Disclaimer: Merlin's not mine.

The Afterfall

It felt like a cold rush of water. Merlin, said a sweet whisper he recognized as Freya's. Merlin, you've got to wake up now.

Why, he groaned, although he couldn't determine whether he said it out loud.

Because Arthur's death broke something besides your heart.

If you don't stop this, Freya—

Why, her whisper cut across his threat, shriller and more desperate than before, —do you think I can suddenly reach you in your head whenever I want and no matterwhere you are?

Merlin, for the first time in the last few horrible days, felt his focus sharpen just a little. You've never been able to do that before.

I can extend myself further than the lake now. I don't know how or why, but it started the moment Arthur died. The moment Arthur died. Everything within Merlin dropped like a stone. As if Freya could feel it, her voice began to plead louder in his ear. You've got to wake up, Merlin. I understand you don't care, but they do. They matter to you.

Not as much as they did to him.

That wasn't always true.

I guess I forgot a few things, was all Merlin answered.

A sensation of being drenched with ice overcame him and he shot up, awake and shivering.

"Lie still," came the brisk sound of only voice he cared to hear. Merlin allowed his muscles to sink into the mattress beneath him. "You've been asleep for a whole day, now."

"I…" Merlin frowned and dug the heel of his hand into his forehead. "What happened, Gaius?" The heel of his hand didn't dissipate the headache at all.

The old man's mouth tightened further. "You were attacking Leon. Aithusa saved the both of you by knocking you unconscious."

"Leon?" Oh. Right. "I—"

"You were hurting him, Merlin." Nothing could have prepared Merlin for the hushed black underlying Gaius's calm words. "And there…there is nothing I can do to stop you from doing that again," he spoke so slowly every syllable might have cost him his life, "…but I can ask you to try. Please. Try not to ever hurt anyone that way. I couldn't bear it if I lost you the way we lost Morgana."

Merlin blinked and opened his silent mouth. "Gaius…" He couldn't say You won't or I'm sorry. What's left, then? What can I tell him?

"Promise me, Merlin," Gaius's gaze quivered before Merlin's eyes. "Promise me you'll try."

Try. Merlin thought for a moment—it was a good word. "I'll try." He was dimly surprised to find himself nodding and meaning it.

Gaius said nothing for a moment. "I'll tell Gwen you're awake," he stood slowly. "Come to the Round Table when you're dressed. She needs to speak with all of us."

"All who are left?"

Gaius stopped mid-step, made as if to look back at Merlin, seemed to think better of it, and continued out the door.

Merlin did as he was told without much hesitation or mind, and departed from the empty echo of his old home.

The only ones seated at the Round Table were Gaius, Gwaine, Leon, Percival, and Gwen. An errant thought passed through Merlin's mind—he hadn't ever held a place at this table while Arthur was alive. Now Gwen, looking clean and even, was calmly gesturing to the chair across from Percival, which appeared to have been pulled out for him. Merlin took it, and the five of them made an even hexagon across the enormous wooden circular slab.

"How are you feeling?" Gwaine was the first to speak, and it took Merlin a few moments to realize the knight was addressing him. Merlin met his eyes and said "Alright," realizing that Gwaine still met his eyes with the same expression he always had, since the day they met. He felt Leon's eyes on him and didn't dare glance that way.

"Merlin," Gwen's voice cascaded across the entire hall, weighty with a power that he didn't expect. He looked at her, truly, and couldn't believe his eyes, "…this council is not about Arthur, and it's not about you," Merlin kept staring, wondering how she could manage not to flinch or cry at speaking his name out loud. She looked healthy. She looked well. "Something happened yesterday and you know I wouldn't ask anything of you right now if it wasn't absolutely urgent." Her expression was serious, but not yet worried. She wouldn't ask anything of me right now?

"Of course," he answered blankly. It sounded appropriate.

Gwen frowned at him with narrowed eyes. "All right," she said after a moment, as if trying to calculate whether or not he was truly capable. How is she holding together? Who is this woman? Why does she need less help than I do? "How do the abilities of a dragonlord work?"

…What?

"…I'm sorry?" Merlin managed after staring nonplussed for a moment.

"How," Gwen repeated, ignoring the knights shifting in their seats and Gwaine's sudden coughing, "—do the abilities of a dragonlord," she lingered over the word as if irritated no one else seemed capable of hearing it out loud, "…work?"

His jaw moved soundlessly up and down for a few moments before a high sound escaped. It might have been a laugh. "Why would you want to know that?"

"Perhaps because I suddenly spoke a dragon's language yesterday while attempting to calm down Aithusa."

Merlin shook his head automatically. "That's not possible."

"I would have assumed so," Gwen almost growled, "—but since my education on the subject is close to nonexistent, I thought I would ask the dragonlord among us for further clarification."

"A dragonlord's power is passed down by magic from father to son once the father dies," Merlin said. "Nothing else unlocks it."

"Then how is this possible?" Gwen shouted, and everyone present nearly leapt from their seats. Gwaine's whole body twitched, but his face was grim as if it were familiar, Percival's eyes went round as coins, Gaius's eyebrow defied gravity, and Leon looked dumb and possibly horrified.

Only Merlin remained at the table, gaping and still. Those words weren't spoken in English. Gwen knew the dragon tongue.

"I don't know," he finally said.

"Merlin…" her voice darkened.

"I swear, Gwen, I swear I don't know. That should be impossible. I'm the last one left, you shouldn't know how to speak to a—"

"Is that why you unchained it?" Merlin wasn't surprised by the question, but he could only look at Leon for a spare second before turned away. He heard Gaius in his head as the old man's eyes pierced through him from across the table. Try.

"No," he answered carefully. "It's why I didn't kill him."

That statement apparently needed a pause to settle. "If you ignore my request one more time, Leon, you will be asked to leave this castle for good," Gwen said to the table before meeting the knight's shocked eyes for one hard moment in which Merlin felt as if he were in a dimension he never lived in before. "Merlin. Tell me again that you know nothing about what is currently happening."

It's a strange feeling for once to be as blind and lost in magic as they are. "I know nothing," the words left a surprisingly honest Merlin.

"There must, then, surely be someone who does."

Freya didn't, but there is… "I don't think you'll want to meet him," he replied, gingerly as he could.

Gwen spared him no such courtesy. "Why not?"

Well, he's nearly killed you before. "I—"

"Merlin," Gaius interrupted suddenly. Everyone's attention swung to him. "She deserves to."

She does. Merlin swallowed involuntarily. I know she does. But why do I have to take her to him? "Tonight," he finally looked at her. "Will you be ready to leave after dark?"

"We'll all go," Gwaine said.

"No," Merlin shook his head, dodging Gwaine's hurt eyes and Leon's narrowed ones. "Gwen, just you."

Gwen frowned at him for a long time. "How far will we be going?"

"Not far."

She raised her chin, ignoring the stares shooting from her to Merlin and back again. "I'll be ready," she said quietly.

Unsteadily, Merlin nodded. Gwen seemed to take that as her cue to stand and turn, her dismissal echoing through the hall. Merlin didn't spare a moment before leaping to his feet and trying not to sprint from everyone seated at the table. It was as if he could hear Freya's voice whispering in his ear, Was that so hard?

One lace, two lace, through one to the other. Gwen hadn't worn this pair of boots in a year or so, but they seemed appropriate. They were an old pair of Hunith's and Gwen was reminded once again how much she still owed her. After becoming queen, Gwen made Arthur give Merlin time off so the both of them could take a trip to see her. Hunith wouldn't accept any money from Gwen, calling it charity.

"It's not charity, I'm paying you back," she remembered trying to protest. "I'm paying you back for the months you let me stay here—"

"You worked for me all those months," Hunith cut her off with those warmly smiling yet unbending eyes. "There is nothing to pay."

Knock knock.

Gwen tied the last lace so tightly she could feel it digging a ring in her leg. "I'm ready," she answered.

The first face she saw as the door swung open was a pale Merlin's, but it widened to reveal Gaius behind him, holding a wrinkled hand to the boy's shoulder. Gwen stared at that hand. Is it all that's holding Merlin up? As if reading her mind, Merlin suddenly straightened his barely quivering back. "Milady," he said, as if it were a common greeting of his to her. Bloody hell.

She dismissed herself from replying to Merlin and turned to the old man. "Will you be coming with us, Gaius?"

Gaius's mouth tightened. "I'm afraid not, Gwen. I—have not been on good terms with who you are going to see for many years."

Well, that doesn't sound ominous at all. "I thank you, then, for coming to wish us farewell," she responded.

Merlin turned around without another word and barely a second glance at Gaius, who bowed to Gwen as she followed her old friend the sorcerer.

It was dark outside the castle and Hunith's boots made Gwen's every step feel surer than she suspected she should on this particular journey. When Merlin continued to lead silently, Gwen sped up until she was level with his pace.

"Arthur told me the last dragonlord's name was Balinor and that he died when you and he went to search him out when that other dragon attacked," she said casually.

Merlin's fist, she saw out of the side of her vision, clenched. "He did," he said, voice sounding more substantial and thick than she had heard it since Arthur. "He wasn't the last dragonlord because he had a son who inherited the ability next."

Gwen blinked. "Oh." Hunith's shoes did the trick and held steadily upright.

They walked wordless until Merlin interrupted the quiet this time. "How did you know Aithusa's name? Did she tell it to you?"

"No," Gwen answered, realizing dimly that she had also kept Merlin in some amout of dark. "Morgana introduced her to me a couple of times."

It was Merlin's turn to say "Oh." Silence again. "Where is she now?"

"You'd know more about where Morgana is than I do," Gwen said carelessly, making Merlin flinch, "—but Gwaine and I tied Aithusa up in the stables."

Merlin frowned as if trying to process that image. "When did she even show up in Camelot?"

Gwen shrugged. "While you'd disappeared to find whoever Freya is."

"How—" Merlin sputtered.

"Merlin, if you're honestly going to begrudge me eavesdropping, I don't understand how you expect me to run this bloody kingdom," Gwen cut exhaustedly through his disbelief "—considering how much of its keeping you've done on your own and hidden from me."

For a minute, Merlin looked blank, stricken, hurt, and angry all at once. When he spoke, however, his voice was surprisingly flat. "We're here."

Gwen frowned. Merlin had stopped them right in the center of a wide, open field. She'd been expecting a dark hovel or someplace more clandestine.

"Maybe you'll understand why I lied so much once you know everything," Merlin's toneless, soft voice interrupted her thoughts once more.

Before Gwen could respond, a strange, focused series of harsh, loud gusts seemed to stir the trees edging the clearing. It was more than a wind, and she glanced at Merlin to ask "What's that?" but he was staring up with ease at the sky as though he were expecting this.

All too late, Gwen realized who was coming.

A scream died in her throat as an enormous wing curled menacingly out from behind a cloud.

MY SEMESTER'S OVER AFTER THIS WEEK! Guys, I have two ten-pagers and a final due in the next three days and this is all I wanted to write. So I'm fucked. BUT this is good for any of you awesome people with the patience to stick with this story even though I don't think I've updated in two months or longer, college makes you lose track of time and reality. Well, so does fanfiction, I guess...nevermind I can't stand to think any more today. I hope this chapter's enough to make up for lost times, and I'm getting to the parts I'm really excited to write. PLEASE READ AND REVIEW! It would cheer my miserable about-to-fail-college self a great deal.