The painting

[amarie-authiel.livejournal.com]

Author: amarie_authiel
Title: The painting
Rating: G
Pairing/s: None?
Character/s: Merlin, Arthur
Summary: There's a figure that keeps popping into Arthur's drawings. Why is that? Possible mental issues? Or is it simply magic?
Warnings:
Word Count: ~520
Prompt:Picture prompt, Merlin and Excalibur.

Author's Notes: So glad I was allowed to post late, so sorry I am later than agreed. So tired I am not entirely sure what I am writing. Have had a lovely vacation though! <3 Scotland <3


He has been emerging in Arthur's text books and and sketch books, among doodles and notes for as long as Arthur can remember. A figure, a young man. His eyes down cast, always in profile with his face half in shadow and a sword held in firm grip, but the blade itself is casually leaned against his shoulder.

Arthur couldn't tell if when or where the man came from, but he kept showing up when his thoughts wandered and sometimes in the corner of his eye. Perhaps he was a figure from an Arthurian legend, a story he heard as a child maybe.

Perhaps is he had known this, then he wouldn't be standing here now, blinking at his newest painting and chastising himself for once again letting this figure claim his time. It was a complete waste of time and paint. He had more important things to complete, items which actually could bring in money. A lifesize portrait of what was at best a figment of his imagination and at worse a plagiarising of something he had stored in his subconscious, was not something he could sell.

With a slight shudder he realized he had been been spending his entire evening and most of the night working on this. He had been focusing on the details of his neck, his hair, the rues on the sword which he had spelled correctly not even knowing that he knew what they looked like. He practically fell into bed and hoped that, after this, perhaps he'd be freed from this odd fixation.

Morning came too soon. His sister Morgana called about his next showing, and he hoped he mumbled coherent replies to her as he brewed himself some tea. He shuffled his feet and hummed in the right places when suddenly he stared at his painting for the first time in hours and realised the painting was staring back.

He hurried to make his excuses to Morgana, tidied up his mess and tried to be rational. He had been so sure that he had painted the eyes closed. Yet a faint line of white with a hint of blue eyes seemed to sneak a peak was clearly visible. So logically he had painted that, even if he had been too tired to remember.

He left the painting standing on the easel, at eye level. He had the irrational need to see if the man had moved, which of course he hadn't. He ended up moving it all to the living room. It was simply easier this way. Soon it blended into the back of his daily routines, like it had always been there. Untill the day it wasn't, when he came home to find it on the floor, sliced open from side to side.

He was not at all surprised when he turned towards the familiar shape in the corner of his eyes and found the man standing there with a loop-sided smile and the sword by his side. After all, when Arthur had pushed the sliced up canvas together, he had found nothing but a empty brick wall.