Title: The Cost
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Gwen; Gwen/Merlin friendship
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Specifically, 2x08, "Sins of the Father." Other than that, just general series knowledge.
Summary: Her last act of desperation brings her to Merlin's door.
Author's Notes: Thanks to Hema and Sav for beta-work and calming my nerves on my first Merlin piece, and my first piece of published fanfic in over a year. More tl;dr notes at the end of the story.
Guinevere does not need to overhear the rumors at Court to know she is failing in her most important duty as queen.
She had thought, during the first few years of her marriage, she had grown immune to the vicious gossip that circulated amongst Camelot's old nobility. After a while, the murmurs about her low birth, her father's profession, her former position in the royal household, even assaults on her honor, simply slid off her like rain from the castle turrets. It had not hurt that she was a blissfully happy newlywed at the time, or that Arthur was the one who needed restraining every time the stories reached his ears.
Besides, she has never been ashamed of her birth, of her parents, of knowing the value of a hard day's work. The more outrageous rumors—that she somehow entrapped Arthur into marriage; that she was a sorceress, working alone or with Merlin to enchant the king—had never generated much more than a laugh to be shared with her husband and her dear friend.
Queen Guinevere had never known a moment when she couldn't hold her head high in the face of lies and innuendo. Her innate dignity protected her and held her aloft through all the early storms.
But this time, the whispers are different. This time, she believes them herself.
What good is a queen who cannot produce an heir?
When Arthur overthrew two hundred years of tradition to marry a commoner, Guinevere had been terrified of failing him in almost every way. She worried she would embarrass him amongst his peers, that she lacked the experience and wisdom necessary to advise him, that she had no fortune, no dowry, no armies or land to present to him.
It never occurred to her that she could fail at something as fundamental as this. This has nothing to do with her status, her background, her poverty. She has failed Arthur as a woman, as a wife, as a queen.
In the early months of her marriage, the whole question of children seemed secondary to the pleasure of finally being Arthur's wife. Years of waiting were over, and they were free to revel in love and in each other. Gwen's ladies-in-waiting had cared much more about her monthly cycle than she had.
Months turned into years, and the hope with which Arthur asked if their encounters had borne fruit gradually dwindled into a mortified despair. It has been months since he posed the question at all.
She feels the wedge this absence of a child is driving in her marriage and—what is worse—knows she is the one putting it there. Arthur is as kind, as tender as ever. He never reproaches her, not with word or glance.
Sometimes, she wishes he would. Arthur so deserves a child, not only for the kingdom, but for himself. His heart is so endlessly open, always giving. Gwen sees him with the sons of his knights—teaching them to fight with their wooden swords, telling stories of epic battles and horrid beasts—and her heart aches with longing.
A child. A little boy with her dark skin and Arthur's crooked smile. A little princess with silky curls and the heart of a lion. She dreams of these elusive creatures; all the while, the reality of her love slips further away from her.
Her last act of desperation brings her to Merlin's door. When she tells him what she wants, no surprise flashes across his face. He looks old, sad, tired…and as though he has been long expecting this.
"Gwen," he begins, and she knows how serious he is, because he rarely calls her by name anymore. "You know better than anyone the cost of what you ask."
She nods once, decisively. "I know, Merlin. A life for a life. I understand the price, and I am willing to pay it. My life for the future of Camelot seems a fair exchange."
"And you think Arthur would agree?" Disbelief and horror sit plainly on the kind face. Merlin never has been able to hide his emotions.
"Not at first, perhaps. But in time, he will come to realize I'm right. Arthur is not just a man; he is a king, the greatest king this land has ever known. Should it all fall apart—Albion and everything he's built—simply because of a barren wife?"
"You don't know that! You and Arthur are still young; you have years before this should even be an issue."
Gwen pities Merlin for the unease on his face. It cannot be pleasant for a single man to talk childbirth with his best friend's wife. "Many of the girls I grew up with are becoming grandmothers. If it hasn't happened by now…it won't. I have accepted that, and so has Arthur."
"Then why—"
"Why do we do everything we do? For Camelot! Without a child for Arthur, Morgana is next in line for the throne."
Merlin's expression clouds over with the grief and guilt that always strike him when Morgana's name is mentioned. Guinevere allows herself only a moment to lament her lost friend. Morgana has made her own choices, and they have led her far from Arthur's kingdom of ideals.
"You know what that would mean. The end of justice and mercy, the end of the Round Table and a united Albion. It would be tyranny, different than Uther's, but tyranny all the same." Gwen pushes this point; it, more than all her other reasons, will convince Merlin.
She knows she's won when Merlin's gaze slips from hers while his body slumps onto the table at his back. He breathes a sharp sigh and then surrenders. "I'm not even sure my magic is strong enough for this."
"Of course it is. There's nothing you can't do." Gwen places a hand on his arm and forces a smile to her lips. "For Arthur."
Merlin stiffens at her words, and she realizes immediately she has said the wrong thing. He raises tear-filled eyes and glares at her. "You believe Arthur will be grateful for this? He'll never forgive me."
"He will. I know with time—"
"You don't know anything. You won't even be here, to talk him down as you always do. You'll be dead, dead in the ground, and I don't care what you say, Arthur will never get over that. Neither of us will."
A spasm of guilt grips her, but she pushes it aside. She's right; she knows she is. "But an heir, Merlin, a child for Cam—"
"Quit lying, Gwen!" Merlin screams at her. She flinches in the face of a wrath that has never been directed at her before.
"My lady," he says, more gently than before, "you are the one who wants a child. But don't you see? This way, it wouldn't really be your child at all. You would never get to hold him in your arms, or watch him grow."
"Don't you think I know that?" It is her turn to fight back tears at the thought of a child she would only get to love while still inside her body. "But better that than none at all. If I have no child, it's not only my life that is ruined, and you know it. All of Camelot will feel the lack. Arth—"
"Have you talked to him about this?"
Gwen turns away from Merlin's too-knowing eyes. She walks to the window and looks out on Camelot at dusk. The center of her kingdom, the only home she's ever known. She watches her people scurrying home, closing down shops, going about their lives, and feels she has failed them, too.
"My lady…"
"I can't talk to Arthur anymore. I can't…I can't look him in the eye and see his regret. His pity and understanding only make it worse. He never should have married me."
"He married you because he loves you, and he's been a better king for it. After all you've been through together, I can't believe you would question that."
Merlin is such a good friend, but, at the end of the day, he is still a man. He fails to grasp the importance of a child in the life of a woman. And he has never understood duty the way she and Arthur have, the need to put Camelot above all else. What Camelot needs of her, she cannot provide.
She is suddenly tired to her very bones. She just wants to end this conversation and accept her defeat. "So you will not help me?"
Merlin groans, and she knows he feels as defeated as she, as ineffective in getting his point across as she has been in communicating her despair. "Talk to Arthur, Gwen. If he agrees…if it's what you both want, I will do what you ask."
"Thank you, Merlin." The smile she gives him is her easiest one in weeks. He has given her hope.
MERLIN
It is still a slim hope, however. Gwen knows her power over Arthur, the extent of her abilities to persuade and advise him. This time, however, she fears she may have reached her limit. How to convince a husband who loves her that it is his duty to let her die?
She cannot rush at him with this. It hardly seems wise, given how estranged they have become. Instead, she softens her manner toward him. The frostiness she has worn like armor to protect her heart, Gwen removes piece by piece. She grants Arthur smiles, instead of frowns; kisses instead of angry words; caresses, where there had been only distance.
Yet her conscience gives her no peace, for this reconciliation is as strategic as the rift had been. Arthur flashes his brilliant smile, and her smile back hides the twinge of guilt. He looks at her with eyes as overflowing with love as the day they married; she feels her own have become dulled by this dreadful burden.
How can she love him so much and wish to leave him forever? The question plagues her. She knows she must have an answer to it before she can say anything to Arthur. He will surely ask. But even in her own heart, she cannot reconcile the two. Duty and love: for so long, they have driven her toward Arthur, and now they pull her away.
Gwen is sitting near the fire, ostensibly doing needlework, but really mentally wrestling with herself, when Arthur takes the matter out of her hands.
"What's the matter, Gwen?"
She starts. The loosely-held embroidery tumbles to the floor as she looks up and finds her husband—a husband she assumed to be lost among his daily reports—watching her carefully. "What? Nothing, my lord." Wanting to avoid his clear-eyed perusal, she leans down to recover her dropped needlework.
But it doesn't stop her ears from hearing, and she feels every drop of pain in Arthur's heavy sigh. "I wish you would talk to me, Guinevere."
Perhaps it is her guilt or his pain or just that she is so very tired of not talking to Arthur, but the truth comes spilling unbidden from her lips. "I asked Merlin to help us conceive an heir."
Even in the orange glow of the firelight, Arthur pales. Gwen sees his rage in the tightening of his lips, his fear in the widening of his eyes. It is a long, loaded moment before Arthur speaks. "And, pray, what did my old friend say when you asked him to kill you?" His voice is low and barely controlled.
"He said he would do nothing without your consent and that I should talk to you." Gwen rushes to vindicate Merlin. If Arthur is going to be angry with anyone, it should be her and her alone.
"So that's what this is? You're going to talk me into letting you die? Not bloody likely."
"Arthur, this isn't just about you and me. Camelot needs—"
"Don't tell me what Camelot needs! It was thinking like that which cost the life of my mother. Did you really think I would let it take my wife, as well?"
There it is—the heart of the matter to Arthur. He still cannot forgive Uther for Ygraine's death, and he will not separate the two. This is one argument for which she has been able to devise a response. "No one is tricking anyone into this. No lies, no deceit. I offer my life willingly. And however angry the thought makes you, Camelot needs an heir more than it needs a queen."
"Not more than I need you."
The quietly spoken words bring tears to her eyes. More than a decade into their marriage, and still he loves her like this. "My lord—"
"I'm sorry, Guinevere. I have failed you."
"What?" She is unprepared for his drooping head, the slump of his shoulders. "No, Arthur, I am the one who has failed."
Arthur snorts and shakes his head, looking deep into the fire. "Has it not occurred to you that this is my punishment for what my father did?"
"My decision to go to Merlin had nothing to do with—"
He jerks his gaze back to her, and surprise flickers inside red-rimmed blue eyes. "I'm not talking about that. I meant the fact that you would have to go to Merlin at all. That Camelot has no heir is not your fault, Gwen; it is mine."
Once, when she was a teenager, Guinevere had been kicked by a horse her father was shoeing. She had flown to the ground, all the breath knocked from her body.
As Arthur's words sink in, she feels a similar sensation. All this time, she has been pushing Arthur away, thinking he could never understand. And all this time, he has been blaming himself as much as she has. "You think it's your fault," she breathes.
"Of course, it is. I was born of magic. By all the laws of nature, I should not exist. It only makes sense that nature would correct the aberration. If anyone's life should be traded for an heir, it is mine."
Gwen's needlework falls to the floor a second time, this time unheeded, as she throws herself into her husband's arms. She sees the golden strands of his hair flow through her fingers and feels his heartbeat next to hers; she trails her lips along his brow, his cheeks, his lips. When Arthur's arms close around her, pulling her tightly to him, she is home after a long, lonely journey. Hope and love are washing away months of bitterness and self-doubt. Tears flow freely down her cheeks, contrasted by the smile threatening to disrupt even this most welcome of kisses.
When they finally break apart, Arthur's eyes search her expression for answers. She only smiles and runs her hands down his beloved face.
"The only aberration I can think of, Arthur Pendragon, is a world without you in it."
"And I cannot live in one without you. So where does that leave us?"
Gwen's smile becomes a grin, one which reaches all the way to her eyes. "Where we started. With each other." She presses another swift kiss to his lips.
Arthur shakes his head as if to throw off a daze. "I don't understand. Minutes ago, you were speaking of your death and a child in the same breath. What changed so suddenly?"
"I realized that Merlin was right. Instead of jumping to drastic measures, I should have come first to you. We have been such fools, Arthur, each blaming ourselves and never reaching out. Every crisis and heartbreak in my life, I have made it through because you were at my side. We can weather this as we have always done."
Still, Arthur looks wary. "And a child?"
Guinevere closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and consciously lets go. The dream children vanish; she will not call them back. "Maybe I cannot conceive, or maybe you're right about Nimueh's magic, or maybe it is something else altogether…but I feel certain that there is no child in our future."
"I'm so sorry, love." He cradles her face in his hands and places a tender kiss on her brow. For several minutes, they breathe and grieve with each other.
She waits until she is sure her voice will not falter before she says, "I would rather be your wife than the mother of a dozen children, if you were not their father."
"Well, I would hope so," Arthur says with a smile and an attempt at his old arrogance.
"A more noble man than you, my lord, would return the compliment."
"A more noble man than I might not have won you for a wife, and, of all my deeds, history will record that as my greatest triumph."
Gwen laughs and blushes, but Arthur's mention of history reminds her that there is more at stake here than her marriage. "Arthur, Camelot—"
"Still needs an heir." For some inexplicable reason, Arthur is grinning at her. "I know that, Guinevere."
"Then why do you look so happy?" She tries to sound irritated, but it is impossible to keep a straight face when Arthur uses his old boyish charm.
"We changed who could be queen; we changed who could be knights; really, isn't it about time we changed the rules on who can be king?"
Gwen once doubted Arthur. As much faith as she had in him, she could not believe he would raise a blacksmith's son to knight, a maidservant to queen. She knows better now.
Soon, the court of Camelot will have something new to gossip about.
fin
Author's Notes II: As much as I love baby!fic, I also love the Arthurian legend, and therefore know that babies are not a likely part of Arthur and Gwen's future. But the more I thought about that, the more I wanted to take a look at how that would work in Merlin-universe. In most versions of the tale, Guinevere's infertility is a punishment for her infidelity, which bothers me on two separate levels—general feminist rage, and the fact that I can't bear to think of Gwen cheating on Arthur in this particular retelling. So then I started thinking of alternate causes, and the Uther connection came straight to mind, which is awesome, because it allowed me to 1) Lift the burden from poor Gwen, and 2) blame Uther—my absolute favorite thing in the world to do.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the fic. I enjoyed writing it, enough that I doubt this will be my last foray into the Merlin world. Comments are always appreciated. :)