merlin_holidays | Happy Merlin Holidays, purely

Title: Swimming with a Raincoat
Recipient:

teaboytoaliens
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Arthur/Gwen
Word Count: 7837
Warnings: Modern AU. Deals with death.
Summary: Through the loss of everything, Gwen finds forever.
Author's Notes: Thank you to my wonderful beta and cheerleader. She knows who she is. ;)
Hopefully this fits the requirements even if it's not as high a rating as asked for, has nothing to do with hotels, and might be a bit sad. Crossed fingers that you get the vibe that they're ‘meant to be'!
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and BBC. I make no profit from this endeavour.

When Gwen was in junior school, she was forced to attend one of those presentations meant to scare kids away from doing bad things when they reached secondary. Her least favourite had been about drunk driving. The entire year six class had been forced to watch a fake accident and listen to a bunch of sob stories that had made Gwen want to leave because she seriously hated tears, especially when they were coming from everyone but her.

At the time, Gwen had assumed that, however much it depressed her, that sort of stuff would never happen to her, even though the presenters kept insisting that wasn't a good way to be thinking. But Gwen was a goody-good and would never drink and drive—so she was fine, wasn't she?

It was too bad fate had a different idea.

~*~

Gwen sighed and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel of her car. It was just her luck that the one day she woke up late and had to skip both breakfast and a shower in order to get to work on time there would be a traffic accident holding her up.

She watched out her windscreen as officials set up barricades and the traffic people in fluorescent uniforms started to direct traffic past the accident.

Gwen lightly hit the gas, glancing over at the mangled cars surrounded by vehicles with flashing lights as she slowly crept past. She thought she recognized one of the crushed cars, but quickly dismissed the notion—lots of vehicles looked similar to each other. She wondered if the people in the accident were all right as she merged back onto the freeway toward her workplace.

Ten minutes later she pulled into the car park and ran for the employee door. Inside, she looked at the clock to see that she was right on time and did a mini victory dance in her head.

"Guinevere!" a deep, booming voice called out. She nearly jumped out of her skin. Her boss pointed to the phone in his hand. "It's for you," he said, handing the phone to her. She frowned as she took it. Who would call her at work?

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Guinevere Dupont?" a womanly voice came over the line.

"Yeah, that's me. Who is this?"

The woman's tone changed. "This is the Cardiff Royal Infirmary. We've just had an Elyan brought in and you're his first contact."

"Elyan? What's he done now? And how am I his first contact? What about our parents?"

When the woman answered, Gwen forgot all about being worried about being late for work. She dropped the phone without hanging up and ran for the door.

~*~

Gwen paced the waiting room, unable to sit still. She couldn't wrap her head around the idea that her parents were dead and Elyan was in surgery in the hopes that they could save him. She couldn't understand how she'd driven past the very accident that had killed her parents without realizing. She couldn't comprehend the fact that she was suddenly very alone in the world. It wasn't like she had any relatives in the UK. She didn't even have very many friends; she'd always preferred studying to socializing. Her only real friend was Morgana, and that was only because Morgana liked to have charity cases and Gwen was her latest. Still, she didn't want to be alone...

She pulled out her mobile and dialled. Morgana's boyfriend answered on the first ring. The sound of him saying hello was the last straw for Gwen—she burst into tears and was barely able to choke out where she was through her sobs. It was a great testament to his hearing that he understood what she was saying at all.

When Morgana and Arthur walked through the doors of the hospital, Gwen had finally managed to calm down enough to be sitting down in one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, staring at the wall in front of her. Arthur sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders as Morgana settled in on Gwen's other side.

"I'm sorry I woke you both up," Gwen said after a minute. "I just couldn't be alone."

Arthur hushed her. "Don't worry about it. We had to make sure you were all right."

Gwen exhaled heavily. "Still. Isn't it your anniversary today?"

"Hardly matters when your brother is in critical condition, Gwen," Morgana said. "I can't believe you even remembered that."

Gwen let her head fall against Arthur's shoulder. "How could I not? You've been calling me every minute asking which dress you're supposed to wear to dinner tonight."

Arthur shook his head. "She should know that she looks good in anything."

"That's what I said." Gwen giggled, then caught herself. She wasn't allowed to laugh while her brother fought for his life. She wasn't allowed to discuss anniversaries when her parents had just died. She got up and walked to the reception desk, where the receptionist shook her head. Gwen walked back and sat down on the edge of the chair, putting her head in her hands.

Arthur and Morgana made twitchy faces at each other over Gwen's head. Arthur shifted his eyes suggestively toward Gwen, trying to indicate that Morgana should do something or say something or, you know, something. Morgana looked confused.

Before Arthur could make his point clearer, he spotted a nurse coming in the waiting room door. He scanned the room before saying "Elyan Dupont?"

Gwen jumped to her feet. "I'm his sister."

Arthur could already tell from the look on the nurse's face that it wasn't good news. Gwen seemed to have gotten the same impression, because she was sitting down again before the nurse could even get the words out.

Gwen tried to stop herself from hearing it, pressing her hands over her ears and starting to hum, like she was five instead of twenty and didn't want to listen to her parents scolding her. Even so, she heard the four words that changed her life forever as if someone had put a loudspeaker right next to her ear.

"He didn't make it."

~*~

Gwen stared at the caskets that were set out side by side in the graveyard. They were empty, she knew, but the symbolism of them was the same regardless. It was everything that had really mattered to her, descending into the earth.

The preacher that Gwen had listened to every Sunday growing up was droning on and on like always, and Gwen wasn't listening, like always. She almost expected Elyan to start tickling her to amuse himself. Then she remembered that one of the caskets in front of her was Elyan and caskets didn't have fingers.

She thought she should probably be crying. A lot of the people gathered around in the graveyard had tears streaming down their faces. She didn't know a good majority, but she guessed that was to be expected when you hadn't been around for most of your parents' lives.

Gwen suddenly realized that the preacher had stopped talking and people were starting to mill about. A few started to leave, but most practically queued up to offer Gwen their condolences. She graciously went through the motions, wishing all the while that she could just run away.

"I meant to get to the front sooner, but all these people are really insistent," a familiar voice said.

Gwen looked up from her feet. "Arthur! Where's Morgana?"

"She was busy with something or other and couldn't make it. She said to apologize and that she'd call you soon." Arthur frowned.

Gwen almost snorted. "You made that up, didn't you?"
"How did you know?" Arthur said sheepishly, running his hand up through the back of his hair.

"Because I know Morgana. She would never say that."

"I don't think you give her enough credit. I'm sure she thought it."

Gwen rolled her eyes and glanced around. Most of the people had retreated to the inside of the church, where there were cookies and squares and all that set up on tables. Gwen's stomach flipped just thinking about trying to casually eat cookies and small talk with people she barely knew.

"Anyway," Arthur started again, "like I was saying before, I meant to rescue you sooner, but..." He waved a hand dismissively at the church. "Do you fancy going for coffee? I know this great place near here..."

Gwen raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. "If it saves me from that, yes."

Arthur nodded and linked an arm through Gwen's, leading her toward a small car parked just outside the graveyard. "I know how you feel," he said conversationally. "I remember my mother's funeral. It was horrible—there were all these people I didn't know telling me how they were so sorry my mother had died, and I just couldn't help but think that they didn't have a clue."

If anyone else had told Gwen they knew how she felt, she wouldn't have believed them, but Arthur's words struck a chord with her. "I didn't know your mother died," she said. "I'm sorry."

Arthur stopped and looked at Gwen. He didn't say anything for so long that Gwen started to wonder if she had said something wrong, but he eventually dropped his arm to his side and stepped away, gesturing for her to get in the car. "You are a marvel," he mumbled as she did so, so quiet that Gwen wasn't sure if she was actually supposed to hear it or not.

~*~

"This is your idea of a great place?" Gwen said disbelievingly.

"It's quaint!" Arthur defended the tiny cafe vehemently, despite the peeling wallpaper and ripped up leather booth seats. "It has character."

Gwen made to sit down, but Arthur shook his head and led her to a different booth on the opposite side of the cafe. "This is my favourite spot."

Gwen sat down, shaking her head. "I couldn't even imagine you in a place like this, much less having a favourite spot in it."

"The usual, Arthur?" a black haired waiter asked, appearing at the edge of the table. He flashed a grin at Arthur.

"Sure thing, Merlin," Arthur replied, smiling back. "What do you want, Gwen?"

"Uh, coffee. Black," Gwen said, directing it toward the waiter. He nodded and went off behind the counter. "You even know the waiter by name. And you have a usual."

Arthur laughed shortly. "Why can't you imagine me somewhere like this?"

Gwen shrugged, looking down at the table top awkwardly. "Oh, I don't know."

"Come on, you can tell me," Arthur pressed.

She sighed. "It's probably because you're dating Morgana," she admitted. "She's so posh, you know—it seems to me that you would be the same way."

"So you think I'm posh?"

"That's not what I said! It was just my first impression. I don't really know you all that well."

Arthur nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose you don't. We've only ever really seen each other when Morgana was there, too."

Before Gwen could say anything else, the waiter with the gorgeous smile once again appeared, putting down mugs in front of Arthur and Gwen. "Who's this, then?" Merlin asked as he shook something—Gwen thought it was probably cinnamon—onto the whipped cream that topped Arthur's drink. "You've never come here with anyone else before."

Arthur cleared his throat. "This is my friend, Gwen. We're just off on a lark, avoiding life and such."

Merlin nodded. "Avoiding life is one thing I can understand." He gestured to the small cafe at large. "It's why I got this job. People tell me their problems and I forget mine."

Gwen suddenly realized that she had been doing exactly that—she hadn't been thinking about her dead family at all. She felt her half smile drop off her face and brought a hand up to cover her face.

"Gwen, are you all right?"

"Um, yeah." Gwen sniffed into her sleeve. "I'm fine."

Arthur reached out and grabbed hold of Gwen's hand, pulling it away from her face and keeping it in his grasp against the table top. "Hey," he whispered, "it'll be okay."

Merlin watched the exchange, perplexed. "Something tells me we're avoiding a little more than just life." He glanced round the empty cafe, then sat down next to Gwen. "Why don't you enlighten me as to what else, eh, Gwen?"

"Death," she muttered, pulling her hand away from Arthur's and putting it in her lap as she looked down.

"Sorry, what?"

"We're avoiding death, too," she elaborated, looking up at Merlin. "My parents and little brother just recently died in a car accident." Gwen felt like she was reciting someone else's lines. She thought it seemed like the expression on Merlin's face was rehearsed, as if they were on a television drama.

She wished that were the case.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Merlin said.

"You and everyone else," Gwen agreed.

~*~

"Come back soon!" Merlin encouraged them as they headed for the door. "Good talking, Arthur, Gwen."

After Gwen had told Merlin about the deaths of her family, the conversation had awkwardly migrated toward how Morgana was (good as ever, apparently) and if Merlin would please join Arthur's football team already because Arthur knew Merlin could almost work magic with a ball (he was self-proclaimed as ‘rubbish', but Arthur insisted he was just being modest). By the time Merlin admitted he needed to close up the shop, Gwen was laughing, though almost reluctantly, at Merlin's terrible jokes.

"S'later." Arthur waved as he stepped out on to the street. Gwen offered a little wave of her fingers. Merlin flashed a grin as the door swung shut behind them.

"He's nice," Gwen commented, unsure of what else to say.

"Yeah," Arthur agreed. "I go there as often as I can. I hardly ever see any other people working; it's always just Merlin. He's a right laugh."

"Can't argue with that." As Gwen slid into the passenger seat of Arthur's car, something occurred to her. "You know, what was that he said when we first got there? That you'd never brought anyone else along?"

"Mmm?" Arthur glanced quizzically at her before pulling out into traffic.

"Does that mean you've never brought Morgana?"

Arthur guffawed. "Are you joking? You can't even picture me there because of Morgana and you're surprised that I've never taken her there?"

Gwen blushed. "Ah, yeah, that was a bit stupid of me. Sorry."

"No problem," Arthur said, amusement still colouring his voice.

"Seems odd though," Gwen continued, glancing cautiously over at him. "You taking me somewhere you've never taken your girlfriend, I mean."

He shrugged. "I just thought you'd appreciate it. You're a lot more down to earth than Morgana."

"Is that a compliment or an insult?"

He looked at a loss. "I'm not sure."

"Hm," Gwen hummed, narrowing her eyes curiously at Arthur. She wasn't sure exactly what to make of him.

They rode in silence the rest of the way back to the graveyard. Arthur parked just ahead of Gwen's car and turned in his seat to look at her.

"Good time today?"

Gwen nodded. "You did a wonderful job of rescuing me. Thank you."

"It's no problem. In fact..." Arthur rummaged in the center console of his car a moment before pulling out a pen and a piece of paper. He scribbled something on the paper and handed it to her. "That's in case you ever need rescuing again."

Gwen looked at the paper. Plain block numbers stood out at her. She looked back up and cracked a small smile. "We'll see." She made to start getting out of the car, then changed her mind. "I really don't think you're posh," she said quickly. "It seems one is not always exactly what meets the eye."

Arthur grinned. "So they say."

She ducked out of his car and hurried to her own. As she twisted the key to turn the engine, she noticed Arthur wave to her in his rear view mirror as he drove away. She waved back, using her entire hand this time.

~*~

Gwen awoke to a dark blue room with a start, clutching her sheets to herself and breathing heavily. She couldn't recall exactly what she'd been dreaming about, but she knew it had something to do with a car accident—more specifically, the car accident.

The clock on her bedside table showed that it was nearing one thirty in the morning. She sighed and kicked off her sheets, shuffling to the kitchen. She knew she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for at least another hour—her obvious exhaustion at work was what had led her boss to decide to give her some mandatory leave.

Gwen stared at her squealing kettle blankly, so tired she almost didn't remember what she was supposed to do with it. Suddenly recalling, she unplugged it and poured the hot water over the tea bag. Giving it a stir and chucking the tea bag into the garbage, she wandered out into the hallway between the small kitchen and the even smaller living room. Gwen hated being alone in her house. She'd never minded before, but now it seemed like every shadow was out to get her. She even hated it in the daytime. She almost found herself wishing for someone to knock on her door and offer food like they had for the first couple of weeks, just so she could talk to someone who'd take her mind off things.

She wondered why, exactly, the people had all stopped with the food all around the same time. Was there some sort of unwritten code that said when the sole survivor of an immediate family had gotten over the absence of her parents and sibling enough to be able to make her own food? Gwen thought the idea was absurd. Even if they just thought she in particular would be okay now, because of course Gwen could handle it, it wasn't any better. They didn't really know anything about her. They had no right to assume anything about her.

Then again, even if they were still bringing her food, they wouldn't be doing it in the middle of the night. Gwen sighed and turned to go back into the kitchen, dumping what was left of her tea down the sink and getting back into bed to stare at the ceiling until it got light out or she fell asleep again—whichever came first.

~*~

Gwen turned the key in the lock of her house and pushed open the door. She flipped on a light as she stepped in and looked around. Sighing to herself, she dropped her keys on the dining room table and shrugged off her coat.

It had occurred to Gwen that she needed to clean out all the stuff that belonged to her parents and her brother that she had no use for, but she hadn't gotten around to it. While at the grocery store she'd decided that it was about time she did, but now that she was home and looking around again, she didn't want to do it.

She dithered around after she put the food neatly away in the cupboards, looking into various rooms and moving things from shelf to shelf. Gwen stopped in front of her brother's bedroom door. She hadn't been in there at all since he died, and she wasn't sure she wanted to be. Something inside her made her reach for the doorknob and turn it.

The second she looked at the dark painted walls adorned with posters, a lump welled up in her throat. She wandered in and sat down on the unmade bed, tears threatening to pour down her face. Eventually she stopped trying to stop them and just sat there and cried.

Thirty minutes later, Gwen was picking through a box of old comic books. She remembered how obsessed Elyan had been with them—it seemed that every time she turned around he was reading a new comic book. Obviously he had kept them in his closet for some sentimental reason. They were useless to Gwen, much like all the clothes she had already taken down and packed into boxes, but she couldn't bring herself to get rid of them in quite the same manner.

Gwen reluctantly put a comic book back in the box and closed it, pushing it next to the boxes of clothes for donation. She continued to go through her brother's things—sorting them into garbage, donation, and keep boxes—with an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. When she finally quit for the day, she left the room to go to bed feeling even more alone than she already had in the empty house.

~*~

Wiping her dusty hands on her jeans, Gwen rushed to open the front door. She was expecting to be met with green eyes looking at her, but instead they were a light blue.

"Hey," Arthur said. "Morgana says that she's sorry she couldn't make it, but she forgot she'd made a hair appointment for today. And this time she actually said that to me." He grinned wryly.

Morgana had called Gwen the day before on the off chance that Gwen wanted to go to a party that night. She declined, saying that she really needed to stay ahead on cleaning out the house. When Morgana heard that, she offered to come and help, which had surprised Gwen—and was probably the reason she wasn't surprised to see Arthur.

"No problem," Gwen replied, stepping back and opening the door wider. "Come on in. I'm just about done with my parents' room, and then it's just various places around the house."

"Pretty nice house," Arthur commented. Gwen shut the door behind him and moved ahead to lead him to the room she was working on.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I grew up here, so I know every inch of it." She left out how she felt every time she turned a corner expecting to see her dad with his feet up in front of the fire, or her mother cooking in the kitchen, or her brother playing video games.

"That must be nice. My dad and I moved around a lot when I was younger. I never really got connected to a house—I was always well aware that we'd be leaving it at some point."

Gwen shrugged before explaining which boxes were for what and where to put any garbage he found. As they set to work, she started up the conversation again. "Moving around doesn't sound so bad, though. I've always wanted to see different parts of the world—or even just the UK."

Now it was his turn to shrug. "If you look at it that way, I guess it wasn't so bad."

Gwen tossed a pair of her father's old and holy socks into the rubbish bin. Doing so gave her a flash of her parents arguing over whether or not he should get new socks or not (her father insisted no, her mother insisted yes), and she found herself saying, "Do you still miss her?"

Arthur froze with his hand halfway into a drawer. He slowly withdrew it without saying anything.

"Your mum, I mean," Gwen rambled, wishing fervently she hadn't bothered saying anything in the first place.

"Yeah," Arthur said shortly, reaching back into the drawer and pulling out a wad of scrunched up envelopes, which he made a quizzical face at before throwing them away.

Gwen wasn't sure if she was disappointed in his answer or not, but she didn't press the matter. In a comfortable silence, she and Arthur worked their way through an entire dresser and were just starting on the next one when Arthur started to elaborate.

"When she first died, I wasn't quite little enough to be so clueless as to think she would be coming back—I somewhat understood how death worked—but I was little enough that I didn't understand the implications of it."

Gwen listened quietly as she cleaned, wondering where he was going with this.

"I would always turn corners and expect to see her cleaning or reading or watering her plants. When I woke up in the morning, I thought she'd be in the kitchen making me breakfast before school." He sighed. "Instead, the house built up dust along with her books and the plants all slowly died. In the morning, I was lucky if my father remembered enough to pour me some juice. He had never put much stock in breakfast." He paused to toss something across the room and into a box for donation.

"I was actually glad when we moved for the first time, because it was a relief to get away from a place that she'd been. I think that was why we moved in the first place—my father couldn't handle just losing her, he had to run away from the memory of her, too."

"It got tedious, though, all that running, right?" Gwen put in to encourage him when he paused.

He nodded. "For me it did. But even though we got as far away from where we'd lived with her as you can while still being in the UK, it was never enough for him. It still isn't. I think he's getting ready to move again pretty soon; I can usually predict when he'll move pretty accurately.

"My point, though, is that yes, I do still miss my mum. Even though I barely knew her, really, I still remember how she acted, and better yet, how my dad used to act when she was alive. He was a proper father, back then. Now he's just a man on the run."

Gwen spoke without thinking. "It's like you've lost both your parents, too."

Arthur looked at her a moment before shrugging. "In a way. But at least I still have my dad, even if he's not really all there."

She nodded before sweeping her arm through the bottom of an empty drawer to clear out all the little pieces of junk and dust that was still hiding there. Gwen shoved the drawer shut and opened the next one. It was already empty except for a small cardboard box. She took it out and performed the arm sweep again before shutting the drawer and turning to frown at the box.

"It's full of blank paper," she said after opening it and flipping through the stack of loose leaf. "What am I supposed to do with that?"

Arthur frowned. "Keep it, I guess. You could always use it."

"I don't think so," Gwen said. "Do you want it?"

He held out his hands in answer, and she handed the closed box to him. He placed it to one side of himself before mimicking Gwen's arm sweep on his last drawer and shutting it. "Is that it?" Arthur asked, turning to Gwen, who was leaning against the bed.

She straightened up and got to her feet to look around. "I guess so. It looks really empty in here," she added, her tone flattening.

"Must be weird," Arthur commented. He was used to seeing empty rooms from all his moves, but he was sure the sight wasn't a normal one for Gwen. She nodded as she led the way out of the room and shut the door behind them, confirming his guess. "Have you thought about what you're going to do?"

Gwen looked at Arthur enquiringly.

"I mean, are you going to keep living here, or are you going to sell it and get your own flat, or..."

She frowned and glanced around the house as if thinking really hard about it. "I don't like it here," she finally said quietly, in a tone near surprised.

"No? Why not?" Arthur pressed, honestly curious.

"It's... lonely. I guess I'm like your father—I want to run away from where all the memories were made." She frowned. "No, actually, it's more like I don't want to make anymore memories here, as if that would ruin the old ones or something. It's already so different from all the cleaning I've done." Gwen looked at Arthur and shrugged. "I don't know how to explain it."

Arthur wasn't sure if he even really understood her logic, but he nodded anyway. "Well, if you ever really need to get away, I have a spare room in my flat," he offered.

"Oh, no way," Gwen protested. "I couldn't just encroach on your territory like that."

"Sure you could," Arthur said. "I wouldn't mind."

"Would Morgana mind?"

Arthur furrowed his brow. "Why should she? It's a spare room, not the other side of my bed." Even as he said the words, he had a sinking feeling that Morgana probably would be irrational about it like that.

Gwen had the same feeling. "Well, still. Thank you, but I'm fine here."

"If you insist. Just keep it in mind," Arthur said, dropping the issue for the moment. "What are we working on next?"

~*~

Gwen had been trying her best to stay preoccupied, to not linger near the silenced and empty bedrooms, to not think too much about how they would remain empty, for near to a week. Morgana had come by a few days earlier to help take all the donation boxes to the nearest charity shop, saving Gwen quite a few car trips. She'd been surprised that Morgana actually helped with something, though she thought maybe Morgana had actually acquired a guilty conscience and was trying to make up for all the times she sent Arthur instead. By the end of that day, the house felt twice as empty as it had in the first place, and it had only worsened as time went by.

Now Gwen sat in the living room, staring at some TV show that she had no clue as to the storyline of. The house sounded way too quiet for her liking, especially since she'd finally given up on the show and muted it. She missed the sounds of family—her brother's too loud rap music, her mother knocking about in the kitchen, her father's sports game turned up too loud. Without the noise of other people, the house was just a house when it should have been a home. Her home.

She could even bring herself to miss the sounds of her parents bickering about something or telling Elyan he couldn't do something, which always led to a screaming match because her brother was an expert in overreaction. Gwen missed him coming into her room to complain about the latest thing their parents had done to offend him, though she'd always wished for him to leave her room as soon as possible at the time.

Thinking about all the things she missed, Gwen felt like crying all over again, but she couldn't. Her cheeks hurt, there was a lump in her throat, and she could feel tears building up behind her eyes, but they didn't fall, though she did nothing to stop them. It was like she'd already cried too much for her body to want to give up anymore tears.

Gwen was sick of feeling like this. She was sick of crying and moping and sometimes thinking that maybe she was okay only to find out that she was most definitely not because how could she use Elyan's special mug, even if it was the only clean one because she was too lazy to do the dishes? She was sick of trying to move on at least a bit and failing. She was sick of being nostalgic every second she spent in her house.

She felt like she was living in the past when she should be looking to the future. She'd always been the type of person to never regret anything and always move forward, but she was stuck on this. It was understandable, but Gwen hated it.

Suddenly, it occurred to her—if she wanted to stop living in the past, she needed to literally move away from it. Her thoughts flashed to her conversation with Arthur. He'd suggested selling the house and getting her own flat. But Gwen knew she didn't make enough money to pay rent with the housing market the way it was, even with the money her parents had left her and the money the house would bring in.

He had offered that spare room if she ever needed it, though... and if she ever wanted to move on, she did. Even though Gwen had her suspicions about Morgana being upset about Gwen living with her boyfriend when they didn't even live together, she thought that it was probably her best bet—a thought aided by the emotions she felt were suffocating her.

The decision to call both Arthur and a real estate agent in the morning made, Gwen turned off the television and went to bed as peacefully as possible with the ghosts of her past hovering around her.

~*~

"Thanks for all your help, Arthur," Gwen said as she put down the last box in his no-longer-spare room. "It's just until I sort out—"

"—what you're going to do," he finished for her. "I know, Gwen, you keep telling me. And I keep telling you, stay as long as you want."

Gwen blushed. "Sorry, I'll try to stop with that."

"Please do," Arthur teased.

"You're sure Morgana is okay with this?" Gwen asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot nervously.

Arthur wrinkled his nose. "I don't need a signed waiver from my girlfriend to help out a friend."

"No, I don't suppose you do," Gwen said. "But did you even tell her?"

The look on Arthur's face said it all.

"Right. Well, you better get to that," Gwen reprimanded. "I'm just going to start unpacking my things."

"Okay," Arthur said, a bit of a laugh hidden in his tone, as he backed out of the room.

Gwen sighed and opened a box of clothes, starting to hang them up. Her parents' house hadn't sold yet, but the agent expressed high hopes for it, though she recommended that Gwen not wait for it to sell before moving, hence why Gwen was moving into Arthur's a mere three days after she'd decided she was going to.

Eventually Gwen ran out of clothes to hang up and made up the bed with her own sheets, deciding she would unpack her other various paraphernalia the next day. She wandered out of the room, thinking she'd find out if Arthur wanted tea or something.

She found Arthur in the kitchen, already making tea. He looked up as she walked in and smiled. "I was just coming to look for you," he said. "You want some tea?"

Gwen nodded. "Yes, thanks," she added to confirm.

He poured some and pushed it across the island to her before pouring some more for himself. "How are you doing?" he asked conversationally.

Gwen looked into her still swirling tea. "I'm okay."

Arthur nodded and didn't push for elaboration. "Want to come watch some telly with me? I'll catch you up on what's happened in my current favourite."

"Sure," she said, following him gratefully to the living room and sitting down in a chair just across from the couch, but still facing the television. As she settled in to sip her tea and listened to Arthur explain a complicated plot line that actually sounded really interesting, she realized that she already felt better here than she had at her old house.

The thought brought a smile to her face.

~*~

Gwen stared up at the ceiling above her bed. She was not smiling—in fact, she was near tears. She couldn't remember why she'd ever thought it would be a good idea to move out of her old house. Gwen let out a loud dry sob and rolled over to bury her face in her pillow. Almost immediately after, the door cracked open and Arthur peered in. She wondered if he'd been hanging around the other side, waiting for her to make some sort of noise. After all, she'd probably freaked him out when she slammed the door after hanging up the phone and not made any noise for at least an hour.

"Gwen?" he said softly, pushing the door open farther. "Are you okay?"

She didn't respond, and Arthur took that as permission to come in and sit on the edge of the bed.

"Who was on the phone?" he asked. When she still didn't respond, he kept talking. "Come on, Gwen. You can talk to me. I told you all about my mum."

At that, Gwen rolled over again and snorted. "Don't patronize me."

"Well, come on, then," Arthur said.

She sighed. "It was the real estate agent. Someone's made an offer on the house that she thinks I should take."

"Seems like a good thing to me—but not, I guess, to you?"

Gwen shook her head best she could while lying down. "How could I sell it, Arthur? How could I even consider it? My parents loved that house. I lived there my whole life. How can I just let that all go?"

"Weren't you saying that you couldn't stay there anymore because of all the memories? Don't you want to move on?"

"Of course I want to move on, but I don't want to let it all go. I don't want to forget," Gwen said, her voice cracking.

Arthur looked at her, then suddenly stood and offered his hand. When she didn't take it, he grabbed her hand and dragged her upward anyway.

"What are you doing?" she asked, resisting his grasp futilely.

"You need to get out into the world and do what you would normally do. First things first—we're going to the coffee shop."

"Why?" Gwen asked lethargically, though she stopped resisting him pulling her to the front door.

"Because I don't want to sit and watch you depress yourself to death. Get your shoes on."

Gwen obeyed.

~*~

Gwen woke the next morning to Arthur knocking on her bedroom door and coming in with a cup of coffee. She turned to see that it was 7:30 AM.

"Why am I awake?" she mumbled.

"Because," Arthur said, "you need to get up and go to work."

"I thought I was on leave?"

"Not anymore you're not. I was serious when I said you were getting back to doing what you normally do."

Gwen frowned. She believed him there. She recalled falling through the door last night, exhausted after being dragged to the coffee shop, where Arthur convinced Merlin that it would be fun to go play football in the park. Gwen was not asked if she agreed—she was merely forced to play goalie for Arthur while Merlin's friend Will played goal for him. And blocking Merlin's shots wasn't exactly easy.

Regardless, Gwen had found herself having fun. Will was at least twice as funny as Merlin and kept yelling taunts across the field to her. And for every taunt Will tossed out, Arthur had two encouraging shouts to make up for it.

Gwen reached out and picked up the coffee mug, sitting up in bed to sip it. "Thanks, Arthur," she mumbled.

"No problem," he said. "You better hurry. We can carpool if you do."

"I want to drive," she said as she swung her legs out of bed, but Arthur pretended not to hear as he left the room and closed the door behind him.

Gwen quickly showered and dressed and got out to Arthur's car in twenty minutes. He was impatiently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel when she got in.

"I would normally drive myself, you know," Gwen pointed out.

"But everything's not exactly the same," Arthur tossed back. She could tell he'd had that line planned and she was supposed to take the hint, so she buckled up without complaint.

Arthur threw a see you later after Gwen as she got out at the shop where she worked. She glared at him through the windscreen, only to get a broad grin back. She smiled in spite of herself, though she turned away so he wouldn't see.

The work day passed without event, and Gwen soon found herself standing out on the pavement, waiting for Arthur to show up. She was not pleased with his tardiness, and told him so when he finally pulled up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Morgana called and went off on me about how I haven't asked her out to dinner recently and she's disappointed in me. I don't know why she can't just ask me."

Gwen secretly agreed, but didn't offer her opinion.

"So I told her we could go out tomorrow," Arthur finished as he pulled out of the car park.

"Tomorrow? Why not today?" Gwen asked, confused.

"Because I have plans today," Arthur said stubbornly. "She wasn't pleased about it, but that's her problem."

"You have plans? With who?"

"You, you daft idiot."

Gwen was struck dumb. "Did you tell her that? I bet you didn't, seeing as you didn't even tell me."

"You bet right," Arthur admitted.

Gwen sighed. "What are we doing?"

"Going to a bar."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yes."

"I would not do that normally."

"Every thing's not exactly the same."

"The same line doesn't work twice."

"Yes, it does."

"Yeah, it does."

~*~

Gwen unlocked the front door of the flat with her key and pushed the door open, expecting to find it empty. She'd deliberately taken a detour from work to her favourite clothes shop to go shopping, and then to the grocery store to stock up on more food. Instead of the quiet she expected, she found Arthur sitting on the couch staring at a blank television screen. She frowned and dumped her shopping bags on the dining room table.

"What are you doing home?" she asked, plunking herself down next to him. "What happened to your plans with Morgana? I thought you'd be gone by now."

"Nothing," he said vaguely.

"Obviously something," she countered. "You're here and not at dinner."

"Yes, well, that would be because she called and told me it was off."

Gwen breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, is that it? I thought it might be something worse."

Arthur raised an eyebrow at her. "I think the only way it could really be worse is if she'd just stood me up and started ignoring my calls."

Gwen frowned. "Wait... you mean..."

"She called off the entire relationship. And I'm to tell you that she'll not be friends with you anymore, either."

"What? Why would she do that?"

"Apparently one of her friends told her she saw us at the bar last night acting all cozy. Morgana says she knew you couldn't just have moved in because I wanted to help a friend. She thinks I've been cheating on her since your family died."

Gwen winced. "Did you tell her—" She stopped talking when Arthur gave her a look. "Right, of course you tried. That was a stupid question."

"She doesn't listen to reason, you know that."

She nodded, then changed tact. "Were we acting cozy at the bar last night?"

Arthur shrugged. "Maybe sort of. There was a point where we were sitting in a corner playing I Spy. You were sort of on my lap. I guess someone could misinterpret that."

Gwen giggled at the memory. "Are you really upset?" she asked seriously.

Arthur thought a moment before answering. "I'm upset that she would think something like that of you and me, but when I really think about it, I'm not devastated that she's gone. How about you?"

Gwen shrugged. "She was never that great of a friend. She just picked me up as her charity case."

Gwen realized the true sincerity of her words and wondered why she'd even let Morgana hang around her for that long. Then she realized that without Morgana, she'd never have met Arthur—and Arthur was definitely the best thing to happen in her life in quite a while. She looked over at him to see his blue eyes looking back into hers. A strong sensation ran through her and she shifted closer to him, grabbing up his hand.

"I never really thanked you for everything you've done for me," she said.

Arthur laughed. "You've thanked me multiple times, Gwen."

"Not really," she insisted. "Without you, I'd just be a lump of jelly on my old bed in my old house, barely living. You showed me how to move on."

"Well," Arthur said slowly. "It was definitely worth losing Morgana for."

"You think so?" Gwen asked, slowly shifting even closer to Arthur.

"Um... yeah. I do," Arthur answered quietly. Gwen was so close to his face that he was having trouble thinking. "Gwen—Gwen, what are you doing?"

She moved back a bit and tilted her head. "I just realized," she told him, "everything is going to be okay."

Arthur chuckled nervously. "I could have told you that."

"It's better when you realize it yourself," she said, and then she was kissing him. He tried to fight it for a moment, a million thoughts about why not running through his head, but soon enough he gave into it, only able to think of why.

"Damn," he said when they broke apart. "That was long overdue."

"I'll say. We should have just had an affair and made Morgana's claims worth something."

"But that would have just ruined this whole moment," he countered. "Stop living in the past, you silly girl."

"I just did."

~*~

When Gwen was in junior school, she was naive about the world. Nothing any presentation could tell her was going to fix that. Now that she was all grown up, she had learned a thing or two.

The most important thing she had learned was that fate sometimes worked in strange ways. It was this she considered as she stared at herself in the mirror and smoothed out her white dress. Merlin appeared in the mirror behind her and smiled.

"You look great, Gwen. Don't worry," he said.

"I'm not," she told him honestly, turning toward him. "Ready to go?"

He held out his arm in answer, and she hooked her arm through it, allowing him to lead her out of her change room and down an aisle. Gwen felt a pang of regret that it wasn't her dad beside her and her mum crying in the audience, and that her brother wasn't there to poke fun at her after the ceremony, but pushed it aside. This day, this moment, was about her and Arthur.

They reached the end of the aisle, and Merlin handed her off to Arthur before taking his place as best man. Gwen smiled as Arthur took both her hands and the preacher started to speak.

"We are gathered here today to witness the joining of these two souls..."