When it came to her son, Hunith Emrys believed three things.

The first was that he was special, more so than usual maternal instincts would lead any mother to think. She couldn't decide whether to thank the Gods for his gifts or to hate them for laying such a burden on her child's shoulders.

The second was that the day Will passed away was the day her son began to fade away, too.

The third, the one that Hunith knew to be true above any other, was that the day Merlin met Arthur Pendragon was the day he began to breathe again.

Merlin wakes to the smell of bacon and sausages wafting up the stairs. He turns over angrily, laying on his stomach in an attempt to ignore it, stave off the hangover headache, and drift back into his dreams. Not that his dreams are a particularly nice experience but lately bad experiences during unconsciousness are better than the thoughts he experiences during consciousness. Merlin knows exactly what his mother is trying to do - lure him out of his bedroom with the promise of his favourite food as a distraction. But a nuclear bomb wouldn't be able to distract him today. He would walk around the rubble and the dead bodies and think about the day he murdered his best friend.

'Breakfast is ready, Merlin!'

He groans. There is no missing the soft inflections in her voice, her words draped in the patronising tone that Merlin had heard for the past year from everyone to the paper delivery boy to his college tutors. At least when it came from his mother it was more I-don't-want-you-to-fall-apart rather than what the hell are you hiding, Emrys?

Knowing that it isn't exactly wise to delay the inevitable, Merlin pulls on a hoodie that smells neither clean nor dirty, a pair of pyjama bottoms and trudges downstairs towards to eat under the watchful eyes of his mother. He gratefully accepts the coffee in front of him even though they've apparently ran out of milk and black coffee Lucifer's drink of choice.

'I'll pop to the shops later. Do you need anything, sweetheart? Actually, I should just ask Gaius if he could bring some with him later. I won't have time for the shops if I'm going to make Mr Miles that lasagne I promised him.'

Zoning out from her rambling, Merlin runs a hand through his greasy black hair and takes a sip, wincing at the bitterness and the slight burn at the roof of his mouth. He needs the energy to pretend to eat the mountain of breakfast that's placed in front of him. It's a trick he learnt from the trusty, if a bit mental, Cassie from the first - and best - series of Skins. Cut your food up like you normally would, bring it to your mouth, make conversation, preferably a question, and then put the food back down again. It's not that he doesn't want to eat. He's in no danger of falling underweight because, usually, he eats like a normal, non-murderous person.

It's just that today, it feels like he's taking the food directly out of Will's mouth.

'Why is Gaius coming over?'

'He's my brother,' says Hunith, glancing at his plate. If she notices what he's doing, she doesn't show it. 'Does he have to have a reason to see his family?'

Merlin raises his eyebrow, and if his mother's sigh is anything to go by, he's getting better at imitating Uncle Gaius' Eyebrow of Doom. He'd been practicing since he was eight years old and he realised the Eyebrow made one of his primary school-teachers, Mr Templeman, almost piss his pants at Parent's Evening after making a malicious comment that Merlin didn't really understand at the time, something about the links between single mothers and concentration spans.

'There's something we want to talk to you about.'

'What?'

'It'd be best if we wait for Gaius…'

'Just tell me.'

'It's not the right time, Merlin.'

'Mum!'

Hunith jumps while Merlin grimaces as two cupboards, the living room door and the fridge open and slam shut. His magic had been acting like a completely separate entity more and more over the past year. A surge of anger, no matter how little the irritant, his magic would tingle in his limbs, wriggle and wriggle uncomfortably until there was nothing more that Merlin could do to oppress it. Sadness often ended in the television switching to a chick-flick - apparently his magic had a weird sense of humour - and happiness, while a lot easier to control, had once caused him to break Old Man Simmons' fence during fit of laughter.

Will was alive when that last happened, and it hasn't happened since.

'Sorry. It's just I've got to go to work with what feels like the worst hangover I've ever had in my life and I don't really need you, to like, keep secrets from me; especially not today.'

Hunith sets down her mug - World's Best Mum, bought with five pounds that ten year old Merlin saved up to buy her for her birthday – and takes a deep breath. 'Don't... I just don't want you to get the wrong idea about why I'm doing this, okay?'

She pulls a document out of a large brown envelope that Merlin hadn't noticed. What he does notice, though, is the wariness in his mother's eyes as she hands it to him, the way her body language changes, and the words UNIVERSITY OF CAMELOT in thick crimson lettering.

'I've already declined my UCAS offers, Mum; I told you I can't go anymore...'

'This isn't a normal University, sweetheart, it's got a separate branch for people like you.'

'People like me?'

'You know, people born with talents. With magic.'

Oh. Oh. So that's what this is about. Merlin remembers her anxiety in the aftermath of Will's death; how he went to stay with Gaius for a week and was forced to relearn ways to supress his natural abilities; the way she gently but sternly reminded him how important it was for his secret to stay a secret, even though that was instilled in Merlin when he was old enough to understand that other little boys and girls couldn't repair their broken toys like he could.

An actual school for people with magic, though? Merlin would bloody never have imagined it. Gaius had told him there were others like him around the world, like the woman in Japan who made it to national news when she saved hundreds of lives during an earthquake and the group of travellers staging a peaceful protest to stay on their caravan park weren't travellers at all, they were Druids. Even so, he didn't think it stretched to needing universities to house them.

'I'm not going,' says Merlin quickly, when he finds himself interested, flicking through the ceramic pages that show photographs of what seemed to actually be Hogwarts. 'I'm not going, Mum.'

'The thing is, love, it's not really optional.'

Merlin clenches his jaw. The coffee is cold by now but he squeezes the mug in an attempt to calm his magic down. 'What?'

'Gaius received an anonymous phone-call last month. He was told certain people had been alerted about a young boy with magic living in Wales whose friend passed away in unexplained circumstances. Dangerous people, Merlin.'

Magic floods his arms. His voice breaks slightly as Merlin whispers: 'I had nothing to do with what happened.'

'I know that, sweetheart, we all know that,' comforts Hunith. She reaches across the table and rests her hand gently over his. If Hunith had her own magic, she would have been able to feel a quite violent buzz of power. 'But these people, from what I've been told, track magic users for a living and… and kill them.'

'K-kill them?'

Hunith refuses to say anymore until she's made them both two cups of tea because apparently tea fixes everything. It's a little cruel, thinks Merlin, considering the cliff-hanger she's left him with. When she restarts the story, though, fortified by the loyal Earl Grey, Merlin wishes she hadn't started at all.

Hunith wasn't quite sure what they were called, something ridiculous like Dragon-fire United -which Merlin thinks sounded like a football team from Middle Earth - and members of the group made it their life's work to wipe out what they believed to be 'unnatural abominations'. Apparently they originated during the build up to the Second World War; suspicious activities had been witnessed on the frontline of the First with enemies being wiped out without a single bullet being fired and soldiers eyes changing colour. It had become more and more radicalised over the years, with members deciding the only way to rid the earth of these creatures was cold blooded murder.

'How do you know all this?' asks Merlin quietly.

It's one thing to find out you're being forced into higher education; it's another to discover strangers want to kill you simply for being born.

'Gaius has some contacts from his teaching days; he's been gathering as much information as he can since the call. We didn't want to tell you until your place at Camelot had been confirmed.'

The television comes to life – its ten o'clock and Merlin is due at work in half an hour. He's been working part-time at a bookstore-cum-coffee shop in the town centre since he decided University was off the cards and his mother, though she didn't ask for it, deserved some rent. It's a tedious job but he does love books and whenever he gets a break, or there's a slow customer day, Merlin makes himself coffee and devours the graphic novels, worlds where magic is the norm, where he wasn't a freak, where he didn't hurt those closest to him.

Worlds where people don't want to murder him.

'I have to get ready,' He stands up, a little too fast, and has to steady himself on the armrest when he sees stars behind his eyelids; he grins lopsidedly when he notices Hunith giving him her best intense worried mother look. 'What? I'm already on a warning for being late!'

'Why don't you give yourself the day off, love? Get some sleep before tonight.'

'Tonight?'

'The memorial. For Will.'

'I forgot.' Shit. Tears burn the back of his eyes. He won't let them fall. 'I forgot about the memorial for the boy that I fucking killed.'

'Language, Merlin.' Getting to her feet, Hunith grips Merlin's chin and forces his head up gently. 'You did not kill William. It was an accident and everybody knows that. You're too hard on yourself. Maybe some time away from here will do you good.'

'Maybe.'

Or maybe, just maybe, destiny, like the awkward little bitch it is, will thrust the young sorcerer onto a path that will lead him to meet a group of people who will put the sparkle back in his eyes – people who are, unknowingly, a great deal more intertwined with magic and murder than any of them could've imagined.

Arthur Pendragon fucking loves parties.

He loves the music, and the atmosphere, the pretty girls - and the pretty boys, of course, because why discriminate? He even loves the hangover, a painful reminder of the brilliant night before, the headache just good memories trying to burst out of your brain, and if it gets too bad, he can always charm one of his father's kitchen staff into making him something greasy and fattening.

But this party, this party isn't good. It isn't good at all. The music is boring, the people are worse and being Uther Pendragon's son and heir apparent, he has to put on his best respectful and intelligent young man act, when in reality if he has to make any more conversation about university or Pendragon Corporations or stocks or money - he doesn't mind the money talk, actually, he spends enough for it to be his specialist subject on Mastermind - then Arthur is going to rip his own eardrums out.

'Find me a drink.'

'What did your last slave die of?'

'I killed them because they didn't find me a drink when I asked.'

Morgana raises one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows in mock outrage. 'I'm your older sister, Arthur, which technically means you should be finding me a drink. Anyway, Uther gave me explicit orders not to let you drink tonight.'

Ah. The infamous Two Day Liver Destroyer for Gwaine's 19th last month had frayed Uther's trust in him which annoyed Arthur a fucking lot because:

A, his Dad was away on a business trip that weekend and didn't even know Arthur was going out so how could he claim to have been worried?

And B, the 'antique' vase he'd smashed - by accident - could easily be replaced and the carpet he had thrown up all over had been washed; Arthur paid for a professional clean out of his own bloody money!

'Right.' says Arthur through a false smile at one of Uther's tipsy-looking business associates, on his way to buffet table, judging by the makeshift holes that have been hacked into his belt. 'And since when have you listened to him?'

'I need a new car," Morgana shrugs because clearly that's the most obvious thing in the world. 'So I'm being Daddy's little princess for the time being, and if that means keeping you sober, then you're bloody staying sober. Understand?'

'I'll buy you two cars if you find me a beer. Three if you can get your hands on some vodka.'

'Be quiet, Arthur, you're being even more insufferable than usual,'

She pulls out her iPhone, and the clicking of her false nails against the screen is too much for Arthur to bear so it's time to mingle. Reluctantly, of course – he wouldn't admit to anyone that he secretly cares about his father's business because Uther built it up from the ground and Arthur knew that if it wasn't for Pendragon Corp, his father wouldn't have survived his mother's death. And it doesn't hurt to know that he or Morgana were not enough to bring his father out of his depression because Arthur knows how much his parents loved each other and he hopes he can find that kind of love someday, too.

And God, he hopes nobody in this room can read his thoughts because he sounds like a Massive Soppy Twat.

He's fixing his hair in the men's toilets when a guy he doesn't recognise enters and, casually as anything, opens the window and lights a cigarette.

'Excuse me, sir,' Arthur says, surprising himself with how insignificant his voice sounds. This man has a presence, an aura, which is pretty hard to ignore. 'You can't smoke in here.'

Mr Nicotine doesn't look at him. 'And you're going to stop me, are you, Pendragon?'

Smoke billows through the man's nostrils, adorned with grey hairs. Arthur takes a step back because he hates the smell, and smoking is one of the things he knows he'll never do, no matter how tempting it becomes during a night out. 'How do you know who I am? I don't believe we've met, Mr…'

'Ah. I don't expect you to remember me, of course, and I shouldn't intrude in the natural course of things, ' explains the still-unnamed man, though Arthur has no fucking idea what's going on so 'explains' is questionable. 'Though I'm afraid the situation calls for intervention.'

Arthur can't decide whether he's drunk or dreaming. He realises the man still hasn't given his name which makes him suspicious and thinks he should probably call Broadmoor to let them know one of their patients has escaped. 'What… situation? I'm sorry; I literally have no idea what you're talking about.'

'He saved your life many times, Arthur Pendragon. It's time for you to return the favour.'

The memorial goes as badly as Merlin expects and he ends up leaving half way through, even though he knows it's rude and Will would tell him to 'man the fuck up, get back in there and start telling everyone what a brilliant person I was', and walking out draws more attention to him than he needs. It's just too hard to look Will's father in the eye as he shakes Merlin's hand, thanks him for being such a good friend to his son and chuckles about their childhood anecdotes with Hunith.

Will didn't even want to come out that day. He was revising for his A2 Sociology and Merlin thought that was reason enough to drag him out because Will never revised, so clearly something was wrong and that called for alcohol.

He never got to sit the exam.

"Merlin?" a voice says from behind him. Gwen has joined him outside and he's glad it's her because if he's crossed a line she'll tell him. "You okay, love?"

There's an outdoor heater protecting them against the chilly night air and Merlin swallows as he remembers the time he and Will were eleven and they camped out in this very garden, the heater literally the only reason they didn't freeze to death. But fuck, he doesn't want to think about Will, so he grins at Gwen, who's probably the closest thing he has to a best friend now, and says: "They ran out of mini sausage rolls, and I simply refuse to be at a party without sausage rolls."

"They have those mini cocktail sausages, if that helps?"

"Gwen!" Merlin fakes offence, complete with pained hand on heart and everything. "How dare you compare sausage rolls to cocktail sausages? That's sacrilege!"

She laughs. "Okay, okay. So in a No Sausage Roll Situation, what do you recommend from the buffet table, Mr Gordon Ramsey?"

"Doritos. But only if there's dip."

"But I'm hungry and there isn't dip. Chip shop?"

And that's how they find themselves in the local chip shop, scraping together £6.42 between them to get two portions of chips, two cans of Coke and some of those little packets of tomato sauce - which you have to pay for now because fucking Thatcher's Britain. They chew in silence for a while, watching the drunkards stumble in, complaining because they want pizza and they haven't realised they've got the wrong takeaway. It's good fun, actually, and it takes Merlin's mind of things for a while.

"I think I'm actually going to miss Ealdor," Gwen says.

"When?"

"In September!"

"You've lost me, Gwen."

"University, Merlin! Some idiot has decided I'm an adult and I'm going to university!"

Ah. Merlin hasn't told her he's going to Camelot yet. She's going there too, studying Chemistry, and everyone knows it's really high up in the rankings and you have to get A's to be accepted, Merlin has been scraping B's over the last year and apparently dead best friend isn't even enough for his teachers to give some lenience. He doesn't know how to put "Camelot has a secret wing for people with magical powers, like me by the way, and I've been given a place there even though I'm thick as shit" into words while still retaining his friendship with Gwen.

"You're going to Camelot, yeah?"

"Yeah, and people look at me as if I'm really clever and stuff when I tell them but I'm actually not, I mean, Dad taught me most of what I know about Chem, and if you asked me to sit a Maths exam I'd fail spectacularly and – what?" Gwen stops, because Merlin has taken to pushing soggy chips around the packet with his fork. "What's wrong?"

Merlin says, "I got an acceptance letter this morning," and still can't find it in himself to sound excited about it, even for Gwen's sake.

"To Camelot?! But I thought you didn't want to leave? What are you studying? Oh god, I'll actually know someone now, I was so scared in case people wouldn't like me and I'd be alone for the rest of my life with three cats and I don't even like cats!"

Now that does bring a smile to his face because Gwen is the most likeable person in the whole world, she'll do anything for anyone and would no doubt be able to make grown men apologise to their mothers for things they did in primary school. They spend the next ten minutes chatting about it – Merlin's doing English Lit when he's not practicing spells, Gwen hopes there's good clubs to join – and everything is great until Gwen asks Merlin why didn't want to leave in the first place.

"I know it's different, but when Dad first died, all I wanted to do was get a one way ticket out of here."

When Gwen was sixteen and her little brother Elyan was fourteen, their father was stabbed by some teenagers hoping to make a quick buck at the expense of an old man who looked like he would have a full wallet. Random deaths are all the more traumatising – when you know it's coming it's easier to prepare. When it's not, and someone who you love is torn from your life without warning, it's horrific, and you find yourself tumbling down a path of grief, unable to put the brakes on, without being able to stop whatever is going on in your life and cry and cry because it's not fucking fair. And Merlin remembers how much he admired Gwen's strength as she aced her GCSE's, kept Elyan on the straight and narrow and smiled in all the right places.

And maybe that's the catalyst for all the emotions he's been hiding away in his mind behind walls that could give Elizabethan castle fortifications a run for their money, complete with Rottweiler guard dogs that would bite anyone who tried to make him open up, because Merlin finds himself crying on Gwen's shoulder in the middle of the local chippy, not caring who is looking because he needs this, he needs to let it out.

"I tried to save him, Gwen, I tried and I made things worse and he died, and it hurts, it hurts so much because he was my best friend and he was the only person who knew everything about me, all my secrets, and now he's gone because of me, and it hurts. And I feel like if I leave I'm leaving Will behind. I'm getting on with my life but he can't. He'll never go to university, but I will." Merlin pauses for breath. "It should have been me."

To Gwen's credit, she doesn't say anything to that. She doesn't shoot him down or reprimand him; she just tightens her grip and lets him sob. She knows she can't say anything to make a difference. She doesn't know exactly what happened to Will, only what was released to the public domain and what Merlin told her in quiet whispers. So Gwen waits until the Merlin's sobs calm, giving death stares to anyone looking their way, and walks him home in comfortable silence.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" Gwen says as Merlin fishes his house key from his pocket. "I can stay if you don't want to be on your own?"

Merlin grins. It isn't forced, and he knows that crying has helped, even though it was a little embarrassing. "I'm fine. I've got you, my… princess in shining armour, right?"

"Princess in shining armour, I like it!" Gwen laughs, enveloping him in a bone-crushing hug before she leaves.

For the first time in a while, Merlin feels like the weight of the world isn't playing house on his shoulders. And then he opens the living room door to find his Uncle Gaius surrounded by empty suitcases. Fuck.