Conflict of Interest (14/?) - (Morgana/Nikki)
For Harry, the morning had come far too soon. Being as tall as he was, sleeping on a sofa had been a decidedly uncomfortable experience. He had eventually managed to fall asleep but it had been one of those nights in which you seemed to wake up to see every hour passing by on the clock. Preparing himself for light the like of which his eyes might very well explode at, he opened them a sliver. Hissing in pain, he quickly shut them again firmly as the sun shot red hot pain through his already pounding head. He felt as though he had emptied a bar of alcohol the night before, though he had barely touched a drop and that had only been because Arthur had and Harry was trying to be friendly. Okay, so maybe he had enjoyed the feel of the bourbon - not his drink of choice - spreading through his body and dilating his vessels. This, though, was an unfair retaliation on the part of his body.
Taking another chance, he brought his hand up to shade his eyes and opened then again, gingerly.
Leo’s living room slowly swam into focus as the noise and smell of people in the kitchen having breakfast filtered into his awareness. Coffee, he could smell coffee. Sweet, sweet life giving coffee.
“I did not say that,” he heard Leo protest emphatically down the hall. His denial was followed by laughing and Janet’s assertion that he most definitely had said it, whatever it was.
“I bet you’re full of cheesy chat up lines,” Nikki laughed, giving Harry a clue that they were probably talking about Leo and Janet’s first date. He had already heard the story and Nikki had too, so this was clearly for the benefit of the others. Maybe it was to lighten the mood.
“Oh, he is,” Janet assured with an inflection of affection. She had been good for Leo, really good.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Harry swung his legs over the side of the sofa and pushed onto his feet. His sleep addled brain couldn’t quite recall the route to the kitchen but following the bitter smell of the morning brew was easy enough. He had never read anything in journal about hangovers - not, he maintained, that it was a hangover - affecting the other senses but he knew as well as anyone how painfully keen it seemed to make your light and sound detection.
It was evident from the bustlingly busy dining table that he was the last one to wake up. He felt as though he was at a bed and breakfast and was late to the morning meal, something he had been severely admonished for by scary old ladies in the past. Thankfully, everyone in the kitchen was too young to be truly scary. Well, maybe apart from Leo. And Nikki could be scary enough when she wanted to be. Janet too now he came to think about it.
“Morning Harry, sleep well?” Leo asked brightly, a steaming cafetiere in his hand. He was far too chipper for that early in the morning. “Coffee?”
Not feeling capable of communicating verbally just yet, Harry nodded and rubbed his eyes again. Since when had the sun gotten so bright and the kettle so loud? Toast jumped up from the toaster and added to the chorus of pain.
“The sofa not up to your usual standards?” Nikki teased. Like the others, she was dressed for the new day. She was wearing the top that he really liked, the blue one that she kept in the overnight bag in her boot. It hugged in all the right places and dipped just that bit lower than her usual tops did. Morgana seemed to have noticed too. That was probably why Nikki had chosen it in favour of the overly large jumper she also kept in that bag.
Ignoring the twinge of jealousy he felt, he took the cup Leo was holding out to his and enjoyed the almost painful heat it gave off in his hands. Taking a sip, he sighed. The heat was even better slipping down his throat. “That’s better.”
“Harry is addicted to caffeine,” Nikki said lightly, looking beside her to Morgana who was cradling her own cup of jet black liquid. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite manage to dislike the Irish microbiologist. He supposed it was because they were quite alike when you started thinking about it. They even seemed to share the same heart fluttering longing for Nikki. He could swear that, watching her look at his friend, she was in love with her already.
“Wise man,” Morgana smiled, meeting her eyes. They had an understanding, though they had never talked about it, that they would try to be friends, real friends, for Nikki’s sake. It would be so easy for him to feel jealous of her and for her to feel threatened by him.
Piercing the silence that had settled over the kitchen, a tinny rendition of Für Elise burst from the mobile tucked in Harry’s pocket. He pulled it out and flipped it open. “Hello.” His eyes went unreadably wide. “He is?” A pause. He fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “And you’re sure?” He exhaled deeply and his eyes fell on Morgana. “I’m looking at her.” He snorted. “Yes, I’m sure.” Rolling his eyes, he put his hand to the microphone and asked Morgana, “Are you here?”
“Err... Yes.” She looked confused.
He relayed the message before pausing to get the caller’s answer. “Were you here all night?” he asked Morgana. “Not me asking.”
“Harry, who is it?” Nikki asked, frowning.
“All night,” Morgana confirmed.
“Who is it?” Nikki asked again, clearly dissatisfied that she hadn’t gotten an answer yet.
Ignoring her, Harry brought the phone back to his ear. “Yes, she was here all night.” He pulled it away again. “Can anyone corroborate that?” he asked the room, half heartedly.
“You know I can,” Nikki said, blushing slightly. “Is it Anderson?”
Nodding, Harry went back to the phone. “Dr. Alexander can confirm, is that good enough for you?” He scoffed. “I am not asking her that, you’re just going to have to use your imagination.”
Huffing in annoyance, Nikki got to her feet, snatched the phone from Harry and walked out of the open patio door. “Alright detective, what do you want to know?” She shut the door behind her, muffling her increasingly heated conversation.
“I almost pity him,” Harry quipped. “Almost.”
“What did he say?” Gwen asked. Harry had almost forgotten that she and Arthur were there.
“Emrys is in the country. He’s been here over two months,” Harry said, taking another sip of his quickly cooling coffee.
“It’s him then,” Arthur said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I’ll kill him.”
“No you won’t,” Gwen said, shooting him a look that wouldn’t be out of place on a primary school teacher’s face. “I’ve had enough of police and courts with your sister, I don’t need it from you too.”
“I’d have to make your life hell if you did something so stupid,” Morgana cautioned. Her expression was sufficient for everyone to hear the silent: especially now Gwen’s pregnant.
“Morgana, he killed Dad and set fire to your house. He set you up for murder!” Arthur protested, not raising his voice but lowering the pitch instead. “Do you really expect me to just sit back and do nothing? What if he went after Gwen?”
Harry let the argument fade into the background as he walked to the patio doors. He understood Arthur’s frustration. If anyone tried to hurt Nikki then he would... Well, he didn’t know what he would do, but it would be a good deal more that the law would allow. Frowning, he peered around the garden. It was empty. A low, cold feeling stirred in his stomach.
Taking a steadying breath, he asked. “Leo, does the garden go around the side?”
“No, there’s a wall. Only the corner houses have side gardens. We do have a quite large front one though,” Leo said conversationally.
“All you have out back then, is what you can see from here?” The cold feeling grew.
“Yeah, though there is some communal ground out the back gate. They were supposed to build a children’s playground but the council cut the funding.”
Harry’s eyes went to the gate nestled in the far corner of the ivy covered wall. It was open. The cold feeling solidified into ice.
All at once, before he could say a word, Morgana was at his shoulder, following his eye line to the open gate. She could feel it too, he was certain. Nikki hadn’t just wandered outside the garden.
They shared a scared look before as one pushing open the door and making for the gate at a run.
“Harry, what is it?” Leo called. They didn’t stop.
The land out back may have been communal, but it wasn’t often used, at least not by people who owned lawn mowers. Young bendy trees filled the spaces between the old birches and oaks, making it impossible to see how far back the greenery went. Two paths had been trodden through the land, forking off in opposite directions. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Harry recalled that they were termed desire lines, though that wasn’t important.
They didn’t need to talk to decide that each of them would take a different path.
Morgana went left, taking the less defined of the two paths. She was still running, adrenaline making it easy to sustain her pace as she thundered past bushes and trees. Her eyes shot from side to side, looking for a flash of anything that wasn’t green or brown. The path wound through the overgrown land, twisting and turning with no rhyme or reason. Brambles pulled at her clothes and scratched at her skin, but she felt nothing. Her breath echoed in her ears, slow and ragged. Every sound was louder, every colour dull. It was almost like the word passing by her was a dream, one dream in particular.
The dream was one she had had since she was a child. She was lost, running through the forest in nothing but her white cotton Confirmation dress. Her shoes were gone - she didn’t know where - and the ground beneath her feet was cold and damp. Blood speckled her dress, though whether it was hers or someone else’s she didn’t know. Tears dampened her cheeks as the trees began to thin and she saw sunlight breaking through. But when she broke free of the tree line, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. She was in a graveyard. The headstones around her were old and unkempt. Moss crawled over the worn names, grey and mottled, obscuring them from view. A noise behind her made her start and she jolted back into a run, slipping and faltering on the uneven ground.
Shaking her head, she tried to break through the memory.
“Mummy!” she cried, now following a winding path that climbed steadily uphill. Through an arch she ran, stumbling over loose rocks into ruin of a church. She span on the spot as tumbled down walls loomed around her.
“Hello, Morgana.”
What she saw when she turned made her scream in fear.
The sharp pain of branches slicing across her arm brought her back to the present.
Within minutes she reached the end of the trees and the land opened up into a rolling field that fell away to a log-lined car park that was deserted except for a dark Audi, one that she had seen before. Her mind flashed back to earlier that morning when she hadn’t been able to resist following Nikki out to retrieve the milk. The car had been there then, across the road, she was sure of it.
“Nikki!
~*~
Everything hurt.
Pain pulsed in her leg, her back stung with a hundred thousand pinpricks and her head felt as though it was full to bursting with lead. Taking a shallow breath, she took in the sweet smell of fresh dirt, crumbly and moist under her fingertips.
It was dark, as dark as night was with only a sliver of a new moon to light it. She was slumped against a wall - metal, maybe steel - with a matching one rising no more than four feet away. Above her, the ceiling that matched the walls, though, being closer, she could see that it was painted a somewhat dull yellow.
Another breath and she tried to move her leg. White hot pain flashed behind her eyelids and everything became impossibly blacker.
When she came around again, faint sunlight was filtering in from somewhere above.
“Hey,” Nikki whispered, sat against the opposite wall. Morgana was sure that she hadn’t been there before. “You look terrible.” So did she.
“Thanks,” Morgana croaked. “What happened?”
“Emrys, I think,” Nikki said. “He spoke with an American accent.”
Morgana nodded, closing her eyes again as agony rose within her like a swelling tide. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, not really. Not as much as he’s hurt you,” Nikki said, sounding concerned, guilty, even.
“I’ll be fine,” Morgana lied. Pain radiated through every fibre of her being. She had never felt anything like it. She was most definitely not going to fine any time soon.
“I - I didn’t see what he did to you. Are you-”
“I’m okay,” Morgana insisted. She couldn’t remember what he had done to her, she didn’t know. “A few broken bones, maybe. That’s it.” She heard scuffling and a sharp intake of breath and opened her eyes to see Nikki moving towards her. “What are you doing?” she asked, though she ached to have Nikki nearer.
“Checking you over,” Nikki said resolutely, it was clear that she would not be deterred. She was crouched before Morgana, hands hovering in mid air as if she was afraid to touch her. “What hurts the most?”
“My pride.”
Laughing slightly, Nikki touched her arm gently. “Physically speaking.”
“You should have been more specific,” Morgana joked, quickly losing her smile when a fresh wave of pain washed over her. “Right leg. I think my fibula is broken.”
“Okay,” Nikki decided, “I’ll leave it ‘til last.” She met Morgana’s eyes and smiled sadly. “I’ll be careful, I promise.” Hesitantly, she ran her hands down each arm in turn, moving at the joints and feeling for anything beyond a bruise. Next she skirted over Morgana’s collar bone and down her sides, at which point Morgana yelped in pain. “Alright, alright,” she soothed. “I’m going to keep checking, okay?”
Morgana nodded, her eyes tightly shut and her head back against the wall, bracing herself. “Ah!” she cried a second later when Nikki touched the upper right side of her abdomen. “There,” she gasped.
When Morgana opened her eyes she saw that Nikki’s face had drained of colour and that her eyes were pinched with worry.
“My liver,” Morgana whispered. “Looks like it’ll be the hospital for me when we get out of here.”
“I’m afraid, I think you’re right,” Nikki said. “Oh, Morgana, what did he do to you?”
“Just - Just check my leg. Please. I don’t think I can move without blacking out again.”
“Then I’m not touching it,” Nikki said determinedly. “It isn’t broken the skin. Does it feel tight or tingly?”
“No,” Morgana said. “Nothing like that, just hurts. It doesn’t feel like a compression fracture, not that I’m ever had one before.”
Frustrated that there was nothing she could do whilst they were trapped, Nikki reached forward and brushed the dirt from Morgana’s cheek. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured as Morgana leaned into her touch. It took her breath away how beautiful she looked, even after all that Emrys had done to her. “You shouldn’t have come after me.”
Morgana turned to her sharply, ignoring the pain that she felt at the sudden movement. “Don’t you dare think this is your fault! It’s only because of me that he...”
“Hush, you’re as much an innocent in this as I am,” Nikki insisted. She wanted to kiss her so much, but she was too afraid of hurting her. It was like nothing she had ever felt, loving - and it was loving, seeing her like this she knew that for certain - someone so fragile, so breakable, yet so strong. “You know, it was quite dashing, you coming to my rescue like that. A little stupid perhaps, but dashing all the same.”
“It wasn’t much of a rescue. At least Harry didn’t get himself knocked out and stuffed into a car boot.”
“Yes, well, Harry wouldn’t fit,” Nikki joked. “I mean it Morgana. If you hadn’t... If you hadn’t come then I would have been alone with him. You came after me and because of that you’re the one who has gotten hurt. I don’t know what I can do to thank you for that.”
“Kiss me,” Morgana beseeched.
Nikki’s stomach flipped over with excitement and anticipation and maybe even love. Leaning forward, she kissed her gently, falling deeper into the kiss when Morgana let her mouth fall pliantly open. The kiss was longer and far more intense than Nikki had intended but she couldn’t pull away, not when there was so much of Morgana to fall into and loose herself in. It was like breathing cool air on a scorching day.
“This sounds stupid,” Nikki panted, still so close to her that their noses touched. “I barely know you, but I’ve fallen for you so deeply Morgana Lafferty. This may be the craziest two months of my life and we may have been kidnapped by a crazy American with a grudge against your stepfather, but I love you and I can’t regret a single moment of it.”
“Nikki...”
“It’s okay,” Nikki interrupted. “You don’t have to say it back. I know its way too fast and I’m pretty sure that I’m falling headfirst into some kind of stereotype, but I need you to know that I love you. Whatever happens, I love you.”
With a gently insistent hand to the back of her neck, Morgana pulled her closer and kissed her.”Of course I love you. It may not quite have been ‘love at first sight’ but the moment I saw you in that bar, I knew. You’re so beautiful... and smart, funny, sweet, warm, intelligent, kind and beautiful.”
Nikki laughed, pulling her hand from Morgana’s to wipe away her tears. No one had ever said anything like that to her before, so simple but heartfelt. “I think you’ve done it before, this whole girly-declaration-of-love thing.”
“No,” Morgana said honestly, “I haven’t.”
“I love you,” Nikki said again, cupping Morgana’s cheek.
“I love you too,” Morgana swore.
And for a moment, no matter where they were, Nikki thought her heart might just burst.
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter, you all rock!
Taking another chance, he brought his hand up to shade his eyes and opened then again, gingerly.
Leo’s living room slowly swam into focus as the noise and smell of people in the kitchen having breakfast filtered into his awareness. Coffee, he could smell coffee. Sweet, sweet life giving coffee.
“I did not say that,” he heard Leo protest emphatically down the hall. His denial was followed by laughing and Janet’s assertion that he most definitely had said it, whatever it was.
“I bet you’re full of cheesy chat up lines,” Nikki laughed, giving Harry a clue that they were probably talking about Leo and Janet’s first date. He had already heard the story and Nikki had too, so this was clearly for the benefit of the others. Maybe it was to lighten the mood.
“Oh, he is,” Janet assured with an inflection of affection. She had been good for Leo, really good.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Harry swung his legs over the side of the sofa and pushed onto his feet. His sleep addled brain couldn’t quite recall the route to the kitchen but following the bitter smell of the morning brew was easy enough. He had never read anything in journal about hangovers - not, he maintained, that it was a hangover - affecting the other senses but he knew as well as anyone how painfully keen it seemed to make your light and sound detection.
It was evident from the bustlingly busy dining table that he was the last one to wake up. He felt as though he was at a bed and breakfast and was late to the morning meal, something he had been severely admonished for by scary old ladies in the past. Thankfully, everyone in the kitchen was too young to be truly scary. Well, maybe apart from Leo. And Nikki could be scary enough when she wanted to be. Janet too now he came to think about it.
“Morning Harry, sleep well?” Leo asked brightly, a steaming cafetiere in his hand. He was far too chipper for that early in the morning. “Coffee?”
Not feeling capable of communicating verbally just yet, Harry nodded and rubbed his eyes again. Since when had the sun gotten so bright and the kettle so loud? Toast jumped up from the toaster and added to the chorus of pain.
“The sofa not up to your usual standards?” Nikki teased. Like the others, she was dressed for the new day. She was wearing the top that he really liked, the blue one that she kept in the overnight bag in her boot. It hugged in all the right places and dipped just that bit lower than her usual tops did. Morgana seemed to have noticed too. That was probably why Nikki had chosen it in favour of the overly large jumper she also kept in that bag.
Ignoring the twinge of jealousy he felt, he took the cup Leo was holding out to his and enjoyed the almost painful heat it gave off in his hands. Taking a sip, he sighed. The heat was even better slipping down his throat. “That’s better.”
“Harry is addicted to caffeine,” Nikki said lightly, looking beside her to Morgana who was cradling her own cup of jet black liquid. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite manage to dislike the Irish microbiologist. He supposed it was because they were quite alike when you started thinking about it. They even seemed to share the same heart fluttering longing for Nikki. He could swear that, watching her look at his friend, she was in love with her already.
“Wise man,” Morgana smiled, meeting her eyes. They had an understanding, though they had never talked about it, that they would try to be friends, real friends, for Nikki’s sake. It would be so easy for him to feel jealous of her and for her to feel threatened by him.
Piercing the silence that had settled over the kitchen, a tinny rendition of Für Elise burst from the mobile tucked in Harry’s pocket. He pulled it out and flipped it open. “Hello.” His eyes went unreadably wide. “He is?” A pause. He fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “And you’re sure?” He exhaled deeply and his eyes fell on Morgana. “I’m looking at her.” He snorted. “Yes, I’m sure.” Rolling his eyes, he put his hand to the microphone and asked Morgana, “Are you here?”
“Err... Yes.” She looked confused.
He relayed the message before pausing to get the caller’s answer. “Were you here all night?” he asked Morgana. “Not me asking.”
“Harry, who is it?” Nikki asked, frowning.
“All night,” Morgana confirmed.
“Who is it?” Nikki asked again, clearly dissatisfied that she hadn’t gotten an answer yet.
Ignoring her, Harry brought the phone back to his ear. “Yes, she was here all night.” He pulled it away again. “Can anyone corroborate that?” he asked the room, half heartedly.
“You know I can,” Nikki said, blushing slightly. “Is it Anderson?”
Nodding, Harry went back to the phone. “Dr. Alexander can confirm, is that good enough for you?” He scoffed. “I am not asking her that, you’re just going to have to use your imagination.”
Huffing in annoyance, Nikki got to her feet, snatched the phone from Harry and walked out of the open patio door. “Alright detective, what do you want to know?” She shut the door behind her, muffling her increasingly heated conversation.
“I almost pity him,” Harry quipped. “Almost.”
“What did he say?” Gwen asked. Harry had almost forgotten that she and Arthur were there.
“Emrys is in the country. He’s been here over two months,” Harry said, taking another sip of his quickly cooling coffee.
“It’s him then,” Arthur said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I’ll kill him.”
“No you won’t,” Gwen said, shooting him a look that wouldn’t be out of place on a primary school teacher’s face. “I’ve had enough of police and courts with your sister, I don’t need it from you too.”
“I’d have to make your life hell if you did something so stupid,” Morgana cautioned. Her expression was sufficient for everyone to hear the silent: especially now Gwen’s pregnant.
“Morgana, he killed Dad and set fire to your house. He set you up for murder!” Arthur protested, not raising his voice but lowering the pitch instead. “Do you really expect me to just sit back and do nothing? What if he went after Gwen?”
Harry let the argument fade into the background as he walked to the patio doors. He understood Arthur’s frustration. If anyone tried to hurt Nikki then he would... Well, he didn’t know what he would do, but it would be a good deal more that the law would allow. Frowning, he peered around the garden. It was empty. A low, cold feeling stirred in his stomach.
Taking a steadying breath, he asked. “Leo, does the garden go around the side?”
“No, there’s a wall. Only the corner houses have side gardens. We do have a quite large front one though,” Leo said conversationally.
“All you have out back then, is what you can see from here?” The cold feeling grew.
“Yeah, though there is some communal ground out the back gate. They were supposed to build a children’s playground but the council cut the funding.”
Harry’s eyes went to the gate nestled in the far corner of the ivy covered wall. It was open. The cold feeling solidified into ice.
All at once, before he could say a word, Morgana was at his shoulder, following his eye line to the open gate. She could feel it too, he was certain. Nikki hadn’t just wandered outside the garden.
They shared a scared look before as one pushing open the door and making for the gate at a run.
“Harry, what is it?” Leo called. They didn’t stop.
The land out back may have been communal, but it wasn’t often used, at least not by people who owned lawn mowers. Young bendy trees filled the spaces between the old birches and oaks, making it impossible to see how far back the greenery went. Two paths had been trodden through the land, forking off in opposite directions. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Harry recalled that they were termed desire lines, though that wasn’t important.
They didn’t need to talk to decide that each of them would take a different path.
Morgana went left, taking the less defined of the two paths. She was still running, adrenaline making it easy to sustain her pace as she thundered past bushes and trees. Her eyes shot from side to side, looking for a flash of anything that wasn’t green or brown. The path wound through the overgrown land, twisting and turning with no rhyme or reason. Brambles pulled at her clothes and scratched at her skin, but she felt nothing. Her breath echoed in her ears, slow and ragged. Every sound was louder, every colour dull. It was almost like the word passing by her was a dream, one dream in particular.
The dream was one she had had since she was a child. She was lost, running through the forest in nothing but her white cotton Confirmation dress. Her shoes were gone - she didn’t know where - and the ground beneath her feet was cold and damp. Blood speckled her dress, though whether it was hers or someone else’s she didn’t know. Tears dampened her cheeks as the trees began to thin and she saw sunlight breaking through. But when she broke free of the tree line, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. She was in a graveyard. The headstones around her were old and unkempt. Moss crawled over the worn names, grey and mottled, obscuring them from view. A noise behind her made her start and she jolted back into a run, slipping and faltering on the uneven ground.
Shaking her head, she tried to break through the memory.
“Mummy!” she cried, now following a winding path that climbed steadily uphill. Through an arch she ran, stumbling over loose rocks into ruin of a church. She span on the spot as tumbled down walls loomed around her.
“Hello, Morgana.”
What she saw when she turned made her scream in fear.
The sharp pain of branches slicing across her arm brought her back to the present.
Within minutes she reached the end of the trees and the land opened up into a rolling field that fell away to a log-lined car park that was deserted except for a dark Audi, one that she had seen before. Her mind flashed back to earlier that morning when she hadn’t been able to resist following Nikki out to retrieve the milk. The car had been there then, across the road, she was sure of it.
“Nikki!
~*~
Everything hurt.
Pain pulsed in her leg, her back stung with a hundred thousand pinpricks and her head felt as though it was full to bursting with lead. Taking a shallow breath, she took in the sweet smell of fresh dirt, crumbly and moist under her fingertips.
It was dark, as dark as night was with only a sliver of a new moon to light it. She was slumped against a wall - metal, maybe steel - with a matching one rising no more than four feet away. Above her, the ceiling that matched the walls, though, being closer, she could see that it was painted a somewhat dull yellow.
Another breath and she tried to move her leg. White hot pain flashed behind her eyelids and everything became impossibly blacker.
When she came around again, faint sunlight was filtering in from somewhere above.
“Hey,” Nikki whispered, sat against the opposite wall. Morgana was sure that she hadn’t been there before. “You look terrible.” So did she.
“Thanks,” Morgana croaked. “What happened?”
“Emrys, I think,” Nikki said. “He spoke with an American accent.”
Morgana nodded, closing her eyes again as agony rose within her like a swelling tide. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, not really. Not as much as he’s hurt you,” Nikki said, sounding concerned, guilty, even.
“I’ll be fine,” Morgana lied. Pain radiated through every fibre of her being. She had never felt anything like it. She was most definitely not going to fine any time soon.
“I - I didn’t see what he did to you. Are you-”
“I’m okay,” Morgana insisted. She couldn’t remember what he had done to her, she didn’t know. “A few broken bones, maybe. That’s it.” She heard scuffling and a sharp intake of breath and opened her eyes to see Nikki moving towards her. “What are you doing?” she asked, though she ached to have Nikki nearer.
“Checking you over,” Nikki said resolutely, it was clear that she would not be deterred. She was crouched before Morgana, hands hovering in mid air as if she was afraid to touch her. “What hurts the most?”
“My pride.”
Laughing slightly, Nikki touched her arm gently. “Physically speaking.”
“You should have been more specific,” Morgana joked, quickly losing her smile when a fresh wave of pain washed over her. “Right leg. I think my fibula is broken.”
“Okay,” Nikki decided, “I’ll leave it ‘til last.” She met Morgana’s eyes and smiled sadly. “I’ll be careful, I promise.” Hesitantly, she ran her hands down each arm in turn, moving at the joints and feeling for anything beyond a bruise. Next she skirted over Morgana’s collar bone and down her sides, at which point Morgana yelped in pain. “Alright, alright,” she soothed. “I’m going to keep checking, okay?”
Morgana nodded, her eyes tightly shut and her head back against the wall, bracing herself. “Ah!” she cried a second later when Nikki touched the upper right side of her abdomen. “There,” she gasped.
When Morgana opened her eyes she saw that Nikki’s face had drained of colour and that her eyes were pinched with worry.
“My liver,” Morgana whispered. “Looks like it’ll be the hospital for me when we get out of here.”
“I’m afraid, I think you’re right,” Nikki said. “Oh, Morgana, what did he do to you?”
“Just - Just check my leg. Please. I don’t think I can move without blacking out again.”
“Then I’m not touching it,” Nikki said determinedly. “It isn’t broken the skin. Does it feel tight or tingly?”
“No,” Morgana said. “Nothing like that, just hurts. It doesn’t feel like a compression fracture, not that I’m ever had one before.”
Frustrated that there was nothing she could do whilst they were trapped, Nikki reached forward and brushed the dirt from Morgana’s cheek. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured as Morgana leaned into her touch. It took her breath away how beautiful she looked, even after all that Emrys had done to her. “You shouldn’t have come after me.”
Morgana turned to her sharply, ignoring the pain that she felt at the sudden movement. “Don’t you dare think this is your fault! It’s only because of me that he...”
“Hush, you’re as much an innocent in this as I am,” Nikki insisted. She wanted to kiss her so much, but she was too afraid of hurting her. It was like nothing she had ever felt, loving - and it was loving, seeing her like this she knew that for certain - someone so fragile, so breakable, yet so strong. “You know, it was quite dashing, you coming to my rescue like that. A little stupid perhaps, but dashing all the same.”
“It wasn’t much of a rescue. At least Harry didn’t get himself knocked out and stuffed into a car boot.”
“Yes, well, Harry wouldn’t fit,” Nikki joked. “I mean it Morgana. If you hadn’t... If you hadn’t come then I would have been alone with him. You came after me and because of that you’re the one who has gotten hurt. I don’t know what I can do to thank you for that.”
“Kiss me,” Morgana beseeched.
Nikki’s stomach flipped over with excitement and anticipation and maybe even love. Leaning forward, she kissed her gently, falling deeper into the kiss when Morgana let her mouth fall pliantly open. The kiss was longer and far more intense than Nikki had intended but she couldn’t pull away, not when there was so much of Morgana to fall into and loose herself in. It was like breathing cool air on a scorching day.
“This sounds stupid,” Nikki panted, still so close to her that their noses touched. “I barely know you, but I’ve fallen for you so deeply Morgana Lafferty. This may be the craziest two months of my life and we may have been kidnapped by a crazy American with a grudge against your stepfather, but I love you and I can’t regret a single moment of it.”
“Nikki...”
“It’s okay,” Nikki interrupted. “You don’t have to say it back. I know its way too fast and I’m pretty sure that I’m falling headfirst into some kind of stereotype, but I need you to know that I love you. Whatever happens, I love you.”
With a gently insistent hand to the back of her neck, Morgana pulled her closer and kissed her.”Of course I love you. It may not quite have been ‘love at first sight’ but the moment I saw you in that bar, I knew. You’re so beautiful... and smart, funny, sweet, warm, intelligent, kind and beautiful.”
Nikki laughed, pulling her hand from Morgana’s to wipe away her tears. No one had ever said anything like that to her before, so simple but heartfelt. “I think you’ve done it before, this whole girly-declaration-of-love thing.”
“No,” Morgana said honestly, “I haven’t.”
“I love you,” Nikki said again, cupping Morgana’s cheek.
“I love you too,” Morgana swore.
And for a moment, no matter where they were, Nikki thought her heart might just burst.
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter, you all rock!