Apocabigbang: Fic: Postremus Regum Britanniae; Merlin; R; Chapter 10
Chapter 9: The Call of the Dead
Chapter 10: A Shattered Skyline
The distraction worked, for the most part, the undead or zombies, as Arthur was definitely not calling them, went after Lance’s party instead of heading for Arthur and Merlin as they snuck away. He tried not to think of the risks involved, or of the fact that the pair of them might come back to find that they were the only ones still alive.
“So, you’re signing up for Morgana’s insane idea now?” he asked, when they were far enough away that he was positive the undead could not hear him.
“So what if I am?” Merlin asked, without looking back. “It’s the only sodding idea we have left.”
“We never had any other ideas in the first place,” Arthur pointed out. “Except for Tristan’s plan to nuke the place.” The name ached a little as he said it, but he hardened his jaw against it.
“Like I said,” Merlin told him, finally twisting round to shoot him a grin. “It’s the only idea we have left.”
Arthur couldn’t understand how the man could grin like that. The world was falling apart, had fallen apart and, in spite of impromptu concerts and Frisbee games in the dark, Arthur couldn’t forget that for a second. He didn’t think he had smiled in days.
But Merlin’s smile, it made his brain fizzle for a second, like there was something missing there. He could feel himself trying to remember something, but it slipped through his fingers. It was the same, sometimes, when Morgana spoke. He would hear her and then something in his brain would fire up. It was the same as when he had picked up that piping the first time, knowing exactly how to wield it as though he had been trained to fight with it. His muscles had remembered something his brain had not. Sometimes, when he thought about it, he thought that maybe Morgana wasn’t completely insane.
But he pushed that thought back again. He was not some fabled king: he was just a man making the best of a terrible situation. There was no destiny at work here, just bad timing and the devil’s own luck.
Then Merlin would smile again and he would be lost in that non-memory once more.
He shook off the feeling again. This was no time to doubt himself.
“How exactly is this going to work, anyway?” he asked, wondering why he hadn’t questioned the plan earlier. But Morgana and Merlin had seemed so certain, so determined, he hadn’t even thought about the details. “If this is another ‘I’ll be able to sense the sword because it is destiny’ thing then I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
“It’s not,” Merlin said, looking solemn. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t. “I’m going to find it. You’re just here to look pretty.”
“Like you’d survive five minutes without me here. You look terrified.”
“This isn’t terror,” Merlin told him, sounding so certain of the fact that Arthur blinked and cast another glance back at him again. There was something different about him. In the last few days he had changed, like he was more himself in his own skin. If Arthur hadn’t already been attracted to him, he would have been now. But as it was the attraction felt more immediate, more real. The thought made him uncomfortable. This was the end of the freaking world as they knew it and he was busy ogling some man he barely knew.
He knew the psychology: affirmation of life and reinforcing the fact that they were still alive. He knew that the adrenalin and the testosterone were pumping through his blood and that was enough to make any man a little… on edge, but this wasn’t the time or the place and all of a sudden, seeing that look of determination and utter confidence on Merlin’s face was making him want to grab him by the collar and thrust him up against the nearest wall.
Something must have shown in his eyes because Merlin blinked and looked at him more carefully. Arthur had to look away. The last thing he needed was an awkward moment between himself and someone he was starting to, maybe, think of as a friend. He did what he always did in those situations, and covered it up with a joke.
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, my lady,” he said in his most chivalrous tone. There was a pause before Merlin chuckled.
“I don’t need your protection,” he said.
“Of course not,” Arthur said, relieved that the uncomfortable moment had never come. “When the undead come at you, I’m sure you’ll be very useful. You never know, you might trip over your own feet and knock it over.”
“I-” Merlin glared at him, as though there was something more behind his irritation than just a few words. “Some things never change.” He muttered and Arthur would have asked him what that meant, if he hadn’t been sure that he didn’t want to know.
“So, we’re heading for where exactly?” he asked.
“The London Eye,” Merlin said as they came to a stop at the next junction, darting his head around the corner for a moment to check the way was clear. “We’re fine,” he said, before walking out, Arthur close on his heels. “I need to have as complete a view of the city as possible. In a building I’d only really be able to see one direction at a time.”
“I didn’t think this sword was going to be that big,” Arthur said. “It might be a little awkward to handle.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve never had a problem handling a sword,” Merlin said, the words sounding as though he wasn’t really aware of what he was saying, just an offhand comment that Arthur had to force himself not to splutter at. He wasn’t sure, at any one moment, whether the other man was flirting with him. It was so vague.
“That… that’s beside the point. I meant,” Arthur said, in a tone that meant ‘you are a complete idiot and I don’t know why I bother to talk to you in words of more than one syllable’, “how are you going to see it?”
“You’ll see,” Merlin told him, flashing another inane grin.
The quickest route, it turned out, was blocked by a crowd of blank, undead faces, so they had to go the long way round, down and round, then North towards the river.
Arthur had never been on the London Eye. He lived in London, after all, and it was really more of a tourist thing. Who needed to see the city from above when they already knew where things were.
Merlin, though, he looked like the kind of person who had queued up for the first day it was working. He’d probably been to the Millennium Dome as well.
He didn’t know what he was expecting to see when he got to the riverside to see it, but the broken, half nonexistent wreckage was not it. The spokes of the wheel were only half there, and one half of the wheel itself was practically gone. The pods, or whatever they were supposed to be called, were lying smashed and broken around them, except for the seven or eight that still clung on to the ruins.
“That’s the problem with modern building,” Arthur said idly. “It just isn’t built to last.” He hadn’t thought the comment was that funny, but Merlin began to laugh, loudly, even when Arthur shushed him, only too aware that there were things looking for them, very carefully. He grabbed Merlin by the arm and clapped a hand over his mouth, trying not to be aware of the warmth of his lips or the dampness of his breath. When he could finally feel that the laughter was dying down, he let go, self-consciously wiping his hand onto his jeans.
“Sorry,” Merlin whispered back, his eyes looked almost indulgent. “It’s just.., you have no idea how funny it is to hear you say something like that.”
“Why?”
Merlin sighed, shaking his head, and Arthur knew he wasn’t going to get an answer. Instead, he decided to change the subject, gesturing to the splintered wheel.
“I suppose that scuppers that plan then,” he said. “Brilliant Merlin. I love how much thought you put into this. Not to mention the fact that even if it wasn’t destroyed, there’s no electricity so we couldn’t have made it all the way to the top anyway. Brilliant. You know I was beginning to doubt your incompetence, but I can see my faith in your utter inability to do anything right wasn’t even slightly misplaced.”
“Arthur.”
“No need to explain. It’s my fault for listening to you and Morgana in the first place.”
He tried not to think of the others, and the fact that some of them might well be, probably were, dead by now just trying to give Merlin and him enough time to get away. Their lives lost for a fool’s errand.
“Arthur, I knew it wouldn’t be working,” Merlin said, cutting through Arthur’s next words, his voice tight with annoyance. “We planned for this.”
“And how exactly, are you going to rectify this situation?” Arthur asked, crossing his arms over his chest and waiting expectantly. Merlin tried not to rise to the bait as Arthur raised his eyebrows and pushed his lips together, unimpressed.
“Trust me,” Merlin said.
“That’s what you said about the bloody dragon,” Arthur pointed out
“I was right about the-” Merlin began, before shaking his head. “Why am I bothering to try and explain when I could just do this.” He turned abruptly to the riverside, where what had once been the London Eye towered over them in all its ruined glory. He extended a hand to it, palm out, fingers splayed; if Arthur hadn’t been watching his face, he probably wouldn’t have seen the flash of gold in Merlin’s eyes that made his jaw drop.
There was a groan of metal and, when Arthur turned back to the Eye, he could see it beginning to turn, even though there was no power and half of it was gone. He watched it in open mouthed shock.
“What?” he asked. Merlin turned to him, hand still extended, with a reckless grin.
“Magic,” he said, like it was the most brilliant thing in the world. Arthur wondered what it felt like, to do that, to move something like that with just a thought. He shuddered. “We should probably get on,” Merlin said as one of the few undamaged pods reached the bottom. They hurried into it, Arthur still unable to drag his eyes away from Merlin.
Griffins, dragons, trolls and unicorns… they were all very well. In the end they were all just animals. Big, odd and unusual animals, true, but animals nonetheless. Magic, the ability to extend a hand and change the world, an ability that Arthur could feel as they were lifted into the air, that was something else entirely. This was beyond some apocalyptic sign or other, this was deeper.
“You-” he said, and Merlin shrugged.
“Sorry, I was going to tell you before I did anything, but then you had to go and beyou so I just showed you.”
“Right,” Arthur said, trying to readjust his world view to allow for a magical Merlin. Just like the legends, his brain said, and he tried to squash it down again. “Can’t you make it move any faster?” he asked, his voice harsher as he tried to cover up his unease.
“Sorry, it’s quite big and I’m a bit out of practice.” Merlin shrugged.
“Trust you to be just as useless at this,” Arthur said, not meaning the words at all, which Merlin must have known because he smiled, not a grin but a small smile - almost sad.
“I’ve heard that before,” he muttered, another one of those comments Arthur wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear.
They reached the top eventually and Merlin halted it there, his forehead creasing in concentration for a second with the effort it took to stop tonnes of metal from moving. He was trying to avoid thinking about what was going on, and the fact that all that stood between him and a plummet to the ground, or maybe it was the icy waters of the Thames he would land in, was the concentration of a man he knew to have a very short attention span. He looked out across the city and he felt a tinge of awe and more than a little horror.
From the ground, the devastation was unbelievable on a personal level- you saw people dead, cars crashed and buildings crumbling. But from up here… He looked out at the world and he saw the big picture, possibly for the first time. He could see the huge cracks that the earthquake had caused, the bridges that had crumbled and fallen into the Thames. The Gherkin jutted out like a broken bottle into the skyline, all jagged edges of glass. He risked a glance at the Houses of Parliament and shook his head. The palace of Westminster was mostly gone and the clock tower was sheered clean in two.
He wanted to close his eyes to shut it all out. He loved this city, had grown up in it. The streets and landscape were as much a part of him as his hands or feet. He remembered going to see Number Ten with his father when he had been young, being raised up onto his father’s shoulders to get a clearer view, and thinking that this was where everything happened, this was the centre of the world.
He had grown up and he had understood that they were a tiny little island, getting swamped by all the bigger nations, clinging onto hope with their fingernails, but he had never quite lost that sense of awe when he saw the places he remembered from his youth.
Now all that was gone. His world had no centre.
“It’s not that bad,” Merlin said from next to him, and Arthur tried to school his features. “They’re just buildings.”
He turned to the man next to him and gaped openly.
“They’re not just buildings.”
“Most of the people who worked in them were useless anyway,” Merlin continued, trying to help but failing to understand so completely that Arthur couldn’t help staring at them.
“It’s not about the people, it’s about the system… the laws, everything that made our society and made us a country not just a group of people huddling together on a tiny island,” Arthur said. He had to try and make this clear, had to try and point this out.
“No,” Merlin said, quietly and calmly. “Believe me, it’s all about the people.”
He was watching Arthur so closely then, as though he was supposed to understand something in that statement that just was not there.
“It…” Arthur gave up, letting all the breath rush out of his lungs in one long sigh.
“Give me your hand,” Merlin said suddenly, smiling a little sadly. Arthur didn’t move his hands from the rail around the wall for a second. “Trust me.” He looked into Merlin’s eyes, and he saw that he did understand, somehow, he just did not agree. Arthur nodded slowly and held out his hand. Not far enough to touch Merlin’s, but enough to signal his agreement.
Merlin reached out the last few centimetres and grasped his hand tightly. His skin was warm, almost too warm and Arthur could feel a strange tingling sensation creep upwards from the contact, like a strange, enjoyable form of pins and needles.
He was still staring into Merlin’s eyes when the other man began to speak, low hissing nonsense words, he was still staring when he watched Merlin’s eyes glow golden again and then, suddenly it was as though he was connected to a million things at once. He again had that strange, overlapping sensation, where he could see two images superimposed.
Merlin stood in front of him at the top of the London Eye, his eyes gold, looking like he could take on the world, and Merlin stood before him, hair whipping in wind while their feet were on solid ground. His hand was extended and power crackled around him.
Arthur could feel the weight of the crown on his head, the one that Merlin had placed there, pulling him down to earth, and he could feel something in his hand, solid and sure, so comfortable and right. He flexed his fingers around it and knew that whatever it was it was his made for his hands, made for him, by Merlin.
He blinked and it was all gone and he was on his knees in the pod with Merlin crouching next to him, hand on his shoulder, and the other still clutched in his.
“I found it,” he breathed into Arthur’s hair, smiling.
“It’s all real, isn’t it?” Arthur replied, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Everything Morgana said - it’s real.”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “It’s real.”
“You’re… You remember,” Arthur said.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Since the tower,” Merlin told him calmly, “since I put the crown on your head I knew. I knew that you really were my king.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“You wouldn’t have listened to me,” Merlin pointed out. “You had to see it for yourself. You remember now?”
“No,” Arthur said truthfully. “I don’t remember, but I know it’s true. I know I’m him. I know that I don’t have a choice.” Merlin shook his head suddenly.
“You have always had a choice,” he said. “Always, Arthur.”
It seemed strange to be having this conversation so high above the ground, caught in a glass bubble over the city. Arthur wasn’t even sure what this conversation was, really. An acknowledgement of the fact he knew, didn’t seem to cover it. There was something more beneath it, something in the way that Merlin was looking at him, with exasperated affection.
Arthur didn’t know why he did it, he would probably never know. But he had wanted to do it for hours, maybe days. Perhaps he had been wanting to do it since he had first seen Merlin sitting at the bar and felt the tug towards him that had made him panic. Perhaps it had even been longer than that, given what he was only just starting to believe. So Arthur gave in. Merlin still had the golden glow of magic in his eyes and he was still looking into Arthur, like there was so much he wanted to say. But now wasn’t the time so Arthur just kissed him.
It was messy and a little desperate with more than a hint of ‘last desperate million to one chance’ clinging to it. Merlin tasted of ash, spaghetti hoops and orange squash, but there was this fizz of magic behind it, sparking like electricity that Arthur just had to get more of. He reached out blindly for the back of Merlin’s head, pulling them as tightly together as he could manage, mashing their lips together so hard it was painful.
It felt like he should remember this, should remember the slide of tongue against tongue, the way their hands grasped at each other and Merlin sighed into him, almost melting away in his hands. He felt like he should remember the rush of the magic that was so clearly there. But it was all a blank, he could remember none of it and there was something curling in his stomach that felt like frustration.
He was about to push Merlin backwards and down, onto the floor of the pod, when hands that had been reaching for him started to push away.
“No,” Merlin said, as soon as they were far apart enough that Arthur couldn’t feel the heat of his breath him any longer. “You don’t... I might drop us.” That had not been what he was going to say, Arthur knew. But it was a valid point. “I got what we came for, so let’s get back.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said, slowly, but he couldn’t put it into words. He wanted to apologise for not being him, not being what Merlin needed, what the world needed right now. He was not King Arthur Pendragon, not in any way that mattered, he was still just Arthur Penworth, who preferred to spend his Saturday nights watching bad films and eating Chinese takeaway rather than fighting monsters.
Merlin pulled back further and Arthur felt a little like he was going to fall anyway, whether Merlin’s magic held them up or not. He looked out of the window again and he saw it differently this time, not a world in ruins but a world he had to save. His world and he was its only hope, so they kept saying.
He had thought his father put a lot of responsibility onto him - high grades at school, good university, good job, promotion after promotion. He had to meet the best people and be the best. But that expectation, that he had been trying to live up to all his life was nothing compared to this.
Merlin was looking at him like he could tell what Arthur was thinking and it only made Arthur angrier at the whole situation. He remembered the people down in the underground tunnels, waiting for him to give them orders, trusting him to keep them safe. And he thought of other groups of people, there must be more, scattered around the city, just clusters of scared strangers trying to survive. He thought of the conviction in Morgana’s eyes as she said that he was destined to rescue them from this hell and the look in Merlin’s eyes as he had made Arthur kneel in the shattered glass and placed a crown on his head.
There was something like love there, something like love there still, when he risked another glance at Merlin’s eyes. It was too much, pressing down on them. They were all waiting for him, believing in him and he was sitting at the top of the world with a magician and all he knew was that they were probably going to die.
He wanted to say that he couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it. They would have to find another guy, another sucker to play their game. But he knew now that that wasn’t a choice. He had seen Merlin show him power beyond his imagination. He had seen images that were from a past that wasn’t his, not really, and he had heard the voices calling to him. He was the only one. He knew that. In the end it all came down to him. Those people who were left needed him, Merlin needed him.
So he had to be what they needed and keep his doubts and his lack of faith to himself.
He pulled himself to his feet and straightened his shoulders, nodding at.
“So,” he said, trying to sound as kingly as possible. “I think we need to go and see a man about a sword.”
Merlin did not look convinced, but, to his credit, he didn’t say a word, just nodded and set the wheel in motion again so that they made their slow downward arc to the ground.
They had a quarter of a turn to go when Arthur risked a look below them to the riverside.
“Merlin…” he said, in his best ‘I am not panicking’ voice.
“Yes, Arthur?” Merlin was concentrating on moving them, Arthur could tell, but this was definitely worth his attention.
“Do you think that maybe someone might have noticed the giant, broken Ferris wheel magically turning?”
“Perhaps,” Merlin admitted. “It does take quite a bit of magic to get it going, and that would be noticeable to someone who knew about magic.”
“Not to mention the fact that it is a giant, broken Ferris wheel, in the middle of London, visible from a lot of places?”
“That would make it noticeable,” Merlin agreed.
“That would explain why there’s an army of zombies waiting for us at the bottom then.”
“What?” Merlin gasped, and the wheel jerked downwards for a second, making Arthur’s heart leapt to his throat. “Shit! Shit shit shit.”
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“This is not good,” Merlin said, looking at the crowd of corpses that stood watching them make their descent.
“I thought, Merlin, that you had everything under control. I thought you said you’d planned this.”
“I had; I did. I just didn’t expect them to be so fast.”
“So now what are you going to do?” Arthur asked. After all, Merlin was magically inclined, if anyone was going to deal with an army of zombies, it might as well be him.
“Say hello?” Merlin suggested, obviously trying to raise a smile Arthur refused to give.
“Great plan, very impressive,” Arthur said nodding. “I give you five seconds before they rip you to pieces.”
“Fine, what’s your idea then?”
“Couldn’t you do some…” He wiggled his fingers vaguely.
“It’s amazing,” Merlin commented drily, “how your hand signals are exactly the same even after over a thousand years. You still think that magic consists of wiggling your fingers and speaking gibberish.”
“Doesn’t it?” Arthur asked, amused.
“No. It’s actually very complex and precise and I can’t just wave my hands and get rid of the zombies, all right? I’m already tired from getting us up here and I’m only just getting used to my magic again. Not to mention the fact that their very existence is caused by someone else’s magic and breaking that spell is about fifty times more difficult than making one of my own.”
“Couldn’t you just send them flying, or something?”
“Not enough to make a difference,” Merlin told him with a shrug of his shoulders. “We’re going to have to get out of this the old-fashioned way.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Merlin admitted, “but in my experience, it involves a great deal of luck.”
The pod came to a halt at the pavement, and Arthur looked out of its glass door at the zombies waiting for them.
*
Merlin watched Arthur’s face carefully as he prepared to open the door of the pod. He had seen that look before a thousand times or more. It was the look he had seen on Arthur’s face the last time he saw him, more than a thousand years ago. The look that said: ‘if these are my last moments, I will not show fear.’
His lips still tingled from their kiss. He had not thought, since his memories came back, that he would ever be able to do that again, but it had happened.
He had been on such a rush from having found Excalibur. He had felt so connected to Arthur in that moment, to Arthur and to the earth that loved Arthur with every atom of its being. It had all been glorious and whole for a few seconds, even if Arthur didn’t understand it, and he had been carried away by the rush of magic in his veins and the knowledge that this was Arthur with him. Then Arthur had reached for him and he had gone, as he had always gone before and he always would. It had been so easy to forget that this was not the Arthur he had known, not yet anyway. This Arthur didn’t remember the last time they had stood together, side by side, watching each other’s back. He didn’t remember the devil-may-care grins they had shot each other and the way, when it was over and they had blood staining their clothes and skin, they had fallen into each other.
He had kissed him like he was still Arthur, and kissed him like he was still Merlin, and it had been for a few seconds exactly as he remembered. But then he had tasted the tinge of chocolate in Arthur’s mouth and felt his hand, free of sword calluses, against his neck and everything had come falling in again.
They were not who they had once been and he couldn’t let Arthur do this when he didn’t even really know what it was he was doing. So he had pushed him back and tried to act as professionally as possible.
Arthur was trying to be who he needed to be. Merlin could see it in the way he held his shoulders and the determination in his eyes. He was trying not to fail and to fulfil the standards that people were still setting for him. It was just so Arthur that Merlin wanted to kiss him again, gently this time, comforting, to try and communicate that he understood.
But there was an army of zombies outside of the door, and the part of Merlin that had grown up in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was marvelling over how awesome that was, while the part of him that had seen magic when it still lived wild was just tired of it all. Over a thousand years and nothing had really changed. It was still the two of them against the world.
He swung the door open as Arthur readied his shotgun. Merlin needed no weapon other than himself really, tired as he was.
He had never been any good with weapons anyway, that was no different in this life than in the last. He would leave the fighting to Arthur and he would handle the magic.
“Ready,” Arthur said. Merlin nodded his agreement, unwilling to put voice to it in case he lost his nerve or made some ridiculous comment that distracted them both, like he always seemed to. He just gave a jerky, firm nod and drew in a deep breath.
They stepped out and saw the zombies begin to lurch forwards.
One at the front, who had once been a woman, well dressed with blood red nail varnish and a huge gaping hole in her stomach, stepped forward ahead of the others. Her head lolled unnaturally, like a puppet held up by mismatched strings, and her eyes were glazed and unseeing, but her mouth opened. As she stepped forward there came a sound that Merlin thought might be his heart beat, except it did not come again.
“Emrys,” she said and Merlin felt his blood congeal. “So it is you who have been hiding him from us. I had hoped you would not be reminded of your magic until it was too late, but now it is that which has led us to you. Irony is amusing, don’t you think?” There was a strange echo effect and it took Merlin a second to realise that it was because not only the woman spoke. She was the foremost person, but every one of the zombies was speaking in unison. The effect made shivers run up his spine.
Merlin did not respond to her words. He knew that whoever it was speaking to him through these things that had used to be people, was the person behind all of this.
“You will both die,” she said.
“No,” Arthur said suddenly, stepping forward, raising his gun with apparent calm until it was levelled at her head. Only Merlin could tell, from the slight twitch of the muscles in his neck, that Arthur was far from calm. “We won’t.” He pulled the trigger and the woman’s head exploded, spreading blood everywhere, thick, cold and congealed. Merlin could feel it spatter across his face, but he didn’t have the time to be disgusted. The body hung for a second, still held up by the final strings, until it crumpled into a heap on the pavement. The almost-heartbeat came again, louder this time
“You cannot stop me, Pendragon,” the rest of the army said as one. “Your petty defiance is nothing more than an inconvenience. You think merely since you have been joined to the earth as its ruler, that you are somehow destined to win this battle. You put too much faith in the visions of seers, as Emrys once put too much faith in the words of a dragon.”
On that word Merlin realised that the noise he had been hearing was not his heartbeat, but the beat of a dragon’s wings. It came again, louder still and all of them standing on the edge of the river were buffeted backwards by the sudden flow of air. A shadow came to rest over them and Merlin risked a look up, where every one of the reanimated corpses was looking, to see a large, brown dragon perched atop the remains of the London Eye. The structure bent and groaned under the weight ominously. If it were to collapse then both he and Arthur would be crushed but, given that there was a dragon standing over their heads, structural instability was the least of their worries.
“At least we’ll die quickly,” Arthur said, his face still a careful blank.
Merlin glanced back at the zombies and saw something strange. He had expected some sort of glory in their defeat a ‘prepare for your deaths’ speech at the least, but instead every single one of the puppet people was staring at the dragon in shock.
The air rushed backwards, and their hair whipped as the dragon drew in a deep breath, staring down at them with sharp amber eyes. It did not speak, it did not have to. It was the biggest threat it could ever give.
Merlin saw the flash of the fire; he prepared to raise a shield, aware that it would likely not be much good in his current state of exhaustion, not to mention the fact that he had not cast the spell in more than a millennium. He felt the heat, burning at his skin, almost painful, but not quite. He felt Arthur pull him to the ground, wrapping his body over him, like some sort of human shield, despite the fact that Merlin was the more likely to survive - stupid, self-sacrificing idiot - and then he waited for the pain.
It never came. There was just the heat, almost unbearable, hotter than anything he had ever felt before. Hotter than that one sauna he had been in, when Will had insisted and he hadn’t been able to come up with a good excuse. He remembered the air burning his skin and that seemed to pale next to this heat.
He could barely breathe because every breath he drew burnt his lungs. He dug his fingers into Arthur’s arm, where it wrapped across his stomach.
Then, as soon as it had come, it was gone, although the air took a while to cool down. But soon the breeze that blew was unbelievably cool on his skin and Arthur was pulling himself away, confused.
Merlin looked out to where the zombies had been standing, and all he saw was heat haze over the melted and charred street. Ripples of the ground, scorched, cracked and blackened earth, moved like a mirage.
Next to him Arthur stared at the empty space in awe.
“Emrys,” a deep voice rumbled from above them and they both looked up to see the dragon staring down at them. “You have earned my faith,” it said, leaning so close that Merlin thought it might fall on top of them. Its huge head snaked down so that they were almost on a level. Arthur gaped.
“You’re the dragon,” he said, “the one from the tunnel.”
“Yes, your highness,” the dragon said, inclining his head in what was unmistakably a box.
“I told you I was right,” Merlin said, a little smugly.
“That time,” Arthur admitted, grudgingly.
“You are the rightful king,” the dragon said, turning its burning amber gaze onto Arthur. True to form, even without his memories, Arthur stood his ground and Merlin had rarely felt so proud. It was like watching Arthur back in Camelot, a young prince again, finding his feet and learning what it was to be a good man and a good king. “The dragons have been gone from this world for many centuries and we have forgotten much about it.
“We are not used to the idea of bowing to a man. We have forgotten much we once knew of destiny and life here. We can see far, but sometimes we do not see clearly.” He spread his wings and jumped down from the top of the wheel to the ground, gracefully for such a large and seemingly ungainly creature. “We once swore ourselves to protect this land, for we are of it and we owe it much. In order to hold to that promise we must protect its chosen ruler also and that is you, young king.”
The bow that happened then, Merlin would never forget. The dragon was so large, bigger than a house and it spread its wings and stepped one foot back to bow down to Arthur, so deeply that its nose brushed the floor.
“You have my allegiance,” it said, “and I will speak to the other dragons. We will be the slaves of selfish magic no longer. We are the servants of the land.”
“As am I,” Arthur replied, returning the bow just as deeply. “I thank you for your aid and I am grateful for your assistance.”
“Should you have need of me, have Emrys call,” the dragon said. “He will know what to do.”
“I will,” Arthur said, managing to sound regal somehow, even through the confusion Merlin knew he must be feeling.
The dragon nodded once before leaping off the ground, beating its wings to get away. The downdraft almost forced Merlin to his knees, but he managed to stay upright, just barely. Arthur next to him hardly seemed to notice it and, as the wind whipped his hair away from his forehead and he stared up at the dragon as it flew away, he looked like the king that Merlin remembered, so much it made him ache with the knowledge that it wasn’t him and might never be.
“We need to go back,” Arthur said, without even pausing. “We’ve been gone long enough and the others…” He didn’t need to finish that sentence, Merlin knew what he meant. They needed to know the others were still alive.
*
Chapter 11: We Ride to War
Chapter 10: A Shattered Skyline
The distraction worked, for the most part, the undead or zombies, as Arthur was definitely not calling them, went after Lance’s party instead of heading for Arthur and Merlin as they snuck away. He tried not to think of the risks involved, or of the fact that the pair of them might come back to find that they were the only ones still alive.
“So, you’re signing up for Morgana’s insane idea now?” he asked, when they were far enough away that he was positive the undead could not hear him.
“So what if I am?” Merlin asked, without looking back. “It’s the only sodding idea we have left.”
“We never had any other ideas in the first place,” Arthur pointed out. “Except for Tristan’s plan to nuke the place.” The name ached a little as he said it, but he hardened his jaw against it.
“Like I said,” Merlin told him, finally twisting round to shoot him a grin. “It’s the only idea we have left.”
Arthur couldn’t understand how the man could grin like that. The world was falling apart, had fallen apart and, in spite of impromptu concerts and Frisbee games in the dark, Arthur couldn’t forget that for a second. He didn’t think he had smiled in days.
But Merlin’s smile, it made his brain fizzle for a second, like there was something missing there. He could feel himself trying to remember something, but it slipped through his fingers. It was the same, sometimes, when Morgana spoke. He would hear her and then something in his brain would fire up. It was the same as when he had picked up that piping the first time, knowing exactly how to wield it as though he had been trained to fight with it. His muscles had remembered something his brain had not. Sometimes, when he thought about it, he thought that maybe Morgana wasn’t completely insane.
But he pushed that thought back again. He was not some fabled king: he was just a man making the best of a terrible situation. There was no destiny at work here, just bad timing and the devil’s own luck.
Then Merlin would smile again and he would be lost in that non-memory once more.
He shook off the feeling again. This was no time to doubt himself.
“How exactly is this going to work, anyway?” he asked, wondering why he hadn’t questioned the plan earlier. But Morgana and Merlin had seemed so certain, so determined, he hadn’t even thought about the details. “If this is another ‘I’ll be able to sense the sword because it is destiny’ thing then I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
“It’s not,” Merlin said, looking solemn. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t. “I’m going to find it. You’re just here to look pretty.”
“Like you’d survive five minutes without me here. You look terrified.”
“This isn’t terror,” Merlin told him, sounding so certain of the fact that Arthur blinked and cast another glance back at him again. There was something different about him. In the last few days he had changed, like he was more himself in his own skin. If Arthur hadn’t already been attracted to him, he would have been now. But as it was the attraction felt more immediate, more real. The thought made him uncomfortable. This was the end of the freaking world as they knew it and he was busy ogling some man he barely knew.
He knew the psychology: affirmation of life and reinforcing the fact that they were still alive. He knew that the adrenalin and the testosterone were pumping through his blood and that was enough to make any man a little… on edge, but this wasn’t the time or the place and all of a sudden, seeing that look of determination and utter confidence on Merlin’s face was making him want to grab him by the collar and thrust him up against the nearest wall.
Something must have shown in his eyes because Merlin blinked and looked at him more carefully. Arthur had to look away. The last thing he needed was an awkward moment between himself and someone he was starting to, maybe, think of as a friend. He did what he always did in those situations, and covered it up with a joke.
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, my lady,” he said in his most chivalrous tone. There was a pause before Merlin chuckled.
“I don’t need your protection,” he said.
“Of course not,” Arthur said, relieved that the uncomfortable moment had never come. “When the undead come at you, I’m sure you’ll be very useful. You never know, you might trip over your own feet and knock it over.”
“I-” Merlin glared at him, as though there was something more behind his irritation than just a few words. “Some things never change.” He muttered and Arthur would have asked him what that meant, if he hadn’t been sure that he didn’t want to know.
“So, we’re heading for where exactly?” he asked.
“The London Eye,” Merlin said as they came to a stop at the next junction, darting his head around the corner for a moment to check the way was clear. “We’re fine,” he said, before walking out, Arthur close on his heels. “I need to have as complete a view of the city as possible. In a building I’d only really be able to see one direction at a time.”
“I didn’t think this sword was going to be that big,” Arthur said. “It might be a little awkward to handle.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve never had a problem handling a sword,” Merlin said, the words sounding as though he wasn’t really aware of what he was saying, just an offhand comment that Arthur had to force himself not to splutter at. He wasn’t sure, at any one moment, whether the other man was flirting with him. It was so vague.
“That… that’s beside the point. I meant,” Arthur said, in a tone that meant ‘you are a complete idiot and I don’t know why I bother to talk to you in words of more than one syllable’, “how are you going to see it?”
“You’ll see,” Merlin told him, flashing another inane grin.
The quickest route, it turned out, was blocked by a crowd of blank, undead faces, so they had to go the long way round, down and round, then North towards the river.
Arthur had never been on the London Eye. He lived in London, after all, and it was really more of a tourist thing. Who needed to see the city from above when they already knew where things were.
Merlin, though, he looked like the kind of person who had queued up for the first day it was working. He’d probably been to the Millennium Dome as well.
He didn’t know what he was expecting to see when he got to the riverside to see it, but the broken, half nonexistent wreckage was not it. The spokes of the wheel were only half there, and one half of the wheel itself was practically gone. The pods, or whatever they were supposed to be called, were lying smashed and broken around them, except for the seven or eight that still clung on to the ruins.
“That’s the problem with modern building,” Arthur said idly. “It just isn’t built to last.” He hadn’t thought the comment was that funny, but Merlin began to laugh, loudly, even when Arthur shushed him, only too aware that there were things looking for them, very carefully. He grabbed Merlin by the arm and clapped a hand over his mouth, trying not to be aware of the warmth of his lips or the dampness of his breath. When he could finally feel that the laughter was dying down, he let go, self-consciously wiping his hand onto his jeans.
“Sorry,” Merlin whispered back, his eyes looked almost indulgent. “It’s just.., you have no idea how funny it is to hear you say something like that.”
“Why?”
Merlin sighed, shaking his head, and Arthur knew he wasn’t going to get an answer. Instead, he decided to change the subject, gesturing to the splintered wheel.
“I suppose that scuppers that plan then,” he said. “Brilliant Merlin. I love how much thought you put into this. Not to mention the fact that even if it wasn’t destroyed, there’s no electricity so we couldn’t have made it all the way to the top anyway. Brilliant. You know I was beginning to doubt your incompetence, but I can see my faith in your utter inability to do anything right wasn’t even slightly misplaced.”
“Arthur.”
“No need to explain. It’s my fault for listening to you and Morgana in the first place.”
He tried not to think of the others, and the fact that some of them might well be, probably were, dead by now just trying to give Merlin and him enough time to get away. Their lives lost for a fool’s errand.
“Arthur, I knew it wouldn’t be working,” Merlin said, cutting through Arthur’s next words, his voice tight with annoyance. “We planned for this.”
“And how exactly, are you going to rectify this situation?” Arthur asked, crossing his arms over his chest and waiting expectantly. Merlin tried not to rise to the bait as Arthur raised his eyebrows and pushed his lips together, unimpressed.
“Trust me,” Merlin said.
“That’s what you said about the bloody dragon,” Arthur pointed out
“I was right about the-” Merlin began, before shaking his head. “Why am I bothering to try and explain when I could just do this.” He turned abruptly to the riverside, where what had once been the London Eye towered over them in all its ruined glory. He extended a hand to it, palm out, fingers splayed; if Arthur hadn’t been watching his face, he probably wouldn’t have seen the flash of gold in Merlin’s eyes that made his jaw drop.
There was a groan of metal and, when Arthur turned back to the Eye, he could see it beginning to turn, even though there was no power and half of it was gone. He watched it in open mouthed shock.
“What?” he asked. Merlin turned to him, hand still extended, with a reckless grin.
“Magic,” he said, like it was the most brilliant thing in the world. Arthur wondered what it felt like, to do that, to move something like that with just a thought. He shuddered. “We should probably get on,” Merlin said as one of the few undamaged pods reached the bottom. They hurried into it, Arthur still unable to drag his eyes away from Merlin.
Griffins, dragons, trolls and unicorns… they were all very well. In the end they were all just animals. Big, odd and unusual animals, true, but animals nonetheless. Magic, the ability to extend a hand and change the world, an ability that Arthur could feel as they were lifted into the air, that was something else entirely. This was beyond some apocalyptic sign or other, this was deeper.
“You-” he said, and Merlin shrugged.
“Sorry, I was going to tell you before I did anything, but then you had to go and beyou so I just showed you.”
“Right,” Arthur said, trying to readjust his world view to allow for a magical Merlin. Just like the legends, his brain said, and he tried to squash it down again. “Can’t you make it move any faster?” he asked, his voice harsher as he tried to cover up his unease.
“Sorry, it’s quite big and I’m a bit out of practice.” Merlin shrugged.
“Trust you to be just as useless at this,” Arthur said, not meaning the words at all, which Merlin must have known because he smiled, not a grin but a small smile - almost sad.
“I’ve heard that before,” he muttered, another one of those comments Arthur wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear.
They reached the top eventually and Merlin halted it there, his forehead creasing in concentration for a second with the effort it took to stop tonnes of metal from moving. He was trying to avoid thinking about what was going on, and the fact that all that stood between him and a plummet to the ground, or maybe it was the icy waters of the Thames he would land in, was the concentration of a man he knew to have a very short attention span. He looked out across the city and he felt a tinge of awe and more than a little horror.
From the ground, the devastation was unbelievable on a personal level- you saw people dead, cars crashed and buildings crumbling. But from up here… He looked out at the world and he saw the big picture, possibly for the first time. He could see the huge cracks that the earthquake had caused, the bridges that had crumbled and fallen into the Thames. The Gherkin jutted out like a broken bottle into the skyline, all jagged edges of glass. He risked a glance at the Houses of Parliament and shook his head. The palace of Westminster was mostly gone and the clock tower was sheered clean in two.
He wanted to close his eyes to shut it all out. He loved this city, had grown up in it. The streets and landscape were as much a part of him as his hands or feet. He remembered going to see Number Ten with his father when he had been young, being raised up onto his father’s shoulders to get a clearer view, and thinking that this was where everything happened, this was the centre of the world.
He had grown up and he had understood that they were a tiny little island, getting swamped by all the bigger nations, clinging onto hope with their fingernails, but he had never quite lost that sense of awe when he saw the places he remembered from his youth.
Now all that was gone. His world had no centre.
“It’s not that bad,” Merlin said from next to him, and Arthur tried to school his features. “They’re just buildings.”
He turned to the man next to him and gaped openly.
“They’re not just buildings.”
“Most of the people who worked in them were useless anyway,” Merlin continued, trying to help but failing to understand so completely that Arthur couldn’t help staring at them.
“It’s not about the people, it’s about the system… the laws, everything that made our society and made us a country not just a group of people huddling together on a tiny island,” Arthur said. He had to try and make this clear, had to try and point this out.
“No,” Merlin said, quietly and calmly. “Believe me, it’s all about the people.”
He was watching Arthur so closely then, as though he was supposed to understand something in that statement that just was not there.
“It…” Arthur gave up, letting all the breath rush out of his lungs in one long sigh.
“Give me your hand,” Merlin said suddenly, smiling a little sadly. Arthur didn’t move his hands from the rail around the wall for a second. “Trust me.” He looked into Merlin’s eyes, and he saw that he did understand, somehow, he just did not agree. Arthur nodded slowly and held out his hand. Not far enough to touch Merlin’s, but enough to signal his agreement.
Merlin reached out the last few centimetres and grasped his hand tightly. His skin was warm, almost too warm and Arthur could feel a strange tingling sensation creep upwards from the contact, like a strange, enjoyable form of pins and needles.
He was still staring into Merlin’s eyes when the other man began to speak, low hissing nonsense words, he was still staring when he watched Merlin’s eyes glow golden again and then, suddenly it was as though he was connected to a million things at once. He again had that strange, overlapping sensation, where he could see two images superimposed.
Merlin stood in front of him at the top of the London Eye, his eyes gold, looking like he could take on the world, and Merlin stood before him, hair whipping in wind while their feet were on solid ground. His hand was extended and power crackled around him.
Arthur could feel the weight of the crown on his head, the one that Merlin had placed there, pulling him down to earth, and he could feel something in his hand, solid and sure, so comfortable and right. He flexed his fingers around it and knew that whatever it was it was his made for his hands, made for him, by Merlin.
He blinked and it was all gone and he was on his knees in the pod with Merlin crouching next to him, hand on his shoulder, and the other still clutched in his.
“I found it,” he breathed into Arthur’s hair, smiling.
“It’s all real, isn’t it?” Arthur replied, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Everything Morgana said - it’s real.”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “It’s real.”
“You’re… You remember,” Arthur said.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Since the tower,” Merlin told him calmly, “since I put the crown on your head I knew. I knew that you really were my king.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“You wouldn’t have listened to me,” Merlin pointed out. “You had to see it for yourself. You remember now?”
“No,” Arthur said truthfully. “I don’t remember, but I know it’s true. I know I’m him. I know that I don’t have a choice.” Merlin shook his head suddenly.
“You have always had a choice,” he said. “Always, Arthur.”
It seemed strange to be having this conversation so high above the ground, caught in a glass bubble over the city. Arthur wasn’t even sure what this conversation was, really. An acknowledgement of the fact he knew, didn’t seem to cover it. There was something more beneath it, something in the way that Merlin was looking at him, with exasperated affection.
Arthur didn’t know why he did it, he would probably never know. But he had wanted to do it for hours, maybe days. Perhaps he had been wanting to do it since he had first seen Merlin sitting at the bar and felt the tug towards him that had made him panic. Perhaps it had even been longer than that, given what he was only just starting to believe. So Arthur gave in. Merlin still had the golden glow of magic in his eyes and he was still looking into Arthur, like there was so much he wanted to say. But now wasn’t the time so Arthur just kissed him.
It was messy and a little desperate with more than a hint of ‘last desperate million to one chance’ clinging to it. Merlin tasted of ash, spaghetti hoops and orange squash, but there was this fizz of magic behind it, sparking like electricity that Arthur just had to get more of. He reached out blindly for the back of Merlin’s head, pulling them as tightly together as he could manage, mashing their lips together so hard it was painful.
It felt like he should remember this, should remember the slide of tongue against tongue, the way their hands grasped at each other and Merlin sighed into him, almost melting away in his hands. He felt like he should remember the rush of the magic that was so clearly there. But it was all a blank, he could remember none of it and there was something curling in his stomach that felt like frustration.
He was about to push Merlin backwards and down, onto the floor of the pod, when hands that had been reaching for him started to push away.
“No,” Merlin said, as soon as they were far apart enough that Arthur couldn’t feel the heat of his breath him any longer. “You don’t... I might drop us.” That had not been what he was going to say, Arthur knew. But it was a valid point. “I got what we came for, so let’s get back.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said, slowly, but he couldn’t put it into words. He wanted to apologise for not being him, not being what Merlin needed, what the world needed right now. He was not King Arthur Pendragon, not in any way that mattered, he was still just Arthur Penworth, who preferred to spend his Saturday nights watching bad films and eating Chinese takeaway rather than fighting monsters.
Merlin pulled back further and Arthur felt a little like he was going to fall anyway, whether Merlin’s magic held them up or not. He looked out of the window again and he saw it differently this time, not a world in ruins but a world he had to save. His world and he was its only hope, so they kept saying.
He had thought his father put a lot of responsibility onto him - high grades at school, good university, good job, promotion after promotion. He had to meet the best people and be the best. But that expectation, that he had been trying to live up to all his life was nothing compared to this.
Merlin was looking at him like he could tell what Arthur was thinking and it only made Arthur angrier at the whole situation. He remembered the people down in the underground tunnels, waiting for him to give them orders, trusting him to keep them safe. And he thought of other groups of people, there must be more, scattered around the city, just clusters of scared strangers trying to survive. He thought of the conviction in Morgana’s eyes as she said that he was destined to rescue them from this hell and the look in Merlin’s eyes as he had made Arthur kneel in the shattered glass and placed a crown on his head.
There was something like love there, something like love there still, when he risked another glance at Merlin’s eyes. It was too much, pressing down on them. They were all waiting for him, believing in him and he was sitting at the top of the world with a magician and all he knew was that they were probably going to die.
He wanted to say that he couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it. They would have to find another guy, another sucker to play their game. But he knew now that that wasn’t a choice. He had seen Merlin show him power beyond his imagination. He had seen images that were from a past that wasn’t his, not really, and he had heard the voices calling to him. He was the only one. He knew that. In the end it all came down to him. Those people who were left needed him, Merlin needed him.
So he had to be what they needed and keep his doubts and his lack of faith to himself.
He pulled himself to his feet and straightened his shoulders, nodding at.
“So,” he said, trying to sound as kingly as possible. “I think we need to go and see a man about a sword.”
Merlin did not look convinced, but, to his credit, he didn’t say a word, just nodded and set the wheel in motion again so that they made their slow downward arc to the ground.
They had a quarter of a turn to go when Arthur risked a look below them to the riverside.
“Merlin…” he said, in his best ‘I am not panicking’ voice.
“Yes, Arthur?” Merlin was concentrating on moving them, Arthur could tell, but this was definitely worth his attention.
“Do you think that maybe someone might have noticed the giant, broken Ferris wheel magically turning?”
“Perhaps,” Merlin admitted. “It does take quite a bit of magic to get it going, and that would be noticeable to someone who knew about magic.”
“Not to mention the fact that it is a giant, broken Ferris wheel, in the middle of London, visible from a lot of places?”
“That would make it noticeable,” Merlin agreed.
“That would explain why there’s an army of zombies waiting for us at the bottom then.”
“What?” Merlin gasped, and the wheel jerked downwards for a second, making Arthur’s heart leapt to his throat. “Shit! Shit shit shit.”
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“This is not good,” Merlin said, looking at the crowd of corpses that stood watching them make their descent.
“I thought, Merlin, that you had everything under control. I thought you said you’d planned this.”
“I had; I did. I just didn’t expect them to be so fast.”
“So now what are you going to do?” Arthur asked. After all, Merlin was magically inclined, if anyone was going to deal with an army of zombies, it might as well be him.
“Say hello?” Merlin suggested, obviously trying to raise a smile Arthur refused to give.
“Great plan, very impressive,” Arthur said nodding. “I give you five seconds before they rip you to pieces.”
“Fine, what’s your idea then?”
“Couldn’t you do some…” He wiggled his fingers vaguely.
“It’s amazing,” Merlin commented drily, “how your hand signals are exactly the same even after over a thousand years. You still think that magic consists of wiggling your fingers and speaking gibberish.”
“Doesn’t it?” Arthur asked, amused.
“No. It’s actually very complex and precise and I can’t just wave my hands and get rid of the zombies, all right? I’m already tired from getting us up here and I’m only just getting used to my magic again. Not to mention the fact that their very existence is caused by someone else’s magic and breaking that spell is about fifty times more difficult than making one of my own.”
“Couldn’t you just send them flying, or something?”
“Not enough to make a difference,” Merlin told him with a shrug of his shoulders. “We’re going to have to get out of this the old-fashioned way.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Merlin admitted, “but in my experience, it involves a great deal of luck.”
The pod came to a halt at the pavement, and Arthur looked out of its glass door at the zombies waiting for them.
*
Merlin watched Arthur’s face carefully as he prepared to open the door of the pod. He had seen that look before a thousand times or more. It was the look he had seen on Arthur’s face the last time he saw him, more than a thousand years ago. The look that said: ‘if these are my last moments, I will not show fear.’
His lips still tingled from their kiss. He had not thought, since his memories came back, that he would ever be able to do that again, but it had happened.
He had been on such a rush from having found Excalibur. He had felt so connected to Arthur in that moment, to Arthur and to the earth that loved Arthur with every atom of its being. It had all been glorious and whole for a few seconds, even if Arthur didn’t understand it, and he had been carried away by the rush of magic in his veins and the knowledge that this was Arthur with him. Then Arthur had reached for him and he had gone, as he had always gone before and he always would. It had been so easy to forget that this was not the Arthur he had known, not yet anyway. This Arthur didn’t remember the last time they had stood together, side by side, watching each other’s back. He didn’t remember the devil-may-care grins they had shot each other and the way, when it was over and they had blood staining their clothes and skin, they had fallen into each other.
He had kissed him like he was still Arthur, and kissed him like he was still Merlin, and it had been for a few seconds exactly as he remembered. But then he had tasted the tinge of chocolate in Arthur’s mouth and felt his hand, free of sword calluses, against his neck and everything had come falling in again.
They were not who they had once been and he couldn’t let Arthur do this when he didn’t even really know what it was he was doing. So he had pushed him back and tried to act as professionally as possible.
Arthur was trying to be who he needed to be. Merlin could see it in the way he held his shoulders and the determination in his eyes. He was trying not to fail and to fulfil the standards that people were still setting for him. It was just so Arthur that Merlin wanted to kiss him again, gently this time, comforting, to try and communicate that he understood.
But there was an army of zombies outside of the door, and the part of Merlin that had grown up in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was marvelling over how awesome that was, while the part of him that had seen magic when it still lived wild was just tired of it all. Over a thousand years and nothing had really changed. It was still the two of them against the world.
He swung the door open as Arthur readied his shotgun. Merlin needed no weapon other than himself really, tired as he was.
He had never been any good with weapons anyway, that was no different in this life than in the last. He would leave the fighting to Arthur and he would handle the magic.
“Ready,” Arthur said. Merlin nodded his agreement, unwilling to put voice to it in case he lost his nerve or made some ridiculous comment that distracted them both, like he always seemed to. He just gave a jerky, firm nod and drew in a deep breath.
They stepped out and saw the zombies begin to lurch forwards.
One at the front, who had once been a woman, well dressed with blood red nail varnish and a huge gaping hole in her stomach, stepped forward ahead of the others. Her head lolled unnaturally, like a puppet held up by mismatched strings, and her eyes were glazed and unseeing, but her mouth opened. As she stepped forward there came a sound that Merlin thought might be his heart beat, except it did not come again.
“Emrys,” she said and Merlin felt his blood congeal. “So it is you who have been hiding him from us. I had hoped you would not be reminded of your magic until it was too late, but now it is that which has led us to you. Irony is amusing, don’t you think?” There was a strange echo effect and it took Merlin a second to realise that it was because not only the woman spoke. She was the foremost person, but every one of the zombies was speaking in unison. The effect made shivers run up his spine.
Merlin did not respond to her words. He knew that whoever it was speaking to him through these things that had used to be people, was the person behind all of this.
“You will both die,” she said.
“No,” Arthur said suddenly, stepping forward, raising his gun with apparent calm until it was levelled at her head. Only Merlin could tell, from the slight twitch of the muscles in his neck, that Arthur was far from calm. “We won’t.” He pulled the trigger and the woman’s head exploded, spreading blood everywhere, thick, cold and congealed. Merlin could feel it spatter across his face, but he didn’t have the time to be disgusted. The body hung for a second, still held up by the final strings, until it crumpled into a heap on the pavement. The almost-heartbeat came again, louder this time
“You cannot stop me, Pendragon,” the rest of the army said as one. “Your petty defiance is nothing more than an inconvenience. You think merely since you have been joined to the earth as its ruler, that you are somehow destined to win this battle. You put too much faith in the visions of seers, as Emrys once put too much faith in the words of a dragon.”
On that word Merlin realised that the noise he had been hearing was not his heartbeat, but the beat of a dragon’s wings. It came again, louder still and all of them standing on the edge of the river were buffeted backwards by the sudden flow of air. A shadow came to rest over them and Merlin risked a look up, where every one of the reanimated corpses was looking, to see a large, brown dragon perched atop the remains of the London Eye. The structure bent and groaned under the weight ominously. If it were to collapse then both he and Arthur would be crushed but, given that there was a dragon standing over their heads, structural instability was the least of their worries.
“At least we’ll die quickly,” Arthur said, his face still a careful blank.
Merlin glanced back at the zombies and saw something strange. He had expected some sort of glory in their defeat a ‘prepare for your deaths’ speech at the least, but instead every single one of the puppet people was staring at the dragon in shock.
The air rushed backwards, and their hair whipped as the dragon drew in a deep breath, staring down at them with sharp amber eyes. It did not speak, it did not have to. It was the biggest threat it could ever give.
Merlin saw the flash of the fire; he prepared to raise a shield, aware that it would likely not be much good in his current state of exhaustion, not to mention the fact that he had not cast the spell in more than a millennium. He felt the heat, burning at his skin, almost painful, but not quite. He felt Arthur pull him to the ground, wrapping his body over him, like some sort of human shield, despite the fact that Merlin was the more likely to survive - stupid, self-sacrificing idiot - and then he waited for the pain.
It never came. There was just the heat, almost unbearable, hotter than anything he had ever felt before. Hotter than that one sauna he had been in, when Will had insisted and he hadn’t been able to come up with a good excuse. He remembered the air burning his skin and that seemed to pale next to this heat.
He could barely breathe because every breath he drew burnt his lungs. He dug his fingers into Arthur’s arm, where it wrapped across his stomach.
Then, as soon as it had come, it was gone, although the air took a while to cool down. But soon the breeze that blew was unbelievably cool on his skin and Arthur was pulling himself away, confused.
Merlin looked out to where the zombies had been standing, and all he saw was heat haze over the melted and charred street. Ripples of the ground, scorched, cracked and blackened earth, moved like a mirage.
Next to him Arthur stared at the empty space in awe.
“Emrys,” a deep voice rumbled from above them and they both looked up to see the dragon staring down at them. “You have earned my faith,” it said, leaning so close that Merlin thought it might fall on top of them. Its huge head snaked down so that they were almost on a level. Arthur gaped.
“You’re the dragon,” he said, “the one from the tunnel.”
“Yes, your highness,” the dragon said, inclining his head in what was unmistakably a box.
“I told you I was right,” Merlin said, a little smugly.
“That time,” Arthur admitted, grudgingly.
“You are the rightful king,” the dragon said, turning its burning amber gaze onto Arthur. True to form, even without his memories, Arthur stood his ground and Merlin had rarely felt so proud. It was like watching Arthur back in Camelot, a young prince again, finding his feet and learning what it was to be a good man and a good king. “The dragons have been gone from this world for many centuries and we have forgotten much about it.
“We are not used to the idea of bowing to a man. We have forgotten much we once knew of destiny and life here. We can see far, but sometimes we do not see clearly.” He spread his wings and jumped down from the top of the wheel to the ground, gracefully for such a large and seemingly ungainly creature. “We once swore ourselves to protect this land, for we are of it and we owe it much. In order to hold to that promise we must protect its chosen ruler also and that is you, young king.”
The bow that happened then, Merlin would never forget. The dragon was so large, bigger than a house and it spread its wings and stepped one foot back to bow down to Arthur, so deeply that its nose brushed the floor.
“You have my allegiance,” it said, “and I will speak to the other dragons. We will be the slaves of selfish magic no longer. We are the servants of the land.”
“As am I,” Arthur replied, returning the bow just as deeply. “I thank you for your aid and I am grateful for your assistance.”
“Should you have need of me, have Emrys call,” the dragon said. “He will know what to do.”
“I will,” Arthur said, managing to sound regal somehow, even through the confusion Merlin knew he must be feeling.
The dragon nodded once before leaping off the ground, beating its wings to get away. The downdraft almost forced Merlin to his knees, but he managed to stay upright, just barely. Arthur next to him hardly seemed to notice it and, as the wind whipped his hair away from his forehead and he stared up at the dragon as it flew away, he looked like the king that Merlin remembered, so much it made him ache with the knowledge that it wasn’t him and might never be.
“We need to go back,” Arthur said, without even pausing. “We’ve been gone long enough and the others…” He didn’t need to finish that sentence, Merlin knew what he meant. They needed to know the others were still alive.
*
Chapter 11: We Ride to War