Title: Count the Ways
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Gwen/Arthur
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Entire series.
Summary: Forty-four Arthur & Gwen stories inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Missing and expanded scenes, as well as pre-series and future!fic.
Disclaimer: Merlin does not belong to me. Neither do the quotes at the beginning of each piece, which were taken from EBB's Sonnets from the Portuguese, each from the corresponding number.

XXVIII.

This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.

Guinevere's courtship with Arthur Pendragon was singularly free of almost all correspondence. He wrote no sonnets adoring her eyes; she sent him no missives harbouring locks of hair. They were both too sensible—and too aware of the consequences if they were caught—for that. (Also, Gwen is convinced the only word Arthur would find to rhyme with "eyes" is "spies.")

In the years prior to Arthur placing a crown upon her head, she received only two letters from him. The first one doesn't count, as it was written by someone else and intended for someone else. Gwen burned it. The second came with a red rose and contained only two words. She still has it, that small, stained paper.

Her letter-writing doesn't begin until after the wedding.

When Arthur marches to battle, pursues a quest, or undertakes a lengthy diplomatic mission, his queen is sure of receiving long, wearisome scrolls treating on state business. They all bear the signature of Arthur Pendragon and are closed with the royal seal, but Gwen knows the difference between poor Merlin's handwriting and her husband's. Aside from his signature, the only part of the communications actually written by Arthur are the few words on the small scraps of paper that flutter out of every scroll when it's unwound.

I miss you, says the first one, read to her by a nonplussed Sir Geoffrey. Thereafter, Guinevere contrives to open the letters and remove her messages privately.

Through the castle scribe, she dictates an official response to the king's directions regarding the new water storage system. And I you is stitched by her own hands on the ribbon wrapped around the document.

Arthur doesn't mention her reply when he returns. But he wears it round his arm at the next tourney.

During an official state visit to Mercia, Arthur sends a note telling her, Bayard is going to keep talking until I keel over dead. Remember me fondly.

Gwen encloses her return letter in a black satin bag. The mourning has already begun.

On an uneventful, long patrol, he informs her, Merlin is definitely sacked when we get home. I mean it this time. Gwaine's socks are starting to repel monsters on their own merit. I miss the smell of you. Is that strange? I miss the rest of you, too. Maybe you would know how to make Elyan stop whistling. Love, your miserable husband Arthur.

She writes back: You're not allowed to sack Merlin. You would die. Throw some dirt at Elyan. He'll stop once he chokes on it. I miss the smell of you. It isn't strange. She sends Gwaine new socks.

Gwen spends three months away from Camelot, overseeing repairs on a summer palace by the sea, while Arthur is kept at Court by an envoy from King Olaf who refuses to leave. Her secretaries transmit detailed accounts on the state of the decay, the cost of materials and labour.

The queen sits at a sawdust-covered table overlooking the waves and writes, The gulls are calling. The tide rolls in with a tremendous crash. It rivals even a jousting tournament for noise and is infinitely more beautiful. I cannot wait until you are here with me, my love, until I may kiss you with the roar of the sea in my ears and the taste of its salt on your lips, until the tempest and the tides batter the windows while we make love in our safe, warm bed.

Arthur sends back money for the labourers and a note for Gwen. Told Olaf's man to sod off. Be there tomorrow.

As much as Arthur strives for peace, he does not always succeed. King Lot challenges Camelot, as his brother Cenred did before him. Camelot's armies march for the boundaries, their king and commander resplendent in the front. Queen Guinevere stands on the battlements until they recede to the size of ants, before she turns to her own duty of ruling the nation.

Countless epistles are sent between the war camps and the castle, between King and Queen. But the ones between Arthur and Gwen are short and wearied.

Last peace talks failed. Whatever happens now, I love you.

You will lead your troops to victory, Arthur, and return safe as always. I still have faith in you.

Balin and Balan fell today. Give their mother our condolences. I would give half my kingdom to see your smile tonight.

The Court has complained all day about my rationing inside the palace as well as without. Are you sure I can't be more useful to you at the front?

It's over! I ordered Merlin to immediately take me home to you in a swirly wind, but he said he couldn't do that. I told him, "greatest wizard of all time, my foot." He said he does know how to turn me into a toad. So we're coming home the old-fashioned way. See you soon, though not as soon as if Merlin weren't such a useless—damn, he saw that. Bye, love!

Guinevere loves her letters. She keeps them in an alabaster box on her vanity and reads them over when she misses her husband—an all-too-frequent occurrence in their marriage. The notes are silly and sweet and short and meaningless. There are no sonnets in praise of her eyes, no essays of an hundred lines in tribute to her charms. There is just Arthur, loving her in his splendid, inarticulate way, more true than the author of a thousand poems.

The candles burn low as she laughs and cries over the messages of a lifetime. Guinevere sits in their room alone and watches the first rays of the sun climb over a distant horizon. Arthur is somewhere in that horizon, off to a gathering of the kings of five kingdoms, with the dream of Albion as one glorious nation.

Gwen's heart stretches and expands like the light over the land. She takes up her quill and ink. Accomplish your task, Sire, and come home to me.

Arthur writes back a week later. As my Queen commands. He delivers it himself.