"Manifesto: Arken machine guns, fifty; associated rounds, five thousand; regulation boots, fifty pairs; regulation coats, fifty; regulation helmets, fifty; regulation gloves, fifty pairs." The guard glared at Arthur through the open window. "Took you long enough."

"Sorry, sir," said Arthur with a sheepish smile. "We ran into some trouble on the way over."

"What kind of trouble?" the guard asked.

"We were attacked by an Independent ship. They tried to board us, but we fought them off," Merlin piped up from the passenger's seat.

The guard held a screen near Arthur's face and squinted at the display. "You're from Nautilus, huh? Explains the accent. Alright, you can head on through. Open the gate!" he yelled in Mandarin, and he pointed down the grey-paved road. "First left. Warehouse five." He stepped away, and Arthur eased the truck through the gate.

"That was easier than I expected," whispered Merlin.

Arthur nodded once, his lips pressed together in a tight line. "Getting out is going to be the tricky part," he said.

"No, that'll be a piece of cake. You remember the plan?"

"Yes, Merlin, I remember the plan," said Arthur. "Same as the last fifty times you asked."

Merlin didn't respond to that, mostly because Arthur had pulled up alongside warehouse five, and several workers crowded around the truck.

"We got a shipment of guns and armor for you," Arthur said through the window. One of the workers led Arthur to the unloading dock, and Merlin opened the back of the truck.

"You got a toilet 'round here?" Merlin asked a nearby worker while Arthur helped unload the truck.

"Inside, just to the right," the man said, and Merlin hurried away. He locked himself in the single-stall bathroom and let his form slip away. This kind of magic was still so new to him, so unfamiliar. He hadn't been sure if he was ready for this mission, but Mal and River had already programmed his and Arthur's fake identification into the Alliance database, and he hadn't had much choice. Merlin took a moment to adjust to his new limbs, then crawled through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door and took flight.

None of the warehouse workers paid any mind to the little flying insect as it swooped around the room and landed in shadowy corners. Merlin had practiced this part, laying runes with tiny buggy appendages, until he could do it in less than a minute. Ten minutes, ten runes: One in each of the corners, one midway through each of the long sides of the warehouse, and two on both the ceiling and floor for good measure. He slipped back into the bathroom and returned to Arthur's side as a man.

"…always does this," Arthur said. He was complaining to a bored-looking warehouse clerk. "Every time. I think he doesn't like doing any of the heavy lifting." He caught Merlin's eye, and Merlin gave him a small nod. "Well, we'd best be going. Got to get back to the ship before noon. The pilot's in a right mood after the attack this morning."

Merlin and Arthur were barely a few dozen yards from the gate before a siren sounded and guards poured out of a nearby barracks. One troop of guards moved to reinforce the gate, while another score surrounded the truck. "Terribly sorry for the inconvenience, gentlemen," said a sergeant, not looking sorry at all. "It seems there's been a security breach. You'll have to follow me. Step out of the truck, please, nice and slow."

"Can you get us out of this?" Arthur muttered in Brythonic.

"Yeah," said Merlin in the same language. "I just need a few moments."

"Now, please, gentlemen," the sergeant ordered. He cocked his gun, a mean-looking thing with a short barrel. Merlin and Arthur had no choice but to obey.

"The man at the gate confirmed our identities," said Arthur. "Whatever security breach you're experiencing, we're not part of it."

"How odd," the sergeant said. "It seems that your captain disagrees. She managed to get a message to the planet's emergency services, who contacted us. She says that you two are Independent agents who hijacked her ship and stole her cargo."

"That seems kind of silly," said Arthur in a reasonable tone. He raised an eyebrow. "If we were Independent agents, why would we steal Alliance cargo just to return it to an Alliance base?"

That question seemed to stump the sergeant. "Ready?" Arthur whispered.

"On my mark, hit the ground and cover your ears," said Merlin. "Three, two, one, now."

Arthur ducked, and Merlin cast two spells in quick succession. The world grew abnormally silent around him then exploded in a flash of light. Merlin's ears rang from the sound of the flashbang despite his shield as the Alliance guards stumbled and swore around him. "Come on!" said Merlin. He dragged Arthur to his feet and pulled him toward the truck, only to see a soldier blessed with foresight slash a second tire.

"Follow me," Arthur said. "I remember the layout from the blueprints. I can get us out of here."

Merlin had memorized the blueprints as well, and he opened his mouth to inform Arthur as such, but Arthur just grabbed his arm and took off running. Merlin had to sprint flat-out to keep up as Arthur dragged him into a tiny alleyway between two warehouses. They crouched behind a stack of boxes and listened to Alliance soldiers tramp by just a dozen feet away.

"How much longer until the runes go off?" Arthur asked.

Merlin checked his watch. "About seven minutes. Why?"

"I have an idea to do even more damage. Lead the guards into warehouse five and barricade them in there."

Merlin considered it. "It's risky. What if we get trapped in there too?"

"Well, it doesn't have to actually be us, does it? How are your illusions coming along?"

Merlin understood what Arthur was getting at. "Not great, but probably good enough for a chaotic chase," he said.

"Ah, chaos," said Arthur. "I can do chaos." He eyed the alleyway around him, then stacked a few of the wooden crates on top of each other. "Give us a boost, then."

Merlin formed a foothold with his hands, and Arthur clambered onto the crates and from there onto the roof of the warehouse. He lay flat on the roof, and Merlin joined him moments later in the form of a bluebird. Merlin shifted back to human form, and two rough likenesses of himself and Arthur appeared in the alleyway where the true versions had stood earlier.

"Two dozen soldiers to the north," Arthur said. "Another ten by the gate. I don't think we should try to pick up any more. We'll want to get far away from here before the runes blow."

Merlin nodded and sent the illusions of himself and Arthur running out from the alley. They looped by the gate, and half the soldiers left their posts to chase after them. As the soldiers ran nearby, Arthur lobbed a flashbang. It was weaker than the one Merlin had produced earlier, but it still disoriented the men moving to surround the illusions. The soldiers to the north had spread out and formed a perimeter. One man took aim with his pistol, but his fellow knocked the gun aside. "Capture, not kill," he said. "You heard the order."

"I wasn't gonna kill him," mumbled the first.

The second man snorted. "Please. Your aim's not that good. You're more likely to kill when you're aiming to wound."

Arthur fired a few shots randomly into the ground, kicking up clouds of dust, and Merlin ran the illusions toward the warehouse. Hopefully, the dust would prevent the soldiers from taking too close a look. "Shut the door!" a guard called to a nearby warehouse worker, but Arthur killed the worker with a well-placed shot, and the illusions slipped in through the open door. Several guards followed, though not as many as Merlin would have liked, and he sent a strong gust of wind to slam the door closed. Merlin twisted his wrist, and the warehouse doors sealed themselves shut. The guards who weren't trapped inside rushed to pry the doors open.

"How do we get out?" Merlin asked, but Arthur was already scanning the Alliance base.

"There," said Arthur, pointing to a blank stretch of wall nearby. "No guards nearby, relatively speaking. We'll have to get to the rendezvous point on foot, but hopefully the guards will be too distracted to see us."

Merlin's eyes burned gold, and a series of hand-and-footholds sprung from the stone wall. He helped Arthur down from the roof and they hurried to their escape point. Arthur was halfway up when the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked sounded from behind them.

"Come on down from there," said a soldier with stripes on her sleeves. Merlin knew they marked her as a lieutenant. "And turn around nice and slow. Hands up." She nodded to the soldier on her right, and he stepped toward Merlin, handcuffs at the ready. Merlin allowed the soldier to grip his wrist, then shifted his arm from his elbow down into the front paw of a tiger. He struck upwards, raking his claws across the soldier's face and leaving the man screaming, then changed his form fully. The lieutenant staggered back in shock, and Arthur shot her in the face. She crumpled to the ground, and Merlin sprang across her body to gut the last standing soldier.

Merlin's hopes for a quiet and easy escape had been dashed, and they only had about two minutes until the runes he had placed took effect. He broke the mangled soldier's neck with a quick jerk of his head, then shifted back to human just long enough to hiss "time to go." Arthur scaled the wall as fast as he could while Merlin flew over. On the other side, Merlin took the form of a horse. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noted that the transformation took longer than usual. He was getting tired. Arthur climbed on his back, and Merlin set off at a gallop. He left bloody hoofprints in the prairie surrounding the Alliance base, and red droplets streamed from his jaw. A boom sounded from the base, followed by a series of crashes and an alarm.

"Sounds like a successful mission to me," said Arthur. "Though I suppose our getaway could have been cleaner."

Merlin couldn't speak, but he snorted as expressively as he could. He was pretty sure Arthur got the message.

The rendezvous point wasn't far, but Merlin took a circuitous route in case he was being tracked. Arthur had checked several times, but one could never be too careful. When they arrived an hour later, Merlin's coat had started to lather, and Arthur, unaccustomed to riding bareback, was getting sore. Merlin halted in front of the stolen Alliance shuttle, and Arthur dismounted with a groan. Simon jumped out of the shuttle and rushed to his side to check him over for injuries. "I'm not hurt," Arthur said, before he remembered to switch languages. "I'm not hurt," he repeated in English. "Just tired."

Merlin shifted back into human form and nearly fell on his face. He felt drained, as though he had run far too long in a flat-out sprint. His muscles trembled, and he gasped for air. Simon managed to get a shoulder under Merlin's arm just before he collapsed, and Simon and Arthur half-dragged and half-carried him into the shuttle.

"The captain is worried," Simon said once he had gotten Merlin stretched out on a couch in the shuttle. "The captain of that Alliance junker managed to get a distress call off. Mal almost pulled you out of there, but we convinced him to wait."

Zoë nodded her agreement from the pilot's seat. "Saw some pretty lights an hour ago. Successful mission, then?"

Arthur sank into a chair and grinned. "We managed to trap some of the guards in the warehouse before it blew. It probably won't have leveled the whole base—those walls were reinforced with steel—but we did a hell of a lot of damage. It'll be out of commission for months."

Simon dabbed at the blood around Merlin's mouth. "It's fine," Merlin said as he pushed the doctor away. "It's not mine." A wave of dizziness washed over him when he tried to sit up, and he slumped back against the cushions again. Simon, frowning, checked Merlin's pulse and temperature.

"Hey, Merlin, how many times did you shift during that mission?" Arthur asked. "Ten?"

Merlin gave a groggy smile. "Twelve," he said, his voice slurred with exhaustion. "Not the most I've ever done that quickly, but close."

Simon tsked. "You need to be more careful. If you keep doing things like that, you might be caught without power at the wrong moment."

"I haven't been without power in a long time," Merlin said quietly. Another failed attempt to sit up took some of the weight out of his words, and Arthur just laughed at him. Merlin closed his eyes and watched the lights bloom, and Zoë flew the shuttle up and out of the atmosphere of the little barren moon. Not long later, the hijacked Alliance transport vessel, tethered to Serenity, came into view.

Zoë hailed Serenity. "It's us, Cap'n. Mission was a success."

"Good to hear," came Mal's voice through the crackly connection. "We've almost finished stripping this boat. Care to help us lay the charges?"

"You know how much I love blowing up potentially useful assets," said Zoë.

"Aw, don't be like that," Mal said. "Our Kaylee has just informed me that we've gotten everything important out of the boat. All that's left is the hull, and we both know that it's not worth it to tow that oversized piece of scrap metal all the way home. Anything useful on the shuttle?"

"The nav system's decent, and Simon found a few medical kits onboard," said Zoë. "It shouldn't take long to clean this thing out, though." She docked the shuttle on the main vessel and tossed Arthur a small toolbox. "Come on, then. Help me out here."

Merlin smiled to see Arthur tinkering with the equipment at the helm of the shuttle. It wasn't too long ago that Arthur had held a wrench like a spoon and asked what kind of food he was supposed to eat with it. Now, his fingers, still forming calluses in strange locations, combed through the intricate hardware with a precision that even Kaylee would have admired. Merlin was pretty sure he admired it more, though.

Simon tossed a pair of medpacks onto Merlin's chest, and Merlin huffed.

"Think you can carry those?" Simon asked.

Merlin rose to his feet, the packs clutched to his chest, proud that he only swayed a little bit.

"Good man," said Simon with a smile. "Let's get moving. We don't want to be in Alliance space any longer than we need to be."

Merlin donned his space suit and made the short jump from the Alliance transport vessel to Serenity with Arthur close behind, a solid, reassuring presence in the brief void. Mal waited in the cargo hold, his arms crossed and a box of explosives at his feet. Kaylee appeared from the hallway behind him and rushed down the stairs into Simon's arms before Simon could even take his suit off.

"I was so worried when that Alliance captain managed to send a wave," she said, her voice muffled by Simon's shoulder. "I thought for sure you'd all be captured."

Simon smoothed a hand down her back. "Shh, dear, we're fine."

"I'm going to lay these charges," said Mal. "Zoë?"

"Right behind you, sir," Zoë said.

"Come on, Merlin," Simon said. "Let's get to the sick bay. I want to run a few tests while you're drained. Bring the medpacks."

"I'll take those," Kaylee said to Arthur as Merlin stepped out into the hall.

Down in the sick bay, Simon poked and prodded at Merlin, drawing blood and testing breathing and heart rate and reaction time. Merlin allowed it for ten minutes, then he brushed Simon off with the excuse that excessive expenditure of magic made him ravenous. It wasn't a lie, but mostly Merlin was getting a bit annoyed. Mal was waiting for him by the time he got to the kitchen, and Merlin groaned inwardly. He knew he was in for a lecture.

"Did anyone see you use magic?" Mal asked without preamble.

Merlin clattered around the kitchen. "No one who survived."

"Is that a fact?"

"We were in a blind spot. No cameras. Arthur made sure." Arthur hadn't told Merlin as such, but Merlin trusted Arthur's judgment in escape routes.

Mal frowned. "And you're absolutely positive that no one was lurking around the corner or setting up for an ambush?"

Merlin threw a pack of instant noodles into a pot with more force than necessary. "You know, I hid my magic for over two thousand years all on my own. I don't need you standing over my shoulder and micromanaging my every little cantrip."

"The stakes are higher now," Mal said.

Merlin turned away from his food to shoot a glare at the captain. "Higher? My best friend would have killed me if he had found out about my magic."

"And how many people would die now if the Alliance got wind of it?" Mal demanded. He stepped toward Merlin, forcing him up against a cabinet. "Secret weapons are only good if they're secret."

Merlin pushed at Mal's shoulders until the captain took a step back. "You're the one who came up with the idea in the first place. What are you expecting the Alliance to think when their forensic team doesn't find any traces of explosives in the ruins?"

"They'd be confused, alright, but I reckon their first thought wouldn't be magic. Seeing you shapeshift is a different matter. You need to be more careful."

Merlin crossed his arms, his noodles forgotten. "Everyone who saw me is dead. Arthur and I made sure of it."

Mal held Merlin's gaze for a long, heavy second. "Alright, son. I trust you."

"Thank you," Merlin said. He turned away from the captain and added a spice packet to his pot of noodles. "How's the propaganda coming along?"

Mal was silent for a moment, and Merlin wasn't sure if he would answer. "Inara is doing well," he said finally. "She's due to get back to Ugarit a few days after we land. Her last update was… promising. It sounds like she's been able to put together a pretty effective smear campaign among the criminal element of Sihnon. And she said that military recruitment, especially for officers, took a nosedive about a year ago. Alliance are starting to feel the effects now. Good news for us."

Merlin nodded. It had been Arthur's idea to send Inara to Sihnon, and Merlin had been surprised by how much Inara had liked the idea. Inara wasn't squeamish, but she had felt like her talents had been wasted as Simon's medical assistant. When Arthur suggested that she act as a spy instead, she had jumped at the chance to put her training as a Companion to use once more.

Mal grabbed a protein bar from a kitchen cabinet. "I want you back at the helm in ten minutes," he said, and he left Merlin alone with the noodles. Not five seconds later, Arthur dropped into the chair that Mal had so recently vacated.

"You're wrong," Arthur said.

Merlin took his time straining his noodles. "About what?"

"I wouldn't have killed you." Arthur shifted in his chair. "At least, I assume you were talking about me. Just now, I mean. I… um. I figured I was your best friend."

"Obviously you're my best friend," said Merlin.

"Oh, good." Arthur frowned. "I wouldn't have killed you."

"Do we have to do this now?" Merlin said before stuffing his mouth full of pasta. "I need to get to work."

"It's been over two years," said Arthur. "We need to talk about it sometime."

"I'm due on the bridge in—" Merlin checked his watch. "Eight minutes. Do you really think now is the best time for this?" Arthur crossed his arms but didn't speak, and Merlin sighed. "We have talked about it. Remember? I said I'm a sorcerer and then you died."

"There was a bit more to it than that," Arthur said. "And I still have some things I want to say to you."

Merlin gestured with his fork before stuffing more noodles in his mouth. He really didn't want to have this conversation, but Arthur apparently didn't care.

"I was… hurt that you didn't tell me, and at first I didn't understand why. But after thinking about it for a while, and you gave me plenty of time to think about it…" Arthur leveled a glare at Merlin. "I get it. If our positions were reversed, I can't say for sure that I would have told you. But when I think about good we could have done for Camelot, the course that history might have taken if we had been honest with each other from the beginning…" Arthur couldn't finish his sentence.

Merlin swallowed his mouthful of pasta but didn't take another bite. The same thoughts had haunted him, especially in the decades just after Arthur's death. He thought that those memories would have lost their raw edge, but Arthur had always been able to make him feel the tender, painful things that he tried so hard to bury deep. "I wish I had told you earlier. Knowing what I know now, I would have told you the moment I met you." Merlin reconsidered. "Well, maybe not right then. That would probably have gotten me killed."

"Probably," Arthur said. "But I would have been really sorry about it afterward."

"I'm sure that would have been a great comfort to me," said Merlin in a wry voice. "You're right, though. We do need to talk about this." He looked at his watch. "I just don't have the time right now."

"You've been saying that for the last two and a half years," Arthur said.

"Well, yeah, we're fighting a war, remember? That tends to be a lengthy process." Merlin finished his noodles, and Arthur followed him into the kitchen.

"You're avoiding this conversation," Arthur said, and Merlin couldn't deny it. "I just don't know why."

"You were gone," Merlin said. His voice came out as a broken whisper. "I kept thinking you'd come back, and you kept disappointing me." Arthur opened his mouth to argue, but Merlin pressed on. "I know, okay? I know it's not your fault. You didn't decide to leave, and you didn't decide to return. But I had made my peace with it. I've had this conversation with you, over and over in my head, for two thousand years. I was done with it, and now you want to open it up again and rehash it all?"

"I think I deserve to participate in it too," Arthur insisted. Merlin made to leave the kitchen, but Arthur blocked his path.

Merlin's heart thudded in his chest, and he was suddenly very aware of Arthur's proximity. His gaze fell to Arthur's lips, and, not for the first time, Merlin wondered what it would be like to kiss the man who had once been his king. Arthur took a step forward, a flush rising in his cheeks, and laid his hand on Merlin's shoulder. The 'Verse narrowed to just the two of them, and they lingered together in that moment, unable to look away. Merlin even dared to hope that Arthur might kiss him, but just as Merlin tilted his head, Arthur pushed him back.

Merlin stumbled and steadied himself on a cupboard shelf. "What the hell?" he demanded, but Arthur only set his jaw and turned away. Merlin wanted to scream at Arthur, to shake him, to make him feel all the raw and confusing things he made Merlin feel. "I need to get to the bridge," Merlin said instead.

Arthur didn't try to stop him as he walked away.

Merlin was surprised to see Zoë perched in the pilot's seat. She rarely ventured to the bridge, even though she was a competent pilot in her own right. Merlin supposed that the place was haunted for her. He understood all too well.

"Are we making any stops before Ugarit?" Merlin asked.

Zoë rose from the pilot's seat as though she had been burned. "No," she said with a forced air of indifference. "We should get going. Cap'n will detonate the charges once we're a safe distance from the Alliance vessel."

Merlin patted Zoë's shoulder as he moved past her to the pilot's seat. She didn't respond, but Merlin thought he saw her cold expression soften a little. She left the bridge, and Merlin was once again alone with the stars. He retracted the tether that held Serenity to the Alliance vessel and eased his way to a fast burn. Ugarit was only a few days' journey away.

Merlin loved flying. He loved the control of it, of the ship responding to his coaxing and commands. He had been a sailor for a while back on Earth-That-Was, but even that giddy sense of freedom and danger paled now in comparison to this golden sojourn between the stars. The aftermath of a mission always felt strange to Merlin. He was proud, certainly. Satisfied, obviously. But he also felt a strange weight hanging around his neck. He had killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people today. Who would he have to kill next? Merlin hated war.

The necessary preparations for landing at Ugarit were few and simple, so Merlin had plenty of time. He filled it with talking, mostly with Arthur. Their conversations were long-overdue and often heated, but Merlin felt better afterward.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this," Arthur admitted one evening.

Merlin, panting, checked the readout on his treadmill. "We've only been going for two miles."

"No, not… this." Arthur waved his hand at Serenity's tiny, makeshift gymnasium. He had insisted Mal needed to install training equipment—especially now that Jayne had departed, taking his weights with him—after their first month-long mission, saying that he needed to rebuild his muscle mass after two thousand years as a sack of bones. Merlin personally thought he had a point, but Mal had taken some convincing. "I mean, this whole soldier thing."

"We're not even really soldiers," Merlin said.

Arthur threw Merlin a dirty look. "Oh, thanks. That makes me feel loads better."

"No, I mean…" Merlin slowed his pace to a walk. "I know you want to have command, but you appeared out of nowhere with no connections or records; the general couldn't exactly give you an officer's commission right away. And from what I've heard, General Albia makes no secret of how much she likes us. The whole crew, I mean. I know it's taken some getting used to, but we're helping the Independents as best as we can."

Arthur considered. "I guess that's not so bad. After all this is over, where do you think we'll end up?"

"I'm not sure," said Merlin. "I don't know if the crew will be able to go back to being petty thieves if we win."

"When we win," Arthur corrected.

"When we win." Merlin smiled. "Maybe we'll be a legitimate transport ship. No smuggling necessary."

"I don't know if I'd be satisfied with that," said Arthur.

"I'm sure there'd be a place for you in the government," Merlin said. "The general could set you up with a nice appointment. She respects your leadership ability, for some reason."

Arthur tackled him for that.

"But what about you?" Arthur asked, panting, several minutes later. "What would you do?"

"I'll follow you," Merlin said from beneath him. "Always. You know that."