Fic: the mood that passes through you
Title: The mood that passes through you
Fandom: Merlin (TV, 2008)
Author: little_giddy
Rating: PG13
Words: ~2000
Prompt: Last of the Mohicans
Pairing: Morgana/Lancelot/Merlin (IDEK, okay?), Arthur/Gwen if you want to see it.
Summary: 1779. Morgana and Gwen travel to find their father in the middle of the British and French armies in the American Revolution. (Apologies for the probable many historical liberties taken.)
*
i. History
The reader may detect an anomaly in the author's inclusion of Miss Morgana Fey in this compilation, filled as it is with accounts of accomplished and distinguished women. To her day and those that followed, Miss Fey was known only as a notorious and cautionary tale. Her end remains unknown, although posterity is content to presume it unpleasant and assume it deserved. Had she but stayed in London, in these isles of safety, temperance and moderation - had she but remained a woman of afternoon tea and dining - had she but married Major Lance Dulac in London, allowing herself to be guided by him in the absence of her noble father- had she but done any of these things, history would never have had cause to remember her name.
(Foreword, Petals of the Rose: Women of Consequence, the author of "VISIONS OF CAMLANN" and "THREE UNRESTRAINED RAVAGES OF THE ISLE OF BRITAIN")
*
ii. Dover
In the brief, contented days on the coast - two years that stretched into an entire epoch of life in her mind - her father would ask daily, when will you return, Morgana? This would be followed by an announcement of supper at an appointed hour, a stern gaze as much for himself as for the daughter he indulged. Her gesture of reply would vary; its implication that the hour of supper would only be held to if the General could be drawn away from his book never did.
Morgana preferred to walk until the sun set or the tide made the beach impassable. The vast swathes of green grass, white cliffs and the indigo of the sea had been such a blessed relief that she had been loathe to be confined to the house a moment sooner than necessary, content to walk and walk until the birds overhead hailed a storm or the tides.
Gwen queries her walks only occasionally, when the weather is particularly vile, and then only to remind her to wear a coat.
Her mother was long gone but her house remained - the traces of her left in dusty golden picture frames and pianoforte melodies handwritten. Her mother's music remained on the sheets, its ink uneven and penmanship hurried, as little in fashion in Morgana's day as her mother's. No restraint, her father had explained with a trace of a smile, running quick fingers up and down the piano keys with only the barest attention to metre. No steady tempo, no discernible point for an orchestra to pick up the key.
Morgana had never learned, preferring the uneven beat of shoes on rocks and feeling the grudgingly contained urge to roam surge in her throat more forcefully whenever she heard proof of its source.
iii. Albany
Four years and an ocean away from the white cliffs, it was unsurprising that the birds again warned her of an oncoming storm and gave her brief moments to remove Gwen and herself from their horses - stay high for advantage, but know it makes you a target - as the warriors ambushed their party.
Later, a dark-haired lieutenant quietly and firmly tugged Lance's rifle from its sighting on the blond stranger who had saved their lives, as far as Morgana could discern from behind the bleeding corpse of the horse from Albany.
The lieutenant retreated behind Lance in a semblance of respect as the blond strode to them, hands tightening around his own rifle.
He paused and rose an eyebrow over his shoulder, pale blue eyes narrowing in irritation at the sight of Morgana's small pistol aimed squarely at the back of his head.
"In case your aim is any better than your judgment," Morgana raised an eyebrow and nodded towards the rifle.
The blond laughed.
iv. the glade
Morgana bit off the retort in her mouth, thinking that it would indeed be a shame if they were to be discovered by the Huron raiding party because she and Pendragon were having a pointless fight in the glade. She shot him one last glare before moving quietly and carefully across the grass and lying down closer to the young lieutenant who never seemed to stray far from Lance's side. He kept his eyes on the tree line, his elbows digging into the grass.
"Emrys?"
He shook himself and blinked at her with shockingly wide blue eyes. Morgana couldn't help but blink back as he looked out ahead.
"We couldn't bury those people - even if Lance would have preferred it. He sees it. He just doesn't like it. He's never been good at accepting the limits of the impossible when it seems wrong to him."
It was a quiet, sympathetic and very slightly prescient remark intended to cut under an argument Morgana had no intention of having with the dark haired man. It was also the height of carefully considered insubordination: Emrys was speaking out of turn about his superior officer to tell her something important without committing the higher impropriety of giving the daughter of a general a scolding. She let out a slow breath.
"How do you find this country, Emrys?" Morgana asked quietly, tilting her head and looking out across the graveyard expanse as curls of low lying fog trailed away from the forest to be carried on the wind along the frontier.
He gave her a sharp, considering glance and returned his eyes to the watch. "Unexpected, Miss Fey."
Morgana felt the corners of her mouth quirk lightly against her will. Emrys had come to her attention in the fight earlier, moving more like one of the attackers than a regimented soldier of the good Empire, all rapidly shifting lines and turns and grace. He'd been a presence in their lives almost as long as Lance but only ever a straight-backed shadow, a runner bringing the message of Lance's redeployment - like a wraith in the tales of her childhood, Morgana had thought on the few occasions she'd given the slight man a thought, disappearing into the background and causing eyes to slip across and away from him in public.
About to reply, Morgana felt rather than heard the Huron near the treeline. They moved silently but the mere change in the composition of the landscape caused her eyes to be pulled to the forest. By her side, Emrys slowly changed his grip on his rifle and held it straight and sighted into the trees. At her other side, Pendragon had taken a similar position, all previous hints of levity gone from his features. The Huron scouts tentatively stepped forward, one pale boot stepping above the fallen tree that marked the end of the forest and into the long grass.
Morgana lowered her head behind the log, needing to move more quickly than would be prudent while her head appeared part of the line, and sighted around until she found Lance and Gwen on Pendragon's other side. Pendragon's adopted brother and father finished the line beyond them, a row of seven parallel bodies lying still and armed on the grass.
The scene had shifted so sharply from one of alert observation to readiness that Gwen hadn't woken - given her sister's exhaustion after the battle and the walk of the day, Morgana was relieved.
Morgana's eyes were pulled to the line in front as the Huron scout stepped forward again, realising that as before, time had seemed to slow around them as her father had always claimed it did in the heat of battle. Both too fast, too slow: was it any wonder they had been drawn to a country both too empty and too full?
"Miss," Emrys called her attention in a voice only just above a whisper - but whispers carry, Morgana remembered her father saying repeatedly. "Do you know how to use that?"
Morgana looked to the small pistol in her hand, the one she couldn't remember drawing from her skirts but must have. She raised her chin and returned her elbows to her position sighting on the first Huron scout - well beyond her pistol's range, but not beyond the rifle braced at Emrys' shoulder. "Yes," she answered, not moving her eyes from the mid-range target and seeing Emrys' eyes follow the same soft-shod steps in the grass as her own.
Emrys didn't answer beyond an almost imperceptible nod.
In the far distance of the forest, a rifle fired, the muffled sound still blasting into the hush of the glade. All three of the Huron scouts turned their heads towards the sound, clutching to their weapons instinctively.
The six froze as a soft moan sounded in the scant shelter behind the log.
Pendragon gave Morgana a look that simultaneously expressed a wish to rend the air with curses and told her that whatever it all was, it was all her fault. He did it quickly enough that it was less than a moment before his rifle had been lowered to the ground and he'd turned, pulling Gwen towards him at the waist as she woke and putting a hand across her mouth.
Had any other man laid such hands on her sister with such unearned familiarity, Lance would have had to wait patiently for a chance at redress while Morgana gutted the man first. However, given the mortal peril of their situation and the undeniable practicality of his actions, Morgana settled for a glare to the back of Pendragon's head that only Lance saw with an enigmatic half-smile before turning back to the sideline and nodding to Emrys, whose body had arched slightly at the hip and the knees to crouch and his hand had gone to the blade at his side. At Morgana's nod, he relaxed and slid his hand back to brace his rifle.
While Pendragon calmed Gwen, shifting his hand from across her mouth to trail fingertips at her temple and bending his mouth to her ear to explain their current disaster-in-progress, Morgana promptly stole his rifle. It had the better range and was the weapon she was better used to - and he wasn't using it.
What she could see of Emrys' mouth behind the length of his rifle curved at that, Morgana cheerily and quickly sighting on the second of the scouts now she had the range to be of use in doing so.
Morgana looked down the line to see Lance looking between her and the imbecile Pendragon himself.
Now that the men were fully exposed in the flat glade, she sighted and focused on the three Huron scouts and frowned. They really were moving abysmally - and torturously - slowly. Now she understood another of her father's battle tales: the knife edge of waiting on a fight. It was a moment of appreciation of how similar they could be, the general and the daughter who was not a son but did not act like a daughter; she hated it as much as she knew he did.
A soft breeze drifted across the glade and set the wooden charms above them to clacking.
The Huron paused, exchanging glances and words she could not have understood if she'd heard their entirety.
After a moment of hesitation, they melted back into the forest as though they were themselves the ghosts Morgana presumed they feared.
"Why did they leave?" Emrys echoed her thoughts, brows coming together in a light frown and eyes focused above her head on Pendragon's head.
"Burial ground." The blond looked over his shoulder, eyes on Morgana's thinner fingers around his rifle. Morgana raised an eyebrow and shot a glance at the hand that lingered on Gwen's forearm. Pendragon smirked and lifted it, eyes on Morgana as he did so.
Gwen looked at him, blushed and moved away. Morgana followed.
*
v. Fort William Henry
Morgana's father's jaw works as he kneels to release the chains around Pendragon's arms. Morgana and Emrys pin him with a glance, one that clearly states that he should not be smug about this.
Lance holds a rifle by the door, standing only just in front of Gwen.
Morgana's father leads them with nods and gestures to a passage to the river away from the burning, falling fort. She watches while Pendragon wordlessly turns the boat on the shore, holding it steady while Gwen and Emrys step on board. She takes the offered wrists and steps on herself, hip braced against Emrys' side as the long boat settles under its new burden.
Then she turns and slaps her hand against the inside of Lance's, tugging and raising her chin. "Not a-"
Lance smiles and nods to Pendragon. Morgana glares and he should know better than to disobey it, but Lance's eyes are on Emrys.
Morgana looks to their father, noting the way he stands slowly from kneeling, talking quietly to Gwen with his chin on her forearm.
"When will you return, Morgana?"
She shakes her head and tightens her hold on Lance's wrist. Her father smiles and braces the flat of his foot against the boat, eyes wide as he kisses her forehead.
"Don't return, Morgana."
v. Kentucky
Six months later and they've heard only scraps of the war. From one half of the finest potential couple in London, Morgana has fallen to a wood cabin on the shore of a small, obscure river, one that winds back and back, dipping in and out of others until it reaches the burnt earth of Fort William Henry.
The four have made a homestead in the valley, repairing an abandoned cabin, erecting screens and building what passes for a kitchen.
They've planted crops and now they wait for the summer to end.
Morgana watches the river from the end of the newly finished log pier, listening to the whoops and cheers and laughter behind; the men are playing some game of Pendragon's people, stripped down to loincloths and split into teams of five. The last of Pendragon's adopted people have joined them, built houses next to them, and after the harvest, Morgana will take the first classes in the school.
Gwen comes to sit by her, bringing the darning she's slowly working through with her and dropping half in her lap.
"More useful than tracing pictures into moving water," she smiles, tracing the back of Morgana's hand with her fingertip. "What were you drawing?"
Morgana shakes her head and shakes the water from her bare toe, leaving her foot hovering above the water.
Gwen doesn't press, only casts an eye over her shoulder and back.
"Pendragon brought no word on his last trip," Morgana says eventually, looking up, "we know what that means."
"And we knew chances were slim when we left them," Gwen answers, nodding. "Would you have said yes?"
Morgana thinks of a garden in a town house in London and then Lance's hesitant, even-voiced proposal in Albany over tea and a lace-edged table cloth, the proposal she'd never answered to affirm or decline. She thinks of Emrys in the glade, lying next to her and as enchanted with the fresh earth beneath the battles as she is and all of the silences and breaths and laughs in between then and now. "It would depend on when I'd answered," Morgana says honestly, shaking her head. "I did love him."
Gwen nods, tying off the end of a thread in a patch before rubbing a circle on the inside of Morgana's paler wrist.
Morgana feels her throat burn steadily as she realises she might have loved Lance, but she'll probably never know in what way. She glances back across to the game, the one that Emrys and Pendragon appear to be winning easily thanks to their smart-mouthed but psychic way of working together. She takes up the other half of the darning with half an eye on them.
vi. History
The integrity of that correspondence which remains for historians to fight over is undisputed. However, having exhausted these papers, recently released by the Kelliwic estate for the first time, we come to the blank spaces between the letters, aborted drafts of historical works and tax records of the estate, reclaimed by the earl in 1805. The historical puzzle of Kelliwic's parents is spoken of only once in the extant documents, in a letter dated 1832 to a gentleman known only as 'Gawain', this version of which was never finished and never sent:
I think the reform acts would amuse her [Kelliwic's mother] in their inadequacy, old friend. How is Paris treating you? I hear the crossing was rougher than expected. [...] I have tried to undertake the project - the only project, to give you your dues - that you have asked of me and cannot complete it. Yes, I know the story - as do you, I might say at this juncture, for we heard it incessantly at your father's knee, as impressed as he was with his part in it - but I cannot in good conscience give it to the public. Their example lies in their ambiguity, old friend. Women whisper her name, half warning, half promise of freedom and travel and new lands and being spoken of with such terrible notoriety as my mother. And I do not think that any still live who would understand my fathers - or yours. What they know is enough - what stories they make are enough. I say we let it be so.
(Introduction to The Private Papers of Mordred of Kelliwic, 2004)
vii.
Morgana stands on the school house steps as the snow drifts across the valley, hand on her stomach and tugging Merlin into a public, uncompromising kiss.
The snow drifts part and a figure made tattered by their lines steps into view, rifle across his back and hair to his shoulders.
Pendragon walks ahead of him, smirk visible even at so many paces.
Lance has found his way back.
Fandom: Merlin (TV, 2008)
Author: little_giddy
Rating: PG13
Words: ~2000
Prompt: Last of the Mohicans
Pairing: Morgana/Lancelot/Merlin (IDEK, okay?), Arthur/Gwen if you want to see it.
Summary: 1779. Morgana and Gwen travel to find their father in the middle of the British and French armies in the American Revolution. (Apologies for the probable many historical liberties taken.)
*
i. History
The reader may detect an anomaly in the author's inclusion of Miss Morgana Fey in this compilation, filled as it is with accounts of accomplished and distinguished women. To her day and those that followed, Miss Fey was known only as a notorious and cautionary tale. Her end remains unknown, although posterity is content to presume it unpleasant and assume it deserved. Had she but stayed in London, in these isles of safety, temperance and moderation - had she but remained a woman of afternoon tea and dining - had she but married Major Lance Dulac in London, allowing herself to be guided by him in the absence of her noble father- had she but done any of these things, history would never have had cause to remember her name.
(Foreword, Petals of the Rose: Women of Consequence, the author of "VISIONS OF CAMLANN" and "THREE UNRESTRAINED RAVAGES OF THE ISLE OF BRITAIN")
*
ii. Dover
In the brief, contented days on the coast - two years that stretched into an entire epoch of life in her mind - her father would ask daily, when will you return, Morgana? This would be followed by an announcement of supper at an appointed hour, a stern gaze as much for himself as for the daughter he indulged. Her gesture of reply would vary; its implication that the hour of supper would only be held to if the General could be drawn away from his book never did.
Morgana preferred to walk until the sun set or the tide made the beach impassable. The vast swathes of green grass, white cliffs and the indigo of the sea had been such a blessed relief that she had been loathe to be confined to the house a moment sooner than necessary, content to walk and walk until the birds overhead hailed a storm or the tides.
Gwen queries her walks only occasionally, when the weather is particularly vile, and then only to remind her to wear a coat.
Her mother was long gone but her house remained - the traces of her left in dusty golden picture frames and pianoforte melodies handwritten. Her mother's music remained on the sheets, its ink uneven and penmanship hurried, as little in fashion in Morgana's day as her mother's. No restraint, her father had explained with a trace of a smile, running quick fingers up and down the piano keys with only the barest attention to metre. No steady tempo, no discernible point for an orchestra to pick up the key.
Morgana had never learned, preferring the uneven beat of shoes on rocks and feeling the grudgingly contained urge to roam surge in her throat more forcefully whenever she heard proof of its source.
iii. Albany
Four years and an ocean away from the white cliffs, it was unsurprising that the birds again warned her of an oncoming storm and gave her brief moments to remove Gwen and herself from their horses - stay high for advantage, but know it makes you a target - as the warriors ambushed their party.
Later, a dark-haired lieutenant quietly and firmly tugged Lance's rifle from its sighting on the blond stranger who had saved their lives, as far as Morgana could discern from behind the bleeding corpse of the horse from Albany.
The lieutenant retreated behind Lance in a semblance of respect as the blond strode to them, hands tightening around his own rifle.
He paused and rose an eyebrow over his shoulder, pale blue eyes narrowing in irritation at the sight of Morgana's small pistol aimed squarely at the back of his head.
"In case your aim is any better than your judgment," Morgana raised an eyebrow and nodded towards the rifle.
The blond laughed.
iv. the glade
Morgana bit off the retort in her mouth, thinking that it would indeed be a shame if they were to be discovered by the Huron raiding party because she and Pendragon were having a pointless fight in the glade. She shot him one last glare before moving quietly and carefully across the grass and lying down closer to the young lieutenant who never seemed to stray far from Lance's side. He kept his eyes on the tree line, his elbows digging into the grass.
"Emrys?"
He shook himself and blinked at her with shockingly wide blue eyes. Morgana couldn't help but blink back as he looked out ahead.
"We couldn't bury those people - even if Lance would have preferred it. He sees it. He just doesn't like it. He's never been good at accepting the limits of the impossible when it seems wrong to him."
It was a quiet, sympathetic and very slightly prescient remark intended to cut under an argument Morgana had no intention of having with the dark haired man. It was also the height of carefully considered insubordination: Emrys was speaking out of turn about his superior officer to tell her something important without committing the higher impropriety of giving the daughter of a general a scolding. She let out a slow breath.
"How do you find this country, Emrys?" Morgana asked quietly, tilting her head and looking out across the graveyard expanse as curls of low lying fog trailed away from the forest to be carried on the wind along the frontier.
He gave her a sharp, considering glance and returned his eyes to the watch. "Unexpected, Miss Fey."
Morgana felt the corners of her mouth quirk lightly against her will. Emrys had come to her attention in the fight earlier, moving more like one of the attackers than a regimented soldier of the good Empire, all rapidly shifting lines and turns and grace. He'd been a presence in their lives almost as long as Lance but only ever a straight-backed shadow, a runner bringing the message of Lance's redeployment - like a wraith in the tales of her childhood, Morgana had thought on the few occasions she'd given the slight man a thought, disappearing into the background and causing eyes to slip across and away from him in public.
About to reply, Morgana felt rather than heard the Huron near the treeline. They moved silently but the mere change in the composition of the landscape caused her eyes to be pulled to the forest. By her side, Emrys slowly changed his grip on his rifle and held it straight and sighted into the trees. At her other side, Pendragon had taken a similar position, all previous hints of levity gone from his features. The Huron scouts tentatively stepped forward, one pale boot stepping above the fallen tree that marked the end of the forest and into the long grass.
Morgana lowered her head behind the log, needing to move more quickly than would be prudent while her head appeared part of the line, and sighted around until she found Lance and Gwen on Pendragon's other side. Pendragon's adopted brother and father finished the line beyond them, a row of seven parallel bodies lying still and armed on the grass.
The scene had shifted so sharply from one of alert observation to readiness that Gwen hadn't woken - given her sister's exhaustion after the battle and the walk of the day, Morgana was relieved.
Morgana's eyes were pulled to the line in front as the Huron scout stepped forward again, realising that as before, time had seemed to slow around them as her father had always claimed it did in the heat of battle. Both too fast, too slow: was it any wonder they had been drawn to a country both too empty and too full?
"Miss," Emrys called her attention in a voice only just above a whisper - but whispers carry, Morgana remembered her father saying repeatedly. "Do you know how to use that?"
Morgana looked to the small pistol in her hand, the one she couldn't remember drawing from her skirts but must have. She raised her chin and returned her elbows to her position sighting on the first Huron scout - well beyond her pistol's range, but not beyond the rifle braced at Emrys' shoulder. "Yes," she answered, not moving her eyes from the mid-range target and seeing Emrys' eyes follow the same soft-shod steps in the grass as her own.
Emrys didn't answer beyond an almost imperceptible nod.
In the far distance of the forest, a rifle fired, the muffled sound still blasting into the hush of the glade. All three of the Huron scouts turned their heads towards the sound, clutching to their weapons instinctively.
The six froze as a soft moan sounded in the scant shelter behind the log.
Pendragon gave Morgana a look that simultaneously expressed a wish to rend the air with curses and told her that whatever it all was, it was all her fault. He did it quickly enough that it was less than a moment before his rifle had been lowered to the ground and he'd turned, pulling Gwen towards him at the waist as she woke and putting a hand across her mouth.
Had any other man laid such hands on her sister with such unearned familiarity, Lance would have had to wait patiently for a chance at redress while Morgana gutted the man first. However, given the mortal peril of their situation and the undeniable practicality of his actions, Morgana settled for a glare to the back of Pendragon's head that only Lance saw with an enigmatic half-smile before turning back to the sideline and nodding to Emrys, whose body had arched slightly at the hip and the knees to crouch and his hand had gone to the blade at his side. At Morgana's nod, he relaxed and slid his hand back to brace his rifle.
While Pendragon calmed Gwen, shifting his hand from across her mouth to trail fingertips at her temple and bending his mouth to her ear to explain their current disaster-in-progress, Morgana promptly stole his rifle. It had the better range and was the weapon she was better used to - and he wasn't using it.
What she could see of Emrys' mouth behind the length of his rifle curved at that, Morgana cheerily and quickly sighting on the second of the scouts now she had the range to be of use in doing so.
Morgana looked down the line to see Lance looking between her and the imbecile Pendragon himself.
Now that the men were fully exposed in the flat glade, she sighted and focused on the three Huron scouts and frowned. They really were moving abysmally - and torturously - slowly. Now she understood another of her father's battle tales: the knife edge of waiting on a fight. It was a moment of appreciation of how similar they could be, the general and the daughter who was not a son but did not act like a daughter; she hated it as much as she knew he did.
A soft breeze drifted across the glade and set the wooden charms above them to clacking.
The Huron paused, exchanging glances and words she could not have understood if she'd heard their entirety.
After a moment of hesitation, they melted back into the forest as though they were themselves the ghosts Morgana presumed they feared.
"Why did they leave?" Emrys echoed her thoughts, brows coming together in a light frown and eyes focused above her head on Pendragon's head.
"Burial ground." The blond looked over his shoulder, eyes on Morgana's thinner fingers around his rifle. Morgana raised an eyebrow and shot a glance at the hand that lingered on Gwen's forearm. Pendragon smirked and lifted it, eyes on Morgana as he did so.
Gwen looked at him, blushed and moved away. Morgana followed.
*
v. Fort William Henry
Morgana's father's jaw works as he kneels to release the chains around Pendragon's arms. Morgana and Emrys pin him with a glance, one that clearly states that he should not be smug about this.
Lance holds a rifle by the door, standing only just in front of Gwen.
Morgana's father leads them with nods and gestures to a passage to the river away from the burning, falling fort. She watches while Pendragon wordlessly turns the boat on the shore, holding it steady while Gwen and Emrys step on board. She takes the offered wrists and steps on herself, hip braced against Emrys' side as the long boat settles under its new burden.
Then she turns and slaps her hand against the inside of Lance's, tugging and raising her chin. "Not a-"
Lance smiles and nods to Pendragon. Morgana glares and he should know better than to disobey it, but Lance's eyes are on Emrys.
Morgana looks to their father, noting the way he stands slowly from kneeling, talking quietly to Gwen with his chin on her forearm.
"When will you return, Morgana?"
She shakes her head and tightens her hold on Lance's wrist. Her father smiles and braces the flat of his foot against the boat, eyes wide as he kisses her forehead.
"Don't return, Morgana."
v. Kentucky
Six months later and they've heard only scraps of the war. From one half of the finest potential couple in London, Morgana has fallen to a wood cabin on the shore of a small, obscure river, one that winds back and back, dipping in and out of others until it reaches the burnt earth of Fort William Henry.
The four have made a homestead in the valley, repairing an abandoned cabin, erecting screens and building what passes for a kitchen.
They've planted crops and now they wait for the summer to end.
Morgana watches the river from the end of the newly finished log pier, listening to the whoops and cheers and laughter behind; the men are playing some game of Pendragon's people, stripped down to loincloths and split into teams of five. The last of Pendragon's adopted people have joined them, built houses next to them, and after the harvest, Morgana will take the first classes in the school.
Gwen comes to sit by her, bringing the darning she's slowly working through with her and dropping half in her lap.
"More useful than tracing pictures into moving water," she smiles, tracing the back of Morgana's hand with her fingertip. "What were you drawing?"
Morgana shakes her head and shakes the water from her bare toe, leaving her foot hovering above the water.
Gwen doesn't press, only casts an eye over her shoulder and back.
"Pendragon brought no word on his last trip," Morgana says eventually, looking up, "we know what that means."
"And we knew chances were slim when we left them," Gwen answers, nodding. "Would you have said yes?"
Morgana thinks of a garden in a town house in London and then Lance's hesitant, even-voiced proposal in Albany over tea and a lace-edged table cloth, the proposal she'd never answered to affirm or decline. She thinks of Emrys in the glade, lying next to her and as enchanted with the fresh earth beneath the battles as she is and all of the silences and breaths and laughs in between then and now. "It would depend on when I'd answered," Morgana says honestly, shaking her head. "I did love him."
Gwen nods, tying off the end of a thread in a patch before rubbing a circle on the inside of Morgana's paler wrist.
Morgana feels her throat burn steadily as she realises she might have loved Lance, but she'll probably never know in what way. She glances back across to the game, the one that Emrys and Pendragon appear to be winning easily thanks to their smart-mouthed but psychic way of working together. She takes up the other half of the darning with half an eye on them.
vi. History
The integrity of that correspondence which remains for historians to fight over is undisputed. However, having exhausted these papers, recently released by the Kelliwic estate for the first time, we come to the blank spaces between the letters, aborted drafts of historical works and tax records of the estate, reclaimed by the earl in 1805. The historical puzzle of Kelliwic's parents is spoken of only once in the extant documents, in a letter dated 1832 to a gentleman known only as 'Gawain', this version of which was never finished and never sent:
I think the reform acts would amuse her [Kelliwic's mother] in their inadequacy, old friend. How is Paris treating you? I hear the crossing was rougher than expected. [...] I have tried to undertake the project - the only project, to give you your dues - that you have asked of me and cannot complete it. Yes, I know the story - as do you, I might say at this juncture, for we heard it incessantly at your father's knee, as impressed as he was with his part in it - but I cannot in good conscience give it to the public. Their example lies in their ambiguity, old friend. Women whisper her name, half warning, half promise of freedom and travel and new lands and being spoken of with such terrible notoriety as my mother. And I do not think that any still live who would understand my fathers - or yours. What they know is enough - what stories they make are enough. I say we let it be so.
(Introduction to The Private Papers of Mordred of Kelliwic, 2004)
vii.
Morgana stands on the school house steps as the snow drifts across the valley, hand on her stomach and tugging Merlin into a public, uncompromising kiss.
The snow drifts part and a figure made tattered by their lines steps into view, rifle across his back and hair to his shoulders.
Pendragon walks ahead of him, smirk visible even at so many paces.
Lance has found his way back.