fic: the world forgetting, by the world forgot - part 16
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 | masterpost |
*
|►morgana|
She was born self-aware and Gwen and Arthur had, over the course of their lives, honed her into her sharp-tongued, perfect-postured self. They made sure she kept her head high and her spine of stainless-steel. She likes to think she is a strong woman but she does not harbour any delusions of invincibility. She knows deep down what can break her because she has had her share of suffering. Occasionally, she finds it strangely liberating because, this way, there is little to fear.
She thinks about her own experience, with disasters, with erasures, and decides that these things do not ever leave. They make us who we are. And she can’t help but feel that Merlin and Arthur knew, maybe not superficially, but a small, secret part of them must have known where and how to find each other. It’s almost like instinct. She'd stayed away from the things that would hurt her for all the years after her erasure, stayed away from men and sex and pregnancy and anything to do with it. And all the while, she had found herself aching, sitting outside schools or parks, watching mothers with strollers or boys and girls in their arms, by their sides, holding hands, and she'd found herself longing for a feeling she could not name, never knowing why. She’d thought it was because she missed her parents; it had seemed like reason enough for the unwarranted emotion, never mind that it was years too late.
And sometimes, she wonders how Uther might have managed it, sitting through the collapse of the lives of both his children, one life-shattering mental breakdown apiece, all on top of the death of the love of his life.
She has only ever had good intentions and, as much as she hates to admit it, she and Uther are very much alike. She knows the road to hell almost intimately. She has paced and done circles on it, hands on her stomach, feeling hollow and guilty like she failed someone who never had a chance of his own.
She has walked inside other people’s heads and hearts as they let her in through their voices and their letters and their recollections. They handed everything over to her and asked her to press a button to cure them of it all. It had been easy, pulling the trigger on their past lives. They’d asked for it and she was helping them, healing them, saving them.
She knows it well, the path, and where it leads.
She only realizes now that the memories were a temporary loan of sorts, the kind that her clients had no room in their heads for at the time, and so they had been left in her care for safekeeping. Now, she knows, she owes them back.
*
When she gives her two weeks notice to Uther, he surprises her with news of his own.
He tells her he’s retiring and it’s her call now. “You can stay and run it how you like or you can leave and I’ll shut it down.” She thinks to ask what brought this upon but doesn’t want to run the risk of questioning it, changing it. “If you choose to keep it running, I have a suggestion that you can feel free to use or discard.”
She takes it.
________________________________
|►merlin|
He’s at the record store and there must be some raincloud vibe he’s giving off because Freya does that thing where she’s trying to cheer him up without making it obvious.
"I saw Maria the other day," she says, "with her real Uncle.” And Merlin had been wondering what had happened to that girl. “He bought her the Franz Ferdinand. I thought that would give her a few more points in your book. She also said hello, said she missed the guy who should have been the magician's assistant for her Uncle Arthur.”
He laughs softly at that even if it's difficult right now to not be overcome with everything that's changed since then.
*
This time, they go to the Charles, and Merlin wants to add, for real. He knows it was real before, has photographic evidence to prove it, but Arthur doesn’t remember and so it doesn’t count.
He doesn’t quite know what he’s doing either, dragging Arthur to these places that he barely remembers. He thinks if he can attach the person and the place, put the two together, he can fix something, or, at the least, extricate the good parts from the madness.
(It will take time but he thinks that maybe they could get there.)
And maybe there is something about the Charles after all because Arthur asks why there are no cracks, and Merlin wonders aloud, “You remember the cracks?”
“There were always cracks.”
“So tell me.” It shouldn’t matter as much as it does but he asks because he needs to know. “How much do you remember?”
“I don’t know. Bits and pieces. Morgana said it would be a while, and even then,” he shoots an apologetic look Merlin's way, “no guarantees.”
Merlin eyes him carefully. “Do you remember when we met?”
Arthur laughs, and it’s a warm, assuring sound. “The first time? You were paying attention to everything but me.”
“I was listening to New Radicals,” And Merlin can’t fight off the grin if he tried. “They used to be the cool thing back then.”
“And reading,” Arthur adds, “on Gwen’s bed. Your junior year. My senior.”
“What were you thinking?” Merlin inches forward, and his hand reaches for the lapel of Arthur’s coat before he can stop it. He pulls them closer, huddling to keep the warmth in.
It’s one of those questions that can go so far back that it becomes all-encompassing. What were you thinking, falling for someone like me? Throwing it away? Wanting it back after everything? What were you thinking, Arthur? Were you even thinking?
“That you were so strange.” Arthur tilts his head, and they’re at angles to each other, the space between them like the air before and after a kiss; there's something of a gravity about it on its own.
“And what are you thinking now?” Merlin asks, because he can.
“I am thinking,” says Arthur, so quiet that it's hard to hear, “if there is any way to keep this.”
When it comes down to it, there is nothing specific about any of this, the here or the now, that makes up Merlin's mind. What it amounts to is that this is what it is, who he is, who they are. It can’t be imagined any other way, and if it can, Merlin wants nothing to do with that reality.
“There might be,” Merlin says, but this time, he has an ultimatum. “You'll need to sign a contract though. I don’t appreciate being erased. So no matter how hard it gets," or how badly it ends, he thinks, if or when it does, "you have to promise me that you will try to remember. Remember me," Merlin holds out his little finger, “and remember us. Can you do that?”
"Yes sir," and Arthur's words are warm, warmer than his lips against the pad of Merlin's little finger.
________________________________
|►gwen|
It comes entirely out of left field over lunch at a new Greek restaurant that recently opened near Morgana’s place.
“So I’m taking over Camelot,” Morgana says.
Gwen has to stop and make sure she’s heard it right. “Uther’s Camelot?”
“Yes, only that now it will be run my way. It’s going to be a grief counselling centre, with real therapy. No more of this forgetting what you can’t deal with. And here's the punchline: Uther suggested it.” Gwen was not expecting that at all.
Morgana goes on about how she has some staff in mind and she thinks she’ll ask Gaius if he wants to return to conducting assessments. Watching her as she gets excited about this is a joy of its own kind.
“I have another piece of news,” and this, Morgana says more tentatively, and she reaches across the table for Gwen’s hand as she does. “This is the first time I’m saying it out loud. You’re the first one I've told. I was thinking...I want to go talk to my doctor. Just to, you know, talk about my options. I think," she hesitates, "I think I want to try again.”
“Morgana,” Gwen sighs, feeling something sink and it's not long before she can tell it’s her own heart dropping in her chest and all on Morgana’s behalf. “Have you thought this through? I think you know that it’s not something you want to rush into, not on a whim.”
Morgana shrugs and her laugh is nervous, so foreign on her face. “I know it’s hard to explain, I do. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and this is not me being my crazy, obsessive self. It just feels right, Gwen. I wanted to know if you'd like to come with me.”
Gwen crosses over to Morgana’s side of the table, squeezes in beside her in the booth, and takes her hand. “Do you really need to ask?” And Morgana shakes her head.
Gwen thinks of how lucky they are. It’s a cold day in December and they can hardly feel it; they have each other and all the warmth in the world. Together, they watch the people from their window-seat in the little Greek restaurant and it’s like watching the world turn, but always mindful of the other from the corner of your eye.
I've got you, Gwen says with a look, and Morgana smiles, weaving their fingers together.
________________________________
|►►|December 31, 2004 - January 1, 2005|►all|
In the end, they decide to call it a beginning.
They sit together for the first time (but really, if they were keeping track, they’ve probably lost count). They start as fresh as they can with the past a faded watermark. Of course, the memories are still there, somewhere and everywhere, and they are marked by them in ways that they can’t ignore.
In time, they find, they don’t have to.
*
♫ | end
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 | masterpost |
*
|►morgana|
She was born self-aware and Gwen and Arthur had, over the course of their lives, honed her into her sharp-tongued, perfect-postured self. They made sure she kept her head high and her spine of stainless-steel. She likes to think she is a strong woman but she does not harbour any delusions of invincibility. She knows deep down what can break her because she has had her share of suffering. Occasionally, she finds it strangely liberating because, this way, there is little to fear.
She thinks about her own experience, with disasters, with erasures, and decides that these things do not ever leave. They make us who we are. And she can’t help but feel that Merlin and Arthur knew, maybe not superficially, but a small, secret part of them must have known where and how to find each other. It’s almost like instinct. She'd stayed away from the things that would hurt her for all the years after her erasure, stayed away from men and sex and pregnancy and anything to do with it. And all the while, she had found herself aching, sitting outside schools or parks, watching mothers with strollers or boys and girls in their arms, by their sides, holding hands, and she'd found herself longing for a feeling she could not name, never knowing why. She’d thought it was because she missed her parents; it had seemed like reason enough for the unwarranted emotion, never mind that it was years too late.
And sometimes, she wonders how Uther might have managed it, sitting through the collapse of the lives of both his children, one life-shattering mental breakdown apiece, all on top of the death of the love of his life.
She has only ever had good intentions and, as much as she hates to admit it, she and Uther are very much alike. She knows the road to hell almost intimately. She has paced and done circles on it, hands on her stomach, feeling hollow and guilty like she failed someone who never had a chance of his own.
She has walked inside other people’s heads and hearts as they let her in through their voices and their letters and their recollections. They handed everything over to her and asked her to press a button to cure them of it all. It had been easy, pulling the trigger on their past lives. They’d asked for it and she was helping them, healing them, saving them.
She knows it well, the path, and where it leads.
She only realizes now that the memories were a temporary loan of sorts, the kind that her clients had no room in their heads for at the time, and so they had been left in her care for safekeeping. Now, she knows, she owes them back.
*
When she gives her two weeks notice to Uther, he surprises her with news of his own.
He tells her he’s retiring and it’s her call now. “You can stay and run it how you like or you can leave and I’ll shut it down.” She thinks to ask what brought this upon but doesn’t want to run the risk of questioning it, changing it. “If you choose to keep it running, I have a suggestion that you can feel free to use or discard.”
She takes it.
________________________________
|►merlin|
He’s at the record store and there must be some raincloud vibe he’s giving off because Freya does that thing where she’s trying to cheer him up without making it obvious.
"I saw Maria the other day," she says, "with her real Uncle.” And Merlin had been wondering what had happened to that girl. “He bought her the Franz Ferdinand. I thought that would give her a few more points in your book. She also said hello, said she missed the guy who should have been the magician's assistant for her Uncle Arthur.”
He laughs softly at that even if it's difficult right now to not be overcome with everything that's changed since then.
*
This time, they go to the Charles, and Merlin wants to add, for real. He knows it was real before, has photographic evidence to prove it, but Arthur doesn’t remember and so it doesn’t count.
He doesn’t quite know what he’s doing either, dragging Arthur to these places that he barely remembers. He thinks if he can attach the person and the place, put the two together, he can fix something, or, at the least, extricate the good parts from the madness.
(It will take time but he thinks that maybe they could get there.)
And maybe there is something about the Charles after all because Arthur asks why there are no cracks, and Merlin wonders aloud, “You remember the cracks?”
“There were always cracks.”
“So tell me.” It shouldn’t matter as much as it does but he asks because he needs to know. “How much do you remember?”
“I don’t know. Bits and pieces. Morgana said it would be a while, and even then,” he shoots an apologetic look Merlin's way, “no guarantees.”
Merlin eyes him carefully. “Do you remember when we met?”
Arthur laughs, and it’s a warm, assuring sound. “The first time? You were paying attention to everything but me.”
“I was listening to New Radicals,” And Merlin can’t fight off the grin if he tried. “They used to be the cool thing back then.”
“And reading,” Arthur adds, “on Gwen’s bed. Your junior year. My senior.”
“What were you thinking?” Merlin inches forward, and his hand reaches for the lapel of Arthur’s coat before he can stop it. He pulls them closer, huddling to keep the warmth in.
It’s one of those questions that can go so far back that it becomes all-encompassing. What were you thinking, falling for someone like me? Throwing it away? Wanting it back after everything? What were you thinking, Arthur? Were you even thinking?
“That you were so strange.” Arthur tilts his head, and they’re at angles to each other, the space between them like the air before and after a kiss; there's something of a gravity about it on its own.
“And what are you thinking now?” Merlin asks, because he can.
“I am thinking,” says Arthur, so quiet that it's hard to hear, “if there is any way to keep this.”
When it comes down to it, there is nothing specific about any of this, the here or the now, that makes up Merlin's mind. What it amounts to is that this is what it is, who he is, who they are. It can’t be imagined any other way, and if it can, Merlin wants nothing to do with that reality.
“There might be,” Merlin says, but this time, he has an ultimatum. “You'll need to sign a contract though. I don’t appreciate being erased. So no matter how hard it gets," or how badly it ends, he thinks, if or when it does, "you have to promise me that you will try to remember. Remember me," Merlin holds out his little finger, “and remember us. Can you do that?”
"Yes sir," and Arthur's words are warm, warmer than his lips against the pad of Merlin's little finger.
________________________________
|►gwen|
It comes entirely out of left field over lunch at a new Greek restaurant that recently opened near Morgana’s place.
“So I’m taking over Camelot,” Morgana says.
Gwen has to stop and make sure she’s heard it right. “Uther’s Camelot?”
“Yes, only that now it will be run my way. It’s going to be a grief counselling centre, with real therapy. No more of this forgetting what you can’t deal with. And here's the punchline: Uther suggested it.” Gwen was not expecting that at all.
Morgana goes on about how she has some staff in mind and she thinks she’ll ask Gaius if he wants to return to conducting assessments. Watching her as she gets excited about this is a joy of its own kind.
“I have another piece of news,” and this, Morgana says more tentatively, and she reaches across the table for Gwen’s hand as she does. “This is the first time I’m saying it out loud. You’re the first one I've told. I was thinking...I want to go talk to my doctor. Just to, you know, talk about my options. I think," she hesitates, "I think I want to try again.”
“Morgana,” Gwen sighs, feeling something sink and it's not long before she can tell it’s her own heart dropping in her chest and all on Morgana’s behalf. “Have you thought this through? I think you know that it’s not something you want to rush into, not on a whim.”
Morgana shrugs and her laugh is nervous, so foreign on her face. “I know it’s hard to explain, I do. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and this is not me being my crazy, obsessive self. It just feels right, Gwen. I wanted to know if you'd like to come with me.”
Gwen crosses over to Morgana’s side of the table, squeezes in beside her in the booth, and takes her hand. “Do you really need to ask?” And Morgana shakes her head.
Gwen thinks of how lucky they are. It’s a cold day in December and they can hardly feel it; they have each other and all the warmth in the world. Together, they watch the people from their window-seat in the little Greek restaurant and it’s like watching the world turn, but always mindful of the other from the corner of your eye.
I've got you, Gwen says with a look, and Morgana smiles, weaving their fingers together.
________________________________
|►►|December 31, 2004 - January 1, 2005|►all|
In the end, they decide to call it a beginning.
They sit together for the first time (but really, if they were keeping track, they’ve probably lost count). They start as fresh as they can with the past a faded watermark. Of course, the memories are still there, somewhere and everywhere, and they are marked by them in ways that they can’t ignore.
In time, they find, they don’t have to.
*
♫ | end