[Fic] The Burden of Your Blues (pt. 1) - for yelloerainboe
Title: The Burden Of Your Blues
Author: staraflur
Recipient: yelloerainboe
Pairing(s)/Character(s): M/A, G/Mo if you want it, OT4 friends for all time
Warnings: Modern-ish AU in an AU, thorough bastardization of actual Druids, sexin
Spoilers: 201
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: Just over 32, 000
Summary: Boarding school was about as expected - rich and stuck-up and boring - until a group of robed crazies try to make the school bully the vessel for their shiny blue diamond. Then there’s suddenly a lot more in Merlin’s life, like swords, spells and late-night room switches.
Author's Note: Thanks to 'I', 'G', 'R' and especially 'o', 'K', 'H' and 'M' for all their help and kind words. Each and every one of you cause something none of the rest did, so consider yourselves all irreplaceable. To protect their good names, it should be said that I wrote a fair bit of this after they all looked it at, so remaining errors could very well beallll mine.
yelloerainboe, I know I made a bit of a hash of all your prompts in one hot mess, but I hope you like it!
Thanks as well to faynia and auroraprimavera, you know why :p
This also had a soundtrack, which I would babble about if I thought I could do it without revealing myself immediately, and which can be found here. There’s an XML playlist which can be imported into Itunes by going to File à Library à Import playlist and then selecting the file. This will put them all in order in a handy ordered playlist. :D
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
For some reason that in hindsight was obviously very stupid, Merlin had thought the trip to the Druid village would be useful. Enlightening, somehow, or comforting.
According to the vocal minority of British citizens who still said magic had once been part of everyday life, as much as farmers and doctors and the government, the Druids had been at the centre of it. Today, of course, they were just a sad remnant of the civilisation that had built the henges (proof! said that vocal minority). Just the guy going to the supermarket in a robe or the girl at school talking about paganism.
Still, he’d been hoping that he would feel something here, because if that vocal minority was right, then Merlin might be the first person in hundreds of years who could actually do magic.
Of course, he only found those people in the robes, puttering about huts carrying out the menial tasks of medieval peasants and giving speeches to schoolchildren about being one with the earth.
Why he’d expected anything else from a trip endorsed by Uther Pendragon, who had gone so far in denouncing all possibility of magic that he refused to let it be mentioned in the courses at his top-tier second form, he couldn’t now remember.
All he could do was was roll his eyes at Gwen when the woman lecturing them on modern uses for hemp fibre trailed off mid-sentence. From Gwen's other side, Morgana caught his eye and pulled a face, which he tried to replicate without looking like she still kind of filled him with pangs of anxiety. Since she did.
It was just that, not only was it bad enough being new when the majority of them had been in the same prestigious school for most of their lives, but he was quite obviously the scholarship kid who couldn't afford the school on his own, quite obviously clumsy and hapless and not excelling at any sports. Apparently, there had been a rumour that he was there as a fencing star, which even Merlin had laughed at when he’d heard. He supposed it had started because he’d almost immediately befriended Gwen, who was there for fencing -- one of the stars of the team, actually, with Morgana.
Morgana was tall and lovely, proud and fierce, a combination that would typically make Merlin her natural enemy at a school like this one, while Gwen was kind of the best person ever. Somehow it was nice even when she made a joke about one of the other students.
More than that, Morgana was the step-daughter of Uther Pendragon, who’d been frightening when he’d attended Merlin’s interview, looking doubtfully down at his test scores and recommendation letters when Merlin stumbled on his own name - frightening long before he’d learnt that even professing a belief in magic might be enough to get him expelled from Uther’s school. So that was enough for Merlin to keep his distance, or at least try; Gwen had already asked him once, concerned, if Morgana had offended him in some way.
She never had, of course. That honour was reserved for her step-brother, who as far as Merlin could tell was the most spoilt, big-headed bully this side of the Atlantic. In Merlin’s short months at the school, Arthur and his goon squad had gone out of their way to make sure barely a day went by without something going wrong: detention because he was out of uniform after his laundry mysteriously got lost and was “found” in the dorm Arthur and his friends happened to live in; detention because his perfectly acceptable compound had somehow become volatile while he’d gone to put on gloves in Chemistry and caused an explosion that had resulted in the evacuation of the entire science building; kitchen duty for ten days because one of them had tripped him straight into the lunch monitor - right after he’d picked up a tray.
At most of those times, Merlin wished he’d never done two things. One, stand up to Arthur on the first day of school, when he’d been tormenting that absolute twit Morris, who’d later gone off on some hissy fit about how at least Arthur had noticed him before. Merlin had a suspicion Morris was a little obsessed with Arthur - he really thought he'd done Arthur a favour. Second, beat Arthur in chess the next day.
And yes, it had been a little rude of him to laugh at the move Arthur had made in his game against that ginger whose name he always forgot, but that hadn’t really been grounds for Arthur to declare the game over and challenge Merlin, instead. It especially hadn’t been grounds for the particularly amusing shade of red he’d turned after Merlin declared checkmate. Merlin wasn’t even very good at chess. Arthur was just bad. He seemed to forget that his opponent also had a brain and would see through his transparent ploy to bait their bishop with his pawn into the range of his knight, and might set up a trap of their own before they pretended to spring his.
Revenge had come in the form of the single most painful class of Merlin’s life: PE, in which Arthur had taken the instructor aside while Merlin watched, nervous in his scratchy unwashed kit. Somehow their planned run had turned into tennis lessons. Tennis lessons in which everyone in the class took group instruction from the teacher while Arthur, the school champion, gave one-on-one teaching to the new kid.
It was the first time Merlin had picked up a tennis racket, and consequently the last. He didn’t know whether it had taken longer for rounded bruises to fade or the yellow fuzzy stains to finally wash out of his clothes.
And somehow fast-forwarding several months had them here: crowded into a fake wattle and daub shack - Merlin could see the beams in a few places -- Gwen and sort of Morgana his only actual friends and an antagonist out of the closest thing this damn school had to royalty. At least kings could be decapitated. Arthur, on the other hand, had one-upped Merlin’s every attempt to stand up to him until he’d just given up and started a campaign of avoidance.
His campaign wasn’t exactly successful, judging by the frequent detentions and the fact that somehow Arthur had volunteered Merlin to demonstrate Mediaevel justice and serve time in the stocks before they retired back to their “camp” for dinner and then the night’s activities, which proved of course to be another chance for showcasing athletic prowess, in the form of a massive game of manhunt, half their class with yellow ribbons on one wrist and the other half with blue.
Not only did Gwen, Morgana, and thus his only chance of actual camaraderie end up on the other team, but most of the knights of the prat table (Merlin’s own creative naming, thank you very much) did, as well.
Just before the first whistle was blown, to give everyone thirty seconds to plan and hide before the second whistle started the game, he caught Arthur staring right at him. When he met Arthur’s gaze, Arthur gave him a dark, predatory, grin, and then actually lifted one hand, extended his pointer and middle fingers in a vee, and then moved them straight in front of his own eyes before he pointed them both at Merlin’s face.
“What?” Merlin said. “Who even does that?”
The insult lost most of its power when there was no one to back him up, and when all it did was make Arthur’s smirk grow.
At the first whistle, Merlin turned and made a beeline straight for the darkest woods he could find. Screw his team, most of them wouldn’t even talk to him if Arthur Pendragon was around to glare at them for it.
The second whistle blew far too quickly, and he realised he hadn’t been too intelligent in his choice to run in a straight line when he heard Arthur yelling, voice close.
It had never been said that Merlin Emrys was a fast runner. For all his long legs, he couldn’t quite seem to figure out where to put them. Arthur Pendragon, on the other end, seemed to spend half his life running down line shots on the tennis court.
He crouched behind a tree, hoping his thunderous heartbeat and rushing breath weren’t actually audible to anyone else, and waited. His ankle started to hurt and he felt sweat dripping down his face, which was ridiculous because it was actually a very brisk October evening, black crescent moon sky.
Silence. Maybe Arthur had given him more credit than he deserved and run off in another direction.
He stood slowly, easing out his crooked limbs and trying to remember which direction, exactly, he’d come from.
“Ha!” he heard, from far too close. Before his heart had even finished leaping from his chest, all the breath got knocked out of him and he was landing awkwardly on one side.
Instinctively, he flailed out with his arm and felt his elbow hit hard, the person above him crying out and letting up. He squirmed away, staggered up, and ran in what he hoped was the right way.
But then, he thought, what was the right direction? Towards everyone else, where Arthur couldn’t kill him and then probably get off on claiming self defence, or further away, where he could maybe hide? He didn’t even know which one he’d picked.
“Emrys! You know I’m faster than you are, you might as well give up and save me the trouble!”
“Like hell!” he yelled back, then cursed his own stupidity and apparent weakness in resisting letting Arthur think he had the upper hand.
He didn’t really have a way of knowing how far or how long he’d run in the country blackness, but he knew it was too far when the ground dropped out from under his feet, and he had time for barely a shout before he was rolling down a steep hill, totally without comprehension of where any of his limbs were. He hit hard when it evened out.
“Fuck,” he cursed, and huffed out an enormous, frustrated sigh. Worst. Field trip. Ever.
Arthur had apparently maintained control down the incline, coming to a noisy, triumphant stop at the bottom and surveying Merlin’s defeated sprawl with a smug raised eyebrow. Merlin didn’t want to move, not even when Arthur moved closer, Merlin's impending doom with him.
“You’ve got,” Arthur observed, crouching on Merlin’s left side, “dirt. And leaves.” He pressed a finger to the far side of Merlin’s cheekbone, right by his ear, and Merlin could feel the gritty layer on his skin.
“Is that actually surprising to you?” he asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste, because the more he came back to awareness, the more he realised he actually had a squishy mess of leaves and mud everywhere.
“I’ll just be,” Arthur began, and leaned forward to jerk the wrist of Merlin’s filthy jumper down. “What?”
“Other one, genius,” Merlin said, defiantly straightening his arm to put it as far away as possible, because while he’d obviously capitulated, he didn’t have to be a total wimp about it.
“We were supposed to put them on the left,” Arthur said. “Genius.” He leant back, but apparently it was just so that he could find a good angle to plant one knee on either side of Merlin’s stomach and plop heavily down.
“I win.”
“Oh my god,” Merlin complained. “Fine, fine, you did. Can you get off me now?” He tried to squirm his way out again, but Arthur flexed the long muscles in his thighs, the same ones that stood out when he pivoted abruptly on the court to change directions after a return, and Merlin was well and truly pinned.
Arthur leant in again, grabbing Merlin’s right elbow with one rough hand and pulling it up. He slid one finger under the plastic strip, in between the awkward one-handed bow Merlin had hastily executed and the point on Merlin’s wrist where three smaller veins branched blue under his skin from the larger one. One sharp tug and it snapped. Arthur dropped his arm, but then he laid his hand back over Merlin’s wrist on the ground.
“Yellow team forever,” he gloated.
“You look terrible in yellow,” Merlin retorted weakly.
“You’d look worse,” Arthur returned. Probably true.
A long pause.
“You gave up,” Arthur said abruptly, non sequitur and strangely accusatory.
“Not exactly,” Merlin protested. “I got rid of you once. And now you’ve taken advantage of me after I’ve been laid low by mother nature.”
“What?” said Arthur. “No, not… Tonight. At school. Why’d you stop?”
“Stop what?” Merlin asked. The general overheating from his panicked run combined with Arthur’s legs firm against his side were making him very sweaty under his prickly wool jumper.
“At school,” Arthur said again, flat firm tone that said Merlin should be getting it by now. “You stopped playing.”
“Playing what?”
“It doesn’t have a name,” Arthur said. “Our game.”
Merlin paused, genuinely confused. “Our… What? You mean the game where you and your trained pack of hyenas get me in trouble until the head of our year calls my mother and asks why my previous record didn’t reflect that I was such a problem child? Most people call that bullying.”
“It wasn’t - why’d you get in trouble?”
“Let’s see,” Merlin said, lifting the free hand to tick along the counts with his fingers. “There was the near destruction of the lab, the frequent being out of uniform, the part where you made me ruin the dining hall monitor’s uniform, the part where you hid all my books for a week, and then, yes, the other times you stole my laundry.”
“But… We do that all the time. I did it to Leon and to Pell and some of it to Gareth. No one ever gets in trouble.”
“Bloody hell,” Merlin said, closing his eyes because he honestly didn’t know whether this made everything worse or somehow better. “Arthur. Your father is on the board. You go to class in a building with your name on it. Of course you’re not getting in trouble.”
Arthur sat back, weight shifting from his own knees to Merlin’s torso. His grip slackened on Merlin’s wrist. His face looked so comically confused that Merlin wished it wasn’t too dark for his phone’s camera. Or that it wasn’t trapped under Arthur’s heavy arse.
“You’re… Oh.”
“Yes,” Merlin agreed. “Oh.” He waited for Arthur to get up.
Arthur didn’t. His face was thoughtful again, but his eyes far away, narrowed as if to focus on something.
The Merlin heard it, too.
“Is that… Chanting?”
“I think so,” Arthur said. “Weird chanting, too. Come on.”
He clambered off so quickly that it was almost like he’d never been there at all, except that Merlin could finally breathe in all the way again, and the rush of night air against the open space where Arthur’s body had just been was cold.
Merlin too rolled up, pausing on his knees when the faraway voices suddenly crested. Arthur looked down at him and pulled him up by an arm.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading Merlin forward by the arm.
With the gradual rise in volume soon came the shaky, uneven flow of fire, and by the time it was close enough to smell, Arthur had slowed.
“Can you be quiet,” he hissed, and Merlin glared back. He had been being quiet.
“Oh, how lovely,” came another voice from the darkness, and Merlin might have been pleased by the shock on Arthur’s face if he hadn’t been sure his looked worse. “We were hoping for some guests.”
----
It was the hemp lady from that afternoon, only she’d traded in her plain homespun for something brighter, more ornate, and she was accompanied by a quartet of similarly attired men, three of whom Merlin recognised from the demonstrations earlier. They crowded in around Merlin and Arthur, and the woman smiled.
“You boys chose an excellent time to drop in, you know. We’re just about to begin the selection ceremony.”
“Selection for what?” Merlin asked.
“The festival’s King, of course! I’m sure we can make room for two more… If you’re interested?”
“We really should go back-”
“Of course we are,” Arthur interrupted. “After all, aren’t we here to further our education?”
“Excellent,” she smiled. “The girls will be ever so pleased if you complete the tasks.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to deny them the pleasure,” Arthur said, with the smirk Merlin always wanted to wipe off his awful lovely mouth. With his fist.
There weren’t many people in the wide, flat clearing, but there were some girls, who sighed rapturously when the hemp lady presented their new prospects. Personally, Merlin thought they all looked pretty ridiculous, eyelashes aflutter and long dark robes, but Arthur took right to it, learning all their names and complying when they asked him to flex his biceps or do a cartwheel.
He couldn’t even do a good one, Merlin thought, disgusted at their chorus of giggles. One even sighed, “He’s perfect!”
Perfectly revolting.
They’d drawn into a large clearing, dotted by small fires that were being progressively doused and the remaining blazes kindled proportionately higher. Beside the one that seemed to be in the centre, a heap of apples and a smaller heap of nuts spilled around an ancient-looking wooden chest, dark with age and bound with heavy iron.
“It’s Samhain,” he realised, and one of the men from the woods nodded at him, pleased.
“Aye,” he said, “but tonight isn’t just to recognise Samonios and the dark beginning. Tonight we draw on the power of the other world to accomplish our goal and change the world.”
“What’s your goal?” Merlin asked, but the man was already whirling away to spread dirt upon one of the fires.
All he knew about Samhain was from his short phase of thinking that knowing about paganism and the old religion would lead to clues about what he could do, but all the reading and even the meetings with so-called covens and magic appreciation societies had led to nothing but disappointment.
Nothing he’d read had referred to a goal of "changing the world." None of this was adding up well.
Arthur was still in the middle of his admirers, but the activity among the remaining couple of dozen robed figures was changing. The hemp woman and a few others were mixing something in a bowl, oats and milk that they stirred and, as he watched, poured into a cast iron skillet and baked over an open fire. Everyone was generally ignoring Merlin, but they watched Arthur with eager, covetous eyes. It made his skin crawl.
“Arthur,” he said, sidling rudely between two of the girls. “I think we should go back. They’ll probably be looking for us.”
“Calm down, Merlin,” Arthur said, and clapped him heavily on the back.
“Ladies, did you know Merlin is the worst tennis player I’ve ever seen? I mean, really. The worst.”
“What’s tennis?” one of them asked.
Arthur frowned. “What do you mean, it’s-”
“Someone could lose their job over this,” Merlin protested. “If your father thinks they lost you.”
“I’ll talk to him, Merlin. Now, relax. Enjoy the scent of bonfires in the evening and - look, they’re even feeding us!”
But they weren’t, not really. The cake got cut into small pieces, heaped into a makeshift sack - one marked with an ember from the fire until it was black all over - and each person put on a blindfold and selected one.
Arthur drew the black bit, and after that the ritual was abandoned in a chorus of excited murmurs.
“To show you are worthy of the honour,” explained hemp lady, whom Merlin was starting to think of as the Creepy Mastermind of this whole ridiculous business, “you must complete the task.”
The task was to leap three times over the middle fire, which was significantly larger than the ring around it.
“I don’t think-”
“Shut it, Merlin. I can do it.” Arthur’s face was set and determined, and he was already rolling his shoulders and hopping in anticipation.
“If you get hurt--"
“I said shut up, Emrys.”
The whole crowd watched, silent and so obviously anticipatory that Merlin wondered if they were hoping Arthur would set himself on fire. Their eyes got larger and larger and Arthur circled the flames once, then walked back a few paces. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and went.
He cleared it, barely, landed hard on one foot on the other side, and the robes all shouted, joyful, and at the command of their hempy overseer threw in more kindling.
“You are almost worthy,” she said, eyes shining.
“This is stupid,” Merlin whispered to Arthur. “Let’s just go.”
“You think I can’t do it, don’t you?” said Arthur, somehow indignant. “Well, I can. It’s not too different from when we have to hop the net in practise sometimes. Watch me.”
“The net’s not on fire, is it?” Merlin pointed out, but Arthur ignored him.
The second leap somehow went better, with some sort of complicated twist of his body in midair, like a pole vaulter, but Merlin didn’t know what he was pushing off of.
Two of the girls actually shrieked in excitement.
“Once more and you will be ready,” hemp woman confirmed. “The ritual will be almost complete, and the ceremony can start.”
Higher licked the flames. Arthur wouldn’t look at him.
When he went, Merlin watched his foot slip on a stick, so he pushed off without near enough force, and unless Merlin did something we was going face-first into the fire, and even if they pulled him out in time to save his life, it wouldn't be pretty.
He sucked in a breath, clenched his fingers in so tightly they almost cut into his palms, and pushed Arthur up. Arthur jerked awkwardly in the air, his legs flailed almost into the blaze, but he arced over the top and came down on his hands and knees on the other side.
There was a heavy moment of silence. Merlin worried they’d noticed, or seen his eyes flash in the darkness more than could be the reflected glare of the fire, but when he looked they were all staring at Arthur, and then at once they broke into another shout, almost frenzied in its shrillness. They burst into a flurry of movement, handing a large knife and one of the apples to hemp lady, who held both reverently.
“Now comes his name,” she said, and began to slice. She ran a clean cut around the circumference, peeling, and threw the shred over her shoulder when she was finished.
Another investigated, face harsh in the firelight, and cried, “C!”
She breathed out a heavy sigh of relief, as if a C were a hard letter to make from an apple peel. She started again, cutting for longer this time, at least one full revolution of the fruit.
Merlin crossed to stand next to Arthur, who looking a little pale, jaw help tight.
“I didn’t think I had that last one,” Arthur said.
Merlin swallowed. “Well, uh… Good job? Can we go now?” But the lady was finished, and threw the second section back.
This time it was an equally difficult S, but apparently it was what they wanted, and a chant of “Sigan” or something of the like started up.
Two men came to either side of Arthur.
“Your time approaches,” said the lady, face a frightening rictus of overdone rapture. “He will appreciate what we have selected for him.”
“Arthur…” said Merlin.
“Okay,” said Arthur. “Let’s go.”
Heavy hands landed on their shoulders.
“It’s far too late for that,” she said. “You’ve been chosen.”
Several more men came forward with rope fashioned from vines, while two of the girls bore the wooden chest into the circle of light from the fire. All the druids drew forward as if compelled, all of them watching Arthur and the woman.
“Run!” said Arthur, but they all leaped on him, twining the rope around his wrists and securing them behind his back, forcing him onto his knees though he struggled violently, kicking one nearly into the fire before enough surrounded him to hold him still.
Merlin ran - or at least, he tried to, but one of them had grabbed his arm before he even took a full step, and soon they had him just as securely, though they hadn’t bothered with the rope.
“Be still,” one told him, quiet like they were exchanging secrets. “We’re not going to hurt you. Or your friend. He’s to receive the spirit. I would kill to be him.”
The lady was opening the box, and lifting something free from it, a huge, heart-shaped stone with something blue inside of it, something that shone and swirled like smoke.
“I offer you the innocent vessel,” she called, loud and resonant in the night. “He has completed the ritual and shown himself worthy, and on this night when the other world is close, we enact the instructions of the Old One to call you back to your rightful place in the world, and magic with you.”
She held the blue stone out with both hands, walking slowly towards Arthur who was straining on the ground against too many hands.
Merlin could feel his heart pounding, and he knew, he knew, that even if Arthur wasn’t technically hurt, something terrible was about to happen, and he was the only one who could stop it.
The fires, every one of them, leapt suddenly with the huge gust of wind that blew in, whirled through the clearing and jumped the flames from their earthen pits into the grass. Everything was suddenly hotter, the air dry and filled with smoke.
“Put them out!” she screamed, and Merlin’s guards abandoned him without thinking, so he surged forward before they could come back, diving into the murky smoke in what he hoped was Arthur’s direction.
“Arthur!” he yelled, and Arthur answered, almost immediately to his left. He could feel the heat on his other side, knew the flames were close, so he hurled himself towards Arthur’s voice. He hit someone wearing rough wool that was obviously one of the druids, so he dug his feet into the ground and pushed as hard as he could. They went down with a shocked cry. The smoke was stinging his eyes, burning in his lungs.
He pushed at the air, trying to clear a circle around himself as best he could, and it was enough the he could breathe a little easier, and that he could see Arthur’s shining hair and count the men still on him.
Only three. He pushed at them all too, a physical blow from behind, where they weren’t expecting it, straight into their knees. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to send them all toppling - they weren’t actually very good at this - and he yelled, “Stand up, Arthur!”
Arthur did, staggering and awkward with his arms still behind him. One of the men on the ground tried to grab at his ankle, and Arthur stomped viciously on his hand.
“Come on come on come on,” Merlin cried, letting the smoke eddy back in, pulling it directly into the faces of the men who’d been holding Arthur.
They ran, one direction, just away as fast as they could, and Merlin spread the blaze behind them, not even sure whether he was just trying to delay pursuit or actually trying to kill them. Whoever they were. Whatever they were.
----
Either Arthur had an extraordinary sense of direction or they were very lucky, because they soon came to the incline Merlin had fallen down, what really didn’t seem like too long ago.
They hadn’t even stopped to free Arthur’s arms -- Merlin would have been to run approximately three feet like that.
“I can’t get up that,” Arthur said.
“Right,” Merlin said, trying to figure out his possibilities. His eyes had adjusted as well as they would in the blackness, the stars poor compensation for the sliver of moon. “I’ll just…”
The vines were wound tight, and pulling at the knot was like trying to pry a door open with a fingernail. Arthur’s hand were cold, and Merlin realised they probably hadn’t had proper circulation in nearly an hour.
“Knife,” Arthur said. “Front right pocket.”
“You carry a knife?” Merlin asked, scandalised. “This is a school trip!”
“It’s just a Swiss army knife! It was my grandfather’s. And besides, looks like we’ll need it.”
“Right,” said Merlin. “Um… I’ll just…” He paused.
“Well, it’s not like I can get it!” Arthur said.
“Right,” Merlin said again, and darted his hand around Arthur’s body, shoved it into his pocket. He could feel Arthur’s thigh, hard and hot through the cloth, against his fingers when he wrapped them around the metal.
“Be careful,” Arthur said as Merlin fumbled it open.
“I know, I know…” And he was, though the blade was dull and the fibres tough. He settled on sawing as the most effective motion, and soon had enough sliced through that he could yank apart the rest.
“Oh, ow, ow,” Arthur complained when his hands sprang free, shaking them and grimacing.
“Sorry,” Merlin apologised. Arthur stopped.
“For what?”
“For not, uh… Doing that sooner, I guess?”
“I think we were a little busy. Besides, we… We should have left immediately. No normal girl is that impressed by a cartwheel.”
It was as close to admitting someone else was right as he’d ever heard Arthur Pendragon get.
“And they are probably still looking,” Arthur continued, “so let’s go.”
He scrambled up the incline easily, and Merlin followed his path. When Arthur reached the top, he turned around and pulled Merlin over the edge.
After a few more minutes they heard someone yelling their names, and he looked up to the sky finally brightening.
----
Merlin slept the entire drive back. A crowd of girls with round, concerned eyes had herded Arthur onto the other bus, so Merlin didn’t know if he too had slept so deeply he didn’t even have any dreams.
Everyone collectively disembarked and headed to their rooms for coursework. Even Gwen had rubbed at a persistent streak of ash oh his face and said she had a lot of French vocabulary to learn, if he was sure he was okay.
He wasn’t, not exactly, but that wasn’t Gwen’s problem. Besides, he had a plan.
So he wound the long way between the squat brick halls, letting himself in the back door of the one he knew was Arthur’s. Once he was in, though, he didn’t know what room was his.
Fortunately, their enthusiastic R.A. had labelled every door, and he found the one tagged Arthur P on the third floor. There wasn’t any noise coming from within like some of the others rooms, so he lingered for a moment trying to decide if he should try to go elsewhere.
One of the bus girls opened the door before he could choose, flipping her hair over her shoulder and giving him a huff of disdain before she stalked off down the hall. Merlin poked his head through the open door.
Arthur was sitting at the desk, which for some reason Merlin had expected would be a very different desk from his own, but was pretty much the same. He had their History text but he was staring at it with the empty stare of one who definitely wasn’t reading.
He looked up when Merlin’s feet scuffed on the floor, eyes still fogged and bloodshot from smoke. He wasn’t as pale, though, as he had been when he’d staggered out of the shadows of the trees in the dawn, blanched under the soot and covered in dirt.
“You still look awful,” Merlin observed.
“Ms. Hawne wanted to take me to the hospital. Smoke inhalation or something. I convinced her we weren’t actually near the fire, so it would be best if you said the same.”
“That’s what you said?” Merlin hadn’t even been asked.
“That we got lost during the game and some kids set a fire that got out of control, yes.”
“She didn’t say anything about going to the police?”
“I told her we didn’t see anyone.”
“Oh… Well, I think we should.”
“Should what?”
“Tell the police. They - I don’t know what they were going to do, but what if they try again?”
“I don’t think they’re going to track down my school and kidnap me or something,” Arthur said, leaning back in his desk chair. It, for one, was much better than the stiff wooden one at Merlin’s, leather with armrests and a high back. Arthur’s room was also in better shape than Merlin’s, everything a little neater, pencils in their holder on his desk and clothes hanging in the closet. But his walls were bare and everything was so beige. The only things that stood out were his red pillow cases. He didn’t seem to have a roommate, but Merlin had heard that all the rooms in this hall were singles. Of course.
“Maybe not,” Merlin said, though secretly he thought it possible. “But what if they decide they don’t need you after all, and pick someone else? What if they’re going to try something really terrible with that blue thing?”
“I’m pretty sure Morgana had a game as a child with that thing as a piece in it,” Arthur said with a small chuckle. “But… Alright. Just in case.”
“Okay,” Merlin said, smiling and relieved. He pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on, unsure whether to actually go into the room.
Arthur was standing up, too, grabbing a jacket from his closet and wallet from the dresser.
“Now?” Merlin asked, thinking about the mountain of unopened books on his desk and his freshly laundered sheets.
“No, Merlin, tomorrow, after they’ve had some time to regroup and cover their tracks. Now. I’ll go get my father’s car and meet you by your room.”
Uther Pendragon owned the shiniest BMW sedan Merlin had ever seen. He thought it had more space inside than his bedroom. At home.
“Can you actually drive?” Merlin asked as Arthur sped down the long drive.
“Of course I can, Merlin. What do you think I’m doing right now?”
“No, I mean - legally?”
Arthur shrugged.
The station wasn’t a long distance from school, which was fortunate since neither of them seemed to have anything to say. It was small-town unofficial, particularly on a Sunday, so they were able to walk right into a room with several cluttered desks and a row of closed doors on the far side.
“Can I help you?” asked the only visible man, thick dark hair and serious, noble eyes, sitting at one of the desks.
“Um…” said Merlin, trying to find a way to explain that balanced important and definitely not crazy. But he was drawing a blank.
“We need to speak to an officer,” Arthur said, giving him a look from the corner of his eyes.
“I’m Constable Du Lac,” said the man, standing to greet them. “What can I help you with?”
Their explanation came gradually - they probably should have discussed it in the car - but Du Lac didn’t even give them the sort of dubious look Merlin had been dreading. He tried to make it sound like he was just worried about pagans tying up tourists and forcing them to jump through fires, because even Merlin wasn’t sure what he thought about the implications of their words. Hopefully Arthur wouldn’t even know enough to have remembered them as important.
Halfway through their story, one of the doors opened: the one marked D.C.O. Merrist, and an older man looked out at them.
“Just taking a statement, sir,” Du Lac said. “Nothing major, just some local crazies.”
“Not… Local, exactly,” said Merlin. “We were on a trip. To Cornwall.”
“Cornwall? That’s out of our jurisdiction, why didn’t you tell the police there?”
Arthur shifted. “Our teacher said we didn’t really know enough to be useful. But we didn’t… We didn’t tell her everything. I didn’t want to get her in trouble with my father.”
“Your father?”
“He’d fire her,” Merlin said, matter-of-fact, and Arthur glared at him.
“You don’t know that. But I’m telling you now, so what does it matter?”
When Merlin looked back over, after he and Arthur described what they could recall of the hemp lady and her minions, the man from the office door was gone.
Merlin had gone to get a drink from the water fountain when he heard someone yelling. He crept back down the hallway, hesitant, because he knew that voice.
“… Interviewing my son without a lawyer present, that’s not even legal!”
“Father, I chose to come here, they didn’t-”
“Silence, Arthur. It’s a damn good thing Merrist called me. I could have you charged for stealing my car, as well, which Mister... Du Lac can drive back, since I had to use Morgana’s to come down here.”
Merlin peeked around the corner, to see all of them standing: Uther, the centre of attention as usual, commanding, Arthur facing him, red-faced and scowling, Constable Du Lac a little flabbergasted and the older man - Merrist - glaring.
“Now, Arthur,” said Uther, putting a controlling hand on Arthur’s shoulder.
“But, Father, something happened, I was there!”
“Did they hurt you?” Uther asked, looking actually concerned, an expression Merlin had never expected to see on his face. Arthur shook his head.
“Then they can take care of it without you. It’s their job, Arthur. Yours is your schoolwork. No need for you to get involved with these crackpots.”
He steered Arthur right out of the station, and Merrist gave Du Lac one last good glare before he stalked back into his office and closed the door.
“Sorry,” Merlin said.
Du Lac smiled. “Definitely not your fault, Merlin. Now, how about I give you a lift back. I’m assuming you don’t want to be in that car?”
“Definitely not,” Merlin agreed. “But… I don't want to be any more trouble.”
“It’s fine, Merlin. Now come on, I felt like you weren’t done explaining everything, anyway.”
On the trip back, Merlin told Du Lac - Lance - a little more than he’d been planning. He was friendly and understanding, and he actually seemed to be listening, even after Merlin accidentally let slip a hint that he thought they were trying to use magic.
All he said was, “Really?” and when Merlin nodded, nervous, all he did was look thoughtful. Also, his cheekbones were a little devastating.
When he dropped Merlin off by his dorm, he promised he’d look into it as best he could. Merlin went inside hopeful, at least until he remembered all the work he had to do.
----
Arthur wasn’t in class the next day. A little concerned, Merlin skipped dinner and sneaked into his hall again.
He was half expecting no one to answer the knock, no one to be in, but Arthur was there, schoolbook open against the red pillows. When he looked up, he didn’t look happy.
“You weren’t in class,” Merlin said.
“Father made me go to the hospital. Said I’d obviously inhaled more smoke than I thought if I was talking nonsense about people trying to use magic.”
“You told him?” Merlin asked.
“Unfortunately. But he’s… I think he’s right, Merlin. We should drop it.”
“But- The policeman believed us. He believed me about everything.”
“You told him everything?”
“Well, no. But more than you did. And he’s going to investigate it.”
“Look, Emrys,” Arthur said, sitting up and closing his book, unexpectedly fierce. “All we saw was a bunch of idiots in robes lighting fires. They lost control of it and could have hurt someone, but the police will find them. It’s not like they were actually going to be able to do anything.”
“But they-”
“But nothing, My father’s right; we don’t need to get involved.”
“No, Arthur. You’re wrong. I don’t really know what they were doing, but it was bad. They’re bad.”
“They’re just a lot of deluded idiots, Emrys. I’m not involved any longer. So leave me alone.”
“Fine,” Merlin hissed, surprised at how betrayed he felt. He could only think of one thing to vocalise it: “Coward.”
He walked out and didn’t look back.
----
He was perfectly set to leave Arthur alone, let him be the hypocritical coward he obviously was and forget he’d ever thought Arthur capable of anything more. He was surly at lunch with Gwen and Morgana the next day, but fine by dinner, turning his back when the same blond from before dumped one of Arthur’s friends spectacularly and upended a whole plate of spaghetti down his shirt when he revealed he’d been screwing some other girl all along. Merlin wondered if Arthur had been doing the blond, too. He was probably the type.
He resolved to get into town somehow that weekend, walk if he had to, and go to the station. Maybe he could help, but even if he couldn’t, he didn’t feel right about that group, whatever they were.
The next day, he ran home to switch books between lunch and French and found a note on his door.
See you at 7:00, AP.
Seven was the walk back from dinner, so Merlin deliberately went the long way, around the back of the halls. Arthur must have been expecting it, though, because he was sprawled across a bench in the back courtyard, drinking juice from a glass he must have filched from the dining hall.
“What is it?” Merlin asked, because he wanted to be the first to say something. He’d been planning on staring with something else, but his plan hadn’t been structured around Arthur looking at him with his huge blue eyes, and Merlin was filled with a sudden shot of hope.
“I’m… Well. Did you -- Did you do the reading for Lancaster yet?”
Merlin felt his jaw drop.
“I haven’t, Arthur,” he said, and turned around to go around to the front door.
----
Three days later, a teenage boy went missing. Allen Jones, 16, attractive and intelligent and strong, just like Arthur. Merlin had seen the photos in the papers and on the news. His stomach welled up cold, and he felt, for a moment, a powerful desire to tell Arthur, to do something, but then he remembered. Arthur was through with it. He was through with Arthur.
That night the dreams started.
After the third time he woke up sweaty and terrified, afterimages of Allen Jones tied up on his knees with no one to help him still in his head, he knew he couldn’t ignore it.
He borrowed his roommate’s bicycle and rode into town during lunch the next day, burst through the same doors and passed all the same desks, several now occupied by people who didn’t look up when he passed.
Lance was staring at the notes he’d made while interviewing Merlin and Arthur, hands clasped over his brow.
“It’s them,” Merlin said, still out of breath. “They did it, I know they did.”
Lance looked up. “Merlin!” he said, and he didn’t really seem happy about it. “I was just-”
“I know. I mean, I know what those are. But listen, that boy - Allen Jones - they took him.” Several of the other officers were watching now.
“Merlin,” Lance said again. “Let’s… Let’s go talk. Out front.”
“Why not in there?” Merlin asked as they passed the empty rooms.
“Those are all wired, of course,” said Lance with a small grin and an arched eyebrow.
“Oh.”
“Listen, Merlin,” Lance began as soon as he closed the door behind him. “I made those calls like I said, and the park doesn’t have record of any employees matching the descriptions you gave me.”
“But… She was there! She gave our whole class a lecture! On… Hemp or something!”
“I know, but there’s nothing else I can do, Merlin. It’s not my jurisdiction, and even if it were, the chief said we’re not to mention it again. I don’t know who told him to back off, but they were… Convincing. If I keep asking questions, I’ll be fired. And then I definitely won’t be able to help.”
“But… Allen Jones-”
“They’re focusing on a divorced father angle, bad custody arrangement. It seems to add up. I’m sorry, Merlin. I really am.”
“But… They were - They tried..,”
“I know. But we just have to hope the Cornish division can figure it out. You probably feel like - Even I feel like I betrayed you.” Merlin didn’t feel like that, not exactly, just helpless and alone, and stupid for expecting anything else.
“Right,” he said. “Well… Thanks for trying. Bye.”
He auto-piloted the rest of his lessons, spent the break trying to do research on his computer, but kept running up against content filters whenever he thought he was actually getting to something substantive.
He skipped dinner, too, couldn’t imagine eating or sitting and watching all his classmates act out their pantomime of real life, cloaked in money and privilege.
He’d never been to Gwen’s room before, mostly because boys weren’t to go to the girls’ rooms, and vice versa, but he knew that most people ignored this rule. He still wasn't aiming to get caught, but fortunately everyone was at dinner.
He heard them laughing from down the hall, loud and carefree and happy. He only realised when they opened the door how very, very creepy this all would look.
"Merlin!" Gwen said, surprised but not nearly as accusatory as she could have been.
"Ah... Good evening," he stammered, blushing.
"How did you even get in here?" Morgana asked, crossing to toss her coat onto the bed. She didn't even seem perturbed. She probably never did.
"Oh, picked the lock," he lied, fake-casual.
"Unexpected." She favoured him with an arched eyebrow and a secretive smile, apparently approving.
"Well, man of many talents, I guess?" That had sounded much more debonair in his head.
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"I need your help with the content filter. For the internet."
"Your porn getting blocked, Merlin?" Morgana laughed.
"No, it's -- it's important," he said, not even embarrassed at the insinuation. There were some perks to purpose.
Morgana looked at him for a long moment, and he wondered what in him she was judging.
"I could get it around it, probably," she said. "But it's still monitored. So if you have a legitimate reason, then you could probably just go to a teacher. But if you don't, I still can't help, sorry. You'll still get caught."
He hadn't thought about that.
"Merlin," Gwen said. "You look -- tired. I mean, you look okay, but tired."
"You do," Morgana agreed bluntly. "What's wrong?"
"Just, ah... Not getting a lot of sleep," he said.
"You haven't been right since we got back from that history trip," Gwen said.
"It was all that time with Arthur, wasn't it? I could see it making one sick..." Morgana said, trailing off as if in thought.
Sort of. Unfortunately. But. "No, it's..."
He had two options: he could tell Gwen and Morgana, leaving anything too revealing about himself out but still exposing himself to the possibility they would simply think him crazy and turn him over toUther for some sort of mental reprogramming or whatever Uther subjected students who questioned his beliefs to, or he could brush the whole thing off, continue on his own.
Only, he didn't have a car, couldn't really get anywhere, couldn't even seem to start figuring out what to do on his own, and he knew that somewhere Allen Jones, if he was even alive, was alone and probably scared and it just wasn't about Merlin anymore.
"I wasn't honest with you," he admitted. "Before, about what happened on the trip..."
And they were shocked, which he'd expected. They asked why he hadn't told them before, which he'd expected. They were impressed that he'd somehow managed to wrest his way from several captors at once, which he felt a little guilty about but mostly worried they'd expect him to somehow demonstrate that skill in the future. He told them he'd been worried they'd think he was crazy, which was true. Then he told them about Allen Jones, and they stopped looking so accepting.
"How do you know?" Morgana asked. She and Gwen exchanged a brief look; there was something going on that he was missing.
"Well... They were talking about a suitable body, you know? And Arthur, I mean, he's an absolute arse, but, well. You know."
Morgana raised her eyebrows. Gwen actually turned a little pink.
"Anyway," he rushed. "Allen Jones is pretty similar. Superficially. And this sounds ridiculous, but I just... Know. And we went to the police and one of them seemed to believe us, but the chief calledUther and he came rushing in and--"
"We?" asked Morgana.
"Me and Arthur. So Uther took him--"
"Arthur went to the police station? To say this?"
"Not... exactly. But close. Close enough that Uther stormed in and told him he's not to be involved anymore. One of the officers believed us, but he can't do anything, either. And if I can find out what they were trying to do, then maybe I can get better evidence and convince him to do something, or give it to someone who can, and--"
"We'll have to go into town," Morgana decided. "You don't have lessons late on Friday, right? So tomorrow afternoon."
He could feel how large his smile was, he must've looked a right idiot, but he didn't care. Even though he was actually no closer to figuring anything out, the relief of having help, of having someone believe in him that much, was so great it felt like progress anyway.
"And get some sleep tonight," Morgana said.
He was so distracted by being happy that on the way out he forgot to look out for people and nearly got caught.
[ Part Two]
Author: staraflur
Recipient: yelloerainboe
Pairing(s)/Character(s): M/A, G/Mo if you want it, OT4 friends for all time
Warnings: Modern-ish AU in an AU, thorough bastardization of actual Druids, sexin
Spoilers: 201
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: Just over 32, 000
Summary: Boarding school was about as expected - rich and stuck-up and boring - until a group of robed crazies try to make the school bully the vessel for their shiny blue diamond. Then there’s suddenly a lot more in Merlin’s life, like swords, spells and late-night room switches.
Author's Note: Thanks to 'I', 'G', 'R' and especially 'o', 'K', 'H' and 'M' for all their help and kind words. Each and every one of you cause something none of the rest did, so consider yourselves all irreplaceable. To protect their good names, it should be said that I wrote a fair bit of this after they all looked it at, so remaining errors could very well beallll mine.
yelloerainboe, I know I made a bit of a hash of all your prompts in one hot mess, but I hope you like it!
Thanks as well to faynia and auroraprimavera, you know why :p
This also had a soundtrack, which I would babble about if I thought I could do it without revealing myself immediately, and which can be found here. There’s an XML playlist which can be imported into Itunes by going to File à Library à Import playlist and then selecting the file. This will put them all in order in a handy ordered playlist. :D
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
For some reason that in hindsight was obviously very stupid, Merlin had thought the trip to the Druid village would be useful. Enlightening, somehow, or comforting.
According to the vocal minority of British citizens who still said magic had once been part of everyday life, as much as farmers and doctors and the government, the Druids had been at the centre of it. Today, of course, they were just a sad remnant of the civilisation that had built the henges (proof! said that vocal minority). Just the guy going to the supermarket in a robe or the girl at school talking about paganism.
Still, he’d been hoping that he would feel something here, because if that vocal minority was right, then Merlin might be the first person in hundreds of years who could actually do magic.
Of course, he only found those people in the robes, puttering about huts carrying out the menial tasks of medieval peasants and giving speeches to schoolchildren about being one with the earth.
Why he’d expected anything else from a trip endorsed by Uther Pendragon, who had gone so far in denouncing all possibility of magic that he refused to let it be mentioned in the courses at his top-tier second form, he couldn’t now remember.
All he could do was was roll his eyes at Gwen when the woman lecturing them on modern uses for hemp fibre trailed off mid-sentence. From Gwen's other side, Morgana caught his eye and pulled a face, which he tried to replicate without looking like she still kind of filled him with pangs of anxiety. Since she did.
It was just that, not only was it bad enough being new when the majority of them had been in the same prestigious school for most of their lives, but he was quite obviously the scholarship kid who couldn't afford the school on his own, quite obviously clumsy and hapless and not excelling at any sports. Apparently, there had been a rumour that he was there as a fencing star, which even Merlin had laughed at when he’d heard. He supposed it had started because he’d almost immediately befriended Gwen, who was there for fencing -- one of the stars of the team, actually, with Morgana.
Morgana was tall and lovely, proud and fierce, a combination that would typically make Merlin her natural enemy at a school like this one, while Gwen was kind of the best person ever. Somehow it was nice even when she made a joke about one of the other students.
More than that, Morgana was the step-daughter of Uther Pendragon, who’d been frightening when he’d attended Merlin’s interview, looking doubtfully down at his test scores and recommendation letters when Merlin stumbled on his own name - frightening long before he’d learnt that even professing a belief in magic might be enough to get him expelled from Uther’s school. So that was enough for Merlin to keep his distance, or at least try; Gwen had already asked him once, concerned, if Morgana had offended him in some way.
She never had, of course. That honour was reserved for her step-brother, who as far as Merlin could tell was the most spoilt, big-headed bully this side of the Atlantic. In Merlin’s short months at the school, Arthur and his goon squad had gone out of their way to make sure barely a day went by without something going wrong: detention because he was out of uniform after his laundry mysteriously got lost and was “found” in the dorm Arthur and his friends happened to live in; detention because his perfectly acceptable compound had somehow become volatile while he’d gone to put on gloves in Chemistry and caused an explosion that had resulted in the evacuation of the entire science building; kitchen duty for ten days because one of them had tripped him straight into the lunch monitor - right after he’d picked up a tray.
At most of those times, Merlin wished he’d never done two things. One, stand up to Arthur on the first day of school, when he’d been tormenting that absolute twit Morris, who’d later gone off on some hissy fit about how at least Arthur had noticed him before. Merlin had a suspicion Morris was a little obsessed with Arthur - he really thought he'd done Arthur a favour. Second, beat Arthur in chess the next day.
And yes, it had been a little rude of him to laugh at the move Arthur had made in his game against that ginger whose name he always forgot, but that hadn’t really been grounds for Arthur to declare the game over and challenge Merlin, instead. It especially hadn’t been grounds for the particularly amusing shade of red he’d turned after Merlin declared checkmate. Merlin wasn’t even very good at chess. Arthur was just bad. He seemed to forget that his opponent also had a brain and would see through his transparent ploy to bait their bishop with his pawn into the range of his knight, and might set up a trap of their own before they pretended to spring his.
Revenge had come in the form of the single most painful class of Merlin’s life: PE, in which Arthur had taken the instructor aside while Merlin watched, nervous in his scratchy unwashed kit. Somehow their planned run had turned into tennis lessons. Tennis lessons in which everyone in the class took group instruction from the teacher while Arthur, the school champion, gave one-on-one teaching to the new kid.
It was the first time Merlin had picked up a tennis racket, and consequently the last. He didn’t know whether it had taken longer for rounded bruises to fade or the yellow fuzzy stains to finally wash out of his clothes.
And somehow fast-forwarding several months had them here: crowded into a fake wattle and daub shack - Merlin could see the beams in a few places -- Gwen and sort of Morgana his only actual friends and an antagonist out of the closest thing this damn school had to royalty. At least kings could be decapitated. Arthur, on the other hand, had one-upped Merlin’s every attempt to stand up to him until he’d just given up and started a campaign of avoidance.
His campaign wasn’t exactly successful, judging by the frequent detentions and the fact that somehow Arthur had volunteered Merlin to demonstrate Mediaevel justice and serve time in the stocks before they retired back to their “camp” for dinner and then the night’s activities, which proved of course to be another chance for showcasing athletic prowess, in the form of a massive game of manhunt, half their class with yellow ribbons on one wrist and the other half with blue.
Not only did Gwen, Morgana, and thus his only chance of actual camaraderie end up on the other team, but most of the knights of the prat table (Merlin’s own creative naming, thank you very much) did, as well.
Just before the first whistle was blown, to give everyone thirty seconds to plan and hide before the second whistle started the game, he caught Arthur staring right at him. When he met Arthur’s gaze, Arthur gave him a dark, predatory, grin, and then actually lifted one hand, extended his pointer and middle fingers in a vee, and then moved them straight in front of his own eyes before he pointed them both at Merlin’s face.
“What?” Merlin said. “Who even does that?”
The insult lost most of its power when there was no one to back him up, and when all it did was make Arthur’s smirk grow.
At the first whistle, Merlin turned and made a beeline straight for the darkest woods he could find. Screw his team, most of them wouldn’t even talk to him if Arthur Pendragon was around to glare at them for it.
The second whistle blew far too quickly, and he realised he hadn’t been too intelligent in his choice to run in a straight line when he heard Arthur yelling, voice close.
It had never been said that Merlin Emrys was a fast runner. For all his long legs, he couldn’t quite seem to figure out where to put them. Arthur Pendragon, on the other end, seemed to spend half his life running down line shots on the tennis court.
He crouched behind a tree, hoping his thunderous heartbeat and rushing breath weren’t actually audible to anyone else, and waited. His ankle started to hurt and he felt sweat dripping down his face, which was ridiculous because it was actually a very brisk October evening, black crescent moon sky.
Silence. Maybe Arthur had given him more credit than he deserved and run off in another direction.
He stood slowly, easing out his crooked limbs and trying to remember which direction, exactly, he’d come from.
“Ha!” he heard, from far too close. Before his heart had even finished leaping from his chest, all the breath got knocked out of him and he was landing awkwardly on one side.
Instinctively, he flailed out with his arm and felt his elbow hit hard, the person above him crying out and letting up. He squirmed away, staggered up, and ran in what he hoped was the right way.
But then, he thought, what was the right direction? Towards everyone else, where Arthur couldn’t kill him and then probably get off on claiming self defence, or further away, where he could maybe hide? He didn’t even know which one he’d picked.
“Emrys! You know I’m faster than you are, you might as well give up and save me the trouble!”
“Like hell!” he yelled back, then cursed his own stupidity and apparent weakness in resisting letting Arthur think he had the upper hand.
He didn’t really have a way of knowing how far or how long he’d run in the country blackness, but he knew it was too far when the ground dropped out from under his feet, and he had time for barely a shout before he was rolling down a steep hill, totally without comprehension of where any of his limbs were. He hit hard when it evened out.
“Fuck,” he cursed, and huffed out an enormous, frustrated sigh. Worst. Field trip. Ever.
Arthur had apparently maintained control down the incline, coming to a noisy, triumphant stop at the bottom and surveying Merlin’s defeated sprawl with a smug raised eyebrow. Merlin didn’t want to move, not even when Arthur moved closer, Merlin's impending doom with him.
“You’ve got,” Arthur observed, crouching on Merlin’s left side, “dirt. And leaves.” He pressed a finger to the far side of Merlin’s cheekbone, right by his ear, and Merlin could feel the gritty layer on his skin.
“Is that actually surprising to you?” he asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste, because the more he came back to awareness, the more he realised he actually had a squishy mess of leaves and mud everywhere.
“I’ll just be,” Arthur began, and leaned forward to jerk the wrist of Merlin’s filthy jumper down. “What?”
“Other one, genius,” Merlin said, defiantly straightening his arm to put it as far away as possible, because while he’d obviously capitulated, he didn’t have to be a total wimp about it.
“We were supposed to put them on the left,” Arthur said. “Genius.” He leant back, but apparently it was just so that he could find a good angle to plant one knee on either side of Merlin’s stomach and plop heavily down.
“I win.”
“Oh my god,” Merlin complained. “Fine, fine, you did. Can you get off me now?” He tried to squirm his way out again, but Arthur flexed the long muscles in his thighs, the same ones that stood out when he pivoted abruptly on the court to change directions after a return, and Merlin was well and truly pinned.
Arthur leant in again, grabbing Merlin’s right elbow with one rough hand and pulling it up. He slid one finger under the plastic strip, in between the awkward one-handed bow Merlin had hastily executed and the point on Merlin’s wrist where three smaller veins branched blue under his skin from the larger one. One sharp tug and it snapped. Arthur dropped his arm, but then he laid his hand back over Merlin’s wrist on the ground.
“Yellow team forever,” he gloated.
“You look terrible in yellow,” Merlin retorted weakly.
“You’d look worse,” Arthur returned. Probably true.
A long pause.
“You gave up,” Arthur said abruptly, non sequitur and strangely accusatory.
“Not exactly,” Merlin protested. “I got rid of you once. And now you’ve taken advantage of me after I’ve been laid low by mother nature.”
“What?” said Arthur. “No, not… Tonight. At school. Why’d you stop?”
“Stop what?” Merlin asked. The general overheating from his panicked run combined with Arthur’s legs firm against his side were making him very sweaty under his prickly wool jumper.
“At school,” Arthur said again, flat firm tone that said Merlin should be getting it by now. “You stopped playing.”
“Playing what?”
“It doesn’t have a name,” Arthur said. “Our game.”
Merlin paused, genuinely confused. “Our… What? You mean the game where you and your trained pack of hyenas get me in trouble until the head of our year calls my mother and asks why my previous record didn’t reflect that I was such a problem child? Most people call that bullying.”
“It wasn’t - why’d you get in trouble?”
“Let’s see,” Merlin said, lifting the free hand to tick along the counts with his fingers. “There was the near destruction of the lab, the frequent being out of uniform, the part where you made me ruin the dining hall monitor’s uniform, the part where you hid all my books for a week, and then, yes, the other times you stole my laundry.”
“But… We do that all the time. I did it to Leon and to Pell and some of it to Gareth. No one ever gets in trouble.”
“Bloody hell,” Merlin said, closing his eyes because he honestly didn’t know whether this made everything worse or somehow better. “Arthur. Your father is on the board. You go to class in a building with your name on it. Of course you’re not getting in trouble.”
Arthur sat back, weight shifting from his own knees to Merlin’s torso. His grip slackened on Merlin’s wrist. His face looked so comically confused that Merlin wished it wasn’t too dark for his phone’s camera. Or that it wasn’t trapped under Arthur’s heavy arse.
“You’re… Oh.”
“Yes,” Merlin agreed. “Oh.” He waited for Arthur to get up.
Arthur didn’t. His face was thoughtful again, but his eyes far away, narrowed as if to focus on something.
The Merlin heard it, too.
“Is that… Chanting?”
“I think so,” Arthur said. “Weird chanting, too. Come on.”
He clambered off so quickly that it was almost like he’d never been there at all, except that Merlin could finally breathe in all the way again, and the rush of night air against the open space where Arthur’s body had just been was cold.
Merlin too rolled up, pausing on his knees when the faraway voices suddenly crested. Arthur looked down at him and pulled him up by an arm.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading Merlin forward by the arm.
With the gradual rise in volume soon came the shaky, uneven flow of fire, and by the time it was close enough to smell, Arthur had slowed.
“Can you be quiet,” he hissed, and Merlin glared back. He had been being quiet.
“Oh, how lovely,” came another voice from the darkness, and Merlin might have been pleased by the shock on Arthur’s face if he hadn’t been sure his looked worse. “We were hoping for some guests.”
----
It was the hemp lady from that afternoon, only she’d traded in her plain homespun for something brighter, more ornate, and she was accompanied by a quartet of similarly attired men, three of whom Merlin recognised from the demonstrations earlier. They crowded in around Merlin and Arthur, and the woman smiled.
“You boys chose an excellent time to drop in, you know. We’re just about to begin the selection ceremony.”
“Selection for what?” Merlin asked.
“The festival’s King, of course! I’m sure we can make room for two more… If you’re interested?”
“We really should go back-”
“Of course we are,” Arthur interrupted. “After all, aren’t we here to further our education?”
“Excellent,” she smiled. “The girls will be ever so pleased if you complete the tasks.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to deny them the pleasure,” Arthur said, with the smirk Merlin always wanted to wipe off his awful lovely mouth. With his fist.
There weren’t many people in the wide, flat clearing, but there were some girls, who sighed rapturously when the hemp lady presented their new prospects. Personally, Merlin thought they all looked pretty ridiculous, eyelashes aflutter and long dark robes, but Arthur took right to it, learning all their names and complying when they asked him to flex his biceps or do a cartwheel.
He couldn’t even do a good one, Merlin thought, disgusted at their chorus of giggles. One even sighed, “He’s perfect!”
Perfectly revolting.
They’d drawn into a large clearing, dotted by small fires that were being progressively doused and the remaining blazes kindled proportionately higher. Beside the one that seemed to be in the centre, a heap of apples and a smaller heap of nuts spilled around an ancient-looking wooden chest, dark with age and bound with heavy iron.
“It’s Samhain,” he realised, and one of the men from the woods nodded at him, pleased.
“Aye,” he said, “but tonight isn’t just to recognise Samonios and the dark beginning. Tonight we draw on the power of the other world to accomplish our goal and change the world.”
“What’s your goal?” Merlin asked, but the man was already whirling away to spread dirt upon one of the fires.
All he knew about Samhain was from his short phase of thinking that knowing about paganism and the old religion would lead to clues about what he could do, but all the reading and even the meetings with so-called covens and magic appreciation societies had led to nothing but disappointment.
Nothing he’d read had referred to a goal of "changing the world." None of this was adding up well.
Arthur was still in the middle of his admirers, but the activity among the remaining couple of dozen robed figures was changing. The hemp woman and a few others were mixing something in a bowl, oats and milk that they stirred and, as he watched, poured into a cast iron skillet and baked over an open fire. Everyone was generally ignoring Merlin, but they watched Arthur with eager, covetous eyes. It made his skin crawl.
“Arthur,” he said, sidling rudely between two of the girls. “I think we should go back. They’ll probably be looking for us.”
“Calm down, Merlin,” Arthur said, and clapped him heavily on the back.
“Ladies, did you know Merlin is the worst tennis player I’ve ever seen? I mean, really. The worst.”
“What’s tennis?” one of them asked.
Arthur frowned. “What do you mean, it’s-”
“Someone could lose their job over this,” Merlin protested. “If your father thinks they lost you.”
“I’ll talk to him, Merlin. Now, relax. Enjoy the scent of bonfires in the evening and - look, they’re even feeding us!”
But they weren’t, not really. The cake got cut into small pieces, heaped into a makeshift sack - one marked with an ember from the fire until it was black all over - and each person put on a blindfold and selected one.
Arthur drew the black bit, and after that the ritual was abandoned in a chorus of excited murmurs.
“To show you are worthy of the honour,” explained hemp lady, whom Merlin was starting to think of as the Creepy Mastermind of this whole ridiculous business, “you must complete the task.”
The task was to leap three times over the middle fire, which was significantly larger than the ring around it.
“I don’t think-”
“Shut it, Merlin. I can do it.” Arthur’s face was set and determined, and he was already rolling his shoulders and hopping in anticipation.
“If you get hurt--"
“I said shut up, Emrys.”
The whole crowd watched, silent and so obviously anticipatory that Merlin wondered if they were hoping Arthur would set himself on fire. Their eyes got larger and larger and Arthur circled the flames once, then walked back a few paces. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and went.
He cleared it, barely, landed hard on one foot on the other side, and the robes all shouted, joyful, and at the command of their hempy overseer threw in more kindling.
“You are almost worthy,” she said, eyes shining.
“This is stupid,” Merlin whispered to Arthur. “Let’s just go.”
“You think I can’t do it, don’t you?” said Arthur, somehow indignant. “Well, I can. It’s not too different from when we have to hop the net in practise sometimes. Watch me.”
“The net’s not on fire, is it?” Merlin pointed out, but Arthur ignored him.
The second leap somehow went better, with some sort of complicated twist of his body in midair, like a pole vaulter, but Merlin didn’t know what he was pushing off of.
Two of the girls actually shrieked in excitement.
“Once more and you will be ready,” hemp woman confirmed. “The ritual will be almost complete, and the ceremony can start.”
Higher licked the flames. Arthur wouldn’t look at him.
When he went, Merlin watched his foot slip on a stick, so he pushed off without near enough force, and unless Merlin did something we was going face-first into the fire, and even if they pulled him out in time to save his life, it wouldn't be pretty.
He sucked in a breath, clenched his fingers in so tightly they almost cut into his palms, and pushed Arthur up. Arthur jerked awkwardly in the air, his legs flailed almost into the blaze, but he arced over the top and came down on his hands and knees on the other side.
There was a heavy moment of silence. Merlin worried they’d noticed, or seen his eyes flash in the darkness more than could be the reflected glare of the fire, but when he looked they were all staring at Arthur, and then at once they broke into another shout, almost frenzied in its shrillness. They burst into a flurry of movement, handing a large knife and one of the apples to hemp lady, who held both reverently.
“Now comes his name,” she said, and began to slice. She ran a clean cut around the circumference, peeling, and threw the shred over her shoulder when she was finished.
Another investigated, face harsh in the firelight, and cried, “C!”
She breathed out a heavy sigh of relief, as if a C were a hard letter to make from an apple peel. She started again, cutting for longer this time, at least one full revolution of the fruit.
Merlin crossed to stand next to Arthur, who looking a little pale, jaw help tight.
“I didn’t think I had that last one,” Arthur said.
Merlin swallowed. “Well, uh… Good job? Can we go now?” But the lady was finished, and threw the second section back.
This time it was an equally difficult S, but apparently it was what they wanted, and a chant of “Sigan” or something of the like started up.
Two men came to either side of Arthur.
“Your time approaches,” said the lady, face a frightening rictus of overdone rapture. “He will appreciate what we have selected for him.”
“Arthur…” said Merlin.
“Okay,” said Arthur. “Let’s go.”
Heavy hands landed on their shoulders.
“It’s far too late for that,” she said. “You’ve been chosen.”
Several more men came forward with rope fashioned from vines, while two of the girls bore the wooden chest into the circle of light from the fire. All the druids drew forward as if compelled, all of them watching Arthur and the woman.
“Run!” said Arthur, but they all leaped on him, twining the rope around his wrists and securing them behind his back, forcing him onto his knees though he struggled violently, kicking one nearly into the fire before enough surrounded him to hold him still.
Merlin ran - or at least, he tried to, but one of them had grabbed his arm before he even took a full step, and soon they had him just as securely, though they hadn’t bothered with the rope.
“Be still,” one told him, quiet like they were exchanging secrets. “We’re not going to hurt you. Or your friend. He’s to receive the spirit. I would kill to be him.”
The lady was opening the box, and lifting something free from it, a huge, heart-shaped stone with something blue inside of it, something that shone and swirled like smoke.
“I offer you the innocent vessel,” she called, loud and resonant in the night. “He has completed the ritual and shown himself worthy, and on this night when the other world is close, we enact the instructions of the Old One to call you back to your rightful place in the world, and magic with you.”
She held the blue stone out with both hands, walking slowly towards Arthur who was straining on the ground against too many hands.
Merlin could feel his heart pounding, and he knew, he knew, that even if Arthur wasn’t technically hurt, something terrible was about to happen, and he was the only one who could stop it.
The fires, every one of them, leapt suddenly with the huge gust of wind that blew in, whirled through the clearing and jumped the flames from their earthen pits into the grass. Everything was suddenly hotter, the air dry and filled with smoke.
“Put them out!” she screamed, and Merlin’s guards abandoned him without thinking, so he surged forward before they could come back, diving into the murky smoke in what he hoped was Arthur’s direction.
“Arthur!” he yelled, and Arthur answered, almost immediately to his left. He could feel the heat on his other side, knew the flames were close, so he hurled himself towards Arthur’s voice. He hit someone wearing rough wool that was obviously one of the druids, so he dug his feet into the ground and pushed as hard as he could. They went down with a shocked cry. The smoke was stinging his eyes, burning in his lungs.
He pushed at the air, trying to clear a circle around himself as best he could, and it was enough the he could breathe a little easier, and that he could see Arthur’s shining hair and count the men still on him.
Only three. He pushed at them all too, a physical blow from behind, where they weren’t expecting it, straight into their knees. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to send them all toppling - they weren’t actually very good at this - and he yelled, “Stand up, Arthur!”
Arthur did, staggering and awkward with his arms still behind him. One of the men on the ground tried to grab at his ankle, and Arthur stomped viciously on his hand.
“Come on come on come on,” Merlin cried, letting the smoke eddy back in, pulling it directly into the faces of the men who’d been holding Arthur.
They ran, one direction, just away as fast as they could, and Merlin spread the blaze behind them, not even sure whether he was just trying to delay pursuit or actually trying to kill them. Whoever they were. Whatever they were.
----
Either Arthur had an extraordinary sense of direction or they were very lucky, because they soon came to the incline Merlin had fallen down, what really didn’t seem like too long ago.
They hadn’t even stopped to free Arthur’s arms -- Merlin would have been to run approximately three feet like that.
“I can’t get up that,” Arthur said.
“Right,” Merlin said, trying to figure out his possibilities. His eyes had adjusted as well as they would in the blackness, the stars poor compensation for the sliver of moon. “I’ll just…”
The vines were wound tight, and pulling at the knot was like trying to pry a door open with a fingernail. Arthur’s hand were cold, and Merlin realised they probably hadn’t had proper circulation in nearly an hour.
“Knife,” Arthur said. “Front right pocket.”
“You carry a knife?” Merlin asked, scandalised. “This is a school trip!”
“It’s just a Swiss army knife! It was my grandfather’s. And besides, looks like we’ll need it.”
“Right,” said Merlin. “Um… I’ll just…” He paused.
“Well, it’s not like I can get it!” Arthur said.
“Right,” Merlin said again, and darted his hand around Arthur’s body, shoved it into his pocket. He could feel Arthur’s thigh, hard and hot through the cloth, against his fingers when he wrapped them around the metal.
“Be careful,” Arthur said as Merlin fumbled it open.
“I know, I know…” And he was, though the blade was dull and the fibres tough. He settled on sawing as the most effective motion, and soon had enough sliced through that he could yank apart the rest.
“Oh, ow, ow,” Arthur complained when his hands sprang free, shaking them and grimacing.
“Sorry,” Merlin apologised. Arthur stopped.
“For what?”
“For not, uh… Doing that sooner, I guess?”
“I think we were a little busy. Besides, we… We should have left immediately. No normal girl is that impressed by a cartwheel.”
It was as close to admitting someone else was right as he’d ever heard Arthur Pendragon get.
“And they are probably still looking,” Arthur continued, “so let’s go.”
He scrambled up the incline easily, and Merlin followed his path. When Arthur reached the top, he turned around and pulled Merlin over the edge.
After a few more minutes they heard someone yelling their names, and he looked up to the sky finally brightening.
----
Merlin slept the entire drive back. A crowd of girls with round, concerned eyes had herded Arthur onto the other bus, so Merlin didn’t know if he too had slept so deeply he didn’t even have any dreams.
Everyone collectively disembarked and headed to their rooms for coursework. Even Gwen had rubbed at a persistent streak of ash oh his face and said she had a lot of French vocabulary to learn, if he was sure he was okay.
He wasn’t, not exactly, but that wasn’t Gwen’s problem. Besides, he had a plan.
So he wound the long way between the squat brick halls, letting himself in the back door of the one he knew was Arthur’s. Once he was in, though, he didn’t know what room was his.
Fortunately, their enthusiastic R.A. had labelled every door, and he found the one tagged Arthur P on the third floor. There wasn’t any noise coming from within like some of the others rooms, so he lingered for a moment trying to decide if he should try to go elsewhere.
One of the bus girls opened the door before he could choose, flipping her hair over her shoulder and giving him a huff of disdain before she stalked off down the hall. Merlin poked his head through the open door.
Arthur was sitting at the desk, which for some reason Merlin had expected would be a very different desk from his own, but was pretty much the same. He had their History text but he was staring at it with the empty stare of one who definitely wasn’t reading.
He looked up when Merlin’s feet scuffed on the floor, eyes still fogged and bloodshot from smoke. He wasn’t as pale, though, as he had been when he’d staggered out of the shadows of the trees in the dawn, blanched under the soot and covered in dirt.
“You still look awful,” Merlin observed.
“Ms. Hawne wanted to take me to the hospital. Smoke inhalation or something. I convinced her we weren’t actually near the fire, so it would be best if you said the same.”
“That’s what you said?” Merlin hadn’t even been asked.
“That we got lost during the game and some kids set a fire that got out of control, yes.”
“She didn’t say anything about going to the police?”
“I told her we didn’t see anyone.”
“Oh… Well, I think we should.”
“Should what?”
“Tell the police. They - I don’t know what they were going to do, but what if they try again?”
“I don’t think they’re going to track down my school and kidnap me or something,” Arthur said, leaning back in his desk chair. It, for one, was much better than the stiff wooden one at Merlin’s, leather with armrests and a high back. Arthur’s room was also in better shape than Merlin’s, everything a little neater, pencils in their holder on his desk and clothes hanging in the closet. But his walls were bare and everything was so beige. The only things that stood out were his red pillow cases. He didn’t seem to have a roommate, but Merlin had heard that all the rooms in this hall were singles. Of course.
“Maybe not,” Merlin said, though secretly he thought it possible. “But what if they decide they don’t need you after all, and pick someone else? What if they’re going to try something really terrible with that blue thing?”
“I’m pretty sure Morgana had a game as a child with that thing as a piece in it,” Arthur said with a small chuckle. “But… Alright. Just in case.”
“Okay,” Merlin said, smiling and relieved. He pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on, unsure whether to actually go into the room.
Arthur was standing up, too, grabbing a jacket from his closet and wallet from the dresser.
“Now?” Merlin asked, thinking about the mountain of unopened books on his desk and his freshly laundered sheets.
“No, Merlin, tomorrow, after they’ve had some time to regroup and cover their tracks. Now. I’ll go get my father’s car and meet you by your room.”
Uther Pendragon owned the shiniest BMW sedan Merlin had ever seen. He thought it had more space inside than his bedroom. At home.
“Can you actually drive?” Merlin asked as Arthur sped down the long drive.
“Of course I can, Merlin. What do you think I’m doing right now?”
“No, I mean - legally?”
Arthur shrugged.
The station wasn’t a long distance from school, which was fortunate since neither of them seemed to have anything to say. It was small-town unofficial, particularly on a Sunday, so they were able to walk right into a room with several cluttered desks and a row of closed doors on the far side.
“Can I help you?” asked the only visible man, thick dark hair and serious, noble eyes, sitting at one of the desks.
“Um…” said Merlin, trying to find a way to explain that balanced important and definitely not crazy. But he was drawing a blank.
“We need to speak to an officer,” Arthur said, giving him a look from the corner of his eyes.
“I’m Constable Du Lac,” said the man, standing to greet them. “What can I help you with?”
Their explanation came gradually - they probably should have discussed it in the car - but Du Lac didn’t even give them the sort of dubious look Merlin had been dreading. He tried to make it sound like he was just worried about pagans tying up tourists and forcing them to jump through fires, because even Merlin wasn’t sure what he thought about the implications of their words. Hopefully Arthur wouldn’t even know enough to have remembered them as important.
Halfway through their story, one of the doors opened: the one marked D.C.O. Merrist, and an older man looked out at them.
“Just taking a statement, sir,” Du Lac said. “Nothing major, just some local crazies.”
“Not… Local, exactly,” said Merlin. “We were on a trip. To Cornwall.”
“Cornwall? That’s out of our jurisdiction, why didn’t you tell the police there?”
Arthur shifted. “Our teacher said we didn’t really know enough to be useful. But we didn’t… We didn’t tell her everything. I didn’t want to get her in trouble with my father.”
“Your father?”
“He’d fire her,” Merlin said, matter-of-fact, and Arthur glared at him.
“You don’t know that. But I’m telling you now, so what does it matter?”
When Merlin looked back over, after he and Arthur described what they could recall of the hemp lady and her minions, the man from the office door was gone.
Merlin had gone to get a drink from the water fountain when he heard someone yelling. He crept back down the hallway, hesitant, because he knew that voice.
“… Interviewing my son without a lawyer present, that’s not even legal!”
“Father, I chose to come here, they didn’t-”
“Silence, Arthur. It’s a damn good thing Merrist called me. I could have you charged for stealing my car, as well, which Mister... Du Lac can drive back, since I had to use Morgana’s to come down here.”
Merlin peeked around the corner, to see all of them standing: Uther, the centre of attention as usual, commanding, Arthur facing him, red-faced and scowling, Constable Du Lac a little flabbergasted and the older man - Merrist - glaring.
“Now, Arthur,” said Uther, putting a controlling hand on Arthur’s shoulder.
“But, Father, something happened, I was there!”
“Did they hurt you?” Uther asked, looking actually concerned, an expression Merlin had never expected to see on his face. Arthur shook his head.
“Then they can take care of it without you. It’s their job, Arthur. Yours is your schoolwork. No need for you to get involved with these crackpots.”
He steered Arthur right out of the station, and Merrist gave Du Lac one last good glare before he stalked back into his office and closed the door.
“Sorry,” Merlin said.
Du Lac smiled. “Definitely not your fault, Merlin. Now, how about I give you a lift back. I’m assuming you don’t want to be in that car?”
“Definitely not,” Merlin agreed. “But… I don't want to be any more trouble.”
“It’s fine, Merlin. Now come on, I felt like you weren’t done explaining everything, anyway.”
On the trip back, Merlin told Du Lac - Lance - a little more than he’d been planning. He was friendly and understanding, and he actually seemed to be listening, even after Merlin accidentally let slip a hint that he thought they were trying to use magic.
All he said was, “Really?” and when Merlin nodded, nervous, all he did was look thoughtful. Also, his cheekbones were a little devastating.
When he dropped Merlin off by his dorm, he promised he’d look into it as best he could. Merlin went inside hopeful, at least until he remembered all the work he had to do.
----
Arthur wasn’t in class the next day. A little concerned, Merlin skipped dinner and sneaked into his hall again.
He was half expecting no one to answer the knock, no one to be in, but Arthur was there, schoolbook open against the red pillows. When he looked up, he didn’t look happy.
“You weren’t in class,” Merlin said.
“Father made me go to the hospital. Said I’d obviously inhaled more smoke than I thought if I was talking nonsense about people trying to use magic.”
“You told him?” Merlin asked.
“Unfortunately. But he’s… I think he’s right, Merlin. We should drop it.”
“But- The policeman believed us. He believed me about everything.”
“You told him everything?”
“Well, no. But more than you did. And he’s going to investigate it.”
“Look, Emrys,” Arthur said, sitting up and closing his book, unexpectedly fierce. “All we saw was a bunch of idiots in robes lighting fires. They lost control of it and could have hurt someone, but the police will find them. It’s not like they were actually going to be able to do anything.”
“But they-”
“But nothing, My father’s right; we don’t need to get involved.”
“No, Arthur. You’re wrong. I don’t really know what they were doing, but it was bad. They’re bad.”
“They’re just a lot of deluded idiots, Emrys. I’m not involved any longer. So leave me alone.”
“Fine,” Merlin hissed, surprised at how betrayed he felt. He could only think of one thing to vocalise it: “Coward.”
He walked out and didn’t look back.
----
He was perfectly set to leave Arthur alone, let him be the hypocritical coward he obviously was and forget he’d ever thought Arthur capable of anything more. He was surly at lunch with Gwen and Morgana the next day, but fine by dinner, turning his back when the same blond from before dumped one of Arthur’s friends spectacularly and upended a whole plate of spaghetti down his shirt when he revealed he’d been screwing some other girl all along. Merlin wondered if Arthur had been doing the blond, too. He was probably the type.
He resolved to get into town somehow that weekend, walk if he had to, and go to the station. Maybe he could help, but even if he couldn’t, he didn’t feel right about that group, whatever they were.
The next day, he ran home to switch books between lunch and French and found a note on his door.
See you at 7:00, AP.
Seven was the walk back from dinner, so Merlin deliberately went the long way, around the back of the halls. Arthur must have been expecting it, though, because he was sprawled across a bench in the back courtyard, drinking juice from a glass he must have filched from the dining hall.
“What is it?” Merlin asked, because he wanted to be the first to say something. He’d been planning on staring with something else, but his plan hadn’t been structured around Arthur looking at him with his huge blue eyes, and Merlin was filled with a sudden shot of hope.
“I’m… Well. Did you -- Did you do the reading for Lancaster yet?”
Merlin felt his jaw drop.
“I haven’t, Arthur,” he said, and turned around to go around to the front door.
----
Three days later, a teenage boy went missing. Allen Jones, 16, attractive and intelligent and strong, just like Arthur. Merlin had seen the photos in the papers and on the news. His stomach welled up cold, and he felt, for a moment, a powerful desire to tell Arthur, to do something, but then he remembered. Arthur was through with it. He was through with Arthur.
That night the dreams started.
After the third time he woke up sweaty and terrified, afterimages of Allen Jones tied up on his knees with no one to help him still in his head, he knew he couldn’t ignore it.
He borrowed his roommate’s bicycle and rode into town during lunch the next day, burst through the same doors and passed all the same desks, several now occupied by people who didn’t look up when he passed.
Lance was staring at the notes he’d made while interviewing Merlin and Arthur, hands clasped over his brow.
“It’s them,” Merlin said, still out of breath. “They did it, I know they did.”
Lance looked up. “Merlin!” he said, and he didn’t really seem happy about it. “I was just-”
“I know. I mean, I know what those are. But listen, that boy - Allen Jones - they took him.” Several of the other officers were watching now.
“Merlin,” Lance said again. “Let’s… Let’s go talk. Out front.”
“Why not in there?” Merlin asked as they passed the empty rooms.
“Those are all wired, of course,” said Lance with a small grin and an arched eyebrow.
“Oh.”
“Listen, Merlin,” Lance began as soon as he closed the door behind him. “I made those calls like I said, and the park doesn’t have record of any employees matching the descriptions you gave me.”
“But… She was there! She gave our whole class a lecture! On… Hemp or something!”
“I know, but there’s nothing else I can do, Merlin. It’s not my jurisdiction, and even if it were, the chief said we’re not to mention it again. I don’t know who told him to back off, but they were… Convincing. If I keep asking questions, I’ll be fired. And then I definitely won’t be able to help.”
“But… Allen Jones-”
“They’re focusing on a divorced father angle, bad custody arrangement. It seems to add up. I’m sorry, Merlin. I really am.”
“But… They were - They tried..,”
“I know. But we just have to hope the Cornish division can figure it out. You probably feel like - Even I feel like I betrayed you.” Merlin didn’t feel like that, not exactly, just helpless and alone, and stupid for expecting anything else.
“Right,” he said. “Well… Thanks for trying. Bye.”
He auto-piloted the rest of his lessons, spent the break trying to do research on his computer, but kept running up against content filters whenever he thought he was actually getting to something substantive.
He skipped dinner, too, couldn’t imagine eating or sitting and watching all his classmates act out their pantomime of real life, cloaked in money and privilege.
He’d never been to Gwen’s room before, mostly because boys weren’t to go to the girls’ rooms, and vice versa, but he knew that most people ignored this rule. He still wasn't aiming to get caught, but fortunately everyone was at dinner.
He heard them laughing from down the hall, loud and carefree and happy. He only realised when they opened the door how very, very creepy this all would look.
"Merlin!" Gwen said, surprised but not nearly as accusatory as she could have been.
"Ah... Good evening," he stammered, blushing.
"How did you even get in here?" Morgana asked, crossing to toss her coat onto the bed. She didn't even seem perturbed. She probably never did.
"Oh, picked the lock," he lied, fake-casual.
"Unexpected." She favoured him with an arched eyebrow and a secretive smile, apparently approving.
"Well, man of many talents, I guess?" That had sounded much more debonair in his head.
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"I need your help with the content filter. For the internet."
"Your porn getting blocked, Merlin?" Morgana laughed.
"No, it's -- it's important," he said, not even embarrassed at the insinuation. There were some perks to purpose.
Morgana looked at him for a long moment, and he wondered what in him she was judging.
"I could get it around it, probably," she said. "But it's still monitored. So if you have a legitimate reason, then you could probably just go to a teacher. But if you don't, I still can't help, sorry. You'll still get caught."
He hadn't thought about that.
"Merlin," Gwen said. "You look -- tired. I mean, you look okay, but tired."
"You do," Morgana agreed bluntly. "What's wrong?"
"Just, ah... Not getting a lot of sleep," he said.
"You haven't been right since we got back from that history trip," Gwen said.
"It was all that time with Arthur, wasn't it? I could see it making one sick..." Morgana said, trailing off as if in thought.
Sort of. Unfortunately. But. "No, it's..."
He had two options: he could tell Gwen and Morgana, leaving anything too revealing about himself out but still exposing himself to the possibility they would simply think him crazy and turn him over toUther for some sort of mental reprogramming or whatever Uther subjected students who questioned his beliefs to, or he could brush the whole thing off, continue on his own.
Only, he didn't have a car, couldn't really get anywhere, couldn't even seem to start figuring out what to do on his own, and he knew that somewhere Allen Jones, if he was even alive, was alone and probably scared and it just wasn't about Merlin anymore.
"I wasn't honest with you," he admitted. "Before, about what happened on the trip..."
And they were shocked, which he'd expected. They asked why he hadn't told them before, which he'd expected. They were impressed that he'd somehow managed to wrest his way from several captors at once, which he felt a little guilty about but mostly worried they'd expect him to somehow demonstrate that skill in the future. He told them he'd been worried they'd think he was crazy, which was true. Then he told them about Allen Jones, and they stopped looking so accepting.
"How do you know?" Morgana asked. She and Gwen exchanged a brief look; there was something going on that he was missing.
"Well... They were talking about a suitable body, you know? And Arthur, I mean, he's an absolute arse, but, well. You know."
Morgana raised her eyebrows. Gwen actually turned a little pink.
"Anyway," he rushed. "Allen Jones is pretty similar. Superficially. And this sounds ridiculous, but I just... Know. And we went to the police and one of them seemed to believe us, but the chief calledUther and he came rushing in and--"
"We?" asked Morgana.
"Me and Arthur. So Uther took him--"
"Arthur went to the police station? To say this?"
"Not... exactly. But close. Close enough that Uther stormed in and told him he's not to be involved anymore. One of the officers believed us, but he can't do anything, either. And if I can find out what they were trying to do, then maybe I can get better evidence and convince him to do something, or give it to someone who can, and--"
"We'll have to go into town," Morgana decided. "You don't have lessons late on Friday, right? So tomorrow afternoon."
He could feel how large his smile was, he must've looked a right idiot, but he didn't care. Even though he was actually no closer to figuring anything out, the relief of having help, of having someone believe in him that much, was so great it felt like progress anyway.
"And get some sleep tonight," Morgana said.
He was so distracted by being happy that on the way out he forgot to look out for people and nearly got caught.
[ Part Two]