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sunnymusingsao3 · 3 years

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⭐ please mr director! release the morgwen cut....(where'd your headcanons for gwen come from, what are some challenges you have re: writing them)

Behind the Scenes: Fanfic Edition

Essay incoming! This one got long as well!

Oh bless you for asking me about this; she once was a true love of mine is one of my favorite things I've ever written, and I am always 110% ready to scream about the things that inspired it!

So the answer to your second question goes hand-in-hand with the answer to the first actually, so I'm gonna answer these out of order!

The biggest challenge with these two is mostly just how little we have in canon in regards to their relationship, background, history, and other such information that would typically be very helpful for writing a canon character-- or how two of them relate-- for a fanfic!

With Morgana, we have a little bit, but she's also not often allowed-- in the show, at least-- to be a character outside of being a villain for our heroes to fight, so one challenge with her is understanding what she does in her day-to-day life. What is she doing when she isn't advancing the plot via attempted fratricide, or directly opposing Merlin in some way? Since she can't possibly always be sitting in her tower rubbing her hands together maniacally (or pulling a BBC Merlin and smirking in full view of everyone who suspects her) I want to know what kinds of things she likes to do when she's not in court, or tackling the Big Themes Of The Show.

She's clearly moved on from lessons with Merlin, so she is not spending all her time studying-- though I do think she must be self-taught in shadow magic, so perhaps some days are spent on magic study-- and ToA is set before Morgana starts being a general-purpose villain to throw into your knight's tale (because as any medieval male writer will tell you, there is nothing scarier than a woman with power).

The way I see it, then, is that in order to establish this close friendship that Wizards says Guinevere and Morgana have, a good chunk of Morgana's time must be spent around Guinevere. And for a Guinevere who, in my headcanon, married Arthur for strategic reasons? For a Guinevere who's got a crush on Morgana the size of Arthur's ego? Spending that much time with her is bound to cause some good old fashioned yearning.

And this is where we get into my headcanons for Guinevere. As I said above, the biggest challenge is how little information we have about Guinevere. She's fallen victim to the Disposable Woman trope, and while I don't inherently fault ToA for that (they have plenty of other very strong and developed ladies), it does leave her with very little character beyond "she was Arthur's wife," and "she was Morgana's best friend." (Short sidenote: I really appreciate the Crusading Widower page on TV Tropes's site, for pointing out that the crusading widower is often an anti-hero or even an anti-villain because I think that's absolutely right when it comes to Arthur).

Anyway, all this to say, since there's so little canon, it's basically a perfect sandbox for fanfic writers to come in and have the time of their lives lol, so this is what I have done!

I am a huge Arthuriana nerd (though I am hardly an expert by any means; I'm just a simple fan who enjoys the stories) so when I saw Wizards utilize wildly famous Arthurian characters, I rather lost my mind over the potential.

I have so many headcanons about how to merge ToA and a bunch of Arthuriana plot points/tropes/characterizations, but for the purposes of this, I will stick to Guinevere!

The main way I went about making headcanons for ToA's Guinevere, was to look at what legends I knew about her and see what could apply to the Wizards canon, without contradicting it, in order to fill in these huge gaps.

For example, we know absolutely nothing about where Guinevere came from, so I kept her father and her home city from legend. Since her mother is not even mentioned in the legends, I also translated that over to an absence of her mother in the story, while also giving her at least a mention, as I think she'd be important to Guinevere, even if she hadn't really gotten to meet her properly. I really wanted this story to highlight the responsibilities that Guinevere has within her roles as wife and medieval royal woman, and I think having her consider what her mother would have done in her shoes tied into that theme of Guinevere wondering "what kind of woman do I want to become?" as she grew up. This is also why Igraine is given a moment in the fic as well; Guinevere's relationships with the women around her is something which I think deserves attention, even in a fic where I'm mostly just trying to establish a general timeline and characterization for Guinevere as a whole.

The idea for Guin's mother to have fallen in battle, in fact, came from ToA establishing that some of the background Camelot knights are men, and some are women, and it's treated as perfectly normal, as far as I noticed. Claire has that one line about a "boy's club," but I do think that it's actually just that she couldn't compete because she wasn't registered as a knight. I might be wrong about that, but I really liked the idea of there being knights in Camelot who are women, and I wanted to keep that in the fic I was writing. Therefore, I think that Guinevere's mother was both a queen and a knight, or, at least, a skilled warrior. Similarly, I also think that Guinevere's father is most known for his relationship with the Pendragons in legend. This then translated to her father being the diplomat, to tie in with her mother being the fighter. I didn't dwell too much on that because, again, the fic was meant to focus on Guinevere, and it had already gotten longer than I'd meant for it to. But, I tried to give a hint at that in the way that Guinevere's father is the one who physically takes Guin's bow, and puts a crown in her hands instead. He's not saying she can't be a fighter, but he is emphasizing that she also needs to be ready to appear in other kingdoms in a formal setting. I like to think that Leodegrance would have wanted Guinevere to have both options, to be a bit more well-rounded than he or her mother were.

Brief addition before I move on to the next phase of the fic: I chose a bow because when the stalkling advances on her, she tries using a stick to fight it off, but shows a bit of an ineptitude at using a weapon like that. Since I didn't want that to turn into "she's a weak royal who couldn't fight at all," especially since it seems to me that most of the time, being royal in the Middle Ages also meant receiving fight training, I chose for her to be better at ranged weapons, like bows, crossbows, maybe even spear throwing.

At any rate, my headcanons from there were created in a similar fashion to the ones mentioned above; I used a mixture of ToA canon (ex: Arthur, Morgana, and Guinevere being shown as childhood friends; Morgana and Guinevere spending time in the woods) and Arthuriana (ex: pulling the sword in the stone, losing it, getting it reforged by Nimue; Leodegrance bringing the round table as Guinevere's dowry; Merlin being a royal advisor).

Now, since this isn't much of a Morgwen cut just yet (so sorry omg), I wanted to skip ahead to the Morgwen pining moments, to talk about them!

The juxtaposition between a burning candle flame representing her love for Morgana, and an uncomfortable midnight cuddle from Arthur (where she can't even bring herself to scratch her nose-- an irritant meant to heighten that feeling of discomfort) representing her relationship with him, is one of my favorite ways to examine the wild difference in how Guinevere sees both relationships. One is untouchable but beautiful, interesting. It burns, and it's bright, and getting too near it hurts too bad.

And then on the other hand, one is there always, it's inescapable, but mostly sweet, though it comes up short of providing comfort. It's not bad, and it's even gentle, and Arthur does love her, but she married him for diplomacy. She married him because it's expected, and it keeps her safe.

(Which, sidenote: I think some stories work well with period-accurate homophobia, and others do not. This is one I would not have put period-accurate homophobia in, as it's fantasy and legend, and I think it's more interesting if Guinevere can't pick Morgana not because of Morgana also being a woman, but because Guinevere is bound by her duties as a royal).

The last thing I wanna talk about is that I have considered writing another Morgwen fic, but I'm just not sure what kind of plot hook or idea I'd like to pursue. So, if there's interest, or any requests that someone might have for these two, please do feel free to ask away! I think their relationship is really interesting, and I'd be delighted to keep writing for them. Guinevere is a fascinating character in particular, and is one who I think, even in legend, sometimes gets boiled down a lot, so I wanna add some depth back into her character, and give her a chance to shine!

Thank you so much for asking, and if there's anything else you're curious about, don't hesitate to send it my way! Like I said, I am always happy to holler about Guinevere and Morgwen! <3

#answered asks #sidhewrites

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kob131 · 3 years

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True Name: Uther Pendragon Class: Saber Gender: Male Alignment: Lawful Good (believes he is Lawful Neutral) Parameter: Strength: B Endurance: A Agility: C Mana: E Luck: C NP: B+

History: Uther was born as the youngest of three brothers, himself, the Black Dragon Vortigern and the Paranoid Prince Ambrousis. After their father Constantine was died, the eldest son Ambrousis took the throne at the young age of 14. Due to an innate paranoia, the treachery of royal politics and persistent rumors of his father having been poisoned, Ambrousis sought to weed out all potential traitors and dangers to himself In his madness, he killed civilians for speaking unfavorably and nobles for dealing with other nations.

Unable to tolerate his eldest brother’s actions, Uther, alongside the middle child Vortigern, staged a rebellion against Ambrousis, uniting several lords and knights across Britan to wage war against his enthroned and madden kin. Through numerous bloody battles, he forced Ambrousis to met his demise by his own hand, with no small amount of grief and sadness. Soon after, the lords of the land agreed to name him King, something that would come to frustrate his last living brother.

Throughout his reign, he came into conflict with his neighbors/arch enemies the Saxxons. The two kingdoms went to war with each other many, many times, almost always with Uther just barely managing to edge a victory. During these many wars, he was always noted to be seen wandering near lakeside, gazing wistfully out upon the water. One night, on the last of his many walks to the lakes of the land, returned with two twin newborns in hand, girls who he would name Morgan and Morgause and claim as his children. No one is quite certain who the mother of these two was...

Later in life, as the strain of his life came to haunt him, he began to seek an heir to which take his throne upon his increasingly likely death. However, due to lacking a wife and having only daughters who could not be accepted by his kingdom, he looked to his old and trusted friend Merlin. Together, they hatched a plan for Uther to impregnate the lovely Lady Igraine with the king impersonating her lover through Merlin’s magic. Alas, though the child was blessed with the blood of a dragon, it was also yet another daughter, named Arturia. Distraught and despondent, Uther gave up his quest for a successor and left the child in Merlin’s care.

This turn of events alongside the death of his legitimate child Morgause left Uther in the worst of health. His body deteriorated day after day, for years on end until one day, seven years after those events, he died due to a combination of sickness and poison by his lifelong enemies....*

Personality: Quite unlike his successor, Uther is open and friendly man who ruled through trust and familiarity, while not being the best at administration. He warms the hearts of both his retainers and his people with his honesty and openness. Alas, this warmth also lends itself to a certain...fiery temperament in battle.

A man tried to uphold honor and dignity during his life, helping define the code of honor that many among the succeeding generation would uphold as their standard. That said, he could not always uphold it as the conception of his youngest child will tell you.

Below his surface though, he holds a great many regrets. He laments his killing of his brother, his inability to stop the tyranny of his other sibling, his failure to properly raise the children under his care, his shame at the manipulation of Igraine born from a moment’s weakness and lust and his perceived abandonment of his youngest child. Because of this, he feels rather uncomfortable around most British servants, especially those from his era as it reminds him of his failures. Though, he still trusts and respects Merlin (even holding the distinction of being one of the few people able to catch the flower magus off guard).

He also regrets not having tried to defy the laws of inheritness during his time, as he sees this inaction having caused the many conflicts and pain of his successors.

Noble Phantasm:

Flame Sword of the Dragon King: Caliburn Classification: Anti-Personnel Rank: B+

Born from the legends that he himself wielded Caliburn before lodging it in it’s infamous stone as well as the misconception that he himself had dragon blood- Uther wields an altered version of Caliburn of similar quality to it’s true self. In battle, he can ignite the sword with dragonfire and enhance it’s power before releasing it in an inferno the swallows the opponent. The Noble Phantasm itself is not the sword but rather the technique and skill that Uther uses when swinging the ignited sword.

Relationships:

Merlin

Still views him as a trusted advisor and friend. Wishes he would not inform him of his daughters’ sex life. Holds the distinction of being one of the few people to catch Merlin off guard.

“Ah, Merlin. My old friend! You are truly a sight for these sore eyes... Would I like to hear about my child? ... I know you better than to answer yes.”

Arturia Pendragon

A father in name only, he believes. He feels nothing but shame and remorse upon seeing her, believing he does not deserve to be considered among her family. This despite Arturia’s admiration of his own rule.

“... Of course, she is here. The noble King of Knights who did what I could not... No Master, I do not wish to speak with her. I had that chance long ago...”

Arthur Pendragon

Is VERY confused why he has a look alike calling him ‘Father.’ While accepting of the man, Uther can’t help but feel bitter about how things seemed to have worked out for his other self.

“Master? Why is that lad giving me such a strange look? ... Arthur Pendragon? My son from another world? ... *sigh* Of course I find an heir I could truly pass on to NOW of all times...”

Lancelot

Is quite confused (then amused) that his daughter’s greatest knight is a Frenchman. Uther shares a kinship with him as a fellow knight ashamed of his past. Helps that Lancelot is the first Servant he meets upon arriving at Chaldea.

“Ah sir Lancelot! I was wondering if you and I could partake in a friendly spar sometime soon! Yes yes, I shall try to keep from getting too excited like last time.”

The Orkney Siblings (Gawain, Agravain, Gareth, Garehis)

Uther feels deeply conflicted with the siblings, knowing that they are the children of his one surviving child and yet his own failings as father caused them harm indirectly. He is, however, forced to put these feelings aside as the knights all deeply admire and adore him, having been raised on stories of his heroics. Especially the eldest Gawain.

(Gawain) “Oh, you are...yes, Gawain. Morgan’s eldest son. I shall take my leave. ... Wait, You want me to stay? You want to know about my battles? Haha, I-I don’t know what to say.”

(Gareth) “Oh, young Gareth. What a surprise, what brings you to me? ... A jousting battle? Young lady, do I appear to be of the Lancer Class in any manner? ... Now it’s a sparring match?!”

Vortigern

The mere sight of his elder brother deeply enrages Uther. The pain of his brother Ambrousis’ death dredged up at the sight of the sibling he believes he should have slain, there is no chance that Uther will ever cooperate with Vortigern.

“VORTIGERN! Damn you to hell, you inhuman tyrant!”

Morgan Le Fay Pendragon

To say the sight of his eldest daughter brings Uther pain would be nothing if not an understatement. Pressured by the constant wars and responsibilities as king, along with no partner to help him in raising a family, he could never truly invest himself into Morgan’s life as he wished to. Because of this, the death of her sister and even his own, Morgan walked a path of sacrifice and failure, transforming her into the brutal witch she is known as. All because, in Uther’s eyes, he could not comfort her.

“Morgan, oh Morgan. You have suffered so much, despite never wishing for the throne yourself. Seeking it out for Morgause and myself... Forgive your fool of a father, for he could not save you from this.”

Mordred

He did not recognize her as his kin at first but greatly enjoyed her company. Upon learning of her full heritage, Uther resolved himself to make up for his failures with her parents and help guide her to a better life.

“Ah, Mordred. Come, come. We have much to talk about. Yes yes, I know you feel as though my talks are long winded and boring. But I ask of you: will you allow this old man to indulge talking to his grandchild? Ha ha, no need to blush, I should be thanking you after all.”

*Sorry to any Arthurian myth fans but holy fuck, not only is Fate’s iteration of the Round Table Myth really hard to faithfully adapt the original myth- The myth ITSELF gets really patchy when not directly concerning Arthur.

Like, the actual villain of early Uther’s life was VORTIGERN, who was NOT his brother. That doesn’t line up with Fate so I had to make the good guy Ambrousis a bad guy. And THEN it turns out that Uther fucked and married Igraine BEFORE Arthur which again doesn’t match up to Fate. So had to change the mother of Morgan and Morgause to someone else just for this to make sense.

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thepinkseat-askthemoonbunny · 4 years

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Toll The Dead

On the day he opens his eyes, the sun is blindingly harsh. He tries to move his hands only to be greeted by astonishingly smooth skin and dark waves flopping into his vision. He’s trapped for so long that both he and the ancient tree actually died. The difference is, he came back. He wept, although they weren’t tears of joy after being finally freed from his (admittedly deserved, he could say that now) captivity. They were tears of sorrow. Actually, neither freedom nor captivity were in his mind upon his awakening. Instead it was one, all-consuming question took up that space.

How long have I been dead?

The old, dead tree was still the same apart from being a mere husk now. The old grove, the forest was still the same. But Camelot...Camelot was totally different. It no longer existed.

The mighty Pendragon Castle had all but crumbled to dust, the inhabitants long gone either to their respective afterlives, or as shades haunting what was left of the ruined halls. He’d heard whispers that there’d been a great battle long ago, a battle where Arthur had been betrayed by the son he conceived in sin and shame. Arthur. Arthur was gone too, then. Tears pricked Merlin’s eyes anew when he’d heard it...he would never see either of them again. He would never go to heaven and see Arthur’s smiling face, he wouldn’t even float through the gates of hell and embrace his beloved Uther after centuries of being apart. Arthur’s grave was at Avalon, a place that was forever closed to him. Even after all this time Morgana and Nimue’s memories had not dulled, and neither had their power it seemed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

There were too many memories here, too much had remained the same and too much had changed. All the work of decades was lost, friends and loved-ones were lost. There was no longer a godson, a lover. A mother, a sister or an apprentice to stick around for. Everything around him was a reminder of loss, the world had moved on without him and he had no choice but to move on too.

There was no place for him anymore. Limbs still stiff after being fused to wood for so long, Merlin summoned his weakened magic to conjure not food, not water, but enchanted roses. A bouquet of them: not his finest work but he hoped that the recipients would appreciate the thought.

. . . .

He left one on Uther’s grave below the crypts of Saint-Peter. “Take care, my love.”

He left the second on the floor where Arthur’s throne used to stand, and what was left of his portrait underneath it.

The third he had left at the grave of his mother, who’d insisted she be buried with her fellow sisters.

Speaking of sisters, he gave the fourth to a raven and instructed it to find Ganieda, wherever she was. He would like to see her again, but he didn’t even know if she was still alive.

The fifth and sixth went onto Igraine and Gorlois’ tombs: at least the lady got to be buried beside her true love at the end. Poor, unfortunate woman...she’d been through so much. He figured it was the least he could do. I know nothing I say or do could make up for what I’ve done...but I’ve looked after Arthur. I raised and protected him the best I could, and he became a marvelous king. A marvelous man, I know you’d be proud of him. I am, even though I’ve no right to be.

When the air turned chilly around him for no reason at all, he knew he’d overstayed his welcome. He was not forgiven, that much was clear.

“Why are you here?! You’re not supposed to be here! You don’t have the right...!”

Merlin didn’t even have to look up when the door to the crypt slammed open, he already knew who it was. “Hello, Morgana.”

“How dare you. How dare you defile my parents once again!” Her hair was a halo of fire, wreathing her thunderous face. “You and your lover already took their lives, you could not leave them in peace at their deaths?!”

“I only meant...” Coming here was a mistake. A second step of footsteps rushed into the chamber, that thin face and those blue eyes and that dark hair was burned into Merlin’s brain. He’d last seen it when she was fusing his old and silvered body into the great oak. “How did you get out of the tree?!”

“The tree is dead, Nimue. Look, coming here was a mistake. I’ll take my leave...”

“Do you really think I’m just going to let you walk away?” Morgana took a step forward. “Not this time.”

There were bolts of magic exchanged and smoke kicked up around them, a confusing jumble of light and sound and smell. Merlin barely missed the thorny vine aimed his way...Morgana had always been the more talented of his students. Nimue chimed in with her own magic, like two perfectly synchrd dancers performing a pas-de-deux. He had to get out, he knew he wouldn’t survive much longer if they’d had better aim. In the cloak of smoke and rubble, he slunk out through the first opening he saw, not having the energy to turn into anything bigger than a lizard at this point.

. . . .

It was taking an excruciatingly long time for his magic to come back...of course he’d loved without it before, but it was just so much easier to have it at your disposal. When you have magic, it becomes a part of you and losing it is a lot like losing a limb. He felt like he’d lost a right arm. When he barely escaped with his life, Merlin ran. He didn’t know where he was running to, but he ran. He kept running, and when his magic finally became strong enough he flew.

He didn’t know where he’d ended up, all he knew is that he was on his knees in a thick forest, hair falling in front of his face. It was just as much gray as it was brown at this point, as well as his beard. It was odd, really...forests were once a place of comfort for him. He used to sleep in them to keep dry, he and his sister would play in the forest when they were children but ever since the whole Nimue debacle, forests felt eerie and suffocating to him. He no longer felt free, he felt trapped instead. Perhaps, not as trapped as the unfortunate soul he stumbled upon though.

“Miss? Miss, are you alright?!” Merlin approached warily, making his way toward the figure who was slumped under a great pine...they didn’t have many of those in Britain. The air was much colder here than it was back in Britain as well. Wherever he was, he wasn’t home anymore. It was a woman, that much was certain from the stained yellow-green skirts and delicate fingers. Her dark hair, as salt-and-pepper as his obscured most of her face like a veil. Her one visible eye, which she turned to him was the deep marble-green of bottle glass. She said nothing for a long time, merely stared. It chilled Merlin to see it. When she finally spoke, he merely stared at her in confusion. This was a language he’d never heard before.

“You don’t even speak our language, do you? You’re not from around these parts.” Perhaps noticing his bewilderment, she switched to English...but it was in a thick, somewhat strange accent. At least he could understand her now.

“No ma’am, I am not. I don’t even know how I got here, I was just...”

“Running away from demons?” She tilted her head and gave him a chilling, impish grin, her eyes twinkling with...mischief? Or something else entirely? Merlin sighed, seating himself on the ground next to her. “Yes. They’re of my own making though, unfortunately.”

“We all have demons...we can choose to run from them, we can choose to work with them. I think the latter offers more possibilities, don’t you?”

“I suppose so? Anyway, why are you here? Just resting?”

“Some boys stole my walking stick and when I tried to run after them, I collapsed.”

“That’s awful! Children these days, no respect. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“You’re rather gentlemanly, aren’t you?” Her smile grew wider, and Merlin actually found himself smiling back. “And very kind.”

“Thank you. Did you get your staff back?”

“Unfortunately, no. But it’s alright, I have others. Those little toads will learn the hard way that this old lady’s walking stick isn’t a toy.”

“I wouldn’t call you old, Miss.”

“You’re kind, but a tad slow-witted.” Merlin felt himself stiffen up at that. “Well I...!”

“Don’t get your beard in a knot! I am old, it’s as plain as the age on your own face. I’m not ashamed of it, why should a lady be ashamed of her age?”

“Do you need any help?”

“If you could help walk me home, I’d be grateful.”

. . . .

“We’re here.” The cabin was small, but rather well-kept and surrounded by a thicket of trees. “You live here alone?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m alone. It’s not as if the only company worth keeping is that of the human variety, you know. Come in, I’ll have dinner on the kettle in a minute.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t...”

“I insist! You stopped to help me, at least let me give you a hot meal as a thank-you. And besides, I can use someone to speak to for a while.”

Merlin had intended to leave as soon as dinner was done, but he realized that he had nowhere else to go. He was used to making his own way, he’d be fine. But the old lady offered to let him stay, provided that they exchange knowledge. She could learn from him, and in turn he could learn from her. It confused him until he added it up in his head. Alone in the woods, sprites and imps as housekeepers, all sorts of odd charms hanging about the house? She’s a witch. A powerful one too. Ever since Nimue, he was cautious of sharing his knowledge with anyone...but then again, he knew that was going to happen. And this one didn’t make him promise not to use magic against her...plus she hadn’t poisoned him, maybe it was safe.

He didn’t know her name, and she told him once when he asked that it’d been so long since she used her true name that she’d quite forgotten it herself. But the locals called her Grandmother, at least the ones that came to her for help.

“Why do they call you Grandmother?” Merlin asked one day while she was pouring over one of his borrowed tomes.

“Because I am more powerful than they, and far older and they know it.” They’d pay her tidy sums for her aid, and she’d help them...sometimes at least. Other times, a far more unfortunate fate awaited those that she refused. It was almost as if she could read the hearts of men, and judge whether or not they were worth helping. He actually quite liked it here, a new start where nobody knew who he was. Freedom from politics...he still had his powers as a Seer, but he’d lost his taste for shaping the future long ago. We all know how the last attempts ended...and good company. He and Grandmother seemed to get on like a house on fire: “fortunate for you, because don’t really like many men.” They seemed to understand each other, he liked her clever ways and her cunning and even her strange house. They were in one position when he was awake, and when he was asleep he would find that they’d moved somewhere else in the middle of the night. Whenever he asked her about it, she’d just give him that rapacious grin and ask him to help her with the garden.

. . . .

It went quite well, until Nimue and Morgana found them. The little tin bell that announced visitors had been rung. “Merlin, could you get that?” Grandmother didn’t even look up from the potion she was stirring, and Merlin opened the door to find two familiar faces. “So this is where you’re hiding out now, eh Teacher?” Nimue mused.

“What are you two doing here?” Morgana wrapped her arm around Nimue’s shoulders, and the girl leaned into the embrace. “Why we’re here to kill you, of course!” Her voice was as cheery and light-hearted as a child. “You avoided us for some decades, but now we’ve finally found you!”

“Technically, Nimue already killed me. She trapped me in that tree and I died, remember?”

“Like it was yesterday...but we’re here to make sure that you don’t come back.” Merlin heard the shuffling of feet behind him and Grandmother peered over his shoulder. “Merlin! You didn’t tell me your friends were coming over, I would’ve made more soup!”

“They’re not my friends.”

“We’re not his friends.” The sentences were said in tandem so that they blurred together, making it hard to distinguish who spoke first. “Look lady, you don’t know what that man in front of you has done...” Morgana began, but Grandmother held up a hand to silence her. “Oh I’m very aware, he’s told me. I trust you young ladies punished him?”

“Not nearly as much as we would’ve liked...but the tree thing was marvelous, I have to give it to Nim.” Morgana leaned in to kiss her cheek, and Nimue smiled up at her. Merlin noticed the way the girls hung off of each other; that easy rapport they had developed. The aura they radiated reminded him a lot of he and Uther once upon a time. When had that happened? Not that it mattered now.

“This is my battle, I’ll deal with them. You don’t have to involve yourself...” Merlin whispered to her, but Grandmother’s glare made him quiet instantly. So much so that it puzzled the redheads in the doorway...who was this woman that could silence the most powerful wizard in the world with a single look? That’s when Morgana noticed it, the staff in her hand. “You’re...you’re...” the sorceress whispered, recognizing the symbol from her books.

“Yes, I am. And you’re not going to take my study buddy from me, are you?”

“But Grandmother!” Nimue protested. “He’s...!”

“Done his time. I believe in women taking back their power, but it seems you’ve already done that. I mean, I think trapping him in a tree for some centuries and leaving him to die is a suitable punishment...I would’ve done the same thing myself. I like him, and I’ve decided to keep him. It seems he’s had quite a bit of time to think while in confinement.”

“He’s a slippery one, Grandmother.” Morgan’s tone was heavy and wooden, much like her house.

“I’m even slipperier. Not to worry girls, I’ve been taking care of myself before him and if he gets out of line, I’ll take care of that too.”

“And if he gets up to his old tricks again?”

“Then he’s for the streets and I’ll personally call you so you can take him off my hands. If there’s anything left of him.” Her voice was as cheery as ever, but there was something coming from the old woman. Something sinister, frightening...wreathing her like flame. Morgana shrank back. “Yes, Grandmother.” The young sorceress’ jaw tightened in protest, but she said nothing further.

“Good. Now run back off to your country, girls. I’m sure you must have things that require your attention.”

Morgana made to turn around, Nimue rushing after her. “We finally have him in our grasp and we’re just going to walk away?!”

“Nim, that witch is more powerful than you, me and perhaps Merlin put together! He’s not worth it...what chance do either of us have against Baba Yaga?”

The cabin’s two “human” occupants watched Nimue and Morgana’s retreating backs, Merlin turned to Grandmother in shock. “I thank you. But...why?”

“Because I like you, you amuse me. Like I said when we first met, I keep all sorts of company. But sometimes human company can be pleasant too.” Her face turned into the sinister, somewhat terrifying mask it was when they’d first met. “This is your second chance. Don’t fuck it up, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes. Crystal.”

“Excellent!” The grin was back on her face. “Now come along, let’s get out of here.”

“Baba Yaga, huh? So you do have a name.”

“It just means Granny Yaga. Yaga is a word that means wicked or frightening, more of an epithet than a name. Come on.”

. . . .

Later that night, Merlin simply placed the last rose into the vase on the dining room table. “It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got left.” The witch gave him a slow smile. “Well, aren’t you quite the gentleman?”

“Hey, I was thinking...”

“I’m not the marrying type, so you can save it. I tried it once and it didn’t end very well, so I swore never again.” She stared through him as if he were made of glass.

“We don’t have to get married!” Merlin said quickly. “We can still be friends, with a...side hustle, if you want.”

“Side hustle? Is that what they call it these days?”

“I panicked, alright?!”

“No persistent pleas to return your love?”

“The last time I tried that shit, I was trapped in a tree for eight hundred years. And I have a fear that you would do even worse to me so no, not worth it.”

She gave one of her rare low chuckles. “Friends with a side hustle, I like it. Let’s be off then, I’m bored and I have locals to terrorize. Plus I haven’t really made the little shits that took my staff pay yet.”

There was a rumbling beneath them, but the witch didn’t seem to be affected. Merlin looked over the cabin’s porch and watched as they rose into the air, higher and higher before finally stopping. “Are those...chicken legs?!”

“Of course, how else do you think the house moves? Did you think it just floated on its own?!”

#merlin #arthuriana #arthurian legend #king arthur #slavic mythology #russian mythology #baba yaga #my story #morgana #morgan le fay #nimue #viviane #lady of the lake #uther pendragon

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one-leaf-grimoire · 3 years

Text

“triad”

Chapter 10: the nightmare

Chapter ten, yay!!!!

Slight warnings: The main character goes through a LOT of self loathing, and has a brief suicidal thought. Also, there's like a slightly sensual implication... you'll see. Nothing too weird I just wanted to preface it with this warning.

AO3 link

“Preparations should be complete within a month. We’re gathering our best Spirit Guardians to train your Knights, and I promise that we will produce major results!”

The Heart Queen is a pretty young woman, who looks about as old as I do, her figure adorned in fine cloaks and medallions. A beauty spot beneath her lip completes her look in the most regal fashion possible. Seeing her sends a chill down my back, even though we only ever meet through a screen. The sight of the crown atop her head makes mine look a little lackluster in comparison. But none of that matters right now.

“Thank you, Lolopechka! You’ve really gone above and beyond for us.”

Lolopechka smiles gently out at me and shakes her head. “No, you’re the one who will be helping us.”

“We help each other… that’s what allies are for, right?” I smile up at her before turning to the others. All nine captains are here to listen to Lolopechka’s update. “In a month, please have some candidates in mind for the training. They should be the people with the most potential to move up to the 1st or 2nd stage.”

The stage system was a little confusing at first, but it didn’t take long for me to accept it as the best way to rank our magical abilities. My flame magic alone was close, if not already at stage 1. And my Dyad magic, of course, is Arcane. Arcane mages are those whose powers could probably defeat a devil already. But that’s not an excuse for me to slack off.

The worst outcome of this situation is that the Spade Kingdom defeats everyone we send at them. We have no idea about any of Megicula’s powers except the fact that it can set curses on people. If Megicula is much stronger than we realized, then our knights will have no defence against the unknown. I’m hoping to stay out of the actual fight and command from afar. But if Megicula and the Spade Kingdom come knocking at our door…

There’s a very real chance that I’ll have to fight it myself. While being seven months pregnant.

So… I need to be strong enough to survive that battle. It might be difficult, but I have to…

I pick my hand off of my stomach, where it had been laying all this time, as I stand up after the meeting ends.

For me… for Julius.

And that leads me to this moment, a moment I’ve been dreading this whole meeting. Each of the captains says goodbye, filing past me and out into the corridor. I smile and nod at each of them, but extend my arm to stop the last woman from passing.

“Dorothy… do you have a few moments?”

.… oh god… this is going to go badly, I already know it…

“Hmm? Yes, of course!” Dorothy stops in her tracks, bouncing a bit as she turns to look up at me. I’m not the tallest, but somehow I almost have to bend over to look her in the eye. The small witch has been awake for the last few meetings, a pleasant contrast to her usual slumber. She has a cheery, bubbly personality, and a smile that almost forces my anxiety out of my mind.

Almost.

“There’s… something I wanted to ask.”

…

Dorothy blinks up at me, her smile only fading slightly when she catches a glimpse of my worry through my face.

“Your dream magic… it allows you to create anything within your Glamour World, right?”

Oh god oh god.

This is going to sound bad, I know it. But I’m on my last straw. The meditation training has gone nowhere so far, only making me stress out more and feel hopeless.

“Yeah! Anything I want… I can even manifest things from your mind, if you go in there. Why do you ask? Do you need me to simulate something for you?”

I’m scared of the future. Not just for me, but for the Kingdom. Each day goes by smoothly, too smoothly, and gives me too much time to worry about the war looming on our horizon. People could die, my friends could die, civilians could die. If there’s any information about the Devils laying in the Simulcian’s past, I’m sure it will help us.

Because, I know… if anyone dies, it will be my fault. I’m the Wizard King, and I promised that I would protect this Kingdom with every ounce of my life.

Every… single ounce.

If my death leads to our victory… I will accept that.

“Can you… let me see Julius?”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last night, Adeline and I stayed up late, trying our best to clear my head and sink into the meditative state I crave. As the hours passed, it got harder and harder, until I was afraid to close my eyes for even a moment.

“Maybe… I know why it’s been so hard for you.”

I can remember how it felt as she held me, my body giving out and exhausted. I wanted to cry, to let all my emotions out, but I couldn’t.

“My grief, right?”

Grief.

No, it’s something more than that. More than loss, more than emptiness. Something I don’t have words to describe. Yet, it’s a feeling that’s distinctly human. And maybe that’s why I can’t bring myself to emote, why I can’t let my emotions show. Because I’m not human.

Why… why did Julius leave this to me? His Kingdom full of humans, left to someone who will never truly care about the affairs of humans?

It was then that the tears started to fall.

How… how can you expect me to be selfless? How can you expect me to be able to protect them?

I want to protect them, I want nothing more than to die for them. To die just as Julius did, to save countless people and igraine myself as a martyr for all time.

But… I could never do that, right?

“I…

I hate myself.”

The words are sour in my mouth. Foreign. All my life, all I could ever feel towards myself was love. I loved myself, more than almost anything. But that was because Julius loved me, right? And his soul loved me too…

But now, that love has faded, extinguished from this world along with his life.

“I hate myself… I hate myself…”

I could hardly feel Adeline anymore, her words falling onto my deaf ears.

For a brief moment, I looked down, into the void. And it consumed me.

It’s a curse, right??? The Dyad’s curse. I flew too close to the sun, and got used to the warmth of its rays. And when I fell back to earth… there’s nothing but the cold.

Nothing. Not the Kingdom. Not Adeline. Not my friends. Not even the baby. And not myself.

I’m the worst… the most selfish person in this world. I stole this position from people who deserved it more than me.

I’ll never be able to be like Julius… never… never…

So… what’s the point?

Why even try, if there’s nothing to build even the foundation of hope upon.

“I… I want…”

I want to die-

Fortunately, those words don’t pass my lips. I just cry into Adeline’s shoulder as we sit on the floor of my bedroom. Julius’s cold, empty robe lays folded by my pillow like it always has.

“Grief is hard, I know that. I can’t even begin to imagine how it must feel.”

Adeline’s voice vibrates pleasantly through her chest as I lay my head against it.

“But… maybe what you need is closure. Do you have any idea how to get there?”

Closure…

Without closure, I’ll never be able to move on, and be strong for the Kingdom. The ultimate enemy I need to defeat isn’t Megicula; it’s me. If I can’t get over my weaknesses, I’ll never be able to protect anyone.

But how am I supposed to get closure.

If only… there was a way to talk to him again.

Wait…

There is a way.

Oh no…

-----------------------------------

“...what?!”

Dorothy’s eyes blow open wider in shock as my words sink in. She opens and closes her mouth a few times before coming to her senses. “I… I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“I know, I don’t think so either.” Embarrassed, I avert my eyes, feeling my chest start to tighten. “But… it might help.”

That’s right… for the good of the kingdom, I have to feel better. And if this has the slightest chance of making me feel better, I have to try it!

“Look…” I turn back towards her as I feel her dainty hand gently touch my arm. Dorothy’s cheery aura is gone, concern straining her eyes as she stares up at me. “It might make you feel worse.”

… I know that. But I don’t think I could feel any worse than I do now.

“Please… Dorothy…”

I look down at her with pleading eyes.

She stares up at me for a long moment, then lets out a defeated sigh. “Fine… but I’m not going in there with you.” She reaches down and takes out her Grimoire. “Is thirty minutes okay?”

I nod quickly, giving her a relieved smile. “Yes, that’s perfect… thank you so much.”

“My pleasure.” Something tells me that she doesn’t really mean that. Dorothy gives me one more look before clearing her throat. “Here we go… Dream Magic: Glamour World.”

A puff of mana, and the meeting room disappears. I blink my eyes a few times as the scene fades in. It’s whimsical, with clouds and sparkles of pink and purple floating through the air. “Wow… this is Glamour World?” I turn around in place, my feet standing firmly upon their own cloud. I’ve never seen this spell purposely, and am not entirely sure how it works. But this is a landscape created for me by Dorothy, specifically for me. And soon…

“Darling! There you are!”

Up until this point, I was nervous and anxious, yes, but also almost giddy at the thought of seeing Julius again. I was sure that seeing him would give me the closure I needed. If I had to, I could return to this place again and again, satiating my need for him even if it was a synthetic remedy. But the moment I hear that voice, his voice…

My blood runs cold.

Slowly, I turn around, and see a man walking towards me. Tall, blonde, handsome, with a smile that could light up an entire room. One that could light up an entire dark life.

And yet…

I can’t bring myself to smile, or even move, as Julius runs to my side, his arms immediately pulling me into a bone-crushing embrace. After a moment, I hesitantly hug back.

This is… wrong…

He pulls back to smile down at me. His eyes still sparkle like they did in life, his unbridled joy plain upon his face. I can’t even resist smiling back, even if I can feel my heart skinking.

Because, even if I can see him, and touch him… it’s not him. The only parts of Julius truly left on this world are a shard of a soul and a baby in my belly. This thing… it isn’t him.

“It’s been far too long…” He smiles gently, but it still breaks my heart. Julius’s hand comes up to cup my face. “You’re the Wizard King, right?”

I blink a few times, then nod slowly. Julius laughs heartily, his eyes closing for a moment. “Well, then, you have a lot to tell me! I want to hear all about it… but not now.”

There’s nothing I can do but stand there, petrified, as Julius leans in, his other arm snaking around my waist and pulling me closer.

“There’s so much that I want to do with you… now that we’re together again.”

Oh… Julius…

His lips hit mine in a hurried kiss, as if he knows this moment is fleeting, something that will never last, something that will just make the world even worse than it already is. But there’s no way he knows that; he’s just an illusion, a broken dream, despair disguised as hope.

This is…

The clouds turn dark purple, like the sky before a storm. The void grows a little bigger.

But despite that, I close my eyes, and cling to his body like it’s the only thing real in this world. I kiss him back with all my might, giving into my desire, into the temptation and selfishness that threatens to destroy everything.

... a nightmare.

“Darling?”

“Hmm?”

I open my eyes to see him staring down at me with worry. His thumb comes up and brushes something off my cheek; a tear.

“Are you alright?”

I can feel his skin against mine now. His heat. But it’s cold.

“Yeah… I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Julius… please… keep going.”

Twenty minutes later, and we still lay there together in the clouds. I still hold him, and he holds me.

This is just like every night we spent together… every night I slept in his arms, heard him snore away in his sleep. Forgotten sounds, sounds that echo like a curse in my soul…

“So… how is it? Being Wizard King?”

Julius is just making idle conversation, moving between subjects aimlessly. But the words Wizard King draw my attention. I look up to see him tilt his head to the side curiously, eager to hear. “Not as easy as it seems, hmm?”

“Yeah…”

Not as easy…

“It’s too much paperwork… not enough fighting! Although, I bet you’ll be doing plenty of that soon.” Julius giggles to himself. “But you’ll be great, I know it.”

“... I don’t know…”

“Hmm?” Julius frowns, his smile only fading slightly. “Why wouldn’t you? I picked you, didn’t I?” Julius reaches out and slides his hand over my head, a pat meant to be comforting, but I almost wince.

Only ten more minutes… I just want this to end.

“...you…”

Thick tears start to bubble up in my throat.

“...made a mistake… I…”

The volcano erupts. My hands desperately try to cover my shame as the tears fall, my body racking with sobs.

Fuck… FUCK THIS!

I want it to end. This nightmare- no- this life.

But I can’t… I’m trapped…

“Darling! Ah! What is it?! Mistake!?” Julius’s hands rub my shoulders as he frantically speaks, just as he always did in life. “My sweet, you’re not a mistake! You- AH, I’m sorry! This is something I said, right? Hey, look at me-” His hand tries to grab my chin and gently make me look at him. “How do I make this right-”

“You can’t!”

I bat his hand away and sit up, his face blurry through the veil of tears in my eyes. Anger, frustration, emptiness, it’s finally all coming out, every emotion I had been suppressing until now.

“You can’t make this right… you’re dead!” I cover my face again, not wanting to look at him right now. “You… you died, remember?! And that’s why I’m in this mess! You…” I clench my fist, my hands dropping to my shoulders so I can hug myself. “You died… and left me alone…”

It’s a curse… I’m all alone.

“Darling-”

It’s because of you… that I hate myself. Because…

“I’ll never be a good Wizard King… I don’t want to be a good Wizard King. I just- I can never do what you did, Julius.”

My nails start to dig into the flesh of my hand.

“Y-you… why...”

My voice weakens, then sharply erupts again with my next words.

“Why?! Why did you tell me that you loved me more than anything?! Why would you say that, then die for the Kingdom?!”

He loved me more than he loved the Kingdom, yet he sacrificed that love for it.

He can’t answer me. I know he can’t. He’s not Julius. He doesn’t have the answers. But I keep asking anyway, desperate to let the questions out and relieve myself of their frustrations.

Julius died… he didn’t have to die, but he did. He refused to kill Patri, he refused to save himself. A selfless act, and yet…

I can’t look at that act with anything but bitterness. Because now I know, I wish he had let it burn.

It doesn’t matter how many people died… it doesn’t matter who was hurt. All that matters is that we were together. Yet, he betrayed that promise… he betrayed me.

But he was right.

Julius had no choice but to die. He had no choice but to give up on his love, right? But the thing that makes me feel the worst…

“If I had been there… in your shoes…”

I would have done the selfish thing. I know it.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. It’s quiet.

“And now… because you’re gone… there’s nothing left for me.”

I relax my hand, looking down at my palm. Blood trickles out of the cuts I accidentally clenched into the skin.

“I… I wish I could have died with you.”

For some reason, saying those words…

It feels good.

I’m the Wizard King, yet I’m the most selfish person in the Kingdom.

That’s it… the thing I hate most about myself.

“This world is so empty without you… there’s nothing but the memory of your love.”

My voice starts to strengthen again. I let out a breath through my nose, and my eyes close.

“I… I want to destroy it.”

There…

“A world without you… I don’t want it to exist.”

The tears that flow now aren’t hot and angry. They’re cool… almost refreshing.

I said it… I admitted it…

“I want to destroy this world, along with this emptiness. I want to erase it all.”

The words hang in the air, no one around to hear but Julius’s image.

And somehow… I smile.

Why… nothing’s changed.

But… I said it.

Were those words weighing me down this whole time? Maybe, my obstacle was never my grief, but my self loathing, brought on by an annoying, intrusive thought.

I’m selfish… I know that. I’m not human. I know that. I’m evil…

No. There’s no such thing as evil.

And anyway… Julius knew all this about me. And… he still loved me.

For the first time, I feel a pulse of warmth from within me.

His soul… stirring.

“Darling…”

I feel a hand on my chin, and this time, I don’t resist. I let him draw my gaze back into his. My eyes widen a bit when I realize that he’s been smiling at me this whole time, a relieved, almost comforted smile, despite everything I just said.

“Do you really think… my love is that weak?”

“...huh?”

His eyes close for a moment, as if he’s amused by my confusion. “Listen… My love still exists in this world. And it’s so strong, it will linger for eternity.” His thumbs come up and start to wipe away more tears. “It’s out there… I promise.”

Julius leans in, one last time, as the scene starts to fade away and I’m drawn back into the real world.

Somehow… I know that I’ll be able to face it a little stronger than before.

Maybe this isn’t the closure of my grief. It’s closure for myself.

Because, what am I?

I’m not human… I don’t even know if I’m a simulcian.

I’m a soul, a soul whose ego has been shattered again and again. A girl who wants nothing more than to give in to the temptation of destruction.

But… now I know… despite that, Julius loved me more than anything. He died for duty, but his love lingers on.

“You just have to find it.”

I will…

I’ll find it, Julius.

And for the first time in weeks, hope blooms in my chest.

Next time!!! Chapter 11: the curse. A second decent into the Simulcian unconscious reveals something sinister: the Dyad's curse runs much deeper than anyone ever thought.

#triad #fic #ajfksdl #Lisa's self loathing is coming out-#black clover #oc: lisa #oc: adeline

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readingloveswounds · 4 years

Text

Ygerne (Igraine) deserved better and here’s why

First a little background - I’ve been reading Robert de Boron’s version of Merlin. Or sort of, because he originally wrote the narrative in verse, but I’m reading it in the prose because a lot of the verse was lost.

Short timeline: Geoffroy of Monmouth’s Historia Regium Britanniae gets reworked into Wace’s Roman de Brut, which greatly influences Robert de Boron’s Roman de Graal cycle (Joseph, Merlin, Perceval), which then gets turned into the Vulgate-Grail cycle. Chretien de Troyes’ work comes a little earlier than this and is actually mentioned briefly in Merlin. All this to say that there is a very strong connection of French literature with the Arthurian legend (think Norman conquest etc).

Anyway, now on to the actual story. To set the scene: Uter (Uther) has just become Uterpandragon on the death of his brother Pandragon (we can talk about naming conventions at another time) and has also just become king. Merlin had created the Round Table under Pandragon’s rule, but now it’s a tradition to gather at Pentecost at the Table for celebration. Ygerne (Igraine) is the wife of the Duke of Tintagel (not named here, but often identified as Gorlois in other works).

She lives a tragedy. Not necessarily in the Greek sense, as she does nothing wrong. In fact the fatal flaw is really on Uter for falling in love so deeply that he (in my opinion) loses his sense of reason. Here’s my explanation how Ygerne is a victim of her time, situation, and Merlin. (Content warning: creepy behavior and nonconsensual relationships)

She’s established to be beautiful, well-born, and incredibly loyal (”estoit molt preudefeme et molt bele, et molt loiaus vers son segnor”). That loyalty is incredibly important.

She catches the king’s eye and he falls in love immediately pretty much. He sends her jewels - this is the first trap. She cannot refuse them. (”Et ele n’osa refuser les joiaus.”)

Uter tells her she has his heart and she does the only thing she can do - pretends not to hear. (”et ele ne fist onques samblant que ele l’entendist”)

Uter talks to Ulfin, who rebukes him for wanting to sleep with a women - essentially telling Uter to back off on the lust/wanting to die from love.

This doesn’t stop anything, though since Ulfin agrees to talk to Ygerne and brings her even more jewels. Ygerne refuses - “s’en desfendoit, et n’en voloit nus prendre.”

She asks him why he’s done this - he lies initially and says it’s because she’s beautiful but eventually reveals that it’s not actually him that’s giving the jewels, but the king. Ulfin tells her that she has the king’s heart. At this, Ygerne crosses herself and says ‘God, what a traitor the king is, who has pretended to love the duke so’. Essentially, the king has been showing her husband with attention so he can see her. (”Deus, com est li rois traitre, qui fait samblant del duc amer”).

She threatens - rightly - to tell her husband about this. She states that her husband will kill the king for this. (”je le diroie mon segnor. Et se il le savoit, il vos en convenroit morir.”) This makes sense - obviously she’s doing her best to stay loyal to her husband, in a very fraught situation.

Ulfin says have some mercy on the king and also remember that you can’t go against the king’s wishes, to which Ygerne makes her only possible response - she will never be in the same place as the king ever again. (“Et Igerne respont en plorant: ‘Se ferai, se Diu plaist, que je ne serai jamais en liu u il me puisse veïr.’”)

Uter still won’t back off. Here’s the second trap - at dinner, he sends her a beautiful golden cup filled with wine with the request that she drink from it for the love of him. She cannot refuse his request in public and has to drink from it. She feels shame, but drinks and wants to send it back, but is told that she is to keep it. (“Quant la dame l’entent, si en ot molt grant honte et rogi, et prist le cope, et i but, et le volt renvoier arriere.”)

After this episode, Ygerne tells Ulfin that she knows that the cup was a trick by the king and says that she’s going to tell her husband. Ulfin tries to talk her out of it, as the king once again pretends to show favor to the duke in order to be near her. She knows this.

At night, when she and her husband return to their lodgings, she begins to cry. Her husband tries to comfort her and asks what the issue is. She explains and says that she would like to be dead. Her husband has his men saddle up and get ready to leave. They go back home, though the king is alerted.

The king then brings political machinations into this by claiming that the duke has offended him (technically true as he wasn’t granted leave, but at the same time, he has good reason for it.) Uter is told to send a messenger requiring them back at court, which he does.

The duke of Tintagel receives this message and is like ‘bruh’. What he actually says is that he’s never going to return to the king’s court because of what Uter did to his wife. (“’Car il m’a tant fait, et a moi et as miens, que je ne le doi croire ne amer’”). The duke also sends out a message asking for support should the king bring a war to him.

The king, predictably, does. [I’m going to skip ahead a bit here, but just know that the king beseiges Tintagel and feels super in love with Ygerne. There’s also some standard Merlin trickery.]

Merlin has shown up and Uter asks for help. Merlin says this might be difficult since she’s smart and loyal towards her husband and God. (“car ele est molt sage dame, et molt loiaus vers Dieu et vers son segnor.”)

But, this is Merlin. He’s got a plan. The plan is that he’ll give Uter the form of the duke so that she’ll confuse the disguised Uter with her actual husband. Yeah.

The plan goes down - Uter gets into the castle and sleeps with Ygerne, who thinks he’s her husband. This is absolutely horrible. Like, I’m sure you can see that, but hoo boy, this particular narrative makes me so angry on her behalf. Like, no woman is treated well by Arthurian narratives, but Ygerne did nothing wrong. Oh my god.

But it doesn’t end there! Because in the morning after Uter flees, Ygerne learns that she’s pregnant and that her husband is actually dead. She’s a smart woman, so she realizes that she doesn’t actually know who she slept with that night.

So now Ygerne is in charge of her husband’s cause. And it gets worse. Uter sends her a messengers who is supposed to tell her that she can’t fight against him - consider the deeper meaning here. (“Et li dites que ele ne se puet desfendre vers moi”).

They have to negotiate the end of the conflict, which includes a price for her husband’s death. Which means she has to negotiate WITH UTER. WHO DID THAT TO HER. She has so little power in this situation - she demands all she really can, which is a recompense for her husband’s death but she is so trapped. [Skipping over more negotiations]

Uter forces her hand and gets her in marriage - to quote the text more directly - ‘thus had the king Ygerne’. Again, double meaning. Not sure if that double meaning is there in the Old French, but it may well be. (“Tot ensi ot li rois Ygerne.”)

IT GETS WORSE THOUGH. She’s clearly pregnant, and who knows who the father is (Uter does). KNOWING THAT HE IS THE FATHER OF HER CHILD, Uter confronts her about her pregnancy and FORCES HER TO ADMIT SHE DOESN’T KNOW THE FATHER, which forces her to relive the uncertainty around that situation and makes her fear for her ‘relationship’ with Uter as well. I could talk about the situation with Merlin’s mother, but this is already so long.

Uter then tells her that he won’t tell anyone if she won’t breathe a word and also gives her child away immediately after birth. She does so - essentially giving Artus (Arthur) to Merlin who then passes him on to his foster father.

Once she’s given birth to Artus, Ygerne pretty much disappears from the narrative.

To summarize that behemoth of a text:

The king falls madly in love with Ygerne, a married woman, who understands the conventions of the time - she can’t really go against the king’s wishes, but she can avoid him. She tries her best to avoid his attentions, but he goes too far and she tells her husband, who ends up going to war with the king over the insult. Uter’s forces kill her husband, but before she learns of this, Merlin gives Uter a disguise so that he can sleep with her. They then negotiate the end of the conflict, which ends with Uter taking her as his wife. He then pretends to be ignorant of the circumstances of her pregnancy and makes her give away their child.

#sophies ramblings #god i don't know how to tag this #arthurian legend #arthuriana #long post #please feel free to ask for clarification or even MORE of my opinions about all this #mine

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epic-summaries · 5 years

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The Big Damn Kiss™️ Fic 💋 with Ector x Igraine (This woman deserves some happiness after Uther)

I agree.

Yeah, I used the same words to describe Sir Ector as I did Sir Kay. They are father and son.

Igraine watched as her son, the little boy she thought she lost, didn’t eat until something magical happened. He looked like he was hungry, but no, he didn’t eat. As a mother, she wanted to force feed him. Just because it was a feast that didn’t mean something magical was going to happen.

“Why does he not eat?” Igraine asked the man who raised him.

Arthur’s foster father was sitting beside her. He wasn’t her choice to raise her son, granted she A. didn’t know of Sir Ector’s existence and B. didn’t have a choice in the matter. She liked Sir Ector and was very pleased that out of everyone Uther could have chosen to raise her son, he chose a good man. She knew he was a good man because of his eye. He was the opposite of Uther. Uther looked like how a King should, he was tall, strong, clean, civilized but he had eyes of hard steel. Sir Ector on the other hand could have been mistaken for one of those barbarians attacking their land. He looked rough, he had a scared face and he was huge. But he had some of the kindness eyes Igraine had seen. He almost reminded her of Gorlois, her first love.

“I don’t know where he gets it from,” said Sir Ector. He had a boisterous voice which somehow made Igraine feel safe. That was something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Sir Ector stabbed his knife into the wild goose and took the creature’s leg. He took a bite, grease trickled down his bread. It was a little gross to be honest. That was why Igraine generally didn’t like watching men eat.

“Aren’t you worried?” asked Igraine.

“I’ve never been worried about Arthur,” admitted Sir Ector. “Not only he is a smart boy, but the wheel of fortune always seems to me spun in his favour. My boy is a lucky son of a bitch.” Sir Ector than realized who he was speaking with. “No offence my Queen, it’s a figure of speech.”

“No offence taken.”

Her son, walked up to them. He must have been bored not eating.

She took a look at her son. He looked so much like Uther that she wondered why anyone would question his legitimacy. But Arthur did inheirant something from his foster father, no his real father, those kind eyes.

Arthur put a hand on her shoulder. She held it there. “Why don’t you eat?”

“A growing boy needs food.” Sir Ector gave Arthur the goose’s other leg.

Arthur patted it away. “I’m sure some adventure will befall us.”

“I told you I don’t know where he gets it from,” said Sir Ector to Igraine.

“Well, a King needs his quirks, and better this than others I have seen,” said Igraine. This quirk was weird, other kings had nasty quirks.

Arthur laughed. “How are you liking the feast? Kay made thirty cooks audition for the job. ”

“With the amount he eats, I’m not surprised he knows how to pick a good cook,” said Sir Ector.

Igraine must admit it but Sir Ector’s young son did know good food. The goose was very well cooked with spices from across the sea. The vegetables cooked in bacon grease was nice touch as well.

Igraine took a nibble of a carrot. “I would keep this cook.”

Arthur beamed a grin. “Good, good. I’ll tell Kay.” He turned around and gave Kay a thumbs up. Kay gave him the sign back.

Just then some woman in a cloaked walked into the hall.

“Looks like this growing boy will be eating after all. Excuse me while I take my seat.” He patted the sword on his hip. He looked like a young King. In a few years, he would look like the perfect King.

Igraine drowned out the cloaked woman’s story. She wanted some knight to help her save her brother or something. Or was it about some magic sword. It didn’t matter to Igraine, it only mattered to one of the young knights looking for glory. But the more glorious knights in Arthur’s court, the more glorious her son would be.

The feast ended with the men singing about Arthur’s glory. Arthur blushed like he didn’t like the kind of attention it gave him. She wasn’t used to a happy court. A court built on loyalty and love. Uther would have forced his men to sing about him and they would have done it because they were afraid of him. No one but his enemies were afraid of Arthur.

“My apologies, but I would like some fresh air,” said Igraine.

“Mind if I join you?”

Igraine shook her head. She would never mind his company.

Igraine loved the cool night air. She loved how the moonlight illuminated nature. It was when fairies came out to play and magic was at its strongest. She used to dream that a fairy would take her and her daughters away. Obviously, it never happened. Instead, she stayed up at night teaching her girls astrology and the magic of the stars. Those were her favourite nights, just her and her girls. She could pretend that nothing was wrong, unless the stars told her otherwise. But the stars always told her that she would be happy once more.

She breathed in the air. There was still a party in the Great Hall. It was so loud that it broke the magical illusion of night. Igraine actually didn’t mind. Everything was different and that stars might have been right all the long.

Her happiness mainly came from her long lost son, but the man chaperoning her was to thank as well.

“If he was raised under Uther, he would not be half as good as a man as you raised him to be. Thank you.”

“He would have been raised under you.”

Igraine laughed. “There is just so much I could have shielded him from.”

“I should not speak ill of the dead, but Uther sounded like a monster.”

“Uther wasn’t all bad. He had some nice qualities.” Igraine had trouble thinking of one of those nice qualities. “He loved his brother.”

“When the nicest thing you can say about a man is that he had loved ones, I don’t think that proves he wasn’t all bad.”

Igraine sighed. “True.” She played with the sleeve of her dress. “He was always gentle with me. I think he thought the only time he’d ever hurt me was the day he let Merlin take Arthur away from me. It was untrue but he thought it.” Igraine looked at Sir Ector’s kind eyes.

“You deserved better.”

Igraine turned away and blush. For a second she felt like she was fifteen again.

“Thank you.” That was all she could say. What else could she say to that? There was nothing else she could say.

Sir Ector sighed contently. “I’ll promise you, that will not happen again.”

“I’m a little old to be the Helen of Britain for a second time.”

“Yet, you look beautiful enough you still could be.”

The night breeze was not cold enough for a line like that. She felt so hot.

“I think it may be time for bed.”

“It was lovely to be in your presence.”

“I haven’t been spoken to like in a while.” Uther had told her lines like that but it always felt wrong coming out of his mouth. “Thank you for every.” She kissed where Sir Ector shaved earlier that day, his cheekbone.

“I don’t deserve that.” Sir Ector would have made a much better king and husband than Uther.

“You do.”

Igraine didn’t know what was happening. Her body felt automatic. But she kissed him, not on the cheek but on the lips. She had her hands on his cheeks. He kissed her back. His hands on her waist, keeping her safe. She had not felt this way in a long long long time. It was amazing. She didn’t even mind the beard.

She let go after what felt like hours. “I will see you in the morning.”

He made her feel like a teenage girl again. It was the closest anyone made her feel like that since Gorlois.

#thanks for the ask!#queen igraine #sir ector #king arthur #arthuriana #arthurian legends #wordtober #sure why not #my writing

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margridarnauds · 5 years

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fandomswillruinmylife replied to your post “grendelsmilf: u know those shows that are so full of potential but...”

Why do you wanna rewrite merlin? I’m on S4E9 (when lancelot comes back from the dead) and it’s good so far (except for Morgana, my baby does not deserve to suffer like this)

Alright, so I’ll TRY not to spoil you too much.

For me, personally, the show never lived up to its premise, nor did it really....have a consistent view on its own morality? It’s generally acknowledged that Uther did a Very Bad Thing when it came to relentlessly persecuting sorcerors, but then, time after time again, Merlin refuses opportunities to either end or diminish that persecution or to kill Uther, even in circumstances where Uther’s death wouldn’t have been directly tied to magic. Merlin ultimately ended up caring more for ARTHUR and Arthur’s wellbeing than his own people, and unfortunately, Arthur never proved himself worthy of that kind of loyalty. Which could have been a FASCINATING take on an unreliable narrator and the development of a narrative over time, but the writers unfortunately didn’t have the self-realization to realize what they were actually writing on the page. Again, I’ll avoid MAJOR spoilers, but during the time he’s king...a lot’s discussed, the audience is told many things about how he’s A Better Man Than His Father, but then we never really SEE it, just like we’re expected to believe that Gwen and Arthur are True Love™ because the soundtrack decided to add in Swelling String Music in the background.

And...really...

Look, I GET that the fandom loved Merthur. I really, really do. But at the same time, they never really rise BEYOND the “Hahaha stupid servant” thing. It’s very, very funny when one person tosses things at another, hits them, belittles them, etc., because it’s two guys, amiright! Sometimes, there are these little moments where they come close, and it’s cute (and then the writers pull back), but ultimately? I would say it’s fairly toxic, as a relationship. And normally, I don’t particularly care, because so many things that I ship are absolutely wretched, but this is someone who Merlin’s willing to risk his people for? There’s no...development. There’s this ongoing cycle of taunting, “Oh, look, Arthur’s not a complete tool after all,” and then...whoops, back to Square One because lol emotions are funny. I guess my main thing is: If they’re going to be friends, you have to SHOW them as friends, and you have to show them evolving beyond the servant/master dynamic. Because otherwise, watching a character getting ordered around by someone that’s supposed to be a friend? Isn’t really my cup of tea. Note: BY THE SECOND EPISODE, Arthur was canonically willing to believe Merlin when he was like “lol Valiant’s a little bitch.” Because the writers certainly did in later seasons.

The treatment of Morgana, you’ve already pointed out. She deserved better as a character; she had SO much potential, but they left her fall to the equivalent of flipping a switch. And...personally, I got TIRED of how sanctimonious the cast could be towards her. Arthur and Merlin can preach about how she should rise above years of Uther’s abuse to her, but ultimately...that was HER experience. Arthur, Gwen, and Merlin ALL suffered at Uther’s hands, but...coming from experience, the way that a given victim will react to an abuser can vary. She’s ALLOWED to be angry. You don’t HAVE to love your abuser, or forgive them, or wish them well, and after what she was put through? Also, I’ll never forgive the writers for making the scene where Merlin POISONS HER about his pain. “Oh, look at our woobie protagonist, he’s crying :(” YEAH, AND MORGANA’S CHOKING TO DEATH RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, TRYING TO GET AWAY BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T WANT HER WOULD-BE MURDERER TOUCHING HER.

I’m calm. I’m calm.

That Fucking Dragon. Get rid of it. If you can’t develop your main cast’s relationships organically and have to rely on Destiny™, you can’t write. IF you’re going to keep That Fucking Dragon, then at least let him be a LEGITIMATELY shady character. Like, Merlin goes from “OH SHIT KILGARRAH’S OFF HIS SHITS AND IS GOING TO BURN CAMELOT TO A CRISP. WHO KNEW HE HAD AN AGENDA ALL ALONG?” to “Ah, well, I’m going to take this action because my BFF Kilgarrah said so.” There’s no real consistency there.

Also the inconsistencies with Mordred, but I’ll skim that since you’re not there yet. Suffice it to say, they could have split him into two separate characters and it would have done very little. They never knew WHAT to do with the damn kid.

Okay, but strictly speaking, what I would change:

The timeline. That’s it. The show stretched itself out too much, ESPECIALLY with Uther. Look, I love Anthony Head, I love Anthony Head as Uther. He’s a delightful asshole who even has a few moments of sympathy despite being a genocidal asshat.

But Uther had to go. There’s a REASON why most Arthurian adaptations begin with the death of Uther, and that’s because, as long as he’s around, things are kept static. Merlin stumbles around, trying to save the day, Prince Arthur alternates between heroism and prattishness, usually within ten seconds of one another, he and Gwen look longingly at one another as Swelling String Music Plays, Morgana smirks...nothing CHANGES.

Ergo, you’ve got to get rid of Uther ~S1-2. I lean towards S2, so you can get a little time to develop him/his relationship to Arthur and The Igraine Drama. Cut The Troll Episode, cut a few other filler episodes, and just. Kill Uther. That gives you time to develop Arthur as a KING, while also not making the switch to King Arthur seem jarring. Spend some time on the magical ban, have Merlin GENUINELY try to do something for people like him. I’d probably set The Magic Reveal around S3-S4, with the last episode of the series being the establishment of the Golden Age of Camelot, with Merlin being appointed Court Magician.

Sometime in those few extra seasons, I WOULD like to see Morgana have an arc of her own. Not even necessarily a full REDEMPTION arc, because I’m not sure there’s anyway for her and her brother/the court of Camelot to be on solid terms, but at least something where she has to really...figure out what’s best for her people, as a High Priestess. She can’t TRUST Arthur and Merlin, but they’re also offering a way out. One of the common things I’ve seen people argue about her sloppy writing was that Morgana HAD to be evil because that’s part of the Arthurian myths, but the figure of Morgan le Fay’s been very flexible throughout the years; in her first appearances, she was benevolent. I would like to see her THERE, having reached a truce with the others. Just as Arthur rises to the kingship, she gains power in her own way. There’s no need to take it to Camlann.

Gwen and Arthur....I would put more threads of it in S1. I’m not sure it would EVER be my Number 1 ship, because it has Arthur in it, but the DEVELOPMENT needs to be there. And, whatever happens with her and Lancelot, I wouldn’t have them being FORCED into it by Morgana. For me, that completely annihilates the pain of Arthur/Gwen/Lancelot. If Uther can make vague references to keeping Morgana’s mother company while Gorlois was away, I THINK the audience can handle Gwen having conflicting feelings towards two men. Maybe Arthur’s different now that he’s king, not the more carefree prince she knew who turned her from a maid to a queen. Maybe the kingdom’s under invasion, maybe he’s finding out that his father left far more of a mark than he thought and he has to reconcile the fact that he STILL loves his father with knowing that the man was a monster, maybe he doesn’t EXACTLY understand the amount of pressure she’s under to be The Perfect Queen, since the court will take any opportunity it can to rip her apart. And she loves him, of course she does, and she’s grateful to him, but Lancelot’s there, and he’s concerned for Arthur too, and he understands what it’s like to rise above his station. I’m not asking for a full on soap opera storyline, but IF you’re going to put Lancelot/Guinevere in there, then you have to do it in a way that respects the characters rather than just ticking points off a checklist. (Especially given that the show completely went away from Arthurian myth at various points, so it’s not like they HAD to bring it in. And the lovely thing with Arthuriana is that you can bring in or take out pretty much whatever you want; the genre is endlessly adaptable.)

Also, we were robbed of a Merlin-style Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. ROBBED. (Christmas special, anyone?)

#fandomswillruinmylife #long post #i'm several years rusty on merlin so this is off the top of my head #but hey it's long enough as it is

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andavrii · 6 years

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Close Enough To Perfect - Garnet’s Half

I’m currently world building for some “semi-original” fiction. It’s a remix of some Arthurian fiction with a hefty dose of character concepts borrowed from @morgaine2005 as well. (Thanks again, Kellie!) While I’m world-building though, I’m dipping the toe back in the old pond by writing up a few little free-form stories mostly drawn from things I’ve told Kellie while I��m boring her to tears with my world-building. Things that impact the story but probably won’t really have a place in the story when I get that far.

So this story is about Garnet and Artemis (who is somewhat based off of COA’s Leona. The daughter of Guinevere and Lancelot, only in this particular world Guinevere is queen of Avalon’s neighboring country, Benoit and was, for a while, married to Arthur. The who why and what of how that fell out is either for the book or for a different drabble and doesn’t really have much impact here. Artemis is still the twin of Galahad, however Will is now Prince Percival/Val Kellie was most insistent that I could not name him Percy. *sad face*.)

Garnet is still the daughter of Morgause and Lot, only--well--little known fact “Garnet” was originally a character sketch I had developed for an Arthurian story, the twin of Gareth. Kellie did a lot of development to her character when she took Garnet over, I simply took and restored Gareth as Garnet’s twin and not her nephew. (Because there’s something in the water.)

Hopefully the rest of this will stand up on its own. Even if you don’t understand the world, the story will be enjoyable.

Length: 6472 words

Fandom: Original Arthurian

Rating: Teen (Barely for minor - like less than ten words of - profanity and one reference to nips on a statue.)

Warnings: It’s fluff? Nothing else though

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Close Enough To Perfect (Garnet’s Story)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“I--I understand, Your Majesty.” Garnet said, hating that her voice was trembling. Yes, focus on the immediate weakness, not how much this hurts, not how much you needed this to work. Keep your chin up, shoulders back. Don’t hunch, Garnet, don’t give her one clipped copper more power over you. She lost the ability to hurt you when she passed on the chance to help you.

Know what? Screw her. If she can’t see past Mother to see you, then fuck her to the ninth level of hell and back. Get angry, Garnet. Anger is safer. She lifted her head out of her curtsey and met the queen’s eyes, just for a moment, hoping the purples, golds, and corals blazed just like her grandmother’s did when something sparked Grandmother Igraine’s ire.

“Garnet, honey, do you…?”

“No.” Garnet interrupted curtly, before her manners caught up to her. “No, your Majesty, I don’t need a moment compose myself. I was to see my lady-mother after I finished here. I shouldn’t keep her waiting. I’ll see myself out.”

“... Garnet.” Queen Guinevere started.

“I will see myself out, your Majesty.” Garnet repeated, trying to draw the breath of cold, of wintry death that Mother’s voice always held. The queen’s eyes widened in alarm as Garnet nodded once and turned before she could say anything further.

Let her be alarmed, let her be whatever the hell she wanted. Garnet bolstered herself as she walked out of the throne room. Thankfully the audience, while taking place in the throne room, was a private one and only two of Queen Guinevere’s knights had been there to see her. She kept her head up, her spine straight, until she was out of sight of the royal bodyguards at the door to the throne room.

When she was alone in the hall, however, the fragility of her anger shattered, and as she did have an appointment with her lady-mother, she needed to be composed. No, Morgause was not a woman to be kept waiting. But Garnet knew a few shortcuts to the suite that her parents were using for this visit from all the years of hide and seek with Artemis and Galahad and Gareth. She could take just one moment. Just one to take a deep breath. She sank against the panelled wall feeling the coolness of the castle stone just behind it and tried to pull the coldness from the stone and into her body as her hands covered her face.

“Garnet?”

“Your highness!” Garnet gasped, eyes meeting the warm witch hazel green eyes of Benoit’s prince consort, he was standing there, concern and sympathy easy to read on his face.

“Your highness?” Prince Lancelot asked, cocking his head to one side and almost staring at her. “I can’t think of the last time that you called me that, what happened to Uncle Lance?”

That ended when your wife basically told me that she can’t trust me not to be my lady-mother. Did he not know that’s exactly what Guinevere was planning to imply in the meeting?

Actually he probably didn’t. His concern, deepening with every breath as he watched her, was too genuine. Lancelot was a horrible actor. He wore his heart on his sleeve for everyone to see. It had always been that way according to Papa. So she couldn’t hurt him. That was what Garnet’s lady-mother would do. Guinevere might’ve deserved it, but Lancelot did not.

“Courtesy is never misplaced, your highness. My lady-mother likes to remind.” Garnet said, bobbing her head in place of a curtsey, even allowing that little bit of familiarity brought all those things she was desperately trying to hide behind her armor too close to the cracks in it. If she had to look up into Lancelot’s handsome, open face much longer she was going to embarrass herself. “And--and speaking of my lady-mother, I am expected at her suite momentarily, if you’ll excuse me, highness?”

“Garnet, if you need a minute, I’m pretty sure one of Gwen’s sitting rooms is empty, you can always just…”

“No.” Garnet said, interrupting one of Benoit’s royals for the second time in less than a quarter hour. “I’ve abused her Majesty’s hospitality enough for one day. I will see you at dinner, your highness.” Garnet didn’t want to say she fled then, but she knew she did.

+++

Lance stared after little Garnet, quite differently than his young squires might’ve. And even though Garnet was a bare fourteen, just sixteen months older than Lance’s twins, the squires already did stare as she walked. Garnet had her mother’s hip-cocked strut and the daringly high heels on her shoes gave a deer-like fragility to that sway.

But whatever was so wrong. No, Garnet was never happy when she had to see her mother, but this was deeper than that. But …

… I’ve abused her Majesty’s hospitality …

Oh, fuck me, Gwen, you didn’t. God above why? How can you be the woman I love and yet so fucking heartless sometimes? And why didn’t you tell me?

Probably because she didn’t want to be reminded that she was being heartless until the poor child’s heart was broken beyond redemption.

He knew Garnet, as well as anyone who wasn’t her twin or cousins could. Even if Lance could talk Gwen around, which he probably couldn’t, Garnet’s pride would never allow her to take a place in the court now. And Gwen knew that. She was counting on it.

Lance was supposed to be in the practice yard in just a few minutes for Galahad’s lessons, but Lance’s second son could wait, right now he needed to champion another child far worse.

Setting his shoulder under his practice armor he executed a ninety degree turn straight off a parade field and marched off to throne room.

Gwen was definitely feeling some guilt right now. She was twisting a loose piece of hair, rich mahogany in color, between her fingers, hunched, just a little, on her throne.

“Lance.” Lance’s wife stood up and spread her hands.

“Really, Gwen?”

“Oh.” Gwen’s face crumpled slightly. “The decision is made, Prince Lancelot.” She shifted from the lost, alone, desperately lonely girl he had loved when she was still Arthur’s wife to his queen in the space of heartbeats.

“I know, your Majesty.” If she was going to play the game of titles, he could play that part as well as she could. Maybe better. “Even if I could change your mind, you could not ever change hers.”

“I’m sure...” Her face looked anything but sure.

Lance shook his head the same way he would’ve if one of his knights had completely fucked up beyond the pale. Not with the slight sympathy he’d have allotted a squire who was still young, but the same disappointed detachment of someone who could’ve done better but had chosen not to.

“You seem very--certain.”

“I am.”

“...How?” Gwen asked, eyes narrowed just slightly.

“Because she’s probably in her lady-mother’s presence, as we speak, telling her. The damage is done, Gwen. You fucked up.”

+++

Garnet didn’t even get all the way to the stairs, out of the sight of the guards, before the tears came. She’d held them off by every bit of trained will Morgan had graced her with. But at the moment she was not Lady Garnet, she was not a mage, she was not a quarter-fae of high court blood, she was a fourteen year old girl.

She was a girl who had lost the last avenue of escape, the last vestige of a whispered prayer that she could in some way make her lady-mother proud.

Morgause hadn’t even been mean about it. Garnet thought as she stumbled past the guards and into the stairwell. She had, to what had to be a strain on her abilities, even been sympathetic.

… And disappointed …

That was the Morgause that Garnet knew; she was always disappointed in Garnet. Garnet was an imperfect copy, a flawed fake. She would never, ever, be what Morgause was.

The stairs split one going left, one going right, Garnet had just a bare few seconds before she hit the landing to remember which way the practice grounds were. She didn’t know if Papa would be back from his ride yet, the stables weren’t far from the practice grounds, but Gareth, hopefully Gareth could get out of his sparring match with Prince Percival.

There she went again, betting on hope.

It’s better to have the minorest basic plan, Morgause said, than to throw yourself on the dice of hope. But you’ll never understand that, my little flower.

“No, I don’t suppose I will.” Garnet breathed barely over the clatter of her heels. The pet name was often mistaken by most people for a compliment, Garnet knew it wasn’t. A flower was pretty, pretty but fragile. Even the most beautiful rose, once you reached past the thorns, could be crumpled with so very little effort. Just like Garnet was now. Crumpled and smashed and thrown upon the ground.

It was, perhaps, understandable that Garnet just didn’t see where the paving pulled away from the wall. She couldn’t really see anything, tears smeared across her vision, beading up at the corners before sliding down like warm rain, destroying Garnet’s careful cosmetics, smearing rouge and kohl down her cheeks.

She took the cornering of the path just a little too tightly, her heel sinking into the damp ground, and then--well--the fall was inevitable.

As should’ve been the squelch of mud under her palms and knees as she reached the end of her arc leading her to the ground.

“Oh, look, Laz, it seems the little Avalonian bitch has found her way to the mud like all of her kind.” An affected breathy voice--masculine, not feminine--said from somewhere to her right.

“Well, as you say, my dear Con, it was inevitable. Poor thing. Do you think we should do something for her?” Laz, whomever he was, simpered back.

Garnet wanted to raise her head, to cover them in boils, let them belch up slugs, something. To be angry, to fight, to hurt someone like she hurt. But…

… she couldn’t …

All she could do was wallow in the mud like some toddler who didn’t know better than getting her best dress dirty. To crawl to forward, making it worse, because her hands were sinking even further into puddle.

Maybe the ground could be what her lady-mother, the queen, could not be. Kind. Maybe it could just open up and swallow her up. The breeze picked up for just a moment then, blowing the soft, intoxicating, smell of flowers, roses most of all, onto Garnet’s face. One last taunt.

The two courtiers were obviously warming to their task as they showed no indication of moving on.

Damn it. Garnet thought as she tried to rub the tears out of her eye with one sleeve, barely avoiding getting mud in her eye and leaving a streak of it across her cheek. A deep breath hitched in her chest at at least three points and did nothing to calm her.

A loud crunch of metal jangling together brought her head up fast. Someone in full practice armor had suddenly appeared in the mud not far from Garnet, given the depth their boots had sunk into the mud (paired, of course, with the loud clattering) suggested that they had scaled the wall and jumped down from the top.

The armor told Garnet very little, it was well-used and well-cared for, good quality as far as she could tell. Other than that? An unremarkable surcoat in the Benotian royal colors of deep blue and light blue, obviously not new, but also not shabby.

The squire? drew a practice blade from their belt and dropped into a stance, facing the two courtiers with an obvious air of menace.

Garnet heard the sound of fashionable shoes hitting gravel a moment later. They had barely started running before Garnet’s ostensible rescuer had turned toward her, holding out a gauntleted hand that Garnet just stared at.

The owner of those gauntlets tipped their helm back, not just the visor, but the whole thing. It landed in the puddle with a splatter that spat the viscous mud all over. But Garnet really wasn’t focused on the boots or, at the moment, even the mud.

“Artemis?” Garnet whispered.

“I won’t ask if you’re all right, you wouldn’t be in the mud if you were, but what’s wrong and can I help?” Artemis asked as the wind tugged at her hair, not so rich a mahogany as the queen’s, nor as sunbleached chestnut as her brothers and father, but a mingled combination of the two, the sunlight was hitting a highlight turning it to gold. Practically, as it had been tucked up under a helm, it was braided and wrapped into a crown, giving Artemis the appearance of nearly having a halo.

“I’m--I--I.”

“Okay, let’s start slower, with solving the immediate problem, up you get, Garnet.” Artemis bent down and slid her hands under Garnet’s armpits, lifting her.

Garnet’s hands made a sticky, slurping sound as they came out of the mud. Garnet looked at them and moaned.

Artemis tsked and pulled a waterskin from her belt, upending the contents on Garnet’s hands before taking a cloth from her belt pouch and scrubbing at the hands.

They weren’t entirely clean when Artemis stopped because her cloth was covered in mud, but they were far better than they had been.

The floral tinted breeze tugged at Garnet’s hair as well, tugging a strand across her face where it threatened to stick to the mud.

Artemis let go of Garnet’s hand to tuck the wayward strand behind her ear. “Can you walk?” Artemis asked, cocking her head to the side the same way that Prince Lancelot always did.

“I think--I think so.” Garnet’s legs felt like jelly, but didn’t give out when she took a few tentative steps toward the paved stone path.

“Great!” Artemis had always been just a little like a whirlwind, rarely still for any length of time, so Garnet wasn’t at all surprised when Artemis caught up one of Garnet’s hands and started off away from the castle, further into the gardens.

She was, however, surprised when Artemis stopped after about three steps and looked back at Garnet, or rather at Garnet’s feet. The younger girl frowned slightly, eyes narrowing as her lips pursed a moment later.

“Sit down a moment, will you?” Artemis said, gesturing to a bench.

Garnet shrugged and sat down on the hard stone, thankfully not squelching with mud. Although if she thought about it, where mud would be on the back of her dress--of which she was desperately not looking, it had been one of her favorites and now completely ruined--wouldn’t have been under her rear anyway.

Artemis went to her knees, unfastening the shoes that Garnet was wearing with an ease that was frankly astonishing given that she was wearing gauntlets. Artemis looked at the heels and then pitched them somewhere into the gardens before bouncing to her feet and extending a hand to help Garnet up again.

“Artemis, my shoes!”

“They’re three-quarters ruined anyway, who cares?” Artemis shrugged as she lead Garnet on across the grass.

“The gardener who has to pick them up?” Garnet frowned.

“It won’t be the weirdest thing the gardeners pick up today.” Artemis dismissed.

Garnet didn’t know how to argue with that, so she just didn’t. If she was going to be honest with herself there was something rather freeing about running across the plush green grass of the castle gardens barefooted like a child again.

Artemis seemed to have some place in mind and disinclined to talk, so they simply ran. Artemis with the grace of an elvensteed, Garnet with far less.

“Almost there,” Artemis said as she peered through the suddenly very structurally planted trees.

It took a moment for Garnet to realize they were now in the fruit orchard.

“Mum tells the gardeners to keep me out of here, so I kinda gotta look out for them.” Artemis told her. “She says at best, I’ll ruin my supper, at worst, nobody else will get any fruit the entire season.”

Garnet smiled faintly, but couldn’t manage anything more than that, the thoughts of how she’d ended up in the mud puddle, thoughts that had fled while they’d been running, caught up with Garnet once more.

Artemis’s eyes flickered over Garnet’s face, but she said nothing further as she lead Garnet through the trees. “But I’m not actually trying to get into fruit, there’s--well, you’ll see.” Artemis finally did say as she pushed aside a branch covered in the softest pink flowers Garnet had ever seen.

And see, Garnet did. The branch had hidden a little cup of a copse, a small pond at its heart. There was a fountain in the center of the pond; a statue of a woman carved out of white marble, she was technically not nude, wearing a what would’ve been a very thin dress that appeared to be molded to her skin by water, cupping her breasts, even defining her very pert little nipples. On one side the skirt was pressed against the woman’s legs, swirling around her in an echo of the hair on the other. The statue held a bowl that cleverly played up the interesting curves and lines of the woman’s body, spilling water down her arms chest, even around the curves of her hair and dress.

The entire pond was surrounded in more of those blossoming trees, many of them dewed and dotted with water from the fountain.

If Garnet tipped her head to one side or the other, she could see the shimmer of rainbows, the beads of water catching every bit of floral scented light and shining like diamonds.

Artemis was standing not far from Garnet, just watching her.

“This is my favorite place in the whole gardens. Val likes the hedge maze, the structure and arbors of it. There’s a bit of a wild garden with a wood swing that Galahad likes to sit on and read. Mum has her private gardens and as far as I know, the practice grounds are as close to the gardens as dad gets, unless he’s in Mum’s gardens with Mum. But this is mine.” Artemis lead Garnet around to the single patch of dry ground near the fountain.

“It’s … beautiful.” Garnet told her.

“Yeah.”

“I suppose here soon you’ll be bringing boys out here.” Garnet said, looking at the mud smeared on her hands and arms.

“ … No. I’d rather save this for important people.” Artemis plunked down on the ground like a stone dropping to the ground.

“Have you shown it to anyone before?”

“Only my twin.” Artemis admitted. “And now you.”

“Yeah, well, there goes your important people.” Garnet muttered.

“What?” Artemis cocked her head to the side again.

The tears that Garnet had been successfully repressing suddenly sprang up once more, the first two tumbling down her muddy cheeks before she even realized they were stinging her eyes.

“Do you know why I was in the mud in the first place?”

“Those stupid crummy shoes your lady-mother,” Artemis put a lot more mocking emphasis on the words than Garnet even dared in her own head. “Insists you wear.”

“Well, the heel caught in the mud, yes. But--your lady-mother told me--told me …” Garnet couldn’t even finish it, embarrassingly hitching off with a sob.

“Aw, fuck.” Artemis sighed. “She say why?”

“Morgause.” Garnet breathed out in between sobs. “I mean she didn’t--she didn’t say that …”

“But once you wipe the diplomatic bullshit off, that’s square on what she meant.” Artemis shook her head. “Shit, I’m sorry, Garnet.”

“It--it was my one hope, Artemis. I have no hope of rising in the court at Camelot. And--and my lady-mother--Mother is there--all the time. I think the last time she was at home for more than a few days was when Dindrane gave birth to Nimue. I mean I’m sure that Aunt Portia would give me a place in her ladies if I asked. But I would still live in the townhouse with my lady-mother. She would still be there every--every day, telling me how I’m not,” her voice completely dissolved into tears at this point, sobs replacing words, eyes glazed over so fully it took three or four blinks to spill enough to see when she heard fabric ripping.

Artemis had torn a large chunk off of her surcoat, leaning toward Garnet, the fabric soft and worn and just lightly smelled like rose petals. Or maybe it was Artemis’ that smelled like them.

As gently as one might clean an antique porcelain doll, Artemis wiped the tears from Garnet’s face.

“Sorry, I forgot a handkerchief this morning and I already used my sweat rag to clean your hands.” Artemis apologized.

“Why are you sorry? I’m covered in mud and cosmetics and--and…” Garnet’s sobs stole her words once more.

“Because you deserve so much more than an old rag pulled off my rattiest, oldest surcoat, Garnet.” Artemis cupped Garnet’s chin in her palm, turning Garnet’s face so the only place she could look was straight into Artemis’s eyes, greener and brighter than the queen’s ocean-water ones.

Garnet could feel her heart pick up in beat, her breath causing her chest to strain against the neckline of her dress.

“No, I don’t.” Garnet told her. “My lady-mother …”

“Your mother probably has a wiper because otherwise she’d spend half an hour after being on the pot wiping here,” Artemis took her hand away from Garnet’s chin to rub her elbow.

It was so--unlike anything Garnet had ever heard anyone say about her lady-mother that something that was like the lovechild of a sob and a laugh leapt from Garnet’s mouth before she could stop it.

“I just wanted, I wanted to get away from her, Artemis. No one understands, no one knows what she’s capable of. I don’t want to know what she’s capable of.” Garnet whispered around the sobs and gasps for breath that she couldn’t keep from bubbling up.

“If you want, Garnet, I’ll take you away from her.” Artemis laid a gauntleted hand on to of Garnet’s.

Garnet stared at the hand then shook her head, looking up into Artemis’s open--beautiful--face. How had she never noticed that Artemis looked exactly like an angel out of a painting?

“I don’t want your pity, Artemis.” Garnet said.

Artemis bit her lip and looked briefly toward the fountain. “You don’t.”

“What?”

“Garnet, you have my heart, my love, everything that I am, everything that I will ever be, if you want it, you have since we met when we were little kids.” Artemis took a deep breath and looked back at Garnet through the veil of her long dark lashes. “But you will never have my pity. I love you too much to pity you. Because you are worth so much more than what pitying you would imply about you.”

Garnet’s jaw fell slightly, her breath picking back up again.

“I--I understand if you don’t feel the same. I mean you’re--you’re everything I won’t ever be.” Artemis continued on, looking at the fountain once more, voice a little shaky as well. The light through the blossoms shifted as the breeze died down as if everything had gone still and silent, waiting. Once more it touched on Artemis’ hair, turning it into a golden halo. “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you. Or what I want for you.”

“What do you want for me?” Garnet asked, her voice a crow-harsh croak.

“Everything! I want you to be happy, I want you to be loved. I want you to have someone who feels about like I feel about you and you feel the same about them. I want you to not have to fear your mother, your brother. To the point of wanting to sneak across the border and put string at the top of every steep set of stairs they walk down just to see you safe.” Artemis shook her head.

I--I don’t deserve any of this, how could Artemis…?

“I know I’m not clever like Val and Galahad, even Mum. I’m not good with people like Dad. I can’t say this better. I know I’m not much to offer, but…” Artemis trailed off with a sputter like a horse shaking its head. “I--I understand.”

The younger girl shifted as if she were starting to get up.

Garnet’s hands shot out, one to grab Artemis’s, the other cupped Artemis’s chin, turning it so Garnet was once more looking into Artemis’s eyes. She leaned toward Artemis, their foreheads coming to rest together.

“I wouldn’t say your mother is all that clever.” Garnet whispered.

Artemis giggled. “Maybe not. She thinks you’re like your mother after all.”

“I know why she’d think it.”

“Don’t let her off the hook, she’s being an ass, Garnet. It’s not you--it’s her. Maybe understandable her, a non-paranoid queen is usually a dead queen, but it’s still her and you don’t have to forgive her or not be hurt by her actions.”

“Wow, you--wow.”

“Galahad. He’s been talking philosophy ever since he got back from Sir Boring’s.” Artemis shrugged. “Even a bone-headed grunt like me can pick up a thing or two.”

“You’re not a bone-head. You’re,” Garnet leaned back, smoothing down the fly-away hairs the breeze was tugging on. “You’re loyal and you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for and you’re--chivalrous.”

“Well, I try.”

“And succeed. You’re--you’re perfect.” Garnet touched Artemis’s cheek. “And I--I don’t know why you love me--but I think--I think I love you too.” Garnet didn’t know much about love, her parents, her elder brother, their marriages were more about compatibility than anything remotely resembling love, but she--she could try. What did she have to lose? “I’m gonna be bad at it.”

“You couldn’t be bad at something if you tried.” Artemis said using her fingertips to tilt Garnet’s head to one side, leaning toward her.

Garnet also leaned forward, hand sliding into the loose space where Artemis’s braid was coming unpinned. And then soft as a whisper of rose petals across the skin, Artemis’s lips were touching Garnet’s. She lost herself in the blossom scented breeze, the burble of the fountain, the lap of water against gravel, in the quiet, soft, honest desperation with which Artemis kissed her, the same desperation Garnet echoed with.

“It’ll be okay in the end.” Artemis whispered against her lips.

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then it isn’t the end. Ask my brother, he’ll tell you.”

Garnet smiled and buried her face in Artemis’s neck. “I could stay here forever.”

“No, because we need to get you a different dress, we do still have a court dinner tonight, unfortunately. I like food, but I like it better when I know what it is.” Artemis waited just long enough for Garnet to raise her head before bouncing to her feet.

“I don’t even know what I’m going to wear. All I have left that I haven’t worn is my formal for the masquerade tomorrow.” Garnet sighed.

“You can wear one of mine. It’ll look better on you than me anyway.” Artemis held a hand out to Garnet, at some point she’d removed her gauntlets.

After Garnet took it and got to her feet, Artemis pulled her into a hug. “You smell like roses.” Garnet commented before blinking, because she was pretty sure that Artemis was blushing.

“Yeah--I have ‘em put in with my clothes and it’s the scent in my soap.”

“So why are you blushing?” Garnet asked as they walked, hand-in-hand back toward the castle.

“Because--I--they remind me of you.”

“They…” Garnet stared at her.

“Roses are beautiful and they’re--fierce--and amazing. And so are you.”

“Morgause calls me her little flower, because they’re easily crushed and scattered.”

Artemis narrowed her eyes slightly. “It’s worse than I thought, does she like need reminders to breathe? I mean if she’s that stupid …”

Garnet chuckled. “Perhaps. Artemis?”

“Yeah?”

“How are we gonna get in the castle without everyone seeing me? I am kinda covered in mud.” Garnet admitted toward her feet.

“There’s a balcony not far from my room, only half a wall up.” Artemis shrugged as if it were that easy. Maybe for Artemis it was.

“I’m not really that good at climbing.” Garnet admitted.

“I can give you a boost.”

“You just want to touch my butt.” Garnet told her primly.

“Well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean that getting onto the balcony can’t be a decent enough side objective.”

Garnet couldn’t help it, she laughed.

“Not this one either. It doesn’t matter how much you tug on the laces, Artemis. If I take anything other than a shallow breath in this gown, the court is going to get an eyeful.” Garnet sighed.

Artemis sighed and put her chin over Garnet’s shoulder, her arms around Garnet’s waist, pulling Garnet slightly back against her chest.

If she hadn’t been on the verge of panic over what she was going to wear, she might’ve just leaned back and stayed like that.

“Huh, I have an idea.” Artemis kissed the side of Garnet’s neck and dashed out from behind the screen. A moment later Artemis reappeared with the mud-stained dress and laying it down on the ground. She flipped the soft teal silk up exposing the lace underneath, frowning slightly. “Okay, this could work.”

“Do I even want to know?” Garnet asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Watch a genius at work.” Artemis grinned bouncing to her feet again and came back with two paintbrushes, three pots of ink, and a pair of scissors. “Or rather help a genius work. Help me spatter this lace with this ink.”

“... Are you sure we want to stop off at ‘genius’?” Garnet looked at the brush Artemis had just laid in her hand.

“You’re lucky I’m cute.” Artemis stole a quick kiss before dipping her own brush in the ink and tossing it at the lace.

Garnet’s brows drew in, but she followed suit.

“Wait, shouldn’t that be that you are lucky I’m cute and not I’m lucky you’re cute?”

“Nah.” Artemis grinned continuing to dot the lace with an adorable frown of concentration.

After the first piece of lace was spattered with black ink, Artemis took the scissors and cut the lace off of the dress. The second piece of lace was spattered with blue ink and removed as well, Artemis washed the brushes and opened the third pot of ink, which was gold.

“Mum would kill me if I wasted this by just randomly spattering it.” Artemis told her as she knelt down next to the dress. With careful precision, Artemis dipped her brush into the gold ink and drew vines and mystical looking swirls on the lace.

Garnet felt very much the idiot because she still didn’t get what Artemis was doing, but watching Artemis who stuck her tongue just slightly out of the corner of her mouth as she worked, Garnet decided she didn’t really need to know.

“Okay, that should be good. Now we just need the starch and some way to get these dry.” Artemis said, standing up and planting her hands on her hips.

“I can get them dry,” Garnet said, pursing her lips.

“Oh? How?” Artemis asked.

“Ma-a-a-agic” Garnet wiggled her fingers exaggeratedly.

Artemis giggled before dashing off.

Where Artemis found the energy, Garnet didn’t know. She hadn’t done half as much as Artemis today and she was exhausted. Also worried because the none bell had rung a while ago and Garnet still didn’t know what she was going to be wearing.

Artemis once more returned with a bowl of laundry starch and another, larger, brush. She quickly, but carefully, applied the starch to the fabric with a studied hand.

“If this won’t come out wrong, you’re actually pretty good at this,” Garnet said.

“Dad again. He likes to assign chores when discipling us, he says that knowing how to cook, clean, launder, and patch stuff won’t hurt any of us. Plus it gives us more respect for our servants. We might be royals but we won’t be brats on his watch,” Artemis said. “As I am terrible at cooking, I usually traded Galahad or Val for laundry duty.”

“I think my lady-mother’s head would explode if Papa told me to get myself down to the laundry and do chores.” Garnet shook her head.

“Do you think we could ask your father to do it, then? To see if it works?” Artemis asked holding up the piece of lace.

Garnet snickered and applied her will to the fabric, warming the delicate threads of silk with a steady stream of magical energy.

“Great!” Artemis said after a moment. “Do you at least know how to sew? Because if not, we’ll have to go find a maid or something.”

“One better.” Garnet said.

“More magic?” Artemis asked, her green eyes sparkling with excitement.

Garnet nodded.

“Too awesome.” Artemis grinned. “Just let me get these cut down to size and we’ll be good to go.”

With that, the other girl took the scissors to the pieces of lace, cutting the worst off the mud off and shaping what was left into panels and--actually Garnet had no idea what the other pieces were.

“Okay, we’ll take this one, because the colors are the closest.” Artemis said picking up one of the discarded dresses and arranging the lace pieces around the neckline before nodding at Garnet.

Garnet shrugged and used magic to fuse the pieces together and to the dress where Artemis indicated.

“That is really, really cool. And much quicker than watching me stitch and tack. I can do it, but I’m kinda slow. You know who is actually insanely good at sewing? My brother Val. Mum says it appeals to his meticulous nature.”

“And Galahad?” Garnet had to ask.

“Would rather stick the needle in his eye. Actually I’m surprised he hasn’t.” Artemis shook her head. “Of course if he would pay attention to the patch and not the book he’s got his nose in while trying to patch something, he’d do better. Once he sewed his surcoat to his lap not paying attention. Not like a little bit of his lap, straight across it. Even Val laughed at that.”

“Okay, so what is this?” Garnet gestured to the random oddly shaped pieces left.

“An artistic solution to a practical problem, so--uh--sew where I tell you, okay?” Artemis grinned.

Garnet took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly trying not to seem like she was doing so.

Gareth grinned reassuringly at her. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

“If you say so.” Garnet breathed back.

Gareth patted her hand, smile identical to Papa’s. He might’ve had a clever response, but one of the young pages ran up to them right then.

“For you, my lady.” He bobbed his head in a bow and was off like a shot before Garnet could do more than accept the handkerchief that he shoved into her hands.

Garnet tilted her head to the side but unfolded the piece of lace trimmed linen. It contained a single rose in the softest shade of peach Garnet had ever seen. There was no note, but Garnet smiled anyway, she knew.

She tucked the handkerchief into the neck of her dress before sliding the stem of the rose into her hair by her ear, the stem the perfect length for doing exactly that, thoughtfully trimmed of thorns.

“His grace, Lord Gareth,” the herald announced. Gareth extended his arm to Garnet, who took it with a nod. “And her grace, Lady Garnet.”

The huge doors to the great hall opened and stepping forward actually pitched them into shadow. Whomever had designed the great hall at Benoit Castle had a serious fetish for drama, there were two huge candelabra flanking the door, but most of the time they were shaded by elaborately wrought metal cages, this gave a moment or two of near darkness before the court could see anyone entering.

It wasn’t until one stepped out into the light of the huge overhead chandelier that a person could truly be seen by the court. Gareth wore a high court doublet in burgundy and sable, identical to the one that Papa wore as he sat at the high table and grinned at them.

Garnet wore the gown of Artemis’s that they had modified that afternoon. The lace had become a decorative collar, the ink covering any stains of mud that might’ve soaked into it, and also covering the fact that the neckline of the dress barely covered Garnet’s modesty.

Those odd pieces made up curling decorative wings, like a faerie’s, laced onto the back of the dress covering the fact that Garnet couldn’t quite lace the dress down without cutting off her ability to breathe.

If anything Papa’s grin got broader as Garnet and Gareth made their way toward their seats. Morgause’s face, however, grew stormy. Her eyes, a deeper lavender than Garnet’s own eyes, and lacking the peach and orange tones that gave Garnet’s a sunset appearance, narrowed.

Artemis was good because while the base of Garnet’s dress was the pieces of a ruined gown and a borrowed one that didn’t even really fit, few would say that Morgause’s elaborately cut velvet gown in a rich purple that, now that Garnet was looking, kinda clashed with Papa’s burgundy, was the more impressive of the two.

Artemis, to her father’s left, grinned at Garnet and winked like the gold chains woven through Artemis’s hair.

“That is--quite the gown, my little flower.” Morgause said as Garnet sat down next to Papa.

“Thank you, my lady-mother.” Garnet murmured toward the table, seeing the metal and leather headdress Morgause wore out of the corner of her eyes.

“I never said I liked it.”

“Well, I do.” Papa grinned slightly up at Garnet. At least he had a proper chair this time, the back the same height and design as the other chairs, but the legs were taller and the seat much higher with a small stool tucked off to one side making it easier to slide into. Often when they visited other courts he found himself sitting on a couple of thick books like a toddler.

It was a nice touch, but the day’s events led Garnet to wonder if that was Queen Guinevere’s thought and care …

Or Prince Lancelot’s.

“Me too, my lady-mother. I like it as well,” Gareth said.

“Seems you’re outnumbered for the moment, my lady.” Papa turned to his wife, eyes narrowed slightly.

“So it seems.”

If only the words didn’t seem to herald retribution to come, Garnet couldn’t help but shiver.

#Stephish writing #currently unnamed arthurverse #Garnet/Artemis: the beginning #*chuck it and run* editing #Sorry if it's not so very coherent gotta post before I lose my nerve

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pumpkins-s · 6 years

Text

Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink

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Lance Alexander Rafael McClain is born in the middle of a summer storm, thunder cracking and rain slamming onto the roof of an old ramshackle house that had seen more than its fair share of children.

The miracle baby, that’s what the family had called Lance. The unexpected son to a mother of five daughters.

(In which family is always complicated, Lance’s life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, and he and Keith are really emotionally constipated for each other.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: Keith/Lance, significant platonic Lance & Hunk

Characters: Lance, Lance’s family, Hunk, Keith, Shiro, Pidge, Allura, Coran

Chapter 10: Listen (Learn)

Lance returns home to the backdrop of the setting sun highlighting the sloping roof of the house. Always a little crooked-looking and never quite right, but sturdy and strong against the years it has housed and sheltered them from summer storms and winter snowfalls without fail.

He breathes in, the smell of grass and the sear of the August heat against his skin distinct, and decides that this is all right. While there’s a part of him that desires to flee back to the relatively safe bustle of Mavis’s apartment—where he can live a life of secrets, undiscovered among the bustling city throng, and find comfort in Mavis’s fierce protection—another, almost larger piece of Lance finds a kind of settling in being home.

There is a peace to Veradera, to the place he has spent every happy summer since his earliest days, that nowhere else can even touch. Despite every complication and each pain that can too be associated with the place, the joys outweigh the grief. Loss has been seen in this house, time and time again, but it has seen so much love too.

If Mavis’s home is the place of safety, this is the place of salvation.

…Love should win. Lance wants love to win. Even with his fears, with the secrets and things buried deep he keeps, he doesn’t want it to turn this place sour for him. Maybe, now that he has found refuge for some of his baggage—both figurative and literal—in Mavis’s own home, he can better protect the good that exists here from turning only to bitterness in his heart.

Maybe.

It’s probably not the best coping solution, he admits, but it’s…well, it’s a solution.

Somewhere in the distance, among the trees that stretch out beyond their road’s little huddle of houses, a bird chirps loudly, and Lance closes his eyes, savoring the feeling of something he’ll never fully understand, but can recognize instantaneously anyways.

This…this is good. Those three weeks away were the refresher he needed to re-piece himself into a semi-functional being.

Mavis had been right.

Distantly, he imagines her rolling her eyes, reminding him that she’s always right, and he smothers a grin behind his palm.

Nodding to himself, he opens his eyes, and goes to help Karen, the one who’d apparently called dibs on picking him up after a fervent rock-paper-scissors match with Marcie, with getting his bag from the car. She pulls it out of the boot without pause, and waves him off when he tries to take it, swinging the weight around like it is nothing to her. To someone like Karen, realistically, it probably is.

“Glad to be back, right?” she asks him, grinning down easily as her bushy bangs fall into her eyes, and Lance smiles.

Really, if anyone else in the family knows what it’s like to come back home after feeling like you’ve lived another life away from here, it’d be Karen. She’d taken what she was good at and used it to run as far as she could with it, and the older he gets, the less he can begrudge her that.

They may not be overly close, compared to their other siblings, but sometimes he thinks he might understand her more these days, just a little. Not entirely, not quite yet, but close.

It hardly matters, either way, really. They are what they are, all of them—the leavers, past and present and eventual, Karen and Mavis and himself, all for their own individual reasons.

Igraine and Lucas, too, he supposes, reminding himself that they’ve long left for training by now.

Still, he gives Karen a nod.

“…Yeah, I think so.”

She leads him inside with little fanfare—well, as little as is possible, for Karen—slamming the door open and shouting a booming “We’re home!” before promptly collapsing facedown on the sofa and not moving, even when Lance pokes her side gently. After a long moment, a quiet snore rings out, and Lance giggles. It had been an eight AM flight arrival time, and Karen has hardly ever been a morning person, despite being an athlete, so he decides she’s earned this one.

He’s just cataloguing who would be at work and who would be home at this time of the day, when Marcie’s voice calls him from the kitchen, upbeat and chipper despite the hour. “In here, Lance!”

As he enters the kitchen, he finds her in a state of frenzy; the counter littered in flour and opened tins of ingredients, with cookies resting in the oven as she whips together frosting with enthusiasm. When she sees him, Marcie’s eyes light up, and she promptly places down the bowl to sweep him up in her arms, littering his face with kisses and fussing with his hair as she draws back, smoothing out the curls and idle tufts that stick out wherever they please.

“How are you?” she asks, and his smile only feels a little forced. This is not like when everything fell apart, and every question was a statement of pity. This is different, he knows.

“Better now that I know you’re baking,” he answers, and she swats his arm, before handing him the mixing spoon regardless. He wedges it in his mouth despite the affronted wrinkle of Marcie’s nose at the ungainliness of it all, and savors the sweet taste of the batter dissolving on his tongue as Marcie picks up her icing bowl and whisk once again.

“Where’s everyone else?” Lance asks around the spoon, and Marcie snorts, freeing a hand to lean forward and yank it gently out of his mouth.

“Aunt Lupe and Mamá are out at work, Aunt Rosa’s asleep upstairs after a night shift, Uncle Jesús is in the garage, our grandparents are over at the Garretts’ for tea and the weekly aggressive Rummikub game with the Muñozes down the street, and Evie’s upstairs yelling at her computer in what I can confirm is neither English nor Spanish—though no idea what it is beyond that—again.”

“…And Karen’s asleep on the sofa,” Lance finishes for her.

“Of course she is.” Marcie rolls her eyes, looking up to the ceiling as if praying to it to give her strength. After a few idle turns of her wrist on the whisk in the mixing bowl, she pauses and blinks, looking back down to Lance. “Oh, right, and Hunk is in the garage helping Uncle Jesús with stuff, since someone conveniently got both his assistants to jump ship.” The quirk of her mouth assures Lance that his sister isn’t actually mad about him encouraging Igraine and Lucas to pursue their ambitions, but he still winces slightly, both at the intentional reminder of his role in their departure and the unconscious one that he has been ignoring Hunk while he has been away.

“You should go check in on him,” Marcie continues, unawares. “He’s been mopey since you left, and it’s only gotten worse. I think he missed you.”

The guilt rises up, and Lance swallows it back down. No, he knew this would happen, and had resolved to himself it was necessary. He can’t call himself Hunk’s best friend and continue to let himself destroy Hunk’s life with all his messes. Some time away was—is the first step in freeing Hunk from the burden of…well, of dealing with Lance.

“Yeah, maybe in a bit…”

Marcie quirks an eyebrow suspiciously at him, but otherwise doesn’t question his lack of enthusiasm, and Lance can only be grateful for it as he pointedly launches into a colorful recount of his time in New York, minus a few things here and there, to steer the conversation in another direction.

Sometime between Lance’s description of the streets of Mavis’s neighborhood, and the reassurance that no, Marcie, living alone has not in any way improved Mavis’s cooking ability, trust me, Hunk shows up in the kitchen.

Lance doesn’t even notice, at first, too caught up in his enthusiastic tale about the day Mavis managed to get them lost on the subway, twice, and then locked out of the apartment…twice, much to his sister’s evident horror. It’s not until he hears the shuffle of noise at the doorway, and Marcie looks up from her mixing bowl to chirp a friendly “Oh! Hunk! There you are,” that it registers, and Lance freezes mid-sentence, rant stalled to silence in an instant.

Turning his head suddenly feels harder than admitting to every doubt, every fear, Lance has felt bubbling under his skin both during and after his visit to see Mavis, and when he finally does, meeting Hunk’s gaze isn’t any easier. Hunk has always been of the earth—the kind of peace and comfort equivalent to skipping stones dancing along a lake or the feel of hot sand lining the surf—but in this moment, with narrowed eyes trained on Lance with a kind of fury he has never known directed at him as such, he is steel.

“Look, Lance is back!” Marcie continues on, painfully oblivious, and Lance wonders if it’s too late to just make a break for it and crawl out the window. “I was going to kick him out to the garage to see you, but I ended up accidentally hogging him so that he could tell me about New York.” She blinks, looking contrite, as if Lance hadn’t been the one to deflect with his stories of the visit. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright, Marcie,” Hunk says evenly, glare never leaving Lance, “We all know it’s pretty much impossible to get Lance to do something he doesn’t want to.”

Marcie laughs, soft and affectionate and a hundred other things Lance probably doesn’t deserve right now, and he shrinks beneath Hunk’s eyes even as Marcie cheerfully bustles on with her baking.

There is silence, cloying and borderline painful, outside of Marcie’s idle humming as she checks the oven, inspecting the cookie trays. After a long moment, she straightens up, hands on her hips, and looks back and forth between them, smile still firmly fixed in place. “Well! I’m sure you two would rather catch up without me in the way, so why don’t you go for a walk to the beach, or something?”

“Uh…I don’t think that’s—“ Lance begins, startling, but Marcie is already there, bustling him up with shooing hands off the counter and out the kitchen, Hunk along with him. She herds them out through the living room to the front door, Lance casting desperate looks to Karen’s sleeping form all the while in the hopes she might awaken and intervene, and then out onto the porch. Hunk doesn’t even look at Lance beyond one quick, scathing side-eye, walking past him with a grace that begets a sense of false diplomacy, and down the steps pointedly.

Lance turns back to Marcie despairingly, eyes pleading, and when she shoots him a blankly unamused look that clearly conveys her disappointment, he decides she’s far too good at reading a situation without actually letting on to it. Mavis may be the self-proclaimed actress of the family—among many things—but Marcie knows how to wield a customer-service smile with downright deadly intent.

Suddenly, Karen’s recurring declaration when they were all younger that Marcie could out-fake-bitch anyone makes a lot more sense.

“Don’t do this to me,” he whispers, and Marcie smiles grimly.

“Sorry little brother, this is for your own good.” She gestures for him to hold out his hand, and he does so reluctantly, Marcie dropping a pile of coin into his open palm, before shutting the door firmly in his face. The sound of the lock sliding into place is a clear reinforcement of the earlier message, and with a sigh Lance drops his head to stare forlornly at his hand, mentally counting out the change. The exact total provided is not lost on him, and when he reaches it, he winces.

…Well played, Marcie.

“So…” he drawls uncertainly, and when he turns, Hunk is staring tiredly at him over his shoulder. “…Wanna go…get ice cream?”

The walk to the beach seems to take longer than usual, steeped in an awkward silence that leaves Lance glancing at the road, the landscape, everything around them but Hunk, choosing instead to drink in the change from lightly scattered trees to the open coastline, and gravel to sand under his sneakers. It’s not as if the whole idea of nature or open spaces has suddenly become a novelty after only a few weeks in New York—if anything, he’d developed a new appreciation for it months ago, after being forced to adjust to the urban setting of Greenwood—but right now anything is better than acknowledging Hunk’s stiff frame barely five steps distance from him, and so he pretends his fascination with the scenery is significantly greater than it actually is.

Somewhere between Lance’s fourth time quickly sliding his eyes past Hunk to the tree or rock next to him, and his fifth time looking up to the sky and gasping when a bird flies overhead—not exactly an unusual occurrence, but he feels like he needs to do something to fill up the silence, or he might just fade away—Hunk grits out a quiet “Will you stop that, please,” and Lance winces, snapping his mouth shut with a near-audible click.

There’s a moment of hesitation in Hunk’s steps as he falters, half-turning to Lance with regretful eyes, a clear apology on the tip of his tongue, before he meets Lance’s own guilty, unsure expression, and just sighs, eyes mournful as he turns back away from Lance once more and continues down the path.

Things don’t much improve by the time they reach the ice cream shop tucked in the middle of the cluster of small stores across from the water, between the tiny Italian restaurant that does garlic knots Igraine swears she’d kill a man for, and the pokey old trinket shop that services the rare tourist or the local who’s forgotten someone’s birthday present until the very last minute. The ice cream shop is a little family-owned business that’s been there since before Lance’s parents arrived, well over thirty years ago, and between the summer jobs both Karen and Carlos got out of the place for three years straight, and the frankly immoral number of free samples Lance’s sisters had wiled out of the unsuspecting teenage boys working the front counters that were far too susceptible to a pretty smile for years on end, the place has firmly become established as a part of Lance’s childhood.

He’s never had a bad memory there, and usually just going in and being welcomed in by the workers that always know him by name is enough alone to put him in a good mood, but when he shuffles in with Hunk, the ring of the bell on the door feels like the toll of death. Lance smiles uncomfortably when the server on duty, a girl who’s brother had gone to school with Evie, greets them, asking him about his trip—because in a town like Veradera, everyone’s up in everyone else’s business. He answers as briefly as he can, trying to ignore Hunk’s stare lingering on him, and counts out the change with a frazzled mind when it comes time to pay.

When they leave, stilted goodbyes called over their shoulders and an ice cream cone each apiece, rainbow sherbet for Hunk and mint chip for Lance, Hunk trudges past Lance with weary silence to the edge of the shop-street pathway. Lance follows him until they hit sand, Hunk walking about ten steps in before simply plopping down upon it, crossing his legs and tucking his elbows over his knees.

The last fading of the sun against the watery horizon is still present, and Lance finds his eyes caught on it as he goes to join Hunk, sitting down next to him and curling up into his own ball not even yet two-third’s Hunk’s size, still tiny and frail by comparison even with every lie of strength and growth, both physical and mental, he tells himself.

He bites into his ice cream, tasting the sharp kiss of the mint on his tongue, and wishes his heart didn’t hurt as much as it does.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Hunk says eventually, and Lance wants to laugh, because of course Hunk would put his worry at upsetting Lance over a perfectly normal reaction to his…Lance-ness above his own frustration at Lance’s shitty behavior towards him. Sometimes, it amazes Lance to no ends they’ve manage to be friends as long as they have, given how different they are—the selfish shadow and the ever-giving rock of stability.

“…This is the part where you apologize and explain why you ignored me for the better part of a month, Lance,” Hunk continues when Lance doesn’t respond, sounding more tired than angry at this point, and Lance looks to the ground, averting his eyes as he takes another bite of his ice cream cone. “Well?”

Lance lets his silence speak for him, and Hunk growls out into the open air, an exhausted, desperate sound.

“Thirty-six calls, Lance! I had to talk to your mother just to check you were still alive, and God, do you know what that feels like? I thought something had happened to you,” the too goes unspoken, tasting of hospital beds and funeral sunshine, but its silence echoes between them. “Thirty-six, and you didn’t answer a single one. ”

“I know,” Lance says, voice measured in a way the unsteady beat of his heart doesn’t match as his confession spills from him, unbidden. “I counted them.”

“Tell me it was an accident, a mistake!” Hunk snaps, “Tell me your phone broke or you forgot your charger, which I know you didn’t because everyone else was getting texts from you. Tell me anything. Spin me some story about why you managed to Skype Ritzie every week and not pick up my calls. Lie to me,” Hunk’s voice cracks, filled with an unspoken, worn-out grief Lance knows so well he can feel it in his bones, and it aches. “I don’t care! Just give me some bad excuse so that I can pretend I believe it and we can move on, like we always do.”

“…No,” Lance whispers, and he doesn’t quite know why, but when confronted with it, with the knowledge that Hunk knows and recognizes every false confidence from Lance’s tongue, the taste of his free out from the situation is sour.

Hunk doesn’t deserve a lot of the crap Lance puts him through on a near-constant basis—doesn’t deserve any of it, really—but he especially doesn’t deserve to be given false complacencies right now, when confronted with Lance’s half-hearted attempt to end it. End their codependence, the depth of their friendship, their…whatever. Whatever this is.

“Why not?!” Hunk screams, jumping to his feet, half-finished ice cream cone forgotten as it falls from his hand, and it is enough to startle Lance to his feet as well, with the realization that he’s never heard Hunk like this before. Not once, not when Lance’s mother got sick and things went to shit, not even when they lost Loraine and everything fell apart all over again. “You lie to everyone else! You lie to your sisters, when they ask if you’re okay. You lie to Ritzie, when she asks you why we came to Greenwood, despite the fact that she looks at you like you hung the sun, and tells you everything, and you let her. You lie to everyone, all the time! Except Mavis, apparently, for some reason—because she showed up out of the blue after three years of radio silence and gave you some stuffed toy, and that was enough to earn your trust apparently!”

“Don’t—“ Lance snaps, because Mavis is more than that, more to him in the face of all they have lost than Hunk could ever understand, despite her faults and despite her flaws, but Hunk barrels on.

“She’s the only one you’re honest with. So c’mon, lie to me! It’s what you do best, right?”

“I didn’t forget to call you,” Lance says calmly, even as his hands shake, because Hunk deserves to know. Deserves this much honesty, at least. “Hunk I didn’t—“

“Stop it!” Hunk says, “Just—stop! Tell me you forgot. Just give me that. Tell me what you tell everyone else, when you want them not to see inside. Tell—tell me you’re better all of a sudden, and you’re not m-miserable inside pretending you’re something you’re not every day, and I’ll lie in exchange and say I believe you!”

Lance’s eyes widen, any words he had left falling from grace, and suddenly this feels like a long time coming, more so than a month of missed calls and heavy silence, stretching across a year and then some of broken things swept under the rug but never actually disposed of. Hunk heaves heavy breaths across from him, hands curled into fists, and Lance’s heart catches in his throat when tears pool in his best friend’s eyes.

“Because—“ Hunk laughs, swiping ineffectively at his eyes. “Because I can’t do this anymore, alright Lance? I can’t take being the person that isn’t good enough for honesty, but isn’t given the comfort of lies either. I can’t take you being a constant presence in my life and then shoving me away the minute you think you’ve found some other coping solution. Y-you need to pick, because I don’t know what’s going on with you anymore, and it’s too much to be both.”

“Hunk…”

“Look,” Hunk sighs, crossing his arms, shoulders shaking. “I don’t know if you ignored me because you just wanted space from my hovering, or if you’ve just decided you’re sick of me, but I need some clear answer, because I can’t keep—“

“It’s not that!” Lance says, “You’re my best friend. You’re family, all right? I need you!”

“Then act like it instead of shutting me out like this!” Hunk screeches, and Lance jumps, taking a step back. Tears threatening to spill over once more, Hunk collapses back into the ground, large shoulders tucked in as he buries his face in his hands. “Make up your mind and just…tell me what you want, you idiot. I need you to tell me, I can’t read your mind. I’m not—“ He swallows, and a mountain of grief shudders out between wide fingers. “I’m not her. I’m not Loraine.” Hunk whispers it like a confession, an apology for a sin he never meant to commit, and it feels like the snap of the rope taut against open air the day Lance—the day they fell…all of them.

Lance sags, stumbling to the ground, and feels the grit of the sand against his knees as he watches his best friend break.

Loraine may have been the one that hit the ground first that day, but they all fell with her, one way or another. Igraine’s regret, Mavis’s guilt, Lance’s collapse, Hunk’s…

Hunk: his best friend, his protector, his brother of summer sun and whispering winters.

They’re all broken, were broken, are still breaking, and Lance is only just starting to see it.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles out, and across from him Hunk twitches, “I was just…I was just trying to protect you.”

Hunk laughs hoarsely, confused and desolate. “Protect me from what?”

“Me,” Lance admits, and it stings. “The things I do to myself. You’re right, I lie and I make myself miserable and I let people love me without actually letting them in, and I—I’m a self-destructive ass and a psychiatrist would probably have a field day with me, and I just thought…” He pauses, and glances over to Hunk hesitantly. “Hunk, I can’t hide from you. You’re there every day and you have to deal with all of that, and you never even complain about it. I had to get you out before I destroyed you too. Mavis is—it’s different,” he finishes lamely, and he doesn’t know how to explain it, that feeling low in his gut when he thinks of Mavis’s hollow apartment and that trundle bed and the clothes she bought for him, that he is not her destruction but, in some fucked up way, her self-decided redemption.

After a long moment, Hunk sighs, shuffling over until he is directly across from Lance, reaching out and catching Lance’s smaller hands within his larger ones, turning them over and inspecting them gently as if they’ll explain all the never-ending inconsistencies of Lance’s being to him. “…You’re an idiot.”

“I’m not gonna argue that one, you know.”

Hunk snorts, releasing Lance’s hands and leaning forward to push one palm against his cheek gently, the tiniest pressure against his jaw and cheekbone. “You remember this?”

Lance furrows his brow, trying to mentally calculate what Hunk means before it clicks, and he blinks. “…The time you slapped me? Kind of hard not to.”

“You were trying to spare me that time, too. It’s exactly the same thing. What, are we just going to go round in circles now?”

He frowns, watching Hunk carefully. “This is different.”

“No, it’s not,” Hunk says firmly, retracting his hand and dropping it into his lap. He stares at Lance sadly, those dark eyes the same as they were that first time he met them, perched in that tree on a hot summer afternoon a lifetime ago, and yet so different, and Lance wonders what the hell happened to the both of them. “You need to save everyone, to protect them, because you love them. You let them in, because you need them, but you also push them away when they get too close. You push me away, because you’re convinced if you let me I’ll run my entire existence around you.” He smiles halfheartedly. “Pretty big ego you’ve got there, buddy.”

Lance shivers, a sudden lump in his throat. “You know me,” he croaks, “I’m convinced everything’s about me.

Hunk’s mouth quirks upward, a lopsided smile, and inside Lance, something settles. “Believe it or not, I need you Lance, just as much as you need me. So yeah, I’ll fuss over you and mother-hen you, if that’s what it takes, because I don’t want to lose you, but do not think that means I’m going to become you. I’m only doing what you’d do for me, for anyone you care about.”

“You just have to go and make me look stupid, don’t you?” Lance says, but he can’t feel anything but relief, and, as his eyes track spoiled ice cream cones lying amongst soft sand, a sort of displaced grief. Even now, things still get spoiled, ruined, because of him, and he doesn’t know how to explain that to Hunk without getting the same lecture all over again.

It’s not a rational thought, he knows. It’s the kind that brings him to secrets buried in a crumbling New York apartment, under a dorm room bed, whispered to a snow-covered gravestone, and yet he can’t deny its presence.

Perhaps that is what drives him to Mavis, because in triple-locked doors and three AM cereal bowls illuminated by city lights, he senses she has those thoughts too.

“Wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t,” Hunk says with a kind of tired amusement, pulling Lance from his musings, and Lance snorts, punching him gently in the shoulder.

“Jerk.”

#Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#My Writing #Voltron #voltron fanfic #vldfanfic

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