Chapter Two: In which Merlin apologises for his behaviour, sort of

Merlin was dismayed to see his new home was so close to where that spoiled brat of a prince lived. From the Christmas catalogue room (as Merlin would think of it forevermore) they followed Gaius through a door. And suddenly—a bit too suddenly—they were there.

It was a small apartment set aside for the prince's governess, or so Gaius said. Merlin felt sure he wasn't going to like this whole governess gig if it meant spending any length of time with that turniphead. But he was pleased with his new home. The rooms were small, but clean and filled with natural light, boasting windows with a view of a tree-filled garden. There was a living room just big enough to fit a couch, table and television; a kitchen so tiny it could probably fit in a wardrobe; and a small bedroom for his mum.

"Where's my room?" he said. Mum came up behind him and gave him a sort of half-hug. He suspected he might have gotten a better one if she hadn't been angered by his behavior.

"I figured you wouldn't mind sharing with me, love." Sure, now that she's the deliverer of bad news, she tries to be all sweet again. "Traditionally, the governess had no family of her own. She was free to spend all her energy taking care of the royal children. It might seem outdated, but it worked well. I'm an exception, having you here with me. But Gaius convinced the king that I'd do an excellent job and that having another child around might be good for the prince. And as atrocious as your behavior was, it does seem like he could do with a little practice on how to talk to other people."

Merlin opened his mouth, ready to chime in with just how horrid he thought that fake excuse for a prince was, but his mother knew him well and cut him off.

"That still doesn't excuse you, young man. As soon as we get settled in here, you are going to write the prince a letter of apology and then hand-deliver it to him. Just because someone else is being rude doesn't mean you can be too. We should always strive to be a good example for others."

Hand-delivered to that turniphead? He'd much rather his mother broke out the spatula. Geez, he hated it when she got in her preachy moods. Probably came from spending so much time minding other people's children. His only consolation was that soon enough she'd be turning some of that attention on to the prince.

Merlin didn't have much to unpack. This normally wouldn't bother him, but this time it meant he had to start on that apology letter all too soon. He dithered around a bit in his school bag before pulling out a pencil and a sheet of paper ripped messily from his notebook. His teachers at school would look at the frayed edge of the paper in horror, but Merlin really couldn't be bothered to care.

He lifted the pencil and hastily scrawled, in his most untidy writing:

Dear prince prat.

I guess I'm sorry for calling you a turniphead. Next time I'll try not to say it out loud when I'm thinking it.

Merlin

Of course, Merlin's mum made him go back and redo most of it ("You know why, Merlin, don't look at me like that!") but that didn't stop him from using a little bit of his magic to restore it to its original state. Minor alterations like that were usually easy, and he had no compunctions against using magic to make his life a little bit more satisfying now and then. His mum would have a fit if she knew all that he used it for ("Just because they've done away with automatic capital punishment for magic users doesn't mean it's not still illegal, Merlin! Please stop trying to give your poor mother a heart attack!") but he just couldn't help it. Magic was an itch under his skin that was begging to be scratched, and if he was going to scratch at something, it might as well be the prince.

#

Merlin's mum sent him to deliver his apology letter alone.

"You need to learn to take responsibility for your own actions," she had said, sounding an awful lot like that person she sometimes watched on the telly—the one who always told parents what an awful job they did raising their children. Merlin had quite enjoyed seeing that parents could be as stupid as their kids. . . . But now his mother was getting ideas.

"And I'm going to check with the prince later to make sure you made your apologies, so no running away, mister."

Ugh.

So Merlin found his way past the Christmas catalogue room, through a fancy door and down a hall that led to the turniphead's bedroom. The walls in this hallway were covered in framed paintings of rather ugly people, probably Arthur's royal ancestors. He contemplated using magic to make the images even uglier; he might be able to highlight all the imperfections just a smidge. Nobody would ever even notice. Probably.

Besides the portraits, the hallway contained four or five doors. Mum said all those rooms belonged to the prince, but that his bedroom, where he spent most of his time, was the first one. Merlin pounded three times on the first door, hurting his knuckles in the process. Maybe no one would answer and his mum would forget about it all by tomorrow. But his fantasies were dashed when a commanding voice yelled, "Come in!"

The turniphead's bedroom seemed fairly normal, sporting various footie posters on the walls and an obnoxious amount of cool-looking toys. There were portable video game systems, sports paraphernalia, and a model rocket; LEGO sets, comic books, and a fancy desktop computer; board games, what looked like a real microscope, and too many other things to properly take notice of. Merlin had never seen such an exciting collection before and was dying to explore. He was reaching for a LEGO train on the floor when a sharp voice said, "Don't touch my things!"

Merlin looked up, startled.

"What do you want, Elf-Boy?"

The reason for this unhappy errand sat at a desk and stared at him as if he were a half-eaten mouse that a cat had regurgitated on his bed. Hey . . . that was an idea. It probably wouldn't be too hard to magic up a dead mouse. But first things first.

"My name's not 'Elf-Boy'," Merlin pouted, clenching the apology letter between his hands in frustration.

"Well, since you never saw fit to inform me of your real name in that charming introduction of yours, what else am I supposed to call you?" Merlin had never heard such a pompous voice in his life.

"Merlin. My name's Merlin."

"Ah, a magical name for a magical elf." The prince looked entirely too pleased with himself.

Merlin clenched his teeth and once again bemoaned the luck that had caused him to be born with eyes glowing gold. He also spent a moment wishing his mum had been a bit less romantic and a tad more practical when naming him. When trying to hide your distressingly magical child from the authorities, it might help to not give said child an obviously magical name. His mum always said it 'just felt right'. Merlin was sure a nice, normal name like Matthew or William would have felt just fine, too.

But anyway, no need to be distracted by what could have been when he had an insulting prat to deal with.

He grit out, "For the last time, I am not an elf!" He just barely refrained from adding, 'but I really wasn't wrong about you being a turniphead'. "My name is Merlin, and you should learn how to use it."

The prat leaned back in his chair, looking rather self-satisfied, and drawled, "Well, then, Merlin, you may call me 'Your Royal Highness'."

Yeah, like that was going to happen.

The turniphead continued, "But there must be some reason you've decided to burden me with your presence. The faster you tell me what you want, the faster you can get out of here. I have actual important people I need to go see."

Could this guy be any more of a prat? Merlin took a deep breath, stewing at the injustice of it all, and said, "I'm supposed to tell you 'sorry'." He thrust the half-crumpled letter at the prince and turned to leave. There. That wasn't so bad.

But then Prince Prat had to ruin it by tapping his desk he was sitting at and saying, "Well? I'm waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"Waiting for you to apologize."

"Well, I already did, you dollophead, so you're going to be waiting a long time."

The prince jolted up in his chair. "What did you just call me?"

In the back of his mind Merlin knew he should just cut his losses, apologize like his life depended on it (which, to be fair, it probably did) and run away. But Merlin was done with thinking rationally.

"You heard me! A dollophead! Ugh, you make me so angry! Knocking me down, being mean about my ears, calling me an elf and not even having to say sorry at all! It makes me so mad I want to hit you!" It made Merlin's magic fizz up with the desire to hit him too.

"Feel free, but you should know that I could take you apart with one blow." And the prat just sat there, smirking at him.

"I could take you apart with less!" Merlin yelled. His magic was certainly ready.

The prince greeted this speech with an amused little snort. "By all means, please try. But you should know I've been trained to kill since birth."

Merlin scoffed at him. "You have not!"

"Self-defense, martial arts, weapons training everyday. . . . As I said, trained to kill since birth."

"Wow, and how long have you been training to be a prat?" The words flew off his lips before he could stop himself.

The prince looked affronted. "You can't address me like that."

Merlin grinned in anticipation. "I'm sorry. How long have you been training to be a prat, my lord?"

The prince jumped up and kicked his chair out of the way, so there was nothing between them. His hands were up, ready to take a swing. But then he spread them wide, as if in invitation.

"C'mon, then, Merlin! Come on!"

And Merlin did it. He took a swing straight at the prat's face. It was times like these that Merlin really regretted the illegality of magic.

Before he knew it, he was face-down on the ground with a heavy weight—a knee, Merlin guessed—pressing painfully into his spine. "Told you so," said the prince.

Merlin went limp, as if he had given up. The second the weight on top of him relaxed, he used the slightest bit of magic to help him roll to the side. He squirmed out from beneath the prince, then launched himself at the other boy, limbs flailing in a flurry of slaps and kicks, battle cry on his lips. This second attack didn't fare any better than the first, and Merlin was promptly restrained in a strange sort of hug, pulled tightly against the prince's body, arms firmly clamped to his sides. He was frogmarched to the door, but kicked at everything he could reach along the way. He got a sharp hit to the prince's shin with the heel of his shoe. He saw the LEGO train he had admired earlier and gave it a good boot. It flew across the floor, pieces spraying off as it went. Merlin didn't feel too bad about it. It wasn't like the turniphead didn't deserve it, or that it couldn't be rebuilt. Merlin would love to rebuild it himself, but doubted he'd get the chance.

The prince gave him one last vicious squeeze, threw him out the door, and kicked him in the back side, hard. "I'm not going to have you prosecuted for assaulting the prince and destruction of royal property, but only because I realize that I encouraged you in your idiocy. But if you ever touch me or my things again, I'll have you and your mother out of here so fast you'll have whiplash."

Merlin, who never did know when to quit, looked up and said, "Could you sound anymore like a stuck-up arse? And that hardly counts as destruction of property. It's LEGO. You just put it back together again. I'd be happy to do it for you."

The door slammed in his face.

"You could have just said no."

#

When Merlin scuttled back home, he paused in the Christmas catalogue room to examine the red-and-gold tree. The tree was so gaudily decorated he was kind of surprised it hadn't thrown itself out the window in protest. (With Merlin's magic being repressed and constantly fighting to escape, strange things like that had been known to happen. For one, his homework had a propensity to turn into fruit leather, which was at least an improvement over that one time it had burst into flames, taking his whole backpack with it. Mum couldn't say he had learned nothing about control: he hadn't accidentally combusted anything in months.)

After some contemplation, Merlin decided that the tree, despite being over-the-top, was actually rather exciting. He suddenly had a similar thought about a certain prat, and pushed it out of his head as fast as he could. Merlin remembered said prat threatening Mum's job, and decided there was nothing exciting about any of it. He longed to kick at the train tracks running under the tree, but decided not to. Mum would be super-sad if she lost her job, and Merlin couldn't risk it. But he did lean down and deliberately place one finger on the tracks, just to show he could. "Take that, prat!" he whispered. Maybe he could sneak back out here tonight and rebuild the whole track layout backwards. The turniphead might think he was losing his mind.

#

When Merlin returned to their new rooms, his mum gave him a kiss on the head and asked how things had gone with the prince.

Merlin shrugged his shoulders, thought a moment, and said, "It was more fun than I thought it would be." His mum looked at him searchingly, but then started talking about the prince. It had been a rough start, but she was sure the prince was lovely. Merlin didn't really listen, astonished by the truth of his statement. It had been fun to go and pester—er, apologize to—the prince, a lot of fun, if he were honest. Too bad he'd probably get sent to prison for the rest of his life if he ever did it again. That is, if the prince didn't reconsider and send him there now.

Surprisingly, Merlin's mum never did seem to hear about the disaster his apology had turned into. Merlin was positive that if she had, he'd never be able to see daylight again, ever. Or at least for a month. He had a sneaking feeling that wasn't the end of it, though. He suspected that Prince Turniphead was going to be an insufferable thorn in his side.