lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2011-01-18 03:47 am
lady_ragnell) wrote2011-01-18 03:47 am
Entry tags:
If That Wasn't Bad Enough (A Metaphor-'verse story)
Title: If That Wasn't Bad Enough
Wordcount: ~6,000w (what. I just. This 'verse makes me wordy, apparently.)
Summary: Gwaine may not have groceries telling him what to do, but he does have a story.
A/N: If you haven't already read A Metaphor of Human Bloody Existence (link goes to first part), this is not going to make sense to you, because it's Gwaine's POV of the Gwaine/Freya subplot that would not leave me alone (I am still not sure how it ended up in there, but they would not leave me alone, thus you get this). Title is from the same Pratchett quote "Metaphor"'s title came from.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Gwaine is writing a theoretical travel guide, in his spare time from whatever job is keeping him in food and entertainment at the moment, since his inability to stay in one place for more than a month at a time means he’s seen quite a lot. He calls it The Guide to the Underbelly of Britain and suspects he’ll have to change the title to something else more snappy eventually.
Five minutes after arriving in the tiny village of Albion (invited by his uni friend Lancelot after his last job situation went belly-up, a long story involving a bar, the owner of the bar, and the wife of the owner of the bar, who funnily enough never wore her wedding ring), Gwaine decides that his notation for it is going to have to be Every bloody one looks like a supermodel. It isn’t just Lancelot, who is disgustingly gorgeous enough that his being a good person on top of it is almost an insult. It’s also Gwen, who’s the head chef in the kitchen where Lancelot works. And Gwen’s girlfriend Morgana, who could make grown men weep. He would try to get in on that action if he thought there was the slightest chance Morgana wouldn’t remove his intestines through his eye sockets. Not to mention the gorgeous, arrogant blond working the register at Albion’s little market.
Lancelot surveys him over a cup of tea kindly made by Gwen. “There’s actually a few places in town these days where you could ask for work. We need a dishwasher here.” There’s a pause while both of them think about what happened when they both worked at the cafeteria together for a semester, and then Lancelot moves on without being prompted. “Arthur’s busy at the shop lately, especially since we’re campaigning to keep an Avalon Supermart from building nearby, but I think you would drive each other mad within a week.”
“I’m not that bad, am I?”
“You are absolutely that bad. And he’s not much better.”
“So where does that leave?”
It is never a good sign when Lancelot looks mischievous. Most of the time he is intensely serious, and it drives Gwaine mad trying to get him to have any fun. Sometimes, though, he’s got a bit of a wicked streak, and it seems now is one of those times. Gwaine raises his eyebrows and waits. “Gaius’s farm. My good friend Merlin works out there, but they need some help in the fields, since Gaius is getting on and Merlin’s only one man.”
“Your good friend?” Gwaine injects as much innuendo as he can into the statement.
Lancelot just shakes his head. “You’ll like him. And he’ll like you. I’ll give Gaius a ring and send you out there. There’s probably space for you to stay at the farmhouse, too, so you don’t have to rent a room here.”
An hour later, Gwaine finds himself on the doorstep of a farmhouse that looks as if it was cobbled together out of at least three other houses, smacked in the middle of a large amount of fields. An old man with flyaway hair (who, to Gwaine’s relief, does not look like a supermodel; that would be a bit much) opens the door. “You must be Lancelot’s friend. I’m Gaius. We’ve been looking for help around the farm, weeding and harvesting and watering, and while we did hire someone on day before yesterday, one more hand certainly wouldn’t go amiss. Have you got experience?”
Gwaine shrugs. “I’ve done some of everything, in my day. That includes farming. Long as you show me what’s a weed and what isn’t, I’ll take my best shot at it.”
Gaius raises an eyebrow. “Any … special talents?”
That sounds like it’s meant to be code for something else, and Gwaine wonders for a moment if he’s been sent to a brothel before deciding that this man working anywhere near the sex trade is a horrifying thought at best. “Ah … I brewed my own lager once,” he offers.
The eyebrow goes higher, but before Gaius can reply, someone comes crashing down the stairs and appears. “Gaius, who’s here? Freya is--oh, hello, who are you?”
And there, Gwaine suspects, is the reason for Lancelot’s little smile, his “good friend” Merlin, who is maybe not a supermodel but who has a million-watt grin and gorgeous eyes. He also suspects that he has just met the inevitable reason that he will be forced to flee Albion for safer climes, since he’s never met a town he couldn’t find trouble in. “Gwaine, at your service. Lancelot’s a friend of mine and he said you might need some help out here.”
Merlin gives him a long searching look before the grin returns at half-strength. “Well, I’ll leave you two to it, then.”
“You may as well stay, Merlin. Come to my office, would you, Gwaine?” says Gaius, and leads him into a room that looks far more like a laboratory than an office. The smell makes his nose itch and there’s something ominous-looking bubbling over a burner, so Gwaine revises his hypothesis from “brothel” to “drug den.”
Gwaine discovers within five minutes that Gaius makes herbal supplements that are “not, I repeat not, young man, recreational,” that there is something both he and Merlin are talking around, and that Merlin may as well have a huge sign hanging over his head with flashing lights proclaiming “TAKEN TAKEN TAKEN” for all the world to see. There’s no mention of a boyfriend (or a girlfriend, but given Merlin’s neckerchief Gwaine was really not expecting one), but the sign is there nonetheless.
However, Gwaine decides after about five minutes of considering pouting about it, that’s probably actually a good thing, as it means he’s less likely to be run out of town on a rail. Gaius hires him (despite Merlin’s eyebrow-telegraph giving off do not hire extremely bad idea signals) and shows him to a room, so Gwaine goes to his car and gets out the duffel that he carries most of his worldly goods around in.
When he steps out of his room to take a leak and hears a startled gasp from someone who definitely isn’t Merlin or Gaius, Gwaine turns around and finds the actual reason he’ll be getting kicked out of Albion.
*
“Ah, just the men I wanted to see,” says Gwaine five minutes later, after following the terrified-looking girl back to her room and attempting to knock and apologize. The lack of answer led him back down to Gaius’s office, where they were pretty obviously discussing Gwaine. “I seem to have frightened your … sister, Merlin?” Unless she’s the reason Merlin has the flashing lights over his head, but judging by the similar coloring he’s going with sister.
“Just an employee,” says Merlin, and gives Gaius a completely ineffectual glare before leaving the room. Gwaine follows, since nobody told him not to, and Merlin throws a smile over his shoulder while they go up the stairs. “Look, sorry if I was a bit rude earlier. Things have just been pretty busy with Avalon building so nearby, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Plus, as you saw, Freya’s pretty shy, so I was worried about that too.”
“All I said was hello.” And maybe he’d given a bit of a theatrical bow as well, but Gwaine never passes on a chance to flirt with a pretty lady. Freya, for all her startled-fawn looks and apparent terror of him, is very pretty indeed.
“She’s shy, like I said, and new here. I don’t think her last situation was that nice.”
Gwaine is nosy, but he’s not stupid. He follows Merlin the rest of the way to Freya’s room in silence, and stands behind him while Merlin knocks gently on the door. It takes four knocks before there’s an answer. “I’ll come down for dinner.”
“That’s fine, Freya. I just wanted to be sure that you’re okay. I’m sorry we didn’t warn you we’re hiring on someone else, it’s unexpected. But his name is Gwaine, and he’s really very friendly, I promise.”
A few seconds later, the door creaks open. Freya does not look noticeably less terrified. “Sorry. It’s nice to meet you, Gwaine.”
“I look forward to getting to know you,” he says, which is apparently all wrong, because she backs up a few steps. Merlin looks pained. “You’re new here too, I hear. We’ll have to get used to Albion together.”
Freya just looks at Merlin imploringly. Gwaine tries hard not to be offended, and Merlin at least has the grace to wince an apology when he grabs Gwaine’s arm. “We’ll see you at dinner, Freya. I’m going to finish giving Gwaine the tour.”
“You want to come along?” Gwaine offers. “Since you’re new as well.”
“I’ve already had the tour,” says Freya, and shuts the door.
A long, awkward silence follows. Merlin clears his throat. “I’ll show you the fields. We’ll probably have you weeding some beds without anything growing in them at the moment so you don’t have to worry about what you ought to leave.”
Gwaine takes the tour, and when they get back to the house, Freya is already halfway through eating her dinner. She answers Merlin’s questions, and Gaius’s (although Gwaine is cheered that she looks mildly terrified of him as well), but whenever Gwaine takes another stab at it she quiets right down and stares at her plate like it’s her only hope for salvation.
Merlin pats his shoulder when Freya flees immediately after the meal. “She’ll warm up to you eventually.”
“Everyone does,” says Gwaine, and accepts Gaius’s offer of a mug of cider.
*
Freya does not warm up to him. Freya, in fact, makes an art form of avoiding Gwaine. Over the next week, he and Merlin get to be good friends, chatting while they work the fields or run errands or visit Lancelot and the lovely Gwen at The Castle in town (the lovely Morgana seems to have urgent business elsewhere, and Gwaine doesn’t ask about it because it makes everyone else scowl; he is many things, but stupid is not one of them). He incurs the dislike of the owner of The Castle and the town’s little market, for no good reason he can fathom. When Lance mentions meetings they’ve been having to see what they can do about stopping Avalon Supermart from building in Mercia (a nearby village whose notation in Gwaine’s Guide to the Underbelly of Britain will be something along the lines of A pub, two fields, and a bunch of trees. And a cute barmaid), Merlin encourages him to come.
The meeting solves the mystery of the serene air of not-interested Merlin gives out even though he acts like he’s single, because when Gwaine and Merlin go to the flat above Camelot Market laughing about an accident in Gaius’s workshop, they’re met by a glare from the gorgeous blond who manages the market. His look at Merlin might as well be a shout of “Mine, don’t touch” for all its subtlety, and Merlin, it seems, is entirely oblivious. So of course when blondie asks Merlin if he’s got a new boyfriend, Gwaine puts an arm around his friend. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, princess. We’ll be good.”
The glare he gets in return is priceless enough to make up for Merlin’s embarrassed and reproachful look, so Gwaine does nothing the rest of the night to dissuade blondie (whose name proves to be Arthur) from thinking that they’re together. Since there’s no chance of Merlin actually doing anything with him, he has to have fun where he can. And if it means they stop giving each other lovelorn looks in the end, that’s only to the good. To that end, Gwaine musters his most casual voice when they get back to the farmouse that night. “You and Arthur, yeah?”
Merlin stammers something out and flees as fast as Freya at her best, and Gwaine prepares himself to brave the stairs (Gwen provides damn good wine, he really has to go to more of those meetings) when he hears something behind him. He spins around and finds Freya watching him, looking more curious than nervous. “He talks about Arthur, sometimes,” she says at last. “Is he nice?”
Gwaine grins at her. “Not particularly, but they are stupidly in love. Maybe eventually they’ll figure it out.”
Her smile turns her from a terrified waif into a gorgeous woman, and Gwaine smiles appreciatively back. “I’d wondered, but Merlin doesn’t seem to like him much, and I thought he would want someone nice.”
“He’s all right, just a bit of an arse.” Gwaine puts on his most persuasive tone on. “You’ll have to come with us to town one day, meet him. Gwen too, Merlin mentioned you and she wants to meet you.”
Within a blink of an eye, she’s right back to terrified. “I’ll stay out here for now, if it’s all the same,” she says, and scurries to brush past him. “Good night, Gwaine,” she adds, and then she’s off so fast it almost makes his head spin.
If he thought she was avoiding him before, it gets even more pointed after that. If he walks into a room, she’s immediately out of it, unless it’s a mealtime, because Gaius frowns on any of them missing meals. Even during dinner, though, she’s silent and won’t so much as look at Gwaine. Gwaine decides that discretion is the better part of valor and doesn’t answer Merlin’s questions about what happened, instead choosing to be unfailingly polite to Freya whenever she deigns to stay in his presence. It’s been since secondary school since he’s been on his best behavior this much, and Lancelot laughs at him when he complains, but Gwaine doesn’t like being disliked, so he keeps trying.
When he isn’t trying to get Freya to stop looking like an abandoned kitten, Gwaine is distracted by Merlin and his group of do-gooders. Even though Merlin claims (repeatedly, not to mention loudly) that he’s been dragged into it against his will (mostly with pointed looks at Arthur), he’s just as passionate about keeping Avalon away as the rest of them, and between he and Lancelot they’ve got Gwaine sitting in on their meetings and contributing as well as he can.
One day, Merlin slams into the house after a trip to town looking halfway between panicked and murderous, and won’t explain the actual problem. He does say, though, that Arthur is being an arse, so Gwaine goes to town to annoy some answers out of him (Albion isn’t the most exciting village in England, though it’s rapidly climbing the list in Gwaine’s travel guide, but it does boast the wonderful local sport of Arthur-baiting), not before knocking on Freya’s door to see if she finally wants to brave town. Unsurprisingly, he gets no answer there.
Arthur is explaining how the register works to a thug with a snake tattoo when Gwaine arrives, and glares the second Gwaine walks in. “What, did Merlin forget something earlier?”
“Actually, I came for unhealthy food,” Gwaine lies easily. “It is almost depressing how well they eat, there. Who’s the new guy?”
The glare doesn’t abate, but Arthur introduces Marcus Valiant, new employee and slimy bastard, and Gwaine chats with them for a few minutes before buying crisps and chocolate (which makes Arthur look murderous, for reasons Gwaine does not pretend to understand) and heading back out to the farm, conjecturing that aforementioned slimy bastard is the cause of Merlin’s bad mood.
He knocks and opens the door before Merlin tells him to come in. “What’s got your Arthur being such a bastard today?” he asks, mostly to make Merlin blush. “Glared at me worse than usual when I--” It occurs to him that he’s witnessing a miracle: Freya is actually in Merlin’s room, looking terrified but not actually running for her room as fast as she can. Excellent, progress. “Hello, Freya. Stopped by your room earlier to see if you wanted a ride into town.”
Merlin mutters something, probably objecting to Gwaine talking about “his” Arthur, and glares at a phone sitting on his nightstand before grabbing Freya when she finally tries to make a break for it and telling her to stay. “Gwaine’s harmless,” he says, and gives Gwaine his best attempt at Gaius’s do-not-prove-me-wrong look.
Gwaine can’t resist a challenge, and if being nice to Freya won’t work, perhaps annoying her will. “I don’t bite unless you ask,” he says, and gives her a quick wink when she looks horrified. He relents a second later and turns back to needling Merlin, who soon mentions a stranger to town. Some more coaxing gets out a story about Slimy Valiant working for Avalon, and accidental phone theft.
Freya stays quiet but isn’t vibrating with the need to escape while they talk about what to do with the phone, and she gives Merlin a sharp look Gwaine doesn’t understand when they talk about trying to tap it.
And then poor, innocent Merlin mentions going to the police, and Gwaine smiles, because as a barrister’s son, he knows exactly what they can do to get something out of Valiant without having to worry about admissible evidence. “Oh, Merlin. You have so much to learn.”
*
By the time Gwaine is finished explaining what blackmail and libel and other such terms technically are, and all the ways he knows of getting around them, Merlin is looking determined, but more gratifyingly, Freya isn’t running in the opposite direction. She actually smiles at him when she slips out, though she ducks her head a second later, and Gwaine decides to count it as win.
Of course, Merlin isn’t an idiot, and he narrows his eyes at Gwaine almost the second Freya leaves. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably not a great idea.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” says Gwaine. “I’m not going to do anything to her. I just want her to stop being terrified of me.”
Merlin’s snort isn’t encouraging, but he doesn’t bring it up again, and they go back to talking about using Val to pass false messages about Camelot Market losing profits to the Avalon CEOs for most of the rest of the night.
Everything falls apart the next day when Merlin arrives home and asks if he can stay in Gwaine’s room for a few nights, since he told Gwen about Morgana maybe working with Avalon and Gwen wants to sleep at the farm for a few nights while they get themselves figured out. From there, nobody’s thinking much about Val except to keep him out of everyone’s way and make sure he doesn’t pass on information that they don’t want him to, because everyone’s too busy worrying about Morgana and Gwen, who both look like hell.
Somehow, though, Val still ends up clapped in irons on assault charges, and Gwaine can’t figure out exactly how or why, since Arthur won’t talk about it and meetings suddenly decrease in frequency. Merlin walks around looking like someone punched him in the stomach, though, and asks Gwaine to buy groceries far more often than he used to. Arthur looks equal parts disappointed and relieved whenever Gwaine walks through Camelot’s doors, and Gwaine wants to shake both of them, but is more worried about Freya, who isn’t avoiding him specifically these days but stumbles through her days like she barely sleeps.
“Are you all right?” he asks a few days after Val is hauled off after assaulting Arthur, when it’s just he and Freya passing in the kitchen.
She gives him a long look. “I’m worried about what Avalon might do next.”
Gwaine stares at her, not quite sure why she would be invested in that of all things when she hasn’t even been to town yet that he knows of and hasn’t been involved in the anti-Avalon campaign. Before he can ask, though, she disappears out to the fields to weed something, and he decides it’s best to leave her alone. He’s got his secrets, Merlin has his, and Freya can certainly have hers.
Merlin comes home after a grocery run wide-eyed and a bit shaky after almost a week of relative quiet, a few minutes late for dinner. “Health and Safety inspector came in while I was at Camelot earlier,” he explains when Gaius asks what’s upset him. “He’s a bit of a creep, is all. Gwen will probably have all the gossip on him when she comes, I think he’s staying at The Castle.”
Gaius glances at Gwaine before changing the subject, and Merlin sits down, still pale, to eat his dinner, but Freya drops her fork and doesn’t pick it up again once, and leaves the second Gaius announces his intention to check on a few things in the greenhouse.
If Gwaine thought Freya was easily frightened before, it’s nothing compared to the next few days, and Merlin and Gaius are constantly on edge too, leaving Gwaine feeling as if he’s missing something pretty big. The Health and Safety inspector is indeed a creep, he discovers at a stop by Camelot, but that doesn’t explain everything.
And then he knocks on the door one afternoon and Freya drops a cup of tea, splashing tea and shattering the cup, and runs upstairs.
*
Behind him, Gaius is telling Merlin to answer the door and say Gaius isn’t home, and Merlin’s obeying, but Gwaine decides to deal with that mystery another time and goes upstairs to see if he can get Freya out of her room, or at least to let him into it.
His knock goes unanswered, so he tries talking. “Freya, it’s Gwaine. Are you okay in there?” Still no answer, although it sounds like she’s moving around. “You don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to, but at least let us know if you plan to do something drastic, yeah? I think it’ll upset Merlin.”
“I don’t--” She’s whispering, so she’s close to the door, but she doesn’t seem to be showing signs of opening it. “I won’t. You can go, Gwaine.”
“Is it that Aredian fellow? Merlin’s sending him away. Do you know him?”
Freya lets out what sounds like a strangled sob, and Gwaine winces. He’s never been good at this sort of thing, but he’s all Freya’s got at the moment, so he sits and leans his back against the door while she cries and makes sure that nobody can get past him.
Luckily, a few minutes after Aredian drives away, Merlin comes upstairs, mouth set. He blinks when he sees Gwaine, and Gwaine shrugs. “She seemed pretty upset, and you and Gaius were busy. I thought I would make sure she was okay.”
When Merlin asks him to, Gwaine gets up and lets him talk to Freya and go in when she agrees to talk to him, but he doesn’t go away. He doesn’t eavesdrop either, no matter how much he wants to, so he’s hovering awkwardly in the hall when Merlin comes back out. He doesn’t look much better than Freya, and clearly there’s something about this Health and Safety inspector making everyone nervous, so Gwaine offers to do the shopping in town for a while. Merlin gives him an absent smile before going outside.
Just as Gwaine’s about to go find something to do out in the fields, since that’s what they’re paying him for, Freya opens her door just a crack. She doesn’t seem surprised to see him, and there are still tears drying on her face. “Merlin said I ought to tell you I’m okay,” she whispers.
It’s not worth it, he decides, to remind her that he isn’t an idiot and say that he actually knows that she isn’t okay. She’s talking to him, they can go on from there. “Let me know if you need anything,” he says instead, because no one should ever look that terrified.
“Maybe I will,” says Freya, and shuts the door again.
She doesn’t ask him for anything, but he brings back snacks he knows she likes whenever he makes a run to Camelot over the next few days, and she starts coming out of her room for longer periods. She and Gwen, who’s still spending a lot of her time, if not all her nights, with them, strike up a friendship, and Gwen gets her to stay at the table in the evenings while Gaius reads and Merlin jitters restlessly and Gwaine makes notes for his travel guide.
A few mornings after Merlin makes a run to Camelot while Gwaine’s on a hike with Lancelot’s friend Percival and comes back smiling and biting his lip with worry in turns, they’re all sitting at the breakfast table when Merlin checks his mobile and starts laughing. “Arthur and I are thinking of how to torture Aredian,” he explains when Gwaine pesters him enough.
Freya, to his surprise, actually smiles, though it isn’t a particularly happy smile. “Bury him head-down in the carrot patch,” Gwaine suggests, to see if he can make her smile more real.
“That’s bad for the produce.”
“Get him to take a kickboxing class with Lancelot. I guarantee that’s torture.”
“Lock him in the basement of an abandoned warehouse where no one can hear him,” says Freya, voice completely level. Gwaine makes a few more less serious suggestions, but Freya’s are all enough to make him shudder, and he’s glad when Merlin finds a way to change the subject.
*
The next night, Merlin gets a text and starts yelling for Gaius. “Morgana did something to Aredian’s car,” he says. “We’ve got to tell her. I’ve told Arthur to bring her and Gwen.”
No matter how many times Gwaine asks, they brush off his questions and tell him he’ll find out when the others get there. Sometime in the confusion, Freya retreats to her room again, so Gwaine sits down at the table and crosses his arms to wait for the explanation, which had better be forthcoming. He’s not particularly patient.
Arthur, Gwen, and Morgana are all pale and quiet when they come in, but Arthur goes to Merlin almost immediately and sits down next to him. There are a few seconds of confusion while none of them knows quite what to do before Gwen gets the ball rolling, and then there’s an even more confusing few minutes while all of them talk around something big, about Morgana blowing up Aredian’s car. Then Merlin finally says it straight out, smiling at Morgana and leaning into the hand Arthur’s put on his shoulder. “It seems you’ve got magic.”
Gwaine just stares, at first. It’s some sort of joke, or code for something else, because magic doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t explain why Morgana relaxes slowly, even though she’s still pale and shaky, or why Gwen eventually nods solemnly and says she always knew there was something different about Morgana. “Merlin and I have it too,” Gaius tells Morgana. “That’s part of what this farm is, a place to learn how to control your powers. Many of the people who work here--”
Freya. That means Freya knows too, and it explains more than it should. Gwaine doesn’t like mysteries, but that doesn’t mean he likes this answer either, because if it’s true, the world doesn’t make sense and everyone he’s living with has been lying to him. “We’ll teach you,” Merlin promises, giving Gwaine a sideways look that isn’t quite apologetic enough for Gwaine’s liking. “You can do all sorts of things,” he adds, and then he starts doing things.
It takes less than five minutes of Gaius and Merlin showing a few little tricks, moving things around that definitely don’t have any wires attached and making fire and shaping it into different things, before Gwaine decides he needs to be somewhere else to process everything. “Excuse me,” he says in between parlour tricks, and goes upstairs.
At first, he intends to go to his room, maybe pack his duffel and get the hell out of Albion. It’s one thing to get involved in corporate espionage and everything else they’ve been up to, but magic isn’t exactly something he’s prepared to handle. Lancelot will understand. However, when he gets to the top of the stairs, Freya’s standing in the hallway. “We’ll talk,” she says.
Gwaine really wants to tell her to sod off, she hasn’t wanted to talk to him before and now when he doesn’t want to talk to anyone he shouldn’t be expected to just go after her. Still, he tromps down the hall after her and goes into her room when she gestures him in. “So,” he says when conversation doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. “Magic. You’ve got it too?”
“I never really learned how to use it, much, and I’m nowhere near as powerful as Merlin.” She sits down on the bed. “I don’t use it at all, anymore. They tell me I should, but the last time someone tried to teach me … Morgause found me. Well, Aredian found me, and then he brought Morgause. They said I should be trained, and they were nice at first.”
This sort of thing doesn’t happen, he’s relatively sure of that, even in a world where magic exists and there is actually a bloody wizard named Merlin downstairs. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Gaius and Merlin, though, they do good with it. And maybe I’ll learn how someday as well. I could only do little things, before I stopped. Tried to make strawberries and got roses.”
“Why aren’t you down there with them?”
Freya just looks at her hands. “You’ve met Merlin. He’s going to say we’ve got to stop Aredian, now. And Morgause. I don’t know if I can do that.”
Gwaine clears his throat. “How about you help as much as you can, and I don’t run for the hills and start thinking this is all some belated alcohol-induced hallucination from my uni days?”
It’s not much of a deal, but she nods anyway. “How can I help?”
“Tell me about the magic,” says Gwaine, and amazingly, she does, until Gaius comes up the stares and knocks on Freya’s door, solemn and then raising his eyebrow in an all-too-familiar expression when he finds Gwaine sitting cross-legged on her floor. “What do you want?”
“Come downstairs, both of you,” says Gaius, wisely not commenting. “We’re going to fix this.”
*
Gwaine visits Gwen and Lancelot in the kitchen at The Castle the next day while Gaius takes Freya a few towns over to a library where they can research any crimes Aredian and Morgause might happen to have committed publicly, and somehow Gwen makes a slip that turns into both of them telling Lancelot the whole business about magic. Lancelot thinks they’re having him on until Gwen pulls out her phone and shows the recording she made of Merlin making fire in his palm, and then he burns a sauteeing onion while he attempts to wrap his mind around things. It feels good to have someone else who thinks the whole thing is completely bizarre.
Lancelot doesn’t really have anything to contribute to the plan, and Merlin attempts to scold Gwen and Gwaine for telling him, which works about as well as could be expected considering Merlin is about as threatening as a baby duck, even with the freaky magic stuff. A few days pass while Gaius and Freya continue attempting to research and get precisely nowhere.
Merlin calls the farmhouse one afternoon and Gwaine picks up the phone. “I’ve accidentally turned Aredian into a toad,” he announces, and hangs up.
Gwaine decides that his life has clearly turned into a surrealist film and passes the message on to Gaius, who blanches and attempts to call Merlin’s mobile, which turns out to be unnecessary because ten minutes later everyone comes trooping through the door. Merlin’s in front, holding a very unattractive amphibian in his hands. Arthur’s beaming, an arm around Merlin’s shoulders. Lancelot, he’s told, is holding down the fort at The Castle, but Morgana and Gwen are holding hands even as Morgana complains that she didn’t get to do anything to Aredian.
Freya comes in from watering a field, finds out what happened, and promptly starts crying all over Merlin. They’re happy tears, but Gwaine decides he’s had quite enough of her crying, especially when Gaius is breaking out cider for a celebration, and makes a scrap of rag into a bowtie for Aredian and proceeds to take pictures.
Aredian looks deeply unimpressed.
The air of celebration lasts until the next morning, when Gwaine comes downstairs near noon hungover and wishing for a cave to hide in to find Freya sitting at the table with a mug of tea in her hands. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“We’ve still got Morgause to deal with,” she says, and his left-over good mood disappears. “She’s the worse one, really. She’s got the magic.”
“Merlin’s on the job, and he turns people into toads by accident. I’d say we’ll be fine.” Gwaine keeps his tone as light as he can and goes in search of the coffee maker. “And even if we’re not, at least not yet, then we’ll keep you away from her. I’d say I can do that.”
Freya smiles, just a bit. “I won’t hold you to it.” She pauses. “Have you still got those pictures of him in a bowtie? I’d like to put one on my wall.”
They all spend the next few days waiting to see what kind of revenge Morgause dreams up for them, and then the phone rings one afternoon and a minute later Freya is pounding on Gwaine’s door. “That was Morgana, she says Morgause is on her way to Camelot and she’s going to try to kill Arthur and Merlin. Gaius is in town visiting Alice, you’ve got to drive me.”
Gwaine doesn’t ask questions, just grabs his keys and a pair of shoes and speeds the whole short drive into town while Freya twists her hands together. “I’ll watch out for you,” he promises, and screeches to a halt outside the store. Camelot’s windows are opaque instead of glass, which he considers to be a really bad sign, and Morgana is dragging Officer Leon, a tree of a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, towards the door.
There’s a loud crash from inside, which makes Officer Leon start and then run forward, pulling out something to break the glass when pulling on the door doesn’t work, but Gwaine sees Freya’s eyes flash gold just as the truncheon hits the door and the whole thing shatters, showing the inside of Camelot, where Arthur is shaking Merlin, who appears to be passed out, and their adversaries are respectively tied up and knocked unconscious.
Gwaine catches Freya’s arm when her knees buckle.
*
The next night, Gwaine is fuzzy with cider and triumph and good company, and everyone else seems to be in a similar state. The whole town is celebrating because the Mercia Avalon won’t be opening after all, what with one of the CEOs and the regional manager on their way to prison, but their little group is having its own special celebration.
Merlin and Arthur, he is pleased to see, have apparently gotten their heads out of their arses, because Arthur is petting Merlin’s poor concussed head and they are giving each other such ridiculously soppy looks Gwaine is torn between wanting to take a picture and wanting to tell the arseholes to get a room. Gwen and Morgana are similarly ridiculous, holding hands and smiling at each other.
Gwaine catches Freya’s eye, and maybe it’s because she’s had some cider too, or maybe she’s relieved that Morgause and Aredian can’t hurt her anymore, because she grins at him, wide and bright. He catches her hand and waltzes her out onto the lawn, but both of them are a little too tipsy and too happy to do anything sedate like a waltz, so they hop around instead.
At the end, with a flash of gold in her eyes, Freya produces a flower and Gwaine tucks it behind his ear, which makes her smile go shy.
He’s already stayed in Albion longer than he manages to stay in most places, and he doesn’t see himself leaving very soon, with friends all around him and work to do and magic to learn about, so Gwaine keeps beaming at her and sweeps an elaborate bow. “Another dance, fair lady?”
Freya actually giggles and Gwaine takes her hands (ignoring Morgana and Gwen and their infernal cooing, not to mention Lancelot’s laughter) and jigs her off again. Maybe it’s time to stay and put his travel guide together for a little while, instead of adding to it.
Wordcount: ~6,000w (what. I just. This 'verse makes me wordy, apparently.)
Summary: Gwaine may not have groceries telling him what to do, but he does have a story.
A/N: If you haven't already read A Metaphor of Human Bloody Existence (link goes to first part), this is not going to make sense to you, because it's Gwaine's POV of the Gwaine/Freya subplot that would not leave me alone (I am still not sure how it ended up in there, but they would not leave me alone, thus you get this). Title is from the same Pratchett quote "Metaphor"'s title came from.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Gwaine is writing a theoretical travel guide, in his spare time from whatever job is keeping him in food and entertainment at the moment, since his inability to stay in one place for more than a month at a time means he’s seen quite a lot. He calls it The Guide to the Underbelly of Britain and suspects he’ll have to change the title to something else more snappy eventually.
Five minutes after arriving in the tiny village of Albion (invited by his uni friend Lancelot after his last job situation went belly-up, a long story involving a bar, the owner of the bar, and the wife of the owner of the bar, who funnily enough never wore her wedding ring), Gwaine decides that his notation for it is going to have to be Every bloody one looks like a supermodel. It isn’t just Lancelot, who is disgustingly gorgeous enough that his being a good person on top of it is almost an insult. It’s also Gwen, who’s the head chef in the kitchen where Lancelot works. And Gwen’s girlfriend Morgana, who could make grown men weep. He would try to get in on that action if he thought there was the slightest chance Morgana wouldn’t remove his intestines through his eye sockets. Not to mention the gorgeous, arrogant blond working the register at Albion’s little market.
Lancelot surveys him over a cup of tea kindly made by Gwen. “There’s actually a few places in town these days where you could ask for work. We need a dishwasher here.” There’s a pause while both of them think about what happened when they both worked at the cafeteria together for a semester, and then Lancelot moves on without being prompted. “Arthur’s busy at the shop lately, especially since we’re campaigning to keep an Avalon Supermart from building nearby, but I think you would drive each other mad within a week.”
“I’m not that bad, am I?”
“You are absolutely that bad. And he’s not much better.”
“So where does that leave?”
It is never a good sign when Lancelot looks mischievous. Most of the time he is intensely serious, and it drives Gwaine mad trying to get him to have any fun. Sometimes, though, he’s got a bit of a wicked streak, and it seems now is one of those times. Gwaine raises his eyebrows and waits. “Gaius’s farm. My good friend Merlin works out there, but they need some help in the fields, since Gaius is getting on and Merlin’s only one man.”
“Your good friend?” Gwaine injects as much innuendo as he can into the statement.
Lancelot just shakes his head. “You’ll like him. And he’ll like you. I’ll give Gaius a ring and send you out there. There’s probably space for you to stay at the farmhouse, too, so you don’t have to rent a room here.”
An hour later, Gwaine finds himself on the doorstep of a farmhouse that looks as if it was cobbled together out of at least three other houses, smacked in the middle of a large amount of fields. An old man with flyaway hair (who, to Gwaine’s relief, does not look like a supermodel; that would be a bit much) opens the door. “You must be Lancelot’s friend. I’m Gaius. We’ve been looking for help around the farm, weeding and harvesting and watering, and while we did hire someone on day before yesterday, one more hand certainly wouldn’t go amiss. Have you got experience?”
Gwaine shrugs. “I’ve done some of everything, in my day. That includes farming. Long as you show me what’s a weed and what isn’t, I’ll take my best shot at it.”
Gaius raises an eyebrow. “Any … special talents?”
That sounds like it’s meant to be code for something else, and Gwaine wonders for a moment if he’s been sent to a brothel before deciding that this man working anywhere near the sex trade is a horrifying thought at best. “Ah … I brewed my own lager once,” he offers.
The eyebrow goes higher, but before Gaius can reply, someone comes crashing down the stairs and appears. “Gaius, who’s here? Freya is--oh, hello, who are you?”
And there, Gwaine suspects, is the reason for Lancelot’s little smile, his “good friend” Merlin, who is maybe not a supermodel but who has a million-watt grin and gorgeous eyes. He also suspects that he has just met the inevitable reason that he will be forced to flee Albion for safer climes, since he’s never met a town he couldn’t find trouble in. “Gwaine, at your service. Lancelot’s a friend of mine and he said you might need some help out here.”
Merlin gives him a long searching look before the grin returns at half-strength. “Well, I’ll leave you two to it, then.”
“You may as well stay, Merlin. Come to my office, would you, Gwaine?” says Gaius, and leads him into a room that looks far more like a laboratory than an office. The smell makes his nose itch and there’s something ominous-looking bubbling over a burner, so Gwaine revises his hypothesis from “brothel” to “drug den.”
Gwaine discovers within five minutes that Gaius makes herbal supplements that are “not, I repeat not, young man, recreational,” that there is something both he and Merlin are talking around, and that Merlin may as well have a huge sign hanging over his head with flashing lights proclaiming “TAKEN TAKEN TAKEN” for all the world to see. There’s no mention of a boyfriend (or a girlfriend, but given Merlin’s neckerchief Gwaine was really not expecting one), but the sign is there nonetheless.
However, Gwaine decides after about five minutes of considering pouting about it, that’s probably actually a good thing, as it means he’s less likely to be run out of town on a rail. Gaius hires him (despite Merlin’s eyebrow-telegraph giving off do not hire extremely bad idea signals) and shows him to a room, so Gwaine goes to his car and gets out the duffel that he carries most of his worldly goods around in.
When he steps out of his room to take a leak and hears a startled gasp from someone who definitely isn’t Merlin or Gaius, Gwaine turns around and finds the actual reason he’ll be getting kicked out of Albion.
*
“Ah, just the men I wanted to see,” says Gwaine five minutes later, after following the terrified-looking girl back to her room and attempting to knock and apologize. The lack of answer led him back down to Gaius’s office, where they were pretty obviously discussing Gwaine. “I seem to have frightened your … sister, Merlin?” Unless she’s the reason Merlin has the flashing lights over his head, but judging by the similar coloring he’s going with sister.
“Just an employee,” says Merlin, and gives Gaius a completely ineffectual glare before leaving the room. Gwaine follows, since nobody told him not to, and Merlin throws a smile over his shoulder while they go up the stairs. “Look, sorry if I was a bit rude earlier. Things have just been pretty busy with Avalon building so nearby, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Plus, as you saw, Freya’s pretty shy, so I was worried about that too.”
“All I said was hello.” And maybe he’d given a bit of a theatrical bow as well, but Gwaine never passes on a chance to flirt with a pretty lady. Freya, for all her startled-fawn looks and apparent terror of him, is very pretty indeed.
“She’s shy, like I said, and new here. I don’t think her last situation was that nice.”
Gwaine is nosy, but he’s not stupid. He follows Merlin the rest of the way to Freya’s room in silence, and stands behind him while Merlin knocks gently on the door. It takes four knocks before there’s an answer. “I’ll come down for dinner.”
“That’s fine, Freya. I just wanted to be sure that you’re okay. I’m sorry we didn’t warn you we’re hiring on someone else, it’s unexpected. But his name is Gwaine, and he’s really very friendly, I promise.”
A few seconds later, the door creaks open. Freya does not look noticeably less terrified. “Sorry. It’s nice to meet you, Gwaine.”
“I look forward to getting to know you,” he says, which is apparently all wrong, because she backs up a few steps. Merlin looks pained. “You’re new here too, I hear. We’ll have to get used to Albion together.”
Freya just looks at Merlin imploringly. Gwaine tries hard not to be offended, and Merlin at least has the grace to wince an apology when he grabs Gwaine’s arm. “We’ll see you at dinner, Freya. I’m going to finish giving Gwaine the tour.”
“You want to come along?” Gwaine offers. “Since you’re new as well.”
“I’ve already had the tour,” says Freya, and shuts the door.
A long, awkward silence follows. Merlin clears his throat. “I’ll show you the fields. We’ll probably have you weeding some beds without anything growing in them at the moment so you don’t have to worry about what you ought to leave.”
Gwaine takes the tour, and when they get back to the house, Freya is already halfway through eating her dinner. She answers Merlin’s questions, and Gaius’s (although Gwaine is cheered that she looks mildly terrified of him as well), but whenever Gwaine takes another stab at it she quiets right down and stares at her plate like it’s her only hope for salvation.
Merlin pats his shoulder when Freya flees immediately after the meal. “She’ll warm up to you eventually.”
“Everyone does,” says Gwaine, and accepts Gaius’s offer of a mug of cider.
*
Freya does not warm up to him. Freya, in fact, makes an art form of avoiding Gwaine. Over the next week, he and Merlin get to be good friends, chatting while they work the fields or run errands or visit Lancelot and the lovely Gwen at The Castle in town (the lovely Morgana seems to have urgent business elsewhere, and Gwaine doesn’t ask about it because it makes everyone else scowl; he is many things, but stupid is not one of them). He incurs the dislike of the owner of The Castle and the town’s little market, for no good reason he can fathom. When Lance mentions meetings they’ve been having to see what they can do about stopping Avalon Supermart from building in Mercia (a nearby village whose notation in Gwaine’s Guide to the Underbelly of Britain will be something along the lines of A pub, two fields, and a bunch of trees. And a cute barmaid), Merlin encourages him to come.
The meeting solves the mystery of the serene air of not-interested Merlin gives out even though he acts like he’s single, because when Gwaine and Merlin go to the flat above Camelot Market laughing about an accident in Gaius’s workshop, they’re met by a glare from the gorgeous blond who manages the market. His look at Merlin might as well be a shout of “Mine, don’t touch” for all its subtlety, and Merlin, it seems, is entirely oblivious. So of course when blondie asks Merlin if he’s got a new boyfriend, Gwaine puts an arm around his friend. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, princess. We’ll be good.”
The glare he gets in return is priceless enough to make up for Merlin’s embarrassed and reproachful look, so Gwaine does nothing the rest of the night to dissuade blondie (whose name proves to be Arthur) from thinking that they’re together. Since there’s no chance of Merlin actually doing anything with him, he has to have fun where he can. And if it means they stop giving each other lovelorn looks in the end, that’s only to the good. To that end, Gwaine musters his most casual voice when they get back to the farmouse that night. “You and Arthur, yeah?”
Merlin stammers something out and flees as fast as Freya at her best, and Gwaine prepares himself to brave the stairs (Gwen provides damn good wine, he really has to go to more of those meetings) when he hears something behind him. He spins around and finds Freya watching him, looking more curious than nervous. “He talks about Arthur, sometimes,” she says at last. “Is he nice?”
Gwaine grins at her. “Not particularly, but they are stupidly in love. Maybe eventually they’ll figure it out.”
Her smile turns her from a terrified waif into a gorgeous woman, and Gwaine smiles appreciatively back. “I’d wondered, but Merlin doesn’t seem to like him much, and I thought he would want someone nice.”
“He’s all right, just a bit of an arse.” Gwaine puts on his most persuasive tone on. “You’ll have to come with us to town one day, meet him. Gwen too, Merlin mentioned you and she wants to meet you.”
Within a blink of an eye, she’s right back to terrified. “I’ll stay out here for now, if it’s all the same,” she says, and scurries to brush past him. “Good night, Gwaine,” she adds, and then she’s off so fast it almost makes his head spin.
If he thought she was avoiding him before, it gets even more pointed after that. If he walks into a room, she’s immediately out of it, unless it’s a mealtime, because Gaius frowns on any of them missing meals. Even during dinner, though, she’s silent and won’t so much as look at Gwaine. Gwaine decides that discretion is the better part of valor and doesn’t answer Merlin’s questions about what happened, instead choosing to be unfailingly polite to Freya whenever she deigns to stay in his presence. It’s been since secondary school since he’s been on his best behavior this much, and Lancelot laughs at him when he complains, but Gwaine doesn’t like being disliked, so he keeps trying.
When he isn’t trying to get Freya to stop looking like an abandoned kitten, Gwaine is distracted by Merlin and his group of do-gooders. Even though Merlin claims (repeatedly, not to mention loudly) that he’s been dragged into it against his will (mostly with pointed looks at Arthur), he’s just as passionate about keeping Avalon away as the rest of them, and between he and Lancelot they’ve got Gwaine sitting in on their meetings and contributing as well as he can.
One day, Merlin slams into the house after a trip to town looking halfway between panicked and murderous, and won’t explain the actual problem. He does say, though, that Arthur is being an arse, so Gwaine goes to town to annoy some answers out of him (Albion isn’t the most exciting village in England, though it’s rapidly climbing the list in Gwaine’s travel guide, but it does boast the wonderful local sport of Arthur-baiting), not before knocking on Freya’s door to see if she finally wants to brave town. Unsurprisingly, he gets no answer there.
Arthur is explaining how the register works to a thug with a snake tattoo when Gwaine arrives, and glares the second Gwaine walks in. “What, did Merlin forget something earlier?”
“Actually, I came for unhealthy food,” Gwaine lies easily. “It is almost depressing how well they eat, there. Who’s the new guy?”
The glare doesn’t abate, but Arthur introduces Marcus Valiant, new employee and slimy bastard, and Gwaine chats with them for a few minutes before buying crisps and chocolate (which makes Arthur look murderous, for reasons Gwaine does not pretend to understand) and heading back out to the farm, conjecturing that aforementioned slimy bastard is the cause of Merlin’s bad mood.
He knocks and opens the door before Merlin tells him to come in. “What’s got your Arthur being such a bastard today?” he asks, mostly to make Merlin blush. “Glared at me worse than usual when I--” It occurs to him that he’s witnessing a miracle: Freya is actually in Merlin’s room, looking terrified but not actually running for her room as fast as she can. Excellent, progress. “Hello, Freya. Stopped by your room earlier to see if you wanted a ride into town.”
Merlin mutters something, probably objecting to Gwaine talking about “his” Arthur, and glares at a phone sitting on his nightstand before grabbing Freya when she finally tries to make a break for it and telling her to stay. “Gwaine’s harmless,” he says, and gives Gwaine his best attempt at Gaius’s do-not-prove-me-wrong look.
Gwaine can’t resist a challenge, and if being nice to Freya won’t work, perhaps annoying her will. “I don’t bite unless you ask,” he says, and gives her a quick wink when she looks horrified. He relents a second later and turns back to needling Merlin, who soon mentions a stranger to town. Some more coaxing gets out a story about Slimy Valiant working for Avalon, and accidental phone theft.
Freya stays quiet but isn’t vibrating with the need to escape while they talk about what to do with the phone, and she gives Merlin a sharp look Gwaine doesn’t understand when they talk about trying to tap it.
And then poor, innocent Merlin mentions going to the police, and Gwaine smiles, because as a barrister’s son, he knows exactly what they can do to get something out of Valiant without having to worry about admissible evidence. “Oh, Merlin. You have so much to learn.”
*
By the time Gwaine is finished explaining what blackmail and libel and other such terms technically are, and all the ways he knows of getting around them, Merlin is looking determined, but more gratifyingly, Freya isn’t running in the opposite direction. She actually smiles at him when she slips out, though she ducks her head a second later, and Gwaine decides to count it as win.
Of course, Merlin isn’t an idiot, and he narrows his eyes at Gwaine almost the second Freya leaves. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably not a great idea.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” says Gwaine. “I’m not going to do anything to her. I just want her to stop being terrified of me.”
Merlin’s snort isn’t encouraging, but he doesn’t bring it up again, and they go back to talking about using Val to pass false messages about Camelot Market losing profits to the Avalon CEOs for most of the rest of the night.
Everything falls apart the next day when Merlin arrives home and asks if he can stay in Gwaine’s room for a few nights, since he told Gwen about Morgana maybe working with Avalon and Gwen wants to sleep at the farm for a few nights while they get themselves figured out. From there, nobody’s thinking much about Val except to keep him out of everyone’s way and make sure he doesn’t pass on information that they don’t want him to, because everyone’s too busy worrying about Morgana and Gwen, who both look like hell.
Somehow, though, Val still ends up clapped in irons on assault charges, and Gwaine can’t figure out exactly how or why, since Arthur won’t talk about it and meetings suddenly decrease in frequency. Merlin walks around looking like someone punched him in the stomach, though, and asks Gwaine to buy groceries far more often than he used to. Arthur looks equal parts disappointed and relieved whenever Gwaine walks through Camelot’s doors, and Gwaine wants to shake both of them, but is more worried about Freya, who isn’t avoiding him specifically these days but stumbles through her days like she barely sleeps.
“Are you all right?” he asks a few days after Val is hauled off after assaulting Arthur, when it’s just he and Freya passing in the kitchen.
She gives him a long look. “I’m worried about what Avalon might do next.”
Gwaine stares at her, not quite sure why she would be invested in that of all things when she hasn’t even been to town yet that he knows of and hasn’t been involved in the anti-Avalon campaign. Before he can ask, though, she disappears out to the fields to weed something, and he decides it’s best to leave her alone. He’s got his secrets, Merlin has his, and Freya can certainly have hers.
Merlin comes home after a grocery run wide-eyed and a bit shaky after almost a week of relative quiet, a few minutes late for dinner. “Health and Safety inspector came in while I was at Camelot earlier,” he explains when Gaius asks what’s upset him. “He’s a bit of a creep, is all. Gwen will probably have all the gossip on him when she comes, I think he’s staying at The Castle.”
Gaius glances at Gwaine before changing the subject, and Merlin sits down, still pale, to eat his dinner, but Freya drops her fork and doesn’t pick it up again once, and leaves the second Gaius announces his intention to check on a few things in the greenhouse.
If Gwaine thought Freya was easily frightened before, it’s nothing compared to the next few days, and Merlin and Gaius are constantly on edge too, leaving Gwaine feeling as if he’s missing something pretty big. The Health and Safety inspector is indeed a creep, he discovers at a stop by Camelot, but that doesn’t explain everything.
And then he knocks on the door one afternoon and Freya drops a cup of tea, splashing tea and shattering the cup, and runs upstairs.
*
Behind him, Gaius is telling Merlin to answer the door and say Gaius isn’t home, and Merlin’s obeying, but Gwaine decides to deal with that mystery another time and goes upstairs to see if he can get Freya out of her room, or at least to let him into it.
His knock goes unanswered, so he tries talking. “Freya, it’s Gwaine. Are you okay in there?” Still no answer, although it sounds like she’s moving around. “You don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to, but at least let us know if you plan to do something drastic, yeah? I think it’ll upset Merlin.”
“I don’t--” She’s whispering, so she’s close to the door, but she doesn’t seem to be showing signs of opening it. “I won’t. You can go, Gwaine.”
“Is it that Aredian fellow? Merlin’s sending him away. Do you know him?”
Freya lets out what sounds like a strangled sob, and Gwaine winces. He’s never been good at this sort of thing, but he’s all Freya’s got at the moment, so he sits and leans his back against the door while she cries and makes sure that nobody can get past him.
Luckily, a few minutes after Aredian drives away, Merlin comes upstairs, mouth set. He blinks when he sees Gwaine, and Gwaine shrugs. “She seemed pretty upset, and you and Gaius were busy. I thought I would make sure she was okay.”
When Merlin asks him to, Gwaine gets up and lets him talk to Freya and go in when she agrees to talk to him, but he doesn’t go away. He doesn’t eavesdrop either, no matter how much he wants to, so he’s hovering awkwardly in the hall when Merlin comes back out. He doesn’t look much better than Freya, and clearly there’s something about this Health and Safety inspector making everyone nervous, so Gwaine offers to do the shopping in town for a while. Merlin gives him an absent smile before going outside.
Just as Gwaine’s about to go find something to do out in the fields, since that’s what they’re paying him for, Freya opens her door just a crack. She doesn’t seem surprised to see him, and there are still tears drying on her face. “Merlin said I ought to tell you I’m okay,” she whispers.
It’s not worth it, he decides, to remind her that he isn’t an idiot and say that he actually knows that she isn’t okay. She’s talking to him, they can go on from there. “Let me know if you need anything,” he says instead, because no one should ever look that terrified.
“Maybe I will,” says Freya, and shuts the door again.
She doesn’t ask him for anything, but he brings back snacks he knows she likes whenever he makes a run to Camelot over the next few days, and she starts coming out of her room for longer periods. She and Gwen, who’s still spending a lot of her time, if not all her nights, with them, strike up a friendship, and Gwen gets her to stay at the table in the evenings while Gaius reads and Merlin jitters restlessly and Gwaine makes notes for his travel guide.
A few mornings after Merlin makes a run to Camelot while Gwaine’s on a hike with Lancelot’s friend Percival and comes back smiling and biting his lip with worry in turns, they’re all sitting at the breakfast table when Merlin checks his mobile and starts laughing. “Arthur and I are thinking of how to torture Aredian,” he explains when Gwaine pesters him enough.
Freya, to his surprise, actually smiles, though it isn’t a particularly happy smile. “Bury him head-down in the carrot patch,” Gwaine suggests, to see if he can make her smile more real.
“That’s bad for the produce.”
“Get him to take a kickboxing class with Lancelot. I guarantee that’s torture.”
“Lock him in the basement of an abandoned warehouse where no one can hear him,” says Freya, voice completely level. Gwaine makes a few more less serious suggestions, but Freya’s are all enough to make him shudder, and he’s glad when Merlin finds a way to change the subject.
*
The next night, Merlin gets a text and starts yelling for Gaius. “Morgana did something to Aredian’s car,” he says. “We’ve got to tell her. I’ve told Arthur to bring her and Gwen.”
No matter how many times Gwaine asks, they brush off his questions and tell him he’ll find out when the others get there. Sometime in the confusion, Freya retreats to her room again, so Gwaine sits down at the table and crosses his arms to wait for the explanation, which had better be forthcoming. He’s not particularly patient.
Arthur, Gwen, and Morgana are all pale and quiet when they come in, but Arthur goes to Merlin almost immediately and sits down next to him. There are a few seconds of confusion while none of them knows quite what to do before Gwen gets the ball rolling, and then there’s an even more confusing few minutes while all of them talk around something big, about Morgana blowing up Aredian’s car. Then Merlin finally says it straight out, smiling at Morgana and leaning into the hand Arthur’s put on his shoulder. “It seems you’ve got magic.”
Gwaine just stares, at first. It’s some sort of joke, or code for something else, because magic doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t explain why Morgana relaxes slowly, even though she’s still pale and shaky, or why Gwen eventually nods solemnly and says she always knew there was something different about Morgana. “Merlin and I have it too,” Gaius tells Morgana. “That’s part of what this farm is, a place to learn how to control your powers. Many of the people who work here--”
Freya. That means Freya knows too, and it explains more than it should. Gwaine doesn’t like mysteries, but that doesn’t mean he likes this answer either, because if it’s true, the world doesn’t make sense and everyone he’s living with has been lying to him. “We’ll teach you,” Merlin promises, giving Gwaine a sideways look that isn’t quite apologetic enough for Gwaine’s liking. “You can do all sorts of things,” he adds, and then he starts doing things.
It takes less than five minutes of Gaius and Merlin showing a few little tricks, moving things around that definitely don’t have any wires attached and making fire and shaping it into different things, before Gwaine decides he needs to be somewhere else to process everything. “Excuse me,” he says in between parlour tricks, and goes upstairs.
At first, he intends to go to his room, maybe pack his duffel and get the hell out of Albion. It’s one thing to get involved in corporate espionage and everything else they’ve been up to, but magic isn’t exactly something he’s prepared to handle. Lancelot will understand. However, when he gets to the top of the stairs, Freya’s standing in the hallway. “We’ll talk,” she says.
Gwaine really wants to tell her to sod off, she hasn’t wanted to talk to him before and now when he doesn’t want to talk to anyone he shouldn’t be expected to just go after her. Still, he tromps down the hall after her and goes into her room when she gestures him in. “So,” he says when conversation doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. “Magic. You’ve got it too?”
“I never really learned how to use it, much, and I’m nowhere near as powerful as Merlin.” She sits down on the bed. “I don’t use it at all, anymore. They tell me I should, but the last time someone tried to teach me … Morgause found me. Well, Aredian found me, and then he brought Morgause. They said I should be trained, and they were nice at first.”
This sort of thing doesn’t happen, he’s relatively sure of that, even in a world where magic exists and there is actually a bloody wizard named Merlin downstairs. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Gaius and Merlin, though, they do good with it. And maybe I’ll learn how someday as well. I could only do little things, before I stopped. Tried to make strawberries and got roses.”
“Why aren’t you down there with them?”
Freya just looks at her hands. “You’ve met Merlin. He’s going to say we’ve got to stop Aredian, now. And Morgause. I don’t know if I can do that.”
Gwaine clears his throat. “How about you help as much as you can, and I don’t run for the hills and start thinking this is all some belated alcohol-induced hallucination from my uni days?”
It’s not much of a deal, but she nods anyway. “How can I help?”
“Tell me about the magic,” says Gwaine, and amazingly, she does, until Gaius comes up the stares and knocks on Freya’s door, solemn and then raising his eyebrow in an all-too-familiar expression when he finds Gwaine sitting cross-legged on her floor. “What do you want?”
“Come downstairs, both of you,” says Gaius, wisely not commenting. “We’re going to fix this.”
*
Gwaine visits Gwen and Lancelot in the kitchen at The Castle the next day while Gaius takes Freya a few towns over to a library where they can research any crimes Aredian and Morgause might happen to have committed publicly, and somehow Gwen makes a slip that turns into both of them telling Lancelot the whole business about magic. Lancelot thinks they’re having him on until Gwen pulls out her phone and shows the recording she made of Merlin making fire in his palm, and then he burns a sauteeing onion while he attempts to wrap his mind around things. It feels good to have someone else who thinks the whole thing is completely bizarre.
Lancelot doesn’t really have anything to contribute to the plan, and Merlin attempts to scold Gwen and Gwaine for telling him, which works about as well as could be expected considering Merlin is about as threatening as a baby duck, even with the freaky magic stuff. A few days pass while Gaius and Freya continue attempting to research and get precisely nowhere.
Merlin calls the farmhouse one afternoon and Gwaine picks up the phone. “I’ve accidentally turned Aredian into a toad,” he announces, and hangs up.
Gwaine decides that his life has clearly turned into a surrealist film and passes the message on to Gaius, who blanches and attempts to call Merlin’s mobile, which turns out to be unnecessary because ten minutes later everyone comes trooping through the door. Merlin’s in front, holding a very unattractive amphibian in his hands. Arthur’s beaming, an arm around Merlin’s shoulders. Lancelot, he’s told, is holding down the fort at The Castle, but Morgana and Gwen are holding hands even as Morgana complains that she didn’t get to do anything to Aredian.
Freya comes in from watering a field, finds out what happened, and promptly starts crying all over Merlin. They’re happy tears, but Gwaine decides he’s had quite enough of her crying, especially when Gaius is breaking out cider for a celebration, and makes a scrap of rag into a bowtie for Aredian and proceeds to take pictures.
Aredian looks deeply unimpressed.
The air of celebration lasts until the next morning, when Gwaine comes downstairs near noon hungover and wishing for a cave to hide in to find Freya sitting at the table with a mug of tea in her hands. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“We’ve still got Morgause to deal with,” she says, and his left-over good mood disappears. “She’s the worse one, really. She’s got the magic.”
“Merlin’s on the job, and he turns people into toads by accident. I’d say we’ll be fine.” Gwaine keeps his tone as light as he can and goes in search of the coffee maker. “And even if we’re not, at least not yet, then we’ll keep you away from her. I’d say I can do that.”
Freya smiles, just a bit. “I won’t hold you to it.” She pauses. “Have you still got those pictures of him in a bowtie? I’d like to put one on my wall.”
They all spend the next few days waiting to see what kind of revenge Morgause dreams up for them, and then the phone rings one afternoon and a minute later Freya is pounding on Gwaine’s door. “That was Morgana, she says Morgause is on her way to Camelot and she’s going to try to kill Arthur and Merlin. Gaius is in town visiting Alice, you’ve got to drive me.”
Gwaine doesn’t ask questions, just grabs his keys and a pair of shoes and speeds the whole short drive into town while Freya twists her hands together. “I’ll watch out for you,” he promises, and screeches to a halt outside the store. Camelot’s windows are opaque instead of glass, which he considers to be a really bad sign, and Morgana is dragging Officer Leon, a tree of a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, towards the door.
There’s a loud crash from inside, which makes Officer Leon start and then run forward, pulling out something to break the glass when pulling on the door doesn’t work, but Gwaine sees Freya’s eyes flash gold just as the truncheon hits the door and the whole thing shatters, showing the inside of Camelot, where Arthur is shaking Merlin, who appears to be passed out, and their adversaries are respectively tied up and knocked unconscious.
Gwaine catches Freya’s arm when her knees buckle.
*
The next night, Gwaine is fuzzy with cider and triumph and good company, and everyone else seems to be in a similar state. The whole town is celebrating because the Mercia Avalon won’t be opening after all, what with one of the CEOs and the regional manager on their way to prison, but their little group is having its own special celebration.
Merlin and Arthur, he is pleased to see, have apparently gotten their heads out of their arses, because Arthur is petting Merlin’s poor concussed head and they are giving each other such ridiculously soppy looks Gwaine is torn between wanting to take a picture and wanting to tell the arseholes to get a room. Gwen and Morgana are similarly ridiculous, holding hands and smiling at each other.
Gwaine catches Freya’s eye, and maybe it’s because she’s had some cider too, or maybe she’s relieved that Morgause and Aredian can’t hurt her anymore, because she grins at him, wide and bright. He catches her hand and waltzes her out onto the lawn, but both of them are a little too tipsy and too happy to do anything sedate like a waltz, so they hop around instead.
At the end, with a flash of gold in her eyes, Freya produces a flower and Gwaine tucks it behind his ear, which makes her smile go shy.
He’s already stayed in Albion longer than he manages to stay in most places, and he doesn’t see himself leaving very soon, with friends all around him and work to do and magic to learn about, so Gwaine keeps beaming at her and sweeps an elaborate bow. “Another dance, fair lady?”
Freya actually giggles and Gwaine takes her hands (ignoring Morgana and Gwen and their infernal cooing, not to mention Lancelot’s laughter) and jigs her off again. Maybe it’s time to stay and put his travel guide together for a little while, instead of adding to it.