[Fic] The Love You Kept Inside (pt. 3) - for themadlurker
Title: The Love You Kept Inside
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: themadlurker
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Hunith/Nimueh (other pairings mentioned), Merlin and Gaius
Warnings: Reference to character death (canon and OCs); grieving, miscarriage, one scene of a lesbian character having sex with a man.
Spoilers: Only through the end of series one. (Not fully compliant with series two.)\
Rating: R
Word Count: 25,191
Summary: When she was the age Merlin is now, Hunith made her own journey from the village to Camelot, trying to find her destiny.
Author's Note: Huge thanks to my beta 'S' and to 'G' and 'C' for additional helpful comments. Thanks to the mods for the challenge and to themadlurker for the amazing prompts. There is absolutely no way I would have written 25,000 words of Hunith/Nimueh if not for this challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope you like it too. Happy Solstice!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
Part One| Part Two
Hunith wanted to give him a Christian name, not because she cared for the priests (who only passed through these villages every few years, performing a handful of baptisms each time) but because she thought it would help him fit in with the other children, the Toms and Timothys, the Michaels and Matthews. Nimueh wanted an older name, something to tie him to this land, but Hunith reminded her these were dangerous times. The three of them were already strange enough in this town. They'd talked about names from nature as a compromise, but though it was easy enough to name a girl-child after a flower or a gem, it was a bit trickier with a boy.
"My darling duck," Hunith would say while she bathed him in the washtub. "My little mole," she'd say when after hours of rocking he'd close his eyes and fall asleep in her arms.
"Well," said Nimueh, "we don't have to decide yet."
Nimueh taught him to play with magic.
At first she would just hold him to her breast. Hunith was the one who fed him, but he learned to love the comfort Nimueh gave him just as much. Even from across the room, even though there was nothing to see, Hunith could feel the way she wrapped him up in care and love and protection.
Later, in the months when Hunith was helping him to sit up and hold a rattle, Nimueh would entertain him by sending balls of light spinning through the air over his head. At first he would just watch them and laugh, but soon enough he started sending his light to chase after them. It was dimmer and wobblier than hers, but still steadier than the movements of his own limbs.
"Were you like this?" Hunith asked.
"As a baby? I don't remember."
"But you had magic, as a child, before anyone taught you?"
"I think so, yes. It was-"
"A very long time ago, I know." Hunith shook her head and looked at her mending. "He can't even speak yet and already he's a better magician than I ever was."
"Just think what he'll be capable of when he comes into his own."
The first thing Hunith thought was, he'll fly away from me, and the thought terrified her, but she tried not to let it. He'll fly wherever he wants, she told ammended, and then he'll fly back. "My little merlin," she started to say, or sometimes, "my sweet little swallow. You'll know your way home."
That spring the three of them would walk through town together. The women who had given Hunith advice and smiles during the pregnancy were warmer but less talkative now, simply cooing at the baby, so Hunith and Nimueh didn't have to say much at all.
Nimueh started to go off on errands again. In May she was gone for almost a week, and at first when her little merlin cried Hunith thought he just missed her, as she did, but then she realised his skin was hot. Then she realised she didn't know how to live without Nimueh anymore.
But she made herself remember what Gaius had taught her, and the fever was gone by the time Nimueh came home.
The weather was warmer and sometimes now the three of them sat outside in the field, and Nimueh would play the same magic games she did inside the house.
"No one here knows about us," Hunith said carefully.
Nimueh shrugged. "For now all they know is we're a little bit queer."
Hunith reached out her hand to where the boy's light was dancing, and it faded into shadow like a candle snuffed out. Nimueh sat up straighter. She let her light settle to the grass and die.
"He should…" Hunith said, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. "He'll have a lot of magic in him, but maybe he shouldn't be practising every day. Or here, out in the open."
"No one's watching," Nimueh said quietly, stiffly.
"It ought to be something…special, that he'll only use when there's truly a need."
"Like you do."
"Well, yes." Just the one time since he'd been born. But why should she do more than that? Hunith had never had any skill for the things that had to happen quickly. The things that could wait, she'd always wait for Nimueh's return and ask her for the favour.
She wasn't the girl she'd been in Camelot, she reflected. The one who'd begged the physician and then the sorceress to pay attention to her, to believe she was special. She wasn't trying to prove herself anymore. Nimueh would say she was hiding, but she didn't really care.
"You do realise you're outside of Uther's kingdom now."
"There are people who are hostile to magic everywhere. I have to live here, Nimueh, I can't put on a new face and go off to a new village every time someone gets nervous about having a lonely sorceress and her changeling boy around."
"Do you think it's easy, living as I do?" So she still thought of her life that way, as the life of a fugitive. This was only temporary, what they'd had the last year.
"Of course not. I've made my life and you've made yours. I thought you liked living it together, but perhaps I shouldn't have taken that for granted. I only think...I worry about the boy."
"And I worry about the balance of the universe," Nimueh said, exasperated.
"Exactly."
"You've got this humble little domestic life all planned out, Hunith, but don't you ever think your child has a destiny? Do you think this would have gone so easily if he hadn't?"
"Sorry, did it seem easy to you?" Hunith was shouting now, and she hadn't meant to. So much for her talk about discretion.
"Compared to half of the births I've seen, yes."
"What if he's not destined for anything? What if he's just supposed to be a boy? And grow into a man and be good to his friends and his family?"
"What if he ends up just like you, you mean?"
Hunith wondered what would be so bad about that.
*
Nimueh went away before Midsummer, and the woman who showed up on the doorstep a month later wouldn't speak. She didn't want to eat anything either. She wouldn't even look at the baby. She just sat and stared and let Hunith rub her back and shoulders, then kneel in front of her and rub her feet.
Hunith talked to herself, as if she weren't longing for an answer. "You must have been walking a long way," she said, "to have your shoes worn down like that. It's good sometimes, just to sit and be with someone. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Just let me know if you need anything else." Then she went quiet herself for a time, fed her baby and put him to sleep.
They went to bed and Hunith massaged the thick muscles of Nimueh's legs. She stroked her arms, her sides, but she didn't kiss her. Nimueh fell asleep and Hunith rubbed herself off, as if she were spending another night without any visitor at all. She woke up to a baby's cry, alone in her bed, and wondered if she'd dreamed it all, until she saw the plate of uneaten food lying on the table.
*
"He'd killed a family," Nimueh said when she came back in August. "Last time I was here I'd just come from trying to… They had a little girl, not much older than Arthur."
"Arthur?" said Hunith, taking Nimueh's cloak.
"Ygraine's son. I haven't seen him - not since he was a bawling little thing covered in afterbirth-"
Hunith swallowed. She knew Ygraine had died in childbirth, but not much more than that. Was she already gone by the time the child was born? Did she survive for a few more hours, and how long was Nimueh able to stay with her? Nimueh hadn't wanted to talk about it before, and she clearly didn't want to now.
"But he's growing up in the castle, with only a few maids and Uther and Gaius to take care of him. Can you imagine? A child being raised by that monster, and that traitor, and no mother to help him through it?"
"I can't," Hunith said simply. She felt simple, lacking in experience or perspective. Yes, she'd grown up without a mother, with a father who could be harsh at times, who never really understood her…but a murderer?
"Anyhow," Nimueh said, "that was why I wasn't myself, last time I was here. I'd just watched them burned at the stake. Uther…he was leaving the children alone, up till now. He was leaving them orphaned, and there was one little boy who ran into the flames, but…He's getting worse, all the time."
"That whole family," Hunith murmured. She hesitated, then added, "And it's your family too, I know that. It would hurt anyone with a heart to watch such a thing, but for you…I don't know how you can stand it."
Nimueh shrugged, looking distant again. "I can't," she said. "I can't stand it. I ran away. I keep running away, I keep coming back here." She was smiling, but it was a cold, hard smile. "And you keep taking me back, even though sometimes I'm…"
"Sometimes you always were," Hunith answered. She smiled lightly and thought about letting it go, talking about the weather or how the baby had said something that sounded almost like "Momma" or that he turned to look at her when she said "Merlin." She thought about saying how she was always glad to have Nimueh back. But she wasn't happy, and she was tired of keeping silent around Nimueh, especially since there was no one else she could talk to at all, no one who would understand.
She let Nimueh touch her cheek and kiss her neck. She said, "You told me once that all our bodies are sites of magic."
"Hmm," Nimueh said, still smiling, "I'm not sure I'd say that now, but I know yours is."
"You said you'd tried to tell the same thing to Ygraine. Did you ever get her to believe it?"
Nimueh's grin disappeared and she slowly pulled her hands away. She stood up.
"We don't…" Hunith tried. "I know it was hard for you. We don't have to talk about it tonight if you don't want to. But we can't never talk about it. I want to know-"
"What, Hunith, exactly what do you want to know about it?"
"You sent me away. You do remember that, don't you? You act like I'm the boring one, like I'm the coward, but you're the one who told me to go away and hide, and you wanted to stay with her and I wanted to stay with you, but I did what you told me and I never knew what happened, and when you came here you were different. And I want to know what happened to you, because I love you, Nimueh."
She wanted to take it back as soon as she'd said it, or if not that she wanted to cry. Of all the ways she'd ever thought of saying it, after all the months they'd lived together and the months they'd spent apart, after making a child, she'd never thought it would come out like that, in a burst of defiance and anger.
"What happened to me is that I made a choice, and I have yet to see whether it was the right one."
"But you said before, when you told me to leave, you said you'd made a mistake."
Nimueh paused, considering her words. "I knew it would take a sacrifice to bring Ygraine's child into the world, and that was the choice I made."
"But if you'd known it would be her you wouldn't have-"
"I don't know."
Hunith's jaw dropped. Her heart sank. "But how could you do that to…"
"I didn't do it to her. I only-"
"You loved her."
"Of course I did!"
"So how could you let her die?"
"What else could I do? Let the Old Religion take some other innocent instead?"
"Yes!"
"I would think you'd be relieved to have your rival out of the way."
Hunith felt as if she'd been struck. It was worse than hearing that Nimueh would choose to let Ygraine die, even though Ygraine was more to her than Hunith ever could be. A moment ago Hunith had hoped this could be a real conversation, the one they'd been putting off all this time. The one where they both admitted that they'd made mistakes. But now Nimueh was lashing out again, hurting. Perhaps she needed that, to protect herself.
Hunith set her jaw, breathed through her nose and steadied herself before she said, "I never hated her."
"You did, Hunith, because you couldn't love me without hating everyone else I loved. I don't blame you, it's the way you were raised."
"Who I am and how I feel has nothing to do with the people who raised me."
"Then how could you go back to it? How can you stand to live in a place like this, where you're the only one around? You never even travel. You barely even ask about what's happened to the people you left behind."
"You told me not-"
But Nimueh wasn't listening. "You were cast out of the only place you'd ever been happy, and men and women and children have been killed for less than what you'd done, and you know that, and you don't even get angry! You only say you're sad. You've never even spoken a word about revenge."
"What use do I have for revenge? And what could I ever do against Uther? Anyway, he never hurt me. It's not my place to-"
"But it is. He'd have killed you if you'd stayed, he'd kill your son if he knew what he was and had him within reach. But it's not even that. It shouldn't matter whether it's your flesh and blood that's burning or some other sorcerer's. The people he's killed can't fight back for themselves. And you…you're just like Gaius. If you can save yourself - all right, if you can save yourself and hold on to your precious baby, nothing else matters."
"Are you telling me now that I was wrong to leave Camelot - even though it was what you ordered me to do - and Gaius was wrong to stay?"
"You were both wrong not to fight."
"Gaius was fighting in his own way," Hunith argued. "He tried to be Uther's friend, to help him see what you told me, that we're not two separate peoples, one side against the other."
Nimueh shook her head. "Gaius didn't just save himself. And if he tried to convince Uther that magic could be on his side then I'd just as soon have revenge for his incompetence. He hasn't done anything to stop it. Surviving is one thing. Going into hiding or running away. All right, so it's what I told you to do. It hurts me that you left so easily and that you never even asked how it went. But Gaius was a hundred times worse. He fed Uther information, turned people in. He helped Uther put them to death."
"I don't believe you," Hunith said.
"You weren't there."
Hunith couldn't find an answer to that. For a few moments, she couldn't even find air to breathe. Nimueh was right, she'd run away, and she didn't know. She hadn't asked because she didn't think Nimueh wanted to tell her, but it was also because she was afraid to hear. And Nimueh had been right, all the times she'd avoided talking about those days, avoided talking about Gaius, because she knew it would feel just like this. And Hunith couldn't stand it.
"Shhh," Nimueh said, and she had her arms around her, and Hunith only realised when she had her face buried in Nimueh's chest that she was sobbing, her face wet with tears. "I don't blame you, I never did."
And Nimueh had been living with it all this time, this anger, this one betrayal among many.
"I'm…I won't say I'm sorry, Hunith. I don't say these things to hurt you."
"I know." But it hurt.
"I know he was kind to you, kinder than the people you'd known before. He was warmer, and easier to know than I was, I'm sure. You're grateful to him and you're loyal, and that's…touching."
Other times Hunith would have resisted - did resist - being treated like a child, but she was crying and rocking in Nimueh's arms. She couldn't make herself stop.
"But he was always loyal to Uther, not to you. Not to us. If you'd stayed, he would have let you burn."
Hunith said nothing, but she still couldn't believe it, still couldn't hate Gaius in her heart. She knew she never would, just as she would never try to seek revenge against Uther, or his son, or his kingdom. She was loyal to the people who cared for her and who needed her, not to a religion or a cause. She wasn't sure what Nimueh meant when she said us, but whatever it was, it was disappearing with every minute the silence stretched out between them. Or else Hunith was just ceasing to be part of it.
*
She couldn't be Nimueh's refuge after that, or not more shelter from the storm than a roof and four thin walls. Ealdor still lay on a road Nimeuh had to travel, but she never stopped for more than a night's rest anymore. They spoke little, and neither of them would mention that the weeks in between visits were stretching longer and longer.
Other women still came to the house, though also less often than before. More of them were simple travellers, Hunith was fairly sure. One day there was a stranger who wasn't Nimueh but reminded Hunith of Nimueh. She had the same direct gaze, the same confident smile while Hunith rehearsed her speech, explaining what she had to share, and that she would take whatever the other woman had to give. "I can sleep on the floor," she said, "or if you want we can share the bed." And although she'd said the same thing to a hundred women over the years, this time her face heated and she knew she was offering something else.
She took other women to bed from time to time. A few of them stayed for longer than a night, but never more than a week.
Nimueh stopped coming back. Merlin never learned her name and she probably didn't know his, since they'd taken so long to settle on just one.
The other women too disappeared, until finally there was no one at all. The years passed and Hunith waited. At dusk especially she would sit outside her door and watch the horizon for travellers, but if they came that way they kept on walking.
So she turned away from the road, back toward her neighbours. People were slow to accept change here, but Merlin was born among them. Hunith went out to speak to them more often, carrying him with her, and she was surprised at how friendly they could be now that she was…what, a widow? A mother whose name they knew. More and more of them came to ask for her help with a letter or a will now that they'd known her for a time, and they'd stopped seeing strangers stop at her door. Alone at night sometimes she'd still weep. She hated the loss of visitors, of news, of Nimueh's touch and her company. Still, she had more friends and steadier work than before, and it was easier to feed her herself and the child.
Sometimes decrees came down from King Cendred, demands for tribute in grain, or in men to fight in his wars. And the washerwomen here never talked of how handsome he was or how lucky his bride, only shook their heads and said, "He's the king. What else can we do?"
Hunith didn't want trouble with royalty, so at first she tried to keep her opinions to herself. But it was her job to read the documents aloud, and sometimes her voice would break when she realised what the new order would mean. "This isn't right," she would say, imagining Nimueh standing beside her. "We mustn't stand for this." It was her job to write down the villagers' answers, and she made them stronger - sometimes by winning a debate, sometimes just by picking a better word.
Some ten years after Merlin was born, the villagers (going against Hunith's advice, that time) decided to send a letter to Camelot, asking Uther to pull his men away from the border. They had no desire to fight, though their king ordered them to. After debating with herself for a week, Hunith decided to send a short letter to Gaius along with the same messenger. She said nothing of her son, or of her contact with Nimueh or the other women. She didn't even use her name, but she was sure he'd recognise her hand and understand what she meant when she asked if she was remembered in Camelot.
There was no answer from Uther for Ealdor - perhaps he sent a messenger directly to Cendred, or perhaps he sent an army - but Gaius sent his own short, kind letter, addressed plainly to Hunith of Ealdor. He said he was delighted to have news of her after all these years, that he remembered her fondly but others did not speak her name. She was safe, she understood, no one was looking for her. After that she wrote him once or twice a year, relaxing a little more each time, daring to say a little more of the truth. He always answered a short time later, and always he was friendly, genial, and as if no one like them had ever been killed by Camelot's king.
Hunith stayed careful, but she grew less and less afraid.
Merlin grew taller and played with the other children his age. They liked him, though he was not quite one of them.
She taught him that he was different from the other children, that he was special and would do great things, but he should try not to let anyone else know. He could use his magic inside the house, or if he went far enough outside the village that no one would see. But not in front of the neighbours, she told him.
"Is it bad?" he asked.
"No," she said. "It's just a secret, just for the two of us to know."
She noticed how much time he spent with Will, another young boy who always held himself a bit apart from the others and always was held apart, though to Hunith's knowledge he didn't have magic. He was the only other child in Ealdor growing up with just one parent. His father sometimes helped Hunith by chopping her firewood or repairing the roof. They even tried having dinner together a few times, but he seemed to understand they were best off as neighbours and friends.
Hunith was happy for Merlin to have so dear a friend as Will. If only she'd had that when she was his age, someone to share things with, someone who understood. She suspected Will knew of Merlin's magic, because what kind of secret was one you couldn't share with your best friend?
Hunith didn't find her own best friend until after Merlin had grown up and gone away. Ellie was a few years younger than her, and childless. She'd been "taken" when Hunith first arrived, back when Nimueh had teased her about farmer's wives. Then her husband had died in the same senseless campaign that took Will's father. But instead of lashing out in anger Ellie withdrew into sadness, and most of the village forgot she was even there. Only Hunith kept bringing her food and keeping her company day after day. She knew Ellie liked that Hunith didn't always try to talk. They could be alone together, and it didn't make the loneliness go away completely, but it helped. It wasn't love. It was better than nothing.
Eventually Gaius did go to sleep, and though he'd said Merlin should do the same, Merlin couldn't think of leaving his mother alone, not until she'd looked on him again and said, if not that she forgave him, at least that she still loved him. He sat and listened to the familiar snore from the other side of the room and wondered what he would ever have done if he hadn't had Gaius as a friend.
"You did the right thing, sending me to him," he said, because he liked talking to her, pretending she was listening and wasn't angry with him.
It wasn't that he had never wondered. It wasn't that he had never been asked, teased, called a changeling and a bastard, a fairy and a freak and every other insult young boys like to throw around. If it was just about him it didn't bother him so much. She'd told him he was special and he understood well enough himself that he could do things no one else could. He figured boys who couldn't move things with their minds probably couldn't help but be jealous. But if it was about his birth then it was really about his mother, and Merlin would never stand for that kind of talk. He'd seen it as a question of respect, never to ask her more about her past than what she volunteered.
Merlin thought of what little he knew of her time in Camelot, and her life before. He thought of how he'd wondered, as a child, why he was the only one who didn't have aunts and uncles and cousins. "It that because of the magic?" he'd whispered to his mother. "Is that because I'm different?"
"No," she'd said, "it's just because I'm not from here."
"Brigitte's got relations on her mother's side and more on her dad's. How come I don't have those?"
"They wouldn't be from here either."
Merlin had nodded and decided he didn't mind not having relations, since most of Brigitte's were boring anyway.
"Gaius is a good man, you can trust him," she'd said when she sent him away. She never explained exactly how she'd come to know this.
"You were born in the winter," she'd said once, the day there was a snowstorm but it was all right because they stayed inside and he didn't have to do his chores and she gave him a plate of baked apples all because he'd turned twelve years old. "Born into the cold, like all the children of May."
Gaius was right. If she wanted to say more when she woke up, she would. If not, he would leave the matter alone as he always had before.
He bent over her and kissed her forehead.
"I'll always take care of you," he whispered.
When Hunith woke up her son was still sitting by her side, but he'd fallen asleep in his chair, so they didn't need to speak just yet. That was a relief.
She watched him for a time. He'd leaned over her body and had his head resting on his arms over her stomach. He looked so young and familiar again, so innocent she wished she had the strength to gather him up in her arms and carry him off to bed. But he'd been taller than her for years now, and today he too big. He was young and impulsive, young and angry, young and too confident for his own good. He wasn't the boy she'd raised.
Except that he was, of course. Perhaps it was her own fault he'd grown up into a murderer (a traitor, said Nimueh's voice in her head). Even without Nimueh there, Hunith could have talked to him, when he was young, about the Old Religion and its people, about how they needed to help and protect each other. Instead she'd told him there was no one else in the world like him. She'd told him to trust her and now she was surprised he'd turned against everyone else, never mind if they were only doing what they thought was right, never mind if they were his own kin.
And here he was, sprawled over her body like the child he'd once been. Only he was grown now, thin for a man but there was weight to him, especially at awkward angles like this - his right elbow was starting to dig into her stomach in a way that really was uncomfortable.
So, as gently as she could, she raised herself up and stroked his hair. When he startled awake she said, "Shh, Merlin, go to bed," and she sat up with him.
"I'm sorry," he said, still silly with sleep, and he probably wasn't any more aware of what he was sorry for than she was.
"Go to bed now, Merlin," she said, rather than say, It's all right or You've done nothing wrong. "I'll be fine, I've done nothing but lie here for days, but you've done too much. You need to sleep."
She was pushing him up. She was caressing him because she was still grateful to be alive and to have him, but she was also shoving him away, because she couldn't talk to him about what had happened. Maybe she would someday, but not today.
He went, mumbling another apology, stalked off to his bed, to the little room where Hunith had lain awake so many nights, figuring out who she really was, the room where Nimueh had kissed her goodbye.
When he'd closed the door Hunith let herself cry. She kept it quiet and wiped her tears on the sheet. If Gaius heard her he pretended not to, and she felt she was alone.
*
She stayed on in Camelot for another week, letting the shock and anger sink into a deeper, softer sadness. She spent most of her time in the company of her dear boy, who loved talking to her when no one else was around, and who loved showing her how much he'd learned since he'd started working with Gaius, and learning spells from the book Gaius had given him. When she was still recovering he'd make the teapot and cups move through the air without touching them, and poured her tea without spilling a drop. It was silly showing off, but purpose and control were much more focused than when he used to throw objects around the house at home, reacting to surprises but unable to plan anything out or know what would happen when his eyes flashed. When she was well enough to walk they went to the garden and he made flowers bloom for her. The simple pride, the childlike joy on his face when he showed her a new trick made her want to gather him in a hug and take him home with her to Ealdor. Instead she just smiled back at him, told him she was proud, and reminded herself she'd made the right decision in sending him here.
Guinevere came to visit often and spoke as easily with Hunith as she did with Merlin and Gaius, as if they were good old friends, and not two women of different generations who'd only spent a few days together. Gwen reminded Hunith of herself when she was younger, with her eagerness and her calm. She hoped she'd have an easier time of it, that she wouldn't have to leave Camelot behind, as Hunith had. Still, she knew Gwen was suffering already. Gwen spoke little of her grief and Hunith said nothing of hers, but she thought they understood each other all the same.
The Lady Morgana and even Prince Arthur himself each came to see her as well. The were respectful and kind, remembering her hospitality in Ealdor and inquiring after her health. (Hunith in turn respected Arthur's clear wish not to discuss his own injury, but thanked him for granting Merlin time to spend with her.) She thought they were somewhat restrained here, that they couldn't speak as freely or linger as long in a peasant's company as when they were away from the castle. Still, she was pleased with them. If Merlin had only a few friends to whom he was completely devoted, she thought he had chosen well.
She was less comfortable when left alone with Gaius, who knew too much and not enough about what she was feeling now.
"Merlin doesn't know, about Arthur's birth, or any of it," he assured her.
"That's as it should be," said Hunith.
Gaius himself didn't know anything about Merlin's birth, or that Hunith had ever seen Nimueh after she left Camelot, and that was as it should be too. Still, he wanted to talk to her, as if he could make her grief go away by convincing her Nimueh was not the woman she'd known.
"She had changed," he said. "She'd become bitter, striking out at innocents, common people who had nothing to do with one side or the other, all as a way of punishing Uther."
Hunith nodded but said nothing. She did not like the way Gaius shook his head, like a scolding father. She did not think it was his place to talk about the suffering of innocents.
She wondered if Nimueh had been telling the truth, all those years ago, when she said she wasn't the one to choose who lived or died. She wondered if it was true now.
Perhaps after what had happened in the last few months, Nimueh had thought Hunith and Merlin traitors, no better or worse than Gaius, with the way they sacrificed other magical people to protect Arthur, or the way they bowed before Arthur's father. She would have been disgusted at what she'd seen, delighted to strike back at one after the other.
But Hunith couldn't believe she was wrong, not in the life she'd lived, not in the way she'd raised her son. She couldn't believe Nimueh was right. Because whether or not it was about revenge, keeping loyalty to her people and her faith should never mean sacrificing her own family, or someone who used love her.
Or someone she used to love. Because it wasn't ever only on Hunith's side, was it? There had been something between them, something more than distance and safety and the resentment underneath. There was some us that was real and that kept the most powerful sorceress in Albion coming back to a one-room house in a dusty little village by the border when she could have been leading armies instead.
Well, the thing about Nimueh was, you could never be sure just what she was up to. If you loved her you could never be sure whether she felt the same way. If you thought she was gone she might still show up at your doorstep one day, asking humbly for a place to spend the night.
Gaius said the killing blow had been a lightning strike. Hunith couldn't imagine that was worse than a Purge, and Nimueh had survived that. Merlin was special, but she'd seen him grow from a baby, and she knew his magic was powerful but still new, trying to find its form. As young and lost and wild as Hunith had been the day she first laid eyes on the Lady Nimueh.
No, the priestess wouldn't trouble herself avenging individual lives and deaths and betrayals. She'd be back someday, if perhaps not during Hunith's lifetime. She would go on.
And so would Hunith. She kissed her son goodbye and set off for Ealdor on foot. Ellie would be waiting for her at home, would make them as hearty a supper as she could with what little they had left after taxes, bandits, widowhood and winter. They'd both cry for the loves they'd lost and then Ellie would take her to bed. It would be good, but it wouldn't make her stop hurting.
The journey was long and her heart was heavy.
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: themadlurker
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Hunith/Nimueh (other pairings mentioned), Merlin and Gaius
Warnings: Reference to character death (canon and OCs); grieving, miscarriage, one scene of a lesbian character having sex with a man.
Spoilers: Only through the end of series one. (Not fully compliant with series two.)\
Rating: R
Word Count: 25,191
Summary: When she was the age Merlin is now, Hunith made her own journey from the village to Camelot, trying to find her destiny.
Author's Note: Huge thanks to my beta 'S' and to 'G' and 'C' for additional helpful comments. Thanks to the mods for the challenge and to themadlurker for the amazing prompts. There is absolutely no way I would have written 25,000 words of Hunith/Nimueh if not for this challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope you like it too. Happy Solstice!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
Part One| Part Two
Hunith wanted to give him a Christian name, not because she cared for the priests (who only passed through these villages every few years, performing a handful of baptisms each time) but because she thought it would help him fit in with the other children, the Toms and Timothys, the Michaels and Matthews. Nimueh wanted an older name, something to tie him to this land, but Hunith reminded her these were dangerous times. The three of them were already strange enough in this town. They'd talked about names from nature as a compromise, but though it was easy enough to name a girl-child after a flower or a gem, it was a bit trickier with a boy.
"My darling duck," Hunith would say while she bathed him in the washtub. "My little mole," she'd say when after hours of rocking he'd close his eyes and fall asleep in her arms.
"Well," said Nimueh, "we don't have to decide yet."
Nimueh taught him to play with magic.
At first she would just hold him to her breast. Hunith was the one who fed him, but he learned to love the comfort Nimueh gave him just as much. Even from across the room, even though there was nothing to see, Hunith could feel the way she wrapped him up in care and love and protection.
Later, in the months when Hunith was helping him to sit up and hold a rattle, Nimueh would entertain him by sending balls of light spinning through the air over his head. At first he would just watch them and laugh, but soon enough he started sending his light to chase after them. It was dimmer and wobblier than hers, but still steadier than the movements of his own limbs.
"Were you like this?" Hunith asked.
"As a baby? I don't remember."
"But you had magic, as a child, before anyone taught you?"
"I think so, yes. It was-"
"A very long time ago, I know." Hunith shook her head and looked at her mending. "He can't even speak yet and already he's a better magician than I ever was."
"Just think what he'll be capable of when he comes into his own."
The first thing Hunith thought was, he'll fly away from me, and the thought terrified her, but she tried not to let it. He'll fly wherever he wants, she told ammended, and then he'll fly back. "My little merlin," she started to say, or sometimes, "my sweet little swallow. You'll know your way home."
That spring the three of them would walk through town together. The women who had given Hunith advice and smiles during the pregnancy were warmer but less talkative now, simply cooing at the baby, so Hunith and Nimueh didn't have to say much at all.
Nimueh started to go off on errands again. In May she was gone for almost a week, and at first when her little merlin cried Hunith thought he just missed her, as she did, but then she realised his skin was hot. Then she realised she didn't know how to live without Nimueh anymore.
But she made herself remember what Gaius had taught her, and the fever was gone by the time Nimueh came home.
The weather was warmer and sometimes now the three of them sat outside in the field, and Nimueh would play the same magic games she did inside the house.
"No one here knows about us," Hunith said carefully.
Nimueh shrugged. "For now all they know is we're a little bit queer."
Hunith reached out her hand to where the boy's light was dancing, and it faded into shadow like a candle snuffed out. Nimueh sat up straighter. She let her light settle to the grass and die.
"He should…" Hunith said, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. "He'll have a lot of magic in him, but maybe he shouldn't be practising every day. Or here, out in the open."
"No one's watching," Nimueh said quietly, stiffly.
"It ought to be something…special, that he'll only use when there's truly a need."
"Like you do."
"Well, yes." Just the one time since he'd been born. But why should she do more than that? Hunith had never had any skill for the things that had to happen quickly. The things that could wait, she'd always wait for Nimueh's return and ask her for the favour.
She wasn't the girl she'd been in Camelot, she reflected. The one who'd begged the physician and then the sorceress to pay attention to her, to believe she was special. She wasn't trying to prove herself anymore. Nimueh would say she was hiding, but she didn't really care.
"You do realise you're outside of Uther's kingdom now."
"There are people who are hostile to magic everywhere. I have to live here, Nimueh, I can't put on a new face and go off to a new village every time someone gets nervous about having a lonely sorceress and her changeling boy around."
"Do you think it's easy, living as I do?" So she still thought of her life that way, as the life of a fugitive. This was only temporary, what they'd had the last year.
"Of course not. I've made my life and you've made yours. I thought you liked living it together, but perhaps I shouldn't have taken that for granted. I only think...I worry about the boy."
"And I worry about the balance of the universe," Nimueh said, exasperated.
"Exactly."
"You've got this humble little domestic life all planned out, Hunith, but don't you ever think your child has a destiny? Do you think this would have gone so easily if he hadn't?"
"Sorry, did it seem easy to you?" Hunith was shouting now, and she hadn't meant to. So much for her talk about discretion.
"Compared to half of the births I've seen, yes."
"What if he's not destined for anything? What if he's just supposed to be a boy? And grow into a man and be good to his friends and his family?"
"What if he ends up just like you, you mean?"
Hunith wondered what would be so bad about that.
*
Nimueh went away before Midsummer, and the woman who showed up on the doorstep a month later wouldn't speak. She didn't want to eat anything either. She wouldn't even look at the baby. She just sat and stared and let Hunith rub her back and shoulders, then kneel in front of her and rub her feet.
Hunith talked to herself, as if she weren't longing for an answer. "You must have been walking a long way," she said, "to have your shoes worn down like that. It's good sometimes, just to sit and be with someone. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Just let me know if you need anything else." Then she went quiet herself for a time, fed her baby and put him to sleep.
They went to bed and Hunith massaged the thick muscles of Nimueh's legs. She stroked her arms, her sides, but she didn't kiss her. Nimueh fell asleep and Hunith rubbed herself off, as if she were spending another night without any visitor at all. She woke up to a baby's cry, alone in her bed, and wondered if she'd dreamed it all, until she saw the plate of uneaten food lying on the table.
*
"He'd killed a family," Nimueh said when she came back in August. "Last time I was here I'd just come from trying to… They had a little girl, not much older than Arthur."
"Arthur?" said Hunith, taking Nimueh's cloak.
"Ygraine's son. I haven't seen him - not since he was a bawling little thing covered in afterbirth-"
Hunith swallowed. She knew Ygraine had died in childbirth, but not much more than that. Was she already gone by the time the child was born? Did she survive for a few more hours, and how long was Nimueh able to stay with her? Nimueh hadn't wanted to talk about it before, and she clearly didn't want to now.
"But he's growing up in the castle, with only a few maids and Uther and Gaius to take care of him. Can you imagine? A child being raised by that monster, and that traitor, and no mother to help him through it?"
"I can't," Hunith said simply. She felt simple, lacking in experience or perspective. Yes, she'd grown up without a mother, with a father who could be harsh at times, who never really understood her…but a murderer?
"Anyhow," Nimueh said, "that was why I wasn't myself, last time I was here. I'd just watched them burned at the stake. Uther…he was leaving the children alone, up till now. He was leaving them orphaned, and there was one little boy who ran into the flames, but…He's getting worse, all the time."
"That whole family," Hunith murmured. She hesitated, then added, "And it's your family too, I know that. It would hurt anyone with a heart to watch such a thing, but for you…I don't know how you can stand it."
Nimueh shrugged, looking distant again. "I can't," she said. "I can't stand it. I ran away. I keep running away, I keep coming back here." She was smiling, but it was a cold, hard smile. "And you keep taking me back, even though sometimes I'm…"
"Sometimes you always were," Hunith answered. She smiled lightly and thought about letting it go, talking about the weather or how the baby had said something that sounded almost like "Momma" or that he turned to look at her when she said "Merlin." She thought about saying how she was always glad to have Nimueh back. But she wasn't happy, and she was tired of keeping silent around Nimueh, especially since there was no one else she could talk to at all, no one who would understand.
She let Nimueh touch her cheek and kiss her neck. She said, "You told me once that all our bodies are sites of magic."
"Hmm," Nimueh said, still smiling, "I'm not sure I'd say that now, but I know yours is."
"You said you'd tried to tell the same thing to Ygraine. Did you ever get her to believe it?"
Nimueh's grin disappeared and she slowly pulled her hands away. She stood up.
"We don't…" Hunith tried. "I know it was hard for you. We don't have to talk about it tonight if you don't want to. But we can't never talk about it. I want to know-"
"What, Hunith, exactly what do you want to know about it?"
"You sent me away. You do remember that, don't you? You act like I'm the boring one, like I'm the coward, but you're the one who told me to go away and hide, and you wanted to stay with her and I wanted to stay with you, but I did what you told me and I never knew what happened, and when you came here you were different. And I want to know what happened to you, because I love you, Nimueh."
She wanted to take it back as soon as she'd said it, or if not that she wanted to cry. Of all the ways she'd ever thought of saying it, after all the months they'd lived together and the months they'd spent apart, after making a child, she'd never thought it would come out like that, in a burst of defiance and anger.
"What happened to me is that I made a choice, and I have yet to see whether it was the right one."
"But you said before, when you told me to leave, you said you'd made a mistake."
Nimueh paused, considering her words. "I knew it would take a sacrifice to bring Ygraine's child into the world, and that was the choice I made."
"But if you'd known it would be her you wouldn't have-"
"I don't know."
Hunith's jaw dropped. Her heart sank. "But how could you do that to…"
"I didn't do it to her. I only-"
"You loved her."
"Of course I did!"
"So how could you let her die?"
"What else could I do? Let the Old Religion take some other innocent instead?"
"Yes!"
"I would think you'd be relieved to have your rival out of the way."
Hunith felt as if she'd been struck. It was worse than hearing that Nimueh would choose to let Ygraine die, even though Ygraine was more to her than Hunith ever could be. A moment ago Hunith had hoped this could be a real conversation, the one they'd been putting off all this time. The one where they both admitted that they'd made mistakes. But now Nimueh was lashing out again, hurting. Perhaps she needed that, to protect herself.
Hunith set her jaw, breathed through her nose and steadied herself before she said, "I never hated her."
"You did, Hunith, because you couldn't love me without hating everyone else I loved. I don't blame you, it's the way you were raised."
"Who I am and how I feel has nothing to do with the people who raised me."
"Then how could you go back to it? How can you stand to live in a place like this, where you're the only one around? You never even travel. You barely even ask about what's happened to the people you left behind."
"You told me not-"
But Nimueh wasn't listening. "You were cast out of the only place you'd ever been happy, and men and women and children have been killed for less than what you'd done, and you know that, and you don't even get angry! You only say you're sad. You've never even spoken a word about revenge."
"What use do I have for revenge? And what could I ever do against Uther? Anyway, he never hurt me. It's not my place to-"
"But it is. He'd have killed you if you'd stayed, he'd kill your son if he knew what he was and had him within reach. But it's not even that. It shouldn't matter whether it's your flesh and blood that's burning or some other sorcerer's. The people he's killed can't fight back for themselves. And you…you're just like Gaius. If you can save yourself - all right, if you can save yourself and hold on to your precious baby, nothing else matters."
"Are you telling me now that I was wrong to leave Camelot - even though it was what you ordered me to do - and Gaius was wrong to stay?"
"You were both wrong not to fight."
"Gaius was fighting in his own way," Hunith argued. "He tried to be Uther's friend, to help him see what you told me, that we're not two separate peoples, one side against the other."
Nimueh shook her head. "Gaius didn't just save himself. And if he tried to convince Uther that magic could be on his side then I'd just as soon have revenge for his incompetence. He hasn't done anything to stop it. Surviving is one thing. Going into hiding or running away. All right, so it's what I told you to do. It hurts me that you left so easily and that you never even asked how it went. But Gaius was a hundred times worse. He fed Uther information, turned people in. He helped Uther put them to death."
"I don't believe you," Hunith said.
"You weren't there."
Hunith couldn't find an answer to that. For a few moments, she couldn't even find air to breathe. Nimueh was right, she'd run away, and she didn't know. She hadn't asked because she didn't think Nimueh wanted to tell her, but it was also because she was afraid to hear. And Nimueh had been right, all the times she'd avoided talking about those days, avoided talking about Gaius, because she knew it would feel just like this. And Hunith couldn't stand it.
"Shhh," Nimueh said, and she had her arms around her, and Hunith only realised when she had her face buried in Nimueh's chest that she was sobbing, her face wet with tears. "I don't blame you, I never did."
And Nimueh had been living with it all this time, this anger, this one betrayal among many.
"I'm…I won't say I'm sorry, Hunith. I don't say these things to hurt you."
"I know." But it hurt.
"I know he was kind to you, kinder than the people you'd known before. He was warmer, and easier to know than I was, I'm sure. You're grateful to him and you're loyal, and that's…touching."
Other times Hunith would have resisted - did resist - being treated like a child, but she was crying and rocking in Nimueh's arms. She couldn't make herself stop.
"But he was always loyal to Uther, not to you. Not to us. If you'd stayed, he would have let you burn."
Hunith said nothing, but she still couldn't believe it, still couldn't hate Gaius in her heart. She knew she never would, just as she would never try to seek revenge against Uther, or his son, or his kingdom. She was loyal to the people who cared for her and who needed her, not to a religion or a cause. She wasn't sure what Nimueh meant when she said us, but whatever it was, it was disappearing with every minute the silence stretched out between them. Or else Hunith was just ceasing to be part of it.
*
She couldn't be Nimueh's refuge after that, or not more shelter from the storm than a roof and four thin walls. Ealdor still lay on a road Nimeuh had to travel, but she never stopped for more than a night's rest anymore. They spoke little, and neither of them would mention that the weeks in between visits were stretching longer and longer.
Other women still came to the house, though also less often than before. More of them were simple travellers, Hunith was fairly sure. One day there was a stranger who wasn't Nimueh but reminded Hunith of Nimueh. She had the same direct gaze, the same confident smile while Hunith rehearsed her speech, explaining what she had to share, and that she would take whatever the other woman had to give. "I can sleep on the floor," she said, "or if you want we can share the bed." And although she'd said the same thing to a hundred women over the years, this time her face heated and she knew she was offering something else.
She took other women to bed from time to time. A few of them stayed for longer than a night, but never more than a week.
Nimueh stopped coming back. Merlin never learned her name and she probably didn't know his, since they'd taken so long to settle on just one.
The other women too disappeared, until finally there was no one at all. The years passed and Hunith waited. At dusk especially she would sit outside her door and watch the horizon for travellers, but if they came that way they kept on walking.
So she turned away from the road, back toward her neighbours. People were slow to accept change here, but Merlin was born among them. Hunith went out to speak to them more often, carrying him with her, and she was surprised at how friendly they could be now that she was…what, a widow? A mother whose name they knew. More and more of them came to ask for her help with a letter or a will now that they'd known her for a time, and they'd stopped seeing strangers stop at her door. Alone at night sometimes she'd still weep. She hated the loss of visitors, of news, of Nimueh's touch and her company. Still, she had more friends and steadier work than before, and it was easier to feed her herself and the child.
Sometimes decrees came down from King Cendred, demands for tribute in grain, or in men to fight in his wars. And the washerwomen here never talked of how handsome he was or how lucky his bride, only shook their heads and said, "He's the king. What else can we do?"
Hunith didn't want trouble with royalty, so at first she tried to keep her opinions to herself. But it was her job to read the documents aloud, and sometimes her voice would break when she realised what the new order would mean. "This isn't right," she would say, imagining Nimueh standing beside her. "We mustn't stand for this." It was her job to write down the villagers' answers, and she made them stronger - sometimes by winning a debate, sometimes just by picking a better word.
Some ten years after Merlin was born, the villagers (going against Hunith's advice, that time) decided to send a letter to Camelot, asking Uther to pull his men away from the border. They had no desire to fight, though their king ordered them to. After debating with herself for a week, Hunith decided to send a short letter to Gaius along with the same messenger. She said nothing of her son, or of her contact with Nimueh or the other women. She didn't even use her name, but she was sure he'd recognise her hand and understand what she meant when she asked if she was remembered in Camelot.
There was no answer from Uther for Ealdor - perhaps he sent a messenger directly to Cendred, or perhaps he sent an army - but Gaius sent his own short, kind letter, addressed plainly to Hunith of Ealdor. He said he was delighted to have news of her after all these years, that he remembered her fondly but others did not speak her name. She was safe, she understood, no one was looking for her. After that she wrote him once or twice a year, relaxing a little more each time, daring to say a little more of the truth. He always answered a short time later, and always he was friendly, genial, and as if no one like them had ever been killed by Camelot's king.
Hunith stayed careful, but she grew less and less afraid.
Merlin grew taller and played with the other children his age. They liked him, though he was not quite one of them.
She taught him that he was different from the other children, that he was special and would do great things, but he should try not to let anyone else know. He could use his magic inside the house, or if he went far enough outside the village that no one would see. But not in front of the neighbours, she told him.
"Is it bad?" he asked.
"No," she said. "It's just a secret, just for the two of us to know."
She noticed how much time he spent with Will, another young boy who always held himself a bit apart from the others and always was held apart, though to Hunith's knowledge he didn't have magic. He was the only other child in Ealdor growing up with just one parent. His father sometimes helped Hunith by chopping her firewood or repairing the roof. They even tried having dinner together a few times, but he seemed to understand they were best off as neighbours and friends.
Hunith was happy for Merlin to have so dear a friend as Will. If only she'd had that when she was his age, someone to share things with, someone who understood. She suspected Will knew of Merlin's magic, because what kind of secret was one you couldn't share with your best friend?
Hunith didn't find her own best friend until after Merlin had grown up and gone away. Ellie was a few years younger than her, and childless. She'd been "taken" when Hunith first arrived, back when Nimueh had teased her about farmer's wives. Then her husband had died in the same senseless campaign that took Will's father. But instead of lashing out in anger Ellie withdrew into sadness, and most of the village forgot she was even there. Only Hunith kept bringing her food and keeping her company day after day. She knew Ellie liked that Hunith didn't always try to talk. They could be alone together, and it didn't make the loneliness go away completely, but it helped. It wasn't love. It was better than nothing.
Eventually Gaius did go to sleep, and though he'd said Merlin should do the same, Merlin couldn't think of leaving his mother alone, not until she'd looked on him again and said, if not that she forgave him, at least that she still loved him. He sat and listened to the familiar snore from the other side of the room and wondered what he would ever have done if he hadn't had Gaius as a friend.
"You did the right thing, sending me to him," he said, because he liked talking to her, pretending she was listening and wasn't angry with him.
It wasn't that he had never wondered. It wasn't that he had never been asked, teased, called a changeling and a bastard, a fairy and a freak and every other insult young boys like to throw around. If it was just about him it didn't bother him so much. She'd told him he was special and he understood well enough himself that he could do things no one else could. He figured boys who couldn't move things with their minds probably couldn't help but be jealous. But if it was about his birth then it was really about his mother, and Merlin would never stand for that kind of talk. He'd seen it as a question of respect, never to ask her more about her past than what she volunteered.
Merlin thought of what little he knew of her time in Camelot, and her life before. He thought of how he'd wondered, as a child, why he was the only one who didn't have aunts and uncles and cousins. "It that because of the magic?" he'd whispered to his mother. "Is that because I'm different?"
"No," she'd said, "it's just because I'm not from here."
"Brigitte's got relations on her mother's side and more on her dad's. How come I don't have those?"
"They wouldn't be from here either."
Merlin had nodded and decided he didn't mind not having relations, since most of Brigitte's were boring anyway.
"Gaius is a good man, you can trust him," she'd said when she sent him away. She never explained exactly how she'd come to know this.
"You were born in the winter," she'd said once, the day there was a snowstorm but it was all right because they stayed inside and he didn't have to do his chores and she gave him a plate of baked apples all because he'd turned twelve years old. "Born into the cold, like all the children of May."
Gaius was right. If she wanted to say more when she woke up, she would. If not, he would leave the matter alone as he always had before.
He bent over her and kissed her forehead.
"I'll always take care of you," he whispered.
When Hunith woke up her son was still sitting by her side, but he'd fallen asleep in his chair, so they didn't need to speak just yet. That was a relief.
She watched him for a time. He'd leaned over her body and had his head resting on his arms over her stomach. He looked so young and familiar again, so innocent she wished she had the strength to gather him up in her arms and carry him off to bed. But he'd been taller than her for years now, and today he too big. He was young and impulsive, young and angry, young and too confident for his own good. He wasn't the boy she'd raised.
Except that he was, of course. Perhaps it was her own fault he'd grown up into a murderer (a traitor, said Nimueh's voice in her head). Even without Nimueh there, Hunith could have talked to him, when he was young, about the Old Religion and its people, about how they needed to help and protect each other. Instead she'd told him there was no one else in the world like him. She'd told him to trust her and now she was surprised he'd turned against everyone else, never mind if they were only doing what they thought was right, never mind if they were his own kin.
And here he was, sprawled over her body like the child he'd once been. Only he was grown now, thin for a man but there was weight to him, especially at awkward angles like this - his right elbow was starting to dig into her stomach in a way that really was uncomfortable.
So, as gently as she could, she raised herself up and stroked his hair. When he startled awake she said, "Shh, Merlin, go to bed," and she sat up with him.
"I'm sorry," he said, still silly with sleep, and he probably wasn't any more aware of what he was sorry for than she was.
"Go to bed now, Merlin," she said, rather than say, It's all right or You've done nothing wrong. "I'll be fine, I've done nothing but lie here for days, but you've done too much. You need to sleep."
She was pushing him up. She was caressing him because she was still grateful to be alive and to have him, but she was also shoving him away, because she couldn't talk to him about what had happened. Maybe she would someday, but not today.
He went, mumbling another apology, stalked off to his bed, to the little room where Hunith had lain awake so many nights, figuring out who she really was, the room where Nimueh had kissed her goodbye.
When he'd closed the door Hunith let herself cry. She kept it quiet and wiped her tears on the sheet. If Gaius heard her he pretended not to, and she felt she was alone.
*
She stayed on in Camelot for another week, letting the shock and anger sink into a deeper, softer sadness. She spent most of her time in the company of her dear boy, who loved talking to her when no one else was around, and who loved showing her how much he'd learned since he'd started working with Gaius, and learning spells from the book Gaius had given him. When she was still recovering he'd make the teapot and cups move through the air without touching them, and poured her tea without spilling a drop. It was silly showing off, but purpose and control were much more focused than when he used to throw objects around the house at home, reacting to surprises but unable to plan anything out or know what would happen when his eyes flashed. When she was well enough to walk they went to the garden and he made flowers bloom for her. The simple pride, the childlike joy on his face when he showed her a new trick made her want to gather him in a hug and take him home with her to Ealdor. Instead she just smiled back at him, told him she was proud, and reminded herself she'd made the right decision in sending him here.
Guinevere came to visit often and spoke as easily with Hunith as she did with Merlin and Gaius, as if they were good old friends, and not two women of different generations who'd only spent a few days together. Gwen reminded Hunith of herself when she was younger, with her eagerness and her calm. She hoped she'd have an easier time of it, that she wouldn't have to leave Camelot behind, as Hunith had. Still, she knew Gwen was suffering already. Gwen spoke little of her grief and Hunith said nothing of hers, but she thought they understood each other all the same.
The Lady Morgana and even Prince Arthur himself each came to see her as well. The were respectful and kind, remembering her hospitality in Ealdor and inquiring after her health. (Hunith in turn respected Arthur's clear wish not to discuss his own injury, but thanked him for granting Merlin time to spend with her.) She thought they were somewhat restrained here, that they couldn't speak as freely or linger as long in a peasant's company as when they were away from the castle. Still, she was pleased with them. If Merlin had only a few friends to whom he was completely devoted, she thought he had chosen well.
She was less comfortable when left alone with Gaius, who knew too much and not enough about what she was feeling now.
"Merlin doesn't know, about Arthur's birth, or any of it," he assured her.
"That's as it should be," said Hunith.
Gaius himself didn't know anything about Merlin's birth, or that Hunith had ever seen Nimueh after she left Camelot, and that was as it should be too. Still, he wanted to talk to her, as if he could make her grief go away by convincing her Nimueh was not the woman she'd known.
"She had changed," he said. "She'd become bitter, striking out at innocents, common people who had nothing to do with one side or the other, all as a way of punishing Uther."
Hunith nodded but said nothing. She did not like the way Gaius shook his head, like a scolding father. She did not think it was his place to talk about the suffering of innocents.
She wondered if Nimueh had been telling the truth, all those years ago, when she said she wasn't the one to choose who lived or died. She wondered if it was true now.
Perhaps after what had happened in the last few months, Nimueh had thought Hunith and Merlin traitors, no better or worse than Gaius, with the way they sacrificed other magical people to protect Arthur, or the way they bowed before Arthur's father. She would have been disgusted at what she'd seen, delighted to strike back at one after the other.
But Hunith couldn't believe she was wrong, not in the life she'd lived, not in the way she'd raised her son. She couldn't believe Nimueh was right. Because whether or not it was about revenge, keeping loyalty to her people and her faith should never mean sacrificing her own family, or someone who used love her.
Or someone she used to love. Because it wasn't ever only on Hunith's side, was it? There had been something between them, something more than distance and safety and the resentment underneath. There was some us that was real and that kept the most powerful sorceress in Albion coming back to a one-room house in a dusty little village by the border when she could have been leading armies instead.
Well, the thing about Nimueh was, you could never be sure just what she was up to. If you loved her you could never be sure whether she felt the same way. If you thought she was gone she might still show up at your doorstep one day, asking humbly for a place to spend the night.
Gaius said the killing blow had been a lightning strike. Hunith couldn't imagine that was worse than a Purge, and Nimueh had survived that. Merlin was special, but she'd seen him grow from a baby, and she knew his magic was powerful but still new, trying to find its form. As young and lost and wild as Hunith had been the day she first laid eyes on the Lady Nimueh.
No, the priestess wouldn't trouble herself avenging individual lives and deaths and betrayals. She'd be back someday, if perhaps not during Hunith's lifetime. She would go on.
And so would Hunith. She kissed her son goodbye and set off for Ealdor on foot. Ellie would be waiting for her at home, would make them as hearty a supper as she could with what little they had left after taxes, bandits, widowhood and winter. They'd both cry for the loves they'd lost and then Ellie would take her to bed. It would be good, but it wouldn't make her stop hurting.
The journey was long and her heart was heavy.