Apocabigbang: Fic: Postremus Regum Britanniae; Merlin; R; Chapter 5
Chapter 4: London Calling to the Underground
Chapter 5: Law and Order
Arthur wasn’t sure how many hours they were walking for before they were too tired to walk any more. They came to another station, Arthur had lost count how many they had been through, but the sign on the wall said that they had arrived at Embankment. Arthur had been through this station a million times before, but it looked different dark and abandoned like it was. Almost like a crypt. He pulled his thoughts away from the bleak places they had started to enjoy dwelling in. This was as good a place to stop as any, he thought to himself.
Morgana had begun to spout her nonsense again, talking about a sword and a way out. The others were listening to her, like the rubbish made sense. It was all he could do not to start shouting; it was only the knowledge that they were so close to the surface that kept him quiet. He didn’t know whether his voice would carry far enough, even in this eerie silence, but he didn’t want to chance it.
“This will do,” he heard himself say; “We’re on what, four lines? That gives us more than enough escape routes.”
“It also gives us a dozen different entrances to guard,” Will muttered, but Arthur ignored him. “We’re in the middle of London, here. You heard that guy on the radio: this is the centre of it all. This is where it all started. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“No,” but it wasn’t Arthur who spoke, he couldn’t find anything to argue with in Will’s speech, it was Morgana. “We’re here for a reason. If we don’t stop this then no one will.”
“No offence,” Jeff said, an edge of hysteria to his voice, “but you’re crazy. We’re here because we got stuck in something that is completely mad, and I agree with Will. We need out.”
“You can’t just turn away from this,” Morgana said, her voice rising. “You’re in the middle of a war here.”
“I didn’t choose this,” Will pointed out, “if you want to commit suicide then go ahead, but I’m not joining you.”
“It’s not suicide,” she said, “not if we find Excalibur.”
“Morgana,” Gwen said quietly, “Excalibur is a legend.”
“So are dragons, so are griffins, so are unicorns, and yet you can all accept those exist now. Try to extend your belief just a little. You can’t run away from this. If we won’t fight then who will?”
“The army,” Gareth said, shrugging. “That’s what they’re here for.”
“Those parts of the army that aren’t engaged overseas, what good will they even do? Their weapons are as much use against these enemies as a bunch of flowers.”
“Then what good will we be?” Merlin asked. “I mean, if I could actually do any good then I’d stay, I’d fight, but I can’t see what the point is. All we’ll be doing is dying.”
“No, you’re not going to die,” Morgana told him, reaching out to touch his arm. “Not this time, not so soon. If you had just…” she bit back her words. “We have more chance than anyone. I swear to you. I swear that we are the ones who have to do something.”
“We are…” Arthur began, but his words were cut off by a noise from beyond the platform, in the rest of the station. Everyone fell quiet.
Footsteps. Voices.
“Stop followin’ me,” a young man’s voice half shouted in the peculiar whine of the teenager.
“Not until you give me back my wallet you arrogant little pick pocket,” the second voice was also male but more refined, like someone who had had extensive elocution lessons. Arthur’s eyebrows rose, even his father had not insisted on diction like that.
“I ain’ got yer fucking wallet, tosser,” the teenager replied.
“Then explain why it disappeared right after I met you. I am not going to leave you alone, young man, until I have my property and I have turned you over to the police.”
“Yeah right,” the teenager laughed, “like to see you try. No cops around, nobody around. Everyone’s fucking dead, or ‘adn’t you noticed?”
“Your language is appalling,” the second voice said.
“Sorry. I though’, under the circumstances ‘n’all a few swear words might be called for.”
“There is never an excuse for vulgar language.”
Arthur’s hand relaxed the hold on his gun that he had not even realised he had, and there was a general sigh of relief.
“Why did you even come down here?” asked the older voice, “Catching a train?”
“They won’ be running after a quake like that, will they?” the teenager asked like the man was stupid. “Don’ be an idiot. I came down ‘ere to get away from up there.”
“With the electricity off, we won’t be able to see.”
“Be’er to be blind than burned alive, or didn’ you see those poor buggers out in the streets.”
“It was probably some sort of accident, caused by the earthquake.”
“And those big things in the sky? Large wading birds, were they?”
Arthur drew in a deep breath and stepped out, switching on his torch.
“Hello,” he said, “Hi…”
The teenage boy, a lanky young man all lines and the hard, pointy angles of elbows, jumped, but tried to cover it up, huddling in on himself. Beside him, the older man, impeccably dressed in a suit and a good few years older than Arthur himself, gaped in astonishment.
Arthur looked down at his blood soaked clothes, torn and dirtied in places and realised he must look like an escaped serial killer or something.
“If you’re looking for somewhere to stay,” he said, “we’ve got food and drink and blankets.”
“We?” the boy asked, recovering more quickly than his companion. Lance, Gareth and Merlin stepped round the corners; Gareth’s hand was still on his gun, still wary.
“There are nine of us,” Arthur said, “we decided that we might have better odds if we stuck together. As I said, you’re welcome to join us. We were just stopping for the night.”
“Well, I haven’ go’ anywhere else to be,” the boy said.
“And I’m not letting you leave with my money,” the man said.
“I’m Arthur.”
“Tristan,” the boy said, keeping his hands stuck deep in his pockets, staring at Arthur’s offered hand in suspicion.
“Percival Montgomery,” the man said, taking the hand and shaking it firmly, the handshake of an honest man, Arthur thought with a small smile. It was a handshake you always gave in business.
“Nice to meet you,” Will said, sticking his head round the edge of the wall. “Welcome to the restaurant at the end of the world. Would you like to see our menu?”
*
“That’s mine,” Gawain said quietly, from his corner. Merlin had to turn and look. That tone of voice struck him on some primal level. It said ‘back off’ and when he looked over to where Percival was standing, holding half a loaf of bread, he could see past him, just about, to where Gawain was sitting.
“Yes, well, I think I might need it more than you,” Percival said glaring down at him. Merlin could see Gareth standing up in the corner of his vision, keenly aware of what was going on.
“How exactly did you work that out?” Gawain asked, his voice still low and deadly. Percy didn’t even bother to look ashamed.
“Well, we need to keep up our strength.”
“For what?”
“Keeping everyone safe. No offence, but you aren’t going to be much good at that, are you?”
Merlin thought to himself for a moment that there were no two more worrying words in the English language than ‘No offence’, then he remembered the number of times Will had started a conversation with ‘don’t panic’ and re-evaluated. They were, however, probably the second most worrying combination of two words you could hear, though.
Gawain was smiling. It was not a nice smile. It was rather more akin to the smile of an executioner who really liked his job, just before he swung the axe.
Percival, who was an oblivious idiot, no offence or anything, didn’t notice. He just blithely continued with his speech.
“So, logically the food would be best distributed to those who play an active part in our continued survival.”
The shit was about to hit the fan, Merlin could tell, he just couldn’t tell how.
Somewhere to his left Arthur and Lance were debating whether it might be possible to kill a dragon with a two by four (and coming to the conclusion that only if it were a huge two by four, wielded by a god), Morgana was talking animatedly to Gwen about destiny, or magical hair care treatments, he couldn’t quite hear which. Tristan, who had been talking with Gareth, was on his feet and watching from a much closer distance than Jeff. Jeff had clearly seen exactly what Merlin had seen, that hard smile playing on Gawain’s lips, and decided the best thing to do was stay far away and hope that there was enough cover.
“Logically,” Gawain said, nodding. “Yes, I suppose logically you might be right. People who can’t walk should starve to death.”
“That’s not what I said,” Percival told him, pulling himself upright and trying to draw on the fact that he could look down at Gawain. It didn’t work. The main reason looking down on people had an effect was because they didn’t like to be reminded that you were taller than them. Merlin himself had used it to his own advantage a number of times. Gawain, though, had spent his entire life knowing that people were going to be looking down at him and it had clearly ceased to impress him. After all, what more were a couple of centimetres when people drew themselves up to their full height? From where he was sitting it didn’t make much difference at all.
So Percival’s attempt at looking superior backfired by just making him look like an arrogant git.
“I just suggested that there might be a fairer system in the distribution of food.”
“Very George Orwell of you,” Gawain replied.
“Pardon?”
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” he said, huffing a breath of acidic laughter. “Strangely enough I think the fairest way to distribute the food would be for everyone to have an equal share. Don’t you?”
“Surely resources should be distributed according to need.”
“Ah, so you are a communist.”
“What?”
“I said that you were a communist. No need to be offended by it, but that is Communism’s supposed basis, isn’t it: that every person be supplied according to his or her needs? Of course the only issue is who is deciding what that person’s needs are? Either it’s the decision of a central, supreme power, in which case the decision is subject to corruption, or it’s the decision of the person whose needs are being addressed, in which case it’s subject to their greed instead. Either way the entire principle refuses to take into account the human factor - that is the fact that every single person on this planet is a selfish bastard, when it comes right down to it.” Merlin watched Percival’s face flicker through confused to angry and right back to confused again. He glanced over at Gareth, who had stopped his slow progress to his brother’s side and was just smiling, a little smugly.
“What...” Percival said, obviously trying to work out where his effort to get more bread had gone a bit wrong. “I never said any of that. This is a completely different situation.”
“Really?” Gawain asked. “Because from where I’m sitting,” and he said the final word with a drawling inflection that made Percy’s eyes flicker down to the wheels of his chair and back up again, “it’s pretty much the same. You seem to have decided that you should be trusted to evaluate your own needs and mine as well. As I mentioned before, there’s a flaw in that system because, given that none of us here is an impartial observer to the situation, we all have our own vested interest.
“In which case,” he said, “I should probably point out that there is very little that we can do to make the system fair other than attempting to divide up what resources we have completely equally.”
“But some people don’t eat as much as others.”
“Then leftovers can be divided up again if the people whose leftovers they are volunteer them to be so,” Gawain suggested. He looked at Percival’s shell-shocked face and laughed.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly not even a little repentant. “I’m a lawyer, civil rights.” Percival blinked in obvious astonishment.
“You are a lawyer?” he asked in shock. Merlin winced again.
“Yeah... for some reason that always surprises people,” Gawain said shaking his head. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? People just don’t think gingers can be clever.”
“It is a terrible prejudice,” Gareth agreed quietly from where he was standing.
“Yes,” Percival said, “yes, right.” He slowly extended the bread towards Gawain.
“Keep it,” Gawain said with a smirk. “I think you need it more than I do.”
He wheeled himself around and went over to Gareth, giving him a bit of a glare as he did so and accepting Tristan’s high five easily.
“You’re seriously a lawyer?” the young man asked, looking a little worried. Gawain’s eyebrows rose up again. “No’ that I didn’ think you could be,” Tristan backpedalled desperately, “I just... you don’ seem the type.” He shrugged, an impressive move on a teenager. It made his whole body move with the movement of his shoulders and his head ducked down in a typical ‘not me’ sort of mood.
“I’m a civil rights lawyer,” Gawain said, smiling again, “not a criminal lawyer. I deal with cases of discrimination on account of gender, religion... hair colour.”
“Oh, right,” Tristan didn’t look happy.
“I haven’t stood in a criminal court for three years,” he said, “well, sat in a criminal court.”
Tristan gave a nervous laugh and nodded, kicking his foot along the ground, his hands still firmly in his pockets.
Merlin was almost amused by the sudden change in his character, the calm gone until all that was left were edges, sharp and thin. The teenager had been cocky as could be, swagger and self-assurance oozing out of him in a way that was a lot like Arthur - Merlin cast another glance over to where Lance and he were still arguing over the best way to kill a dragon. He wondered whether Percival had been right about his wallet (or Percy, as Merlin had taken to calling him in his head, delighting in popping the man’s over inflated ego even if it was just inside his own head), not that it mattered much now. Whatever money there was in there would do none of them any good.
Merlin listened to the chatter swirling about him and thought, for a moment, that he saw daylight, clear and bright through a window.
He jerked his eyes open quickly, realising that he was nodding off where he sat. There weren’t any windows around.
He had barely slept the last few nights, his brain replaying things behind his eyes whenever he closed them, his co-worker, stepping backwards out of that window, the bodies torn and broken, bloody on the ground, dragons and griffins and bears. The nightmares were worse because they were real.
He tried to force himself to stay awake, but the lilt of the conversations around him, no longer fraught with the tension of Percy’s arrogance, was soothing, and he knew that he couldn’t keep running on empty. He stared at the shadowy walls looming out of the darkness, half lit by torch light.
Then the light seemed to fade into complete darkness and the conversation drifted away until there was only silence around him.
*
It’s a dream; Merlin knows that as soon as he opens his eyes. It’s a strange feeling because he’s never known that he was dreaming before. He remembers that line from the Bible, Elijah or Ephesians or something, now he sees through a glass darkly. He doesn’t feel anything, he just sees and hears.
It is dark in this place, but it is not utterly black. Some part of his brain understands that there is somewhere blacker than this. He has been somewhere blacker than this, though he cannot remember it now, except in the way you remember things in dreams: knowledge with no sense of experience.
He looks down at his hands. The colour of them seems faded, almost nonexistent. This is because he is dreaming, he thinks, and he is not of the dream world.
Not of the dream world. That’s not his way of thinking, but it doesn’t surprise him either. Nothing here is quite what it feels like it should be. He feels old, older than trees and hills, though not as old as earth, or light or darkness. He feels weary.
Again, it is not a bodily sensation, just a knowledge.
“Merlin.” A girl’s voice says from behind him. “Merlin, I’m sorry I had to speak with you.”
He turns around to face the girl, and she is familiar, like a dream he has had before, a long time ago, or maybe the memory of another lifetime.
Merlin does not, as a rule, believe in past lives, but here in the dream world, anything seems possible.
The girl is pretty in frozen way, like she’s just a photograph, there’s nothing real, nothing alive behind it. Merlin knows, without asking, that this is because she is frozen, a frozen moment in time, frozen in the second of her death. She died too young. Merlin wants to cry for her, but his tears do not fall. He has already shed all the tears he can for this girl, a long time ago, a lifetime ago… or seven.
“You returned it to me,” she says, “You bound Morgana to protect it in punishment, but I gave my protection as a gift, and I failed.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says.
“I know, but now I have another chance,” she says, leaning towards him. “We were both bound to that lake, and I am part of it because it is part of me. I will give you another gift, as you once gave a gift to me.”
“I… don’t remember,” Merlin tries, racks his brains to find some hint of what she means, but it is like raking his fingers through sand or mist - thoughts and memories, half formed, tumble away.
“No, but you will one day.” She leans forward again, smiling at him. Merlin has never been able to keep his head when pretty girls smile at him, it has got him into trouble on more than one occasion. Pretty guys too, for that matter.
An image of Arthur flashes through his brain, smiling in a way that Merlin has not seen him smile, lit by sun that is warmer and more golden than any sun that Merlin has felt on his skin. Nostalgia, he thinks.
The girl reaches her hand out to the darkness beside her, and she takes something from thin air. Or maybe, it was there all along.
Merlin thinks that both things are true at the same time. He doesn’t know how that works exactly, but it is the way of dreams.
It is a sword that she holds, and Merlin thinks, for a moment, that she will run him through.
“This is not the sword,” she says. “This is a memory of the sword.”
“Right,” Merlin says, like he understands.
“It is my memory of the sword,” she says again. “And it will help you find it.”
He reaches out to take the hilt, but instead, she swings it around so the point is at his chest. She is smiling sadly.
“You were never mine to begin with,” she says, “but thank you for giving me a few days of your life.”
The point of the sword, memory-sword, pierces his chest, a bright, sudden pain in this world of no sensation.
As agony overcomes him, she keeps pushing until the sword is in him up to the hilt, but it does not come out the other side.
Merlin knows, on some instinctive level, that it only hurts because it is a memory. A real sword would have no power here.
She releases the hilt and Merlin reels backward. He had not realised he was falling until he opens his eyes and he is on his knees.
Their eyes meet. She looks sad. She looks like goodbye. It is an odd thing to think, Merlin knows, that a person can look like goodbye, but she does.
He knows what to do as she turns away. It is only he who can accept the gift. He puts his hands on the hilt and he pushes, the cross guard slips into him, even though it is blunt, sliding into his body, and the pain grows, but he keeps on pushing until the hilt is halfway in, all the way in and there is just the pommel sticking out above his heart, echoing his pulse.
He looks down at it, through the pain, curious to see the golden metal sticking out of his chest. Then, with one finger, he pushes the last inch into him, and it slips inside as easily as if he were insubstantial.
The memory of the sword is inside him, it is part of him and he feels it.
The skin of his chest has no sign that it has ever been broken and the dream world is empty except for him.
Then Merlin wakes up, and the dream world is empty completely once more.
*
“I dunno,” Tristan said. In his teenage mumble it had fewer consonants, sounding like ‘ayuhoh’. He looked around. “It could be true: there are, like, dragons and shi’, after all.”
“I’m not some mythical King,” Arthur complained, but his voice was lost in the murmurings that began from around him.
Morgana had started her crusade again, telling everyone her insane theories, her tall tales and mad stories about him and his mythical counterpart.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are or not,” Gawain said thoughtfully. “We need someone to be in charge. There are eleven of us now. Two or three might work as a democracy, but we need someone to make the decisions out there.”
“I work in an office.”
“I hate to break this to you,” Gawain said with a laugh, “but your office job is long gone. It’s a brave new world out there, and we need different skills.”
“I’m not a leader,” Arthur protested, but even as he said the words he was unsure of them. He might not have been born to lead, might not have been trained to lead - and he sure as hell was not some King from story books - but he had never been a follower, never done as he was told without thought. He preferred it in the front, liked to make his own decisions. He needed control, especially in a situation like this.
But in a situation like this, the last place anyone wanted to be was in charge. People were going to die.
He hated himself for thinking it, but people were going to die, and he did not want to be the person who sent them to their deaths.
“You’ve been leading us since we met,” Gawain said quietly, “you just haven’t realised it yet.”
“He’s right,” Gwen said encouragingly, leaning over to touch his arm. “You’re the one who’s been taking charge. This is just making it official.”
It had been Morgana’s idea to put it to the vote. That is, he thought it had been Morgana’s idea, though it might have been his. She had done the thing where she twisted things around until he wasn’t sure which were his ideas and which were hers. She seemed to see into his mind half the time, like she had known him so long, like she claimed.
“I’m not going to ask you to follow me when I have no more idea of what’s going on than you do,” Arthur told them, standing up. He caught Merlin watching him thoughtfully from the corner. When the man saw that he was looking back he flashed him a grin.
“You’re not asking us, we’re volunteering.” There was a hum of agreement from around the circle. Arthur was annoyed to see even Lance join in. He had thought he could at least rely on sanity from that corner. It was only a few days ago that they had both thought Arthur was having a nervous break down after all.
It was strange to think, but Arthur had not had the same sick feeling of being in the wrong place since the cataclysm had begun, just the opposite in fact. He felt like he was exactly where he needed to be, like every part of him was working together… in cosmic harmony or some other such hippy nonsense.
He glared at Morgana, convinced that this was her fault.
“I am not going to be responsible for you,” he told them, turning on his heel and stalking off down the corridor, forgetting his torch in his haste to get away.
Somewhere deep down he knew that he already felt responsible for them all, each of them individually, but it wasn’t official. It wasn’t real.
He sighed and slumped against the wall.
*
Without electric light, every part of the tunnels was pitch black, except for the odd section where the torches of the survivors glowed. Lance didn’t have to walk far before he saw the dim glow of Arthur’s silhouetting his friend where he stood, staring upwards towards the ground and the world above - the world they had been exiled from.
He cleared his throat rather than creep up on the man. In the current circumstances, surprises were liable to be dangerous for everyone involved,
“Arthur?” The man turned to him, so that Lance could see his profile and just make out his expression. He pulled his own torch out of a pocket and switched it on. He saw Arthur blink at the sudden invasion of light.
“She seems to think I should…” Arthur began. His voice was emotionless, but Lance had known him too long to be taken in by that.
“Someone needs to take charge,” Lance pointed out. “If we don’t work together then we’re dead.”
“I know, but I…” Arthur took a deep breath. “The world is ending out there, Lance. It’s crumbling down and there’s nothing left.”
“There’s us,” Lance took a step forward, just close enough to reach out and grasp Arthur’s arm. He pulled Arthur around abruptly. “We are alive, and we have hope. But those people out there need someone to follow.”
“I work in an office,” Arthur said slowly, repeating his words from earlier. He didn’t know why he couldn’t come up with a better reason than that.
“You’ve never been entirely comfortable there, and we both know it,” Lance told him, smiling a little in amusement. “You spent your holidays travelling the world and climbing mountains. You’ve never been happy without a challenge.”
“This isn’t just a challenge,” Arthur said, drawing a deep breath, “this is life and death. If I fail - when I fail - then people die, Lance. It’s not like a computer game, and those things out there. You saw them, they had - I’ve never seen anything like it before. And she’s convincing them all to follow me because she claims I’m some destined leader. She’s got them looking at me like I’m a damn saviour when I’m just as-” Lance could see the word ‘terrified’ being swallowed back. “When I’m just as lost as they are. She’s feeding them lies.”
“After what I’ve seen in the past days, it’s not a great leap to think that maybe fate is real,” Lance said, choosing his words carefully. “Perhaps we were destined to be here.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“I didn’t believe in magic until yesterday. Now I’m completely certain it’s real.”
“Just because there is something out there, doesn’t mean that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary hero who never existed in the first place.” Arthur slumped against the wall and Lance almost regretted his decision to come after him. Perhaps he should have left his friend to fume. Perhaps he shouldn’t even be talking him into this.
“Did I ever tell you my full name?” he asked after a moment. He felt Arthur look at him again, confused.
“You’re name’s Lance Thomas Cartwright” Arthur said, “what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Actually, it’s not,” Lance said, drawing in a deep breath. “I just introduced myself as Lance and you never thought to ask if it was short for anything. I always have done. It stopped people from… well. It stopped the jokes.”
“What jokes?”
“My name’s Lancelot, Arthur, Lancelot. Not Lance.” He paused as Arthur laughed, the sound ricocheting off the walls.
“Good joke! God, for a moment there I thought you were serious.”
“I am. My mother named me Lancelot. If I’d had a sister she would have been called Guinevere. I’m sort of glad I ended up an only child, if only so that no one would make incest jokes.”
“Your name’s really Lancelot?”
“Yes,” Lance turned to look down the tunnel. “And back there we’ve got a Morgana, a Guinevere and a Merlin, Arthur, not to mention the Gawain. Gawain. I’m not sure I believe in coincidences that big.”
“A Guinevere?”
“Gwen,” Lance explained calmly. “We were talking about people’s names. It came up.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, but it’s certainly suspicious.”
“I am not King Arthur,” Arthur snapped, “I won’t have people follow me because they think I’m someone I’m not.”
“Then how about having people follow you for who you are?” Merlin’s voice came out of the darkness to their right and Lance’s torch swivelled round to spotlight him in a split second.
“What do you mean?” Arthur asked, the wind taken out of his sails suddenly, caught off guard. “Did she send you to try and convince me of her… insanities?”
“No,” Merlin replied, smiling and stepping closer. “I’m with you on that. So there are a few coincidences with names. I’m definitely not the reincarnation of some old wizard with truly appalling taste in facial hair.” Lance smirked slightly at that. “I mean that. I don’t know you; we only met a couple of days ago. But from what I’ve seen, when you’re not being a git or an arsehole, you’re a good person. You’re smart, you’re brave to the point of foolhardy and the very fact that you’re out here worrying about it means that you care about these people.
“They don’t need a mythical saviour. They need someone here and now and, like it or not, you’re the person that people have started looking to.” Merlin’s eyes were staring directly at Arthur and when Lance turned back to his friend he saw that Arthur’s own gaze was glued to the newcomer. He felt as though he had faded into the background and the two of them were communicating without him.
“I won’t be perfect,” Arthur muttered, his voice low.
“No one is,” Merlin replied, suddenly grinning and turning away. He gave Lance a smile as he went. “Anyway, we’re making dinner. Gwen brought baked beans. See you in a minute when you’ve stopped having your drama queen moment.”
“I’m not…” Arthur began, but Merlin had already disappeared into the dark of the tunnel. “So.” He looked back at Lance. “Looks like I’m in charge.”
“Congratulations.”
*
Chapter 6: Aesop and the Dragon
Chapter 5: Law and Order
Arthur wasn’t sure how many hours they were walking for before they were too tired to walk any more. They came to another station, Arthur had lost count how many they had been through, but the sign on the wall said that they had arrived at Embankment. Arthur had been through this station a million times before, but it looked different dark and abandoned like it was. Almost like a crypt. He pulled his thoughts away from the bleak places they had started to enjoy dwelling in. This was as good a place to stop as any, he thought to himself.
Morgana had begun to spout her nonsense again, talking about a sword and a way out. The others were listening to her, like the rubbish made sense. It was all he could do not to start shouting; it was only the knowledge that they were so close to the surface that kept him quiet. He didn’t know whether his voice would carry far enough, even in this eerie silence, but he didn’t want to chance it.
“This will do,” he heard himself say; “We’re on what, four lines? That gives us more than enough escape routes.”
“It also gives us a dozen different entrances to guard,” Will muttered, but Arthur ignored him. “We’re in the middle of London, here. You heard that guy on the radio: this is the centre of it all. This is where it all started. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“No,” but it wasn’t Arthur who spoke, he couldn’t find anything to argue with in Will’s speech, it was Morgana. “We’re here for a reason. If we don’t stop this then no one will.”
“No offence,” Jeff said, an edge of hysteria to his voice, “but you’re crazy. We’re here because we got stuck in something that is completely mad, and I agree with Will. We need out.”
“You can’t just turn away from this,” Morgana said, her voice rising. “You’re in the middle of a war here.”
“I didn’t choose this,” Will pointed out, “if you want to commit suicide then go ahead, but I’m not joining you.”
“It’s not suicide,” she said, “not if we find Excalibur.”
“Morgana,” Gwen said quietly, “Excalibur is a legend.”
“So are dragons, so are griffins, so are unicorns, and yet you can all accept those exist now. Try to extend your belief just a little. You can’t run away from this. If we won’t fight then who will?”
“The army,” Gareth said, shrugging. “That’s what they’re here for.”
“Those parts of the army that aren’t engaged overseas, what good will they even do? Their weapons are as much use against these enemies as a bunch of flowers.”
“Then what good will we be?” Merlin asked. “I mean, if I could actually do any good then I’d stay, I’d fight, but I can’t see what the point is. All we’ll be doing is dying.”
“No, you’re not going to die,” Morgana told him, reaching out to touch his arm. “Not this time, not so soon. If you had just…” she bit back her words. “We have more chance than anyone. I swear to you. I swear that we are the ones who have to do something.”
“We are…” Arthur began, but his words were cut off by a noise from beyond the platform, in the rest of the station. Everyone fell quiet.
Footsteps. Voices.
“Stop followin’ me,” a young man’s voice half shouted in the peculiar whine of the teenager.
“Not until you give me back my wallet you arrogant little pick pocket,” the second voice was also male but more refined, like someone who had had extensive elocution lessons. Arthur’s eyebrows rose, even his father had not insisted on diction like that.
“I ain’ got yer fucking wallet, tosser,” the teenager replied.
“Then explain why it disappeared right after I met you. I am not going to leave you alone, young man, until I have my property and I have turned you over to the police.”
“Yeah right,” the teenager laughed, “like to see you try. No cops around, nobody around. Everyone’s fucking dead, or ‘adn’t you noticed?”
“Your language is appalling,” the second voice said.
“Sorry. I though’, under the circumstances ‘n’all a few swear words might be called for.”
“There is never an excuse for vulgar language.”
Arthur’s hand relaxed the hold on his gun that he had not even realised he had, and there was a general sigh of relief.
“Why did you even come down here?” asked the older voice, “Catching a train?”
“They won’ be running after a quake like that, will they?” the teenager asked like the man was stupid. “Don’ be an idiot. I came down ‘ere to get away from up there.”
“With the electricity off, we won’t be able to see.”
“Be’er to be blind than burned alive, or didn’ you see those poor buggers out in the streets.”
“It was probably some sort of accident, caused by the earthquake.”
“And those big things in the sky? Large wading birds, were they?”
Arthur drew in a deep breath and stepped out, switching on his torch.
“Hello,” he said, “Hi…”
The teenage boy, a lanky young man all lines and the hard, pointy angles of elbows, jumped, but tried to cover it up, huddling in on himself. Beside him, the older man, impeccably dressed in a suit and a good few years older than Arthur himself, gaped in astonishment.
Arthur looked down at his blood soaked clothes, torn and dirtied in places and realised he must look like an escaped serial killer or something.
“If you’re looking for somewhere to stay,” he said, “we’ve got food and drink and blankets.”
“We?” the boy asked, recovering more quickly than his companion. Lance, Gareth and Merlin stepped round the corners; Gareth’s hand was still on his gun, still wary.
“There are nine of us,” Arthur said, “we decided that we might have better odds if we stuck together. As I said, you’re welcome to join us. We were just stopping for the night.”
“Well, I haven’ go’ anywhere else to be,” the boy said.
“And I’m not letting you leave with my money,” the man said.
“I’m Arthur.”
“Tristan,” the boy said, keeping his hands stuck deep in his pockets, staring at Arthur’s offered hand in suspicion.
“Percival Montgomery,” the man said, taking the hand and shaking it firmly, the handshake of an honest man, Arthur thought with a small smile. It was a handshake you always gave in business.
“Nice to meet you,” Will said, sticking his head round the edge of the wall. “Welcome to the restaurant at the end of the world. Would you like to see our menu?”
*
“That’s mine,” Gawain said quietly, from his corner. Merlin had to turn and look. That tone of voice struck him on some primal level. It said ‘back off’ and when he looked over to where Percival was standing, holding half a loaf of bread, he could see past him, just about, to where Gawain was sitting.
“Yes, well, I think I might need it more than you,” Percival said glaring down at him. Merlin could see Gareth standing up in the corner of his vision, keenly aware of what was going on.
“How exactly did you work that out?” Gawain asked, his voice still low and deadly. Percy didn’t even bother to look ashamed.
“Well, we need to keep up our strength.”
“For what?”
“Keeping everyone safe. No offence, but you aren’t going to be much good at that, are you?”
Merlin thought to himself for a moment that there were no two more worrying words in the English language than ‘No offence’, then he remembered the number of times Will had started a conversation with ‘don’t panic’ and re-evaluated. They were, however, probably the second most worrying combination of two words you could hear, though.
Gawain was smiling. It was not a nice smile. It was rather more akin to the smile of an executioner who really liked his job, just before he swung the axe.
Percival, who was an oblivious idiot, no offence or anything, didn’t notice. He just blithely continued with his speech.
“So, logically the food would be best distributed to those who play an active part in our continued survival.”
The shit was about to hit the fan, Merlin could tell, he just couldn’t tell how.
Somewhere to his left Arthur and Lance were debating whether it might be possible to kill a dragon with a two by four (and coming to the conclusion that only if it were a huge two by four, wielded by a god), Morgana was talking animatedly to Gwen about destiny, or magical hair care treatments, he couldn’t quite hear which. Tristan, who had been talking with Gareth, was on his feet and watching from a much closer distance than Jeff. Jeff had clearly seen exactly what Merlin had seen, that hard smile playing on Gawain’s lips, and decided the best thing to do was stay far away and hope that there was enough cover.
“Logically,” Gawain said, nodding. “Yes, I suppose logically you might be right. People who can’t walk should starve to death.”
“That’s not what I said,” Percival told him, pulling himself upright and trying to draw on the fact that he could look down at Gawain. It didn’t work. The main reason looking down on people had an effect was because they didn’t like to be reminded that you were taller than them. Merlin himself had used it to his own advantage a number of times. Gawain, though, had spent his entire life knowing that people were going to be looking down at him and it had clearly ceased to impress him. After all, what more were a couple of centimetres when people drew themselves up to their full height? From where he was sitting it didn’t make much difference at all.
So Percival’s attempt at looking superior backfired by just making him look like an arrogant git.
“I just suggested that there might be a fairer system in the distribution of food.”
“Very George Orwell of you,” Gawain replied.
“Pardon?”
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” he said, huffing a breath of acidic laughter. “Strangely enough I think the fairest way to distribute the food would be for everyone to have an equal share. Don’t you?”
“Surely resources should be distributed according to need.”
“Ah, so you are a communist.”
“What?”
“I said that you were a communist. No need to be offended by it, but that is Communism’s supposed basis, isn’t it: that every person be supplied according to his or her needs? Of course the only issue is who is deciding what that person’s needs are? Either it’s the decision of a central, supreme power, in which case the decision is subject to corruption, or it’s the decision of the person whose needs are being addressed, in which case it’s subject to their greed instead. Either way the entire principle refuses to take into account the human factor - that is the fact that every single person on this planet is a selfish bastard, when it comes right down to it.” Merlin watched Percival’s face flicker through confused to angry and right back to confused again. He glanced over at Gareth, who had stopped his slow progress to his brother’s side and was just smiling, a little smugly.
“What...” Percival said, obviously trying to work out where his effort to get more bread had gone a bit wrong. “I never said any of that. This is a completely different situation.”
“Really?” Gawain asked. “Because from where I’m sitting,” and he said the final word with a drawling inflection that made Percy’s eyes flicker down to the wheels of his chair and back up again, “it’s pretty much the same. You seem to have decided that you should be trusted to evaluate your own needs and mine as well. As I mentioned before, there’s a flaw in that system because, given that none of us here is an impartial observer to the situation, we all have our own vested interest.
“In which case,” he said, “I should probably point out that there is very little that we can do to make the system fair other than attempting to divide up what resources we have completely equally.”
“But some people don’t eat as much as others.”
“Then leftovers can be divided up again if the people whose leftovers they are volunteer them to be so,” Gawain suggested. He looked at Percival’s shell-shocked face and laughed.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly not even a little repentant. “I’m a lawyer, civil rights.” Percival blinked in obvious astonishment.
“You are a lawyer?” he asked in shock. Merlin winced again.
“Yeah... for some reason that always surprises people,” Gawain said shaking his head. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? People just don’t think gingers can be clever.”
“It is a terrible prejudice,” Gareth agreed quietly from where he was standing.
“Yes,” Percival said, “yes, right.” He slowly extended the bread towards Gawain.
“Keep it,” Gawain said with a smirk. “I think you need it more than I do.”
He wheeled himself around and went over to Gareth, giving him a bit of a glare as he did so and accepting Tristan’s high five easily.
“You’re seriously a lawyer?” the young man asked, looking a little worried. Gawain’s eyebrows rose up again. “No’ that I didn’ think you could be,” Tristan backpedalled desperately, “I just... you don’ seem the type.” He shrugged, an impressive move on a teenager. It made his whole body move with the movement of his shoulders and his head ducked down in a typical ‘not me’ sort of mood.
“I’m a civil rights lawyer,” Gawain said, smiling again, “not a criminal lawyer. I deal with cases of discrimination on account of gender, religion... hair colour.”
“Oh, right,” Tristan didn’t look happy.
“I haven’t stood in a criminal court for three years,” he said, “well, sat in a criminal court.”
Tristan gave a nervous laugh and nodded, kicking his foot along the ground, his hands still firmly in his pockets.
Merlin was almost amused by the sudden change in his character, the calm gone until all that was left were edges, sharp and thin. The teenager had been cocky as could be, swagger and self-assurance oozing out of him in a way that was a lot like Arthur - Merlin cast another glance over to where Lance and he were still arguing over the best way to kill a dragon. He wondered whether Percival had been right about his wallet (or Percy, as Merlin had taken to calling him in his head, delighting in popping the man’s over inflated ego even if it was just inside his own head), not that it mattered much now. Whatever money there was in there would do none of them any good.
Merlin listened to the chatter swirling about him and thought, for a moment, that he saw daylight, clear and bright through a window.
He jerked his eyes open quickly, realising that he was nodding off where he sat. There weren’t any windows around.
He had barely slept the last few nights, his brain replaying things behind his eyes whenever he closed them, his co-worker, stepping backwards out of that window, the bodies torn and broken, bloody on the ground, dragons and griffins and bears. The nightmares were worse because they were real.
He tried to force himself to stay awake, but the lilt of the conversations around him, no longer fraught with the tension of Percy’s arrogance, was soothing, and he knew that he couldn’t keep running on empty. He stared at the shadowy walls looming out of the darkness, half lit by torch light.
Then the light seemed to fade into complete darkness and the conversation drifted away until there was only silence around him.
*
It’s a dream; Merlin knows that as soon as he opens his eyes. It’s a strange feeling because he’s never known that he was dreaming before. He remembers that line from the Bible, Elijah or Ephesians or something, now he sees through a glass darkly. He doesn’t feel anything, he just sees and hears.
It is dark in this place, but it is not utterly black. Some part of his brain understands that there is somewhere blacker than this. He has been somewhere blacker than this, though he cannot remember it now, except in the way you remember things in dreams: knowledge with no sense of experience.
He looks down at his hands. The colour of them seems faded, almost nonexistent. This is because he is dreaming, he thinks, and he is not of the dream world.
Not of the dream world. That’s not his way of thinking, but it doesn’t surprise him either. Nothing here is quite what it feels like it should be. He feels old, older than trees and hills, though not as old as earth, or light or darkness. He feels weary.
Again, it is not a bodily sensation, just a knowledge.
“Merlin.” A girl’s voice says from behind him. “Merlin, I’m sorry I had to speak with you.”
He turns around to face the girl, and she is familiar, like a dream he has had before, a long time ago, or maybe the memory of another lifetime.
Merlin does not, as a rule, believe in past lives, but here in the dream world, anything seems possible.
The girl is pretty in frozen way, like she’s just a photograph, there’s nothing real, nothing alive behind it. Merlin knows, without asking, that this is because she is frozen, a frozen moment in time, frozen in the second of her death. She died too young. Merlin wants to cry for her, but his tears do not fall. He has already shed all the tears he can for this girl, a long time ago, a lifetime ago… or seven.
“You returned it to me,” she says, “You bound Morgana to protect it in punishment, but I gave my protection as a gift, and I failed.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says.
“I know, but now I have another chance,” she says, leaning towards him. “We were both bound to that lake, and I am part of it because it is part of me. I will give you another gift, as you once gave a gift to me.”
“I… don’t remember,” Merlin tries, racks his brains to find some hint of what she means, but it is like raking his fingers through sand or mist - thoughts and memories, half formed, tumble away.
“No, but you will one day.” She leans forward again, smiling at him. Merlin has never been able to keep his head when pretty girls smile at him, it has got him into trouble on more than one occasion. Pretty guys too, for that matter.
An image of Arthur flashes through his brain, smiling in a way that Merlin has not seen him smile, lit by sun that is warmer and more golden than any sun that Merlin has felt on his skin. Nostalgia, he thinks.
The girl reaches her hand out to the darkness beside her, and she takes something from thin air. Or maybe, it was there all along.
Merlin thinks that both things are true at the same time. He doesn’t know how that works exactly, but it is the way of dreams.
It is a sword that she holds, and Merlin thinks, for a moment, that she will run him through.
“This is not the sword,” she says. “This is a memory of the sword.”
“Right,” Merlin says, like he understands.
“It is my memory of the sword,” she says again. “And it will help you find it.”
He reaches out to take the hilt, but instead, she swings it around so the point is at his chest. She is smiling sadly.
“You were never mine to begin with,” she says, “but thank you for giving me a few days of your life.”
The point of the sword, memory-sword, pierces his chest, a bright, sudden pain in this world of no sensation.
As agony overcomes him, she keeps pushing until the sword is in him up to the hilt, but it does not come out the other side.
Merlin knows, on some instinctive level, that it only hurts because it is a memory. A real sword would have no power here.
She releases the hilt and Merlin reels backward. He had not realised he was falling until he opens his eyes and he is on his knees.
Their eyes meet. She looks sad. She looks like goodbye. It is an odd thing to think, Merlin knows, that a person can look like goodbye, but she does.
He knows what to do as she turns away. It is only he who can accept the gift. He puts his hands on the hilt and he pushes, the cross guard slips into him, even though it is blunt, sliding into his body, and the pain grows, but he keeps on pushing until the hilt is halfway in, all the way in and there is just the pommel sticking out above his heart, echoing his pulse.
He looks down at it, through the pain, curious to see the golden metal sticking out of his chest. Then, with one finger, he pushes the last inch into him, and it slips inside as easily as if he were insubstantial.
The memory of the sword is inside him, it is part of him and he feels it.
The skin of his chest has no sign that it has ever been broken and the dream world is empty except for him.
Then Merlin wakes up, and the dream world is empty completely once more.
*
“I dunno,” Tristan said. In his teenage mumble it had fewer consonants, sounding like ‘ayuhoh’. He looked around. “It could be true: there are, like, dragons and shi’, after all.”
“I’m not some mythical King,” Arthur complained, but his voice was lost in the murmurings that began from around him.
Morgana had started her crusade again, telling everyone her insane theories, her tall tales and mad stories about him and his mythical counterpart.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are or not,” Gawain said thoughtfully. “We need someone to be in charge. There are eleven of us now. Two or three might work as a democracy, but we need someone to make the decisions out there.”
“I work in an office.”
“I hate to break this to you,” Gawain said with a laugh, “but your office job is long gone. It’s a brave new world out there, and we need different skills.”
“I’m not a leader,” Arthur protested, but even as he said the words he was unsure of them. He might not have been born to lead, might not have been trained to lead - and he sure as hell was not some King from story books - but he had never been a follower, never done as he was told without thought. He preferred it in the front, liked to make his own decisions. He needed control, especially in a situation like this.
But in a situation like this, the last place anyone wanted to be was in charge. People were going to die.
He hated himself for thinking it, but people were going to die, and he did not want to be the person who sent them to their deaths.
“You’ve been leading us since we met,” Gawain said quietly, “you just haven’t realised it yet.”
“He’s right,” Gwen said encouragingly, leaning over to touch his arm. “You’re the one who’s been taking charge. This is just making it official.”
It had been Morgana’s idea to put it to the vote. That is, he thought it had been Morgana’s idea, though it might have been his. She had done the thing where she twisted things around until he wasn’t sure which were his ideas and which were hers. She seemed to see into his mind half the time, like she had known him so long, like she claimed.
“I’m not going to ask you to follow me when I have no more idea of what’s going on than you do,” Arthur told them, standing up. He caught Merlin watching him thoughtfully from the corner. When the man saw that he was looking back he flashed him a grin.
“You’re not asking us, we’re volunteering.” There was a hum of agreement from around the circle. Arthur was annoyed to see even Lance join in. He had thought he could at least rely on sanity from that corner. It was only a few days ago that they had both thought Arthur was having a nervous break down after all.
It was strange to think, but Arthur had not had the same sick feeling of being in the wrong place since the cataclysm had begun, just the opposite in fact. He felt like he was exactly where he needed to be, like every part of him was working together… in cosmic harmony or some other such hippy nonsense.
He glared at Morgana, convinced that this was her fault.
“I am not going to be responsible for you,” he told them, turning on his heel and stalking off down the corridor, forgetting his torch in his haste to get away.
Somewhere deep down he knew that he already felt responsible for them all, each of them individually, but it wasn’t official. It wasn’t real.
He sighed and slumped against the wall.
*
Without electric light, every part of the tunnels was pitch black, except for the odd section where the torches of the survivors glowed. Lance didn’t have to walk far before he saw the dim glow of Arthur’s silhouetting his friend where he stood, staring upwards towards the ground and the world above - the world they had been exiled from.
He cleared his throat rather than creep up on the man. In the current circumstances, surprises were liable to be dangerous for everyone involved,
“Arthur?” The man turned to him, so that Lance could see his profile and just make out his expression. He pulled his own torch out of a pocket and switched it on. He saw Arthur blink at the sudden invasion of light.
“She seems to think I should…” Arthur began. His voice was emotionless, but Lance had known him too long to be taken in by that.
“Someone needs to take charge,” Lance pointed out. “If we don’t work together then we’re dead.”
“I know, but I…” Arthur took a deep breath. “The world is ending out there, Lance. It’s crumbling down and there’s nothing left.”
“There’s us,” Lance took a step forward, just close enough to reach out and grasp Arthur’s arm. He pulled Arthur around abruptly. “We are alive, and we have hope. But those people out there need someone to follow.”
“I work in an office,” Arthur said slowly, repeating his words from earlier. He didn’t know why he couldn’t come up with a better reason than that.
“You’ve never been entirely comfortable there, and we both know it,” Lance told him, smiling a little in amusement. “You spent your holidays travelling the world and climbing mountains. You’ve never been happy without a challenge.”
“This isn’t just a challenge,” Arthur said, drawing a deep breath, “this is life and death. If I fail - when I fail - then people die, Lance. It’s not like a computer game, and those things out there. You saw them, they had - I’ve never seen anything like it before. And she’s convincing them all to follow me because she claims I’m some destined leader. She’s got them looking at me like I’m a damn saviour when I’m just as-” Lance could see the word ‘terrified’ being swallowed back. “When I’m just as lost as they are. She’s feeding them lies.”
“After what I’ve seen in the past days, it’s not a great leap to think that maybe fate is real,” Lance said, choosing his words carefully. “Perhaps we were destined to be here.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“I didn’t believe in magic until yesterday. Now I’m completely certain it’s real.”
“Just because there is something out there, doesn’t mean that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary hero who never existed in the first place.” Arthur slumped against the wall and Lance almost regretted his decision to come after him. Perhaps he should have left his friend to fume. Perhaps he shouldn’t even be talking him into this.
“Did I ever tell you my full name?” he asked after a moment. He felt Arthur look at him again, confused.
“You’re name’s Lance Thomas Cartwright” Arthur said, “what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Actually, it’s not,” Lance said, drawing in a deep breath. “I just introduced myself as Lance and you never thought to ask if it was short for anything. I always have done. It stopped people from… well. It stopped the jokes.”
“What jokes?”
“My name’s Lancelot, Arthur, Lancelot. Not Lance.” He paused as Arthur laughed, the sound ricocheting off the walls.
“Good joke! God, for a moment there I thought you were serious.”
“I am. My mother named me Lancelot. If I’d had a sister she would have been called Guinevere. I’m sort of glad I ended up an only child, if only so that no one would make incest jokes.”
“Your name’s really Lancelot?”
“Yes,” Lance turned to look down the tunnel. “And back there we’ve got a Morgana, a Guinevere and a Merlin, Arthur, not to mention the Gawain. Gawain. I’m not sure I believe in coincidences that big.”
“A Guinevere?”
“Gwen,” Lance explained calmly. “We were talking about people’s names. It came up.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, but it’s certainly suspicious.”
“I am not King Arthur,” Arthur snapped, “I won’t have people follow me because they think I’m someone I’m not.”
“Then how about having people follow you for who you are?” Merlin’s voice came out of the darkness to their right and Lance’s torch swivelled round to spotlight him in a split second.
“What do you mean?” Arthur asked, the wind taken out of his sails suddenly, caught off guard. “Did she send you to try and convince me of her… insanities?”
“No,” Merlin replied, smiling and stepping closer. “I’m with you on that. So there are a few coincidences with names. I’m definitely not the reincarnation of some old wizard with truly appalling taste in facial hair.” Lance smirked slightly at that. “I mean that. I don’t know you; we only met a couple of days ago. But from what I’ve seen, when you’re not being a git or an arsehole, you’re a good person. You’re smart, you’re brave to the point of foolhardy and the very fact that you’re out here worrying about it means that you care about these people.
“They don’t need a mythical saviour. They need someone here and now and, like it or not, you’re the person that people have started looking to.” Merlin’s eyes were staring directly at Arthur and when Lance turned back to his friend he saw that Arthur’s own gaze was glued to the newcomer. He felt as though he had faded into the background and the two of them were communicating without him.
“I won’t be perfect,” Arthur muttered, his voice low.
“No one is,” Merlin replied, suddenly grinning and turning away. He gave Lance a smile as he went. “Anyway, we’re making dinner. Gwen brought baked beans. See you in a minute when you’ve stopped having your drama queen moment.”
“I’m not…” Arthur began, but Merlin had already disappeared into the dark of the tunnel. “So.” He looked back at Lance. “Looks like I’m in charge.”
“Congratulations.”
*
Chapter 6: Aesop and the Dragon