Work Text:
It’s the first day of Spring.
It’s the first day when the sky is clear, when the breeze rustles through the trees and flowers appear, and Merlin gets the feeling that everything will all be okay from here.
April dawns, and it doesn’t matter how many years it’s been. Anything could happen, and he still wouldn’t change his mind. It’s his favourite month out of the lot of them, and it always has been.
Arthur’s birthday was in April. He can’t remember exactly when. He thinks the calendar has changed one too many times over the centuries for him to remember the precise date. But he knows it was April. Or rather, the April that once was.
Back when the same clear skies graced the heavens above Camelot, back when the King would throw tournaments in honour of his only son, when Arthur would end up wowing the crowds with his reputable sword-craft and sheer magnetism.
“Come on, clotpole.”
Merlin says quietly, wearily sitting down by the water and gazing across the hills at Glastonbury Tor. He wonders whether today might be the day that Arthur makes his way back to him.
It never is.
But, he takes some solace in the fact that the Somerset hills are as endless as his will.
It doesn’t matter how many winters he’s had to face to get here. How many times in the last 1,500 years he’s sat poised and waiting for what he’s come to know as both the impossible and the inevitable.
The time will come, and he’ll be right here when it does.
He can’t imagine ever being otherwise.
He doesn’t know, really, what makes him do it.
Merlin thinks that in all of this, it’s probably just a trick of the light. He stares across at the fields and the never-ending sky and the tower on top of the Tor and sees the kind of haze that usually appears only in the height of summer. The water ripples around the banks, and for a second, he thinks he sees a flash of a sword somewhere in the depths, like the raging current around the ruins of Tintagel.
Of course, if it were to happen, it would be in April.
He doesn’t know why. He just has a feeling.
Standing hurriedly to his feet, Merlin stares out at it; the trees just starting to bear their blossom, the sound of songbirds in the branches and the warmth drifting past in the air.
He decides to run for it.
For the tower across the water, for the sloping sides and the winding stairs cut into the rock and the endless pathway that continues on past the horizon.
He can’t remember the last time he climbed to the top.
He thinks he must have done it a thousand times, more so back in the earlier days, when the loss was still equivalent to the pain of being mortally wounded by a sword forged in Dragon’s breath.
Not that the loss is any easier now that it was back then. He supposes he’s just… got used to it.
Sitting by the water, he’d been in exactly the same place he had been a millennium and a half ago, watching his only friend get smaller and smaller into the distance.
He would give all the days he’s lived since then to have this one thing come true. To have Arthur come back to him, it would mean the total sum of every single April he’s lived since the end of the battle of Camlann.
Panting for breath, after taking more time than he cares to admit, Merlin finally makes it to the top of Glastonbury Tor.
He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to find.
The ruined tower, the view that goes on for miles in all directions, the springtime sun beating down upon him… all of these things are exactly to be expected. Except this time, there’s one thing that’s different.
Around the side of the tower, there’s a large patch of wildflowers sprouting out of the dirt.
Which wouldn't be unusual in any other place, they’re common enough as it is this time of year. But Merlin doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything grow up here. Not in all the centuries he’s known this place. No trees, no flowers, sometimes even the grass doesn’t make itself known. He doesn’t want to chalk it up to the lingering of magic, but in his heart, he doesn’t know what else it could be.
Walking slowly towards the flowers, he crouches to his knees and stares at them in the haze, the shimmering of their petals, the breeze through their leaves.
He doesn’t know what it is.
Suddenly, today, he can feel it in the way the sun hits the slide of his face. If he were to look back over his shoulder, he’s sure he could still see the glint of the sword in deep water from all the way up here.
Reaching out an outstretched hand, he lingers his fingers over the top of the wildflowers, whispering an enchantment that comes to him in the spur of the moment. His eyes glimmer like the warmth surrounding him. He’s not really sure what he says has a direct translation.
It’s something like Return to me, or, Rise again, or another sentiment equally as similar. As if any words will do justice to everything that he’s feeling right now.
He doesn’t know why he’s leaning so hard into it today of all the days.
After 1,500 years, he still has to be well prepared for this to be yet another false alarm. After all, they have been known to happen.
Merlin doesn’t know whether it’s some kind of trick that April plays on him, luring him to a false sense that maybe after all this time he might have waited long enough by now. Maybe today he will be given his prize. The one thing he’s wanted from the beginning. Perhaps, Glastonbury Tor won’t have to be haunted anymore, if only he gets this one thing right.
And, as fate would have it, as he lifts his hand away from the wildflowers, praying under his breath for all the makings of a miracle, the ground below him starts to shimmer.
One moment, where there were just petals, now appears the body of a man. And Merlin doesn’t have to be crouching this close to know who it is, he thinks he’d know it even if he was a thousand leagues away, under a different sky, looking up at different stars, on the edge of different seas.
Arthur.
The Once and Future King.
He’d know him anywhere. That’s the one thing he’s always stuck to, over all of these centuries; it’ll take him far longer than 1,500 years to ever forget his face. The furrow of his eyebrows, the arch of the bridge of his nose, the wayward sandy hair above deep blue eyes that are the exact same colour as Caerleon skies. He’d noticed it the second he’d set foot there.
Arthur blinks, once, then twice, staring up at the sky for the first time in millennia. Wildflowers in his hair, he lifts his head slightly to focus on his surroundings, coming to as if being awoken from the longest dream.
“Arthur?”
Merlin, crouching in stunned disbelief, almost doesn’t want to push his luck. There’s nothing worse than being too hasty at a time like this. After all, this could all be a figment of his imagination. It almost wouldn’t surprise him.
But then Arthur looks right at him.
“...Merlin?”
And Merlin can’t stop himself. He hasn’t gone by that name in years. No one has called him that since the very last days of Camelot. He honestly didn’t think he’d ever hear it again. And here King Arthur is, on a completely random day in April, 1,500 years later, asking for him as if it’s only been mere hours since they’ve last seen each other.
Merlin falls to his knees from where he’s been crouching, immediately overcome with emotion, weeping with a mixture of relief and sheer joy. He carries with him the knowledge that nothing that dies is ever really dead, so long as there is someone to remember it. Today, he seems to have been proved right.
He reaches out for Arthur’s shoulders, pulling him up and into a tangle of limbs, wrapping his arms around his chainmail, digging in his fingernails.
Their hug lasts just as long as the last 1,500 years has felt.
Burrowing his face into his neck, Merlin breathes in the smell of old Camelot, of castles and Kingdoms and things that haven’t existed since the great ages of long ago.
“...I had thought I might never see you again.”
Which is as much a lie as it is the truth. In the back of his mind, he always hoped that this day might come, but a part of him had always prepared for the alternative. Maybe he was too late, all those years ago. Maybe the spell could never be broken. Maybe he’d be confined to waiting for the rest of existence, as penance for not fulfilling his destiny the first time around.
“Don’t you dare tell me I would ever forget your face.”
And Arthur doesn’t know what to say to that. Or maybe he does, and he just chooses not to say anything at all. It occurs to Merlin then, in the middle of an embrace, that Arthur has no idea what’s happened to him. He has no idea what year it is. He has no idea how long it’s been.
Pulling away, tear trails on his cheeks, Merlin studies Arthur’s bemused expression, staring at him like he’s committing everything to memory all over again. He’d remembered it exactly right, the way the light falls in his eyes, the way his nose scrunches at things he doesn’t quite understand. Merlin wipes at his face with the cuff of his sleeve.
“What are you talking about?”
Arthur transforms his face into a look of baffled disdain, and it’s one that Merlin knows all too well. Like the back of his hand, standing in the citadel of Camelot, it’s a look he first saw in the days after the fall of the Old Religion.
And Merlin coughs a laugh then, for the first time in years, because he’s missed absolutely everything about this. On this April day, in the middle of Somerset, the two of them sit in amongst the wildflowers atop Glastonbury Tor.
“It appears Albion’s need is greatest.”
Today of all the days, it would seem. Merlin watches as Arthur starts to make the smallest of movements, reaching up to place a hand over his chest, feeling the break in the chainmail. But underneath, his wound is nowhere to be found.
“...I had a sword in my heart.”
“Yes. It’s gone.” Merlin says, nodding furiously as he tries to blink back further happy tears. “It will ail you no more.”
How long has he wished to say those words, he wonders? Far, far too long.
“Was it your doing?”
“Me?” He lets the word escape from his lips on a stunned breath.
“You are a sorcerer.” Arthur points out, as if he’s only just remembered it to be true. He looks across at Merlin through the haze, the birds perching their nests in the ruined tower. Merlin only has one response for him.
“And you’re a King.”
“...What of Camelot?” Sitting up straighter, Arthur narrows his eyes as if the fate of his Kingdom is a thought that’s only just come to him.
With his hands in the grass, Merlin absentmindedly picks at the blades between his fingers. It’s a subject he almost doesn’t know how to broach. Not on a clear day like this. He squints into the sun, looking around him while he tries to find the right words.
“...It's gone, Arthur. Camelot is no more. The world you knew no longer exists. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t all around you. That doesn’t mean the people don’t need their King.”
Arthur’s trying to process all of this, scrunching up his nose as the reality dawns just as brightly as the ways of the old world did.
“...What if they don’t know me?”
“Oh, they will,” Merlin’s eyes glimmer. “Trust me. They’ve been telling stories about you for 1,200 years.”
“How on Earth-”
“There was once a lowly Camelot servant…” Merlin starts, interrupting him, still picking the blades of grass between his fingers. “...Who first told the tale of the Once and Future King.”
Arthur rolls his eyes. Merlin’s pleased to note it’s almost with a level of fondness.
“You can’t have had that much influence.”
“Arthur.” Merlin says gently, taking his hands from the ground to reach instead for his King. He finds Arthur’s fingers and holds them tightly, feeling the softness of his skin and vows to keep holding on until the world tells him otherwise. “It’s… the 21st century. It really has been 1,500 years.”
Arthur can only stare as this revelation befalls him, scanning around at the surroundings with wide eyes just to check that the sun still shines the same as it always did. It doesn’t feel like he’s been away that long at all. It feels like nothing has changed. It feels like everything has. Swallowing harshly, he looks Merlin up and down.
“Then what are you still doing here?”
And Merlin simply muses.
“...All bad endings lead back to good beginnings if you’re prepared to wait long enough.”
It’s what he’s known for years.
“So you… So you’ve waited-”
“All this time?” Merlin lets out another laugh, in sheer relief. “Yes. Of course I did.”
He thinks he could continue to cry happy tears. The look on Arthur’s face is nothing compared to getting to hold him, to have his fingers curl around his own and hold on to something tangible for the first time in 1,500 years.
“Merlin-”
“It’s alright.”
It’s the first day of Spring.
It’s the first day when the sky is clear, when the breeze rustles through the trees and flowers appear, and he gets the feeling that everything will all be okay from here.
He lets out an ear-splitting grin at the sight that beholds him. Arthur, sitting in his bed of wildflowers, the warmth once again returning to his skin.
Around them, the Somerset hills go on for miles, the blue sky spanning above them like something impossible and never-ending.
Down below in the waters, Merlin catches sight of a sword held fast and protruding from the waves, from tip to hilt glistening with droplets, glinting in the sunlight just waiting for Arthur to take.
“What are you grinning at?” Arthur asks, leaning over to see what’s caught Merlin’s eye.
And all Merlin can do is let out the breath he’s been inadvertently holding ever since Arthur was last alive. After all this time, it’s a new dawn for both of them. Squeezing his hands with all he hope he can muster.
“Glastonbury Tor isn’t haunted anymore.”
He has, always, really liked April.