The essence to Merlin's Apprentice: Merlin thinks he was very drunk once….
This is a record of that time, relocated to a bar, in present time.
Let me misquote: "Oh, they hurt. Memories of alcohol, they hurt.
Well, nothing can be done about that now. The arrow of time points in one direction."
Lady/Merlin ahead, dive in at own risk.
/
He recognized her at once. She had changed her hair, she had been changing much about herself recently.
She was the very person he wanted to see most and the last person he wanted to see. With the obvious exception of his mother. He would pick dying over facing mother right now.
He had dropped out of college. He would fail his studies. The woman sitting there was his benefactor, in a way. She had encouraged him to pursue his studies, his love, everything, life. She gave him fundings and lavish gifts. He needed her advice desperately, like air to keep from suffocating. Sometimes he imagined she lived through him. Her own life always sounded empty to him.
He watched the black boots she wore, high-heeled, uncommon for her. She often went out the door forgetting to put shoes on. She wasn't even wearing those sparkly white fingerless gloves she was so fond of.
How many pairs of those had she owned? Were they all worn down?
She sat exactly where he used to sit. Beer at hand and study book in front of him. This bar drew people, interesting people, and it breathed out atmosphere and a poet's inspiration. Not that he was a poet, but he liked the taste of poetry. Nimue did too, before she dumped him.
He was lazy and never around when she needed him. He understood. It was true. How would he break this to his aunt?
Telling her was almost equal to telling his mother. They were best friends, in an incomprehensible near-hostile way. They resembled each other, called each other sister too. Now that her hair was black as well, the ghostlike presence of his mother grew all the stronger. No, these thick tresses shone and waved. Her hair wasn't like his mom's at all. She was not. Her voice was entirely different and her personality even more so. He could count on her understanding.
His mother will be furious when she finds out he didn't finish his studies. She was paying for his boarding. She would skin him. He would be lucky to get away only missing his skin.
"Viviane, what brings you here?" He should not have asked that. He could bite his tongue for this. She did not look as though she had come looking for him. She was only a woman having a drink. Her eyes on the Celtic swirls decorating the wall. He could almost hear her wish for a folk tune to play. Maybe later it would. The bar tender had a tickle taste in music.
"Merlin," He could have sworn her cheeks flushed. "dear student boy." She looked almost scared, as if not he, but his mother had discovered her here. Was she here in the hopes of picking someone up? His mother would disapprove, but then, she disapproved of most things.
"Please call me Vivi, Viviane makes me feel old."
"Don't be silly. You are young."
"It is different for women. You'll learn." She paused wistfully. "You cut your hair." She smiled, firmly holding her glass, droplets condense tricked down over her fingers.
"My student days are over." His voice of inevitable doom and death.
Their family always was one for being dramatic. "Tell me more."
"I would have called…" It's been days, weeks, since he attended lessons.
"Sit down and tell me now. I won't judge."
"I know." She tilted her head.
"You are worried about your mother."
"Yes."
"She'll hate you for this."
"I know." He looked defeated. "I am making a living, a future for myself. I am developing a freelance project. We call it Camelot."
"We?"
"Myself and a group of friends. Arthur does most of the work, under my supervision. I am his mentor."
"How old is Arthur that you can be his mentor?"
A pause. "He's not left high school yet, but he'll do great things, I know it. He is just what the world needs."
His hand gestures were all over the place, indicating to her that he too probably already had something to drink before entering this lowly drinking cavern. She allowed herself a deep drink, downing her glass in one swoop, thinking she needed it.
"Are you for drinking?"
"Excuse me?"
He reached to scratch the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Err sorry, I meant can I buy you a drink? What would you like?"
"That is very kind of you."
"I've only ever seen you drink water."
"Could have been vodka."
"It wasn't. I know you, Vivia... Vivi."
Her empty glass had most certainly not contained anything close to water. So there were more sides to her than he knew of. That is what makes life interesting.
"This is my usual dwelling." It felt like him, a stretch of forest in a crowded world.
"Is it? I liked the sign outside, before you walk down the stairs.." into the filth, into the cool cavernous space that is this bar. "The sword."
He knew her to be superstitious. She believed in signs. A sword must mean something specific to her. She let her private symbolism guide her.
"Yes. This place is called Excalibar. It's a pun… it's…"
"silly."
"Yeah.
There was supposedly this woman in a lake and she handed a man a sword, to make him king, I think."
"I know the story."
"I wish I were a better storyteller."
He was still not sitting down. And he was beginning to explain to her the best known legend in the world out of sheer despair, but it all sounded too adorable for her to be annoyed.
"Am I making you uncomfortable?"
"You couldn't." Hell, she could. He had never seen her like this before. He only ever saw her in soft colours, in the cold light of his family home, her pastel shaded make-up, light pink lips now a deep red. He involuntarily felt his knees weaken when she smiled. He gripped the chair, for his dear life, and sat down.
"I like your other style better. It is more… you." His hands fidgeting in his lap, like that nervous nerdie Frik.
"Oh." For a moment she looked as though she would take her napkin and wipe the red from her lips. She then, decidedly, did not.
The smoky shadows of the bar enveloped her, they hid her face almost as well as her hair did.
He reached out, brushed the hair away. He was fed up with women hiding, he got enough of that with Nimue. She shivered. He did not understand.
"Merlin, you shouldn't…" Her voice hoarse, not as light and luminescent as he was used to. Its counseling streak was also gone. He had caught her here, what he had considered to be strange waters to her. Evidently he'd been wrong. He never was a good judge of people.
"Is Nimue… well?"
His girlfriend's confidence had never recovered from meeting his mother. Merlin had known she would not approve. Nimue took it personal. Viviane had borne witness to all her sister's complaints, irks and grievances about the girl.
"She is gone."
"I am sorry." Viviane placed her hand on his. It was peculiar in the sense that he had never noticed how often she shied away from physical contact until now when she did touch him. His entire family was not of the huggy kind.
"I… another drink." She agreed.
He was on his seventh glass, - somehow the glasses hadn't gone up even. It was only her fifth. – when she kissed him.
She did not become embarrassed. Had he expected her to? Girls often did.
He was easily led when drunk. She almost enjoyed having this power over him.
As sweat dripped slowly from the ceiling of the bar and the air inside had grown sharp drowning in muddled liquored breaths, she decided it was time to leave.
He was hopeless when it came to directions. They did find his rooms, in the end. Long after she had taken off her shoes, which had become painful to her feet, and after that street where he stopped every few paces to kiss her as though his life depended on her alone. "Aren't you too drunk?" she whispered. "No." he called. "No!" resting his head against a cool surface. "I am too drunk, but not too drunk to adore you. Look at this lamppost, it's beautiful. And. So. Are. You."
"Hey lady!" Another drunken voice. "Is that guy bothering you?"
"Mind your own business." she called back.
His rooms were a second kind of cave. She put on the lights, clear white ones. She stripped to her underwear. He could barely get out of his clothes, she stopped helping him, they had taken enough off for him to be serviceable to her and at least he was enthusiastic, if not very mobile. She lay him on the bed. She freely enjoyed what happened there, taking her desires.
When he woke, she had left. There was a blasting headache in her place and precious little recollection of the previous night.
A week or two later, in which time he met up with his friends and continued building up Camelot, his memory was jolted into action. There was a text.
"Are you alone?"
"Yes, cooped up in my student room." Where you left me…
He only went home on weekends. He was staying here for as long as he could to avoid his mother's wrath. He had officially quit, she knew, and somehow his skin was still intact.
"Do not tell your mother."
"Wasn't planning to."
She sounded secretive, as ever. But then one had to be when acquainted with his mother who was known for her temper. She smashed any objects to the floor. You didn't want her to repeat last year's fatal phone crash, which had occurred upon receiving a text she hadn't liked, not on her own phone. That "swine Vortigern" offering to pay her for a lap dance. Merlin still missed that phone.
"I am pregnant."
"Are you… keeping it?"
"Yes. Do not tell your mother it is yours."
It is mine? His head pounded all of a sudden. That is impossible.
"Will I have to… marry you?"
"No, Merlin." Such a boy still.
"Will I see you again?"
/
-Meet me at the lake.-
Creating a child had been her purpose to going out in the first place. The much needed change to her existence.
He did not need to know that.
All she had needed was a sword.