And I'm ready to suffer, and I'm ready to hope (Gwen & Morgana | Part 2)
Title: And I'm ready to suffer, and I'm ready to hope
Part: 2
Previous Chapters: Part 1
Pairing: Gwen & Morgana
Word Count: 3,500
Summary: Gwen and Morgana reunite. It's not exactly hearts and flowers.
Author's Note: This appears to want to be longer than I originally intended. Let's see how that goes.
And! This chapter contains an oblique reference to my story This young war will war for years. It's not by any means required reading in order to get what's going on, but check it out if you feel like fully appreciating the whole deranged Morgana experience. ;-)
Part II
Gwen
Alice stays quiet, and a shadow falls over Ealdor. You came here seeking peace; ruin trailed along after you, constant as a faithful friend. You remind yourself again and again that this is not your fault - how could it be? How could you have done it? - but you aren’t quite sure. After all, the last time magic had its claws in you, you were none the wiser.
Of course, you think of Morgana. Wonder if she might have sent a curse after you, and you were so relieved to see the slight broken traces of your old friend that you didn’t even suspect her until it was too late.
You feel, down deep, that this isn’t the truth, but what good has feeling done you so far?
“We must send word to Merlin,” Hunith says absently, the two of you sitting by the fire one bleak evening. The words are little more than a whisper; a thought that escaped.
You know that Merlin is an essential ingredient in most of Arthur’s heroics, and that, thanks to the two of them, nothing so very bad has befallen Camelot and stayed. Still, you can’t imagine how he might go about fighting this magic that none of you even know how to name. He is only a man, after all, and what hope does a man have against such a foe?
Unless. The word dawns in you, unbidden. Along with it comes all of Merlin’s odd silences, his silences and the sad wisdom that lurks behind his young eyes, his knack for always, always being in the right place at the right time-
Hunith seems to catch herself.
“You yearn for the ones you love,” she adds, with the smoothness of someone very accustomed to lying. “In times like these.”
“Of course,” you murmur, docile, your mind on fire.
Morgana
You reach Ealdor in what feels like no time at all; you’re so focused upon arriving that the whole journey seems a blur. You do not eat much, save for a distracted bite of something or other when lightheadedness sets in. With the village visible on the horizon, exhaustion suddenly catches up to you. Even standing seems a triumph.
You push on. You aren’t about to let weakness become a habit.
You remember where Hunith lives, and hope you can make it there unbothered. No such luck. (But then, you had expected as much. You are prepared for the situation - all you need to do is reach into your pocket.) There is a tense, frightened pulse in the air that lets you know something has beaten you here. You are halfway to the cottage when a pair of men intercepts you. They both look the worse for wear, but one wears such raw anguish on his face that you know the cause of this silence must be a matter close to his heart.
“Stop,” says the less suffering one. “What’s your business here?”
“I have a friend residing in your village,” you say. You use the word to give them less reason to fear you, but it still feels peculiar to say, like a taste you had nearly forgotten. “Gwen. She told me she would be staying with Hunith.”
“Lower your hood,” commands the broken man.
“I only want to see Gwen,” you say, biting back fury. You could knock them unconscious in seconds with the slightest lift of your hand. Insolent idiots, infected with tyranny just as all men are, expecting that just because you are a woman you couldn’t tear them to bits as easy as breathing-
They watch you, their faces wary and distrusting and a little afraid. Afraid of you, who have done nothing to them. Good. They ought to be. They can feel it on you, without even seeing your face.
But there is no point in toiling with peasants. Not with Gwen in danger, and so close. It’s ridiculous to let these two men stand in between you. You can play nice just as well as anyone. You doubt they will remember you, anyway. You were only a soldier of Arthur’s. Only a girl. And so you comply, and lower your hood.
“Morgana Pendragon,” breathes one of them, proving you wrong.
“Please-” You say it without thinking, and hate the word as soon as it slips from your mouth.
The sadder man wastes no time in threatening you. You can tell he means every word. “You made a grave mistake showing your face here, witch. You think you can curse our people, our children, and then breeze in as if we’ll bend at the knee to you? Woman, every one of us will go down fighting before we let you-”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you snarl. “You think I’d waste my efforts on a village?”
“I think there’s no low a killer of kings wouldn’t sink to!”
They are only two men, and though you know you shouldn’t kill them (they are husbands and fathers, there are women and children who will cry for them), you would like to so much that it aches in you. The magic begs like the hands of an ardent wooer, wandering, wandering-
“And not only kings,” you begin, when-
“Morgana?” She steps out of the cottage, your impossible destination, with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.
“Gwen.” Your knees give up at the sight of her. So does your anger; suddenly, the men are only men, small in their suffering and not worth anything but your pity. The ground is hard and dirty beneath you, but might as well be feathers and down, for how badly you’d like to stay there. Never rise again.
Their voices swim in your head:
“Gwen, what is the meaning of this?”
“You led a witch right to us?”
“No,” Gwen says, calm but very firm. She sinks onto the ground beside you, steering your head to her shoulder. “She did not do this.”
“What?” you ask, your voice damnably faint. “What’s happened?”
“Of course she did! My daughter is cursed, and days later a sorceress shows up by coincidence? What else are we to believe?”
“Look at her,” Gwen says, as if she’s scolding children. “Does she really look like she’s in a state to harm anyone?”
You glare at her with what strength you have left - for the past few years, you have considered yourself in an eternally fit state to harm anyone, thanks very much - and she answers with an ‘oh, don’t be difficult’ roll of her eyes.
“What happened?” you demand.
“A little girl in the village has fallen under some sort of magic,” Gwen explains. She runs her fingers through your hair, as if it’s still a habit. You feel it keenly. You remind yourself to breathe. “We don’t know what it might be. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. She’s stopped talking. Stopped looking at anyone as if she knows them. It’s like she’s just been-”
“Hollowed out,” you finish.
She frowns slightly. Her fingers still; she seems to realize what she’s doing at last, and pulls her hand back. You knew she would. “How did you-”
“I dreamed it. I dreamed it, and I came to help-”
“What is she talking about?” demands the slightly calmer man, looking at you as if he’s prepared to run for the nearest pitchfork at your slightest movement.
“You’re dreaming again?” Gwen says, with a peculiar expression on her face.
You feel suddenly, absurdly shy, and find you cannot stand it, her staring at you like that.
“I’ll cure her,” you say instead, in big bold Morgana tones, and force yourself up out of the comfort of her lap.
“What?”
“Take me to her,” you instruct the men; the world whooshes as you force yourself to your feet. “I’ll do everything I can. If it is in my power-”
The broken man lets out a short, ugly laugh. “Like hell.”
“I don’t kill children for sport!”
He looks at you as if he can see clear into your rotten heart. “But you kill them for other reasons?”
It stings, though it shouldn’t. They are only words, words from a callous fool twisted by grief; you remind yourself that he does not know you, does not know anything you’ve done. And besides, he’s one to talk. He, who would do anything to bring his daughter back. The ugliest things are the ones done for love.
“You think me quite the monster, don’t you?” you ask - tilting your head just so, turning your voice pretty and jeering. It is not so different from talking to Arthur.
You find yourself quite eager for his reply, but he does not give you one. Instead, he turns his wrath upon Gwen. “Conspiring with a witch - bringing her here - why, you’ve had us all quite fooled, haven’t you?”
Gwen’s face turns - not sad, exactly. Pained. Desperate. You remember that it was not so long ago that she must have stood before Arthur and listened to tales of her duplicity. “Alec, I didn’t-”
“Liar,” the father snarls, and takes a step, an ugly lunging step toward Gwen.
You have no idea what he means to do, but you do know that it makes you sick, seeing only that one step. And so, without thought, easy as anything, you lift a hand and send him flying. He lands with a heavy thud some fifteen feet away. His friend looks at you as if you are the devil itself; it freezes him. Coward.
“Morgana!” Gwen shouts. The shout, or perhaps the thud, draws people out from their little sanctuaries. The voices start, fluttering like birds, persistent, closer, above and around you, ready to tangle their talons in your hair, to beat their wings into your heart, to peck out your eyes and the last bits of your soul, which they cannot have, not those, they’ve been promised to someone else-
“What have you done?” cries someone, a woman, rushing to the side of the man you threw. Ah, there’s the mother. Your heart aches for her, and admires her; she sounds dignified, somehow, in her sorrow. Not high-voiced and weeping and womanish.
“Gwen’s brought her here,” says the frozen man, melting at last, his voice too loud.
You remember your pocket, just in time: a vial filled with six drops of clear liquid. You damn your hands as they fumble - but no matter. You get there just in time. You pull the stopper out, and murmur the right words.
For one clean second, the village, the horizon, the sky goes white.
Gwen
You could kill her.
Well, all right, no, you couldn’t. But you could certainly hit her. Hard.
“What were you thinking??” you hiss, grabbing Morgana’s elbow as you usher her toward Hunith’s cottage. The villagers of Ealdor watch you go, but it’s with hopeful and unfrightened interest.
“Essence of letheroot. It’s harmless. Only enough to make them forget they’ve heard anything of me since I was here last. As far as the people of Ealdor know, I still reside in Camelot at Arthur’s side.”
“And you don’t see how that’s wrong?”
“They were accusing you!” She looks at you with such rage and loyalty; a feral dog beseeching its beloved owner. “I wasn’t about to stand by and watch!”
“You can’t just go around stealing peoples’ minds from them! It’s monstrous.”
“I had to.” She’s looking at you with a none-too-winning mix of bewilderment and disdain, as if she genuinely cannot fathom why you’d protest.
You knew. You knew very well that she is not the way she once was, that she’s dangerous. And yet you let yourself forget.
You can no longer afford that luxury.
“And I suppose that’s what you told yourself when you did it to Lancelot?” you say sharply. “To me?”
Morgana looks at you as if you have hit her, but you’re too angry to dissolve into apologies the way you would have before. It feels good, watching the hurt dawn on her face. Because some cruel part of you has been itching to hurt someone. Because it’s a relief to know that there is enough heart left in her to hurt her at all.
“It’s so good to see you again, my dear,” Hunith says as you two enter the cottage, clasping Morgana’s hand in her own. Morgana looks startled by the contact, and for a moment you’re sure she will shake Merlin’s mother off. But then she recovers - she always was graceful with admirers. “So the King sent you?”
“Gwen sent word, and I came as quickly as I could, upon Arthur’s orders. Not that he could have stopped me if he’d wanted to,” she adds with a sly grin. Hunith smiles, charmed. You feel suddenly sick, watching Morgana step back into the role of the girl she once was. She is almost perfect at it - close enough that no one else here will ever notice a difference.
But only ‘almost,’ to you. You knew her best.
“And do you think you’ll be able to help her?” Hunith continues.
“I’ve been studying medicine under Gaius when my spare time allows it,” Morgana replies. “I’m nowhere near as gifted as he is, of course, but the poor old man did not feel up to the journey, and he seemed to think the time had come to test what I’ve learned.”
Her hatred of Gaius glints brightly in the sweetened syllables; it reminds you of that not-quite-right smile she always wore, in that last year in Camelot after her time away with Morgause. You assumed then that she had been hurt more badly than she could confess, and could not quite remember how to be kind. How your heart would ache for her, even when she looked at you like a stranger, put that too-shining smile on. You’ve always had such a troublesome tendency toward thinking the best of her.
“Do you think medicine stands a chance against magic?” Hunith asks.
“I think it may. I know I can try,” Morgana answers, so earnest and stubborn (so Morgana) that you yearn to throw something at her. Scream and scream until she stops using your dead best friend as a mask to hide behind.
“Did Merlin send any word?” It comes back to you at the sound of Hunith’s careful words - Merlin.
Merlin, and magic.
“He sends his love,” Morgana answers smoothly, “and hopes for my success.”
“But he did not come.”
“You know men.” Morgana laughs - her airy banquet laugh. “Especially royal ones. So very busy with the business of kings. And, well, the polishing of kings’ boots, in Merlin’s case. It seems Arthur just couldn’t spare him.”
“Ah,” Hunith says softly. You watch as the news of her son’s new lack of concern settles into her. You wonder what Morgana will do if she ever finds out what you are just beginning to know about Merlin. You shiver.
“I promise I’ll do all I can,” Morgana adds, gentle and earnest, taking Hunith’s hand in hers this time.
“Of course,” Hunith says, and presses a hand to Morgana’s cheek. “But look at you, dear. You’re a wreck.”
“I saw no point in wasting fine dresses on such an arduous journey,” Morgana answers with a self-deprecating smile. You wonder if she means to torture you right now.
“Hunith,” you interrupt, deciding to put an end to it, “if you’d like to go sit with Mary and Alec, I’ll prepare supper.”
“Oh, Gwen, I couldn’t ask you to-”
“Please,” you interrupt firmly. “I know you bring them such comfort; surely they could use extra, after Alec took that fall.”
“Poor man,” Hunith says. “I’ve never known a stronger one. If you’d told me before today that he could faint, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“No one is built to endure the suffering of their children,” you say.
“Yes.” Hunith smiles, wistful.
“A visit from you would do them good. You can tell them of Morgana’s arrival, and what she means to do for Alice.”
“Yes,” Hunith agrees after a moment. “Yes, all right.”
“Send them my love,” Morgana orders after Hunith, just as the door is closing.
As soon as it shuts, you turn to her, and decide, for perhaps the first time in your life, that kindness is overrated. “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Morgana asks, sounding genuinely puzzled. You suppose she must be used to it, having spent a whole year lying to all of you without a second thought.
It suddenly seems very pointless to pursue this conversation.
“Nothing.” You toss an apple to her, harder than one usually tends to toss apples, and feel a surge of disappointment when she catches it neatly. “Here, eat this. You’re shaking.”
“You’re displeased with me.”
“I’m afraid of you.”
“Why?” You turn your thoughts to supper, abandoning her for the larder. She follows you, oblivious. “Gwen, surely you must know I would never hurt you.”
“Oh, yes, surely,” you mock, and try your hardest to contemplate potatoes with utmost concentration. A few are beginning to sprout.
“I mean it,” Morgana insists. You know it must incense her to talk to your back. “I came all this way to save you. I dreamt- and the second I knew you were in danger, I swore I wouldn’t let it happen, I swore you wouldn’t- Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt that? Ever since Morgause died, I’ve had no one save for that idiot Agravaine; do you know how it felt, to have him bring me news of you and Arthur and Merlin, carrying on together as you always had, you and Arthur so in love, Merlin so loyal, while I sat in that godforsaken hovel alone, month after month-”
“My heart breaks for you,” you snap, digging out potato sprouts with your fingernails. “Truly.”
“You can’t imagine what it was like.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t imagine being so selfish.”
“Those people would have seen me dead if they knew what I really was!”
“Or so your sister taught you.”
Her hand is on your shoulder in an instant, stronger than you remember (then again, she was always so soft with you before; she had no reason not to be). The potatoes fall to the floor with dull dead thuds. She whirls you around to face her. You think for a second of Arthur, yelling, shaking you. This hurts less, somehow, and feels truer. Morgana’s eyes are bright with anger, not quite sane. Inviting, as a flame is.
“Don’t you dare speak ill of her.” Morgana keeps one hand on your shoulder and puts the other against the wall, trapping you between her arms. “Don’t you dare.”
You allow yourself to linger for a moment, so that she can realize just where she is, and why.
“Ah yes,” you say then, carefully. “Of course you’d never hurt me.”
Morgana freezes. Realizing where and why. Then her face crumples, and she starts crying.
You’ve always had a knack for comforting crying people (especially her, once), but this-
This is beyond your expertise.
“You don’t know,” she sobs. “You don’t know what it feels like. I’m going mad, Gwen, I swear it. Everything is too much, and I left the bracelet behind because I knew, I knew you were right, that the nightmares are a part of me and I was a fool to push them down for so long, but I can’t sleep and I can’t think, and I’m going mad, I know it. I’m not strong enough for this, and if you ever tell anyone-you can’t tell anyone-”
It isn’t quite a hug: it’s more that she collapses against you, and you’re not left with much choice but to turn it into one. Her shoulder blades are too sharp underneath your hands. You wonder if she has let herself go to skin and bones beneath those ratty, ugly black dresses. You wonder if Agravaine has ever reminded her to eat.
“I won’t tell,” you capitulate at last, though you make sure not to sound too sorry for her.
She looks up at you, still shaking, her face streaked with tears. She does not look beautiful at all, for once.
“When have I ever told?” you add impatiently. “Your secrets are always safe with me, Morgana. Now, go on, then. Eat something.”
You guide her to your bed; she sits obediently, still crying a little. When you hand her the apple again, she stares at it like she has no idea what it might be for.
“You can’t carry on like this,” you tell her, stern. “Not here and now. You owe these people. You have a curse to break. Either that, or a promise.”
“I’m through with breaking promises,” she replies, steeliness sneaking through her tears, “thank you very much.”
You smooth her hair out of her eyes. It seems you’ll never be able to quite shake the maidservant out of you. Then you issue a dare. “Prove it.”
She meets your eyes. Nods, just barely, and bites into the apple at last.
Part 3
Part: 2
Previous Chapters: Part 1
Pairing: Gwen & Morgana
Word Count: 3,500
Summary: Gwen and Morgana reunite. It's not exactly hearts and flowers.
Author's Note: This appears to want to be longer than I originally intended. Let's see how that goes.
And! This chapter contains an oblique reference to my story This young war will war for years. It's not by any means required reading in order to get what's going on, but check it out if you feel like fully appreciating the whole deranged Morgana experience. ;-)
Part II
Gwen
Alice stays quiet, and a shadow falls over Ealdor. You came here seeking peace; ruin trailed along after you, constant as a faithful friend. You remind yourself again and again that this is not your fault - how could it be? How could you have done it? - but you aren’t quite sure. After all, the last time magic had its claws in you, you were none the wiser.
Of course, you think of Morgana. Wonder if she might have sent a curse after you, and you were so relieved to see the slight broken traces of your old friend that you didn’t even suspect her until it was too late.
You feel, down deep, that this isn’t the truth, but what good has feeling done you so far?
“We must send word to Merlin,” Hunith says absently, the two of you sitting by the fire one bleak evening. The words are little more than a whisper; a thought that escaped.
You know that Merlin is an essential ingredient in most of Arthur’s heroics, and that, thanks to the two of them, nothing so very bad has befallen Camelot and stayed. Still, you can’t imagine how he might go about fighting this magic that none of you even know how to name. He is only a man, after all, and what hope does a man have against such a foe?
Unless. The word dawns in you, unbidden. Along with it comes all of Merlin’s odd silences, his silences and the sad wisdom that lurks behind his young eyes, his knack for always, always being in the right place at the right time-
Hunith seems to catch herself.
“You yearn for the ones you love,” she adds, with the smoothness of someone very accustomed to lying. “In times like these.”
“Of course,” you murmur, docile, your mind on fire.
Morgana
You reach Ealdor in what feels like no time at all; you’re so focused upon arriving that the whole journey seems a blur. You do not eat much, save for a distracted bite of something or other when lightheadedness sets in. With the village visible on the horizon, exhaustion suddenly catches up to you. Even standing seems a triumph.
You push on. You aren’t about to let weakness become a habit.
You remember where Hunith lives, and hope you can make it there unbothered. No such luck. (But then, you had expected as much. You are prepared for the situation - all you need to do is reach into your pocket.) There is a tense, frightened pulse in the air that lets you know something has beaten you here. You are halfway to the cottage when a pair of men intercepts you. They both look the worse for wear, but one wears such raw anguish on his face that you know the cause of this silence must be a matter close to his heart.
“Stop,” says the less suffering one. “What’s your business here?”
“I have a friend residing in your village,” you say. You use the word to give them less reason to fear you, but it still feels peculiar to say, like a taste you had nearly forgotten. “Gwen. She told me she would be staying with Hunith.”
“Lower your hood,” commands the broken man.
“I only want to see Gwen,” you say, biting back fury. You could knock them unconscious in seconds with the slightest lift of your hand. Insolent idiots, infected with tyranny just as all men are, expecting that just because you are a woman you couldn’t tear them to bits as easy as breathing-
They watch you, their faces wary and distrusting and a little afraid. Afraid of you, who have done nothing to them. Good. They ought to be. They can feel it on you, without even seeing your face.
But there is no point in toiling with peasants. Not with Gwen in danger, and so close. It’s ridiculous to let these two men stand in between you. You can play nice just as well as anyone. You doubt they will remember you, anyway. You were only a soldier of Arthur’s. Only a girl. And so you comply, and lower your hood.
“Morgana Pendragon,” breathes one of them, proving you wrong.
“Please-” You say it without thinking, and hate the word as soon as it slips from your mouth.
The sadder man wastes no time in threatening you. You can tell he means every word. “You made a grave mistake showing your face here, witch. You think you can curse our people, our children, and then breeze in as if we’ll bend at the knee to you? Woman, every one of us will go down fighting before we let you-”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you snarl. “You think I’d waste my efforts on a village?”
“I think there’s no low a killer of kings wouldn’t sink to!”
They are only two men, and though you know you shouldn’t kill them (they are husbands and fathers, there are women and children who will cry for them), you would like to so much that it aches in you. The magic begs like the hands of an ardent wooer, wandering, wandering-
“And not only kings,” you begin, when-
“Morgana?” She steps out of the cottage, your impossible destination, with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.
“Gwen.” Your knees give up at the sight of her. So does your anger; suddenly, the men are only men, small in their suffering and not worth anything but your pity. The ground is hard and dirty beneath you, but might as well be feathers and down, for how badly you’d like to stay there. Never rise again.
Their voices swim in your head:
“Gwen, what is the meaning of this?”
“You led a witch right to us?”
“No,” Gwen says, calm but very firm. She sinks onto the ground beside you, steering your head to her shoulder. “She did not do this.”
“What?” you ask, your voice damnably faint. “What’s happened?”
“Of course she did! My daughter is cursed, and days later a sorceress shows up by coincidence? What else are we to believe?”
“Look at her,” Gwen says, as if she’s scolding children. “Does she really look like she’s in a state to harm anyone?”
You glare at her with what strength you have left - for the past few years, you have considered yourself in an eternally fit state to harm anyone, thanks very much - and she answers with an ‘oh, don’t be difficult’ roll of her eyes.
“What happened?” you demand.
“A little girl in the village has fallen under some sort of magic,” Gwen explains. She runs her fingers through your hair, as if it’s still a habit. You feel it keenly. You remind yourself to breathe. “We don’t know what it might be. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. She’s stopped talking. Stopped looking at anyone as if she knows them. It’s like she’s just been-”
“Hollowed out,” you finish.
She frowns slightly. Her fingers still; she seems to realize what she’s doing at last, and pulls her hand back. You knew she would. “How did you-”
“I dreamed it. I dreamed it, and I came to help-”
“What is she talking about?” demands the slightly calmer man, looking at you as if he’s prepared to run for the nearest pitchfork at your slightest movement.
“You’re dreaming again?” Gwen says, with a peculiar expression on her face.
You feel suddenly, absurdly shy, and find you cannot stand it, her staring at you like that.
“I’ll cure her,” you say instead, in big bold Morgana tones, and force yourself up out of the comfort of her lap.
“What?”
“Take me to her,” you instruct the men; the world whooshes as you force yourself to your feet. “I’ll do everything I can. If it is in my power-”
The broken man lets out a short, ugly laugh. “Like hell.”
“I don’t kill children for sport!”
He looks at you as if he can see clear into your rotten heart. “But you kill them for other reasons?”
It stings, though it shouldn’t. They are only words, words from a callous fool twisted by grief; you remind yourself that he does not know you, does not know anything you’ve done. And besides, he’s one to talk. He, who would do anything to bring his daughter back. The ugliest things are the ones done for love.
“You think me quite the monster, don’t you?” you ask - tilting your head just so, turning your voice pretty and jeering. It is not so different from talking to Arthur.
You find yourself quite eager for his reply, but he does not give you one. Instead, he turns his wrath upon Gwen. “Conspiring with a witch - bringing her here - why, you’ve had us all quite fooled, haven’t you?”
Gwen’s face turns - not sad, exactly. Pained. Desperate. You remember that it was not so long ago that she must have stood before Arthur and listened to tales of her duplicity. “Alec, I didn’t-”
“Liar,” the father snarls, and takes a step, an ugly lunging step toward Gwen.
You have no idea what he means to do, but you do know that it makes you sick, seeing only that one step. And so, without thought, easy as anything, you lift a hand and send him flying. He lands with a heavy thud some fifteen feet away. His friend looks at you as if you are the devil itself; it freezes him. Coward.
“Morgana!” Gwen shouts. The shout, or perhaps the thud, draws people out from their little sanctuaries. The voices start, fluttering like birds, persistent, closer, above and around you, ready to tangle their talons in your hair, to beat their wings into your heart, to peck out your eyes and the last bits of your soul, which they cannot have, not those, they’ve been promised to someone else-
“What have you done?” cries someone, a woman, rushing to the side of the man you threw. Ah, there’s the mother. Your heart aches for her, and admires her; she sounds dignified, somehow, in her sorrow. Not high-voiced and weeping and womanish.
“Gwen’s brought her here,” says the frozen man, melting at last, his voice too loud.
You remember your pocket, just in time: a vial filled with six drops of clear liquid. You damn your hands as they fumble - but no matter. You get there just in time. You pull the stopper out, and murmur the right words.
For one clean second, the village, the horizon, the sky goes white.
Gwen
You could kill her.
Well, all right, no, you couldn’t. But you could certainly hit her. Hard.
“What were you thinking??” you hiss, grabbing Morgana’s elbow as you usher her toward Hunith’s cottage. The villagers of Ealdor watch you go, but it’s with hopeful and unfrightened interest.
“Essence of letheroot. It’s harmless. Only enough to make them forget they’ve heard anything of me since I was here last. As far as the people of Ealdor know, I still reside in Camelot at Arthur’s side.”
“And you don’t see how that’s wrong?”
“They were accusing you!” She looks at you with such rage and loyalty; a feral dog beseeching its beloved owner. “I wasn’t about to stand by and watch!”
“You can’t just go around stealing peoples’ minds from them! It’s monstrous.”
“I had to.” She’s looking at you with a none-too-winning mix of bewilderment and disdain, as if she genuinely cannot fathom why you’d protest.
You knew. You knew very well that she is not the way she once was, that she’s dangerous. And yet you let yourself forget.
You can no longer afford that luxury.
“And I suppose that’s what you told yourself when you did it to Lancelot?” you say sharply. “To me?”
Morgana looks at you as if you have hit her, but you’re too angry to dissolve into apologies the way you would have before. It feels good, watching the hurt dawn on her face. Because some cruel part of you has been itching to hurt someone. Because it’s a relief to know that there is enough heart left in her to hurt her at all.
“It’s so good to see you again, my dear,” Hunith says as you two enter the cottage, clasping Morgana’s hand in her own. Morgana looks startled by the contact, and for a moment you’re sure she will shake Merlin’s mother off. But then she recovers - she always was graceful with admirers. “So the King sent you?”
“Gwen sent word, and I came as quickly as I could, upon Arthur’s orders. Not that he could have stopped me if he’d wanted to,” she adds with a sly grin. Hunith smiles, charmed. You feel suddenly sick, watching Morgana step back into the role of the girl she once was. She is almost perfect at it - close enough that no one else here will ever notice a difference.
But only ‘almost,’ to you. You knew her best.
“And do you think you’ll be able to help her?” Hunith continues.
“I’ve been studying medicine under Gaius when my spare time allows it,” Morgana replies. “I’m nowhere near as gifted as he is, of course, but the poor old man did not feel up to the journey, and he seemed to think the time had come to test what I’ve learned.”
Her hatred of Gaius glints brightly in the sweetened syllables; it reminds you of that not-quite-right smile she always wore, in that last year in Camelot after her time away with Morgause. You assumed then that she had been hurt more badly than she could confess, and could not quite remember how to be kind. How your heart would ache for her, even when she looked at you like a stranger, put that too-shining smile on. You’ve always had such a troublesome tendency toward thinking the best of her.
“Do you think medicine stands a chance against magic?” Hunith asks.
“I think it may. I know I can try,” Morgana answers, so earnest and stubborn (so Morgana) that you yearn to throw something at her. Scream and scream until she stops using your dead best friend as a mask to hide behind.
“Did Merlin send any word?” It comes back to you at the sound of Hunith’s careful words - Merlin.
Merlin, and magic.
“He sends his love,” Morgana answers smoothly, “and hopes for my success.”
“But he did not come.”
“You know men.” Morgana laughs - her airy banquet laugh. “Especially royal ones. So very busy with the business of kings. And, well, the polishing of kings’ boots, in Merlin’s case. It seems Arthur just couldn’t spare him.”
“Ah,” Hunith says softly. You watch as the news of her son’s new lack of concern settles into her. You wonder what Morgana will do if she ever finds out what you are just beginning to know about Merlin. You shiver.
“I promise I’ll do all I can,” Morgana adds, gentle and earnest, taking Hunith’s hand in hers this time.
“Of course,” Hunith says, and presses a hand to Morgana’s cheek. “But look at you, dear. You’re a wreck.”
“I saw no point in wasting fine dresses on such an arduous journey,” Morgana answers with a self-deprecating smile. You wonder if she means to torture you right now.
“Hunith,” you interrupt, deciding to put an end to it, “if you’d like to go sit with Mary and Alec, I’ll prepare supper.”
“Oh, Gwen, I couldn’t ask you to-”
“Please,” you interrupt firmly. “I know you bring them such comfort; surely they could use extra, after Alec took that fall.”
“Poor man,” Hunith says. “I’ve never known a stronger one. If you’d told me before today that he could faint, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“No one is built to endure the suffering of their children,” you say.
“Yes.” Hunith smiles, wistful.
“A visit from you would do them good. You can tell them of Morgana’s arrival, and what she means to do for Alice.”
“Yes,” Hunith agrees after a moment. “Yes, all right.”
“Send them my love,” Morgana orders after Hunith, just as the door is closing.
As soon as it shuts, you turn to her, and decide, for perhaps the first time in your life, that kindness is overrated. “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Morgana asks, sounding genuinely puzzled. You suppose she must be used to it, having spent a whole year lying to all of you without a second thought.
It suddenly seems very pointless to pursue this conversation.
“Nothing.” You toss an apple to her, harder than one usually tends to toss apples, and feel a surge of disappointment when she catches it neatly. “Here, eat this. You’re shaking.”
“You’re displeased with me.”
“I’m afraid of you.”
“Why?” You turn your thoughts to supper, abandoning her for the larder. She follows you, oblivious. “Gwen, surely you must know I would never hurt you.”
“Oh, yes, surely,” you mock, and try your hardest to contemplate potatoes with utmost concentration. A few are beginning to sprout.
“I mean it,” Morgana insists. You know it must incense her to talk to your back. “I came all this way to save you. I dreamt- and the second I knew you were in danger, I swore I wouldn’t let it happen, I swore you wouldn’t- Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt that? Ever since Morgause died, I’ve had no one save for that idiot Agravaine; do you know how it felt, to have him bring me news of you and Arthur and Merlin, carrying on together as you always had, you and Arthur so in love, Merlin so loyal, while I sat in that godforsaken hovel alone, month after month-”
“My heart breaks for you,” you snap, digging out potato sprouts with your fingernails. “Truly.”
“You can’t imagine what it was like.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t imagine being so selfish.”
“Those people would have seen me dead if they knew what I really was!”
“Or so your sister taught you.”
Her hand is on your shoulder in an instant, stronger than you remember (then again, she was always so soft with you before; she had no reason not to be). The potatoes fall to the floor with dull dead thuds. She whirls you around to face her. You think for a second of Arthur, yelling, shaking you. This hurts less, somehow, and feels truer. Morgana’s eyes are bright with anger, not quite sane. Inviting, as a flame is.
“Don’t you dare speak ill of her.” Morgana keeps one hand on your shoulder and puts the other against the wall, trapping you between her arms. “Don’t you dare.”
You allow yourself to linger for a moment, so that she can realize just where she is, and why.
“Ah yes,” you say then, carefully. “Of course you’d never hurt me.”
Morgana freezes. Realizing where and why. Then her face crumples, and she starts crying.
You’ve always had a knack for comforting crying people (especially her, once), but this-
This is beyond your expertise.
“You don’t know,” she sobs. “You don’t know what it feels like. I’m going mad, Gwen, I swear it. Everything is too much, and I left the bracelet behind because I knew, I knew you were right, that the nightmares are a part of me and I was a fool to push them down for so long, but I can’t sleep and I can’t think, and I’m going mad, I know it. I’m not strong enough for this, and if you ever tell anyone-you can’t tell anyone-”
It isn’t quite a hug: it’s more that she collapses against you, and you’re not left with much choice but to turn it into one. Her shoulder blades are too sharp underneath your hands. You wonder if she has let herself go to skin and bones beneath those ratty, ugly black dresses. You wonder if Agravaine has ever reminded her to eat.
“I won’t tell,” you capitulate at last, though you make sure not to sound too sorry for her.
She looks up at you, still shaking, her face streaked with tears. She does not look beautiful at all, for once.
“When have I ever told?” you add impatiently. “Your secrets are always safe with me, Morgana. Now, go on, then. Eat something.”
You guide her to your bed; she sits obediently, still crying a little. When you hand her the apple again, she stares at it like she has no idea what it might be for.
“You can’t carry on like this,” you tell her, stern. “Not here and now. You owe these people. You have a curse to break. Either that, or a promise.”
“I’m through with breaking promises,” she replies, steeliness sneaking through her tears, “thank you very much.”
You smooth her hair out of her eyes. It seems you’ll never be able to quite shake the maidservant out of you. Then you issue a dare. “Prove it.”
She meets your eyes. Nods, just barely, and bites into the apple at last.
Part 3