Merlin Headcanons

This is What I Know (Part Three)

This is what I know:
I have had the dreams for as long as I can remember. I have lived one life by day, (poor, but we made do), and another by night. (Dangerously poor, in a medieval village.) It was strange, but I thought little of it. They were only dreams.
Then I dreamed of Balinor for a week before I met him, and I knew they were far more than that.
Particularly when he confessed he'd dreamed of me in that time period too, the same dreams, or near enough.
We lived in a world that was falling to pieces around us, but we didn't care. We were young and in love. We got married.
The night I dreamed he left me terrified me, but he stayed right there with me and swore not to go, so the terror left me, bit by bit.
He dreamed of hiding. I dreamed of a tiny kick.
I had never felt so much joy. I was sure it meant I was pregnant now too. I rushed to the doctor.
I wasn't pregnant.
This is what I know:
We had no children. We wanted them. I yearned for the son of my dreams so much it hurt, but he was not there. I missed him, the boy I had never really met, the one I worried so much about when I slept. I started worrying for him during the day too; he was in danger, in my dreams, and I had no way of knowing how it all would end.
I couldn't bear it, if he died.
Balinor understood. He felt it too, I think. He never saw the boy in his dreams, but he wanted to, desperately, and he grieved for those he had lost and yet never really had.
The desperation in him grew until one morning, we awoke from dreaming, and he grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the car. We drove and drove until at last we came to an empty field, and he pulled me out and shouted nonsense at the sky.
They were the words from the dreams, the ones he had whispered to me in a ramshackle hut and told me would summon a dragon. He roared them to the sky, the terrible expression on his face telling me plainly he expected nothing and yet . . .
Nothing happened. His shoulders slumped. He was defeated, more than he had ever been before. I touched his arm.
And out of nowhere, a dragon came.
I'm not sure who was more surprised, us or him, to be honest. It had just been a dream after all, to us, and from what the dragon said, my husband should not have been able to do what he had done. Something about their being only one Dragonlord left, not two, and that his actual Dragonlord was calling him now, so . . .
The dragon, looking almost flustered, disappeared. We just stood there, in awe of the proof of our dreams.
This is what I know:
Someone knocked on our door the next day, but they couldn't seem to wait for us to answer it. They hurled it open - despite the fact that it was locked - and ran inside.
He. He ran inside.
He looked so thin. So desperate. So terrifyingly hopeful.
He was the dream child. Older, sadder, than he should have been. He should have been in his late teens, not mid-twenties, but what did it matter? He was mine.
He buried himself in my open arms, sobbing. Begging me to say I knew him, he couldn't bear it if I didn't remember -
Oh, my son, you made me roses on winter days and made sparks into dragons. I may not remember how our story ends, but I know how it begins. How could I ever forget you?
His smile was beautiful.
Balinor had never seen him, never known him, but that had not made his desperation to any less. He'd had only second hand accounts of his son. He wanted, needed, more.
Our son was home.
This is what I know:
Balinor dreamed of Merlin for three short nights. On the third, he woke up at midnight with a hoarse shout.
I didn't wake. Nothing had ever been able to wake me in the midst of a dream, but Merlin woke, and he told me of it later. He wasn't surprised. He'd known it was coming since the first morning when Balinor had shared that at last he had met Merlin in both worlds. Merlin feared we'd be angry he hadn't shared what he knew, but we understood. How do you share something like that?
I did ask if my own dreams were likely to stop soon, and he told me not for another eighty years or so. When I pointed out I was in my late thirties, something akin to pride entered his eyes.
I suspect my gifted son might have something to do with my previous longevity.
We are happy. We met the dragons - plural dragons, Merlin happily chattering on about Asian and American ones and idly wondering how it was that with seven continents that all had their own dragons, he had been the only Dragonlord to survive, until now, of course.
Merlin showed us all he'd worked for, all he'd achieved. We could not be more proud of our brave, wonderful son.
This is what I know:
The world continued to fall apart around us. Like the eye of the storm, we were untouched, but the rest raged around us. The country itself was splintering, ready to fall.
We searched frantically.
We found Will holding off an army of the undead with all the weapons a gas station could provide. He and Merlin embraced like brothers. My son handled the army with ease and teased Will about it mercilessly. Will upheld Merlin had cheated, and I upheld they were both insane. We were all laughing by the end of it, even Balinor.
We found Gilli holed up in an abandoned office building, sniping passing monsters with his magic.
We found Freya in Bastet form, fighting a griffin. Freya was winning. My son approached her with a spell that at long last allowed her to control both forms.
I had never seen my son so happy.
We found Gaius in a pharmacy that, despite everything, remained open.
We found Lancelot holding together a group of survivors headed to the safety of London.
We found Gwaine daring an Afanc to charge.
We found Percival putting out a fire.
We found. We found. We found.
We found Gwen. We found Elyan. We found Mithian.
We found Arthur.
I'm sure, theoretically, my son let Arthur out of his sight at some point after that, but I can't for the life of me remember when.
This is what I feel:
Happy. Complete.
As do we all. Our lives are beautiful things, and when they are done, we can rest. All of us.
Even my beautiful son.
This is what I know:
The world fell apart, but we rebuilt it, and we rebuilt my son, bit by bit, until one day, his beautiful smiles weren't the rarity, they were the norm.