A/N: Happy Valentine's Day!
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Chapter Four
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Arthur wakes up with no less than five Post-Its stuck to him. His first awake thought is that managing that in his bird form must have been a feat, which can mean only one of two things.
One would be that Merlin got bored at some point in the afternoon and started experimenting.
The other—and rather more likely, Arthur thinks, realizing the dog's been whining in the back of his throat since Arthur opened his eyes—is that Merlin is very, very worried about something.
Arthur sits up. The notes are scattered, haphazard, with no hint as to what order they're meant to be read in, but Arthur's done enough puzzles in his very long lifetime to piece the message together.
The first one seems to stop the breath in his lungs:
Mordred has magic.
Arthur closes his eyes. When he opens them the dog is nudging at his arm, obviously concerned. Arthur reaches over out of habit to scratch behind its ears.
"Honestly?" he says. "If this is some kind of joke, I think destiny is taking things a little far."
The rest of the message is scattered worrying ('he levitated a load of books by looking at them' and 'I've got no idea how much control he has'), which could have easily fit on one note, but Merlin was clearly in a hurry. He's always made fun of Arthur's handwriting, persistently terrible no matter how many court tutors had tried to sculpt it into something more legible, but Merlin's own writing here is a barely readable scrawl.
Then there's the interesting part: He wants me to help him control it.
Arthur stares at that one. Maybe if he stares long enough it'll start to make sense instead of just horrible, horrible irony.
Apparently guessing which part of the missive he's read to, the dog makes a distressed sound and starts butting its head against the sofa cushions. It's not unlike a very human warlock banging his head against a wall when he can't figure out one problem or another, and the resemblance nearly makes Arthur smile.
"Easy," he murmurs, resuming his ear-scratching. Merlin must be going out of his mind; he doesn't normally allow himself to be 'patronized', as he puts it, for this long.
Arthur returns to the notes. The last one is just the usual mother-henning—'I know I can't stop you speaking to him because you're a complete turniphead with no self-preservation instincts but if you could just not piss him off in my absence, I would appreciate it'.
'Not' is underlined three times. Arthur gives the dog an affronted glare.
"It's like you don't trust me," he says.
The dog's eyes narrow.
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Mordred doesn't seem at all surprised when Arthur appears in the backroom. The boy is poking at the dusty shelves (not that that's much of a descriptor when the entire shop is perpetually dusty, Arthur's willing to admit), pulling out the occasional book and leafing through a few pages before replacing it.
He doesn't appear to notice when Arthur enters the room, but neither does he react when Arthur clears his throat to announce himself.
Maybe some of those knightly instincts stuck after all, Arthur muses as the boy turns, and he finds more pride in the thought than foreboding.
Mordred doesn't bother with pleasantries. "Did he tell you?" he asks.
"He did," Arthur replies.
"And did you…?"
Arthur waits until it becomes apparent that Mordred has no idea how to finish that question. "I wasn't surprised, if that's what you're asking."
Mordred's head comes up sharply. "How long have you known? About him, I mean." He frowns. "Must've been awhile, because you're taking this weirdly well."
Oh, you have no idea. "I've known about Merlin for a very long time. He's about as good at keeping secrets as he is dusting."
(He's going to casually leave out the fact that he and Merlin had somehow managed to live in each other's pockets for nearly a decade without Arthur cottoning on to the whole magic thing, which has long since ceased to be a topic associated firstly with betrayal and has instead turned into an acute and personal embarrassment. For Arthur, of course. Merlin positively delights in reminding him, when Arthur dares suggest himself capable of remembering this or that without the benefit of a Post-It: "Eight years, Arthur. Eight years." It doesn't have quite the same effect when delivered through expression rather than voice, but it stings all the same.)
Mordred is still eyeing him like he's a pissed-off adder that could bite at any moment. "Am I going to get a reaction from you or are you going to make me keep asking stupid questions?" he says at last.
It occurs to Arthur, and not comfortably, that he's being given something of a second chance. When Merlin had confessed his magic, Arthur had…not reacted well. And yes, a good part of that was the betrayal rather than the thing itself, but still. It hadn't been one of his prouder moments.
Problem is, he's not exactly sure what a "good" reaction to a magic reveal is supposed to be. They don't write handbooks for this sort of thing.
Well, being blunt has often worked for him before. "What reaction would you like?" he asks.
Mordred throws his hands up in the air, all of his considerable fourteen-year-old exasperation with adults on display. "An honest one? All I got from bloody Merlin was another blackout and a splitting headache when I woke up, and please feel free to kick him in the kneecaps for that, by the way. So I'm guessing he isn't thrilled, which is pretty damn hypocritical when you think about it, but you're supposed to be adults so I'd really like it if you could use your words."
He's breathing heavily when he finishes. It's at times like these Arthur wishes he could do the eyebrow acrobatics that Merlin can, but then again, Merlin learnt from the best. Uther had never used eyebrows where a well-timed growl would do.
"Are you finished?"
Mordred nods.
"Good. Well, then, my honest reaction is that I don't have one. Like I said, I've been with Merlin for a long time, so the idea that someone else could have the same abilities is…" He shrugs. "Less than surprising."
"Really. That's your opinion."
"It is." Arthur strives valiantly for the eyebrow raise. "Were you hoping I'd throw things?"
"Expected it, more like," Mordred mutters. "I keep thinking people in suits are going to show up to dissect me for science, or turn me into a government weapon or something."
"…Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe you've read too many science fiction novels?"
"Oh, stuff it."
There's an awkward little pause before Arthur clears his throat.
"What is it that you want from Merlin, exactly?"
"What are you two to each other, exactly?" Mordred shoots back.
Arthur very nearly sighs—he has only vague memories of being fourteen himself, but the pieces are enough to paint a very unflattering portrait indeed—but he stays on track. "That's none of your business. And you haven't answered my question."
"I told him. I wanted his help."
"Yes, but what—"
"I want him to teach me to control it!" Mordred bursts out, and immediately looks mortified.
Arthur, however, suddenly feels a lot less confused. "I see."
Mordred scowls. "You don't," he snaps. "You don't have any idea. You don't know what it's like to have this—this thing inside you that you can't control, something that could hurt people if you aren't—"
His mouth closes with a snap. Arthur finishes for him.
"If you aren't careful."
There's a look on Mordred's face that Arthur can recognize, if only with the benefit of hindsight. A hunted look. Merlin used to wear it frequently. Arthur hadn't seen it at the time for what it was—the look of someone who was scared of themselves.
It's never ceased to amaze him that he can trust Merlin with his life when it took Merlin so long to trust himself.
"You want him to help you learn to be careful," he says. Mordred nods, eyes fixed on the floor.
"I thought I was going mad, the first time I saw his eyes change," he says quietly. "I thought it was wishful thinking making me hallucinate or something. But I didn't have anything else to go on, wondered if maybe it was fate or some shit giving me a break, and then the way he reacted to my—powers, or whatever—I knew." He looks up again and his eyes are blazing. "I mean, that's crazy, right? What are the odds I'd run into him?"
"Does seem a little like destiny," Arthur agrees.
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"Are you mad?"
Arthur has the nerve to roll his eyes. "If I haven't gone mad by now, I don't think I'm likely to."
"You never know. It could still happen," Merlin snaps. "Because I'm having a really hard time thinking of any other reason you want to keep him around."
"Maybe because he's a homeless boy who asked for our help?" Arthur says tersely.
"He was a little boy the last time we helped him, and look where that got us!"
Arthur stiffens. "That isn't fair. Mordred helped us when he got older, if you'll recall."
"And if you'll recall, he stuck a sword in you not long after." Merlin shoves down instinctive guilt when Arthur flinches. He's too angry to stop—and too scared, because this is starting to feel much like it had the last time, Merlin trying to get Arthur to understand that Mordred could not be trusted and utterly, utterly failing.
That can't happen again. They won't get lucky twice.
"Mordred isn't trustworthy. I tried to tell you before, and you wouldn't hear me, and now—"
"He's done nothing to us," Arthur says quietly.
"He fucking murdered you!"
The space around them shudders and bends as Merlin's voice rises to a shriek. But Arthur doesn't flinch, doesn't take a step back. He's never once shown fear when Merlin's eyes have gone gold, Merlin remembers; not even on those first-last awful days. Not once.
He breaks Arthur's gaze, feeling guilty and helpless all over again, and sits down heavily.
"I'm sorry," he croaks. "I didn't mean to…"
Arthur sits down next to him, and Merlin knows he's been forgiven already.
"I'm still here, you know," he points out. "Maybe they did try to kill me—Mordred and Morgana both—but they didn't succeed. You stopped them."
"By cursing us both?" Merlin replies sardonically.
There's a heavy pause. Then Arthur says, carefully neutral, "Would you rather not have…?"
Merlin bristles. "There is nothing I would not have done to keep you alive. Nothing. If the Sidhe would have accepted my life for yours, I would have given it." Now that Arthur's looking him in the eye again, Merlin allows himself a rueful little smile. "And I have to rate being a dog half the time as an improvement over being dead."
Arthur cracks a smile. "A very intimidating dog," he says, in the most patronizing tone possible, of course. "Surely a dog to make all enemies freeze in their tracks."
Merlin wishes he could smack him. "You're a bird, Arthur, you don't get to make fun of me. At least I'd be somewhat useful in a fight, what are you going to do? Peck the assailant's eyes out?"
"I might," Arthur replies with immense dignity.
Merlin raises an eyebrow. Arthur's mouth twitches.
He's not sure who starts laughing first, only that neither of them can stop for a while.
But he is starting to feel the strain of maintaining the illusion, can feel blackness creeping in around the edges of his vision. It's not smart to try and hold it for this long.
Arthur notices when he sobers. "Our time is up?"
"Nearly," Merlin admits. He sighs. "I don't know what to say to you, Arthur. I can't trust Mordred. Not after what he did. Maybe you can, but every time I look at his face I see—"
He cuts himself off, but he thinks Arthur gets the picture. No matter how fervently Merlin might have wished their places reversed at the time, he imagines getting stabbed couldn't have been an enjoyable experience either.
"And I suppose I can't blame you for that." Arthur looks at him steadily. "But you're forgetting that Mordred is dead, Merlin. Our Mordred, the one we knew, the one I trusted, is dead. I killed him." A crooked flash of a smile. "He didn't have someone like you—someone who would bend the laws of nature to save his life. We both tried to kill each other at Camlann, but I was the only one who succeeded. Doesn't that make us even?"
Merlin bites his lip. "Will you hate me if I say no, not really?" he offers. It's only half-joking.
The look Arthur gives him is exasperated, but undeniably fond. "No."
"Then what are we going to do with him?"
"Let him stay another night?" Arthur suggests. "Hope one of us comes to our senses?"
Merlin raises an eyebrow. He may never achieve Gaius' level of skill with the art of eyebrow raising, but nonetheless, he's gotten pretty good at it over the years.
Arthur grins at him. "Well, a man can dream."
Merlin smiles back. The entire vision is blurring into darkness, wavering in and out of existence, and it's as good a time as any to let go.
"Talk to you soon?" he manages.
"I'll be here," says a voice without a face. Merlin closes his eyes.
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When he opens them, he's sitting on the floor of their flat with his ears ringing. He feels like he's going to collapse.
And really, it's not far to the floor from here, so why not. His body tips sideways and Merlin lets it. The wooden slats are cool and blessedly here after the dry intangibility of the meditation vision.
A beak pushes itself roughly through his hair. The raven is making concerned noises. Merlin smiles sleepily at it, raising two fingers to stroke its head.
"'M fine," he insists. "Just overdid it a bit, that's all."
The raven pecks his fingers as if to rebuke him for being an idiot. Merlin grins at the familiarity of the gesture before remembering the conversation that prompts it. He sighs.
"Suppose I should let our resident psychotic traitor know he's got a roof for another night, shouldn't I?"
Arthur pecks him again, harder that time. Merlin pulls his fingers back with a wince.
"Fine, fine. If you insist on not calling a spade what it is, I'll think of something else."
He hauls himself up off the floor carefully, monitoring himself for any sudden sharp pains. The meditations drain his strength and his power; he's never figured out how far he can push his luck before they begin to drain other, more vital things, and he'd rather not find out.
It's going to be some time, he realizes with a sinking feeling, before he can safely do it again.
The raven is fluttering back and forth by the time Merlin gets to his feet, a not-quite-flying motion that he knows to interpret as impatience.
"I'm going, I'm going," Merlin tells it. "Honestly, it's like you forget I'm not your servant anymore."
Which is probably less true than he'd like it to be some days, but oh well.
He makes sure to lock the door behind him before he descends the narrow staircase. He can feel the adrenaline beginning to pump already—he can't help it; the feeling became part and parcel of dealing with Mordred long before he showed any actual inclination towards stabbing people. Even knowing that this Mordred is a child with no apparent swordsmanship to speak of doesn't seem to help. Some habits die hard.
"Mordred!" he calls as he walks into the shop.
The call is greeted with a thud of the bodies-hitting-the-floor variety.
Oh, damn.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone's tried to rob them, although how they got past Merlin's particular brand of security measures is a question to be pondered later. He walks purposefully to the back of the shop, considering different spells that could take care of things subtly—
—and is faced instead with Mordred, staring up at him from the floor and looking stunned.
"Were you sleeping already?" Merlin asks, bemused. "You realize it's not even dark yet."
"Long day. Needed a nap," Mordred manages. Merlin can see that he's sweating and pale, the blood drained from his face.
"Are you all right?" he asks before he can think about it. Leftover physician training, must be. More old habits he's never quite been able to break.
The question quickly answers itself. "I think I'm gonna be sick," Mordred says, and as if on cue promptly turns green.
One last damnable habit kicks in. Merlin flicks his eyes to a corner where a lonely rubbish bin has been gathering dust for who knows how long, and in an instant it's moved across the room to nudge at Mordred's elbow. Fortunately, Mordred is too busy heaving at that point to wonder where it came from.
Merlin stands by uncomfortably as the minutes drag on. Finally he can't take the sound of puking any longer and retreats to the front desk just to give himself something to do.
He and Arthur have long since taken to keeping bottled water behind the desk. It's a necessity borne by a combination of omnipresent dust and a seemingly never-ending list of things that need to be repaired (the old-fashioned way, lest regular patrons start to wonder and, well, it gives Arthur something to do). He grabs one and returns to the back.
Mordred hasn't yet gathered the wherewithal to remove himself from the floor, but at least he seems to have stopped throwing up. Wordlessly, Merlin offers him the water.
"Thanks," Mordred mumbles as he uncaps the bottle and begins to gulp it.
"Drink too fast and you'll be sick again," Merlin warns him, and immediately wants to kick himself in the face.
Gaius would be glad you've remembered that much, he tells himself as the boy obeys and drinks more slowly. Focus on that.
"Thanks," Mordred repeats. He sounds marginally more like a human being now that he's had something to drink. "I can—I'll clean this up. Sorry about the mess."
"You can stay overnight again, if you've got nowhere else to go," Merlin says instead of acknowledging the apology. Mordred blinks.
"Thank you," he says for the third time.
Merlin doesn't say what he wants to say, because 'stop thanking me' sounds petulant and 'I'd like us to remain mutually unimpressed with each other, thank you' doesn't make much sense even to him.
"Thank Arthur," he advises instead, and turns to leave.
"You hate me, don't you?"
Merlin stops. Slowly turns back around.
"That didn't sound like a question," he says.
"It wasn't."
There's a too-familiar steel in Mordred's tone. Merlin's hackles rise on instinct.
"You're awfully sure of yourself."
Mordred shrugs. "Doesn't take a genius to figure out that you can barely stand to look at me. I'd been wondering why that was."
"And you aren't wondering anymore?" Merlin asks, nonplussed.
"I don't need to stay here, you know," Mordred says sharply. "I could find somewhere else to sleep if I had to. It'd probably be a lot more restful than being up half the night wondering if you're going to strangle me in my sleep."
Merlin glares. "Then why don't you?"
"I told you," Mordred snaps. "I need your help. Even if you don't want to give it to me."
Merlin folds his arms and says, very calmly, "Is that a threat?"
Mordred rolls his eyes. "What is this, the mob? Christ. I meant I could do something for you. Barter, or something—"
"What did you mean before?" Merlin interrupts. "It sounded like you'd figured something out. I'm all ears."
"Yeah, I noticed that," Mordred says under his breath. Merlin magnanimously ignores the crack. "I heard you and Arthur talking, all right? Didn't mean to eavesdrop or anything, just…things got sort of loud, so it was pretty hard to miss."
"You're lying," Merlin says flatly. "You didn't overhear anything. Tell me the truth."
"I—" Mordred looks up at him helplessly. Merlin is jolted by the memory of a much younger boy with those same blue eyes, begging him for help. It's an entirely new level of déjà vu.
"Look, I didn't mean to, okay? I just fell asleep and…" He makes a vague hand gesture.
"That doesn't actually tell me anything."
"I saw you two together, talking! What's it matter how I saw?"
"You're lying," Merlin repeats. "That's impossible."
"What's impossible?"
You can't have seen us together because we haven't been human at the same time in about two thousand years. Even for someone who has magic himself, that would be a bit of a stretch.
He takes a calming breath before speaking again. "You know what? I don't know what you're playing at and I don't care. Keep your secrets. You can stay the night, like I said, do—whatever it is you've been doing down here—"
"Homework," Mordred mumbles.
Merlin blinks. "Right. That. And tomorrow you can leave. Go home, go elsewhere—like I said. I really don't care."
He turns and leaves Mordred on the floor and almost, almost makes it to the stairs before the boy's voice stops him.
"It was a dream or something, I don't know. I was tired and I fell asleep and the next thing I knew, you and Arthur were talking to each other. I only caught bits. Everything was…blurry. And there was a beach."
Merlin stands frozen with one hand over the doorknob. That's…improbable, he thinks, trying to be calm.
Improbable. But not impossible, which puts it one step ahead of Mordred's first explanation.
"Am I crazy?" Mordred asks in a strained little voice.
Merlin makes a split-second decision.
He only spares a moment to think, this is an incredibly stupid thing to do, before turning on his heel.
"If you want my help, then you listen to what I say and you do it. I don't have time to babysit someone who's not going to hear a word that comes out of my mouth."
Mordred gapes, but he pulls himself together quickly and nods.
"And I'm assuming you don't have another job lined up—" Honestly, whatever part of him is supposedly a Responsible Adult feels like Merlin ought to be asking about school and just when was the last time Mordred went, but the rest of him isn't about to get mired any deeper in the boy's life than he absolutely must. "—so you can help out here. This place is a mess, and I've been meaning to hire someone to help with it anyway, so…" He makes an awkward hand gesture of his own. Mordred is still staring at him like he's convinced he's wandered into a very bizarre dream.
Which is apparently not as unlikely as one might think.
"I'm going upstairs now," Merlin says at length.
Mordred nods some more.
"Right." And on that awkward note he turns and walks very purposefully up the stairs, like he can leave his latest horrible decision behind if he just moves quickly enough that it can't catch up to him.
He thinks he hears a quiet "thank you" being lobbed at his back, but he pretends not to hear it.
.
Of course then there are a few problems.
One: Merlin has effectively banished himself from his own shop because he can't stand to be around Mordred longer than strictly necessary. It's a Sunday so they're closed anyway, but still, this is not a tenable position.
Two: He has invited the aforementioned bane of his existence to stay. He has agreed to educate the bane of his existence. He is going to have the bane of his existence sleeping under his roof, good god, what has he done?
Three, and perhaps the most intimidating: He is now going to have to explain this to Arthur. Ideally in such a way that it will sound less batshit insane than it does from his current perspective.
Luckily Arthur is either asleep or causing trouble elsewhere, as he hadn't flown at Merlin's head the second he stepped through the door in a demand to know what had happened, so that gives him a little time. He kicks off his shoes, starts boiling water for the purpose of making some desperately needed tea, and curls up on the sofa with a pen and a full pad of Post-Its.
He has no idea where to start.
I have no idea where to start, he writes, figuring with a mental shrug that honesty is the best policy. I told Mordred he could stay the night and then things sort of spiraled out of control, so now he's staying indefinitely. I'm sorry, I should've talked that over with you first.
Not that Arthur will mind, he thinks ruefully, as he's apparently taken to seeing Mordred as an abandoned kitten in need of rescue.
But that train of thought just takes him back to the little boy Arthur had been unable to keep from helping, and how all of that had ended, so Merlin gets off of it. It won't do him any good now; he's dug his grave and now he's damn well going to have to lie in it.
Let me just sort this out first thing—I still don't trust him. I still don't want him around, especially around you and most especially with magic. But he mentioned something today that made me worry, and
Merlin stops. Because this is the bit he's having trouble explaining even to himself.
Mordred had heard him and Arthur inside of the dreamscape. There's no other explanation for it. He can't know how much he heard, but it doesn't matter, because if a sleeping Mordred is capable of simply wandering into Merlin's dream-construct, if it's so easy for him that he almost believes it to be a normal dream…
Keep your enemies close. Merlin knows he didn't manage that very well in the old days, but better late than never, he supposes. A teenage warlock with that kind of power, particularly one with Mordred's history, is too dangerous to be let off a leash.
He ends up writing, I don't want him to be a danger to himself or others. I don't need that on my conscience. And stop gloating, I can already tell you're gloating.
He sticks the notes together, leaves them in a conspicuous place, and fires up his laptop. If he's somehow managed to end up in self-imposed exile from his own shop, he might as well get some orders done.
.
For the record, Mordred hadn't meant to eavesdrop. If you could call it that. He hadn't meant to wander off in his sleep, is what he means.
It's never happened before—the feeling of falling asleep and half-waking up in an endless black space, devoid of shape or feeling or anything, really, except for two angry voices.
He'd thought, okay, this is a dream, I've had stranger ones, and followed the sound because why not? It'd seemed better than wandering aimlessly around in the dark.
The voices had belonged to Merlin and Arthur, which made sense, because they're the only human beings he's had any real contact with these last few days. And they'd been arguing. Mordred had heard his own name.
The whole thing had felt disturbingly real. Off. Like Mordred hadn't actually been dreaming, just sort of…sleeping awake.
He'd wandered closer to the voices, straining to make out the words. At some point he'd ended up on a beach. Sand and sea and wind in his hair. It had felt nice.
And then…
For the record, Mordred also doesn't make a habit of throwing up on strange people's floors. Or anybody's floors, really. But extraordinary circumstances and all.
It becomes clear after an hour or so that Merlin really isn't coming back. Which is odd, because the place is a damn mess and Mordred imagines there's work to be done even if they are closed.
Then he remembers that Merlin didn't actually deny hating his guts, that even though he agreed to be Mordred's mentor or whatever it doesn't mean he wants to spend a second longer than necessary in Mordred's presence, and feels depressed all over again.
It's another hour of staring at the same page in his Literature textbook and not taking any of it in before Mordred gives up and sets it aside. He's been trying to keep up with school as best he can, considering he's not actually been going (someone would be bound to tell his mum); reading ahead in his textbooks and texting friends for assignment outlines and generally trying to keep himself occupied. It's pretty boring staying cooped up with nothing but page after page of dryer-than-dust academia, but even that's better than being alone with his own thoughts.
His head is a real bastard, Mordred knows that by now.
But apparently his tolerance for Yeats has long since evaporated, so Mordred decides to make good on his promise by cleaning up…something.
Probably anything would do, he thinks dubiously, looking around the room.
Merlin will most likely eviscerate him if Mordred tries to put the books someplace without knowing the system behind it, so he awkwardly digs some tissues out of his backpack and starts dusting off shelves.
So this is what you've decided to do with your life, he muses. Work a thankless, miserably dusty job for the privilege of being taught by a man who can't stand the sight of you. Brilliant, Mordred. Really, well done.
Well, it's better than being a murderer.
The thought's like a sucker punch, and it leaves Mordred swallowing down bile again. Which is disgusting. He's going to have to find out where Merlin keeps that water stash.
Anyone else would think he's gone mad, he knows, putting so much stock in what for all intents and purposes had been a dream. But Mordred's been alive fourteen years. He knows nightmares. He's had all the usual ones about showing up to school naked or all of his teeth falling out. Normal stuff, all right?
But he's also had the dreams.
He knows the difference, and he knows that when things feel real enough, it'd be stupid not to put any stock in them.
He'd been small when they started, maybe too small to remember when. The earliest ones had just been flashes of things he couldn't make sense of, but that were still enough to send him flying out of bed in a cold sweat to crawl into bed with his mum.
Eventually he'd gotten too old to do that anymore. Mordred's outgrown a lot of things, but he's never quite managed to outgrow the dreams.
There's no structure to them, not really, although they're clearer now than they had been when he was a little kid. The recurring themes go something like this:
Young, very young, still old enough to know something's terribly wrong, but there's a kind man looking after him, he'll make sure everything is all right—but he can't because he dies, they put him down like he's an animal and want to do the same to him—
Older, keeping secrets, always keeping secrets, but there are two pairs of blue eyes; one is bright and strong and full of hope; one is cold and angry and powerful and somehow still scared. One trusts him, one hates him, and he doesn't understand either—
Younger, betrayal, the powerful eyes just starting to go cold, and he swears not to forget this, not to forget any of it—
Older, and there's something—there's someone, two someones, a man and a woman and he cares for them more than anything in the world, but the two are enemies, both want the other dead and he can't—he doesn't know—
A woman, always a woman, green eyes and ice in her smile, warm only when she looks at Mordred—
A woman, always a woman, brown eyes and fierceness filling them to overflowing, a noose around her neck—
Something snaps in his head and he screams—
One of the people he loves is dead, and he slides a sword deep into the gut of the other, and it feels—it feels like—
It's not triumph, but he's smiling.
A stab of pain followed by spreading numbness, like icy water poured all over; it feels like an end, and he wonders if it's raining—
Darkness—
Mordred slaps himself across the face. Not hard, just enough of a sting to snap himself out of it.
That isn't right, he tells himself, trying futilely to calm his roiling insides. They don't come like that, not all at once. And it's true. It's taken him years to piece together enough snippets of sensation and blurry images to form something even sort of coherent.
Somehow, though, there was never room for doubt.
He fucking murdered you!
Mordred has just enough time to think oh, fucking hell before he's on his knees again, clutching at the sides of that damned trash bin as he pukes up whatever's left in his guts.
He can't stop shaking.
At first he hadn't thought anything of the dream in the darkness-turned-beach, not when it was a change from blood and lightning and whatever else his mind liked to come up with to screw with him, but Merlin had said those words and suddenly a lot of things had slid sickeningly into place. Like why his eyes are always so cold. Or why, every time Mordred looks at either of them, he feels a sort of twinge in his gut. Like he's done something wrong and isn't sure whether he's about to be caught.
Merlin does hate him. Or some version of him, anyway, and the worst part is that he actually has a good reason.
Merlin had called him a murderer.
Something about that must've been a shock to his system, because he'd catapulted awake, sweating and shaking and desperately nauseous. And somehow he'd managed to fall on the floor as well. Panic really does not agree with him.
Merlin himself appearing had just been the icing on the cake. Mordred hadn't been planning on saying anything. He'd figured he could lie his way out of it like he does with everything else.
He hadn't known it was real until he'd seen that look on Merlin's face.
How do you feel guilty about something you don't remember doing?
You shouldn't fucking have to!
Mordred knows he's getting angry again, knows he shouldn't be, knows what a horrible idea that is, but he can't seem to calm down. Everything has gone mad. Like he didn't have enough shit going on, now this is being dumped on top of it? What higher deity has he pissed off lately? Why the fuck is this happening to him?
He feels it the instant he loses control, which is of course too late. Half the books around him fly from their shelves and rocket across the room. Instinct forces him to duck, so he only hears the spectacular cacophony of a dozen volumes slamming into a wall at high speed before thudding to the floor.
Ringing silence.
Slowly Mordred sits up again. His hands are shaking.
No. Please, no. This can't be happening again.
He hadn't meant to do it.
But that's the problem, isn't it? He hadn't meant to do it the last time, either. He never means to. But it happens anyway, so then what the hell does it matter what his intentions are?
Mordred can feel his breath coming sharp and fast. He puts his head between his hands, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to remember how to breathe.
.
He's always been a little different from the others. There were the dreams, of course, but every kid has nightmares, and Mordred's got really good at writing them off over the years. Just really persistent nightmares. That's all.
But then there'd been the magic, obviously, and he couldn't write that off as anything but real. Or crazy, but of the two, the first was slightly less terrifying. He'd shoved it down deep and tried to ignore it.
Magic, he's learned, doesn't take kindly to being ignored.
It started to itch underneath his skin, a constant tingle just shy of being painful. Like Mordred imagined an animal might feel when fitted with a collar just a bit too small. Like his own abilities were punishing him for clamping down and refusing to let them out.
Suffocating them.
He started to get into trouble. Acting out, just regular kid stuff at first—being a little shit in class, then skipping class in favor of wandering around and doing nothing in particular. He just needed to move. If he didn't, he felt like he was going to go mad.
His mum worried. Of course she did; what else was she supposed to do when her only son stopped talking to her and started turning into a delinquent?
(That was what all the school letters said—'delinquent', and that was even before he started stealing sweets from checkouts just to see if he could get away with it. The adrenaline was almost enough to drown out the itch, sometimes.)
His personal record ended up being a week of skipped school, just short of the tally needed for expulsion, and the worst part was he didn't even care. Mordred had always liked school. He'd been good at it. But somewhere along the way he'd turned into a jittery ball of raw nerves, throwing anything he could at the beast nipping at his heels in the hope that it might be distracted, at least long enough for him to get away. His grades had just been the latest thing to be thrown, but it was really bloody hard to keep running when the beast was already inside you, setting you on fire from the inside out.
Well, and then he just got unlucky. The school phoned his mum and she couldn't ignore the issue anymore, or hope that Mordred would get whatever this was out of his system and get himself back on track. He'd skidded so far off the rails he didn't even know where they were anymore.
She'd ended up staying home that day, the better to rip Mordred a new one the second he walked through the door.
The ensuing lecture was one for the ages, and she said a lot of things Mordred knows now that she didn't mean. Most pointedly that she didn't want him to become useless like his long-gone father, which was such a cliché Mordred probably would've laughed had he been watching a sitcom and not, you know, living it.
Eventually she'd stormed out with tears in her eyes and Mordred had stood there, stock still, staring a hole in the wall.
He hadn't said a word the whole time. Not once.
Silently, slowly, he'd gone into his bedroom and shut the door. Sat on his bed and stared numbly at the wall.
And immediately remembered why he'd been trying so hard not to sit still lately—it made it too easy to think.
It was like all the shouting had put cracks in the walls he'd built in his head, and now the knowledge that he'd fucked up spectacularly was flooding in. He'd fucked up with school and he'd fucked up with his mum and he'd fucked up with…whatever the hell was wreaking havoc on his insides, this thing he couldn't control.
He'd tried to levitate bread over to the toaster once. The toaster had exploded, fucking exploded. Which was hilarious for about five minutes, before he'd realized—
The same thing he was realizing all over again, actually.
He was a fuckup. Worse, he was dangerous.
Things started getting fuzzy after that, his breathing getting heavy, laborious, like the room was closing in around him. He felt like something was clawing at his skin from within and he was furious, all of a sudden, because why did this have to happen to him? It wasn't enough to be the weird kid with no dad who had weird dreams and weird eyes that turned yellow sometimes when he forgot himself; he had to have this massive, angry blob of ability he had no idea how to control—why? Why'd he have to get that on top of everything else?
Something had snapped. Mordred had seen red and then—
The world had exploded.
At least, that's what it'd felt like. The windows of his room had all shattered at once, glass flying everywhere; books and knickknacks went shooting off his shelves, his desk, slamming into the walls with such force some of them actually left dents in the drywall.
He didn't realize until the room had settled that he'd been screaming. Maybe he'd just been trying to ease the tension somehow, let out some of the stress that'd been building up for months on end with no relief, but it had turned into something else.
Mordred had looked over to the side, dread pooling in his stomach.
The wall opposite the window had been turned into some sort of twisted modern arts project, shards of glass sticking out everywhere, blue paint nicked off in six places. A football participation trophy he'd got when he was six years old had sunk into the wall as well, three inches deep by the look of it.
As he'd sat there in stunned silence, his first thought had been, Good thing Mum wasn't in here.
His second, and more pertinent, had been And what if she had been?
It had moved pretty quickly from there. He'd panicked, bolted—hadn't even snagged a sandwich or a change of clothes, just grabbed his school bag, launched himself off the bed and gone wherever his feet had wanted to take him.
.
A croaking noise from the corner nearly startles Mordred out of his own skin. Jolted out of his breathing exercises, he looks up sharply.
A raven is perched on top of one of the bookshelves, and it seems to be looking at him.
Mordred blinks a few times to make sure he isn't hallucinating—at this point he's probably going mad anyway so it doesn't really matter, but it's the principle of the thing—but the raven remains stubbornly present.
"I'm not Edgar Allen Poe, you know," he says shakily. "So you're gonna need to take that cliché somewhere else."
The raven tilts its head but otherwise doesn't move. Mordred sighs.
"All right then, what the hell. Do what you like. I'm probably crazy anyway."
There's no discernible response. Which is as it should be, because birds don't talk and teenagers don't kill people. At the very least not without remembering it.
Tears spring to his eyes with alarming speed. "Shit," Mordred mumbles, reaching up to wipe them away, but they just keep coming. "Shit."
He tries to tell himself, as the tears ratchet up into racking sobs, that he's not losing any face here. There's no one around. Just a stupid bird that can't talk. But he's pissed anyway because he knows he looks like a little kid, crying because he just threw up and now his throat and nose are burning and he can't breathe without smelling it.
He's not. He's crying because he hasn't been home or seen his mother in three days, hasn't slept well in weeks. He's crying because kneeling on a stranger's dusty floor throwing up in a cardboard box has somehow become the least depressing part of his day.
But mostly, Mordred knows bitterly, he's crying because he's scared.
He's scared of his magic. He's scared of his dreams and he's scared of Merlin and he's scared of himself. He's scared because he knows fuck-all about things like magic and reincarnation and he's bloody terrified that he's actually going crazy.
I'm not going crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm just—
Just what? What the hell am I, then?
He can't cry forever, though. Eventually the sobs taper off into sniffles; Mordred registers in a vague kind of way that he is even grosser now than he had been a few minutes ago. And even before that he'd been pretty gross. When's the last time he took a shower?
"Shit," he repeats into the silence. His nose is all stuffed up, though, so it comes out more like "Shid." Which is somehow hilarious, so he says it again. "Shid." He starts laughing. He laughs until his stomach starts hurting again, and when he thinks wow, I really am cracking up, it's only a little bitter.
There's a fluttering on the edge of his peripheral vision, followed by a slight weight on his shoulder and the feeling of tiny pinpricks digging through the material of his shirt. Tilting his head sideways, Mordred can see the raven perched on his shoulder like he's a character out of Dungeons and Dragons or something.
"H'llo," he greets it, because it feels like the right thing to do.
The raven starts preening him in response, running its beak repeatedly through Mordred's hair.
"I'm pretty gross right now," he warns it. The bird doesn't stop. "Fine, whatever." Maybe his rat's nest of hair has confused it. Maybe it thinks Mordred is a lost little…baby raven, whatever those are called.
Not too far off, then, he thinks reluctantly, reaching up to stroke between the bird's feathers without thinking about it. Surprisingly—or maybe not—it lets him without putting up a fuss.
The whole thing is trippy as hell, but also surprisingly therapeutic.
.
Merlin's never really surprised when Arthur vanishes from their flat. They both learned the hard way that the ex-king tended to go batshit if cooped up inside for too long—something that carried over from his human self, it would seem—so Merlin's always careful to leave a window cracked open.
Of course this has backfired on a few occasions, the most memorable being when Arthur had transformed mid-argument with a frustrated, growling Merlin and still been so pissed that he'd flown off and picked a fight with the first sentient thing he'd encountered. That being one of the Tower ravens.
"Uppity bastards," Arthur had grumbled once he was human again, cuts and scratches and all. "I used to rule that land, you know."
Turf wars aside, Merlin knows that Arthur—even Arthur in bird form—is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He used to own to a bout of intense paranoia about letting his king out of his sight, but that had calmed after a few years.
Fine, decades. Who's counting anyway?
So when he's filled enough orders that his eyeballs are beginning to bleed and his lower back is cramping from bending over the computer screen for so long, looks up and sees the sun hanging low in the sky and knows Arthur's not in residence, he's not overly concerned. They've both been guilty of cutting it close on more than one occasion, but they're always both home at sunup and sundown.
Sundown. Damn. He'd almost managed to forget who is still going to be here.
Merlin groans, stretches until he hears something give a satisfying pop.
The shop's heating is shit, a reproachful little voice in the back of his mind reminds him. Merlin grimaces. It's been warm lately so they haven't really needed it, but then again…
He fights a brief battle with himself before giving up and getting up. There are some spare blankets shoved under the bed; those should do it. He might not want Mordred around, but he's still a child and Arthur will give him the mother of all disappointed looks if Merlin allows the boy to contract a freak case of hypothermia whilst under their roof, so there it is.
I've gone soft, he thinks morosely a few minutes later, heading down the stairs with musty blankets in hand. Soft as a marshmallow. It was always bound to happen sometime, I suppose.
He makes sure to make a lot of noise entering the shop this time around, not wanting a repeat of the earlier fiasco. "Mordred?"
"In here," Mordred calls back, and honestly, doesn't he ever leave that back room?
Merlin shakes his head—not my circus, not my monkey—and follows the sound.
And is met with the most bizarre sight he's seen in a very long time.
Mordred is still curled up on the floor like he never left it (there's a very distinct scent of vomit in the air that makes Merlin lean back a little); his eyes are red and he looks an absolute mess. Merlin nearly catches himself feeling sorry for him. He can't remember ever seeing Mordred look so pathetic. It's…disconcerting.
Almost as disconcerting as the fact that Arthur is currently perched on his shoulder.
Mordred continues to stroke absentmindedly between his feathers, oblivious to Merlin trying not to gape in the doorframe.
"What's going on here?" he manages at last.
"Is he your pet?" Mordred asks, which conveniently has nothing to do with the question Merlin just asked. "Only, he seems to like people."
"Not really, no," Merlin says before he can think about it. But it's true; Arthur isn't unpleasant as a bird—well, no more unpleasant than he is as a person—but he certainly doesn't go out of his way to make friends with strangers. Or with anyone. And Merlin can't remember the last time he saw him willingly set talon on another human being.
He tries very hard to communicate what the hell do you think you're playing at to Arthur through sheer force of glare, but is thoroughly ignored. Typical.
Mordred starts to shrug before apparently realizing that would dislodge Arthur and tilting his head instead. "Well, he hasn't pecked my eyes out or anything, so I guess I'm just special."
There's enough teenage snark in that tone that Merlin sort of wants to strangle him for other than the usual reasons. He inhales slowly instead, offering the blankets and a temporary truce along with them.
"Here. It can get cold down here at night."
Mordred eyes the blankets like they're going to bite him, but after a second reaches up and takes them anyway. "Thanks," he says uncertainly.
Merlin nods and holds out an arm for Arthur. The raven merely eyes him.
Don't be difficult, you prat, he thinks impatiently. I'm tempted to skin you as it is.
With a noise almost like a sigh, the raven flies from Mordred to Merlin. The familiar weight settles on Merlin's forearm and he lets out a breath he hadn't meant to hold.
"Good night," Mordred offers from the floor.
He's pitiful. He's so damn pitiful and harmless-looking, even if Merlin does know better.
Arthur is looking at him with knowing eyes. Merlin is seized by the sudden if not unfamiliar desire to drop him, but it wouldn't do any good. He knows he's lost this round.
"You're disgusting," he informs the boy on the floor. Mordred stares.
"Yeah, I'd figured that one out myself."
Don't strangle, Merlin reminds himself. You're an adult loads of times over. Resist the impulse. "Well, anyone would, because you reek. You need to shower before you suffocate yourself in your sleep."
Mordred continues to watch him blankly. Merlin musters up his very best Gaius Eyebrow.
"Are you going to come with me or not?"
The boy scrambles up from the floor, Arthur makes a coughing sound that sounds too much like laughter to be comforting, and Merlin heads back upstairs feeling like he's just been thoroughly played.
.