Archive of Our Own

It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
– Leonard Cohen

Morgana is pale to the point of being almost translucent. Gwen finds her sleeping like one exhausted but still restless, when she arrives in the morning. Morgana has taken to sleeping in her chair. She makes Gwen stay longer in the evenings, far into the night. She’ll talk about matters of the court, big and insignificant alike, or fall into stretching lapses of silence. Gwen watches the dark shadows lurking under Morgana’s skin.

As night follows evening on this particular day Morgana forgets to send her away before sleep overtakes her. Gwen stays, curled up by the fireplace. She watches Morgana’s every breath as they slow and become regular and as they quicken and hitch. Morgana’s eyes move under closed eyelids. She is dreaming again. Of course she is. Gwen is on her knees, holding Morgana’s hand and whispering sweet nothings without quite knowing when she decided to overstep the boundaries so. Morgana trembles small sounds.

Merlin goes about his duties quietly and moves through the castle unobtrusively. If one more kitchenmaid asks Gwen what on earth has happened to Merlin, Gwen thinks she’ll slap the poor soul. Had she broken Merlin’s heart (like the stableboy teased) she would’ve been drowning. In the river, in tears, in wine. She thinks the last time Merlin smiled for real was before the Questing Beast. Before he disappeared and returned and before his mother lay dying in his bed. It is not Gwen’s story to tell. Not to curious maids.

Arthur recovers with uncanny speed. Only days after his people held vigil for him he strides around the castle and argues with Uther. The King will not let his prince go train the knights quite yet. “Recover first, son,” Uther says. “I feel fine,” repeats Arthur time and again but Uther does not back down. Arthur sulks and is restless and doesn’t acknowledge that nobody’s really understood yet that he isn’t dying.

Miracles happen, Gwen tells herself. The prince lives. Hunith came back from the brink under Gwen’s eyes when Gaius and Merlin both had left her alone without explanation. They both returned from wherever they were (she’d rather not know). Gaius looks a bit older, his movements tired, but content. Still, Gwen wonders.

Morgana keeps dreaming, waking up shaking and refuses to tell Gwen anything at all. She keeps frantically busy in the days – riding, taking walks, clearly whishing she could train with the knights until she fell over from fatigue. Gwen thinks that Morgana’s body ought to force her to sleep by now. The dreams (or her fear of them) are stronger.

And Merlin, Gwen’s heart aches for him but she can’t understand why he’s so broken now. She doesn’t see him much, since trying to keep up with Morgana these days leaves her little spare time. Gwen thinks he might be avoiding her as well.

Gwen’s carrying fresh linens for Morgana’s bed. She climbs the stairs, rounds a corner, already out of breath. In the middle of this empty hallway lies a crumpled body, hair a dark shock against the floor. She runs, drops the linens and kneels next to Merlin. His eyes are closed, his skin a yellowish white. His eyes won’t open when she calls his name and he doesn’t move when she grabs his shoulder. She stands and runs, down one hallway and round a corner to the Crown Prince’s chambers. The door is closed. She knocks and steps in without waiting for an answer.

“Now that’s a novel way to go about knocking. Honestly Merlin, do we need to have this conversation again?” says Arthur and turns in his chair. “Gwen? What’s the matter?”

“It’s Merlin, sire,” she says and Arthur gets to his feet. “I found him collapsed in the hallway, I don’t know what happened, he won’t wake up and…”

“Where?” demands Arthur, and then Gwen has to run again to keep up with his strides down the hallway. He stops short a second at the sight of Merlin, then he bends and gathers him in his arms. As he straightens the image of the king carrying his son in the same way across the courtyard flashes before Gwen’s eyes. “To Gaius,” says Arthur. Gwen collects her linens because they can’t be left here, obviously, as her lady will need them, and scrambles after Arthur.

“What is the matter, now?” Gaius asks resignedly when Gwen throws the door to his quarters open. He turns around to see Arthur striding in with Merlin’s limp body in his arms and starts. “Merlin! What happened to him, my lord?”

“We don’t know. Gwen found him collapsed in the hallway,” Arthur says and gently lays Merlin down on the cot that Gaius motioned to.

Gaius seems to lose all interest in the crown prince after that, focusing only on Merlin – placing a hand on his forehead, holding his wrists to check his pulse, looking at his eyes – all in silence. Arthur stands a few feet away, stiff and still. Gwen smoothes the topmost layer of her linens out over and over.

“He’s feverish,” Gaius says, placing a hand on Merlin’s chest, which makes him jerk and give a small pained sound.

Gaius frowns and gingerly pulls Merlin’s shirt up to his chin and sucks in air through his teeth. Merlin’s skin goes from yellow to green to purplish to blue to black, all over his chest and ribs around a large circular burn. It’s scabbing over at the edges but looks red and irritated and so painful that Gwen feels her throat go tight.

“Did you know about this?” Arthur asks Gaius, sounding grim.

“No,” answers Gaius. “He hid it far too well.”

It’s a difficult night. Gwen falls asleep for only a few moments on the foot of Morgana’s bed and wakes up feeling like Morgana’s nightmares have spread to the entire room, creeping closer in the shadows of the draperies and into the corners of her own mind. Morgana thrashes wildly in her dreams and wakes up without quite waking up, striking out towards Gwen or clinging to her with surprising strength.

At one point Morgana gets up, saying something about needing to find him now, and starts towards the door. Her feet are bare on the cold stone, her hair wild and loose over her nightgown.

“My lady, please don’t – my lady – Morgana, please.” Gwen takes hold of her upper arm to hinder her, and Morgana swings around to face her, dark eyes coming to focus on her from far away.

“Don’t you stop me,” she says, grabbing Gwen’s wrists and using her momentum to slam her into the wall. Pain blooms from her hip and back but Gwen makes no sound, out of breath. Morgana presses Gwen’s wrists to the wall above her head, ever harder. She’s almost leaning on Gwen, who feels her chest move with every one of Morgana’s heavy breaths.

She’s crushing her to the wall with her body, breathing on her, staring at her with eyes open wide – but Gwen still isn’t sure that Morgana actually sees her. Physicality, she thinks. Dreams are in the mind, reality is in the body. The body is what anchors you.

She leans forward and captures Morgana’s lips with her own, arching her shoulders off the wall to get closer, pressing them together in a few short kisses. When she draws back Morgana’s eyes seem narrower and clearer, and it’s Morgana who initiates the next kiss. It’s fierce, wild and warm, like burning. Morgana’s grip loosens but she keeps a hand on Gwen’s wrists against the wall, and Gwen finds that she doesn’t mind.

When Morgana wakes up she sees the bruises starting to bloom on Gwen’s wrists and shatters into tears. Gwen holds her close, strokes her hair and whispers “Shush, my lady, it’s all right, we’ll be fine, hush now,” as Morgana shakes and sobs and tries to say something. Apologise, maybe. Gwen isn’t sure why she resents the idea of Morgana apologising – because a lady should never apologise to her servant, because it would mean that Morgana was herself and was responsible for last night, or because Morgana should never apologise for touching her. Ever.

Morgana does not need forgiveness, she needs comfort and sleep, and Gwen needs the world to stop unravelling around her.

Merlin refuses to say how he got injured. Gaius says he won’t speculate but Gwen finds his look rather knowing – he watches Merlin with a mixture of pride, worry and deep annoyance.

Arthur looks like the wants to kill something (preferably what hurt Merlin, Gwen supposes), but cannot decide what. He tells Gaius to do whatever necessary or possible to help Merlin, and tells Merlin that he’s an insufferable bother and that he’ll have to work twice as much once he’s back on his feet, since he’s stupid enough to hide that he’s hurt and get bloody ill and therefore leave his prince without a servant.

Merlin scowls and mutters something about self-absorbed ungrateful princes, but he’s doing an increasingly bad job of hiding a smile. Arthur reaches out, as to touch Merlin’s cheek, but aborts the gesture and leaves without another word. Merlin’s smile shines through with full force.

Gwen is at the door of Merlin’s sickroom when she hears Morgana’s voice and stops. She doesn’t quite know why she stays still and silent instead of knocking. Merlin is talking now.

“Every moment I’m awake, I hear him. He screams. I keep thinking I should have no ears left by now but it echoes in my scull. And when I’m about to fall asleep the screeching gets louder, and louder…”

“In my sleep,” Morgana says, “In my dreams… I’ve never seen such a fury. Wild eyes, claws, teeth… The sheer volume. It yells your name at me, Merlin.”

Gwen presses her hand to her mouth to stop the surprise that wants to make itself heard.

“What have you done, Merlin? What have you done?” says Morgana.

Merlin’s voice is like something scratching on a hard surface, thin and painful. “He would have died, Morgana. I couldn’t let it happen.”

Gwen retreats three steps, remembers to breathe again, then quickly walks back to the door, knocks and enters before she has time to rethink it. Merlin is propped up against the headboard of his bed, looking pale and wretchedly angry. Morgana stands over him, hands gripping the edges of the bed, her hair wild around her distressed face, on the verge of speaking.

“Gwen,” Merlin says, caught between fear and relief.

Morgana straightens.

Gwen thinks that the two of them look like distorted mirrors – the lady and the manservant, opposite shades of sickly paleness, eyes wild and mouth set or trembling mouth and determined eyes, Morgana standing tall and Merlin curled up in illness.

The two of them have all her questions wrapped up in their lives, in their flickering gazes. Gwen wonders if they have all her answers, too, or if with each answer there comes a new question, if the proportions always stay the same. Or maybe they just multiply, the uncertainties, until even the facts sound like questions.

She greets them both and offers them soup. Physicality, she thinks. That is what Gwen has to offer their restless minds: an anchor in bodies and earth.