a sanctuary, safe and strong
Title: a sanctuary, safe and strong
Wordcount: ~3,000
Summary: Morgana doesn't know when it starts for the others, but she knows it starts.
Warnings: Spoilers up to 4x09 (goes AU after that), half-sibling incest
A/N: For this prompt on the meme. Title from Billy Joel's "And So It Goes."
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Morgana knows it starts, for her, when she heals Merlin in the hovel she’s forced to call home and thinks-maybe, maybe if you hadn’t, I could still …
She doesn’t know when it starts for the others, but she knows it starts.
*
There’d been a glorious while, after Ealdor and before Morgana’s dreams began to consume all her sleep, when she’d thought that all it would take was a word, or one of them being a little less terrified, and they all could have tumbled into bed and into love together in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
Then Arthur had finally seen what made Morgana and Merlin love Gwen so fiercely and forgot that he could hold more than one person in his heart, and Morgana’s visions turned into magic, and Merlin started lying, and that vanishing chance at picking another destiny disappeared, never to be seen again.
Until-until Agravaine brings the news that Gwen has returned to Camelot after a secret search by the king’s most trusted knights and a humble apology by the king himself, and Morgana sees tiny, aching flashes that she thinks are dreams and not visions at first until she can no longer deny it. She doesn’t know what makes it possible.
Maybe it’s just that they’ve all hurt each other enough, now.
*
She meets Merlin in the woods one day when she’s hunting for her supper. He’s sitting, leaning back in a tree, and he must know how close he is to her home but he doesn’t open his eyes when she strides up to him even if he must know who’s there. “You’re more of a fool than I thought,” she snaps.
“Just kill me. It’s what you want, isn’t it?” He doesn’t bother even opening his eyes, and she wants to shake him. Merlin’s supposed to die fighting, whether at her hand or not. “I deserve it, and I’ve nowhere else to go now.”
She scoffs. “Your loyalty to Arthur’s been repaid with Pendragon betrayal?”
He opens his eyes just long enough to glare. “You’re a Pendragon too, Lady Morgana.”
She wants to strike him down for that, and she walks forward to grab his hair. He just tilts his head back, baring his neck. He’s been crying. “What’s he done?” she asks, and her voice comes out gentler than she means it to. “What’ve you done that made him send you away?”
Merlin looks up at her golden-eyed and miserable. “I saved his life.”
Traitor, liar, she wants to say, or maybe so you understand how it feels, now. “Come,” she says instead, and turns on her heel to walk back to her hovel.
*
They have an uneasy truce, the two of them. She doesn’t try to harm Arthur while Merlin stays under her roof, and Merlin tells the truth in exchange. All of it, sparing nothing. He apologizes-too little, and far too late, but something, at least. Whenever she goes out, she returns to find the hovel a little neater, a hole patched, a piece of thatch replaced, until it starts to look more like a little woods cottage. Like a home.
Agravaine comes to her one afternoon, head bowed and groveling, saying that he’s somehow lost the king’s trust even after exposing his manservant as a sorcerer, which should have cemented his position as she’d been telling him to do. She could have told him that discrediting Merlin was no way to do it, though. “You have no further use to me, then,” she says instead, turning away from the way his face crumples like a child’s and refusing to allow him inside, where Merlin is waiting.
He cowers, but she doesn’t kill him. He’s not worth it, and not worth the reproachful looks Merlin would give her over their supper.
Merlin is leaning against the wall when she comes back inside, hands clenched into fists, eyes squeezed shut. She strokes a hand across his face. He moves into the touch and neither of them says a word.
*
“The knights are looking for you,” says Morgana.
Merlin doesn’t look up from the fire he spends every night staring into. “I suppose Arthur’s decided to kill me at last, then.”
“No. Your knights are looking for you.” The ones that would never hurt Merlin, and who Arthur trusts above all others. “Like they went looking for Gwen.”
He looks so, so old, like he wouldn’t even need a potion to be the man who’s meant to be her doom (and isn’t he? Her thirst for revenge is so easily thrust aside, with him beside her, and she has so little else, now). He doesn’t realize yet, where they’re heading. “I’m not Gwen,” he whispers.
“So you won’t go back with them?”
“I’ve lost Arthur’s trust, no matter what else happens. I can’t return knowing that. I’ve done as much for Albion as I can.”
Merlin and Arthur have always been like this with each other, either completely together or completely apart and loud and full of fire about it all either way. It’s why they’ve always needed Morgana to laugh at them and Gwen to keep them grounded. Morgana almost laughs at the familiarity of it. “I won’t force you to go, but if they return without you, Arthur may come himself.” And Merlin has never been able to say no to Arthur, not really. She wonders what Merlin will say about his time with her, if he’ll claim she kept him against his will or claim even more egregiously that she’s redeemed and ready to come back into Camelot’s fold to play pet prophet and slowly drive herself mad. “What will you do then?”
Merlin doesn’t answer.
*
It isn’t Arthur who comes. It’s Gwen.
When Morgana senses that achingly familiar presence just beyond her wards, the worry so palpable that it makes Morgana fidget where she sits, she says that she wants to hunt and walks out. Merlin just grunts and continues settling their door on its hinges, making it fit properly into its frame for the first time.
Gwen, braver than all the knights of Camelot, pulls a sword on her when Morgana steps out from behind a tree, with a stubborn tilt to her chin that Morgana wants to soothe with kisses. Instead, she just holds out her hands to show she has no sword or knife, even though both of them know she needs neither. “Is this what we’ve come to?”
“You did this. You’ve enchanted me, you’ve tried your best to hurt your own-to hurt Arthur, and now you’ve taken Merlin.” She blinks. “I don’t want this either, but please, we need him back. Arthur is giving Gwaine one more day to return from Ealdor before he goes out searching himself, but I know just as he does that it’s you, and I thought maybe, after what you did to me, you might feel enough guilt to give Merlin back to us.”
“Merlin goes where he wills.”
Gwen closes her eyes, and her hands shake. Morgana wishes she could give her comfort, but she wouldn’t accept it, much less trust it. Not yet. “Please. I know you probably feel as if we have done you wrongs just as we feel you’ve done them to us, but please.”
“Follow,” says Morgana, and walks away, turning her back. She knows Gwen won’t hurt her while her back is turned.
Sure enough, Gwen follows two paces behind her, like they walked through the halls of Camelot when they were girls.
*
Morgana turns to watch Gwen’s face when she sees Merlin, because she knows what Merlin will look like-surprised, nervous, angry at Morgana for not warning him-and everything relies on Gwen here.
She needn’t have worried. Gwen lights up with the same look of stunned disbelief that she wore after Merlin recovered from poison he drank for Arthur, then runs at him, sword dropping to the ground. Merlin watches Morgana over Gwen’s shoulder as she buries her face in his neck, feeling frantically for injuries and at the back of his neck for another serpent, whispering apologies and professions of worry. “I’m sorry for scaring you. I thought I was unwanted,” says Merlin when she winds herself down. “You’ve more right than almost anyone to be angry, but you’re-”
“I don’t care about that, I thought we’d lost you. Are you safe? Are you hurt?” Gwen pulls slowly away, face damp with tears, and turns so she can see both of them. “Are you a prisoner?”
“I told you. Merlin goes where he wills.” Morgana doesn’t dare step any closer.
Merlin nods. “I’m free, and I couldn’t go back to Ealdor.” He doesn’t mention asking Morgana to kill him, or night upon night of staring dismally out the window. Morgana can’t blame him. She’s always wanted to hide her darkness from Gwen, even if she often fails in the impulse. “I can’t go back to Camelot either, if I’ve lost Arthur’s trust.”
“He’s had his knights looking for you. Do you really think he doesn’t trust you?” Gwen’s mouth tightens. “I had to win his trust back, Merlin, just as he had to win mine.” Her gaze flickers to Morgana. “Do you think you’re any different?” Merlin shakes his head miserably, but he’s wavering, and Morgana is struck by sudden panic that he’s going to walk away with Gwen and without another backward glance and that they’ll have lost their chance for good, this time. She needs Arthur too, all four of them together, or this will be what their life is until they all destroy each other.
Somehow, Merlin understands, and gives her a level look across the distance between them. “I need to think about it,” he says, to both of them, and he looks properly awake, properly Merlin, for the first time since she found him in the woods. “Stay for dinner?”
“Arthur doesn’t know I’m gone, but Gaius has word to tell him where I went if I’m not back by dark,” she says, uncertain. “They’ll come.” She shakes her head. “He’ll come for us.”
Morgana smiles. “Good.”
*
It takes Arthur until midnight to reach her wards. Morgana goes out to meet him.
“You’re late,” she calls, because it’s always been like this between them.
He comes at her, intent on vengeance or information or one of a hundred things. Morgana stands her ground even when he puts his sword to her throat. “Where are they, Morgana? What do you want with them? With me? They were your friends. Even if you want my throne, you can get nothing from them.”
Once, he trusted her more than anyone else. Once, he would have done anything for her. It’s a different sort of loyalty than the kind she had from Morgause, and she finds herself missing it more than she’d expected-they haven’t truly spoken since she took Camelot, so she’s never seen him look at her like this. “I have something to show you,” she says.
“This isn’t the time for games.”
“I know. This way.” She makes a light for them to walk by, a glowing orb Morgause taught her the trick of when she didn’t want to risk flame, and Arthur starts, staring at it as though it’s somehow familiar. Morgana doesn’t ask.
Merlin and Gwen fell asleep waiting for Arthur, and they’re still asleep when she puts her finger to her lips and pushes open the door to her cottage, curled in a weary tangle of limbs on Merlin’s pallet. His face is hidden in Gwen’s hair, and she’s holding tight enough to his tunic that it will wrinkle when they wake. “What have you done to them?” he hisses, fierce, hand at his hilt again.
“Hush. They’re sleeping.” She waves a hand. “Look for yourself, though. No bonds, Merlin is well-fed though he’s been with me for weeks … you hurt him, you know.”
His jaw is set, and he’s almost trembling with the desire to go to them. “I know. You could have them under a sleeping spell. You could be controlling them.”
Gwen stirs, making a sleepy noise and blinking blearily. Within a second, Arthur is across the room and dropping to his knees, grabbing for her hand before she’s truly awake and scattering kisses on her face before turning to Merlin, running his fingers over all the skin he can reach as Merlin yawns his way awake and pressing close to whisper to them both, alternating stroking Gwen’s hair and pressing closer to Merlin. Morgana’s heart lurches when Gwen just gives Arthur and Merlin a sleepy smile as Arthur presses his nose to Merlin’s temple. If they’re all three together, if they’re united, then she’s missed her chance and she’s doomed to this, working against them instead of trying to change things through them.
It’s the startled expression on Merlin’s face as he comes awake that makes her easy again, the way his hand is tentative as it comes up to grip Arthur’s shoulder. “I’m fine, Arthur,” he mumbles when the other man seems unlikely to stop his panicked and ineffectual examination.
There’s a space in the way they’re arranged, a slot next to Merlin where she could curl into him and reach out for the other two easily. Morgana closes her eyes and wonders why it is that certainty deserts her now, when she’s so close. She’s never thought this last part through, though, and her visions don’t show her what happens betweens the gathering and them being together.
“What’s this about, Morgana?” Arthur asks, sounding honestly baffled.
She opens her eyes. Arthur is turned away. Merlin’s looking at her, level and almost challenging. It’s Gwen who reaches out a hand, though, Arthur’s shoulder hiding her expression. “It’s a second chance,” she says.
“Come,” says Merlin, as she said to him weeks ago, and Morgana goes.
*
They just hold each other, at first, and it’s all the apologies they’ll have to spend years making to each other. Morgana slowly breathes out her worry as Arthur keeps a bruise-tight grip on her hip and Gwen reaches across the men to stroke her face.
She isn’t sure who kisses whom first-she thinks it’s Merlin tilting his head to turn and kiss her, though he might have given Gwen a shy kiss first. His mouth is soft and rich with the taste of the meat from the stew they ate earlier, and Morgana gives herself over to the kiss until Arthur’s hand tightens to the point of pain. When she pulls away, Gwen’s eyes are dark as she looks between them and Arthur looks as though he isn’t sure which one of them he wants to be jealous of. Morgana leans across Merlin and catches Arthur’s lip between her teeth. He moves his hands to her face and they kiss until she’s in Merlin’s lap and within Gwen’s reach, when Gwen just tilts Morgana’s head back and kisses her softly, shy. Arthur lunges for Merlin the second his mouth is free.
From there, it’s a tangle of limbs as they all trade touches. Arthur’s the only one they manage to strip entirely, all of them in silent agreement that his mail is far more a hindrance than a help, and later, Morgana remembers it all in flashes like she might one of her visions: laughing, head tossed back, as Merlin kissed her neck. The sight of Arthur and Gwen touching each other reverently, as if they’ve never done it before. Gwen and Merlin giggling before settling into a touch, awkward with each other as everything changes. The way Arthur looked at her dark-eyed and solemn over Gwen’s body as Morgana slid her fingers inside. Merlin’s face when Arthur leaned close and whispered “I’m sure you can find some way to get some oil.”
It’s not like it would have been four years ago, and she wouldn’t change a moment of it.
*
Morgana and Arthur are the last two left awake, with Merlin snuffling softly into Gwen’s hair between them. “I’m not coming back to Camelot,” she whispers.
“What was this, then?”
“Oh, Arthur.” She rolls to her back, too warm to sleep pressed against Merlin’s side. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I don’t have to be either your enemy or a lady of your court, especially the way Camelot remembers me now. And I won’t hide, now. Things have to change.”
Arthur presses his thumb gently against Merlin’s pulse. “They do.” He raises his eyes to hers. “They would have, if you’d just told me.”
“You can’t blame me for being frightened. You’re very much your-our father’s son, sometimes.”
He turns away so she can’t see his face, but she imagines that even for him, the acknowledged heir, the one Uther didn’t betray over and over again, the sentiment is mixed at best. “So what are we to do now, with these changes, if you won’t come?”
“You’ll crown Gwen your queen, just as you would have anyway. You’ll do as you see fit about magic and Merlin, and sometimes the three of you will come to me, or I’ll send word to you.”
“It’s not fair to leave you alone.”
Arthur and his stubborn pride, his insistence on everything having what he deems fair. He’s been the same since they were children. “Maybe, someday when the thought of going back to Camelot doesn’t make my skin crawl, I’ll come back to you. Until then, we’ll take what we can have.”
“You really won’t come?”
“Yet,” says Gwen clearly, no sign of sleep in her voice, and both of them look to her. Her eyes are glittering in the moonlight, and Morgana wants nothing more than to tell her how beautiful she looks but she can’t break the moment.
It’s a large word, and it hangs in the air until Merlin whimpers in his sleep and all three of them turn instantly to look at him, to soothe him until he subsides again, reaching behind him to put one scorching palm on Morgana’s arm. “Yet,” she agrees, voice choked, and Arthur nods like she’s made a promise.
Wordcount: ~3,000
Summary: Morgana doesn't know when it starts for the others, but she knows it starts.
Warnings: Spoilers up to 4x09 (goes AU after that), half-sibling incest
A/N: For this prompt on the meme. Title from Billy Joel's "And So It Goes."
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Morgana knows it starts, for her, when she heals Merlin in the hovel she’s forced to call home and thinks-maybe, maybe if you hadn’t, I could still …
She doesn’t know when it starts for the others, but she knows it starts.
*
There’d been a glorious while, after Ealdor and before Morgana’s dreams began to consume all her sleep, when she’d thought that all it would take was a word, or one of them being a little less terrified, and they all could have tumbled into bed and into love together in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
Then Arthur had finally seen what made Morgana and Merlin love Gwen so fiercely and forgot that he could hold more than one person in his heart, and Morgana’s visions turned into magic, and Merlin started lying, and that vanishing chance at picking another destiny disappeared, never to be seen again.
Until-until Agravaine brings the news that Gwen has returned to Camelot after a secret search by the king’s most trusted knights and a humble apology by the king himself, and Morgana sees tiny, aching flashes that she thinks are dreams and not visions at first until she can no longer deny it. She doesn’t know what makes it possible.
Maybe it’s just that they’ve all hurt each other enough, now.
*
She meets Merlin in the woods one day when she’s hunting for her supper. He’s sitting, leaning back in a tree, and he must know how close he is to her home but he doesn’t open his eyes when she strides up to him even if he must know who’s there. “You’re more of a fool than I thought,” she snaps.
“Just kill me. It’s what you want, isn’t it?” He doesn’t bother even opening his eyes, and she wants to shake him. Merlin’s supposed to die fighting, whether at her hand or not. “I deserve it, and I’ve nowhere else to go now.”
She scoffs. “Your loyalty to Arthur’s been repaid with Pendragon betrayal?”
He opens his eyes just long enough to glare. “You’re a Pendragon too, Lady Morgana.”
She wants to strike him down for that, and she walks forward to grab his hair. He just tilts his head back, baring his neck. He’s been crying. “What’s he done?” she asks, and her voice comes out gentler than she means it to. “What’ve you done that made him send you away?”
Merlin looks up at her golden-eyed and miserable. “I saved his life.”
Traitor, liar, she wants to say, or maybe so you understand how it feels, now. “Come,” she says instead, and turns on her heel to walk back to her hovel.
*
They have an uneasy truce, the two of them. She doesn’t try to harm Arthur while Merlin stays under her roof, and Merlin tells the truth in exchange. All of it, sparing nothing. He apologizes-too little, and far too late, but something, at least. Whenever she goes out, she returns to find the hovel a little neater, a hole patched, a piece of thatch replaced, until it starts to look more like a little woods cottage. Like a home.
Agravaine comes to her one afternoon, head bowed and groveling, saying that he’s somehow lost the king’s trust even after exposing his manservant as a sorcerer, which should have cemented his position as she’d been telling him to do. She could have told him that discrediting Merlin was no way to do it, though. “You have no further use to me, then,” she says instead, turning away from the way his face crumples like a child’s and refusing to allow him inside, where Merlin is waiting.
He cowers, but she doesn’t kill him. He’s not worth it, and not worth the reproachful looks Merlin would give her over their supper.
Merlin is leaning against the wall when she comes back inside, hands clenched into fists, eyes squeezed shut. She strokes a hand across his face. He moves into the touch and neither of them says a word.
*
“The knights are looking for you,” says Morgana.
Merlin doesn’t look up from the fire he spends every night staring into. “I suppose Arthur’s decided to kill me at last, then.”
“No. Your knights are looking for you.” The ones that would never hurt Merlin, and who Arthur trusts above all others. “Like they went looking for Gwen.”
He looks so, so old, like he wouldn’t even need a potion to be the man who’s meant to be her doom (and isn’t he? Her thirst for revenge is so easily thrust aside, with him beside her, and she has so little else, now). He doesn’t realize yet, where they’re heading. “I’m not Gwen,” he whispers.
“So you won’t go back with them?”
“I’ve lost Arthur’s trust, no matter what else happens. I can’t return knowing that. I’ve done as much for Albion as I can.”
Merlin and Arthur have always been like this with each other, either completely together or completely apart and loud and full of fire about it all either way. It’s why they’ve always needed Morgana to laugh at them and Gwen to keep them grounded. Morgana almost laughs at the familiarity of it. “I won’t force you to go, but if they return without you, Arthur may come himself.” And Merlin has never been able to say no to Arthur, not really. She wonders what Merlin will say about his time with her, if he’ll claim she kept him against his will or claim even more egregiously that she’s redeemed and ready to come back into Camelot’s fold to play pet prophet and slowly drive herself mad. “What will you do then?”
Merlin doesn’t answer.
*
It isn’t Arthur who comes. It’s Gwen.
When Morgana senses that achingly familiar presence just beyond her wards, the worry so palpable that it makes Morgana fidget where she sits, she says that she wants to hunt and walks out. Merlin just grunts and continues settling their door on its hinges, making it fit properly into its frame for the first time.
Gwen, braver than all the knights of Camelot, pulls a sword on her when Morgana steps out from behind a tree, with a stubborn tilt to her chin that Morgana wants to soothe with kisses. Instead, she just holds out her hands to show she has no sword or knife, even though both of them know she needs neither. “Is this what we’ve come to?”
“You did this. You’ve enchanted me, you’ve tried your best to hurt your own-to hurt Arthur, and now you’ve taken Merlin.” She blinks. “I don’t want this either, but please, we need him back. Arthur is giving Gwaine one more day to return from Ealdor before he goes out searching himself, but I know just as he does that it’s you, and I thought maybe, after what you did to me, you might feel enough guilt to give Merlin back to us.”
“Merlin goes where he wills.”
Gwen closes her eyes, and her hands shake. Morgana wishes she could give her comfort, but she wouldn’t accept it, much less trust it. Not yet. “Please. I know you probably feel as if we have done you wrongs just as we feel you’ve done them to us, but please.”
“Follow,” says Morgana, and walks away, turning her back. She knows Gwen won’t hurt her while her back is turned.
Sure enough, Gwen follows two paces behind her, like they walked through the halls of Camelot when they were girls.
*
Morgana turns to watch Gwen’s face when she sees Merlin, because she knows what Merlin will look like-surprised, nervous, angry at Morgana for not warning him-and everything relies on Gwen here.
She needn’t have worried. Gwen lights up with the same look of stunned disbelief that she wore after Merlin recovered from poison he drank for Arthur, then runs at him, sword dropping to the ground. Merlin watches Morgana over Gwen’s shoulder as she buries her face in his neck, feeling frantically for injuries and at the back of his neck for another serpent, whispering apologies and professions of worry. “I’m sorry for scaring you. I thought I was unwanted,” says Merlin when she winds herself down. “You’ve more right than almost anyone to be angry, but you’re-”
“I don’t care about that, I thought we’d lost you. Are you safe? Are you hurt?” Gwen pulls slowly away, face damp with tears, and turns so she can see both of them. “Are you a prisoner?”
“I told you. Merlin goes where he wills.” Morgana doesn’t dare step any closer.
Merlin nods. “I’m free, and I couldn’t go back to Ealdor.” He doesn’t mention asking Morgana to kill him, or night upon night of staring dismally out the window. Morgana can’t blame him. She’s always wanted to hide her darkness from Gwen, even if she often fails in the impulse. “I can’t go back to Camelot either, if I’ve lost Arthur’s trust.”
“He’s had his knights looking for you. Do you really think he doesn’t trust you?” Gwen’s mouth tightens. “I had to win his trust back, Merlin, just as he had to win mine.” Her gaze flickers to Morgana. “Do you think you’re any different?” Merlin shakes his head miserably, but he’s wavering, and Morgana is struck by sudden panic that he’s going to walk away with Gwen and without another backward glance and that they’ll have lost their chance for good, this time. She needs Arthur too, all four of them together, or this will be what their life is until they all destroy each other.
Somehow, Merlin understands, and gives her a level look across the distance between them. “I need to think about it,” he says, to both of them, and he looks properly awake, properly Merlin, for the first time since she found him in the woods. “Stay for dinner?”
“Arthur doesn’t know I’m gone, but Gaius has word to tell him where I went if I’m not back by dark,” she says, uncertain. “They’ll come.” She shakes her head. “He’ll come for us.”
Morgana smiles. “Good.”
*
It takes Arthur until midnight to reach her wards. Morgana goes out to meet him.
“You’re late,” she calls, because it’s always been like this between them.
He comes at her, intent on vengeance or information or one of a hundred things. Morgana stands her ground even when he puts his sword to her throat. “Where are they, Morgana? What do you want with them? With me? They were your friends. Even if you want my throne, you can get nothing from them.”
Once, he trusted her more than anyone else. Once, he would have done anything for her. It’s a different sort of loyalty than the kind she had from Morgause, and she finds herself missing it more than she’d expected-they haven’t truly spoken since she took Camelot, so she’s never seen him look at her like this. “I have something to show you,” she says.
“This isn’t the time for games.”
“I know. This way.” She makes a light for them to walk by, a glowing orb Morgause taught her the trick of when she didn’t want to risk flame, and Arthur starts, staring at it as though it’s somehow familiar. Morgana doesn’t ask.
Merlin and Gwen fell asleep waiting for Arthur, and they’re still asleep when she puts her finger to her lips and pushes open the door to her cottage, curled in a weary tangle of limbs on Merlin’s pallet. His face is hidden in Gwen’s hair, and she’s holding tight enough to his tunic that it will wrinkle when they wake. “What have you done to them?” he hisses, fierce, hand at his hilt again.
“Hush. They’re sleeping.” She waves a hand. “Look for yourself, though. No bonds, Merlin is well-fed though he’s been with me for weeks … you hurt him, you know.”
His jaw is set, and he’s almost trembling with the desire to go to them. “I know. You could have them under a sleeping spell. You could be controlling them.”
Gwen stirs, making a sleepy noise and blinking blearily. Within a second, Arthur is across the room and dropping to his knees, grabbing for her hand before she’s truly awake and scattering kisses on her face before turning to Merlin, running his fingers over all the skin he can reach as Merlin yawns his way awake and pressing close to whisper to them both, alternating stroking Gwen’s hair and pressing closer to Merlin. Morgana’s heart lurches when Gwen just gives Arthur and Merlin a sleepy smile as Arthur presses his nose to Merlin’s temple. If they’re all three together, if they’re united, then she’s missed her chance and she’s doomed to this, working against them instead of trying to change things through them.
It’s the startled expression on Merlin’s face as he comes awake that makes her easy again, the way his hand is tentative as it comes up to grip Arthur’s shoulder. “I’m fine, Arthur,” he mumbles when the other man seems unlikely to stop his panicked and ineffectual examination.
There’s a space in the way they’re arranged, a slot next to Merlin where she could curl into him and reach out for the other two easily. Morgana closes her eyes and wonders why it is that certainty deserts her now, when she’s so close. She’s never thought this last part through, though, and her visions don’t show her what happens betweens the gathering and them being together.
“What’s this about, Morgana?” Arthur asks, sounding honestly baffled.
She opens her eyes. Arthur is turned away. Merlin’s looking at her, level and almost challenging. It’s Gwen who reaches out a hand, though, Arthur’s shoulder hiding her expression. “It’s a second chance,” she says.
“Come,” says Merlin, as she said to him weeks ago, and Morgana goes.
*
They just hold each other, at first, and it’s all the apologies they’ll have to spend years making to each other. Morgana slowly breathes out her worry as Arthur keeps a bruise-tight grip on her hip and Gwen reaches across the men to stroke her face.
She isn’t sure who kisses whom first-she thinks it’s Merlin tilting his head to turn and kiss her, though he might have given Gwen a shy kiss first. His mouth is soft and rich with the taste of the meat from the stew they ate earlier, and Morgana gives herself over to the kiss until Arthur’s hand tightens to the point of pain. When she pulls away, Gwen’s eyes are dark as she looks between them and Arthur looks as though he isn’t sure which one of them he wants to be jealous of. Morgana leans across Merlin and catches Arthur’s lip between her teeth. He moves his hands to her face and they kiss until she’s in Merlin’s lap and within Gwen’s reach, when Gwen just tilts Morgana’s head back and kisses her softly, shy. Arthur lunges for Merlin the second his mouth is free.
From there, it’s a tangle of limbs as they all trade touches. Arthur’s the only one they manage to strip entirely, all of them in silent agreement that his mail is far more a hindrance than a help, and later, Morgana remembers it all in flashes like she might one of her visions: laughing, head tossed back, as Merlin kissed her neck. The sight of Arthur and Gwen touching each other reverently, as if they’ve never done it before. Gwen and Merlin giggling before settling into a touch, awkward with each other as everything changes. The way Arthur looked at her dark-eyed and solemn over Gwen’s body as Morgana slid her fingers inside. Merlin’s face when Arthur leaned close and whispered “I’m sure you can find some way to get some oil.”
It’s not like it would have been four years ago, and she wouldn’t change a moment of it.
*
Morgana and Arthur are the last two left awake, with Merlin snuffling softly into Gwen’s hair between them. “I’m not coming back to Camelot,” she whispers.
“What was this, then?”
“Oh, Arthur.” She rolls to her back, too warm to sleep pressed against Merlin’s side. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I don’t have to be either your enemy or a lady of your court, especially the way Camelot remembers me now. And I won’t hide, now. Things have to change.”
Arthur presses his thumb gently against Merlin’s pulse. “They do.” He raises his eyes to hers. “They would have, if you’d just told me.”
“You can’t blame me for being frightened. You’re very much your-our father’s son, sometimes.”
He turns away so she can’t see his face, but she imagines that even for him, the acknowledged heir, the one Uther didn’t betray over and over again, the sentiment is mixed at best. “So what are we to do now, with these changes, if you won’t come?”
“You’ll crown Gwen your queen, just as you would have anyway. You’ll do as you see fit about magic and Merlin, and sometimes the three of you will come to me, or I’ll send word to you.”
“It’s not fair to leave you alone.”
Arthur and his stubborn pride, his insistence on everything having what he deems fair. He’s been the same since they were children. “Maybe, someday when the thought of going back to Camelot doesn’t make my skin crawl, I’ll come back to you. Until then, we’ll take what we can have.”
“You really won’t come?”
“Yet,” says Gwen clearly, no sign of sleep in her voice, and both of them look to her. Her eyes are glittering in the moonlight, and Morgana wants nothing more than to tell her how beautiful she looks but she can’t break the moment.
It’s a large word, and it hangs in the air until Merlin whimpers in his sleep and all three of them turn instantly to look at him, to soothe him until he subsides again, reaching behind him to put one scorching palm on Morgana’s arm. “Yet,” she agrees, voice choked, and Arthur nods like she’s made a promise.