a.n: this was written at 2am in under an hour, to try to clear my writers block so I could write a decent Ethics essay. It's un-beta'd, and I've barely re-read it, but I like it, so here you go.
...
Morgana is seven summers old, and she never wants to marry. Boys, she has decided, are really quite disgusting creatures, if Arthur is anything to go by. He is muddy all the time and he runs around shouting the most ridiculous things. Uther humours him with an indulgent smile, but Morgana finds it extremely annoying, and makes excuses to spend as little time with him as possible.
...
Morgana is ten summers old, and she never wants to marry. All the boys around the court are exactly the same – obsessed with armies and weapons and blood and battlefields. They are all convinced they will grow up into great warriors. She doubts this greatly – haven't they realised that all heroes die in the end? Surely it is better to die old, happy and loved, than going out in a blaze of fame and glory, younger than thirty summers.
...
Morgana is thirteen summers old, and she never wants to marry. But she is already being paraded around to princes and foreign dignitaries like a cow at an auction. She hates it.
...
Morgana is sixteen summers old, and she never wants to marry. Now she is older, the balls and dances have become worse. She has grown to understand the comments that passed her by before, the ones about how she looks, and how the men think she will behave if by some happenstance they were to gain her hand. She thought that by now, the boys would have grown into men, and that somehow they would be more respectable. They aren't.
Court life is lonely, and her only friendship is found in her maid, Gwen, and a young knight who helped her hide one evening, when she found she couldn't listen to the vitriolic conversation of the visiting dignitaries standing beside her at a dance. Clearly they hadn't realised who she was – they would never have said such vulgar things about her otherwise – but she had fled the great hall, angry and scared. Vision blurred by furious tears, she hadn't realised there was anyone else in the dark corridor until she ran straight into them.
The first thing she noticed as she looked up at the man she crashed into was his eyes. They were warm, and kind, rather than the leering ones that she had become accustomed to of late. His hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her on her feet as she tried to regain her balance. She attempted to apologise to him, but he shook his head, smiling a little.
"The fault, Lady Morgana, was all mine." He paused, looking down at her. "...Shouldn't you be at the ball? The King will be looking for you."
Morgana shook her head vehemently. "He won't notice, not yet anyway. And I couldn't stand it in there." The fury that had ebbed away at her embarrassment for crashing into a perfect stranger started to bubble up again. "Men are pigs!" She spat, clenching her fists slightly. The knight quirked an eyebrow, and she blushed a little, embarrassment creeping up on her again. "Well, perhaps not all men. Maybe just the rich ones. I just...I wanted to escape for a few minutes."
He chuckled, a low, infectious sound that meant that she couldn't help but smile either. He dropped his hands from her shoulders, and offered her his arm. "Perhaps I cannot help you escape entirely, but I can escort you back to the dance, and protect you from any, uh," he chuckled again, "pigs."
Morgana took his arm gratefully, smiling properly for the first time that night. "My knight in shining armour." They walked back down the corridor for a few moments, before she stopped suddenly, tugging lightly at his arm. "I don't even know your name!"
He smiled down at her, starting to walk again. "I am Sir Leon, my lady."
...
Morgana is nineteen summers old, and she never wants to marry.
Marrying means leaving Camelot, leaving her home. How could she give up that for a prince that she probably wouldn't even love?
She asks Leon this one afternoon, as they stand together on the parapet while he's on duty. They often meet like this, pretending not to know each other as well as they do. But she could tell anyone that asked anything about Leon – where he grew up, the names of his siblings, his favourite colour, his favourite food, how he intends on becoming the best knight that Camelot has ever seen. They talk about everything, somehow forgetting the rules of propriety, but for some reason when she asks him this, he changes. He looks away, standing taller and clasping his hands behind his back as he looked out over the kingdom.
"I wouldn't know what to say to that my lady."
It's this that strikes her most – it is never 'my lady' any more when they are together. Usually it's 'Lady Morgana', or sometimes simply 'Morgana' if they are completely forgetting themselves, but never just 'my lady'.
But she knows it's just a matter of time before she breaks through his barriers.
...
Morgana is twenty-one summers old, and she never wants to marry.
Because now she knows that marriage doesn't just mean leaving Camelot – it means leaving him. She will be forced to suffer through a loveless marriage, hundreds of miles away from Camelot and the man that she believes that she has truly grown to love. She may be overwhelmed by gifts of gold and diamonds by ardent suitors who send their pages to profess their love to her, but really it is the little things that count.
Like seeing her token tied to his armour during jousts, even if it doesn't always seem to bring him the best of luck. Or when he starts keeping a shawl near him while he's on duty, knowing that she's more than likely to turn up to talk to him, even if it's freezing. Or when he spends two hours of his free time in the armoury with her, just so that she can find the perfect crossbow to best Arthur in the hunt.
Sometimes, standing together on the parapets of the castle, they talk about the future that they could have had together if things had been different. If he had been a prince. If she had been a peasant. Sometimes, they make idle plans to run away together into the sunset on a white horse, after he has rescued her from her room in the topmost tower, and she laughs, and calls him her 'knight in shining armour' once more.
He may be her knight in shining armour, but he is not a prince and they both know it.
...
Morgana is twenty-three summers old, and she never wants to marry.
And Morgana knows she will never marry, because the only man that ever truly loved her now hates her. She betrayed Camelot, she betrayed her father, she betrayed Arthur, but more than anything, she betrayed him.
...
Leon is twenty-eight summers old, and he never wants to marry.
Leon refuses to be with anyone else after Her. She plagues his thoughts relentlessly, and though he tries his hardest to forget her, he knows that he can't. And though he hates her, hates her like he's never hated anyone before, the fact that he has to pursue her with the intent of arresting or killing her sickens him because he knows that he still loves her. Every time he sees her face, he sees who she once was and what they once had. What they could have had, if the Fates didn't hate them as much as they seemed to.
...
Leon is twenty-nine summers old and Morgana is twenty-four, and they both know that they will never marry.
Neither of them thought that it would come to this – battling each other on a burning parapet, fire roaring on all sides and the screams of the dying and the stench of the dead surrounding them. This is not how either of them foresaw their future together, but it seems that this fate was inescapable.
They lock eyes for the briefest of moments, and they are standing in their spot and in suddenly, in the midst of the battle between their sides, she pulls him towards her in a bruising kiss, pouring all of the heartache and agony and longing of the past thirteen years into it.
They will pay for that kiss.
Though Morgana wields power over the armies on her side, they are not her armies. They are simply fighting for her cause, and she is displaying weakness. Weakness is not tolerated in a leader, and she is replaceable. She led them into the heart of Camelot, but they do not need her anymore.
Morgana dies at the hand of her own army, and Leon goes out in a blaze of fame and glory in her name, younger than thirty summers.