Disclaimer: Merlin and its characters belongs to BBC. No copyright infringement intended.

But we shall all rise again and again and again. We do not come once and go to Heaven or their Hell, but live again and again until we are even as the Gods. (Morgaine - The Mists of Avalon)

x-x-x

The sight of the ancient walls of the historical monument, standing tall and proud all around her, made her eyes wide.

According to the prospectus, the college building - a castle, really - was more than a thousand years old. It once belonged to an ancient kingdom, the legendary tales of which had been unable to fade with the course of time, known by Camelot.

Standing in the freezing air with a dark coat wrapped securely around her light brown turtleneck and a beanie covering the top of her long, black curls, a dazed half smile came unknowingly to her face as she took in the majestic elegance of it all standing in the courtyard; the towering white bricked walls, the long framed windows, the wide marble staircases, the dark statues. It was at once both exquisitely beautiful - and for some unknown reason - heartbreakingly sad.

Taking a deep breath, she looked away from the large balcony, the sight of which was tickling her memory uncomfortably and walked purposefully to the wide staircase leading to the main entrance with dark double doors.

Inside, she once again came to a halt as she took in the beauty of the huge corridor with its marbled floor and a wide staircase going up on her left. Another statue of a winged lion was perched at the top of the staircase. Feeling a strangely strong leap of happiness, she kept walking down the corridor, her eyes fixed on the huge, arched windows near the high ceiling through which sunlight was richly pouring in. The statues on her both sides were white instead of the black she saw outside. She felt transfixed by it all - it felt so familiar. It was almost like sleep walking around her house.

The jolt to bring her back to reality made her give a small shriek - she had walked straight into someone. The other person had immediately took hold of her elbows to stop her from falling back. Blinking away her dazed state, she looked up sheepishly.

It was a boy, wearing a dark coat over a black T-shirt with the collars turned up. As her eyes reached his face, he let go of her arms, and she found herself yearning to hold on to something.

His eyes - having a strange eternal feel to them - were slightly wide as he looked at her, frowning sightly, his face a mixture of confusion and disbelief. She guessed his expressions to be originated from his possible realization of how appalling she must have looked walking with her eyes on the ceiling. And she blushed in embarrassment.

"Hi," the boy said in almost a whisper, probably to break the awkwardness, after they kept staring at each other for few seconds, his eyes slightly narrowed now.

That voice . . . with that face . . .

She felt herself feeling suddenly breathless.

"Hi," she replied in an equally low whisper, if a few beats later, a sheepish smile coming on her lips.

She realized she was not able to look away from him. His blue eyes, his face, his messy hair as black as hers . . . everything about him gave her a feeling of deja vu. Like a half forgotten dream coming to reality. She tried to place him in a memory - tried to remember why he felt so familiar but it was like trying to catch smoke. It kept slipping through her fingers.

"Are you okay?" the boy asked hesitantly. If anything, his confused expression were now at the verge of being that of frustration.

He must think I am half crazy, a fleeting thought passed through her mind.

She opened her mouth to say yes, to answer his question and walk away and be done with it, but a feeling of immense heaviness settled in her chest, making her unable to speak. It felt like a burden of centuries had been handed to her against her will, making it hard to breath. She was not sure if she was sharing the weight of his wise eyes or it was hers alone but it left her exhausted nevertheless.

Taking a labored breath, she finally lowered her eyes, feeling suddenly both lost and at loss. She could feel his steady gaze on her but any sense of embarrassment was completely overshadowed by her will to force herself to walk away from him. It took gathering of a surprisingly strong will to do so, but in the end she stepped aside and finally walked away, her eyes firmly set on her feet now.

x-x-x

He stared at the ceiling of his dormitory, ignoring the presence of his roommate completely, going over the events of his first day at this college.

Well, event, really.

The day had been entirely normal and satisfying. He liked the college, liked the place, despite having the irritating feeling of being there before, which he was sure had been pointless. He had never been to this place before. Like the rest of the students, he had taken a general stroll of the place, just to get familiar with his surroundings and to memorize the several different routes to his classrooms. The place was a sight of regal beauty, making him fall in love with it strongly enough to ignore that irritating feeling of familiarity. He had been pleased - very pleased, indeed - with all of it until . . .

Until he collided with the girl walking with her eyes on the roof. He had been too mesmerized by the statues to not to notice her until the last second and though he stopped at once, she walked right into him. He had, of course, being the shy gentleman he was, tried to steady her and for those few moments he was close enough to her to sense something familiar about her. She had started to raise her head but he realized he already have some idea as to what she looks like, that he already knew her without even seeing her face. He was suddenly dreading to look at her face without knowing why.

He let go of her arms.

And then she looked up and was staring at him and something about her large, dark blue eyes and the fathomless sadness accompanied by a hint of surprise in them was endearingly familiar. He narrowed his eyes in confusion, trying to recall where he had seen her before, but it didn't come to him. He saw her blush slightly, looking embarrassed, and immediately tried to make it less awkward for her.

"Hi," he had blurted out then, but it sounded almost like a whisper. He blamed it to his growing irritation with not being able to recall the memory associated with her, that made him absentminded enough not to speak clearly.

"Hi," the girl had replied back, now smiling sheepishly, and once again he knew what she would sound like before she spoke up.

Surprisingly enough, she made no motion towards dismissing the whole thing and simply walking away like it should be done when you walk into a stranger. Instead, she kept looking at him, her eyes never entirely still but kept flickering between his eyes to his hair to the side of his face to his eyes again. He felt the frustration growing in him with every second that passed between them in silence - the helpless feeling of not remembering her yet knowing that he should not remember because they had never met before. It was the same feeling he had when he entered the castle and somehow both of them - the castle and the girl - seemed connected, a part of each other. She seemed to belong there more than anybody else, no matter how strange the notion sound. She was definitely just a new student like himself. Yet standing there, in that corridor, with broken sunlight filtering in, she seemed like someone whose presence in that place comes naturally to the senses.

He saw her smile fading away slowly, her eyes getting slightly wider.

"Are you okay?" he asked, trying to break the awkwardness for the second time.

The girl opened her mouth to say something and he saw with a mixture of wonder and anxiety as her expression dissolved into that of sadness. It seemed as if the sadness of her eyes spilled over her face, making her look achingly beautiful.

The moment was shattered as she looked away, down to her feet, her lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. Before he could stop her, she stepped sideways and walked away with hurried footsteps. He turned around quickly, perplexed by her sudden departure, the urge to call her back seizing him, but then he realized that despite guessing so much about her beforehand, he didn't know her name.

x-x-x

She sat at the edge of the slightly damp staircase at the entrance to the college, on her jacket she had laid down to avoid the dampness from soaking in her jeans, staring at the statue of a knight on a small pillar in the middle of the staircase. Despite wearing a thick turtleneck, she was feeling chilled to the bone. But she stayed there. She had half an hour before her class starts and something about the frosty morning felt too refreshing and she enjoyed breathing in it.

Her eyes drifted away from the statue, skimming over the faces of several other students milling about the campus. Most of them were rushing into the ancient building, walking away from the cold. She remembered the cold air that had frozen her breath on the way to the college from her dormitory and smiled.

The castle and the land around it were once a busy kingdom, the lower and upper city crowded with houses and shops and taverns. Now, several centuries later, the castle was turned into college and the lower city got transformed into vast grounds at the end of which were students' dormitories. The path from the dormitory building to the college was not a long one but she had enjoyed it, shivering violently as she had been. She hadn't mind the cold, or the shivering. She had been too preoccupied by her thoughts. Just like right now.

As she gave a fleeting look to each face, her eyes got drawn to the stairs of the west wing and became wide as she recognized the boy from yesterday, coming down the stairs swiftly. Today he had a dark grey sweatshirt on, his hair as messy as ever. She found herself once again unable to look away from him and kept staring at him.

Perhaps it was the intensity of her gaze or maybe sheer coincidence, but he looked up just as he reached the end of the steps, his eyes meeting flawlessly as if he knew exactly where she was before even looking at her.

Feeling electrocuted, she jerked her eyes away from him, her face heating up to add color to her already cold-flushed face. She tapped her foot nervously, her head bowed over her backpack as she rummaged in it uselessly, trying to appear nonchalant. She couldn't see the boy now and it made her even more flustered. A part of her wished he hadn't recognized her, that he will just walk away to wherever he was going. But another part, the one that had tried to place him in a memory yesterday, the one that had given her a feeling of deja vu about him, wished him to come to her, no matter how scared she was of that prospect. She would like to think that both parts of her were in balance, that both her contradictory wishes were equally strong but she knew they weren't. Not after the dream she had last night.

The dream was a dangerously vivid one, stronger and closer to reality than any she had experienced. And it scared her. The dreams were supposed to be about people you know, had known for a long time. And even then, they should be just dreams - with some hazy and other more memorable parts. But the dream last night was as opposite to any regular dream as it gets.

For one thing, it was not about someone she knew but rather about the boy from yesterday, whose name was unknown to her. And secondly, the dream was still sharp and clear in her mind, just like it was the moment she woke up from it.

In her dream, she was looking down from a high window, half opened into the courtyard she was sitting in right now. Unlike the reality, the court was full of people of all ages, gathered around in a loose circle around a raised platform. There was a dark block on the platform and a man kneeled in front of it, his head bowed, his hands tied behind him. A soldier stood beside him with a sharp blade.

Just as the man was dragged to the block and his head pushed on it, she felt a sense of remorse and dread rising in her. The blade was raised and she willed herself to look on as it came down, slicing the air, and went through his neck. She looked away then, feeling a heavy despair settling on her heart.

When she looked down again after few seconds, her eyes fell on the boy in the midst of the crowd - the boy from yesterday - looking up at her, and even in her deep, dream like state, she felt a jolt of recognition that woke her up.

Only after lying in her bed for several minutes, trying to control her breath, did she realize how strange the dream was.

For once, the people including the boy were all wearing strange clothes - more medieval than she could have expected. The boy had a red neckerchief and was wearing an old brown jacket with it. She recalled herself wearing something long and flowing, something she had never used in her life.

The boy's face had felt acutely familiar despite ever seeing him once and then for not more than few seconds. She recalled his messy hair, his blue eyes, his facial contours down to smallest details and it scared her.

She shouldn't be able to recall a complete stranger so clearly.

But then, that stranger shouldn't be looking at her like that either - with awe and admiration. The look in his eyes reminded her of his eyes during their only meeting and she realized that he might not be looking at her with confusion only, then, either. The thought had flustered her more than she would like to admit.

x-x-x

He had always been aware; of emotions, of movements, of motives - in a way he knew most people were not. He had always been good at guessing others' reactions, their expressions and any minute shift in them. He had always been aware of the air and the way it shifts, the sand under his feet, the sounds drifting with the wind. It had came naturally to him and he was used to it.

But since yesterday, he had been on edge. His senses, his awareness had never been so acute, so focused on something or someone before. Even as the girl had side stepped him to walk away, he was able to feel what she was feeling; a sudden, immensely old sadness. It had left him speechless.

All day after that, he had found himself feeling weirdly cautious, as if trying not to feel something that was shouting its presence to him. But it was useless. He could feel her. Her presence. Her emotions. And when in the middle of the night he woke up with a jolt for no apparent reason, drenched in sweat, he realized she must have had a nightmare.

And now, coming down the stairs, her presence made itself known as he glanced up involuntarily to meet her eyes. She had looked away swiftly but he was able to feel her embarrassment. Standing there, he struggled over deciding whether to go to her or not.

Logically speaking, there was no reason for him to approach her. Yes, he had an accidental meeting with her which lasted few minutes at the most but that was just an insignificant incident. He didn't even know her name.

But even as he debated over why it was inappropriate to go over to her, his feet were already moving forward. Before long, he found himself standing over her, with no memory of making the decision of approaching her.

Her head was halfway into her backpack, looking for some nonexistent thing to get over her awkwardness and for a moment he felt inclined towards turning away silently.

"Hey," the words coming unexpectedly out of his mouth betrayed his decision.

The girl became very still on hearing his voice and slowly looked up at him, her eyes wide. Once again, upon seeing her up so close, he felt the urge to remember her. She was not a face that should be forgotten easily. He pushed the thought aside.

"Hi," her voice was as soft and hesitant as ever, slightly deeper than most girls.

"Can I sit here?" he asked politely, raising his eyebrows to the steps. She gave him a long look and he noticed how the sunlight turned her dark blue eyes a shade lighter when she tilted her face up like that. She nodded slightly.

He sat down a few feet away from her. The sudden shift of air between them made him realize she had calmed down a bit. He glanced at her. She was no longer searching her bag. Instead, her eyes were fixed across the courtyard, on nothing significant. They stayed quiet for several minutes. He realized how easy it felt to sit here with her, with no need to fill the gaps with words.

"I'm Merlin," he began.

He felt another shift in her emotions as she stiffened slightly. She was surprised to hear his name.

She turned her head towards him, began to say something, then stopped. He saw the way she recoiled inwardly at something unknown to him. Composing herself, she nodded her acknowledgement and smiled slightly.

Encouraged by her smile, he decided to lighten the charged air between them, "Sorry about yesterday. I wasn't paying attention."

Now she smiled fully, making him breath deeply, "No, I think it was my mistake. I should look where I'm going."

Hearing her voice, forming a complete sentence, brought him a sense of relief. He felt an immediate lift in his spirits and smiled. Something had settled in him, then. He was no longer regretting coming to her, no matter how strange the prospect still seemed of them, two complete strangers, sitting there so casually.

She kept looking at him and he recognized a shimmer of disbelief in her eyes - a feeling laced with bewilderment and sadness. He sensed a hint of recognition appear in her eyes before overcoming with confusion again.

Could it be possible, he wondered, that she has the same feeling of knowing me as I have for her?

"Do you like the college?" her question caught him off guard, mainly because he was solving the mystery of her eyes, and also because this was the first time she had made an effort to ask him something.

"Wha - oh, the college?" he stumbled over his words and noticed her trying to hide her smile, "Yeah, it's great," he looked around him, once again marvelling at the beauty and strength of the ancient edifice, trying to conceal his blush, "The first time I saw it, I had the feeling that I've been here before."

Her low gasp, inaudible enough, came to his notice only because he was so emotionally aware of her. He snapped his neck around to look at her whose eyes were still and unmoving on his, pupils dilated in disbelief. It took him less than a second to understand her source of wonder.

"You . . . feel the same about this place, don't you?" he asked softly.

She stared at him for few long moments, her pupils quivering. Very deliberately, she gave a small nod, "I thought it was just me, " she attempted in vain to smile again. But her eyes were aware - strangely conscious - all of a sudden as she kept looking at him. She could very well be tunneling through his soul for all the intensity her eyes held.

He smiled weakly, and shrugged, "I asked some of my classmates if they feel the same about this place. Nobody else feels the way we do."

He realized his mistake of collecting them together in the same pronoun of "we" only a second later as her eyes went blank and she straightened up. Checking her watch, she stood up abruptly, shaking her head slightly as if in denial of his suggestion. His eyes followed her movements, sensing her confusion - and was it fear?

"I should go," she said quietly yet firmly, an authoritative tone enveloping her voice. It didn't surprise him. Nothing about her surprised him. To him, it felt as if that's how she usually speaks, that's the way she should speak, which was ridiculous considering it was the first time he had any real conversation with her. Before he could stop her, she turned away and almost ran up the steps.

"Wait -" he tried to call her back but realized that he still didn't know her name. He watched helplessly as the last of her long, black curls vanished inside the double doors.

x-x-x

She slumped down in her seat, panting heavily. The brief encounter with the boy had left her even more bewildered than yesterday and she was starting to get uncomfortable with the amount of effect he was having on her.

Earlier, when the boy had approached her uncertainly, she had felt a leaping joy for a short dizzying moment at the sound of his voice. It took her a while to compose her expressions enough to look at him and reply. When he asked for her permission to join her on the staircase, a part of her, the more reserved and logical one, resisted. He was a complete stranger. She didn't know a thing about him. He should not even have approached her so casually, never minding her willing him to. And now that he was here, she should keep her distance, like she would with any other boy. She should refuse him.

But even as her mind debated over several reasons to refuse him, she found herself nodding. It might got something to do with the part of her that had detected the faint shimmer of recognition in his eyes as she looked up at him, or maybe the part of her that was still struggling over last night's dream. But whatever was the reason, she couldn't deny the sudden feeling of tranquility that enveloped her as soon as he sat down beside her. She found herself loosening up. It felt so normal, so . . . right, to be sitting with him, as if out of habit built over a long practiced routine. She found herself staring idly across the courtyard, noticing the shift of shadows as the sun rose higher. The silence between them was oddly comfortable, more satisfying than the words.

"I'm Merlin."

And then he had to say his name and shatter her peace. She found herself suddenly stiffening, the name slicing through her calm like a glass shard.

Merlin.

Saying his name in her mind brought her within the touching distance of the teasing tendrils of that half forgotten memory. She could almost feel it; the taste of those memories, could almost guess at their bitter sweetness. But then it went away; the sensation of coming so close to something hers, leaving her reaching out behind it.

She realized the weight of her customary duty to provide with her name, now. She began to give it.

What she wanted to say was, "I'm Morgana."

What she barely stopped herself from saying was, "I'm the Lady Morgana."

A flashing memory, from the depths of those veiled ones, appeared, making her recoil. Her, once again, in a flowing dress. Him, standing awkwardly in his brown jacket and red neckerchief, smiling shyly.

"I'm Merlin."

"I'm the Lady Morgana."

Her own voice was clear, ringing, with a regal tone to it. She could see the way he was looking at her - a shy smile, with open admiration in his wide eyes. She found herself thinking how adorably silly he looked.

And then she was back in the courtyard, looking at him as he waited patiently. Suddenly clueless, she simply nodded and smiled, searching even then the course of broken conversation. Then she remembered. He had told her his name. And instead of telling him her name, she had nodded like a fool. She also recalled almost introducing herself as The Lady Morgana! Lady? Was she really about to call herself that?

When he apologized about yesterday, she realized he was trying to bring the atmosphere back to the one before. She grabbed at the opportunity. Smiling easily, she relieved him of his apology.

His answering smile was so full of relief and a certain unexpected coyness that she could not stop herself from staring at him. He felt even more familiar than ever; his eyes no longer hesitant but offering open warmth. His smile; relieved and slightly awkward, with the similar hint of admiration she had observed in that weird bit of memory, turning his eyes into crescents.

How can someone seem so familiar and yet so distant, both at the same time?

She noticed him staring back at her, an underlying turmoil of confusion replacing the relief in his eyes from earlier.

He must think I usually take half an hour forming a complete sentence, she thought dejectedly.

Trying to prove him wrong, she asked about the college. Later she regretted she hadn't.

His initial flustered response had made her smile, reminiscing the same shy boy from the strange memories, that were not hers. His answer threw any such feeling away.

He felt the same. About this place, about being here, about those walls and towers.

Exactly how much do they know each other?

He had sensed her shock and his immediate conclusion was the right one. She could not deny it even if she wanted to. She felt the same about this place. And to share something like the feeling of deja vu with someone whom she doesn't even know past his name, and who made her feel at loss from their very first encounter, and whom she was seeing in her dreams and then, like today, dreaming about him in those flashes even awake, it made her strongly wary. Specially when he implied that only they were experiencing such sensitivity to this place. It was like he was trying to dig something with those wise, knowing eyes of his that she could feel resting deeply inside her.

And she did not want anything or anyone to disturb it. No. The dream had felt like the tiny opening in her soul and she could not allow the boy to cause further damage. He will not succeed in implying that they were the same; that they share something among themselves without even knowing each other. The mere notion scared her.

Using the ticking time piece as an excuse, she stood up abruptly. She had to go, stay away from him. For as long as possible. She had to get over that part of her that felt hollow whenever she was not looking at him. She had to stop feeling the burden behind his sapient eyes. She had her own trials to cope with. She could not allow someone like him to have any amount of control on her.

She heard him calling out to her, trying to stop her and the desperation in his voice made her realize that he was just as confused of what was between them as she was, that he was just as scared to step in that territory both of them know nothing about and yet could feel themselves already standing in, if only at the very opposite edges. He almost succeeded in stopping her but in the end her fear of knowing the unknown made her recoil enough to escape.

And now, sitting at the back of the class, observing the long, painted windows all around her and ignoring the ongoing commotion of continous chatter, she once again felt the sadness seeping in. It felt as if, with that last request of his to wait, he had succeeded in stopping at least some part of her - and she had left that part behind with him because she was in a hurry to get away.

Sighing, she propped her arms on the desk and placed her forehead against them. In all her life, being always alone and distant from people, she had never felt such emotional instability before. And now someone so simple was easily unwinding her. She was not sure what she was supposed to do.

At the sudden drop in noise, she raised her head to see the professor entering the class. Just as he came to stand behind his table, another figure hurried in the class, looked around and sat down in the first empty seat closest to the entrance. She felt her mouth going dry.

No. Not him.

He had not seen her, possibly didn't even know that they were in the same class, and yet, the sight of him was enough to make her want to cry. She had just ran away from him so rudely few minutes ago. And now his mere presence in the same room made her feel trapped.

This could not be happening. The fate has got to be kidding.

She forced herself to look in front of her, at the teacher, but she could see in her periphery view, almost sense him, getting tensed. Slowly, he turned his head around, as if searching for someone - no, as if turning to see someone, knowing exactly where they are.

She kept her eyes stubbornly on the blackboard, as his eyes glided over the class to rest on her. He had found her. Once again.

The sudden lack of air increased as he kept staring at her. She was finding it harder not to meet his eyes. It was like trying to force the opposite poles of magnets to not to attract. No, even harder.

And he stared and she cursed him for his persistence even as she looked away to finally meet his eyes. If she was expecting him to be surprised at finding her in his class, she was disappointed. There was no surprise. No disbelief. Just satisfaction. And a hint of smile around his lips, accompanied by the familiar awe he held for her in his eyes. He nodded slightly as their eyes met, as if acknowledging her presence and dismissing the indecency of her abrupt departure minutes earlier. Before she could think of a course of action, he turned back to face the front, relieving her from coming up with an appropriate response to his presence. She breathed deeply, not noticing the small smile that appeared on her lips unknowingly, as she once again looked at the teacher.

x-x-x

He was surprised when she approached him after the class. He could sense her uncertainty even as he felt her coming behind her. He kept writing idly on his notebook, giving her time to make up her mind. He was not sure she would really attempt talking to her; not after the blank stare she gave him when their eyes met at the beginning of the class, or after her awkward departure from their last and only proper conversation. She was stalling, he could tell, but as the minutes stretched and he started running out of things to write, he started doubting if she really wanted to talk to him . Finally, giving up on pretense, he tossed his notebook in his bag and stood up. He felt her sudden panic at his abrupt movement. He considered turning around to confront her but then realized it might not be the best strategy and left the classroom.

What sort of game the two of them playing, he wondered sadly, and why. One moment they were relieved at the mere sight of each other, next they were trying to get as far away from each other as possible. One moment they were solving each other's mystery and the next they were a puzzle, even more complicated than before. He had noticed how their two encounters contained far few words than what they have been able to guess from each other's eyes and faces. The confusion of familiarity, the frustration of the lack of memory, the rare fear he had seen quivering in her eyes whenever he got too close to solving her enigmatic sadness followed by an abrupt departure. He had sensed her melancholy just as he was sure she had sensed the burden of his soul, one that came with being able to feel so much more than any other human. They had known each other more in their mere two, exceptionally short-lived encounters than he had been able to know anyone, or had let anyone to know about him, in his entire lifetime. They had come to read each other like half way opened books, eager to know the beginning yet afraid to let the pages turn.

As he was reaching the end of the long corridor, he heard the distant echo of running shoes behind him. Anticipation rose in him as he slowed down without acknowledging.

"Merlin! Wait!"

It was the first time she had called out his name and the effect was phenomenal. He felt a warmth spreading through him, taking away last of his doubts and uncertainties. He turned around so fast that his neck jerked sideways, making him wince, the pain insufficient to prevent the smile from coming to his lips. He saw her running down the corridor and just as she was trying to slow down, her feet skidded on the marbled floor. It seemed like time has stopped as he saw each and every emotion that played across her face in that one second. Panic, at the sudden loss of balance. Despair, at her failure to gain footing. And shock, as she found herself sprawled on the floor on her back, her notebook still tightly clutched to her chest. His smile vanished and his lips parted in shock.

It happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that for the moment both of them just stared at each other, their eyes wide at the abrupt turn of events. A few students paused to look at her anxiously and being apparently satisfied to see that she was, in fact, alright, went on their way.

Several moments later, he realized that his mouth was still slightly open with shock and closed it, his eyes never leaving her wide ones. In a matter of milliseconds, the whole scene repeated itself in his mind and he could not stop himself from smiling - which soon gave way to grinning.

He leaned forward, bowing down from waist, tilted his head, and grinning silly, said "Hi again."

The girl stared at him blankly for a moment, then seemed to come out of the shock as a surprised chuckle escaped her lips to accompany his grin.

"Yeah," she said breathlessly, still trying to gather what happened.

Laughing softly, he sat down on one knee and offered her a hand, "Need help?" he asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

The girl stared at him for a moment, her smile growing slightly, and raise her arm to place her hand in his.

The charged feeling that passed between their touch wavered her smile, her eyes getting shadowed with doubts again. He had felt it; the way her hand felt in his, the way that touch suddenly combined them as one, their aura enveloping each other, overlapping, and for once he feared the effect, too. Pushing the thought aside forcefully, he tightened his grip on her hand even as she tried to slip it out, and standing up, pulled her up with him with a single tug. She teetered uncertainly on her feet before regaining her balance and he kept holding her hand.

"Thanks," she said quietly, the cheerful environment of moments earlier slowly ebbing away.

He tried to regain that atmosphere and smiled, not waiting to let any more awkwardness come between them, "How did that happen?" he asked with an obvious teasing smile.

It worked.

He saw her grinning sheepishly as she examined the bottom of her shoe, apparently forgetting her hand still clutching his, "I think the shoe lost its grip there," she looked up at him again, her smile pure and cheerful.

And he wished he could stop the hands of time. He was not sure if she will ever smile at him like that again, if the sadness of her eyes will ever get dimmer than right then.

He wanted to stand there, frozen, holding her hand in a hand shake, with her smiling so openly, all guards down. But it never works that way. He felt the seconds ticking away and hurried to make the most of it.

"Does it hurt?" he asked with concern and she shook her head quickly.

"No, I'm fine. Really."

He glanced back from where she was coming and asked, "I heard you calling me," he began and noticed her smile faltering slightly, "Is there something you wanted to talk about?"

He wished with all his will that she would say yes, that they could have few more moments with no secrets and puzzles.

She shook her head, "No, I just wanted to apologize for earlier," her voice, so serene and gentle, crushed his hopes, "I should not have left like that."

"It's okay," he nodded quickly. He noticed that she had all but forgotten about her hand in his. She was still smiling, in that gentle way of hers, her head held high. She seemed so much more elegant than anybody he had seen in his entire life that it made him wonder if she was a royalty. The idea was so absurd that it never succeeded in occupying his brain for more than few seconds.

Bowing his head a little, he asked, "I realized back then that I still don't know your name," he scratched his head sheepishly and looked up to see her confused, struggling with something, and said carefully, "Will you tell me?"

She blinked slightly and he felt the lightening of her feelings as she breathed deeply and appeared to come out of her thoughts. She nodded once, her curls slipping out from behind her ear, and smiled graciously, "Morgana."

x-x-x

A/N: I was - and am - dead nervous about posting this story. I've never quite written anything like this before. Shaping this idea into a fanfiction has introduced me to a whole new territory of words and concepts. It was very, very hard for me to give words to what I was trying to say. I'm still not entirely sure I succeeded.

The basic idea behind this fanfiction can be easily understood by watching these YouTube videos: "The Second Time Around - Trailer - Colin Morgan, Katie McGrath" and "Never Let Me Go - Modern Merlin-Morgana". Reviews are more than appreciated - they are cherished