Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin.
When it comes to this particular fandom, I really tried, I will say that. However, despite mulling over this character for months now, I've never really gotten the urge to write about him, sans 12 o'clock last night. Yep.
Hate:
Kilgharrah had not hated, truly and deeply loathed someone or something, before his 20-year-imprisonment as an example against magic. There had been dislike, irritation, and overall anger, though none of those held a candle when compared to the deep, smoldering darkness that was hate. Then again, he had not known despair before that time either, not until he had reached out with his magic, swept spectral eyes over the lands, the four winds, and come to the conclusion that he was alone. The last of his kind.
He had not been special, a veteran of any kind. He had not Seen this sort of outcome when he scryed, nor ever really been alone like this, as it were. Just completely and utterly isolated, cut off. The manacle prevented him from really using any of the magic that he had been innately using since birth, something that felt both terrifying and even more forlorn than before.
And the circumstances of his imprisonment were even more confusing. The dragonlords themselves had assisted in driving him down to the caverns, and making the manacle that bound him to the rock. For that, he had been a bewildering mix of betrayed and angry, until he felt their lives being extinguished, one by one. The last one, Balinor [his dragonlord, Kilgharrah remembered with a flash of both possessive fear and bitter betrayal], had left of his own accord, though his mind simply refused to think of the what ifs.
At first, he had been afraid, sad, angry, but not hateful, not yet. Though early on, there were moments.
When he remembered how Uther had proclaimed him a monster, held on a leash under the castle for the protection of the people while he slaughtered those with magic with the merciless ferocity of a true monster, remembered how he realized with a cold snap of his cursed uniqueness, his solitude, while his species, kin of spirit and blood, waited for him in the shades. And, for a while, he had wanted to die, even, if oblivion would rid him of these cursed and baffling thoughts, colored by emotions that troubled him in their ferocity, the dreams that were the fruit of them. They were soaked through with blood, screams, and the flying devil that dove from the skies, and razed the houses of the small humans to the ground with more than fire. Changed by the hatred that he could feel burrowing its way into his heart the more the torturous imprisonment went on.
And there was no way to siphon it off, to get rid of it. There was only the option of divulging it, letting it speak and run its course. But since there was nothing to let it loose on, it could only build, grow, becoming a festering blot that colored his emotions and mind.
That is, until Merlin came. With the warlock came interaction, even if through the cold, distant relationship between that of estranged teacher and student. Kilgharrah envied Merlin. He could hide, he could walk on the surface, within the very streets of Uther's supposed fortress against magic, and remain unscrutinized, unchained, free.
And, slowly but surely, he began to hate Merlin as well. If only for the similarities of themselves, yet the vast differences in their situations. It escalated to the broken promises, and the maybes, and the you-should-have-dones. However, the hate he felt for Merlin was tinged by their likeness, among other things.
"Well, there must be something I can do. Please, help me."
"Merlin, I see you are distressed by this. But I cannot help you, because, I do not know how to."
"I can't stand by and watch Gaius die! I can't!"
"I am sorry."
And he had been, every word of what he said had been true. It was a rare moment of honesty, though it did not last, as he had looked into the young warlock's eyes and had seen something very akin to how he had felt regarding his own imprisonment, in the earliest of days. It was the look of something that felt conflicted, weak, and trapped. Powerless, an emotion that suddenly made him feel repentant for hating the warlock to begin with, and hate him even more for making him remember it.
And he had flown away. Simply leaving the warlock to the task of saving his mentor's life himself, something that twenty years earlier, he might have balked at. 'Might have' being objective, as it had become difficult to remember how he had been before. It almost made him speculate on how much this forced captivity had changed him, and what it had molded him into, with this hatred and roiling anger in his heart that cried out for some form of release. That dreamed of razing Camelot to the ground in vengeance for this genocide of all things magic. That gave birth to this anger, hatred, this monster that had taken up residence in his heart.
With that, Kilgharrah had shoved the realization away, along with a new emotion that had surfaced over the long, long period of time he had spent dwelling on the subject, self-hate. He had all but become the creature that Uther had, and he was well on his way there, should he be released. For a brief, despairing moment, he had thought about staying here forever, if only to keep this emotion, which had had years to build itself up, from being let loose on the world. However, it whispered, pricking at his thoughts, and turned them towards his captor, and just what he had done to him, and did he not deserve the same treatment? To watch everything crumble down around him? To feel as powerless and conflicted as he did? After everything he had done, should he be allowed to get away, to slide easily into the shades for a long, long rest?
No, his mind had answered, while guiltily shoving away his own doubts. He had been waiting for nearly twenty years, and he would not be distracted now. Twenty long years of being left alone in the dark, left for the monsters to fester in his heart.
Uther had claimed that he was a monster, the thought had occurred to him just as Merlin was about to break the chain that held him fast to the rock.
Well, we shall see what sort of monster I am, will we not, Uther?