Britain Boys, Part 2/10
Aug. 29th, 2011 06:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyxelestiaMerlin was scared.
He had been in Hyde Park with Will, enjoying the fresh winter weather while reading his new Animorphs book. Well, he was reading, Will was standing guard like always.
“I’m your body guard, kiddo,” Will had said when Merlin had complained of Will being no fun anymore.
“You used to be more fun,” Merlin had said. “You were always my bodyguard before!”
“Yeah, but your mum wasn’t Prime Minister, before,” he’d said, ruffling Merlin’s hair before gently guiding him back to the one bench in the whole park he had deemed safe for Merlin. “Things were different when she was just Foreign Secretary.”
Merlin had sighed and gone back to reading about kids turning into animals and saving the world. No one ever made them sit on only one bench just to read a book in the park. They could probably sit on any bench they pleased and no one would mind.
Scant months ago, he would have protested, but when Mum became Prime Minister, Will had sat him down and told him about all the people that would want to hurt Mum and would hurt Merlin to hurt Mum, and those who would hurt Merlin because he’s magic, and Merlin had listened to him ever since.
Suddenly, Will had grabbed Merlin’s arm, lifting him up and dragging him up.
“Will!” Merlin had protested as he shoved the book into his schoolbag.
“Get to the car,” Will had said, voice deep and low and terrifying, and Merlin listened, running to the car alongside Will, shielded by Will’s body.
Except the other man there for Merlin, Old Man Simmons, another guard and the driver, had been shouting something at them, before he’d suddenly fallen silent, and Merlin had stumbled as he’d watched the driver collapse, as if all the bones had vanished from his body.
Behind Simmons had stood a short but heavily-muscled man, holding a baton of some kind, having just bludgeoned Simmons over the head with it.
Will had suddenly cried out in pain, and Merlin was grabbed from behind, and lifted up by someone who was not Will and-
“NO!” he’d screamed, throwing out all his magic that he could. Whoever had been holding him had gasped in pain, letting him go, but someone else had been there, holding a rag with a bittersweet smell over his face.
Merlin had guessed immediately what it was, and had tried not to breathe, but he had been suddenly hit in the back, forcing all the breath out of his lungs, and on reflex he had breathed in.
He remembered nothing from after that.
He’d woken up here, in what Merlin could only assume was the back of a moving van of some sort. It was empty, save for him, a lump of probably-clothes on the other side, and some utility lights showing the emptiness, and he was handcuffed to something on the floor, as his hands were bound behind him.
He was a hostage. A bloody hostage.
“Well, well, well, look who’s finally decided to join us.”
Merlin’s head snapped, only for him to need to shut his eyes from the dizziness, when he heard a deep voice speak from where, apparently, the front of the van was. It was hard to tell in the near-darkness, but the back of the van was apparently separated from the front by a thick partition of some kind.
It was while his eyes were closed that Merlin realized he could feel something around his neck. Metal, cold, unnaturally cold, almost painfully so.
And underneath it he was burning.
No…
He’d heard about these. But – they were only used on criminals! Merlin wasn’t…he didn’t…
He opened his eyes to see a small door, barely the size of his face, slide open in the partition, and a face in a ski-mask peer in.
Merlin cringed away from the sight, and the man laughed, turning back to face forward, closing the flap, and leaving the wall between them.
Oh, god, he was a hostage. He was handcuffed in the back of a strange van with a strange man staring at him, and he had one of those magic-suppressing collars around his neck.
He tried desperately to move something with his magic, wiggle his shoelace, shift the handcuffs, something, but no matter how hard he tried to push out with his magic, it hit the collar and screamed and Merlin wanted to scream with it as it retreated inside him, and crying out as he felt a painful shock go through him, starting from the neck. It was his magic, they couldn’t do this to him!
He tried to look around with the meager lights of the van. The windows were completely blacked out, but the light was enough for Merlin to see the lump he’d dismissed as clothes was moving. Breathing! He wasn’t alone.
Slumping against the opposite wall, arms also tied behind his back, was…
“Arthur?”
Nothing, and for one horrendous moment, Merlin wondered if Arthur was dead. But he reassured himself with the sounds of Arthur breathing, and the sight. Good.
They drove for a long time and it was at least two forevers before he heard Arthur groan and shift.
The person in the front slid the flap open again, looking back. Only his eyes were revealed, and in this dim lighting, it wasn’t enough for Merlin to make out what his expression was.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” the man said, in a tone that told Merlin what the man’s expression was, anyway. “Or rather, good evening. You boys are up way past your bedtime.”
Then he laughed once more and turned away, closing the flap again.
When Merlin looked back at Arthur, the prince was looking at him.
“Emrys?” he asked, slurred and groggy. “Merlin?”
“Yeah,” Merlin said. “We’ve been kidnapped.”
“I can see that,” Arthur snapped. He was trying to be a prat, but he sounded as scared as Merlin felt.
“What are we going to do?” Merlin asked. “Where are they taking us? What if they want to kill us? What if-”
“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur said with a sigh. “We will do…nothing.”
“WHAT?!”
“Oi!” the man up front shouted. “Quiet back there!” The menacing voice had him and Arthur both cringing away, again.
After several moments, Arthur spoke, lowly, only enough to be barely heard over the van’s engines.
“I am the Crown Prince, and you are the Prime Minister’s son. We’re on the news all the time, the entire country knows our faces! The army and the police and MI5 and MI6 and everyone, they all work for our parents! We’ll be found in no time.”
Merlin pondered it.
“Arthur,” Merlin said. “If all these people work for our parents, how were we kidnapped in the first place?”
Arthur never answered.
Instead, after several moments, he pulled his feet out from underneath himself and stretched out his legs.
Merlin did the same, and while he didn’t want to seem like a baby about it, he felt a lot better when their ankles were touching and locking together.
“Do you think they’ll send James Bond to get us?” Merlin mused.
Arthur snorted. “Yeah, and Doctor Who can help him, with Father Christmas as back-up.”
“…think Father Christmas would let me pet his reindeer?” he asked cheekily.
Arthur dramatically hung his head in exasperation.
When Arthur looked up, though, he frowned.
“What’s that around your neck?”
Merlin winced to be reminded of it.
“Magic-suppressing collar,” he said quietly.
Arthur said nothing, just sighing as he leaned back against the wall behind him.
The van drove over a bump of some kind, forcibly dragging them back to face their predicament.
Merlin wiggled his foot a little, and Arthur absentmindedly wiggled his foot back.
After that, they were still and silent. Their captors drove for hours, and Merlin started to droop, dozing off…if the guy up front wasn’t lying, then it was way past his bedtime.
~*~
The van eventually stopped, and a moment later, Merlin gasped as the back door opened, and flinched away from the sudden brightness blinding him.
“Ow!” he cried out sharply as he felt the handcuffs around his wrist being tugged off and was dragged across the rough bottom of the van and dropped onto a hard dirt ground, with sharp rocks digging into his skin.
A moment later, he heard another thud and Arthur crying out beside him. Merlin looked up to see Arthur shouting at three men, all large with muscle and height, and engraved bracelets Merlin knew to be protections against magic.
Not like it would be worth much, considering the collar.
“Who are you?” Arthur demanded a moment later, as Merlin tried to open his eyes. It wasn’t sunlight, but some sort of bright floodlight well above them, inside a large, large room. A warehouse? Or an abandoned factory, as there seemed to be machinery around. But it was only one floor, from the looks of the doors the rest of the building was an office? Or what?
“That’s not for you to know, little boy,” the bloke from earlier said, before turning to the other two men. “Get them to the holding room. I’ll call the boss.”
Then Merlin was being grabbed again, and he kicked out furiously, pushing with everything but his magic (it was his magic, but the collar hurt hurt hurt hurthurthurt-) and he heard a deep growl from above him and next to him as he heard Arthur fighting too and-
There was a rag in front of his face, and Merlin had already breathed in before he realized what it was.
“Merlin!” he heard Arthur shout, and then another muffled shout, and then it was quiet.
He was conscious, this time, barely. He couldn’t move as he was lifted up into the man’s arms like a doll and thrown over his shoulder and carried, and he could only muster up the energy to open his eyes again, and when he did it was to blink blearily at dull gray surroundings as they were carried through a labyrinth of hallways.
His head cleared slowly as they were carried through the hallways, but not enough to fight.
Then suddenly, they were in a room, a much smaller room, and then he and Arthur echoed indignant cries as they were unceremoniously dropped onto what felt like a really thin mattress.
“Ow,” Merlin heard Arthur mumble, and tried to push himself up, wincing when his wobbly arms collapsed and dropped him back on the pallet.
He heard heavy footsteps walking away, a door slamming, and then shuffling from beside him, and opened his eyes to see Arthur struggling to sit-up.
“Where are we?” Merlin mumbled several minutes later, looking around from his position on the floor.
“How should I know?” Arthur snapped, standing and surveying the room. “And for god’s sake, get up!”
“I can’t,” Merlin said quietly, even trying to get up to prove his point.
“I knew you were a big girl,” Arthur sneered.
“Have you met Gwen? Or Morgana?” Merlin asked. “And – it’s not…it’s this collar.”
Arthur frowned, before reaching out and helping Merlin sit up, leaning him against the stone wall of the room they were in.
It appeared to be an old office of some kind, a filing cabinet in one corner and a desk in another, with a small TV sitting on it. There were no windows, one large vent for air, and the walls were gray stone, and otherwise there wasn’t really anything to say about the room.
“What does the collar have to do with it?” Arthur asked.
“It makes me ill,” Merlin said.
“Ill?” Arthur asked with a frown. “Huh. I would think that having your magic suppressed for you would be better.”
Merlin stared. No…
He had hoped, somewhere deep down, that Arthur would be better than his father – but he was just like him.
“How can having magic suppressed be good?!” Merlin cried out.
“Because then you don’t have to control it – all that pent up power trying to destroy everything, it’s contained for you…why are you staring at me like that?”
“I…I can’t believe you actually believe that,” Merlin said in horror. “I always thought…I never thought Mum meant it when she said that people said those things…” Merlin shook his head. “How can anyone believe such stupid things?”
“How, exactly, are they stupid things, Merlin?” Arthur asked. “Because magic does destroy things-”
“So can you,” Merlin said, on the verge of crying, shaking his head furiously to get rid of the tears. People actually believed these things? “I always thought Will was lying or joking when he said the kind of lies people believed.”
“Who’s Will?” Arthur asked.
“My…my bodyguard.” Merlin bit his lip, shutting his eyes. “I used to think those lies were so stupid, that no one could possibly believe them.”
He opened his eyes to see Arthur frowning in confusion.
“How are they so preposterous? It’s perfectly logical – magic destroys a lot of things and we need to control it – with that collar, though, it does it for you, so you can relax and-”
“I don’t need to!”
Arthur scooted back, startled, and if Merlin had the energy he would have smiled vindictively.
“What do you mean ‘you don’t need to’?” Arthur asked.
“Magic doesn’t – it doesn’t try to destroy everything. There’s nothing in the universe that tries to just destroy things for no reason,” Merlin said. How could anyone believe that such an evil force could exist? “It’s not – I don’t…I don’t need to control it because there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Arthur narrowed his eyes. “What, and you expect me to believe that?”
Merlin hardened his jaw. “How can you not believe that? It’s…look, there are a lot of bad sorcerers out there – but that’s because there are a lot of bad people out there. Most sorcerers are normal people and- I’m not evil!”
“Well I know you’re not, you’re too stupid to be, but all the other sorcerers out there-OW!”
Merlin pulled back his fist from where he’d punched Arthur, and Arthur reeled, pushing himself back as he brought up a hand to his cheek where Merlin had punched him.
“Look what I just did without magic!” Merlin snapped. “And I’m not stupid, I know you’re bigger than me – you can do a lot worse to me.”
Arthur swallowed as he brought his hand down from his face.
“I didn’t – I didn’t mean anything-”
“Yes you did,” Merlin said. “People like you say that and then think it’s okay to beat up people like me or kill people like me.”
And, now he couldn’t hold back the tears – Arthur was a prat but Merlin had hoped he’d be better than this. He just turned away and curled up into a little ball against the wall. He was a hostage, he had no idea where he was, he was wearing a magic-suppressing collar, and his only fellow hostage was a magic-hating ass who believed all the lies about sorcerers that Merlin had always felt so sure were obvious lies, lies, lies!
“Hey, look, don’t cry, just – I didn’t…I didn’t know, all right?”
“Well now you do,” Merlin snapped, refusing to look up.
Arthur sighed and sat by the wall next to Merlin.
For a while, they just sat there like that, Merlin trying to stop crying and Arthur fidgeting.
This was how they were when one of the men from earlier burst into the room.
~*~
Arthur nearly jumped out of his skin when the door slammed open, and he scrambled up when one of the kidnappers from earlier barged in, a large canvas bag over his shoulder and no ski mask on. He shut the door behind himself and cried out, “Rise and shine, boys!”
Arthur glared at the man. He was an average looking bloke, probably dozens looking just like him running around in Father’s office.
“The name is Thomas Collins – no need to introduce yourselves, I know who you are,” the man said cheerfully as he set the bag down on the table. “Now, up and at ‘em, boys.”
“Who are you people?” Arthur asked. “And what do you want with us?”
Tom smiled.
“Same thing that boy wants from you, I expect,” he said with a smirk, pointing outright to Merlin, who only just managed to stand up. “To be treated as a human being instead of a second-class citizen.”
“Er…” Arthur frowned, confused. This man wasn’t a human being? And how was Merlin…
“…you’re sorcerers,” Arthur said finally, carefully.
“Right in one, Your Highness,” the man said sarcastically.
Arthur slowly turned to Merlin, who was staring up at Tom Collins in horror.
“No…” he said. “You c-can’t be…why…” He swallowed, then reached up for the collar around his neck. “If you were, I w-wouldn’t be wearing this.” He touched the flat, smooth, silver ring around his neck, with nothing to signal a place where the ring might split except for the small ridge with a little black square on it, on the part of the collar at the back of Merlin’s neck.
Arthur wondered if it felt as cold as it looked. Even if it wasn’t, a ring of metal almost an inch wide around the neck could not possibly be comfortable.
The man sighed. “I really am sorry about that, Emrys – but it was necessary. You boys are going to promote our cause one way or another, and that requires you both stay here. And that means you have to be bound.” Arthur realized with an internal start that the man was genuinely sorry about this.
Merlin was crying again. “No!”
Tom Collins ignored him, turning back to reach into the canvas bag. Just as Arthur was starting to realize that maybe he should make a move on the man while he was turned away, he turned back, a camera and a newspaper in hand.
“Well, then, boys, time to make your parents really worry,” he said, and yanked at a still-stunned Merlin’s arm until he and Arthur were standing right next to each other, before Tom shoved the newspaper at them.
“Hold that up,” he commanded. Arthur and Merlin both obliged, Merlin with shaking hands and Arthur with defiant fury, trying desperately to think his way out of here, but Tom Collins just smirked and crouched, held up what looked to be a professional-quality camera, and snapped one picture of them, before checking something on what was probably the screen of the camera.
“Good, boys, very good,” the man said, stowing the camera away in his bag. “Keep the paper, and these – lucky for you boys there was no tracking technology or tracing spells on them.”
Arthur looked in surprise as he was handed his Gameboy Advance he’d just got and the travel-pack with it that he’d had on him when he’d been kidnapped, and watched as the man handed a small, shabby backpack to Merlin.
“This really doesn’t have to be unpleasant, boys,” the man said in a relatively neutral tone as he shuffled around with something in his canvas bag. “Just cooperate, listen to us, don’t complain too much or do anything particularly stupid, and you’ll be fine. If your parents do the same, you’ll be home in no time.” He looked down at his watch. “You get to go to the loo at the same time as your meals, the first of which comes in an hour. Don’t cause trouble until then. Telly works, so you can entertain yourself without causing us any problems. I suggest you make use of it.”
And with that curt but creepily-polite word, he walked out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him.
Arthur collapsed onto the large pallet, as did Merlin, and looked down at his Gameboy, before looking over to Merlin, who had just opened his bag and was looking for something inside. In several moments, he extracted a book with what looked to be a picture of a kid turning into an animal on the front.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Animorphs,” Merlin said. “It’s an American series. I had just got a bunch of books when I was…” He looked over at Arthur’s Gameboy. It was red and covered in stickers. “What were you playing?”
“…I had a lot of games with me, but I was playing Asterix & Obelix,” Arthur said finally.
Merlin nodded, before looking down at his book nervously, biting his lip, then opening up to where a bookmark was situated in the book, and he started reading.
Arthur checked the newspaper, only to find out it was from the same day they were kidnapped. So not much time had passed, then. It had been early afternoon when he was grabbed, and judging by their sleepiness it was very late at night, now, or very early morning. But right now, that didn’t tell them much.
For lack of anything better to do, Arthur found a socket to plug the charger into, connected his Gameboy to it, and opened up to continue playing.
Dinner came, some god-awful ready-meal of some kind and a bottle of water each, and they were blindfolded and walked down the hall or someplace individually to the loo, where Arthur relieved himself and brushed his teeth and hair with some cheap things the man had curtly handed him, and then they were left alone, but not before the man said, “The lights’ll go off in half an hour, if I were you I’d be in bed by then.”
And then he tossed in two pillows and two large blankets, and left them alone to their own devices.
They were lying down when it happened, but Merlin still cried out when the lights abruptly switched off, apparently remote controlled.
For several minutes, Arthur tried to go to sleep, hoping tomorrow they could go home. If Tom Collins was anything to go by, their kidnappers were of the reasonable sort. Probably would demand something their parents could give, and hopefully would just let them go once they got it.
“Arthur?”
Arthur sighed when he heard Merlin from the other side of the pallet. They’d put as much space between them as possible on the thankfully-large pallet, but that still meant Arthur could hear every moment of fidgeting and restlessness. And now Merlin wanted to talk?
“Yes?”
“…I’m scared,” Merlin admitted quietly.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “We’re hostages.”
“No, I mean…I know it’s stupid and you’re probably going to call me a big baby, but…it’s so dark in here.”
Arthur frowned. “You’re scared of the dark?”
“Not…normally. But I usually have my magic and I can make little lights and stuff until I fall asleep but right now-”
“Good, god, you are a big baby,” Arthur said.
“…I don’t care,” Merlin said in a small voice, making Arthur wince with guilt. Luckily Merlin couldn’t see him. “I’m still scared.”
“Oh, here,” Arthur said, before pushing himself up and reaching over to the bag where his Gameboy was. He pulled it out of the travel bag, along with one of the more mindless games he had, and plugged the charger in, which was still connected to the wall. Turning off the sound function, he turned it on and set it to play a demo game automatically, then set it down next to Merlin’s head on the other side of the large pallet. “There, that demo game goes on for twenty minutes if you let it. The light should stay on that whole time. Just hit replay if you need to.”
With that he flopped down on his pallet and shut his eyes, and slowly drifted off the sleep.
But not before hearing Merlin murmur in a small voice, “Thank you.”
~*~
Part 3
He had been in Hyde Park with Will, enjoying the fresh winter weather while reading his new Animorphs book. Well, he was reading, Will was standing guard like always.
“I’m your body guard, kiddo,” Will had said when Merlin had complained of Will being no fun anymore.
“You used to be more fun,” Merlin had said. “You were always my bodyguard before!”
“Yeah, but your mum wasn’t Prime Minister, before,” he’d said, ruffling Merlin’s hair before gently guiding him back to the one bench in the whole park he had deemed safe for Merlin. “Things were different when she was just Foreign Secretary.”
Merlin had sighed and gone back to reading about kids turning into animals and saving the world. No one ever made them sit on only one bench just to read a book in the park. They could probably sit on any bench they pleased and no one would mind.
Scant months ago, he would have protested, but when Mum became Prime Minister, Will had sat him down and told him about all the people that would want to hurt Mum and would hurt Merlin to hurt Mum, and those who would hurt Merlin because he’s magic, and Merlin had listened to him ever since.
Suddenly, Will had grabbed Merlin’s arm, lifting him up and dragging him up.
“Will!” Merlin had protested as he shoved the book into his schoolbag.
“Get to the car,” Will had said, voice deep and low and terrifying, and Merlin listened, running to the car alongside Will, shielded by Will’s body.
Except the other man there for Merlin, Old Man Simmons, another guard and the driver, had been shouting something at them, before he’d suddenly fallen silent, and Merlin had stumbled as he’d watched the driver collapse, as if all the bones had vanished from his body.
Behind Simmons had stood a short but heavily-muscled man, holding a baton of some kind, having just bludgeoned Simmons over the head with it.
Will had suddenly cried out in pain, and Merlin was grabbed from behind, and lifted up by someone who was not Will and-
“NO!” he’d screamed, throwing out all his magic that he could. Whoever had been holding him had gasped in pain, letting him go, but someone else had been there, holding a rag with a bittersweet smell over his face.
Merlin had guessed immediately what it was, and had tried not to breathe, but he had been suddenly hit in the back, forcing all the breath out of his lungs, and on reflex he had breathed in.
He remembered nothing from after that.
He’d woken up here, in what Merlin could only assume was the back of a moving van of some sort. It was empty, save for him, a lump of probably-clothes on the other side, and some utility lights showing the emptiness, and he was handcuffed to something on the floor, as his hands were bound behind him.
He was a hostage. A bloody hostage.
“Well, well, well, look who’s finally decided to join us.”
Merlin’s head snapped, only for him to need to shut his eyes from the dizziness, when he heard a deep voice speak from where, apparently, the front of the van was. It was hard to tell in the near-darkness, but the back of the van was apparently separated from the front by a thick partition of some kind.
It was while his eyes were closed that Merlin realized he could feel something around his neck. Metal, cold, unnaturally cold, almost painfully so.
And underneath it he was burning.
No…
He’d heard about these. But – they were only used on criminals! Merlin wasn’t…he didn’t…
He opened his eyes to see a small door, barely the size of his face, slide open in the partition, and a face in a ski-mask peer in.
Merlin cringed away from the sight, and the man laughed, turning back to face forward, closing the flap, and leaving the wall between them.
Oh, god, he was a hostage. He was handcuffed in the back of a strange van with a strange man staring at him, and he had one of those magic-suppressing collars around his neck.
He tried desperately to move something with his magic, wiggle his shoelace, shift the handcuffs, something, but no matter how hard he tried to push out with his magic, it hit the collar and screamed and Merlin wanted to scream with it as it retreated inside him, and crying out as he felt a painful shock go through him, starting from the neck. It was his magic, they couldn’t do this to him!
He tried to look around with the meager lights of the van. The windows were completely blacked out, but the light was enough for Merlin to see the lump he’d dismissed as clothes was moving. Breathing! He wasn’t alone.
Slumping against the opposite wall, arms also tied behind his back, was…
“Arthur?”
Nothing, and for one horrendous moment, Merlin wondered if Arthur was dead. But he reassured himself with the sounds of Arthur breathing, and the sight. Good.
They drove for a long time and it was at least two forevers before he heard Arthur groan and shift.
The person in the front slid the flap open again, looking back. Only his eyes were revealed, and in this dim lighting, it wasn’t enough for Merlin to make out what his expression was.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” the man said, in a tone that told Merlin what the man’s expression was, anyway. “Or rather, good evening. You boys are up way past your bedtime.”
Then he laughed once more and turned away, closing the flap again.
When Merlin looked back at Arthur, the prince was looking at him.
“Emrys?” he asked, slurred and groggy. “Merlin?”
“Yeah,” Merlin said. “We’ve been kidnapped.”
“I can see that,” Arthur snapped. He was trying to be a prat, but he sounded as scared as Merlin felt.
“What are we going to do?” Merlin asked. “Where are they taking us? What if they want to kill us? What if-”
“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur said with a sigh. “We will do…nothing.”
“WHAT?!”
“Oi!” the man up front shouted. “Quiet back there!” The menacing voice had him and Arthur both cringing away, again.
After several moments, Arthur spoke, lowly, only enough to be barely heard over the van’s engines.
“I am the Crown Prince, and you are the Prime Minister’s son. We’re on the news all the time, the entire country knows our faces! The army and the police and MI5 and MI6 and everyone, they all work for our parents! We’ll be found in no time.”
Merlin pondered it.
“Arthur,” Merlin said. “If all these people work for our parents, how were we kidnapped in the first place?”
Arthur never answered.
Instead, after several moments, he pulled his feet out from underneath himself and stretched out his legs.
Merlin did the same, and while he didn’t want to seem like a baby about it, he felt a lot better when their ankles were touching and locking together.
“Do you think they’ll send James Bond to get us?” Merlin mused.
Arthur snorted. “Yeah, and Doctor Who can help him, with Father Christmas as back-up.”
“…think Father Christmas would let me pet his reindeer?” he asked cheekily.
Arthur dramatically hung his head in exasperation.
When Arthur looked up, though, he frowned.
“What’s that around your neck?”
Merlin winced to be reminded of it.
“Magic-suppressing collar,” he said quietly.
Arthur said nothing, just sighing as he leaned back against the wall behind him.
The van drove over a bump of some kind, forcibly dragging them back to face their predicament.
Merlin wiggled his foot a little, and Arthur absentmindedly wiggled his foot back.
After that, they were still and silent. Their captors drove for hours, and Merlin started to droop, dozing off…if the guy up front wasn’t lying, then it was way past his bedtime.
The van eventually stopped, and a moment later, Merlin gasped as the back door opened, and flinched away from the sudden brightness blinding him.
“Ow!” he cried out sharply as he felt the handcuffs around his wrist being tugged off and was dragged across the rough bottom of the van and dropped onto a hard dirt ground, with sharp rocks digging into his skin.
A moment later, he heard another thud and Arthur crying out beside him. Merlin looked up to see Arthur shouting at three men, all large with muscle and height, and engraved bracelets Merlin knew to be protections against magic.
Not like it would be worth much, considering the collar.
“Who are you?” Arthur demanded a moment later, as Merlin tried to open his eyes. It wasn’t sunlight, but some sort of bright floodlight well above them, inside a large, large room. A warehouse? Or an abandoned factory, as there seemed to be machinery around. But it was only one floor, from the looks of the doors the rest of the building was an office? Or what?
“That’s not for you to know, little boy,” the bloke from earlier said, before turning to the other two men. “Get them to the holding room. I’ll call the boss.”
Then Merlin was being grabbed again, and he kicked out furiously, pushing with everything but his magic (it was his magic, but the collar hurt hurt hurt hurthurthurt-) and he heard a deep growl from above him and next to him as he heard Arthur fighting too and-
There was a rag in front of his face, and Merlin had already breathed in before he realized what it was.
“Merlin!” he heard Arthur shout, and then another muffled shout, and then it was quiet.
He was conscious, this time, barely. He couldn’t move as he was lifted up into the man’s arms like a doll and thrown over his shoulder and carried, and he could only muster up the energy to open his eyes again, and when he did it was to blink blearily at dull gray surroundings as they were carried through a labyrinth of hallways.
His head cleared slowly as they were carried through the hallways, but not enough to fight.
Then suddenly, they were in a room, a much smaller room, and then he and Arthur echoed indignant cries as they were unceremoniously dropped onto what felt like a really thin mattress.
“Ow,” Merlin heard Arthur mumble, and tried to push himself up, wincing when his wobbly arms collapsed and dropped him back on the pallet.
He heard heavy footsteps walking away, a door slamming, and then shuffling from beside him, and opened his eyes to see Arthur struggling to sit-up.
“Where are we?” Merlin mumbled several minutes later, looking around from his position on the floor.
“How should I know?” Arthur snapped, standing and surveying the room. “And for god’s sake, get up!”
“I can’t,” Merlin said quietly, even trying to get up to prove his point.
“I knew you were a big girl,” Arthur sneered.
“Have you met Gwen? Or Morgana?” Merlin asked. “And – it’s not…it’s this collar.”
Arthur frowned, before reaching out and helping Merlin sit up, leaning him against the stone wall of the room they were in.
It appeared to be an old office of some kind, a filing cabinet in one corner and a desk in another, with a small TV sitting on it. There were no windows, one large vent for air, and the walls were gray stone, and otherwise there wasn’t really anything to say about the room.
“What does the collar have to do with it?” Arthur asked.
“It makes me ill,” Merlin said.
“Ill?” Arthur asked with a frown. “Huh. I would think that having your magic suppressed for you would be better.”
Merlin stared. No…
He had hoped, somewhere deep down, that Arthur would be better than his father – but he was just like him.
“How can having magic suppressed be good?!” Merlin cried out.
“Because then you don’t have to control it – all that pent up power trying to destroy everything, it’s contained for you…why are you staring at me like that?”
“I…I can’t believe you actually believe that,” Merlin said in horror. “I always thought…I never thought Mum meant it when she said that people said those things…” Merlin shook his head. “How can anyone believe such stupid things?”
“How, exactly, are they stupid things, Merlin?” Arthur asked. “Because magic does destroy things-”
“So can you,” Merlin said, on the verge of crying, shaking his head furiously to get rid of the tears. People actually believed these things? “I always thought Will was lying or joking when he said the kind of lies people believed.”
“Who’s Will?” Arthur asked.
“My…my bodyguard.” Merlin bit his lip, shutting his eyes. “I used to think those lies were so stupid, that no one could possibly believe them.”
He opened his eyes to see Arthur frowning in confusion.
“How are they so preposterous? It’s perfectly logical – magic destroys a lot of things and we need to control it – with that collar, though, it does it for you, so you can relax and-”
“I don’t need to!”
Arthur scooted back, startled, and if Merlin had the energy he would have smiled vindictively.
“What do you mean ‘you don’t need to’?” Arthur asked.
“Magic doesn’t – it doesn’t try to destroy everything. There’s nothing in the universe that tries to just destroy things for no reason,” Merlin said. How could anyone believe that such an evil force could exist? “It’s not – I don’t…I don’t need to control it because there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Arthur narrowed his eyes. “What, and you expect me to believe that?”
Merlin hardened his jaw. “How can you not believe that? It’s…look, there are a lot of bad sorcerers out there – but that’s because there are a lot of bad people out there. Most sorcerers are normal people and- I’m not evil!”
“Well I know you’re not, you’re too stupid to be, but all the other sorcerers out there-OW!”
Merlin pulled back his fist from where he’d punched Arthur, and Arthur reeled, pushing himself back as he brought up a hand to his cheek where Merlin had punched him.
“Look what I just did without magic!” Merlin snapped. “And I’m not stupid, I know you’re bigger than me – you can do a lot worse to me.”
Arthur swallowed as he brought his hand down from his face.
“I didn’t – I didn’t mean anything-”
“Yes you did,” Merlin said. “People like you say that and then think it’s okay to beat up people like me or kill people like me.”
And, now he couldn’t hold back the tears – Arthur was a prat but Merlin had hoped he’d be better than this. He just turned away and curled up into a little ball against the wall. He was a hostage, he had no idea where he was, he was wearing a magic-suppressing collar, and his only fellow hostage was a magic-hating ass who believed all the lies about sorcerers that Merlin had always felt so sure were obvious lies, lies, lies!
“Hey, look, don’t cry, just – I didn’t…I didn’t know, all right?”
“Well now you do,” Merlin snapped, refusing to look up.
Arthur sighed and sat by the wall next to Merlin.
For a while, they just sat there like that, Merlin trying to stop crying and Arthur fidgeting.
This was how they were when one of the men from earlier burst into the room.
Arthur nearly jumped out of his skin when the door slammed open, and he scrambled up when one of the kidnappers from earlier barged in, a large canvas bag over his shoulder and no ski mask on. He shut the door behind himself and cried out, “Rise and shine, boys!”
Arthur glared at the man. He was an average looking bloke, probably dozens looking just like him running around in Father’s office.
“The name is Thomas Collins – no need to introduce yourselves, I know who you are,” the man said cheerfully as he set the bag down on the table. “Now, up and at ‘em, boys.”
“Who are you people?” Arthur asked. “And what do you want with us?”
Tom smiled.
“Same thing that boy wants from you, I expect,” he said with a smirk, pointing outright to Merlin, who only just managed to stand up. “To be treated as a human being instead of a second-class citizen.”
“Er…” Arthur frowned, confused. This man wasn’t a human being? And how was Merlin…
“…you’re sorcerers,” Arthur said finally, carefully.
“Right in one, Your Highness,” the man said sarcastically.
Arthur slowly turned to Merlin, who was staring up at Tom Collins in horror.
“No…” he said. “You c-can’t be…why…” He swallowed, then reached up for the collar around his neck. “If you were, I w-wouldn’t be wearing this.” He touched the flat, smooth, silver ring around his neck, with nothing to signal a place where the ring might split except for the small ridge with a little black square on it, on the part of the collar at the back of Merlin’s neck.
Arthur wondered if it felt as cold as it looked. Even if it wasn’t, a ring of metal almost an inch wide around the neck could not possibly be comfortable.
The man sighed. “I really am sorry about that, Emrys – but it was necessary. You boys are going to promote our cause one way or another, and that requires you both stay here. And that means you have to be bound.” Arthur realized with an internal start that the man was genuinely sorry about this.
Merlin was crying again. “No!”
Tom Collins ignored him, turning back to reach into the canvas bag. Just as Arthur was starting to realize that maybe he should make a move on the man while he was turned away, he turned back, a camera and a newspaper in hand.
“Well, then, boys, time to make your parents really worry,” he said, and yanked at a still-stunned Merlin’s arm until he and Arthur were standing right next to each other, before Tom shoved the newspaper at them.
“Hold that up,” he commanded. Arthur and Merlin both obliged, Merlin with shaking hands and Arthur with defiant fury, trying desperately to think his way out of here, but Tom Collins just smirked and crouched, held up what looked to be a professional-quality camera, and snapped one picture of them, before checking something on what was probably the screen of the camera.
“Good, boys, very good,” the man said, stowing the camera away in his bag. “Keep the paper, and these – lucky for you boys there was no tracking technology or tracing spells on them.”
Arthur looked in surprise as he was handed his Gameboy Advance he’d just got and the travel-pack with it that he’d had on him when he’d been kidnapped, and watched as the man handed a small, shabby backpack to Merlin.
“This really doesn’t have to be unpleasant, boys,” the man said in a relatively neutral tone as he shuffled around with something in his canvas bag. “Just cooperate, listen to us, don’t complain too much or do anything particularly stupid, and you’ll be fine. If your parents do the same, you’ll be home in no time.” He looked down at his watch. “You get to go to the loo at the same time as your meals, the first of which comes in an hour. Don’t cause trouble until then. Telly works, so you can entertain yourself without causing us any problems. I suggest you make use of it.”
And with that curt but creepily-polite word, he walked out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him.
Arthur collapsed onto the large pallet, as did Merlin, and looked down at his Gameboy, before looking over to Merlin, who had just opened his bag and was looking for something inside. In several moments, he extracted a book with what looked to be a picture of a kid turning into an animal on the front.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Animorphs,” Merlin said. “It’s an American series. I had just got a bunch of books when I was…” He looked over at Arthur’s Gameboy. It was red and covered in stickers. “What were you playing?”
“…I had a lot of games with me, but I was playing Asterix & Obelix,” Arthur said finally.
Merlin nodded, before looking down at his book nervously, biting his lip, then opening up to where a bookmark was situated in the book, and he started reading.
Arthur checked the newspaper, only to find out it was from the same day they were kidnapped. So not much time had passed, then. It had been early afternoon when he was grabbed, and judging by their sleepiness it was very late at night, now, or very early morning. But right now, that didn’t tell them much.
For lack of anything better to do, Arthur found a socket to plug the charger into, connected his Gameboy to it, and opened up to continue playing.
Dinner came, some god-awful ready-meal of some kind and a bottle of water each, and they were blindfolded and walked down the hall or someplace individually to the loo, where Arthur relieved himself and brushed his teeth and hair with some cheap things the man had curtly handed him, and then they were left alone, but not before the man said, “The lights’ll go off in half an hour, if I were you I’d be in bed by then.”
And then he tossed in two pillows and two large blankets, and left them alone to their own devices.
They were lying down when it happened, but Merlin still cried out when the lights abruptly switched off, apparently remote controlled.
For several minutes, Arthur tried to go to sleep, hoping tomorrow they could go home. If Tom Collins was anything to go by, their kidnappers were of the reasonable sort. Probably would demand something their parents could give, and hopefully would just let them go once they got it.
“Arthur?”
Arthur sighed when he heard Merlin from the other side of the pallet. They’d put as much space between them as possible on the thankfully-large pallet, but that still meant Arthur could hear every moment of fidgeting and restlessness. And now Merlin wanted to talk?
“Yes?”
“…I’m scared,” Merlin admitted quietly.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “We’re hostages.”
“No, I mean…I know it’s stupid and you’re probably going to call me a big baby, but…it’s so dark in here.”
Arthur frowned. “You’re scared of the dark?”
“Not…normally. But I usually have my magic and I can make little lights and stuff until I fall asleep but right now-”
“Good, god, you are a big baby,” Arthur said.
“…I don’t care,” Merlin said in a small voice, making Arthur wince with guilt. Luckily Merlin couldn’t see him. “I’m still scared.”
“Oh, here,” Arthur said, before pushing himself up and reaching over to the bag where his Gameboy was. He pulled it out of the travel bag, along with one of the more mindless games he had, and plugged the charger in, which was still connected to the wall. Turning off the sound function, he turned it on and set it to play a demo game automatically, then set it down next to Merlin’s head on the other side of the large pallet. “There, that demo game goes on for twenty minutes if you let it. The light should stay on that whole time. Just hit replay if you need to.”
With that he flopped down on his pallet and shut his eyes, and slowly drifted off the sleep.
But not before hearing Merlin murmur in a small voice, “Thank you.”
Part 3
