A/N: Sooo...it's come to my attention that I've kinda been neglecting my ffnet account, to the point where I wrote an entire Merlin Big Bang and just forgot to post it here, lol. So I'm doing that now! Behold my 2016 Merlin project, a fusion with the movie The Man From U.N.C.L.E. I shall endeavor to upload chapters on a fairly regular basis...
Casual reminder that my AO3 account is jinkandtherebels and I would love to see y'all over there as well! Either way, hope you enjoy this one!
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Chapter One
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The briefing is longer than it should be. His handler speaks in clipped, cool tones; he delivers what he considers to be the pertinent facts with a slideshow in the background containing scans of relevant files, photographs, and the like. The current slide has only one picture: an uncharacteristically austere portrait of a young man in uniform: skinny, dark-haired, with sharp cheekbones and large ears.
"Merlin Emrys," his handler says. He wonders if he's imagining the faint note of disdain in the measured words. Probably not. "Left home at sixteen to pursue an exceedingly brief military career. He failed to distinguish himself in service, except in his remarkable ability to end up in places he shouldn't have. Discharged for failing to follow orders."
Somehow that doesn't surprise Arthur in the slightest.
"His skill at infiltration brought him to the attention of our organization, and we acquired him shortly after his time in the military ended. For three years he was one of our agents—impertinent and disrespectful, but he did get results. On occasion." The words sound like teeth being pulled.
A small man in the back of the room changes the slides. The image on the projector screen flips to that of a heavily redacted file, their agency's equivalent of an open warrant, and Arthur knows what's coming next. He reminds himself to keep his posture loose and relaxed.
"Two years ago Emrys defected. The reasons for his doing so are not widely known, nor do they matter. He disappeared from our radar, only to reappear a year later in the midst of an art heist in Vienna." Now his handler isn't even bothering to hide the fact that he's unimpressed. "We at first suspected that he had put his skills of deception to use in the black market, but were later able to tie him to an American organization that functions similarly, on the surface at least, to our own. Emrys remains an active agent under their jurisdiction and protection."
"I know all of this already," Arthur cuts in, unable to stop himself even at the irritated look that crosses his handler's face. "There wasn't a single agent here who didn't know about it the second it happened. Why is Emrys suddenly relevant?"
His handler's mouth tightens.
"Because he has resurfaced again," he says. "And we have it on good authority that his current mission involves the Smithson debacle."
Arthur's grip on the armrests tightens, briefly, before he remembers himself and loosens his fingers.
"Specifically?"
"The daughter," his handler replies. "Emrys' handlers believe they have located Guinevere Smithson. It follows that his objective is to extract her from her current location without drawing any undue attention."
So it also follows, then, that Arthur's mission is to intercept them. He stands.
"I'll be on a plane within the hour," he says.
His handler nods. "I'll see that you're given the coordinates before then."
The dismissal is clear, so Arthur turns to leave, but his handler's voice stops him.
"I trust Emrys' status as your former comrade will not impede your judgment. Nor your willingness to do whatever needs to be done."
Arthur understands more than his handler thinks. He knows that he's being given a chance here, a chance to redeem himself for the one mistake that has never been forgiven. He turns around.
"I understand, Father."
.
Gwen will readily admit that she's been a little paranoid lately. But she's also aware it's for a good reason, so when the sharp click-clack of understated yet expensive shoes sounds in her peripheral hearing while she's trying to fix the engine of a 1944 Aston Martin, she's already prepared—rolling out from under the chassis, getting to her feet and brandishing her wrench at the intruder before she can think twice about it.
"Stay back," she warns. The man puts up his hands and takes an obliging step backwards. Gwen spares a moment to congratulate herself on excellent instincts (or cynicism—same difference, really, nowadays): No one in a suit that well tailored would willingly set foot in the grease pit that Gwen calls home. Not unless he had some business that involved more than just car repairs.
"Who are you?" Gwen demands, brandishing the wrench again for good measure. The stranger starts to lower his hands and she glares. "And don't try anything. I have excellent aim."
The man in the suit doesn't smile, but there's a glimmer in his eyes that almost makes Gwen think that he wants to.
"Just someone who wants to help," he answers. An American, then, Gwen thinks. There's a hint of another accent there but she can't quite place it.
Even she has to admit that he doesn't look like much of a threat—he doesn't really look like much of anything, to be honest. Despite the fact that he's got to be at least a full head taller than she is, he also looks like he wouldn't weigh eight stone soaking wet. He probably has a few years on Gwen, if that much, and is sporting a mop of black hair and bright blue eyes that still look very much like they want to laugh.
Honestly, the only remarkable thing about him would have to be the cheekbones, and Gwen isn't quite desperate enough to go lusting after men who wander into her garage fairly reeking of suspicious intent.
"Help," she repeats, and lets her tone tell the man exactly what she thinks of that explanation. "Who says I need your help?"
The man's gaze flickers down to his watch before returning to her face. "Honestly, I think if I told you all the specifics you'd never sleep again." He looks pointedly at the wrench she's still clutching in a white-knuckled grip. "And it looks like you're plenty paranoid already without my help. Or do you always threaten your customers with whatever tool happens to be handy?"
"When they wear shoes like that? Fancy suits?" Gwen lifts her chin. "Yes. I've been at this long enough to know that people with that sort of money have people to deal with people like me so that people like them don't need to."
The man blinks—and then, to her surprise, he cringes.
"God, I don't look that bad, do I?" he asks with a hint of plaintiveness. "The suits sort of come with the job, but if they make me look like that much of an arse I'll switch to casual wear, dress code be damned." There it is again, the faintest trace of an accent that disappears as quickly as Gwen manages to pick up on it.
The man looks down at his watch again. Gwen is starting to second-guess her own instincts—the man standing in front of her is one of the least subtle people she's met in some time; how dangerous could he actually be?
"Look," he says, "I'm going to skip all the cryptic BS the people in my line of work usually open with, if that's all right with you. You're Guinevere Smithson, right?"
Gwen stiffens, tightening her grip on the wrench again. She wants very badly to say something arch and cool like, who wants to know? But the fact is, even going by a false name does little to help when you're a woman in a man's field. There aren't too many female mechanics drifting about. Gwen steels herself.
"Yes," she says quietly. "Now tell me why you're asking."
"Your father's attracted a lot of attention."
Of course. He sounds almost apologetic. It doesn't stop Gwen's voice from shaking.
"He was never a traitor. Never. That was a filthy lie."
"That's not—" Yet another glance down at the watch. "We think you might be able to help us locate him. Your father."
Ice water in her veins. "I don't know where he is. He disappeared; that's what I told the police over and over—"
"I'm not accusing you of anything!" the man says quickly. "Trust me, if that were the case then they would've sent someone marginally more intimidating than me."
That wouldn't be too hard, some mad part of her wants to say, but fortunately the man in the suit speaks again before Gwen's mouth can run away with her.
"I get that this is all very weird and you're probably off-balance and freaked out right now, and I wish I had the time to sit you down and spell everything out in a way that made this all seem any less sketchy than it does, but I don't. I just need an answer. Will you help my people find your father?"
"Even if I had some clue how to reach him," Gwen says tightly, "which I don't, by the way—how on earth am I supposed to trust 'your people' with that information? I don't know who you're working for. You won't even tell me what your name is."
"Emrys," he replies instantly, at least having the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "My name is Emrys."
I doubt that very much. She bites her tongue again and tries to sound calm. "Well, Emrys, you seem to have some idea of how cloak-and-dagger all this is. Then you should understand why until I get something more concrete than just 'people', I'm not comfortable agreeing to anything you suggest."
"Fair enough," Emrys says. "And I don't blame you, and honestly I wouldn't've bothered you at all, except—well, I was followed here."
The wrench slips from Gwen's fingers. It makes an ugly clanging sound on the concrete floor.
"What?" she croaks.
"Followed," Emrys repeats, apologetic again. He's got to be the most diminutive secret agent she's ever seen, not that Gwen has seen all that many outside of Bond films. "Not one of my finer moments, but I was bugged sometime before I got here. This was supposed to be a recon thing, at least for now, but I found the device on my car about two minutes before I walked in here. I figured that gave us about ten minutes to talk uninterrupted. It's now been—" He checks his watch yet again, which is somewhat less annoying now that Gwen knows there's a practical reason behind it. "Six minutes. So—"
He stops talking suddenly, whirling around to look out the window. Gwen follows his gaze, but she hears the problem before she sees it: the low rumble of a slow-moving car's engine, and nothing but darkness where the flares of headlights would normally be.
"Early," Emrys is saying under his breath. "Bloody early, should've known—" He turns back to Gwen and speaks firmly, rapidly, his accent slipping off his words until they acquire a lilt rather like Gwen's own.
"Merlin Emrys," he says. "All right? My name is Merlin Emrys, and I'm with the American government, and I'll tell you my birthday and blood type in the car if you come with me right now. Because I can tell you from experience, the man in that car out there is vastly more unpleasant to deal with than I am."
There's a hint of desperation in those too-readable eyes that tells Gwen, somewhere down deep, that he's not lying.
The car outside is getting closer to the window. Another few seconds and they'll be seen.
Faced with two equally unappealing options, Gwen sets her jaw and makes her choice.
"What is it that you drive?" she asks.
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The answer is, almost unequivocally, junk. Gwen takes one look at the car and immediately nudges Emrys out of the way when he makes for the driver's side door.
"I've worked on this model before," she says firmly, "and not to offend, but I wouldn't entrust my life to anyone else's driving anyway, and certainly not in this death trap."
It's hard to tell in the darkness—most of the streetlights in this area went out a long time ago and nobody's been willing to cough up money to replace them—but Gwen thinks Emrys looks offended at her appraisal of his Jowett. Excuse her for not being tactful when he's got her running for her life after knowing her for all of seven minutes.
The other car has just disappeared around the front of the building when Emrys says quietly, "Floor it, please."
Gwen doesn't need to be told twice.
Emrys is thrown against the passenger side window as she slams on the gas and the little heap of tin goes hurtling down the narrow streets; she hears the sudden squeal of tires behind them and knows, her heart leaping up to jangle around in her throat, that the other car has turned around and started following them at the same speed.
"Try to stay as steady as you can," Emrys tells her, cranking the window down.
"I can do that," Gwen says, trying to ignore her sweaty palms and pounding heartbeat. "And what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to try and shoot his tires out," Emrys replies, as easily as he'd say I'm popping out for a pint of milk, you need anything?
She doesn't really have time to focus on that, however, as the next thing she knows Emrys is leaning halfway out the window and aiming a handgun—where the hell had he been hiding that this whole time—at the car behind them, and Gwen can't see more than that because she has to pull her eyes back to the road to keep from veering into a building and killing them both before the person in the other car has the chance to.
Too late, as it turns out, because a sharp turn is rearing up in front of them almost before she has time to process it. Gwen barely manages to shout a warning to Emrys before they're veering sideways, nearly nicking an old brick building in the process.
Emrys, fortunately, manages to withdraw in time to avoid being scraped off on said building. He doesn't seem to appreciate this turn of events, however: "Are you trying to take my head off? I'm trying to keep us from getting caught here!"
"Then stop complaining and do it!" Gwen snaps back, adrenaline pushing her beyond the possibility of politeness.
Emrys nods, and in one lithe movement he's halfway out the window again—but this time there's not more than a second's hesitation before the blam of a gunshot cracks the night open, followed by a second. Gwen hears rather than sees the other car screeching and swerving to an ungraceful halt.
She lets out a breath. "Is that it, then?"
"Should be," says Emrys, flopping back into his seat. "Not much else he can do unless he decides to get out and—"
He stops, leaning closer to the rearview mirror before turning around in his seat to look out the back window.
"Oh, you have got to be joking."
"What?" Gwen demands. "What is it?" Even as she says the words she's looking in the rearview mirror herself, squinting in the dark, trying to see.
Her mouth falls open. "Is he—he's not—"
"He is," Emrys says, and Gwen can't tell whether he sounds bitter or impressed. "He is running after the car on foot, because he's an impossibly stubborn prat, and he's damn well going to catch us too so step on it, please."
.
For the record, Merlin does not actually hate his job.
Well. To be fair, there are some parts of it that he hates. Just a little. Like the suits—Merlin really hates the suits—and the lack of any discernible health benefits, and the ever-present possibility that he's going to get shot.
(It's not that much of a possibility, to be honest—despite what most people think, if you're a secret agent worth any salt at all you don't end up in a position to get shot at in the first place. Ideally, you're in and out of a situation and halfway home before the targets even realize they've been had. But, you know, these things do happen. Sometimes. More frequently than Merlin would like.)
There's also the slightly tiresome fact that he always has to go by 'Emrys' because 'Merlin' is, in the words of his handler, "so blatantly ridiculous that any mark with half a brain in their head would realize that it's a pseudonym." Never mind that it's not, but whatever.
But on the other side of things, there's travel! Adventure! Excitement! Going to exotic new places, meeting interesting people (typically before having them arrested, but still), getting to become an interesting person for days or weeks at a time. There are definitely perks to this job, even if Merlin didn't exactly have what one might call a choice when he took it. But he digresses.
Merlin doesn't actually hate his job. But right now he really, really hates his life.
Guinevere at least has the courtesy to listen when Merlin's trying to get them both out of here in one piece, so Merlin's car is going at top speed. Which admittedly isn't much, because his people are surprisingly stingy when it comes to forking over cash for vehicles that don't look like they're about to keel over in the middle of the street.
He'd like to think the intrinsic lack of speed on the poor thing is why the man in the rearview mirror is rapidly catching up. On foot. To a moving car. But Merlin is very much acquainted with the man in question, and with that acquaintance comes the unfortunate awareness that no, he really is just that good.
Good, obnoxious; take your pick, really.
"Emrys?"
Guinevere's voice, and understandably frazzled too. Merlin drags his gaze away from the rapidly approaching figure in the shadows and turns to her.
"What is it?"
"Couldn't you just—" One hand briefly vacates the wheel to wave at Merlin's firearm. "Maybe just a warning shot, or something?"
Merlin blinks. "He's not going to kill us," he says, realizing too late that she has no reason to think that's not the obvious outcome of this little chase. "And I'd really rather not shoot him at all."
(He's not even certain he could do it if he wanted to. Sure, he's been trained to be a good shot, well-rounded when it comes to weapons and whatnot, but again: the nature of the job demands a certain level of danger avoidance. They're not American cowboys swaggering straight into a firefight; they're meant to operate with finesse, with subtlety. It's sort of difficult to be subtle if you're waving a gun all over the place.
Merlin's never actually shot anybody and he really doesn't want to start tonight.)
He squints at the road ahead. "If you can get us to the nearest building with roof access, I can take it from there. We'll be able to lose him. Just trust me, all right?"
Guinevere takes her eyes from the road long enough to shoot him a suspicious look, which is fair, because she doesn't have much reason to trust anyone right now.
"Hang on," is all she says.
Merlin barely has time to comply before the car swerves again, violently, and so hard Merlin thinks shit, we're going to flip and I guess this is how it ends. Not the most glamorous death for an ostensibly secret agent, but maybe it's no more than he deserves.
And then they clear the corner and the car rights itself, and Gwen keeps right on speeding like nothing unusual is happening.
Trying to ignore the fact that his heart's pounding a tattoo into his chest, Merlin cranes his neck again and tries to see out the back window. The shadowed figure is no longer in sight.
Guinevere, apparently thinking along similar lines, asks, "Did we lose him?"
"I sincerely doubt it," Merlin admits. "He'll be back. The second you think you've won, he'll be back." Bloody prat always has to have the last word. "Don't slow down. We're almost there."
He tells her when to turn and she listens, which again is a nice change from what he's used to dealing with, and gives Merlin a little bit of encouragement that maybe this whole night won't end in utter disaster. Which is usually the feeling that precedes utter disaster, now that he's thinking about it.
They pull up in front of the building and get out. Merlin crouches down to pick the lock because these old buildings actually have decent structure and trying to kick the door down would just end in embarrassment for everyone involved.
"Emrys?" Guinevere interrupts after a moment, her voice strained enough that Merlin immediately guesses what the problem is. He doesn't turn around.
"Five more seconds," he says through gritted teeth.
"He is literally right there."
"Three more—there." The lock clicks open; Merlin stands up and grabs Guinevere's elbow, tugging her into the open doorway ahead of him in one fluid motion. "Just get to the roof and try your best to ignore the scary man chasing after us. He hates it when people ignore him."
He can see Guinevere's mouth struggling to open around that question, but she's a practical sort of person when it comes down to it, and forgoes being nosy in favor of bolting up the stairs. Merlin takes the extra second to lock the door again because even a moment's obstruction is worth the time in situations like this.
Merlin's not much for praying, generally speaking. All his attempts tend to devolve into irritable mental grumbling halfway through, and that's what he's doing now, swearing vengeance on all and sundry vague persons if they get up to this rooftop and the zipline isn't set up, as it ought to be assuming Merlin isn't the only person in this entire bloody organization who knows how to do his job.
The shattering of glass comes from behind them, followed by heavy footfall: their pursuer apparently bypassed the door entirely and decided to enter by window. Now that's just cheating.
The second they reach the roof Merlin is casting around for something to barricade the door with; he finds a heavy bar that will do the trick, if only temporarily, and then he and Guinevere run for the very edge of the roof where—ah. There. He yanks off the tarp covering their means of escape.
"Why is there a zipline here?" Guinevere asks, her disbelief evident even in a terrified whisper, but Merlin doesn't really have time to explain his handler's perpetual tired assumption that every given thing is going to go wrong. 'Simple extraction' my arse.
He kneels down, feeling around until he finds the mechanism that releases the zipline's cord. It shoots out into the night; the maths experts have done their homework because if he squints, Merlin can just make out the sharp end of the zip embedding itself into a blurry dark space on the other side of the river. A truck—their ride out, assuming they can just get there.
He passes Guinevere the first of the smaller cords. Her mouth falls open briefly, a soft O of surprise forming as her brain probably screeches that she's taken up with a suicidal idiot, but the moment passes as she tightens her jaw.
"It could be worse," she says. "I half-expected you to have a parachute under that suit."
Merlin is really starting to like her.
Guinevere clambers up on the edge of the rooftop, her breath hitching as something heavy begins to slam against the door behind them—and then she's gone, an indistinct shape sliding across the sky through empty air. Merlin climbs up onto the roof's edge and slips his own cord over the zipline, half a heartbeat away from following her down when the door finally crashes open.
He knows better than to look back, but Merlin's an idiot so he looks back anyway—sees blue eyes flashing angrily in the darkness.
It's been a while, but Merlin still knows that expression down to the most minute of details.
Sorry, Arthur.
The words are inane and clichéd and far too late, so it's probably for the best they get stuck in his throat.
Arthur makes a move toward him, but Merlin turns away and jumps off the roof, lets the rush of wind in his ears and the spike of adrenaline drown out the regret.
He cuts the line the second his feet hit the ground.
.
They hole up in a nondescript little motel right across the border, not glamorous enough to attract attention but not shitty enough to make it look like they're trying not to attract attention. (There's a trick to the art of hideout choosing. Merlin's gotten pretty good at it over the years.) He gets them separate rooms, because he figures at this point Guinevere is in deep enough that there'd be no point to her running away.
They're connecting rooms, because Merlin's also been taught never to leave things to chance if he can avoid it.
He does his habitual sweep of the room (for bugs, listening devices, pipe bombs, that sort of thing—paranoia is a job requirement in his line of work) while Guinevere pads about next door, possibly getting ready for bed, probably pacing and trying to pinpoint the exact moment when her life spun so spectacularly out of control. Merlin empathizes. He's been there. When the footfalls finally stop, indicating she's either gone to sleep or just passed out, Merlin picks up the hotel phone and dials a number.
There's a good five to ten minutes in between the initial dialing and Merlin actually being connected to the person he wants to talk to. A lot of vague answering messages and equally vague passcodes are exchanged, once or twice he has to hang up and call back exactly six seconds later. It's a pain in the arse, but like his handler is always telling him, security—and subtlety (this part is usually punctuated with what Merlin thinks is an unnecessarily pointed eyebrow raise)—is paramount.
Finally, there's a click on the line and his handler picks up. "Yes?"
"Line's secure," Merlin says, also unnecessarily, because he wouldn't be talking at all if it weren't. "I picked up our houseguest."
"And how is she?"
Most handlers probably wouldn't ask that question, Merlin thinks. His old ones certainly never did. It's part of why he likes Gaius so much, trusts him in a way that's hard to come by in this job.
"Good," he answers. "I mean—rattled, obviously, who wouldn't be, but she's holding up really well. She insisted on driving the escape vehicle."
At this point in their relationship, Merlin doesn't need the benefit of eyesight to be able to sense Gaius's eyebrow going up. "I sincerely hope you're joking."
"I'll explain it in the mission report. It'll all sound very tame, I promise." He grins. Gaius sighs on the other end.
"I suppose it's too much to hope that that was the extent of your excitement for the evening?" When Merlin hesitates, Gaius sighs again. "I may be retired from the more excitable portions of our work, Merlin, but I am not dead yet. Out with it."
Merlin's grin slides off his face. Without meaning to, he remembers Arthur's eyes in the dark. Furious.
"We were followed," he says, keeping his tone neutral. "I got sloppy, and another agent tracked me."
Gaius's voice is abruptly alert. "Were you identified?"
Merlin braces himself. "It was my old partner. From where—from where I used to be. We recognized each other straight off."
In the silence that follows Merlin wonders, uncomfortably, just how much his handler knows—or has guessed—about the factors that contributed to Merlin leaving his old organization. They might not be in any file, even a redacted one, but Gaius has an uncanny way of reading people.
"I see," Gaius says at last. "That is a problem."
"He doesn't know where we are. And we weren't followed here, I made sure of that."
"I'm more concerned with what he might tell his superiors," is the grim reply. "Before, we could have claimed plausible deniability when Guinevere went missing. Now they can definitively tie her disappearance to us."
Merlin cringes. "I'm sorry. I should have been more thorough."
"There's nothing to be done about it now," Gaius tells him, not unkindly. "I'll make some calls. There might still be a way to mitigate the damage."
It's his handler's turn to hesitate. "Merlin," he says, "you're certain you're all right?"
Uncanny. Merlin clears his throat. "'Course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Whatever your reasons for leaving your previous employer, it is always…difficult, to find yourself faced with the people who believe you've betrayed them. I know."
He closes his eyes. Gaius can't see him. "It won't interfere with my work. You have my word on that."
He can tell Gaius isn't satisfied with the answer—which is fair enough, because it's bullshit and they both know it—but he doesn't push. They say their brief goodbyes and the next thing Merlin hears is a dial tone, and a cool female voice apologizing for the dropped connection.
He hangs up the phone and sits down on the hotel bed. Leans over, puts his head in his hands and breathes slowly until enough time has passed that he feels almost normal again.
.
Gwen does a lot of pacing back and forth across the shoebox of a motel room while she waits. There isn't much to see; the walls are a violent shade of yellow, but the room seems clean and it has the necessities. She's stayed in worse places.
At the very least, this one does have a phone.
The timing has to be ludicrously specific, since she can't chance Emrys hearing said phone ring from the next room. The door between them has a lock, but Gwen imagines that won't do her much good against a government agent. So she waits, and she paces, keeping an eye on the big clock on the wall.
When the hour, minute and even second hands are all in place, she stops pacing, sits down on the bed and dials a number. She wonders as it rings whether the phone she's calling will have been destroyed by tomorrow. It seems likely.
There's a tiny click, letting her know the call has been picked up, but no greeting. She hadn't expected any.
Gwen takes a breath and tries to keep her voice down. "It's as you said," she says. "They came. There were some…complications, but I don't think it'll interfere in the long run."
The voice on the other end asks her a question. Gwen swallows hard.
"Of course I am. You shouldn't need to ask."
The line goes dead after that. Gwen returns the phone to its cradle with a sigh, turns off the light, and resolves to at least try for some sleep.
She doubts she's going to get very much of it over the coming days.
.