The rage of the betrayed king had been tempered enough to avoid sentencing her to death. But didn't Arthur realise that banishment and execution were one and the same? / A saga dealing with Arthur's bastard and dangerous idea to banish a vulnerable woman. What did he think would happen? TW: Rape, sexual harrassment, depression, suicidal thoughts. Stay with me for more upbeat vibes. Arthur/Gwen.
Hello. I'm not new here. I last posted - probably terribly - over ten years ago. Many stories and fandoms and creative writing endeavours later…I have returned to posting Arthur/Guinevere fanfiction as a way to get back into long-form writing.
I really hope you'll stick with this story. It's not going to be an easy read but after a recent Merlin rewatch I've been absolutely inundated with ideas for dark!Merlin themes. The primary one of these themes is naturally Arwen-related and deals with the pure evil that is 4x09 and its aftermath.
The essence of this story is: banishing a woman from the kingdom is really fucking dangerous and here's why. Pay for your sins Arthur Pendragon / Merlin writers.
One
Guinevere
Fingers uncurling from painfully-tight fists, she felt the lull of sleep fall away from her. Beneath her hands lay damp moss and sodden leaves, but she wasn't quite conscious enough to realise this yet. Pain coarsed across her shoulder blades as she rolled slightly to the left, expecting to be met by the rough cotton of her bedsheets.
This was not to be. Instead, she was met by twigs - the twigs and branches she'd barricaded around herself merely hours ago - scraping against skin. She opened her eyes, blinked, and remembered.
She was not at home anymore.
To be precise, she had no home anymore.
Heart pounding from the abrupt realisation, from the sudden wave of severe anxiety, she threw herself forwards, sitting up defensively. The forest swayed as she did so, wind rippling through it as if to scare her. As if the trees knew of the terror coursing through her breath, her blood, her bones. Branches snapped and Guinevere turned frantically, still sat in a virtual nest of branches, left and right to check for threats: human, animal, or magical. She continued to turn where she sat, surveying as far as the before-dawn light would allow, until she was sure of being alone.
Alone. Gwen pulled her knees to her chest with trembling hands. Her dress, worn for two days straight now, was the same one she'd been wearing when she'd left Camelot. It was the same dress that she'd worn in the dungeon cell. The same dress the love of her life had grasped with his hands, vice-like with rage, as he bellowed WHAT were you DOING, a question neither of them could answer. Wearing the same dress, however, was the least of her problems.
Her stomach lurched with nausea at the situation befalling her. It was worse than she could have ever imagined. Falling asleep had taken hours, despite the sheer pain across her shoulder blades from pulling a cart of her belongings for the best part of a day. Sleep had only intensified the pain and exhaustion she felt from the miles she'd walked. The September weather was wet and cold, though not yet fatally so.
Yet.
Before the weather killed her, Guinevere mused, she would likely die from hunger. She was not a skilled hunter and had eaten very little since she'd left Camelot. The feeling of her heart breaking, and breaking, and breaking shouted louder than the small, weak needs of her stomach. Gwen thought methodically about how long she'd last out here, in the woods. With no horse, it would take weeks to reach another kingdom where she could seek work. She would not survive so long in this state. Her legs were lead-like, unaccustomed to unending, physically-demanding hikes. Her food packed in the cart would last a maximum of a week, assuming she did not eat three meals a day. Her map reading was poor - she'd never been taught properly, coming from the Lower Town - so she didn't even particularly have a well-thought out plan of where to go.
But worst of all, Gwen acknowledged that should any man travel through the forest and come across her, she would most likely be raped and killed. Possibly sold. Maybe tortured. If Gwen was found to be a single woman in the woods by men, she knew she would come to harm. This scared her more than dying of hunger, or from animals attacking, or from exhaustion. She would happily sink into a long, unrelenting sleep, dreaming of wine and archery and camping with Arthur as she passed. But she could not bear the thought of another man touching her, taking her, who was not him. So many women and girls had hopefully left Camelot to explore lakes and brooks and meadows; if they returned, they were silent, trembling, housebound.
The sky lightened and Gwen did not move. It all felt so pointless. Did she relieve herself? Eat? Change clothes? For what? There was nothing to motivate her but fear of attack from travelling bandits and mercenaries. She pushed herself up from the damp forest floor, weakly, and leaned against a tree stump's remnants.
Don't do it. Don't do it. Think of anything else. Anything.
But it was too late to refocus the mind, and Guinevere fell into the cycle of replaying the events of two nights ago.
Tomorrow…was our wedding day.
All these years I've waited for you.
You only had to wait one more day.
I don't want to see you dead, Guinevere. But I don't want to see you.
She felt her whole body recoil replaying it. Her lips quivered and she was helpless in stopping the wave of tortured agony that crashed down on her. Arthur's rage was like no other. His pain, never before seen. She had never seen him tremble, shake, quiver in such a way. And she could not wrap her mind around the fact that it was she who had put him into that state.
And so she bore the consequences.
I don't want to see you dead, Guinevere. But I don't want to see you.
You return upon pain of death.
But this, this was worse than death. Execution was quick. The pain was momentary. Banishment had left her with nothing. Granted, she had a cart of possessions, but she had no life worth living: no love, no friendship, no home, no vocation, no company. Every known and cherished part of her life had died over the course of a few mere hours. No questions, no appeals, no forgiveness would resuscitate the life she had fought for.
The tears rolled thick and fast now, as she gripped the tree stump. The rage of the betrayed king had been tempered enough to avoid sentencing her to death. But didn't Arthur realise that banishment and execution were one and the same? She would die out here. There was no question of the outcome, only of the process.
Blinking back the salty, nauseating tears, Guinevere let a small laugh escape her body, which hurt more than she expected. Arthur had really thought he was doing her a favour with banishment. In reality, the only person it served was sadly him. This way, she would die, but he would not be privy to it. She would decay into the moss and in years to come his descendants would trample over her still-exhausted bones, somewhere between Camelot and Mercia, as they united Albion.
She stared at the beginnings of the sunrise. Her eyes railed as she remedied hours of body-wracking sobs with blinding light. Everything hurt. It would be foolish to continue on instead of resting further, but she'd fallen asleep next to a tree bearing a sunbleached stamp of Camelot's crest. She was still within the kingdom's boundaries, despite yesterday's near twelve hours of hiking with the cart.
She had to move on. At least when she met her end, she should aim to be in somewhere pleasant. Retrieving a small, bruised apple from the cart, she wrapped her cloak closer around her and pocketed it for the journey. A glance at one of her beloved father's battered maps suggested if she followed the sun, rising invitingly at due east, she would, God willing, make her way towards Mercia.
She jerked the cart forwards, testing her arm and shoulder strength. She expected to have to abandon it in the coming days, as she would be too weak to drag anything more than a lithe body towards the new kingdom. But, for the moment, she would begin again: taking heavy steps across the uneven ground towards the sunlight, her head bowed, having broken everything she'd ever held dear into incorrigible pieces.