So we meet again... (a merthur au)

Remnants of Art

Media: the 6 paintings that remain of Art Thithe, referred to in chapter below
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Eventually, when Merlin fell asleep, Arthur went into the kitchen, pulling up a seat at the small table to look on the internet via his phone for these people Merlin mentioned. Surely, Art at least, had some surviving paintings that could give hints towards their shared past. He found them, alright, under an article titled "Art Thithe- the Man Who Paints a Memory" in an online newspaper archive from decades ago, he read it aloud under his breath.

"Nearly 50 years ago, lived a man named Stuart 'Art' Thithe who according to an article written around the time of his death had a compulsion to paint the same man over and over again. Though he admitted his early works contained mainly landscapes of the countryside, castles, and bodies of water, somewhere around his 20th birthday he began drawing the man in his portraits who he has named Merlin. When asked about the identity of the subject, he could not place where he had met him but was insistant that he would meet the man, if he kept painting and could remember. You can see the 7 paintings which survived the studio bombing at our gallery this--"

Arthur stopped, finding his hands clenched nervously in fists, he smoothed them out and massaged the white knuckles.

The known paintings and their names listed together, the article mentioned that there had been landscape paintings too, but were never formally recovered. The 7 portraits at the bottom of the article held 3 seperate versions of the same man, in duplicate, the one Arthur had come to know as Emrys. The seventh painting, though, nearly made him leap from his seat.

The biggest of the portraits looked exactly like the Emrys he knew, the one sleeping in the next room. He nearly puked from a sudden wave of nervousness. Had Art somehow seen how Merlin would look before he died? Was that even possible? With a sudden wave of nausea, a memory resurfaced.

...

He heard a bell chime, like a small trill similar to those in old shops over the door, then silence. The door, if it had been opened at all, was not closed and no one entered. As though from his own voice he heard himself ask who was there.

Turning his face from a sketch of a highland landscape, he looked over the rail of the studio's loft to the entrance. The door was closed and no one was inside. A chill went down his spine as he went down the stairs and peered through the window at the street filled with its normal pedestrians around this time of day.

His eyes drifted to the cafe across the sidewalk, and nearly choked on the air he breathed. The man from his portraits, or someone of his likeness, was sitting just within reach! Though his hair was tousled and curled, surely it was him! He took off his painting smock, threw it to the side and ran across the street, narrowly avoiding a passing automobile.

"Sir! Sir!" He cried, the man noticed him and scrambled to his feet, running at full speed away from him. "Sir! May I speak with you a moment?!"

Ducking into an alley, Art clicked his tongue in distaste and crossed his arms as the man was retching in the gutter from having run after a full meal.

"I just wanted to ask you something," Art muttered, reaching out his hand to steady the man. "My name is Stuart Thithe-"

"Unhand me!" The man growled, spitting out bile, before wrenching the arm away. "Leave me alone. Go back to your painting."

He started to walk away as Art yelled, "How did you know I'm a painter?"

"You have paint on your face." He whispered, slouching and sidling away from him.

"You look queerly familiar, you see, there is this person I've been painting for years--" Arthur insisted, following him.

"That has nothing to do with me," Merlin grumbled, trying to shuffle faster through the thinly crowded walkway.

"I'm sure of it, though, you're the same man!"

"You're delusional."

"Merlin!"

Merlin froze, inhaling so sharp it twinged his lungs.

"That's your name isn't it? You were a doctor, a-a sorcerer," he whispered. "Haven't you come for me? I've been waiting to meet you and-"

"I'm not who you're looking for... Best to give up on it. There's no such thing as destiny, is there?" Merlin tensed, slinking away.

Art was heartbroken, but returned to his studio. It was then that he only focused on drawing Merlin, in hopes that like some kind of incantation, it would draw him back.

...

From that, Arthur was sure of a few things, Art did know it was Merlin somehow (likely from gut feelings and memories) but did not pursue him again, Merlin was likely to avoid Art from that point on, and Merlin had lied to him about never meeting Art. That one hurt the most.

The bell on his studio door trilling for no apparent reason had been strange, but assumed it was an odd way of fate trying to push them onto the same path again. A path which Merlin refused to go down again. If they had met then, surely he did remember things over time, but ended his own life.

Why did Merlin lie? His mind repeated the thought over and over as he kept glancing in the other room to see if Merlin was still asleep. What did Merlin have to hide that he had to lie about? What could he possibly have been afraid of?

Was he afraid Arthur wouldn't believe him? Or he didn't want to show that rotten side of him that became selfish after King Arthur, then Artie died? Was he ashamed that he pushed him away to spare his own feelings? Or was there something else he simply wasn't saying?

Morbid curiosity led him to an attempt to dig in deeper to find what Merlin could have been hiding. Like the real circumstances that surrounded Stuart Thithe's death.