Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin or Angel

Thanks to Deiticlast for being my beta-reader.

It's been awhile for Ruins – my writing motivation has just been elsewhere for a while, but I
didn't abandon this fic, promise. :p

As I often do, I assume you are more or less familiar with the episode being rewritten/retold here. I'd suggest reading a summary or transcript of 2x09 "The Lady of the Lake", or watching it again, before reading this chapter, though you don't have to follow it completely.

The Ruins of My Kingdom to Come

By Alkeni

Chapter 25: Temporary Common Cause

When Morgana had heard that Halig was in town, she'd felt fear, hate, anticipation, and opportunity. Rationally, she knew that unless she used magic right in front of him, Halig would never even think to accuse the King's ward of being a spellcaster, and the brutish man was little more than a lazy thug anyway. The people he brought to Uther, though usually 'guilty' of breaking the King's laws on magic to one degree or another, were never a threat to anyone. It didn't stop Uther from paying the repulsive man his bounty, locking the person up, and executing them at the earliest convenience.

Halig, like the Witchfinder, like so many others, was just a man that played on Uther's fear and arrogance and hatred for his own gain. She'd never liked him, and her hate had long simmered for him, just like it had for Uther.

Now any reason to hide from her hate, for Uther, for men like Halig... those reasons were long gone. What she had left was a need to keep that hate hidden – from everyone. She never should have said what she'd said to Arthur, however freeing it had felt to finally say it to someone other than Merlin… and even Merlin – even Arthur— didn't, couldn't, understand the power the hate coursing in her. It flowed through her, like a river always ready to overflow its banks. A natural force of destruction that could wipe clean the land all around it.

It was... perhaps unnecessarily poetic to describe it as such, but she couldn't think of any better way to describe it. Sometimes, it frightened her, just how much she hated Uther, how much she wanted to kill him. How much she wanted him dead. Just a year ago the thought would have been... mostly unthinkable. But the hate had been there. She'd just hidden it, under fear and a sense of righteous anger and justice against Uther's excesses.

This is still about justice. About what the right thing is.

But it was also about how much she hated Uther. Hated Uther and his ilk for all that they'd done to her kind – to those whose only crime was to be born with a power they couldn't understand. Could barely control. Hated him for his hatred of all that was different, all that he couldn't control.

She hated him for subjecting her to living under his roof for so many years, for manipulating her into caring for him as a...not quite second father, but as the man who'd taken a fatherly role in her life. For terrifying her every time she disagreed with his excesses. For every execution she'd been expected to watch. For the endless fear that she'd felt ever since she'd realized she had magic.

But the arrival of Halig came too with opportunity. For he'd come with a prize for Uther – a prize that had escaped his custody.

A young druid girl that was somewhere in Camelot – the castle or the lower town. Morgana doubted she'd been able to escape.

Morgana was only half-paying attention to what Halig and Uther were still saying when she heard the bounty hunter say something else: "I saw two figures running away."

Two?

There were two people running away.

No. Couldn't be him. Merlin had made his priorities clear. He wasn't interested in saving their people. He was interested in Arthur – in making sure Arthur became King.

But even as she thought about that, she thought about the fact of the druid boy, over a year ago now. Merlin hadn't had to help him – but he had. He'd saved a life then. Was it so hard to believe that he'd do it again?

Yes.

It was hard to believe he'd risk it – he'd shown how far he was willing to go in his focus on Arthur. He'd kept Uther alive, lied to Arthur about the truth, kept Uther alive for all his sins, and his own deep-seated hypocrisy.

Why would he save this druid girl?

But who else? Who else would? It could be another – but Camelot didn't have anyone else that could get away with this. Or would try it. The people of Camelot all either agreed with Uther, were far too scared to try anything...or just didn't care. In most cases, Morgana imagined it was that last one. And she had little sympathy for them.

But that meant...

But how could it be Merlin? That didn't make sense.

The obvious answer was to ask him. Even as Halig and Uther were still talking, Morgana stood and swept out of the chamber. She caught Uther frowning out of the corner of her eye as she left, but she didn't care – and he didn't say anything or make a motion to stop her or order the guards to stop her.

Asking Merlin was the reasonable option – and by now, she knew when he was lying. Far better than she had before. If asked before she'd learned about Merlin's magic, she'd have considered Merlin a rather terrible liar. Once she found out that he had magic and had been lying about that and concealing it for so long from everyone...

Well, she'd since gained newfound respect for his abilities to lie, but also had been able to think back and start to pick up on the signs. Merlin's greatest defense when it came to lying was that people didn't think he was capable of doing anything really dangerous. She knew enough about him, about the real him...

If he lied to her when she asked, she'd know.

As she made her way through the halls of Camelot, Morgana passed a number of guards and servants who gave her a wide berth – all of them usually did these days, and when she moved through the castle with the kind of purposeful glare in her eyes that she had now, they especially knew to avoid her. Even more so when she was angry.

Of course, Arthur had been right the other day – she had been more irritable lately. In the eyes of the staff and the guards, she was probably always angry.

Though really, it wasn't anger so much as it was hate.

She found Merlin soon enough though – found him making his way down to the tunnels beneath the castle, a small cloth wrapped up into a makeshift bag in one hand. Ducking into an alcove, Morgana grabbed his arm and pulled him into it as well.

"Were you the one?!" she demanded with a hiss.

Merlin looked at her, then blinked. "The one what? Morgana, what are you talking about? I thought we weren't speaking!" He didn't sound especially happy to see or speak with her, and she wasn't finding this anymore preferable than he likely was. But she did notice how close he was to her. The alcove didn't exactly have that much in the way of space – these places weren't designed to hold two people.

"Are you the one that helped the druid girl escape Halig's cage last night?!" Her tone was still a quiet hiss – there was no one nearby, but this was not something to be overheard, by anyone. "Someone was helping her get away last night, and I doubt it was anyone else in Camelot."

Merlin looked around, poking his head out of the alcove to make sure no one was nearby before looking back to her. "Yes. I did. I helped her escape. But why are you so upset? You're the one who wants to take more direct action, save the lives of people who have magic. That's all I did."

"Exactly," Morgana shot back. "That's what you did, and I would like to know why?! You've made it crystal clear that your priority isn't saving the lives of our people or halting Uther's reign of terror. Your priority is Arthur."

"Yes, it is!" Merlin agreed. "But just because something is a priority doesn't mean that I can't do other things! The druid boy, remember? I want to save lives and mitigate how much suffering Uther causes just as much as you do, Morgana, but I also won't let how much I hate the man be the dominating force in my life!"

"You hate him?!" Morgana scoffed. "You don't hate him. If you truly hated him you'd-"

"Let it be the only thing I cared about?!" Merlin interrupted, "No, Morgana, that's not hate; that's obsession! I told you that night you told me you were afraid you had magic, that night I told you I had magic, that I think Uther should die for all that he's done. I thought it then and I think it now. But that doesn't mean I'm prepared to be a murderer. Killing someone for revenge, for hate, is evil."

"It's not revenge, Merlin. It's justice!" Morgana fought to keep control of the conversation. This wasn't about Uther, it was supposed to be about the druid girl. If Merlin really had helped her, then she was hiding somewhere in the lower town, or maybe beneath the castle. Whatever she thought about Merlin's 'priorities', she would work with him to save the life of one of their people. That she could, and would, do. She was angry – furious – at Merlin still, but she didn't hate him. The only one she hated was Uther. She just pitied Arthur.

"Justice? Is that what you call risking plunging Camelot into wars on every border? Maybe civil war if any of the nobility decide to rise up? You hate Uther – if you hate someone, you shouldn't kill them unless you have no other choice. Because it's always going to be about revenge." Merlin's words sounded like they belonged to a philosopher, but Morgana was used to Merlin saying things like that, despite his relative lack of an education. As Arthur had once said of Merlin to her, "He has a certain...I wouldn't call it wisdom, but..." All the prince had done then was shrug. He didn't know a better word after that.

But 'wisdom' or not, Morgana couldn't agree with him. And this wasn't the point. It wasn't why she'd pulled him into this far too small alcove and been almost too close to him for the last several minutes.

She shook her head, "This is immaterial right now, Merlin. You saved the Druid girl, but she's not out of the city yet, correct?"

Merlin nodded, "No, she's not." He held up the makeshift bag. "I was on my way to bring her this food." Despite the gravity of the conversation they'd just had, Merlin smiled a little. "I, ah...borrowed it from Arthur's breakfast."

Under other circumstances, Morgana might have found that amusing, but right now, she was in no mood or state so. "Have you made any plans on how to get her out of the city then?"

"...Not yet," Merlin admitted. "Getting her free from that cage and that bounty hunter was more important than getting her out of the city last night, and..." He shrugged. "I don't think she's really in any state to run anywhere, at the moment. I think Halig didn't feed her at all on the way here."

"Probably not. Why bother? As long as they live long enough for Uther to pay his bounty...Halig doesn't care about them." Morgana spat the words out as if they were venom. "Take her the food. I'm not sure how to get her out of the city, but I think we're going to need more than the two of us – I'm going to speak with Wesley and the Lady Illyria." She wasn't sure why the idea of trying to get their help was occurring to her, but...

It was much about gauging them as amenable to this matter right now. Neither liked Uther, that much was clear, and Illyria remained the devil she knew. At the very least, even if they weren't interested in helping they wouldn't mention anything to Uther.

Merlin blinked. He seemed to start to say something in response to her words, but after a moment, just nodded and stepped out of the alcove. The pair of them had been extremely fortunate that no one had come down the hall at all during their hissed conversation – or that there was no one to see them now, both stepping out of the tiny alcove, one after another.

Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS

The Lady Illyria and her guide, Wesley, had been even more reclusive in recent days than they usually were, Morgana had noticed. The pair of them only rarely interacted with the rest of the castle, and sometimes she wondered if Uther even remembered they were there. But the pair of them still both worked with the city guard when word of a vampire in the city came to light. They'd even gone off into the countryside when one of the smaller villages had reported a strange, bloodless body with two puncture holes. For a realm that had never experienced vampires before, many were happening now. Since the incident with the Witchfinder, now several weeks in the past, the Kingdom had experienced at least five more vampire attacks – each one leading to a soon killed vampire, but still...

It wasn't hard to connect the arrival of these two with the vampires presence, except for the fact that from what she'd overheard while Uther was holding court, the other kingdoms had started to experience similar problems – and without veritable experts on vampires on hand, they were having a harder time determining how to deal with the problem.

It was as if something had been keeping these beasts away from the land, and now there was nothing holding them at bat. Morgana wondered what, if anything, there was to that theory, but she didn't have any way to find out an answer.

Morgana knocked on Wesley's door, and only a few moments passed before the man opened it. Through the doorway, she saw the Lady Illyria standing some distance into the room, looking almost... relaxed?

There's a word I never thought would apply to her.

"Lady Morgana. How can I be of service?" Wesley asked calmly.

"May I come in?" she asked carefully. Knowing what she knew now of vampires – their need for an invitation – she didn't expect a verbal invitation from them. She'd even started to take up the habit herself, although she was inconsistent about it – she was not used to the habit yet. "This isn't exactly something to speak about in the open."

Wesley raised an eyebrow, but stepped aside and Morgana walked into the room. He closed the door behind her.

"I'm sure you've heard that a bounty hunter brought a druid girl into Camelot last night?" Morgana asked. Even when they never left their rooms, they seemed to keep abreast of what was happening in Camelot.

"I've also heard that she's no longer in his custody. Your work?"

"Merlin beat me to it," she told Wesley. "However, he doesn't have a plan to get her out of the castle or the lower town. Last time we tried to get someone out of the castle, we had Arthur's help." She frowned, remembering what she'd told Arthur in a moment of... ill-advised total honesty a short time ago. "Right now, that's not really an option. So..."

"You wish our help with getting her away from the city," Illyria finished, walking over to stand next to Wesley. Morgana nodded. "Why should we take the risk?"

"Because both of you have magic," Morgana replied. It should be enough – one had to protect their own people, if they could.

"That's not a reason," Illyria replied. "I believe it is customary in these situations to request a favor." Illyria looked at Morgana carefully. "If you wish our help, you will owe a favor to me, to be collected at a later date, upon my request."

Morgana frowned. She didn't have an inherent problem with trading a favor, but this woman was not a normal person. A favor owed to Arthur, or Gwen or most people – she didn't have to worry that much about what they might ask. Illyria was... much more difficult to guess at what she might ask for.

"It would have to depend on the favor," Morgana replied. "There are things I'm not going to be willing to do, favor or not." She looked Illyria in the eye, then looked away – for a split second, they looked... utterly inhuman. Alien and frightening. Crystalline blue, like a tunnel filled with dark shapes.

"I'll accept you refusing two requests for the favor to be repaid. No more," Illyria agreed after a moment. "Acceptable?"

Morgana took a breath. It wasn't really, but she knew that they almost certainly needed their help. "As long as you don't just ask favors you know I'm going to refuse to go through the two, then yes," she agreed.

"Acceptable," Illyria replied after a moment. "You may leave."

Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS-Merlin-AtS

Morgana didn't see Merlin again until later in the day. She was on her way to where she was fairly confident Merlin had hidden the druid girl. It was the most logical place to do it, given everything. Ever since she and Merlin had started the magic lessons... she'd come to learn the tunnels under the castle and the walls and town fairly well. Very well, actually.

She saw him, only to see him walk right into Halig. Morgana closed her eyes and muttered under her breath, cursing Merlin's stupidity and Halig's obviously well-founded (though hopefully he didn't realize how well-founded) suspicions. She wasn't sure why he had a silver pitcher in his hand, but she followed Merlin and Halig as two guards frog-marched the young man back to the castle and down to the dungeons. Along the way, she grabbed another one of the servants and told him to inform Arthur about Halig taking Merlin.

When she finally reached the cell where Halig was speaking to Merlin, they were already in the middle of the conversation.

"Do you know how much money she's worth to me?" Halig was in Merlin's face, keeping the distance between them very small. After a moment, Halig answered his own question. "More than your life."

"Really?" Morgana asked coolly, forcing all her hatred down into ice, adopting the cool, calm mask she had to wear around Uther and most of the rest of Camelot almost all the time. "That's Arthur's personal servant. He's rather fond of the boy."

Halig turned around and swallowed a moment at Morgana's tone. Uther still – sickeningly – doted on her, and anyone who annoyed 'Morgana, the King's beloved Ward' had good reason to be worried. Still, he stood his ground. "He's the one who helped the druid girl escape last night," the bounty hunter explained. "And he's going to tell me where he's harboring the girl."

Morgana managed a wholly convincing scoff of disbelief. "Has he told you that?" Morgana looked at Merlin, "Do you know where the druid girl is?"

Merlin shook his head violently, "I have no idea."

"There, you see it?" Morgana replied, all but glaring at Halig. "Merlin cannot lie successfully. Ask Arthur, if you don't believe me."

"Ask me what?" Arthur came around the corner and walked into the cell, grabbing Merlin's arm and pushing him into the cell door. "What are you doing with my servant?"

"He was behaving suspiciously, sire," Halig explained, his tone even more respectful and careful.

"Merlin?" Now it was Arthur's turn to scoff – and this one was genuine. "He's an idiot – and he's certainly not capable of doing anything to be concerned about. He has my absolute trust. If you have a problem with him, you'll come to me. Understand?"

"Sire." Halig bowed his head a little after a moment. He looked to Merlin as he left. "Goodnight, Merlin. Don't forget your dinner." Morgana wasn't sure what to make of that comment until she saw Arthur looking down at what were unmistakably three sausages on the floor.

"Ah," Merlin said after a moment.

"Are those my sausages?" Arthur didn't sound especially surprised. Merlin nodded and made a noncommittal sound. "You took them?"

Merlin nodded, crouching down to get them. "To keep you in shape."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" Arthur demanded, raising his voice just a touch.

Merlin shook his head, "No." He paused a moment, "Well, not yet."

Despite herself, Morgana did have to admit that she found the exchange amusing. Which was exactly why she left then, before it continued. She had no interest in laughing at their antics right now.

Merlin had better keep his nose clean for the moment. Her idea had been an even better one than she'd thought.