Disclaimer: Neither Merlin nor its characters belong to me.
A sudden burst of wind rips through the trees in the clearing, dislodging the few, decaying leaves that still cling to the branches. They fall rather than flutter to the ground, heavy with rain, and Merlin feels the last of his hope plummet along with them.
It's been three hundred years now, and he knows better than to hold on to the words Kilgharrah had uttered. It's been three hundred years since he'd held his best friend in his arms as he'd died, and he knows he won't return to him. Three hundred years since he'd run a sword through the woman he'd loved and hated despite himself.
Three hundred years since he'd returned to this spot and sent her home through the mist.
Never to see her again.
He extends a trembling hand and mutters, á-drúgiaþ, voice cracking as he uses it for the first time in weeks. The patch of earth he'd marked off with tiny, white stones that glisten in the dark dries, crackling as the decaying leaves freeze and crumple under the weight of his spell.
He sinks to his knees, revelling in the ache of his now ancient bones as they meet the hard, frozen ground. He still looks much as he did then, but he feels his age in the stiffness of his actions and the numbness of his soul. He doesn't know how much time he has left on this earth, but with every visit to those that he's lost, he finds himself hoping for less.
A loud fluttering sounds through the thundering rain, ripping him from his thoughts, and he looks up to see white, deformed wings flapping over the clearing.
Aithusa.
A lump forms in his throat as his last living friend lands and nuzzles him in greeting before letting out a high pitched moan, half sigh, half cry. Merlin reaches out and pats his faithful companion as they both settle onto their heels and consider the earth where the woman they'd once loved drew her last breath.
He doesn't know when the Morgana of their youth had replaced the one he'd slain in his mind, but her laughter washes out her sneers, her long, shiny hair and extravagantly coloured gowns her sombre garbs. She smiles at him; free of the hatred that had poisoned her very existence as he'd slipped it passed her lips.
Regret floods through ever cell of his body as the images ebb and flow. He knows his actions had seemed necessary as he'd held the sword in his hands, but Arthur had fallen and Camelot had been lost along with the tiny son Arthur had never known he'd had. Alone save for the little dragon who had returned to his side at his mistress's death, Merlin knows that he'd done wrong not in that moment, but in the years before. He knows now that he could have found another way.
Around the poison and the secrecy and out of the misery he'd unknowingly brought upon them under the illusion of joy.
Out of the darkness into which Camelot had plummeted as he'd tried to cast it into light.
That he'd done the best he could have done at the time no longer matters, and he sees a made up past in which he saves Morgana from Morgause's clutches and in which, together, they show Arthur the good of magic, decades before the young king peacefully meets death in old age.
Tears he'd sworn to stop shedding rip through him at the thought, scorching his skin as Aithusa cries and nuzzles his side. He leans into the dragon, wishing he could at least have spared the beloved creature a life of silence. Suffering alongside Morgana, Aithusa had never learned to speak, and Merlin longs for the sound of another voice.
He gives into his tears, fisting the dead leaves at his feet, and when he feels the ghost of nimble fingers he'd once known so well brush against the nape of his neck, he refuses to consider that they might finally be real.