The Un-Grey Man 2

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Merlin couldn't help it - he laughed. It started as a chuckle, then a snigger, and then suddenly it was a full, honest, open-mouthed laughing, bubbling out of him deep and rich. He glanced at his accuser; Mulder looked bored. He thinks I'm trying to laugh the theory off as too preposterous to be believed, like some villain cornered by the detective in a bad tv show, Merlin realized.

But that wasn't it at all.

An impossibly wide grin split Merlin's face as he looked Agent Fox Mulder straight in the eye and said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am."

Mulder, who had seen any number of extraordinary things in his bizarre career, was more surprised by the ease of the confession than by what it implied. "Really?"

Merlin nodded.

"Just like that? You're admitting to being immortal?"

"Not much point to denying it."

"If you don't mind my asking, why would you tell - "

"Simply because you are the first person who's ever asked. Plus, while I'm fairly good at hiding, I've never enjoyed outright lying. Let's face it too, you're either right or crazy, in which case you wouldn't believe me if I said no, and I'd be safer humouring you anyway." Merlin laughed again. "All this time… You know, I never thought being discovered would feel like this. Maybe it's relief, but I don't think so. It's more like…" Merlin pondered it for a moment, "more like amusement. And pleasure. I think I'm actually pleased someone finally figured it out. I feel almost giddy."

"How much time?"

Merlin reached a hand out for the file on the table. "How about we start with this first?"

Mulder raised his hands as if to say, 'go ahead' and Merlin glanced through the contents of the folder.

"The Un-Grey Man?" Merlin read on the tab. He looked at the FBI agent. "Did Fellig make this file?"

"I found it in his apartment. The photos are how I recognized you on the street. Can you tell me what the name means?"

"Truthfully, I have no idea," Merlin admitted, as he pulled out records and old photos of himself. "I only know that when I first saw him, after I'd fallen back in '28, he stood over me and asked me why I wasn't grey."

"Did you ever see him again?"

"Not so close. I'd spot him watching me from a crowd every once and awhile, other times I would merely sense him."

"You could sense him?"

"I'd never run into anyone so old before. Anyone who might have been like me."

"Was he like you?"

"No. He was no different than you, just much older."

"We had an old Civil Service Exam he once took. He listed his birth date as April of 1849. He would have been one hundred and fifty if he'd lived another few months."

"Oh, I don't think that's true."

"What makes you say that?"

"Just a feeling. Did he tell you anything about himself?"

"My partner said he told some story about being sick during a cholera epidemic. When Death came for him, he closed his eyes and let his nurse be taken in his place."

Merlin thought back. "Fellig looked to be about sixty-five. If we assume he stopped aging when Death missed him, that would have been about 1914. I don't recall any cholera epidemics in New York in 1914. Did he give Agent Scully any other details?"

"Just that the city was burying people in Washington Square Park."

"Ah. That was mostly done before 1850, if I remember right. And the big cholera epidemic was in the 1790s, so - "

"How do you know those things?"

"It was fairly memorable, Agent, though plagues and epidemics do tend to run into one another after awhile."

"You were actually there?"

"Yes."

"So you must be fairly old yourself."

"Patience, Agent Mulder. We'll get to it in time. But the question was about Fellig and what 'grey' meant to him."

"Agent Ritter of the New York office first stumbled onto Fellig through his knack of showing up at crime scenes before the police arrived. Fellig told Scully that he could tell when someone was about to die - perhaps that was how," Mulder theorized.

"And so, when I fell nearly eight hundred feet and didn't turn grey - "

"It started him asking questions about you."

"I wonder why he never approached me."

"He wanted to die. Maybe he wondered what good another immortal man would be in giving him the answer."

"So how did he die in the end?"

"It's hard to say."

"I'm immortal, Agent Mulder," Merlin pointed out dryly. "If anyone can wait out an answer from you, it's me."

"Both Fellig and Agent Scully were shot. He told her to close her eyes. He died and she didn't. That's all we really know for certain."

"So he finally confronted Death. Literally. Well, it's as good an explanation as any, I suppose," Merlin agreed as he added an old promotional postcard from his days as the 'The Great Mysterioso' to the other items he'd laid out on the coffee table. "Hmm, now these do bring back memories." There were copies of his enlistment records from both 1914 and 1939, several press passes from his days as a reporter in the twenties, his picture in a newspaper from 1931 when he was giving testimony in a murder trial, a magazine article from the late seventies, a rare back cover photo for his first book from 1961 -

"The Immortal Man series, by G.B. Emmerson," Mulder said, interrupting Merlin's trip down memory lane. "Bit risky, wasn't it? Didn't you ever worry people would connect you to the man who fell from the Woolworth building? It had only been thirty-three years; most people would've still remembered."

Merlin shrugged. "If they did, they probably assumed I was the same G.B. Emmerson, simply older and making money off my own name."

"So that's why the books almost never had an author's photo? Because they might think it strange to see you looking so young?"

"No, the books almost never had a photo because science fiction was even more of the literary world's red-headed stepchild than it is today. Most of the series went straight to ten-cent paperbacks - the kind of book you could only find by digging through back-corner piles in musty used book shops. As for the photo, if they didn't assume I was the G.B. Emmerson, they probably put me down as his son. People will explain an awful lot away all by themselves, if you just sit back and let them."

"Really?"

"Took me ages to learn it, but yes, really." Merlin sat back. "Now, Agent Mulder, tell me: why exactly are you here? It's been awhile since I've been a lawyer, but as far as I know, immortality isn't illegal. And even if it is, you haven't really got much of a case. These things are all very interesting, but there's nothing that would count as conclusive proof of anything. People are going to believe in Photoshop a hell of lot quicker than they'll believe in immortal beings."

"That's why I did a little digging myself," Mulder said, pulling another file out of his briefcase. He passed it to Merlin. Inside was a set of fingerprints, like the ones taken in any police station the world over, and a much newer form - a DNA analysis. "The fingerprints are from 1931, taken during the investigation that eventually led to the trial in the newspaper article Fellig collected. What do you want to bet that if I took your prints right now, the man born in 1972 would miraculously have the same prints as the man giving testimony forty-one years before he supposedly born?"

"That's still not going to convince most people," Merlin said. A smirk was dancing just behind his cheeks; Mulder didn't have the evidence he thought he had.

"The DNA report was on a section of liver taken during an operation in 1957. Again, long before you were supposedly born. Care to open your mouth and let me take a swab?"

Merlin leaned forward and opened his mouth. Mulder wasn't a man who expressed much emotion, but the warlock could tell he was slightly surprised.

"Well, Agent Mulder," Merlin said, leaning back once more, "here's the thing: your oldest evidence is from 1914. The age given on the enlistment form has "me" at eighteen, so that would make me what now? One hundred and three? Remarkable, perhaps, but not exactly impossible."

"A stunningly well-preserved one hundred and three," Mulder pointed out.

Merlin's eyes flashed gold and suddenly the FBI man found himself sitting across from a elderly man with long white hair and matching beard. Merlin quirked a wry eyebrow at his interrogator. "How about now?" he asked, rather smugly.

Mulder's eyes widened every so slightly. "Uh… that was quite an impressive trick."

"Throws a bit of a spanner into the works when it comes to proving your theory though, doesn't it? So I'll ask you again: why exactly are you here, Agent Mulder? I'm not about to let you haul me off to some secret government installation in order to be experimented on, nor am I going to let America - or any nation for that matter - turn me into a weapon. I suppose the worst you can do is to sell my story to the tabloids. Therefore, what is it that you want from me?"

"Only the truth."

"And what truth would that be?"

"Well, for a start, you never answered my questions as to how old you really are," Mulder said.

"I was born nearly fifteen centuries ago."

"Seriously?"

"You believe I'm immortal, but my actual age is too much to accept? You're definitely a strange mix of believer and skeptic, Agent Mulder."

"Where are you from?"

"Cornwall," Merlin stated matter-of-factly, taking a sip of his coffee. "What, were you expecting me to say Krypton?"

"So you're not an alien?"

"Certainly not!"

"So what are you?"

"Who, Agent Mulder. The proper question is who. I'm not a thing, after all."

"My apologies."

"I should think so."

"You know, you're a lot more cranky like this," Mulder said, gesturing at Merlin's 'Dragoon' form.

"Odd. I usually feel more calm this way. But if you like…" Merlin changed back.

"All right then, who are you?" Mulder asked.

"I think I've given you a couple of clues already," Merlin said. "Let's see if you can work it out."

"Any particular reason you have to be so cryptic?"

"Actually, I think I'm just being unnecessarily evasive. However, if you truly want cryptic, ask a dragon."

"Dragon? Is that a reference to something?"

"Yes. To an over-sized, scaly lizard creature."

"Unh hunnnh."

"Seriously, you're the one who came here looking for an immortal man, yet I'm the one who doesn't sound believable?"

"So help me out here," Mulder said, ignoring Merlin's comment. "Tell me who you are."

"Dragons, Cornwall, fifteen centuries, Arthur…" Merlin hinted. The warlock watched the gears turning in the agent's mind and saw the exact moment the answer slotted into to place.

"You're kidding, right? You're not actually telling me you're King Arthur?"

Merlin snorted. "No. No, most definitely not. In fact, he most likely would have had you in the stocks for even suggesting it."

"Then…" Mulder thought a little more. "Merlin? We're on the cusp of the twenty-first century, a brand spanking new millennium, and you expect me to believe you're Merlin, the wizard of King Arthur's court?"

"Well, it's warlock, and actually, Agent Mulder, I'd be tremendously relieved if you didn't believe me at all. More coffee?"

"No, thank you. So I don't suppose you could give me a demonstration of your magnificent power, could you?"

Merlin got up to take the cups into the kitchen. "I think you're forgetting who came looking for who. Or is it whom? Still…" He eyes flashed gold.

And suddenly photos and papers slid to the floor as the coffee table turned into a duck.

Mulder stared, but otherwise didn't react outwardly except to pull his legs away from the angry bird. "All right, that's… uh, I don't know what that is."

QUACK!

"It's a duck," Merlin told him helpfully.

"How do I know you didn't lace my coffee with some sort of hallucinogenic?" Mulder demanded, trying to maintain his calm while defending himself from the crazed water fowl currently trying to nip at his calves.

"I don't suppose you can. But I fail to see how exactly that's my problem," Merlin said from the kitchen sink, where he was rinsing out the mugs.

QUACK! QUUUAAACK! QUACKQUACKQUACK!

"Uh, could you get rid of this thing?" Mulder asked, almost begging.

"Of course." Merlin's eyes flashed again and the duck was gone. He sat back down on the couch, hands resting on his stomach, with a rather wry grin on his face.

Mulder breathed a sigh of relief. "So, you're…Merlin."

"Yes."

"I should have guessed that first - Merlin, Martin, they're both the names of birds."

"I would have thought Merlin being known for magic would have provided the better explanation for the freakish immortality thing, but what do I know? And I never thought of Martin also being the name of a bird - it just was the most convenient of the closest sounding names. Marvin, for instance, never really blended that well outside of the States. Or the 1950s, when you get down to it."

"Shouldn't you be older?"

"Excuse me? I'm nearly fifteen hundred years old, Agent. Why would I need to be older than that?"

"I meant physically older."

"Whatever for?" Merlin pretended to be genuinely puzzled.

"Well, Merlin is always portrayed - "

"Like this?" Merlin asked, changing back to Dragoon.

Mulder grimaced, then laughed at himself. "Yeah, that'd be it. So all the legends about the Round Table are true."

"Depends on which story you're talking about. I've never met any killer rabbits, for instance."

Mulder grinned. "No holy hand grenades then?"

Merlin chuckled. "Not a one." He was beginning to like the Agent, impertinent cabbage-head though the man was.

"But there was a real King Arthur?"

"Certainly."

"What was he like?"

Merlin's gaze took on a faraway look. "Bit of a clot pole, but a good man. A great man, really."

"Would you tell me about him?"

Merlin saw something in the Agent's face - a curiosity hidden behind all the dark memories and the drive for the truth and the sorrow, a little boy's curiosity that not even little boys seemed to have anymore - and so he began to tell the other man stories about boisterous knights and prattish princes and a beautiful blacksmith's daughter who became Queen, speaking till the first light of dawn began to cross the frozen lake outside. Eventually, however, he trailed off, his memories reasserting the weight they always left in the middle of his chest.

Mulder ran a profiler's eye over his companion; the man's loneliness was palpable. He nearly commented on it, but instead asked, "Tell me, in the books, whatever happens to the Immortal Man?"

Merlin looked at him.

"So far, he just keeps waiting."