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netgirl_y2kTitle: A Bastard Does Not Have a Constant Heart
Fandom: Merlin/Game of Thrones
Pairing: Gwen/Morgana
Rating: R
Word Count: 2079
Summary: In which Morgana is King Robert's bastard, and entirely too much like her father for her own good, especially when it comes to wine and women.
"Guinevere Flowers," is what the newest handmaiden calls herself.
Morgana wonders if she imagined the girl's tongue stumbling over her bastard last name, because whatever qualities Morgana may lack as a mistress she's not one to condescend to bastards, for obvious reasons.
Morgana Storm, they call her, acknowledged bastard of King Robert and the late Lady Lyanna of Winterfell.
Uncle Eddard says that Morgana gets her grey eyes and wild nature from her mother. The king's courtiers say that she gets her black hair and reckless bravery from her father; aye, they add behind her back, and her inveterate womanising comes from him as well.
"Can I call you Gwen?" Morgana asks.
"Only my father ever called me Gwen."
Morgana interprets that, as she interprets most things in life, as not a no.
*
Lady Lyanna would have learned to swordfight had her father allowed it; King Robert allows it, encourages it even, and so Morgana learns to fight with sword and dagger and mace.
Today she has no patience for Ser Loras demolishing three opponents with a grace she'd usually envy, her attention keeps being stolen by his sister.
When Lady Margaery catches Morgana's eyes, Morgana leans on her sword, shifting her weight suggestively onto one hip, and smirks like the cat that got the cream. Margaery returns her grin.
*
When Gwen arrives for her morning duties she finds her new mistress kneeling between Margaery's thighs making the Rose of Highgarden scream like there's a murder being done.
After Margaery gathers her clothes and departs Morgana stays abed; she is amused by the sight of the maid, whose job it is to dress and undress Morgana, trying to avert her eyes from her nakedness.
She props herself up on her elbows and says, "You disapprove of me, Guinevere."
"It's not my place to disapprove of you, my lady."
"No," Morgana agrees with a sudden unexpected flash of anger, "it's not. Fetch my clothes and send a message to the queen, tell her I plan to break my fast with the family."
Usually Morgana does her level best to ignore her Lannister relations, but she knows that Joffrey desires Margaery for himself, and the afterglow of her conquest will be enough to make even his presence bearable.
*
Gwen spends most of her first week in silence, giving one-word answers to direct questions. She's brushing out Morgana's hair in preparation for bed when she says, "I do not disapprove of your desires, Morgana, only the ways you go about satisfying them."
Morgana is so stunned by hearing so many words come out of her handmaiden's mouth at once that she forgets her usual justifications; that she has never ordered a woman to her bed, that she is skilled enough that few leave with regrets, and that she's certainly never sent anyone away with a bastard in her belly.
"I know your old handmaiden."
"Sefa?" Morgana asks, glancing up at Gwen's reflection in confusion. "Sefa is Cersei's creature, I'm sure she's spying on somebody else as we speak."
"No, I'm speaking of Freya--"
Freya. It takes Morgana a moment to place the name, and then she remembers long, colt-like limbs and pretty, nervous eyes. She remembers kissing the name of the girl's betrothed - a squire, Marvin? Merlyn? - from her lips.
"--You made her promises, she ended her engagement on your account."
Morgana feels absurdly guilty; she's never ordered a woman to her bed, true, but she has a honeyed tongue and no aversion to pretty lies.
"If she believed me then she's a fool, everyone knows that bastards do not have constant hearts."
Morgana yelps as Gwen drags the brush harshly through her hair.
*
"Your friend Freya, does she need anything?" Morgana asks. "Gold?" This earns her a withering look from Gwen.
"A recommendation for employment?" gets her a slightly less withering look.
*
The first time Gwen touches Morgana with more tenderness than brisk efficiency she's removing her dented breastplate from over what Morgana strongly suspects are cracked ribs.
"You shouldn't provoke Joffrey so," Gwen says. "You know he ordered his Hound to teach you a lesson out there today. What will you do once he is king?"
"Joffrey will never be king," says Morgana, hissing through the pain that Gwen delicately unwrapping her chest bindings causes her.
"I used to believe my father immortal too," says Gwen sadly.
Morgana thinks that it's less that she believes King Robert unkillable - she shares her father's fondness for wine and women, but not his desire to commit suicide by means of them - and more that the idea of Joffrey being king of anything is just insane.
"If Joffrey is ever king I shall take the black! I'll go to the Iron Islands and become queen of the pirates, or I'll sail to Asshai and become a priestess of the Red God!"
Gwen laughs at that, and Morgana has to laugh too, at the ridiculous juxtaposition of her overwrought declarations and beaten and bedraggled appearance.
She leans forward, naked from the waist up, with aching ribs and the taste of blood in her mouth, and kisses Gwen.
And for a glorious moment Gwen kisses back, before taking hold of Morgana's wrists, and mindful of her injuries, gently pushes her away.
Morgana bites her already bloody lip; she will not beg.
"It's like you said, bastards do not have constant hearts; I have no desire to be your latest--" Gwen stops and chews her lip, obviously unsure about what the next word should be. "To be your latest."
*
"I think I'm in love," Morgana tells Morgause.
Morgause may be a Lannister - a minor one, of Lannisport instead of Casterly Rock - but she's still the closest thing Morgana has to a real friend and confidant.
Morgause looks at her with an expression of shock as though Morgana has just announced the ability to transform into a direwolf. "With who?"
So Morgana tells her about Gwen, and Morgause laughs that same deep, throaty chuckle she'd laughed when Morgana, after the one and only time they'd gone to bed together, announced that fun though it had been she couldn't bring herself to fuck a Lannister on a semi-regular basis.
"That's not love, Morgana. You've finally met a woman who doesn't want to fuck you as soon as you smile at her, you're in shock."
"What do you suggest I do?"
Morgause's dark eyes crinkle and she says, "Take someone else to bed."
"Are you volunteering?"
"Not while you're pining over some serving girl, no."
*
Ros is leaving just as Gwen arrives; Morgana timed it that way, paying the whore to stay through the night.
She spends most of the morning trying to interpret Gwen's frowns. The girl does not judge her for loving women; she kissed back, so is she jealous or does she just dislike the idea that Morgana pays for it on occasion?
In the end, having worked herself into a terrible mood, she dispatches Gwen to take a note to Tyrion Lannister, thanking him for his recommendation.
*
"What are they?" Gwen asks, looking at the package Morgana has gifted her with.
"Earmuffs," Morgana says. "And a warm cloak, and gloves, and fur-lined boots."
"Yes, I know what those are, but why?"
"We're going to visit Winterfell; it becomes hard to travel north once autumn sets in, and Winter is Coming."
Gwen laughs, and affronted Morgana asks, "What?
"Nothing-- It's just that you sounded positively Stark there."
Morgana tries to hide her delight; people are always saying how like Robert she is, it's nice when people see some Lyanna too.
*
Morgana reaches over and taps Arya on the crown of her head with the hilt of the wooden sword. Her little cousin drops her practice sword and tackles Morgana around the knees, plowing them both down into the slush of Winterfell's training yard.
Morgana may have inherited her father's black hair and his love for wine and women, but not his stature. She can hardly lift his famed warhammer, and by necessity she's learned techniques to fight people stronger than she is, and longer of reach.
"Let me up, wolf pup," she instructs Arya, "I've a trick I'm going to teach you."
Over Arya's head she can see Gwen watching, laughing and wearing Morgana's earmuffs.
*
"It was kind of you," Gwen says, later, "to spend that time with Arya."
"I'm fond of Arya. Uncle Eddard says she's very like my mother."
"I thought that once we arrived here all your attention would be on Sansa; they say she's becoming a famous beauty."
"She's my cousin," Morgana says.
"I haven't known that to ever discourage the highborn much."
"I'm not highborn," Morgana reminds her. "In any case, my heart belongs to another."
Gwen smiles an uncomfortable smile and suggests they hurry along to supper.
*
Winterfell is cold and it is not unusual for ladies and their handmaidens to share a bed for warmth. Gwen lets Morgana kiss her for what feels like hours before pushing her away.
"What now? If this is about the bastards have changeable hearts thing, I'd remind you that I'm not the only bastard in this bed, Guinevere Flowers."
Gwen rolls onto her side and refuses to say anything more.
"Gwen?"
Gwen fakes sleep, badly.
"I didn't always have a bastard name," Gwen says, just when Morgana is about to actually attempt sleep rather than just pretending it. "Our lord thought my father a traitor - he was wrong - but he stripped us of our name."
"Which lord?" Morgana asks.
"Uther Pendragon."
"I've met him, he makes my Uncle Stannis look like the lord of the dance."
Gwen laughs helplessly into her pillow. "You're different to how you were described to me."
"How was I described?"
"Like King Robert, but prettier and without a claim to the throne."
"And being different from that is better, is it?"
"Yes, Morgana. It's better, you're better."
*
They have not long returned from Winterfell when the king is mortally wounded; somewhere in the back of her mind Morgana wonders if boar hunting while drunk is the sort of stupidity she should be worried about inheriting.
When the king dies Morgana retreats to a little used part of Maegor's Holdfast with the intention of getting catastrophically drunk by herself; it's how her father would want to be remembered.
Across the city bells ring out in celebration of King Joffrey, First of his Name, and somewhere behind the grief and wine Morgana experiences a flash of bitterness; she may have been King Robert's favourite bastard, his favourite daughter, but if she'd been born a boy, Lady Lyanna's son, her father's first act upon taking the Iron Throne would have been legitimising her. Joffrey would not be king, if the Gods were good there would be no Joffrey.
Morgana is just settling in to brood on this when Gwen finds her, carrying, among other things, Morgana's sword and armour.
"Wha--"
"We have to flee. Now. Cersei is ordering your arrest as we speak."
Terror has an unpleasant sobering effect and Morgana thinks at once of her uncles; Uncle Eddard would take her in, but she has no wish to bring trouble such as Cersei Lannister down on her Stark relations. Uncle Stannis dislikes bastards and women generally, and Morgana specifically. Uncle Renly has recently married Margaery Tyrell, and while Renly likes Morgana and wouldn't care, there's the look of the thing to consider.
"Shouldn't have fucked his wife," Morgana mutters, and it's a testament to how far their relationship has come that Gwen only rolls her eyes.
"Morgana, we have to go."
Morgana remembers all the things she'd claimed she'd do if Joffrey ever came to the throne - the wall, the sea, the priesthood - and sees them for what they are; the bragging of a bastard girl who's never been treated as either a bastard or a girl.
"There's nowhere to go," Morgana says miserably.
"Have you heard about the Targaryen Princess?" Gwen asks.
"Daenerys, yes. My father sent an assassin after her."
"He failed."
Morgana's brain scrambles through the fog of wine and wonders how Gwen could possibly know that, how she could even know about Daenerys Targaryen's existence. "You're Varys' creature."
"Not anymore. Now I'm yours. If you want me?"
"And if I do?"
"Then I'll take you to see dragons."
Gwen holds her hand out, and when Morgana takes it she presses her lips to Morgana's mouth, and the hilt of a sword into Morgana's hand and says, "Run!"
Fandom: Merlin/Game of Thrones
Pairing: Gwen/Morgana
Rating: R
Word Count: 2079
Summary: In which Morgana is King Robert's bastard, and entirely too much like her father for her own good, especially when it comes to wine and women.
"Guinevere Flowers," is what the newest handmaiden calls herself.
Morgana wonders if she imagined the girl's tongue stumbling over her bastard last name, because whatever qualities Morgana may lack as a mistress she's not one to condescend to bastards, for obvious reasons.
Morgana Storm, they call her, acknowledged bastard of King Robert and the late Lady Lyanna of Winterfell.
Uncle Eddard says that Morgana gets her grey eyes and wild nature from her mother. The king's courtiers say that she gets her black hair and reckless bravery from her father; aye, they add behind her back, and her inveterate womanising comes from him as well.
"Can I call you Gwen?" Morgana asks.
"Only my father ever called me Gwen."
Morgana interprets that, as she interprets most things in life, as not a no.
*
Lady Lyanna would have learned to swordfight had her father allowed it; King Robert allows it, encourages it even, and so Morgana learns to fight with sword and dagger and mace.
Today she has no patience for Ser Loras demolishing three opponents with a grace she'd usually envy, her attention keeps being stolen by his sister.
When Lady Margaery catches Morgana's eyes, Morgana leans on her sword, shifting her weight suggestively onto one hip, and smirks like the cat that got the cream. Margaery returns her grin.
*
When Gwen arrives for her morning duties she finds her new mistress kneeling between Margaery's thighs making the Rose of Highgarden scream like there's a murder being done.
After Margaery gathers her clothes and departs Morgana stays abed; she is amused by the sight of the maid, whose job it is to dress and undress Morgana, trying to avert her eyes from her nakedness.
She props herself up on her elbows and says, "You disapprove of me, Guinevere."
"It's not my place to disapprove of you, my lady."
"No," Morgana agrees with a sudden unexpected flash of anger, "it's not. Fetch my clothes and send a message to the queen, tell her I plan to break my fast with the family."
Usually Morgana does her level best to ignore her Lannister relations, but she knows that Joffrey desires Margaery for himself, and the afterglow of her conquest will be enough to make even his presence bearable.
*
Gwen spends most of her first week in silence, giving one-word answers to direct questions. She's brushing out Morgana's hair in preparation for bed when she says, "I do not disapprove of your desires, Morgana, only the ways you go about satisfying them."
Morgana is so stunned by hearing so many words come out of her handmaiden's mouth at once that she forgets her usual justifications; that she has never ordered a woman to her bed, that she is skilled enough that few leave with regrets, and that she's certainly never sent anyone away with a bastard in her belly.
"I know your old handmaiden."
"Sefa?" Morgana asks, glancing up at Gwen's reflection in confusion. "Sefa is Cersei's creature, I'm sure she's spying on somebody else as we speak."
"No, I'm speaking of Freya--"
Freya. It takes Morgana a moment to place the name, and then she remembers long, colt-like limbs and pretty, nervous eyes. She remembers kissing the name of the girl's betrothed - a squire, Marvin? Merlyn? - from her lips.
"--You made her promises, she ended her engagement on your account."
Morgana feels absurdly guilty; she's never ordered a woman to her bed, true, but she has a honeyed tongue and no aversion to pretty lies.
"If she believed me then she's a fool, everyone knows that bastards do not have constant hearts."
Morgana yelps as Gwen drags the brush harshly through her hair.
*
"Your friend Freya, does she need anything?" Morgana asks. "Gold?" This earns her a withering look from Gwen.
"A recommendation for employment?" gets her a slightly less withering look.
*
The first time Gwen touches Morgana with more tenderness than brisk efficiency she's removing her dented breastplate from over what Morgana strongly suspects are cracked ribs.
"You shouldn't provoke Joffrey so," Gwen says. "You know he ordered his Hound to teach you a lesson out there today. What will you do once he is king?"
"Joffrey will never be king," says Morgana, hissing through the pain that Gwen delicately unwrapping her chest bindings causes her.
"I used to believe my father immortal too," says Gwen sadly.
Morgana thinks that it's less that she believes King Robert unkillable - she shares her father's fondness for wine and women, but not his desire to commit suicide by means of them - and more that the idea of Joffrey being king of anything is just insane.
"If Joffrey is ever king I shall take the black! I'll go to the Iron Islands and become queen of the pirates, or I'll sail to Asshai and become a priestess of the Red God!"
Gwen laughs at that, and Morgana has to laugh too, at the ridiculous juxtaposition of her overwrought declarations and beaten and bedraggled appearance.
She leans forward, naked from the waist up, with aching ribs and the taste of blood in her mouth, and kisses Gwen.
And for a glorious moment Gwen kisses back, before taking hold of Morgana's wrists, and mindful of her injuries, gently pushes her away.
Morgana bites her already bloody lip; she will not beg.
"It's like you said, bastards do not have constant hearts; I have no desire to be your latest--" Gwen stops and chews her lip, obviously unsure about what the next word should be. "To be your latest."
*
"I think I'm in love," Morgana tells Morgause.
Morgause may be a Lannister - a minor one, of Lannisport instead of Casterly Rock - but she's still the closest thing Morgana has to a real friend and confidant.
Morgause looks at her with an expression of shock as though Morgana has just announced the ability to transform into a direwolf. "With who?"
So Morgana tells her about Gwen, and Morgause laughs that same deep, throaty chuckle she'd laughed when Morgana, after the one and only time they'd gone to bed together, announced that fun though it had been she couldn't bring herself to fuck a Lannister on a semi-regular basis.
"That's not love, Morgana. You've finally met a woman who doesn't want to fuck you as soon as you smile at her, you're in shock."
"What do you suggest I do?"
Morgause's dark eyes crinkle and she says, "Take someone else to bed."
"Are you volunteering?"
"Not while you're pining over some serving girl, no."
*
Ros is leaving just as Gwen arrives; Morgana timed it that way, paying the whore to stay through the night.
She spends most of the morning trying to interpret Gwen's frowns. The girl does not judge her for loving women; she kissed back, so is she jealous or does she just dislike the idea that Morgana pays for it on occasion?
In the end, having worked herself into a terrible mood, she dispatches Gwen to take a note to Tyrion Lannister, thanking him for his recommendation.
*
"What are they?" Gwen asks, looking at the package Morgana has gifted her with.
"Earmuffs," Morgana says. "And a warm cloak, and gloves, and fur-lined boots."
"Yes, I know what those are, but why?"
"We're going to visit Winterfell; it becomes hard to travel north once autumn sets in, and Winter is Coming."
Gwen laughs, and affronted Morgana asks, "What?
"Nothing-- It's just that you sounded positively Stark there."
Morgana tries to hide her delight; people are always saying how like Robert she is, it's nice when people see some Lyanna too.
*
Morgana reaches over and taps Arya on the crown of her head with the hilt of the wooden sword. Her little cousin drops her practice sword and tackles Morgana around the knees, plowing them both down into the slush of Winterfell's training yard.
Morgana may have inherited her father's black hair and his love for wine and women, but not his stature. She can hardly lift his famed warhammer, and by necessity she's learned techniques to fight people stronger than she is, and longer of reach.
"Let me up, wolf pup," she instructs Arya, "I've a trick I'm going to teach you."
Over Arya's head she can see Gwen watching, laughing and wearing Morgana's earmuffs.
*
"It was kind of you," Gwen says, later, "to spend that time with Arya."
"I'm fond of Arya. Uncle Eddard says she's very like my mother."
"I thought that once we arrived here all your attention would be on Sansa; they say she's becoming a famous beauty."
"She's my cousin," Morgana says.
"I haven't known that to ever discourage the highborn much."
"I'm not highborn," Morgana reminds her. "In any case, my heart belongs to another."
Gwen smiles an uncomfortable smile and suggests they hurry along to supper.
*
Winterfell is cold and it is not unusual for ladies and their handmaidens to share a bed for warmth. Gwen lets Morgana kiss her for what feels like hours before pushing her away.
"What now? If this is about the bastards have changeable hearts thing, I'd remind you that I'm not the only bastard in this bed, Guinevere Flowers."
Gwen rolls onto her side and refuses to say anything more.
"Gwen?"
Gwen fakes sleep, badly.
"I didn't always have a bastard name," Gwen says, just when Morgana is about to actually attempt sleep rather than just pretending it. "Our lord thought my father a traitor - he was wrong - but he stripped us of our name."
"Which lord?" Morgana asks.
"Uther Pendragon."
"I've met him, he makes my Uncle Stannis look like the lord of the dance."
Gwen laughs helplessly into her pillow. "You're different to how you were described to me."
"How was I described?"
"Like King Robert, but prettier and without a claim to the throne."
"And being different from that is better, is it?"
"Yes, Morgana. It's better, you're better."
*
They have not long returned from Winterfell when the king is mortally wounded; somewhere in the back of her mind Morgana wonders if boar hunting while drunk is the sort of stupidity she should be worried about inheriting.
When the king dies Morgana retreats to a little used part of Maegor's Holdfast with the intention of getting catastrophically drunk by herself; it's how her father would want to be remembered.
Across the city bells ring out in celebration of King Joffrey, First of his Name, and somewhere behind the grief and wine Morgana experiences a flash of bitterness; she may have been King Robert's favourite bastard, his favourite daughter, but if she'd been born a boy, Lady Lyanna's son, her father's first act upon taking the Iron Throne would have been legitimising her. Joffrey would not be king, if the Gods were good there would be no Joffrey.
Morgana is just settling in to brood on this when Gwen finds her, carrying, among other things, Morgana's sword and armour.
"Wha--"
"We have to flee. Now. Cersei is ordering your arrest as we speak."
Terror has an unpleasant sobering effect and Morgana thinks at once of her uncles; Uncle Eddard would take her in, but she has no wish to bring trouble such as Cersei Lannister down on her Stark relations. Uncle Stannis dislikes bastards and women generally, and Morgana specifically. Uncle Renly has recently married Margaery Tyrell, and while Renly likes Morgana and wouldn't care, there's the look of the thing to consider.
"Shouldn't have fucked his wife," Morgana mutters, and it's a testament to how far their relationship has come that Gwen only rolls her eyes.
"Morgana, we have to go."
Morgana remembers all the things she'd claimed she'd do if Joffrey ever came to the throne - the wall, the sea, the priesthood - and sees them for what they are; the bragging of a bastard girl who's never been treated as either a bastard or a girl.
"There's nowhere to go," Morgana says miserably.
"Have you heard about the Targaryen Princess?" Gwen asks.
"Daenerys, yes. My father sent an assassin after her."
"He failed."
Morgana's brain scrambles through the fog of wine and wonders how Gwen could possibly know that, how she could even know about Daenerys Targaryen's existence. "You're Varys' creature."
"Not anymore. Now I'm yours. If you want me?"
"And if I do?"
"Then I'll take you to see dragons."
Gwen holds her hand out, and when Morgana takes it she presses her lips to Morgana's mouth, and the hilt of a sword into Morgana's hand and says, "Run!"