King Henry

Chapter 50 - The Truth Comes Out

"Is it really you?" Mary Margaret asked, looking Merlin up and down from head to toe, in shock. "But, I thought you ..... I thought you were dead. I was told ...."

Merlin shook his head. "No, you were told wrong. I'm still very much alive."

She stood there staring at him as if she were looking at a ghost, obviously still trying to wrap her mind around this news. Then her smile slowly faded away and she got a serious look on her face.

"Did you come back here to be with me?" she asked, with a vulnerability in her voice that surprised him. In all the years he had known Mary Margaret, he had never known her to be vulnerable.

He hung his head and let out an exhale as he ran a hand up through his hair, quietly whispering, "No, I just came here to talk to you."

"To talk to me?" she asked loudly in disbelief, with scrunched eyebrows. "About what?"

Merlin lifted his head and looked down into her eyes before saying, "About Henry." He took a deep breath in and let it out before telling her, "You know what you're doing isn't right. He's meant to be the King. It's his destiny. You can't take that away from him."

She looked taken aback and scoffed. "Who are YOU to tell ME what I can and can't do? You disappeared three years ago without even saying goodbye and now you suddenly reappear and want to start making demands?!" she shouted.

She had her hands on her hips, glaring at him and it was obvious that she was getting angry. This conversation wasn't going the way Merlin had hoped it would at all.

"I didn't want to leave, but I had to. What we were doing to George wasn't right and the guilt was killing me. I had to get away."

She scoffed, laughing at him.  "I almost forgot how sensitive you are Merlin. You would rather leave, just so someone else can be happy, while you make yourself absolutely miserable? That's ridiculous," she said, crossing her arms across her chest and shaking her head at him in judgement.

"I'm not ridiculous for not wanting to hurt my best friend!" he said loudly. "SOME of us actually try NOT to hurt the people we care about! I know that might be a hard concept for YOU to comprehend!"

"I'm not a bad person for wanting happiness for myself!" she shouted back.

They both stood there glaring at each other, breathing heavily from getting themselves all worked up. That's when he realized how close they were standing to each other.

She looked up, searching his eyes and hesitated before breathlessly saying, "I was in love with you Merlin. You're the ONLY man I've EVER been in love with. How could you just leave me like that?"

He couldn't believe what she just said. "You never loved George?" he asked, searching her eyes with scrunched eyebrows.

She looked away, hesitating for a minute before shaking her head and looking down at her hands. "No," she sighed. "I only married him because he was the King, because being married to him would earn me respect and power I couldn't get anywhere else." Then she raised her head and looked back into Merlin's eyes, giving him a weak smile before saying, "but you've always been the one I really wanted Merlin. It was always you."

Hearing that made Merlin think back to their childhood. Mary Margaret's family had been very wealthy and powerful members of the Royal Court and close friends of the royal family. Merlin's father had been George's father's personal sorcerer. Because of that, the three of them spent a lot of time together and became best friends at a young age. As the King's son, George had trouble making other friends because people automatically assumed he was arrogant, spoiled and thought he was too good for them. George didn't mind too much because he had Merlin and Mary Margaret and that was enough for him. The three of them were the same age and they spent all day, every day together, becoming closer to him than his real family was.