The paper boat, drifting in lazy spirals across the surface of the lake, looked a ghostly star, painted on dark, velvety water. It occasionally quivered slightly as it bobbed up and down on the gentle tide, dusty moonlight hitting the planes of the bow and stern, casting strange up-and-down shadows on the water.
A whispery, almost hazy voice breathed out a command, the words wafting across the water: "Atberan mónaflyen búta," the voice murmured. As a pair of faintly golden lights glowed briefly in the stygian, silky night, the boat moved in a near-straight line across the surface of the water, picking up immense speed, before succumbing to the water's deathly, dangerous embrace and sinking below the waves. A thin ripple spread across the calm of the lake, before all traces of the boat had disappeared.
"Hello! Laptop, give me!"
Jeff Angelo - a very British twenty-six-year-old with a sharply-sculpted face and a host of unlikely and downright disgusting sexual penchants - looked up in horror as the Doctor - the overeager, wide-smiled Doctor, with his strange eyes and floppy hair - attempted to grab Jeff's computer from him.
"No, no, no, no, wait, hang on!" yelped Jeff, trying desperately to close down all his tabs (and there were a lot of them). Despite the fact Jeff was very obviously protesting, and very obviously didn't want anybody taking his laptop, no matter what grotesque shapeshifting alien was taking over the world, the Doctor yanked it out of his hands anyway.
"Blimey! Get a girlfriend, Jeff!" the Doctor exclaimed, recoiling in horror at the tabs that Jeff hadn't shut down.
"Well if you'd given me time to close them -" began Jeff, when the door swung open again. He sighed in exasperation. "Gran."
Jeff's grandmother had concern and worry smeared all over her face, which generally had friendly features and a permanent smile. "What are you doing?" she asked, not bothering with any pleasantries.
The Doctor looked up at her, with a familiar "I-finally-get-to-explain-something-scientific-and-complicated-
to-someone" expression. "The sun's gone wibbly," he explained, "so right now, somewhere out there, there's going to be a big video conference call." His fingers danced across the keyboard. "All the experts in the world panicking at once, and do you know what they need? Me." Jeff rolled his eyes and sighed pointedly, though the Doctor was oblivious and carried on. "And - look - here they all are! All the big boys. NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Centre, Patrick Moore."
Gran blushed violently and appeared very flustered. "Ooh, I do like Patrick Moore,"
"I'll get you his number. Watch out, he's a devil, he is," the Doctor grinned.
Suddenly Jeff realised what the Doctor was doing, and cried out, rather pointedly, "You can't hack in on a call like that!"
The Doctor flashed something at the webcam, and turned slightly to Jeff. "Ca-" suddenly, he broke off. "Jeff. Jeff. Hmm... Jeff," he stood up to look properly at Jeff, who also stood, towering at least a head over the Doctor. The Doctor looked him up and down, looking more-than-slightly thrown off balance.
"I've seen you before - before I met you earlier. Where have I seen you before, Jeff?"
Frowning, Jeff replied, "I don't think we met before.."
"Shut up, Jeff, I'm thinking," said the Doctor brusquely. All of a sudden, it hit him: he knew where Jeff was from, where they'd met before, how the Doctor knew him already. "Got to go," he said quietly, and disappeared, leaving nothing but the vague scent of tweed in the air.
"And to think I'd poured his tea in the good china," sniffed Gran disapprovingly.
"Yeah," muttered Jeff, half-listening. "The good china."
The house hadn't changed for as long as the Doctor could remember. It was a fairly large, fairly uninteresting grey brick house that had been built in the sixth century and - to the Doctor's disbelief - maintained by magic ever since, so it permanently looked new, if slightly unstable. He clattered up the gravel path, not bothering to knock – the door was rarely locked anyway. He pushed the door open, and walked slowly into the house, with its familiar scent of flowers, herbs and smoke.
"Merlin?" he called. "You in?"
There was a muffled crash from somewhere in the house, then a figure appeared at the top of the stairs. "Doctor!"
The Doctor grinned briefly at his friend, then let his face fall into a more serious expression, but it was hard to stay that way. "Merlin, let me make you a cup of tea. We need to talk."
"Um – sure," Merlin answered, walking down the stairs two-at-a-time. "Has something happened? It's not the Cybermen, is it? They are called Cybermen, aren't they?" he asked, remembering the Doctor's tales of the strange metal men, recounted in quiet voices late at night over hot drinks.
"Ah, my old mates the Cybermen! No, nothing about them, they've not been bothering us. It's about - come on, then," the Doctor said, bouncing into the kitchen. "Let's have that famous herbal tea of yours. Well, I say famous, really it's just me and Adelaide who..." he trailed off. "Right. Tea. Now, where's your kettle?"
Merlin followed the Doctor into the kitchen, where he was stumbling around, searching for the kettle. Merlin shook his head fondly, taking two mugs printed with paintings of Arthurian legends and lazily dropping teabags into them, filling the cups with cold water straight from the tap.
"Ah, Merlin, the thing about tea is... Oh! Of course! Why would Emrys need a kettle?"
"Doctor."
"Sorry. I mean Merlin."
Ignoring the Doctor, who continued to witter on about something - a theorem, and some diagrams, from what Merlin caught - the wizard hovered one of his hands over the mugs and said, slowly, "Eaum abywan." Slowly, the water began to bubble, steam rising from the mugs like a dragon's coils, like hair that falls in waves and curls, like the spiralling lick of the ocean. After a couple of minutes, when the liquid was hot all the way through, Merlin handed a mug to the Doctor.
"Lovely, lovely. Through to the living room?" without waiting for a response, the Doctor wandered into the room across the hall and dumped himself - not very gracefully - into a sofa, sinking into the cushions.
Merlin followed, slightly unsure, but always trusting of the Doctor. Because out of everyone he knew, Merlin trusted the Doctor the most, because when he'd been lost and broken and scared it was the Doctor who'd found him and repaired him, as best he could. So no matter how unsure the Doctor made him, Merlin would always trust him, no matter what.
"Merlin, my magical little wizard pal," the Doctor began, cheerful as ever. "Sit down. Take a seat. Have a chair. Good things, chairs, aren't they? Love a chair. Very... chairy. Very useful. Nice to have a chair on hand, for, you know, sitting, and things. Mostly just sitting... sorry. Right."
Merlin half-scowled, unable to be truly annoyed at his nearly-best-friend. "You said you needed to talk," he reminded the Doctor.
"Yes, very important. Merlin, listen..."
"Doctor, just tell me."
The overeager smile gone from his face, the Doctor looked at Merlin with a frown. "Percival's back."
Percival.
The memories flooded back at once: Sir Percival. Brave, loyal, intimidating Percival, who'd pledged loyalty to Arthur without hesitating, without lingering. Sir Percival, who had the strongest sense of justice Merlin had ever known, who'd die for what he thought was right. Caring, selfless Sir Percival.
"Doctor, Percival – Percival's dead, Doctor!" snapped Merlin. "I watched him die! I was with him!"
The Doctor seemed to think very carefully about his next sentence: "Merlin, do you remember what the Great Dragon said? About reincarnation, rebirth, whatever you call it?"
How could he forget? Hadn't Merlin been living on the Great Dragon's words for all this years, on the belief that Arthur was the Once and Future King who'd rise again? How he'd waited, by the lake, watching and waiting every day for the King of Camelot to return. How he'd died a little bit more every day when Arthur didn't come. How he was starting to lose faith in the dragon, in the Doctor, in everything.
"Merlin, you know what this means. Sir Percival's been reincarnated and he's here. Don't you see? Don't you get what it means?"
Despite the fact the Doctor already knew that Merlin, of course, knew what it meant, he answered without being asked.
"Arthur's coming back."
