Chapter Text
The voice first comes to her in her dreams the night Arthur is cured of the Questing Beast's bite. She doesn't think anything of it to begin with - after all, she's used to hearing and seeing all sorts of strange things in her head while she sleeps.
But this voice persists. It frequently follows her into her waking thoughts - as many of her dreams do - but it begins to linger longer than any other. Sometimes, she'll swear she can still hear it while Gwen strokes her hair and hugs her tight until she calms. Yet it always stops by the time Gwen finishes fussing and leaves her to sleep once more, so she thinks very little of it.
A single voice calling her name over and over is reall nothing compared the frequent visions she has of battles and strange beasts, and inexplicable magical acts, and Arthur dying over and over again.
So, it wasn't until she was walking through the lower levels of the castle one day that she started to take notice. There was an issue with food storage- no, it was something to do with a servant thrown in the dungeons- no it was. Oh, she can't remember anyway. Not that it matters why she was there. It was just the first time she heard the voice in her head when she wasn't already dreaming. The first time in the light of day - not that much sunlight reached those corridors - that she heard that voice. She almost suspected herself of sleep-walking, except that she gasped out loud and one of the castle maids came up to her to ask if she was alright. And if she hadn't caught the same maid looking at her strangely in the courtyard days later, she still might have been tempted to write it off as a dream or a fantasy.
No, she hadn't been sleepwalking, or dreaming with her eyes open. Morgana is sure she heard that voice, and she doesn't understand why.
* * * * *
First she goes to Gaius for help, but she can't seem to get the words out right. When she tells him what she heard and where she was at the time, he freezes and stares at her for a moment. She opens her mouth to try again but he just shushes her, and impresses upon her the importance of privacy in these matters. He says she's simply too tired to know her own surroundings, and that he has a new, stronger draught for her to try.
'It's just a lack of sleep, Morgana,' he pleads with her. 'Please, there's no reason to worry the King about such matters. Trust me, and try this. I'm sure you'll find everything is much clearer when you're well rested.'
So she goes; she takes the draught, and oh, how it fogs her head and makes her limbs heavy. She sleeps long and deep and scares Gwen when she has to be physically shaken awake in the morning. She stumbles while walking around Uther's audience room, and ends up being sent away when she can't speak anything but nonsense, and no. No, this won't do. She certainly doesn't feel more clear headed. Indeed, she's barely able to function, and no dreamed horror is worth this.
Morgana doesn't take the drug a second time, and she dreams vividly and horrifically and at length. She avoids Gaius' assessing eyes when she has to ask for a different draught the next morning.
The voice calls to her again that night, and once more long after Gwen has woken her, but she simply tries to ignore it.
* * * * *
So it goes on. Arthur hunts when he has other responsibilities, and Merlin offers himself up to take the blame. Uther rants and continues to execute anyone accused of using magic. Gwen continues to wake Morgana from her nightmares, and occasionally something truly strange - usually involving magic or some mythical creature - happens in Camelot. But always, always, the disembodied voice reappears in her head each night.
It's weeks before she realises that the first time she heard him calling her while she was awake was significant not just in the hour, but also her location at the time. It takes quite a lot of planning and a great deal of assistance from Gwen before she manages to return alone to explore the lower levels of the castle well enough to find him.
The dragon. Under Camelot.
Morgana knew there was one somewhere reasonably close by. They all knew that. The last great conquest of Uther over magic. But under the castle, with frankly useless guards if she - the easily recognisable King's ward, with all her stupid, bothersome dresses and jewellery to rattle and rustle and give her away - could slip past them. She can't begin to understand how Uther deemed this a secure location for such a creature, given all his fears and paranoia.
So she wasn't expecting it, and she felt her legs weaken under her when she saw it. It was the great big scaly face that she knew from her dreams, where it was always roaring and breathing torrents of flame. It flapped down in front of her and she was tempted to turn and run, but she stiffened her shoulders and walked out onto the little rock ledge once it was settled and watching her.
"Have you been calling me?" she cried, and thrust her torch in front of herself defiantly.
"You wield that flame as though fire would scare me, little one."
Yes, Morgana concedes to herself. I suppose that's a little obvious. Still, she doesn't let her grip falter, and simply squares her shoulders and straightens her back.
"So defiant for one with so strong a gift," it continues, and rears up a little, flapping its wings. The breeze stirs Morgana's skirts and flings her hair across her face to tickle her nose, and she struggles not to sneeze.
"What do you mean?"
"You have many gifts, Morgana. Gifts which could be put to better use if you had the freedom to use them openly."
"I don't understand-"
"Your empathy. Your lively mind-" Morgana's brow furrows, and she finally lets the weight of the torch lower her aching arm. "- and your dreams."
Morgana shakes her head. Hard.
"There is no point denying it. You heard my voice and followed it here, and I cannot speak so with those who have no power."
She stumbles backward off the ledge without taking her eyes off it. Him. The dragon who has been speaking to her mind.
"There are many possible destinies," it intones seriously at her, and she's struggling not to fall apart, but there's a dragon in front of her talking about destiny and prophecy and her dreams. "You understand this. You've seen many possibilities in your own mind."
"I might have," she says, with her chin in the air as she presses herself bodily against cold stone at her back.
"We all have many possible destinies. You could have a great one, if you choose it. As could Arthur, by your side; Camelot, under your hand."
"Me? Rule Camelot?" She scoffs, and relaxes a little. It might be a dragon, but a slightly crazy dragon is somehow less intimidating. "Arthur and I will be given much more advantageous matches than each other."
Even if she doesn't want to leave her home.
"Perhaps to fulfill your greatest destiny, you must change that," it intones more seriously still and begins to flap its wings again, but she would have sworn it was laughing at her. If dragons can laugh - she's not sure that they can.
"Wait-" she cries, and nearly leaps too close to the edge in an instinctive bid to hold its attention, but the dragon is already launching itself away. "How am I meant to do that?" she finishes off quietly to herself.
There's no response but silence, so she gathers herself back up and begins the return climb to the castle proper.
* * * * *
The dragon is no more helpful the next time Morgana manages to sneak away to see him, nor the time after that, and she starts cursing her own curiosity. He simply talks on and on about the importance of her staying with Arthur.
"Help him," he says. "Guide him, teach him, care for him. Protect him."
Yet he never tells her why, or how, nor the means with which she is meant to ensure that she won't be married to a lord from a distant realm to cement some alliance or treaty. As if she has any control. She is the King's ward, not his daughter or his sister. Uther may profess to care for her and respect her opinion on occasion, but it is only occasionally, and she isn't his family. Not by blood. There's no link in her to his beloved Igraine to sway his temper or his ambition. Her only choices - should he take it into his head to marry her off - would be to accept his decision, or to leave Camelot forever and make something of herself out of the kindness of strangers.
Morgana can take up a sword and defend herself. She can hold court over a feast and oversee the running of a castle and be entrusted with delicate, diplomatic issues. But she cannot choose her husband or the place in which she will live with him, and why can't the dragon see that it was pointless to ask her to? But still he tells her to wait, and be patient. He insists all will become clear in time, and that she simply needs to bide her time and stay by Arthur's side, to be his friend and his confidant.
"But he's insufferable," she cries. "He still behaves like a child, and a spoiled one at that! We've never gotten along easily!" It makes no difference. She wonders why she keeps returning, and yet, she can't stay away. If she does, he calls to her again, and she finds she wishes to speak to him anyway. He is the one creature who understands her visions, and who she can talk to about them without fear of reprisals. Morgana finds more peace sitting in the dark, with the smoke from the torch in her nose and throat while she chats with an incomprehensible magical creature, than she ever could have expected.
Sneaking away becomes harder and harder still. Her absences are noticed more because she hasn't been inclined to disappear on whims like Arthur always has. Morgana takes to spending what hours she has free of duties in the castle, and away from Arthur and the dragon both, wandering among the many small tower courtyards and secluded garden balconies in Camelot with Gwen. She never stays in one courtyard or garden for the afternoon though; instead she flits from place to place restlessly until it is openly considered difficult to track her down. People stop wondering when she can't be located, and instead assume she is reclining and admiring the view from a tower top or smelling flowers. Gwen reluctantly agrees to cover for her
She knows Gwen thinks she has a lover somewhere. When she asks her to say they've been on one of their castle-bound walks, when they've done no such thing, she is slow to agree. But she never speaks a word in reproach or fails in her promise. She knows there is danger to Morgana should she be caught - just not the danger she thinks - and she is, as always, steady and reliable.
Morgana's has begun to lose count of her visits when Merlin stumbles across her walking where she shouldn't be. There'd been a dozen, maybe more, before they collided in a deserted side corridor, and she panicked. Merlin is smilingly bewildered to find her there, and she looks at him beseechingly while she babbles up an excuse she can't remember afterwards and reaches for his arm. The smile drops from his face by the time he leaves her, she can see that much, and she finds herself unreasonably terrified. They're only a few turns away from the guarded entrance to the dragon's cavern and there's nowhere else he could think she was heading. She has to feign a lack of knowledge of the lower corridors, forsake her trip and return to Gwen's side, but he still watches her suspiciously afterward.
When she finally makes it to the cavern the next day, the dragon tells her not to worry about him.
"He is not important," is his final opinion, and from there on the subject is closed. He will not be roused to speak of Merlin again, and simply disappears into the gloom when she continues to try.
She stays away for days after that, prompted by worries of Merlin and by her own feelings of disgruntlement, until she hears him calling to her again. For the first time, it wakes her from her sleep, and Morgana listens to her own name being repeated over and over again in an empty room, rather than with Gwen by her side. She slips quietly through the halls, and past the dozing guards, and is shivering by the time she reaches the cavern.
"What do you want?" she calls quietly, as if night and day make any difference in this place.
"Tomorrow is important," the dragon's voice echoes through the cavern before she sees him. "You must be ready."
"Ready for what?"
"For your destiny."
"But how-"
"Go to Arthur," the dragon says, nodding its head and shifting on its rock. "Go to him as soon as the sun has risen. He'll need you today, you must protect him."
"From what?" she cries desperately. There had been nothing in her dreams of Arthur, only strange creatures and endless stretches of forest.
"You must stand strong together," is all the reply she gets before it disappears again into the gloom. Morgana stays this time, and yells herself hoarse, but to no avail. By the time she drags herself back to her room, dawn has broken and the castle has broken. She shakes Gwen awake to dress her just as the first alarm sounds.
"Something practical today, Gwen," she says absentmindedly, and hovers at the window until Gwen has assembled all the appropriate things. There are knights gathered in the courtyard, talking heatedly amongst themselves, but neither Arthur nor Uther is in sight yet. "Good, there's still time," she mutters and relatches the window.
"My lady?"
"Nevermind, just help me dress."