fic: Big Bang - Man, Rearranged (Part Two)

[calliglad]

Title: Man, Rearranged [Part Two]
Author: calliglad
Artist: gwentastic
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Please take careful note, warnings will heavily influence the reader's interpretation of events that the author has intentionally left open and can be viewed as major spoilers. Highlight to read: mental disorder, ambiguous character death. End Highlight.
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I affiliated with Merlin, Colin Morgan, Bradley James or any other subject in this story. This is for entertainment purposes with no wish to offend.
Summary: After 'Merlin', Bradley's career skyrockets. Amidst his growing fame and budding relationship with Colin, he starts having strange dreams and begins to wonder what is real and what isn't.

Masterpost | Part One | Part Two | Art

-

The premiere of The Sky Weeps marks the end of Bradley's holiday and he wishes it didn't feel so exactly like that. His apartment is strewn with the mess he made whilst packing, most of the things in the fridge have gone off and he inexplicably has sand in half of his shoes. Los Angeles is even greyer and smog-stained than he remembers and the road-users are just as rude. He thinks of his flat in Kensington, of the leafy streets and the quirky shops, and can't stand being away from it.

In the car, Colin tells him to stop sulking.

"I'm not sulking," says Bradley.

"And stop fidgeting, or you'll lose your cufflinks and look like some kind of tramp."

"Yes, Mother," says Bradley, forcing himself to be still.

"So which one's this?" asks Colin, fiddling with his own cufflinks, the hypocritical toad.

"The New Zealand one."

"And you die at the end?"

"Yes."

"You died at the end of your last film, too. Is this becoming a trend?"

"Think it has to be three to be a trend."

"What about your next film? You die in that, too?"

"Haven't decided yet."

"Whether you die?"

"Which film, plonker. Got a couple of scripts I'm eyeing up."

"You die in any of them?"

"Some."

"Must be a trend, then."

The car rumbles to a stop and Bradley opens the door on the squall of journalists and flashing cameras. Colin clambers out beside him and they stand still for a moment, to let the photographers do their thing. Bradley feels weird, really wants to put his arm around Colin, but can't. He'd usually put his hands in his pockets instead, but he can't do that here either, so his arms just hang limply by his sides, not sure of their purpose.

He knows all the journalists and magazines have noticed that, whenever he's presented with a plus-one situation, he always either brings Colin or goes alone, but so far they've only wondered why he doesn't have a Swedish model on his arm instead. They haven't yet started speculating and forming theories about him and anybody, let alone Colin, but that probably won't last much longer.

It's not as if they haven't talked about it, either. It's just that Colin is a deeply private person and as soon as they announce their relationship to the media, all that privacy will be lost. Bradley doesn't want that for Colin.

He puts it to the back of his mind, like he always does, and starts working down the journalists and television crews lined up along the barriers.

"Bradley, Bradley!" calls one woman. "We've heard that this is a very different film from your last one. How do you feel, having taken that new direction?"

"I think it was definitely a decision I really thought about," he says. "You don't get many opportunities like this, to do a film about such a sensitive and controversial issue. This film gave me the chance to tell a really important lesson about some of our world's history, so I just jumped for it."

"You liked that controversial aspect?"

"Well," he glances back at Colin, who's chatting blithely away to the Head of Principle Photography, and says, "Sometimes you have to push the boat out a bit, surprise people. If people didn't do the unexpected, life would be so dull. I think what a lot of people will see as negative parts of this film are actually the best, because they speak to viewers the most. Make them think."

As they take their seats in the cinema, Colin says, "You excited?"

"A little," Bradley replies and he's lying. He's so excited. Nervous, too, but in a good way.

It's good. Really good. The cinematography is gorgeous, the script flows neatly from scene to scene and his own acting doesn't make him want to grimace.

Only, about two thirds of the way in, this scene comes up--a Maori man, knelt in the mud at the feet of a white man, Bradley's character--and he's not just seeing it on the screen, not just remembering filming the scene, he's there, holding a sword over a helpless man.

"Why do you do this?" asks the man.

"If only you would listen," Bradley replies, but then the world shifts again and he's standing in a different muddy field, holding a different sword, a different man knelt at his feet.

"Prince Arthur," begs the man. "Please, do not do this. Think of my children--"

"Think of all the people you have killed," Bradley snarls. "All those you murdered with your sorcery. They were somebody's children, once."

"Please, sire, have mercy--!"

"I'm afraid I cannot do that," he says and swings the sword in a great and condemning arc.

It takes three blows to sever the sorcerer's neck. When the head finally detaches and starts rolling slowly away down the hill, Bradley is covered in blood, up to his elbows, splashed across his face. He thrusts his sword at a page.

"Clean this," he says. "Find the head. Burn the body."

He stumbles towards his tent, filled with empty triumph and a deep sickening in his belly. His vision swims as he looks at his hands, streaked and spotted with tainted, magical blood.

"Bradley! Bradley, look at me. Look at me!"

He watches his hands flicker between stained and clean, faster than blinking, and when he looks up, it's into Colin's worried face.

"Bradley?"

"Yeah," says Bradley, glancing at his hands again. They're clean of blood, even when he checks under his fingernails. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You are not fine," says Colin, gripping his shoulders. "What happened?"

"I don't know, I--" he realises he's sitting on the floor inside the disabled toilet, beside the baby change table. There's an emergency handle on the wall, gratingly red, and he glances at his hands again, just to be sure. Colin gives him a little shake.

"Seriously, Bradley, what's going on?"

"I--What happened?"

"You ran out of the film and when I found you, in here, you were on the floor." Colin looks pale and shaken. Bradley can only imagine what he himself must look like.

"Can we go home? Please, Col, I'm fine, just--I just want to go home."

"Okay," says Colin and fishes Bradley's phone out of his inside pocket to call their driver.

-

After the lengthy, tense drive home, Bradley has a headache blooming in his left temple and a sincere desire to do nothing but sleep until he is dead. Colin circumvents this by giving him some aspirin and staring at him very intently.

"What?" Bradley asks, annoyed.

"What happened in that cinema?" says Colin seriously.

"I don't know, all right?"

"Don't give me that crap, Bradley. You are a great actor, but you can't lie to me. I know you too well. Now tell me what happened."

"I'm telling you, I don't--"

"Bradley, please."

Colin looks at him, brow creased with distress, and Bradley stares straight back. Colin looks away first.

"You really worried me," he says, quietly, then amends, "You're still worrying me. Just tell me what happened. Please."

Bradley takes a deep, shaking breath, then lets it out again, slowly. "I've not been sleeping well," he says.

"Yeah, I've noticed," says Colin.

"Really?"

"When you're asleep, you kick. And snore. You've not been doing that lately."

"I've been having these nightmares," says Bradley and it's difficult, really difficult, admitting it after all this time. "And one of these nightmares is really similar to a scene in that film. I don't know why it was okay while filming, but now it's not and I just--" He pauses to collect his thoughts, to decide what he's going to tell Colin.

He chickens out and goes with, "I just had to get out of there."

Colin looks simultaneously exasperated and relieved at that and says, "You didn't think about seeing a doctor?"

"It doesn't happen all the time. Just every so often," Bradley says and sighs. "I thought it was getting better."

"Well, promise me you'll make a doctor's appointment?" says Colin, and doesn't wait for an answer before pulling him into a tight hug. Bradley really wants this dream thing to go away because he doesn't like worrying Colin. He knows that's all Colin will do when he goes back to London, whatever job he picks up, half of him will be distracted and anxious. That's just how he is.

After Colin flies back to the UK, Bradley does as he asks and makes an appointment with a doctor. He expects the ten-minute conversation to end in a mediocre reassurance and a prescription of less stress and more sleep, but the American private healthcare system is apparently much more generous than the NHS, because he leaves the health centre with several leaflets about tai chi or yoga or something and a bottle of sleeping pills.

The pills work, but don't help. He sleeps right through the night, but the drugs just trap him in his dreams, unable to wake up from his nightmares. Colin sounds so fretful on the phone that Bradley lies and tells him he's never felt better. Uneasy about having a mostly full bottle of sleeping pills in his bathroom cabinet and reminded vividly of the tragedy of Heath Ledger, he gets up in the middle of the night and flushes them all. He sleeps even worse, after that.

-

After the premiere, there are innumerable interviews and magazine articles about the film that he's contracted to attend to and they're so soul-destroying that he considers instructing Julia to remove them from all future contracts. Possibly with a flamethrower.

The interviews consist of him talking about the general premise of the film, how it was working with some of the other stars, what he thinks he might do next. None of them mention his little episode, until one talk show, hosted by a particularly belligerent woman with nails like scarlet talons.

"Now, I heard something from a friend of mine, who was present at the premiere of the movie," she says, leaning forward in her seat, and Bradley feels an ice-cold chill in his spine. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but I heard you experienced some kind of mental breakdown and ran out of the theatre. Is that true? Scared of your own performance?"

Bradley is good as bullshitting, so he just laughs.

"Scared of my acting, more like," he says. "It's always awkward, as an actor, watching your own work. I had such high hopes of this film, I just couldn't bear to watch it, I was so worried what people might think of it."

"But your performance received critical acclaim from reviewers all over the world," she says. "I've been to see it and I thought you were great."

"Ask any actor," says Bradley. "I assure you, the majority of them will say that they never watch their own films, except for the premiere. It's too excruciating."

"How interesting," she says, and moves on to ask him about his future plans. Bradley's mouth is dry, but he doesn't take a sip of water because he doesn't want the camera to see his hand shake.

-

He throws himself back into work, to the combined alarm of Julia, Scarlett and his mother.

"Are you sure?" they all say.

He deflects Julia and Scarlett with arguments about his career and the need to continue working. His mother is not so easily averted.

"I've spoken to Colin," she says, and Bradley thinks that's possibly the most damning phrase he has ever heard.

"Oh, yes?" he says, sweetly.

"He seemed quite worried."

"That's just Colin. Always worrying."

"Is this film really that upsetting? I was talking with Mrs Williams across the fence the other day and she didn't find it at all distressing."

"She probably fell asleep ten minutes in, Mum."

"No, no, she expressly stated that she highly enjoyed it. Recommended I go see it, in fact."

"Then you should go see it," says Bradley. "If you like. Honestly, Mum, I'm fine. The film's fine. Don't pay attention to Colin. He's just worked up about this project he's doing right now."

"But I don't like to see him fret," she replies. "Especially about my son. He sees you more than I do. Sometimes I have to take his word."

"Don't worry about it," he says, for the third or fourth time in this conversation. "I'm starting work on this new film in a week or so and I'll come back and see you as soon as I'm done, okay?"

"All right," she says, sounding only partly convinced. Bradley distracts her by asking after his cousins. She retaliates by telling him not to get any skinnier and things begin to seem normal again.

-

The new film, Black Cat, White Monkey, is a surreal, ultra-modern affair with a seemingly limitless budget and Johnny Depp in a supporting role. Bradley feels a little twinge of something that could be embarrassment or pride every time he looks at the call sheet.

"So," says Jennifer, his co-star love interest. "How is it, Bradley James, that you are still so unattached?"

"I don't know what you mean," Bradley replies, scrawling another note into the margin of his script. "I am attached to many things. My legs, for instance. My hands. My dignity."

"Very funny. You know exactly what I mean."

"I haven't the faintest."

"This really isn't in your best interests, you know," she tells him, looking half annoyed, half amused. "The more you avoid the question, the more interesting I think the answer's going to be."

"In that case, I remain so unattached because I am a eunuch and I snore like an asthmatic chainsaw. Also, I have leprosy."

"That's not true at all. I gained indisputable proof that you are not a eunuch four days ago, when we filmed the bedroom scene."

Bradley forces himself not to smile. "It was a very realistic prop."

"BJ, you are a sick, sick man," she says, just as one of the assistant directors hurries up in a tizzy and says they have to be on their marks five minutes ago.

"Always busy busy, rush rush," Bradley grumbles as they wind their way through the forest of lighting rigs and cables.

He and Jennifer get into position and the make-up girl is just powdering his nose one last time when he looks down at the gun in his hands and suddenly has no idea what to do with it.

Jennifer turns to look at him, glances at his fingers, at his white knuckles.

"What?" she says.

But Bradley isn't entirely sure what. He knows that he's holding a rifle, which he should hold in this way, point in this direction, but his hands don't. As if this is the first time they've held this strange, foreign object.

His hands start shaking and Bradley gets scared, thinking that maybe he's trapped in some kind of paradox. Just as the director calls for silence, he drops the gun.

"Whoops," says the sound rigger. "Butterfingers Bradley."

"Yeah," Bradley laughs stiltedly and bends to pick it up, but now he really doesn't know what to do with it. He picks it up by the barrel--what he knows is the barrel, even if he doesn't know what it's for--and it feels weird, unbelonging in his hands.

"Bradley?" says the director and Bradley's torn between the two feelings. Torn between one dimension, where he's confused and displaced and wanting to go home, and the other, where he's aware of everyone's eyes on him, feeling embarrassment and growing horror beginning to crawl up his spine.

"I--" Bradley starts, staring at Jennifer, who's looking increasingly concerned. "I can't-- I need a break."

He flees the set and hides in his trailer, his head in his hands, and tries not to cry. After a minute or two, Mark, the producer and a much more likeable and reasonable man than the director, knocks on his door and doesn't wait for an answer before coming in.

"You all right?" he says, sitting on the coffee table. Bradley takes a shallow, shaky breath.

"Not really," he says.

"You should talk about it," Mark says, calmly.

"I want to," Bradley says, thinking of how worried Colin had been. "I want to, but it's just--hard to explain."

"Well, either you talk to me, now," says Mark, "or I'm going to have to suspend this movie until you see someone professionally."

"What?"

"You heard me. There's nothing else I can do, Bradley, not without compromising everybody else's work on this project."

"I--" Bradley knows this has to come out, soon, but that knowledge is tempered by shame. He's not crazy. Going to see a specialist--something he's put off for so long--would be admitting to it, facing up to the fact that something is wrong. Has been wrong for a while.

"Your choice, Bradley."

"I've--" Bradley says, and then plunges on. "I haven't been sleeping very well."

Mark makes an encouraging sound. "Go on."

"I've had these dreams. Sometimes-- Sometimes nightmares."

"What're they about? Do you know?"

"Lots of things. But they're all-- They're horrible," but Bradley doesn't mean they're horrible in the sense of being nightmarish--though some of them are. More than that, he means how it feels to wake up afterwards, cold and breathless, like it's the other way around and he's just woken into the nightmare.

"Okay," says Mark. "That's okay. How about we talk about what just happened on set?"

"I don't want--"

"Bradley."

"I don't know, okay? I don't know what happened."

Mark sighs heavily. "I will suspend the movie, Bradley. I'm not kidding."

"I don't know! I don't know how to explain it."

"Okay," says Mark, seeming to pull patience from some well deep inside himself. "Tonight, I'll email you the details of this therapist. A specialist in helping with stress in actors."

"But--"

"No buts," Mark says, firmly, staring him down. "I want you to go, Bradley, do you understand?"

"Yes," says Bradley.

He gets the email that night, as Mark promised, and carefully writes down the contact details.

He does not go.

-

For the next few weeks, he dreams every night and begins to appreciate early morning call times, since it gives him an excuse to slump into the make-up chair, looking terrible and exhausted, and no one bats an eyelid. His nightmares don't creep into the waking hours again, not until the very last day of filming.

He's on the phone to Katie, between scenes, and she's ranting. Something about the government and criminals and maybe the death penalty.

"It's not fair!" she says.

"Life isn't fair, Katie."

"Don't give me that crap. Why people can't elect politicians who actually think about what they say before they say it, I don't know. It makes me so angry."

"So do many things," says Bradley.

"Fools," she hisses and, for some reason, that chills his blood, shakes something loose in him. Across the field, an assistant director starts waving at him in some kind of demented semaphore.

"Listen, Katie," he says, "I've got to go."

"Yes, yes, go off and play," she says. "We'll talk soon, darling, bye bye."

He walks back to the director with a strange feeling in his belly, something between unease and indigestion. The director doesn't notice, just waves for everyone to get ready and says,

"Right, Bradley, last shot. I want you to run across the bridge, okay? But in character, yeah?"

"Yeah," Bradley says and goes to stand on his starting mark.

"Okay, everybody, cue sound...Action!"

Bradley starts to run, doggedly, because his character is tired. It's raining hard, maybe hard enough to be seen on camera, he's not sure, but it's making the bridge slippery under his feet. Halfway across, he nearly loses his footing and slips. When he steadies himself, he starts to run again and then stops dead.

Morgana is standing at the end of the bridge, but Bradley sees her face as clearly as if she were right in front of him. She is smiling wickedly and bone dry amidst the pouring rain.

"What?" Bradley says, shaking water out of his eyes. Behind him, somebody's shouting on a megaphone.

She laughs and stretches out a hand, says, in a whisper that flits and echoes around his head, "Fools."

Bradley feels fingers inside his chest, moving, gripping, and his heart--his heart is in agony. As he falls to the floor, his face pressed against wet concrete, the last things he sees are Morgana's eyes, golden and all seeing.

-

When he wakes up, it is to a dim, green room. He stares up at the ceiling, at the cracked paint, and wonders where he is and how he got here. One of the fluorescent bars in the light fitting is blackened from a broken filament and, when he tries to remember, he sees hands with fingernails like claws and a sharp, crushing pain in his heart. He shies away from the memory.

There are flowers, he realises. He can smell them, glimpse them out of the corner of his eye. He turns his head to look, slowly, because it feels like he's crawling through molasses. The flowers, in a vase on the bedside table, are sun colours: red and orange and yellow. In the dark, the colours are slightly muted, everything washed green. He realises that he's in a hospital bed.

There is a stirring near his knees. Someone says, "Oh, you're awake," and it's Colin, bleary-eyed and ruffled. One of his cheeks is red from where it has been resting on his arm and he looks dead tired. Exhausted, even.

"Would you like some water?" Colin asks. Bradley opens his mouth to say no, but that makes him notice how dry it is, how tight his throat is. He wonders how long he has been here, and nods.

Colin calls for a nurse, who takes his blood-pressure, looks at his pupils and produces a glass of water and a straw before leaving quietly. It's a little embarrassing; Bradley's not a child, or an invalid. Except, maybe he is.

"What happened?" he says, as soon as he is able.

Colin frowns and looks down at Bradley's knee, doesn't look up again. "You collapsed on set," he says. "The medics--they couldn't wake you up. Only, the doctors say it's not--it wasn't a coma. They said it was like you were sleeping."

Bradley doesn't feel like he was sleeping. He feels like he's just run for days through mountains and thickets, little rest, little food. Just running from some faceless, terrifying enemy. He doesn't say this to Colin.

"Oh," he says, instead. "I-- But I'm awake now?"

"Yeah," says Colin, and there's a very long pause before he says, "It was horrible, you know."

"What?" asks Bradley, except that's a stupid question--of course he knows what. Colin must have been worried sick, all this time, just waiting--

But then Colin says, with the voice of a man stretched as thin as he will go,

"I heard about it on the news, Bradley. Do you know how awful that was?"

"I--"

"Just-- They didn't call me. Like--I don't know. I'm just sick of people not knowing how much I care about you."

Bradley can't think of anything to say, so he just sits there, knowing that this conversation is going to come to some kind of head, one way or the other.

"You're so far away," Colin continues, still staring at the blankets. "I wish-- I want to be in your life more, but I can't if-- not if you're half the world away."

There's a long pause and a heavy, sick feeling settles in the pit of Bradley's stomach.

"Are you breaking up with me?" he says, and he sounds absolutely pathetic.

Colin finally looks up at him. "No! No, that's not what I'm saying at all!" he says and Bradley feels the knot in his stomach unravel. Colin takes his hand. "I'm saying I want to be with you more of the time. I want to make sure that, if anything like this happens again, I'll be there for you without having to take an eight-hour flight first."

"Okay," says Bradley, stupidly, because there's not much else he can say.

"Okay," says Colin. "Wait, what? You mean, you'll do it? You'll come back home with me?"

"--Yes? But my job-- I can't just leave--"

"I talked to your agent. She says she thinks you need a break too."

"Which agent?"

"The female one."

That distinction is extremely unhelpful and Bradley's just about to launch into an evasively noisy one-sided discussion about Scarlett and Julia and how they are meddling hags and he never should have introduced them to each other, but then Colin says,

"I talked to your producer, too," and Bradley stops short.

"About what?" he says, nervously.

"About what happened. He says you've been bit funny for weeks. That you said you'd been having nightmares."

Bradley looks at his hands, but he can still feel Colin's eyes on him. "And?"

"And you said they were getting better," says Colin, critically.

"And they came back!"

"So, why didn't you tell me that?"

"I don't know. I didn't want to worry you, that's all."

"Bradley! I would rather know and be worried than be kept in the dark," Colin snaps. "Anyway, your producer says it's been affecting your work."

Bradley doesn't say anything.

"Is that true?" presses Colin.

"Maybe," says Bradley.

"Was it like what happened at the premiere?"

"No-- Maybe. I don't know. Not as bad as that."

"But it could be? As bad as that, I mean?"

"I don't know," Bradley says again. "Maybe."

Colin looks satisfied, but more concerned at his answer. "He also said he told you to go see a specialist."

Bradley keeps his eyes on his hands, clenched in his lap.

"Did you go?" Colin asks.

"No," says Bradley.

"You should," says Colin. "When we get home, I want you to."

"But I don't--"

"Bradley, please," Colin begs, startling Bradley back into eye contact again. "You collapsed and wouldn't wake up. Something's wrong--really wrong. I want you to go see a therapist about this, or you're just going to end up making yourself really, really ill."

Bradley hesitates and Colin squeezes his hand and says,

"For me, Bradley. Please, for me,"

and Bradley is helpless to do anything but give in.

-

Colin books his first therapy session just four days after they fly back to London and accompanies Bradley in the taxi to the clinic.

"I'm not going to run away," Bradley says, mulishly, although he had been having sneaking thoughts about finding a nice coffee shop to hide in instead.

"Just for my peace of mind," says Colin. "Would you like me to wait outside during your session?"

"No, thanks."

"All right, then. I'll meet you afterwards. Be good, okay?"

Colin watches him climb the steps to the clinic and waits until he's inside before leaving. Watching him go, Bradley has a disturbingly strong urge to flee down the road in the opposite direction, but then the girl at the desk behind him says,

"How may I help you, sir?"

and the game is up.

"Er, Bradley James to see Dr Patel?"

"Certainly, Mr James. Just take a seat there and you'll be called through when he's ready."

He sits down in the chair she indicates. It's the only one and it's so squishy he feels like it could fold him into its depths and he might never get out again. Despite the clinic's price tag and reputation, the magazines on offer are the usual affair: obscure sports or wife-rags. He's just flicking through the recipes in Good Housekeeping when the receptionist looks up and says, as if prompted by some invisible puppet master, "You may go through now, Mr James."

Dr Patel is a slightly elderly man with very silver hair and a kind, open face.

"Please, sit, Mr James."

Bradley sits. There is no sofa to recline on, which is a slight disappointment.

"May I call you Bradley, Mr James? It helps our sessions if I can speak to you more informally."

"Sure," says Bradley, slightly off-kilter. "Yeah, that's fine."

"Very good," says Dr Patel. "Now, what are you here to discuss with me today?"

Bradley takes a deep, steeling breath. "I've been having nightmares."

"What are these nightmares about?"

"It's...hard to explain."

"How so? Is it because you do not remember them clearly, or is the content difficult to put into words?"

"The second one," says Bradley. "Only, some of them aren't nightmares. Some of them are just dreams, but they're all the same. But different."

"We'll start with one of the ones that are just dreams, then," says Dr Patel, noticing something down. "Can you try and describe one of these dreams to me?"

"It's--stupid, really, I don't even--"

"Bradley, we are here to solve this problem. I cannot do that unless you can communicate that problem to me."

"I just-- It's ridiculous, you know." He sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Especially since I-- Well."

"Try, Bradley. If it is causing you distress, it is not ridiculous."

Bradley looks down at his shoes and breathes deeply, slowly, and says, "In my dreams--in my nightmares, too--I dream that I am King Arthur."

He looks up at Dr Patel, expecting to see mirth or alarm, but there is only understanding.

"In these dreams, do you do anything specific, as King Arthur?"

"Loads of things. The dreams, they're always different. I'm doing different things, I'm all different ages. Some of them seem really important, others are just everyday things."

"I see. Anything else?"

Bradley hesitates before saying, "They feel like memories," something he's never admitted before, not even to himself.

Dr Patel just notes something else down and says, in that easy voice of his, "Please describe these dreams to me, in as much detail as you can."

Bradley talks almost constantly for the entire two-hour session and meets Colin outside the clinic, hoarse-voiced and drained.

"Good?" says Colin, perhaps overly cheerfully.

"Could have been worse."

Colin smiles and hands him a carrier bag. "You can have this, then. A reward for attending your first session."

Bradley looks in the bag. It's filled with vegetables. "Col, you shouldn't have, really."

Colin thumps him in the chest. "I'm cooking you dinner tonight! It's one of those stupid romantic gestures that we never do enough of."

"Oh," says Bradley, grinning dopily. "Cool."

-

He runs for his life across broken ground, slipping in the mud. He can hear the snarling, wheezing breaths of the monster behind him, ruffling the hairs on his neck. He can smell it, the gruesome, fetid stink of it, setting his teeth on edge, but he can't fall, he can't.

"The river!" Merlin yells. "Make for the river!"

"What?" says Bradley, nearly losing his footing as he skirts a boulder.

"It can't swim! Get across the river!"

The river is just there--just there, feet away. Bradley puts on a spurt of speed, ready to dive in, but then he feels phantom hands gripping him, flinging him across the water. He lands uncomfortably on the opposite bank and turns in time to see Merlin hopping across, and is gratified to notice that he lands even more gracelessly.

The monster is pacing on the other side, growling and sniffing.

"What are we going to do?" Bradley says.

"I don't know," Merlin replies. "I've lost the silver knife. Either we've got to contain it, somehow, or--"

Merlin's words are cut off, as the creature takes a giant, flying leap towards them, all nine clawed hands outstretched.

In the morning, Colin looks weary and frightened and keeps sneaking glances at Bradley over his cup of tea. When Bradley asks him, Colin says,

"You screamed in your sleep, last night, and I couldn't wake you up. Scared the life out of me."

"Oh," says Bradley.

"Maybe mention that in your next session," says Colin. As he lifts his mug to drink, his hand shakes a little.

-

"Sometimes, they're not just dreams," Bradley tells Doctor Patel. "Sometimes I see things when I'm awake, too."

Doctor Patel makes a note. "Can you speak about this in any more detail?"

"It's like I relive the memory," says Bradley. "I see it, and I can feel it, like it's real."

There's a pause, while Doctor Patel scrawls something down on his notepad. Then Bradley admits,

"When that happens, I think I'm Arthur,"

which sets a chime going in his gut, a sense of rightness. He squashes the feeling down and Doctor Patel makes note after note after note.

That night, he gets on the internet and does some research, comes up with a lot of material on reincarnation. He starts reading through it, tentatively, before shutting the computer down in denial, dismissing it as impossible, stupid. This is because, very deep down, he is terrified that it might be true.

-

Weeks merge into months and the dreams get better. Bradley starts to have nightmares about normal things, like bad auditions and Doctor Who, and Colin stops looking so haggard in the mornings.

Bradley does a couple of odd jobs: talking at some schools, championing a charity, doing some interviews. One of them asks the million-dollar question,

"We heard that, earlier this year, you suffered a psychotic breakdown. Could you tell us about that?"

but he just shrugs them off.

"I don't think I'd call it a 'psychotic breakdown'," he says. "I was under a lot of stress at the time, that's all. Everyone gets a little overworked now and again. Sometimes, you just need to talk some things over, so I've been seeing a therapist and things have been much better since then."

The absolute best thing about his time off is seeing Colin every day, being able to greet Colin with a cup of tea every time he gets back from a rehearsal. Colin always slumps down on the sofa and takes the tea with a little smile, sips it and says it's good.

And Bradley always smiles back, because it is.

-

It's just an ordinary Sunday morning, Colin at one end of the kitchen table with the paper, Bradley hunched over the other with the sports section and the quick crossword. He's trying to come up with another word for 'legendary', eight letters, when it just hits him, and the words come out of his mouth before he's quite got his brain around them.

"I want to go public."

Colin looks up from the paper, one eyebrow raised. "Bradley, you are a household name. I don't think you can get much more public than that without appearing on a trashy reality show."

"No, no," says Bradley. "I want us to go public. Our relationship."

Colin doesn't say anything at first, then, "Are you sure?"

"Well--"

"Because I'm not sure."

"Okay," Bradley says. "I get it, I do. But didn't you say you didn't like the way people discounted you? Because they didn't know how much you mean to me?"

"Maybe," says Colin, looking uncomfortable.

"I feel the same way," Bradley tells him. "Every time I think about the way people must see us, I-- I've been talking about this with Dr Patel."

"Bradley, those are supposed to be for helping you with your dreams, not angsting over your love life!"

"No, they're for dealing with any kind of stress I might be experiencing," says Bradley. "And keeping us hidden, like we're some kind of dirty secret, that's causing me stress."

Colin plays with his mug, spinning it on the table. "I don't know, Bradley. I want to, I think, but--"

"Oh, I'd never make you do it if you didn't want to!" says Bradley, waving his arms around. "Seriously, Colin, this isn't me pressuring. Just a thought, you know?"

"Yeah, I'll think about it," Colin says, smiling, and he does. Or, at least, he's abnormally quiet for the next week, until Bradley comes back from one of his therapy sessions a little earlier than planned. The flat is empty, but there's an enormous bunch of flowers on the kitchen table, possibly the most flamboyant flowers he's ever seen, and there's a card attached. It reads,

Let's come out!

and Bradley can't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

-

Scarlett handles the press release and Bradley's life doesn't seem to change much. Popping down the shop for a pint of milk gets a bit awkward for a few days, because every gossip rag on the shelves has his and Colin's faces splashed across their front pages, but fewer women come up to him in bars and blatantly flirt with him.

A few days after the news breaks, Colin gets nominated for an award that Bradley doesn't even pretend to know about. Bradley goes as his date, which Colin gets a bit funny about, but then Bradley tells him,

"Look, darling, the whole point of announcing our relationship was so that you could flaunt me and my outrageous good looks, so do it!"

and Colin calms down.

When the car pulls up at the red carpet, Bradley loves it, loves getting out of the car and being able to put a hand on Colin's back, low down and intimate.

They split up. Colin goes to talk to the real journalists about his play and Bradley potters around with the tabloid writers and photographers, laughing and joking and not really telling them anything. He's just trying to detach himself from one woman, who keeps asking him overly searching questions, when something catches the corner of his eye.

There is a man standing at the end of the carpet, near the doors. When the man turns around, Bradley sees his face and it makes his blood run cold.

It is Mordred. Not a boy anymore, but a man. Tall and proud and murderous.

"Merlin," Bradley whispers, because he's terrified. He knows his destiny, knows how it ends, but it's not today, it can't be today.

Mordred is stalking towards him, one hand outstretched, his image flickering between himself and a monster, something with tentacles and claws and a million glittering eyes.

"Merlin!" Bradley cries, backing away, knocking over a woman in an unchaste dress. He can't see Merlin anywhere--

Then he hears Merlin's voice, bell-like in his head: "Run, Arthur, run!"

And Bradley runs. He pushes his way through the crowd and vaults over the metal fence, scattering men and their strange black, flashing devices. He sprints down the street, then has to stop dead, because he nearly collides with a cart; a cart without horse or oxen pulling it, with lamps that blind him and that travel faster than anything he has ever seen.

There are so many lights, lights everywhere, of every colour. They cast this realm into pools of shadow and light, such contrast between each. Bradley is afraid of the shadows and what might lurk there in a place so ingrained in sorcery as this.

He glances behind him. A crowd is following him and Mordred is at the head. Bradley starts to run again, turning a corner and skirting an enormous spire of glass and metal. He has never seen so much glass before. It stretches so tall it must scrape the sky. Dimly, he wonders if it would smash in high winds, if the entire thing would tumble down to the ground in shards.

There is a cave up ahead, with steps leading down into it. People are filtering into it hurriedly and Bradley follows. Inside this refuge, it is more of a warren, with tunnels leading in every direction. There's another curious metal fence, that lets people through with the use of strange orange tokens. Bradley slips through, behind a mother and child, and follows one of the tunnels, comes out at the top of some metal stairs. Stairs that move. Bradley clutches at the sides until he reaches the bottom and dashes through another tunnel, following the crowd.

There are doors open in front of him, people pouring through them. Bradley pushes forward and finds himself in a windowed box, half-filled with people.

Suddenly, the doors close and the box shoots into a dark tunnel. The lamps flicker on and off, the ground shakes and the walls roar. Bradley curls into a corner and shuts his eyes against the howling wind and the stale, fetid air. His ears pop.

Then the box fills with light and screeches to a halt in an open tunnel just like the last. The doors open and the other occupants of the box exit, some of them glancing at him with concern. A voice grates through some tiny holes in the ceiling and Bradley cowers, knowing it must be some kind of demon. He remembers what Merlin taught him and makes the sign against possession.

He is more afraid than he has ever been, trapped and lost in this ensorcelled kingdom. He's just about to take his chances and escape when the doors close again and the torture resumes, along with the terrible, yowling shriek of metal on metal.

There are men waiting for him when it next stops. They pull him out when the doors open and try to speak to him, but their words make no sense--devil language. He fights; tries to run again, for these must be Mordred's constructs come to bring him to their master. They try to pin him to the floor, but he throws them off and escapes up the stairs. He follows the crowds and vaults over the token-barriers, bounds up the steps two at a time.

Up, up and up he climbs, until he's outside again in the cool, sweet air. The multicoloured lamps blare down at him again, but their light is like a benediction after that dank cavern.

He rests by a fountain, puts his head in his hands and breathes, trying to shut out the glass towers and the pillared stone temples. He wishes Merlin were with him, hopes that he's not busy fighting Mordred in a losing battle.

More men come, with kind words spoken with the tongues of demons. They try to restrain him, gently, but when he lashes out, they use force, binding his hands with metal.

He doesn't remember much after that, just the prick of something sharp on his arm and blissful, enfolding darkness.

-

He wakes up in a hospital bed, the room empty and smelling faintly of bleach. He can't move his arms very far, and when he looks down, he realises he's restrained.

As if by magic, a nurse appears. As she checks his pupils and his blood pressure, he notices the security camera in the corner, which means her appearance is less to do with magic and more to do with him being watched.

"The doctor will come speak to you in a minute," she says, sitting down in a chair on the far side of the room. Bradley estimates it's more like four minutes by the time the doctor shows up in a white coat, her hair in an uncompromising bun.

She smiles at him and comes to stand at his bedside. "Welcome back, Mr James."

"Where's Colin?" he says, and his throat is sore, like he's been shouting.

"He's next door," she says, soothingly. "You'll see him soon. First, I may attempt to answer any questions you might have."

"What happened?"

"We believe you suffered a psychotic episode. A member of the public felt endangered by your behaviour, so you were sedated and taken into hospital custody."

"Why am I restrained?"

"We feared that, when you woke from your sedation, you would still be experiencing this episode," she says, calmly. "We were correct. As soon as you can be moved to a more secure unit, you will be freed."

"What? Moved? I--"

"Mr James, please understand that these precautions are only for your own safety and the safety of this hospital's employees. I will send in Mr Morgan for you."

"Hey, wait!" Bradley says, but she doesn't answer. She leaves the room, but the nurse stays. There's an awkward silence for a moment, during which Bradley considers asking the nurse how her day is going when Colin enters, looking awful.

He spots the nurse and says, "Can I please speak to him alone?"

The nurse hesitates, then glances at the restraints, nods, and leaves.

"Hey," says Colin, nervously.

"Hey," says Bradley, and Colin looks too pleased at that. "You okay?"

"Yeah, but, you know. It's you that matters. How are you feeling?"

"All right," says Bradley. "No worse than usual," and that's an extremely discomforting thing to say, judging by Colin's expression.

Bradley feels uneasy, like they're just going through the motions. There's something simmering under Colin, some outburst, but he can't tell what it is.

He plays the waiting game and Colin eventually says it.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Bradley asks.

"Just--everything. They've told me everything. I called your lawyer and they brought out all your therapists notes, and--"

Bradley stares at Colin, whose hands are gripping the bedrail just inches from Bradley's fingers, his knuckles white, his mouth in a thin line.

"What?" he says, quietly. "What, Colin?"

"--and why didn't you tell me that's what your dreams were about?!" Colin says, loudly and suddenly, like it's been pulled from him.

Bradley feels himself get angry. "As if you would have believed me."

"And you didn't even try to explain?"

"It was ridiculous! I thought I was King Arthur, for God's sake. You would have thought I was mad--"

"You are mad, Bradley."

The silence afterwards is heavy and appalled.

"I shouldn't have said that," says Colin. His nose is a little red and he takes a few shallow breaths. "I should have let the doctors-- I'm sorry. I didn't-- It was just so horrible, seeing you--"

"It's all right," Bradley says, even though it's not, really.

Colin stares at his hands and says, haltingly. "You weren't you. And then they said I couldn't see you, in case I upset you, and-- and then you were insisting you were Arthur, and I--"

"What?"

"I just--kept thinking I should have realised earlier," says Colin, in a voice filled with shame. "That it all made sense."

"Why?" says Bradley. "Why did it-- Did I say something?"

"No," says Colin, and he sounds pained, now. "It was just, sometimes you would look at me like you were seeing someone else."

"Colin," Bradley says, earnest. "I'm not crazy, I swear. It's just--you look so much like him."

Colin looks up at him finally. "You just called me 'Merlin'."

"No, I didn't. I said, 'Colin'."

Colin makes a noise like a sob. "No, you didn't."

-

They throw him in the cell, his hands bound, so that he trips and lands face-first in the dirty straw covering the floor. They laugh as they bar the door.

"Fit for a prince," they snigger.

They leave him there for days. Each morning, they open the door and the light stings his eyes. They leave him a cup of water and a hunk of stale bread, which, until he manages to get his hands untied, prove almost impossible to eat or drink.

Every day, he wonders where Merlin is, why it's taking so long to mount a rescue. Normally, he'd expect the door to get unlocked after a day or two, Merlin grinning triumphantly, suspicious scorch marks on the floor outside the cell.

He waits patiently, because there's nothing else to do.

On the morning of the eleventh day, they pull him out of the cell and sit him at a table in a grand study. They tie him to the chair and don't close the curtains, so the summer sunlight streams through the windows onto his face, blinding him.

"Do you want me to close the blinds?"

"What?" says Bradley.

"The blinds," says the doctor. "Is the sun in your eyes?"

"Uh, yes," says Bradley, feeling shaken and off-balance. "Yes, please."

She gets up and twists the blinds closed, then sits back down across from him and shuffles her papers. "So, where were we?" she says, but Bradley interrupts.

"Who are you?" he says, and her face falls.

"My name is Doctor Nicola Grant, Bradley. We have been talking for the past half an hour. Or have we not?"

"I going to go out on a limb here," Bradley says, trying to dredge up some hilarity from the situation. "And say no, probably not. Shall we start from the beginning?"

"Certainly," she says, shuffling her papers again and managing not to look resigned. "You are aware, Bradley, that you are suffering from a severe mental disorder, yes?"

"I-- No, I don't think--"

"Please try to look at this from our point of view," she says. "I understand that, to you, this is all a mistake, you're just having dreams, but look at it from your boyfriend's perspective, for instance. To him, you periodically fade away into a delusion, into somebody he doesn't know. Can you imagine how awful that must feel to someone who loves you?"

"So, are you saying I have a split personality?"

"No. We believe you are suffering from a form of schizophrenia."

Bradley is confused. "I thought that was a split personality?"

"That is a common misconception. In fact, schizophrenia is a condition that causes abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. Patients can suffer delusions, disorganisation of speech and thought processes and experience auditory hallucinations."

"Hearing voices?"

"Exactly."

"I don't hear voices."

"No, but from what we can gather, from your therapy sessions and from interviews, you do suffer visual and auditory hallucinations or delusions. Like a waking dream. In any case, all of these symptoms result in significant social dysfunction."

"I am not socially dysfunctional!"

"Bradley," she says, in a soothing voice. "Members of the public found you cowering in a Tube carriage. You did not appear to know where you were or, perhaps at the time, who you were. We would class that as major social dysfunction."

"But that's not all the time," says Bradley, starting to panic. "I could get better."

"I'm sorry," she says, and Bradley feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. "I'm afraid that we have diagnosed you as suffering from a rare disorder called catastrophic schizophrenia."

Bradley tries to get a hold of himself, tries to ask, "Could you elaborate?" in as even a tone as possible.

"Catastrophic schizophrenia leads directly to a rapid decline into a chronic psychosis without remission, involving a severe deterioration of personality."

"So. I am mad."

"That is an unfriendly term," she says, and Bradley almost cannot stand the bland sympathy of her. "It more involves a disconnection from reality, an inability to distinguish the real world from your dreams."

She taps her pen on her notebook once and the room blurs, then sharpens again. When she resumes speaking, flicking through her notes, Arthur surveys the room.

The window is too small and, in any case, looks like it's sealed shut. He could break it, but there's nothing available to smash it with. The chair he's sitting on is bolted to the floor. So are the table and the woman's chair.

The woman is talking, still, in the calm, measured tones of a healer. Arthur wonders what she wishes to treat him for, then dismisses it. He feels fine.

"I'm sorry, but it's incurable," she says and she's good at lying. There's not a sign on her face to show she's speaking anything but the truth.

"I see," says Arthur, assessing the rest of the room. He takes note of the locked door and the lack of guards, files the information away. The healer talks at length about a course of treatment and Arthur makes all the right noises in the right places, waiting for his chance.

It comes when she stops speaking and offers him her hand. Arthur has never shaken the hand of a woman before and it almost throws him off-kilter; he almost misses the creak of the door handle.

Just one man comes in, no weapons, no armour. Arthur thinks that either they're foolhardy or extremely stupid. Perhaps both.

"Come on, Bradley," says the man and Arthur assumes that means him, that perhaps it's some kind of cuss, or derogatory slang for prisoner. He gets up and walks casually to the door, ready to throw himself on the guard, then he notices, just down the corridor, an open door, sunlight streaming through. Glancing at the guard, he runs for the door, ignoring the shouts behind him of, "Wait, Bradley!"

Outside, there is a yard and a high fence. Some of the other prisoners are playing a game with a ball. Arthur feels his heart sink, then runs for a building on the other side of the yard. He gets one foot on a windowsill and stretches up, grabs for the guttering at the edge of the roof. There are spikes, but they're unevenly spaced and he can get his fingers between them. He pushes off the window and heaves himself upwards, if only he can make it onto the roof--

A hand grabs his leg and yanks him down. Arthur kicks, but more hands join the first. The guards drag him to the floor and pin him there. The healer comes to kneel by his head.

"What is your name?" she asks, softly.

"Arthur Pendragon," he snarls. "Crown Prince of Camelot."

She pauses, then stands up. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shake her head sadly.

-

When Bradley wakes up, he's lying on a narrow, hard bed and Colin is sitting in the furthest corner of the room, by the door, talking like he has been for some time.

"Colin?" Bradley says, quietly.

Colin gasps, then looks up from his knees and says, "Oh God," and his voice cracks. "Please don't tell me I've been talking to--to Arthur all this time."

Bradley doesn't say anything and Colin puts his head in his hands.

"This is Bradley, isn't it? You are Bradley?" he says.

"Yes," says Bradley. "It's me."

There's a long pause. Colin takes a few heaving breaths.

"I love you," he says, "but--"

Bradley can't stand to hear the rest of that sentence. He only knows that he has to hold Colin, has to have him in his arms as soon as possible. He gets up off the bed and starts for Colin, but Colin rears back in his seat and says, "Don't--"

Bradley stops dead. That word is like a knife in his heart.

"But--I love you," he says, and his throat thickens with oncoming tears. "Please, Colin, you--"

That seems to do it. Colin comes forward in a rush and flings his arms around Bradley, squeezing him tightly, shaking a little.

"This is just so hard," he says harshly, into the hair behind Bradley's ear.

"I know," says Bradley, stroking a hand soothingly up and down Colin's back. "I know it's hard."

Arthur buries his face in Merlin's neck and breathes deep, inhaling the comforting, familiar scent.

"We need to get out of here," he says.

"When you're better, yeah, we will," says Merlin.

"What? No, I'm fine, honestly, let's go."

"You're not fine! And the doctors decide when you are, not you."

"What is the point of you coming here if you do not free me?" says Arthur, angrily. "I've waited for so long, you have no idea--"

"Bradley!"

"Do not call me that filthy slave name!"

Merlin looks at him in horror, transfixed for a moment, then he escapes through the door and it locks behind him, leaving Bradley pounding on it in desperation, calling Colin's name, hopelessly.

-

On Wednesdays, Bradley plays table tennis with his primary carer, Chris. He's never really played before, not when he was younger, so he's not very good. All the pieces seem too small, the table, the bat, the ball. They make him feel larger, more ham-handed and inelegant. Chris, in comparison, is the largest, broadest and most heavily muscled nurse in the entire hospital. He used to be a bouncer in a London club, but now he cares for psychiatric patients and, when wielding a table tennis bat, is graceful and poised. Far more so than Bradley thinks he'll ever be.

"Just practise," Chris always says. He also always leaves off saying, "You'll have plenty to time to get better," but Bradley still hears it, unspoken.

"I saw one of your films last night," says Chris, hitting the ball, quick and easy, making Bradley scramble after it.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

"The one with Anne Hathaway in it," says Chris. "You know, everybody thought you were shagging her."

It could be crass and really rude, but Chris looks up as he says it and smiles in a way that just makes it funny instead.

"Would have," says Bradley, grinning back. "If things were different."

"Yeah? What kind of things?"

"Genes, maybe. They say it's in your DNA," says Bradley, and Chris laughs. "So how come you were watching such a powerful manly film like that?"

"It was my girlfriend's turn to pick. If I'd had my way, we would have been watching something involving Matt Damon."

"Ah, well, he's not all he's cracked up to be."

"Really?"

"Dunno. Only spoke to him once. He was quite drunk at the time. Kept trying to do this Michael Macintyre impression."

"Weird."

"You said it," says Bradley and he punctuates the remark with a smash that goes completely wide of the table and bounces off the bookcase, behind the television. He starts to go after it, but Chris waves a hand and crouches down instead.

Bradley waits behind him and watches as Chris gropes around for the ball.

Arthur sees the opportunity, feels the weight of the bat in his hand and strikes.

He brings the bat down on the base of the guard's skull with a sickening crack and the man crumples. Arthur searches him for any kind of concealed weapon, finds none, and snatches the guard's pendant and its token, the shiny, flat rectangle that he's seen them open doors with. He hurries, because there's not much time.

He runs for the door, jams the token into the slot by the door handle and wrenches it open when the light turns green. He turns left, running for the door marked 'emergency exit', almost stumbling, adrenaline pumping through his system.

As soon as he's out of the door, into the sweet, crisp winter air, a wailing alarm starts up. He races across the field towards the fence as he hears voices behind him, shouting. He doesn't climb the fence, but barrels into it, into one corner, where the wire is a little rusted and loose with age. It doesn't come free and he kicks at it frantically. Men are coming for him, running across the field towards him.

With one final desperate slam, the edge of the fence comes apart from the post. Arthur squirms through the gap, almost gets stuck, and forces himself up, forwards.

He is free, but not if they catch him.

He starts running again, but men are appearing from all directions, from within those strange, horseless carriages. He hears their shouts over the deafening wail of the alarm. They're getting closer and he is getting tired.

One of them gets too close, nearly close enough to grab. Arthur dodges and makes for firm ground, for the long, black road. They call his name, but there's only blood pounding in his ears, so close to freedom.

A hand grabs at his sleeve and he trips, stumbles through a bush onto the black road.

Suddenly, but also sluggish, like the world has slowed down, a scream starts up. A horrifying, howling scream that deafens him. He turns around and a bellowing roar joins the discord, urgent and primal, and he is gripped by some otherworldly terror, spellbound.

He sees only a blur of red, taller than ten men, then darkness.

-

When his eyes blink open, it is to soft light, like the first dawn. Merlin is waiting, smiling like he would have waited hundreds of years for this day, and has.

Arthur smiles back and steps out of Avalon, into Merlin's waiting arms.

THE END