Title: Ancient Methods of Roasting Chickens
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin/Morgana/Gwen
Categories: Reincarnation, polyamory, 1950s, cooking
Length: Medium (6,041)
Warnings: Mention of temporary past character deaths

Author on LJ: fleete
Author Website: fleete fleete

Author's summary: The four of them do not often turn up in the same place in the same life, but now that they have, they are determined to make it work.

Now they just have to get Gwen to remember who they are.

Review:
There's a great sense of epic togetherness through history here. Despite the fact that there are many lives in which Arthur, Merlin, Gwen and Morgana don't end up finding one another, it's clear that a life with all four of them together is the ideal to which other, less successful incarnations are compared. So when Morgana stumbles across Gwen at a pub, she, Merlin and Arthur drop everything to move to Bristol and be near her, all of them longing for Gwen to remember.

Setting this in the fifties rather than the present was a brilliant move, highlighting their passage through time and the institutionalized racism and homophobia that are additional difficulties. fleete juggles history and changing relationship dynamics to keep this realistic and complicated. Gwen was once hung for leading a slave rebellion, and now living in the fifties comes with its own issues. In this life, Arthur was raised in a way that's had him keeping more distance from Merlin than in past lives, and Morgana (from whose point of view the story is told) hasn't completely resolved the tension between herself and Merlin that dates back to Camelot.

The story is tagged OT4, and you definitely get a fond sense of that here. Something much stronger than any one time period or obstacle is pulling them together, and Morgana's hoping they're going to get their happy ending this time around.

Ancient Methods of Roasting Chickens