AN: Final chapter! Sorry it's taken me so long to post it but I've been participating in Camp NaNoWriMo to help me with my original novel, so my time has been thoroughly sucked. Glad this story is finally finished and up! Hope you guys have a great summer!
"You never told me about him before." Janelle said to her mother bringing Lenaya back from her faraway place again. "If you loved him, why didn't you stay with him?" she asked. "Why didn't he go with you?"
Lenaya shook her head. "I only loved a part of him. I loved his magic, his mystery, his adventure. I did not know what real love was."
She looked at her daughter who seemed slightly distraught at the story. "Your father on the other hand… I fell in love with everything about him. We had been friends ever since we were children, but we had drifted apart as adults. He studied more and more to be a knight, and I studied to be a Queen. But when I returned after seeing Merlin, Gwaine became a friend to me once more. He listened to all my worries, let me pour out my heartbreak to him, and in so doing I truly fell in love with a man I loved completely, and one who loved me, for all of me, not just a part."
Lenaya's eyes drifted past her daughter, to the figure in the doorway. "Merlin loved a part of me, the part that was my father, his closest friend."
Janelle followed her mother's eyes to the doorway and stood up quickly.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
The man with the dark beard and intense blue eyes stepped forward. "I came to see your mother." In an instant Janelle knew who this man was. She did not really understand how she knew, but it didn't stop the name from coming to her lips.
"Merlin," she murmured, and he merely smiled in response. She glanced between the two of them. "You… you look…" For a man who was supposed to be as old as her grandfather, he actually looked younger than Janelle herself.
"I'll give you two some privacy," she stated, moving past him and out the door.
Merlin stepped forward and took the seat in which Janelle had been sitting. He reached his young, pale hand to grasp her wrinkled, dark one.
Lenaya smiled at him. "You are looking very good for your age," she teased, causing Merlin to smile, although his eyes were sad.
"How is the lake, Merlin?" she asked. "Is it still as beautiful as I remember?"
Merlin nodded. "Even more so," he stated looking intently at her with a fondness in his eyes.
She sighed, "I believe it's time, Merlin."
Merlin frowned. "Time for what?" he asked.
"Time for you to stop hiding in that forest of yours. Time for you to go find Aithusa and fix things. It's time for people to return to the resting place of the greatest king that ever lived."
Merlin dropped his gaze. "I'm not ready," he murmured. "I'm not ready to leave."
Lenaya reached out her weak hand and lifted his chin. "It's what my father would have wanted," she murmured.
"Aithusa's time is not over. She still has the chance to redeem herself, to become the light that you first saw when she hatched," Lenaya encouraged. "And you…" she leaned back in her pillows. "You must move on as well. You must let go of the anger you have carried for so many years."
Merlin's eyes grew teary. "I don't know if I can change," he admitted.
Lenaya sat up completely, pulling from some reserve of strength she didn't know she had. She cupped Merlin's face in her hands.
"I don't want you to change. I want you to always be you,*" she said. Merlin dropped his head, but Lenaya raised it again. "Not the you I first met, but the you I spent those glorious days with. The one who was honest with me, who hated taking the life of an innocent animal, and spared the wyverns life although it would have taken his."
"That was because of you," Merlin protested.
"You wouldn't have done it," Lenaya responded.
"You can't know that for sure," Merlin shot back.
"I know you," Lenaya stated and Merlin did not argue.
She leaned back. "I'm tired, Merlin," she murmured.
Merlin nodded. "I know," he whispered.
"I won't be around much longer," she admitted, and Merlin turned his head to hide his tears.
"When I die, will you lay me to rest with my father? And with Freya and Lancelot?" she asked, remembering the stories Merlin told her in the forest oh so long ago.
"Of course," Merlin responded.
Lenaya sighed happily and sunk even farther into the pillows. As she fell asleep, she whispered quietly, just loud enough for Merlin to hear:
"Thank you."*
AN: So not the happiest of endings but in my mind it is filled with hope. I hope this story lifted your spirits instead of dragging them down and that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
*Quote from Diamond of the Day Part II. One of the last things Arthur says to Merlin.
**Another quote from Diamond of the Day Part II. The very last thing Arthur says to Merlin.
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God bless!