Merlin pulled the blankets up to his chin, staring at the ceiling. So much had happened, he could hardly believe that the entire day hadn't been a figment of his imagination. And alien. A time-travelling alien. A time-travelling alien that was going to take him into outer space. In a telephone box. That flew. He chuckled to himself. If only his friends from Camelot could see him now.
The Doctor snored loudly from down below. Merlin glared at the door, willing him to stop. He didn't, of course. He was tempted to use magic and make him stop, but he didn't want to risk strangling his ride out of this place.
He inhaled deeply, his eyes closed. The sweet scent of flowers overwhelmed his senses, helped along by a clean breeze from the lake. He focused on the soft rushing of the stream, and allowed it to lull him to sleep.
Merlin shrugged on his leather jacket, looking about the room. His clothes and some precious possessions occupied the suitcase on his bed, but he felt like he was missing something. He checked under the bed, behind the curtains, in his nightstand, but he could find nothing of consequence to take.
His eyes then fell upon his wardrobe. It was the same wardrobe he had used when he lived with Gaius. He hadn't opened that in years. He opened it now, and was greeted by a puff of dust. After a fair amount of coughing and wheezing, he beheld the contents. His old jacket greeted him, thin, pressed leather with crooked stitches, made soft by years of use. Indents by the neck were reminders of when Arthur used to grab it to pull him out of the line of fire, or taking one step too many on a hunt, or just plain horseplay. A neckerchief hung over it. His mother had knitted him that neckerchief the day before he left Ealdor for Camelot. She had promised that it was infused with good luck, and over the years, Merlin had come to believe it.
He smiled a sad smile at the memories, and tucked the items into his case. Even if he wasn't going to wear them, he wanted to keep them close.
Merlin made his way outside, and found the Doctor holding a key in his hand. The Doctor turned and flashed a smile at him.
"She should be all fixed up and broken in, now. A day is usually enough," said the Doctor, staring avidly at the key. "You're about to be in for the adventure of your life." Merlin believed it, of course. What else was to be expected? They stood there for a number of minutes as the Doctor continued staring at the key.
"It's not working," the Doctor groused. "Why isn't it working?"
"Here, let me try," offered Merlin, holding his hand out for the key. The Doctor held it away from him, a defensive scowl on his face.
"She won't work for you."
"Who knows?"
"She's mine."
"Okay, control freak, I just want to get off this planet." The Doctor handed over the key, still scowling. Merlin took the small silver trinket and closed his fingers over it, concentrating on the blue box. "âðollan forniman me," murmured Merlin. He felt the familiar burn in his eyes, accompanied by the distinctive wheezing of the TARDIS materializing. He turned to see the Doctor staring at him, not with incredulousness, as Merlin expected, but with scientific calculation. The look unnerved him, but not enough to keep him from putting the key in the lock and stepping inside.
He had been forewarned about the size difference between the outside of the TARDIS and inside, but the sheer impossibility of a network of rooms bigger than his cottage fitting inside of a telephone box totally overwhelmed him.
The first room was cut into a bowl shape, generators pockmarking the walls, with staircases leading off to additional levels. There was a control panel in the middle, with seemingly random buttons and knobs strewn haphazardly over it. The floor was made of glass, so the ship's central core was visible, with a small staircase leading down to that. The whole scene was illuminated by an orangish glow.
"How many rooms does this thing have?" Merlin asked wonderingly, running his hands over the panel without pushing any buttons.
"I don't know, I haven't been able to find them all." Merlin raised his eyebrows.
"You haven't found them all?"
"I keep finding new ones every week. Let me tell you, the best find so far was the indoor swimming pool." Merlin didn't even bother asking.
"What do all of these buttons even do?"
"Oh, loads of things. This one plays soothing music." The Doctor pressed a little green button on the other side of the console, and soft orchestral music began to play. "Granted, I get all the stations, but I like the classic stuff the best. Even helped write some of it." He said this with a hint of pride, straightening his bow tie.
"All, right what about…this one?"
"NO, DON'T TOUCH THAT ONE!" Merlin touched that one. They heard a muffled explosion outside that rocked the TARDIS, knocking Merlin and the Doctor to their feet. The Doctor glared at Merlin.
"When I say don't touch it, don't touch it." Merlin stood and brushed off his jacket, trying to maintain some of his dignity. The Doctor, however hurried outside to assess the damage. Merlin soon joined him, praying that whatever had been shot hadn't landed on his house; after all, he had spent years perfecting the view out the window. What else was he supposed to do with an immortal existence and a heckton of free time?
They exited the TARDIS to find a gigantic dent in the ground, a few yards from the first lilac tree. It had obliterated quite a few daisies, though. They wordlessly stared at it for a moment before hearing sirens in the distance.
"We'd better go." The Doctor hastened back to the TARDIS, Merlin close behind. "And don't touch the console!"
"I won't touch the console."
"Unless I'm injured or dying. Then you may touch the console." The Doctor pushed buttons and pulled levers, toggled knobs and flipped switches. The generator in the middle began to pulsate, throwing a soft, undulating glow over everything. The sirens faded into the distance, and soon, the only sounds were their labored breathing and the wheezing of the TARDIS.
"So where would you like to go?" asked the Doctor after letting go of the controls.
"Pardon?"
"If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you go?"
"Well, I've never seen the universe before, have I?"
"Well, what have you dreamed about seeing, with what little knowledge you have?"
"That was low, but I've always wanted to zoom out a little and see the multiverse for myself. Nothing on Earth boggles me anymore, and I'm sure the size of it all would prove to be quite a rush for me." Merlin had daydreamed about it often, standing at his gazebo and watching the constellations swirl across the surface of the lake, seeming to make a portal to another world, somewhere where there was more to him than grief and patience.
"Well, I'll have to zoom out more than a little, but nevertheless, the zooming out shall be done." He set the coordinates in a screen surrounded by post-it notes on which circular symbols were inscribed. The coordinates were entered in the same strange dialect. Merlin held onto the railing in anticipation as the TARDIS rocketed millions of miles a second. The deck shuddered beneath them as light years passed them by. After a few minutes of this tumult, the TARDIS slowed it course, and began to float peacefully. Merlin looked at the Doctor, his heart starting to race.
"What now?" he asked, nearly shaking with excitement.
"You open the doors," answered the Doctor. Merlin was more than happy to comply. He rested his hands on the handles, preparing himself for what he was about to see. But when he opened the doors, he realized that no amount of preparation could lessen the impact of the sight before him.
Endless black was laid out before him, a blank tapestry lusting after color. And color complied in the most beautiful way. A tapestry woven from stars, so masterfully crafted, it would make any artisan weep. The colors within this vast work of art were as tangled as emotion, and were almost as beautiful. Jewels created the borderline for this living color, winking shyly from behind the magnificent display.
"It's so… big," whispered Merlin, nearly leaning out of the TARDIS.
"It gets bigger, I can tell tell you that." Merlin simply could not comprehend such a prospect, but accepted it nonetheless. And there they stayed, watching the colors swirl and bleed into each other, making color anew. Merlin stared unblinkingly for what seemed like days, though he could have easily stayed there for centuries. But he knew there was more to see than this one piece of exquisite artistry. He wrenched his eyes away to see the Doctor contemplating him, his head tilted slightly to the side.
"What?"
"I was just wondering, since you've got this magic thing, could you bring someone back from the dead?" The Doctor's eyes bored into him, something like desperation in them.
"Why do you ask?"
"Just curious." Merlin highly doubted that, but he found no harm in telling him.
"Logic points to yes, and I've even tried, but it just didn't seem to work," Merlin explained, standing. "So, I'll have to say that it's either impossible, or difficult on an astronomical scale. I'm thinking it would require a staggering amount of magic, for even I couldn't succeed at it." The Doctor nodded slowly.
"Could I see some magic?" he asked suddenly. "I would like to scan it and see if there's a logical explanation for your ability to manipulate matter and forces of nature with nothing but muttered words, because to me, it just doesn't make sense."
"Er… all right. What kind of magic?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, there are many realms of magic--"
"All right, all right, enough with the long-winded explanations. Just something small will do." Merlin nodded, thought for a moment, then reached his hands out in front of him, clasping them together.
"Gewyrcan lif," he whispered, then separated his hands. A little, luminescent butterfly flitted out, and floated up to the upper rafters of the TARDIS, where it landed and rested, gracefully fluttering it's blue wings. The Doctor looked incredulously at him.
"A butterfly?"
"Er...yes?"
"You could have done anything you wanted, and you chose to make a butterfly?"
"Oi, you said something small, and I did something small. Sue me." The Doctor laughed.
"How are we going to get it to come down here?" asked the Doctor, looking up at the butterfly.
"We call it, genius," Merlin answered, and stretched forth his fingers once more. "Wiðbregdan wiðtêon me, fîfalde." His eyes burned as the butterfly complied, spiraling down to rest on the Doctor's outstretched finger.
"He needs a name," the Doctor decided, heading toward a door at the back of the TARDIS. He unbolted it and stepped inside, fixated on the butterfly. Inside was a myriad of scientific instruments, some of them quite fatal-looking. Merlin stepped warily inside, eyeing the sharp objects.
"A name? It's a butterfly." Merlin watched as the Doctor weaved through the delicate tools, nearly knocking over many of them. The butterfly, however, stayed obediently on his finger, despite almost running into glass tubes and needles.
"Of course he needs a name! He deserves one, being something so magnificent." The Doctor smiled as the butterfly flapped its wings in recognition of the compliment.
"Well, thanks," Merlin muttered as the Doctor siphoned the butterfly off of his finger and onto a table towards the back of the room.
The Doctor bent down so he was eye level with the butterfly, and stared avidly at the it's twitching antenna and shimmering wings for quite some time before saying, "Gilbert."
"I'm sorry?"
"Gilbert shall be his name," answered the Doctor, straightening. Merlin could not think of a less majestic name for a magical creature, but the Doctor seemed pleased, so he said nothing of it. The Doctor hurried about, gathering instruments and setting them on the table next to the immobile butterfly.
Firstly, he selected a rather large magnifying glass, and aimed it at the butterfly. His magnified, pale green iris seemed gargantuan next to the small creature. After gazing at it from various angles for a number of minutes, he unearthed a notepad from a mountain of clutter, and jotted down notes in the indecipherable circular dialect.
"It's wings aren't made out of scales."
"What?"
"Normal butterflies' wings are made out of thousands of tiny scales. This one's wings are all….misty." The Doctor looked utterly perplexed by the predicament. He continued his study. He poked it gently with various instruments and grievously apologized when he tried poking various chemicals that steamed at it, but the butterfly seemed impervious to everything. It elicited next to no reaction, other than shuffling its wings around a bit.
The Doctor's eyebrows grew closer and closer together as the experiment progressed. Eventually, when the Doctor had exhausted the harmless substances, he started dropping acid, lighting it on fire, but nothing seemed to bother it. The acid simply slipped off and eroded the table, much to the Doctor's displeasure (there was a lot of cursing), and the fire burned bright for less than a second before all at once, extinguishing. And all the while, Gilbert sat, and Merlin thought he could detect amusement from him at the Doctor's efforts.
After nigh on 20 minutes, the Doctor sat, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
"I can't explain it," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "I need to find out what he's made of."
"Then, why haven't you already? You've been examining this butterfly for as long as I've been alive." Merlin had never seen someone so obsessed over something, even the workaholics he went to school with.
"Because it might kill Gilbert." There was so much horror on his face, his eyes darkening, yet Merlin could not fathom why.
"So? I can just make a new one." The Doctor glared at him so intensely Merlin almost recoiled. Why was the Doctor acting like this? About a butterfly?
"But he's innocent. So I won't try."
"Mate, it's a butterfly, an insect. And plus, you just poured acid on it, like, four seconds ago."
"For science," the Doctor mumbled defensively.
"And finding out what he's made of is obviously going to obsess you for weeks, so why not do it now? This is 'for science' too. Geez." Merlin sat in a chair, and watched the Doctor's face scrunch up as he fought an internal battle. "And plus, I'm a little curious myself." The Doctor looked up, startled.
"You mean you never found out anything about your magic?" Merlin chuckled.
"What haven't I done over the course of my life? Yes, I have tried, but firstly, no one on Earth believes in magic anymore, and secondly, all the old texts I've researched haven't mentioned anything about the origins or the very make of magic. Maybe your findings will provide all of the answers to those questions." The Doctor nodded slowly, then stood up, retrieving Gilbert. The traversed through the maze of deadly instruments to the main room. There, the Doctor set Gilbert upon a small platform that he pulled out from a console. He tapped a few buttons and entered some numbers, causing a dangerous-looking lazer ray of death to descend from the ceiling. But true to character, Gilbert stayed exactly where he was, standing as proud as a butterfly could.
The Doctor directed the ray at Gilbert, then, looking a bit nervous, slammed his hand dramatically upon a conspicuously large button. A beam of white light penetrated the bated silence that had dropped along with the lazer. The light lasted less than a second, diminishing into a faded blue glow behind Merlin's retinas. Merlin blinked this away to see Gilbert vibrating slightly. Both he and the Doctor watched him nervously until the tremors subsided, and Gilbert was just as calm and collected as before.
"Huh," the Doctor mused, scrutinizing Gilbert once more. "Things usually die when I point that at them." He shrugged unconcernedly, then scampered to the screen to read the results. He stared at the screen with the light of the sun in his eyes as he did the excited bouncing he enacted when excitement took hold. Eventually, after what seemed like years, a beep resounded throughout the TARDIS, and a little blip containing the data appeared.
As the Doctor read through the results, all in the strange circular language, the look on his face became more and more confused. It got to a point that the confusion turned into something like horror.
"Well? What is it?" asked Merlin impatiently, his voice rising along with his anxiety. The Doctor slowly looked up. "It it bad? What's it made of?"
"It's….not made…of….anything," the Doctor breathed, his eyes far away. Merlin tilted his head slightly, perplexed. Of course it had to be made of something.
"That's not possible."
"Honest! It's not recorded on any database from any planet! Not even from the future." The Doctor seemed distraught at this information, but Merlin could not locate the source of his panic. The Doctor began to pace, going faster and faster as he attempted to keep up with his thoughts.
"All right, new substance, then," Merlin surmised, thinking that a scientific mind like the Doctor would be over the moon at the prospect.
"No, you don't understand." The Doctor ran a hand through his already unruly hair. "Every substance is made up of the same basic things, different combinations. There are infinite ways to combine these things, and I believe that we're not even close to discovering every combination out there, but this? Gilbert? He's not made of any of that stuff. He's a life form and he doesn't have a carbon cycle." Merlin admitted that this was quite strange, but the Doctor seemed completely out of his mind.
"He's made of magic then."
"Yes, but what is magic made out of?"
"...Magic?"
"As in what are the fundamentals of magic? Everything is made up of atoms, molecules, but not necessarily different ones."
"And?"
"And? And MAGIC DOESN'T HAVE ATOMS!" The Doctor was waving his hands about at this point, and his voice had risen to a shout. The man was having a nerdy scientist meltdown, and after quite some time, he collapsed into a chair and started reciting molecular formulas and atomic numbers to assure himself that the world was real. Merlin stared at him, completely nonplussed, before the Doctor looked up with that calculating look in his eyes.
It was then that the Doctor stood up, pushed a button, and a blackboard descended out of nowhere. He began scrawling all over it with a piece of chalk, muttering about magic interacting with atoms through its non-atomic properties, and began to write equations representing the amount of power needed for each spell, how the spell interacted with the forces of nature, and so on. Soon, he had covered the board with markings that made next to no sense to Merlin.
The Doctor stood back and admired his handiwork, before taking up an eraser and erasing it all. Then, using one of the formulas he concocted, began to write a new equation, this one long and complex, one that required much head-scratching and deranged muttering. After about five minutes, the Doctor circled the solution, a miniscule number on the right, bottom corner of the board, letting out a peal of laughter.
"What was all that?" Merlin asked, slightly concerned. The Doctor turned to him, that wide smile of his stretching a mile long.
"I know how much power you need to bring someone back from the dead."