A/N: So good news and bad news... Bad news is I had a much fluffier version of this chapter written earlier in the week and then deleted it and started from scratch. Good news is I've thoroughly plotted out the rest of the story and this "two-three chapters tops" fic now looks like it's going to be more like twenty. So this universe is here for the long haul. That being said though, I also have about 60 pages of papers to write in the next six weeks. I procrastinate a lot, but I don't know how quickly the chapters will be coming...
Many thanks to Rory both for helping me plot and for looking over this chapter. 3
New visions hit and send her hurtling through the worst of her nightmares. They're the same ones she always sees, but she stands in Uther's place, condemning and killing. And yet she's villain and victim alike, losing her head on the chopping block and perishing in the flames. Tremors rip through her body, and she wakes terrified and alone.
Her arm is awkwardly trapped under her, guarding her face from the cold, bathroom tiles, and memories of the early morning rush back to her as pain runs through her wrist and reminds her of the fall. She hisses, pain and images whirling together, and pushes herself off the ground.
Aithusa is at her side instantly, meowing in what sounds curiously like concern, and gently paws at her. Sniffling, Morgana cradles him to her chest and presses a kiss to the top of his wrinkly head. The tears come on faster as she does, terrified of being left all alone except for the tiny creature in her arms, and she leans her head back against the wall and cries, desperate to make the dreams stop and the haunting images go away.
"I'll come home."
"You are home, Merlin. I can't ask you to leave your mother because I can't cope with a few dreams."
She's bundled up back in her bed, wrapped in the fluffy, silk lined duvet that soothes her even if it doesn't keep the nightmares at bay. Heavy, blackout shades keep the bright, early spring sunshine out of the room, and she wills the hours from passing too quickly. Every inch of her body aches from the tortured few hours of sleep, and exhaustion seeps from every pore.
She knows staying home is the first step to losing control, but she doesn't have it in her to face anyone today. She hasn't left the flat, hasn't even gone down to get her morning coffee from Gaius.
Instead she's spent the past hour talking to Merlin, phone propped up on an unused pillow and switched to speaker mode. The sound of his voice calms her, and despite the objections she makes, she wants nothing more than for him to come back so she can wrap herself up in it in person.
"They're more than just dreams, Morgana, and I'd come back even if they weren't."
"I thought you were dead set on staying put no matter what?"
"Well."
She hears the hesitant emotion in his voice and smiles into her pillow, not needing for him to say anything more.
"Have you spoken to Gaius?"
"He's coming on Friday. Whether I like it or not, apparently. I think he'll be happy to come even sooner if I ask him to."
"No doubt. Stay until Friday, though. I won't have you leaving your mum when you get to spend so little time with her as it is, and I'll be fine for two more days."
A pressure makes itself known in her chest as she speaks, and she silently berates herself for refusing to ask for help when he's so ready to give it. Two days may not be long, but they stretch out like an eternity before her.
"Are you sure?"
He sounds deflated, and she tells herself it's her chance to change her mind. She knows Gaius will gladly get on the next plane to Dublin, and that Merlin will be beside her before nightfall if he does. They'll go through with the plans they'd had to abandon and curl up to watch the films they'd picked out and left untouched.
But she also knows that she needs to stand on her own two feet and at least try to defeat it by herself.
"Positive."
"Morgana."
"I'll be fine, Merlin. Just stay on the phone a bit longer?"
"Tell me more about the sorceress in the Aithusa story?" she asks as the cat curls up beside the phone and purrs.
"I thought you were trying to take your mind off of work and rest?" Merlin asks, amusement evident in his tone.
"I am resting, but I still need to think while I do. Please?"
"Fine. Then I need to tell you about the warlock and the dragonlord first."
"Ooh, there are more characters involved?"
"Just one."
"Do tell."
She burrows into her pillow and closes her eyes as he tells her about a young warlock who loves the sorceress but is pulled away when he takes over the role of last living dragonlord from his father. He hatches the white, baby dragon who goes to save her, and then gets pulled into a war he fails to escape with his life.
She can't help the feeling of foreboding that runs through her as she listens, but the story resonates and appeals to her.
"It's rather romantic when you think about it."
"He dies. They don't get to live their lives together."
"No, but he hatches the dragon, and the dragon goes to her and heals her and keeps her company when he can't. He sends someone to help her when he can't and stays with her in his way."
"I suppose it is, then, but I prefer romances to have happy endings."
"How would you have had the story go then?"
"He would have survived the war, with her help, and then he would have gone to her, and they would have lived together in the woods with the dragon."
"Happily ever after?"
"You think it sounds stupid."
"No. Not at all. It's lovely."
They remain silent, and she mulls it over, wondering how it was that pieces of the story had worked itself into her dreams while others hadn't.
A far-fetched hypothesis is on the tip of her tongue when Merlin breaks the silence and makes her wish she'd never come up with it.
"I miss you, Morgana."
A bit longer stretches into much more as her paranoid thoughts fade away and the cadence of his voice lulls her into much-needed sleep. Dreams don't even scratch the surface of her consciousness, and it's well into the afternoon when she rises.
She stays in her pyjamas, determined to remain as comfortable as possible, and pulls a soft, cashmere jumper over the emerald silk. She pads through the flat and into the kitchen to make coffee before the dull ache in her head turns into anything more as the caffeine withdrawal works through her system.
Merlin's hastily scrawled instructions sit beside the espresso machine, and she gives it a whirl, managing to extract two unburnt shots for the first time. She adds a bit of steamed milk and sips, puckering her lips when the beverage doesn't quite taste like the ones Gaius and Merlin make for her below.
Still, it isn't terrible and she drinks at the kitchen counter, booting up her laptop.
After the past few weeks of silence, she doesn't expect to find any articles, but she looks anyway. She goes through her news alerts and networks and AP, and find she does.
Dozens of new articles about Uther playing the role of victim appear, and her anger rises back to the surface, all traces of dormant sympathy disappearing into rage. She knows she should x out of the articles, but she reads them anyway, one by one, seeping in indignation. Uther places Tom in the role of the villain, painting him as an irresponsible CFO with a secret substance abuse problem and then likens him to her own father.
And then he announces his intention to return to London.
At that, her breath hitches, and she reaches for her phone. Panic rises to the surface, and she struggles to breathe as she scrolls through her recent calls, going past Merlin and Gaius and half a dozen restaurants, before dialling Arthur's number.
She doesn't expect him to answer, doesn't even expect his phone to be switched on, and so she knows she shouldn't be upset when the call goes straight to voicemail.
But she is.
And when Gwen's phone does the same, she throws her own across the room, drawing satisfaction from the thump that sounds as it bounces off the cabinet lands on the plush carpet in the middle of the room.
Wanting nothing more than to guarantee that Uther doesn't have a place to call home if he dares to return to London, she goes into a packing frenzy, cursing and crying as she dumps all of his possessions into boxes without stopping to consider whether they carry any sentimental value. The antique swords he has hanging over the fireplace come off the wall, with the paintings he'd had made of his childhood home, and she smashes the odd, ceramic troll figurines he keeps on the mantelpiece. Satisfaction rushes through her as they shatter one by one, and she leaves the pieces on the ground, not wanting to clear up her therapeutic mess just yet.
Exhausted and having nothing left to break, she makes more coffee, pouring one, two, three shots of espresso into the biggest mug she can find as Aithusa sits on the kitchen counter.
The cat follows her around wherever she goes and is at her feet when she carries the coffee into Uther's study to finish what she'd started the night before.
She's halfway through boxing a shelf of old economics textbooks when her phone rings. Her heart jumps when she thinks it might finally be Arthur or Gwen calling her back, but she picks it up to find the selfie she and Merlin had taken the afternoon they'd gotten Aithusa flash across the screen.
Her breathing slows some at the sight, and she smiles as she answers, "Miss me already?"
"You know that I do. But that isn't why I'm calling."
He pauses, sounding more serious than he usually is on the phone.
"Is something wrong?"
"Are you still home?"
"I am. I've been packing."
"Packing?"
"Uther's stuff."
Merlin's breath audibly hitches, and Morgana frowns. "What is it?"
"I've been in the waiting room at the doctor's with Mum for the past hour, and they have the BBC on. I, uh. I think you should turn on the news, Morgana."
"What happened? What are they showing?"
"Uther."
Morgana doesn't answer and switches on the set Uther keeps in the room. She sits on his desk and watches as her father's face flickers off the screen.
"What was he doing?"
"He was only on for a minute or two, but he's been talking about how he had nothing to do with the embezzlement scheme and is planning to fly back to London within the week."
"He can't."
"He sounded pretty determined. They said they were going to show more extensive footage of their interview with him later on tonight."
"He can't, Merlin," she objects as her pulse begins to pound in her ears. "He can't just waltz back into our lives after he's destroyed everything. I won't let him."
"How can you stop him?"
"I'll find a way." She doesn't know what to do, but she knows she has to do something. "Thank you for telling me."
"I'm sorry you have to deal with this, but Morgana?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm flying back tonight. You aren't going to face this alone."
Hanging up, Morgana tightens her grip on the coffee cup and struggles to keep her breathing steady. She's happy that Merlin is coming home, terrified of what she'll do if left alone to face Uther.
For all of his actions, for all of his shameless cries of innocence, she can't believe that he has the nerve to change his mind and declare that he's coming back. She never wants to see him again, never wants to hear his voice or allow him to be anywhere near the people she loves.
She refuses to allow Uther to hang over Arthur and Gwen, and she wonders yet again if they're aware of all that's happening in the wake of their absence.
She never wants him to meet Merlin or burden Gaius or target any other human being as prey.
She drains the rest of her cup and throws it against a newly emptied bookcase, giving up on keeping her calm. The cup shatters at the contact, and her stomach sinks with regret as the pieces fall to the ground. She's teetering on the edge, and guilt mixes with anger and shame, triggering more tears.
Aithusa meows and flattens her ears as the cup hits the bookcase, and Morgana takes a shaky breath as the guilt multiplies. "I'm so sorry, Aithusa."
She reaches out to him, but Aithusa leaps off the desk and runs out of the room, leaving her alone to deal with the predicament.
Breathing deeply, she wills the tears to stop falling so she can find a solution. She spots the scoop Uther keeps beside the fireplace to gather stray ashes, and she crouches by the bookcase to gather the white, ceramic pieces. Moving across the room to dump them into the dustbin, her eyes meet the safe that had lain hidden behind Arthur and Uther's portrait, and a possible path clears before her.
Uther had never discovered that she'd cracked the safe, and the files proving her father's suicide sit within it. She'd vowed to keep the information to herself, to respect Gorlois's memory and to protect Arthur, but making such documents public would disgrace Uther and prove without a doubt that he wasn't the innocent man he claimed to be. Such a move would support her theory that Uther had had Tom killed, and there would be no way he'd be allowed to stay in London as a free man.
Trembling, she approaches the safe and lets out a sigh of relief when the code is still the same. She draws out the document case at the side of the box, and trying to regulate her breathing, carries it out of the room.
She switches her phone to silent, not wanting to risk being side-tracked from doing what she now knows she needs to do, and settles onto the floor in front of the coffee table.
Her heart pounds in her chest as she extracts packets of papers until she comes to a stack of journals at the bottom of the box. Gorlois's papers were near the top of the box the last time she'd ventured into the safe, and the journals are new to her. Frowning, she pulls them out and places them on the table. Uther had never struck her as one to write down his thoughts or sentimentalize the present, and she draws away from them as another possibility crosses her mind. The journals can wait until the correct documents are in her hands.
Her and Arthur's birth certificates, fake passports with Uther's photographs.
Gorlois's death certificate.
Bank records.
Uther's will.
She rifles through the papers, stacking them in order of relevance and potential use, ignoring the feelings of guilt that bubble to the surface with every new document she finds.
It isn't until she locates all of the files related to Gorlois that Morgana turns to the journals. All six of them are identically bound in supple red leather but unadorned. Opening the journal at the top of the pile, she finds the scrawl she expects and the spidery, elegant 'Y' that she knows so well.
Her mother had bequeathed her with all of her personal belongings upon her death, but the guilt that has plagued her through the evening intensifies with every page that she reads. Yet the more she reads, the more she understands that she isn't going to be able to stop, and that her mother wasn't the woman she believed her to be.