They were one class away from lunch by the time Gwen gave in to her nosiness. The bell hadn't rung just yet and the teacher was still puttering around at her desk, ignoring the noisy horde of undisciplined teenagers. Gwen turned right around in her seat to face Merlin and said bluntly, "Alright, what's going on with you?"

Merlin mouthed at her, as wrong-footed by her bluntness as he always was. Of course, usually he had fewer things to lie about and cover up when she asked questions like that and while he had a number of tried-and-true excuses to use for the normal culprits, like magical exhaustion and accidental magic usage and training sessions with Gaius he needed to attend, none of those would work now. So he just settled for: "What?"

Gwen huffed at him, impatient and completely not fooled by his faux-innocence. "You look like you haven't slept in days, Merlin," she said. "You're fidgeting fit to crawl out of your skin. And you've been looking over your shoulder every ten minutes like you've got hellhounds nipping at your heels. That's not like you at all."

"I'm fine," Merlin said, not really expecting that it would placate her but hoping all the same. "Just tired. Stressed. Lots of reasons to be stressed, you know."

Gwen sighed, her urge to be sympathetic winning out over her determination to get answers, as it usually did. "It's just, you look ten times more tired today than you did even two days ago, and you had just as many reasons to be stressed then. What's changed since?"

Merlin shook his head. "Nothing."

Gwen's eyes slid to the left, where Arthur was sitting in the next row. It was where he had always sat, next to Merlin, like in every class they shared in the last six years. But it was not where he had sat for the last two months. Merlin cringed internally, knowing where this interrogation was going next. Sure enough, when Gwen looked back at him she had eyebrows raised.

"Nothing's changed?" she asked, all skepticism. "Nothing at all?"

Arthur didn't look up from his geometric doodling, the only sign that he wasn't completely oblivious to the conversation going on beside him the clench of his jaw, and Merlin was left squirming.

For all his secrets, he truly hated lying to his friends. Especially Gwen, who was just too nice and understanding and wonderful for anyone to lie to with any sort of clean conscience. But he couldn't tell her what was really going on, couldn't drag her into this with him, not when he didn't even know what it was exactly that he'd gotten himself into. Or how dangerous it may or may not be. And besides, he wasn't entirely sure what was going on with Arthur anyway. It was beyond complicated in more ways than he could explain.

He rubbed at his forehead, cursing his past self and wishing he could just hide his head under a pillow and nap for a week. Maybe that would get rid of the low throb in his head that never quite went away.

Gwen leaned in closer, whispering now. "Look, not that I'm not thrilled with the progress and everything, but seriously. You two are best friends for years, then you stage a completely inexplicable World War III and are mortal enemies for two months, and now nothing happens and suddenly you're on speaking terms again but not acknowledging it? Mm, no, try again."

"Look, Gwen," Merlin started, not knowing what he was going to say, what he could say, to get her off his back without having to actually explain anything. "It's...it's complicated, okay?"

Gwen scoffed. "You and Arthur have never been complicated," she said.

Merlin's head gave a vicious throb, punching a gasp out of him. He had a moment of bright clarity to recognize that the memories were coming faster and more often before the pain dragged him down, away from Gwen's worried face.

"Why are you being like this?" Merlin demanded, following in Arthur's wake, refusing to let him walk away.

Arthur rounded on him. "Jesus, Merlin, really? The fact that you even feel the need to ask that—"

"You know what happens to people like me," Merlin shot back. "If anyone finds out, that's it, game over!"

"I'm not anyone, Merlin!" Arthur shouted. "I haven't been just anyone in a while now, have I? Especially after—"

"This isn't about that," Merlin said. "That doesn't change anything. That doesn't make it any easier to bring something like this up. All it really did was raise the stakes here."

"We are not a fucking poker game," Arthur snapped. "You don't get to gamble on our—"

"Every day of my life is a gamble, Arthur!" Merlin threw up his hands, well and truly fed up with everything. "I'm playing Russian roulette every time I step out my front door. You have no idea what that's like."

"Because you didn't tell me, Merlin."

"I didn't tell anyone," Merlin repeated through gritted teeth because Arthur wasn't getting it. "I can't just tell people."

"You told Mordred," Arthur said with a sharp, spiteful sort of smile on his face now. "Didn't have any problem telling him, chatting it up in the corridor like you're discussing dinner plans."

"That—that's different," Merlin insists, floundering for words, for a way to explain properly. "Mordred and I, we're the same, we share—"

"Oh yes, you two are peas in a pod. Magical pals doing magical things, riding off into the fucking magical sunset together," Arthur spat, waving a dismissive hand that makes indignation boil in Merlin's gut, low and hot.

"It's not like that," he said, even as his magic burned in his palms, angry and eager to lash out if only he would let it. That was a sensation that Mordred knew as well as he did, and one that Arthur would never understand no matter how he tried to explain it.

"Isn't it?" Arthur demanded with an ugly laugh. "You and Mordred, you're the same, but us? You and me?" He shook his head. "We're just too different, is that it?"

"Yeah, maybe it is," Merlin said, a vicious sort of satisfaction welling in him at the stunned, almost hurt look that put on Arthur's face, like he hadn't expected Merlin to agree with him.

"Right then," Arthur said. "I guess that settles that."

He walked away, and this time Merlin didn't follow.

Merlin came to with tears in his eyes for a multitude of reasons, none of which he wanted to discuss in front of a class full of his peers. The most pressing, and the most easily explained, was the pain that he was definitely not getting used to no matter how many times this happened. He waited for the worst of it to subside before trying to open his eyes, the classroom's fluorescent lighting the newest bane of his existence.

Arthur was leaning across the aisle now, one elbow planted on Merlin's desk. He was talking to Gwen, saying, "—working it out, it's fine. It just took us a while to sort ourselves, but now we're—" while Gwen frowned at him like she didn't quite believe anything he was saying. She tried to turn back to Merlin, concerned, but Arthur surged forward with more aggressive reassurances, obviously trying to keep her attention on him while Merlin pulled himself together.

A sharp-nailed finger tapped on Merlin's shoulder and drew him away from Gwen and Arthur's conversation. He turned to find Morgana leaning over from her seat behind and to the right of him, her perfectly shaped eyebrows drawn together in a tight V.

"Are you alright?" she asked. "You look like your head hurts."

Merlin tried to nod, but that only made it worse. In fact, the pain flared up for just a second and a face flashed before his eyes, a man's face covered in scars, terrible burn scars. It was gone in an instant but Arthur's hand was already on his back, grounding and reassuring.

"Merlin?"

"What's going on?" Morgana pressed, reaching forward to take hold of his arm and staring at him with those piercing green eyes. "Merlin, are you starting to remember? Is that what this is?"

Another spike of pain and Merlin nearly doubled over as a voice, smooth and unctuous, drifted through his mind— "Don't worry, it will heal. One quick spell and it'll barely even scar!"

The pounding heat at the base of his skull wasn't subsiding like it usually did after these quick glimpses; if anything it was getting worse, swelling until he was biting back a scream. He could barely make out Gwen's cry of alarm, Morgana's continued questions, the murmuring of the rest of the classmates.

He heard Arthur say, "I'll just take him to the nurse, this has happened before, it'll pass!" and then he was being hauled to his feet. He didn't dare open his eyes, but he staggered forward as best he could and let Arthur steer him out into the hallway. They had barely made it around the corner before Merlin's legs gave way and he went down hard.

Grimoires were laid out on Merlin's bedspread, ancient and powerful books covering every inch that wasn't taken up by the teenagers studying them. Merlin turned the page of the one closest to him and read on, but Morgana made a frustrated noise and pushed aside the notes she had been taking.

"It's not fair that you pick this up so quickly," she said with a pout. "I've been studying the Ancient Language longer than you have, I should know it better!"

Merlin laughed. "Sorry," he said. "Not my fault, you know. Just how it is! You'll have to take it up with magic itself if you don't like it."

Morgana kicked his shoulder. "I know, I know. The more powerful you are, the easier it comes to you. Doesn't mean I can't complain about it."

Merlin stuck out his tongue at her and flipped to the next page.

"You know, Alvarr says he's never seen anyone take to it so fast," Morgana said, half-jealous and half-admiring. "Morgause too. According to her, even the higher-ups are impressed with you."

"Whoever they are," Merlin muttered, too caught up in the spell he was studying to care all that much about the vague Powers That Be, whom he had yet to meet anyway.

Morgana shifted around until they were shoulder to shoulder on their stomachs, nudging him. "Hey, that's a good thing," she said. "Morgause says they're thinking about offering you a real apprenticeship. Like advanced spells, specialized training or something."

"Specialized? What sort of specialized?" Merlin asked, intrigued.

Morgana shrugged. "Morgause wouldn't say. It's probably classified, super-secret, then-I'd-have-to-kill-you-type stuff."

Merlin snorted and reached for a new book, the arcane symbols scratched into the page shimmering before his eyes in a way that somehow managed to translate into something he understood instinctively. The bizarre sensation had bothered him for a while, but the language didn't faze him anymore, not the way it did Morgana or Mordred or any of the other kids he had studied with over the last few weeks.

Morgana took a few more notes then stopped to twirl her pen in her fingers, biting her lip.

"You still haven't heard anything from Arthur?" she asked, though she sounded like she already knew the answer.

Merlin's jaw clenched. "Don't want to."

"I still can hardly believe that he reacted that way," she said hotly. "I'm ashamed to be related to such a heartless bigot! Honestly, I would expect that sort of reaction from Uther, but Arthur I really thought would be better than that."

"Yeah, well, I guess he had us both fooled there," Merlin said bitterly.

Morgana draped her arm over his shoulders, pulling him into a half-hug. "He's a prick. And he's wrong. So if you ever want me to hex him for you—"

Merlin laughed and pushed her off. "Believe me, if anyone is gonna hex him, it'll be me."

Merlin came to with Morgana's name on his lips. He was on the floor again, pressed against the wall with Arthur knelt in front of him and looking obviously worried this time, but he reared back when Merlin suddenly began flailing.

"Whoa, whoa!" he said, catching Merlin's wrists in his hands and holding him still. "Morgana's still inside. What about her?"

"She was—" Merlin tried to put words together to form a sentence, but coherency was beyond him when he hurt so much. He had to hunch into himself and simply breathe for another few minutes until it subsided to a more tolerable level.

"Christ, Merlin," Arthur said, sounding somehow small and more helpless than Merlin could ever remember him sounding. "You can't go on like this."

Merlin managed to shake his head, though it still made his stomach turn over; there was nothing he could do. No doctor could help him with this because it wasn't a medical issue. It was magic, and no one would be able to help him with that. Or at least, those who could would be arrested if they tried. And besides, this was a good thing, in theory. He was getting his memories back, more and more by the day. His magic was overcoming the spell that had been cast on him. The fact that the warring magics were maybe tearing him apart was irrelevant.

"Morgana," he said again. His tongue felt swollen and hot; he wondered if he had bitten it.

"What about her?" Arthur asked again.

"I saw her. She knew. She knows everything."

Arthur didn't understand, that much was obvious. He just looked at Merlin with that scrunched up expression of confusion that had always been equal parts aggravating and endearing. "What everything?" he asked.

"Everything," Merlin growled, the fading pain giving way to a hot anger instead. "She knows about my magic, about why we were arguing. She knows about the grimoires and about Mordred, and—and whoever was teaching me was teaching her too."

"What?" Arthur asked, already shaking his head. "No, that...that doesn't make any sense."

Merlin shoved Arthur back far more harshly than was necessary, nearly knocking him flat, but he couldn't stand to be boxed in against the wall anymore. He felt trapped, like he was an animal in a cage where someone was poking a sharp stick through the bars, and he needed to move. He stumbled getting to his feet but pushed Arthur's hands away when he tried to help.

"She knows, Arthur, I saw it!" he said sharply. He only barely stopped himself from shouting at the last minute, remembering that the person in question was only one corridor over and there were classes in session all around them. "I heard it from her own mouth!"

"No, she can't," Arthur said, looking up at him from where he was still kneeling on the floor with wide, uncomprehending eyes. "She doesn't have—No, she would have said something if she—"

"She lied," Merlin gritted out. "Here I've been for weeks, scared out of my mind and not knowing anything, and she bloody well lied about everything. She has fucking magic, and she could've told me what the fuck has been going on, but she—"

Arthur finally scrambled to his feet, his face clouding over. "Now wait! You can't just go accusing her of something like that," he said. "She can't be—"

"What, she can't be like me?" Merlin asked bluntly, staring him down. "She can't be a filthy sorcerer? A criminal, a liar? Is that what you mean?"

Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it again, holding himself so tightly that the tendons stood out in his neck. Abruptly, he turned away, both hands coming up to scrub over his face. "That's not what I meant," he said hoarsely. "But Merlin, she's…she's my sister. She can't have done what you're saying. Why would she do that?"

"I don't fucking know, Arthur," Merlin said, throwing his hands up. "Why would somebody go out of their way to magically erase five months of my memories, hm? And is it really a stretch of the imagination to think that maybe these two things are related?"

"What, you think she was involved with that?" Arthur said, incredulous.

"She's definitely involved in something!" Merlin cried, making Arthur shush him in a panic and immediately scan the area for anyone who might have heard him. "And you heard her in there," he went on, a bit more quietly but no less agitated. "Asking all those questions. She seemed very interested in whether or not my memories were coming back. You and Gwen were more concerned with my health, but all she cared about was my memory. And—and!—she was with Mordred this morning, and they looked very cozy."

"Since when is Mordred a suspect?"

"Since he knew what I was doing these last five months and didn't see fit to tell me about it," Merlin said. "Same as her! They've both been deliberately keeping me in the dark, making sure that I don't know what I was involved in."

Arthur was very pale now, mouth working soundlessly as he struggled for anything to say in rebuttal. "I—I can't believe that she would do something like this," he finally said, but it didn't sound like a denial anymore, only a lament.

Merlin's anger collapsed in an instant, leaving him drained and exhausted and sad. Morgana was his friend, had been his friend for nearly as long as Arthur had. And apparently they'd gotten closer recently, had shared secrets between them, bonded over mutual interests and experiences. But now? He had trusted her and she had betrayed him, had deceived and manipulated him and left him to flounder when he had most needed his friends to have his back. His eyes burned and he rubbed at them, cutting off the tears before they could start.

"Me neither," he said roughly. He swayed on his feet, suddenly too tired to even contemplate finishing out the school day. "I need to go."

Arthur nodded and said, "Yeah, I'll, uh…I'll make your excuses. Or do you need a ride home? I can drop you."

Merlin started to say that he was fine, that he'd make it on his own, but a wave of dizziness swept over him and he found himself saying, "Yeah, I think you'd better." He headed for the exit and Arthur followed behind, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. It was a good thing he did, too.

As soon as they reached the first flight of stairs, between lifting his foot and setting it down again on the next step, something hit him, like a baseball bat had collided with his ankle and knocked his foot out from under him. As he started to tilt, Arthur's hand tightened its grip. It wasn't enough to stop him, but it did twist him around enough to turn it from a head-first fall into a sidewise roll. Before he could make contact, his magic slipped free of his hold and blasted forward, counteracting his forward momentum and cushioning the blow. He reached the bottom of the stairs relatively unscathed, though winded.

Arthur was at his side a moment later, frantic hands running over every inch of him and looking for broken bones or open wounds. It took Merlin a moment to rally himself enough to reassure him that he wasn't injured. The only thing that hurt was his ankle, but when he looked up there was nothing at the top of the stairs, nothing that could have tripped him.

To corroborate, Arthur was saying, "Good lord, Merlin, only you could manage to trip on thin air at the top of a staircase and nearly brain yourself. As if your life isn't messy enough right now!"

He hauled Merlin to his feet again, looking him over another time just to be sure, but Merlin wasn't paying him any attention anymore. No, his eyes were drawn inexplicably down the corridor. A man was turning the corner, a man he was certain had no reason being in the school at all. Merlin got a glimpse of the waxy, discoloured ridges of burn scars, just before the man slipped out of sight.