Merlin fic: Smoky Eyes of Doom
The Evil Eyelined Universe
So one of the prompts on my AU bingo card was “Evil Goateed Universe”, which I had to look up before I even knew what it was. This is stretching that prompt a little (a lot), but it's still the same idea of judging someone's evilness by a single characteristic, in this case eye liner. redorchids and I were discussing the first Merlin ep when she pointed out that Merlin was embracing the tv trope “eye liner=evil” in the new season, and then went on to muse on what would happen if Merlin got hold of eye liner. And so this extremely silly piece was born.
Title: Smoky Eyes of Doom
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3000
Summary: Merlin had always thought his eyes could be brought out more.
A/N: This picks up somewhere half-way through Merlin 3.01, before Merlin figures out Morgana is not actually grateful to be back and intensely loyal (even though she's doing such a good job of pretending to be). Written for the au_bingo prompt Evil Goateed Universe, suitably mangled.
Things had mostly returned to normal at Camelot. The king had stopped crying tears of joy about Morgana's return and started talking about killing people, Arthur had begun training his knights again, Gaius was brewing sleeping potions like there was no tomorrow and Merlin was once again being sent like an errand boy to deliver them.
There had been something different about Morgana since she returned home after a year of being captive and scared and learning about the evils of sorcery or whatever it was she had actually been doing, he reflected as he walked through the halls of Camelot. It was hard to put his finger on it, but he knew that something wasn't entirely right.
He arrived at Morgana's door deep in thought and knocked twice, but receiving no answer he decided to enter anyway, because that was the way he rolled and he had never actually got in trouble for entering someone's chambers unasked before. All right, so he'd been mistaken for Gwen and attacked by magic serpents and almost been employed by an evil sorcerer planning to overthrow Camelot, but he'd never actually been yelled at.
He put the bottle of sleeping potion on Morgana's dressing table, frowned at the pedantic order on it-wondering if could bribe Gwen into cleaning his room now and again-and then frowned harder at an item on the far right. It couldn't be...
But yes, it was. He recognised it perfectly from his book of magic (chapter seven: Evil Sorcerers, The Recognising Of).
And most of all, beware the man or woman wearing Eye Liner. No truer mark of evil intent is to be found, and as it is said in the ancient scrolls: “Maybe it's real, maybe it's evil incarnate.”
Merlin stared in horror, trying to decide what to do. Could he tell Arthur? Would he even be believed? Could anyone truly think that Morgana would sink to such depths? He stood frozen in agonised thought, trying to look anywhere but the ominous pen but finding his gaze dragged back to the offending object again and again. There was something strangely alluring about it, and Merlin tried to shut his mind to it's evil sway.
Then again, he thought suddenly as he caught sight of his own face in Morgana's mirror, he'd always thought his eyes could be brought out more.
“And when you've done that,” Arthur said, watching Merlin carefully, “you can take these lists to Sir Leon. Is something bothering you, Merlin?”
Merlin looked at him, smiling oddly. “No, sire,” he said.
“It's just that you look a little... different...”
“Oh?” Merlin raised his eyebrows. That only made the oddness come into better focus-there was something strange about his eyes. “Does it make me darkly alluring? Sire?”
Arthur stared at him. “No,” he said firmly. “Are you sure you haven't hit your head recently?”
“I'm sure, sire,” Merlin said, smiling that weird smile again. “I'll just take that list, then.”
As he turned away, Arthur heard something that sounded suspiciously like a cackle.
The day after that, Arthur watched Merlin hide behind a corner with a piece of string in his hand, the other end of which was tied to a money bag. He saw Merlin wait until a passing guard or servant bent to pick the bag up and then yank the bag out of the way, giggling. The same afternoon one of the blacksmiths came to complain about someone who kept knocking on doors and running away.
Two days after that, he caught Merlin trying on one of Morgana's hooded capes. Granted, this wasn't the first time he'd discovered Merlin with women's clothes and he probably wouldn't have thought much about it, if it hadn't been for the fact that that kind of cape was usually never coveted by anyone but evil people and sorcerers.
(Oh, and Morgana. He was going to have a talk with her about that one of these days.)
And then, thinking over the past week, Arthur realised that Merlin had consistently called him “sire” for four days in a row. Something was very obviously wrong.
“Magic bad sorcery evil kill all wizards take over world blah blah blah,” Uther said.
Well, something like that. Arthur wasn't really listening. He was watching Merlin serve the meat instead, trying to work out what it was about him that was different lately.
“I think you agree with me, Arthur,” Uther said.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Arthur said, hoping that he was agreeing to something at least marginally sane. There was that odd smile on Merlin's face again!
“I think it's a brilliant idea,” Morgana said, leaning forward and laying a hand on Uther's arm, while her other hand poured him some wine. Arthur spared her a glance. There was something not quite right with her, too, but this didn't worry him quite as much. There had been something not quite right with Morgana for years.
“I'm glad to have such trusted advisers with me,” Uther said indulgently, then picked up his knife and fork. “Can someone pass me the salt?”
Arthur gave him the bowl of salt next to his plate, only narrowly beating Morgana to it. She glared at him. Uther took a pinch of salt and sprinkled it fastidiously on his duck, then took a bite of it. His expression changed slowly from delight to horror.
“Father?” Arthur asked, worried. “Father, are you all right?”
Uther very slowly spat the duck out again. “Who,” he said dangerously, “had the audacity to switch the salt for sugar?”
Arthur stared at the bowl of not-salt-after-all, then turned in his seat and glared suspiciously at Merlin, who was looking straight ahead with an innocent expression. Slightly mollified-he'd never yet seen Merlin being able to hide a guilty conscience-he turned back around, only to hear a quiet little “mwaha” behind him.
Right, that was it. He was talking to Gaius in the morning.
By old habit, Arthur switched goblets with Uther and then knocked his over. The wine smoked as it quickly burned through the tablecloth, but this was a fairly regular occurrence during family meals and he didn't give it much thought.
Morgana was walking from Uther's chambers when she ran into Merlin.
“Oh, hello, Merlin,” she said, composing her face into the loyal-daughter-of-Camelot expression she and Morgause had been practising together. “Is everything well?”
For one strange moment, Morgana had the sense that Merlin, too, was composing his expression, but he answered her readily enough.
“Yes, fine,” he said. “I'm just taking all these knives I'm carrying to be sharpened and I'm not going to hide them in my room and plot the downfall of the kingdom at all.”
“That's sounds nice,” Morgana said, smiling sweetly at him. She was trying to work out what it was about Merlin that seemed different.
Merlin smiled at her. “Well, I should be off. I'm happy to see you looking well.”
Morgana shook the thought away and favoured him with another sweet smile. “Thank you, Merlin.”
She let him pass her, then turned back towards him and was about to smirk when the sight of Merlin doing just that made her stop and gape in surprise. He turned his head again and rounded a corner quickly, but she was certain of what she had seen.
That had been her smirk.
Gaius had noticed that Merlin was acting differently than usual, of course, but he had thought that Arthur's suggestion that Merlin was under some kind of evil enchantment seemed like a bit of an overreaction. Even when Merlin regularly started tripping Gaius up he dismissed it as boyish high spirits. But when he woke one morning and tried to put on his tunic only to find that both sleeves had been tied into a knot, he began to think that Arthur might actually have a point.
The secret path to the secret cave was empty and quiet as Morgana made her way to Morgause's hiding place. She had slipped out of the castle easily enough and had made it through the forest without trouble, but she still longed to arrive at the warm cave and shut the night out. She and Morgause didn't have a meeting scheduled for this day, but she was certain Morgause would be only too pleased to see her.
She saw the red of the fire shine out ahead and hastened forward, then stopped when she was only a few feet from the entrance. She had heard laughter.
It wasn't entirely unusual for Morgause to laugh when there was no one else around, of course, but-that hadn't sounded like Morgause.
“No, no, no, I keep telling you,” she heard Morgause's voice say. “Very carefully apply black eye shadow in an even layer over the entire eyelid and then use the brush to soften the edges. No, now you're doing it wrong again.”
Morgana gasped, ran the last couple of steps forward and entered the cave, then stopped short. Merlin and Morgause looked at her balefully, the former wielding a brush and the latter holding up a small mirror.
“Do you mind?” Morgause asked eventually in icy tones. “We're kind of in the middle of something here.”
Morgana stared for several seconds, then turned on her heel and ran. As she stumbled down the path, tears of fury and betrayal stinging in her eyes, she heard Merlin say in a voice clearly intended to carry to her ears, “Ooh, those split ends are really making her tetchy, aren't they.”
Looking at Merlin was making Arthur increasingly uncomfortable. There was something vaguely slinking about all his movements now, a kind of sinister grace, and while this meant that he wasn't walking into nearly as much furniture, it also meant that he looked weird and, for some reason, like Morgana.
“You can go, Merlin,” Arthur finally said, making a dismissive gesture. “I'm going to bed.”
“Yes, sire,” Merlin said, in that suspiciously servile tone he'd adopted the past week, and bowed his way out of the room. Arthur stared for some time at the closed door, then shook his head briskly and moved to his privacy screen, changing into his night clothes. Sighing and rolling his aching shoulders, he got into bed and prepared to stretch out luxuriously.
His feet met resistance.
“What the-” he began, then sat up and examined his bedding, finally exclaiming incredulously, “Merlin, did you short-sheet me?”
A distinctly cackling laugh from the other side of his door was all the answer he was going to get.
“Merlin is ruining everything,” Morgana said unhappily, her head in Gwen's lap while Gwen, never happy while her hands were idle, was mending a bonnet.
“There, there,” she said vaguely.
“I mean,” Morgana went on, “he just suddenly became good at sneaking around and he stole my smirk and now he's trying to steal my Morgause, too! She was giving him make-up advice!”
“Morgause?” Gwen frowned. “Isn't she the sorceress who broke into Camelot and killed our guards and defeated Arthur in a duel and raised some knights from the dead to murder Uther and has on numerous occasions attempted to break the kingdom from the inside?”
Morgana shifted position uneasily. “I meant Mordred,” she said.
“Oh.” Gwen frowned again. “Isn't he seven years old?”
“He's precocious.”
“Didn't you call him 'she'?”
“And confused,” Morgana snapped, testily. “Stop being clever! I don't pay you to be clever.”
“You don't pay me,” Gwen reminded gently, and Morgana made a face.
“Can't you just pat my hair?” she said plaintively.
Gwen entered the kitchen that same evening to find it the floor covered in soup. Half the kitchen staff was wearing bandages or bruises, the head cook was sobbing by the table and Rhonda was swabbing the flagstones angrily.
“What happened?” Gwen asked in astonishment, then stepped out of the way as Gerwin went past, carrying a stack of bent and buckled plates.
“Someone,” said Rhonda, sloshing water over the floor with barely contained fury, “left banana peels all over the kitchen floor. Llian slipped on one and upset the soup cauldron, and it hit Merion who dropped all the plates and then Brionne stepped on one of those and fell and she was holding the pudding and...”
Gwen listened wearily as Rhonda raged on, standing back to avoid being splashed with soup and water as Rhonda's gestures became more and more violent. Right, she thought. This had to stop.
“I'm worried about Merlin. He's getting out of hand,” Gwen said. Gaius nodded solemnly.
“This morning he tied my shoelaces together while we were eating breakfast,” he said. “And my shoes didn't even have laces until then!”
“He put my boots by my bed the wrong way around this morning,” Arthur said darkly. “Again.”
“We need to do something quickly,” Gwen said anxiously. “I'm afraid he's getting worse.”
“Gaius, do you have any idea what's causing all this?” Arthur asked. Gaius looked uncertain.
“It's difficult to know without any clear symptoms,” he said. “It would help if you could remember something that has been clearly different about him during the last days.”
They all stood in silent thought for some time. It was getting increasingly to hard to remember any other Merlin than the one who smirked and cackled a lot.
“His eyes,” Arthur said finally. “I think there's something strange about his eyes.”
“His eyes...” Gaius mused, turning to his encyclopedia of Everything People In Camelot Could Possibly Have Use For and starting to flick through the pages. “I know I've seen something here-oh, no.”
“What?” Gwen asked quickly. Gaius shook his head sadly.
“It's worse than we thought,” he said. “It might already be too late. You will have to act very quickly indeed if you are to save him.”
His tirade was stopped by Arthur's hand on his arm.
“Tell me what I need to do,” he said quietly, “and I'll do it.”
Gaius told him. Arthur lit up.
“That?” he said. “Oh, that's easy. I do that all the time.”
“Gaius,” Gwen said carefully once Arthur had left. “That doesn't say anything about a true love's kiss, does it?”
“What?” Gaius stared at her. “No, Gwen. Why?”
Gwen blushed. “No reason,” she said.
“Oh, Merlin...”
Merlin turned and looked suspiciously at Arthur. “Sire?” he said carefully, eyes flicking from Arthur to the knights on either side of him. Arthur grinned.
“Let's get him,” he said, and took a rather great pleasure in the panicky look that crossed Merlin's face before they all grabbed him. They carried him bodily to the water barrel, Merlin screaming insults and threats all the way.
“I will serve you rat's stew for the rest of your life!” he shouted. “Just you wait, Arthur, you haven't seen anything yet!”
“Dunk him in,” Arthur commanded, trying to keep hold of a flailing arm. “Quickly!”
There was a brief silence as Merlin's head disappeared under water, and then he resurfaced.
“I will put breadcrumbs in your bed!” he screamed.
“It isn't helping,” Arthur said urgently. “Quick, dunk him again.” He pushed his sleeve down over his palm and thrust his arm into the barrel, rubbing it vigorously over Merlin's face.
When Merlin was dragged back out of the water this time, he came blinking in confusion with black marks down his cheek. “What happened?” he asked, looking shocked. “What have I been doing? Where am I?”
“Shh,” Arthur said, gesturing for the knights to let him go and laying a reassuring arm around Merlin's shoulders. “You were under an evil spell. Of make-up.”
Merlin gasped. “Not-eye liner?”
Arthur nodded solemnly. “I'm afraid so. Can you remember how it happened?”
Merlin shook his head. “It was like being in an evil dream. I can't remember how it started,” he confessed. “It must have been someone of questionable loyalties in a position of trust here in Camelot who I know well enough to talk to occasionally, but I have no idea of who that could be.”
“We will get whoever did it,” Arthur promised, although he, too, was doubtful. “In the meantime, you should probably keep away from mirrors. You might have a relapse.”
Merlin shivered. “No, I've learnt my lesson,” he said. “I will never touch eye liner again in my life. Do you know,” he added with a horrified grimace, “I think I was even starting to consider leather pants.”
THE END
So one of the prompts on my AU bingo card was “Evil Goateed Universe”, which I had to look up before I even knew what it was. This is stretching that prompt a little (a lot), but it's still the same idea of judging someone's evilness by a single characteristic, in this case eye liner. redorchids and I were discussing the first Merlin ep when she pointed out that Merlin was embracing the tv trope “eye liner=evil” in the new season, and then went on to muse on what would happen if Merlin got hold of eye liner. And so this extremely silly piece was born.
Title: Smoky Eyes of Doom
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3000
Summary: Merlin had always thought his eyes could be brought out more.
A/N: This picks up somewhere half-way through Merlin 3.01, before Merlin figures out Morgana is not actually grateful to be back and intensely loyal (even though she's doing such a good job of pretending to be). Written for the au_bingo prompt Evil Goateed Universe, suitably mangled.
Things had mostly returned to normal at Camelot. The king had stopped crying tears of joy about Morgana's return and started talking about killing people, Arthur had begun training his knights again, Gaius was brewing sleeping potions like there was no tomorrow and Merlin was once again being sent like an errand boy to deliver them.
There had been something different about Morgana since she returned home after a year of being captive and scared and learning about the evils of sorcery or whatever it was she had actually been doing, he reflected as he walked through the halls of Camelot. It was hard to put his finger on it, but he knew that something wasn't entirely right.
He arrived at Morgana's door deep in thought and knocked twice, but receiving no answer he decided to enter anyway, because that was the way he rolled and he had never actually got in trouble for entering someone's chambers unasked before. All right, so he'd been mistaken for Gwen and attacked by magic serpents and almost been employed by an evil sorcerer planning to overthrow Camelot, but he'd never actually been yelled at.
He put the bottle of sleeping potion on Morgana's dressing table, frowned at the pedantic order on it-wondering if could bribe Gwen into cleaning his room now and again-and then frowned harder at an item on the far right. It couldn't be...
But yes, it was. He recognised it perfectly from his book of magic (chapter seven: Evil Sorcerers, The Recognising Of).
And most of all, beware the man or woman wearing Eye Liner. No truer mark of evil intent is to be found, and as it is said in the ancient scrolls: “Maybe it's real, maybe it's evil incarnate.”
Merlin stared in horror, trying to decide what to do. Could he tell Arthur? Would he even be believed? Could anyone truly think that Morgana would sink to such depths? He stood frozen in agonised thought, trying to look anywhere but the ominous pen but finding his gaze dragged back to the offending object again and again. There was something strangely alluring about it, and Merlin tried to shut his mind to it's evil sway.
Then again, he thought suddenly as he caught sight of his own face in Morgana's mirror, he'd always thought his eyes could be brought out more.
“And when you've done that,” Arthur said, watching Merlin carefully, “you can take these lists to Sir Leon. Is something bothering you, Merlin?”
Merlin looked at him, smiling oddly. “No, sire,” he said.
“It's just that you look a little... different...”
“Oh?” Merlin raised his eyebrows. That only made the oddness come into better focus-there was something strange about his eyes. “Does it make me darkly alluring? Sire?”
Arthur stared at him. “No,” he said firmly. “Are you sure you haven't hit your head recently?”
“I'm sure, sire,” Merlin said, smiling that weird smile again. “I'll just take that list, then.”
As he turned away, Arthur heard something that sounded suspiciously like a cackle.
The day after that, Arthur watched Merlin hide behind a corner with a piece of string in his hand, the other end of which was tied to a money bag. He saw Merlin wait until a passing guard or servant bent to pick the bag up and then yank the bag out of the way, giggling. The same afternoon one of the blacksmiths came to complain about someone who kept knocking on doors and running away.
Two days after that, he caught Merlin trying on one of Morgana's hooded capes. Granted, this wasn't the first time he'd discovered Merlin with women's clothes and he probably wouldn't have thought much about it, if it hadn't been for the fact that that kind of cape was usually never coveted by anyone but evil people and sorcerers.
(Oh, and Morgana. He was going to have a talk with her about that one of these days.)
And then, thinking over the past week, Arthur realised that Merlin had consistently called him “sire” for four days in a row. Something was very obviously wrong.
“Magic bad sorcery evil kill all wizards take over world blah blah blah,” Uther said.
Well, something like that. Arthur wasn't really listening. He was watching Merlin serve the meat instead, trying to work out what it was about him that was different lately.
“I think you agree with me, Arthur,” Uther said.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Arthur said, hoping that he was agreeing to something at least marginally sane. There was that odd smile on Merlin's face again!
“I think it's a brilliant idea,” Morgana said, leaning forward and laying a hand on Uther's arm, while her other hand poured him some wine. Arthur spared her a glance. There was something not quite right with her, too, but this didn't worry him quite as much. There had been something not quite right with Morgana for years.
“I'm glad to have such trusted advisers with me,” Uther said indulgently, then picked up his knife and fork. “Can someone pass me the salt?”
Arthur gave him the bowl of salt next to his plate, only narrowly beating Morgana to it. She glared at him. Uther took a pinch of salt and sprinkled it fastidiously on his duck, then took a bite of it. His expression changed slowly from delight to horror.
“Father?” Arthur asked, worried. “Father, are you all right?”
Uther very slowly spat the duck out again. “Who,” he said dangerously, “had the audacity to switch the salt for sugar?”
Arthur stared at the bowl of not-salt-after-all, then turned in his seat and glared suspiciously at Merlin, who was looking straight ahead with an innocent expression. Slightly mollified-he'd never yet seen Merlin being able to hide a guilty conscience-he turned back around, only to hear a quiet little “mwaha” behind him.
Right, that was it. He was talking to Gaius in the morning.
By old habit, Arthur switched goblets with Uther and then knocked his over. The wine smoked as it quickly burned through the tablecloth, but this was a fairly regular occurrence during family meals and he didn't give it much thought.
Morgana was walking from Uther's chambers when she ran into Merlin.
“Oh, hello, Merlin,” she said, composing her face into the loyal-daughter-of-Camelot expression she and Morgause had been practising together. “Is everything well?”
For one strange moment, Morgana had the sense that Merlin, too, was composing his expression, but he answered her readily enough.
“Yes, fine,” he said. “I'm just taking all these knives I'm carrying to be sharpened and I'm not going to hide them in my room and plot the downfall of the kingdom at all.”
“That's sounds nice,” Morgana said, smiling sweetly at him. She was trying to work out what it was about Merlin that seemed different.
Merlin smiled at her. “Well, I should be off. I'm happy to see you looking well.”
Morgana shook the thought away and favoured him with another sweet smile. “Thank you, Merlin.”
She let him pass her, then turned back towards him and was about to smirk when the sight of Merlin doing just that made her stop and gape in surprise. He turned his head again and rounded a corner quickly, but she was certain of what she had seen.
That had been her smirk.
Gaius had noticed that Merlin was acting differently than usual, of course, but he had thought that Arthur's suggestion that Merlin was under some kind of evil enchantment seemed like a bit of an overreaction. Even when Merlin regularly started tripping Gaius up he dismissed it as boyish high spirits. But when he woke one morning and tried to put on his tunic only to find that both sleeves had been tied into a knot, he began to think that Arthur might actually have a point.
The secret path to the secret cave was empty and quiet as Morgana made her way to Morgause's hiding place. She had slipped out of the castle easily enough and had made it through the forest without trouble, but she still longed to arrive at the warm cave and shut the night out. She and Morgause didn't have a meeting scheduled for this day, but she was certain Morgause would be only too pleased to see her.
She saw the red of the fire shine out ahead and hastened forward, then stopped when she was only a few feet from the entrance. She had heard laughter.
It wasn't entirely unusual for Morgause to laugh when there was no one else around, of course, but-that hadn't sounded like Morgause.
“No, no, no, I keep telling you,” she heard Morgause's voice say. “Very carefully apply black eye shadow in an even layer over the entire eyelid and then use the brush to soften the edges. No, now you're doing it wrong again.”
Morgana gasped, ran the last couple of steps forward and entered the cave, then stopped short. Merlin and Morgause looked at her balefully, the former wielding a brush and the latter holding up a small mirror.
“Do you mind?” Morgause asked eventually in icy tones. “We're kind of in the middle of something here.”
Morgana stared for several seconds, then turned on her heel and ran. As she stumbled down the path, tears of fury and betrayal stinging in her eyes, she heard Merlin say in a voice clearly intended to carry to her ears, “Ooh, those split ends are really making her tetchy, aren't they.”
Looking at Merlin was making Arthur increasingly uncomfortable. There was something vaguely slinking about all his movements now, a kind of sinister grace, and while this meant that he wasn't walking into nearly as much furniture, it also meant that he looked weird and, for some reason, like Morgana.
“You can go, Merlin,” Arthur finally said, making a dismissive gesture. “I'm going to bed.”
“Yes, sire,” Merlin said, in that suspiciously servile tone he'd adopted the past week, and bowed his way out of the room. Arthur stared for some time at the closed door, then shook his head briskly and moved to his privacy screen, changing into his night clothes. Sighing and rolling his aching shoulders, he got into bed and prepared to stretch out luxuriously.
His feet met resistance.
“What the-” he began, then sat up and examined his bedding, finally exclaiming incredulously, “Merlin, did you short-sheet me?”
A distinctly cackling laugh from the other side of his door was all the answer he was going to get.
“Merlin is ruining everything,” Morgana said unhappily, her head in Gwen's lap while Gwen, never happy while her hands were idle, was mending a bonnet.
“There, there,” she said vaguely.
“I mean,” Morgana went on, “he just suddenly became good at sneaking around and he stole my smirk and now he's trying to steal my Morgause, too! She was giving him make-up advice!”
“Morgause?” Gwen frowned. “Isn't she the sorceress who broke into Camelot and killed our guards and defeated Arthur in a duel and raised some knights from the dead to murder Uther and has on numerous occasions attempted to break the kingdom from the inside?”
Morgana shifted position uneasily. “I meant Mordred,” she said.
“Oh.” Gwen frowned again. “Isn't he seven years old?”
“He's precocious.”
“Didn't you call him 'she'?”
“And confused,” Morgana snapped, testily. “Stop being clever! I don't pay you to be clever.”
“You don't pay me,” Gwen reminded gently, and Morgana made a face.
“Can't you just pat my hair?” she said plaintively.
Gwen entered the kitchen that same evening to find it the floor covered in soup. Half the kitchen staff was wearing bandages or bruises, the head cook was sobbing by the table and Rhonda was swabbing the flagstones angrily.
“What happened?” Gwen asked in astonishment, then stepped out of the way as Gerwin went past, carrying a stack of bent and buckled plates.
“Someone,” said Rhonda, sloshing water over the floor with barely contained fury, “left banana peels all over the kitchen floor. Llian slipped on one and upset the soup cauldron, and it hit Merion who dropped all the plates and then Brionne stepped on one of those and fell and she was holding the pudding and...”
Gwen listened wearily as Rhonda raged on, standing back to avoid being splashed with soup and water as Rhonda's gestures became more and more violent. Right, she thought. This had to stop.
“I'm worried about Merlin. He's getting out of hand,” Gwen said. Gaius nodded solemnly.
“This morning he tied my shoelaces together while we were eating breakfast,” he said. “And my shoes didn't even have laces until then!”
“He put my boots by my bed the wrong way around this morning,” Arthur said darkly. “Again.”
“We need to do something quickly,” Gwen said anxiously. “I'm afraid he's getting worse.”
“Gaius, do you have any idea what's causing all this?” Arthur asked. Gaius looked uncertain.
“It's difficult to know without any clear symptoms,” he said. “It would help if you could remember something that has been clearly different about him during the last days.”
They all stood in silent thought for some time. It was getting increasingly to hard to remember any other Merlin than the one who smirked and cackled a lot.
“His eyes,” Arthur said finally. “I think there's something strange about his eyes.”
“His eyes...” Gaius mused, turning to his encyclopedia of Everything People In Camelot Could Possibly Have Use For and starting to flick through the pages. “I know I've seen something here-oh, no.”
“What?” Gwen asked quickly. Gaius shook his head sadly.
“It's worse than we thought,” he said. “It might already be too late. You will have to act very quickly indeed if you are to save him.”
His tirade was stopped by Arthur's hand on his arm.
“Tell me what I need to do,” he said quietly, “and I'll do it.”
Gaius told him. Arthur lit up.
“That?” he said. “Oh, that's easy. I do that all the time.”
“Gaius,” Gwen said carefully once Arthur had left. “That doesn't say anything about a true love's kiss, does it?”
“What?” Gaius stared at her. “No, Gwen. Why?”
Gwen blushed. “No reason,” she said.
“Oh, Merlin...”
Merlin turned and looked suspiciously at Arthur. “Sire?” he said carefully, eyes flicking from Arthur to the knights on either side of him. Arthur grinned.
“Let's get him,” he said, and took a rather great pleasure in the panicky look that crossed Merlin's face before they all grabbed him. They carried him bodily to the water barrel, Merlin screaming insults and threats all the way.
“I will serve you rat's stew for the rest of your life!” he shouted. “Just you wait, Arthur, you haven't seen anything yet!”
“Dunk him in,” Arthur commanded, trying to keep hold of a flailing arm. “Quickly!”
There was a brief silence as Merlin's head disappeared under water, and then he resurfaced.
“I will put breadcrumbs in your bed!” he screamed.
“It isn't helping,” Arthur said urgently. “Quick, dunk him again.” He pushed his sleeve down over his palm and thrust his arm into the barrel, rubbing it vigorously over Merlin's face.
When Merlin was dragged back out of the water this time, he came blinking in confusion with black marks down his cheek. “What happened?” he asked, looking shocked. “What have I been doing? Where am I?”
“Shh,” Arthur said, gesturing for the knights to let him go and laying a reassuring arm around Merlin's shoulders. “You were under an evil spell. Of make-up.”
Merlin gasped. “Not-eye liner?”
Arthur nodded solemnly. “I'm afraid so. Can you remember how it happened?”
Merlin shook his head. “It was like being in an evil dream. I can't remember how it started,” he confessed. “It must have been someone of questionable loyalties in a position of trust here in Camelot who I know well enough to talk to occasionally, but I have no idea of who that could be.”
“We will get whoever did it,” Arthur promised, although he, too, was doubtful. “In the meantime, you should probably keep away from mirrors. You might have a relapse.”
Merlin shivered. “No, I've learnt my lesson,” he said. “I will never touch eye liner again in my life. Do you know,” he added with a horrified grimace, “I think I was even starting to consider leather pants.”
THE END