Once and Again | The Far Side of Avalon
Title: The Far Side of Avalon
By: revenant_scribe
Fandom: James Bond (Craig Films), BBC Merlin
Rating: PG-13 | Pairing: Bond/Q, Arthur/Merlin
Status: One-shot | Word Count: 2,941
A/N: This is a one-shot attached to a much longer and more complex story I am working on. If you are interested in seeing more, please leave a comment to keep me on task! This is marked as slash because the larger arch involves these pairings. Knowledge of Merlin is not necessary but will enhance the story.
Summary: Arthur once asked him to never change, but after seventeen lifetimes Merlin finds that change is impossible to avoid and isn't always such a bad thing.
"I don't want you to change," Arthur said. "I want you to always be you."
__________________________________________
The little bakery is family run and serves the most delicious chocolate croissants he has ever tasted, and they brew tea to perfection. Additionally, no one has any trouble with him occupying the corner booth at the back, hunched over his laptop making good use of the free wi-fi, typing with one hand as the other gropes for the warm crumbly treat or alternately for a sip from his cup. He has been known to waste entire days in this little shop, occupying his booth until Mrs. Kensington finishes closing out the till and offers him a biscuit to take home with him because she is perpetually concerned that he is 'too thin'.
He's not used to being interrupted and outside of the staff he doesn't know anyone in the area, which is why he is taken by surprise when a tall woman in a tailored, flatteringly fitted suit and black high heels settles down opposite him perching her elbows on the table and her chin on her laced fingers. She opens conversation by saying, "It's you, isn't it?"
Merlin glances up from his laptop and notes her dark brown hair held back in a smooth bun, and the piercing grey-blue eyes that are fixed on him. She is beautiful, effortlessly elegant and entirely striking, but he is absolutely certain he has never seen her before.
He still knows exactly who she is even if she looks less defiant. There is no longer an arrogantly petulant curve to her lips, no imperious coldness in her stare. He thinks she looks ethereal and melancholy even as she offers him a slight smile from across the table. "Your style hasn't changed much," she notes, humor warming her tone. Her voice is low, a bit of dry husk to it, strangely alluring. She arches a brow at him as she pointedly eyes his attire: a dark blue long-sleeved shirt with a red knit scarf still wrapped about his neck because he suspects he's coming down with a cold. His brown parka is hanging over the back of a chair to his left.
These clothes were simply ready-to-hand; the first shirt he pulled from his drawer, the warmest scarf in his closet. Suddenly he feels awkward about them. "I don't recall wearing blue jeans in Camelot," he says as he sips from his teacup, trying not to look unsettled.
"Mm." She offers him an enigmatic smile as she drinks him in, the intensity of her gaze makes him feel curiously shy. "Or glasses. Do you really need those, or are you merely being vain?"
Merlin sets his tea aside. "I've never been vain, Morgana."
"Surely your magic would have taken care of any need for them." She plucks them off his face and holds them up, peering through a lens to test the prescription. "It's Vesper, by the way. I prefer it to the other. Fresh start."
"Fresh start?" He takes his glasses back when she offers them, resettling them on his nose.
"Well, more than one. I think I'm up to about twenty, now. I assume it's been the same for you?" When he nods she flashes that curious little smile again, part nostalgic and part grimace. "I suppose it's no use to apologize for any of it. Too little, too late."
"Some lives have been foretold," he says, somewhat more darkly than he had intended. He doesn't feel bitter about it any longer. Instead, he's mostly numb.
"I'm half afraid that one day it will all happen again, and it will be exactly the same. As soon as I start recovering the memories I do what I can to ensure that it can't, that at least I won't play the part in things that I did then."
"That was ages ago, Morgana. None of it matters anymore." He returns to his laptop trying to quell the surge of emotion rising up inside him. He wants to forget it, all of it. Every goddamned painful second. He can't. Just like he can't pretend there isn't a part of him that is flooded with relief and joy just at the sight of her, beautiful and bright-eyed and undamaged. "You remember it? All of it?"
"Not all of it, and not always," she says, with a half-shrug. "It's the visions. I'll be gloriously ignorant for most of my childhood and then one day…"
He tries to hide how envious he is of her but it slips through into his tone. "I'm never ignorant of it. I remember everything, always, from the moment I return."
They fall silent as she sips at her tea. "I recognized you the other day. You were entering this shop and I was across the street. It's hard to believe you ever managed to keep your magic secret; I felt it all the way from where I was standing. Further, I think, but I didn't know what it was until I saw you." Her eyes meet his and then slip away again; she looks shy, or perhaps nervous. "I thought I would take a chance, see if you might return here. I thought it might be good for us, to talk."
He looks for it but can't see anything of the bitter sorceress she once was; there is only the impetuous stubborn woman that he had been friends with so many lifetimes ago. "Have you seen any of the others?" he finds himself asking, and then feels horrible when it only seems to heighten her discomfort.
"Gwen. Once," she admits. "She was one of the maids of honor to Anne Boleyn, I saw her at court." Merlin watches as she stares into the depths of her teacup for a moment before taking a sip. When she puts it down there is a faint shadow of red on the rim, the shade reminds him rather morbidly of blood, which makes him feel guilty, thinking of her and blood when things are different now, when she is so plainly someone else.
Morgana shakes her head, smiling sadly. "I didn't speak to her. I couldn't think of anything to say at the time, but later I regretted the missed opportunity."
He understands how she feels. He had seen Mordred once on a busy street near Piccadilly, two lifetimes ago. Morder's hands had been tucked into the pockets of his blue jeans, his shoulders hunched forward under the weight of a green backpack, he'd been crossing the street as Merlin had been coming out of a corner shop. Mordred hadn't looked anything like he had back then but Merlin still recognized him, felt a conflicting surge of rage-hurt-sorrow-anger-bitterness and he'd found himself instinctively ducking back inside just as the other man had glanced back over his shoulder as if he too had recognized Merlin's presence.
"I met Gwen as well," Merlin offers, pushing the memory away in favor of a happier one. "She was the fifth Grand Master of the Knights Templar."
"Really?" Morgana's smile looks genuinely pleased by the revelation. "That's brilliant. How did you meet her?"
"I was one of the founders."
"Tell me more."
There are thirty-seven lifetimes between them to catch-up on. The more she talks the more Morgana seems to brighten and relax. The more he talks the more Merlin becomes aware of the giddy-joy he feels to be able to speak to someone this way. He tells her about how he was accused of sorcery in 1488 and spent several long months in prison being interrogated, tortured and starved. He'd met Gawaine there, imprisoned for the same crime. "Innocent, of course," Morgana says.
"Yes. Unlike me."
"I managed to avoid the indignity of being accused of witchcraft, though I've been beheaded several times, and burnt once as a heretic."
Merlin and Gawaine had been lashed side-by-side to the stake. As the knots were tied he had considered using his magic to break free but he couldn't bring himself to leave someone who was once such a good friend, even if that friend had no memory of their lifetime together. In truth, a part of him had wondered, as he found himself wondering every time, if this death might be permanent. When the fire had been set, licking up to their feet, Gawaine had looked to him, had seemed to remember something of his years as a knight of Camelot. Merlin has never been sure but there was something in the other man's eyes, in the anguish in his tone as he had said, "I'm so sorry,". Perhaps it was an apology that belonged more in that other life than this one, where they stood burning together.
"They never seem to know," he tells Morgana. "I thought maybe I was an exception, cursed to always remember. It's nice, to find that it's not quite the case."
"Even if it's me?" she asks ruefully, and then brushes over any answer he might give by asking, "What about him? Have you seen Arthur?"
"No." Merlin licks his lips and focuses his attention on breaking his croissant into pieces. "The dragon told me that he would come again when he was needed. I just assumed it was a one-time thing."
"You're different without him. Do you even remember what it was like, to be passionate about something? To know it was right down in the very heart of you, to have unshakable faith in it?" Again her smile is sad, she dips her head forward slightly. "I think I envied that most about you, Merlin. Every life I live I find myself hoping to know what that might be like: dying for something I really believe in."
"Don't romanticize it, Morgana," he says, then corrects himself, "Vesper. It's not glorious. Death is always just death."
"You both seemed like one half of a whole, to me," she says, ignoring him. "You should look for him, I think. It would be good for you."
"Didn't you hear me? Arthur isn't out there. He's not coming back until some distant point in the future when a place that doesn't really exist anymore suddenly needs him again. Then maybe this hellish cycle can finally stop. But until then it's just this: me, here on my own. Sometimes brushing paths with someone I remember from a different time."
"But what if he is out there?" she pushes, leaning forward even as she lowers her voice. "What if he's always been out there just like I've been, and Guinevere and Gawaine and the others? What if you just haven't bothered to look for him?"
Merlin clenches his jaw and turns away from her until she reaches out, resting her hands atop his own. "I'm so sorry, Merlin. I can't ever say it enough, and I know it doesn't mean anything now. But I can see that you're a different person than you ever were, and some of that change isn't for the better. What’s the harm?"
He takes a shuddering breath as he admits, "I don't know if I can take even one more moment of disappointed hope."
She kisses him chastely on the lips as she stands. "Think of it this way: if you keep going the way you are, there will be barely anything left of who you once were. How will Arthur recognize you, then?"
__________________________________________
The first time Merlin died it was nothing. He was tired and worn, had long-since forgotten Gaius and Guinevere and what words like 'friendship' and 'family' meant. He was the wild man of the forest and he knew only the squirrels and birds and creatures that lived there with him, knew the aching loss he felt when he looked out across the water to Avalon though he had forgotten why that view filled him with such sorrow.
One day he simply curled up on the sand and closed his eyes, breathed out the one word he would always remember for all of time and had a moment of peace and calm, of perfect bliss, of restoration.
So much love and so much joy had filled him up it had been almost unbearable, and just when he thought he might burst from it all he opened his eyes and gasped and stared blankly at the flushed woman who was holding him in her arms. "Shh," she told him. "Shh, everything is alright little one. My sweet little boy."
Confusion filled him as he gazed at her. The woman holding him was not Hunith, was not his mother and yet …
And yet…
Merlin remembered Arthur and Camelot, remembered Morgana and the dragon and Mordred. Every moment of it. "It's alright now," the woman was crooning to him even though it looked as if he should be the one whispering those words to her, exhausted and worn as she was, sitting propped upright by straw pillows. "Everything is alright."
He gripped her as hard as he could and realized his hands were small, so very small. That he was clutching only her index finger, that he was shriveled and tiny and brand new. He took a breath and screamed and screamed until the midwife had picked him up, soothing the woman who was and yet was not Merlin's mother, "He is simply hungry, do not fear."
Outside, spurred by his rage and his magic, a storm broke open on the town that was now his birthplace even if it was not Ealdor. Lightning pounded the earth as Merlin roared.
__________________________________________
Two agents usher him into Vauxhall Cross, (only two, which is mildly insulting given what he is capable of doing to an entire city with the mere blink of an eye). He follows obediently and sits on a black leather chair when one is offered. He even manages to pay attention when the head of the Secret Intelligence Service says, "You may call me 'M'."
As it turns out while Merlin's abilities with technology, most notably computers, is above and beyond anything SIS have encountered before they are not above being tracked. 'M' has an entire file on him. It is dark blue and leather-bound. It looks very nice and also terribly official, and it contains enough of his online movements to be damning.
"Once might very well be coincidence, Mister Boothroyd," she says. "But as you can see it's quite a bit more than once." Her primary concern, naturally, is the number of times he has slipped through the security of her organization. "What exactly were you looking for?"
"I don't know." He's telling her the truth but not the whole of it: he doesn't explain that even if he didn't know exactly what he was looking for he had hoped to recognize it when he saw it.
'M' has glinting sharp eyes and Merlin reads her history in the lines on her face, the tightness around her mouth as she looks at him. He doesn't need to use any magic to know that she views him as a threat with the potential to be a valuable asset. "Mister Boothroyd…"
"Please," he interrupts. "Call me 'Q'."
Some of the severity ekes from her expression and there's a flash of what might be amusement in her eyes. "Q," she says. "How would you feel about coming to work for the agency?"
This is how Merlin finds himself ensconced in a shadowy basement, working for MI6.
__________________________________________
Merlin is reborn again and again. He looks different and his name changes but be always remembers everything that went before. He always has magic and he's always waiting. Camelot's borders expand and shrink and expand, names of places change, rulers come and go but Arthur never does. Merlin dies and feels a brief lulling moment of bliss that fills and fills him up until he is about to burst and then he opens his eyes and it begins again: different, but always the same.
__________________________________________
Later, but not today, Vesper Lynd will send him a cryptic message shortly before dying for something that she believes in. Merlin's magic will come to the attention of his employer and he will be asked to pledge every ounce of himself to the defense and preservation of his country, as if he hasn't done all of that already.
Vauxhall Cross will explode and he'll be promoted and somehow, Merlin will find himself sitting in the National Gallery in front of a painting that always leaves him feeling melancholy. "What do you see?" he will ask. "I'm your new Quartermaster," he will say.
Beside him, 007 will respond: "You must be joking."
Later, but not today, Merlin will be standing in his subterranean office that has become his second home, staring at his open palm onto which his agent has just deposited a tiny radio. "What about the gun?" he'll call after Bond's retreating form.
"It's in Macau."
"You left it?"
"Don't worry. It's perfectly safe," Bond will assure him. "It's in the belly of a komodo."
"A komodo?" he will find himself shouting several hours later over a golden pint of frothy beer.
Beside him, Eve Moneypenny will toss her head back and laugh. "I've never seen you get this worked up over anything before, Q."
"I've never had an agent be such a prat!" he will snap. "It's like he thinks he's the king of bloody England when the truth is, he's just a … a clotpole!"
Until that time, however, Merlin has his magic and his own desk in Q-Branch, and the satisfaction of finally, after lifetimes spent merely passing the time, of finally doing something that he is passionate about.
___________________________________________________
THE END ?
By: revenant_scribe
Fandom: James Bond (Craig Films), BBC Merlin
Rating: PG-13 | Pairing: Bond/Q, Arthur/Merlin
Status: One-shot | Word Count: 2,941
A/N: This is a one-shot attached to a much longer and more complex story I am working on. If you are interested in seeing more, please leave a comment to keep me on task! This is marked as slash because the larger arch involves these pairings. Knowledge of Merlin is not necessary but will enhance the story.
Summary: Arthur once asked him to never change, but after seventeen lifetimes Merlin finds that change is impossible to avoid and isn't always such a bad thing.
"I don't want you to change," Arthur said. "I want you to always be you."
__________________________________________
The little bakery is family run and serves the most delicious chocolate croissants he has ever tasted, and they brew tea to perfection. Additionally, no one has any trouble with him occupying the corner booth at the back, hunched over his laptop making good use of the free wi-fi, typing with one hand as the other gropes for the warm crumbly treat or alternately for a sip from his cup. He has been known to waste entire days in this little shop, occupying his booth until Mrs. Kensington finishes closing out the till and offers him a biscuit to take home with him because she is perpetually concerned that he is 'too thin'.
He's not used to being interrupted and outside of the staff he doesn't know anyone in the area, which is why he is taken by surprise when a tall woman in a tailored, flatteringly fitted suit and black high heels settles down opposite him perching her elbows on the table and her chin on her laced fingers. She opens conversation by saying, "It's you, isn't it?"
Merlin glances up from his laptop and notes her dark brown hair held back in a smooth bun, and the piercing grey-blue eyes that are fixed on him. She is beautiful, effortlessly elegant and entirely striking, but he is absolutely certain he has never seen her before.
He still knows exactly who she is even if she looks less defiant. There is no longer an arrogantly petulant curve to her lips, no imperious coldness in her stare. He thinks she looks ethereal and melancholy even as she offers him a slight smile from across the table. "Your style hasn't changed much," she notes, humor warming her tone. Her voice is low, a bit of dry husk to it, strangely alluring. She arches a brow at him as she pointedly eyes his attire: a dark blue long-sleeved shirt with a red knit scarf still wrapped about his neck because he suspects he's coming down with a cold. His brown parka is hanging over the back of a chair to his left.
These clothes were simply ready-to-hand; the first shirt he pulled from his drawer, the warmest scarf in his closet. Suddenly he feels awkward about them. "I don't recall wearing blue jeans in Camelot," he says as he sips from his teacup, trying not to look unsettled.
"Mm." She offers him an enigmatic smile as she drinks him in, the intensity of her gaze makes him feel curiously shy. "Or glasses. Do you really need those, or are you merely being vain?"
Merlin sets his tea aside. "I've never been vain, Morgana."
"Surely your magic would have taken care of any need for them." She plucks them off his face and holds them up, peering through a lens to test the prescription. "It's Vesper, by the way. I prefer it to the other. Fresh start."
"Fresh start?" He takes his glasses back when she offers them, resettling them on his nose.
"Well, more than one. I think I'm up to about twenty, now. I assume it's been the same for you?" When he nods she flashes that curious little smile again, part nostalgic and part grimace. "I suppose it's no use to apologize for any of it. Too little, too late."
"Some lives have been foretold," he says, somewhat more darkly than he had intended. He doesn't feel bitter about it any longer. Instead, he's mostly numb.
"I'm half afraid that one day it will all happen again, and it will be exactly the same. As soon as I start recovering the memories I do what I can to ensure that it can't, that at least I won't play the part in things that I did then."
"That was ages ago, Morgana. None of it matters anymore." He returns to his laptop trying to quell the surge of emotion rising up inside him. He wants to forget it, all of it. Every goddamned painful second. He can't. Just like he can't pretend there isn't a part of him that is flooded with relief and joy just at the sight of her, beautiful and bright-eyed and undamaged. "You remember it? All of it?"
"Not all of it, and not always," she says, with a half-shrug. "It's the visions. I'll be gloriously ignorant for most of my childhood and then one day…"
He tries to hide how envious he is of her but it slips through into his tone. "I'm never ignorant of it. I remember everything, always, from the moment I return."
They fall silent as she sips at her tea. "I recognized you the other day. You were entering this shop and I was across the street. It's hard to believe you ever managed to keep your magic secret; I felt it all the way from where I was standing. Further, I think, but I didn't know what it was until I saw you." Her eyes meet his and then slip away again; she looks shy, or perhaps nervous. "I thought I would take a chance, see if you might return here. I thought it might be good for us, to talk."
He looks for it but can't see anything of the bitter sorceress she once was; there is only the impetuous stubborn woman that he had been friends with so many lifetimes ago. "Have you seen any of the others?" he finds himself asking, and then feels horrible when it only seems to heighten her discomfort.
"Gwen. Once," she admits. "She was one of the maids of honor to Anne Boleyn, I saw her at court." Merlin watches as she stares into the depths of her teacup for a moment before taking a sip. When she puts it down there is a faint shadow of red on the rim, the shade reminds him rather morbidly of blood, which makes him feel guilty, thinking of her and blood when things are different now, when she is so plainly someone else.
Morgana shakes her head, smiling sadly. "I didn't speak to her. I couldn't think of anything to say at the time, but later I regretted the missed opportunity."
He understands how she feels. He had seen Mordred once on a busy street near Piccadilly, two lifetimes ago. Morder's hands had been tucked into the pockets of his blue jeans, his shoulders hunched forward under the weight of a green backpack, he'd been crossing the street as Merlin had been coming out of a corner shop. Mordred hadn't looked anything like he had back then but Merlin still recognized him, felt a conflicting surge of rage-hurt-sorrow-anger-bitterness and he'd found himself instinctively ducking back inside just as the other man had glanced back over his shoulder as if he too had recognized Merlin's presence.
"I met Gwen as well," Merlin offers, pushing the memory away in favor of a happier one. "She was the fifth Grand Master of the Knights Templar."
"Really?" Morgana's smile looks genuinely pleased by the revelation. "That's brilliant. How did you meet her?"
"I was one of the founders."
"Tell me more."
There are thirty-seven lifetimes between them to catch-up on. The more she talks the more Morgana seems to brighten and relax. The more he talks the more Merlin becomes aware of the giddy-joy he feels to be able to speak to someone this way. He tells her about how he was accused of sorcery in 1488 and spent several long months in prison being interrogated, tortured and starved. He'd met Gawaine there, imprisoned for the same crime. "Innocent, of course," Morgana says.
"Yes. Unlike me."
"I managed to avoid the indignity of being accused of witchcraft, though I've been beheaded several times, and burnt once as a heretic."
Merlin and Gawaine had been lashed side-by-side to the stake. As the knots were tied he had considered using his magic to break free but he couldn't bring himself to leave someone who was once such a good friend, even if that friend had no memory of their lifetime together. In truth, a part of him had wondered, as he found himself wondering every time, if this death might be permanent. When the fire had been set, licking up to their feet, Gawaine had looked to him, had seemed to remember something of his years as a knight of Camelot. Merlin has never been sure but there was something in the other man's eyes, in the anguish in his tone as he had said, "I'm so sorry,". Perhaps it was an apology that belonged more in that other life than this one, where they stood burning together.
"They never seem to know," he tells Morgana. "I thought maybe I was an exception, cursed to always remember. It's nice, to find that it's not quite the case."
"Even if it's me?" she asks ruefully, and then brushes over any answer he might give by asking, "What about him? Have you seen Arthur?"
"No." Merlin licks his lips and focuses his attention on breaking his croissant into pieces. "The dragon told me that he would come again when he was needed. I just assumed it was a one-time thing."
"You're different without him. Do you even remember what it was like, to be passionate about something? To know it was right down in the very heart of you, to have unshakable faith in it?" Again her smile is sad, she dips her head forward slightly. "I think I envied that most about you, Merlin. Every life I live I find myself hoping to know what that might be like: dying for something I really believe in."
"Don't romanticize it, Morgana," he says, then corrects himself, "Vesper. It's not glorious. Death is always just death."
"You both seemed like one half of a whole, to me," she says, ignoring him. "You should look for him, I think. It would be good for you."
"Didn't you hear me? Arthur isn't out there. He's not coming back until some distant point in the future when a place that doesn't really exist anymore suddenly needs him again. Then maybe this hellish cycle can finally stop. But until then it's just this: me, here on my own. Sometimes brushing paths with someone I remember from a different time."
"But what if he is out there?" she pushes, leaning forward even as she lowers her voice. "What if he's always been out there just like I've been, and Guinevere and Gawaine and the others? What if you just haven't bothered to look for him?"
Merlin clenches his jaw and turns away from her until she reaches out, resting her hands atop his own. "I'm so sorry, Merlin. I can't ever say it enough, and I know it doesn't mean anything now. But I can see that you're a different person than you ever were, and some of that change isn't for the better. What’s the harm?"
He takes a shuddering breath as he admits, "I don't know if I can take even one more moment of disappointed hope."
She kisses him chastely on the lips as she stands. "Think of it this way: if you keep going the way you are, there will be barely anything left of who you once were. How will Arthur recognize you, then?"
__________________________________________
The first time Merlin died it was nothing. He was tired and worn, had long-since forgotten Gaius and Guinevere and what words like 'friendship' and 'family' meant. He was the wild man of the forest and he knew only the squirrels and birds and creatures that lived there with him, knew the aching loss he felt when he looked out across the water to Avalon though he had forgotten why that view filled him with such sorrow.
One day he simply curled up on the sand and closed his eyes, breathed out the one word he would always remember for all of time and had a moment of peace and calm, of perfect bliss, of restoration.
So much love and so much joy had filled him up it had been almost unbearable, and just when he thought he might burst from it all he opened his eyes and gasped and stared blankly at the flushed woman who was holding him in her arms. "Shh," she told him. "Shh, everything is alright little one. My sweet little boy."
Confusion filled him as he gazed at her. The woman holding him was not Hunith, was not his mother and yet …
And yet…
Merlin remembered Arthur and Camelot, remembered Morgana and the dragon and Mordred. Every moment of it. "It's alright now," the woman was crooning to him even though it looked as if he should be the one whispering those words to her, exhausted and worn as she was, sitting propped upright by straw pillows. "Everything is alright."
He gripped her as hard as he could and realized his hands were small, so very small. That he was clutching only her index finger, that he was shriveled and tiny and brand new. He took a breath and screamed and screamed until the midwife had picked him up, soothing the woman who was and yet was not Merlin's mother, "He is simply hungry, do not fear."
Outside, spurred by his rage and his magic, a storm broke open on the town that was now his birthplace even if it was not Ealdor. Lightning pounded the earth as Merlin roared.
__________________________________________
Two agents usher him into Vauxhall Cross, (only two, which is mildly insulting given what he is capable of doing to an entire city with the mere blink of an eye). He follows obediently and sits on a black leather chair when one is offered. He even manages to pay attention when the head of the Secret Intelligence Service says, "You may call me 'M'."
As it turns out while Merlin's abilities with technology, most notably computers, is above and beyond anything SIS have encountered before they are not above being tracked. 'M' has an entire file on him. It is dark blue and leather-bound. It looks very nice and also terribly official, and it contains enough of his online movements to be damning.
"Once might very well be coincidence, Mister Boothroyd," she says. "But as you can see it's quite a bit more than once." Her primary concern, naturally, is the number of times he has slipped through the security of her organization. "What exactly were you looking for?"
"I don't know." He's telling her the truth but not the whole of it: he doesn't explain that even if he didn't know exactly what he was looking for he had hoped to recognize it when he saw it.
'M' has glinting sharp eyes and Merlin reads her history in the lines on her face, the tightness around her mouth as she looks at him. He doesn't need to use any magic to know that she views him as a threat with the potential to be a valuable asset. "Mister Boothroyd…"
"Please," he interrupts. "Call me 'Q'."
Some of the severity ekes from her expression and there's a flash of what might be amusement in her eyes. "Q," she says. "How would you feel about coming to work for the agency?"
This is how Merlin finds himself ensconced in a shadowy basement, working for MI6.
__________________________________________
Merlin is reborn again and again. He looks different and his name changes but be always remembers everything that went before. He always has magic and he's always waiting. Camelot's borders expand and shrink and expand, names of places change, rulers come and go but Arthur never does. Merlin dies and feels a brief lulling moment of bliss that fills and fills him up until he is about to burst and then he opens his eyes and it begins again: different, but always the same.
__________________________________________
Later, but not today, Vesper Lynd will send him a cryptic message shortly before dying for something that she believes in. Merlin's magic will come to the attention of his employer and he will be asked to pledge every ounce of himself to the defense and preservation of his country, as if he hasn't done all of that already.
Vauxhall Cross will explode and he'll be promoted and somehow, Merlin will find himself sitting in the National Gallery in front of a painting that always leaves him feeling melancholy. "What do you see?" he will ask. "I'm your new Quartermaster," he will say.
Beside him, 007 will respond: "You must be joking."
Later, but not today, Merlin will be standing in his subterranean office that has become his second home, staring at his open palm onto which his agent has just deposited a tiny radio. "What about the gun?" he'll call after Bond's retreating form.
"It's in Macau."
"You left it?"
"Don't worry. It's perfectly safe," Bond will assure him. "It's in the belly of a komodo."
"A komodo?" he will find himself shouting several hours later over a golden pint of frothy beer.
Beside him, Eve Moneypenny will toss her head back and laugh. "I've never seen you get this worked up over anything before, Q."
"I've never had an agent be such a prat!" he will snap. "It's like he thinks he's the king of bloody England when the truth is, he's just a … a clotpole!"
Until that time, however, Merlin has his magic and his own desk in Q-Branch, and the satisfaction of finally, after lifetimes spent merely passing the time, of finally doing something that he is passionate about.
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THE END ?