[fic] The Ivy Crown, 9b/9
Of all the moments that had given Merlin near-heart attacks today, it felt like Morgana's appearance almost did the job.
Although it had been months since he'd last seen her, he recognized her voice immediately, and judging from the way Arthur spun around on his heel as though he'd been struck, he was not the only one. The sudden shift in the atmosphere was almost palpable, the clearing's collective attention shifting from Gwaine and the Green Knight to Morgana. Metal scraped at Merlin's right, and when he glanced over, he was not surprised to see that Leon and Lancelot had drawn their weapons.
His first thought was that Morgana looked different, although he couldn't quite tell how much of it came from the dangerous crackle that hovered in the air around her. She wore a dark cloak, the hood thrown back to expose her head, but it looked nothing like the cloaks he'd seen her wear in Camelot before. The hems were torn, the fabric dirty and worn from weeks of exposure to the changing weather.
But she still carried herself the same way, with the same regal grace that bordered on arrogance-an arrogance that had made Merlin smile once upon a time because it was so much like the imperious haughtiness that Arthur often drew around him like a coat. But now it was hard and cold, weathered by storms, and it sent a shiver through Merlin that he had ever thought her and her brother alike.
On its own accord, his gaze drifted to Arthur, whose face had gone completely white and who was watching Morgana too, helpless shock brightening his eyes. He stared at the knotted, dirty tangles of hair that hung about her face, the smeared dust on her face that looked like she'd been traveling and had never bothered with a quick wash in a mountain stream.
Most of all, he seemed transfixed by her eyes, once green but now littered with specks of gold that glowed erratically like dying embers. Merlin didn't know what she had done to change her eyes like that-even his own had always returned to blue, no matter how much magic he'd been doing-but in a way, he figured he might not want to know.
"Most excellent," Morgana said, almost to herself, and let out a misplaced girlish giggle as she looked around the clearing. She spread her hands in mock welcome, and Merlin saw that she was clutching something dark and charred, but couldn't quite make out what it was. "You're all here, alone, defenseless-oh, this is a far better outcome than I ever dared to dream of!"
She gave them a wide, guileless smile, and Merlin half expected her to clap her hands in childish glee. A shiver crawled down his spine, slow like the creeping dread that began to curl into a cold ball in his stomach. Her eyes sparked with sputtering gold whenever she moved, like the magic in her was drawn so far up to the surface that it was almost beyond her control, but she didn't seem to notice.
When she stepped further away from the treeline, Merlin noticed how the very grass seemed to shrink back from her as if curdled by an unseen breeze. The bark of the ancient oaks groaned when she passed them, like they were struggling to stretch away from the mud-spattered hem of her cloak.
"You know, I thought you had figured me out," Morgana told Arthur, conversationally, like they were loosely acquainted nobles on a courtly feast. She laughed again, a high, trilling sound that rang out across the clearing, and she looked around at the others as if sharing a private joke with them. "When you sent the squires back to Camelot, I thought they were going to come back with the entire army, but it seems like I've still outwitted you!"
The gleam in her eyes made Merlin's skin pull tight with apprehension, tiny crackles of golden light sparking on his fingertips, but no one so much as looked at him, and so he didn't try to suppress the wave of magic that crested on the surface of his mind. His gaze firmly fixed on the white-knuckled clench of Morgana's hand around the blackened thing, he tried to calm the frantic pounding of his heart. He told himself that he was more than equipped to strike her down as soon as she so much as moved a finger in Arthur's direction, but apprehension continued to pulse through him anyway.
"Morgana," Arthur said finally, not really an acknowledgement of what she'd said-it sounded more like a question. It was the first time he saw her since he'd found out that she was his sister, Merlin realized, and winced a little at the uncertainty in Arthur's voice, concealed beneath a veneer of expressionless indifference.
Distaste flickered across Morgana's features, dimming her smile for a moment, as if that tone stirred at something hidden deep within her mind, something that she didn't want to look at. When she spoke again, her voice was filled with contempt. "I will not listen to your empty platitudes- brother," she added, the word tumbling from her mouth without her consent.
She paused, frowning, as her own acknowledgement of the blood bond between her and Arthur threw her off kilter. For a moment she looked lonely and confused, like she'd forgotten altogether why she was even here; her eyes grew brighter, the gold dimming as she glanced around the clearing, looking for something she had lost.
Slowly, Leon inched noiselessly through a cluster of bushes that seemed to bend their twigs out of his way to avoid any rustling, heading for Morgana's left side, for the hand that was holding the charred object. His eyes flickered back and forth between Arthur and Morgana, his hold on his dagger tense but secure. Gwaine was right next to him-he looked paler than Merlin had ever seen him, the blood on his neck all the brighter for the contrast, but his gaze was calm and calculating.
Nobody spoke or made a sound. Merlin saw Morgana still the trembling of her hands with a mighty effort, and suddenly he could barely suppress the urge to jump forward and try to talk her out of whatever she was planning, right now, while she seemed susceptible to the influence of reason.
"No," Morgana said to herself, her gaze turning inward. The flaring shards of gold in her eyes cast a strange, unearthly glow on her face, and Merlin knew that the moment was over. "I didn't listen when Uther begged me to kill him instead of his people, and I don't have to listen now either."
Merlin saw Arthur's shoulders pull tight against the flinch that wanted to force its way past his defenses at the mention of his father. But he didn't say anything, and Morgana took a deep breath, shaking herself. Lancelot and Elyan had used her momentary distraction to creep closer to her other side, and even without looking over his shoulder, Merlin knew that Percival was standing behind him, ready to protect or lash out as he saw fit.
The smile was back on Morgana's face as if it had never been gone. It had nothing in common with the contemptuous, knowing smirk that Merlin had seen so often during her last months in Camelot, and that was what scared him. In a way, it looked helpless, forced onto her lips without her consent, simply because the mad, exalted triumph in her eyes needed an outlet.
"This time," Morgana said to Arthur, turning back to him like her monologue had never happened at all, "not even your knights will save you." A brief, glowing glance skimmed the others, and tension rippled across the clearing-Merlin felt Percival step closer to him, his body heat reassuring at Merlin's back.
"I had quite a nice talk with Bayard," she told them, disinterestedly, as though it bored her to tell them how well her plan had worked. "And he dispatched so many of his patrols to follow me here when I told him of a potential threat to his kingdom, it was quite kind of him."
The look she fixed Arthur with reminded Merlin a bit of the old Morgana, hard and unforgiving as it was, her eyes suddenly devoid of the strange, cheerful gleam. "Mercian soldiers are on their way to the Chapel," Morgana said, each word precise and deadly like the lash of a whip, "and I wonder what they'll tell their king when they find the crown prince of Camelot and his knights, armed and incognito in the middle of their lands."
A ringing silence fell, and Merlin fought to keep his features impassive and devoid of the shock that coursed through his veins. He tried to tell himself that he'd known this-he had pieced together the bits of information that he had gathered over the past weeks of their journey to form exactly the picture that Morgana was showing them now. But the realization that he'd been right, that Morgana had indeed lured them here, still hit him hard.
"He'll declare war on Camelot, I think," Morgana stated idly, shaking a stray lock of hair from her face. The cold, calculating awareness had vanished from her features, leaving blank, childish glee in its wake. She leaned forward, closer to Arthur, and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper when she added, "And I really don't think Uther's strategic skills are what they used to be, you know."
Arthur shook his head as if to chase away an annoying fly that buzzed close to his ear. Anger throbbed through Merlin, sudden and unexpected, not really because of Morgana's words, but because of how tightly the prince was holding himself in check. He wanted to step closer to Arthur and wrap him in a protective cocoon of golden, glowing magic, but he didn't dare move, for fear of drawing attention to himself. All of his instincts were screaming at him to be careful and wait.
"You will stop this," Arthur said, so quietly that Merlin almost didn't hear him. His voice was flat and unemotional, but there was a rawness just beneath the veneer that pulled uncomfortably at something within Merlin's chest. "You'll send the Mercians away, you'll tell Bayard that you were wrong-"
-and then I might give you another chance, he didn't add, but Merlin heard the words like Arthur had shouted them. He didn't know if it was the deranged cheer on his sister's features that disarmed him, but something was keeping Arthur in check, holding back the betrayed anger that Merlin knew had built up and up since Cenred's attack, waiting to be unleashed.
"Oh, but what makes you think I'd want to do that?" Morgana asked, amusement bubbling into her voice and threatening to break out in a giggle. Merlin couldn't help the uneasy shiver that raced down his spine, and from the corner of his eye he saw Leon and Gwaine exchange a grave look. "I have help this time, don't I?"
For the first time, Morgana's attention shifted. All around the clearing, heads turned to follow her gaze, but even before Merlin had pivoted on his heel, he knew she was looking at the Green Knight. Merlin caught a glimpse of Arthur's face when he turned around, his features white and tight as though carved out of marble.
"Indeed I do," Morgana muttered, frowning for a moment like she was struggling to come to a decision. Confusion flickered across her features again, but this time her own reassurances were quicker to pull her mind back. "This is most convenient. You," she added, pointing at the Green Knight with a careless finger, and Merlin saw that her nails were ragged and torn, crusted with earth and blood, "you will hold them here until the Mercian soldiers arrive."
The Green Knight stared at her with an expression that Merlin didn't think he'd ever quite seen. Pity, anger, reluctance-but most of all, overwhelming revulsion, like he was seeing Morgana clearly for the first time. An unearthly glow seemed to hang in the air around him like a towering wave, reflected by the metal clasps of his tunic and the shining blade of his axe. His fingers twitched, probably longing to curl into fists or around the handle, but he kept his hands well clear of his weapon.
"I have been lenient," he said in a near whisper, but there was no rustling of leaves around them, no faraway calls of birds, and so his voice carried anyway. "I have been most patient with you, even though you made me your slave," he spat out the word like it was something vile, "even though your nightmares left scorched scars in my realm-"
Morgana's anger erupted so suddenly that Merlin hadn't even seen it coming. Her features twisted into a grimace of fury, her body hunching in on itself to keep it in, but then it burst out of her anyway, golden arcs of light whipping through the air before they went out in showers of sparks.
"You have been lenient?" she shouted shrilly, her voice echoing through the clearing, and Merlin didn't even stop to think about it-he used her distraction to hurry to Arthur's side, his feet making no sound on the grass.
The air was thick and charged with the magic that had broken out of Morgana, and for the first time Merlin felt a stirring of true fear. It was like he had assumed-even the remnants of magic tasted stale and charred in his mouth, like power that had been cooped up for so long that it had become primal and uncontrollable.
"It is not your place to pity me!" Morgana shrieked, and Merlin saw her fingers curl into claws in her unthinking fury. She didn't even look at him, her gaze fixed only on the Green Knight, but although he had reached Arthur, Merlin didn't dare whisper the words of a shielding spell. "You should beg me for mercy so I don't end your pathetic existence here and now!"
The Green Knight's features twitched, and for a moment, ageless, unearthing anger broke through before his mask of strained patience slipped back into place. "I know what the loss of your sister did to you," he began once more, slowly, and Merlin silently marveled at the fact that he was even trying to get through to her. He wasn't sure whether he would have done the same if he had been in the Green Knight's position.
But Morgana wasn't listening anymore. A hysterical, manic smile spread across her features, even as Merlin saw her eyes grow wet and vulnerable at the mention of Morgause-the sight chilled him more than the explosion of magic a moment ago, and he drew closer to Arthur without thinking. A cold ball of dread was squirming in his gut, and he had to physically force himself to stand still and not try to whisk them all away to a safe place.
Morgana lifted her chin, perhaps to stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks, and when the golden fragments in her eyes gleamed again, the trace of uncertainty was gone from her features. She looked only at the Green Knight, still smiling, and said, "Don't think I don't know how to make you burn."
With dreamlike slowness, she raised her left hand.
The Green Knight went completely and utterly still, not even blinking as his eyes focused on her white fingers, soiled by dirt and soot. With a sick, sinking feeling in his stomach, Merlin gazed at her hand as well, although he suddenly wished that he had the strength to look away. The stench of scorched plants drifted over to them, and when Morgana uncurled her hand, Merlin wasn't even all that surprised by what he saw.
An ivy leaf was lying in her palm, and Merlin's first thought was that it didn't look like the one that was still hidden beneath his tunic, pressed securely to his chest. His leaf was thrumming with life, the bright green veins shot through with thriving health. But Morgana's leaf looked like it had been burned. The edges were singed and curly, paper-thin fibers barely keeping it whole, and Merlin saw little green veins pulse weakly in the middle, struggling to sustain what little life was left in it.
Morgana held out the leaf for everyone to see, like a child proudly showing off a trophy to her peers. Fixed on the Green Knight, her eyes went a triumphant gold, and there was nothing but command in her voice as it rang across the clearing. "Ic þē gebīede," she called, and the leaf's veins suddenly began to glow even as smoke curled faintly from its edges, "hīe āgæle!"
It felt like a punch to the gut. Even mercifully cut off from the forest's magic as he was, Merlin still couldn't suppress the bone-deep shudder that clawed its way through his stomach, leaving him bent over and gasping. Dimly, he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears and felt Arthur's startled touch on his shoulder, and he blinked his eyes open with a monumental effort, fighting to see through the black spots that danced in front of his vision.
The first thing he saw was the Green Knight, and the very air seemed to shake around him, fighting with maddened fury against the spell. His features twisted and Merlin saw him widen his stance like he was preparing to face an armed foe, his whole body trembling as he struggled for control-but Morgana had given him a direct order, and the glowing leaf in her palm told Merlin that he had to obey.
The Green Knight curled his fingers and slowly raised his hands, his open palms facing the sky, and for a moment Merlin thought he saw glittering strings of magic pull tight around him, thin and silvery in the sunlight. Then the ground shuddered beneath him, and Merlin suddenly understood what Morgana had commanded the Green Knight to do. "No!" he shouted, uselessly, even as he saw Lancelot stumble on the other side of the clearing, the air thick like syrup in his lungs. "Run!"
Gwaine lurched forward, trying to throw his body into motion, but his movements looked odd and sluggish, and a second later, Merlin understood why. Thorny tendrils were growing up his legs, winding around his boots in a thickening curl of green and brown as leaves sprouted upwards, unfurling themselves and turning their newborn fibers towards the sunlight.
He tried to stumble back even as Percival and Elyan let out shocked shouts, their feet suddenly glued to the ground by thick tangles of grass and wooden twines-then a small field of clover erupted from the ground at Merlin's boots, holding fast to his heel. Thin, strong branches grew up his legs and hooked their thorns into his trousers, not hard enough to sting, but firmly enough to keep him still. Long stalks of grass wound around his knees and locked his legs in place, knotting with the twines to form an impenetrable tangle.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Arthur and Leon hack and slash at the greenery that imprisoned their legs with their longest daggers. Percival's face was twisted into a grimace of concentration as he struggled to free his legs, tearing at the twines with his bare hands. Shredded leaves flew every which way, strips of bark were ripped from the tangles, but the plants just grew back, sprouting fresh sets of tendrils wherever one was hacked off.
Merlin stopped trying to move when the first twigs reached curiously for his flailing hands, and forced himself into stillness, blood roaring in his ears. He was panting with exertion and fear, but as soon as he held still, the twines stopped growing, and he couldn't help the sigh of relief that escaped him. The clawing, claustrophobic panic subsided-although he couldn't walk, he wasn't completely immobilized, and the plants didn't seem to want to envelop him completely in their green embrace.
When he looked around, he saw that the others had stopped struggling as well, having come to the same conclusion. He caught Arthur's eye and they exchanged a helpless glance, although Merlin couldn't help a tiny moment of relief when he saw that the color had finally returned to Arthur's face, and he didn't look as stunned and helpless anymore.
"Very good!" Morgana exclaimed, clapping her hands, heedless of the trickle of soot that fell from between her fingers. She grinned at the Green Knight as if he had done her bidding of his own free will.
His restrained legs began to prickle from the cut-off blood flow, and Merlin fought to contain the terror that tried to force its way past his defenses. They were stuck, trussed up like a bunch of pigs waiting patiently for their butcher, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. The Green Knight couldn't help them, and Merlin didn't know how to help him, he'd never had any idea how to free him from Morgana's control, in spite of the trust that Kilgharrah and the Green Knight had put into him. He struggled to keep his breathing even, ignoring the cold sweat that slid down his back, and his chest was burning, although he couldn't tell if it was from fear or a lack of air.
"Now we will just have to wait for the soldiers to arrive," Morgana said, conversationally, and smiled sunnily at Arthur. Merlin ground his teeth so hard they hurt when she stepped towards him, his magic a furious, panicked clamor in his ears, but she didn't try to touch him.
She just stared at Arthur for a long moment, searching her brother's stony, blank features for any traces of fear, like she wanted to check whether she'd made an impression on him yet. What she saw didn't satisfy her, Merlin could tell, because she flung back her hair in a gesture that was oddly reminiscent of her old self, although the dirty tangles held nothing of what used to be glossy black.
"You'll beg for your life soon enough," she told Arthur, with an vehement coldness that made Merlin think that she was trying to convince herself as much as him. Her lip curled in disgust, a short flicker of fury sparking through her eyes. "Or maybe you'll beg me to spare Uther instead, the bumbling mad fool shut away in his castle, too broken to plead for his life himself-"
Color flooded Arthur's cheeks, and he snarled at her in wordless fury, lurching forward in his constraints. A thorny twine crept up his chest as though in warning, and abruptly, the skin on Merlin's chest felt like it was breaking out in an itchy rash. From the corner of his eye, he could see the others, their eyes fixed on Morgana with varying expressions of anger and disbelief. Elyan was still struggling against his entrapment, keeping his movements slow and deliberate as he tried to squirm out of the plants' hold without triggering their growth yet again.
But one face wasn't turned towards Morgana, and Merlin finally looked over his shoulder at the Green Knight. He was startled to find that the man was staring at him instead of his conqueror, his face pale but determined, the fathomless depths of his green gaze effortlessly drawing Merlin in. There was a warning there, an insistent, silent message, and Merlin squirmed in his constraints as his sternum prickled with heat.
He couldn't figure out what the Green Knight was trying to tell him, couldn't think with danger looming so close, and he tore his gaze away, frantically scanning the treeline instead. Morgana was right, he thought, struggling to push down the hysteria that bubbled up in him like poison. They could only wait, wait to hear the familiar clang of armor, the scrape of unsheathed swords and the creak of bowstrings, pulled tight for arrows that were meant for their hearts.
Their hearts, a tiny, insistent voice repeated at the back of his mind, and he paused at the thought. Merlin's own heart was thrashing with its frantic pulse, pounding against his ribcage as though it wanted to crawl right out, and his chest was on fire, it stung and burned and itched unlike anything he'd ever felt before, like his very skin was trying to peel itself from his flesh-
Merlin's gaze flew to the leaf of ivy that was still clutched in Morgana's hand, and he understood.
A strange calm washed over him as he stood there, claiming him in long, slow waves that stilled his squirming. Morgana was still whispering of Uther's madness, her mouth curled into a deranged parody of her former smirk, but her eyes grew darker and darker with fury as she tried to find words that would break down her brother's defenses. But Merlin barely heard her over the rush of blood in his ears, and it didn't matter anyway-none of it mattered, if only he could do what he knew he had to.
He moved with deliberate care, trying not to draw attention to himself as he brought a hand to his chest, his trembling fingers searching his pulse. The Green Knight was still watching him, his gaze like a physical touch as Merlin slowly, so slowly reached into the neckline of his tunic, hoping, praying that the strange movement wouldn't catch Morgana's eye. His fingers were clammy with sweat, but Morgana never even glanced at him, turning away from Arthur with a childish pout of contempt.
The ivy leaf stopped scorching his skin as soon as Merlin touched it, and he knew he had figured out the Green Knight's silent message.
Constrained as he still was, the green coils and twines around his legs felt more like a welcome anchor when he gently pulled the leaf from his collar. A tiny pulse was hammering through its veins under his touch, and he wished he could soothe it somehow. It had kept him safe and sane for the past three days, and what he was about to do wasn't exactly going to return the favor.
With a hazy sort of surprise that barely scratched the resolve in his mind, Merlin realized that he had not gone unnoticed after all. Gwaine's puzzled gaze was fixed on him-he must have struggled with his bonds more than the others, because his right arm was almost completely overgrown with twigs and leaves. A thin crust of clotted blood was covering the wound on his neck, drying to patches of brown on the collar of his shirt.
Merlin swallowed hard and looked away, trying not to think of Percival and Elyan-they were the only ones who didn't know about his magic yet, but now they would. He was acutely aware of Percival's tall bulk somewhere behind him, and Elyan had almost managed to free his thigh from the clutch of the twines.
And Arthur was staring at him as well with wide, wild eyes, his gaze bluer than the sky and for the first time, afraid-as if he knew what Merlin was going to do and was silently imploring him not to. Merlin smiled at him, helplessly, trying to hide how his stomach clenched around a shivery ball of fear that bled through the strange sense of peace that had befallen him, and Arthur opened his mouth to order Merlin to stop.
Tearing his gaze away from Arthur, Merlin took a deep, steadying breath, and let go of the leaf.
It hovered in the air before him, suspended by a thread of power that he wasn't sure was his own, but then he forgot to wonder about it. With a triumphant, primal roar that was meant for his ears only, the forest's magic slammed into him, thundering through his veins and infusing his very breaths with raw, untamed power. All of his muscles convulsed in protest under the assault, blood boiling hotly in his veins like it wanted to force its way out of his body. He thought he screamed, but maybe it was just an echo of the forest's all-encompassing call of victory-
Far away, somebody shouted his name, a hollow, forlorn sound that reached him as though through a long tunnel. Blackness raced through his blurred vision, swooping down on him like a bird of prey, and he let himself be pulled under.
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