Summary: Chapter 2: Merlin explains to Morgana exactly why we shouldn't trust randomly appearing 'long-lost' relatives who plot regicide. She doesn't enjoy the lesson. Or, alternately: What if Merlin had actually confronted Morgana about why Morgause and her invasion were Not GoodTM? (You know, instead of just jumping automatically to murder because the big, sketchy magic lizard said so?)
A/N: Another snippet that is most likely in the same 'verse as the one where Merlin gave Arthur and his knights what-for over torturing Gaius. I was never actually sure whether Morgana knew exactly what Morgause was planning, or if she even knew she was powering the spell. If I ever write the full fic, the scene will definitely have a proper conclusion, but as of right now, the rest of it is refusing to reveal itself to me.
"What have you done?" Merlin asked her - like he knew for a fact that she had something to do with the obviously magical sleeping sickness. Like it was a foregone conclusion. Like just because she had magic, she was doing something evil. The thought ignited her temper and she geared up to lash out at him. It was so much easier than facing the fear and unease she'd felt as she'd watched Gwen slump over, or the serving girl in the hallway collapse to floor, or that one guard pass out still somehow upright and with his eyes open.
Never mind that he was right and she did have something to do with what was going on. She was doing this for the greater good. Morgause would come and depose Uther, and get rid of the ban, and magic would be free. And no one would have to die and she wouldn't have to fear for her life. He didn't know what it was like to live with a noose always dangling around his neck, or the terror that anyone at any moment would just somehow figure it out and announce him as magical and condemn him to death, even though they'd laughed and smiled with him the day before. How dare he accuse her of being or doing evil just because he knew she had magic?
Despite the sneer she knew was on her face, one that had sent greater men than him running, Merlin continued to stare at her with the same mixture of disappointment, pity, and faint horror. She couldn't stand it.
"Why would you think I had anything to do with this?" she hissed at him, eyes narrowed. "Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to figure out how to fix it?" she demanded.
"You never offered to help," he said quietly.
Morgana paused, taken aback. "What?"
"The entire time this has been happening," he clarified. "You never offered to help. Usually, Gaius has to kick you out of his chambers because you're getting underfoot demanding to do too many things at once. You're never this quiet in a crisis."
Before she could respond to that, he continued.
"And you've been staring out the southern windows all day, but you never looked down into the courtyard at all the citizens coming in in a panic; you've been looking out instead of down, like you're waiting on something. And you smiled when we got news that the king fell ill when you thought no one was looking." He didn't step any closer to her, or raise his voice, but somehow, there was authority in his tone when this peasant country bumpkin then told her: "Whatever you did, you need undo it before someone gets hurt."
To be fair, Morgana had never been very good about being told what to do, uncharacteristic authoritativeness or not.
"Just because of what I can do," she hissed at him, mindful of the fact that there were still people up and about who hadn't succumbed yet and could possibly overhear them, "you're accusing and judging me? You have no right to-"
"Do you remember how Will died saving Arthur?" he cut her off.
Shocked at his audacity, she couldn't remember what he was talking about.
"My best friend, for all my life in Ealdor," he explained to jog her memory. "Do you remember how he died when we went to save my village from the bandits?"
Her mind flew back to the previous year in a dusty village, with Hunith's humble peasant food, and Arthur being an ass without even realising it. Back to teaching a group of peasant women how to defend themselves if their menfolk were overrun because they were determined to save their homes, to Merlin's friend who told them embarrassing childhood stories and made Arthur jealous, the one who died making the windstorm to-
Her eyes widened as the memory came roaring back in startling clarity. The arrow, the magic, Arthur pardoning him (which really wasn't his place to do because they weren't within Camelot's borders). Merlin grew up with a magical friend. It was probably how he was able to recognise it in her. Which meant that Merlin wasn't afraid of magic like Arthur seemed to believe.
She had assumed that any kindness she'd received from him since realising her magic was because he was afraid to get on the wrong side of her temper. But Merlin had always been kind. He hadn't changed. She was the one who had become suspicious of him.
She hadn't realised her mouth had dropped open until it snapped shut when he spoke again.
"Morgana, what did you do?" he asked again, and this time, it was more of a plea.
Thrown at the recent revelation - he knows I have magic and doesn't hate me - and more than a little off-balance at what it could mean, Morgana couldn't properly string a coherent thought together. If this was what Gwen felt like all the time when she got tongue-tied, Morgana would never be impatient with her about it again. "You don't-" she stammered.
Suddenly, Merlin was right in front of her, her wrists in his hands and his blue eyes boring into her own, frantic for reasons her mind was just too disconnected to discover. It was enough to snap her back to the present.
Still, she hesitated. Her sister was relying on her to help end the Purge. But this was Merlin - the one who helped her realise her magic and still wasn't condemning her despite the spell she'd been part of.
Apparently she took too long because Merlin shook - actually shook - her. "Morgana, there is an army coming, and if you don't tell me what you did, people will die."
That cleared her head enough for her to regain some of her usual self. "No one is going to die - except maybe Uther," she said, brushing his hands off. "The spell is only putting everyone to sleep. Morgause will-"
But she didn't get to finish. "Morgause?!" Merlin demanded, just barely keeping his voice from carrying. "You're working with Morgause?"
All at once, her earlier irritation came back, and Morgana did lash out this time. "She's my sister! We're going to depose Uther and bring magic back! Don't you understand?" she pleaded. She needed him to understand. Merlin had always been a rather unique friend to Arthur, and by extension, to herself. He had always been able to understand them in a way that servants and peasants rarely did or even could. "We just want it to be safe for people like us to live alongside everyone else."
"And you thought Morgause was the best person to help you?" he demanded incredulously. "I never thought I'd say this to you of all people, but how could you be so foolish?" Merlin asked, running agitated hands through his hair and pacing away from her.
Morgana recoiled, stung at his words. It hurt, and from Merlin of all people, who had always spoken his mind, the idea that he thought her stupid felt like being hit over the head with a glaive.
Without giving her a chance to rally and argue as she was wont to do, Merlin turned back to her, face angrier than she'd ever thought him capable of being. Honestly, it scared her a bit, and the fact that he had distanced himself (probably so that he wouldn't shake her again - or worse, her mind supplied) somehow made it worse.
"Morgause, the one who broke into the palace - your home - to challenge Arthur - the man who's always been a brother to you - to a duel to the death," Merlin ranted in a hissed whisper, hands flying. "Morgause, who tried to get Arthur to kill his own father. Morgause, this sister who has conveniently shown up just as you realise that you have magic. Morgause, who is marching on Camelot with an army, when you've already cast a spell that should put everyone to sleep. That Morgause is the one you expect to bring magic back to Camelot peacefully?"
He really couldn't believe that Morgana - headstrong Morgana who could match Arthur in strategy games and if not physically overpower him in a spar, manage to outsmart him at least some of the time - had fallen for something so transparent and trite.
Hearing it all listed in that manner, she could see the inconsistencies. The shame that bubbled in her was something she hadn't felt since she was a young girl and had done something monumentally stupid that got her a thorough dressing-down. But in that funny way of human emotions, it all coalesced into a burning anger.
Maybe it wasn't her best decision, but Morgause was her sister, and they were trying to protect magic in Camelot. Why could he not understand that?
"Maybe you have no problem with continuing to stand by and watch innocent people be burned alive for their abilities, but we are taking actual steps to change it," Morgana asserted hotly. She stepped right up to him to drive her point home. "You don't know what it's like to live in constant fear, to worry that all your friends will turn on you, that you could be murdered for an ability you never asked for. So don't you dare try to condemn me for fighting to survive."
Morgana had expected surprise, maybe a bit of fear at her fierceness, a return to meekness. What even her dreams couldn't have shown her was the pure rage that lit up Merlin's eyes.
"I don't understand?" Merlin demanded. After everything he'd done, the sacrifices he'd made, the attempts to help and support, all his life up to this point, that Morgana of all people wanted to condescend to him like this, especially now, was more than he would even attempt to take.
"No, Morgana," he sneered, getting right back into her space. "You don't understand. Ealdor wasn't even in Camelot, but Will and I lived every day with the fear that the 'Red Cloaks' would march in to kill us, to burn down our homes with our families still inside, to torch the fields it took the whole village to plant, and the set us alight in the midst of it all to 'purify our tainted spirits'," he sneered. It was more the foreign-ness of such an expression on his face than the expression itself that made her want to recoil. "It wouldn't matter that Old Man Bromley was a recluse, or that Mrs. Paxton was pregnant and had just moved there and didn't actually know us. The Red Cloaks would kill everyone because Ealdor was small enough that, by Uther's standards, everyone would have been complicit in some way in hiding the magic. It didn't matter that Ealdor wasn't actually in Camelot's lands; because there were other villages outside Camelot that had burned before."
Morgana's eyes widened, but she held her ground out of sheer inborn stubbornness.
Merlin continued, pressing his case, because he would make her understand that there was more to the world than just her experience, and she would do well to remember it. "You don't know what it's like to live as a child being sent to bed every night with a warning about how magic would destroy you and everyone you loved when, just that day, it had stopped you falling out a tree you shouldn't have been climbing; to see witch hunters pass through with Druid children in cages, whether or not they had magic, to collect a bounty from Uther's coffers. You don't know what it's like to be sent into the heart of it all when your mother discovers the secret between the two of you and fears for your life because the only person she knew who could distance you from the danger at home was 'The Slaughterer's' physician." His expression hardened. "Two months of unease, surrounded by friends who had stood with you to fight this same problem before, is absolutely nothing compared to a lifetime of terror and uncertainty. So don't you dare to try to justify this to me. You've fought for the innocent before. This was to save yourself, no matter who else would suffer."
Morgana opened her mouth to argue the last point, but Merlin steamrolled over her. "Arthur is as good as your brother, and Gwen has been more of a sister you than Morgause has ever been. Did you really believe that Morgause would let Arthur, Uther's son, live, especially when she'd tried to kill him before? Did you believe she would overlook Gwen - ordinary, non-magical, kind Gwen, who had grown up in magic-hating Camelot? Did you think she would spare Gaius, the man who turned away from his magic so that he could stay to take care of you and Arthur and all the citizens of Camelot after the queen died? Do you think she actually values you as her sister, or as a means to an end? How long has she known about you? Why only show up now? And why not take you away to safety instead of making you the source of the destruction of your home and the people you love?"
He took a deep breath and straightened back up, suddenly looking tired. Morgana realised with a start and a jolt of fear that he may be succumbing to the spell as well. Despite not being as big or muscular as most of the men and knights she had been surrounded by all her life, Merlin always had an air of some underlying strength and indomitability. To see him be brought low by this spell she was helping with twisted her stomach for reasons she couldn't fathom.
"You're smarter than that, Morgana," he said. "At the very least, I thought you were." He turned away from her, and she couldn't put into words the feeling that spread from the pit of her gut to fill her from head to toe. A sort of nameless terror at the thought that Merlin, who seemed to be able to bring out the good in Arthur that no one else would have believed was there, was abandoning her, not because of her magic or the fact that she was a noble, but because she'd managed to actually disappoint him badly enough to lose his respect.