Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin.
Title: Tides of Life
Word Count: 4,400
Author: Sardonic Irony
Summary: After a millennia apart he has the audacity to reappear in her life.
A/N: A future fic and the only one I'll ever do. I wanted to examine what could possibly happen if they did both truly ensure throughout time. In some ways this could loosely connect to Afterwards, in that the timeline is very loosely compatible but I wrote the two entirely independently. As always, please R&R - it makes producing content more rewarding!
When she found out, she couldn't believe it. He had magic. Her world had crumbled; her heart shattering into countless pieces with the implications of those three words. All those years, all those moments, moments when he could have saved her. He had had the ability all along, to pull her from the precipice, and he had chosen not to. Even now, she could scarcely believe it.
He had always talked about choices and possibilities, but how in the name of the five kingdoms, could she have known that he was a choice, how could she have known that it didn't have to be like this?
Once she had been proud, beautiful, confident, strong, but then he'd come... and slowly, so slowly she'd fallen, fallen down and down... fallen for him. He'd somehow crept his way into her life, into her confidence, into her heart. He'd made her feel alive, made her feel free, made her feel invincible. For the first time since her father she'd felt okay, felt not just strong, not just proud, not just beautiful but perfect, untouchable.
He'd loved her too, she had learned that; and once she knew, she was lost. Her life had become an inconvenience that occurred in-between stolen kisses and moments with him, moments she treasured. He'd never made her a promise, a promise of life after Uther, a life where they were happy, but she had hoped, oh how she had hoped, and that was what she clung to, that strength, the strength he gave her. It didn't last, for her it never did. As time went on they drifted apart on destiny's currents, but she'd still clung to that unspoken hope, that unmentioned belief in her, that one day... but sometimes destiny is un-fightable and as its pull strengthened, tugging at her more and more insistently, she felt herself losing her grip, losing that hope. Despite the current, despite the insistence, she had held on desperately.
Then he'd broken her. Broken her with lies, half-truths and omissions, broken her with his betrayals. And that had torn her apart, shattered her so deeply, so seriously that she'd never open up again. On the outside she was sown together, confident again, but on the inside she was torn into pieces, so many pieces that she wasn't sure they could ever be put back together.
And the world has paid for his betrayal. Oh, how the world had paid for their folly.
The sky had blazed, clouds roiling in vermillion hues, fires roaring through towns that had known peace under her brother's rule. She'd sworn to tear it down, to tear it all apart, in a mindless, vengeful fury. She had become the archetype of fury, of rage, of evil. Her fury had reigned and she wanted the world to hurt, to bleed, to scream. She covered the country in blood;and all for him.
So, when he strode back into her life after so many centuries apart, after so many centuries of pain she was not happy.
She had found work as a sales supervisor at a magic store in a smallish country town. Occasionally she performed 'tricks' for a few of the nicer customers. Or, rather those customers thought they were tricks. She supposed it was cheating to use actual magic, but in the end the wonder on their faces always convinced her it was worth it, it proved to her that she was capable of bringing good to this world, even without him.
Today was a busy day, it was a summer weekend and that meant that plenty of kids were being dragged into the town by parents for days out. Summer heat, or Britain's version of it, was really beginning to set in, and beneath the sun's early morning warmth the town was alive. The clock tower was chiming ten o'clock, cars were crawling through the town, and the cries of the workmen who were repairing the shop next door filtered in through the double doors which stood open. She leant casually on the wide wooden counter with a till standing on it.
Her friend Neil was currently performing a few card tricks for some wide eyed children and some open-mouthed parents. He was really very good at them. Even she couldn't figure out how he did a few of them and that was saying something. Everyone who worked for the store had a few tricks, some had already known a few, some picked them up by working in the store but all of them were impressive in their own way. Finishing off his trick, Neil pulled a card from within one of the child's sleeve, and received appreciative gasps from his audience. Morgana smiled, this was what she loved about working here, the wonder, the happiness, it was all so different to the way magic had been treated all those years ago, it was her corner of happiness and she adored it.
Neil's audience began to disperse, some of them going straight to the shelves, grabbing packs of cards with instruction manuals attached, watched by their parents bemused eyes.
She conversed lightly with the customers as she scanned a few purchases and put the order through the till, then she went back to leaning on the desk, enjoying the sounds of life outside and watching the amusement Neil caused with his tricks.
Magic, in whatever form, real or not, she loved it.
About an hour later, it was her turn to entertain some of the customers. Before her, rising up and down as if on a fluttering breeze, was a chair. Really, for magic as strong as hers, it was simple; but for the audience of ten or so adults and about the same number of children, who had been so conditioned that they were looking for some sort of illusion, it was clearly very impressive. A grin came to her face as they muttered to themselves, most of them breaking out into suitably impressed smiles.
The audience shifted slightly and she spotted a woman and a young boy. The boy was jumping up and down, desperately trying to see exactly what was going on, his mother stood by him, holding his hand. She clearly was having problems seeing as well. She was wearing three rings on her right hand. She allows the chair to drift down to the floor and then speaks up.
"Madam?"
She gestured to the women, though a few people jostled around to see if she was talking to them, she waved them genially aside, finally getting the woman to notice her. When the woman did, Morgana beckoned her forward. Haltingly the woman and the boy, whom Morgana presumed to be her son, came forward. When they were standing in front of her she spoke to them quietly.
"Would you mind participating in the next trick?"
The women paused for a moment but before she could speak her son squeaked in excitement.
"Oh can we?"
Morgana smiled, she never tired of the reactions that magic could bring. The mother looked at the son who was quivering with excitement.
"Well, I suppose so, yes we'll take part."
Morgana smiled.
"Brilliant. Can I ask your names?"
"My name is Kara, this is my son Thomas."
"Okay, Kara and Thomas, can you come with me?"
She steps away from them and moves over to a table a few feet away. The mother and son follow and the audience shifts to watch.
She grabs a piece of paper she left on the table for this trick and shows it to the audience.
"You see this is a normal piece of paper yes?"
The crowd murmurs in agreement. She hands the paper to the boy who looks at her with merriment shining in his eyes.
"Now Thomas, please can you crumple that paper into a ball shape?"
He nods so fast she thinks for a moment that his head will fall off and then he proceeds to wreck the piece of paper with a speed and deftness only young boys seem to be able to manage. When he'd finished he's holding a piece of vaguely-ball-shaped paper. She smiles. He reminded her of Merlin with his boundless energy and incredible optimism and - no she chides herself don't go there. So she continues her little show.
"That's great Thomas, can you please keep hold of that ball of paper please?"
He nods and she turns to Kara, the mother.
"Now, Kara, can I please ask to borrow one of your rings? Don't worry, I promise you'll have it back in perfect condition."
The woman pauses for a minute then reluctantly takes off one of her rings. Morgana ignores Kara's trepidation, in the end she hopes it will be excitement and surprise that shows in the mother's eyes too.
She makes a big show of raising the ring up into the air in both her palms, chanting nonsense all the while. In one sudden movement, she drops the ring. It falls, picking up speed before she claps her hands together, closing her palms around the ring. Keeping her palms pressed together she raises her hands, putting them before her face, obscuring her eyes and mouth. She releases her magic, hiding the golden eyes from view, and makes a show of uncurling her hands, blowing out. The audience mutter, the ring has disappeared. Now for the finale, she decides. She turns to Thomas.
"Thomas, who you be kind enough to unwrap the paper?"
The boy begins to undo his work, unscrewing the paper to reveal... nothing. No ring. She was in trouble. She began to panic, the trick had never gone wrong, never. Where in the name of the five kingdoms was the blasted thing? A scatter of laughter came from the audience and she flushes. She was preparing to make some sort of excuse when a male voice rang out.
"I believe you may have been looking for this?"
He comes from behind her, through the crowd to face her. In his outstretched hand he holds a dark silver band with a sapphire embedded in it. It's Kara's ring. The crowd begin to mutter, she hears gasps of surprise, but she doesn't focus on that, instead she's focusing on his eyes, those wondrous blue orbs, the orbs that cause every single wound in her heart to tear open once more.
The speaker... was Merlin.
It had been an uncomfortable twenty minutes for her since Merlin had thrown himself headlong into her world by interrupting her little show. She had had to pretend that his appearance was all part of her performance, all part of the magic, and then she had ignored him. He had responded by slowly combing the aisles of magical trick sets and practical jokes. As if he needed any implements, he was the most magical human to ever walk the earth. She knew he was waiting for her, so she studiously avoided glancing in his direction. She wanted nothing to do with him, she quite preferred her scars buried thank you very much. She preferred, for them not to be parading around in front of her like some sort of her testament to her, no their bloody past.
She could feel the ache in her chest, feel the pain of the re-opened wounds and what was worse than that, what was worse than the excruciating pain of seeing him again was the joy that had shot through her as she had met his gaze, she'd thought herself past it, thought herself so guarded that he would never be able to reach her again and yet the joy had been there, strong and immense, and that joy had almost been enough.. enough to make her love him again, to make her run into his embrace and that was worse... to know that she was that weak.
She may love him, may long for him in every fibre of her body, yet she wouldn't tell him that, never tell him that. Perhaps it was the desperate child who lost the only person she cared about so early in life, perhaps it was the spiteful part of her that said she should limit his choices like he'd limited hers, perhaps it was the fact that every time they tried to make it work everything came crashing down in the most spectacular fashion possible. She didn't know, she just knew she'd never show him that part of her again, that part had suffered enough at his hands. She couldn't afford to suffer like that again because if she did... she wasn't sure she'd recover.
She left the shop at ten past one. On Saturdays she only worked the mornings.
She took a right out of the doors and headed downhill towards the bottom of town. She passed a clothing shop and glanced inside, but she passed off the temptation, she was exhausted, and she hadn't had her monthly pay cheque in any case.
She had reached the traffic lights near the clock tower when he caught up with her.
"Hey."
She almost punched him for that alone. Centuries apart, decades of betrayals and half-truths before that, failed relationships galore and scars that ran so deep they were a fibre of her very being and he comes back into her life with hey? She sighed. It was so like him.
"What are you doing here Merlin?"
He frowns. His brow furrows in that puzzled look she once found adorable but now simply stirs the pain in her chest.
"What am I doing here?"
"That is what I asked."
"Well... I suppose... I'm here to see you."
She arches an eyebrow.
"You suppose?"
He cracks a grin, and she can read that grin, it's a grin that acknowledges how little they've changed, how much the exchange was like them. And that's when she realises she's slipped up, realises that in all of three seconds he'd slipped under again, slipped beneath her guard. Rage fires through her and her weakness, at the pain, at his stupid, ridiculous, insufferable Merlin-like behaviour.
"Morgana. "
His tone holds the same wry quality that his grin seemed to possess.
The traffic light walk alarm went off, screaming at her shrilly. She spins away from him and marches across the road. She senses him walking as well and she spins, regardless of the fact that she's standing in the middle of the road.
"Don't follow me Merlin."
"Please, Morgana, just hear me out I-"
She cuts him off, she doesn't want to hear it, can't afford tohear it, because if she does, she knows how weak she'll get, she'll collapse and let him in again, let him in only for him to tear her apart and she's sure she can't take that again.
"No."
Then she stalks away, leaving him behind and this time, he doesn't follow her.
"Are you alright?"
It was Neil.
She turns to face him and smiles, still avoiding even looking at Merlin. He's visited the shop nearly every day since he first re-appeared, messing with her tricks on some days, just watching on others and either way it's torture, knowing he's so close, so real and yet... so wrong for her. She thinks it's ridiculous for her to want something so badly even though she knows she shouldn't.
"I'm fine."
He gives her a disbelieving look, the kind that screams 'are you kidding me?'
"Morgana, it's not exactly hard to see that you're about as far from fine as you have been since I've known you and it all started when he turned up."
He gestures his head towards Merlin and there's an edge to his voice, a protective edge, an edge that is that of a brother or father when his little sister's boyfriend shows up for the first time.
When they first met Neil had wanted to be more than a friend to her but she'd resisted and after he'd met Leanne he was lost, head-over-heels in love with her and she was fine with that. She appreciated his friendship and Leanne's. Now though it was not entirely helpful. After all, it's one thing to know that Merlin was unsettling her, it was quite another to have her friend point it out.
"So who is he?"
She jolts and realises she must have been lost in her thoughts.
"He's..."
She pauses. How to describe Merlin?
"A friend from a long time ago."
Neil grunts, his lips quirking.
"Some friend."
She sighs, it's clear he knows that there was a lot more to it than simple friendship.
"It was a long time ago, like I said, but... it went wrong... really badly wrong and that... hurt."
She appreciates the glare he shoots at Merlin when she says this; it's nice to have someone on her side. She follows that thought by wondering how it ever came to this whole 'sides' business.
Neil sighs.
"Honestly Morgana?"
She turns to face him.
"Give him a chance."
Her jaw drops.
Neil chuckles slightly.
"I've never seen a bloke affect you so much. For this one guy to have so much effect on you, he must have been pretty damn important to you right? Probably your first love?"
She nods unwillingly and mumbles her reply.
"And the last."
He smiles.
"Nobody is immune to love Morgana, not even you. Now the way I see it you have three choices. You can either tell him to leave, and if I've got the guy's number right, he'll listen; he'll go because you asked. But if you do that you have to mean it… really, truly mean it. Your second option is that you can do nothing, keep him at arms length and wait, but honestly what sort of option is that Morgana? It'll just kill you inside and it'll do the same to him."
His laugh carries an ironic note.
"Trust me, I know what it can do to a guy when they chase someone like you and get nowhere. Now, you also have a third choice. You can give him a chance. Now I know that's probably not what you want to hear, but in the end, if you send him away you'll probably always wonder what would have happened if you hadn't. And whatever he did in the past? Well, I don't know what he did but you did say it was long time ago, so what it was what twenty years ago?"
She chuckled bitterly.
"Something like that."
"Well then, twenty years is a long time and people do change."
Twenty years? More like a millennium
"Your point?"
Neil runs his hand through his hair.
"My point? Like I said I don't know what he did, but I do know what my eyes see. And you know what? I see in front of me a guy hopelessly following the woman he loves despite getting metaphorically kicked in the head each and every time. I wonder what that says about him."
"That's he a masochistic moron?"
He chuckles.
"Well, yes, but more than that, it says he loves you. It says he's willing to suffer your rather scarring responses just to stand a chance of being with you, it says he wants to be with you. In the end Morgana it's your call, but maybe... just think about what I said."
Then he was gone to entertain some newly arrived customers and she was left to think, to ponder the problem of Merlin.
This time when she leaves the shop it is different. She has had her time to think, has taken her time to ponder the unusually thoughtful words Neil had given her. She thinks that it is really quite unfair when you've lived a whole blasted millennium and more and yet your friends are still wiser than you.
He catches up with her at the traffic lights as always.
"Hey."
It's that greeting again, the one that had annoyed her just days ago. Now she sees it in a different light. He's extending the hand, the olive branch. All she needs to do is grab it. But does she really want to?
She turns to him, turns to fully, truly allowing herself to look at him for the first time in a millennia. His dark mop of hair still fell down his brow, stopping just above his cerulean eyes. He wore dark jeans, a bright purple t-shirt and a black leather jacket. Her heart ached with her love for him, ached with her longing for him.
The walk alarm blares out again and they cross the road. When they get to the other side she speaks up.
"We need to talk."
He spins to face her so fast he almost falls over. She laughs at him, laughs until she sees the look of hope on his face, a hope as deep and desperate as her own.
"Where?"
"Come on. I'll show you."
She guides him downhill, further towards the bottom of town, through the throngs of people that always seemed to appear on market day. They reach the bottom of town and take a left. They walk in a kind of comfortable silence.
They cross through the town's small bus stop. He's letting her guide him, leaving her to her silence and thoughts. She knows he's letting her decide when and where they have the conversation, letting her start and for that she's grateful.
They arrive ten minutes later, crossing over a small bridge and moving into an area full of a riot of colours. Reds, yellows and oranges all combine to give an impression of fire, of warmth. She smiles as the heady scent of all the flowers reached her.
She gestured around her.
"The town gardens; I love it here, it's so peaceful and quiet... I come here to think sometimes."
He smiles at her softly and she's taken in by how unchanged that grin is, yet now it seems to also hold some sadness as well.
"Yes, I can see why you love it so much."
A few feet away from them there is a water fountain, spitting water high in the air, only for it to cascade back down the side of fountain and rejoin a pool at the bottom. Behind the fountain there was a small slope of grass which seemed to glow emerald in the sun's light. At the bottom of the slope there were more flowers but here they are more subtle, purples, blues, whites.
She passes the fountain, and sits herself down on the slope. He sits beside her, and she knows even as he sits quietly looking out over the flowers that he's waiting for her.
She goes to speak. Then she stops. She's suddenly faced with the difficulty of this task, the impossibility of putting a millennium of pain and sorrow into words, a millennium of missing him. She wonders if too much stands between them, if this task is impossible, hopeless. Then she looks at him, bathed in the sunlight, and she was reminded of just how much she loved him, and everything seemed possible again.
"You hurt me Merlin."
He sighs, head lowering to stare at the floor.
"I know."
His posture changes and he becomes someone she doesn't know. His eyes are filled with an ocean of regret, a sadness as profound and limitless as her own. His shoulders are hunched as if from carrying the weight of the world, and she supposes that that is exactly was he has done, so many times, lifted the world up from the ground, all by himself.
Suddenly she doesn't need to hear his excuses, his reasons, she can see it written all over him, his sorrow, his anguish, his regret and that is enough for her. Life had left marks on him much as life had left its mark on her, and there is no need for her to put him through this, no need for him to explain because, she realises, she has already made her decision.
She has decided to trust him, decided to trust him with her heart and this time she knows he'll never break it, never let her hurt again. They're both different this time and yet... he's still Merlin and she's still Morgana and that, is enough for her. She knows she risks total annihilation with him and yet... she can hardly help herself, like the moth that tempts the flame. She has decided to throw herself of the precipice and this time, she knows somewhere in her heart that he'll be there to catch her. She has decided that to gain everything she will risk everything and the exhilaration, the sheer joy, of that decision burns within her.
She reaches out towards him and traces her hand across his cheek. He looks up at her, pinning her with his gaze, and he slowly, fearfully reaches out his own hand to touch her cheek, as if she was going to disappear into the ether in an instant. With that one touch he annihilates her walls, sending all the pain, sadness and suffering crashing down on her like a tidal wave, and yet... the wave can't touch her anymore because there is hope at her core, a hope that is stronger than all the pain.
He smiles at her, and there is a kind of wonder to the smile.
"Can you accept an old man weighed down by his own foolishness?"
His voice is a whisper. She smiles back at him. She threads her fingers into his glossy black hair.
"Only if you can accept an equally foolish old woman."
He smiles at her then, truly smiles, without reservation and without any sadness, and she knows that he has her heart, has it and will treasure it always.
Slowly, she sees the sadness, the regret fade away from his eyes, the sadness begins to ebb and she knows that they have both achieved something they thought out of reach for eternity: redemption. And more than that, they have found each other again and in that instant she knows one thing is beyond all doubt: this time, they will never let go.
She can't help but smile back.
A/N: Please R&R!