A/N this is for one of my best friends, who i have recently found out is depressed and has attempted to end her own life. You know who you are if you are reading this, this is for you and i love you, i hope this makes you see how much people will mourn you if you do anything to yourself. I'll also dedicate it to anyone else who has ever thought of ending their life because no one should ever feel like that ever!

I hope everyone else likes it though and reviews will be appreciated, thanks x

It was so sudden that no one had seen it coming, not Gaius, not Arthur not even Merlin himself. One night the load had become too much for him to possibly carry and the joking insults from friends became mean and true, in his mind anyway. That night a little tickle from the knife seemed almost a joke to Merlin, what would that achieve? Pain and punishment but it could never be enough, all the blood that he saw on his hands, all the lives that were held between his fingers, all the lies that spewed out his mouth almost naturally could never be punished or forgotten, nothing would ever be enough, except death. So that night, without realising what he was really doing, he brought the knife down a little harder and a little faster, and right across his jugular. For him, seeing this, the joy was overwhelming, finally it wasn't lies spewing out, it wasn't innocent's blood on his hands, it wasn't the blood of the lives of those who trusted him, it was his own blood, at last. Running fast and thick down his neck and out his mouth, he looked almost like an ornate, gothic, fountain.

He didn't look like that when Gaius found him the next morning. He wasn't smiling anymore and he never would again, the knife was still in his hands and his whole body, his whole room, the floor, the blanket, the bed, all of his clothes soaked with nothing less than his own blood. And when Gaius went to him, loss and a pain beyond imaginings in his eyes, he fell over the corpse of his beloved boy, drowning himself in blood and weeping like none other had before, for the still form of what was his ward. Gaius shouted at the boy, screamed at him to "WAKE UP!", the boy, as per he would have done if there was still blood in his veins, didn't do as told.

Passing guards hearing the commotion from beyond the closed door, made their way into the chambers calling out for Gaius, but just as they were about to open the door to Merlin's little room at the back, Gaius jarred the door shut shouting at them to "LEAVE" and to "GET THE KING" and that they had to do it "NOW". Not wanting to cooperate but seeing no other option, the guards fled to the King's chambers.

They knocked on the door before waiting patiently at the door to the chambers of the King whose world was about to end.

"You're already late, Merlin, there's no need to start with such formalities as knocking now, just come in." Little did the King know it but that was the last time he would ever say his friends name without his heart shattering.

"My lord, its Gaius, I suggest you come with us now."

The door opened to reveal a rather dishevelled looking king, "Lead the way." He said, any joking immediately dissipating at the mention of his beloved physician.

He walked with a serious demeanour, the definition of collected and in control but the king's mind didn't mirror his exterior, reeling with worry, his mind went through all the scenarios he could think of. Gaius, dying in his sleep, Merlin by his bedside weeping uncontrollably, Gaius finally succumbing to one of the contagious diseases he had had to treat and Merlin being a worried wreck attempting to find a cure, Gaius somehow having disappeared and Merlin already with a plan and packed to get the hell out of there looking for him. What he saw when he got to the chambers never even crossed his mind as an option and there was no way his mind had prepared him for the sight.

His mouth fell open just a little, had Merlin been with him he would have said "catching flies, are we?", and he collapsed to his knees in the pool of his friends blood, a strange sound emitting from his mouth, not quite a wail and not quite a scream but a confused, strangled, horror filled...sound.

Reaching his hand out, his fingers went through his friends, sticky, red stained hair, "Mer- me- Merlin? Merlin wake up. I ORDER YOU TO WAKE...to wake up. Please, Merlin, don't be dead." Taking his hand back and letting his, now bloody, hand fall to his lap, he quietly wept, tears leaving their all too obvious track on his face.

The King heard a guard behind him gasp, obviously seeing the mess of his friend and heard the footsteps retreat, he wanted to turn around and scream at the guard to stay right where he was, to tell him he was not to gossip and he was to tell no one of what he saw, he wanted to tell him that so much but he just froze. He couldn't turn around, he couldn't function, all he could do was stare at what used to be Merlin and make that forever unknown sound. It was his fault that people ended up gossiping about Merlin, making up stories of how he ended up how he did, why he did what he did, just because Arthur was too weak to turn around and tell one guard to tell no one. It was his fault that Hunith found out about her boys premature death from petty gossipers on the street when she walked into the citadel on a surprise visit to Merlin rather than in a lovingly written, regret filled letter from her dear brother.

"MY BOY! Merlin, NO, Merlin, oh Merlin, why? What have they done to you?"

She ran into the chambers, and crumbled on the floor, laying her arms over her son in hysterics, crying over the son she should never have had to see die. She mumbled little, incoherent nothings to her son, wishing him alive. Her wishing did not work.

Time froze in that room and as the hours passed, the persons within did not move, and hours later when darkness was upon them once more, little lights could be seen dancing from outside through the window. Hunith got up slowly, her face a mess of tears and blood, and worked her way over her son to the window to see what could easily have been the whole of Camelot holding their candles, beacons of love and hope and grievance up towards Merlin's little room and she once again crumbled to the floor, her mind trying to figure out why this fate had befallen her and her son.

"The candles, they are for him aren't they?" The first words to be spoken for hours in that room were spoken into the screaming silence of death.

"He was a beacon of light, it's only correct he is remembered as such."

"He meant so much to everyone."

"How could he have done this?"

"I don't know." And none of them did, and they never found out but they forever wondered.

A/N so this was pretty hard to write but I hope you enjoyed it, or maybe enjoy is the wrong word but still, please review depending on response and if i don't succumb to my usual writers block, i might make this into a little arc, dealing with the after math of Merlin's death, the funeral and other characters grief and stuff so drop me a review of what you thought if you would, they are all really greatly appreciated, thanks x