fic: Waking up Merlin
Title: Waking Up Merlin
Author: MK Yujji
Pairings/characters: Dean, Sam, Merlin
Rating: G
Word Count: 1856
Warnings: crack
Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by Kripke Enterprises and Warner Brothers Entertainment. Merlin is owned by Shine Limited, the BBC, and assorted others. I think the general Authurian Legends fall under public domain laws at this point, but I could be wrong. Certainly I’ve never heard of anyone being sued for using one in a novel/television program/movie etc etc etc, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Either way, I’m not making any money from writing this.
Comments/Notes: Written for himitsuowl's prompt of Supernatural/Merlin
“Some missions could use an old solution”. Some sort of fix-it fic where Sam or Dean wake up Merlin It was only meant to be a drabble, but it got away from me a bit.
Summary: When demons steal Excalibur, the Winchester brothers need to recruit a little help getting it back.
~*~*~
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Dean rolled his eyes and clenched his teeth against the urge to snap at Sam. Again. "It's the best idea we got."
"It's just... Dean. If the legends are right, if this guy is the real deal... He was seriously powerful. And he's gonna be pissed. Probably at us."
There were times when Sam resembled nothing less than a giant, fretful chicken. Dean wasn't exactly sanguine about freeing an insanely powerful immortal warlock either, but the alternative was much, much worse. "Look, Sam. Would you rather we left fucking Excalibur in the hands of demons?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Pissed or not, this guy will get the sword back. Even Bobby said so." And Bobby disliked warlocks almost as much as Dean disliked witches. "So shut your pie-hole and help me. I did not get on a fucking plane and fly all the way to fucking Wales so you could wuss out on this."
Sam quieted for a moment and went back to helping Dean with the slow process of digging out the cave mouth. A millennium of rock slides and debris had buried the entrance but good. Dean would have preferred to rent some heavy machinery for this, but Bobby had cautioned against it. Something about magical crystals reacting badly or something.
Luckily, the Winchester boys had a lot of practice with excavation.
It was mindless work, though, and gave Dean plenty of time to think about the legends that had Sam so nervous. There were too many versions and they were all contradictory, but Bobby had pieced together what he thought was the most accurate accounting. As best as he could figure, the basic bare bones of the legends were true. There had been a great King named Arthur who'd wielded a magical sword and who'd gone a long way in uniting the British Isles with a powerful warlock named Merlin at his side. And that king had died in a bloody feud against his sister and a psychotic young man named Mordred who may or may not have been his son after the pair had lured Merlin away and trapped him in some kind of magical crystal cave.
That was where the legends all started diverging. No one could agree on what had happened after that. Some said that Merlin had gotten free and taken both his king's body and the sword to mythical Avalon. Others said that he'd cast a spell to trap his king's soul on Earth - possibly in the sword - and set the sword into a stone where it would stay until he could forge a new body for his master. Yet another version said he'd cast the sword back into the lake and gone into mourning somewhere hidden.
Bobby said all that was codswallop.
He didn't think that Merlin had ever made it out of the cave that he'd been trapped in.
Dean was inclined to agree since the damned sword had never been trapped in any stone. He'd found it hanging on some witch's wall during a job in upstate New York.
He hadn't known it was the real Excalibur and he certainly hadn't known that it had been under protection charms to hide it. She'd been a witch. He'd just figured she liked putting spells on things. Witches were weird like that.
They'd only been on the road for a day when a band of demons had attacked and made off with it.
Dean's ears were still ringing from the dressing down Bobby had given him over his stupidity in stealing Excalibur and then leaving it out in the open where anyone with a sense for power could happen along and steal it. Then he'd painted all the various horror scenarios that could come to pass if they sword stayed in the wrong hands.
The way he figured it, even if this Merlin guy killed him, as long as he got the sword back, that was all right by Dean. He'd made a mistake. He didn't want the whole damned world paying for it.
Things hadn't gone to shit yet, but Dean figured that it was just a matter of time.
"Um... Dean?"
"What?!" He snapped, looking up to glare at his brother.
Sam just pointed towards the mound they'd been working out.
Blinking, Dean took a step back. There was light coming through the holes between some of the rocks and a shiver seemed to be going through the dirt, sending it cascading downwards in thin sheets.
Nothing came popping out at them, though, so after a minute he relaxed again. "He must still be trapped."
Clearing out the entrance to the cave was only half the job, after all. They still had to remove the spells that had been used to trap the warlock inside.
"Sammy, you got the doodad?"
"It's not a 'doodad', Dean." He could almost hear the eyeroll. "It's a very -"
"Whatever. You got it?"
Sam held up the doodad in question. It looked vaguely like a dreamcatcher to Dean, though he knew it wasn’t. He didn't particularly want to know what it was or where Bobby had gotten it. All that mattered to him was that it worked.
“We’ll need to get the rest of the rocks out of the way. It needs to be laid directly against the spell barrier."
Grimacing, Dean picked up his shovel and went back to work.
It took another fifteen minutes before they’d managed to clear most of the cave’s entrance. They’d probably done more than absolutely necessary, but damned if they were going to break this guy out just to accidentally crush him with falling rocks.
The barrier glowed a faint greenish color. Streaks of gold shot through it, looking like the cracks on a windshield.
His brother poked at it for a moment, a morbidly curious expression on his face. It shimmered under his fingers, but held firm. They couldn’t see past it into the cave. “Can you imagine being held captive for a thousand years? I wonder if he was aware of time passing…”
“I guess we’re about to find out. Doodad?”
Sam looked pained, but he didn’t protest the term again. Instead he just nodded.
“Good. Weapons?” He held his own shotgun at the ready and gave Sam an approving look when his brother held up the curved blade of his own fancy knife. Legend might have painted Merlin as a good guy who just happened to be an immortal warlock, but they had some experience with just how wrong legend could be. There was no telling what might come bursting out of the cave, starving after a millennium of being captive.
Dean had no intention on either of them becoming food for an incubus, demon, wendigo, werewolf, vampire or anything else.
At his nod, Sam placed the witch’s charm against the barrier and jerked back as it fused to the shimmering wall.
He sucked on his thumb with a pained look but just waved off Dean’s noise of concern. “It’s fine. Just… stung a bit.”
A sound like ice breaking over a river rent through the air and the brothers turned back to the barrier. The thin gold lines were spreading rapidly and Dean realized that they were cracks.
He had a moment to hope that they hadn’t made a horrible mistake, then the barrier shattered and the world went black.
~*~*~
When Dean regained consciousness, the pain radiating through his skull was about the only thing he could focus on. “Fucking hell why didn’t Bobby warn us about kickbacks?”
“Umm… Dean….”
The tone of his brother’s voice was cautious but not necessarily afraid. More like when he was trying not to spook someone or something.
Or when he had to call something to Dean’s attention and he was leery of the elder Winchester’s reaction.
Dean cracked an eye open, but had to shut it again. He had the mother of all concussive headaches. “Fuck.”
A calloused hand covered his eyes and Dean froze, hardly daring to breath. That hand was far too small to be Sam’s massive paw. Soft words were whispered in a language he didn’t understand and the pain in his head faded away to nothing.
When Dean opened his eyes again, the headache was completely gone. He was greeted by the sight of an angular face peering at him with wide, blue eyes and a hopeful expression.
“Better, Arthur?”
“Umm…” Dean glanced towards his brother. Sam shrugged from his position slightly behind the stranger. No clue, he said silently. “Merlin?”
The stranger looked far too young to be an immortal warlock. Bobby’s legends had indicated that, assuming Merlin hadn’t aged in the cave, they were looking for a man who would have been in his mid to late forties - old by medieval standards. This kid looked younger than Sam.
But he beamed at his name. “You do recognize me! I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
Sam and Dean shared another look, then Dean cleared his throat. “Look… I’m not sure who you think I am, but we broke you out for a reason, see, and-”
“Thank you for that,” Merlin said, turning a nasty look on the cave. “I’ve been working on it, but it’s been slow going. Morgana’s spells aren’t usually that tenacious. She must have put everything she had into it.”
“Riiight… Okay.” Obviously the kid wasn’t good at focusing. “Seriously. We’ve got a little problem here and apparently you’re the only one with the juice to fix it. Some demons kind of… stole Excalibur. We were hoping you could get it back before they destroyed the world or something.”
Behind Merlin, Sam gave him a look of disbelief. Subtle, dude. Dean made a face at him.
Merlin’s expression turned severe. “The crystals showed me. Don’t worry. We shall retrieve it together. Such unclean hands were never meant to hold it.”
“So you’re not… angry? That I lost it?” Dean asked cautiously.
“Well, you’ve always been a little clumsy without me, haven’t you?” Merlin remarked, grinning again as he stood and reached down to pull Dean up with him. “I suppose you’ll insist on staying in the New World once we’ve managed to get your sword back. I can live with that. It’s better than the cave at least.”
Then he was heading through the woods without waiting for them, prattling on about someone named Kilgarrah and the general barbary that had overtaken the world while he was locked away.
They stared after him for a moment, bemused.
“Arthur! There isn’t time for dillydallying. There’s no telling how much havoc a band of demons could wreak with that sword! To say nothing of how quickly Kilgarrah will eat you once he finds out you’ve lost it.”
Dean sighed and shook his head without looking at his brother. “Don’t even say it.”
Sam cracked up and gestured Dean ahead with a mocking sweep of his arm. “After you, your highness.”
“Bitch.”
~*~*
fin
Author: MK Yujji
Pairings/characters: Dean, Sam, Merlin
Rating: G
Word Count: 1856
Warnings: crack
Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by Kripke Enterprises and Warner Brothers Entertainment. Merlin is owned by Shine Limited, the BBC, and assorted others. I think the general Authurian Legends fall under public domain laws at this point, but I could be wrong. Certainly I’ve never heard of anyone being sued for using one in a novel/television program/movie etc etc etc, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Either way, I’m not making any money from writing this.
Comments/Notes: Written for himitsuowl's prompt of Supernatural/Merlin
“Some missions could use an old solution”. Some sort of fix-it fic where Sam or Dean wake up Merlin It was only meant to be a drabble, but it got away from me a bit.
Summary: When demons steal Excalibur, the Winchester brothers need to recruit a little help getting it back.
~*~*~
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Dean rolled his eyes and clenched his teeth against the urge to snap at Sam. Again. "It's the best idea we got."
"It's just... Dean. If the legends are right, if this guy is the real deal... He was seriously powerful. And he's gonna be pissed. Probably at us."
There were times when Sam resembled nothing less than a giant, fretful chicken. Dean wasn't exactly sanguine about freeing an insanely powerful immortal warlock either, but the alternative was much, much worse. "Look, Sam. Would you rather we left fucking Excalibur in the hands of demons?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Pissed or not, this guy will get the sword back. Even Bobby said so." And Bobby disliked warlocks almost as much as Dean disliked witches. "So shut your pie-hole and help me. I did not get on a fucking plane and fly all the way to fucking Wales so you could wuss out on this."
Sam quieted for a moment and went back to helping Dean with the slow process of digging out the cave mouth. A millennium of rock slides and debris had buried the entrance but good. Dean would have preferred to rent some heavy machinery for this, but Bobby had cautioned against it. Something about magical crystals reacting badly or something.
Luckily, the Winchester boys had a lot of practice with excavation.
It was mindless work, though, and gave Dean plenty of time to think about the legends that had Sam so nervous. There were too many versions and they were all contradictory, but Bobby had pieced together what he thought was the most accurate accounting. As best as he could figure, the basic bare bones of the legends were true. There had been a great King named Arthur who'd wielded a magical sword and who'd gone a long way in uniting the British Isles with a powerful warlock named Merlin at his side. And that king had died in a bloody feud against his sister and a psychotic young man named Mordred who may or may not have been his son after the pair had lured Merlin away and trapped him in some kind of magical crystal cave.
That was where the legends all started diverging. No one could agree on what had happened after that. Some said that Merlin had gotten free and taken both his king's body and the sword to mythical Avalon. Others said that he'd cast a spell to trap his king's soul on Earth - possibly in the sword - and set the sword into a stone where it would stay until he could forge a new body for his master. Yet another version said he'd cast the sword back into the lake and gone into mourning somewhere hidden.
Bobby said all that was codswallop.
He didn't think that Merlin had ever made it out of the cave that he'd been trapped in.
Dean was inclined to agree since the damned sword had never been trapped in any stone. He'd found it hanging on some witch's wall during a job in upstate New York.
He hadn't known it was the real Excalibur and he certainly hadn't known that it had been under protection charms to hide it. She'd been a witch. He'd just figured she liked putting spells on things. Witches were weird like that.
They'd only been on the road for a day when a band of demons had attacked and made off with it.
Dean's ears were still ringing from the dressing down Bobby had given him over his stupidity in stealing Excalibur and then leaving it out in the open where anyone with a sense for power could happen along and steal it. Then he'd painted all the various horror scenarios that could come to pass if they sword stayed in the wrong hands.
The way he figured it, even if this Merlin guy killed him, as long as he got the sword back, that was all right by Dean. He'd made a mistake. He didn't want the whole damned world paying for it.
Things hadn't gone to shit yet, but Dean figured that it was just a matter of time.
"Um... Dean?"
"What?!" He snapped, looking up to glare at his brother.
Sam just pointed towards the mound they'd been working out.
Blinking, Dean took a step back. There was light coming through the holes between some of the rocks and a shiver seemed to be going through the dirt, sending it cascading downwards in thin sheets.
Nothing came popping out at them, though, so after a minute he relaxed again. "He must still be trapped."
Clearing out the entrance to the cave was only half the job, after all. They still had to remove the spells that had been used to trap the warlock inside.
"Sammy, you got the doodad?"
"It's not a 'doodad', Dean." He could almost hear the eyeroll. "It's a very -"
"Whatever. You got it?"
Sam held up the doodad in question. It looked vaguely like a dreamcatcher to Dean, though he knew it wasn’t. He didn't particularly want to know what it was or where Bobby had gotten it. All that mattered to him was that it worked.
“We’ll need to get the rest of the rocks out of the way. It needs to be laid directly against the spell barrier."
Grimacing, Dean picked up his shovel and went back to work.
It took another fifteen minutes before they’d managed to clear most of the cave’s entrance. They’d probably done more than absolutely necessary, but damned if they were going to break this guy out just to accidentally crush him with falling rocks.
The barrier glowed a faint greenish color. Streaks of gold shot through it, looking like the cracks on a windshield.
His brother poked at it for a moment, a morbidly curious expression on his face. It shimmered under his fingers, but held firm. They couldn’t see past it into the cave. “Can you imagine being held captive for a thousand years? I wonder if he was aware of time passing…”
“I guess we’re about to find out. Doodad?”
Sam looked pained, but he didn’t protest the term again. Instead he just nodded.
“Good. Weapons?” He held his own shotgun at the ready and gave Sam an approving look when his brother held up the curved blade of his own fancy knife. Legend might have painted Merlin as a good guy who just happened to be an immortal warlock, but they had some experience with just how wrong legend could be. There was no telling what might come bursting out of the cave, starving after a millennium of being captive.
Dean had no intention on either of them becoming food for an incubus, demon, wendigo, werewolf, vampire or anything else.
At his nod, Sam placed the witch’s charm against the barrier and jerked back as it fused to the shimmering wall.
He sucked on his thumb with a pained look but just waved off Dean’s noise of concern. “It’s fine. Just… stung a bit.”
A sound like ice breaking over a river rent through the air and the brothers turned back to the barrier. The thin gold lines were spreading rapidly and Dean realized that they were cracks.
He had a moment to hope that they hadn’t made a horrible mistake, then the barrier shattered and the world went black.
~*~*~
When Dean regained consciousness, the pain radiating through his skull was about the only thing he could focus on. “Fucking hell why didn’t Bobby warn us about kickbacks?”
“Umm… Dean….”
The tone of his brother’s voice was cautious but not necessarily afraid. More like when he was trying not to spook someone or something.
Or when he had to call something to Dean’s attention and he was leery of the elder Winchester’s reaction.
Dean cracked an eye open, but had to shut it again. He had the mother of all concussive headaches. “Fuck.”
A calloused hand covered his eyes and Dean froze, hardly daring to breath. That hand was far too small to be Sam’s massive paw. Soft words were whispered in a language he didn’t understand and the pain in his head faded away to nothing.
When Dean opened his eyes again, the headache was completely gone. He was greeted by the sight of an angular face peering at him with wide, blue eyes and a hopeful expression.
“Better, Arthur?”
“Umm…” Dean glanced towards his brother. Sam shrugged from his position slightly behind the stranger. No clue, he said silently. “Merlin?”
The stranger looked far too young to be an immortal warlock. Bobby’s legends had indicated that, assuming Merlin hadn’t aged in the cave, they were looking for a man who would have been in his mid to late forties - old by medieval standards. This kid looked younger than Sam.
But he beamed at his name. “You do recognize me! I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
Sam and Dean shared another look, then Dean cleared his throat. “Look… I’m not sure who you think I am, but we broke you out for a reason, see, and-”
“Thank you for that,” Merlin said, turning a nasty look on the cave. “I’ve been working on it, but it’s been slow going. Morgana’s spells aren’t usually that tenacious. She must have put everything she had into it.”
“Riiight… Okay.” Obviously the kid wasn’t good at focusing. “Seriously. We’ve got a little problem here and apparently you’re the only one with the juice to fix it. Some demons kind of… stole Excalibur. We were hoping you could get it back before they destroyed the world or something.”
Behind Merlin, Sam gave him a look of disbelief. Subtle, dude. Dean made a face at him.
Merlin’s expression turned severe. “The crystals showed me. Don’t worry. We shall retrieve it together. Such unclean hands were never meant to hold it.”
“So you’re not… angry? That I lost it?” Dean asked cautiously.
“Well, you’ve always been a little clumsy without me, haven’t you?” Merlin remarked, grinning again as he stood and reached down to pull Dean up with him. “I suppose you’ll insist on staying in the New World once we’ve managed to get your sword back. I can live with that. It’s better than the cave at least.”
Then he was heading through the woods without waiting for them, prattling on about someone named Kilgarrah and the general barbary that had overtaken the world while he was locked away.
They stared after him for a moment, bemused.
“Arthur! There isn’t time for dillydallying. There’s no telling how much havoc a band of demons could wreak with that sword! To say nothing of how quickly Kilgarrah will eat you once he finds out you’ve lost it.”
Dean sighed and shook his head without looking at his brother. “Don’t even say it.”
Sam cracked up and gestured Dean ahead with a mocking sweep of his arm. “After you, your highness.”
“Bitch.”
~*~*
fin