The Champion's Lady
"For the love of Camelot!" Morgana heard familiar voices bellow as they charged and burst open the doors to the council chambers. "Welcome, dear brother. It's been far too long," she greeted Arthur, dismissing Merlin, Gwen, and the unfamiliar couple. And indeed, it had been nearing the second year since they had last seen each other's face, in waking at least.
Arthur approached her, holding Excalibur high before placing it back into his belt, unconsciously submitting to her.
"What happened to you, Morgana?" asked Arthur regretfully in an attempt to hide the desperation quaking in his voice. "I thought we were friends."
We were much more than that, they thought in unison.
"As did i," she replied softly, yet her piercing emerald eyes were those of an enemy. "But alas, we were both wrong." She spat in contempt, her voice hardening while she watched his heart plummet in his eyes.
That was never enough.
A small pool of tears began to swell within his eyes. He refused to let them fall for her, for what they once had. She deserved neither love nor pity, not anymore. Peace and love simply do not communicate in such a dark place.
But Morgana was not the only one dwelling in those shadows. Arthur too has slept alone for far too long, keeping himself hidden from all else within the darkness. In the dark, there is no one there to see their sorrow, leaving them to cry out into the shadows. Without each other, the darkness became their only embrace.
In their brief moment of silence, before their duel, Arthur gazed at his once friend, lover, and sister and found nothing but a terrible beauty consumed with bitterness more grand than he could have ever foreseen.
They spoke of Uther, their father and he anticipated the fire to ignite, but hadn't expected how burnt out it had become as he watched the embers die within Morgana's eyes.
Now that the fire for their father had exhausted it's flames, what else had there been to anger her still; cause her to seethe? What words must he entreat her to breathe, not to bellow? Arthur knew neither, and he thought, that just maybe, nor did she.
"Hleap on bæc." She chanted twice, neither time had her magic been successful and as it was, all present saw how frightened she became in that moment, revealing all that she persistently endeavoured to conceal: her humanity. A blind man could see that her bitterness had hardened her heart and sickened her body, leaving all to mourn for her with the pity she did not deserve.
Morgana had become cold to the core but her brother's belief in her had never ceased as he believed that she too, like himself, deserved a second chance. Could she begin again; miraculously transformed; be neither evil nor innocent; learn to love and be loved, and escape the voices screaming out of the darkness? Arthur believed so, but he knew others would not. For this, he cared not.
Perhaps it selfish of this young King but he'd admit profusely that he needed her. Morgana was the only one who knows all of his secrets. The only one who knows the depth of his pain. So he needed her to remind him that he was not alone in the bleak darkness, caging their poor, wretched souls from the light.
Arthur watched warily then eventually dared to speak out in the midst of her failure to end his life. "Not so powerful now, my Lady." She glanced up at him one final time before fleeing behind Helios and out of the chambers. Both Morgana and Arthur saw pain, misery and much more in the eyes they had found themselves lost in so many times.
And finally, he knew then and there, as he stared back at her retreating form, his gaze never faltering. His Lady was truly gone and, it seemed, so was he.