Happy Merlin Holidays, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jungle_ride!
Dec. 29th, 2011 09:07 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
merlin-hols.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
merlin_holidaysTitle: You can’t repair everything
Recipient:jungle_ride
Author:leviathans_moon
Rating: R
Pairings: Merlin/Morgana
Word Count: 3791
Warnings: mentions of war and the consequences
Summary: It’s the beginning of the century, but both their parents are still very traditional and force them into a marriage neither wants. It takes a while to make the marriage one of love, but just as they managed it 1914 disrupts their lives.
Author's Notes: I want to say thank you to my lovely beta S.
I also sincerely hope that my recipient likes this, I loved all the prompts and ideas and actually had a difficult time deciding what I should actually do, because it was all so good. I hope I have fulfilled a few of the wishes.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and BBC. I make no profit from this endeavour.
~
Her parents’ eyes teared up at the thought of the money that this marriage would bring to their family. His parents were not crying but they looked smugly satisfied with the match that would bring a prestigious connection with a very old and very well-known family and ensure them a more secure place at the top of High Society.
Her future husband looked proud for everyone else to see, but she saw the defeat in his body and eyes.
Because she felt it too.
She had raged and stormed against this agreement, had tried very hard to discourage his family to marry off their only son to such a monstrous woman.
She had wanted to marry for love. She had dreamt about meeting him on a meadow during one of her afternoon walks, him helping her over a treacherous object and then they would talk for hours until he would bring her home. He would have called the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next. Eventually, he would have asked, full of reverence, whether he could have the honour to have her for his wife.
Instead her mother had dropped the bomb over dinner one day and it had already been a done deal she could not change.
It was a day full of contradictions. It was sunny, but rain fell down her cheeks. It was warm; yet she felt cold inside and she saw the same coldness in his eyes. People congratulated her and her family; she felt they should have pitied her. She swore love before God, but she only felt frustration and a hatred that neither of them deserved.
When he took her home to their new house, he went to bed saying a quiet good night. She watched as his slumped shoulders disappeared behind the door, leaving her to do what she liked.
She cried herself to sleep in her solitary bed.
Visitors to their home were few and seldom did they leave feeling well entertained. Her husband was not one to talk much, secluded, shy and unhappy. She would storm off to bed, slam the doors in an unseemly way and ignore the polite questions he asked her over breakfast the next morning just as she ignored the meaningful glances the servants gave each other whenever they thought she wouldn’t notice.
Except one day, after another disastrous social call from one of her old London friends, after another momentous storming-off, she did not get the polite questions from her husband and meaningful glances from her servants. Instead, she found a bouquet of red roses on her nightstand in the evening and a single four-leaf clover lying on her pillow.
She didn't comment on it, but her heart swallowed some of its tears. Soon, the flowers became a frequent occurrence, not always red roses, but always on her nightstand and always with a four-leaf clover on her pillow. She was sure he was stealing back those he'd left before and which she was collecting in a small unimpressive tin box; she doubted he could find that many four-leaf clovers in the middle of London, but every time she opened that box to add the newcomer to her collection she counted and they were all still there.
She had never been the person to give way to her feelings, she was unlike all those girls who started to swoon and faint at the very thought of a possible lack of sweets in the house or were terribly frightful every time it looked like the light drizzle might turn into a storm. She would stand stoically, almost happily at the window and admire nature's power. Naturally however, it was also not in her to talk about the appreciation she felt and express oral thanks towards his chivalry and respect.
She stood in the kitchen, trying to remember what her old nanny had told her about baking biscuits which would be small enough to place on his pillow every day before he came back home, but her memory and her social status failed her and Merlin found his wife covered in flour and egg while his social acquaintances and possible business partners from the club embarrassedly coughed into their neatly folded handkerchiefs. He excused her in a tone that tried to be neutral, but he'd never been very successful at that, and left her looking forlorn among the flour and egg. She threw two eggs at the door where they smashed and slithered to the floor in a yellow-transparent pulp. She banged every door on the way up to her room and could see him rolling his eyes in her mind. She didn't care.
She still didn't care when he came into her room in the evening and in a quiet voice complained about her behaviour and how she embarrassed him in front of his fellow club members. Members of the society; a society that she understood better than him.
“Then you shouldn’t be surprised that I hate it more than you do,” she replied.
“Oh, yes, because living in the gutter is so much better than having a good home, a secure life and a husband who cares for you!” His voice cracked on the last part; if she noticed, she didn’t show it.
“I don’t need you to take care of me. I never needed you. I never needed anyone. Trust me, if there had been a way, I would have stopped the wedding and this pointless marriage. I have half the mind to file for a divorce; I don’t care about the social disgrace. I’d rather live in the gutter than be trapped here.”
The hurt look on his face stopped her in her rage for a moment.
“Pointless marriage?” His eyes darted to the fresh daffodils on her nightstand. She saw where his eyes wandered and quickly walked over to the beautifully ornamented vase and threw it across the room directly at him. He ducked just in time, the vase smashing into thousands of small pieces that fall into the darkest corners.
“We don’t talk about anything other than the stupid weather. We never do anything together. You…you don’t even touch me. We don’t even share a bed. That’s not marriage. I feel like a servant whose sole purpose it is to sit in the damned room with you so you can pretend that you’re not lonely, you miserable man. I’d rather you hit me than treat me like I’m nothing more than decoration. I have had enough of being mere decoration, you hear me. I don’t like it … I… don’t touch me, you bastard.”
Merlin had stridden towards her, forcing her to back into the wall and his arms came down on her side.
He kissed her. Quick, but forceful.
She slapped him. Hard.
“Make up your mind, would you?” He started to turn away from her, his cheek an angry red, but she caught his arm.
“I want you to be my husband.” She was almost whispering, her temper silently simmering beneath her wishful reverence.
Again, he crowded her space, pressed her against the wall, but this time he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her firm but slowly.
They had their first sex against the wall of her bedroom, her pulling at his hair and clawing at his back in a mixture of passion and accumulated anger, him tucking up her dress haphazardly, nearly getting entangled in the material, frustration huffing out of him and onto her neck where dark bruises began to form. It was rough, most definitely too rough to be seemly, but neither cared. The vase was already broken.
"Next time we'll do it like everybody else. In bed, at night," he murmured into her shoulder once they had both gotten their breath back.
"Why? It can hardly be more exciting than this?" She was glowing. It was the moment Merlin fell properly in love with her, he told her years later.
"Your dress was in the way." He slowly disentangled himself from the many folds of her dress.
"That's not my fault. I have to dress like this."
"I thought you didn't want to be just a decorative element," he said with a mischievous grin.
She swatted his arm. "Cheeky." She put her clothes in order and he saw the red spots on the white material of her undergarments.
"You're bleeding!"
"It's nothing. I'll deal with it."
"No," he hastened to the door, looking back with a worried face. "I'll get the tub so you can wash. Do you need bandages?"
It was the moment Morgana fell properly in love with him.
~
The servants continued to exchange knowing looks, as if they'd been expecting the change in affections. As if it had been forecast in the skies and Merlin and Morgana had only been unable to read it. Merlin's room was only entered when he got dressed in the morning. They exchanged her duvet with his after she admitted that she didn't like orange. The curtains also went to be replaced by heavy dark green ones that shut out the world completely when they fell into the warmth of the bed together.
The flowers continued, only now they were thrown to the floor more often as Merlin stumbled into them or gesticulated too wildly explaining the noisy mess that was the men's club on Friday and Sunday afternoons. She giggled and he kissed her, blushing as he pulled back again to pick up the vase. They soon had to buy a new carpet, looking at the exhibitions in the warehouse hand in hand.
Saturday mornings were her favourite. No church they had to attend, no business he had to take care off and all the social calls were only in the afternoon or evening. She could wake up next to him, could crawl deeper into the sheets toward his heat that was so all-encompassing, her dark hair mingling with his. He would snake his slender arms around her soft curves, fitting her neatly to his side. Sometimes they were intimate, slow and comfortable, both their hearts aflutter. He would bring breakfast into the bedroom, the tray trembling under the weight of the things he knew she liked best. Often she would stand at the window and look out at the fast-moving London beyond it, feeling as if it was so far away, as if reality was so far away. He'd wrap her up in his arms and they would watch together until the tea grew cold. It was her favourite kind of morning.
She lost a child in their second year of marriage, but never told him of it. He worried about her melancholy silence, asked her if he'd done something, what he needed to do to fix it. She shook her head and cried in his arms. As the tears stopped she looked up at him, smiled and said: "Let's go to bed!" He never asked again.
Her parents were nagging her for a grandchild, that "clearly it was time for a proper family and that they hoped that there weren't any problems". They were discreet enough about it but after the seventh time Merlin kicked them out in a raging battle of booming voices for insulting both him and his wife and making her feel uncomfortable. She had never seen him so fierce, his rage continuing well into the evening. When they slept together that night it was with a kind of desperation and she realised that he knew about the lost child; that he knew why she had cried in his arms that one night. He apologized as he settled his head on his chest and she murmured ‘I’m sorry’s into his ear after he had fallen asleep at her side.
Her father came for dinner the next day and he and Merlin made a truce. Her mother remained offended and cold towards him until the following year. Until 1914.
It was a summer between harmony and disaster. It was warm, but spoke of a cold time to come. Morgana saw the wrinkles on his face deepening each time he read the paper and couldn't help but guess the disastrous future.
The euphoria when war was declared stayed well outside of their doors. One of the servants proclaimed: "We're going to show these Germans," but he ducked his head as everybody frowned at him. He was barely 15 and didn't know any better.
"I have to," he said to her after their fight in the safety of their bedroom, the vase which had lasted more than six months lying at his feet in pieces. He looked tired.
“You don’t. You don’t have to follow your father’s footsteps, become the next hero of the family. Let the others do this and by Christmas we’ll have forgotten all about it.” She knew she was begging.
“Morgana,” he looked at her as if he had to explain something very difficult and sad to a five year old girl, “you know as well as I do that this Christmas-talk is naïve nonsense.”
He hugged her and she held tight. “I’ll be fine. I’ll come back to you.”
“Don’t promise something that is unlikely to come true.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, noses touching, but he didn’t answer.
“Can I come with you?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
The next Saturday she stood at the window, wrapped in the shirt he’d discarded down the side of the bed during their last night together. His smell was slowly fading, as if her body was soaking it up, trying to intensify the memory of taste, smell and the feeling of skin on skin. It didn’t take away the loneliness and dread.
The world outside had never looked more real.
She nearly went mad sitting around in the empty house waiting for him to return. She wrote letters, every day, but every day she couldn’t help imagine that he might not even get to read them.
The numbers were published in the papers; the names drawn up on lists; women, young and old, checking for their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers; the solemn acceptance that one of the 20000 or 60000 was their husband, the stoic composure, waiting, waiting to get home before you broke down in tears thinking of a man who would be lying in the fields of France, distorted, broken, frightened and cold – it all seemed too daunting. She stopped going through the lists - her parents, his parents, surely they would tell her.
His letters had to be reassurance enough for the moment.
She decided to work in the munitions factories. Her mother was outraged, her father ashamed that she would degrade herself voluntarily, but she felt calmer for the first time in months.
She fell into bed after the first day, exhausted from the work, exhausted from having to justify her actions to everyone including the girls in the munitions factory who were gleeful that a lady had to come down to their level. She was grateful for the few women who understood the sadness in her eyes and defended her.
Within weeks the work went from exciting and exhausting novelty to monotonous handiwork, and soon it was only the company of the other women that helped keep her mind of Merlin and all the possibilities. She wasn’t the only one who felt that way. They guided and held each other, even if it wasn’t always obvious that they did. More often than not she found herself being dragged along to a shabby pub around the corner, soon finding out that those with less money were more generous than any person she had ever been associated with before the war. And she was almost happy.
He came back to her at the end of 1917, the lower part of his left leg gone. She could guess what had happened - he didn’t have to tell her - she had helped produce the munitions that could cause such injuries. She didn’t mention it, taking her cue from him. She saw the weariness in his eyes, haunted, disturbed eyes, and wanted to reach out, but she didn’t know how.
She quietly changed his trousers, sowing one trouser leg shorter, sowing the ends together.
He burnt them all in the fireplace in the kitchen.
When she angrily demanded to know why he would do such a thing after she’d put so much work into it to help him, he got up heavily, leaning on the table.
“You should have asked me first. Please. I need… I need some control over things. I need to regain...”
“Merlin.”
“I..I lost it.”
“Okay.” She wrapped her arm around his waist. It was reverent but also defiant. It was an ‘okay, but I’m not leaving your side, you’re stuck with me’.
“Just ask. Please. Just ask.”
Sometimes she felt more alone than she had done during the war years. The days when they would entangle in the sheets were gone. Standing at the window for hours, being hugged by him from behind, as she had so often dreamed about while he was gone, was unlikely to ever happen again. She’d seen the pain that surged through his body when he was standing up for too long with the crutches to lean on, and he would never use her to lean on, she knew that.
She missed the flowers, she missed the enthusiastic talks at breakfast, and she missed rolling their eyes in unison at the ridiculousness of some of their more prestigious but so blatantly ignorant high society guests. Most of all she missed his smile and his light-footed clumsiness that brought goodness into the house and her heart. She missed laughing at yet another broken vase. She missed swatting his arm after he’d grinned at her cheekily.
She often found him sitting at the window in their bedroom, a blanket thrown over his legs. The first few times she stood in the door, watching him, watching his eyes. They were so different now and it scared her so she didn’t dare go to him.
On the night of November 11 his shoulders shook with silent tears, until she touched them and turned him around. He clung to her. Instinctively, she felt his torn heart – torn between gladness, almost happiness, at the end of the war, and the heartache and mourning for his comrades, his friends.
He didn’t eat anything the next day, but spent his time looking out of the window onto the happy streets of London. She tried to coax him into eating, worried what the news might have evoked in him. He merely shook his head and stared out of the window. As she got ready for bed at night, he was still sitting there, the darkness outside bright enough to light the room. She undressed, self-conscious about her husband, who felt like a stranger, watching her. She threw back the duvet, her nightgown rustling in the silence.
“Wait!”
She looked up and he motioned for her to come to him. It was the first time he actively sought her presence since he’d come back. She hesitated, but a small smile slipped on his face, barely noticeable from where she was standing, but it was enough to make her heart lighter.
She walked around the bed towards the chair, stopping in front of it.
“Sit down.” He pulled the blanket up a bit further and she climbed into his lap like a small child. She reached up to cup his cheek in her hands.
“Are you back?”
His eyes were shining with sadness. She understood.
“Are you very angry with me? That I left you here in London?” he asked silently.
“I was at first, but I realised why you did it and in your strange way of thinking it was the sweetest and most generous thing anyone has ever done for me, even though you broke my heart.”
“I’m sure we can mend that.” She caught a glimpse of his mischievous and cheeky self before his face fell back into gloom. He played with her long black curls.
“I would have died out there not knowing whether you were safe or not. Your safety kept my mind in focus. I needed to know that.”
“Will you ever talk about it?” she asked hurriedly before she lost her courage. She could feel him shifting in discomfort.
“And then I come back and find out you worked in a munitions factory!” he exclaimed, his voice cracking.
“Well, I knew I couldn’t tell you while you were still over there,” she played along. She’d do anything to have her old Merlin back, even forget her wish to know.
“And it’s better you didn’t or I would have come straight over and told you off.”
“And get shot for desertion?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“At least you would have been safe.”
He looked at her determined to make her understand, but she needed him to understand as well.
“I had to do something. Remember how I said I don’t like to be mere decoration? Turns out being decoration with no one there to look at you is even more horrible.”
“Oh really, I thought you’d done it to get your skin yellow and look even more appalling than you did before.”
She stood up in mock outrage.
“What a revolting thing to say. I’m sure I should detest you.”
He laughed, but immediately sobered up, pulled away the blanket and stirred himself into a standing position. He grabbed for his walking stick and came closer until their foreheads were touching. She could feel him flush against her.
“I want to register you with the University of London, whichever course you want to do. Just tell me.”
She drew back slightly, opening up a space between them, a frown forming on her forehead. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re not the kind of person to be trapped in this sort of life for forever. Working in the factory made that clear enough.”
She ducked her head shyly.
“Whichever course you want. Whatever you want to do. As old-fashioned as it is, but I’m your husband and I want to take care of you in whatever you do.”
“Thank you.” And they kissed like they used to, except only one hand snaked around her waist. “I think I should like medicine and anatomy.”
“You’re standing on my foot.”
She looked down. “No, I’m not. I’m...” She looked down again and saw that her right foot was where his left foot should have been. “Oh, you morbid man. I don’t know why I married you.”
“You clearly shouldn’t have.”
“That ‘yes, I will’ clearly was the biggest mistake of my life.” She nodded vigorously.
“You want to throw the vase to express your anger at your own stupidity?”
She swatted his arm.
~
Recipient:
jungle_rideAuthor:
leviathans_moonRating: R
Pairings: Merlin/Morgana
Word Count: 3791
Warnings: mentions of war and the consequences
Summary: It’s the beginning of the century, but both their parents are still very traditional and force them into a marriage neither wants. It takes a while to make the marriage one of love, but just as they managed it 1914 disrupts their lives.
Author's Notes: I want to say thank you to my lovely beta S.
I also sincerely hope that my recipient likes this, I loved all the prompts and ideas and actually had a difficult time deciding what I should actually do, because it was all so good. I hope I have fulfilled a few of the wishes.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and BBC. I make no profit from this endeavour.
~
Her parents’ eyes teared up at the thought of the money that this marriage would bring to their family. His parents were not crying but they looked smugly satisfied with the match that would bring a prestigious connection with a very old and very well-known family and ensure them a more secure place at the top of High Society.
Her future husband looked proud for everyone else to see, but she saw the defeat in his body and eyes.
Because she felt it too.
She had raged and stormed against this agreement, had tried very hard to discourage his family to marry off their only son to such a monstrous woman.
She had wanted to marry for love. She had dreamt about meeting him on a meadow during one of her afternoon walks, him helping her over a treacherous object and then they would talk for hours until he would bring her home. He would have called the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next. Eventually, he would have asked, full of reverence, whether he could have the honour to have her for his wife.
Instead her mother had dropped the bomb over dinner one day and it had already been a done deal she could not change.
It was a day full of contradictions. It was sunny, but rain fell down her cheeks. It was warm; yet she felt cold inside and she saw the same coldness in his eyes. People congratulated her and her family; she felt they should have pitied her. She swore love before God, but she only felt frustration and a hatred that neither of them deserved.
When he took her home to their new house, he went to bed saying a quiet good night. She watched as his slumped shoulders disappeared behind the door, leaving her to do what she liked.
She cried herself to sleep in her solitary bed.
Visitors to their home were few and seldom did they leave feeling well entertained. Her husband was not one to talk much, secluded, shy and unhappy. She would storm off to bed, slam the doors in an unseemly way and ignore the polite questions he asked her over breakfast the next morning just as she ignored the meaningful glances the servants gave each other whenever they thought she wouldn’t notice.
Except one day, after another disastrous social call from one of her old London friends, after another momentous storming-off, she did not get the polite questions from her husband and meaningful glances from her servants. Instead, she found a bouquet of red roses on her nightstand in the evening and a single four-leaf clover lying on her pillow.
She didn't comment on it, but her heart swallowed some of its tears. Soon, the flowers became a frequent occurrence, not always red roses, but always on her nightstand and always with a four-leaf clover on her pillow. She was sure he was stealing back those he'd left before and which she was collecting in a small unimpressive tin box; she doubted he could find that many four-leaf clovers in the middle of London, but every time she opened that box to add the newcomer to her collection she counted and they were all still there.
She had never been the person to give way to her feelings, she was unlike all those girls who started to swoon and faint at the very thought of a possible lack of sweets in the house or were terribly frightful every time it looked like the light drizzle might turn into a storm. She would stand stoically, almost happily at the window and admire nature's power. Naturally however, it was also not in her to talk about the appreciation she felt and express oral thanks towards his chivalry and respect.
She stood in the kitchen, trying to remember what her old nanny had told her about baking biscuits which would be small enough to place on his pillow every day before he came back home, but her memory and her social status failed her and Merlin found his wife covered in flour and egg while his social acquaintances and possible business partners from the club embarrassedly coughed into their neatly folded handkerchiefs. He excused her in a tone that tried to be neutral, but he'd never been very successful at that, and left her looking forlorn among the flour and egg. She threw two eggs at the door where they smashed and slithered to the floor in a yellow-transparent pulp. She banged every door on the way up to her room and could see him rolling his eyes in her mind. She didn't care.
She still didn't care when he came into her room in the evening and in a quiet voice complained about her behaviour and how she embarrassed him in front of his fellow club members. Members of the society; a society that she understood better than him.
“Then you shouldn’t be surprised that I hate it more than you do,” she replied.
“Oh, yes, because living in the gutter is so much better than having a good home, a secure life and a husband who cares for you!” His voice cracked on the last part; if she noticed, she didn’t show it.
“I don’t need you to take care of me. I never needed you. I never needed anyone. Trust me, if there had been a way, I would have stopped the wedding and this pointless marriage. I have half the mind to file for a divorce; I don’t care about the social disgrace. I’d rather live in the gutter than be trapped here.”
The hurt look on his face stopped her in her rage for a moment.
“Pointless marriage?” His eyes darted to the fresh daffodils on her nightstand. She saw where his eyes wandered and quickly walked over to the beautifully ornamented vase and threw it across the room directly at him. He ducked just in time, the vase smashing into thousands of small pieces that fall into the darkest corners.
“We don’t talk about anything other than the stupid weather. We never do anything together. You…you don’t even touch me. We don’t even share a bed. That’s not marriage. I feel like a servant whose sole purpose it is to sit in the damned room with you so you can pretend that you’re not lonely, you miserable man. I’d rather you hit me than treat me like I’m nothing more than decoration. I have had enough of being mere decoration, you hear me. I don’t like it … I… don’t touch me, you bastard.”
Merlin had stridden towards her, forcing her to back into the wall and his arms came down on her side.
He kissed her. Quick, but forceful.
She slapped him. Hard.
“Make up your mind, would you?” He started to turn away from her, his cheek an angry red, but she caught his arm.
“I want you to be my husband.” She was almost whispering, her temper silently simmering beneath her wishful reverence.
Again, he crowded her space, pressed her against the wall, but this time he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her firm but slowly.
They had their first sex against the wall of her bedroom, her pulling at his hair and clawing at his back in a mixture of passion and accumulated anger, him tucking up her dress haphazardly, nearly getting entangled in the material, frustration huffing out of him and onto her neck where dark bruises began to form. It was rough, most definitely too rough to be seemly, but neither cared. The vase was already broken.
"Next time we'll do it like everybody else. In bed, at night," he murmured into her shoulder once they had both gotten their breath back.
"Why? It can hardly be more exciting than this?" She was glowing. It was the moment Merlin fell properly in love with her, he told her years later.
"Your dress was in the way." He slowly disentangled himself from the many folds of her dress.
"That's not my fault. I have to dress like this."
"I thought you didn't want to be just a decorative element," he said with a mischievous grin.
She swatted his arm. "Cheeky." She put her clothes in order and he saw the red spots on the white material of her undergarments.
"You're bleeding!"
"It's nothing. I'll deal with it."
"No," he hastened to the door, looking back with a worried face. "I'll get the tub so you can wash. Do you need bandages?"
It was the moment Morgana fell properly in love with him.
~
The servants continued to exchange knowing looks, as if they'd been expecting the change in affections. As if it had been forecast in the skies and Merlin and Morgana had only been unable to read it. Merlin's room was only entered when he got dressed in the morning. They exchanged her duvet with his after she admitted that she didn't like orange. The curtains also went to be replaced by heavy dark green ones that shut out the world completely when they fell into the warmth of the bed together.
The flowers continued, only now they were thrown to the floor more often as Merlin stumbled into them or gesticulated too wildly explaining the noisy mess that was the men's club on Friday and Sunday afternoons. She giggled and he kissed her, blushing as he pulled back again to pick up the vase. They soon had to buy a new carpet, looking at the exhibitions in the warehouse hand in hand.
Saturday mornings were her favourite. No church they had to attend, no business he had to take care off and all the social calls were only in the afternoon or evening. She could wake up next to him, could crawl deeper into the sheets toward his heat that was so all-encompassing, her dark hair mingling with his. He would snake his slender arms around her soft curves, fitting her neatly to his side. Sometimes they were intimate, slow and comfortable, both their hearts aflutter. He would bring breakfast into the bedroom, the tray trembling under the weight of the things he knew she liked best. Often she would stand at the window and look out at the fast-moving London beyond it, feeling as if it was so far away, as if reality was so far away. He'd wrap her up in his arms and they would watch together until the tea grew cold. It was her favourite kind of morning.
She lost a child in their second year of marriage, but never told him of it. He worried about her melancholy silence, asked her if he'd done something, what he needed to do to fix it. She shook her head and cried in his arms. As the tears stopped she looked up at him, smiled and said: "Let's go to bed!" He never asked again.
Her parents were nagging her for a grandchild, that "clearly it was time for a proper family and that they hoped that there weren't any problems". They were discreet enough about it but after the seventh time Merlin kicked them out in a raging battle of booming voices for insulting both him and his wife and making her feel uncomfortable. She had never seen him so fierce, his rage continuing well into the evening. When they slept together that night it was with a kind of desperation and she realised that he knew about the lost child; that he knew why she had cried in his arms that one night. He apologized as he settled his head on his chest and she murmured ‘I’m sorry’s into his ear after he had fallen asleep at her side.
Her father came for dinner the next day and he and Merlin made a truce. Her mother remained offended and cold towards him until the following year. Until 1914.
It was a summer between harmony and disaster. It was warm, but spoke of a cold time to come. Morgana saw the wrinkles on his face deepening each time he read the paper and couldn't help but guess the disastrous future.
The euphoria when war was declared stayed well outside of their doors. One of the servants proclaimed: "We're going to show these Germans," but he ducked his head as everybody frowned at him. He was barely 15 and didn't know any better.
"I have to," he said to her after their fight in the safety of their bedroom, the vase which had lasted more than six months lying at his feet in pieces. He looked tired.
“You don’t. You don’t have to follow your father’s footsteps, become the next hero of the family. Let the others do this and by Christmas we’ll have forgotten all about it.” She knew she was begging.
“Morgana,” he looked at her as if he had to explain something very difficult and sad to a five year old girl, “you know as well as I do that this Christmas-talk is naïve nonsense.”
He hugged her and she held tight. “I’ll be fine. I’ll come back to you.”
“Don’t promise something that is unlikely to come true.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, noses touching, but he didn’t answer.
“Can I come with you?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
The next Saturday she stood at the window, wrapped in the shirt he’d discarded down the side of the bed during their last night together. His smell was slowly fading, as if her body was soaking it up, trying to intensify the memory of taste, smell and the feeling of skin on skin. It didn’t take away the loneliness and dread.
The world outside had never looked more real.
She nearly went mad sitting around in the empty house waiting for him to return. She wrote letters, every day, but every day she couldn’t help imagine that he might not even get to read them.
The numbers were published in the papers; the names drawn up on lists; women, young and old, checking for their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers; the solemn acceptance that one of the 20000 or 60000 was their husband, the stoic composure, waiting, waiting to get home before you broke down in tears thinking of a man who would be lying in the fields of France, distorted, broken, frightened and cold – it all seemed too daunting. She stopped going through the lists - her parents, his parents, surely they would tell her.
His letters had to be reassurance enough for the moment.
She decided to work in the munitions factories. Her mother was outraged, her father ashamed that she would degrade herself voluntarily, but she felt calmer for the first time in months.
She fell into bed after the first day, exhausted from the work, exhausted from having to justify her actions to everyone including the girls in the munitions factory who were gleeful that a lady had to come down to their level. She was grateful for the few women who understood the sadness in her eyes and defended her.
Within weeks the work went from exciting and exhausting novelty to monotonous handiwork, and soon it was only the company of the other women that helped keep her mind of Merlin and all the possibilities. She wasn’t the only one who felt that way. They guided and held each other, even if it wasn’t always obvious that they did. More often than not she found herself being dragged along to a shabby pub around the corner, soon finding out that those with less money were more generous than any person she had ever been associated with before the war. And she was almost happy.
He came back to her at the end of 1917, the lower part of his left leg gone. She could guess what had happened - he didn’t have to tell her - she had helped produce the munitions that could cause such injuries. She didn’t mention it, taking her cue from him. She saw the weariness in his eyes, haunted, disturbed eyes, and wanted to reach out, but she didn’t know how.
She quietly changed his trousers, sowing one trouser leg shorter, sowing the ends together.
He burnt them all in the fireplace in the kitchen.
When she angrily demanded to know why he would do such a thing after she’d put so much work into it to help him, he got up heavily, leaning on the table.
“You should have asked me first. Please. I need… I need some control over things. I need to regain...”
“Merlin.”
“I..I lost it.”
“Okay.” She wrapped her arm around his waist. It was reverent but also defiant. It was an ‘okay, but I’m not leaving your side, you’re stuck with me’.
“Just ask. Please. Just ask.”
Sometimes she felt more alone than she had done during the war years. The days when they would entangle in the sheets were gone. Standing at the window for hours, being hugged by him from behind, as she had so often dreamed about while he was gone, was unlikely to ever happen again. She’d seen the pain that surged through his body when he was standing up for too long with the crutches to lean on, and he would never use her to lean on, she knew that.
She missed the flowers, she missed the enthusiastic talks at breakfast, and she missed rolling their eyes in unison at the ridiculousness of some of their more prestigious but so blatantly ignorant high society guests. Most of all she missed his smile and his light-footed clumsiness that brought goodness into the house and her heart. She missed laughing at yet another broken vase. She missed swatting his arm after he’d grinned at her cheekily.
She often found him sitting at the window in their bedroom, a blanket thrown over his legs. The first few times she stood in the door, watching him, watching his eyes. They were so different now and it scared her so she didn’t dare go to him.
On the night of November 11 his shoulders shook with silent tears, until she touched them and turned him around. He clung to her. Instinctively, she felt his torn heart – torn between gladness, almost happiness, at the end of the war, and the heartache and mourning for his comrades, his friends.
He didn’t eat anything the next day, but spent his time looking out of the window onto the happy streets of London. She tried to coax him into eating, worried what the news might have evoked in him. He merely shook his head and stared out of the window. As she got ready for bed at night, he was still sitting there, the darkness outside bright enough to light the room. She undressed, self-conscious about her husband, who felt like a stranger, watching her. She threw back the duvet, her nightgown rustling in the silence.
“Wait!”
She looked up and he motioned for her to come to him. It was the first time he actively sought her presence since he’d come back. She hesitated, but a small smile slipped on his face, barely noticeable from where she was standing, but it was enough to make her heart lighter.
She walked around the bed towards the chair, stopping in front of it.
“Sit down.” He pulled the blanket up a bit further and she climbed into his lap like a small child. She reached up to cup his cheek in her hands.
“Are you back?”
His eyes were shining with sadness. She understood.
“Are you very angry with me? That I left you here in London?” he asked silently.
“I was at first, but I realised why you did it and in your strange way of thinking it was the sweetest and most generous thing anyone has ever done for me, even though you broke my heart.”
“I’m sure we can mend that.” She caught a glimpse of his mischievous and cheeky self before his face fell back into gloom. He played with her long black curls.
“I would have died out there not knowing whether you were safe or not. Your safety kept my mind in focus. I needed to know that.”
“Will you ever talk about it?” she asked hurriedly before she lost her courage. She could feel him shifting in discomfort.
“And then I come back and find out you worked in a munitions factory!” he exclaimed, his voice cracking.
“Well, I knew I couldn’t tell you while you were still over there,” she played along. She’d do anything to have her old Merlin back, even forget her wish to know.
“And it’s better you didn’t or I would have come straight over and told you off.”
“And get shot for desertion?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“At least you would have been safe.”
He looked at her determined to make her understand, but she needed him to understand as well.
“I had to do something. Remember how I said I don’t like to be mere decoration? Turns out being decoration with no one there to look at you is even more horrible.”
“Oh really, I thought you’d done it to get your skin yellow and look even more appalling than you did before.”
She stood up in mock outrage.
“What a revolting thing to say. I’m sure I should detest you.”
He laughed, but immediately sobered up, pulled away the blanket and stirred himself into a standing position. He grabbed for his walking stick and came closer until their foreheads were touching. She could feel him flush against her.
“I want to register you with the University of London, whichever course you want to do. Just tell me.”
She drew back slightly, opening up a space between them, a frown forming on her forehead. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re not the kind of person to be trapped in this sort of life for forever. Working in the factory made that clear enough.”
She ducked her head shyly.
“Whichever course you want. Whatever you want to do. As old-fashioned as it is, but I’m your husband and I want to take care of you in whatever you do.”
“Thank you.” And they kissed like they used to, except only one hand snaked around her waist. “I think I should like medicine and anatomy.”
“You’re standing on my foot.”
She looked down. “No, I’m not. I’m...” She looked down again and saw that her right foot was where his left foot should have been. “Oh, you morbid man. I don’t know why I married you.”
“You clearly shouldn’t have.”
“That ‘yes, I will’ clearly was the biggest mistake of my life.” She nodded vigorously.
“You want to throw the vase to express your anger at your own stupidity?”
She swatted his arm.
~
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 04:06 pm (UTC)The gradual shift from hate to love was wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 08:01 pm (UTC)I have a lot of knowledge about war injuries and their consequences, but of course as an author you're still sort of worried, so thank you for saying that I portrayed it well*-*
also, you're icon is love!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 07:47 pm (UTC)Gorgeous, gorgeous work. ♥
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 08:08 pm (UTC)well, I just couldn't let Morgana go back to the life before the war*g*. thank you so much!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:18 pm (UTC)hope your heart is fine again
no subject
Date: 2011-12-31 04:45 am (UTC)This is so beautiful... ;____; sad and happy and warm but it breaks my heart so good, ah.. ♥
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:19 pm (UTC)thank you <3
no subject
Date: 2011-12-31 05:06 am (UTC)I think this was my favorite line:
He grabbed for his walking stick and came closer until their foreheads were touching. She could feel him flush against her
It makes it clear that he's not all right and that everything isn't just like it was, but the sheer intimacy present in their interaction with each other suggests that they may just end up being okay anyway. Plus, it's a beautiful image.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 04:26 pm (UTC)OMFG!!! This is just…WOW!! This fic is completely AWESOME!! Historical AU’s are such a big love of mine and THIS is just more than I could have hoped for. They remained the Merlin and Morgana I love and yet you managed to fully capture the essence of the era with their speech, background etc. I loved how their relationship developed turning into a true romance and marriage. Their silent understanding of each other made my heart flutter like mad. The way you handled Merlin’s return from the war was just BEAUTIFUL! And then ending was SUBLIME. I can not thank you enough for this wonderful piece; I shall be reading this often. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:55 pm (UTC)<33333
no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:56 pm (UTC)love the icon*g*
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 08:24 am (UTC)What an good & well written fic.
Thank U so much!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:57 pm (UTC)thank you so much for your comment
no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-08 10:57 pm (UTC)