A/N: I think I'll have to try and force a slower rate of updates, to keep up the quality and the right pacing. It's safe to say this story has completely taken over my brain. So rest assured, dear readers - I'm not gonna leave you hanging.

Six.

.

Merlin sat on his side of the hearth, kindling a small flame into life. The wood soon crackled and whistled under the heat. It stopped struggling soon and cast a steady warm glow on the two of them. Morgana sat, curled up, her chin buried in the sleeve of her sweater. The fire danced in their eyes, but didn't catch. His irises remained cobalt blue.

This must be it, Morgana mused distantly, their moment of truth. Gaius had left a while ago, bidding the 'young ones' goodnight. There was no one here to interrupt them, nothing to stop the inevitable from happening. He deserved an explanation, Morgana reasoned, having been so patient and trusting all this time. But now that the chance had come, she couldn't bring herself to talk about it. Couldn't open her mouth and speak. As if she were under a spell.

'The man at the station, who was he?' Merlin asked after a while, raising an eyebrow in mock-suspicion, 'Some corporate bloodhound to track you down?'

'Close,' Morgana admitted with the faintest hint of a smirk. 'He's my brother.'

Merlin looked up in surprise. So it had begun. The secrets began to unravel. Morgana wondered whether she really wanted him to know. A part of her wanted to cling on to this childish notion of innocence, the idea of them remaining untouched, unmarred, by her present and their past, to put all the hatred and ugliness behind...

'So it's true - what he said. About your family looking for you?'

Merlin looked unexpectedly concerned, as if he hadn't just pulled pretty much the same stunt a few years ago. Morgana looked back into the fire and shrugged. Suppose they were looking for her, all worried and anxious. "It doesn't matter, not after what they did."

'Did they abuse you...in any way?' Merlin asked tentatively, after a while.

He was thinking she had been abused, Morgana realized, or - worse yet - molested. And she did not want him to think that. 'Not physically, no,' she admitted. 'My family is convinced everyone I cannot take care of myself.'

She proceeded to describe her life during the past few months, walled up in a house like a table decoration. The huge halls and empty corridors. Cameras in hallways and search marks in her room. Letting people know each time she planned to go out for as much as a walk, or a trip to a store, a bodyguard on her trails when she did. Merlin, married to his own freedom, shuddered to think of it.

'Must have driven you nuts.'

Morgana smiled at the irony.

That night, Merlin agreed to sleep by her side, his bed, just wide enough for two of them, as gesture of comfort and a continuation of the closeness after their long talk at the fireplace.

All that time in the firelight, he had looked at her, and unconsciously licked his lips, when all she wanted to do was kiss him, get back into that deep dark chasm of emotion they had left behind together with their past, the battlefields and harming each other with dark magic.

Morgana had to keep reminding herself that this shy boy was really the same Merlin, the great warlock who had challenged her before - and won, arguably the most powerful being of magic, whose death had drained its very source of from the foundations of earth. That it was indeed Merlin, whose hands now restef om over the small of her back, just below the clip of her bra under the fabric of her shirt, his body hopelessly drawn to hers, but not really acting on it. No.

In that moment, Morgana regretted him being such a nice person, the very thing that had drawn her to him and rekindled her desire. She buried her nose deep in his collar, snuggled in, causing the tendrils in his neck to tighten as she breathed out, sending an involuntary twitch through his body against the full length of her limbs.

Merlin held out, like he always had. With a pang of mercy on his poor soul, Morgana finally gave up the assault, and bit back the sour disappointment.

Almost is never, she remembered. As always.

Inadvertently, Morgana had also been reminded why her arch enemy had remained unconquered. It made her think of lost opportunities, one more moment that might slip by. She traced the line of his collarbone under the black cotton shirt, savouring their newfound peace.

Merlin grew still and let out a soft sigh, her hands rested on his chest, feeling his heart beat under the fabric of his shirt.

'Is there really no one you trust?' she heard him wonder before falling sleep. 'Anyone you'd like to contact?'

Morgana considered. just one.

Sliding away from Merlin's sleeping form, Morgana grabbed her cell phone, went downstairs and opened the door that lead to the darkened yard. Freezing droplets of rain hovered in the air, easily mistaken for snow, when - struggling to remember - Morgana began to dial the number.

. . .

'You knew it, didn't you?' Morgana realized how frantic her own voice sounded in the silence of the night: accusatory, pleading - begging even - but she couldn't bring herself to care, not with her mother on the other end, evading and utterly void of a cohereny answer. 'That's why you gave us these names,' Morgana continued, not giving up on this. 'Me and Arthur. You already knew what we would be, who we were. Didn't you?'

The implications of her mother's informed decision and their full effect on Morgana's life played out in numerous scenarios, and she fell silent, considering them all. 'Is that what you planned when you met Uther? Was this why you left my Dad? To live out your dream?'

'Morgana, dear, this is not the kind of discussion we should have on the phone.'

A long pause, and the air grew heavy, as both listened to the other breathe, far away from each other.

'Sweetheart. Please, just tell me where you are. I'll come over. We can talk about everything.'

Sensing the crack in the facade, this nagging suspicion, she added, like a soothing whisper to a scared child,

'I won't tell anyone. I promise.'

In the morning, Morgana lay awake for a while, enjoying the wonderful sensation of another body against her own. Merlin stirred, his legs tangled with her own, an arm around her waist, and slept on. There was little regret that things had not progressed any further. Merlin had the right to be cautious, even if he did not remember her as she was, even if he only knew the life that he had now.

After all, who was she to ruin this for him - bring back memories of killings and death. Magic was dead, had not been resurrected with them. What's the point of missing something you can't hope to have again?

'Morning,' Merlin's eyes peeled open, and Morgana could not resist the urge to reach out and rake a hand through that tousled hair, over the faint stubble that had appeared overnight. He closed his eyes at her touch, so utterly at peace, that Morgana had never known.

'You're so... stunning,' Merlin whispered, his own hand tracing the arch of her neck to where the shirt had exposed her shoulder - a touch of a feather, nothing more.

Morgana swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and wondered if so was his. Wondered how she would look through his eyes, how with their pale hands entwined in each others hair, equally dark, so that no one could not tell which belong to which, as if they'd been made of the same kind of substance, divided by space and time into two uneven lumps.

She wondered if they had met just to even it out, take the parts that were missing and give up the excess.

'Merlin...' Morgana began, realizing that she'd called him again with his true name. Merlin blinked. Confusion coloured his handsome, yet somewhat sleepy face. Then, the sound of the doorbell, and their world came crashing down.

A/N: Enjoy the last drops of sweetness, heavy angst to come later on. Thank you all for following, your reviews keep me going!