gnimaerd | Fic: Fragments

Title: Fragments
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Gwen, Arthur and Morgana; implied Gwen/Arthur; hints of OT3-nes
Disclaimer: Don't own, not making any money, etc.
Summary: A post 'Sins of the Father' tag; After confronting his father, Arthur goes to Morgana to beg for a few more answers.

Fragments

“Morgana,” Arthur entered abruptly.

Morgana had been fussing over a stack of parchments on her table, and she glanced up, surprised, as he slammed the door closed behind him. “Arthur – I didn’t realise you’d arrived back.”

From where she had been folding a number of Morgana’s undergarments (which she now hastily stepped in front of), across the room, Gwen looked up.

“I need you to…” Arthur trailed off, glanced distractedly about him as if he couldn’t quite remember how he’d arrived there.

He looked, Morgana realised, exhausted. His eyes were glassy and red rimmed, his hair thick with sweat, his shirt clammy. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in week which… would not be entirely unusual, but for the fact that Morgana had long ago insisted that he never enter her chambers without having bathed at least once since the previous sunrise.

“Is something wrong?” She asked, gently.

Arthur passed a hand over his eyes, “I need you to tell me about my mother.”

Morgana raised an eyebrow, “I… I told you, Arthur, I was only a very small child…”

“Please, Morgana,” there was something hollow in Arthur’s voice all of a sudden.

Morgana bit her lip, uncomfortable with how close the prince clearly was to complete emotional breakdown. “I really don’t remember – ”

“Please,” Arthur took a step toward her, looking very much as if he wanted to grasp her by the shoulders and shake her, “please, Morgana. Anything – anything you remember. I just – as my friend – as my sister – just… I know you remember fragments of things and that’s – that’s more than I have ever experienced. And I need to know.”

“Arthur…” Gods he genuinely looked as if he was about to cry. “What’s happened?”

“Can you just – ” Arthur inhaled, sharply, the edge to his tone suggesting that he was on the verge of losing his temper. “Just tell, Morgana. Everything you know.”

Morgana swallowed, but nodded, glancing quickly at Gwen. “Gwen, could you please fetch me my ivory comb? I – I think I left it in the library.”

Taking the hint, Gwen smiled sympathetically and nodded. “Of course, my lady.”

She made to go for the door but Arthur shook his head. “It’s alright. She can stay.”

Morgana felt an odd thrill of surprise at that but then – no, she hadn’t been imagining the odd little association between the pair of them of late, had she? She nodded, inclining her head towards her window seat.

Arthur sat down, shakily resting his elbows on his knees and laying his chin in his palms, fingers splayed to cradle his face.

Over his head, Morgana caught Gwen’s eye again, as her maid hovered, uncertainly, by the table. Her knuckles had curled anxiously about the back of a chair, her concern mirroring what Morgana already felt deep in her belly.

Tentatively, Morgana settled herself next to him, sitting in profile to the window, watching the tense arch of his back and shoulders – the sweat drying on the back of his neck.

“What did she look like?” Arthur’s voice was muffled behind his hands.

Morgana exhaled, heavily. “I’m – I’m not sure, Arthur – I don’t have any clear recollection – ”

“I need you to think, Morgana,” Arthur insisted, harshly, “it’s important!”

Morgana closed her eyes, trying to pull together the blurred, syrupy fragments of her earliest days – the very, very few that featured a woman in soft gowns; a frail smile; very tall to Morgana’s infantile self.

“She… she had fair hair, like you,” she began, safely enough – because where else would Arthur have gotten his hair from? Uther’s had been black before the years had begun to pepper it with silver.

Arthur’s barely visible nod was as much signal as she got that she should continue.

“It was… long… and…” Morgana frowned, pinching the bridge of her nose, “she – she once – I’m sure she set me on her knee and… she gave me this little toy, a… a silver bird in a cage that… played music, I think, perhaps… her hair smelled of roses. Like the ones that grow in the west gardens.”

“Roses?” Arthur looked up, abruptly, “from the west gardens?”

“I…” Morgana shook her head, “I can’t be certain, Arthur. It was so long ago – I could be mixing it up with something else.”

Arthur grimaced, “just – anything else about what she looked like?”

“She…” Morgana considered, uncertainly, “she seemed tall…”

“She wasn’t tall!” Arthur informed her, sitting up, frustrated, “the woman I saw wasn’t tall!”

“Well I wasn’t even three years old, Arthur!” Morgana snapped, “everyone was tall!”

“What woman?” Gwen interrupted, her voice calm but just firm enough to stop the potential for an argument in its tracks, “what woman did you see, Arthur?”

“Morgause,” Arthur looked exhausted again, all of a sudden, and frightened and… sad. His voice had that low, cracked quality to it again. “Morgause she – she turned out to be a sorceress, and she… set me this sort of test and I passed it and so she granted me one wish and she had said she’d known my mother so I asked her to tell me everything she knew about her and she said she could…. She said she could show me, and she did she… she somehow must have summoned… except that she wasn’t a ghost she was – she real – I felt her – ”

There was a look of such utter bewilderment on his face – as if he were this frightened, lost little boy. A look Morgana knew she was only witnessing because he likely hadn’t slept in two days and was clearly on the verge of complete physical collapse and emotional exhaustion; else he would have been masking his despair a little better. There was still that slightly feverish, insomniacle look to his brow, even as he glanced between the two women (for Gwen had somehow come to Arthur’s shoulder without Morgana noticing). It was so distracting to see the prince of Camelot in such a state that Morgana barely had time to take in the confirmation of what she had somehow already known about Morgause’s magic. Her fingers curled about the bracelet she still had on her wrist and she wondered dismally if Gaius would tell Uther that Morgause had given it to her – whether it would be confiscated from her – instinctively began turning over the many ways in which she could keep such an event from transpiring.

But her attention was quickly drawn back to Arthur, who was too clearly so riled up to ignore. Gwen wasn’t quite touching him – she was lingering at the wall by the window, a few inches from him, and clutching at her apron with the hand she clearly wished she could place on his shoulder.

Obliging Gwen’s glance – the pleading quirk of her brows; the slight, anxious twitch of her mouth – Morgana did what her friend could not, and laid a hand on Arthur’s back.

“I just,” Arthur took a breath, “I need to know if it was her. If it at least looked like her. She said some things that… can’t be true – that must have been Morgause just trying to… manipulate me. But I’ve never seen my mother’s face before and I want to know if I have now.”

Morgana felt a deep, gnawing shiver of sympathy – saw Gwen’s look of concern flash true distress for a moment. They all understood loss.

“Gwen,” Morgana looked at her, quietly, “there’s a blank sheet of parchment in my desk – and some charcoal – could you…?”

Gwen nodded and hurried to retrieve the requested items.

“I think it might be easier to… draw – what I remember,” Morgana told Arthur, at his puzzled look. “They’re such little fragments. It would be hard to make coherent sense of them with words – I mean, if we’re really trying to piece together what she looked like.”

Arthur nodded, mutely, as Gwen deposited parchment and charcoal on the table, and Morgana got up, closing her fingers tentatively about the charcoal and contemplating the sepia surface of the parchment.

“She had hands like…” she traced a delicate outline, thinking of the pearly nails, spindly fingers curled about the little bird toy, placing it into her own pudgy, baby hands, “they were thin – soft – I held her wrist because I was worried she wasn’t strong enough to keep me from falling…”

Arthur got up, and came to peer over her shoulder at the hands Morgana had traced out in one corner of the parchment.

“I didn’t know you could draw,” he muttered, distractedly rubbing his eyes.

Morgana shrugged, her expression dry. “Something else to do when the needlework gets tiresome.”

“I’m not sure I could recognise her from her hands, though,” Arthur pointed out, “those weren’t exactly what I was focusing on at the time.”

“Patience,” Morgana swatted at him.

The next thing to emerge on the parchment was a scrap of dress fabric – the pattern as delicately detailed as Morgana could make it with the charcoal, sketching the folds and lines she could recall with surprising clarity, now she thought about it. Sat on Igraine’s knee, she had toyed with the little beads on the queen’s sleeve, intrigued by how bright and precious they had looked. Treasure! She had declared, pleased, and she could remember the soft laugh that had reverberated in the queen’s chest.

“She was thin,” she recalled, abruptly, surprised by her certainty in the idea, “I thought that was why she couldn’t have a baby – I thought a baby wouldn’t be able to fit.”

Arthur managed a quick huff of laughter at the idea. Morgana glanced at him. “Was she… thin, the woman you saw?”

“She seemed…” Arthur considered, “slight, yes.”

Morgana nodded, laying out the soft dent of a chin – a vulnerable mouth… perhaps – did the cheekbones arch so?

She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t hold the image together as a whole in her head – the queen’s face was in pieces, jumbled with other things – a snatch of her forehead as Morgana was being whirled around by her father; the corner of one lip as she chased a playmate across the garden; the ghost of an ear as she nestled against an anonymous chest, falling asleep; the bridge of her nose as she kissed her good night.

But Arthur looked suddenly overjoyed. “Yes!” He pointed at the image that Morgana had impressed onto the parchment, eyes wide like a child’s, “that’s her! That’s the woman Morgause showed me – that’s – that was her – it… it really looked like my mother – she – she –”

He swallowed, hard, and Morgana could see the prince desperately reigning himself in.

“Thank you,” he began again, stiffly, “that’s a help, Morgana.”

“Good,” Morgana offered, in place of all the comforts and sympathies and tenderness she knew he truly needed but couldn’t ever possibly accept from her.

“I am – I must go,” Arthur informed her, glancing, for some reason, at Gwen before he did so. He picked up the parchment, looking a little uncertain.

“Take it,” Morgana told him, “keep it, Arthur.”

Arthur nodded – about as much of an admission of his need to do so as he would ever show – and left them as abruptly as he had arrived.

Gwen remained staring at the door for several moments after, as if she’d been stricken.

“Oh,” she began, after a moment, “it must have been so awful for him…”

“He’s a big boy,” Morgana assured her, giving her friend’s arm a squeeze, “he’ll survive, Gwen. Though he might have to communicate with poor Merlin entirely by hurling things at him for a few days.”

Gwen smiled, weekly, and then went back to folding Morgana’s underthings.

***

If he were a weaker man – a man of vulnerabilities and uncertainties and doubt in his father and deep, unquiet insecurity – Arthur Pendragon might have been found, very early the next morning, smelling the roses in the west gardens.

And though, of course, he was not the sort of man who could be so easily drawn into such a sentimental act – would not be so foolish as to be lured into the errand with only the vague hope that this might be his mother’s scent, nevertheless, Gwen found him there anyway. She didn’t say a word as he lingered over one of the blossoms, looking lost, and a little sad.

Instead, she gently clasped his forearm, and led him away.

Current Mood: hungry

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

heather11483.livejournal.com

I LOVE YOU OKAY.

Gni, this is perfect, perfect, it could have happened on the show exactly this way, with Arthur's urgency and repressed pain tending towards rudeness (I've mentioned before that I love your Arthur), Morgana's growing concern for him and at the same time stopping to worry about her own realizations re: the bracelet -- and Gwen, so clearly concerned but so restrained that she's clutching things to stop herself from reaching out - so wonderfully in-character.

You captured the relationships between Morgana and Gwen, Morgana and Arthur, Gwen and Arthur, so beautifully and you touched on the common thread of loss between them the way the show rarely does and I wish it would. I NEED TO HUG THEM ALL.

The last section killed me dead. Oh Arthur, oh Gwen. <3 Also, also, OT3-ness! They each play off each other so well. When Gwen looked urgently at Morgana and then Morgana put her hand on Arthur's back? *dies*

♥ Thanks for sharing this; fabulous job.

Edited Date: 2009-11-19 06:09 pm (UTC)

From:

another weird queer depressive on the internet

Fic: Fragments

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TV taught me how to feel, now real life has no appeal

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