AN: YAY! THANKS FOR NOT BEING TOO ANGRY WITH ME, GUYS, AND THANKS FOR THE REVIEWS! :D I kept my promise of an update this week! :)) I feel very proud. BUT I SHALL MAKE NO OTHER PROMISES NOW THAT I HAVE FULFILLED THIS ONE. Anyway, I apologise for any mistakes that might be spotted. This might be the most carelessly edited chapter I have, so. :))

I warn you of some of the content here. :) Just MIGHT disturb you.

Standing Resistance

Chapter 11

Gwen wasn't sure why, but she had an idea as to the reason behind the extreme trembling of her hands. She reached for her own mug of tea on the table, trying to steady her hands by tightly gripping it with her fingers and pressing her palms against the warm ceramic, never breaking her eye contact with Merlin.

She had expected him to change, of course. It was inevitable. She would be crazy if she would think otherwise.

When she was still queen and her suspicions of him being more than just the servant he acts to be were confirmed, she learned to never underestimate his mastery in the art of fraudulence. It was ridiculous, really, that they had not seen it earlier than they had, but he had hid his magic and his destiny well enough. His skills in other aspects were not to be underestimated either, as he has earned respect from many respectable people from many places, and he has acquired respectable titles, jobs, and positions.

As he was now, currently, a businessman, and the founder and owner of several luxury watch brands and a few real estate companies. Big-time man, their Merlin was.

She was prepared for all of that. Some were expected, and some even managed to surprise her, though she had tried to brace herself for those as well. But… nothing could have prepared her for this sudden turn of events.

Speechless and dumbstruck, she simply waited for further explanation from Merlin.

"She did die that day, after Camlann," he managed to say. "I'm sure of it. I had killed her myself." It was then, as he started talking about Morgana, that she could see the guard he had lifted in his eyes, and she could hear the distance he put between them in his voice. He turned stoic, emotionless, and it broke her heart to see his own crumble behind a wall of distrust and forced indifference. His tone had grown softer, his posture stiffer, his hands clasped more tightly on his lap, but the expression on his face just seemed—seemed resigned.

"How is that even possible?" Gwen asked in disbelief. She didn't even know how she found the voice to speak, but that didn't matter.

Merlin smiled, but she could not decipher the true meaning behind it.

"Magic loves her, Gwen," he replies with a small sigh as he looked back down to his lap. "She is magic." This time, she's sure that it's sadness that's hinted behind the quirk of his lips. "But it seems that destiny holds an equal amount and force of love for her, and with both magic and destiny combined, they would most probably have enough grasp over her to not have her disposed of."

When he fell quiet, the noise of the café around them becoming more unnoticed as a part of the background, she remained patient and had waited. Gwen could tell that despite his silence, there was more to his story, and what he has said was less than what he was willing to tell, less than what his lonely soul was screaming with need to speak.

"She came back," he smiled. "And she put a dagger to my throat the next time I saw her since I stabbed her with a sword." Merlin laughed humourlessly. "It took me years and years to finally find out what happened, after endless nights of investigation and coercions. I'm not sure if I'm even supposed to be telling you this," he continued, his eyes shining with amusement, but whether it was amusement towards the situation itself, to her, or to himself, she could not tell, nor why it was that he even felt remotely entertained by the situation.

"She told me that she woke up into the night, alone and confused and undeniably terrified." He took a small sip of his cooling tea, smiling bitterly at the rim of his cup. "She wasn't even bleeding anymore, her blood having been almost gone from her veins hours and hours before she awoke. And, frankly, she didn't know how long exactly she lied there in the trees near the Lake of Avalon. She couldn't move; she was too weak to. There was a hole in her heart and the blood that was supposed to be flowing throughout her body was gone, and she was in too much pain." Merlin's mouth twisted with displeasure and his eyes hardened. He shook his head. "And before she came back from death, she had a vision. But to this day, it was something that she never revealed to me, and it was something I could never find out for myself. He smiled wryly at her, then. "But I could never forget what had happened to her."

•

To say that she was surprised and confused was an understatement.

Morgana blinked into the darkness, thinking back as questions flooded her mind with the previous events escaping her thoughts momentarily: what happened? Why was she there? Where was she?

As she prodded and pounded her mind for answers, she was hit by a sudden realisation and a wave of horror as her hand went to press against the hole in her side, the sum of the recent events hitting her with a force greater than that of a hurricane.

Morgana felt for the blood around her, already feeling the little energy she had drain away very rapidly with the small movements she made, and her fingers met a mixture of almost dried and sticky fluids that sunk into the earth beneath her and splattered and painted the rocks and roots that stuck up from beneath her body. Then, there was only one thing that ran down to every nerve of her body, making her shiver with so many emotions all at once: horror.

Complete and utmost horror.

She let it sink in into her skin until she thought it were the very essence of her being. The night had dragged on slowly, and after feeling as if she had gained some of the ability to move that she had wasted earlier, she raised her hand to the nearest pulse point and easiest to reach. Shaking, she felt for her wrist, and there she felt a pulse. It was faint, like the twitching of a bird's wing as it waited for death, but it was there. Except, there wasn't any blood to pump through her veins. It had all gone to keep the earth moist and satisfied.

Anger, terror, hurt. Confusion. Nothing could even cover those. She could feel them pierce into the hole in her side as an invisible blade, unrelenting and cold, and surge into her system in place of the hot blood that would bring justice to the life she had such a privilege of enjoying at the moment.

Her thoughts got to nowhere. Her questions met dead ends, the tears that escaped her closed eyelids betraying her into the blackness of the world, and her barely beating heart truly did feel empty.

It all drove her to the fine line between sanity and madness. She waited to die and for it all to simply end, but her torture just seemed to go on and on as if time was nonexistent. She woke up at times, some in the break of dawn as the sky was lit by a faint glow of a promise of grey skies or of one in pale gold, or at dusk, as the darkness at the edges of the sky began to devour the daylight encompassing the world. Sometimes, it was noon, and she would relish the warmth she could get. But most of the time, she awoke into the embrace of the night: barely a wink of the pale face of the moon from between the leaves above her head, and barely a sound.

She lost count of the number of times she lost consciousness and blacked out with all the pain, and in exhaustion of this tiring endless cycle, but it was the pain that was constant in the inconsistent pattern she was in. There was barely any blood in her system to even ooze out of her stab wound, her veins almost dry. She barely felt herself heal for all the time she stayed idle, until it was unbearable.

After what felt like an eternity, countless times having the sun and moon take each others' places, it had become clear to her that no, she was not to die. She screamed and shouted and cried for help, for somebody, anybody, to rescue her, to save her, to do anything, as long as it ended her agony. Desperation became an old friend to her, but it had done nothing to ease her.

No one came, no one answered her cries and pleas and her screams of pain. The Lake of Avalon continued on with its solitude, having barely a single soul, anyone or anything, passing by along the forest's edges. Even in her weakness and pathetic state, she scoffed in bitterness she couldn't help but feel. And even if there was anyone, who would help her? A crazed witch who killed thousands and forced her authority and dominance upon those who were dark and wicked to bend to her will?

No one would help her.

Desperation sitting deeply in her bones, she wept as she pressed her hand against her side, her throat dry and her stomach in knots, and tried to summon her magic. She tried to weave back together her flesh, stitch by stitch, but…

It was to no avail.

Her despair grew deeper and deeper at each failed attempt, and it truly seemed that her torture would go on until the world would cease in its existence, to atone for the crimes and sins she deemed herself to have had the right to commit.

Then, there came her little ray of sunshine, and she cried with a joy that was incomparable to any that she had thought she felt in her life.

Aithusa.

Aithusa, his dragon, no, her dragon, came to her calls, and as soon as she came, she tried to heal her, did everything to try to make her better, but the dragon's magic did nothing for her. So despite her being drained, of blood, of magic, of life, she continued to push on and forced herself to use her magic, and tried to heal herself, to heal the wound that had swollen in infection and almost rotting in its mangled flesh.

Aithusa stayed at her side, comforted her, and kept her company. She cried and wept, confronted mercilessly with the hurt and anguish and pain and the truth of her downfall—she tried so many times to kill herself, to end it all herself, if the circumstances failed her.

She cried each time her magic failed her, and among the many things she lost count of, it was also the number of times when the day passed on to the night, light eating darkness, and darkness eating light in turn. But when she did finally tap into her powers, her gifts that she should have been able to use from the start, it only brought her even more excruciating pain. But it was a choice she had to make: to stay here in an eternal agony, or to face a price to test her abilities and everything that hadn't seemed to matter since she awoke where she lied?

So she faced the pain. It was a slow process: healing her self when she had no energy, no blood. She was able to eat, as Aithusa brought her when she needed food or water, but the smell and sitting on her own waste was starting to become unbearable, and thus she avoided to taking anything in unless her hunger and thirst won out her reluctance.

Her cries had turned into wails and screams to the hidden sun and into the endless night, and to a certain extent, she truly did go mad.

•

"How did she live? What was in her vision?" Gwen whispered as she watched the horror on Merlin's face as he relived the tales of Morgana's survival, or to be more accurate, resurrection, in his mind. "What happened to her?"

He was silent, and the quiet air that existed between them stretched on for too long. His lips thinned into a line, his eyes cast down to stare at the coffee table, and absentmindedly stroked the surface of the leather case he had.

"There are some things you are not meant to know."

Gwen's nostrils flared, but said nothing. When Merlin's gaze met hers once more, his eyes were glassy, and it made her swallow the lump that had risen in her throat.

"It isn't something that should come from me, either. What happened to her was a sliver of knowledge given to me through a projection of memory in my mind. I don't even know what she saw in her vision," he added with a slight shake of the head. "And it isn't a wound that needs to be reopened. The happenings of that part of the past have no place in this present, nor in the future, other than the lessons it taught and the wisdom it brought."

Gwen stared at the firmness of his words, and at how set his face had become, leaving room for no other objections and arguments.

"But Merlin," she started to asked, suspicion and caution laying at the wake of her every word. "Is she behind all of this? Has she any part to play in all of this… whatever it is that's going on?" She let her voice go down into a hush, daring not to let it out any harsher and louder to his ears. "Is she the reason for all of this?" Again, she had said silently in her mind.

His eyes flashed and burned, and Merlin's hands tightened into fists.

"No," he said firmly. "No. She has nothing to do with this, at least nothing to its making." He leaned in closer to Gwen, and he softened his expression, only for it to remind her of the boy he had used to be, a young servant in Camelot, one with a kind heart and held bonds of trust with almost everybody. She frowned and licked her lips, moving almost unnoticeably away from him, and it made his heart fall a little bit more than it already has.

"Trust me, Gwen, please. She has changed."

It took her a while to let his words sink in. But he saw it in her eyes then, the way her mistrust and disbelief sprang into her face. Gwen clutched at her armrests until her knuckles turned white, and she stared at Merlin hard until he almost wanted to squirm under her scrutiny.

Memories of an almost unbreakable bond between sisters, not bound by blood, flooded her mind's eye. Whispers of gossip, stifled giggles, and lively chatter that took the better part of their lives to have gained that level of closeness turned into careful smiles and held-back secrets, uncertainty and unsaid suspicion in their every move as they held themselves with caution. Then, lies and deceit left bitter tastes in their tongues as they danced around each other, never admitting aloud the sisterhood lost, but the truth settling in their chests.

Those turned into admission, the established walls of falsehood shattered to reveal even more permanent rifts in their friendship. They chose their sides, chose to be enemies, because they felt that they had no other choice.

Choked down thoughts of a certain dark tower had fought to invade her mind, of all of her deepest and most kept secrets and darkest nightmares as they danced around her in the pitch blackness of her surroundings, taunting, always haunting.

She remembered faces hiding their brokenness behind smiles and other masks of emotion. She remembered cries of war, of metal clashing against metal, of screams and shouts as chaos overtook homes and villages, of whimpers of pain and weeping in agony, of preparing to march into battlefield and of the mournful silence that came after.

She remembered the last time she saw the face of her husband, on that day that was taken away from him, when she had prepared herself for the loss, but never learned to make the pain any easier to bear.

So how could he ask that of her?

Asking her to forgive her wasn't as hard as this. Forgiveness, that wasn't too hard to give. She could try to understand her point of view, even when the end didn't justify the means. To trust him, however, that she could trust her? That was a more impossible request.

"This time, Merlin," she whispered beneath her breath as she stared at him with a hard fixed look from underneath her long eyelashes, "you might be asking for a little too much."

Merlin's eyes widened at that as he leaned back into his chair, his brow lifting as he stared at her expectantly.

"Have you forgotten about all that she's done in the past?" she asked with a calm she didn't truly feel. "Do you not remember what she has done to me, to Arthur, to Camelot and its people? Have you forgotten about what had happened, what she turned into?" Gwen's throat tightened as she went on as anger began to seep into Merlin's gaze. "Have you forgotten what she could still turn into, what she could still be?

"Because if you do remember, then how can you ask me of this?"

The words that came next from his mouth were bitter and were accompanied by spite.

"That," he started as his gaze settled unblinking and unforgiving into her own, making her look down at her hands, "is a past so long ago, that it turned into stories and myths and fairytales. Do you think a thousand years too short to change a person, to repent for one's sins and mistakes? Do you still think her too foolish and blind to see her mistakes and regret and mourn for them?"

Gwen could not meet his eyes.

"Have I not lived long enough to say that I know of what I speak of? Have I not lived through enough to earn a certain level of trust and respect from you?"

She looked up at him then, and it came down upon her as she looked into his hard eyes and set mouth, the true meaning behind his life, that she has lived but less than a tenth of a fraction of his long years, and of how she sounded to him. She may have been a queen once, but she must seem like a whining girl who submerged herself in a pool of her own selfishness.

She couldn't answer.

Moments ticked by as she barely held up her shameful eyes into his own, his expression slowly softening as the apology written all over her face. He frowned regretfully at the result of his actions, and gave her a smile of apology of his own.

"I'm sorry. I…I—" he swallowed before continuing, "I should have handled that better. I—I'll give you some time to think about it, okay? You know, for a chance to digest everything that's been said. You deserve at least that much."

Gwen smiled weakly at him, nodding, and stood with her apron clutched tightly in her hands. "I—I should probably be going," she stammered. She smoothed down her shirt and her jeans, and when she lifted her head to look back at him, he was already standing as well. "My father needs me."

Merlin nodded and moved from the other side of the coffee table to embrace her tightly, and she returned it with fervour, oblivious to the already darkened sky outside.

"Take care of yourself, okay? Don't hesitate to call me or try to find me."

•

Morgana pursed her lips as she stared at Merlin from across the table, the light from the candles that were steadily afloat in midair casting gentle shadows across her face in the dim room. Her straight posture and raised eyebrows were of exasperation at the unnecessary display of magic in the twenty-first century, for Christ's sake, of the dramatics put into the scene around them, of the piles of home-cooked meals heaped up around her that were enough to feed five, and at that smug, almost innocent smile on his face. Almost.

"This isn't going to let you off the hook that you were an arse earlier," she said as she gingerly picked up a dinner roll.

Merlin nodded. "Of course, of course." Oh, how she wanted to wipe than crooked smile off his face. "I just wanted to show how much I care for my love," he said from the other side of the table, letting sincerity lace in with his humour.

She shook her head, letting her smile hide behind a curtain of her lush black locks of hair, not willing to give him the satisfaction he wanted to see.

Minutes of idle conversation and laughs went by as they ate, and they were submerged into a comfortable silence, until Merlin broke it with a statement that brought pure shock into her bones.

"I was with Gwen today."

Morgana froze in her seat, her eyes on a bowl of sautéed mushrooms as she forced her breathing to go back to its normal pace.

"Something is happening already, Morgana," he continued, his eyes searching hers as she slowly lifted her gaze. "Something has already started."

She swallowed painfully as she pushed down emotions of panic and fright from her composure. She nodded at him, letting her hands rest on the table and put on a thoughtful expression to let him know that she was listening.

"There are already a handful of them back," he continued softly, and she heard the caution in his voice as she saw it in his eyes. "Old friends and old enemies alike." He looked down onto the table, shook his head, and put on a happier expression. "Did you know that Gwen's in college? She's going into university while she works."

Hearing of her old friend and confidant pulled at the edges of her mouth. "That's good. I hope she's been doing well," she replied, and she meant it. She wanted her friend happy, despite everything. "How did you meet her again?"

She listened to Merlin begin his tale of meeting Gwen at a coffee shop, tried her best, at least, but her thoughts were in incoherent order, filled with too much, even after they clean up and until they had lain together that night in the darkness of their bedroom later that night, her mind was still swimming with worries and unsaid words, and the fear she felt was stronger than any other time she could remember.

AN: Please leave reviews! :D They give me more encouragement, inspiration, and more drive to write. :) Writers' food, they are.