"Arthur Pendragon."
"Sir?"
"My name. I wasn't sure if they'd told you."
He had hoped this might spark something. Instead, Merlin just hunched further in on himself.
Arthur couldn't find anything else to say for the rest of the ride home.
He slid the car into the driveway and turned it off. "You're officially assigned to me, so when we're not at work you'll be staying here."
"Yes, sir."
Arthur was beginning to hate that word.
Guinevere ran out onto the porch just as they reached it. "Merlin! Oh, I was so worried. Have you eaten yet? How are you?" The last few words came as she wrapped her arms around him.
Merlin just stood there, unresponsive. "Sir?" he pleaded softly.
"Gwen," Arthur said, swallowing hard. "He doesn't . . . "
Gwen stared at him, horrified. "No." She shook her head. "No."
"We'll fix it," Arthur promised her. Promised all of them. "Come on, you're right. He needs to eat."
"I'll be perfectly functional for a few more days without, sir."
"You're eating," Arthur said flatly. "You're eating three meals a day, and if I forget, you will remind me."
He ate. But he refused to remind Arthur whenever he forgot. Which, since Arthur wasn't used to having to order someone to eat, happened sometimes.
Arthur chose to look at it as a good sign. It was a defiance of orders and it annoyed him, so it was proof that Merlin was still in there somewhere, right?
It was the only good sign. Merlin wouldn't talk to him. Not really. Just "Yes, sir. No, sir. I'll check, sir."
Arthur bought a punching bag. He scrawled the word "sir" on it with a sharpie. It was better than taking out his frustrations by yelling at Merlin. The one and only time that had happened he had cut off rather abruptly and been consumed with guilt for the rest of the week.
He had cut off when he'd realized Merlin's eyes were firmly fixed on the controller for his collar. He was obliged to carry the thing around for appearance purposes, but just looking at the thing was enough to make him feel sick. The thought that Merlin was afraid he would actually use it . . .
Arthur got his money's worth out of that punching bag.
People said the Soulless were incapable of feeling anything. Arthur could have told them that was horse manure even in his first life. If he'd needed any more recent proof, he could direct someone to his house.
Merlin felt uncomfortable. Guinevere had taken to bringing over large, home cooked dinners. She heaped as much food on his plate as she could get him to eat and waged war on his silences with determined conversation. Merlin didn't seem to know what to make of her.
Merlin felt surprise. When Arthur had led him to the guest bedroom and informed him it was his, he had dropped the bag of necessities Guinevere had given him and gaped at it.
Merlin had nightmares. Arthur had been up late working and had gone to check on Merlin before heading to bed. Once, he would have had an excuse, but he'd given up on pretending he didn't care several hundred lifetimes ago. Merlin was his friend, even if he didn't currently remember that fact.
Merlin had been locked in a nightmare, silent tears streaming down his cheeks. Arthur had shaken him awake. "Merlin. Merlin!"
He had jolted awake and immediately shrunk back. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. It won't happen again, I'm sorry - "
"Easy, easy. You're fine." Arthur hesitated. He still wasn't any good at this kind of thing. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Merlin shook his head frantically.
But for one flicker of a second, he had thought Merlin had recognized him.
Coffee at the office had improved dramatically about a week after Merlin came. Arthur had assumed that someone had finally found the budget for the good stuff. Then he heard some people complaining about how the coffee now tasted like boiled troll snot.
Then he noticed that Merlin personally handed out coffee and that his eyes always glowed slightly when he did. Funnily enough, the people who referred to Merlin only by number were the ones who were complaining the most.
When Arthur's rivals started saying boiled troll snot would taste better than the coffee, he couldn't help feeling a sort of warm, cozy feeling curl up in his chest. Merlin liked him. He was making progress.
Also, it added proof to his theory that Merlin hadn't entirely lost his sense of humor.
Merlin's instincts were as good as they had ever been, so when he was asked to interview new job applicants, he had Merlin bring them coffee. If they turned green after one sip, he crossed them off the list.
Other parts of the job weren't as easy. Slowly, he was building up a team that he could trust to help him change things. He was able to sneak more and more sorcerers to safety.
It still wasn't fast enough.
Especially when they came face to face with Morgana.
Arthur woke up in the hospital.
Merlin wasn't there.
"Where is he?" he demanded. "Where's Merlin?"
The nurse looked a little startled. "He's at the holding center. No one was really sure what had happened, and the authorities weren't sure if he would need to be retrained or - "
Arthur was pretty sure he set a new record for fastest exit from the hospital after waking up. He was also pretty sure Guinevere was going to yell at him for ripping the IV out of his arm.
What had happened exactly?
They'd been on a routine check of a warehouse where there'd been a reported sighting of a rogue Soulless. Apparently, the report was more or less accurate. Morgana had been there.
Arthur wasn't sure if she remembered or not. She and Merlin had certainly seemed to share some history. Neither had been quite willing to kill the other.
He flicked the voice controls for his phone on. "Check database for all information on Morgana," he ordered.
Alias. Age. Power level according to the Avalon scale. Date of escape. Details of escape -
If Arthur had been drinking anything, he would have choked on it. Merlin had helped Morgana escape.
And . . . All three of them had survived their most recent encounter. In fact, Morgana had seemed almost . . . worried? Fond of him? She had talked to him a lot. Encouraging him to run, to fight, but more than that, she was -
She was flirting with him.
Arthur gagged. His formerly evil half sister, who his father had apparently turned over to the authorities at birth, was sweet on his amnesiac best friend.
Once, just once, couldn't he have a life that wasn't complicated?
He got a very strong feeling the answer to that one was no.
Arthur resisted the urge to beat his head against the steering wheel.
The next few hours were some of the most frustrating of his life. He had to fill out more forms than he could count, retelling the same events over and over again.
They had located Morgana. (They had literally bumped into one another as they rounded a corner.) They had attempted to negotiate. (Negotiate. That sounded good. Professional. Not very accurate, but very professional.) Morgana had temporarily gained the upper hand. (Morgana had managed confuse Merlin to the point of distraction and had used magic to shove Arthur against the wall with an invisible hand around his throat. Arthur had been convinced he was about to die.) Merlin had stepped in to defend him. (He assumed that was what had happened, seeing as he was still alive. He was a little blurry on the details. He thought he might have passed out.) Morgana had managed to escape. (At the very least, no one had found a body. He had checked.)
At long last, they let him retrieve Merlin from his cell.
Arthur's shoulders slumped. Merlin lay curled in on himself in the floor. Tears had escaped from eyes clenched tightly shut. He was rocking slightly.
"He'll come, he'll come, he'll come. He's all right, he's all right, he's all right. He'll come, he'll come, he'll come, he'll - "
Arthur was all too aware of the cameras recording everything. He forced back his instinct to rush to his friend's side and managed to retain the majority of his composure.
"Merlin."
Merlin stopped rocking. He didn't look up, though. "No. You're dead. You're not real. You're dead."
He forced a smile onto his face. "Make up your mind, will you? First I was all right, now I'm dead. Which is it?"
"They won't tell me," he whispered.
Arthur was going to enjoy tearing this government apart, piece by piece. "Well, I'm telling you now. Morgana's never yet managed to kill me." Not once, in any life. Her pawns had, her allies had, her enemies had in the rare lives they'd been on the same side, but Morgana never had. Arthur took a strange sort of comfort from that. "Now let's get you out of here, all right?"p
Merlin opened his eyes hesitantly. "You're here," he breathed out.
"Yeah. And technically I'm still supposed to be in the hospital, so let's go home, shall we?" He offered Merlin a hand.
He took it shakily. "You came," he said, disbelief dripping from his words.
"Of course I did."
"You came," he repeated. "I'm sorry."
"You gave me an excuse to leave the hospital early. What on earth are you sorry for?"
"I'm sorry you were there in the first place."
"As I remember it, you saved my life. Come on." The last thing he needed was for Merlin to say anything that would contradict his report. He managed to get him out into the parking lot without incident, at least.
"I let her escape," Merlin admitted in a whisper. He flinched a little as he said it.
"You didn't kiss her, did you?"
Merlin's expression was priceless. "What?"
Arthur threw open the car door. "Did you? Because I'm technically her older brother which means I've got a duty to give you a lecture if you kissed her."
"No!"
Arthur breathed out a sigh of relief. "Great. Because that would have been all kinds of awkward, considering. Especially since that lecture typically involves threats, and we both know you could blow my head off before I could even get my gun out of the holster." He paused. "Also, she has a tendency of trying to kill me, so . . . "
Merlin's eyes had gone very, very wide. "What?"
"Car, Merlin. Unless you really want to stand here all day. There we go." He started the car and backed out of the parking lot. "This wasn't the first time you'd let her go, was it? You helped her escape the first time."
Merlin looked straight ahead. "If I was capable of regretting that incident, I would."
Arthur smiled wryly. "Very nicely worded, Merlin. Not 'if I was capable of regret' but 'if I was capable of regretting freeing her'."
Merlin flinched, but he straightened quickly enough. "She wasn't going to kill you," he blurted out. "She just wanted a chance to talk to me in private."
"Oh?"
"She'd heard about what you do to - to help the others."
Arthur glanced at him sideways. "I wasn't aware you'd heard about that." Inside, he was rejoicing. This was the most Merlin had talked to him in this life.
"I'm not stupid," Merlin grumbled.
"Stupid? No. Reckless, yes. Dollopheaded, frequently - "
"That's my word."
A slow grin spread across Arthur's face. "Define it, then."
"In two words? King Arthur."
Arthur shot a glance at him, just to be sure. Merlin, his Merlin, through and through, grinned back.
Arthur let out an exhilarated laugh. "Welcome back, Merlin. Welcome back."
. . . . .
A/N: Merlin's been through a lot, so he's not "fixed" by a long shot. The process has been started though. Arthur finally came for him, and that let what had been buried claw its way to the surface.