"You've changed since last we saw each other." Morgana took a tentative step toward him with a faraway look in her eyes, like she was watching him through a veil of time instead of across a clearing on a cool forest night. A quiet longing shone there too, and regret. He'd seen that expression before, the memory of it flashing through his mind like lightning, clearer than any other memory he had of Blackheath.

"I might have loved you once," she said.

In the midst of her taunts, there had been a moment when the vulnerable girl Morgana had once been had appeared. Her face softened and the light in her eyes had shone with such cracked innocence it was hard not to feel pity for her. It hadn't been much of a change nor did it last long, but he had seen it, had felt it. She'd admitted that she might have loved him once. Merlin had admitted the same.

So many might-have-beens.

In that moment, there had been a slim chance he could have avoided what she intended for him, that she would have taken him away from that black cell. But Merlin had known, as surely as he knew the sound of his own heartbeat, that even if he had taken that chance, there was no easy way out of that web. Not when the Goddess's hand directed Morgana's fate. He might have avoided the pyre only to fall prey to the Goddess later on.

And so he'd burned.

Merlin took another step into the clearing, his eyes narrowing at the pale lights. Faerie fire and will 'o the wisp spread a greenish glow through the air, and soft sparks flashed here and there in the tree branches, tiny bursts of frozen blues and fiery reds. "You've changed, too," he said. Her features were sharper, the hollows of her face deeper. Her eyes were shadowed, and the cold blue they'd turned seemed to shine like lights within the darkness. She inclined her head in the faintest nod, but didn't move otherwise.

"Why are you here, Morgana?" Merlin let his senses wash through the trees, looking for other magical beings that might be lurking, waiting in some sort of ambush, but there were none.

"I was brought here," Morgana said. Her voice was distant, as though she spoke to him from beyond a dream. "Brought here to find the missing piece."

"The missing piece of what?" Merlin heard a strange buzzing in his ears. He winced and shook his head to try to rid himself of it, but it remained.

"The future." Morgana rushed forward. Her movements were smooth, almost like she was floating. She stopped in front of him, one shaking hand rising to touch his face, but Merlin flinched away. The scar under his eye- the reminder of the injury she'd given him- ached. Morgana's brow knit, but she didn't try to touch him again. "You've seen it, haven't you? A day without a sun, and the sea rising over the mountains to. . . "

". . . wash over the land, bringing war and sorrow and death in its wake," Merlin said. "And that hour will be Albion's darkest, a time when the sword shall be called forth from the stone. . . "

". . . and broken alliances will be reforged," Morgana said, her voice as arid as Merlin's had been. "Old powers, once lost, shall be awakened. From the storm-tossed towers of the Isle of the Blessed. . . "

". . . to the shores and the deepening mists of the Summer Country," Merlin said. "Then will mark the rise of the Once and Future King. . . "

". . . and all must unite, else all will be lost, and night will lay upon Albion for a thousand years."

Morgana gasped and stumbled back, nearly falling. Merlin staggered away from her, catching a steady tree trunk to stay upright. "What was that? What did you do?" Morgana glared up at him, her eyes slowly returning to their normal shade, dark again in the moonlight.

"Nothing." Merlin shook his head to clear his swimming vision. "I didn't do anything. That was prophecy. Fate speaking through us."

"But why bring us here for it? Why bring us together?"

"I don't know. Do you think I have any more answers than you do?" Merlin straightened, but kept his back against the tree. He hadn't sensed any magical danger, but that didn't mean Morgana couldn't summon something. Or attack him herself.

"You always seemed to. Or you pretended that you did. So self-righteous." Morgana squared her shoulders and used a breath of magic to brush away the leaves caught up in her skirts. She half-turned away, her posture a study in adolescent sullenness before she looked back at him. Confusion was plainly written on her face. "Why did you never tell me the truth? About yourself? About me? Things could have been different. So much different. For everyone."

Merlin studied her for a long moment, drawing a breath to give her an answer, then stopping when he realized it sounded trite even to him. "Because I was afraid, Morgana. Afraid of what we were and what our magics were turning us into. Of what Uther would do to both of us if he found out. And I was afraid of losing Arthur's love." Merlin bit his lip and looked away. He didn't want to admit that he was also afraid, for some misbegotten reason, of Morgana's judgment. "Perhaps Fate brought us together because we wouldn't know the whole of that prophecy without both of us being present. Maybe it was another way to tell us that 'broken alliances would be reforged'. Perhaps someday, we will have to put our old enmity aside and work together to keep Albion from being destroyed."

"Perhaps," Morgana said. Her voice was soft, almost sad. Merlin looked up at her again, and saw something like regret written upon her face. "It seems we are fated to endure far more than our fair share of suffering and death. Perhaps we would have been happier if we'd lived in another time."

Merlin smiled sadly. "For better or for worse, Morgana, I am exactly where I'm supposed to be."

"Perhaps." Her gaze turned inward for a moment. Her lips parted, as though she were about to say something. She stopped herself, though. Her back straightened and her chin came up. Her posture regained the stubborn pride of a High Priestess. "I make no apologies. What's done is done. Good-bye, Merlin. Perhaps someday I will see you again."

Morgana stepped back, away from the pale light of the will 'o the wisp, whispering words of magic as she went. A cold breeze swept through the branches, growing in strength as it spiraled about her, whipping leaves and twigs up into the air until Merlin had to cover his eyes until the wind had passed. When it died, and the clearing was still again, Morgana was gone.

In the tumult of their meeting, neither Merlin nor Morgana had paid attention to anything beyond the clearing. They were too caught up in the machinations of Fate, the prophecy, and hashing out old sins to notice the quick tread of footsteps running away from that magic-haunted clearing, heading straight for the city of Camelot.