A/N ~ I watched the finale. I cried because just Morgana. Then this happened. I'm sorry.
Merlin doesn't leave the lake for three days and three nights. He sits, and sobs, and watches his tears flow into the lake of Avalon, tastes the rain and the tears on his lips, and he sits, and he stares, and he remembers. I always thought you were the bravest man I ever met. Everything you've done; I know now, for me, for Camelot. Thank you.
His sobs can be heard for miles around. He doesn't care. How can he care? Everything he worked for is gone. Everything he loved is dead. He failed. He didn't reach Avalon in time. This is where the chapter ends. He lets the water lap at his feet, lets the rain take him. What does he do now? Life is empty. Life is nothing. Destiny is dead.
On the third night, he shivers so violently he realises he's going to die here if he doesn't move. He's hungry, he's thirsty, he's freezing, he doesn't care. But he has to go. The time has come for letting go. He has to guard everything he worked so hard to build. Guinevere and Gaius, and the knights. He has to let Arthur's memory live on. Arthur's pain has ended, but Merlin's has just began.
How can he leave? How can he abandon his king here, now? He's lost the difference between tears and rain, crying and not crying. He'll come back. Every day, if he must, he'll be here, at the lake. But he has to live.
"I'm so sorry." He manages to choke out, as he shakily stands up and walks away. He doesn't let himself look back.
If I look back, I am lost.
Some time later he comes across a body, lying on the floor, and his sobs become more violent. He's not aware he's falling to his knees before he's on the ground, screaming, cradling the body.
"How could you!" He screams through his tears, shaking, rocking, holding the lifeless weight. "We loved you!"
Morgana's body is soundless. He doesn't know how long he stays like that, screaming and crying, holding the dead woman, but it's the next dawn comes when he sees something. In death, there's a faint smile on her lips. Only one word applies when he looks at her dead face, and it's relief. Her pain has ended. Her life ended too soon. I killed her when I poisoned her. Or was she dead before? Her deterioration started with her magic. Nobody should feel such pain so young. The memory of her before, before he broke her, stirs something in him. More memories. Before. When they were all still children. I just don't think chopping someone's head off is a cause for celebration.
What have these people done to you? She'd demanded of Uther. Why are you so full of hate?
He could ask her the same question. But he knew. He knew. She was hurting, it was driving her insane, the pain, and he could have saved her. He didn't. Nobody else noticed her deterioration, nobody cared but him and he killed her. He found himself wondering if he had explained it to her, why he had to do it, if she would have drank it down willingly. The state she was in. She would have. Maybe.
"Would you?" He sobbed into her hair.
No, you just poison them!
She wasn't evil, she was broken. Morgause was her only way out, she took it, of course she took it, he would've done. If the roles had been reversed... he would have done. He feels an overwhelming guilt devouring him. She went insane. But that was all the Sarrum. But then... it wasn't. If he had helped her, saved her like he was supposed to, she never would have gone through any of that. He clutches her body tight to him and sobs wildly.
"I'm sorry." He whispers into her hair. "I'm so, so sorry."
It's too late for that now. She can't hear him. She'd dead.
But she deserves more than this. She deserved so much more than here, lying out for the crows and the rain, in some woods, to be forgotten. Maybe people would like to forget her.
But then forget this. Forget the broken creature he and Uther and the Sarrum helped create. Remember. Remember the girl who fought openly for innocent children she didn't know, remember the girl who risked everything for a peasant blacksmith, remember the girl who did what was right and damned the consequences.
Because that, that was what mattered.
She was the one person who stood up against all odds, who didn't care what happened to her, because, as long as justice was served and the innocent were spared, that was all the mattered.
It did not do to dwell upon the darkness of a person, inflicted by time and pain and other's mistakes.
But the goodness of a person, that, that should be honoured. No matter what else they'd done since.
He carried her body the whole way back to Camelot.