Usually Arthur isn’t particularly interested in achievements unless there are pets or pvp involved, but there is a little bit of both in Hallow’s End.

Arthur dreams. The lake is vast and tranquil, so clear he can see the sword hidden in its depths. Merlin smiles next to him, the angles of his face subtly changed: hardened, older, his eyes flecked with gold. A faint white scar traces the edge of his jaw like a lingering caress.

Camelot will fall. Merlin knows this with the same certainty that he knows that air is required for breathing and that an unburied body will mean sickness in the town.

"But, my dear boy, you have wretched taste in movies."

Ten times Arthur relied on Merlin's magic and one time he didn't.

Arthur really is much better at noticing some things than others.

It wasn’t until Arthur had left for Tintagel that Uther had Merlin arrested.

For someone who carries on so much about how much it damages his reputation to rent office space across the hall from a psychic, Arthur sure comes over to bother Merlin a lot.

From the lowest dungeon Merlin imagines he can hear them building the platform, driving iron nails. The ring of the axe being sharpened haunts him like a faint echo, like keen-edged memories. The day rushes past with a sickening lurch. The dark lonely hours before dawn have closed in when he hears the sound of hurrying footsteps. Arthur's hands are slippery with blood, the key stained red. He tosses a small pouch, heavy with coins, that Merlin almost doesn't catch.

It is jarring, then, to find a woman lying in a pool of red in the upstairs bathtub. Disturbing, to see the blood protection of the Boy-Who-Lived slowly and very literally drip down the bathroom drain.

The Inferi are the worst when it's someone they once knew.

Merlin is not how Arthur remembers him. His memories tell him of a man with eyes as gold as the sun, who shared his bed and stood behind his throne; a man powerful enough to rule the world, and humble enough to never do so. The Merlin Arthur knew was joyful, idealistic and naïve. The man Arthur is faced with now, is ancient, broken and has been stoned out of his mind for nearly six centuries.

Immortality is dull. This is the first thing Merlin learned about it - you can mope for a hundred years about your lost lover in the woods, you can have wild sex with seven bards and tell them naughty things about said lost lover, you can write a book and build a castle and set up and then destroy six small monarchies. But you'll get bored eventually. You can settle in the same village with a cat for six hundred years (it's a very special cat), and you can yell at Morgana for as long as you damn well please. You can pine and you can drink. But it all gets boring in the end.

Until the liberation of Warsaw in 1945, many men and women risked their lives trying to help Jews escape Nazi persecution. Merlin tried to help as best he could and it was in doing so, that he was reunited with Arthur.

Female seeking male for intellectual conversation in multiple languages during the day and crazy-hot animal sex during the night. Knowledge of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs is a must. Also, if you can’t speak all three dialects of Romulan, you can just forget it. My man should be able to match me drink for drink at parties and also show some goddamned emotional sympathy when I break a nail.

"Never knew werewolves were such fiends for tea."

"How can you forge a car?"

"Mother will be most displeased. But not at me. It's not my room that's going to be covered in mostly unclad Muggle women. It's Sirius. And he deserves it, after what he said."

The first time Jack sees David in the morning after, he’s got bags under his eyes and appallingly tousled hair, a bruise across his waist and an enormous hickey glaring from his neck like the world’s largest tramp stamp. He’s also wearing pants which are clearly not his own, and about three sizes too big: they hang dangerously low, barely catching on his hipbones, and very obviously do not cover any sort of underwear.