Flipping onto his back, Merlin sighs and stares up at the ceiling. Everything Morgana told him plays over in his head and he tries to make sense of it all. Why she would keep such a thing from him.
Why Gwen would keep it from him.
He understands that they weren't as close at the time, understands that Gwen was and is Morgana's best friend, first and foremost, and that her loyalty always has and always will lie with her, but he can't help but feel that he had the right to know, despite it all.
The thrill of being in Morgana's presence that had run through him all through the dinner has worn off and the relief he'd felt at her news – not that she'd suffered but that there really was nothing to stand in their way – now disappears. He tosses and turns and with every movement, the anger grows until he decides there's no point in even trying.
Kilgharrah wakes and hisses as he crawls out of bed, swatting at him as he moves the blanket aside. Merlin pushes him away, grumbling, and stands, his feet hitting the cool, wooden panels of the floor.
It was nearing midnight when he'd gotten home from dinner and the long, tension-filled walk with Morgana, and it's nearing five a.m. now and he hasn't slept at all. He has nothing but his own research and his office hour in the morning, and he knows students aren't likely to come this early in the semester.
Padding across the room in nothing but boxers and the thin t-shirt he'd slept in, he opens the window, hoping the cold, night air will calm him down.
He can't decide if all Morgana's told him makes things better or worse. There's no denying that he was relieved that it was nothing worse, that he had been justified in thinking that Morgana had doubtlessly had her reasons, but he feels increasingly agitated, angry that all the pain could have so easily been avoided. Had she talked to him. Had she not left. Had she come back.
He makes his way into the tiny kitchen and decides that coffee is what he needs.
He knows there's nothing he could have done about the miscarriage, but he wishes he could have been there for her, and he slams the cupboard door as he thinks of her facing it all alone, as if she were on some heroic quest.
He measures out a scoop of ground coffee beans and fills the kettle with water.
The smell of the coffee beans invades his senses and sends him whirling back to the coffee shop, to all the nights they'd spent together, and he remembers why he'd stopped drinking it in the first place. He'd told Gwen and Viviane that he wanted to be healthier, that he felt better drinking tea and that all the vegetable smoothies helped him be more productive, but in reality, he'd wanted to avoid the constant reminders of Morgana. She'd hated tea, laughed at the super healthy trends, and it'd been masochistically therapeutic to adopt the things she'd disliked.
He'd been stupid. There was no denying it any longer. He'd stayed away thinking he was giving her space, and he'd been angry then, and too hurt to do otherwise, he'd let his emotions rule over logic. Because no matter how many times he told himself that she'd had her reasons for acting as she did, nothing he said changed the fact that she'd given up on him and left, that she'd outright abandoned him when they'd been at their happiest.
Growling as the water comes to a boil, he pours it over the coffee and watches it drip into the mug below.
Part of him wants to let the anger take over again, to run off as he'd joked of doing days before. It had been a while since he'd been to Dublin and there was a conference he could attend in Paris, but this had all started from running and he refuses to let this second chance go.
"Mummy!"
Morgana turns as a tiny, gangly four year old comes running towards her, her cropped black hair flying behind her as Merlin chases after her. Morgana holds out her arms and the child runs into them, laughing. Merlin reaches them as she shifts the child onto her hip. He wraps them in his arms, eliciting the child's laughter to grow louder, and just as he leans in to kiss Morgana, she startles awake.
The room is pitch black, the blackout shades drawn to keep her asleep and the book she'd fallen asleep reading thuds to the floor as she reaches to switch on her bedside lamp.
The soft light floods the room, and everything is still, the only living, breathing thing besides Morgana is Aithusa, silently sleeping on the pillow beside hers.
No Merlin. No child who has never been allowed to come to life.
The dream is a new one, but she's had others in the same vein of thought. They come rarely, but they're almost worse than her nightmares when they do, taunting her with a life of could have, should have beens.
Had she not been the only one able to change things, able to bring Uther to justice. Had she allowed herself to be selfish and put everything she valued aside.
For all the pain, she doesn't regret the things she's done. She's suffered and she's hurt others, but she succeeds in everything she does. She brought Uther to justice by going to Morgause. She watched him go on trial and watched as he was imprisoned. She brought him to justice, and she exposes others like him every day.
She does what she feels she needs to do, and she's proud of her work because of it. Yet, when the dreams strike and she finds herself stroking her baby's cheek or wrapped in Merlin's arms, she hopes for her realities to be swapped, to wake and find that the two people she wants at the centre of her world are still there, an arm's length away.
Instead, she always wakes alone.
