Merlin: Gwen Battle Winter 2009 | Gwen/Merlin, Prompt: Accidents Happen
My second submission for the Gwen Battle Winter 2009 at thefuturequeen.
... Okay. I have to say that this is absolutely nothing like I originally imagined it would be when I first took the prompt. I have part of this awesome stream-of-thought piece written somewhere, but I decided I kind of wanted this to be more of a short story than a stream of thought. And then I started it about three times, trying to figure out what the plot was, and what would happen, and whether things came from out of left field. I hope I've found some kind of happy medium; concrit is definitely welcome, because I'm a little worried the "character development" is shaky.
Anyway, here it is. I think maybe someday when I'm on less of a deadline I'll write that first piece I came up with, because I feel like this just barely borders on Gwen/Merlin if you squint at it, so I hope it fulfills what it's supposed to. ^^; I really love them and want to write something shippier than this sometime.
Also, I seem to be keeping with my Gwen fics (all two of them XD) using song lyrics as titles. Eheh.
Title: From This Moment On
Prompt: 19. Gwen/Merlin, accidents happen
Rating: G
Wordcount: 2,661
Spoilers: Spoilers for 1x02, 1x04, 1x12
Really, someone should have known better.
Arthur should have realized he wasn’t aiming at game. Merlin should have been a bit more subtle about his magic. And Gwen - well, Gwen probably shouldn’t have been so deep in the woods, nor should she have been humming to herself and being rather oblivious about her surroundings.
Someone should have known better - but no one had, and so Arthur had taken aim and let loose with his crossbow, and Merlin had realized too late what was wrong and flung his hand up and shouted something in a wild and foreign tongue. All Gwen knew was that one moment she was rustling about in the bushes, looking for some late-season berries, and the next she’d been flung to the side by something - some invisible force that had seemed like a flash of light and a shove from behind all at once.
She found herself flat on the ground with a faceful of leaves as someone came crashing through the trees to her side.
“Gwen!”
“Ow.”
“Gwen! You’re all right?”
“What happened?” There was a shadow over her, blotting out the bright midday sun when she opened her eyes, but she didn’t need to see the features to know the face. “Merlin?”
“Yes - here, careful.” He took her hand in one of his, levering her slowly off the ground and into a sitting position. “Are you all right?” he repeated.
“I’m fine,” she said, blinking owlishly at him. “You... where did you come from?”
Merlin cocked a bit of a grin, but it was half-worried and tight. “The same place as that,” he said, and pointed to the tree just beside her, in which a crossbow bolt was buried nearly to the fletching.
Gwen felt a chill pass through her. If she hadn’t been knocked down by... whatever it had been, it would have been nearly level with her head.
“Merlin!” A voice came ringing through the trees, followed shortly by its owner as Arthur jogged through the dappled sunlight, crossbow in one hand and his features arranged in a very peculiar fashion -somewhere between shock and fear. “Merlin - you just - ” He came up short, staring at Gwen as though she were a ghost. “Guinevere? What...?”
The grin had disappeared entirely from Merlin’s face now; in fact, he had gone rather pale. “She had nothing to do with it!” Merlin burst out suddenly, stepping between Gwen and Arthur, though Gwen could not imagine why, or what he meant. “It was - it was me, and I only did it because -”
Gwen pointed to the bolt, buried in the trunk of the tree beside her. “My lord...” She frowned - Merlin and Arthur were staring at each other rather intently, as though holding some sort of silent conversation. For a moment, Gwen felt as though she might as well not even be standing there, for all that they noticed her. “What is this about?”
Arthur squared his shoulders, and looked at Gwen as though he’d only just remembered she was there. “Magic,” he said, and the word was terse and clipped.
Gwen blinked. “Excuse me?” She looked to Merlin, as though he might be able to clarify, but he was only standing white-faced and thin-lipped, tensed as though he might bolt at any moment. In frustration, Gwen turned back to Arthur. “What is going on?”
Arthur pointed to Merlin. “I’ve told you. I just saw him use magic.”
“To save her life from you!” Merlin burst out, and then looked as though he rather regretted it.
Gwen’s mind slowly began to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and seconds later she thought she’d begun to understand the situation. A rush of adrenaline and something else stirred in the pit of her stomach as she turned to Merlin. “Merlin...” she said gently, ignoring the prince completely for a moment, “that was you?”
Merlin looked suddenly torn, his eyes flashing full of guilt and defiance all at once. “Yes,” he said, very quietly. “I... I didn’t know what else to do -”
Gwen’s heart fluttered, in a way that she’d only felt once before. It was the way she’d felt, she realized, when Merlin had seemingly woken from the dead - when Arthur had defied his father to bring back a cure for the poison Merlin had drunk in the prince’s place, and for a terrifying, heart-stopping moment, Merlin had been dead. And then just as suddenly he hadn’t been, and all Gwen had known in that moment was joy, pure and unbridled, until it had overflowed from her lips to his.
She had the same wild urge now, to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him, but she didn’t even know why and that frightened her almost more than the prospect of Merlin - Merlin - being a sorcerer ever could.
After all, if he was telling the truth, he’d just used his magic to save her life, and that more than accounted for where his intentions lay, in Gwen’s eyes.
And so she rounded on the prince, who was still staring at Merlin with something very much like betrayal and fear in his eyes. “And you’d have him executed for that?” she asked, and her voice was loud and defiant and Arthur looked at her suddenly, his eyes just as wild as the feeling in her stomach, and for an instant Gwen thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d gone too far.
“What do you want me to do?” he spat, and looked between them. “My father - Merlin - ” Arthur faltered, seeming to deflate as he tried to make sense of the situation before him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gwen very much wanted to ask Merlin the same question - it almost hurt, in a terrible way, that Merlin might actually be a sorcerer and not have told her. She’d thought she knew everything about him, right down to the clumsy way he tripped when he was carrying too much down the corridor or the squeaky way he laughed when he’d had too much to drink. But this - this, she hadn’t known, and she knew why he couldn’t possibly have told her, or Arthur, but for a moment she felt just as shut out of his life as Arthur must have.
But it was clear that this situation needed resolving. “You’re not going to execute him,” she said, the servant telling the prince firmly what he was going to do and Arthur blinked at her, his mouth open and his face utterly blank for a moment. She was almost afraid he might hit her, but it didn’t matter right now. Merlin’s life was the one in danger, and she wasn’t going to let him die for saving her.
Merlin swallowed; the wind whistled through the trees, rustling the leaves and filling the silence between them for a moment that stretched on too long.
“Oh, for - no, I’m not going to execute him!” Arthur burst out, and Merlin nearly swayed with relief; Gwen placed a hand at his elbow, and he looked down at her, his face utterly exposed and all she could see was relief, and regret.
“Thank you, I - ” Merlin began, but Arthur cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“I’m going to go back to the castle now,” he said, and his gaze was heavy as it locked on Merlin’s. “I expect you at my chambers with my dinner at sundown.” Gwen watched his face, and saw his eyes soften once more. “But you needn’t fear execution, is that understood?” There was a gentle undercurrent beneath the words, and Merlin nodded. Arthur turned and left them, heading back up the gentle slope and disappearing through the trees a moment later.
Gwen watched him go. Arthur would work off his steam; he’d be ready to face Merlin with civil words and a sound mind when they returned to Camelot in the evening. For all that he was hot-headed and prattish, Arthur wasn’t his father, and he had a mind more open than the King’s. Arthur, Gwen knew, would be a far greater king than his father someday. And he would not execute his best friend.
Gwen and Merlin stood, hand to elbow, for a moment, watching the break in the trees into which Arthur had disappeared. Then, “I wanted to tell you, you know,” Merlin said quietly.
Gwen looked up at him, at his face and his eyes, and all of the hurt in her heart began to melt away. His face was like an open book to her, and she could see it in every pore - it had hurt Merlin to conceal his secret, as much or more than it hurt Gwen not to have known it. “I know,” she said, just as quietly.
“It was just too dangerous - ” Merlin began, but he came to a halt as Gwen threw her arms around his shoulders, hugging him close to her. She breathed in his scent - woodsmoke and sweat and something just a little like lightning - and nodded.
“I know,” she said again - and she did. It was dangerous to even speak of magic within Camelot’s walls, but to practice it...
She knew why he hadn’t told her, and that knowledge washed the last of the hurt away. He’d done it for her own good, and how could she begrudge him that? Merlin was sweet, sweeter than anyone else she knew, and though Arthur griped about his lack of skill as a servant, Gwen knew that even the prince knew the truth - there was no man more loyal or kind in all of Camelot. It made Gwen feel warm just to know that.
They set off for the castle at a slower pace than Prince Arthur, not wanting to catch up with him as they made their way back. Somehow, when they’d set off, Gwen’s fingers had slipped into Merlin’s; neither of them seemed inclined to pull away first. There was relative silence for a while, a comfortable silence, though beneath it Gwen was full to the brim with questions. Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Merlin, how long have you been a sorcerer? What does it feel like? Have you done very many spells?”
Merlin glanced at her in the late afternoon light, his features going from shocked to amused and Gwen’s smile grew. “I’ve always been like this,” he admitted slowly, his eyes watching her face carefully. “It...” He laughed. “It doesn’t feel like anything in particular, I guess.” He paused, smiling carefully. “And yes, I guess I have done a number of spells. Most of them since I came to Camelot.”
Gwen’s eyes were wide, but it was with wonder, not fear. She hoped that he could tell the difference, and she squeezed his fingers to reassure him. She’d never known a sorcerer, never met one up close, and it felt like everything and yet nothing had changed all at once. “What kind of spells? Have I seen any of them?” Visions of dancing lights filled her head, though she was sure she would recall seeing Merlin’s magic if it had looked like that.
Suddenly Merlin looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Gwen felt a stab of fear pierce her stomach. He glanced down at their fingers, still linked, and Gwen had a wild moment of quiet panic. Has he enchanted me somehow? It was a sudden, fleeting thought, but it brought with it the realization, just as sudden, that she felt for Merlin something that she had not felt for anyone else. She had hidden it in the dark corners of her mind, concealed from even herself, but something this day had brought it alive and she felt as though she stood on a precipice, committed to jumping before she’d even taken that step over the edge.
She was still watching Merlin and that frightened, worried look on his face. They stopped walking.
“Gwen, I... ” Merlin faltered, and he pulled his hand away from hers. He looked down at his palms, as though they had betrayed him. “Your father.”
Gwen felt her entire body freeze - her heart might have stopped and she wouldn’t have noticed. She felt ice-cold as she looked at Merlin and asked, “What about my father?”
“Gwen, I - do you remember that plague? The one not long after I arrived here - your father fell ill, and then he got better, and you - ” Merlin’s voice sounded choked.
Gwen could only nod. Certainly she remembered.
Merlin mumbled something, so quietly that she could barely hear him. But she did, nonetheless, and what he said was, “That was me.”
Now time seemed to freeze as well, while Gwen’s mind whirled in rushed circles, chasing itself down memories she’d been wondering if she might be better off forgetting. Those were days she would never forget, tossed from despair to joy and back into despair again, frightened that she might lose her father and, upon his return to her, her life in exchange for whatever miracle had transpired.
But it hadn’t been a miracle - it had been Merlin.
“I almost let you take my place,” Merlin said hoarsely, “and I’m sorry - I’m so sorry, Gwen, that I couldn’t apologize for it until now.” He looked as he had just half an hour ago, standing before Arthur and expecting to be executed. And even if Gwen hadn’t known his heart, hadn’t known just how Merlin felt by hearing the pain in his voice, it would have been evident in his eyes, wide and bright and pleading for forgiveness.
And Gwen could do nothing but give him that. “Merlin,” she said, and took a step closer, looking up into his face, “You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing.”
Merlin looked as though half of him wanted to believe her, while the other half wouldn’t let it be that easy. But it was that easy, and Gwen smiled up at him, showing him that it could be. Merlin was a good man, who leapt before he looked when it came to those around him - above all else, he cared about others before he even stopped to consider himself.
And whatever she felt for him now, while it was still lay quietly just beneath the surface, was growing. Gwen would not be afraid any longer to take that step, not when Merlin had already bared himself before her. It had all been totally, utterly unintentional - but then, Gwen had discovered, most things about Merlin were. He just had that sort of air about him, that made things you never thought possible happen, though it almost always turned out all right in the end.
The events of the past year opened up before her like a book, and she saw everything that had transpired, good or bad, for what it was, and what it was building towards. It almost frightened her that so much of it could be because of Merlin, but more than that, it made her proud, privileged to be his friend, and left her with the sudden, aching desire to perhaps, someday, be more than that. She wanted to be his strength.
He had bared his magic before her, and in doing so had shown him more of himself than perhaps even he knew. It had been an accident, nothing more, but because of it nothing could ever be the same. But it had taught her more about Merlin than she’d ever thought she hadn’t known about him, and Gwen thought that this new Merlin was even more magnificent than the old one.
Gwen reached out again, taking his hand in hers. She offered her brightest, kindest smile up at the man who had put his life on the line for so many others, and would do it again as easily and often as he drew breath. “Come on, Merlin,” she said, and turned them once more toward Camelot’s white towers, just visible in front of the setting sun. “Let’s go home.”
... Okay. I have to say that this is absolutely nothing like I originally imagined it would be when I first took the prompt. I have part of this awesome stream-of-thought piece written somewhere, but I decided I kind of wanted this to be more of a short story than a stream of thought. And then I started it about three times, trying to figure out what the plot was, and what would happen, and whether things came from out of left field. I hope I've found some kind of happy medium; concrit is definitely welcome, because I'm a little worried the "character development" is shaky.
Anyway, here it is. I think maybe someday when I'm on less of a deadline I'll write that first piece I came up with, because I feel like this just barely borders on Gwen/Merlin if you squint at it, so I hope it fulfills what it's supposed to. ^^; I really love them and want to write something shippier than this sometime.
Also, I seem to be keeping with my Gwen fics (all two of them XD) using song lyrics as titles. Eheh.
Title: From This Moment On
Prompt: 19. Gwen/Merlin, accidents happen
Rating: G
Wordcount: 2,661
Spoilers: Spoilers for 1x02, 1x04, 1x12
Really, someone should have known better.
Arthur should have realized he wasn’t aiming at game. Merlin should have been a bit more subtle about his magic. And Gwen - well, Gwen probably shouldn’t have been so deep in the woods, nor should she have been humming to herself and being rather oblivious about her surroundings.
Someone should have known better - but no one had, and so Arthur had taken aim and let loose with his crossbow, and Merlin had realized too late what was wrong and flung his hand up and shouted something in a wild and foreign tongue. All Gwen knew was that one moment she was rustling about in the bushes, looking for some late-season berries, and the next she’d been flung to the side by something - some invisible force that had seemed like a flash of light and a shove from behind all at once.
She found herself flat on the ground with a faceful of leaves as someone came crashing through the trees to her side.
“Gwen!”
“Ow.”
“Gwen! You’re all right?”
“What happened?” There was a shadow over her, blotting out the bright midday sun when she opened her eyes, but she didn’t need to see the features to know the face. “Merlin?”
“Yes - here, careful.” He took her hand in one of his, levering her slowly off the ground and into a sitting position. “Are you all right?” he repeated.
“I’m fine,” she said, blinking owlishly at him. “You... where did you come from?”
Merlin cocked a bit of a grin, but it was half-worried and tight. “The same place as that,” he said, and pointed to the tree just beside her, in which a crossbow bolt was buried nearly to the fletching.
Gwen felt a chill pass through her. If she hadn’t been knocked down by... whatever it had been, it would have been nearly level with her head.
“Merlin!” A voice came ringing through the trees, followed shortly by its owner as Arthur jogged through the dappled sunlight, crossbow in one hand and his features arranged in a very peculiar fashion -somewhere between shock and fear. “Merlin - you just - ” He came up short, staring at Gwen as though she were a ghost. “Guinevere? What...?”
The grin had disappeared entirely from Merlin’s face now; in fact, he had gone rather pale. “She had nothing to do with it!” Merlin burst out suddenly, stepping between Gwen and Arthur, though Gwen could not imagine why, or what he meant. “It was - it was me, and I only did it because -”
Gwen pointed to the bolt, buried in the trunk of the tree beside her. “My lord...” She frowned - Merlin and Arthur were staring at each other rather intently, as though holding some sort of silent conversation. For a moment, Gwen felt as though she might as well not even be standing there, for all that they noticed her. “What is this about?”
Arthur squared his shoulders, and looked at Gwen as though he’d only just remembered she was there. “Magic,” he said, and the word was terse and clipped.
Gwen blinked. “Excuse me?” She looked to Merlin, as though he might be able to clarify, but he was only standing white-faced and thin-lipped, tensed as though he might bolt at any moment. In frustration, Gwen turned back to Arthur. “What is going on?”
Arthur pointed to Merlin. “I’ve told you. I just saw him use magic.”
“To save her life from you!” Merlin burst out, and then looked as though he rather regretted it.
Gwen’s mind slowly began to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and seconds later she thought she’d begun to understand the situation. A rush of adrenaline and something else stirred in the pit of her stomach as she turned to Merlin. “Merlin...” she said gently, ignoring the prince completely for a moment, “that was you?”
Merlin looked suddenly torn, his eyes flashing full of guilt and defiance all at once. “Yes,” he said, very quietly. “I... I didn’t know what else to do -”
Gwen’s heart fluttered, in a way that she’d only felt once before. It was the way she’d felt, she realized, when Merlin had seemingly woken from the dead - when Arthur had defied his father to bring back a cure for the poison Merlin had drunk in the prince’s place, and for a terrifying, heart-stopping moment, Merlin had been dead. And then just as suddenly he hadn’t been, and all Gwen had known in that moment was joy, pure and unbridled, until it had overflowed from her lips to his.
She had the same wild urge now, to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him, but she didn’t even know why and that frightened her almost more than the prospect of Merlin - Merlin - being a sorcerer ever could.
After all, if he was telling the truth, he’d just used his magic to save her life, and that more than accounted for where his intentions lay, in Gwen’s eyes.
And so she rounded on the prince, who was still staring at Merlin with something very much like betrayal and fear in his eyes. “And you’d have him executed for that?” she asked, and her voice was loud and defiant and Arthur looked at her suddenly, his eyes just as wild as the feeling in her stomach, and for an instant Gwen thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d gone too far.
“What do you want me to do?” he spat, and looked between them. “My father - Merlin - ” Arthur faltered, seeming to deflate as he tried to make sense of the situation before him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gwen very much wanted to ask Merlin the same question - it almost hurt, in a terrible way, that Merlin might actually be a sorcerer and not have told her. She’d thought she knew everything about him, right down to the clumsy way he tripped when he was carrying too much down the corridor or the squeaky way he laughed when he’d had too much to drink. But this - this, she hadn’t known, and she knew why he couldn’t possibly have told her, or Arthur, but for a moment she felt just as shut out of his life as Arthur must have.
But it was clear that this situation needed resolving. “You’re not going to execute him,” she said, the servant telling the prince firmly what he was going to do and Arthur blinked at her, his mouth open and his face utterly blank for a moment. She was almost afraid he might hit her, but it didn’t matter right now. Merlin’s life was the one in danger, and she wasn’t going to let him die for saving her.
Merlin swallowed; the wind whistled through the trees, rustling the leaves and filling the silence between them for a moment that stretched on too long.
“Oh, for - no, I’m not going to execute him!” Arthur burst out, and Merlin nearly swayed with relief; Gwen placed a hand at his elbow, and he looked down at her, his face utterly exposed and all she could see was relief, and regret.
“Thank you, I - ” Merlin began, but Arthur cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“I’m going to go back to the castle now,” he said, and his gaze was heavy as it locked on Merlin’s. “I expect you at my chambers with my dinner at sundown.” Gwen watched his face, and saw his eyes soften once more. “But you needn’t fear execution, is that understood?” There was a gentle undercurrent beneath the words, and Merlin nodded. Arthur turned and left them, heading back up the gentle slope and disappearing through the trees a moment later.
Gwen watched him go. Arthur would work off his steam; he’d be ready to face Merlin with civil words and a sound mind when they returned to Camelot in the evening. For all that he was hot-headed and prattish, Arthur wasn’t his father, and he had a mind more open than the King’s. Arthur, Gwen knew, would be a far greater king than his father someday. And he would not execute his best friend.
Gwen and Merlin stood, hand to elbow, for a moment, watching the break in the trees into which Arthur had disappeared. Then, “I wanted to tell you, you know,” Merlin said quietly.
Gwen looked up at him, at his face and his eyes, and all of the hurt in her heart began to melt away. His face was like an open book to her, and she could see it in every pore - it had hurt Merlin to conceal his secret, as much or more than it hurt Gwen not to have known it. “I know,” she said, just as quietly.
“It was just too dangerous - ” Merlin began, but he came to a halt as Gwen threw her arms around his shoulders, hugging him close to her. She breathed in his scent - woodsmoke and sweat and something just a little like lightning - and nodded.
“I know,” she said again - and she did. It was dangerous to even speak of magic within Camelot’s walls, but to practice it...
She knew why he hadn’t told her, and that knowledge washed the last of the hurt away. He’d done it for her own good, and how could she begrudge him that? Merlin was sweet, sweeter than anyone else she knew, and though Arthur griped about his lack of skill as a servant, Gwen knew that even the prince knew the truth - there was no man more loyal or kind in all of Camelot. It made Gwen feel warm just to know that.
They set off for the castle at a slower pace than Prince Arthur, not wanting to catch up with him as they made their way back. Somehow, when they’d set off, Gwen’s fingers had slipped into Merlin’s; neither of them seemed inclined to pull away first. There was relative silence for a while, a comfortable silence, though beneath it Gwen was full to the brim with questions. Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Merlin, how long have you been a sorcerer? What does it feel like? Have you done very many spells?”
Merlin glanced at her in the late afternoon light, his features going from shocked to amused and Gwen’s smile grew. “I’ve always been like this,” he admitted slowly, his eyes watching her face carefully. “It...” He laughed. “It doesn’t feel like anything in particular, I guess.” He paused, smiling carefully. “And yes, I guess I have done a number of spells. Most of them since I came to Camelot.”
Gwen’s eyes were wide, but it was with wonder, not fear. She hoped that he could tell the difference, and she squeezed his fingers to reassure him. She’d never known a sorcerer, never met one up close, and it felt like everything and yet nothing had changed all at once. “What kind of spells? Have I seen any of them?” Visions of dancing lights filled her head, though she was sure she would recall seeing Merlin’s magic if it had looked like that.
Suddenly Merlin looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Gwen felt a stab of fear pierce her stomach. He glanced down at their fingers, still linked, and Gwen had a wild moment of quiet panic. Has he enchanted me somehow? It was a sudden, fleeting thought, but it brought with it the realization, just as sudden, that she felt for Merlin something that she had not felt for anyone else. She had hidden it in the dark corners of her mind, concealed from even herself, but something this day had brought it alive and she felt as though she stood on a precipice, committed to jumping before she’d even taken that step over the edge.
She was still watching Merlin and that frightened, worried look on his face. They stopped walking.
“Gwen, I... ” Merlin faltered, and he pulled his hand away from hers. He looked down at his palms, as though they had betrayed him. “Your father.”
Gwen felt her entire body freeze - her heart might have stopped and she wouldn’t have noticed. She felt ice-cold as she looked at Merlin and asked, “What about my father?”
“Gwen, I - do you remember that plague? The one not long after I arrived here - your father fell ill, and then he got better, and you - ” Merlin’s voice sounded choked.
Gwen could only nod. Certainly she remembered.
Merlin mumbled something, so quietly that she could barely hear him. But she did, nonetheless, and what he said was, “That was me.”
Now time seemed to freeze as well, while Gwen’s mind whirled in rushed circles, chasing itself down memories she’d been wondering if she might be better off forgetting. Those were days she would never forget, tossed from despair to joy and back into despair again, frightened that she might lose her father and, upon his return to her, her life in exchange for whatever miracle had transpired.
But it hadn’t been a miracle - it had been Merlin.
“I almost let you take my place,” Merlin said hoarsely, “and I’m sorry - I’m so sorry, Gwen, that I couldn’t apologize for it until now.” He looked as he had just half an hour ago, standing before Arthur and expecting to be executed. And even if Gwen hadn’t known his heart, hadn’t known just how Merlin felt by hearing the pain in his voice, it would have been evident in his eyes, wide and bright and pleading for forgiveness.
And Gwen could do nothing but give him that. “Merlin,” she said, and took a step closer, looking up into his face, “You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing.”
Merlin looked as though half of him wanted to believe her, while the other half wouldn’t let it be that easy. But it was that easy, and Gwen smiled up at him, showing him that it could be. Merlin was a good man, who leapt before he looked when it came to those around him - above all else, he cared about others before he even stopped to consider himself.
And whatever she felt for him now, while it was still lay quietly just beneath the surface, was growing. Gwen would not be afraid any longer to take that step, not when Merlin had already bared himself before her. It had all been totally, utterly unintentional - but then, Gwen had discovered, most things about Merlin were. He just had that sort of air about him, that made things you never thought possible happen, though it almost always turned out all right in the end.
The events of the past year opened up before her like a book, and she saw everything that had transpired, good or bad, for what it was, and what it was building towards. It almost frightened her that so much of it could be because of Merlin, but more than that, it made her proud, privileged to be his friend, and left her with the sudden, aching desire to perhaps, someday, be more than that. She wanted to be his strength.
He had bared his magic before her, and in doing so had shown him more of himself than perhaps even he knew. It had been an accident, nothing more, but because of it nothing could ever be the same. But it had taught her more about Merlin than she’d ever thought she hadn’t known about him, and Gwen thought that this new Merlin was even more magnificent than the old one.
Gwen reached out again, taking his hand in hers. She offered her brightest, kindest smile up at the man who had put his life on the line for so many others, and would do it again as easily and often as he drew breath. “Come on, Merlin,” she said, and turned them once more toward Camelot’s white towers, just visible in front of the setting sun. “Let’s go home.”