Arthur awoke in shock as a familiar form embraced him fiercely, burying her head in his bare chest.
"G-Guinevere…?" He said in shock, rewarded with a glimpse at those dark eyes he so loved. They were wide with fright. "Guinevere, what…?"
She screwed her eyes shut and held him tighter, trembling more than he'd ever seen.
But no matter how many times he asked, she wouldn't tell him what had her so terrified.
###
The materialized back in their chambers, the whirlwind knocking books over tables, and with a quiet chime the pre-set silence wards clamped down to give them privacy.
For a moment, all Merlin could do was stare at her in his arms, wide-eyed and tired. How had he not noticed how exhausted she looked, the dark circles under her eyes? She seemed to shrink under his inspection, the surprisingly insecure side of her making a brief appearance thanks to the cracks in her armor.
Morgana's hand came up to caress the side of his face, nervous eyes becoming grateful.
"You're yourself again." She exhaled, as if only now able to breathe. "Since Gaius, I thought I had lost you; I-I thought you'd never be the same again…."
"I'm so sorry, Morgana." Merlin whispered, furious with himself. "I shouldn't have tried to pull away from you. I just couldn't-"
Something he had said seemed to break the moment because her face fell and she was pulling away before he could stop her.
"I know why you were… grieving like that, Merlin." She said briskly, her back to him as she began picking up the scattered books. "I'm just glad your mother was able to bring you back to me."
Merlin stared morosely, watching her go about righting the room like a woman on a mission.
"Morgana-"
"Hunith's so wonderful, isn't she?" Her overly chipper voice cut him off dead, as she placed the vase of lilacs back on her nightstand. "She didn't even hesitate to come all this way when I asked, and we had such a good talk."
Merlin winced; there was a certain tone in her voice, masking the hurt and the abandonment, saying 'you should have been there.' He knew she saw it and relished it; although he was forgiven, there was a vindictiveness in her tonight for which he had only himself to blame.
"…I truly wished she lived in Camelot, don't you?" She was saying, still with that awful fake smile. "Oh, of course you do; spend half your letters trying to convince her to move, the stubborn woman…"
"I know how hard it must have been." Merlin said, his voice finally making her stop dead in her tracks with her back to him. "Gaius… is gone, and when you needed someone I wasn't there; not really."
She stiffened at his words, and Merlin shook his head and continued.
"When you needed comforting more than anything, instead you had to comfort me; it wasn't fair."
"No," Morgana bit out, though with a leap of his heart he realized she was having trouble keeping the venom in her voice. "But I understand why it happened. You… wanted to get back control of yourself, because you'd almost struck down Uther for me."
Merlin flinched again, remembering how close he had been that night, how terrified he still was at going back to that dark place inside himself; because all his justifications for keeping Uther alive were slipping under the tide of his grief. He had shut himself down to put a wall between them… because for some reason how much he loved her seemed to go hand in hand with how much he wanted Uther dead.
It had been a terrible thing to do, even subconsciously, and he'd never wanted her to know about it.
"I'm a killer, is that it Merlin?" Morgana half-sobbed, spinning towards him with a heartbroken fury he hadn't seen in ages. "Li-like the Druid b- like Mordred? It's my destiny, right! And we both know you're such a believer in destiny!"
Merlin dropped his gaze to the floor, away from her hurt, accusing stare.
He hadn't let himself think about the boy, Mordred, since he had last seen him on Arthur's horse. At first didn't want to think about his best friend's bleak destiny waiting out there in the forest somehow, and later didn't want to think about the poor boy who he had almost let die because of the dragon's cruel lies. But the guilt had remained, pulsing deep within him…
"Not anymore." Merlin vowed, meeting her eyes again. "I promise you, Morgana, I don't think you- either of you- are evil, and I'm so, so sorry for what I almost let happen."
Morgana opened her mouth to shout something, sending him reeling back at the force of her roiling emotions flooding the room, before she clamped it shut with a guilty look and turned away.
"…I don't blame you." She whispered, reluctantly but genuinely. "Truly, I don't. I can't imagine what it'd be like, to be in the sway of a manipulator who I thought was my closest ally… who played on my fears enough to make me compromise myself."
She met his eyes again, bowling him over with sympathy.
"I'm so sorry for what he's done to you, love." She said heavily… but the sudden coldness dulling the warmth in her eyes brought the moment crashing down. "And I promise, I'll find a way to get rid of him for you."
"W-what?" Merlin balked, taking an involuntary step back.
"A-ha!" She shouted victoriously, stomping forward to shove a finger in his chest. "See, I knew it! You do think I'm a killer!"
Is that what was worrying her? That the dragon had gotten to him on some level, despite what he'd said to her in the cave? Merlin watched her, the harsh rise and fall of her chest, the livid light in her eyes hiding an irrational hurt and fear… she was so scared of losing him, and the fear was now finding reasons to justify itself.
Gently he wrapped his own rough digits around her soft one, like he had done during their argument in the forest a lifetime ago, willing his conviction, in her and in them, to reverberate through his fingertips. Her face melted in front of him, revealing the wounds he had caused beneath her shell.
"Morgana, I know you're a killer." Quickly he rushed to talk over her as she tried to pull back, shocked and angry. "B-but it's okay, alright? Because… I'm a killer too."
His wife looked at him, jaw dropped almost comically, brow furrowed in concern; he could feel her empathy coating his body like rainfall.
Merlin took a shuddering breath. It had been a long road for him to admit this, even to her… had been so easy to convince himself that it somehow didn't count if he took a life in self-defense, that he was a… good person, no matter his sins.
"You are a good person Merlin." She said insistently, reading his mind suddenly as easily as if he spoke. Consolingly, she crushed herself against him in a hard embrace, her touch and scent and beauty consuming him until the entire world shrunk down to her. "The best I know, and no amount of murders could change that. I'm so happy you- I mean, I was so afraid that you thought that… I was less than you."
"Why would you ever think that?" Merlin said against her forehead. "Nothing… there's nothing about you I don't worship, Morgana, and that includes your darker impulses. If you're a murderer, than so am I."
Desperately Morgana drew him down into a kiss, pulling him even tighter against her, and they nearly drowned in each other, in their taste, their forgiveness, and the mutual relief that they knew everything but didn't think any less of each other. For both of them… if felt like coming home.
She pulled back with a shining smile, and destroyed the moment yet again.
"So how are we going to kill Uther?"
And the fight began anew.
###
"…And what did you mean, 'next time you won't be able to stop me?'"
It felt like they had been fighting for hours; their argument degenerating into petty rows about things neither truly cared about, before he dragged it back onto the subject her latest assassination attempt.
"Well, I think it should be obvious!" Morgana fired back across the bed they were making together, with just as much bite in her voice, as she harshly fluffed a pillow as if it were a foe to be battered. When she turned away to check the silence wards instead of continuing, Merlin made an exasperated noise she had never heard from him that made her turn back and roll her eyes. "What, do you need me to say it?"
Merlin tucked in the comforter's edges into the bed with far more force than necessary, fuming silently, and his silence gave her time to appreciate how much she loved the passion in him when they fought, the fire that only she could light, before their hard exchange began again to block out kinder thoughts.
"…Clearly, since you think I'm such a fool." He murmured angrily, and Morgana felt her jaw drop along with the pillow in her hand.
"W-when did I say that?" She volleyed, suddenly more hurt than angry that he could think such a thing. Sure, she was often frustrated at his idealism, sometimes thought of it as wide-eyed naiveté , but 'fool'-?
"You don't have to say it, Morgana." He replied tiredly, running a hand through his messy hair. "I can feel it from your magic, right now. You think I'm stupid to protect Uther."
Morgana used the moment of shock to attempt to close their connection, but finding it so pried open at the moment that she instantly gave up.
"I think you're insane to protect Uther!" She shouted furiously, wincing at the hurt and anger she felt on the other end. "After everything he's done; to you, to me, to Gaius-!"
She immediately slammed her mouth shut at the flare of pain the name caused in him, suddenly staring down the raw bleeding wound that she had only gotten glimpses of while she tried to coax him out of his shell by Gaius' bedside. For a moment she waited for the inevitable clamp down, saw the edges of his walls beginning to shut her out, yet again, but then he seemed to realize what he was doing and fiercely clawed them back open.
They stared in uncomfortable silence for a moment, just letting each other feel one another. He quirked his eyebrow after a beat, asking permission with the gentle waves of himself lapping up against her. Asking to be shown the damage that Gaius' loss had caused, what she had been stubbornly shielding because she had to be strong for him.
"Not anymore, Morgana." His voice whispered gently to her, and his tide increased in insistency, but still not enough to swallow her.
Timidly she nodded, hating again the way he thought he had to ask ever since that bastard Hengist, and dropped the rest of her guards to expose her own grief to the air. She almost winced as her husband actually stumbled as if struck, beautiful eyes wide.
"You're-you're not the only one who misses him, you know…" She muttered quietly, hugging herself like a child before him.
Merlin was across the bed before she could even register it, sweeping her into him with enough force to knock the breath out of her. Unable to resist clinging back, they fell together onto the half-made mattress, the feel of his hands in her hair the only thing keeping her from breaking down the way she couldn't let herself.
"I-I am so tired of crying." She whispered finally into her crook in his neck, after what felt like hours of them just laying together in their loss. "I feel like it's all I've done since I killed those people…"
"You didn't kill them." He said firmly in her ear, and she smiled ruefully into his skin.
"Please don't lie to me again, husband. I don't think I could take it."
Morgana's words were meant only with silence, and they resumed their quiet respite in the candlelight.
It was strange to say, but she loved arguing with him. It was why she pulled him into random spats for little to no reason, ones he stubbornly refused to admit that he enjoyed. She loved to fight, she couldn't help it; she had always been a knight to her core, and that would never change. But sparring with Merlin was like nothing else, like every other trouble in the world faded away and it was just them, trading barbs over the tiniest things and trying to hide their smiles.
(Making-up with him was even better.)
But Morgana hadn't fought with him over anything serious in quite a while, and there was one stance he just would not budge on. Uther Pendragon. She still remembered the first fight they had had about him.
"Well?" She began, more carefully this time. "Can you, or can't you?"
Merlin remained silent, staring at the floor.
"…Merlin? You could, couldn't you?" Still he said nothing. "You of all people could get away with this. Make it look like an accident, no one would suspect you. This would all be over." She was aware she was pleading, and it didn't sting her pride like it normally would.
"No." Merlin said, hoarsely but firmly. "I'm not a killer."
"Yes, you are." She reminded him briskly, because he was wasting time. "You said so last night."
Merlin winced and looked at his hands, clasped in his lap to stop them from shaking.
"…Low blow." He said under his breath.
Morgana's heart ached for him, for finally accepting what he wasn't, even as it filled her with relief. They were the in the same boat, as always; two people walking the line together between night and day, trying to stay balanced. She wanted him to be comfortable with himself, wanted him to know how much she loved every part of him, from the goofy servant to the alien sorcerer. If he could look at her, and tell her it was okay to be a killer and he loved her anyway, why couldn't he accept the same from her?
"If I kill him, I'll become him."
Morgana started, looking up at him in confusion. He sighed, almost nervously, and continued.
"That's what Gwen said to me, when… when her father died." The lady exhaled sharply, assaulted by memories of her part in poor Tom's death and the assassination attempt she no longer regretted. "I-I asked her what she'd do if she could take revenge on Uther, and she said that… that would make her just like him."
Merlin looked off somewhere to the side, his voice dropping to the barest whisper.
"And I'm so scared of becoming like him."
Morgana frowned. She loved Gwen to death, but the girl hadn't been through what they had, had never had to kill to save before. Gwen had never been given the power to change the course of history, and never been put in the position of having to decide whether to use it or not. Gwen still had her innocence, while Merlin's attempts at keeping his own were like holding water in his hands.
Because she knew how close he had been last week, when Uther had dared to raise a hand against her, had felt the strength of his rage as if it could crack the castle in two. It scared him, how much he loved her and the depths he could go to her for her sake... and not even shutting her out could stop that. He was never again going to be that bright boy that had wandered into Camelot last year, and she couldn't convince him that that was perfectly alright.
"…Merlin, you once told me that there is nothing wrong with violence so as long as it's not pointed at the innocent." She said softly, her caress bringing his guilty face back to hers. "Uther is not innocent, and nor is anyone else you or I have killed. You could never be like him, Merlin, no matter how violent you become, because you cherish what he threw away decades ago."
And when her hand came to rest on his racing heart, and felt it calm at her touch, she knew he'd gotten her message.
###
"Tell me of Nimueh."
Merlin's hands froze mid-lace as they helped fasten the back of her nightgown. The witching hour had long since passed, as had their dreadful fight, and they had been readying each other for bed in companionable silence. He felt utterly drained, but in the most satisfying way imaginable, as if his entire head had been emptied of all the things plaguing him. So it took him a moment to remember that she had overheard the dragon's jabs about her.
"Gaius… told me some things about her." Morgana continued carefully, piquing his interest. "That she was a Seer, like me, and he took her in… that that foul dragon turned him against me by playing on his fears of my becoming like her."
Merlin's head shot up to look at her face in the vanity mirror across the room, taking in his own wide-eyed expression.
"You didn't know…?" She whispered empathetically.
Merlin just shook his head against hers, because if he opened his mouth right now he didn't know what would come out. Hardly a day passed anymore where he wasn't discovering some new facet of the dragon's evil, and wondered how he could ever have been stupid enough to think him a friend.
"Merlin, please…" Morgana said, turning to face him and running her hands slowly up the front of his night shirt to cup his face. "I can't bear to see you shoulder this alone anymore."
His hands splayed against the thin fabric of her front, feeling goose bumps stand to attention underneath it, and buried his nose into her hair with a sigh.
I really do need to talk about this. Merlin relented.
"Nimueh was… Queen Ygraine's friend." He began carefully, watching her considering face. "When she couldn't get pregnant, Nimueh helped her. Magically."
"…Arthur was conceived by magic?" His love said incredulously, as her face softened with the rapt attention of a child being told a bedtime story. "Did Uther know?"
"Oh yes, milady." He said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He hated how hard it was to be impartial when it came to the king anymore. "He knew, and he also knew that creating life required it to be taken from somewhere. Nimueh didn't know where… and she hadn't considered that Arthur would sap that life from his own mother."
Morgana gasped. "Oh no…"
Merlin nodded grimly. "Ygraine finally passed when Arthur was born, and Uther snapped. He blamed not just Nimueh, but all magic for her death, and took out his grief on the whole world."
"And this Nimueh survived the Purge?" She asked inquisitively, burying her familiar fury at the mad king with surprising ease. "Came back for revenge?"
Merlin sighed again. This was the part he didn't want to talk about.
Gently, he took her hand and guided her to the bed, feeling her follow him under the covers. She latched onto him with just as much force as always, as if he was the missing part of her body come home, and he pulled the curtains of the four-poster bed closed around them with a twitch of his fingers.
"Nimueh may as well have declared war." He said into her hair, feeling from the fluttering of her eyelashes how wide awake she still was. "You may have even seen her around the castle, posing as a handmaiden from Mercia; that was when she was trying to spark a war by framing King Bayard for poisoning Arthur."
"That stupid little-!" Morgana cut herself off before she could start ranting, pulling back enough to look at him worriedly. "That was the first time I saw you die, wasn't it?"
Images of that day, the cup, Arthur stunned, Morgana staring worriedly in his peripheral vision, Nimueh grinning somewhere in the back, before he downed the goblet and it was like someone lit a match in his throat, and all his magic couldn't help him now, and he was falling-
"Stop." Merlin blinked his eyes open at the sound of her voice, bringing him back to Earth, to find her stony eyes filling his vision. He grimaced when he realized that the memories had trickled into her as well, and shot her an apologetic look, which she smiled sadly at.
"At least now I know why you were so adamant to save Uther from my hemlock." She replied carefully, trying to avoid another explosion because the fight about the king may have fizzled, but it had certainly not been settled.
He wondered if it would ever be.
###
"...What else did she do to you?"
Merlin started at her question, breaking out of another of his pensive moods. Morgana didn't like it when he withdrew like that; it reminded her too much of the impenetrable silence at Gauis' bedside, and she was terrified that he would go back into himself if she pushed too hard. Merlin had always required coaxing, but it had been awhile since she had needed to get something out of him.
Like, for instance, what this evil fucking harlot had done to him, right under her nose.
"…Actually, the first thing she did was send the afanc to poison the well." His angry flush quickly gave way to an odd embarrassed one. "To get revenge on me for stopping it, she… manipulated me into drinking the poison.
Morgana frowned at his tone. "How?"
Merlin looked at her guiltily, something strange in his face, and all of a sudden she realized what Nimueh had done and hit the roof.
"How dare-"
"Morgana, it was before I even really knew you, it-"
"No, how dare she!" Morgana snarled, aware from his hiss that she was now digging her nails painfully into his chest but was unable to care. Merlin had always been a lonely soul… and people like that were easily manipulated by those who would offer them even a moment's kindness. Even when Merlin had fallen in love with her, it had taken ages to convince him that she truly returned his feelings. Morgana had assumed he was just insecure, but this was the true reason, wasn't it?
"Morgana-"
"Some crazy little tart comes swanning into my man's life and-" She cut herself off with a wordless shout, because she could see it now, how vulnerable he was and how this cruel woman had used him, made him feel wanted and maybe even a little respected until he took the bait and choked to death in front of the people he loved.
If I could bring the bitch back to life, I'd kill her all over again, the bloody great whore-
Abruptly her murderous thoughts were interrupted by his kiss, and she felt the rage bleed away like leaves on a windy day, until all that was left was a quiet gratitude for what they shared. When he pulled away, looking ashamed and just a bit amused, she gave him a trembling smile.
"Well, now I know why it was so hard to convince you that my feelings were genuine." Morgana whispered, running her hands through his messy bedhead lovingly. Her face sobered. "…Tell me how she died, love."
And as the night darkened and the moon passed overhead, she listened to him speak of the Questing Beast… of the deal struck with Nimueh, and finally understood why he had been so cold to her that day, when she had offered him knowledge of a future he thought wouldn't be a part of. She learned of the dragon's unholy bargain with the witch- because if those words fit anyone, it was her- of just why poor Hunith had suddenly appeared on the verge of death, and wept with him over his goodbyes to Arthur and Gwen, and kissed him forgivingly when he spoke of how it hurt too much to say farewell to her, the love he thought he could never had.
And when it was over, when she finally understood just how much Gaius was willing to sacrifice to keep his loved ones safe, and just how powerful her husband was; how much he hated himself for what he had done that day…
When she was left holding him in the dark, kissing away the tears, she made a new vow to go along with those she'd already given him.
You'll never have to kill again, Merlin. Not while I'm here.
###
Gwen didn't know how to deal with this.
In the dead of night, she lay next to Arthur, savoring his hand running absent-mindedly through her unruly hair, the way her father had done for her when Elyan had teased her to the point of tears. She missed them terribly… she missed her family.
But even more, she missed Merlin and Morgana, her best friends in the world, whom she had lost tonight.
Because tonight, she had followed them down into a dragon's den and seen not her friends, her siblings; but two terrifying sorcerers wearing their faces.
Gwen whimpered and buried her head further into her Arthur's loving embrace.
No, she didn't know how to deal with this at all.
###
Not very lifechanging at all.
In case you haven't met me; hi, I'm Eidolon, and I love cliffhangers. :D
This chapter is dedicated to newboy, who has been scrambling for a protective!Morgana freak-out over Nimueh for ages now. I know it's not very much, but I hope it suffices. ^_^
So, The Fight ended up being much less "screaming fit" than initially drafted; I hope it's still alright, because I had left myself WAY too much to cover in this chapter and hopefully it's not too disjointed. At the very least it's all addressed now, and we can move on to focusing on the whole "arranged marriage" issue I keep getting distracted by. Apologies; I didn't mean to get that far off track.
Speaking of, I'm going to go ahead and announce that, after a bit of restructuring, we are finally nearing the endgame. Don't worry, there are still plenty of chapters of left, and knowing my decompression skills this could take months. Still, the end is in sight, and it will be a happy one! Of course, everything before it may not be. D:
Coming Soon: Six chapters ago I mentioned the onset of our favorite troll… and then promptly got sidetracked. I do that a lot. -_- (Sorry again, Haley~!)
BUT, it's here now! For real! (Hopefully!)