if merlin is blue and arthur is red, then merlin and arthur together are gold.
everything about merlin is blue. his kindness, his anger, his fear. they are the color of the sky and the depth of the ocean. merlin’s mourning is a grey shade of dirty cerulean, his grief drips deep blue everywhere, falls from his cheekbones, from his lips. his sadness and his happiness are azul and they swirl, twin butterflies taking flight. pale blue is death and cyan is the relief of forgiveness and blue is the silent quiet. azure is healing and pain and gentleness and electric power. blue his unshaken faith and blue his loyalty, marked on his skin and bones. merlin is spring horizons, cloudless night, where the indigo almost turns black.
arthur is coated in red. blood red, frustration and annoyance red, his hands and his voice are full of it. arthur is the softest velvet, embracing with a shy yet bold love. red is his pride, weapon and shield, and adorned with rubies his protection. arthur is the heart that beats hard, he pumps blood in camelot, he is affection and pure passion. red is war and red is penitence. he is crimson courage, fearless because of his cherry honeyed love. a scarlet hued justice follows in his steps, beneath his trademark cloak. he is dusk and sunset and coming back home. he is summer hot and blazing midday.
merlin and arthur are blue and red but oh, together they are the most anciet shade of gold.
gold of magic and gold of camelot. gold the lining of arthur’s cloak and heart, gold the brightness in merlin’s eyes and soul. gold the tendrils that bind them together. gold the sun and the stars, which twinkle above them all, dancing to a silent tune. gold is the pendragon crest, and gold the eyes of dragon. gold is where the night meets the day, and gold is eternity, and gold is time outside of time, where the young and the legend live forever, untouched. gold the bridge, the door and the key. gold is life.
gold is memory and gold are the smiles that are shared.
gold the dawn when love is born and a new era begins for them all.
this scene just quietly broke my heart?? merlin is alone, building a burial marker for the sorcerer who died in front of him without anyone offering help or comfort or even trying to tend to his wounds. mordred startles him by saying
“what would the king say? sorcerers are not allowed marked graves.”
i just… how many times has merlin done this. how many times has he tended to the dead in secret, mourning people he didnt know, offering them what little dignity he could? he could’ve been caught so easily. he was caught. but of course that doesn’t matter to him, of course he makes the cairns anyway.
mordred says that until they have their freedom, they “go unmarked in death as in life” and it’s interesting because their conversation is sohopeful despite the cirumstance. for once merlin doesn’t seem that suspicious of mordred. they both reassure each other, and for a brief moment the different path things might have taken is actually tangible. the scene just speaks to me so clearly of the violence of erasure, but also of the importance of memory and kinship, and if ever there was a moment which was showing merlin the way forward, i feel like this was it
the common variation of the “arthur comes back” trope is that he emerges from avalon, fog headed and confused, and countless time has passed, and the only thing that makes sense is merlin.
but.
imagine an awake arthur. arthur, who enters the realm of avalon with a hand clamped tight over his eyes, refusing to watch as his friends mourn. arthur, who bangs against the walls of the veil, who slams his shoulder into invisible barriers, who reaches for his sword that won’t pierce through. “i have to go back,” he says. it’s like no one hears him, in this liminal space, where nothing is familiar and all he can see is a technicolour hellscape that is life without him.
arthur, who watches the years pass, and his friends grow old, and die, but never forget. who watches his kingdom grow and diminish, suffer and sing.
but then there’s merlin, who only grows old when he wants to. there’s merlin, who doesn’t die, even when it’s well past the time he should. and as the familiar faces of his loves fade away, he clings to that. and watches.
watches as merlin grows his magic, and learns, and reaches into the core of the universe to pull out more beauty than arthur has ever known. watches as merlin tells his story, over and over and over and over, and watches as the light never fades from his eyes when he tells it.
and there are parts arthur has trouble watching. those years where merlin pleads at the lake’s edge. give him back to me. take me to him. make me forget. each iteration hurts in different ways, and arthur finds himself slamming his shoulder against the veil again, gasping for breath he doesn’t need.
and worse yet, somehow. merlin falling in love, doomed from the start. merlin watching as everyone he believes in and seeks comfort in grows old and dies. he slowly stops telling the stories, and arthur screams his voice hoarse– or imagine he does– trying to get him to hear, i’m still here, i’m still here.
but centuries pass and he comes to learn that merlin never forgets him. faces fade and he changes towns, villages, cities, but he keeps waiting, hoping.
and arthur watches the world fall apart and stitch itself back together again, often at the behest of his sorcerer. and his magic grows more and more subtle, but it’s still there, never leaving him.
arthur never leaves him, either.
somewhere in the liminal, he realizes what he’s known all along, the steady thrum of love beneath his chest. and it drives him mad for a while, and there’s the sword through the veil again.
but he’s doomed to wait, and finally, finally, finally–
he’s spitting up vile, murky water, his legs a newborn stag’s, and he’s looking up into the blue eyes he’s been watching for so many aching centuries.
“well,” merlin laughs. “took you long enough.”
“you,” he’ll reply, whether his voice is ready or not, “have no idea.”
