She Dreams With an Open Heart
Rating: PG
Pairings: Gwen/Arthur, but very much a OT4 piece.
Disclaimer: Merlin belongs to the Beeb. Certain aspects of this is from Doctor Who Series Five.
Summary: Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. When a tragedy occurs, Gwen finds herself in a new kingdom, with no recollection of her life in Camelot. The presence of a mysterious person is triggering her memory, but meanwhile, an injured man turns up, whom she seems to have a great affinity for. But why is she here? Who is the person she keeps on seeing? And why can’t she remember a thing? AU after series two.
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A/N: Just to point out, when Morgana disappears from Camelot at the start of this series, it’s under the assumption she disappears with Morgause after Merlin has poisoned her, but unlike in series three, Morgana doesn’t come back, she stays with Morgause and it’s clear to Arthur, Merlin and Gwen where her loyalties lie.
Many thanks to
_autumncolours for her wonderful betaness. Also, I'm really sorry for the delay in this, but there are three parts! Also, I have not replied to comments from last chapter because I haven't had a chance, but I'll do better this time? And lastly, MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Prologue/
Part One/
Part Two/
Part Three /
Part Four /
Part Five/
Part Six/
Part Seven/
Part Eight/
Part Nine/
Part Ten________________________________________
Part VIII
Time passes: five minutes, an hour, a lifetime. Arthur’s not really sure how long he’s been standing outside in the cold for, but any of these values seems like a distinct possibility right now. He’s lost all sense of time and dithers on the spot, uncertain how to proceed. He thinks he should find out why he’s here, but doesn’t know where to start. If magic is behind him being here, then he would be so damn hopeless at finding the source. Merlin was always the one who figured out these sorts of things, even all those times when Arthur thought he had been the mastermind behind it all. A pang hits him, and he realises how utterly lost he is without his friend and he closes his eyes, calling out to him, hoping he will come.
When he opens his eyes, he realises just how pitiful his situation is: out here in Souhaiter, with no weapon to defend himself with, no riches to bail him out and no horse to carry him home. He’s completely defenceless here and lacking any resources and it strikes him that he’s never been in this position before. How typical it is then, to find himself so ill-equipped in a situation that surely necessitates being prepared. Unknown danger lurks just around the corner, and he’s the house made out of straw standing in the path of a raging storm.
He sees the few choices he has laid out before him: he could steal a horse and ride back to Camelot, although what he’ll be riding back to, he has no idea. Or he could seek help from Gwen. He laughs at how ridiculous that sounds. The Gwen of before would not have hesitated in helping him, but this Gwen, the Gwen he created, has been sucked into a vortex just by having seen him. Who knows what damage would be done and what she would discover if she chose to help him. Should she choose to help him, that is. This Gwen, the one with the same face but blank memories as the one he knows by heart, reminds him of those dolls Morgana used to have. Given to her by elders who were too ignorant to realise she was far too old for dolls and not caring for them anyway, she used to perch them on top of her armoire so they were out of reach, but to Arthur’s glee, not out of sight. He used to like to take them, erroneously thinking it would annoy Morgana. It took him a while to realise she didn’t even notice they had gone and even longer still to realise that they were things of beauty to be admired from a distance; to touch them would only result in them breaking. Nevertheless, the desire to seek Gwen out yet again is overwhelming.
Don’t, his mind chides.
The sound of people laughing startles him out of his reverie. When he looks to his side, he sees the last of the party dwellers pouring out of the castle entrance. For a moment he envies them for their problem-free lives.
And then suddenly Gwen emerges from the entrance. Instantly, he stands up straighter and more alert. There’s something slightly off about Gwen: she seems dazed and unsteady and it worries him enough to want to go up to her. But he stays where he is, watching as her eyes furtively dart to and fro.
Then her gaze lands on him.
He thinks that it’s impossible for her to have seen him in the dark, but her eyes are locked onto him.
For a few moments, they just stare at one another.
There’s something different about Gwen; he can tell that much even though she’s several feet away. There’s the loss of the innocence she carried from being blissfully unaware of her past. There’s confusion and disbelief written all over her face.
He panics. Does she know? How much does she know? How can she know?
She answers his questions by walking right up to him and saying with incredulity, “So it turns out that I do know you after all.”
The statement hangs in the air and it strikes Arthur that maybe she’s waiting for him to confirm this, but he’s not sure if he should. Maybe he should deny that he knows her, maybe he should run away lest he finds out that she knows what he did, maybe he should make out that whatever she says next is not true. Maybe he doesn’t want to do any of these things.
Maybe he should stay and face all of these things head on, damn the consequences.
Mutely he nods and she closes her eyes momentarily.
“I’ve been having these strange dreams of another life, and I thought they were just that. Strange dreams. But apparently...apparently that’s not true. Apparently they’re memories of a former existence.”
There’s a pleading look in her eyes, almost as if she wants him to reassure her that it’s false.
But he nods again.
She flinches.
“I thought you were a knight,” she says, her hand waving in the air with emphasis. “And it turns out you’re a prince.”
He clears his throat and shifts uncomfortably. “King,” he corrects. “I’m King now.”
Her eyes widen. “King,” she mouths, stunned. She shakes her head, dismissing this. “And apparently we know each other quite well.”
There’s no doubt what she means by ‘know’.
He nods again, unable to articulate anything useful.
“It’s impossible!” she declares. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
Even as she says it, there’s uncertainty in her eyes.
“I sort out flowers for a living. I can’t be that...girl in my dreams and now my memories, because that’s just-,” she stops what she’s saying and bites her lip.
But he knows her well enough to conjure what she would have said next.
Because that’s just too much to hope for.
“And even if there was this small, ridiculous chance that I am that girl, then why I am here in Souhaiter, so far away from Camelot? Why are you here in Souhaiter when your place is back there? And how is it I didn’t know of you or any of this until today?”
Relief floods through him as he realises that she doesn’t yet realise why she’s here. But that joy is short-lived.
“I don’t know,” he answers, and it’s not really a lie if he answers correctly for only one of her questions is it?
She looks at Arthur, waiting for him to elaborate.
“The last thing I remember before waking up in this place is lying on the battlefield dying. I don’t know how I got here.”
She nods her head but it quickly turns into shaking.
“I don’t...I don’t understand anything,” she says.
“Me neither,” he whispers, and this time he’s telling the truth.
+
They sit at the table of her aunt’s house, having moved there when the cold became overbearing. Gwen finds some leftover broth from yesterday’s dinner for the two of them, and Arthur devours his hungrily. It makes her smile, because even in this odd situation, where she feels she doesn’t really know him at all- but knows him entirely- her intuition is still able to guess what he needs.
Minutes pass where neither says a word. Gwen is quiet and reflecting on a life she can’t believe is hers; Arthur is silent with the gravity of what is being unfurled.
“What do you remember about your life back in Camelot?” he dares himself to ask.
Gwen shrugs, but the heaviness of her shoulders suggests she’s accepted her former life, or at least she mostly has. “Just bits and pieces, really. I have all these memories to sort through and some are startling clear and others are obscure. I remember you. I remember Merlin. I remember my role in Camelot and that we were at war with Cenred, but everything after that is muddled.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through, knowing what you thought was your life was in fact a lie.” Arthur’s voice is quiet and he can’t understand why he’s broaching this topic or when he became such a masochist.
“I’m not sure if I completely believe it,” she admits. “I’m waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me it’s all a dream.”
He smiles, but it’s a small one.
“How long have you been away from Camelot?” Gwen asks.
Arthur is briefly stunned by the question, but regains composure and shakes his head. “I’m not sure...months I think. I’ve been out at war.”
Gwen nods, understanding. “Do you know how long I’ve been away from Camelot?”
Arthur hesitates. “I think probably about the same time.”
“Did you know I had gone?”
His breath hitches. “No. I was not in Camelot at that point- I haven’t been for a long while. I didn’t realise you weren’t there until I saw you here today.” Arthur winces at the obvious lie and hopes Gwen hadn’t noticed.
Gwen nods again, but there’s a tinge of doubt whispering in her mind. There’s something that doesn’t quite add up about what he’d said, but she can’t pinpoint what it is.
She casts her gaze down to stare at her empty bowl. “Who would have taken me here? Why would I be sent away from Camelot?”
Arthur doesn’t say anything. His eyes close before he answers, “I don’t know.”
Gwen notices his voice is tense.
“Someone sent me here,” she deduces. “And wiped away my memories, made me think that I had lived here all my life. They made me forget about Camelot. About you and Merlin and everything I had there! I can’t understand why someone would have reason to do so.”
Arthur opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. Trying once more to find suitable words, he takes a breath before saying, “Maybe someone thought that you being in Camelot wasn’t safe anymore.” His words seem futile even to him.
Gwen’s brow furrowed in confusion. If not Arthur and Merlin, then who else would be invested in her enough to send her away?
“Guinevere, back home, everything is...everything is different. I’ve heard that Camelot is dangerous and unsafe and I have seen so many terrible things from being at war that I can’t wish away. For whatever reason you are here, I am glad because it means that you weren’t at home. From what messengers have told me, there isn’t much of the kingdom left. Few people have survived within Camelot’s walls and fewer still have survived outside of them. You being here means that you were safe from all of that and if I... if I had returned from winning the war only to find that I had lost you, I wouldn’t have been able to live with that.”
Arthur tilts his head up to stave off the pending tears and, feeling her heart break at the sight, Gwen reaches out and places her hand over his.
“Arthur...” she whispers.
Hearing her say his name after so long sets him over the edge and the tears run freely now. Despite lying about having not been in Camelot as long as her, everything else had been true and the grief he feels over his losses strikes him hard. He thinks about his failed kingdom and all the lives lost because he hadn’t been good enough to save them all; he thinks about his dead father and the friends and comrades who have fallen; he ponders the genuine relief he feels over Gwen being here, safe and unharmed from the terrors of back home, but thoughts of what would have happened to her with certainty had she stayed behind plague him.
His other hand goes over the one she has over his. “You have no idea how much it means to see you again after all this time.” His voice is hoarse, but not devoid of sincerity.
She smiles up at him; the feelings she has for him are too new for her to attempt anything more comforting.
“Is the war in Camelot over now?” she wonders.
“I’m not sure,” he answers. “The battle I was fighting in, it was to be the last and Camelot was to triumph. But it didn’t quite go to plan.” Gwen watches as Arthur’s eyes darken with memory. “The last I remember, we were losing. But maybe there’s a chance that we were saved.”
“Merlin,” she murmurs.
Arthur nods.
“You don’t know where he is,” she states.
He shakes his head. “I was fighting the last of Cenred’s men. Merlin’s job was to defeat Morgause.”
Morgause. Gwen remembers her.
“Tell me about your life here, Guinevere.” There’s a look of desperation in his eyes that doesn’t go missed by Gwen and Arthur feels a strange kind of hunger: a desire to know all that he’s missed in Gwen’s life over the last year.
“I...there isn’t much to tell.”
Arthur looks imploringly.
“I live with my aunt,” Gwen offers, her hand gesturing around the house. Subconsciously, her gaze lifts to the bedroom where her aunt is sleeping and she smiles as she thinks of her. “I have my own bedroom, with actual furniture and a bed that fits my frame.” Her eyes are gleaming and Arthur doesn’t miss her happiness. “I get to spend my days picking flowers from the woods and the fields and arranging them in decorations. Souhaiter has no enemies and I do not have to constantly look over my shoulder just in case. Life is free here and I really love it.”
For some reason, knowing that the last year has been glorious for her, and that she’s loved a place that isn’t her home, strangles Arthur. The last year has been hell for him, and even though this is the best he could have hoped for Gwen, knowing that she has been fine without him hurts.
“I don’t know what I’m expected to do now,” Gwen admits. “I guess maybe I’m supposed to return to Camelot...if it really is my home, and maybe it shouldn’t do if my life here has been a lie,” her voice breaks slightly at the thought. “But Souhaiter feels a lot like home to me.”
Arthur looks at her in shock at what’s implied in her tone, because in all the scenarios he envisioned of returning back to Gwen, through her eventually hating him for what he’d done and the distance that would be there from their year apart, he never imagined that he would go home to Camelot and that Gwen would stay behind.
“I’m glad that this place has been good for you,” he eventually says.
Gwen smiles again and they drift into silence once more. Arthur’s expression is solemn as he gazes down into his bowl, as if trying to find answers, and Gwen takes the opportunity to really study his face. She finds it hard to believe that she has history with this man and would never have believed that someone of his status and good looks would ever be interested in someone so entirely different. Yet, when she looks at his downcast eyes, she can conjure up a hundred images of him looking at her so intently. When her eyes sweep over his mussed up hair, she can remember the many times her hands swept through it and when her gaze falls on his lips, she can recall each instance when those lips were pressed against her own.
She lets out a soft sigh, and it’s enough for Arthur to lift his saddened eyes to hers and to hold them there.
There are whispers in her mind of him calling her name in two syllables; him reaching out to her so many times when tears overwhelmed her; drunken dancing and declarations in the dark; clandestine meetings in the shadows and feeling overwhelmingly happy every time he was near.
As Gwen of Souhaiter, she barely knows the man before her, but the Gwen of Camelot has so many memories of him that it’s ingrained in every one of her cells. Every time she now looks at him, she regards him with familiarity, because those memories are in the periphery of everything she does and though she feels like there are two Gwens: the one of before and the one of now; really there is only one Gwen which hasn’t entirely placed itself together.
“You mentioned you had these dreams,” Arthur finally says, breaking their fragile eye contact. Words conjure in his mind: I keep having these dreams. I know that isn’t exactly unusual, everybody has dreams. But I don’t. I never did, not until recently, and I keep dreaming of the same people... He blinks ferociously, uncertain where they came from. “Can you tell me about them?”
“My dreams?”
He nods.
Gwen paces her hands on the table and studies them. “They started a few weeks ago, just after I saw...I saw...,” her eyes widen in realisation.
“Who? Who did you see?”
Gwen meets Arthur’s gaze again. “Morgana.”
She remembers her now.
With all the events that had happened today, Gwen had forgotten all about the mysterious woman who she had been encountering. But now she realises who she is.
Her answer shocks Arthur enough for him to stand up, terror in his eyes.
“Morgana?”
She nods and Arthur places his hands over his face.
“If Morgana’s here, Guinevere, then you have to leave. We both have to leave now. It’s not safe and she’s dangerous-,” Arthur begins to head for the door.
“No!”
Arthur turns his head, only to see Gwen standing and a resolute expression on her face.
“Morgana’s not dangerous, Arthur. It’s not like before when-,” she cuts off for a moment. When she wanted us dead. “I’ve seen her and talked to her and she’s not a threat. Mysterious and frustrating, yes, but I never felt my life was at peril.”
Arthur shakes his head. “You don’t know that for sure.”
Gwen frowns.
Arthur sighs. “I don’t doubt your observations, Guinevere. It’s just that Morgana is a powerful witch and it wouldn’t be beyond her to manipulate you into thinking you’re safe around her and lulling you into a false sense of security.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe that. If it were true, why did I start remembering everything when she showed up?”
Arthur shrugs.
“Maybe she wanted me to remember. Maybe...maybe, she was the one who brought me here in the first place.”
Arthur’s eyes widen. “Do you believe that?”
“Who else would do so?”
“What would her motive be?”
“I never believed that Morgana was evil, Arthur. Never. Confused, yes. Fallen, yes. Misplaced, certainly. But I don’t believe she’s a bad person. Maybe she got tired of her lifestyle. Maybe she wanted to be gone from all of that. Maybe she wanted me to be gone from all of that too.”
Arthur exhales deeply and tilts his head up to the ceiling. “Even if what you’re saying is true, I can’t take a risk on that.I can’t. I think we should move some place safer, just in case.”
Gwen moves round so she’s standing in front of her chair, but doesn’t make a move towards Arthur. Tentatively, she places her hands on the chair and it takes her a few moments before she speaks. “It’s been a while since the two of us have seen one another; you and I, that is. And forgive me, Arthur, but I am not in the position to have to consent to do everything you say.”
He looks at her in confusion. “What are you implying?”
She lifts her chin slightly. “You are asking me to leave here because you perceive Morgana to be a great threat to the two of us and given her history, I do not blame you. But she has been here with me whereas you have not. She knew I was here when you did not. She was an ally of sorts whereas you were absent. So I am choosing to stay here because I know it’s the right choice.”
Startled, he looks at her realising that he no longer has any say over her.
My, how the two of us have changed, he realises with a pang.
Knowing he can’t leave without her, he relents and goes to sit back at the table. Gwen sits back down too.
He clears his throat. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been presumptuous to think-,”
“No, it’s fine. Really,” she cuts in.
“So what happens now?”
She darts a look at the window, which reveals a lightening sky. “It’s almost dawn,” she says. “It’s late and I’m exhausted after all that’s happened today. Tomorrow we can...” she trails off, uncertain what it is they can do next. Find Morgana? Get answers? “We can decide tomorrow,” she finally says.
“Of course,” he says.
“I guess I better be heading off to bed. Are you tired, because I-,” she stops herself when she realises she has no spare bed to offer him or anything to work as a makeshift bed. An image of him being in her house, sleeping in her bed while she has to make do with a lumpy sack conjures up in her mind. The image turns into his chambers, with the two of them simply lying together, seeking solace in these dark times. She immediately flushes at the thought.
“No, I’m not tired,” he answers. “I think I’ve had enough sleep.”
She hesitates. “What will you do?”
He manages a small smile. “Stay here, if that’s okay. I have a lot to think about.”
“Okay,” she says with a nod. She begins to head to her bedroom, before turning to face him. “Oh, if my aunt wakes up before me and sees you here, she might attack you with a broom and you might have to fend her off.”
“Duly noted,” he replies. “Sleep well, Guinevere.”
She smiles at him. “Thank you, Arthur.”
He watches as she heads to her room and shuts the door behind her, and then his head collapses into his hands.
What a nightmare, he thinks.
+
Time seems to drag now that he’s left alone and the candles Gwen had lit had almost burnt out.
Talking to Gwen had been unsettling for a number of reasons, but he had found comfort amid the pain. Despite this, the news that Morgana is in Souhaiter deeply troubles him. Gwen may be able to vouch for her integrity, but Arthur can’t do the same. He had watched her kill Gwen and saw the destruction she had caused and until he could confront her, he wasn’t going to let his guard down.
Unable to sit still any longer, he rises from the table and paces about, before realising that the noise he’s making may well wake up Gwen and her aunt. Letting out a sigh, he casts a glance over at the door and the outside view from the window beside it beckons him.
He dithers for a moment, wondering whether it’s a good idea to go outside given the circumstances, but he does need some fresh air. And he knows he won’t wander far.
+
Part Nine