A/N: I'll keep it short and sweet here, since my author's note at the bottom will be quite a big longer this time. This is the final chapter of In Darkness. Enjoy!

"Are you sure, Sire?"

"I'm positive, Gaius. He looked right at me."

"Perhaps you were mistaken."

"No. He could see me. I'm sure of it."

There was silence in the physician's chambers then. Merlin had been listening to Arthur and Gaius for the past minute now. Ever since he had regained consciousness. But he had yet to open his eyes.

Because he did not want to be disappointed. He had a foggy memory in his head, a memory that may have just been a dream. A cruel trick that his mind was playing on him. In this memory, he had opened his eyes and seen, actually seen, Arthur kneeling at his side. But that was impossible. Because he was blind. Because the last image he had seen before the world had gone dark was that of the cold, cruel eyes of Prince James of Varelia. And Merlin knew better than to hope that his luck might have turned around.

His mind was working too slowly. He knew that he was lying on the patient's cot in the main room of the physician's chambers. But how or why he was there was a mystery to him at the moment. He was having trouble remembering. He tried to think back to the events of the previous days, but his head was pounding relentlessly. That was when he realized that the rest of his body ached as well. He tried to shift into a more comfortable position on the bed, but found even the slightest movement to be painful.

Frustrated, Merlin sighed and opened his eyes. Then he immediately closed them again and took a deep breath. His heart began to beat faster in his chest. Could it really be true? Slowly, he lifted his eyelids again, and then blinked a couple of times, experimenting. And then, unable to stop himself, Merlin let out a laugh. He almost instantly regretted it though. His throat hurt terribly.

"Merlin?" two voices said in unison as their owners jumped up from the table and hurried over to the patient's cot.

Merlin turned towards the King and the physician, and smiled.

"You look terrible," he rasped, meeting Arthur's gaze and noting the dark circles under the King's eyes.

Arthur laughed at that. "I bet I look better than you do."

Merlin groaned in response before turning to look at Gaius.

The physician was staring in disbelief at his ward. "You can see, Merlin?" he finally managed to say.

Merlin just nodded, hardly able to believe it himself.

Gaius moved forward to get a better look at Merlin's eyes then. "Do you notice any differences in your vision from the way it was before? Is it blurry or out of focus?"

"No, it's perfect," Merlin replied, wincing at his sore throat. Gaius immediately left his bedside to get him a cup of water.

"I thought I told you that I never wanted to find you unconscious again," Arthur said when Merlin turned back to him.

"No. You said you never wanted to find me unconscious at the bottom of a staircase again," Merlin corrected. "And I don't think I fell down the stairs again. Did I?" Merlin's eyes were moving around the whole room now. He wanted to take it all in. He was afraid that at any second, darkness would settle over him once more.

"No. You don't remember what happened?" Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No. What?"

"You really shouldn't be talking so much, Merlin," Gaius interrupted, returning to Merlin's side with the water. "Your throat took a great deal of abuse in the fire. I'll get you some medicine to help with that." The physician left the water with Arthur and then headed over to his medicine stores, or what was left of them anyway. A large portion of his potions and remedies had smashed to the ground after the powerful explosions that had shaken the whole city.

"Fire?" Merlin said, the memories beginning to rush back to him now. Fire. He had been surrounded by flames. The intensity of their heat had been so terrible. He hadn't thought that he was going to get out of there. He had been so sure that he was going to die.

"Are you incapable of following orders?" Arthur demanded, bringing Merlin out of his thoughts. "Or of keeping your mouth shut? You shouldn't be talking." He helped support Merlin's head as it was lifted off the pillow to take a drink of water.

Merlin swallowed greedily from the cup that Arthur held to his lips and then sank back onto his pillow, wincing in pain. "Gaius never ordered me not to talk. He just said I shouldn't."

"Well I'm ordering you now. So just shut up, would you?" Arthur said exasperatedly.

Merlin sighed and just stared at Arthur expectantly.

"I found you slumped against a wall in the burning stables. You were lucky. You burned your arm but nothing else. It was the smoke I was worried about."

Merlin closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered now. That explained why he felt so sore. He had been slammed into the wall of the stables. Looking down, he saw that his arm had been bandaged up. He shivered at the memory of the pain that had shot up his arm when the flames had finally touched him. "And the sorceress?" he whispered.

Arthur glared at him and Merlin clamped his mouth shut.

Gaius came over with the medicine then and with the help of Arthur, lifted Merlin into a position where he could easily swallow it.

"We pulled a woman from the building as well, but it was too late for her," Arthur said in answer to Merlin's question. "She was badly burned and the roof had already collapsed on her. So that was the sorceress then?"

Merlin nodded in confirmation and Arthur visibly relaxed at this news. But then his face darkened once more as he glared down at Merlin.

"You idiot! What were you thinking? How did you even get to the stables? Why were you with the sorceress? She could have killed you! She almost did!"

For once, Merlin thought it would be wise to just keep his mouth shut. He looked up at Arthur, pointed to his mouth, and then shook his head.

"Oh, so now you'll stay quiet. Fine. I have to get going anyway. I must oversee the rebuilding of the lower town today. We'll discuss this later."

Merlin just nodded as the King took his leave. He would have to figure out what he was going to say to Arthur later.

"How bad was the damage?" Merlin asked when Arthur was gone.

Gaius gave his ward a disapproving look before answering. "Not nearly as bad as it could have been. The lower town took the brunt of the attack. The sorceress used her coins to cause those explosions. It destroyed many homes. A few lost their lives."

Merlin sighed and turned his gaze onto the ceiling. The room was silent for another minute. Then, "My eyes, Gaius. It was so strange. I could just feel the magic from the dying flames pushing into them. And then I saw that bright white light."

Gaius smiled. "The Great Dragon's healing magic."

"What?" Merlin asked incredulously.

"It would seem that Kilgharrah's magic never left your eyes, Merlin. The white light indicates that much. Perhaps all you really needed was a little more powerful magic to make it work."

Merlin thought about this for a while. So his trip to go call the dragon had not been in vain after all. Kilgharrah would be pleased.

"You should rest now, Merlin," Gaius said at last. "I'll give you a sleeping draught."

But by the time Gaius had found the correct potion and made his way back over to Merlin's bed, he found that his ward was already asleep.

Merlin's eyelids fluttered open as his ears registered a banging noise. It was another few seconds before he was able to work out that someone was pounding on the door of the physician's chambers. Gaius had jumped out of bed and was now shuffling to the door. Merlin frowned. How long had he been sleeping? Apparently it was nighttime now.

Gaius opened the door. "Sir Gwaine? What-?"

But then the physician fell silent as he opened the door wider. Merlin managed to pull himself into a sitting position as he tried to get a better view of the door, ignoring the pain in his back as he did so.

Gaius stepped aside to allow Gwaine to enter the chambers. But Sir Gwaine was not the only visitor. There was someone else with him, and Merlin had to blink his eyes several times to make sure he was seeing correctly.

"Mother?" he finally managed to choke out, his throat still extremely sore.

In an instant, Hunith was at Merlin's side, hugging him close to her as she sat on the edge of his bed. "Oh, Merlin," she whispered, tears streaming down her face now.

Merlin felt as though he were dreaming. He couldn't believe it. After everything, all the worrying, all the waiting, he couldn't believe that his mother could possibly be here right now.

"How?" was all he could manage to say.

It was Gwaine who answered. "Arthur sent me to Yelrik."

"What?" Merlin whispered pulling away from his mother's embrace to get a good look at her face. His own eyes were now watering with tears.

"I escaped into the forest with some others when the fires broke out," Hunith explained. "We stayed hidden for a time before making our way back to the village. I was helping to treat the wounded when Sir Gwaine arrived."

Merlin turned to Gwaine then. "Thank you," he said.

Gwaine smiled. "Anything for a friend. 'Course, I suppose the princess deserves some of the credit, too. It was his idea to send me there."

Merlin nodded as he pulled his mother into another hug. He would have to thank Arthur later.

It was a few days before Merlin was finally cleared to leave the physician's chambers. He hurried through the castle, in desperate need of some fresh air. The last few days, he had been fussed over so much by both his mother and Gwen to the point that he had begged Gaius to let him go out this morning on his own.

He was tired of lying in bed all day. Of course, he had had plenty of visitors. Leon, Elyan, Percival, and Gwaine came around often enough. And Gwen had turned into his second mother. But Merlin was ready for things to get back to normal. It had been quite a while since they had been.

"Merlin!"

Merlin turned around at the familiar voice. "Nicholas. What are you doing here?"

The young boy shrugged. "Just going for a walk. I got a job in the kitchens!" he said excitedly.

Merlin smiled. "That's great, Nicholas. But what about your family back in Varelia? Won't they miss you?"

Nicholas shook his head. "I don't have a family. It's just me."

"Oh," Merlin said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I was really young when my parents died. I don't remember them at all."

"I see," Merlin replied.

"So you can really see again? Perfectly?" Nicholas asked excitedly.

Merlin smiled. "Yes. Perfectly."

"I'm glad," Nicholas said.

Merlin laughed. "Me, too."

After a long climb up the tower, Merlin reached the battlements and gazed out over the city of Camelot. The sun was making its way up over the morning sky, casting its light on everything down below. Merlin quickly decided that he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life. He would need to come up here more often. Just to make sure that he never took such a view for granted.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" came a voice from behind Merlin.

Merlin smiled. "It's beautiful." He listened to the footsteps of the King as he came closer.

Arthur sighed as he reached Merlin's side and gazed off in the distance, towards the sun. "I'm sorry I haven't visited you in the last few days. There's just been so much to do and-"

"I know," Merlin said, cutting him off.

Arthur nodded. "Well I went to Gaius' this morning to see if you were awake and apparently I had just missed you."

"How'd you find me?"

"Well, I figured that if I had lost my eyesight and then gotten it back, this would be the first place I'd come. So I could take it all in. See as much as I possibly could at once."

Merlin smiled as Arthur managed to voice his own thoughts exactly. He wanted to see everything.

"Thank you for sending Gwaine out to find my mother," Merlin said then.

"I told you I would do everything I could to find her."

The two of them stood in silence for a minute before Arthur continued to speak.

"What happened in the stables, Merlin? What were you doing there?"

Merlin sighed. He knew this had been coming, and he had thought about what he was going to say. And in the end, he had decided on the truth. Mostly.

"I knew I had to confront her," he said truthfully. "Once everything went dark, I realized that I was the only one who could. I knew how to find my way around in the dark. Nobody else did."

"Merlin, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. What did you expect to do when you found her?"

Merlin shrugged, knowing that this was where he would have to change part of his story. "I don't know. I didn't have much of a plan really. I think I took her by surprise, though. She dropped her coin into the flames and the next thing I knew, she was screaming."

The expression on Arthur's face was one of complete shock. "You can't be serious," he said incredulously.

Merlin just shrugged again.

"Idiot! Never do that again!" Arthur nearly shouted.

"What? Run into a building where a crazy sorceress is lurking and waiting to set the place on fire? I'll try to keep that one in mind." Merlin replied.

Arthur sighed. "I'm serious, Merlin. Sorcery is an extremely dangerous thing. It's not something to be messed with."

"I know," Merlin said quietly.

They stood together in silence for a while longer before Arthur took his leave, patting Merlin on the shoulder before he went. "Can I expect you back at work tomorrow then?" he asked.

Merlin nodded. "Of course."

"Good. Because you need to polish my boots again. You did a terrible job on that last pair."

Merlin snorted. "Sorry, Sire. I'll see what I can do to fix it."

Arthur gave Merlin a gentle shove before leaving then, and Merlin was left alone once again with his thoughts.

"Your precious king would never accept you if he knew the truth, and you know it." The sorceress' words echoed in his mind.

Merlin sighed. Once again, sorcery had been the cause of the loss of innocent lives. With every new magical threat that came their way, it seemed that the possibility of Arthur ever accepting magic was slipping farther and farther away.

Maybe he would just have to tell him, Merlin thought. Explain to Arthur that not all sorcerers and sorceresses were evil. Show him. The King was his friend. He would listen.

Wouldn't he?

Merlin shook his head. It wasn't time to reveal his secret to Arthur. Not yet. He didn't think either of them were ready.

Someday they would be.

Just not today.

And with that thought in mind, Merlin turned back towards the sun, smiling as he felt the warmth of its rays on his face and arms, and as he took in the sights of everything its light touched.

A/N: Wow! I cannot believe that this story is complete. This has been such an amazing experience. I never expected to get so much encouragement and support for something that I'd written. It's been completely overwhelming.

This story almost didn't happen. At least, I almost decided not to write it down. I was just going to keep it to myself as I do with all the other stories my brain is constantly coming up with. I'm really glad now that I decided to share it.

I'm probably going to take a short break from writing. I feel exhausted after this story. I've never written anything at such a fast pace before. But knowing my brain, I'll have a new story attacking my mind in no time. So I'll probably be back soon.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you one last time for everything. For all of the follows, favorites, and reviews. And most of all for just taking the time to read my story. It really means a lot to me. It's been really fun getting to show you all a little bit of what goes on in my head on a daily basis.

So anyway, I sincerely hope you enjoyed this story. Any reviews would be greatly appreciated. Until next time! :)