Rated: T because this contains vague(?) implication(?) about sex(?)

Summary: Everything Madeleine has done, up until now, has been her choice.

Author's Note: Inactivity is me in a nutshell and I have no excuse for it. Other than my old laptop suddenly crashing down and I have to rewrite this from scratch. And that I'm kinda struggling with college application and moving abroad.

Oh wait. On second thought, I do have excuses.

Another soulmates – reincarnation AU for you all because why tf not =))))

Do take the warning seriously though: This has references to prostitution, drug usage and violence.

Here, have a dose of angst and stay active my Mergana peers – I swear I will not let this ship die. It's kind of a testament that this fandom is just so small now that even I am being thanked for writing… like it's at the stage where even trash will do

Edit 04/07/2018: This was previously one of my oneshots but now another chapter of this fic bc it's neater this way tbh

Disclaimer: I, I'd like to own Merlin. Just think of the Mergana potential =))))

.

my ghost
where did you go?
what happened to the soul that you used to be?

.

Sometimes Madeleine thinks Merlin is a hallucination borne from her singed, open wound that can still be felt centuries after she died and reincarnated and died again. Sometimes she thinks Merlin is in the inflammation on her abdomen that refuses to heal despite time washing by; the horrible horrible reflection in her dirty mirror glaring back with empty golden eyes, calling her a different name, goodbye Morgana. She thinks he is the same thing in her veins, she's got more heroin in her veins than blood and he is her drugs, stripping her off her sanity, what a curse, what a blessing; she inhales memories and coughs purges heaves blood vomit regret poison until her insides aches from the emptiness and she is hollowed out, fresh-faced and blank past.

Sometimes she almost believes Merlin is real.

There was once a girl born when the world was weeping around her: The stars in all the wrong places: Mars shining in a starless night, red in the sky and red all around her. Her mother screamed and pushed and grunted some more until her hoarse voice faltered and blood gushed out of her body. Demon child, the nurses would whisper years later when everything fell into place, she sucked the life out of her own mother, pushed and pulled and tugged until fate yielded, fell in her favors. It's a perfect sob story and Morgana is her own villain. Wild roses grew out of her fingertips and there is always matted blood on her eyelashes, perfect burgundy slick wet and all the blood on her mouth her lips her hands since she was born and even before that, all the dead, all the dying. Madeleine, they say, what an angelic name for such a temptress; rumors traveling further than the lady herself can ever do. Madeleine, silence spells out her name, beckoning her, darkness stretches out a bony hand with a golden branch extended, childe, sweet childe, singing and crooning such alluring words. My lady. You can be queen again.

When they asked her hesitantly, "why do you do this," and gestured vaguely, eyes blinking heavily and body sated, she'd love to wring every pre-formed pity out of those eyes and pulled sucked snapped. There is no fall from grace, unless you count the hundred years of denied rights, no sob story that pushed her here. Everything Madeleine ever does is her choice and hers alone, but everything before that, everything before her was not – was pried out of her grasp, despite it; back when she had a different name. But everything's changed now. Now, it doesn't matter what she does. History doesn't care about a dirty little girl born in slumbers, sweetheart.

(There is an exhilarating thrill in defying rules and doing what she likes just for the sake of it, consequences be damned, and she is free to breathe, for the first time.)

"Because I didn't have a choice before," she'd say instead, and they would assume

Magic cried for her, the darkness, the light that never was, the last pillar of a kingdom falling to ruins. Magic wept and cried and in the end echoed her life and her soul shattered like glass, sharp shards crumbling into golden dust and dissolving into light, soaking his mind. She touched his bones, weaved herself into his flesh, crawling in him, his body. What was left of her broke, cracks and lines run down bleached white skin, lips dried and dark and utterly dead. He watched her, eyes golden and hands spread, lips murmuring an incantation, friend and lover and enemy, sank lower and lower into the cold earth and life seeped out. If there was a lone tear on his cheek, nobody was there to witness it anyway.

And this is the part that they left out: he burnt you on a royal pyre on a sunny day, the sky pure and cloudless and sunlight carved sigils in the white of his eyes. Your body broke, incinerated, inches after inches of white skin charred into tar. He scattered you on a river, the same river that ripped off his brother in all but blood. Your flesh and blood fell apart but it was never anticipated that so did your soul.

The first time Madeleine saw him, he is little more than a figment of her imagination. Merlin is the dead and the damned in her dreams, his hands cutting off her air, her insides tore apart and liquid fire coursing in bluish veins. She wakes up scared and confused, sweat coating her skin, an alien name on her tongue and tears in her eyes. Merlin, the name rolls off perfectly, unused and dusty but fits in the roof of her mouth. There is something vaguely familiar in the arch of his eyebrow and his too-large ear, like a warning whispered in the back of her skull, like the tingling in her mind that fears darkness, like the too-detailed nightmares in crimson. Her fingers rub on nonexistent scars and she frowned.

The next few times are worse. Merlin, Merlin, she meets him again and regrets are there (but not strong enough for him to actively ask for second chance – not that she would have given him one anyway.) She meets him again and the not-strong-enough sadness eventually gives ways for hatred until he is a stranger she knows too well, until tears dry and salt evaporates, thickens into viciousness and the deep tang of blood on her fingertips.

She meets him again and fire burns them both. She meets him again and he never once pledges for forgiveness (and somehow that makes everything even worse.)

It's terribly unpredictable to see him here, of all places. She has come to call this place hers. With its dingy atmosphere and dim lights and throaty, inviting songs, this is a part of her that has nothing to do with magic of all thing, with bruises under corset, dirty lace and ribbons and bite marks on her collarbones under layers of concealer. In these kinds of place, Merlin – Merlin with his awkward look and laughter and equally awkward looks – Merlin would stick out like a sore thumb.

(He does always stick out though, whether it's for his clumsiness or for the current of energy humming just under his skin, sizzling like oil and just demanding respect. It has taken her decades to realize this.)

For the next few days, she chose to observe him from afar. It's amazing what magic does to you: Time warps and bends everything to its will but he is the same, same young face, same antics: the tapping of his feet when he's uncomfortable, the blush coating his skin when a particularly bold girl places her hand on his knees and grinds her bottom against him (which is exactly why Annalise did that in the first place, she thought amusedly), the same low alcohol tolerance – surprisingly low for someone who's had thousands of years to practice and too many memories to drown.

His is a face she longed to forget. She has yet to decide if not getting this particular wish is a curse or ablessing, if this sparkling, unnamed ache can become anything important.

Here is a truth: She hated him.

There are a thousands way this could have ended. In one reality, Madeleine chooses to turn a blind eye on him, pretends she never saw, pretend she didn't remember, and they passed by, a dim spark never given a chance.

In another, she holds a knife in her hand, her grip just a little too tight. The blade wedges in his heart and his eyes blaze gold.

There are chances, and possibilities, and a thousand ways she could have made it different. There could have been poison in his cocktail – she can always mess with his next order; and the irony is just too delicious to pass up – there could have been a spell crawling up his spine, rendering him paralyzed; there could have been nothing at all. She could have chosen another path, but it doesn't matter in the end.

It's all about her choices. Wrong, right, regret, too late. But they are still hers, see? They are, ultimately, a part of her, the way she is, the way she will ever be, each choice shaping up her, a part of her flaked off and projected for the world to see. Everything Morgana – Madeleine has done, up until now, has been her choice.

The thought doesn't help her much at the moment.

(She can't help feeling like walking into a trap.)

(It just sits low in her stomach, heavy and uncomfortable, an inevitable mistake. Centuries-old memories screamed, turn back. Turn back and save yourself; her skin faintly pulsing where a scar should have been.

Turn back. Turn back.)

The scene, Madeleine would later say, would be in slow motion, was this a movie. If she concentrates hard enough, layers of gold swirls will appear on where his veins should be, condensed time trickling inside him, making up his body. How can anyone be ignorant of his presence is what she wants to say. How can anyone ever be ignorant of him, she wonders. This kind of power that is barely concealed, that is just waiting to burst forth at any chance, at any slip of control; and tight as the grip he has on his magic, it just seems to leak out uncontrollably. Why doesn't anybody cower in fear and bow down to him, because he has every right for such a simple request. Merlin is a force to be reckoned with, a lesson she's learnt the hardest way possible. Storms and ice thread in his sinuses, spun into his bones like gold; and there are winds, there are thunders, there are promises unspoken and broken in him and that, of all things, make him big, larger than life, larger than death but still so very human, and that of all things makes him terrifying.

She is not his soul mate but almost. Almost, perhaps, if the unsettling, once upon a time hatred can be erased, if given the chance, if taught how. The last two pillars of a religion no longer remembered, bound together with magic. Despite it.

He doesn't react at first. Surprise, she thinks, surprise. And then there is a damn broken somewhere inside, and it floods. A plethora of emotions rage in the white of his eyes, fury and disbelief and sadness.

A tiny flicker of hope, a traitorous, traitorous hint of relief.

He doesn't pull out a sword and stab her, so Madeleine will take that as a good sign. "Long time no see, Merlin." She plops down a stool – one of this place's many charms, she's sure, with its cracks and worn down leather and a not-very-assuring creaking sound when she sits down. They need to fix this thing ASAP.

"Morgana," he sighs almost inaudibly, "and here I thought you would be gone for good."

"Not Morgana," a flicker of surprise flashes in brown eyes. She licks her lips.

His eyes dashes upwards.

"What game are you playing this time, Morgana?"

"Nothing," Madeleine replies, "deception is not in my nature, Emrys,"

And if she takes a tiny bit of vicious pleasure at his abrupt departure, well, she's entitled to it, isn't she?

She doesn't expect him to come back. She doesn't.

(She does. You can only fool yourself so much. She hopes he will come back. She hopes he will prostrate and apologize. She hopes – she hopes –

What does she hopes for?)

He plops himself down and doesn't even pretend to look like a regular, his pointed stare glued to her back.

(He does the thing he knows best: He waits. He waits until night falls and customers file away. It feels too much like a confrontation.)

She is not ready for this. She is not sure if she ever will.

"Hello, Emrys,"

"Why are you here, Morgana," right, no beating around the bushes then. The frown on his face is weary, a thing too heavy and out of place on his face. Everything is odd, from his impatient voice to his face, too young to be right.

(She keeps forgetting that he is not Merlin anymore.)

"Well, you know, when a man and a woman love each other very much, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a goat – really, J. , that is disturbing, and you call this children books? – they take each other clothes off, go to bed and nine months later, there is a baby."

One thing that she is not used to see in Merlin: He is prone to exasperation – the product of a thousand years of solitude and near-madness and I could have saved him jumbled in his mind.

"That is not what I mean and you know it."

"Yes, well, I am not Morgana, so your point is null anyway."

And of course, she may, might, possiby, enjoy this.

"What do you mean you are not Morgana?"

Scratch that. She is enjoying this.

"Oh Merlin, you always know how to make a girl blush."

His gritted teeth are visible now, the sound of bones breaking.

"Fine. Fine! You want to play games? Let's play games then!"

It is possible, she thinks with thinly veiled disgust, for a person to age but to never mature.

"No, Emrys, I ask that you leave me alone."

Oh but they both can't resist each other, can they? This is proof enough, that after hundreds of years and thousands of lives and undercurrent of time, they did, do, and will gravitate towards each other.

"Not until you answer my question."

"You will waste time here then, I'm afraid." Madeleine turns away. "I don't know anything."

Streetlight patches his body into something whole, softer in golden light, the shadow onhischeekbones underhiseyes inhisbones faded to almost-dust. She can fall in love with him like this, she thinks.

Her eyes mist over unexpectedly, and she doesn't move.

Here is a secret: She can learn how to love him.

(If it's still you, and the magic is still there, but not the soulmark, does it still count?)

Morgana can see the future, time in motion and the constant hummingmovingturning of fate. Madeleine can only ever see ghosts.

He comes to her again, this time with melancholy in his hands. She is not used to this, she admits. The soulmark under his collarbone glistens.

Something heavy knots itself in her throat.

"It… was't right of me to push you like that," and it's the closest thing to an apology that she can ask of him.

The thing about betrayal is that it makes you doubt everything, shakes the foundation of your relationship to the core. It's a scar still healing.

She is tired, she realizes.

She is not Morgana.

(But sometimes she wishes.)

It happens.

They gravitate towards each other. He wants redemption, wants to fix her. He regrets. She can't be fixed, can only be undone. (You can't fix what is not broken.)

They both want to restart again.

He peels her clothes of, inches upon inches of curves and pale skin, unblemished. No soulmark.

Madeleine can feel realization finally settling in.

He starts to pull away, to apologize again – something else she isn't used to. She holds his wrist. Shakes her head. Later, goes the unspoken promise.

His lips taste like something she can't identify; Madeleine ponders briefly.

They fold together until she can't tell where she ends and he begins.

It… happens.

"Why do you do this," he askes, fingers writing a language no longer spoken into her skin; and the coincidence is just too hilarious that she huffs, just a little. His brows draw together.

She strokes his hand, the touch almost comforting.

"You need to understand first that I'm not Morgana. No, Emrys, let me finish," hushes his protests into silence, "I really am not your Morgana. I have a part of her soul, that is.

"You remember when you killed her? No, don't flinch, I won't stab you. Not this time, at least. If I had wanted, you would have been dead the night you set foot in the bar. You really are just careless, you know?

"Her soul crumbled. A piece of it just… happens to make up mine, that is."

His silence is heavy. Madeleine tries not to feel like a fraud, like she has lied to him somehow.

"And how do you know?"

He is weary. Hopeful, still, underneath it all, a bit of doomed optimism slips in his voice. Please don't talk like that, it will make me hope too.

Madeleine brushes a fingertip against the name scrawled on his skin and feels something sinks.

"We both know I'm not your soulmate."

We both know I'm not the part of her that loves you.

"I love all of her," Merlin doesn't plead, but it's close. It's close enough that a primal voice inside her head laughs victoriously.

The words under her eyelids burn. She can read them easily, Hebrew and Latin and Old English, dead languages to match the dead in her dreams. She can see ghosts still, visions lingering in a dusty, untouched corner of her mind, an old box sitting in a dark attic. She can taste death on his fingertips, curling around his shadows like smoke, like fog, like home.

They are a perfect match, another hysteric part scoffs. Mad prophetess and ageless wizard and all the history between them, all the words, all the blood. Blood on her hand and blood in his mind. They can never ever erase them.

She can choose, she thinks, delirious with unfounded hope. She can unravel this like a thread and tangle them until they melt, until she is tightly knitted into his soul, until he drips of her at every edge, until Madeleine is the only thing they can find when they rip into his bones.

But it's not her choice to make.

Madeleine swallows. This particular future is not hers to control.

"I am a large part of her, but I'm not the one that loves you," she repeats again. The words are firm. Her voice isn't.

And this is the darkest, deepest secret of all: To be Morgana, she has to love him, with or without the past behind her like a burden; and that Madeleine can't do.

He pulls her into another kiss, then.

"I can love you," shakily, unsaid and moon-shone, heady with ashes, you can be enough. I can't ask for more.

Rose, the word pops into her head. He reminds her of rose ash, the smell of freshly burnt petals and fire and dirt. He reminds her of a graveyard untended.

Roses for a lover long dead.

He peers into her eyes, and the answer is clear.

Madeleine presses a finger on his heart and lips on his cheeks, touch as gentle as she can manage.

"Goodbye, Emrys,"

If she can choose, she will be fresh-faced and innocuous. Trade her prophecies for songs, trade this past for a blank canvas, and let herself adorn jewels without crying again. If she can choose, she will weave magic into the air and incantations into her skin instead of unsteady soul, and her name alone will remind her of him, the northern light to guide her home, to stitch her into herself again.

Rose, she decides. She will be Rose.

(Once upon a time, a girl meets a boy again, and destiny finally smiles.)

A year later and I still don't understand how to maneuver these characters. Actually, my writing seems to go downhill? And just as I thought it couldn't even get any worse?

Review please because I'm a mess and need constant validation to not feel like a total worthless shit.