the new age
you know when love is real
arthur/guinevere/merlin
{reign}
Uther dies in Summer.
Arthur is left with a kingdom overrun with talk of uprising and of a glorious new age.
Sometimes (always) he wishes to simply hand over his destiny. He's tired and he fears that the place he's at and the one he sees are to far apart.
Yet.
Merlin guides him.
It's his hand a second to long on his shoulder , the muttering he remembers (from death and Guinevere and a poisonous beast) that comforts the longing.
The wishes.
The fear.
"Do you really think..."
"That you're still a prat?"
Arthur grins. It's easy.
It's almost enough to pretend that his father's not dead and how he can't recall his mother. Almost.
And when he faces his subjects, he fights a wince and from behind him he can feel the heat of Merlin's body hovering. Protecting. There.
And in the window, he sees Guinevere's eyes. Silent. Strong. Hopeful.
He begins his reign.
{silence}
The summer she turns twenty four she falls quiet. Like somewhere between her dead and dirt father and the day Morgana is to far gone to remember, she forgets her own sound.
Like promised she has a place in the castle, because the new King's word is his bond. She spends her days mending and her nights surrounded with the sound of her own heart pounding. She tries to forget the smell of her mother's death and the fell of her father's ash and metal. She tells herself, with her breath it's all as it should be (in) and with Arthur as King, it's all going to be better (out). And if she doesn't always believe, then at least she's still alive.
And somewhere after the image of Morgana's icy eyes fades and before the end, Arthur kisses her. His lips firm and tasting of all the things that could be.
She kisses him back.
"Where is that Guinevere?" It blooms from hsi mouth like a blushing rose.
"Here." She bites her lip and thinks of all the things that the end of a sentence holds. [Here but not. I'm afraid. why? kiss me again and help me to forget... orisitremember,it'sbeentolongtorecall.] But instead she endures the calm and the empty sound of the night around them.
"What happened?"
Her mother dying. Her father turning to grass. The winter that took over Morgana. The swirl in her belly that turned from wistful longing to dull ache and never looked back. The years of magic that came and of the before that sentenced her eager hopeful father to die.
She settles on "What do you mean?"
"I remember a shy girl, but a strong willed one. Sometimes she spoke to fast, to much. Said more than she wished to. But her eyes..." His thumb trailed her cheek, " they were hopeful. Where...where is that Guinevere?"
"Gone."
The silence was all that was left.
{dawn}
There's the darkness of death.
He had faced it so often. Saved so many from it. But could not in the end, fight the right of age.
Gauis dies in Spring.
Simply does not wake. And gone is the mentor. The friend. The father that's helped him evolve.
His magic echoes in his body. Fills him in places he did not know existed. And yet.
It can not touch the places that feel closed. Empty. Dark.
It can not heal true death.
Gwen sits with him. Says nothing but works her bruised fingers harder.
"Does it get better?"
Without looking up, "Some days. And yet. No. There is always the world in which he lives and this new world in which he doesn't. And you will never forget or fill the ache. But there's joy and light and trueness. It's different. It's fine. But never better. Never the same."
He loved her then. For her voice. For her hands that bled for the work which gave her life. For the way that when she looked at him, her eyes still wide but old, he knew truth.
And there were the first rays of light on the darkness.
{between}
She finds that she loves them both.
Arthur's steadiness. His honor. His valor. And his grin, when he has won. The way her name sounds long and wide and bigger than handmaiden she was or the mender she became.
Merlin's eyes. His dreams. His enduring hope. The twitch of his eyes when there's a joke on Arthur. The way he holds her hand, as if he never has a thought of letting go.
And yet she fears that she can be nothing more to Arthur than a secret, a late night vist that leaves them both shiver and gasping and her always waking to where he was.
That in the end Merlin will see the pull of him and Arthur and she will be faded. Unneeded.
She's afraid of being the inbetween.
"Do you love me?"
"Of course." She draws a cross over Arthur's heart.
"Do you love Merlin?"
She laughs. "Don't you?"
He stops her fingers. "What do you mean?"
"The looks, the touches. The things you say in silence. I know them. You love him. More I would say, than you do me. Or at least better." She slips her fingers through his.
"It isn't the same."
"I saw you, at the festival, when you drank to much and you leaned over to him. And he laughed. You kissed him."
"I was drunk."
"You love him. All the ale and mead and all the blushing and stammering and denial will not rid you of that."
He kisses her instead. His fingers slip to her hip and hold her still.
"Sometimes. Sometimes, Guinevere. I fear if I don't keep hold of you, you'll fall away from me."
"Maybe I will. Or maybe you'll find out that it's someone else you love."
"Maybe it's both of you."
Days later she finds Arthur's hands tangled in Merlin's hair. It's harder, almost beautiful in the brutality.
She almost laughs.
The girl with a King in her bed and hovel for a home. And she can't keep anything straight.
She doesn't go to his bed.
Forgets about tea with Merlin.
She pours over royal clothes to sew and kingly socks to darn. She doesn't think of the could bes any longer.
He comes to her.
"You haven't-"
"You've found where you're meant to be."
His brows knit and his too large ears turn pink. "I don't understand."
"I saw you. Kissing. I would only-"
When he kisses her, she can taste the magic.
"Merlin."
"Gwen. You are a part of all of this. There can be nothing if you're not there."
She almost believes him.
{home}
He marries Guinevere in Autumn.
And when he kisses her it's the beginning of a different time.
And later with Merlin's steady breath behind him and Guinevere's warm hands on his hips. He can finally see the path that's been laid for him.