AN:

So there was a lot of Arthur in the last chapter, which I enjoyed writing, but I miss Mergana so that will be what I focus on in this chapter! Also, I feel like flexing my classical music fascination. I encourage you all to listen to the piece I mention in this chapter! And I want to flesh out Aithusa a bit. Basically, this is a chapter of self-gratification, the stuff that makes me happy to write.

That being said, I should probably warn you in plain English: FLUFF CHAPTER.

DISCLAIMER: Getting really tired of this… I don't own stuff, like any of this stuff, really. Happy now?

1 Week

By the end of the first week back with Arthur, I realized just how set in my ways I had become during the previous millennium. Working for the king again was wearing on my nerves more than I had anticipated it would. Worse yet, he and Morgana had begun to argue, and when they weren't arguing, he was teasing me about my bond with the formerly-evil sorceress. It entertained him to no end that I had been sleeping in her room every night since his return. I needed a break, so I had Morgana drive me out to see Aithusa before she had to be at school.

I had started working with the dragon about a year after we had made our peace. Aithusa had spent her entire life mute, and at first, I assumed that this was due to her lack of interaction with humans growing up. As time went on, however, and I started to do some digging in the ancient manuscripts I had collected over the ages, I began to suspect that, just as with the case of the hatching of dragons, the process of learning to speak had to involve a Dragonlord.

We would sit on rural plains for hours on end. I would try everything I could think of, from translating books into the Dragon Tongue and reading them to her, to frustratedly shouting spells into the sky in hopes that one of them would allow Aithusa to speak. None of it ever worked. I suspected it would be all too easy, had I practiced my dragon magic even once since the Battle at Camlann. As it was, I desperately wished for the guidance of Kilgharrah or my father. Unfortunately, in all my power, I could not recall the dead.

I collapsed on the ground where she was curled up and leaned against her foreleg as she stretched her maw into a massive yawn. We had been working endlessly all morning, shuffling through the books I had managed to salvage from an age when dragons had widely populated the world and the Dragonlords were a powerful order.

"I have plans to search the Crystal Cave for information soon, when things settle down," I tried to reassure her.

She blinked slowly. Now that Arthur has returned, there is no guarantee that things will ever slow down, she seemed to be saying.

"I will help you, Aithusa, I swore I would."

She closed her eyes and turned her head away. I knew she was getting weary of this, and I knew she would be content to continue life as she had always lived it, but I could feel the hope burning inside her, that maybe one day she would hear her own voice. Oh, the things she must be able to tell of, the words of advice she might have to share with me. Dragons were unparalleled for their wisdom, and I would need her guidance in the complicated times ahead. I needed her voice just as desperately as she wanted it. She knew that.

We lay like that in the sun for a while, simply enjoying the sense of kinship between us. Eventually, I checked my watch.

"Morgana's just gotten off school. I need to head back to the city."

Aithusa nodded and allowed me to climb onto her back. Careful to fly in the sun to shield her from the view of any on the ground, she flew me to the pick-up point in minutes. Morgana was already waiting, leaning on the hood of her mud-covered Beetle with a friendly scowl on her face.

"You really need to learn to drive, Merlin," she called, striding over as soon as we landed.

"Why? I'm happy using the Tube." I released Aithusa's neck spike and climbed down her side.

"Yes, but the Tube doesn't take you to Aithusa." She kissed the dragon's snout and stretched up to scratch the place between her eyes that she loved the best, the sorceress rocking up onto her tip-toes to do so. "Not that I'm not happy for the chance to see you, my Dear," Morgana whispered, reassuringly, to her friend. "But you don't know what it's like, having to play his chauffer."

Aithusa gave her a look that screamed, Trust me, I do.

Morgana laughed. "Alright, maybe you do." She rested her forehead against the dragon's snout. "I'll come visit you tomorrow, I promise." The dragon blinked contentedly.

Aithusa took off as we pulled away onto the backroads. When she was out of sight behind the glare of the sun, I turned to Morgana.

"So what's the plan for the rest of the night? I was thinking about taking Arthur to Buckingham Palace. Maybe it'll help him realize he isn't royalty anymore." I turned to look at Morgana, and realized she was looking at me like my head had fallen off my shoulders. "What? Bad idea? I was just thinking, you know, it might get him off my back, but…"

"Merlin!" she shouted, cutting me off. "Have you honestly forgotten what tonight is?"

"Um… Tuesday?"

She slapped my arm. It hurt. "No! It's my concert!"

Realization struck me like her hand had just struck my arm. Guilt consumed me in an instant. How had I forgotten? She was soloing on the piano with a local symphony. It was the only thing she had talked about all month beside Arthur's return. She had been practicing night and day, and she didn't come to bed until 2 in the morning last night. "Oh…"

"You said you would come." She looked away dejectedly out the windshield. The look on her face made my whole frame ache to ease her suffering.

"I know I did! I bought my ticket two months ago, middle of the third row, right where you can see me."

She glanced at me. "Will you be okay leaving Arthur home alone?"

"I'll leave food out and lay out a newspaper on the floor since I won't be there to let him out." She laughed like she couldn't help it, and I knew I was forgiven. "What piece are you playing again?" I knew this would get her talking. She always did intensive research on any piece she was working on to give emotional substance to her playing, and I loved that about her.

"Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 In c minor, remember?" She rattled off the name of the work as fluidly as she did her own. "Oh, there's this one run in the second movement that's been driving me mad, I don't know how that man came up with something so…" Just like that, she was off and running like I knew she would be. By the time we were back at our flat she was still talking about Sergei Rachmaninoff's distaste for performing his most famous piece, Prelude in c# minor.

"What's your call time?" I finally interrupted her while we walked to the front door.

"I have to be onstage ready to rehearse at 5:30, and the concert starts at 8. I'll be leaving in two hours, so you can either come with me in the car or show up by Tube in time for the concert."

I smiled at her as I fiddled with my keys. "Well, I'm coming with you of course. What's a star musician like you to do without her entourage?"

She grinned. "I haven't the slightest idea. I assume I'd be lost without you."

"Lucky for you, you'll never have to know."

The warmth in her eyes in that moment was so overwhelming, I didn't want to move an inch from where I was standing.

So, obviously, that was the moment that Arthur yanked the door open.

"Where have you lovebirds been? I'm absolutely starving!" The tandem look of murder Morgana and I gave him made him pause. "Sorry. I'll, er, be in the kitchen." He gave me a meaningful, 'make me a sandwich' glare, and walked away.

A few minutes later, Morgana went to her room to practice while I made Arthur a sandwich. I told him of our plans as we ate. I offered to take him to Buckingham the next day, but the king decided that he wanted to go that night, and he wanted to go alone.

"I know you don't believe it, Merlin, but I do think, and sometimes I need to be able to think about things without you around. Besides, I'm not completely incompetent, and you did show me how to use a cab the other day. You go make sure Morgana's night is special." I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but I didn't waste time thinking about it.

One of Morgana's classmates (one of the girls she had been with that fateful night in the pub) showed up an hour before we needed to leave in order to help my favorite sorceress get ready. I let her in, introduced Arthur to her as Morgan's cousin, and led her to the bedroom that was quickly becoming half mine.

"I'll never understand why girls feel the need to spend half the afternoon getting ready for the evening," I mused, leaning against the doorframe to the bathroom. Morgana was seated in front of the mirror attending to her makeup while Clara bent over her, doing goodness knows what to her hair with a hundred different tools and products.

"It's Morgan's big night, Merlin. If she is ever going to look her best, it's now."

"Well, she's already stunning as it is. Do too much more to her, and no one will pay attention to her playing. Did you think of that?"

Morgana immediately picked up some sort of cream and started covering her cheeks with it. I hoped she was trying to hide a blush, but in the next moment I was puzzled, wondering why I found that a desirable thing.

Clara just shook her head. "Maybe you should try it, Merlin. Go put on your suit and I'll help you get fixed up."

"My suit?" It occurred to me then that I hadn't even considered my attire for the evening. I went to my room and pulled out the dinner jacket Morgana had bought me for just such occasions.

Before long, I was standing by the front door waiting for Morgana and her friend. Arthur leaned against the kitchen counter, smirking.

"I think you looked better in the ceremonial servant's robes, Merlin, I really do,' he chided. I rolled my eyes as the girls entered.

Everything within me crumbled when I saw Morgana. Her elegant, ebony curls were pulled half back, framing her face but allowing the hair to drape free in its untouched, breathtaking radiance. Her makeup was minimal, but dramatic, highlighting her features and giving her the air of being distant, unattainable, above and out of reach. She was wearing an emerald gown with intricate silver detailing running from the hem of her skirt to her right hip where it met a delicate chain draped in a V at her waist. The sleeves were made from a transparent material and gathered just above the elbow, from where they plummeted nearly to the floor. The neckline was off the shoulder, so low that the sleeves barely looked connected to the rest of the dress, but the outfit was held up by a braided silver chain that wrapped around Morgana's neck and hung down her back in the three individual strands. Everything about it was like a modern take on the wardrobe Uther had provided for her as his ward. All I could see was the woman I had known when I first arrived in Camelot, the beautiful, brilliant, remarkable Morgana that had the world at her fingertips and filled it with light and love.

My voice caught as I tried to speak. "You look…" I tried to tell her everything I couldn't figure out how to say, but there weren't words enough.

She just smiled warmly, that smile that she saved just for me and Aithusa. "As do you." I met her eyes, her ethereally green eyes, and I knew that words would never be enough, and that, somehow, we didn't need them. We both knew what we were trying to say.

Clara stepped forward, walking past me toward the door and eyeing me as she did. "Yes, he does, doesn't he? You clean up well, Emrys. You didn't even need my help." There was a contemplative edge to her voice. Morgana's gaze flashed from me to her, and back. There was a brief moment that I believed I saw something akin to hatred in her green depths, but it was gone before I could be sure what it was. When she looked back at me, there was just the blissful happiness that had been there when she walked out.

"Shall we be off then?" I offered Morgana my arm, which she took without a moment's pause. Clara, who was meeting us at the concert hall right before the concert started, left us on the street after another glance at me and headed up the road to get ready in her own flat. I helped Morgana into the car and made sure all her affects were in order before we left, making our way to the across the city.

Three hours later, I was in my seat, displaying every nervous tick in the book and staring down the red curtain over the stage like it might blink before I did if I strained hard enough. Clara sat at my left, rolling her eyes at me and whispering to the rest of Morgana's friends about the upholstery on the seats or something along those lines. I knew I was just being an anxious stage mother, but I was convinced I was more stressed out about this concert than Morgana was. I had left her in the green room after she had finished warming up with the symphony, allowing her to get her head in gear.

After what seemed like a millennium (and if anyone alive knew what that felt like, it was me) the curtain finally opened. The orchestra was already seated, and after a word from the president of the organization, the conductor walked out with my favorite sorceress on his heels. The stage lights struck her hair like a halo, and once more my vital organs turned to a puddle of indiscernible mush. She sat at the grand piano that was almost as beautiful as she was, and music swelled through the hall.

I had heard Morgana play that piece so many times I felt I may never forget it no matter how much longer I lived, but it was different that time. As I sat there for the half-hour that it took to play through Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, I saw, felt, and heard a side to this woman that I had never touched before. I couldn't tell if the rest of the audience saw it as clearly as I did, but that night I saw her crack open her chest, rip out her heart, cut down to its deepest corners, and pour everything within onto that piano and all over the stage. I was washed in the presence of her, raw and beautiful, exposed in a way that captivated me and immobilized me in my awe. She wasn't playing the piano, she wasn't performing in any way, and the notes coming from her fingertips weren't just notes, not to her and not to me. She was throwing herself into the moment wholeheartedly, and the music was no more than the medium of her expression. She wasn't playing Rachmaninoff.

She was playing her soul.

When it was over – the moment that I never wanted to end – I left my seat and rushed from the hall. The audience was still settling down from the standing ovation that they had given Morgana, preparing for the rest of the concert, but I ignored them, pushing my way up toward the auditorium doors. I wound through the halls, crashing through doors until I found the one I was looking for.

She was sitting in the mirror of the green room, smiling like the sunrise and dabbing at her eyes as tears of joy threatened her in her moment alone. I paused in the threshold, just watching her, not wanting to disturb her. She was still so raw, safe with just herself. I could feel her magic in the air like a tangible force, painted brilliant colors with her emotions behind my eyes so I could read them like a map of her mind. Then her eyes found mine in the mirror, like they had that first new night, and the spectrum of her around me lit up like fireworks.

She was out of her chair in an instant and she threw her arms around me, sobbing into my jacket. I ran my hand down her back, knotting my fingers in her hair.

"Merlin…" She choked on her words.

"I know," I mumbled into her curls. I did know. I couldn't be sure what she herself had experienced on that stage, but I could see it, taste it in the air around us. I wanted so desperately for her to feel me the way I felt her in that moment. I wanted her to see what I couldn't say, the thing that had been on the tip of my tongue, the thing that I had been dancing around for months but hadn't had the words for. I had the words now, the words I could think and feel, but still didn't know how to say. The words that meant everything to me, and yet absolutely nothing without her:

I love you, Morgana.