Have you ever said or written something that made absolutely crystal clear sense to you, but when you showed it to someone else they look at you as if you're speaking Swahili?

Yeah, that's what I got for last chapter.

Okay, so perhaps I was dipping a little too far into the Sandman universe. The dream was supposed to be symbolic. Bedivere was close to dying from using his powers too much. The road was easy to walk, had a lot of temptations, and led down to a Very Bad Place. The tree was an arduous climb, dangerous, but led up to a Very Good Place. Gah, it takes all the fun out of symbolism when you're forced to explain it.

Ah, well, I suppose it's not your fault.

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Merlin woke slowly.

Strange. He usually woke quickly. Presumably because he'd had his sleep pattern thoroughly destroyed by various 'problems' that needed to be dealt with at all hours of the day. To wake up slowly was a rarity. It was the kind of sleep when you couldn't say exactly when you became conscious, only that you weren't before but are now.

There were familiar noises around him; something bubbling, a clink here, a thump there. Normal sounds, ones that made him want to sleep again because all was well…

Merlin's eyes snapped open, and he couldn't help but let out a groan as the light hit him. What was going on? How was he here? The last thing he remembered was Agravaine running - no, wait, he had seen something after that, Arthur and the knights fighting the woodsman while he saw his own body laying blankly by and the small boy who had been hurt and sang the terrifying song running toward him -

"Merlin!"

Merlin tried to stop the maelstrom of thoughts inside his head, and forced himself to calm down upon hearing the voice.

"Gaius?" he muttered.

"Yes, I'm here. Drink this."

Something was put against his mouth and he swallowed instinctively. Water.

Carefully, he cracked open his eyes. This time, he allowed them to adjust to the light, which was actually a bit dim.

"What -" his voice sounded croaky, and he cleared his throat, "what happened?"

Gaius gave him an indecipherable look. "What can you remember?"

"I was kidnapped." Merlin replied promptly. That part was coming through loud and clear. "Gaius, he had a bracelet - a silver thing that -" he paused as he remembered the Nowhere, "it cut me off from my magic."

Gaius' eyebrows rose. He looked rather alarmed. "All of it?"

"Well - sort of. It…" Merlin wondered how best to put it. "It cut me off from my body. I was…nowhere. I couldn't see or hear or feel anything."

Gaius frowned. Merlin couldn't really blame him.

"Then I tried getting back to my body with magic - and it worked. Then…" Merlin frowned this time. "There was…a boy," he said hesitantly, "and…he was hurt."

He looked to Gaius, who only nodded and gestured for him to continue.

"We…uh…started back to the horses…and…"

Merlin thought harder.

"I fell asleep." he concluded, remembering the sensation of being only vaguely attached to his body.

Gaius nodded and let out a breath. There was something like relief in his face, though Merlin didn't know why. "Anything else?" asked the physician.

"Well…"

Merlin told him about the memories that weren't his. As far as he could tell, there were a few dozen. All of them were either in the forest or one-room cabin he had been kept in, and most featured the woodsman. There were a few with the small boy as well, usually in the company of the woodsman, which confused Merlin.

There were also a few with other people. Those were…disturbing. Aside from the one memory of Agravaine running, every other person in the memories was dead. He had more than one of the woodsman either killing or burying them, and, in one horrifying memory he desperately hoped was false, hanging the body of a teenage boy in a tree.

Gaius was silent after he had finished explaining.

"Gaius?"

Gaius stared off in the distance.

Merlin felt the bubbling panic well up inside him. This wasn't normal, having memories he'd never experienced. Even for him, it wasn't normal.

Was he going insane? Was he already? What if this wasn't real either, a false hallucination he'd created to comfort himself while he was still in that cabin and all alone with nobody coming in time -

"Merlin."

He looked at Gaius, who leaned forward and clasped his hand. Merlin held his breath, focusing on the touch. Real. It was real, it had to be.

"What happened, Gaius?"

"My boy," Gaius said slowly, "I believe -"

A strangled yell interrupted him. Merlin tensed and tried, out of reflex, to turn toward the yell. He held back a moan as his body made it abundantly clear he would not be moving anywhere anytime soon.

Gaius let go of his hand, and he suddenly felt set adrift.

Being far more cautious this time, Merlin slowly turned his head to follow the physician. Stepping around the various obstacles scattered about the room with practised ease, he hurried over to another bed with a thrashing figure.

"I won't! I won't!"

"Bedivere, Bedivere!" Gaius grabbed the flailing arm. "Calm down!"

"I won't, I won't I won'tIwon'tI -"

"Bedivere!"

"I - I…"

Merlin saw a sweaty red face peer up at Gaius. It was the boy from the forest. He looked confused, lost. Somewhat like Merlin felt.

"I didn't. I didn't. It's bad."

"That's very good, Bedivere," Gaius said soothingly. "Go back to sleep."

The boy - Bedivere - blinked sluggishly up at the physician, and said "I don't want to. I want to go up the tree. It's better and it's good. Up at the top."

Gaius nodded. "You can do that after you've rested. Is that alright?"

"I - yes."

"Good."

Bedivere blinked again, and his eyes stayed closed this time.

Merlin had never felt so confused in his life.

"Gaius?" he asked.

Gaius shook himself and moved back toward Merlin. He avoided eye contact, and Merlin instinctively knew not to speak as the elderly physician started to mix something in a pestle.

The soothing, rhythmic sounds of bubbling and stirring had the desired effect on Merlin. He felt his muscles begin to relax, lulled out of their alert watchfulness from a few minutes ago. Gaius was making potions and mixtures, simple and regular. Ordinary, normal, the exact opposite from the insanity of today. The difference was almost surreal. And exactly what he needed.

More than anything else, simply being home was the most comforting thing he could imagine.

Merlin had almost dozed off, when Gaius said "I have only a theory as to what happened."

Blinking, Merlin turned his head slightly to look at him. "What is it?" Considering Gaius' experience and track record in identifying magical phenomenons, Merlin was ready to take his theory as the iron truth.

Gaius took a deep breath. "When you were…severed, you say, your magic was with you in...where you were. Without magic, or you, to keep the you you left behind anchored in the present, the you that was left behind drifted. It's been said that time, as we experience it, may be something we shape unconsciously, and if there was no conscious mind to guide it, it's possible you saw things that had and will happen at random.

"However, the very fact that you weren't there meant that the you left behind couldn't understand what you saw. They were just recorded as memories, without knowing what they were. When you got back, there they were, waiting."

Gaius was silent for a moment. Merlin could hear him still grinding the herbs in the pestle. "It's only a theory."

"No," Merlin almost shook his head, but thought better of it. "it's a very good one. It's probably true. Sounds right." It did.

He couldn't help but glance over to the other cot. "Who is that?" The tiny boy fit in somewhere, Merlin knew, but he couldn't figure out how.

"Ah." Gaius paused to gather his thoughts. "That is a good question."

So Merlin was told all that had transpired while he had been away. It wasn't very much, as Gaius had only received a brief retelling from Arthur, but it was enough to get most of the picture. Apparently Gwen had even taken a liking to the boy - Bedivere - and had offered to take him in.

When it was over, Merlin mentally breathed a sigh of relief. "So they're okay? Arthur, the knights?"

Gaius nodded. "I'm not quite sure what the woodsman did to them, but it seems to have no lasting effects. Percival has the worst of their injuries." he paused thoughtfully, "Although I'm still not quite sure how he broke his nose. He won't tell me."

Merlin would have shrugged if he could. How a broken nose had occurred wasn't particularly interesting, but he was grateful that it was the biggest worry out of the entire ordeal. There had been days when the loss had been…quite a bit higher.

There could be time for other things later. Agravaine, Morgana, dealing with a new magic-user (who would hopefully, with their help, turn out nothing like his father), explaining the whole (edited version of the) story of his captivity to Arthur…

It could wait for a few hours.

Merlin closed his eyes and slept.