Floating On Avalon

He swung open the door and marched inside, heading straight for the observation window for Specimen 1; the view was blocked by Gaius’ assistants and students standing shoulder to shoulder, some muttering anxiously amongst themselves whilst others scribbled notes.

“Ah, there you are!” Gaius said cheerfully, walking over and putting an arm around Arthur’s shoulder, steering him away from the window and towards the table he’d come from.

“Gaius, Specimen 1–“

“—Is currently being cared for by the doctors. He needs a bit of help calming down—naturally he was quite upset to wake up here.”

“You’ve explained to him where he is? Why he’s here?”

“We tried, of course. But he doesn’t speak our language, Arthur.”

“He’s foreign?”

Gaius hesitated.

“I don’t think so—not exactly. Alice thinks he’s speaking English.”

Arthur stopped in his tracks. He heard Morgana give a small gasp in his ear. English hadn’t been spoken in Albion for at least the last two millennia.

“English? That can’t be right.”

“I had my doubts, too—but take a look at these.”

Arthur fought back the urge to roll his eyes at the old man, and obligingly looked at the backlit screens on the table showing the magnified images of the flowers they’d found alongside Specimen 1.

Or rather, above him; it was only when Arthur’s Knights had begun to carefully remove the unknown plant life they’d discovered that they found the body of the young man buried beneath—still, impossibly, alive.

“What am I looking at?” Arthur asked. He wasn’t much of a plant person, and none of the flowers looked familiar to him.

“They were once common flowers here in Albion—primrose, campion, lady’s violet…”

Arthur frowned at the strange-sounding names, unable to match them to the numbered images he was looking at.

“Those are English names. That’s what tipped Alice off about our friend in there.”

Arthur tried hard not to look back over to the observation window and give the plants his full attention. He cleared his throat.

“Are any of them…interesting?”

“Well of course they’re all interesting—they’re supposed to be extinct!”

“Apart from that.”

Gaius stared at Arthur as though he were an imbecile for a moment, before sighing and beckoning him to the end of the table, where a glowing screen showed another flower, this one displayed alone and from a number of angles and different magnifications. It was small, with three round, yellow petals that folded away from each other. Arthur felt a peculiar urge to reach out and take it.

“Mortaeus flower.” Gaius said.

“This one is different?”

“This one wasn’t identified from the natural history archives,” Gaius explained, “we reached out to the Department for Magical Defence—as is protocol,” he added quickly, seeing Arthur bristle. It wasn’t just that Arthur personally disliked Aredian, who headed the department—but if the damn witchfinders got an inkling that something pertaining to magic had surfaced, Arthur would have a fight on his hands to keep this investigation within his jurisdiction. And it looked like it was unavoidable.

“A magical flower, found amongst a bed of extinct common plants, growing above the body of a strange man, deep in an ancient cave system where none of these things ought to be found living at all…”

Gaius nodded, face grim.

“I will keep Aredian at bay for as long as possible my boy, but—“

Several gasps came from the observers at the window. Arthur didn’t hesitate—he marched over, shouldering his way through the bodies, a singular black suit through a sea of white coats until he reached the glass at the front.

In the room beyond, Specimen 1 stood with a sheet wrapped around his hips, circling the bed in the centre to keep it between him and the team of doctors who were trying to approach him; they were dressed head to toe in white suits, with masks and visors covering their faces, and Arthur wondered if the man understood it was for his protection as much as theirs. The doctor at the front held his hands out placatingly, but the man was eyeing the figure behind who held a large needle. As Arthur watched, the person with the needle took half a step forward—and the man’s eyes glowed a brilliant gold and sent the needle shattering into the window.

Several of the onlookers next to Arthur screamed; the man jumped, raised his arms and the doctors slammed into the walls and stayed pinned there, unable to move—he spun around, eyes scanning for the noise, for the next potential threat, half crouched as if ready to run, although he had nowhere to go.

“What’s going on? Arthur?” Morgana’s anxious voice spoke in Arthur’s ear, but he barely heard her, transfixed at the scene playing out before him.

The wandering eyes, now back to blue, landed on Arthur—and the man froze, mouth falling open. The noise and movement in the lab around Arthur seemed to evaporate as all his attention was drawn towards the man in front of him. There was something familiar—something about his eyes, tugging at the edges of memory. He took an involuntary step closer, feeling a sharp pull at his sternum as if from a taut cord reeling him in, like they were the only two people in the world. And then, impossibly:

“A-Arthur?”

Arthur’s breath caught. The man’s voice was rich and warm, though still quite hoarse from lack of use. He took several, shaky steps towards the glass, and reached out with pale hands as though to touch. Those eyes, still glued to Arthur’s, flashed gold for the briefest of moments—and all around him the lab exploded back into awareness. Arthur gasped.

“…Merlin?”