All the Ways We Almost Said It
A Mergana fanfiction story
Because I couldn’t help the plot bunny that whispered, "You should write a ‘I just wanted to check you were okay’ as Merlin’s way of saying ‘I love you’ to Morgana story,"—and because I wanted a heartbreaking one—I asked myself:
What if Merlin had been in love with Morgana since Season 1, and came to see her one last time before he was about to sacrifice himself in Le Morte d’Arthur?
The fire had long since surrendered, leaving only the ghost of a flame dancing in the hearth’s cradle. Its glow spilled across the stone walls in soft, flickering ribbons brief golden sighs in a room grown quiet with waiting. Outside, rain murmured against the windows like a secret too tender to say aloud. It did not rage it wept. Steady, soft, as if the heavens knew this was the hour of breaking.
Morgana sat on the edge of her bed, hair unbound, spilling like ink over her shoulders. A book lay open and forgotten in her lap, words swimming on the page like they no longer belonged to any language she knew. Her eyes had not moved from the same line in over an hour.
The storm was distant. But something closer trembled in her chest an ache, low and insistent. She did not know what she was waiting for, only that she was.
Then a knock. Soft. Barely there.
Not the knock of a servant, brisk and practical. Not Arthur’s, not Gwen’s. This one was hesitant. A single breath against wood. Like someone asking for permission they knew they didn’t deserve.
“Who is it?” Her voice, more breath than sound.
His voice sounded low and scraped thin, like it had weathered too many silent hours.
She rose slowly. Her bare feet touched the cold stone, anchoring her to a moment that already felt too fragile. Crossing the room, she opened the door.
There stood Merlin, drenched in rain, hollow-eyed, and trembling. His hair clung to his brow, his cheeks pale with something deeper than cold. His coat sagged under the weight of water, but his shoulders sagged under something heavier.
She managed a soft, teasing smile, though her heart had already clenched. “You look like death.”
“I… I wanted to check you were okay,” was his answer.
The phrase. That same phrase. How many times had he said it? How many times had she let it slide past her ears, soft and strange and secret?
But tonight, it wasn’t routine. Tonight, it felt like a goodbye.
Merlin’s mind drifted in the silence, memories flickering like broken light.
The moment had come quietly, without fanfare or grand revelation. It was in the way her laughter caught in his chest, the way her eyes softened when he met hers, the way his breath hitched whenever she entered the room. Love had crept in on silent feet, weaving itself into his thoughts, until it was all he could think of—her face burning in his dreams, her voice a balm to the worst of days.
And still, he had never dared say it aloud.
“You always say that,” Morgana murmured.
Her voice laced through the hush, and his thoughts dissolved like smoke.
“Because I always need to know,” he replied.
Something inside her tightened.
She stepped aside, letting him in. He moved like a shadow carefully, quietly, as if afraid the stones themselves would cry out if he stepped too loudly. He stood by the door, damp and shaking, like the fire might not warm him even if it tried.
“You’re trembling,” she said, her voice turning gentle. “Come closer to the fire.”
She turned to face him fully, watching the ghost in his expression, the grief clinging to him like rain. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” he replied too fast.
She took a step closer. “Don’t lie.”
He looked down, shoulders folding inward.
“Why are you really here?”
His mouth opened, then closed. His jaw clenched like he was swallowing fire. Then: “I just… I just needed to see you.”
A single heartbeat passed. Then another.
“At this hour?” she asked. “Like this?”
The question caught in her throat. The air between them had changed. Something old and unnamed now stretched between their breaths.
He raised his eyes to her face eyes that knew how to hide pain, but not tonight. Tonight, they bled. He looked at her as if she were already a memory he longed to cherish forever.
“Merlin…” she whispered her gaze never leaving him.
“You have this way of looking at me,” he said, voice unsteady, “like I matter. Like I’m not invisible.”
The words hit something deep in her. Something that had no name.
And yet, here he was, broken and vulnerable, standing in the doorway of her heart, giving her everything he could not say.
“I wanted to…” He faltered. “check you were okay.”
“Please don't deny me that. It’s all I can say,” he practically pleaded.
“No, it isn’t. I know it isn't,” her voice sounding so desperate to her ears that it frightened her.
Silence draped over them, heavy and thick. Even the storm outside seemed to still, listening.
She stepped closer. Raised her hands to his face, fingertips grazing his chilled skin. He didn’t flinch. He leaned into her like a man starved of warmth.
“Your eyes are red,” she said quietly.
“I haven’t cried,” he quickly denied.
“Then why do you look like you’re already mourning something?”
His breath hitched, shallow and uneven. She saw it - the war inside him. Words unsaid pressed against his teeth like they would drown him if spoken.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he breathed.
His gaze dropped. But she didn’t let go. She held him steady, her touch soft but unrelenting.
“I kept thinking…” His voice cracked. “If I could just see you one more time. Hear your voice. Then I could happily go.”
“Merlin tell me what's happening.”
“Because if I do, it will be harder to leave.” His voice dropped, barely a whisper. “And I have to. No matter how much I—”
Too close. Too near the truth he couldn’t afford to say.
Her next words came out in a breath. “How much you what?”
His hands found her face now, matching her tenderness. His thumbs traced beneath her eyes, gentle and reverent. Their foreheads met. Eyes closed. The storm outside quieted, holding its breath.
“I just wanted to check you were okay,” he said again. But this time, it fractured.
“You were the only thing,” he whispered, “that ever made this place feel like home.”
And that was when it broke inside her the slow, quiet truth that had been blooming unnoticed.
It was him. It had always been him.
The late-night glances. The warmth behind his worry. The way her heart ached when he smiled at someone else. She loved him. She had loved him in silence for so long she had forgotten there were words for it. For months, she had told herself it was concern she felt when he came to see her, a lingering worry for a friend cloaked in habit. But now, the truth bloomed a sharp, breathtaking realization that she had loved him in the quiet places of her soul without ever saying it, without daring to admit it. She had watched him from the shadows, yearning for his blue eyes, aching when he looked away and only now realizing she was terrified that if she spoke aloud, she might shatter the fragile bond between them.
But she couldn’t say it. Not now. Not when he looked like a man standing at the edge of the world. He was saying goodbye. He would never return. She could see it in his eyes. So many questions he wasn't willing to answer, so little time. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words died, too heavy with grief, too small against the weight of what was slipping away.
So instead, she kissed him—not to stop him, not even to change his mind, but because it was the only language left. A final plea, a quiet surrender, a desperate attempt to say everything that time would no longer allow.
It was not perfect. It was trembling and desperate, built from everything they had never said. Her lips sought him like a final prayer. He kissed her back like he was drowning and she was the breath he’d been denied. It was slow, tremulous like the fragile breaking of dawn, a fragile unspooling of months held tight in silence. Her lips parted beneath his like a secret unlocked. He tasted of rain and raw grief and all the things he couldn't say.
His hands tangled in her hair, gentle but desperate, as if the very act of holding her might hold the world from falling apart. His mouth moved with a softness that shattered her, as if he feared the moment might be their last. No, he knew it will be their last. No more dawns, no more secret glances, no more Morgana.
Time slowed until it was just the two of them breath mingling, hearts thrumming like wild birds trapped in a cage. The ache between them was a living thing fierce, tender, unbearable.
When they parted, it was only just - lips brushing still, foreheads pressed together like they could hold the shattered pieces of themselves in that small space. Their breaths came ragged, and tears spilled freely down her cheeks, tracing silent rivers of loss and love.
“I should’ve said it a hundred times,” he whispered, voice breaking like glass.
“Then why didn’t you?” she demanded even though she knew the answer.
He closed his eyes, voice barely a breath. “Because you are you… and I am only me. Because our world is full of so many lines we’re not meant to cross. But mostly… because I knew if I ever began I’d never know how to stop.”
Her hand slipped into his, fingers weaving tightly through his own. The touch was a promise, a plea, a lifeline.
“If you leave now,” she whispered, voice trembling like a fragile prayer half mad half desperate to make him stay, “I’ll be furious with you,”
“I know,” he said, and the sadness in his voice made her chest ache.
“But I’ll wait anyway for your return,” she promised
“I will. You will come back to me. This can't be how this ends,” her voice breaking at the last word.
In a single moment, the words she whispered in the corridor flooded back to him—when her touch overwhelmed him, and he had to flee, for if he stayed, tears would have spilled before her eyes. “It is only the beginning,” she had said. And so it was—the beginning of the end. His end. Yet, he would carry with him that one stolen kiss from her for at least a few hours before death, heavy with the weight of her silent, unspoken love. But now, he must leave her and lay down his life to save his mother. In truth, he had lived a good life, even if only a fleeting fraction of his days were touched by Morgana’s presence. Many die never knowing love. He had been lucky. Selfishness was a luxury he could not afford. Not now, not ever again.
He squeezed her hand, a quiet anchor in a sea of storm.
Then he pulled away, stepping back toward the door.
She did not move no matter how much she wanted to but her gaze followed him tears never stopping.
“Please... stay,” she begged.
He reached the threshold but her words gave him pause.
Then, as if the weight of a thousand silent years crashed down on him, he spun back.
Without a word, without a thought, he crossed the room again with reckless urgency, hands catching her face, pulling her into a kiss that was sharper, deeper, more desperate.
This kiss was the cry of a soul torn between love and loss. It was the sweetness of all the moments stolen, the ache of all the hours they’d never have. His mouth moved against hers with a fierce longing, trembling hands threading through her hair as if to memorize the feel of her one last time.
She clung to him, the world narrowing to breath and pulse and the burning heat of their collision. Their lips parted, only to find each other again, tasting the bittersweet finality of a love that might never find its dawn.
When at last they broke apart, his forehead rested against hers, breaths mingling like a whispered farewell.
“Morgana, please—please smile when you think of me. ” he breathed, voice barely audible, laden with everything he could never say aloud.
And then he ran hearing her voice screaming his name.
Down the hall, away from the only woman that had ever truly felt like home.
Morgana stood frozen, her fingers still trembling where his had held her face. The fire flickered low, casting long, restless shadows that echoed the storm raging inside her chest. She tasted the ghost of his lips, the faint warmth of his breath lingering on her skin, and the unbearable weight of everything that had just slipped through her fingers.
Her body trembled with silent screams, eyes wide and desperate, searching the space where he had been—as if willing him to stay. She clenched her hands into fists, knuckles white, her breath catching in a choke of helplessness.
Time seemed to stretch and shatter around her, the silence pressing in like a cold wave. The hollow absence he left was a void so vast, so cruel, it threatened to swallow her whole.
Her heart broke quietly but utterly—a single star collapsing in an endless night.
And in that shattered stillness, she understood: love was a cruel and beautiful torment—an unyielding flame shared between two souls, destined to burn fiercely, even as they were torn apart.
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