a/n: My great thanks go to my reviewers, who make me immeasurably delighted :] The next (short) instalment of this series is Morgana/Morgause, the second end Morgana meets. Oh, and if I forgot to say it earlier, Merlin is not mine.
e
She didn't mean for things to be this way.
She started off as a defender of the innocent, an upholder of justice. She started off good. But then she saw more and more of the wrong in the world and she realised she couldn't fight all that wrong with good. The wrongness would eat her up and she would have achieved nothing.
She goes to war a tigress, all fire and blood until the bitter end. She fights in the name of all she's lost and all the people who've died unjust deaths, and for a while she's winning. She takes the castle and steals its crown and burns the Pendragon banner with the smoke rising like a victory cry to the heavens. She sits upon her traitor's throne and smiles her traitor's smile. Morgause, she thinks, I've made her proud.
Once she would have abhorred her own actions. Once she would have been appalled at the blood spilled for her cause. But those days are gone, so very gone, and this is all that's left of her. She's got so many battle scars there's not much left that looks like the beautiful fool she used to be. Now she's hell-bent onchanging this godforsakenland, and along the way she's lost so much that she can't stop now.
But then they're upon her again like rain on smoking embers, and there's betrayal in their eyes that makes her smile, even as she realises she's gone too far too fast.
Oh, there were always going to be sacrifices.
But now all those sacrifices, those precious, awful sacrifices, have been made and she realises that this is it, this is the end, she can't go back and make it all better now. She faces Arthur and she's the one with the crown, but in the end it's not him who ends it for her (as if he ever could). After all, Emrys was always meant to be her destiny and her doom.
But nobody had told her that Emrys was Merlin. She supposes she shouldn't be surprised; it was stupid of her not to even think of him. She supposes she deserves it for being foolishly blinded by distant mocking notions of class divideand servitude and thinking he was nothing more than a boy. Oh, how wrong she's been. He's tried to kill her once before and she knows that he'll sacrifice everything else for Arthur, no matter what the cost. She knows it's because of him that she's this way, that she's dying alone with the remnants of her hard-fought throne smashed like coloured glass on the merciless floor.
They don't know where she is. They know Merlin caught her with a blow that she won't survive, but she won't give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry at the end. She has enough strength left to stop her giving them her broken body to desecrate, but she doesn't think she can stop the tears as her breath becomes shallower and her limbs grow colder. Her soul is desperately crying for someone to be with her now, but there's no one left. There is nobody left to care that she's dying, and it's all been for nothing.
Lots of people have died before her and she thought it would be easy. She thought living was harder, almost envied the ease with which Morgause, Uther, Mordredhad slipped away, pale faces softened in the peaceful embrace of death.
But she doesn't want to go like this. She is defeated, destroyed; she's the loser in this war she raised from the shadows herself. She wants to win for the sake of everyone she watched succumb to injustice and cruelty, but it's so so over for her now. She's just another piece on the chessboard that's been taken by the knights, and for all she thought she was playing the Queen, she's really just a pawn.
I'm dying alone
She's in the forest, she thinks, and there are mighty elder trees around her, but their leaves are already decaying on the earth because it's autumn and life is going to sleep for the cold months. She doesn't really like the idea of dying in the autumn because everything dies in autumn, and now she's going to fall like just another scarlet leaf to be buried in a year of snow, lost to the dust of time and passing until nobody even remembers she was ever there. They'll burn away her memory and paint it over with golden dragons on blood red velvet, and it will be as if she had never fought and lost at all.
She wants to live because she's still angry and she hasn't got all the things she wanted, and Arthur's King and it's a bitter taste in her mouth to say that he was better than her all along. She rolls on the cold ground and opens her eyes wide to take in her last sight. The indifferent sky is washed white above her, not a glimpse of blue. There's no hope of sunshine today. Tears mark her cheeks in silent, bitter tracks as she starts to give in. So this is death: death is loneliness and fear, like a hunted animal in the forest, but that's what life is too for her now there's no one left. It seems, then, that death is no different, but-
"Sister."
That voice.
That voice is not real, because that voice was stopped by her own hand. That voice cannot be real, because Morgana has no one left in the world who can make her heart leap in hope. But then there are soft fingertips at her temple brushing her dark hair aside. There's a beautiful face and pale locks of hair and magic that's reaching out to hers.
Morgana tries to speak, parts her lips to say she's sorry she failed, sorry she didn't do the things she promised she would do. Didn't pay back her sister's life debt. But Morgause just smiles, and Morgana still can't work out if she's real or not, but it's her sister and she's missed her sister, the only one in the world who can love allof her because they are one and the same. She knows others have loved her, knows that Arthur would have died for her and Uther too, but neither of them knewher, neither of them could accept her and this is why she is a tragedy.
"All is well, sister, and we are together once more. Leave Arthur to sit under his heavy crown and mourn his ruined kingdom. You've done enough. Come with me. All is well."
This is why, as her breath leaves her, the only salvation Morgana can find is in the sweet, sweet arms of her beloved sister, the only one who ever knew her, and now the only one who could ever save her.
Morgause made her, and Morgause will keep her.
Forever.
