a/n: I think there's other work already out there based on the Arthur/Morgana confrontation, so I apologise if any of this inadvertently resembles it. Merlin is not mine. This is a study of Arthur and Morgana's relationship, though take that relationship to imply whatever you like.
P r o x i m i t y
She knows he's coming, and she smiles and says she's ready. She wants him to come; she wants his head on a silver plate and she wants his crown. She wants to wipe out every last trace of the Pendragon cruelty that's made her this way. But even then she can almost see the irony that in doing so, she's become Uther all over again, while Arthur's everything she was meant to be. Maybe that's another reason to hate him.
But when he's standing close enough for her to count the shades of blue in his hurt, hurt eyes, and close enough for her to pick out the scar on his jawline he's had since he was twelve and think I gave him that, it's a little different. Hating him from afar is one thing; she's safe from the hurt and the love and the bitter regret in those cursedly beautiful eyes when she's far away from him. But not now, not now… now all those things are standing with him in front of her and it's like an army battering down on her alone, and she thinks he couldn't have hurt her more than by just standing there and staring at her with those eyes.
It was easier to hate you when I forgot what you were like.
"What happened to you, Morgana?"
There's one question she's been running from. Buried in her schemes and her treachery and her dark dark words, she doesn't ever stop to step outside herself and see what she is like, and that's because she can't. If she did she would never be able to carry on, so she keeps running because she is afraid of what she would find. There's a little light left over in her, a light she can't quite snuff out, and the voice of Morgana from the old days sometimes whispers back. That Morgana is locked and bound deep inside the avenger she's become, but there is enough of her left to make her break down sometimes, overwhelmed by self-hatred and melancholy at the shadow she's become. When she dragged Lancelot into his half-existence it wasn't his former glory she mourned, it was hers. Because just look at what she's become, and what better way to show it than to put her beside Arthur, Arthur the Righteous King.
Everything I could never be
She's long since shattered any mirror in her possession because somehow she can't bear the sight of herself now. The shadows in her heart have already bled into the porcelain of her skin like poison blackening her veins and she knows it, but it's far too late now to go back to the days of beauty. And if broken mirrors are bad luck then she's damned for a thousand lifetimes, but then maybe she was already damned before all this started anyway, because sometimes she thinks her existence is one great malicious joke.
"I thought we were friends"
Arthur, Arthur, oh Arthur. She can see the hurt in him; if shadows are in her heart then the light of the sun is in his, and it's not fair. Arthur is the golden King of Camelot, Arthur is the brave and the just and the beloved. Arthur is the only one the people love and even when she wanted to do right by everyone she was never as loved as him. Not by Uther, not by Merlin, not by Camelot. But she was loved by him, and there was a time when she'd thought that was enough.
It could've been enough.
But then it all went wrong and they were shattered like two halves of a broken lute that would never play again. And the music used to be so sweet… but now there's only anger, and there's blood on their hands that Uther put there and neither of them can wash it off. And she's sworn that she'll kill him, she's thirsted for his blood, but saying that was easy when his blood was out of reach. Now he's there, he's in front of her, he's all around her, he overwhelms her. This is proximity and there's nothing she can do to stop him breaking through her bitter shell even though all he's done is put his sword away.
"As did I"
When she pictured this reunion, she thought that she would be strong. She thought revenge would come easily, like a blade sliding through skin, easy, effortless. Unclouded by emotion, because she knows by now that emotion only gets you hurt, and loyalty is there to be abused and lost. She is a traitor, she's lived with traitors, she's turned people into traitors. She knows there is no such thing as eternal loyalty, and eventually everybody loses the things they love. But that's not how it is when he's there, and it's always always so much harder to hate him when he's near. Because Arthur Pendragon always was easy to love.
She can't stop the regret pushing back the mask of impassivity, and she knows he's seen it just as she sees the tears swimming in his blue, blue eyes. She knows they are united in their hurt in that moment and she hates him for being able to raise such emotion in her when she's spent so long pressing it down. She hates that he still loves her and even more hates that she can't stop loving him back because how can she kill him when he's the last one left who's never ever betrayed her? She tells herself over and over that he's the one who's wrong, he's the killer; he would have her put to death on sight, because he is Uther's son and Uther is everything that's wrong about her world.
But he's not Uther, and he's not trying to kill her now. His sword hangs forgotten, and her spells are reined back, and they look at one another, faltering. His sad eyes are telling her he wants to help her, wants to have Morgana his dearest friend back, not Morgana who knows only hatred. But she is so beyond fixing now that she cannot let him in, cannot let him win.
We were both wrong
Yes, they were both wrong, because they were more than friends. They were always inextricably linked, always tied together whether they wanted it or not, and that was Uther's fault too. Their connection transcended the normal boundaries of companionship and became infinitely more complex. It meant she loved him and hated him, pulled him in and pushed him away, cared for him and hurt him, stood by and against him, forever swimming in confusion. It was why her very being warred with itself as he faced her, so painfully close, torn between drawing his blood and falling into his arms. There was no name for what they were; we were friends could never encapsulate what they had shared. Nobody else could ever really understand why they looked at one another with such suffering; nobody could understand what it was like to be shackled by a destiny that turned the purest flower into scorched ash and left nothing but desolation in its wake.
What chance did she ever have when she was always meant to be in the dark as he rode into the light?
The days of beauty are gone. They have to fight now, because they are dragged down different paths that leave no room for childhood memories. Her defences are back up; she remembers how to hate him. She remembers who he is and who his father was, remembers that he's killed her kind just as Uther did.
She forgets the ones he saved, the times he defied injustice, and forgets he would've saved her too.
o - o - o - o
Later, when she's lying in the forest with the ghost grey sky empty, the light of day turning its back on her, her blood and the earth are a deathful heady tang that lets her know there is no way back for her. It's getting cold, there's nobody near. The voices she hears aren't real, but they tell her she's failed. She knows there's not much longer, and her eyes are closing.
It's his face that burns behind her eyelids, and the future they were never destined to have.
And then there's salvation.