[merlin] this is the beggining - Merlin/Morgana/Nimueh - 1x13 AU.
I'm obsessed with this three, I just HAD to write this prompt. Argh, this was supposed to be up some days ago, so sory for the delay!.
Fandom: Merlin
Characters: Merlin/Nimueh/Morgana
Title: This is the beggining.
Rating: PG13
Warnings: femslash. weird plotting (lol)
Word Count: 4783 (WTFME?)
Community: Done for gwenmorganabbc Ladies of Camelot AU challenge.
Summary: Prompt: Minor AU: Varied shades of Merlin/Morgana, Nimueh/Merlin, Nimueh/Morgana. Morgana and Merlin set out to confront Nimueh in 1x13. Nimueh manipulates Morgana.
Notes: Beta'ed by fortassetu (thanks sweety!). I still find it weird, random weird, but I hope you like it ♥
Fire burns her skin at the bare touch. “Please, Merlin. You must beware. This is only the beginning.” Her words echo between them, filling the empty space that separates madness from truth. She strengthens her grab of his wrist until it hurts; reality is something that he must be shaken into. In the dark, they are alone.
He looks lost, confused and ashamed. She knows, he knows she knows and the vicious circle never ends. She insists. “Listen to me, Merlin, this is only the beginning.”
Sore throat, there are words that won’t come out of his mouth. Her eyes are lighted on fire in the shadows and he nods, silent, to the emptiness that surrounds them. “I don’t know…”
“You do.” In the crazy glint of her eyes there is worry and knowledge, wisdom she doesn’t even understand. “I’ll be waiting,” she says and then, she is gone, fading into the darkness of the aisle.
In the air left behind, life and death fight for dominance.
**
The sky is gray as her dreams, as their future. She knows it. She fears it. She’ll fight it.
**
Merlin comes to her earlier than expected. She flinches, her eyes looking at him with suspicion. He struggles for words, however; he doesn’t look like the innocent young boy that is Arthur’s manservant anymore, and her heart crushes.
“She’s sick,” is all he manages to say, his back on the door, his eyes locked with hers. “You…” His words die in his throat. He doesn’t cry, although she knows he wants to, she can see the tears in his soul. “He is gone.”
Morgana smiles, it is not a happy gesture, and her eyes are shadowed by the future she lives scared of. She walks to him, tracing her hand over his arm, catching his hand in hers.
“I know,” sweet whispers leave her lips, close enough to his ear, as if someone else was in the room and she didn’t want them to her. “They are waiting,”
She doesn’t have time to explain to him that by ‘they’ she doesn’t mean the people he thinks. Magic and fate work by rules men does not know.
**
The lands are empty, people hiding in their houses. The news of the future of the Prince is devastating and nobody has informed them that he will survive. Nobody will ever tell them the price that was paid in exchange. Or, maybe, they just can feel the same she does.
There’s a world moving too fast.
**
It’s Merlin who takes control when they arrive to the lake and Morgana the one that follows. He looks warily at her before he speaks the words she is not supposed to hear, but her hand is on his shoulder before he can hide the expression on his face. He shivers under her touch, but his eyes glitter for the first time since the deathly bite on Arthur.
The lake is humid and heavy, and the air is filled with darkness. She covers her shoulders, protecting herself, not from the cold, but from the feeling further inside her skin of loneliness and horror; dread knocks on her soul’s door.
“Why…?” He hasn’t said a real word until know, she can see confusion, doubt in every movement. She leans to his shoulder, looking ahead to the ruins that wait for them, magic and fright.
“Because I don’t want it to be the end,” she answers truthfully and sits straight. She feels his hand in hers seconds later. All she can do in the heavy atmosphere is smile.
Freedom is something her soul does not know about. Perhaps, this is a glimpse of what it feels like.
**
Nimueh waits; her dress falling lazily to the ground, her eyes sparkling with expectation. She knows what’s coming. Her hand closes Gaius’s eyes, such a pity, so much lost potential. She smiles.
The sky is black. And black is the colour of her tainted glass.
**
It is Morgana the first to walk out of the boat into the ruins. Her cloak is covering her from the cold day and her eyes pierce the air. Her voice is the first to be heard in the dead silence.
“No!” Images are flooding to her mind in the same instant her eyes lay on the dead man. Past, present, future mixing in her head, dreams coming alive, she feels helpless and weak. She hoped- she was wrong to even try. “It can’t- can’t-” She fears to mutter her thoughts aloud as if they would allow them to be truth. It can’t be too late. Only, that it is.
**
Merlin walks in, trying to convey his emotions, one hand keeping Morgana steady in her place, the other falling lifeless at his side. His eyes focus on the witch in front them, her eyes obviously amused at the scene she is experiencing.
“I was waiting for you,” her voice is dirty and seductive, but it’s not directed to him, but to the woman he helps keep standing. Morgana is crying, her sobbing echoing in the place, and her body shaking at his hold. “I was waiting for you too, Merlin.”
He feels the anger building inside him, desperation, hate, incontrollable rage that fills him from the tip of his toes to the end of his hands, magic lingering in his fingers anxious to take revenge.
“What did you do?” he asks, voice fierce with fury. “What did you do?!!” Shouting now. He sees colours in his eyes, tears fall without permission, but he can only think in the woman that killed his friend, the closest thing he ever had as a father.
Morgana’s hands are shaking, distracting him, but he can’t notice that her eyes flicker from him to Nimueh to Gaius and back again.
“I did as asked, young warlock,” her voice is vicious, her eyes show malice and both Morgana and Merlin can feel it, crushing their barriers, breaking everything they know. Merlin feels devastated, his nails piercing the skin of his hands in fists, his eyes burning in madness and hate.
“It wasn’t his choice, this was not the bargain we made, witch.” He is full with disgust and horror; magic used for such horrible porpoise sickens him, such a pretty and wonderful thing turned into a despiteful weapon. As focused as he is, he can’t feel Morgana flinching at his side, torn between confusion and sadness. Betrayal speaks in her eyes, but he can’t see them. But Nimueh does, and her eyes change focus to the woman at his hands.
“How dare you talk about your kin like that?” she mutters to him, eyes still facing Morgana. Her voice, soft and low pierces their hearts in ways they can not anticipate. The shout is, by then, unexpected. “Átende!!”
A ball of fire is coming for them. The blue light makes shadows in the rocks and blinds them. Morgana doesn’t move, paralyzed in her place, and Merlin sends her to the side with all the strength he can gather. Not quick enough, not strong enough, he receives the fire in his chest as he starts casting a spell and it sends them both flying backwards to the wall.
Merlin smells the blood before he can actually feel it. Pain shoots across his chest blacking his sight. He fades into unconsciousness, trying to fight it back, the last thing he sees is Morgana on her knees against the wall, her eyes open and in shock.
**
“Such a poor nemesis,” Morgana can hear Nimueh mocking him, her feet walking towards her. Morgana looks for her eyes, immobile as she is against the hard rock. Nimueh shines in the gray atmosphere, her smile, torn between happiness and disappointment, doesn’t sicken her as it should. “My dear Morgana, it’s not your fate to choose the side that loses,” the witch kneels in front of her and her hand caress her cheek sending chills to the back of her bones. “You could do better, my dear.”
Morgana sees it then: the dreams she fears, the images she never understood, the power in her hands, death and life at her feet. Their feet. She sees promises of a future without fear, worries or hiding, she sees acceptance and understanding in Nimueh’s eyes; in her lips as the woman whispers to her. In her skin, glowing, calling her, seducing into a path she never considered but presented to her in the most intoxicating way.
“You are better, my dear,” Nimueh is whispering, the tips of her fingers dancing over Morgana’s eyelids. “Such a rough warmth, you are destined for such great glory… you could only start now.” Her voice torments her, she has seen this before, heard those words, made the choice in her head way before she even understood what it meant. She wants to fight it; to go against the flow magic has set for head. “This is why the Old religion gave you this gift; you are everything I’ve been waiting for,”
She feels lost and broken and is still incapable of moving. Her body is in so much pain that she barely notices it anymore, it is not something she can identify but a whole bunch of unwariness in her skin. Nimueh’s hands play with her hair, like a mother with her daughter, she talks to her about all the magic she could learn, about freedom and control. No more nightmares, no more potions, just her and her senses working together. Nimueh, the woman she came to fight, is the one to offer her everything she wants. Everything she needs.
She can’t see Merlin, she can’t feel him, she can’t even tell if he is still alive, but for what it really matters, she can’t think of him anymore. There is a hole in her thoughts, a place she doesn’t walk by right now, avoiding every contact to the life she knows. Nimueh’s words consume her, changing her, challenging her to take the path where she will lead her own life.
All she can see is Nimueh’s big ponds of blue looking at her. All she can hear are her words in her ear, pushing their way to the core of her soul. All she can feel is Nimueh’s magic mixing with her own, healing and not healing, matching until they almost seem to be the same, to work like one. She can’t remember where she is, why she is there or what she is supposed to fight.
“You could be so powerful, so free,” Nimueh’s word taste like sin and rain in her lips, salt for a meal she didn’t even know she was having. The proximity is intoxicating. Something, deep inside, tells her that she has to push her away, but her body is limp and her mind is long gone inside Nimueh’s promises. “So pure and unique you are, so great you’d be…”
This is the end, she remembers. This is the end and she is falling deep into it.
**
He sees black. His head spins forward and backwards and it feels like fire is burning every inch of his skin. Numbness, that’s how he feels, except for the pressure in his chest, the heat that crawls from there to his whole body. He tries to move in the dark, but pain shoots his veins and he arches against the cold hard rock.
He feels magic in his fingers. He isn’t gone yet.
**
Nimueh knows she is playing with destiny and fate, she is pushing the Old Religion's wishes to the limit, fire growing inside her, hopes and dreams she had forgotten awakening under the perspective of a new future. The Old Religion doesn’t have time to play hide and seek, but she does, and she is willing to go just a little further if that means gaining all she’s lost.
It feels natural to touch Morgana, to let her fingers trace the woman's skin, so easy to mutter the words that will bring the Lady of Camelot to her power. It’s like going back to the past but at the same time searching for the future. It’s not Igraine who lingers under her magic, it’s not Igraine’s blue eyes, but it foresees a future she could only imagine when the woman was alive.
It’s so easy to break Morgana that she almost can believe it, there’s a tenderness in her lost eyes that remembers the hopeless look of determination her old friend gave her before her life was gone forever. There are promises lingering in every caress she gives, in every spasm she causes the other girl. Lips so close and yet so far, smelling like past and future, consuming her and at the same time, making her alive.
Magic has a power she has learned how to work. It’s a fate that was given and taken, and now, it presents to her in the body of a young beautiful woman, so different to everything she has known so far and yet so alike. There’s magic flowing between them, something she has never been able to share before, not completely, not this way. There’s power like her own, competing for balance, even if the young woman isn’t aware of it.
Everything Nimueh needs right now is her kin to be home, she wants the Old Religion to grow strong, the connection she felt back then when magic was free for all. Morgana is offered to her, a prize, a tool, a memory, and it’s so easy to move the chords that keep her sane and stable that Nimueh is almost disappointed the fight was won before it even began.
**
He is still against the rocks when he gains consciousness, he feels as if something had drawn a hole in his chest and he is quite sure he is not far from the truth. He doesn’t open his eyes at first, light, barely as it is, breaks his head at the bare touch with his pupils. His mouth tastes like blood, and if he has to be sincere with himself, everything simply smells like it too. He starts to remember what was happening before he passed out, and as soon as Nimueh’s face appears in his thoughts he is back on alert. Eyes full open, hand searching for magic and power to overcome this situation. Nothing can prepare him for what he sees after light stops blinding him.
Morgana is standing next to Nimueh, her eyes are looking at him, but there’s no sadness, not even that glint of madness that has covered her actions in the last times, just firm determination. He doesn’t understand at first, Morgana doesn’t seem to be hurt, in pain, or be tied to anything, Nimueh has one of her hands in her shoulder, but there’s no oppression, no obligation to submission in her touch.
As reality sinks into his skin, he realizes that Morgana and Nimueh are standing there, like friends, as if the sun shone in the summer and they were simply sharing a day out after a long rainy month. He believes to be dreaming, or may be, just hallucinating. He knows he is not.
Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
**
Morgana ignores Gaius at first, and finally, she doesn’t see him anymore. He is a traitor, Nimueh said to her. He helped the King kill hundreds of their kind; he would have turned his eyes if she was the one to be hanged up. She knows is true, she doesn’t need tricks or magic to be convinced and it doesn’t take too long before her head accepts it without question or remorse.
It’s really simply to be on this side of the world. Her thoughts are clear, her dreams forgotten, is all she ever wanted and it feels so good she almost regrets not doing it before. She is not sure what she is supposed to do now, they have been waiting for some time, and Morgana feels clueless about Nimueh’s intentions. Something in her head retains the questions, the worries, so, she simply waits for something to change. When it does, is Nimueh’s hand on her shoulder, barely touching it, sending shivers to her spine.
When Morgana looks for what has changed, she sees Merlin, on the floor, where she hadn’t noticed before. Is him there with them? Why is he lying? She doesn’t have time to think, there’s horror in his opened eyes, and magic surrounding him like a shield. She sees him stand up, facing them, confusion, bewilderment, hate and fear all in one, with such intensity that she feels the urge to grab his hand. To guide him, be for a second his light. Instead, she remains under Nimueh’s touch and control. Confused, insecure.
This is not what she saw in her dreams, this is not the future she expects, but seems to be the future she wants. However, the weak point of her thoughts resides in the fact that this, the unknown, is something she doesn’t know how to act on.
**
“Welcome to the world of the living, Merlin,” Nimueh’s voice is the first sound to be heard once he stands up. “I- We were hoping you were still among us. Such a boring destiny it would have been if you hadn’t given us that pleasure.”
Morgana’s eyes are fixed on him, and though he tries to face Nimueh, he can’t avoid that look. He needs to find something, to understand the reasons for such a bad switch. He is playing with his magic around him, and tears come out of his eyes without permission, frustration, pain, desperation and fury blending in one, corrupting him. The sky opens at the same time and cries with him.
“Impressive,” Nimueh keeps talking, her hand no longer on Morgana’s shoulder, her bare feet walking towards him in ease. “Learning new tricks, warlock?”
“Morgana…” the word comes out as a whisper, but she hears him, one step forward, one step backwards. He is pleading with his eyes, searching for something there that will tell him she understands, but for him, she is away, far into the darkness of something he hadn’t understood until now: Morgana’s dreams and needs hidden in the dark of her mind crushing down their world.
“You live and die in the Isle of the Blessed,” her voice sounds like poetry, a song he never heard, and even Nimueh seems surprised to hear her. “A life for a life, a world for a world, balance is always restored.”
Something is changing in the air. He can feel it, surrounding him, fighting against his own magic, and as the heat of the moment flows away from him, fear establishes in his bones. This can’t be good, there’s no way that feeling, the emptiness, the waves of belonging and not hitting him, can be a good sign.
“What are you doing?” Nimueh’s voice is almost a shriek. Her eyes plastered against her head, her hands divided, one pointed to Merlin and the other to Morgana. “Stop.”
“It’s no so simple, my Lady,” Morgana’s eyes shine, and Merlin can swear he has never seen her wrapped in such madness. Nothing good can come out of this, and even Nimueh is sensing so. “I wish to follow your desires,” Morgana walks towards Nimueh, settling her hand in the witch’s one. “Your reasons are right, your feelings are true, but you misunderstood what magic was asking of you, and so did I.”
Merlin blinks in confusion, but is fast enough as to cast a spell towards Nimueh. She must pay, for everything she did, for everything she wants to do. Distracted as she is, she stills manages to stop it. Fire dies in mid air and her eyes, full with fury and contradiction face him again.
“Young warlock, you must wait. You could be so powerful too, if only…” her voice dies in her throat, and her eyes grow tears on her cheeks. Merlin can see magic pulsing through the women hands, but he is unable to understand. Whatever Morgana is doing, it’s hurting the witch. Whatever Morgana is doing, scares him more than it should.
“Magic needs a vase, a spot in earth for life to go on, to fulfil its destiny, which isn’t mine and isn’t yours, I see that now.”
“S- stop.” Nimueh’s pleadings aren’t but a low whisper in the air. Her hands look black, her eyes red of tears. “I command you,” she manages to say, but her voice ends in silence and her eyes shut down in pain.
Merlin can only think but call Morgana’s name.
**
Everything is black. And hot. Really hot. There’s fire everywhere, in her hand, in her eyes. Everything is black and silence is heavy on her years.
Screams, shrieks coming for everywhere to pierce her eyes, voices she has heard before, voices she has had once, past that haunts her. Igraine, Gaius, Uther, Morgana, Merlin and them. All of them. Every single one of the dead. Are they haunting her? Is she dead?
Black. A big labyrinth without end. Black. This is how it ends.
**
Morgana isn’t really sure of what she is doing, but everything seems clearer now. It just comes without voice, without command, the sheer realization that this is the true path. There are no shadows in her eyes; everything is lighted by some mystical magic she doesn’t fear anymore. Suddenly everything has a purpose and she is not sure when the change happened. First, everything Nimueh said was like stories of better futures to her ears, a sad song that promised love and life, and then, there was comprehension. Great things happen to those that choose their one true path. And it wasn’t Nimueh’s promises she heard anymore, it was her dreams, magic, those that have been waiting for her, those that have wanted her there. Future isn’t a black cloud of uncertainty but a blossom walk along the shore of a big shiny coast.
Magic talked to her. Magic commanded her. All she is now is an anchor of magic, destiny and life to earth.
She sees Merlin, and her soul is sad, she wants to explain, she wants to tell him she isn’t coming back. She wants to say she is sorry, to give him messages for those that are left behind. She can’t.
Her grab on Nimueh gets stronger, her magic dancing with hers, power fighting for balance. There can’t be two Ladies, magic has told her so, and they want her. Paths have been bidden, future settled and all she can do is work her way through it, wishes that magic foretold her. Desires she never understood. Until now.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and Hell opens its doors for them.
**
Merlin is paralyzed, and only because of that he knows his feet are still on ground. Air dances with rain, fire grows in a circle around them, lightening falls, too close and yet not enough. Nimueh fights against Morgana skin, and they glow.
It’s almost beautiful. So beautiful he feels compelled to watch but doesn’t know how to react. Morgana has both of Nimueh’s hands in hers now, and there are colours swirling around them in a demonstration of magic that can only resemble to that night in Avalon, months ago. He feels his own magic pleading to play in the madness he is seeing and he has never felt it so away from himself, and so inside at the same time. It comes as a shock to realize that magic is not only a gift but a part of him; something given that can’t be taken. Or so he hopes. The spectacle in front of him doesn’t leave him too much to have faith for.
It takes hours or minutes, he isn’t really sure, to the world come to an end. Fire, water, wind, love and hate. Magic controls the way they move, and the fight is something he can only guess for the elements that move around, as he knows, he can tell, that the real power is inside their heads.
He falls to the floor, weak and hurt, unable to fight the power that flies around him, knocking him of his feet. The dragon’s riddles sound in his head, Morgana’s words echo between the voice and the mocking of Nimueh dancing in his ears. He is too weak to keep watching, and before he can tell, black takes over and all he can do is hope that Morgana is still on her feet when he comes back to life again.
**
It happens in an instant and she is not there but at the same time she is. All she can see are Nimueh’s blue eyes even though they are shut. She feels the magic, the adrenaline, the pulse of her blood on her arms. Nimueh’s pleadings echo in her head. Please. We could be great. Together. Don’t. Just. Please. Morgana. My lady.
Even in her surrender, Morgana knows she can’t give in. It’s not meant to happen like that, she understands that now. She didn’t come to save Gaius, his life was gone before she could even dream about it. She didn’t come to save Merlin, or help him, neither to bring hope or knowledge. She came for this. And for so, she is going to do it right on her very first try.
It pulses in her veins and then is gone. Her eyes open to see the world she knows coming to an end. Nimueh lays limp on her arms, life sucked from her hands, red lips that remember blood. She slowly lowers her to the floor, a fallen rose, an angel that was left by all grace. Tears fall from Morgana face covering the dead woman, wet and full of mud. The sky doesn’t pour on them anymore, there’s no light, no wind. Just the calm. Just the grieve.
Morgana sees through new eyes. Everything faded under a new colour, a new life. She’s the Priestess. She is the Blessed. Deep inside, she wishes she was not. The price was too high, death fills the air she breaths. She whispers words to Nimueh, to her life, to her magic; she worships the woman she now knows she was and gives her the respects she deserves.
When she is done, she looks up. In the mud, near the wall of the ruins rests Merlin. His eyes are closed, but his chests rises and falls slowly, rhythmic and Morgana smiles. A lost child sleeping in the woods. She walks to him, knowing that behind her, Nimueh is disappearing in a swirl of wind, but never looking back. Morgana kneels beside Merlin, and puts his head in her lap, pushing a lock of wet hair out of his face.
So much depends on him, the destiny of all they ever knew weights on his shoulders. She knows that and more, she sees his future, his past, his present. She sees his power and his importance. She also sees the little boy that one day arrived at Camelot, and she smiles at the thought.
Air whispers to her, images fly in front her eyes. Everything seems happy, colours, life and she wants to smile as long as she can, because the truth is that she will eventually have to face the black that comes with this new path. She bends down and brushes her lips to his.
“Farewell, Merlin.”
**
When Merlin wakes, his skin burns. There’s a mark on his wrist, where Morgana first held him when all this started. He looks at it in bewilderment, it doesn’t hurt and it’s just there as a reminder of something he can’t quite put his finger on. He looks up and he sees the Isle of the blessed from the far. In the shore, between the ruins, Morgana is looking at him. An angel in the middle of the mist.
He isn’t sure he understands, but Morgana’s voice sounds in his head, clear and soft, a guardian angel for his nights. He nods. “My lady…” His feet guide him home. Defeated and broken.
This is not what they came for. He prays for Morgana, for Gaius, and in some part of his heart, for the broken life of the witch Nimueh. When he walks into Camelot, the sky is gray, his grief is sour.
**
In the lake, at the border of the Isle, Morgana sings a song. “My destiny, my lord,” She was right after all.
It was only the beginning. She was there for it not to end.
At least, not yet.
Fandom: Merlin
Characters: Merlin/Nimueh/Morgana
Title: This is the beggining.
Rating: PG13
Warnings: femslash. weird plotting (lol)
Word Count: 4783 (WTFME?)
Community: Done for gwenmorganabbc Ladies of Camelot AU challenge.
Summary: Prompt: Minor AU: Varied shades of Merlin/Morgana, Nimueh/Merlin, Nimueh/Morgana. Morgana and Merlin set out to confront Nimueh in 1x13. Nimueh manipulates Morgana.
Notes: Beta'ed by fortassetu (thanks sweety!). I still find it weird, random weird, but I hope you like it ♥
Fire burns her skin at the bare touch. “Please, Merlin. You must beware. This is only the beginning.” Her words echo between them, filling the empty space that separates madness from truth. She strengthens her grab of his wrist until it hurts; reality is something that he must be shaken into. In the dark, they are alone.
He looks lost, confused and ashamed. She knows, he knows she knows and the vicious circle never ends. She insists. “Listen to me, Merlin, this is only the beginning.”
Sore throat, there are words that won’t come out of his mouth. Her eyes are lighted on fire in the shadows and he nods, silent, to the emptiness that surrounds them. “I don’t know…”
“You do.” In the crazy glint of her eyes there is worry and knowledge, wisdom she doesn’t even understand. “I’ll be waiting,” she says and then, she is gone, fading into the darkness of the aisle.
In the air left behind, life and death fight for dominance.
**
The sky is gray as her dreams, as their future. She knows it. She fears it. She’ll fight it.
**
Merlin comes to her earlier than expected. She flinches, her eyes looking at him with suspicion. He struggles for words, however; he doesn’t look like the innocent young boy that is Arthur’s manservant anymore, and her heart crushes.
“She’s sick,” is all he manages to say, his back on the door, his eyes locked with hers. “You…” His words die in his throat. He doesn’t cry, although she knows he wants to, she can see the tears in his soul. “He is gone.”
Morgana smiles, it is not a happy gesture, and her eyes are shadowed by the future she lives scared of. She walks to him, tracing her hand over his arm, catching his hand in hers.
“I know,” sweet whispers leave her lips, close enough to his ear, as if someone else was in the room and she didn’t want them to her. “They are waiting,”
She doesn’t have time to explain to him that by ‘they’ she doesn’t mean the people he thinks. Magic and fate work by rules men does not know.
**
The lands are empty, people hiding in their houses. The news of the future of the Prince is devastating and nobody has informed them that he will survive. Nobody will ever tell them the price that was paid in exchange. Or, maybe, they just can feel the same she does.
There’s a world moving too fast.
**
It’s Merlin who takes control when they arrive to the lake and Morgana the one that follows. He looks warily at her before he speaks the words she is not supposed to hear, but her hand is on his shoulder before he can hide the expression on his face. He shivers under her touch, but his eyes glitter for the first time since the deathly bite on Arthur.
The lake is humid and heavy, and the air is filled with darkness. She covers her shoulders, protecting herself, not from the cold, but from the feeling further inside her skin of loneliness and horror; dread knocks on her soul’s door.
“Why…?” He hasn’t said a real word until know, she can see confusion, doubt in every movement. She leans to his shoulder, looking ahead to the ruins that wait for them, magic and fright.
“Because I don’t want it to be the end,” she answers truthfully and sits straight. She feels his hand in hers seconds later. All she can do in the heavy atmosphere is smile.
Freedom is something her soul does not know about. Perhaps, this is a glimpse of what it feels like.
**
Nimueh waits; her dress falling lazily to the ground, her eyes sparkling with expectation. She knows what’s coming. Her hand closes Gaius’s eyes, such a pity, so much lost potential. She smiles.
The sky is black. And black is the colour of her tainted glass.
**
It is Morgana the first to walk out of the boat into the ruins. Her cloak is covering her from the cold day and her eyes pierce the air. Her voice is the first to be heard in the dead silence.
“No!” Images are flooding to her mind in the same instant her eyes lay on the dead man. Past, present, future mixing in her head, dreams coming alive, she feels helpless and weak. She hoped- she was wrong to even try. “It can’t- can’t-” She fears to mutter her thoughts aloud as if they would allow them to be truth. It can’t be too late. Only, that it is.
**
Merlin walks in, trying to convey his emotions, one hand keeping Morgana steady in her place, the other falling lifeless at his side. His eyes focus on the witch in front them, her eyes obviously amused at the scene she is experiencing.
“I was waiting for you,” her voice is dirty and seductive, but it’s not directed to him, but to the woman he helps keep standing. Morgana is crying, her sobbing echoing in the place, and her body shaking at his hold. “I was waiting for you too, Merlin.”
He feels the anger building inside him, desperation, hate, incontrollable rage that fills him from the tip of his toes to the end of his hands, magic lingering in his fingers anxious to take revenge.
“What did you do?” he asks, voice fierce with fury. “What did you do?!!” Shouting now. He sees colours in his eyes, tears fall without permission, but he can only think in the woman that killed his friend, the closest thing he ever had as a father.
Morgana’s hands are shaking, distracting him, but he can’t notice that her eyes flicker from him to Nimueh to Gaius and back again.
“I did as asked, young warlock,” her voice is vicious, her eyes show malice and both Morgana and Merlin can feel it, crushing their barriers, breaking everything they know. Merlin feels devastated, his nails piercing the skin of his hands in fists, his eyes burning in madness and hate.
“It wasn’t his choice, this was not the bargain we made, witch.” He is full with disgust and horror; magic used for such horrible porpoise sickens him, such a pretty and wonderful thing turned into a despiteful weapon. As focused as he is, he can’t feel Morgana flinching at his side, torn between confusion and sadness. Betrayal speaks in her eyes, but he can’t see them. But Nimueh does, and her eyes change focus to the woman at his hands.
“How dare you talk about your kin like that?” she mutters to him, eyes still facing Morgana. Her voice, soft and low pierces their hearts in ways they can not anticipate. The shout is, by then, unexpected. “Átende!!”
A ball of fire is coming for them. The blue light makes shadows in the rocks and blinds them. Morgana doesn’t move, paralyzed in her place, and Merlin sends her to the side with all the strength he can gather. Not quick enough, not strong enough, he receives the fire in his chest as he starts casting a spell and it sends them both flying backwards to the wall.
Merlin smells the blood before he can actually feel it. Pain shoots across his chest blacking his sight. He fades into unconsciousness, trying to fight it back, the last thing he sees is Morgana on her knees against the wall, her eyes open and in shock.
**
“Such a poor nemesis,” Morgana can hear Nimueh mocking him, her feet walking towards her. Morgana looks for her eyes, immobile as she is against the hard rock. Nimueh shines in the gray atmosphere, her smile, torn between happiness and disappointment, doesn’t sicken her as it should. “My dear Morgana, it’s not your fate to choose the side that loses,” the witch kneels in front of her and her hand caress her cheek sending chills to the back of her bones. “You could do better, my dear.”
Morgana sees it then: the dreams she fears, the images she never understood, the power in her hands, death and life at her feet. Their feet. She sees promises of a future without fear, worries or hiding, she sees acceptance and understanding in Nimueh’s eyes; in her lips as the woman whispers to her. In her skin, glowing, calling her, seducing into a path she never considered but presented to her in the most intoxicating way.
“You are better, my dear,” Nimueh is whispering, the tips of her fingers dancing over Morgana’s eyelids. “Such a rough warmth, you are destined for such great glory… you could only start now.” Her voice torments her, she has seen this before, heard those words, made the choice in her head way before she even understood what it meant. She wants to fight it; to go against the flow magic has set for head. “This is why the Old religion gave you this gift; you are everything I’ve been waiting for,”
She feels lost and broken and is still incapable of moving. Her body is in so much pain that she barely notices it anymore, it is not something she can identify but a whole bunch of unwariness in her skin. Nimueh’s hands play with her hair, like a mother with her daughter, she talks to her about all the magic she could learn, about freedom and control. No more nightmares, no more potions, just her and her senses working together. Nimueh, the woman she came to fight, is the one to offer her everything she wants. Everything she needs.
She can’t see Merlin, she can’t feel him, she can’t even tell if he is still alive, but for what it really matters, she can’t think of him anymore. There is a hole in her thoughts, a place she doesn’t walk by right now, avoiding every contact to the life she knows. Nimueh’s words consume her, changing her, challenging her to take the path where she will lead her own life.
All she can see is Nimueh’s big ponds of blue looking at her. All she can hear are her words in her ear, pushing their way to the core of her soul. All she can feel is Nimueh’s magic mixing with her own, healing and not healing, matching until they almost seem to be the same, to work like one. She can’t remember where she is, why she is there or what she is supposed to fight.
“You could be so powerful, so free,” Nimueh’s word taste like sin and rain in her lips, salt for a meal she didn’t even know she was having. The proximity is intoxicating. Something, deep inside, tells her that she has to push her away, but her body is limp and her mind is long gone inside Nimueh’s promises. “So pure and unique you are, so great you’d be…”
This is the end, she remembers. This is the end and she is falling deep into it.
**
He sees black. His head spins forward and backwards and it feels like fire is burning every inch of his skin. Numbness, that’s how he feels, except for the pressure in his chest, the heat that crawls from there to his whole body. He tries to move in the dark, but pain shoots his veins and he arches against the cold hard rock.
He feels magic in his fingers. He isn’t gone yet.
**
Nimueh knows she is playing with destiny and fate, she is pushing the Old Religion's wishes to the limit, fire growing inside her, hopes and dreams she had forgotten awakening under the perspective of a new future. The Old Religion doesn’t have time to play hide and seek, but she does, and she is willing to go just a little further if that means gaining all she’s lost.
It feels natural to touch Morgana, to let her fingers trace the woman's skin, so easy to mutter the words that will bring the Lady of Camelot to her power. It’s like going back to the past but at the same time searching for the future. It’s not Igraine who lingers under her magic, it’s not Igraine’s blue eyes, but it foresees a future she could only imagine when the woman was alive.
It’s so easy to break Morgana that she almost can believe it, there’s a tenderness in her lost eyes that remembers the hopeless look of determination her old friend gave her before her life was gone forever. There are promises lingering in every caress she gives, in every spasm she causes the other girl. Lips so close and yet so far, smelling like past and future, consuming her and at the same time, making her alive.
Magic has a power she has learned how to work. It’s a fate that was given and taken, and now, it presents to her in the body of a young beautiful woman, so different to everything she has known so far and yet so alike. There’s magic flowing between them, something she has never been able to share before, not completely, not this way. There’s power like her own, competing for balance, even if the young woman isn’t aware of it.
Everything Nimueh needs right now is her kin to be home, she wants the Old Religion to grow strong, the connection she felt back then when magic was free for all. Morgana is offered to her, a prize, a tool, a memory, and it’s so easy to move the chords that keep her sane and stable that Nimueh is almost disappointed the fight was won before it even began.
**
He is still against the rocks when he gains consciousness, he feels as if something had drawn a hole in his chest and he is quite sure he is not far from the truth. He doesn’t open his eyes at first, light, barely as it is, breaks his head at the bare touch with his pupils. His mouth tastes like blood, and if he has to be sincere with himself, everything simply smells like it too. He starts to remember what was happening before he passed out, and as soon as Nimueh’s face appears in his thoughts he is back on alert. Eyes full open, hand searching for magic and power to overcome this situation. Nothing can prepare him for what he sees after light stops blinding him.
Morgana is standing next to Nimueh, her eyes are looking at him, but there’s no sadness, not even that glint of madness that has covered her actions in the last times, just firm determination. He doesn’t understand at first, Morgana doesn’t seem to be hurt, in pain, or be tied to anything, Nimueh has one of her hands in her shoulder, but there’s no oppression, no obligation to submission in her touch.
As reality sinks into his skin, he realizes that Morgana and Nimueh are standing there, like friends, as if the sun shone in the summer and they were simply sharing a day out after a long rainy month. He believes to be dreaming, or may be, just hallucinating. He knows he is not.
Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
**
Morgana ignores Gaius at first, and finally, she doesn’t see him anymore. He is a traitor, Nimueh said to her. He helped the King kill hundreds of their kind; he would have turned his eyes if she was the one to be hanged up. She knows is true, she doesn’t need tricks or magic to be convinced and it doesn’t take too long before her head accepts it without question or remorse.
It’s really simply to be on this side of the world. Her thoughts are clear, her dreams forgotten, is all she ever wanted and it feels so good she almost regrets not doing it before. She is not sure what she is supposed to do now, they have been waiting for some time, and Morgana feels clueless about Nimueh’s intentions. Something in her head retains the questions, the worries, so, she simply waits for something to change. When it does, is Nimueh’s hand on her shoulder, barely touching it, sending shivers to her spine.
When Morgana looks for what has changed, she sees Merlin, on the floor, where she hadn’t noticed before. Is him there with them? Why is he lying? She doesn’t have time to think, there’s horror in his opened eyes, and magic surrounding him like a shield. She sees him stand up, facing them, confusion, bewilderment, hate and fear all in one, with such intensity that she feels the urge to grab his hand. To guide him, be for a second his light. Instead, she remains under Nimueh’s touch and control. Confused, insecure.
This is not what she saw in her dreams, this is not the future she expects, but seems to be the future she wants. However, the weak point of her thoughts resides in the fact that this, the unknown, is something she doesn’t know how to act on.
**
“Welcome to the world of the living, Merlin,” Nimueh’s voice is the first sound to be heard once he stands up. “I- We were hoping you were still among us. Such a boring destiny it would have been if you hadn’t given us that pleasure.”
Morgana’s eyes are fixed on him, and though he tries to face Nimueh, he can’t avoid that look. He needs to find something, to understand the reasons for such a bad switch. He is playing with his magic around him, and tears come out of his eyes without permission, frustration, pain, desperation and fury blending in one, corrupting him. The sky opens at the same time and cries with him.
“Impressive,” Nimueh keeps talking, her hand no longer on Morgana’s shoulder, her bare feet walking towards him in ease. “Learning new tricks, warlock?”
“Morgana…” the word comes out as a whisper, but she hears him, one step forward, one step backwards. He is pleading with his eyes, searching for something there that will tell him she understands, but for him, she is away, far into the darkness of something he hadn’t understood until now: Morgana’s dreams and needs hidden in the dark of her mind crushing down their world.
“You live and die in the Isle of the Blessed,” her voice sounds like poetry, a song he never heard, and even Nimueh seems surprised to hear her. “A life for a life, a world for a world, balance is always restored.”
Something is changing in the air. He can feel it, surrounding him, fighting against his own magic, and as the heat of the moment flows away from him, fear establishes in his bones. This can’t be good, there’s no way that feeling, the emptiness, the waves of belonging and not hitting him, can be a good sign.
“What are you doing?” Nimueh’s voice is almost a shriek. Her eyes plastered against her head, her hands divided, one pointed to Merlin and the other to Morgana. “Stop.”
“It’s no so simple, my Lady,” Morgana’s eyes shine, and Merlin can swear he has never seen her wrapped in such madness. Nothing good can come out of this, and even Nimueh is sensing so. “I wish to follow your desires,” Morgana walks towards Nimueh, settling her hand in the witch’s one. “Your reasons are right, your feelings are true, but you misunderstood what magic was asking of you, and so did I.”
Merlin blinks in confusion, but is fast enough as to cast a spell towards Nimueh. She must pay, for everything she did, for everything she wants to do. Distracted as she is, she stills manages to stop it. Fire dies in mid air and her eyes, full with fury and contradiction face him again.
“Young warlock, you must wait. You could be so powerful too, if only…” her voice dies in her throat, and her eyes grow tears on her cheeks. Merlin can see magic pulsing through the women hands, but he is unable to understand. Whatever Morgana is doing, it’s hurting the witch. Whatever Morgana is doing, scares him more than it should.
“Magic needs a vase, a spot in earth for life to go on, to fulfil its destiny, which isn’t mine and isn’t yours, I see that now.”
“S- stop.” Nimueh’s pleadings aren’t but a low whisper in the air. Her hands look black, her eyes red of tears. “I command you,” she manages to say, but her voice ends in silence and her eyes shut down in pain.
Merlin can only think but call Morgana’s name.
**
Everything is black. And hot. Really hot. There’s fire everywhere, in her hand, in her eyes. Everything is black and silence is heavy on her years.
Screams, shrieks coming for everywhere to pierce her eyes, voices she has heard before, voices she has had once, past that haunts her. Igraine, Gaius, Uther, Morgana, Merlin and them. All of them. Every single one of the dead. Are they haunting her? Is she dead?
Black. A big labyrinth without end. Black. This is how it ends.
**
Morgana isn’t really sure of what she is doing, but everything seems clearer now. It just comes without voice, without command, the sheer realization that this is the true path. There are no shadows in her eyes; everything is lighted by some mystical magic she doesn’t fear anymore. Suddenly everything has a purpose and she is not sure when the change happened. First, everything Nimueh said was like stories of better futures to her ears, a sad song that promised love and life, and then, there was comprehension. Great things happen to those that choose their one true path. And it wasn’t Nimueh’s promises she heard anymore, it was her dreams, magic, those that have been waiting for her, those that have wanted her there. Future isn’t a black cloud of uncertainty but a blossom walk along the shore of a big shiny coast.
Magic talked to her. Magic commanded her. All she is now is an anchor of magic, destiny and life to earth.
She sees Merlin, and her soul is sad, she wants to explain, she wants to tell him she isn’t coming back. She wants to say she is sorry, to give him messages for those that are left behind. She can’t.
Her grab on Nimueh gets stronger, her magic dancing with hers, power fighting for balance. There can’t be two Ladies, magic has told her so, and they want her. Paths have been bidden, future settled and all she can do is work her way through it, wishes that magic foretold her. Desires she never understood. Until now.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and Hell opens its doors for them.
**
Merlin is paralyzed, and only because of that he knows his feet are still on ground. Air dances with rain, fire grows in a circle around them, lightening falls, too close and yet not enough. Nimueh fights against Morgana skin, and they glow.
It’s almost beautiful. So beautiful he feels compelled to watch but doesn’t know how to react. Morgana has both of Nimueh’s hands in hers now, and there are colours swirling around them in a demonstration of magic that can only resemble to that night in Avalon, months ago. He feels his own magic pleading to play in the madness he is seeing and he has never felt it so away from himself, and so inside at the same time. It comes as a shock to realize that magic is not only a gift but a part of him; something given that can’t be taken. Or so he hopes. The spectacle in front of him doesn’t leave him too much to have faith for.
It takes hours or minutes, he isn’t really sure, to the world come to an end. Fire, water, wind, love and hate. Magic controls the way they move, and the fight is something he can only guess for the elements that move around, as he knows, he can tell, that the real power is inside their heads.
He falls to the floor, weak and hurt, unable to fight the power that flies around him, knocking him of his feet. The dragon’s riddles sound in his head, Morgana’s words echo between the voice and the mocking of Nimueh dancing in his ears. He is too weak to keep watching, and before he can tell, black takes over and all he can do is hope that Morgana is still on her feet when he comes back to life again.
**
It happens in an instant and she is not there but at the same time she is. All she can see are Nimueh’s blue eyes even though they are shut. She feels the magic, the adrenaline, the pulse of her blood on her arms. Nimueh’s pleadings echo in her head. Please. We could be great. Together. Don’t. Just. Please. Morgana. My lady.
Even in her surrender, Morgana knows she can’t give in. It’s not meant to happen like that, she understands that now. She didn’t come to save Gaius, his life was gone before she could even dream about it. She didn’t come to save Merlin, or help him, neither to bring hope or knowledge. She came for this. And for so, she is going to do it right on her very first try.
It pulses in her veins and then is gone. Her eyes open to see the world she knows coming to an end. Nimueh lays limp on her arms, life sucked from her hands, red lips that remember blood. She slowly lowers her to the floor, a fallen rose, an angel that was left by all grace. Tears fall from Morgana face covering the dead woman, wet and full of mud. The sky doesn’t pour on them anymore, there’s no light, no wind. Just the calm. Just the grieve.
Morgana sees through new eyes. Everything faded under a new colour, a new life. She’s the Priestess. She is the Blessed. Deep inside, she wishes she was not. The price was too high, death fills the air she breaths. She whispers words to Nimueh, to her life, to her magic; she worships the woman she now knows she was and gives her the respects she deserves.
When she is done, she looks up. In the mud, near the wall of the ruins rests Merlin. His eyes are closed, but his chests rises and falls slowly, rhythmic and Morgana smiles. A lost child sleeping in the woods. She walks to him, knowing that behind her, Nimueh is disappearing in a swirl of wind, but never looking back. Morgana kneels beside Merlin, and puts his head in her lap, pushing a lock of wet hair out of his face.
So much depends on him, the destiny of all they ever knew weights on his shoulders. She knows that and more, she sees his future, his past, his present. She sees his power and his importance. She also sees the little boy that one day arrived at Camelot, and she smiles at the thought.
Air whispers to her, images fly in front her eyes. Everything seems happy, colours, life and she wants to smile as long as she can, because the truth is that she will eventually have to face the black that comes with this new path. She bends down and brushes her lips to his.
“Farewell, Merlin.”
**
When Merlin wakes, his skin burns. There’s a mark on his wrist, where Morgana first held him when all this started. He looks at it in bewilderment, it doesn’t hurt and it’s just there as a reminder of something he can’t quite put his finger on. He looks up and he sees the Isle of the blessed from the far. In the shore, between the ruins, Morgana is looking at him. An angel in the middle of the mist.
He isn’t sure he understands, but Morgana’s voice sounds in his head, clear and soft, a guardian angel for his nights. He nods. “My lady…” His feet guide him home. Defeated and broken.
This is not what they came for. He prays for Morgana, for Gaius, and in some part of his heart, for the broken life of the witch Nimueh. When he walks into Camelot, the sky is gray, his grief is sour.
**
In the lake, at the border of the Isle, Morgana sings a song. “My destiny, my lord,” She was right after all.
It was only the beginning. She was there for it not to end.
At least, not yet.