Gwen had expected it to be worse. When the cook, who all of Camelot's servants lived in perpetual terror of, came to her, wringing her hands and saying that something terrible had happened, Gwen had expected it to be worse.

She'd expected to have to run for Arthur and his sword, or Merlin and his... Merliness. Instead she clapped her hand over her mouth and tried not to laugh, it was hard, there was flour on Morgana's nose.

"It's not that funny," said Morgana. She frowned, it made her nose wrinkle and the flour all that more obvious.

"What exactly," Gwen asked, "were you trying to do?" From the state of the kitchen Morgana could have been up to anything from sword-fighting to sorcery. Although, Gwen conceded, if sorcery was performed by smearing your face with flour then Uther had probably been overreacting all these years.

"Cooking," said Morgana, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. To Gwen, who could actually cook, it wasn't. "At least," Morgana conceded, "trying to."

"Looking on the bright side," said Gwen, "at least you banished the kitchen staff upstairs."

"That bad?"

"The cook looked like she was about to weep when she came to me."

"The cook, she's the one who used to make you cry when we were younger, wasn't she?"

"It was just once, I was a kitchen maid and I dropped-"

"Then I'm only sorry I didn't make more of a mess," Morgana picked up a pot, containing stew, and made as though she were about to drop it.

Gwen lifted it from Morgana's hands and placed it gently down, it was the servants supper. "Why don't I help you clear all this away, then I'll prepare your evening meal while you get cleaned up."

"No, I'll stay and watch, I'd like to. I have to learn sometime."

"Why the sudden urge to learn to cook?" Gwen asked, turning away from Morgana to clear away some of the mess she'd made.

"You know why," Morgana said quietly, almost sounding ashamed.

Gwen immediately regretted asking the question, because she did know why Morgana wanted to learn to cook and sew and all those other things she'd never shown any interest in before. Morgana was leaving. Gwen understood why, really she did, the dreams, and the executions and Uther, it was all too much. And she knew the druids were good people, knew they'd take care of Morgana almost as well as she could. But it still felt like Morgana was leaving her. Still felt awful.

"Hey," Morgana had crept up behind her and placed her hands on Gwen's hips, "I'm not leaving today."

Gwen forced a smile and turned into Morgana's embrace. "Good, because you'd starve to death within a week, and you don't know how to mend clothes and-"

"I am useless, aren't I? What would I do without you?"

Gwen stood on her tip toes and kissed the tip of Morgana's flour-covered nose. She tried not to think about how really didn't have an answer to that question.