fic: the world forgetting, by the world forgot - part 1
title: the world forgetting, by the world forgot
film prompt: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
characters/pairings: merlin, arthur, morgana, gwen (main); merlin/arthur (main); everyone/everyone on the side
rating: pg-13; please see masterpost for notes and warnings
| part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11 | part 12 | part 13 | part 14 | part 15 | part 16 |
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
- Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard
*
|2004|►merlin|
He's pretty sure it's his room, what with the splotches of colours, rows and rows of them that he blinks and recognizes as posters. There should be books, probably, somewhere on the floor and in great stacks. Even if he can't quite remember the date, he remembers something about the library and hefty fines, but the effort required to turn his neck outweighs the desire to find out.
His head's full of something with a texture in between fresh lint from the dryer and newly-picked cotton. His mouth's no better though he tries not to think about that. There's a vague thought of a hospital swimming in the back of his head, the smell of disinfectant and loud footfalls until they became a blur of faces overhead. There's the memory of a searing headache until it starts becoming less and less of a memory and he wills himself to close his eyes and just shut up, please, before promptly returning to the comfortable and familiar oblivion of sleep.
*
The next time he opens his eyes, the room has darkened considerably and the curtains are drawn with a thin crack. Faint early evening light casts a single orange line across the covers just below his chest.
This time, he is not alone. He knows its Gwen even before he catches sight of her. He can practically feel her fretting about the room. She's picking up books, CDs and their jewel cases, without much of an idea of what to do with them, and he figures he may as well speak before he laughs.
"It's evening already?" It comes out as more of a croak than anything but it’s enough to make Gwen appear at his side in a show of superhuman speed. She has her hand on his pillow, then the side of his face, and if it wasn't for the proximity, he might have missed the almost-dent in her smile.
"How are you feeling, sleepyhead?"
Sleepy, he wants to say, but tries to lift his head instead and mumble the million dollar question. "What happened?"
"You really don't remember?"
And he tells her of what he does, which is mostly hazy images of hospital walls and being very heavily sedated. She fills in with the rest, says he had a bit of an accident in the kitchen. Gaius suspected he was attempting to cook because it left an ugly burn, and if that wasn't enough, she adds, "They were worried that you hit your head pretty hard when you fell-"
"I what?"
"You were out cold, Merlin. Gaius found you and had no idea how long," and when Merlin's still looking at her blankly, Gwen adds, "but he said that you should be back to one hundred percent soon enough.”
It doesn’t explain why he can barely sit up straight but Gwen explains the rest. He has apparently been on a diet of Tylenol 3s and when he's about to ask what for, a sharp jolt of pain greets him from his right hand to the joint in his elbow. He inspects the source to find his hand and part of his forearm almost entirely bandaged. The only visible sliver of skin next to his wrist looks halfway cooked. He can only guess how deeply. So yes, he thinks, that might be a part of it.
"Great," is the only word that comes out of his mouth.
There is a great deal more that he knows he should probably ask. For now, he's still only maybe fifty percent here so it's probably not a good idea to push his luck with this mental capacity thing.
The frown buried beneath Gwen's smile is more apparent now even if she seems to be fighting it back tight-lipped. There's something of a wistfulness in it, creeping through even though it's as if she has sworn not to let it.
"Gaius says to give it a week but you know I'm here for as long as you need me." She squeezes his good hand before switching on the bedside lamp and handing him a book. “I’m going to check on dinner. You can kill some time with this.”
*
Most of that week and the next is filled with foggy days interrupted by sleep, the irritating presence of blisters, and the not-so-irritating presence of Gwen, who comes over almost every day. She helps wash his hair and cooks the meals and coddles him all around even when he tries to bat her off because, honestly, it’s not like he got shot.
Gaius cuts down his clinic hours and brings his research home though he still lives mostly in the little corner of the apartment he's fondly dubbed his study. He confirms what Gwen told Merlin earlier about his little accident but his uncle sounds so unperturbed about it all that Merlin figures it must really not have been that big of a deal at the end of the day.
There's a day, after Gwen has fed them and done the dishes and just made her way out, when he catches Gaius looking at him, long and contemplative. Merlin calls him on it but all it really earns him is a shake of the head and a goodnight that sounds far heavier than it has any right to.
Merlin wants to press it then but he remembers what Gwen had said about Gaius finding him after the fact. He sees the lines on his uncle’s face and wonders just how many of them he’s responsible for.
*
When Gaius is about to head off to the clinic one evening, he calls out that Ms. Kendra from down the hall is home and might drop by to look in on Merlin. “She’s wants to make sure that if you need anything-”
Honestly, thinks Merlin. "I'm twenty-five, Gaius. Tell me why I’m not living by myself again?"
"Because last time, that did not work out so well,” and his uncle is quick to add, “you do remember college, don't you?"
"Mostly," Merlin says sheepishly. Admittedly, a lot of it was a haze of liquids and the smoke of things he'd rather not think too hard about. Still, he thinks he had passed as one of the relatively sober ones, and that was probably because Gwen had made a point of keeping him in line.
"That, and the fact that you lack sustainable income. And no, your ongoing fling with that little record store does not count. Do not even get me started on the lack of sustainable common sense." Gaius pulls out his coat and his beaten up backpack that he’s had, Merlin’s pretty sure, since the days of the Dark Ages. "There's dinner in the fridge."
"You're just trying to prove a point now."
"No, I am leaving now. By the way, your mother called. I told her you had a bit of a fall. You know how she gets. You can elaborate however much you feel is appropriate but try not to worry her too much."
"Elaborate how? I don't even know what-" but Gaius is out the door and Merlin's left calling out after air. He groans and knocks a pillow off the couch only to pick it up a moment later. He'd be doing it eventually anyway.
Turns out, he doesn't feel the need to tell his mother much since there really isn't much to tell. Yes, he fell, doing something in the kitchen. Were you cooking, dear? (Probably?) Yes. There was a bit of a cut, a bit of blood, and he may have burned himself a little, and kind of passed out, but no worries, ma. I'm fine now.
In trying to convince her, he starts believing it himself.
*
Still, there are days.
Some edge more on the side of unpleasant than others, and there's a buzzing that comes with them, along with a whole lot else that's difficult to place.
Gwen's been there to wash his hair, hold his hand, change the dressing on the other one, and has spared him the trouble of trying to do things like tie a knot with one hand and his teeth. All things considered, she has been more than great, more than he could ever ask for. Even then-and he hates to think it so he seldom allows himself to do so-she is not here the way he maybe needs her to be, the way he can’t quite ask for because he doesn't know the words. Part of it is that, in spite of all the resilience in her smiles, Gwen's an overly sympathetic thing if he ever saw one. She still looks at her empty fishbowl from seventh grade and tears up so he can't help but wonder if she looks at him and pictures him almost-dead as well.
And then there's Will, who has lived in his building for years now, and been a good friend for even longer, but conversation with him had been awkward and stilted ever since Merlin's been back. It's as if they all think they're going to break him if they speak in full sentences, and these days, more than anything, he wishes they'd quit treating him like glass.
It’s comforting that Gaius, at least, is more or less still his same old, stern but strange local parental figure. He still treats Merlin like he's some idiot-teenager about to get himself run-over, smacks him on the head (though thankfully less so now considering suspected head injuries and all), but also cooks for him and scolds him and loves him as he always has. Only, there is a certain silence to him now. He doesn't lecture unnecessarily and at length the way he used to and he spends a great deal more time in the study. Merlin tries to blame it on the grant deadlines and the clinic hours all ganging up and taking their toll on him but he supposes he can't quite fault Gaius for earning a living so he lets it slide.
*
And then there are the headaches.
Merlin gathers that they are a normal part of having hit your head. Besides, for the most part, they aren’t all that bad.
And then they are.
He brings it up to Gaius and then wishes he hadn’t because the frown the man wears in response is the kind that never sat well with Merlin. It’s two parts concerned and one part upset with a dash of unmistakeable fear. The creases on his forehead are becoming ever-deeper and Merlin wonders if he’s made a mistake.
Merlin wakes up the next morning to a bottle of ibuprofen on his bedside table. Which helps. For a bit.
*
When he steps into the record store for the first time in two weeks, he’s greeted by Freya, who practically tackles him to the ground with a hug and then pulls back in a rush to clasp a hand over her mouth. "Please tell me I didn't hurt you!"
"I'm fine, honest," he gives her a thumbs-up, happy to have his thumb in working order. Looking around, he says, "It's good to be back.”
The store is fairly empty today. Granted, it’s a Sunday. He takes a visual inventory of the place which, of course, looks the same as it always does. Still, there’s something about the air of it that leaves him unable to bite back a smile. It goes beyond the colours and posters, all that sets Lake Records apart from any music store-no, any store, period-that he’s ever been in. It’s the people who own it and run it and it shows. He loves that they love this space, have made an effeort to meticulously put bits of themselves in its design. They've handpicked everything from the basecoat of paint to the art on the walls and the kites and old, decorative vinyl that hang from the ceiling. They've handpicked what they sell and handmade the shelves it sits on and handwritten the labels above and below. Taking it all in makes him almost giddy in the moment, a sudden rush of emotion. He tells himself it's all on account of having been away for a bit.
He points up absently. “Is this new music? I like it."
Freya gives him a funny look. "This is Franz Ferdinand, silly. The album came out a couple months back and you loved it." She shakes her head and laughs, "Wow, you really must have hit your head hard."
"Yeah, I keep hearing that." He also keeps thinking that he should probably be more worried about that.
"You know, mom and I came to the hospital but you were asleep. Everyone said you were going to be okay so that was reassuring," Freya eyes him, leaning against the cash counter. "And, believe me, mom was worried. She would have hated for anything to happen to her favourite salesboy."
Merlin grins because it is completely like Nimueh to make grand exaggerations like that. "You mean, her only salesboy."
They walk and talk on their way to the backroom where the log of new releases is kept. Freya explains how they had a temp till yesterday but she was all kinds of awful with merchandise. They couldn’t blame her though since she only stuck around long enough to cover electronica, soul, and new age properly. “Mom kept comparing her to you and how you picked up this stuff in two days."
"Yeah, well, I did own half of it.”
"And that's not even an exaggeration," Freya smiles, handing him the new inventory log. "Plus, you know how it is with our lovely female clientele. They'd never come here if it were just for the music.”
Merlin rolls his eyes in spite of the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I missed you too," and he means it.
It goes without saying that Gaius and Gwen are his rocks, his family, but it’s been too long since he last left the apartment.
It makes this place feel like oxygen in his lungs after years and years of being underwater.
________________________________
|►gwen|
They’re sitting on the steps of her front porch when he first mentions it.
“Gwen,” he says, eyes on the street and the cars zooming by, “I think I’m forgetting things.”
She swallows hard and asks him, "What kind of things?" and listens steadily as he talks of going through the library books in his room and not remembering how half of them ended.
“It’s strange, Gwen. You know me. If you tell me a title, doesn't matter how long ago I read it, I would always know the ending.”
“Maybe you just didn’t get around to them.” She has no idea how or why but she winces as she feels herself becoming a part of this thing that feels so close to en masse deception. She tries not to think of just how much he might be forgetting (how much he has already forgotten). Gaius had said to play it by ear and had argued that some things were probably better left behind. Gwen had begged to differ but she knew it wasn’t her place to decide and so she’d kept quiet and waited for Merlin to go about it at his own pace. Most of the time, she's still waiting.
“But I know what I've read." He talks of crossing them off a list and his frustration is growing, building the way it tends to when he can’t put his finger on what he knows he should be able to. Her only piece of silent consolation is that there is no way this can last. Merlin is different. Special. It will come back, she tells herself. It has to. And Gwen can't decide if she's dreading it or counting on it, biding her time because it’s the only way to keep her mouth shut and not despise herself entirely.
I’m sorry, she thinks, watching him fidget with the hem of his shirt and the frayed holes in the knees of his jeans. She wants to reach out for him, take his hand, tell him, it’s always the in-between that’s difficult, but that would come too close, be too dangerous.
“After I got back from the hospital, you handed me Slaughterhouse-Five. I know Slaughterhouse-Five inside out. I’ve read it-I don’t remember how many but a lot of times. Why can’t I remember the ending? I’m not losing my mind, am I-”
“Merlin, you’re rambling.” And maybe that’s harsh, a tad unfair even, but she needs him to not panic. “How long have you known me?”
“High school, junior year. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question. And Will?”
“Near the end of college.”
She runs a few more names by him, people he’s barely known or been acquainted with to different degrees. Most, he recognizes. He’s better with the names of those he’s known longer, which is to be expected, but it throws Gwen off that he remembers a substitute teacher in senior year English but not the boy he’d crushed on fiercely from afar throughout freshman year of college.
Very tentatively, she mentions Morgana, and he says, “Yeah, she was your college roommate. Feisty, pretty one, yeah? She moved a while back but you said you still saw her from time to time.”
“Yes, well, she’s quite busy with work these days.” It doesn't do to talk about Morgana, not with him, not anymore. In the same breath, Gwen adds, “And do you remember Arthur?”
Merlin is unnaturally quiet for a moment. When he speaks, Gwen lets out the breath she didn’t know she'd been holding. “The name sounds familiar. A friend of yours?”
“Um, kind of,” she says, and can see it all slotting into place.
“Well, he sort of disappeared off the grid as well,” Gwen not-quite-lies, then runs off other names in quick succession, figures that if it hasn’t stuck by itself then there is no reason that she should make it. “What about Jenna? And Chris? They used to live around here some time ago. They were a really sweet couple.”
Merlin shakes his head and gives her a long look then. “There’s something wrong, Gwen.”
She catches the fear in his eyes, in his voice, and she concedes a little because this is Merlin and she can't possibly not. She reaches for his arm, tangles her fingers in his bracelets, and says softly, “I’m sure it’s just temporary. Short-term effects, y'know? You were hurt but you'll be better soon,” and she hopes to god that this one’s not a lie, doesn’t think she can hold many more of them on her conscience.
________________________________
|►arthur|
It’s been a bizarrely slow week at the firm and he wonders if it’s a sign from the universe telling him to return the army of calls and texts and emails that Morgana flung at him the previous week.
Once he has managed to launch himself onto the Main Line and tucked loose balance sheets into the side of his laptop-bag, he collapses on a seat and rings Morgana. Of course, he thinks, when she doesn’t answer. There would probably be a glitch in the universe if she had picked up the one time he wanted her to. He doesn’t leave a message because it’s Morgana and she’ll catch his missed call in the next five minutes.
*
She calls back three hours later, waking him up from a nap in front of a rerun of Friends. He mumbles something that should be a hello, flips over on his back and blinks against the growing dark. He needs another lamp, possibly something with a sensor, that's smart enough to turn itself on if he’s going to keep sleeping through sunsets.
“You called?” Her voice comes through loud but it crackles with bad reception and too much noise in the background.
“Yeah, I-where are you anyway?”
“Out.”
“Clearly.”
She seems to be stepping out of wherever she was because he can hear her more clearly now. “You can quit being such a big brother and tell me what’s up.”
“I think you wanted to see me last week.” Arthur reaches for the light, any light, and tries to remember how to think while working past the taste of sleep in his mouth. “I finished with a deadline and have no morning audits this week. I thought you'd maybe like to come by and partake in the joys of awful sitcom reruns and takeout Chinese.”
"Because misery loves company and all?” He catches a breath of her chuckle over the line. “Sorry, darling. Can't tonight. I owe Gwen a night out."
"Right, of course. Tell her hi." He’s leaning against the kitchen counter and, outside, it’s starting to rain. "You used to see her a lot more, didn't you?" Absently, he thinks of Gwen and how long it's been since he’s seen her himself.
"I've no idea what you're on about but I'll pass on that you miss her pretty face. Rain check on our date?”
The droplets get heavier outside, patter against his windows, their rhythm quickening. “Right. Sure. Have yourselves a good time.”
He closes his eyes and waits for an image to form. He can picture a lounge somewhere in Lower Manhattan, bad lighting and loud music, but it’s been long enough that the mental image collapses when it comes to Gwen’s face.
*
|►morgana|
They settle in a corner of the lounge, close to a window, where the music isn’t as loud.
“Arthur said hello,” Morgana reports, settlin back into her seat.
Gwen seems distracted by something outside and Morgana remembers why she avoids window seats. It makes it far too easy for everyone in her life to be even more evasive than they normally are. “It’s been a while,” Gwen finally says.
“A year, give or take.” Morgana’s eyes are still on her friend. So far, four men have tried to buy her drinks. All were politely declined but Morgana can’t fault them for trying. Even in this harsh light, Gwen looks gorgeous in a swirl of warm colours but there's something about her that’s a little off tonight, distracted and bordering on preoccupied. Morgana has known her long enough to be able to read it on her face when there's something on her mind but she still hasn’t mastered how to tackle it with crosshair precision.
“It’s nothing,” Gwen says, slight smile and a shake of her head, an answer to an unvoiced question in the air. “I just miss us, you know? All of us.”
And this? This might be the one thing that Morgana has no idea how to approach let alone begin to solve. She has been meaning to ask but didn't know how, not with the knowledge that Gwen is still not over everything that happened a year ago, resulting in the dissolution of all of us. And then there is the knowledge, quiet but certain, that Gwen holds her responsible for most (if not all) of it. Morgana would be lying if she said she regretted it because she would do it all over again in a heartbeat if she had to. Nothing will convince her that it wasn’t a necessary intervention.
Still, Merlin had been her friend once too, even if he probably doesn’t remember it now. She asks what she thinks she ought to have some time ago. “How is he?”
“I don’t know, Morgana.”
But Morgana knows, or knows almost as much as Gaius at least. Even after the man had stopped working with her and Uther, they spoke regularly, and this thing, this accident, and what it had done to Merlin couldn’t not have come up. Gwen doesn’t get it though and Morgana thinks to rephrase it to: all things considered, how are you holding up, but Gwen looks at her then, eyes still and serious.
“He’s worried, Morgana. He remembers some things and not others, and he’s scared. He remembers me, and Gaius and Will and the people he works with. He remembers you. It’s vague, but he does.”
“But not Arthur,” and really, thinks Morgana, at the end of that day, isn’t that what everyone has been walking on eggshells about for months now? Gwen looks uneasy, or whatever counts as uneasy when you put it through a Gwen-shaped filter. It comes across more as a vague sense of disquiet.
“Gaius drilled him a bit and said there seemed to be a pattern.” Morgana is well aware that she sounds more like she's dictating patient history than talking about an old friend; sometimes, it is the easier way of going about it. “It involves recency and intensity, he thinks. The more recent and intense an experience, the greater the lapse in his memory seems to be. It’s a strange kind of,” she tries to find the word, wondering if it could fit, and finds it’s the closest she’s got, “retrograde amnesia almost, one that we’ve never come across before.” She doesn’t need to add that Merlin himself is beyond anything anyone has ever come across before.
Gwen fixes a stray strand of her hair and swirls her drink in her glass. “You and your lovely psychobabble,” and it's hard to know what's going on in her head.
“Occupational hazard,” Morgana shrugs, apologetic. “I just-” she reaches across the table to latch on to Gwen’s fingers. “What I’m trying to say is that, it’s going to be okay. Gaius is glad that Merlin doesn’t have to deal with any of it anymore. Why aren’t you?”
“Because,” and Gwen speaks with her eyes on their hands, careful, as if measuring her words, “in one way or another, I'm losing all my friends.”
Morgana shoots her a funny look, one that Gwen doesn’t look up to catch. “You do realize I’m still sitting across from you, right?” It’s supposed to be light, playful; it comes out as petulant instead.
“I know." Gwen meets her eyes then and the smile on her face isn't right at all. "You’re here, Morgana, but you’re not the same.”
*
She considers calling Arthur after dropping Gwen home. It’s close to midnight and he’s probably up but she then decides against it. Arthur’s had a difficult time being a morning person as it is and can probably do without her nagging him into the late hours of the night.
She knows it's stupid but she can’t help but feel a little bit like crap. Not only did she not manage to see him the one time he was the one to bring it up but the friend she saw instead seemed to be somewhere else altogether.
She gets it. She bore the brunt of what was more or less the same thing in the past year, watching someone she loved fall apart, wholly and totally, and piece himself together again. The only difference was that she’d dragged him by the hand if not pushed him through it because she’d needed Arthur to come out through the other side, for her sake, yes, but mostly for his own.
Morgana never saw the point of carrying excess baggage. It was like an awkwardly dangling vestigial limb, the kind she'd felt everyone was better off without. She’s self-aware enough to know that this mindset is probably another occupational hazard. Arthur had once said, and not entirely jokingly, that her job had come to define her. She'd rolled her eyes and told him it wasn't even nearly as complicated as that.
She works for Uther because she understands why he does what he does and the no-regrets mindset that comes with it. There's nothing more to it.
*
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