Notes: Sorry for the absence of chapter last week, will try very hard not to let it happen again. That said, there's only three more chapters and a tiny epilogue to go, so it's not like there's all that much opportunity left for me to not update. And no, I don't think that sentence made sense either...
X 14 X
I love you, Merlin, she said, and that's still true. It's the second part she has her doubts about; she told him that it would be okay, that she loved him and they'd survive it, and when she said it, it didn't feel like a lie.
Until today, Morgana hasn't had a problem with morning sickness, but when Merlin brings her breakfast in bed all she wants to do is throw up.
X
Arthur is at work before half seven on Monday, regardless of the fact that his hours are supposed to be nine 'til five. He's been awake since five, though, and turning up more than an hour before his official starting time is nothing new, not since the wedding.
Honestly, he likes his job, likes the facts and figures, the way he can line them all up so that they make perfect sense. He likes the order, the exactness, the knowledge that when he fucks up at work he can fix his mistake in no more than a couple of hours.
In short, what he likes most about his job is the complete lack of resemblance between his work and the rest of his life.
X
"I'm sorry you're feeling crappy," Merlin says, meeting her eyes in the mirror above the fireplace as he straightens his tie. "I'd stay if I could, but..."
"I know, Merlin," she answers, trying not to sound how she feels; she knows it, certainly, but that doesn't mean there isn't a little resentment there. "You don't have enough holiday days to stay home taking care of me."
"I love you," Merlin says, leaning down to brush a kiss to her cheek, then straightening the blanket she has draped over her legs, partly to keep her warm but mostly because she's feeling ill and that's what illness means, curling up on the sofa under a blanket with mug after mug of tea.
"I love you, too," Morgana tells him, and tells herself the second part again: we can survive this.
She still feels sick, though.
X
When the person entering his office on the dot of nine doesn't knock before opening the door, Arthur knows it is only likely to be one of two people; either it's his sister, or it's her husband.
The chance of Merlin showing up after how abruptly he left Arthur's house yesterday is not high, Arthur is in no doubt of that, so he braces himself for his sister's appearance; Morgana is supposed to be banned from the building after her blatant disregard for company property, but since she's made her way past security at least once since then, there's no reason to believe she cannot and will not do so again. Hell, after whatever the conclusion of his discussion with Merlin yesterday was, Morgana probably has even more reason to find her way inside to shout at him.
He looks up, ready to face his sister's fury, and is relieved to see an entirely different face instead.
"Annis," he says, standing as soon as he realises the woman in his office is not his sister but his equally intimidating employer. "Can I help you with something?"
"You can, Arthur," she answers, closing and, more disturbingly, locking his office door behind her before settling herself opposite him; Arthur sits as well, since looming over his sister is fine but looming over his boss is a little inappropriate. "You've been putting in a lot of extra hours lately, haven't you?"
"Erm," Arthur says, since this wasn't exactly the question he was expecting. "I've been busy," he explains, although one would probably use the term loosely given the not quite truthful nature of his words. "Lots to do, you know. I don't… I'm not expecting to be paid overtime for it, ma'am."
Annis smiles at him, and Arthur isn't entirely sure whether or not she intends to be condescending but that's definitely how it comes across. "I don't imagine you are, Arthur," she says, quiet, sitting so still that the usually creaky chair is absolutely silent. "The overnight security team have told me you've been arriving earlier and earlier lately, and I'm fairly sure you're the last person to leave here most evenings, all without saying a word. If you were hoping for overtime, that's hardly the way to go about it."
"I've had a lot to do," Arthur repeats; he's not sure where this conversation is going, but vagueness seems the way to go regardless.
"So you said," she says, sounding distinctly unconvinced and rather stern. "So you said. Of course, that's not quite what your colleagues are saying. In addition to your own work, you also appear to be doing that of the junior analyst we have lately changed our minds about employing, not to mention anything else that comes across your desk."
"Erm…"
She laughs, relaxing. "It's okay, Arthur," she says, far lighter than she was, far less imposing. "I'm not here to berate you for putting in extra. I'm here to offer you a promotion."
X
After the fiftieth time Merlin checks his phone for messages and finds nothing, he gives up; yes, he made the effort to come in, but when his pregnant wife is ill, he figures he has enough reason to leave. So, he goes home early, expecting to find Morgana still huddled on the sofa, and is understandably concerned when she isn't there.
He checks their bedroom next, then the bathroom, although the unlocked door there is enough that he doesn't get his hopes up. The kitchen after that, then he goes into the cupboard under the stairs to check for her shoes and coats, all of which are there. Her car keys are in the bowl on the table, too, along with both her house keys and the spares.
After that, he launches a systematic search of the whole house, whilst simultaneously checking his phone for any messages from her that he might have missed. There's nothing, though, and it's only when he's scoured the entire downstairs for any place a pregnant woman might be able or willing to hide that he decides to call her, again, in the hope that he might get an answer this time.
He doesn't, but he does hear her phone, and by now he's gone from concerned to worried, bordering on panicked; he can't find his wife, all her shoes and coats and keys are still in the house as, apparently, is her phone.
He keeps it ringing, though, hoping that wherever he finds it he'll also find some kind of clue as to what happened or where she is.
The noise takes him upstairs, going through to voicemail when he's on the second step, necessitating a brief pause to call back again. For a moment, he thinks Morgana's phone is in their bedroom, that he'll see it lying on her bedside table where she usually leaves it in the evening, a source of neither evidence nor assistance, but it doesn't; her ringtone takes him onwards, to the spare bedroom.
He pushes the door open and breathes a sigh of relief; there is Morgana, holding a paint roller and a tray of paint, powder-blue streaked through her hair, dotted on the noise-reducing headphones that cover her ears and the mask over her mouth, her phone flashing and buzzing on the floor behind her.
She's here, she's okay, and, apparently, she's redecorating.
For now, that's enough that Merlin isn't going to interrupt her.
X
Morgana finishes what she can reach of the wall she's working on, then steps away, putting down the roller and the paint tray before admiring her work, and only now does she realise how cold it is with all the windows open.
She's never decorated before, never particularly wanted to, but for her son, she will.
Merlin's in the kitchen when she goes downstairs, hovering over the cooker like the good housewife she will never be, which is something of a surprise. Somewhere in the midst of painting, Morgana lost track of the time; she had no idea it was anywhere near time for him to be home, let alone an appropriate time for food to be made.
"Smells good," she says, leaning over the pan then whirling backwards as Merlin moves to take it from the heat.
"It does, doesn't it?" Merlin agrees, scraping spaghetti bolognese onto a pair of plates before carrying them over to the table, leaving her to get them each a glass of water. "Dig in."
She does, and for a good couple of minutes there is silence, comfortable and safe, broken only by the scraping of cutlery on china plates, until…
"What if it's a girl?" Merlin asks.
She pauses, halfway through chewing a mouthful of spaghetti, then swallows. "It's not," she says, certain.
"You don't know that," he tells her, sounding just as sure. "We told the nurse we didn't want to know, remember?"
"It's a boy, Merlin," she says, and she doesn't know how she's so sure, but she is. She just is.
Merlin frowns long and hard at her, only to shake his head eventually, not asking. He never asks, and Morgana doesn't know if that's a good or bad thing. "Okay," he says, quietly, peacefully, nothing of an argument to it. "Maybe the next one will be a girl."
Morgana smiles, shaky and hollow, borderline nauseous, and her heart is ice.
X
Merlin washes the pots, and then follows her up to the spare room – the nursery, as he should probably start calling it – picking up a roller and getting to work on the patches she's left bare, the patches too high for her to reach.
They work in silence, and Merlin isn't sure how to break it.
"I'm tired," she says eventually, lowering her paint roller, and Merlin feels like he's being given permission to do the same.
"You're paint-y, too," he tells her, and she is, her hair streaked with blue, splotches on her face and up the lengths of her arms, dotted over her jeans and ruining a jumper that probably costs as much as Merlin makes in a week.
"Yes," she says, bland, looking down at herself like she either hasn't noticed or just doesn't care. "It'll wash," she continues, sounding just as remote. "I'm going for a bath."
"Want a hand scrubbing your back?" Merlin offers, and only half of him hopes she'll say yes. Half of him hopes she'll say yes, and the rest of him feels like he'll throw up at the mere suggestion, sickened by the idea of touching her – of being allowed to touch her – after what he's done.
"I think I've got it," she answers, and Merlin pretends he isn't relieved.
X
Morgana returns to work the following day, leaving the nursery two walls done, two still to go.
There's still time, she tells herself, and it feels like just as much of a lie as everything else.
X
Arthur types out a thousand emails to Merlin, deleting all of them before he can let himself hit send.
Some things cannot be fixed, and some people don't deserve for them to be. Arthur has no doubt which is the case here.
He types out a thousand emails to Merlin, deletes them all without sending them, and carries on working at his shiny new job in his shiny new office.
X
She hates him, sometimes. During the day, when he forgets the boundaries she has set, when he forgets there is a reason for the distance between them, when he buys her flowers and chocolates and cooks her favourite meals, looks forlorn and rejected each time she steps out of reach. Sometimes, she hates him.
At night, too, when he rolls over in his sleep and presses against her, an arm around her waist. When his sliding away wakes her in the morning and Morgana is torn between kicking him for the breach in their unspoken contract and holding him close. When he dreams, the sort she used to wake him from with desperate, hungry kisses, the sort that now make her want to jam an elbow into his gut and demand to know who he dreams of, what he dreams of, and then remind him that he is hers, taken, and what can be forgiven once is unforgivable a second time.
Sometimes, she hates him.
The problem is, even then, she still loves him more than anyone.
X
"Here," Morgana says, grabbing his hand and pressing it to her bump, holding it there, and Merlin doesn't know if it's an exaggeration to say that it's more contact than she's allowed him in months. It feels like it should be, because she's his wife, pregnant or not, and even beyond that she's his friend, the closest one he has now that he and Arthur are no more. It feels like it should be, but he doesn't know that it is.
She's smiling now, though, her eyes meeting his directly for the first time in what seems like forever, a happiness to them that is exquisite to behold, the first green bud on a tree long winter-dead.
"What's..." he starts, almost afraid to break the moment, and then realises he doesn't have to ask anyway. "He's kicking."
"He is," Morgana agrees, and when Merlin, swept up in the moment, the life that is theirs, the future still ahead of them, leans down to kiss her, she doesn't stop him.
X
They finish the painting after that, and it seems to Merlin that they get more paint on each other and the floor than they do on the walls, pausing for kisses and cups of tea, a closeness that has been missing for months, a closeness that makes Merlin want to forget how long it hasn't been there.
For the first time since he told her about what happened with Arthur, Merlin actually feels like they might work out.
"I missed this," he says, when they've cleaned up, together, and are standing in the middle of a pale blue room, staring at what they've accomplished. She's leaning against him, her back to his chest, wet hair soaking his t-shirt, their hands linked, resting on her bump, their son. "I missed you."
"I'm not the one who went away, Merlin," she says, quiet, heavy, and, you are, Merlin thinks. She is.
You knew, he thinks, thinks but does not say. You knew before I did, and you were fine. You knew for months, and there wasn't distance between us; you knew, and you never told me, you chose not to tell me, you and Arthur took this from me.
"I'm sorry," he says, because it's too late to say anything else, too late to resent the pair of them for the choices they made.
"It's done," she answers, and it's not the same as the it's okay she gave him when he first told her, but it's enough. It's the past, it's done, and they're both still here.
"Yeah," he agrees. "It's done." He presses a kiss to the top of her head, trying not to wonder if she realises just how closely those words echo his thoughts.
X
Waking up in the middle of the night is nothing new to Morgana, not when pregnancy apparently means needing to pee every two hours, but waking up in pain is more recent.
The first time, she thinks her son is just feeling particularly energetic; he always shifts more at night, when she wants to be asleep, kicking and punching and generally making a nuisance of himself more and more as her due date approaches. It hurts, but that's just part of being pregnant; Morgana gets up, not so accidentally bumping Merlin's arm on her way to the bathroom, then gets a glass of water from the kitchen and goes back to bed. Merlin is snoring again when she gets back there, and it's not long before she's sleeping, too.
Then the second wave comes, launching her into wakefulness maybe an hour and a half later, bringing her upright, desperately trying to hold herself together, and she wonders if it's not that, if it's contractions, but it's not really time yet, not yet. It's Braxton-Hicks, she tells herself, then gets up to pee again.
The third time, her water has broken.
"Merlin," she hisses through gritted teeth, then elbows him and yelps when the pain comes again. "Wake up!"
"Ouch," Merlin answers, his jaw cracking as he yawns wider than a tunnel. "What was that for?"
"I'm in labour, you git. Get me to the hospital, now."
With the exception of his rushing after Arthur at the dinner where they announced the pregnancy, Morgana doesn't think she's ever seen him move so fast.