#Merlin dies

[bitsandbobsofwriting]

Been contemplating the implications of Phoenix!Merlin, in which yes Merlin is immortal, but he can't come back until his body burns. I think Lancelot knows Merlin is immortal but not that he needs to be burned. Maybe they wait hours, days, weeks, until eventually they're forced to believe they were wrong and he's not coming back, so they finally put him to rest and only then does he return

(Headcanon Masterlist) (Full Masterlist)

I hope it's ok that I turned this into a shorter Headcanon post than a full fic!! It's pretty similar to my Merlin Dies fic (the first one I ever posted😌)

SO

I love this Phoenix!Merlin idea!! BUT!! What if, in this world, Phoenixes don't exist, but all the legends and stories and lore around them came from people who had witnessed Dragon things?? And misunderstood/mis-seen it?? If we ignore Aithusa's egg scene (which we can do, because it's an AU, and the power of imagination is very strong) and replace it with Merlin having to use fire to burn the egg to ash, from which Aithusa rises, and this situation, decades/centuries prior, is what starts the rumours.

Maybe some travellers see a Dragon hatching in flame, and from the bushes they're hiding in, the creature looks like a bird rather than a dragon, and the story is spread and mis-told and warped and changed for the sake of the story/because of bad story telling. Things just go from there. Sightings of Phoenixes are common both because people lie, and because baby dragons used to be far more common than they are now. And once a rumour/legendary creature like that is invented, it's basically impossible to destroy, so even when dragon scholars and Dragon Lords come out and are like "actually... uh..." it's just... not common knowledge that it's a Dragon thing and not a Phoenix thing.

And as we know, anything that is a Dragon thing, is probably a Dragon Lord thing as well. Merlin is immortal because he's Emrys or whatever, but that just means he doesn't age and heals very quickly. If he actually DIES it's the Dragon Blood that brings him back to life.

So yeah, either pre or post magic reveal, Merlin dies. It's very horrible, everyone is heartbroken, but they either know already, or are told, that he's immortal, and it's only a matter of time before he wakes up again. HOWEVER Balinor isn't around and Kilgharrah is still feeling petty, so they have no one to tell them how it actually works. They keep Merlin's body clean and presentable to the best of their abilities, which is HORRIBLE, because even if you know your friend will be waking up any second, you still have to handle their corpse.

But then... he doesn't wake up. The body goes stiff, and then it stops being stiff, and then it starts doing all the normal corpse stuff of smelling and leaking and just generally being gross. He gets paler and paler and the blood pools at the bottom of his body and his eyes and cheeks and abdomen sinks in and they have real trouble keeping flies and bugs away and it just gets to the point where... this isn't sustainable. They have to accept that Merlin is dead and, if he IS coming back, it surely can't be to this?? Arthur, after much persuasion from Gaius and maybe some Druids (who have no real idea how his immortality works, and are half grieving that they were wrong and half trying to convince themselves that everything will work out in the end), finally decides that Merlin deserves a proper funeral. He originally intends to bury him like normal, but the Druids, various other sorcerers, and probably Lancelot (though this is eating him up inside, he thought he'd have Merlin forever and sort of took that for granted) convince him that considering how magical and powerful he is... was, it's too dangerous to leave his body intact. There are some creepy, dark strands of necromancer's magic out there which could cause severe amounts of damage if Merlin's body was desecrated and broken down into components, so he's burned instead.

It's a hugely sombre affair. Basically everyone is crying, because they'd put this off for so long, and lighting the wood feels like a final acceptance that he's not coming back, that they've given up. And then like... a while later, when there’s literally nothing left but dust and charcoal black scraps, some sooty, dirty, butt naked body just... sits up?? Coughing up ash and shards of bone?? Everyone is shocked into silence until Gaius or some random Druid or Mordred or someone, just goes "Holy Fuck... he's a Dragon Lord" and then Merlin like... covers his junk up and shivers in the wind and is all "You... you didn't have to make this such a public affair, could someone grab me some clothes please?" and they all jump into action. Arthur covers himself in... the ash of his best friend's gross mouldy body jumping up onto the pyre to pull Merlin down. He's hugged, he's wrapped in about twenty knights’ cloaks, everyone cries some more. He makes some annoyed comment about having to wash all this shit out of all their clothes, and the crying gets, somehow, significantly worse, until he sighs and hugs them back and allows himself to be smothered with love.

Arthur pulls back, punches him, and goes "What the shit was that?? What took you so long??" and Merlin has to explain that like... his Emrys immortality is just not aging and healing quick... his coming-back-from-the-dead immortality is a Dragon thing and requires being burned before it like... kicks in. Everyone is mildly embarrassed, especially the people who knew about the Dragon Lord thing, and ESPECIALLY when someone says "Oh! Like a Phoenix, right?" and Merlin gets all grumpy and is like "No. Like a Dragon.".

Anyway, it's a big lesson, and if he ever dies again they take a LOT less time before burning him, do it privately, and have clothes and a bath ready for when he rises. They take to calling him Phoenix as a cute little nickname, but only because they know it annoys him because apparently Phoenixes don't actually exist and it's just been a huge, centuries-long miscommunication, which Merlin is now desperately trying to fix within the public education system or whatever.

~

Thank you Heart and I hope you liked this!!!

Let me know your thoughts, Gang!!

[merlins-broken-heart]

Chapters: 9/9 Fandom: Merlin (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Morgana (Merlin), Gwaine & Merlin (Merlin), Gwaine & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwen & Morgana (Merlin), Balinor/Hunith (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois/Uther Pendragon (Merlin), Gwaine & Morgana (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois & Nimueh (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois & Merlin (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois & Hunith (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois/Morgause (Merlin), Morgana & Morgause (Merlin), Morgana & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwen/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwaine & Uther, Ygraine de Bois/Nimueh (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois & Gaius (Merlin), Hunith & Merlin (Merlin), Balinor & Merlin (Merlin) Characters: Merlin (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana (Merlin), Gwaine (Merlin), Ygraine de Bois (Merlin), Uther Pendragon (Merlin), Hunith (Merlin), Balinor (Merlin), Original Child Character(s), Leon (Merlin), Elyan (Merlin), Percival (Merlin), The Disir (Merlin), Nimueh (Merlin), Gaius (Merlin) Additional Tags: Explicit Sexual Content, Canon-Typical Violence, Memory Loss, Spells & Enchantments, Magical Pregnancy, Dark Magic, Sex Magic, Blow Jobs, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Infidelity, Parent Merlin (Merlin), Parent Morgana, Emotional Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Possession, Temporary Character Death, Boys Kissing, Love Confessions, Arthur Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Morgana Knows about Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Gwaine Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Protective Knights (Merlin), Gwen Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Arthur Knows About Morgana's Magic (Merlin) Summary:

Arthur and Merlin's lives were an impossible labyrinth of converging and diverging pathways filled with a myriad of obstacles. They were trapped, caught up in a perpetual web of outright lies, manipulations, half-truths, and deceptions, woven together by their parents, leaving them to face the consequences. Consequences that, in the end, left them with no choice at all.

When Merlin is killed, how far will Arthur go to bring him back? What long-buried secrets will be revealed in the aftermath? When Morgana learns the full extent of Morgause's betrayal she finds out just how intertwined her destiny is with Arthur and Merlin's. Together they must find the one person who can finally give them the answers they so desperately need. And in the end, they discover that love just might win after all.

[blessyouhawkeye]

bbc's merlin was literally thee most show of all time they gave us a black actress playing guinevere, one of the greatest queerbaits of our time, katie mcgrath (sword), katie mcgrath (evil), blatant disregard for any sort of historical accuracy, a queer metaphor they publicly said "didn't mean anything", and then at the end they fucking killed king arthur. truly legendary.

[emrysofealdor]

Merthur (3) | BBC Merlin + Textposts/Tweets (27/?)

[merlinemrys]

the narrative is SO mean to merlin in s2 especially. arthur took a possessed cedric as a servant, druids died when merlin sent morgana to them, gaius gets imprisoned and interrogated by aredian bc merlin wanted to do a little fun bit of magic, he falls in love with freya and she dies, he has to lie to arthur so he won't kill his tyrant dad, he has to poison morgana so that camelot won't die, and then merlin has to set kilgarrah free and then he wrecks havoc on camelot... it is unbearable how much the narrative MAKES merlin hide his magic even further

[colettetatouss]

change the fates' design

save what has been lost

bring back what once was mine

what once was mine

[asha-mage]

Their is always this moment in "Arthur returns" fics where the subject of how government has changed comes up and Merlin invariably goes "Oh yeah we have this thing called democracy now and it's really good haha" and each time I can't help but be taken back.

Cause look. I love Merlin but that boy is a hardcore, dyed in the wool Royalist if there ever was one. He believes in his King so much that he waited for more then a thousand years for the crisis bad enough that it would call Arthur back from Avalon to reclaim his throne, never doubting that he would return and he would fix everything when he did.

Merlin 100% believes in the institution of absolute monarchy as a result of Arthur. He would still be bitter about the Magna Carta in the year 2023 and have a dart board somewhere with a picture of Cromwell taped to it. He would be disgusted by the office of sovereign being reduced to figurehead celebrity and is convinced their hasn't been a proper sovereign since Anne Stuart. He calls the Hanovers "those posers from the continent". He likes the Windsors a little bit better but not much: George VI and Liz II won some points in his book for their services in World War 2, but he detests the advent of the modern "celebrity royal" for degrading the dignity of the crown to new lows.

Everything wrong with England and Britain, in his mind, is the fault of Parliament who he still sees as a bunch of unruly Barons and angry Roundheads squandering the nation's future to stay in power.

(If anything Arthur "I want what's best for my people always" Pendragon is the one much more into the idea of democracy and parliament, and would crush Merlin's hopes of simply dissolving to body by instead reforming it to make it more fair.)

[emrys-merlin]

Merlin is still trending and i want to say something important:

Merthur is not ‘queer baiting’. Anyone with eyes could see that the powerful, believable, star-crossed love story in the show was between Merlin and Arthur.

Julian Murphy: “We did, very genuinely, think of the episode as a love story between two men. Which is what I think it is, jokes and innuendo aside,” he says. McGrath adds that, “you can’t deny that Merlin and Arthur do love each other, you know? In whatever love way you want to think, there is no denying.”

I’m genuinely grateful to the producers and the director (the same one as for 5.01 and 5.02 - also strongly Merthur) that they wrote and shot and allowed the final Merthur interaction to be acted as a love scene.

Merlin will go on and on and wait for Arthur to rise again - that, we were explicitly told, was their fate. That’s why a part of me loved the ending. I’m very, very grateful they chose finally to honour Merlin and Arthur, and Colin and Bradley, and give us this at the end.

Everything was saved and elevated by the decision to make the ending all about Merlin's relationship with Arthur, the HEART of the show.

Everything from the ‘Just hold me,’ said in Arthurs old imperious Merlin-speak was beautiful. Arthur’s speech, his need to tell Merlin at the end how much he meant to him, his ‘Sorry‘ and his ‘Thank You‘. The emotion conveyed between Colin and Bradley, the way they played the physicality of the scene – it was stunning :)

[her-soliloquies]

What a time to be alive!

If all of this happened just because Bradley was swinging his bat like it was a sword and the fact that he still REMEMBERS then I'm gonna bloody scream–

[hoziersong]

[july-19th-club]

i know for a fact i have made this post before but for me it's very important that bbc merlin is a pointless tragedy. it wouldn't be good (it's frequently not good anyway but it would be a lot further away from good) if it wasn't a pointless tragedy! it's simply not arthuriana if it doesn't go past the high point of the heroic/legendary/high medieval romance stuff and end with detailed rundowns of exactly how everybody got betrayed and died like that is what makes it real arthuriana to me and not just a silly show about a wizard

[dollopheadedmerlin]

Gwen really just kissed Merlin on the mouth and he still was like huh what a nice friendly gesture

[silverdrws]

the trope merlin dies just hits harder than arthur dies yknow

like seeing arthur absolutely breaking down, cannot thinks straight, barely functioning and never being the same person again cause he just lose his other just makes me cry my heart out

(if y’all can give me fic rec like this , it would be muchly appreciated thanks :))

[katieheyy]

just close your eyes, the sun is going down

you’ll be alright, no one can hurt you now

come morning light, you and i’ll be safe and sound.

not long after artur’s death, come the nightmares. the queen and the magician find each other then; and while they don’t quite fit together, not really, never will, the new emptiness never filled, holding each other at night keeps them sane enough.

the nightmares still come, of course, and arthur’s still dead at the bottom of the lake. but he remains, in a way, in the two people he loved; and they guard him, his love forever safe between their warm bodies.

[dragoncall]

Everyone: Merry Christmas Eve!

Me: you mean CHRISTMAS GRIEVE

[honeylemonntea]

His and Gwaine’s deaths were disrespectful