Merlin’s Fire
Summary: Merlin learned the smell of death as a boy.
Death smells like fire.
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Death smells like fire.
Merlin whispers this to Gaius, wrapped in his arms, limbs still trembling with the aftershocks of his nightmare. The physician grabs a blanket to place around his shoulders and holds him tighter, like a swaddled babe. “Breathe, Merlin,” he says slowly. “Just breathe.”
He can’t breathe. His lungs are filled with phantom smoke. He can still hear the crackles and pops of burning logs - the heat of the flames is beating down on his face. He wheezes and looks desperately at Gaius: “She was there.”
“Who?” Gaius looks terrified.
Merlin speaks as best he can. He’s still choking. “The goddess.”
Merlin learned the smell of death as a boy.
An elderly widow passed away. She had no family left - she outlived them all - so the whole village turned out to the funeral, to see her safely to the other side. Men Merlin had never met lifted her shrouded body on top of the funeral pyre. A woman he’d never seen before started a prayer.
He didn’t see who set the fire.
He saw orange flames start to lick at the corners of the shroud from where they’d burned the sticks. Merlin didn’t really understand what was to happen before smoke and burning flesh was suffocating him. He gasped, trying to find clean air, and eventually settled for shoving his face into his mother’s side and breathing in her scent.
Later, he’d stared blankly into the fireplace she lit. “Mother,” he said quietly.
“Yes, Merlin?” His mother took care to try and hide the relief in her voice but didn’t quite manage. He didn’t blame her - he hadn’t been able to speak since the funeral, not around the mass of horror lodged in his throat.
“Whatever you do,” he said, barely even whispering, “please don’t let them burn me.”
“She’s watching me,” he says quietly.
“Watching you?” Gaius holds him even tighter.
“She wanted me to know,” he groans. Grief is an ice cold ball in the pit of his stomach. “She wanted me to know the price of my failure.”
“Merlin,” Gaius says quietly. “Merlin…” He doesn’t know what to say. Arthur’s death was failure. Even if Gwen is legalising magic, he failed.
“Do you know what I saw?”
After coming to Camelot, Merlin feared fire even more. He became convinced that he was destined to die on the pyre, bathed in flames. Even after Uther died, he feared it - even though he knew Arthur wouldn’t…
He used to close his windows whenever they burned sorcerers. He wouldn’t watch - if Arthur gave him work he’d make himself busy, and if he didn’t he’d hide away in his room.
When it was over he’d go to the ashes and say the prayer he remembered the woman saying for the woman, all those years ago.
“Do you know what I saw?” he says again, more intense this time.
“No,” Gaius says. “No, I don’t.”
“I saw my fire,” he says. His eyes burn - he doesn’t know if they burn with tears or with the inferno. “I saw the fire she meant for me… And I saw her put it out.”
Gaius lets go of him in shock. “What?” he says.
“I watched her put the fire out.” Merlin looks at Gaius and he is crying, now. “They warned me: Emrys means immortal. And now she’s put my pyre out.”
