Note: This story is set roughly in Season One (with a bit of pre-Season One backstory for a chapter or two) and is meant to be a fairly standard/canon interpretation of characters and events. Points of view are divided pretty equally between Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, and Morgana. It's an exploration of the developing relationships between A/G and M/M. Most of the A/G stuff will be quite canon in nature, but M/M is more of my own take (since s1's Morgana is not evil, and I wanted to give her and Merlin a chance together.)

The Maid, the Fool, the Witch, and the Prince

She remembers.

Playing with her brother in the gold-wheat fields, with the sky overhead so blue their eyes burned to stare at it. Carrying home water from the stream in buckets, they were laughing at their own clumsiness as it spilled along the way. Coming into the sweaty forge and seeing their father's repressive frown that never quite reached his eyes. "Elyan," Tom would say to the boy, but Elyan had no desire to be a bender of iron or to stand by the fire all day, and would find some excuse to run off with Guinevere, back to the fields where they would practice sword-fighting in imitation of the king's crimson-cloaked knights.

She remembers happier times and freedom.

He remembers.

Hunith made him promise never to forget where he came from, never to forget the gift of his powers. That his father, since hounded into hiding, was the last dragon-lord. That no matter how humble his life seems, he must remind himself of the greater purpose he has in this world. That he is destined for greatness, as much as any prince of Camelot, though it may take a long time. Though it may seem to him that it will never come.

He remembers how wonderful and terrible it was the day he realized he was different.

She doesn't remember.

Her mother was Vivienne, but a mystery surrounds her. Her father Gorlois, now only a legend on the lips of his best friend. She is frightened by the knowledge she does not have. Stories are carried to her on the winds, whispers of fabrications, hints of truth. Power tempts yet threatens her, she feels a power in her own mind and body that terrifies her out of a sound sleep at nights. In the day, she is pale and quiet, consumed with her thirst for understanding herself.

She doesn't remember where she came from, and she doesn't know where she is going.

He doesn't remember.

Queen Ygraine died bringing him into the world, a bittersweet final gift to her king. His nurses had to tell the blue-eyed blond-haired prince how beautiful and good his mother was, since he doesn't remember. He looks to the future, not to the past, and he grows up confident and sure-perhaps too sure of his place, of the love and devotion of his people. He is given a sword and trained to fight, told how he is the hope for Camelot, its joy, the jewel in the Pendragon crown. He knows nothing of hardship, nor of deprivation.

He doesn't remember a time when magic was allowed to be practised.