Scarlet Capes
Title: Scarlet Capes
Author: tudor_rose445
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Arthur, Gwen, ArthurxGwen
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: BBC owns "Merlin".
Summary: Gwen copes with Arthur's absence during war campaigns.
Author’s notes: This was a prompt from my tumblr where withkissesfour asked for an ArthurxGwen involving capes.
She knew it sounded silly, but she normally slept beside one of his capes when he went off to war.
As Guinevere was queen no one could outright judge her upon her actions, yet she had caught quite a few of the elder women in her service giving her sympathetic glances over her wanting of Arthur. Then there were the maidens that made up her ladies-in-waiting who looked rather confused when making up her bed in the morning to find the king’s scarlet cloak among the bedsheets.
Those young girls didn’t understand how it felt to sleep alone after having nights and nights of your beloved beside you. More than once during such campaigns she found herself reaching across the bed in the middle of the night, searching for his warm body to cling to. It always sent an icy jolt down her spine when she realized in her sleep induced haze that he was not there.
After his second trip to implement justice she withdrew one of his cloaks from his clothes press and placed it on his side of the bed. It helped, at night, when she became disoriented as to where he was to clutch at the fabric. To breathe in his scent. To have something to hold when she pictured terrible scenarios where Merlin’s magic was not enough to save him.
She was rather defensive of what others thought about her habit, despite the fact that no one had commented upon it.
Except Arthur.
He had called her silly when he had first discovered the cloth in his bed. Yet somehow the cloak always made it back into their bed when he was gone, placed not by her but by the king himself.