And Arthur wakes unable to, Merlin's immortality running in his veins.
Merlin had been lying there, prone, unbreathing, when Arthur woke up with the loudest yet least painful gasp.
Immediately, the very first thing Arthur noticed, was the weight on his chest.
Later... Later, After the flood of tears, after the hours of screaming himself hoarse until he no longer can, it will hit Arthur that Merlin breathed his last with his lips against Arthur's unbeating heart, his head tucked under Arthur's once-lifeless chin, his tears staining Arthur's armour.
What is the point of a love finally realized, Arthur thinks through his burning eyes burning heart burning soul, when the one you love is already gone?
He will agonize over it all the way to Camelot. Returning with Merlin's lifeless form in his arms.
When Gwen throws herself into his arms in the privacy of their rooms -after Leon and Percival had managed to pry Merlin from his arms, a struggle that ended in curses from a struggling Arthur (struggling against his knights as he never had against anyone before, not even trickster Death as it had taken him) and Merlin's body deposited in a tiny cot in Gaius's room in Gaius's devestated care- Arthur finds he does not even have the strength or will to lift his arms to return her desperate embrace.
Merlin and Gwaine are put on twin pyres a month later. A month Arthur had spent in denial and anger, shouting at anyone who as much as suggested he put Merlin to rest -which was all of them.
Something changed then ended between him and Gwen the day he told her to get out and leave him in peace, clutching to Merlin's rotting corpse.
A month Arthur looked high and low for the druids, hoping for a miracle to bring Merlin back to him. But none were to be found. They had retreated. Emrys was dead. It wasn't meant to happen. Yet it had. It was unthinkable. So they had retreated to where no kings and warriors and swords could reach them.
So after a month, Arthur, defeated, lit Merlin's pyre.
Watching Merlin's funeral flames burn through dead eyes, Arthur wondered if he should just throw himself onto it. Hold on to his dearest and only friend, his deepest love, until he too was dust.
Then he remembered it was a mad hope, he was now unkillable by all.
Merlin's last gift to him. And curse.
Why did you leave me, Arthur would think over and over for a whole year -a year without his soul's mate, to make fun of him and laugh at his jokes-
Until the dragon descended from the heavens.
When the Great Dragon that had wrecked havoc and bloodshed on his land and his people, comes down from the sky, landing right in front of Arthur in his castle's courtyard, Camelot's king can only think, at last, and does not have the strength to feel ashamed of it.
But when the dragon opens its mouth, what comes out is not the fire Arthur prays for.
Merlin is Emrys, the dragon tells Arthur -Arthur so dead to the world he cannot even be surprised that it can talk- and Emrys is magic.
He may have given up his immortality, and sacrificed this life, but he will have another life, a truly endless one, as he was always meant to, once he returns.
When will he return? Arthur asks, heart breaking and mending and breaking and mending and breaking and mending again and again and again.
Not for one thousand year and more, yet, the dragon answers, and Arthur's burning heart jumps into his throat.
You are the once and future king, the dragon goes on, You were meant to die. And Merlin was meant to wait for you. Because of you he was born. For you he lived. I should have known, then, all of us should have, that only for you he could die.
The wait ahead of you is long. Too long. Can you do it, Young King?
And how could Arthur not?
After the Great Dragon has flown away -the last time Arthur will ever see the creature- Arthur throws himself back into becoming again the king that Camelot deserves. That Merlin had always spoken he would.
Becoming the man of legends.
He rules for generations. After Gwen is gone. Gaius is gone. Leon, Percy. Everyone he grew up with. Fought shoulder to shoulder with.
And, eventually, when the invaders grow so many and so strong that even an immortal king cannot hold them off -then
Arthur watches Camelot burn.
His people. His land. All of it, gone.
Hope, as Arthur realizes over the long period of his seemingly endless wait, breeds both relief and utter misery.
In the deepest pit of despair, only the thought of Merlin carries him on.
As he watches the world change endlessly on, Arthur is always overcome with the thought that how, how he would have loved to tell Merlin he legalized magic in his name. If only doing so had been of any use.
After Merlin died, Arthur never came across a single magic user again.
With Emrys gone, they had left too. No longer concerned with laws of kings and magic-less men.
Arthur Pendragon lives through the rise and fall of empires.
He lives through such a plague as never seen before, which kills all but one inhabitant of his tiny Norfolk village, and half of the entire continent's population besides.
He lives to see men, evil men like his father, he admits now as he never had before -his people, drunk on the superiority of their skin color, their birth, their power- enslave far far away lands and countless people Arthur had not even known existed.
He lives to see people rise against these injustices, and fight back. And he is there fighting right beside them.
He lives and fights through two world wars.
As Arthur watches the world welcome the 21st century with spectacular fireworks from the roof of one of the buildings of his apartment complex in London, he says Merlin's name, and prepares himself for another century of agonizing unfruitful waiting.
Arthur lives in a large but silent house in Cheviot Hills.
The quiet suits him, after all that he saw, working as a nurse in the pandemic.
He goes out for walks. Thinks of Merlin. Cooks. Thinks of Merlin. Cleans. Thinks of Merlin. Reads. Thinks of Merlin. Writes. Thinks of Merlin. Sews. Thinks of Merlin. Hums while lying on the sofa by himself. Thinks of Merlin. Drives his beloved car around. Thinks of Merlin.
He really shouldn't have been doing that last one. Arthur can't help but think when he hits some poor sod with his car, on a road going over a small hill one fog covered evening.
Arthur stops his car and pulls the door open at speed of lightning.
So fast that his mind, overrun with worry, only registers the cursing voice as familiar -agonizingly beautifully so- when he's rounding the car's front.
On the ground lies a man on his back, in a blue shirt, red neckerchief, dark trousers, and russet brown jacket -
All of it old. All of it badly worn.
Arthur is on Merlin in an instant.
He will never let go again.
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