Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

–Robert Frost

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

            Sometimes, warriors fall in battle. That’s just… how it is. It’s the dark side of knighthood, and it’s no secret. Knighthood has its obvious pleasures and its privileges. There are the flowing red cloaks and the shiny mail and the respectful deference from all and sundry. There’s the fervent brotherhood the knights share, the dizzying exhilaration of adventure, their pride in great deeds and loyal service, and their sense of being part of something larger, greater, than themselves.

            And then there’s the other part of it. The danger and the tedium and the fear. The painful wounds and the dead comrades and the broken bodies and the likelihood of finding oneself face-down in a patch of churned-up dirt rapidly turning to blood-soaked mud.   

            Knights know all of that before they kneel to swear their oaths of fealty. They know, because the older knights make sure they know. Death and glory. One of them is certain.

            Knights fall in battle. It’s a fact. It’s understood. And in its twisted, vicious way, it’s almost fair. Almost.

            …But Merlin wasn’t a knight… 

            *.*.*.*

            Arthur couldn’t stop replaying it in his mind, trying to see what he could have done differently. What he should have done differently. Because there had to have been something he’d done wrong. That was the only explanation for what had happened. It had to have been his fault somehow.

             They had been hiding in that ruin of a fortress, that much was clear, and the Dorocha had come shrieking down the passageway—Arthur couldn’t have prevented that—and there were no more torches, no more lights, no more time.

              And Merlin had shoved him back and attacked the Dorocha himself. He had no chance, and he had to have known it. It accomplished almost nothing. All he did was get himself killed. All he did was buy Arthur a few more precious seconds. All he did was stall the Dorocha long enough for Lancelot to arrive with a torch.

            All he did was save Arthur’s life.

            Arthur looked at the frozen body at his feet and tried to understand what he’d done wrong. Because this wasn’t supposed to happen.

            With no real hope, Lancelot handed Percival the torch and knelt beside Merlin. Gently, he turned him over, put a finger to his neck and concentrated, wincing at the chill. Then his eyes widened. “He’s alive!”

            “What?” Arthur dropped to one knee, clumsily pulled away the ice-stiffened fabric of Merlin’s neckerchief, and pressed his fingers in the correct spot. And for an endless moment, there was nothing. Then he felt a faint pulse, one weary beat. And, after far too long, another. And another. It was impossible. Completely impossible.    

            Gaius had said that nothing mortal could survive the Dorocha’s touch. But he’d said that about the Questing Beast’s bite, too. Clearly, the old physician had been wrong before. Maybe, just maybe, he’d be wrong again.   

            “We’ll… make a fire,” Arthur said, with vague thoughts of frostbite and winter campaigns in his head. “Thaw him out and keep the Dorocha at bay at the same time. We’ll start out again in the morning. And don’t think this means you get to sleep in,” he told Merlin, trying to force his voice to sound normal. “I expect my breakfast at the usual time, understand?”    

            Merlin’s eyes—open and staring—slowly focused on Arthur, but he gave no other sign that he’d heard or understood. His eyes were the dull gray of an iced-over pond in the glittering frost coating his skin.

            Percival cleared his throat. “Lancelot, I’ll carry him; you take the torch,” he said quietly. “We should find the others. Quickly.”

            “Yes,” said Lancelot, and took back the guttering torch, careful not to let it go out. He didn’t want to think about how long it might take them to rekindle the fire if they had to do it the usual way. He didn’t want to think about needing to do it the usual way.

            It had been all too easy for Arthur’s knights to get used to cheerful, effortless campfires each night on patrol. The weather could be wet, the wood could be green, trees could be scarce, and somehow it never mattered. Always, Merlin would come trudging back to camp with an armload of good sticks and a few choice comments about lazy knights and useless royalty, and in next to no time there would be a crackling fire with something bubbling over it. Lancelot had been a wanderer long enough to appreciate the luxury, even if the recklessness of it did worry him.  

            There had been light in the darkness. There had been warmth to keep the chill at bay. There had been an enchanted circle sitting around that fire—a band of brothers, their silvery armor gilded rosy gold by firelight, and, a bit deeper in the shadows, a quiet figure tending the fire and protecting the protectors. That was Camelot, Lancelot suddenly thought. Everything that made the kingdom unique was in that brightly-lit circle. He had a terrible feeling that it was all about to change, about to end, and he was genuinely afraid to see what might happen if the fire went out. 

            Leon, Elyan, and Gwaine had regrouped in what had probably been the great hall when the fortress had housed anything other than unquiet spirits. A few bits and pieces of furniture were scattered about; Elyan was breaking up a once-fine chair for firewood as the four of them entered.

            Gwaine’s expression as he saw Percival approach with Merlin’s limp body in his arms was something Lancelot knew he never wanted to see again. It was almost as bad as Arthur’s stony calm.

            “Elyan, hurry up with that,” Arthur ordered. “I want a fire started immediately. And someone bring a bedroll. We have to get him warmed up.”

            Some color returned to Gwaine’s face. “Right away,” he said, and hurried off.

            “Take a torch!” Leon shouted after him.      

            Gwaine darted back, snatched it out of Lancelot’s hand almost before he’d finished lighting the campfire, and ran out of the room, back to where they had left the horses and baggage. Nobody missed the telltale glitter in his eyes. Nobody blamed him, either.         

            They set up camp in grim silence. Elyan kept smashing furniture. Percival took several of the longer pieces of wood and a dusty tapestry torn from the wall and busied himself making a fresh supply of crude torches. Lancelot, once Gwaine had returned with their gear, began to cook a meal that no one wanted to eat. Gwaine, taking a couple of Percival’s torches, appointed himself to sentry duty, and if he looked as though he was hoping to encounter a Dorocha in order to rip it limb from noncorporeal limb, it was only because he was. And Arthur fed the fire, as they all pretended that they weren’t listening for each ragged breath from the still figure cocooned in blankets and cloaks.   

            It was not a restful night. For anyone.

            But even the longest night has to end at some point, and when the sun dredged itself out of the horizon, not only was Merlin still clinging to life, he was slightly improved.

            …‘Improved’ being a relative term, of course. He was still limp as a dishrag and colder than ice, but he was definitely conscious, and understood what was going on around him. He couldn’t move or swallow—they found that one out the hard way—but he had whispered a word or two. Three, even. “Arthur,” had, unsurprisingly, been the first. And then the surprisingly unanswerable, “Everyone okay?”

            “We’re all fine,” said Arthur. “None of us took it into our heads to jump straight at an attacking Dorocha.”

            “You were… about to,” said Merlin.

            Arthur didn’t answer that. Because ‘no’ would have been a blatant lie, and ‘yes’ would have implied that Merlin had been right to forestall him, and ‘don’t be stupid’ felt inappropriate. “You get some rest,” he said instead. “You’ll need it. Because as soon as we get back to Camelot, Gaius will be pouring gallons of those noxious potions of his down your throat, and you’ll need all your strength to deal with that. Gods know I’d rather be sick than drink those revolting things.”

            Merlin, spent, didn’t reply. Those four extra words had taken more out of him than he’d expected.

            Arthur took a deep breath. “Anyway, you’ve got a little time to prepare yourself for the ordeal. We can be back in Camelot in a day or so if we push the horses a bit. Just… hold on until we get home.”

            Leon frowned. “Sire… we can’t turn around now. We have to seal the veil.”

            “We will. But first we have to get him back to Gaius.”

            “And abandon the quest?”

            “He saved my life,” Arthur said. “I’m not going to let him die.”

            “I understand that. But sire, if we don’t get to the Isle of the Blessed, hundreds more will perish. With all due respect… don’t you think the rest of your people deserve as much of your care as he does?”

            That, Arthur thought, was a low blow. He didn’t have an answer.

            Fortunately, Lancelot did. “Let me take him,” he said.

            “It’s too much of a risk,” said Arthur. “And carrying a wounded man alone, it’ll take you two or three days to reach Camelot. Maybe longer.”

            “Not if I go through the Valley of the Fallen Kings,” said Lancelot. “That will cut the journey nearly in half. Please, Arthur—he’s my friend, too. Let me look after him for you. You cannot give up the quest.”

            Leon didn’t look much happier with that solution, but he knew it was about the best compromise they were going to come up with. “Sire, he’s right,” he said. “We must continue. For everyone’s sake.”

            Arthur looked stubborn for a moment, but surrendered. “All right,” he said. “Thank you, Lancelot. Get him home.”

            Lancelot nodded. “I will, sire.” He suppressed a wince as he walked over to the horses and Merlin’s motionless form. He’d made the same promise to Gwen. Now he was breaking his word. Protecting his friend rather than his king. And the worst part, the most shameful part, was that he couldn’t even find it in himself to regret his choice. Leaving Arthur to fend for himself was not what Gwen would have wanted; it was not what Merlin would have wanted; it was not what a loyal knight should have wanted to do.

            It was, however, what Arthur wanted. Or, at least, it was what was best for him. Did that make it right?

            He wasn’t sure. He just wasn’t sure.

            Gwaine watched the byplay. “Arthur, what are you doing?” he said.

            “If we don’t get him to Gaius, he’ll die,” said Arthur, in a tight, controlled voice that hid nothing. “We need to get him back to Camelot as quickly as possible.”

            “Arthur. Arthur. He’s not going to make it back to Camelot. The Valley of the Fallen Kings is a deathtrap at the best of times; it’ll be worse now. And going by the road, it’s a three or four day journey back to the citadel, and Merlin is not going to last that long,” Gwaine said, his voice equally calm. And equally revealing. “And if by some miracle he does, Gaius made it quite clear that there’s nothing he can do. Are you really going to make Lancelot drag a dying man halfway across the kingdom, just so that, in the best case scenario, an old man can stand helplessly by his bedside and watch his ward die in front of him?”    

            “What would you have me do, then?” Arthur asked, his face a mask. “Leave him here?”

            “You could respect his wishes for once! We’re all dead men anyway; what in hell does it matter? Take him with us. All the way to the Isle of the Blessed, if he can hold out that long. Maybe they can do something for him there. Even if they can’t, he’s been loyal to you. You could at least have the decency to let him die in the only place he’s ever really wanted to be.”

             “And where might that be?”

            “Where…? About two feet to your left,” Gwaine said, his eyes glittering with anger… and maybe a hint of tears. “Don’t you know even that much?”

            Arthur looked away. Across the courtyard, Percival picked Merlin up, effortlessly boosted him into the saddle, and held him steady as Lancelot tied him to his horse. Merlin— limp, white, unresisting— looked even frailer than usual as they lashed him into place like so much laundry. Elyan hovered nearby, trying to look reassuring and succeeding only in looking awkward.

            Leon shook his head. “I sympathize, but it’s not right, sire. He’s in no shape to continue.”

            “He’s safer with a large group to watch out for him. Lancelot is safer with the group than out in the middle of nowhere with the Dorocha on the hunt. We’re safer for having Lancelot with us, giving us that much more of a chance that this mad jaunt into hell will actually accomplish anything. And the entire world is doomed if it doesn’t,” said Gwaine, counting the reasons off on his fingers with horrible, undeniable logic. “We’re already one man down; we can’t afford to lose another. Add in the fact that we all know he doesn’t want to leave you, and I’d say the right thing to do is pretty damned obvious.”    

            Arthur, his lips white, walked across the cobbles. Merlin was draped bonelessly across his horse’s neck, securely bound. He looked dead already, except for his eyes, which burned. Considerately, the other knights withdrew a few steps.

            “This is my fault,” Arthur said, pretending to check that the straps weren’t too tight. And of course they weren’t. Lancelot’s hands were gentle whenever he wasn’t holding a sword. “I’m sorry.”

            Merlin ignored that. “Take me with you,” he said, his lips barely moving and his voice scarcely more than a breath. “Please.”

            Arthur had to swallow twice before he thought he could trust his voice to stay steady. “You’ll die, Merlin.”

            “I’ll die anyway,” Merlin rasped. “This way… it’ll mean something. Tell the Cailleach… I’m your sacrifice.”

            Arthur looked away, sickened, as the pieces fell into place. It made a cruel— but flawless— sort of sense. Mending the veil required a death. Arthur had been ready to give his own life for his people, but now… Merlin was already dying. The Cailleach demanded one life. Not two. And there was Gwen to think about.

            Arthur didn’t want to die. He didn’t want Merlin to die, either. But he was going to. And one way or another, someone had to die on the Isle of the Blessed if Camelot was to survive. Was it so very selfish of Arthur to save himself, save his kingdom, and make an otherwise pointless death serve a purpose? 

            Yes. Yes, it was.

            It was also tempting in a way that shamed Arthur to his marrow.

            Arthur cleared his throat. “Don’t talk rubbish, Merlin. You’ll have to come along, since I can’t spare a man to take you back, but what on earth do you think the Cailleach would want with you? I’m trying to appease her, not goad her into inflicting something worse on Camelot in revenge.”

            “You know… I’m right,” said Merlin.

            “And you know I never listen to you,” said Arthur, clapping a hand on his shoulder and immediately regretting it. Even through the layers of cloth and leather, his skin radiated a cold so extreme that it burned to the touch. “Come,” he said, turning away. “There’s no time to waste. We ride.”

*.*.*.*.*

            The morning would have been beautiful under most circumstances. Lancelot supposed that if they were going to ride to their doom with a dying man in tow, keeping their eyes grimly focused on the road ahead to avoid thinking about what they’d find when they ran out of horizon, it was just as well to do it on a fine day. A driving rain, or something equally unpleasant, would have been adding insult to injury.  

            After a few hours of hard riding and grim silence, they came to a small brook. Arthur signaled a stop, and the knights dismounted to let the tired horses drink and to refill their waterbags. By unspoken consensus, they left Merlin where he was, but Gwaine immediately went to him, carrying one of the freshly filled waterskins, and tried to coax him into drinking some of it. Most of the water ended up dribbling down the horse’s side. Merlin tried to show willing, and he did manage a few mouthfuls, but most of his attention was taken up with forcing his heart to keep beating, primarily through pure bloody-minded stubbornness. Everything else had been flayed away. Even his magic was frozen, iced over and inaccessible, numbed and all but useless, if not gone entirely, which was several orders of magnitude more terrifying than even the paralyzed ruin of his body. There wasn’t much left of him besides bloody-minded stubbornness, and he knew he would need every bit of it just to survive the journey. He didn’t have the energy to spare for any task as herculean as drinking a cup of water.

            Arthur watched for a moment. And a moment was about all he could stand.    

            “Sire?” said Lancelot in an undertone, when he was certain that the other knights weren’t listening.

            “What is it?”

            “What did he mean about a sacrifice?”

            Arthur kept his expression blank, cursing Lancelot’s sharp ears. He’d really thought that the knights had been far enough away to prevent any eavesdropping, inadvertent or otherwise. “Since when does anything Merlin says make sense?” he said dismissively. “And being half-frozen can’t be helping that pudding he calls a brain. Ignore him. He’s talking nonsense. As usual.”

            Lancelot looked angry for a moment, but quickly mastered his expression. His voice stayed low. “Sire—we both know that’s not true. Is he right? Does this quest require a death?”

            “That’s not your concern,” Arthur said. “It’s my burden to bear. Not yours. And certainly not his.”

            “If the answer was no, you wouldn’t be avoiding the question,” said Lancelot. “So he is right.”

            “No, he’s not,” Arthur said, then relented. Lancelot knew; there was no real point in lying anymore. It was almost a relief to be able to speak honestly. “Not if he thinks I’m going to throw his life away.”

            Lancelot nodded slowly. “Then who? Whose life do you intend to give?”

            Arthur looked off into the distance. “It’s my responsibility to protect my people. No matter the cost.”

            As if there had ever been a chance that he would say anything else, Lancelot thought with a flicker of black humor. He and Merlin deserved each other. He sighed. “Arthur… you know you can’t do that.”

            “I’m the king. I don’t have a choice.”

            “That’s true. You are the king. And you don’t have a choice. You would sacrifice your life for us because you’re a good man. A good knight. But that isn’t always the same as a good king. Camelot doesn’t need you to be a heroic martyr. She needs you to take care of your people.”

            “I’m trying to take care of my people,” Arthur said, somewhat defensively.  

            “I know. And you will. But not like this. The moment of crisis is going to be an ordeal, but it will at least be brief; the aftermath is going to be far worse, and it will go on for months. When the quest is ended, we will be returning to a country in chaos. Your people’s lives have been thrown into utter turmoil. It’s going to be up to you to hold things together while they rebuild. It’s not going to be easy, and there’s no one who can take your place. Not in Camelot. There is someone who can take your place on the Isle of the Blessed.”

              “So you think I should offer him up in my stead?” Arthur’s voice was suddenly furious. “You think that’s the sort of king Camelot needs? ‘Right then, Merlin; go polish my armor, clean my chambers, see to my horse, and then lie down on this altar and let me cut your throat, there’s a good fellow.’”

            Lancelot gave him an even look. “No. He’d want you to, but I doubt he’ll last the night. I was going to suggest myself.” As he said it, the thought did occur to him that he might not have much of a leg to stand on when criticizing Arthur and Merlin for being a matched pair of selfless idiots, but he squelched it and continued. “I’m sworn to protect Camelot with my life, I have no family to care what becomes of me, and I’m not the only knight you have at your disposal. Whereas we only have one king. And gods know there’s only one Merlin.”

            Ordinarily, Arthur’s reflexive response would have been something on the order of ‘and thank heaven for that’ or possibly ‘we can only hope,’ but not today. “I’m not about to ask any of you to die for me.”

            Lancelot actually laughed at that, one sharp, humorless crack. “Arthur. Are you listening to yourself? You already do just that. Being a knight means rushing headlong into danger to protect everyone and everything but ourselves, and being a knight of Camelot means doing it while wearing a very noticeable bright red cloak, just in case the enemy wasn’t quite sure where to aim. You ask for our lives every single day, and we’re proud to give them. For Camelot. And for you.” He cocked his head. “Do you know who told me that?”

            Gwaine had finally given up on trying to get Merlin to drink, Arthur saw. He’d settled for taking off his cloak and was now wrapping it around Merlin’s slumped shoulders for what little additional warmth it might provide. His very noticeable, bright red knight’s cloak. “I can probably guess,” said Arthur.

             “You’d probably guess right. Don’t misunderstand me, sire. I’m in no hurry to die. But I wouldn’t have chosen this life if I didn’t believe that there are things worth dying for,” said Lancelot. “As your knight, I have a duty to protect you. And as our king, you have a duty to protect Camelot. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”  

              If he closed his eyes, Arthur thought, he could almost imagine that it was Merlin delivering this little curtain lecture. It sounded like the sort of thing he’d say—half counsel, half encouragement, half kick in the pants, and if that made three halves, well, he hadn’t kept Merlin around all this time for his arithmetic skills.

              Merlin was the one who told him all the things he didn’t want to hear—the harsh truths, the unpleasant realities, the nagging warnings. More than that, he was the one who told Arthur all the things he desperately needed to hear, good and bad alike. He encouraged Arthur when he faltered, advised him when he struggled, warned him when he was in danger, praised him when he doubted himself, criticized him when he was wrong, fought back when he was insufferable, argued with him when he was being foolish, needled him when he needed to smile, and followed him unquestioningly on whatever course Arthur chose, whether or not he agreed with it. Even when Arthur didn’t want him to do any of those things.

              Especially when Arthur didn’t want him to, in fact.

             And always, always, when things were at their worst, he was the one who told Arthur that he believed in him. And by some alchemy Arthur had never understood, he made Arthur believe, too.

             It wasn’t right. If anyone—anyone—was going to alternate between telling Arthur what a prize idiot he was and in the same breath telling him that he was the brightest gem in Albion’s crown and would always do what was right, then damn it, Arthur wanted to hear it from arguably the worst servant in the Five Kingdoms. 

             He didn’t want to be hearing this at all, but even more than that, he didn’t want to be hearing it in Lancelot’s voice. Lancelot was not the one who was supposed to tell Arthur the things he didn’t want to hear. Arthur didn’t want to think about the fact that, from now on, he might have to be.  

             “It’s at least another day’s ride to the Isle of the Blessed,” Arthur said at last. “I’ll tell the others tonight, after we’ve made camp. We’ll discuss the matter then.”

             “Just so long as you’re prepared to hear four more people volunteering to take your place,” Lancelot said with a humorless smile. “You know we won’t let you sacrifice yourself. Can’t and won’t. Not when you’d be taking the kingdom with you.”

*.*.*.*

               The camp they set up that evening wasn’t much of an improvement on the one the night before. Percival eventually got a fire going, but the wood was damp, and it smoked abominably. Elyan, after a sharp look from Leon, saw to the horses. Lancelot cooked another meal that no one wanted to eat, Leon unpacked their gear, and everyone wondered who was going to be the first to break down and comment on the fact that it took four knights to do, badly, the taken-for-granted tasks Merlin usually handled alone. And, it had to be admitted, with scant thanks. Another thing to feel guilty about.

               Gwaine looked down at his still mostly full bowl, stirred it with his spoon. The dishes would have to be washed, he thought, so that would probably be yet a fifth knight’s job. With a sudden rush of distaste, he fought down the sudden impulse to throw the bowl, stew and all, as hard as he could into the distance. He felt helpless, and he hated it. He was a swordsman in a situation where steel was useless, and a fighter with no physical enemy to face. He was a wanderer who had been gifted a home because he’d picked the correct side in a tavern brawl, and he could feel it slipping out of his grasp. Merlin had convinced him that he deserved his place here—hell, had convinced him that he even wanted it. He didn’t want to go back to his aimless ramble from fight to fight and alehouse to alehouse, he knew that much, but he didn’t know what he did want, aside from making it so none of this had ever happened.

              Arthur cleared his throat after a while. “Tomorrow, if all goes well, we’ll arrive at the Isle of the Blessed,” he said, unnecessarily, but he didn’t know how else to begin. “I… haven’t told you quite everything about the nature of our task once we arrive.”

             “You said that we had to seal the tear in the veil,” Elyan said.

             “Yes,” said Arthur. “What I didn’t tell you was how it had to be done.”

             “I noticed that,” said Percival, sounding a little embarrassed. “I wondered. I suppose I just assumed that once we got there, it would be obvious.”

             “It is,” said Arthur. “I consulted with Gaius before we left. He said that the gate between the worlds is guarded by someone he called the Cailleach. That only she can repair the damage, and that she cannot be forced to do so. Only petitioned.”

            Leon’s brow furrowed. “And you think that she’ll refuse to do it?”

            “No,” said Arthur. “She will, if asked. But she will demand a price, and that price must be paid.”

            Gwaine narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like where this seemed to be going.

            Arthur fought with himself for a moment, and lost. “A blood sacrifice,” he said, his voice low. “She requires a blood sacrifice. Human blood.”

            No one said anything for a long moment.

            “One of us,” Percival said slowly. “One of us must be sacrificed?”

            “No,” said Arthur again. “Not one of you. I must. Make no mistake, this isn’t a discussion; I only tell you so that you’ll know what to expect.”

             That unleashed the predictable angry exclamations from the other knights, all jumbled up in an incomprehensible torrent of indignation. Arthur’s expression didn’t even change as he waited for them to stop.

            It was Leon who finally waved the others to silence and cleared his throat. He was a man long accustomed to the hard jobs of leadership—the impossible dilemmas, the cruel no-win situations, the day-by-day decisions that decided, if indirectly, who would live or die. “Sire,” he said formally. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that you cannot do this. I do not say this lightly, sire, and I apologize for my presumption in giving my king an order, but you must choose another. You must. Allowing yourself to be sacrificed wouldn’t be suicide—it would be treason. Without you, Camelot will be lost—there is no one else to step into Uther’s place.” His eyes were anguished, but dry. “I am the First Knight of Camelot, sire. Allow me to fulfil the oaths I swore.”

            Lancelot’s knowing eyes met Arthur’s as the other three began to make what would probably have been very similar speeches. He cut them all off. “You know he’s right,” he said, and his voice was so low, so calm, that it easily overpowered the rest of them. “Giving your own life for Camelot would be easy by comparison, and there’s not one of us who wouldn’t do so without regrets. But the easy way won’t do. Not this time. I’m sorry, Arthur; I wouldn’t wish this choice on my worst enemy. But it has to be one of us, and it’s a decision only you can make.”

            “No decision… at all,” said Merlin, his voice noticeably fainter than it had been that morning. Every head turned, with some shock. They’d propped him up against a saddle, well-padded with blankets, because stretching him out on the ground seemed a little too apropos, but none of them had even been entirely certain that he was still conscious, let alone lucid. “Take me.”

            “No,” Arthur said. He wasn’t even really addressing Merlin anymore. He was trying to argue with fate.

            “Kinder… to leave me… like this?” Merlin challenged. “Dying in pain?”

            No one said anything.

            “Not a prince… Not a knight…. Servant. Let me serve.”

            There was a long silence, broken only by Merlin’s slow, ragged breaths, as the knights looked at their hands, or the fire, or their boots—anything but each other. Agreeing that what he was saying made sense felt wrong. Felt selfish and callous. Arguing the point felt, if anything, even more callous. No one could look at Merlin and doubt that he was in agony, or that, in his position, they wouldn’t also have preferred a mercy stroke to the protracted death he faced.

            And the tiny, treacherous voice inside each of them, the one that did not want to die if there was any way to avoid it, felt worst of all.

            Arthur couldn’t stop thinking about a long-ago angry conversation he’d had with his father, the first time Merlin had come close to dying in Arthur’s place. Or was it the second? Third? He couldn’t recall anymore. He’d snapped at his father, ‘So his life is worthless, then?’ And Uther had answered, ‘No. It’s just worth… less than yours.’

            He’d disobeyed without a shred of remorse, then or after, had gone in search of the poison’s antidote and gotten himself thrown in the dungeons for his trouble.

             It wasn’t fair that, after all that, he should find himself in Uther’s position. Making Uther’s choice. Hearing Merlin gasp out Uther’s argument. Who was Arthur to decide whose life was worth more?

             He was king, that was who.

             And a king wouldn’t force the burden of this sort of decision on anyone else. He couldn’t let himself wait for someone to say, ‘he’s right’ or ‘it’s the only way’ or ‘it’s not your fault.’ No soothing lies or self-justifications. No spreading the guilt around. This was his to carry. Alone. Forever.

            He looked Merlin squarely in the eye, held his gaze for a moment, then nodded minutely. Merlin couldn’t move, not even enough to nod, but his icy eyes filled with a sudden relief. Relief and determination.

Chapter Text

            Leon took first watch; Lancelot took second. Arthur stopped him before he could wake Percival for the third watch.

            “Let him sleep,” he said. “I’m up anyway.”

            Lancelot nodded—what was there to say?— handed him the unlit torch he carried, and lay down on his bedroll. Arthur tossed another chunk of wood on the fire and watched it burn.

            After spending the first part of the sleepless night trying not to think, he finally let himself take the events of the evening and look squarely at them. They weren’t any prettier in retrospect than they’d been at the time.

            As much as he hated to admit it, Leon—and Lancelot—had been right. Sacrificing himself would have left Camelot in shambles; his father was in no fit state to govern, and Morgana would obviously stop at nothing to take the throne she thought rightfully hers. She might even have been counting on his willingness to lay down his own life for his people to remove the last obstacle in her way.

            That didn’t make this any easier.

            “Why couldn’t you be more like other servants? Why couldn’t you just... clean my chamber and polish my armor and leave it at that? Saving my life was never supposed to be part of your job, and I will never understand why you seemed to think it was. You shouldn’t have had to. Especially not like this. Why do you keep doing this to me?”

            He poked the fire, a bit harder than strictly necessary. Sparks rose angrily from the coals. “All I wanted was a servant. Not a friend. I can’t afford friends. Then you turned up, insolent and incompetent and incorrigible… damn you, Merlin! What am I going to do when servants are all I have left? How am I supposed to go back to that?”

            He didn’t get an answer. He didn’t expect one. He didn’t think there was one.

            The night dragged on just short of forever, and the morning still came too quickly. As the sun peeked above the horizon, Arthur was almost disappointed to see that Merlin was still alive, and that, if anything, his breathing seemed a little more even. Still shallow, still slow and unsteady, but it had lost much of the pained rasp they’d been listening to for the past two nights. It figured. Merlin never could do things the easy way; why should this be any different? If he’d just had the courtesy to die peacefully in his sleep, Arthur wouldn’t be facing the prospect of don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think.

            As the others started to wake up, Arthur was carefully putting out the last embers of the fire. He flicked a hand at the stewpot. “The leftovers from last night are still warm; anyone who wants some, eat quickly. The rest of you, pack your gear. I want to be on the road in twenty minutes.”

            They all looked around, pretending that they weren’t checking on Merlin, and then got very busy rolling up their bedding and stowing their gear. Breakfast, it was clear, was about the last thing anyone wanted.

            “I’ll see to the horses,” said Gwain, mostly to pretend for a moment that he could saddle his horse and just go, somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t the Isle of the Blessed. Alone.

            “I’ll help,” said Elyan, neatly putting paid to that, and they walked over to where he’d picketed the horses the night before. Gwaine heaved his own saddle into place, began tightening the girth.

            Elyan started with Arthur’s mount. “Gwaine… If you want to—”

            “Don’t,” Gwaine cut him off. “Whatever you were going to ask… don’t.”

            Elyan nodded. They worked in silence for a few minutes.

            “Life seemed… easier as a blacksmith,” he finally said. “Maybe I’m remembering it as rosier than it was, but I don’t remember as many choices with no right answers.”

            “Try being a sellsword,” Gwaine said sourly. “No choices more complicated than ‘which side of the fight offers better pay’ and ‘which tavern shall I visit tonight.’ Turns out I didn’t know when I was well off.” He moved on to Percival’s horse, checked the hooves. “Since the day we met, Merlin kept on insisting that Arthur wasn’t like most royalty,” he said. “The only reason I’m here, instead of Mercia or Nemeth or somewhere, hungover and trying to decide where to go next, is because it seemed like Arthur kept proving him right.”

             “He is right,” said Elyan. “You know that, Gwaine.”

             “The hell I do. If he’s going to go through with this, maybe I don’t know as much as I thought I did.”  

             Elyan fastened the last buckle. “Maybe. Knights have harder choices than blacksmiths. I’m just glad I’ll never have to find out how much harder a king’s choices are than a knight’s.”

             “Words. You know this isn’t right.”

              “No, it isn’t,” said Lancelot, walking into the clearing with an armload of gear, just in time to catch that last. Guessing the topic of conversation was not difficult. “None of it is right. It’s just the… least wrong we can manage.”

              “That’s not saying much.”

              “And that’s true, too,” he said. “Now stop talking about it. Percival’s bringing Merlin over, and he can still hear just fine. Listening to you raking Arthur over the coals isn’t going to help anything.”

              Elyan half-smiled. “As if he didn’t say worse twenty times a day.”

              “You know the rules. The only one who gets to insult Arthur is Merlin,” said Lancelot, with perhaps the faintest hint of emphasis on the present tense. Talking about him as though he were already dead wasn’t going to help, either. “And vice versa.”

               They were on the road well within the allotted twenty minutes.

               For an hour or so, they rode in the same gloomy silence as the day before. Then, out of the blue, Gwaine said, “Did I ever tell you about the dispute over the rightful successor to the Towrie barony? What a nightmare that campaign was! They were identical twins, and still each one of them managed to be uglier, not to mention stupider, than his brother.”

               Percival gave him an incredulous now-is-not-the-time look, but Lancelot forestalled his objection with a quick headshake. “No, Gwaine,” he said casually. “I don’t think I remember that one. What happened?”

              “Well, their names were Mavin and Lavin, to start with, but that was their parents’ fault. They must have thought it wasn’t confusing enough, so one of them used a crest with a red eagle, and the other used a crest with a red griffin, so you had to really squint at its legs to know which shield was which. On the battlefield, there was no good way of telling the sides apart, especially once the badges got a bit dirty, and you could hardly ask the guy swinging an axe at your head whether he was fighting for Lavin-with-an-L or Mavin-with-an-M, especially since most of the foot soldiers were illiterate.”

              He got a few lips starting to curve upwards, and even what sounded very like a stifled chuckle from Elyan. Good.

              “Half the time, after a skirmish, you just went back to whichever camp was closer. What difference did it make? And if you found yourself eating dinner with someone who’d done his best to kill you that afternoon, well, you’d tried to kill him, too, so no hard feelings. Anyway, about two weeks into it, even the would-be barons got mixed up, which wasn’t hard, since they had roughly half a set of wits between the two of them, and both of them happened to go to the same camp after a particularly unproductive sortie. And that’s when things started to get really interesting.”

                From there Gwaine launched into a story involving the feuding twins, a large barrel of sloe gin, the previous baron’s seal ring, a steak-and-kidney pie, a mace, and a very nervous sheep that was so utterly preposterous that it almost had to be true.

                “…So I said, I’m not trying to stop you, I just want a refill before you go and taint the gin… and I think the sheep needs one even more than I do!” he finished. Even Leon was snickering by then. 

              After that, Elyan jumped into the fray with a story from his blacksmithing days involving a stallion who liked his old shoes just fine, thank you very much, and clearly did not want to be reshod. It was fairly predictable, ending as it did with the horse kicking him halfway across the stableyard, where he landed in a large heap of manure, but it was good enough. For a little while, it almost felt like any other patrol, the sort where all they had to worry about was bandits or mercenaries— the sort of dangers they understood and were equipped to face. No shrieking ghosts or supernatural gates or mystic sacrifices, just strong arms and honest steel. The sort of patrol where death was an ever-present possibility, not a cold necessity, and anyway it would never happen to them.

              The feeling of not-quite-normality lasted until they topped a hill and saw the lake below, and the island in its center. That was when it all came crashing back down on them. They rode to the water’s edge in the now-familiar miserable silence.

              “I saw what you did back there,” Arthur told Gwaine as they dismounted. “It was… well done. Thank you.”

              “I’d rather die with a laugh on my lips than a tear in my eye,” Gwaine said, looking out over the water. “I figured I can’t be the only one who feels that way.”

              “Probably not,” said Arthur.

              Percival gently lifted Merlin off the horse and carried him to a small boat tied to a stump. It didn’t look particularly seaworthy, but then again, it didn’t look large enough for seven until they were all aboard, either. It was obviously the only way onto the island, though, and no one was willing to be left behind, so they piled in. Perhaps there was an enchantment keeping it from sinking. Probably. There had to be some sort of magic involved, since it was steering them straight across the water despite the fact that none of them were paddling it.

                 Leon wished that thought was more comforting.

                 Percival went to pick Merlin up as the boat grounded itself on the opposite shore. “Wait,” said Lancelot. Lowering his voice, he said. “Leave him his dignity. Whatever fate is waiting in there, let him walk to it like a man instead of being carried like an infant.”

                 Percival nodded, and took a step back.

                “Arthur, give me a hand.” Lancelot took one of Merlin’s arms, put it around his shoulder. Arthur did the same on the other side, and between the two of them they got him upright. He hung between them like a scarecrow on a pole, but he was vertical.

                With some effort, he tilted his head up from where it lolled against his chest. It was the first purposeful movement he’d made since the attack. “Thanks,” he said. “Better than looking… up everyone’s noses.”

                 Lancelot actually laughed at that. “I don’t suppose I can argue with that.”

                 “No, but I’ve met more than a few people who were forever looking down their noses at everyone,” said Gwaine insinuatingly. “They never seemed to mind the view.”

                 Arthur assumed that was aimed squarely at him; just now he didn’t have the strength to care. “Come on,” he said, as something screeched overhead. “We’d better get under cover. Whatever’s making that noise, it doesn’t sound friendly.”

                  “Pheasants,” Merlin said.

                  “Sounds like it,” Gwaine agreed. “At least three, I bet. Just what this trip needed. It was starting to get dull.”

                  Percival blinked. “What?”

                  “Wyverns,” Gwaine translated. “I’ll explain later. Come on!”

                  They all scrambled through the gates and into the antechamber, which didn’t provide much cover after all. The wyverns swooped and shrieked; it was clear that driving them away was not going to be as easy as waving a torch at them.

                  “I’ve fought them before,” Gwaine said, drawing his sword. “They’re mean, but they’re cowards. Scare them enough, they’ll look for easier pickings elsewhere.”

                  Well, that wasn’t strictly accurate, on either count, but Merlin hoped it wasn’t too far from the truth. He tried to summon dragonspeech—at this point, he was both dying of cold and pledged to be sacrificed; what more could anyone do to him if they discovered he was a dragonlord? Or even a sorcerer? Kill him a third time?—but all he could summon were the words themselves, and his current state made them useless. He didn’t have the strength to imbue them with anything like the force they required, not with his stiffened lungs and frozen vocal cords and his exhausted magic.

                  “Arthur! Go! We’ll hold them off!” said Elyan, hacking away at a not-so-cowardly wyvern. Lancelot cursed, dropped Merlin’s arm, and leapt towards Leon, who was trying to fend off two of the beasts, with a third poised to join them.

                  Arthur was not the type to retreat from a fight, even a hopeless one, and he was even less inclined to run while his men were in danger. He spent one endless second fighting with every instinct he had, then, one hand gripping Merlin’s wrist hard enough to bruise, and the other holding him around the waist, turned and fled down the passageway, the wyverns’ cries growing fainter in the distance, and the toes of Merlin’s boots dragging on the ground.

                  The passage culminated in a courtyard that did not need the weathered stone altar in its center to give the impression of both sanctity and immense age. Generations upon generations had worshipped here, that was plain to see, and something of their solemnities, their prayers of supplication and gratitude, their awe, their joys and griefs, their fear of and love for their deities, had seeped into every blade of grass, every stick and stone.  

                  The torn veil was visible behind the altar. It was… indescribable, although the word ‘wrong,’ with all its myriad shades of meaning, came close. It wasn’t ‘dark’ so much as it was an absence of light, a negation of light. It was hard even to look at such intense nothingness.

                   It was a suppurating wound in the flesh of the world, and Arthur could feel the pain of it from where he stood. Or rather, he recognized the pain he, and everyone else, had been feeling, just below the threshold of consciously noticing it, since the moment Morgana had inflicted it.

                 “It’s not often we have visitors,” came a voice. Arthur dragged his eyes away from the veil and looked at the speaker. She had to be the Cailleach; nothing living could have had a voice like an echo in a charnel house. And nothing human had ever had eyes like hers; the infinite emptiness in them made looking her in the face nearly as bad as looking at the veil itself.

                  “Put an end to this,” Arthur demanded hoarsely. “I demand that you heal the tear between the worlds.”

                  She shrugged. “It was not I who created this horror. Why should it be I who ends it?”

                  “Because… innocent people… are dying,” said Merlin, still leaning heavily against Arthur’s shoulder and kept upright only by Arthur’s grip on his arm, but meeting her gaze without a trace of fear.

                  “Indeed,” she said. “The innocent die every day, as do the not-so-innocent, and the irredeemably evil. What of it?”

                  “You yourself called this a horror,” Arthur said. “I cannot believe that you want things to continue as they are.”

                  “What you believe, Camelot’s king, is meaningless to me. Think what you will.”

                  “I know what you want,” he said, gritting his teeth.

                   “Do you?” she said. “And are you willing to let me have it?”

                   “I am prepared to pay… whatever price is necessary,” he said.

                   “Have a care,” she said. “It is a fearsome thing to go back on your word once you’ve pledged it to the dead, and only a fool agrees to pay a price before asking what that price will be.”

                   “I’ve been called… a fool before,” Merlin said. “It doesn’t… change my answer.”  

                   “You?” she said, taken aback. “You would challenge me here? On my own ground?”

                    “Challenge? No,” he said. “Seal the veil… and you can… do with me… what you will.”

Chapter Text

            The Cailleach took a moment to gather her thoughts. “This is not what I had expected from this meeting. I had thought to parley with the young king of Camelot.”

            “You are,” Arthur said firmly, trying for some vestige of control of the situation. “Although it seems to me that there’s very little that needs discussion. You know what I want you to do; I know what you demand in return. What more is there?”  

            “And what do I demand?” she asked softly. “Say the words, young Pendragon.”

            “A blood sacrifice,” Arthur said, then, painfully, forced out the words, “A life must be given to deliver us from the dead. We stand ready to pay your price.”   

            The Cailleach looked from grim king to fading warlock and back, anger now clearly visible in her bottomless eyes. “It’s easy to offer up a life that seems already lost,” she said. “Hardly a sacrifice at all.”

            “Can’t make up… new rules… as you go along. You never… said anything about that,” said Merlin. “Twenty minutes or twenty years… no one ever knows… how long they have left. I offer you… however long I have. Just like… everyone else.”

            She laughed at that, then pointed a long, thin finger at him. And just like that, the sheen of frost on his skin vanished, the ice seemed to melt from his eyes, and color returned to his face as he took his first deep breath since the Dorocha had struck him down.

            Arthur could feel the change, even through two layers of clothing. Merlin’s frozen skin had sucked the warmth from anything it touched, numbing Arthur’s hand where it grasped his wrist, and the arm draped across Arthur’s shoulder had actually frosted the links of his chain mail. Startled by the sudden change as the warmth flooded back into his body, Arthur released his hold, letting Merlin stand unaided. As the literal weight lifted from Arthur’s shoulder, the metaphorical one became a hundred times heavier.

“So be it. Twenty minutes, twenty years, or twenty centuries. Just like everyone else,” said the Cailleach, her voice mocking. “Are you still willing to lie on the stone, now that you’re actually giving something up?”

            Merlin flicked a glance at Arthur. “Of course I am.” Without a trace of hesitation, he walked to the altar and stretched out. “There. Do it.”

            “So impatient,” she said chidingly. “Is life so bitter that you welcome my blade?”

            “Why? Does it taint the sacrifice if I don’t suffer before the knife comes down?” Merlin said. “You asked that I be willing. I am. Don’t mistake that for me liking the idea. Besides, this rock is cold. You’re the one who wants this, so you might as well get on with it.”

            She quirked a disapproving eyebrow at him, but let it pass. “And you, Arthur, king of Camelot. Do you offer this sacrifice willingly?”

            Arthur took a breath. “You ask two different questions, and of two different people,” he said. “No, Arthur Pendragon does not willingly offer up his friend. Would you expect him to? But the king of Camelot… does not have the freedom to place his own desires above his people’s needs, and he submits to your power. So yes. I will offer this sacrifice of my own free will. And I will mourn for this moment for the rest of my life. Are you answered?”                

            “I am,” she said, her eyes gleaming with interest. “I am indeed.” She took a step towards them, a bone-handled dagger suddenly in her hand. “Very well, then. The bargain is struck. I will do as you ask. Now take the knife. On behalf of your people, spill his blood for me.”

            Arthur took it. As the hilt warmed in his grasp, it seemed to break the sense of unreality that had gripped him since they’d set foot on the island. He froze in place. What was he doing? This was impossible. This was cold-blooded murder. This was Merlin! How could he even have dreamed…

             Merlin pushed himself up on one elbow. “Oh, come off it, Arthur,” he said, with a very good imitation of his usual grin. “Now who’s being a girl’s petticoat? Besides. Don’t even try to tell me that you haven’t thought about running me through once or twice, because we both know that you have. Maybe even once or twice a month. Or is it a week?” 

            Arthur snorted, one tiny huff of breath that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a choke.

            Merlin sat up a little further, mock-affronted. “A day?”

            Arthur, who recognized exactly what Merlin was trying to do and why, shook his head, bemused. How many victims spent their last moments comforting their murderers? “You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”

            Merlin shrugged cheerfully. “Must be. If I wasn’t, you’d think I’d have found a new line of work a long time ago.”

            “A ‘new’ line of work? You barely did any work to begin with, and what you did do was usually atrocious,” Arthur said. “You never did quite grasp the concept of ‘dusting,’ and I’d more or less resigned myself to the fact that you were never going to realize that wine is meant to be poured into my cup, not my lap.”

            “You shouldn’t drink that much wine, anyway. You just can’t handle the stuff. Half of it goes straight to your waist, and the rest goes straight to your head. Makes you think that your jokes are actually funny,” said Merlin. “You do know that people only laugh because they’re being polite to their king, right?”

             “Being polite to their king…? Oh, yes, yes, I think I remember what that sounded like,” said Arthur. “Yet another proper servant’s skill you never picked up. I’m not entirely sure I’d still know how to respond if I heard it.”

             They’d been doing their best, but the banter had been fairly strained to begin with, and the mention of other servants, with the unspoken implication that, very soon, Arthur was going to need a new one, finished it off. They were just stalling, anyway, and the time for that was over. “I’m sure you’ll manage. Just… remember what I told you,” Merlin said. “No bootlickers.”

            Arthur nodded. “No bootlickers,” he promised.

            Merlin lay back down, and he found one last smile. A real one. “It’s all right, Arthur,” he said softly. 

            “I’m sorry,” said Arthur, which was not at all what he wanted to say, and with one quick, expert motion, he thrust the dagger home.

            Death is rarely instantaneous. This time was no exception. Even a knife to the heart takes a few moments to do its work, and the thing about the human body is that it has a mind of its own. The person living in that body can be, if not necessarily thrilled with the idea, at least resigned to the prospect of being stabbed, and possibly even determined to bear it quietly so as not to disturb anyone else. The body itself has no such compunctions, and absolutely no regard for anyone’s feelings. All the body wants is to keep living.

            Merlin writhed, tried to gasp, one hand involuntarily reaching for his chest as he fought for life. Arthur captured the thin hand in his own, held it fast. “Shhh,” he said. “Take it easy, Merlin. It’s all going to be fine. Shhh. Not much longer. Just relax.”

            His eyes were wide, shocked, uncomprehending—even a little frightened as he stared up at Arthur, his breath rattling in his throat. Every time his torn heart tried to beat, it sent more blood pumping from the severed arteries, soaking through Merlin’s tunic, into Arthur’s cloak, red on red, except where it was pooling darkly beneath him, and surely this was all a nightmare, this couldn’t be real. He kept a tight grip on Merlin’s hand—that much was real, he was certain of that—and kept murmuring soothing babble as the pauses between labored breaths grew longer, as the spurting blood slowed to a rivulet, then a trickle, then nothing at all.

            The blood was still dribbling down the sides of the altar, from cold stone to colder ground. Still warm. But Merlin’s chest was still, and his hand was cool once more. How had that happened so fast?

            Gently, he lowered Merlin’s arm to his side, and closed the glazing eyes. And then there was nothing more he could do for him. Everything had been said that was going to be, and what was done was done, the good and the bad alike. It was over. He looked down at… at the body, and he could hear his own voice parroting his father’s words. No man is worth your tears. No man is worth your tears. No man…

            Gods, Merlin had been right all along. He was a prat.

            He took a deep breath, looked at the Cailleach. “There,” he said harshly. “I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain. Close the veil. Seal away the Dorocha.”

            “As you say, Arthur, king of Camelot,” she said. “Give me the knife.”

            Silently, he handed it to her; she examined it carefully. It was already smeared red from tip to pommel, but she frowned, dipped it in the pooled blood, then again, and a third time, until the entire blade was an even shade of crimson. Apparently satisfied, turning towards the rip in the world, she used the bloody knife to carve a spiral pattern in the air. It left a shining red trail against the void as she drew, like a bright thread stitching torn fabric. As she finished the third loop, the entire glyph glowed white, and the wrongness flickered, then vanished.

            “The price is paid, and what was rent is mended,” she said, thrusting the now-clean dagger back into her belt. “One drop of life-warm blood to soothe their fury. One to call them back to their rest. And one to atone for disturbing their peace. It is done.”   

            Arthur’s shoulders slumped with relief. At least there was that. He hadn’t failed entirely. Then he snapped back to attention as a chill crept down his spine. “…Three drops?” he asked. “That was all you needed? Three drops?”

            Her smile was cruel. “A blood sacrifice to tear the veil; a blood sacrifice to mend it. No more than that was asked, no more than that was required. If you were told to do more than spill his blood, it was not I who said it. I did not tell you to take his life.”

            “You never said—”

             “You never asked,” she cut him off. “You assumed. You never looked beyond what you thought you knew. I would have answered your questions, had you been humble enough to ask them. It is no fault of mine that you did not.”

             “Then you should have punished me! Not him!”

             “I have done nothing to him. Nor to you. This is no punishment of my making; this is a consequence of your own actions. Life and death are not toys, Camelot’s king. The spirits are not pawns to be pushed about on a gaming board. It was that arrogance that rent the veil, and I do not take kindly to being manipulated.”

             She was addressing Arthur; to his surprise, insofar as anything could get past the horrified fury that was numbing his brain, she was glaring at Merlin as she said that last.

             “How have I tried to manipulate you?” said Arthur, his voice rising. “It was Morgana who ripped the dead from their rest! Not I! Perhaps I failed to ask the right questions, but I didn’t bargain with you, I didn’t plead or cozen or lie—you set the price, and I tried to pay it. Where do you see trickery in that?”  

            She didn’t look terribly impressed with that speech, but she gave him a grudging nod. “Perhaps the deception was not yours, Camelot’s king,” she conceded. “But I have been cheated. And I will not forget this.”

             She vanished. Or rather, it seemed that she had never been there in the first place; she had fit perfectly among the dark shadows and gaping nothingness of the rift. It was almost impossible to imagine her beneath a bright sky, in a world that once more seemed meant for the living.  

             The living.

             Oh, gods…

             There was a muffled clink of chain mail behind him. He didn’t turn towards it. Not yet. Not quite yet. The blood was still dripping. One drop; two. Three. Somehow it didn’t feel right not to witness that.

             “…Sire?” Sir Leon. Of course it was him. Duty called, and Leon would always answer.

            “How are the others?” Arthur asked, his back still turned. Wyverns. They’d been fighting wyverns. Wyverns were dangerous; he had to know what had happened so they could regroup and wait for another attack, if necessary. If anyone was wounded, he had to know about it. He had to be the leader, he had to be king. See to the living; that had to come first. And as long as he was thinking about wyverns, he wouldn’t be thinking about… anything else.  

             Slowly, the knights came forwards, ranged themselves in a rough circle around the altar, where he could see them without having to turn away from the bier. Maybe they knew that Arthur didn’t quite have the heart to move just yet.

             “Everything’s all right,” said Elyan. “All at once, the wyverns just flew away. She must have called them off when you… We’re all fine, sire.” Percival glared at him, and he cut himself off with a wince. They weren’t all fine.

             “Yes,” said Arthur. He took a deep breath. “…How much of that did you hear?”

             “Most of it,” said Gwaine. His voice was dark, furious. It barely sounded like him at all. Gwaine never had that much hatred in his voice. “We got here just as the hag started in with her damned word games.”

             “Good. I’m glad you heard it for yourself,” said Arthur in a flat, emotionless voice. “I don’t know how many times I’m going to be able to get through explaining that I gutted Merlin like a sheep in the slaughterhouse because I was too stupidly arrogant to listen to instructions.” He let out a sharp breath. “And wouldn’t he have enjoyed that little admission.”

             “It wasn’t your fault,” said Leon. “We all thought that this was what she wanted. You told us that even Gaius thought so. Misinformation isn’t arrogance.”

             Arthur went even stiller than before, because he refused to flinch. “Oh, gods—Gaius. How am I going to tell him about this?”

             “You won’t need to,” said Lancelot. “He would have known before we left that Merlin wasn’t coming back to Camelot, and he would have known why. He’s had time to prepare himself. He’s the one who told you about the sacrifice in the first place.”

              “Yes, and I told him that I would be...” Arthur trailed off.

              “Sure you did. And anyone who’d met Merlin for more than fifteen minutes would have known that there was no way in hell he’d ever let you do it,” said Gwaine. “You knew that. We all did.” He swept a sharp glance around the circle, not quite accusing, but demanding recognition of an unflattering fact from each of them. He got it.

              “Gwaine’s right,” said Percival. “He would have found some way to take your place. Whether you wanted him to or not. If he had to hit you over the head and knock you out, that’s what he would have done.”

               “And Arthur, don’t forget the Dorocha attack,” said Leon. “He didn’t have long in any case. This way, at least he died for a reason.”

               “He had all the time in the world,” Arthur said, nipping that comforting little illusion in the bud. “The Cailleach healed him. She gave him his life back. Presumably so that it would hurt more when I took it.”

                Elyan bit his lip. “Do you think that’s what she meant by cheating?”

               “What?”

               “The Cailleach. Do you think she was angry because he was… already dying?”

               Arthur clenched his teeth. He’d known, hadn’t he? He’d known all along that offering Merlin in his place was wrong, was selfish, was dishonorable… “Maybe,” he said. He took a breath. “There’s nothing I can do about it now, in any case. Come. We ride for Camelot.”    

               “And Merlin?” Gwaine asked.

              “We’ll take him home,” said Arthur. “Give him the hero’s funeral he deserves. What else can I do?”

              The other knights nodded somberly. Lancelot looked away, involuntarily picturing the scene and trying not to shudder.  

              He took a deep breath, careful not to let his face betray him. If staging a ceremonial cremation on a warrior’s pyre, with half of Camelot watching in stricken silence as the flames rose higher, brought Arthur even the faintest scrap of comfort, it was all to the good. Funerals were meant for the living, not the dead, who didn’t care. At least Merlin would never know it was happening. And at least Arthur would never know that the gesture he intended as a high honor was a point-for-point recreation of his friend’s worst nightmare.

*.*.*.*.*.*

               “I don’t know how you do it,” Lancelot had said. They’d been sharing a blessedly dull watch after a day that had been far too exciting in all the wrong ways. It was the darkest part of the night, that fey hour when there’s no place for anything but honesty. Even the moon was behind a cloud, so there was no light except for their tiny campfire, and no sound except for what they were making themselves. The other knights were sound asleep— snoring, in several cases. Not Arthur, as it happened, although in the morning Merlin would probably tell him that he had been. And then he’d duck as the other knights snickered. Familiar little rituals to put them all in a better humor. “I’ve tried, but I really just… don’t understand how you do it.”

               “Huh?” Merlin looked up from the hauberk he was desultorily polishing, more for the sake of having something to do with his hands than anything else. “Me? Oh, it’s not that hard. You just take the cloth and rub it in little circles, like this.”

               Lancelot rolled his eyes at the weak joke. “I mean it, Merlin. You shouldn’t be here.”

               “Thanks; too kind. You’re almost as good as Arthur at making me feel appreciated. Tell you what— next time, tell Arthur to take George along on one of these everlasting camping trips, instead. Let me have a day off for once.”

              “As if you’d let him go anywhere without you. And I don’t mean here on patrol. I mean here in Camelot. You’re taking your life in your hands, day after day, and I don’t think I could be that brave.”

              “Says the man who trained his entire life for the privilege of rushing into danger with a sharp stick. While wearing a bright red target on his back so the enemy couldn’t possibly miss him.”

               “A sharp stick?”

              “Sorry. A very sharp stick,” Merlin corrected himself, grinning briefly at another eye roll from Lancelot. Then the grin faded. “It’s just a matter of having something worth dying to protect. That’s all it is. I’m no braver than anyone else. Less, maybe. You— all of you— offer up your own lives every day, every bit as much as I do, and you’re doing it because you want to, not because destiny says that’s what you’re meant for.”    

              “I don’t know anything about destiny—” said Lancelot.

               “—Count yourself lucky.”

               “I do. I also recognize courage when it’s right in front of me. Just keeping your secret is terrifying enough. I can’t imagine what living with it must be like.” 

               “I’m sorry,” Merlin said. “I never meant to burden you with any of that.”

               “Not what I was getting at. But Merlin—just today. Don’t think I didn’t notice how convenient it was when that bandit accidentally tripped over a tree root that hadn’t been there two minutes earlier. Someday, someone else is going to notice, too.”

               “Maybe not. They haven’t yet,” said Merlin, more for form’s sake than because he sounded like he believed what he was saying. “I’m not that bad at keeping secrets.”

              “Merlin.”

               He sighed. “What do you want me to say, Lancelot? That I’ll probably burn someday? I know it. Just like you know that someday an enemy could be just a little stronger, or faster, or luckier than you. I'll burn. It doesn’t change what I have to do, or why I have to do it. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth the price.”

               “I wish I had your equanimity.”

               “So do I. Trust me, the thought scares me. But I’ve had my whole life to get used to the idea. By now, I just…”

               “You just what?”

               “I just hope that when it happens, it isn’t Arthur holding the torch,” said Merlin, matter-of-factly, and went back to his polishing. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

*.*.*.*.*.*

Chapter Text

            Merlin opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was that, somewhat to his surprise, nothing hurt. He glanced down at himself, just to be sure, but everything seemed to be attached and in working order. There wasn’t even any blood on his uncut shirt, which was nice, since he doubted that the spirits would be offering him a change of clothing anytime soon, and walking around drenched in blood was uncomfortable at best.

And there had been so much blood. He clearly remembered being skewered with that sharp little dagger—an experience with very little to recommend it—and he remembered the blood pouring out of him, taking every vestige of warmth with it.

            Really, it was almost funny, in a dark, not-remotely-humorous-at-all sort of way. He’d spent essentially his entire life dreading the fire. He’d been so damned sure that when his luck finally ran out and death caught up with him, it would be in a searing burst of heat and light and crackling wood, and while the thought hadn’t been what anyone sane would call comforting, he’d eventually come to terms with it. Mostly.

            If there’s one thing on which most religions regretfully agree, it’s that the gods love irony, so he probably shouldn’t have been surprised when, instead, his death turned out to be dark and frigid, with the Dorochas’ lipless mouths leeching his warmth, his strength, his life, away by fractions of degrees. The slow, relentless cold, draining him of everything he was while he watched, helpless, trapped within a column of ice, was nothing at all like the bright, quick agony of flame. He hadn’t prepared for that. He hadn’t been prepared for that.

            He hadn’t been entirely prepared to be stabbed, either, but there had been a few relatively bright sides to that part. First and foremost was the simple fact that if he was the one bleeding out on the altar, it meant that Arthur wasn’t, which meant that he still had a chance at bringing about that golden age Kilgharrah insisted he was fated to create, which, in turn, meant that he, Merlin, had done at least some of what he’d been created to do. He could, and did, regret that he hadn’t done more; he could, and did, regret the mistakes he had made along the way, but he hadn’t failed entirely. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

            There was also some bitter comfort in the knowledge that he had kept his secret to the end. Yes, Arthur had put a blade through his heart—and yes, he’d had more than a few nightmares about that very scenario—but he’d done it, insofar as such a thing was possible, as a friend. Arthur had not been forced to realize that Merlin was everything Uther had raised him to despise, so Merlin had not been forced to see hatred in Arthur’s eyes as he drove the knife between his ribs. There had been no fury in his face, none of the contempt or disgust or betrayal or loathing Merlin had dreaded seeing through golden eyes as the steel arced downwards. And, he admitted, when you came right down to it, that was the part he’d truly feared. Dying was one thing— happened to everyone, sooner or later, and frankly, it was a miracle he’d lasted even this long— but the thought of dying at Arthur’s hand, or worse, the thought of Arthur genuinely wanting to kill him, for the magic, or the lying, or both… well, that had hurt.   

              If it had to be Arthur doing it, (gods, why did it have to be Arthur doing it? Not fair, not fair notfair,) this was the best scenario he could have hoped for. It had been as clean, as merciful a kill as the situation allowed, with no intention or attempt to cause more pain than was strictly necessary. Arthur hadn’t killed him because he thought Merlin deserved it, or because he thought it was fair and just and desirable. He had been dispatched as a sacrifice; not slain as an enemy or executed as a sorcerer. It was probably a far easier death than just about anyone else in the world would have granted him. That was something, too. Not much, but something.

              Yes. It was something, at least. It was going to have to be enough.

              He looked around, mildly curious as to what the rest of eternity was going to look like.

              It looked like… nothing. Gray and dim and featureless, like standing in an empty field in the misty predawn, or sitting in a befogged boat in the middle of a calm lake. It seemed to stretch on forever—and probably did—and all was as silent as… well, as a grave.

             No one had ever said that death was going to be boring. 

              He picked a direction at random and started walking. People died every day; there had to be other… what was he now? A ghost? A spirit? Whatever he was, there had to be others like him around somewhere. He hoped so, anyway. Forever was a long time to sit around talking to oneself. And setting out to find them would at least give him something to think about besides trying to convince himself that death wasn’t as bad as all that. If whoever he found was friendly, then so much the better, and if they weren’t, at least he’d be too busy fighting to think about anything else. It was as good a plan as any. He’d find the others.

             Others. With a quick indrawn breath, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he’d find, not just ghosts, but ghosts he knew. He might be able to see Will again. Or his father. Or maybe… (don’t get your hopes up, Merlin, don’t do that to yourself, you idiot, don’t, oh, damn, you’re doing it,) or maybe even Freya.

              He quickened his pace, not sure if he’d been walking for a minute or an hour or a week. Not that it appeared to make any difference; he was still, so far as he could tell, ploughing through an infinity of twilit fog, and might well not have moved at all.

               “Leoht,” he mumbled, not really thinking about what he was doing, and was more than a little surprised when a glowing sphere obediently manifested over his head. Not that it showed him anything with regards to his surroundings, but what it implied was stunning.

                Had his magic followed him to the realm of the dead? How? Why?

                Was there something more he was supposed to do?

                If there was… what was it? How was he supposed to do it? Was there anyone who could tell him what was going on? He didn’t know, he didn’t know what to do, he’d never known, he’d mostly just made it up as he went along because prophecies weren’t instructions, damn it all, cryptic draconic hints and half-glimpses in crystals were next to useless, they were just barely enough to tell him that whatever he was supposed to be doing, he was doing it wrong.

                He stopped short, his mind spinning, as it occurred to him that the people he’d been hoping to see had, every one of them, died in his arms— because he had failed them. Why would any of them even want to see him?

                 Will, brave, stubborn, hotheaded Will, had been killed in a battle that, as he had bitterly pointed out, Merlin could have won in half a minute if he hadn’t been too much of a coward to use the only real talent he had. Balinor had been safe and sound until Merlin had lured him out of hiding and to his death; twenty years of caution gone for nothing. Freya… there was no thought left about her that he hadn’t rehashed in his mind until it was worn smooth and featureless as a river stone. He’d wanted so badly to save her, and he hadn’t. He really hadn’t. The best he could say about his own attempts was that she’d been dead before she went to the fires, instead of after.

                  And then there was Arthur. With a sickening jolt, he realized that he’d been so focused on making sure that Arthur didn’t die today that he hadn’t given a thought to making sure he didn’t die tomorrow. And this was Camelot; there was always going to be another enemy, another peril, another disaster, another something that, (for reasons that, sadly, usually made a great deal of sense,) would make a beeline straight for the citadel with mayhem in mind. So far as Merlin had ever been able to tell, killing Pendragons was the primary goal of just about every living creature in Albion, magical or otherwise, not to mention a fairly large selection of the dead ones, just in case there was any danger of having a quiet day in between emergencies. Making sure that Arthur didn’t die was a full-time job-and-a-half in and of itself, and somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that, after this, he wasn’t going to be there to do it.

            Had this been a terrible mistake? Should he have tried harder to find another way?

            It was far too late for second-guessing and should-haves, and it wasn’t as though panic ever really helped anything, but it was too late for logic, too. He wrapped his arms around himself. And panicked.  

*.*.*.*.*.*

            Dorocha didn’t hunt while the sun was in the sky, but then Dorocha weren’t the only danger in Camelot. The lower town was filled and overfilled with frightened, desperate people, and the tension was spilling over into some very unfortunate, if predictable, outcomes. In short, there were fights. There were attacks. There were fires. There were accidents. There were illnesses.

            There were more patients to tend, more work to do, than one old man could handle alone, especially without the help of his apprentice, and he was trying very hard not to think about his apprentice just then. Too many people needing help; not enough beds, or supplies, or time in the day to give each of them anything even close to the sort of aid they needed. And that was before trying to figure out something respectful to do with the bodies of the ones who didn’t make it, or trying to find enough hands to do it.

            Gaius had commandeered Gwen’s hands without thinking twice, and it wasn’t entirely for her intelligence and compassion. She was doing a good job, especially with the frightened children crowding the infirmary, and he suspected that having something hard to do—something that took energy, and concentration, something where she could see a tangible, positive result from her efforts—would help her more than anything else.

            And having her nearby was helping him more than anything else. He wanted to keep her in sight, because she was all that he currently had of the three young people he had, each in their own way, thought of as almost his. All three of them had loved her, again, each in their own way; two of them still did, and of those two…

            Of those two, in all probability one of them was never going to come home again. He didn’t have much doubt which of them it would be, although given that both of them were equally stubborn, and equally dedicated to protecting the ones they cared about, and equally stubborn, (it really did bear mentioning twice,) and sometimes seemed to be actively looking for opportunities to lay down their lives for one another, there was a distinct possibility that it was going to come down to a footrace as to which of them could make it to the altar first.   

            Whichever one came home was going to need Gwen’s comforting presence, and he was going to need it very, very badly. Keeping her safe and close at hand was the least he could do.

            “Gaius,” she said late one afternoon, coming out of Merlin’s room, which (after a very hasty tidy-up and a very thorough search for incriminating objects,) had been pressed into service as the children’s ward. She had an empty jar in her hand. “Is there any more tincture of motherwort? Nearly all of the children have needed it, and I’m afraid I’ve run out.”

            He nodded. Motherwort was a mild sedative; sleep was the best medicine for many of the traumatized children, and the tincture could help soothe them enough to rest, while not being strong enough to drug them into a stupor. He wasn’t surprised that she had finished off the jar.

            He rather wished he could take some himself, but he ignored that unworthy impulse. “Of course, Gwen,” he said, walking to the appropriate shelf and selecting a jar. It was labeled ‘Motherwort’ in a neat, square hand that wasn’t his, and he narrowed his eyes for a moment against the pain.

            Forcing his fingers to unclench, he brought the jar to Gwen. He even found a faint smile for her. “Here you are, Gwen. Don’t stint if you can help it; sleep is often a better physician than we mere mortals.”

            She went to take it, then drew back her hand. “Is there enough to last, though? I’d hate to use it all up and then find we needed it more later on.”

            “Oh, we will; the first rule of field medicine is that, invariably, you will run out of what you need at the worst possible time. But we have more than enough for a few days yet.” And if this goes on much longer than that, it will mean that Arthur and his men have failed and the world is lost, anyhow, he didn’t say aloud. “That’s one benefit of having an apprentice; it vastly increases the number of tinctures and distillations I can have made up in advance and ready to hand. Especially the more, shall we say, ‘aromatic’ ones.”

            That, as he’d hoped, won him a faint smile in return. “Poor Merlin. Between your medicines, Arthur’s sweaty gambesons, and horse dung, I’m surprised he can still smell anything at all.”

            “To hear him tell it, if anything, his sense of smell has only gotten sharper as a consequence,” said Gaius, forcing himself to speak lightly. “And tell it he does. Repeatedly.”

            She tried to maintain the smile; it didn’t work. “It can’t be much longer until they arrive at the Isle of the Blessed,” she said, pivoting the discussion to what they were both thinking about, anyway. “Don’t you think? It’s been nearly a week. Even accounting for the early stops to prepare for the Dorocha while the sun is in the sky, they have to be nearly there.”

            “Quite likely,” Gaius said. If they’ve made it even that far. “I’m sure they’re going as fast as they can.”

            She fussed with the label; one corner had come loose. “If they—when they get there, how long do you think mending the veil might take?”

            He could see her doing sums in her head—so many days to go, so many days to get back, and did the fact that they no longer needed to stop as early each day balance the fact that the horses would be tired, and the great unknown in the middle, the ritual itself. “I don’t know for certain,” he hedged. “But I can’t imagine it’s too lengthy a process.” A heartbeat. Or, rather, the length of a heartbeat stopping. Don’t think about it. Don’t think…

            She nodded dolefully. “Do you think there will be any way to tell when… I mean, how will we know?”

            “I’m not sure if there will be any external signs,” he said. “It’s possible, of course. I am far from an expert in these matters, and I could find very little detail in what few books were…” unburnt “…available. I suppose when night falls without bringing on further attacks, that will be our surest proof that they were successful.”

            “I’m sure you’re right,” she said wistfully and glanced at the lengthening shadows. There were still several hours before sundown. It was a long time to wait for answers. It wasn’t nearly long enough to prepare for them once they came. “Well. I’d better get back to the children. Thank you, Gaius.”

            “Thank you, Gwen,” he said, as she turned to go. And of course, it was that precise moment that… everything changed.

            Everything and nothing. The ground didn’t shake. The sun still shone, the sky stayed blue, the wind neither picked up nor died away. No thunderclap, no rainbows. Sometimes reality just has no sense of theater.

            But they all felt it. They felt it. It was as if the entire world let out a breath it hadn’t realized it was holding. An ache so familiar as to be almost unnoticed stopped; something missing snapped back into place. They felt it. And they knew.

            Gwen whirled about, her eyes huge. “Gaius…?” She caught her breath; it was almost a sob. “Did you feel that?”

            He put a hand against the table to steady himself, and closed his own eyes for a moment. “Yes, Gwen,” he said softly. “I felt it.”

            All around the room, people were dazedly looking around, asking one another the same questions, getting the same answers. Trying to make sense of the indescribable as a group is, perhaps, easier than doing so alone; they could at least find some solace in the bedrock I did not imagine it. This was real, that was, in the end, the only thing any of them ever really knew for absolute certain.  

            “They did it,” Gwen breathed, her eyes wet. “Gaius, they did it!”

            So were his. “It seems they did,” he said.

            “I knew Arthur would save us,” she said, tears now streaming, unnoticed, down her face in earnest, but she was smiling through the tears. “I knew he would do it.”

            He gathered her in his arms for a minute, let her sob her relief into his shoulder. “Yes. Shhh, Gwen. It’s all right now. We’re safe,” he said softly. “I had no doubt he would protect us.” Whatever the cost. Oh, my poor boys. My poor brave boys…

Chapter Text

“Emrys.”

A figure stepped out of the endless fog; Merlin, startled, jerked to attention.

*.*.*.*.*

            Arthur, slowly and deliberately, took off his cloak and draped it over Merlin. It was already bloodstained past salvaging, and even if it hadn’t been, he’d never have been able to bring himself to wear it again, anyway. There was a better use for it now. “Someone help me pick him up. We’ll wrap him in this for the trip home,” he said, his voice deliberately brusque. Not that it was likely to fool anyone, but still. He couldn’t bear to look at that empty, waxen shell for another moment. Because the longer he looked at the slack features, the more firmly they embedded themselves in his mind, overtaking and overpowering his memories of Merlin’s animated expression and eternally visible emotions. Arthur wanted to remember wide grins and sly mischievous smirks punctuating sarcastic rejoinders. He wanted to remember the sudden way Merlin’s entire demeanor could instantly pivot from seeming younger than his years to decades older and wise to boot. He wanted to remember annoyed grimaces when Arthur went out of his way to be irritating and earnest, wholehearted delight when Arthur did something good and quiet, compassionate glances when Arthur was holding himself together by sheer willpower.

            He didn’t want to remember the desperate way Merlin had stared up at him, blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth as he struggled for one more breath, and he didn’t want to remember the broken thing lying on the altar. That was not Merlin. It wasn’t. And Arthur refused to dishonor the man by remembering him as though it was.

It was bad enough that they were going to have to drape him over the saddle for the long ride back to Camelot, tied into place like a prize stag after a hunt. Being shrouded in the rich crimson fabric, with the proud Pendragon crest picked out in gold thread, was about the only vestige of dignity Arthur could think to give him on this last journey.

            Not that ‘Merlin’ and ‘dignity’ were two words anyone tended to use in tandem all that often, Arthur thought, with a flash of something that might, eventually, when the raw immediacy of death had mellowed into quiet sorrow, become fond humor. Merlin had taken things in his stride, and had never seemed too bothered by objectively embarrassing situations of either his own making or Arthur’s. Oh, he had his own brand of pride, and he got even, openly and unabashedly and with every evidence of complete satisfaction, but with no sign of any festering resentment or shame. It reminded Arthur of a toy he’d had as a very small child—a roly-poly figure carved from wood with a heavy, rounded base. He could tip the figure over, knock it around as hard as he liked, push its painted face clear to the floor, but it always rolled back upright the moment he released his grip. Merlin was like that. No matter what, come famine, flood, or fire, he always got back up.

            Arthur respected that. His first sword instructor—a grizzled old veteran—had introduced himself to his pupil by ‘sparring’ with the five year old. Not a word, no warning, just full-on attack, almost before Arthur had had a chance to draw a sword he had no real idea how to use. He’d given no quarter, sending the boy sprawling half a dozen times in half as many minutes, then hunkered down by a dazed Arthur, who was doing his best not to cry, and told him that life was like that. That it wasn’t a question of not being knocked down, because it was going to happen, any number of times, and it would hurt. The secret of strength, he’d said, gravely extending a hand, was simply getting back up again when it happened. Fall ten times, get up eleven. And then he’d waited to see what Arthur would do. The approving glance he’d given him when Arthur took his hand and scrambled to his feet, sword at the ready, had instantly become the prize Arthur wanted more than almost anything else, second only to the same look from his father. Arthur had learned a great deal from him, but he thought the lesson he’d taken in those first five minutes was probably the most valuable thing the old man had had to teach. Arthur got back up when he fell.    

            Merlin got back up, too. Even when it was Arthur who’d knocked him down. He always got back up.

            He had always gotten back up.

            Wordlessly, the knights helped him wrap Merlin neatly in the concealing fabric. It was not a task unfamiliar to any of them; they were soldiers. They had all lost comrades in battle, and, when possible, (and sometimes it wasn’t,) they had all helped to recover the bodies of the fallen and to afford them what respect they could. They had all wondered, too, if there would be anyone to extend them the same courtesy when and if the time came, and it wasn’t a pleasant thought to have twinging at the corners of the mind. A decent burial was no substitute for the years a man should have had to live, but it was bad enough to steal one without adding insult to injury by depriving him of both.  

Lancelot was the only one of them who recognized that they were, at that very moment, committing a crime—by law, sorcerers were not permitted a formal interment, or any other sort of respectful treatment. By law, their rotting carcasses were left to the ravens, or, at best, dumped into a shallow trench without so much as a rock to mark the place. By law, they could not be memorialized, and ought not to be mourned.

            Well, not this time. And not this sorcerer. There was a certain fierce, aching triumph to that. Maybe, Lancelot thought, once it was over and could not be taken back, he’d tell Arthur what he’d done. Then he’d tell him what Merlin had done. Maybe it would be enough to shake the longstanding distrust of magic Uther had worked so hard to instill in his country. And his son.

            If it did, maybe that could be Merlin’s real monument. His real legacy. He’d been willing enough to die to ransom his prince; if, in addition to that, his death could be the coin that purchased freedom for his kind, Lancelot knew he’d have died a dozen times over and counted it cheap.

            No one else would, but then again, when had Merlin ever backed down from his own opinion just because no one agreed with him?

            It was ever-so-slightly easier to look at the shrouded figure once it had been decently covered. Arthur cleared his throat. “Right,” he said. “We still have a few hours of daylight. Let’s not waste them. There’s work for us to do back in Camelot.” 

            “And the sooner we’re off this godsforsaken rock, the better,” Gwaine muttered.

            Nobody could disagree with either of those sentiments, but no one had anything to add to them, either. Percival looked to Arthur with a question in his eyes, and at his nod, bent over and gently picked Merlin up.

Arthur turned on his heel and strode away from the gory altar, Leon close on his heels, and the others following. They walked through the ruined temple in grim silence; this time, there were no wyverns shrieking defiance or warning—in fact, no sign that anyone or anything alive had ever been there at all.

Including the boat.

*.*.*.*.*.*

            “I’d thought better of you than this, Emrys.”

            The voice was cold; the disappointed contempt in the words was colder still. And, Merlin had learned, any conversation in which he was addressed as ‘Emrys’ had a better-than-average chance of being horrible. No one who called him that ever had anything good to tell him.

There was no mistaking that voice, though; he knew precisely which of the many, many people who’d thought better of him as they delivered their bad news was speaking. He turned to face the Cailleach, her empty eyes all but boring holes in him. “What?”

            “I said that I’d thought better of you,” she repeated. “Or hoped, I suppose is a better word. For hundreds of years, your coming was foretold. So much was promised us.” Her mouth twisted. “Prophets lie; no one has ever denied that, but I’d not expected you to spit on destiny quite so brazenly. For shame, Emrys. For shame.” 

            “I… tried,” Merlin said. “I tried my best to help Arthur become the king he’s meant to be. From the day I stepped foot in Camelot—”

            “Oh, yes, yes,” the Cailleach mocked. “You tried. For how long, Emrys? A year? Two? How long did you ‘try’ before you lost interest in the future you were created to bring about? How long did you ‘try’ before you abandoned your king?”

            Merlin’s jaw dropped. Of all the accusations she could have chosen to make, that was perhaps the one he’d expected least. And the one that hurt most. “Abandoned him? I never abandoned him!” Freya—his brief dream of running away with her, of building a quiet, peaceful life that could be theirs, and no dragons or prophecies or curses—came briefly to mind, but guiltily, he thrust the thought away. Surely, spending two or three days pretending to believe that a man named Merlin was allowed to want a chance at happiness before a sorcerer called Emrys bowed his head under the yoke again wasn’t so unforgivable as all that. Surely it didn’t outweigh the years of faithful service, or the sacrifices he’d made along the way, or literally laying down his life for Arthur. On multiple occasions, no less.

            …Did it?

            “And yet you’re here,” she snapped. “Instead of where you belong. Instead of fulfilling the prophecies and bringing about the age of Albion. What do you call that?”

            “I called it the least damaging outcome I could contrive,” Merlin snapped right back. “Would you have preferred it if I’d let Arthur go through with his idiotic plan to sacrifice himself? He’s not going to fulfil any prophecies if he’s dead.”

            “You let him even consider that?”

            “Yeah. Sure. I ‘let’ him. Because Arthur always takes my advice on everything,” Merlin said. “Hangs on my every word. It’s not like he’s the most stubborn, pig-headed ass in the Five Kingdoms or anything like that—”

            “Second most stubborn, I’d say,” said the Cailleach, and there was, perhaps, just a glimmer of snide humor in her voice.

            Merlin glowered at her. 

            “Two sides of the same coin, indeed,” she said, going back to that inevitable old metaphor. Maybe, Merlin thought wearily, there was a standard phrasebook given to all magical and/or supernatural creatures, full of gnomic utterances, obscure insinuations, half-baked riddles, and worn clichés, and there was some sort of competition to see how many of them they could cram into any given conversation. If she started in on more old chestnuts about his destiny, or how the half couldn’t hate what made it whole, Merlin thought there was a fairly good chance that he was going to scream, and if that happened, he wasn’t sure when, or if, he’d be able to stop.

            “I did my best,” said Merlin. “He’s alive. The veil is mended. Camelot is as safe as it ever is. He can still do all the wonderful things he’s supposed to do, even without me.”

            “But he won’t, Emrys. He won’t. Not without your aid. You had no right to shirk your duty, and all of Albion will suffer for your dereliction.” Her lip curled. “And you had less than no right to make me party to your deception, or to cheat the dead. That’s not something I can forgive, Emrys.”

            His head snapped up. “Cheat the dead? Look, I’m sorry if my death was somehow inconvenient for you, but if it’s any comfort, I’m not too happy about it either. Do you think I wanted to die? Even if I did, you saw Arthur’s face! Do you think I wanted to hurt him like that?”

            She frowned, but not as though she was angry, this time—just confused. Something he’d said didn’t make sense to her.      

            And that was her problem, he thought bitterly, crossing his arms with a scowl. This didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, either.

*.*.*.*.*

            The knights stood, aghast, at the edge of the water, where the boat wasn’t. Leon looked across the expanse of water, where the horses weren’t, either. Nor was any of their gear, which, by this point, didn’t even surprise him.  

            “She’s not letting us leave the island,” he said, numb.

            “I knew it,” Elyan muttered. “I knew this was too easy.”

            Gwaine’s hands curled into fists. “Easy? What about this seemed easy to you?”

            “The part where that evil old hag let any of us go,” Elyan snapped back. “She’s toying with us, Gwaine! How do you not see that? Why in hell would she be satisfied with one half-dead servant when she could demand the rest of us as well?”

            “That’s nonsense,” Lancelot said, before Gwaine could object to Elyan’s phrasing. “We all saw it. The veil is closed. It’s done.” 

            “For now,” Elyan said. “It’s closed for now. What’s to stop her opening it again, or threatening to open it unless we… you know. She’s not going to let any of us out of here alive.”

            Gwaine’s expression was little short of murderous. “The hell she’s not,” he ground out, and began taking off his armor, throwing each piece down on the ground with a clang.

            “What are you doing?” Leon asked, wincing a bit as he flung his vambrace against a rock, denting it.

            “You can stay here until doomsday, if you like. I’m going to swim to the other side. I don’t need the damned boat; I’ve crossed my share of lakes and rivers without one. And I’m taking off my armor because swimming while encased in iron doesn’t strike me as the cleverest of notions.”

            “We could make a raft to carry… things,” Percival offered, gently putting Merlin down and gesturing towards the straggly trees. “Cut down a few saplings, tie them together into a platform, and drag it along behind us as we swim. If the horses are gone and we have to walk, we’ll need some way to carry… our things for the journey home.”

            Delicately put. Gwaine shrugged himself out of his chain mail and let it fall in a messy pile with the rest of it. “We’re not walking. I’ll find our horses. Or steal some,” he muttered, wading out into the water. It was several days ride back to Camelot, which meant at least a week’s walk, and there was only so long a fresh corpse stayed fresh. If they were going to bring Merlin home, walking was, quite simply, not an option.   

            Gwaine was a fairly strong swimmer, and the water was not rough. There was absolutely no reason for him to find himself straining against the current, unable to make any forward progress, and the longer it went on, the more obvious it became that he was being deliberately kept in the shallows. After the third time he was flung back on the shore, Lancelot put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s no use, Gwaine,” he said. “Magic brought us here, and magic is keeping us here. We…” he swallowed. “We don’t have any way of countering that.” Anymore.

“What would you suggest we do, then?” asked Elyan. “Sit here and twiddle our thumbs as we wait for the Cailleach to come back?”

            “We might have to,” said Leon. He turned to Arthur. “This is her domain, sire; she makes the rules, and we have little choice but to bow to her will. And sire… forgive me for saying it, but I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t aimed primarily at you.”

            Arthur gritted his teeth. “If it is, then so be it. As I told you, that was my intention from the first.”

            “No. Not like that,” Leon said. “If I’m right, it’s not your blood she wants. I think she was lying about that ‘three drops’ business. I think she just wanted to see your reaction, first to having to perform the sacrifice itself and to then being told that it had been an error. And now, I think she wants to see how much more she can demand of you… and how you’ll respond.”

            “You mean, how many more she can demand of me.” 

            Leon swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

            There was a long silence. Lancelot frowned. “If that’s truly what’s going on here… you think this is a test?”

Arthur found himself thinking of a table by the sea, set with two glasses, a boy he couldn’t quite figure out sitting across from him. That had been a test, too. More shame to him for forgetting that lesson; he’d had the courage to go through with what he’d known was right, once, and he had prevailed. He’d drunk the poison for his people, rather than letting his faithful shadow take his place. How had he grown so cowardly in a few short years?

            “A test. Or a punishment,” Elyan growled. “She was angry when she left the first time.”

            “Not with you, though,” said Percival. “Remember? She admitted that you probably weren’t the one who’d deceived her.” He looked around the circle. “I don’t think this has anything to do with you, sire. From where I was standing, it looked like she was angrier at Merlin than anyone else.”

            “Good! So am I!” Gwaine spat.

            Lancelot looked stunned. “Gwaine…?”

            “He didn’t… he could have given half a thought to the rest of us before he went and…oh, gods.” Gwaine cut himself off with a scowl. “I’m not blaming you, princess,” he finally said. “But he was so damned focused on keeping you safe that I don’t think it ever even occurred to him that we wouldn’t just shrug our shoulders and go on our merry way after he was gone. And that hurts. I am mad as hell, and it hurts.”

            Arthur snorted inelegantly. “It does,” he said, after a long moment. “But please—go right on ahead and blame me. Then at least we’ll agree on something.”

*.*.*.*.*.*

Chapter Text

            They made camp on the bank. Or, rather, since they didn’t have tents, bedrolls, cookware, provisions, or anything else, they built a driftwood fire and sat gloomily around it. Lancelot and Percival sharpened sticks into spears and prowled along the banks for a while looking for likely fishing spots.

            “It should have been me. I was going to volunteer as the sacrifice,” Lancelot said after a while, surprising even himself. “Because I knew he was going to, and I didn’t want that to happen.”

            “I know,” Percival said quietly, examining the point on his spear in minute and unnecessary detail. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t. I’m sorry he did, but I’m glad it wasn’t you.” There was silence for a while, then Percival finished the thought. “I’m glad it wasn’t me, too. It shames me to say it, but I’m grateful to be alive.”

            “Yeah,” Lancelot admitted. “It would have been… it was a bad way to die.”

            “Was it? You mean the knife, or the friend’s hand holding it?” Percival asked. “Because we’ve both seen worse.”

            “Both. Neither. I don’t know what I mean,” Lancelot said. “The futility of it, maybe. If the Cailleach was telling the truth… he died for nothing. And if she was lying, if Leon’s right, then he still died for nothing.”

            “Closing the veil wasn’t nothing,” Percival reminded him. “Stopping the dorocha wasn’t nothing, either. And keeping Arthur from sacrificing himself is about as far from ‘nothing’ as I can imagine.”

            “We’re not even sure that we’ve done any of that.”

            “He was sure. So far as he ever knew, he died saving the people he cared about. He died happy, Lancelot. I can only hope that when my time comes, it’s for as good a reason.”

            “It still should have been me,” Lancelot said. “It should have. And I… I’m glad it wasn’t. Gods forgive me; I’m glad it wasn’t.”

            Percival didn’t bother pointing out that each and every one of them felt the same way, that it was the same way everyone felt after a battle was done; Lancelot knew that was well as he did. He just put a hand on Lancelot’s shoulder and gripped it, in a silent you-are-not-alone that was simultaneously not nearly good enough and the best—maybe even the only—possible response to the situation.  

*.*.*.*.*.*

            The Cailleach’s voice had lost much of its accusatory bite. She almost sounded… uncertain. “Emrys, you do understand why we are disappointed that you’ve chosen to leave the Once and Future King’s side?”

            “I know,” he said. “And believe me, it’s not as though I wanted to. But you don’t understand Arthur, and he doesn’t understand how important he is. He would have done it. Killed himself, that is. He would have. I should know. The last time we were in this sort of situation, he tricked me into looking away for a moment while he poisoned himself.”

            She looked bewildered for a moment, then nodded. “The unicorn. The situations are not precisely parallel, though, are they? Last time, it was undeniably his fault, and just as undeniably his responsibility to atone for his error.”

            Merlin shook his head. “I won’t say the guilt didn’t have an effect on him, but that wasn’t why he did it. He would have done the same thing no matter who had killed the unicorn, just because he sees it as his duty to protect his people. All of them. The nobles, the knights, the peasants… even me. Everyone but himself, you know? It’s what will make him a great king, but it can be a liability, too. It keeps him from seeing the big picture, sometimes.”

            “And what is the ‘big picture,’ Emrys?”

            “That the future of Albion is resting squarely on his shoulders. Maybe volunteering to be the sacrifice was the noble thing to do, but he couldn’t be allowed to do it. Honor be damned, he couldn’t. And he’d never have agreed to letting someone else go in his place.”

            “But he did agree, didn’t he?”

            “I was dying anyway. What difference did it make how it happened? Either way, I wasn’t going to be able to help him anymore.”

            She blinked. “You were what?”

            Merlin gave her an odd look. “Um. Dying, remember? Gaius told us before we left; no one survives the touch of the dorocha. And I was in so much pain I was almost sorry I’d made it as long as I had. I wanted it to end.”

            She stared at him. “Twenty minutes or twenty years,” she repeated. “You meant it.”

            “Of course I meant it,” Merlin said with a shrug. “I mean, we both know that it was going to be closer to the former than the latter, but, well. I gave what I had.”

            She kept staring at him, utter disbelief in her empty-grave eyes. “You didn’t know,” she murmured. Then, correcting herself, she repeated, “You don’t know. Oh, Emrys. I misjudged you.”

            He swallowed. Her approval was as overpowering as her anger. “I just did what I had to,” he said meekly. “My job was keeping him alive. I did that as long as I could.”

            “And if you were sent back to Arthur’s side?”

            His entire face lit up with hope. “You’d do that?”

            “It isn’t my decision to make,” she evaded, and watched the hope die.

*.*.*.*.*

             Morgana smoothed her tangled black hair into something resembling order, and her hands didn’t shake as she did it. No. They did not, and she clenched her fists to prove it.

            Involuntarily, she glanced over at the bed where Morgause had spent the last months of her life, then looked away. She clasped a hand over her bracelet, stroked the worn silver for comfort.

            It didn’t compare—didn’t begin to compare—with her sister’s kind eyes and loving voice. It wasn’t a patch on the safety Morgana had felt, sheltered and upheld by the iron-hard will and towering strength behind those kind eyes.

            But it was all she had left.

            A bracelet, and a purpose.

            Camelot would be hers. Hers. She would sit on her father’s throne and wear her brother’s crown, wiping away the memory of both men like so much dust. She would put her onetime maidservant back in her place and keep her there; the throne of Camelot was Morgana’s by right, and soon it would be hers by conquest—Gwen would not, could not be allowed to sully it. And as for the serving boy who had become such a thorn in her side… oh, she had plans. He would beg for death before she was through with him; she wasn’t sure, yet, when, or if, she would be merciful and oblige.

In short, everything she had been denied would be hers. If her so-called ‘family’ would not give her what she was owed, then she would simply take it. Her sister had died to give her the opportunity to set things right, to reshape the world in their own image, and she would not dishonor the sacrifice of the only person who had ever really loved her.

            She could feel the miasma of the torn veil all around her. This, this was her sister’s legacy. This horror, this worse-than-death choking the world into submission was her weapon, her sword and dagger, bought with her sister’s heart’s blood.

            (Morgause’s blood on Morgana’s hands. Her unshaking hands. Sometimes she thinks she can still feel it, spurting hot and fierce on her cold skin, the colder stone. Blood is not red in the moonlight; it’s black as pitch. She hadn’t known that. She wished she didn’t know it now.)

            Morgana sat up at night, safely encased in a ring of blazing fires, listening for the shrieks of the restless dead. She loved the sound, loved knowing that they were near. And if she wondered if one of the hungry spirits might be Gorlois, might be Vivienne, might be Morgause, surely that wasn’t weakness. There was nothing wrong with wanting to think that her beloved dead hadn’t abandoned her entirely. There was nothing wrong with not wanting to be alone.

            She felt it when the veil was mended, when the dead were called back to the other side of reality. When they left her bereft and orphaned once again. Plans destroyed and heart broken and so utterly, utterly alone.

            And she wept.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

            “Sire? What are you going to do?”

            Arthur didn’t take his eyes off the fire. “For now, Leon, I’m going to wait to see if Lancelot and Percival had any luck catching fish. I’m hungry.”

            Leon nodded. “Yes, sire. And… after that?”

            He glanced at the horizon, then back at the fire. “I suppose the sun will be just about down by then. We’ll find out if the dorocha really are gone. If they are, who knows, we just might get a decent night’s sleep. Gods know I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

            The look on Leon’s face made it clear that he’d hoped for a better answer than that, but he didn’t say anything.

            Arthur relented. “In the morning, I assume one of two things will happen. Either the Cailleach will let us off the island, in which case we go home. Or else she’ll appear to make whatever demand she will. Either way, we’ll know where we stand, which is more than we do now.”

            “Which do you think more likely?” said Elyan.

            He shrugged. “I’m not making any predictions. Every expectation I’ve had since this whole nightmare started has been wrong. All we can do is wait and see.”

            Gwaine’s voice was eerily calm. “And if she demands another sacrifice?”    

            Arthur looked him dead in the eye. “Then she’ll have one. The better question is this—what will you do if she demands a third?”

*.*.*.*.*.*

            The Cailleach looked at the young man standing before her. He wore human frailty like an ill-fitting cloak; she could see all the places where his true being shone through, and could scarcely understand how anyone was fooled by the flimsiness of the disguise. Still less could she understand how he was fooled by his own masquerade, but she did at least understand that, somehow, he was. He genuinely thought that he was human. And he genuinely thought that he could die. That he had died.

            She wasn’t sure if she pitied his ignorance or envied it.

            She had been so certain that it was all some sort of clever trap—that Emrys, secure in his immortality, had deliberately mocked the sacrifice she had demanded. That he had used the appalling fact of the torn veil and the tormented dead—a crime that had hurt her on levels most beings could not even imagine—as an opportunity to escape from a task he found tiresome. What, after all, could have been easier than to lie on the stone, feign death for an hour, then go off, free of his obligations?

            What could have been less honorable? Less forgivable?

            She had known from the beginning that she couldn’t keep him, couldn’t hold him on the other side of the veil for long, but she had a little time, and she’d intended to use every instant of it to show him the error of his ways. And even after she had to let him back into the world of men, she had intended to punish him for his dishonesty and disrespect, for his dereliction of duty, for his sheer unworthiness of the gifts he’d been given. There were ways. She had the means. She would have used them.

            No one ever really likes admitting that they were wrong, but she could not help but feel a bit relieved that, in this case, she had been. A world where Emrys was not what he needed to be was not a world anyone would care to live in.

            She toyed with the idea of telling him. Would it be better, or worse for him if he knew what he was? There was no real question that he was as dedicated to the Once and Future King as anyone could ask—maybe even a little too dedicated. But he was also reckless—if jumping in front of a dorocha hadn’t proved that, the insolent way he’d argued with her certainly had. What would happen if he knew that he could not be killed? Would he decide that he no longer had to worry about the consequences of his actions and be even more reckless, or would he realize that immortality meant that consequences could last literally forever and grow timid?

            Was it even her decision to make? Perhaps there was some reason that he had been left so woefully ignorant. So wretchedly untutored. So… human.  

            The corners of her mouth quirked faintly up. She knew what she had to do.

Chapter Text

            The sun set. The moon rose. The dorocha were conspicuous only by their absence.

            Lancelot, supposedly, took first watch, but it was rather a moot point, since no one could fall asleep anyway.

            He didn’t bother keeping his voice down. “It appears, sire, that the Cailleach has kept her word after all, at least with regard to the dorocha.”

            “So it seems,” said Arthur, sounding brusque and bored. Merlin, he thought, had known him well enough that he would have heard the emotion under the disinterest. He wasn’t sure if anyone else ever had, or would have cared to know if they did.   

            “Maybe that’s why she kept us here overnight,” Percival said hopefully. “To prove that the bargain was kept.”

            “Gods, I hope you’re right,” Elyan murmured. 

            Leon cleared his throat. “If the boat hasn’t returned by morning, perhaps we should consider conducting the funeral here.”

            “No. We’re taking him home,” Gwaine said, his voice harsh.

            “I understand your feelings. But that might be what she objected to. He… technically, he’s hers, now. Leaving him here might be the only way she’ll allow us to go home.”

              Arthur added that to his list of horrible thoughts that he really hadn’t needed Leon to share. “We’re just upsetting ourselves with what-ifs now. In the morning we’ll see what she wants, and I’ll deal with it then. For now, get some damned sleep.”

            Lancelot tossed another log on the fire and set his jaw. Percival leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll take second watch,” he said quietly. “You get some rest.”

            Lancelot nodded. Percival, he knew, understood loss, and, more than that, understood when not to talk about it. He stretched himself out under his red cloak and tried not to think about morning. Eventually, somewhat to his own surprise, he drifted off.

*.*.*.*

            Merlin ran his fingers through his hair nervously as the Cailleach continued to say nothing. When, at long last, she smiled, he gulped in queasy anticipation of her judgment.

            “Well, Emrys,” she said softly. “It appears that we are at something of an impasse.”

            He shook his head.  “I’m not fighting with you. I’m at your mercy,” he said.

            “I’ve been told that I have no mercy, Emrys,” she reminded him.

            “Then I’m at your disposal, I suppose.”

            And he really believed it, she thought. “What do you think I ought to do?”

            He bit his lip. “I couldn’t say. It’s not my place to tell you your business.”

            “What do you want me to do, then? Surely you can tell me that.”

Hopeful and imploring, he said, “You… you said you could send me back?”

            “And if I could? What would you do then?”

            “What I’d prefer to do is go back to serving the Once and Future King. If I’m allowed.”

            “And if I refuse? If I order you to have nothing to do with him, to cease meddling in his destiny?”

            “Meddling?” Merlin wasn’t taking that one lying down. “It’s my destiny, too.”

            “It was,” the Cailleach said, heavy emphasis on the past tense. “The dead have no destiny.”

            “If you send me back, I won’t be dead any longer.”

            “Perhaps not. But if I were to demand a price of you in exchange for that boon? The world is wide, Emrys. There are places other than Camelot you could go; kings other than Arthur you could serve if you choose. If I were to demand that you sever the cord between the two of you? If I let you return to your life at the cost of what was your fate, what then? What is your answer?”

            “That you might as well keep me here,” Merlin said. “I won’t leave him, no matter what you say.”

            “Good. Remember that the next time you decide to throw yourself at death. Even you may someday run out of miracles,” she said, a hint of iron in her voice. She gestured, and the veil appeared before them. “Go now, Emrys. I will not detain you here.”

            He blinked at her. “…Really?” he asked, like a child, unable to believe it could be that easy. “Thank you, my Lady. Thank you!”

            “Do not thank me, Emrys,” she said. “I do you no favors. Here is peace, and rest. You have suffered; I have seen it. You have lived your life in fear— there is nothing to fear in my realm. Back there you will face dangers you cannot yet imagine. And there will be pain, fear, unendurable loss. Friends will become enemies; enemies will appear in the guise of friends. The worst burdens of your past will seem lighter than the brightest day of your future. The day may come when you curse me for giving you back your life.”

            “I know,” he said. Life was like that. “But that day is not today. Why are you trying to talk me out of it?”

            “I told you; I have no mercy. Perhaps I simply want you to see that destiny is not simply something that happens to you. It is something you must choose, over and over again, and then accept the price of that choice. Because the alternative is worse. Do you understand?”

            “I think so,” he said. He walked to the veil, took a deep breath. “And I’m grateful for another chance.”

            “As well you should be. It’s an opportunity given to few. Remember—dying for a cause is often easier and pleasanter than living for one, and you are not intended for the easy path.” She smiled. “Farewell, Emrys.” 

            “Farewell,” he said awkwardly. “I… I suppose I’ll see you again, someday.”

            She said nothing as he stepped towards the veil. It wasn’t until it had sealed behind him that she murmured, “No. You won’t.”

            And if a tear rolled slowly down her death-pale face, it surely had nothing to do with him. Surely not. Compassion was not in her nature; she said so herself.

*.*.*.*.*

            At dawn, Arthur stopped pretending to sleep and stood up. There was just enough grayish, early-morning light to make it abundantly clear that the boat had not magically returned. Truth be told, he hadn’t expected it to. Without a word, he stalked into the temple complex, determinedly not looking at the red-draped bundle on the way.

            The other knights, who hadn’t slept much, either, traded awkward looks.

            “Should we… go with him?” Percival finally asked.

            “I wouldn’t,” Lancelot said. “Let him face her without an audience.”

            “But what if she… I don’t know, attacks him?”

            Gwaine snorted. “She’s the Keeper of the Gates of Death. You’re a man with an oversized butter knife. What do you think you could actually do if she does attack?”

            Percival grimaced, but either agreed or at least chose not to pursue the matter any further.

*.*.*.*.*

            Arthur stormed into the central chamber and looked around. It was empty, with only the stained altar for company. “Hey!” he shouted. “Cailleach! Come back!”

            Nothing happened.

            “Tell me what you want from me!”

            Nothing happened.

            “For the love of the gods, be fair! You told me that I should have asked you what to do—well, I’m asking! Why are you keeping me here?”

            Nothing happened.

            “I’m not leaving until I get an answer,” said Arthur. “If it’s me you want, then say so. If it’s something I’ve done that offended you, then tell me that and I’ll atone. But I don’t know what you want!”

            Nothing happened.

            “I killed my only friend to save my people,” Arthur said, his voice broken. “And to please you. After that, there’s nothing worse you could ask of me, so just ask it and let’s be done with one another.”

            Nothing happened.

            “I won’t leave until you either answer me or let my men go.”

            Nothing happened.

He began to feel silly.

It got harder and harder to look away from the rusty stains on the altar and the ground surrounding it.

“Please. Please. Just tell me what I’ve failed to do so I can do it. Let this end.”

“Is that really what you want, Camelot’s king?”

Arthur spun on his heel. The Cailleach was standing there, her dead eyes meeting his. “Yes,” he said simply. “If the reason you’ve kept us here on this island is some failing of mine, then I beg you to tell me how to make things right.”

 “Why do you assume that I’m keeping you here?”

Arthur opened his mouth, closed it. Thought about it for a moment, and tried again. Making assumptions had been fatal, in every sense of the word, the first time around; the last thing he needed was to compound the error. “We were unable to leave the island,” he said carefully. “The boat was gone, and we could not swim to shore. Unless that was a coincidence?”

“No,” she said.

“No. So I thought that if we were unable to leave, it was because there was something more that needed to be done. We… guessed, but I thought it would be simpler to ask you what it might be.”

“Very good,” she said. “A king should know when to ask for help.”

He bowed his head. “And I’m asking.”

She gave him a thin smile. “And if my answer is that I kept you here for reasons of my own, and that no actions of yours, either taken or omitted, had anything to do with it?”

 He swallowed. “Then I suppose I can only request your permission to leave.”

“Very well,” she said. “Go.”

He blinked at her. That had been too easy. “My men as well?”

She shrugged. “What would I want with them?”

He let out a relieved breath. “I thank you, my lady.” He hesitated, not quite ready to leave.

She gave him a long look. “Was there anything else?”

“Just a foolish question,” Arthur said. “It’s just… my… is Merlin at peace?”

She shook her head gravely. “No, young king,” she said. “Nor will he be. One such as he is not meant for peace.”

“…I see,” Arthur mumbled, sick at heart and sorry he’d asked. “I want to take him back to Camelot,” he said defiantly.

She shrugged again. “As well you should.”

“Is the boat back?”

“It will be by the time you return to the shore,” she promised.

“Thank you,” said Arthur. To the empty air.

*.*.*.*.*

Arthur walked back to the campsite. It was deserted, except for Merlin, who for obvious reasons wasn’t going anywhere. He peered into the distance; on the far shore, the horses were once again picketed. Magically reappeared, and he didn’t doubt for a moment that the boat would do likewise. With any luck, his knights would, too, preferably before it was time to row back to Camelot.

“I’m angry with you,” Arthur said conversationally. “Just so you know. You really are the worst servant I’ve ever seen or heard of. You’re supposed to be here, making your usual slapdash attempt at packing up camp and getting us ready to go home. And complaining about it. Incessantly. Gods, what I wouldn’t give to have to tell you to shut up, just once more.”

He picked up a stick and stirred the ashes of their campfire; it was well and truly out, so that was one less thing to do before they left, he supposed. There was nothing else to pack up.

“But I’ll tell you one thing, and I hope to hell you can hear me. I’m going to try to be the king you always told me I could be. You’ll see. I’m going to…” he trailed off. He couldn’t bring himself to promise to make Merlin proud; he’d promised his father the same thing a thousand times and had never once managed it. Saying any of this soppy stuff out loud was bad enough without bringing the specter of Uther’s eternal disappointment into the matter. “…Anyway. I’m so sorry. Sleep well, old friend. And I swear to you, when I see you in Avalon…” No. No, it was no use; this wasn’t who they were. “When I see you in the next life, I’ll kick your scrawny backside for leaving me alone to do the job. You had no business being a hero. You hear me? None.”

Merlin had made it so easy for him to be just plain Arthur. Not the crown prince, not the future king, not even the first knight. Merlin joked with him, just as if he was a real person instead of a marble statue in a crown. He didn’t angle for favors aside from the occasional stolen sausage or a day off; he had no agenda, no axe to grind. There wasn’t that chasm Arthur’s rank usually imposed between himself and the rest of the world, because the idiot had refused to acknowledge that it was there.

Arthur had never had that before. He was grimly aware that he was never going to have it again. He told himself that it didn’t matter. He couldn’t let it matter.

The other knights eventually straggled back to the campsite, each with an armload of firewood and a shamefaced expression when they got a look at Arthur’s frozen fury.

“I thought… just in case, sire,” Leon tried to explain.

“I know what you thought,” Arthur said wearily, and nodded at the shore, where the boat was waiting. “It’s not necessary. She’s sending us home. All of us.”

“Oh. Then… you were successful?”

“Something like that,” said Arthur, because saying ‘I shouted at her until she lost interest’ didn’t seem likely to inspire much confidence. “Shall we go?”

Percival took one slow step towards Merlin, waited for Arthur’s nod, and gently picked him up. Then he swore, and dropped him, suddenly pale.

“What the hell are you—!” Gwaine started, then froze midword.

“Ow…” came a voice none of them had ever expected to hear again.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Chapter Text

“Did you…?” Elyan broke the silence. “Did he…?”

The bundled cloth wriggled in a decidedly not-dead sort of way.

The knights just stared at it, frozen with an unholy mixture of hope and disbelief.  

            Lancelot recovered first. “Don’t just stand there! Help me get him out!”

            Gwaine, spurred out of his shock, dropped to his knees and began tearing at the knots holding the cloak together. “Take it easy, mate,” he told Merlin, patting what he hoped was a shoulder through the layers of cloth. “You’re going to be all right.”

            “…Okay?”

            “Yeah. We’re going home, Merl. We’re all going home.”

            Lancelot lost patience with the knots and ripped part of the cloak free, revealing the face of a very dazed-looking Merlin. “Hang on. You’re still wrapped pretty tightly. Who tied these knots, anyway?”

            Merlin blinked at him. “I think a better question is, why am I tied up?”

            “So we could take you back to Camelot,” Leon explained, looking just about as dazed. “We were, that is, I thought we should, well… do it here, but Arthur insisted. It had to be at the citadel. In public.”

            “What had to be at the citadel?” Merlin asked. No one answered. No one needed to. He saw the stack of firewood for himself, and what little blood was in his face drained away. “…Oh.” He took a shaky breath.

            Lancelot saw the complicated mix of emotions washing across his face. The grief, the disappointment, the fear. The heartbreaking acceptance. Desperate to head things off before things got any worse, put a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to meet his eyes, and shook his head slightly. “A knight’s funeral, he meant. Full honors.” Fire was fire was fire, Lancelot thought sadly. How could the same medium convey both solemn honor and deepest degradation?  

            “Oh,” said Merlin again, in a different tone. Some color came back to his face. “Um… I’m touched, but, er, thanks for waiting?”

            And wasn’t that a thought to inspire nightmares—if they hadn’t waited. If Merlin hadn’t woken up in time. Arthur suppressed a shudder. If he, himself, hadn’t gotten stubborn and insisted on a hero’s sendoff, they might have buried or burned him last night. Oh, gods, if he’d woken up while on the pyre…

            Too many ifs. And none of them mattered anymore; they hadn’t happened. Don’t think about it. Don’t think don’t thinkdon’tthink… 

            The last of the knots finally yielded, and Merlin sat up. The cloak fell from his shoulders, revealing his blood-soaked tunic. It had dried to a stiff, ugly brown. He looked down at himself. “I… um, guess I’ve got some laundry to do when we get home,” he said, with a sickly attempt at a grin. He noticed the large tear over his heart, poked his fingers through it. Pale, unmarked skin showed through the gap. “Looks like some mending, too.”

            Arthur made a mental note to ‘accidentally’ tear one of his shirts, badly enough that he could legitimately pass it on to Merlin as a castoff without it looking too suspicious. Because laundry or no laundry, mending or no mending, Merlin was never wearing that tunic ever again. Just looking at it was making Arthur sick.

            Gwaine made a frustrated noise. “All right, if no one else will ask the question, I will. How in hell did you come back from the dead?”

            Merlin looked embarrassed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Really. I don’t.”

            “You have to remember something!”

            “I remember the Cailleach,” he said slowly. “I was on the other side of the veil, and she came to talk to me. She said I could go back.”

            “Just like that?” Arthur asked.

            “You said it yourself. She didn’t want me,” Merlin said. “And I know, I know, you’re going to say that you can’t blame her for that.”

            That wasn’t what Arthur was going to say at all, but he forced himself to smirk as if it was. If this was how Merlin wanted to play it, Arthur would follow his lead. For now. “Yes, yes, very funny. What did she really say?”

            “That I can’t leave my job, because you’d get into far too much trouble if I weren’t there to drag your royal arse out of danger every other week.”

            “Your first try was more believable,” said Arthur. He felt, to his horror, his throat clogging up, and cleared it forcefully. “Anyhow. We’ve got a long ride back to Camelot. You can give us the interminable details on the way.”

            Merlin grinned at him. Arthur had the horrible feeling that Merlin had somehow heard everything Arthur wasn’t saying. He had an irritating habit of doing that.

            Oh, gods. What if he’d heard some of the things Arthur had said? What if Merlin’s ghost had been sitting by the campfire listening to Arthur having an emotional breakdown?

            He was going to have to make the man’s life a living hell for weeks. Months, maybe. However long it took to drive that memory out of his head. In fact, if Merlin had heard all that rot about making him proud, one of them might actually have to die for real. Possibly of embarrassment.

            “And that’s it?” Gwaine said. “That’s all? What else did you see?”

            “Nothing,” Merlin insisted. “Just her. And a lot of gray fog. I don’t know. Maybe I never got past the entrance to the next world, and if she’d let me go a little further I’d have seen something a little less… dull.”

            “Dull?” Leon sounded as though he was choking on something. “You died, and then you came back to life, and all you have to say about the experience is that it was dull?”

            Merlin looked at him, shrugged whimsically. “Well, it was.”

            Lancelot couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “Only you, Merlin. Only you. It’s good to have you back,” he said affectionately when he could speak again.

            That broke the floodgates, and for a few confused moments there was nothing but hugs and back slaps and people talking over one another. 

            After the initial catharsis, Merlin cleared his throat. “So, what does everyone think of the idea of getting into that boat and going anywhere that isn’t here?”

            “Best idea you’ve had yet,” Arthur said. “Which isn’t actually saying all that much, but yes.”

            “Hey! I have plenty of good ideas!”

            “Merlin, your last brilliant idea was letting me stab you. Tell me you think that sounds reasonable.”

            “It worked, didn’t it?” He looked affronted. “And anyway, you had the same idea, just the other way around.”

            “And who was the first person to tell me that I was being an idiot?”

            “Just today, or going back to your childhood?”

            “Merlin…?”

            “Shut up?”

“Another brilliant idea. Now come on. We need to get back to Camelot as quickly as we can.”

Merlin reached down and picked up the blood-smeared cloak, folded it into a messy wad with no apparent care for either the expensive fabric or the royal emblem with which it was emblazoned, and tucked it under his arm.

            “Leave it,” Arthur ordered.

            “What? Why? All it needs is a good wash. And you’ll be cold without it.”

            The idea of fastening the erstwhile shroud around his neck nearly choked Arthur. “I don’t care. I said leave it.”

            Merlin shrugged, uncomprehending but obedient, and dropped it on the ground. The golden dragon seemed to peer out from the folds, bloody but unbowed.

            No one said anything as the boat began to propel itself across the suddenly quiet water, but when they reached the other side and Merlin moved to tack up the horses, there was a sudden chorus of eager voices volunteering to take care of it, not to worry, it would only take a moment, and why didn’t he sit down and rest while they packed up the camp?

            Merlin grinned as the knights scattered to their— his— various chores. It wouldn’t last long, he knew, but no point in not enjoying it as long as possible. “I should die more often,” he said.

            Arthur didn’t smile. In fact, he cuffed him—fairly gently—around the back of the head. “Don’t even joke about that,” he said, his voice cold. “It isn’t funny.”

            Merlin looked over at him, smile gone. “I know it isn’t,” he said. “That’s why I’m joking about it. The sooner I can laugh about it, maybe, the sooner I can forget how scared I was.”

            “You didn’t act scared.”

            “Of course not. You wouldn’t have, either.”

            Arthur couldn’t deny it. “No.”           

            “I was afraid of dying, and even more afraid that it wouldn’t work, and either way I was terrified. And that reminds me. I wanted to thank you, Arthur.”

            “Thank me? For what?”

            “For the way you… when I was, you know, dying, you stayed with me. Held my hand. All that. You didn’t have to, and it meant a lot that you did, is all I’m saying. It helped.” 

            “Yeah, well,” Arthur said, as always uncomfortable with sentiment. “It was the least I could do, considering.” He let out a breath. “Considering that it was my fault.”

            “Arthur, you were only doing what—”

            “What my own arrogance dictated. I should have known, I should have asked… She told me that all she needed was blood. A few drops. Not a death. The truth is that I killed you for nothing. And she made sure I knew it.”

            Merlin made a face. “And you believed her?”

            That brought Arthur up short. “You don’t?”

            “She was angry, Arthur. She was already angry because the veil had been torn in the first place, she was angry with me for going along with it, she was angry with you because you were conveniently there to be angry at, and she told you that you’d been wrong because she knew it was the thing that would hurt you most. If we’d gone in there and pricked a finger, she’d have been angry about that, too.” 

            Arthur had not considered that. It made some sense—and gods knew sorceresses weren’t known for their honesty. He changed the subject.

            “Either way, I’m glad you’re all right,” Arthur said. Then, hurriedly, he tacked on, “It would have been a wretched nuisance trying to break in a new servant. I’ve… gotten used to your inimitable incompetence.”

            Merlin, as intended, saw right through that, and bantered right back. “That’s why I had to live. I wouldn’t want to inflict you on George or one of the others. You’re my burden to bear.”

            That cut a little too close to the truth. Arthur sobered. “I’m not, you know,” he said. “I shouldn’t be. This whole thing… I should never have let you go through with it. It’s not your place to die for me.” Again. And again. And again.

            “Then stop being worth dying for,” Merlin said, just as seriously. “And it wasn’t just for you. It was for Camelot. It was for everyone.”

            “Then next time, it’s someone else’s turn to play the hero. You can’t keep doing this!” Arthur snapped, thinking of poisoned wine. “This isn’t your fight, Merlin! You’re—”

            “Just a servant?” Merlin’s voice was flat. “I’d think that makes me more expendable rather than less.”

            “No, you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a friend, and I thought I’d killed you. Again! You can’t keep doing this, because I can’t keep doing this.”

            “What makes you think that either of us have a choice?” Merlin said. “You’re my friend, too, as well as my king. You can’t ask me to stand back and let you die if I can prevent it.”

            “But you can ask me to drive a knife between your scrawny ribs and go off whistling?”

            “Whistling wasn’t necessary. Saving Camelot from the dorocha was.” Merlin looked stubborn. “I realize that when it’s all said and done, I had the easiest part of all this, and I’m not trying to make light of what you and the others went through. I’m sorry. But if it comes down to me or you, I’ll always pick you, and I’m not sorry for that.”

            “I don’t understand you,” Arthur said.

            “There’s not much to understand. Any of your knights would have done the same. Would that have been so shocking?” Merlin’s voice sharpened, hurt. “Suppose it had been Leon; we both heard him volunteer, and you didn’t find that strange at all. Or Lancelot. Or Elyan—imagine trying to explain that to Gwen!”

            Arthur didn’t want to imagine it. “She won’t be much happier to hear what actually did happen. You can explain it to her yourself.”

            Merlin winced. “Yeah, I suspect I’ll be wishing I’d stayed dead halfway through the lecture. Oh, gods, and then Gaius will take a turn blistering me. He doesn’t even have to yell. All he has to do is give me this look and I’m ready to crawl under the table—”

            “The truth, Merlin. Did you know you’d come back?”

            “No,” he said softly. “I thought I was done for. The most I was hoping for was the chance to see Will again.”

            Arthur forced himself not to react to the name of the belligerent young sorcerer who’d died saving his life. “I see,” he said. “And did you?”

            “No.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “He won’t mind. Either there really is another world beyond the veil, in which case he’s probably too busy to miss me, or there isn’t, in which case it doesn’t matter,” said Merlin. “I still have no idea which it is; all I saw was fog.”  

            “Why did she really send you back?” Arthur asked. “No more jokes. Why?”

            “For you,” Merlin told him. “I wasn’t joking the first time. She sent me back to serve you and the kingdom you’ll build.”

            “You in particular, or would she have sent back anyone I’d sacrificed?”

            “I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me to ask.” He looked away. “She’s… not exactly easy to have a conversation with.”

            Arthur nodded. She wasn’t.

            “Arthur?”

            “What?”

            “I really am sorry that you had to be the one to... you know. I’d’ve spared you that if I could have.”

            Arthur snorted. “Interestingly phrased, Merlin. You’re not sorry that you did it; you’re just sorry that I had to watch the life draining out of your eyes. Twice in as many days, come to think of it. Yeah, I’m sorry about that, too.”

            “Well... I hope you can forgive me someday.”

            He hoped that Arthur would forgive him for letting Arthur run him through. Gods, if Merlin didn’t drive him to utter madness, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. “Someday,” he said.

            Merlin didn’t seem to have anything more to say; he looked at the ground.

            Arthur growled under his breath. “You utter girl,” he said, not unaffectionately, and pulled him into something in between a one-armed hug and a headlock. “So help me, if you ever try to die for me again, I’ll… I’ll beat you senseless before sending you to the stocks for a week. I might do it anyway, just to make sure you learn your lesson.”

            “Trust you to make survival sound like the less attractive option,” said Merlin, and laughed.

Chapter Text

            Gwaine didn’t have much to say on the ride back. He kept to the fringe of the group as they rode, grimly watching the horizon and pretending not to notice the increasingly concerned looks that the others kept sending his way.

            Finally, Merlin reined in his horse a bit and dropped back to keep pace with him. “Hi,” he said.

            Gwaine looked at him with some disbelief. Of all the conversational openers in the world, he picked that one? “Hi,” he said, and turned away. When he’d thought Merlin was dead, all he’d wanted was the chance to speak with his friend one last time. Now that he was back, Gwaine could barely look at him without wanting to kill him. Even he realized that was more than a little unreasonable, but it didn’t change anything. 

            “You’re not all right,” Merlin told him. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

            “You’ve done enough.”

            “Meaning that I’m the problem,” said Merlin. “Can I at least apologize?”

            “That depends,” said Gwaine. “Do you have the slightest idea what you’re apologizing for?”

            “I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re upset with me because of the whole ‘human sacrifice’ thing,” said Merlin. “That’s why Arthur’s upset, anyway. He’s already promised me a week in the stocks for it. I just hope he’s kidding.”

            “Arthur. It always comes down to Arthur in the end, doesn’t it?” Gwaine scowled. “You did it for him.”

            Merlin thought about that for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said. “I suppose I did. And any of you would have done the same.”

            “That’s different.”

            “How?”

            Gwaine floundered for a moment. Because we’re knights, he wanted to say. Because we get the power and the glory and the fancy capes and the early graves. You don’t get any of the first three, so it’s only fair that you don’t get the fourth, either. Because the only reason for people like me is to protect people like you. Because the world without you in it would be a darker place. Because you were the first friend I ever had and the first one to see something worthwhile in me, and you see it even when I don’t. I owe you everything, everything good about the life I have now. And making me stand back and watch you die was crueler than I thought you had it in you to be.         

            “We need you a hell of a lot more than anyone needs any one of us,” he finally said gruffly. “You matter, you know?”

            Merlin rolled his eyes. “I’m sure you could find someone else to tend your horses and cook your dinner.”

            That hurt, and it reawakened Gwaine’s anger. “You think that’s all we see in you?”

            “What else is there to see? It’s all I am.”

            “Arthur is right about you,” Gwaine snapped. “You are an idiot.”

            “Maybe. But when you get right down to it, what I am is selfish. Weak.” Merlin looked at him. “I wasn’t brave enough to face losing any of you. Not just Arthur. I can’t imagine a Camelot without you in it anymore, Gwaine. And I don’t want to. You’re my friend… and as long as you’re alive to be angry with me, it was worth it.”

            “I’m glad you’re alive to be angry with, but make no mistake… I am angry.”

            “And I don’t expect you to forgive me anytime soon,” Merlin said. “Any of you.”  

            “You made us watch you die,” Gwaine said. “And I still don’t think you understand what that did to us. What it did to me.”

            “I held my oldest friend in my arms as he bled out with an arrow in his gut,” Merlin said. “In my place. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I understand exactly what I did, and I’m sorry it hurt you.”

            “But you’re not sorry that you did it.”

            “If it wasn’t me, it would have been one of you. So no. I’m not sorry.”   

            “That has to be the worst apology I’ve ever heard. And that includes my own.”

            “Well, I am an idiot.”

            “You are. This isn’t a joke, Merlin. What makes you think that any of us could face losing you? Forget about me, what do you think it did to Arthur?”

            “The same thing it would have done if he’d had to pick anyone else to die on that altar. It wasn’t supposed to be an easy choice. If it was that easy, it wouldn’t have been a test.”

            “A test,” Gwaine said. “Is that what it was?”

            “I’m only guessing,” Merlin said. “But I think so. That’s what it was the last time, anyway.”

            “The last time?”

            “Anhora. The keeper of the unicorns. He set up a game where either Arthur or I had to poison ourselves.”

            “Obviously you got out of it,” Gwaine said.

            “No. We didn’t. Arthur just got to the cup before I could. If it had really been poison, he would have died.”

            “And you weren’t about to let him do it a second time, is that it?”

            “That’s part of it,” Merlin said. “The rest of it is just that… I’m not a knight, and I never will be. I can’t protect him, or any of you, with a sword. This was a way I could protect him. So I did. It’s my job to take care of him.”

            “But it isn’t,” Gwaine said. “Not like that. You’re just supposed to…” cook the meals and tend the horses, mocked a little voice in the back of his head, and he flushed. “You’re supposed to be there,” he said instead.

            “That was the part I regretted most,” Merlin said. “That I wouldn’t be.”

            “Did you think about anyone besides Arthur?” Gwaine asked, after a long silence. “Anyone at all? Did it ever even occur to you that a lot of people care about you and would be devastated to know you were dead? Especially like that?”

            “That was the other thing I regretted.” He looked away. “Gaius would have had to write and tell my mother the news, you know. He’s not likely to forgive me for that anytime soon, either.”

            “You’re getting the worst of it from both ends, aren’t you?” said Gwaine. “All the fear and pain of dying, and your only reward is that we’re all furious with you for putting us through it.” And he says he’s the selfish one, the little voice continued.

            “Are you telling you I’d have been better off staying dead?”  

            The fledgling humor in Gwaine’s voice vanished. “No. Never that.”

            Merlin nodded. “Because the Cailleach said the same thing. There’s nothing to fear beyond death, she said. There’s no pain there, not like there is here.”

            “Did she ask you to stay?”

            “No. I think she just wanted me to know that she wasn’t sending me back as a favor, or because she was kind. And I didn’t ask to stay, either, if that was going to be your next question. Maybe that was my test.”

            Gwaine nodded. Maybe it had been, at that. “I still say that you’re the one we could least afford to lose.”

            Merlin just shrugged. “So who would you have picked if the choice was yours? And you can’t say yourself; we didn’t let Arthur do that, so you can’t, either.”

            Gwaine opened his mouth, closed it again. Tried to picture riding home without Leon’s solemn dignity, without Elyan’s unstinting warmth. Without Percival’s quiet steadiness, or Lancelot’s gleaming honor. Without Arthur’s… Arthurness. It was unanswerable. He sighed. “I can’t.”  

            “Neither can I,” Merlin said. “And I was already dying. I doubt the Cailleach would have healed me if she wasn’t trying to make the sacrifice just that much harder. My choice wasn’t whether to live or die, it was whether my death had meaning or not.”

            Gwaine reflected on the fact that his life only had meaning because Merlin had dragged him, kicking and screaming, into respectability. He wondered what meaning his death would have had if he’d stayed a rootless wanderer, and cut off that train of thought as quickly as he could lest it turn into wondering what meaning his death might have here in Camelot. 

            He glanced at Merlin’s downcast expression, and stifled an irritated growl. Why was it he could never stay angry at the man?           

            “Don’t you realize that you have people that care about you?” he said, hating how plaintive he sounded.

            “Yes. Don’t you understand that I feel the same way about each of you?”

            “I understand,” he finally said. “I still don’t like it, but I understand why you did it. I can’t even say you were entirely wrong.”

            Merlin grinned at him. “You sound like Arthur,” he said. “He can’t bring himself to say ‘you’re right, Merlin,’ either.”

            Gwaine laughed aloud. That was why he could never stay angry. “No need to be insulting, man!”

*.*.*.*.*.*

            Gaius was reorganizing his much-depleted stocks of medicines and trying not to wonder if he was going to have to replenish the herbs himself when Gwen burst in the door.

“Gaius!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“They’re back,” she said. “The sentries saw them coming! Come on!”       

Gaius could not think of anything he wanted to do less than rush to the gates to find out which of his boys was not there, but he couldn’t think of a way to say so, either. “You go ahead,” he said kindly. “I’ll be right behind you. I don’t want to slow you down.”

She nodded, then turned and hurried away

Gaius looked one last time at the closed door to Merlin’s little alcove room, and set his jaw, steeling himself for whatever he would learn.

He followed Gwen to the gates, where a small crowd was waiting. He saw the king first, golden hair gleaming like a crown, and had to stifle a pang of dismay that was almost painful, not to say treasonous.

Arthur was alive. Merlin would have wanted it that way, he told himself sternly. It was destiny, nothing more or less.

All the logic in the world was no remedy for heartbreak, though, and as he numbly counted the red cloaks following the king—one, two, three, four… yes, five—only a lifetime of iron self-control kept his expression neutral.

            The tears didn’t come until he finally spotted the seventh horse, and more importantly its very-much-alive rider.

Chapter Text

            “…And that’s when I woke up,” Merlin finished. “I was all wrapped up in Arthur’s cloak, I suppose so they could carry me home for the funeral.”

            Gaius took a deep breath, his hands firmly locked around his now stone-cold cup of tea so they wouldn’t shake. “That was thoughtful of Arthur,” he said.

            “Yes, it was,” said Merlin. “I guess. I’d never thought of myself having one of those. A funeral, that is.”

            “With any luck, you won’t; at least, not for a very, very long time.”

            “I’ll do my best.”

            “Good,” said Gaius. “And you’re sure you don’t feel any lingering effects? No, er, dizziness or… anything?”

            Merlin half-smiled. “I don’t think any of your books will have a list of symptoms to watch out for after dying and coming back to life. But anyway, the answer’s no. I feel fine.”           

            Gaius sighed. “I hope that you really are as well as you say.”

            Merlin’s hand went to his chest, long fingers probing for the dagger wound that was no longer there. “I am, Gaius. Don’t worry. I don’t have so much as a scratch on me. It’s not even a scar and a story; all I have is a memory that probably isn’t going to go away anytime soon.”

            “Yes,” Gaius said gently. “And mental injuries can be as devastating as physical ones.”

            Merlin nodded. “Death is cold,” he said quietly. “And gray. And lonely. I wish I could forget it, but I can’t. I just hope that there’s more beyond the veil than I saw, because otherwise... I’m afraid of it. Of dying. I mean, I was before, but now that I know what I know… What if there’s no Avalon, after all? What if the nothing is all there is?”

            “I don’t pretend to have answers for you, Merlin,” said Gaius. “I don’t know what awaits us after death. No one does. But I believe that the gods are kinder than that.”

            Merlin nodded, and swallowed hard, suddenly looking very young. “I hope you’re right.”

            “So do I,” said Gaius. “So do I.”

*.*.*.*.*

            Gwen’s eyes were round. “And then what happened?” she prompted.

            Arthur took a deep breath. “The Cailleach healed him,” he began. That was the easy part. “Then he lay down on the altar. And I…” he looked away. “I did what I thought I had to do. I killed him. I put the blade through his heart and held him down as he bled out.”

            She paled. “How is that possible?” she said. “I saw him ride in with you, as well as anyone. He can’t have died.”

            “Oh, he was dead, there’s no doubt about it. He says the Cailleach let him come back to this world so he could continue to serve me.” Arthur shook his head. “I don’t understand it either. She gave me a good telling off about not asking her advice before I went ahead with it, so maybe she never wanted a blood sacrifice at all. I don’t know. Neither does Merlin; I asked. She just kept him overnight and he woke up in the morning, hale and whole.”

            “Thank all the gods for that,” she said.

            Arthur nodded. “I watched him die twice in as many days, and it was my fault both times,” he finally said.

            “No,” she said. “It was his choice both times. Don’t take that away from him. You didn’t force him to do any of it—not attacking the Dorocha, and not volunteering for the sacrifice. You didn’t even force him to come along on the quest at all, and you know most servants wouldn’t have.”

            “He’s hardly ‘most servants,’” Arthur said, with a hint of humor in his voice.

            “You’re right,” said Gwen, very seriously. “He’s not.”

            “I’d like to… I don’t know. Make things right. But how does one say ‘I’m sorry I killed you’ without sounding insane?”

            “I think a ‘Thank you for dying for me’ would be more appropriate,” said Gwen, tongue firmly in cheek. “Or maybe a ‘Thank you for not dying’ would be better. I doubt he’s holding any grudges that need apologies.”

            Arthur made a face. “Either way, I’m in his debt, and a day off work isn’t going to cut it as recompense.”

            She chuckled. “No, I shouldn’t think so.”

            “Ugh. I’ll think of something,” Arthur said.

            “You could try just thanking him,” Gwen said pointedly.

            “…I’ll think of something else.”

*.*.*.*.*.*

            Merlin brought Arthur his dinner later that evening. He had changed into fresh clothing, and to look at him you would never have guessed that he’d ever had anything wrong with him, let alone that he’d been dead not so very long before.

            “Here you go,” he said cheerfully. “Roasted duck with all the trimmings for the conquering hero, with spice cake to follow. Cook is very grateful to you for getting rid of the Dorocha. I mean it. She actually smiled and everything.”

            “Maybe you should eat it yourself,” said Arthur. “You did more than I did to seal the veil.”

            “It took all of us to do it—and the others are being feted and spoilt just as much as you are, don’t have any fears on that score. I saw with my own eyes Gwaine tucking into a slice of apple pie the size of a brick.”

            “And what about you?”

            “What about me?”

            “Where’s your reward?”

            “My reward is knowing that there aren’t any empty beds in the castle tonight,” said Merlin, his face serious. “I couldn’t have borne it if I’d lost any of you.”

            “Neither could I,” said Arthur. “Any of you,” he repeated.

            Merlin heard what he didn’t say, and he smiled. “And you didn’t,” he reassured Arthur.

            And he hadn’t.

~Fin~