Merlin. The Witcher. Good Omens. Broadchurch. Sherlockian. TJLC. Tolkien-obsessed. Hiddlestoner. House Tyrell. Gryffindor. District 13 Tribute. Loki's Army. - ‘With all due respect Sir, move away from me now, or I will piss in a cup and throw it at you!’
I genuinely think Merlin has been passively suicidal since episode ONE, and the immortality makes that so much more horrifying 😭 because from the very beginning, Merlin has this weirdly detached relationship with his own life.
In the first episode, when he thinks he might lose his magic, he's basically at the point of if I can't use magic, I might as well die, which is INSANE when you remember he's literally nineteen.
And throughout the entire show, Merlin repeatedly treats his own life as expendable if it means Arthur gets to live. He is constantly willing to sacrifice himself for Arthur, constantly putting himself between Arthur and death, and repeatedly making it clear that if one of them has to die, it will be him. Merlin's instinct is never really I need to survive. It's Arthur needs to survive. And then Arthur actually dies. And this is where the immortality becomes genuinely tragic, because Merlin can die. He's immortal in the sense that he doesn't age, but he's not invulnerable or impossible to kill.
So after spending his entire life being willing to throw himself away for Arthur, he's suddenly left with a life that can continue for centuries, while the person he was willing to die for is dead.
Except Merlin has been told Arthur will return when Albion needs him most. So now imagine what that means for the next 1,500 YEARS. Merlin doesn't have to keep living. He could die. He knows he can die. And yet he doesn't, because Arthur is supposed to come back.
The same Merlin who spent the entire series saying I will give my life for Arthur eventually becomes the Merlin who has to preserve his life for Arthur's return. That's such a horrible reversal.
Before Arthur's death, Merlin's life is something he's willing to sacrifice because Arthur's life matters more. After Arthur's death, Merlin's life becomes something he has to protect because Arthur might one day need him again.
And that's why I don't think Merlin's immortality is really about him wanting to live forever. I think it's about him being unable to let go because there is still this one unfinished promise sitting in the back of his mind: Arthur will return.
So for fifteen centuries, every time Merlin could have simply stopped caring, every time he could have accepted that there was nothing left for him, there was still that possibility. What if Arthur comes back tomorrow? What if Albion needs him now? What if I die and Arthur returns and I'm not there? And suddenly his entire existence becomes this endless act of waiting.
He doesn't necessarily have to want life itself. He just has to want Arthur's return enough to keep enduring it. Which makes the ending so much more devastating because Merlin, who was willing to die for Arthur when Arthur was alive, spends 1,500 years staying alive because Arthur is supposed to come back. His life starts as something he's willing to give Arthur and ends as something he's forced to keep for him.
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Just finished the ep with the Witch finder which was so much chaos 😭 A calamity happens and what does Arthur do instead of throwing Merlin in jail? He breaks the law 💅🏼
bro was too stunned to speak…
But I just think it’s a sweet moment how Arthur comforts him here and lets him know he’s alright and that Merlin can see Gaius again bc he knows how much he means to him. I think Arthur’s starting to develop more as a character abt the kind of person he wants to be. I also think that Arthur doesn’t tell Merlin how much he appreciates him as much in these early seasons bc he probably doesn’t know how to say it but he shows it through his actions a lot. Such a gud ep 👍🏼
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Some of my favourite moments in Merlin are when they show sorcerers feeling the magic around them. Like when Merlin passed out from the veil opening, or when he’s able to tell a place is sacred by the magic all around them. It’s just such a neat detail and I wish they played into it more
2. Is there an awkward moment involving Leon finding himself in the middle of a romantic moment of any couple?
Yes > I see you're a pro already
No > please take the next 15 minutes to research the significance of poetry for Sir Leon and then think about how you could create a scenario like that
3. Does Leon kiss a horse in your fic?
Of course > ✨🤌🏻
No he kisses Arthur > That counts if donkey ears are involved
No> Where does this irrational hatred against horses come from?
4. By the end of the fic, is Leon happy?
Yes > as he should be this is bare minimum next time I want him to be fabulously over the moon hyped up
He's done > by or because of merthur? By > counts; because of> counts as well
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For @merthurmicrofic | Prompt: Touch | Word Count: 1267
Arthur hated letters in the way some men hated the sea, not because they were ugly, nor because they frightened him, but because they refused to remain where he placed them, forever shifting beneath his gaze, trading places with one another as though conspiring against him in some private language he had never been taught to speak, and it had taken him years—years of clenched jaws and split practice swords and bruised pride—to understand that it was easier to let people mistake him for impatient than incapable, easier to bark that he had no time for reading than admit that every page became a battlefield before he had even reached the second line, easier to laugh when Leon stumbled over an inventory than risk someone noticing how his own eyes lingered too long over words that refused to become meaning.
Kings, everyone said, must be educated. Princes, everyone assumed, must devour books as naturally as breathing. Arthur learned, instead, how to memorize speeches after hearing them only once, how to recognize official seals before he had to read the names beneath them, how to nod at reports while hiding the terrible, aching certainty that if someone asked him to read the next sentence aloud the entire illusion would collapse around him.
Merlin noticed within a fortnight.
He noticed because Merlin noticed everything, because there was something infuriatingly gentle about the way his attention settled upon the cracks people believed they had plastered over years ago, because he did not stare when Arthur's eyes skipped the same line three times, nor did he offer pity when Arthur exchanged one document for another in hopes that no one would realize he had never understood the first, and when he finally asked, one rainy evening after the council had dispersed and Camelot seemed wrapped in the hush that only arrived after midnight, "Do you want me to read it?" there was no triumph in his voice, no careful sympathy sharpened into humiliation, merely the sort of question one asked another person who happened to have full hands and needed a door opened.
Arthur had almost lied.
Instead he passed him the parchment.
From then onward it became habit so slowly neither of them noticed the exact moment it ceased to be charity and became something far stranger, far dearer, Merlin reading treaties while Arthur paced the room counting possibilities instead of words, Merlin copying letters in his neat, looping script while Arthur dictated replies that grew increasingly thoughtful once he no longer spent every ounce of himself wrestling each sentence into existence, Merlin pausing every so often to ask, "Did you mean generous or diplomatic?" and Arthur answering, after a moment's consideration, "Diplomatic."
Sometimes Arthur watched him write.
Merlin's handwriting looked effortless, as though the ink had decided exactly where it wished to go before the quill ever touched the page, each letter leaning into the next with quiet confidence, and Arthur found himself wondering what it must be like to possess a mind that never argued with words, never watched them fracture apart before they reached the end of the line, never had to memorize the shape of every sentence like the route through an unfamiliar forest.
It was only weeks later that Arthur noticed the way Merlin rolled one shoulder before reaching for fresh parchment, the faint tightening around his mouth whenever he leaned too long over the desk, the almost imperceptible hesitation before standing, as though every joint required negotiation before agreeing to move, and once he noticed he could not stop seeing it, because Merlin hid pain with the same stubborn competence Arthur hid his reading, disguising discomfort as clumsiness, exhaustion as absentmindedness.
"You've been rubbing your neck all evening," Arthur said one night.
"I've also been listening to you complain about tax reform all evening. One of those things is considerably more painful."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Arthur watched him flex his fingers around the quill before setting it down with unusual care.
"Merlin."
"It flares sometimes," he admitted quietly. "My shoulders. My back. Some mornings it's barely there, other days it feels like someone replaced my bones with rusted hinges. I'll survive."
Arthur frowned.
He disliked those words.
People always said them when surviving had somehow become the highest thing they expected of themselves.
Merlin reached for another blank page.
Arthur caught his wrist.
"You've written enough."
"The correspondence—"
"It can wait."
Merlin looked ready to argue, then blinked in surprise as Arthur stood behind his chair instead.
"What are you doing?"
Arthur rested both hands lightly upon Merlin's shoulders.
"Repaying a debt."
Merlin barked out a laugh.
"You cannot possibly know how to—"
"I've had enough knights come back from patrol unable to lift their swords. I've learned."
"You learned?"
"I am capable of learning things."
"I thought books were involved."
Arthur rolled his eyes.
"Keep talking and I'll stop."
"You weren't doing anything yet."
"I was considering it."
Merlin's smile lingered even as he surrendered, inch by reluctant inch, allowing the tension to leave his posture without seeming to realize he had done so, and Arthur pressed his thumbs carefully into the muscles gathered along the base of Merlin's neck, expecting complaint, expecting flinching, expecting instructions.
Instead Merlin inhaled.
Arthur continued more carefully than he had ever held a sword, discovering beneath his palms the astonishing hardness of muscles that had apparently forgotten softness existed, every knot another silent record of mornings Merlin had risen anyway, afternoons he had spent hauling buckets or carrying armfuls of firewood or sitting bent over Arthur's endless paperwork because Arthur himself could not make sense of half the words upon it, and with every slow movement he became increasingly furious at himself for accepting so easily the effortless version of him that had never truly existed.
"You should have told me."
"You should have told me."
Arthur paused.
Merlin smiled without opening his eyes.
"About the reading," he elaborated.
Arthur resumed.
"I didn't want you to think less of me."
"I suppose neither of us did."
Silence settled around them, not awkward but heavy in the way evening rain was heavy, carrying things that had waited years to fall, and Arthur realized with a strange sort of grief that they had spent so much time protecting one another from imagined disappointment that they had each carried burdens the other would have accepted without hesitation, Arthur believing words would make him smaller in Merlin's eyes, Merlin believing pain would make him inconvenient, when all along the only thing either of them had truly feared was becoming difficult to love.
Arthur squeezed his shoulders once before continuing more gently.
"You read for me."
Merlin hummed.
"You write for me."
Another hum.
"So the least I can do is make sure you can still move afterwards."
Merlin laughed then, soft enough that it scarcely disturbed the quiet room, and leaned back without thinking, until the back of his head rested lightly against Arthur's chest, trusting him with the sort of unconscious certainty that could never be rehearsed, only earned over countless ordinary evenings exactly like this one, with ink drying upon unfinished letters, candles burning low, the kingdom waiting patiently outside its walls while within them two stubborn men discovered, piece by fragile piece, that love was not always found in declarations or impossible sacrifices, but in the exchange of borrowed strengths, in one pair of eyes willing to become another's reading, in one pair of hands willing to become another's relief, until neither of them could remember where one kindness ended and the other began.
