His pocket vibrated and he pulled out his phone. Val's face popped up with a message.
"Where are you? Our dinner reservation at the Crystal Palace is in five minutes."
"I'll be right there." He hit send and regretfully put his fact finding mission on hold.
Installment 1: The Clock Strikes at Midnight
Chapter 3: Funny Feelings
In the morning Merlin rose at his normal early hour and went to sit and meditate by the pool. He had picked up the habit while living in India a few decades ago and found it very good for calming his magic. Although he had not kept up the practice as often as he would've liked, he easily slipped into the rhythmic breathing and let his mind calm down. His magic was swirling and churning just beneath the surface, straining to be let out of the cage. Cautiously, Merlin let a small tendril of power out and watched it dance around under the morning light filtering in through the dome, bringing an equally bright smile to his face.
Only for a moment though before he felt a tug on his magic once more, stronger now that he was on the surface, and pulled it back inside himself. It protested but after a long meditation period it was at least not constantly trying to escape his careful bounds that would keep his magic undetectable inside him.
At last it was his stomach that actually reminded him that he hadn't eaten yet.
After lunch with his adopted parents, who really weren't too bad once they relaxed, they all began boarding the craft that would take them out to the sapphire waterfalls and the crystal ravines. They handed their tickets over and they were ushered aboard with a smile. Val and Biff sat together and Merlin chose a seat across the aisle from them. Isolated but not far enough to be rude. At least that's what he thought.
"Don't be silly," Val said. "Come and sit with us. Look, we get slippers." He rolled his eyes.
"I'm sitting here," he retorted.
"Oh he's ashamed of us," Biff announced to the rest of the passengers. "But he doesn't mind us paying, does he?"
Merlin felt a twinge of guilt at this, after all they hadn't actually asked to suddenly gain a child, let alone one as self sufficient as him. He had latched onto then like a leech. Then he remembered that they had won the contest and weren't paying at all. And there weren't even three seats. He let out a small snort of amusement and curled up in his seat, earphones already pumping his audiobook of DragonSong by Anne McCaffery directly into his ears. It was going to be an enjoyable four hours.
Only then the hostess decided to demonstrate all the different options on the entertainment system. All at once. Merlin wasn't the only one who looked disgusted at this. There was a buzzing noise that he wasn't sure anyone else was able to hear but suddenly the entire system shut down. The man at the front seemed sarcastically surprised, as if he had something to do with it stopping. It didn't really matter to Merlin, as long as it wasn't on.
Only now the man suggested that they could all talk to each other for four hours. In normal circumstances thus would be perfectly acceptable. But keeping his magic bottled up was leaving him in a foul mood and he really wanted to know what would happen next to Menoly at Harper Hall. So his earphones stayed in and he shut his eyes.
That worked for approximately two chapters. The man didn't have much luck getting people to talk until he asked Biff and Val if they had any funny stories from previous vacations. Merlin groaned as the distinctive voice of Val began to cut through the narration. There would be no concentrating on his book now, back to music it was.
He did feel a twinge of sympathy for the other passengers without headphones. In the span of the five days which he had been staying with Val and Biff as their son, he had heard the same cycle of six stories enough times to have memorised then all. It was almost guaranteed that they would be told at least twice on this trip. He turned up the volume louder and focused on tapping out the baseline with his fingers on his leather bracelet.
Shortly after the rounds of crazy stories from the different passengers, the man who started all this talking came and threw himself into the seat next to Merlin. He raised an eyebrow but pulled out his earphones.
"Yes?"
"I'm the Doctor," he introduced himself. "You're Jethro, correct?"
"That's the name they gave me." He jerked his head across the aisle as he said this. Which was true; when he was tampering with their memories he had come across the baby name they would've chosen if Val had been able to conceive.
"Jethro Cane. A good name."
"And people just call you The Doctor?"
"Yup!" Merlin found himself warming to the man. At the very least it kept his mind away from his trapped magic.
"What are you a doctor of?"
"Lots of things. Mainly science, but right now I'm just here to have fun."
"I'm guessing you do a lot of fun adventuring."
The Doctor's smile lessened and he cocked his head to the side. "What makes you say that?"
"Just a funny feeling," he shrugged. "I'm usually really good at reading people."
"We'll you're correct. What else does your funny feeling tell you?" The Doctor asked as he turned in the seat to face Merlin fully. For his part, Merlin closed his eyes and tentatively sent a minuscule amount of magic out to see what he could detect. Non-human, quite old but with a strong life force still, buried hurt with a kind heart. It was almost like looking at himself. He knew his face would've betrayed a flicker of surprise but as he looked at the Doctor again he replied in an even voice, "I can tell that you have a kind spirit and a fierce protective streak."
"Is that all?" he prompted with a raised eyebrow. But no one has ever been able to match the feared eyebrow raise of Gaius so it was easy to deny sensing anything else. The Doctor didn't seem to believe him but brushed past it with another question. "So what do you like to do for fun?"
"Designing video games," Merlin replied immediately. "The virtual reality kind are the best because you get to completely immerse yourself in a new world with new rules and everything."
"Similar to lucid dreaming."
"Exactly. I use it sometimes to train my muscle memory without wearing myself out. Or sometimes to jog through the heyday of Greece while simply on the treadmill."
"That's brilliant!" The Doctor laughed. "There's certainly more to you than meets the eye." Merlin nearly froze up at that but he just gave a quirky smile and the Doctor plowed on. "When did you arrive on Midnight? Are you enjoying the palace?"
"Well, it's not much like the palaces of old." Merlin kept a serious face before the Doctor burst out laughing. "It's not bad really; I was trying to find out more about the planet but there's not much online and here it only mentions the barest basics on the wall outside the restaurant. Disappointing."
"Actually." The Doctor held up a finger and taped his lips in thought before lunging over the seat in front of him. "Professor Hobbes?" The man in question turned around. "You said you have done some research on the history of Midnight, right? Would you mind sharing some of that research with the rest of us?"