fic: the world forgetting, by the world forgot - part 7
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
| 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 |
*
|►morgana|
She’s talking to Gwen about web-design and how Gwen should make a website and advertise her jewelry when she sees Arthur come in through the doors of the coffee-shop. She’s about to call him over and ask what brings him here at this hour because she knows Arthur and his first-train home routine and that it takes an extremely good reason for him to step out of it. When the reason follows him inside within mere moments, she nearly spits her caramel latte all over Gwen’s new blazer.
Her first instinct is that it has got to be some sort of hallucination. Maybe caffeine can induce them after all, and maybe if she plays her cards right, she can get a paper or two published out of it. This is, however, very much real. Before she can even begin to process the entirety, not to mention, the near-impossibility of it, she figures her best bet is for them to not see her or Gwen. More particularly, they are not allowed to see her and Gwen, because she can’t think of a single scenario in which that would not lead to a cataclysm of epic proportions.
Gwen has asked her thrice now what’s going on and her only response is a gritted, “Whatever you do, please do not turn around,” because she knows Gwen and knows that Gwen will react.
So, of course, Gwen turns around, and promptly looks back at Morgana as if she has seen a ghost. “Morgana.”
“It’s okay. They’re going to leave. I hope they leave. They have to leave.” This is more for herself than Gwen, and she's aware. She’s also aware that she’s maybe acting slightly hysterical.
“Morgana,” Gwen hisses. “How are they here?” Together, is what Morgana knows her friend wants to, means to, and cannot say.
Morgana is torn between keeping her eye on the pair of them and dodging the risk of accidental eye-contact that’s even more likely to get her noticed. “I’m trying not to think about that bit just yet.”
This is all so surreal that she doesn’t know where to begin. She drains her mug of her drink and when she blinks, she finds Arthur standing over Gwen’s shoulder and making the usual small talk people make when they haven’t seen each other in ages and don’t know where to begin. It’s not quite the cataclysm she’d expected but it makes the word awkward seem like a compliment. It helps that Merlin is nowhere to be seen.
He turns to her eventually. “Morgana.”
“Hello to you too.” She gets up and reaches for Gwen’s arm. “We were just leaving. Gwen?”
Gwen gives her a long look then. “Morgana, hold on. I’m waiting for Merlin. I want to see him. I think he’s in the men’s room.”
“Gwen,” she practically yelps, just as Arthur asks Gwen how she knows him. Gwen, of course, can’t lie to save her life and so she tells him that they went to school together and that they were neighbours once. Traitor, Morgana thinks, but she has to move and fast because the adrenaline kicked in some time ago and if she's not careful, it will make her do something reckless very soon. “Well," she says, decisive, "I have to run.” Giving both Arthur and Gwen a peck high on the cheek, she grabs her coat and makes her way out of what could easily have become her personal purgatory.
*
Although she and Arthur had always made a habit of digging their noses in each other’s business, they had drawn the line at romantic relationships. It was a safe policy of don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to hear about it. Of course, it took Arthur longer to curb his pesky big-brother reflexes and go along with said policy but all in all, it did them good.
Morgana weighs the pros and cons of breaking it now and gives up on the weighing when she sees Arthur’s name on her call display. She thinks it’s better that this happens over the phone. She’s more likely to catch herself that way in case she slips up.
“So,” she says, conversational, once the pleasantries are done with, “I hear you’ve been seeing someone.”
And because Arthur would make the connection even if none existed, she can picture him shaking his head when he says, “Gwen. She told you.”
It’s probably better to let him think that. “Yes, well, they’re friends, and I’m told he’s a pretty great guy.”
“Good to see you’ve gathered your intel already. Yes, he is. Can we please move on now?”
“Touchy,” she says with a laugh. She wants to ask more, wants to know more. Where did you meet? How long has it been? Where did I screw up? Instead it comes out, “Just don’t screw it up.”
“I’m getting the talk? From you? Shouldn’t you be out there threatening him?”
Been there, she thinks. Done that.
________________________________
|◄◄|2003-2004|►|
She doesn’t know how she knows she’d find him here but now that she has, she doesn’t quite care. They used to come to this playground behind the nearest elementary school when they were younger, when Morgana had first started living with the Pendragons.
She’d always felt too old for the swings and the slides but sometimes, in the early evenings, she would sit and watch little kids with their parents while Arthur would wait until it got darker and emptier before making an idiot of himself on the monkey bars. It was the only time and place she'd seen him act like a kid, half his age rather than the double of it. Looking at him now, she can’t think about it for too long for fear of not being able to keep it together.
“You’re going to get mugged,” she says to him, meaning to be stern but it just comes off as weary.
“Nothing for them to mug.” His speech is borderline slurred and if she hadn’t caught that, the smell of alcohol would have given him away.
She should get him up and take him home but she finds herself taking a seat beside him instead.
“I’m sorry,” he says, surprisingly clear. She’s about to ask, whatever the hell for, but he beats her to it. "It was my job to protect you, be there for you, and I screwed that up."
Morgana wants to scoff and ask what he’s on about. He’s been a better big brother than he’s had any right to be. When she’d had her rough patch, it had had nothing to do with him. It was because she’d woken up one morning and both her parents were dead and then she’d been thrown into a new life with people who were more or less strangers. All things considered, Arthur had dealt with it and with her surprisingly well.
"That wasn't your fault," she tells him, because it's important that he knows. "I wouldn't let you."
"Then why should I?" And he says it so easily that it almost sounds like a valid excuse.
"Because,” she says, and something catches in the back of her throat and prickles against her eyelids, “I was wrong, and even though I didn't grant you permission to help me, you were never all that good at listening." Her voice dies down in a whisper because any louder and it will break and that is just not allowed to happen, especially not here and not now.
Arthur's head lolls and ends up on her shoulder and she can feel the gentle rise and fall of him breathing. Even as she thanks every higher power that comes to mind for the solid weight of him here, there is no polite way to put it, that her brother is a wreck. His hair is matted with sweat and he stinks of alcohol and gasoline and himself but she presses a kiss to his forehead without thinking and helps him to his feet. "Give me your keys. You are going home and you will wash and eat and not fall asleep on a park bench. Your father does not earn a monstrous amount of money so his son can look and act homeless."
"I hate that place, Morgana. Every damn thing reminds me of-"
“I know,” she says, “I know.” She won’t do him the disservice of even pretending to misunderstand. "Then you're coming with me but the same rules apply."
"Washing, eating, sleeping,” he mumbles, “got it."
*
And so it begins, his life on her couch, but because Arthur Pendragon is nothing if not endowed with often pigheaded amounts of pride and tenacity, it doesn’t last for very long at all. All she gives him is a push, because that’s all the erasure really is. At first, he is adamantly against it, but they talk about it, for days and days. As they dissect it from every angle that makes him uncomfortable, Morgana can feel his resolve slip. In time, she can feel the arguments lacking any of their initial weight until, one day, he tells her that he’s in.
After, it's like he's brand new.
He finds a better job at a better accounting firm, and she takes him shopping for nicer suits which he makes faces at but eventually complies when she tells him, “Who else is going to give you such excellent fashion advice?”
She helps him find his own place nearby and that’s the one thing-other than his newly discovered taste in impeccable clothing-that she’ll take full credit for. It’s smaller but much nicer than the one he left behind, much as everything she's seen in Brookville tends to be. It’s painted and furnished in blacks and whites and all deep, solid colours, bold to the eyes, like his new wardrobe, like his new life.
When he leaves, she misses his near-constant presence in her home and in her life. That said, she would easily have given up much more than that if it meant watching him pick himself up the way he inevitably does. If Arthur falls grandly, he also rises with just as much grandeur if not more. Perhaps it sounds silly but she knows what they mean now about that mix of love and pride and being so full with it that your heart could burst.
|►►|2004
[ next]
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
| 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 |
*
|►morgana|
She’s talking to Gwen about web-design and how Gwen should make a website and advertise her jewelry when she sees Arthur come in through the doors of the coffee-shop. She’s about to call him over and ask what brings him here at this hour because she knows Arthur and his first-train home routine and that it takes an extremely good reason for him to step out of it. When the reason follows him inside within mere moments, she nearly spits her caramel latte all over Gwen’s new blazer.
Her first instinct is that it has got to be some sort of hallucination. Maybe caffeine can induce them after all, and maybe if she plays her cards right, she can get a paper or two published out of it. This is, however, very much real. Before she can even begin to process the entirety, not to mention, the near-impossibility of it, she figures her best bet is for them to not see her or Gwen. More particularly, they are not allowed to see her and Gwen, because she can’t think of a single scenario in which that would not lead to a cataclysm of epic proportions.
Gwen has asked her thrice now what’s going on and her only response is a gritted, “Whatever you do, please do not turn around,” because she knows Gwen and knows that Gwen will react.
So, of course, Gwen turns around, and promptly looks back at Morgana as if she has seen a ghost. “Morgana.”
“It’s okay. They’re going to leave. I hope they leave. They have to leave.” This is more for herself than Gwen, and she's aware. She’s also aware that she’s maybe acting slightly hysterical.
“Morgana,” Gwen hisses. “How are they here?” Together, is what Morgana knows her friend wants to, means to, and cannot say.
Morgana is torn between keeping her eye on the pair of them and dodging the risk of accidental eye-contact that’s even more likely to get her noticed. “I’m trying not to think about that bit just yet.”
This is all so surreal that she doesn’t know where to begin. She drains her mug of her drink and when she blinks, she finds Arthur standing over Gwen’s shoulder and making the usual small talk people make when they haven’t seen each other in ages and don’t know where to begin. It’s not quite the cataclysm she’d expected but it makes the word awkward seem like a compliment. It helps that Merlin is nowhere to be seen.
He turns to her eventually. “Morgana.”
“Hello to you too.” She gets up and reaches for Gwen’s arm. “We were just leaving. Gwen?”
Gwen gives her a long look then. “Morgana, hold on. I’m waiting for Merlin. I want to see him. I think he’s in the men’s room.”
“Gwen,” she practically yelps, just as Arthur asks Gwen how she knows him. Gwen, of course, can’t lie to save her life and so she tells him that they went to school together and that they were neighbours once. Traitor, Morgana thinks, but she has to move and fast because the adrenaline kicked in some time ago and if she's not careful, it will make her do something reckless very soon. “Well," she says, decisive, "I have to run.” Giving both Arthur and Gwen a peck high on the cheek, she grabs her coat and makes her way out of what could easily have become her personal purgatory.
*
Although she and Arthur had always made a habit of digging their noses in each other’s business, they had drawn the line at romantic relationships. It was a safe policy of don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to hear about it. Of course, it took Arthur longer to curb his pesky big-brother reflexes and go along with said policy but all in all, it did them good.
Morgana weighs the pros and cons of breaking it now and gives up on the weighing when she sees Arthur’s name on her call display. She thinks it’s better that this happens over the phone. She’s more likely to catch herself that way in case she slips up.
“So,” she says, conversational, once the pleasantries are done with, “I hear you’ve been seeing someone.”
And because Arthur would make the connection even if none existed, she can picture him shaking his head when he says, “Gwen. She told you.”
It’s probably better to let him think that. “Yes, well, they’re friends, and I’m told he’s a pretty great guy.”
“Good to see you’ve gathered your intel already. Yes, he is. Can we please move on now?”
“Touchy,” she says with a laugh. She wants to ask more, wants to know more. Where did you meet? How long has it been? Where did I screw up? Instead it comes out, “Just don’t screw it up.”
“I’m getting the talk? From you? Shouldn’t you be out there threatening him?”
Been there, she thinks. Done that.
________________________________
|◄◄|2003-2004|►|
She doesn’t know how she knows she’d find him here but now that she has, she doesn’t quite care. They used to come to this playground behind the nearest elementary school when they were younger, when Morgana had first started living with the Pendragons.
She’d always felt too old for the swings and the slides but sometimes, in the early evenings, she would sit and watch little kids with their parents while Arthur would wait until it got darker and emptier before making an idiot of himself on the monkey bars. It was the only time and place she'd seen him act like a kid, half his age rather than the double of it. Looking at him now, she can’t think about it for too long for fear of not being able to keep it together.
“You’re going to get mugged,” she says to him, meaning to be stern but it just comes off as weary.
“Nothing for them to mug.” His speech is borderline slurred and if she hadn’t caught that, the smell of alcohol would have given him away.
She should get him up and take him home but she finds herself taking a seat beside him instead.
“I’m sorry,” he says, surprisingly clear. She’s about to ask, whatever the hell for, but he beats her to it. "It was my job to protect you, be there for you, and I screwed that up."
Morgana wants to scoff and ask what he’s on about. He’s been a better big brother than he’s had any right to be. When she’d had her rough patch, it had had nothing to do with him. It was because she’d woken up one morning and both her parents were dead and then she’d been thrown into a new life with people who were more or less strangers. All things considered, Arthur had dealt with it and with her surprisingly well.
"That wasn't your fault," she tells him, because it's important that he knows. "I wouldn't let you."
"Then why should I?" And he says it so easily that it almost sounds like a valid excuse.
"Because,” she says, and something catches in the back of her throat and prickles against her eyelids, “I was wrong, and even though I didn't grant you permission to help me, you were never all that good at listening." Her voice dies down in a whisper because any louder and it will break and that is just not allowed to happen, especially not here and not now.
Arthur's head lolls and ends up on her shoulder and she can feel the gentle rise and fall of him breathing. Even as she thanks every higher power that comes to mind for the solid weight of him here, there is no polite way to put it, that her brother is a wreck. His hair is matted with sweat and he stinks of alcohol and gasoline and himself but she presses a kiss to his forehead without thinking and helps him to his feet. "Give me your keys. You are going home and you will wash and eat and not fall asleep on a park bench. Your father does not earn a monstrous amount of money so his son can look and act homeless."
"I hate that place, Morgana. Every damn thing reminds me of-"
“I know,” she says, “I know.” She won’t do him the disservice of even pretending to misunderstand. "Then you're coming with me but the same rules apply."
"Washing, eating, sleeping,” he mumbles, “got it."
*
And so it begins, his life on her couch, but because Arthur Pendragon is nothing if not endowed with often pigheaded amounts of pride and tenacity, it doesn’t last for very long at all. All she gives him is a push, because that’s all the erasure really is. At first, he is adamantly against it, but they talk about it, for days and days. As they dissect it from every angle that makes him uncomfortable, Morgana can feel his resolve slip. In time, she can feel the arguments lacking any of their initial weight until, one day, he tells her that he’s in.
After, it's like he's brand new.
He finds a better job at a better accounting firm, and she takes him shopping for nicer suits which he makes faces at but eventually complies when she tells him, “Who else is going to give you such excellent fashion advice?”
She helps him find his own place nearby and that’s the one thing-other than his newly discovered taste in impeccable clothing-that she’ll take full credit for. It’s smaller but much nicer than the one he left behind, much as everything she's seen in Brookville tends to be. It’s painted and furnished in blacks and whites and all deep, solid colours, bold to the eyes, like his new wardrobe, like his new life.
When he leaves, she misses his near-constant presence in her home and in her life. That said, she would easily have given up much more than that if it meant watching him pick himself up the way he inevitably does. If Arthur falls grandly, he also rises with just as much grandeur if not more. Perhaps it sounds silly but she knows what they mean now about that mix of love and pride and being so full with it that your heart could burst.
|►►|2004
[ next]