Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not Arthurian-related, not Stargate-related. Written for fun, not profit.
Spoilers/Season: Season 10, The Quest part II. Nothing else, I think.
Notes: Arthurian legend, Stargate SG-1 style. Because... well, mainly because Arthurian myth has been hitting me over the head lately, considering it's the subject of my senior thesis. This is kind of a composite of early myth and interpretations of it, as rewritten by the romances. The biggest point I had to quibble over was the fact that we seem to be grafting Viviane's story onto Morgan's, so here they're combined. Feedback, as ever, is loved and appreciated.
oOo
If I come not,
The lady Vivian will remember me,
And say: 'I knew him when his heart was young,
Though I have lost him now.'
Merlin and Vivien, from The Idylls of the King; Alfred Lord Tennyson
oOo
His first thought is that he has lived too many lifetimes. They revolve in his head now, and where once they would have inspired wonder, or at the very least regret, they make him tired. The stained glass halls of Atlantis filled with broken light; concrete halls filled with artificial light; caves filled with little light and crude paintings. They whirl in his head now, and dizzy, he stumbles blindly to a place that for a moment, will offer a place to sit.
"Stage two?" someone's voice asks in the background of self-contained pandemonium, a brightly colored cacophony of lights and sound that slowly dies in his mind. A memory rises, attached to the nuance in the voice: Mitchell. But though the memory is there in essence, it eludes him. Head in his hands, he rests.
"Indeed," he replies. "I must rest. I am not as young as I once was."
But then, there drifts a familiar face, unattached to voice or name, whispering his name, Taliesin; and her lips are not quite in sync with the sound that emerges on her exhale.
"Daniel?" asks Vala softly.
Her face, defiant and regal, when they had barely known each other. Teach me what you know, she had asked once.
He had paused, cautiously. I will teach you what I can.
She had risen, saluted him, and left.
The torchlight glitters now in her eyes, sparkling with the intelligence she always held so closely to herself. Long dark curls glinted with the light of the Beltane fires as it flew in time to her movements, dancing in the heat and the intensity of the night. Her hand, as she offered it to him. He slips in his memory, and remembers.
"I know you," Merlin says, smiling.
In another lifetime, a woman named Vala Mal Doran smiles for another man who resides, suppressed, in his mind. "Of course you do, silly. It's me. Vala!"
But in his, Viviane kneels before him; and gratefully, he brushes her cheek with her hand, to the radiance of her smile. Crags and rock surround her beauty, rough and tried as her surroundings, the scene of her learning and his work. There was an elegance that even the years they worked together could not steal away, and the beginning of a grey streak in her dark hair was only a testament to her will and determination.
I have lived more than half my lifespan already, she said when she first came to him. They call me the lady of the lake, for I dwell alone on the shores with my foundling son, who is but three winters old. I do not wish for what remains of my life to pass in vain.
How many winters have passed for you? he had asked.
It has been thirty-three summers since my birth, Viviane replied.
And those had been the good times; the creation of the Round Table at which he had placed Viviane's son, the planting of a secret which might pass through generations and centuries of mythology toward the deciphering by the worthy. Then, there was Ganos herself, having retaken her corporeal form. The legends surrounding her had reached them, certainly; these days, calling herself Morgan, she was known in some circles as Morgue, the fay, the Morrigan. The seeds of mythology surrounded them all, as both of them intended it.He had not been surprised at her arrival.
You are the Morrigan, Viviane said, in reverence, saluting her as once she had him. Great queen, derivative from both their own ancient tongue and the tongue of this land. It was hardly a coincidence.
I am, Ganos confirmed without preamble.
And then there was nothing but work, tireless, endless, shut up in a cave secreted in a forest with both Viviane and Ganos, who now convinced him she was working with, not against him. Viviane was near distraught as he'd ever seen her, cut off from the spurt of civilization that had grown here, and her foundling Galahad, now Sir Lancelot; but she prevailed.
Viviane. She is derivative of life, in his tongue. Vivate. Viva. It suits her.
And here she kneels in front of him, their work nearly done. She clasps his hand against her cheek, and her face blurs as her smile drops. Is there a flash of blue in her black eyes?
"I had the strangest dream," he tells her. "Everything was covered in ice."
The confusion on her face becomes an overwhelming sadness he cannot comprehend, and her features are no longer her own. The light no longer gleams in her dark eyes or glitters off the waves in her graying hair, still flying about her body, dancing wildly and uncaring at the Beltane around girls of thirteen and fourteen years, bodies painted in their way. Magic thrives, and dies.
"Jackson."
Daniel snaps back to himself, and looks around wildly. "What's going on?"
Vala snaps his head around, and he is startled by her likeness, but not her anger. "We're losing you, that's what's going on." Her eyes speak of Viviane's sadness, and Daniel thinks she's right as far as losing himself is concerned. Is the look on her face too tender, the break in her voice too real?
The memory of his hand, his, on Vala's cheek, not Viviane's, is fresh, and the returning warmth of her hand on his still present, ghostlike as the memory of the spirits that haunt this cave, and more real in the fact that he knows the now-fading warmth is Vala's, and not a memory.
Her words are echoing to him through the swirling masses in his mind, and through his eyes, he can just see her.
"You have to fight it," she's saying matter-of-factly, apparently devoid of any emotion, to those who don't know her and can't see the desperation in her grey eyes.
Viviane reflects for a moment in front of her or in place of her, and Daniel shakes her away in annoyance or desperation. Vala reappears, her blue eyes unwaveringly concerned.
In that moment, Daniel decides he can't do this to himself. "No, no, I have to let it happen." Either Daniel or Myrddin or Moros strides over to an instrument wherein only one reality and one purpose exists, and everything fades. Time is transcendent, and everything within it, coalescent.
The whispers of agitation or discovery behind him are thus, as nothing.