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aithusar · 3 years

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hiii sorry if you've answered this before but I just finished Longing of the Soul and would love to know what you had planned for the next chapters if you want to share... i took the afternoon off after some stressful news and have just been reading everything youve written and its exactly what I needed, ive been crying but in a nice way :') youre now one of my fav merlin authors for real

I am so sorry you've had bad news! I'm really glad that my fics could help in some small way and hope whatever has happened is able to resolve itself. I'm batting for you, anon <3

You know, you're actually the first person who's wanted to know what my plan for that story was. Unfortunately I didn't have any notes and my memory is a little fuzzier than it was, and I also didn't have a plan for the ending (which was a major factor in why I abandoned it) so I can't offer closure there, but the ideas I had left are below the cut. It's really long despite not having a conclusion, sorry!

It was going to be a couple more chapters before Merlin and Arthur finally saw each other again. Arthur grew much more isolated in this period because the knights and Gwen are both seeing and speaking to Merlin now, and despite Merlin always blaming himself and not Arthur, they can tell Arthur's done something. Arthur can't explain himself because that would mean revealing Merlin's magic. So he gets really lonely.

Arthur doesn't have anything against Merlin's magic, it's more inaction and inability to make decisions because of the grief of betrayal and how momentous the shock is. He's just... not really thinking about how magic is illegal at the moment and what that means for Merlin, and what it has meant for Merlin all these years. He's dealing with too much emotionally for him to devote the mental time and space to thinking about how it's affecting/is affecting Merlin (and yes, this is a bit selfish but was part of his character flaws).

Then. THEN. It's been 30 years since magic was eradicated in Camelot and the Council asks Arthur for a feast to celebrate the purge and the destruction of magic. He tries to shut it down but politically it's complicated what with Morgana waging a magical war against them and I was going to work out a few issues with some of the lords that would make it hard for him to say no outright. So he has to let something small happen, and he kinda tries to make it more about peace and ending deaths than magic, but he feels absolutely sick because it makes him really think for the first time about how Merlin has had to hide and fear for his life and could have been burnt at the stake. Mordred notices Arthur trying to shut them down.

So here Arthur is a couple of weeks later, lonely, miserable, and everyone around him is merrily celebrating the brutal and merciless slaughter of sorcerers... sorcerers just like Merlin. Arthur's still not thinking in broader terms about how the ban has been wrong and all of its consequences; he's just thinking about Merlin, can't think about anything else. How he could have died. How many times he was probably nearly discovered. Arthur gets fantastically drunk. Back in his chambers later that night, George of course tries to get Arthur ready for bed and Arthur's so upset and so angry that he's not Merlin because he misses Merlin, and he's not there because Arthur sent him away because he lied about everything. Idk if many people noticed but George in the show actually wears really similar clothes to Merlin (including a scarf) but much more neatly. And anyway, Arthur actually gets a bit violent and yells at George and tries to take the scarf off. Gwen hears shouting and puts a stop to it, sends George away with an apology and then gives Arthur a piece of her mind. I don't recall exactly what was going to be said, but she was icy and furious, and it escalated to her yelling at him for the way he's treated her (including some hints Arthur will pick up on later when he's sober that Gwen's not okay), and for the way he's treated Merlin. At some point in the conversation Arthur finds out Gwen's been seeing Merlin and then that's all he can think about, asking her how is he. She doesn't really answer him except like "how do you think, given what you've done to him". I wish I remembered how I was going to end that scene, but that thing about Merlin was the pivotal point because Arthur's drunk and sad and he wants to see Merlin, and he knows that he's around the castle.

What's Merlin been up to in the meantime? He's very busy, actually. Seeing Gwaine, occasionally speaking to Mordred (they're not friends, but he'll humour Mordred if approached), going out with Gwen. He's up on a watchtower one night having a few drinks with Gwaine, who, for the first time, presses him about what happened with Arthur. After weeks of stewing in it more or less by himself and constant suspense of what Arthur's going to do with him he's tired of it all. And despite all his friends, he's also sad and lonely. He ends up telling Gwaine he has magic, and Gwaine accepts him of course and says Arthur's a fool, but it doesn't make Merlin happy. Leaves him a bit less weighed down, but the only person he really wants that reaction from is Arthur. And he betrayed Arthur by lying, and he's still hiding the dragonlord stuff from him. My recollection of Merlin's thought process from here is fuzzy, but that basically got Merlin onto thinking about Aithusa (which is why I had Merlin go to the dragon's cave and make that iron dragon) and how he failed her, and maybe he ruined his destiny but he can still try and help Aithusa.

So Merlin reads all the books on dragons and dragonlords and their magic and everything and anything that seems remotely useful. He just leaves the books out everywhere in his chambers because he's finally feeling passionate about something and is trying to ride that wave. In the end he sort of innovates this idea himself that although his magic doesn't work on dragons, he can command them in the dragon tongue, so if he commands Aithusa to obey his magic that might work. He brushes up on his dragon anatomy, because he has to work out how to spell Aithusa right again. And he sets out to the forest and calls her, and she comes, and he sings to her, for hours, in a blend of the old religion and dragon tongue, chanting over and over to convince her flesh to change itself. He can only work on really specific parts at a time and by dawn he's only managed to reduce her brow ridge or make her skull less broad or something really small like that, but he's done it. He can make her better. He comes back to the castle feeling more purposeful and happier than he has in months, since even before he told Arthur about his magic, and he goes into his room and... Arthur's there. Looking at all of his magic books.

Although I've just spoken at length about Merlin's POV I had no plans to write any of that in Merlin's POV, or maybe one chapter with Gwaine but nothing about Aithusa and studying. It's just important to me that I always know what all my characters are up to and how and why they are thinking/feeling something at any given time because it's a crucial part of how I shape their actions and dialogue, and an enormous factor in creating the story itself. They're all protagonists in their own lives.

So, Arthur, day after the feast, while Arthur and the reader are oblivious to Merlin's vivacious social life, his rediscovered passion for dragons and Aithusa, and Gwaine knowing about his magic. He crawls up to Gaius' chambers, checks Gaius is out, and plants himself in Merlin's room to wait for him because he has to speak to him. He doesn't know what he's going to say, he's just so lonely that he's drowning in it, and also miserable that Merlin could have died, but also a bit sick at how long and how easily Merlin lied to him for. And he walks in there and there's Merlin's magic books. Everywhere. On the desk, on the floor, on the bed, in the cupboard. Bestiaries and healing manuscripts and an ancient tome with Gaius' handwriting in it, and Merlin's annotations around the edges of the spells too, and dozens of books about dragons, and even a book on necromancy (from the Lancelot shade episode). And it sort of hits him that Merlin had this entire life he didn't know about, not just that he had magic and could have been caught, but that there was this entire world there and how much of his time and life Merlin dedicated to it.

Enter Merlin. Arthur says something about all the books and how he could be caught, and Merlin's like well, if anyone sees them, what are they going to do? Tell the king? Arthur, being Arthur, doesn't take that well, because he hasn't thought about the fact that it's his fault that Merlin has to fear prosecution, and has been for the past like three/four years. (Arthur's generally really slow to connect the dots on anything that requires emotional intelligence in this fic). He's the one putting Merlin in a position where he could be killed, and he says something along the lines of how he wouldn't hurt him.

I really wish I remember how the conversation reached the important moment because I had like this whole plan with a bunch of dialogue in my head and I know it took longer to get here, but Merlin gets angry about the imbalance that's always been there where Arthur wants to be friends but is happy to use his powers as king to interfere with their relationship when it suits him. (If you're wondering how this makes sense with Arthur having referred to using his power to help Merlin, it doesn't. Like I said this used to be longer, and it had a logical sequence. There was something about Arthur saying that Merlin was his friend and he wouldn't do that to him which kind of got this started, because Merlin's like you don't treat me like a friend because friends can't usually just order the other one to leave when they don't want to see them, referring to coming back from the cauldron. idk). Arthur tries to interrupt and defend himself, and Merlin uses magic to take away his voice for a few seconds and asks how it feels when your friend uses unimaginable power to stop you from speaking when they don't want to listen. He immediately returns Arthur's voice who's sort of in shock because he hasn't seen Merlin use magic since the cauldron, and also he'd never feared Merlin at all since the discovery and he's only just considering what it would have meant if Merlin had ever turned his magic against him, and how easily he could have hurt Arthur, and he never did. Arthur asks him why he did it, all these years, why he protected Arthur.

Merlin's quiet for a moment, and Arthur asks if it's because Merlin's in love with him. Merlin's a bit startled and ashamed and says no, that came years later. He did it because of who Arthur was, but also because it was his destiny, but destiny is all messed up now. Arthur can smell that he's getting close to some explanations for the first time in weeks since Merlin revealed everything and asks Merlin what he means about destiny, and Merlin is exhausted by the reminder of how much Arthur still doesn't know and he's kept secret, and they sit and have a very long discussion about Merlin's magic and life in Camelot.

I'm sorry to say that's as far as I had gotten. Merlin and Arthur's relationship was going to continue to dip back and forth a bit, with the reveal about the dragonlord thing being a bit of a setback, then about healing Aithusa, but that conversation in Merlin's chamber was a turning point for them and they were on an upwards trajectory. Arthur wanted to understand, and the more he learnt about Merlin and everything he'd done the more he sympathised with and was humbled by Merlin, and the transparency between them and amount of time they spent together made Arthur come more to terms with his feelings for Merlin.

What I was absolutely clueless on was how to fill in Gwen's arc, and the entire thing kind of crumbles without that. I had a vague idea that maybe she could strike out and find Morgana - I put in something about her being happiest as Morgana's maid in the last chapter I wrote, I think - and that would prevent the war, because having a friend would help Morgana heal. But Morgana was insane by then, and had literally tortured Gwen. That idea would perpetuate a lot of dangerous and hurtful stereotypes around the portrayal (or lack thereof) of black people's trauma, and how their own stories are pushed aside to service other people's. Sending Gwen, of her own volition, to be with and heal a woman who has tortured her and repeatedly tried to kill her? No. I wanted to fix the mistakes the show made with her trauma, not exacerbate them. Even without doing that to her it felt like I would have to end up making her step aside too happily for the sake of a gay relationship, which is misogynistic because that's treating my female characters like they're just things in the way of letting my male characters do what I want. Like Gwen doesn't have a right to be too hurt by her husband emotionally cheating on her because it's gay rep. And it wasn't my plan to write a polyamorous relationship either. Maybe I shouldn't have written it as a merthur story, but it was far too late for that. Besides, I still wouldn't know how to handle Morgana and prevent the battle of Camlann. Something with Mordred, but what?

I hope that's helped a bit, both in regards to finding out more and also, if not being able to find out the ending, at least understanding the directions my thoughts were circling in and where they got stuck. I'm extraordinarily flattered by your opinion of my fics, and that you cared enough to want to know more - thank you so so much - and very happy they could bring you some form of comfort. Best of luck anon with the news that you received. Sending you love and good wishes <3

#i answer #my fics

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