In A Fit Of Pure Work Calendar Muscle Memory I Invited My Boss To My Doctor's Appointment.

Arthur & Merlin or Arthur/Merlin (you decide) | Teen & Up | No Archive Warnings Apply | Word Count: 500

Arthur Pendragon Returns | Angst | Language Barrier | Sad Ending

For @merlinmicrofic with the prompt "frozen"

Arthur returns but Merlin finds he can no longer understand him.

“You can't understand me, so I will say this-”  “I’m sorry I couldn't stay the same.”  “If I was afforded the choice, Merlin, if there were only one thing left of my kingdom, one soul, it would be you.”  “I've lived so long, I've lived too long.”  “So please.”  “You deserve someone who could’ve held on for you.”  “I need you to understand.”

☾ ☾ ☾

A snowstorm, a series of blue arrowheads and an infernal swirl on the television, arrived a few days before the winter solstice. The dead silence, the disappeared roads and finally, the sudden interruption to the electricity called to Merlin’s slow, ancient mind the way the world had once been, quieter, colder.     

It was then that he felt Arthur’s impending return, unmistakable, a change in the seismograph. 

The lake was solid and as blue as the dawn sky above it. 

The ice was singing like steel cables and whale song. He had waited here many times before, mad with certainty and loneliness that this was the day. 

But this was the day. 

The song rose in tempo, and in a sudden crack, a familiar boat. 

Merlin stumbled forward, fell through where the ice was thin and before he knew it, the once king, the future king, was gathering him, shivering, in his arms.  

Merlin clutched onto him and in his ear Arthur said- 

What were these words? Hard consonants so wholly unfamiliar that Merlin wondered if he had ever understood them, if the same sounds had ever passed his own lips. Emotion broke every other syllable, he could understand the utter relief in them, but the words themselves? 

“I don't- Arthur I don't understand.” 

***

Before they could understand each other without words, but no longer, not when there was so much to say.

Merlin tried, but his eroded memory had too long forsaken learning. The weeks went on, and in the tense and then pleading sounds that Arthur made, Merlin understood two things: Arthur had been frozen and had emerged from the lake perfectly intact; Merlin however could not breach the surface of his own stagnant pool. 

Arthur continued his noises, his hard consonants and the occasional gnashing of his teeth, and Merlin despaired. 

***

It wasn’t fair, Merlin knew. Time meant denial was robbed from Arthur’s grieving. Now Merlin was asking him to bury understanding along with their friends. Instead he piled all of that denial onto Merlin’s unyielding tongue. 

One day in the dusty, moldy space that Merlin resided in, that he struggled to keep in order with time rushing past him as it did, Arthur snapped. He seized his arms, his eyes wild, wet. 

“You’re not trying!”  he cried, angry, in that language Merlin no longer possessed.

“I don't- I’m trying.” 

“You're all that's left.”  

“I’m sorry, Arthur.” 

Sometimes a word would prick Merlin’s ears, and he would hear Welsh, Latin, or else it would stir something in his long memory, but it was recognition without comprehension. The words transformed and melded together, evading his grasp. 

“You can't understand me, so I will say this-” 

“I’m sorry I couldn't stay the same.” 

“If I was afforded the choice, Merlin, if there were only one thing left of my kingdom, one soul, it would be you.” 

“I've lived so long. I've lived too long.” 

“So please.” 

“You deserve someone who could’ve held on for you.” 

“I need you to understand.”

periods are medieval honestly. like sorry I got suicidal last night turns out I had too much blood in me. yeah no some of it fell out and I'm fine now.

sexy knights. sexy wounded knights. sexy wounded weary knights. sexy wounded weary knights in the rain. sexy wounded weary knights in the rain pledging their loyalty to you.

4x06 || 5x05

Behold! Dragoon the Great pondering his orb!

I wonder, what secrets of the universe is he peering into?

reblog if you have skilled writer friends and you're damn proud of them

I'd loveee a fantasy setting where healing magic is unstable!!!

Archer missing shots because their finger calluses are gone.

Warrior struggling to intimidate the enemy because their hoarse voice was made softer.

Mage with fresh eyesight blinded by their own spells.

Unable to remove enchanted piercing jewellery because the piercing holes aren't there anymore.

Magical tattoos dripping off the skin.

Sensory overload from better hearing, eyesight, smell, touch, and taste.

Okay but what if I snap and write a full-fledged fic of Arthur becoming king in s1 and how it could have changed the entire course of the show.

one thing the show doesn't care about enough: the dragonlords and the dragons themselves. they were hunted to extinction. merlin is the last of his kind. and he'll never know anything about being a dragonlord because his entire family and anyone who might've known about them is gone. how do you fix that? you can't. there's nothing you can ever do to make up for something like that. absolutely nothing.

and i love fics that explore arthur surviving and struggling through the realisation of just what kind of monster his father was for everyone else but also. they rarely focus on that bit of history, on the fact that uther actually managed to destroy that part of magic completely as merlin is the very last of his kin and there are only two dragons left (the first one won't live much longer and he has no knowledge on how to help the second). uther actually did eradicate something, it wasn't magic as a whole maybe but an entire branch of it is just gone.