Perfectly Clear

Author: weepingwillow9
Title: Perfectly Clear
Rating: R
Pairing/s: In order of appearance: Morgana/Elaine(OC), Mordred/Galahad(OC), Merlin/Arthur
Character/s: See above...
Summary: They're reflections of each other. Opposites in some ways, the same in others.
Warnings: Angsty, very angsty. And death, and hints at an abusive relationship
Word Count: 679
Prompt: Reflection
Author's Notes: This prompt came at an opportune moment, when I was thinking about how so many of my ships are on opposite sides of a divide, or opposites to each other. So sorry  this is so dark! And keep reading, there is Merthur, honest!

A reflection, a mirror image, that’s what they are to each other.

People like this litter the world, paired in the spaces where left turns to right, forward to back, in a silvered glass. They stand heart to heart, reach out a hand to see if the other follows. Meet the hands in the glass, press yourself close, reach out and touch and hope to break through, to reach your pair.

First is Morgana. Dark hair, dark future, powerful and beautiful. And her mirror, Elaine, with lighter, brighter hair, a belief only in the good of the world, and a lack of magic so deep she’s come out the other side, cursed.

Their eyes meet in the same blue. Their resolutions crash at the barrier between them, spreading and engulfing each other like paint on opposite sides of a pane of glass, never really meeting but equal in their brightness, their intensity.

And they can lower the barrier, thin the glass but for a while, and they can touch and they can hold and they can promise so much, but when fate brings its reckoning they will always be forced apart. To watch and to clutch at nothing. From fingers curled in hair and lips on lips to nails over smooth glass, scrabbling without a purchase.

To death, in the cold, inescapable, unreachable tomb of a mirror, and screams inaudible from the distance between them, punches that cannot hope to break through glass...

The next, Elaine’s son, Galahad. A man pure of heart, but locked in the prison of the love of his opposite, one who can only cause harm. Mordred, fated to destroy, to desire beyond that which can ever be his. His actions will bring about the downfall of Camelot. Galahad’s will be almost forgotten. Galahad is ruled by his faith, and his heart, and his need to do only what is right. Mordred is ruled by his grief and his anger and his inability to love, to hold something without crushing it in his grasp, shards of glass between his fingers cutting them to ribbons. Because Mordred’s childhood was filled with suffering and grief and confusion and power; and Galahad’s was safe, and loved. It’s made them into the men they are; vengeance and compassion, greed and temperance, dark and light, magic and mortal, evil and good.

And when good loves evil, and evil dares to love back, nothing worthwhile can come of it.

So they can ignore the mirror in stolen moments, step around its frame to press one another against its cold surface, and take all they can. In fits and starts, in arguments and biting kisses and thrusts that come like punches but bring them closer regardless.

But when it comes to it, there’s no way to change what they are. After all, left is left and right will always be right. Love is mixed up and confused and never, ever gives you the easy option. And there’s more than the two of them at stake, no matter how they wish.

In the end, they’ll have to turn their eyes away, walk from the mirror on the count of three, and play their parts…

Last is the earliest, but the happiest. Because they find a way to shatter the glass.

There’s dark and light in appearance, power and lack of, again. But there are lies, and there are pretences, and there is misunderstanding on either side.

These, though, they make it through. A King and his servant, in more ways than one. Arthur and Merlin, separated by betrayal, united by the revelation that they can fight through that, but they can’t live without each other.

They find the pressure point of trust, throw a stone, and capture each other in the shattered light that cascades down around them; in the chaos and the battles and the death that wells up in the blood on the fields. They hold each other through it; a hope, a beacon of love and warmth and forever.

And when fate catches up with them, they cheat it once more…