fic: the world forgetting, by the world forgot - part 14
title: the world forgetting, by the world forgot
film prompt: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
characters/pairings: merlin, arthur, morgana, gwen (main); merlin/arthur (main); everyone/everyone on the side
rating: pg-13
| part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11 | part 12 | part 13 | part 14 | part 15 | part 16 |
*
|►merlin|
When he’d woken up alone and had the time and enough clarity to mentally backtrack, it occurred to him that something had been happening for some time now. It was a faint wisp of knowledge, hovering at the periphery and whispering that he was different somehow, always would be, even if he would never know why.
It’s evening by the time he switches on one of the table-lamps in the living room. If his theory is to be proven then this is maybe one way to go about it, and if it is correct, this should work. He removes the shade and stares at the bare bulb with his full concentration and wills it to explode. It does not listen. He tries the bathroom light next. Nothing.
He’s about to go for the hallway light, even as he’s still a little wary that something is wrong with that one inherently, when the apartment buzzer goes off.
*
“You can't be serious,” Merlin says, and tries very, very hard to keep his head on straight because there has got to be a perfectly rational explanation for why Arthur is convinced that the two of them were practically married in something of a past life. The explanation has not yet made itself clear to Merlin but he figures if he waits long enough it will come. There is no way his mind is equipped to deal with all of this in the span of twenty-four hours. First the accidental electrokinesis or whatever that was, and now Morgana putting her own brother under erasure?
“Arthur,” he says, with more calm than he feels, “I think you might be in shock. Yesterday was weird, I know, and I’m still trying to figure it out, Just give me some time and it will make sense.”
There’s resignation in Arthur's eyes and the line of his mouth when he pulls out a photograph from an envelope and hands it to Merlin.
It has half of Arthur's face peeking out from behind his own with Arthur's chin on Merlin's shoulder. Both faces grin at him from between hats and Arthur’s raised collar and the candy-cane scarf that Gwen had knit for him many Christmases ago. It's the kind of off-centered close-up that results when holding out the camera to take a picture of yourself. Merlin can tell it was taken on a winter night because the sky stretches dim and purple behind them, pale with the reflection of snow, and on the ground, the snow seems to go on forever.
They haven’t taken any pictures as far as he remembers. Even then, he can buy it as a practical joke, something photoshopped by someone, maybe Arthur’s sister, to screw with his head. He flips it on its back and it reads, Charles River 2001, in Merlin's own scrunched up handwriting, and that’s the very quiet start of when everything begins to fall apart.
"I met you in September at a record store," Arthur says, quiet and still. The words sound garbled to Merlin's ears. "We haven’t been to the Charles. What am I supposed to think?”
Arthur reaches for his hand, the one that had been burnt, fingers clasping around the lightning bolt bracelet. “I know you’re going to think I’m crazy. I’m pretty sure I think I’m crazy, but I got you this because it reminded me of you. It reminded me of how you set off everything around you when you got angry or scared, when you felt anything to an extreme. Merlin, you have no idea what you’re capable of.”
It sounds so strange to have Arthur say it, and Merlin can’t tell for sure if it's lamentation or awe that his voice veers closer to. Either way, Merlin does not want it. He shakes his head, gently at first, and when the godforsaken buzzing returns, he digs his fingers in his hair until they press in on his skull. This is what it feels like once it gets going, growing into a pulse, which turns into a throbbing and he can practically feel the blood beat below his fingertips. He can feel himself being pulled from the sidelines into the eye of the storm, dragged by his insides into some sort of black hole. It is infinitely worse than the previous night, so much so that he thinks it will be a small wonder if his head does not explode by the end of it. Or, at the least, if he doesn't get sick. Instead, the lights go out, again, every single one in sight and then some until the apartment is bathed completely in darkness.
"Your eyes,” Arthur says, a distant sound that Merlin has to strain to hear, “they’re gold, Merlin. I remember this-” but Merlin's barely listening now and finds it impossible to register the rest of what Arthur’s on about, not with the starburst of pain that he's convinced will kill him.
“Call Gwen,” he cries out. “Fuck, Arthur, just please-call her and tell her to call Gaius, or page him or something.” It’s all he can manage to say before he feels a sudden chill that comes without warning and reaches him bone-deep. In the dark, there are shadows and half-there images, bare branches and snow all around and ice beneath him. It’s a time and space so separate from this.
He closes his eyes and can feel the flutter of lashes close to his face, the wool of a coat, a scarf, and then warmth and warmth, inside and out, a faraway feeling that competes with the headache from hell.
________________________________
|◄◄|2003-2004|►|
He’s watching CSI reruns with Will and Gwen one night when Gaius comes back from work, bringing boxes of papers and stationary inside. His uncle's mouth is set in a straight, tight line.
No, thinks Merlin, dragging Gaius into the hallway. There is no way. “If you tell me that Uther fired you, I will go there and torch that place down.”
“No, Merlin,” Gaius shakes his head, deflated. “I left. It was a mutual decision.”
Merlin knows that at least a part of him should be happy, that this is what he'd wanted, for Gaius to extricate himself from that twisted, wretched business as soon as possible. Still, it's like being doused with ice water. “What happened?”
“We had a...” and as Gaius tries to find a word, Merlin wants to scream because, of course, even now, he would try for diplomacy, “...disagreement,” Gaius decides, “of professional opinion.”
“Let me rephrase, Gaius, what the hell happened exactly?”
“It was a personal matter for Uther and there’s patient confidentiality involved, Merlin.” Even as he says it, Gaius looks extremely pained. It’s one of those would-if-I-could looks but it doesn’t make Merlin any less furious. He tells Merlin not to worry, that he still has the research at the university and two clinical practice offers from their teaching hospitals, but Merlin knows that’s not the point.
*
Several days later, he’s walking down 34th Street when he thinks he sees them. The panic doesn't set in until he's sure it’s them, and then, he almost can’t breathe for a moment. Morgana and Arthur are not more than five feet away when Morgana catches sight of him, and Merlin thinks, maybe, after all this time, the three of them should be able to talk like civilized adults on the street.
“Arthur,” he nods, stopping in front of them. He can’t even remember how long it’s been, only that seeing him again is nothing like the way he’d imagined it the twenty thousand or so times in his head.
Arthur smiles his polite and formal smile, guarded with care and devoid of recognition. This should have been warning enough but then Arthur adds, “Have we met?” and Merlin knows that something is very wrong.
“Very funny,” Merlin says, trying not to panic, and looks at Morgana. “What’s going on? Is he alright?”
“Arthur,” she says firmly, “could you give us a minute?” Without waiting for a response, she manhandles Merlin towards the street corner and in the most chilling hiss he’s ever heard, she says, “You are going to leave him alone, understand? I do not want him near you and I do not want you near him ever again.”
And there it is. Confirmation. He didn’t ask to become the bane of Morgana’s existence and yet it makes such perfect sense that he can’t even fault her for it. He wants to ask what happened but, of course. It clicks almost instantaneously. This is Morgana Le Fay, loyal to her family, and employee of Camelot Neuroservices where they wipe people's minds clean for a living.
Merlin feels light-headed at the thought.
“You’re twisted,” he rasps out, even if it is maybe starting to make sense. He knows Morgana has had a rough time of the past year or so but he had always considered her the most human of that corporate neuro-psycho-whatever-services lot, even more so than Gaius at times. And here, even that piece of the puzzle falls into place. This is why Gaius left. It had to be. He would have been staunchly against Arthur as a candidate. He wouldn’t have even entertained the thought whereas Uther doubtlessly would have if it had meant one more shot at mind control over his son. “I can’t believe you, Morgana. He’s your brother.”
“So you can understand why it was necessary.”
He wants to hate her for it but under all the ice of her glare, he can see how much she’s hurting. Maybe knowledge is power but he doesn't feel all that powerful because he also knows what she does not, that she was not this person once, deep down is maybe still not this person, but she is trying to be strong and solid for something and someone she needs to protect. It's the means to an end kind of logic that he can't quite agree or argue with. He doesn't have to like it but the look in her eyes and the line of her jaw are relentless so he knows that he will have to live with it.
“I get it. You don’t want me to hurt him.” The words are his, he knows, but they feel like someone else's, spoken from the other side of the street. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Arthur looking inside a storefront window, a display of children’s clothing in what he thinks is a Baby Gap, and Merlin feels something like vertigo at the thought of everything disappearing.
“Good seeing you Morgana,” and he closes his eyes against the image of the man on the west side of 34th Street who is a perfect stranger now, and he walks and walks and walks, trying to widen the gap in between.
*
He wonders how it works and he doesn’t mean the technicalities. He has heard about all that from Gaius and bits and pieces from Arthur who had been forced to sit through dinner conversations that revolved around procedure upgrades with Morgana and his father. Already, they feel like moments from a past life.
Instead, he wonders what it would be like to wake up the next morning after going through something like that, wonders if it would be like any other morning, and spends his time wondering because it’s easier than feeling like someone else’s bad dream.
*
The note in the mail comes a few days after. It’s nothing new, just further confirmation of what he already knows.
Dear Dr. Gaius Richards,
Arthur Pendragon has had Merlin Emrys erased from his memory. Please never mention their relationship to him again.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Morgana Le Fay
Laboratory and Clinical Procedures Coordinator
Camelot Neuroservices
*
Merlin will deny two things forever. The first is that Morgana’s note was what finally drove him to sit in the waiting room at Camelot Neuroservices. The second is that it was all done in a reckless fit of retaliation.
It was a complete waste of his time anyway.
It left him more like the frayed-at-the-edges loose cannon he’d been when he’d first come to live with Gaius some twenty years ago. Back then, he’d been young and new at all of this, known nothing of his power or how to manage it. Now, he couldn’t think of an excuse, except for the obvious one, but he wasn't willing to give Arthur any more credit for screwing him up.
*
Merlin’s pretty sure Gaius is sick of buying light bulbs because Merlin is sure as hell sick of changing them. Light bulbs, he had once told Arthur, are somehow always the first to go.
His neighbours have been in an uproar and maintenance is torn between wanting to rewire the whole place and just quitting altogether. Everyone calls the building cursed, the seventh floor especially, because they'd been through this once before some twenty years ago. Those who'd been here that long remember vividly the electrical disasters this place had suffered when Merlin first moved in.
Gaius really should've just bought himself a detached house or an island or something before volunteering to have someone like Merlin live with him and to help tame his gift from hell. Once, when he'd voiced this to his uncle, the man had told him that this kind of life would force him to be accommodating, that it would help him get there faster because he would know that what he had would also affect others around him. Unfortunately, Merlin wasn't a completely selfish prick (though, sometimes, he really wished he was because it would have made the whole thing with Arthur so much easier to clean up and faster too) and Gaius had been right.
After that useless attempt at erasure, however, he finds he can’t really be very accommodating because this thing in his head is no longer being very accommodating. Try as he might to claim otherwise, he's never been behind the wheel in difficult times. He is well aware that he's losing the careful grip on his mind, the one he'd spent a lifetime of practice managing, ensuring that he had mastered as best he could. It had been either that or letting the world around him go up in smoke. There was never a rulebook for what to do when your mind had a mind of its own and adamantly refused to listen to you, when all it was good for anymore was turning against you at inopportune moments, throwing shocks and flashes of light and current. He tries so hard to keep it in, in, in, so afraid he might burst if he doesn't, until, one day, he can't.
*
He will never know if it was him trying to shut his mind up or the other way around when it had happened. He’d stood by the kitchen table, a knife in hand, and dug it as deep as it could go in the electric socket on the wall. His last thought had been something along the lines of please let me go, and it had all ended in a spectacle of white light, followed by something like a seizure, and Merlin on the floor.
|►►|
*
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