UPDATE Aug. 7th 2014: Ok, it's almost been a year; I'm ridiculous. I promise I'll try. And I still haven't watched the finale!
UPDATE Aug 28, 2013: I have NOT yet watched the finale. If I see how they've ended it, especially as concerns Merlin and Morgana then I'll never write this and I'd really like to finish it. Please don't mention it in any reviews. Thanks!
Author's First Note: I've only recently gotten around to watching Merlin, so of course it turns out to be a five season-capped series, haha. I actually think it was a great idea on the writers' part, although having read some Arthurian legend I'm surprised they picked 5 and not say, 12. Once I had read an interview with Colin Morgan where he said they were going to follow the same ending as the legends I knew poor Arthur was toast. The Mergana thing is so new to the legend (and largely unexplored in the series too, damn) that I thought a post-series story could work fairly well. Enjoy! :)
Disclaimer for entire 'After Brwydr Camlan' story: I don't own Merlin. Just this tale.
CHAPTER 1: After Brwydr Camlan
The sky was transparent the day King Arthur of Camelot was dealt a mortal wound by Mordred, his once most loyal knight.
The knights of Camelot, brave and valiant, tirelessly battled the rebel army, darkly commanded by the sorceress Morgana le Fey. An ominous sun began to set, glowing morbidly in the west; it tinted the field in crimson, transformed armor into fire, and the blood into garnet pools. Casualties, strewn across the battlefield, were shrouded in the moving shadows of the tattered standards, those embroidered declarations of house and family triumph transformed into eulogies and headstones. There were no wounded cries, for everyone was dead.
King Arthur had fallen with sword still in hand.
Excaliber had plunged into the earth as the king fell back for the last time. At least Mordred's blow had been answered with a mortal strike of its own. The unfortunate Druid lay crumpled on his side, icy eyes staring across the battlefield.
The king's arm stretched to the sky still tightly gripping the hilt of his shining blade, magically untainted by dirt or blood. His helmet long-gone, Arthur's young, still features looked as if asleep. But the bloody light did not tinge the king with the stain of war. A normal day's sunshine, as fair as could be found in any part of Camelot, glistened around him.
This was all that his loyal servant and friend had left to give him. One of Merlin's aged, wrinkled hand swept across Arthur's brow, smoothing the golden hair; the other hand settled on top of Excaliber's hilt, covering Arthur's.
"My king," he murmured, tears bringing renewed shine to his faded blue eyes.
"I strove so long to serve you so that our destinies would be fulfilled." He glanced askance at Mordred. "But-," Merlin's voice caught and he painfully swallowed.
"I have failed. After everything, I could not do what had to be done, and for that I am sorry." Merlin's fingers tightened over Arthur's until his arm trembled and his knuckles turned white.
"I am so sorry, my friend."
Merlin gently slid Arthur's fingers from the sword's hilt and set the king's hands in a regal pose on his chest. He kneeled for a moment with eyes closed, curling his long fingers that looked more white and dead around his friend's tan wrists, trying to ignore the metallic and dirty scent around him. Then, folding Arthur's cloak over until it covered his body, Merlin arranged it so that the gloriously embroidered Pendragon shone fully golden in the unearthly sunshine. Then Merlin pulled a slicing Excaliber from the ground.
With a quick whisper, Merlin banished any stain from marring the king's cloak ever again, and turned away from the purer light.
His red robe streamed out over the grass as he moved through the carnage; it rippled over fallen swords and bloodied, outstretched hands. He stopped and laid a hand on the foreheads of all his dear friends. Gwaine and Percival lay side by side; they had fought at each other's backs. Merlin looked for Leon, but he was nowhere to be found.
Merlin strode east, aimless, until the forest came up to meet him. There at the edge, where natural trees met the upheaved earth of a supernatural battlefield, lay his wooden staff, its crystal muddied. Picking it up, he gave the field a last dejected look and turned to approach the forest when a moan erupted from nearby. A glimmer of hope lit in his chest and Merlin, using both Excalibur and his staff as supports, roughly leaped over the broad trunk of a fallen tree unnaturally uprooted only hours before.
Lying curled up against a cracked bough, with a bloody face and a rough wound that cut through trousers and flesh from her right hip to the back of her right knee, was Morgana le Fey. Her eyes glared angrily through blood-matted hair, and Merlin gripped his staff in astonishment. His face worked hard not to show it.
"So you're alive," he said in a monotone. Morgana's fist curled against her stomach, blood from a second wound trickling out between her fingers.
Her breathing was labored as she bit out sarcastically, "Oh please, Emrys, help me."
His voice rose in a rage, his staff trembling on the ground, as he looked down upon her.
"Is this really what you wanted, Morgana?"
Morgana's eyes slid away to look west over his shoulder into that bloody sun, over the destruction she had wrought, and the heaps of bodies that measured her failure.
Merlin angrily stepped in front of the sun's light and she narrowed her eyes as a crimson halo lit his robes and burned his white hair. Only his pale blue eyes shone from the shadow of his face.
"King Arthur of Camelot, the Once and Future King, is dead. Your brother is dead." Her eyes flitted down the hill toward the still brilliant patch of white light, then moved back to his. Stubbornly, she said nothing.
"You have destroyed the chance for a united Albion. Magic will fade from the world of men, and the practice of it will become nothing more than fairy stories. Your part in this is unforgivable," he intoned.
Morgana violently reared up into a sitting position, angrily gasping against her wounded ribs, "I have done everything to bring magic back to this realm! I fought for Camelot! I fought against Uther's cruelty and Arthur's injustice. I-"
"You fought your father and brother for your own selfish reasons!"
Morgana's fingers gripped unfeelingly into the tree's rough bark as she pulled herself to her knees, her imperious green gaze meeting his righteous one.
"My father and brother murdered people," she hissed. "And you waited and watched while violence was done to your kind-"
"The Great Dragon had prophesied-"
"I was given prophesies too," she hissed. "And what came of his prophesy, oh Great Emrys?" Her voice clamored around him.
"Did you ever hear Arthur decree the welcome presence of magic? Did your beloved king sit you at his right hand and welcome you to his table and tell his children that a magician was one of Camelot's good and worthy men?"
She was standing now.
"Or did you make excuses for your friend until the moment he was struck down by the magic he betrayed?"
Merlin had listened to her with a face like stone, but now he slammed his staff on the ground, startling her slightly.
"Mordred killed Arthur, magic did not, Morgana, because it is not magic that excuses such a deed," he said in a warning tone. "If things had been allowed to run their proper course-"
Morgana spat at his feet.
"Don't condescend and lie to me, Merlin, as you've always done, even as a servant boy."
She relished the flash of sadness that crossed Merlin's face but stubbornly straightened her injured body.
"You thought you knew what would happen, so you let horrible things happen." Morgana panted her declaration, "I, not you, fought against the evil inside Camelot." Merlin's anger faltered for a moment.
"If magic fades from the world of men," one knee hit the ground," then it is because of Merlin."
He watched her finally collapse to both knees, one hand against her side and her other fiercely gripping the grasses beneath her, nails digging into the dirt. Merlin had opened his mouth to speak, protestations readying themselves on his tongue, when he heard the distant beat of horses' hooves. To the west, now lit in the golden light of sunset, seven knights had crested the hill rise.
They rode back and forth among the dead looking for survivors, arms pointing toward the far-flung colors of their friends; Merlin could see their defeated posture even from across the battlefield. As they moved closer Merlin could see the tawny hair of their leader, Sir Leon. He breathed a sigh of relief, and at once was struck by a fast-paced vision.
Leon would set Arthur adrift on the very lake where Merlin had laid Freya to rest so long ago. Seven knights would remain loyal to a great Round Table, although tumultuous times would scatter the knights and their nation for centuries to come. But other round tables appeared in front of Merlin's gaze, both small and large, some surrounded by both men and women. There would still be round tables even as man created buildings that could scrape the sky. And they would forever be connected back through time to Arthur, the Once and Future King.
As Merlin came back to himself Sir Leon rode closer, and with a shout began to gallop toward the supernatural sunshine marking where his majesty lay. Red cloaks flying as owners leapt from horses, the knights all gathered to kneel around Arthur's body; their hands settled on each other's shoulders, heads bowed. The light cast their group in such a heart-wrenching image that Merlin turned away before it would change, holding it in his memory. He knew the image would have to last him forever.
He knelt on front of Morgana and laid his hand over hers in the dirt. Pain froze her in place, and he could tell she desperately fought the urge to yank her hands away. She stared at the ground instead.
"We are done here, Morgana," he sadly murmured. "They do not need or want us anymore." He was glad she would not look at him.
She released her words in one breath, "The world is magic. The world needs magic."
He nodded, half-agreeing, and slid his hand away from hers. Beneath her gaze, Merlin dug a long trench between them, flinging bloodied grass to the side and scraping the dirt until only pure, earthy moisture was visible. He placed his staff at the bottom of the trench. Only then did Morgana look up at him, in confusion and wariness.
Merlin settled back on his heels and took a small vial from his pocket. With one dirty, wrinkled hand settled against the cheek of his snowy beard and a slightly wry smile, he tipped the vial into his mouth with the other. As if a fog blew away across a mountainside, gone were the wrinkles, the snowy hair, and the knotted and gnarled hands. In their place were the black hair and end-of-day beard of a young man. Merlin capped the vial, then with a slight shyness looked up at Morgana with the restored crystalline-blue eyes of her doom, her destiny, her childhood friend.
"What a clever trick," she said, drily.
His brow furrowed slightly, but he only placed the vial in the trench beside the staff and filled in the hole with dirt, patting it down carefully. Without looking at her, Merlin firmly encircled her free hand with his own and slid them over the fresh earth, then pressed them down further into the dirt. He stared at their hands and nodded again, agreeing again.
"Yes," he said, "The world is magic."
**Please Review! I take all comments and criticisms, especially for how I format. It also spurs me to keep writing this thing.
AGAIN, if you DO review, please don't reveal any finale events! I've still (2014) made it without seeing the finale! Don't even tell me if you liked it. ;) Thanks!
***In the meantime, totally go check out Duchess Emma's Merlin stories (they're Mergana, and fun and racy) or my Fringe story.