"Emrys."

A figure stepped out of the endless fog; Merlin, startled, jerked to attention.

*.*.*.*.*

Arthur, slowly and deliberately, took off his cloak and draped it over Merlin. It was already bloodstained past salvaging, and even if it hadn't been, he'd never have been able to bring himself to wear it again, anyway. There was a better use for it now. "Someone help me pick him up. We'll wrap him in this for the trip home," he said, his voice deliberately brusque. Not that it was likely to fool anyone, but still. He couldn't bear to look at that empty, waxen shell for another moment. Because the longer he looked at the slack features, the more firmly they embedded themselves in his mind, overtaking and overpowering his memories of Merlin's animated expression and eternally visible emotions. Arthur wanted to remember wide grins and sly mischievous smirks punctuating sarcastic rejoinders. He wanted to remember the sudden way Merlin's entire demeanor could instantly pivot from seeming younger than his years to decades older and wise to boot. He wanted to remember annoyed grimaces when Arthur went out of his way to be irritating and earnest, wholehearted delight when Arthur did something good and quiet, compassionate glances when Arthur was holding himself together by sheer willpower.

He didn't want to remember the desperate way Merlin had stared up at him, blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth as he struggled for one more breath, and he didn't want to remember the broken thing lying on the altar. That was not Merlin. It wasn't. And Arthur refused to dishonor the man by remembering him as though it was.

It was bad enough that they were going to have to drape him over the saddle for the long ride back to Camelot, tied into place like a prize stag after a hunt. Being shrouded in the rich crimson fabric, with the proud Pendragon crest picked out in gold thread, was about the only vestige of dignity Arthur could think to give him on this last journey.

Not that 'Merlin' and 'dignity' were two words anyone tended to use in tandem all that often, Arthur thought, with a flash of something that might, eventually, when the raw immediacy of death had mellowed into quiet sorrow, become fond humor. Merlin had taken things in his stride, and had never seemed too bothered by objectively embarrassing situations of either his own making or Arthur's. Oh, he had his own brand of pride, and he got even, openly and unabashedly and with every evidence of complete satisfaction, but with no sign of any festering resentment or shame. It reminded Arthur of a toy he'd had as a very small child—a roly-poly figure carved from wood with a heavy, rounded base. He could tip the figure over, knock it around as hard as he liked, push its painted face clear to the floor, but it always rolled back upright the moment he released his grip. Merlin was like that. No matter what, come famine, flood, or fire, he always got back up.

Arthur respected that. His first sword instructor—a grizzled old veteran—had introduced himself to his pupil by 'sparring' with the five year old. Not a word, no warning, just full-on attack, almost before Arthur had had a chance to draw a sword he had no real idea how to use. He'd given no quarter, sending the boy sprawling half a dozen times in half as many minutes, then hunkered down by a dazed Arthur, who was doing his best not to cry, and told him that life was like that. That it wasn't a question of not being knocked down, because it was going to happen, any number of times, and it would hurt. The secret of strength, he'd said, gravely extending a hand, was simply getting back up again when it happened. Fall ten times, get up eleven. And then he'd waited to see what Arthur would do. The approving glance he'd given him when Arthur took his hand and scrambled to his feet, sword at the ready, had instantly become the prize Arthur wanted more than almost anything else, second only to the same look from his father. Arthur had learned a great deal from him, but he thought the lesson he'd taken in those first five minutes was probably the most valuable thing the old man had had to teach. Arthur got back up when he fell.

Merlin got back up, too. Even when it was Arthur who'd knocked him down. He always got back up.

He had always gotten back up.

Wordlessly, the knights helped him wrap Merlin neatly in the concealing fabric. It was not a task unfamiliar to any of them; they were soldiers. They had all lost comrades in battle, and, when possible, (and sometimes it wasn't,) they had all helped to recover the bodies of the fallen and to afford them what respect they could. They had all wondered, too, if there would be anyone to extend them the same courtesy when and if the time came, and it wasn't a pleasant thought to have twinging at the corners of the mind. A decent burial was no substitute for the years a man should have had to live, but it was bad enough to steal one without adding insult to injury by depriving him of both.

Lancelot was the only one of them who recognized that they were, at that very moment, committing a crime—by law, sorcerers were not permitted a formal interment, or any other sort of respectful treatment. By law, their rotting carcasses were left to the ravens, or, at best, dumped into a shallow trench without so much as a rock to mark the place. By law, they could not be memorialized, and ought not to be mourned.

Well, not this time. And not this sorcerer. There was a certain fierce, aching triumph to that. Maybe, Lancelot thought, once it was over and could not be taken back, he'd tell Arthur what he'd done. Then he'd tell him what Merlin had done. Maybe it would be enough to shake the longstanding distrust of magic Uther had worked so hard to instill in his country. And his son.

If it did, maybe that could be Merlin's real monument. His real legacy. He'd been willing enough to die to ransom his prince; if, in addition to that, his death could be the coin that purchased freedom for his kind, Lancelot knew he'd have died a dozen times over and counted it cheap.

No one else would, but then again, when had Merlin ever backed down from his own opinion just because no one agreed with him?

It was ever-so-slightly easier to look at the shrouded figure once it had been decently covered. Arthur cleared his throat. "Right," he said. "We still have a few hours of daylight. Let's not waste them. There's work for us to do back in Camelot."

"And the sooner we're off this godsforsaken rock, the better," Gwaine muttered.

Nobody could disagree with either of those sentiments, but no one had anything to add to them, either. Percival looked to Arthur with a question in his eyes, and at his nod, bent over and gently picked Merlin up.

Arthur turned on his heel and strode away from the gory altar, Leon close on his heels, and the others following. They walked through the ruined temple in grim silence; this time, there were no wyverns shrieking defiance or warning—in fact, no sign that anyone or anything alive had ever been there at all.

Including the boat.

*.*.*.*.*.*

"I'd thought better of you than this, Emrys."

The voice was cold; the disappointed contempt in the words was colder still. And, Merlin had learned, any conversation in which he was addressed as 'Emrys' had a better-than-average chance of being horrible. No one who called him that ever had anything good to tell him.

There was no mistaking that voice, though; he knew precisely which of the many, many people who'd thought better of him as they delivered their bad news was speaking. He turned to face the Cailleach, her empty eyes all but boring holes in him. "What?"

"I said that I'd thought better of you," she repeated. "Or hoped, I suppose is a better word. For hundreds of years, your coming was foretold. So much was promised us." Her mouth twisted. "Prophets lie; no one has ever denied that, but I'd not expected you to spit on destiny quite so brazenly. For shame, Emrys. For shame."

"I… tried," Merlin said. "I tried my best to help Arthur become the king he's meant to be. From the day I stepped foot in Camelot—"

"Oh, yes, yes," the Cailleach mocked. "You tried. For how long, Emrys? A year? Two? How long did you 'try' before you lost interest in the future you were created to bring about? How long did you 'try' before you abandoned your king?"

Merlin's jaw dropped. Of all the accusations she could have chosen to make, that was perhaps the one he'd expected least. And the one that hurt most. "Abandoned him? I never abandoned him!" Freya—his brief dream of running away with her, of building a quiet, peaceful life that could be theirs, and no dragons or prophecies or curses—came briefly to mind, but guiltily, he thrust the thought away. Surely, spending two or three days pretending to believe that a man named Merlin was allowed to want a chance at happiness before a sorcerer called Emrys bowed his head under the yoke again wasn't so unforgivable as all that. Surely it didn't outweigh the years of faithful service, or the sacrifices he'd made along the way, or literally laying down his life for Arthur. On multiple occasions, no less.

…Did it?

"And yet you're here," she snapped. "Instead of where you belong. Instead of fulfilling the prophecies and bringing about the age of Albion. What do you call that?"

"I called it the least damaging outcome I could contrive," Merlin snapped right back. "Would you have preferred it if I'd let Arthur go through with his idiotic plan to sacrifice himself? He's not going to fulfil any prophecies if he's dead."

"You let him even consider that?"

"Yeah. Sure. I 'let' him. Because Arthur always takes my advice on everything," Merlin said. "Hangs on my every word. It's not like he's the most stubborn, pig-headed ass in the Five Kingdoms or anything like that—"

"Second most stubborn, I'd say," said the Cailleach, and there was, perhaps, just a glimmer of snide humor in her voice.

Merlin glowered at her.

"Two sides of the same coin, indeed," she said, going back to that inevitable old metaphor. Maybe, Merlin thought wearily, there was a standard phrasebook given to all magical and/or supernatural creatures, full of gnomic utterances, obscure insinuations, half-baked riddles, and worn clichés, and there was some sort of competition to see how many of them they could cram into any given conversation. If she started in on more old chestnuts about his destiny, or how the half couldn't hate what made it whole, Merlin thought there was a fairly good chance that he was going to scream, and if that happened, he wasn't sure when, or if, he'd be able to stop.

"I did my best," said Merlin. "He's alive. The veil is mended. Camelot is as safe as it ever is. He can still do all the wonderful things he's supposed to do, even without me."

"But he won't, Emrys. He won't. Not without your aid. You had no right to shirk your duty, and all of Albion will suffer for your dereliction." Her lip curled. "And you had less than no right to make me party to your deception, or to cheat the dead. That's not something I can forgive, Emrys."

His head snapped up. "Cheat the dead? Look, I'm sorry if my death was somehow inconvenient for you, but if it's any comfort, I'm not too happy about it either. Do you think I wanted to die? Even if I did, you saw Arthur's face! Do you think I wanted to hurt him like that?"

She frowned, but not as though she was angry, this time—just confused. Something he'd said didn't make sense to her.

And that was her problem, he thought bitterly, crossing his arms with a scowl. This didn't make a whole lot of sense to him, either.

*.*.*.*.*

The knights stood, aghast, at the edge of the water, where the boat wasn't. Leon looked across the expanse of water, where the horses weren't, either. Nor was any of their gear, which, by this point, didn't even surprise him.

"She's not letting us leave the island," he said, numb.

"I knew it," Elyan muttered. "I knew this was too easy."

Gwaine's hands curled into fists. "Easy? What about this seemed easy to you?"

"The part where that evil old hag let any of us go," Elyan snapped back. "She's toying with us, Gwaine! How do you not see that? Why in hell would she be satisfied with one half-dead servant when she could demand the rest of us as well?"

"That's nonsense," Lancelot said, before Gwaine could object to Elyan's phrasing. "We all saw it. The veil is closed. It's done."

"For now," Elyan said. "It's closed for now. What's to stop her opening it again, or threatening to open it unless we… you know. She's not going to let any of us out of here alive."

Gwaine's expression was little short of murderous. "The hell she's not," he ground out, and began taking off his armor, throwing each piece down on the ground with a clang.

"What are you doing?" Leon asked, wincing a bit as he flung his vambrace against a rock, denting it.

"You can stay here until doomsday, if you like. I'm going to swim to the other side. I don't need the damned boat; I've crossed my share of lakes and rivers without one. And I'm taking off my armor because swimming while encased in iron doesn't strike me as the cleverest of notions."

"We could make a raft to carry… things," Percival offered, gently putting Merlin down and gesturing towards the straggly trees. "Cut down a few saplings, tie them together into a platform, and drag it along behind us as we swim. If the horses are gone and we have to walk, we'll need some way to carry… our things for the journey home."

Delicately put. Gwaine shrugged himself out of his chain mail and let it fall in a messy pile with the rest of it. "We're not walking. I'll find our horses. Or steal some," he muttered, wading out into the water. It was several days ride back to Camelot, which meant at least a week's walk, and there was only so long a fresh corpse stayed fresh. If they were going to bring Merlin home, walking was, quite simply, not an option.

Gwaine was a fairly strong swimmer, and the water was not rough. There was absolutely no reason for him to find himself straining against the current, unable to make any forward progress, and the longer it went on, the more obvious it became that he was being deliberately kept in the shallows. After the third time he was flung back on the shore, Lancelot put a hand on his shoulder. "It's no use, Gwaine," he said. "Magic brought us here, and magic is keeping us here. We…" he swallowed. "We don't have any way of countering that." Anymore.

"What would you suggest we do, then?" asked Elyan. "Sit here and twiddle our thumbs as we wait for the Cailleach to come back?"

"We might have to," said Leon. He turned to Arthur. "This is her domain, sire; she makes the rules, and we have little choice but to bow to her will. And sire… forgive me for saying it, but I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't aimed primarily at you."

Arthur gritted his teeth. "If it is, then so be it. As I told you, that was my intention from the first."

"No. Not like that," Leon said. "If I'm right, it's not your blood she wants. I think she was lying about that 'three drops' business. I think she just wanted to see your reaction, first to having to perform the sacrifice itself and to then being told that it had been an error. And now, I think she wants to see how much more she can demand of you… and how you'll respond."

"You mean, how many more she can demand of me."

Leon swallowed. "Yes," he said. "I do."

There was a long silence. Lancelot frowned. "If that's truly what's going on here… you think this is a test?"

Arthur found himself thinking of a table by the sea, set with two glasses, a boy he couldn't quite figure out sitting across from him. That had been a test, too. More shame to him for forgetting that lesson; he'd had the courage to go through with what he'd known was right, once, and he had prevailed. He'd drunk the poison for his people, rather than letting his faithful shadow take his place. How had he grown so cowardly in a few short years?

"A test. Or a punishment," Elyan growled. "She was angry when she left the first time."

"Not with you, though," said Percival. "Remember? She admitted that you probably weren't the one who'd deceived her." He looked around the circle. "I don't think this has anything to do with you, sire. From where I was standing, it looked like she was angrier at Merlin than anyone else."

"Good! So am I!" Gwaine spat.

Lancelot looked stunned. "Gwaine…?"

"He didn't… he could have given half a thought to the rest of us before he went and…oh, gods." Gwaine cut himself off with a scowl. "I'm not blaming you, princess," he finally said. "But he was so damned focused on keeping you safe that I don't think it ever even occurred to him that we wouldn't just shrug our shoulders and go on our merry way after he was gone. And that hurts. I am mad as hell, and it hurts."

Arthur snorted inelegantly. "It does," he said, after a long moment. "But please—go right on ahead and blame me. Then at least we'll agree on something."