What can I say? I've in a ooh-shiny-new-fandom Merlin mood lately.

Title: Peach, Plum, Pear
Author: sweetestdrain
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Categories: Future fic, drama
Length: Long
Warnings: none
Author on LJ: sweetestdrain

Author’s Summary: How in his tenth year of rule King Arthur chose a man to take the role of Court's Magician, and how Arthur made his decision.

Review:
I admit, I’m a sucker for stories that weave in bits of Arthurian legend without trying to make it necessarily compliant. I like to pretend that there’s a bit of “truth” to the legends that just got massively distorted over time and that the BBC version ends completely happily.

Peach, Plum, Pear does just that (so long as you ignore the last two lines). In this story, Arthur is searching for a court magician (Merlin was forced to flee Uther and has never been found) and one of the candidates is a gray-bearded old man named Myrddin Wyllt. Now if you know anything about Arthurian legend (or simply wiki Merlin), it’s no spoiler to give away that this is Merlin in disguise.

The story reminds me a bit of a folktale told in modern language. Most of the story is concerned with the contest’s tasks – and Wyllt’s responses are both entirely believable adult!Merlin and have that sensible, understated sort of wisdom and insight that wise old folktale characters have – and Arthur’s loneliness is palpable even when it’s unspoken. The skeptic in me found the actual reunion between Arthur and Merlin rather unrealistic by modern sensibilities – twelve years a long time for undiminished love and a fairly painless meeting – but works perfectly well if you view the story, as I said, as more of a folktale. And I admit, the reunion is, in and of itself, quite sweet.

A thoroughly enjoyable fic that gets automatic props for enigmatic old!Myrddin Wyllt.

Peach, Plum, Pear