rivers_bend

Original fiction is still a total no-go, and so I set myself a fanfic flash challenge. Here you have it.

Title: My Lady, Your Honour
Pairing(Fandom): Gwen/Morgana (Merlin)
Words: ~1,200
Rating: Teen for sexual situations
A/N: I was reading the fabulous astolat's The Trouble With Unicorns, and noticed that she gave permission for people to remix her stories. Hers is a delicious Merlin/Arthur, but I could not resist telling Gwen and Morgana's tale.
Summary: Morgana bets Arthur that he could not live the life a woman has to for even a week. She wins the bet and gets to decide the forfeit.



"No, not that one," Gwen said when Morgana held up the purple dress. It was Gwen's favourite—a deep purple velvet bodice draped with a paler lavender fabric that almost seemed to float when Morgana walked. Gwen had no wish to see her favorite dress on Prince Arthur.

"How about this one?" Gwen continued, holding up a pale blue gown instead. The color did nothing for Morgana, washing out her eyes and making her skin look almost sallow. It would suit Arthur just fine.

"He won't wear it anyway," Morgana said. "But you're right. That one is much better. The V at the back will accommodate his shoulders so he can't use his size as an excuse." She took the dress and looked at it critically. "He's not as weedy as you'd think. I suppose all those hours carrying a sword around looking like a prat had to pay off sometime."

Gwen's stomach did a little dip when Morgana said Arthur wasn't weedy, and then a little soar when she called him a prat. Gwen ignored the swooping as she always did.

"What's his forfeit if he won't wear it?" she asked.

"He must keep his honour until he's married." Morgana looked very pleased with herself as she made the announcement.

Gwen was shocked. "And you think he'd rather do that than wear a dress for a day? With Uther having to approve of any match he made?"

"I think he'd rather say he'll do that than wear a dress for an hour, but the bet is for a week in any case." Morgana's expression went from pleased to delighted. And, Gwen had to admit, not just a little bit wicked.

Gwen couldn't help grinning back at her mistress.

"Now, help me on with this mail," Morgana said. "I'm afraid I'll get it tangled in my hair."

Gwen was more than happy to assist.


Arthur did just as Morgana expected: sputtered, protested, ranted, and hardly seemed to consider the implications of keeping his honour before leaping upon it as a far preferable alternative to wearing a gown. Gwen didn't get to see it, but Morgana, still in her mail, did a full reenactment when she returned from the prince's chambers, and as far as Gwen was concerned, that was just as good as being there.


Life in Camelot carried on as it always had. Gwen cooked and sewed and kept house for her father, and served Lady Morgana, and ignored the swooping in her belly when her Lady would ask if she might plait Gwen's hair the way Gwen plaited hers. As the months went on, Gwen forgot Morgana and Arthur's bet.

By the time Arthur's next birthday—his sixteenth—rolled around, he was broader yet across his shoulders, his legs were long and strong, and he could wield a sword as handily as any of Uther's knights. Gwen hadn't specifically noticed any of this herself, but one could not walk two hundred yards through the castle without overhearing a chamber maid, or a kitchen girl, or a visiting noble daughter extolling Arthur's virtues.

Despite their fawning, Gwen had never seen one of them coming out of Arthur's rooms looking flushed or rumpled, though if she thought anything of it at all, she simply thought Arthur was discreet.

But after dinner on Arthur's birthday, Morgana asked Gwen to follow her, and pulled Arthur into a corner.

"Do you still have your honour?" she asked him.

Arthur gaped at her and shot a significant look in Gwen's direction that said clear as words, Not in front of her, you idiot.

"Oh, for God's sake, Arthur, Gwen knows everything. And I know you won't lie in front of her. So tell us. Have you kept your honour?"

"Yes," Arthur admitted through teeth clamped tightly together.

"Good," Morgana said brightly. "Then I won't have to do anything stupid."

In much the same way the maidservents went on about Arthur, the knights went on about Morgana. Where neither Uther nor Arthur could hear, obviously, but it occurred to Gwen that Morgana might know, and may have already chosen which knight she would give her honour to if Arthur broke the terms of their bet.

Gwen might have been able to ignore the way her stomach plummeted, but it was harder to miss the way her fists clenched and her feet, without so much as a by your leave, shuffled her closer to Morgana. Close enough that the toe of Gwen's shoe was under the hem of Morgana's dress and their arms were pressed together.

Distracted, Gwen missed most of what Arthur said—something about "couldn't… won't… consequences," but she heard Morgana say, "Fair is fair," before she took Gwen's arm in hers and headed to her chambers.

Gwen was pretty sure the words Arthur muttered as they left were, "I hate you."

Two days later, Gwen was helping Morgana step into her bath when Morgana turned and gave Gwen one of her brilliant smiles.

"You know," she said. "If you wanted to bathe with me, no honour would be lost. For either of us."

Gwen dropped Morgana's arm in shock.

"You don't have to, of course," Morgana added hurriedly. "I just thought— You don't seem to have noticed yet that I look at you the way I've caught you looking at me. Or at least the way I imagined—" Morgana looked at her feet and then back up. "I'm ever so sorry, Gwen. Please forget I said anything. You may go. I can finish here on my own." Morgana finished her speech with her arms crossed over her nakedness as though Gwen hadn't been seeing her naked for the last three years.

"No," Gwen croaked. She cleared her throat. "I— You— I—"

"I wasn't mistaken?" Morgana sounded hopeful. She slowly let her arms drop back to her sides. Eyes on Gwen's face, she moved to one end of the tub and sat with her knees up under her chin, leaving half the bath conspicuously empty.

Before Gwen's brain could fully catch up with events, her fingers were undoing the laces of her bodice.

Morgana smiled and held out her hand.

Bath tubs, it turned out—even royal ones—were not really big enough to get up to anything that even by the most stringent definitions would be termed a loss of honour, though Gwen was able to discover that Morgana's lips were just as soft as they looked, and that her fingers on Gwen's scalp when they were kissing felt even nicer than they did when she was plaiting Gwen's hair. Morgana's bed, however, was large and soft and afforded plenty of room for them to roll together, still-bath-damp skin sticking, except where their fingers slipped through the more viscous moisture between each other's thighs.

As Gwen shuddered on Morgana's hand and then smothered the cries of Morgana's pleasure with a kiss, she became less sure that some sort of honour wasn't being compromised. But she was happy. And Morgana looked happier even than when she'd bested Arthur, only this time not wicked. So Gwen decided she didn't much care about honour, and she rolled them again in the sheets.

And the next year, when Arthur admitted through gritted teeth that he did, indeed, still have his honour, both Gwen and Morgana hid their smiles until they were back in Morgana's chambers helping each other out of their dresses.