It's Only a Paper Moon.

Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin; that is the BBC's. I would have made it a lot more colorful…rainbow colorful.

Warning: This is a very Angsty look at the series end. I might do a less serious one later. But in the meantime, this is my offering.

It's Only a Paper Moon

You hate that he leaves you every single time. You hate that you're the one left waiting. You hate that you can't wait to see him again. You hate that you only see him once every four hundred years and it's never for long. You hate that you've started counted years by him. The current date isn't 2013 AD. It's 387 SA. Since Arthur. You hate that, no matter what, he always leaves again. You hate that you always have to let him, because that's the destiny you're stuck with.

Your life has become this pitiful broken record, just when the pathetic wailing about lost love and broken hearts ends, the needle hits the crack and you're sent straight back to the beginning.

If you're painfully honest with yourself, it's never been anything different. You're not anything important. You never were. In your first life you were a servant, the son of an unwed mother, disgraceful in those days. You were the personal aid of a king, but who are you trying to kid with that one. You were always in the background, helping, but always in the shadows. Now the years bleed past and you've worn so many masks you've lost count, each more pathetically unassuming than the last. Arthur's always the king. Arthur's always the Savior. You're always the nobody who's waiting patiently for him to come and rescue the world. Because everyone needs King Arthur. But who wants Merlin, the geeky, knob-kneed nobody to come to their rescue? Over the long drag of centuries of self-induced solitude you've come to understand just how insignificant you are. But that doesn't stop you from waiting for him, even if it's just so he can save you from this solitude. Even you need King Arthur it seems. It's part of that destiny bull you were fed centuries ago. Coins and all that. It's bullocks, every single word of it. When you were told you were going to help Arthur become the king he was born to be, you were stupid enough to think he was going to live through it.

This isn't the future you pictured all those years ago. That dream, produced by a naïve village boy/ closet magician, isn't anything like the reality which slaps you in the face every morning.

You've tried living though the endless hours between Arthur. It hurts worse than just being a nobody. You remember that from when you lost Will all those years ago, but this is different. It's worse when your life doesn't have a time-limit and the people who are living around you do. It's worse after you bury your fifth best friend and realize that you haven't aged a day. After awhile you stop hurting, because you stop caring. And you have to stop caring, otherwise you're going to die. But this way you're already dying a little every day anyway. It works better this way. Except you still have a single chink in the armor around your heart, a chink named Arthur. Some days are bad and you wish you'd never met the prat and he could go and die a million times for all you care. Then with the next morning comes the sun and you really don't mean it. Except Arthur is actually dead…except he isn't. So really you're good either way.

You don't know when you started the memory game. You think it happened sometime after Arthur went to the Crusades, but it might've been a little bit before that. But then again, the when doesn't really matter.

It would always be of your first life together as Master and Servant. You think you chose this time it's because it's the best time, the time you don't want to be washed away in the unforgiving tides of history; the time that's always omitted in the text books. You should know; you've read enough of them. So you began the game. You pick a memory, you started at the beginning, the first time you laid eyes on the man to whom you would give your destiny. He was a bastard then. To be fair he still was when he became the king of Camelot all those years ago, just less of one.

You go over the scene in your mind again and again until you get every detail exactly right, every dust mote; every freckle and flickering eyelash. You feel like you're keeping Arthur alive, the Arthur you knew. The prat. This Arthur who you get to see once in a blue moon isn't your Arthur. He's the Savior of the world. He doesn't remember a clumsy manservant who constantly pandered after him. He doesn't remember the years together, the laughter, the tears, the hits and all the near-misses. He doesn't remember fighting a dragon, or losing his kingdom or his father. He doesn't remember hating you at first, but growing to respect you through your long journey together.

He doesn't remember you. He doesn't remember the long nights together, when the castle was cold, but the bed was warm, the touch of skin warmer. He doesn't remember stifling moans because sound echoed off those old stone walls like firecrackers. He doesn't remember the breathlessness or the feeling like you're up in the clouds and you never wanted to come back down. He doesn't remember when he gave you up for Gwen, or how you supported him. Because while a romance with a servant girl is bad, a deviant dalliance with a manservant was far worse. He doesn't remember how you faked it day after day because seeing him with his queen, with his child, hurt like a physical blow. He doesn't remember the day you showed him your magic. He doesn't remember the betrayal he felt, the shock written in his eyes as he told you to leave him. He doesn't remember that you didn't. He doesn't remember that you kept going, trying to get him back home; because he had something to live for. He doesn't remember that he died with your name on his lips; that he died thanking you. He doesn't remember that you cried for him, that you tried to argue with destiny. He doesn't remember that you waited for him, that you are still waiting while he sleeps.

So you take what you can get. It isn't much, just the shallow contact he allows you once every several hundred years. It's nothing compared to the Arthur you remember, who would kiss every inch of your body, taste you, trail his fingertips through your hair, drive you mad with need before making love to you. His sweetness and passion would fill you up to nearly bursting until all you want to do ever again is feel him moving inside you, against you. He is everywhere at once, all consuming, a part of you.

That was your Arthur though, the one that remembered you. This one is different. He kisses like a cold, dead fish. He never touches you except to pull you down harder on himself. He never says your name, but you're always thinking his, especially when he comes. It's so devastatingly beautiful, so like your Arthur it hurts to watch.

You don't get to cum with this Arthur. He always leaves you, cold and alone, if not that night then eventually. All you can do is wrap your fingers around your unsatisfied flesh and remember because you are, you will, inevitably, be alone. Remembering Arthur. Because he doesn't remember you. Because he can't remember you. You hate that he doesn't remember. You hate he doesn't remember what you once were to each other. You hate that you have become what you are. You hate that he has become what he is. Because he is not your Arthur anymore. Yours is lost forever. So it's your job to remember him for you both. You owe it to what you once were to each other. It's all you can do, besides wait. You hate that that's all you can do anymore. Wait for the next time Arthur comes back to you.

And remember.

A/N: Please review!