fic: stonewalled (merlin)
stonewalled
merlin. in his more self-pitying moments, arthur would imagine that he should feel grateful these sort of things only happen once, that he should be grateful morgana only happened once. arthur; arthur/morgana. rated pg-13. 2660 words.
notes: so, merlin fic. spoilers through the most recent episode, 1.09, and this entire fic is very speculative about the future of these two. clearly, this show isn't strictly abiding to what is well-known of the arthurian legend and i sort of ran with that a little as well? anyway, that is all. read, enjoy, the usual.
it's damned if you don’t and it’s damned if you do -
i once was lost but now i'm found
was blind but now i see you
how selfish of you
(metal heart, cat power)
“I like the idea of making you regret things,” she said once with a smirk.
Looking back, maybe that’s how all of this began.
A statement, a smirk, a poking, a prodding and her.
But it’s always been about her, hasn’t it?
Arthur won’t answer that.
There are grand adventures that shall befall them. It has been foretold, the groundwork for the future laid down, the events to come prophesized and heralded by the likes of mystics and unearthly creatures alike.
This is a lie.
There are grand adventures that shall befall him - Arthur, the once and future king.
Morgana, she shall settle, so they say, as a footnote in history.
Arthur was never one to settle disagreements gracefully.
With the wave of his wrist, Uther booted Arthur from the court, the promise of a more private reprimand in the offing and Arthur had stomped the length of the castle to his chambers.
“You’re angry,” Morgana said. There was a mock petulant frown spread across her lips; it provided little aid to Arthur’s already maligned disposition. “What did your father say this time, hmm?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Arthur snapped and Morgana shook her head as she smiled.
“That’s Arthur though, isn’t it? Poor, poor Arthur,” she drawled. Her fingers drew a line across the mantel as she walked, slow. Her fingers left a trail there in the dust. “Always wanting what he can’t have…”
He had frowned.
“I could have you if I wanted,” he said and she laughed.
“Who said anything about me?”
She was born to wear a crown.
But then again, so was he.
Arthur awakened and he could not remember a thing. A woman, his father, the promise of marriage.
After Gaius and Merlin filled in the remaining gaps, he found Morgana. She crossed her arms in front of her and bit her lip.
“You embarrassed me,” she said.
“Right,” Arthur said. She quirked one brow up and she shifted her weight as though waiting for something from him. Finally she sighed, turned towards the window.
“I would really rather not look at you,” Morgana said. The voice was familiar; the scorn was not.
Arthur found himself wanting to ask, so this is what we’ve become then? but could not think of a single answer he desired as a response.
After the disappearance of Sophie, of Arthur’s accidental fiancée, short of that initial conversation, they did not speak.
There was nothing heavy with intention behind it. He did not avoid her on purpose, and he imagined the same could be considered true for her as well. He thought that perhaps there was nothing to be said. Or, worse still, it was the opposite - there was too much, too much water under the bridge and neither one of them had the desire or strength to attempt to address it.
She cornered him one day, after training. His hair stuck sweaty to his forehead and his chainmail was noisy as he moved.
At first she did not speak. She just stared, her face curiously blank.
“Are you angry with me?” Arthur asked slowly.
Morgana shrugged. “Something along those lines,” she said.
She had stepped forward and stopped before him. Morgana extended a hand and presses her palm firm against the wide plane of his chest. The chainmail was hot under her fingers, felt hot and heavy against him. She drew a line down his sternum with one finger and said, “I really don’t know what to do about you. I really just don’t know.”
“What - ” Arthur had started and Morgana shook her head. She mouthed the word no, but did not actually say it.
She leaned forward, her hand still flat against his chest.
They were close enough that their breath mingled together. His breathing was heavier than hers, a heady blend of nerves and anger and want coiling tight within him. She leaned in a little further and their mouths almost touched. His lips had parted as though of their own volition; his mouth was dry.
Morgana did not kiss him.
She bit at his throat like she’d rather use words but had settled for this instead. Blunt teeth and the easy arch of his neck, throat to neck to jaw. Her teeth eased over the edge, her nose sliding along his cheekbone as her tongue slicked out to sample his jawline.
She hummed against him. Arthur had shivered.
“What…what are you doing?” he asked, tried again for an answer. His mouth was still too dry.
There was a soft chuckle from her, her breath hot against his ear.
“I thought that much would appear obvious,” she said. She caught the soft skin of his ear lobe between her teeth and Arthur had moaned.
His hands had grabbed for her hips. They clutched and they held, the fabric noisy beneath his hands. She laughed lightly again, lip and tongue slicking a line beneath his ear.
She pulled back abruptly; Arthur sighed, colored at the sound of it.
“I forgive you,” she said.
She turned to go, and her hand was the last part of her to leave him.
A pattern emerged:
Rather than speak of their grievances, rather than address unspoken emotions, rather than sound the words aloud - I need you, I want you, I love --- - they acted and punished with hands and mouths and teeth.
Arthur shoved her against a wall. Her skull made a dull thud sound upon impact and she bit her lip hard on a grunt.
Morgana straddled his lap one afternoon and her fingers bit into the hard muscle of his shoulders as she rocked her hips against his; when he groaned and bucked his hips up toward her she left.
At a banquet he found a corner and grabbed Morgana from behind. He bit at the back of her neck; she trembled in his arms. He watched the way her knuckles bruised against the stone of the wall.
Another time he let his fingers drag beneath her skirt, up and up and up, pale skin he could not see but he could feel it, soft against the curve of his clenched fist. He dragged his knuckles over her, against her, his hand coming away wet. His smirk had been wide and obnoxious and her cheeks were pink; “Have a good evening with Sir Guaire then, eh?” he had said.
It was never spoken of after. Dulled and fading bruises on his forearms, her hips.
They were never spoken of.
“I hear Sir Althalos has expressed interest in the Lady Morgana,” Merlin said. Arthur’s armor chinked together; Merlin reached for Arthur’s sword.
“Has he now?”
Practice was brutal the following afternoon.
Once, the stone caught at her hair.
Arthur had slid his hand over the curve of her hip, had pulled her leg up and around him, his fingers firm along the pale underside of her thigh; the muscle there had quivered.
He had slid his hips into and against hers and tried to breathe, his mouth pressed against the crown of her head.
She said his name.
She said his name and then pushed him away.
He did not kiss her once.
Arthur rode through the entire night.
Morgana sat in silence. The guards were searching the castle.
After Mordred, after the child is returned and after Arthur is returned, he approached her in the cold silence of her bedroom, of the night.
“You’re back,” Morgana said. Her voice was small, quiet, still rang incredibly sure in the blue-black dark. He could see her, see her sitting up in her bed, her shape under the blankets.
He lit a candle, two. Morgana blinked.
“And are you glad?” Arthur asked, the beat long between them. The moment was strained by a familiar palpable tension.
Morgana did not answer his question.
“The boy?” she asked, her voice still low, hushed, as though despite the hour, the fact he was the only other man present in the room they ran the risk of being overheard. Not only that, it made his very presence in her chambers feel taboo, that it was something to be hidden.
“And the boy is safe?” Morgana asked.
Arthur frowned. He narrowed his eyes.
“Yes,” was all he said, a choked off syllable and if Morgana detected the level of frustration and restraint in it, she did not comment on it.
Instead she said, “good,” and then stared at him.
“Was there something else, Arthur, or are we finished here?”
It was a poor choice of words, Arthur had thought. There was always something else, always something that remained, something they skated and danced around, as careful with their mouths and tongues and the words emitted there as he was on foot with lance or shield or sword.
This was to be a stumble, a loss to be gained, he had thought, he had been sure. He was tired, he was frustrated, and, yes, maybe he was finished here.
“You know, Morgana,” he had said. “I would really love to know what it is that goes on in that head of yours. I would really love to understand the logic, or the lack thereof, at work there.”
Her face was immobile. No frown or downturn of her lips into a pout could be seen.
“What is that supposed to mean.” She had not said it as a question.
He exhaled loudly.
“What that’s supposed to mean is that you can be so awful and so frustrating and I can’t stand you half the time, you are demanding as hell, and you play these games and I - ” He paused. “Why. I just want to know why.”
“Why what exactly?”
Arthur groaned dramatically and held his head.
“Why do we do this to each other? What do you, what do you want?”
“I wanted the boy to be returned to his home.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“But it is what I am speaking of.”
“What do you want from me?” he yelled. Morgana winced, her eyes cast over towards to door, and then back to him.
“What I want,” she said coldly, “is for you to leave. Get out.”
Arthur only nodded. He ran a hand through his hair and over and back to rub the back of his neck. He turned and his boots squeaked against the floor.
“Good night,” he said; he shut the door behind him.
He left the candles burning.
The next day Morgana visited after lunch.
She stood behind his chair and Arthur placed his book down.
She rested her hands on his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.
The Black Knight was dead and Arthur still had a crown. Order restored and that night the castle was quiet. Morgana was quiet and she stuck to the outer perimeter of her room, her fingers lining the edges of windowsills and panes of darkened glass.
He had watched her before he spoke. He had watched her before he advanced and stopped her pacing with a firm hand at her elbow. He had pulled her round to face him.
“You worry about me?” he murmured. Their faces were too close; it made it difficult for him to look at her. Morgana eyes were cast down, her eyelashes shadowed and dark and when she spoke her voice was equally soft, equally slow.
“Of course.”
“Of course,” she said and it was that simple.
Arthur raised her chin, his hand cradling her jaw and her eyes were wide, glassy, no shame visible upon her face.
He kissed her.
“You’re not your father. You’re not Uther,” she said once.
Arthur had laughed, a single bark, and Morgana had remained serious.
“There’s still hope for you yet.” There was no jest in what she said. Instead Morgana appeared completely earnest and Arthur’s smile had faded fast.
He kissed her.
He kissed her and she had tasted like smoke and time and arrogance.
She tasted like futility and perhaps that’s what made him wrap his arms around her, made him deepen the kiss that much more, her mouth swollen and red when he finally pulled back to breathe.
It was she who kissed him then.
Her fingers slipped under the open collar of his shirt, her hand cool against the rapid beating of his heart, and as he opened his mouth to her it was enough for him to forget just how much he had been fighting this.
It made him forget why.
The truth, as it commonly does, made itself known.
Uther called Morgana a witch, briefly imprisoned Gaius for his knowledge of her abilities. He left Morgana in her chambers, a guard posted at her locked door.
“I cannot kill her,” Uther had said. “I cannot.”
Arthur tried to stand tall.
He married Gwen in the spring and the guilt threatened to swallow him whole.
Guilt, yes: his father, Merlin, Morgana - a trio to hang around his conscious.
He unlocked the door to see her once.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she had said. He nodded.
He did not leave.
He kissed her and she kissed him and it was sad, it was desperate, it was nothing Arthur had wanted from her.
Her body fit against his exactly as he remembered. His name sounded the same from her. The bed felt cold and empty even with them in it; he buried his face in her neck and the taste of her skin was familiar.
When she came against him she might have said don’t leave me.
When he came inside her, he might have said I won’t.
Uther died.
For the life of him, Arthur could not recall his father’s final words to him.
He released Morgana the following week -
“Leave,” he said.
“Arthur,” she said.
Before she leaves (a pause to consider: before she leaves, before she leaves the castle, before she leaves Camelot, before she leaves Arthur, before she leaves Arthur, before she exits and abandons Arthur - ) there will have been a moment between them. The morning will be yellow with sun and green with shade and the castle walls will shield them.
She will enter his chambers unannounced and he will look up at her from his table. It will be only after they have stood there in an angry silence, she appraising him and he avoiding her eye, that he will rise and begin to pace the expanse of the room. Window to window and back ‘round again.
“Perhaps,” Morgana will say, “in another universe you could have loved me.”
She will not look sad when she says it, her face pulled in that characteristic, unreadable smirk of hers. If anything, Arthur will think later, later when there are dense, empty moments to dwell upon things like these, things like her, he will think she almost looked triumphant.
Arthur will not have the heart to tell her that this universe she speaks of already exists, that it already exists, and that it is their own.
Merlin made the mistake once of suggesting the possibility of her return.
“You have no idea who she is,” Arthur said to Merlin and his manservant nodded meekly.
Arthur listened for the sound of horses, he listened for sounds that no longer existed.
Merlin paused at the open door.
“Perhaps neither did you, sire,” he said.
Arthur did not argue.
Once, he kissed her and she had tasted like all things without promise.
It was a sign.
The once and future king assumed his throne -
He kept an eye trained on the beckoning horizon, always.
fin.
merlin. in his more self-pitying moments, arthur would imagine that he should feel grateful these sort of things only happen once, that he should be grateful morgana only happened once. arthur; arthur/morgana. rated pg-13. 2660 words.
notes: so, merlin fic. spoilers through the most recent episode, 1.09, and this entire fic is very speculative about the future of these two. clearly, this show isn't strictly abiding to what is well-known of the arthurian legend and i sort of ran with that a little as well? anyway, that is all. read, enjoy, the usual.
it's damned if you don’t and it’s damned if you do -
i once was lost but now i'm found
was blind but now i see you
how selfish of you
(metal heart, cat power)
“I like the idea of making you regret things,” she said once with a smirk.
Looking back, maybe that’s how all of this began.
A statement, a smirk, a poking, a prodding and her.
But it’s always been about her, hasn’t it?
Arthur won’t answer that.
There are grand adventures that shall befall them. It has been foretold, the groundwork for the future laid down, the events to come prophesized and heralded by the likes of mystics and unearthly creatures alike.
This is a lie.
There are grand adventures that shall befall him - Arthur, the once and future king.
Morgana, she shall settle, so they say, as a footnote in history.
Arthur was never one to settle disagreements gracefully.
With the wave of his wrist, Uther booted Arthur from the court, the promise of a more private reprimand in the offing and Arthur had stomped the length of the castle to his chambers.
“You’re angry,” Morgana said. There was a mock petulant frown spread across her lips; it provided little aid to Arthur’s already maligned disposition. “What did your father say this time, hmm?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Arthur snapped and Morgana shook her head as she smiled.
“That’s Arthur though, isn’t it? Poor, poor Arthur,” she drawled. Her fingers drew a line across the mantel as she walked, slow. Her fingers left a trail there in the dust. “Always wanting what he can’t have…”
He had frowned.
“I could have you if I wanted,” he said and she laughed.
“Who said anything about me?”
She was born to wear a crown.
But then again, so was he.
Arthur awakened and he could not remember a thing. A woman, his father, the promise of marriage.
After Gaius and Merlin filled in the remaining gaps, he found Morgana. She crossed her arms in front of her and bit her lip.
“You embarrassed me,” she said.
“Right,” Arthur said. She quirked one brow up and she shifted her weight as though waiting for something from him. Finally she sighed, turned towards the window.
“I would really rather not look at you,” Morgana said. The voice was familiar; the scorn was not.
Arthur found himself wanting to ask, so this is what we’ve become then? but could not think of a single answer he desired as a response.
After the disappearance of Sophie, of Arthur’s accidental fiancée, short of that initial conversation, they did not speak.
There was nothing heavy with intention behind it. He did not avoid her on purpose, and he imagined the same could be considered true for her as well. He thought that perhaps there was nothing to be said. Or, worse still, it was the opposite - there was too much, too much water under the bridge and neither one of them had the desire or strength to attempt to address it.
She cornered him one day, after training. His hair stuck sweaty to his forehead and his chainmail was noisy as he moved.
At first she did not speak. She just stared, her face curiously blank.
“Are you angry with me?” Arthur asked slowly.
Morgana shrugged. “Something along those lines,” she said.
She had stepped forward and stopped before him. Morgana extended a hand and presses her palm firm against the wide plane of his chest. The chainmail was hot under her fingers, felt hot and heavy against him. She drew a line down his sternum with one finger and said, “I really don’t know what to do about you. I really just don’t know.”
“What - ” Arthur had started and Morgana shook her head. She mouthed the word no, but did not actually say it.
She leaned forward, her hand still flat against his chest.
They were close enough that their breath mingled together. His breathing was heavier than hers, a heady blend of nerves and anger and want coiling tight within him. She leaned in a little further and their mouths almost touched. His lips had parted as though of their own volition; his mouth was dry.
Morgana did not kiss him.
She bit at his throat like she’d rather use words but had settled for this instead. Blunt teeth and the easy arch of his neck, throat to neck to jaw. Her teeth eased over the edge, her nose sliding along his cheekbone as her tongue slicked out to sample his jawline.
She hummed against him. Arthur had shivered.
“What…what are you doing?” he asked, tried again for an answer. His mouth was still too dry.
There was a soft chuckle from her, her breath hot against his ear.
“I thought that much would appear obvious,” she said. She caught the soft skin of his ear lobe between her teeth and Arthur had moaned.
His hands had grabbed for her hips. They clutched and they held, the fabric noisy beneath his hands. She laughed lightly again, lip and tongue slicking a line beneath his ear.
She pulled back abruptly; Arthur sighed, colored at the sound of it.
“I forgive you,” she said.
She turned to go, and her hand was the last part of her to leave him.
A pattern emerged:
Rather than speak of their grievances, rather than address unspoken emotions, rather than sound the words aloud - I need you, I want you, I love --- - they acted and punished with hands and mouths and teeth.
Arthur shoved her against a wall. Her skull made a dull thud sound upon impact and she bit her lip hard on a grunt.
Morgana straddled his lap one afternoon and her fingers bit into the hard muscle of his shoulders as she rocked her hips against his; when he groaned and bucked his hips up toward her she left.
At a banquet he found a corner and grabbed Morgana from behind. He bit at the back of her neck; she trembled in his arms. He watched the way her knuckles bruised against the stone of the wall.
Another time he let his fingers drag beneath her skirt, up and up and up, pale skin he could not see but he could feel it, soft against the curve of his clenched fist. He dragged his knuckles over her, against her, his hand coming away wet. His smirk had been wide and obnoxious and her cheeks were pink; “Have a good evening with Sir Guaire then, eh?” he had said.
It was never spoken of after. Dulled and fading bruises on his forearms, her hips.
They were never spoken of.
“I hear Sir Althalos has expressed interest in the Lady Morgana,” Merlin said. Arthur’s armor chinked together; Merlin reached for Arthur’s sword.
“Has he now?”
Practice was brutal the following afternoon.
Once, the stone caught at her hair.
Arthur had slid his hand over the curve of her hip, had pulled her leg up and around him, his fingers firm along the pale underside of her thigh; the muscle there had quivered.
He had slid his hips into and against hers and tried to breathe, his mouth pressed against the crown of her head.
She said his name.
She said his name and then pushed him away.
He did not kiss her once.
Arthur rode through the entire night.
Morgana sat in silence. The guards were searching the castle.
After Mordred, after the child is returned and after Arthur is returned, he approached her in the cold silence of her bedroom, of the night.
“You’re back,” Morgana said. Her voice was small, quiet, still rang incredibly sure in the blue-black dark. He could see her, see her sitting up in her bed, her shape under the blankets.
He lit a candle, two. Morgana blinked.
“And are you glad?” Arthur asked, the beat long between them. The moment was strained by a familiar palpable tension.
Morgana did not answer his question.
“The boy?” she asked, her voice still low, hushed, as though despite the hour, the fact he was the only other man present in the room they ran the risk of being overheard. Not only that, it made his very presence in her chambers feel taboo, that it was something to be hidden.
“And the boy is safe?” Morgana asked.
Arthur frowned. He narrowed his eyes.
“Yes,” was all he said, a choked off syllable and if Morgana detected the level of frustration and restraint in it, she did not comment on it.
Instead she said, “good,” and then stared at him.
“Was there something else, Arthur, or are we finished here?”
It was a poor choice of words, Arthur had thought. There was always something else, always something that remained, something they skated and danced around, as careful with their mouths and tongues and the words emitted there as he was on foot with lance or shield or sword.
This was to be a stumble, a loss to be gained, he had thought, he had been sure. He was tired, he was frustrated, and, yes, maybe he was finished here.
“You know, Morgana,” he had said. “I would really love to know what it is that goes on in that head of yours. I would really love to understand the logic, or the lack thereof, at work there.”
Her face was immobile. No frown or downturn of her lips into a pout could be seen.
“What is that supposed to mean.” She had not said it as a question.
He exhaled loudly.
“What that’s supposed to mean is that you can be so awful and so frustrating and I can’t stand you half the time, you are demanding as hell, and you play these games and I - ” He paused. “Why. I just want to know why.”
“Why what exactly?”
Arthur groaned dramatically and held his head.
“Why do we do this to each other? What do you, what do you want?”
“I wanted the boy to be returned to his home.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“But it is what I am speaking of.”
“What do you want from me?” he yelled. Morgana winced, her eyes cast over towards to door, and then back to him.
“What I want,” she said coldly, “is for you to leave. Get out.”
Arthur only nodded. He ran a hand through his hair and over and back to rub the back of his neck. He turned and his boots squeaked against the floor.
“Good night,” he said; he shut the door behind him.
He left the candles burning.
The next day Morgana visited after lunch.
She stood behind his chair and Arthur placed his book down.
She rested her hands on his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.
The Black Knight was dead and Arthur still had a crown. Order restored and that night the castle was quiet. Morgana was quiet and she stuck to the outer perimeter of her room, her fingers lining the edges of windowsills and panes of darkened glass.
He had watched her before he spoke. He had watched her before he advanced and stopped her pacing with a firm hand at her elbow. He had pulled her round to face him.
“You worry about me?” he murmured. Their faces were too close; it made it difficult for him to look at her. Morgana eyes were cast down, her eyelashes shadowed and dark and when she spoke her voice was equally soft, equally slow.
“Of course.”
“Of course,” she said and it was that simple.
Arthur raised her chin, his hand cradling her jaw and her eyes were wide, glassy, no shame visible upon her face.
He kissed her.
“You’re not your father. You’re not Uther,” she said once.
Arthur had laughed, a single bark, and Morgana had remained serious.
“There’s still hope for you yet.” There was no jest in what she said. Instead Morgana appeared completely earnest and Arthur’s smile had faded fast.
He kissed her.
He kissed her and she had tasted like smoke and time and arrogance.
She tasted like futility and perhaps that’s what made him wrap his arms around her, made him deepen the kiss that much more, her mouth swollen and red when he finally pulled back to breathe.
It was she who kissed him then.
Her fingers slipped under the open collar of his shirt, her hand cool against the rapid beating of his heart, and as he opened his mouth to her it was enough for him to forget just how much he had been fighting this.
It made him forget why.
The truth, as it commonly does, made itself known.
Uther called Morgana a witch, briefly imprisoned Gaius for his knowledge of her abilities. He left Morgana in her chambers, a guard posted at her locked door.
“I cannot kill her,” Uther had said. “I cannot.”
Arthur tried to stand tall.
He married Gwen in the spring and the guilt threatened to swallow him whole.
Guilt, yes: his father, Merlin, Morgana - a trio to hang around his conscious.
He unlocked the door to see her once.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she had said. He nodded.
He did not leave.
He kissed her and she kissed him and it was sad, it was desperate, it was nothing Arthur had wanted from her.
Her body fit against his exactly as he remembered. His name sounded the same from her. The bed felt cold and empty even with them in it; he buried his face in her neck and the taste of her skin was familiar.
When she came against him she might have said don’t leave me.
When he came inside her, he might have said I won’t.
Uther died.
For the life of him, Arthur could not recall his father’s final words to him.
He released Morgana the following week -
“Leave,” he said.
“Arthur,” she said.
Before she leaves (a pause to consider: before she leaves, before she leaves the castle, before she leaves Camelot, before she leaves Arthur, before she leaves Arthur, before she exits and abandons Arthur - ) there will have been a moment between them. The morning will be yellow with sun and green with shade and the castle walls will shield them.
She will enter his chambers unannounced and he will look up at her from his table. It will be only after they have stood there in an angry silence, she appraising him and he avoiding her eye, that he will rise and begin to pace the expanse of the room. Window to window and back ‘round again.
“Perhaps,” Morgana will say, “in another universe you could have loved me.”
She will not look sad when she says it, her face pulled in that characteristic, unreadable smirk of hers. If anything, Arthur will think later, later when there are dense, empty moments to dwell upon things like these, things like her, he will think she almost looked triumphant.
Arthur will not have the heart to tell her that this universe she speaks of already exists, that it already exists, and that it is their own.
Merlin made the mistake once of suggesting the possibility of her return.
“You have no idea who she is,” Arthur said to Merlin and his manservant nodded meekly.
Arthur listened for the sound of horses, he listened for sounds that no longer existed.
Merlin paused at the open door.
“Perhaps neither did you, sire,” he said.
Arthur did not argue.
Once, he kissed her and she had tasted like all things without promise.
It was a sign.
The once and future king assumed his throne -
He kept an eye trained on the beckoning horizon, always.
fin.