Work Text:
It takes a day or two for him to realise that he hasn’t moved. He’s sat by the lake, legs pressed to his chest, a few more days, perhaps a whole week, before he realises he also hasn’t eaten or drank or slept.
He just…watches.
Waiting.
Gaius comes to him after a month. Talks to him. Shouts at him. Pleads with him to just say something. But there is nothing to say, nothing to do, except wait.
Gaius continues to visit him, comes to him every few days and tells him Gwen is running things smoothly, that the kingdom is thriving. Of course she is, of course it is, because she’s Gwen.
Not Guinevere.
Not the Queen.
Gwen.
The daughter of a blacksmith who knows everything about armour and feels embarrassed about it.
One day, perhaps when a year or two has passed, Gaius, wobbling with a staff, informs him his mother is dead. A fever, a broken heart, it matters little, she’s gone and the world is colder because of it. He lets himself cry when Gaius leaves, just for a moment, and then resumes waiting.
Eventually, even Gaius stops visiting. He knows why. He feels it, feels the warmth leave him just as it did with Arthur and his mother. That’s when he finally moves, finally gasps, bloodshot eyes still staring at the lake.
He uses time a little more wisely.
He builds himself a small cottage by the lake, just like a girl he loved had once wanted, but the place is cold and lifeless and empty.
He stays there and he waits.
People come and go, some he knows and some are strangers. Leon is an odd one. He comes even when he shouldn’t be able to anymore, not a wrinkle marking his grim face, and he feels he knows why but doesn’t voice it aloud, but still the immortal knight comes. He speaks of Arthur, of Gwen, of all the knights that they knew having closed their eyes a final time.
‘Percival sired two sons before he passed’, Leon tells him, ‘they’re as big as bulls now.’
The knight never mentions magic, never broaches the subject at all, and he doesn’t need to because he can feel it, feel how it is dwindling into nothing but the tiny ember of a dying fire. He worries, but says nothing.
When Albion needs Arthur, magic or no magic, he will rise.
It’s many, many hundreds of years later that the local youths know him as the ‘cranky wizard’. He quite likes the name. More so than Emerys, anyway. The youths dare each other to knock on his old cottage door, shaking in their shoes, terrified he’ll open the door and turn them into a frog. Sometimes, he considers doing it. Other times, he weeps to himself when they have blond hair.
Leon still visits, even now. He trades armour for hoodies and jeans, baton for sword, but it’s still Ser Leon and he’s grateful to still have someone other than the Lady of the Lake who truly knows him.
Merlin waits for Arthur.
He will always wait for Arthur.