Morgana saw a lot of things that people didn't realise she saw.
Not just in her sleep – though those things were extraordinary, and she probably ought to have opened up to someone about them. Even to Gaius they were just 'nightmares'. Sometimes she wondered if her imagination was just unnecessarily hyperactive: that would have explained a lot. But she liked to think that there was something more to it – that she saw the future in her dreams because she could guess the future, through logic and deduction and fancy-sounding concepts like that. She liked to think that she could, to some extent, use that ability whilst awake – that she could read people like books, that she was far more observant than the average adult, never mind child. That was her explanation, anyway.
Morgana saw a lot of things.
She saw in the dream-Uther's eyes a manic passion, a hatred, a fury raging there that she did not recall from her waking moments. Yet after these dreams she looked him in the eye, and was surprised to see a fire there that she had not noticed before. It was a terrifying thing, really – to see the spark of the total destruction that she had imagined.
Before the dreams, she had thought Arthur's eyes to be hard and cold, but, when she saw the infinite warmth and wisdom in his dream-self's eyes, she started to see it in his every glance – once again like fire burning, but the fire of a hearth, not an inferno. It was reassuring somehow. She wondered if Arthur knew what his eyes revealed. He did not show it, if he did.
She had dreamt about Gaius several times now. She did not see him very often, but her fondness for the old physician evidently manifested itself in her dreams. He seemed wiser there, beyond the veil – his eyes were brighter, and hid more behind them. He had secrets. Often his role in her dreams was not as a dull kindly physician, but as a mechanism for change. He became to her one of Camelot's most fascinating characters.
Her faithful little servant Gwen, so lovely, so naïve – she was not much changed in this imaginary world, except that she seemed to have a good deal more authority. Sometimes Morgana looked across at her and tried to imagine the girl in her position. It was surprisingly easy. There was something about her, something she couldn't put her finger on. She wasn't sure if she liked it.
And, recently, the boy Merlin had started to appear. There was a dark horse if ever there was one – standing almost at Arthur's side, he said powerful things that Morgana could not recall when she awoke; he seemed to shine even when all other lights failed; he mingled himself into every scene, every image that flashed before her eyes. Sometimes she would find a name on her lips, something other than Merlin that nevertheless seemed to fit him, a name that failed her as soon as she opened her eyes. Judging by her other dreams, this all must mean something.
She watched him from time to time, quietly fascinated. His real-world self was the same clumsy smiling boy that she knew; she could discern nothing different in his eyes. There a beaming grin towards one of the guards – there a stumbling run up the castle stairs – there a kind word to anyone he should meet. He embodied sincerity and innocence. Morgana must have been the only person who ever thought to question this façade, if it was in fact a façade.
Merlin was different, if her dreams were anything to go by. He scared her a little, worried her more even than Uther did. Her dreams had never yet been wrong. He would stand at Arthur's side, at the top of Camelot; he would become powerful and important; he would be there in every dangerous situation, though whether he fought the danger or caused it she did not dare to say. She found herself wondering how it would happen. She found herself wondering what perils the city faced – what her role in them would be – why only she was shown these visions of a darker future.
Morgana saw a lot of things. And constantly, constantly, she wished and prayed that she didn't.