When I walked down the path to the cave, I faced the darkness.
I can never in my life really explain what happened back then.
The day when I faced myself.
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I try.
But it's hard, hard to find right words.
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I looked myself.
He was me, and wasn't.
"Yes, I'm you. Or do I say, I'm one of those who you could be." His voice was mine.
"She said that I have to face magic itself." I hesitate. I didn't know what to do.
"She was right. Partly. Even she doesn't know everything and she had lived longer than others. She was old already when Kilgharrah born. She was old when the last immortals faded away. She had been in here all this time, and still, she doesn't know everything."
I moved nervously.
"What I have to do?"
He didn't looked me at all.
His eyes wandered somewhere what only he could see.
I couldn't see anything but him.
"Just answer my questions. And if you can, be honest. Be honest to yourself. Simple, isn't?"
"What I have learned." I sighed. "Anything isn't simple."
"True." He nodded. "Tell me then, why everything goes always so wrong? You died because your best friend killed you because he lost his temper."
"It was accident. I should have seen that coming."
"But you didn't."
"But if this was bound to happen…"
"Are you sure about that?"
I couldn't answer so he continued.
"If he has just listened to you. You would be alive and everything would be just fine. But no, you always go the hard way. Maybe you really are idiot."
"I'm idiot." I admitted. "Maybe there was an other way. But maybe not."
"Maybe." He shrugged his shoulders with indifference. "And what ever way you took, you always blame yourself."
I couldn't even look him. I remembered all those times when I made mistakes and someone other has suffered because of that.
"Be honest." His voice was little bit gentler.
"But it is my fault. Those were my decisions." I whispered.
"You can't live forever if you always regret everything what you have done. Although I admire that you don't blame others from you own actions and mistakes. Although, it would be the easy way, and I have noticed that you don't take easy ways." Now he was just sarcastic.
"Then I have to just learn to live with my regrets."
Oh how confident I was.
"Easy to say, easy to say." He muttered and our eyes met.
I met my darkness.
The darkness what was lying in me.
What I was learned to hide all those years ago.
"What you are ready to sacrifice? You have already lost so much." He asked.
"But I have gained so much more." I answered, truly believing then what I said. "What ever it takes, I have to go back. My destiny belongs there. I don't belong here, not yet. Not when Arthur is waiting me."
"Does he really need you? You can be so much more without him." He suggested.
"Yes, because I'm his other half and I don't need anything more. If I'm not there, nether can't he. He will die. And his life cannot be over, not yet."
"You are absolutely right about that one. He will die tomorrow if you are not there."
His face came right front of mine. We stared each other. I felt the coldness around him. How it reached everywhere. How it found everything.
"You are serious. You are willing to pay any price to gain your immortality now."
And I was.
And he knew it.
"So, maybe you should wake up." He smiled to me.
What he did next, echoed in my dreams years and years afterward.
He woke me up.
It was like a fire inside of me was catch fire. It burned me and in me all that was left. Birth is painful. And I screamed and cried. It seemed to continue forever, which perhaps was true, because time does not matter in that place.
And when it finally stopped, I was empty.
It was still dark. But that darkness was not all-consuming.
I swallowed. My mouth was dry. I looked up and saw the stars.
I was out.
I was standing on front of the lake, but still in Avalon.
And someone stood there, near the boat.
"To go over this lake, you have to pay the price for me." Freya smiled.
"Really?" I stepped closer. "Anything for you." I promised.
I couldn't get what I saw in her eyes.
Joy maybe.
Pain? I wasn't sure.
She offered her hand to me and I bulled her close.
"Come. Only tonight we can be together." She said and I kissed her, but she bushed apart.
"One thing Merlin. Tonight you don't wear that silver chain."
And before I followed Freya, I put the pendant on the boat. Morgana maybe was like a moon in my life, but Freya was my sun. And that night, my other half have to wait little bit longer.
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Only years later I knew what was the price of my immortality and I have over and over again regretted it. But no one, even immortal, can get anything what he wants.
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There is always the price.
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And you live through it.