Thank you to all my reviewers so far, I'm glad people seem to be enjoying the story! Please let me know what you think of this chapter, and Happy New Year!!
Chapter Two
"OW! You landed on my foot AGAIN!"
"Shush!"
"Shush? You've broken my foot!"
"Will you shut up? It might still be here!"
"Oh come on. I may not have your sixth sense but even I can see the thing's not here anymore."
"Yeah I think you're right."
Merlin and Arthur stood side by side, twin looks of confusion on their faces as they stared through the trees at the two people who had just appeared out of nowhere. Merlin supposed that he – and Arthur, for that matter – should be preparing to defend themselves against possible danger, but Merlin didn't really feel like they were in any danger from the new arrivals.
For one thing, the two new arrivals were paying them no attention at all – they had appeared with their backs to them, and hadn't turned to face them fully. Instead they'd both looked over at where the beast had been before it had disappeared, and where you could still see traces of red in the air. Secondly, both seemed completely preoccupied by their own concerns, and they didn't seem to be anything to do with Merlin and Arthur. The blond one was hopping on the spot, nursing his injured foot and scowling at the other one, who had dark hair and was obviously trying to ignore him and concentrate.
Thirdly, they were them.
There were differences, definite differences, but there was no getting away from it. The two people who had just appeared out of nowhere were Merlin and Arthur. The blond one, the one complaining about his foot, was obviously Arthur. He had a beard, and his hair was slightly longer, but Merlin would recognize the voice and the scowl anywhere. The other man had shoulder-length black hair and a goatee that was quite long at the chin, but apart from those differences it was like Merlin was looking in a mirror – it was him.
Merlin glanced at Arthur –the one next to him – to find the prince staring at the other two, his mouth hanging open in shock. He started to shake his head, like he didn't quite believe what he was seeing. Merlin would have been inclined to disbelieve with him, but for his 'sixth sense', as the other Arthur had called it.
Because he could sense Arthur, and he felt exactly the same as the one standing next to him, except maybe a little stronger. Merlin concentrated, and tried to sense the other Merlin, but was immediately repelled. He frowned. There was power there, he was sure of it, but it wasn't like any other he'd felt. Maybe it was that it was him, but he just couldn't get the actual feel of the power like he could with everyone else.
Before Merlin could figure it out, the other him suddenly froze.
"What?" Asked the other Arthur, frowning.
The other Merlin looked at him. "We're here."
The other Arthur slumped with relief. "Thank god," he said. "So where are we – oh."
Merlin and Arthur tensed as the other two turned to look at them, both of them with amused smiles on their faces.
"Hello," said the other Merlin cheerfully.
"Er, hello," replied Merlin.
"Don't talk to them!" Hissed Arthur, looking at him as though he were crazy. Merlin rolled his eyes at him.
"Why not?" He asked. "It's not as though they'll go away if we just ignore them."
"They might, you don't know," said Arthur.
"Um, we won't."
Merlin and Arthur both jumped at the sound of the other Merlin's voice, which was a lot closer than before. They turned to look at the others again to find that while they'd been arguing they had walked through the trees towards them and were now only six feet away. Merlin gave his other self a kind of embarrassed smile, but Arthur pointed his sword straight at them.
"Don't come any closer!" He ordered. The other Merlin and Arthur obediently stopped, though they both looked like they were trying not to laugh.
"Alright," said Arthur. "Who are you, and what is going on here?"
The other Merlin sighed. "It's alright Arthur," he said. "We're not going to harm you. And really, don't you recognise us?" He winked, which just seemed to incense Arthur, who swiped his sword through the air.
"You expect me to believe that you two are us?" He retorted. "Again, who are you, and what is your business with Camelot?"
The other Merlin shook his head and nodded at the other Arthur. "You see how annoying you are?" He said to him.
The other Arthur rolled his eyes and turned to face Arthur again, squaring his shoulders. "We really are you, whether you believe it or not," he said. "But we're not here because of Camelot, or even because of you. We're tracking that beast."
Merlin's eyebrows shot up. "You're tracking it?" He asked. "Really? How?"
"What did I say about talking, Merlin?" Arthur growled. Merlin just rolled his eyes and looked at his other self again.
"What is it? Where did it come from? And where did it go?"
"Enough of this!" Arthur snapped before the other Merlin could answer. "Surrender your weapons. We will continue this discussion back in Camelot."
The other Arthur shook his head. "No, I don't think so," he said dryly.
Arthur wasn't fazed by his counterpart's answer. "I am arresting you both for sorcery," he said. With his sword still out and a determined look on his face, he started forward.
The other Arthur had his sword out its sheath faster than Merlin would have ever believed possible, and he took a step forward towards Arthur. Before Merlin could so much as open his mouth to warn Arthur, though, the other Merlin raised his hand. His eyes flashed gold and both Arthurs froze.
Merlin's jaw dropped as he stared at the two princes, who stood like armed statues, still glaring at each other. Their eyes were moving, left to right, but the rest of them was perfectly still.
The other Merlin walked round the other Arthur so that he was standing in front of him, and smacked him on the side of the head.
"You realise that that is yourself you were about to attack?" He said in a patronising tone. "Idiot." He shook his head and then started to prise the other Arthur's sword out of his frozen hand.
Merlin took a step forward, so that he was standing in between the two Arthurs with the other him. He glanced at Arthur as he did – though his face was frozen in a glare, his eyes were on him. Merlin gave him what he hoped was a comforting look.
"Um… you can, er, undo this, right?" He asked his other self nervously.
The other Merlin shrugged. "Well, yes, if you really want me to," he said. He turned around and smirked at Merlin. "Don't you prefer them this way though?"
Merlin laughed, but stopped quickly when he felt not one but two sets of Arthur's eyes glaring at him.
"Let's just disarm them so they don't kill each other, and then I'll unfreeze them both," the other Merlin said.
Merlin nodded and turned towards Arthur but as he did he noticed the sword the other him was now holding. He gasped. "That's Excalibur!"
The other Merlin just nodded and Merlin, after gaping at the sword for a few moments, remembered the task at hand and turned to his own Arthur. He carefully pulled Arthur's fingers away from the hilt of his sword – so dull and common next to Excalibur – and soon had the sword away from him and tucked under one arm. He turned to face the other him again.
"So you believe that I'm you then?" The other Merlin asked him.
Merlin hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. "Well, yeah," he said. "You're a little hard to read, but Arthur's the same."
The other Merlin nodded. "I – we – have a sort of in-built shield," he said. "We just do it naturally. I can't read you either."
Merlin nodded. "Oh… alright."
"In answer to your question before," the other Merlin said, "it's a Tempfera. It's very powerful."
"I got that," said Merlin ruefully. "Where did it go?"
The other Merlin shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "The Tempfera can travel through time. When it disappears like that it usually reappears in an entirely different time, though not far away from the physical place it started at. You scared it away, so it would have definitely jumped through time rather than space in order to get away from you."
Merlin was well aware that his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't help that. The beast travelled through time? He'd never heard of such a thing, or even imagined such a thing was possible. And the other Arthur had said they'd been tracking it… through time?
The other Merlin smiled. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "It's not impossible. It's just very powerful, old magic. We've been tracking it, but it's not been easy. Every time we jump, I have to feel the air for the trace of its jump, so that we can follow it. It doesn't last long, so I have to work quickly."
Merlin glanced over at the spot where the beast had disappeared – sure enough, the red was entirely gone. But… wait, did that mean they were stuck here?
"It's alright, we don't need to follow it now," the other Merlin said before Merlin could ask. "We were tracking it so that we could find you two. The Tempfera is going to reappear here in two days' time, so we don't have to follow it anymore. We can just stay here, and then it's four of us against the beast rather than just two."
Merlin finally found his voice. "How do you know it will be back?"
The other Merlin grinned at that. "Because I'm you," he said. "I stood right there, five years ago, and listened to everything I'm saying right now. Then I spent the next two days alternating between trying to find out as much about the future as possible, and trying to stop Arthur from having a nervous breakdown."
Merlin jumped as though he'd been given an electric shock and whirled round to face Arthur. It wasn't that he'd forgotten Arthur was there, but he'd been so caught up in the strangeness of the whole situation that he'd not really given it any thought. Instead, he'd stood there with his other self – his future self – and cheerily discussed magic and time travel and all kinds of things, in front of the person he most didn't want to find out that he was a warlock.
Well, second most.
"Oh god."
"It will be alright," said the other Merlin. "You'll see." He waved his hand and the other Arthur suddenly unfroze. He immediately swung his hand to smack the other Merlin on the back of the head, but he ducked without even looking.
"Were you not listening to the speech about having lived this conversation before?" The other Merlin asked as he straightened up. "I know when to duck."
The other Arthur didn't look impressed. "I told you not to do that to me again," he said coldly.
The other Merlin rolled his eyes. "Alright, next time I'll just let you kill yourself."
The other Arthur snatched Excalibur out of his hands and sheathed it again. "I wouldn't have hurt him," he grumbled.
The other Merlin turned towards Arthur, who was still frozen, but Merlin shook his head and jumped in front of him. "No, wait!" He exclaimed.
The other Merlin just grinned. "I was going to," he said.
Merlin nodded and spun round to face the frozen Arthur, who was looking straight at him, his face still in the same glaring expression. Merlin didn't imagine his expression would change much once he could move again.
"Alright," he said quickly. "I can do magic. I'm not a sorcerer, not in the way you think of them, of magic, not that way… um… I can just, er, do magic. I'm not bad. I'm good. I swear! In fact I've saved your life a few times, bet you didn't know that… um… okay, I'm rambling now. Look, I guess what I want to say is I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, and I'm sorry you found out this way, and… um… please don't have me killed?"
Merlin closed his eyes and shook his head, appalled by his choice of words. He wasn't particularly eloquent anyway, but that had really been something else.
He opened his eyes to find Arthur still glaring at him, but very much animate again. They stared at each in silence for a moment, and with each passing second Arthur's expression seemed to get darker and darker. Eventually he squared his shoulders and held out his hand for his sword.
Merlin hesitated for a second and then handed it to him. Arthur stood still for a moment longer before lifting his sword and sheathing it quickly. Merlin jumped.
Arthur glared at Merlin again. "I think we should go back to Camelot," he said flatly.
Merlin swallowed and nodded. This was bad. He wasn't used to this kind of treatment from Arthur; usually, when he was angry, Merlin knew. This cold silence was worse, much worse than any amount of shouting and thumps on the head. He was really mad.
Arthur turned on his heel and strode through the trees towards Camelot, passing the other them as he went. He didn't spare them a glance. Merlin looked after him, and then over at the other two. The other Arthur just shrugged at him in a sympathetic kind of way.
It will be alright, Merlin.
Merlin blinked and stared at his other self. He could hear his voice in his head – just like when the dragon had first called to him.
He will not betray you.
Merlin nodded and looked after Arthur again.
Maybe not, he answered his other self. But will he forgive me?
TBC
