Friends to Be Feared

Chapter 19: Finally

All I could do was stare.

The ragged landscape was still, not even a whisper of wind traveling over the jagged rocks.

I dully noted these observations as I took in Merlin's sunken face. He was leaned against a rock, his legs folded underneath him and a blank stare on his face.

I gently grabbed his shoulder.

"Merlin?" I spoke as softly as I could.

He didn't even flinch.

"Merlin." I spoke more firmly, my other hand reaching up to his adjacent shoulder.

"Merlin please, please respond to me." I was desperate, my voice betraying my desperation. I tried to keep my composure but looking at his face, completely blank and unresponsive...it killed me.

Merlin was always expressive, even if I could never figure out what he was actually expressing, there wasn't ever a moment where I doubted his intensity.

He was never one to half-ass things after all.

The thought brought a small chuckle out of me but didn't stop it from sounding pained all the same.

A wave of frustration washed through me and I pulled my hands away, angrily running them though my tangled hair.

"What do you want from me?!?" I yelled at the sky, my breath coming in tagged gasps as despair shot through me.

"Who am I kidding? You have absolutely no reason to respond to me. How could I have ever thought I could help you? I don't help people, I can't. All I'm good for is hurting them." The words that had been in the back of my mind since this began seemed to trigger the tears I had been trying so hard to hold back.

I sobbed. Big, ugly sobbing that I knew would leave my face blotched and red. But for once I didn't care about appearances.

"It's not fair!" I screamed. I didn't know who I was screaming at, the person showing me the memories, maybe the nothing, or the gods. I didn't know and I didn't care.

I was lost.

I was alone.

No

I looked up to the figure in front of me. He didn't seem to have moved at all during my meltdown. His eyes as blank as before.

But he was there.

I looked at him, really looked at him.

He was alive, his chest still rose with his breathing, no matter how shallow. His heart was still beating. There was still hope.

Okay, okay. Think Morgana. You've never given up your entire godsdamn life and you are not about to start now. Snap out of it.

I took a breath. Another.

Now, what to do. I thought about everything I'd been shown, all the memories. The ones about his childhood were fairly self-explanatory, but what about the mist filled throne room? I knew I would be seeing his memories, but that just didn't seem to make sense.

Who had I been talking to? I didn't think much of it before, just talking to myself to vent, but now that I think about it... it had felt like there was someone listening.

I looked to figure in front of me again.

Merlin.

He may not look like he was there, but I was inside his mind, of course he was listening.

He just wasn't reacting.

Okay, I can work with that. I just had to get him to react.

Problem was I didn't know how to do that.