When Morgana first came to Camelot, she refused to eat or talk to anyone, no one could break her cold personality. She refuses any bribe from the King or pity from a servant, she locks the door to her new Chambers and screams and cries because no one understands. Her father is dead, the man who is meant to love her forever no matter what, and he's gone. She already doesn't have a mother, but her dad, her hero?
She spits at Uther when he tries to comfort her.
She hates everything about the man because he is nothing like her father, he is the opposite in every dastardly way. And when he tries so hard to replace him, her young venom towards him sparks in screaming and tantrums and meltdowns. The court avoids her.
She spends her days locked in her room, watching the pure be lit and listening to the screams. At night she wanders the castle alone to avoid nightmares of a ragged witch, no matter how sunken her eyes become, no matter how many times the old physician tries to prescribe her tonics and potions.
The hallways and corridors become her most trusted friends, until she encounters a young boy crying in an alcove.
"Why do you cry?" she asks him.
The boy with blond hair looks up at her with red rimmed eyes. "Father made me watch the execution."
Morgana sits down next to him, he was so small and innocent. "They're horrible. Why did he make you watch it?"
"'Cause it's my duty, or whatever."
"Duty?"
"Being Prince and stuff."
That made Morgana want to flee, recoil from the child. From Arthur.
She wanted to hate him, but all she felt was pity. She should hate him, hate everything about him because he was Uther's son. Except all she saw was a scared child. Afraid.
They said nothing after that, Morgana stood up and held out her hand, Arthur took it. She lead him through the halls and into a lit corridor with guards.
"Goodnight, Arthur." Morgana watched from a dark doorway as Arthur sleepily rubbed his eyes and mumbled a reply, dosily stumbling to his door, to the guards surprise.
She went back through her friends pathways, and when she found herself in her bedroom, at her bedside table, she took the vial of sleeping tonic and drank it all in one.
Begging that this was a way to end her grief for a while, that she could rest, forgot for a while, that she would wake up less afraid and less alone.
The potion did work.
Because years later as she tore down the very kingdom she hated so much as a young child, she didn't once think about her father. Her true father, Gorlois. He was nothing but a blurry echo in the back of her mind, silent in the torrent of anger and rage and fear.
The potion worked and she forgot, becoming the very witch that haunted her nightmares.