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Chapter Six
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"So let me get this straight."
Mordred lifts his head from his hands and tries not to sound too obviously like he's despairing of his life and everything in it.
He points at the dog. "That's Merlin."
Arthur looks uncomfortable. "Yes."
"And…you're a bird."
"Sometimes. Er. Half the time, yes."
Mordred hears the pleading in his own voice, which is sad. "And I'm not crazy?"
"You've got magic," Arthur points out. "You know Merlin does too. What's one more crazy thing?"
Groaning, Mordred drops his head back into his hands. "You're sure Merlin didn't drug that pizza or something? Because drugs would definitely make a lot more sense than any of this."
"Is it possible you missed the part about magic existing?"
"No, but that's—" Mordred makes a wild gesture meant to…oh fuck it, he flails, all right? He flails because sometimes that's just all you can do. "That's different, isn't it? I've grown up with that, it's always been there. This shit is like an eighties movie threw up all over my life and now I'm supposed to clean up the mess. Next I s'pose you'll be telling me you ended up this way because a witch cursed you or some shit like that."
Arthur gets this really shifty look on his face, and Mordred's voice rises to a pitch he hadn't known was possible.
"Are you shitting me?"
"Technically I suppose you could say there was a witch involved, yes, but that's beside the point—listen, I tried to get you to leave. You're the one who insisted on poking around."
"I'm a teenager," Mordred moans. "Making horrible life choices is a requirement for my age group. You, on the other hand—"
Arthur raises a hand for silence, and Mordred shuts his mouth without thinking about it. "Can we just agree that this isn't a discussion either of us wanted to have and leave it at that?"
Numbly, Mordred nods.
Another awkward silence ensues.
At least the dog has stopped growling. Although he hasn't left Arthur's side since they sat down to have this delightful conversation, which makes him wonder.
"Can he understand us when he's, you know, like this?"
Arthur glances down at the dog and shrugs. "A little, I think. It's…harder to focus, as an animal. Harder to concentrate. Processing basic words and gestures is difficult enough, never mind responding in a way that gets your point across."
"But you've done it," Mordred interrupts, remembering the oddness when Merlin had come down with the blankets. "I've seen you. You can communicate with each other."
"Well enough to get by. It's taken years of practice, though." Arthur's mouth quirks, but it isn't quite a smile. "Years and years. To be honest, we didn't do a fantastic job of communicating when we were both human."
Recognizing from personal experience the signs of an imminent brood, Mordred changes the subject. "So how does that work, then? Is it random—like, one minute you're minding your own business, next you're sprouting feathers?"
Arthur shakes his head. "Goes by day and night. Sun goes down, it's like this; sun comes up again, and it's the opposite. Efficient, if irritating."
I can imagine, Mordred almost says. He doesn't, though, because…he really can't. He can't imagine what it must be like, being so close to someone without really being close at all. Suddenly the endless detritus of Post-Its surrounding them isn't as amusing as it had been.
Three inches. Everything you could want to say to someone, and all of it has to fit on three inches of brightly colored paper.
Mordred's aware that he's starting to blink a lot, which is kind of embarrassing. He coughs.
"So you're a pair of shapeshifters and one of you has magic, and you run a bookshop because…?"
Arthur spreads his hands in a shrug. "Why not? It's a nice enough place, and if we keep strange hours, nobody's surprised if the ancient book collectors are a little eccentric."
Mordred remembers the old man again. "Guess they wouldn't be."
"I think you should get some rest," Arthur says after a bit. "It's been a long night."
"No arguments here," Mordred mutters. He stands up and collects his backpack, trying to ignore the feeling of two pairs of eyes boring into him the whole time.
He pauses at the door. "Arthur?"
"Yes?"
"Why'd you tell me all that?" He swallows. "I mean, this is crazy, yeah? All of it. You could've just laughed it off, told me I was mad and had done with it. I would've believed you."
Arthur gives him a long look.
"Then maybe that's why I told you," he says at last.
Mordred doesn't pretend to get what that's supposed to mean. Crazy is crazy, just like dangerous is dangerous—it doesn't matter what Arthur thinks of him or what Merlin does. Mordred is what he is.
It's not really a comforting thought.
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He's not sure how long it's been since they left Camelot. Years. Decades, probably, and Merlin's starting to think he needs to stop keeping track of the time, or it's going to get very depressing very fast.
Either way. They stop at an inn for the night, and the town is quiet and it seems as good a time as any to test his tolerance to alcohol.
His tolerance, as it turns out, is terrible.
He stumbles into their room at whatever ungodly hour and finds the raven perched on the bedpost, still awake and glaring at him. At least Merlin thinks it's glaring; it's kind of hard to tell, especially with the room spinning.
Oh right, the room is spinning. He should probably sit down.
He sits—or rather collapses—onto the bed, a stripe of moonlight filtering through the window to scatter across his legs. The raven immediately flutters over and quorks directly into his ear, as if to punish him for being an idiot. Merlin yelps and jerks away.
"Prat," he grumbles, rubbing the offended ear. The raven says nothing.
It's still unnerving, not getting any kind of response when he calls Arthur names or does something stupid. Every time Merlin thinks he's starting to get a handle on this—this thing they have, silence will squeeze in where it's not wanted and remind him all over again what's been lost.
"I still don't know how to do this," he says out loud. "Talking, I mean. And you'd probably say I could talk enough for three people, but that's not what—" He stops, trying to articulate what he's thinking. It's all very fuzzy. "I don't know how to talk when you're not talking back. I don't know what to do with that.
"Before, you know, it was always—you drove me mad. You did, I won't try to lie about that, but I know I drove you mad as well." He grins, almost. "Gaius would probably call it a partnership, mutual irritation that builds character, something like that. I remember him telling me once about how some things—plants and things—they could survive all right on their own, but they did so much better when something else was, you know, helping them along. Symbiotic. That was it. I think that's what it was like."
His face feels hot, and he's got the distinct feeling he's making a fool out of himself (talking to the ceiling in the dark like a madman), but it's like the dam that keeps all of his words stopped up behind his teeth has broken and now they're all gushing out in a flood.
"Sorry," he says, "this is all coming out a mess. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we—we helped each other, you know? And trying to talk to you could be like talking at a stone wall sometimes, you know it was, you prat, but this is—this is worse." He swallows hard around a sudden lump in his throat. "This is worse."
Shit. He breaks off and puts his head in his hands, trying to breathe. Trying to remember why he'd thought this was a good idea in the first place.
There's a careful touch at his hair, and for one wild second he thinks, he's back, this has all been a god-awful dream and now I've woken up and everything will be fine—but no, it's just the bird, running its beak through his hair.
Almost like it's trying to give him some comfort. There's something to that, he supposes, managing a watery smile.
"Sorry," he says again. It sounds half-choked and garbled, but he doesn't imagine that makes much of a difference. "I guess it's just—even when you were at your most stone wall-like, I still knew you could hear me. Even if you weren't listening right then." He takes a deep breath. "But now it's like I'm shouting into a hole in the ground. I have no idea if you can hear me. I can't know if you understand what I'm saying or if I'm just…."
Merlin trails off, looking down at his empty hands. There's probably some metaphor there, he thinks, but if he's going to start thinking in metaphors then he's already done for, so he starts stroking the raven's back to occupy his fingers with something better than empty space.
There's something else there, he knows. Something big hiding behind all of the words he's just vomited everywhere. And it's stupid that they still have secrets. It's so stupid that he's still hiding something from Arthur after all this time—really, the logical part of his mind insists, if Arthur didn't turn on him for the magic and the lying and the betrayal and everything else, then knowing the last bit surely won't be the tipping point.
But then there's the other part of Merlin's mind, the part that's panicking. Because what if it is the tipping point? What if, all that time spent hiding his magic, he'd been avoiding one precipice while a completely different cliff's edge waited just behind his feet?
He barely remembers what it was like anymore, not being in love with him. It seems like such a damnably long time ago. He doesn't know how to go back.
All honesty, he's not at all sure he'd want to go back if he could.
Even if it ruins everything we've built up to now?
He's dry-swallowing. Another panic attack, then. How lovely. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to calm down, tries to focus on the feel of sleek feathers under his touch, the breath coming next to his ear—not human breath, no, but still. Proof that he hasn't failed, not completely, not yet.
And maybe it's that tiny little vote of confidence that gives him the courage—well, that and the ale. Because isn't that why he's so afraid? Because he still has something to lose?
Isn't that a good thing?
Fuck it, he thinks. He takes a deep breath and jumps.
"I love you, you know."
The words hang, briefly, in the silence between them.
Then he begins to babble, the last of the dam crumbled. "I mean, I say that like it's some—some big revelation that I've had, but it's not. Some days I think I've been in love with you from the first, which is stupid, because you were trying to take my head off and I'm pretty certain I was trying to concuss you, but even if that's an exaggeration, it's still about—well, how many years has it been? A lot. It's been a lot. Which is sort of pathetic, when you think about it."
He shoots the bird a halfhearted glare. "Not that you noticed. As it should've been, I suppose, with Gwen and all. But it is frustrating sometimes. I know you're not an idiot all of the time, so the only explanation is that you're being purposely obtuse."
But that's not quite right, because Arthur's never been stupid. He's just always been very good at not seeing the things he didn't want to see.
The magic, Agravaine, Morgana and Mordred—he almost wants to say something about it but he doesn't. There are some things that can't be unsaid or forgotten, even if they are forgiven.
Merlin sighs. "Well, there you are. No more secrets on my end. I would say I'm sorry that it took me this long, but, well." He shrugs. "You probably can't understand any of this anyway, so it's fine. I wouldn't expect anything from you if you could. But the point is that I'm here, all right? I always have been and I always will be. Even if—even if you aren't—"
He can't finish, but he imagines the point stands anyway.
The raven is still running its beak determinedly through his hair. Merlin manages a tired smile for it.
"I'll find a way to fix this," he murmurs. And for a second, maybe he even believes it.
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For once, he falls asleep easily and hopes that he doesn't dream. The nightmares are shit and the good dreams are worse.
He doesn't end up having time for either.
It feels like he's been asleep for all of thirty seconds when something drags him back into consciousness. Merlin groans and tries to roll over.
The grip on his shoulder tightens, shaking him until he finally opens his eyes out of sheer frustration. It's pitch black in the room, all trace of moonlight gone.
"What—" he begins, and then he realizes that the fingers digging into his skin are just that—fingers.
When Merlin finally looks up, mouth open, Arthur is staring at him with wide eyes.
Even in darkness, there's no question of who he is.
The moment stretches. Merlin says nothing, terrified of dispelling some fragile illusion.
"I heard you," Arthur says at last.
He doesn't disappear, and Merlin's in no mood to start asking questions.
He thinks Arthur might try to say something else, but talking doesn't feel like the priority right now, so Merlin throws his metaphorical hands in the air and his caution to the metaphorical winds, pulls him close and kisses him.
There's a moment of stillness where Merlin thinks maybe this is nothing but a hallucination after all.
But then Arthur is kissing him back, more carefully than Merlin would have imagined him doing, and the illusion holds. Merlin wants to stay inside of it for the rest of his life.
He's given seven minutes.
It's more than he would have expected to have, ever again, but he can still feel the tremor under Arthur's skin when the transformation begins to pull at him, and it feels like his heart is breaking all over again.
He panics. All he can think about is losing this, losing Arthur again, and the sheer impossibility of it. He can't let it happen. He won't let it.
Magic bursts out of him like a white-hot flare, temporarily blinding; he can't remember ever using it like this before, like it's sucking the very marrow from his bones in exchange for the power he's wielding. This, he thinks, is how stars die.
And then it's gone just as suddenly, leaving him utterly drained and exhausted. Everything hurts. His brain feels like it hurts, making it hard to think in straight lines.
But Arthur is still there.
He looks horrified.
Merlin opens his mouth to ask what's wrong, what could possibly be wrong when he's finally done it, but nothing comes out. Strange—he must've fallen on the floor at some point, because Arthur's never been taller than him. Certainly not by this much. But there's softness under his hands, so what—?
His hands?
He looks down.
There's moonlight on the blankets again, enough to see by. But there are no hands where they should be; no human fingers. There are instead a dog's slim black paws, and they twitch when Merlin flinches in shock.
No.
"Merlin, what the hell have you done?"
He can't think. Arthur is saying something else, something he can't understand; his mind is muddy and it must be the shock, it has to be—he's hallucinated before and he's doing it again, that's all, isn't it? The reason his thoughts keep slipping away like water through a sieve?
"You idiot, what did you do?"
What has he done?
But the animal mindset leaves no room for lying to himself, leaves no room to doubt the obvious.
Which is that he's fucked up royally.
Again.
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The next morning is awkward as all hell, which Mordred's guessing he should have expected.
Merlin comes downstairs with a look on his face like he's just been force-fed a dirty sock. It's not a nice face. And when he sees Mordred, lurking in the doorway between the back room and the main part of the shop, there's this painfully uncomfortable thing where they both freeze and stare at each other for what feels like millennia.
Mordred's guessing Merlin knows more about millennia than he does, but that's what it feels like.
Finally, Merlin unglues his feet from the floor and strides past Mordred into the back room. Mordred follows him for lack of anything better to do, and is wordlessly handed a box of books.
He waits. No instruction is forthcoming.
"Erm," he prompts.
Merlin looks pinched. Like he really, really wants to be anywhere but right here in this moment. Mordred sympathizes; he really does.
"Do you know how the Dewey system works?" Merlin asks.
"Erm," Mordred says again.
"…Right."
Apparently they're going with the 'last night and its life-shattering revelations never actually happened' approach, which is fine. Mordred completely approves of this approach.
He approves a little less when the next ten minutes are spent enduring a lecture—no, sorry, an explanation—about completely arbitrary numbers being assigned to completely arbitrary categories. Mordred kind of wants to argue the stupidity of it all when he finds out pet books don't go right next to the regular animal books, but Merlin kind of looks like he's had that argument enough times that he'll tear the throat out of the next person to try him, so Mordred prudently keeps his mouth shut.
Who even owns antique books on pet care, is what he really wants to know.
"So that's that," Merlin is saying. "We get a ton of donations, more than you'd think, but it's just me doing the organizing and the filing alone is a bloody nightmare, so…" He gestures helplessly at the expanse of dusty boxes surrounding them. It's a desolate literary landscape indeed.
Mordred frowns. "Just you? Arthur doesn't…?"
Merlin stiffens, but surprisingly doesn't clam up. "We learned the hard way that having him squint at repetitive numbers for hours on end made him prone to bloodshed, so no." He coughs. "He keeps the place standing, though. Has done since we got it. He's repaired nearly everything in the building at this point."
"Cool," Mordred says, because he can't think of anything else to say.
Merlin coughs again. Well, it is very dusty in here. "That should be everything you need, so I'm going to open up."
By the time Mordred manages a "yeah", Merlin's already out of the room. And here they'd been so close to having an actual conversation.
Mordred looks at the dozens and dozens of old books at his feet, the dust in their pages just waiting to choke him to death.
You'll have to get in line, he thinks, and makes a face. I guess it's time to go to work.
It's a long day. Like, an interminably long day. Turns out antique bookshops don't really get a load of traffic during weekday afternoons; who knew? Mordred gets into a groove, sorts the books out into piles that he then carries to the proper shelf. His wrists are smarting after the first hour; by the fourth, his back is starting to ache.
And here we have Mordred, eighty-year-old man in a fourteen-year-old's body. Witness in awe as he shelves the withered corpses of books and inhales ten lifetimes' worth of dust without stopping.
At least his new "job" is confusing enough that it doesn't leave much time to think.
He's sweating and sore by the time it gets dark, so he collapses into one of those questionable armchairs and surveys his handiwork. It's not bad, he thinks with some smugness. A lot fewer boxes are sitting around, anyway. He can almost make a path across the room without risking a concussion.
His phone buzzes, and Mordred glances at the screen, hoping it's not his mum again. He'd texted her just the once to let her know he wasn't dead or kidnapped or anything, not that that'd stopped her from continuing to freak out.
It's not her, though. It's Kathy from school texting him Ms. Fray's latest assignment. Mordred thumbs the attachment and groans—honestly, he'd thought astronomy would be an easy science option, but he's probably ended up doing more reading for this class than any of his English ones. This week it's a twelve-page article on eclipses and really, does anyone think this stuff is practical?
Well, it's not like you're going to be at school to turn in your work anyway.
Mordred cringes. He really hadn't thought this through well at all, had he?
"What are you doing?"
He flinches, almost drops his phone. "Christ, Arthur."
"You're the one sitting in the dark," Arthur reminds him, switching on a light. He takes a look around and nods. "I think I'm impressed. It's considerably less of a health hazard in here."
"Should be," Mordred says, trying not to sound as pleased as he feels. "I've been at it all day. Pretty sure there are laws against that, actually."
"I'm going to get some Indian," Arthur offers. "Can I bribe you with curry?"
Mordred feigns outrage. "You think you can force me to work crazy hours and keep my mouth shut about it with curry?"
"I think you're a teenager, which by definition means you'll do anything for food," Arthur replies. His mouth is twitching.
Mordred pretends to think about it for about two seconds before letting out a martyred sigh and hauling himself up off the armchair. "Might as well come along, make sure you get my order right," he says. Arthur looks surprised, but he doesn't protest.
It's still unseasonably hot, although now that the sun's gone down the temperature is back to a humane level. This humidity doesn't bode well. Still, it feels better than expected just to be outside again, away from the dust and the lack of functioning air conditioning that characterize Ealdor.
"Do you two ever actually cook?" Mordred asks.
Arthur pulls a face. "Not much. I'm shit at it. Merlin…well, Merlin tries. He did make me eat rat once, though; don't think I've ever quite managed to shake that."
Mordred finds himself pulling a similar face. "He did not."
"Hand to god, he did." Arthur laughs. "Of course, I made him eat it too once I figured out what was going on. We ended up foisting the rest of it on—" Arthur hesitates, but it's so quick Mordred almost doesn't catch it. "On my sister."
Mordred snorts. "Bet she loved you for that one."
"She hated me for a lot of things. I don't think rat stew rated high on the list, in hindsight." He clears his throat. "We're here. What did you say you wanted, again?"
They have indeed ended up in front of a small Indian place. Mordred trips over himself ordering because he's still thinking about how depressed Arthur had sounded a minute ago. Family drama, sounds like. Well, Mordred can understand that.
"So, you've been assigned shelving duty?" Arthur asks him on the walk back. Mordred groans.
"Yeah, and talk about thankless work. If I didn't already think Merlin hated me, I would now."
Shit.
There's an awkward little pause. Arthur doesn't try to lie and say Merlin doesn't hate him—which, as depressing as it is, makes Mordred respect him a little more.
"It isn't you," he says at last. "It's…complicated."
Mordred gets that. Probably gets it more than Arthur knows; Mordred's not sure how much of his dream-wandering Merlin told Arthur about, but whatever. He shrugs.
"Doesn't matter. As long as he helps me with the whole…" A waggle of the fingers meant to convey 'magic' without sounding bonkers to anyone who might overhear. "I don't really care what he thinks of me."
Arthur looks at him sidelong. He doesn't call Mordred out on it, but Mordred gets the feeling he knows he's full of shit.
It's stupid. It's really, really stupid, because he shouldn't care. He doesn't know Merlin from Adam; why should he give a damn what Merlin thinks of him? But some part of him does care, and it's incredibly obnoxious.
He starts when Arthur reaches over and puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"He'll come around," he says. "He just needs time."
"Time." Mordred tries to sound convinced. "Right."
Because if a couple thousand years didn't do it, another few days'll definitely do the trick.
The rest of the walk is silent, though once they get back to the shop Arthur surprises him by sitting in the armchair that Mordred isn't using.
"Were you expecting a guest?" he asks, dry as salt at Mordred's surprised look.
No, just wondering why you're bothering to eat with the enemy. He doesn't feel all right about being shitty right after Arthur's just bought him food, though, so he shakes his head and leaves it at that.
They eat quietly enough until Arthur notices the book lying open near Mordred's feet. "You realize Merlin will kill you if you get curry on one of those books, don't you?"
Mordred rolls his eyes. "It looks about a hundred years old as is, I don't think he'd notice if one page got a little smudged," he protests.
"It's older than that," Arthur corrects him, eyeing the massive book with interest. "What are you doing reading the wares, anyway? Can't imagine it makes for exciting pleasure reading."
Mordred half-shrugs. "It gets boring down here; figured I might as well know what the hell I'm putting on shelves. Especially when they're a thousand bloody pages long and like to give me back problems before I hit fifteen. Besides, look." He leans over and flips a few pages. In all those hours of shelving, this is the only interesting thing he's found—an anomaly tucked between the pages of a massive treatise on agricultural advancements in the eighteenth century. No wonder the original owner hadn't found it.
Carefully, very carefully, he lifts the paper up and unfolds it. It feels like a butterfly's wing, whisper-thin and delicate enough to fall apart if he breathes on it wrong. Mordred imagines Merlin really would kill him then.
"Says it's a map of Camelot," he says, passing it over to Arthur. "'Course it could just be a sheet of paper covered in tea stains, for all I know."
"No, it's genuine. Not old enough to have been created while Camelot actually stood, but definitely old." Arthur smiles a bit. "I remember when we got this. It was a total fluke; I don't think the woman who sold it to us even knew it was in that book. Merlin was thrilled.
"It's completely inaccurate, of course. Like—here, look at this." He points to a faint line, green ink almost completely faded away. "That forest actually expanded further than this map makes it look. It throws everything else off." His finger moves to another point, marked simply, Avalon. "This, for instance. It was much closer to the center of the woods."
Arthur seems to remember where he is and coughs. "That's if the place existed at all, obviously. Half these points are either misnamed or invented."
He refolds the map and hands it back to Mordred, who presses it back between the pages of the world's most intolerably wordy book.
"Sounds familiar, though," he says thoughtfully.
"I'm sorry?"
Mordred looks up. "Avalon. Rings a bell, doesn't it?"
There's something guarded about Arthur's eyes. It hadn't been there a second ago, and Mordred wishes he could get rid of it.
"You must have read it somewhere," Arthur says.
"Must have," Mordred agrees.
He pushes the niggling feeling of déjà vu into the back of his mind and resolves to leave it there.
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