A/N: This is sort of crack that takes itself seriously. The costume people on this show obviously know something we don't!

Beta'd by Laffy Taffy the Grape, with much thanks.

Little Black Dress

Gwen yawned, slowly ambling back into consciousness as she snuggled down deeper into her nice, warm bed. She didn't want to get up. Nothing out there could be quite as nice as the warmth of her cot. Nothing.

But alas. A body couldn't lie abed all day! Gwen cracked open her eyes and, knowing that getting it over quickly would lessen the torment, she threw away her blankets swiftly. The chill of the day struck her all at once, and after a moment of paralysis, she shuddered and climbed up to face the world.

She pulled her long white nightdress up over her head, standing there in just her underthings. Gwen ran a calloused hand over her side, rubbing out an itch, and winced as her cold hand touched her warm, dark skin. She turned to put on her dress… and winced.

"Oh!" she moaned gently. How could she have forgotten?

Picking up the lavender affair, she surveyed the long, mud-stained rip down the back of the skirt. She'd meant to fix that last night. Now there wasn't time. Well, surely she had another dress? She'd had more money to spare since Elyan came home and became a knight. And… hadn't he bought her a dress a while ago?

Gwen's brown eyes lit up as she dropped the soiled dress and began to root under her bed. It hadn't really been her style, so she'd never worn it, but had stuffed it with the rest of the unwanted things she couldn't get rid of. Oh, how she loved Elyan right now!

At last she found it. A long black dress with a straight skirt, and the same lacing and petticoat that marked it clothing for the less-than-noble. But the fabric wasn't bad, and it was well-made. Gwen just didn't care for wearing black; she liked lighter colors, to compliment her skin tone. But you simply couldn't expect a man to understand that sort of thing.

Gwen slipped it over her head and pulled it down until it fit her nicely. She couldn't recall wearing black before. It was sort of fun.

By now fully awake, she began humming to herself and smiling as she set about getting ready to go out for the day. And as she stepped out the door, she was unaware that her usual whimsical smile had begun to have a tilt to it, and the gleam in her eyes looked a little more mischievous than usual.

The first hint she got that something was wrong was when she ran into Merlin.

The actual happenings were usual enough. She was sashaying down the hall, smiling and holding onto a pile of clothes. Merlin was rushing past, busy as usual, but when he saw her, he stopped to talk – forget Arthur and his "hurry up, Merlin"!

"Gwen!" he said chipperly. "I almost didn't recognize you! Is that a new dress?"

"No," she answered. "An old one. I didn't have anything else, I'm afraid."

"It's very nice," Merlin said.

And she smiled. That was when she heard it… The whispering. It was faint. In the back of her mind, more an urge than a word: betray. It was there, in her head, where such a word had most certainly not been before, like that itch she'd had this morning. Betray. Betray. Her smile faltered.

Merlin's head cocked to the side in that endearing way. (A very, very endearing, best-friend-creating way. Not at all a you-should-betray-this-man way.) "Gwen, is something wrong?"

"Oh, no," she assured him. "Thought I heard something. I'm probably tired." She laughed. It sounded a little harder than usual.

Merlin looked concerned. "Perhaps you should sleep, Gwen…"

She shook her head. "I'm fine. I'll see you later, then?"

Merlin nodded and bid her goodbye, and she continued down the hall, a little less swing in her step, thinking hard. The whisper was still there.

She ran into Arthur next, and though she didn't notice at first, another word twisted its way into the mantra in her mind.

"Arthur!" she said happily. It sounded less happy than usual. How odd.

"Guinevere," he said. "I was just on my way to training." Indeed, he was slipping on gauntlets. "How did you sleep?"

She was having trouble with her smile. And then she noticed the other word in her brain. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt.

Something was wrong.

"What's wrong?" Arthur asked her, noticing her frown.

She blinked. "Nothing! Nothing. I'm fine. You?"

"Wonderful," Arthur said, putting his hand on his sword hilt out of habit. Gwen wished she hadn't noticed it… In fact, suddenly she was noticing every weapon on Arthur or around him all the sudden, hanging on the walls of the hall or in his room past the open door. It was extremely discomforting.

Arthur leaned down and gave her a little kiss, putting his hands on her shoulders. And she enjoyed it. She really did. But somehow the closeness, instead of feeling romantic, suddenly made her feel dangerous, reminding her how easy it would be to take the sword hanging at his hip and…

She pulled back. Arthur looked hurt, but she tried to appear kindly so he wouldn't be offended. "Ah…" she said. "A cut on my lip. It's a bit chilly; they're just chapped. Sorry. It hurts a bit."

"Ah," Arthur replied, his pride soothed. "Perhaps you should see Gaius?"

See Gaius for a hurt lip? She wasn't made of glass! As a matter of fact, right now, she didn't feel delicate at all… She felt dangerous. Betray. Hurt. Dangerous.

She tried to smile normally as Arthur walked away. But all that came out was a smirk.

Maybe she should go see Gaius…

She didn't stay at Gaius's long enough to confide her rather unusual woes to him. No, the minute he walked out and greeted her with a happy, "Gwen! How are you this morning?" she could only stare in horror.

For instead of the usual warm thoughts she had for Gaius, Gwen's first thought was that he was such a rickety old man, it would be easy to push him down or put something in his food when his back was turned. He was a nice old man, but he was very smart, and he knew things, and he could ruin a person's devious plans. Which was a problem.

Except Gwen didn't have any devious plans!

Swallowing, she shook her head. "I'm fine," she said as normally as she could. "Fine! Really! No problem!" she babbled. "I'll see you later, Gaius!"

And she fled his premises.

Betray. Hurt. Dangerous. Destroy.

Gwen had a perfectly terrible day, though she tried to hide it. It was full of barely-resisted temptations and horribly out of character thoughts that scared her more than that talk her father had had with her when she was old enough to feel something other than disgust for boys. Actually, it scared her worse than the feelings had in the first place.

She had not tripped her brother into a pigsty, thank you very much.

She had not slapped Lancelot across the face just to see him react, of course.

She had not lied to Mary the kitchen maid about her suitor for the sake of watching her cry.

She had not tried to flirt with Percival to see if she could scare him by making him think the prince's girl was crazy.

She had not spiked Uther's drink just to finish the ailing man off.

The effort of not doing those things she never did anyway was a lot more exhausting than she thought it had any right to be.

Finally, she retired to her house so as to be out of temptation's way, and spent the rest of the day fixing her normal dress. By then, the whispering itch in her head had become something of a scream.

BETRAY. HURT. SLAP. POISON. PUSH. SMIRK. DANGEROUS. KILL. MAIM. DESTROY…

Oh, shut up! she griped to herself.

Finally it was bedtime. She was a bit hungry, but she daren't go out into the kitchen for fear she'd commit murder on her way there. Not knowing what else to do, Gwen decided to go to sleep, store her strength to fight this thing, and ask Merlin's help in the morning. Merlin always knew what to do in situations like this.

Gwen slipped off her black dress…

…and the bad thoughts stopped. The screaming was gone. Pausing, shocked for a second at the silence in her head, Gwen put the dress back over her shoulder.

KILLMAIMBETRAYHURTSLAP…

She ripped the black garment off. Silence. Curious, she dropped it on the floor and went, just in her underthings, and wrapped herself in her black shawl. There. She heard it… A slight hiss. In the back of her mind. So slight, no wonder she'd never taken notice of it before.

Wound. Bite. Twist.

Gwen dropped the shawl on the ground. She looked at the two articles of clothing, thinking. Could it be…?

No. No, impossible. Gwen was not superstitious, and her clothes were hardly enchanted. She was being ridiculous. She was tired. She was hearing things. That's what it was.

But all the same, she got her white night dress on with the greatest speed and stuffed her black dress and shawl under her bed, never to take them out again. Then she got into her warm, welcoming cot, smiling slightly. At least that was over with.

The next morning, Merlin would awake to discover that he'd sent away all his usual clothes to be cleaned in the castle with the servant's wash. But, he would figure, it wasn't a very large deal, because he had that extra black shirt that he'd never worn. That would do for one day.

The end.

Moral: Those in black are evil, villainous, or at the very least slightly nefarious, and should be viewed with suspicion from the start.