I’m not sure about the ending of this fic, I have about five different versions and I had no idea what I was doing with them. I went this way.
One Inside The Other.
Merlin/Morgana
PG-13 for insinuations
~700 words
Written for
zombie_boogie with the prompt my blood is singing with your voice.
She watches him, always. Her eyes shining like a jewel with the calculation and lies that build up behind them.
And he in turn watches her from behind tapestries and doorways.
It is a none too careful dance. He cannot move against her for she is the king's ward (daughter, a traitorous part of both their minds whisper) and she cannot move against him for... for... (and she can't quite think of a reason other than she cannot).
There are confrontations in alcoves. And when once he would not have thought of touching the pristine lady of Camelot except in his darkest dreams he now finds himself boxed in with thin pale arms that can wield a sword better than he, as her mouth (that mouth he once came to at the thought of slowly letting his fingers trace it) whisper harsh threats and promises of blood and destruction.
Arthur and Gwen move around them, above them in a courtship that is so beautiful and tender it almost blinds them because it is so pure. (And he thought she was going to die, and her blood, red and thick and just like his was on his hands.)
Once he was told that he was good and she was evil, yet he feels more tied to her as he watches his best friends seemingly float higher and higher into a wave of love as his whole life becomes based in anger and hate and disappointment. (She catches him once, watching them flirt from a doorway, and she says nothing, but her fingers entwine themselves with his; it is not gentle, she squeezes so tight he thinks he might lose circulation, but he does not flinch back and it is her hand that is bruised the next day.)
Their movements draws them closer and closer together, isolating them from an Arthur who stops teasing Merlin for he is too concerned and a Gwen who for the first time is scared of the mistress who would've gone against all Camelot to spare her life. And slowly they become each other's worlds. (She's so desperately alone here, so desperately trying to find out a way to live with who she is, and he knows what she is, and on the darkest nights when no one can see, he envies her freedom to fight for herself, for what she believes in and not what she is told to.)
Fighting with each other becomes as natural as breathing, and as the months pass he sees her use of magic increase and it's beautiful. She uses it as a weapon against him and yet he cannot but see the control and the power that radiates from her when she does, he cannot help but want to push aside the swords, or the staffs or whatever the hell is convenient half the time and trade the clumsy physical weapons aside for the magic they both share. But Gaius' voice inside his head tells him, no, no, no.
And there are nights, nights in between fights when they're both just waiting, and they still have to watch each other and he feels the urge for something else. Another thing that Gaius' voice would say no, no, no to if he had any idea of. He thinks of how it could be, his magic thrums so his bones when he fights with her and knows from the flashes of her eyes the same goes for her. He imagines, late at night huddled outside her door, what it would be like to have her legs around his hips, her hair creating a curtain from the world and their conflicts and her eyes glued on his and he knows they would glow.