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"I... that...." and Rivven was beginning to panic. He couldn't figure out what was going on, he knew it couldn't be that, but everything in his mind screamed with memory of it, and slowly, he was losing his grip upon calmness.

"...you've never done anything wrong to me. Never, Morgan... I..." one of his feet started to slide backward as she approached, but he stopped it, taking what was left of his composure to keep himself there, facing her. His face had drained of whatever color it normally held by this point. "...that wasn't you, it was that damn curse, there wasn't a thing you could do to help it... I... it was the curse, wasn't it? I-is that what you mean?" Rivven's voice almost beginning to shake, desperation entering it. It had been the curse. Hadn't it? Maybe she'd slept with other men before that without its influence, but that... it was to him not some minor thing that still could n** at his memory, but a old, deep wound. There was no way it had truly been her.

There couldn't be. He wouldn't believe it. Maybe not even if it came right from her lips.

"You... embraced it? I... I've never known that much about your past, what are you saying? You... you can't mean... that you wanted to... You shouldn't even remember any of this! You'd forgotten it all, I could tell, when the curse ended..."

Rivven wasn't shouting, but his voice was picking up, just a little, and clearly sounding choked. The problem was that, while Morgan might have been able to talk this out with him and work through it calmly, come to a easy understanding, in different circumstance, it would not be so easy now. She was confronting Rivven with not one, but many problems and questions, all at once. Doubt of himself, her, both their pasts, on top of just what this might have been. She might have meant to make a confession about her actions under that curse and come to peace with it, but she'd launched Rivven into a raging mental battle against the entirity of his past.

Slowly, he started to drift toward the wall, one hand stretched to feel blindly for it as his eyes lost focus on everything, and when it finally made contact, he sagged against the stone, still upright. "I didn't want you to have to know too, I was happy that you wouldn't have to feel guilty about something you couldn't help... I didn't even want you to know I knew about it all along... he told me what it was making you do while he was here, and I knew it could only have been Quintilius. I..." his voice had slowed down. He was talking as much to himself as to her, slowly bubbling through one line of his thoughts. "...but, we were the same... there was no way you could help it, of course it was only natural I stand by you still... maybe I loved you already then, maybe I was desperate, scared to lose the first peice of happiness I'd had in... but I'd been in a control no one had ever broken of their own device. I know..." but now he didn't know. Had she decided simply not to bother stopping the affair, had she perhaps even wanted it? Had he... would he have been able to break the hold that had constricted him, despite any lack of precedent? Was he really that monster, had he wanted that and used his enslavement as a lie to justify it?

He cracked, all at once. He shoved himself off the wall, and stumbled toward Morgan, unsteadily on his feet, grabbing either shoulder and as much steadying himself by her as pulling them together. "But... it doesn't matter any more... you love me now, don't you...? You do... you'd... you wouldn't do that to me again now..." he started weeping bitterly over one of her shoulders, forcing words out. "I don't know what you were, but aren't you different now? You wouldn't be like you were then, whether that was you or the curse? You're..." he choked on something he might have said, and continued on... "...I'm not a monster, am I? Morgan...? Whatever we might have been... we're different now, aren't we...?" The flood of words stopped then, and he broke down to limply weeping over her.

It was so hard for him to understand. He slowly stopped weeping, or at least making sounds. He didn't bother wiping his face to see if they had stopped coming or not.

Her last remark felt like a slap in the face, but he didn't know how to take much of what she said anyhow. "I'm not sure I understand." he shook his head gently. "We came from completely different directions in life, and we rushed together for our feelings and what we had in common without ever stopping to compare; I guess it's natural that there's so much I've never understood about you."

He sighed, a long, shaking breath out. "It made you do things you didn't want to, wouldn't have done... but now you say that... you did want to...? Or just that some part of you was tempted, and that’s all it took? I don't understand." he sighed again. "I think there’s a lot more we do need to talk about. I think maybe we should get everything there is, out of the way now. There might be a better place to go for it but… before we do…"

His face scrunched up, and still looking dazed, his cheeks still wet, and he pushed himself back enough that he could look at her. “I always worried about what you said… that with that missing piece of you, regardless of whether it was a good part of you or not… that I was missing a part of you…” he sighed, stopping to organize his thoughts. “I worried, before it went away, that maybe sometimes, because of that, it wasn’t really you who was there with me, but the curse. I realized though, that it was a part of you, even if I wanted to see you free of it ever hurting you again… that when it went away you lost your memories, a piece of who you were. I worried that it was all a lie…” stumbled, wavering and slipping, catching himself as he started to back up from her, and then after a thought sinking down onto one knee anyway. “When I proposed you had lost that piece. Morgan, if I asked you now, remembering everything, without that missing piece… you’d still have me, wouldn’t you…? Would things still be much like they are now…?”

((I thought Ygraine was her mother and the child was named Yvain?))

He still hadn't said she would have agreed to marry him still. That hurt. Then again, she'd hinted they wouldn't be married, but never said that she would have said no. Like she was deliberately avoiding that. It began to remind Rivven of something else, something he remembered.

But now, Rivven saw something. He had a goal. Maybe, a while ago, he would have sat there pitying her, or himself, right then, but not now. He came to his feet, the shaking stopping enough that he could slowly follow after his wife and daughter.

"But you love me. You want this. And I love you; I don't know what horrible things you've done, what you might do, or what right down to your core might be terrible. But there's plenty of good in you, and let the rest be there; I could never forget. Or forgive myself if I gave either of you up."

"And you can say how terrible you are, but you're not, are you? You aren't talking fondly off all this." He still shook just a little, but despite how wet his face was, he was begginning to look focused, determined. Maybe it was there all along, but he would assert it to her having rubbed off on him a little. "If you're so terrible, why do you regret it?"

"I-I don't know what you're going to do to me. But I think I'm going to want to be around to see it." permitted, by that time, he'd kiss her gently on the cheek, following with Yvain, still shaking slightly. "One way, or another, and stay to see what'll happen after that."

"I can't say I know what you're thinking. I don't." he replied levelly.

"But following on that, how do you know what I've ever felt, or thought? You don't. You can look at how I act, what I say, but that's all you'll ever have to go by, just like the reverse." He wouldn't try to kiss her again, but he wasn't backing off either, staying close.

"And unless you tell me, honestly, I'm never going to know any of that, just like the reverse is true. And maybe I'm paranoid, but right now, I think you're pushing me away. I think you're scared, that you might hurt me or Yvain. Maybe scared that if you let yourself really look at yourself you'll see something horrible, and you're willing to give up the chance of seeing anything better than you'd expect to avoid that."

"I know you well enough to say a few things. You're no coward. You're beautiful, intelligent, you've got a wonderous, if not always the most pleasant or easiest to get along with, personality, and you are quite well aware of it all. You're strong, and proud, and maybe I'm as attracted to your vices as your virtues. Didn't I love you, even propose to you, before the curse went away?"

"I think you're scared right now, and you're not used to it. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. But I know you love me, and our daughter. And I think, right now, what you're doing is trying to push me away from you to protect me, telling me how terrible you are. Maybe I've only seen parts of you, and maybe I've been, or am, niave, but don't think I'm blind."

His voice had heat in it, but not anger- well, maybe a touch of offended anger, but mostly, just determination. "I might think right, and I might be totally wrong. But like it or not, I'm giong to stay here by you, just like I always have, regardless of what you do to me, good or bad, or twisting both the way this whole relationship has been to make each extreme all the more accentuated."

"Because like it or not, I believe in a part of you, and I love you, good and bad together. And if I hurt, it won't be anything new. But it'll be better than what I had before, because I'll be hurting right here with the two of you."

Rivven started to go after her, but stopped. Standing, watching after her a long moment, he decided that perhaps she did need just to be alone a while to think by herself.
He wished it wasn't so. He wished he could have helped her, that even if it pained him, he could have taken abit of her burden. That's what it was about; they were supposed to share their problems, not keep them to themselves. 'For better or for worse' but however it was, they cared for each other; any amount of pain or happiness, he knew it'd be better if they shared it, because they had.

Quietly, he went over to Yvain, and picked up their child gently. Cooing at her, he sat down in that chair with a small, hopeful smile in that chair. And his face flooded with tears not meant for himself while he smiled just that little and played with his daughter.