Gwen smiled into the pillow, burying her face in it. Her mistress's bed is absolutely luxurious. The mattress is soft and the sheets are vanilla white smooth against her chocolate-coloured skin. She could stay in bed all day. Her still sleepy mind wants to giggle at 'mistress' and 'bed' in the same sentence and her face flushes as she can remember what they did in this very bed last night. Morgana must have slept the whole night through afterwards, Gwen deduces with a mischievous grin. She starts a little when she realises it is already midmorning. Usually she gets up at the crack of dawn, as every good handmaiden should. Morgana wasn't the only one dead to the world this morning. Morgana who appears to be asleep still, her back to Gwen who can only see the cascade of dark hair popping out from the bunch of sheets. Gwen dresses quietly and gets breakfast, wanting to give her lady a little more time. Just a little more. Often, her lady could not get more than a few hours of sleep at a time without her 'special dreams' interrupting her rest.
Usually a light and fitful sleeper, Morgana hasn't moved. Putting the tray down silently, Gwen thinks about getting her sewing done while watching over Morgana but suddenly the room is quiet, too quiet.
"Lady Morgana?" Gwen approaches quietly and with her hand firmly on one shoulder not wanting to startle her. "It's me, Gwen. It's time to wake up, my lady." She shakes Morgana and her mistress rolls over limply, face ghostly white, lips blue and a thin trickle of something dark coming out of her mouth and staining the white silk of her pillow.
Gwen gasps before managing a scream. "SOMEBODY HELP ME! I NEED A PHYSICIAN! NOW!" Her panicked fingers checks for a pulse. Nothing. She tries tapping Morgana's face gently. "Morgana? MORGANA!"
A guard rushes in servant boy in tow.
"Gwen?"
"Tell the King and Merlin to come here right now. It's an emergency. You must hurry." Gwen manages to thank him even though everything is a blur, like she is trapped underwater.
With the pitter-patter of feet on stones, he runs off.
It is then the shock hits her and she knows that something is not just wrong. Her world has fallen apart and it cannot be fixed. Morgana is dead. Morgana, beautiful Morgana, who had been very much alive and just told her that she loved her merely hours ago would never again be able to say those three words again this side of Avalon. Gwen backs into the breakfast table near the foot of the bed sending food and drink everywhere. Emotions pulse through her like shockwaves. Sorrow. Despair. Hopelessness.
She tries to pull herself together through the tears and the fog of grief. Gwen is on her knees, cleaning up when Arthur and Merlin burst in. The King sees Gwen kneeling on the floor, sobbing hysterically over the pieces of a tiny vase. The wildflowers scattered on the floor looking rather pathetic. Morgana is fast asleep.
"What's going on?" Arthur rushes over to Gwen. He knows Gwen is not the type to cry over a broken vase but perhaps in light of her condition…
"It's Morgana," Gwen says, standing up slowly, trying not to look at Morgana. The body, her mind fills in. Tears stream down from her face even as she tries to mop them away. "I think…I think she's dead."
Arthur's face freezes and he's climbing into Morgana's bed in an instant. "Merlin! You have to do something. Gwen? What happened?"
"I d-d-don't k-know," Gwen says, trying not to speak clearly. "I just f-f-found her like that. I would have got you sooner if I k-knew something was w-w-rong." A sob comes out. "Maybe I could have saved her."
Merlin is already her limp wrist from the other side of the bed. "I'm sorry, Arthur."
"No!" Arthur says, urgency making his tone sharp. "No!" He cannot accept this. "It's not, it can't be. Merlin, can't you do something? You have to save her!"
"I'm sorry, sire, there is nothing I can do now," Merlin says, sorrow colouring his voice. "She's…gone."
Arthur shakes his head and presses the point. "But isn't there something only you can do? Like what you did for me?"
Merlin clenches his jaw involuntarily, unable to meet his lover's gold eyes. "Sire, it isn't something that she'd want from me, even if I could do it. I don't have that power anymore." It's the truth. He wants to say so much more. Arthur, you do not know what you ask from me.
Arthur doesn't say anything but his hands ball into trembling fists. He raises his head to stare at Morgana, lying still and lifeless. He takes his gloves off and brushes the hair out of her face with his bare hand. Using the edge of his cape, he wipes her mouth. Satisfied, he then kisses her cold forehead tenderly as if she was merely asleep. Gwen can see his lips moving, mouthing words that Morgana could not, cannot hear. She can feel the grief well up inside her again just as she can see Arthur straightening up stiffly, looking at a point in the distance. He's using every fibre of his being to hold his emotions in check. A sharp inhale suspiciously like a sniff gives him away.
Merlin is casting spells quietly in the background, two empty bottles in his hand.
"She has been dead for a while," Merlin notes clinically. "An overdose of sleeping draughts estimated at around late last night." He's tucking the sheets around Morgana tightly. She looks like a mummy.
"Gwen, who did this to her? Tell me! I'll kill them!" Arthur's flies to his pommel.
She swallows. "No. I mean, no one." The words hurt. She wants someone to blame too.
"Possible causes of death are accidental or deliberate overdose," Merlin murmurs.
"I- I have to go," Arthur says. He sends a guard to ring Camelot's bells on his way out.
Gwen goes back to clearing the mess. It's easy, something she's done without thinking many times. When she's done, Gwen does not know what else to do. Without Morgana, she's lost. So she turns to finding Arthur. It seems like the right thing to do. As she had guessed, he's at the knight's training grounds. It's a beautifully sunny day. Completely inappropriate for the mood and Gwen finds herself hating it. It's so unlike her.
He is throwing knives into a target. If the broken and bleeding knuckles are any indication, he may have been throwing fists at targets too.
As she approaches him, her grief follows her. The last thing she wants to be is a stuttering wreck but right now what she wants seems so insignificant. "I-I'm so s-sorry, sire. I should have-"
"The fault is not yours, Guinevere," Arthur interrupts Gwen, punctuating his words with vicious throws of his jewelled daggers. "It's mine. I should have taken care of her better. After my father died, she was my responsibility. I should have known." He sits down abruptly after this, rubbing the bridge of his nose with bloodstained hands.
"Sire, you're hurt." Gwen takes his hand into hers and wraps a handkerchief around the worst of the wounds. This she can fix. This she can do. Arthur sitting there hollow-eyed and ashen-faced – he looked beyond consolation. "You should not blame yourself."
"I do."
It's awkward. She doesn't know what to say to that. The tears come again and again and she doesn't think she can ever stop. She's crying for Morgana and for Arthur. Arthur who is so broken right now that he doesn't even know it. Something inside her tells Gwen that things will never be the same again from this day forward.
Finally, Arthur comments, "She looked so peaceful… like she could be sleeping."
Gwen hiccups quietly, managing to squeak, "Yes", before her voice is stolen away.
Arthur stands woodenly and retrieves the target with the knives sticking out of it. Several have missed the bullseye, embedded at odd angles. He begins yanking the blades out ferociously as if his life depended on it.
"Did she say anything to you about this...?" Arthur asks Gwen desperately.
"No. She had a bad dream last night but she let me stay with her. She went off to get some water and-" Gwen stops as realisation comes to her. Morgana had planned this. She has planned it all. Gwen swallows hard. "Maybe she didn't mean to..."
They could hold onto the fantasy but Morgana would have laughed. Arthur laughs for her, a bitter, grating sound. "No, we both know Morgana better than that." She didn't do things by halves. "I need to change into mourning clothes. Get on with things."
She can tell he's trying not to think about it. Like her. That maybe if she pretends to go on with the day, this terrible thing didn't happen. That she will wake up with Morgana beside her. But she knows it's not. This really has happened and it's not going to be alright. Gwen can't persuade him to stop, all she can do is offer her assistance. "I'll come with you."
"Thank you, Guinevere."
In his chambers, Arthur starts shedding his clothes methodically. As Gwen takes the mourning robes from his wardrobe, she checks up on him. He looks more vulnerable. Gwen half-expects that he might break down violently. But he doesn't. He hangs his robe neatly instead. He stands there with his hands out like he's ready to be sacrificed so she comes up behind him, slipping his hands into the dark sleeves of the mourning tunic.
"Sire," she says hesitantly as she circles to his front to do up the buttons. When he doesn't respond, she says, "Arthur." His eyes are golden, a pale gold and it reminds her of Morgana. Morgana looked like that sometimes when she was frightened. Gwen was sure that it wasn't just a trick of the light. She lowers her voice, guilt forcing her to take her eyes from his. "Do you think it was because...of me?" Gwen's hands moved deftly from Arthur's throat his stomach. Then on her knees to do the buttons down to the ground.
"Don't be stupid, Guinevere," Arthur says brusquely, taking her small hands into his large sword-calloused ones and pulling her up. "I can't say I know what pushed her over the edge but… I know she wouldn't have wanted you to blame yourself for it."
Gwen nodded tearfully, lacing up his sleeves through blurry eyes. "She didn't even leave a note."
"I think she said everything that she wanted to say," Arthur says as if he was coming to the conclusion himself. After a long pause, he continues. "The last thing she said to me was goodnight. I can't help but wonder if she'd… if she'd planned it then. Planned everything. I wonder if I could have said something. That maybe I could have said something more." Maybe I could have saved her.
Gwen can hear the words even if he does not say them. "She told me she cared for me last night," Gwen confessed. "I think she said um I think she wanted to say that is I'm not sure but that's not the say I don't think she doesn't-"
"She loves you." He corrects himself. Raising a hand to hold Gwen's face, Arthur looked her deep in his eyes. "She loved you. I know she did. Can you understand that? She had me give my word that I would take care of you. I just wish I knew why she did it, why she had to do this. And if she didn't tell you, I don't think she told anyone. Morgana's always had her secrets. She was different."
"Special," Gwen adds with a blush.
"Yes, she was."
"Some part of me still hopes that maybe I'm having a bad dream. That Merlin will be able to fix this and magically make everything better. I don't know. I'm rambling but I just wish. I'm…It just doesn't feel like it's real but it's all too real." Gwen's hands flutter as she struggles to find the words. "It's like the feelings are there inside me and I can't control them. I sound so silly. Here I am crying again."
"I am sorry I cannot be of more comfort," he says in a formal, detached voice.
"Don't do this, sire. Arthur, listen to me. Take care of yourself alright? I'll be fine." It's you I'm worried about, she thinks. You're not letting yourself feel.
"What will you tell the people, my Lord?"
Arthur turns and looks out the window. "The truth," he answers firmly. "That Lady Morgana had been unwell and passed away suddenly. I must go, Guinevere."
She bows and lets the lie pass. "Sire."
Then he's gone.
To be continued: All criticism welcome.