fic: I just lost my mind (but I've still got you)
title: I just lost my mind (but I've still got you)
characters/pairings: merlin/arthur/morgana/gwen together and in pretty much every configuration (though i think my blatant shippy biases show through and through)
words: ~2600
rating/warnings: pg-13; psychiatric illness somewhere on the psychosis spectrum
summary: Maybe it's the meds. Maybe it's the people. Maybe there's no difference and they are all one and the same.
notes:
+ for the screw you, canon! merlin ficathon and the awesome prompt here: OT4; "The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you." - Rita Mae Brown
+ modern AU with mentions of canon-era flashbackishness.
+ title + cut text from lydia's one more day and some ot4 inspiration borrowed from this lovely bit of art by lolryne.
*
He can't look Morgana in the eye anymore, can't meet her lips when she tries to kiss him, can't chase away her frown either because now she's worried and somehow he has always had a knack for that.
He thinks--does not know where the thought comes from or why it is so clear, so transparent and pervasive: This is wrong; you were my sister, my friend, and then you left and the world fell to pieces...
*
Merlin leaves him twenty-five voicemails, pours all his anger and confusion and frustration into each and every one of them. Arthur leans against the inside of the door and listens to every single one. There's a thought that's both his and not his, and it says, I'm so sorry. You used to be my best friend and I should have told you.
I loved you to death but I never told you.
(I never knew why I never told you.)
"Fucking hell, Arthur." Merlin's voice comes through harsh and tinny before the click, the twenty-fourth click. He's probably at the tower, at the office. Bad reception, thinks Arthur. Then another message, the final one. "Hey, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. Look, just call me back, okay? Whatever it is, just call me back. Please."
(Maybe, I should tell you now. Maybe you'll forgive me then.)
But it's so different. They're both so different. They're all so different now.
--Stop it, he tells himself, his waking, sane and sober self. It's slipping away, piece by piece.
His friends can tell, he knows, and sometimes he's so terrified that he won't be able to keep it inside his head, that it will all come spilling out and tumbling down, and so he keeps himself inside his locked doors.
*
Gwen tries to talk to him, tries to call and text and email and leave post-its on his door to no avail. He can't wrap his head around it. He hears her voice and sees her bubbly script and the thought that comes is like cold air to his lungs; it's, You used to be mine but you loved him and you left--
Her last text says that she'll come by later. She has a spare key. They all do. Morgana might beat her to it, or maybe Merlin once he gets over his tantrum.
i'll swing by after cooking class, her text reads.
He knows she will even if a distant part of him thinks, No, you won't come back. You never do.
And it's like a dream, like a memory, like waking up with the ghost of heartbreak and knowing it's not real (even if he's not very sure he knows anything at all anymore).
Sometimes, he wishes he could remember when it began.
No, that's not quite true. He mostly just wishes it never began at all.
*
He doesn't leave his flat for days and that's when Gwen comes to check up on him.
He's curled on his side, on his bed, when he hears the door unlock and her soft steps on his floor. She knocks and then swings open his door without waiting for permission she would never explicitly receive. The mattress dips with her weight and when she curls an arm around him from behind, adjusts herself to press her cheek to his, she whispers, "I know you're not sleeping," and, "they're worrying themselves sick."
He half wants to ask, Why aren't they here then? and, more absently, more stupidly, Is that why I married you?
But she adds, "Merlin's losing his shit as we speak. Morgana's taking him out, keeping him occupied. You know he's angry you didn't tell him something was wrong."
He wants to say, nothing's wrong, but what a lie that would be.
"Did they send you then?" They're the first words out of his mouth in days. His tongue feels dry from disuse.
She kisses the cotton of his T-shirt where it sits on his shoulder, says, "You know that's not how we operate."
He turns his face to her then, takes a breath and gives her a long, steady look until he can say with almost certainty that this is her (and not the her once knew, or thought he knew).
"Come out," she says, hands smoothing back his hair. "Come out when you're ready. We miss you."
*
There are flashes of colour, shapes he doesn't recognize (but he does, he does), and quick movements from the corner of his eye that disappear too quick when he turns around.
...the gold of a crown...a frayed neckerchief...fine purple silk and red-rimmed eyes...
It's draining is what it is, trying to keep it separate, tell it apart.
...blood on the knife...on her hands...her fingers on your neck...his hands pressed to your heart...
It's tiring, losing your mind; that's what this is, what it must be.
*
Morgana's the one he tells first. He doesn't know why, sees no rhyme or reason in it.
(She'll use it against you, a part of him had said. He told it to bugger off, drowned it out with a few stiff drinks, and then showed up at her doorstep.)
It takes a vast amount of effort to stay steady on his feet and not fall into her arms at the sight of her.
*
Gwen wasn't kidding about Merlin.
He looks furious when Arthur finds him. Furious and a lot like he's trying exceptionally hard to stay on top of it.
"Arthur, what the hell?" And it would have been easier if his voice wasn't breaking even as he said it. As it is, Arthur feels hollow, bottomless. "You know I'm here, you prick. I'm always here."
Arthur wants to say, I know, and, I should have told you because you always understood and you always understand, but what he wants and what he does feels miles away once again.
What he does is walk up close and tip his forehead against Merlin's, take his face in his hands and whisper, "I'm sorry."
You were the only one who never left.
(It shouldn't matter if it never happened but it does.)
Merlin holds on to his hands, to his fingers, holds them tight and says, "Don't be. Just--let me help you. Let us help you." And Arthur nods and rests his chin on Merlin's shoulder, lets the words run soft in his ear and keep him together.
*
He has always hated being coddled, being helpless, hated feeling like something's off and wrong with all of his circuitry, leaving him out of control.
So it's hard, really, really hard, having Gwen clutch his hand tightly on the way to see Dr. Gaius.
It's even harder when Morgana drives him to see Dr. Lac, the staff psychiatrist Dr. Gaius refers him to.
He adores Morgana for more reasons than he can count or remember but right now, he could hand over his soul on a platter to her for not asking any questions or expecting any answers. She only asks if he wants her to come with but he rasps out a "No, but thank you, and I mean it," and gives her a blink-and-miss-it kiss.
*
That first week, his body feels like it doesn't belong to him at all. It's foreign and hellish and highly uncooperative. The medication makes him sleepy and his appetite hits overdrive; it dries out his mouth and dulls his senses.
Two weeks later and he still either hates the hell out of everything or just plain cannot be bothered to care.
*
Merlin doesn't let him out of his sight, or his flat, if one gets too literal.
Morgana and Gwen do this thing where they seem to have gone from camping in here to practically moving in for the time being.
Merlin may make a lot of money working for Pendragon Ltd. but his place is small. When he whines about the lack of space, however, Morgana glares pointedly at his king-sized bed.
"Think we'll all fit?' Gwen asks with a laugh.
The startling part is not that they do but how easily they manage it. If Arthur feels elbows in his ribs, cold toes poking into his calves and bony knees, he's willing to bet that Merlin is responsible for at least that last bit if not more. He clings to Arthur even in his sleep, mumbling in his ear with more ache than Arthur can bear to hear, "You might slip away otherwise," and, "I can't let that happen."
At the very least, the space is warm and full. The small part of Arthur's mind that doesn't feel like quicksand these days shivers a bit with this feeling of being eight years old and building a fort out of blankets, building it with all the people he wants to share it with inside.
*
At the end of it all, it seems as if the one thing they have absolutely sworn to never let him feel is alone.
He wonders if it isn't completely unhealthy in a hundred different ways that of four grown adults, none of them can fall asleep by themselves anymore.
*
From the three of them, it was Morgana whom he'd met first. She'd interned at his father's company and they'd been friends for some months before they'd starting seeing each other. It had become a bit of an open relationship of sorts, or so he supposes he would call it, before Gwen had come into the picture. Then the thing with Morgana had slowly become the thing with Gwen-and-Morgana, and it was strange at first, sharing Morgana like that, but not unlike sharing space in the way that once you gave it time, it felt right.
And then, he'd met Merlin Emrys from Sales at Pendradon Ltd. who had charmed the socks off of him, literally and along with other bits of clothing on many occasions, and knocked his world into the realm of technicolor.
He never did get his old life back, never bothered to even try.
They had a thing apparently, the four of them. Merlin called it special.
Meanwhile, Arthur had said that they were all just doomed really. There was no other word or explanation for it.
They were different from a lot of people and they knew it. Instead of shedding previous entanglements when they transitioned into new ones, they had a knack for layering them one over the other like long-sleeved shirts in winter weather.
Still, Morgana had been the first, his first, and there was something about that, something special Arthur didn't quite have words for. So at the end of the day, he had to make sure she was okay with it all even if part of him knew he couldn't change it up now if he wanted to, couldn't manage without Gwen blowing kisses his way as she dangled off Morgana's arm or without the smell of blueberry pancakes in Merlin's kitchen or Merlin mouthing his way down Arthur's spine in the hours before and the hours after.
As much as Arthur had wanted to rub in her face that he'd gone on and found someone else as well (because Gwen was Morgana's first and foremost and they all knew it), none of it lasted very long because stupid Merlin got on far too well with everyone. It had come to the point where Arthur tried not to feel too betrayed when he was left cold and alone early on Sunday mornings so that Merlin could make it to cooking classes with Gwen or the nights when he'd drink Morgana under the table before proceeding to snog her for a good hour on Gwen's kitchen tiles.
"My boyfriend is a hussy," he had lamented aloud to the girls once while said boyfriend was in earshot.
"Shut up," Merlin had grinned, clearly taking it as a compliment. "If it works then it works."
The sad thing was that he was right.
*
There's one night where he doesn't get a wink of sleep despite the wave of medicated sedation he knows he should be riding.
He spends a good five minues carefully disentangling himself from Merlin's legs and Gwen's arms and walking over Morgana to get to the kitchen for a glass of water.
When he turns around, it's to find Merlin leaning against the door frame, head tipped to the side and watching him.
"What are you, a hawk?"
('A falcon, actually, or so my mum said when she named me.')
"Just keeping my word," Merlin says.
"I'm not going to turn into a pillar of salt behind your back," and Arthur adds with a measured breath, "promise."
"What's it like?" Merlin asks, closing the distance. "You talk to them about the worst of it, I know you do. Why do you never tell me?"
(Because I put you through it all before and this time, you deserve a break.)
Arthur snaps himself out of it. He had onlyreally told Morgana and Gwen had a way of worming words out of other people, especially Morgana it seemed.
"It's going to sound crazy." Of course it's going to sound crazy. "It's like--it's like there was a different time, with different people but...they were all so much like--"
"I'm sorry," Merlin cuts him off, looks down at his feet. "I mean, you don't have to. It's not fair of me to feel so entitled, is it?"
"That's not it," Arthur shakes his head. "I don't know, where it comes from, why it's there, but it--it feels like it was real sometimes. And it gets confusing."
"Well maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Either way, it's behind you now, isn't it?"
"You're the first person to say that," Arthur chuckles. "I don't think it's very conducive to my treatment." Still, the thought makes something inside him feel just a little bit lighter.
(Maybe it was. Even if, maybe it shouldn't matter now.)
"I'll show you conducive," Merlin smirks. With a quirk of his head, he presses his lips to Arthur's jaw, splays his hands under the hem of his shirt and Arthur leans into the touch.
(And maybe it doesn't matter because this is real now.)
*
The world is still off-kilter but slowly, so slowly, it no longer feels entirely unbearable.
He still catches the flashes of movement, has moments of severe disorientation where he can swear there was a tapestry where Merlin's painting from Santo Domingo hangs, but those moments are fewer now and farther between. Maybe it's the meds. Maybe it's the people. Maybe there's no difference and they are all one and the same.
*
And then there's the morning when he wakes up in Merlin's bed, Morgana propped up on an elbow beside him as she combs soft fingers through his hair. There's talking in the kitchen, Gwen's voice and Merlin's laughter. It's layered with the clinking of pots and the tinkling of utensils, and over all that, it smells like butter and blueberries. Morgana watches him watching her and moves her free hand to take his. She holds it tight and whispers a "Good morning."
(And whoever this woman and these people may or may not have been, in his head or in the past, who they are to him now is infinitely greater, infinitely more real and more precious and more perfect than anything has ever been.)
His pills are bitter and his mind may be a black hole waiting to heal or waiting to happen. Either way, he knows that he will fight to keep this, to keep them. He will fight to the bitter end if he must because this is real and he's not quite ready to let that slip.
characters/pairings: merlin/arthur/morgana/gwen together and in pretty much every configuration (though i think my blatant shippy biases show through and through)
words: ~2600
rating/warnings: pg-13; psychiatric illness somewhere on the psychosis spectrum
summary: Maybe it's the meds. Maybe it's the people. Maybe there's no difference and they are all one and the same.
notes:
+ for the screw you, canon! merlin ficathon and the awesome prompt here: OT4; "The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you." - Rita Mae Brown
+ modern AU with mentions of canon-era flashbackishness.
+ title + cut text from lydia's one more day and some ot4 inspiration borrowed from this lovely bit of art by lolryne.
*
He can't look Morgana in the eye anymore, can't meet her lips when she tries to kiss him, can't chase away her frown either because now she's worried and somehow he has always had a knack for that.
He thinks--does not know where the thought comes from or why it is so clear, so transparent and pervasive: This is wrong; you were my sister, my friend, and then you left and the world fell to pieces...
*
Merlin leaves him twenty-five voicemails, pours all his anger and confusion and frustration into each and every one of them. Arthur leans against the inside of the door and listens to every single one. There's a thought that's both his and not his, and it says, I'm so sorry. You used to be my best friend and I should have told you.
I loved you to death but I never told you.
(I never knew why I never told you.)
"Fucking hell, Arthur." Merlin's voice comes through harsh and tinny before the click, the twenty-fourth click. He's probably at the tower, at the office. Bad reception, thinks Arthur. Then another message, the final one. "Hey, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. Look, just call me back, okay? Whatever it is, just call me back. Please."
(Maybe, I should tell you now. Maybe you'll forgive me then.)
But it's so different. They're both so different. They're all so different now.
--Stop it, he tells himself, his waking, sane and sober self. It's slipping away, piece by piece.
His friends can tell, he knows, and sometimes he's so terrified that he won't be able to keep it inside his head, that it will all come spilling out and tumbling down, and so he keeps himself inside his locked doors.
*
Gwen tries to talk to him, tries to call and text and email and leave post-its on his door to no avail. He can't wrap his head around it. He hears her voice and sees her bubbly script and the thought that comes is like cold air to his lungs; it's, You used to be mine but you loved him and you left--
Her last text says that she'll come by later. She has a spare key. They all do. Morgana might beat her to it, or maybe Merlin once he gets over his tantrum.
i'll swing by after cooking class, her text reads.
He knows she will even if a distant part of him thinks, No, you won't come back. You never do.
And it's like a dream, like a memory, like waking up with the ghost of heartbreak and knowing it's not real (even if he's not very sure he knows anything at all anymore).
Sometimes, he wishes he could remember when it began.
No, that's not quite true. He mostly just wishes it never began at all.
*
He doesn't leave his flat for days and that's when Gwen comes to check up on him.
He's curled on his side, on his bed, when he hears the door unlock and her soft steps on his floor. She knocks and then swings open his door without waiting for permission she would never explicitly receive. The mattress dips with her weight and when she curls an arm around him from behind, adjusts herself to press her cheek to his, she whispers, "I know you're not sleeping," and, "they're worrying themselves sick."
He half wants to ask, Why aren't they here then? and, more absently, more stupidly, Is that why I married you?
But she adds, "Merlin's losing his shit as we speak. Morgana's taking him out, keeping him occupied. You know he's angry you didn't tell him something was wrong."
He wants to say, nothing's wrong, but what a lie that would be.
"Did they send you then?" They're the first words out of his mouth in days. His tongue feels dry from disuse.
She kisses the cotton of his T-shirt where it sits on his shoulder, says, "You know that's not how we operate."
He turns his face to her then, takes a breath and gives her a long, steady look until he can say with almost certainty that this is her (and not the her once knew, or thought he knew).
"Come out," she says, hands smoothing back his hair. "Come out when you're ready. We miss you."
*
There are flashes of colour, shapes he doesn't recognize (but he does, he does), and quick movements from the corner of his eye that disappear too quick when he turns around.
...the gold of a crown...a frayed neckerchief...fine purple silk and red-rimmed eyes...
It's draining is what it is, trying to keep it separate, tell it apart.
...blood on the knife...on her hands...her fingers on your neck...his hands pressed to your heart...
It's tiring, losing your mind; that's what this is, what it must be.
*
Morgana's the one he tells first. He doesn't know why, sees no rhyme or reason in it.
(She'll use it against you, a part of him had said. He told it to bugger off, drowned it out with a few stiff drinks, and then showed up at her doorstep.)
It takes a vast amount of effort to stay steady on his feet and not fall into her arms at the sight of her.
*
Gwen wasn't kidding about Merlin.
He looks furious when Arthur finds him. Furious and a lot like he's trying exceptionally hard to stay on top of it.
"Arthur, what the hell?" And it would have been easier if his voice wasn't breaking even as he said it. As it is, Arthur feels hollow, bottomless. "You know I'm here, you prick. I'm always here."
Arthur wants to say, I know, and, I should have told you because you always understood and you always understand, but what he wants and what he does feels miles away once again.
What he does is walk up close and tip his forehead against Merlin's, take his face in his hands and whisper, "I'm sorry."
You were the only one who never left.
(It shouldn't matter if it never happened but it does.)
Merlin holds on to his hands, to his fingers, holds them tight and says, "Don't be. Just--let me help you. Let us help you." And Arthur nods and rests his chin on Merlin's shoulder, lets the words run soft in his ear and keep him together.
*
He has always hated being coddled, being helpless, hated feeling like something's off and wrong with all of his circuitry, leaving him out of control.
So it's hard, really, really hard, having Gwen clutch his hand tightly on the way to see Dr. Gaius.
It's even harder when Morgana drives him to see Dr. Lac, the staff psychiatrist Dr. Gaius refers him to.
He adores Morgana for more reasons than he can count or remember but right now, he could hand over his soul on a platter to her for not asking any questions or expecting any answers. She only asks if he wants her to come with but he rasps out a "No, but thank you, and I mean it," and gives her a blink-and-miss-it kiss.
*
That first week, his body feels like it doesn't belong to him at all. It's foreign and hellish and highly uncooperative. The medication makes him sleepy and his appetite hits overdrive; it dries out his mouth and dulls his senses.
Two weeks later and he still either hates the hell out of everything or just plain cannot be bothered to care.
*
Merlin doesn't let him out of his sight, or his flat, if one gets too literal.
Morgana and Gwen do this thing where they seem to have gone from camping in here to practically moving in for the time being.
Merlin may make a lot of money working for Pendragon Ltd. but his place is small. When he whines about the lack of space, however, Morgana glares pointedly at his king-sized bed.
"Think we'll all fit?' Gwen asks with a laugh.
The startling part is not that they do but how easily they manage it. If Arthur feels elbows in his ribs, cold toes poking into his calves and bony knees, he's willing to bet that Merlin is responsible for at least that last bit if not more. He clings to Arthur even in his sleep, mumbling in his ear with more ache than Arthur can bear to hear, "You might slip away otherwise," and, "I can't let that happen."
At the very least, the space is warm and full. The small part of Arthur's mind that doesn't feel like quicksand these days shivers a bit with this feeling of being eight years old and building a fort out of blankets, building it with all the people he wants to share it with inside.
*
At the end of it all, it seems as if the one thing they have absolutely sworn to never let him feel is alone.
He wonders if it isn't completely unhealthy in a hundred different ways that of four grown adults, none of them can fall asleep by themselves anymore.
*
From the three of them, it was Morgana whom he'd met first. She'd interned at his father's company and they'd been friends for some months before they'd starting seeing each other. It had become a bit of an open relationship of sorts, or so he supposes he would call it, before Gwen had come into the picture. Then the thing with Morgana had slowly become the thing with Gwen-and-Morgana, and it was strange at first, sharing Morgana like that, but not unlike sharing space in the way that once you gave it time, it felt right.
And then, he'd met Merlin Emrys from Sales at Pendradon Ltd. who had charmed the socks off of him, literally and along with other bits of clothing on many occasions, and knocked his world into the realm of technicolor.
He never did get his old life back, never bothered to even try.
They had a thing apparently, the four of them. Merlin called it special.
Meanwhile, Arthur had said that they were all just doomed really. There was no other word or explanation for it.
They were different from a lot of people and they knew it. Instead of shedding previous entanglements when they transitioned into new ones, they had a knack for layering them one over the other like long-sleeved shirts in winter weather.
Still, Morgana had been the first, his first, and there was something about that, something special Arthur didn't quite have words for. So at the end of the day, he had to make sure she was okay with it all even if part of him knew he couldn't change it up now if he wanted to, couldn't manage without Gwen blowing kisses his way as she dangled off Morgana's arm or without the smell of blueberry pancakes in Merlin's kitchen or Merlin mouthing his way down Arthur's spine in the hours before and the hours after.
As much as Arthur had wanted to rub in her face that he'd gone on and found someone else as well (because Gwen was Morgana's first and foremost and they all knew it), none of it lasted very long because stupid Merlin got on far too well with everyone. It had come to the point where Arthur tried not to feel too betrayed when he was left cold and alone early on Sunday mornings so that Merlin could make it to cooking classes with Gwen or the nights when he'd drink Morgana under the table before proceeding to snog her for a good hour on Gwen's kitchen tiles.
"My boyfriend is a hussy," he had lamented aloud to the girls once while said boyfriend was in earshot.
"Shut up," Merlin had grinned, clearly taking it as a compliment. "If it works then it works."
The sad thing was that he was right.
*
There's one night where he doesn't get a wink of sleep despite the wave of medicated sedation he knows he should be riding.
He spends a good five minues carefully disentangling himself from Merlin's legs and Gwen's arms and walking over Morgana to get to the kitchen for a glass of water.
When he turns around, it's to find Merlin leaning against the door frame, head tipped to the side and watching him.
"What are you, a hawk?"
('A falcon, actually, or so my mum said when she named me.')
"Just keeping my word," Merlin says.
"I'm not going to turn into a pillar of salt behind your back," and Arthur adds with a measured breath, "promise."
"What's it like?" Merlin asks, closing the distance. "You talk to them about the worst of it, I know you do. Why do you never tell me?"
(Because I put you through it all before and this time, you deserve a break.)
Arthur snaps himself out of it. He had onlyreally told Morgana and Gwen had a way of worming words out of other people, especially Morgana it seemed.
"It's going to sound crazy." Of course it's going to sound crazy. "It's like--it's like there was a different time, with different people but...they were all so much like--"
"I'm sorry," Merlin cuts him off, looks down at his feet. "I mean, you don't have to. It's not fair of me to feel so entitled, is it?"
"That's not it," Arthur shakes his head. "I don't know, where it comes from, why it's there, but it--it feels like it was real sometimes. And it gets confusing."
"Well maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Either way, it's behind you now, isn't it?"
"You're the first person to say that," Arthur chuckles. "I don't think it's very conducive to my treatment." Still, the thought makes something inside him feel just a little bit lighter.
(Maybe it was. Even if, maybe it shouldn't matter now.)
"I'll show you conducive," Merlin smirks. With a quirk of his head, he presses his lips to Arthur's jaw, splays his hands under the hem of his shirt and Arthur leans into the touch.
(And maybe it doesn't matter because this is real now.)
*
The world is still off-kilter but slowly, so slowly, it no longer feels entirely unbearable.
He still catches the flashes of movement, has moments of severe disorientation where he can swear there was a tapestry where Merlin's painting from Santo Domingo hangs, but those moments are fewer now and farther between. Maybe it's the meds. Maybe it's the people. Maybe there's no difference and they are all one and the same.
*
And then there's the morning when he wakes up in Merlin's bed, Morgana propped up on an elbow beside him as she combs soft fingers through his hair. There's talking in the kitchen, Gwen's voice and Merlin's laughter. It's layered with the clinking of pots and the tinkling of utensils, and over all that, it smells like butter and blueberries. Morgana watches him watching her and moves her free hand to take his. She holds it tight and whispers a "Good morning."
(And whoever this woman and these people may or may not have been, in his head or in the past, who they are to him now is infinitely greater, infinitely more real and more precious and more perfect than anything has ever been.)
His pills are bitter and his mind may be a black hole waiting to heal or waiting to happen. Either way, he knows that he will fight to keep this, to keep them. He will fight to the bitter end if he must because this is real and he's not quite ready to let that slip.