danzanelfuoco

MERLIN

Cow-T, w6, m1 - sacrificio
792 parole

In the end, Merlin stopped waiting.

It took him centuries, centuries spent in the same damn place, always hovering near the lake, every mornin waking up and strolling through the forest, every morning with his heart beating faster for an instant, his throath closing around the idea that today could be the day, that Arthur could be back, only for all his hopes to plummet to his stomach, the lake quiet and unmoved, not even a ripple on the surface.

Merlin waited and waited and waited. By the end of Gwen's reign he decided to move, let the figure of the grat warlock Emrys - Merlin - be cloacked by mistery. It was a more selfish reason - it was that Merlin was alone. Gaius long gone, the Knights valiantly perished in battle, or in their homes with their families, or lost to the foolish that was questing for the Graal.

Guinevere, grey and old and wrinkled, had smiled at Merlin, had cupped his young face - not older than the day Arthur died - with her hand and had asked him if she had done enough. Merlin had smiled back, motioning to the window. Camelot was flourishing, thriving. The fortified citadel was at its apex, and it was all Guinevere's merit.

"Yes, Gwen, you have been amazing."

The next day he had taken his few possession and throw them in a sack. He didn't stay for her funeral.

Still, even leaving, he could never strain too far from Camelot, from Avalon, from the lake. The profecy said Arthur would come back when Albion would be in need of him again and Merlin would be there to welcome him.

But Arthur never came back. Not when plague was sweeping away the population and Merlin, elbwos deep in potions and medicaments, sleeping two hours per night, had worked to save as many people as possible, not when pointless war after pointless war had been drafting the youngster to die for a country that starved them, not when a new continent was discovered and his fellow countrymen - Englishmen they called themselves, people who had forgot all about Albion and Camelot, about greatness and honour - his fellow contrymen had started colonizing, buy and selling people, killing entire populations without a second thought.

Yet Arthur hadn't come back from the dead to reign them in. Hadn't come with all his scorn and his pride and his disgust to guide his subjects to the right path.

Merlin, still had waited.

Wars and pandemics and death, civilization brought at his finest while new methods of torture were brought forth. The industrial revolution, Merlin had seen the birth of pollution, had lived throught the shift from drinking water from a well to check if the water was clean enough from chemicals. And yet he waited.

He saw young people beeing drafted again for a war that dependend on the girldle of an Archiduke in Sarajevo and he saw them never return. He wavered.

All his life he had sacrificed to the wait, all those years spent on the altar of Arthur's return, his blind faith pledged to the man he was supposed to protect and failed.

The war won, Albion - not Albion, not any more, and not until Arthur came back - England prospered. Merlin sat back, maybe it wasn't that bad, not as bad as it had looked. Maybe it didn't warrant Arthur return.

But then, there was another war, another generation of children sent to die in a foreign country and then there were two bombs - two mushrooms in the newspapers and a death tool that made Merlin sick and that was it.

If Arthur hadn't come back for this - hadn't come back in time to prevent this - he would never come back at all. Merlin had to think so, because otherwise it would mean that something worse was yet to come, and he would lose what little was left of his sanity.

So he sacrificed this instead. He let go of the lake, he let go of his wait, he let go of his celibacy. Married a widow of war, two small children that called him their father even if they were old enough to remember he really wasn't, and he lived a happy life. Later, when she had grown old and he hadn't, despite the years passing, he could have stayed - he could have stayed forever, watching his granchildren grow and get old and become grandparents to other children and still he could be there and alive. But it wasn't his life, so one day, he left a flower on his wife grave and he simply disappeared.

Another thing sacrificed to his immortality, another thing sacrificed to Arthur.