Songs to Dance - Song 5 - For me
Title: Songs to Dance
Author: kbrand5333
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Arthur/Gwen
For me, there is no song
Unless I sing it,
And yet I love you,
And make music
Which I cannot hear.
xXx
I slept on the table again. There is a crick in my neck, threatening to become permanent from my head being bent over the table each night rather than on my pillow.
But I cannot sleep in that bed. Not knowing that she is supposed to be there with me. In my arms. My body warming hers. Loving hers. Worshipping hers.
I miss her so much.
The sting of her betrayal is nothing compared to the burning gash that is her absence.
I’ve endured all manner of pain and hurt in my life. No cut from a sword, no blow received from a fist or a club, no bite from an enchanted beast, nothing hurts as much as this pain.
She haunts my dreams. Dreams that turn into nightmares just because she is in them and I know that when I wake she will be gone.
I try not to sleep. I sit at this table; at my desk, attempting (pretending) to read, write, clean my fingernails, anything to keep me from drifting off to sleep where her beautiful face and lavender smell will taunt me, making my loins and my heart ache.
Yet invariably I pass out, at this table; at my desk, my face in a book or pressed against the cold, hard wood.
Pressed against the cold, hard wood instead of into her soft, warm hair.
I cannot bear this pain.
Everywhere I go I am reminded of her. Even the stones in the floor echo her delicate footsteps.
The smell of lavender is like a dagger in my heart, twisting. I avoid the gardens.
My door opens, and Merlin enters my room. I can see his shoulders droop when he sees I’m not in my bed. Again.
His stalwart presence is comforting, but his sympathy irks me. I do not need his pity. I do not want his pity.
“Arthur?” he says quietly, his hand gentle, cautious on my shoulder as I sit and stare into the empty space that is my room. My room that should be our room.
“I’ll tend to my own needs this morning, Merlin,” I say testily, shrugging him away.
“Sire,” he starts, with that damnable patience of his, stepping back in again.
“That will be all, Merlin,” I snap, standing.
He sighs, which just irritates me more. “Breakfast, my lord?” he asks, persistent.
“Get out!” I yell, shoving him now and turning towards the window.
I hear a loud noise behind me and turn back, surprised. He’s slammed the sword and sword belt he was holding on the table, and there is fire behind his eyes.
“Damn it, stop taking your anguish out on me!” he says crossly, standing firm. “I’m only trying to help you, you know.”
Whoa.
“Merlin, I…”
“Do you think you’re the only one hurting? That you’re the only one who misses her? Do you?” he rails at me, waving his arms, the pain finally showing on his face.
“I…”
“Apart from Gaius, she was the first person in Camelot to show me any friendship, any true kindness.” He pauses and continues, no longer shouting. “She and I have been through a lot together, and I love her like a sister, Arthur. So if you think that you’re alone in your pain, you’re not. You’re really not.” His voice is low, breaking on his last sentence, breathing hard. I can see the tears pricking at his eyes just before he turns away from me to stomp out of the room.
Honestly, I’ve been wondering when I’d push him too far. Wondering what it would take.
“Merlin.”
He stops, but does not turn.
“I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Being king doesn’t mean that you do not need someone to lean on,” he says to the door. “Everyone needs friends, Arthur, regardless of their standing.”
We are both silent.
“I cannot abide her absence, Merlin.”
“I know.” He is still at the door, facing away. If we face each other and see the tears in our eyes, our mirrored expressions, it will be too embarrassing for us both.
“She…”
“I know, Arthur.” He finally turns around.
“Do you think I acted rashly?” I blurt out the question that has been plaguing me since the day she left. I was having second thoughts by that same afternoon.
“I think you acted mercifully, compared to what you could have done.”
“But?” I can hear the un-finished thought in the air and call it out.
“But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think she deserved another chance.”
I turn away now, looking back out the window. Unconsciously my eyes search for her on the cobbles of the courtyard. I drop my head and squeeze my eyes shut, remembering that I won’t see her.
“There is no joy left in my heart. She’s taken it with her. All that’s left is pain.”
“She is a part of you, Arthur.” Merlin’s voice, coming closer. “She is in your blood, in your bones as much as you are in hers.”
“Which is why I feel so empty, so incomplete without her,” I conclude.
“Do you want her back?” A simple question, but somehow it is the hardest question I have even been asked.
“Yes. No. Yes. What… what can I do, Merlin? I can’t live without her, but I don’t know if I can bear seeing her again.”
“You can. If you want to find her, we will find her.”
I sigh, troubled. Conflicted. My pain from her actions at war with my pain from her absence.
“Surely there must be an explanation for what happened,” he says, cautiously, treading what he knows is very dangerous ground.
“I asked her for an explanation! I even suggested some to her! She had none!” I’m yelling again, but it is not at Merlin. It is at the situation, the world, the gods.
“Perhaps…” he looks uncomfortable now, afraid. He knows I am not yelling out of anger at him, but he is troubled nevertheless.
“Yes?” I ask, as calmly as I can manage.
“Perhaps she cannot provide the explanation.”
“What?”
“Just because she did not know the reason, doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, Arthur.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Merlin,” I say, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize that it does.
I sit back down in my chair and reach for my goblet, downing the last of last night’s stale wine with a grimace.
“We will find her,” he says, sitting down. I see something like hope in his eyes; hope that I am unable to feel. “We will find her and bring her back to you, where she belongs. And then we will figure out what happened. You will forgive her, Arthur. You will forgive each other.”
“We don’t even know where she is,” I say despondently. “And what if she won’t come back?”
“You’re the king. Order her back,” he says flippantly. I look at him sideways, in no mood for his jests.
“I know you would never do that to Gwen,” Merlin says quietly, daring for the first time to speak her name in my presence since she left.
“I could no more order the sun from the sky.”
“And that is precisely why she will come back, Arthur.”
I sigh heavily, bone-weary though I have just woken. “Thank you, Merlin. I know I do not say it enough.”
He stands. “No, you don’t,” he agrees, standing and grinning that stupid lopsided grin of his at me. I cannot return the smile. I have forgotten how; else she’s taken that as well. “I’ll be back with your breakfast.”
“You are a good friend,” I say quietly. Very quietly. He hears me, though. I see him pause on the way to the doors, pondering a reply.
“You are, too, Arthur.”
“When I remember how to be one,” I answer ruefully. He chuckles and leaves me alone where he found me.
At the table, staring into the empty space that is my room.
Thinking of her.
Missing her.
Wanting her back.
I will get her back.