I Am Devastated - Blog Posts

“Pochoduji jako voják, kterému bubnují do kroku. Má duše mě opustila. Bloudí horskými stráněmi a hlídá zbytečné hroby.”

- Květa Legátová, Jozova Hanule

“I march in the rythm of drums like a soldier. My soul left me. It wonders through the mountains slopes and watch over unnecessary graves.”

- Jozova Hanule (translated by me)

oh- oh i thought-

oh my bad-

billie eilish!!!

idk how to handle the fact that the next season of cpc would be the last ….. no one touch me ;-; 

I keep thinking about Arthur's regression at the end of Season 2 and then into Season 3. I keep thinking about how victims of trauma tend to get worse once they escape their traumatic situation. How their body and mind start to crack and shake under the weight of the horrors, now safe enough to escape the survivorship mindset but now forced to endure the fallout.

I keep thinking of how hard Faroe's death hit Arthur. How his guilt and grief were so intense that he wanted to kill himself, so low that he drank himself into a stupor for who knows how many years to just dull the pain. I keep imagining how hard it was to pull himself out of that, to work with Parker and find a new meaning in life, to walk away from his guilt of killing his daughter, and instead to help people.

(I keep thinking of how Arthur finds a vial of alcohol in the Dreamlands. How he sniffs it and recoils in disgust.)

I keep thinking of how long it took for Arthur to build himself back up from his lowest point, to tuck the guilt of Faroe in the deepest corner of his mind just so that he has enough room to breathe, to live, to be a better person. (And yet, Faroe is every facet of his life. It's his first memory in Season One, when he plays Faroe's Song, when he doesn't even remember his own name. It's the last name on his lips when he dies on that boat. It's his only memory when John is torn away from him.) I keep thinking about how Arthur is consciously repressing her every second of every day just so that he can keep going.

And then John pushes, and asks, and asks again. And finally, after almost dying twice with this entity, after surviving time and time again, he thinks he can trust him. He thinks he can share his deepest secret, to pull open the wound he keeps stitching over to protect himself. How he risks feeling the grief he's suppressed for years to trust someone. I keep thinking how John seizes it and, because he is ancient and young and inexperienced, childlike in his tantrums and his fears of responsibility and consequence, he uses it as a weapon the moment he's backed into a corner. I keep thinking of how not only the trust is torn away from Arthur, but how his wound is stretched and torn, and not only does his guilt and grief come back, but it's like a tidal wave that he cannot suppress this time. He's opened that wound and John has pried it wider, and now Arthur can't shut it. He survives in those pits, but she is all he thinks of. He escapes those pits, and ("Goodbye, Faroe.") she is all he thinks of. He slits his throat and she's all he thinks of.

He enters at icy cabin (a small gurgle, a bundle of blankets in his arm, a warm hum rumbling in his chest as he lulls his whole World to sleep) and he thinks of her to keep going.

And then Yellow enters, a blank slate, a John before he was John, and the pain is too fresh. This is the thing that tortured him. This is the thing that starved him. This is the thing who asked who his daughter was, and when he told him, the thing called him a killer. John and Yellow and the King are all the same in that moment, and Arthur's too fucked up and traumatized to separate them tangibly, as much as he insists that he can. His hatred grows and grows, all from himself, until it bleeds into Yellow, and he remakes this entity in his image, in his self-pitying hatred.

So when Yellow finally calls him a monster (and Arthur knows, he's called himself that the moment he saw the water spill from the bathtub onto the tile below), Arthur holds it close to his chest, and becomes it.

for the @merlinmicrofic prompts Home, Desperate measures and "You wouldn't."

Merlin & Arthur, Gen, 3 x 100 words, Major character death, AO3 link

for @mightybog

A heavy soul, a hopeful man

Their world is in crisis. It aches for its saviour.

“Emrys,” the Disir call.

He despises them. He comes anyway. There's kinship in being the last of the old ones.

“It's time." One steps forward, in her hand a coin.

“What,” he scoffs, “is it my turn to suffer your judgment?”

“We offer a chance. The time of the Once and Future King is nigh. You know it, you yourself have assembled his court.”

It's true. He's found them, souls reborn. The knights. Guinevere.

She flicks the coin into the air. “His rest in Avalon is over. Bring him home.”

The coin spins and spins, reaches its zenith, plummets down.

“Heads or tails?” He remains silent. “That's right, there is no answer. It is both and neither, a mere matter of perspective.”

“Save your riddles.”

“Two sides of a coin, inseparable. One up, one down. It will take all your magic to bring him back, every last bit of you.”

A pause.

“I will die?”

A look of pity, unwanted. “We'll lend you strength. You have three months.”

Its days numbered, his heart beats faster, rebellious. Desperate times. There's no choice. He bends his knee and picks up the coin.

Arthur returned is his every joy. He teaches him about the new world, laughs at him trying to operate a microwave, watches him discover ice cream - looming catastrophe momentarily dismissed.

Blissful ignorance can't last; his magic's gone, he's fading. Confession - now or never.

“No, you wouldn't, please don't-”

“You will have the others. You know the way. You don't need me anymore.”

“I will always-”

“Don't. Please.”

The day dwindles. Miniscule waves disturb the third full moon's reflection on the inky black lake waters. Merlin sits by its shore, Arthur's arm around his shoulders, and, for the last time, waits.