They made camp on the bank. Or, rather, since they didn't have tents, bedrolls, cookware, provisions, or anything else, they built a driftwood fire and sat gloomily around it. Lancelot and Percival sharpened sticks into spears and prowled along the banks for a while looking for likely fishing spots.

"It should have been me. I was going to volunteer as the sacrifice," Lancelot said after a while, surprising even himself. "Because I knew he was going to, and I didn't want that to happen."

"I know," Percival said quietly, examining the point on his spear in minute and unnecessary detail. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you didn't. I'm sorry he did, but I'm glad it wasn't you." There was silence for a while, then Percival finished the thought. "I'm glad it wasn't me, too. It shames me to say it, but I'm grateful to be alive."

"Yeah," Lancelot admitted. "It would have been… it was a bad way to die."

"Was it? You mean the knife, or the friend's hand holding it?" Percival asked. "Because we've both seen worse."

"Both. Neither. I don't know what I mean," Lancelot said. "The futility of it, maybe. If the Cailleach was telling the truth… he died for nothing. And if she was lying, if Leon's right, then he still died for nothing."

"Closing the veil wasn't nothing," Percival reminded him. "Stopping the dorocha wasn't nothing, either. And keeping Arthur from sacrificing himself is about as far from 'nothing' as I can imagine."

"We're not even sure that we've done any of that."

"He was sure. So far as he ever knew, he died saving the people he cared about. He died happy, Lancelot. I can only hope that when my time comes, it's for as good a reason."

"It still should have been me," Lancelot said. "It should have. And I… I'm glad it wasn't. Gods forgive me; I'm glad it wasn't."

Percival didn't bother pointing out that each and every one of them felt the same way, that it was the same way everyone felt after a battle was done; Lancelot knew that was well as he did. He just put a hand on Lancelot's shoulder and gripped it, in a silent you-are-not-alone that was simultaneously not nearly good enough and the best—maybe even the only—possible response to the situation.

*.*.*.*.*.*

The Cailleach's voice had lost much of its accusatory bite. She almost sounded… uncertain. "Emrys, you do understand why we are disappointed that you've chosen to leave the Once and Future King's side?"

"I know," he said. "And believe me, it's not as though I wanted to. But you don't understand Arthur, and he doesn't understand how important he is. He would have done it. Killed himself, that is. He would have. I should know. The last time we were in this sort of situation, he tricked me into looking away for a moment while he poisoned himself."

She looked bewildered for a moment, then nodded. "The unicorn. The situations are not precisely parallel, though, are they? Last time, it was undeniably his fault, and just as undeniably his responsibility to atone for his error."

Merlin shook his head. "I won't say the guilt didn't have an effect on him, but that wasn't why he did it. He would have done the same thing no matter who had killed the unicorn, just because he sees it as his duty to protect his people. All of them. The nobles, the knights, the peasants… even me. Everyone but himself, you know? It's what will make him a great king, but it can be a liability, too. It keeps him from seeing the big picture, sometimes."

"And what is the 'big picture,' Emrys?"

"That the future of Albion is resting squarely on his shoulders. Maybe volunteering to be the sacrifice was the noble thing to do, but he couldn't be allowed to do it. Honor be damned, he couldn't. And he'd never have agreed to letting someone else go in his place."

"But he did agree, didn't he?"

"I was dying anyway. What difference did it make how it happened? Either way, I wasn't going to be able to help him anymore."

She blinked. "You were what?"

Merlin gave her an odd look. "Um. Dying, remember? Gaius told us before we left; no one survives the touch of the dorocha. And I was in so much pain I was almost sorry I'd made it as long as I had. I wanted it to end."

She stared at him. "Twenty minutes or twenty years," she repeated. "You meant it."

"Of course I meant it," Merlin said with a shrug. "I mean, we both know that it was going to be closer to the former than the latter, but, well. I gave what I had."

She kept staring at him, utter disbelief in her empty-grave eyes. "You didn't know," she murmured. Then, correcting herself, she repeated, "You don't know. Oh, Emrys. I misjudged you."

He swallowed. Her approval was as overpowering as her anger. "I just did what I had to," he said meekly. "My job was keeping him alive. I did that as long as I could."

"And if you were sent back to Arthur's side?"

His entire face lit up with hope. "You'd do that?"

"It isn't my decision to make," she evaded, and watched the hope die.

*.*.*.*.*

Morgana smoothed her tangled black hair into something resembling order, and her hands didn't shake as she did it. No. They did not, and she clenched her fists to prove it.

Involuntarily, she glanced over at the bed where Morgause had spent the last months of her life, then looked away. She clasped a hand over her bracelet, stroked the worn silver for comfort.

It didn't compare—didn't begin to compare—with her sister's kind eyes and loving voice. It wasn't a patch on the safety Morgana had felt, sheltered and upheld by the iron-hard will and towering strength behind those kind eyes.

But it was all she had left.

A bracelet, and a purpose.

Camelot would be hers. Hers. She would sit on her father's throne and wear her brother's crown, wiping away the memory of both men like so much dust. She would put her onetime maidservant back in her place and keep her there; the throne of Camelot was Morgana's by right, and soon it would be hers by conquest—Gwen would not, could not be allowed to sully it. And as for the serving boy who had become such a thorn in her side… oh, she had plans. He would beg for death before she was through with him; she wasn't sure, yet, when, or if, she would be merciful and oblige.

In short, everything she had been denied would be hers. If her so-called 'family' would not give her what she was owed, then she would simply take it. Her sister had died to give her the opportunity to set things right, to reshape the world in their own image, and she would not dishonor the sacrifice of the only person who had ever really loved her.

She could feel the miasma of the torn veil all around her. This, this was her sister's legacy. This horror, this worse-than-death choking the world into submission was her weapon, her sword and dagger, bought with her sister's heart's blood.

(Morgause's blood on Morgana's hands. Her unshaking hands. Sometimes she thinks she can still feel it, spurting hot and fierce on her cold skin, the colder stone. Blood is not red in the moonlight; it's black as pitch. She hadn't known that. She wished she didn't know it now.)

Morgana sat up at night, safely encased in a ring of blazing fires, listening for the shrieks of the restless dead. She loved the sound, loved knowing that they were near. And if she wondered if one of the hungry spirits might be Gorlois, might be Vivienne, might be Morgause, surely that wasn't weakness. There was nothing wrong with wanting to think that her beloved dead hadn't abandoned her entirely. There was nothing wrong with not wanting to be alone.

She felt it when the veil was mended, when the dead were called back to the other side of reality. When they left her bereft and orphaned once again. Plans destroyed and heart broken and so utterly, utterly alone.

And she wept.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

"Sire? What are you going to do?"

Arthur didn't take his eyes off the fire. "For now, Leon, I'm going to wait to see if Lancelot and Percival had any luck catching fish. I'm hungry."

Leon nodded. "Yes, sire. And… after that?"

He glanced at the horizon, then back at the fire. "I suppose the sun will be just about down by then. We'll find out if the dorocha really are gone. If they are, who knows, we just might get a decent night's sleep. Gods know I haven't had one of those in a while."

The look on Leon's face made it clear that he'd hoped for a better answer than that, but he didn't say anything.

Arthur relented. "In the morning, I assume one of two things will happen. Either the Cailleach will let us off the island, in which case we go home. Or else she'll appear to make whatever demand she will. Either way, we'll know where we stand, which is more than we do now."

"Which do you think more likely?" said Elyan.

He shrugged. "I'm not making any predictions. Every expectation I've had since this whole nightmare started has been wrong. All we can do is wait and see."

Gwaine's voice was eerily calm. "And if she demands another sacrifice?"

Arthur looked him dead in the eye. "Then she'll have one. The better question is this—what will you do if she demands a third?"

*.*.*.*.*.*

The Cailleach looked at the young man standing before her. He wore human frailty like an ill-fitting cloak; she could see all the places where his true being shone through, and could scarcely understand how anyone was fooled by the flimsiness of the disguise. Still less could she understand how he was fooled by his own masquerade, but she did at least understand that, somehow, he was. He genuinely thought that he was human. And he genuinely thought that he could die. That he had died.

She wasn't sure if she pitied his ignorance or envied it.

She had been so certain that it was all some sort of clever trap—that Emrys, secure in his immortality, had deliberately mocked the sacrifice she had demanded. That he had used the appalling fact of the torn veil and the tormented dead—a crime that had hurt her on levels most beings could not even imagine—as an opportunity to escape from a task he found tiresome. What, after all, could have been easier than to lie on the stone, feign death for an hour, then go off, free of his obligations?

What could have been less honorable? Less forgivable?

She had known from the beginning that she couldn't keep him, couldn't hold him on the other side of the veil for long, but she had a little time, and she'd intended to use every instant of it to show him the error of his ways. And even after she had to let him back into the world of men, she had intended to punish him for his dishonesty and disrespect, for his dereliction of duty, for his sheer unworthiness of the gifts he'd been given. There were ways. She had the means. She would have used them.

No one ever really likes admitting that they were wrong, but she could not help but feel a bit relieved that, in this case, she had been. A world where Emrys was not what he needed to be was not a world anyone would care to live in.

She toyed with the idea of telling him. Would it be better, or worse for him if he knew what he was? There was no real question that he was as dedicated to the Once and Future King as anyone could ask—maybe even a little too dedicated. But he was also reckless—if jumping in front of a dorocha hadn't proved that, the insolent way he'd argued with her certainly had. What would happen if he knew that he could not be killed? Would he decide that he no longer had to worry about the consequences of his actions and be even more reckless, or would he realize that immortality meant that consequences could last literally forever and grow timid?

Was it even her decision to make? Perhaps there was some reason that he had been left so woefully ignorant. So wretchedly untutored. So… human.

The corners of her mouth quirked faintly up. She knew what she had to do.