The Virtue of a Shade
Should you choose to read this story, I fully suggest that you read my notes preceding your journey:
Gwaine and Elyan are ALIVE. I like to deny the fact that either of them died at all. Unfortunately for all you Lancelot lovers, he's still dead… sort of.
… I suppose that's it. For now, at least.
So, after an extended, undetermined, crazy two and a half year hiatus, here's to my first (rebooted) Merlin fanfiction. Yay! Now to reopen the rest of my In-Progress stories… possibly.
Kill me now.
And with that, I, once again, truly thank those who have returned to finish out my tale. Please review and enjoy, and check out my link to the story on AO3; Kudos' are love!
Disclaimer: BBC owns Merlin.
Arthur stops like he's been kicked in the chest, eyes going wide. He freezes, instantly going still, and, just behind himself, Arthur knows that Lancelot has done the same, shocked so deeply to the core that neither seem to know how to do anything but stare.
This isn't possible. And this is coming from a fifteen-hundred year old king.
"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" The voice, her voice, purrs, smooth and velvety, shudder-inducing. Arthur thinks he might throw up; his stomach churns with agonizing horror that he hasn't felt in centuries. "I think the last time I saw you was… oh yes."
She smiles, and it's like poison.
"When your prick of a manservant impaled me."
This can't be happening.
"Morgana," Arthur chokes, and it is.
The woman standing there can be mistaken for no one else, hair long and dark, curly locks tangled in clumps and braids like some sort of barely-tamed nest. Her clothes are ragged, her dress ribbed with tears and stretching, her robe botched in places with unexplained stains, the black color long faded from vibrancy into a sort of dull darkness. On the floor is evidence of where she'd been pacing, in the form of footsteps, printed against the stones like there's ink smeared along the bottom of her boots, and it had marked the territory she'd crossed, leaving her tracks.
Her face is pale, pallidly so, lips frosty rather than bright red, as they had been before she'd turned away from what was good and pure in her desperate quest to make Arthur and his family suffer. Her eyes are dark, black instead of the vibrant green they'd once been, like someone had drained the color from them and let her long-boiling hatred and fury shade her irises with their dark tone. Her mouth is twisted into a smirk that's all anger and no sympathy (though, really, Morgana hasn't felt sympathy for anyone in a very long time).
She's supposed to be dead. And Arthur really doesn't feel guilty for wishing that she still was.
"Nice to see your eyes still work, my liege," she drawls, voice threaded fully with sarcasm, giving a slight, mocking bow. "I see your age has, of yet, had no bearing on anything other than your always-increasing stupidity."
"You're supposed to be dead," Arthur hisses, his grip tightening around the hilt of the sword in his hands.
"Sorry to disappoint," she sneers, scoffing as her eyes travel over Arthur's shoulder, her gaze finding Lancelot and locking on with intense focus.
"Well, well," she says after a moment, in a hum. "You brought a friend." Her smirk is venomous, cold, full of a smugness that sends defensive anger rippling through Arthur's blood, down his spine and through all of his bones. "I remember this one," she snickers. "He was my puppet once. That was fun."
"Leave him alone," Arthur snarls angrily, not allowing Lancelot his own chance to retaliate. "Shut your fucking mouth."
"Language!" Morgana spits, glaring him down with eyes of dark fire, like that's truly what she's angry about. As if that means anything right now. "How dare you speak that way to your queen."
Arthur's reaction is automatic; he scoffs, the sound layered with disgust and disbelief. "Queen of what?" he spits, filled with a furious fire of his own. "An empty city? Did you slaughter them all?"
Morgana cackles. "I wish," she hisses. "But the opportunity was, unfortunately, not mine. I would have taken pleasure in burning them to ash like your father did to so many innocents, himself."
"This isn't about him."
She lets out a cackle that's pitchy in nature. "This has always been about him," she snarls. "Everything I've done was about destroying the reign of the Pendragons. Murderers of magic, annihilators of the powerful."
"My father was a fool," Arthur hisses. "But you're a monster."
"Maybe to you," she says coldly. "I was to be the hero of sorcerers. We were meant to be the dominant race. We were meant to rule."
"You're no hero, witch," Lancelot hisses, his own voice fueled with a fury that Arthur can relate directly to. "You're nothing but a devil and a traitor."
"If I'm a traitor for defending the hundreds of innocents Uther slaughtered, then I will gladly stand for my so-called betrayal."
She sneers again, eyes glaring down at her half-brother. "This city is mine, now," she says coldly, lips curving up into a cruel smile. "And this time, there is no Emrys tostand in my way."
Arthur's face twists into a deadly snarl. "Where is he?" he demands, his whole body thrumming with anger, his voice rising in a furious shout. "What did you do to him, Morgana!"
"I did nothing, but oh, how I wish I had," Morgana cackles, eyes alight with horrible pleasure at the idea of whatever had happened to Merlin. "I wish I could have cut him open and pulled out his goddamn heart. I wish I could have taken him apart and buried him throughout the city streets."
She laughs again, loud and awful, the sound echoing, reverberating through the throne room with a chilling effectuation. "How I wish I'd been the one to hurt him," she chuckled darkly, "but I can live knowing that he suffers."
"How dare you," Arthur growls, hackles risen, hands closed in white-knuckled grips on his sword, still raised in defense of the sorceress before him. "Tell me where he, and all of my citizens, are! Now!"
"Your citizens?" she snickered. "There is nothing here for you, Arthur Pendragon! This city is ruins! This city is mine!"
"Camelot will never belong to you!" Lancelot barks, his voice loud and filled with the same rage spreading through Arthur's body, filling him with an anger and righteousness that is beyond words. "Arthur is Camelot's king, and he is the only true ruler of Albion! You have no power here!"
"This throne is mine!" Morgana shrieks, dark eyes flooding sudden with gold, molten and angry. "And even after fifteen hundred years, I will not stand for another murderer of magic to sit upon it!"
"You will stand down," Arthur hisses warningly, "or I shall make you."
Morgana's face twitches with annoyance and fury, before her expression finally twists into stony, dark rage, her eyes shining brighter as she lifts her hand into the air. Arthur and Lancelot tense, and Morgana snarls, voice biting and utterly livid.
"You'll have to make me, then," she snaps, and waves her hand.
The inanimate suits of armor against the walls, made into decorative statues of knights, spring to life instantly, drawing swords and maces that used to be useless in their metal hands, now wielded as the life-threatening weapons they were meant to be. The suits are all rusted with age and wear, coated in bronze spots and sheened with brown over the expanse of their metal surfaces, but with magic they move with a grace that's unhindered, that's almost like the elegance of a real swordsman.
Lancelot whirls around as the suits, ten in all, surround the knight and his king, encircling them for the attack. They're cold, and there's no doubt that they're brutal, emotionless and murderous. Morgana's eyes burn with golden fury, and she shrieks for them to attack as their weapons go up, already lunging in Arthur and Lancelot's direction.
Arthur reacts on pure instinct, and swings out his sword in time to catch a mace mid-swing, saving himself from having his head separated from his body. He throws his weight forward to dislodge them, managing to throw the knight off balance just enough to get his sword through its chest. It jerks once, and doesn't hesitate, yanking right off the sword and lunging at Arthur again. The king curses and ducks, flinging himself sideways, allowing the knight to clash into one of its mates, the clash resounding through the room, metal on metal.
Arthur staggers, whipping around in time to see Lancelot take the head off a knight before another one is throwing itself at the king, its rusty blade meeting the shine of Excalibur's, the sound sharp and loud. Arthur gives a shout, bracing himself on one foot to throw the other into the knight's chest, shoving it back. It trips, stumbling at Arthur's kick, and Arthur moves quickly, cutting the helmet off of the suit of armor. It flies away, clanging where it bounces off the stone floor, and the body collapses instantly, crashing into a dead pile.
Arthur pants, barely dragging in a breath before two more are on him, and he wheezes slightly, ducking desperately to avoid the swing of another mace. It flies around, embedding in the chest of its partner, and Arthur throws himself away from them while the first knight yanks its weapon from the other's chest, lurching forward after the king. Arthur sidesteps to avoid the mace coming down on his head, only to nearly run into the swing of the second knight's blade. He grunts and spins to the side, twisting the hilt of his sword and thrusting it back, impaling Excalibur into the head of the closest knight. He shoves his arm forward, successfully ripping the head from the knight's body. The head flies off the end of his sword, and the body drops, tripping its mate and sending him sprawling. Arthur lashes out, slicing off the head of the second knight, sending it flying with a hard kick.
He hears another clash of metal on metal and whips around, eyes finding Lancelot's form, standing off against his third knight. Lancelot swings, missing, ducking from another blow before lashing out with a slam of his elbow to the knight's chest. The armor staggers, and Lancelot swings, just as, out of the corner of his eyes Arthur sees another knight lunging right for Lancelot's victorious form.
There's no time to call out to Lancelot before the enchanted armor is jabbing its arm forward, and Arthur watches in horror as it slices straight through Lancelot's back, the metal of the blade erupting from Lancelot's chest, just as the defeated knight's head goes flying from the slice of Lancelot's blade. Lancelot's face twists, mouth dropping in agony, eyes huge, gasping in a desperate, ragged noise. The knight's fist flies last, slamming into the back of Lancelot's head, and Lancelot goes horrifyingly limp, collapsing, sliding off the knight's blade as he slumps to the floor in an unmoving pile, leaving a long smear of scarlet down the rust-covered sheen of the knight's sword.
Arthur lets out a howl of fury that overtakes Morgana's victorious cry, barreling forward, sword flying. He slices off the heads of two more coming for him without more than the power of his own angry adrenaline, before throwing himself at the knight splashed with Lancelot's blood, blade swinging. He slams the flat of his blade into its helmet, sending it reeling before shoving it into the nearest wall with a crash, letting out another enraged yell before slicing the damn thing's head off, finishing them off.
He whirls around, breathing hard, sweaty hair in his eyes, frantic gaze finding Lancelot just as Morgana screams, and Arthur feels her magic latch onto him in a wrathful grasp. In the next moment he's flying, and his back explodes with agony when he hits the far wall at full speed, shouting out in pain as he collapses to the floor, shaking with exertion and anguish. He groans, but the sound is cut short as Morgana throws him again, throwing him through the air and slamming him into the wall opposite the first one, sending him sprawling, body screaming in torment. He gasps desperately for air, wheezing through ribs he's pretty sure are broken, heart pounding in his ears. Past it he can hear Morgana's rapidly approaching footsteps, but moving seems impossible, his whole body aching, pained.
"You should have stayed dead," she hisses, voice spitting and choked with her own venom, thrusting her hand at him again. Her magic takes a hold of him again, and Arthur heaves out a noise of intense suffering as she lifts him from the floor with her power alone, pinning him flat against the wall. Arthur's lungs and heart are screaming with pain, his ribs sending shots of throbbing agony through his whole chest. Arthur gasps, the sound ragged and broken, unable to struggle as Morgana advances, eyes alight with fury beyond words.
"I've waited so long for this," Morgana snarls, her form blurry in Arthur's sweat and pain, looking almost as if she's flickering with how angry she is. "This time, I will rid myself of you, Arthur Pendragon!"
Her voice is a shriek by the time she clenches her fist, and Arthur feels his airway cut off instantly, her grip steadfast and furious. He spasms, unable to move, his body instantly going into a mode of extreme panic, his lungs screeching ever louder in fear without air to fuel them. He's shaking all over, and in seconds alone his whole body is jerking as best it can, fighting desperately to find air that's been taken from him. His vision blurs fast and hard, swimming between heightened and defined, and a slur of nothing but colors and fog.
"This time, there will be no returning for you," Morgana's voice snarls somewhere beyond the hummingbird-fast drumming of his desperate heart, her voice echoing and deathly cold. "There will be no rise of the fallen king. Albion is mine."
Had Arthur not been quickly dying under Morgana's pale but powerful hands, he would have felt a severe sense of disappointment, for lack of a better word. What kind of king was he, he thought, to return to Albion, only to be killed by the hands of his dead half-sister, and in the first fortnight? He would have thought that there might be some kind of cruel, cosmic irony to the whole thing, but he was more focused on the fact that his body was now seizing, dying rapidly against the wall of his throne room, unable to even wheeze, body practically on fire with his agony.
His ears hear Morgana's cackling, but as his sight returns for a brief, terror-induced second, Arthur's eyes find someone else standing before him, fist clenched, their magic strangling Arthur to death against the stone wall. His gaze sees but he cannot believe, his vision half spotty with black bursts and explosions of blurry color, cannot believe in the person his gaze has found, the person his brain has identified before him. Short. Dark hair. Body long and lean under their ratty tunic and jacket, their skin pale white, untouched by the sun. Their eyes shine with bright gold under flurries of their loose bangs, their expression twisted in a hatred that's indescribable. Arthur's eyes see, but he cannot believe, cannot believe that in the middle of his death his mind would draw such tricks, would make him see such things.
His servant. Sorcerer. Friend.
Merlin.
Arthur's eyes fuzz over in a blur, just as, from somewhere far to Arthur's left, the king hears a slam, the doors of the throne room swinging open in a bombardment of crashing noises where they hit the walls, flung wide. Arthur hears shouting mixed with the sound of Morgana's screeching, and his vision makes another desperate return in time to see her— not Merlin, not Merlin, not Merlin— watching as her hand releases her grip on him, allowing her to dash away, and Arthur collapses into a pile, unable to think about anything but the air his body is desperately dragging in, and the absolute suffering his whole body is in.
From somewhere far away (that's probably closer than his hollow hearing can realize), Arthur can hear shouting and clanging, but his brain is working too slowly right now to figure out what could be happening. His vision hasn't changed, spotty and blurred, except for the fact that it's going dark now, the colors and lights fading slowly into blackness. He wheezes, whole body burning with pain as the sound around him dies down under the sound of the frantic beating of his heart in his ears, and while he tries to fight, there's no point, his consciousness spiraling quickly downward, his world fading around him. His body quakes, pained and abused, and, just as he falls out of reality and into a hard faint, he thinks he feels someone turning onto his back, hands thin, warm, and… familiar.
Arthur coughs, wheezes, and falls alone into the darkness.
"Maybe you should check him again," is the first thing Arthur hears when he comes to, feeling as though he's slept for another thousand years. His brain and hearing is still foggy, both pounding badly, and it takes him a moment to find the ability to focus on the whispers he's hearing, managing just barely to make out the words.
"I checked him just a few moments ago," murmurs another quiet voice. "He's still the same—"
"That's not a good thing."
"I didn't say it was, my lady."
Arthur exhales, brow wrinkling slightly. The voices sound familiar… sound so familiar that he feels stupid for not recognizing them instantly, even in his groggy, stuporous state.
"Please. Please check him again."
"He's right, my lady," another voice murmurs, even more familiar, though Arthur feels like it's misplaced there, alongside the… the living. "We must give him time. Morgana nearly killed him."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" The first voice, a feminine one, demands.
"Unfortunately, no. But it's the truth, ma'am, and that's all I can give."
"I have a name, you know, I don't need you to call me that."
"I'm going to have to ask you both to leave if you two can't keep quiet," the second voice that had spoken hissed, firm in its resolve. "Arthur needs to rest—"
It's only in perfect timing, then, that Arthur's chest revolts, and he breaks into a fit of ragged, painful coughing, body jerking badly, chest rising and falling from the soft but itchy surface of whatever he's laid out on. He hears rapid footsteps, before he feels two pairs of hands carefully come down on his biceps, holding him steady as he hacks and wheezes, chest burning with pain. He gulps air in desperately, throat sore and thick where Morgana's power had attempted to squeeze the very life out of him.
"He needs water," the feminine voice insists at one of the other voices, hers stricken with worry. "Quickly!"
Arthur hears footsteps hurry away as his coughing finally begins to slow, and he groans brokenly, breaths broken and raspy as his eyelids flutter, and finally, slowly, peel back, opening.
He has to blink for a minute before anything comes into focus, and the first thing he sees is long, dark hair, nearly hanging in his face. His gaze travels further upward, up, up, up, to find the face the hair is attached to, but it's turned away from him. His ears ring slightly, but he can just hear the sound of the feminine voice speaking rapidly, shooting off orders, just before her face finally turns back to him, eyes huge on his face.
His blue eyes meet brown, worried, familiar ones. Arthur stares, eyes huge, and his pained breath catches in his throat.
Guinevere.
Please make sure you've checked out my Author's Note on the previous page.
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