Fizz (rainbow_prophet) wrote in britannia_ny, @ 2009-08-21 23:04:00 |
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Current location: | Ken's wall, awaiting Arthur |
Current music: | The Call - Regina Spektor |
Entry tags: | arthur, enfys walters |
Witness all that I have mentioned... the stars will avert their gaze from these men (Arthur, Merlin)
That night she dreams again.
It's not one of the dreams she almost enjoys, either. Those ones, at least, have daring deeds and beautiful, noble people in their favour, even if she can't help thinking she's a little beyond fairy tales of dragons and knights and damsels in distress by now. It's not even one of the ones she's used to, the ones where she's learning what it's like to watch a sliver of sky get thinner and thinner as rocks close overhead, roots entwining over where the gap once was.
Nimue – no, she's the Lady now, as she always has been, he'd just not seen it - Her hand is on Arthur's wrist, small and pale against the King's skin, too small to come near to reaching around it. She dreams of a sword... the sword. There are other weapons which will come into Arthur's life – Carnwennan, Rhongomyniad, Clarent – and other names by which this sword will pass – Caledfwlch, Caliburn – but, as ever, only one Sword. It is Fergus' Caladbolg, and Sigmund's Gram. It is, and always has been, Arthur's, and...
… and then she wakes.
She'd thought earlier that if she looked in the mirror she'd see this Other Man, this Merlin, looking out, and been afraid to check. Now, whether it's the tiredness, or the resignation, or just that she's finally lost all traces of sanity, she does. And there's nothing there. Her eyes are still her own, the way they always have been. Nothing altered, nothing gained. No one different lurking there. Somehow that scares her more, all things considered.
So she's terrified, but she's also laughing. Uproariously, even. Because it's all such an excellent joke, this living backwards. Beginning at the end, remembering past glories (and tragedies, but she doesn't want to dwell on them; talking to Nim... to Nathan had been more than enough in that regard) and unable to re-capture them – and even then, missing chunks, mis-remembering, forgetting faces, names, and knowing they're not really forgotten, just beyond her grasp, leaving her stumbling through a fog - rendered weak and feeble in comparison to what she was, those fragments of memory teasing her. Trapped in a flesh which won't do what it's supposed to, what had once come so naturally. In so many more ways than one, she's become this old man. And it's hilarious.
She also knows what she has to do, and this time she's not going to be distracted, or wander off back into Nathan's clutches. And again, it's going backwards.
A sensible person might have waited until a reasonable hour. But sensible people rarely made history, and almost never succeeded in changing it. Besides, this is beyond that. Beyond any notion that it's dangerous for a girl to be out alone at god-alone-knows-what-hour in the morning, that it's creepy for her to be watching the house.
Soon, she's back at the wall again.
Only it's not the same.
She's changed, and it's obvious, but hard to place exactly what is different. Something about the set of her jaw, maybe, or the way she's holding her shoulders, the fact that she's not hunched up on the wall but leant back against it, head held high. Or maybe it's not something physical so much as the way the fug of confusion has started to lift. The way she's not consciously debating whether to go over and knock the door, ask to speak with him (she's not even watching the house, really) because she trusts he'll know she's there, waiting.
So Merlin came unto the King... as Merlin had devised, so was it done