a/n: Thanks to all who keep reading. Introducing the third end Morgana meets: Morgana and Mordred. Still no claims on BBC Merlin.

M o r d r e d

In the end it is so easy.

They have swords and they have shields. The golden dragon rears on their cloaks but it is all a charade; they play valiant knights and they swing their blades but they may as well be wooden for all it matters. She comes to Camelot in all her fire-and-ice vengeance, a sordid army of worthless soldiers she's tricked some arrogant puppet king into handing over for her use. But they are just her toy soldiers and they aren't the ones that matter. She doesn't care how many of them die, as long as she gets what she wants.

She's gone too far for mercy now.

At her right hand is the boy with the blue, blue eyes, but he is less of a boy today. He's tall now, lean and wiry, but the eyes are still the same frightening, soul-searching blue. There's ice in those eyes, but they look on her with love because she is everything to him, just as he is to her. They have no one left to care for but each other and they share dreams of a world that's better than the one that burns under Pendragon rule.

They ride to Camelot amid torches of blue fire and the black sky is starless, the lights of the night hiding from the sin that is about to bleed through the citadel. Mordred looks to her as they approach, and she hears him in her head.

"Take your destiny, Morgana."

It is time. She nods once, curtly, steeling herself. She knows to be wary, knows she cannot trust herself not to stumble into the stupid weakness of emotion. Sometimes she sees one familiar face, one smile she used to return, and that's all it takes to send her reeling into doubt, and doubt is not something she can afford. She does not have time for doubt.

"Go. I will see you when all is done, Mordred." She pauses, glances at him, and sees the calmness in him. He is never afraid and he never doubts. He has grown like a stalagmite, ever sharper and ever icier, compassion and warmth leeched out of him with every year that passes. She knows it's not his fault; he's only ever known persecution and loss. He's been passed around from guardian to guardian like an unwanted gift, and only she has ever stayed constant for him. She loves him like the son she is destined never to have.

He is most of the reason she is doing all this, because in truth she's always acted for the sake of other people. She needs someone to be courageous for, or she has no courage. She needs someone to be outraged for or she withers into silence. She is a warrior who needs a cause to fight, and that'ss why she cannot look back now. Her white horse snorts as they pass the gates and Mordred smiles, cold, always cold, and he takes his detachment of her army away, reinforcing them with his furious, blazing magic as they brush away the Pendragon soldiers like smoke in the wind.

Morgana reaches the heart of Camelot first. She faces Merlin, she destroys Merlin, because after all he is her destiny, but he shall not be her doom. She takes a thin pleasure in Arthur's horror and grief when he sees his old friend's broken body, his fury at her part in it. He runs at her in a rage, his anger the only thing that's ever swamped his ridiculous sense of honour and loyalty. He never did understand that nobody could be truly loyal to anyone but themselves. This time, this time Merlin's lost, and that means Arthur's lost. She wonders briefly if he ever found out just how much his foolish, humble servant had given for him.

She halts Arthur with a casual flick of her wrist. She's sure this time; she's not swayed by his beautiful, beautiful face and the agonising memories that surge like flames in winter when she sees it. She's locked up her love for Arthur Pendragon in a little box and scorched it, smashed it, utterly brutalised it, until all that remains is a lust for his crown.

"I'm sorry for the welcome, Arthur, it hardly befits a king. But you won't be that for much longer."

She doesn't kill him straight away; she holds him before her, a few inches above the stone underfoot, and walks around him, watching critically. She comments indifferently that Mordred's probably killed Guinevere by now, because she told him to make sure she was wiped out like the backstabbing, self-righteous little irritant that she is. Arthur roars his fury at that, and it's so easy to play him, to make him dance to her tune and give her all the sadistic pleasure she thinks she wants.

But then she starts to feel the prickles of guilt that somehow never cease to plague her. She sees the proud curve of his Pendragon jaw and his defiant eyes, even now they've come so far. There's magnificence in his defeat and it's a taste like poison (and doesn't she know about poison) to see it. It's enough to make her put him out of his misery quickly, her appetite for his suffering suddenly gone.

When he's dead it's not the jubilation she expected. She feels hollow, empty, and wonders if this is what Mordred's done to himself. Even she still calls it a sin to kill another, and she thinks she feels her soul being bent a little more out of shape now she's got Arthur's blood on her hands, because after all, his blood was never so very far from hers. She kneels like a child at his side, her black dress pooled about her as she touches his handsome, still, familiar face, still magnificent to the bitter end. There are no smiles and victory cries here. He's a dead king now and that makes her a queen, but why does it still hurt?

She's almost crumbling at his side and she wants to cry, but then the high wooden doors swing open with an echoing slam that makes her leap to her feet, and then she sees blue eyes. Mordred walks sedately to her side and she knows he knows exactly what it is that's running through her mind, because he always knows. Impatiently he gestures at her, and it's as if he's flicking away the surfacing heartache left in her because her flaring emotions suddenly cease like ripples evaporating on still water.

"Don't cry, Morgana, we're nearly at the end," he says, that voice so pure and yet so filled with dark, dark power, like the wingbeats of a midnight owl in the empty sky. She takes his hand and smiles, the lost king forgotten.

"Never leave me," she murmurs, pulling his slender frame into a tight hug. He returns her embrace readily, but still so distantly, and yet again she thinks how he could be sculpted from ice, perfect, frozen and utterly utterly untouchable. But no matter what, she will never stop loving him. She's always loved too hard.

"It's time. This is the time of magic," he sighs, and she watches as he turns, wordless, movements so tiny that he scarcely raises one pale, delicate hand, and sets the Pendragon insignia alight, iridescent flames that leap and scream their glee. This is as close as Mordred gets to expressing his deepest emotion.

Mordred finds someone who can crown her Queen in some masquerade of an official ceremony. As if there's anything official in killing the King and sitting in his throne, all his best and bravest dead in the courtyard while she smiles under a golden crown that gives her everything she asked for.

"I crown you Morgana, Queen of Camelot"

Mordred is still at her right hand, standing stoic but proud as she accepts the crown of Camelot and knowing that this is it, this is change and the ghosts of the past are about to be exorcised. Morgana's won and this is the time of magic: she'll be cruel at first but it's only so they know she's here to stay; she'll win their hearts later because she's beautiful and she's magical and so sweetly enchanting when she wants to be. For now it's enough. She sets about changing everything, proving that yes, you can change the world.

There's guilt every now and then, for she is not cruel by nature, but merely by what the world has made her become. She is a victim too, because Uther left the marks of his rule like whip marks scorched across her soul and she learnt tyranny from a tyrant. But with Mordred next to her she knows she can do this, and she'll make the world everything she wanted it to be. For all her crimes she still wants to make it a better world, and that's what she will do.

She's looking in the eyes of her strange, special Druid boy and she knows she can redeem all her sins.