can you save me
{arthur/guinevere}
i. a girl in need of a tourniquet
She meets him when she's seven, with her fingers still laced through her mother's. Her wide eyes peering from behind her mother's skirts.
"Guinevere. Let go."
"Olita."
Her mother fell like a plucked flower. Gwen felt the pull of her mother's rough hands and pushed the tears from her eyes as her knees hit the ground.
"Your Highness." Even then, Gwen shivered at the reverence in her mother's voice. The fear. Gwen could not look up, the weight of the King's eyes sat hard on her spine.
"Is this your Gwen?"
"Yes, Sire."
She stayed her eyes searching the ground and her fingers pressed hard in the folds of her dress.
"Well let's see her then."
The King was solid and hard, and in his eyes Gwen saw then a longing and a darkness that made her stomach ache.
"Your Highness." She whispered, her eyes traveled back to the ground.
"She looks like you."
"Yes. She has my mouth, I'm afraid. A bit to big." Her mother's fingers brushed against her lips.
The King looked hard at her still, "And your eyes. Especially your eyes."
She felt strange with the looks of the King and her mother passing around her as if she was nothing but air taking up the space around them.
"Father."
The King turned quickly then and Gwen grabbed her mother's fingers and stood as far from the sight of them as she could, her face buried in the dirt and folds of her Mother's dress.
"Arthur, shouldn't you be at lessons."
She could see the shadows through the thin nothing of her mother's worn cloth.
She clung hard as her mother passed by, her head down and something like dew in her eyes. And from over her own arm, Gwen saw the little prince for the first time. His pale hair and his blue angry eyes.
But he was gone in the blur and the light and the fleeing feet of her mother.
Later, her face pressed to her palm and her mother's eyes turned to wet floors and a hum about soldiers that do not come home, she hears something like a sob.
She searches the walls and the doors with her ear pressed hard at wood.
"What are you doing?"
The same boy, the same eyes.
"There's someone crying."
"Morgana."
She wishes to ask why. But the words get caught in her throat as Arthur simply sits at the door.
She falls beside him.
They stay still and sure and there's nothing but air between them till her mother shuffles her home.
ii. if you could
Her mother dies in her sleep when Gwen is fourteen.
She remembers the night before when her mother had come home late and smelled of water and soap and her eyes were as red as roses.
Her father had laid by Olita and Gwen had watched from the across the floor. Had fallen asleep to her father's blinking eyes and her mother's breath, in out in out inout in out, and when she woke, there was nothing but her father's hand on her shoulder and Gauis' shaking head.
Olita's burns on a Tuesday.
She becomes Morgana's handmaid on a Thursday.
And there are days when she still feels the King's eyes like fire on her skin.
"I'm sorry."
Arthur's eyes are the same. She can't remember what to say. On Monday she told everyone thank you, but it seems silly to thank them for sorrow that isn't theirs. Tuesday she wore black and grey and told everyone that she was too. But she isn't. Not in the same way. They're sorry because there is nothing else they can be. Not like her. Not because her mother's dress still hangs by the door, or her scent lingers across the hay and the wind and her large wide eyes still stare back everytime she passes Morgana's mirror. She's tired of the space between her and them and everyone being filled up with words that don't sound like truth at all.
She nods to him.
"Or maybe I'm not sorry."
She hugs the laundry tighter to her. And still nods.
"I can't remember my mother. She was suppose to be beautiful. She was frail and small and she sang. But I don't remember."
She doesn't say she's sorry. Even if it feels a little like sorrow but it isn't the same. He sorry for things he can never know. She sorry for the things that she will forget.
"My father doesn't tell me about her, doesn't say her name or keep her portrait up. A nanny once said when she died that she brought with it a new age."
"When important people die it always brings about something new." Her voice sounds strange and old and it fills her with fleeting memories of her mother that seem sure to fly from her skin and far away from her.
"And your mother, is it new, now that she's gone?"
Yes, she thinks, and yet no. There's still the wash to fold and the smell of fire and ash and red metal in the air when her father comes home. Still something to clean and a hidden book beneath her bed that she's been learning quietly. Still the air that her mother filled. And no longer can. It's all the same. It's all different.
"I guess."
"Maybe...maybe you could tell me about your mother and for a while I can know what one is like."
She keeps her eyes trained at the corner of his lip. "Yes. I suppose I can. When I'm done."
She meets him behind a statue of Sir Oliver his face always young and never knowing the way he'd chip and shadow. She tells him everything she can remember and she sings him something low and off key about soldiers and brave knights about the old times and the new.
The day that follows Arthur refuses to look at her.
By the end of the season it's like that day never happened. Winter had fallen and with the snow and the crisp air she almost doesn't notice that her mother's scent is no longer anywhere at all.
iii. the hunger strike
She is existing when Merlin appears.
And it's easy to pretend that, that was enough.
Because at least then, there was her home and her father and Morgana's eyes clear and friendly and she knew it would be okay.
But then there's magic and fear and her father is as gone as her mother.
But she doesn't hate Merlin, can't blame Arthur. Even if her father's presence leaks from the open windows.
He finds her wandering the castle halls weeks later.
"Guinevere."
She bows her head.
"I really am sorry."
She nods to him, the same unease from long ago filling her skin.
"It's okay to blame me."
She looks to his eyes. "I don't."
"I would."
"And what did you do? Did you kill him yourself? Did you order it done? Did it fill you with glee?"
His silence makes her heart beat faster. "No I didn't think you did. You are not your father. He is King. It was his choice. No one elses. I do not blame you for the sins your father bares."
"Nor I your mother's."
She reels back, as if he had pushed his hand to her side. "And what-"
"I..I...nothing. Sorry. I don't know what-"
She remembers the looks, the scent of something to fine for a washer and a maid to have on her skin. Her father's sad lonely eyes.
"It's just something to fill the silence." She murmurs.
"Yes. Just that."
But his eyes know.
A month later and she's brushing her fingers over his fevered head.
She tells him of the King he'll become.
And before she leaves, she tells him that she's sorry too. That she knew he was right. That she wishes him better not just for Camelot but for herself too.
She leaves when Gauis and Merlin come in looking fearful and hopeful in the same breath.
That night after he's better and she's at home in the house where her father is no longer taking up the air and the night, she sleeps fitfully.
Because maybe she's no longer just existing.
Maybe she's living.
iv. like a perfect fit
He kisses her for the first time in the snow. Uther is dead and Merlin is free. Morgana has been gone for years, the hunger in her icy eyes haunting the few that held her close.
He's walking her home, her fingers curled into his arm like she's a real lady and not simply a maid.
He takes her face in his hands and kisses without a care as to who is watching. He tastes of old love letters, of a boy and girl in silence but understanding.
She loves him because maybe she always has, or it was always suppose to be.
She can't bare to remember why.
And when he pulls away, his breath curling around them before climbing high enough to be nothing, he leans his forehead to hers.
"Well."
She grins and kisses his chin. "Perfect."
And maybe it is.
And maybe she's happy without knowing how exactly it got be to this way.