The Return (PG, spoilers for 3x07, Elyan & Gwen)
such_heights asked for "all the Elyan fic" at the
camelot_fleet party last week, and I went to type up some sappy adventures of Elyan and Gwen as kids.
This happened instead.
Warning: references past character death and loss of loved ones
Elyan remembers.
The smell of the forge is the same, though when he last sat on this stool he was shorter. The room seems smaller now, but he can almost hear Dad's laughter, Gwen's teasing scold, Mum's voice calling from the house. All of them, cramped into these two tiny spaces and knowing nothing else, loving each other and driving each other to tears of frustration. (Or maybe that was just him driving Gwen.)
He can hear the sound of struck metal ringing out, feel he heat of the fire on his face and hands. The dust beneath his feet holds these memories, and so does he.
This is how you curl a hook, his memory of Dad says. This is how you temper a blade. Elyan's eyes slip shut, and that familiar voice carries him away.
"You need to build your arms and back," Dad said, "so keep pumping." Elyan's arms ached, the bellows squeezing reluctantly though he put his whole body into it. The fire sputtered and burst into life, only to fade again.
"The temperature needs to be steady," Dad warned. Elyan wiped sweat out of his eyes with his forearm before taking hold of the handles again and squeezing desperately.
"Here." Dad's voice was suddenly close, Dad's hands reaching up to cover his, rearranging them to a better position. "Lean your weight to ease the pressure." And like that, easy as a knife into pie, the bellows slid closed and open and closed again in time with their breathing.
"Like that," Dad said, but tomorrow he would have to explain it all again.
There were market days, when Dad worked out front where everyone could see him. Gwen always helped with the sales and sent Elyan to help Mum carry home the things they needed. It should have been the other way around, but Gwen had a head for business, and Elyan had a blacksmith's burgeoning strength, awkward and coltish as it was right then.
He liked spending time with Mum anyway. She was tired most days, but once in the market she stood straighter, smiled more, waved to folks she knew from out of town.
"That's old Mary Cobb," she told him. "She ran of with the miller's son when she was just a lass, and now she's eight children spilling out of that shack of theirs. She'll be asking your father to apprentice one of them next year, mark my words."
Mum knew everyone and everything there was to know about the lower town and most villages within a day's walk. She could tell where cheese had been made by the smell alone, and she always knew whose beer had gone off. She had an eye for good fabrics and collected them like a magpie, but always with her other eye on the price.
"Gwen's shaping up to be an excellent seamstress," Mum said more than once on these walks, Elyan balancing baskets beside her. "You'd do well to try harder in your own work."
Gwen was always perfect, always hard-working, alway thoughtful and responsible and wise. Of course it irritated him; why wouldn't it? Still, sometimes he came in at the end of the day and found her slumped on her bench, exhausted and sighing.
That was when he'd go right back out again, straight through the gates to the twilight-gray fields outside Camelot, and pick the first colorful thing that drew his eye. Sometimes the flowers were pathetic and easily crushed, and in winter he could never find anything but wayward branches of evergreen on the edge of the forest, but it never failed to bring a wry smile to Gwen's lips when he came home carrying some small gift. She always put whatever he'd found in a bowl of water in the center of the table - and then told him to go wash his filthy self. He liked to whistle while he scrubbed off the grime of the forge, keeping the tune jaunty and too loud just to annoy her.
Elyan's eyes flutter open, spell broken by a sudden sound in the house next door. Gwen's home. He sighs, feeling the past recede again. The forge is quiet and cold, clean but not often used. He'll have to - well, if she wants him-
A moment later Gwen's voice rings out, "Supper!"
His vision blurs, and he finds himself standing before the door between the two spaces, empty-handed with a lump in his throat. He can't even do this much: open a door, go into a house, and eat supper with his sister.
The door opens, and Gwen is standing there looking at him, solemn with a strangely gentle expression. "There you are," she murmurs. "Go wash yourself, you're filthy." She reaches up, and for a moment he thinks she's going to brush away the tears trickling down his face, but she goes for his ear instead and tucks something colorful behind it. "There, much better."
She has a basket of violets hanging from her arm. When he reaches up, he can feel soft petals beside his face.
"Now go clean up," she tells him firmly, then closes the door.
As he grabs a bucket to go to the pump, he thinks he hears someone whistling. Surely it's not Gwen, but he tucks the sound away in his heart just in case.
---
What I'd really like to do is write a whole bunch of stories about Gwen, Elyan, Morgana, and Arthur all growing up sort of together, with adventures and class issues and maybe even some mysteries to solve. What I'll probably do instead is end up with future ficlets. Sir Elyan has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Crossposted on Dreamwidth with
replies.