A series of technically not drabbles, but still quite close, based around the word "Materfamilias". They're involving my three favourite Merlin characters and yes I am obssessed over Sir Leon, but you can't blame me for that - he's awesome! I hope everyone likes them, please review!
Materfamilias – The mother of a family
Merlin
From the moment he was born Merlin knew that he would never have to worry about whether or not his mother loved him. He was drenched in the knowledge that she did.
When he woke up as a boy it was to his mother's hug. When he went to sleep it was with a kiss on his forehead. When he left her to go to Camelot it was with both.
He had never realised that his life was different to anyone else's. Oh, sure he noticed that most also had another parent, a father, but he never felt jealousy, or the need of one.
His family was perfect just the way it was and anyone who didn't recognise that didn't understand what family really meant. Warm arms and an even warmer heart to shelter in and defend from. Not a pair of people to fit a prescribed formula.
Gwaine
Gwaine had always known that something was missing. Despite the love for and from his mother there was always a gap in their lives. His mother had sighed and looked out the door, or past the garden gate, or down the road from the market. At the sound of a horses hoof, she had jumped in her seat or turned looking for a man who was never coming home.
She had told him of a man who had promised to teach him to ride, to fight, to be a man. A man who never came back and when his wife went to their king for help, was denied it.
Their lands were sold off until they only had the house and then until they only had a cottage. The horses and swords and tutors Gwaine should have had were limited to an elderly pony who his mother also rode and who pulled the cart, his sword was well made but paid for with a pig that should have been kept for the table and tutors? Well he learned to read from his mother, to count from the animals they owned and sold and to fight from the boys in the village.
Leon
Leon's mother was reported to have been a great beauty, with russet hair and the same blue eyes as her son. Time however had taken its toll. Losing a husband and two sons to the King's wars had also done their malicious work on her appearance.
And yet she always had a smile for her son. A smile for everyone in fact; a polite one for the lords and ladies of the court; a decorous one for her king; a compassionate one for her prince's love, the daughter of her old maid; and a mischievous one for her son's friends, be they six or twenty six.
But her son had a special one all to himself. In it there was;
Pride in the man he had become.
Joy in his integrity and kind heartedness.
A faint hint of worry, due mainly to his frequent brushes with death, though being his mother some part of her would always be worrying over him.
But most of all relief and thankfulness that her youngest was still with her, that he hadn't followed the fate of his father and siblings, but was still here for her to care for.