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*The door opens, and a beautiful black-haired woman enters. She pauses and looks around in confusion and wonder. Her eyes light on a face that she'd never expected to see again.*

Owen?

*Unnoticed behind her, the door closes quietly and disappears.*

[OOC: Full summary here.]

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*All her choices have been her own, a part of him thinks, grave and sorrowful and detached. And all Mordred's too, however bitterly he might rail at her; he is no stranger to betrayal either. And Will's eyes on Mordred as he speaks are narrowed, and not approving. An Old One's words, some of them, but meant as cruelty and not stemming from an Old One's way of thinking.*

*But Gwion is right, too, and he has something none of the rest of them can bring here -- neutrality and ordinary human kindness both together.*

*He leaves the explanations to Gwion, who can give them better just now, but his face softens, before his eyes flick back to Bran.*

Bran catches Gwion's look, and Will's. He turns towards Mordred -- angry on Bran's behalf, and glances towards Owen staring off towards the fireplace.

At last he looks at Guinevere, and shakes his head in near-apology.

"The Light gives strange choices." Bran's expression may be a rueful smile, but he is blinking again, and his eyelashes glint white. "We must talk about choices. Not tonight. I am not ready yet." He turns away from them all, suddenly, setting the harp down and covering his face with his hands.

Owen lifts his head and turns swiftly, walking towards Bran and setting an arm silently around Bran's shoulder.

For a moment, Mordred doesn't look at Bran. He's staring at Guinevere and, for just a moment, his golden eyes go blank.

Pain, hurt, betrayal, grief, that's all you ever cause, isn't it?

Then he blinks, slowly, and turns his head. It hits him, then, but what he really can't put into words, or even thoughts.

"Stepmother, dearest," Mordred says at last, not looking at Guinevere. "Whose son is he? Yours, or Owens?"

He smiles, oddly, and walks away (http://www.livejournal.com/users/maydaybrat/6186.html).

Gwion says quietly, then, under the silence: "My lady. There are some...things...you need to know, about where you have come. If you'd follow me...?"

His manners are courtly; he is all warm courtesy.

For an instant, he almost wishes that Merlion were here -- and then the wish evaporates.

She needs someone kind, he thinks. Not one of them.

It's good to be needed.

Bowing slightly, he says, "If you'd accompany me to the bar..." First, tea. Then talk.

She takes his arm, and, with one last look for Will, Gwion leads the queen away.

*Will returns the look evenly, and there is compassion in his gaze.*

*He knows the reprimand layered with the other emotions in Gwion's glance, and does not deny it, nor quite concede it. All the same, he lets them go, and with whatever gladness he can find in this situation. Gwion can help her in ways that Will, who is a teenager and an Old One and her abandoned son's best friend, cannot.*

*He looks back at Bran and Owen, and exhales. Gwen who is Guinevere cannot understand how rare Owen's half-embrace of his son is, but Will has only seen such displays of affection between them twice before. Now...*

*Now, he can think of no help for either of them that he could add onto that, slim comfort though it might be.*

Owen helps Bran stand, and watches as Bran picks up the harp. If Owen is wondering why Bran has an instrument that looks very much like a golden harp he saw tossed into Tal y Llyn three years ago, he says nothing about it. There are more important things to worry about now.

He looks over towards Guinevere, and then returns his gaze to Bran.

"Come, boy," he says. "Let's go home." Standing closely together, father and son walk out the front door.

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