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The very first thing that Merlin registers is the sound of his nose cracking against a stone floor.
Immediately, his head bangs with intense pain, throbbing and pulsing as claws at the ground, trying to pull himself up. His hearing goes… out of range? Out of focus? Whatever. Everything's muffled.
Something touches his nose—his hand—and he looks down with unfocused eyes at the red that covers it. Fuck. What? He flips his hand over and presses his knuckles into his forehead, trying to swallow back his pain. His other hand begins clenching and unclenching before it tries to help him up off the floor. His legs are no help. No help at all. His knees give out before he can stand.
There's noise coming from behind him. A hand on his back. Someone is trying to speak to him, but the ringing makes it all jumbled. He tries to listen anyway. Nods where he thinks he should. Lets whoever it is pull him up to his feet.
In the vague blurriness, he can see a long corridor, framed with large windows. The person next to him is nothing more than a smudge of green and black.
The moment doesn't last long before the world is tilting on its axis. He hits his head on a wall and goes crashing back to the floor.
This time, Merlin can't help letting out a groan of pain, holding a hand to his head and just… keeping it there as he tried to focus his eyes. It takes a while. Too long, but eventually the ceiling comes into view, with intricate detailing and arches along the hall. Still can't hear properly. That wasn't good.
Ignoring the ringing, he swings his head—much, much too fast—down to the floor instead. He can see himself first. Brown pants. Brown boots. Cheap-looking. Scratchy. Then, he sees a man lying on…a sheet? He looks regal. He looks asleep. And there's a man in chain mail, a plate vest, a metal mask, a black cloak, and a sword pointing up.
Merlin knows he should be scared, but right now he's just trying to feel real.
Something—someone— is shaking his shoulder, trying to drag him upwards. He turns his head, slower this time, and looks at them.
This face. Merlin knows this face. Long dark curls. Bright green eyes, rimmed with tears. She's scared. He takes one long blink. A deep breath in.
"Morgana?"
She drags him up to his feet, and he feels more stable now. His hearing levels out as well. He can hear her, "Come on! We need to go, now!" she yells, barely hiding the tremble in her voice.
He knows what happens here. Stumbling away from her, he grabs the corners of the sheet with— with—someone, he'll remember later—and tries to drag them along the floor. He needs to—they need to get to a… a room! There's a room where they're taking this person.
The figure draws closer, and Merlin tries desperately to remember where he is. What happens next.
Morgana—Morgraine, Morgan, Morgana—can't take her eyes away from the swordsman. Knight. Swordsman. Ghost? Doesn't matter. It has her transfixed, and so he reaches out to touch her shoulder. "It'll be OK," he says, the words slurring. He removes his hand, leaving a bloodied print on her dress.
(There is a lump in his jacket pocket. A little glass bottle. It burns heavy against his chest.)
Her face contorts in disbelief before shaking her hand and dragging the man—Merlin's seen him before too, but where where where—with a renewed fervour. He follows in kind.
The swordsman moves closer and closer, and it's then that Merlin (sees Morgana trip and fall, and he, for the briefest moment, fully intends to leave her there, dragging Uther with him and letting the swordsman kill her. It wouldn't be his fault then, would it? He wouldn't have to poison her himself, and he wouldn't have that aching pain in his chest. But then it doesn't kill her. It stares at her, tilts its head, and focuses back on Merlin like Morgana isn't a threat. Because she isn't — she's the catalyst, the power source, the reason everyone is—) remembers and waves his hand towards Morgana and then towards the knight. Then his legs give out again.
He thinks he falls asleep then, if only for a moment, because when his eyes reopen, the knight is gone, and there's another person in front of him, holding his face as it lolls from side to side. This face. Merlin can never forget this face. "…'Thur," he tries speaking, but can barely finish his sentence as his head drops.
Whatever Arthur says in response is muffled, and then Merlin is being dragged to his feet, with Morgana leading him towards a different room — the throne room. Her hand is tight around his wrist, trembling.
He looks at the man they've been dragging. At the room. The clothes he's wearing. The people he's with. Pieces begin falling into place.
They've left him beside this man, propped up against the throne, and start barring the doors to the throne room. They begin talking, and it looks like they get into an… argument? No, that isn't right. Arthur looks pushy but concerned, and Morgana is shaking her head, and she's so, so scared. He can feel it in the air. But he can't do anything to help. The world is still spinning, and he needs—he needs time to think. He… almost remembers what happens next. He just needs to think.
He doesn't know how long he was thinking, but soon enough, Arthur is gone. It's just him and Morgana. She starts tearing up the sheets the man (he's sure he knows his name, but his mind is not cooperating) is lying on. "He's not going to survive," she says, voice choked wth tears.
His eyes land on the waterskin around his torso. The inner pocket of his jacket burns hotter and hotter. He knows what he did next. He knows what is supposed to happen now.
Instead, he grabs her arm. She looks at him, fearful, as he reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and brings out the bottle of hemlock.
"Merlin—"
"The curse… the power," he barely manages to say. Morgana shuffles back as he holds the hemlock out towards her, "…S'you. Tied to you. Not asleep. Wasn't attacked." He hopes that's enough of an explanation because his body has reached its limit. He can't keep his eyes open, the throbbing pain in his head getting louder and louder.
He isn't granted rest, though, because Morgana shakes him awake, "How are you so sure?"
Instead of replying, he holds a hand out and produces a weak butterfly made of fire before it fizzles out into nothingness.
Then he passes out.
(In the moments after, Morgana clutches the bottle in her hands tighter, still transfixed on the empty air where the butterfly had briefly lived. She calls out to her half-sister, demanding an explanation, and holds her own life hostage. Morgause asks—begs—Morgana to reconsider, but she stays strong. Innocent people have been hurt for Uther's crimes against magic. No matter how much she tries to reason, Morgana is not yet soured against goodness and cannot abide by her half-sister's plot. She has been lied to. Tricked.
And she will never forget.)
The world sets itself in stone after Morgause vanishes and Merlin has been treated by Gaius. It's only then that his fractured memories begin to piece themselves back together.
He is Merlin, man-servant to Prince Arthur, and an apprentice physician to Gaius. The day before, Camelot had been sieged by the Knights of Medhir, conjured by Morgause, who had used Morgana as a conduit for a powerful sleeping spell. He is also Merlin, a humanities professor at Bangor University, teaching a module on Arthurian Legend. The day before, he had taught a lecture-seminar on Morgan Le Fay.
Both had collided into one another, and now Merlin was stuck with a furious headache and no clear recollection of the day prior. There was a train, except it was currently the 5th century (or 12th century, Merlin can't really remember), so that can't be right. That train that should not exist crashed, and then he fell face-first onto Camelot's hallways.
Dragging a hand over his face, he let out a loud groan.
"Well, you seem much better," Gaius raises an eyebrow from where he's sat, mixing whatever medicine has been requested from him that day. "How's your nose?"
"Broken, but I'll live," he says. "Not the worst that's happened anyway," and it's true. Even after Camelot, Merlin has had a rather… clumsy life. He's pretty sure his students started keeping count of whenever he tripped over his own feet, or accidentally walked into his desk (which, Merlin is pretty sure, kept shifting by a couple of centimetres every so often, and it was driving him mad.)
Gaius' eyebrow somehow raises even more, but he doesn't reply, instead handing him the concoction, "If you're complaining, then you're well enough to take this to the Lady Morgana. The past few days have been rather stressful, and she requested you personally."
"What?" he took the bottle from Gaius. It had a strange, reddish hue that Merlin was certain would be disgusting to drink. He was already dreading the lack of proper painkillers or antibiotics. Maybe he could make them— no. Too much work, and would probably require magic, which was too risky, and he's already definitely fucked up if Morgana was asking for him rather than Gaius.
He tried to reason it away at first, but no, no, he for sure used magic in front of Morgana — and if his timeline was correct, then this happened after he hadn't supported her when she first came to Gaius' chambers. Sure, he led her to the druids, but he also led Camelot's men straight to them. What was he supposed to tell her? None of the reasons or excuses he could think of were anywhere near adequate, so—
Merlin could also just tell the truth.
The first go around, he'd been so scared. Gaius hadn't helped, and neither had the overgrown lizard haunting Camelot's dungeons. But he's older now, and by quite a large margin, too.
And Morgana was terrified — of herself, of her dreams, everything. It's no wonder she turned out the way she did, bitter and full of hate. There was no one except Morgause, and Merlin was certain that she didn't have the best intentions for Morgana. He just had to pull his socks up and deal with this.
It took him a little bit to find Morgana's room (the years of life had not been kind to his sense of direction), but once there, he raised a hand to knock, hesitating just a little bit.
"Who is it?" Morgana called out, voice muffled through the door.
"Me—uh, Merlin. I have the tonic from Gaius."
She replied after a moment of silence, her voice shaking, "Come in."
When he entered, Morgana was standing by the window, facing the courtyard below, but Merlin could tell she wasn't really looking at anything. He cleared his throat, and she turned to face him. She looked like she wanted to speak, but her lips stayed shut, eyes looking for… something on his face.
She was agonising over this, so Merlin spoke first, "I have magic." Short, simple. To the point.
"What—since when?" She asked, beginning to pace around the room.
"I didn't really have a choice," he said, "I was born with it, so. Better learn to control it rather than let it roam free."
"All this time…" her voice trailed off, before she pierced Merlin with an accusatory glare, "I told you. I told you that I thought I had magic, and you—you brushed me off! You lied. You said you didn't know it was magic, but you did because you have magic!"
"Please lower your voice. I don't fancy dying right now." Morgana took a deep breath, "I'm sorry. I'd been told to keep it a secret for my whole life, and I was scared. I've made a lot of mistakes because of that fear, and you almost became one of them."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to, but I want to help you. I have books, I can teach you in my spare time. I know what it's like to be alone, with no one who can understand what you're going through, and how agonising it can be. But it doesn't have to be like that for you. I can be there, if you want me."
Morgana didn't say anything for a while, instead walking over to her window and looking down at the courtyard. Merlin was content to let her think things over. Digest everything. Of course, he would have liked a response, but he's had centuries of patience, so he could wait a day or two more.
He moved to leave Morgana's chambers when she spoke up, "Merlin?"
Turning around, the expression on her face was unreadable, "I… wish you had told me earlier. I don't like being lied to." She paused, then gave him a tight smile, "But thank you. I need some time."
"Of course, my lady."
"How many times have I told you to just call me 'Morgana'? We're friends, Merlin."
He smiled, "Sorry, my lady."
She huffed and waved her hand towards the door, "Just—Arthur probably has need of you, so—" there was a distant yell from the hallway, one that sounded an awful lot like his name— "You'd best get going."
He gave a short bow and left her chambers. He'll probably have to deal with Kilgharrah since, if his memory is correct, he had promised that lizard his freedom in exchange for information. Of course, he then remembers the dragon attacking Camelot right after, so. Perhaps, he should bind him? Despite the time shenanigans, he is technically still the Dragonlord (even if his father is still alive in this timeline). Kilgharrah would have to listen to him, and if he doesn't, Merlin will just have to force him.
Well, that's a problem to deal with later. Merlin needs to remember how to act as a servant, though something tells him Arthur wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
(In the moments after, Morgana's heart begins to harden. What would Uther do if his precious ward were revealed to have magic? Would he have her executed as well, or will he make excuse after excuse to keep her alive, like a hypocrite? And Merlin. He would not spare a serving boy, no matter how dear to Arthur he is. Morgana will not see her friends suffer at the hands of a tyrant.
And so, Morgana plans.)