9One thousand five hundred years after King Arthur was killed in combat.
One thousand five hundred years of simple, brief, long, complicated lives.
One thousand five hundred years of dying alone.
Forty-seven lives.
Forty-seven deaths.
Sometimes he remembered, sometimes he didn't.
But he always dreamed of a gallant blonde man, at least once.
And sometimes he met him on a dying day.
Once, he was a nurse switched to a different ward, and on that day they met again for all of two seconds before the heart line went flat.
Once, he was mugged on the way home and died in the arms of a man with familiar eyes.
Those deaths were the best and the worst. He got to believe, even for just a second, that they could be together again.
And then, for the first time in one thousand five hundred years, Merlin could remember. He could remember so much and so clearly, they put him in a psychiatric ward and gave him pills to make him forget. But when he turned eighteen, he left. He went searching without knowing exactly what he was looking for, who he was looking for. Until one day he realized there was only one event that could bring them together again.
He had to die.
The bridge was a common place for jumpers, but he wasn't quite sure he could do it. He spent an hour looking down at the water below, wondering vaguely if he could bluff his way through it, but of course he couldn't. He had to be sure. It was the only way.
He stepped onto the ledge and balanced himself, reveling for a moment in the way his own heart was slamming against his chest. This was it. He was alone again, standing on the edge of death, and no-
"It's not worth it."
Merlin's eyes widened, but he kept himself perfectly still on the thin ledge. His eyes watered, every ounce of him pleading for more than just a second this time. Just a minute more, please. Please.
Merlin smiled. "Yes, it is."
He turned slowly, arms outstretched, careful not to fall too soon. And there he was. Just as gallant and pompous and extraordinary and utterly unmistakable. Merlin laughed in disbelief. "Of course you're a policeman!"
The man froze for a second after Merlin turned, and for a moment he might have remembered, but then he frowned. "Someone noticed you a while ago and reported a jumper. We get a lot of those, you know."
Merlin nodded, staring in wonder at the man before him. He was still whole and gorgeous and alive. Maybe it was just always meant to be this way, dying at the start. There was a curse on them, he knew. A curse he couldn't break. He didn't have magic, anymore.
The man stepped forward and Merlin twitched. He stopped. "Why don't you-"
"I can't." Merlin couldn't stop smiling, and God help him, he was crying as well. The longing in him was taking over. Longing to talk and touch and laugh with the best friend and love he ever had in any life. But he couldn't. "Not this time."
The man looked slightly more alarmed. "You've done this before?"
"No." And it was true. He'd never tried this before, no matter how miserable. But he still remembered death. "And yes."
They were silent for a moment. The man looked pale, for being the one not in danger of dying. He couldn't quite look Merlin in the face, and though he was brave, so brave, and surely used to violent deaths by now, he was shaking. The man took a breath.
"Look, I know it probably won't help at all, and I'm really the insane one here, but – I think I've dreamt of you."
Merlin's body swayed a little. He couldn't have heard that right. It wasn't possible.
"I dreamt of this off and on for a long time. That's why I always take the call when there's a jumper. I knew you would be here. I knew I would have to save you."
Merlin laughed, caught despairingly between joy and doubt and longing. "I bet you say that to all the jumpers."
The man, if possible, grew paler. "I don't. I promise, I don't."
Merlin nodded. It was too much of a coincidence, anyways. "I dreamt of you, too. My whole life. But I'm not meant to survive this. You have to understand."
"Why not?" He finally met Merlin's eyes, crazed in lost, confused disparity. "How is that fair? How were we led to this moment just to be torn away again? What is the point?!"
And for a moment, Merlin could see that he felt the echo. Even if he didn't understand why, he felt the grief and lonliness of nearly two millenniums clawing out through the surface, and it was killing them both. Merlin's hand twitched forward. He wanted, so badly, for once, to stay.
And it was in that second of doubt that Merlin saw the car swerve. It was fast and precise and too direct to be anything but fate intervening. He saw it before the man heard it, and he took that second of grace to grab hold, to move.
And then just like that, it was all over.
Because even after a thousand years, Merlin would still give his life for Arthur without a second thought.
He did not, however, expect to wake again in a hospital, bandaged heavily and bruised even worse. He was too drugged to keep his eyes open properly, but he knew that the blurry mass beside him was a dream. He was Arthur and not-Arthur. He was a different name and many different people, as Merlin was no longer Merlin and still Merlin, all the same. And he was holding Merlin's hand and clenching his jaw as he once did, though he didn't look the same at all.
Merlin's eyes shuttered closed. "Are you a dream?"
"No," the man said softly. "Not this time."
And Merlin couldn't be sure, as he was quite hazy and not all there, but he felt the bed give as not-Arthur came closer, murmuring reassuringly by his ear, "The curse is broken. My sister says she's sorry."
A breathy laugh pushed through Merlin's heavy, sore lungs. He was quickly drifting back off to sleep, leaving the world behind again. He had to say it now, should he not wake up. He had to let him know, after all this time, "I love you."
A hand brushed his hair; a pair of lips pressed on his head.
And then Merlin died.
Some odd years later, a little boy will lose his parents in the crowd and wander off. He won't know exactly where he's going, just that he has to go somewhere if he wants to find his way home again. He'll walk for hours until finally stumbling into a small backyard and meeting a boy near his own age, maybe a little older. That boy will take his hand and guide him home, and they'll face trials and doubt and prejudice, but they'll face it together.
And there will be no falling in love.
Because they will never have to fall.
The love will be already there.