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It's a terrifying thing, to stand on the precipice of changing everything. To know the world you live in and the one you are about to inhabit are irrevocably different. If Merlin were not stripped down to desperation, he may have not had the courage to speak. He wonders if doing so is a folly, if the worlds in which he held his tongue are kinder, happier.
"I have magic."
But this is the world Merlin lives in. The one he's created. The one where he'd rather throw himself to the changing winds of fate than let his king think he'd abandon him.
Arthur stills from where he'd been about to leave the room. Right after he'd thrown the cruelest words he'd ever said to Merlin like a dagger. I thought you were the bravest man I ever knew. I guess I was wrong.
"I was born with it," Merlin continues, and Arthur's back is still turned to him, and he can't know, can't see the expression on Arthur's face. "I've used it to protect you since the moment we met. To help you become the king you've always been meant to be. And I want to go with you into battle, you help you win this fight, more than anything but— Morgana, she— she did something that took my magic. I need to go somewhere to try to get it back, or we'll— you'll— Arthur, please, look at me."
The words rush out of him like a waterfall, matching the taste of salt that's landed on his tongue. He's trembling.
Arthur slowly turns to face Merlin. His eyes are damp. "I thought you would never trust me enough to tell me."
Merlin's heart stops. His inhale of breath gets caught somewhere in his throat, and he manages no more than a sputtered "You— you knew—" before Arthur's moving to him.
Arthur's clasping him on the back of the neck, and then he's bowing his head so their foreheads brush against one another. Merlin doesn't know how long they stay there, just breathing. The world is much the same as it was moments ago— there is still an army thundering towards them, Arthur will still ride out with his life as a shield to protect Camelot, Merlin is still stripped of everything that made him an agent of fate.
And yet, everything has changed.
"Your magic," Arthur says, head still pressed against Merlin's. "Can you get it back?"
"I don't know," Merlin whispers. "I have to try."
Arthur pulls back, but keeps his hand settled on the nape of Merlin's neck. They're so close that Merlin can feel the puff of Arthur's breath ghost over his face. Arthur's eyes are so, so blue, like the open sky, like an endless sea.
His eyes drop to Arthur's lips.
Tomorrow, they might both be dead. If Merlin has courage enough for one truth, he can act on another.
He's just started to lean in when the hand on the back of his neck squeezes. His finds Arthur looking directly into his eyes.
"I'm needed on the battlefield," Arthur says slowly. His voice is rough. "And you need to recover your magic. For I don't think we'll win this war without it."
Merlin realizes what Arthur's saying. Go. Go, and come back to me.
He's making Merlin promise to come back. To pick up where they've paused.
"And when I return?"
"Find me." Arthur replies. "Wherever I am, find me."
Find me, and I'll be yours.
Merlin makes Arthur promise him, as well.
//
Find me.
Merlin's magic takes to the battle like an oncoming storm, rolling out in every direction around him. For the first time in his life he doesn't care to hide, sprinting headlong into the fray. Merlin can hear the knights' shouts of surprise as he cuts through the battlefield— some clearly recognizing the king's manservant, some just stunned at the sight of a sorcerer among their ranks.
Merlin pays them no mind. He's only looking for one man.
Lightning strikes down around him, taking out a group of Saxons that hoped to flank his right side. He pauses, eyes scanning over the battlefield, and a gale force wind directs a volley of arrows to fall harmlessly into the dirt. When a couple of mounted soldiers charge towards him, roots spring up from the earth, sending their horses crashing to the ground.
Merlin feels less like a man and more like a force of nature. But he doesn't know what he'll become if he can't find Arthur.
"Arthur!" he cries out, his voice magically amplified. He reaches out with his magic, searching for the soul he knows as well as his own.
A heartbeat stutters. Merlin hears the relieved breath as if it were in his ear.
"Merlin?"
There.
His magic cuts a path in front of him, and no man, no weapon is capable of standing in his way. His feet lead him to a rocky gorge, where the corpses of men in both red and brown litter the earth. Merlin spots a head of straw-blonde hair, a sword with glimmering golden runes, and nearly collapses with relief.
If Merlin is a force of nature on the battlefield, Arthur is a wild animal. He moves with a warrior's instincts, no hesitation in his eyes as he drives Excalibur into the chest of the Saxon in front of him. Even as another enemy rushes towards Arthur with ax drawn, the king pounces on a weakness with a hunter's instinct— kicking out a weakened leg, disarming his opponent with a quick maneuver, and ending their life.
A man in Camelot red cries out in pain, lifting his hand from where he lies on the ground. Arthur's attention instantly diverts to him, and that's what makes him Merlin's king. In that moment, an injured Saxon sits up from behind Arthur, managing to level a crossbow at Arthur's head.
Merlin cries out, the crossbow fires, and Arthur turns in alarm.
The bolt changes direction mid path, flying past Arthur's head. Merlin's fist clenches, the Saxon's neck snaps, and the bolt drops to the floor.
Arthur turns, eyes meeting Merlin's, and Merlin can't help it, running towards Arthur and throwing his arms around him. Arthur's right arm loops around Merlin's waist, the other still tightly clutching Excalibur.
"You came back."
"I gave you my word."
Merlin pulls back, cradling Arthur's head in his hands. They're alive. They're both alive.
The grim masque of facing death lifts for a moment from Arthur's face. His eyes lighten, and for a moment his lips twitch, and echo of the cocksure smile Merlin saw a decade ago outside of Camelot's walls.
If Merlin wasn't standing in front of Arthur he would have never seen the blade coming. Mordred is as silent as a shadow, sword drawn, eyes locked onto Arthur. The slightest widening of Merlin's eyes is the only warning his body gives him of the incoming attack.
How might fate had been changed, if Merlin hadn't taken Arthur into his arms at Camlann?
It's too fast for Merlin to reach for his magic. To quick for him to listen to anything but his most basic instincts.
He shoves Arthur to the side, throwing his own body forward. A heartbeat later, Mordred's blade sinks into Merlin.
//
Merlin's dying.
He knows this from the way his body feels like a thing that does not belong to him, freed of all pain. He knows this from the way he can't make out any concrete words from the voices that float around him. He knows this from the way his magic flickers in his chest like a flame sputtering out.
Most of all, he knows this from the great expanse that swallows him up. A void that he thinks he's never existed outside of.
He doesn't want to die. He promised Arthur. He promised he would return.
He thinks he hears the sound of waves lapping at the shore, distantly. There's a song beneath the shore, someplace that feels like home. Someplace that Merlin came from and thinks he will always have come from. The water calls to him. He can't see his way out from under the depths.
There's a hand on his own. A man's voice, broken by grief.
"Please. Please, Merlin. I can't—" A shuddering breath. "I'm so sorry. If I could change things— if I could take your place—"
Don't you dare, Merlin thinks. He'd make the same choices a hundred lifetimes over.
Fingertips brush along his jaw, impossibly gentle. Something wet falls on his face, and it trickles down, mixing with the endless cavern that lies below him, reaching up with ready hands to pull him under for good.
Merlin can't see, can't feel, can't breathe— and yet. And yet, there's one golden touch, reaching him even when he should be lost in the depths. A voice he hears, even when he's hopelessly adrift.
"You promised," Arthur begs. "You promised you'd come back."
I don't know where you are, Merlin thinks. I don't know how to find you.
Lips press against Merlin's.
They're warm, flush with life. A golden touch, anathema to the cold water that seeks to claim him.
The spark of warmth spreads from his lips, down his throat, into his lungs, his veins, sprawling from his fingertips to the very core of his being. His magic, the flame almost completely enveloped by the deep, flares like a bonfire. Driving away the abyss that holds him, lifting him up, up, up. A north star, a guiding light. Merlin's eternal map, not to his home, but to where he belongs.
Merlin presses back into the kiss. His eyes flutter open as the contact breaks with a ragged gasp. He looks up into sea blue eyes.
"Found you."