works in progress (oh sugar): part two
Two of these are continuations of stories I've posted in the past; the third is the Sherlock fic that's owned me since August. I feel so used; I don't regret a minute of it.
Component Parts. Star Trek Reboot, Spock/Uhura. Teen.
“The Enterprise?” Spock repeats, his surprise obvious. The doors to the lecture hall open and the first students trickle into the room, walking down the long staircases on their way to their seats.
Uhura adjusts the programming on the lecture prompter - not that he ever uses it. She’s worn her hair down today, and it keeps falling into her eyes; she tucks an offending strand behind her ear. “That’s the plan,” she says. “I want it for my first assignment, of course, but even if I have to wait a few years for another mission I intend to…” Her voice trails off, and she squints at the prompter screen. “Commander, are you sure about this Andorian colloquial sample? It looked fine before, but now I’m thinking-”
“I have been assigned to the Enterprise as Chief Science Officer,” he says quickly, the words almost rushed. She looks up to see him standing close, with his hands behind his back and a strange stiffness in his shoulders. His expression is as serene and unreadable as ever.
She turns back to the prompter. “So it’s possible,” she says slowly, watching his reflection in the monitor, “that we’ll end up serving together.”
He looks away, at the students filing into the hall. “Not only possible, but likely. An officer of your considerable abilities would be of great use to the Enterprise’s mission.” A few cadets sit in the front row, just in front of the lecture podium, and Spock takes a step closer to her, lowering his voice. “I had thought that you might prefer research and a professorship at the Academy to exploration.”
She turns her head and gives him a small, professional smile. “And I would’ve said the same about you.”
His expression does not change, but his fingers brush the inside of her elbow - a brief, accidental rasp of skin against sleeve. “It seems we are each of us more adventurous than we appear,” he says. When she turns back to his reflection in the monitor, he is still watching her face.
Uhura steps away, retreating to her seat in the fourth row. “I wouldn’t use the Andorian sample. The others are better suited to your argument.”
He rests one hand on the podium. “I agree,” he says.
The lecture goes well. He skips the Andorian sample - and honestly, why does she even bother with the prompter when he never so much as glances at it? - and by the time they’ve hit the fifty minute mark she’s hardly listening, idly making notes for next week’s lecture on her PADD and considering her next move on the chessboard waiting in his office. His voice is soothing, even and precise, and she finds herself thinking that there is something almost musical about it, the rise and fall of consonants and vowels and her foot taps softly - a metronome, keeping time.
++
Untitled sequel to The Goose Girl. Merlin, Bess & friends, some Bess/Merlin. Teen.
In late summer her dreams return to the lake.
The air is still winter cold, and she can taste the snow of the mountains, the bitter sharpness of the evergreens that stand in a solemn circle around the water. The lake is iron grey and eerily still, and she takes a hesitant step closer to the water’s edge, bending down to watch her reflection.
Two pairs of eyes look back at her - one brown, the other vivid, unnatural blue. Bess has rarely thought of the beauty she has lost, the regal height and pale, flawless face. Being beautiful is much like being feared, and she’d once had a taste for both; now she is plain and freckled with sun, her hair fine and brown and wispy with curls. She is not what she was, and she cannot regret it.
They would fear you still, her reflections tell her silently, their faces as strange and unmoving as masks. They would fear you, if they knew.
“They won’t,” Bess says, “not ever,” and the water rises up, pooling at her ankles, dragging at her feet. The cold is like sharp cuts against her bare skin, and she looks down, thinking to see blood. Instead she sees a darkness spreading poisonous across her skin, turning her feet and calves and thighs the silt grey of lake mud, her trembling fingers and hands the rotten green of dying algae. She stumbles back onto the shore and the lake follows, surging around her, filling her mouth with ice and her lungs with water. She shudders, a girl made from silt and snow and reeds, and then spills broken upon the shore.
My lady, the lake says, and the tide recedes, carrying her with it.
++
“I see,” the Dragon says, his upper lip curling into a smug, sharp-toothed smile. “You’ve grown attached to the boy.”
“Oh,” Bess says, “like you haven’t.”
The Dragon pauses, and in the flickering torchlight he looks like a monster made of stone, a statue carved from the rocks of the cavern. Then he blinks, and his large yellow eyes focus on her again. “Merlin is…unique.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Bess mutters, folding her arms across her chest and scuffing the toe of her shoe in the dust. “The moron’s nearly got himself killed four times in the last month, and those are just the ones I know about.”
“He is young, Sister, not stupid.” The Dragon frowns, considering. “Well, maybe a little bit stupid.”
Bess rubs her hand over her face and exhales, a long sigh that rattles through her chest. “I’ve agreed to teach him.”
“I know,” the Dragon says.
She scowls. “If you say one word about destiny or fate or the sides of coins, just one word-”
The Dragon taps his claws against the rock beneath him. “Coins? When did I-” He snorts, and steam leaves his nostrils in a rush of vapour. “Of course. I knew I’d used that one before. That was you and Uther, wasn’t it? Two sides of the same coin, tied together by fate, doomed by arrogance and the cruelty of your vengeful hearts-”
“I’ve been having dreams,” Bess says, suddenly. “Odd ones.”
The Dragon’s mouth shuts with a sharp click of teeth. “Dreams,” he says.
“Yes,” Bess says.
“Odd ones.”
“Wow,” Bess says, “look at you. It’s almost as if you listen when I talk.”
The Dragon settles back on his haunches, his eyes heavy-lidded and wary. “You’ve never shown signs of the gift of prophesy.”
“I don’t think I’m seeing the future,” she says. “At least, not in the way you mean.”
His tail twitches. “Explain.”
A chill breeze blows from the tunnel at her back; Bess hugs herself tightly and fights a shudder. “I don’t know how.”
“Try.”
Bess closes her eyes, squeezes them shut and tries to recapture the moment just before she’d woken that morning, the taste of lake water still thick on her tongue. “It’s like a message. A promise. Like something out there is waiting, and it wants me to know.”
“Wants you to know what?”
Bess opens her eyes. “That it’s only a matter of time.”
The Dragon watches her silently for a long moment, eyes glinting gold in the torchlight. “Don’t teach Merlin the spells. Magic words and ancient talismans and foolish hand waving, dancing naked in the light of the full moon - the mumbo jumbo, to borrow a phrase. That’s not what he needs from you.”
“I know,” Bess says.
“Good.” The Dragon shudders, once, and unfurls his wings. “We may not have the time to waste.”
His wings beat twice, hard and loud and swirling dust, and then he lifts into the air, suddenly weightless. The wind snaps at her hair and her dress, stinging her eyes, but she watches as he fades into the darkness of the cavern, his long neck arched toward the sky.
++
“What I don’t understand,” Merlin says, jumping up to tug an apple from a low hanging branch, “is why we’re doing this out here. Don’t you think it’s a little dangerous?”
Bess walks faster, the even rows of the orchard blurring into long green lines that stretch into the distance to either side. Merlin catches up to her easily, polishing his stolen apple against his sleeve as he walks. Bess snatches the apple out of his hand. “Who’s the teacher here, Merlin? Me or you?”
“My most humble apologies, mistress,” he says, and drops into a low bow. He doesn’t bother to hide his smirk.
Bess bumps him with her shoulder, and he nearly overbalances and lands face first in the lawn. Instead he trips forward into a run, then turns and walks backwards, grinning impishly at her.
“You know,” he says, “I think we should have a talk about your violent impulses. You obviously have some deep-seated anger issues we should be dealing with.”
“Oh, well spotted,” she says, and throws the apple at his head. He catches it neatly with his magic, and she scowls at him. “This isn’t a game, Merlin.”
“It isn’t a funeral, either.” He stops walking, waiting for her to catch up. When she does, he presses the apple into her hands. “I really do appreciate it, you know. What you’re risking to help me.”
“My motivations are purely selfish,” she says, her voice rising to the odd pitch it always finds when she lies. Merlin gives her a knowing, affectionate look, but says nothing; Bess kicks at a fallen apple as she walks and thinks uncharitable thoughts about the size of his ears.
The evening sun hangs low and red in the sky, and the trees of the south orchard cast long, fragrant shadows in the heat. Slowly the ground grows rough beneath their feet, the grass thick with weeds and brambles, and then the forest rises before them like the impenetrable wall of some great citadel - dark and ageless and forbidden.
“Ah,” Merlin says. “So this is why we’re here.”
Bess pauses. The forest is dark, and its silence is like the deepest of sleeps, like the unnatural quiet of moonless nights and heavy snows. The apple is still warm with the heat of Merlin’s magic and the summer sun; she curls her fingers around it and walks into the trees.
There are no paths through this wood; the underbrush is too dense for good hunting, the trees old and full of rot and too dangerous to clear. The air is cold, sunless - a sudden twilight falling around them like a curtain. Bess has spent most of her long life in forests like this one, but she has grown used to the castle, to its movement and loud warmth. Each step feels like a trespass, and the uneasy silence swallows the sound of every breath, every snapped twig.
“You’re a bit jumpy,” Merlin says, and Bess jumps.
She turns to glare at him. “I am not.”
Merlin’s expression is mild, his mouth turned up at the corners in a teasing sort of smile. If the forest bothers him at all, he doesn’t show it. “I was just making an observation.”
“Well, keep your observations to yourself,” Bess says, and walks into a thornbush.
“Uh oh,” Merlin says.
Bess is caught, helpless, snagged by her skirts and her sleeves and her hair. She tries to yank one arm free and only tangles herself further. “You could have warned me!”
“You said-”
“And since when do you listen to anything anyone says?”
“Not a bad point.” He watches as she struggles to free her dress from the thorns. “Do you want-”
“I’m fine,” she says, “I’m brilliant, I’m-” A thorn catches the soft skin between her fingers, and she hisses in pain. “I’m bleeding. Well, isn’t that just typical.”
Merlin reaches for her wrist, circling it gently with his fingers and holding her hand up to the light. “It’s not bad. Suck on it a little - your saliva will help stop the bleeding.”
“I know that,” Bess says, mulishly, and sticks her finger in her mouth. “I’m not an idiot,” she adds, the words a little garbled.
Merlin grins. “Never said you were.” He crouches down and frees her dress thorn by thorn, working slowly and carefully as she watches, his fingers long and pale in the forest dark. “Actually, you’re one of the cleverest people I’ve ever met.”
“Oh,” Bess says, struck dumb, her eyes wide and her hand still stuck in her mouth. “Uh.”
“Of course, you’re also one of the most annoying.” He stands and works the thorns free from her hair, from the tangles below her left ear and the nape of her neck. His fingers are gentle, and the thorns never touch her skin. “You don’t need to be embarrassed, Bess. This forest scares a lot of people.”
“Not you,” Bess says.
He shrugs. “I’m scared of other things.” He takes a step back and waves his hands in a flourish. “And now you’re free to go. Try to keep the tears of gratitude to a minimum, please - I so hate it when women cry.”
“I’ll make you cry,” she says, and shoves him in the chest. Not hard enough to knock him down, or even to push him off balance - just a quick, reassuring press of palm against sternum before she jerks her hand away again.
“You and your violent impulses,” Merlin says, shaking his head, and they walk the rest of the way in companionable silence - Merlin a step behind her, warm at her back.
The clearing is just as she remembered it, a brief gasp of open air hidden amid the choked moss and heavy growth of the forest. The clearing is small, warmed by the red light of the setting sun, and Merlin plops down onto the long grass. He lays back, his hands behind his head, and says, “I’ve changed my mind. I think this is the perfect place for our lessons.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Bess sits beside him, hugging her knees to her chest. She looks at the trees, at the near perfect circle of grass around them. She’d found this place years before, had used it for the magics she practiced far from Gaius’ watchful eyes. She’d never before wondered who had created it, or why after all these years it remains untouched by the surrounding forest.
Merlin reaches up and tugs her sleeve. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she says, and wills it to be true, fixes her smile and ignores the prickle at the back of her neck, the eerie quiet of the trees around them. She tears out a handful of grass and sprinkles it over his upturned face. “Stop nagging me.”
Merlin brushes the grass and dirt from his mouth with the back of his hand and grins up at her. “Stop acting like such a moody brat, and I’ll stop nagging.”
“Stop stupidly risking your life once a week, and I’ll stop being a moody brat.”
“We could go on like this forever.”
“We probably will.”
He reaches up and drops a blade of grass into her hair. “Eventually we’ll need snacks.”
Bess pulls the apple from its place in her pocket and balances it carefully on the peak of her knee. Its skin is flushed blood red in the light of the evening sun, and she bites hard on her bottom lip before saying, “The Dragon calls you a creature of the Old Religion. Do you know what that means?”
Merlin smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It means I should do what he tells me.” He sits up and leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “He said I was his kin, once.”
Bess nods.
“He calls you sister.”
“It’s complicated, Merlin. I’m not sure how to explain.” She frowns, rubbing her hand over her mouth. “I could tell you what my father told me when I was small.”
“I’d like that,” he says. “Story time.”
She gives him a warning look, and then closes her eyes, trying to remember. She rarely thinks of those years, of the lone tower by the cliffs and the dust of her father’s ancient books, the dust that stained her fingers and stung her eyes; the sour smell of her father’s breath, like strong ale and old, old magic. Her memory of his face is imperfect, shadowed by shuttered windows and low burning candles, but she remembers his voice - the bite of it, and the power.
He told her one story, and it was this:
“Long ago,” Bess says, “when the seas were young and the sky still new, the trees were the first kings of Albion. They were the land’s first children, and her most beloved. She treasured their wisdom and their mercy, the murmur of their slow voices and the twining touch of their roots. They ruled well and justly, but after many years the land turned against them, as a mother betrayed turns against her most loyal son. She stole their voices and burned their crowns, and though the story of their treachery has been lost to time, we know that they have been thus ever since - silent, and watching. Imprisoned.
“The land took the fire of her rage and buried it deep, letting it boil beneath the mountains and the stone floor of the sea. The dragons were born from that rage, and it lives in their blood even still. The land made them the next kings of Albion, and their reign was a terrible one. They loved philosophy and war, built stunning palaces of mountain and molten stone and destroyed them in a moment’s fury. The land treasured their beauty, and their magic - the dragons were the first to use spells, to twist the world with the power of their words. But some learnt a power the land had not granted them; they looked into the future, and they saw that they would not always be kings. They demanded promises the land would not give.
In revenge, the land brought the first men to the shores of Albion.
“The men came from far places, carried by their ships, but the land claimed them as her own. They were so small, with dark hair and pale skin and eyes like the sky, and the land loved them as she had loved no other. She gave them ore and wood and the shelter of green valleys, the fertile places that would one day be called Camelot - the heart of Albion. To her delight they loved her in return; they gave her many names, sang songs and spilled blood and they were wild, her blue-eyed kings. They were hers.
She gave them magic, and the world trembled with their wars. The land watched with pride.
“More ships came, and more men. She forgave them their impudence and their hair the colour of sand, the memories they brought with them of other lands and the names they whispered in pain and pleasure that were not her own. They conquered her blue-eyed kings and were conquered in turn, and still more ships found the shores of Albion, bringing with them men and women of every hue and height. The land welcomed them open-armed, her heart full to bursting.
“Years passed. The seas grew old and the sky grew pale, and the kings of Albion forgot their debt, as men forget all such things in time. Again the land was betrayed, and again she burned with rage, with famine and storm and plague. She burns still, and in their ignorance men blame their ills upon the magic that would be their cure. In time her names are forbidden, her songs lost to the silence of the executioner’s axe, and only those with unnatural long memory know what will follow.
For if you listen, child, you will hear the whispers from the mountains, and from the trees. They have seen it before, and they will see it again - the land will crown a new king of Albion, and he will be our last.”
There is a silence, and then Merlin grins. “Arthur,” he says, his voice hushed. “They mean Arthur.”
Bess is entirely unsurprised that Merlin has missed the point so spectacularly; she rolls her eyes and says, “It’s a fairy story, Merlin. For children.”
Merlin’s expression turns stubborn. “The Dragon believes it, doesn’t he?”
“Which means exactly nothing,” Bess says, and yet - her father died years before Uther’s Purge, long before the king first set foot upon the shores of Albion; he could not have known what Camelot would become. And yet.
Her names are forbidden, her songs lost to the silence of the executioner’s axe - her father’s words, not her own.
It was the only story he ever told her.
Bess stands, bruising the apple in her grip. She pulls a small knife from her pocket and slices the apple in half.
“First lesson,” she says. She digs a seed from the heart of the apple and drops it into his hand. “Grow me a tree.”
Merlin looks down at his open palm. “And I suppose it would be cheating if I just planted this and asked you to wait a season or two?”
“I know you think you’re charming,” Bess says. “Disabusing you of that notion will be lesson two.”
Merlin frowns at the seed and says, “Fine, then. What spell do I use?”
Bess crouches down until their faces are level. “You’re not using a spell, Merlin - you’re using magic.” She takes a crisp bite from one half of the apple and tilts her head toward the trees. “I’ll wait over there until you’re finished.”
She walks the short distance to the edge of the clearing and settles back against an old oak. The bark is warm from the sun; she curls her legs beneath her and finishes half the apple, tucking the other half in her pocket. In the middle of the clearing, Merlin digs a hole in the ground with a sharp stick, plants the seed, and covers it again with a small mound of dirt.
“Right,” he says, carefully not looking in her direction. “Álíed.”
Nothing happens. He stares down at the dirt.
“Álíed,” he says again, a little louder. The mound of dirt continues, somewhat stubbornly, to be a mound of dirt. He gives it an encouraging poke with his finger. “Ástíöe álíed áwiex?”
The mound of dirt remains unencouraged.
“Huh,” Merlin says. He looks up from the ground. “This might be a while.”
“No kidding,” Bess says, and pulls a book of poetry from her pocket.
++
Four hours later the sun is long set and Merlin is going a bit berserk.
“I really,” he says, tearing at his hair, “I really just don’t understand. I mean, I’ve had trouble with spells before - and yes, I know, I’m meant to be doing magic, not spells, not that I have the slightest idea what that means - but this is just, it’s a bloody apple tree, not an all-powerful sword meant to kill the dead or an eagle lion snake thing or-”
“You’ve set the grass on fire again,” Bess says, not looking up from her book.
“Bugger,” Merlin says, and puts out the flames with a wave of his hand. He covers his face and collapses back onto the still smoking ground. The conjured ball of light over Bess’ head bobs a little in sympathy.
“You should really eat something,” Bess says. “I have bread.” She pulls some from her pocket.
Merlin lifts one hand from his face and fixes her with a single baleful blue eye. “How big is that pocket of yours, anyway? You keep an awful lot in there.”
Bess goes still, staring unseeing at the page in front of her; she’d been trying rather hard not to think about that. She clears her throat. “It’s not magic,” she says. “I don’t do magic, so it couldn’t be magic.”
“Okay,” Merlin says.
“It’s just a big pocket.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Good. Because you’d be wrong.”
Merlin sits upright, points his finger at the mound of dirt, and says, “Bræde beorhtne.”
It only takes a moment’s rolling in the dirt to put out the sparks in his hair, and despite his whinging his ears are only a little singed. Bess inspects the tiny burns in her dress; in retrospect, perhaps sitting on his head hadn’t been the best response to the emergency, even if it had got the job done. She licks her finger and rubs at a scorch mark. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but that was a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“Don’t talk to me,” Merlin says.
++
The Anatomist. Sherlock, Molly Hooper, Jim Moriarty, others. Adult. Spoilers like whoa for The Great Game.
James Joseph Moriarty was born in Galway, in 1976. His birth certificate no longer exists.
If it did, it would list his father’s name (Dr. Joseph Arthur), his mother’s (Mrs. Elizabeth Anne), and his birth weight (2.7kg). It would not tell you that his eyes were blue, or that he entered this world as he will leave it - howling.
It would not tell you that five minutes later his mother (Mrs. Elizabeth Anne) gave birth to a daughter, his sister. His twin. The records of her birth burned with his, but if they hadn’t, you would know her name.
Mary Elizabeth Moriarty was born in Galway, in 1976.
They will call her Molly.
12
Their name was not Moriarty, not then. Moriarty is a cipher, a small piece of a larger puzzle; Jim chooses it when they are twelve, after their mother dies and their father is sent away and they become penniless orphans, like in a storybook. He writes the name above the creased fold of a brown paper bag, the nearest paper to hand. His pen shakes, excitement like a flame behind his eyes.
Jim and Molly Moriarty, he writes, with long, heavy loops on the l’s and y’s. She takes the biro and copies it out carefully, her handwriting small and neat and utterly unremarkable. Jim and Molly Moriarty, she writes, over and over again, covering the wrinkled brown paper with their new name, and when Jim takes it from her the ink smears under his fingers.
This is what we really are, his smile says. This is what we become.
They will use many other names. This is the only one they remember.
5
Their father is a professor of mathematics at Trinity, and when he swings Molly into his arms at the end of the day she tastes the chalk dust on his clothes, like desert sand under her tongue. Sometimes she sneezes into his collar, and he laughs.
“Hello, my little mouse,” he says, whispers into her ear before scooping Jim up in his other arm and spinning them close, in a tight circle down the length of the hall. Their mother looks on from the doorframe, her tired face fond.
(Jim doesn’t like to be spun, doesn’t like to be carried or embraced or confined, but he’s good at pretending. Only Molly can see the edge to his smile.)
“Now then,” her father says, a child on each hip, “what does the little mouse want for supper?”
“Cheese,” Molly answers, quite seriously. “Mice eat cheese.”
“And chocolate biscuits,” Jim adds with a charming, gap-toothed grin. “Mice go mad for chocolate biscuits.” Her parents laugh, but Molly doesn’t understand why. Mice will eat anything, she thinks, that’s why they’re pests. Her mother sets traps and everything.
“Don’t frown, little mouse,” her father says, kissing her cheek. “You’ll get your cheese.”
“Will it be in a trap?” Molly asks, picturing the small, furry bodies and their small, snapped necks. She’s seen them in the traps, still twitching.
Her parents laugh again, their eyes flashing in the lamplight.
Molly likes making them laugh; she’d like an answer to her question more.
7
Molly has soft, mouse-brown hair that curls around her ears, rarely tangling. She is small for her age, with quick-pale fingers and a quiet, nervous disposition, and she hides in linen cupboards, under tables and behind dust-heavy curtains. She learns not to sneeze.
People think Jim is the clever one, and he is clever. He always knows just what to say and just how to say it, and when their father’s friends from the university come to dinner they watch Jim’s proofs and equations unfold with awe in their whiskey-fogged eyes.
Impressive, they say. Remarkable. The word prodigy gets thrown around quite a bit, though Molly had solved the same equations that afternoon after school, and she’d shown her work.
But Molly hides from guests, from teachers, from her mother and her father. She doesn’t hide from Jim, because he will always find her, and because he doesn’t like having to look. If she tries he will crowd in beside her, too large and too warm and breathing too loud, his knees sharp against her side, and he will say, “If you ever run away from me again, little mouse, I’ll pinch you until your arm turns blue.”
“If you ever turn my arm blue,” she whispers back, “I’ll bite your fingers off.”
“Yum,” Jim says, smacking his lips, and then their mother finds them, laughing like jackals in the darkness at the depths of the broom cupboard.
++
Component Parts. Star Trek Reboot, Spock/Uhura. Teen.
“The Enterprise?” Spock repeats, his surprise obvious. The doors to the lecture hall open and the first students trickle into the room, walking down the long staircases on their way to their seats.
Uhura adjusts the programming on the lecture prompter - not that he ever uses it. She’s worn her hair down today, and it keeps falling into her eyes; she tucks an offending strand behind her ear. “That’s the plan,” she says. “I want it for my first assignment, of course, but even if I have to wait a few years for another mission I intend to…” Her voice trails off, and she squints at the prompter screen. “Commander, are you sure about this Andorian colloquial sample? It looked fine before, but now I’m thinking-”
“I have been assigned to the Enterprise as Chief Science Officer,” he says quickly, the words almost rushed. She looks up to see him standing close, with his hands behind his back and a strange stiffness in his shoulders. His expression is as serene and unreadable as ever.
She turns back to the prompter. “So it’s possible,” she says slowly, watching his reflection in the monitor, “that we’ll end up serving together.”
He looks away, at the students filing into the hall. “Not only possible, but likely. An officer of your considerable abilities would be of great use to the Enterprise’s mission.” A few cadets sit in the front row, just in front of the lecture podium, and Spock takes a step closer to her, lowering his voice. “I had thought that you might prefer research and a professorship at the Academy to exploration.”
She turns her head and gives him a small, professional smile. “And I would’ve said the same about you.”
His expression does not change, but his fingers brush the inside of her elbow - a brief, accidental rasp of skin against sleeve. “It seems we are each of us more adventurous than we appear,” he says. When she turns back to his reflection in the monitor, he is still watching her face.
Uhura steps away, retreating to her seat in the fourth row. “I wouldn’t use the Andorian sample. The others are better suited to your argument.”
He rests one hand on the podium. “I agree,” he says.
The lecture goes well. He skips the Andorian sample - and honestly, why does she even bother with the prompter when he never so much as glances at it? - and by the time they’ve hit the fifty minute mark she’s hardly listening, idly making notes for next week’s lecture on her PADD and considering her next move on the chessboard waiting in his office. His voice is soothing, even and precise, and she finds herself thinking that there is something almost musical about it, the rise and fall of consonants and vowels and her foot taps softly - a metronome, keeping time.
++
Untitled sequel to The Goose Girl. Merlin, Bess & friends, some Bess/Merlin. Teen.
In late summer her dreams return to the lake.
The air is still winter cold, and she can taste the snow of the mountains, the bitter sharpness of the evergreens that stand in a solemn circle around the water. The lake is iron grey and eerily still, and she takes a hesitant step closer to the water’s edge, bending down to watch her reflection.
Two pairs of eyes look back at her - one brown, the other vivid, unnatural blue. Bess has rarely thought of the beauty she has lost, the regal height and pale, flawless face. Being beautiful is much like being feared, and she’d once had a taste for both; now she is plain and freckled with sun, her hair fine and brown and wispy with curls. She is not what she was, and she cannot regret it.
They would fear you still, her reflections tell her silently, their faces as strange and unmoving as masks. They would fear you, if they knew.
“They won’t,” Bess says, “not ever,” and the water rises up, pooling at her ankles, dragging at her feet. The cold is like sharp cuts against her bare skin, and she looks down, thinking to see blood. Instead she sees a darkness spreading poisonous across her skin, turning her feet and calves and thighs the silt grey of lake mud, her trembling fingers and hands the rotten green of dying algae. She stumbles back onto the shore and the lake follows, surging around her, filling her mouth with ice and her lungs with water. She shudders, a girl made from silt and snow and reeds, and then spills broken upon the shore.
My lady, the lake says, and the tide recedes, carrying her with it.
++
“I see,” the Dragon says, his upper lip curling into a smug, sharp-toothed smile. “You’ve grown attached to the boy.”
“Oh,” Bess says, “like you haven’t.”
The Dragon pauses, and in the flickering torchlight he looks like a monster made of stone, a statue carved from the rocks of the cavern. Then he blinks, and his large yellow eyes focus on her again. “Merlin is…unique.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Bess mutters, folding her arms across her chest and scuffing the toe of her shoe in the dust. “The moron’s nearly got himself killed four times in the last month, and those are just the ones I know about.”
“He is young, Sister, not stupid.” The Dragon frowns, considering. “Well, maybe a little bit stupid.”
Bess rubs her hand over her face and exhales, a long sigh that rattles through her chest. “I’ve agreed to teach him.”
“I know,” the Dragon says.
She scowls. “If you say one word about destiny or fate or the sides of coins, just one word-”
The Dragon taps his claws against the rock beneath him. “Coins? When did I-” He snorts, and steam leaves his nostrils in a rush of vapour. “Of course. I knew I’d used that one before. That was you and Uther, wasn’t it? Two sides of the same coin, tied together by fate, doomed by arrogance and the cruelty of your vengeful hearts-”
“I’ve been having dreams,” Bess says, suddenly. “Odd ones.”
The Dragon’s mouth shuts with a sharp click of teeth. “Dreams,” he says.
“Yes,” Bess says.
“Odd ones.”
“Wow,” Bess says, “look at you. It’s almost as if you listen when I talk.”
The Dragon settles back on his haunches, his eyes heavy-lidded and wary. “You’ve never shown signs of the gift of prophesy.”
“I don’t think I’m seeing the future,” she says. “At least, not in the way you mean.”
His tail twitches. “Explain.”
A chill breeze blows from the tunnel at her back; Bess hugs herself tightly and fights a shudder. “I don’t know how.”
“Try.”
Bess closes her eyes, squeezes them shut and tries to recapture the moment just before she’d woken that morning, the taste of lake water still thick on her tongue. “It’s like a message. A promise. Like something out there is waiting, and it wants me to know.”
“Wants you to know what?”
Bess opens her eyes. “That it’s only a matter of time.”
The Dragon watches her silently for a long moment, eyes glinting gold in the torchlight. “Don’t teach Merlin the spells. Magic words and ancient talismans and foolish hand waving, dancing naked in the light of the full moon - the mumbo jumbo, to borrow a phrase. That’s not what he needs from you.”
“I know,” Bess says.
“Good.” The Dragon shudders, once, and unfurls his wings. “We may not have the time to waste.”
His wings beat twice, hard and loud and swirling dust, and then he lifts into the air, suddenly weightless. The wind snaps at her hair and her dress, stinging her eyes, but she watches as he fades into the darkness of the cavern, his long neck arched toward the sky.
++
“What I don’t understand,” Merlin says, jumping up to tug an apple from a low hanging branch, “is why we’re doing this out here. Don’t you think it’s a little dangerous?”
Bess walks faster, the even rows of the orchard blurring into long green lines that stretch into the distance to either side. Merlin catches up to her easily, polishing his stolen apple against his sleeve as he walks. Bess snatches the apple out of his hand. “Who’s the teacher here, Merlin? Me or you?”
“My most humble apologies, mistress,” he says, and drops into a low bow. He doesn’t bother to hide his smirk.
Bess bumps him with her shoulder, and he nearly overbalances and lands face first in the lawn. Instead he trips forward into a run, then turns and walks backwards, grinning impishly at her.
“You know,” he says, “I think we should have a talk about your violent impulses. You obviously have some deep-seated anger issues we should be dealing with.”
“Oh, well spotted,” she says, and throws the apple at his head. He catches it neatly with his magic, and she scowls at him. “This isn’t a game, Merlin.”
“It isn’t a funeral, either.” He stops walking, waiting for her to catch up. When she does, he presses the apple into her hands. “I really do appreciate it, you know. What you’re risking to help me.”
“My motivations are purely selfish,” she says, her voice rising to the odd pitch it always finds when she lies. Merlin gives her a knowing, affectionate look, but says nothing; Bess kicks at a fallen apple as she walks and thinks uncharitable thoughts about the size of his ears.
The evening sun hangs low and red in the sky, and the trees of the south orchard cast long, fragrant shadows in the heat. Slowly the ground grows rough beneath their feet, the grass thick with weeds and brambles, and then the forest rises before them like the impenetrable wall of some great citadel - dark and ageless and forbidden.
“Ah,” Merlin says. “So this is why we’re here.”
Bess pauses. The forest is dark, and its silence is like the deepest of sleeps, like the unnatural quiet of moonless nights and heavy snows. The apple is still warm with the heat of Merlin’s magic and the summer sun; she curls her fingers around it and walks into the trees.
There are no paths through this wood; the underbrush is too dense for good hunting, the trees old and full of rot and too dangerous to clear. The air is cold, sunless - a sudden twilight falling around them like a curtain. Bess has spent most of her long life in forests like this one, but she has grown used to the castle, to its movement and loud warmth. Each step feels like a trespass, and the uneasy silence swallows the sound of every breath, every snapped twig.
“You’re a bit jumpy,” Merlin says, and Bess jumps.
She turns to glare at him. “I am not.”
Merlin’s expression is mild, his mouth turned up at the corners in a teasing sort of smile. If the forest bothers him at all, he doesn’t show it. “I was just making an observation.”
“Well, keep your observations to yourself,” Bess says, and walks into a thornbush.
“Uh oh,” Merlin says.
Bess is caught, helpless, snagged by her skirts and her sleeves and her hair. She tries to yank one arm free and only tangles herself further. “You could have warned me!”
“You said-”
“And since when do you listen to anything anyone says?”
“Not a bad point.” He watches as she struggles to free her dress from the thorns. “Do you want-”
“I’m fine,” she says, “I’m brilliant, I’m-” A thorn catches the soft skin between her fingers, and she hisses in pain. “I’m bleeding. Well, isn’t that just typical.”
Merlin reaches for her wrist, circling it gently with his fingers and holding her hand up to the light. “It’s not bad. Suck on it a little - your saliva will help stop the bleeding.”
“I know that,” Bess says, mulishly, and sticks her finger in her mouth. “I’m not an idiot,” she adds, the words a little garbled.
Merlin grins. “Never said you were.” He crouches down and frees her dress thorn by thorn, working slowly and carefully as she watches, his fingers long and pale in the forest dark. “Actually, you’re one of the cleverest people I’ve ever met.”
“Oh,” Bess says, struck dumb, her eyes wide and her hand still stuck in her mouth. “Uh.”
“Of course, you’re also one of the most annoying.” He stands and works the thorns free from her hair, from the tangles below her left ear and the nape of her neck. His fingers are gentle, and the thorns never touch her skin. “You don’t need to be embarrassed, Bess. This forest scares a lot of people.”
“Not you,” Bess says.
He shrugs. “I’m scared of other things.” He takes a step back and waves his hands in a flourish. “And now you’re free to go. Try to keep the tears of gratitude to a minimum, please - I so hate it when women cry.”
“I’ll make you cry,” she says, and shoves him in the chest. Not hard enough to knock him down, or even to push him off balance - just a quick, reassuring press of palm against sternum before she jerks her hand away again.
“You and your violent impulses,” Merlin says, shaking his head, and they walk the rest of the way in companionable silence - Merlin a step behind her, warm at her back.
The clearing is just as she remembered it, a brief gasp of open air hidden amid the choked moss and heavy growth of the forest. The clearing is small, warmed by the red light of the setting sun, and Merlin plops down onto the long grass. He lays back, his hands behind his head, and says, “I’ve changed my mind. I think this is the perfect place for our lessons.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Bess sits beside him, hugging her knees to her chest. She looks at the trees, at the near perfect circle of grass around them. She’d found this place years before, had used it for the magics she practiced far from Gaius’ watchful eyes. She’d never before wondered who had created it, or why after all these years it remains untouched by the surrounding forest.
Merlin reaches up and tugs her sleeve. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she says, and wills it to be true, fixes her smile and ignores the prickle at the back of her neck, the eerie quiet of the trees around them. She tears out a handful of grass and sprinkles it over his upturned face. “Stop nagging me.”
Merlin brushes the grass and dirt from his mouth with the back of his hand and grins up at her. “Stop acting like such a moody brat, and I’ll stop nagging.”
“Stop stupidly risking your life once a week, and I’ll stop being a moody brat.”
“We could go on like this forever.”
“We probably will.”
He reaches up and drops a blade of grass into her hair. “Eventually we’ll need snacks.”
Bess pulls the apple from its place in her pocket and balances it carefully on the peak of her knee. Its skin is flushed blood red in the light of the evening sun, and she bites hard on her bottom lip before saying, “The Dragon calls you a creature of the Old Religion. Do you know what that means?”
Merlin smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It means I should do what he tells me.” He sits up and leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “He said I was his kin, once.”
Bess nods.
“He calls you sister.”
“It’s complicated, Merlin. I’m not sure how to explain.” She frowns, rubbing her hand over her mouth. “I could tell you what my father told me when I was small.”
“I’d like that,” he says. “Story time.”
She gives him a warning look, and then closes her eyes, trying to remember. She rarely thinks of those years, of the lone tower by the cliffs and the dust of her father’s ancient books, the dust that stained her fingers and stung her eyes; the sour smell of her father’s breath, like strong ale and old, old magic. Her memory of his face is imperfect, shadowed by shuttered windows and low burning candles, but she remembers his voice - the bite of it, and the power.
He told her one story, and it was this:
“Long ago,” Bess says, “when the seas were young and the sky still new, the trees were the first kings of Albion. They were the land’s first children, and her most beloved. She treasured their wisdom and their mercy, the murmur of their slow voices and the twining touch of their roots. They ruled well and justly, but after many years the land turned against them, as a mother betrayed turns against her most loyal son. She stole their voices and burned their crowns, and though the story of their treachery has been lost to time, we know that they have been thus ever since - silent, and watching. Imprisoned.
“The land took the fire of her rage and buried it deep, letting it boil beneath the mountains and the stone floor of the sea. The dragons were born from that rage, and it lives in their blood even still. The land made them the next kings of Albion, and their reign was a terrible one. They loved philosophy and war, built stunning palaces of mountain and molten stone and destroyed them in a moment’s fury. The land treasured their beauty, and their magic - the dragons were the first to use spells, to twist the world with the power of their words. But some learnt a power the land had not granted them; they looked into the future, and they saw that they would not always be kings. They demanded promises the land would not give.
In revenge, the land brought the first men to the shores of Albion.
“The men came from far places, carried by their ships, but the land claimed them as her own. They were so small, with dark hair and pale skin and eyes like the sky, and the land loved them as she had loved no other. She gave them ore and wood and the shelter of green valleys, the fertile places that would one day be called Camelot - the heart of Albion. To her delight they loved her in return; they gave her many names, sang songs and spilled blood and they were wild, her blue-eyed kings. They were hers.
She gave them magic, and the world trembled with their wars. The land watched with pride.
“More ships came, and more men. She forgave them their impudence and their hair the colour of sand, the memories they brought with them of other lands and the names they whispered in pain and pleasure that were not her own. They conquered her blue-eyed kings and were conquered in turn, and still more ships found the shores of Albion, bringing with them men and women of every hue and height. The land welcomed them open-armed, her heart full to bursting.
“Years passed. The seas grew old and the sky grew pale, and the kings of Albion forgot their debt, as men forget all such things in time. Again the land was betrayed, and again she burned with rage, with famine and storm and plague. She burns still, and in their ignorance men blame their ills upon the magic that would be their cure. In time her names are forbidden, her songs lost to the silence of the executioner’s axe, and only those with unnatural long memory know what will follow.
For if you listen, child, you will hear the whispers from the mountains, and from the trees. They have seen it before, and they will see it again - the land will crown a new king of Albion, and he will be our last.”
There is a silence, and then Merlin grins. “Arthur,” he says, his voice hushed. “They mean Arthur.”
Bess is entirely unsurprised that Merlin has missed the point so spectacularly; she rolls her eyes and says, “It’s a fairy story, Merlin. For children.”
Merlin’s expression turns stubborn. “The Dragon believes it, doesn’t he?”
“Which means exactly nothing,” Bess says, and yet - her father died years before Uther’s Purge, long before the king first set foot upon the shores of Albion; he could not have known what Camelot would become. And yet.
Her names are forbidden, her songs lost to the silence of the executioner’s axe - her father’s words, not her own.
It was the only story he ever told her.
Bess stands, bruising the apple in her grip. She pulls a small knife from her pocket and slices the apple in half.
“First lesson,” she says. She digs a seed from the heart of the apple and drops it into his hand. “Grow me a tree.”
Merlin looks down at his open palm. “And I suppose it would be cheating if I just planted this and asked you to wait a season or two?”
“I know you think you’re charming,” Bess says. “Disabusing you of that notion will be lesson two.”
Merlin frowns at the seed and says, “Fine, then. What spell do I use?”
Bess crouches down until their faces are level. “You’re not using a spell, Merlin - you’re using magic.” She takes a crisp bite from one half of the apple and tilts her head toward the trees. “I’ll wait over there until you’re finished.”
She walks the short distance to the edge of the clearing and settles back against an old oak. The bark is warm from the sun; she curls her legs beneath her and finishes half the apple, tucking the other half in her pocket. In the middle of the clearing, Merlin digs a hole in the ground with a sharp stick, plants the seed, and covers it again with a small mound of dirt.
“Right,” he says, carefully not looking in her direction. “Álíed.”
Nothing happens. He stares down at the dirt.
“Álíed,” he says again, a little louder. The mound of dirt continues, somewhat stubbornly, to be a mound of dirt. He gives it an encouraging poke with his finger. “Ástíöe álíed áwiex?”
The mound of dirt remains unencouraged.
“Huh,” Merlin says. He looks up from the ground. “This might be a while.”
“No kidding,” Bess says, and pulls a book of poetry from her pocket.
++
Four hours later the sun is long set and Merlin is going a bit berserk.
“I really,” he says, tearing at his hair, “I really just don’t understand. I mean, I’ve had trouble with spells before - and yes, I know, I’m meant to be doing magic, not spells, not that I have the slightest idea what that means - but this is just, it’s a bloody apple tree, not an all-powerful sword meant to kill the dead or an eagle lion snake thing or-”
“You’ve set the grass on fire again,” Bess says, not looking up from her book.
“Bugger,” Merlin says, and puts out the flames with a wave of his hand. He covers his face and collapses back onto the still smoking ground. The conjured ball of light over Bess’ head bobs a little in sympathy.
“You should really eat something,” Bess says. “I have bread.” She pulls some from her pocket.
Merlin lifts one hand from his face and fixes her with a single baleful blue eye. “How big is that pocket of yours, anyway? You keep an awful lot in there.”
Bess goes still, staring unseeing at the page in front of her; she’d been trying rather hard not to think about that. She clears her throat. “It’s not magic,” she says. “I don’t do magic, so it couldn’t be magic.”
“Okay,” Merlin says.
“It’s just a big pocket.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Good. Because you’d be wrong.”
Merlin sits upright, points his finger at the mound of dirt, and says, “Bræde beorhtne.”
It only takes a moment’s rolling in the dirt to put out the sparks in his hair, and despite his whinging his ears are only a little singed. Bess inspects the tiny burns in her dress; in retrospect, perhaps sitting on his head hadn’t been the best response to the emergency, even if it had got the job done. She licks her finger and rubs at a scorch mark. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but that was a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“Don’t talk to me,” Merlin says.
++
The Anatomist. Sherlock, Molly Hooper, Jim Moriarty, others. Adult. Spoilers like whoa for The Great Game.
James Joseph Moriarty was born in Galway, in 1976. His birth certificate no longer exists.
If it did, it would list his father’s name (Dr. Joseph Arthur), his mother’s (Mrs. Elizabeth Anne), and his birth weight (2.7kg). It would not tell you that his eyes were blue, or that he entered this world as he will leave it - howling.
It would not tell you that five minutes later his mother (Mrs. Elizabeth Anne) gave birth to a daughter, his sister. His twin. The records of her birth burned with his, but if they hadn’t, you would know her name.
Mary Elizabeth Moriarty was born in Galway, in 1976.
They will call her Molly.
12
Their name was not Moriarty, not then. Moriarty is a cipher, a small piece of a larger puzzle; Jim chooses it when they are twelve, after their mother dies and their father is sent away and they become penniless orphans, like in a storybook. He writes the name above the creased fold of a brown paper bag, the nearest paper to hand. His pen shakes, excitement like a flame behind his eyes.
Jim and Molly Moriarty, he writes, with long, heavy loops on the l’s and y’s. She takes the biro and copies it out carefully, her handwriting small and neat and utterly unremarkable. Jim and Molly Moriarty, she writes, over and over again, covering the wrinkled brown paper with their new name, and when Jim takes it from her the ink smears under his fingers.
This is what we really are, his smile says. This is what we become.
They will use many other names. This is the only one they remember.
5
Their father is a professor of mathematics at Trinity, and when he swings Molly into his arms at the end of the day she tastes the chalk dust on his clothes, like desert sand under her tongue. Sometimes she sneezes into his collar, and he laughs.
“Hello, my little mouse,” he says, whispers into her ear before scooping Jim up in his other arm and spinning them close, in a tight circle down the length of the hall. Their mother looks on from the doorframe, her tired face fond.
(Jim doesn’t like to be spun, doesn’t like to be carried or embraced or confined, but he’s good at pretending. Only Molly can see the edge to his smile.)
“Now then,” her father says, a child on each hip, “what does the little mouse want for supper?”
“Cheese,” Molly answers, quite seriously. “Mice eat cheese.”
“And chocolate biscuits,” Jim adds with a charming, gap-toothed grin. “Mice go mad for chocolate biscuits.” Her parents laugh, but Molly doesn’t understand why. Mice will eat anything, she thinks, that’s why they’re pests. Her mother sets traps and everything.
“Don’t frown, little mouse,” her father says, kissing her cheek. “You’ll get your cheese.”
“Will it be in a trap?” Molly asks, picturing the small, furry bodies and their small, snapped necks. She’s seen them in the traps, still twitching.
Her parents laugh again, their eyes flashing in the lamplight.
Molly likes making them laugh; she’d like an answer to her question more.
7
Molly has soft, mouse-brown hair that curls around her ears, rarely tangling. She is small for her age, with quick-pale fingers and a quiet, nervous disposition, and she hides in linen cupboards, under tables and behind dust-heavy curtains. She learns not to sneeze.
People think Jim is the clever one, and he is clever. He always knows just what to say and just how to say it, and when their father’s friends from the university come to dinner they watch Jim’s proofs and equations unfold with awe in their whiskey-fogged eyes.
Impressive, they say. Remarkable. The word prodigy gets thrown around quite a bit, though Molly had solved the same equations that afternoon after school, and she’d shown her work.
But Molly hides from guests, from teachers, from her mother and her father. She doesn’t hide from Jim, because he will always find her, and because he doesn’t like having to look. If she tries he will crowd in beside her, too large and too warm and breathing too loud, his knees sharp against her side, and he will say, “If you ever run away from me again, little mouse, I’ll pinch you until your arm turns blue.”
“If you ever turn my arm blue,” she whispers back, “I’ll bite your fingers off.”
“Yum,” Jim says, smacking his lips, and then their mother finds them, laughing like jackals in the darkness at the depths of the broom cupboard.
++