I do not own BBC, nor any of it's characters. Just borrowing them!
Merlin shuffled down the road, looking with disinterest at the dirt he trod upon, the weary earth sighing beneath his feet. Along the path old wrappers and bottles were strewn, a collection of disposables from the travelers before him.
He felt old, but he didn't acknowledge it. He'd begun to feel the burden of age centuries before, but when disease and old age had taken his friends and his allies, one by one, it cruelly left the wizard be. When everyone else could not, he waited for Arthur. And waited. Eventually he no longer noted the passing of seasons, nor changes in fashion. Every day blended into the next until the concept of time passing was but an old wive's tale, told to everyone but him.
The area he walked was known to him; he had surely been there before, yet it had a different sort of air about it that day. It was a feeling he had nearly forgotten, the surge of completeness he had felt back when his eyes would flicker gold, when legends had yet to be created. And before he could even register the change of atmosphere, he heard it. It wasn't a voice in the wind, or over the phone. It was spoken for him alone, as it always had been in times before.
Merlin
It was soft and throaty; threatening and commanding. Merlin stopped in his tracks, his pulse at once coming alive. It was like a memory that hadn't crossed your mind in ages, yet at once could hit you so clear and commanding. It was an invitation that hadn't been sent in a longest time. And before he even had a moment to question its legitimacy, it came again.
Merlin
It was the dragon. There was no way around it, no trick of the mind. Not when Kilgharrah was concerned.
Merlin turned, his eyes scanning the area, searching for a where. There he saw it, the same image he had probably seen several times before, yet not cared enough to note; an old coal mine. It likely hadn't been used in decades, yet there it stood, neglected and no doubt unsafe. Yet to Merlin he had not seen anything so welcoming since he first walked the road to Camelot as a boy.
Without a thought, or a third call to confirm what was to come, the wizard walked towards the entrance with a brisk pace. He felt weightless in that moment, like all of the age and the sorrow was melting away into the breeze. And then came darkness.
Merlin entered the coal mine, his thoughts echoing across the walls as he descended into the black. As he walked, he could almost feel the dragon's breath, slow and laboring, yet as warm as the embrace as a friend.
Merlin
The voice came again, and just like that, the wizard stumbled into the cave without so much as a hint of direction. It was almost as if he had entered an entirely different dimension, the atmosphere at once a stark contrast to the one he felt but moments before. The air he breathed was crisper, the ground less stable. And all around him were treasures.
They weren't valuables merely in the sense of gold and jewels, but something beyond that. In piles along the ground lay an array of objects that were once worth so much more than any coin. There were dolls once fiercely loved by their owners; pocket watches and old letters. There were journals with pages falling out, and engraved lockets.
They were the things that slipped through the cracks; promises long forgotten yet never any less valuable. And there, in the midst of the priceless rubble, Kilgharrah lay, surrounded by the best bits of his collection.
He was as commanding as the poems promised, and lovely and as powerful as anyone could imagine. Yet he, as great as he was, had not caught the same immunity to disease as Merlin has. There was something decaying about his manner, a weakness that hung unspoken. Yet still as he was, there was no denying the shiver of anticipation that ran through him when Merlin, after all this time, was at last again in his presence.
Merlin moved slowly towards the dragon, stepping around the artifacts that littered the ground, until he was close enough to Kilgharra to whisper should he wish it. And at last, after all that time, he spoke.
"Kilgharra." Was all that he managed. His tone was broken, yet rapidly mending. He felt emotions, long since repressed, boil to the surface as if they were never away. The dragon raised his head and turned so that he and Merlin were eye to eye; the only feature that was timeless.
"Merlin," he began, "my friend."
"After all this time?" Merlin asked, meekness creeping over him in the presence of this mighty beast. Kilgharrah allowed a fraction of a nod, his expression the closest thing to awe that Merlin had ever seen him give.
"It's been many years. I'm sure you do not care to say how many, yet it has been enough. I feel my sand is running out, and I know now at last that I am not to see the acts that you were destined for. Yet I am selfish enough to ensure that I at least get to see you in these final moments."
"Destiny?" Merlin asked, at once a familiar feeling of confusion coming to surface. "All these years, all these unforgiving years, and you're still on about destiny? I had thought we had both become wiser than that." Kilgharra regarded Merlin for a moment, before shifting his gaze in a flicker of disappointment.
"As had I, warlock. Yet it seems that time has taken it's toll on you. Can you not see the state our world has come to? The unrest and the fear? Merlin, you had believed the climax to be the death of your friend, yet that was only the beginning. If you have been paying attention, you would have seen that there was never a time for a hero so important as this one."
"Perhaps, but not Arthur." Merlin said. As soon as the former king's words hit his lips Merlin had felt a shock. How long had it been since he had last said those two syllables? They had died long ago, clinging to the hope that passed along with it.
"Oh, but certainly Arthur, do you not think? Do you not believe, then, that he has been waiting for the right time? Or have you not been keeping watch?"
"Keeping watch? I kept watch! For the first day, and the ones that followed. For months I watched, and then decades. Gaius died, Kilgharrah! Then Percival, and Gwen. They died, and their children died, and everyone that came after. Everyone, save for you and me. And for what purpose?"
"You know what purpose. You know what it has all been for, and you're waiting has not been for nothing. Destiny has stood silently by, and it is ready now to do it's part. Are you ready?"
"You said you're dying." Kilgharrah blinked.
"I am."
"When?"
"Now." Merlin paused.
"Right now?"
"As we speak. I didn't want to do it alone. I have been alone long enough." Merlin stepped even closer to Kilgharrah, a thin film of tears beginning to mist along his eyes. He raised a hand, wrinkles looping around his fingers like the aging rings of trees, and pressed it against the dragon's skin. His scales were cold and rough, and inside of them Merlin could almost see his own reflection. The white hair that fell carelessly around his shoulders, the mouth that lost the strength to smile. And the eyes that longed for gold. At the wizard's touch, Kilgharrah sighed.
"Just like that." He said, and almost for the first time, Merlin felt the unwavering respect that the beast had long regarded him with, the torch that he held when Merlin had not. He held on his own belief in a world that he would never see, but that he had had a part in creating. And Kilgharrah was selfless enough that to him, that would do.
"What do I do?" Merlin asked. Kilgharrah closed his eyes and let out a low hum.
"The world we live in, warlock, is on the brink of destruction. But it is still here, and it's alive. It is alive because of believers, and innovators, both ones who were alive once before, and who are now. The thing of it is, all these kingdoms, these countries- they are concepts not fully realized. Ideals as they were written are beautiful things, but they require action. Merlin, you and Arthur, and everyone that once walked to halls of Camelot; they had something to believe in. They did not fight out of hatred like so many do, but as a means to a beautiful end. An end that is yet to arrive. Do not forget the thing you started so long ago."
"There's the thing of it." Merlin mused. "It was so long ago. I was young, and I had something- someone that I believed in. I was so scared I would lose the past, that that was how I lost it. That time is long over now, we'll never have it back." Kilgharra grunted an air of disapproval.
"You are still like a boy, Merlin, you only look older. The only purpose of looking to the past is to raise a glass to it. Beyond that, our job only extends to forging the future. Don't make me, in my final moments, question who I have always known you to be."
Merlin felt Kilgharrah take a laboring breath beneath his hand. And then, for what was no more than a fraction of a moment, time broke the rules and stood still. For there in a cave made of foggy memories stood a warlock and a dragon, equals and friends. There was a power that hung about them that could not be expressed by words, or even movement. It was an image so powerful that no tapestry nor painter could ever portray it. And there, everything shifted.
"Look, Merlin." Kilgharrah urged. There, in the scaly reflection was no longer a grief scarred old man, but an image of long ago. Merlin's hair was once again dark and short, his skin youthful, his expression boyish. It was the visage of him captured in a moment of rare bliss long ago; perhaps he was walking alongside Arthur in some forest, or sharing a breakfast after a sleepless night. It was the Merlin that had been waiting in the shadows alongside Destiny, at last out again to play. To seek out the other side of a coin.
"It has been a long journey." Kilgharrah admitted. Merlin jerked his head up. His body felt light now, restored to what it once was.
"I missed you." The warlock admitted. "I missed you then, and I'll miss you after you are gone. You are so good, you always were." Kilgharrah dipped his head in regard, his body trembling with some emotion or another. He gave off what appeared to be the shadow of a smile, and repeated the same sentiment from earlier:
"Just like that." He breathed.
"What's that?" Merlin questioned. "One last riddle?" Kilgharrah turned his head towards Merlin, his gaze commanding, the light in his eyes burning dangerously bright for one about to expire.
"That one wasn't a question, young warlock. Merely an answer." The dragon inhaled, and the light in his eyes seemed at once to engulf the entire cave. For a moment Merlin could not see, and before him Kilgharrah began to disappear effortlessly, his presence shining across the cave like the flighty light of a prism. As the light started to fade, the voice that was never truly a voice echoed one last time, a final cry, or a plea. Perhaps a farewell.
Merlin.
And then is was dark; or almost. Merlin stood alone in the cave, as if it had never happened. Except that it had. For all around him still stood the same piles of objects, and Merlin's hands were still young, his hair still dark.
He would have perhaps stayed a while, had he not felt the pull outside of the cave, which was now, without Kilgharrah inside of it, suffocating. Merlin began to walk slowly towards the exit, and then faster as he began to remember what it was to truly move. The ground danced beneath him effortlessly and he bolted towards the entrance of the coal mine.
Only that wasn't where he ended. Instead, Merlin headed out towards where the sun was shining, and stood in front of a vision from centuries past; only it was not then, but now. He felt beneath his feet lush grass that seemed to bow in his presence. And mere feet ahead of him stood the waters of Avalon, almost rippling in anticipation.
Merlin felt his breath catch in his throat. A butterfly flew in front of his eyes, heading towards his trees. And there, where the frothy water met with the sand, stood the King of Camelot.
Arthur stood, as humble yet proud as he had always been, duty and destiny standing on each shoulder respectively. The sun rested on his head, reflecting off of his golden hair, his jaw firmly set.
And then Merlin breathed, a breath that came out a sob. Arthur smiled, and his servant followed suit. Destiny was perhaps the leading player, but for now it hung back out of respect for affection.
And on the banks of Avalon, in the brightest hour of a new day, they both stepped forward.
It has been a long time since I wrote a Merlin fanfiction- or any fanfiction, but the passing of John Hurt was cause enough. I don't need to go into the man that John Hurt was- we are all aware. It's interesting to revisit something that once meant so much to us- and perhaps still does though we don't always think about it. Yet Camelot and it's inhabitants will always mean so much to me, no matter how long I go without watching a tv episode or reading a book. It's stories that make us, after all.