Work Text:
for in thy veins an avenging poison flows, distilled in that dark hour when Merlin's lips...
Morgana watches the forest burn, bright and hot under her skin. Uther has a long memory and an even longer reach – he wants all the Druids hunted down and killed, he wants Morgana back in Camelot, even if it's just her body brought in on a cart.
He won't live long Mordred tells her and she forces a smile, all edges and no kindness but she feels it deep in her heart, and maybe some of it carries through her hands, as she gently brushes Mordred's hair from his face.
Arthur's reign is coming, the golden age for Camelot, for Albion.
She smiles, bittersweet, because it's Arthur's hand that's carrying the torch that lights the world afire, Arthur's knights hunting them at night.
It's Arthur she loves and it's Arthur she fears now.
*
"I'm magic, Morgana," Merlin says to her and she understands now, the way her skin reacts under his gaze, the way his fingers burn her skin even from inches away, where they're grasping the edge of her bed.
I have always known, she wants to tell him. I never suspected, she wants to say.
She touches his hand and remembers what will happen, feels the smoke filling her head. Forests burning, her own stake awaiting her in Camelot, Merlin's death in flames, the burned carcasses on the Camlann's slopes.
Some of those will happen.
He risked everything and will risk everything again, in the game where the stakes are higher than both of them can even imagine. Arthur's nearby, and she wants to run towards him as much as she wants to run away, and her hand is still grasped in Merlin's, her connection, her anchor, her friend.
Mordred tugs at her hand and she is caught between her past and her future, the pull of destiny so strong it makes her dizzy, like that time when she was younger and allowed to attend a feast for the first time and she danced herself into exhaustion, her head spinning and spinning as her legs gave way.
She runs.
*
Uther dies and Arthur takes the throne, solemn and tired already, not even five-and-twenty yet. The crown weighs heavily on him, Morgana can tell, but it grounds him, too.
She used to joke it wouldn't fit, that a blacksmith would have to take care of it, due to Arthur's unnaturally big head.
Come back, Merlin says in her dreams, his eyes golden but older, older than they should be.
She wants to see him so badly, imagines burying her face in his neck, remembers the briefest of touches and how it would feel to have his hands over her skin.
You still hadn't told him, she answers sadly. How could I?
She's not even the one Arthur loves, after all.
*
She runs through the forest, Mordred's hand trustingly in hers. She stumbles and falls and gets up again, her heartbeat loud in her ears, louder than the sound of her feet on the grass, almost drowning the calls of the knights to each other, almost louder than their footsteps.
Merlin said he could give her time, so she runs, unwilling to let his sacrifice go to waste.
She stumbles and falls, and there's blood on her hand, and she puts her palm to her mouth, tastes it.
Morgana, someone thinks at her and she can't tell if it's Mordred or Merlin but she runs faster, she runs for them both.
Her blood is sweet like the smell of the trees burning.
*
There are things she doesn't forget.
Gwen's smile in the morning, bright and beautiful. The smell of fresh flowers and fresh linen. Her tears when her father died.
Arthur's eyes flashing when she used to tease him, bright with anger and amusement at the same time. His hand on hers when he showed her how to hold a sword.
Merlin's voice in her head, his fingers on her skin. The wonderful feeling of being home, even if it was so brief. The sudden knowledge that one day, they will meet again.
She will remember that day in the forest, the choice he made. She is infinitely grateful, and she hates him a little for it, too.
*
She wakes up with a start, sometimes, the covers fumbled around her feet. She feels as if she's been running for hours, tired and aching.
She wakes up slowly, sometimes, lazy and liquid, as if swimming in a stream of golden honey.
She can't tell the dreams from the nightmares from the visions. She thinks it doesn't matter.
*
Merlin stayed back for her, to keep the knights away, she thinks sometimes, and wants to believe it.
He stayed back because leaving Arthur is physically painful, like a knife to the heart, but slow and everlasting. He was her brother, her lover and her future king, even though he was not any of those things, not really.
Mordred is growing up, taller than she is now. She is his mother, his sister, his lover, even though she isn't any of those things. He is growing up in the world where the forests had been burned, in the world they travel under assumed names. He is growing up into anger and resentment and love that's sharp like an axe hitting your neck, power that burns hot like your flesh when you're burned at stake.
No one hunts sorcerers anymore, but the land has a long memory, and the Druids have always been one with the land. The wounds go deep.
I remember, he tells Morgana, brushing her hair away from her face tenderly.
She remembers hiding him in her chambers. She remembers Merlin helping her. She remembers Arthur risking everything to get him out.
"I will remember this," she says, kissing him softly. It's not sweet and it's not kind, but maybe it will wash away the hardness in him.
*
She loves Mordred. She loved him unconditionally when he was just a little boy, when all she wanted was to hold him close and shield him from the world, keep him away from harm. He is ingrained in her soul, in her thoughts, in her future.
She loves Merlin. That brief moment of holding his hand filled the hole in her heart she had no idea existed. He is in her veins, scorching hot, filling her like liquid gold. He is in her dreams and in her nightmares, in her blood and under her skin.
She loves Arthur. She had loved him her entire life. Even when she hated him, she only loved him more. He is her past and her future and she suspects, in the waking hours, that he'll be the death of her if she's not the death of him. He is in her bones, as deep as possible.
In her dreams, she's running away from all of them.