"I told you. You don't love someone because of [destiny or fate or even duty]. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand."

― L.J. Smith

They stand there like two planets left stranded amidst the stars after their own sun vanishes.

Finally Arthur speaks. His tone is earnest and his volume is low but the words carry across the room clearly and easily. The words fall from his mind as truths, Merlin can tell that much. Arthur is not trying to convince himself and this comforts Merlin. Arthur's conviction is not enough anymore but it helps. It helps.

"Merlin did exist. He's existed from the beginning and he always will. You were a young boy who was afraid of his magic and wondered if he was a monster. Destiny would not have thought such unhelpful thoughts. You were an idiot who could never do things properly because he was too busy trying to do what was right. That's why you saved Mordred and Morgana and Uther and a hundred others. Not because they would help your destiny. Not because protecting me would be easier if they were alive. Because you, Merlin, could never let the fates rule your heart."

Merlin trembles. "I did though. I did. I don't- I can't-"

He can almost feel where his memories should be. In their place crystalline branches of light cut and sear anything that comes too close. Only fragments escape.

"What happened to the young boy who came into my chambers just a few years ago?"

"-So you've grown up. Everyone does. Maybe you're a darker person than you were. Maybe you have fears that can't be stilled and wounds that can't be healed. But you are still as you have always been.-"

The crystal fissures and suddenly he does care. He desperately wants the answer to that question, what happened…? Who was he? Where had that part of him gone? The part of him that asked "what can I do next?" instead of "Haven't I given enough?" The part of him that knew what compassion meant and thank you and honor. The part of him to whom duty wasn't an unbreakable code and survival wasn't the ultimate goal. Where was the part of him who cared?

Arthur can see the change in his friend's eyes. He can read the questions in his face and he does his best to answer them. "You're an idiot and a brave one. You are the most courageous man I know, not for saving my life so many times but for risking it when doing so mattered most. The fates of the world may have created Emrys and the Once and Future King, but the legends could not stand alone. They were born inside two people who became friends despite destiny. You didn't need to insult me to protect me. You didn't need to care to fulfill your destiny."

Merlin's eyes slip shut. His hands curl into balls at his side and his trembling escalates. Arthur wraps his arms around him and Merlin can't decide whether to lean into the contact or tear himself away from the extra sensation it brings. Arthur continues.

"You didn't need to care but you did. Too much sometimes. That's what makes you Merlin. That is why I remember you as my closest friend. Because you care."

He remembers the cave. That he can remember without interference. Those memories are embedded in the crystal, impossible to tear away and impossible to shatter.

Eyes still tightly shut he reads his memories aloud. "I'd given up. I thought it was just because of my magic, because it was gone but it wasn't that. I'd given up long before Morgana's last trick. Since before the Disir I think. I don't know what happened. I was so tired of it all. And in the end I thought I'd given you everything, but I was wrong. I hadn't given you that part of me. I'd lost it all on my own."

The arms around him shift and he feels rather than sees one of Arthur's hands lift and tilt his head.

"Open your eyes Merlin. That's an order."

He obeys.

"Look at me." Arthur's face is set sternly yet he can see beyond the frown and tilted eyebrows to the concern and friendship and respect that this man holds for him.

"Losing yourself was not your fault. If anything I would place the blame squarely on destiny itself, but it was really all of us. Everyone who attacked and forced you to defend in secret, everyone who didn't know your secret and didn't support you. Everyone who depended on you without even knowing it. No man can stand alone Merlin."

"If that's all it is then why do I feel so distant?"

Arthur shrugs in way that tells him he's given it a lot of thought. "Our destiny has been fulfilled right? Maybe Emrys and the King are gone. Maybe we're not connected by forces beyond our choosing anymore. Maybe now we can just be Merlin and Arthur."

"Start over?" The idea sounds painfully difficult and Merlin almost can't breath at the thought of trying to erase all the pain he doesn't quite remember. How could they possible go back to being who they'd been before everything?

Arthur cuts through his rising panic with one swift gesture of execution.

"More like a new beginning."

"I don't know how to do anything other than follow my destiny. It's all I've ever done."

Arthur hums and then releases his friend to turn away. He picks up something from the table and walks slowly back to the center of the room.

"I hadn't told you yet. Gwen is expecting."

The thought strikes through the crystalline parts of his mind as wrong. Gwen can't be pregnant. That wasn't what was going to happen. He'd seen it. It was impossible.

Arthur holds out a ring engraved with the dragon of Camelot. "I was wondering if you would accept the honor of being the princess' Godfather or if I'd have to make it an order."

"A new beginning." Merlin repeats to himself. The memories are still fragmented but somehow he knows that the man in front of him speaks the truth. More than that he knows now that the crystals in his mind, echoes of a distant cave, are merely conduits. Whatever the mechanism of the visions they produced, the system was flawed. Destiny was not the end. "What will you call her?"

"I was thinking of naming her after an old friend. Morgan."

Destiny had claimed so many lives yet the destination it prophesized was not set in stone. Destiny could be wrong.

"I think that the girl who fought Uther's hatred and rode beside us into Ealdor would have liked that."

And maybe Emrys was what was wrong with him. Maybe destiny had been his crutch and aid so that he limped now that it was gone. A life for a life. Emrys for Arthur. He can feel it inside him, the magic, but it's small and it doesn't feel like the wellspring that had comforted and given him purpose. Instead it feels like the earth and the air and castle stones.

"I wonder what one calls a warlock who no longer has magic of his own? A sorcerer?"

Arthur huffs laughingly and ruffles his hair. "Nah. Do you know how many weeks I've spent convincing the council that you're not a sorcerer? You can't change that now."

Merlin looks around startled. "I wasn't asking you. I mean- Sorry, I was speaking aloud, I didn't-"

Arthur shoots him a teasing glare that is only partially faked. "Don't start apologizing on me Merlin. I couldn't stand it. And if you're concerned about labels-" and here he waves his hand to show that he certainly shouldn't be, "-then just make one up. Like warcer, wiser, wiserld-"

"Wizard."

Arthur smiles. "Yes, that's it. You can be a wizard. A one of a kind. Now what do you say to my daughter? Would you protect her from a dollophead like me?"

Merlin grins softly. The memories aren't clear in the details but he doesn't think he needs them to tell him where to go from here.

"Only if you can protect her from an idiot like me."

Arthur smiles and he knows he said the right thing.

"Merlin."

With a wave of his hand Arthur gestures to his friend to join him where he stands by the windows.

"Look Merlin."

Following Arthur's direction Merlin allows his eyes to drift over the tightly clustered straw or shale thatched roofs of the lower town. In the courtyard below, two knights tussle good-naturedly to the appreciation of a gaggle of young women clustered at the small market set up along the opposite wall. Beyond the city walls summer's green fields roll gently into the distance studded with small farmsteads. A few of the closest villages are just visible at the edge of his sight and of course there's the forest dipping close to the citidel and then receding into the distance to create a wild green border around the Camelot valley. Across the landscape a pale river of dampened dust marks the road, thick with traders and travelers including a few small clusters of cloaked druids.

"This is what we fought for Merlin. This is why we tortured ourselves with what ifs and brutal training, and awful choices. To create a world of peace and prosperity. To create a world where our children will have a better life than we did."

Looking out across the lands and the people that he had, in his own way, also claimed as his, Merlin cannot help but agree. They had created something wonderful, a true Golden Age, and they hadn't need destiny to do it. They'd done it themselves with loyalty, bravery, trust, mercy, love. From this rich soil they had cultivated a land he was proud to call his own.

And wasn't everything he had worth it after all? For this?

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So what do you think? Good, bad, ugly? Please tell me!