I don't own Merlin. If I did, Arthur would be alive and Merlin would have helped him fulfill the prophecy.
Merlin trudges up the hill that first started his journey and will now be its end. His red-rimmed eyes scan the castle, secretly hoping that his best friend is still there, but knowing in his heart that Arthur will never again be there to scold him for being late or joke around with him. He even knew he would miss the goblets being chucked at his head, or the teasing at training.
The warlock's knuckles are bloody and his knees are raw. He shivers in the wind, crawling into his mind and trying so hard to make it so he'll never come out, but he can't. His chest feels like it has been ripped open, his heart torn out and beaten, then thrust back into the empty cavity. He is numb from the pain, both mental and physical. He relives the memories from when his king was alive, but they feel like a hazy, wonderful dream.
Merlin looks up and realizes that in the time in which he was remembering, he had reached Camelot, and the sun had gone down. He sees Gwen sprinting at him, tears in her eyes and still in her nightclothes, her maid servant running worriedly towards her mistress. Merlin falls to his knees just as Gwen reaches him. He looks up and gives her the saddest look and knows, then, that Arthur is truly gone. She kneels down and takes the man who has now become childlike in his grief, and hugs him as hard as she can. He buries his face in her shoulder and begins to weep, his hands gripping her silky robe, his sobs ripping from his already abused throat. He cries that he wished that not even Death would take him, but he wished that it would. He screams at the world and asks what he did to deserve a living hell. Finally, he concludes that he must be dreaming because nothing so HORRIBLE could ever happen to anyone. Gwen holds him in her arms and lets tears silently cascade down her cheeks, running so fast that she is surprised that they don't make permanent tracks down her face, marking her as a widow. They just wash away all of the hope she ever had of her husband coming back with her best friend, alive and well.
Merlin can't believe it. He is the same boy who had came from Ealdor. The freak with magic. Among friends but yet, still out of place.
Merlin is alone once more.
I originally wrote this in the youtube comments under the lyric video for Regina Spektor's "The Call". Every time I listen to it since the finale, I always think of this scene whenever I listen to that song and have ever since the finale. I'm sorry if I caused any mental anguish to anyone while they read it, but to tell you the truth, you brought it on yourselves! I did tell you to bring tissues...
I hope you enjoyed my story, and reviews encourage me to write more. Who knows, maybe if I get enough reviews, I'll write Arthur's point of view from the afterlife as a bonus chapter...
Thanks for reading!
REM
