A woman woke up alone in her bed, grasping at the air with trembling hands. Her heart was thumping harshly in her chest and her skin was drenched in terror-sweat. She didn't scream, but only because she was biting too hard on her tongue for any sound to slip out. Her mouth felt bloody, and it ached. The air around her swam with static and dim light. She couldn't remember what she'd been reaching out for in her dreams, and wasn't sure she wanted to remember.
Her stomach was heaving and she thought she was going to vomit, but when she stood up the wave of nausea passed. It left her light-headed; too tired to sleep, but just awake enough for the panic nestled under her breastbone to flare up again.
I'm going mad. It's finally happening. I'm crazy.
The edges of her vision flickered. She stumbled out into the hallway, groping for the light switch. Her fingers found it; she flicked it on, and before her eyes had even begun adjusting to the change she was making her way to the living room, feet scraping over the cold wooden floor. She needed her phone. She needed to call someone before she fell apart at the edges, before she fell over and cracked her head open or the hallucinations came back again or—or something. Something terrible.
There was a darkness coming. She could feel it.
Her mobile phone was on the edge of the dining table where she'd left it last night, along with her wallet and her keys. Sitting down with her elbows on the table, she picked up the phone and pressed the cool plastic hard to her cheek, until she could feel its indentations in her flesh. Her hands still smelt like the underground: of oil and human sweat.
The woman didn't know who to call. She sat frozen for a while, then struggled to make her fingers move.
There were three voice messages. One from Shannon from work. Anxious. "We heard about your accident on the train. The bitch keeps complaining, but don't come back till you're well, okay? Phone me when you get this." The second message was from the bitch—otherwise known as the woman's boss, and the woman deleted it without listening to it. The third message…
The third message was a hiss of static that made images flicker before the woman's eyes. The third message was someone's soft breathing, and a calm voice that sparked memories inside her.
"I can still help. You know where to find me."
The message ended.
Two days later, still holed up in the flat without a clue of how he and Gwen were going to find Arthur or how they were going to avoid whoever—or whatever—had tried to threaten Merlin into revealing Arthur's whereabouts, and Merlin was ready to claw at the walls with frustration. He spent the first few grey hours of the morning pacing up and down the (small) main room, his head ringing with memories and fear.
Gwen watched him. She was perched on the sofa, dressed in one of his shirts with her hair pinned back with a make-shift bandana fashioned from one of his ties. The leftovers of last night's Chinese take-out were in a carton balanced precariously on her lap. She was making a good show of being totally unimpressed by his anxiety, but the way she was careful to take bites of food at measured intervals gave away her apparent nonchalance for what it really was—a sham.
Merlin couldn't calm down. He wished he could just be Tom again and have total faith in his Win's ability to fix any and every situation, but Gwen wasn't much like Win anymore and he wasn't—couldn't be--Tom. He kept pacing.
"If you keep that up, you'll wear out the carpet," Gwen said. Took a bite of her noodles.
"Carpet's crap anyway," he said with despair. "This whole flat is crap. I swear, it looks like the bathroom ceiling is going to cave in any day now. Did you see the cracks in it?"
"I told you there was something wrong with it months ago," Gwen said, exasperated, and the two of them had to pause mid-breath, blinking back the disorientation of memories that didn't fit right anymore.
"Right," Merlin said finally. "You--Win--did that."
"Right," echoed Gwen; took a determined bite of the sweet and sour chicken.
Merlin took a deep breath, and kept pacing.
"What I mean is, Camelot was protected. There were knights. Walls. Guards." He ran a hand through his hair, grimacing. "Best we can hope for is that if someone breaks in that the bathroom will try and fall on 'em."
"Well, that certainly makes me feel safe," Gwen murmured mildly, but Merlin barreled on without paying her comment a blind bit of attention.
"I'm going to have to find a way to protect this place," he said, trying to sound decisive. He was pretty sure he was failing. "And, and you of course. I promise."
He sifted through old memories of spells; wondered if marking protective sigils into the doors and floor would serve to keep danger out. He wondered, too, if he really remembered enough to create sigils without botching them up somehow. He doubted it.
Gwen was watching him, expression soft.
"I trust you," Gwen said gently.
That was the problem, realised Merlin. That Gwen believed in him even though he'd lied to her for years and years (well, years ago); that he was afraid that there was too much of Tom in him now, too many broken and used up pieces of a weaker man for him to do what was necessary to keep Gwen out of harm's way. The problem was that Merlin couldn't trust himself, and that uncertainty was heavy and awful and terrifying.
He needed to do things right.
"I'll try and put a spell of protection around the flat. And around yours too. I used to have a book full of incantations that would've helped but… but it's probably dust now." Gaius, he thought inexplicably, and a lump of grief rose in his throat. He swallowed it back. "But I can improvise. I'm good at that." A weak grin. "You just wait and see, Gwen."
He gave Gwen a pleading look, all big-eyed and earnest and just nod your head and agree with me, oh please. Gwen stared at him, eyes liquid dark. She nodded. Then she shuffled over on the couch, the shirt crumpling up to reveal even more bare thigh, and patted the seat of the sofa with one hand. She kept her grip on the take-out container with the other.
"Come sit by me."
"Gwen—"
"Merlin," she said, voice somewhere between order and a plea. And Merlin did.
She put the container on his lap and gestured at it. "You didn't eat much last night. Did you think I didn't notice?"
"Wasn't hungry," he murmured.
"You're always hungry," she said, smiling. "Don't lie, I've seen how much you can eat. You were just thinking too much. Haven't you heard that's bad for you?" She picked a piece of chicken out of the container and flicked it playfully against his nose; he could feel the slick of sauce of his skin and grinned despite himself, something hot and bright flaring in his chest. He plucked the food from her grip, wolfing it down in one go. God, he was hungry.
"I'll try to do less of it in the future," he said. "Maybe you can do the thinking for both of us, huh?"
"Well, I can try." She watched him attack the rest of the food with a tender, affectionate look on her face. He remembered how Gwen had always smiled at the smallest things, as if they'd had the power to complete her. Even now, in the middle of the mess of their lives, she could find a way to sit in his tatty shirt-turned-nightdress and just smile at him eating, and wouldn't it be wonderful to have just a little of her easy faith in the world? Just a little.
"You don't have to be strong for me, you know," she said.
"Huh?" He swallowed down a mouthful of food.
"Strong," she repeated. "You don't have to be strong for me. I know you're trying to protect me—and it sounds like there are definitely things I need to be protected from—but I'm not helpless. I can be strong too. Maybe not in the same way, but it'll take more than magic to find Arthur, won't it?" She smiled. "Besides, if I leave it to you we'll hide in here forever, and then we'll lose our jobs for sure. I don't think your boss is going to believe you're sick forever."
"Uh, right." He shrugged, sheepish. He really hadn't considered the practicalities. Old memories and magic had made him forget temporarily that he was still living Tom's life, and to some extent still had Tom's concerns: the rent; the job. "I'm not very good at planning," Merlin said, a helpless little smile on his face.
"I know," Gwen said agreeably. She touched her fingers to his hair, tousling it a little. He squirmed away, ducking his head, still smiling. "That's why you have me."
Then she snatched some of the food straight out of the container and popped into her mouth, a pleased look on her face. Merlin followed the movement of her hand with his eyes, his gaze fixing on Gwen's crossed legs.
"Um," he said.
"What?"
Merlin debated saying nothing and then thought, well—what the hell.
"My shirt. That you're wearing. Uh, it's—going up."
Gwen looked down. Looked up. Very studiously avoided tugging down the hem.
"I've seen me wear shorter things in this life," she said, as if that wasn't a strange thing to say all. This life. "So it shouldn't bother me, right? I mean—unless it bothers you—"
"Me? No, it doesn't bother me," Merlin said, wondering if he could resist laughing long enough for Gwen to turn purple from blushing. "Do you remember the time you—well, Win—wore that bikini under…?"
"Under the sheer dress? I remember. It was very… uh, modern." Silence. Gwen jumped to her feet. "I think I'm going to get changed," she announced, and ran into the bedroom.
Merlin couldn't even hold his laughter until she'd shut the door. He buried his face into a pillow, his shoulders shaking violently.
"I can hear you!" yelled Gwen. But even through her embarrassment she was laughing, and that was when Merlin really knew they were both going to be just fine.
It was mid-afternoon when a woman stepped off a bus onto a street she'd never visited before. She clutched her bus ticket in her hands, smoothing her thumb over the tiny slip of crinkly, crumpled paper. Her fingers trembled and her legs shook like live wires. Inside her head--
(pendragonemryspendragon)
--thoughts tumbled over one another like slippery eels.
She'd always been practical. Cool and sharp-witted and eminently logical. But now she was a wreck inside and out, strung out on bad dreams and caffeine and something that felt like a strong kick of insanity. A distant part of her mind was appalled by the state she was in. She'd always worked so hard to immaculately perfect, after all, and was this what her life's hard work had really been reduced to?
Her hair was a snarl, but she'd tied it back to conceal the worst of the damage. She was also wearing sunglasses. In the morning when she'd looked in the mirror her eyes had been laced with a spider's web of bloodshot veins, as ugly and knotted as her dreams. So she'd put on the glasses. She was determined to keep them on. She was also determined not to collapse (again).
People had always called her ambitious.
The house she'd seen in her vision was so nondescript, so normal that it made her teeth ache. It had all the normal trappings: wooden fence, shrubbery, a little stretch of green lawn and even some potted plants. There was a little boy playing on a child's scooter in the garden, but he stopped when he saw her and stared up at her face with curious eyes. The woman stared right back. Usually she liked children, but today she wasn't sure she even liked herself, no matter anyone else.
"Is your mother home?" she asked. Her voice felt strange and heavy in her mouth.
The child didn't move; just kept blinking up at her, its mouth agape. Behind it, the front door opened.
There, in the doorway, stood Nimueh. She smiled.
"Don't mind him," she said, voice tinged with exasperated affection. "Come inside. I've got some lunch ready, if you'd like to share."
The woman nodded and unlatched the gate. When she walked up the path the Nimueh took hold of her hands, twining their fingers together. There was a familiar current between them. Memories unraveled.
"You think you're going mad." It wasn't a question.
"I remember being someone else," said the woman, her voice only shaking a little. "If that isn't madness, I don't know what is." She tugged free, feeling cold, and buried her face in her hands, wondering if she was going to really embarrass herself and, God forbid, start crying. "It doesn't make any fucking sense."
"It will," Nimueh promised. "It will, if you let me help you."
They stepped inside. The door closed with a muffled snick.
Together they stood in the muffled quiet. The woman tried desperately to fit her two sets of memories—of a Nimueh in her dreams, who'd curled magic in her fingers and died under lightning, and of this woman with her little house and her son, who'd helped her after she'd collapsed on the train—together, and found that she couldn't. She leaned back against the door, breathing out a frustrated sigh.
Nimueh watched her.
"If it helps, people call me Mary these days," she said lightly. She took off the woman's sunglasses—touched the pained frown creased into her brow. "What do they call you?" she asked, smoothing the younger woman's hair from her sweat-slick brow.
The woman thought, Your weren't this nice to me once. But the thought (memory) was swallowed up by a wave of gratitude.
At least she wasn't alone.
"Nina," said Morgana. "They call me Nina."