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“Tell me about Freya” Gwaine can’t help but let the words lose, knowing it was going to break his heart even before he said it.
It happened several nights ago on a hunt. Merlin had all but collapsed after getting them ready, setting up camp, running after them all day, cooking for them, and having to deal with the emotional toll of putting up with Arthur, so Gwaine had taken one look at those dangerously large eye bags and pulled him down to rest on his lap, just a little selfishly. He didn’t realize Merlin was well on his way to the realm of dreams until he started mumbling nonsense. See, Merlin was a quiet sleeper, he didn’t snore, he didn’t scream, but that large mouth just seemed incapable of running still even in his sleep.
And that’s how Gwaine heard the name, mumbled into his lap while he ran his hands through the dark raven hair, sitting on the cold forest floor. Soft and sweet and aching and desperate all in one.
So Gwaine hadn’t been able to let it go. Cause you only sound like that when you have loved and lost, he had heard that tone far too many times in men trying to find the bottoms of their bottles. The thing was… Gwaine had a bit of a crush. Or no that’s not really right, more an obsession. And well, just call him a masochist because where Merlin was concerned, he would cut himself open from head to toe and hand over each organ one at a time just to see a slight smile. And oh, how he would love it. That’s how the name had stuck in his head. His knife poised to cut his own heart out to give to Merlin after learning the man might have lost his to another.
Now in Merlin’s tiny room on his tiny cot Gwaine had let the name finally leave his brain. The surprise of it affecting the two of them in equal measure. He could practically see it form into something tangible as Merlin’s back sat straighter and his motion of twiddling with one of his many knick-knacks stopped completely. He was sure both of them stopped breathing for a second.
But like so many other times, that fake smile that didn’t quite reach the younger man’s eyes slowly drifted across his face. “Where did you hear that?” He said pleasantly, like the man wasn’t desperate for the answer. But Gwaine could tell, Gwaine could always tell.
"You talk in your sleep sometimes. She seems to be a frequent character” He was really trying to go for his nonchalant persona, but Merlin could read Gwaine just as well as Gwaine could read Merlin.
They both stared at each other, waiting for the other to broach the topic that neither of them wanted to truly talk about.
These were the games Gwaine was never good at playing, though, so with a sigh and a hand running across his forehead he said, “Can we not lie to each other? Just this once?”
That seemed to startle Merlin, his eyes quickly flashing to the door then the window before finally resting on the knight's face. He watched muscle by muscle relax as he took in Gwaine's eyes, his nose, his chin, his mouth. Sure, Gwaine didn’t at the moment have a mirror, but he was positive he looked exhausted, desperate, needy even. That didn’t seem to matter as Merlin slowly nodded before falling back onto the mattress to look up at the wood beams that ran across the ceiling instead of the knight.
There was a fortifying breath before finally he started "Freya was…” the words slipped out almost dreamily before he was scrunching up his face in the most adorable way as he thought “Freya was light in a world that had long since forgotten the sun”
There was a pause as Gwaine felt like someone punched him in the gut. All the air left his lungs, and he found himself deflating lower onto the bed. His body lying in the opposite direction of Merlin’s. It was confirmation in the worst possible way. She was. She was something to Merlin but not anymore. And he ached just knowing that someone that meant that much to the man was gone. That his heart had clearly been fractured if not entirely destroyed and there was no way for Gwaine to truly ever put it back together completely.
"She was the feeling of jumping into a lake on a hot summer day, like relief.” He continued. Gwaine should have tried to get him to stop, to not let him relive this, but he couldn’t seem to find the words, how ironic when it was his that got them here in the first place, burning with dread and pain and sadness. “She was beauty in a kingdom that didn’t have mirrors. She was fire in the middle of a snowstorm.” Another breath and just the hint of water gathering in those crystal blue eyes “She would have been my everything.”
The way he said it broke something in Gwaine. There was so much pain there that he could never hope to kiss better, so much blood that he could never wipe away, so much love that he could never chip out of that heart. A lost love he could never replace, no matter how much he wished too.
Still, once the gates were open, it seemed they couldn’t be closed. “She died because she was of magic” he whispered. Oh. So, it was the thing. The thing Gwaine promised to never bring up. The thing he so desperately wished Merlin would. The thing he couldn’t, shouldn’t, know about. “Because magic hurt her. And I’ve never been able to forgive it, not really. It’s the reason I continue on yet it’s the reason I wish for nothing more than to stop, to set up a farm on a lake with some cows” he choked on the last bit and again Gwaine found he couldn’t stop himself. He pulled Merlin into his arms and let him weep into his chest.
“When I first came to Camelot” the tears were still soaking into his tunic but neither of them could stop this now. The sky was dark, and they could only cling to each other and hope when dawn came, they would still be in one piece “I asked Gaius if I was a monster” Gwaine wrapped his arms around the man tighter, trying desperately to make sure he knew that he wasn’t since words seemed to be failing him so completely at the moment. That he simply could never be to Gwaine anything but extraordinary. “Freya never asked me the same. She was cursed… cursed to be a beast, to kill. She never asked because she thought she was already too far gone. I never truly believed that magic was evil. Not until I saw what they did to her.”
For once in his life Gwaine found himself at a loss for words. Just breathing his too shallow breaths as Merlin grieves to him. And Gwaine knows, he knows this was the first time Merlin had ever done this with another person just like he knows the sky is blue. So, he lets him have his silence to hear the beat of his heart. He lets his nails sink into his bicep so that he knows there is another person here, another soul is bearing witness to his darkness and not telling him it’s unpleasant. He lets the wetness spread as the tears keep coming with no sign of stopping.
"She was a druid.” He eventually stutters out after many, many moments where they both sat in their sadness together. “She was a druid, and I loved her” It’s more of a sob than anything else as he somehow kept talking, despite the chocking that seemed to be clogging his chest. “She was a druid, and I loved her, and she died because of magic”
There is so much weight to those words Gwaine can practically feel it drop on his shoulders, on his chest, on his back. But he doesn’t mind the heavy load as much as he probably should, knowing it’s just a little less for Merlin to have to carry.
It took a while but finally, finally, Merlin’s tears dried up. “And you are a knight,” he whispered, so light Gwaine isn’t sure he heard him at first.
But then the words sink in, and the dread comes with it. Because yes, he was a knight in a land where magic was illegal, but the thing was, he was Merlin’s long before he was Arthur’s. “Merlin,” he says, his voice breaking with all the words he wished to add to the end, that still evaded him like the glow from the sky on a moonless night.
Merlin, though, didn’t let him even try to scrounge something up, he just popped his head up to look back into his eyes. The tear tracks are ever so much clearer against those dark shadows that seem to be swallowing him. But then, then there is his smile and it’s like the moon had just appeared from behind a cloud “You’re a knight who became my sun when I forgot there could be light”