prompt: "Long live the Queen" | Morgana/Morgause, Morgana/Gwen, Morgana/Arthur, Morgana/Uther | 500 words | Not Rated | Chose Not to Warn
{Long Live the Queen written for @merlinmicrofic}
She’d never let slip that she’d overheard her—some people are just born to be queen—when she slipped past in her gown of regal red the night of the feast.
It was a sentiment she’d overheard often enough over the years living as the King’s ward, and often enough in her formative years, she would find herself idly imagining such a future in which she was wedded to his son, the prince Arthur.
But…those scenes of her fantasies dissipated like the smoke of a candle snuffed out too soon, the tiny, burning flame not enough to hold its own, and accordingly, so it was for her and Arthur, he following in his father’s footsteps, raiding druid camps and fighting his wars, and she, with a different path beset by dreams, where her only role was to watch how each time he thwarted death as it appeared to have him at the last in its throes.
Until Morgause, that was. The half-sister, Morgana hardly recalled, and yet, when she let her helmet fall to reveal her face, let it be known that Morgana knew her instantly as someone significant from her murky past.
Morgause who provided gifts and answers, and sometimes, gifts that blurred the answers Morgana always knew deep down to be true.
No longer she dreamt of Arthur in his agony at night with the bracelet wrapped about her wrist, and likewise, she began to question her loyalty to his father, who ruined the lives of those with magic like her, regretting her failed attempt on his life the summer before, when a spark of love in his eyes, his regard for her, caused her in the end to betray the traitors to the throne.
Uther was her father; Arthur, the half-brother, perhaps, deep down, she always longed for, and yet both, Morgause whispered cunningly into her ear, stood in her way to the throne, in the way of that golden crown that would name her, Morgana, Queen of Camelot, breaker of the old laws that held the witches and sorcerers across the land criminals punishable by death.
Now, once more, Morgana slipped onto the scene at hand: Uther dethroned, Arthur and Merlin trapped in the alcove above, powerless to the machinations of sisterhood, and with all the spite of a rejected witch-daughter at that.
This time, she wore a gown as white as the innocence she could only feign, for it had been stripped from her far too long ago to be sincere, if ever there was a genuineness about Morgana Pendragon, a name she despised, and yet she would claim it if that meant the crown that rested upon her head was hers.
She smiled, thinking then not on her guardian-father, nor her half-brother, but of her maid Gwen, once dearer to her than no other—not until Morgause—and her words came back to her then, in a powerful refrain, just as Morgause voiced:
