Non-challenge - Loyalty (1/7)

[shanaqui]

Title: Loyalty
Chapter: 1/7
Characters/Pairing: Jane, Simon, Barney, Will, Bran, John, OC
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Six must be gathered again, to face an old threat wearing a new face.
Notes: Inspired by Heather Dale's song, Mordred's Lullaby. Draws on a plethora of different Arthurian legends.
All chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.


"Hey, Jane, where're you going? There's plenty of time to go out later!" Barney leaned out of the hotel window to look down at her, grinning a little. His pale blond hair was sticking up in all directions, ruffled by the breeze that was whipping her own hair up around her face. "You're supposed to be unpacking!"

"I'm just going outside for a bit," she called back, waving at him. "I won't go far!"

"Don't go up to see Bran without us!"

Jane rolled her eyes and waved at Barney again before running across the car park of the Trefeddian to look round at the countryside. It hardly seemed to have changed in the five years since they'd been there last: it was the same hills, the same buildings, like the same world caught out of time and preserved just for her. It made her smile. Five years ago, she might have had to scramble up on the wall to see over it, but she found that she was tall enough just to look over it.

"Hullo," someone behind her said, startling her. She hadn't felt anyone's eyes on her. She spun round to find a young man standing just behind her, as if he'd come out of nowhere -- he was a little older than her, she thought, maybe twenty, maybe a little older. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and his skin seemed terribly pale in contrast. He grinned at her. When he spoke, his accent was unidentifiable, and Jane couldn't decide if he was Welsh or not. "Sorry, did I startle you?"

"A bit," she said, and she reached up to push her hair back into place, suddenly self conscious.

"My name is Michael," he said, sticking his hand out to shake hers.

"Jane," she said, putting her hand in his, surprised at the coolness of his skin. "Do you live around here?"

"In Tywyn, yes. I moved here recently, though -- don't expect a tour of the hills from me."

"Oh, that's okay. We've been here before. Me and my family, I mean. When I was twelve, anyway. And we have friends here. Well, one at least. Bran Davies, from Clwyd Farm. I don't suppose it's changed much around here, and anyway, Bran will show us if it has. I don't suppose you've met Bran?"

"I know of him," Michael said, shrugging. "The albino, yes? He is pretty distinctive."

"Yes, he's an albino." She cast a quick look at him, but she couldn't catch any hint of -- well, anything, in particular.

"Well..." Michael shrugged again and smiled at her, quick and charming. "Maybe you could show me around a little, since you seem to know the area better than me. Tomorrow, maybe. I will have more time then. Now I should probably be getting home."

"I should probably go back inside," Jane said, suddenly remembering the bags propped against the wall in her room waiting to be unpacked and all the things her parents had said about talking to strangers. They wouldn't be very happy if they saw her out in the car park speaking to a young man she'd never seen before. She smiled back at Michael apologetically. "It would be nice to see you tomorrow, but I don't know where you live."

"That's alright," he said. "I can wait here for you."

Jane hesitated, and then nodded. He seemed like a nice kind of person, anyway, and he wasn't that much older than her after all. "Okay, I'll meet you here at, um... four in the afternoon?"

"That will be fine."

"Bye, then," she said, at the same moment as Barney's window swung open again and Simon stuck his head out.

"Come on, Jane! Mother wants you to be unpacked by teatime!"

"Okay, I'll be in, just give me a minute!" Jane called back, turning to Michael again as Simon withdrew and shut the window. "I really have to go now, I'm sorry."

"That's alright," he said again, and he smiled at her again too. For a moment Jane hesitated, and then turned and ran over to the hotel doors as Michael began to walk out of the car park and towards the road. By the time she looked back into the car park, he had apparently already gone out of sight. Jane smiled to herself for a minute, thinking of how nice his smile had been, and then hurried inside to do her unpacking, humming all the while.

---

They stand on a hill, a small group -- five together and then one standing alone. They recognise it when they look around, and flashing unbidden into their minds comes a sword -- one remembers how it fit in his hand, how it felt made for him, and how perhaps it was made for his hand only to wield. Another remembers how a lump had been in his throat, seeing the young lad so. The boy's head was up, his eyes bright, so that he looked ready to take on the great responsibility that had to be too much for his slim shoulders. Another feels again the upswell of excitement, the quickness of his breath and the tightness of his chest. He was so small against so great an uprising, but not alone. Another remembers living power in her hand, bright, bronze, and her heart pounding fast, too fast. The last of the five looks around at it all for a moment, the hill and the six of them standing there, together, and thinks that this isn't quite right, and then he shakes his head and tells himself it's just a dream anyway.

The sixth turns to them, and he's at once a young boy and a young man; either way his eyes are the same, old and wise and full of knowing and pain. The girl takes a step toward him, and the one who held the sword moves to his side.

"What is it, Will?" he asks.

"I'm just dreaming, aren't I?" the fifth asks, swallowing hard.

"No," the one called Will says, gently. "No, Simon. You're remembering. In a dream, yes, but you are starting to remember."

"I don't feel as if I remember much at all," says the girl, biting her lip hard.

"It's hard, remembering," Will says, still gently, so gently. "You have to relive everything. Forgetting takes things away, strips away all the little links throughout your lives. To remember what I need you to know, you need to remember your whole lives, each of you. But don't fear, Jane."

"None of us are afraid," says the boy who had been so excited. "I have a feeling we've faced worse."

Will's face lights up with laughter for a moment, just a moment. "You have indeed faced worse than this, Barney. But you will face worse again in remembering. I am sorry."

The man, older than the rest of them, old enough to know how very young the others still are, turns his eyes to Will. He has been silent all this time. "Why am I here? I wanted to forget... There was something terrible I had to forget, and I think I would have been glad of the forgetting if I had known..."

"I am sorry," Will says, again.

"It's time, then," the one who held the sword says, and they all look at him and remember him, at the end: the crystal arcing up, blazing into life as he swung it up, cutting the silver from the tree. Bran, they remember, the Pendragon, the son of --

The son of --

"It's time to remember," Will says, quietly. He closes his eyes and like it's a compulsion, the others all slowly close their eyes too. Simon feels water around him, Barney crawls through a tiny cave, Jane faces a monster so terrible that her heart nearly fails her. Bran is lost in a place of mirrors, and John sees his wife again transformed, taken, lost. Simon runs, breathless and aching, Bran's fingers brush over the strings of a harp that sounds so beautiful it could bring the tears to his eyes, Jane speaks to an old, tired lady --

They all hear his voice once more, before the hillside recedes entirely and they drown in the memories -- darkness, deliverance, white bones and ribbons, strange writing on the side of a cup -- and such a sense of loss amidst triumph. Such a terrible, terrible loss.

"Remember," Will says, and that's all, and he's gone.

---

"Bah, I thought we'd never escape," Barney said. He glanced back at the hotel over his shoulder and made a face. "As if they really expected us to hang round with them all day."

"It is a family holiday, Barney," Simon said, patiently. "We'll be expected to spend some time with them."

"Still," Jane said. Then she sighed. "I had such a weird dream last night. I feel really restless, now. I think I need to get out in the fresh air like this and maybe -- maybe run or something."

"Funny," Barney said, absently. "I had a weird dream last night, too. Bran was in it, actually. He -- " Barney closed his mouth all of a sudden, stopping in his tracks. "It wasn't a dream, Jane! We were remembering! Don't you remember what Will said? Don't you remember the grail and seeing Bran with his sword -- what was it called? It had a name, didn't it? -- and..." He trailed off, looking at their blank faces. "Come on, surely I'm not the only one?"

Jane frowned, stopping as well. "Are you sure that wasn't just all part of the dream? I mean, it's weird we both dreamed the same thing, or something like, but..."

Barney scowled at her a little, crossing his arms in front of him. "It wasn't just a dream, remember? Come on Jane -- and Simon, you were in it too, you have to remember. There was us three and that man, John Rowlands, and Will and Bran. And it was all about the grail, and I remembered crawling in that horrid dark cave all over again -- come on."

It was probably the whine of frustration in his voice that made Jane consider it, more than anything. She crinkled her eyebrows together, thinking about the whole weird dream, remembering again the clearness of it. The smell of the sea in Trewissick. The boiling of the waters around her, and the Greenwitch, eternally childlike...

Her voice came out a little croaky and she had to clear her throat. "I remember."

"I had the same dream," Simon said, starting to walk again. He hadn't stopped when they had, and Barney had to run to catch up, while Jane scrambled in a rather unladylike manner over a few stones to reach Simon's side again.

"Well?"

"It doesn't mean anything," he said, shrugging. "We're all in the same family -- I'm sure it stands to reason we dream of the same things once in a while, and anyway, it's probably just memories from when we were children. We all had such good imaginations then -- we probably played something and imagined it was true, or something."

Neither of his siblings knew what to say to that. They all stayed silent as they carried on up towards Clwyd Farm -- sometimes Barney put his hand out to help Jane when they took a short cut and the ground was rough and uneven, but mostly they remained withdrawn, each thinking their own private thoughts. It didn't take long for Simon to brighten up, forgetting the dreams, and Jane began humming to herself and thinking about four o' clock in the afternoon. Barney began to trail behind after a while, frowning as he thought about the memories that all of a sudden seemed to make the landscape around him just a little more threatening, as well as more familiar.

He was hardly surprised when he heard someone shouting their names and they looked up to see two figures on the side of the hill, one waving at them, the other simply standing, straight and still. "Will!" he called back, breaking into a run, and beside him Simon and Jane started to run, too -- the latter hampered a little by her long skirt.

"Croeso nôl," Bran said, when they got close enough. He smiled just a little. Barney saw that he'd grown rather tall, still half-lanky from adolescence and yet growing into a man's strength already. His eyes were as strange as they'd always been: strange and secretive and mystical in the plain, ordinary world. "Welcome back, that means, for you Sais."

"Were you waiting for us?"

"Yes," Will said, and Barney turned to look at him. He'd grown -- broadened, too -- but he was still less impressive than Bran: shorter, stockier, plainer. His eyes, though... they were really something. Barney was sure that if he tried for a thousand years he'd never be able to capture Bran or Will. When Jane and Simon arrived as well, Will smiled at them all. "I need you all to help me, as you know from your dreams last night. We're just waiting for one more person."

"This is awfully convenient," Simon said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "I mean, we all end up in Wales, we all supposedly have the same dream that isn't really a dream -- "

"It is the doing of the Light," Will said, mildly. Bran did not say anything.

"I don't -- "

"Wait and see, Simon," Jane said. She slipped an arm through his and held on. "I want to know more about all this, even if it is... imagination."

Barney thought he was the only one that saw the troubled look that passed between Will and Bran, then, and afterwards he decided he must have imagined it. He bit his lip hard, but didn't say anything, instead turning to look at someone who was walking along towards them with an easy, long-legged stride. "The sixth?" he asked, and Bran smiled just a little.

"Yes," he said, waving to him, and then speaking to him when he came close enough. "P'nawn da, John. Sut dach chi?"

For a moment, the man stood still and took them all in, and then he smiled back, a slow, quiet kind of smile. "Dim yn ddrwg, Bran. Not bad at all, if it weren't for strange dreams disturbing my sleep. Anything you want to tell me about that?"

Barney realised all of a sudden that there was a kind of anger in the man's face: not a violent one, but all the same, it was anger, a kind of resentment. He expected Bran to say something -- somehow it seemed to be his territory, what with the man being Welsh and all -- but Will stepped forward and put a hand on the man's shoulder. It surprised Barney all over again how tall Will had become -- not as tall as Bran, but of a height with John Rowlands.

"I'm sorry. You know I am."

"You said, yes," John said, and sighed deeply. "What is it your people need of me now? Another terrible choice?"

"I will not hold you against your will -- I never will," Will said. He turned to look at them all again. "I only know that there is another threat, that I felt the need to gather those who knew of the Light again. I am not... I'm not supposed to do this, it was supposed to be me alone from the moment my people left Earth and onwards, but..."

"Nobody's any good alone," Bran said. He shrugged. "I, for one, want to help you, no matter what it is."

"I do, too," Barney said, hastily, casting a wary glance sideways at Simon though he knew he wouldn't really care if Simon mocked him for it. Simon opened his mouth to say something, but Jane got there first.

"Me too," she said, looking at Bran. "I'm glad I remember."

Barney didn't think he was imagining Bran's sudden happiness, because he was smiling. He couldn't remember seeing Bran smile so very much when they were younger, so he memorised the sight. He felt a little glad that Bran seemed less wild and lonely and fiercely apart than he had when they'd first known each other.

"I'll do whatever you need me to," John said, at last. Simon didn't say anything. For a long moment, Will and Bran seemed to be both leaving a space for him to say something -- anything -- and then Will shook his head, cutting that space short.

"Well then, now that we're six again, I suppose we should talk. I'm not sure what to say, though. I know little more than you do yourselves, really."

Jane noticed how frustrated Will seemed, then, but in that same moment Barney went dead pale and reeled backwards. It was John Rowlands who caught him, before Simon had so much as moved and before Bran had quite gotten to him. Barney's eyes were wide open, but the whites were showing horribly, and he was shaking. Bran stopped and stood stock still.

"Is he having a fit or something?" Simon asked, after a horrible pause, and Jane reached out for him, grabbing his hand and holding on tightly because she had a sudden sickening feeling that that was exactly what was happening. Neither Will or Bran moved.

"It's okay," Will said, gently as ever, but that was all.

"Aren't we going to -- " Simon started, and then he was cut off by Barney himself. His voice sounded strange and horrible, distorted as if it came from a radio not quite properly tuned to a station.

"Blood of your blood, the threat comes," he said, to Bran, shaking again in John Rowlands' hold. "Son of your same father, born of the Dark as you of the Light."

Jane noticed how Bran drew himself up as he listened, noticed the way he drew into himself. He seemed, as he had sometimes before, somehow more kingly, his head held high and his eyes piercing. Will, at his side, had a hand on his arm and a strange look -- half triumph, half fear -- on his face. Jane tightened her hold on Simon as he tried to move toward Barney, suddenly sure that this was something they shouldn't interrupt.

"Your brother," Barney said, weakly, in a voice more like his own. And then he cleared his throat and it flickered back to the other voice, suddenly so deep it sounded ridiculous coming from his still rather slight and skinny body. "Heed the warning already given -- "

Simon lurched out of Jane's grip as Barney broke off, swaying on his feet, but John held him tight and didn't let him fall. For a moment there was silence and then Barney's eyes returned to normal and he took a step away from John, trembling all over.

"What was that...?"

"Prophecy," Will said, slowly. "True prophecy. Barney's own gift, like that given to Cassandra of Troy, though no one believed her... Not a rhyme handed down and memorised by all from those who knew, but a true seeing of what is, and what may yet be. And what was, I think, too. 'Heed the warning already given'..."

"What does it mean?" Bran asked, suddenly fierce, rounding on Will. "Blood of my blood, son of my same father, born of the Dark...?"

"Mordred," he said, after a moment's thought. "Your half-brother."

"Mordred?"

"Son of Arthur and his sister Morgan Le Fay," Barney said, and John shook his head.

"He was said to be the son of Arthur and his sister Morgause. Anna, she's sometimes called."

The look on Bran's face was blank disbelief. "His sister?"

Will nodded. "Some say that Morgan and Morgause were one and the same. It doesn't really matter, though. Morgause is certainly less well-known than Morgan, known for having an affair with a knight and being killed by her son Gaheris because of it, rather than Morgan's enduring reputation for being a witch. If Mordred is the problem..."

Barney cast an almost sulky look at John. "There are different stories about how Mordred came to be born. Some of the earliest stories have him be Morgause's legitimate child with King Lot, while the later ones say he was the son of Arthur."

"Early stories could have been ploys to try and 'prove' Mordred's legitimacy by making everyone believe it," Will said, thoughtfully. He smiled at Barney. "Go on. You know more about this than almost any of us."

Barney nodded. "Okay. Um... some of the stories had Morgause and Arthur having sex by accident. I don't quite get how that worked, actually, I mean, you'd think they'd've noticed... and another involved trickery. There was another one too, but... that one doesn't matter. It's only really more modern stories that have Mordred's mother being Morgan, anyway. So John's right, mostly."

Bran's voice sounded strange and tight. "Another story?"

Barney winced a little. "There was a story that Arthur raped his sister. But I don't believe it."

"It's not true," he said, flatly. There was a short silence and then Simon cleared his throat.

"The problem with all this is that Mordred's supposed to be dead, isn't he? Even I know that much. He died in the same battle as Arthur."

"Arthur didn't die," John, Barney and Bran said, almost simultaneously. Will smiled ruefully as if he'd been about to say the same thing.

"Bran's father went to the Light, but men probably did believe that he died. The legends about him are little more than that, now, unfortunately. Perhaps Mordred was simply a literary device, in the battle of Camlann, and perhaps there was no such battle."

"Can't you find out for yourself, if you can travel in time?"

"I could, but it isn't a period of history I really belong in... I was to work for this time, my master for the time of Arthur." Will shrugged. "Again, it doesn't really matter. Mordred could have simply escaped through the cracks of time, or perhaps he wasn't there in the first place. I don't know. I do know that Arthur supposedly had other sons -- Gwydre, he was killed by a boar, Loholt, Amhar -- "

"Call it Mordred, until we find out otherwise," Bran said, impatiently. "That isn't the important part. We need to know what to do about it."

"Can we discuss it another day?" Jane asked, biting her lip. "I promised my friend I'd meet him down at the Trefeddian at four."

Bran looked up at her, his eyes narrowing. "A friend? You've a friend round here?"

"Why shouldn't I have a friend round here?" she asked. She shrugged. "I'm going to go. I'll see you tomorrow, Bran, Will!"

"See you," Will said, pushing his hands into his pockets. They all watched her go, Bran with a frown twisting his mouth. Nobody said anything until she was out of earshot, moving swiftly down the slope in the direction of the Trefeddian. And then Barney started to speak, in that strange voice he'd used before, turning towards Simon and looking at him with blank eyes.

"A darkness comes close," he said, and that was all. Will frowned slightly, obviously wondering why the warning had gone to Simon, but he didn't say anything. Bran was the one to catch Barney's arm and support him as he came out of it again, and he pushed him down to sit in the grass. After some hesitation, the others all sat too, moving in close to talk. John looked the most awkward of all of them.

"So... what does this all mean?" he asked Will, looking as uncomfortable as he did incongruous. "I mean... young Barney making predictions and Bran-bach having a brother and..."

"The prophecies..." Will took a deep breath. "That's difficult. Barney's always had the gift. It was dormant until it was woken by the Dark, when a man from the Dark asked him to look into oil and water in the grail. But that was only one way to open the... the channel, if you will, and it fell dormant again when he was made to forget all about the grail... Now he remembers, well, he's old enough now to start learning to control the gift, and for it to start controlling him."

"It's going to control me?" Barney asked, frowning. Simon shifted uncomfortably.

"Not in the sense you mean," Will said, quickly. "It just... it will come sometimes, unbidden, as it just did. The more you use it and learn how to use it, the easier it will become to wield it, to stop visions just happening as they will."

Barney nodded slowly. He looked almost pleased. "I suppose I'm going to be quite useful to you, then."

"Perhaps," Will said. "As it is, we have no idea what to expect, except that thanks to you we have a clue -- it's one of Arthur's sons, and therefore Bran's brother, but..."

"Born of the Dark as I am of the Light," Bran said, thoughtfully. "We don't really need to know more. He will want to bring back the Dark, to plunge the world into chaos..."

"That's what I remained on Earth to prevent."

"And why you returned my memories to me..."

There was a long silence then. John didn't say anything, but his eyes were on Will and Bran, like he was trying to read what they were thinking. Simon felt terribly uncomfortable, with Will and Bran so obviously believing in what they were saying so strongly, and even John -- a supposedly sensible and steady adult -- buying into it all. Barney was sat peacefully, watching a bee fly between a few patches of flowers nearby, and Simon realise he had no idea what he thought about what was going on with Barney. He wondered if he should mention those queer fits to his parents, and yet... Barney seemed fine now. Maybe he was just putting it on. Simon sighed to himself.

"How am I supposed to fight this Mordred, anyway?" Bran asked, after another few moments silence, lifting his head. He was looking at Will. "Guns hardly seem appropriate, but obviously I don't have a sword anymore... I gave Eirias to my father, and there's no way I can get it back now."

"Eirias is gone," Will agreed.

"So... what do we do?"

"I don't know," Will said. He got to his feet, brushing himself off. He looked as if he very much wanted to give into frustration. "I'm going to go for a walk and think. We can talk about this some more tomorrow."

"I'll come with you," Bran said, getting up, and within a few moments John Rowlands and Simon and Barney were all alone on the Welsh hillside, thinking their own thoughts, fearing their own fears. None of them said anything, and after a few minutes John, too, stood up, and went off to get to work.