SC6 Entry 7: Fleeting Memories
Title: Fleeting Memories
Themes and/or Prompt/s Silk
Rating: PG
Word count: 2,116
Characters/Pairings: Arthur/Gwen, Merlin, Morgana, Gwaine, Percival, and Leon. Assorted Once Upon A Time characters.
Spoilers/Warnings: AU, ModernAU, with a dash of crossover with Once Upon A Time.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, only BBC owns Merlin and ABC/Disney owns Once Upon A Time. I just love throwing their two worlds together.
Summary: Arthur and Gwen and their loved ones are separated by an evil curse conjured up from Morgana. Arthur is haunted by dreams of a mysterious woman and will do anything to find her.
Author’s notes: This is an idea that had been swirling around in my head for about a month or two now and this challenge gave me the opportunity (and the nudge) to write it. If you don’t watch Once Upon A Time, that’s okay. I only use some elements from the show that fans will find and enjoy and while others it will just be part of my story.
The brush of silk and the scent of lavender clouded his mind. The warmth of her soft caramel skin made his body ache and his heart beat faster. Her sweet lips captured in his were like fire to his body and made that ache grow stronger. He could feel her rapid breath on his neck as her lips trailed down his throat and he could feel her silk nightgown in his fingers and how the soft, coolness of the material was like ice to the fire burning inside of him. His own breathing became hitched and he heard her warm, sweet voice whisper breathlessly in his ear.
Arthur
Arthur awoke with a jolt and sat straight up in his bed. His body was covered in a cool sweat but his heart was still beating fast and his body ached as if the dream was real. His hands were in fists at his sides clutching at his navy cotton sheets. He couldn’t contain the rapid and uneven breaths coming out and he couldn’t shake the reality of the dream.
The dream was so real.
“Arthur?” He jumped at the soft voice next to him and felt a cold hand touch his warm bare shoulder.
He turned his head to see Ruby next to him. Her wide brown eyes were concerned and her full lips were formed into a straight line in worry. Her fair skin was not the girl he dreamed about and her long wavy brown hair with bright blood red streaks was not the curly lavender scented brown hair from his dream. If he wasn’t dreaming about his own girlfriend, then who was she?
“Are you alright? What’s wrong? You look as if you dreamed about a ghost,” Ruby said rubbing her hand down his arm softly and comfortingly.
“I’ll…be fine. Just go back to bed.”
She gave him a hard look and then nodded her head and started to fall back to bed when she saw the time.
“Shit! Granny’s going to kill me! I’m going to have to go, are you sure you’re going to be alright?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine. Just head back home before Granny catches you out late with me again. She might fire me if we keep this up.”
Ruby just shook her head and kissed him lightly on the lips, no tingle, no fire, nothing compared to his dream.
“Don’t worry, Granny wouldn’t hire her best and favorite bus boy,” She smiled.
Arthur nodded his head and then Ruby quickly grabbed her things and left.
Arthur was then left alone in his thoughts, he couldn’t shake the dream and he quickly grabbed a pen and paper and wrote it all down. He then got up and went to the bathroom and saw how horrible he looked. His face was pale and he looked sickly and he couldn’t control the rapid beating of his heart. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to go into work tomorrow. He needed to talk to Merlin, but it would have to wait till the morning. Merlin was the only one who he knew would understand.
As he stared in the mirror, he could almost see someone else staring back at him, a woman, angry and afraid. He then felt everything go cold and everything around him fade into darkness.
*~*~*~*~*
Merlin rushed through Storybrooke’s General Hospital halls and felt his worn down sneakers skid across the floor as he turned a sharp corner. He had to find her, he knew this would change everything. He jumped over a pharmacy cart and hurried as quickly as he could upstairs since he had no patience for elevators nor did he feel safe in those odd and dangerous contraptions. He felt in his heart and in his soul that Arthur remembered his past last night and he needed to find Gwen to see if she was showing any signs as well.
Something changed in Storybrooke last night and Merlin, being the only one who remembers his past before Morgana’s wretched curse, felt it change. His magic was dim in this world but he could still feel when things happened that could change the course of their future and could break this horrible nightmare of a curse.
“Merlin! Where are you running off to?” Doctor Whale called after him.
“To the bathroom, sorry Doctor!” Merlin called over his shoulder.
He finally reached the Nurse’s break room and he slid inside. Most of his fellow Nurse’s greeted him warmly and he noticed Gwen sitting in a corner, staring into her coffee.
“Gwen! How are you this morning?” He asked collapsing down in front of her.
“I’m…I don’t know. I didn’t sleep well.”
Merlin felt his stomach flip and he tried to sound nonchalant, “Oh, why?”
“I kept having this strange, yet very vivid realistic dreams.”
“What were they about?”
She blushed and couldn’t answer right away, “Well…one was…very…uh…”
“Spit it out!” Merlin said impatiently.
“Part of it was not something I wish to speak to you about Merlin! It was very….passionate!”
“Oh…”Merlin felt himself blush and then decided he’d avoid that one, “What was the other part like?”
“I was…being crowned Queen of somewhere, wearing this gorgeous gown and there was a man, who was obviously the King smiling down at me as he held my hands. He was the most handsome man I have ever seen and yet, I felt like I knew him and I love him. He was the same man in the other part of the dream as well.”
Merlin couldn’t contain the smile that formed on his face, “Maybe you do know him. Maybe he’s someone here in town.”
“I’ve never seen him before Merlin, he couldn’t possibly-”
Gwen was cut off by one of the head Nurses popping her head inside the room, “Gwen! Merlin! Doctor Whale needs you stat!”
They both jumped up and rushed out of the room while the head Nurse filled them in on the patient coming into the ER. It was a male, about mid-twenties, who was found on his bathroom floor, symptoms of a heart attack but as they rushed him to the hospital, they found scars and bruises and cuts along his body, they think him might have been robbed and injured in an attack with the assailant.
“Were there any signs of a break in?” Merlin asked concerned for his friend.
“That’s the strange part, there was no signs. But some of his scars look to be years old and some of the bruises days old. Something is not right here.”
Merlin could sense Morgana’s work here and he knew those scars to be from battle wounds many, many years ago.
Gwaine and Percival come flying through the ER pushing the gurney, Gwaine’s EMT jacket is covering Arthur to try and keep his body temperature warm. Gwen and Merlin follow behind them and quickly into the operating room.
Doctor Whale and Doctor Leon come in both ready for work. The head Nurse fills them in and meanwhile Merlin rushes over to check Arthur’s vitals.
He’s in good condition but something has happened to him and it’s not any of the things they were assuming. Magic was at work here.
“How is he?” Gwen comes over and then she sees Arthur for the first time. She backs away in shock and confusion.
“Gwen?” Merlin asked worried. He sees the look of shock on her face and she walks back towards him carefully.
Over the chaos and loud noise of the room, suddenly, it’s as if only Arthur, Merlin, and Gwen are in the room. Gwen looks at his pale face and he’s shivering and his breathing is shallow and hitched. She reaches toward his face and brushes a piece of hair out of his face.
Gwen looks down at the injured and sick Arthur and holds his hand close to her face. He’s wrapped with a bandage over his left shoulder from the horrible monster’s attack. She prays for his survival so he can become…
Gwen jerks her hand away as the memory flooded through her brain. Suddenly his heart rate starts to slow and he opens his eyes for the first time.
Arthur sees a blurred figure and as the figure comes into focus, it’s a woman. The woman from his dream, dressed only this time not in a long silk nightgown but purple scrubs and her long curly hair is piled up in a messy bun on top of her head. She looks at him with concerned eyes and somehow recognition. Then her name comes to him, as if he knew it all along.
“Guinevere,” he said almost as if it were a command mixed with a teasing tone. Her eyes became wide as his hand reached out for hers and she took it instantly.
“I’m here Arthur,” She whispered. How did she know his name? She hadn’t even heard them tell her the patients name and yet it just came to her.
Merlin looked on between them with joy and happiness. The key to breaking this spell was so simple, it was true love and their love was more powerful than anything.
“WOULD YOU TWO STOP CODDLING OVER THE PATIENT! WE NEED TO SAVE HIM!” Doctor Whale shouted at them and they both jumped as they realized Arthur’s heartbeat started to decline even lower and his breathing became shallow and slow.
Merlin shook his head in disbelief, it was powerful magic that was forcing him to die if he remembered anything. He knew what they had to do to save him.
“This isn’t a normal procedure, you can’t cut in to him. Give me and Gwen just a few moments, we can save him!” Merlin said running up to Whale.
“Merlin, now is not the time,” Leon said impatiently.
“No! We can save him! Just give us a chance!” Merlin argued.
“We have a man dying on the table right now! This is not the time for your antics!” Doctor Whale ordered. Suddenly Percival and Gwaine had started dragging Merlin out. He tried to use his magic but it started to make him weak just attempting it. He couldn’t use magic in this world.
“GUINEVERE! KISS HIM!” Merlin yelled.
“What?!” She shouted as she started doing CPR on Arthur as the monitors started beeping that he only had seconds to live.
“KISS HIM! TRUE LOVE’S KISS!” He shouted.
“This is utter ridiculousness! Get him out of here!” Whale shouted.
Gwen looked down at Arthur’s eyes as they started to droop and she couldn’t let him die, not that she had just found this man from her dreams. She felt such a strong connection to him, something about him made her feel like her world was finally complete.
So she grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him.
It was like a jolt, suddenly memories of another life came rushing back to her mind and his. They remembered how they first met, their first kiss, their good times and bad, their wedding, and their wedding night. Everything came to them and she pulled away in shock.
His color regained and his heart beat went back to a normal pace, and suddenly those memories all filled her mind. She felt herself turning and she looked to see Morgana, the right hand woman to Mayor Mills standing in her clingy dark green dress staring at her with a flash of anger in her eyes and frustration all over her face.
Merlin, who had been rooted to the spot with everyone else in the room, turned as well to see her and with surprising strength escaped free from Gwaine and Percival’s hold. He rushed out after the witch as she stalked through the hospital.
“Morgana! Stop!”
“It’s not over yet Merlin, just wait, the worst is yet to come.”
“But why are we still here? If the curse is broken?”
“Oh, it’s not. Only a small fraction of it is broken. Now everyone must live with these memories of another life in their heads and try and figure out which is real and which is just a dream. Your precious friends, must now live with the suffering of their own memories.”
She disappeared around the corner and Merlin slumped against the wall. And the finally thought, all hope was once regained.
He walked back into the operating room and found everyone trying to figure out what to do next, but he was happy just to see, no matter what stupid curse, that Gwen and Arthur in the middle of the room of confusion were staring at each other, holding each other’s hand with awe and admiration that they had finally found one another.
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