sky sailing

what a catch, donnie

(A/N so, I just got this idea for a merlin/doctor who fusion! I'm a bit stuck on my sherlock fic, and for some reason, writing other things can help with that for me X3 so for those of you reading it, don't worry, I'm still working on it!)

Maybe it is unfamiliarity. Maybe just anxiety. Or even a ghost of foolish hope. But as I step through the pressurized door of the Crusader, I feel it again. After all these years, all this despair, it's finally come back to me. The comfortingly familiar tug of magic inside my chest is enough to stop me in my tracks, to stop right in the doorway. Suddenly, painfully suppressed memories come flooding back, crashing over my senses like a tidal wave. Gwen, Hunith, Gaius, Morgana, Uther, Morgause, Mordred, Gwaine, Annis, Will... Arthur. I remember every time he'd called me a bumbling idiot, every time he'd thrown the object closest to his right hand at the back of my head. But most of all; "I want you to always... be you."

I remember how I'd failed him.

"Jethro, dear!"

And that was all it took to make to the tide recede.

"You're blocking the entrance. Go on, let the nice man through." Mrs. Cane glances over her shoulder at me, her eyes widening at me meaningfully while still managing to look sweet. She is a small old woman with fluffy auburn hair and a weathered, kind looking face. Her eyes are a remainder of her youth, flashing a bright, radiant blue. Everyone says I inherited them from her, and it is true that they are similar in color, but technically I did not. Sometimes I do wonder if I am her who-knows-how-many greats uncle or something, though.

Breaking out of my trance with a pounding heart, I pad over to the gray and blue cushioned seat across the row from Mr. Cane, a tall, plump man with thinning chestnut hair and a fair amount of neatly trimmed facial hair. He is Mrs. Cane's husband, obviously.

See, the thing is that they both think that I'm their son, but I'm not. In fact, I'm actually thousands and thousands of years older than both of them, unable to physically age any more. Of course, nobody else would believe that's possible, so I have to keep moving from family to family. I'm not completely sure how, but it's almost like this huge illusion is created to fool anyone I choose. I pick a person or family to live with, and it's as if I was never gone, as if a complete stranger didn't just walk into their house and declare that they were going to live with them. I stay with that person, in their complete custody, mysteriously disappearing after a few years. People start to get suspicious when I don't look any older than seventeen or eighteen after five years of nothing.

It's kind of funny, though. I'm supposed to be the most powerful warlock ever to live, and look at me now. A blurred shadow, flitting from place to place, a forsaken traveler. I guess that's how it always was. Arthur, the big, rough tough save-the-world kind of guy, and I'm just... Merlin. Maybe that's why I'm left to stay behind, to wait for something that will never come. It's simple, I suppose. He is forever, and I am finite.

Dwelling on these thoughts, I click the chip inside my brain I'd had installed last year on and music starts playing.

"You're using your headphones... to drown out your mind," Regina Spektor's soft voice croons, the melody rising slightly.

Ha. That's exactly what I'm doing. Thanks Regina.

Suddenly, another sharp tug from my magic, feeling like a bucket of freezing water being poured over my head, jerks my head up from where it had been sunk upon my chest. A man, the one I realize must've been the one I'd been blocking the entrance from, is staring at me intently from across the car. He wears a pair of red converse and a brown pinstriped suit. The man's dark chocolate eyes are slightly unfocused from each other, his arched eyebrows giving him an inquisitive and, okay, a slightly unnerving appearance. The man runs a hand through his disheveled brown hair, his mouth slightly open as he stares. Our eyes lock and a shiver ghosts down my spine, and yet he doesn't break his gaze. In fact, what I do see in his eyes scares me. Sadness, amazement, pity, empathy, admiration..., they bloom into a thick mist that detatches him from the rest of this world.

I glance back down as a peculiar feeling settles in my stomach, staring at my black converse and letting my mind drift while I distantly listen to my music. I can tell this will be a long ride.