MERLIN ANNIVERSARY SHARE YOUR WIPS CHALLENGE
Is this a thing? No I just made it up. Share something from your drafts. Tag #bbc merlin or #merlin. Bonus points if you tag someone whose wips you also want to see. Tagging a bunch of cool people to get started but if you see this TAG YOU'RE IT! @limbel @cbk1000 @diaryofatrekker @nebulastars @schweetheart @figachilles @haloud @count-pudding @lualuadraw @lauravian @bakerharrystyles @hurglewurm @gyrhs @mythmagicetc
Something shocking happens that spring: the Lady Morgana comes home.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Gwaine can't help but draw his sword when she's brought into the throne room.
Arthur rises, a small breathless noise escaping him. Merlin moves forward swiftly, a half step in front of the king. Gwaine meets his eyes briefly, knows they're both thinking the same thing: don't let Arthur get too close.
Not that she looks much like a threat right now: wrists bound, dark hair matted, skin crusted in dirt and dry mud and worse. She's thin, too, bird-like bones stark at her collarbones, her hands and wrists, in her face.
She's flanked by the entire patrol that had found her; evidently they're not taking any chances either, despite her bedraggled experience—and rightly so, Gwaine thinks. She's about as predictable and harmless as a feral and vicious animal.
"Morgana," Arthur says, and Gwaine is almost impressed at how close to level he sounds, although it takes him a long moment to say more. "Why are you here?"
Morgana, too, takes a moment to respond. She stands still, but Gwaine gets the feeling it's taking her considerable effort. There is a familiar clench to her jaw, much like the one he's seen Arthur get, when he's pushing through injury.
"Morgause," she says finally, voice more level than Arthur's, "is dead."
And then her knees buckle.
Arthur sends for Gaius, and orders Leon to unbind her, dismissing the patrol. In fact, he dismisses the entire room bar Merlin.
Gwaine promptly ignores this, as does Lancelot. Good man.
"Gwaine," Arthur says tiredly. "You can go."
"Nah, I'm fine," Gwaine says easily, not sheathing his blade. He does not miss the fact that Lancelot is not ordered away; there is something here, between the three of them, some thing he is missing. Merlin is staring a hole in Arthur's head.
Morgana remains slumped on the ground, eyes hooded but still lucid. "Your men are right, Arthur. You should not trust so easily."
"I don't," Arthur says, and there is the clench of his jaw: wounded. "But I do not need their protection."
Gwaine hears Merlin suck in a breath. "Arthur."
Arthur ignores him, and steps towards his sister.
"Why are you here?" he repeats quietly.
She opens her mouth but starts to cough, fist pressed to her own chest as it heaves. If it weren't for the threat of her magic, Gwaine would drop his weapon; she sounds like she's on Death's door.
Arthur wordlessly holds out his water skin.
Suddenly, there's a strange charge in the air, raising the hair on Gwaine's arms. For just a moment, Morgana's gaze bolts past her brother, and lands on Merlin. Gwaine can't help glancing at him too, and doesn't miss the way he flinches, though he doesn't look away from her.
Finally, Morgana takes the skin, hand trembling, and drinks. Then she begins, haltingly, to speak.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
When Morgause dies, a fog lifts in Morgana's mind—and a hatred she had thought her own leeches out of her limbs so suddenly she loses consciousness. She wakes, hours later, sun almost fully sunk in the sky, her sister's body sprawled on the hard ground beside her, and remembers she loves her brother.
Morgana is promptly sick, bile burning her throat on the way up.
Her first clear thought, through the last of the heaving, is that she must get to Arthur.
