hi! back again in your inbox <3
“wearing the other person’s old shirt to sleep better”
“wrapping the other person up in their jacket to stay warm”
or anything on the list! i jusf want to read your take on it :))
You are always welcome in here omg 💗 now for some heartbreak, as a treat!!
He was gone. Guinevere knew that. She’d felt it when it happened, as though someone had thrown an ax and cleaved her heart straight in two. She’d fallen to the ground immediately, her body wracked with sobs. Merlin was the only person who could calm her down, convince her to leave where she was and return to her rooms. She hadn’t known how he’d appeared so quickly, but she’d long since stopped questioning his mysterious appearances.
All she noticed was no light remained in either of their eyes.
For days, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in the throes of her grief, mourning the greatest lost she’d felt since her father passed. Arthur was ingrained in her soul, and when he left, he took a piece of her with him.
Gwen trudged through the days with dark shadows beneath her eyes, trying as hard as she could to keep her head above water and the kingdom afloat alongside it.
A month passed, then two. By the third, Merlin’s concern had grown ten sizes.
“You need rest, my lady.”
She looked at him, her eyes, though deeply sad, pricking with the barest hint of her old self as she softly corrected, “Gwen. It’s always been Gwen to you. You know that.”
Even now, in the middle of the night, both of them in nightclothes, hiding away in the kitchen, she was still Gwen, and he Merlin. Their friendship was not so far removed, not so altered, that they could not remain familiar.
“I know that, Your Highness,” Merlin repeated, sighing quietly as he added, “Gwen. I know that. I also know you need rest.”
“I can’t sleep,” she confessed, snapping slightly. “Don’t you think I would if I was able to? I haven’t been able to sleep since he — ”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it, though thankfully she didn’t have to. Merlin nodded, his I know unspoken yet still hovering between them.
“I have an idea,” he said after a moment, offering her his hand. She took it, nodding slowly. He led her back to her own bedroom, rustling around until he produced one of Arthur’s shirts.
Though bewildered, she took the shirt from him, disappearing to change.
“You didn’t enchant it, did you?”
She reappeared after a few moments, a lightness he hadn’t seen in months briefly returned to her. The shirt was large on her, engulfing her smaller figure beneath it. Merlin cleared his throat, looking away, his cheeks dusted with a light pink.
Guinevere did as she was told, crawling beneath the covers of her bed. She had no idea how this was meant to help her sleep, though her limbs did feel slightly heavier than usual.
She followed his latest instruction, and tears streamed from her eyes after she inhaled. It wasn’t a shock to find the shirt smelled like Arthur, but it was another reminder that he wasn’t here.
“Wait,” she told him, wiping her eyes and sitting up slowly. Merlin stopped, having been carefully moving towards the door as to not disturb her.
He heeded Gwen’s command, sitting down at the edge of the bed. She shook her head.
She placed a palm on the space next to her. Merlin swallowed nervously, but slid into her bed as she instructed.
Gwen bit down on her lip, deliberating for half a second before she placed a hand on his arm.
“Would you… I mean, would you…?”
She couldn’t get the words out, another tear slipping past her cheek. Thankfully, he could still read her mind after all these years.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Of course.”
Merlin wrapped his arms around her. Not for the first time, they cried together, took turns brushing the water from each other’s faces. Though, when they had both calmed, Guinevere settled back, taking Merlin with her.
“Please don’t disappear,” she whispered. He placed his head down atop hers, and the gesture reminded her so fiercely of her husband that she took a shaky breath to keep herself from breaking down again.
“I won’t,” Merlin whispered. “I promise.”
He wasn’t Arthur. Gwen, however, didn’t want him to be. She wondered what he would have thought, his wife and his advisor huddled together, bound by his memory. She pushed the thought and any remaining guilt away as a yawn arrived. Guinevere settled into Merlin’s chest, listening to his heart as he held her.
For the first time in months, she slept soundly.
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