Author's Note: Hello! This is my first Merlin fanfic. I hope you like it! I know most fans ship Merthur above all else, but they're only my brotp. I am irresistibly drawn to the idea of Merlin/Morgana, due to the poem "Masks" by Shel Silverstein. Anyways, read and review! Enjoy!
Her hair wound up above her in delicate, weightless ringlets, undulating gently in the wind. She felt a strange sense of peace, as if the numbing cold had relaxed her mind, and all this bloodshed was simply one of those dreams. Idly wondering if she'd wake up soon, she tried to turn her head, but she found she could not lift it. Her neck strained and she wanted to see what was left of the battle around her, but her head just fell back onto the damp, hard earth. She wasn't wearing her cape and snow was collecting on her dress, shrouding her in a gauzy haze, as if she were covered in sea foam and spider webs.
Dead men lay all around her; the horrific aftermath of ferocity and belief; it meant just another loss or another win in a long-running war. There were so many these days. Her eyelids felt heavy and she indulged them enough to blink for a moment, closing her eyes and seeing light fields and an entire spectrum of important objects and faces. She wanted to sleep, wanted to fall into a few of these faces and just dawdle here, letting herself be buried underneath the snow. But she had to move, had to keep warm; she was injured and her magic wouldn't work if she was freezing to death.
There was a hole in her middle, and on the side of her left leg. She knew this because blood came out of both and stained the snow a deep, gruesome red. By the time she could sit up and walk away from these ruins, it would be pink, like a baby's cheeks. It would take a while to repair herself enough even for that, she thought, but she was just so drowsy that she couldn't manage to lift her hands to her wounds.
The deep ache of the fight – her flesh wounds and the energy it had taken to use so much magic – left her completely deflated, and she let out a shallow breath, feeling her eyelids droop again, but this time it was not her will. The sky was a white-gray mess of storm clouds, vultures, and smoke, as it had been in her visions. So this is the place, she thought, remembering the villages nearby and the people she'd met here. This is the place I've come to die.
She dug her fingers into the cold ground, feeling the snow give way underneath her nails and the hard, frozen earth halt them. She was lying half-curled onto her side and half on her back, her legs to the side and her face pointed towards the heavens. She could feel the blood in her veins slowly running cold. Her body would become one with this ground, she imagined coldly. Soon small flowers and the weeds that strangled them would be growing through her ribcage, their roots wrapping around her spine.
Of course she was angry. She'd been angry for a long time, but this anger was fueled by the fact that she hadn't planned to die today. She wanted to thrash and scream and claim her revenge, but all she could do was stare up at the pale sky, with her shallow breaths and bottled rage. She could feel her hands becoming dry and hard, certain that if she looked, her fingers would look like the gray, twisted talons of a dead chicken.
She didn't look.
Instead, she waited for the clouds to take her, with their pouring rains and their rolling thunder. She was not afraid of a little bad weather. Closing her eyes, she let herself go, waiting for death to come and claim her so that she would not suffer as much as she should. She knew how death and destiny worked: hand in hand – they were, in fact, married.
This…war on magic had taken a toll on her. Even the marrow in her bones felt drained of energy, like it had used all its lifeblood for mere promotion. Now she lay dying, her breath coming slower and slower as she felt her heartbeat slow down, away from the adrenaline and the burn of magic and her lust for vengeance.
The darkness came to cover her with its veil, like she knew it would. There was no shining light, not for her, but she didn't resent it. If it was the only result of fulfilling her own wishes, so be it. She was a simple creature of complex origin, and the pretense of doom didn't faze her as it should. Her eyes were wide open but all she saw was blackness, no stars, no moon, just an empty nothing.
She would wear this pitch darkness like a cloak made of the finest velvet. It felt jagged, however, but it was to be expected.
Then something like two shovels scraped underneath her like hot branding irons, and then she was floating, as if the night had given her the wings of a vulture and she hadn't learned how to operate them just yet, having fallen towards and landing in a shallow pond that let her float right in the middle, swaying and shifting slightly every now and then, relaxing her and forgiving her for not excelling in using the gift.
The shovels now felt like hands, one clutched at her left knee and another on her side, gently but firmly, and she felt as if she had been rudely woken. This gave her the time to peek out from under the veil of blackness and gaze up at the reaper who'd plucked her from the battlefield.
His cheekbones were sharp, his face pale and gaunt; his eyes looked haunted, far away. He was looking at her as he carried her through the realms and the hills of the badlands. She understood halfway what it was that he represented; a guide to see her through to her rightful place on the other side, so that she wouldn't wander or sneak away. It was a fine precaution, but as she pushed the dark veil up further, she recognized the clouded sky with a sort of disappointment.
"Mm…mm." Her mouth tried to form words, but her tongue was thick and she was so unbearably numb from the cold; her fingers would snap off from frostbite at any point now, she was sure. "Mmur."
Merlin raised his eyebrows and hushed her, his voice a harsh whisper. "Shh, Morgana," he told her, his voice as distant as his eyes. "There's no point in talking." His eyes were aglow with the kind of magic she was always excited to see rise in him, but now wasn't the time for amusement.
"I'm dying," she told him with difficulty, as if he couldn't already guess. His face showed no emotion, no reaction to her words, and she said, "Set me down and leave me alone."
He shook his head, staring at something ahead of him that she was too weak to turn her head and see. "Death isn't a private thing," he said quietly. "You wouldn't be alone, either. You'd have all these…brave, noble men around you, dying as well. If you wish to be alone, now is clearly not the time for your death."
His arms, once wiry, held her as if she were nothing. She wondered if it was magic that helped his strength, or if he'd made himself strong in the gap between when they'd lived together in Camelot and now. Everything back then had been so fickle; she was almost embarrassed to recall it.
A strange warmth seemed to come from him, or perhaps she was so cold that he seemed feverishly warm. She wanted to roll onto her side and into that warmth, to seal herself within it and never leave. This bitter cold had tried to kill her, and she wasn't out of its clutches yet. Seeing him had reminded her why she'd even been on the battlefield that day, and why a hundred men had tried to kill her. A few had succeeded, she thought, feeling her wounds jostle with every step Merlin took.
I was supposed to die on that field, she knew but could not say. The warmth made the blood thrum in her fingertips and she felt goosebumps all over, as if her body was readjusting slowly but surely back to normal, as if she weren't fatally wounded.
If Merlin was taking her away from her death, it meant he would dress her wounds and even use magic to heal her. She knew this. And she knew that he probably had a reason for such behavior, which meant it had something to do with him and her former friends.
She did not want to go with him. But he had molded her to him the moment he'd picked her up out of the carnage and given her the shelter of his body heat. It felt horribly personal, as if he'd undressed and hugged her. She didn't like the feeling at all; it made the parts of herself that she'd closed off behind iron walls itch. Her nails, grown long from lack of care, would surely scratch scars along the metal of those walls, and streams of blood would flow down the sides, hardened and almost violet from the lack of circulation and warmth.
"You're different," she said weakly, and realized that she'd stopped keeping track of the time spent since Arthur had died; since Merlin had stabbed her with Excalibur. She tried to swallow but it was as if her muscles had forgotten how to function.
Confusion swarmed like bees in her head and she attempted to push herself out of Merlin's hold; he only tightened his grip around her, as if she weren't some dangerous witch. He was walking uphill, not even breaking a sweat as he carried her – the bony, wiry Merlin of the past had clearly come into his own, and this was perhaps set upon by the death of his best friend.
Sympathy wasn't her greatest virtue, not after he'd poisoned her and she'd made it her life's goal to kill Arthur. But watching Merlin's hardened face was a truly painful thing, and she remembered the days of old, when she, he, Arthur, and Gwen had been friends. It had taken a great amount of magic to heal herself after he'd tried to kill her, and these days she walked the faded earth, sinking slowly and side to side, over the jagged edge that she followed like a path.
Seeing Merlin again after so long and so much revived the bitter memories she'd locked away; Morgause and Mordred and the Druids, her visions, nightmares, and Uther. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pushed the thoughts away. Snow was still drifting through the air, cooling her face and giving Merlin an icy halo. His eyes burned with magic, and she realized he was angry, too.
Of course he was livid; she'd more or less killed his best friend and forced him to kill so many of his, including herself. Maybe, even, he was angry that she was alive. And how long had he known? Surely not for months after he watched Arthur die. His mind had probably, like hers, fallen to pieces.
As if reading her thoughts, Merlin glanced down at her and said, "I tried to heal him. I used every bit of myself to try and save him. He was my friend, my king. I loved him as all his knights did. But…I couldn't help him."
"And what of Mordred? Did you weep for him as well?" she asked, recalling the boy she'd watched grow into a man. She missed him fiercely, but he had been just another price to pay for what she wanted.
Pausing his steps for a moment, Merlin stared down at her again, his eyes now a grayish blue in the whiteness. His gaze was heavy, and his face was honest as he said, "I wept for every friend I lost that day."
The implication was clear and Morgana turned her face away, feeling childish as soon as she did so. A lump, to her surprise, formed in her throat, but she bit it back as Merlin resumed walking; he was seemingly satisfied that he'd affected her.
They fell into silence again, and not long after, Merlin arrived at a small cabin, much like her old hovel. It had a gray exterior and vines crawled up its sides. Merlin shifted her in his arms and opened the door, revealing a large round room on the inside. There was what she expected to be a bedroom behind another door, as well as about three closets placed in a triangle around the room. It was cluttered, as expected of Merlin, with baubles most likely related to potions and spells.
"Mattress," he ordered quietly, and the door to the bedroom opened gently as what could only be his mattress came floating out, landing on a bench to his left. Walking over, he laid Morgana down and turned to grab random items; when he turned back to her, he leaned over her and she raised a hand to shove him away, but all he did was brush it aside as if it were an insect that had flown into him.
His fingers pried away the shredded side of her dress and she pushed at his hands, scowling. "I don't need your help," she hissed. He pulled a chair out of thin air – or so it seemed, and sat next to the makeshift bed.
"I can tell by the way you were lying on the blood-covered ground, preparing to die," he said sardonically, giving a magnificent eye roll. "Quit moving." He took her hands and laid them by her head, and she realized that he'd bound them there with his words.
Huffing a sigh, she watched as his cold fingers peeled away the scraps of her dress that had dried against the blood; the sensitive area made her jerk a little, but she didn't complain and he didn't apologize, as they would've years ago. He produced a bucket of water and dabbed at the wound with a cloth. "It's deep," he murmured, "But it will heal." Tracing his finger along the cut, his eyes glowed orange as he wove the deepest parts of it closed, so it was no longer dangerous or fatal, but still hurt the same.
He bandaged her side, using a little magic to seal the gauze to her skin. Then he went to work on the side of her leg, brazenly pushing up her skirts and half-healing the sliced flesh there as well. After wrapping her leg with another bandage, he sat back and stared at her, his eyes blank.
Morgana shifted under his gaze, uncomfortable in this entire setting; his home, his plucking her out of the war-torn ruins of some village whose name she didn't care for. She could hear the soldiers still marching on if she imagined it enough.
"You stabbed me through," she said quietly. "And you left me to die there, in those woods." Her fever seemed to disappear with her impending death; she felt better, although still weak.
"This is true," came his slow reply.
She tilted her head and threw his stare back at him. "Tell me, then, why you decided to stop my death today. It's clear your attitude hasn't changed."
There was a long pause, and she heard crows cawing outside. This place, if she recalled correctly, wasn't too far from where he'd found her. Her eyes found the tall window carved to the left of the front door; the whiteness of the sky was pushed by the sun's rays through the window, making the glass on his tables glitter.
"Did you watch?" she asked absent-mindedly. "The battle. Did you see the men in all their glory? Such pigs."
Merlin simply stared at her. He recognized her dismissive tone; it was that of her father, Uther. How she had hated the Pendragons when she learned she was one of them. How she had hated Merlin for siding with them over her, a High Priestess. Merlin remembered so clearly the look on her face as she'd glared at him, speechless and flushed with frustrated anger. She would never understand the bond between him and Arthur, which was so much more than his destiny having been to protect the king.
"No," he told her. "I didn't watch. I was…away. I arrived back here at the end and heard the cries; innocent people who didn't want to go to war." His head dipped forward, in what she assumed was mourning. He'd probably known some of the villagers.
"Hold your head up," she commanded harshly. "They didn't appease, either. Those who won't give in to power have a reason to oppose it. Those reasons were a good reason to go to war. They fought valiantly; if only you could've seen. But you were out, ah, running errands. Could you not stand to protect these innocents?"
Merlin shook his head slowly, looking like an adult that was tired of trying to explain politics to a child. That was more or less how he felt. "If I had been here, not a hair on any of their heads would've been harmed," he murmured. "But you slew the children."
"I had no part in the children," she told him defiantly. "Or the mothers. I slew only the warriors who thought armor would protect them from me."
"You're a monster," he said, and finally his voice showed emotion. Tremulous and deep, it conveyed all the hatred and guilt that he'd built up inside himself over time; she relished it, wanted to prolong it so she could bask in his agony.
Smiling sweetly up at him, she said, "Masks, Merlin. You and I are the same. I just allow my true self to be known, as you've always had trouble doing."
He shook his head again, his eyes narrowing and his mouth twisting into a disgusted grimace. "Do not mock me as if we are old friends," he snapped. "I wished you dead years ago and I wish you dead now. The only reason I kept you from your well-deserved fate is because I have a task that requires you."
Morgana raised her eyebrows, almost surprised. "I don't miss the old, fickle Merlin. I rather enjoy this new, sharp-tongued version. And what are your plans for us? Are you going to make me the source of an enchantment? Or perhaps a sacrifice – wait, what's the difference?"
"Sleep," Merlin said sharply, before she could draw up more frozen memories. He reached out and quickly touched his hand to her forehead; her eyes closed and her entire being seemed to slacken as her grip on consciousness was jolted away. Her head lolled to the side and a soft sigh escaped her lips, so Merlin withdrew his arm and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his upper lip with the side of his finger as he stared at Morgana.
She was thinner, as he was thicker; the spooling, spiraling tendrils of her hair grown long and wild but not tangled. He feared the coming storm, as he knew Morgana's advantageous nature would find the holes in his plan and use them against him. She was a walking riddle, with her venom and her spells, and he could only dread her presence.
Morgana was fitful in her sleep, as she had been before. Merlin stayed in the room, watching carefully as his glassworks rattled. That was all that happened, though; he'd put anti-spells on his candles and windows so that she wouldn't affect them. She twitched, the whispers of her dreams cascading through his home like a violent wind. Hours passed and he simply watched her, thoughtfully rubbing his lip and content to do nothing else with his night; he'd worked enough lately.
How wickedly poetic it was, that she hadn't died. He'd failed to kill her time and time again, but in the end, she'd gotten what she'd wanted. How cruel it was, that destiny had played them like mere instruments instead of massive sources of power and craving.
"I've ridden myself of fate," he murmured to himself, as he had many times in the past. "I no longer follow its jagged path." Over the years, he'd allowed the darkness in himself to grow, almost to the point of consuming him, swallowing him whole. He'd felt the resonance of the kind of magic Morgana held dear pouring through his veins, singing, dancing, stealing bits and pieces of his soul.
He was not the Merlin he once was. Now, he fed the darkness his bitter emotions, and it fed off of him, waiting for the right moment to devour him. He was ready; he could control it. He could control anything and anyone. Arthur had kept steady the morality in him, as Arthur had with Mordred, but the magic's power had overridden the king's as soon as Arthur had disappeared.
Morgana mumbled something that sounded like a curse. Glancing at her, Merlin watched her arms fidget around and her face darken. "Quiet," he ordered, and all was silent. Yes, he could control whatever he wished. Even Morgana, he suspected, although he knew she would fight him. The last High Priestess, come home to him at last. He smirked.
Imagining that every piece of her magic was scrambling to heal her body, Merlin stood over her once more, this time in fascination. He ran his middle and third fingers along her brow bone, remembering how he'd done this once back then, before everything had turned sour. She had been sleeping in her chambers and he'd gone to watch her in her nightmares, expecting to hear simple murmuring but instead watching candles flicker and curtains billow.
She was powerful, yes, but not as powerful as he. He relished in this fact. Everyone, now, knew that he had magic. He could make anyone do anything, he knew. This knowledge made his blood boil and his teeth set on edge and his mood soar. He remembered running through the woods, wild and free and with nothing to hold him back. He remembered the wind singing through the trees, his hair floating upward in the wind. He remembered the deep blue of the midday sky and how it looked so like the color of Arthur's eyes.
It wasn't just Morgana who had come home, he realized. No, he'd returned as well; a month prior to her arrival, as if he'd been called by some otherworldly force. And in a way he had, because fate had brought him and Morgana back together, for better or for worse, and while he controlled his destiny, fate would lead him into many snares. He blinked and two candles lit themselves.
"Wake up," he said softly, watching as Morgana stirred. Her eyes opened and found his, blue meeting blue, and her face, having looked akin to a child's or an angel's whilst sleeping, hardened into her half-crazed mask, framed by her wild, dark brown tresses. He remembered Gaius at one point saying they could be siblings.
"I have plans for us," Merlin said, his eyes lingering on Morgana's full lips, pale and held in disgust. He wondered what secrets her lips had told, what atrocities her tongue had spoken while they were parted. "I believe it was fate that brought you here to me, Morgana."
"No, it was feet, not fate," she said sarcastically, using her arms to prop herself up. She winced when her wounds panged from the movement, but made no discomforted sound. "I walked."
He rolled his eyes. "Quit your childish bickering and pay attention," he commanded, and her eyes flared, but she said nothing. "We're going to resurrect Arthur," he told her, and her face betrayed no emotion except for a slight amount of disgust. Standing up, he faced the wall opposite her and went on, "I have had visions of the future. The very distant future. And I intend to change it."
"And you think that just because you act enlightened, I'm going to help you?" Morgana countered, shifting her weight from one elbow to the other.
She saw Merlin turn and then he was right in front of her, sitting on the bed and almost on top of her. His eyes burned orange and hers widened in surprise, but she frowned in defiance. She would not be scared by him.
"You'll help me," he told her simply, as if he'd foreseen that, too. "You have no choice."
Morgana snorted, holding his glare before breaking her gaze away and fixing them on the window. "I am not afraid of you," she said, shaking her head. "You can't make me abandon my mind and help you. You're not capable of such power."
Merlin was silent, and when she looked back at him, his whole face had hardened, grown dark and sinister in a matter of seconds. Morgana's eyes widened again as he leaned over her, grasping her knee and sliding his hand up her thigh towards her side, pressing his thumb through the bandage and deep into the cut that he'd half-healed not too long before. She squeaked in discomfort.
Feeling his finger penetrate her skin and rip through all that had healed, tears came to her eyes as she gave a pathetic cry; her blood rushed up around his hand and she cried out another time, then again, whimpering and squirming uncomfortably in an attempt to get away. "Merlin," she gasped, her hand rising to pull his away.
Grabbing her hand with his other hand, he squeezed it tightly and pulled it towards his chest, dipping his head down so that their noses were almost touching and she could feel his breath on her lips. Their eyes were level and he held her gaze with such cold eyes, colored like a dark fire. He dug his thumb harder into her side, twisting until his nail hit bone, and a scream ripped out of her throat, transforming into a wail before it once again became a whimper. "You don't know what I'm capable of," he said in a steady voice with a dangerous undertone – something darker than what he was showing. She stared up at him in shock, and his expression was a mixture of glee, apathy, and malice.
Then the orange in his eyes faded away into the same old blue that she remembered, and after a moment he blinked, letting go of her hand before pulling his thumb out of her. It was covered in fresh blood and healed skin was caught underneath the fingernail; he stared blankly as she clutched at her wound, her own crimson-colored filling pouring through her fingers like jelly out of the pastries that the cooks used to make.
Merlin reached to fix what he'd done, but she hissed and wriggled away from him, batting his bloody hands away with hers. Her skirt was caught under his legs and made it difficult for her to put distance between them, so he grabbed at her arms, finally catching one. "Morgana," he said, his low, ragged tone making her quiet. He pressed the palm of his hand against the weeping cut and she moaned, tears welling in her eyes and one spilling down her cheek.
He felt her body knit itself back together, up until the veins were healed, and then he stopped. He grabbed another bandage and threw away the old one, listening to her keening all the while.
Merlin sat back, staring blankly at the blood caked underneath his nails. Morgana panted like a frightened animal on the bed, watching him with wary, primal eyes. Control had gotten the slip on him again, he thought. This was happening more and more often. Times like these…they didn't frighten him in the way that they should, but he always regretted them. Even though this was Morgana, who had murdered his friends, he felt guilty. Maybe it was because he was scared that one day, his harnessed power would hurt the wrong person and he'd be to blame.
She'd known worse pain than this; she'd been stabbed so many times. But that didn't mean there was less pain or that her body had become more tolerant of intrusion.
Merlin didn't apologize. He was a creature of magic, and sometimes the magic turned impulsive. She should know that better than anyone. But he wasn't even sorry; not after all she'd done. So no, he didn't apologize and wasn't going to. Instead, he repeated in his soft voice, "You don't know what I'm capable of."
And Morgana felt his words resonate in her bones, as if he'd pressed his lips to her flesh and sent his words inside of her, breathing them into her pores and letting them slip through her bloodstream. She felt the echo of everything that had changed him over the past years, marred him and made him something other than the old Merlin, but more than a man.
Bitterly, without scrubbing the tears off of her face, she said, "We could've been kings and queens. All of us." Guinevere, Arthur, Merlin, and herself. Maybe even Mordred and Lancelot; Morgause.
Merlin's eyes filled with nostalgia, and it swam deep into him as he nodded slowly. "Three of us were," he told her, as if she didn't remember. "And always…there was a Pendragon on the throne."
She grimaced, hand placed delicately over her side like he was going to attack her again. "I am not a Pendragon. I was never allowed to be. You saw the effect of that."
Merlin sighed, his eyes seeming to search for something in the room and not finding it. "You're more like your father than you know," he said simply, to which she sat up against the wall, glaring at him but wary now, as if anything she might say may turn him into…whatever that was again.
"I'm neither stupid nor arrogant, and I'm far from being a tyrant," she snapped, re-folding her skirts and trying to pay as little attention to him as possible. Her heart leapt within her chest, and she didn't want to call it fright, but it was fright. She'd thought she'd seen Merlin at his worst when he'd stabbed her through.
"You're rash, unfeeling, hateful, and monstrous," Merlin snapped back, standing up and causing Morgana to flinch. "You're also very brave," he added quickly. "Go to sleep, Morgana, you'll need your rest." His voice was strained as he began to walk towards his bedroom door.
Morgana glowered for several hours after that, watching the candles he'd lit while she was asleep flicker and spit. She tried to put them out so many times but found she couldn't, and wondered what kind of magic he'd used to make her so weak, not even considering that the fault might be her own.
She didn't bother trying to get up; her leg seemed to be getting sorer with every waking minute. Turning over and over until she found a comfortable position in which she didn't rest on her left side, she wondered what Merlin was using as a mattress to sleep on, or if he was sleeping at all. She didn't dare call out to him, not like children who shared a room would've, like restless friends whispering in the middle of the night. He'd probably left the room to be rid of her. He probably had a spare mattress. She didn't know; she didn't care.
Sleep came only when she became horribly bored, when it seemed like the distant, distant future of which Merlin had spoken had arrived. Her eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings as she tried to stay awake, but they became heavier and heavier like a skirt in water.
In her dream, she stood on a raised platform made of wood, and Arthur stood to her right, wearing a red, velvet cape, his blonde hair floating gently in the breeze. He stared ahead, his eyes dark and distant. His cheekbones seemed sharper than before, and he stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his feet shoulder-width apart, as if waiting for his father to come up on the platform with him.
Following his gaze, Morgana noticed a crowd of people gathered around the dais, their faces nonexistent. Hatred – for him, for her – swarmed around the crowd like a plague, and Morgana glanced at Arthur out of the corner of her eye. He remained still.
Past the crowd, a small procession trudged closer and closer, and she recognized a few of Arthur's knights – Gwaine, Lancelot, and Mordred. Mordred and Gwaine held a man by the arms as he stumbled to keep up with them, head down and clothes dirty. The knights' faces were just as stoic as Arthur's.
Morgana realized that they were in Camelot when she caught sight of the castle, down the road. Staring at its architecture almost as if she was seeing it for the first time, Morgana saw movement in one of the windows and squinted at a dark figure; in the shadows stood Guinevere, her face too far away to be readable.
Frowning at the sense that something was amiss, Morgana remained quiet, looking back to the procession. The man was shouting but his voice was distorted, and she could barely make out what he was saying. "Kill the heathens! Their wretched blood should not survive this decade!"
Uther.
Everything went still for a moment as she closed her eyes, a feeling of dread pooling within her. When she reopened her eyes, she felt colder, harder, as if the sight of him had changed something within her. She watched him reach the stairs to the platform with a raised chin, wondering why Arthur wasn't protesting.
She turned her head and saw a noose hanging not five feet away from her; knew it was Uther's fate before he was thrust in front of it, in front of her. He gazed at her coldly before spitting at her feet, but she just held his eyes with contempt.
You're more like your father than you know. The words felt whispered against her ear like a lover's sigh, and she almost turned her head to see if anyone was actually there. But she felt Arthur's hand on her opposite shoulder and his chest come to her back before she could look, and he said quietly, "Morgana. There's something I should tell you."
"What?" she murmured, not looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on Uther, who suddenly threw his head back and gave a hideous cry as the noose was placed around his head by Gwaine. The knights let go of Uther's arms and he flailed, driven insane by his looming execution.
The executioner, wearing a black frock with a hood that covered his face completely, placed his hands on the lever. Morgana felt Mordred's gaze bore into her, and she locked eyes with him as he mouthed, "Be still, you're home." She cocked her head to the side, puzzled.
Without warning, the leather was pulled, and Morgana's head snapped towards Uther's body as it jerked helplessly about. Swallowing hard, she stared up at the hangman – a crow perched on his shoulder, digging its talons into him so harshly that his cape was torn and she could see his bloody skin underneath.
Sir Gwaine knelt in front of her, staring up at her as if she were the sun. Grasping her skirt like a child, he said, "You're home." Grabbing her skirts, she pulled them out of his clutches and moved to the other side of Arthur, who still stood straight as a statue, looking stern and stoic just as before.
Morgana couldn't help but stare at the hangman; his familiar shoulders and the way he hung his head, as if he weren't used to making eye contact. She couldn't see his face, but she knew him the instant he said, "Next."
Uther's body was let loose from the noose by Sir Lancelot, and it went flopping onto the ground underneath a square hole cut in the platform. The knight placed the noose around his own neck. Merlin swiftly executed Lancelot, without so much as a falter, then called for the next person.
Mordred stepped forward, looking solemn, and Morgana's entire body cried out with a mother's love, and she shrieked, "No! You can't!" into dead silence, and the clouds overhead grew darker as all eyes – the eyes of the crowd, the remaining knights, and even the eyes of Arthur – turned to her.
Before she knew it, Mordred was strutting towards her with a look of anger on his face. Grabbing her roughly by the shoulders, he ignored Arthur's disgruntled sigh as he shoved Morgana down on her knees, taking a fistful of her hair and bending her head back. She stared at Merlin with wide eyes as the noose slid down around her head, and felt even more frustrated and confused when he said, "I felt you every day. I felt you every time you moved."
"I see," her lips said. Her hands, clasped behind her back in the same manner as Arthurs', began to shake. "And what of the others?"
"All gone," he said with a shrug, resting his hands conversationally on top of the lever. "There's only you and I, now. I felt you every time you moved."
She nodded, tears forming in her eyes. Mordred's hand detangled its fingers from her hair and she gazed valiantly out at the crowd, wondering why she'd been forced to her knees in front of them. Everything was silent but felt as if there was a deadly riot taking place, and her heart beat steadily in her ears.
Looking to Arthur as if he would help her, she said, "The once and future king."
Merlin nodded enthusiastically, grinning as if she'd just proposed a wonderful toast. "The once and future king," he said in agreement, and looked to Arthur. Morgana's eyes trailed after his, towards the cold king's face, and his blue eyes met hers.
Oceans. She felt oceans surround the three of them, as heavy as Guinevere's gaze resting on her from the window. Mordred's fingers combed through her wild hair, trying to tame her and make her human again. She tried to twist away, but the imaginary water made her buoyant and she stared into the square hole, seeing Uther's lifeless gaze reflect back at her. She wondered what her mother looked like.
Merlin pulled the lever and she felt herself falling, weightless and infinite, deep into a dark pit. The pit turned into a deep blue tunnel, with a light at the end, and she splashed underwater, feeling freezing water turn her skin cold.
Then Merlin's hands were clutching at her, trying to wrap around her, grab hold of her. She thrashed in the water and he finally caught her, pulling her up and outward as if he were plucking a feather off a chicken. Holding her by the arms as she coughed water into his lap, he chuckled and said, "Don't you know how to swim?"
She raised her head and saw that they were in a valley, and she'd been in a lake. They sat under a tree on the bank of the lake and he leaned against it, staring at her with both a serious and amused look on his face. The tunnel seemed like a silly notion and she dismissed it as such, wiping her hands on Merlin's chest as he cupped her face in his hands.
It was autumn and leaves blew around them as easily as snow, catching in their hair and sticking to her wet body. She undid the strings of her bodice and pulled her saturated dress off, laying it next to them and shivering in her underthings. They were white and translucent from being wet, and she stared at Merlin as he undid the strings of his cape, opening it for her to take shelter from the breeze.
She climbed onto his lap and he closed the cloak around her, holding her in his arms as she stared at the sky. Closing her eyes and turning to face him as she leaned against his chest, she sighed contently into his collar bone as he adjusted his arms around her back. He wasn't wearing much underneath the cloak, which was odd, but then again, Merlin was always odd.
"Morgana." His voice was gentle and quiet, and his body heat surrounded her, warming the places where their bodies touched before seeping into the rest of her. She was still breathing heavily from almost drowning, and his hands rubbed up and down her back, trying to heat her up. His fingers traced her spine as he pet her hair, staring across the lake as if searching for something.
Warmth pooled in her stomach, seeping down her abdomen and between her legs. Morgana made an uncomfortable noise and shifted in Merlin's arms, only to feel a jab of pain in her side, like a cramp. Merlin noticed her behavior, tearing his cloak away from her to reveal her injury, having followed her here, bleeding heavily.
Pressing her hands to her side and whispering nonsense, she waited for her magic to help her, but found it was missing from her. Shocked and nervous, she raised her head to stare at him, frantically trying to save herself. "Merlin," she stammered at one point, but he simply stared back at her. Removing her hands from her wound, she grabbed his shoulders – now clad only in a simple white shirt – and shook him frantically.
He remained still. "Merlin!" she cried, but he remained frozen. Her bloody hands were staining his shirt. Deep, disconcerting red marks stood out against his pale shirt and skin, and she felt her lower lip tremble as she took in the sight of it.
A twig snapped somewhere close by, and she grabbed Merlin protectively as she looked around, her wound seeping blood more quickly now. Pressing a hand to it, she bit her tongue hard in an attempt to drown out the pain, but her teeth came away bloody as well. All was raw.
Arthur stepped out from behind the tree, holding his sword. Resting its tip in the ground, he leaned against the hilt and stared at Morgana, his face blank as it had been before, on the wooden platform. Violet images flashed before Morgana's eyes when she blinked, yellow and orange butterflies and birds. She saw a black cavern and a deep blue sea, and then red apples while green grass tickled her legs.
"Give me a reason," Arthur said tonelessly, his eyes not quite meeting hers. "Just a little reason. Are you sorry?"
Morgana stared at him, stared at his blonde hair floating in the wind and his empty blue eyes, his pale skin and his knight's garb. Another flood of images rushed through her brain; Uther's hateful insanity, Arthur's arrogant rashness. How wonderful it had been to know Morgause as siblings…
Hours seemed to pass in mere seconds. The wind blew her hair against her lips and she still clung to Merlin, her betrayer, her savior. She stared at her half-brother with wild, childlike eyes, speechless and contemplating. The lake they sat next to, she realized, was the Lake of Avalon. That's why I was drowning, she thought. They hate me.
Turning to look over her shoulders, she saw two of Arthur's knights flanking her from a distance; the one with the dark skin – Gwen's brother, Sir Elyan – watching from the trees to her left, copying Arthur's pose with a hard expression on his face, directed at her. Sir Lancelot stood at the edge of the lake to her right, his sword in its sheath and a dutiful expression on his rugged face; she caught his eye and he dipped his head in a small, singular nod, as if he still respected her as much as she respected him. Morgana nodded to him in return.
She faced Arthur once again, no longer unsettled by Merlin's stillness. Taking her hand away from her side, she looked at the crimson smeared from her palm to her elbow before closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and reopening them to gaze at her brother once more; this time, her expression wasn't scared or naïve. Instead, she held her face as neutral as he did, refined and collected, as their father had dictated to them between luncheons and meetings.
"No," Morgana finally replied, the power in her own voice resonating throughout the ground, the trees, and the lake itself. His face broke and became wistful for half a second, but returned to blank immediately after. She blinked and he vanished, perhaps back into the lake from whence he'd supposedly come, or simply disappeared from her mind.
Glancing at Merlin, she raised her bloody hands and took his face in them, cupping his jaw gently as she brought his face close to hers. Staring into his eyes, she told him, "You don't need to wake up, Merlin. I understand."
Then Merlin's face broke as well, and he gave his trademark smile; his noble, pure grin. His blue eyes passionate as they searched hers, he murmured, "I was never far from you."
Morgana smiled at him and he grasped her hand in his, warm and safe like she'd always known him to be. He placed his hand against her stomach and all the pain was gone in an instant; she was so mesmerized in watching her skin knit itself back together between his fingers that she almost missed the dark clouds gathering overhead.
Raising her chin to stare up at the blackened sky, she likened the clouds to a charcoal drawing. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she lowered her face to see Merlin's eyes blazing a magnificent red-orange, and whimpered as he stared at her with the dark expression she'd encountered earlier.
"You need to wake up, Morgana," he told her in a deep, scathing voice – so unnatural compared to his usual light tones. "You don't understand at all."
And that was when she sat bolt upright on his mattress, chest heaving and beads of sweat rolling down her forehead and making her hair stick to her forehead. A cold gust of wind blew from under the front door and her head snapped towards it, her body shivering even though at some point, Merlin had covered her with a blanket.
You don't understand at all. The words replayed through her head and her thoughts scattered, traveling along each branch of what that could possibly mean and coming up inconclusive. "I really don't," she breathed, clutching the sheets in her sweaty fingers. Lying back down, she turned onto her uninjured side and stared at the candles once more, using every corner of her magic to try and put them out. But, just like before, she couldn't manage to get rid of the flames, and the fire so reminded her of the color of Merlin's eyes.
Swallowing hard, she realized she was stuck, and that it would be a while before she got herself out of this one. Exhausted and breathing heavily, she remained awake for most of the night, but when dawn came, her eyelids drifted shut once more, and for once, she didn't dream at all.
