Arthur's Notes: This story is the next in the "Friday Knights" series, after "A Dish Best Served Cold" (currently posted by May Glenn). It is an AU from Season 3.
Gwaine must deal with the arrival of his long-lost siblings, and something relatively foreign to him called "True Love". Leon juggles being over-protective with being a good leader (and boyfriend). Merlin tries to address how he can maintain his relationship with Arthur when he's living a lie. Add in malicious fabric-based magical mayhem and you've got a recipe for what you expect from Merlin-with more feelings and more sillyness (and in fan-fiction form).
...
When Gwaine was nine years old, he killed his father.
"Go on to bed, boys," Sir Lamorak ordered. "Your mother and I got things to do."
Anna had been talking to twelve-year-old Gaheris and nine-year-old Gwaine quietly by the fire, stroking Gwaine's hair as she told them stories of heroic myths and ancient gods. Her accent was different from the people around whom Gwaine grew up (Gaheris' was too, a bit), and her stories were from a far northern land as exotic as her speech.
At Lamorak's words she went still and tense, and Gwaine and Gaheris sat up.
Sir Lamorak of Éire wasn't really his father, though. But Loth had died in a war when Gwaine was less than a year old, so he was the only father Gwaine had ever known. Gaheris told him of their father, sometimes, but he had been young, too. And mother did not like to talk about him.
Gwaine and Gaheris looked at each other. Gwaine did not like the way his mother reacted to the word 'things,' and he did not like the look on Lamorak's face when he said it. Gwaine didn't like much about the old man, admittedly. He didn't like the way he spoke to his mother. He didn't like the way his breath smelled. He didn't like how he would hit Gareth or Gwarae if they cried, or how he hurt mother if she tried to stop him. He didn't like how he kept maids, not only Anna, in his bed sometimes against their will. He didn't like that he beat his servants cruelly, and starved his hunting dogs. Gwaine especially didn't like how he got away with it.
Gaheris had once tried to explain this to him. He said it was because Lamorak was noble. The older brother had tried to tell young Gwaine the difference between blood-nobility and character-nobility, but Gwaine had decided that he hated both.
Without anyone explaining it to him, Gwaine understood the value of money young. Why else would mother have married the aged and abusive Lamorak if not for money? She had loved his father, but she needed money to raise her children.
"Mama?" Gwaine asked, challenging the order he had been given.
Anna had nodded to him, sad but brave. "Go on to bed, sweetheart."
Gwaine looked between them. He had a vague idea what 'things' were, but only in that they entailed hurting his mother.
"No!" he said, and stood up, glaring at Lamorak.
"Gwaine," Anna said, more sternly. "Go check on your brother and sister."
Two good things only came out of Sir Lamorak, in Gwaine's opinion. Their names were Gareth and Gwarae. He doted on them religiously. They were, in fact, his world. His childhood was never happier than when he, his mother, and his brothers and sister were alone together. Lamorak ruined everything.
"Gwaine," Gaheris said, tugging at him.
"NO!" Gwaine said, and stamped his foot.
Lamorak went from his usual mildly annoyed to instantly enraged. Gwaine expected this, though, and leaped out of the fat old man's grasp. "I hate you!" Gwaine shrieked. The world made no sense except for hate. "You're not my father, don't tell me what to do! And stop hurting my mum!"
"Stupid brat!" Lamorak struck him so hard his head spun, but Anna and Gaheris had leapt to his aid, then, and paid for it: for being so old, Lamorak was strong, and threw Gaheris into the table, and then he put his pudgy hands around Anna's neck and squeezed. He was killing her.
So Gwaine drew Lamorak's own dagger from his belt and stabbed him in the back with it. It was a low strike, dead center.
Gwaine hadn't expected death to be so easy, actually. The knife just slid in, and Lamorak just fell, choked, and died. Gwaine would later learn that he had severed Lamorak's spine, a long list of instant kills he knew all to intimately.
Then mother had sent him to bed, angrily, even though she kissed him goodnight. Gaheris got to stay up late.
When he woke, Lamorak was gone, like a bad dream.
A year later, Lamorak's money had run out.
Two years after that, Anna and Gaheris were taken away by a fever. Gwaine had been the only one in the family to not even take ill. He led a charmed life like that.
Gwaine found jobs to support he and his younger siblings in the hovel they lived in. Some were honest, many were not. When he discovered that alcohol helped him forget, it quickly became a constant companion. Sometimes he drank away the money he had earned for food, but not often. Gareth and Gwarae were too important, too young. He would take any job. He cleaned stables, shined shoes, fed pigs, slaughtered cows, brought in harvest. He also fought, killed, stole, cheated, lied.
One winter he got a job as a mule driver on a caravan headed south. He left Gareth and Gwarae with enough money to last until Yule, telling them he would be back by then, with presents.
He wasn't. Heavy snows kept the caravan on the other side of the mountain.
"I'm not leaving, Gareth! Gwaine's coming back, he promised!"
But Gareth was wise beyond his years, and the kindly knight who wished to take them in (his wife was barren) was sure to represent better stability and safety than his brother, hard as he tried.
"We have no more money. Do you want to spend Christmas here?" he waved his hand derisively at the hovel.
"Yes. Because Gwaine will come..." Gwarae sobbed, stamping her foot.
"We'll leave him a note, Gwarae. For when he comes," Gareth said, and put his arm around her.
Gwaine never got the note, so he never came. Gwarae cried all through Yule. Gareth, who had not cried since Anna died, believed that Gwaine left them on purpose.
The hovel made it through Yule, but a squatter huddling there mid-February burned it to the ground through carelessness. When late spring thawed the snows and Gwaine returned over the mountains, the hovel was gone, and Gareth and Gwarae were gone.