Chapter Text
Three Months Later
Something I wasn’t sure of
But I was in the middle of.
- Keane
Morgana has been waiting for this in the sense that something has been niggling away in the back of her mind; her subconscious trying to remind her that she knows everything that’s ever going to happen to her, or near enough, if only she hadn’t forgotten all of it. However, since she no longer has visions – just dreams, which are still fucking scary and disturbing, no matter what anyone else may say – she doesn’t really know what this is until it’s a little too late.
It’s a Wednesday evening; they’ve received their fifth postcard from Lance, still full of annoying cryptic messages that are affectionate but unhelpful – even Saint Gwen is starting to lose patience – and still without an expected date for his return. The postcard is dated almost a week ago, from somewhere in Peru. Morgana has had it read to her eight times, enough to memorise the message, and she’s getting annoyed with him and his bloody need to find himself or whatever the hell he thinks he’s trying to do.
Arthur is doing paperwork of some kind on the sofa; she can hear him rustling pieces of paper and repeatedly clicking the top of his Parker biro in a way that’s getting steadily more irritating. Merlin has taken Gwen out for coffee in a we no longer live together but that doesn’t mean we can’t spend huge amounts of time together anyway kind of way, and Arthur is endeavouring not to be possessive and jealous in an entirely obvious and hilarious way. He used to be like this about Lance, so even though Morgana can’t see his pouting expression, she knows what it looks like anyway.
In the peaceful silence, Arthur sighs heavily and loudly and obnoxiously. He’s been doing this every five minutes, and it is slowly but surely driving Morgana insane.
“If you do that one more time I will hurt you,” Morgana warns idly.
She can hear Arthur rolling his eyes.
“I may not be able to see you,” Morgana says carefully, “But I do know you, Arthur.”
“Right,” he murmurs; it sounds like he’s trying to sound neutral, but it comes out more sheepish. Then he coughs and says: “Not that I have any idea what you’re talking about, of course.”
“Of course,” Morgana agrees, rolling her eyes in return.
This is better. For about the first month after… well, after everything, Arthur was too careful around Morgana. She didn’t blame him, but she quickly tired of being treated like an invalid all the time. It’s taking time, and she’s still adjusting of course, but at least they’re back to niggling at each other, back to whatever resembles normal for them.
She listens to Arthur huffily return to his paperwork, and twines a lock of hair around her fingers a few times. She’s getting the hang of Braille, of turning on the audio description function on DVDs, of all the things that becoming randomly blind has suddenly made necessary, but there are still times when she finds herself a little at a loss. Not that she isn’t grateful to be alive; not being mad or dead makes a lot of things worth it.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re staring at me,” she says after a moment. “I can’t see your expression, so I don’t know what you’re doing, but you are staring at me, Arthur. What is it?”
Arthur is silent for a long moment, before beginning: “You’ve never told me about your father, you know.”
Morgana is still getting used to being taken by surprise; surprises are a new and exciting thing to her.
“Well,” she replies, lashing out without really thinking, “You’ve certainly talked about your father enough for the both of us.”
Something hits her in the face; after a moment she establishes it’s a cushion. She throws it back in Arthur’s general direction, and hears the whumph of a direct hit.
“You missed,” he singsongs.
Morgana grits her teeth.
Arthur persists: “What if we get into another ridiculous situation with murderous people and you die and I still don’t know anything about your father and it drives me mad with not knowing for ever and ever and ever?”
Morgana frowns. “Just how long are you planning to live?”
“Oh, forever,” Arthur says nonchalantly, and she pictures a casual hand gesture to go with it. “Anyway, you’re attempting to distract me, and you’re not doing it very well.”
“You’re just needling me because you can’t cope with the fact Merlin wants to spend time with people other than you,” Morgana tells him.
“Your shoes don’t match,” Arthur snipes.
Morgana swallows down a smile. “Yes they do,” she tells him. “Anyway, why the sudden curiosity?”
“I’m just wondering where you got your super magical powers from,” Arthur tells her. “I mean, your mother was nice but I don’t remember her having weird unnatural abilities, and then I thought about it and realised that you haven’t told me anything about your father ever except that he’s dead.”
“That was kind of all the information you needed,” Morgana shrugs, and is disappointed by how blatantly evasive she’s being.
“I know way too much about you,” Arthur reminds her. “But I don’t know anything about your father. I mean, was he French? Irish? You look like your mother, but you don’t have her nose; do you have his?”
“My mother didn’t have her nose,” Morgana replies. “Her nose was the work of a plastic surgeon.”
“Oh,” Arthur says. He’s silent for a long moment. “Were those her real-”
“Yes, they were, not that it’s any of your business,” Morgana replies snippily. “Want to ask any more inappropriate questions about my mother’s anatomy?”
Arthur is silent for a while. “Go on,” he whines.
Gwen and Merlin are likely to be out for at least another hour, and Arthur will have no qualms about annoying her for as long as it takes, so Morgana obediently crumbles.
“I don’t have a lot of details,” she says. “He died when I was eight, and my mother didn’t exactly talk about him a lot.”
She can hear Arthur moving, and a moment later he comes and squeezes in next to her in the big, squashy armchair.
“When he was younger, my father was rich and pretty and would shag anything that would have him,” Morgana says, when Arthur has stopped shifting about and elbowing her in her ribs. “Bit like you used to be, actually.”
“Hey-” Arthur begins indignantly.
“You had an orgy in here for your twenty-second birthday,” Morgana reminds him.
“I did not.”
“There were four of you. I had to make coffee for you all in the morning. Four is enough for a mini orgy, at least.” Morgana can’t stop a smirk from stealing across her face.
“Could you not?” Arthur groans, burying his face in her shoulder.
Morgana obediently lets the subject drop. “Anyway, he wasn’t really in a relationship with my mother when he got her pregnant; unlike you, he didn’t have someone like me to keep an eye on him and prevent him from knocking up poor innocent women.”
Arthur wisely chooses not to say anything; he sits up a little, clearly waiting for the rest.
“He left Ireland before she even knew she was pregnant and my mother didn’t see him again for the next two years. Then he turned up again, saying he was more emotionally mature, and wanted to give it a go. So they got married and lived perfectly happily together for the next six years before he died of some kind of pre-existing heart condition that, no, I haven’t inherited, before you start panicking.”
Arthur is thoughtfully silent for a moment, before saying: “And where did you fit into all this?”
Morgana shrugs. “I was the lovechild, mother came into a lot of money when she married into the Le Fay family; I was raised largely by a succession of increasingly afraid au pairs who all quit within six months.”
“Were you badly behaved?” Arthur asks.
“A little,” Morgana replies. “But mostly, they were just scared of me. You know how creepy I was; picture a little tiny me being that creepy.”
She feels Arthur shudder.
“What did he look like?” Arthur asks curiously. “Ridiculously tall Frenchman?”
“His grandfather was French,” Morgana corrects him. “He was handsome though; black hair and the bluest eyes.”
“Bit like Merlin,” Arthur remarks.
“Not everything is about your boyfriend,” Morgana teases, before realising the path they’re on. Arthur may not know yet, but she does, and it’s already too late to back away.
“Was your father freaky and unnatural?” Arthur asks.
“I’m not sure,” Morgana replies. “I don’t remember him ever going: hey, Morgana, here’s my weird power, but…” She sighs, thinks through her words. “He liked gardening,” she says. “We had a huge house in Ireland, big gardens, and I use to like going out with him when he tended to the flowers.” She sighs. “None of them ever died, you know? We’d plant them one afternoon and the next day they’d be grown and beautiful. It took me ages to find out that plants actually take time to grow.”
Arthur has gone very, very quiet. Morgana elbows him.
“Arthur, you have to say things. I can’t read your facial expressions any more and it’s disconcerting when you’re just sitting there.”
“I’m just doing some calculations,” Arthur tells her, and at that moment Morgana realises he’s figured it out.
“Yes,” she sighs, “I did some digging around. My father was married to someone else when my mother got pregnant.”
Arthur is quiet for another long moment. “Morgana,” he begins, “Have you ever considered the possibility that Merlin is-”
“The Dragon told me,” Morgana interrupts him. “But I think I knew already. I think I always knew.”
“I don’t trust the Dragon,” Arthur mutters.
“Neither do I,” Morgana replies. “Which is why I got you to help me track down those photo albums last month and I took them to Gaius, who confirmed everything.” She sighs. “The Dragon might be, well, a dragon, but it wasn’t lying.”
Arthur sighs pointedly, but doesn’t say anything.
“You might as well come out and say it,” Morgana says.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep going down there,” Arthur tells her.
“It’s all right,” Morgana says. “I know that the Dragon has been living in the underground for nearly a hundred and fifty years; I know that it is bored and dangerous and desperate to escape. And it’s ok; I wouldn’t be stupid enough to help it even if I could.”
Arthur squeezes her hand and Morgana squeezes back. “All right,” he concedes at last. There’s another pause. “So, basically, you’ve known for months that Merlin is-”
This time, he’s interrupted by the door buzzer, indicating there’s someone downstairs wanting to get in. Arthur goes to answer it, leaving Morgana feeling a little dizzy, though she’s not sure why.
“Who was it?” she asks, when Arthur gets back.
“Someone who wanted the people below us,” he replies easily. “So, Morgana…” He sighs. “Actually, fuck it. I know, and you know, and… does Merlin know?”
“Not as far as I know,” Morgana shrugs.
“But Gaius knows,” Arthur says. “So he’ll tell Merlin.”
“He might not,” Morgana reminds him. “Anyway, it’s fine. Merlin doesn’t need to know; nothing needs to change.”
“Are you sure?” Arthur sounds sceptical.
“Not really,” Morgana responds. “I suppose you’ll just have to get married, then we can all be related by law and that’ll be good enough.”
The choking noise Arthur makes is enough to make Morgana wish she could see his facial expression.
There’s a knocking at their front door.
“Wrong buzzer, Arthur?” she asks faux-sweetly, but he’s already leaving the room. Morgana stays in her chair, scowling deeply because she never feels more helpless than when Arthur is lying to her, and listens to more than one person walk back into the room.
“I suppose you think you’re fucking clever-” she begins, but trails off as someone who decidedly isn’t Arthur wraps their arms around her.
“I’ve missed you,” Lance says quietly.
“You are a bastard,” Morgana informs him, and: “Gwen is going to kill you.”
She hugs him back anyway.