A/N: Hello everyone!
Sorry about the confusion, but I'm in the process of editing and reposting this story, hopefully making it better and more collected.
There will be small differences and addings with each chapter, so even if you've already read the story, I would recommend reading it from the beginning again, because there's some important additions, the new beginning of the story being one of them :)
Hope you like what Iøve done to the story :)
Moriah dried the tears from her eyes as she stopped in front of the door to her home. A small apartment she shared with her parents. She shook off the voices of her classmates, their laughs at her misfortune and their taunting words. She didn't want her mother to see her like this and she didn't want her father to comment on how useless she was.
Not again.
Moriah heard the gunshot the moment she opened the door. Her mother's eyes were the first thing she saw, as the older woman collapsed on the floor.
"No!" She screamed and ran to her mother, catching her, just as she fell.
"Moriah, sorry..."
The woman breathed before her eyes closed and body went limp. Tears fell on pale skin as Moriah felt a sob working its way through her troath, making it hard to breathe.
"No, mom please, don't leave me..." She whimpered and rested her head against the cooling forehead.
"Let this be warning to you Ivan." A deep and rough voice spoke up, "If you don't have the money by next week, we'll come for your daughter. I'm sure we can earn a few bucks on her, despite her freakish look."
"Why?" Moriah asked aloud after the men had left the apartment, "Why didn't you save her?" She looked up at her father as he still sat, kneeling on the middle of the floor where the men had left him, "Had you used your magic, you could-"
"Don't!" He interrupted her and gave her a hateful glare, "Don't you ever say that word!"
"Why?!" Moriah shouted back, gently putting down her mother's head, "Why are you so afraid of it?! If you would just use it, if you would teach me, we could-"
The heat followed the pain as the flat hand collided with her cheek. She glared up at her father, as he stood above her, eyes wide in fear.
"Don't ever even think about using it!" He said, voice shaking, "It's evil, it's wrong and using it will consume you."
Moriah stood up slowly, holding her father's glare and caressing her sore cheek.
"That sounds pretty good to me right about now." She sneered angrily, "Anything is better than this. Anything is batter than having to hide who you really are and deny something you were born with."
"Moriah..." Her father said in a warning tone as the girl stormed out of the living room and locked herself in the bathroom.
Turning from the door she found a young girl, in her early teens, with purple hair, messy and reaching her shoulders, skin and bones wearing ragged and worn clothes, two eyes, one a light green and the other a deep blue. Moriah walked closer to the mirror and touched the glass slowly.
"I hate you." She whispered, voice strained and shaking with anger, "I hate you so much, you worthless piece of shit."
"Come now, don't be so hard on yourself, love."
A voice spoke suddenly, making Moriah turn around, but found no one in the room. An amused chuckle resounded between the naked bathroom walls.
"Who...?"
"You're sick of it, aren't you?" The voice continued, "Sick of being used, feeling wrong, ashamed. An outsider. Tired of them constantly degrading you?"
Moriah turned back to the mirror and saw a shadowy figure appear in it. She moved closer, hesitating. Squinting her eyes, trying to make out the shadow, which seemed to only be in the mirror.
"I know exactly how you feel. Believe me..."
Moriah stopped inches from the mirror and reached out, feeling the cold glass against her fingertips.
"Who... what are you?" She asked again, something in her told her she ought to feel scared by the strange phenomenon, however it was the exact opposite. She felt a strange warmth and familiarity as the shadow in the mirror slowly became clearer, revealing a woman, dressed in a black dress, with raven black hair and dark eyes.
"My name is Morgana Pendragon and I was like you, Moriah."
"Morgana?" Moriah repeated, the name seeming slightly familiar to her. The woman smirked and nodded. She then crooked her head, looking at Moriah for silent moment.
"You really are one of us." She then said, voice amazed, "I thought I had been the last and yet, here you are, after 1500 years..."
Moriah blinked confused and looked back at the woman calling herself Morgana.
"What do you mean? One of you?" She asked and bend over the sink, closer to the mirror.
"A high priestess." Morgana clarified, "A sorceress and a powerful one at that... It's time for you to realize that."
Moriah looked at herself in the mirror, she let out a gasp as the brown spot in her blue eye suddenly changed form.
"You're a High Priestess Moriah," She heard Morgana's voice ring in her ears, "A High Priestess of the Old Religion."
A small smirk crept across Moriah's chapped lips, as the spot turned to a small tree with visible roots and felt a warm tingling spreading from the core of her stomach to her fingertips.
"Yes..." She then whispered.
(…)
Mom, no!
Morgan was torn awake by the scream. Woken with a feeling of complete hopelessness and grief, which still dominated his body, as he sat up, adrenaline coursing through him. He was breathing heavily, naked chest raising and falling rapidly. Pearls of sweat ran over cold skin. Hands shaking.
He looked around him.
It was still dark, no doubt only a few hours since he'd last been conscious.
He heard the light snores of his guests. Morgan couldn't help feeling a little jealous that their fix somehow still worked, while he himself, had been so rudely interrupted in his bliss.
Sighing heavily, Morgan pulled aside the torn fabric he had slept with and stumbled to his feet from the worn mattress on the floor. He graphed a hoodie, pulled up the hood, leaving it otherwise unzipped, as he stepped over the sleeping people sprawled on the floor.
Graphing a half-smoked joint on the coffee table, Morgan stepped out on the small balcony, lighting up the joint.
He rested his arms on the rail and took the first inhalation.
The view from the balcony wasn't anything spectacular.
A back alley with a few dumpsters, cats, rats and then the windows of the next-door apartments, which was all but dark, except for one. The old man Rogers, who spent yet another night in front of the telly.
Morgan breathed in and inhaled once again, beginning to feel the small buzz from the drug spreading in his body, amplifying the drugs still in his system from earlier.
The light tingle in his fingers grew and overwrote the shaking of his hands. The fuzzy feeling in his head numbing him.
The nightmares were nothing new.
In fact, they were probably the most constant in his entire life, despite his own effort to thwart them.
It had been 15 years already and yet, that night kept on haunting him, even in his waking hours. The only relief he seemed to be able to find these days, were when his fix, every now and then, momentarily would lead him into the imaginary world of the stories his mother had told him as a child.
A world of kings and queens, knights, dragons and most of all - magic.
Of undying loyalty, love, friendships and devastating betrayals.
The stories, his Arthurian obsessed mother had told him, when he was a young child.
The legends of the great King Arthur and his faithful warlock, Merlin.
Children's stories, he'd been told
A child's lively imagination.
That's all it had been.
Yet, to Morgan, whenever a fix brought him those dreams, it felt more real than reality itself.
He felt everything in those dreams.
The power inside him.
The cold ground beneath him, sleeping under the trees in the wild forest.
The pain from the arrows and spells.
The wind through his hair, riding the dragon. The gentle and playful touch of a dear friend.
It had always felt more real to him than anything else.
Morgan looked down at his hands. Stretching and closing them a few times. He remembered, as a kid playing and pretending he was able to do magic, like the Merlin of his mother's stories. He would dress up as a warlock for Halloween, pointy hat, wand, and everything and then run through the garden of his first home, imagining he was riding a great dragon and fighting evil priestesses.
When Morgan's mother had died that night, the stories were all he had left of her. The stories had become dreams and his only mean of escape in a cruel and lonely world.
The years that followed his mother's death was full of different foster homes and admittance in and out of psychiatric wards. Of people telling him that his mother had filled him with lies and everything he felt wasn't real.
When Morgan turned 18, people finally stopped caring about him and just left him on his own.
Morgan drew another breath, inhaling the last of the joint before he threw it over the rail and in the next second, he heard the front door to the apartment slam open. He heard shouts, gunfire, running feet and general chaos from inside the apartment.
The door to the balcony suddenly slammed open and one of his comrades stumbled out. His eyes landed on Morgan, bewildered, frightened before another shot was heard and said friend fell backward over the rails. Morgan covered his mouth, trying to drown the scream threatening to erupt and soon heard the sickening thud of the body hitting the dumpsters beneath him.
"Did I get him?!" Someone shouted from inside the apartment and suddenly it felt like time slowed down.
Morgan stood, frozen in place, heart beating like crazy, as someone stepped out on the balcony.
The first thing Morgan noticed was the black police uniform and bulletproof west. Then was the dirty blonde hair, the strong cheekbones and then the eyes, as he turned to find Morgan.
Arthur.
Morgan felt everything around them stop as eyes locked.
'I can't lose him! He's my friend!'
The desperate scream from his dreams resounded in his mind. The feeling of relief and happiness mixed up with utter confusion and fear.
What was happening?
How was it happening?
How could the man, Morgan had dreamt about his entire life, suddenly stand right in front of him?
"Pence?!" Another shout from inside the apartment, "Did I get him? Is someone out there?"
The blonde held up his hand, stopping whoever talked to him from coming out, eyes still locked on Morgan.
"No." He said, voice deep and then tore his eyes from Morgan, looking inside, "There's no one here. We got them all."
With one last look at Morgan, the man turned and went back into the apartment. It was only a few minutes later that the footsteps faded and the sound of a door closing left a complete silence. Morgan let out a breath he'd been holding back and slid down the wall, his legs giving away under him. He drew a shaky breath, feeling tears welling up in his eyes.
Morgan pulled up his legs and rested his head on knees, as tears fell freely.
It wasn't sad tears, but they came with an unfamiliar feeling of relief and happiness, something which confused him even more.
It was as if his heart knew something, his mind had yet to understand.
(...)
Merlin!
Do you ever do as you're told?
I've come to quite like you...
I can't let him die...
Shut up Merlin!
Arthur opened his eyes slowly, finding himself staring up at the rays of the early sun and shadows of his bedroom ceiling.
He let out a groan and rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of sleep. He had dreamt again. Ever since meeting that man during the drug raid a week ago, Arthur had found himself dreaming about the stranger. His thick black hair, deep blue eyes, holding surprisingly much wisdom...
At least he thought it was him. Although the setting and situations were so far from anything he knew in his life, the man still looked like the one he called Merlin in his dreams, while dressed up as a knight, prince, and king in a medieval Britain.
Arthur knew he was named after the legendary king, his father having great expectations of him, but this was ridiculous. And why him?
A complete stranger. A criminal who he should have arrested along with the others but let go. Why had he let him go?
Arthur sat up in bed, feeling Ashley move in her sleep next to him.
Dreaming about some random guy, while sharing the bed with his fiancé was just wrong.
So very wrong.
Arthur drove a hand through his blonde hair, letting out a long sigh. He needed to get to work. Needed to preoccupy himself with something to get his mind off the strange meeting. He needed distractions. A cruel murder, a complex theft - anything would do.
(...)
Morgan was lost in his own thoughts, walking through the crowd of busy people in downtown London.
His mind was reeling. The past week had been one strange occurrence after the other. Strangers bumping into him, seemingly on purpose, giving him long strange looks, as if it was supposed to mean something. Not to mention the cop from that raid.
Pence, was it?
Morgan found himself unable to shake the man off his mind, along with the feeling that had appeared during their short meeting and even more so, the deep, suffocating, annoying longing to see him again.
Morgan looked up from the pavement and found a large group of people gathered outside an alley, talking rapidly amongst themselves and holding up their phones, taking pictures and filming.
Curious about what was going on, Morgan walked up to them.
The first his eyes landed on was the blonde-haired man with the black coat and police batch around his neck. He was talking to someone, dressed in a grey coat with a notepad. Morgan's heart skipped a beat and couldn't stop a small smile from creeping across his lips. Something which made Morgan freeze and take a step back, shaking his head, for feeling so utterly stupid.
Arthur.
"Shut up." He mumbled annoyed and tore his eyes from the man. It was only just then that Morgan realized the kind of scene he had come across.
He saw the yellow tape, stopping people from getting closer. He saw the white sheet covering the body.
Morgan felt a cold shiver as eyes landed on a pale hand sticking out from under the cover. The middle finger carried a silver ring, with an unfamiliar crest on. Morgan had noticed the exact same ring, not days ago, on one of the people who had bumped into him.
He looked away, feeling sick, as something stirred inside him. Blue eyes caught someone across the street. A man, dressed in all red, staring straight back at him.
Morgan gasped, suddenly finding it hard to breathe, as an icy cold pierced him, making him stumble back a little.
Dark eyes squinted and Morgan gasped, his legs giving away under him, as he felt an excruciating pain piercing his skull.
Next thing, Morgan felt a warm hand on his shoulder, which immediately seemed to soothe the pain.
"Are you okay?" A gentle and familiar voice asked making Morgan look up as the pain subsided. For a moment he met deep blue eyes, his heart skipping a beat once again, something which, he thought was a becoming a bad habit and could hardly be healthy. Morgan found himself getting lost in the eyes for a second, before he remembered the man in red and tore his eyes away, only to find that the man across the street had disappeared.
"You…"
Morgan's attention was brought back to the blonde man standing next to him once again.
"Who are you?" The blonde asked the question before Morgan could find those same words. It seemed he had wondered the same as Morgan and as much as he wanted to be able to answer that question, he found himself unable to. He couldn't explain this familiarity, this connection and longing he felt towards the other man and if his puzzled look was anything to go by, neither could the blonde.
A/N: So, how did you like this first new chapter? What did you think of Moriah?
PLease let me know, so I know if I'm completely off with these new editings :) Much appriciated!