TAKEN (What's yours is Mine) - 2/6
Part One
Part Two
*
*
The words that had come from the speaker on his phone still echoed in Arthur’s brain as he hung up on autopilot. Merlin. Someone had Merlin -
Panic overrode his basic instinct’s he’d thought growing up with Uther Constance could never remove and he was running back towards the office harder than he’d run in years. Their lunch was scattered on the pavement behind him as Arthur ran up the street. He could barely hear above the sound of his brain on repeat - they have Merlin, someone has Merlin, they have Merlin - as he burst around the corner and came to a stop, staring at the front of his building. It loomed up over the sidewalk and sitting slumped on the footpath just outside the doors, was George.
The sound of his shoes on bitumen echoed in Arthur’s brain as he ran the distance over to their assistant.
“George,” he said, grabbing hold of the man, fumbling to catch his breath and retain at least a semblance of control.
“I’m afraid, Mr Dubois, that the building is rather out of our control at present,” George said with all the bluster of his normal speech despite the fact there was an unfocused glean in his eyes as he looked at Arthur.
“They said to give you this. I believe Master Merlin is still inside,” he said, pressing a fold of cloth into Arthur’s hands. Arthur took it and it only took a second to recognise the red scarf Merlin had stolen from him all those years ago, back when he was nothing but a smirk and a flash of black hair on security footage and a list of fraud and felony half a mile long.
It was still pinned with the Pendragon crest Arthur had given him last year in some half hearted joke to do with his possessive determination when it came to Merlin.
Knowing he wasn’t marked anymore, that he wasn’t wearing Arthur’s seal.
Somehow that made it all the more terrifying.
“Did they say what they want?” he croaked, looking back up at George and clutching the scarf tightly.
“Not at all, Sir. They did make it rather clear that you would be informed rather promptly, Sir.”
“And Merlin?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t see him, there were quite a number of them, and I’m afraid I was distracted by the fellow pointing a rather large gun in my general area. It did not take long before they arrived downstairs with that, however. It appears you may have been successful in teaching your partner the worth in laying low, Sir.”
“We can only hope,” Arthur croaked and glanced up at the building. There was nothing he could do on his own. If Merlin had surrendered then there was no chance that Arthur could break him free on his own if Merlin hadn’t tried. Despite appearances Merlin was much better at taking care of himself than he let on, a fact that had taken all of twelve months on the run for Arthur to properly comprehend.
“I need you to go home, George. Lay low, alright? I will call you when this is done. Until then, stay safe, all right?”
“Understood, sir,” George nodded and Arthur dragged the man to his feet. George shared a glance with him before he obeyed and started a slow stuttering walk up the alley towards the main street to find a taxi. Arthur needed to do the same. He had an hour. They’d given him an hour to do what he needed to do in order to obey them. Any normal person would have used that hour to call the cops if they’d been in the same position, if they’d been given the chance to find help without restriction. And these people knew who he was, they knew who he was which meant they knew his past and when they said he could find help, Arthur was almost certain they intended for him to call in the Knights. Leon and Lance and Elyan and Gwen. Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat. They should have been his own first instincts and a part of him mourned the loss. They couldn’t help him. They couldn’t help him ever again, not without recourse; he could never knowingly bestow upon them any more than he already had by jumping ship and switching sides.
No, his help lay on Merlin’s side of the fence.
He needed Gwaine and Percy and anyone else they could get their hands on. If he was lucky Gwaine would let him help them rescue Merlin without breaking any of his major bones or puncturing any internal organs. But there was no one else on the planet Arthur would entrust Merlin’s safety with than the duo Merlin had been working with prior to what Merlin called the Arthur Debacle.
For safety sake, Gwaine’s townhouse wasn’t far away and for an extra twenty quid even the safest Camelot cabbie was open to upping the speed limit and taking all the shortcuts.
But for all the time he saved getting from the office to Gwaine’s he wasted standing on the front doorstep feeling a moment of complete utter uselessness.
Merlin had become his everything, he had given up everyone else in his entire life for the criminal with the cheeky smile and taunting game they shared and he had become everything in Arthur’s life worth living and to lose that...
Arthur shuddered and turned back to the door with a returned vigour he couldn’t withhold. Arthur pounded on the front door until his fist was nearly numb. He could hear the swearing from Gwaine long before the long haired lothario actually opened the door.
“Hello Princess,” Gwaine smirked almost immediately, still all sarcastic drawl and arrogance. Arthur swallowed down the lump in his throat.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Someone’s got Merlin.”
Arthur watched as the arrogant smirk fell off Gwaine’s face and his expression scrambled for something other than fear. And that was the real price of Gwaine’s worth. He’d been in with Merlin for years. Years before Arthur found himself in Merlin’s bed, but Arthur had always been Merlin’s infatuation the entire time Gwaine and Merlin had been friends. They’d been more than that, once; this off and on relationship between jobs that was fuelled by the heady infatuation of sex and job-induced adrenaline. They’d been brilliant. Arthur could still remember the six months where Merlin had been everywhere. Where Merlin had gone from a little menace on the wanted list, into the top twenty and an order to ‘find him now, Dubois, right now’ ordered from the head of the Knights themselves. At the time Arthur had been infuriated, it had taken him months to figure out Merlin had found himself a partner (or two) and a partner he’d liked and stuck with. What was worse was that he’d never figured out who the partner was. He’d had pictures of Gwaine. Security footage from a museum heist they’d run together, but he’d been a face in the crowd and Arthur hadn’t known he’d found his man until after he’d left the Knights and Merlin had dragged him out of Camelot in the middle of the night and they hadn’t stopped until they’d reached an underground bachelor pad in upper Caerleon and he’d met Gwaine.
Percy had been in on that job, too, but Percy had been in on that job (and a number of others) in a way that was possibly worse than Gwaine. In that when Arthur had thought Merlin had suddenly learned how to forge paintings... that had been Percy and Percy alone. The man had never been in any footage at all. He hadn’t existed in Arthur’s files. But Percy was soft spoken and quietly hilarious and intelligent. Gwaine was brash and infuriating on purpose and never let Arthur forget that he hadn’t identified, let alone caught him.
But no matter how long he and Merlin had been sleeping together and no matter how long Arthur had listened to Gwaine berate Merlin for kidnapping your fucking Knight like a dick; do you want to get caught? - He was loyal and he cared for Merlin.
And Arthur could trust him with his life.
What was better - he could trust him with Merlin’s.
Arthur was silent as he watched the outrage clamour for space in Gwaine’s expression as Gwaine pushed himself off the doorframe.
“Fucking Christ in a bucket,” Gwaine swore, running a hand through his long, tousled hair and jogged across the room, leaving Arthur to close the door and follow him inside.
“How? Who told you?” he asked, throwing the questions over his shoulder sharply as he hurried up the hallway and then through a door and downwards, into the lower floor built into the hillside.
“I got the call twenty minutes ago. From what I can guess they surprised him in the office.”
“The office?” Gwaine stopped short and Arthur barely caught himself before he bumped into the other man. Gwaine narrowed his brow eyes and stared at Arthur.
“Download everything now, Princess,” he snarled. “Merlin’s supposed to be off base for another two days.”
“He came back early. Called me at twelve or so and told me to go and get him something to eat. I went to the bloody sandwich shop and by the time I get out I get a call off Merlin’s mobile. Someone else was on the other end. They were after me, Gwaine, and Merlin got caught instead.”
It must be the guilt Arthur couldn’t hide in his voice or the tense worry that was stiff in his shoulders but there was a moment where he was almost certain Gwaine was going to punch him in the face and Arthur wouldn’t stop him except for the very reason Gwaine stopped himself. Merlin.
“How long you got?”
“Just over half an hour before they call back and tell me what the hell they want.”
“And you got any idea what that might be, Princess?”
Arthur stopped and let his mind wander for the first time since he seized up after the call. He hadn’t a clue.
“No.”
“Then we start with the building then. Perce!” Gwaine shouted the last and on the other side of the room a hulking shadow moved into Arthur’s stronger field of sight. Percival looked anxious and not for the first time Arthur thanked the heavens that Merlin’s team were very much like the Knights had been - ready in an instant for all sorts of shite to go down. In fact, Merlin’s team were almost better. After all, their freedom often hinged on how fast they responded, the Knights only had their team pride on the line. Not their entire lives.
“On it,” Percy said as he turned his attention fully to the computer in front of him, his fingers dancing across the keyboard in similar fashion to how Arthur had seen Merlin’s. The screen in front of the other man scrolled with code, brilliant green against black before a second window opened and then a third and then, without warning, Arthur was suddenly staring at the main camera footage from the top corner of his office.
“Aaaand we’re up!” Gwaine crowed, slapping Percy on the back. Two pairs of eyes turned to Arthur after that but neither one of them said anything as he remained quiet, just looking. There were four figures within the room, three standing, dressed in black, two of which were stationary around the fourth, the first was pacing, back and forth his back to the camera. But framed in shot, sitting slumped in Arthur’s chair, was Merlin.
Arthur’s stomach jolted. It had been over a fortnight since he’d seen him, fifteen days since he’d pressed his fingers to Merlin’s skin and felt butterflies in his stomach like every time they touched. Since he’d kissed him and held him and watched his eyes flash in outright indignation.
It had been fifteen days and now Merlin was blocks away and unconscious, his head hanging forward and his body lax. From the angle they couldn’t see what had happened but from the two men standing either side of him it didn’t take much to put it all together.
“How are you seeing that? How?” he croaked, pointing at the screen. “Merlin swore to me it was a closed network. He had Gilli hardwire everything himself so it was.”
“It is a closed network, Princess,” Gwaine replied, rolling his eyes, but his shoulders were tense and Arthur’s fingers prickled. “Then how - “ he asked, suddenly feeling vulnerable and not appreciating it for a second.
“Merlin,” Gwaine answered, turning in his seat to look up at Arthur and he calmed, almost instinctively.
“There are two passwords encrypted into the network,” Percy supplied quietly. Looking a little guilty, which probably meant he had helped in some vague way. Like sitting in the second spinny chair and watching Merlin create the program. “When you type in one then you get the normal version. You type in the second, it keeps an external record of everything that happens in the system and it boots a hidden shortcut that when opened gives us access into the network.”
“So basically, if at any given time Merlin types in the wrong password he’s opening up my entire company records to you pair?”
“Don’t be such a drama queen, princess,” Gwaine replied, spinning in his chair and back to the input monitor where there were the thumbnails of every camera they’d built into PSC. At the time they’d been overly cautious, optimistic that they’d laid enough false trails; that they’d been fast enough, clever enough - that Arthur knew his team well enough to be safe. But Merlin had laid precautions and he’d laid more precautions than he’d told Arthur about and in that moment the secrecy hurt. Clenching his fingers tightly into the supple leather of Gwaine’s chair he stared at the large LED screens mounted on the wall above the desk. He could feel the two of them watching him.
It was Percival who broke the quiet.
“It’s a security measure that’s coming in valuably now, Arthur,” he said and Arthur could feel his soft calculating gaze watching him, like a warm weight.
Yeah, Arthur thought wryly, now I get to see when they shoot him.
He continued to focus on the screens, but that didn’t mean he missed the sharp look shared between Percival and Gwaine. Gwaine’s unhappy growl as he turned back to the screens didn’t help them either.
“You do remember the part where Merlin was a crook, right, Pendragon?” Gwaine asked, emphasising the alias Merlin had created for him, for them and Arthur scowled and looked down at him sharply.
“And what does that mean?”
“What that means is you have fucking backup plans for your backup plans. And right now, Merlin’s backup plans lets us in on them, alright? You might’ve gone soft in the last couple of years, but Merlin’s been keeping a sharp eye out for you, and I wouldn’t hazard three guesses on which of you those bastards came for.”
“Gwaine don’t,” Percival hushed but the damage had already been done. The blame had been laid and there was no taking it back. Not that Arthur could have let it go anyway. Gwaine’s words were the truth, after all, a truth he’d thought of himself. But when it was your own blame... it sounded worse coming from someone else, even someone like Gwaine. Merlin hadn’t been supposed to be back. He was supposed to be on the other side of the world still, protecting Arthur by dragging his old alias through a job or two, while Arthur stayed in Camelot, with their new life, their new world, representing their dual venture - Pendragon wasn’t just Arthur, but it was Arthur it was created to hide first and foremost. It was Arthur and Merlin,
“Merlin’s supposed to be on the other side of the world for another two days. He’s not supposed to be here, and you can guarantee that those bastards right there knew he was gone. They were there for Dubois here,” Gwaine raged and his expression was heated enough that Percy didn’t try and stop him and neither did Arthur. “They were here for him and Merlin’s gonna pay for it, so I suggest that Princess here better stop being so butthurt Merls thought well enough to stay two steps ahead and get his head in the game, cause Merlin’s relying on him now, not the other way around.”
Gwaine let out another disgruntled growl and got to his feet, his chair spinning on its axis as he stalked across the room.
“Where are you going?” Arthur growled and Gwaine shot him a dirty look.
“I’m getting the laptop.”
Neither Arthur nor Percy said a word as they listened to Gwaine stalking up the stairs, his feet heavy on the landing.
Arthur sighed and turned back to the screen, his stomach jolting uncomfortably again as he looked at Merlin. He couldn’t see enough of him, he needed to know everything. Everything about the people who had him, everything about what had happened; most importantly he needed to know why.
“Have faith in him, Arthur,” Percy said softly and Arthur knew he was following Arthur’s gaze. Merlin still hadn’t moved, not even a twitch of his fingers. Arthur’s fear didn’t lessen. He had faith in Merlin, he did. It was faith in himself he needed more of.
“I’ll have faith in him when he’s at home trying to rewire shortcuts into the microwave, not when he’s in the middle of my bloody building with a bunch of armed mercenaries intent of getting something out of me.”
“Now that’s where we need to focus, Arthur. What’s clear here, no matter what Merlin may have thrown into the mix by getting held hostage in your stead, is that you have something they want. If we can figure out what that is before they do, we have a greater chance of intercepting it and replicating a safe copy before we hand it over.”
Arthur glance down at his watch, there were eighteen minutes until they called.
“They’ll call with their demands in a little under twenty minutes.”
“Then we know what we’re dealing with then and when we do, we’ll figure it all out. Until then we search the room and see what we can figure out about these guys,” Percy said with a grim smile that Arthur returned. Percy’s pragmatism worked - whatever part of Arthur that had failed Merlin for the last half an hour disappeared and he braced himself against the back of Percy’s chair.
“You’re going to have to be my eyes, Percival; I can’t work Merlin’s system for anything.”
Percy chuckled wryly.
“Neither can Gwaine, but don’t tell him I said that. He thinks he’s got a handle on it. You should hear Merlin mumbling under his breath every time Gwaine gets his paws on it. It’s hilarious.”
Percy’s fingers on the keys were already moving and the second screen was scrolling through code faster than Arthur could keep track.
“Now, what can we see - “ Percy said, not really expecting an answer but this, this is what Arthur had been trained for. He had a job now, he had goals and access to information and he could use that.
“There are three upstairs, my guess is there’s more downstairs. Can you pull up the camera’s facing away from the entrance? That should have the best viewpoint.”
Percy typed and while he wasn’t as fast as Merlin, it didn’t take him long for the camera view to swap. He went through four angles before they found the right one and by then Arthur could hear Gwaine coming back down the stairs.
“Who the fuck are they?” Gwaine asked as Arthur stared at the second angle.
“Three upstairs plus Merlin, four downstairs. Can we bring up both cameras at once? Upstairs on that screen, downstairs on the second?” Arthur asked, pointing at two of the six monitors stretching across the wall. Merlin’s set up was ridiculous: substantial and brilliant, but ridiculous. The tech at the Knights Base was more advanced than what they had here, but Merlin made LED screens bought online, fibre optic cables and his own complex Operating System work to the same standards as Gwen’s system that was worth more than Arthur’s old house was marketed at.
“We got screen snapshots Perce? Throw em over and I’ll start running them through Merl’s database, see if we ain’t come across any of these blokes before,” Gwaine muttered, throwing himself down into his chair and opening the laptop he’d gone upstairs to fetch. That, Arthur recognised, it was the same layout OS that Merlin had created for him at the office: simple and easy, a blend between Windows 7 and Mac’s Snowleopard. Idiot Proof, is what Merlin had called it.
Merlin must have given Percy lessons on how to work hissystem, because the man did exactly what Gwaine had asked of him with little fuss. He wasn’t as fast as Merlin was, but Merlin had made computer programs into an art. It was his fun growing up. His mother had managed to get him a broken computer on one of their moves once and Merlin had told him how he’d spent the next year learning how to fix it, how to pull it apart and make it work. How he’d then turned to programming, learning new ways to make the battered old machine to do old things, learning old things to make the machine do new things - a complex circle of give and take that evolved with the computers and Merlin’s own frustrations with the world he had no say in. By the time he’d stumbled onto Arthur’s attention span he was so adept at computer programs and hacking that it had been the hacking that had made Arthur suspicious his target had an accomplice. At that point in time Arthur had spent weeks searching for someone who might have been working with Merlin, but no one had appeared. Merlin had gone underground after he’d hacked into a wireless security system and rerouted the feed entirely for long enough to break in and clean out a safe owned by a significant collector of antiquities. After that, when he surfaced again he actually did have a partner, but Arthur still hadn’t found him. That had been Gwaine. Nine months later there was also Percy and it would take another six months before Arthur would actually get his hands on Merlin. Except he’d only managed that because Merlin had come back to save his life. So in exchange Arthur had conveniently been elsewhere while Merlin had picked his handcuffs and disappeared.
Arthur watched as Percy’s fingers clicked against the keys and as he rolled through the footage in front of them, highlighting the clearest shots of their enemies faces and typing something again, only for the images to show up on Gwaine’s laptop.
The task kept their attention fixed as Gwaine opened Merlin’s database and submitted each of the seven photographs into the program and they all watched the little scrolling box in the bottom corner flashing with face after face so quickly only the computer had any idea who they were looking at.
They were all so consumed that when Arthur’s phone rang it came completely by surprise.
The phone buzzed on the table and automatically everyone’s eyes turned to it. Arthur set his jaw and he reached out and picked up the phone, answering and pressing loudspeaker in a fluid movement. Everyone else knew to keep their mouths shut, anyway.
“This is Arthur.”
“It’s been an hour, Arthur. Are you comfortable with your friends and confidants? ” the speaker buzzed and immediately set Arthur’s teeth on edge, he looked at the screen where the man on the phone was walking idly over to Merlin. Arthur grit his teeth.
“What do you want?”
“Straight to the point, I see. I like that, ” the man chuckled and came to a stop in front of Merlin. “Tell me, Arthur, how much do you value your business partner?”
Arthur knew he couldn’t give away the fact that they were watching, that he knew that the man he was talking to was bending over Merlin as he taunted Arthur, reaching out with his second hand and holding Merlin’s head up off his chest. He had to pretend he couldn’t see the purpling swollen skin over Merlin’s right cheek, the dark stain that could only be blood where the skin had broken.
“He is valuable to me,” Arthur grit out, determined to keep his voice steady, maintain control.
“How valuable?” the man asked and he let go of Merlin’s chin, Arthur watched as Merlin’s head lolled forward again, limp like a rag doll. “- because I have a very specific request of you, Arthur, and I will not hesitate a moment to teach you how very serious I am about completing it. Are you willing to bear his blood on your hands by not complying?”
The man turned away from Merlin, walking towards the camera again. Arthur
tightened his grasp on the phone.
“Tell me what you’re after.”
“Ah, so his life has a price, then? I had heard such good things about you, Arthur.”
“What do you want?”
“Back to business. I like you. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to meet as planned.”
“So tell me what you want, Merlin’s already in a situation that doesn’t concern him.”
“So honourable. Tell me, Arthur, do you remember all those names you scrawled through day after day working in that compound? Because there is one man I am very interested in. His name is Kil Gareth, he was a researcher for the Knights MRD. I want his file. Everything the Knights have on him, and maybe, just maybe, if I find what I’m looking for, then I’ll let your friend go. But if you fail, Arthur, I’m going to gut him and make you listen. You have until midnight. Get the file and if you have it when I call back, then we’ll discuss letting little Merlin here see sunlight again.”
The click of the phone call ending echoed in the space between the three of them. Arthur sighed and set the phone down. Just in time for Gwaine to smash the uncomfortable quiet with his special brand of abrasive annoyance.
“What the fuck is a MRD?”
Despite himself, Arthur’s lips twitched and in his head for a moment all he could think about was the way Merlin would always smile at Gwaine’s direct questions. All it took was a glance up at the monitor at Merlin’s unconscious body to set him back to rights.
“It stands for Magical Research Department. The Knights had one; it was shut down twenty five years ago or so. Back then Knights recruited magic users. It went so far as each unit had it’s own sorcerer, so that if it was ever needed, it could be used. They were trusted. Important. Then my father turned on them and since then they’ve been pushed further and further over the edge. The MR Department at the Knights used to develop magical aids, for the sorcerers and their units. Bombs, lock picks, shields - you name it. Magical weaponry. After my father deemed all sorcerers untrustworthy it was shut down and everything destroyed.
“If they want a file on a guy who worked for MRD, then there’s something he was looking into that they want.”
“And now you’re the one who has to get it,” Gwaine supplied, looking furious.
“And Merlin could be the one they want to use it,” Percival said quietly and both Arthur and Gwaine turned towards him so fast their necks cricked.
“What?”
“You heard me. Merlin’s powerful. He might not be on the register, but if he was, he’d be well up the scale. If they figure that out, then they could very well force him to do what it is they’re after. I mean, if any of them are sorcerers, which I’ll lay first bets and say that they are, anything that they’re gonna do is gonna be bigger if the magic’s bigger.”
“Fucking hell, didn’t think of that,” Gwaine swore, running a hand through his hair.
Arthur said nothing for a moment, instead he looked up at the monitor again. Merlin wouldn’t let them use him like that. Merlin wasn’t dangerous. He made a point of not being harmful to people. Sure, he stole their property - but it was never from anyone who couldn’t afford to lose it. He never harmed the guards or the owners. Hell, Merlin was the type who smuggled families into the Underground as soon as their names hit the Witchfinder’s database. Who helped them find their feet again and get a grip on the magic that had made them an outcast, so that they wouldn’t disappear into the system. He was the type to keep doing it even after he ran away with the Director of the Knights prodigal son. Merlin was a good person, a good person who had grown up in a bad world and he kept on being a good person despite the world he still lived in.
Arthur knew Merlin wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally - but the one thing
Arthur knew about Magic, was that sometimes it didn’t leave choices down to the person carrying them out. Magic could make Merlin do something dangerous and Merlin would spend the rest of his life regretting not being strong enough to stop it.
“We need to have faith in Merlin,” Arthur croaked and felt the two of them watching him.
“We have faith that Merlin will do whatever it takes to stall them on their end. We need to move on our end.”
“And what do we do, Princess? You know that building of yours - we aint got the resources or the people to storm that place. There’s seven of them in there, besides and Merls is out for the count.”
“We’re not going in. We’re getting him out. And right now, that means getting this file on fucking Kil Gareth and handing it over.”
“You want to get the file?”
“We have to. We don’t have anything else to do. They don’t want anything else. They have Merlin and they want a file or they’ll kill him. I’m not going to argue. I’m going to get him the file with or without the help of you two lackeys.”
“Alright Princess, calm it down,” Gwaine said, his voice patronising but he counteracted it by turning back to the computer.
“Fuck - “ the word was out of his mouth before Percy could answer and the joviality was gone completely.
Arthur turned to face him but there was movement on the monitors that stopped him from leaning over Gwaine’s shoulder and he was pretty sure he was looking at the same thing anyway.
Arthur watched in abject horror as the two goons either side of Merlin hacked at the ropes binding Merlin to the chair. Between the two of them they hoisted him out of it like he was a rag doll. His body was limp and weightless in their grasp and Arthur had to turn away from the screens to stop himself doing something reckless and stupid - like smashing the monitors.
“They’re leaving PSC,” Percy murmured.
None of them spoke for a long moment, just watching as Merlin disappeared out of the first camera and moments later reappeared in the second. As they carried him out of the building the three of them clearly saw the shadowing bruise up the side of Merlin’s face and it stirred the anger bubbling in the pit of Arthur’s gut.
“We find this file. Screw it, we find this fucking Kil Gareth himself if it’s easier and we get him back.”
“Aye aye,” Gwaine replied and turned to the laptop. “I’ll check Merl’s database, see if he’s in there.”
“Percy? Merlin said he had access to my files at the Knights. He said he had a backdoor into the system. Can you find it? It might be this simple, but I doubt it. I need you to check anyway.”
Percy nodded and turned back to the main monitor and started typing.
*
There was a crick in Merlin’s neck when he made the first circle into consciousness. There was a crick in his neck and there was something keeping his hands bound. His fingers twitched and the spasm carried up his arm and into his aching shoulders. His eyelids were heavy and refused to obey his command to open the first time. He tried to lift his head but the movement triggered something in the darkness and with a groan that echoed far too loud in his own ears he slumped back into unconsciousness.
He didn’t know how long it was when he made the second lap, but something had changed in the time frame because lifting his head didn’t send him spiralling back into the darkness again. The ache in his shoulders hadn’t lessened and as he took stock of himself he couldn’t quite place a reason for them hurting.
It didn’t take particularly long for him to realise that he wasn’t alone. His magic was fizzing under his skin, burning merrily away and screaming to be let out and play. It heightened his senses, driving them outward and he could practically feel the shift in the air as the person moved somewhere behind him, the faint warmth of their own magic.
Slowly opening his eyes he let the light, soft and grey as it was, filter into his vision at a snails pace until it no longer made him flinch. His head throbbed and the skin on his wrists itched under the burn of the rope. His legs weren’t bound, but given the circumstances and the debilitating senses of his body, he knew he was in no condition to even make an escape if he wanted to. Twisting in his chair he made a good show, testing the give of his constraints, testing the give and take of his body. Neither gave him much to work with and he was left again with a thump in his temples and a bruising ache in his chest and shoulders.
Behind him the person shifted and there was a faint click of sound that Merlin felt justifiable to acknowledge. He twisted his body as far as it would go and wound up craning his neck more than anything.
“Who are you - ?” he croaked before he’d even finished talking. It had been a bad idea because the words cut off on his tongue as he saw who was sitting across from him.
“Come now, Merlin, is this really necessary?” Morgana’s lip curled in imitation of what could have once been a pretty smile. There was a sharpness about her that was all Merlin had known. She had been forced to harden herself, and he’d been sad about that part of her the first time they’d met. But then that outer shell had excluded her, shielded her in a way that she probably shouldn’t have embraced. She’d cut herself off from the world, the good parts of it, anyway, and in the end something had... warped. Turned sour.
“Morgana,” he acknowledged and she laughed. A tinkering sound that had a sinister sneer about it.
“I must say, Merlin, it’s good to see you. Not exactly like this. You’ve been careful about this, clearly. When I heard a rumour all those years ago I thought ‘no, not Merlin’. But it appears I was wrong. You with Dubois? Shocking, really.”
“Is it?”
“Is it shocking to find me here?”
“No. Not at all.”
“I thought as much. But there was a little bit of shock there, Merlin. I saw it. Tell me, did you enjoy your little jaunt with Alvarr and his friends? Because I really must congratulate them on their handiwork; it’s much nicer than I’d hoped to achieve on my own if I ever ran into you on the street like I thought I might. It had always seemed so futile to try and corner you. After all, Arthur tried for so long and what did that get him? He disappeared off the face of the earth two and a half years ago with you.”
“You had a tendency to underestimate me.”
“I know. Which is what makes this so wonderful. I had a plan, but Alvarr brings you straight to me instead. I have to say, this isn’t quite how I expected things to go. But, I’ve thought this through. I have had to make some adjustments in the last couple of hours, but I must say it will be worth it in the long run.”
“What do you want, Morgana?” Merlin spat, watching her as she pushed herself up off the chair. Morgana had always had an air of control. She was a dangerous intimidator, a terrible flirt and stunning all wrapped into one being; she was unstoppable when it came to the type who preferred breasts. Merlin had never been the type and her wares had never quite worked in her favour, which had, in turn, made her both curious and constantly mad at him. A factor only intensified by the fact that he was much better at magic than she was. He was stronger - higher up the Register Scale when they’d tested themselves just for fun one day, when they’d been stupid and high and delirious from tormenting their chasers. But Morgana was nothing if not persistent and she had studied, tested, twisted her magic into doing things Merlin had never tried - had never thought of. Magic had been a toy for him, used when he desired or had need. Morgana had used hers constantly, protected by the simple basis that she had a father who refused to acknowledge her - especially when it came to the magic he despised.
It had caught up with her, once, and Merlin had come to her aid - but everything had gone south and it had never been the same. He hadn’t seen her in years - closer to four than three - and something had changed. She was malicious; he could see it in her eyes.
“You know what they used to call you, Merlin? Our Saviour. If anyone could fix this, it was you. You, who grew up all over Albion, your mother dragging you through every known Magic Users home in the country. You, who defied logic, who defied grading and boundaries and everything that restricted the rest of us, but what did you put yourself to? Shagging Arthur Dubois, my bastard half brother. Hiding him from the world and thinking of everyone else second. You let us down, Merlin. Let us down when we needed you. So I found a way, a way to help us. Save us all. And you know what it did? It lead right back to you; right back to Arthur Dubois and Uther Constance. Back to the ban itself.”
“Whatever it is, Morgana, you can’t win.”
“Oh but I can, because it’s very simple, Merlin. Either Arthur does what I tell him or I kill you. Or you do what I tell you, otherwise I’ll kill Arthur. Either way, Merlin, I’ll have my way. I will have my way with this.”
“And what way is that?” he snarled, pulling at the ropes binding him.
“Nuh uh, uh,” Morgana tutted, her lips curling into a smirk once again as she leant over him, one hand braced on either of his bound wrists and her nails digging into his skin. Her eyes were bright, fever bright, almost and barely inches away from his face.
“All in good time, Merlin,” she said, squeezing his arms once for good measure before standing straight again, peering down at him like he was a bug.
“You see, Merlin, as you pointed out - I was waiting for Arthur, today. It was Arthur Alvarr was meant to find - Arthur who I was going to have the pleasure of breaking today, waiting until you returned from your silly little sojourn over the pond leading those foolish Knights of Arthurs away from Camelot. Without Arthur to guide them they’re like soulless sheep, aren’t they? They lost their drive when you took their leader. But it doesn’t matter. That’s in the past, isn’t it? It’s today you have to worry about.”
Merlin narrowed his gaze as he followed her slow steady walk back across the room. Her boots clicking on the cement like a defined point. She stopped at a table, barely taller than her waist, a stack of drawers in stainless steel. Morgana threw Merlin a look over her shoulder and the only emotion Merlin could place on it was glee.
“You see - “ she pulled the drawer open - “While it was meant to be Arthur here today, I am easily adaptable and I still get my fun.”
She slammed the top drawer closed and from his angle, Merlin couldn’t see what she’d taken out until she turned back to face him and started that slow, steady walk back across the room. There, in each of her hands was a thick black metal cuff. There were no links strung between them, just cold black metal and Merlin felt his first flicker of fear.
“You know what these are, Merlin?” she taunted, holding them up so the light flickered against them, the shadows dancing like flickering flames.
“There aren’t many made for the higher grades. They don’t know how. I studied it, you know. They have to study the magic involved in order to appropriately match the grade, and well, the higher grades don’t like to sit still and let themselves get bound, do they? One blast of power and they’re gone. But these? These were made for the higher grades. Like you and me.”
Merlin stared at the cuff Morgana was holding in her right hand. He couldn’t tear his gaze away and couldn’t quite hold down the fear that was bubbling up inside him. His head was fuzzy and his magic still wouldn’t obey him properly. He didn’t have the time or capacity to stop this and he only had a second before Morgana held him down. He watched in horror as the cuffs opened. He struggled against the ropes holding him down, but against Morgana he had no hope. Not against this.
“Don’t - “ he croaked and he saw her feral smile before he felt icy metal against his skin and the first awful click as it closed down around his wrist. The cold was immediate. It travelled up his arm, through his bones, deep into him. This icy chill that hurt, that seemed to overcome the fizzing warmth of his magic. Reality seemed to disconnect and only slammed back into place for a split second as Morgana closed the second cuff around his other wrist and the same feeling travelled through the other side of him until it consumed him. His entire body felt ice cold, from the inside out. It felt frozen and heavy and the familiar warm buzzing was gone. A keening noise stuck in his throat and somewhere he could hear someone else - saying something, laughing, smiling - something he couldn’t place. The world was suddenly too small, too heavy and he was so cold.
That noise tore through him again, wordless, but a part of him. The world felt dim and tiny, nothing beyond the heavy weight of his limbs.
He could hear muffled sounds beyond it but they were unimportant and incomprehensible. He was entirely lost in himself, in the cold, sharp disorientation.
Time smeared across his consciousness like a blur. He didn’t know how long it had been since the cuffs had closed but it was too long, regardless. His limbs were useless and his whole body burned, like ice freezing everything from the outside in.
“It’ll clear, Merlin, I promise.”
*
“Perce? Have you found anything?” Arthur asked. Percy’s look of concentration pinched for a moment before the large man sighed and turned to face Arthur.
“I’ve looked everywhere I can, but I’m with Gwaine. There’s no mention of Kil Gareth in Merlin’s system. Worse still, there’s nothing on him in the main Knights database. There may be something in the depths of the High Security stuff, but Merlin’s got back doors in security layers that shouldn’t be possible looking at the coding of them. I’m no expert - but if Kil Gareth’s in the system he did something that they’re doing everything they’ve got to protect their info. Something even Merlin couldn’t hack.”
Arthur’s stomach dropped. Damn.
“I feared as much.”
“And what the bloody hell does that mean, Princess?” Gwaine growled, spinning in his chair to look at Arthur, his eyebrows pinched and his mouth curved in a frown. Arthur sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“Rumour has it that after the magical reforms went through, my father had everything we had on anything magical removed from easy access. You need Directors clearance to get anywhere near the vault. It’s not digital - it’s all hard copy. If there’s anything left on Gareth, it’s there.”
“And where’s this vault then?”
“Basement level of the Knights compound.”
“And what, you’re going to walk in and try and get it, then? Is that the plan?”
“It is now,” Arthur said, watching the sarcasm drop from Gwaine’s face.
“Arthur - “ Percy brokered but Arthur couldn’t listen. He pushed away from the two seats and the men sitting in them.
“You can’t be serious, Dubois!” Gwaine crowed, the edge of seriousness back in his voice.
“You have any idea how much effort Merlin’s put in to make sure that bloody place has no idea where you are and you’re just going to walk in and get a file without being seen?”
“Unless you think you can do it, Gwaine? It’s the only thing I can think of. Because like I said, there’s no digital copy of that file. If there was Merlin would have it on his bloody system and he’d have found it years ago. The fact is, we need to get it. We need that file. I won’t sit back and do nothing when there’s something i can do.”
“Arthur, Gwaine’s right. You’re going to walk into the Knight’s Compound. That’s paramount to suicide. You’re Blacklisted,” Percy said simply, in that way he had of stating the obvious that brokered no anger against him and his easy compassion.
“And you don’t think I know that? What else do you want me to do? Let them have him? Give up?”
“That’s not what we’re saying.”
‘Then what are you saying? As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only one who can do this. I know the layout. I know what to do, how to stay unnoticed. I know the blind spots. I know the security. I know the risk. Now, are you going to help me or are you going to just sit there and argue?”
Arthur folded his arms and he watched as the two of them glanced at each other and crumbled under the pressure of his stubborn resolution. He’d never had to really face them down before. They had always been a team, and strangely, it had always been Merlin the three of them had looked to for guidance. Merlin had been their rallying point. This time he still was, in a way. Instead he was the reason for their rallying. He was still integral; more so than ever, if anything.
“What do you need, Arthur?” Percy asked. Gwaine was gripping his chair, leaning back into it and scowling. He very clearly wasn’t happy with the outcome, which Arthur knew had nothing to do with Arthur’s fate, so much as Merlin’s reaction if it all went downhill and he wound up caught. It would be Merlin that Gwaine would have to deal with, and despite his determination to go through with it with or without their help, Arthur wasn’t liking the idea of telling Merlin that he had essentially gone into the belly of the beast. Gwaine had been right - Merlin had spent the better part of the last two and a half years trying to keep Arthur safe after they made a run for it, and now, Arthur was about to go walking into headquarters like nothing had happened. It was paramount to suicide - but he had to do it.
“I need schematics of the building - I know Merlin had them, he taunted me more than once with the intel. I need a list of everyone with high clearance on site, and I need to know the exact security system they have running. It’s been two and a half years - they upgrade more often than Merlin does socks.”
“On it,” Percy said, spinning back to the screens and starting to type. Gwaine, on the other hand, stared at him a moment longer, his gaze fixed and angry. Arthur waited him out, keeping his gaze steady and a beat later he turned back to the laptop and murmured to Percy quiet enough that Arthur couldn’t make out the words.
Arthur watched them for a moment, feeling the wall between them and himself start to grow once again. It had been near on impenetrable those first few weeks after Merlin dragged him halfway across the country to hide him from the Knights. They’d run to Gwaine’s because Gwaine had never been able to turn Merlin away and never would. But while Gwaine had put up with Merlin’s infatuation with Arthur in the field, bringing home the man had been one step too far. Arthur had spent the first week locked in a room upstairs, a room far different to the one they slept in here, in a different house a couple of hundred miles further north. It had been impossible to escape, even for someone of Arthur’s calibre, schooled by the best in the country, raised on martial arts instead of football, science textbooks instead of fairytales, language tapes instead of pop music. Part of it had been his own doing, the scouts had been his idea, the cadets - but as a whole he had been aware from a young age just what his father did for the country and he had been desperate to emulate the man. He had tried his hardest in every facet of his behaviour to meet those standards his father had never actually set but Arthur had been incapable of meeting, desperate to join the Knights, the best of the best. It had been the greatest day of his life when he had qualified, when he had been registered. His first grading had set him two teams higher than his father had been, but Arthur had never quite been sure it was enough.
The work, when he got to it, had been brilliant. It had sustained him in a way that he hadn’t felt before. He felt important, and while he hadn’t followed his father’s aim for him, down the Special Ops route - dealing with magic users, terrorists and high danger risks, there had been something about the white collar crime, the thieves and con artists that had excited him, that had tweaked his brain. People who didn’t hurt people for the sake of hurting them, who didn’t like hurting people - who didn’t kill, that had been something he couldn’t turn away from. There had been some hope to them, the cases, as strange as it sounded. It had put him in the middle of paperwork piles full of petty people trying to get ahead, deceiving people that trusted them, that they hated, that had something they wanted.
It wasn’t a high profile job and he’d copped flack for it. For those who knew who his father was, Uther Constance, the Director of MDD, Magical Defence Division. It was a division that very little knew specifics about, but was commonly known. They were the Unspeakables, the name stolen from those popular Potter books and the irony of it for those who didn’t know what the division did, did not pass Arthur by. His father’s hatred of Magic Users was strange and all consuming and Arthur hadn’t quite understood it. It hadn’t mattered much until he’d met Merlin, really met him, face to face. Merlin had been in the middle of a job, a job Arthur had thought was just smuggling of 17th Century sculpture.
What it had turned out to be, was a small family Merlin was helping smuggle across the country because their youngest son, a boy not four years old, had started levitating things while he laughed. He couldn’t control it and word had reached the Witchfinder that there was something strange about little Bran. Arthur had run headfirst into exactly what happened to families who started showing signs of abnormal behaviour and the risks those families took in order to escape that fate. The danger that people put themselves in to help them. People, surprisingly, like Merlin, the young smiling criminal Arthur had been chasing for years up and down the country and even over into England and Wales. Arthur had chased Emrys to that warehouse, but instead he’d found Merlin for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Arthur would meet him long enough face to face the next time to exchange half a conversation. Twice more and Merlin would save his life and drive himself so far under Arthur’s skin he wasn’t sure that he would ever get Merlin out.
And considering the situation he was in now, he knew he never wanted to lose that feeling.
Leaving the two of them typing like they were going to put their fingers through the keyboards, Arthur took up the stairs, past the first floor and up into the second, where there were four bedrooms and a bathroom.
Heading down the hall to the last one his fingers itched as he reached for the handle. Pushing the feeling down he opened the door and went inside. It was exactly the same as it had been when they were last here - god, four weeks ago now? Five? He wasn’t sure, but the déjà vu was enough, anyway. Gwaine had a girl who came through once a week to put things in order, so the room wasn’t anywhere near the condition it had been in when they’d left, but he could still vaguely feel the good cotton sheets under his fingers, the slick feel of Merlin’s hair and his snickering laugh, the burn of his kisses and the heat of his skin. There was a dent on the wall they’d put there from the bed head hitting the wall and the window didn’t quite close after they’d broken the hinge months ago.
But he wasn’t there for nostalgia, so he forced himself to cross the distance to the closet and open it. It was full of clothes, bursting with different outfits that were either the work clothes of a prolific stripper or someone who couldn’t hold down a job. They were the only two semi-legal options Arthur had ever been able to come up with when he’d first opened the door. There were guard uniforms, delivery coats and shirts, pressed trousers and black socks, doctors coats, suits and shirts and everything in between. Arthur had no idea how it all fit, but as he pulled out a folded white shirt out of a stack of them on the top shelf, he eyed the tag and low and behold it fit his own measurements. Merlin, somehow, had a plan for everything.
Yet, somehow, they’d never quite planned for something like this.
Pulling out a set of pressed trousers Arthur started to change. He needed to look like he belonged and while the quality of the shirt was nothing on what he used to wear when he was a Knight, it wouldn’t really matter. All he had to do was look like he belonged, like he was meant to be walking those halls and not running away from them.
He was going to need some sort of distraction to get through the main gate, he could swipe an ID badge for the actual screening, but to make sure the guy at the front wasn’t looking at the monitor itself, he was going to need something to keep him occupied for a moment and not pay any more attention other than whether or not the machine dinged or beeped at him.
“I’ve been waiting for the day sleeping with you caught up with him, Dubois.”
Arthur startled, genuinely surprised to hear Gwaine’s voice. He hadn’t heard him on the stairs or in the hall at all. Covering himself, he smoothed the fresh shirt over his shoulders and looked up at the man, who was lounging in the doorway scowling at him.
“I’ve been waiting for the day that it came back to bite him, and I’m just as bloody pissed at you as I thought I would be, and I have to say, I don’t quite trust you, that you’re up for just walking into that nest of vipers. It smells fishy to me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Well it does. I’ve spent the last two and a half years watching you. I’ve spent the last year starting to think maybe, just maybe, I might have got it wrong. Maybe Merls is right about you. But this? This ain’t right.”
“I’ll get him back, Gwaine.”
“I damn well hope you do, cause I’m giving you fair warning. You might have spent the last two and a half years undercover or some shit. This might be your play, I don’t know. All I know is that you did something that made Merls trust you and I trust Merlin. But know this, you might be the son of Uther Constance. You might be the best Albion’s ever bloody trained and god damn Merlin thinks so, but I’m telling you, if Merlin don’t come out of this. Or if it ends up that you’ve been playing him like a fiddle, I’m gonna hunt you down, Dubois, and nothings gonna protect you. You got me?”
“I understand,” he replied and watched the sharp anger recede, just a little, out of Gwaine’s eyes.
“Good,” the man finished and disappeared back down the hall.
Arthur breathed a sigh of relief and fixed his collar.
Part Three
Part Two
*
*
The words that had come from the speaker on his phone still echoed in Arthur’s brain as he hung up on autopilot. Merlin. Someone had Merlin -
Panic overrode his basic instinct’s he’d thought growing up with Uther Constance could never remove and he was running back towards the office harder than he’d run in years. Their lunch was scattered on the pavement behind him as Arthur ran up the street. He could barely hear above the sound of his brain on repeat - they have Merlin, someone has Merlin, they have Merlin - as he burst around the corner and came to a stop, staring at the front of his building. It loomed up over the sidewalk and sitting slumped on the footpath just outside the doors, was George.
The sound of his shoes on bitumen echoed in Arthur’s brain as he ran the distance over to their assistant.
“George,” he said, grabbing hold of the man, fumbling to catch his breath and retain at least a semblance of control.
“I’m afraid, Mr Dubois, that the building is rather out of our control at present,” George said with all the bluster of his normal speech despite the fact there was an unfocused glean in his eyes as he looked at Arthur.
“They said to give you this. I believe Master Merlin is still inside,” he said, pressing a fold of cloth into Arthur’s hands. Arthur took it and it only took a second to recognise the red scarf Merlin had stolen from him all those years ago, back when he was nothing but a smirk and a flash of black hair on security footage and a list of fraud and felony half a mile long.
It was still pinned with the Pendragon crest Arthur had given him last year in some half hearted joke to do with his possessive determination when it came to Merlin.
Knowing he wasn’t marked anymore, that he wasn’t wearing Arthur’s seal.
Somehow that made it all the more terrifying.
“Did they say what they want?” he croaked, looking back up at George and clutching the scarf tightly.
“Not at all, Sir. They did make it rather clear that you would be informed rather promptly, Sir.”
“And Merlin?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t see him, there were quite a number of them, and I’m afraid I was distracted by the fellow pointing a rather large gun in my general area. It did not take long before they arrived downstairs with that, however. It appears you may have been successful in teaching your partner the worth in laying low, Sir.”
“We can only hope,” Arthur croaked and glanced up at the building. There was nothing he could do on his own. If Merlin had surrendered then there was no chance that Arthur could break him free on his own if Merlin hadn’t tried. Despite appearances Merlin was much better at taking care of himself than he let on, a fact that had taken all of twelve months on the run for Arthur to properly comprehend.
“I need you to go home, George. Lay low, alright? I will call you when this is done. Until then, stay safe, all right?”
“Understood, sir,” George nodded and Arthur dragged the man to his feet. George shared a glance with him before he obeyed and started a slow stuttering walk up the alley towards the main street to find a taxi. Arthur needed to do the same. He had an hour. They’d given him an hour to do what he needed to do in order to obey them. Any normal person would have used that hour to call the cops if they’d been in the same position, if they’d been given the chance to find help without restriction. And these people knew who he was, they knew who he was which meant they knew his past and when they said he could find help, Arthur was almost certain they intended for him to call in the Knights. Leon and Lance and Elyan and Gwen. Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat. They should have been his own first instincts and a part of him mourned the loss. They couldn’t help him. They couldn’t help him ever again, not without recourse; he could never knowingly bestow upon them any more than he already had by jumping ship and switching sides.
No, his help lay on Merlin’s side of the fence.
He needed Gwaine and Percy and anyone else they could get their hands on. If he was lucky Gwaine would let him help them rescue Merlin without breaking any of his major bones or puncturing any internal organs. But there was no one else on the planet Arthur would entrust Merlin’s safety with than the duo Merlin had been working with prior to what Merlin called the Arthur Debacle.
For safety sake, Gwaine’s townhouse wasn’t far away and for an extra twenty quid even the safest Camelot cabbie was open to upping the speed limit and taking all the shortcuts.
But for all the time he saved getting from the office to Gwaine’s he wasted standing on the front doorstep feeling a moment of complete utter uselessness.
Merlin had become his everything, he had given up everyone else in his entire life for the criminal with the cheeky smile and taunting game they shared and he had become everything in Arthur’s life worth living and to lose that...
Arthur shuddered and turned back to the door with a returned vigour he couldn’t withhold. Arthur pounded on the front door until his fist was nearly numb. He could hear the swearing from Gwaine long before the long haired lothario actually opened the door.
“Hello Princess,” Gwaine smirked almost immediately, still all sarcastic drawl and arrogance. Arthur swallowed down the lump in his throat.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Someone’s got Merlin.”
Arthur watched as the arrogant smirk fell off Gwaine’s face and his expression scrambled for something other than fear. And that was the real price of Gwaine’s worth. He’d been in with Merlin for years. Years before Arthur found himself in Merlin’s bed, but Arthur had always been Merlin’s infatuation the entire time Gwaine and Merlin had been friends. They’d been more than that, once; this off and on relationship between jobs that was fuelled by the heady infatuation of sex and job-induced adrenaline. They’d been brilliant. Arthur could still remember the six months where Merlin had been everywhere. Where Merlin had gone from a little menace on the wanted list, into the top twenty and an order to ‘find him now, Dubois, right now’ ordered from the head of the Knights themselves. At the time Arthur had been infuriated, it had taken him months to figure out Merlin had found himself a partner (or two) and a partner he’d liked and stuck with. What was worse was that he’d never figured out who the partner was. He’d had pictures of Gwaine. Security footage from a museum heist they’d run together, but he’d been a face in the crowd and Arthur hadn’t known he’d found his man until after he’d left the Knights and Merlin had dragged him out of Camelot in the middle of the night and they hadn’t stopped until they’d reached an underground bachelor pad in upper Caerleon and he’d met Gwaine.
Percy had been in on that job, too, but Percy had been in on that job (and a number of others) in a way that was possibly worse than Gwaine. In that when Arthur had thought Merlin had suddenly learned how to forge paintings... that had been Percy and Percy alone. The man had never been in any footage at all. He hadn’t existed in Arthur’s files. But Percy was soft spoken and quietly hilarious and intelligent. Gwaine was brash and infuriating on purpose and never let Arthur forget that he hadn’t identified, let alone caught him.
But no matter how long he and Merlin had been sleeping together and no matter how long Arthur had listened to Gwaine berate Merlin for kidnapping your fucking Knight like a dick; do you want to get caught? - He was loyal and he cared for Merlin.
And Arthur could trust him with his life.
What was better - he could trust him with Merlin’s.
Arthur was silent as he watched the outrage clamour for space in Gwaine’s expression as Gwaine pushed himself off the doorframe.
“Fucking Christ in a bucket,” Gwaine swore, running a hand through his long, tousled hair and jogged across the room, leaving Arthur to close the door and follow him inside.
“How? Who told you?” he asked, throwing the questions over his shoulder sharply as he hurried up the hallway and then through a door and downwards, into the lower floor built into the hillside.
“I got the call twenty minutes ago. From what I can guess they surprised him in the office.”
“The office?” Gwaine stopped short and Arthur barely caught himself before he bumped into the other man. Gwaine narrowed his brow eyes and stared at Arthur.
“Download everything now, Princess,” he snarled. “Merlin’s supposed to be off base for another two days.”
“He came back early. Called me at twelve or so and told me to go and get him something to eat. I went to the bloody sandwich shop and by the time I get out I get a call off Merlin’s mobile. Someone else was on the other end. They were after me, Gwaine, and Merlin got caught instead.”
It must be the guilt Arthur couldn’t hide in his voice or the tense worry that was stiff in his shoulders but there was a moment where he was almost certain Gwaine was going to punch him in the face and Arthur wouldn’t stop him except for the very reason Gwaine stopped himself. Merlin.
“How long you got?”
“Just over half an hour before they call back and tell me what the hell they want.”
“And you got any idea what that might be, Princess?”
Arthur stopped and let his mind wander for the first time since he seized up after the call. He hadn’t a clue.
“No.”
“Then we start with the building then. Perce!” Gwaine shouted the last and on the other side of the room a hulking shadow moved into Arthur’s stronger field of sight. Percival looked anxious and not for the first time Arthur thanked the heavens that Merlin’s team were very much like the Knights had been - ready in an instant for all sorts of shite to go down. In fact, Merlin’s team were almost better. After all, their freedom often hinged on how fast they responded, the Knights only had their team pride on the line. Not their entire lives.
“On it,” Percy said as he turned his attention fully to the computer in front of him, his fingers dancing across the keyboard in similar fashion to how Arthur had seen Merlin’s. The screen in front of the other man scrolled with code, brilliant green against black before a second window opened and then a third and then, without warning, Arthur was suddenly staring at the main camera footage from the top corner of his office.
“Aaaand we’re up!” Gwaine crowed, slapping Percy on the back. Two pairs of eyes turned to Arthur after that but neither one of them said anything as he remained quiet, just looking. There were four figures within the room, three standing, dressed in black, two of which were stationary around the fourth, the first was pacing, back and forth his back to the camera. But framed in shot, sitting slumped in Arthur’s chair, was Merlin.
Arthur’s stomach jolted. It had been over a fortnight since he’d seen him, fifteen days since he’d pressed his fingers to Merlin’s skin and felt butterflies in his stomach like every time they touched. Since he’d kissed him and held him and watched his eyes flash in outright indignation.
It had been fifteen days and now Merlin was blocks away and unconscious, his head hanging forward and his body lax. From the angle they couldn’t see what had happened but from the two men standing either side of him it didn’t take much to put it all together.
“How are you seeing that? How?” he croaked, pointing at the screen. “Merlin swore to me it was a closed network. He had Gilli hardwire everything himself so it was.”
“It is a closed network, Princess,” Gwaine replied, rolling his eyes, but his shoulders were tense and Arthur’s fingers prickled. “Then how - “ he asked, suddenly feeling vulnerable and not appreciating it for a second.
“Merlin,” Gwaine answered, turning in his seat to look up at Arthur and he calmed, almost instinctively.
“There are two passwords encrypted into the network,” Percy supplied quietly. Looking a little guilty, which probably meant he had helped in some vague way. Like sitting in the second spinny chair and watching Merlin create the program. “When you type in one then you get the normal version. You type in the second, it keeps an external record of everything that happens in the system and it boots a hidden shortcut that when opened gives us access into the network.”
“So basically, if at any given time Merlin types in the wrong password he’s opening up my entire company records to you pair?”
“Don’t be such a drama queen, princess,” Gwaine replied, spinning in his chair and back to the input monitor where there were the thumbnails of every camera they’d built into PSC. At the time they’d been overly cautious, optimistic that they’d laid enough false trails; that they’d been fast enough, clever enough - that Arthur knew his team well enough to be safe. But Merlin had laid precautions and he’d laid more precautions than he’d told Arthur about and in that moment the secrecy hurt. Clenching his fingers tightly into the supple leather of Gwaine’s chair he stared at the large LED screens mounted on the wall above the desk. He could feel the two of them watching him.
It was Percival who broke the quiet.
“It’s a security measure that’s coming in valuably now, Arthur,” he said and Arthur could feel his soft calculating gaze watching him, like a warm weight.
Yeah, Arthur thought wryly, now I get to see when they shoot him.
He continued to focus on the screens, but that didn’t mean he missed the sharp look shared between Percival and Gwaine. Gwaine’s unhappy growl as he turned back to the screens didn’t help them either.
“You do remember the part where Merlin was a crook, right, Pendragon?” Gwaine asked, emphasising the alias Merlin had created for him, for them and Arthur scowled and looked down at him sharply.
“And what does that mean?”
“What that means is you have fucking backup plans for your backup plans. And right now, Merlin’s backup plans lets us in on them, alright? You might’ve gone soft in the last couple of years, but Merlin’s been keeping a sharp eye out for you, and I wouldn’t hazard three guesses on which of you those bastards came for.”
“Gwaine don’t,” Percival hushed but the damage had already been done. The blame had been laid and there was no taking it back. Not that Arthur could have let it go anyway. Gwaine’s words were the truth, after all, a truth he’d thought of himself. But when it was your own blame... it sounded worse coming from someone else, even someone like Gwaine. Merlin hadn’t been supposed to be back. He was supposed to be on the other side of the world still, protecting Arthur by dragging his old alias through a job or two, while Arthur stayed in Camelot, with their new life, their new world, representing their dual venture - Pendragon wasn’t just Arthur, but it was Arthur it was created to hide first and foremost. It was Arthur and Merlin,
“Merlin’s supposed to be on the other side of the world for another two days. He’s not supposed to be here, and you can guarantee that those bastards right there knew he was gone. They were there for Dubois here,” Gwaine raged and his expression was heated enough that Percy didn’t try and stop him and neither did Arthur. “They were here for him and Merlin’s gonna pay for it, so I suggest that Princess here better stop being so butthurt Merls thought well enough to stay two steps ahead and get his head in the game, cause Merlin’s relying on him now, not the other way around.”
Gwaine let out another disgruntled growl and got to his feet, his chair spinning on its axis as he stalked across the room.
“Where are you going?” Arthur growled and Gwaine shot him a dirty look.
“I’m getting the laptop.”
Neither Arthur nor Percy said a word as they listened to Gwaine stalking up the stairs, his feet heavy on the landing.
Arthur sighed and turned back to the screen, his stomach jolting uncomfortably again as he looked at Merlin. He couldn’t see enough of him, he needed to know everything. Everything about the people who had him, everything about what had happened; most importantly he needed to know why.
“Have faith in him, Arthur,” Percy said softly and Arthur knew he was following Arthur’s gaze. Merlin still hadn’t moved, not even a twitch of his fingers. Arthur’s fear didn’t lessen. He had faith in Merlin, he did. It was faith in himself he needed more of.
“I’ll have faith in him when he’s at home trying to rewire shortcuts into the microwave, not when he’s in the middle of my bloody building with a bunch of armed mercenaries intent of getting something out of me.”
“Now that’s where we need to focus, Arthur. What’s clear here, no matter what Merlin may have thrown into the mix by getting held hostage in your stead, is that you have something they want. If we can figure out what that is before they do, we have a greater chance of intercepting it and replicating a safe copy before we hand it over.”
Arthur glance down at his watch, there were eighteen minutes until they called.
“They’ll call with their demands in a little under twenty minutes.”
“Then we know what we’re dealing with then and when we do, we’ll figure it all out. Until then we search the room and see what we can figure out about these guys,” Percy said with a grim smile that Arthur returned. Percy’s pragmatism worked - whatever part of Arthur that had failed Merlin for the last half an hour disappeared and he braced himself against the back of Percy’s chair.
“You’re going to have to be my eyes, Percival; I can’t work Merlin’s system for anything.”
Percy chuckled wryly.
“Neither can Gwaine, but don’t tell him I said that. He thinks he’s got a handle on it. You should hear Merlin mumbling under his breath every time Gwaine gets his paws on it. It’s hilarious.”
Percy’s fingers on the keys were already moving and the second screen was scrolling through code faster than Arthur could keep track.
“Now, what can we see - “ Percy said, not really expecting an answer but this, this is what Arthur had been trained for. He had a job now, he had goals and access to information and he could use that.
“There are three upstairs, my guess is there’s more downstairs. Can you pull up the camera’s facing away from the entrance? That should have the best viewpoint.”
Percy typed and while he wasn’t as fast as Merlin, it didn’t take him long for the camera view to swap. He went through four angles before they found the right one and by then Arthur could hear Gwaine coming back down the stairs.
“Who the fuck are they?” Gwaine asked as Arthur stared at the second angle.
“Three upstairs plus Merlin, four downstairs. Can we bring up both cameras at once? Upstairs on that screen, downstairs on the second?” Arthur asked, pointing at two of the six monitors stretching across the wall. Merlin’s set up was ridiculous: substantial and brilliant, but ridiculous. The tech at the Knights Base was more advanced than what they had here, but Merlin made LED screens bought online, fibre optic cables and his own complex Operating System work to the same standards as Gwen’s system that was worth more than Arthur’s old house was marketed at.
“We got screen snapshots Perce? Throw em over and I’ll start running them through Merl’s database, see if we ain’t come across any of these blokes before,” Gwaine muttered, throwing himself down into his chair and opening the laptop he’d gone upstairs to fetch. That, Arthur recognised, it was the same layout OS that Merlin had created for him at the office: simple and easy, a blend between Windows 7 and Mac’s Snowleopard. Idiot Proof, is what Merlin had called it.
Merlin must have given Percy lessons on how to work hissystem, because the man did exactly what Gwaine had asked of him with little fuss. He wasn’t as fast as Merlin was, but Merlin had made computer programs into an art. It was his fun growing up. His mother had managed to get him a broken computer on one of their moves once and Merlin had told him how he’d spent the next year learning how to fix it, how to pull it apart and make it work. How he’d then turned to programming, learning new ways to make the battered old machine to do old things, learning old things to make the machine do new things - a complex circle of give and take that evolved with the computers and Merlin’s own frustrations with the world he had no say in. By the time he’d stumbled onto Arthur’s attention span he was so adept at computer programs and hacking that it had been the hacking that had made Arthur suspicious his target had an accomplice. At that point in time Arthur had spent weeks searching for someone who might have been working with Merlin, but no one had appeared. Merlin had gone underground after he’d hacked into a wireless security system and rerouted the feed entirely for long enough to break in and clean out a safe owned by a significant collector of antiquities. After that, when he surfaced again he actually did have a partner, but Arthur still hadn’t found him. That had been Gwaine. Nine months later there was also Percy and it would take another six months before Arthur would actually get his hands on Merlin. Except he’d only managed that because Merlin had come back to save his life. So in exchange Arthur had conveniently been elsewhere while Merlin had picked his handcuffs and disappeared.
Arthur watched as Percy’s fingers clicked against the keys and as he rolled through the footage in front of them, highlighting the clearest shots of their enemies faces and typing something again, only for the images to show up on Gwaine’s laptop.
The task kept their attention fixed as Gwaine opened Merlin’s database and submitted each of the seven photographs into the program and they all watched the little scrolling box in the bottom corner flashing with face after face so quickly only the computer had any idea who they were looking at.
They were all so consumed that when Arthur’s phone rang it came completely by surprise.
The phone buzzed on the table and automatically everyone’s eyes turned to it. Arthur set his jaw and he reached out and picked up the phone, answering and pressing loudspeaker in a fluid movement. Everyone else knew to keep their mouths shut, anyway.
“This is Arthur.”
“It’s been an hour, Arthur. Are you comfortable with your friends and confidants? ” the speaker buzzed and immediately set Arthur’s teeth on edge, he looked at the screen where the man on the phone was walking idly over to Merlin. Arthur grit his teeth.
“What do you want?”
“Straight to the point, I see. I like that, ” the man chuckled and came to a stop in front of Merlin. “Tell me, Arthur, how much do you value your business partner?”
Arthur knew he couldn’t give away the fact that they were watching, that he knew that the man he was talking to was bending over Merlin as he taunted Arthur, reaching out with his second hand and holding Merlin’s head up off his chest. He had to pretend he couldn’t see the purpling swollen skin over Merlin’s right cheek, the dark stain that could only be blood where the skin had broken.
“He is valuable to me,” Arthur grit out, determined to keep his voice steady, maintain control.
“How valuable?” the man asked and he let go of Merlin’s chin, Arthur watched as Merlin’s head lolled forward again, limp like a rag doll. “- because I have a very specific request of you, Arthur, and I will not hesitate a moment to teach you how very serious I am about completing it. Are you willing to bear his blood on your hands by not complying?”
The man turned away from Merlin, walking towards the camera again. Arthur
tightened his grasp on the phone.
“Tell me what you’re after.”
“Ah, so his life has a price, then? I had heard such good things about you, Arthur.”
“What do you want?”
“Back to business. I like you. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to meet as planned.”
“So tell me what you want, Merlin’s already in a situation that doesn’t concern him.”
“So honourable. Tell me, Arthur, do you remember all those names you scrawled through day after day working in that compound? Because there is one man I am very interested in. His name is Kil Gareth, he was a researcher for the Knights MRD. I want his file. Everything the Knights have on him, and maybe, just maybe, if I find what I’m looking for, then I’ll let your friend go. But if you fail, Arthur, I’m going to gut him and make you listen. You have until midnight. Get the file and if you have it when I call back, then we’ll discuss letting little Merlin here see sunlight again.”
The click of the phone call ending echoed in the space between the three of them. Arthur sighed and set the phone down. Just in time for Gwaine to smash the uncomfortable quiet with his special brand of abrasive annoyance.
“What the fuck is a MRD?”
Despite himself, Arthur’s lips twitched and in his head for a moment all he could think about was the way Merlin would always smile at Gwaine’s direct questions. All it took was a glance up at the monitor at Merlin’s unconscious body to set him back to rights.
“It stands for Magical Research Department. The Knights had one; it was shut down twenty five years ago or so. Back then Knights recruited magic users. It went so far as each unit had it’s own sorcerer, so that if it was ever needed, it could be used. They were trusted. Important. Then my father turned on them and since then they’ve been pushed further and further over the edge. The MR Department at the Knights used to develop magical aids, for the sorcerers and their units. Bombs, lock picks, shields - you name it. Magical weaponry. After my father deemed all sorcerers untrustworthy it was shut down and everything destroyed.
“If they want a file on a guy who worked for MRD, then there’s something he was looking into that they want.”
“And now you’re the one who has to get it,” Gwaine supplied, looking furious.
“And Merlin could be the one they want to use it,” Percival said quietly and both Arthur and Gwaine turned towards him so fast their necks cricked.
“What?”
“You heard me. Merlin’s powerful. He might not be on the register, but if he was, he’d be well up the scale. If they figure that out, then they could very well force him to do what it is they’re after. I mean, if any of them are sorcerers, which I’ll lay first bets and say that they are, anything that they’re gonna do is gonna be bigger if the magic’s bigger.”
“Fucking hell, didn’t think of that,” Gwaine swore, running a hand through his hair.
Arthur said nothing for a moment, instead he looked up at the monitor again. Merlin wouldn’t let them use him like that. Merlin wasn’t dangerous. He made a point of not being harmful to people. Sure, he stole their property - but it was never from anyone who couldn’t afford to lose it. He never harmed the guards or the owners. Hell, Merlin was the type who smuggled families into the Underground as soon as their names hit the Witchfinder’s database. Who helped them find their feet again and get a grip on the magic that had made them an outcast, so that they wouldn’t disappear into the system. He was the type to keep doing it even after he ran away with the Director of the Knights prodigal son. Merlin was a good person, a good person who had grown up in a bad world and he kept on being a good person despite the world he still lived in.
Arthur knew Merlin wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally - but the one thing
Arthur knew about Magic, was that sometimes it didn’t leave choices down to the person carrying them out. Magic could make Merlin do something dangerous and Merlin would spend the rest of his life regretting not being strong enough to stop it.
“We need to have faith in Merlin,” Arthur croaked and felt the two of them watching him.
“We have faith that Merlin will do whatever it takes to stall them on their end. We need to move on our end.”
“And what do we do, Princess? You know that building of yours - we aint got the resources or the people to storm that place. There’s seven of them in there, besides and Merls is out for the count.”
“We’re not going in. We’re getting him out. And right now, that means getting this file on fucking Kil Gareth and handing it over.”
“You want to get the file?”
“We have to. We don’t have anything else to do. They don’t want anything else. They have Merlin and they want a file or they’ll kill him. I’m not going to argue. I’m going to get him the file with or without the help of you two lackeys.”
“Alright Princess, calm it down,” Gwaine said, his voice patronising but he counteracted it by turning back to the computer.
“Fuck - “ the word was out of his mouth before Percy could answer and the joviality was gone completely.
Arthur turned to face him but there was movement on the monitors that stopped him from leaning over Gwaine’s shoulder and he was pretty sure he was looking at the same thing anyway.
Arthur watched in abject horror as the two goons either side of Merlin hacked at the ropes binding Merlin to the chair. Between the two of them they hoisted him out of it like he was a rag doll. His body was limp and weightless in their grasp and Arthur had to turn away from the screens to stop himself doing something reckless and stupid - like smashing the monitors.
“They’re leaving PSC,” Percy murmured.
None of them spoke for a long moment, just watching as Merlin disappeared out of the first camera and moments later reappeared in the second. As they carried him out of the building the three of them clearly saw the shadowing bruise up the side of Merlin’s face and it stirred the anger bubbling in the pit of Arthur’s gut.
“We find this file. Screw it, we find this fucking Kil Gareth himself if it’s easier and we get him back.”
“Aye aye,” Gwaine replied and turned to the laptop. “I’ll check Merl’s database, see if he’s in there.”
“Percy? Merlin said he had access to my files at the Knights. He said he had a backdoor into the system. Can you find it? It might be this simple, but I doubt it. I need you to check anyway.”
Percy nodded and turned back to the main monitor and started typing.
*
There was a crick in Merlin’s neck when he made the first circle into consciousness. There was a crick in his neck and there was something keeping his hands bound. His fingers twitched and the spasm carried up his arm and into his aching shoulders. His eyelids were heavy and refused to obey his command to open the first time. He tried to lift his head but the movement triggered something in the darkness and with a groan that echoed far too loud in his own ears he slumped back into unconsciousness.
He didn’t know how long it was when he made the second lap, but something had changed in the time frame because lifting his head didn’t send him spiralling back into the darkness again. The ache in his shoulders hadn’t lessened and as he took stock of himself he couldn’t quite place a reason for them hurting.
It didn’t take particularly long for him to realise that he wasn’t alone. His magic was fizzing under his skin, burning merrily away and screaming to be let out and play. It heightened his senses, driving them outward and he could practically feel the shift in the air as the person moved somewhere behind him, the faint warmth of their own magic.
Slowly opening his eyes he let the light, soft and grey as it was, filter into his vision at a snails pace until it no longer made him flinch. His head throbbed and the skin on his wrists itched under the burn of the rope. His legs weren’t bound, but given the circumstances and the debilitating senses of his body, he knew he was in no condition to even make an escape if he wanted to. Twisting in his chair he made a good show, testing the give of his constraints, testing the give and take of his body. Neither gave him much to work with and he was left again with a thump in his temples and a bruising ache in his chest and shoulders.
Behind him the person shifted and there was a faint click of sound that Merlin felt justifiable to acknowledge. He twisted his body as far as it would go and wound up craning his neck more than anything.
“Who are you - ?” he croaked before he’d even finished talking. It had been a bad idea because the words cut off on his tongue as he saw who was sitting across from him.
“Come now, Merlin, is this really necessary?” Morgana’s lip curled in imitation of what could have once been a pretty smile. There was a sharpness about her that was all Merlin had known. She had been forced to harden herself, and he’d been sad about that part of her the first time they’d met. But then that outer shell had excluded her, shielded her in a way that she probably shouldn’t have embraced. She’d cut herself off from the world, the good parts of it, anyway, and in the end something had... warped. Turned sour.
“Morgana,” he acknowledged and she laughed. A tinkering sound that had a sinister sneer about it.
“I must say, Merlin, it’s good to see you. Not exactly like this. You’ve been careful about this, clearly. When I heard a rumour all those years ago I thought ‘no, not Merlin’. But it appears I was wrong. You with Dubois? Shocking, really.”
“Is it?”
“Is it shocking to find me here?”
“No. Not at all.”
“I thought as much. But there was a little bit of shock there, Merlin. I saw it. Tell me, did you enjoy your little jaunt with Alvarr and his friends? Because I really must congratulate them on their handiwork; it’s much nicer than I’d hoped to achieve on my own if I ever ran into you on the street like I thought I might. It had always seemed so futile to try and corner you. After all, Arthur tried for so long and what did that get him? He disappeared off the face of the earth two and a half years ago with you.”
“You had a tendency to underestimate me.”
“I know. Which is what makes this so wonderful. I had a plan, but Alvarr brings you straight to me instead. I have to say, this isn’t quite how I expected things to go. But, I’ve thought this through. I have had to make some adjustments in the last couple of hours, but I must say it will be worth it in the long run.”
“What do you want, Morgana?” Merlin spat, watching her as she pushed herself up off the chair. Morgana had always had an air of control. She was a dangerous intimidator, a terrible flirt and stunning all wrapped into one being; she was unstoppable when it came to the type who preferred breasts. Merlin had never been the type and her wares had never quite worked in her favour, which had, in turn, made her both curious and constantly mad at him. A factor only intensified by the fact that he was much better at magic than she was. He was stronger - higher up the Register Scale when they’d tested themselves just for fun one day, when they’d been stupid and high and delirious from tormenting their chasers. But Morgana was nothing if not persistent and she had studied, tested, twisted her magic into doing things Merlin had never tried - had never thought of. Magic had been a toy for him, used when he desired or had need. Morgana had used hers constantly, protected by the simple basis that she had a father who refused to acknowledge her - especially when it came to the magic he despised.
It had caught up with her, once, and Merlin had come to her aid - but everything had gone south and it had never been the same. He hadn’t seen her in years - closer to four than three - and something had changed. She was malicious; he could see it in her eyes.
“You know what they used to call you, Merlin? Our Saviour. If anyone could fix this, it was you. You, who grew up all over Albion, your mother dragging you through every known Magic Users home in the country. You, who defied logic, who defied grading and boundaries and everything that restricted the rest of us, but what did you put yourself to? Shagging Arthur Dubois, my bastard half brother. Hiding him from the world and thinking of everyone else second. You let us down, Merlin. Let us down when we needed you. So I found a way, a way to help us. Save us all. And you know what it did? It lead right back to you; right back to Arthur Dubois and Uther Constance. Back to the ban itself.”
“Whatever it is, Morgana, you can’t win.”
“Oh but I can, because it’s very simple, Merlin. Either Arthur does what I tell him or I kill you. Or you do what I tell you, otherwise I’ll kill Arthur. Either way, Merlin, I’ll have my way. I will have my way with this.”
“And what way is that?” he snarled, pulling at the ropes binding him.
“Nuh uh, uh,” Morgana tutted, her lips curling into a smirk once again as she leant over him, one hand braced on either of his bound wrists and her nails digging into his skin. Her eyes were bright, fever bright, almost and barely inches away from his face.
“All in good time, Merlin,” she said, squeezing his arms once for good measure before standing straight again, peering down at him like he was a bug.
“You see, Merlin, as you pointed out - I was waiting for Arthur, today. It was Arthur Alvarr was meant to find - Arthur who I was going to have the pleasure of breaking today, waiting until you returned from your silly little sojourn over the pond leading those foolish Knights of Arthurs away from Camelot. Without Arthur to guide them they’re like soulless sheep, aren’t they? They lost their drive when you took their leader. But it doesn’t matter. That’s in the past, isn’t it? It’s today you have to worry about.”
Merlin narrowed his gaze as he followed her slow steady walk back across the room. Her boots clicking on the cement like a defined point. She stopped at a table, barely taller than her waist, a stack of drawers in stainless steel. Morgana threw Merlin a look over her shoulder and the only emotion Merlin could place on it was glee.
“You see - “ she pulled the drawer open - “While it was meant to be Arthur here today, I am easily adaptable and I still get my fun.”
She slammed the top drawer closed and from his angle, Merlin couldn’t see what she’d taken out until she turned back to face him and started that slow, steady walk back across the room. There, in each of her hands was a thick black metal cuff. There were no links strung between them, just cold black metal and Merlin felt his first flicker of fear.
“You know what these are, Merlin?” she taunted, holding them up so the light flickered against them, the shadows dancing like flickering flames.
“There aren’t many made for the higher grades. They don’t know how. I studied it, you know. They have to study the magic involved in order to appropriately match the grade, and well, the higher grades don’t like to sit still and let themselves get bound, do they? One blast of power and they’re gone. But these? These were made for the higher grades. Like you and me.”
Merlin stared at the cuff Morgana was holding in her right hand. He couldn’t tear his gaze away and couldn’t quite hold down the fear that was bubbling up inside him. His head was fuzzy and his magic still wouldn’t obey him properly. He didn’t have the time or capacity to stop this and he only had a second before Morgana held him down. He watched in horror as the cuffs opened. He struggled against the ropes holding him down, but against Morgana he had no hope. Not against this.
“Don’t - “ he croaked and he saw her feral smile before he felt icy metal against his skin and the first awful click as it closed down around his wrist. The cold was immediate. It travelled up his arm, through his bones, deep into him. This icy chill that hurt, that seemed to overcome the fizzing warmth of his magic. Reality seemed to disconnect and only slammed back into place for a split second as Morgana closed the second cuff around his other wrist and the same feeling travelled through the other side of him until it consumed him. His entire body felt ice cold, from the inside out. It felt frozen and heavy and the familiar warm buzzing was gone. A keening noise stuck in his throat and somewhere he could hear someone else - saying something, laughing, smiling - something he couldn’t place. The world was suddenly too small, too heavy and he was so cold.
That noise tore through him again, wordless, but a part of him. The world felt dim and tiny, nothing beyond the heavy weight of his limbs.
He could hear muffled sounds beyond it but they were unimportant and incomprehensible. He was entirely lost in himself, in the cold, sharp disorientation.
Time smeared across his consciousness like a blur. He didn’t know how long it had been since the cuffs had closed but it was too long, regardless. His limbs were useless and his whole body burned, like ice freezing everything from the outside in.
“It’ll clear, Merlin, I promise.”
*
“Perce? Have you found anything?” Arthur asked. Percy’s look of concentration pinched for a moment before the large man sighed and turned to face Arthur.
“I’ve looked everywhere I can, but I’m with Gwaine. There’s no mention of Kil Gareth in Merlin’s system. Worse still, there’s nothing on him in the main Knights database. There may be something in the depths of the High Security stuff, but Merlin’s got back doors in security layers that shouldn’t be possible looking at the coding of them. I’m no expert - but if Kil Gareth’s in the system he did something that they’re doing everything they’ve got to protect their info. Something even Merlin couldn’t hack.”
Arthur’s stomach dropped. Damn.
“I feared as much.”
“And what the bloody hell does that mean, Princess?” Gwaine growled, spinning in his chair to look at Arthur, his eyebrows pinched and his mouth curved in a frown. Arthur sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“Rumour has it that after the magical reforms went through, my father had everything we had on anything magical removed from easy access. You need Directors clearance to get anywhere near the vault. It’s not digital - it’s all hard copy. If there’s anything left on Gareth, it’s there.”
“And where’s this vault then?”
“Basement level of the Knights compound.”
“And what, you’re going to walk in and try and get it, then? Is that the plan?”
“It is now,” Arthur said, watching the sarcasm drop from Gwaine’s face.
“Arthur - “ Percy brokered but Arthur couldn’t listen. He pushed away from the two seats and the men sitting in them.
“You can’t be serious, Dubois!” Gwaine crowed, the edge of seriousness back in his voice.
“You have any idea how much effort Merlin’s put in to make sure that bloody place has no idea where you are and you’re just going to walk in and get a file without being seen?”
“Unless you think you can do it, Gwaine? It’s the only thing I can think of. Because like I said, there’s no digital copy of that file. If there was Merlin would have it on his bloody system and he’d have found it years ago. The fact is, we need to get it. We need that file. I won’t sit back and do nothing when there’s something i can do.”
“Arthur, Gwaine’s right. You’re going to walk into the Knight’s Compound. That’s paramount to suicide. You’re Blacklisted,” Percy said simply, in that way he had of stating the obvious that brokered no anger against him and his easy compassion.
“And you don’t think I know that? What else do you want me to do? Let them have him? Give up?”
“That’s not what we’re saying.”
‘Then what are you saying? As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only one who can do this. I know the layout. I know what to do, how to stay unnoticed. I know the blind spots. I know the security. I know the risk. Now, are you going to help me or are you going to just sit there and argue?”
Arthur folded his arms and he watched as the two of them glanced at each other and crumbled under the pressure of his stubborn resolution. He’d never had to really face them down before. They had always been a team, and strangely, it had always been Merlin the three of them had looked to for guidance. Merlin had been their rallying point. This time he still was, in a way. Instead he was the reason for their rallying. He was still integral; more so than ever, if anything.
“What do you need, Arthur?” Percy asked. Gwaine was gripping his chair, leaning back into it and scowling. He very clearly wasn’t happy with the outcome, which Arthur knew had nothing to do with Arthur’s fate, so much as Merlin’s reaction if it all went downhill and he wound up caught. It would be Merlin that Gwaine would have to deal with, and despite his determination to go through with it with or without their help, Arthur wasn’t liking the idea of telling Merlin that he had essentially gone into the belly of the beast. Gwaine had been right - Merlin had spent the better part of the last two and a half years trying to keep Arthur safe after they made a run for it, and now, Arthur was about to go walking into headquarters like nothing had happened. It was paramount to suicide - but he had to do it.
“I need schematics of the building - I know Merlin had them, he taunted me more than once with the intel. I need a list of everyone with high clearance on site, and I need to know the exact security system they have running. It’s been two and a half years - they upgrade more often than Merlin does socks.”
“On it,” Percy said, spinning back to the screens and starting to type. Gwaine, on the other hand, stared at him a moment longer, his gaze fixed and angry. Arthur waited him out, keeping his gaze steady and a beat later he turned back to the laptop and murmured to Percy quiet enough that Arthur couldn’t make out the words.
Arthur watched them for a moment, feeling the wall between them and himself start to grow once again. It had been near on impenetrable those first few weeks after Merlin dragged him halfway across the country to hide him from the Knights. They’d run to Gwaine’s because Gwaine had never been able to turn Merlin away and never would. But while Gwaine had put up with Merlin’s infatuation with Arthur in the field, bringing home the man had been one step too far. Arthur had spent the first week locked in a room upstairs, a room far different to the one they slept in here, in a different house a couple of hundred miles further north. It had been impossible to escape, even for someone of Arthur’s calibre, schooled by the best in the country, raised on martial arts instead of football, science textbooks instead of fairytales, language tapes instead of pop music. Part of it had been his own doing, the scouts had been his idea, the cadets - but as a whole he had been aware from a young age just what his father did for the country and he had been desperate to emulate the man. He had tried his hardest in every facet of his behaviour to meet those standards his father had never actually set but Arthur had been incapable of meeting, desperate to join the Knights, the best of the best. It had been the greatest day of his life when he had qualified, when he had been registered. His first grading had set him two teams higher than his father had been, but Arthur had never quite been sure it was enough.
The work, when he got to it, had been brilliant. It had sustained him in a way that he hadn’t felt before. He felt important, and while he hadn’t followed his father’s aim for him, down the Special Ops route - dealing with magic users, terrorists and high danger risks, there had been something about the white collar crime, the thieves and con artists that had excited him, that had tweaked his brain. People who didn’t hurt people for the sake of hurting them, who didn’t like hurting people - who didn’t kill, that had been something he couldn’t turn away from. There had been some hope to them, the cases, as strange as it sounded. It had put him in the middle of paperwork piles full of petty people trying to get ahead, deceiving people that trusted them, that they hated, that had something they wanted.
It wasn’t a high profile job and he’d copped flack for it. For those who knew who his father was, Uther Constance, the Director of MDD, Magical Defence Division. It was a division that very little knew specifics about, but was commonly known. They were the Unspeakables, the name stolen from those popular Potter books and the irony of it for those who didn’t know what the division did, did not pass Arthur by. His father’s hatred of Magic Users was strange and all consuming and Arthur hadn’t quite understood it. It hadn’t mattered much until he’d met Merlin, really met him, face to face. Merlin had been in the middle of a job, a job Arthur had thought was just smuggling of 17th Century sculpture.
What it had turned out to be, was a small family Merlin was helping smuggle across the country because their youngest son, a boy not four years old, had started levitating things while he laughed. He couldn’t control it and word had reached the Witchfinder that there was something strange about little Bran. Arthur had run headfirst into exactly what happened to families who started showing signs of abnormal behaviour and the risks those families took in order to escape that fate. The danger that people put themselves in to help them. People, surprisingly, like Merlin, the young smiling criminal Arthur had been chasing for years up and down the country and even over into England and Wales. Arthur had chased Emrys to that warehouse, but instead he’d found Merlin for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Arthur would meet him long enough face to face the next time to exchange half a conversation. Twice more and Merlin would save his life and drive himself so far under Arthur’s skin he wasn’t sure that he would ever get Merlin out.
And considering the situation he was in now, he knew he never wanted to lose that feeling.
Leaving the two of them typing like they were going to put their fingers through the keyboards, Arthur took up the stairs, past the first floor and up into the second, where there were four bedrooms and a bathroom.
Heading down the hall to the last one his fingers itched as he reached for the handle. Pushing the feeling down he opened the door and went inside. It was exactly the same as it had been when they were last here - god, four weeks ago now? Five? He wasn’t sure, but the déjà vu was enough, anyway. Gwaine had a girl who came through once a week to put things in order, so the room wasn’t anywhere near the condition it had been in when they’d left, but he could still vaguely feel the good cotton sheets under his fingers, the slick feel of Merlin’s hair and his snickering laugh, the burn of his kisses and the heat of his skin. There was a dent on the wall they’d put there from the bed head hitting the wall and the window didn’t quite close after they’d broken the hinge months ago.
But he wasn’t there for nostalgia, so he forced himself to cross the distance to the closet and open it. It was full of clothes, bursting with different outfits that were either the work clothes of a prolific stripper or someone who couldn’t hold down a job. They were the only two semi-legal options Arthur had ever been able to come up with when he’d first opened the door. There were guard uniforms, delivery coats and shirts, pressed trousers and black socks, doctors coats, suits and shirts and everything in between. Arthur had no idea how it all fit, but as he pulled out a folded white shirt out of a stack of them on the top shelf, he eyed the tag and low and behold it fit his own measurements. Merlin, somehow, had a plan for everything.
Yet, somehow, they’d never quite planned for something like this.
Pulling out a set of pressed trousers Arthur started to change. He needed to look like he belonged and while the quality of the shirt was nothing on what he used to wear when he was a Knight, it wouldn’t really matter. All he had to do was look like he belonged, like he was meant to be walking those halls and not running away from them.
He was going to need some sort of distraction to get through the main gate, he could swipe an ID badge for the actual screening, but to make sure the guy at the front wasn’t looking at the monitor itself, he was going to need something to keep him occupied for a moment and not pay any more attention other than whether or not the machine dinged or beeped at him.
“I’ve been waiting for the day sleeping with you caught up with him, Dubois.”
Arthur startled, genuinely surprised to hear Gwaine’s voice. He hadn’t heard him on the stairs or in the hall at all. Covering himself, he smoothed the fresh shirt over his shoulders and looked up at the man, who was lounging in the doorway scowling at him.
“I’ve been waiting for the day that it came back to bite him, and I’m just as bloody pissed at you as I thought I would be, and I have to say, I don’t quite trust you, that you’re up for just walking into that nest of vipers. It smells fishy to me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Well it does. I’ve spent the last two and a half years watching you. I’ve spent the last year starting to think maybe, just maybe, I might have got it wrong. Maybe Merls is right about you. But this? This ain’t right.”
“I’ll get him back, Gwaine.”
“I damn well hope you do, cause I’m giving you fair warning. You might have spent the last two and a half years undercover or some shit. This might be your play, I don’t know. All I know is that you did something that made Merls trust you and I trust Merlin. But know this, you might be the son of Uther Constance. You might be the best Albion’s ever bloody trained and god damn Merlin thinks so, but I’m telling you, if Merlin don’t come out of this. Or if it ends up that you’ve been playing him like a fiddle, I’m gonna hunt you down, Dubois, and nothings gonna protect you. You got me?”
“I understand,” he replied and watched the sharp anger recede, just a little, out of Gwaine’s eyes.
“Good,” the man finished and disappeared back down the hall.
Arthur breathed a sigh of relief and fixed his collar.
Part Three