morgwen microfic

When She Loved Me

@morgwenmicrofic prompt: I know

| prompt: "is this true?" (hope slight rephrasing is okay?) | words: 281 |

| other tags: alternate universe: modern setting, one night stands, implied sexual content, rumours |

𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐬: CAGE // "IS THIS TRUE?" // MYTHOLOGY

The motion is almost a curtsy. Gwen’s dress skims the earth as she dips low to pluck a flower. She will place it in a vase beside the window, lit by a shaft of stray light— tend to it with cool clear water. Her fingertips will brush its petals, breeze-soft. Soon it will wither and fade. Soon, she must cast it away. It is too late already: the rot has set in, and rot brings ruin, and pain, and sorrow, and death. For now, it is bright and beautiful. Gwen rises and remembers Morgana as she carries the flower home.

For Morgana, Camelot had always been a place shrouded in fear. Fear of Uther's wrath, fear of her visions, fear of being discovered for what she was. For a time, it felt as though the only time she wasn't afraid was when she was with Gwen. Gwen, with her soft smiles and rough hands, who seemed to smooth away Morgana's nightmares with a brush of her skin. Of course, as soon as Morgana realized this, she also realized that she had something entirely new to be afraid of: Gwen being taken from her. Perhaps Gwen would be ripped away like when Morgana's parents were killed, or perhaps she would slip out of reach like when Arthur decided he'd rather be a Pendragon than a brother. Either way, Morgana knew that there would be nothing she could do to stop it. She was cursed with enough power to see her world coming to an end, but never enough to stop the carnage.

“All this time and you still won’t talk to me?”

The girl drapes herself over a broad, flat stone, her head pillowed on her folded arms. Below the water, Freya knows, her legs are kicking lazily swathed in gauzy golden silk. Her face, sweet with mischief, is tilted up to catch the sun on her pale cheek.

Freya pulls her knees tight to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. The afternoon warmth ripples all across the lake’s unclouded surface and sloshes through Freya’s veins or what passes for them now. In some part of her the clinging ribbons of the girl’s skirt billow to and fro and Freya wants to snag them, pull them, tangle her up, just because she can.

The other Sidhe never talk to Freya. She is beneath their notice, outside their realm, neither flesh nor spirit: more like the sunlight than the water or the lilies or the mist. But Lady Sophia is an exception, nosy and pestering; and Freya, who never had much company in life and certainly never the company of fairy ladies, hasn’t mustered the courage to answer her endless questions.

“Well, you’re not very nice,” Freya reasons, and at the sound of her voice, Sophia perks up.

“It’s not very nice to ignore people, either,” Sophia teases. “So, what’s your name, rude girl?”

“...Freya.”

Eyes twinkling, Sophia holds out her hand, palm down, for a kiss.

There was a narrow path behind the lower town, half-swallowed by wild grass and tangled brambles and the slow, patient insistence of nature reclaiming what people forgot, and it was there, on a bright spring morning washed clean by rain from the night before, that Morgana first found Gwen gathering flowers.

She had escaped the castle because the walls felt too close, because every corridor echoed with expectations she had never asked for, because every nobleman seemed to have an opinion on what she should become and every servant lowered their eyes when she passed, and because the sky beyond the battlements had looked impossibly blue and she had wanted to walk beneath it.

She almost missed Gwen entirely.

The blacksmith's daughter was kneeling in the grass several yards away, her skirts stained with dirt, her sleeves rolled carelessly to her elbows, completely absorbed in the task before her as though the fate of the kingdom depended upon it.

Gwen reached for a cluster of tiny white blossoms growing between stones, smiling faintly as she gathered them, and there was something so peaceful about the sight that Morgana found herself reluctant to move.

Most people behaved differently when she was near.

They straightened.

Stumbled over words.

Became painfully aware of her rank.

But Gwen, unaware she was being observed, seemed utterly herself.

And perhaps that was what kept Morgana standing there longer than she intended.

Eventually a twig snapped beneath her boot.

Gwen startled.

Her head jerked upward.

For a moment they simply stared at one another.

Then Gwen rose so quickly she nearly dropped half her flowers.

"My lady."

"What are you doing?"

Gwen glanced down at the flowers gathered in her arms.

"Collecting these."

"Obviously."

A laugh escaped Gwen.

Morgana felt absurdly pleased she had caused it.

"For my father," Gwen explained. "He likes having flowers in the house."

Morgana looked at the mismatched collection.

Tiny white blossoms.

Yellow buttercups.

Blue cornflowers.

"They're just weeds."

Gwen's expression softened.

"No."

The answer came so simply that Morgana looked back at her.

Gwen held up a flower.

A small thing.

Fragile.

Ordinary.

"They're flowers."

Something about the certainty in her voice made Morgana smile despite herself.

The morning stretched around them.

Birdsong drifted through the trees.

A breeze stirred loose strands of Gwen's dark hair.

And without entirely understanding why, Morgana remained.

She helped gather flowers.

Badly.

She crushed stems.

Picked the wrong plants.

Got caught in thorns twice.

Gwen laughed every time with genuine amusement that made Morgana want to hear the sound again.

And again.

And again.

By the time they finished, the basket was overflowing.

Gwen sat beneath a tree to arrange the flowers into something resembling a bouquet.

Morgana sat beside her.

Gwen worked carefully, weaving stems together with patient fingers.

Morgana watched.

Finally, Gwen selected a single flower from the bundle.

A pale blue cornflower.

She hesitated.

Then held it out.

"For you."

Morgana stared.

Nobody gave her gifts.

Not real gifts.

Jewels were obligations.

Silks were expectations.

Everything expensive came attached to something.

But this was just a flower.

Picked from a field.

Offered because Gwen wanted to offer it.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Morgana accepted it carefully.

As though it might break.

"Thank you."

Their eyes met.

For a moment neither looked away.

And something settled between them.

Not love.

Not yet.

Nothing so obvious.

Just the faintest beginning of something.

A thread.

A possibility.

A flower pushing through stone.

Small enough to miss.

Strong enough to survive.

Then voices drifted faintly from the direction of Camelot.

Reality returning.

The castle.

Responsibilities.

The distance that existed between a king's ward and a blacksmith's daughter.

Gwen stood first.

"We should go back."

"Probably."

Neither moved immediately.

Morgana turned the cornflower slowly between her fingers.

Blue petals catching sunlight.

Ridiculously ordinary.

Ridiculously precious.

When they finally began walking toward Camelot, the flower remained tucked safely behind Morgana's ear, and though she would later receive necklaces made of gold and gowns sewn with silver thread and gifts worth more than most people earned in a year, it was that small blue flower she remembered long afterward, because it had been given freely, beneath an open sky, by a girl who saw flowers where others saw weeds and who, without knowing it, had begun to make Morgana wonder whether the world contained more kindness than she had ever dared believe.

Beside her, Gwen carried the basket home.

With deft hands, Ygraine finishes knotting the last of the sheets together. An experimental tug shows that they hold fast, and it’s with no small amount of giddy relief that she realizes this might actually work.

When she told Tristan she would rather run off and live as a common peasant in the woods than marry Uther Pendragon, he laughed as though she’d made a particularly amusing joke; she wonders, her lips quirking in a wry smile, if he will laugh again when he hears that she has actually gone and done it. It will be his own fault, for underestimating her.

Ygraine has the makeshift rope gathered in her hands and is about to toss it out the window, when there’s a knock at her door. She goes still. Perhaps if they think no one is here, they’ll go away. She fights the urge to swear when another knock comes, accompanied by a woman’s voice.

“My Lady?”

Ygraine shoves the sheets behind a curtain and hurries for the door. Her heart is thudding against her ribcage as though whoever is on the other side knows that she is trying to run. It’s ridiculous– she has played the part of the acquiescing bride since her arrival, hasn’t spoken of her plans to anyone– but the fear still leaves her wrongfooted. She wrenches the door open, unladylike and just barely composed.

The woman on the other side of the threshold doesn’t help in the slightest.