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Merlin had always figured he was cursed. Living time backwards from everyone else was a confusing a messy experience.
He was raised by a woman who had already seen him leave, experienced him as a young teen, bathed him and took care of him. She was not his birth mother. He knew that. He never knew his birth parents.
It was when he was eight that Merlin realised how difficult his curse was.
At eight he had woken from a bad nightmare and went crying into his mother’s room. Curled beneath her covers he asked her to sing his favourite bedtime song. She stared at him blankly and he realised she had never sung it before. It dawned on him that he would never hear it again.
By fifteen he knew he would need to leave soon. Each day his mother knew him less and less. As her grey hair turned dark brown and her wrinkles faded, so did her memory of him. Until one day, as he made eggs down in the kitchen and she came at him with a frying pan, Merlin was forced to leave. He sent her a note that day, explaining who he was and thanking her.
That was the last time he ever saw his mother.
The streets were a hard place to live. Harder still because he had never been able to make friends. At times he would try, but each day he would need to start anew. Try again and again to form connections with people.
The first time he had sex it was with a man named Gwaine. Merlin had stumbled into him after washing up in a pub bathroom. He spent the day with the man, enjoying his hair and laugh. He had stumbled back to Gwaine’s place and very quickly tossed off his clothes. It was awkward and fun. However, when he woke up naked, he knew Gwaine would not remember him. His clothing had not made the time jump with him. So he stole Gwaine’s clothing and quietly left the apartment.
He told himself that it was stupid to be upset about something that he had never really had.
He was nineteen when Arthur Pendragon came into his life.
He was a white-haired old man with crooked teeth.
“Merlin,” he gasped. “Is that you?”
Merlin had had this experience a few times. Where sometimes important people from his future would recognize him. No one like this. The old man had simply kissed him hard and passionately on the street corner.
Suddenly Merlin heard whispers around them. Pushing away from the old man he yelled, “Get off me! Who the hell are you?”
It was another year before he ran into Arthur again. A little less white and more grey. He seemed happier than the last time Merlin had seen him. In fact, he did not seem at all surprised to see Merlin this time.
“I couldn’t find you this morning,” he said and Merlin could not find it in him to ask who he was, or explain that the last time he had seen this man he had left him standing on a street corner. It had been years since he had felt the safety of someone knowing him and loving him.
He let Arthur take him home and make him dinner. He listened to the jokes about “old friends” he had not yet met. And at the end of the night, he let Arthur with his wrinkled hands take off his clothes and touch him like a precious gift. As each finger breached him, Merlin felt a bit closer to home.
Afterwards, naked and sated, he finally felt safe.
“You didn’t know me this morning, did you?” Arthur asked.
“No,” Merlin admitted.
“Do I ever see you again?”
“Just once,” Merlin whispered and pretended not to see this near-stranger cry as they fell asleep.
For Merlin though, it was just the beginning. It was not until forty-five years later, with ups and downs, that Merlin, now the old man, allowed a blonde-haired youth to thrust into his willing body, that he felt the end coming.
“It’s as if we have never done this,” Merlin teased, looking at Arthur’s wide and wondrous eyes.
“We haven’t” Arthur gasped.
As he slowly lost Arthur, becoming that strange old man down the road, Merlin still couldn’t leave. He watched his love become a child and then a babe. He offered to babysit for his parents and holding the baby Arthur in his arms he whispered, “Just you wait, we’re going to have so much fun.”
Then he slipped back onto the streets, a frail old man, waiting for time to sweep him away.