AN:

For those of you who are stuck on the road with nothing to do, I'll be updating the story twice on both Christmas days (4x total).

Captured yet again. A moment of unawareness and she found him. No fancy magic was need to capture him but his own stupidity. When Agravaine had left, he didn't realize she was going to leave as well. Despite the supplies Camelot's traitor had brought her, there was far more satisfaction to be had in feeding on your own kills. Imagine her surprise when she found another set of prints in the snow and they led to one side of her hovel. She didn't follow them but moved around the hovel and caught him by surprise. He must have followed Agravaine unnoticed and shouldn't have been so foolish as to linger.

Now he was in chains once more but at least he wasn't hurt. She sat on her bed across the room and merely looked at him. The boy was another resource to be included in whatever plot she could think of. Killing him did come to mind but that seemed excessive, perhaps he could be put to use somehow. Since making him an assassin was a failed plan, bait would be a better one. Arthur was fond of his manservant after all.

She sighed. Whatever plot she would come up with, it wouldn't happen until after Christmas. That meant there was another mouth to feed in an already harsh winter. What on earth was she supposed to do to pass the time with? Torture could keep her occupied but there wasn't much point to it. He couldn't tell her much that she had not already heard from Agravaine. Not much but still something.

She rose from the bed and held her head high as she walked towards him. No matter how great his disadvantage, whether he was in chains or had a dagger at his throat, he always had this fire in his eyes. Bravery was so easily confused with stupidity and to her this was the perfect example of it.
"Why did Alator betray me?" She asked.
Not once had the man shown any desire to fight her and at first he even seemed eager to break another man. His betrayal was a blow but leaving the enchanted bracelet behind said that he no longer wished to be associated with her. How did the man go from one extreme to another?
"How should I know?" He acted all innocent and confused. She didn't know whether he was telling the truth or not. Then again, what would a mere servant know about the affairs of magic?
"What happened while I was out?" She demanded to know. Despite knocking her unconscious, Alator's betrayal did not seem to extend to her death.
"He said he made a mistake and left." She could tell Merlin wasn't telling the whole truth since he was talking about the sorcerer and not himself.
Merlin was trying to hide the fact that he left with Alator, that would imply there was some sort of friendship or trust, and Morgana didn't pick up on that but something else instead.
"So you were alone with me." Morgana realised.
The manservant hadn't thought the lie through and was left with making up another one.
"I left." He rushed to give her an answer and it was as bland as the last one.
Rather than seeing two separate lies (Alator did not leave by himself and he did not stay behind), Morgana saw it as one and that she was closing in on the truth.
"I was unconscious and my dagger was not three feet from you." She desperately wanted to know what was going on. He had every opportunity to kill her but he didn't. In the tale he told her, Alator left him alone with her and the dagger she had held at his throat. No one would have stopped him.
"I..." A lie did not come to mind.

Morgana moved away with a smirk. She saw the unlikely truth beneath the lies. He couldn't do it. For some foolish reason, he couldn't do it. All this time she thought it was her that had a hard time dealing with them being on opposite sides. She had gotten over the pain of his betrayel but he didn't. He couldn't bear what he had done to her and couldn't do it a second time. It changed nothing in her heart, she still wanted vengeance.
How weak you really are. She thought.

Going to bed she could still see him squirm. He knew that she'd figured it out and it worried him like she hoped it would.

Banging on the door woke her. No one she knew would do that. Knights would barge in much like Agravaine did. The damn thing didn't even have a lock. Getting up from under the covers, it seemed the noise didn't even faze the manservant.
"Who is it?" She asked annoyed.
"Morgana?" A man replied and her eyes grew wide.
It was completely and utterly impossible, he was dead. Although she barely knew him, she felt an obligation to open the door.
"Aglain?" He was the leader of a group of druids, the ones she came to when she first realised she had magic.
He told her how magic could be a force for good, just like she thought it was. But he shouldn't be alive, Arthur and the Knights and killed him.
"May I come in?" Having a dead man standing in front of her short-circuited her brain.
She let him enter giving only thought to being courteous and forgetting the man in chains inside. To make matters worse, first thing he did was examine Merlin hanging from the ceiling.
"He tried to kill me." She immediately sought to defend her actions.
"Do you remember what I told you?" He asked almost as if discarding the boy in chains.
"That magic can be a force for good and I've been doing exactly that. When the throne-" She really did seem to think she was doing the right thing.
"Morgana." He interjected, not in anger but pity. "The throne is nothing but a dark ambition."
"Arthur is a tyrant, no different from Uther. I can set us free, can't you see that?" The witch was convinced that she was doing it for the sake of all those with magic.
"Yes, Uther was indeed a tyrant. He put you in chains for defying him." Aglain's words put a slight smile on her face but then turned to Merlin and continued. "See anything familiar?"
Uther had put her in chains and now she had done the same to Merlin. It was wrong, she knew that, but remorse wasn't the emotion she felt for it. Aglain compared her to Uther made her blood boil.
"All I want is what is rightfully mine." She spoke through clenched teeth.
Who was Aglain to question her like that? He knew nothing of the hardships she had gone through. Yes, he knew pain of banishment for the crime of existing but he knew not the betrayal she had to endure. He was weak. No doubt she could tear him apart with single spell.
The druid sighed and continued. "Tonight, three ghosts will visit you, Morgana. And they will show you the errors of your ways."
And in the blink of an eye, he was gone.