A/N - Set shortly before the start of series 4, when Morgana has just revealed her true colours and tried to take over Camelot, before disappearing with Morgause. I only realised after I wrote this that Morgause was injured at the end of series three, so maybe just...pretend that she's hiding it really well here?
-JKelly
Venal:
adj. showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery; corrupt
In the darkness, Merlin saw a light.
It was a light that he recognised to be magical - the sort of thing he himself might conjure up in a dark cave or on a cloudy night. But while his magical lights always brought a sense of comfort and safety, this one seemed to make his magic nervous, and he could almost feel it skittering around in his chest. Slowly, he began to make out the forms of two people walking towards him, one with a long skirt that he presumed must brush the floor he could not see, and the other in what seemed to be armour, because there was the slight clink of metal on metal whenever they moved, but not bulky armour like Arthur or his knights would wear. This seemed smaller, lighter, more...feminine.
Morgana and Morgause then. Vaguely, Merlin wondered what they wanted with him, but his thoughts were mostly taken by questions such as how he got into this magical darkness in the first place, and why couldn't he move his limbs, and why couldn't he remember what happened, and was Arthur okay - that last caused him to to tense and look around wildly as he realised that he might be somewhere in the darkness too, and Merlin just couldn't see him.
"Merlin, here you are," the soft lilt of Morgana's voice floated across to him, and for a moment he could almost imagine that all that had happened between them had been some sort of terrible dream. But then she continued, her voice suddenly hard, "somewhere you deserve to be at last."
"Now, now sister, remember our aims," Morgause suddenly seemed to leap forward and grabbed Merlin's chin in her hand, turning his head this way and that as though she were inspecting a horse, "Merlin here may prove useful yet."
"Whatever you want, I won't give it to you." said Merlin, wrenching his head from Morgause's grasp and hoping he sounded braver than he felt.
"Ah, but Merlin," Morgause crooned, "you're not a noble. No knight or clergyman. You're a peasant. One of the common people that Uther so likes to crush under his armoured heel."
Merlin had to admit, this wasn't a line of argument that he'd been expecting. General claims about the Pendragon line being evil, yes. An insistence that Arthur was no more worth following than them, sure. Being tortured for information about the Citadel that Morgana couldn't provide, absolutely.
A comment on the inherent classism of Camelot had not made his list.
"Are you going to try and paint yourselves as the champions of the poor? Because every time you attack Camelot with magic or armies or whatever, it's not the nobles whose homes and livelihoods you destroy when you raze the lower town, and it's not the nobles who you kill trying to flee through the locked gates of the citadel."
"Oh Merlin...we're not 'champions of the poor' as you put it, and in any war there will be collateral damage." Morgana had the grace to look ashamed, but Morgause didn't notice and continued.
"Fortunately for our purposes though, there are some things that you peasants can be relied upon to be. Scruffy, for one," she said, gingerly flicking at the corner of Merlin's neckerchief with a look of disgust on her face (his favourite neckerchief too, so how dare she treat it with such disdain, he thought), "vulgar - that's where that word comes from, you know, the language of the vulgus, the common people - and honourless."
"Look, I didn't come here to be insulted-"
"But most importantly," Morgause continued as though Merlin had never interrupted, merely raising her voice to drown him out, "peasants are venal. Corruptible. Bribable."
"Yes, I do know what it means. I might be 'scruffy, vulgar, and honourless' but I'm not an idiot. And I don't care what you give me, I won't betray Arthur."
"Not even...for five gold coins?" Morgana hid her face in her hand.
"Morgause...he has access to Arthur's gold. If he really wanted five gold coins he could just take them."
"Fine then. Ten."
"Nope." Merlin couldn't help but feel insulted that Morgause thought he'd be so easily bought.
"Twenty."
Merlin shook his head.
"Fifty! I will give you fifty gold coins to be my inside man."
"No amount of gold could ever persuade me to betray Arthur or Camelot." Merlin sighed and closed his eyes. It looked like he was going to be here for a while.
"You don't want gold?" Morgause seemed shocked at this pronouncement, as though a peasant turning down money had challenged her entire understanding of the world.
"What about your mother?" At this, Merlin opened his eyes again and looked at Morgana. "I saw how you cared for her, that time in Ealdor, and I saw how difficult her life was in that tiny, cold shack. Do what we want, and we'll make sure she's well taken care of for the rest of her life." Morgana looked at Merlin earnestly, her words taking Merlin back to a time when his feet practically froze solid in the winter and there was never quite enough to eat.
Morgause must have seen the longing on his face, because she took over Morgana's narrative, "Just think Merlin, your mother could live in the sort of luxury that you can never hope to provide her with as a simple servant."
Merlin only sighed.
"My mother would no more want to betray Arthur and Camelot than I do. There is nothing that you could offer me to make me do that. Nothing."
Just then, a different sort of light appeared in the direction the witches had approached him from. Unlike the orb now floating somewhere above his head, this light was not magical at all, and instead resembled more closely the flickering light of the pitch-soaked torches that lined the walls back in Camelot.
"I told you that this wouldn't work, sister," Morgana began complaining, heedless of the potential intruder, "the best thing that we can do about Merlin is to end his existence before he causes us any more prob-"
Morgause waved for Morgana to be silent when footsteps began to echo through the gloom, whilst whispering a spell that made the neckerchief that she had seemed to so despise stuff itself into Merlin's mouth, effectively preventing him from calling for help.
"Merlin?" The whisper floated through the darkness, and if he had been able to make a sound, Merlin would have laughed with relief.
"It's Arthur!" hissed Morgana, looking to her sister for guidance.
"This isn't over, Merlin. We will find a way to make you help us."
Unable to speak, Merlin simply raised an eyebrow.
A flurry of wind, and both the women and their sinister light was gone, leaving Merlin with a distinct sense of relief. Finding that he could move again, he spat the makeshift gag out of his mouth and stood up from the freezing floor.
"Arthur!" he shouted back, "I'm here!"
The torchlight moved towards him, and soon he could see Arthur's panicked face approaching him.
"Merlin? Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Are you alright?"
"I wasn't the one who disappeared for almost half a day on a hunting trip. What happened to you?!"
Merlin's first instinct was to come up with some sort of lie to cover up his conversation with Morgana and Morgause, to say that he'd wandered off into this dark cave and tripped over or something equally implausible. But this was Arthur, and although he had to lie to him more than he wanted to, as this particular kidnapping hadn't actually had anything to do with his magic, he realised that there was no reason not to tell him the truth for once.
"It was Morgana and Morgause. I found myself here and they tried to bribe me to be their inside man in Camelot, first with gold coins and then by offering to give my mother enough riches to practically make her a Lady, from the way they put it."
Seeing Arthur look around frantically, as though he'd somehow missed two grown women hiding in a corner, Merlin explained further: "They disappeared as soon as they heard you. You must have...scared them off?"
For a moment, Arthur looked at Merlin, concerned, and Merlin worried that he'd made a terrible mistake. Did Arthur think that he would have betrayed him for something like money? Was he worried that Merlin was lying to him to lead him into a trap?
But when Arthur finally spoke, it wasn't to realise any of the anxious thoughts whizzing through Merlin's mind.
"I suppose it's a good job they didn't offer you a day off then. I don't know what you wouldn't do for one of those."
Merlin grinned at the familiar banter, shoulders loosening with relief. "Is this your way of saying you should give me more days off? Because I wholeheartedly agree with you there Arthur."
"No, Merlin, this is my way of telling you that you're a lazy lump who's apparently just spent the last few hours sitting around here having a chat, and that when we get back to Camelot I'm going to need you to scrub my floors, polish my armour, proofread my speech for the feast - I haven't written anything for that one yet, by the way, so it might take you a while - and to see if you can't reach some of those cobwebs in the corners of my chamber somehow. Maybe...stand on a chair or something."
"Dollophead." muttered Merlin, a smile playing on his lips despite his words.
"At least I'm not an idiot." Arthur retorted.
"Ehh...jury's still out on that one, sire."
"Merlin!"
A/N 2 - Morgause's views are based on traditional medieval views on peasants and serfs (it's all sort of tied in with the feudal system and the great chain of being, both of which are pretty interesting if, like me, you're interested in things like that), and the word vulgar comes from the Latin vulgus, or the common people, making it another fun example of Roman opinions coming to define meaning in words derived from Latin. I think I spend too much time on the internet...