Archive of Our Own

This is quickly turning into one of Merlin’s less liked realities. The people are suspicious and brash, the clothing style as obscure as it is strict, and the entertainment, well… He’s in the upper rungs of the colosseum, so at least the fighting isn’t right under his nose, but there’s only so many blind eyes you can turn when there are androidic beings with painfully realistic voices essentially cockfighting a few dozen yards below.

So far, Merlin has escaped the need to schmooze by pretending to be fascinated by the fighting, but after one of the androids gets a leg yanked clean off, he turns away to survey the people up here with him. The upper rungs are mostly for doing business, no seats but wide aisles to stand and network in and robot waiters trying to shuffle through the uncaring crowd. At least the violence below is more incidental up here. These people come to the games to do business, not to watch life-like beings murder each other like the jeering rungs below.

Still, though. Merlin can’t help but wish he could leave already, and he’s about to call it a night and head on home to wait for his departure there when he spots a familiar head in the crowd.

Finally, someone he can stand. He can’t remember the last time he saw Arthur (the one with the lava rivers maybe? Or with the floating cities?) but that’s probably more to do with Merlin’s badly developed memory than with how long it’s actually been.

He gives a little wave. Arthur’s gaze focuses on him, surprise morphing into something like pleasure, and he immediately extracts himself from his conversation. Probably can’t stand this version of humanity either; they’ve always been pretty similar in tastes.

“Hey, you,” Arthur says, coming to stand at his side, turning his attention to surveying the crowd below. He looks tired. “Been here long?”

“Coupl’a weeks,” Merlin says. He rests his forearms against the railing. “You?”

“Fortnight?” Arthur guesses, one eye fluttering the way it does when he’s trying to remember some fuzzy details. A lot of their details are fuzzy, so it’s a familiar expression.

Arthur thinks for a moment, then shrugs. “Fortnight. Hey, do you –”

He’s cut off by an announcement, speakers booming to life far louder and more dramatic than necessary. In the arena below, very few of the androids start limping for the exists. Most lie still in the sand.

Merlin looks down at the slowly emptying ring; at the still, lifeless bodies left behind. “This one sucks,” he says quietly.

“Yeah.” Arthur knocks their elbows together. “You wanna get out of here?”

Boy does he. Arthur takes him to some hole-in-the-wall eatery with the local variant of ‘meat piled into a bread roll’ and it’s less awful there; just two friends sharing a meal leaned against a water-stained building, joking and updating each other on where they’ve been since the last time they met. They pause their laughter for a moment when a truck carrying metallic body parts rumbles by, and when Merlin feels the split-second tug on his insides that precludes a coming jump, he’s both a little disappointed to leave this reality behind and not sad at all.

There’s a little cottage in a village named Ealdor, or Ealdron, or Aldor. It’s simple and poor, but well-kept, with a small fenced-in garden with vegetables and herbs and useful flowers. Merlin parks the borrowed car a block away. He doesn’t go into the yard, he doesn’t ring the doorbell. He never does. But he closes the little gate where it stands ajar and brushes a few dried leaves off the little wall and shoots the curtained windows a small, fond smile before he walks on by.

He runs into Gwen in the shopping center of a train station, of all places, watching waves crash ten-fold on the display monitors set up in the window of an electronics store. She smiles when she sees him, a bright, pretty smile. The wide skirts and corseted tops of this reality suit her well.

“And?” he asks, nudging her ribs and grinning when she rolls her eyes.

“Morgana,” she says, with her most infatuated smile. “She’s got the wickedest tongue, she makes me laugh for hours.”

“’Laugh,’ eh?” Merlin asks, smirking, because it’s fun to make her blush. He slings an arm around her shoulders. “You know any good coffee shops around here?”

“Of course,” Gwen says, still flushed dark. “But I’m not sure I can take you to any of them if you’re going to be making jokes like that.”

“I will be on my best behavior,” Merlin promises solemnly. If his best behavior includes cancelling a trip with zero warning, because he does technically have a train to catch.

Or did. Because now he’s found Gwen, and between commitments in a reality that he could disappear from at any moment, and Gwen, there’s never even going to be a question of what he’ll chose.

The little cottage in Eldor stands with its windows illuminated in the twilight. It’s quiet inside. The whole village is quiet, the after-dinner calm where easy country folks watch their shows or clean up the kitchen or have a light chat together on the couch. No one will bother to look out their windows now to catch Merlin wiping the grime from the nametag on the mailbox with his thumb before dropping a blank envelope with a bit of money inside.

No one will bother to watch him stroll away with his hands in his pockets, smiling faintly to himself in the evening air.

The square has a clear roof keeping it safe from the weather, which is nice because it hasn’t stopped raining since Merlin got here. Most of the locals seem to respond by never leaving their houses, and so, despite the artfully arranged water fountains and the trees and the enormous screen showing the president’s latest address (with subtitles and a sign language interpreter tucked into the corner) there aren’t many people around. Dystopian political vibe aside, Merlin likes it. It’s nice that it’s reasonably quiet besides the rain pattering down on the see-through roofing; that besides him, there are maybe a few dozen people in the entire space.

Which makes it easy to spot familiar faces in the distance.

“Arthur!” Merlin calls, waving as he strides over.

He makes it across the square easily enough, but Arthur doesn’t watch his approach with his usual smile.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asks instead, scowling.

Merlin’s steps falter, just for a moment. He trips through various explanations – he’s got the wrong person, Arthur’s lost his memories, Arthur’s playing a prank – before he, hesitating, takes a closer look. Because this Arthur is younger than the one he knows, the one he’s come to know. He is, dare Merlin say it, young.

“Wait, wait,” Merlin says, laughing. Rain drums a steady rhythm onto the roof above them. “Is this our first interaction in your timeline? Am I meeting itty bitty baby Arthur right now?”

Arthur’s scowl deepens. It’s a familiar expression, but the longer Merlin looks, the more unfamiliar the face making it becomes – the spotty skin, the hairstyle, his teeth a little more crooked than he’s used to.

“I don’t know you,” Arthur mutters. He’s probably trying to growl it, but it comes out more unsure.

“You will,” Merlin says cheerfully. This is fantastic. His own first meeting with Arthur, in his own timeline, was a long time ago and not particularly pleasant, but now he gets to return the favor. “I’m Merlin,” he says. He doesn’t add the part about being Arthur’s best friend, Arthur will figure that out soon enough. “And you’re Arthur Pendragon, raised by Uther Pendragon, got yanked to a new reality for the first time just after your seventeenth birthday.” He hesitates. “How old are you now?”

Arthur shrugs grumpily. “You’re like me?” he asks.

Merlin nods. “We meet each other a lot,” he says easily. “We know each other well.” He points down at the hands Arthur’s wringing together. “You do that when you’re scared.”

“Oh.” Arthur glances down at his hands. “I do?”

“Yeah.” Merlin grins, suddenly, bright and wicked. “And you like to hold hands.”

Arthur splutters. “I do not!” he spits, red-faced and yanking his fingers apart. “That is – you are – you’re making that up!”

“Am I, though?” Merlin says, smirking, and while he’d love to stay, the split-second pull at his insides has such perfect comedic timing that he doesn’t even mind this time when his gift yanks him away.

In Ealdor, summer heat has turned the air sluggish and thick. The clouds roll above, grey and heavy, always on the verge of another shower. Sweat beads on Merlin’s brow when he stops at the little garden gate, watching as she struggles to lug a stack of crates from her handcart to the door.

“Let me –” is out before he can stop himself, and before she can stop him, he’s picked up the boxes for her. She directs him to set them down under the roof overhang and then follows him back out to the street, overwhelmed but pleased. A light drizzle starts to mist down onto their skin.

“I thank you, sir,” she says, smiling up at him.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he returns, grinning cheekily, and she grins right back at him.

“There’s no need for that,” she chides, and instead of harping on about the point, he dips his head in acknowledgement and turns to go. She’s not his mother in this reality, but she’s his mother in every reality, and he’ll never see his own again.

The sun sets in brilliant colors behind the hills, streaking the sky in red and purple and green. Merlin’s reasonably sure he’s allergic to some of the grasses that grow here, but he doesn’t let that stop him from sitting up on a rise, watching farmers turn their enormous harvesters towards home.

“I miss my father,” Arthur says quietly.

Merlin looks over. He’s met the person Arthur’s speaking of, not the one who became Arthur’s father in Arthur’s home reality but other versions of him, and while not every personality translates across realities, the guy has never seemed like a pleasant fellow.

Arthur hugs his knees to his chest. “Not as a person, really,” he says. “But as a fixture, you know? Everything revolved around him. All I had to do to do good, be good, was make him happy. But now…” He gestures with one hand, face drawn, and he looks so young like that. Maybe it hasn’t been all that long. “Like, what’s the point, you know? We get yanked from one reality to the next but it’s not like we’re fixing them, or doing anything else worthwhile. We can’t even use the things we learn in other realities to help the ones we’re in because we never know when we’re going to get pulled away next, you know?”

Merlin nods.

Arthur looks away. “And I’m still mad I never got to meet my mother.”

Merlin nods again. There are so many inconsequential details in all of these realities that he has a hard time remembering the important things about his friends, but he thinks Arthur’s told him that his mother was yanked shortly after his birth. Quickly enough to leave Arthur’s father stranded with an infant and entirely ill-equipped to prepare Arthur for the fact that he, too, would one day be torn from their reality.

“I’m never going to forgive this… this gift for taking me away from my mother,” Merlin confesses quietly. “I won’t. I’ll wish I could go back to her until the day I die.

“But the thing about parents is… We can’t control what they do. We can’t even control how long we get to stay with them. But we can control how we let them affect us, you know? I could drive myself insane hunting my father down, could remain hypervigilant of the fact that he’s out there, getting yanked through realities like we do. Knowing he might be around any corner, you know?”

He hesitates, taking a deep breath. “But what good will that do me? I won’t find him faster that way. I won’t ever be able to return to the mother I love. So it’s better to focus on what I have. To enjoy what I do get because I can’t ever regain what I lost. You know?”

Arthur doesn’t reply, not for a long time. When Merlin turns his head to look at him, the space beside him is empty and still.

He finds Gwen in front of a texture painting of a wave, thick layers of paint hinting at seafoam and sand and light glinting on the water. The gallerist keeps a suspicious eye on them, but Merlin ignores her. So what if he hasn’t managed to update his wardrobe since he got here? It’s an art gallery, for fuck’s sake, they should be used to people wearing outlandish things.

Also, he’s going to miss the jacket when he has to give it up.

“And?” he asks Gwen, almost missed under the rumble of a bullet train running through underneath.

Gwen sighs. “Haven’t found either of them yet,” she says.

Frowning, Merlin turns away from the fancy art and more towards Gwen. He doesn’t care about modern stylistic techniques, he cares about her, and he’s not sure he’s ever heard her sound like that. “What is it?”

She slumps her shoulders. Glances at his face, over at the gallerist, then back at the painting. “The last time,” she says softly, “I was with Lancelot, and he was lovely of course.” She shoots Merlin a smile at that, one he easily returns. Her fond expression fades quickly, though, and instead she runs her fingers over her cheeks, gaze growing tired. “He kept staring at every baby carriage passing by, you know? He never said anything, you know he wouldn’t, but it was just so obvious, you know?”

Merlin waits, quiet.

She sighs once more, an angry huff of breath. “Morgana can at least find a way to have a baby without me, you know? It doesn’t matter because I won’t be able to give her a family regardless. But with Lancelot… You know how he is. He’d never force me into anything, but he’d always want.”

Merlin, from what he can tell, is a fairly fast jumper. It’s rare for him to be in any one reality for longer than a couple of weeks. Not uncommon to get yanked in less than a day. It’s a fast-paced, lonely life, and sometimes he’s barely even figured out what reality he’s in before he’s yanked away again, but he’s not sure he minds it. Not when the alternative is living like Gwen, spending years in a single reality, building a life and falling in love and growing attached, only to then be torn away from it all with not even a second’s warning regardless.

He wraps an arm around Gwen, feeling her sag into his side, feeling the gallerist’s eyes boring into his back.

Gwen won’t risk having a child. Merlin has no idea if a pregnancy would survive a reality switch; none he’s ever met do. There must be people who are willing to risk it; Gwen’s mother has the gift, so does Arthur’s. Merlin, hazily, remembers Arthur telling him of growing up with his father’s angry rantings about a mother who abandoned her squalling babe. Gwen’s father was less frustrated in the stories he told about his missing wife, but as far as Merlin understands it, Gwen’s mother stayed in realities even longer than she does. Neither woman was yanked in her pregnancy, and Merlin doesn’t know anyone who has ever dared try if it works. Nobody wants to be responsible if it doesn’t, and no one wants to not only leave a loved one but simply vanish, child and all, from their lives forever.

There’s a lake where Ealdor used to be. A reservoir used for generating renewable energy. Merlin stands on top of one of the hills surrounding the calm, still waters, turbines rushing in the distance, and tries too hard to spot familiar rooftops under the surface. They aren’t there, he knows. Even if the foundations survived, the roofs would have collapsed under the weight of the water. But he still tries.

Their current reality is a little bland, with all-natural everything and reminders to be healthy plastered on every billboard, but he’s got Arthur with him and apparently the city spa is to die for. Merlin keeps craning his neck while Arthur pays, intrigued by the scents drifting up from the damp, mossy corridor, so Merlin’s caught painfully off-guard when the cashier in his little booth poises a pen over a census sheet and says, “Age?”

“Uh.” Merlin hesitates. “F-forty?“ That’s a nice, safe age to be right? Not too old, not too young. Uncontroversial.

The guy laughs. “There is no way, man,” he says. “You’re what, 25 tops?”

The thing is that Merlin doesn’t know. He knows he was sixteen the first time he was yanked – the time he was torn away from home, with no idea what was happening, never to return. But he has no idea how long it’s been since. It’s surprisingly easy to lose track of all sense of time passing when there is no way to keep track; no calendar to guide him through the seasons, holidays that are celebrated in some realities but not in others, days blending into an endless string of trying to find out how his new world works before he blunders badly enough to draw attention. It’s been – a while. Maybe he’s twenty-five, maybe he’s forty. Merlin wouldn’t know.

“Forty,” he repeats, because few things invite scrutiny as quickly as not knowing very basic details about yourself.

“Uh-huh,” the guy says, still shaking his head. He marks it down. “And you, man?” he says to Arthur. “How old are you? A hundred?”

“Forty,” Arthur says blandly.

The cashier rolls his eyes. “In you go, then, gentlemen,” he says, tone caught somewhere between amusement and annoyance. He waves towards the end of the corridor. “Gentlemen to the right, make sure you wear your slippers in the common areas. Guests over thirty are welcome to enjoy a complementary cucumber cocktail at the bar.” He looks down at his form, voice dropping into a mutter. “But good luck convincing them you need it.”

Merlin glares at the top of his head, ready to belabor the point (isn’t the purpose of a spa to be soothing? Snooty comments at the door aren’t exactly inviting rest and relaxation) when Arthur nudges his arm underneath the counter.

“Let’s just go,” he says, tilting his head down the corridor, and he wraps one of his arms big and warm and soothing around Merlin’s back as they walk.

Ealdor no longer exists in this reality, bulldozed to make way for an amusement park that closed after three seasons. Merlin doesn’t make himself go. He doesn’t have the stomach for it.

The man comes up to him on the outskirts of the market, where the booths with fabrics and fruits and household goods stand a little farther apart and a quiet conversation between strangers won’t draw much attention.

“Hey,” he says, holding out a hand. His gaze flickers over Merlin’s face. “You haven’t met me yet.”

It’s not quite a question. Reaching out to grasp the offered hand, Merlin shakes his head. “You’re one of us.”

“I am.” The stranger smiles a little. “You’re Merlin.”

“I am.”

It’s not the strangest interaction Merlin’s had, of course not. His existence consists of jumping involuntarily from one reality to the next, strange interactions are his bread and butter. But he’s more used to meeting people who aren’t like him than meeting people who are, and he finds himself looking the stranger over intently, trying to spot some sort of marker. Some sort of identifier. A visual cue that this person is more like him than not.

There isn’t any. He’s older than Merlin, probably; with similar dark hair and a reasonably well-kept beard. Tired-looking. His clothes don’t quite match the fashion in this reality, but they’re nondescript enough and the current style down to earth enough that he’d pass as a local at a casual glance. Merlin prefers to update his wardrobe as much as he can, because what others joys in life does he have, but he can appreciate a good technique to help their kind blend in.

And he knows someone who would gladly prattle on about survival tactics if given half a chance, so he asks, “Have you met Arthur, by any chance?”

“He’s one of us?” The stranger tilts his head. “I don’t believe I have.”

This part, at least, is familiar. While all around them, people wander towards the market proper and away again under the beady eyes of traders hawking their wares, they go through the names and descriptions of everyone they know – yes, the man has met Percival, he’s met Gwaine. He doesn’t know Finna, but he does know Ygraine, whom Merlin has yet to encounter.

“She’s a spitfire,” the stranger says, smiling. He looks amused under the worn expression but nothing more than that. Merlin doesn’t know what a relationship between people of their kind would look like, but he imagines it as both easier than any others and also hell.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Merlin says. He hasn’t met many new ones recently. This stranger has been the first in what feels like a while.

“You do that.” He holds out a hand again. “My name is Balinor,” he says.

“Nice to meet you,” Merlin says obediently. The city moves on around them, indifferent. “You already know my name.”

“I do,” Balinor says, with a little grin that reminds Merlin of his own wry smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t stay, but I do know we’ll meet again.”

Merlin nods. That’s how it usually goes. “I suppose I’ll…” He pauses. “I’ll see you next time?”

Balinor nods at him. “You will.”

This reality is absolutely covered in plants. Sometimes it’s because they never got into the habit of logging, sometimes it’s nuclear accidents that cause abnormal growth or biological experiments gone wrong. These seem harmless, at least, and the socialites at this event Merlin has stumbled into all wear fresh flowers and leaves as earrings and bracelets and fascinators. The beauty on Arthur’s arm has a statement necklace strung entirely from seed pods, tilting their head to show off their jewelry every time the pair is approached by someone new.

Their pretty smile drops into a frown when Arthur spots Merlin in the crowd and bounds away without a second’s hesitation. “Merlin, hey,” he says, humidity beading in sweat drops on his brow. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Merlin says, softer than he intended.

“You good?” Arthur takes another step towards him. “Actually, no, wait, come with me…”

Arthur waves at his pretty companion, a reassuring grin on his face that does nothing to ease the scowl on the other’s, before he takes Merlin’s arm and leads him outside. There’s a porch opening onto the rainforest, the air muggy and warm but not unpleasant. Amongst the thick foliage, an array of animals can be heard but not seen. Merlin can’t lean over the banister, not with sturdy netting keeping them in and wildlife out, but he steps up to the edge and tilts his head; above him, light filters through the leaves but he can’t see the sky.

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

“Yeah.” Arthur leans his elbows onto the railing and tilts his head. “When did you get here?”

“Couple of days?” A bird calls, loud and piercing, somewhere very close-by, startling a laugh out of him. “What about you?” he asks, still smiling, gesturing vaguely towards the door and Arthur’s peeved companion. “How long has that been going on?”

Arthur laughs, more hollow than happy. “No idea. A few months maybe?”

Merlin nods wordlessly. Arthur does that, sometimes. Not always, they’re often not in a reality long enough to form any sort of attachment, but give it long enough and Arthur will find someone to take up with.

Merlin tends to stay away from those types of connections. Sometimes, when he’s been steady in one reality for a while, he’s felt the stirrings of attraction towards someone or other. Sure, that happens. But the draw is never intense enough, the desire never deep enough, for him to want to risk it. That’s not someone he wants to be. Someone like his father, who disappeared before his mother even realized she was pregnant; who is yanked from one reality to the next without mercy and won’t ever find out he even has a son. Who doesn’t even know he’s cursed his son to do the same. Merlin doesn’t want that. Sure, he’d love to find someone to share his life with; someone he connects with the way his parents connected. But that’s not a possibility for someone like him, and in the absence of that, Merlin would rather spend the rest of his life alone than have what happens to him happen to more children.

“You wanna get out of here?” he asks.

Regretfully, Arthur shakes his head. “I need to,” he says, gesturing towards the balcony doors, and Merlin forces himself to smile.

“You do that,” he says. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Right,” Arthur says, but then he hesitates, staying silently at his side a moment longer.

This reality has sheer cliffs over cerulean seas, with a well-maintained path along the top of them highlighting the benefits of marine ecosystems. Merlin stays on the walkways because straying into the fields of delicate flowers generates an automatic fine attached to his identity and his identity doesn’t exist in this world and that’s a headache he’d rather not deal with. Also, the flowers are pretty and he doesn’t want to harm them.

Gwen sits on a bench at a vista point, looking out over the waves. She looks up when she hears him coming. Merlin will never grow tired of seeing her smile.

“Hello,” he says, sitting down next to her with his hands still in his pockets. And then, because he always does, asks, “And?”

“Lancelot this time,” she says, with the cutest little flush and glance away. “He was in a motorcycle accident a while back. We have the same therapist.”

“And how do you explain your issues to a therapist?” Merlin asks, amused, because there is never any juicy gossip about Lancelot. He is, in every reality, without fail, a kind, charming, overly chivalrous gentleman who worships Gwen with all his heart and always, always does what he believes to be best, even if it isn’t. In many ways, Lancelot is a steadier rock in Merlin’s many worlds than Arthur or Gwen; immovable and unchangeable, reliable as the tide.

Gwen smiles, lightning-bright. “Vaguely,” she says, knocking her elbow into his. “Very, very vaguely.”

Merlin grins.

“How are you?” she asks, genuinely, and he shrugs a little.

“Tired,” he says, which is as true an answer as any. Sometimes he gets to visit Gwen at an ocean as beautiful and stunning as this one, and that fills him with awe. Sometimes he goes to see the woman who had been his mother once upon a time and sees her in the garden with a whole gaggle of kids, laughing and grinning and never even knowing that there is another child that’s missing, and that fills him simultaneously with bone-deep sorrow and a quiet, simmering rage. Sometimes he wishes he could just text his loved ones when he wants to see them instead of having to hope and pray and wish that they’ll run into each other in their current reality before they are yanked apart again. He wants to not have to search for the people he cares about in this, or any, world.

He misses Arthur.

When he glances at Gwen, she’s looking back at him instead of out at the sea. She doesn’t smile, not really, but there’s a soft, understanding look in her eyes.

“I’m tired,” he says, and she takes his arm and leans her cheek against his shoulder.

“Yeah,” she says softly, while the washes crash against the cliffs below them and the sun beats down from above. “Me too.”

Merlin snakes his way through one of the upper levels of the city, a bandana wrapped around his head to protect him from the sun. The weather here is mostly hot and painfully dry, the buildings small and thick-walled and stacked half on top of each other to make up for it. The food is great, though. Dozens of different versions of stew that all taste different shades of amazing, and Merlin’s playing a mental game with himself where he’s trying to see if he can manage to try all of them before he gets yanked away again.

“Over here!” calls a familiar voice. On a bench in the shade, Gwaine and Percival sit side by side. Percival fits in well enough, or as well as someone of his stature can, but Gwaine’s wearing a too-bright shirt and a hat with fancy feathers that definitely didn’t come from this reality.

“Merlin,” Gwaine says, smiling, as they clasp hands. “When did you get here?”

Merlin smiles back. “Five, six days?” That sounds probable enough.

“We’ve been here, oh, four weeks?” Gwaine nudges Percival in the ribs. “Four weeks, right?”

“Right,” Percival agrees, squinting up at Merlin but smiling himself. Merlin doesn’t run into either of them very much, but they seem to have a knack for finding each other the way Merlin does with Arthur and Gwen. And Merlin likes them. He’d probably be friends with them if he managed to see them more. He’d like that.

“Anything new?” Gwaine asks, and this time, Merlin can actually nod.

“Met Balinor,” he says to blank faces, counting off on his fingers. “He told me about Ygraine, have you met her?”

Percival shakes his head, but Gwaine brightens. “I have!” he says. “She’s a treat.”

“A treat?” Merlin echoes, smiling.

Gwaine nods. “Beautiful, unapologetically clever, as noble as your Arthur. A treat.”

“He’s not my Arthur,” Merlin says, this time to doubtful expressions. “And I never thought I’d hear you refer to anything about Arthur as a treat, either.”

“Neither did I,” Gwaine says with a grimace. “But no matter how I feel about the rest of him, I can’t fault him for that.”

“Right,” Merlin says, lips twitching. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t sober either, not even when Gwaine reaches up to give him a shove.

“Stop that,” Gwaine says sternly. “Or I won’t tell you which of their stupid stews uses rat.”

“They use rat?” Merlin asks, voice flipping, and even stoic Percival laughs at him.

“Wait, what?” Gwen gasps, head thrown back in laughter. “You did not!”

“I did, I did!” Arthur says, shifting closer. “I got yanked from a prison cell, I swear I did! The cops held me a long speech about how I wasn’t going to be able to weasel my way out of trouble, and then they left me, and two hours later I was gone.”

Merlin wipes at his eyes. “What were you even in prison for?” he asks. “Excessive chivalry?”

Arthur presses his lips together. “Not carrying a valid ID,” he says, and that sobers them up a little. While Merlin takes a couple of deep breaths, Gwen scoots away from where she’s sitting leaned against the balcony spindles and reaches for the wine bottle. She’s older, here – hair more grey than brown, silver strands streaked through her curls. There are crow’s feet around her eyes and her entire face creases when she laughs. She’s as beautiful as ever.

Arthur, in contrast, looks very young. Not as young as the earliest he met Merlin, but pudgy-cheeked and clear-eyed and less worn than usual. He huffs every time Merlin brings it up, so Merlin mentions it at every possible opportunity.

He’s been here for… for some time. Perhaps a little longer than usual. Gwen has been here the longest, of course, she has an apartment in the block of dorms of the school where she works – some sort of teacher. They’re not the only ones having an impromptu party, either. Multiple bursts of laughter and music ring out from the buildings around them, but instead of going out to shut down the merriment, Gwen only occasionally glances towards the noises with amused fondness before reaching out with the wine bottle to top up their glasses.

“Your turn, Merlin,” she says.

Merlin has encountered enough to have to sift through his foggy memories for a while, but he discards most of them. There’s being honest, and then there’s killing the mood.

“I got yanked to an island one time,” he says instead. “Beautiful white sand beaches. Palm trees creaking under the weight of coconuts. Lush waterfalls. No other person in sight for miles.”

“She said worst reality,” Arthur protests, only to be cut off by Gwen’s gentle “Shsh.”

Merlin downs his glass. “It was the worst reality, Arthur, because the reason there was no other person in sight for miles was that there was no other person on the island.” He shudders, partly at the drink and mostly at the memory. “It was some sort of supply stop for an archipelago and there was a little hut with food and gear, but I walked that entire island every single day and there was not a soul on that stupid little speck of dirt, besides me, the entire time I stayed there.”

While Arthur stares at him, brows furrowing ever so slowly, Gwen grimaces in sympathy.

Merlin sets his glass down before he starts gesturing with it. If Gwen happens to fill it back up for him, then that’s something he’ll just have to live with, isn’t it?

He slumps against the rough wall of the building behind him. “I’ve never been so bored in all of my existence. Literally I prayed to get yanked from that stupid fucking island, so naturally I ended up staying there for literal months.”

Arthur and Gwen break into peals of laughter. Merlin pretends to pout about it, but he can’t help but enjoy their merriment. Certainly it makes for a better story than some of the other worlds he’s found himself in.

“And there was a much bigger island on the horizon, too,” he says. “Shaped kind of like a cowboy hat? Sometimes I was so sure I could see light there at night.”

Arthur, with his glass halfway to his mouth, hesitates at that. “I think I’ve been there, actually,” he says thoughtfully. “With a little mountain on the right?”

“Oh, don’t act like you’re all worldly and well-travelled now,” Merlin says, because he’s not about to admit that he absolutely can’t recall. “You’re, like, five.”

“I am not!”

Merlin scoffs. “You have no idea how old you are.”

“Neither do you!” And then, because Arthur huffs and folds his arms, sky blue eyes clouding over in annoyance, and because Gwen shoots him a reproachful look, Merlin scoots himself across the balcony floor and lays his arm around Arthur’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” he says softly, right in Arthur’s ear, because with his arm around him, he can feel how Arthur is holding himself tense enough to break. “It’s okay, Arthur, it’s just a joke.”

“You don’t know how old you are either,” Arthur mutters.

“None of us do,” Merlin says. He lifts his other arm, inviting, and Gwen crawls across the balcony around their much-emptied glasses and snuggles into his side. “And it doesn’t matter,” he says, because while having sudden freakouts about things they’re all technically used to isn’t new, neither is this: Holding each other when frustration gets the better of them, speaking soft reassurances into each other’s ears, offering quiet comfort while strangers laugh and cheer and carry on, oblivious, in the distance.

In Eald, the little cottage is dark, its owner departed for a long weekend away with friends. In her absence, Merlin oils the hinges of the squeaky garden door; he brushes the cobwebs away from the roof supports where she can’t reach with her bad shoulder; he pulls the weeds from the path and trims the hedges and mows the little patch of grass, with the bench in the sunny south-west facing nook, old and worn and wide enough for two.

He’s the gardener, he tells the neighbors when they ask. Yes, yes, she hired him to do this. No, he’s not currently taking any more orders, many apologies, this is a special case.

Merlin spots Gwen in a clothing shop, entirely on accident, bypassing the security scanners at the entrance to speedwalk down the aisles and tap her on the shoulder. He barely has time to register her nicely fitted blazer and pencil skirt before she recognizes him, and then he stops caring about them because she squeals in delight and throws her arms around his neck, uncaring of the bewildered looks of the workers gathered around her.

“And?” he asks, a little later, when Gwen has told the store workers to get by without her for a while. (“I’m a manager,” she says, pride in her voice, and Merlin asks himself how long that will last but he won’t say it out loud.) She’s taken them down to a little coffee place in the same shopping district that she absolutely swears by. Merlin hasn’t had time to get used to this reality’s particular way of roasting coffee yet, but it’s very elaborately made up and probably costs a pretty penny.

“Morgana,” Gwen says, pride coloring her words. “She’s a scientist. Real important stuff. She got a grant to do plant restauration in the Arctic, so right now she’s gone for a couple of months. But she sends updates whenever she can!”

“She’s – but you might not be here when she gets back,” Merlin says, unable to stop himself. What an awful thought that is – to be so far away and have your loved ones vanished into thin air when you return. To be gone, working, unaware that you’re missing your last moments with your love.

“So?” Gwen asks, cheeks flushing. “Am I supposed to ask her to put her life on hold for me? Like you said, I might not even be here when she gets back.”

Merlin feels shameful heat rise in his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, glancing away from her righteous anger and out at the kids and parents and random shoppers outside, all leading mundane, ordinary, uneventful lives.

It’s not even about her, or Morgana, so much. Gwen’s realities are a lot more stable than his own, and while he likes Morgana in her better realities and wishes both of them happiness, ultimately, what they do with each other is not his business. It wouldn’t work for Merlin, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for them.

Merlin rings the doorbell this time. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says, all polite smiles. “I think I’ve gotten lost. Would you mind telling me how to get to the highway from here?”

She fidgets on the doorstep, wrapping her shawl tighter around herself. “It’s just straight ahead,” she says, suspicion in her eyes. “You can’t miss it.”

Right. Perhaps that wasn’t the smartest approach. Merlin didn’t drive here, so he doesn’t know. He also doesn’t have a car parked out front for her to see when she cranes her neck. He’s just a stranger, standing on her doorstep, asking her questions he doesn’t need answered.

She folds herself even more tightly in on herself. “I’m sorry,” she says, though she sounds more tense than anything. “I don’t think I can help you with anything else.”

“I’m sorry,” Merlin says helplessly, but she closes the door in his face regardless, and though his heart is aching, he leaves before he causes her any more harm.

Merlin tries not to glance back too much. He can’t see much, anyway, only hear the heavy thwaps on the wind, and the forest floor is uneven and treacherous enough to require his attention. Dried pine needles crunch under his hurried steps.

He has no idea where he’s going. There’s the ruins of a town somewhere behind him. All he can do is hope that there’s another one, preferably one still standing, coming up ahead. His feet ache from speed-walking over the uneven ground and his arm still stings and if he could just get yanked from this reality right about now, that would be great.

“Merlin!” someone calls.

When he spins, panting still, it’s Arthur who emerges from the trees. He’s got a sword at the ready in his hand, wearing a loose tunic over a set of breeches that don’t really fit him, but look near enough to the type of dress Merlin’s been encountering these past few days. Merlin got here a few days ago and he’s still dressed in high performance fabrics from head to toe, the hi-vis jacket that was mandatory streetwear in his last reality draped over top.

Merlin throws a glance over his shoulder, but with the trees rising up dark and foreboding all around them, he can’t catch a glimpse of the sky. “You been here long?” he asks Arthur. Maybe he’ll know something helpful.

“No idea,” Arthur says, scowling.

Distracted, Merlin almost trips over a tree root. “What do you mean, ‘no idea’?”

“Had a crisis and went on a bender,” Arthur says darkly, like he’s just daring Merlin to judge him for it. Which Merlin wouldn’t. It’s not like he hasn’t done the same. “Woke up somewhere I didn’t recognize. Could be a jump, could be the blackout, no way to know.”

Merlin shifts, trying to ignore the unsettling feeling of eyes on the back of his neck. It can’t actually see him. He’d be dead if it could. “And it doesn’t look – different, or anything?”

“Uh, I think…” He glances around, frowning. “No, I don’t know. No idea.”

Merlin shifts again. If only he had better boots. Although he also wouldn’t say no to Arthur’s sword. “This one has dragons, if that helps?”

“Ah.” Arthur scratches at his chin. “Probably a different one, then.” He looks at Merlin again, appearing to notice for the first time the burnt fabric of Merlin’s sleeve. Maybe he’s still hungover. “I’m assuming the dragons are pretty noticeable?”

Wings flap thick and heavy above the trees, precluding a screech so near and so ear-splitting that they both hunch down on instinct. The creature screeches again, long and loud, before it drifts away on the wind.

“Pretty noticeable, yeah,” Merlin says.

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Come here,” he says, holding his sword firmly in one hand and reaching for Merlin with the other. “I hope you’ve gotten better at running.”

“Better since when?” Merlin asks, unresisting while Arthur drags him through the trees.

Arthur shoots him a dark look. “Since the one with the land octopus and the car and the angry locals,” he says.

“That was – ages ago!” Merlin says, because he does remember that, in more unpleasant detail than he’d like. He doesn’t know when it happened, but he does know that it happened.

“I hope you’re well-rested, then,” Arthur says, pulling him into a run right before there’s another screech above them. While Merlin would prefer not to be in a reality where getting chased by angry dragons is a very real possibility, he also can’t bring himself to hate this – him and Arthur, reunited in chaos once again, dashing through the trees with their hands clasped firmly together, panting their way into an uncertain future.

The rooftops in Eyaldor are a little scorched, reeds tinged in black. Eyes follow Merlin on his entire walk into the village, and he doesn’t knock this time. A stranger’s attention won’t bring her joy, here.

He has a bit of fruit and a bottle of some drink he doesn’t know in his satchel, and he leaves that in a protected corner of her yard, hoping she’ll be able to trust a kind stranger’s gift and take it.

Arthur’s not-father is a piece of work even in the best of realities – always stern-faced and bad-tempered, always aiming for power, consistently demanding of his servants or workers or slaves, respective of their current reality. Merlin sits in the window of the coffee shop across the street from the man’s office and watches him berate a maybe-human, maybe-robotic assistant in complete public. Hovering by a sleek, shiny car, the assistant seems too nervous to be a machine and too smooth-moving to be human, so who knows. Merlin hasn’t really figured out this reality’s advancements in AI yet.

“Why am I here?” he asks.

Arthur pushes a sleek chrome mug under his nose. “For the free coffee.”

Merlin breathes in. Whatever the drink is, it smells like health supplements and disappointment. “I mean, why are we stalking some guy you’re not even currently related to? Again?”

“I know what you meant,” Arthur says, with that edge that only comes out when he’s verging on actual upset. His jaw is tight, eyebrows drawing firmly together, and Merlin takes a sip of his drink and doesn’t needle him for the entire time it takes him to get that too-good-for-you taste out of his mouth.

“I think he lied to me about my mother,” Arthur says quietly.

Merlin looks up at that. “Lied how?” Arthur grew up with his father, so his mother must be the one switching realities. As far as Merlin can remember, that’s pretty much all Arthur knows. It’s the same for Gwen, but Gwen has never much shown much interest in her absent parent’s identity. Maybe her father just handled it better than Merlin’s and Arthur’s parents did, who knows.

Arthur fiddles with his own shiny cup. “I ran into Gaius the other day. Here-Gaius, I mean. And then I remembered that he – there-Gaius – told me, once, that she’d been there for my first Christmas.” One of his eyes flutters. “But that would have been months after I was born. And I remember specifically that my father said she abandoned us the first chance she got. He said it often enough.” He scowls. “That means he lied. He knew practically nothing about her in the first place but he still lied.”

Merlin glances across the street again. Arthur’s not-father has dragged some sort of traffic warden into whatever spat he’s having with his assistant. The shiny vehicle sits, unattended, at the side of the road. “You wanna go over there and sabotage his ride?”

Arthur grins, wide and a little manic, and Merlin pushes his overly healthy drink away with zero regrets.

Merlin spends his lunch break standing outside with his colleagues, usually around the back where no one will take offense at their existence. They don’t talk much, but they’re friendly enough, and it’s a nice break to hang out quietly with their phones in their hands, protected from the sun biting through the smog by the office buildings with their red tiled roofs and sloped windows.

Merlin’s sense of time is underdeveloped and spotty at best, but he must have been here a few months at least. He has an apartment. A job. He celebrated Christmas with his neighbors a while back, eating figs inside a ring of candles and exchanging gifts with warm smiles and eyes. Ealdor exists here, but the owner of the little cottage has moved away without a forwarding address, and he’s mostly stopped looking up train schedules to the middle of nowhere by now.

His phone buzzes right as one of his coworkers reaches past him to snag her bottle of water, and she’s leaning half over him when Merlin unlocks the screen to a message from Arthur.

You wanna get dinner tonight if?

“What’s that mean?” she asks, snaking one arm over his shoulder to point at the screen. “’If’?”

“It just means, uh, if we can make it.”

She frowns. “But they all end in ‘if.’”

“Uh-huh.” Merlin tucks his phone away. “Listen, you wouldn’t happen to know any good restaurants around here?”

She does, directing him to a small insider tip a few blocks away. Merlin texts Arthur the address and heads on over, indulging himself with warm bread and homemade butter infusions and people-watching, legs stretched out underneath their little two-seat table.

Arthur doesn’t show.

Merlin doesn’t think anything of it at first; doesn’t even realize when Arthur is first ten, then twenty minutes late because time means nothing to him. It’s not until a server asks him if he’ll be dining alone after all that he realizes anything is amiss, and by then it’s been almost forty minutes and any ambiguity of what this might mean has disappeared.

Arthur is gone.

With a quiet sigh, Merlin set down his butter knife and looks out over the restaurant. It’s just as charming as it was a moment ago, the bread just as fluffy and the butter just as flavorful. It still sits like ash in his mouth, and he flags down the server with his wallet in his hand and an apologetic smile.

The cottage is well-maintained, this time, beyond the tidiness and care of a single occupant. There are tools leaning against the wall that seem far too heavy for some slip of a woman to wield, and there’s a man’s pair of sturdy work boots fallen over by the door.

There’s a child’s bike in the yard.

Merlin doesn’t ring the doorbell, or tidy the belongings, or straighten the overzealous pea sprout where it’s attempting to usurp its neighbor’s planter. He stoops down to leave a rose on the doormat, a single peach-colored rose, and turns, quietly, to go.

Gwen stands at the very end of the pier, staring down at the barnacle-riddled pilings. There’s an amusement park at the shore, with bright lights and cheers and snatches of music drifting in the wind, and Merlin tucks his hands into his pockets against the evening breeze when he goes to stand next to her.

“And?” he asks, cheeky.

“Both of them,” Gwen says, scowling. Merlin’s not sure he’s ever seen her scowl.

“Congrats?” he says carefully.

She shakes her head. “No, not congrats.” High-pitched, she says, “‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Gwen, I do feel the attraction, I do, but I just don’t want to jeopardize what I have, you know?’ Morgana and Lancelot together. Who’d have thought.”

“That, uh. Sucks?” Merlin shuffles his feet. “But you – don’t want them to jeopardize what they have, either. Do you?”

“Of course I don’t!” she snaps. “I want them to be happy more than I want myself to be happy, goddamnit, but I want to be happy too. There are two people I love more than life itself, so why can’t I at least have one of them? Why is it such a shocking thought that I’d like to have some joy in my miserable existence? Why is that too much to ask!?”

“It’s not,” Merlin says quickly, moving in to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “It’s never asking too much to want to be happy, Gwen, you know that.”

Gwen sighs. She pulls herself together quickly, because she’s Gwen, and she’d never let herself take her frustration out on Merlin for more than the worst of moments. She’s not Arthur, after all.

“I know.” She leans into his side in silent apology. “It just – hurts.”

“I can imagine,” Merlin says, because he wouldn’t actually know.

She smiles a little, sadly, tilting her head back to look at him. “Are you happy?” she asks.

Merlin hesitates. Is he happy? Can he be happy? Can any of them? And does it even matter? No matter it it’s a gift or a curse or some higher power that yanks them from one reality to the next, it is without rhyme or reason or warning or purpose. It takes inherently social creatures and isolates them beyond any capacity of understanding, leaving them scrambling to form connections with others who are as adrift at sea as they are. It leaves a trail of heartbreak stretching across the expanses of the universe, as inescapable as the tide, all of them lost and lonely and leaving every home they find behind.

In the end, he doesn’t say anything at all, just hugs her close and lets the night wind carry their sadness away.

“I don’t think I know you,” a woman says, catching up with him on the way to the little bungalow in the jungle that he’s sharing with Arthur. Arthur – who is in a snit about something Merlin said, as he so often is – is a dozen yards ahead, stomping along the wooden platforms raised above the foliage with a mutinous set to his shoulders.

Behind them, the dining hall spills light and conversations into the night air. Nocturnal animals rustle by underneath. Merlin wanted to come here because there’s supposed to be a plant and animal diversity that’s rare even in shared realities, and he wasn’t intending to either fight with Arthur or be followed back to his room by a stranger.

He glances down at the woman, with a head of blonde hair that barely comes up to his nose, bright blue eyes staring up at him, unflinching.

“But I think I might have heard of you.”

“Merlin,” Merlin says, and she nods.

“Ygraine.”

“Oh, Balinor told me about you,” he says, ignoring in his excitement the way her face goes a little funny. “Wait. Arthur! Wait!”

“Arthur?” she asks, growing wide-eyed, and before Arthur has even had time to properly turn around and stomp back their way, Ygraine has pushed her way past him. “Arthur?” she calls. “Baby?”

Arthur stops in his tracks. “What -,” he says, hands curling into fists at his sides. “Merlin, who –?”

“This is Ygraine,” Merlin says, motioning at the woman. The one who it seems like might be Arthur’s mother. She looks young to have a grown child, but what does he know? “I’ve heard of her?”

“Ygraine?” Arthur echoes, and she nods, eagerly, still speechless.

Arthur’s face crumples. He doesn’t cry, but his face scrunches like he might, not unlike a disbelieving toddler seeing his mother again when he thought her lost forever. “Mom?” he stutters, and clamps his hand over his mouth when she nods.

She does the same.

With both of them similarly struck dumb, Merlin takes over the task of ushering them into their little bungalow, numbly unlocking the door to invite them inside. They don’t sit, none of them do, standing on the little all-natural material rug between two identical beds in utter silence. Ygraine looks like she wants to say something, several times, but she never makes it past opening her mouth.

“How,” Arthur stutters, finally. “How. Why. Why?”

“I didn’t know,” she says, desperately. “Please believe me, I didn’t know.”

“How…” Arthur asks, frowning. “How could you not know?”

“I had you young,” she says. “I was barely more than a child myself. Didn’t start jumping until over a year later.”

Arthur breathes out a stuttering breath. “You were there?” he asks quietly. “When I was small? You stayed?”

“Of course I stayed,” she says, reaching out to cup his cheek, and she’s still so young now and she was even younger then, but there is something infinitely motherly in her expression. “Arthur. I would have stayed an eternity for you.”

Arthur doesn’t speak.

“Arthur?” She smiles a little, then, glancing away. “I chose the name, you know?” she says. “It was close to his, so he approved, but I was the one who picked it for you.”

Arthur’s jaw tightens. His eyes shine, unnaturally bright. He doesn’t resist when she draws him in, down, to rest against her chest, only lays his head against her shoulder and closes his eyes.

“I wish I could – stay,” he says, voice breaking. “I wish I could – I don’t want to go.”

“I know,” she says, and Arthur hitches a soft, muffled breath and goes utterly still against her. “Baby, believe me, I know.”

On silent feet, Merlin leaves them to it, slipping out onto the balcony into the lingering chill of night. He doesn’t begrudge Arthur this meeting. How could he? If he could hug his mother again, just a single time, he would defy the tides to do it.

He tucks his hands into his pockets to ward off the creeping cold, leaning against the banister in silence. Who even knows if he’ll ever meet his other parent? When he was younger, Merlin always wanted to know him. To know. He had his mother, and she was more than enough to raise him well and whole and healthy, but he was always curious. He always wanted to meet his father. To ask him questions. To give him hell for passing this awful, awful thing on to a child, and then perhaps forgive him, because it’s not like his father chose this for himself.

Merlin tilts his head back to look up at the stars. Nighttime birds soar overhead, black shades against a blacker sky. They are, all of them, adrift in the tide. No control, no choices. They can only hope that, sometimes, the tide will carry them towards each other before it once again pulls them apart.

Sometime in the very late night or very early morning, when dawn is already brightening the thick cover of clouds, the balcony doors slide open behind him.

“She’s gone,” Arthur says, voice mostly even but a little sour. His eyes are red-rimmed but dry. “Yanked. In the middle of her grandmother’s favorite pie recipe. Just poof, gone.”

Merlin bites his lip. There’s not much he can say to that, really, so he doesn’t.

Arthur doesn’t seem to mind. He comes to stand beside Merlin, turning towards the light brightening the horizon. He’s quiet for a moment before turning his frown back to Merlin. “I guess I’m never going to find out just what to do with those 400 grams of cherries,” he says, and Merlin can’t help but crack up, laughter ringing out loud and lonely in the still morning air.

In Ealdor, Merlin hesitates by the little garden gate. The sight of the always-familiar house makes him smile every time. It doesn’t matter if it’s the little brick building he grew up in or a rustic wooden cabin or a sleek, prefabricated house with double glazed windows and its own generator around the back. It always feels a little bit like it did back then.

“Can I help you?” she asks, popping up behind the little wall and making him jump; she chuckles at his resulting flailing, both amused and apologetic.

“I don’t – think so,” Merlin says, once he’s gathered his wits about him, willing his frantic heart to stop pounding. “I don’t want – I was just looking at your garden, really.”

“I hope that’s a compliment,” she says, with a brightness in her eyes that will never stop feeling familiar.

“It – it is,” Merlin is quick to assure her. “It’s lovely. I suppose it just… reminds me of home.”

Her sharp eyes soften. “Here,” she says, snapping a brilliant white blossom from a bush and holding it out for him. When Merlin ducks his head, uncertain, she takes it as invitation to tuck the flower behind his ear.

“There you go,” she says, smiling softly, with a gentle flush across the bridge of her nose that says that she’s embarrassed, too. 

She’s not his mother, but she’s what he has. She’s not his mother but she wishes him a safe journey, resting her tiny hand on his arm, rising up onto tiptoes to kiss his cheek across the safety of the garden wall and it’s both foreign and achingly familiar; the strange scent of laundry soap he’s never used mixed with the way her bedsheets used to smell when he crawled in beside her in the dead of night; the oddly shaped cap that everyone wears to hide their hair here but the color that she loves so much; wrinkles he’s never seen and a scar across her brow that he’s never brushed his fingers over, but the same eyes and the same smile and the same affection in her expression. She’s not his mother, but she is, and he’ll never stop loving her.

Gwen loves the ocean. Merlin can’t muster up much enthusiasm for vast expanses of unfamiliar, unexplored territory stretching out before him, but he’s enthusiastic about Gwen, so he finds himself drawn to the beach with easy familiarity.

Drawn to it, but not onto it. Merlin’s fair-skinned and easily burnt in every reality; with the sun bright in the sky, making the sand shine white and the waves glitter, the patchy cover of the palm trees is his best friend.

His other best friend is right beside him, with an overpriced creamy cocktail in each hand, sitting down in a patch of sunlight before handing him one of the drinks. Merlin takes a sip. It’s not a flavor he knows, or has ever even heard of, but it tastes beachy enough. There’s the smell of salt in the air and the cry of gulls overhead, sunlight shining warmly down on where Lancelot and Gwen and Morgana are all splashing in the surf.

Merlin isn’t sure how they all feel about each other here, because he hasn’t had the chance to ask. And maybe he won’t. But if he could will this into existence for Gwen, he would: a reality where Morgana isn’t hounded by her demons and Lancelot doesn’t wear his honor like a millstone around his neck, where Gwen loves them and they love Gwen and the tide is a tame, friendly thing, nipping affectionately at their toes.

“It’s not gonna last,” Arthur says quietly. He sits, drink sweating in his hand, watching Gwen shriek with laughter when Lancelot lifts her off her feet. He glances at Merlin. “Give it a week, give it a month. Hell, give it a year.” He gestures with his cup, drink sloshing. “Sooner or later, Gwen will get yanked away again, and it doesn’t matter how happy they are now, they’ll all be fucking miserable when she’s gone.”

Merlin cocks a brow at him. “So they might as well get started on the misery now?”

Arthur scowls. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Huffing, Arthur sets his cup aside. “I just don’t see the point, I guess,” he says. “She’s got to know there’ll just be more sad times in the future.”

“Yeah,” Merlin says. If anyone knows, it’s Gwen. He leans his shoulder against Arthur’s, giving him a little nudge when Arthur glances over. “But there’ll be more happy times, too.”

Arthur looks away, out at the crashing waves and the couples and families sprawled out on the beach and this easy, comfortable world they’re only visitors in. “You think we will?” he asks softly. “Be happy?”

Merlin shifts his weight over, leaning against Arthur’s strong, comfortable shoulder. It feels like nothing could ever take away its solidity – like nothing could ever be as solid as Arthur is right now. Like there’s no way he could ever be yanked away with not even enough warning to say goodbye.

Merlin might not know joy the way Gwen and her lovers do, might not have that kind of connection. That shared life together. He might not know what it feels like to care for someone for years, to wake up every morning hoping he’ll get just another day, another hour with his loved ones.

He might not have met his parent, the one who’s like him, the way Arthur did. His family. He doesn’t have that, and maybe he never will. But just because he doesn’t live the life they lead, just because he can’t have that, doesn’t mean he can’t have happiness in his own ways.

“I am happy,” he says gently. In this moment, he is. He’s got Arthur here, who, despite how much they might argue and bicker and fight, understands him in a way nobody else can. In a way nobody else could ever be understood; sharing experiences that define who they are, what they do, knowing without ever having to say it out loud the other’s deepest insecurities and heartbreaks and fears. Arthur is right at his side, like he always is, and Gwen is right there on the sand – the people who stand with him on the shores of the brightest realities, who weather the waves with him and abandon everyone else to run his way.

He has Arthur, and Gwen, and the others like them who might not know him well but are always so happy to see him, so pleased to meet another like them. Maybe it’s not much, maybe it wouldn’t be enough for anyone who doesn’t experience what they do, but that doesn’t mean Merlin can’t be happy.

And he is.