FIC: Shake the Leaves Off the Trees for peskywhistpaw
Title: Shake the Leaves Off the Trees
Author/Artist:
Pairing(s): Gwen/Morgana
Rating: PG
Warnings: kisses, mild lady!angst
Summary: In which Morgana and Gwen take a mental health day. Sort of.
A/N: If I owned this show there would be a lot less subtext and more, you know, text.
Words: ~3250
It's a feast in honor of Camelot's latest guests, the Lady Margaret and her son Corwin. Uther is positively beaming as Margaret keeps making suggestive remarks about how Morgana and Corwin would produce gorgeous spawn and Morgana is gripping her armrests so hard her knuckles have gone white.
Margaret is horrid. And also very, very wealthy. Corwin is as innocuous as somebody with an overblown sense of entitlement and a sword can be. Mostly he's just loud.
Morgana clears her throat and turns to Gwen, who is standing a pace behind her chair. "I'll have more wine." As Gwen moves in to pour more, Morgana grips Gwen's side and pulls her closer. Gwen hovers, mid-pour for a moment.
Morgana whispers, throaty and low and only meant for Gwen: "The Lady looks a little like her lapdop."
Gwen looks up to see Margaret slightly hunched and snuffling at her food. The furry, fidgeting thing in her lap is similarly occupied. Gwen suppresses a snort and covers it with a cough. The gentlewoman next sitting next to Morgana looks offended and Gwen flushes but Morgana smirks and holds on for another moment. Gwen can feel warm, wine-sweet breath on her neck and it makes the whole length of her spine feel electrified. "Though who resembles what is not so clear."
She lets go and Gwen shivers. Morgana's face disfigures into a private, nose-crinkling grimace. It's only for Gwen's benefit, and sometimes it registers that Morgana is maybe a little too good at going from butter-soft to razor-sharp in no time at all.
Uther's attention goes to his ward. He's looks disapproving, though in his case Gwen thinks that what her mum used to tell her when she was little-- how if you made a face for too long it would stick that way-- might just be true.
"Morgana," he chides, "don't you think you've had enough wine?"
The Lady casts the King a devastatingly sweet smile, tilts her head back regally and downs the whole goblet.
*
When Gwen comes the next morning, the sky still bruise-dark, Morgana is awake. She's also half-dressed in clothes Uther will never see. Gwen is fairly certain they used to be Arthur's, before he got taller and started to fill out all his awkward angles.
Morgana hasn't slept, and Gwen knows this. She has rings underneath her eyes.
Gwen's eyebrows stitch with concern. "You're up so early."
"Well, you're always up this early."
But then Morgana's eyes are all apology, because it's a reminder of the difference between them. Gwen gets up early. Gwen's hands are rough and calloused from working all her life and Morgana's are delicate and smooth.
Sometimes Gwen wishes Morgana wasn't so apologetic about it, because then Gwen's instinct is to reassure her. It's cleaner, tidier when royals aren't quite so empathetic.
She pushes back the discomfort with words that fall out faster than she can think about them. "Well, that's how it goes. Things, I mean. Do you want me to braid your hair?"
Morgana bites her lip and nods. "And then, to the training yard?"
Gwen smiles.
*
The cool morning makes them walk faster on their back-way path through the castle to the training yard. It takes them down the servants' corridor, through the kitchen and out a side-entrance. And if the other servants see, they pretend not to. They pretend not to see a lot of things, and in turn the lords and ladies pretend they haven't been seen. But everybody knows where the king's ward is going. They'll talk about it later-- in laundry rooms and in corridors away from the ears of the gentry.
Morgana's half-a-step ahead. It's taken almost the whole two years since Gwen was appointed this station, but they are fluent in the same companionable silence.
They get their hands on practice swords, blunted and somewhat less shiny than the genuine articles.
Morgana wraps her hands around the hilt with a steady grip. "I used to do this with Arthur, you know."
Gwen nods.
"I can't really bully him in coming down here anymore." She smiles when she says it, but there's sadness underneath. As an afterthought: "I barely see him anymore."
Gwen doesn't know how to respond, but she offers a sympathetic purse of her lips. Then she busies herself with picking up swords, testing them. Morgana gives her a curious look.
She explains. "They're sort of off-balance."
Morgana crinkles her nose and laughs. "Sometimes I forget you're a blacksmith's daughter."
Gwen flushes and she doesn't know why. But she finds a sword that isn't horribly off-kilter and they begin.
Morgana lunges, Gwen knocks the blow away. Morgana retreats and finds her balance again.
"I've made some before."
There's a lot of huffing and movement and swishing of swords in-between responses.
"Swords?"
Gwen wipes her brow with her sleeve. "It was after my mum died."
Morgana waits for more.
Gwen readjusts her hold on the hilt. "My dad stopped working for a while. He stopped doing a lot of things. But the orders didn't stop coming in. It was only for a month or so, before he started working again."
They go on like this, neither of them gaining any ground until Morgana stumbles and gets a blunted blow to her shoulder. She hisses and Gwen drops her sword to the ground in alarm.
"My lady?"
"Gwen, I'm fine.
Morgana brushes away Gwen's hands.
"It's getting light. You're supposed to go to breakfast with the guests."
Morgana rolls her eyes, but nods.
They're putting the swords away when Gwen adds hesitantly,"It's your footwork. You fall too heavily on your heels. Put your weight on your toes. You'll be faster."
Morgana gives one of her rare, lovely smiles. "You're sort of amazing, you know?"
Gwen busies herself with the swords.
*
Morgana has been invited (ordered) on a late morning ride with Lord Corwin. Gwen is concerned that the Lady's eyes might just roll out of her head. They are a half hour into the forrest on a safely trodden path and one of Corwin's monologues when suddenly Morgana's eyes narrow very quickly. Her handmaid knows her well enough to know she's made a decision and is going to see it through.
Morgana clears her throat, interrupting Corwin. He looks more surprised than anything else. Gwen thinks he doesn't get interrupted very often.
"My Lord, it's just that… I've heard rumors about your great skill with the crossbow."
He nods. "Well, I have gained a reputation of sorts," he concurs, casting his gaze out to settle on the middle-distance. Gwen coughs to hide her laugh.
Morgana smiles sweetly, but her eyes are something else altogether. "Well, words mean nothing unless they are backed with action."
Corwin squints, working out what she's getting at. She helps him. "Might we have a demonstration?"
Apparent he finds that he can't refuse. He dismounts, offering Morgana a hand down. Gwen slides off on her own.
He points to a distant arm of a tree. "I'm going to hit that branch, over there."
Morgana makes an indifferent hum in her throat. Corwin is immediately annoyed. "Well, what would you have me do?"
Morgana points, all innocence, to the top branch of a tree that Gwen thinks must be too far away to be a plausible target. "That one."
"Well…" He isn't pleased anymore.
Morgana pouts. Corwin never stood a chance.
So he secures his arrow in the bow, makes some adjustments and puts on a little show of preparation that Gwen suspects is not entirely necessary.
After a suitably dramatic pause, he lets it fly.
A stretched out moment later, he shrieks out in a distinctly unlordly manner. "I HIT IT. I HIT IT!" He whirls around to face them, all expectation.
The Lady squints and cranes her neck to look. "I don't think you did."
"IT'S RIGHT--" he remembers his position and drops his voice an octave before continuing, "-- there. It's right there."
The Lady looks dubious. She turns to Gwen and, with large eyes, asks if she can see it.
Gwen makes a show of looking. She can see it, all right. She shakes her head. "I can't."
Corwin is wild-eyed and indignant and looks a bit crazed. "Are you all blind?!"
Morgana innocently suggests that he should go retrieve it. "Our female vision is no match for yours, my Lord."
Corwin purses his lips, clearly fighting to hold in an outburst.
But then Morgana bats her eyelashes and shrugs, the picture of ladylike, well-meaning incompetence. Gwen would snort at the ridiculousness of that image if it wouldn't ruin whatever her Lady is planning. Morgana adds shyly: "If you retrieved it, I should like to keep it as a favor."
So, Corwin is off. After he has mostly disappeared into the distance, Morgana spins to face Gwen with the wickedest smirk her handmaid has ever seen. "Let's go."
And they do.
*
They take a horse. They end up in a tree.
It's Morgana's fault. And they are very, very high up. Morgana has some of the Pendragons' taste for competition (blood) and every branch was a challenge. That she won.
Gwen is huffing just a little and praying that this one is the last branch when suddenly Morgana stiffens and shhhes furiously.
Gwen stills with alarm. Then she hears the cracking of the underbrush and a very un-Corwin-like half-wail of "Lady Morgana? LADY MORGANA?"
Neither of them dare to breathe.
Cormac passes underneath their tree, never once looking up at the pair perched high above him. He finds the horse, which he takes with him. There's a very colorful stream of cursing that provides an undercurrent for his stacattoed hollering. Gwen wonders if his mother has been called that to her face. She rather thinks not.
They wait until his footfalls and voice have faded into nothing before Morgana sucks in a long breath.
Gwen shifts slightly. Her leg is going numb. "Are you sure this is… wise?"
Morgana considers this. "No." She quirks half her mouth humorlessly. "But it's satisfying."
Gwen has to concede.
They begin their descent, Morgana first. Gwen is worried because she has a clear view of each terrifying time Morgana's foot gropes blindly for purchase before she settles on the next branch to drop onto.
"My Lady, are you quite sure this is… "
"Of course! I just--"
And with that comes an almighty crack a branch breaks and Morgana rapidly disappears from Gwen's line of vision.
There's screaming. It's Gwen's, though it takes a moment to recognize it as her own. When reaches ground, descent rushed and sloppy, she falls to Morgana's side.
Morgana is splayed out on the ground, eyes closed, head against an alarming root sticking out of the ground.
"Morgana. Morgana. Are you alright?"
Morgana flutters her eyes open. "No-o," she says reassuringly. She opens her eyes more decisively and reaches back to clutch the back of her head, which now full of twigs and leaves and other things that have no business being in the hair of a king's ward. She hisses at the touch and retracts her hand and Gwen lurches forward with the need to do something.
"I mean, yes. Fine. I'm. Yes. I'm fine." Morgana attempts one of her wide smiles but it's more of a grimace than anything. She looks pale. Well, paler than usual. Gwen viciously brushes through all the thoughts that are flying around in her head to focus on the woman in front of her.
Morgana squeezes her eyes shut for a second before opening one, eyebrow cocked. "Gwen, stop making your worried face."
"I can't!" It comes out more exasperated than Gwen meant it to. There is silence in the aftermath of the exclamation, and then Morgana starts laughing and then Gwen does too and it feels awfully good to laugh.
Morgana is still laughing when Gwen reaches out to cradle both sides of her head to peer into her eyes. Morgana's pupils are different sizes and Gwen's witnessed enough of Camelot's head traumas to know that isn't good.
"I don't think this is quite as amusing as you think."
"Gwen, I think that the things that come out of your mouth surprise even you."
"And you know that I talk too much. I get nervous and-- oh your hands-- "
They are alarming-- her palms are scraped raw and red, skin torn and getting ready to bleed.
"My hands are fine. And I love that about you."
Gwen looks up and Morgana is positively radiating fondness. Gwen flushes. "You've hit your head very hard, I think."
Gwen is inspecting the other woman's (but at the moment she's more overgrown girl than anything)-- hands, holding both in her own with palms upward. "Oh, Gods, what is Uther going to think?"
Morgana, however, has her gaze fixed firmly on Gwen.
"To hell with Uther. And you talk a lot but it's not nonsense. Some people talk endlessly-- like Corwin-- and they don't say anything at all. But you talk and it's none of it is empty."
Gwen can feel the heat from her blush radiating from her chest to behind her ears. She shakes her head furiously. "We're going to have to wash you off."
Morgana turns her until now passive hands over and squeezes Gwen's. "I know a place near here." To the other woman's protestations, Morgana stands herself up shakily and tugs Gwen along.
*
It's a cold stream that is tucked away in a forest clearing. It's much deeper than it looks on first glance and it smells like the first snow that is months away. By the time they've let the stream wash Morgana's abused hands clean they've mostly given up on shoes and stockings and overdresses.
Gwen is just starting to let herself get her racing heart under control when Morgana gives her a wicked smile and casts her gaze to the stream and Gwen can see her shifting her weight forward from the bank towards the water and Gwen's eyes widen and she's shaking her head.
"Morgana, I'm sure you have some kind of concussion. I don't want to be responsible for bringing your lifeless corpse to Ut--"
But it's too late. It's always too late with Morgana.
Really, Gwen has no choice but to follow.
*
There's splashing and Morgana keeps submerging for distressingly long periods and then surfacing expectedly. Gwen is feeling absurdly childish but then Morgana grabs her ankle and yanks her under. Gwen surfaces, spluttering and coughing and then Morgana's behind her and tugging Gwen flush against her and then there's a mouth on Gwen's neck and a tongue that laps up the water there once, twice, and Gwen is paralyzed with the feeling that goes through her whole body. And then Morgana's gone, submerged again and it feels an awful lot like Gwen's heart has failed on her.
*
The afternoon is fading by the time they relocate to the bank. There's still sun enough to dry them. It's warm and lovely. Gwen is propped up on her elbows, eyes half-lidded. She could sleep here, she thinks.
Then an image pops into her mind that makes her laugh so much her elbows give up on her and her stomach aches.
"What?"
Gwen doesn't answer, so Morgana prods her side with a foot. This makes her laugh even more.
Morgana maneuvers herself like a cat over Gwen to straddle her. With a hand braced on either side of her face, Morgana leans in close to ask again. "Tell me what is so funny."
This is all so absurd. It takes Gwen a few gasps to retrieve enough air to answer.
"Did you see... Corwin's face?"
Morgana smirks, deeply satisfied.
She looks positively evil.
Gradually Gwen returns from her giddy high with the dawning awareness of just how close Morgana is. And that isn't funny at all.
Morgana is perched over her, straddling her with a predatory look that is very nearly cold-cruel Pendragon but something entirely new too, electric and dark. Her face is very, very close to Gwen's and Gwen can feel her own pulse behind her ears and can feel how cold Morgana is beneath her slip, cold thighs pressed up against her own.
Everything is poised for something, anything, some shift in the earth they've been standing on for so long. But maybe some treacherous thing flashes across Gwen's face and Morgana reacts to it because for a horrible moment Morgana looks scared and then she's rolled off, lying next to Gwen but not touching her.
Gwen feels like some vital limb she never knew she had has been cut off and her whole body aches from the loss.
*
It's twilight when they begin their return to Camelot. Gwen's frock still isn't all the way dry and without the sun she's shivering. Morgana isn't talking and looks like a condemned woman on the way to her execution. The closer they get, the straighter she holds herself and the more Gwen can feel all the tension in their world flooding back.
Gwen is overcome with the urge to fill the awful, shivery silence with something, find comfort in words that will cover empty spaces. But she can't bring herself to speak.
They're at the castle walls when, before she's conscious of what she's doing, she stops Morgana by hooking her hand in the crook of her elbow.
"I don't want to go back." Morgana says it quietly. And now is one of those times when it dawns on Gwen that Morgana's never had a proper friend, has never learned how to navigate a friendship before. But that hasn't ever stopped her from trying. She's clumsy but she always tries.
Morgana looks younger and hungrier for something nameless than Gwen can ever remember seeing her. And before Gwen's head catches up with the rest of her she's reaching out to cup Morgana's face in her hands.
She exhales, but no words come out. So she closes the distance and brushes her lips against Morgana's.
Morgana inhales shakily and then dives in.
Morgana might be stubborn but she picks things up with terrifying speed when she applies herself.
It's awkward, and they slide until they fit together less awkwardly and Morgana is impatient and insistent and greedy and she backs Gwen into one of the stone walls, a little too roughly. The back of Gwen's head is smarting, but then a pale hand snakes back to cradle it gently and that's why Gwen loves her.
It's Gwen who pulls them apart. Morgana's wild-eyed and poised for more but Gwen just squeezes her hand before leading her back to the castle, Morgana just a few steps behind.
Gwen's grinning. They'll manage.
Author/Artist:
Pairing(s): Gwen/Morgana
Rating: PG
Warnings: kisses, mild lady!angst
Summary: In which Morgana and Gwen take a mental health day. Sort of.
A/N: If I owned this show there would be a lot less subtext and more, you know, text.
Words: ~3250
It's a feast in honor of Camelot's latest guests, the Lady Margaret and her son Corwin. Uther is positively beaming as Margaret keeps making suggestive remarks about how Morgana and Corwin would produce gorgeous spawn and Morgana is gripping her armrests so hard her knuckles have gone white.
Margaret is horrid. And also very, very wealthy. Corwin is as innocuous as somebody with an overblown sense of entitlement and a sword can be. Mostly he's just loud.
Morgana clears her throat and turns to Gwen, who is standing a pace behind her chair. "I'll have more wine." As Gwen moves in to pour more, Morgana grips Gwen's side and pulls her closer. Gwen hovers, mid-pour for a moment.
Morgana whispers, throaty and low and only meant for Gwen: "The Lady looks a little like her lapdop."
Gwen looks up to see Margaret slightly hunched and snuffling at her food. The furry, fidgeting thing in her lap is similarly occupied. Gwen suppresses a snort and covers it with a cough. The gentlewoman next sitting next to Morgana looks offended and Gwen flushes but Morgana smirks and holds on for another moment. Gwen can feel warm, wine-sweet breath on her neck and it makes the whole length of her spine feel electrified. "Though who resembles what is not so clear."
She lets go and Gwen shivers. Morgana's face disfigures into a private, nose-crinkling grimace. It's only for Gwen's benefit, and sometimes it registers that Morgana is maybe a little too good at going from butter-soft to razor-sharp in no time at all.
Uther's attention goes to his ward. He's looks disapproving, though in his case Gwen thinks that what her mum used to tell her when she was little-- how if you made a face for too long it would stick that way-- might just be true.
"Morgana," he chides, "don't you think you've had enough wine?"
The Lady casts the King a devastatingly sweet smile, tilts her head back regally and downs the whole goblet.
*
When Gwen comes the next morning, the sky still bruise-dark, Morgana is awake. She's also half-dressed in clothes Uther will never see. Gwen is fairly certain they used to be Arthur's, before he got taller and started to fill out all his awkward angles.
Morgana hasn't slept, and Gwen knows this. She has rings underneath her eyes.
Gwen's eyebrows stitch with concern. "You're up so early."
"Well, you're always up this early."
But then Morgana's eyes are all apology, because it's a reminder of the difference between them. Gwen gets up early. Gwen's hands are rough and calloused from working all her life and Morgana's are delicate and smooth.
Sometimes Gwen wishes Morgana wasn't so apologetic about it, because then Gwen's instinct is to reassure her. It's cleaner, tidier when royals aren't quite so empathetic.
She pushes back the discomfort with words that fall out faster than she can think about them. "Well, that's how it goes. Things, I mean. Do you want me to braid your hair?"
Morgana bites her lip and nods. "And then, to the training yard?"
Gwen smiles.
*
The cool morning makes them walk faster on their back-way path through the castle to the training yard. It takes them down the servants' corridor, through the kitchen and out a side-entrance. And if the other servants see, they pretend not to. They pretend not to see a lot of things, and in turn the lords and ladies pretend they haven't been seen. But everybody knows where the king's ward is going. They'll talk about it later-- in laundry rooms and in corridors away from the ears of the gentry.
Morgana's half-a-step ahead. It's taken almost the whole two years since Gwen was appointed this station, but they are fluent in the same companionable silence.
They get their hands on practice swords, blunted and somewhat less shiny than the genuine articles.
Morgana wraps her hands around the hilt with a steady grip. "I used to do this with Arthur, you know."
Gwen nods.
"I can't really bully him in coming down here anymore." She smiles when she says it, but there's sadness underneath. As an afterthought: "I barely see him anymore."
Gwen doesn't know how to respond, but she offers a sympathetic purse of her lips. Then she busies herself with picking up swords, testing them. Morgana gives her a curious look.
She explains. "They're sort of off-balance."
Morgana crinkles her nose and laughs. "Sometimes I forget you're a blacksmith's daughter."
Gwen flushes and she doesn't know why. But she finds a sword that isn't horribly off-kilter and they begin.
Morgana lunges, Gwen knocks the blow away. Morgana retreats and finds her balance again.
"I've made some before."
There's a lot of huffing and movement and swishing of swords in-between responses.
"Swords?"
Gwen wipes her brow with her sleeve. "It was after my mum died."
Morgana waits for more.
Gwen readjusts her hold on the hilt. "My dad stopped working for a while. He stopped doing a lot of things. But the orders didn't stop coming in. It was only for a month or so, before he started working again."
They go on like this, neither of them gaining any ground until Morgana stumbles and gets a blunted blow to her shoulder. She hisses and Gwen drops her sword to the ground in alarm.
"My lady?"
"Gwen, I'm fine.
Morgana brushes away Gwen's hands.
"It's getting light. You're supposed to go to breakfast with the guests."
Morgana rolls her eyes, but nods.
They're putting the swords away when Gwen adds hesitantly,"It's your footwork. You fall too heavily on your heels. Put your weight on your toes. You'll be faster."
Morgana gives one of her rare, lovely smiles. "You're sort of amazing, you know?"
Gwen busies herself with the swords.
*
Morgana has been invited (ordered) on a late morning ride with Lord Corwin. Gwen is concerned that the Lady's eyes might just roll out of her head. They are a half hour into the forrest on a safely trodden path and one of Corwin's monologues when suddenly Morgana's eyes narrow very quickly. Her handmaid knows her well enough to know she's made a decision and is going to see it through.
Morgana clears her throat, interrupting Corwin. He looks more surprised than anything else. Gwen thinks he doesn't get interrupted very often.
"My Lord, it's just that… I've heard rumors about your great skill with the crossbow."
He nods. "Well, I have gained a reputation of sorts," he concurs, casting his gaze out to settle on the middle-distance. Gwen coughs to hide her laugh.
Morgana smiles sweetly, but her eyes are something else altogether. "Well, words mean nothing unless they are backed with action."
Corwin squints, working out what she's getting at. She helps him. "Might we have a demonstration?"
Apparent he finds that he can't refuse. He dismounts, offering Morgana a hand down. Gwen slides off on her own.
He points to a distant arm of a tree. "I'm going to hit that branch, over there."
Morgana makes an indifferent hum in her throat. Corwin is immediately annoyed. "Well, what would you have me do?"
Morgana points, all innocence, to the top branch of a tree that Gwen thinks must be too far away to be a plausible target. "That one."
"Well…" He isn't pleased anymore.
Morgana pouts. Corwin never stood a chance.
So he secures his arrow in the bow, makes some adjustments and puts on a little show of preparation that Gwen suspects is not entirely necessary.
After a suitably dramatic pause, he lets it fly.
A stretched out moment later, he shrieks out in a distinctly unlordly manner. "I HIT IT. I HIT IT!" He whirls around to face them, all expectation.
The Lady squints and cranes her neck to look. "I don't think you did."
"IT'S RIGHT--" he remembers his position and drops his voice an octave before continuing, "-- there. It's right there."
The Lady looks dubious. She turns to Gwen and, with large eyes, asks if she can see it.
Gwen makes a show of looking. She can see it, all right. She shakes her head. "I can't."
Corwin is wild-eyed and indignant and looks a bit crazed. "Are you all blind?!"
Morgana innocently suggests that he should go retrieve it. "Our female vision is no match for yours, my Lord."
Corwin purses his lips, clearly fighting to hold in an outburst.
But then Morgana bats her eyelashes and shrugs, the picture of ladylike, well-meaning incompetence. Gwen would snort at the ridiculousness of that image if it wouldn't ruin whatever her Lady is planning. Morgana adds shyly: "If you retrieved it, I should like to keep it as a favor."
So, Corwin is off. After he has mostly disappeared into the distance, Morgana spins to face Gwen with the wickedest smirk her handmaid has ever seen. "Let's go."
And they do.
*
They take a horse. They end up in a tree.
It's Morgana's fault. And they are very, very high up. Morgana has some of the Pendragons' taste for competition (blood) and every branch was a challenge. That she won.
Gwen is huffing just a little and praying that this one is the last branch when suddenly Morgana stiffens and shhhes furiously.
Gwen stills with alarm. Then she hears the cracking of the underbrush and a very un-Corwin-like half-wail of "Lady Morgana? LADY MORGANA?"
Neither of them dare to breathe.
Cormac passes underneath their tree, never once looking up at the pair perched high above him. He finds the horse, which he takes with him. There's a very colorful stream of cursing that provides an undercurrent for his stacattoed hollering. Gwen wonders if his mother has been called that to her face. She rather thinks not.
They wait until his footfalls and voice have faded into nothing before Morgana sucks in a long breath.
Gwen shifts slightly. Her leg is going numb. "Are you sure this is… wise?"
Morgana considers this. "No." She quirks half her mouth humorlessly. "But it's satisfying."
Gwen has to concede.
They begin their descent, Morgana first. Gwen is worried because she has a clear view of each terrifying time Morgana's foot gropes blindly for purchase before she settles on the next branch to drop onto.
"My Lady, are you quite sure this is… "
"Of course! I just--"
And with that comes an almighty crack a branch breaks and Morgana rapidly disappears from Gwen's line of vision.
There's screaming. It's Gwen's, though it takes a moment to recognize it as her own. When reaches ground, descent rushed and sloppy, she falls to Morgana's side.
Morgana is splayed out on the ground, eyes closed, head against an alarming root sticking out of the ground.
"Morgana. Morgana. Are you alright?"
Morgana flutters her eyes open. "No-o," she says reassuringly. She opens her eyes more decisively and reaches back to clutch the back of her head, which now full of twigs and leaves and other things that have no business being in the hair of a king's ward. She hisses at the touch and retracts her hand and Gwen lurches forward with the need to do something.
"I mean, yes. Fine. I'm. Yes. I'm fine." Morgana attempts one of her wide smiles but it's more of a grimace than anything. She looks pale. Well, paler than usual. Gwen viciously brushes through all the thoughts that are flying around in her head to focus on the woman in front of her.
Morgana squeezes her eyes shut for a second before opening one, eyebrow cocked. "Gwen, stop making your worried face."
"I can't!" It comes out more exasperated than Gwen meant it to. There is silence in the aftermath of the exclamation, and then Morgana starts laughing and then Gwen does too and it feels awfully good to laugh.
Morgana is still laughing when Gwen reaches out to cradle both sides of her head to peer into her eyes. Morgana's pupils are different sizes and Gwen's witnessed enough of Camelot's head traumas to know that isn't good.
"I don't think this is quite as amusing as you think."
"Gwen, I think that the things that come out of your mouth surprise even you."
"And you know that I talk too much. I get nervous and-- oh your hands-- "
They are alarming-- her palms are scraped raw and red, skin torn and getting ready to bleed.
"My hands are fine. And I love that about you."
Gwen looks up and Morgana is positively radiating fondness. Gwen flushes. "You've hit your head very hard, I think."
Gwen is inspecting the other woman's (but at the moment she's more overgrown girl than anything)-- hands, holding both in her own with palms upward. "Oh, Gods, what is Uther going to think?"
Morgana, however, has her gaze fixed firmly on Gwen.
"To hell with Uther. And you talk a lot but it's not nonsense. Some people talk endlessly-- like Corwin-- and they don't say anything at all. But you talk and it's none of it is empty."
Gwen can feel the heat from her blush radiating from her chest to behind her ears. She shakes her head furiously. "We're going to have to wash you off."
Morgana turns her until now passive hands over and squeezes Gwen's. "I know a place near here." To the other woman's protestations, Morgana stands herself up shakily and tugs Gwen along.
*
It's a cold stream that is tucked away in a forest clearing. It's much deeper than it looks on first glance and it smells like the first snow that is months away. By the time they've let the stream wash Morgana's abused hands clean they've mostly given up on shoes and stockings and overdresses.
Gwen is just starting to let herself get her racing heart under control when Morgana gives her a wicked smile and casts her gaze to the stream and Gwen can see her shifting her weight forward from the bank towards the water and Gwen's eyes widen and she's shaking her head.
"Morgana, I'm sure you have some kind of concussion. I don't want to be responsible for bringing your lifeless corpse to Ut--"
But it's too late. It's always too late with Morgana.
Really, Gwen has no choice but to follow.
*
There's splashing and Morgana keeps submerging for distressingly long periods and then surfacing expectedly. Gwen is feeling absurdly childish but then Morgana grabs her ankle and yanks her under. Gwen surfaces, spluttering and coughing and then Morgana's behind her and tugging Gwen flush against her and then there's a mouth on Gwen's neck and a tongue that laps up the water there once, twice, and Gwen is paralyzed with the feeling that goes through her whole body. And then Morgana's gone, submerged again and it feels an awful lot like Gwen's heart has failed on her.
*
The afternoon is fading by the time they relocate to the bank. There's still sun enough to dry them. It's warm and lovely. Gwen is propped up on her elbows, eyes half-lidded. She could sleep here, she thinks.
Then an image pops into her mind that makes her laugh so much her elbows give up on her and her stomach aches.
"What?"
Gwen doesn't answer, so Morgana prods her side with a foot. This makes her laugh even more.
Morgana maneuvers herself like a cat over Gwen to straddle her. With a hand braced on either side of her face, Morgana leans in close to ask again. "Tell me what is so funny."
This is all so absurd. It takes Gwen a few gasps to retrieve enough air to answer.
"Did you see... Corwin's face?"
Morgana smirks, deeply satisfied.
She looks positively evil.
Gradually Gwen returns from her giddy high with the dawning awareness of just how close Morgana is. And that isn't funny at all.
Morgana is perched over her, straddling her with a predatory look that is very nearly cold-cruel Pendragon but something entirely new too, electric and dark. Her face is very, very close to Gwen's and Gwen can feel her own pulse behind her ears and can feel how cold Morgana is beneath her slip, cold thighs pressed up against her own.
Everything is poised for something, anything, some shift in the earth they've been standing on for so long. But maybe some treacherous thing flashes across Gwen's face and Morgana reacts to it because for a horrible moment Morgana looks scared and then she's rolled off, lying next to Gwen but not touching her.
Gwen feels like some vital limb she never knew she had has been cut off and her whole body aches from the loss.
*
It's twilight when they begin their return to Camelot. Gwen's frock still isn't all the way dry and without the sun she's shivering. Morgana isn't talking and looks like a condemned woman on the way to her execution. The closer they get, the straighter she holds herself and the more Gwen can feel all the tension in their world flooding back.
Gwen is overcome with the urge to fill the awful, shivery silence with something, find comfort in words that will cover empty spaces. But she can't bring herself to speak.
They're at the castle walls when, before she's conscious of what she's doing, she stops Morgana by hooking her hand in the crook of her elbow.
"I don't want to go back." Morgana says it quietly. And now is one of those times when it dawns on Gwen that Morgana's never had a proper friend, has never learned how to navigate a friendship before. But that hasn't ever stopped her from trying. She's clumsy but she always tries.
Morgana looks younger and hungrier for something nameless than Gwen can ever remember seeing her. And before Gwen's head catches up with the rest of her she's reaching out to cup Morgana's face in her hands.
She exhales, but no words come out. So she closes the distance and brushes her lips against Morgana's.
Morgana inhales shakily and then dives in.
Morgana might be stubborn but she picks things up with terrifying speed when she applies herself.
It's awkward, and they slide until they fit together less awkwardly and Morgana is impatient and insistent and greedy and she backs Gwen into one of the stone walls, a little too roughly. The back of Gwen's head is smarting, but then a pale hand snakes back to cradle it gently and that's why Gwen loves her.
It's Gwen who pulls them apart. Morgana's wild-eyed and poised for more but Gwen just squeezes her hand before leading her back to the castle, Morgana just a few steps behind.
Gwen's grinning. They'll manage.