Their mother, Morwen often told him, had walked ten miles to Caerleon's capital to ask the king for aid when their father died, and she did it while pregnant with Gwaine. Morwen had walked with her the whole time and never complained, not once, despite only being eight years old at the time.
The lesson in the story was plain. Their family was strong, and they didn't complain. They acted.
Morwen did it with an iron will and grim eyes that constantly assessed their poverty for a way out.
Gwaine did it with an easy laugh and a careless smile. It made Morwen furious, but it made their mother smile.
"You've got your father's strength," she told him. "It's a rare man who can see the world for what it is and still laugh without losing that caring heart of yours."
That was the other thing he learned: It didn't matter whether or not others recognized your strength. You just had to be strong.
When Morwen was of marrying age, she set the house on fire.
She did it in her sleep, without ever getting out of the bed they all had to share and without ever going near the fireplace.
They fled the village before anyone realized it was magic.
Their mother said, "You'll have to be strong enough to keep it locked up inside. It's the only way we'll be safe."
"You'll never be safe so long as you're with me," Morwen said, voice flat, and she was strong enough to walk away.
Gwaine was too young and too weak to stop her no matter how he clung to her arm.
When their mother died, Gwaine was strong enough to go on. Strong enough to find work wherever he went. Strong enough to resist offers of more profitable work as a mercenary instead of as a laborer.
Well. A laborer who fought bandits and enjoyed a good brawl.
He met Morwen once. She was different. Colder.
Judging by the charms on her wrist and her neck, he didn't think she'd dealt with her magic by locking it in.
"You're wasting your life," she told him. "What would Father think if he could see you living like this?"
Gwaine took another drink and smiled at her cheerily. "He'd probably be glad that I'm not going to to die like he did, fighting for someone who couldn't care less."
He never really figured out what happened the rest of the evening. He just woke up the next morning in a ditch with a raging headache, and when he wandered back to town, he found out the inn they'd been at had burned down.
He also had a necklace on that he'd never seen before, and when he touched it, he could sense his sister as surely as if she was right there yelling at him.
He knew without being told that he could use it to call on her if he was in trouble.
He tried not to think about how he knew that, just like he tried not to think about who, exactly, in the heat of the moment had burned the inn down.
Merlin, Gwaine realized quickly, was strong. Anyone with that many secrets in their eyes had to be or they would break.
Merlin was uncertain with his strength though, and that was alright. Gwaine was strong enough to help him.
Every time Gwaine rode out with the knights and there was magic involved, he was always afraid his sister would turn out to be at the bottom of it. He wasn't sure he was strong enough to turn his back on the family he'd built in Camelot. He wasn't sure he was strong enough to turn on what little of his first family he had left.
It was never her, though. Whether by design or accident, it was never her.
Morgana came and threw him into a ring to fight with nothing more than a wooden sword. He was starving and bruised, but Gaius was dying and Elyan was half-dead, and he was strong enough, he was, he was, he was -
He was strong enough, in the end.
He'd thought about calling on his sister half a dozen times, but up against Morgana, he knew better than to think that would end any way but with him watching her die.
Whatever distance had grown between them, he wasn't strong enough for that.
Brothers fell and Merlin was breaking. Gwaine gritted his teeth and tried to be strong enough for them all.
He was strong but maybe he wasn't very clever, because he'd fallen for Eira's trick and then he'd been stupid enough to go after Morgana.
He was strong, but he wasn't strong enough, because the pain tore through his very soul until the words came out as if of their own accord, and he betrayed his king, betrayed Merlin, and while one of them might forgive them, the other never would, and he would never forgive himself.
He still didn't call for Morwen. He didn't want her to see that he had broken the family's cardinal rule. He hadn't been strong.
Sir Gwaine was given a place of honor in the catacombs under the city. A witch, now able to come freely to the city thanks to Emrys and the queen, came to visit every Samhain when the veil was thinnest.
She read to him from scrolls about the Naithair venom, calmly dissecting every symptom and effect. She recited accounts of other victims in a cold monotone.
She was making a point to a dead man, and she didn't care what others thought.
No one had ever resisted the Nathair snake. That Gwaine had for as long as he did, to the point that it killed him -
"You had father's strength," she told him.
And because it was dark and there was no one to see, she allowed herself to cry just a bit, and to choke out, "And I gave you that necklace for a reason, you fool."
