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ofsmokenandgold · 1 month ago

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Just happened across Dyan Elliott's The Corrupter of Boys today while doing some collection development reading, and am kinda wondering if you have opinions as the resident medieval queer historian? I feel like some of the implications regarding the history of sexuality are. Questionable. Does she not think sex between consenting adult men was a thing in the middle ages?

Full disclosure, I had heard of this book before but never actually read it. I've gone and read parts of it now (introduction, conclusion, etc -- full text available on JSTOR for those of us with university logins) and I do have a few thoughts.

First, Elliott's professed reason for writing the book was to uncover the intellectual and legal history of ecclesiastical cover-ups for scandal, particularly sexual scandal, and particularly that of clerics molesting boys and young adults, in the wake of the first major American Catholic sex-abuse scandals that broke in the early 2000s, i.e. in Boston. I think this is a valid and important critical agenda, especially as she convincingly demonstrates that this project began quite early in the history of the church and does have a long and sordid continuity across many historical periods. Holiness demanded celibacy, demanding flawed humans to live celibately and against their usual natures, and clerical predation emerged quite soon as a consequence. Because holy men lived in all-male communities where their access to women was limited or non-existent, this meant that the targets for illicit sexual contact were often boys or male adolescents, though Elliott acknowledges that girls and women were not necessarily spared either. However, when thinking about the premodern church as an almost exclusively male institution, that meant "corrupting" sexual influences were perforce often turned on younger boys. Her argument convincingly shows that this has never been seriously challenged in the Catholic Church, that it has tended toward secrecy, cover-ups, and denial of all responsibility for a long time, and that this has troubling and very pertinent modern consequences. I think this is important and necessary, and would not substantially disagree with it.

She then argues that this toleration of clerical sodomy was fairly widespread until the eleventh century, where reformers began to more aggressively condemn these relationships and try to bring the perpetrators to justice via tribunals, whether secular or ecclesiastical. Where I think she then starts to get onto more dangerous territory is by then asserting, as you say, that this represents the only model or possible evidential base for premodern same-sex relationships, and that perforce they were only ever clerical, pederastical (i.e. between an older man and a young boy), and premised on coercion, secrecy, and violence. For instance, in dismissing the allegations of Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus's possible affair, she writes:

Practically all the evidence for same-sex relations between males in the Middle Ages, north and south, adheres to the model of classical pederasty, which involves a mature man and a beardless youth. The idea of two adult males consensually having sex would have been considered a highly unusual, and possibly revolting, prospect [... ]The model of pederasty that shapes same-sex relations in the Middle Ages does not constitute the kind of usable past that historians of sexuality, including myself, were hoping for (Elliott, The Corrupter of Boys, p. 11--12).

I think this is true if -- and only if -- you accept that the only evidence for same-sex relations in the Middle Ages is the evidence she uses, which is a shaky premise for me. The fact that she draws easily argued-against conclusions in re: Richard and Philip makes me suspicious as to whether she is able to accurately recognize more subtle instances of premodern queer rhetoric, behavior, or other evidence that is less explicitly punitive, legalistic, ecclesiastical, and premised on a relationship (whether consensual or otherwise) that ends up with criminal charges. I have written elsewhere that there is often much that we simply don't know about queer behavior in the Middle Ages, and the tendency has been to overarchingly write in generalized negatives that may or may not fit the bill, which it would look to me as if she is doing here.

For one thing, the idea that "adult males consensually having sex would be unusual/revolting in the Middle Ages" does not fit the multiple instances of this very possibility being brought up elsewhere, in contexts where people were concerned with it actually happening. It's ironic that she cites Matthew Kuefler in this paragraph, because he has actually written about how twelfth-century France was deeply concerned whether adult male knights were in fact having sex with each other, or if their intense and homosocial bonds were turning homoerotic. See Matthew Kuefler, ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, pp. 179-214 and Ruth Mazo Karras, ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy,' 273–86, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2006). Elliott is clearly critical of Boswell, sometimes validly, but it is also an oversimplification to assume that the only sources he presents in Christianity and Social Tolerance, whether in a positive light or otherwise, are those relating to clerical molestation.

This is not to mention the later fourteenth-century culture of "queer anxiety" around the possible consensual sexual relationships of (adult male) kings and their (adult male) favorites, i.e. Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst, ‘Kings and Favourites: Politics and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017), 298–31. What I think Elliott is (clearly) missing here, and which has troubling implications for the rest of her argument, is just that because something might be "considered highly unusual or revolting," i.e. in the case of adult males having consensual sex, is not a sufficient evidentiary standard for it never happening at all. After all, there are plenty of people today who think queer behavior is "highly unusual and revolting," and that has zero impact on whether it does in fact happen. Also, as I have written about in other publications, you can't have a widespread culture of premodern queer anxiety -- i.e. that these relationships will have a baneful influence on the rest of society -- unless they are both actually happening and doing so at a fairly regular basis in a recognizable format. In other words, anxiety does not work as rhetoric without reality. It may well be true that there was concern about these relationships from the rest of society, though I think that's another case of reading more into the evidence than is actually there, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. In fact, quite the opposite. This is also not getting into all the other sources for premodern queer behaviors, narratives, or figures that explicitly do not rely on clerical sodomy as a context, and which it is (to say the least) troubling to dismiss carte blanche with statements such as the above.

I want to emphasize that we can't discount Elliott's work altogether, just because some of the implications may be uncomfortable. After all, premodern queer history is not an unproblematic capering daisy field of happy adult consensuality sanitized to Tumblr pearl-clutching standards at all times. Humans are difficult, messy, and complex, especially when it comes to sexuality, especially when it comes to non-normative sexuality in a context that is still hotly debated, especially when this context is only recoverable through complicated, subjective, and difficult premodern sources that can be received and interpreted in a variety of ways. Clerical sodomy was an important frontier of same-sex sexual behavior in the Middle Ages, and it was a constant preoccupation of clerical writers in a lot of different ways. The fact that many of these relationships were secretive, non-consensual, and abusive is a troubling reflection of just how long the Catholic church has allowed them to persist to avoid "dishonoring" themselves, with implications that run right up to the modern day, and I think Elliott is very right to point that out.

However, I would ultimately agree with you that she is also making some dangerous implications that are not supported by the other evidence, she is showing a clear inability to recognize or properly interpret said evidence, and runs the risk of reducing the complexity of premodern queer behavior down to "it was all/mostly just older priests non-consensually abusing young boys." For one thing, that props up the modernist fallacy that the LGBTQ+ movement, and (apparently) queer consensual sex at all, was only invented in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and gives ammunition to the "all queer people have historically/traditionally been sexual predators because this is the only context available to them" straw man. I think this fallacy is easily disprovable with like, five minutes of research, and I'm disappointed to see it embodied in what is otherwise an important and necessary work.

(More reading available on request.)

#queer history #medieval history #qqueenofhades #another fascinating essay from qqueenofhades

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ofsmokenandgold · 1 month ago

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This is a gorgeous little Merlin/Musketeers crossover - thank you @illustrate-her

“Fuck, Lancelot,” Merlin moans, screwing his eyes shut. “You never learn, do you?”

So true

@that-nerd-who-writes-fanfiction posted about wanting to read at Merlin/Musketeers crossover fic with Merlin in the 17th century timeline, and for some reason it just jumped into my head, and I wrote this thing in about two hours whilst trying to convince my stubbornly awake toddler to gtf to sleep.

Un-beta’d, very quick and dirty.

Tags: angst, insanity, mentions of serious injury, stuff like that.

___

Time slips on, and on occasion, Merlin will let his sanity slip with it. He keeps half a finger pressed against the magic inside of him, because he knows it will tell him when Arthur returns. Alright - he hopes it will tell him. His opinion on the trustworthiness of magic tends to ebb and flow with the years, and whether or not he is in a particularly bleak period at the time.

Merlin allows himself that too: a decade here or there to really wallow in the awfulness, the loneliness of it. After a couple of hundred years he begins to realise a pattern, that he makes himself Emrys when he is feeling miserable, and allows the hopefulness of his younger body to propel him back into purpose and the will to carry on.

The sanity though, that is a different thing. Sometimes it just becomes too much to learn the new ways, to assimilate into the societies of the time and not look like, well, a lunatic. And when that happens Merlin seems to give a mental shrug and let himself descend into the swirl of magic inside of him, because when Arthur died, when the prophecy came to pass it was like all of the magic in the world came rushing through him like an open floodgate, and everything that made him Merlin got swept away in the deluge.

So the time slips on. And Merlin lives. Some times he lives better than others, though famine or self-inflicted starvation, injury or cold or despair doesn’t seem to hinder him for long.

Time slips on, but, he reflects one day, slipping almost implies a certain degree of speed. And the time fucking drags.

At some point around the 15th century he decides to leave the land that has now been named Britain: when Arthur returns it would do him well to be advised by someone who knows a little bit about the countries that now encircle Albion across the sea. Every year the world seems to expand, new places and people emerging from the mists, new foodstuff and materials and advances in technology and warfare and medicine and artistry. And despite his oft-experience malaise, Merlin cannot help but find it all absolutely fascinating: he had spent an interesting couple of years learning everything about astronomy and mathematics from a Moorish traveler, found himself moved to tears by the paintings of Caravaggio and the tragic love of Shakespeare. The marvels that can be wrought without even a scrap of magic are astounding, and often it is this undying progress of humankind and their relentless search for beauty and meaning that gives him a reason to keep living.

Sometimes around the early 17th century - though he has lost count a bit. 1620? 1640? - he finds himself in France, and the magnetic pull of the great and rambling city of Paris draws him inexplicably towards it. It seems to perfectly represent everything that people are: disgusting and beautiful and kind and brutal in equal measure.

He doesn’t care much for the kings of this age, finds them venal and stupid and small-minded. And it’s because of this that the sadness swell within him once more like a horrible dark sucking of water behind his breastbone, because these kings are nothing - nothing - like Arthur, and he feels the loss of the man like an aching in the world.

What a king like Arthur could do! What peace he could bring, what justice! To see these small men on their thrones when Arthur lies sleeping in Avalon feels like the most enormous of injustices, and Merlin feels the despair slip slowly into his lack of will to try, and his tenuous grip on his sanity loosens like a sail in the wind once more.

So it is in France, in Paris, in the early part of the 17th century - 1610? 1630? - that Merlin finds himself locked within the walls of some castle or dungeon or prison. He cannot remember if he has committed some crime - it does tend to happen, regrettably: an apple taken from a cart or an insult given without meaning, a lack of understanding of social mores of a time or that breeches must generally be worn in public, that sort of thing - but either way merlin is locked within stone walls and iron bars.

He could get out in an instant, of course. If he wanted to. If he had anywhere to go, something to do or anyone who was waiting for him.

Ah, there’s the despair again. What does it matter? He doesn’t need much to live on: the hunger cramps in his belly but he barely notices. It won’t kill him.

Nothing will fucking kill him.

“Do I…do I know you?”

It takes a long time for Merlin to respond at all, given that he is so unused to anyone speaking to him but the gaoler, who tends to spit on Merlin more often than speak to him.

“I’m…I’m sorry?” Merlin says. He looks up, lets his eyes adjust. There is a man on the other side of the bars, clearly having paused whilst walking by this cell.

“Fuck,” Merlin breathes. It’s a word he’s learned of late and it seems to fit a lot of situations. Seeing someone who died around ten centuries ago is probably one of them.

The same brown eyes, that’s the first thing Merlin’s notices: brown eyes warm and lit from beneath like peat water in the sun, framed with lashes that always were a little indecent. He has a neat moustache and beard, fashionable at this time, and his hair is longer, reaching almost to his shoulders in places.

“Your hair curls,” Merlin says, his voice croaked thin with disuse. “I suppose it was never long enough to before.”

Lancelot puts a hand up to his hair for a moment, his brows pulling low in a frown. “My hair…” he says, confused.

And everything just seems to crash around Merlin as if the whole ceiling were raining down on him because of course, of course: he’s mad isn’t he? This isn’t real. This is just some man. It cannot be Lancelot.

“What’s your name?” The man who is not Lancelot says. He steps closer and Merlin can see that he is dressed practically but with a touch of frivolity, the lace around the edges of his shirt, the tooling on his doublet. The hilt of his sword is a swirled and elegant thing, just visible hanging from belts slug around his waist with a blue sash. And buckled at his shoulder is a leather pauldron, fashioned with some regimental heraldry that Merlin has not been bothered to educate himself on.

“What is your name?” The man says again, squatting down so that he is on the same eyeline as Merlin. His voice has gone soft, kind.

“Merlin,” Merlin rasps. “Who. Who are you?”

“Aramis. Of the King’s Musketeers.” The man doffs his feathered hat in a gesture of good manners, and his smile is warm and easing across his face.

His smile is not like Lancelot’s. Merlin’s friend had been shy at times, his smile a timid thing, though wonderful for its scarcity.

This man - this Aramis - smiles too easily and with too much knowing.

“You’re not him,” Merlin says. He feels a lump of something hot and molten lodged in his throat, and only realises that he is crying when the tears scald lines down his cheeks. He doesn’t have the energy to feel shame anymore, dignity is such a pointless thing when you’ve lived as long or seen as much as Merlin has.

“I’m…I’m not him,” Aramis says kindly. “I’m sorry.” He reaches a hand then, through the bars, and lays it on Merlin’s arm without any guile. And Merlin cannot remember the last time that anyone touched him.

___

Aramis comes back the next day.

“You know, it’s very strange. I do feel like I know you,” Aramis says, thoughtfully.

“You look exactly like a man I used to know,” Merlin says.

“And where is this friend of yours now?”

“Dead. Twice over,” Merlin says to the ceiling, because it is too horrible, too strange to say it while looking at this man who is the very mirror of Lancelot.

“I am sorry,” Aramis says quietly. “It is terrible to suffer the loss of a friend. They say that time can heal, a little…”

He trails off because Merlin is laughing, uncontrollable heaves of laughter. “I’m not sure,” he hiccups, breathless, after a while, “A thousand years hasn’t seemed to do much.” He laughs again then, for quite some time. Aramis only sits, a puzzled sort of half-smile on his face.

___

He comes back again the next day.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he says, half to himself. And then he shakes his head as if to rid it of something, and settles down to talk through the bars once more.

“I brought you some food, Merlin,” Aramis says. “You’re terribly thin.”

“I always was,” Merlin says, but he accepts the food that Aramis hands him through the bars. “Arthur used to say that’s why my ears stuck out so much.”

“Arthur is another friend of yours?” Aramis smiles.

Merlin genuinely hadn’t meant to speak his name, hadn’t meant to summon Arthur up from whatever place he inhabited in the depths of Merlin’s heart.

“Another dead friend,” he says, with forced levity.

“I’m sorry,” Aramis says. And then, “Will you tell me about him?”

For a moment Merlin hovers somewhere between the desire to keep Arthur close, safe and protected and unknown by this huge and dangerous world he finds himself in. But to speak of him might make him feel as though he were alive once more, and it’s this desire that wins the day.

“He was a King, actually.”

“Huh,” Aramis smiles, though not unkindly, “Like King Arthur himself.”

“What?” Merlin asks, frowning.

“Well, you know. King Arthur. And, who was it…ah…Guinevere?”

His eyes widen a little bit when he sees the look on Merlin’s face. “I don’t know anymore, really. My English is not so good, so I’ve not read it. But Athos sometimes likes to rave about English literature when he’s drunk enough Armagnac. Not wine, funnily enough - that just makes him maudlin - but Armagnac? That’s when we get the Shakespeare, the Chaucer, the rest of it…”

He trails off. “La Morte d’Arthur. It’s a book about a king from Britain called Arthur...” He clears his throat. “I’ve not read it.”

“Fuck,” is all that Merlin can say.

___

“Why are you in here, Merlin?” Aramis asks one day. “What did you do?” He looks as though he’s bracing himself for some awful reveal, but Merlin can only shrug.

“I don’t know. Can’t remember.”

“You…can’t remember?”

“I must have done something,” Merlin elaborates, Nothing, you know, awful,” he hastens to add. “But possibly something illegal. Or mad. It’s likely I’m here because I did something mad. It has happened before.”

“You’ve been imprisoned before?”

“Oh,” Merlin puffs out his cheeks with a sigh. “More times than I could count actually. Never for anything awful.”

“Just something mad,” Aramis supplies.

“Yeah. That.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Merlin says after a while, and stretches out his long legs, and lets his head thunk back against the rough walls of the cell. “I could get out of here right now if I wanted to.”

“And you don’t want to?”

“Not really. I don’t see why I should.”

___

“I’m going to petition the Queen to have you pardoned,” Aramis beams one day, sitting on the floor outside the bars with an alarming clatter of pistols and blades.

“Why do you have so many weapons?” Merlin frowns, “Surely it just sort of gets in the way after a point.”

“I have exactly as many weapons as I need, thank you very much, and if I didn’t I’d be dead by now. Only this morning I narrowly avoided being shot through the head because I had this,” Aramis pats lovingly at a blade in his belt. “Besides, didn’t you hear me? I said I’m going to petition the Queen to have you pardoned.”

“Why would the Queen listen to you?” Merlin says, dubiously. “And did you bring me any more of that apple pastry?”

“No, Constance says there’ll be more tomorrow, and the Queen and I have…well, we are…we speak sometimes.”

Merlin sits up, a rush of something invisible and heavy suddenly falling onto his chest. “Aramis. You should stay away from queens. Take it from me.”

“You’re speaking nonsense,” Aramis says, waving a hand.

“Frequently,” Merlin nods.

“She gave me this,” Aramis says, pulling out a small crucifix on a chain about his neck, and there is something small and tender in his voice and oh Gods he’s in love with her, isn’t he? He’s in love with the Queen.

“Fuck, Lancelot,” Merlin moans, screwing his eyes shut. “You never learn, do you?”

___

Aramis doesn’t come back the next day.

Or the next.

And then there is another man, tall and dark-skinned and looming.

“You him then?” He asks, voice gruff, as though throwing out a challenge before one can be made to him. “Merlin?”

Merlin opens one eye. “The one and only.”

“Huh,” the man says, “Barely more than a boy. You’re the one he’s been comin’ to see every day?”

“Aramis?” Merlin says, sitting up, “You know Aramis?”

“I do,” the man nods. “Yeah I do. He told me to come and see you. He was…he made me promise. Dunno why.” He scratches the back of his neck, awkwardly, and it’s only then that Merlin notices the stretched thin quality of this man, the way his face is drawn and tired.

“What’s wrong,” Merlin says, bolting to his feet. “What is it?”

“Aramis…” the man says, trailing off. He takes in a deep breath. “Aramis got…he was run through. Right in the gut.”

The world spins, settles to a point of excruciating clarity.

“Is he dead?” Merlin asks, voice very still.

“Not yet,” the man says, and the yet dangles there like a hanged man because it is suddenly very obvious that yet means soon.

“Aliese.” Merlin feels his eyes flash gold, and it’s like a relief singing through his whole body to use his magic after so very long. The lock on the barred door clicks somewhere deep within its mechanism, he shoves it with his shoulder as he steps through. “Where is he?”

___

He can feel the wary shock of the man next to him as they hurry through the streets of Paris, hasn’t failed to notice how the man has one hand on his pistol and one on the hilt of his huge sword, both hanging from his belt, and uses his chin and a snapped word to indicate which direction they must go.

They had walked right out of the prison. Merlin had only needed to cast a little spell, a small easing of things so that eyes glazed over him and attention settled elsewhere as he passed. They walked right out and no one even said a word, and is it testament to the fear and shock - not of Merlin but that Aramis’ death is imminent - that stops the big man who walks beside him from asking questions or demanding to know what exactly Merlin is doing.

He is led through a doorway and into an internal courtyard, up some worn stone staircase and into a suite of modest rooms. A young man startles to his feet beside the bed, and another is leaning heavily against the wall with his back to them and a half-drunk bottle of wine hanging from his lax grasp.

“Who’s this?” The young man says.

“Aramis’ friend.”

“Send him away, Porthos” says the man leaning against the wall without bothering to turn. “If he is truly his friend he will not want to witness what comes next.”

The big man - Porthos - crosses to the bed and drops to his knees beside it, and it’s only then that Merlin really looks. Aramis is lying there, his face a sweating and awful shade of spoilt milk. His eyes are closed and bruised around with blue shadows. His breath comes rattling and sullen.

“Aramis,” Porthos says, and his voice is horrible and filled with a false kind of easiness, “Aramis? Can you hear me? I’ve got someone here for you. Your friend. Merlin.”

The man in the bed does not move, shows no sign of hearing anything that is happening in this room.

Merlin can hardly breathe. He sees Aramis in the bed but he sees Lancelot, dead, laid out in the boat that he sent out into the lake. He sees it all and a thousand years is nothing, is nothing.

“Do you have yarrow?” Merlin asks, crossing quickly to the side of the bed and shouldering Porthos out of the way. “Ah…Achillée Millefeuille?”

“What would we do with that?” the younger man says, dubiously.

“It’s an old wives tale,” the man leaning against the wall states in a monotone, “Said to stop bleeding.”

“It works,” Merlin insists, “Especially when I can help it along with magic.”

The room falls silent. “Magic,” Porthos says after a moment.

“Why did you bring him here?” Spits the older man, by the wall.

“Because Aramis asked me too, Athos!” Porthos says, jumping to his feet angrily. “Because he is Aramis’ friend and Aramis is dying’!”

“Don’t do this,” the young man says, his voice high with desperation. “Not now.”

“Fuck it,” Merlin says, and rips down the blanket over the dying man’s abdomen, and places his hands where there is a mess of dark blood and bandages.

It’s not like with Lancelot, or with Arthur. Their deaths had been sullied by dark magic before Merlin could even think to help them. Aramis’ wound is deep and awful but it was made with a mortal blade, untouched by sorcery.

Merlin couldn’t do it for Lancelot, or Arthur.

He will do it for Aramis.

He closes his eyes and reaches deep within himself, to that swirling maelstrom of power. He reaches further, pulls from the hewn timber of the floorboards that still hold some echo of the trees they once were and the vast forests in which they once grew. He pulls down deeper, reaching through beam and plank and flagstone, through to the earth beneath, alive with living things, alive with a magic that is so simple and so ever-present that it could never die, could never even be noticed.

“Come on,” he spits.

Merlin pulls. Merlin heaves. He feels his body shaking uncontrollably, his teeth chattering. He feels his eyes burning painful and hot with magic until he cannot see anything anymore through the sun flare glow of them. He feels all the air leave his lungs and the way they cramp around their emptiness because there is no room for breath, no room for anything but the magic.

All the glass in the windows blows out, and Merlin keels sideways. He doesn’t hear how the room erupts in shouts. He is unconscious before he hits the floor.

___

The dark is comforting, and warm, and friendly. He doesn’t want to open his aching eyes. He feels like every part of his body has been punched.

“Merlin,” says a voice. “Merlin. Are you with us?”

“Can’t I sleep a little longer Gaius?” Merlin groans, and then memory blooms like a flower, and he understands that Gaius is long dead, and that the man speaking to him was about to be.

“Aramis,” Merlin says, and tries to sit up but the room spins him back to a groaning horizontal. He screws his eyes shut again.

“Easy,” Aramis says. “I don’t know what in God’s name you did but I imagine it rather took its toll.”

“What did I do?” Merlin says, cracking one eye open.

“Well. I no longer have a hole in my stomach,” Aramis says, thoughtfully, “Which I…I don’t want to think about right now.”

___

At the Porte Saint Honore Aramis looks assessingly at him. It’s so much like the kind of look Lancelot would have given Merlin that he can’t help but grin back. It doesn’t hurt so much, anymore, and he’s not sure why but he is very grateful.

“Are you well enough to travel?” Aramis asks, dubiously.

“I’m fine, Aramis.”

“Are you an angel, Merlin?”

“An..a..no. No I’m not, Aramis.”

“Hmm,” Aramis says, assessing him once more. “Well, regardless, I will pray for you at the church of Saint Sulpice this evening.”

“You think I’m in need of saving?” Merlin is well aware that the attitudes towards magic - witchcraft - have not improved particularly despite the passage of time.

”I think you’re in need of protecting,” Aramis says, simply. “I think you’re quite extraordinary and I think I will pray every day for the Lord to watch over you because you saved my sorry, sinful life. Merlin.”

Merlin looks at those brown eyes, those same eyes. “I couldn’t save my friend. I couldn’t save any of my friends. I am glad to have been able to save you.”

“Where will you go?”

The countryside spreads out like a blanket around the city, darned patches of fields and woodlands. But Merlin can feel it again, that little tugging sensation somewhere inside his ribcage.

“Home.”

“Britain?” Aramis says, and then makes a small moue of distaste at Merlin’s questioning raised eyebrow. “I assumed. Your accent is atrocious.”

Merlin laughs. And it feels so good.

“Yes,” Merlin says, “Britain. I can’t be gone for long. I’m waiting for someone.”

The countryside spreads out like a blanket, and time spreads out quite similarly, and perhaps there are bits darned here and there, mends and rips and added patches. Perhaps a person can come again, in a different place and a different time, and Merlin has to believe it’s true because that means he’s still holding on - somewhere, somehow - to the faith that Arthur will come again.

Time spreads out, and Merlin wonders if maybe all these years might be worth something after all, and that for a while at least, he might try being part of the world again.

#Merlin #Musketeers #Crossover fic #Lancelot #Aramis

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