Sorry I haven't updated in so long. I hope this chapter makes up for that. Enjoy.

Merlin's Story

Gaius. Shit Shit. What was he doing still awake? Had he heard him? Surely he couldn't have woken everyone; he had been as silent as he possibly could. The shovel dropped from his hand in alarm, landing with a soft thud on the ground. He could run. Though they'd catch him eventually. Shit. Where was Kilgarrah when he was actually needed?

'I'm speaking to you, boy.' He'd hobbled across to him now, the distance rapidly closing as he approached. Merlin was still stood frozen. 'What the Hell are you doing?'

'Gaius, I…'

'What are you? Some demon thinking you can dig up your little buddy here? Cause she's long dead now…'

'I'm no demon, Gaius, you've tested me already.'

'What then? I ain't heard of no such monster as needs dead demons to snack on, cause that is what you're doing, right? Digging up the blonde bitch? You haven't come out here for some late night gardening, I presume?' Merlin needed him to stop talking; just long enough for him to explain himself, but the old man was furious by now. 'But, if you ain't some monster, what are you then? Or are you just some punk-ass kid who thought hunting would be a good use of your time?'

'I've been with you all for months. You know I'm not a monster, or some useless kid.'

'I might know you're not a monster, I don't know anything about you not being useless. Just because Arthur's quite taken with you, don't mean you're some sort of supreme hunter now. What do you want with this body, anyhow? Hunting not enough for you now, thought you'd try necromancy as well?'

'Gaius, there's no body here. Morgana lied to you. She lied to all of us. She didn't kill that demon.'

'What do you think I am, some sort of idiot? She killed that damn demon and buried it…

'No, she didn't. I know she didn't.' This was all wasting valuable time. Merlin was becoming increasingly aware of the very narrow window he had to dig this grave up. 'Look, you've got to trust me and let me dig it up. Then, you can see Morgana for all she's worth.'

'You really think I'm going to trust you, some pathetic boy who happened to get lucky in killing a vamp and now considers himself a hunter, over Morgana, who I have seen grow up and who I know to be one of the best hunters, and people, I've met? What you heard, anyway, to suddenly be suspicious of her? Or are you just jealous?'

'Someone told me…'

'Someone?'

Merlin hesitated before he spoke. He knew he'd sound crazy. He knew he already sounded crazy. But, if that's what it took for Gaius to believe him, it would have to do. 'An Angel. Kilgarrah.'

'You think I was born yesterday? Angels don't exist. No hunter's ever seen one. They're just bible stories to scare the God-fearing.'

'You're wrong. They exist. I've seen one, and spoken to him. Do it often, actually. He told me about this body. He told me all about demons long before I met you. I think I know what's happening to Morgana. It…happened to me, too.'

'Who are you, boy?'

He'd been hoping to keep everything a secret. All of it. But the longer he stared into the old man's face, his eyes narrow in open suspicion, the more he realised he needed to tell him everything if he wanted his trust. 'It's a long…story, I guess. As ridiculous as that sounds. It begins with my parents. My mom was born and raised in some small-ass town in Texas. She was well liked, quite popular, but no drive, no ambition. She was quite happy to settle, get married, have kids, live the pretty American Dream life just as her mom had done before her.'

'She met my father when he was travelling through the town with his regiment. He was an army officer, already served a few years. He was everything she wanted. He was good-looking, charming, a few years older but that only meant he was at the age ready to settle down. He quickly swept her off her feet. The town was small though, and heavily religious, so news travelled fast and everyone was quick to judge. My mom was a good person, she'd been brought up with strong Christian morals, and she didn't like the reputation that was beginning to follow her. Neither did my father. After only six months of them knowing each other, they were married in a large, Church wedding. White dress, flowers, doves, the works. Everyone thought they'd be happy.'

'But, it went wrong pretty quick. My father was a liar, and a cheat. Despite the marriage, he continued to roam as a free man; chasing skirt like a fox chases rabbits. Within two months of their marriage, he was dismissed from the army, something about a lack of respect for his senior officers. He didn't bother to find another job; he stayed at home and drank. Or he went out and drank. Either way, he became a foul drunk in very little time. He turned possessive and paranoid, cutting off mom's social interactions one by one. Then he got violent. He'd paint mom black, blue and red and then walk out in the town like a respected gentleman. No-one knew the extent of it all. Or, at least mom didn't think anyone knew.'

'About a year and a half into the marriage, she got a knock on the door one evening while he was out. It was a young woman, looked like some sort of lawyer or accountant, apparently. She said she knew about my father, she knew what he'd been doing to mom. She denied it all, until the woman started detailing events. The women he'd brought home. The abuse he'd hurled. The bones he'd nearly broken. She said she could take care of it all, make it all go away, if that's what mom wanted. It would be for a price, she said, but one so minute that it would never really impact on her life.' Merlin missed out the part about the woman's eyes being bright yellow all the time she spoke. Gaius would never believe that. 'My father's body was found three days later, face down in a river. Mom thought she was free from everything, she thought she could move on from the past events. Only a month afterwards though, she discovered she was pregnant. Seven months later, I was born.'

'I don't get what any of this has to do with Morgana...' Gaius tried to interrupt, but the boy merely shook his head.

'Mom tried to bring me up normally. We never moved from the neighbourhood, and though she never told me about my father, I noticed the looks of sympathy from when I was a young child. I don't know if it was the looks, or something else, that always made me feel different.'

'What about the deal? The woman?'

'It all started when I was 18. It began with dreams. I'd wake in the night screaming, my dreams full of death. I thought nothing of it, until they started coming true. I would see articles in the paper, hear about them from neighbours, and I would have dreamt the exact details a night, or two nights before. I kept them to myself; I thought I was just going crazy. Sleep deprivation, or some sort of personality disorder. But things only got worse. I found myself being able to do things. Crazy things. I could concentrate on an object and move it with my mind. Only slightly at first, then the harder I concentrated, the more I could move things. But people had begun to notice. My mom, especially. And she knew what was happening to me. Then, one night, I was walking home from work and I was confronted by a group of guys in an alley. They tried to rough me up, take my cell phone and wallet, the usual. But, I didn't let them. Behind my eyes, I felt my blood boil, and one of the guys just flew back into the wall. He smacked his head, and just landed flat. I didn't check a pulse, I just ran. Straight home. I didn't stop once.'

'Mom wasn't the only person waiting home for me that night. There was a man, also. He said his name was Kilgarrah, and he was an Angel of the Lord. He told me the woman who had made the deal with my mom before was a demon, who went by the name of Azazel. Azazel had been going round, making deals that seemingly had no consequences, but were only realised years later, when people began to change. Kilgarrah, and the other Angels, believed Azazel was making an army, part-human, part-demon. They were trying to track down every child affected, every deal made, and assign an Angel to prevent Azazel making use of her soldiers. Kilgarrah was to be my Angel. And that's when mom asked me to leave Texas.'

There was silence for a few moments while the old man continued to stare at Merlin, before whispering, 'You can't expect me to believe that…?'

'I don't expect you to believe anything, but you asked for the truth. That was mine.'

'Part-demon? That's not even possible. No human can be made part-demon.'

'It's difficult. But it is possible.' Merlin took a deep breath for speaking again, knowing how the next sentence would sound to an outsider. 'It requires ingestion of demon blood at a young age. That's the only way.'

'You drank demon blood? Is that what you're saying?' Gaius stood back, an eyebrow raised quizzically. 'What sort of an idiot does that?'

'I was fed demon blood, as a baby. Only six months old. There was no choice in the matter.'

Another silence. 'And you're saying this is what's happening to Morgana?'

'I don't know. Maybe. Her mother died in a fire when Morgana was only six months old, which is the right age for her if she was killed by Azazel while trying to turn Morgana. Now, she is plagued by nightmares and visions, just as I was. And now an Angel tells me that Morgana has allied with a demon, maybe an ally of the demon, or even the same one, who killed her mother. Why would an Angel lie about that? Why would I?' He bent down, retrieving the shovel he'd dropped before and held out the end to the old hunter. 'The only way to answer that is to dig up this grave.'

Gaius took the end of the shovel slowly, feeling the thoughts race around his mind clearer than they had done in a while. He wasn't going to admit it to the boy stood in front of him, but he'd had his suspicions of Morgana from the moment she'd spun that story about killing Morgause. He knew Morgana. She wasn't so easily spooked as to kill a demon without consulting anyone. Nor was she stupid enough to go in alone in the first place. And having only Mordred help bury the body only added to Gaius' fear. This needed doing. He'd take on Uther in the morning, should he prove wrong. But the more he thought, the more he realised Merlin could be right.

'Well, boy, let's dig up this body…' He stopped suddenly at the sound of a high scream from inside his house. Merlin's head turned quick at the sound, his ears pricked up almost animalistically.

'Morgana.'