Author's notes: Set after the end of season 2, this story will be about what happens next. Based on my (quite liberal) interpretation of canon relationships. I've planned for this to be a pretty involved multi-chapter piece, but we'll see how it goes. Let me know what you think.
As always, I'm just borrowing these characters, since they're not mine -- don't worry, I'll give them back when I'm done.
Morgause was troubled. High atop the battlements of the stone ruins where she made her home, she gazed out over her surroundings, frowning. As the sun slipped low on the horizon, she watched the knotted shadows of the forest unravel in the fading daylight, unwinding into the slender silhouettes of single trees. Her eyes traced the lines they projected across the surface of the still lake, following them to their distant origin on the western horizon. Towards the setting sun – and Camelot.
Events there had slid beyond her control. Uther still reigned. Something – someone – had convinced Arthur to spare his life, and even to trust him again. Worse, she was not sure who had cooled Arthur's anger, or how they had persuaded him to turn away from the truth about his birth. The cost of that failure was high; it pained her, and not only for its outcome. It had been hard to gaze upon Ygraine once again, hard to hear her speak the truths that Morgause knew would cut her half-brother so deeply. Harder still to watch Ygraine vanish forever, the doorway sealed until she one day passed through it herself. For what? It had all come to naught in the end.
The cost of her second failure was higher, for what might have been, and for what almost was. She shuddered to think on it. Lives dear to her were very nearly lost. Years of work were undone; the knights could never be raised again. Arthur, who was supposed to have safely fallen under the spell with the rest of the city, had nearly been killed, and he did not trust her, not after her first plan had gone awry. Her half-sister's trust, she had won, but she had then been forced to bargain the girl's life for the success of her plans – forced to bargain with a mere servant. It was insulting to have nearly lost so much due to the interference of a simple servant, one who should have been asleep in the kitchens or the stables with the rest of his kind.
She had since learned his name. Merlin. A simple, common name, a peasant's name. A name that troubled her nonetheless. He knew things he had no way of knowing. Very few people knew that spells could be cast through a living conduit – only those who were truly steeped in the Old Religion. No servant had access to that kind of education, and no one with such knowledge would ever lower themselves to the role of a servant. He simply could not have known that Morgana harbored the spell that had put Camelot to sleep. Yet, he knew.
After these events, Morgause had spent a great deal of time thinking about Merlin, and had come to suspect that he may have caused the undoing of her first plan as well. She had seen his loyalty to Arthur, and the trust Arthur placed in him. Arthur would have had no reason to believe the lies Uther surely told him when confronted; the anger Ygraine's words had ignited burned too hot. None of his knights would have dared intervene in such a conflict between the King and the Prince, and if the knights did not dare, who would have been bold enough? Perhaps only a servant fearless enough to bargain with a powerful sorceress like herself. That he had succeeded in talking Arthur out of his anger showed that Arthur's trust in his servant ran deeper than she would have believed was possible.
A creeping worry arose in the back of her mind while contemplating Merlin. Raised by priestesses of the Old Religion, she had been taught much of its lore and prophecy. However, between her ambition and her determination to decide her own destiny, she had dismissed much of the latter out of hand, refusing to believe events could be predestined centuries before their occurrence. Her own dreams, and her sister's, pointed merely towards potentialities in the immediate days ahead; she had little faith in anything more. Still, something about Merlin reminded her of those prophecies she had long since forgotten, and she could not quite place her worry, nor assign it a name. It bothered her.
As if it were called by her disquiet, Morgause felt a comforting presence arrive behind her. Her heart lifting somewhat, she turned to face Morgana.
By way of greeting, her half-sister simply asked, "Camelot?"
"Camelot," she replied, exhaling her worries into the word. Her brooding did not matter, for it would change nothing – only action would. She cocked her head and felt a half-smile play at the corners of her lips. Soon, events would be back under her control. "Are you ready?" she asked.
"I am ready."