fic for nekokoban!

[rivendellrose]

nekokoban introduced me to the music of Heather Dale, who writes a lot of Arthurian-themed music. One of her songs is a loose concept of the funeral of Arthur, and of course things being how they are, I couldn't not end up thinking of the BBC Merlin's Arthur and the people around him... and then nekokoban sealed the deal by saying she liked to think of the song from Merlin's perspective.

Well. Naturally that ended up slamming me with a huge, unrepentant fic-bunny, which I'm now foisting on her as a late birthday present.



On the dark beach, a fire burned. Nineteen men in armour surrounded it, and beyond them in the shadows beyond the flickering light, several hundred men and women stood with candles, mourning their king. A great king, the king of all Albion. King Arthur.

Standing beside the pyre, the burning brand that set it still in his hand, Merlin couldn’t think of the king they all mourned. He was too busy thinking of the man he’d served and loved, of the young man he’d met so long ago.

The fire burned, the sword was thrown back into the lake, and the ring broken... and the ritual, for most, was over. The people left. They returned to their homes, slept another night, wondered what would happen tomorrow. The peasants thought about the coming harvest, whether they would have enough for winter. The nobles thought of the troubles to come, of a king dead with no heir, of how they could try to keep Camelot together, or how they might break it to win their own share. Life went on. The knights remained a while longer, but they all knew that the spell, so to speak, had been broken, and eventually they wandered away, back to the castle, or back to their own lands to prepare for the coming tide of war. A few seemed to want to say something to the king’s old advisor, but Merlin had learned in his years how to appear intimidating, even as his tall frame stooped and his unruly hair greyed. He remembered Gaius, now, and summoned his old teacher’s most foreboding scowl, and eventually even the most well-meaning of Arthur’s men departed without another word.

And Merlin waited alone in the darkness, and watched his old friend burn.

“You’ve really gone and done it this time, you great prat,” he murmured. “You’ve really...” He choked, and then leaned on his staff in silence, tears glinting on his weathered cheeks, reflecting the sparks of the fire.

For a time, all was silence except the crackling of the fire, and the soft lapping of waves on the shore. And then, in the darkness, a figure moved.

“You’re late,” Merlin coughed.

“I wanted to be sure the others were gone.” Tall and still as straight and thin as she'd always been, the figure that emerged into the firelight was cloaked in dark blue, but when she pushed back her hood, dark hair only now beginning to silver shone in the starlight, and proud features that seemed only to have sharpened with age softened slightly with the remembered whisper of a smile. “I didn’t want anyone else to see me.”

“But you came.” Merlin laughed softly. “I knew you would.”

“Of course you did.” She shrugged, careless. “Whatever else he was... whatever we became... Well. Let’s just say that I’m here to remember the past. He was like a brother to me.” She thought for a moment. “The annoying kind. But a brother, still. In those days.”

“I remember.”

“Do you?” She looked at him curiously. “They say you age backward, now, do you know that?”

“And they say you bathe in the blood of virgins to keep your beauty.”

Morgana shrugged. “Virgins, really? A lot of mess, when herbs and spells will do as well. Is it true, that it was Mordred who did it in the end?”

Merlin nodded, and reached up to rub a crick out of his neck.

“Do you ever wonder if we were wrong, back then, to save him? Do you wish we’d let Uther kill the child, to spare him now?”

Merlin thought about it. “I don’t think it works that way. I think it had to happen like this. It always felt... like fate.”

Her jaw tightened. “I don’t believe in fate.”

They watched smoke rise from the pyre, as a group of bats flew by and caught the gathering moths. After a time, leaves and branches crackled behind them. Neither wizard nor sorceress glanced back.

“I’m so sorry... I'm too late, aren't I?” the newcomer asked.

“That,” Merlin said, “would depend on what you mean, your majesty.”

The woman behind them had softened with her years as Morgana had not, but she was still as beautiful as when she was young - there was a light to her, Merlin thought, a sort of glow that would never fade, despite how the passing of time had tired and worn her. Her dark hair was hidden under a cloth, now, and her clothes were simple, much as they’d been when Merlin first met her, but more modest. Gone were the rich fabrics and fine jewelry that would have identified her to the masses who’d loved her when she was queen.

“I wanted...” Guenivere bit her lip as she suddenly recognized Morgana beside Merlin. “I know he didn’t want to see me, but I came as soon as I heard. I didn’t realize...”

Morgana crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to argue with you now, Gwen.”

“I don’t want to fight either. But you had to know--”

“Do we have to talk about this now?” Morgana’s voice was softer than Merlin had ever heard it before - certain softer than anyone had heard it in the last long years, since she left Camelot.

“No. Of course not. I’m sorry.”

Morgana laughed softly. “You were high queen for twenty years. Anyone else would have been changed by that, but you sound just like you always did.”

“Is that meant to be a compliment, or an insult?” Gwen asked, and though her voice was soft and low, Merlin thought Morgana was wrong to say that she was unchanged by her years as queen - the Gwen they’d known as youths had almost never been so direct with her lady.

The fire sparked. “I miss those days,” Morgana admitted.

It was as much of an answer as they were likely to get, so both Merlin and Gwen let it go at that, and for a long time the three former friends stood in silence. And then, another form moved in through the darkness.

“You must be joking...” Merlin lifted a hand in a warding gesture.

“Hello, there, little warlock. My, how you’ve grown.”

“Nimue. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to say goodbye to our old friend, just like you three. I knew long ago that his life wasn’t mine to take. Now that the proper person has done his job, I’m here to deal with the aftermath. Just like always.” Her smile was like the expression of a cat who sees a wounded bird.

The oldest and most familiar protectiveness in Merlin’s heart rose up again, and he moved to stand between her and the pyre. “You can’t take him.”

“I have to. Don’t I, Morgana? You’ve seen it, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here. And you, too, Guenivere.”

“Morgana, that can’t be true--” Merlin turned to his old friend for confirmation, but she was nodding slowly.

“Yes. I did see that. But it’s not the only reason I came.”

“Oh, how sweet.” Nimue grinned in the darkness. “See, warlock? Step aside. Let destiny take its path.”

“No. He’s already given up everything. I won’t--”

“What? Lose him?” Nimue stepped forward, and cupped his weathered cheeks in her hands. She still looked exactly the same as she had in those heady old days. “Foolish boy. He’s already lost to you. But you will both be remembered forever, your names written in the histories of this land for as long as it shall survive... and if you step aside, we shall ensure that when the time comes, he will rule it again.”

“Without me.”

Nimue laughed. “That’s up to you, Merlin. With all your power - if you’ve really become all that they say of you, all that your potential promised - then you ought to be able to find a way to wait for him, too. But that’s not my job.”

“Our job,” Gwen corrected, stepping up to Nimue’s side.

“Three queens. So the legends will say.” Nimue nodded.

“You’re not a queen,” Merlin pointed out.

Nimue made a tsking noise, and waggled her finger at him. “I am many things, little warlock. There are still many things in this world you don’t know.”

“Anyway, you’re too late. We’ve burned him.”

“As if that would be enough for one such as him.” Nimue waved her hand at the pyre, and the flames seemed to blow away in the breeze, leaving a wrapped body still whole and untouched.

“Morgana--”

“Let it go, Merlin. Let him go.”

“I can’t!” the old man shouted, feeling more by the minute like the young man who’d first met Arthur. And before he could stop them, the words leaped out again, as in those days of old - “He’s my destiny!”

It was Gwen who turned to him this time, as they others raised their arms to lower the body down from the charred pyre. “He was all our destinies, Merlin. But life goes on.”

“Not for me,” Merlin choked. “Not without him. I loved him.”

“We all did. In our own ways,” she added awkwardly, casting a suspicious and very Gwen-like sideways glance at the other two women. Merlin nearly laughed through his tears at that, it was so much like all those old days that he remembered, when they were all young and quick and so very alive. “All of Camelot did.”

“And they always will.” Morgana strode back to their sides, and seeing her side by side with Gwen again after all those years filled Merlin with a strange nostalgia, and a keen wish that things had been other than they were. “Merlin, in days long from now, people won’t remember the boy we knew. They won’t remember the arrogant prat who bossed people and threw his armour at you. They won’t remember the crown prince who threw his socks all over the floor. They’ll remember the greatest king in history. And they’ll remember you at his side.”

“And you. Both of you.”

Morgana shrugged. “Gwen, maybe. Me... I think I have another position to fill in those stories, and I think you know what I mean. Maybe someday... but that’s beside the point. What I’m trying to tell you is that we’re not taking away the man. We’re taking the king. Arthur, the man - the one we all remember - will die with us here. He burned tonight, and he’ll burn in our memories until we each die, and then he’ll be gone forever. Arthur the king belongs to history. Arthur the man... He belongs only to us.”

“All three of us,” Merlin agreed, and reached out his hand. It was gnarled and calloused, not at all the long, thin fingers he remembered, and he still wondered sometimes when and how that had happened. How had he not noticed the day his hands became Gaius’? Probably in the same way he hadn’t noticed the day Arthur’s hair grew grey. He’d been too busy living life to see it pass by him. And the two hands that rested on his - first Morgana’s, still as slender and pale as in memory, and then Gwen’s, softer than in youth, but just as warm and comforting - were just as old. They’d all lived it together, the greatest years history would ever know, even if they hadn’t seen it that way at the time.

“This is all very touching, ladies, but we have a legend to keep.”

Morgana rolled her eyes. “Witch.”

“What’s that saying about the pot and the kettle?” Nimue grinned. She held up Arthur’s wrapped body in a nimbus of pale green light behind her.

“Let me see him one last time,” Merlin demanded.

“You can’t.”

“I can.” He raised his hand, and the words came easily to his mind, slipping the wrappings from his head. In his mind, he remembered the face he’d seen only a few mornings before, doing his best to forget the cold, grey head of the corpse he’d prepared that morning. Arthur’s face had grown heavier in age, gaining many lines and scars, and at certain angles he’d resembled his father strongly these last few years, although there was always a warmth to his features that Merlin had never seen in Uther. Maybe some of that was because Uther had never smiled at him, Merlin allowed - certainly not the smile that Arthur had reserved for Merlin alone. In quiet times, when no one else was by, in the late watches of the night when they could be themselves instead of the king and his wizard, there had been a spark to his eyes, a wry tilt to his smile, that Merlin was sure had belonged to him alone. He lowered the half-unwrapped corpse to chest level, and looked down at it one last time...

And saw the face of youth. This was not the king of autumn years who had ruled with scars and the wisdom of ages. Instead, Merlin turned aged eyes on the face he’d known as a young man - a king newly crowned, as beautiful then as summer height, a man still seeking his strength, still a little unsure, still reaching and hopeful. Sorrows had already touched these brows, but they weren’t the heavy trials of later years, when the body begins to fail and the heart to doubt.

“This sight is not for you, Warlock.” Nimue moved to replace the wrappings, but two hands stopped her - Morgana and Gwen both, and for the first time that night their eyes met, and both almost smiled for an instant, for the past it recalled to move in such perfect tandem together.

“It is.” Gwen corrected softly. “He is ours. He always will be. Our Arthur.” She bent and pressed a soft kiss to the forehead of the face she’d married, and whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry.”

“Gwen’s right.” Morgana laid a hand possessively on her foster-brother’s chest. “He belongs to us as much as to the future. And I’m glad they’ll see him like this, first. He was at his best in those days.” After an awkward moment, she, too, bent and kissed him, ever-so-lightly, and then turned away quickly. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Merlin closed the distance, and bent, pressing a kiss to his forehead, too. “I’ll be there,” he whispered. “I don’t know how, yet, but... I’ll figure it out. I promise.”

“A promise to the dead? You still live dangerously, Merlin.” Nimue smiled.

“He’s only dead for now.” Merlin stepped back. “All right. Take him. But remember - I’ll be there, too. You won’t have an easy time if you mean to mess around with things again.”

Nimue laughed. “I never doubted it. Until then.”

Three queens carried Arthur into the darkness, into the future. Merlin the wizard would, the next day, look to the time to come, and find the way to join them there. That night, Merlin the man cried for his friend, his king, and his lover.