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'Character Motivation'. Merlin/Merlin RPF. Merlin/Bradley James. NC17. (1/2)
I love how this icon is capable of expressing "ooh, that's sexy", "ooh, that's awkward", and "that's confusing", depending on the context. Like, "One day, as Gregor Samsa Bradley James was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into ARTHUR PENDRAGON, PRINCE OF CAMELOT." And then he makes this face.
Thank you to all the people who answered my questions (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
allothi & lonelybrit, here's to you!), held my hand, and listened to me doubt my sanity. You guys = fabulous! Thanks especially to Team Awesome (almostinstinct, bedlamsbard, & stealingpennies) for making this fic better. All remaining fail are mine.
Okay, here goes, IDEK. I has a shame?
Character Motivation
Merlin/Merlin RPF. Bradley/Merlin, mentions of Merlin/Arthur & Bradley/Colin. NC17. Warning: spoilers for episodes 4, 7, 10, & 13; strangeness.
This began as a short thing for the Porn Battle, then it took on a life of its own and became Rather Bizarre. Who are you, person who posted the "Merlin/Bradley James" prompt?! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
Gaius is running out of ideas.
"All right, I get the point," says Arthur with cheerful confusion. "You're all very good actors and this is a very fine joke, but it's becoming a bit much, honestly."
"I should say the same to you," Morgana replies irritably.
"Katie-"
"Stop calling me that!" she bellows. "I've had enough of this. Gwen?"
Gwen smiles at them apologetically, tells Arthur that she hopes he feels better in the morning (ignores his "I feel fine!"), and follows her lady out the door.
Gaius sighs. "If that infusion of yarrow didn't work, I'm rather at the end of my rope."
"Is that it then?" Merlin demands. "We're just going to give up?"
"Calm down, Colin," says Arthur, patting his back, "you're going to give yourself a heart attack."
"Aaaarrrgh," Merlin responds.
Merlin leads the way back to Arthur's chamber, despondently quiet as Arthur natters on about method acting and longform improv, whatever they are. "I admire your stamina, I really do," says Arthur. "Is this some lesson to teach me about the importance of craft?"
Merlin gives him a sidelong glance. "Witchcraft?" he ventures.
Arthur rolls his eyes. "For god's sake. I bet you all have some wager going on, don't you? How long before I break down and gibber, is that it?"
"Do you not remember anything?" Merlin bursts out, even as he hears Gaius's voice at the back of his mind: His memories are intact; he's just remembering them wrong. "Don't you know us?!"
Arthur looks at him then, concerned and maybe a little hurt. "I like to think so."
Merlin opens the door to Arthur's room and Arthur steps through first, yammering about 'Anthony' again. ("Did you see his face when I dropped the sword? I thought he was going to start crying! When did the props become so heavy?") It's magic, Merlin thinks. It must be. Magical possession. Arthur's been possessed by an evil spirit named Bradley James.
But Merlin somehow knows it's not. Despite Arthur’s strange affliction, Merlin can still recognize him in the way he smiles and intones certain words, and his unapologetic way of being. It's Arthur, somehow, shifting in and out of focus in his body.
Merlin locks the door behind them. "Arthur."
And Merlin goes to him, presses up against him and doesn't stop, pushing him backwards across the room.
"What-"
"Do you remember this?" And he tumbles them both to the bed.
His lips are certainly as soft as Arthur's, his skin as warm and his tongue as pliant. Arthur makes the same sounds of surprise and pleasure deep in his throat like the first time they did this.
"Do you know this?" His hand slides down the front of Arthur's trousers.
"Colin," Arthur gasps.
"I'm not Colin! I'm not Colin and you're not going to say another word until you remember who we are."
Something like fear flashes through Arthur's eyes and it nearly disheartens Merlin - since when has Arthur been frightened of him? But he pushes the thought out of his head when he wraps his hand around Arthur's prick and slides his thumb over the tip. He tastes like Arthur, feels like Arthur in his mouth, even though when he comes he doesn't call Merlin's name.
They divest each other of clothes, and Arthur returns Merlin's kisses messily, between curses and wordless grunts and, when Merlin doesn't expect it, he flips them around, trapping Merlin between him and the bed, and then there is only the feel of so much warm skin pressed against him, and Arthur’s teeth on his neck.
Arthur watches him as he wanks him, fist tight around Merlin's cock, and Merlin doesn't look away. The wonder on Arthur's face is writ as clear as the lust, like he's wondering why he never thought to do this before. Merlin would have felt disappointed - it's not Arthur, it's still not him - but at the moment he's being touched by able hands and it's difficult to worry overmuch.
At first Arthur fucks him like he's afraid Merlin might break, and Merlin has to hiss "harder" and "faster" until Arthur says, "Jesus Christ, all right, shut up," and they fuck hard and fast like Merlin is used to, even if something is a little off. And afterwards, when they are spent and sweat-covered, panting and tangled in each other, Merlin says hoarsely, "Arthur..."
And Arthur says, "I think I have to recalibrate Arthur's motivations."
Merlin cries out in frustration, clambers out of bed.
"Where are you going?"
"To sleep.. Bradley." He starts pulling on his clothes. "I'm going to sleep."
"Colin-"
"Don't," he snaps. "It's getting old." It's strangely liberating being bad-tempered at this Arthur-shaped creature. It's not Arthur after all, no matter how familiar the expression of confused hurt is.
"Good night, then," says Bradley, sounding unsure.
"Yeah," says Merlin, and closes the door.
How is he going to explain this one to Arthur? Merlin supposes he first needs to explain this to himself. Does it count as cheating if he didn’t know it wasn’t Arthur? Maybe he can just never tell Arthur. But no, Arthur had been furious when he found out about the whole magic thing. After stomping around for a bit and asking if Merlin could maybe just stop being magical (“No, you prat, it’s the only reason you’re still alive.”), Arthur had then said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner,” in such a tone that Merlin now believes himself quite done with keeping secrets from Arthur.
“How is he?” asks Gaius when Merlin bursts through the door.
“It’s not Arthur,” Merlin sighs.
Gaius merely raises his eyebrows. “How are you so sure?”
“Bah,” Merlin replies, and goes to his room.
+
After the knight nearly takes his head off, Bradley drops his sword and proceeds to trip over it in a truly magnificent manner involving a high-pitched yelp and an inglorious face-first descent into the dirt. This stuff is levels above mere sword-twirling, and he is glad when Anthony finally commands Percival to take over for the morning and that Arthur is to be confined to his chambers until further notice.
As he walks off the field, Bradley says to Anthony, “They’re very dedicated. It’s like they’ve been taking lessons on the side.”
Anthony frowns at him, not a disapproving frown, but one tinged with bemusement and tentative hope, and replies, “Our knights are the best in the land.”
“It’s like the Matrix,” he continues. “You know the part when they download the fighting programs into their brains, and out of nowhere they’re kung-fu masters and they’re like-”
And then Anthony’s frown turns into a fully-fledged scowl, and Colin herds Bradley off to the castle before Anthony can reply.
In any case, Bradley is sitting in Arthur’s room with nothing to do, and usually doing nothing suits him fine, but Colin is also there, doing nothing, and Bradley can’t help but remember last night, when they were both doing lots of things to each other. Bradley keeps coming back to that for a number of reasons.
The number one reason is this: as much as Bradley can rationalize the lengths that his castmates would go to for a prank, he didn’t think Colin would go… well, that far, just to mess with his head. Until you remember who we are, he had said. Colin demanded and commanded his way through the sex like he’s done it a hundred times before, and it’s all just a little disconcerting. Colin is a good actor, but Colin is not… He wouldn’t do this.
“Bradley?”
Bradley, who is sitting on Arthur’s chair with his boots on the table, looks up at Colin. “Hmm?”
“I was just saying,” says Colin wearily, “if you don’t need me, then I’ll be off.”
It’s just best to settle the matter now.
Bradley says, “Show me the dragon.”
The look on Colin’s face implies that he possibly shat his pants, and he proceeds to sputter his way through variations of “Dragon what dragon, where?” and “Underground cavern hahaha funny, um” before Bradley bursts out, “Listen, you utter tit,” because if Colin wants to play it that way, then fine. Bradley knows how to do longform improv too.
He continues, “So I’m a magic spirit from the Old Religion, right? I know lots of things. Us Bradley spirits, we’re pretty omniscient, and also dashingly good-looking. I know there’s a dragon under the castle who talks to you about coins and destiny, just like I know you’re a sorcerer.”
Colin is still making the ‘shat my pants’ expression, now with a pinch of horror.
“So take me to your dragon, sorcerer,” Bradley finishes.
“But you’re confined to your chambers.”
“You’re my manservant so you must do as I say.”
“No, I’m Arthur’s manservant,” Colin asserts, “and you just said yourself you’re a Bradley spirit.”
Bradley closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and replies, “Oh my god.”
“I’ve never heard of a Bradley spirit,” Colin begins, but Bradley speaks over him.
“Look,” he says, “if you don’t take me to the dragon, I’ll tell Uther you’re a sorcerer.”
Colin’s eyes widen and his body tenses, and Bradley recognizes that facial expression. It’s the one that appears for a flash second when Bradley’s twattery goes too far and Colin can’t believe Bradley just went there. And normally Bradley would then make a joke at his own expense to make up for it, but he’ll do that later, probably at the bar, after he insists everyone buys him a drink as recompense for this ridiculous exercise.
“Fine,” Colin says, looking away. “Bradley. I’ll take you to the dragon.”
They make their way through the castle in silence, side by side, and Bradley tries to ignore the feeling that something is off with the castle. (Has that corridor always been there?) He steals a glance at Colin, who looks straight ahead, tight-lipped.
“Your highness!” gasp the guards, flustered when they see Bradley and Colin coming down the stairs. One of the guards throws the pair of dice behind him in what he must have thought was a discreet manner, but they clatter conspicuously on the floor and the other guards give him dirty looks.
Bradley, who has been on autopilot since the first unfamiliar corridor, tells them, “My father requires your services,” and is both unsurprised and apprehensive when they leave immediately.
Colin lights the torch. Bradley thinks he hears him chant something sibilant before the flame flares, but then again, he has his back to him and it’s hard to tell. Maybe Colin has a lighter on him or something. That’s not so strange. What’s strange is that Bradley knows that this corridor they are in usually leads to a dead end, a craggy stone wall, but for some reason this isn’t the case today. There is no wall, there is only a…
“dfhjlksa,” opines Bradley’s brain.
They say the camera adds ten pounds, but maybe that doesn’t apply to underground caverns. Maybe the rule for them is that the camera takes away ten thousand, because the cavern into which they emerge seems implausibly huge. It’s definitely bigger than it was two days ago, when it didn’t exist. He goes to the edge as close as he dares and peeks over, but he can’t even see the ground.
There is a hand on his back, bunching up his shirt and pulling him back gently. “Be careful,” says Colin.
Bradley resists the urge to yell ‘poop’ into the darkness just to hear it echo.
“Um, dragon?” Colin calls out. “It’s me. Hello?”
From somewhere in the dark, there is the clank of chains and the beat of wings. Bradley sees the dragon’s silhouette and his brain suggests, Perhaps it’s a particularly large bird? But his stomach churns anyway and he squeaks, “Fuck,” moving backwards until he’s pressed up against the wall.
“Merlin,” the dragon intones as it perches on a boulder then, in a tone of mild surprise and high interest, it adds, “and the young Pendragon.”
“Well-” Colin begins.
“No.” The dragon squints and lowers its head to take a closer look. “Not Pendragon as we know him, but he does carry the prince inside him.”
Don’t eat me, Bradley wants to say, but it’s generally bad etiquette to start conversations that way, so he opts for: “…Hello.” Then he clears his throat, hopes his voice doesn’t come out as high and quavery, and manages to say: “…”
“Well, go on,” says Colin.
“Yes,” says the dragon, smiling the most horrible smile Bradley has ever seen. “Do go on.”
“…” says Bradley, as his brain says, “AAARRGH.”
“He’s harmless, really,” Colin assures him. Then he adds, “Sometimes,” which doesn’t help.
“Er,” Bradley finally says. “Look. I think there’s been some sort of mix-up. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“There are no such things as accidents,” the dragon informs him.
“…Right.” He should have known it was going to go like this.
“He does that,” Colin whispers. “You just have to work with it.”
“I should probably introduce myself,” he calls up at the beast. “I’m Bradley, and I’m a little lost.”
The dragon continues to exude an air of unflappability.
“I hear you’re good with destiny and things,” Bradley continues, “so I was wondering if you can maybe tell me how I ended up here and, if it’s not too much trouble, how I can go home?”
“Everything comes and goes,” says the dragon. “Comings and goings are the warp and weft of this world. Perhaps the true question is, ‘What pattern will they weave?’”
“No,” Bradley replies, slowly. “That is not the question.”
“Where’s Arthur?” Colin demands.
“Where, indeed,” it says, raising its wings. With a rattle of chains and a gust of air, the not-so-mythical creature retreats into the dark, leaving the two of them staring after it haplessly.
Col… Merlin turns to Bradley with an apologetic look on his face. “It usually goes like that.”
“Yeah,” he says numbly. “I know.”
Bradley trails behind Merlin as they go back through the castle. His mind is in a fog of impossible questions, and he registers only peripherally the rooms and stairs that weren’t there before, and the people who demurely avert their eyes as he passes. He turns to look at Merlin, who is also looking at him with a curious expression on his face. When their eyes meet, Merlin smiles awkwardly and Bradley knows that smile.
So okay, it wasn’t Colin he was shagging last night. If he were honest with himself, Bradley would say he sort of knew at the back of his mind, because Colin wouldn’t fuck a friend for a laugh, just like Bradley also knew all along (in a denial sort of way) that this whole set-up is too weird and elaborate to be a joke. Still, Bradley had stayed in denial anyway, clinging to the hope that, maybe after this whole malarkey was over, the two of them could have a laugh at Colin’s questionable propositioning methods over drinks that Bradley has paid for, and then they could proposition each other all over again, but for real this time. “Roleplaying’s for the birds,” he imagines himself saying, imagines Colin saying something wry. Bradley doesn’t know what Colin would say, but he knows how he would say it, all smirky and understated, like he knows he never has to exert himself overmuch to reel them all in, the smug bastard.
Well, Bradley can’t do any of that now.
Also, by shagging Merlin, he feels like he’s violated Colin’s privacy somehow. It’s weird and it makes him feel a little like some sort of voyeur. Merlin is smiling Colin’s smile at him, and maybe Bradley should smile back, but he thinks the shock of being universally displaced has frozen the muscles in his face.
“So,” Merlin ventures. “Um. Is Bradley your name or is it the name of your, er, species?”
“…What.”
“Bradley spirits. I’ve never heard of Bradley spirits,” he muses. “Is Bradley the name of the place where you’re from?”
Bradley stares, opens his mouth to answer.
“Are you some kind of fairy?” Merlin asks with earnest curiosity.
“Well-” says Bradley before Merlin can come up with another thoughtful query. After half a moment’s hesitation, Bradley proceeds to do what he does best: he starts talking out of his arse.
All the way back to Arthur’s room, he tells the young warlock all about Bradleys, including their habits (“A Bradley likes to sleep in late. Don’t wake one before noon if you can help it.”) and favorite foods. The latter leads to a convoluted tangent in which Bradley tries to explain what marshmallows are, and Merlin looks fairly horrified at the idea of sugared processed pork gelatin, and, okay, when put that way, Bradley may be forced to reconsider marshmallows too.
“What else do Bradleys like?” asks Merlin.
And, because a horrible thought just occurred to him, Bradley responds by describing toilet paper, a hint of desperation in his voice.
It’s the first thing they teach you in improv class: go with the flow. If your partner mimes picking something up, wobbly-kneed and grunting and saying, “Gosh, this box is heavy,” you don’t say, “Wow, you’re stupid because that’s obviously a bag of feathers.” You accept the situation, support the scene, and move on. You take the circumstances given to you and work with it until it doesn’t work anymore. “The best actors don’t act,” an acting coach once told him, “they adapt.”
In Arthur’s room – his room now – Bradley flops down on the bed and reaches towards the nightstand for his phone, which crossed over with him because it had been in his pocket. It doesn’t have much battery life left, but a charger wouldn’t do much good at this point anyway. The phone isn’t picking up any signal and now he knows why.
Merlin frowns at it. “What’s that?”
“It’s a magic machine from my world. We call it the iPhone.”
“What’s it for?”
“Talking to people, mostly.” Bradley scrolls down his list of contacts for the hell of it - a familiar tic - and it’s almost like he and Colin are just killing time during a shooting break, going about the important business of figuring out who to prank-call next. “Sometimes I use it to send funny pictures and people text me back saying things like, ‘Bradley, that’s uncouth.’”
“Huh. Do all Bradleys have an eye phone?”
“Just the ones that like to show off.”
Merlin smiles. “You like showing off then?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes, when it’s convenient.” Then, “Do you like music?”
“Sure.”
“What kind of music?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Minstrels don’t come down to my village much. I like the songs that are also stories. Adventures and things. You don’t usually get a lot of adventures where I’m from.”
Bradley is already clicking through his playlist. “Right, I don’t know if I have that many songs about adventures, so you’re just going to have to settle for something I like instead. Don’t worry,” he assures him, “I have good taste in music.” Bradley sticks one earbud in his left ear, then pats the space on the bed next to him. “Come on. I don’t bite.”
Merlin sits next to him and acts like Bradley might bite at any minute, and goes still when Bradley sticks the other earbud in Merlin’s ear, thumb brushing against his cheek.
He presses ‘Play’ and turns up the volume. The thrum of bass and the steady beat of processed percussion sound in their ears, and Bradley watches Merlin’s expression transition from wariness to confusion and then to awe as Snoop Dogg advises them to drop it like it’s hot.
“This is music from your world?”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” says Merlin, a smile spreading slowly on his face. “It’s not bad.”
Bradley grins.
They listen to Snoop Dogg until the iPhone runs out of battery.
+
“He’s doing much better, I think,” says Gwen when she and Merlin are sent to fetch water. “I’m glad. He’s had everyone so worried.”
“Yeah,” Merlin replies. “He’s doing marvelously, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering… his illness.”
Gaius is the only other person who knows about the prince’s ‘illness’, and the three of them agreed that it’s best if they keep it that way. Considering that Bradley doesn’t know how he ended up here or how to leave, what good would it do to spread alarm? Uther would probably just stick Bradley’s head on a pike. Merlin begins spending his free time trawling through his book of magic for anything, anything at all, that might be useful.
With a combination of Gaius’s encyclopedic knowledge of maladies and Bradley’s expertise in something he calls ‘pop psychology’, they devised a satisfactorily dense explanation for Uther involving imbalanced humors and a stress-induced breakdown caused by massive overexertion. Uther usually glazes over during Gaius’s lengthier lectures and, much to Bradley’s delight, the prince is excused from matters of state and training with the knights until further notice.
“Do you know what’s strange?” says Gwen as Merlin pumps water into a bucket. “Morgana told me that Arthur sat her down and asked her to tell him everything. ‘Don’t leave anything out,’ he said.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”
“I mean everything! About what they were like when they were children, about what they used to do, all the places they’ve ever gone… Everything. I suppose he’s still ill, so one has to indulge him, but I’m beginning to wonder if Gaius was wrong about the memory loss.”
“Maybe he’s just dim,” shrugs Merlin, and hopes his smile looks sufficiently jaunty. “I’ve been telling people that for ages.”
Bradley has already sat Gaius down bade him do the same thing, absorbing Arthur’s life and legacy into himself like some kind of parasite. Maybe ‘parasite’ is a harsh word - Bradley is just being smart, after all – but it gives Merlin a strange feeling seeing this creature step into the spaces that Arthur used to occupy.
Bradley impersonates Arthur eerily well in his mannerisms, carriage, and vocal inflections but, beyond that, the details get jumbled up. Bradley doesn’t know things like how old Arthur was when he learned to ride a horse, but for some reason he knows what really happened to Aulfric and Sophia. “It’s difficult trying to keep track of what Arthur knows about whom, and who knows that Arthur knows about whatever,” says Bradley, “so I’ve been having a lot of conversations about the weather.”
He bickers with Morgana, displays a guarded reverence towards Uther, and cheerfully humiliates Merlin in public, though he apologizes for it later in private. He can – and does – pass for the real thing, as long as you don’t look too closely, and everyone is just so relieved to have Arthur back that they don’t. Bradley still slips up and calls Merlin Colin on occasion, but not as often as Merlin accidentally calls him Arthur.
Merlin’s book proves useless. He’s already tried a number of counter-enchantments on Bradley when Bradley isn’t looking, just in case he isn’t as benign as he seems. But counter-enchantments don’t work if there are no enchantments to counter, so all this achieved was Bradley shivering, looking around in confusion, then glaring at Merlin and demanding, “Was that you?”
“No. Er, what was me?”
“Don’t give me that, I caught you golden-eyed.”
Well, there was the one time he mispronounced a counter-enchantment and turned Bradley into a wolfhound puppy, but a few hours’ worth of panicky research righted that wrong. (Gwen had returned to Gaius’s quarters with a plate of leftover pork rinds from the kitchens and was disappointed to find, not the puppy she had gleefully named Winkles, but a very livid prince and a sheepish-looking Merlin. Gaius, who is not the best at these sorts of things, explained to her that Winkles had choked on a chicken bone and died.)
Anyway, he stopped doing that. Bradley threatened to eviscerate him with a lance if he didn’t.
With the excuse of convalescing, Bradley’s days are long and unencumbered. He makes a habit of riding out into the nearby hills, Merlin at his side, and he would talk wistfully about ‘television’ and ‘indoor plumbing’. Which do sound pretty great, if Bradley is to be believed. Merlin still doesn’t know when to trust him. Bradley definitely isn’t as omniscient as he previously claimed, and Merlin is beginning to doubt his ‘magic spirit’ status.
“And in the southern hemisphere,” Bradley says with the air of a traveler recently returned from the hinterlands, “the water flushes around the other way.”
“That’s weird,” Merlin concedes.
“I know!”
The sun is low in the sky, coating the hillsides in an amber light. They should go back soon, but Merlin isn’t in any rush to rush them. He rather enjoys these outings, despite himself. When Bradley isn’t Arthur, he’s very not Arthur, but that’s sort of why Merlin likes it. It’s a nice change from being ordered to muck out stables, polish armor, and being the guy Arthur tries out all his new insults on. When Bradley is Bradley, there are no complications of hierarchy between them and he is as willing to learn from Merlin as Arthur hadn’t been. Between Arthur bossing Merlin around and Gaius giving Merlin endless chores, it is a new experience being the one someone goes to for answers, even if it’s just for questions like “What is an imbalanced humor?” and “Why is Percival such an ass?”
If Arthur were more like this, Merlin thinks, maybe I might have an easier time saving his life. Then Merlin feels guilty for even thinking it.
He does sometimes find himself having to explain to Bradley that really, Merlin can’t come with him to heckle the knights while they train because he really does have to tend to Arthur’s armor. Armor doesn’t tend to itself, and Merlin doubts that Arthur would be pleased to come back and find his armor in less-than-perfect condition.
“Arthur’s a bit of prig, isn’t he?” Bradley had commented, with a strangely knowing grin.
Merlin had shrugged and replied, “You get used to him.”
Before these outings, they take food and drink from the kitchens, and nobody tells them they can’t, because Bradley is the prince, and a sick one to boot, so everyone treads twice as lightly and accommodates his wishes with twice the expedience, lest they end up having to explain to Uther why his son keeled over dead in their presence.
“Old man Pendragon has been talking to me about picking up the sword again,” says Bradley as they loll on the hillside.
“Are you going to do it?”
“I told him I wasn’t ready, but he’s adamant. I suppose he has a point. I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, so I might as well pick up a few things. I think he plans to set me up with Arthur’s old tutors.”
“It’ll keep you busy, at least.”
“Last night, he insisted we spar a bit. I said ‘oh no thanks’ but then he got a bit scary. You know how Uther gets a bit scary?”
“I know how Uther gets a bit scary,” nods Merlin.
“So I was roped into it. Nearly killed me. But.” Bradley shrugs, fiddles with a blade of grass. “I don’t know, I think it killed him having to go easy on me. Poor bastard misses his son.” He looks up at Merlin then, Arthur’s blue eyes and Bradley’s unabashed earnestness. “You miss him, don’t you?”
“Well,” Merlin mumbles, looking away. “Yeah, I guess I do. Sometimes.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When did you and Arthur… you know. When did you two start, uh…”
“Fucking?” Merlin fills in wryly. “When did we start fucking?”
“To put it delicately, yeah.”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
Bradley snorts. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“Besides,” Merlin adds, “I wouldn’t ask you when you and Colin started-”
“We don’t,” Bradley cuts in hastily. “Colin and I. We don’t…”
Then the gets the same look on his face that Arthur does when he’d rather not talk about it, so Merlin changes the subject.
They arrive back in Camelot shortly before supper. A stableboy runs outside to take their horses, but Bradley is still prattling on about something or other and Merlin has to hiss, “Arthur!”
“What?” Bradley blinks, then sees the stableboy approaching and there is an instantaneous change in his body. It still disorients Merlin a little. Bradley sits up straighter, lifts his head, and Merlin isn’t sure what Bradley does to his face but he does something, because a moment ago it was Bradley talking and now… “Good god, Merlin,” says Bradley-as-Arthur, “you smell like a pigsty.”
“Well, the pigsty is just beyond the stable, sire,” Merlin replies as they dismount, “so maybe you’re smelling an actual pigsty.”
“Maybe you’re just an idiot,” Bradley responds airily, handing the reins to the boy, “who doesn’t know how to bathe.”
Merlin smiles. “Maybe. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.”
“You’d know all about strange things, I’m sure,” Bradley quips, and they continue in this fashion as they make their way to castle.
+
Bradley doesn’t tell them about the show, doesn’t tell them about the King Arthur mythos, nothing. What good would that do? It’s a bit of a downer, telling everyone that they’re all destined to betray each other and that Camelot is doomed doomed doomed. Most times he just tries not to think about it, because then it’s like thinking about blinking or breathing: suddenly you have to concentrate to do it, and it becomes more difficult than it needs to be. Besides, it’s not like, when he asks people to tell him stories about Arthur, they’re being entirely truthful. Bradley is fairly sure Morgana is holding something back in her accounts, but what can you expect from Morgana?
He keeps an eye on her. Arthur may have been too stupid to care about his foster sister’s agenda, but Bradley knows how the story goes.
He wonders occasionally how Arthur is faring in his own world, if that’s where he is. There’s no way to be sure, but Bradley can’t think of any other places Arthur might be. What does Arthur think of the internet? Do cars frighten him? Has he backed a surprised Colin to the bed and kissed him, calling upon supplanted memories?
Bradley goes to see the dragon by himself one night. He still wants to run away screaming when it appears, but he gathers his courage like he knows Arthur would and demands, “When do I go back?”
The dragon, true to form, replies, “One cannot truly go back. The nature of time is to march onwards, and the nature of us, its subjects, is to march with it.”
“No, hold on,” Bradley retorts with a certain triumph. “I watched a documentary about this once. There’s no such thing as absolute time, right, ‘cos Albert Einstein discovered relativity, or something, and there’s all this stuff with time dilation and the theory of simultaneity that says that the nature of time-”
“You carry the young Pendragon in you,” the dragon interrupts, refusing to be dragged into this nonsense.
“But I’m not him!” Bradley cries out. “Don’t change the subject!”
“And the young Pendragon carries in him a great destiny,” it continues as if Bradley hadn’t spoken. “You must trust in that destiny.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.” But the dragon flies off, having made its point (maybe). In a moment of frustration-inspired boldness, Bradley calls out, “I’m going to strangle the writers for making you such a big horse’s arse!”
“Horse’s arse! Horse’s arse!” the cavern echoes, taunting Bradley in his own voice.
Uther follows through on his threats to bring in Arthur’s old tutors, and Bradley starts spending long hours in a stuffy room with stuffy old men who insist he reads stuffy old books. When he isn’t doing that, he’s outside collecting a new set of injuries from being taught the sword, the lance, the crossbow, and god knows what else. It’s a crash course in kingship and knighthood, and Bradley is sick of telling himself that it’s basically research and rehearsal, and that they’ll all be impressed back home by his marked improvement in handling medieval weaponry and newfound ability to list the Pendragon forefathers to ten generations.
At supper, Uther asks him, “How are your studies going?”
“They’re going well,” Bradley replies. “It’s all starting to come back to me.” A lie, but a well-placed one, he thinks.
Uther smiles: a rare sight in Bradley’s time here. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. I knew those lessons would do you good.”
“After all, it’s no fun beating you if you keep complaining your sword’s too heavy,” Morgana teases.
“You’ll be eating your words soon enough,” smirks Bradley, and finds himself missing his family more than ever.
Riding out to the hills with Merlin becomes an infrequent and thus valued adventure, and they go when they can. Merlin shows him how to set a snare to catch quail and, because summer is ending, where to pick the best apples once autumn arrives. Bradley goads Merlin into showing him his magic, to make rocks levitate and to transfigure mushrooms into berries, which they then eat. His eyes flash gold, not through special effects, but through real honest-to-goodness magic. Magic is a good enough answer for things here, a panacea for the mysteries of this world. He thinks he might miss that aspect of it when he goes back, where magic has been explained away by science and ethnography.
“Merlin,” says Bradley as they lie around on a hillside after a spectacularly failed attempt at fishing. “Do you tan?”
“What?” Merlin mumbles, fuzzy with catnap.
“Do you tan? In the sun, does your skin darken?”
“Um. I turn sort of pinkish, I suppose. Do Bradley spirits not burn in the sun?”
Bradley isn’t sure if Merlin is being sarcastic, so he doesn’t say anything. He thinks of Colin sitting in the shade for the sake of visual continuity, memorizing lines and practicing Received Pronunciation because apparently the British populace can’t relate to anyone who doesn’t sound like Jeremy Paxman.
Merlin says, “The back of my neck is still peeling from the last time we rode out.”
“Yeah? Show me.”
Merlin rolls over and takes off his scarf so Bradley can see. The back of his neck is pink and sort of disgusting-looking, but Bradley reaches out and touches it anyway, fingers brushing from his nape to his shoulder.
“Bradley,” Merlin says quietly, and there is a warning in his voice that makes Bradley withdraw his hand.
Whatever. It isn’t like Merlin hasn’t been thinking it. Like his eyes don’t follow Bradley around a room as if he’s trying to see one of those Magic Eye pictures. Like a hand on the shoulder or the softness of his smile don't linger. Bradley envies Merlin his muscle memory, but he’ll just have to work with it. He’ll work with it until it doesn’t work anymore or until someone invents vodka, whichever comes first.
“Dragon,” Bradley says to the beast that night, “do you ever miss your kin? Do you ever wish you were outside again?”
“It is not given to us to question the machinations of fate,” the dragon intones.
“You’re full of shit,” Bradley informs him, and goes back upstairs and goes to sleep.
+
In his moments of weakness, Merlin lets himself pretend Bradley is Arthur, really Arthur, maybe as much as Bradley himself is pretending to be Arthur. “But it’s not pretending,” Bradley tells him once. “It’s my job.”
In any case, it’s becoming easier to do this, to pretend. As Bradley’s tutoring progresses, Uther drags him in more frequently to navigate matters of state, eager to regain his son and ally. Merlin passes their conferences as he does his chores and recognizes Arthur’s look of concentration as he frowns over a treaty, and his “let’s be reasonable, Father” tone when Uther is on the verge of some rash decision.
One night at supper, after Bradley and Uther had dealt with the fickle fish that is diplomatic alliances with Orkney, Uther tells him, “You will make a fine king.”
“Thank you, Father,” says Bradley, but instead of looking proud, he just looks queasy, which makes Merlin feel offended on Arthur’s behalf.
Uther would never say that to Arthur, no matter if Uther actually thinks so, no matter how Arthur starves to hear them. The only reason Uther is suddenly frank in his affection is because he is trying to find in Bradley the son he thought he had lost to some strange affliction, and now that Arthur is beginning to seem his old self again, Uther is determined to anchor him with reminders of his birthright: yes, Arthur belongs here, and yes, he is proud to have Arthur for a son, and yes, he is the beacon that will light the way for the kingdom to the future.
“I have faith in you,” says Uther, raising his goblet to Bradley.
All the things Arthur has wanted to hear from his father’s lips, and it’s not actually Arthur hearing them. None of this is Bradley’s fault, but it makes Merlin angry anyway.
“I can’t believe those Orkney tossers actually bought what I said,” Bradley confesses to him later as they approach Arthur’s room. Merlin opens the door and lets Bradley step through first. “I had no idea what I was doing, I was just channeling ‘The Godfather’ as hard as I could and left the profanity and tommy guns out. God, the things Camelot could do with tommy guns, though. We’d rule the world, making offers people can’t refuse.”
“You should take it more seriously,” Merlin says, closing the door behind them. “This may all just be fun and games to you, but you’re prince of an actual kingdom here that actual people live in, and what you do affects them. Once you leave, we still have to live with the consequences of your actions.”
“Well, but the thing is-”
“That was something Arthur at least understood,” Merlin continues, feeling his anger rise. “He may have been a huge prat who made me muck out the stables more than was strictly necessary, and he may not have made the best decisions all the time, but at least he did what he did because he really cares about his subjects. He wants to be a good king because it’s the right thing to do, not because he’s some… ghoul from another world who has to pretend so he doesn’t get burnt at the stake!”
“Hold on,” Bradley cuts in, red-faced. “Look, I never asked for this. All right? If it were up to me I’d still be in France, with air-conditioning, and toilets, and television, and… and Haagen Dazs, and cars! Little cars, because the roads in France are really small sometimes!”
“I don’t care if you didn’t ask for it! No one ever asked me if I wanted to be a sorcerer. I just was one. No one asked Arthur in the womb, ‘Hey, do you fancy being a prince?’ You are what you are, and you do what you have to do, especially when it’s not just your neck on the line.”
“You’ve been hanging around that dragon too much.”
“Arthur would have-”
“I’m not Arthur!” Bradley cries out, and there’s such a note of desperation in his voice that Merlin hesitates. He clutches Merlin’s shoulders and says, “I’m not Arthur! And I need you to remember that, Merlin, I need you to remember that with me. Look, everyday I have to be someone else and go by his name and remember his habits and, on top of that, he’s a politician, meaning that sometimes I have to be someone who’s pretending to be someone else, and it’s a mindfuck. I have to fear what Arthur fears, be bored by what Arthur is bored by, and god, I haven’t even figured out what’s going on between him and Morgana, though I’m sure that’s an interesting story for another time. I know Arthur is my character, right, I built him in my head and I stepped into that role, so obviously there’s going to be a lot of Bradley in Arthur, sure. But I don’t even… It’s like…” At a loss for words, Bradley deflates. He takes his hands off Merlin and steps back, rubbing his face as if suddenly tired. “I don’t even fucking know. It’s just that no one yells ‘cut’ anymore.”
They regard each other awkwardly, unsure how to proceed in the face of so much exposed.
“That doesn’t change anything,” Merlin finally says. “What you do still affects people’s lives. You can’t disregard that just because you’re not who they say you are.”
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, gesturing at Merlin rubbing his shoulders.
Merlin shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
“Sorry. I don’t know my own strength anymore. Must be the sword-fighting.”
“Yeah.” He smiles and adds, “Hey, congratulations on not dropping your sword for a full fifteen minutes yesterday, by the way. I saw that.”
“Did you?” Bradley beams. “Thanks, I was quite proud of that.”
“You’re welcome.”
They fall into another silence.
“Look,” says Bradley. “You’re the only other person who knows who I am.”
“What about Gaius?”
“We’re not counting Gaius because he’s creepy.”
“He’s not creepy,” Merlin says defensively. “He’s been like a father to me.”
“Like father, like son,” says Bradley, and Merlin’s heart does something funny because maybe that’s how Arthur would have replied, too. “Look, Merlin, the point is that… The point is that I’m Bradley James. I was born in Devon, in 1984, and I like football and steak, and I hate wearing shoes without socks. And I don’t like chocolate with nuts in it, but I like nuts on ice cream. I… don’t have a favorite movie because I like a lot of movies. Fuck if I know what my favorite color is, probably blue. And.” He throws up his hands. “I don’t know, I prefer Sprite to Coke.”
“That’s, um,” says Merlin. He doesn’t know what to say.
“I’m not Arthur,” Bradley insists. “I’m not Arthur Pendragon.”
And Merlin just looks at him, at this man, whoever he is. His fierce eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw, the familiar shape of his mouth. Merlin swallows, concedes, “Okay.”
After subdued ‘good nights’, Merlin leaves (Bradley dresses and undresses himself) and goes straight to the dragon. “Will Arthur ever come back?” he asks.
“What is a kingdom without a king?” the dragon replies.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You must understand the question, lest you misunderstand the answer.”
Merlin sighs. “Never mind.”
Part 2
Thank you to all the people who answered my questions (
allothi & lonelybrit, here's to you!), held my hand, and listened to me doubt my sanity. You guys = fabulous! Thanks especially to Team Awesome (almostinstinct, bedlamsbard, & stealingpennies) for making this fic better. All remaining fail are mine.Okay, here goes, IDEK. I has a shame?
Character Motivation
Merlin/Merlin RPF. Bradley/Merlin, mentions of Merlin/Arthur & Bradley/Colin. NC17. Warning: spoilers for episodes 4, 7, 10, & 13; strangeness.
This began as a short thing for the Porn Battle, then it took on a life of its own and became Rather Bizarre. Who are you, person who posted the "Merlin/Bradley James" prompt?! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
Gaius is running out of ideas.
"All right, I get the point," says Arthur with cheerful confusion. "You're all very good actors and this is a very fine joke, but it's becoming a bit much, honestly."
"I should say the same to you," Morgana replies irritably.
"Katie-"
"Stop calling me that!" she bellows. "I've had enough of this. Gwen?"
Gwen smiles at them apologetically, tells Arthur that she hopes he feels better in the morning (ignores his "I feel fine!"), and follows her lady out the door.
Gaius sighs. "If that infusion of yarrow didn't work, I'm rather at the end of my rope."
"Is that it then?" Merlin demands. "We're just going to give up?"
"Calm down, Colin," says Arthur, patting his back, "you're going to give yourself a heart attack."
"Aaaarrrgh," Merlin responds.
Merlin leads the way back to Arthur's chamber, despondently quiet as Arthur natters on about method acting and longform improv, whatever they are. "I admire your stamina, I really do," says Arthur. "Is this some lesson to teach me about the importance of craft?"
Merlin gives him a sidelong glance. "Witchcraft?" he ventures.
Arthur rolls his eyes. "For god's sake. I bet you all have some wager going on, don't you? How long before I break down and gibber, is that it?"
"Do you not remember anything?" Merlin bursts out, even as he hears Gaius's voice at the back of his mind: His memories are intact; he's just remembering them wrong. "Don't you know us?!"
Arthur looks at him then, concerned and maybe a little hurt. "I like to think so."
Merlin opens the door to Arthur's room and Arthur steps through first, yammering about 'Anthony' again. ("Did you see his face when I dropped the sword? I thought he was going to start crying! When did the props become so heavy?") It's magic, Merlin thinks. It must be. Magical possession. Arthur's been possessed by an evil spirit named Bradley James.
But Merlin somehow knows it's not. Despite Arthur’s strange affliction, Merlin can still recognize him in the way he smiles and intones certain words, and his unapologetic way of being. It's Arthur, somehow, shifting in and out of focus in his body.
Merlin locks the door behind them. "Arthur."
And Merlin goes to him, presses up against him and doesn't stop, pushing him backwards across the room.
"What-"
"Do you remember this?" And he tumbles them both to the bed.
His lips are certainly as soft as Arthur's, his skin as warm and his tongue as pliant. Arthur makes the same sounds of surprise and pleasure deep in his throat like the first time they did this.
"Do you know this?" His hand slides down the front of Arthur's trousers.
"Colin," Arthur gasps.
"I'm not Colin! I'm not Colin and you're not going to say another word until you remember who we are."
Something like fear flashes through Arthur's eyes and it nearly disheartens Merlin - since when has Arthur been frightened of him? But he pushes the thought out of his head when he wraps his hand around Arthur's prick and slides his thumb over the tip. He tastes like Arthur, feels like Arthur in his mouth, even though when he comes he doesn't call Merlin's name.
They divest each other of clothes, and Arthur returns Merlin's kisses messily, between curses and wordless grunts and, when Merlin doesn't expect it, he flips them around, trapping Merlin between him and the bed, and then there is only the feel of so much warm skin pressed against him, and Arthur’s teeth on his neck.
Arthur watches him as he wanks him, fist tight around Merlin's cock, and Merlin doesn't look away. The wonder on Arthur's face is writ as clear as the lust, like he's wondering why he never thought to do this before. Merlin would have felt disappointed - it's not Arthur, it's still not him - but at the moment he's being touched by able hands and it's difficult to worry overmuch.
At first Arthur fucks him like he's afraid Merlin might break, and Merlin has to hiss "harder" and "faster" until Arthur says, "Jesus Christ, all right, shut up," and they fuck hard and fast like Merlin is used to, even if something is a little off. And afterwards, when they are spent and sweat-covered, panting and tangled in each other, Merlin says hoarsely, "Arthur..."
And Arthur says, "I think I have to recalibrate Arthur's motivations."
Merlin cries out in frustration, clambers out of bed.
"Where are you going?"
"To sleep.. Bradley." He starts pulling on his clothes. "I'm going to sleep."
"Colin-"
"Don't," he snaps. "It's getting old." It's strangely liberating being bad-tempered at this Arthur-shaped creature. It's not Arthur after all, no matter how familiar the expression of confused hurt is.
"Good night, then," says Bradley, sounding unsure.
"Yeah," says Merlin, and closes the door.
How is he going to explain this one to Arthur? Merlin supposes he first needs to explain this to himself. Does it count as cheating if he didn’t know it wasn’t Arthur? Maybe he can just never tell Arthur. But no, Arthur had been furious when he found out about the whole magic thing. After stomping around for a bit and asking if Merlin could maybe just stop being magical (“No, you prat, it’s the only reason you’re still alive.”), Arthur had then said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner,” in such a tone that Merlin now believes himself quite done with keeping secrets from Arthur.
“How is he?” asks Gaius when Merlin bursts through the door.
“It’s not Arthur,” Merlin sighs.
Gaius merely raises his eyebrows. “How are you so sure?”
“Bah,” Merlin replies, and goes to his room.
+
After the knight nearly takes his head off, Bradley drops his sword and proceeds to trip over it in a truly magnificent manner involving a high-pitched yelp and an inglorious face-first descent into the dirt. This stuff is levels above mere sword-twirling, and he is glad when Anthony finally commands Percival to take over for the morning and that Arthur is to be confined to his chambers until further notice.
As he walks off the field, Bradley says to Anthony, “They’re very dedicated. It’s like they’ve been taking lessons on the side.”
Anthony frowns at him, not a disapproving frown, but one tinged with bemusement and tentative hope, and replies, “Our knights are the best in the land.”
“It’s like the Matrix,” he continues. “You know the part when they download the fighting programs into their brains, and out of nowhere they’re kung-fu masters and they’re like-”
And then Anthony’s frown turns into a fully-fledged scowl, and Colin herds Bradley off to the castle before Anthony can reply.
In any case, Bradley is sitting in Arthur’s room with nothing to do, and usually doing nothing suits him fine, but Colin is also there, doing nothing, and Bradley can’t help but remember last night, when they were both doing lots of things to each other. Bradley keeps coming back to that for a number of reasons.
The number one reason is this: as much as Bradley can rationalize the lengths that his castmates would go to for a prank, he didn’t think Colin would go… well, that far, just to mess with his head. Until you remember who we are, he had said. Colin demanded and commanded his way through the sex like he’s done it a hundred times before, and it’s all just a little disconcerting. Colin is a good actor, but Colin is not… He wouldn’t do this.
“Bradley?”
Bradley, who is sitting on Arthur’s chair with his boots on the table, looks up at Colin. “Hmm?”
“I was just saying,” says Colin wearily, “if you don’t need me, then I’ll be off.”
It’s just best to settle the matter now.
Bradley says, “Show me the dragon.”
The look on Colin’s face implies that he possibly shat his pants, and he proceeds to sputter his way through variations of “Dragon what dragon, where?” and “Underground cavern hahaha funny, um” before Bradley bursts out, “Listen, you utter tit,” because if Colin wants to play it that way, then fine. Bradley knows how to do longform improv too.
He continues, “So I’m a magic spirit from the Old Religion, right? I know lots of things. Us Bradley spirits, we’re pretty omniscient, and also dashingly good-looking. I know there’s a dragon under the castle who talks to you about coins and destiny, just like I know you’re a sorcerer.”
Colin is still making the ‘shat my pants’ expression, now with a pinch of horror.
“So take me to your dragon, sorcerer,” Bradley finishes.
“But you’re confined to your chambers.”
“You’re my manservant so you must do as I say.”
“No, I’m Arthur’s manservant,” Colin asserts, “and you just said yourself you’re a Bradley spirit.”
Bradley closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and replies, “Oh my god.”
“I’ve never heard of a Bradley spirit,” Colin begins, but Bradley speaks over him.
“Look,” he says, “if you don’t take me to the dragon, I’ll tell Uther you’re a sorcerer.”
Colin’s eyes widen and his body tenses, and Bradley recognizes that facial expression. It’s the one that appears for a flash second when Bradley’s twattery goes too far and Colin can’t believe Bradley just went there. And normally Bradley would then make a joke at his own expense to make up for it, but he’ll do that later, probably at the bar, after he insists everyone buys him a drink as recompense for this ridiculous exercise.
“Fine,” Colin says, looking away. “Bradley. I’ll take you to the dragon.”
They make their way through the castle in silence, side by side, and Bradley tries to ignore the feeling that something is off with the castle. (Has that corridor always been there?) He steals a glance at Colin, who looks straight ahead, tight-lipped.
“Your highness!” gasp the guards, flustered when they see Bradley and Colin coming down the stairs. One of the guards throws the pair of dice behind him in what he must have thought was a discreet manner, but they clatter conspicuously on the floor and the other guards give him dirty looks.
Bradley, who has been on autopilot since the first unfamiliar corridor, tells them, “My father requires your services,” and is both unsurprised and apprehensive when they leave immediately.
Colin lights the torch. Bradley thinks he hears him chant something sibilant before the flame flares, but then again, he has his back to him and it’s hard to tell. Maybe Colin has a lighter on him or something. That’s not so strange. What’s strange is that Bradley knows that this corridor they are in usually leads to a dead end, a craggy stone wall, but for some reason this isn’t the case today. There is no wall, there is only a…
“dfhjlksa,” opines Bradley’s brain.
They say the camera adds ten pounds, but maybe that doesn’t apply to underground caverns. Maybe the rule for them is that the camera takes away ten thousand, because the cavern into which they emerge seems implausibly huge. It’s definitely bigger than it was two days ago, when it didn’t exist. He goes to the edge as close as he dares and peeks over, but he can’t even see the ground.
There is a hand on his back, bunching up his shirt and pulling him back gently. “Be careful,” says Colin.
Bradley resists the urge to yell ‘poop’ into the darkness just to hear it echo.
“Um, dragon?” Colin calls out. “It’s me. Hello?”
From somewhere in the dark, there is the clank of chains and the beat of wings. Bradley sees the dragon’s silhouette and his brain suggests, Perhaps it’s a particularly large bird? But his stomach churns anyway and he squeaks, “Fuck,” moving backwards until he’s pressed up against the wall.
“Merlin,” the dragon intones as it perches on a boulder then, in a tone of mild surprise and high interest, it adds, “and the young Pendragon.”
“Well-” Colin begins.
“No.” The dragon squints and lowers its head to take a closer look. “Not Pendragon as we know him, but he does carry the prince inside him.”
Don’t eat me, Bradley wants to say, but it’s generally bad etiquette to start conversations that way, so he opts for: “…Hello.” Then he clears his throat, hopes his voice doesn’t come out as high and quavery, and manages to say: “…”
“Well, go on,” says Colin.
“Yes,” says the dragon, smiling the most horrible smile Bradley has ever seen. “Do go on.”
“…” says Bradley, as his brain says, “AAARRGH.”
“He’s harmless, really,” Colin assures him. Then he adds, “Sometimes,” which doesn’t help.
“Er,” Bradley finally says. “Look. I think there’s been some sort of mix-up. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“There are no such things as accidents,” the dragon informs him.
“…Right.” He should have known it was going to go like this.
“He does that,” Colin whispers. “You just have to work with it.”
“I should probably introduce myself,” he calls up at the beast. “I’m Bradley, and I’m a little lost.”
The dragon continues to exude an air of unflappability.
“I hear you’re good with destiny and things,” Bradley continues, “so I was wondering if you can maybe tell me how I ended up here and, if it’s not too much trouble, how I can go home?”
“Everything comes and goes,” says the dragon. “Comings and goings are the warp and weft of this world. Perhaps the true question is, ‘What pattern will they weave?’”
“No,” Bradley replies, slowly. “That is not the question.”
“Where’s Arthur?” Colin demands.
“Where, indeed,” it says, raising its wings. With a rattle of chains and a gust of air, the not-so-mythical creature retreats into the dark, leaving the two of them staring after it haplessly.
Col… Merlin turns to Bradley with an apologetic look on his face. “It usually goes like that.”
“Yeah,” he says numbly. “I know.”
Bradley trails behind Merlin as they go back through the castle. His mind is in a fog of impossible questions, and he registers only peripherally the rooms and stairs that weren’t there before, and the people who demurely avert their eyes as he passes. He turns to look at Merlin, who is also looking at him with a curious expression on his face. When their eyes meet, Merlin smiles awkwardly and Bradley knows that smile.
So okay, it wasn’t Colin he was shagging last night. If he were honest with himself, Bradley would say he sort of knew at the back of his mind, because Colin wouldn’t fuck a friend for a laugh, just like Bradley also knew all along (in a denial sort of way) that this whole set-up is too weird and elaborate to be a joke. Still, Bradley had stayed in denial anyway, clinging to the hope that, maybe after this whole malarkey was over, the two of them could have a laugh at Colin’s questionable propositioning methods over drinks that Bradley has paid for, and then they could proposition each other all over again, but for real this time. “Roleplaying’s for the birds,” he imagines himself saying, imagines Colin saying something wry. Bradley doesn’t know what Colin would say, but he knows how he would say it, all smirky and understated, like he knows he never has to exert himself overmuch to reel them all in, the smug bastard.
Well, Bradley can’t do any of that now.
Also, by shagging Merlin, he feels like he’s violated Colin’s privacy somehow. It’s weird and it makes him feel a little like some sort of voyeur. Merlin is smiling Colin’s smile at him, and maybe Bradley should smile back, but he thinks the shock of being universally displaced has frozen the muscles in his face.
“So,” Merlin ventures. “Um. Is Bradley your name or is it the name of your, er, species?”
“…What.”
“Bradley spirits. I’ve never heard of Bradley spirits,” he muses. “Is Bradley the name of the place where you’re from?”
Bradley stares, opens his mouth to answer.
“Are you some kind of fairy?” Merlin asks with earnest curiosity.
“Well-” says Bradley before Merlin can come up with another thoughtful query. After half a moment’s hesitation, Bradley proceeds to do what he does best: he starts talking out of his arse.
All the way back to Arthur’s room, he tells the young warlock all about Bradleys, including their habits (“A Bradley likes to sleep in late. Don’t wake one before noon if you can help it.”) and favorite foods. The latter leads to a convoluted tangent in which Bradley tries to explain what marshmallows are, and Merlin looks fairly horrified at the idea of sugared processed pork gelatin, and, okay, when put that way, Bradley may be forced to reconsider marshmallows too.
“What else do Bradleys like?” asks Merlin.
And, because a horrible thought just occurred to him, Bradley responds by describing toilet paper, a hint of desperation in his voice.
It’s the first thing they teach you in improv class: go with the flow. If your partner mimes picking something up, wobbly-kneed and grunting and saying, “Gosh, this box is heavy,” you don’t say, “Wow, you’re stupid because that’s obviously a bag of feathers.” You accept the situation, support the scene, and move on. You take the circumstances given to you and work with it until it doesn’t work anymore. “The best actors don’t act,” an acting coach once told him, “they adapt.”
In Arthur’s room – his room now – Bradley flops down on the bed and reaches towards the nightstand for his phone, which crossed over with him because it had been in his pocket. It doesn’t have much battery life left, but a charger wouldn’t do much good at this point anyway. The phone isn’t picking up any signal and now he knows why.
Merlin frowns at it. “What’s that?”
“It’s a magic machine from my world. We call it the iPhone.”
“What’s it for?”
“Talking to people, mostly.” Bradley scrolls down his list of contacts for the hell of it - a familiar tic - and it’s almost like he and Colin are just killing time during a shooting break, going about the important business of figuring out who to prank-call next. “Sometimes I use it to send funny pictures and people text me back saying things like, ‘Bradley, that’s uncouth.’”
“Huh. Do all Bradleys have an eye phone?”
“Just the ones that like to show off.”
Merlin smiles. “You like showing off then?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes, when it’s convenient.” Then, “Do you like music?”
“Sure.”
“What kind of music?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Minstrels don’t come down to my village much. I like the songs that are also stories. Adventures and things. You don’t usually get a lot of adventures where I’m from.”
Bradley is already clicking through his playlist. “Right, I don’t know if I have that many songs about adventures, so you’re just going to have to settle for something I like instead. Don’t worry,” he assures him, “I have good taste in music.” Bradley sticks one earbud in his left ear, then pats the space on the bed next to him. “Come on. I don’t bite.”
Merlin sits next to him and acts like Bradley might bite at any minute, and goes still when Bradley sticks the other earbud in Merlin’s ear, thumb brushing against his cheek.
He presses ‘Play’ and turns up the volume. The thrum of bass and the steady beat of processed percussion sound in their ears, and Bradley watches Merlin’s expression transition from wariness to confusion and then to awe as Snoop Dogg advises them to drop it like it’s hot.
“This is music from your world?”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” says Merlin, a smile spreading slowly on his face. “It’s not bad.”
Bradley grins.
They listen to Snoop Dogg until the iPhone runs out of battery.
+
“He’s doing much better, I think,” says Gwen when she and Merlin are sent to fetch water. “I’m glad. He’s had everyone so worried.”
“Yeah,” Merlin replies. “He’s doing marvelously, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering… his illness.”
Gaius is the only other person who knows about the prince’s ‘illness’, and the three of them agreed that it’s best if they keep it that way. Considering that Bradley doesn’t know how he ended up here or how to leave, what good would it do to spread alarm? Uther would probably just stick Bradley’s head on a pike. Merlin begins spending his free time trawling through his book of magic for anything, anything at all, that might be useful.
With a combination of Gaius’s encyclopedic knowledge of maladies and Bradley’s expertise in something he calls ‘pop psychology’, they devised a satisfactorily dense explanation for Uther involving imbalanced humors and a stress-induced breakdown caused by massive overexertion. Uther usually glazes over during Gaius’s lengthier lectures and, much to Bradley’s delight, the prince is excused from matters of state and training with the knights until further notice.
“Do you know what’s strange?” says Gwen as Merlin pumps water into a bucket. “Morgana told me that Arthur sat her down and asked her to tell him everything. ‘Don’t leave anything out,’ he said.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”
“I mean everything! About what they were like when they were children, about what they used to do, all the places they’ve ever gone… Everything. I suppose he’s still ill, so one has to indulge him, but I’m beginning to wonder if Gaius was wrong about the memory loss.”
“Maybe he’s just dim,” shrugs Merlin, and hopes his smile looks sufficiently jaunty. “I’ve been telling people that for ages.”
Bradley has already sat Gaius down bade him do the same thing, absorbing Arthur’s life and legacy into himself like some kind of parasite. Maybe ‘parasite’ is a harsh word - Bradley is just being smart, after all – but it gives Merlin a strange feeling seeing this creature step into the spaces that Arthur used to occupy.
Bradley impersonates Arthur eerily well in his mannerisms, carriage, and vocal inflections but, beyond that, the details get jumbled up. Bradley doesn’t know things like how old Arthur was when he learned to ride a horse, but for some reason he knows what really happened to Aulfric and Sophia. “It’s difficult trying to keep track of what Arthur knows about whom, and who knows that Arthur knows about whatever,” says Bradley, “so I’ve been having a lot of conversations about the weather.”
He bickers with Morgana, displays a guarded reverence towards Uther, and cheerfully humiliates Merlin in public, though he apologizes for it later in private. He can – and does – pass for the real thing, as long as you don’t look too closely, and everyone is just so relieved to have Arthur back that they don’t. Bradley still slips up and calls Merlin Colin on occasion, but not as often as Merlin accidentally calls him Arthur.
Merlin’s book proves useless. He’s already tried a number of counter-enchantments on Bradley when Bradley isn’t looking, just in case he isn’t as benign as he seems. But counter-enchantments don’t work if there are no enchantments to counter, so all this achieved was Bradley shivering, looking around in confusion, then glaring at Merlin and demanding, “Was that you?”
“No. Er, what was me?”
“Don’t give me that, I caught you golden-eyed.”
Well, there was the one time he mispronounced a counter-enchantment and turned Bradley into a wolfhound puppy, but a few hours’ worth of panicky research righted that wrong. (Gwen had returned to Gaius’s quarters with a plate of leftover pork rinds from the kitchens and was disappointed to find, not the puppy she had gleefully named Winkles, but a very livid prince and a sheepish-looking Merlin. Gaius, who is not the best at these sorts of things, explained to her that Winkles had choked on a chicken bone and died.)
Anyway, he stopped doing that. Bradley threatened to eviscerate him with a lance if he didn’t.
With the excuse of convalescing, Bradley’s days are long and unencumbered. He makes a habit of riding out into the nearby hills, Merlin at his side, and he would talk wistfully about ‘television’ and ‘indoor plumbing’. Which do sound pretty great, if Bradley is to be believed. Merlin still doesn’t know when to trust him. Bradley definitely isn’t as omniscient as he previously claimed, and Merlin is beginning to doubt his ‘magic spirit’ status.
“And in the southern hemisphere,” Bradley says with the air of a traveler recently returned from the hinterlands, “the water flushes around the other way.”
“That’s weird,” Merlin concedes.
“I know!”
The sun is low in the sky, coating the hillsides in an amber light. They should go back soon, but Merlin isn’t in any rush to rush them. He rather enjoys these outings, despite himself. When Bradley isn’t Arthur, he’s very not Arthur, but that’s sort of why Merlin likes it. It’s a nice change from being ordered to muck out stables, polish armor, and being the guy Arthur tries out all his new insults on. When Bradley is Bradley, there are no complications of hierarchy between them and he is as willing to learn from Merlin as Arthur hadn’t been. Between Arthur bossing Merlin around and Gaius giving Merlin endless chores, it is a new experience being the one someone goes to for answers, even if it’s just for questions like “What is an imbalanced humor?” and “Why is Percival such an ass?”
If Arthur were more like this, Merlin thinks, maybe I might have an easier time saving his life. Then Merlin feels guilty for even thinking it.
He does sometimes find himself having to explain to Bradley that really, Merlin can’t come with him to heckle the knights while they train because he really does have to tend to Arthur’s armor. Armor doesn’t tend to itself, and Merlin doubts that Arthur would be pleased to come back and find his armor in less-than-perfect condition.
“Arthur’s a bit of prig, isn’t he?” Bradley had commented, with a strangely knowing grin.
Merlin had shrugged and replied, “You get used to him.”
Before these outings, they take food and drink from the kitchens, and nobody tells them they can’t, because Bradley is the prince, and a sick one to boot, so everyone treads twice as lightly and accommodates his wishes with twice the expedience, lest they end up having to explain to Uther why his son keeled over dead in their presence.
“Old man Pendragon has been talking to me about picking up the sword again,” says Bradley as they loll on the hillside.
“Are you going to do it?”
“I told him I wasn’t ready, but he’s adamant. I suppose he has a point. I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, so I might as well pick up a few things. I think he plans to set me up with Arthur’s old tutors.”
“It’ll keep you busy, at least.”
“Last night, he insisted we spar a bit. I said ‘oh no thanks’ but then he got a bit scary. You know how Uther gets a bit scary?”
“I know how Uther gets a bit scary,” nods Merlin.
“So I was roped into it. Nearly killed me. But.” Bradley shrugs, fiddles with a blade of grass. “I don’t know, I think it killed him having to go easy on me. Poor bastard misses his son.” He looks up at Merlin then, Arthur’s blue eyes and Bradley’s unabashed earnestness. “You miss him, don’t you?”
“Well,” Merlin mumbles, looking away. “Yeah, I guess I do. Sometimes.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When did you and Arthur… you know. When did you two start, uh…”
“Fucking?” Merlin fills in wryly. “When did we start fucking?”
“To put it delicately, yeah.”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
Bradley snorts. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“Besides,” Merlin adds, “I wouldn’t ask you when you and Colin started-”
“We don’t,” Bradley cuts in hastily. “Colin and I. We don’t…”
Then the gets the same look on his face that Arthur does when he’d rather not talk about it, so Merlin changes the subject.
They arrive back in Camelot shortly before supper. A stableboy runs outside to take their horses, but Bradley is still prattling on about something or other and Merlin has to hiss, “Arthur!”
“What?” Bradley blinks, then sees the stableboy approaching and there is an instantaneous change in his body. It still disorients Merlin a little. Bradley sits up straighter, lifts his head, and Merlin isn’t sure what Bradley does to his face but he does something, because a moment ago it was Bradley talking and now… “Good god, Merlin,” says Bradley-as-Arthur, “you smell like a pigsty.”
“Well, the pigsty is just beyond the stable, sire,” Merlin replies as they dismount, “so maybe you’re smelling an actual pigsty.”
“Maybe you’re just an idiot,” Bradley responds airily, handing the reins to the boy, “who doesn’t know how to bathe.”
Merlin smiles. “Maybe. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.”
“You’d know all about strange things, I’m sure,” Bradley quips, and they continue in this fashion as they make their way to castle.
+
Bradley doesn’t tell them about the show, doesn’t tell them about the King Arthur mythos, nothing. What good would that do? It’s a bit of a downer, telling everyone that they’re all destined to betray each other and that Camelot is doomed doomed doomed. Most times he just tries not to think about it, because then it’s like thinking about blinking or breathing: suddenly you have to concentrate to do it, and it becomes more difficult than it needs to be. Besides, it’s not like, when he asks people to tell him stories about Arthur, they’re being entirely truthful. Bradley is fairly sure Morgana is holding something back in her accounts, but what can you expect from Morgana?
He keeps an eye on her. Arthur may have been too stupid to care about his foster sister’s agenda, but Bradley knows how the story goes.
He wonders occasionally how Arthur is faring in his own world, if that’s where he is. There’s no way to be sure, but Bradley can’t think of any other places Arthur might be. What does Arthur think of the internet? Do cars frighten him? Has he backed a surprised Colin to the bed and kissed him, calling upon supplanted memories?
Bradley goes to see the dragon by himself one night. He still wants to run away screaming when it appears, but he gathers his courage like he knows Arthur would and demands, “When do I go back?”
The dragon, true to form, replies, “One cannot truly go back. The nature of time is to march onwards, and the nature of us, its subjects, is to march with it.”
“No, hold on,” Bradley retorts with a certain triumph. “I watched a documentary about this once. There’s no such thing as absolute time, right, ‘cos Albert Einstein discovered relativity, or something, and there’s all this stuff with time dilation and the theory of simultaneity that says that the nature of time-”
“You carry the young Pendragon in you,” the dragon interrupts, refusing to be dragged into this nonsense.
“But I’m not him!” Bradley cries out. “Don’t change the subject!”
“And the young Pendragon carries in him a great destiny,” it continues as if Bradley hadn’t spoken. “You must trust in that destiny.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.” But the dragon flies off, having made its point (maybe). In a moment of frustration-inspired boldness, Bradley calls out, “I’m going to strangle the writers for making you such a big horse’s arse!”
“Horse’s arse! Horse’s arse!” the cavern echoes, taunting Bradley in his own voice.
Uther follows through on his threats to bring in Arthur’s old tutors, and Bradley starts spending long hours in a stuffy room with stuffy old men who insist he reads stuffy old books. When he isn’t doing that, he’s outside collecting a new set of injuries from being taught the sword, the lance, the crossbow, and god knows what else. It’s a crash course in kingship and knighthood, and Bradley is sick of telling himself that it’s basically research and rehearsal, and that they’ll all be impressed back home by his marked improvement in handling medieval weaponry and newfound ability to list the Pendragon forefathers to ten generations.
At supper, Uther asks him, “How are your studies going?”
“They’re going well,” Bradley replies. “It’s all starting to come back to me.” A lie, but a well-placed one, he thinks.
Uther smiles: a rare sight in Bradley’s time here. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. I knew those lessons would do you good.”
“After all, it’s no fun beating you if you keep complaining your sword’s too heavy,” Morgana teases.
“You’ll be eating your words soon enough,” smirks Bradley, and finds himself missing his family more than ever.
Riding out to the hills with Merlin becomes an infrequent and thus valued adventure, and they go when they can. Merlin shows him how to set a snare to catch quail and, because summer is ending, where to pick the best apples once autumn arrives. Bradley goads Merlin into showing him his magic, to make rocks levitate and to transfigure mushrooms into berries, which they then eat. His eyes flash gold, not through special effects, but through real honest-to-goodness magic. Magic is a good enough answer for things here, a panacea for the mysteries of this world. He thinks he might miss that aspect of it when he goes back, where magic has been explained away by science and ethnography.
“Merlin,” says Bradley as they lie around on a hillside after a spectacularly failed attempt at fishing. “Do you tan?”
“What?” Merlin mumbles, fuzzy with catnap.
“Do you tan? In the sun, does your skin darken?”
“Um. I turn sort of pinkish, I suppose. Do Bradley spirits not burn in the sun?”
Bradley isn’t sure if Merlin is being sarcastic, so he doesn’t say anything. He thinks of Colin sitting in the shade for the sake of visual continuity, memorizing lines and practicing Received Pronunciation because apparently the British populace can’t relate to anyone who doesn’t sound like Jeremy Paxman.
Merlin says, “The back of my neck is still peeling from the last time we rode out.”
“Yeah? Show me.”
Merlin rolls over and takes off his scarf so Bradley can see. The back of his neck is pink and sort of disgusting-looking, but Bradley reaches out and touches it anyway, fingers brushing from his nape to his shoulder.
“Bradley,” Merlin says quietly, and there is a warning in his voice that makes Bradley withdraw his hand.
Whatever. It isn’t like Merlin hasn’t been thinking it. Like his eyes don’t follow Bradley around a room as if he’s trying to see one of those Magic Eye pictures. Like a hand on the shoulder or the softness of his smile don't linger. Bradley envies Merlin his muscle memory, but he’ll just have to work with it. He’ll work with it until it doesn’t work anymore or until someone invents vodka, whichever comes first.
“Dragon,” Bradley says to the beast that night, “do you ever miss your kin? Do you ever wish you were outside again?”
“It is not given to us to question the machinations of fate,” the dragon intones.
“You’re full of shit,” Bradley informs him, and goes back upstairs and goes to sleep.
+
In his moments of weakness, Merlin lets himself pretend Bradley is Arthur, really Arthur, maybe as much as Bradley himself is pretending to be Arthur. “But it’s not pretending,” Bradley tells him once. “It’s my job.”
In any case, it’s becoming easier to do this, to pretend. As Bradley’s tutoring progresses, Uther drags him in more frequently to navigate matters of state, eager to regain his son and ally. Merlin passes their conferences as he does his chores and recognizes Arthur’s look of concentration as he frowns over a treaty, and his “let’s be reasonable, Father” tone when Uther is on the verge of some rash decision.
One night at supper, after Bradley and Uther had dealt with the fickle fish that is diplomatic alliances with Orkney, Uther tells him, “You will make a fine king.”
“Thank you, Father,” says Bradley, but instead of looking proud, he just looks queasy, which makes Merlin feel offended on Arthur’s behalf.
Uther would never say that to Arthur, no matter if Uther actually thinks so, no matter how Arthur starves to hear them. The only reason Uther is suddenly frank in his affection is because he is trying to find in Bradley the son he thought he had lost to some strange affliction, and now that Arthur is beginning to seem his old self again, Uther is determined to anchor him with reminders of his birthright: yes, Arthur belongs here, and yes, he is proud to have Arthur for a son, and yes, he is the beacon that will light the way for the kingdom to the future.
“I have faith in you,” says Uther, raising his goblet to Bradley.
All the things Arthur has wanted to hear from his father’s lips, and it’s not actually Arthur hearing them. None of this is Bradley’s fault, but it makes Merlin angry anyway.
“I can’t believe those Orkney tossers actually bought what I said,” Bradley confesses to him later as they approach Arthur’s room. Merlin opens the door and lets Bradley step through first. “I had no idea what I was doing, I was just channeling ‘The Godfather’ as hard as I could and left the profanity and tommy guns out. God, the things Camelot could do with tommy guns, though. We’d rule the world, making offers people can’t refuse.”
“You should take it more seriously,” Merlin says, closing the door behind them. “This may all just be fun and games to you, but you’re prince of an actual kingdom here that actual people live in, and what you do affects them. Once you leave, we still have to live with the consequences of your actions.”
“Well, but the thing is-”
“That was something Arthur at least understood,” Merlin continues, feeling his anger rise. “He may have been a huge prat who made me muck out the stables more than was strictly necessary, and he may not have made the best decisions all the time, but at least he did what he did because he really cares about his subjects. He wants to be a good king because it’s the right thing to do, not because he’s some… ghoul from another world who has to pretend so he doesn’t get burnt at the stake!”
“Hold on,” Bradley cuts in, red-faced. “Look, I never asked for this. All right? If it were up to me I’d still be in France, with air-conditioning, and toilets, and television, and… and Haagen Dazs, and cars! Little cars, because the roads in France are really small sometimes!”
“I don’t care if you didn’t ask for it! No one ever asked me if I wanted to be a sorcerer. I just was one. No one asked Arthur in the womb, ‘Hey, do you fancy being a prince?’ You are what you are, and you do what you have to do, especially when it’s not just your neck on the line.”
“You’ve been hanging around that dragon too much.”
“Arthur would have-”
“I’m not Arthur!” Bradley cries out, and there’s such a note of desperation in his voice that Merlin hesitates. He clutches Merlin’s shoulders and says, “I’m not Arthur! And I need you to remember that, Merlin, I need you to remember that with me. Look, everyday I have to be someone else and go by his name and remember his habits and, on top of that, he’s a politician, meaning that sometimes I have to be someone who’s pretending to be someone else, and it’s a mindfuck. I have to fear what Arthur fears, be bored by what Arthur is bored by, and god, I haven’t even figured out what’s going on between him and Morgana, though I’m sure that’s an interesting story for another time. I know Arthur is my character, right, I built him in my head and I stepped into that role, so obviously there’s going to be a lot of Bradley in Arthur, sure. But I don’t even… It’s like…” At a loss for words, Bradley deflates. He takes his hands off Merlin and steps back, rubbing his face as if suddenly tired. “I don’t even fucking know. It’s just that no one yells ‘cut’ anymore.”
They regard each other awkwardly, unsure how to proceed in the face of so much exposed.
“That doesn’t change anything,” Merlin finally says. “What you do still affects people’s lives. You can’t disregard that just because you’re not who they say you are.”
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, gesturing at Merlin rubbing his shoulders.
Merlin shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
“Sorry. I don’t know my own strength anymore. Must be the sword-fighting.”
“Yeah.” He smiles and adds, “Hey, congratulations on not dropping your sword for a full fifteen minutes yesterday, by the way. I saw that.”
“Did you?” Bradley beams. “Thanks, I was quite proud of that.”
“You’re welcome.”
They fall into another silence.
“Look,” says Bradley. “You’re the only other person who knows who I am.”
“What about Gaius?”
“We’re not counting Gaius because he’s creepy.”
“He’s not creepy,” Merlin says defensively. “He’s been like a father to me.”
“Like father, like son,” says Bradley, and Merlin’s heart does something funny because maybe that’s how Arthur would have replied, too. “Look, Merlin, the point is that… The point is that I’m Bradley James. I was born in Devon, in 1984, and I like football and steak, and I hate wearing shoes without socks. And I don’t like chocolate with nuts in it, but I like nuts on ice cream. I… don’t have a favorite movie because I like a lot of movies. Fuck if I know what my favorite color is, probably blue. And.” He throws up his hands. “I don’t know, I prefer Sprite to Coke.”
“That’s, um,” says Merlin. He doesn’t know what to say.
“I’m not Arthur,” Bradley insists. “I’m not Arthur Pendragon.”
And Merlin just looks at him, at this man, whoever he is. His fierce eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw, the familiar shape of his mouth. Merlin swallows, concedes, “Okay.”
After subdued ‘good nights’, Merlin leaves (Bradley dresses and undresses himself) and goes straight to the dragon. “Will Arthur ever come back?” he asks.
“What is a kingdom without a king?” the dragon replies.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You must understand the question, lest you misunderstand the answer.”
Merlin sighs. “Never mind.”
Part 2