SPOILERS FOR 5x13

A/N: The thing about the last episode of Merlin is not the deaths, at least for me; it was that until the very end- the very last second, just before the credits- I was waiting for some miracle.

Because there was no way, after losing so much, Merlin was going to lose Arthur too.

But then again, there is now the opportunity to write things like this, and other wonderful people have written things like this, and together we'll get through it.

I don't usually write things with titles like this (at least, I haven't for years now), but I sort of wrote this on the fly and it's helping me cope with the 'Merlin is over and I want to burn things' feels, so here it is.

This is inspired by ptelly's gorgeous Merlin fanart onTumblr [check out scarrletmoon on AO3]

It came in the rain, in the middle of a gray crowd under a bleak sky that's been dark for as long as Merlin could remember. Blinded by umbrellas and rain and wet raincoats, he almost didn't see it, but something compelled him to look up: a spot of colour out of the corner of his eye somewhere, bright and wrong and terrifying, but no one else seemed to see it. Under the blaring noise of headphones and the rush to get off the train, it was ignored, and only Merlin saw it as it struggled to keep flying before it was crushed by the water. And as soon as Merlin saw it, he felt something that he hadn't felt in years; it started somewhere deep inside his chest, sparked behind his eyes and travelled until he felt it burning through his blood like flames, and he suddenly had to work to keep his magic in control like he had when it was still new. He'd stopped using magic years ago, and even then only in emergencies; because Arthur took part of him that day, and Merlin had been waiting- aging and pretending and moving on for years, from Merlin to the old man that nobody knew, and then back to the boy that wandered all over England just waiting for his once and future king.

No one saw; most people were just irritated when Merlin suddenly stopped and they muttered angrily as they were forced to walk around him. It didn't matter, none of them did, nor the cold wet of the rain and the sweat that made his t-shirt stick to his skin from being crowded in with so many strangers, nor his own weariness: what mattered was the face of the man he saw when the red butterfly fell out of view; what mattered were the blue eyes that found his in the middle of that crowd, the man's first frown and then Merlin's lips shaping the name he hadn't spoken in so long.

He hadn't changed at all, not since that day. Merlin pushed through angry crowds, stumbled and skinned his hands on the pavement when he fell, but it didn't matter, and the pain in his hands and his chest and the throbbing headache he'd had this morning weren't important; what was important was the way Arthur's face changed from confusion to surprise, the way he tried to reach Merlin first, they way before he fell again, Arthur's hands had already found him and were pulling him up, the way when Merlin looked at him, he was back in Camelot again so many years ago, back when things were a little easier and Merlin didn't know how the world was going to change before they saw each other again.

And after a while, after they'd gotten their breath back and were still staring at each other in awe, Arthur put his hands on Merlin's shoulders and looked at him very seriously, and for a moment Merlin was worried that he was going to say that now wasn't the time; that this was a false alarm and that he would have to say goodbye all over again (but he had had enough of goodbyes, Merlin wanted to say, had had enough of watching the light fade out of friends eyes, of promising Gaius and Gwen that he would find Arthur again even though he didn't know how he would).

"You haven't changed," Arthur said.

"Neither have-"

"You're still an idiot."

Merlin stopped, but a second later he felt a tug at his lips and then his face breaking into a grin, and they were laughing again.

Just as they had; just as they always would be.