Fic: Seeing
Jan. 7th, 2009 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gnimaerdRating: R
Genre: Humour, romance, crossover
Characters/Pairings: Rupert, Mina (Demons) and Morgana (Merlin) predominantly Mina/Morgana; suggested Arthur/Merlin, Morgana/Gwen, Morgana/Arthur, and general OT4ness
Summary: Mina meets an immortal creature infinitely older than herself.
AN: With thanks to my beta,
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
clanne . The idea for this particular fic was put into my head by eviinsanemonkey for you can
Seeing
The second time that Rupert asks her if she’s okay, Mina hears him, and realises that she’s been entirely focused elsewhere for nearly half an hour.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, managing a reassuring smile over her coffee.
“You sure you’re alright?” Rupert is raising his eyebrows – Mina can tell by the tone of his voice. “You sensing someone? Something in here you don’t like?”
“What? Oh – no,” Mina shakes her head, “it’s nothing. Nothing to be worried about, anyway.”
“Then what is it?” Rupert sounds sceptical, but Mina only shakes her head again.
He’s a hunter by nature – paranoid and gung-ho, as he should be, really, given his trade. He sees a threat round every corner; a monster in every shadow.
Mina knows a little better – sees, she thinks with a bitter kind of amusement, a little clearer.
Certainly there are things more than human all over the place – and they are all very dangerous. But they aren’t all monsters.
So when Rupert is finally convinced that he can leave her, and does so with instructions to call him later, Mina waits a minute or so, to see if what she thinks she has spotted will come to her, and in the quiet of the almost empty Starbucks, she addresses the stranger two tables over.
“You know, it would be very rude to make a blind woman come to you.”
A pause, and then a ripple of mirth echoes back to her. “Whatever happened to respecting your elders?”
The accent is smooth; lilting; Irish. Mina can hear in it the feline smile, the full red lips, the pale grey eyes widening with amusement. She thinks of waist-length dark hair and porcelain skin and regality, oozing out of every pore – but she can’t be sure if she’s really sensing that or just allowing her imagination to paint in the missing details.
“I’m not moving,” she tells the creature, leaning back in her chair, “either way.”
It takes a minute or so – she can hear the thing sipping whatever caffeinated beverage of choice is sustaining her today, stretching long, languid limbs, then scraping back her chair and standing.
A moment later Mina has another person at her table, sitting opposite her, leaning her weight on her elbows as she places them on the table top. She can hear the murmur of the cloth of her shirt sleeves sliding over the polished wood.
“Do you know who I am?” The enquiry comes with a quirk of the speaker’s head – Mina can see it quite clearly in the back of her mind.
“I can make an educated guess,” Mina replies.
“Mm…” the sigh is somewhere between appreciative and amused, “I don’t doubt that… it’s been so long since anybody recognised me, even just a little… the times we live in, I suppose.”
“No respect for our elders?” Mina suggests, and knows that she has made her guest smile.
“No memory of your ancestors.”
“I know who my ancestors are,” Mina tells her.
A giggle, “of course you do. To a point. But do you know what land birthed the very first of your family? You have some gift for Sight, do you not? How far back can you reach?”
Mina considered, “I’ve never tried. I’m not sure I’d want to. Some of my ancestors are not people I think I’d like to know.”
“Poor thing,” the creature cooed. “So sweet a girl to spring from demon blood…”
Mina inhales – she didn’t feel the other woman get inside her head, and that frightens her. That this creature can so easily pluck such devastating information about her out of her very aura speaks of someone wielding far greater power than she had previously realised.
“Do you know my name?” The creature asks.
“I could find out,” Mina offers, unsure of quite what she may be getting herself into but unwilling to back away now.
She does not have to ask the half-life to hold out her bare hands. Mina feels unnaturally cold fingers twine with her own – palms that are icily smooth; unbitten fingernails long and even.
“You are old,” she states: for suddenly this woman’s soul is a chasm of years upon hundreds of years. Centuries flutter in her aura like moths, grey and ghostly. And far, far away there are dragons and demons – a distant kingdom; a waiting prince; a boy named Merlin and an innocent girl scrubbing the floor and bringing her flowers.
“I like to think I look pretty good for my age, though,” the creature carries a smirk in her voice.
“I wouldn’t know,” Mina points out.
“Well…” the creature squeezes Mina’s hands, “…trust me.”
Mina can’t help but allow herself a smile she hopes is coy.
“You don’t look too bad for it either,” the creature tells her, softly. “The last time I checked, the average hundred and twenty five year old doesn’t bare any resemblance to you.”
Mina can feel all those centuries of life stretching away from her in the stranger’s head – already past and still to be lived – this creature is an immortal of immense power; immense history; a creature of myth and magic far beyond the half-lives that roam the streets now.
“Do you even have a name?” She asks, smoothing her thumbs over the backs of those cold hands – an automatic attempt to warm them, though she knows that all those years of life have long since sapped the heat from her flesh.
Does a creature such as this even posses blood anymore?
“I have hundreds of names,” the stranger replies, “can’t you guess any of them?”
Mina quirks her head, reaching tentatively, properly into the creature’s mind, feeling it open and uncurl about her – her head is not like those that she is used to entering. It is infinitely more layered; infinitely more complex. It has more memory; but less substance. It is drifting and soft as shadow. Mina can’t flick through it like she would anybody else’s – she has to wade.
“Morgan La Fey, I suppose is… what popular culture would have me call you,” she begins, after a moment. “You’re as close a reality to her as is ever likely to exist, I think.”
The stranger giggles – but the sound is… wistful. “Call me Morgana.”
With the name comes another layer of memory – perhaps the very earliest one, faint and faded like a picture too many times thumbed over. A blond boy with a crown; dark girl with rough hands and a smile like honeyed milk. A youthful mage with gold in his eyes. A tyrannical king with a wounded soul.
These are the memories of her mortal life, so long ago that they are barely existent now. Mina can see the creature as she was when she was human – tall and proud and pale; light eyes with waves of dark hair; fine gowns and pretty trinkets. High cheekbones and a querulously jutting jaw – the lift of a defiant chin; the stubborn twist of a full mouth.
She was beautiful, and she was powerful, and yet she was utterly, utterly helpless for so much of her natural lifetime.
These days, she doubts Morgana looks much different; she might have dyed or cut her hair; she will most certainly have changed her clothes; she may have lost or gained weight… but her basic physicality will be as it ever was. Only Mina – and those like her – will be able to sense about her that which is distinctly Other. That which marks her out as ancient, powerful and beyond the mortal realms of possibility.
“Morgana,” she repeats, softly, and feels the stranger’s grip on her hands tighten.
“And you are Mina Harker,” she says, “the immortal wife of a vampire slayer… a refugee left behind by the cold stream of time – and a rather gifted pianist, I believe.”
“Well,” Mina smiles, dryly, “I’ve had over a century to practice.”
“You’re making enough money out of it to live on, though,” Morgana points out, “that’s impressive enough – believe me; I know musicians. Most of them are poor as dirt. You get driven around in a limo.”
Mina quirks her head again. “Did you really just See that or have you been following me?”
“Perhaps a little of both,” Morgana has turned Mina’s hand over and is absently stroking the back of it. The sensation is… puzzling. Her grip is cold but the touch is gentle – intimate enough that it should be making Mina uncomfortable; but she’s too fascinated by the caverns of centuries in this woman’s head to want to draw her fingers away.
“I haven’t sensed you before,” Mina murmurs, and feels Morgana smile.
“Do you honestly think I have no way of masking myself? You are good, Mina, you truly are, but you are nowhere near powerful enough to spot me if I don’t want to be found. Still… that’s nothing to cry about – there’s really only one other person in this world who could do that and he’s… well, God knows where Merlin is these days…”
“You are alone,” Mina states, realising it properly for the first time and feeling a pang of… she’s not sure what.
Morgana most definitely smiles at that, “not for the moment.”
***
It is not easy to literally meet someone when one doesn’t have the use of ones eyes.
Mina has been trying for years to hone her second sight in order to make it easier, but so far it only works on people she already knows well. She can feel Rupert coming a mile off, for instance. But she is still lost when it comes to meeting up with someone she has only met once before.
It’s a park. Logistically speaking, a nightmare – people’s minds are buzzing all over the place; normally Mina has no trouble keeping herself walled into her own head, but today she’s unreasonably nervous and twitchy and it’s making her susceptible to other people’s thoughts. Currently, she is craving a very specific brand of salt and vinegar crisps – much like those that the pregnant woman a few feet to her left is craving.
But at the same time, it’s a little exhilarating. And Mina likes going out to crowded places by herself – if only to prove that she is still perfectly capable of such things.
She finds a bench and sits down, deciding that Morgana will simply have to work to find her – and then a hand falls on her shoulder and makes her jump, violently.
Morgana is giggling in her ear. “I told you I can mask myself.”
Mina sighs, “please don’t do that again.”
“Promise,” the immortal’s tone is not reassuring – she drops onto the bench next to her and links an arm through hers. “You look nice.”
“Thank you,” Mina leans back and allows the sun to bathe her face. She likes to look up on warm days, because when the light is bright enough she can sometimes still make out vague shapes and shifting shadows. Today is one of those days, and she’s enjoying it. She can see something that might be a tree branch smeared over head, and another darkish smudge that is probably a bird; all of it thrown up against a dark, dirty blue sky.
She wishes she could see Morgana.
“What are you wearing?” She asks, and Morgana laughs.
“Nothing at all,” she says, and Mina finds herself smiling at that, wanting to turn her head to look at her companion, even though it wont do her any good to check.
“You’re lying,” she points out, “come – Morgana – I want to be able to imagine…”
“Yes, but won’t it be so much more fun to imagine me naked?”
“Morgana…” Mina feels her face grow hot, but she is amused, none-the-less.
She enjoys being flirted with. It has been such a very long time since her husband died and she misses the ease and thrill of such interactions. Rupert cannot see her as anything but a vulnerable asset in his long standing war; the rest of the world’s population likes to assume that attempting to have sex with her would be taking advantage of her in some way.
And it’s not as if she has time to look for potential mates, anyway.
“This,” she begins again, finding the hem of something that Morgana is wearing – it feels like knitted lace, and it has fallen midway down Morgana’s thigh, “what colour is it?”
“White,” Morgana tells her, “mostly – that bit is green, though. All the edging is green.”
“What shade?”
“Like the grass,” Morgana sounds amused. She takes Mina’s hand and guides it around the lace-edged hem of what, Mina assumes by the length, must be a smock of some kind.
“You’re wearing jeans,” she realises, her fingers brushing over denim, “jeans – on a date!”
“In the middle of the day!” Morgana laughs, “and they make my arse look fabulous, I’ll have you know.”
Mina snorts. “I’m sure I’d be very appreciative if I could see it.”
“Oh, you would be,” Morgana assures her, and Mina cannot help but laugh.
She has to suppose that if she were as old and powerful as this particular immortal she would probably be just as arrogant. But, at least for now, she is finding it endearing rather than off-putting. Mina has never had much patience for people who do not know their own worth.
“This bit is green too,” Morgana tells her, moving Mina’s hand to her neckline, where there is a smooth, silky trim – and a certain amount of bare flesh.
Mina cannot stop herself smiling as she allows Morgana to manipulate her fingers. “You’re incorrigible.”
“You’re enjoying it.”
***
“Rupert – which one of these is the red one?”
“Uh… shouldn’t you fold those different ways so you can tell for yourself?”
“I did – now I’ve forgotten which one is which – would you please just tell me?”
“I’m not sure how comfortable I feel helping you pick out your underwear, Mina.”
Mina laughs, “don’t be silly, Rupert. This isn’t underwear.”
“No, they’re just sexy teddies. They’re sex clothes, Mina – I’m helping you pick out sex clothes.”
“Well, who else should I ask?”
“How about the person you’re sleeping with?”
“Wouldn’t that be rather like showing someone their birthday present before you wrap it up and give it to them?”
“…the one in your left hand is the red one. And, for the record, I am never helping you do this again. I smite freaks and I make the best damn omelettes outside of France – I do not pick out sex clothes.”
“Wow, I have no idea why you’re so often single, Rupert.”
“That’s low, Mina. Real low.”
***
Mina has been listening to Morgana undress. She hears clothes gliding over skin and crumpling on the floor and she can smell the soft lavender scent coming off her from across the room.
“Are you actually wasting time so that you can admire yourself in front of the mirror?” She asks, because she can tell by the sound of Morgana’s footsteps exactly where she’s standing.
Morgana laughs, “you have no idea how much you want to see me in this underwear.”
“Well, you see, the advantage here,” Mina tells her, sitting up and holding out her hands expectantly, “is that I may not get to see you in it – but I do get to feel you in it… besides, surely you should be admiring me?”
“Oh but I am,” Morgana assures her, as she takes Mina’s hands and then pushes her back onto the bed, “you are beautiful, Mina.”
And when she kisses her it’s cold as ice and full of years and Mina arches her back and closes her eyes, running her hands down Morgana’s ribs and wondering how long this can possibly last.
After she has had the pleasure of feeling her way around Morgana’s underwear, and then removing it, and after Morgana has slid a hand under the hem of Mina’s negligee and they are thoroughly ensconced, she uses her tongue, and maps Morgana’s body from head to toe. She memorises every fold and curve of flesh; ever scar and mole and wrinkle. Morgana sighs and tells her she is beautiful – adorable– an anomaly; a perfect paradox.
Mina wishes she could slip out of herself and disappear into Morgana for a little while.
She wishes she could forget, and be simply lustful and happy.
“Have you ever had a sex with a blind girl before?” She asks, later, as they are entwined under the covers, foreheads touching, noses grazing – and God, Mina hasn’t felt this way in a very long time. She’s missed it.
When there is a pause that seems longer than is strictly necessary to answer such a question, she laughs, “do you actually have to try to remember that?”
“When you are seventeen hundred years old and have slept with as many people as I have, you will have trouble answering those questions too,” Morgana tells her, sounding a little peeved – but kissing Mina’s temple again as if to prove that she doesn’t mean anything by it. “And I am sure I’ve been with someone who was blind before… or was he just partially sighted?”
Mina snorts and presses her face to Morgana’s shoulder.
“No, he had one eye – that was it,” Morgana remembers, “he lost it in the revolution – this was in the sixteenth century; he was a French soldier… I spent most of the sixteenth century in Paris.”
“Really?” Mina is fascinated, “what was it like?”
“Oh, it was exciting,” Morgana sighs, nostalgically, “glamorous, actually – for all the Parisians loved to hate the wealthy, they knew how to make fine clothes… the sixteenth was probably my favourite century until the twentieth arrived.”
“What was so good about the twentieth?” Mina asks, “I remember the twentieth – it was hardly all sunshine and roses.”
“That’s because you have nothing to compare it to,” Morgana replies, “believe me, the twentieth century was an amazing time to live through… it was awful, some of it, but it was beautiful. And did you see the forties? Oh, those were good years for fashion in America.”
“I wasn’t in America in the forties,” Mina shakes her head.
“Poor thing,” Morgana coos, “you missed a show and a half. Plus, America was the safest place to be during the first five years of that decade. That or Switzerland but… America had better shops.”
Mina laughs, softly. “I can’t believe a seventeen hundred year old mythical figure could be so interested in high-end fashion.”
“It’s the mortal in me,” Morgana tells her, “can’t help it – love pretty clothes. Always have done. I remember once, when I was very young… I went out riding to help a friend of mine defend his village. I had a necklace specially made to go with my outfit. I knew it was probably silly but I was a very vain person in my youth. Besides, I was still the best looking soldier they had… maybe apart from Gwen – but Gwen never did have to try to look pretty.”
Mina shakes her head, amused, “you are unbelievable.”
“You like that, though,” Morgana points out, stroking her cheek.
“I like you,” Mina tells her, truthfully.
“You are adorable,” Morgana murmurs, “though if it’s arrogance that turns you on, you would have loved Arthur.”
Mina smiles, nestling closer to her. “Was your brother very full of himself?”
“He was a legendary king – he had every right to be,” Morgana sounds wistfully amused at the memory, “not that Merlin ever let it go to his head too much… or Gwen, for that matter… and he wasn’t my brother, by the way. I know how that part of the myth must have come about, but we were never related.”
“No?” Mina is endlessly intrigued by the bits of myth and half-truth that linger about the immortal sorceress – she is a walking legend and yet there is a reality to her. The stories are her history – her childhood.
“No,” Morgana shifts a little and brushes the toes of one foot over Mina’s ankle, tracing the curve of the bone, “my parents died when I was young – my mother in childbirth, my father in battle when I was ten – Uther took me in and I was raised in Camelot… mostly because he felt guilty, I believe. Arthur took to referring to me as his sister after he became king… it was a way of clarifying our relationship. There were a lot of rumours about the court that he had taken me as his mistress… they were true, but it would not have been helpful for anyone beyond Merlin and Gwen to know that…”
Mina cannot help but smile, “so was he really married to Guinevere?”
“Of course,” Morgana is gently dismissive, “the legends are fabricated but the wider details are not inaccurate. Arthur was married to Gwen – Arthur loved Gwen… he loved me too, but there was a long period of time in which marrying me would not have been acceptable; he loved Merlin more but that is an entirely different story…”
“Oh really?”
“Please – theirs is one of the greatest untold love stories in history. The things those two used to get up to…”
“Really?” Mina is unsure whether Morgana is simply teasing her or whether she is being genuinely serious.
“Completely,” Morgana assures her, “oh, it was dysfunctional as anything but Arthur never loved anyone as much as he loved Merlin. The fact that they were both men did not particularly deter my dear little brother – I mean, he was primarily attracted to women but he always claimed that Merlin was essentially a girl anyway…”
Mina cannot help but be amused by that.
“And Merlin adored Arthur, of course. He loved all of us but he adored Arthur.” Morgana sounds so full of nostalgia; longing and distant fondness. “And it was easier for him – he was never particularly attracted to women in the first place. He loved Gwen and me… but he could only ever get hard for Arthur.”
Mina does not have to be able to see the wicked grin on Morgana’s face to know that it is there.
“I never minded… I was always happiest when it was just me and Gwen…”
“You and Gwen? As in… the Guinevere?” That intrigues Mina.
Morgana giggles, “Gwen,” she corrects, gently, “she was always Gwen to me. Only Arthur ever called her Guinevere. But I knew her long before he did. I loved her, long before he did.”
“How?” Mina does not quite know if they are ready for the ex-girlfriend discussion, but given as how Morgana is likely to have several hundred under her belt, she supposes that they need to start somewhere.
“Gwen was my maid,” Morgana tells her, softly. “Greatest secret of the whole story – that girl didn’t have a drop of noble blood in her body. Her father was a blacksmith. Oh, history likes to paint this picture of the spoiled, high-born princess who ran away with Lancelot but… frankly, history has her mixed up with me and… places far too much emphasis on Lancelot’s part in the proceedings. Typical of male historians, really. And it did not suit the record keepers at the time to note that Gwen was not a member of the nobility – a great king should not have married his foster sister’s lady’s maid, after all. So they falsified a few things and… seventeen hundred years later, so little of who that girl actually was survives in modern consciousness.”
“Then what was she like?” Mina asks, gently, and she feels Morgana’s soul open wide with grief.
“She was the sweetest thing,” is all she can say, softly – then, “I miss her.”
“I’m sorry,” Mina knows what it is to love those you will outlive – to leave them far behind and begin to realise that every day you lose another piece of them as the memories begin to drift apart.
“It’s too sad a thing to discuss now,” Morgana tells her, stroking her hair, “that’s why I prefer shopping. Remembering makes me feel… old. Shopping keeps me human. Tell me, what did you get up to in the 1940s?”
“Oh, I stayed in London,” Mina says, “the blackouts during the blitz made it a haven for vampires – they multiplied like nothing on earth during the war.”
“Work,” Morgana sounds sympathetic.
“It keeps me human,” Mina tells her, and Morgana laughs.
“No, dialysis keeps you human,” she points out, “work keeps you occupied.”
“And what keeps you occupied, aside from shopping?” Mina asks, just a little mockingly.
Morgana gives her a gentle poke, “oh, hush. You are rather keeping me occupied for the moment, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” Mina murmurs, deftly finding Morgana’s ear with her lips, “so all I am is a distraction to you, mm?”
She gasps as she feels Morgana twist and push her onto her back, pinning her down and kissing her, hard. It steels her breath and singes something deep in her soul.
“You are so much more than a distraction, Mina…”
“Good.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 09:17 pm (UTC)I suppose the part I loved most was Morgana getting to be powerful and all-knowing.
Ahem...yeah, it was hot too. ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 08:36 pm (UTC)Great stuff!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 10:23 pm (UTC)Any chance of you writing more of this pairing?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 10:44 pm (UTC)Glad you liked it so much! ^_^
no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 10:46 pm (UTC)Aside from that it was wonderful, they were all just right and i loved Morgana's description of the four of them, it made me all smiley but slightly weepy, good job!
Also, congrats on the first merlin/demons crossover, i thought of one tonight and imagined i was being very clever, but obviously not! if i did choose to write it would you mind?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 10:55 pm (UTC)Thanks, anyway, glad you liked it - and of course I wouldn't mind. Demons needs all the fic it can get, croosover or not.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 11:04 pm (UTC)Excellent! together (and with anybody else who wants to get on the bandwagon) we shall create our own little sub-genre!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-24 07:43 am (UTC)