Merlin - Five Times Merlin Crossed
Title: Five Times Merlin Crossed
Genre: Gen, Crossover
Fandoms: Merlin, Old Kingdom, Sherlock Holmes, Leverage, Alphas, Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13 for violence and implied character death
Length: ~3060 words
Spoilers: End of Abhorsen series, general for all other series, 11th Doctor, Arthurian mythology
Synopsis: Five times Merlin has crossed the boundary to death.
Author’s Notes: I love the immortality aspect of the Arthurian myths and could not resist playing with it again. This is also a shameless excuse to cross some of my favourite fandoms (even though I did not manage to get Fringe or Highlander in here this time around).
Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters and am making no profit from this.
1.
“No, not him,” Sabriel warned, stilling Lirael’s hand before she could even remove Saraneth from the bandolier.
Lirael looked from her to the stranger in confusion, but simply gripped her new sword in her rebuilt hand that much tighter, ready for battle even if the Abhorsen forbade her from using the bells. “Why?” she eventually asked. The stranger had made no move towards them, but only waded past as though the current of the river that was Death was nothing more than the weakest of trickles.
“Death has no hold over him, though some say neither does Life,” Sabriel non-explained. She bowed at the man and he returned the gesture, two dark heads stark against the bleakness of their surroundings.
Lirael could feel the Charter marks stream from him as he passed, some completely unrecognisable, and others adapting the known in ways she would have never dreamed. “He is old,” she declared.
Sabriel nodded. “But so very young,” she murmured under her breath. Louder now, she said, “Some say he predates the Charter, and others claim he is the Charter itself in manifestation. What is known is that Death and Life greet him equally, and that he speaks to the current as though to an old friend.”
“Predates the Charter? Like Dog?” Lirael asked doubtingly. Dog was Free Magic and Charter in one, an odd and potentially dangerous combination, though the beast was nothing if not loyal to his mistress to the very end.
It was not Sabriel who answered, but the man himself, his voice a subtle chuckle above the rush of the water. “Gaius never did forgive me for leaving that thing in his workshop,” he mused.
Then, as though his words made sense, he strode forward, Life welcoming him in a haze of amber and gold. His stride never faltered as he passed through, and Lirael tried to remember every facet of him on the off chance she would ever lay eyes on him again. She wondered why one so powerful dressed so simply and walked with nary a bell or sword, even as she wondered if he would ever need either given the pure power that flowed through him.
The Dead that they had been hunting had fled at his presence though, practically throwing itself through the First Gate to avoid him. Sabriel urged Lirael to return to Life, their work now redundant in his passing.
“He is the Walker,” Sabriel said as the warmth of Life invited them and melted the frost from their time in Death. “And he has chosen his path.”
2.
The evidence was there, clear for all to see. Just as clearly though, a key piece of evidence was missing.
Holmes looked to the fallen man and knew it would be simple enough to claim it was a mugging gone awry. The miscreant lay prostrate in the muck of a mostly abandoned alleyway. His right hand clutched a shredded thong of leather, whatever bauble it had held clearly missing as though the victim stole it back before running off into the night. His left hand held a blade approximately five point six inches in length, the gas light from the nearby street illuminating crudely etched runes about the silver, the scratches bearing the crimson of blood not yet washed away by the unrelenting rain.
A quick examination revealed another mark, this one a faded tattoo of three-fifths of an inch in diameter at the joint between the wrist and thumb, the lines bearing far more meaning than they had any right to be, especially when paired with the tiny burn marks that cascaded up the otherwise unblemished skin..
“Occult then?” a voice startled him out of his reverie.
He looked up to find his colleague Doctor Watson bent at his side, fat drops of water pooling and then spilling from the brim of his hat to land and join the rivulets that trickled down Holmes’ wool-covered back..
If only it was that easy. If only he could stand up, brush the muck from his trousers, clap his hands and announce the case closed.
He looked over to the gathered officers, all eagerly awaiting the warmth of fireplaces and hot tea, all save for one Mr. Gregory Lestrade, who glanced too quickly away from the shadows, away from the figure thought invisible from the impressive skills of Sherlock Holmes himself. Some day he would know better, but this was not that day.
He cleared his throat and stood slowly, facing the small crowd but his attention never left his true prize. “The man himself may have believed in the ridiculous trappings of the occult, but this was simple thievery and nothing more. His intended victim escaped, though may need medical attention from the wounds he sustained.” It was an understatement of epic proportions given the amount of crimson in the pools slowly diluting with the rain. There was so much more to say, so many more conclusions to draw, but he let it be and stepped away from the scene to allow the others to tidy the unsightly remnants of the night’s events.
With the others suitably distracted, he idly wandered towards the shadows. “You may not escape detection so easily next time,” he warned as he pretended to blow on his hands.
Another hand moved in the shadows, stained with enough blood that, when mixed with the amount washing away down the alleyway, would have surely killed any other man. A ring flickered in its grasp, the dragon gold and bold against the dark red stone. “I could not let him have this; it is all I have left of him,” a weak voice responded.
There was a cough and Holmes pretended it was him to avoid the draw of the remaining officers. “Will you heal?” he asked, more concerned than he had any right to be.
There was a snort, indelicate and quiet. “I already have else you would have far more explaining to do when your morgue came up one body short.” It was an admission of what Holmes had already suspected, and he took it as such.
“I could not be certain that you would be here, that you would remember,” the man whispered. Holmes glanced away, towards the approaching Watson, but it was too late, he had given the game away.
“Ah, so you deduced, not remembered,” the voice sighed, but there was a hint of a smile to it. Holmes looked back to see bright eyes of startling blue blink at him knowingly. “If it is any consolation, Mr. Lestrade does not fully remember either. He acted upon instinct alone, and for that I must thank you both. Someday, perhaps, you will both know who you truly are.”
“Perhaps,” Holmes agreed and stepped away before his colleague grew too suspicious.
“Sherlock!” the man called, voice not much more than an echo in his mind. “Use caution. His name is no longer Mordred, but he is just as treacherous.”
Holmes considered the words, and silently nodded. Watson was at his side now, babbling about tea and a warm change of clothing. He slipped into the familiar camaraderie easily enough, but the larger part of his conscious mind began to puzzle out the warning and just how to prepare for the inevitable.
3.
“Wait for it,” Eliot urged. The blood dripped freely down the side of his face, but he simply swatted it away like an errant strand of hair.
Parker groaned, though the action seemed to take up most of her already waning energy. For no reason Eliot could think of save to prove him wrong, she propped herself up on one elbow, her free hand pressed weakly to the wound in her side, slick red spilling through her fingertips. “He’s dead already,” she lamented. Then, just loud enough for him to strain to hear in the empty room, she muttered, “Just like we’re going to be.”
Eliot closed his eyes and wished for skills he did not have. He wished he could fix the little bits of wire and plastic smashed on the floor beside him like he knew Hardison could. He wished he could have read the mark well enough to have caught some tiny little sign and suspected they were at risk before it was too late like he knew Sophie or Nate would have done. He wished he could pick locks with even half of Parker’s skill so that he could free himself from his tether to the wall and treat her properly if not even break free of their makeshift prison all together.
He managed to pull off his flannel shirt and rip it free from the chain at the cost of the sleeve. It didn’t matter, it was just a piece of fabric and there were far more important things it could do now instead of get in his way. He balled it up and pressed it against Parker’s side, wishing he could have caught her head somehow when she fell back against the hard cement floor with a gasp.
It was happening now though, he could feel it. He turned his head to the side just as bright blue eyes opened against a face far too pale. The man sat up, incongruous in a simple t-shirt and jeans as much as the fact said clothing was stained through with dirt and gore.
The man blinked a few times as he sorted out his bearings, and then turned to his current companions. His eyes widened slightly in recognition before he asked, voice rough with disuse yet tinged with a familiar accent, “Eliot is it, this time ‘round?”
Eliot nodded, head flooded with memories of the same man with the same earnest yet pained expression from lifetimes past. They found each other often, no matter what name the other man chose or Eliot was gifted with. “Can you help her?” he asked. Parker’s eyes fluttered closed and her grip beside his hand grew lax.
The man nodded and soon the room filled with a brilliant light in hues of amber and gold. When the light faded, Eliot found the locks looped useless and open and Parker’s heartbeat grow strong beneath his fingers.
A squawk from nearby caught his attention and he heard three familiar voices vying for attention from two tiny pieces of unmarred plastic at his side. He looked up to find the man already at the now open door, a wry smile upon his familiar features. “I always did like you best with the hair,” he confided before he left, accepting no thanks and giving no clue as to whether it would be weeks or decades before he would be seen again.
4.
Hicks saw Gary go down and had a fair idea he would not be getting up again any time soon, if ever again. Bill was in full rage mode, smashing anything and everything and taking out two of the three men that were the source of their latest problem, but one was clearly about to get away.
He grabbed the closest thing he could find, which was a chunk of metal rebar left over from some industrial building project or another and likely to give him tetanus just from touching it, and chucked it against the nearby wall. He watched it ricochet to and fro until it finally hit its target, the man collapsing into a pool of something unmentionable with what was probably a truly massive head wound.
He ignored that for now, the echoes of approaching sirens promising the man would be taken care of soon enough, and focused his attention on Gary, who still lay unmoving while Rachel and Nina both knelt beside him.
“He’s not breathing,” Nina warned as Hicks approached.
“His heart rate is low and slowing,” Rachel said with that far off tone that meant she was possibly listening to the flow of blood through his very veins for all he knew.
Hicks looked down at the bluish skin-tone and the way every blood vessel seemed a stark purple against the unnatural hue. “What did he do to him?” he asked, not certain he wanted an answer.
The man the attackers had originally been after, the one they had mistook Gary for in their initial grab, groaned and rolled over, debris and blood coating his face and clothing. He crawled on his hands and knees, ignoring the broken glass and sharp rocks, and whispered, “Let me see if I can help.”
It wasn’t a question, not really. It wasn’t even a plea. For some reason though, Nina and Rachel backed off and let the skinny and lanky man who barely looked alive himself approach. He rested one bony pale hand in the middle of Gary’s chest and uttered something that sounded truly foreign. Hicks swore he saw the briefest flash of light in the man’s blue eyes, but was distracted by the way Gary suddenly surged upwards, gasping for breath as though denied it for far too long.
Rachel and Nina pulled him to them and held him, praising him as though he had committed some great feat. Hicks was torn between checking on his friend and checking on the strange man, who had now pulled himself to his feet and was preparing to stumble off into the ether.
His quick reflexes caught the man before he fell, and he received a raspy, “Thanks, mate,” for his troubles. The man pulled himself free though and seemed quite determined to continue to walk on, possibly to get the hell out of Dodge before the authorities arrived.
“You going to be okay?” Hicks asked, hating to think of the man crawling off somewhere to die after saving someone else.
The man nodded. “Made of tougher stuff than you think,” he assured him before he began his shuffle away again.
“Thank you,” Hicks sighed, hoping the next nod was proof that the man had heard him.
When he turned back to the others, it was to find Rosen trying to keep Gary in one place until a medic could look him over while Bill took deep breaths and tried not to break anything like the random wall or concrete pylon. Cameron listened in as Gary babbled about the shear amount of frequencies surrounding the stranger and Rosen lamented not getting the chance to talk to one with such incredible Alpha abilities.
“He was like the Alpha of Alphas,” Gary insisted.
While Rosen mused about what the attackers could have wanted with one such as that, Hicks spared a glance back down the alleyway, not at all surprised to find it empty. He just hoped this “Alpha of Alphas” had gotten away safely, and could stay out of reach of both whoever had been after him and the folks at Binghamton that would probably love to track him down for their own less than kind reasons. Somehow though, he doubted even they would be able to keep that guy down for long.
5.
The people swarmed around him, a crowd in a panicked flee for safety, if such thing was even possible. The Doctor let them pass, pushed against them as he tried to force his way in the opposite direction. A shadow caught his attention out of the very corner of his eye and it was then he realised that he was not the only one in the midst of a struggle upstream.
The man was familiar, more so than he had any right to be. The man was also far closer to the door that led to the now near critical reactor than he had any right to be.
“Jethro!” the Doctor called, his memory providing the name the man had last given him.
There was no response, even though the Doctor was fairly certain he was heard. After three attempts, he changed tactics and shouted, “Merlin!”
The man whipped around as though physically burned, eyes searching and instantly finding the man who dared to call him by his real name. “You have regenerated again,” he commented consideringly. “This is no place for you, Doctor,” he continued, calm despite the inherent threat of death that surrounded them both.
The Doctor continued to walk forward, certain the other man had done something to insure no one else knew of their current conversation as no one even paused or turned their heads to see who would be daft enough to stay behind. “I can help,” the Doctor told him. “I can save them.”
“At what cost to yourself?” Merlin asked. He spared a glance to the arched doorway and the bright light that shone through its tiny window. “Even a Time Lord could not withstand the blast.”
“And you could?” the Doctor asked, incredulous. Merlin may have been powerful, if the myths were to believed and if his own experiences were any indication, but this was ridiculous.
Merlin shrugged, uncaring. “I found him, saved the world, and yet he passed on again and again. Now is my chance to do something a bit more than live out a legend.”
The Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver. “I can stop it before it goes critical,” he offered.
“The resulting radiation may kill you, for good this time,” Merlin replied. “I will survive. I always survive.” He seemed saddened, as if such a realisation was a greater burden than even the Doctor could know.
“You can’t know that,” the Doctor reasoned. “Not this time.”
“If it saves these thousands of people, it’s a chance I am willing to take,” Merlin told him.
He reached for the handle, and the Doctor used his screwdriver to seal it in place. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” the Doctor tried. “You don’t have to sacrifice yourself just to prove your worth - you have done enough, time and time again.”
There was a flash of gold and amber and, when the Doctor blinked to get his bearings, he found himself safely ensconced in the TARDIS, doors locked and shields at maximum. He ran over to the display screen just in time to see his onetime friend step into a blinding circle of light.
“It doesn’t have to be this way!” he yelled at the image on the screen.
The shadow of a figure turned against the incandescent glow and he heard, as loud as though he was standing right next to him, Merlin whisper, “Yes, it does.”
Feedback is always welcomed.
This entry was originally posted at http://cat-77.dreamwidth.org/381432.html. Current comments
Genre: Gen, Crossover
Fandoms: Merlin, Old Kingdom, Sherlock Holmes, Leverage, Alphas, Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13 for violence and implied character death
Length: ~3060 words
Spoilers: End of Abhorsen series, general for all other series, 11th Doctor, Arthurian mythology
Synopsis: Five times Merlin has crossed the boundary to death.
Author’s Notes: I love the immortality aspect of the Arthurian myths and could not resist playing with it again. This is also a shameless excuse to cross some of my favourite fandoms (even though I did not manage to get Fringe or Highlander in here this time around).
Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters and am making no profit from this.
1.
“No, not him,” Sabriel warned, stilling Lirael’s hand before she could even remove Saraneth from the bandolier.
Lirael looked from her to the stranger in confusion, but simply gripped her new sword in her rebuilt hand that much tighter, ready for battle even if the Abhorsen forbade her from using the bells. “Why?” she eventually asked. The stranger had made no move towards them, but only waded past as though the current of the river that was Death was nothing more than the weakest of trickles.
“Death has no hold over him, though some say neither does Life,” Sabriel non-explained. She bowed at the man and he returned the gesture, two dark heads stark against the bleakness of their surroundings.
Lirael could feel the Charter marks stream from him as he passed, some completely unrecognisable, and others adapting the known in ways she would have never dreamed. “He is old,” she declared.
Sabriel nodded. “But so very young,” she murmured under her breath. Louder now, she said, “Some say he predates the Charter, and others claim he is the Charter itself in manifestation. What is known is that Death and Life greet him equally, and that he speaks to the current as though to an old friend.”
“Predates the Charter? Like Dog?” Lirael asked doubtingly. Dog was Free Magic and Charter in one, an odd and potentially dangerous combination, though the beast was nothing if not loyal to his mistress to the very end.
It was not Sabriel who answered, but the man himself, his voice a subtle chuckle above the rush of the water. “Gaius never did forgive me for leaving that thing in his workshop,” he mused.
Then, as though his words made sense, he strode forward, Life welcoming him in a haze of amber and gold. His stride never faltered as he passed through, and Lirael tried to remember every facet of him on the off chance she would ever lay eyes on him again. She wondered why one so powerful dressed so simply and walked with nary a bell or sword, even as she wondered if he would ever need either given the pure power that flowed through him.
The Dead that they had been hunting had fled at his presence though, practically throwing itself through the First Gate to avoid him. Sabriel urged Lirael to return to Life, their work now redundant in his passing.
“He is the Walker,” Sabriel said as the warmth of Life invited them and melted the frost from their time in Death. “And he has chosen his path.”
2.
The evidence was there, clear for all to see. Just as clearly though, a key piece of evidence was missing.
Holmes looked to the fallen man and knew it would be simple enough to claim it was a mugging gone awry. The miscreant lay prostrate in the muck of a mostly abandoned alleyway. His right hand clutched a shredded thong of leather, whatever bauble it had held clearly missing as though the victim stole it back before running off into the night. His left hand held a blade approximately five point six inches in length, the gas light from the nearby street illuminating crudely etched runes about the silver, the scratches bearing the crimson of blood not yet washed away by the unrelenting rain.
A quick examination revealed another mark, this one a faded tattoo of three-fifths of an inch in diameter at the joint between the wrist and thumb, the lines bearing far more meaning than they had any right to be, especially when paired with the tiny burn marks that cascaded up the otherwise unblemished skin..
“Occult then?” a voice startled him out of his reverie.
He looked up to find his colleague Doctor Watson bent at his side, fat drops of water pooling and then spilling from the brim of his hat to land and join the rivulets that trickled down Holmes’ wool-covered back..
If only it was that easy. If only he could stand up, brush the muck from his trousers, clap his hands and announce the case closed.
He looked over to the gathered officers, all eagerly awaiting the warmth of fireplaces and hot tea, all save for one Mr. Gregory Lestrade, who glanced too quickly away from the shadows, away from the figure thought invisible from the impressive skills of Sherlock Holmes himself. Some day he would know better, but this was not that day.
He cleared his throat and stood slowly, facing the small crowd but his attention never left his true prize. “The man himself may have believed in the ridiculous trappings of the occult, but this was simple thievery and nothing more. His intended victim escaped, though may need medical attention from the wounds he sustained.” It was an understatement of epic proportions given the amount of crimson in the pools slowly diluting with the rain. There was so much more to say, so many more conclusions to draw, but he let it be and stepped away from the scene to allow the others to tidy the unsightly remnants of the night’s events.
With the others suitably distracted, he idly wandered towards the shadows. “You may not escape detection so easily next time,” he warned as he pretended to blow on his hands.
Another hand moved in the shadows, stained with enough blood that, when mixed with the amount washing away down the alleyway, would have surely killed any other man. A ring flickered in its grasp, the dragon gold and bold against the dark red stone. “I could not let him have this; it is all I have left of him,” a weak voice responded.
There was a cough and Holmes pretended it was him to avoid the draw of the remaining officers. “Will you heal?” he asked, more concerned than he had any right to be.
There was a snort, indelicate and quiet. “I already have else you would have far more explaining to do when your morgue came up one body short.” It was an admission of what Holmes had already suspected, and he took it as such.
“I could not be certain that you would be here, that you would remember,” the man whispered. Holmes glanced away, towards the approaching Watson, but it was too late, he had given the game away.
“Ah, so you deduced, not remembered,” the voice sighed, but there was a hint of a smile to it. Holmes looked back to see bright eyes of startling blue blink at him knowingly. “If it is any consolation, Mr. Lestrade does not fully remember either. He acted upon instinct alone, and for that I must thank you both. Someday, perhaps, you will both know who you truly are.”
“Perhaps,” Holmes agreed and stepped away before his colleague grew too suspicious.
“Sherlock!” the man called, voice not much more than an echo in his mind. “Use caution. His name is no longer Mordred, but he is just as treacherous.”
Holmes considered the words, and silently nodded. Watson was at his side now, babbling about tea and a warm change of clothing. He slipped into the familiar camaraderie easily enough, but the larger part of his conscious mind began to puzzle out the warning and just how to prepare for the inevitable.
3.
“Wait for it,” Eliot urged. The blood dripped freely down the side of his face, but he simply swatted it away like an errant strand of hair.
Parker groaned, though the action seemed to take up most of her already waning energy. For no reason Eliot could think of save to prove him wrong, she propped herself up on one elbow, her free hand pressed weakly to the wound in her side, slick red spilling through her fingertips. “He’s dead already,” she lamented. Then, just loud enough for him to strain to hear in the empty room, she muttered, “Just like we’re going to be.”
Eliot closed his eyes and wished for skills he did not have. He wished he could fix the little bits of wire and plastic smashed on the floor beside him like he knew Hardison could. He wished he could have read the mark well enough to have caught some tiny little sign and suspected they were at risk before it was too late like he knew Sophie or Nate would have done. He wished he could pick locks with even half of Parker’s skill so that he could free himself from his tether to the wall and treat her properly if not even break free of their makeshift prison all together.
He managed to pull off his flannel shirt and rip it free from the chain at the cost of the sleeve. It didn’t matter, it was just a piece of fabric and there were far more important things it could do now instead of get in his way. He balled it up and pressed it against Parker’s side, wishing he could have caught her head somehow when she fell back against the hard cement floor with a gasp.
It was happening now though, he could feel it. He turned his head to the side just as bright blue eyes opened against a face far too pale. The man sat up, incongruous in a simple t-shirt and jeans as much as the fact said clothing was stained through with dirt and gore.
The man blinked a few times as he sorted out his bearings, and then turned to his current companions. His eyes widened slightly in recognition before he asked, voice rough with disuse yet tinged with a familiar accent, “Eliot is it, this time ‘round?”
Eliot nodded, head flooded with memories of the same man with the same earnest yet pained expression from lifetimes past. They found each other often, no matter what name the other man chose or Eliot was gifted with. “Can you help her?” he asked. Parker’s eyes fluttered closed and her grip beside his hand grew lax.
The man nodded and soon the room filled with a brilliant light in hues of amber and gold. When the light faded, Eliot found the locks looped useless and open and Parker’s heartbeat grow strong beneath his fingers.
A squawk from nearby caught his attention and he heard three familiar voices vying for attention from two tiny pieces of unmarred plastic at his side. He looked up to find the man already at the now open door, a wry smile upon his familiar features. “I always did like you best with the hair,” he confided before he left, accepting no thanks and giving no clue as to whether it would be weeks or decades before he would be seen again.
4.
Hicks saw Gary go down and had a fair idea he would not be getting up again any time soon, if ever again. Bill was in full rage mode, smashing anything and everything and taking out two of the three men that were the source of their latest problem, but one was clearly about to get away.
He grabbed the closest thing he could find, which was a chunk of metal rebar left over from some industrial building project or another and likely to give him tetanus just from touching it, and chucked it against the nearby wall. He watched it ricochet to and fro until it finally hit its target, the man collapsing into a pool of something unmentionable with what was probably a truly massive head wound.
He ignored that for now, the echoes of approaching sirens promising the man would be taken care of soon enough, and focused his attention on Gary, who still lay unmoving while Rachel and Nina both knelt beside him.
“He’s not breathing,” Nina warned as Hicks approached.
“His heart rate is low and slowing,” Rachel said with that far off tone that meant she was possibly listening to the flow of blood through his very veins for all he knew.
Hicks looked down at the bluish skin-tone and the way every blood vessel seemed a stark purple against the unnatural hue. “What did he do to him?” he asked, not certain he wanted an answer.
The man the attackers had originally been after, the one they had mistook Gary for in their initial grab, groaned and rolled over, debris and blood coating his face and clothing. He crawled on his hands and knees, ignoring the broken glass and sharp rocks, and whispered, “Let me see if I can help.”
It wasn’t a question, not really. It wasn’t even a plea. For some reason though, Nina and Rachel backed off and let the skinny and lanky man who barely looked alive himself approach. He rested one bony pale hand in the middle of Gary’s chest and uttered something that sounded truly foreign. Hicks swore he saw the briefest flash of light in the man’s blue eyes, but was distracted by the way Gary suddenly surged upwards, gasping for breath as though denied it for far too long.
Rachel and Nina pulled him to them and held him, praising him as though he had committed some great feat. Hicks was torn between checking on his friend and checking on the strange man, who had now pulled himself to his feet and was preparing to stumble off into the ether.
His quick reflexes caught the man before he fell, and he received a raspy, “Thanks, mate,” for his troubles. The man pulled himself free though and seemed quite determined to continue to walk on, possibly to get the hell out of Dodge before the authorities arrived.
“You going to be okay?” Hicks asked, hating to think of the man crawling off somewhere to die after saving someone else.
The man nodded. “Made of tougher stuff than you think,” he assured him before he began his shuffle away again.
“Thank you,” Hicks sighed, hoping the next nod was proof that the man had heard him.
When he turned back to the others, it was to find Rosen trying to keep Gary in one place until a medic could look him over while Bill took deep breaths and tried not to break anything like the random wall or concrete pylon. Cameron listened in as Gary babbled about the shear amount of frequencies surrounding the stranger and Rosen lamented not getting the chance to talk to one with such incredible Alpha abilities.
“He was like the Alpha of Alphas,” Gary insisted.
While Rosen mused about what the attackers could have wanted with one such as that, Hicks spared a glance back down the alleyway, not at all surprised to find it empty. He just hoped this “Alpha of Alphas” had gotten away safely, and could stay out of reach of both whoever had been after him and the folks at Binghamton that would probably love to track him down for their own less than kind reasons. Somehow though, he doubted even they would be able to keep that guy down for long.
5.
The people swarmed around him, a crowd in a panicked flee for safety, if such thing was even possible. The Doctor let them pass, pushed against them as he tried to force his way in the opposite direction. A shadow caught his attention out of the very corner of his eye and it was then he realised that he was not the only one in the midst of a struggle upstream.
The man was familiar, more so than he had any right to be. The man was also far closer to the door that led to the now near critical reactor than he had any right to be.
“Jethro!” the Doctor called, his memory providing the name the man had last given him.
There was no response, even though the Doctor was fairly certain he was heard. After three attempts, he changed tactics and shouted, “Merlin!”
The man whipped around as though physically burned, eyes searching and instantly finding the man who dared to call him by his real name. “You have regenerated again,” he commented consideringly. “This is no place for you, Doctor,” he continued, calm despite the inherent threat of death that surrounded them both.
The Doctor continued to walk forward, certain the other man had done something to insure no one else knew of their current conversation as no one even paused or turned their heads to see who would be daft enough to stay behind. “I can help,” the Doctor told him. “I can save them.”
“At what cost to yourself?” Merlin asked. He spared a glance to the arched doorway and the bright light that shone through its tiny window. “Even a Time Lord could not withstand the blast.”
“And you could?” the Doctor asked, incredulous. Merlin may have been powerful, if the myths were to believed and if his own experiences were any indication, but this was ridiculous.
Merlin shrugged, uncaring. “I found him, saved the world, and yet he passed on again and again. Now is my chance to do something a bit more than live out a legend.”
The Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver. “I can stop it before it goes critical,” he offered.
“The resulting radiation may kill you, for good this time,” Merlin replied. “I will survive. I always survive.” He seemed saddened, as if such a realisation was a greater burden than even the Doctor could know.
“You can’t know that,” the Doctor reasoned. “Not this time.”
“If it saves these thousands of people, it’s a chance I am willing to take,” Merlin told him.
He reached for the handle, and the Doctor used his screwdriver to seal it in place. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” the Doctor tried. “You don’t have to sacrifice yourself just to prove your worth - you have done enough, time and time again.”
There was a flash of gold and amber and, when the Doctor blinked to get his bearings, he found himself safely ensconced in the TARDIS, doors locked and shields at maximum. He ran over to the display screen just in time to see his onetime friend step into a blinding circle of light.
“It doesn’t have to be this way!” he yelled at the image on the screen.
The shadow of a figure turned against the incandescent glow and he heard, as loud as though he was standing right next to him, Merlin whisper, “Yes, it does.”
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