Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

She was still alive.

Merlin wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed by the fact. He'd half believed that they would cross the ice and look down at her and she would be gone. The choice would have been taken away from them, and she would have been remembered regrettably as collateral damage in the battle against Mordred. It would have been convenient. Morbidly and disgustingly convenient. But convenient all the same.

Merlin hadn't tried to kill her. Honestly, he'd forgotten that she was there when he'd opened the heavens. He'd been so focused on Mordred. If Morgana had died in the ice as Mordred had, it would have truly been an accident. As it was, her head had been above the water when he'd frozen it. It would have taken away from them the awful choice that was before them, but he didn't know if he could have lived with the fact that he would have caused the deaths of two people in the manner of Mordred's. The way that his knees had moved…

When they'd taken her from the ice, Merlin melting into rainwater a small pool around her and Arthur pulling her out, Merlin had thought that she was dead. She was so pale and so very cold to the touch…but she was breathing. She didn't wake, no matter how they jostled her as they lowered her onto the brick of the floor adjacent to the courtyard. Merlin was beginning to believe that she wouldn't wake at all unless they did something.

And therein lay the problem. The doing something. Was there something that they ought to do? Or ought they do nothing and…let matters take their course? Or was there some else, something worse, that they owed it to who she had once been to do? Oh, why couldn't she have just been dead…

What made him feel even worse was how he intended for whatever was going to happen to happen. Arthur wouldn't understand. Not really. Not why Merlin was so certain. This was just one of those scenarios when Merlin felt the way that events had to unfold, a tingling that told him that he had to step back. He just knew. But he also knew that Arthur would probably not be so impressed by the explanation of how being "Emrys" automatically excused what Merlin intended. Arthur was just so not magical…Merlin hoped that he could understand. He needed Arthur to understand.

He needed Arthur to understand that he would have to be the one to do it.

"Merlin," said Arthur, sounding very young as they crouched on either side of the fallen sorcerer. "What do we do?"

Merlin took a deep breath. "Arthur, I'm truly sorry for this. But whatever is going to happen is going to be your decision. I'll take no part."

Arthur just looked at him, and Merlin felt guiltier than he could remember ever feeling. "What do you mean?"

"Morgana's life is in your hands," Merlin said, trying to speak as firmly as possible without sounding insensitive to what he was asking of Arthur. "I have enough blood on mine today."

"You don't want to…deal with Morgana because of Mordred?" he asked, looking as though he was trying very hard to follow Merlin but was having trouble tracking.

Merlin sighed, wishing that he could explain. "Mordred was my responsibility. Mordred was my choice. Morgana is your sister. She's wronged you far more than she has me. She is your choice."

Arthur's brow puckered. "I thought that you were meant to be her doom. That's what she said."

Merlin shook his head. "I trapped her in the ice. Whatever decision you make, whatever happens, I had a hand in it. But this is your choice."

Arthur nodded, his expression bleak and desperate. Merlin wasn't sure if Arthur was really hearing what he was telling him.

"We don't look alike, you know," said Arthur.

Merlin bit his lip. He thought that he knew where this was going. "I know, Arthur."

"We look so different. When we were children, even when we went places together without dressing as nobles, no one ever thought that we were siblings. Granted, our accents were a bit different, especially when we were little and she hadn't spent so many years in Camelot, but you see two children going everywhere together, doing everything together, of similar age…you'd think that they were siblings. But she's so pale, even when she's not frozen like this. Her hair is so dark. And me…well, they didn't exactly have to use their imaginations very much when they called me the Golden Prince. No one ever even guessed. But she was my sister before I even knew she was my sister. But then, she never tried to kill me until she found out that she actually was my sister. Oh, why doesn't this make any sense…"Arthur rambled, staring down at Morgana, and Merlin flinched at his own heartlessness. He always forgot about how close Morgana and Arthur had been as children before he'd come to Camelot, and now he was making Arthur do this…

"Although," said Arthur, laughing a bit. "At least I understand now why my father always so violently opposed marriage talks about the two of us. How uncomfortable that must have been for him! Not that it wasn't all his fault in the first place…"

"Arthur," Merlin said quietly.

Arthur decided not to hear him.

"Did I ever tell you about what happened when I got my first crown? You were there when I got my second, I think. But I got my first when I turned ten, and there was this endless ceremony with about a dozen different speeches, and all I wanted was the damn crown, but my father looked so proud and the people looked so hopeful so I had to sit there and wait for them to have it all out. I finally got the thing on my head and was standing there as all of the people in attendance came forward to give their congratulations, as if I'd done a damn thing other than been born to a certain pair of parents. My father came up with Morgana on his arm—she couldn't have been more than twelve—and he talked about how I was the pride and joy of his heart, you know, all of the things that he always said whenever there was a ceremony or he was drunk or I was on my deathbed. And then Morgana says the little speech that she was taught, about how I was well on my way to becoming a king about whom the poets would write and singers sing and all of that rubbish. Then, after she said what she'd been told to say to me, she turns to my father and says out loud, 'When am I getting my crown?'" Arthur laughed again. "She was so offended that she was older than I was, as though someone had skimped on her tenth birthday and forgotten to give her her crown. Of course, I laughed and laughed and she glared and probably would have cried if she'd been any other little girl than Morgana and my father stood there, probably wishing that he never had children. But we were happy, that day."

Merlin nodded. He didn't know what else he could do. Arthur seemed like he needed to get all of this out before he made any decisions. If Arthur needed to stare at his sister and rhapsodize about their childhood, Merlin was just fine with letting that happen.

Abruptly, as though he had heard Merlin's thoughts and decided to immediately subvert them, Arthur turned to look at Merlin.

"She's killed so many people," he commented, almost casually. He kept looking at Merlin, and Merlin gathered that he was hoping for a response.

There was only one that he could think of.

"Yes," Merlin said simply. This was a hellish situation that Arthur was in, but Merlin wasn't going to sugarcoat Morgana's crimes. Her victims deserved better.

"She's tortured and tormented," Arthur continued.

"Yes." Merlin was beginning to think that Arthur just needed to say these things aloud, to hear them affirmed, to make whatever he did okay. And these were statements that Merlin could affirm wholeheartedly. He'd always hate himself on some level because of how he had poisoned her, but she had done so much that could not have been excused by that awful thing that he had done. She could hardly blame her circumstances for all of the evil that she had done.

"If she hadn't been stopped, back whenever she would take my throne, she would have kept killing and torturing and tormenting until she ran out of subjects to kill, torture, and torment," said Arthur thoughtfully, looking back down at Morgana.

"Probably, yes."

"She burnt crops and homes and shops."

"Yes."

"She can't ever be trusted."

"Yes."

"She's so powerful…"

"Yes, she is."

"Merlin?" asked Arthur, looking up at his friend, his face settled.

"Yes, Arthur?"

"Leave me."

Merlin was taken aback. Whatever Arthur was going to do, Merlin had figured that he'd be a witness. Propriety aside, he was vaguely uncomfortable leaving Arthur alone with a dying Morgana and a dead Mordred. It just seemed like a bad idea. Arthur had been overwhelmed already. They both were. No, he'd assumed that he would be there. He assumed that it would be as heavy on his conscience as it was on Arthur's.

"Would…" he began, then took a deep breath. "Would you like me to wake her for—"

"Please," said Arthur. "Just…leave me."

Merlin left.

At first, he wasn't sure where he ought to go. If he wandered through the castle, he was likely to get lost. It all looked the same now that they weren't stalking the corridors, searching for their enemy. It occurred to him now that he might have been drawn to Mordred's power and so had had a fairly easy job of finding him. He wouldn't even really be able to use any statues for landmarks. None of them had heads.

And Merlin didn't like thinking about the headless statues.

He walked. He didn't aim or try to pick out the way that they'd gone on their way in. He figured that he'd probably overthink it anyway. So what if he got lost? It wasn't as though he was in any danger of anything beyond tripping over some debris. Even the darkness wouldn't be particularly daunting. He didn't exactly require a torch.

Still, after a few minutes, he found himself at the entrance of the castle. He almost smiled. He wouldn't have found his way out if he'd tried, but of course he'd managed to meander himself out of the maze. He trotted through the archway and sat himself down on the steps that led out toward the moat turned crypt. He figured that this was as good a place as any to wait. Besides, if Arthur got it into his head that he wanted to escape without having to face Merlin, he wouldn't be able to sneak his way out. And it just felt good to have clean and open air on his face.

Merlin waited.

It was nearly two hours before he saw Arthur, but the king finally emerged from the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Arthur very gently lay something on the floor behind them. He saw down heavily next to Merlin, hung his head, and Merlin knew.

Merlin didn't say anything. He didn't place a hand on Arthur's shoulder. He didn't pat him on the shoulder. He didn't even look at him. He didn't dare acknowledge the king. Merlin knew that if he gave any sort of kind gesture at this moment, Arthur would break.

So they sat.

Merlin never found out how Arthur had done it. He never asked. He even didn't know if Arthur would have told him if he had.

They sat.

And they sat.

They sat until they couldn't sit anymore, because there were things to do and they needed to be done before either of them thought about it too much.

Merlin offered to make the fire, citing ability and ease and wanting this to be over as quickly as possible, but Arthur refused. Instead, the king spent hours making trips back and forth from the forest through which they'd spent so many hours trekking. He was gathering wood, assembling the pyre on his own, right in front of the archway that led into the castle that had been the end of so very much. He wouldn't let Merlin help, and when he lifted Morgana from the stone floor, he was more gentle than Merlin had ever seen him.

Arthur lit the fire himself, taking Merlin's flint and striking his fingers bloody. Unaccustomed to doing it himself, it took him several clumsy tries with unsteady fingers to draw a spark from the stones. But he managed.

And Morgana burnt.

It didn't take very long, all things considered.

They stood motionless the whole time, watching. After the fire finally began to die away, Arthur roused himself.

"Let us never speak of her again," he said quietly, watching curls of smoke rise up from the place where he had lain his sister.

Merlin remembered the look on Morgana's face when she'd realized that she'd been poisoned. How she had tried to push him away. How she had relented because she didn't want to die alone. He remembered how frightened Mordred had been when they had first met. How Kilgarrah had warned him of what Mordred would become, but how he couldn't see anything beyond the scared little boy. How Mordred's knees had wriggled back and forth as he froze. Merlin remembered everything.

"Let us never speak of any of this again," he said.

There was silence for a moment.

"Merlin," said Arthur, and Merlin looked at him for the first time since he had ignited the fire to find that Arthur was facing him as well. "What have we done?"

He sounded dreadfully sad.

"What we had to," answered Merlin, hating the weakness of the words that came out of his mouth.

"'What we had to," Arthur echoed thoughtfully. "Was there truly no better solution?"

"Not for us, I think," said Merlin, wanting Arthur to see that he didn't know what they were doing any better than Arthur did. "Not if we wanted to…win."

Arthur nodded and rubbed his eyes. "Do you think that we'll ever escape from this? From what we've done?"

Merlin just shrugged. "No."

"Why not?" asked Arthur curiously. There was no anger, no condemnation in his voice. Not even any disagreement. Just that same quiet knowledge that there was no going back. Two sides of the same coin…Merlin thought that maybe Arthur was finally understanding what that really meant. "Why not?"

"There is nothing more damning than a destiny denied," said Merlin, very quietly.

"Nothing?" asked Arthur, a ghost of a smile on his face as he looked back at the embers. "I don't know about that."

"Yeah," said Merlin, his eyes closed, remembering the cold.

He shivered, wishing that there was more to say. It was so desolate in this place. The pitch blackness of night that surrounded them rendered almost eerie the whiteness of the castle at their backs, the utter silence broken only by the cracklings of the dying fire. They couldn't see much of anything beyond the moat of skeletons, save for the ghostly images of the distant ruins of what had been the great city. The world felt so small and yet so vast at the same time that Merlin wanted to yell out and see how far his voice would travel.

Then, before Merlin could do something rash and probably more alarming than either of them needed by that point, Arthur spoke.

"Are you ready to go home?" he asked, sounding exhausted.

"Yes," Merlin replied immediately. He was. It felt like it had been ages since he'd been anywhere that felt like home. It hadn't been more than two weeks that they'd been gone, but those had been two weeks filled with near death experiences and arguments and illnesses and unhappy endings. He wanted to go back to Camelot and sleep in his bed and eat at a table and see his friends and spend time in friendly company. Arthur was his greatest friend, but they had had a tough couple of weeks. They could use some fresh company. They had been each other's only source of kindness, and even that had stretched a few times. Yes, he was ready to go home.

Then, he remembered.

"No, I'm not," he said. "There's something that I need to do."

Arthur was either too tired to wonder or he heard enough in Merlin's tone to understand that this was not something that Merlin particularly wanted to discuss, and he said nothing. Merlin was grateful. He took Arthur's knife and cut a long strip away from the hem of his shirt. Jumping down into the pit of bones, Merlin stood up on his toes and tied it carefully around one of the lines of ribbons, hung long ago by the Druids to honor the dead. The faded red fabric contrasted starkly with the ribbons, ghostly pastel and rendered stiff from exposure, as it fell limply in their midst. It was a poor addition, Merlin had to admit. But it was all that he had.

"Be at rest," Merlin whispered. He ducked his head and closed his eyes for a moment.

Then, without looking back, he climbed out and yelled for Aithusa, certain that the white dragon would be able to come fetch them where they stood. After all, he thought, there was no more darkness in this place.

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Thank you for reading! There's only one chapter left, and maybe an epilogue. The heavy stuff is finally out of the way.

Reviews are always extremely appreciated!