A/N: With many thanks to my roommate, without whom, this would not exist.

Merlin has a large wheelbarrow covered in a sheet that he has thrown himself in front of. Since Merlin is approximately the width of a large bundle of sticks, this doesn't do much for concealment purposes.

Gwen stares at him, frozen, for a long moment.

"I have - sheets," Merlin blurts out. "From the laundry."

He does, admittedly, have a sheet. Gwen is just pretty sure, from the shape of it, that said sheet is currently hiding a body.

However, if she questions this, Merlin might question her wheelbarrow, which is currently filled with a monster who hadn't had the courtesy to disappear when she staked it and is barely covered by a quilt.

A quilt that is starting to slip.

"I also have - sheets," she says hastily. "And a quilt."

"Right," Merlin says.

"Right," she agrees.

They push their wheelbarrows in their separate directions down the corridor. Neither of them mentions that they are on the other side of the castle from the laundry or that it is midnight and far too late for such a chore.

Merlin is probably just carrying out a former patient of Gaius's, Gwen tells herself determinedly. If she thinks otherwise, she'll have to bring it up to Geoffrey, and - No. Not Merlin. Surely not Merlin.

It's fine.

Even though he carries out an awful lot of bodies for Gaius, and often at the most inconvenient times.

It's all fine.

(She does wonder, a little, what explanation he's come up with for her.)

It starts like this:

A strange man follows her home on a night when her father is late coming back from the forge. When she realizes he is not entirely human, she is not entirely surprised because this is Camelot, after all, and Camelot is all but under siege from the enraged remnants of magic.

It does not change her response, which is to shriek and try to hit him with the first thing that comes to hand, which happens to be a wooden ladle.

No one is more surprised than her when it goes straight through his chest, and the strange man falls into dust.

She should probably have reported this, but her trick with the ladle is a little too unnatural for her to feel entirely comfortable with admitting to it, and besides, it's not like she has any proof.

She sweeps up the monster and goes to bed, pressing her fist against her mouth to stifle her sobs.

By the third time she runs into one of the creatures, she has to admit that they seem to be drawn to her. She also has to admit that she needs to know more.

She's . . . changing. She's stronger now, faster, and the creatures keep saying such terrible things . . .

She can't be magic. She can't be. She would know.

But she can't take the risk of asking Gaius or confiding in Lady Morgana in case she's wrong, so she'll just have to figure it out for herself.

When Geoffrey finds her dozing on the floor of his library surrounded by dusty books that she is very sure he was supposed to have burned, she grasps desperately for an explanation that will get her out of this.

But Geoffrey just sighs and looks impossibly old when he says, "So you're our next Slayer, then."

She is not sure what he means.

She is not sure she wants to know, either, but that option is apparently off the table.

According to Geoffrey, she is destined to kill creatures of magic. His mouth twists a little as he says this, muttering something about what the Watchers' Council would say, but Gwen is too nervous to press the matter.

At least she has help now, even if his help mostly consists of dusty books with pictures of terrifying monsters that even a knight would hesitate to face.

Someday, apparently, she will be strong enough to face them herself.

(She asks Geoffrey once if - if she is entirely natural, and his face goes as grey as the dust on his books.)

("A Slayer fought for Uther in the Purge," he tells her.)

(He does not tell her why no one speaks of that woman now.)

Merlin is sweet, and, she thinks blushingly, not entirely bad looking.

He also never asks questions when a stake falls out of her sewing basket or presses her when she nervously assures him that it's better if she walks home alone.

It takes her a few weeks to notice that this is because Merlin also has a few odd habits, like disappearing during battles and then knowing too much or asking questions like, "If you had the chance to kill Uther, what would you do?" and making the question sound not rhetorical at all.

There is a part of her, the part of her that pushes her further, faster, stronger, that turns her blood to fire when she fights, a part of her that thinks, when Merlin asks her about Uther, that she should say, Rip his head off his shoulders and paint the corridors with his blood, but that thought makes her nearly sick to her stomach, and what will that solve? What will that do but force Arthur to taste the same grief she feels now?

She gives her answer to Merlin, minus the bloodlust, and Uther comes home alive . . . although admittedly following an assassination attempt . . . and she tells herself it's fine, probably.

Merlin eats perfectly normal food, not blood, she's seen him, and his skin is warm and alive, not at all dead, so he's fine.

(And if she thinks of Geoffrey's thick, thick books and all the things in them that are not blood-drinkers, not undead - It's nothing. It's fine. Merlin has never been anything but kind to her, and he cannot possibly be the kind of thing she hunts.)

The third time they bump into each other outside the walls after curfew, Merlin blurts out, "Mushrooms. I was hunting mushrooms. That can only be picked at night."

Gwen feels the thick green blood that is slowly soaking through her skirts and says, "I was picking - moonflowers. For Lady Morgana."

Neither of them is holding a basket suitable for picking anything.

Or at least not that she can tell. Gwen is holding a dripping stake behind her back.

She wonders what Merlin is holding behind his.

The first time they bump into each other at the library, Merlin says, "Gaius sent me," and she thinks that for the first time, that might possibly be the truth.

"Lady Morgana sent me," she lies. "For . . . love poetry." She does her very best not to look at Geoffrey while she says this.

For the first time, Merlin looks skeptical.

She thinks this is entirely unfair, since she heard from Morgana, who heard from Arthur, that Merlin has once used "hunting for vicious dust bunnies" as an excuse for being in Arthur's bedroom at a far too early hour of the morning, so she really doesn't think he has room to judge anyone else's excuses.

Geoffrey tells her that someone is attempting a dangerous ritual in the catacombs, and she must stop it or the dead in the catacombs will rise and kill them all.

Gwen really wishes that this had been the first time he has told her this.

She is anticipating the first sorcerer. She is not anticipating the second.

She is also not anticipating the fire ball that abruptly takes out the second sorcerer.

When she turns to look for the source of that fireball, she isn't anticipating Merlin, exactly.

. . . Given everything else, though, she can't say she's surprised by him either.

"You're a sorcerer," she says, and her stomach is churning like it hasn't since her father was accused of treason.

(He had admitted it though, hadn't he? Morgana had told her how Merlin had charged into the council room when she was accused of witchcraft and tried to claim the charges for himself. Morgana had thought it was romantic in a stupid Merlin sort of way.)

(It seems far less romantic and far more dangerous now, with the smoke of that fireball still in the air.)

But Merlin looks afraid of her, of all things, his eyes firmly on the dagger she had plunged into the sorcerer's chest. "And you're a - a - " He fumbles for words.

"A Slayer," she says, and she wishes she really understood what that meant.

"Oh," Merlin says. He still looks pale. "I'm a warlock, actually. If that matters."

Probably. She doesn't know how, though.

It's Merlin. It's Merlin, and he saved her life, and it is, apparently, her life's destiny to kill him.

"I won't tell Arthur if you won't?" Merlin offers hopefully.

And it's Merlin.

Merlin, who apparently was telling nothing but the truth all along, when he said there was more to him than met the eye, when he said he had magic to save her, when he tried to save her father, when -

When he came down here for the exact same reason she did.

Merlin, who might understand the horror that is rising within her when she looks down and realizes that for the first time, she has purely human blood on her hands.

She sits down hard, and the dagger clatters out of her hands. "Alright," she agrees faintly.

"Alright," Merlin agrees in relief. "We can - we can talk?" He looks around. "Later, though. Um. I can get the wheelbarrows?"

A faintly hysterical laugh rises up in her throat. "I'll come with you," she decides. "We can talk on the way."

(When Geoffrey finds out, Gwen tells him, very firmly, that she is not killing Merlin.)

(Geoffrey informs her, very dryly, that Merlin is Emrys and apparently unkillable.)

(Apparently the second part of this is news to Merlin too. Gwen will think through the implications later. For now, she is nothing but relieved.)