The Future is Ours
Title: The Future is Ours
Wordcount: ~3,300
Warnings: canon character death (in an alternate universe), references to half-sibling incest
Summary: Morgana wakes, and it's all been a dream.
A/N: I have wanted this fic to exist for a long time (even if by all rights it deserves Big Bang treatment), so I thought I would do it as the last part of my post-finale fics. It isn't a headcanon so much as it is basically a big screw-you to destiny the way the show does it, with bonus pre-OT4 added in.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Morgana wakes only when she has had time to understand that there is not a soul who regrets her death. Not those she called friends or family, not those who might once have been loyal to her, not even those who had come to follow, even to worship, her-just one small dragon who followed another’s orders and a distant regret from a few for who she used to be. No one mourns the death of Morgana Pendragon.
She wakes screaming in rich sheets and lace nightdress, the taste of metal on the back of her tongue and Gwen, young again, with her arms around her calling her “my lady.” It takes a moment for that long, long dream to fade into something less like reality, and even then she shies away from Gwen’s gentle touch. “Another nightmare?” Gwen asks, looking a little hurt as Morgana scrambles out of her arms. “We must speak to Gaius, and see if he can help at all.”
Morgana swallows down bile at the thought of the poison Gaius spent (will spend) years feeding her, keeping her magic from her as he trains up a boy who has-not yet arrived. The boy, the sorcerer named Merlin is not yet here and this dream has been given to her for a reason. She will not let her dreams control her destiny; if this is what she’s been shown, then this is what she will change. “Gaius will be no help.” She tries a smile that feels foreign on her face. “Gwen, do you trust me?”
“Of course, my lady.” She sounds bewildered, worried, but kind and willing to help, everything that beautiful Gwen will always be, the only thing in the whole dream that was never twisted beyond recognition except in Morgana’s hands.
“Then do not tell Gaius, even if the dreams get worse.” Yesterday feels years away, still, and she cannot remember what she’s meant to be doing on this bright morning when she’s still young, and still has a chance. “What day is today? What am I meant to be doing?”
Gwen blinks, her brows knitting. “There’s the banquet tonight, and in the afternoon …”
Once again, Morgana feels sick. It’s the very beginning of the dream, then, and right now a boy named Merlin will be entering the city. She must get to him before the dragon does. “The execution,” she finished, and her smile feels false. “Of course, how silly of me to have forgotten.”
So much to change, and the path is long and overwhelming before her, poisoning the present before she can even do anything. There is her magic to contend with, and Uther and Arthur (her father and brother, and while without the bitterness of years she feels no quarrel with the latter, something must still be done about the former), and bringing Merlin to trust her, for trust her he must. If he will not tell her of his magic and offer to help her, then she must do it for him, even if the thought rankles.
“Are you well, my lady?” Gwen tries, helping her to stand. “You seem different this morning.”
Gwen must know, and soon, about some of what Morgana dreamed, but Morgana can’t tell her yet. There’s too much still to figure out-she knows what the Morgana who died just before she woke would think and say, but they are not the same, not truly. There were betrayals that still sting, but she has not truly felt them yet, and if all goes well she can prevent their appearance entirely.
“Trust me, Gwen. All will be well.”
Albion will have its golden age-even its golden king. That doesn’t mean the rest of this path must be the one they take. She will change whatever she can.
*
Uther is unbroken and unbowed, only as mad as he ever was, and still so fond of her. Morgana can pretend to be natural in anything but the face of that. She spends the day after she wakes up avoiding him, first in her room, where she can’t bear to watch Thomas Collins be executed a second time, and then wandering the town.
There is little she can do, these first days. She cannot be seen to seek Merlin out without casting suspicion on them both, so she knows he is making his impression on Arthur, giving his loyalty and affection to Gaius, meeting the dragon who is the engineer of all of their fates and who Morgana means to defy. She notes Gwen blushing and giggling and knows they have met as well.
It isn’t until Lady Helen’s imposter sings them all to sleep that she has the chance to make her first change. She sleeps, and then she wakes to find Arthur on the ground, Merlin next to him-her first time, she realizes, seeing him, outside of her dreams. Uther names him Arthur’s servant, and she thinks of intervening then, but-she cares for Arthur, still. It cannot hurt to have him protected.
Instead, she catches Merlin in the hall after, when he’s still bewildered and Gaius is lagging behind. “I know what you are,” she says, low enough that only he will hear her.
His eyes are wide and terrified and gods, he’s a child, he’s not a monster who killed her twice. He’s just a boy, and it’s only that he’ll be too frightened to ever tell her unless she changes that now. “I don’t know what you’re-” he starts, more bravely than she expects.
“I dreamed your arrival the night before you came,” she hisses, and watches with satisfaction as his gaze goes even more dumbstruck. “We haven’t the time right now, but I need you to trust me and your magic, no matter what Gaius or the dragon says.”
Merlin nods, very slowly. “You know about the dragon?”
“He will tell you I am an enemy, but I only am if you make me so. Do you understand, Merlin?”
Maybe it sounds too much like a threat, but Morgana has no reason to trust him either in the present or the future. All she has now is hope, and that won’t keep her safe unless Merlin agrees. “I understand,” he says, and he sounds nervous, but there’s a smile tugging at his mouth.
“You’ll have your hands full keeping Arthur safe, but I will help you as much as I’m able,” she says.
“You and the dragon agree on that much,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and then Gaius is there, taking Merlin by the arm and apologizing on his behalf for whatever offense he imagines he has inflicted on Merlin.
“I simply wished to thank him for saving Arthur,” she says with all the courtly grace that still feels rusty after the long dream where she was not the king’s ward but a displaced queen. “Good night, Gaius. Merlin.”
*
Now that Merlin knows about her and, she thinks as time goes by, trusts her, Morgana thinks about resting on her laurels, but her dreams are still restless, and the castle feels like it is shaking with the weight of the dragon’s disapproval.
She turns her eyes to other problems, things to stop before they begin. Her first order of business, she decides, is to tell Gwen of her magic and convince Merlin to do the same. The three of them will be enough to overwhelm Arthur out of doing something rash, but that must wait until he trusts Merlin just a little more-the tournament with Valiant passes, and his annoyance with Merlin for being right and still new is plain.
“There’s going to be a plague,” she says to Gwen when she thinks it’s nearly time for the afanc. “It’s coming through the water, and we need to stop it.”
Gwen pauses where she’s brushing the wrinkles out of one of Morgana’s gowns. “Did you have another nightmare, my lady?”
Morgana catches her hands, makes her stop her work and look at her. “You know they aren’t nightmares, Gwen. You must listen. In a few days, you must go to Arthur, tell him you know that it sounds foolish but you think you heard a beast as you passed by the city’s water supply.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, sounding a little bewildered, but this version of Gwen still trusts Morgana, cares about her more than she does Arthur, and Morgana has every faith that eventually she will come around.
“I have magic, Gwen, and I know you will keep me safe but I must do this. I can’t let it fester.” Not as she and Merlin and Gaius let it do the first time, until it becomes a poison inside her and she resorts to Morgause to help her leach it out. Morgause will be a problem to deal with later, but not today.
Gwen smiles, gentle and unsure. “I’ll never betray you,” she promises, and she will, or she would, but not until Morgana betrays them all first, and if all goes well, that won’t happen this time. “A few days, you say? Why not now?”
“Just to make sure.”
Gwen is hailed as a heroine, rewarded with money for herself and her father and-well, that rather takes care of Tauren and Tom’s death later, doesn’t it? Morgana goes with Arthur and Merlin to the water supply just as she did the first time, but this time she lends what little magical control she has to Merlin and shares a smile with him after as Arthur struts around as though he killed the beast.
*
There is the problem of Arthur, of course.
Arthur is her brother, but her body, used to flirting with him, used to the attraction she denies to keep the upper hand, cannot seem to remember it, and she feels dirty and angry at Uther for it. She withdraws as well as she can, returns to treating him as she did when they were children, but he seems bewildered and hurt by it, reaching out and treating her with the same courtly sweetness she remembers him using for Gwen later on.
She pushes him gently towards Gwen, remembering them as something golden and good in the dream, something that different version of herself wanted to choke and kill, but Gwen merely looks alarmed and Arthur only more hurt-clearly it isn’t their time yet, and Morgana isn’t willing to push for fear it goes wrong. Next, she moves on to wondering what it was that made them grow apart the first time, the time that won’t happen now. It was earlier than the advent of her magic, earlier than the first blush of his infatuation with Gwen.
It isn’t until she forgets to warn Merlin about the poisoned goblet among the Mercian delegation that she remembers Ealdor, saving his village and the way Arthur was oddly solicitous of Merlin then and directly after. She doesn’t think they were ever lovers, in her dream (though she remembers Arthur’s face as he died and wonders again-no, he would never betray Gwen so, but it was there between them, something huge and never-consummated), but Merlin became someone to force Arthur to be a better man, supplanting Morgana in that way as she took her first faltering steps away from Uther’s influence.
Arthur must, it becomes clear, care for all three of them in some way. They must all learn to care for each other in whatever ways they can, and if his young love for Morgana is what keeps him from killing her when she confesses her magic, well then-at least Uther will never let them marry.
(Though would it be so bad? Gaius read them books of the pharaohs of Egypt when they were children, and it isn’t as though the concept is unheard of. Morgana shakes the thought off before she even finishes thinking of it.)
Yes, Arthur is a problem. Morgana cannot allow Merlin and Uther, with help from Gaius and the dragon, to poison any good he may someday see in magic, all with the best of intentions. She must tell him about herself, and when he comes to accept it, she must convince Merlin to tell him.
Everything, she tells herself over and over, will be better. She cannot allow herself to become overwhelmed by betrayals that will now never happen. She is changing their destiny, watching it crumble down night after night until there is only mystery ahead of them.
*
Morgana allows some time to pass mostly as it did in the dream-she reminds Merlin to insert his false knight’s seal into Geoffrey’s book and then convinces Lancelot to leave on a quest before anyone pays enough attention to suspect more. She refuses the flowers that Edwin sends her, though she lets some of the rest of that episode play out; her anger with Gaius and with Uther is less easily cast aside than that she has for Merlin and Arthur, and if destiny sees fit to remove either of them she’ll make no move to the contrary. Merlin saves them both, but that is Merlin, noble and always trying to do the right thing even if it turns him into a fool.
She lets Sophia pass with almost no changes, but she knows the time has come when Merlin bursts into her chambers with Mordred, panicky and wishing for help.
This time, when Morgana pleads for Mordred’s life and Arthur’s help, she snaps at the first sign of resistance. “If you condemn him,” she says, as low as she can, “then you may as well condemn me, Arthur, for we are no different.”
Arthur freezes, and she doesn’t want to recognize the way he is looking at her, as though he suddenly doesn’t know her any longer. “Morgana, what?”
Morgana explains, over hours, while Mordred’s time ticks away, and by the time she has convinced Arthur of the truth and avoided any mention of the dream of the destiny she’s averting, he is white-lipped and angry. Still, he is stupidly noble, and he saves the boy. She almost loses Merlin’s help, at the last, but she shouts him down, with Gwen and Mordred there, telling him the dragon’s words only come true if he lets them.
He’s angry, after, that she told Gwen without consulting him, but she doesn’t care that Gwen is a little hurt at them both. He sacrificed her sanity and her life in another path-his secret is little price to pay in this one.
*
“Tell him,” Morgana says as they ride to Ealdor, falling behind with Merlin and leaving Gwen to keep Hunith occupied and Arthur to scout ahead.
Merlin looks alarmed. He’s still wary of her, after all this time. She rather misses the way he stumbled over his words and blushed in the dream, when he did it from admiration and not mild fear. “I can’t. He may have accepted you, but he barely knows me.”
Things are still awkward between she and Arthur, and now that she is utterly without his flirtation, she feels absurdly lonely and isolated from him. She hasn’t explained their parentage, but perhaps she should, if she has already lost that. Arthur should be free to make his own decisions. “If you don’t tell him now, you will spend years making any excuse not to, and it will only hurt you both in the end. Trust him. You expect him to trust you, after all.”
“I sometimes feel as if you know everything,” he says to his horse’s ears, looking pained. “Perhaps it’s because you’re a seer, but how can you know that? Gaius’s books say that you shouldn’t be able to see more than weeks ahead.”
Perhaps the high priestess she once was (won’t be) would be able to answer that question, but the memories from the dream are starting to slowly dissipate, as if they’re smoke blown away by the force of what she’s trying to do. “I saw more than I ever cared to, once, and no matter what anyone says, destiny can be changed. Maybe not the overarching picture, but the details.”
“These don’t seem like details, that you’re changing,” he points out.
“Someday, I’ll tell you what I’m preventing.” When he trusts her-when they build up a real trust from what they have now, instead of the false one she thought they had in the beginning of the dream. “But for now, trust me when I say you should tell him. He’s coming to save your village against his father’s express orders, Merlin. Do those seem like the actions of a man who would have you killed?”
*
When they ride home from Ealdor, Arthur’s jaw is tight with anger and betrayal, but all of them know now, and Merlin is still with them, alive and employed and riding along with so much relief on his face that Morgana feels a wash of tenderness for him. He’s still only a boy, after all.
Arthur rides with Gwen, most of the time, but that’s only right-there are cords binding all of them, now, all four of them in every possible combination, but of all of them the one between Arthur and Gwen seems the weakest, where Morgana needs it to be strong. Morgana doesn’t know if Gwen will be queen someday, or if she herself will, but she learned her lessons, whatever that dream was trying to teach her: they must all be united, or all of them will fall.
There is still Uther to deal with, and the dragon. There is Nimueh, and Morgause, and a hundred other foes who will come even if word quietly goes out that the prince does not agree with his father about magic. Some things cannot be averted. Some, she thinks, can. Her dreams may well change, show her different things, and she will learn to treat them with the skepticism no one ever taught her in that other life.
The dream she has that night, though, is a comfort. It’s many dreams more than it is one, an endless web of futures, of the four of them in every combination, them against the world and them making an Albion that any destiny would be proud of. This time, when Morgana Pendragon goes to Avalon, there will be those who mourn her passing.
Morgana wakes to Gwen’s warm body at her side and Merlin snoring across the fire, with Arthur sitting up to keep watch and watching Merlin more than their surroundings. She smiles and goes to join him on the log where he sits. Arthur doesn’t say anything, just gives her a weary smile, and she wonders if he’s been awake all night, working his way through magic and Merlin and Morgana and just what this means about himself and his father. She doesn’t ask, though. There’s time for talking, a life of it, and for now Arthur only needs comfort.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re different, these past months,” he says when Gwen starts to stir. Morgana knows, with a certain sense of inevitability, that he will have to kick Merlin awake if they want to get back to Camelot in time for supper. “It’s like you’re older now, and I don’t think it’s just the visions coming on.”
“Someday I’ll tell you a story,” she promises, just as she did Merlin, just as she has the silent question in Gwen’s eyes. “I doubt you’ll believe me, and it won’t me you happy, but you deserve to know. In the meantime, just trust that I know more than you do.”
Arthur laughs, and to her surprise Merlin wakes up, snorting and unhappy at the rude awakening, only to look stricken and happy when he catches Arthur smiling. Morgana goes to help Gwen to her feet and pack up the camp for their journey.
There’s a unicorn somewhere in Camelot’s woods; she thinks they may save it this time.
Wordcount: ~3,300
Warnings: canon character death (in an alternate universe), references to half-sibling incest
Summary: Morgana wakes, and it's all been a dream.
A/N: I have wanted this fic to exist for a long time (even if by all rights it deserves Big Bang treatment), so I thought I would do it as the last part of my post-finale fics. It isn't a headcanon so much as it is basically a big screw-you to destiny the way the show does it, with bonus pre-OT4 added in.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Morgana wakes only when she has had time to understand that there is not a soul who regrets her death. Not those she called friends or family, not those who might once have been loyal to her, not even those who had come to follow, even to worship, her-just one small dragon who followed another’s orders and a distant regret from a few for who she used to be. No one mourns the death of Morgana Pendragon.
She wakes screaming in rich sheets and lace nightdress, the taste of metal on the back of her tongue and Gwen, young again, with her arms around her calling her “my lady.” It takes a moment for that long, long dream to fade into something less like reality, and even then she shies away from Gwen’s gentle touch. “Another nightmare?” Gwen asks, looking a little hurt as Morgana scrambles out of her arms. “We must speak to Gaius, and see if he can help at all.”
Morgana swallows down bile at the thought of the poison Gaius spent (will spend) years feeding her, keeping her magic from her as he trains up a boy who has-not yet arrived. The boy, the sorcerer named Merlin is not yet here and this dream has been given to her for a reason. She will not let her dreams control her destiny; if this is what she’s been shown, then this is what she will change. “Gaius will be no help.” She tries a smile that feels foreign on her face. “Gwen, do you trust me?”
“Of course, my lady.” She sounds bewildered, worried, but kind and willing to help, everything that beautiful Gwen will always be, the only thing in the whole dream that was never twisted beyond recognition except in Morgana’s hands.
“Then do not tell Gaius, even if the dreams get worse.” Yesterday feels years away, still, and she cannot remember what she’s meant to be doing on this bright morning when she’s still young, and still has a chance. “What day is today? What am I meant to be doing?”
Gwen blinks, her brows knitting. “There’s the banquet tonight, and in the afternoon …”
Once again, Morgana feels sick. It’s the very beginning of the dream, then, and right now a boy named Merlin will be entering the city. She must get to him before the dragon does. “The execution,” she finished, and her smile feels false. “Of course, how silly of me to have forgotten.”
So much to change, and the path is long and overwhelming before her, poisoning the present before she can even do anything. There is her magic to contend with, and Uther and Arthur (her father and brother, and while without the bitterness of years she feels no quarrel with the latter, something must still be done about the former), and bringing Merlin to trust her, for trust her he must. If he will not tell her of his magic and offer to help her, then she must do it for him, even if the thought rankles.
“Are you well, my lady?” Gwen tries, helping her to stand. “You seem different this morning.”
Gwen must know, and soon, about some of what Morgana dreamed, but Morgana can’t tell her yet. There’s too much still to figure out-she knows what the Morgana who died just before she woke would think and say, but they are not the same, not truly. There were betrayals that still sting, but she has not truly felt them yet, and if all goes well she can prevent their appearance entirely.
“Trust me, Gwen. All will be well.”
Albion will have its golden age-even its golden king. That doesn’t mean the rest of this path must be the one they take. She will change whatever she can.
*
Uther is unbroken and unbowed, only as mad as he ever was, and still so fond of her. Morgana can pretend to be natural in anything but the face of that. She spends the day after she wakes up avoiding him, first in her room, where she can’t bear to watch Thomas Collins be executed a second time, and then wandering the town.
There is little she can do, these first days. She cannot be seen to seek Merlin out without casting suspicion on them both, so she knows he is making his impression on Arthur, giving his loyalty and affection to Gaius, meeting the dragon who is the engineer of all of their fates and who Morgana means to defy. She notes Gwen blushing and giggling and knows they have met as well.
It isn’t until Lady Helen’s imposter sings them all to sleep that she has the chance to make her first change. She sleeps, and then she wakes to find Arthur on the ground, Merlin next to him-her first time, she realizes, seeing him, outside of her dreams. Uther names him Arthur’s servant, and she thinks of intervening then, but-she cares for Arthur, still. It cannot hurt to have him protected.
Instead, she catches Merlin in the hall after, when he’s still bewildered and Gaius is lagging behind. “I know what you are,” she says, low enough that only he will hear her.
His eyes are wide and terrified and gods, he’s a child, he’s not a monster who killed her twice. He’s just a boy, and it’s only that he’ll be too frightened to ever tell her unless she changes that now. “I don’t know what you’re-” he starts, more bravely than she expects.
“I dreamed your arrival the night before you came,” she hisses, and watches with satisfaction as his gaze goes even more dumbstruck. “We haven’t the time right now, but I need you to trust me and your magic, no matter what Gaius or the dragon says.”
Merlin nods, very slowly. “You know about the dragon?”
“He will tell you I am an enemy, but I only am if you make me so. Do you understand, Merlin?”
Maybe it sounds too much like a threat, but Morgana has no reason to trust him either in the present or the future. All she has now is hope, and that won’t keep her safe unless Merlin agrees. “I understand,” he says, and he sounds nervous, but there’s a smile tugging at his mouth.
“You’ll have your hands full keeping Arthur safe, but I will help you as much as I’m able,” she says.
“You and the dragon agree on that much,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and then Gaius is there, taking Merlin by the arm and apologizing on his behalf for whatever offense he imagines he has inflicted on Merlin.
“I simply wished to thank him for saving Arthur,” she says with all the courtly grace that still feels rusty after the long dream where she was not the king’s ward but a displaced queen. “Good night, Gaius. Merlin.”
*
Now that Merlin knows about her and, she thinks as time goes by, trusts her, Morgana thinks about resting on her laurels, but her dreams are still restless, and the castle feels like it is shaking with the weight of the dragon’s disapproval.
She turns her eyes to other problems, things to stop before they begin. Her first order of business, she decides, is to tell Gwen of her magic and convince Merlin to do the same. The three of them will be enough to overwhelm Arthur out of doing something rash, but that must wait until he trusts Merlin just a little more-the tournament with Valiant passes, and his annoyance with Merlin for being right and still new is plain.
“There’s going to be a plague,” she says to Gwen when she thinks it’s nearly time for the afanc. “It’s coming through the water, and we need to stop it.”
Gwen pauses where she’s brushing the wrinkles out of one of Morgana’s gowns. “Did you have another nightmare, my lady?”
Morgana catches her hands, makes her stop her work and look at her. “You know they aren’t nightmares, Gwen. You must listen. In a few days, you must go to Arthur, tell him you know that it sounds foolish but you think you heard a beast as you passed by the city’s water supply.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, sounding a little bewildered, but this version of Gwen still trusts Morgana, cares about her more than she does Arthur, and Morgana has every faith that eventually she will come around.
“I have magic, Gwen, and I know you will keep me safe but I must do this. I can’t let it fester.” Not as she and Merlin and Gaius let it do the first time, until it becomes a poison inside her and she resorts to Morgause to help her leach it out. Morgause will be a problem to deal with later, but not today.
Gwen smiles, gentle and unsure. “I’ll never betray you,” she promises, and she will, or she would, but not until Morgana betrays them all first, and if all goes well, that won’t happen this time. “A few days, you say? Why not now?”
“Just to make sure.”
Gwen is hailed as a heroine, rewarded with money for herself and her father and-well, that rather takes care of Tauren and Tom’s death later, doesn’t it? Morgana goes with Arthur and Merlin to the water supply just as she did the first time, but this time she lends what little magical control she has to Merlin and shares a smile with him after as Arthur struts around as though he killed the beast.
*
There is the problem of Arthur, of course.
Arthur is her brother, but her body, used to flirting with him, used to the attraction she denies to keep the upper hand, cannot seem to remember it, and she feels dirty and angry at Uther for it. She withdraws as well as she can, returns to treating him as she did when they were children, but he seems bewildered and hurt by it, reaching out and treating her with the same courtly sweetness she remembers him using for Gwen later on.
She pushes him gently towards Gwen, remembering them as something golden and good in the dream, something that different version of herself wanted to choke and kill, but Gwen merely looks alarmed and Arthur only more hurt-clearly it isn’t their time yet, and Morgana isn’t willing to push for fear it goes wrong. Next, she moves on to wondering what it was that made them grow apart the first time, the time that won’t happen now. It was earlier than the advent of her magic, earlier than the first blush of his infatuation with Gwen.
It isn’t until she forgets to warn Merlin about the poisoned goblet among the Mercian delegation that she remembers Ealdor, saving his village and the way Arthur was oddly solicitous of Merlin then and directly after. She doesn’t think they were ever lovers, in her dream (though she remembers Arthur’s face as he died and wonders again-no, he would never betray Gwen so, but it was there between them, something huge and never-consummated), but Merlin became someone to force Arthur to be a better man, supplanting Morgana in that way as she took her first faltering steps away from Uther’s influence.
Arthur must, it becomes clear, care for all three of them in some way. They must all learn to care for each other in whatever ways they can, and if his young love for Morgana is what keeps him from killing her when she confesses her magic, well then-at least Uther will never let them marry.
(Though would it be so bad? Gaius read them books of the pharaohs of Egypt when they were children, and it isn’t as though the concept is unheard of. Morgana shakes the thought off before she even finishes thinking of it.)
Yes, Arthur is a problem. Morgana cannot allow Merlin and Uther, with help from Gaius and the dragon, to poison any good he may someday see in magic, all with the best of intentions. She must tell him about herself, and when he comes to accept it, she must convince Merlin to tell him.
Everything, she tells herself over and over, will be better. She cannot allow herself to become overwhelmed by betrayals that will now never happen. She is changing their destiny, watching it crumble down night after night until there is only mystery ahead of them.
*
Morgana allows some time to pass mostly as it did in the dream-she reminds Merlin to insert his false knight’s seal into Geoffrey’s book and then convinces Lancelot to leave on a quest before anyone pays enough attention to suspect more. She refuses the flowers that Edwin sends her, though she lets some of the rest of that episode play out; her anger with Gaius and with Uther is less easily cast aside than that she has for Merlin and Arthur, and if destiny sees fit to remove either of them she’ll make no move to the contrary. Merlin saves them both, but that is Merlin, noble and always trying to do the right thing even if it turns him into a fool.
She lets Sophia pass with almost no changes, but she knows the time has come when Merlin bursts into her chambers with Mordred, panicky and wishing for help.
This time, when Morgana pleads for Mordred’s life and Arthur’s help, she snaps at the first sign of resistance. “If you condemn him,” she says, as low as she can, “then you may as well condemn me, Arthur, for we are no different.”
Arthur freezes, and she doesn’t want to recognize the way he is looking at her, as though he suddenly doesn’t know her any longer. “Morgana, what?”
Morgana explains, over hours, while Mordred’s time ticks away, and by the time she has convinced Arthur of the truth and avoided any mention of the dream of the destiny she’s averting, he is white-lipped and angry. Still, he is stupidly noble, and he saves the boy. She almost loses Merlin’s help, at the last, but she shouts him down, with Gwen and Mordred there, telling him the dragon’s words only come true if he lets them.
He’s angry, after, that she told Gwen without consulting him, but she doesn’t care that Gwen is a little hurt at them both. He sacrificed her sanity and her life in another path-his secret is little price to pay in this one.
*
“Tell him,” Morgana says as they ride to Ealdor, falling behind with Merlin and leaving Gwen to keep Hunith occupied and Arthur to scout ahead.
Merlin looks alarmed. He’s still wary of her, after all this time. She rather misses the way he stumbled over his words and blushed in the dream, when he did it from admiration and not mild fear. “I can’t. He may have accepted you, but he barely knows me.”
Things are still awkward between she and Arthur, and now that she is utterly without his flirtation, she feels absurdly lonely and isolated from him. She hasn’t explained their parentage, but perhaps she should, if she has already lost that. Arthur should be free to make his own decisions. “If you don’t tell him now, you will spend years making any excuse not to, and it will only hurt you both in the end. Trust him. You expect him to trust you, after all.”
“I sometimes feel as if you know everything,” he says to his horse’s ears, looking pained. “Perhaps it’s because you’re a seer, but how can you know that? Gaius’s books say that you shouldn’t be able to see more than weeks ahead.”
Perhaps the high priestess she once was (won’t be) would be able to answer that question, but the memories from the dream are starting to slowly dissipate, as if they’re smoke blown away by the force of what she’s trying to do. “I saw more than I ever cared to, once, and no matter what anyone says, destiny can be changed. Maybe not the overarching picture, but the details.”
“These don’t seem like details, that you’re changing,” he points out.
“Someday, I’ll tell you what I’m preventing.” When he trusts her-when they build up a real trust from what they have now, instead of the false one she thought they had in the beginning of the dream. “But for now, trust me when I say you should tell him. He’s coming to save your village against his father’s express orders, Merlin. Do those seem like the actions of a man who would have you killed?”
*
When they ride home from Ealdor, Arthur’s jaw is tight with anger and betrayal, but all of them know now, and Merlin is still with them, alive and employed and riding along with so much relief on his face that Morgana feels a wash of tenderness for him. He’s still only a boy, after all.
Arthur rides with Gwen, most of the time, but that’s only right-there are cords binding all of them, now, all four of them in every possible combination, but of all of them the one between Arthur and Gwen seems the weakest, where Morgana needs it to be strong. Morgana doesn’t know if Gwen will be queen someday, or if she herself will, but she learned her lessons, whatever that dream was trying to teach her: they must all be united, or all of them will fall.
There is still Uther to deal with, and the dragon. There is Nimueh, and Morgause, and a hundred other foes who will come even if word quietly goes out that the prince does not agree with his father about magic. Some things cannot be averted. Some, she thinks, can. Her dreams may well change, show her different things, and she will learn to treat them with the skepticism no one ever taught her in that other life.
The dream she has that night, though, is a comfort. It’s many dreams more than it is one, an endless web of futures, of the four of them in every combination, them against the world and them making an Albion that any destiny would be proud of. This time, when Morgana Pendragon goes to Avalon, there will be those who mourn her passing.
Morgana wakes to Gwen’s warm body at her side and Merlin snoring across the fire, with Arthur sitting up to keep watch and watching Merlin more than their surroundings. She smiles and goes to join him on the log where he sits. Arthur doesn’t say anything, just gives her a weary smile, and she wonders if he’s been awake all night, working his way through magic and Merlin and Morgana and just what this means about himself and his father. She doesn’t ask, though. There’s time for talking, a life of it, and for now Arthur only needs comfort.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re different, these past months,” he says when Gwen starts to stir. Morgana knows, with a certain sense of inevitability, that he will have to kick Merlin awake if they want to get back to Camelot in time for supper. “It’s like you’re older now, and I don’t think it’s just the visions coming on.”
“Someday I’ll tell you a story,” she promises, just as she did Merlin, just as she has the silent question in Gwen’s eyes. “I doubt you’ll believe me, and it won’t me you happy, but you deserve to know. In the meantime, just trust that I know more than you do.”
Arthur laughs, and to her surprise Merlin wakes up, snorting and unhappy at the rude awakening, only to look stricken and happy when he catches Arthur smiling. Morgana goes to help Gwen to her feet and pack up the camp for their journey.
There’s a unicorn somewhere in Camelot’s woods; she thinks they may save it this time.