at Kilgharrah before he pitched over the edge of the mountain, and spilled the contents of his stomach into the abyss below. Again and again Merlin lurched, and the sting at the back of his throat brought tears to his eyes as he continued to hurl over the ledge.

Kilgharrah didn’t say a word as Merlin heaved, waiting by his side for him to finish. When he had nothing left, and was green in the face, the golden dragon used his long snout to guide Merlin into the shelter of the cave, and used his fire to warm and light the air. Merlin, exhausted and empty, took little encouragement to fall asleep.

<<>> 

When he awoke, Kilgharrah was still lying in the cavern, large body wrapped around him in the same way they had slept all those years ago. His stirring must have caught his attention, because by the time he opened his eyes, a scaly face was already close to his. The nausea had ceased, at least. Kilgharrah didn’t say a word, instead turning to stare out the entrance of the cave, where yet another blizzard roared.

“How long was I asleep?” Merlin croaked.

“Only hours,” the dragon answered, still looking into the storm. He didn’t ask the question, so Merlin found himself asking one instead.

“Did you lie to me, about Arthur’s return?”

The dragon’s tail flicked lazily. “I did not.”

“How can I be sure? You lied to me before, you’ve manipulated me before, for your own gain.”

The dragon’s giant head turned to face Merlin, golden eyes squinting. “Despite what you might believe of me, Merlin, I never lied.”

“You told me-”

Kilgharrah cut him off. “I am not all-knowing. I do not hold all the answers.” His tone was harsh, harsher than he had been with Merlin in a while. “I have told you what I have believed to be true. I might have wielded it to my advantage, I admit, but I have never lied.”

“I’ve trusted you,” Merlin said.

“You would be a fool to hold me to the standards of mortals, Emrys,” his name was a weapon, and Kilgharrah knew it, “You did not know my ways in the beginning.”

“But I know better now,” Merlin finished. And it was true, after decades of having Kilgharrah as his only permanent companion, he had learnt. He knew than to expect the dragon to live by human morals, but he also had come to know the morals that the dragon lived by. Had come to know Kilgharrah to the point that when they fought – and they did, often – they were equals. Dragon and Dragonlord, he supposed neither of them were human, or mortal. And despite the beginning, he had come to trust the dragon, and he knew that deep down, Kilgharrah had let himself become trustworthy.

Merlin met Kilgharrah’s gaze once more. “Aithusa found me, while I was in the hot spring,” he said finally.

Kilgharrah looked back out to the blizzard. “She still lingers.”

“She... She wanted to know Morgana’s story, the one of me and her. And in return, she told me that I was wrong, about Arthur’s return.” Merlin fiddled with a fallen scale from the cave floor, twisting it in his hands. “Aithusa said that he would not return when Albion needed him the most, but rather when Albion had proven themselves most worthy of him.”

Kilgharrah was silent for a minute, considering. “And this upsets you?” he asked finally.

“...Yes.”

The great dragon turned to blink at him. “I would have thought this was good news.”

Merlin shook his head, and Kilgharrah raised a scaled brow. Merlin took a breath. “I... In my worst moments, I thought...” He looked up at the dragon. “It’s easier to destroy something, than it is to fix it.” He spat the words. The admission alone felt like he was spitting on their graves- Gwen’s, the knights’, all of them. He had never said it out loud.

The dragon tilted his head. “You thought to bring Albion to its knees yourself, to force your king to rise.”

“He would hate me for even thinking it. He would kill me himself.”

“And yet, he would be alive, and you would see him again.”

“Grief makes you stupid- it changes the way you see things,” Merlin said.

Kilgharrah huffed, his curiosity piqued. Merlin could almost see the thoughts churning in the dragon’s head, digesting how great a story his worst thoughts might have made. He wondered if perhaps the dragon was just a little disappointed.

He laid his great head to rest on the cavern floor, the stone itself radiating a comfortable heat thanks to the presence of the dragon. Kilgharrah shuffled, but did not face him as he said “I never would have let you do it.”

“If I had my magic, there would be nothing you could have done,” Merlin countered, though it was mostly in jest. He was comforted to know that the dragon might have protected him from the worst version of himself. “I don’t have an alternative anymore. To waiting,” he said solemnly, the truth of why he had sullied the base of their mountain with his stomach contents.

“You could fathom burning Albion to the ground, but not building it? Not bettering it?” The dragon snorted, still resting his head. “You surprise me, young warlock.”

Merlin nestled against the dragon as the mountain rumbled with the wind. “You truly did not know, then?”

“I did not.”

He hummed, emotions still running high as he thought over the dragon’s words. “Maybe only when Albion is at its greatest will it really need a king as great as Arthur to rule over it.”

“Perhaps.”

<<>> 

They did not sleep while they sheltered from the storm, instead opting for a silence filled with thoughts that raged as loudly as the winds outside. Merlin was staring out at the dancing white that blinded the mountains. “Do you think Aithusa is alright?” he asked.

Kilgharrah didn’t move. “She’s likely sheltering from the storm in one of the other peaks. But she’s nearby.” Merlin knew that already, he could feel the bond between them still, tattered and dull as it was. As if reading his mind, the dragon said “Even if she wanted to, she would not seek us out.”

“Why?”

“It’s impolite to impede on another’s territory. I’m surprised she dared to follow you to the next peak.”

“You wouldn’t do anything,” Merlin countered, though there was an edge to his words.

“I’ll tolerate it, because I was there when she hatched,” was all the great dragon said.

More silence, until Merlin broke it again.

“She’ll never trust me.” He knew it, and he had accepted it.

“For whatever reason, you are not her true Dragonlord. Morgana was. She is forced to obey you for your blood, and nothing more.”

Thunder echoed through the mountains again, the crash causing their own to quiver. “I’ll hatch the egg,” Merlin whispered quietly, staring at where his pack – and the egg it contained – sat against the wall.

Kilgharrah moved so swiftly that Merlin nearly toppled back. He stared at Merlin.

“I’ll hatch it,” he said again, “but I have some conditions.” The dragon’s nostrils flared in protest, but he did not say anything. “The first is that no matter if it is a dragon, we will not leave it on its own, unprotected. I don’t care if you go, or if I go, but until it is grown enough, there will always be one of us.” Kilgharrah looked as though he was about to protest, spin yet another warning of how dragons and mortals were different, but the touch of authority in Merlin’s stare kept the words at bay. “The second is that you will teach it all that you know. Whether you tell me or not, I wish everything of the old religion, of destiny, of your traditions that you might not share with me, you share with the hatchling. You asked me more than once not to let you die the last of your kind, and in return you must fulfill your duty.”

Kilgharrah ducked his head. Acceptance. Merlin glared at him, not a friend or kin, but a Dragonlord to a dragon. For this moment.

Satisfied with the great dragon’s concurrence, Merlin walked to his pack, and with gently hands lifted the egg. He placed in nearer to the centre of the chamber, where it was warmest.

He took a deep breath, drowning out the intense stare from Kilgharrah.

The draconic magic filled him, as the mountain shook from the storm, he allowed it to stir his mind. He had each of his hands on the egg, and when it felt like his chest was about to burst, he let the summons come from his mouth.

“Koryne.”

Lightning crashed outside, lighting up the entire sky as the name rolled off Merlin’s tongue, harsh an unforgiving just as mush as it was beautiful. Beneath his hands, he felt the egg warm, burning hotter and brighter until Merlin had to step away, and the first crack in the ancient shell appeared. Followed by another, and another, until the tiniest head pushed through the shell.

Red. A red dragon.

Named for the storm that raged outside, and for the storm that raged within. Koryne, Storm of fire.

Chapter Text

Thunder continued to rattle the mountain as the blizzard swirled outside. Kilgharrah and Merlin ignored it, only staring at the tiny life that now crawled from its egg. The hatchling looked around, red scales gleaming against the golden fire Kilgharrah kept burning. It squeaked, crawling towards the great dragon.

Merlin watched but did not say anything as Koryne approached Kilgharrah. As the old beast brought his snout to the hatchling in what must have been a greeting and something else, as he bestowed a mighty breath of magic on the young dragon. Merlin felt like an intruder, as though this was a moment not meant for his eyes. He turned away.

He could hear Koryne squeaking happily and the strange air had lifted from the cave when he finally turned back around. The hatchling was staring at him, golden eyes akin to Kilgharrah’s watched him and he held out a hand, waiting to see if it would approach him. To Merlin’s pleasant surprise, Koryne did not hesitate, stalking up to him to sniff his hand.

“He is named for storms and flames,” Kilgharrah rumbled as Merlin tried to run a finger along the tiny scales.

“You know that I don’t choose the name,” he replied. “Besides, it seems to fit.” He glanced up to meet the dragon’s gaze and found something peculiar hanging in his ancient eyes, but nothing was said. “How long does it take dragons to reach your size?”

“We grow for nearly a thousand years.”

Merlin blinked, looking down at the hatchling before him, no larger than a young hound. He thought of Aithusa too. While she was larger than most houses, she was a mere fraction of Kilgharrah’s size, despite the centuries that had passed since her own birth. Merlin cringed, “How old are you?”

The dragon chuffed, but did not dignify him with an answer, instead using his snout to nudge Koryne. “We grow quickest in our first years. He will reach Aithusa’s size in merely a few decades.” Kilgharrah said. A quick, silent pang hit Merlin. He will grow quickly because he will be free, not caged in a darkened well at the mercy of a sadist.

Merlin watched as Koryne climbed Kilgharrah’s resting limb until he was able to curl up on top of him, between the great dragon’s furled wings. The hatchling squeaked in happy satisfaction before he closed his eyes, succumbing to a comfortable sleep. Merlin couldn’t fight the soft smile that slid across his face.

Perhaps for Koryne, he could face the years of waiting for Arthur. Like Gaius had once said- perhaps Koryne could be what he lived for. It was an easy thought to behold as he watched the small red form breath steadily, his features dangerously cute, a word he never thought he’d use to describe a dragon.

Merlin smiled again. He could almost feel his father’s hand on his shoulder, smiling beside him.

<<>> 

To Merlin’s surprise, dragons learnt to mind-speak before they learnt to speak normally.

‘Emrys’ an unfamiliar voice had startled him one day as he leant over the fire, preparing a stew. He had jumped, looking behind and around for a surprise visitor, only to find a young dragon looking at him with playful eyes. ‘Emrys,’ the voice said again.

“Is that you?” Merlin asked Koryne. The hatchling squeaked. “You know my name is Merlin.”

‘Emrys...’ Koryne whispered again, and the small dragon sat down at Merlin’s side. ‘Food?’

Merlin sputtered a laugh. Taking a piece of goat caught for him by Kilgharrah, he threw it to Koryne, who chomped it down with frighteningly sharp teeth without a second thought.

‘More?’

Next, they learnt to breath fire.

For the first time, Merlin was grateful that he lived in the depths of a mountain, surrounded in stone, because Koryne would have burnt down anything else. He had taken to stashing his clothes and his other belongings in nook carved into the very back of the cavern, just to reduce the risk of waking up to them in embers as the young dragon still figured out how to control his fire.

“More!” Koryne begged, his voice squeaky with his youth. Merlin shook his head.

“There is no more. You ate it all.” Three mountain goats and a handful of birds.

“Emrys, I’m still hungry!”

“Merlin,” Merlin corrected him gently, and waggled a finger at the dragons snout. “You’d better learn how to hunt for yourself, or convince Kilgharrah.”

Koryne stared at him with a scarily human disgruntled expression on his scaly face, before his whole body burst into flame, every scale burning.

“Ah!” Merlin yelped, shuffling backwards until his back hit Kilgharrah’s sleeping form. “Koryne!”

The older dragon shifted from where he slumbered behind Merlin. “He might still be hungry, but it’s not food he starves for.”

Merlin turned to look at the dragon’s golden eye. He sighed. “Stories?”

“We develop an appetite for them at a very young age.”

“I don’t understand what it is with you dragons and your stories,” Merlin sighed, leaning his head back as he watched Koryne jump around, nearly nothing more than a ball of flame.

“It is as second nature to us as greed is to humans.”

“Grim.”

“What is the point of living so long if there are no tales to collect?”

Merlin supposed he had a point. Ahead of him, Koryne finally extinguished himself. He sighed. “Do you want to hear a story, then?” he asked the young dragon. Already, he was nearly the size of a baby horse, and it had only been a couple of months.

He chirped happily, before settling down in the cave and watching Merlin expectantly.

“Once upon a time, there was a man and a dragon who travelled far and wide, collecting stories. One time, the dragon dropped the man off in a far away land, who’s name doesn’t exist in neither my tongue or yours,” the hatchling’s eyes widened as Merlin spun his tale. “The land was thick with forests unlike any in Albion, greener and lusher than anything the man had ever seen. He wandered through the forest – a jungle, it’s called – following a giant, snaking river until he came across a beautiful woman. Her name was Auki, and she held her basket in one hand, and took his hand in her other. She led him back to her village, where they lived on the edge of the trees where the river split into hundreds of smaller streams.”

Koryne listened intently as Merlin spoke, interrupting every so often to ask questions or remind him that he was still hungry, urging him to continue.

“Auki had the same eyes as someone else the man had loved before, so dark brown that he could see himself in them until the sun shared its light, and then her eyes turned into the deepest gold. The man had loved those eyes before, belonging to a heart even more kind than Auki’s.”

“Did the man fall in love with the woman?” Koryne asked, sitting on his hindquarters to stare up at Merlin. He shook his head.

“The man couldn’t love her in the way she wanted – he couldn’t love anyone that way anymore.”

Koryne sniffed. “Why not?”

“Because he had loved another one before – loved so hard that it broke him into a million little pieces that he’ll never find them all again. That’s the danger with love.”

“Who did the man love before?”

Merlin blinked at him before taking a quick breath. “That’s a story for another time, I think.”

“I want more!”

Kilgharrah nudged the smaller dragon with his nose. “Perhaps you’ll have to go find your own stories, young one,” he boomed.

Merlin’s head snapped up when the sound of rocks falling caught his attention outside the cave entrance. Kilgharrah’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ll tolerate it?” It was less of a question, and more of an order.

“She’s testing the limits,” the dragon hissed. “I’ve been more than patient.”

“She doesn’t know any other dragons. She doesn’t know your rules.”

Kilgharrah huffed in annoyance, but didn’t say anything more. He laid his head down on the cave floor. Merlin encourage Koryne to do the same, watching him tuck into the bigger dragon’s side as Merlin got to his feet. He walked out to the entrance of the cave.

It was a quiet night, despite the freezing cold. Winter was starting to leave the mountains, leaving only the snow in its wake. On the peak of the neighbouring mountain, Merlin saw a quick flash of iridescence, but by the time his eyes had focused on it, only the snow remained.

It might have been a trick of the light, but Merlin knew better.

Aithusa was lurking.

And it warmed his heart.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t long after that spring was welcomed into the Mountains of Isgaard. And soon after that, summer. Koryne grew at an alarming rate, learning to fly from leaping off the tallest cliffs and hoping the updraft would catch him when we opened his wings. By summer, he was the size of a horse, lugging young mountain goats back up to the cave that was growing more crowded by the day.

By the following summer, Koryne was nearly double the size.

“You said it would take decades for him to reach Aithusa’s size! At this rate, it will only take a few more years!” Merlin had told Kilgharrah.

“Perhaps he will be larger than me when he is fully grown.” And wasn’t that a terrifying thought.

Aithusa had disappeared from the range for a while, but had now returned, this time making her presence known. She and Kilgharrah had circled each other for hours miles into the air while Merlin and Koryne tried to guess what they were saying.

When they had flown down, together, Merlin had guessed it had gone fairly well.

The next winter after that, Kilgharrah started to grow restless again. “It is time, young warlock. We have been here too long.”

 It was true. Koryne was much larger now, easily able to fend for himself. And becoming just as reckless.

“Tomorrow then?” Merlin said, and smiled at the brightening in the old dragon’s eyes. Though he would never admit it to Kilgharrah, he missed his travels as well. They had been isaaan the mountains long enough.

“Can I come too?” Koryne poked his head through the cave entrance. He no longer fit alongside Kilgharrah.

The golden dragon huffed at him, but didn’t say no. Merlin smiled again, wider this time. He went into the back of the cave, and started packing.

<<>> 

Before dawn, Merlin sat out on the ledge in front of the cave he shared with the Great Dragon. Aithusa clung on to the side of cliff beside him.

“We’re leaving, Koryne, Kilgharrah and I. We’ve been here too long, I fear.”

She sniffed. “They’ve been growing impatient for nearly a year.”

“I know.” Merlin looked into her silver eyes. “I-”

She shook her head, now littered the with sharp thorns and scales of a grown dragon. “I cannot make the journeys that they can.” She lifted her wings, still unchangeably crippled by her earliest years. “I can never leave the shores of Albion.”

Merlin felt her words pang in his chest. “I can bring you back the stories. I’ll tell you all of them.”

Aithusa nodded. “And I will collect my own. I’m sure there are some you would like to hear.”

“If you’ll tell me.” He reached out a hand to stroke her white scales. They would never be close, not like he was with the others. Just as Kilgharrah had once said, he wasn’t her Dragonlord. Their relationship would never have the same amount of trust, or vulnerability. Merlin understood.

Sometimes he thought she was more like him than any of the others.

The rock creaked as she leapt from it, the early morning light bouncing off her white scales. If only Morgana could see her now, Merlin thought she might have smiled in the way he remembered.

Beside him, a great golden snout appeared, bringing familiar eyes level with his own. “Aithusa has her own destiny,” Kilgharrah said. “She will find her way.”

“I hate destiny,” Merlin said simply, getting to his feet and slinging his pack over his shoulder. The dragon chuckled as Merlin climbed up his shoulder, settling himself between his giant wings.

As Kilgharrah unfurled his wings and took the first steps of the cliff, and the wind began to rush past Merlin’s face as they hurtled into the sky, Merlin let out a joyous cry, whooping and yelling into the sky. They settled above the clouds, the sky still orange fading into blue when they broke below him, another set of wings, red and beating, soared beneath them.

Koryne swooped through the air, flying in and out of the clouds, chasing Kilgharrah’s shadow where it fell upon them. Merlin smiled.

And then he screamed.

From seemingly nowhere, talons came down from the sky, plucking his off of Kilgharrah’s shoulders, dangling him over the fluffy abyss. Looking up, Merlin saw a mirthful, fanged face staring down at him.

“Don’t-” Merlin started, predicting what the young dragon was going to do.

He didn’t get a chance to finish before Koryne dropped him, and his stomach plummeted as he did the same, free-falling through the air for seconds until he landed between Koryne’s wings, shaking with humour. “That wasn’t funny!” he cried, but he couldn’t keep the grin off of his face. Even Kilgharrah above him seemed to be laughing at him.

Flapping his wings, Koryne darted forward, swooping down until they settled below the clouds, the older dragon hidden above them. Merlin watched as Albion unfolded before them, cities where towns once were, roads connecting towns that had never existed before. Crops split the land into a patchwork of green and yellow, blue lakes and green forests surrounding them. Even more, Merlin could almost smell the magic that emanated off the land. It almost made the heat of his own return, if he could even remember what it felt like. He’d lived much longer without magic than he had with it, after all.

“Is that Camelot?” Koryne asked.

“Camelot is in the opposite direction. This is Northumbria, or whatever they call it now,” Merlin called out over the rush of wind around him. Koryne made a sound of disappointment, before heading back up through the cloud cover to where Kilgharrah still soared.

Merlin loosened his grip on Koryne’s scales, stroking as he did so. On Kilgharrah’s back, he could lay down and stare up at the sky, but the younger dragon was still only a small fraction of his size. He couldn’t carry Merlin for long before getting tired, not that it bothered Merlin. He was still amazed at how quick Koryne had grown – only two years ago, he’s been no larger than a small dog, when Merlin called him from his egg. Not that Merlin really counted the years anymore.

<<>> 

Merlin dozed off atop of Kilgharrah’s back, using his arm as a pillow. His neck would hate him the next day, but the flight was long. They’d had to stop multiple times along the way to allow Koryne to rest, and each time they took off again, they headed in a different direction, watching so many sunrises and sunsets that Merlin nearly forgot the sky was blue.

“Wake up, Merlin,” the familiar rumble called through Merlin’s head, shaking him awake. “We’re here.”

“Where’s here?”

“That’s for you to find out.”

Merlin shook his head, but sat up and held on tighter as they made their descent through the clouds, flying in large circles with Koryne on their flank as they made for the ground. Kilgharrah landed with a heavy thud, but smooth nonetheless. Koryne, on the other hand, hurtled straight into the ground, leaving a slight pit for him to climb out of.

Kilgharrah was still chuffing at the younger dragon in amusement as Merlin slid down his shoulder to get his feet back on solid ground.

Out of habit, Merlin began walking away, swinging his pack over his shoulder in order to make his way towards the nearest town, when Kilgharrah stopped him.

“Merlin,” he called. Merlin spun, waiting for him to continue with his eyebrows raised. “There’s powerful magic in these lands. Remember it.”

He frowned. It was just like Kilgharrah to by that cryptic. He thought about asking what the hell the dragon meant by that, but thought better of it. He had spent enough time with him to know he would never get the answer he searched for.

Merlin nodded, before he waved goodbye to both of the great beasts, and began his journey through the forest.

<<>> 

Even though it was the late edge of winter, snow still covered the ground, making each step one towards exertion. Even so, Merlin felt alive, more than he had in a while. His skin fizzled as if something invisible danced along it, and even the air seemed to fill his lungs more than it had before. He felt a once-familiar warmth, and he knew what it was. Magic.

Merlin let it fall over him, calm his senses while it simultaneously lit them up. It was almost exactly as he remembered it – potent, nearly like a drug. It was like finally breathing air after centuries of drowning. It was weaker, than what he had before, because it flowed over him rather than through him, but Merlin couldn’t help himself as he closed his eyes for a moment, letting the sensation settle over him. He could barely remember what it was like, feeling all of this and more, every single day. Even here, in this forest across the seas, it was miraculous. Merlin could barely fathom the thought of how he managed to hide the magic for so long, if this was truly how he felt every hour of every day, for a quarter of a century.

Merlin trenched forward through the snow. It wouldn’t be long until the sun melted it away and the Earth turned green again. He hoped he was still here to see it when the wildflowers would undoubtedly scatter the landscape, painting it with all their colours. He paid little attention to his direction, or how far he walked. Merlin simply walked – even if it was in circles, he would not mind.

The sky began to darken soon enough, though, and the light became tinged with orange. And that’s when he starts to feel it. The sensation drags him out of his stupor, the familiar prickling along his skin that made the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end, and the subtle was the scent around him changes, as if even the wind knew something was about to happen.

Silence befell him.

Though he kept his breaths steady, Merlin’s heart began to pound slightly harder in his chest. Slowly – so slowly – he started to turn around. His eyes moved before his body, until Merlin was facing the opposite direction, and his breath finally stopped.

It was giant. It’s antlers stretched seemingly miles into the air, hanging with branches and debris caught up in the spikes. A great stag, but then again it wasn’t. A dozen orange eyes speckled its face, blazing with predatory steadiness as it watched him. Merlin swallowed once, and the great beast lifted a cleaved hoof, pawing at the ground.

In the fading light of the sun, a single beam hit the beast, illuminating it in the trees. Merlin caught the sparkle as it bounced off of one of many shining, sharp, pointed fangs hanging from its lips.

Merlin blinked.

And then he ran.

Chapter Text

Merlin’s vision rushed as he scrambles through the undergrowth, running for his life. The sleeve of his jacket snagged on a dead branch that hung from one of the trees. Panting, Merlin tugged at it, pleading the fabric to rip. A vicious roar sounded behind him, the ground rumbling as the giant stag came crashing closer. Merlin yanked his arm forward, and the fabric finally gave way. He stumbled forward, dashing free just as a hellish set of fangs closed around the branch he’d been stuck on.

Merlin didn’t have a second to consider it. He ran forward, ignoring the way his breath no longer came easily or the he bled from hundred of little cuts from his endeavour. He dared a look behind him. The footsteps were becoming more distant, but there was no way he could really outrun the creature. Still rushing forward, Merlin’s gaze landed on an ancient tree a little way in front of him. Branches started low enough that he could force his way high enough to get a good grip.

Merlin hoped that the beast couldn’t climb trees.

He dashed to the tree, bark crumbling around him as he dug his fingernails into the ancient tree, pulling himself up with gritted teeth. Merlin was pretty sure he couldn’t die, but he didn’t really want to test it. Especially not with something so monstrous and... hungry.

Merlin reached the first branch, finally gaining a solid hold on the tree. Just as he took his first shuddering breath, the tree shook. Saliva flew through the air s Merlin came within a centimetre’s distance of a gleaming, dripping fang. Hot breath singed him as he looked down.

Gulping, Merlin started to climb. Faster, quicker than he ever had. He scrambled up through the branches and the foliage that cut and scraped at his skin, as the stag unleashed a horrific roar, shaking the tree with only the sound of it.

Merlin climbed until he sat as high as he could possibly go. Any higher, and the branches would begin to snap around him, and he would fall into the awaiting jaws. He was defenceless, armed with only a small knife – he had no chance of defeating such a great creature. As he took stock of his options, Merlin had to cling to the tree as it shook so violently that he was almost forced out of the safety of its branches. He peered down through the branches to the forest floor, where the beast had just rammed his head into the tree. Merlin watched in silence as it backed up, and rammed it again.

It was going to bring the whole tree down. If it didn’t get Merlin first.

Merlin opened his mouth, calling to the burning within him to shout the familiar words, to call his kin. Kilgharrah would come. He didn’t know how quickly, but at the very least, the great dragon could take whatever was left of his body back to the Lake.

And then the world disappeared into white.

A bright light blinded him, burning the back of his eyes for a whole second before it dissipated and the world faded softly back into view. The beast roared, angry. Another blast rocked not just the tree, but the whole forest. Merlin saw from his place in the branches as the ungodly antlers crashed through the brush, flying through the trees until it was running, away.

Merlin breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

Although, he paused before he began to climb down the tree. What was so powerful and threatening that it could send a bloodthirsty demon of the forest running in the opposite direction, its tail between its legs.

‘You could have, Emrys.’

Merlin froze as the voice echoed through his mind, shaking the foundation of his psyche. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard. Not a man, not a woman, not a beast. It was everything, everywhere.

‘Come down.’

It was spoken like an order. Merlin obeyed it, partly because of his painful curiosity, but also for the intense command Merlin felt shudder through his body, compelling him in so few words. He climbed slowly down the ancient tree until he reached the bottom, landing with a soft thud as he leapt from the lowest branch.

In front of him, a figure stood in a heavy green cloak. It trailed along the grass, through the fallen pine needles and the mud, although wasn’t stained with a single mark of brown.

The figure used gnarled and knotted hands to pull the hood down from over its head, and Merlin blinked as he watched a face appear, albeit wavering slightly, as if they were still deciding on their form as they revealed themselves. A powerful glamour, it reverberated with him even as his magic was buried so deep within him.

An old woman stood in front of him, with speckled skin marked with age and long, gray hair that was woven in several brittle braids, twisted and tied with white string.

He could barely look at her. The power that emanated off of her made him want to look away, blinding him without light to blind. It was like staring at the sun.

“Thank you for saving me,” he said.

‘You did not need me to save you, Emrys,’ she responded, still taking up his mind.

“How do you know who I am?” It wasn’t that he was surprised, though. In all his travels, there had always been people who recognised the lines on his face for what they really were.

‘I know you because like me, you have many names, and yet none. You are as part of the trees and me as I am of the rocks and you,’ she said.

Merlin considered her form for a second. He didn’t know what she was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. “What can I call you?” he asked after a moment.

A kind smile formed on her face, and yet her mouth did not move as she spoke. ‘Etris. Now come, you have much to learn, and I have been waiting for you.’ Etris starts to move away. Merlin was nearly glad that he couldn’t see beneath her cloak, as he wasn’t sure that he would find any legs.

He followed. “What was that, earlier?”

‘If you are to learn anything, young one, you must learn to listen, rather than ask,’ she tutted. ‘That is your first lesson.’

Merlin followed her deeper into the forest, as the sun finally slipped entirely below the horizon, done with the day.

<<>> 

Etris, who Merlin had decided was some sort of God of the forest, ethereal and otherworldly, led Merlin into a hidden grove. He could have sworn she chuckled as he had the thought.

The grove was surrounded and guarded by trees that must have been there for centuries. So old, that he could have sworn that they watched and whispered just like any human.

‘All the trees listen, Emrys. These ones are just louder about it,’ Etris has said.

If the forest had felt reminiscent of his magic, the valley they now sat in was more than he could have ever imagined. It almost breathed life back into him.

Merlin wondered if maybe, the Valley of the Fallen Kings had once felt like this. Alive, skittering and deep, entwined with everything that lived or didn’t. If the crystal cave was truly the birthplace of Magic, Merlin supposed it would have to. He asked Etris as he settled in front of her, following her lead as she sat in the lush grass.

‘Were there places like this in Albion, once?’ he asked. To her mind, because for some reason, it didn’t feel right to use words here. Nothing else did, after all.

She nodded. ‘You are correct in your thoughts. What you call the Valley of the Fallen Kings was once like this, and more. What you feel there now is only a remnant of what it once was.’

‘Why did it leave?’

In his soul, Merlin felt as the profound... sadness – if a God could be sad – befell her. ‘Magic is in the Earth. It is in its beasts and it is in its creations. Magic cannot exist if it is not welcome.’

He felt his mouth dry up. ‘The... Uther’s Purge caused it to leave?’

Etris shook her head. ‘No one man can cause what happened. It is merely the track of time. If men have no need for magic, and the creatures no longer roam freely, then what is left for magic to do? Magic is in the wild things, Emrys. And it is you.’

‘Is that why you brought me here? My magic?’ Merlin asked.

‘The magic is not yours, you are one and the same. They cannot be separated. It is as much part of you as the heart that stands in your chest. Frozen maybe, by the pits of time and the pain you choose to guard, but there nonetheless. As like your heart, it will dance once again.’

Merlin let her words settle over him. It wasn’t the first time he’d been told it. In his travels, he’d looked into getting his magic back. Without fail, every master and sorcerer and creature had told him that he hadn’t lost it. And yet, he was still unable to reach it.

Even in situations like today. Even when magic could have been the only thing between his life and his death, he couldn’t use it. He couldn’t find it.

‘You have lived long without it, Emrys. You have forgotten what shouldn’t be forgot. You have forgotten what you are.’

She got to her feet, extending her hands. He took them, her wrinkled hands closing over his calloused ones. She drew him to his feet.

‘Allow me to show you.’

Chapter Text

Deep in the forest and secluded in the magical safety of the grove, Merlin stayed. He slept in a bed of grass with a pillow made from the fallen leaves. The forest is always lit up with gold, even in the depths of night – not light, but rather the very essence of the magic that wove between the trees and drifted off of the Earth just like the mist once rolled over the hills of Camelot in those early mornings.

Just as Etris instructed him, he only ate the bark of the trees that surrounded him, drank only the water he was able to taste from the dew that dusted the grass at the first golden light of the day. He let the beetles crawl over his skin and the dirt cleanse his skin, rejecting his clothes and letting his hair grow free.

He caught his reflection in the stream one day, and couldn’t tear his eyes away. He barely looked human, more of some sort of creature that haunted the forest. ‘Emrys,’ Etris’s voice shook his mind. ‘You are a creature of the Earth. You are magic.’

“But am I human?” he asked quietly, more to himself than to her. He certainly didn’t look the part. He tore his gaze from his unruly reflection to look at her. She lifted a bony hand to caress his cheek.

‘Your heart is.’

“And the rest of me?”

Etris didn’t say another word, lifting her hand from his face to offer it to him. Merlin took it.

Slowly, she led him into the water. The green of her cloak floated around her in the water as she pulled him further in, until they were waist deep. He frowned at her, but she simply placed her other hand on his chest, and started to push him under.

There was an uncanny strength to her grip as she guided his submersion. His head fell through the water, and she still held him down. ‘Breathe,’ her voice in his mind reverberated. Merlin looked up at her through the rippling surface, he could have sworn she wasn’t in her usual form.

Finally, Merlin drew a large breath into his lungs, and they filled with water. But nothing happened.

He doesn’t convulse, doesn’t cough. He couldn’t even really breathe out. While the sensation wasn’t overly pleasant, neither was it unpleasant. Rather, he simply couldn’t breathe.

 It took a moment while Merlin adjusted to the lack of air, but soon a whole new world opened up to him. The way sound moved through water, and how he could hear the very heart beats of the fish and the reeds that grew through the stream. He began to notice how the water rushed around him, how his hair moved with the current and the way it carried power through it.

He stared at the way the light scattered on the water’s surface, far above him. How it dappled the water with blue streams that waltzed with the wind and water to bring its gift into a whole other realm. It was a familiar dance, because once, the gold of his magic had danced to the same silent music within his own eyes, lighting blue in the same manner the sun did water.

Even when the pressure of Etris’s hand receded, Merlin didn’t surface. It was... lighter, when you didn’t have to breath. Merlin wondered if this was what death felt like, but thought the better of it. This is what life felt like.

When he finally decided to find the surface again, he marvelled in the way the droplet rolled down his skin, returning to whence they came. He laid on a sun-warmed rock, letting the moss cushion him as he coughed the water out of his lungs, taking a fresh breath of air.

‘Do you understand?’ Etris asked.

‘Maybe.’

Maybe it didn’t matter if he was human or inhuman, mortal or immortal. Maybe all that mattered was the way the trees sung in the wind or the way the rivers chased the seas. Maybe he was anything and everything, and always was.

She nodded cryptically, disappearing back into the trees. Merlin wondered just ancient she really was. He had a feeling she was the one who built the rives and carved the rocks that border them. He didn’t really know why she had taken such interest in him, but still held out the hope that his magic would respond to her, to the forest. He was waiting for it to come back to him.

<<>> 

Etris showed him a great many things that he would never have understood before. Once, she asked him to plunge his hand into a bush of roses, covered in thorns that would shred his skin, and pluck her a red rose. Not a white one, she had said. It was Merlin’s blood that turned the petals to red, and the flowery scent to one tinged with copper. She had taken it happily, and Merlin’s hand had bled no longer.

Another time, she told him to push his hands into the ground, and learn to feel.

‘This is the way of the ancients,’ she had said. ‘Even the High Priests and Priestesses of your religion had done the same.’

Merlin had plunged his palms into the Earth, spreading his fingers into the soil. He’d felt the grass brush his wrists, closed his eyes, and breathed out, allowing himself to truly feel.

Roots grew over his hands, over his legs as he knelt into the soil, sinking further down. Flowers came and went with the seasons, and when the rains and bitter winds flew through the grove, Merlin listened to what they had to say, and the stories they had to tell.

When the leaves fell down onto him, he let their cover protect him as they crumpled into dust and returned to the Earth, while he remained unchanged. When the first snows fell, he felt Winter’s memories and grating sadness, and untouchable, freezing beauty. He waited until the magic that flooded the grove began to flood him, too. Until it ran through his veins and pumped from his heart like any other lifeblood would, until it poured from his eyes and ears and mouth and nose, until his breath came only with magic, and not with air.

He waited until he remembered.

Until he could feel.

When he opened his blue eyes next, Etris stood in front of him.

‘Do you remember your name?’ she asked, looking down at him with a peculiar expression.

He blinked. ‘Emrys?’

‘Perhaps. Do you have any others?’

‘I have many, and none at all.’ The old woman smiled faintly. She had said something similar to him, once. Despite it, Etris waited, blinking down at him. “Merlin,” he whispered. “My name is Merlin.”

For that was the name his mother gave him. It was the name that had ignited the hearts of his loved ones, and the name that had rolled off their tongues tinged with endearment.

Slowly, Etris offered her hands down to him. Merlin stared, but began to move his fingers in response. He pulled them out of the roots and grass, browned and hardened by the Earth, and put them in hers.

She pulled him to his feet.

Merlin looked at her while she waited, until he realised what she was waiting for. For the first time in many, many years, Merlin felt a giddiness light up his chest.

She blinked in silent affirmation, and a smile – a true, unbroken smile, broke loose upon Merlin’s face. Magic. His magic. He closed his eyes, calling to it as he once did, feeling the connection through his very soul as it flooded him.

Merlin called for light. He even whispered a spell, which he had usually reserved for quiet nights alone, when he checked in secret that his magic was still not there.

He felt the familiar buzz through his senses, but... something was missing. The warmth, he realised. It wasn’t there.

And no light came to him.

Merlin’s eyes flew open, searching Etris’s face for an answer. “It’s still... I can’t...” he stuttered in confusion.

Etris tilted her head back and laughed, shoulders shaking her light frame as the laughter overtook her, she shook her head.

‘Of course you can, young one. You just won’t.’

“But-”

‘You never lost your magic, I told you this from the start. But you had forgotten what it was, where it came from. It is easy to lose things if you forget where you put them.’ Etris still chuckled. ‘It is not my job to heal your soul, young one. Only your connection. And that is what I have done.’

“I thought I hadn’t lost my magic,” Merlin said, deadpan.

‘You didn’t, you lost your connection. You forgot where to find it. Now, you know. You know it all, you know everything.’

“I know nothing.”

She tutted. ‘No one knows anything.’

Frustrated, Merlin left Etris in the grove and walked back down to the stream, once again looking at his reflection in the water as it lapped at the bank. Cryptic bastards, all of these ancient creatures. Merlin wondered if the Goddess planned for him to become one, someday. He supposed it might be fun.

Merlin cupped the water in his hand, splashing his face, and began to bathe.

<<>> 

He was finishing up at the stream when Etris appeared behind him.

‘Your kin await you,’ she said quietly. He turned to face her, bowing his head.

‘Thank you, for what you have done for me.’

She smiled softly. ‘I have waited many, many years to meet you, Merlin. Fate has once again fallen from my hands, but I hope that one day soon it falls into yours.’

Merlin was left lost for words at her use of his name. He smiled back. From behind her mossy cloak, Etris presented his bag, still untouched by the time and seasons despite the years that had passed since he first stepped foot into these unknown woods. He took his pack from her hands and slung it over his shoulder.

Etris turned away, beginning to walk back into the trees. Merlin watched her for a second, and began to do the same, until he felt an uncanny weight be added to his shoulder, as if his pack had somehow gotten heavier in the few steps he had taken.

He stopped, laying it on the floor to peer inside. He gasped as he opened the bag.

He flung his head back around to where Etris had been disappearing into the woods. Merlin stumbled backwards in shock. Instead of the familiar old woman with white hair and wrinkled skin, something entirely new stood in the tree line, meeting his gaze with ancient eyes that glittered with the same stars that glittered on a lake’s surface as they did in the darkest night.

Gnarled bark crept where skin used to lay, still covered by a cloak of unthinkable moss and flowers, like the one from before but more. Everything more. From its head, hair like water from the softest blue streams dripped down, but Merlin’s gaze was more distracted by the large set of antlers protruding from it, antlers that dripped with blood. It wasn’t the blood of death though, it was a startling bright red. It was blood that bled life, in its purest mortal form.

Merlin nodded at the creature whoever – whatever – it was. The ancient creature nodded back, and disappeared into the woods.

Breathing shallowly, Merlin brought his stare back to the pack laying at his feet. Within it, an untouched egg. Green, with brown and gold speckles dotting the top of its teardrop shape. Heat radiated from it in a way so familiar, Merlin barely had to look to know what it was.

A gift more precious than

Chapter Text

Merlin all but sprinted to the edge of the forest, though he was careful to keep the sound of his scrambling to a minimum – the last thing he wanted to do was attract a beast like the one he had run from on his first day in this mysterious land.

Eventually, he reached the line where the trees surrendered to flowing grasses that fluttered as the wind rolled over the gentle slopes. He barely allowed himself the time to catch his breath before tilting his head back into the sky.

“O drakon, e male so ftengometta tesd'hup'anankes!” he roared, ignoring the birds that jumped from the grass at the sound.

As he searched for his breath, he sat down on the grass. Merlin had thrown his old clothes back on as he was leaving the woods, and it felt odd to be once again be bound by them after more than a year without them.

He carefully pushed his hands into his pack, lifting the egg into the fresh air to inspect it in the clearer sunlight.

Unlike the dazzling moon-white glow of Aithusa’s egg, or the fiery warmth of Koryne’s, everything about this egg was more subtle. It was a multitude of shades of green, mixing to form the most beautiful artwork, like each leaf in a forest. It’s pointed tip was speckled with brown, and Merlin couldn’t help himself from running his hands along it. It too radiated warmth, although it was unlike Koryne’s. It felt... older. Merlin wondered if it was possible for a Dragonlord to determine when an egg had been laid – he’d ask Kilgharrah later.

Only a few hours passed before a pair of dark shadows appeared in the sky, circling the sun above him before the larger of the two began to descend.

Kilgharrah landed in the grass in front of him, but quickly froze as his gaze landed upon what Merlin held in his hands.

Merlin grinned at him foolishly. “You did say that you didn’t want to die the last of your kind.”

The Great Dragon blinked at him, before something that as closely resembled joy as possible on a dragon overtook his face. “You have much explaining to do.”

“As if you’d ever let me forget.”

<<>> 

Koryne flew in circles around Merlin, who was equally overjoyed to be reunited with the young dragon. Even bigger than he was last time Merlin had seen him, Koryne begged to carry Merlin, demanding to know everything that had happened.

Although Kilgharrah continued to cement that dragons were not horses, he flew close by as Merlin told them both what had happened in the past years, describing Etris and the way she had shown him magic again, how he had never felt so connected to it before, even if he still couldn’t use it.

Kilgharrah had huffed, though Koryne had only pleaded to hear the tales of when Merlin had been able to use his magic. Because his heart had grown overly fond in his old age, Merlin solicited him, telling him of a few of the adventures and mischiefs he had crafted with his magic, when he was still older than the young dragon himself.

They decided to fly straight back to Albion, crossing the seas without stopping.

“What do we do with the egg once we get back?” Koryne asked as the first glimpse of land began to appear on the horizon.

“I’m not sure yet,” Merlin replied. “When I hatched you, we stayed for years to wait until you were large enough. I’m not sure Kilgharrah will be so patient again so soon.”

“So you’ll hide it?”

Merlin hummed. “Or find someone to guard it.”

For the first time since... well, since forever, they didn’t go back to the Mountains of Isgaard. Instead, they flew right over it, heading straight in the direction of Camelot.

Merlin’s stomach did somersaults as they careened over the land. He wouldn’t see the city, the citadel – if it even still stood – but even being so close... There were memories here that made Merlin hesitant to let his mind drift toward them.

When they finally spiralled out of the sky into a land so overbearingly familiar, Merlin nearly felt sick. He climbed down from Koryne’s shoulder, only to be faced with Kilgharrah’s giant face right beside him, a golden snout nudging him gently.

Their years together had softened the Great Dragon, it seemed.

“Are you all right?” Kilgharrah asked, though gruffly. Merlin ran a hand over his face. He had stood here many times, with Arthur. He had only been back once – when he had been looking for Aithusa. He took a shuddering breath, steeling himself to the sweeping nausea that was creeping up his throat.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, though his voice wobbled.

Once again he stepped into the ancient forest, searching for a white dragon.

<<>> 

Once again, the white dragon found him first.

‘Emrys’, the name echoed through his head. A branch snapped behind him, and he spun around. Aithusa faced him, the dappled sun pouring from the gaps between the trees glimmering from her pearly scales. ‘You did not call me.’

“I knew you’d know I was here,” Merlin said lowly, while scraping his eyes over the dragon’s form. She’d grown larger, if anything. “I need you.”

“Do you bring me the stories you promised?” She switched to her physical voice, still raspy, but it had grown with use. Merlin nodded, before he reached into the bag that swung from his shoulder. He pulled out the egg, presenting it to her. Immediately, Aithusa’s eyes brightened with curiosity.

“I was gifted it by an ancient creature in an even more ancient wood, somewhere over the sea. Somewhere that this place used to be.”

She raised her scaly brows. “The wind here reminisces of its past.”

Merlin understood, now, what she meant. “I’ll tell you the story, if you’ll let me ask something of you.” Not a favour, because she owed him nothing of the sort. He took her silence as an invitation to continue. “Hide the egg. Guard it. Keep it from the world until I can hatch it.”

She considered him. “Why not hatch it now?” she asked with a tilted head.

“Kilgharrah will not settle for as long as it took with Koryne after so short a time. And- and I think there are more out there.”

“You intend to find more eggs?”

“I found you when Kilgharrah though no more existed. I’ve since found two more. I can’t help but think... there must be more.” Merlin looked down at the speckled shell in his hands and sighed. “I have a duty, as a Dragonlord. I will not fail it again.” A hard ball filled his chest. He had had many duties, in his long life, and he had failed at most of them. This one, so precious and magical, he refused to let fall into the pattern.

Aithusa stood still, her cool eyes fixed on his own. A long moment later, she huffed. “I will guard the egg.” Merlin couldn’t contain the grin that broke out over his face, stretching his cheeks. “But I warn you, these woods are less and less quiet each year. More mortals pass through, unaware of the valley’s character.”

“I trust you to hide it where you see fittest,” Merlin said. And he did – he didn’t think Aithusa would willingly sacrifice the future of her kind, no matter their past. He knew Kilgharrah did too, or else he would have never agreed to asking her. She moved her great head in agreement and Merlin set the egg down, watching as Aithusa ever so gently picked it up, balancing it between her teeth.

‘I’ll look after it, Emrys,’ her voice rumbled through his mind. ‘Worry not.’

Merlin’s hair flew across his eyes as her wings began to beat, and she caught the updraft through the canopy, disappearing into the sky.