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lily_handmaiden) wrote2010-10-10 10:40 pm
More Than You Will Ever Know (Merlin Fic)
by me
Watching "The Crystal Cave" almost gave me a nervous breakdown. It took me a while (and a really long phone call with Bethany) to work out my feelings on it, but I did like it. I feel like I'd need to watch it again to really appreciate it, and I don't think I have the energy to do that at present. I certainly don't have the time.
I wanted to do some kind of post about this episode. I thought about doing an actual review, I thought about just doing an "I CALLED IT!" post-- because I DID, Merlin fans, while watching the season premiere. (I actually had it called for most of the first season, but then the show lulled me into complacency. If that's how they're going to play, I'm half tempted to put my farfetched "Druid Boy From the Future" idea back on the table.) But when I got up this morning, my thoughts came out in fanfic form.
This is basically a combination of filling in the gaps and speculation raised by the episode. I'm spelling Morgana's mom's name "Vivien," because that's how Tennyson spells it and I don't have access to a closed-captioned version of the episode. Many thanks to the amazing Bethany for beta-reading this so quickly.
Title: More Than You Will Ever Know
Fandom: Merlin
Characters: Uther, Morgana, Vivien, Gorlois, Morgause, Nimueh
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,941
Disclaimer: Merlin belongs to the BBC. I mean no infringement.
Summary: Spoilers through "The Crystal Cave." Morgana's destiny, as shaped by her parents.
He had never been sure. That was the hardest thing. If he’d only known for certain, one way or the other, he’d have had a better idea of how to deal with Morgana. She could simply have been born a month early, like everyone assumed she was. She could be Gorlois’s daughter; it was far from impossible.
There had been that day, the day after Morgana was born, when Vivien had called him to her and said, “Well? Are you going to ask? I know you’re wondering.” She’d waited until then, until after the child was in the world and Gorlois had seen it. She smiled like a witch.
He had been wondering. But he had pushed it from his mind until the day before, when Vivien had been brought to bed a month before her time. It had been a hard birth, and he’d stayed up all the night, unable to sleep, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Six months after Ygraine’s death, and he’d still felt so much powerlessness, despair, and Vivien had looked up at him with those sad, lonely eyes… Her marriage to Gorlois had been political, and she had always been so beautiful, but so weak. He was not to blame.
Yes, she had always been weak. That was what he thought as he looked at her then. She did not look at all well, but the baby was strong. I know you’re wondering. He was silent.
She said, “What if I told you she was yours? I know you took my first baby from me, Uther Pendragon.” She caught his expression. “Yes. Who else could have been behind it? Wouldn’t it be poetic justice, for me to raise your child in hatred of you, raise her to take your precious son’s throne and steal your crown? This little, innocent babe could be the instrument of my vengeance. I could have made sure I conceived that day. Did that not occur to you?”
“You’re no witch, Vivien. You don’t have that power.”
“But who is my sister, Uther? You thought you could keep her from seeing me? Your power is nothing to Nimueh’s.” She sank back against her pillows, her face drawn. “But I would be a fool to tell you that, wouldn’t I, if it were true? Knowing the history you have with inconvenient babies?”
At the sound of that name, his hands had started to shake. “I have spared you…” he began, through gritted teeth.
“For your dear friend, Gorlois, whom you have cuckolded? Because I am not gifted like my sister?”
“Yes."
The baby, in her basinet by the bed, started to cry, and Vivien lifted her and held her close.
“You should think, Uther, on the fact that you and your crusade are wounding the innocent, too. You put a death sentence on my sister’s head, and you think that doesn’t hurt me?” There were tears in her eyes. “The wounded grow desperate, they become fierce, and they will always rise up to strike.”
“Not if I dispatch them.” His voice was cold.
“Starting with me? But how would you explain my execution to my dear husband?” Despite her words, she didn’t look like a witch then. She looked, he thought, merely pathetic. “No. I will raise my baby under your very nose, and one day you will find out whether she is yours or not. Until then, you can go on wondering.”
But within days, Vivien had taken an infection and died. The answer to the riddle that was the infant Morgana died with her—if, Uther thought darkly, she herself even knew the answer. His mind was not as easy after her death as he’d have liked. It called up too many memories of Ygraine’s, for one thing. Then, too, knowing that she would never poison the mind of any child of his, he could pity her. She had never said an unkind word to him before that day, the last day they spoke, in spite of everything. She had only been very beautiful, and very weak. He had, perhaps, not always treated her well.
Gorlois, who had adored his wife, was despondent. “I shall grant you Tintagel Castle,” Uther told him, “on the holding near your brother’s land, as a reward for your years of service to me. You should go—get away from this place, with all its memories of her.” And so, before he had even set eyes on her more than twice, the child was gone to the very edge of the kingdom. The distance made it easy for him to convince himself that she was Gorlois’s, after all. No one, not even Gaius, had questioned the baby’s prematurity. Vivien had been bluffing, lashing out, tired and ill, nothing more.
In ten years, he saw Morgana only once. Gorlois, now lord of all the Cornish region, let her come with him on one of his frequent journeys to Camelot when she was around six. Uther had intensified his purge, extending it to the families and associates of known sorcerers. Shopkeepers, servants, children had been drowned. “Think what you’re doing!” Gorlois shouted. “The people will turn against you. For God’s sake, Uther, think of Vivien! Give these people the chance you gave her, that you’re giving Morgana.” He saw her only briefly, in the courtyard, and for a moment his conviction wavered. He searched her face for a Pendragon resemblance, and was relieved to find none. Of course, she did not look particularly like Gorlois, either. Under Vivien’s dark hair, Morgana looked like no one. Still, he felt reassured. She certainly was not his daughter.
And so, when Gorlois lay dying on the field of battle, the last words he breathed, “Please promise me you’ll take care of Morgana,” Uther said, “Yes. I promise.” He spoke the words freely, as a last favor to a friend. He would bring Morgana to Camelot, because Morgana was Gorlois’s daughter and there would be no harm in it. For that moment of betrayal before her birth, for all he had done to Gorlois and even to Vivien, yes, he would take care of Morgana.
She was giving him hell before they’d even set off for Camelot, throwing a fit about having to leave her nurse behind. When she looked him in the eye and shouted, “Branwen has to come! She’s my friend!” all he could think was that he had his confirmation. Gorlois was the only other person who had dared to challenge him like that, and Morgana had inherited that audacity. So, while the servants standing about gasped and stared, he did not get angry. He refused her demand with a smile. Later, when she sat pale on her pony beside him and simply refused to speak, he acknowledged that she had some of Vivien’s petulant, emotional nature, too. But this girl, while she might become beautiful like Vivien, was strong. They were two days out from Tintagel when he first looked at her and found himself wondering, Are her eyes the same shade as mine?
Nine more years went by. Most of the time he believed Morgana to be Gorlois’s daughter. Most of the time. The way she defied him, dared to stand against everything he had built, sometimes almost spit hatred at him… When she helped that druid boy escape, he knew her to be no daughter of his. She was Vivien’s daughter through and through, Nimueh’s niece, a traitor by blood, but for Gorlois he would spare her. For Gorlois, and…
And because he could not be sure. Uther had sacrificed too much for too long to kill any child of his. And there were days when he thought, Perhaps. There were days when he thought he could see in her eyes flashes of himself, and he acknowledged that it was possible. If only he knew. Because he didn’t know how to govern her like this. He would discipline Arthur without a thought, but the guilt and uncertainty surrounding Morgana left him with hands tied. What rights did he have over Morgana’s life? The rights of a guardian, certainly, but a father was more.
The day Uther took Morgana to Gorlois’s grave and she killed his would-be assassin, something turned. He had come to that place speaking of Gorlois as her father, speaking of her resemblance to him, and he had come away thinking, The daughter has saved her father. For the first time, he found that he would have liked to be able to claim her as his. My daughter saved my life. Perhaps. Over the next year, that feeling grew. After all, she was born at the right time. It was possible that she was Gorlois’s but not impossible that she was his, and the way Vivien had spoken…
It was, strangely enough, when she disappeared that he knew. What he felt then was the desperate fear of a father, not of a mere guardian. He saw it all the instant she was gone, and wondered how he had blinded himself for so long. Her will was as strong as his own. But the flaws of the parent are the flaws of the child, and she had them all—his pride, his anger, his rashness. She’d called him brutal, a tyrant, she had broken his heart and he loved her anyway.
As Vivien had said, the wounded always rise up to strike. He had disowned his daughter, and so she had done the same to him. Vivien did not need to poison Morgana against him; years of doubt, uncertainty, and his inability to punish his own faults in his child had taken their toll. If she hated him, then God knew he’d made it so.
As the time passed, his certainty grew with his anguish. He had to make amends. He would not rest. And he would devote everything, everything to finding her, his lost child who was so like himself. If he’d lost her, lost her even before Morgause had taken her… for that, he was to blame. He vowed that, if he found her, he would never lose his daughter again.
He thanked his stars that, even should Morgause know the secret of Arthur’s birth, no one alive but he knew the secret of Morgana’s. She had his flaws, after all, and so he knew that she would never forgive him.
***
On the Isle of the Blessed, a twelve-year-old girl stands between her mother and the most powerful sorceress in the world, examining her pretty new bracelet. “Next time you see me,” her mother says, “you’ll have a little brother or sister.”
“Sister.” The sorceress smiles. “The bracelet will help you find her when you scry.”
“And if you wear that bracelet, she will be sure to know you. She will be very important, Morgause. She was conceived to bring down the Pendragon dynasty and restore magic to the realm. It is her purpose. I—”
The sorceress signals the girl’s mother to say no more.
“You mean this is her destiny?” Morgause asks, trying to understand.
“Her destiny, her curse.” Nimueh turns to her sister. “The magic is powerful, Vivien. Be careful what you say.”
Vivien places Morgause’s hand so she can feel the baby kick. “See? She knows you already.”
It is the last time Morgause sees her mother alive. Nimueh never speaks of her, or the baby, again.
But Morgause finds Morgana sometimes, in the crystals.
***
“When shall I be dead and rid
Of all the wrong my father did?
How long, how long, till spade and hearse
Put to sleep my mother’s curse?”
-A.E. Housman
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"Under Vivien’s dark hair, Morgana looked like no one."
She's really an orphan in multiple ways, isn't she? That's part of what makes her story so compelling, I think. No one really wants to lay claim to her, save for Morgause.
Anyways, interesting look at the past relationships. Thanks for writing!
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Yes, I think a large part of the reason Morgana is so firmly on Team Morgause now is because she feels like Morgause is the only person who wants her. And part of the reason she was so (murderously) angry with Uther this week was because it was like being orphaned all over again. She's spent her life sort of... adrift, in a way, and I think she's very keenly aware of it.