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The pub was crowded, blue and red lights pressing in on Sam’s eyelids and flickering whenever the blurred shape of a bartender passed across his place at the bar. Music pumped from somewhere in the corner, a heavy, pounding beat that Sam couldn’t quite make out, but invaded his headspace nonetheless.
She should be here by now, a voice nagged at the back of his mind, and he clung to it. Yes, he argued, yes, it’s her fault you’re like this. Not yours. Just ten more minutes and you’ll be fine. Ten more minutes and Ruby will be along with blood and-
Just the thought of Ruby and her perverse cargo was enough to send Sam into another seizure of longing, that terrible, insatiable want that bloomed against his good conscience like algae in a rockpool. That guilty, unclean need that he had spent so long trying to ignore. And succeeded for the most part, but Dean’s stunt with the panic room had worn away of what was left of his righteousness, and at this point, he barely cared if what he was doing was right or wrong, only that it was etched into his path, and he didn’t have the strength to carve out a new direction.
Someone somewhere pushed a glass over and Sam mumbled a half-formed thanks before taking a sip. The liquor burned at his throat, and he gagged, causing the world to swim just a little more and he buried his face in the heels of his hands in a feverish attempt to break the symptoms. When he drew back, his palms were damp and sticky, though he couldn’t be sure whether it was from sweat or tears.
"Are you alright, mate?" a voice somewhere in the fog of sound and colour cut through the haze, and Sam blinked, placing a steadying hand on the bar but keeping his eyes firmly closed.
"Yeah," he rubbed a hand over his chin. "Yeah I'm fine."
"Really," the guy sounded unimpressed, and despite Sam's affronted dismissal, pulled up a stool and rested his elbows one by one on the bar counter. Sam scowled. There was something odd about that voice, something that pricked the part of Sam’s brain that it could have been deja vu, but was so bizarrely unfamiliar Sam knew he had never heard it before in his life. It belonged, he assumed, to a man, low and gravelly, but with an almost childish softness that echoed with the premonition of laughter, though its cadence suggested a still larger capacity for grief. He- the stranger- had what was probably a British accent, but it was laced with a slight tang that could have been Irish or Welsh or Scottish, or something else entirely. And in that moment, it was simultaneously the most welcome and irritating voice Sam had ever heard.
"Look, dude, I know you mean well, but I honestly don't need the company right now."
The stranger shrugged. "Well, I could. It's been a while since I've been in the States, and you look like you could use a friendly face right now. Win-win scenario, see?"
Sam blinked, and for the first time, he looked up at the stranger. At first glance, he was seemingly unremarkable, with scruffy black hair and a clean shaven face. He had a thin, lanky frame, and though it was hard to tell from sitting down, Sam reckoned it would still fall several inches short of his own. All in all, he must have been about six feet, but any boast of height was quickly obscured by the youthful hunch of his shoulders and unkempt hair, which stood in stark contrast to the rather paternal glance he shot Sam across the counter. His clothes were plain and slightly rumpled, as if they hadn't been changed in a few days, and the odd, gawky ruffledness of his demeanour rendered him to the naked eye as less of someone of drinking age and more of a twelve year old- or, Sam thought with a half smile, a slightly dishevelled golden retriever. Around his neck was a ratty, red neck scarf whose frayed ends fastened tidily under his chin and reminded Sam a little of Bobby, though he couldn’t for the life of him work out why. Yet beneath the matted clothes and kind eyes, Sam thought he could- not necessarily see, exactly, but feel a certain darkness to the boy. Not the kind of soul sapping, voidless darkness that followed around the soulless or the evil, nor the kind of natural, cathartic darkness of the reapers or a burnt out grave, but a kind of treacle density, as if there were something at the centre of the boy’s soul that could hold the world if it had to, as if every movement he made was a stroke of ink on a page, thousand of secrets, both remembered and forgotten, all woven together in a sombre tapestry of something too great for Sam to find the words for. It was not a darkness borne of absence, but of stories.
Sam sighed and rubbed his eyes again, causing the edges of his vision to spark and blanche. Bile rose in his throat and blood rushed through his eardrums in a sickening chorus of guilt and hastily formed dreams. If he noticed Sam’s discomfort, the stranger said nothing, instead taking a sip from a pint glass Sam was sure hadn’t been there at his last look. But then again, what state was he in to measure aunty continuity besides that of his brain and the next fix of blood. "You seem like a nice kid, but I could really use a moment right now. It's been a rough few days."
To his surprise the stranger snorted. "Oh, I'll say."
Mildly affronted, Sam ceased his attempts to move and looked the guy up and down. “Are you sure you’re old enough to be drinking?” he muttered, half to himself, but the stranger didn’t seem to care. Something about that must have amused him, because Sam thought he saw the edges of the stranger’s lips begin to twitch upwards and a flash of mirth briefly appear behind his eyes, but he held his gaze, any humour borne only of whiskey and good nature
“Yeah, I am,” he glanced over, a wicked glint in his eye, “believe me.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Because you look about twelve,” he replied with a frown, then took another sip of drink- whiskey, he now realised. Fleetingly, he wondered why he hadn’t realised that before, but brushed the thought from his mind. He didn’t need any extra baggage to worry about right now.
“Suit yourself,” the stranger took a defiant gulp of his pint and flashed Sam another grin. “But seriously, mate, are you sure you’re alright? Because you look like someone’s just dragged you out the arse end of hell in a tequila bottle.”
Something about the oddly specific nature of the analogy must have amused Sam, because he felt his lips twitch in what might have grown into a smile, were it not for the dull cloister bell that rang in his head every time he turned around. “Look,” he said again. “I appreciate the concern, but honestly, there’s nothing wrong with me.” In truth, every word that came out of his mouth thrust another blade through his skull, but he kept his eyes focused on the shelf behind the bar and his mind on Ruby’s promise of a swift arrival.
It seemed for a moment that the stranger had given up, and despite his annoyance, Sam felt slightly disappointed when his dismissal wasn’t challenged by the man. He might be a mouthy git, but it was the first honest conversation Sam had had with anyone in a good long while who didn’t think he was some kind of freak, for better or worse. He waited a moment longer, catching the other man’s gaze, but was met onl with a cool, slightly unnerving reciprocation of his own fevered paranoia. After a moment, he slid a note towards the waitress and nodded to the stranger, wincing as his consciousness raked across the base of his skull in protest to the movement. He managed to take a few steps in the direction of the door before a popping sensation blew stars across his vision. Yet just as the weight began to settle again, he heard a voice, isolated from the noise and bustle of the bar and ringing with a muted clarity that was just too sensitive to be anywhere but within his own thoughts.
If by “nothing wrong with me”, you mean you’re suffering a crippling addiction to demon blood and are waiting for your demon girlfriend to come and bring you a fix before you go and do something stupidly reckless that will likely get multiple people killed, then sure. There's nothing wrong with you at all.This isn’t real, he told himself. This is just the start of withdrawal, though something else reminded him that this was far from the agony and hallucinations he had experienced in the panic room at Bobby’s.
This is definitely real, the voice replied, and Sam realised with a jolt that it belonged to the stranger, I am real, you are real, and we are both in very real danger if we don’t fuck off out of here pretty soon. There are demons on your tail and I can only spell them back for so long before one of us has to do something more permanent, and I don’t think that would bode very well for your-
Sam whipped around, instincts overriding pain, and within seconds, he had a gun wedged under the stranger’s hip, making sure the barrel dug in just beneath the bone. “How are you doing that?” It was barely a question, some fevered medium between demand and desperation, utter alienation and an underlying shadow of completeness that gnawed at his mind that, for a moment, almost eclipsed the hunger for blood that bit at the edges of his reasoning. The stranger, however, looked unimpressed, all previous suggestions of childlike naivety returned to whatever dark hole they had crawled out from to convince Sam he should stay. The man who looked up at him now was undeniably the same person, but those strange, dark undercurrents that had burbled almost undetected mere moments ago had turned into a full river, gleaming with age and power and wisdom of the likes Sam had never seen before, even from angels. “What are you? A witch? A demon?”
The man ignored his questions and shot a cool look at the pistol pressed against his trousers. “You’re never going to use that on me,” he said, out loud this time, but in a voice that betrayed no acknowledgement of either motive or exterior doubt, and though he didn’t want to admit it, it made Sam nervous. “For one, you never use a silencer, and this is a crowded room. Two, you can’t make a quick getaway because that would mean compromising your…” he paused, and Sam thought he detected a kernel of guilt in his tone, “...delivery. And three, weapons like that won’t work on me. I trust you will not be stupid enough to assume it will, given past encounters with characters of the more unusual disposition, and therefore request you restrain yourself from the “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality until you have heard what I have to say. Because believe it or not, I haven’t come all this way to get shot in the leg.”
“Who. Are. You.” Sam’s jaw was set, but he relinquished his grip on the gun a little, adjusting his grip so the other man would still feel its presence, but so it wasn’t an immediate threat. In a seeming acknowledgement of this, the stranger shifted in his seat and looked up at Sam, before closing his eyes and frowning. After a few seconds of bizarre silence, he opened them, and Sam almost thought he caught a flash of gold receding from his irises, but it was eclipsed almost immediately by lights and movement to the point where, if it weren’t for the strange sense of clarity that had come in the moment of quiet before he opened his eyes, he would have thought he had imagined it.
“Listen,” he said, swinging his legs over the stool and jolting Sam’s gun away as he did so, causing it to almost clatter to the floor before Sam caught it between the bar and his knee with an ugly thunk. “I would explain everything to you now, but this isn’t a safe place, and we really haven’t got long. I promise I’ll give you the full story when I can, but right now, we have to move.” He fished around in his pocket for a moment before producing a tatty business card, stained a grubby blue at the edges from what must have been years of travel wedged in a denim pocket. There’s a motel about a mile up the road. I’ve booked a room there- don’t worry,” he added at the look of scepticism on Sam’s face, “I warded it earlier. Ask for the name on this card and someone will give you a key. They know I’m expecting a guest. D’ja follow?”
Sam stared blankly at the man- no, the puzzle- in front of him, and he stared back with equal lucidity. “How do I know I can trust you?” he blurted suddenly, though he gripped the card in his left hand as if it were a lifeline. “How do I know you’re not just another angel dick who’s trying to lure me into some kind of trap?”
If there had been anything he had expected in response, it wasn’t for the stranger to flash him a smile- not the bright, merry smile that he had seen earlier, nor the sadistic smile etched onto the face of a demon about to strike. It wasn't even a vaguely detached righteousness that often accompanied angelic serenity. In truth, Sam couldn’t quite place the meaning or the motive behind the stranger’s expression, yet distant and strange as it might be, it was somehow deeply and unequivocally human. In ordinary circumstances, Sam would have turned and ran, called Dean, fired a gun. But Dean wasn’t here, and these most certainly were not ordinary circumstances. Humanity might be a risky definition of safety, but it was the greatest assurance Sam had now, and it would have to be enough. “You don’t know,” he said after a moment. “But if it helps, you’ve got an equal probability of getting fucked over whether you stay in the demon infested pub or follow the weird British dude into a motel room, and only one of us has given you a spelled up whiskey to help ease your withdrawal, and I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t the demons.”
Bemused, Sam glanced over at his now empty tumbler and realised with a jolt that his head was indeed clearer than it had been when he had first come in, and not only that, but his physical symptoms had relaxed as well. His hands had stopped shaking quite so much and his heart rate had returned to a relatively normal level. He looked from the glass to the stranger, opening his mouth to say something- thanks? An accusation? He wasn’t sure, but by the time he had collected his thoughts enough to express even the notion of surprise, the stranger had vanished into the crowds, lost amongst the colours and lights that, for once, seemed to be just that.
~~~
It took Sam nearly quarter of an hour to reach the motel the stranger had described. It felt odd, calling him the stranger, but after brief deliberation, it had seemed the most appropriate name to address him by, at least in his head. If he got as far as the room without getting poisoned or shanked or any other type of weird ambush, he would ask for a name. But that was a big ‘if’, and Sam was tired, and for the duration of the walk, all he could really focus on was getting one foot in front of the other before he collapsed from sheer exhaustion on the pavement at the side of the road.
The motel itself was a shabby affair, a grubby, pebbledash monolith that seemed to lean into itself as if its very structure was built slouching towards the earth. Neon red letters flickered above a glass entrance that was lit by a single fluorescent beam in the carpeted porch area that led to an equally uninspiring reception area. A single high schooler sat at the welcome desk, a computer open in front of her and a chemistry textbook rammed up against the screen, her eyes dragging their way across the pages like boulders along a desert. When she noticed Sam, she shifted her book to one side and looked him up and down with a bored expression.
"You look like shit," she remarked in a monotone before turning to the computer. "You checking in now or do you have a room pre-booked?" she asked, typing something into the system. Sam shook his head and stole a quick look at the card, still enclosed in the fist of his left hand.
"Neither, actually I'm meeting a Mr…” he glanced down at the smudged letters and squinted. How long had he been using this thing? “Martin Ambrose. He said you would direct me to his room."
"Sure, just a second," she typed something else into the computer, leaving Sam fidgeting in front of her. After about thirty seconds of agonising silence, she looked up at him, bored expression still intact. "You're good to go. He's in room 235. Honeymoon suite," she added with raised eyebrows, looking him up and down with some interest. Sam blinked, but otherwise retained a straight face. In truth, it was a smart decision- a room supposedly occupied by newlyweds on a busy friday night was the last place anyone wanted to come a-knocking, even on the eve of the apocalypse, and he could almost hear Dean’s casual grunt of admission: Kid knows what he’s doing, I’ll give him that, but brushed it away. Dean wasn’t here, and Sam sure as hell didn’t need him to be.
"Thank you," he said with a strained smile and took the keys dangling from her impatient fingers before turning to hurry along the corridor and away from the now amused smirk on the clerk’s face.
“Enjoy!” she shouted behind him, in addition to what Sam assumed was some kind of inappropriate remark, but he turned the corner before he could quite catch what it was.
Room 235 was at the far end of the ground floor, though several identical corridors of grey industrial carpet and chipped red plaster walls. Strip lighting flickered on as he moved, counting the door numbers with increasing desperation. Eventually, he found himself at the foot of a staircase, a fire escape illuminated green beside a brass numbered door and he slowed to a halt. He paused, glancing behind him, hand at the holster of his gun before raising a fist to knock.
Just before his knuckles made contact with the wood, however, a buzzing sound made a quiet humm through the stagnated air and he leapt back, gun half raised as the stranger’s head popped out in the gap between the door and the frame, adorned with a face-splitting grin.
"You came," he said. There was no indication of surprise in his time, but there was no arrogance either. Sam wasn't entirely sure what to make of it, but holstered his gun nonetheless.
"I did," he responded, trying to keep his tone nonchalant despite the rush of adrenaline in his chest. Then: "Can I come in?"
In response, the stranger held open the door and Sam traipsed into the room, glancing around at the interior. Regardless of anything else, the stranger had at least remained true to his word, at least where warding was concerned. Blood sigils adorned each of the walls, and lines of salt at least two inches thick ran not just under the windows and doorframe, but around the skirting boards and vents, should any cracks allow for a rogue demon to slip through. A devil’s trap was drawn in chalk beneath each of the windows, and Sam could see the edge of one peeking out from under the rug as well, a last precaution in the event of invasion. But strangest of all were the series of runes drawn along each of the walls, complicated, twisting patterns that seemed to get more intricate with each look. When Sam looked at some of them through the corner of his eye, he was almost sure he caught one or two of them moving.
"So,” he said eventually, gesturing to the various symbols around the room, ''are you a hunter?” When the stranger didn’t respond, he walked over to one of the chalked symbols, reaching out a hand and letting his fingers trace the series of lines that formed a complicated star pattern. “I mean, I've never seen half of these wardings before. Are they Celtic? Enochian?"
"A bit of both," the stranger responded, adjusting the lock and checking the salt line at the base of the door. "Just some stuff I've picked up over the years. I mix what I can and isolate what I don't like. It's a bit unconventional, but it works. And no, I'm not a hunter." He finished applying the defences and stood back as if to admire his work. Then. "I hope you don't mind, but give me a moment…" He turned his back on Sam and raised his hands to the door. Then: "seula an aghaidh uilc, agus aingeal!"
As the words left his lips, the sigils on the walls burned a brilliant gold before fading into the plaster, and as the stranger turned around, Sam caught that same brief flash of vitality in his eyes as he had seen at the bar, and was once again filled with that odd mixture of exhilaration and tranquillity, like his soul has been temporarily been scrubbed clean and held up to a hot slate.
Sam blinked. “Was that-”
“Magic?” the stranger raised an eyebrow and leaned against the wall, hovering somewhere between amused and apprehensive. “Yes, it was. Is that going to be a problem?”
Sam ignored that comment and spun around, reaching once again for his gun. “You’re magic.”
The stranger sighed. “You’d think that would be easier to accept for a guy who’s spent the last year exorcising demons with his mind, but if you really want to do the whole “it’s not evil, it's just who I am” speech, I’ve got it down to a point by now. But maybe before you start making judgments about me, we should try some real introductions, yeah?”
The stranger’s tone was light, but there was a slight edge to it that betrayed an underlying note of panic beneath the calm exterior, and more than a little tiredness, too. Whatever was about to happen, this was clearly not a new road for him, yet it didn’t seem to be one he particularly enjoyed either.
“I would introduce myself, but it seems you already know everything about me,” Sam said eventually, sitting down on the bed and clasping his hands between his knees. “I’m assuming you used magic to find that out, too?”
The stranger shrugged. “A little, and I don’t know everything. But it mostly came from watching. I used to visit you sometimes, as a kid, though I doubt you’d recognise me.”
Sam snorted at that. “Dude, you’re younger than I am. There’s…” he trailed off and looked the man up and down. It was true that at first glance, he looked little older than a college kid, his impish grin slightly clumsy mannerisms all culminating in a near perfect façade of youth. But when he looked a little closer there was something almost archaic about civility, the twinkle in his eyes less a product of youth but of a life overspilling with emotion like a cup under a stream, that treacle darkness he had noticed at the bar too deep to be present in anyone truly so young. In a way, Sam thought, the stranger reminded him a little of Cas, with that curious, bone deep empathy and furious concern, shaded off by years of experience but at the same time made a thousand times stronger for it. He was at the same time unknowable, and everyone Sam had ever met, all condensed into a young man with slumping shoulders and a cracking grin, and despite everything, he thought he might even be able to trust it.
“How old are you?” he said in a low voice. “Really.”
The stranger bowed his head, his eyebrows knitting together. “It’s hard to say,” he said eventually, looking up at Sam. “There have been a few skips along the way in how we measure time, but all in all, I’d say almost fifteen hundred years, give or take a century either way.”
Whatever Sam had been expecting it wasn’t that, and his eyebrows shot into his hairline before he could even think about stopping them. “Fifteen hundred years?”
“Yes.”
“How are you alive?” he sputtered, gesturing wildly at god knew what and taking a few steps backward. “Are you a demon? An angel?”
“I’m human,” the stranger said simply, gesturing for Sam to sit down again. “Sit down. My healing spell won't last forever and the more you move, the quicker it will wear off.”
Obediently, Sam perched himself on the edge of the bed, but kept a couple of feet between him and the stranger. “Then how? And why am I here with you… I…” he pinched his nose and exhaled, screwing his eyes tightly closed. “I followed you here and I don’t even know your name.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
The stranger, though it felt increasingly wrong to keep referring to him as such, shrugged and shifted further on to the bed, his boot leaving a dirty scuff mark on the pale sheets as he drew himself into a cross legged position. “Fair enough. I’ve had a few names over the centuries, as you can well imagine, but most people now call me Merlin.”
Sam froze. He felt his face slacken and his jaw drop, but didn’t stop to correct it. He wasn’t sure if it was the calmness in the other man’s tone as he had said it, or the hushed quality of the air in the hotel room, as if one had only to turn his head to begin to breathe secrets, but the name had a certain resonance to it, like the closure of a music box, or the long forgotten cadence at the end of an even longer forgotten song.
“Merlin?” he said, eventually, his voice an echo even in his own mind. “As in the Merlin?”
“That’s the one.”
He blinked, searching the man in front of him for any sign of humour, but found only a detached serenity and an earnest gleam of truth in his eyes. "But… you're dead," he blurted, then winced at the crudeness of it. "Sorry, I-"
"Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated," the stranger, no- Merlin?- replied with a smile.
Sam stepped back and raised a hand to his forehead, breathing a short laugh. "Right… Merlin," he spun on the spot and looked back at the other man, as if he might have disappeared in the time it took him to turn around. "Merlin. Wow… I mean. I've read the lore on you. And I did a paper on 'Le Morte d'Arthur' in high school but…” Rambling, Sam Dean’s voice echoed, and he swallowed. “I… I mean… well, I never really thought you were real," he confessed, looking down at the floor and waiting for a rebuke, but looked up at the other man's snort.
"I'm not surprised!" he grinned. "And grateful too," at Sam's quizzical expression, he shook his head and shrugged. “Look, there were a lot of problems with Camelot when I was there, and a lot of stuff only really got straightened out after Guinevere was put in charge- oh yeah," he added at Sam’s shocked frown. "After Arthur died, the crown fell to Gwen. She had been a servant when I came to Camelot and were old friends by the time she became queen. She was one who actually brought about the golden age like the one you read about in Mallory and stuff like that.”
Sam blinked. “Are you telling me everything we know about the Arthurian canon is…”
“Bullshit?” Merlin asked, and Sam nodded apologetically. “Not all of it. I mean, the sword in the stone was real, but Arthur only pulled it out after he became king. The knights of the round table were real, so were Guinevere and Mordred and Morgana, though I can assure you that Mordred was not Arthur and Morgana's child.”
“What about the lady of the lake?” Sam asked, though no sooner had the words left his lips, he felt a slight change in the atmosphere of the room and stopped himself short. Too late, he remembered something in the lore about Merlin's relationship with the Lady, but kept his expression level, should he only make it worse.
"Freya was real," he said after a moment. "Well, she's still there somewhere. It's been years since I've seen her. I used to go and talk to her sometimes, but she never responded…" he trailed off, expression clouding over, and Sam floundered, seizing at some initiative to change the subject.
“How do I know this isn’t some elaborate scam to distract me from killing Lilith?” he said eventually, but the words tasted hollow in his mouth.
“Why?” Merlin raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it is?”
Sam swallowed. “I don't know.”
“Then what's stopping you from walking right out that door and never seeing me again?”
Sam opened his mouth to answer but stopped before he could speak. Merlin watched him with a knowing curiosity as he grappled with truth and expression, unable to articulate either one. After a few moments of struggle, he let the tension release from his shoulders, looking up glumly at the other man, his mouth a hard line of defeat.
Merlin said nothing in response, but met Sam's eyes in a silent admission of thanks, his irises glinting under the harsh lights of the hotel room. Sam let his gaze drop, unused to the heaviness of the reciprocating state, and shook his head, eyebrows knitted together in a frown.
"So, if you're still around to tell the story, why did you let people tell it wrong?” he asked. It was a bad attempt at changing the subject, but it came from a place of genuine interest, and at any rate, Merlin seemed happy to move on.
"Well, the first Arthurian lore wasn't really written until a couple of hundred years after Arthur had died," he started, striking a point against his thumb. "I couldn't exactly go up and prove them wrong without getting either laughed out of town or burned at the stake. Secondly, it was better for us if it stayed a legend.
“Us?” Sam’s voice came out as a whisper, and Merlin smiled apologetically.
“Me and this other guy- Leon- we’re still knocking around. And Arthur’s not technically dead, he’s just stuck in Avalon until the rift opens and spews him out again. It gets a little weird, but the further removed we are from the legends that have risen up around us, the harder it is for people to put together the pieces. Oh, some hunters would have a field day looking for a bunch of the shit we left lying around. So yeah, we let everything get convoluted, because, as I’m sure you know, the more contradictions in the lore, the harder it is to hunt, the easier it is for us to stay under the radar. Unless,” he nodded at Sam, “we find ourselves in circumstances where the truth is worth more than the pretence.”
Sam rubbed his eyes and sighed, opened them, then shook his head. “Is this a hallucination?” he mumbled, half to himself, half to Merlin. “Tell me this isn’t some wacky new withdrawal symptom or…” he shrugged “side effect of the demon blood or…”
“I can promise you, this is very real,” Merlin said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, and Sam looked up with frightened eyes, suddenly feeling very young. Merlin’s expression softened, and he tentatively raised a hand and placed it on Sam’s shoulder. It was a simple question, and should have meant nothing, but it was the first shred of genuine, human kindness that Sam had felt in a long time, and after a second’s brief hesitation, Sam collapsed into it, not so much a concession of defeat, but an acceptance that this situation, strange as it may be, was not one he could either win or lose.
“So,” he said after a second, leaning forwards to rest his elbows on his knees. “If you’ve spent so long trying to bullshit your way out of the history books and avoid the attention of hunters-” Merlin smirked at that, and Sam’s lips twitched, despite themselves, “Why the hell are you here, at the end of the world, with me?” It was a valid question, but Merlin frowned and bit his lip, as if something about Sam’s question bothered him. After a second, though, his expression cleared, changing from one of intense curiosity to nonchalance in the blink of an eye.
“One of the reasons I try and say off grid,” he began, and Sam thought he heard his voice catch very slightly as he drew breath, “is because I am in the unusual position of not just being born with some psychic ability, or as a vessel or a witch or some normal shit like that. I'm actually the only one of my kind in more ways than one, but the gist of it is that I'm the human manifestation of magic on earth. Technically, I'm made of the stuff, which is why I haven't aged since I was with Arthur.” Sam blinked and edged slightly away.
“You mean…”
Merlin’s eyes widened and he held up his hands in an almost endearing attempt to absolve Sam’s obvious wariness, and he shook his head, his hair falling in his eyes as he did so. “Relax! I’m still human. I was born to a human mother and… mostly… human father. But that’s exactly it. Most people, especially you hunters, tend to think of magic as some supernatural entity, some… oh, I don’t know… weird otherness that exists outside or in addition to the world as it should be, so you try and keep it in check. But magic, far from needing to be eradicated, is just a natural component of the earth. The idea that it’s dangerous and should be feared in all its forms is a misconception borne from misunderstanding and intolerance of people and things that are different.”
“But it’s not…” Sam looked away, almost apologetically, “it’s not exactly human, is it?” The words came out flatter than he intended, and he winced at the way Merlin’s eyes glinted in response, a thousand years of the same scepticism branding itself once again to his memories as it had done what must have been so many times before.
Merlin’s mouth set in a hard line. “It’s part of everything,” he said again, more forcefully this time. “Including humans. It’s in you, in Dean, in everyone you’ve ever met, everyone who was ever born. Without it, the universe would simply cease to exist. The only reason some people can use it and others can’t is the same reason some people are vessels and others aren’t. The same reason people are right or left handed, why some people have perfect pitch, or photographic memories, or can shoot a basketball hoop, or have curly hair. We all have different strengths and qualities that are compatible with different things in our environments. Magic is no different, it’s just easy to utilise for bad, and that, unfortunately, is what people seem to get hung up on. I was born as an anomaly, a perfect recreation of magic in its human form, and that might make me a freak, but it sure as fuck doesn’t take away what makes me human.”
Sam nodded at that, half afraid of the calm accusation in Merlin’s eyes, the inflammation of an old injustice that was too ancient to be anger but too present to ever be forgotten. “Right. Sorry.”
Merlin nodded, conceding the apology with a shrug. “It’s okay. You’ll get there,” Sam barely had time to process that last cryptic remark before Merlin flashed him another smile, this time, encouraging again. “But you asked why I’m here?" At Sam's admission, he stood up, gesturing vaguely with one hand, as if he were writing something in the air in a language he wasn't aware was no longer spoken or even understood. “Being… who I am… I feel the whole tide of magic across the universe. It’s a part of me, and most of the time, I let it fade into the background. White noise, you know? But once every couple of centuries or so, something happens. Like a seismic tremor. Usually it’ll be something like a witch casting an unusually powerful spell, the birth of a nephilim or a particularly powerful psychic, and I don’t always get involved, especially if it’s just your standard angel crap. I’ll keep tabs on whatever it is, just in case, but in the last fifty or so years, Azazel started causing disturbances- big ones, or at least big enough to get my attention. And then he started going into children’s bedrooms and… well,” he looked up at Sam, almost sheepishly. “You know the rest of the story.”
“If you knew what was going on,” Sam said, surprising even himself with the abrupt flare of anger that ignited in his chest at Merlin’s words. “Why didn’t you do anything to stop it?”
Merlin looked away, and when he turned back, Sam thought he registered a certain amount of guilt in his eyes. “I told you. I try not to get involved, especially when it gets biblical. I’m about this close to being considered a pagan god, so I don’t exactly confer much with your man Upstairs,” he gleaned towards the ceiling. “But honestly, I didn’t know what was going on at first. I could feel he was doing something to the children, but I didn't work out what until much later, and by then, it was too late. I watched over all of you to a certain extent, watching in case anything would go wrong, but the ritual Azazel had used, the reason he got to you all so young, made it virtually impossible to get the blood out of your systems without seriously harming you. And then the apocalypse started, and the gates of hell opened, and demon deals left right and centre, and then they were all gone, sacrificed to the ineffable plan or whatever. Everyone except you.”
There was silence for a moment as Sam let the words settle between them. It was just as much a void as it was a crossing; a signal to run as much as it evoked a desire to stay. Merlin paused, shifting as the weight of the knowledge floated to a standstill, filling the room with the echoes of all that forgotten potential, ghosts of lives stolen before they were lived as they never should have been.
“So what,” Sam said flatly if only to bring movement to the rapidly stagnating quiet. It was hardly a question, and Merlin wasn’t stupid enough to assume it was. “You’re here now, at the end of the line, when I’m clocked up on demon blood and practically addicted to the stuff…” he trailed off. Addicted. It was the first time he had dared to voice the word out loud. Dean had said it. Bobby had said it. He had known it, but still he had refused to say it. It should have been freeing, to have it out in the open, especially with the tentative chance of rehabilitation sitting at the end of his bed, but instead of feeling anything like that, Sam just felt sick to his core. “What are you doing here, Merlin?” It was desperate, and he knew it, a final concession of weakness in a world that demanded his every artifice of stability, the truth that ate away at the last of the illusion that had once been Sam Winchester, Mr Perfectly Fine.
Merlin studied Sam, his eyes darting across the wounds on his soul he refused to lick clean, his face narrowing in an indecipherable cacophony of understanding and shame. “I’m here,” he said gently, his stare not moving from Sam’s face, “because now you have a chance to get better. If you can kick the habit now, you have a chance at leaving this all behind and developing into who you should have been before heaven and hell got in your blood and fucked up your system.”
Sam paused. “What do you mean?”
Merlin inhaled, then glanced tentatively at the man across from him. “You don’t need the blood, Sam, not really.”
Sam looked down at his clasped hands, an empty smile tracing his lips. “But I do, Merlin. Look at me.” he unclasped his hands and held them in front of him, turning his shaky palms towards the light so they glistened with pale sweat. “You knew it as soon as you lay eyes on me in that bar, probably before with your psychic, magic shit.”
“You have an addiction,” Merlin corrected, finally breaking eye contact and looking coolly across the room. “Yes, you are currently reliant on the blood and are utilising its high to do what you think is the right thing, and there is something admirable in that. But you do not need it to do magic.”
“I had demon blood in me from the start,” Sam met Merlin’s eyes then dropped his gaze again, unable to look him in the face. “That’s what made me psychic in the first place, and the only reason this is working now. So if you want to help me become ‘who I should have been’-” his fingers sketched quotation marks around the phrase, and he heard the aggression rising in his voice, “either give me the juice I need to defeat Lilith or go to hell.”
Merlin almost smiled at that, but his lips barely twitched. Instead, Sam saw something else indecipherable flicker across his expression, something that could have been pain, or could have been pity. In the midst of his agony, Sam wondered when the moment had come that rendered him unable to tell the difference.
“The demon blood may have amplified your abilities, for a while, but it doesn’t work if there isn’t already something there,” at Sam’s confused expression, he sighed and shook his head. “When I was first around, demons mostly kept to themselves. There would be a couple of deals, now and again, but the majority of Albion- that’s Britain-” he added as Sam opened his mouth, “was pagan at the time, so they didn’t have too much of a foothold in the culture. Back then, demon blood was a fairly exotic ingredient, peddled by dark sorcerers as a component for dark spellwork. Rogue warlocks used to neck a bottle because it added a kick to certain avenues of power and enhanced psychic ability. But besides the scarcity, another reason it was so rare is because it was a very dangerous thing to play with. The process of becoming a demon reshapes your soul and turns it into something more brittle. More evil, I mean, you’ve seen enough demons to do that. And demon blood does the same thing. It makes you stronger in some ways, but a living soul is unable to sustain that kind of damage. It can’t let itself be reshaped because its priority is always to the service of its vessel. But the temptation that runs through demon blood is strong, and though your soul can’t bend to it, over time, it wants to. And then-”
“That’s how you end up with an addiction,” Sam finished grimly.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin said, and despite the ancient detachment of his demeanour, Sam thought he could hear genuine concern in the other man’s voice. “I know it’s a lot to take in-”
“Damn right, it’s a lot to take in!” he shouted, though less from directed anger and more from that simmering irritability that was beginning to gnaw its way back though wherever spell Merlin had cast on his head in the moments before. “Because if I’m not just some contaminated blood freak, what does that even make me? You give your grand talks about magic and the natural order, but that’s all,” he stopped short of saying “bullshit”, but let the word hang in the air, his own offering to the mystery that sat at the heart of whoever Melin claimed to be. “Am I even human?”
“Oh, rest assured, Sam Winchester, you are most definitely human,” there was a quiet passion in Merlin’s tone that made him pause and look up at the strange memory of a man that stood less than a few feet from the bed where he sat. And almost in answer to his question, Sam was met with a furious vehemence in his expression, a phantasmal vitality of hope and regret and love and hatred,a myriad of emotions that culminated in an explosion of something so broken and fierce, it could be nothing but humanity. His eyes brimmed with an ancient passion of battles one and lost, lives that had slipped away and memories that would have slipped further were it not for the desperate furiosity of one who had lost far too much to still be considered a man, but far too little for him to have ever forgotten what it felt like. Sam thought, and he scanned the stranger’s face for any sign of deception or falsity, that they were the kind of eyes people had died for, but even rarer than that, eyes that people would die for and go back to do it again.
Sam let out a shaky breath. “No. That's impossible.”
Merlin glanced over, his eyes round and owlish. “Sam… you have spent your whole life trying to do your best for other people. To save people’s lives, and even when you’ve done some…” he fumbled for words, then decided on “questionable things, you’ve only done them because you thought it was the right thing to do. So tell me again why you don’t think you’re human.”
“Because I’m a freak!” he practically shouted, leaping up again. “Sugarcoat it all you like, but Dean’s right. What I’m doing is perverse and dirty and wrong, and I’m only doing it because I don’t have a choice. And when this is over…” he trailed off and looked at Merlin with desperate eyes. The other man met his gaze, but merely blinked, his expression otherwise blank.
“You’ll what?” he said coolly. “You’ll go back to normal? You think it will just go away once you’ve killed Lilith? And if it doesn’t, what, you’ll keep going, hating yourself for who you are and what you’re doing?”
“I’ll kill myself,” Sam said, with more conviction than he felt. “I’ll save as many people as I can, and when I can’t anymore, I’ll make sure I’m not anyone’s problem anymore.”
“No you won’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No,” Merlin said, slowly. “I don’t, not really. But I know myself, and if I’m any judge of character, I think we’ve been along the same road, just at different points in the timeline.”
Sam actually snorted. “Really. The Merlin of legend, favoured by King Arthur and his court, was once a snivelling twit addicted to demon blood. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to listen to you lecture about something about which you have no idea.” He looked up at Merlin then, and was startled to see hurt in the other man’s eyes, or not hurt, so much, but the memory of something. A ghost of a past barely remembered, a truth infused with such strong guilt it had practically become a falsehood.
“You know,” he said eventually, “When I first came to Camelot as a kid, magic was illegal.”
Sam frowned. “That’s not what the lore-”
“We’ve been over this, the lore isn't real,” His tone was edging on frustration now, and his words carried such forcefulness Sam blinked and closed his mouth. “When I first came to Camelot,” he said again, “I was faced with a death penalty if anyone ever found out who I was. I spent nearly a decade looking after Arthur, saving him from all kinds of magical shit that cropped up and he never knew about any of it, because if he did, he would have been forced to burn me at the stake. I watched my friends murdered simply for being born with magic, I had people die protecting me because I was lucky enough to have a destiny and- “ his voice broke, “I couldn’t save the people I loved from letting magic twist them into people they never should have been, all because they hated themselves so much they couldn’t even see a possibility of who they were ever being able to do something good. And I might not know you, Sam. I might not watched every second of your life tick by as I watched my own, but I know that look, and I sure as fuck am not going to let what happened to my friends happen to you.”
Despite the harshness of his words and the anger in his tone, Sam was barely surprised to realise that he hadn’t raised his voice. There was no sympathy in his voice, no note of comfort, only a quiet ferocity, a hollow, aching loneliness that deadened any bright sparks of anger that may have once flown from his words. It was liberating, in a way, to be acknowledged without judgement or sympathy, but with pure, unequivocal truth, as difficult as it may be. And Merlin was strange. He was old and young at the same time, unknowable and familiar, and filled with such a bursting, fervent vitality that Sam almost had to look away, a liveliness that was powerful not because of its noise, but because of the unadulterated quiet that came with it, something that was so devoid of the bright flashes of mortality that it emitted an almost invisible glow, should one only stop to see it. It was terrible, and it was beautiful, but most of all, it ached with a curious sensation Sam had never dared to imagine, that he had never wanted to feel. It was the hesitant yet pervasive utterance of three words: I can belong.
Perhaps noticing his expression, Merlin pressed his lips together and exhaled. “Magic isn’t inherently evil, Sam. But it’s not inherently good, either. It just is, and it's up to you how you use it."
Sam looked down at his hands. "I don't have a choice in how I use it,” he said hollowly. “Using the demon blood is the only time I've had any control over all the psychic shit I used to be able to do, and now I can't even do that."
“I've already told you, the demon blood only amplifies some powers. Once you get it out of your system-"
“If-”
“When you get it out of your system,” he continued, speaking over Sam's paltry rebuke. “Your natural magic should start to come back. It's very common for a lot of mages, even incredibly powerful ones, to begin their powers with little more than premonitions. Prophetic dreams, nightmares, stuff like that. And then, when you get a little stronger, it moves on to more physical stuff. Telekinesis, maybe even telepathy? Sound familiar to you?”
“Before Azazel…” he broke off with a glance at Merlin, but the warlock merely blinked back at him. “Before Azazel took me away, I moved something… with my mind, I mean," he said faintly. “Do you mean to say that…”
“That wasn't blood magic, Sam,” Merlin nodded his head and looked up at Sam, an almost gentle look on his face. “That was just you. Like I said,” he continued as Sam let out a shaky breath. “No demons. No evil. Just you, and who you choose to be.”
He was quiet for a moment, and Sam let his words sit between them, an offering to be accepted or refused as he saw fit. He glanced at Merlin, but the sorcerer made no move to appeal further. Sam suspected he could have got up and walked out that door had he wanted to, and the other man would have just let him go, but he had a niggling suspicion that while he was free to do what he wanted, there was only one choice he would ever have the strength to make.
After about thirty seconds of charged silence, Sam pulled a face. “But Dean-”
“Don’t worry about Dean,” Merlin said with a strangely paternal finality, and Sam was slightly taken aback.
“But you’ve seen how he is now, and he thinks all this psychic shit is just a result of the demon blood. He thinks he can cure me.”
“He’ll come around,” Merlin said again. “Arthur did. It might take him a while, but he loves you, and you love him. And that’s stronger than any preconceived ideas about who and what you might be.”
“How do you-?”
“Because I do. Because I’ve been there. And because, believe it or not, you’re not the first scared kid I’ve had this chat with over the centuries.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“I’m fifteen hundred years old, Sam. You’re a kid,” he said, then grinned, that same, oddly youthful grin as when he’d opened the door. Or maybe it wasn’t youth. Maybe he’d just never forgotten what it was like to live in hope.
“One more thing,” Sam could sense that this bizarre meeting was coming to a close, and the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them.
“Go for it.”
“Am I…” he gestured at Merlin helplessly, and the other man smiled.
“Are you going to live forever?” he asked gently. When Sam nodded, he sighed. “Honestly, Sam, I don’t know. I could read your future if I wanted to, but that wouldn’t change anything, and it doesn’t do anyone any good to have the weight of a prophecy hanging over their head, as I’m sure you have recently become aware. But from an outward glance, you have moderately powerful magic. It’s not earth shaking, and it certainly isn’t anything near the power of someone like me, but it’s stronger than any of the other kids picked out by Azazel, and it’ll only grow over time.”
Sam was moderately taken aback by that analysis. “You can feel my magic?”
Merlin almost snorted at that. “Well, yeah. I’d assumed you’d gathered as much by now. It’s definitely damaged, the demon blood being the main cause of that, I’m afraid, and may take some time to grow back to its full strength. Don’t be alarmed if you end up with any sudden bouts of prophetic dreams or floating objects at some point. But it’s there, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“You mean you’ll help me?” he said quietly. “If I get out of this, I mean. You’ll help me control my…” he stumbled for the word, “powers?” it felt clumsy in his mouth, like he was speaking an unfamiliar language, or had grown an extra limb.”
Merlin looked up, affronted. “I didn’t come all this way just to give you a lecture and fuck off again, did I?” he looked at Sam like he’d grown an extra head. “What goes on in the apocalypse isn’t my business, and it’s not my place to intervene, but where you and Dean decide, whatever happens…” he trailed off there, a shadow passing across his face before, and Sam wondered if the reason he didn’t want to get involved was because he already knew what was going to go down. “I’ll be there to help you pick up the pieces. When you need me, I’ll be there.”
Sam struggled for a moment, thousands of ‘thank yous’ and ‘sorrys’ erupting in his throat, but instead, all that came out was: "I'm scared.”
Merlin nodded, and again, his face came alight with that aching compassion that stirred at something in the pit of Sam's stomach, snagging a connection he didn't know he needed to make. “I know.”
“Is this ever going to go away?” and for the first time, it wasn't his magic he was talking about.
Merlin met his eyes, clarity rushing to meet confusion. “No,” he said, his voice a bell amongst the chatter, a light in the dark. He sighed. “Yes. What is happening to you now is something you will remember for the rest of your life, but I'll tell you something. It will get better. It might take weeks, it might take months, it might even take whole years, but you will get out of here. And this pit you've fallen into, you're never going to be able to un-dig it, but you can move on, until one day, it doesn't bother you anymore, and instead of looking back on it with shame, you will see it as something you had the strength to overcome.”
Sam’s breath caught and he swallowed, his eyes refusing to be dragged away. “Promise?” he said, his voice barely an echo.
Merlin put a hand on his shoulder, and this time, Sam felt the magic rush through him, a coursing river of ineffable power, all harnessed within the body of a gawky, compassionate teenager with a cocky grin and kind, ancient eyes. The sorcerer looked up at him, eyes flashing a brilliant gold, and all at once Sam was hit with a hundred lifetimes of magic and memory, and sank slowly to the floor.
A boy with dark hair and ragged clothes breaching the top of the hill as a castle came into view in front of him, and the same boy staring red faced at an old man, spine bent almost double with the weight of years and knowledge scolding him with fast-formed affection. a fight with another boy, blonde this time, in the market place and the bright stench of adolescent magic in the air. Sam blinked, as the images kept coming: a black woman and the dark haired boy, head trapped in the stocks and laughing at some joke, a tall girl with a white face and frightened eyes, putting on a brave face for a scowling man with a scar across his right eye. A bejewelled cup and the blonde boy following a light up a damp cliff face, a flower clenched in his fist as if it were the key to life itself.
The pictures changed after that, though Sam wasn't entirely sure how- the same people flickered through his subconscious, but they seemed to be older this time, the smiles changing with the set of their faces, youth extinguished by responsibility, innocence by experience. And new faces now too, a tall man with reassuring eyes and a loyal smile, whispering a death secret to the dark haired boy in a deserted corridor while voices echoed in the chamber beyond. A man with wild hair and scruffy clothes, his cheerful face scarred with the channels of a seldom acknowledged grief, throwing a pitcher at an armour-clad thug. A black man beating the bars of a prison cell in terrified, passionate defiance, a young woman, features ravaged by guilt of an unbidden crime drifting out into a lake, body aflame as her soul melts into the water.
Then still more, the faces blurred together now, united only by time and memory, fragments of the past knitting together in a terrible tapestry of sin and grief, moments of joy melting amongst the growing roar of sadness and power. A carved wooden dragon, a silver sigil, glinting in the firelight. a line of hundreds of worn leather boots and a gleaming sword, glowing white from the heat of some ineffable fire. a wedding ring, half buried in the dirt as the girl from by the stocks, once so young and hopeful, cries out for grief of the life she had lost to another's displeasure, and the kind passion of the other girl's eyes gradually guttering like a unattended candle as the walls of dark magic grow around her despite her increasingly reluctant pleas.
And then finally, a battle. Bright lightning, an old man and the memory of a funeral that came both too late and too soon. Dragon breath and ancient tongues and that same sword, out of the fire, out of the lake and out of the stone, plunging towards the heart of a child turned enemy, friend turned victim, supplicant turned avenger, who administered a final, fatal blow before collapsing into the rocks to become little more than a half remembered legend. A flame dragon and a stuttered confession. Years of friendship and hatred warring, churning up into a huge crescendo before it's all over, and Sam is back at the edge of a lake, standing alongside Merlin as he cries away the part of his soul that belonged with these people, as the last dregs of who he was slip away before he begins to change into the legend he would one day become.
Then thousands of years. Faces he barely remembered and some Sam knew he would never forget. Children and adults, eyes aglow with greed and fear and everything in-between, flashes of hope amongst desperation, and jolts of mourning in the midst of something new. Hundreds of people, millions of faces as the centuries ticked by in his mind before Sam found himself slammed against a mirror, a hundred versions of himself staring back with wide, innocent eyes.
“Have a look,” a voice came at his elbow, and Sam realised with a jolt that Merlin was still there, his hand resting at the top of Sam's arm. “You don't have to if you don't want to. And there's nothing to say that whatever you do see will really happen, but it's there.”
Sam paused, then looked back at himself, his reflection both older and younger than he was, yet knowing so much more than he could ever hope to understand. Half-formed fragments of his life flickered then burnt out, dissipating just as he reached out to touch them, but his reflection only looked back at him, a shadow in his head, another monster to eat at his mind.
“Relax,” Merlin's gentle voice came again. “You're alright.”
Sam drew in a shaky breath and closed his eyes. The picture wasn't quite as clear as Merlin's, but memories danced into the light of Sam's dreams, staying for a few brave questions before dissolving back into whence they came. Two young boys and a truck of fireworks, one hugging the other as if he were the only real thing in the world. A brass amulet tied around the older's neck in a mark of both devotion and defiance. Fire on a nursery ceiling, fire up university walls, yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness and a pair of green eyes staring back. An absent father and a missing God. A wayward angel and his broken man. And then just Sam, swimming in the darkness, desperate, despite his protests, for a means to an end. But then magic, Merlin's hand on his shoulder, the dirt beneath his feet, and his own soul, fluttering in quiet defiance against the cage it had wrapped itself in, and with it, a single kernel of hope. It wasn't a promise, exactly, neither was it an order. But it was something, and in that moment, for that version of Sam Winchester, it was enough.