Disclaimer: Merlin's not mine.
The Afterfall
"Has it hit you yet?"
"Which part?"
"Arthur, although if you have to ask, I suppose that answers my question."
Gwen didn't say anything for a moment. As she hitched up her skirt to step over a branch, Gwaine caught a glimpse of the feet under her dark red dress—they were bare. Huh.
"I'm not sure," she finally answered. "He came so close to dying so many times. I'm used to expecting it, just not—"
Gwaine couldn't describe how those words made him feel. "Just not used to having those expectations met?"
Again, she didn't answer, but she didn't need to. Gwaine felt his stomach knot at how unfamiliar it all felt. He himself was used to expecting death and then being pleasantly surprised by survival.
Losing Elyan was bad enough.
Everything here looks so different. Now Arthur's dead and Merlin's in the open. Oh, and there's a dragon behind us.
He didn't know how to feel about being surprised this time.
Guinevere kept turning back to check on Aithusa—Gwaine had to repeat it a few times in his head to get it right—who was stumbling behind them. A few times Gwen stopped to let it catch up to them, kneeling down to stroke its crinkled, whimpering head. Gwaine tried not to gape at the sight in case that seemed disrespectful, but it was proving difficult. There was also more of a life in Gwen's eyes he noticed whenever she looked at it—the same life in them Gwaine saw when she hugged him and told him how happy she was he came back alive.
"How long was it with her?" He asked suddenly.
Gwen turned back to him, looking vaguely disoriented by the question, "…You mean Morgana?"
An echoing moan stretched from the dragon. Gwaine was glad for the excuse to wince—he couldn't stand hearing that name aloud either. "Yes."
Gwen's mouth tensed and she turned back to the dragon, whose wings now looked like they were shivering. It gave Gwaine the chance to stare at it more, to study the crown of its head and the dull, but captivating, bone-colored scales. The curve of its neck and back, however, were the most interesting—Gwaine could see its no, Gwen called it a her, her spine protruding, like a malnourished kid's. "She saved Morgana's life after her second takeover of the city," Gwen finally answered.
He felt a little nonplussed. But I saved her life after the second takeover. "What else did she tell you?" Gwaine asked, as cautiously as he knew how.
But Gwen had gone silent and stopped. Gwaine skid to a halt—his mind was still far too battle-alert for all this silence—and nearly collapsed into her as he followed her gaze. She was staring at the palace stables, which they could see over the short hill now. "I killed Tyr." The focus of Gwaine's vision snapped away and returned within one second as he looked at the queen, at Gwen. "When I was hers, I killed him," she said.
The words, and the image they should have evoked, refused to click in his head.
Gwaine knew Tyr pretty well. Round-faced, polite, and pink cheeked, always sweet and always refusing the liquor Gwaine offered him. "It makes me fall over," Tyr once admitted sheepishly, "And it makes my face even redder. Also, the horses don't like me as much that way."
"Morgana…made you do that?" Gwen into a murderer, Morgana made Gwen into a murderer, Morgana, I should have killed her, I should have killed her a thousand times over, and the ground felt like it was sliding away.
"No," Gwen responded. "I did that. She might have enchanted me, but I was still someone. I could still use my own head. I killed him without her orders."
He could still see that face in his mind, so pale and sharp. "That's not how she works…" he found himself saying, "—but that doesn't mean you're responsible, Gwen. It doesn't. She—she makes you do things." He tried to trail himself off, don't go too far, don't tell her too much, but it was no use. "She turns you into someone you don't recognize." He couldn't dart his eyes away from Gwen's open stare.
"She won't anymore," her voice sounded strange, hollow, off-balance, and she just kept staring at him. He doubted she missed the way he twitched beneath it, beneath the weight of that idea. Merlin, Arthur, Gwen, Morgana. Gwaine always thought those four couldn't be undone, that if one of them died, all of them would. Two down, there's still time, I cannot let that happen.
Arthur.
Morgana.
Gwen and Merlin.
"No," he whispered. "She won't."
Gwen turned her head away, and her voice came out rough and thin, "Someone still killed Tyr and that someone was me. Morgana doesn't matter now."
"I thought you said the blame could wait."
She released something like a strangled giggle. "How unrealistic of me."
All Gwaine could think to do was nod. "Well, then," he gestured to the stables. "Let's pay our respects."
Gwen blinked held out her hand behind her. The dragon Gwaine forgot was behind them sniffed it, moaned softer this time, and followed the trail Gwen's dress made in the dirt. It made him remember the trail of another dress, one made in the snow...
Morgana looked different the second time she captured Gwaine. Ismere's scenery became her in the most awful way possible. Her voice was sharp and dry as the chill, her skin seemed pale and translucent as the ice, and he might have been invisible for all the attention she paid him. It took the dragon, just as thinly white as Morgana was, to walk in front of Gwaine's eyes to shake the sudden cold from his shoulders. The dragon, all that was left of her.
When they past the stable doors, the looks the horses gave—Aithusa?—were so apprehensive, disturbed, snobbish, and human-like that Gwaine had to try again to swallow his snort. Maybe someday I'll stop finding all of this so bloody funny. Gwen turned around and shushed the shivering dragon, whose eyes were flying from horse to horse in something that could have been fascinated terror, huh. It's almost more human than the horses.
"Here," Gwen whispered to Aithusa, bending down and walking backwards into a stall far away from the other horses'. When the dragon was faced with the tiny, enclosed corner, she started to shriek, throw back her long neck and beat her wings so aggressively the horses snorted and reared back in their stalls.
"Whoa," Gwaine shouted, bracing himself to jump on her back, wrestle her wings down, anything, when Gwen shot out her arm. Apart from the horses' cacophony, the whole space seemed to halt with that action and Gwaine couldn't believe his ears but something that was not English suddenly curled around the stable. The source, he realized with frozen shock, was Gwen. A different language, older and sharper, fell from her lips, word by word, as she knelt further down to Aithusa who looked smaller and smaller, human and more human, compared to the unearthly sympathy in Gwen's eyes. Even the horses shut up. When the dragon's breathing steadied and her wings dropped around her body, Gwen stopped speaking. Her eyes were focused in a frown as she tore a strip of fabric from her dress, wrapped it gently around Aithusa's neck, and tied the length to the post in the middle of the stable.
Gwaine waited a full ten seconds before asking, "What just happened?"
Gwen, still staring at the red velvet she lashed to the post as though she'd never seen it before, shook her head. "I have no idea."
The greenery skated past his vision as Merlin walked, fast, like something winged or hollow. He could have already past the castle by ten miles and still not have noticed for all the mind he paid his current surroundings and body and, when another sound entered the scene, he heard the footsteps only with half his being.
"Merlin!" It was a call. So many people keep saying my name today, he thought. Looked up. Slowed his walk.
"Leon," he answered back, nodding politely out of habit and not raising his voice. Leon was far enough away from him he might not have even heard Merlin acknowledging that he still knew his name anyway.
"You set it loose."
It was an odd enough combination of words to collect Merlin's attention. He looked up from his feet and into Leon's oncoming face. "Sorry?"
Leon got closer, and Merlin realized he'd never seen him look like that. His forehead was drawn so far down his skin looked sketched with straining red and his eyes looked gold with fury. "Uther's dragon," he said. Merlin stopped mid-step. "You broke its chain," Leon was getting closer now, "…and you were there when we met it in the field. Arthur told me—he told me he didn't remember killing it, he just woke up and it was gone. You were still standing and you said he killed it. You let it go. You let it live."
Merlin wasn't sure he could have said anything even if he cared to. When all he did was nod, Leon was only standing a couple feet away from him, his hand shaking violently while it gripped his sword hilt.
"I almost died that day," he hissed, "I knew three of the families that dragon burned and seven knights who trained with me got slaughtered by that thing and you're the reason why."
"Yes." Merlin figured he at least owed it to Leon to look him in the eye as he said it.
"I know it was you at Camlann," everything in Leon's voice and face was building, heightening his color and volume, rage and terror accepting each other's presence and working as one, "You commanded Morgana's dragon there so you could have killed Uthers's. You killed him, and you killed Morgana, so what stopped you for so long, Merlin?" he was shouting now, his voice rang in Merlin's head, "Why didn't you save those people they killed?"
"You didn't either."
"If I had your bloody power do you think I wouldn't have?" Leon almost roared. "I've bled for them a thousand times over!"
Merlin turned his gaze toward that hand on the sword. He let his eyes glow gold and watched the hand loosen and drop by the Leon's side while he looked on in wrath and suddenly clear horror. "I couldn't control Kilgarrah," Merlin began, patiently toneless, "—because my father had to die before the Dragonlord gift passed to me. I'm sorry for everyone you lost because of it. I let Kilgarrah out in the first place because I owed him a debt for all the times he helped me defend this kingdom and time was running short because…" What was happening? Who was attacking the palace that time? Oh, "—Morgause was closing in on Uther and Arthur and I almost killed Morgana then because Morgause needed her but she took her away instead to cure her of the poison I gave her in a waterskin and then she was gone for a year, she came back angry and I tried, so many times, to kill her, but it was Morgana."
Leon only stared at him. Oh. He has no idea what I'm talking about. And I haven't spoken that many words since…since…
"She killed Arthur," Leon's shattered voice finished the thought. "You knew she was planning to kill Arthur. She finally did. You let her win."
"No."
"No?"
"Mordred killed Arthur," Merlin felt the growl tumble from his throat along with a thread of fire. His eyes burned again, and Leon tightened suddenly as if shot through with pain for a brief second. There. Taste it, just a moment of how that felt.
"Mordred?" Leon choked out as Merlin loosened his grip.
"Arthur wouldn't listen to me and none of you caught him in time. You couldn't kill him," Merlin heard his words thinning into a shivering laugh and Leon's over-wide eyes were a sight for the ages, "You couldn't kill Mordred and he won. Just like Kilgarrah said he would, he killed Arthur, he won, he's dead, they're all dead now…if it's my fault, it's yours. My 'bloody power?' It wasn't enough," everything left him in a hiss, coiling around Leon's frame bone by bone, "—and I'd have liked to see you try to save his life."
"Merlin, stop," Leon gasped.
"What can you do to me?"
"Merlin," he began again, gulping hard, as if swallowing every instinct telling him to run, "If you want me to trust you, you'll come back to the palace with me now."
"I did all of this for Arthur. I saved your lives time and time over again for Arthur. What if I don't care if you trust me, now?" the sentence had barely left his mouth when a shriek pierced his ears, something hit his head, and black overtook his eyes.
Leon's mouth dropped open as his breath rushed through clear again, collapsing him to the ground. The white dragon had shot out the forest and collided with Merlin's head, shortly followed by Gwen, Gwaine, Gaius, and Percival. Merlin lying next to him now, flat and soundless.
"How…how did you…?" Leon gaped.
Gwen, who was frowning down at Merlin as if she'd never seen anything stranger in her life, shook her head. "We heard you two while we were on our way back from the stables and called for reinforcements," she said shortly.
"What was he doing to you?" The question came from Percival.
Leon grasped at his shoulder, using the excuse of massaging away the pain to stop himself from shaking. "Magic."
The company went silent for a moment until Gwen shook her head. "You shouldn't have met him alone."
He couldn't look away from the queen, who stood so tall and perfectly still over him while he wondered if he'd ever felt this small in his life.
Gwaine, whose jaw was tense, knelt down by the sorcerer and threw him over his shoulder, shoving Percival away when the bigger man tried to carry Merlin instead. "What do we do now?" he asked in a flat grunt.
Gwen looked up with firm, grim eyes. "I'll lead Aithusa back to the stables. Percival, wait ten minutes after I've left her there to post guards outside. Give them a wide perimeter and tell them to stay there—we cannot let them have idea what they're guarding. Gaius," she turned to the stricken-faced old man next, "Make sure she didn't give Merlin a concussion and then bring him to the Round Table. Something is very wrong."
Guys, I am so sorry this took forever. I've had a rough semester and I work a lot and basically have had no time to write this. I made this one extra long, and I hope it makes up for the lost time. Please review and help me decide what to do with the next chapter :D