Lord and a Lady
Title: Lord and a Lady
Characters/Pairing: Arthur/Gwen
Spoilers: 1x10
Word Count: uh, around 2,000?
Disclaimer: I own zilch.
Summary: Guinevere takes a late night walk in the forest, and runs into Prince Arthur. Set just after 1x10.
Author’s Note: This is the first thing I’ve written in about a year so please be gentle on me! The mood is a bit all over the place at times, but I so wanted to write something about my bbs, seeing as I haven't written them since 1x03 - 1x05 last year.
There’s a crown in the stars and she finds it in the forest.
She’d learnt the constellations at the insistence of Morgana, who believed the patterns of the future could be found in the path of the stars. With the right mind and a quick eye, the black depths of the night could tell tomorrow’s tales and plumb the mysteries of the past.
But tonight - tonight even the stars seem to have deserted the forlorn wood where their party is camped. Gwen thinks she can discern the rough points of crown if she squints hard enough, but she needs the slumbering Morgana to make sense of it, and besides, five stars does not a constellation make.
And Gwen knows she shouldn’t, but the night is so cold and the moon is so big and Morgana and Merlin are soundly sleeping none the wiser, so she finds herself straying from their encampment, deeper into the surrounding woods. The crown follows her light steps (she must be careful not to stir anything), and soon she stands directly beneath it.
How lonely, she thinks, to hang solitary in the sky for millions of years, save for the brief moments where you are joined by another celestial companion - and then the sun rises, and you disappear until the cycle begins again. Not unlike a servants life, in fact: she will remain with Morgana until either woman gets married, and will then be passed onto another lady, and another, until the cycle breaks and a new girl takes her place. So really, actually not like a star at all.
Gwen wanders deeper into the woods, and then there is a flash of silver that has naught to do with stars and moons - but the sword of the golden Prince. Arthur sits upon a rotting wooden log as though it were a jewelled throne, and Gwen knows she cannot retreat back to the camp pretending she hasn’t seen him, for Arthur, with the natural instincts of a hunter, had no doubt heard her first step from their camp, had probably recognised her footfall and known her identity while she was but clambering from her makeshift bed.
“My lord.”
He cocks his head as if assessing her, taking in her windswept, haggard appearance with an inscrutable expression. Gwen waits for the smirk to emerge, the banal remark, seemingly playful but with a cutting edge - the kind he had delivered to her class for years - but it does not come. He merely ponders her a moment longer, as if she were an interesting creature that’d recently learnt a new trick - Morgana’s shy servant with a surprising backbone - but then returns to cleaning his sword.
The discomfort of his intense stare over, Gwen instead goes to move deeper into the forest, to find her own clearing to sit and ponder. She is gone barely three yards, when Arthur interrupts her.
“Guinevere, where are you going?”
Again: that sharp thrill connected with his voice saying her name seems to stir some part of her she didn’t know existed. Guinevere. He is too proper to call a woman her nickname - Gwen - so he must find his way around the complicated, difficult syllables of her full name.
“I’m going for a walk in the forest, sire.”
“No you’re not,” he says, not looking up from his sword. “This forest isn’t safe - there are bandits all over these borders, not to mention sorcerers. If you want to go haring off into a dangerous forest, you can do it on your own time, not mine.”
Gwen gapes at him a moment - it might be the most he’s ever said to her - but is chastened enough to bow quickly and leave.
“And where are you going now?” he calls to her retreating back. “I don’t remember dismissing you.” But there is a smile on his face and Gwen knows what he’s doing - reaffirming the power-lines. The Gwen that dared to talk back to him and could shake his hand and sleep in the same room must be left on the Camelot-Ealdor border.
“To the camp, unless your lordship has any objections?”
Arthur deigns to look up and appears amused by her obvious discomfort. “You know, for all the faith you have in me you don’t seem to like being in my presence, Guinevere.” He motions to the log beside him. “Sit, and that’s an order,” he adds, when she opens her mouth to protest about decorum and propriety. “A bit of good company wouldn’t go amiss after a week spent with Merlin’s lot.”
Gwen reluctantly obliges, and Arthur, yet again, seems amused at how far she places herself from him.
“I don’t bite you know.”
She slowly inches closer, but that just seems to widen Arthur’s smile even more. They sit in an awkward silence for a time, not least because Gwen has the strange feeling that Arthur is studying her.
“You didn’t seem so frightened of me in Ealdor,” he says finally.
His tone is playful, and Gwen responds accordingly: “I was surrounded by a lot of people then, I knew you wouldn’t risk their bad opinion to scold me - nor the Lady Morgana’s wrath.”
“I didn’t know I was such a fearsome fellow, Guinevere. Now if you’d only tell that to Merlin, you’d certainly make my life a lot easier.”
He offers her an exasperated smile, and Gwen, who had spent her life frowning at the swooning servant girls and blushing kitchen maids that clustered around him, can suddenly understand why he has such an exhilarating effect on people. Their interactions over the past few days had been Gwen forgetting her station and daring to defy her Prince with a bravery forced from the desperation of their situation. But now, in the woods, with Gwen the deferential handmaiden returned and the imperious Prince commanding her attention, she finally realises why so many of the court’s lowly maids have risked disgrace and sacking for a night with this prince.
He was always good-looking, and yes, at the start of his teenage years she had seen hope in him not due to any of his own merits but because he was not his father. But under the guidance of Merlin, she had come to admire him for the blossoming nobility she could discern within him. And yet this, this was different, this was him looking at her in that playful way he sometimes looked at Merlin, but there was something else there too - was it, could it be hope? Anticipation? Awkwardness? And wasn’t that the way he used to look at the Lady Morgana?
“Merlin,” she offers tentatively, after a short silence, “I think he cares for you a great deal.”
“He has an odd way of showing it. I hope when I am King he will afford me some degree of respect, or ere the first day of my reign is old the servants will be running Camelot.”
“And all the better for it, my lord. Merlin has wisdom far beyond his years.”
There is a short pause, and then: “Are we talking about the same person?” Laughter follows, and then to cover another looming awkward lull in conversation, Arthur asks whether she is looking forward to returning to Camelot.
“The adventure has been rather nice - I’m not allowed to leave Camelot unless my lady leaves - but I am looking forward to returning to my usual duties. I imagine you are too, my lord.”
Arthur regards her carefully. “How so? And please, call me Arthur.”
“Well, diplomatic missions are so dangerous at the best of times, yet you were not even authorised by the King to venture on this one.”
“I could not just sit idly by and watch people suffer.”
“Yet your father could -”
The words have escaped her mouth before she can retract them - a habit that rears its ugly head in any awkward conversation she finds herself in. Yet this might be her worse one yet - insulting the King to his own son? Oh Guinevere, she can almost hear her mother sigh.
And the atmosphere, never relaxed to begin with, shifts dramatically. Guinevere knows that Arthur’s relationship with his father is factitious at the best of times and the pair do not exactly see eye to eye with regards to political policy, but there is love there, and despite Arthur’s frequent doubts of his father that are there for all to see, like any child’s relationship with their parents, only they are allowed to find fault with them - anyone else must be regarded as an intruder insulting their family.
“My father did what he thought was right,” Arthur says forcefully. And then comes the occasional careless cruelty she knew still existed within him, still occasionally crawled out to hurt. “I don’t bite” he said - but he does:
“And anyway, what would a servant girl know about governing a country?”
Gwen’s small but sharp intake of breath seems to cut any further remarks from Arthur off, and in an instant, the sneer is replaced by a look of apology and - is that, shame? She had known that a leopard couldn’t entirely change its spots, regardless of the man he was becoming under Merlin’s encouragement; she had known that Arthur still had a mean streak that occasionally reared its ugly head - but still, it hurts more than it should. He had welcomed her unorthodox, outspoken opinions earlier; now he censured them.
A servant girl: easily replaceable, a forgettable part of the castle’s fabric that could easily disappear and none would be the wiser, yet to hear the word’s from Arthur’s lips, the acknowledgement of her lowly status - bizarrely, a dull painful ache begins to throb in her stomach, and even more strangely, Arthur seems embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, Guinevere, I didn’t mean to offend -”
“No, it’s quite alright, my lord. There is no need to apologise, I was the one at fault -”
“Oh, but there is, I - ”
“My lord, really -”
“It’s Arthur, and -”
And Gwen is amazed that the confident, cocksure Arthur of her youth has devolved into a stuttering wreck before her eyes. There is shame there, frustration, but still a small remnant of that flare of anger.
“Arthur, I told you to call me Arthur. You are annoyed when I acknowledge your status, but you place yourself beneath me by referring to me as ‘my lord’.”
“But I am beneath you, my lord” (there is a sigh of aggravation); “there is no man in the kingdom above you but your father. There is no shame in saying a servant is beneath a prince.”
“But there is shame in the way I addressed you. I should not have spoken to you so.”
“You are the heir to the throne - you may address me how you like.”
He raises an eyebrow. “That’s not what you were saying in Ealdor.”
“That was in Ealdor - we are now in Camelot. Things are different.”
Arthur stares at her a moment, frustration still evident in the corners of the tense frown creasing his brow, but there is admiration, she fancies too, admiration at her stubbornness in the way he contemplates her small but proud figure.
“You are a puzzle, Guinevere.”
A ponderous sentence, as if he’s still wondering what to make of her, deciding what opinion to have of her: a disrespectful servant stepping far above her station? A woman who acknowledges the bonds of propriety so much it becomes stifling? A young girl, charming in her awkwardness, admirable in her stubborn defiance? Or just Morgana’s companion, to be forgotten after they return to the castle?
He nods at her, and she understands this as her signal to leave. They are not quite returned to their somewhat warm dynamic of earlier in the night, but not quite as awkward as their argument before either.
She bows. “My lo -”
“Don’t say it,” he warns, but she can hear the smile in his voice. “My name is Arthur. Say “my lord” again, and I’ll have you strung up on the battlements.”
He stares at her expectantly, his eyebrows raised. Guinevere wonders if she can go that far - and knows, despite the teasing nature of it, that if she calls him “Arthur” something, however small, will change. Not quite friends, nowhere near equals yes, but somewhere else entirely than they are now.
He waits, and Gwen offers him a mischievous smile, before bowing -
“My liege.”
For a brief second, Gwen imagines she sees a flash of disappointment on his face, but then his mouth splits into a wide grin and he dismisses her, his laughter following her all the way back to the camp.
Characters/Pairing: Arthur/Gwen
Spoilers: 1x10
Word Count: uh, around 2,000?
Disclaimer: I own zilch.
Summary: Guinevere takes a late night walk in the forest, and runs into Prince Arthur. Set just after 1x10.
Author’s Note: This is the first thing I’ve written in about a year so please be gentle on me! The mood is a bit all over the place at times, but I so wanted to write something about my bbs, seeing as I haven't written them since 1x03 - 1x05 last year.
There’s a crown in the stars and she finds it in the forest.
She’d learnt the constellations at the insistence of Morgana, who believed the patterns of the future could be found in the path of the stars. With the right mind and a quick eye, the black depths of the night could tell tomorrow’s tales and plumb the mysteries of the past.
But tonight - tonight even the stars seem to have deserted the forlorn wood where their party is camped. Gwen thinks she can discern the rough points of crown if she squints hard enough, but she needs the slumbering Morgana to make sense of it, and besides, five stars does not a constellation make.
And Gwen knows she shouldn’t, but the night is so cold and the moon is so big and Morgana and Merlin are soundly sleeping none the wiser, so she finds herself straying from their encampment, deeper into the surrounding woods. The crown follows her light steps (she must be careful not to stir anything), and soon she stands directly beneath it.
How lonely, she thinks, to hang solitary in the sky for millions of years, save for the brief moments where you are joined by another celestial companion - and then the sun rises, and you disappear until the cycle begins again. Not unlike a servants life, in fact: she will remain with Morgana until either woman gets married, and will then be passed onto another lady, and another, until the cycle breaks and a new girl takes her place. So really, actually not like a star at all.
Gwen wanders deeper into the woods, and then there is a flash of silver that has naught to do with stars and moons - but the sword of the golden Prince. Arthur sits upon a rotting wooden log as though it were a jewelled throne, and Gwen knows she cannot retreat back to the camp pretending she hasn’t seen him, for Arthur, with the natural instincts of a hunter, had no doubt heard her first step from their camp, had probably recognised her footfall and known her identity while she was but clambering from her makeshift bed.
“My lord.”
He cocks his head as if assessing her, taking in her windswept, haggard appearance with an inscrutable expression. Gwen waits for the smirk to emerge, the banal remark, seemingly playful but with a cutting edge - the kind he had delivered to her class for years - but it does not come. He merely ponders her a moment longer, as if she were an interesting creature that’d recently learnt a new trick - Morgana’s shy servant with a surprising backbone - but then returns to cleaning his sword.
The discomfort of his intense stare over, Gwen instead goes to move deeper into the forest, to find her own clearing to sit and ponder. She is gone barely three yards, when Arthur interrupts her.
“Guinevere, where are you going?”
Again: that sharp thrill connected with his voice saying her name seems to stir some part of her she didn’t know existed. Guinevere. He is too proper to call a woman her nickname - Gwen - so he must find his way around the complicated, difficult syllables of her full name.
“I’m going for a walk in the forest, sire.”
“No you’re not,” he says, not looking up from his sword. “This forest isn’t safe - there are bandits all over these borders, not to mention sorcerers. If you want to go haring off into a dangerous forest, you can do it on your own time, not mine.”
Gwen gapes at him a moment - it might be the most he’s ever said to her - but is chastened enough to bow quickly and leave.
“And where are you going now?” he calls to her retreating back. “I don’t remember dismissing you.” But there is a smile on his face and Gwen knows what he’s doing - reaffirming the power-lines. The Gwen that dared to talk back to him and could shake his hand and sleep in the same room must be left on the Camelot-Ealdor border.
“To the camp, unless your lordship has any objections?”
Arthur deigns to look up and appears amused by her obvious discomfort. “You know, for all the faith you have in me you don’t seem to like being in my presence, Guinevere.” He motions to the log beside him. “Sit, and that’s an order,” he adds, when she opens her mouth to protest about decorum and propriety. “A bit of good company wouldn’t go amiss after a week spent with Merlin’s lot.”
Gwen reluctantly obliges, and Arthur, yet again, seems amused at how far she places herself from him.
“I don’t bite you know.”
She slowly inches closer, but that just seems to widen Arthur’s smile even more. They sit in an awkward silence for a time, not least because Gwen has the strange feeling that Arthur is studying her.
“You didn’t seem so frightened of me in Ealdor,” he says finally.
His tone is playful, and Gwen responds accordingly: “I was surrounded by a lot of people then, I knew you wouldn’t risk their bad opinion to scold me - nor the Lady Morgana’s wrath.”
“I didn’t know I was such a fearsome fellow, Guinevere. Now if you’d only tell that to Merlin, you’d certainly make my life a lot easier.”
He offers her an exasperated smile, and Gwen, who had spent her life frowning at the swooning servant girls and blushing kitchen maids that clustered around him, can suddenly understand why he has such an exhilarating effect on people. Their interactions over the past few days had been Gwen forgetting her station and daring to defy her Prince with a bravery forced from the desperation of their situation. But now, in the woods, with Gwen the deferential handmaiden returned and the imperious Prince commanding her attention, she finally realises why so many of the court’s lowly maids have risked disgrace and sacking for a night with this prince.
He was always good-looking, and yes, at the start of his teenage years she had seen hope in him not due to any of his own merits but because he was not his father. But under the guidance of Merlin, she had come to admire him for the blossoming nobility she could discern within him. And yet this, this was different, this was him looking at her in that playful way he sometimes looked at Merlin, but there was something else there too - was it, could it be hope? Anticipation? Awkwardness? And wasn’t that the way he used to look at the Lady Morgana?
“Merlin,” she offers tentatively, after a short silence, “I think he cares for you a great deal.”
“He has an odd way of showing it. I hope when I am King he will afford me some degree of respect, or ere the first day of my reign is old the servants will be running Camelot.”
“And all the better for it, my lord. Merlin has wisdom far beyond his years.”
There is a short pause, and then: “Are we talking about the same person?” Laughter follows, and then to cover another looming awkward lull in conversation, Arthur asks whether she is looking forward to returning to Camelot.
“The adventure has been rather nice - I’m not allowed to leave Camelot unless my lady leaves - but I am looking forward to returning to my usual duties. I imagine you are too, my lord.”
Arthur regards her carefully. “How so? And please, call me Arthur.”
“Well, diplomatic missions are so dangerous at the best of times, yet you were not even authorised by the King to venture on this one.”
“I could not just sit idly by and watch people suffer.”
“Yet your father could -”
The words have escaped her mouth before she can retract them - a habit that rears its ugly head in any awkward conversation she finds herself in. Yet this might be her worse one yet - insulting the King to his own son? Oh Guinevere, she can almost hear her mother sigh.
And the atmosphere, never relaxed to begin with, shifts dramatically. Guinevere knows that Arthur’s relationship with his father is factitious at the best of times and the pair do not exactly see eye to eye with regards to political policy, but there is love there, and despite Arthur’s frequent doubts of his father that are there for all to see, like any child’s relationship with their parents, only they are allowed to find fault with them - anyone else must be regarded as an intruder insulting their family.
“My father did what he thought was right,” Arthur says forcefully. And then comes the occasional careless cruelty she knew still existed within him, still occasionally crawled out to hurt. “I don’t bite” he said - but he does:
“And anyway, what would a servant girl know about governing a country?”
Gwen’s small but sharp intake of breath seems to cut any further remarks from Arthur off, and in an instant, the sneer is replaced by a look of apology and - is that, shame? She had known that a leopard couldn’t entirely change its spots, regardless of the man he was becoming under Merlin’s encouragement; she had known that Arthur still had a mean streak that occasionally reared its ugly head - but still, it hurts more than it should. He had welcomed her unorthodox, outspoken opinions earlier; now he censured them.
A servant girl: easily replaceable, a forgettable part of the castle’s fabric that could easily disappear and none would be the wiser, yet to hear the word’s from Arthur’s lips, the acknowledgement of her lowly status - bizarrely, a dull painful ache begins to throb in her stomach, and even more strangely, Arthur seems embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, Guinevere, I didn’t mean to offend -”
“No, it’s quite alright, my lord. There is no need to apologise, I was the one at fault -”
“Oh, but there is, I - ”
“My lord, really -”
“It’s Arthur, and -”
And Gwen is amazed that the confident, cocksure Arthur of her youth has devolved into a stuttering wreck before her eyes. There is shame there, frustration, but still a small remnant of that flare of anger.
“Arthur, I told you to call me Arthur. You are annoyed when I acknowledge your status, but you place yourself beneath me by referring to me as ‘my lord’.”
“But I am beneath you, my lord” (there is a sigh of aggravation); “there is no man in the kingdom above you but your father. There is no shame in saying a servant is beneath a prince.”
“But there is shame in the way I addressed you. I should not have spoken to you so.”
“You are the heir to the throne - you may address me how you like.”
He raises an eyebrow. “That’s not what you were saying in Ealdor.”
“That was in Ealdor - we are now in Camelot. Things are different.”
Arthur stares at her a moment, frustration still evident in the corners of the tense frown creasing his brow, but there is admiration, she fancies too, admiration at her stubbornness in the way he contemplates her small but proud figure.
“You are a puzzle, Guinevere.”
A ponderous sentence, as if he’s still wondering what to make of her, deciding what opinion to have of her: a disrespectful servant stepping far above her station? A woman who acknowledges the bonds of propriety so much it becomes stifling? A young girl, charming in her awkwardness, admirable in her stubborn defiance? Or just Morgana’s companion, to be forgotten after they return to the castle?
He nods at her, and she understands this as her signal to leave. They are not quite returned to their somewhat warm dynamic of earlier in the night, but not quite as awkward as their argument before either.
She bows. “My lo -”
“Don’t say it,” he warns, but she can hear the smile in his voice. “My name is Arthur. Say “my lord” again, and I’ll have you strung up on the battlements.”
He stares at her expectantly, his eyebrows raised. Guinevere wonders if she can go that far - and knows, despite the teasing nature of it, that if she calls him “Arthur” something, however small, will change. Not quite friends, nowhere near equals yes, but somewhere else entirely than they are now.
He waits, and Gwen offers him a mischievous smile, before bowing -
“My liege.”
For a brief second, Gwen imagines she sees a flash of disappointment on his face, but then his mouth splits into a wide grin and he dismisses her, his laughter following her all the way back to the camp.