title: girl with a secret
characters/pairings: gwaine/freya
ratings/warnings: pg; some unhappiness?
words: ~600
notes: written for the prompt: Freya/Gwaine - They meet some time before she is captured and brought to Camelot. Bonus points if he suspects something is "off" with her behaviour.

x

(She was the flow of water and he was the grit of metal and it was only ever going to end badly. It was going to end in rust and loss and erosion because one day they would take her away and he would fall into drinking and never come out of it but, before all of that, there was this.)

x

He first sees her by a lake in the western lands, a swirl of water around her neck and hair and, for a moment, he is transfixed.

But he walks on because he's not meant to stand still. He is meant to trace the lines on maps and cover all the ground until he falls off the edge. It is what is written for men like him.

x

The rain is what stops him in his tracks. It's no ordinary rain; it comes in a whirlwind and it shakes the trees right down to their roots. He finds shelter by a grove near the lake, sets up camp and waits for the storm to pass. It is here that he finds her in the morning when he opens his eyes.

He remarks upon the rain, that it's gone now.

And she smiles and says its time was up. Perhaps it came down upon him for a reason and he was meant to stop, and perhaps, it was here that he was meant to stop.

He looks up through the leaves at the clearing sky and says he can't possibly imagine why.

(He stops. He stays.)

He is not a superstitious man but there is something about the here and now that he can't shake off.

It feels important, like it means something and so he stays and builds a home by the lake.

x

She comes to talk to him nearly every day, shows him the woods and the waters and the trees and the game, where to fish, where to bathe, where to go when it rains. She tells him what he should and should not eat or drink and where to go and not to go because there's something about these woods and this lake and not everything is for every man to take.

x

She's a girl with a secret and he would ask about it but something always stops him half way. Part of him still can't quite believe this place is real, that she is real. Part of him worries that if he asks too many questions or breaks a rule, it will all dissipate and take her with it.

x

Sometimes, she looks as if she has been crying and even if the redness in her eyes betrays her, her face lights up when she sees him.

Once, he'd dared to ask and dared to say that if something, anything, was hurting her, he'd put his blade through it in a heartbeat.

She'd smiled then and touched his cheek, and said, Thank you, truly, and nothing else.

x

And they'd gone like that, gone on and on like that until the smile and touch became and embrace and a kiss and something like a life that he had never believed could have been his.

If she had a secret, he also had his own, and so he felt that he could live with that. And if he was wrong, there was no reason for him not to pretend otherwise.