Fic: Mark The Grave (1/1)
Title: Mark The Grave [1/1]
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing/Characters: Gwen/Morgana, Arthur/Merlin.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13? Suicide, mentions of murder and femslash/slash/lesbian/gay stuff.
Word Count: 3775.
Summary: Modern!AU, in which Gwen is married and Morgana is her criminal, on the run lover.
Yeaaah, I don't even know. It was 1 AM, and I was just lying on my bed listening to music, and bang! I ended up writing this. I literally just typed without looking, sent it to absorbefacient and ended up posting. It's nearly 5 AM, so I should probably go to sleep before my brain spews more crack.
I DON'T EVEN KNOW, OKAY. I prefer Gwen/Lancelot to Gwen/Morgana, but I do love both. IDFK. I NEED TO GET OFF THE INTERNET LOL.
The lyrics used are from Cemetery Drive, by My Chemical Romance. The characters belong to the BBC show, Merlin, I'm not making any profit, blah blah.
this night walk the dead in a solitary style
Gwen walked the streets of London with barely-contained excitement; her destination wasn’t far and undoubtedly her lover would be waiting for her. They hadn’t seen each other in a fortnight, since it was hard to keep track of meeting up with someone convicted. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Gwen missed Morgana more than anything when they’d been apart for too long.
The glass of two bottles clinked together, securely held in the carrier bag clutched in her hand. Occasionally it bumped against her leg, causing her to scrunch her face up in annoyance, and stop to smooth her dress.
and crash the cemetery gates in the dress your husband hates
It was cotton and buttery yellow, with thick straps around her shoulders framed by soft white frills. The same white frills hung from beneath the skirt, skimming the skin on Gwen’s legs. Morgana couldn’t comprehend why Arthur didn’t seem to realize how beautiful she was in it - and out of it.
They sat side-by-side outside the cemetery, shoulders touching, a sharing of warmth in a cold night. Neither of them were quite sure why their meeting-place was outside a cemetery, but since Morgana had ended up on the run, it was difficult to find places for them to meet at all. It wasn’t like her striking appearance made it easy for her to hide from the people who mattered, and made it harder for her to see Gwen.
Besides, Gwen decided, if she was going to have a gay affair with a criminal, she might as well add to the shock-horror factor by meeting her lover outside a cemetary.
way down mark the grave
They lay together for what felt like hours, though it never was. Sometimes there would be friction and heat and sex - no, love - but tonight they exchanged only words and soft kisses while the night drifted by, hanging around them.
Morgana turned to look at the gravestones beyond the gate with a sullen expression, a sigh escaping her mouth. Gwen’s face matched hers as she picked up two sticks and pulled the yellow barrette from her hair; she crudely shoved it onto the sticks to hold them into a pseudo-cross and pushed it into the thick dirt beneath them.
“That’s my marriage,” she said, sadly. Pale fingers touched the side of her face, pushed curly hair behind her ear where the barrette had been.
“You’ve still got me.”
where the searchlights find us drinking by the mausoleum floor
They’d been there for about four hours, after three of which Gwen had uncovered the plastic bag she’d brought with her and dutifully shared out the two bottles of wine. Morgana liked rose, thought it classy - like her upbringing. Gwen, who had grown up in a more ordinary, middle-class lifestyle, preferred white wine. It’d been the drink she’d grown up with, from her first sips at Christmas with the family to glasses on New Year’s Eve. They shared the alcohol messily, drinking from the bottle and swapping bottles, unconcerned about the smears of different shades of lipstick lingering around the bottle-tops.
It was 3AM, and Morgana set down the wine bottle in her hand clumsily. The liquid had already slopped over her hand, sweet red staining her fingers; a disturbingly familiar sight. Unperturbed and smiling, Gwen leaned towards her, their lips clashing without direction or care, but with fire -
- until a burst of white broke the dark, shining on their faces; they sprung apart, Gwen lifting her arm to cover her face from the dark. Morgana could only stare hopelessly at the policemen standing over them with wide eyes, a rabbit caught in a headlights, a criminal caught in searchlights.
Gwen was only in the police station for about half an hour. Morgana had been forced through a pretentious acting school as she grew up, and had pleaded for her to be released - they were strangers, she insisted; she’d kidnapped Gwen and forced her into submission for the night. Mute, her lover could only nod and stutter out her phone number for officials to dial; Morgana snuck her a secretive smile, a wink and a whisper.
“I’ll see you soon.”
Arthur came to collect her minutes after someone at the station had called him, playing the part of a distressed husband as he entered, eyes searching for her. Gwen winced as she went to him, noting that he hadn’t bothered to sort his mussed hair and hide the hickey forming on his collarbone that she definitely hadn’t put there. What she had with Morgana wasn’t cheating, she reasoned, not when her husband had been taken long before their arranged marriage had come into place.
and they found you on the bathroom floor
She spent hours puzzling over Morgana’s final whisper. How would they see each other again? Morgana had been arrested and jailed more times than Gwen could count; they said she consorted with magic and Gwen knew it to be true, though she hardly cared. She supposed there was something poetic about knowing her dead father-in-law was Morgana’s doing and she’d done it with magic and her own bare hands.
Even so, Gwen didn’t think of Morgana as a killer. She was stunning and captivating and a thousand other things, treated Gwen with a delicacy that Arthur had never quite achieved even when he’d tried to court her for the sake of their arranged wedding - pulling her close and combing her hair and whispering good day, my lady Guinevere.
The headlines screamed of death penalty for the witch, and Gwen hid in the bathroom before she let her tears out. Ironically, it was the room that had most reminded her of Morgana; it was this room she’d use to dress up in the soft yellow dress her lover liked so much, the mirror she’d use to apply the make-up Morgana had taught her to use, the shower she’d use to help deal with the persistent dreams about the dark-haired girl she had. It made sense that it would be here that she’d curl up with the newspapers that thoughtlessly toyed with puns of the wicked witch.
Morgana wasn’t wicked and Gwen knew it better than anyone. She wrote a letter to her jailed lover and burnt it with the newspapers, created a fire in her bathroom sink. When it got too much she turned on the taps, water forming in the corners of her eyes as it fizzled out to nothing. She wished it were as easy to put out her feelings.
It was with Morgana’s golden eyes burning behind her own lids that Gwen swallowed the pills in her trembling hand. Her butter-yellow dress crumpled as she sat on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the side of the bath-tub with her fingers wrapped loosely around a broken bottle of rose wine.
i miss you i miss you so far
“Gwen, you’re awake!”
Blearily, she forced her eyes to open and sighed when Arthur’s features came into view. Pillows propped her up and she sank into them gratefully, lolling her head back and closing her eyes again.
“Gwen... ?”
It took a moment for her to realize that his fingers were twined with hers; she wriggled her wrist until he let go. Her head shook no against the pillow it lay against. She remembered, remembered drinking, remembered swallowing, remembered sitting back and waiting for a darkness that would last forever. The crisp white sheets suffocating her body when she tried to sit up made her stare, and she stared at the matching walls with fervour. White, so much white - where was her darkness?
“Arthur... leave, please.”
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
What had gone wrong? Gwen couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t work out where she’d failed. She should be in a blissful state of forever unknowing, not in a hard white bed with nurses constantly asking if she needed anything and prodding at her. The only solution she could come up with was that Arthur had found her and rushed her here - couldn’t he do anything right? She sighed into nothing, sinking into sleep and waiting for the blur of memories to bleed into her dreams.
It hurt to admit that she missed Morgana more than anything, especially knowing that Morgana was still securely locked away somewhere. She’d asked a nurse about it, asked for a newspaper or magazine to read after seeing a glimpse of a news report on the tinny little television in the corner of her hospital room. Reading about it only made her feel worse - she couldn’t shake the feeling that Morgana’s capture had been her fault, and something she needed to rectify. Maybe trying to take her own life hadn’t been the answer, but something had to be done as soon as she could get out of here.
Morgana stared blankly at the inside of her cell, tired of scraping the number of days into the wall with a rusting yellow barrette. Eventually she shoved it into her hair, though it did little to contain the tangled dark mass that hung around her shoulders. Her want for a hairbrush was nothing compared to want for Gwen; night after night she found herself drawing daffodils in the dust lining her cell. Daffodils, yellow, always bright, full of joy and beauty, the colour of Gwen’s dress and of the woman she knew she’d escape her prison for.
back home off the run
Two days later and she was gone, free, on her way to find Gwen again. It wasn’t safe any more, she decided; if they had to be together then Gwen would have to run with her. It was far too dangerous to keep hanging around the same area, and it was with this in mind and the echo of her love’s kiss on her lips that she swung through the window of Arthur and Gwen’s home.
Admittedly, she hadn’t been expecting to find herself face-to-face with Arthur Pendragon. She’d heard a lot about him, and expected him to look resemble his father. It wasn’t as though she’d known his father well any more, but she knew him well enough after she’d slaughtered him along with his anti-magic attitude. She’d heard of him from Gwen, too, but suspected that those descriptions were flattering - Gwen tried to avoid talking about her husband, since she was far too good on the inside to willingly discuss the man she was cheating on with his father’s killer. Even from those, though, she’d gotten the impression that he’d be a cold and unloving shell and not the shocked-looking man demanding to know who she was and why she was in his home.
“Where’s Gwen?” she interrupted, lifting her nose into the air. “I need to talk to her. I’m... a friend of hers.”
“A friend who couldn’t deign to knock on the door?” Arthur replied curtly, folding his arms.
“Yes. I want to see Gwen.”
“That’s not funny.”
With that, Arthur turned his back on her and let out a sigh. He sounded tired, though he didn’t look physically tired. Morgana suspected that the half-bottle of whiskey on the counter had something to do with it.
“What do you want?” he asked, with the air of a man forcing patience to his tone.
“I want to see Gwen,” Morgana repeated slowly. “Where is she?”
“That’s not funny,” he repeated back at her, gritting his teeth. “I don’t see why I should talk to someone who broke into my home and insists on mocking me about my wife, who tried to kill herself.”
The world stopped turning.
“Guinevere...”
Morgana fled.
singing songs that make you slit your wrists
Music whirled around her head as Morgana walked, every depressing lyric she’d ever heard pounding inside her skull. She knew better than to hitchhike, but trawling along the side of the highway on foot was hardly the most comfortable thing she’d ever done. Sleeping there when she ran out of steam wasn’t so bad, her lithe body slumping on the rough ground. She’d long since gotten used to sleeping rough, since being on the run, and murmuring whatever words and songs she could think of to pass the time and to force sleep to come.
After a while she’d nearly forgotten where she was going. Initially she’d wanted the hospital, wanted to find Gwen, but after a day of hazed walking Arthur’s words had blurred in her mind and become killed herself rather than tried to kill herself. She’d only kept going for Gwen, kept escaping and kept running. What was the point of going now? Her teenage self’s insistence that Romeo and Juliet were pathetic to want to die without each other suddenly seemed stupid. Now it felt real.
it isn’t that much fun staring down a loaded gun
In a field somewhere Morgana thought she’d finally lost it, on her knees and singing quietly to herself. Her tune didn’t really carry words any more, but it hardly mattered when there probably wasn’t anyone within a mile radius of her. A small part of her reminded her that she was being stupid, that she could carry on - that she could move on, but every time she started thinking about how to change her life (what was left of it), her thoughts were crushed by the incessant voice in the back of her head. It served only to remind her that Gwen was gone and it was her own fault, just like Morgause’s death had been all those years ago. She’d been only sixteen at the time, and it was one of the worst cases of magic gone wrong in recent years - they probably used it as an example in anti-magic propaganda.
The more her thoughts lingered on Gwen and her own loneliness, the more she thought of a polished, black shotgun. But Morgana wasn’t stupid, she knew herself too well and knew that she’d never have the gall to kill herself. Other people were a different matter altogether, but there was something about directly ending everything she’d ever known that she couldn’t even bear to think about.
so i won’t stop dying won’t stop lying
Gwen stared out of her window at the night, frozen tears burning tracks in her skin. They dripped from her jaw and onto her chest, slithering down to her chest and drying over the steady beat of her heart. Her hair kept wildly tangling around her face, no matter how much she shoved it back. She thought pointlessly of the yellow barrette that should have been there to hold it back.
She thought of the beautiful woman that should have been there to hold her back.
“I’m fine, Arthur,” she lied swiftly when he came to see her, when he tried to spend days at her side. Silently she loved his efforts, though there wasn’t a force on the planet that could make her love him even half as much as Morgana.
It took two weeks for her to come home, and she did so with a smile applied more carefully than lipstick. She’d perfected the art of telling her husband that she was fine, of acting like she had gotten over her episode to her friends and family.
And it was on the first evening since she’d returned that Arthur was gone that she found herself staring at bottle of pills in their medicine cabinet again.
if you want i’ll keep on crying
Countless miles away, Morgana tried to console herself with what Gwen would want her to do. She’d want her to keep her head high and stay strong, to be where she wouldn’t be recognized. Her memories were fading, Gwen’s voice no longer the memorable presence in her mind that it’d always been. Vaguely she tried to make it up to her, crawling when she had run out of strength and talking to what she believed was the presence of a dead lover.
“Gwen, I don’t know what to do any more,” Morgana confessed to the ground, eyes fixed on it. “I don’t know where to go. I haven’t got anyone to keep me safe any more. Why’d you leave me?”
It didn’t matter that no-one, especially not a woman so far away, could hear her.
“You know I’d always come back to you,” she continued, her neck emitting a soft clicking sound as she threw her head back to stare at the sky. The stars shone back at her, mocking in their beautiful light.
Morgana sighed, and let herself cry when it began to rain.
did you get what you deserve is this what you always want me for
Maybe this was punishment for adultery, Gwen considered. It was definitely a sin, even though she knew well enough that her apparently loving husband had committed it long before she’d even met Morgana and considered the possibility. It didn’t seem to add up to her that such a sin could create so much pain and misery, but maybe she’d done something else wrong along the line. She believed in karma, for sure, so maybe showering her affection on a beautiful murderer was a punishment. Maybe she deserved it.
It was only around then that she began to question whether Morgana had really loved her. She’d never suggested they run away together, though Gwen had subconsciously dreamt about and entertained the notion for long enough. It was a difficult topic to bring up in conversation - she’d been planning to talk about it, been building herself up to it - but that was before a cursed searchlight had thrown light at them and torn them apart.
i miss you i miss you so far
“I miss you, my lady Guinevere,” Morgana sang to the night sky. She lay on her back and watched the white of the moon dangling in the sky, allowing herself to smile lazily at it. Her stomach whined at her, a cavern reminding her that she hadn’t eaten in a few days, and dutifully she ignored the sound though she rested her hands on top of her stomach in apology.
Still what she wanted to do was unclear. Survival was important, but it was dropping lower on Morgana’s to-do list. The list was tiny enough already.
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
The clock struck midnight and Gwen stared at herself in the mirror, a thousand and one thoughts running riot inside her head. Arthur was still out, and she knew he wouldn’t be home for a while, until he thought she’d be asleep at least. Last time had been a mistake she wouldn’t make again; this time she locked the bathroom door before turning to place a fresh bottle of rose wine on the floor. Butter-yellow cotton was wrapped around her torso again, thick straps framed with white frills resting on her shoulders and accompanied by the weight of the world. She stared at her reflection and with shaking hands applied the yellow-gold make-up Morgana had shown her to use with her own skilled fingers. She never used her lover’s lipstick although she owned one, one that she’d taken as a keepsake.
Now she smoothed the substance over her mouth, puckering into a phantom kiss as she slid to the floor. Her back hit the bathtub again, her entire body relaxing the wine helped her to swallow. Quickly she lost count of how many she was taking and what of, having emptied every packet she could find in the cabinet.
way down way down way down way down way down way down way down way down
The remains of a river was one of the filthiest things Morgana had ever come across, and that was after growing up with her own mind. The water wasn’t more than a few centimetres high, but it was brown and leaves floated atop the scum on the surface.
Morgana struggled not to wrinkle her nose at the smell as she crawled into the cold, her limbs losing their strength and giving way. Lying there, she had no will nor want to make herself get up. A deep sigh left her lungs as her position switched to leave her lying boneless, face falling into the murky water.
i miss you i miss you so far
“Miss... you, see you,” Gwen whispered to the empty room, eyelids sliding shut. “Soon, Morgana.”
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
“Gwen’s gone,” Arthur murmured to a wide window. A city landscape laid out before him, bright lights shining through the night. Heat was wrapped around him, arms wound his bare midriff and soft kisses being pressed to his shoulder.
“No, she isn’t.”
“She’s changed, Merlin. She’s not Gwen any more, she’s empty.”
“Are you surprised?”
Arthur exhaled, his breath misting the glass in front of him. He turned, enveloping himself in his lover’s warmth.
“No.”
when will i miss you when will i miss you so far
“... I don’t know if I can miss her,” Arthur admitted, his hands absently wrapping themselves around Merlin’s scarf. “I don’t yet.”
He was met by a momentary silence as Merlin’s mouth moved away from his, settling somewhere near his ear. “You will.”
“When? She was my friend, even if... even if I didn’t... you know.”
“I don’t think you can be condoned for not loving her.”
“You don’t know that,” Arthur remained stubborn, removing his hands from Merlin’s chest and sliding them around the other’s neck. They collided again, mutually stumbling away from the window.
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard made it so hard
The occasional bubble of appeared in the dirty water drenching Morgana’s head as she lay in it, rising her head when breathing became a necessity. With irrational anger she wiped the liquid from her lips, scratching at the skin there as though it could bring Gwen back to her.
Morgana didn’t even know how she knew it - perhaps she’d finally gone insane - but suddenly she was sure that the world didn’t want her any more, that there was nothing left. Her eyes slid shut as she let her body lose all rigidity, sinking into the shallow water. This time, she didn’t rise.
On a revoltingly clean bathroom floor, Gwen’s body lay with a bottle tipped and dark red staining her legs. The same colour dribbled from the corner of her mouth.
way down way down way down way down way down way down way down way down way down
On the other side of the world, Morgana fell.
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing/Characters: Gwen/Morgana, Arthur/Merlin.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13? Suicide, mentions of murder and femslash/slash/lesbian/gay stuff.
Word Count: 3775.
Summary: Modern!AU, in which Gwen is married and Morgana is her criminal, on the run lover.
Yeaaah, I don't even know. It was 1 AM, and I was just lying on my bed listening to music, and bang! I ended up writing this. I literally just typed without looking, sent it to absorbefacient and ended up posting. It's nearly 5 AM, so I should probably go to sleep before my brain spews more crack.
I DON'T EVEN KNOW, OKAY. I prefer Gwen/Lancelot to Gwen/Morgana, but I do love both. IDFK. I NEED TO GET OFF THE INTERNET LOL.
The lyrics used are from Cemetery Drive, by My Chemical Romance. The characters belong to the BBC show, Merlin, I'm not making any profit, blah blah.
this night walk the dead in a solitary style
Gwen walked the streets of London with barely-contained excitement; her destination wasn’t far and undoubtedly her lover would be waiting for her. They hadn’t seen each other in a fortnight, since it was hard to keep track of meeting up with someone convicted. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Gwen missed Morgana more than anything when they’d been apart for too long.
The glass of two bottles clinked together, securely held in the carrier bag clutched in her hand. Occasionally it bumped against her leg, causing her to scrunch her face up in annoyance, and stop to smooth her dress.
and crash the cemetery gates in the dress your husband hates
It was cotton and buttery yellow, with thick straps around her shoulders framed by soft white frills. The same white frills hung from beneath the skirt, skimming the skin on Gwen’s legs. Morgana couldn’t comprehend why Arthur didn’t seem to realize how beautiful she was in it - and out of it.
They sat side-by-side outside the cemetery, shoulders touching, a sharing of warmth in a cold night. Neither of them were quite sure why their meeting-place was outside a cemetery, but since Morgana had ended up on the run, it was difficult to find places for them to meet at all. It wasn’t like her striking appearance made it easy for her to hide from the people who mattered, and made it harder for her to see Gwen.
Besides, Gwen decided, if she was going to have a gay affair with a criminal, she might as well add to the shock-horror factor by meeting her lover outside a cemetary.
way down mark the grave
They lay together for what felt like hours, though it never was. Sometimes there would be friction and heat and sex - no, love - but tonight they exchanged only words and soft kisses while the night drifted by, hanging around them.
Morgana turned to look at the gravestones beyond the gate with a sullen expression, a sigh escaping her mouth. Gwen’s face matched hers as she picked up two sticks and pulled the yellow barrette from her hair; she crudely shoved it onto the sticks to hold them into a pseudo-cross and pushed it into the thick dirt beneath them.
“That’s my marriage,” she said, sadly. Pale fingers touched the side of her face, pushed curly hair behind her ear where the barrette had been.
“You’ve still got me.”
where the searchlights find us drinking by the mausoleum floor
They’d been there for about four hours, after three of which Gwen had uncovered the plastic bag she’d brought with her and dutifully shared out the two bottles of wine. Morgana liked rose, thought it classy - like her upbringing. Gwen, who had grown up in a more ordinary, middle-class lifestyle, preferred white wine. It’d been the drink she’d grown up with, from her first sips at Christmas with the family to glasses on New Year’s Eve. They shared the alcohol messily, drinking from the bottle and swapping bottles, unconcerned about the smears of different shades of lipstick lingering around the bottle-tops.
It was 3AM, and Morgana set down the wine bottle in her hand clumsily. The liquid had already slopped over her hand, sweet red staining her fingers; a disturbingly familiar sight. Unperturbed and smiling, Gwen leaned towards her, their lips clashing without direction or care, but with fire -
- until a burst of white broke the dark, shining on their faces; they sprung apart, Gwen lifting her arm to cover her face from the dark. Morgana could only stare hopelessly at the policemen standing over them with wide eyes, a rabbit caught in a headlights, a criminal caught in searchlights.
Gwen was only in the police station for about half an hour. Morgana had been forced through a pretentious acting school as she grew up, and had pleaded for her to be released - they were strangers, she insisted; she’d kidnapped Gwen and forced her into submission for the night. Mute, her lover could only nod and stutter out her phone number for officials to dial; Morgana snuck her a secretive smile, a wink and a whisper.
“I’ll see you soon.”
Arthur came to collect her minutes after someone at the station had called him, playing the part of a distressed husband as he entered, eyes searching for her. Gwen winced as she went to him, noting that he hadn’t bothered to sort his mussed hair and hide the hickey forming on his collarbone that she definitely hadn’t put there. What she had with Morgana wasn’t cheating, she reasoned, not when her husband had been taken long before their arranged marriage had come into place.
and they found you on the bathroom floor
She spent hours puzzling over Morgana’s final whisper. How would they see each other again? Morgana had been arrested and jailed more times than Gwen could count; they said she consorted with magic and Gwen knew it to be true, though she hardly cared. She supposed there was something poetic about knowing her dead father-in-law was Morgana’s doing and she’d done it with magic and her own bare hands.
Even so, Gwen didn’t think of Morgana as a killer. She was stunning and captivating and a thousand other things, treated Gwen with a delicacy that Arthur had never quite achieved even when he’d tried to court her for the sake of their arranged wedding - pulling her close and combing her hair and whispering good day, my lady Guinevere.
The headlines screamed of death penalty for the witch, and Gwen hid in the bathroom before she let her tears out. Ironically, it was the room that had most reminded her of Morgana; it was this room she’d use to dress up in the soft yellow dress her lover liked so much, the mirror she’d use to apply the make-up Morgana had taught her to use, the shower she’d use to help deal with the persistent dreams about the dark-haired girl she had. It made sense that it would be here that she’d curl up with the newspapers that thoughtlessly toyed with puns of the wicked witch.
Morgana wasn’t wicked and Gwen knew it better than anyone. She wrote a letter to her jailed lover and burnt it with the newspapers, created a fire in her bathroom sink. When it got too much she turned on the taps, water forming in the corners of her eyes as it fizzled out to nothing. She wished it were as easy to put out her feelings.
It was with Morgana’s golden eyes burning behind her own lids that Gwen swallowed the pills in her trembling hand. Her butter-yellow dress crumpled as she sat on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the side of the bath-tub with her fingers wrapped loosely around a broken bottle of rose wine.
i miss you i miss you so far
“Gwen, you’re awake!”
Blearily, she forced her eyes to open and sighed when Arthur’s features came into view. Pillows propped her up and she sank into them gratefully, lolling her head back and closing her eyes again.
“Gwen... ?”
It took a moment for her to realize that his fingers were twined with hers; she wriggled her wrist until he let go. Her head shook no against the pillow it lay against. She remembered, remembered drinking, remembered swallowing, remembered sitting back and waiting for a darkness that would last forever. The crisp white sheets suffocating her body when she tried to sit up made her stare, and she stared at the matching walls with fervour. White, so much white - where was her darkness?
“Arthur... leave, please.”
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
What had gone wrong? Gwen couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t work out where she’d failed. She should be in a blissful state of forever unknowing, not in a hard white bed with nurses constantly asking if she needed anything and prodding at her. The only solution she could come up with was that Arthur had found her and rushed her here - couldn’t he do anything right? She sighed into nothing, sinking into sleep and waiting for the blur of memories to bleed into her dreams.
It hurt to admit that she missed Morgana more than anything, especially knowing that Morgana was still securely locked away somewhere. She’d asked a nurse about it, asked for a newspaper or magazine to read after seeing a glimpse of a news report on the tinny little television in the corner of her hospital room. Reading about it only made her feel worse - she couldn’t shake the feeling that Morgana’s capture had been her fault, and something she needed to rectify. Maybe trying to take her own life hadn’t been the answer, but something had to be done as soon as she could get out of here.
Morgana stared blankly at the inside of her cell, tired of scraping the number of days into the wall with a rusting yellow barrette. Eventually she shoved it into her hair, though it did little to contain the tangled dark mass that hung around her shoulders. Her want for a hairbrush was nothing compared to want for Gwen; night after night she found herself drawing daffodils in the dust lining her cell. Daffodils, yellow, always bright, full of joy and beauty, the colour of Gwen’s dress and of the woman she knew she’d escape her prison for.
back home off the run
Two days later and she was gone, free, on her way to find Gwen again. It wasn’t safe any more, she decided; if they had to be together then Gwen would have to run with her. It was far too dangerous to keep hanging around the same area, and it was with this in mind and the echo of her love’s kiss on her lips that she swung through the window of Arthur and Gwen’s home.
Admittedly, she hadn’t been expecting to find herself face-to-face with Arthur Pendragon. She’d heard a lot about him, and expected him to look resemble his father. It wasn’t as though she’d known his father well any more, but she knew him well enough after she’d slaughtered him along with his anti-magic attitude. She’d heard of him from Gwen, too, but suspected that those descriptions were flattering - Gwen tried to avoid talking about her husband, since she was far too good on the inside to willingly discuss the man she was cheating on with his father’s killer. Even from those, though, she’d gotten the impression that he’d be a cold and unloving shell and not the shocked-looking man demanding to know who she was and why she was in his home.
“Where’s Gwen?” she interrupted, lifting her nose into the air. “I need to talk to her. I’m... a friend of hers.”
“A friend who couldn’t deign to knock on the door?” Arthur replied curtly, folding his arms.
“Yes. I want to see Gwen.”
“That’s not funny.”
With that, Arthur turned his back on her and let out a sigh. He sounded tired, though he didn’t look physically tired. Morgana suspected that the half-bottle of whiskey on the counter had something to do with it.
“What do you want?” he asked, with the air of a man forcing patience to his tone.
“I want to see Gwen,” Morgana repeated slowly. “Where is she?”
“That’s not funny,” he repeated back at her, gritting his teeth. “I don’t see why I should talk to someone who broke into my home and insists on mocking me about my wife, who tried to kill herself.”
The world stopped turning.
“Guinevere...”
Morgana fled.
singing songs that make you slit your wrists
Music whirled around her head as Morgana walked, every depressing lyric she’d ever heard pounding inside her skull. She knew better than to hitchhike, but trawling along the side of the highway on foot was hardly the most comfortable thing she’d ever done. Sleeping there when she ran out of steam wasn’t so bad, her lithe body slumping on the rough ground. She’d long since gotten used to sleeping rough, since being on the run, and murmuring whatever words and songs she could think of to pass the time and to force sleep to come.
After a while she’d nearly forgotten where she was going. Initially she’d wanted the hospital, wanted to find Gwen, but after a day of hazed walking Arthur’s words had blurred in her mind and become killed herself rather than tried to kill herself. She’d only kept going for Gwen, kept escaping and kept running. What was the point of going now? Her teenage self’s insistence that Romeo and Juliet were pathetic to want to die without each other suddenly seemed stupid. Now it felt real.
it isn’t that much fun staring down a loaded gun
In a field somewhere Morgana thought she’d finally lost it, on her knees and singing quietly to herself. Her tune didn’t really carry words any more, but it hardly mattered when there probably wasn’t anyone within a mile radius of her. A small part of her reminded her that she was being stupid, that she could carry on - that she could move on, but every time she started thinking about how to change her life (what was left of it), her thoughts were crushed by the incessant voice in the back of her head. It served only to remind her that Gwen was gone and it was her own fault, just like Morgause’s death had been all those years ago. She’d been only sixteen at the time, and it was one of the worst cases of magic gone wrong in recent years - they probably used it as an example in anti-magic propaganda.
The more her thoughts lingered on Gwen and her own loneliness, the more she thought of a polished, black shotgun. But Morgana wasn’t stupid, she knew herself too well and knew that she’d never have the gall to kill herself. Other people were a different matter altogether, but there was something about directly ending everything she’d ever known that she couldn’t even bear to think about.
so i won’t stop dying won’t stop lying
Gwen stared out of her window at the night, frozen tears burning tracks in her skin. They dripped from her jaw and onto her chest, slithering down to her chest and drying over the steady beat of her heart. Her hair kept wildly tangling around her face, no matter how much she shoved it back. She thought pointlessly of the yellow barrette that should have been there to hold it back.
She thought of the beautiful woman that should have been there to hold her back.
“I’m fine, Arthur,” she lied swiftly when he came to see her, when he tried to spend days at her side. Silently she loved his efforts, though there wasn’t a force on the planet that could make her love him even half as much as Morgana.
It took two weeks for her to come home, and she did so with a smile applied more carefully than lipstick. She’d perfected the art of telling her husband that she was fine, of acting like she had gotten over her episode to her friends and family.
And it was on the first evening since she’d returned that Arthur was gone that she found herself staring at bottle of pills in their medicine cabinet again.
if you want i’ll keep on crying
Countless miles away, Morgana tried to console herself with what Gwen would want her to do. She’d want her to keep her head high and stay strong, to be where she wouldn’t be recognized. Her memories were fading, Gwen’s voice no longer the memorable presence in her mind that it’d always been. Vaguely she tried to make it up to her, crawling when she had run out of strength and talking to what she believed was the presence of a dead lover.
“Gwen, I don’t know what to do any more,” Morgana confessed to the ground, eyes fixed on it. “I don’t know where to go. I haven’t got anyone to keep me safe any more. Why’d you leave me?”
It didn’t matter that no-one, especially not a woman so far away, could hear her.
“You know I’d always come back to you,” she continued, her neck emitting a soft clicking sound as she threw her head back to stare at the sky. The stars shone back at her, mocking in their beautiful light.
Morgana sighed, and let herself cry when it began to rain.
did you get what you deserve is this what you always want me for
Maybe this was punishment for adultery, Gwen considered. It was definitely a sin, even though she knew well enough that her apparently loving husband had committed it long before she’d even met Morgana and considered the possibility. It didn’t seem to add up to her that such a sin could create so much pain and misery, but maybe she’d done something else wrong along the line. She believed in karma, for sure, so maybe showering her affection on a beautiful murderer was a punishment. Maybe she deserved it.
It was only around then that she began to question whether Morgana had really loved her. She’d never suggested they run away together, though Gwen had subconsciously dreamt about and entertained the notion for long enough. It was a difficult topic to bring up in conversation - she’d been planning to talk about it, been building herself up to it - but that was before a cursed searchlight had thrown light at them and torn them apart.
i miss you i miss you so far
“I miss you, my lady Guinevere,” Morgana sang to the night sky. She lay on her back and watched the white of the moon dangling in the sky, allowing herself to smile lazily at it. Her stomach whined at her, a cavern reminding her that she hadn’t eaten in a few days, and dutifully she ignored the sound though she rested her hands on top of her stomach in apology.
Still what she wanted to do was unclear. Survival was important, but it was dropping lower on Morgana’s to-do list. The list was tiny enough already.
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
The clock struck midnight and Gwen stared at herself in the mirror, a thousand and one thoughts running riot inside her head. Arthur was still out, and she knew he wouldn’t be home for a while, until he thought she’d be asleep at least. Last time had been a mistake she wouldn’t make again; this time she locked the bathroom door before turning to place a fresh bottle of rose wine on the floor. Butter-yellow cotton was wrapped around her torso again, thick straps framed with white frills resting on her shoulders and accompanied by the weight of the world. She stared at her reflection and with shaking hands applied the yellow-gold make-up Morgana had shown her to use with her own skilled fingers. She never used her lover’s lipstick although she owned one, one that she’d taken as a keepsake.
Now she smoothed the substance over her mouth, puckering into a phantom kiss as she slid to the floor. Her back hit the bathtub again, her entire body relaxing the wine helped her to swallow. Quickly she lost count of how many she was taking and what of, having emptied every packet she could find in the cabinet.
way down way down way down way down way down way down way down way down
The remains of a river was one of the filthiest things Morgana had ever come across, and that was after growing up with her own mind. The water wasn’t more than a few centimetres high, but it was brown and leaves floated atop the scum on the surface.
Morgana struggled not to wrinkle her nose at the smell as she crawled into the cold, her limbs losing their strength and giving way. Lying there, she had no will nor want to make herself get up. A deep sigh left her lungs as her position switched to leave her lying boneless, face falling into the murky water.
i miss you i miss you so far
“Miss... you, see you,” Gwen whispered to the empty room, eyelids sliding shut. “Soon, Morgana.”
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
“Gwen’s gone,” Arthur murmured to a wide window. A city landscape laid out before him, bright lights shining through the night. Heat was wrapped around him, arms wound his bare midriff and soft kisses being pressed to his shoulder.
“No, she isn’t.”
“She’s changed, Merlin. She’s not Gwen any more, she’s empty.”
“Are you surprised?”
Arthur exhaled, his breath misting the glass in front of him. He turned, enveloping himself in his lover’s warmth.
“No.”
when will i miss you when will i miss you so far
“... I don’t know if I can miss her,” Arthur admitted, his hands absently wrapping themselves around Merlin’s scarf. “I don’t yet.”
He was met by a momentary silence as Merlin’s mouth moved away from his, settling somewhere near his ear. “You will.”
“When? She was my friend, even if... even if I didn’t... you know.”
“I don’t think you can be condoned for not loving her.”
“You don’t know that,” Arthur remained stubborn, removing his hands from Merlin’s chest and sliding them around the other’s neck. They collided again, mutually stumbling away from the window.
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard made it so hard
The occasional bubble of appeared in the dirty water drenching Morgana’s head as she lay in it, rising her head when breathing became a necessity. With irrational anger she wiped the liquid from her lips, scratching at the skin there as though it could bring Gwen back to her.
Morgana didn’t even know how she knew it - perhaps she’d finally gone insane - but suddenly she was sure that the world didn’t want her any more, that there was nothing left. Her eyes slid shut as she let her body lose all rigidity, sinking into the shallow water. This time, she didn’t rise.
On a revoltingly clean bathroom floor, Gwen’s body lay with a bottle tipped and dark red staining her legs. The same colour dribbled from the corner of her mouth.
way down way down way down way down way down way down way down way down way down
On the other side of the world, Morgana fell.