Leave out all the rest
Merlin woke after some time to darkness. He opened his eyes, not that he could see anything: to a pounding in his head and stiff joints. I wonder how long I was out, he thought, worried about how his friends were managing with him gone. They could have been alone for hours, even days. I have to get back to them. With this revelation among the incoherent jumble of his concussed brain, the Warlock attempted to move, to get away, but found he could not. Regaining some focus, he worked out by shifting his weight that he was tied to a chair, sitting upright. His bindings were too cold to be rope, and too strong, so he guessed they were chains. "Abricaþ benda" he whispered, hoping the chains would snap so he could be out of there as soon as possible. They glowed momentarily, so the room was briefly illuminated, showing him to be in a vast space, an empty room with one door and a covered window; but the chains did not break, instead tightening. Merlin groaned as it squeezed the breath from his lungs: aware now that he was definitely a prisoner somewhere. Where exactly there was no way to tell, but he had to get out before Morgana returned.
"Leaving so soon?" said a voice from behind him, and his hope left him as Morgana walked through the door. He managed to turn his head just enough to see her approach. She paused directly behind his back, grabbing his head where it was injured so he had to bite his lip to contain a scream of pain; she leaned in to his ear before whispering "Did you really think it would be that easy?" She shoved his head forward, releasing him, and walked to the window. She pulled off the covering, so they attic was half lit with stark light.
Daylight? Merlin thought - but was it the same daylight he was injured in, or a new day? "No, of course not," he answered calmly, "that's just my luck."
"And you never did have the best of luck, did you Merlin?" The Priestess sneered, but Merlin remained silent, determined not to give her that satisfaction of an answer, or a conversation. She was facing him, her back to the window; it's square of light surrounding her and setting her features into fierce contrast. He did not expect her to want to talk; in fact he expected torture, or death. Even the world's greatest sorcerer could not have predicted that Morgana Pendragon wanted an explanation.
"You have magic" she said, not as an accusation, or a threat. It was a question. Or at least, that's the feeling he got from it. It was strange, Morgana didn't seem so fierce now, she looked – sad. Betrayed, almost. It was confusing, so breaking his stoic silence; he nodded, "Yes"
"And you never told me?" So this was what it was about - Merlin keeping his secret. Why did everything come down to that? He'd kept his magic a secret for all of them. Merlin opened his mouth to speak, but she wasn't listening anymore, ploughing on as she paced in front of the window. She spoke again, getting more and more expressive as she did, almost screaming at the end, "After you found out I had magic – how scared I was – you didn't think to tell me? You didn't think it might help to have someone going through the same thing?"
"And risk being executed?"
"I would never have told!" Morgana stopped pacing, saying this passionately, exaggerating the word 'never', "You were my friend."
Merlin sighed. "Yes, you were. But what about afterwards? When you were intent of destroying Camelot? If you'd have known then, you would have killed me."
"I might not have, we could have worked together – for magic."
Merlin laughed out loud at this, infuriating her even more. "You still don't get it, do you Morgana? We could never have fought together: we fought different battles. I fought to bring magic back peacefully," he leaned forwards, sounding disgusted now, "and you fought only for revenge."
"I fought for our kind!"
"No you didn't! You used to, you tried to help the way I did – but you became so hateful, so bitter; it was never about magic after that, it was just your personal vendetta"
"You betrayed our kind"
"I SAVED OUR KIND!" Merlin shouted, angry now, but quietened, adding coldly, "You condemned them." Morgana recoiled, twisting venomously to face him and moving forwards, closer to where Merlin was bound, defenceless. "You're a liar, Emrys"
"No," he shook his head, "no, I'm not. You condemned them all, to suffering and death, for too long. Don't you see?" He groaned then, a frustrated scream at her ignorance. He thought about it, really thought, and it all came down to that. Everything he'd done, Morgana had been the one stopping him, making it all so hard. She was wrong, and it was time he finally told her.
"When I first arrived in Camelot, I was just a boy: but I was a sorcerer too. I knew that, but I didn't know how. I was born with it," he paused, but she had stopped stock still, listening for perhaps the first time in her life. "Then, I heard a voice calling to me in my dreams, an old voice; a wise one. I followed it to a dungeon underneath the castle and found Kilgarrah, the great dragon. Over the years in Camelot, he spoke to me, helped me-"
"Why did he never speak to me?" Morgana interrupted, the spite was gone completely from her face, replaced by a long lost curiosity. "I was of magic too, why would he not help?"
Merlin sighed, "Because he knew . . . what you would become. Just as he knew I was Emrys, he knew you would be Arthur's destruction." The Priestess looked crestfallen, speaking quietly, "So I was made to be evil?"
Not knowing how to respond, Merlin pretended not to heave heard, and continued with his story. "So he helped me to save Arthur for many years, and things – they went well for a while, although it didn't feel like it at the time. I had no idea how bad it would get. So, for a long time, that was the dance we did: Arthur was an idiot, and I saved him, keeping my secret of course – because that's what I was told was my destiny."
"But you never wanted credit? Why?"
"They'd have killed me," Merlin laughed, "But that's not why I did it anyway. You see, from the moment I was told that I was 'Emrys', and I must save Camelot – I got promised something at the end of it all – he called it Albion. It was a land I would create with Arthur, where Camelot was strong - and magic was free."
"But that never happened; you had years with your destiny and nothing changed" Morgana accused. If he was so great, then why didn't Albion get built straight away? "It wasn't that easy" Merlin shouted, "Especially with you getting in the way"
"How was I to know? You never shared your secret with me – I was only trying to free my people too!"
"Everything I did – everything – you made it worthless, Morgana. Every time I was so close, I nearly had Arthur believing magic was a force for good; you would do something to make it all useless. Every time I considered telling him after I'd saved someone, because he might see it differently – you'd attack someone, or destroy something – showing him it was bad. You were wrong. You made us look evil in his eyes and condemned magic." He was getting quite flustered now, angrier than Morgana had ever seen him, "All I ever worked for, everything I ever lost something for or fought for or bled for – you made it worthless."
"I-I didn't know" she stuttered.
"You ruined me" he said it dripping with venom, every bit of weariness and pain on his face in that second, "I only ever wanted peace."
"And you didn't mind destroying me in the process?" Morgana demanded, matching his anger with her own. Both could be cruel, manipulative people if they needed to be, and right now all the buried anger of the past was showing. "I never wanted to – you brought that upon yourself!" he yelled.
"By not knowing? Perhaps if you'd had trusted me things might not have ended this way"
That essentially tipped cold water over Merlin's head, and his rage sobered instantly, "I'm sorry that it did" he said softly.
"Me too"
A silence fell between them, as Morgana leaned against the window and Merlin relaxed in his bounds. "Abricaþ benda" he tried again, but the chains did not yield.
"It will take a lot more than that" Morgana informed him, "Why are you still trying to escape? I'm not hurting you."
"I know. I just figured it would be easier to talk if I wasn't tied up."
"I can't let you go, Merlin"
"Why? I'm not your enemy anymore" he pleaded.
"But you are, Emrys. We have no choice – destiny took that away from us all." She wasn't being cruel or vindictive anymore; Morgana Pendragon had no other path to take. The change from calling him 'Merlin' to 'Emrys' was noted by Merlin. "It doesn't have to end this way" the Warlock told her. She wanted so desperately to believe him, to believe his story of Albion and peace. But too much had happened between them; there was no going back from here. "You killed me, Emrys"
"I didn't want to," he sounded genuinely apologetic, and she expected him to stop there, but he carried on, "I was told to kill you a long time before that. By Kilgarrah, he said you would be the doom of Camelot – I didn't want to believe him. You were so sweet back then, before – well, before things happened. He said I should kill you or else let you die."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because as much as things have changed: you were my friend. That meant something to me. You hadn't done anything wrong and I couldn't bear to do it."
"You should have," she said bitterly, "Arthur might have lived then." He made a noise that might have been a sigh; she watched him. Merlin had changed. Just as the others had noticed, so did Morgana.
"Don't say that," he ordered, annoyed again, "Don't even start playing the victim again. I tried so hard to save you! I really did blame myself for what happened to you, understand that. I wanted to keep you in Camelot, safe, until Albion was built. In a way, I wanted to prove to you that Arthur was not Uther – and he isn't." She looked up at this. Morgana had never given her brother much thought in all of this, besides defeating him.
"I don't trust anything you say anymore" she said.
"I never wanted this to happen! All the times I tried to keep you grounded there, I tried to keep you away from the evil around us, but you ran straight to it. By trying to kill Uther; siding with Morgause – none of that was on me. That was all you. You were the one who left us. I had no choice after that, you were attacking us and I had to stop you. But I tried so hard, for so long, to keep you on the good side"
"What's the 'good' side?! With you? Standing by letting our kind be slaughtered"
"I tried to help them" he exclaimed, "I helped Mordred, didn't I? Even though I knew he would one day kill Arthur. I did that for you – I thought you might stay of you thought you could help people."
"You helped one boy of hundreds - that's nothing. If you wanted me to stay, you should have trusted me. If I had hope of Albion, as you had been given, I might have seen a future. As it was I thought the only way was to end Uther's reign."
Merlin provided no answer for a few minutes, thinking. "If you had tried to see the love in people; their goodness instead of spite, I wouldn't have needed to" he said evenly.
"Some people don't have any goodness to find"
"Yes, they do" Merlin told her, "They always do. But sometimes you don't look hard enough to find it. In the way that Uther viewed all those with magic as being evil, you viewed all those in Camelot as heartless – you really are Uther's daughter."
"Don't you dare say that ever again" Morgana snapped, striding across the room and slapping the serving boy across the face. He took the blow without complaint, staring her down. It was as he did this that Morgana really saw the change in him. Through everything, Merlin always had a kindness to his eyes, now only a cold apathy remained: like he was dead behind the eyes. It was truly terrifying; Morgana knew he was more dangerous now than ever – a man with no hope is a man with nothing to lose.
"The sins of the father are not those of the daughter" she warned him, "would you judge Arthur this way?"
"Arthur was never like Uther – he was so much better than him."
"And I'm not?"
"You used to be," Merlin sighed, "before you brought yourself down to his level. Then you became so much like Uther that the old Morgana, the compassionate one, was unrecognisable." Fuming, Morgana took a deep breath and stood back, straightening her posture so she towered over him.
"And you, Emrys– are you like your father?" she asked.
"I'd like to believe I am" the Warlock said earnestly, fleetingly looking like his past self. "He was a good man; I'd be proud to be half the man he was"
"I never got to feel that way - pride, I mean. I never had a father to be proud of" Morgana mused. The boy said nothing, for frankly he agreed that there was nothing to be proud of in having Uther as a father – except perhaps that he died protecting his son. "Who was he, your father?" Merlin's train of thought was interrupted by the question.
"Why does it matter?" he demanded, becoming impatient. The Sorceress changed the topic, allowing the matter to drop if it was a sore one, for she needed to know now. She needed to know why. Why he couldn't save her. "Can you really forget it so easily?" Morgana asked coolly.
"What?"
"The hurt. You learned hide it well, but I can see it. You're hurting" she said.
"Why can't you let it be?" he snapped suddenly. If he could convince her to move on, maybe he could save her at last; and then everyone could be safe. Everyone. "Because I never got an ending" she announced, "It was just – over."
To her surprise, he nodded solemnly in agreement, "me neither."
"But at least you won, Emrys. My army was destroyed and everything we fought for lost, but for you, Camelot still stood"
"You think this is winning?" his voice gained pace at this, spitting the question out bitterly. "I may have saved Camelot – but that doesn't mean I didn't lose everything. I did."
"You lost one man"
"Arthur was gone" he roared, leaning forward viciously, anger quick to build, "he was gone, and everything was lost with him. And as for an ending," he spat, "You got a better one than I did. I have lived for a thousand years, I never ever got to rest – at least you got an ending in death."
Morgana's head snapped up, "You think dying was a good end? I-"
"-It's better than living" he didn't give her chance to finish, but only spoke quietly. "When you die you get an answer, or at least to sleep. But living after all of that - once you've lost everything you held most dear – you just get so tired." She could see it on his face, the weary old man leaping out from his youthful features; he was old, and tired. She shook herself, was she really pitying him? Emrys, who had destroyed her?! "Do you expect sympathy?" she sneered, "What happened is no more than you deserve."
"No," he shook his head, "I don't want pity – but if you're going to kill me, you can hear it all first. If you could have the decency to kill me quickly now though, I would be thankful. I think we've established that I'd welcome it" Merlin was done. He was done trying to fight the tide that was coming in, so he sank into the depths instead. If she killed him, it was not losing; it was giving in and finding rest.
"You're no saint, and I won't make you martyr" Morgana replied, stringing together an idea.
"I never said I was! I know I'm an awful person who has done terrible, terrible things: I don't need you to tell me that. I don't have the answers you want" he protested. "Just let me die."
The lady Morgana could not believe her luck; he was pathetic – pleading for death. But somehow, on that day, she could not bring herself to think cruelly on these words. She had imaged this moment a thousand times, to have Emrys at her feet begging for death, but now when it was real, she could see only simple Merlin at her mercy. Merlin: who laughed even in the hardest of times – begging to die? It wasn't victory, not even justice – it was sad.
"Perhaps keeping you alive would be the bigger torment, Emrys" she said, not because she meant it heartlessly, but because she couldn't bring herself to kill him when he was like this. She wanted a fight: a blaze of glory in which she would finally vanquish her foe on level ground – not the plain murder of an empty man. That would be no victory at all.
He looked at her strangely then. He'd figured it out. "You used to call me Merlin." He sighed. She said nothing, so he carried on. "Until I was your enemy, I was your friend. When you found out who I was you switched straight to calling me Emrys. Why is that, my lady?" He was mocking now underneath the facade, for he finally understood her and their relationship. "It was nice to put a name to my tormentor" she said too quickly, turning away.
"I think it's more than that," he said, tilting his head to the side and refusing to let her drop her gaze, "It is like you couldn't call me Merlin and still fight me. When I was Emrys, I was your enemy, but Merlin – I was your friend. That still means something."
"No, it means nothing!" Morgana yelled, "You were my friend, Merlin" she said his name in his face, "but then you stabbed me in the back by betraying me; it didn't count for anything then."
"Then why couldn't you call me by the name you did when we were friends?"
"Because you are Emrys, it was your destiny long before you were just Merlin" she reasoned, although it was a lie. He was right – she didn't call him Merlin because the name didn't bring to mind her doom, but her old friend, the clumsy serving boy. Merlin would never be her mortal enemy, Emrys was.
"I don't think that's true" he didn't let it drop, gaining confidence now. "I think you call me Emrys when I am your rival and Merlin when I am at your mercy. You fear Emrys but not Merlin, but equally you will not hurt me when you're thinking of me as Merlin. So you pretend I'm nothing more than Emrys"
"You're nothing without Emrys" she screamed coldly at him, "Merlin is nobody: you were a useless, clumsy idiot! If it hadn't been for your destiny – for you becoming Emrys – nobody would have thought anything of you at all." Now that hurt him. It wasn't true, it was Merlin who his friends knew, not Emrys; it was the serving boy they loved. But it made him feel as worthless as he'd believed for years, and gave him a determination to carry on. He was more than that – more than who is destiny said he would be. He was definitely more than what Morgana thought of him; he would not let her win. He would not abandon his friends. He would never be so afraid again. This time he was getting an ending; he would fight for it.
"I am," Merlin laughed bitterly. "I am so much more than any of you thought." She did not get time to retort before he opened his mouth and a string of words, a spell so powerful it shook the room, escaped. It might not have worked yesterday, but right then, he believed in himself for a second of madness, and it showed. "O drakon, e mala soi ftengometh tesd'hup anankes! Erkheo!" he called, head tilted to the sky and voice strong.
"What are you doing?" Morgana demanded, fear briefly flashing across her face. He had changed in a second, from limply sitting; losing hope, to shouting fiercely, as she had never seen him before. It had always been old Emrys like that: so great and powerful, never her Merlin, who fell over a lot and once brought her flowers.
His face dropped to look at her, and it was proud and profoundly regretful, "I gave you a chance, Morgana." A rumbling sound made the entire area tremble, the beat of wings filling the air. The lady looked worried "What have you done?" she shouted over the din, holding onto the window sill to keep upright. Her question was answered by a commotion behind Merlin, as Aithusa burst through the brick wall, landing deftly behind him. She had grown now to the size of a fully grown Dragon; aged and mighty. Her scales shone brilliantly, eyes gleaming: Morgana's Dragon. But now, the old creature obeyed her master's command. Merlin spoke to her again, not once taking his eyes off Morgana, and the great Dragon breathed fire onto the chains biding him, its flames strong enough to break their spell. The Warlock was released as his chains fell to the ground at his feet. He rose, standing taller than before: Aithusa opened her wings behind him, giving him the image of an angel with wings. Morgana trembled, for it was a great and terrible sight to behold.
"I am Merlin" he said, walking towards her. "Son of Balinor, and I am the last Dragon Lord." His eyes were brimming with tears of bitter pride, "The druids call me Emrys, but I am more than that. It was said long ago that I would unite the lands of Albion alongside my King – and what a kingdom we built."
Smiling slightly, he stopped just in front of her, not fearful in any way. She could have fought back, but Morgana stood, frozen.
"I'm not afraid of you anymore" he said, and found it to be true. Holding back tears, he went on, "I'm never going to be afraid again."
"Emrys-" Morgana started, but he cut her off.
"I am, above all else, Merlin. I will fight for my friends, and for my King. I tried to save you-" he cut off, choked up. "But I am more than you think, and I will not stand by and let your evil poison this world again. I'll give you one more chance –come with me, Morgana. We don't need to fight anymore" he held out a hand for her to take, if she chose to. The lady stared at it for a minute; then met his eyes. "It's too late" she said, without anger, but sadness. She regretted that it had gone this far, but she needed her ending this time. He nodded.
"Then I am sorry. I will not let you hurt anyone; you will not harm my friends. Remember that I tried" Merlin spoke softly, if wistfully, "remember we used to be friends."
"I will"
Morgana didn't know what she was expected, but as Merlin turned away, walking to Aithusa and touching the beasts white nose affectionately, she was surprised. She had thought he would kill her. But he was too kind. Emrys – Merlin, mounted the creatures back, and with a final glance at her, took off into the sky on the back of his Dragon. The lady Morgana hadn't realized she was holding her breath until she released it. The she choked on it, even a few tears escaped upon her cheeks. Still shaking, she stood uncertainly, no longer needing to hold the window sill for support. She stood in light, reflecting on all that had been said.
She didn't hate Merlin. She had come to know that. She should hate him, but she didn't – they just fought different battles. The new one was just beginning.
Morgana knew where she stood with the boy now, and felt better about it. She still needed her ending, her victory, but things were not the same. Why did he have this effect in people? She had seen it before with Arthur, when Merlin was his voice of reason that couldn't be ignored. She had underestimated him: a mistake she would come to regret. Shaken but standing, Morgana swept her gaze across the room, resting finally on the chair and chains in the centre. Things were clear now; it was just the beginning. Setting her jaw and brushing away the tears, she left the room behind, not looking back.
A goodbye is a funny thing. They can be for the better or the worse; bittersweet or heart-wrenching; short or long things. They are usually complicated, and not always final. Sometimes, they're wrong. If the people saying goodbye had met at a different time, they might not be saying goodbye at all. Or they can be late: moving on is hard and leaving is difficult until you take the first step. Goodbyes can be under different circumstances; temporary or permanent. But whether it's a proud brother saying goodbye to his sibling at a new beginning, school or leaving home; or an old man saying a last goodbye to his beloved as she leaves this earth: goodbyes mean change. The two greatest figures of the old religion, Morgana the grey and Merlin the red, thought they had said goodbye that day. But they hadn't. (Not yet.)
