GUYS. I'm writing this from LONDON where I just saw Colin. Fucking. Morgan. In the Tempest. At the Globe.

Sorry, I still can't believe this happened to me.

Anyhow, sorry this took forever! Thanks for sticking with me. Unbetaed.

The Afterfall

The world looked gray.

It was a dream—Guinevere recognized that—but as she breathed in the haze through her nose, her mouth and throat felt thick with something wrong. This place was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Every building was rectangular and twice as tall as the castle. There were people, very oddly dressed people, but there were too many of them moving too fast for her to make out a single individual face. Metal of all different colors gleamed too brightly. Guinevere grew up a blacksmith's daughter. She knew that the metal covering those strange, speeding contraptions was not made by human hands. Their wheels ripped through black, painted ground, and the noise, so much noise—

"It looks different, doesn't it?" the voice wrapped casually around her wrist and trailed up her arm, as it always did. Gwen closed her eyes and let out a long breath. Morgana was standing next to her when she opened them.

"Where are we?" Guinevere asked, frowning down at the chaos beneath her and realizing her own feet were planted firmly on a building—silver and rectangular, taller than the palace.

The view out of her peripheral vision revealed a smirk, a sad little smirk, curving Morgana's sharp face. "Look over there," she pointed her finger. "At the lake."

Gwen's eyes widened. The lake was lined with crowds of loud boats and that same gray shroud, but she still recognized it. That's…

"You call it Avalon," Morgana continued, as though she'd said nothing shocking. "It has a different name now, although it's escaping me at the moment."

"Morgana," Gwen nearly growled, "Where are we?"

Her old friend turned to face her completely. "Exactly where you'll be when you wake up," she whispered, "—but many years and many mistakes later."

Gwen could feel those green eyes blazing at her profile, daring her to turn, daring her to meet them head on. She remained perfectly still as her heart sank at the gathering light,"—You're telling me this is the world without magic."

"You always were a smart girl," Morgana's sad smirk widened.

Without thinking, Gwen lifted her foot and stepped off the building.

She expected to hit the ground and wake, but what she felt instead was the sensation of gliding too easily through the air to truly be falling.

"I had a feeling you would do that," Morgana's voice whistled in the air behind her. Gwen couldn't stop herself from turning to look—her dead enemy's hair streamed through the sky in a glorious mess. She looked as pale and thin as she did on the day she died, but she was flying as if she'd always known how to.

Gwen found Morgana lovely even now, and she hated it.

"You really should see this," the witch's voice lowered the slightest bit. Gwen blinked and made her own eyes focus on the world around the woman in front of her.

"The colors look wrong," Gwen found herself saying as her feet touched the strange, stiff floor.

Morgana's mouth twitched. "They aren't wrong. That's just how they look now. This place is too dense with the new replacement for magic."

Gwen lifted her eyebrows. "What's that?"

"I think they call it technology," Morgana said flatly.

Gwen blinked and tried breathing in through her mouth again. The taste and movement on the oxygen wasn't like home, where it was bright, thin, and cool—here it was thick and tangled, and made her feel confused and exhausted enough almost to wake up from the dream. Almost. Until Morgana spoke again.

"Did you like my present?" her voice was quiet.

A horrible, wrenching shiver twisted through Gwen's body. "Present?"

"I think you know what I mean."

Gwen did, and forced herself to swallow it. "Kilgrarrah said that was just a reaction of the magic, just a way for me to help Merlin—"

"Well, you dear Kilgarrah…" disdain dripped from Morgana's tongue through the name, "—was essentially right about magic seeping into odd corners and the like, but I was the one to steer a little bit of the power your way once I realized what was happening." Gwen was still letting the knowledge sink into her stomach when Morgana whispered, almost ashamedly, "I knew you'd look after Aithusa for me."

At that, Guinevere couldn't keep her eyes from meeting Morgana's wide ones head on. "You killed Arthur," she said, and the words charred her heart black on their way out of her chest. "You killed your brother, my husband, and you left me to take care of your bloody dragon."

"Yes," answered Morgana, in a hush that hid her voice almost completely.

Gwen felt her own fingernails bite into her palms. "Get out."

"Gwen, that dragon was the last good part of me—"

"Get out of my head, Morgana, I don't want you here!" she stormed closer to those green eyes, she was inches away from her frozen face, "He is gone and you are the one I can still see. What justice is there in that? How dare you come back here after you killed him?"

"Actually, I didn't kill him." Morgana's jaw strengthened, she met Gwen's stare without dodging, and something thickened her voice until it rang through the air. "Mordred did. It was Mordred who actually dealt the final blow, and it might interest you to hear about how Merlin knew that was coming for years."

Gwen felt those words slide through her blood in that old familiar way—smooth and black like mandrake poison. "Trying to set me against Merlin now?" she countered, fist shaking. "It won't work again, and not even because I trust him at all. I don't. He's just all you left me with," her voice grew shallow and nearly snapped at the word "left."

Morgana seemed to flinch and took the tiniest step back. "I left you with Gwaine," she finally said. "I left you with Aithusa."

"You didn't kill Gwaine because you couldn't. You were too weak," Gwen spat, "—so don't pretend that was selfless charity. As for Aithusa? I'm your last resort. You're still trying to pull my strings, even from the grave, to protect the only living thing you never betrayed!"

A wounded rage flared in Morgana's eyes. "See it that way if you must, Guinevere, but not before you look around. Look! Look at this world, this strange world, this place that will swallow you sooner if you don't protect her," with that, Morgana suddenly lashed her flailing hands out at Gwen's shoulders. She grabbed them and spun the queen around to face the dream. Every flaw of the scenery stabbed at Gwen's eyes and the only thing that kept her from seizing uncontrollably was Morgana's hands.

Wrong, this is all so wrong, Arthur, you should be here…where are you? Where is Merlin?

"I know you don't want this, not any more than I do," she heard Morgana's unsteady voice a few horrible moments later, "—and you're right. I couldn't bear the thought of Aithusa dead, but it's more than that, Gwen, I swear—I don't want any of you to live here, not yet. Not even Merlin. Not in this lifetime. I don't want my home to disappear before it has to."

Gwen took her eyes away from the dream and looked down at her feet. Flat and gray. The world was flat and gray, and it didn't sound like a bad thing to be. "Why do I always end up believing you?" she asked, feeling so exhausted.

"You don't," Morgana answered freely, letting go of Gwen's shoulders. "You never have. You always questioned me at every turn."

"Is that why you had to enchant me into listening?"

"No, I did that because I missed you."

Gwen turned her head and looked her in the eye. "Congratulations, Morgana. My husband's dead like you wanted him and now you get to take up all my time."

Morgana only shook her head bitterly. "Arthur is the Once and Future King. He'll come back centuries from now and be welcome with open arms. Don't worry about him, he's the lucky one—he gets to sleep in the meantime."

Gwen exhaled, long and slow, before shutting her eyes "Just wake me up."

Knock knock knock.

"My lady," a voice called from behind the wood of her door. Everything was fuzzy when Gwen opened her eyes, but at least it was familiar. "Gwen," Gaius—she recognized it—called again.

She groaned and rolled over to check the window—the light had darkened almost completely. She'd come back here after her conversation with Maro and slept through the entire day. "Come in!" she answered back, not caring that she was in her nightgown. It had been a long few days.

Gaius opened the door and wasn't entirely dressed either, as if he too had just woken up. "They're back," he said.

Gwen blinked the exhaustion from her eyes and frowned. "Already? Did they find Iseldir?"

"Yes, and he's badly wounded. Leon and Percival are bringing him in now, but Merlin thought you should see."

Gwen nodded, lifted herself up, and grabbed her robe.

Seeing him broken and bent on a stretcher like that churned Leon's insides.

"There were two more men in that cave," Percival grunted in a rush as they both heaved the stretcher across the stone courtyard, "—but they were dead. Merlin said the spirits would have charged them with curses on their way out of the shrine for holding a druid hostage like that, and they didn't survive a mile. You should have seen them, it was like they were slashed from the inside out—"

"Not now," Leon said through a tight jaw. He felt sick.

Gwaine's voice called out from behind him on the entryway steps. "Merlin cleared the room and got Maro moved, bring him in!"

Right. She shouldn't have to see him like this either. Leon huffed up the first few stairs with his end of the stretcher, looking anywhere but at the druid it carried. He remembered Iseldir as a man who was thin and weather-beaten enough that he should have looked frail, but his strong chin and discerning eyes kept that from ever happening. His chin was bruised black and purple now and his eyes were limply shut.

Leon and Percival made it into the physician's room while Gwaine held open the door and Merlin stood at the table, gaping at the stretcher and looking green as Leon felt. Well, at least he and I have this much in common. "Bring him here," said Merlin's shaking jaw as he turned around to drench a cloth in a somehow already filled bucket of water. Oh. Magic. Right.

Gaius and Gwen stormed into the room. "How bad is it?" Gaius wasted no time asking while he rolled up his sleeves. Gwen seemed to be using all her energy keeping the horror on her face in check. Leon felt something puling at him to go and hold her.

Merlin shook his desperate head. "I don't know how many broken bones there are…he's breathing, though, he's breathing a little—"

"The cup." When Leon saw every set of eyes in the room shoot to his own, he realized he said those words out loud. He also realized he didn't care. "He saved me once with it. Use it."

Merlin looked stilled into stone while a conflicted fury raged in Gaius's face. "That cup nearly destroyed this entire kingdom. We can't bring back the dead—"

"He's not dead," Leon slammed his hand on the table across from Gaius, with Iseldir's crumpled form between them. "He is breathing. He saved me even though he never knew me and was tortured entirely because of us. The cup's his, anyway, we just stole it. We bloody owe this to him."

"I have it." They all spun around—the hushed words came from Merlin. "I'll be right back." He didn't meet a single one of their stares as he ran out the door. For a moment, none of them moved, until Gaius stirred and tended to Iseldir as if a man's life were on the line. Gwen leaned against the wall behind her and sunk to the floor.

It might have been the longest five minutes of all their lives—Leon himself couldn't remember a longer—before Merlin came running back. The cup in his hand was unmistakable. "I'd been keeping it in Morgana's room…" he stuttered, "—since I knew no one ever went back there."

Once again, they all stood mutely staring, and Gaius was once again the first to move. He took the cup from Merlin's hands, shoved it into the water pail, and held it tremblingly up over Iseldir's body. "Hie paet blaedsian," he said, in a voice Leon had never heard before that resonated, somehow, deep in his bones…the physician put the cup to the druid's lips, tilted it, and the bruises began to clear.

Leon let out a cold breath and felt suddenly pounds lighter.

"Let him sleep now," Gaius said, through a relieved sigh and in his usual, familiar voice.

Merlin, with his color slowly returning, managed a weak smile. "I'll go tell Maro," he said quietly, then seemed to almost speed from the room once more.

At that, Gwen seemed to spring back to life as she lifted herself from the ground. "Mordred," she called after Merlin, who froze in the doorway. Bewilderment shot through Leon, and both Gwaine and Percival's smiles wiped from their faces. Gaius did not look relieved anymore. "What happened with Mordred?" she asked again.

Merlin finally turned around. He didn't look confused by the question, but Leon couldn't decipher the expression actually on his face. "Something good happened for once, Gwen," he said. "Can't we leave everything else for another day?"

It wasn't quite a plea and it wasn't quite an order. It was just exhausted. Something, another expression Leon didn't understand, tore through Gwen's eyes. "All right," she said. "Hide that cup somewhere harder to reach this time."

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