Chapter Text
Merlin liked to tell himself—quietly, in the privacy of his own head—that he no longer meddled.
It was not that he lacked the opportunity. Or the capability. Far from it. It was simply that he had lived long enough to understand that history moved like a wheel. It turned and turned and always ended up back where it began. Empires rose, cracked, fell, and rebuilt themselves from dust. Heroes were born and died and were remembered as stories. Magic sealed wounds and ripped others open. The world no longer needed him to hold it upright.
Arthur slept. Camelot was myth. Albion stood or fell without him.
Merlin, these days, poured tea.
His tea shop in was quiet and largely unknown, except by word of mouth. A slim, slightly crooked building fitted between a charity bookshop and a fish-and-chip takeaway, with a sign in the window that read, rather modestly:
Herbal Infusions, Tarot, and Academic Consultation by Appointment Only
The bell above the door chimed like a wind chime—his doing, not the metal’s—and the interior was a mismatched collection of overstuffed armchairs, simple wooden tables, shelves of jars filled with herbs, and one very temperamental kettle that whistled whenever it desired attention rather than when the water was done. Students from the nearby university came for tarot readings or to panic about their dissertations. Retired professors came to debate medieval symbolism. Tourists came when they got lost and left with a bag of loose-leaf chamomile and a feeling of having stepped sideways in time.
Merlin found the quiet comforting.
Or so he thought.
“You haven’t slept in two days,” said Lydia, a nineteen-year-old history student who often stopped by the shop to rant and relax. Currently she was leaning over the counter with the practiced exasperation of someone who had, in fact, witnessed this exact scenario before. “You’re muttering in Middle Welsh again. Go outside.”
“I am perfectly fine,” Merlin said, elbow-deep in a pile of manuscripts on the table. His hair stuck out at angles unachievable by mortal beings, his sleeves rolled up, ink smudged on his cheek like war paint. He looked like an academic cryptid.
“You just tried to stir your tea with a quill.”
“It worked,” Merlin pointed out, not looking up.
“That’s not better,” Lydia said, horrified. “That is so much worse.”
He shrugged.
“Go. Outside. Touch grass. Touch a person. Touch a sandwich. I don’t care which. But if you don’t stop muttering about monastic scribes I will physically throw you out the door. I am small, but I have rage and I believe in leverage.”
Merlin opened his mouth to argue. Something about centuries of composure. Something about responsibility. Something about the fact that the manuscripts were not going to catalogue themselves and if he didn’t finish them who would—
The kettle, traitor that it was, whistled in agreement with Lydia. Loudly. Mockingly.
Merlin glared at it. The kettle did not apologize.
Lydia crossed her arms. “Even the kitchen appliances are telling you to go outside.”
“It is a kettle,” Merlin said, deeply offended.
“And it still has better judgment than you.”
Silence.
Merlin sighed the sigh of someone who has lived a very long time and yet has never once won an argument with a determined young woman, just ask Gwen.
Perhaps… perhaps a change of scenery would not be the end of the world. He did occasionally have to remind his body it was, technically, a physical object with needs.
Merlin sighed.
He could go to Diagon Alley and see if they have some of the tea that he has been looking for and see how the magic is holding u-.
“And not to another library,” Lydia added preemptively, pointing at him like he was a misbehaving cat.
“I was not going to a library,” Merlin lied.
“Uh-huh.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Sure.”
He stood, stretched, and felt his spine pop like a bag of firecrackers.
“Fine,” Merlin said. “I will go. Outside. Fresh air. Life. Grass.” trying to make it sound more dignified and less like he was being mothered by a university student.
Lydia eyed him carefully before giving him a glare that rivaled Gaius's "You better" then left the shop shortly after.
He quickly packed his bag, and the bell over the door chimed as he stepped outside, he quickly locked the door and left.
The world was bright. Too bright.
And somewhere, in the distance, fate stirred like a cat that had just discovered the crinkle of treat packaging.
Merlin pretended not to notice.
Tea. He was only going for tea.
He hoped.