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Merlin/SPN xover fic: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court 1/?

Title: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court
Rating: Gen, no pairings, just swearing.
Characters: Sam, Dean, Merlin, Arthur, various canon BBC Merlin characters, and a few OC.
Word Count: ~3K
Warnings/Spoilers: None for Merlin S1; set mid-S1 for SPN, but very vague spoilers for S2 and later in the next few parts; a version of a SPN canon character from S3-4 shows up, with some very vague references to SPN 3.09; and there's a non-spoilery, blink-and-you-miss it shout out to SPN 4.18.
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, and I am making no profit from this.

A/N: As you can tell from the title, this is also partly a "remix" of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I've shamelessly lifted some scenes, lines, and plot points from the amazing Mr. Clemens. If you know the book, you'll recognize some stuff, especially at the beginning.
A/N 2: I think this only works if you imagine original flavor Winchesters: S1. No deals, no Hell, no angels.
A/N 3: beta'd by the brilliant, generous, and kind-hearted calamity_crow. All failures of imagination my own, of course.
A/N 4: rest assured that this won't be epic! ~6 parts, I think.
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

Summary: The title kind of says it all. And this:

"Fair sir," said the knight, or Jedi warrior, or whatever the fuck he was, "will ye just?"

"Will I which?"

"Will you try passage of arms for land or lady or for—"

"Seriously? Seriously? What, did someone drop acid in the fake mead at the Renaissance Fair? Stop dicking around, man, and fuck off."

Picture Credit by: ala_tariel

Contrary to popular belief, Dean preferred not to hustle pool. Sure, it was a thrill when everything went right, but given a choice, he'd rather just play on the up and up. He was good enough that he usually won, could make a fair amount of money that way, if not as much as when they were scamming. More importantly, though, there were fewer hard feelings, and therefore fewer punches, when no one felt they'd been duped.
Hustling, there was always a major chance that things could go south—too often before they'd pocketed the cash.

But sometimes, they just needed a lot of money fast, and playing a mark or two seemed like the best option. Seemed was the operative word in this case, Dean thought, as he blocked a nasty right hook from the surprisingly agile trucker who'd just twigged to the fact that he was being played. He'd thought the guy was muscle going to fat, but it turned out he was just muscle going to more muscle—plus, a few of the guys propping up the bar turned out to be his buddies. Five against two weren't bad odds, but he'd seen better.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpse Sam land a blow to the gut of one of the larger buddies. He also saw another one behind Sam, swinging a pool cue at a perfect angle to crack against Sam's ear.

"Sam!" he bellowed, turning his head a fraction to see what was going to happen. Mistake. The trucker's fist connected solidly with his jaw and the last thing he felt was his head smacking against the barroom floor as he went down.

**********

Dean came back to consciousness slowly. He could feel sunlight on his face, and a soft breeze brushing against his body. Must have kicked us out, he thought, conscious or unconscious. But whatever he was lying on was a hell of a lot softer than the blacktop surrounding last night's dive, and something on it was tickling the back of his neck. He could hear chirping and whirring, but it didn't sound like cars on a highway, even a distant highway. Kicked us way the fuck out, he thought, dragged us out to the middle of nowhere and dumped us. Shit.

He pried his eyes open, and sure enough he was lying in a field somewhere, blue sky overhead, long grass under him, birds chirping and flies buzzing. He brushed at an insect that had landed on his face. "Sam?" he called, "Hey, Sammy?" But the only reply he got was something that sounded disturbingly like a whinny.

Startled, Dean pushed himself up to his knees, groaning a little as the shift in elevation jarred his head. When he got upright, he was face to face with a horse. At least he thought it was a horse—he couldn't see much of it behind the metal plate covering its snout and the purple, beribboned headdress it was wearing between its ears and down its mane.

"What the fuck?" He staggered to his feet. And then staggered backwards. Sitting on the horse was a figure in full armor. He couldn't see the person's face because it was covered by a plumed helmet whose only opening was a metal grate. Kinda like Darth Vader, only more silvery. There was a long spear clipped to the rider's saddle, and he was pointing a thick, gleaming sword right at Dean.

"Okay. Dude. Whoa." Dean backed up some more, hands in the air. "What's up? Am I trespassing on a Renaissance Fair or something? Sorry, okay? I just gotta find my brother, and then we're out of here, no harm done."

"Fair sir," said the knight, or Jedi warrior, or whatever the fuck he was, "will ye just?"

"Will I which?"

"Will you try passage of arms for land or lady or for—"

"Seriously? Seriously? What, did someone drop acid in the fake mead at the Renaissance Fair? Stop dicking around, man, and fuck off."

Dean wasn't trying to antagonize him, but it was the morning after the night before, his head hurt, and he probably sounded a little more aggressive than he should have. The knight seemed to think so, anyway, because in the space of about ten seconds he trotted the horse a little way off, turned it, exchanged the sword for the lance, lowered his head, and came charging straight towards Dean.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Dean said. Then he turned and ran. He reached for the gun usually tucked into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, but came up empty. As luck would have it, though, there was a tree directly ahead of him with some convenient branches. He used the lowest one to vault himself up, and then pulled himself into the higher limbs. The weight of that armor alone should prevent Sir Loonytoons from getting him there, he thought, relieved. The knight seemed to agree. When he reached the tree, he just slowly circled round it, thinking out his next move. Just then, Dean heard Sam's voice.

"Dean?"

"Sam! Over here. Well, up here, actually."

"Dean? What're you doing in a tree, Dean?" Sam sounded muzzy and slightly disapproving. Then his voice sharpened. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Buddy," Sam was addressing the knight now, and from his perch, Dean rolled his eyes at the appearance of Sam's super-special voice o'reason. Lotta good it was going to do him here. But Sam plunged on: "I know maybe you think my brother's part of whatever LARPing action you've got going on," (what the hell is larping? Dean wondered), "But he's not, he's really not. So maybe you could just back away from the tree, okay, and let us get out of your way."

Dean had to admit that usually Sam's special voice worked wonders—it had gotten them out of some tight spots in its day. But there was something off about it right now. Through the leaves below him, he could see that Sam was a little unsteady on his feet. He was waving his arms around a little too enthusiastically, like he was the crazy one, and not the wackjob on the horse. Concussed, probably, from his close encounter with the pool stick. Dean's worry level went up a notch. Then it shot through the roof when the knight, moving far faster than his heavy armor should have allowed, reached down and grabbed Sam, pulling him tight against the horse, a dagger against his throat. Where did that come from? Dean thought, the small part of him that wasn't worried or furious admiring the guy's personal armory.

"I claim this Giant as my captive," said the knight triumphantly, "descend from the tree, stranger, and I will let you both live."

"What if I don't?"

"I will gut him like a fish. And take his head as my trophy."

Dean came down from the tree.

The knight produced some rope from his crazy, invisible stockpile of stuff, and lashed their wrists together, so that they could walk one on each side of the horse, but couldn't get away. The knots were complicated, and Dean couldn't figure out a way to reach the knife that should be stashed in his boot. There was nothing to do but go wherever the nutcase was taking them.

He led them out of the grassy field onto a rough dirt road that had twinned tracks gouged into it a foot or two deep, and plenty of puddles besides. Once they left the open space of the field, trees lined the road on both sides, almost meeting overhead. There were no other travelers, and Dean couldn't see any sign of human habitation on either side.

"Sam? Hey, Sammy, you okay?" Dean hissed, as soon as they'd gotten into a kind of rhythm of walking.

"Yeah, pretty much. Kind of dizzy, maybe a little concussed. You alright?"

"Peachy. Seriously, though, you're not going to pass out or anything, right?"

"Nah, I'm fine. Not sure where we are though. Those guys at the bar must have run us right out of town."

Dean was starting to have a bad feeling that they were much farther away than that. It had been early winter last night in Hartford. The trees and weather this morning seemed to be celebrating summer. He didn't say anything, though.

After they'd stumbled along in the wake of the horse's easy amble for an hour or two, the trees thinned out, and they could see ahead of them a town nestled in a valley by a winding river. On the hill above it was a vast compound of towers and turrets. It looked like--Dean forced himself to admit it--it looked like the biggest fucking castle you ever saw, outside of book, anyway. Had to be some kind of crazy theme park, or some billionaire's private fantasy.

"Hey, mister! Hey, Sir Fights-a-lot!" Dean called to the knight, "Where are we? Is that Bridgeport?"

"Bridgeport?" the knight said, "I know of no such place. The noble fortress before you is Camelot."

********************************

The knight marched them through the town and up the hill towards the castle. The house-line streets were just as muddy and pot-holed as the road, but with garbage added. They were full of people dressed as oddly as the guy on horseback; dogs, chickens, even pigs, ran underfoot. The men were wearing crude linen tunics and leggings, and the women wore long dresses made of the same fabric, many with their heads covered by turbans or shawls.

Everyone was busy with the various tasks of daily life, carrying baskets of vegetables, loads of kindling, standing by the open doorways gossiping. Like that school trip he'd been dragged on once to Colonial Williamsburg—but the Medieval version. Everyone was taking it pretty seriously, though. As the knight and his captives passed by, they would fall silent, bowing their heads a bit in respect, and then look up quickly to out-and-out stare at the Winchester brothers. And, yeah, Dean knew he was cute, would even admit Sam wasn't bad looking, but he could do without feeling like he was the circus coming into town.

It was about two in the afternoon—as far as he could judge, since his watch was as AWOL as his gun—and without the shade of trees or houses, the sun was hot. Despite his metal armor, the knight seemed unperturbed. Yeah, thought Dean, 'cause he's riding a fucking horse. By the time they'd climbed the steep, bare hill, and come to the wide worked iron gate in the stone wall of the castle, Dean was drenched, and wishing he could ditch the heavy cotton jacket he still had on from last night. He jumped up a bit so he could see Sam over the top of the horse, and saw that he was sweating too, looking a little green along with it.

They passed into the stone courtyard of the castle. It was a wide space, with a bunch of people carrying out the same kind of tasks as the folks in the village, but dressed in richer fabrics and colors. There were with a few other guys in armor or chain mail mixed in with them, some carrying giant, notched spears—pikes, that was it.

"Hey!" Dean called, sensing an opportunity, "Any chance of a water break here? You guys ever hear of the Geneva convention, proper care of prisoners and all that?"

To his surprise, the knight did actually slow his horse a bit. Then Dean felt the rope stretched between his hands and Sam's tug and heard a kind of surprised grunt. Jumping again, he saw that Sam had sunk to the ground, and was sitting dazedly on the cobbles. At little frantic, Dean tried to get to him around the horse, but the rope wouldn't reach far enough, cutting into his wrists when he reached its limit. Feeling a little ridiculous, he crouched down and managed to get a better view of his brother under the horse's belly.

"Sam—you okay? Talk to me, man."

"Mmmm, m'fine," Sam said, in a slurry voice that did nothing to relieve Dean's anxiety.

"Oh, Kay," he heard another voice say, in a tone of mild disapproval, "mistreating captives again? You know how the king feels about that." Dean shifted to peer around the horse, and saw an older man in a long blue robe coming towards them. He had shoulder-length white hair, and a kindly expression on his wrinkled face. A much younger man was with him, dark-haired and pale, sporting a pair of truly prize-winning ears. The guy was younger than Sam, Dean thought, and gawkier than Sam had ever been, even that one really bad year in junior high.

"Here, son." The older man had crouched down next to Sam, Dean saw as he looked under the horse again, and was offering him some water from a leather flask.

"I meant him no harm, Gaius," the knight was saying, his voice no longer muffled by the Darth Vader headgear.

Their captor was younger than he'd expected, Dean realized, with a round, doughy face and sandy hair standing up in damp clumps. He was looking a little worried.

"He's taken quite a blow to the head, Kay, by the looks of him. Is that your doing?" Gaius was moving confident and practiced fingers over Sam's skull now. Sam gave a sharp hiss when he found the spot behind his right ear where the pool stick must have connected. "Nasty lump," Gaius murmured to him, "but you'll be fine."

"No, no, I swear it wasn't." Kay swung himself down from his horse, and came over to stare at Sam. "Can you get him to stand up? I want to present them to Uther, and the assembly will be almost over by now."

"He'll make a better show tomorrow. Why don't you wait?"

Kay was shaking his head, looking more like an eager teenager than a brave and terrifying knight.

"I want to do it today," he said petulantly, "Look at them—they're the most outlandish looking captives anyone's brought in for ages. Everyone will have to start giving me a little respect when they see I've landed these two."

"Where'd you find them, Kay?" That was the guy with the ears.

He sounded amused by the situation—not giving Kay that respect just yet, Dean thought.

"Ah—as you can see by their rich and exotic attire, they come from a far land of ice and mists, one I had to travel many leagues, and surpass many obstacles to discover…"

"But you've only been gone since yesterday afternoon, Kay."

"Ah—um," Kay seemed easily flustered, derailed from his tall tale too easily, in Dean's opinion. "Alright then, I found them in that fallow field about five miles west. But they must come from really far away. Just look at them." He insisted, his whole face lighting up with glee.

"Where do you come from, boys?" Gaius asked kindly.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look under the horse's belly.

"Impala." Dean finally said, straightening up and giving the Knight of the Crappy Lies a defiant stare. Two could play at this game, and he should think twice going up against the Winchesters. "We come from the far land of Impala."

********************************

In the face of Kay's enthusiasm, Gaius relented, and helped Sam stagger to his feet. The water seemed to have done him some good. Kay parked the horse somewhere, rebound the ropes so that their hands were behind them, and led them up the steps at the far end of the courtyard, Gaius and his friend following along behind.

They came into an enormous, high-ceilinged room, with rows of slit windows along one wall, and huge tapestries with brightly stitched scenes of hunting and courtship hanging across the other. The floors were bare stone, and their footsteps and the faint creaks and clanks of Kay's armor threw back echoes that set Dean's teeth on edge. The stone walls of the castle had kept out the day's heat, and the air was noticeably cooler inside, if damp smelling, and weirdly still, as if it was too thick and old to be stirred by the bustle of people. Thin bars of afternoon light cut through the windows and carved out patches of brightness towards the center of the room, but the space along the walls was in shadow. Nonetheless, Dean could make out a pretty solid contingent of armed men standing back there, their pikes glinting a bit as they shifted. There was indeed some kind of audience in progress; knots of men and women stood in the better lit portions of the hall; they were all lavishly dressed, but Dean could see why Kay was calling Sam a giant—even Dean towered over most of them.

Kay maneuvered them through the crowd of people at the back of the room, and as they came out into the open Dean could see the folks in charge up at the front.

Sure enough, in the center, seated on an impressive wooden throne, was a guy wearing a crown. It was a relatively simple gold circlet, sure, but still unmistakably a crown. The man wearing it looked to be in early middle age. He had close-cropped hair, and a hard, commanding face: even sitting, Dean could see that he was powerfully built under his red cape.

Standing to his right, and a little behind him, his arms crossed, was a blond man about Sam's age, wearing a short, ornate red jacket—the thing had studs, for chrissake, Dean thought—and a sword in a beautifully worked leather scabbard. The guy was handsome enough, and carried himself like he knew his way around a fight, but he had an arrogant sneer on his face worse than ones the rich, prep school kids used to bestow on raggedy public school kids like him and Sam when they were growing up—on the few occasions when they'd ended up in a town big enough to support a private school, that is. Gaius's dark-haired buddy had gone to stand behind the prep school dude, ducking his head a little.

To the left of the guy with the crown, the view got better. A girl in a low-cut blue dress was sitting there—blue eyes, full red lips, and pale skin that almost glowed against her long black hair—a real knockout. Dean managed to catch her eye, and gave her his best, most appreciative smile. But all he got back was a haughtier look, if possible, than the blond guy's. What an ice princess, he thought. And then bit back a hysterical giggle, as he realized she probably was a princess. Or thought she was. Or whatever.

Behind the princess stood two girls: one dark-skinned and pretty, with black curly hair; the other blond, with a long, pale, horsey face. The dark-haired girl smirked knowingly at Dean's embarrassment; the blond girl just gawked, her mouth literally hanging open a bit, as if the Winchesters had strolled in from the surface of the moon.

Meanwhile, Kay had managed to get himself to the front of the crowd, and was tugging at the rope to bring Sam and Dean along with him.

"Sire," Kay knelt, and jerked the rope until the Winchester brothers knelt with him. "I bring you two captives from the far land of Impala. A giant," he gestured expansively at Sam, "and his keeper," he flung a hand in Dean's direction.

"Hey, wait a minute," Dean spluttered. "I'm not his keeper. Not that he doesn't need one sometimes. But I'm his brother. Not his keeper. Not my brother's keeper…." He trailed off. Jeez—he was starting to lose it.

"And I'm not a giant," Sam chimed in, "Just kind of on the tall side. Where we come from, anyway…" Sam looked around the room, apparently only now realizing that he was looking down on just about everyone in it.

"Oh for goodness sake, Kay," said the blond guy contemptuously, "Where did you find the starving mountebanks this time?" Dean was beginning to sense the lack of respect Kay was talking about.

"Silence," said the king. "That's enough, Arthur. Thank you, Kay. They are very—unusual. Have them brought to the dungeons until I can decide what to do with them. Have you any friends who can ransom you, Giant?" This last was addressed to Sam.

Shit, thought Dean. Dungeons. Ransoms. This was getting way too serious. He tried to think of an exit strategy. Then Sam solved the problem for them by passing out cold on the stone floor.

part one

Chapter Text

Merlin/SPN Crossover fic: Two Boys from Kansas...2/?

Title: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court
Rating: Gen--no pairing, just swearing
Characters: Sam, Dean, Merlin, Arthur, various canon BBC Merlin characters and a few OCs
Word Count: ~3K
Warnings/Spoilers: see part 1
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit.

A/N: beta'd by the wonderful calamitycrow
More notes here, with part 1

Thanks, everyone, for reading and commenting. This part is still mostly introductory, but there'll more action and plot in the next couple of sections--promise!
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

Summary: The title says it all. And this:
"So, you think we really—" Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose, "we really went back in time?"

Dean shrugged unhappily.

"And these guys are really Merlin and the Pendragons?"

Dean shrugged again, even less happily.

"It's a little different than The Sword in the Stone, Dean." Sam was working up a head of steam now.

"Hey, no one ever said Disney was historically accurate, did they? Loved that movie, though—when Mickey can't stop all the little brooms with the water buckets?"

Picture Credit: ala_tariel

part 1

Part 2:

When Sam faceplanted, Dean really did lose it for a moment. Heedless of the rope cutting into his wrists, he scrambled off his knees, around the clueless Kay, and to his brother's side, standing over him protectively. The king flicked his hand, and a couple of chain-mailed guards started towards them. And either the layers of metal made them slow, or adrenalin made Dean fast, because bound hands or not, he was able to stagger the first one to approach with a quick, two-handed blow to his exposed cheekbone, and grab his pike before he could recover. Dean had no idea what to do with the long, awkward weapon once he had it, but he waved it at the other guards in what he hoped was a threatening manner.

They stopped, unsure. And then Arthur stepped out from behind the throne, walking towards Dean and Sam with his arms spread wide and empty hands.

"Lower the weapon, stranger, you have proven your courage," he said, still supremely self-assured, but without his earlier contempt. "I am Arthur Pendragon, and you are in my father's court. We treat all captives honorably here—even giants from the land of Impala—and we mean your brother no harm. Put down the pike, and we will commit him to the skilled care of our Court Physician." He nodded towards Gaius, who wiggled his eyebrows at Dean in a way that clearly meant please do what he says.

Dean looked around. He was completely out-numbered, and still had no clue what was really going on. Then he looked at Sam, unconscious and pale on the hard stones. They clearly weren't going anywhere just yet.

He put down the weapon.

*********************************

A couple of the guards scooped up Sam, and carried him down to the room that seemed to serve as Gaius's treatment room, office, and living space combined. Brave Sir Kay, thankfully, had faded away once the fighting started. The dark-haired boy, however, had followed them at a gesture from Arthur—is he everybody's dogsbody? thought Dean, though he warmed up to the kid when he surreptitiously helped him get the rope off his hands.

They laid Sam on a cot in the middle of the room, and Gaius efficiently brought him around by waving a vial of something sharp and medicinal-smelling under his nose. Sam blinked a few times, lifted his head off the pillow, and then lurched suddenly to the left. Dean's respect for Gaius went up a few notches when he produced a wooden bucket before Sam could puke all over the floor.

"Easy now, son," he said, steadying Sam's shoulders as Dean hovered anxiously behind him, "a head injury will do that to you, and a long march in the hot sun doesn't help. Some rest, some sustenance, and you'll be fine." He eased Sam back down onto the cot, and stood to concoct something out of the various bubbling pots and vials on his table. Dean took Gaius's place, brushing Sam's damp hair off his face, while Sam batted ineffectually at him. Gaius handed Dean a tin cup of water, and another vial of something pungent.

"That should help with the pain and settle his stomach," he said. Dean sniffed it, then shrugged and held it out to Sam, who got up on his elbows, and also sniffed at it suspiciously. Nevertheless, he downed it, and took a few sips of water too.

"Merlin," Gaius was saying, holding the bucket out to the boy with the ears, "go clean this outside for me, will you?" The boy wrinkled his nose, then grinned good-naturedly, and trotted off.

Dean saw his own surprise mirrored in Sam's face.

"Merlin?" Sam said weakly, "Is that the Merlin?"

Gaius laughed bemusedly. "Yes, I suppose so. I know of no others who use the name."

"But he's the same age as Arthur." That was still Sam. Something in that potion must have loosened his tongue, Dean thought warily, or the bump on his head was still making him loopy—it wasn't like him to go on like this.

"Close enough. He was born in 508, Arthur in 507."

"And what year is it now?" Dean said, steeling himself for the answer.

"Why, it's the Year of Our Lord 528. The twentieth of June, 528, to be precise." Gaius peered at Dean, puzzled, "did you take a blow to the head as well? Or perhaps they use a different calendar in your country?"

"Yeah," Dean replied, "that's one way of putting it."

Sam was still chewing on the Merlin thing.

"But, he's a servant? He's not a great magician? Not the greatest wizard of all time?"

Now it was Gaius's turn to look pole-axed, though he quickly schooled his face into an expression of amused disbelief.

"No, of course not." He laughed awkwardly, and then turned serious, as though trying to convey a warning along with the information. "Merlin could not be a warlock, because King Uther, in his wisdom, has banned the practice of all magic from Camelot. Any who perform magic are imprisoned and executed. Since Merlin is both alive and free, he is therefore no magician."

That shut Sam up. He got a look on his face Dean recognized—like he was trying to put together a particularly gnarly jigsaw puzzle—one of those ones with only neutral colors and abstract designs. Dean felt oddly comforted by that look. Sam always kicked ass with those puzzles—maybe he could figure out this mess too.

"Well, then," said Gaius, clearly glad to put the matter to rest, "let me get you two something to eat and drink, you must be famished." At the mention of food, Dean's stomach growled, and he realized he hadn't eaten since the night before--an ocean away, and almost fifteen hundred years in the future, if Gaius was to be believed. "What are your names? I don't believe Kay properly introduced us."

"Dean," Dean said, standing and holding out his hand. When Gaius just looked at it quizzically, he tried bobbing his head in an awkward bow. "I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother, Sam."

"And are you really from a place called Impala?"

"Nah. Sorry about that. We're from Kansas. Originally, anyway."

"Mmm," said Gaius, though Kansas clearly didn't mean any more to him than Impala. Right, thought Dean, 'cause if it's really 528, there's nothing in Kansas except long-grass prairie and a lot of happy buffalo.

"Thank you for helping us out today," he said, "we appreciate it."

Gaius waved a hand at him, dismissing his gratitude, and began to put some food out for them on the table in the center of the room: brown bread, yellow cheese, a bowl of what looked like broth scooped out of a pot over the hearth for Sam, a cup of something for Dean that he happily identified as a kind of thick, warm beer. Sam gingerly levered himself off the cot, and they tucked in--Dean enthusiastically, Sam more cautiously, though everything seemed to stay down okay.

It was Gaius who brought the matter up again.

"How did you—I mean, why did you think that Merlin might be a magician?" he asked.

"Well—him," said Sam, gesturing at Dean, still overly communicative despite the caloric intake, "from Bugs Bunny and that Disney movie. Me—well, me—just from reading, I guess."

That, at least, seemed to push Gaius off in a different direction.

"You read? You are a scholar, then? A traveling scholar? Perhaps a monk?"

"Yup," Dean put in, sensing an opportunity for revenge for the Bugs Bunny thing. "He's a scholar on a road trip—and he might as well be a monk." Sam kicked him under the table. Which made a more serious possibility occurred to him. "In fact, he would love to see your library, once he's feeling better."

"Hmm. Yes, perhaps. I'll see if I can work it out with the Records Keeper," Gaius agreed, as Merlin re-entered the room.

******************************************

Gaius excused himself for a bit, saying he had other patients to check on, and Merlin pulled up a chair and stared at Sam and Dean while they ate with frank, wide-eyed interest. It would've bugged Dean, but the boy managed to convey so much sheer friendliness along with the curiosity, that he couldn't muster much irritation. More of a puppy dog than Sammy, he thought.

"Merlin?" he asked around a mouthful of bread and cheese.

"Mmm?"

"Will Uther throw us in the dungeons like he said? Once Sam's on his feet again?"

"I shouldn't think so. Not if you aren't nobly born, and don't know anyone rich enough to ransom you." Dean snorted at the idea of the Winchesters as aristocrats. "Uther may be a hard man, but he's not much for letting people rot down there just for the fun of it. Doesn't have much use for Giant Shows, either, unless your brother has some really good feats of strength up his sleeve."

"Oh give it a rest, will you?" Sam said wearily, pushing himself back from the table, and sagging back down onto the cot with a muted groan. "Not. A. Giant. Just. Tall." His voice trailed off at the end, and his eyes slid shut. Dean caught Merlin's sly smile, and couldn't help snorting again.

"No," the boy continued, "he'll find some other use for you. In the kitchens, maybe. Do you have a trade, where you come from?"

"Um…huh," Dean was at a loss. Trade? "Well, he's a traveling, monk-like scholar." That had to be the best description of Sam he'd heard for a while. "And I'm, well, a hunter. Sam is too, when he's not being a scholar."

"Oh, you're woodsmen, then?"

"What? No, no, we don't chop down trees or anything. We—uh—we track things, evil things, things that are hurting people. And then we kill them. You know, saving people, hunting things, it's kind of a family business for us."

"So, you're a tracker?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Can you handle a crossbow?"

"Hell yes!" God, Dean loved crossbows. Hardly ever got to use them, but Dad had made them train with bows, along with a lot of other obscure weapons. Give him some silver-tipped arrows, and a bow was better than a gun, in some situations.

"Well, you might be in luck then. Some creature—we're not sure exactly what, except that it can fly, it's huge, and it has sharp claws—has been terrorizing the village. Arthur's going after it first thing tomorrow, and he's down a few men. Maybe he'll take you on."

"Awesome!" And, okay, this whole situation was still fucked, but Dean couldn't help but feel a tiny thrill of pleasure at the idea. Tracking some nasty flying creature through the woods with a crossbow? Finally, something that made sense.

As if on cue, they heard Arthur's voice shouting for Merlin, and the prince flung open the door without knocking.

"There you are, Merlin. I've been looking for you everywhere. There's a state dinner tonight, and I need you to dress me." Dean's eyebrows went up at that, since Arthur sure didn't look naked, though he had ditched the ridiculous red jacket, and was down to a much more reasonable open-necked brown tunic. Merlin seemed to take him seriously, though.

"Sorry, Arthur, sorry. I think I'm supposed to guarding the captives, though."

"What, them?" Arthur cast a cursory glance over Sam and Dean. "I think they'll stay put without your prodigious restraining power. He's not going anywhere," he gestured at Sam, who Dean now saw was fast asleep, snoring slightly. "And the other one won't go anywhere without his brother." True enough, Dean thought, a little surprised at the prince's swift and accurate assessment of the situation. "How is he?" Arthur asked tersely, 'Will he live?"

"He'll be fine," Dean said, "Go on, Merlin, we won't do anything to get you or Gaius in trouble."

"Arthur? Dean here comes from a long line of trackers, and he's good with a bow besides. I thought he might help us out tomorrow, since Ranulph is still out with that broken arm."

"Yes, Merlin, and the fact that I started the afternoon with him disarming one of my men and waving a pike in my face is no reason not to hand him a deadly weapon first thing in the morning. Excellent plan." The sarcasm of the throne room was back in Arthur's voice, but with nowhere near the level of venom he'd directed at Kay, maybe even a little affection, Dean thought.

"Dude—I mean, uh, your Highness—that was nothing personal. As long as no one's trying to hurt Sam, I got no problem with the rest of you. And I'm a good hunter, I can promise you that."

"You don't have to give him a bow, Arthur, he could just help with the tracking—".

"Hmmn. I will take it under consideration. Merlin, attend me." And with that, the prince swept out of the room, Merlin mouthing I think you're in over one shoulder as he scurried after him.

*****************************************

Dean let Sam sleep for what he thought was probably an hour, following the protocol for head injuries even though he had no idea what he'd do if Sam really was bleeding into his skull, given the apparent level of medical care around here.

Gaius hadn't come back yet, and Dean very cautiously poked around in his books and medicines. If this was some kind of massive role-playing thing—which was seeming less and less likely every goddamn minute—someone had certainly gone all out on the authenticity front. Dean knew a bit about old books and manuscripts, and these were done with the right kind of colors, and bound in the right kind of hides. The Latin they were written in was perfect as well. The room looked real down to the spider webs in the corners and the mouse droppings near the hearth.

Sam was a little more clear-eyed when Dean woke him. He drank some water, and then said, in a careful voice.

"So, what do you think is going on here?"

"Wish I knew, Sammy." Dean had been looping through every conceivable possibility until his head swam. "No fucking clue, though."

"Could we have ended up in some elaborate live action role playing gig somewhere?" Oh, so that was what LARP-ing was, Dean thought, filling in the blank from this morning.

"Could be…pretty damn authentic, if it is…And then there's the fact that it was November last night, and June this morning."

"Okay, maybe I'm dreaming. Or delusional. Maybe this is all from being hit over the head."

"If you're dreaming, why am I here too?'

"You're not here—you're a creature of my delirium.'

"Oh shut up, Sam, you're making my head hurt now."

"So, you think we really—" Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose, "we really went back in time?"

Dean shrugged unhappily.

"And these guys are really Merlin and the Pendragons?"

Dean shrugged again, even less happily.

"It's a little different than The Sword in the Stone, Dean." Sam was working up a head of steam now—probably ticked off he hadn't been able to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together yet.

"Hey, no one ever said Disney was historically accurate, did they? Loved that movie, though—when Mickey can't stop all the little brooms with the water buckets?"

"Wrong movie, doofus." Sam blew out another breath. "So, maybe someone cursed us, or we accidentally touched some magical object or something?"

"I don't know, Sam. The last couple of jobs we had were poltergeists, and before that just the angry spirit of that mailman….Not much powerful magic there…And I don't think it was those truckers in the bar."

"I don't know then." Sam subsided, looking pissed, "You got any ideas?"

"Not really. You could take a look in their library tomorrow, see if you can find some spell to get us back. Or a Delorean, or something."

"Yeah, okay. Hey—you have Dad's journal with you?"

Dean checked, and to his surprise, it, unlike his gun and his watch, was still there, tucked away, as usual, in the inside pocket of his jacket. He nodded.

"Well, that's something. What about you? What're you doing tomorrow?"

"I, uh, I think I'm going on a crossbow hunt with Arthur; they're after some flying creature that's picking off villagers."

Sam glared at him. "Unbelievable. You're enjoying this, aren't you? Doesn't matter how messed up a situation is, show you a shiny weapon and it's all good, huh?"

"Hey, at least I didn't faint in the presence of royalty." Dean tried to divert Sam from seeing how right he was, but Sam suddenly wasn't paying attention to him anymore.

"Wait. I think I know how we can tell if this is really 528."

Dean raised his eyebrows.

"Well, the only complete eclipse of the sun in the first part of the sixth century occurred on June 21st, 528. And we aren't due to have any eclipses at all in 2005."

"Jesus, Sam, how do you know this shit?"

"What? Oh, astronomy class, sophomore year. But the point is, if there's no eclipse tomorrow, we'll know we're messed up with some twenty-first-century bullshit."

"And if there is?"

"Then we really are in the sixth century."

part three on LJ

part three on DW

Chapter Text

Two Boys from Kansas....3/? (Merlin/ SPN crossover fic)

Title: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court 3/?
Rating: Gen--no pairing, just swearing
Characters: Sam, Dean, Merlin, Arthur, various characters from BBC Merlin and a few OCs
Word Count: this part ~5.5K
Warnings/Spoilers: see part 1
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit

A/N: beta'd by the unfazeable calamitycrow, who truly went above and beyond on this one.
A/N 2: more notes, here, with part 1
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

Summary: The title kinda says it all. And this:
"So—the body of a lion?"

Dean nodded.

"Dragon's wings?" Another nod. "A scorpion's tale with poisonous spikes it can fling at people?" Arthur waved the black quill at him.

"Well, the venom usually just paralyzes the victims—doesn't kill them."

"I don't see how that matters, if it's just going to eat them later. Anything else?"

"Um, it has a human face—but with really sharp teeth."

"Well then," said Arthur, "sounds like we've got an interesting hunt on our hands."

Picture Credit by: ala_tariel

part one

part two

3.

Merlin shook Dean awake before dawn.

He blinked. He couldn't see a thing except for Merlin's face, its sharp angles weirdly shadowed by the dim light of a closed lantern. For a moment Dean couldn't remember who the kid was and why he himself was lying on a hard stone floor, wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket, his head on a rough, straw-stuffed pillow. Then it all came rushing back: knights in armor, kings and princes, Sam unconscious on the throne room floor. Camelot. Or a pretty fucking lifelike facsimile thereof. At least Sam seemed to be sleeping peacefully in the cot beside him.

Dean scrubbed a hand over his face and blew out an exhausted breath. It had taken him forever to fall asleep on the cold, uneven stone. The rattle and whir of heaters or air conditioners mixed with an undercurrent of highway noise usually lulled him to sleep—but the castle had been perfectly quiet except for some small rustling noises he hadn't wanted to think too much about. The only familiar sound had been the soft whoosh and snuffle of Sam's breathing and he had trained his attention on that until he was finally able to drift off.

Even so, he had jerked awake, internal alarm systems firing and hands reaching for a weapon, every time a knee or elbow knocked against the unyielding surface beneath him. The first few times, he had woken Sam up too, quizzed him on his name and date of birth and waved a few fingers in front of his face. When Sam had tried to punch him on the third go-around he had figured his brother would be able to look after himself in the morning.

The only bright spot had been the discovery that the knife strapped to his ankle had survived whatever transition they had undergone in time and space. Its weight was so familiar he hadn't even remembered to check for it after they had gotten away from Kay. It was iron, though, and he felt ten times better knowing it was under the crude pillow.

"Come on," Merlin was whispering urgently, "the creature snatched somebody else during the night—Arthur's mustering the men to go look for it. He'll take you if you get a move on."

"Huh?" It had been a struggle to get as far as where and he was nowhere near why. All the details in between were still blurred by sleep.

"Hunt? Nasty creature? Absconding with our villagers?"

Right. A jolt of adrenaline brought Dean fully awake. "Right," he said out loud, disentangling himself from the blanket, "let's go hunting." He strapped the knife to his leg, pulled on his boots, and looked hopefully at Merlin.

"Coffee?"

"Pardon?"

"Coffee?"

Merlin seemed to consider his response carefully. "I am well, thank you. And yourself?" He sounded like he had been studying the words in etiquette class.

"No, no, it's a drink, not some crazy foreign greeting," Dean scowled. Then he sighed in resignation, vaguely remembering Sam lecturing him about his caffeine habits—telling him that coffee hadn't even arrived in Western Europe until the seventeenth century, so there was no need to treat it like water or oxygen or something. He'd been too under-caffeinated at the time to care much what Sam saying. Now he cared. It was going to be a long day, and he sure hoped the creature was worth it.

The geek in question snored on. Dean shook his shoulder gently.

"Hey—I'm going hunting—you gonna be okay?" Dean felt a momentary qualm about splitting up.

Sam peered at him through sleep-tousled bangs. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine—go on." He waved at him vaguely, dismissing Dean's concern.

"Alright." Dean frowned. "I'm leaving Dad's journal with you. Find out some stuff, okay? And be careful."

"Yeah—you too. Try not to go medieval on anyone's ass." Sam snickered sleepily at his own joke and burrowed deeper under his blanket.

Dean was following Merlin out the door when he remembered.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Mmmf?"

"When's that eclipse supposed to be?"

"Umm…mid-day sometime I think—'round noon—"

*************************************************
Dawn light was just beginning to filter into the courtyard when Merlin led Dean to where Arthur was standing with a small group of men and horses. The prince had on some kind of light chain mail that covered his shoulders, and both sword and shield strapped to his body. The two burly men with him—trackers, Dean guessed—wore thick leather tunics, and crossbows slung over their backs. All three wore heavy red cloaks against the chill early morning air. Dean felt acutely conscious of his own worn jeans, cotton jacket and boots. This seemed like a world where you needed a lot of protective clothing.

"Merlin," Arthur said, "So kind of you to grace us with your presence." Merlin ducked his head in apology. The prince gave Dean a brusque nod. "Winchester. I'm not about to give you a weapon so soon after that display in the throne room. You'll help Merlin carry the supplies and extra weapons. You can ride, can't you?"

Dean was pretty sure he could. He'd been able to last time he tried, anyway. Of course, that had been when Dad got rid of that dude ranch ghost in Colorado, and he'd been about fourteen. He was pretty sure it would come back to him, though. He eyed the horses. They looked bigger than normal; like they'd bulked up special to carry heavily armored knights. They, like the people, were rocking some serious gear—leather breastplates and faceguards along with their harnesses. Yeah. Pretty sure.

"Here's what we know:" Arthur continued, "The creature, whatever it is, took one of the village cowherds before first light as he was readying the cattle for pasture. No one saw it, as usual—too dark. Just heard the screams. But there seems to be some evidence of a struggle at the edge of the paddock. So, we'll take a look at that, then see if there's any way to track it farther into the woods. Hard to track something that flies, of course, and the thing won't come out again 'til nightfall. But with any luck we'll find its lair—trap it there before it does more damage."

Dean looked at him. The prince seemed different in this context. Still as curtly arrogant as before, but in the fresh air of morning his terseness seemed designed to rein in his excitement rather than mask his contempt—as if he felt it would be improper to display the pure joy hunting kindled in him. Dean felt a smile tugging at the corners of his own mouth in response to Arthur's unspoken excitement, but he quickly schooled his face into the seriousness the situation seemed to merit.

He heaved himself awkwardly onto one of the horses, uneasily feeling the giant animal breathing beneath him as Merlin passed him some heavy bags of weaponry. They set off.

********************************************************

"Well, at least there's one clean print this time," Arthur said, running a careful hand over the wrecked, muddy ground that signaled the beast's landing site, "though bless me if I know what it is."

The two trackers—named Walter and Watt, of all things—crouched next to him and peered at the large paw print deeply embedded in the soft earth near the paddock. Dean tried to get a good look at it over their shoulders.

"Looks like a giant cat," Watt said, "heavy, too." He gestured towards the deep gouges made by the thing's claws—four facing forwards, one back.

"And we know something else about it," Arthur said grimly. "It likes to eat people. Otherwise why fly away with old Nob when there were plenty of tasty cows at hand?"

Dean stepped away from them, took a deep breath, and arched his back hard enough to crack his spine. Staying on the horse hadn't been as easy as he'd remembered, though he'd managed to avoid the embarrassment of falling off. His mount had kept making unexpected little movements that threw him off balance, tossing its head and whickering at him like it wanted to start a conversation. Give him a car any day—how could you ever relax on something that was freakin' alive?

He scanned the grass around the edge of the paddock. The spring green practically glowed, punctuated by a few orange poppies and white daisies. Something black caught his eye, and he stooped to pick up what seemed like a long, thick, porcupine quill. He turned it over in his fingers, careful to avoid its sharp point. Porcupines weren't native to England, were they?

A giant, flying cat with spikes. Dean tried to picture that weird combination of attributes. He searched through his extensive mental database of monsters for an image that would ring some bells, idly passing the spike from hand to hand. After a moment, he flashed on an illustration from an old book of Bobby's about the monsters of the medieval world, and his hands froze. Shit. He had a pretty good idea of what they were after. And he didn't like it at all.

He went over to Merlin and gingerly handed him the spike.

"Show it to Arthur, would you?"

"What do you think it is?"

"I've got a bad feeling," Dean said, "that we're dealing with a manticore."

*******************************************************************

Arthur was grilling him.

"So—the body of a lion?"

Dean nodded.

"Dragon's wings?" Another nod. "A scorpion's tale with poisonous spikes it can fling at people?" Arthur waved the black quill at him.

"Well, the venom usually just paralyzes the victims—doesn't kill them."

"I don't see how that matters, if it's just going to eat them later. Anything else?"

"Um, it has a human face—but with really sharp teeth."

"And you know so much about it how? Is the land of Impala infested with such creatures?"

"No…um…I," Dean cleared his throat and tried to get the tone right. "I am young, but I have traveled far, and hunted many monsters. And, uh, I have read many books of lore." Christ, he sounded like a fake medicine man from an old Western.

"Humpf." Arthur looked at hum sharply, but he didn't challenge Dean's claims. "What's the best way to kill it, then?"

"Just the usual, I think" Dean said, relaxing into familiar territory, "cut off its head, salt and burn the carcass."

"Why the extra precautions? Is it a magical creature?"

"No…not really…" Dean remembered Gauis's thinly-veiled warning about the Pendragons' views on magic. "I mean, it doesn't do magic, cast spells or anything—it just isn't exactly natural—supernatural, we'd say."

"Well then," said Arthur, "sounds like we've got an interesting hunt on our hands."

************************************************************************
They left the horses at the edge of the forest, thank God, and set off in the direction the villagers said that the manticore had taken its victims. Or rather, the direction most of the villagers had thought it had gone. The initial question had provoked a sea of fingers pointing in opposite directions, like a dozen Scarecrows from The Wizard of Oz. They'd gone with the majority.

Under the vaulting forest canopy, the air stilled. The trees had to be the biggest Dean had ever seen, their huge limbs blocking out most of the sun. Only a few, well-defined, narrow beams cut through, creating pools of light that made the shadows around them even darker. Thick, gnarled roots spiraled out crazily in all directions, half hidden under a blanket of fallen leaves. Unobstructed by undergrowth, giant, mossy trunks loomed over the men, dwarfing them. A spongy carpet of dead foliage formed the forest floor. It gave a little under their feet, absorbing most of the rustling and clinking of their passage. Without the overlay of pollution he now realized had varnished all the scents he had ever breathed, the ripe fragrances of tree mold and damp earth were almost overpowering.

Dean shivered slightly in the moist, close air, wondering once again what the hell had happened to him and Sam after that bar fight in Bridgeport. He was no wilderness expert, but he knew that the wood around him differed in some profound way from the forests he had known. It wasn't hostile exactly—just alien: untouched by human hands—as if people were newcomers to an ancient world it ruled uncontested.

He shook himself free of his reverie. It wasn't like him to be awed by the beauty of anything that didn't have perky tits and a nice ass. All this eco-musing wasn't going to help them find the manticore, and besides, no one else seemed to be finding the forest unusual at all. Arthur and the trackers were scanning the ground for spikes and the branches overhead for signs of the monster's passing, and Merlin was struggling under the weight of a supply bag, managing to crash into things despite the lack of undergrowth.

"Merlin," Arthur hissed in exasperation, "I'm amazed by the way you can make a racket in any situation. Try to be stealthy, would you?"

Merlin shrugged good-naturedly. Dean looked around, acknowledging the cathedral-like grandeur of the forest one last time, and then focused his mind on the job.

***************************************************************************

As the morning wore on, his sense of wonder backed off a bit, giving way to the discomfort and tedium of any long hunt. The overhanging branches shaded them from the sun, but the air warmed steadily around them nonetheless. Arthur and the trackers shed their cloaks, and Dean shucked his jacket and stuffed it in one of the bags. A nasty caffeine-withdrawal headache took up residence at the base of his skull.

They found a black spike or two as they moved through the forest, and saw a few broken branches overhead. But none of it was enough to make Dean believe they were really on the thing's trail. So it was probably pure luck when after a few hours they stumbled onto the site the monster had chosen for its midnight snack.

They came to a place where the giant trees thinned out a bit, beaten back by the assault of some long-ago fire, maybe, or pushed aside by the path of a now-vanished stream. Grass and a few bushier weeds flourished in the opening. The sun, approaching its zenith, lit up the space like an amphitheater. And spotlighted, near the exact center of the clearing, was the little that remained of Old Nob, the ground nearby gouged the way it had been back at the paddock.

The bones and bits of skin and hair were bloody and they stank. One of the trackers—Walter maybe—turned away quickly and was sick in the bushes. Dean had to put a elbow over his nose and mouth. Merlin, however, surveyed it all coolly, and Arthur actually picked up a stick and started poking around in the mess, looking for tracks.

Dean saw a sparse trail of black spikes leading out of the clearing, and cautiously followed it a few yards into the trees, hoping to get a sense of which direction the beast had flown off in. After a brief investigation, he decided that if the pattern of the quills was to be believed, it had set off to the west.

It took just a moment for him to get back to the clearing with this information, but when he did, the sunlight illuminating the clearing seemed shadowed, as if the shade of the surrounding trees was reclaiming its territory. He peered at Arthur and the others in the dimming light and thought, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Sam was right. And then, the gathering dusk just one more confirmation of what he'd probably already known, we really are in 528.

In front of him, Merlin seemed to notice the change as well, cocking his head towards the sky. The boy walked over to Arthur and tugged at his sleeve, murmuring a question, and then Arthur was looking around apprehensively too.

The light was failing rapidly now, and the four other men turned and twisted anxiously, as if they might catch some theatrical mastermind playing with the lights.

"Sire," Walter asked, sounding close to panic, "Is it magic? Is the beast casting a spell on the sun?"

"No," Arthur's voice was grim, but level, "I think not, although I know not what this darkness portends."

"Arthur," Dean said urgently, too concerned to stand on formality, "tell your men not to look at the sun. I—I've seen this kind of the thing before—and it can be very dangerous—it can blind them. Tell them not to look at the sun."

Arthur looked at him askance, but relayed the command with calm authority.

The forest had been eerily hushed before, but now it burst into a cacophony of cries, as if all its inhabitants had decided to give their opinion on the unexpected nightfall at the same time. Even the air, which had been oppressively still, stirred a bit, brushing over Dean's skin in a slow, rhythmic pulse.

Dean tensed under the onslaught of discordant noise, a little spooked himself by the gathering dark. At the edges of his hearing, over and above the other sounds, he thought he could catch a high-pitched, feral keening. As he focused on it, it seemed to get louder, and he realized all at once that the ripple in the air was no breeze, but rather the currents churned up by the beating of huge wings.

Of course, he realized, it thinks night is falling, and it smells prey nearby .

The same thought must have occurred to Arthur.

"Men-at-arms, to me," he called, "Merlin, Winchester, take cover in the trees."

Arthur's men were well-trained, Dean gave them that. Whatever fear they were experiencing, the two trackers instantly came to stand back to back with Arthur in a heavily armed triangle—two loaded bows and a broad sword raised expectantly towards the sky. All three men had donned chain mail hoods.

Dean hesitated for a moment, his hands itching for a sword or bow—or better yet a sawed-off—then he acknowledged his unarmed state, snagged one of the supply bags, and fell back with Merlin into the brush at the edge of the clearing. He grabbed the knife strapped to his ankle, but doubted it could do much good against what was coming.

The gusts of air got stronger, whipping the leaves into a frenzy, undersides flipped over as if to signal the approach of a thunderstorm. The howling, too, increased in volume, somewhere between a reptilian scream and mammalian howl—half lion, half dragon—and the sound made the hairs on the back of Dean's neck stand up.

Between the dimming light and looming trees, they couldn't actually see the manticore until it crested over the edge of the clearing. But then all at once it was hovering over them, body bigger than a lion's, wingspan almost as wide as a single-engine plane. It surveyed the scene for a moment, circling just out of bowshot, body so powerful it seemed impossible that even its enormous wings could keep it up. Suddenly, with a whoosh of air, it banked, and dove towards the men in the center of the clearing.

The light was bad enough now that Dean could only see its outlines as it began its tightly controlled plummet—angular wings set into a lithe leonine body, a narrow tail with a bundle of what must have been spikes at the end. Its head was human, and the faint, remaining rays of the sun glinted off sharp teeth set into an old man's mouth.

Before the bowmen could get off shots in the gloom, the manticore whipped its tail around and let loose a volley of poisonous quills. Arthur's shield went up instantaneously, but Watt and Walter had no such protection, and first one, then the other, crashed unceremoniously to the ground, black quills lodged needle-like in their faces. Dean heard Arthur grit out a string of what he assumed were medieval curses as he hunkered down between the bodies, as much of him tucked away behind the shield as possible.

Sensing victory, the manticore settled to the ground in a welter of slashing wings, and ear-piercing caterwauls. It gave its full attention to the one remaining obstacle between it and lunch, and leveled a barrage of quills at Arthur's shield. Since the beast was now between him and the men in the clearing, Dean decided to risk a throw despite the failing light. Hefting his knife into the air, he aimed as best he could at the join between spiny wing and muscled shoulder. The resulting hit produced a satisfying howl of pain from the monster. It flapped its wings madly for a moment, then subsided, and Dean dared to hope that he had impaired its flying capacity somewhat.

Unfortunately, that also meant that the beast was trapped on the ground, all its rage focused on the prince. Arthur, miraculously, seemed to be holding his own against it so far, darting his sword out from behind the shield to harass the beast's face and fore legs, keeping his own body protected. Dean wondered grimly how long he would be able to keep it up as the eclipse moved on towards total darkness. For all he knew, the manticore could see in the dark, but Arthur had to be fighting on instinct alone—sensing the thing's movements by sound and fluctuations in the air. A natural fighter, Dean thought, with dawning admiration.

"I'm gonna have to try and get a bow off one of the trackers," he whispered to Merlin, "stay here and try to get a fire going—I think there's a tinderbox in the supply bag."

He used his most soothing, I've-got-this-situation-under-control voice; he expected the kid to be close to hysteria at this point. He was wrong. It was too dark now to see Merlin's face, but his voice, when he murmured his agreement, was even and alert, and Dean felt oddly reassured.

Figuring that closer to the ground was safer, Dean set off towards the sounds of fighting in a kind of commando crawl, using his elbows and forearms to propel him across the grassy ground, digging in with his toes and knees for traction. He could hear the low frustrated growls of the thing, and the scrape of its claws hitting the prince's shield. He tamped down a worry about how much longer Arthur's armor could hold up against the brutal onslaught of claws, teeth and spikes and pushed towards the struggle.

After what seemed like an endless crawl through the now total darkness, Dean hit up against something soft but unyielding and realized that it was Watt. The beleaguered prince was so close by Dean could hear his shredded breathing. Arthur must have sensed his proximity too, because he whispered harshly, "Come to keep me company?"

"Getting a fucking weapon so I can take that thing out," Dean said, his voice equally strained. A quill pinged against his shield and the prince hunkered down again.

Dean felt around, and found the quiver of arrows on Watt's back, realizing, to his dismay, that that meant that the tracker had fallen on top of his bow.

"Can you divert that thing for a minute?" he hissed, "I'm gonna have to move this guy and I don't want it to notice before I'm armed."

Arthur didn't answer, but he shifted away from Dean and the unconscious Watt, stuck his sword out, and called out tauntingly, "Hey, you! Yes, you, you ugly pile of bones and fur. Slow today, are we? Molting season not our friend?"

The manticore roared and lunged away from Dean. As quickly as he could, he got his shoulder under the heavy tracker and rolled him over, biting back a curse. Panting with the exertion, he retrieved the weapon.

"Thanks—that thing's dead meat now," he whispered, with more confidence than he really felt.

"Any time," said the prince, his voice muffled again behind his shield, "just make it quick."

Clutching the arrows and tucking the bow under his arm, Dean turned, not entirely sure anymore which direction he'd come from. But a light had appeared nearby and he realized that Merlin had actually managed to get a fire going. He risked getting to his feet to make a crouching run towards it.

The fire, when he got to it, was strangely big—higher and brighter than what Dean thought Merlin would have been able to produce in the short time he'd been away—but he had no time to think about that.

Dean hefted the crossbow to his shoulder. Made of wood, it weighed much more than the titanium bows he had trained with, but he thought he could still control it. He tested the draw—well-oiled, but harder to pull than the smooth, mechanical mechanism he was used to.

He cocked an arrow, sighted as well as he could in the flickering light of the fire, and glanced at Merlin. Lit by the flames, the boy's face showed the same serene intensity Dean had heard in his voice.

"Here goes nothing," he murmured, and let the arrow fly.

It rose in a smooth arc, but Dean could barely track it as it moved in and out of the flickering light of Merlin's fire. As it descended towards the manticore, however, a fierce blue fire suddenly ran up the arrow, illuminating its length.

"What the—"

Dean turned to Merlin, but the boy wasn't paying any attention to him. He was looking intently at the arrow, and his eyes glowed dark gold.

Dean's breath caught in his throat.

The burning arrow found its mark in the side of the manticore's neck, and the beast let out a tremendous bellow of pain and outrage. The blue fire rippled over its skin for a moment, and then faded away. Its wake seemed to leave the beast in agony, however. It suddenly stretched it wings out to their full extent, every sharp bone and knotted muscle in them rigid and straining. It stayed like that for a minute, impossibly huge, frozen, and then, just as quickly, the wings crumpled. The manticore tried to draw them in towards itself, but it had lost its fine muscle control—its movements were awkward, uncoordinated, and the wings collapsed like sails that had lost their wind.

The arrow must have struck an artery; Dean could see a river of dark blood coursing down its neck. Reeling from the pain and blood loss, the lion body writhed, its howls fading, but hitting the high notes just the same. Then, it seemed to gather the last of its remaining strength, rearing back on its hind legs, its dragon-length claws fully extended. But the violent lunge it was clearly planning never happened. Instead, Arthur emerged from behind his shield, spun his sword around once, and in a smooth, perfect movement, sliced off the thing's head.

And then it was over. Blood gushed from the place where the manticore's head had been, and the monster slowly crumpled to the ground in a puddle of its own bodily fluids.

Beside it, Arthur dropped his sword and shield and pushed back his chain mail hood. He sank to his knees, head canted upwards, gulping in ragged breaths of air.

Dean turned to Merlin to ask what the fuck was up with the blue fire, but Merlin was already pushing past him to kneel in front of Arthur, face tight with worry, hands hard on the prince's shoulders, then running over his arms with rough concern.

"Oi, Merlin," the prince said hoarsely, "I'm fine. Get off me."

"Shut up, you prat," Merlin said fiercely, cupping Arthur's jaw and tilting it to make sure his face and head were uninjured. "I don't know why you aren't dead." Arthur grimaced, but seemed unfazed by his servant's familiarity, and made no further attempt to push Merlin away.

Dean cocked his head at them. Huh. But what did he know about sixth-century master-servant relations? He checked on the unconscious trackers. He couldn't see much in the flickering light of the fire, but they seemed to be breathing alright—he got their headgear off, just to make sure.

"Winchester—"

The prince had gotten to his feet again, leaning heavily on his sword.

"Thank you," Arthur said, "that was a good shot, and a neat trick with the fire."

"Actually—" Dean began, but over Arthur's shoulder Merlin shook his head sharply, and gave him a pleading look. Well, okay, if that was the way he wanted to play it, no one had ever accused Dean Winchester of not knowing how to keep a secret. He changed tack and said sincerely, "thanks, and that was a beautiful blow."

He meant it—it must have taken considerable power and an impressive degree of precision to get the thing's head off clean in one stroke.

Arthur wearily nodded his acknowledgement. He looked a little unearthly himself—blond hair dark with sweat, firelight limning the broad, proud lines of cheekbones and jaw, flinging a tall, wide-shouldered shadow behind him. A Winchester hunting with a prince, Dean thought, what would Dad say to that? But he quickly shied away from the painful reminder of his father's absence.

The manticore's carcass was as gruesome a heap of monstrosity as Dean had ever seen. Golden fur covered what would have been a majestic lion's body, but the leathery dragon wings and the spiny scorpion tail incongruously attached to it rendered it grotesque. The worst was the severed head lying next to it—skin wrinkled and spotted, split by a wide mouth frozen open in the horrible rictus of death—Dean counted three rows of sharp teeth, one behind the other, inside.

That is one nasty son of a bitch, he thought admiringly, and wished he had his phone so he could get a picture of the thing. He imagined himself showing the picture to Sam, and saying smugly, "oh, yeah, no big deal—all it took was an arrow lit up with blue unearthly fire, and a good, sharp broadsword."

They were all three wrung out by the battle, so it was hard work gathering enough fuel to burn the manticore's body. Dragging his tired feet between the trees, holding a makeshift torch in one hand, and the axe Merlin had conveniently pulled out of one of the supply bags in the other, Dean was struck once again by how alive the forest was around them. If it could cough up a manticore, who knew what else lurked in its depths? He peered through the darkness apprehensively for wood dead enough to burn, but everything seemed to be bursting with life. Finally, he found a tree split down the middle, struck by lightening, probably, and started hacking away wearily with the wobbly axe blade. Where was Home Depot when you needed it? , he thought, gathering up the branches and carting them back to the clearing, where Merlin and Arthur had already arrived with similar loads

It was harder still to get the fire to catch without Merlin's gold-eyed trick. It took about ten tries to get the still-damp wood to ignite, and even then it popped and sizzled for a long time as the excess moisture burned off. If Arthur noticed the difference between this slow-building fire and the magically instantaneous blaze that had helped defeat the monster, he didn't say anything.

They didn't have any salt, but the pyre around the manticore's body—minus the head and the scorpion tail, which Arthur insisted they bring back to Uther as trophies—was pretty damn impressive once it got going. Despite the strangeness of his surroundings, and the sobering certainty that they had indeed landed in the sixth century, with no immediate way to get back to the twenty-first, Dean felt the familiar satisfaction of a successful hunt. Merlin shared out some food—dried meat, hard bread, and, blissfully, a wineskin—and the three of them watched in contented silence as the fire consumed the manticore's corpse.

By the time the monster had been reduced to a pile of charred bones, the unconscious trackers had started to revive, and the sun was beginning to reappear from behind the earth's shadow.

part four

Chapter Text

Two Boys from Kansas....4/? (Merlin/SPN crossover fic)

Title: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court 4/?
Rating: Gen (no pairing, just swearing)
Characters: Sam, Dean, Merlin, Arthur, assorted canon BBC Merlin characters, and a few OCs
Word Count: ~6.5K this part
Warnings/Spoilers: see part one
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit

A/N 1: thanks, as always, to my wonderful beta, calamitycrow
A/N 2: more notes here
A/N 3: I'm sorry this is taking so long! Work...kids...laundry...SPN 5.01....not even necessarily in that order. It will definitely be finished in 6 or 7 parts, but they might appear at the same slow rate. My heartfelt gratitude for the patience of anyone who's still reading!
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

Summary: The title kinda says it all. And this:

For the second time that day, Dean heard the sound of giant wings, and felt the air shudder into life around him. He tensed. An enormous shape rocketed out of the darkness.

"Sammy," he breathed, "that's a—"

"Yeah," Sam confirmed, equally awestruck, "that's a dragon."

Picture Credit by: ala_tariel

part one * part two * part three *

Part Four

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Dean sidled his horse up to Merlin's. Arthur and the still unsteady Watt and Walter ambled along a good way ahead of them.

Merlin jerked his head around and stared at him wide-eyed.

"No, no, not like that," Dean laughed, loose and relaxed after the successful hunt, "I just mean I'll tell you the secret of my identity if you tell me how you did that trick with the arrow."

"You have a secret identity?"

"I certainly do," he said solemnly, "but you first." Merlin hesitated, "Come on—I already know you can do stuff you don't want your employer to know about, I just want details. So spill."

Merlin looked fixedly at the reigns in his hands.

"I'm magic," he said reluctantly, "and if Arthur or Uther finds out, they'll have me killed."

"Yeah, yeah, I got that part, don't worry, I'm not telling. But, like, where does the magic come from? Are you some kind of supernatural creature? Do you use spells? Do you—" Dean swallowed, "—have dealings with demons?"

"Well…sometimes I use spells, say words, but mostly it's just something inside of me-- it's always been there. Demons don't exist," Dean let that one slide for now, "and I'm certainly not anything other than human—there are a bunch of other people like me, we're just all in hiding these days. Our magic is part of the old ways, ways Uther wants to leave behind."

"Huh. Okay." Dean let it go at that, "So what can you do? You can set things on fire, we know that—what else?"

"I can move things around without touching them."

"Handy. Can you read minds?"

"Not usually."

"Make people do stuff?"

"Hardly ever." Merlin grinned, "and when I can, it's not with magic."

"See the future?"

"Never."

"That's lucky" Dean said, thinking of Sam's visions, "that one hardly ever turns out well." Merlin looked at him quizzically, but Dean had no intention of elaborating.

"Your turn: what's your secret identity?" the younger man said.

Dean told him as best he could. Merlin, to his credit, took it all in without much fuss. Dean supposed that when you'd spent the first part of the day fighting a manticore, surviving an eclipse, and setting arrows alight with a blue unearthly fire, visitors from the future didn't seem like anything special.

"But how did you get here?' Merlin asked.

"No clue," Dean shrugged, "Hopefully Sam's found something out by now."

"And how will you get back?"

"That, my friend, is the million dollar question."

They rode on, both silently considering the problem.

"I may know someone—uh—something, that could help. Or give you some answers at any rate," Merlin said after a while. "I'll take you tonight."

"Don't tell me—another secret?"

"You have no idea."

************************

Dean was just beginning to get sick of their slow, hot progress down the dusty road when five horsemen cantered into view. The one in the middle was the king himself, Dean realized with surprise as they rapidly approached, flanked by two pike-carrying men-at-arms on either side. Arthur had sent a boy on a fresh horse on to Camelot with a pared down version of the hunt as soon as they passed the village again, but Uther coming out to meet them still seemed—unexpected.

Ahead of him, the prince urged his mount forward to meet his father, and Dean's horse took up the faster pace in sympathy. For a minute he had to give his full attention to just staying on board.

The two parties came together in a place where the road bisected a fallow, daisy strewn field. Arthur slid gracefully off his horse before it had even stopped moving, going to one knee in the dirt.

Dean almost smiled. Now that was a level of respect his own father would have enjoyed.

"My liege," Arthur said, head bent, "We bring you the head of the manticore, the fearsome beast that has tormented our people these last weeks."

Still astride, Uther surveyed his son impassively. If Dean hadn't been an expert in the passage of imperceptible signs across hard faces, he wouldn't have noticed the tiny movements as the king's jaw unclenched and his shoulders fell a fraction of an inch.

Well, that explains the welcome wagon, he thought. The king had come to make sure his son was unhurt. Arthur had maybe left that little detail out of the message.

Uther dismounted, standing in front of the prince, who still had not looked up. The king made a small, awkward gesture with his hand, as if he had been about to reach out and touch his son's head or shoulder but then thought better of it. If Arthur sensed the movement, he didn't let on.

"You have done well, my child," Uther said, "the kingdom of Camelot is grateful."

"I am pleased to be of service to my king and country," Arthur replied.

Dean stared at them, amazed they could keep up this degree of formality amidst the potholes and buzzing flies.

"Get up, Arthur," the king said brusquely, "Was the beast magic? Did it cause the plague of darkness that befell us today?"

"I know not for certain, sire," Arthur replied, rising and dusting off his knees, "but the sun reappeared soon after we killed it, so I can only suppose that there was some connection."

Uther nodded, seemingly satisfied. "We will call off the search for other magicians, then."

Now one large party, they set off again towards the castle, but not before Uther had them mount the manticore's head on a pike, and instructed one of the men-at-arms to lead the way with it.

"Let the people see the might and skill of the Pendragons," he proclaimed, "let them know who protects them from the foul deeds of magic."

The citizens of Camelot cheered the impromptu parade as it passed through, delighted with the gory spectacle. But Dean thought of Merlin's fear, and shivered a little in the warm afternoon air.

***********************************
When they passed through the castle gates, Dean imitated the rest of the group in giving the reins of his horse to a waiting groom, and gratefully, finally, got his feet back onto solid ground.

Arthur clapped him on the back, looking as happy and relaxed as Dean had yet seen him, and said, "It was a good hunt, Winchester. I would be pleased to have you continue in my service."

It had been fun, but Dean kinda hoped they wouldn't be sticking around that long. Still, he bobbed his head, trying to look appropriately grateful and respectful.

Arthur just laughed, "Go see Gwen," he said, "she'll get you some proper clothes. And a bow of your own."

Sam fell into step with Dean as he made his way out of the crowd that had gathered around the returning hunters, following the directions Merlin had given him for reaching the mysterious Gwen.

"A manticore, huh?" Sam said, grinning, "Now who's like a Disney movie? Saving the prince and everything?" Everyone in the castle seemed to know the story already. It was that kind of place.

"Wish you'd seen it, man," Dean said, launching into a play-by-play, including the part about Merlin's magic he had kept from Arthur. He streamlined the details but provided all the necessary sound effects.

"Whoosh," he intoned, imitating the beautiful arc of Arthur's sword across the monster's throat. "Swords are awesome, Sammy—how come Dad never taught us to use swords?"

"Um. 'Cause guns are better for killing shit?" Sam rolled his eyes.

"Killjoy." Dean swung his hands through one last, enthusiastic whoosh, and then sobered. "How about you? You find us a way out of here? Because shiny killing sticks aside, the lack of indoor plumbing is gonna get old fast."

Sam frowned. "The short answer is, no. Turns out that when they purged all the magicians, they purged all the books about magic too. So there wasn't much in the library that could help us. No specific spells, anyway.

"And the long answer?"

"Well, I did find some references to time portals—stone circles rigged so that people can travel between different times just by stepping inside them. Then I looked and found descriptions of the same kind of thing in Dad's journal."

"Sounds good—let's find the nearest one, and dis-fucking-apparate ourselves home."

"Yeah. That's the problem. No magic books, no magic maps—I couldn't find anything that said where these things were. And the only thing Dad could say about them was that he was pretty sure there weren't any in North America."

They walked on glumly for a bit, Dean calculating how long he could realistically expect to survive without a car, a shower or a cheeseburger. But he tried to be optimistic, if only for Sam's sake.

"Alright. Good.," he said as heartily as he could. "It's a start. We know these things are out there—we just have to find one. We can do that. How was the rest of the library?"

Sam put on a brave face, too, and threw himself into a description of the never-before-seen, and the long-thought-lost volumes of this and that he'd encountered. Turned out Sam felt about old books the way Dean felt about old weapons. Dean teased him about it, but only half-heartedly. It was good to see that look of geeky glee on Sam's face, even if it had taken being sent back thirteen hundred years to spark it—it hadn't been around much since Jess died.

******************************
Gwen turned out to be the curly-haired girl from the throne room yesterday. She was even prettier close up, in a low-cut, yellow dress that hugged her curves.

She cracked the door of her workroom open for them, and gave them a slightly moony smile that indicated that she too already knew the whole manticore story.

"Oh! Arthur sent to say you'd be coming by. We've been waiting for you." She dropped her eyes and backtracked a bit, "well, not waiting, not that we don't have other things to do, important things." She blushed a little, which only highlighted the strong, clear lines of her face. She seemed to have forgotten about opening the door any farther.

"The prince said you might be able to find us some clothes, and, uh, weapons?" Dean prompted, though actually he would have been fine with hanging out in the doorframe, ogling each other like teenagers.

"Oh. Right!" Gwen opened the door the rest of the way, ushering them into the room.

It contained several long, low tables, piled with bolts of cloth, sewing projects in various stages of completion, and whatever you used to make clothes with in this century—no sewing machines, that was for sure.

The only other person in the room was the blond girl who had been standing beside Gwen in the throne room. Like Gwen, she wore a long, low-cut gown over some kind of under-blouse, pale blue in her case; her hair was piled messily on top of her head, strands of it coming loose and flopping into her face. She was busily sweeping, but swiveled her head around to see who had come in.

The broom clattered to the floor with a resounding thunk, and the girl gawped at them just like she had yesterday, her long, horsey jaw hanging open.

Dean marveled again at the effect they seemed to have on people here.

"Ruby!" Gwen reprimanded, "close your mouth and pick up that broom. You're in Camelot now, and it's not polite to stare at strangers. Even if they did just slay a fire-breathing dragon-lion," this last bit was addressed to Dean, with a sly smile. "My cousin's just arrived from the country," she added apologetically, "and her manners could use a bit of polishing."

Ruby shut her mouth, but her eyes were still huge. She wasn't really looking at Dean, though, he noticed, but fixing an unwavering, hungry eye on Sam.

"No worries," Dean said, looking warily at Ruby, "and it didn't really breathe fire."

If Sam noticed that he was the object of the girl's unblinking attention, he didn't let on. Maybe because he was puzzling over something else entirely.

"Gwen?" he queried, "Guinevere?"

"That's right. It's a mouthful, isn't it? People hardly ever use it—don't know why my mother saddled me with the thing."

"And you…?" he gestured vaguely around the room, but Gwen seemed to grasp what he was asking.

"Well, mostly I'm Morgana's lady's maid," The hot chick in the throne room, Dean concluded, "but I know where everything is in the castle, and I've got a knack with a needle, so I help Arthur—and Merlin, and, uh, sometimes Gaius—out with things. Oh, and my dad's the castle smith, so I can fix you up with a weapon, too."

Dean decided all the crazy time travel had probably been worth it, just to hear the sentence that popped of Sam's mouth next. He would be busting his balls for it in perpetuity.

"So, you're not—uh—not a—uh--not a princess?"

Gwen goggled at him for a moment, then gave a startled laugh. "No, I most certainly am not—and I never hope to be one. You really are from distant lands, aren't you?"

"Yes. Yes, we are," Dean agreed, cuffing his brother on the back of the head, "Sammy—what have I told you about personal questions? My brother," he said, trying to dispel Gwen's discomfort with as blinding a smile as he could muster, "his manners could use some sandpaper themselves."

"Don't call me that," Sam muttered. But at least he didn't ask her if she was hooking up with her future king.

Trying to shift the subject, Dean continued, "Well, now that introductions are over…"

Gwen measured them both for clothes, fingers traveling the outlines of Dean's body in a way that made him think he could finds things to like about Camelot after all. She kept Ruby busy fetching things and tidying up, because every time the girl stopped, her eyes went unerringly back to Sam like a magnet. Sometimes her distraction made her drop stuff, which meant that even Sam noticed, shuffling his feet uncomfortably.

Dean wiggled his eyebrows at his brother, in a way that he hoped said, See? You could get lucky in the Middle Ages. The girl's vibe was more awkward and creepy than fun, true, but you never knew. Sam just tossed him an epic bitch face.

Gwen told them she would need to alter a few things, and would send them over to Gaius's chambers later. Then she took them to the armory, which was everything that Dean could have hoped for. He got a bow, and one of those useful chain-mail hoodies, as did Sam—who declined a bow, but took a hunting knife.

********************************

What he really needed, Dean thought, as Merlin led them down a steep, winding staircase, the light of his torch bouncing crazily off the stone blocks of the walls, was a nap. Killing a monster before lunch tends to take it out of you, and the only thing keeping him awake on this after-dinner jaunt to the bowels of the castle was Merlin's promise that whatever lived at the bottom of the staircase might have some answers for them. That, and the fear of tumbling down the worn, narrow steps if he blinked. He tried to focus on Sam's back energetically descending in front of him.

A few twists of the winding staircase down and the air started to chill—he could almost believe they'd left June behind and gone back to November. Damp patches slicked the stone walls, as if the wet earth they were holding back were pushing its way through. Phantom scents kept catching him unawares—sharply mineral, cloyingly decaying—disappearing before he could pinpoint what they were.

At the bottom of the endless stair, Merlin took them down a short passage that opened into—nothing.

Well, not nothing exactly. Some kind of cave expanded out in all directions, the little bit of floor they were standing on sticking out over the inky abyss like a diving board. The pool of light cast by Merlin's torch pushed a little way into the gloom, enough that Dean could see glistening rock wall curving out to enclose a huge expanse.

He glanced at Merlin but the boy didn't seem ready to fill them in on why they were there. He was waiting—but for what, Dean didn't know. Next to him, Sam caught his eye and shrugged.

Then, for the second time that day, Dean heard the sound of giant wings, and felt the air shudder into life around him. He tensed. An enormous shape rocketed out of the darkness.

"Sammy," he breathed, "that's a—"

"Yeah," Sam confirmed, equally awestruck, "that's a dragon."

The beast flew directly at them, scaly bronze wings outstretched, long snout open to show rows of pointed teeth, eyes glinting fiercely. It was as big as the manticore, but rather than a grotesque collection of parts, it was all of one shiny, spiky, symmetrical piece, moving with a harsh grace. It swooped towards them so swiftly that he was sure it was getting ready to incinerate them, or at least rip them limb from limb. Some part of Dean shouted at him to get out of the way, to get all of them out of the way, but most of him was mesmerized by its strange beauty, the way people are said to be by approaching tornados, too compelled by the sight to get out of their deadly path.

At the last minute, however, the dragon pulled up short, emitting a low, piercing scream. It was chained, Dean realized, held in the cavern like a Rottweiler in a suburban yard.

The dragon perched on a spur of rock jutting out of the cavern wall opposite them, and folded its wings close to its body. It stretched its impossibly long, serpentine neck across the empty space between them, bringing its head right into Dean's personal space. He felt like a rabbit with a rattlesnake, frozen, while the dragon sniffed him—or did the dragonly equivalent thereof.

Satisfied, the dragon turned its attention to Sam, doing a long, slow sniff up his body, and then cocking its head almost sideways to peer at his face, while Sam did his own rabbit impression. Apparently it didn't like what it saw—or smelled—because it opened its mouth a little wider and emitted a nasty, reptilian hiss.

The suggested threat snapped Dean out of his paralysis. He shouldered his way between the dragon and his brother and shooed at it, as if it were just some overgrown lizard. "Alright," he said, "that's enough now—back off!" He realized suddenly that he was unarmed, and wondered what he'd do it the dragon decided to snap at him. Luckily, however, it took the suggestion amicably, and retreated to its rocky seat.

"Why are they here?" it said, looking at Merlin, its deep, disgust-laden voice reverberating in a weird way that made it hard to tell whether it emanated from outside Dean's head or inside it.

"We were hoping you could tell us that," Merlin said, as unabashed with this giant scaly creature as he had been with the one earlier today.

"It is wrong," the dragon insisted, "they are out of place. They upset the balance."

"I'm sure they do," Merlin continued, their official spokesperson, since Dean and Sam were panting beside him in uncharacteristic speechlessness. "But who or what brought them here? Was it done by magic?"

"Yeesss," it hissed, "But not our kind of magic. Not through the old ways. We abhor such displacement. It was done with newer methods." The dragon turned the word into a sneer.

"But why—why would someone do it?"

"They hope to wreak great evil with what he carries with him," the beast jerked his head in Sam's direction.

Dean found his voice, even if it was a bit croaky. "Why him? He's not carrying anything." But the dragon only emitted a low, unnerving keening noise in response.

"They must go back. The longer they are here, the worse the imbalance."

"Right—I got that. But how? How can they get back?" Merlin grew insistent.

"You must seek help from your own kind," the dragon answered sepulchrally. Then it spread its wings and glided back into the darkness.

*********************************
Dean was beat by the time they got back to Gaius's chambers. He didn't know how Sam and Merlin could still be yammering on, rehashing the big load of fuck-all the dragon had told them.

Dean had tuned them out after Merlin explained what the dragon was doing down there (imprisoned by Uther, natch—'cause imprisoning shit was pretty much his M.O.). Because, yeah, seeing a dragon was pretty cool—kinda a lifelong dream, to be honest—but in terms of practical help for getting them out of there-- not so much.

But Merlin and Sam were united in the belief that they could winkle more information out of the encounter, and went on comparing and contrasting different kinds of magic, different kinds of potential evil, tangible and intangible things Sam might be carrying, all the way back.

"Nice visit?" Gaius said when they came in, barely lifting his head from the dusty tome he was perusing (Merlin had given him some vague story about meeting his mates to explain their absence).

"Yeah," Dean muttered, "a regular laff-riot." He trudged over to the cot still made up near the hearth, only half-hearing Sam and Merlin delving into the political history of Camelot with Gaius. Maybe if he fell asleep on the bed now, Sam wouldn't have the heart to make him move to the floor later on.

It was like someone had drawn an invisible line on the floor around the cot. On one side of it, he was weary in an ordinary, end-of-a-long-day kind of way; on the other, he felt like someone had cut the sinews in his legs. And arms. And neck. With no warning or build-up, he found himself descending to the floor, boneless, like a heap of spaghetti sliding out of a pot.

Luckily, he was close enough to the cot that it broke his fall a bit, and he came to rest propped up a against it, legs sprawled out in front of him, head lolling like a broken marionette's.

"Dean?" Sam said urgently, alarmed by his undignified collapse. "What's going on with you?" He started towards him.

Dean tried to tell him not to come any closer, to stay away from the bed, but his tongue and lips were as useless as his other muscles, and all that came out of his mouth was incoherent "nnnhg."

Sure enough, the minute Sam crossed the unseen barrier around the cot, he too turned into Gumby, rapidly subsiding into a pile of long, floppy arms and legs on the floor.

Suddenly Dean wished he'd paid more attention to the different kinds of magic duking it out in Camelot.

Gaius and Merlin stared at them, aghast. They clearly wanted to help, but were understandably hesitant about getting any nearer after what had just happened to Sam.

Dean tried to take stock of the situation, and found, to his relief, that the muscles powering his brain still worked. Most importantly, whatever spell it was—and it had to be a spell—wasn't designed to kill them—because otherwise, they'd be dead already. Just to incapacitate them for some purpose. Furthermore, it hadn't been in place when they'd left to visit the dragon—he was sure he'd sat on the bed for a moment to retie his boots before walking out the door. Which meant that it wasn't intended for Gaius, since he'd been here the whole time they were gone: just him and Sam, and possibly Merlin.

So, both localized and personalized. Which meant only one thing: witches. And someone needed to find the hex bag involved, or else he and Sam were going to spend the rest of their lives on the floor as puddles of goo.

Christ, he hated witches.

Sam had landed with one cheek mashed into the floor, facing Dean, and he swore he could hear the same gears turning behind his brother's slack face. Sam, though, was having better luck getting his word-making equipment to function.

"…iii…" Sam got out faintly. "…ags….ur…." Dean knew he meant, witches, hex bags, burn them , but Merlin and Gaius, needless to say, looked baffled.

Finally, Merlin threw caution to the winds and moved towards Sam, murmuring words that Dean sincerely hoped were a warding spell. And either his magic worked, or the spell wasn't meant for him, because he was to able move into the kill zone of the bed without being reduced to jello.

Merlin crouched down next to Sam, and awkwardly got his face close to Sam's mouth.

"Rags?" he asked, after listening again, "hags?" Sam managed to squeeze his facial muscles in a way that clearly indicated no. "Bags?" Merlin tried, and this time Sam's eyebrows lifted in minute, happy, assent.

"Ahh," Gauis exclaimed, joining them now, and not suffering any ill effects either. "I think I've read of this practice. It's a lower form of witchcraft. The witch takes something from the victim, and crafts a spell through placing it in a tiny bag with other magical objects—it only works on the person it's intended for, and then only in close proximity."

Yeah, thought Dean, that.

"Right," Gaius was saying, "it—they—must be near the bed." With Merlin's aid, he proceeded to strip the covers, shaking them out thoroughly. Nothing. They poked around in the ashes of the hearth, and among the objects on the mantle above it. Still nothing. Dean felt a wave of frustration at his own helplessness rise, crest and break inside him without having the slightest effect on his useless limbs.

"Oh," Merlin said, looking at a pile of fabric in different colors that had separated itself out when they disassembled the bed. "Your new clothes."

He and the older man went through them, pushing their hands inside the shirts, and into the trouser pockets. Still nothing. Then, Merlin ran his hand along the seam of a pants leg, and his fingers come to rest on a suspicious lump. Ripping the stitches, he removed a small, black bag, tied with a piece of darning thread.

"What now?" he asked Gaius.

"Burn it."

Merlin placed it carefully on the floor and raised his hand. The hex bag exploded in a burst of sickly green flames.

With a gasping intake of breath, Sam came back to life, pushing himself up off the floor, breathing out a heartfelt thanks, and looking kind of impressed with Merlin's fire starting abilities.

If Gaius hadn't known about Merlin's magic before, he certainly did now. But since he mostly just looked relieved at Sam's revivification, Dean thought he probably had.

A brief investigation of the other clothes revealed another bundle similarly hidden. Merlin gave it the same treatment, and Dean suddenly found his body back within his control.

"Like I said, handy," he told Merlin, struggling to his feat and clapping him on the back. He appraised Sam, who seemed as good as new. "You okay?" he asked anyway.

"Yeah. You?"

"Fine. Except for how my butt is numb. Fucking witches." He grimaced apologetically at Gaius, but the physician just nodded his agreement.

"Okay," Dean went on, dusting himself off, "so now we know someone brought us back here for some kind of nefarious purpose, and they're using black magic to do it. Unfortunately, we still don't know what that purpose is, or who they are."

"Oh, we know something," Sam put in, "We know they had access to those clothes. They arrived after we left, right."

"Yes," said Gaius, "a page brought them, with Arthur's compliments, he said."

"But it must have been someone who was around while they were being altered, to sew the bags into the seams like that," Sam continued, "Someone who could have gotten hold of a strand of hair or two. Gwen—"

"No, not Gwen—she would never dream of doing something like that," Merlin protested.

"Okay, then, the other girl, her cousin," Dean said, "what's her name—Scarlett?"

"Ruby," Sam corrected, an undercurrent of menace in his voice, "Her name was Ruby."

**********************************

Merlin tapped softly on the door to Gwen's family chambers, while Sam and Dean hung back in the shadows. After some convincing, Gaius had agreed to stay behind. Dean was glad—he didn't want the physician to see the kind of thing that he thought was about to go down. Didn't really want Merlin to see either, but they needed him. He had briefly considered trying to get Arthur in on the venture, but decided the less any of the Pendragons knew about the magic going on around them, the better.

The boy knocked again, a little harder.

With a creak, the door swung open, and Gwen peered through the opening. When she saw Merlin, she opened it wider and stepped outside. She wore a long, white nightdress, her hair falling loose over her shoulders.

"What is it?" she asked, alarmed, "had something happened to—" The end of her sentence was cut off as Dean slipped behind her and got a hand over her mouth. She struggled a little under his arm, staring wide-eyed at Merlin and Sam.

"Gwen," Merlin began, in the kind of strained, tightly controlled voice Dean recognized from a lifetime of crisis situations. "It's okay—no one's going to hurt you. It's just—Sam and Dean ran into some trouble tonight—er—magical trouble—Someone tried to hurt them." He let that sink in for a bit, Gwen's eyes getting even bigger, and then dropped his bombshell. "And we think your cousin might be involved." Gwen shook her head in protest, jiggling Dean's arm.

"I'm sorry," Merlin continued, "but, yeah. So, we need to go in and talk to her, and we can't have you warning her. Trust me on this, okay, and help us out?" Gwen was still for a minute, then nodded, though Dean could sense her reluctance. He slowly released her, but stood ready to gag her again if she raised the alarm. She threw him a look over her shoulder at him, sad rather than pissed-off, as if she were disappointed he wasn't the loveable monster-killer she had taken him for. His chest tightened unexpectedly.

"Ruby?" She whispered, turning back to Merlin and Sam, "Magic? You must be mistaken. I mean, the girl's family and all, but to be honest, she doesn't have the wits to be mixed up in something like that."

"Like that ever stopped anybody," Dean snorted. Sam made a face at him, then turned his attention to Gwen, reasonable-and-reassuring voice dialed up to eleven.

"We're not saying she's done anything. We just need to ask her a few questions. Is she inside?"

"Asleep," Gwen confirmed.

"And your father?" Merlin asked.

"Shoeing horses at the border stations—won't be home 'til the end of the week."

"Right," said Dean, "Merlin, stay here with Gwen. Sam, let's do this."

They found Ruby snoring peacefully under a pile of untidy bedclothes, blond hair tumbling over the pillow. She looked like a kid, Dean thought, and wondered how old she was—sixteen, seventeen at the most. Steeling himself against the wrongness of what he was about to do, Dean slipped a hand under her face and over her mouth. He pulled her, none too gently, into a sitting position, holding her against him.

She woke abruptly, in a flurry of flailing limbs, thrashing against him like a giant salmon caught by a bear.

"Hey! Calm down—we just want to talk," he said, tightening his grip. Sam unwound the rope they had brought, and got a few lengths around the girl, securing them as tightly as possible. The relatively flimsiness of the restraint made Dean nervous—he would have preferred a few lengths of iron chains—who knew what kind of witch-tricks she had up her sleeve?—but they needed to get some information from her, and they needed it fast. He cautiously took his hand off her face. She struggled against the ropes some more, but the look on her face was one part resentment to nine-tenths astonishment, as if she couldn't figure out what they were doing here.

Sam sized her up. "Ruby," he said, voice stripped of all warmth or reassurance. He might have been a different person now, all business, and it never failed to freak Dean out a bit, seeing his little brother turn on a dime like that. Still, in this kind of situation, it was a useful trait to have.

"Someone tried to hurt us earlier tonight," Sam went on, "Hurt us with magic. Which we did not appreciate at all. And that someone managed to sew the hex bags into the clothes that were made up for us today. So, since we're pretty sure it wasn't Gwen, we're thinking that someone might have been you. Was it you, Ruby? Did you try to cast a very nasty spell on us?"

She glared at him. Then futilely tried to deny it. "I don't know what you're talking about," she spluttered, "I don't know anything about magic."

"Oh, I think you do, Ruby." Dean answered her, "And I think you're going to start telling us what you know and how you know it, or things are going to get real unpleasant for you real fast."

She flipped over from false innocence to fury with startling ease. "Damn you," she hissed.

Dean raised his fist, hoping pretty hard that he wouldn't have to drive it into her face. Because, yeah, he'd hit girls before, and he was sure he'd hit one again, in the right set of circumstances, but that didn't mean he had to feel good about it.

Luckily, her defiance collapsed as quickly as it had flared up, and she burst into tears as soon as she grasped his intention.

"I thought it would work," she sobbed, "She told me it would work."

"Yeah, sorry about that, sweetheart. Nice try, but your timing was a little off."

Sam, as determined as ever, kept up the questioning.

"What would work?" he said, "what did you think would happen?"

"The hex bags, the spell, it was supposed to im--, immob--, make it so you couldn't move, couldn't wake up, and then I was going to sneak in before dawn, and just prick you," she jerked her chin towards Sam, "just get a tiny bit of blood from you, not so it would hurt you, you wouldn't even've noticed. That's all. But it was the whole reason we—" Her confession skidded to a halt.

"The whole reason--?" Sam said, startled, "Did you—did you and she--? Were you the ones who brought us here in the first place? Did she give you a spell for that too?"

Seemingly defeated, Ruby nodded, hanging her head, a curtain of hair hiding her face.

"But why? Why bring us here?" Dean was caught between outrage and curiosity.

"We had to cast our net wide—" Ruby's voice was faint now, "my mistress said we needed to cast our net wide—to find someone whose blood would be powerful enough. The spell found you. I had no idea it would bring you from as far away as Impala."

Dean shook his head—how could she know that it had brought them from so much farther away than that? He looked at Sam, and they silently agreed to take up the question of what made Sam's blood so powerful later on.

"Your mistress," Sam pressed, taking a different tack. "Who is she? Can we speak to her?"

Ruby raised her head at that, some of her former spitefulness returning. "Her true name is not for the likes of us. But she is beautiful and powerful—and will soon be more so. You do not speak to her—she speaks to you."

Dean rolled his eyes. What guff.

"She found me," Ruby continued, caught up now in some satisfying memory, "out of all the girls in our village, she chose me. She said I was ripe for better things, that she could help me get all that I desired."

"And what was that, Ruby? What did you desire?" Sam asked, in a voice that you might have called gentle if it hadn't been so cold.

"Geoffrey," she said, "the Miller's son. And she got him for me too." Dean could hear the want in her voice, the unrepentant joy of victory.

"And what did she ask for in return?" Sam asked.

"Nothing, she did it to help me. Because she had chosen me." Sam raised his eyebrows at that, and Ruby amended her statement. "She told me she would come for my soul in ten years time. But what's that to me?" She looked at them, and the bitterness radiating from her smooth, unlined face was chilling. "I won't live to see twenty-five—I'll be dead of plague, or in childbirth, like my mother and half the women in our village. Twenty-five!" she spat it out like a curse.

A surge of fury went through Dean. Fucking demons, he thought, taking advantage of a teenager's crush. Fifteen, for chrissakes .

"Where's Geoffrey now?" he said.

"Taken by raiders. He won't be coming home again." Ruby admitted, with the callousness of youth, "But my mistress said to forget him, that better things were waiting for us in Camelot. And when I saw you two, I knew she was right."

"But how did you know—how did you know we were the ones the spell had brought?" Sam asked.

"She told me," Ruby replied, with a crude giggle of delight, "she said she could smell you a mile off."

His skin crawling with disgust, Dean plucked at Sam's sleeve, drew him a bit away.

"Okay—way to freak me the fuck out. What's our next move here?"

"Beats me," Sam replied. But before they could decide what to do next, they heard Ruby chanting a rapid-fire string of somewhat garbled Latin words. The sequence tugged at his memory, but Dean couldn't quite place it--

"Dean," Sam said, grabbing his wrist hard, "that's a summoning spell!"

part five

Chapter Text

Two Boys From Kansas....5/7 (SPN/ Merlin Crossover Fic)

Title: Two Boys From Kansas in King Uther's Court 5/7
Rating: gen, PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, Merlin, Arthur, assorted BBC Merlin canon characters.
Word Count:~4.4K, this part
Warnings/Spoilers: here with part 1. Reminder: This takes place mid-S1 for Merlin. All that stuff going in S2...hasn't happened yet. Ditto for SPN: mid-S1 boys. They don't know from angels, or from powers.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.

a/n: beta from the extraordinary calamitycrow, who has done more this month already than three regular people put together--and still found time to deal with this. All remaining failures of imagination and elegance mine, of course.
a/n: more notes here
a/n: apologies again for the slow pace in getting this out! Thanks for your patience.
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

Picture Credit by: ala_tariel

part one * part two * part three * part four *

from Part Four
"But how did you know—how did you know we were the ones the spell had brought?" Sam asked.

"She told me," Ruby replied, with a crude giggle of delight, "she said she could smell you a mile off."

His skin crawling with disgust, Dean plucked at Sam's sleeve, drew him a bit away.

"Okay—way to freak me the fuck out. What's our next move here?"

"Beats me," Sam replied. But before they could decide what to do next, they heard Ruby chanting a rapid-fire string of somewhat garbled Latin words. The sequence tugged at his memory, but Dean couldn't quite place it--

"Dean," Sam said, grabbing his wrist hard, "that's a summoning spell!"

Part Five

As soon as the words had left Sam's mouth, the air around them crackled with electricity and the sour scent of sulfur stung Dean's nose.

From one moment to the next, a woman stood in front of them who hadn't been there before.

Her beauty probably cost them a few vital seconds. She was taller than any woman they had yet seen in Camelot—long-waisted and willowy, clearly as strong as she was graceful. In her mid-thirties, maybe, but age had only strengthened the clean lines of her face. A thick curtain of ash-blond hair fell gleaming past her shoulders, and her wide mouth twisted with delight under an arched, Roman nose. She was wearing a purple dress, made of some thin, silky material that clung to her high, round breasts and slim hips. Dean could see why Ruby had forsaken her home and family to follow a demon dressed in this body.

They all hung fire for a moment, then the woman blinked once, and opened eyes that were perfectly, totally black. Flames leaped in the hitherto unlit hearth, and the torches they had been using for light blew out.

Sam spat out the first few syllables of the exorcism ritual, but before he could get any momentum going, the woman raised her hand, and first Sam, then Dean, went slamming into the wall behind them.

The force pinned Dean a couple of inches above the floor, toes dangling, skull grinding against the stone. He struggled, but it was like being encased in an iron blanket, every limb immobilized.

"Mistress," Ruby exclaimed, "I knew you'd come."

A flick of the hand, and the chains binding Ruby clattered to the floor. The girl wasted no time in prostrating herself in front of the demon, babbling praise and thanks.

"My child," the woman said gently, raising Ruby up. Her voice was as lithe and beguiling as her body. Ruby looked at her worshipfully. Then the woman's hand cracked hard against the side of the girl's face and sent her back to her knees.

"You half-wit wench," she hissed, "look at the mess you've made of things." She kicked Ruby in the side with efficient brutality, leaving her sprawled full-length on the floor. The girl whimpered, and her demon mistress made an exasperated noise. "Country girls," she said, "hardly worth the goat's milk you were raised on. I'll be doing this myself, I see."

The woman raised her hands, letting the purple sleeves of her gown slide down around delicate wrists; suddenly, she held a gleaming knife and a cup of beaten brass.

She started towards Sam.

Dean struggled futilely against the force holding him, a sea of insults boiling inside him.

Then, unexpectedly, another woman came into his field of vision, trailing Merlin in her wake. She wasn't a demon, Dean was pretty sure; he couldn't feel the sour, sulfuric charge that emanated from Ruby's mistress, yet the woman burned with something almost wilder, a tightly reigned chaos like the centrifugal force of a tornado.

She was smaller than the demon's vessel, more compactly and voluptuously built, with dark, luxurious hair pulled back from her face to tumble over pale shoulders. She was wearing a red dress that bared her chest and arms and then split artfully around her legs.

Interposing herself between Sam and the demon's knife, the dark-haired woman raised her arm, and kindled, out of nowhere, a small ball of fire in her palm. She sent it hurtling towards the demon, but the blond woman raised her hand in turn and snuffed out the fireball as easily as blowing out a match.

It was official: Dean had no fucking idea what was going on.

The two women focused on each other, caught in some kind of magical stalemate. Battle had clearly been joined, although no more fireballs went back and forth. Nevertheless, Dean could feel the waves of pure power pushing up against each other, sucking the air out of the room.

Somehow or other, he and Sam seemed to have gotten themselves in the middle of a super-powered girl-fight, adversaries unknown. Under normal circumstances, he would have found a smackdown between two hot chicks in tight dresses totally entertaining. But being pinned to the wall knowing that dead Winchesters were the door prize was putting a serious damper on his enjoyment.

"Merlin, you useless lout" the dark-haired woman gritted out between clenched teeth, "join your magic with mine to defeat her."

"Why should I help you?" the boy shot back from the corner of the room. He clearly knew the woman, and was regarding her with suspicious loathing.

"Because we are the same, you and I, and this creature is a perversion of power who feeds on death and shame," the woman in red told Merlin, "She is our enemy as much as she is theirs. And if you do not help me, she will drain the blood from your friends and leave them to die."

"Cave-dwelling bitch," said the blond demon, "your kind is nothing but a remnant now, bog-witches and weather charmers. Soon, we will put you all back into the holes you crawled out of"

Merlin looked back and forth between the battling women, perhaps, like Dean, remembering the dragon's words. He gave the woman in the red dress a look that could have cut glass. Then he turned to the blond demon and raised his voice in that strange language that seemed to free his magic.

Although there was no visible sign of Merlin's intervention, Dean could feel the balance of power in the room shift as a new lode of magic opened up. The blond demon's face contorted under the onslaught. She flung her arms up defensively. A fireball flew towards her from the dark-haired woman's palm. It hovered inches from the demon's face as she exerted all her strength to keep it back.

Like someone whisking a cloth off a table, the force pinning Dean to the wall disappeared, and he unceremoniously stumbled onto his feet again. Sam landed with a thud beside him.

"Your ritual," the woman in the red dress exhorted them breathlessly, "use it now."

They didn't need to be told twice. In concert, Dean and Sam launched into the Latin words of the exorcism, while Merlin and the other woman held the demon still with invisible bonds.

When they neared the end, Ruby's mistress threw back her head and let loose an ugly, guttural howl. A column of black smoke poured out of her open mouth, snaking out of the room through some crevice in the stone walls. The beautiful, blond body she had been inhabiting crumpled to the floor in an ungainly heap.

:::::::::

Gwen burst into the room and took in the scene with a horrified stare. Then she knelt beside the body of the demon's vessel.

"Dead," she announced in a subdued voice. She looked from Merlin to Sam to Dean and then to dark-haired woman who had mysteriously appeared to save them. Ruby still lay face down on the floor, shoulders shaking in little whimpering sobs.

"Who—what—was she?" Gwen asked.

"A demon." Sam said, "pretty powerful one, too."

"But there's no such thing as demons," Merlin protested, looking slightly winded from the fight. "They're just a boogey man those Christian priests use to scare children."

"Kid," Dean told him, "I think you've just seen the degree to which that's not true. What I want to know is—who is she?" He jerked a thumb at the woman in red, "And why is she on our side? If she is on our side, that is," he amended.

The dark-haired woman just crossed her arms and smirked, letting Merlin field the question.

"This," Merlin said flatly, voice tinged with distaste and maybe fear, "is Nimueh. She is a powerful sorceress, and sworn enemy to the Pendragons and to Camelot. The last time I saw her she was trying very hard to kill Arthur—and ended up almost killing me. I have no idea why she showed up to protect you two." He sounded like Nimueh's concern for Dean and Sam had put them under a cloud of deep suspicion.

Dean shook his head and shrugged, seeing Sam make the same gestures out of the corner of his eye.

"Priorities, Merlin," Nimueh said, her voice light and mocking. "I thought the Great Dragon explained that to you. The struggle between our kind and hers is a greater problem than any human dynasty." She was deadly serious now. "This hell-spawn has seriously upset the balance of things by bringing these two back in time for her own ends. That balance must be righted. When that is done, I will turn my attention back to other concerns." She made no effort to conceal the threat in her voice.

"Are you saying—?" Sam said, clearly trying to process the different forces at play in this scenario, "Can you--?"

"Yes," Nimueh returned, "in this case, the enemy of my enemy is my friend—at least temporarily," she shot a look toward Merlin, and then returned her gaze to Sam and Dean. "I will tell you the location of the place—the gateway—you seek. It is a three-day journey, beyond the Northern Fells—I will give you more precise location when we are someplace more secure," she glanced at Ruby. "Come," the sorceress gestured, "leave the girl to clean up the mess she's made."

With that, Nimueh stalked gracefully out of the bedroom, Merlin and Gwen, then Sam and Dean, following her.

Behind them, Ruby lifted her head off the floor and said plaintively, "but what am I supposed to do with her—with it?"

Dean turned back, "I'm sure you'll figure something out," he said.

"At least she's gone," said Ruby, sniffing, "I'm safe now, right?"

"Oh sweetheart," Dean answered, torn between pity and disgust, "She'll be back for you. Ten years, remember? You made a deal."

::::::

Outside the door of Gwen's chambers, Nimueh paused again and looked at them.

"Ready yourselves," she said, "You have banished the demon from that body, but you know she—it—will find another. I will give you what help I can, but you would do well to arm yourselves with whatever weapons may work against such a being. You know what to do?" Dean and Sam nodded. "Good. I can stay no longer, but I will meet you in the hour before dawn at the split oak west of the castle. I will tell you then how to find the portal."

And with a casual gesture, she was gone.

The four of them stared at each other until Dean broke the silence.

"Anybody wanna tell me what the hell just happened here? 'Cause somebody forgot to hand out the scorecards for that little celebrity grudge match."

"I think the two of you have something to explain to us," Merlin returned, a little belligerently--spooked, maybe, and who could blame him?

"Okay, okay," Sam said, making peace, "Here's what we know: Ruby made a deal with the demon she called her mistress—we don't know her true name—and the demon got her involved in a scheme to bring us here—she needed something from us to increase her power." Sam was skimping on the details. Dean approved.

"Ruby managed to summon her mistress while we were, uh, questioning her," Dean took up the narrative, "and the demon was about to just take what she was after from me and Sam—probably killing us into the bargain--when your girl shows up to save the day—with your help, of course," he amended, nodding at Merlin. Gwen looked at the dark-haired boy quizzically.

"She's not my 'girl'" Merlin protested, "and I wouldn't let Nimueh catch you calling her anybody's girl, if I were you—anyway, last I checked, she and I hated each other."

"Yeah, about that," Dean cut in, "This Nimuwhatsit, can we trust her? Can she really help us find the portal home?"

"Yes to the second: if it's a magical place, she'll know where it is. No, I don't think so to the first. She seems to hate these demons—who really aren't supposed to exist, by the way—as much as you do, so I expect she will help you, if only to hurt them—but no, I wouldn't trust her."

"Good to know." Dean took it in. "But she's the best—the only—lead we've got for finding the way out of here. So, trustworthy or not, we're going to have to check out what she has to offer." He locked eyes with Sam, and his brother nodded without hesitation.

"So," Dean went on, "if we're going to make this trip, with at least one demon on our tail, we're going to need some supplies. Is there a Christian chapel in the castle, one with a font or something?"

"Yes," said Gwen, "there's a small one in the east wing—my aunt goes sometimes. I can take you there, if there's something there that'll help you reach this—this—portal. Though I'm not sure why you can't just make your way back to Impala the way you came," she added.

"Thanks," Sam answered, "I'll go with you. We'll fill some flasks with holy water. Demons hate holy water," he said to Gwen, "and I'll explain why we need this portal as we go."

Dean nodded, then said, "Merlin, let's you and me hit the kitchen and liberate some salt."

Merlin and Gwen stared at him, as if he'd just suggested they look for motor oil in the frozen foods aisle.

"What?" Dean asked, bemused.

"The salt isn't in the kitchen," Gwen said, still looking at him like he was an idiot.

"It's in the tower." Merlin added.

"Huh?" It was Dean's turn to stare. Sam gave one of his uber-geek noises of recognition. Dean raised his eyebrows at his brother.

"Dean," Sam said, clearly having a geekgasm, "in this, uh, place, salt is very rare and very precious—it's used as a form of payment, even—so of course it's going to be under lock and key somewhere. In fact, the Tower of London was called the Salt Tower for a long time because…."

"How do you even know this shit?" Dean cut him off.

"World History, sophomore year," Sam said smugly.

"Okay, whatever, Professor Peabody. I don't care if it's in Fort Knox. We can't do this without salt—not if we're going to sleep at night. Demons can't cross salt lines," he added for Gwen and Merlin's benefit. "But, luckily for us, a locked cabinet shouldn't be too much of an obstacle." He gleefully waggled his favorite lock pick at them, thankful it had survived the time jump. "Come on, kid," he said to Merlin, and then to Gwen and Sam, "We'll meet you back at the armory in an hour,"

:::::

As they carefully threaded their way through the shadows between Gwen's chambers and the tower, Dean began to feel a little remorseful about dragging Merlin into a criminal venture. A wave of adrenaline from the demon-sorceress battle was buoying him now, banishing the evening's weariness, but the boy looked a little worse for wear.

"Look, kid, you don't have to get involved in this—any more involved, I mean," he said, "I don't want you to be stealing from your employer on top of everything else. Why don't you just go home and get some sleep, huh?"

Merlin looked at him seriously and shook his head.

"No, no—I'm coming with you—you'll need some help finding the right room. And—" he paused, something clearly on his mind.

"Yeah?"

"Nimueh said you have to go past the Northern Fells to get to this portal. And the Fells... Well, they're not exactly what you'd call a friendly part of the kingdom. Robbers, bandits, you know. Lots of places for highwaymen to hole up in that terrain. So—" he paused again.

"Merlin, just spit it out, okay? I'm not going to bite."

"I think I should come with you," Merlin said, words tumbling out, "I mean, you and Sam don't have a clue about how things work here, and I wouldn't trust Nimueh, not in a pinch, and I could help, not just with magic—" He ran out of steam.

Dean sighed, and ran a hand over his face.

"Look, Merlin, Sam and I are pretty used to dealing with things on our own—we've handled a lot of stuff you probably couldn't even imagine. I think we can handle a few bandits just fine by ourselves.'

"I should come." Merlin insisted. "I know you haven't been here long, but I—I would hate to see you come to harm--."

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. He had to admit he'd developed a soft spot for the boy, too, whose bumbling earnestness barely concealed the conviction and power underneath. Still, he hated to get anyone come to grief over Winchester business. "Alright," he stalled, "let's just get the salt first. We'll think about this later."

::::

The Great Salt Robbery of 528 didn't turn out to be as difficult as Dean had anticipated.

He was able to get the drop on one of the guards patrolling the tower, knocking the guy's legs out from under him with a well-placed kick. The man-at-arms was wearing a mail shirt and hood, but the extra weight only made it that much more difficult for him to struggle back up, and before he could do so, Dean laid him out with a blow to the exposed part of his face.

His friend must have heard the commotion, because he came galumphing back around the corner of the building. But he too was slowed down by the protective gear, and now that Dean had the first guard's pike, it was a simple matter to stop him in his tracks.

Dean grinned at Merlin over the two unconscious bodies, pleased that he'd been able to use his fists at least once during this overly magical night.

Of course, it turned out the tower was so lightly patrolled because of the huge lock on a thick chain fastening the iron grate over the door.

But even that, though it looked pretty damn intimidating, quickly yielded to twenty-first-century stainless steel. Dean couldn't help but find that kinda satisfying. Sometimes a little hard-earned know-how was better than any hocus-pocus.

Each floor of the small, square tower was one big room, with a narrow staircase built right along the wall leading from one up to the next. Each floor-room held various chests, cabinets, and sometimes just piles of burlap bags. The whole place was obviously an enormous storeroom of important junk, with no labeling system to tell you what was what. Merlin had been right: Dean would have had no idea which one was the salt vault without his guidance.

They found it on the third floor: a glossy, walnut chest with, yes, several lengths of chained wrapped around it, anchored by a grim little black nugget of a lock.

"Keep an eye out," Dean hissed at Merlin, and set to work.

This one did take some fancy fiddling, and Dean cursed himself a few times, imagining what his Dad would have to say about the length of time it was taking him to winkle a medieval lock. But he eventually elicited a satisfying click from the thing, and was able to peel the chains away and open the chest.

The salt inside was bundled into a neat series of muslin bags, maybe twelve in all, each about half a pound. Dean was perfectly prepared to take the bunch, but he relented when Merlin objected. No need to rob the Pendragons blind. He took half.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Gwen and Sam were already waiting for them when they arrived back at the armory.

Sam cheerfully waved four flasks at him, signaling success. "Good old-fashioned holy water," he said.

Dean grinned in reply, hefting up the bag of salt so Sam could see it. "And here's some of that medieval white gold. If we don't use it all on demons, I guess we can always use it to buy lunch."

Then they all lapsed in an awkward silence, knowing departures were imminent.

"Um," Sam said to Gwen, "thank you—for helping us, I mean. And—I—we're sorry about what happened in your rooms, earlier—and—the—uh—mess—and about your cousin, and everything…"

Gwen stared at the floor and shook her head. "She was always trouble, that one" she said, 'I thought that was probably why they sent her here in the first place. She made her bed…"

"Will you turn her over to Uther?" Merlin asked, with an undercurrent of anxiety. "She was practicing magic, after all."

"I don't think so," Gwen replied, though she didn't seem certain. "Besides, knowing her, she's probably run off already." She paused, shrugged. "In any case, I'd better get back." She looked at the three men. Then, she grabbed Sam's hand and squeezed it, and went up on tip-toes to press a brief kiss on Dean's cheek. "Good luck getting back to your own time," she said—Sam must have decided to fill her in, "travel safely."

And then she was gone.

"Right," said Merlin, watching her go, "we've got what we need now, haven't we? Best be off, eh?" He looked antsy, eager to be away.

"We?" said Sam.

"Kid wants to come with us," Dean said. Sam raised his eyebrows. "Might not be such a bad idea," Dean went on, not sure when he'd come to that conclusion. "He knows the territory, which he says is pretty nasty, by the way. And after a couple a days here, I gotta say that having some magic on our side might not be a bad idea.

Sam grimaced, but said, "I guess. If you're sure," he looked at Merlin, who nodded resolutely. "And you're sure they won't send a search party after you?"

"I'll leave a note for Gaius," he said, with a cheerful eagerness Dean found kind of touching, even if it was foolhardy, "he'll understand. And he'll make up a story for Arthur and everyone." He looked at Sam and Dean again. "So, if we've got all the weapons and stuff, shouldn't we be going?"

Dean shook his head, "Uh-uh," he said, "we've got to take one more thing first.'

"What's that?"

"Food. I wanna fuel up before we set off on this cockamamie venture."

"Really?" Merlin protested, "can't we just get something later? We need to meet Nimueh soon."

"No. We need to eat. You especially," he jabbed a finger at Merlin. "You look like the next stiff breeze is gonna carry you away. I'm not going anywhere with you till you take on some ballast."

Merlin ducked his head mulishly. Sam snorted, and shot Dean a look that clearly said, really? One little brother isn't enough for you?

Dean scrunched up his face in annoyance. It wasn't that—it was just that someone had to be practical here. "Seriously, kid," he said to Merlin, "go leave your note for Gaius, and scrounge us up some cheeseburgers or something."

"Some what?"

"I dunno—just find us some meat, some cheese and some bread—we'll improvise. Go on—" he pushed a hand, not ungently, against the side of Merlin's face, "get."

Merlin trotted off, giving them a bemused look over his shoulder.

Sam still looked amused, but Dean shrugged it off.

"Wonder if there's some way we can get the salt to stick to the arrows? Come in handy if we run into demons again," he said, prowling around the armory looking for something adhesive. He found a pot of a sticky substance that smelled like it came from an old-time glue factory—the kind they used to threaten old horses with—and tried to figure out a way to coat the arrow head without making too much of a mess.

The project was absorbing, and he jumped a bit when Sam tentatively said, "Dean?"

Dean knew just from the way that Sam said his name that this was a conversation he didn't want to have. Sure enough, Sam continued, "Why do you think she wanted my blood?"

"The fuck do I know, Sammy?" Dean said, 'cause he really didn't, and what's more, he really didn't want to think about it. "You know demons—liars and schemers, all of them."

"Yeah, I know," Sam mused, "but this one definitely had a plan. What would make my blood so special to her? What would make it different than yours? Do you think it has to do with my dreams? Visions," he amended.

"Stop thinking about it already, okay? We see her again, we'll ask her. Or, better yet, we won't. Doesn't matter why she wants it. Matters she doesn't get it. So let's just focus our energy on that."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, subdued. He didn't seem at all convinced by Dean's bluster. "okay."

Luckily, Merlin chose that moment to barge back into the armory, carrying not only a basket of food, but also two saddle bags crammed with stuff. He looked pleased with himself.

"Here," he announced, dropping his loot, "food," he looked pointedly at Dean, who grinned, "and," he continued "I thought since I was at it, I'd get some extra clothes, and, things we might need in an emergency, bandages and stuff."

"Nice work," Dean said, thumping him on the shoulder, "now you're thinking straight." He crouched down by the food basket, and was getting ready to share out a meal, when he heard the unmistakable clanking of mail in the passageway outside.

Suddenly alert, he straightened, and saw that Sam and Merlin had heard it too. He gestured for them to hide, grabbed he first weapon he saw—a wooden practice sword—and stood next to the door frame, where the door would hide him when it opened.

Seconds later, Arthur Pendragon eased himself, cat-like, into the room, sword at the ready.

tbc

Chapter Text

Two Boys from Kansas...6/7 (Merlin/SPN Crossover fic)

Title: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court, 6/7
Rating: gen, PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, Merlin, Arthur, assorted canon BBC Merlin characters
Word Count: ~7K, this part
Warnings: here with part one. Takes place S1 for Merlin, S1 for SPN. There's a lot of Arthur in this part--if that's something one should warn for. ;)
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit.

a/n: beta'd by the wonderful calamitycrow--thanks, hun!
a/n 2: more notes here.
a/n 3: there's a scene in this section--you'll be able to tell which one--that is more or less lifted from A Connecticut Yankee. It's a scene that made a big impression on me as a kid, and I wanted to see how it fit on this Arthur. Absolutely no disrespect meant to Mr. Twain. Quite the opposite, in fact!
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

As always, thanks for your patience!

Picture Credit by: ala_tariel

part one * part two * part three * part four * part five *

Part Five

For a moment, Dean thought he was going to have to coldcock the once and future king.

Arthur was peering through the shadows, sword in one hand and torch in the other, taking in the scattered bags and weapons on the armory tables.

Dean eased himself silently towards the prince, wooden practice sword poised for a knock-out blow to the skull.

Before he could swing, however, Merlin stepped forward into torchlight. The prince's expression instantly went from watchful to annoyed.

"Merlin," he said harshly, an undercurrent of concern in his voice, "what are you doing here? There're thieves about—they've already broken into the Tower." He looked around warily, "I thought they might try here next."

"Yeah?" Merlin said, wide-eyed, "is that what's going on? I thought I heard a noise. And I, um, came down here to investigate." He managed to look innocently horrified, and continued hurriedly, "But there's no one here—I've just done a thorough check—so we can leave now." He tugged at Arthur's sleeve, "maybe they've gotten into the grain stores."

Arthur eyed him suspiciously, but allowed himself to be guided towards the door.

It was a decent improvisation, Dean thought, and reasonably well-executed. It might even have worked. Except that when Arthur turned towards the door he caught a flicker of movement as Dean tried to sink back into the shadows. The prince moved fast, had him pinned against the wall, forearm against Dean's throat and blade raised menacingly before Dean could even get the wooden sword up in self-defense. The torch fell guttering to the floor.

"Arthur," Merlin said, alarmed, "let him go—I can explain."

"I think I can put two and two together, Merlin," the prince said, pressing harder against Dean's windpipe, "And I don't like it. Half of Camelot's salt store is missing, and you're here in the dead of night with a stranger—a stranger I trusted with my life yesterday," he glared at Dean. "I actually don't think it's a good idea to let him go."

"Oh, I expect you'll find that it is." That was Sam, who had taken advantage of the flurry of movement to come up behind Arthur. He was looming over him now, his knife resting on the skin behind the prince's ear. "Let my brother go—or this kingdom's going to be missing an heir."

He was a cool customer, Arthur Pendragon, Dean gave him that. He didn't flinch under either Sam's weapon or his threat—nor did he make any move to let Dean go.

"Back away," Arthur said, for Sam's benefit, though he kept his eyes on Dean, "or you'll be missing a brother."

"All of you!" Merlin almost shouted, "Stop acting like idiots." He picked up the torch and waved it at the three of them as if they were a pack of wild dogs. "Put the weapons down, and let's talk about this like rational beings. Arthur," he said beseechingly, "Dean saved your life yesterday—he's not trying to hurt you now. Sam—you know Arthur's just trying to protect the castle. We're all on the same side here, guys. There's a good explanation for everything." He sounded a lot more confident about that than Dean felt about it right now. "Please?" Merlin was pleading now, ratcheting up the puppy dog eyes like he'd been taking lessons from Sam.

With a sigh, Sam lowered his knife and stepped back.

"Arthur? Just let me explain what's going on—"

Arthur glared at him, but lowered his sword and moved his arm off Dean's airway. Dean sucked in a deep breath and inched away.

"This had better be good," Arthur said, and Dean marveled again at Merlin's ability to get Arthur to do what he wanted without using magic.

Merlin himself seemed slightly startled by his success.

"Um, okay," he stammered, "the gist of it is—is this: well—it turns out that it's much harder for Sam and Dean to get home—to their home—"

"To Impala?" Arthur said

"Yeah," Merlin said, "there. See, it's really hard for them to get back there. But they have to. Because there are people here—well, not people exactly—creatures—who want to stop them—want to hurt them. And the only protection they have—or one of the only protections—against these creatures—is salt—

"So it was you who broke into the tower!" Arthur declared, shooting Dean another glare. Dean shrugged sheepishly.

"Yes," Merlin continued, "but that's not the important part." Arthur raised his eyebrows, but didn't interrupt again. "The important part is—is that there's somebody else—who can help them get home. And we need to take the salt, and the weapons, and meet that person very soon, or—or—well, I'm not sure what will happen, but it won't be good."

"Merlin?" Arthur said.

"Mmm?"

"That's the worst explanation I've ever heard."

Merlin visibly deflated.

"Do it again," Arthur said, "and give me some facts this time—like names and dates and places."

"You won't like it."

"Try me."

Merlin steeled himself. "Right, then, Sam and Dean are from the future. A demon brought them here for some power-mad scheme of her own. But they are upsetting the balance of things by being here. So Nimueh is going to help them get back. There's a place she knows, past the Northern Fells, that will take them back. A magic place," he added tentatively, "that will help them get back to the future. But demons are after them. That's why we needed the salt. Demons hate salt…" he trailed off.

When he'd finished, Merlin held his breath, looking as if he were sure that the prince was about to start yelling, or laughing, or both.

Arthur did neither. He just looked at Merlin and said, "And you were going to go with them?"

If Dean hadn't known from personal experience what a fearsome warrior the heir to Camelot was, he would almost have thought that Arthur sounded hurt.

"Well, I was going to come back," Merlin said reassuringly. "I would never leave for good, would I?"

Arthur seemed somewhat mollified by this, though he still furrowed his brow at Merlin.

"You know demons don't exist, right?" he said.

"Yeah, I do, except I just watched one try to eviscerate us," Merlin said. Arthur pursed his lips.

"And Nimueh? You do remember how she almost killed you—I mean me—but mostly you—don't you?"

Merlin nodded, "Yeah, but I think—for the moment—that she has other things on her mind."

Arthur paused, thinking. Dean tensed, and felt the others do the same. If he were to decide to tell Uther now, that magic had been performed on castle grounds…. But once again, the prince surprised them.

"Well," he said, "if you really do need to go over the Northern Fells to get to this place, I'd better come with you. The three of you won't last two hours in terrain like that.'

"Sam and I are perfectly capable—" Dean bristled. Arthur ignored him.

"Best get a move on, hadn't we? If you really do have to meet your new sorceress friend. Come on, then." He urged brusquely, when they didn't budge, the three of them flummoxed by the prince's sudden self-inclusion in their plans.

"But—what will you tell Uther?" Merlin eventually got out.

Arthur paused, halfway out the armory door. "The truth," he said defiantly, "That we are indebted to this man," he nodded at Dean, "for his aid in ridding Camelot of a terrible sun-stealing, peasant-snatching beast, and I would repay that debt by helping him and his brother reach their homeland."

It was Merlin's turn to look unconvinced.

"Alright, then," Arthur crooked a sly smile, "I'll leave him a note, telling him I'm tracking down the dastardly salt thieves, who have fled to the western borders."

"We're sorry about the salt," Sam said contritely, "We'll give back whatever we don't use, we promise."

The prince waved it way, clearly swept up by the spirit of adventure.

"To the stables," he said, "we'll need horses for a journey like that."

As they followed Arthur out into the pre-dawn gloom, Sam bumped up against Dean's shoulder and gave him a what the fuck? look. Dean remembered that Sam hadn't seen Arthur in action against the manticore, had only been exposed to his imperious high-handedness.

It's okay, Dean mouthed, rubbing his bruised neck, he's pretty good in a fight.

Sam raised his eyebrows skeptically, but otherwise kept his peace.

::::::::::::::

"You're late," Nimueh called disapprovingly when she saw them approaching.

She was standing under a huge oak tree, still bare shouldered, seemingly impervious to the chill dawn air. The tree's thick trunk was riven by lightning, or some other disaster. One side was blackened and dead, while the other was in full leaf.

"We were delayed," Arthur said unapologetically, as the four of them dismounted and walked towards her.

"I see you've brought Uther's whelp," Nimueh said contemptuously, surveying them. "This is nothing you need concern yourself with, princeling," she sneered at Arthur.

"All that happens in Camelot is my concern," Arthur declared. A bit pompously, Dean thought.

The sorceress seemed to find the statement vastly amusing. She threw back her head and laughed, a clear, trilling sound like water over underground rocks.

"Well," she said when she'd recovered, "since you're here, I suppose you can make yourself useful. Do you know the second ford of the Lodon?" Arthur nodded. "Good," she said, and proceeded to rattle off a set of directions filled with incomprehensible place names and unfamiliar measurements of distance. Suddenly, Dean was glad he and Sam hadn't managed to go it alone.

"Can you remember that?" She asked when she finished. Merlin and Arthur both nodded. "I will help you when I can," she went on, "but you would do best to keep your wits about you and your weapons at the ready."

"Story of my life, sister," Dean muttered. Nimueh cocked her head at him curiously, then vanished with the same casual gesture as before.

::::::::::::::::::

Dean was feeling pretty good, all told. Even though none of them except Arthur had gotten any sleep the night before, they'd decided they needed to get some distance from Camelot before stopping. So he was tired, but a fresh breeze was tempering the morning sunlight, and for the first time since they'd landed in 528, there was a glimmer of hope that they'd be able to get back to 2005.

Sam, to Dean's surprise, remembered their childhood adventure on the dude ranch fondly, and had leapt into the whole equine transportation thing like fish into its favorite pond.

"Awesome!" he'd exclaimed when presented with a horse, swinging himself neatly into the saddle and giving his mount's neck an affectionate pat. Dean had resisted the urge to smack him as he'd gingerly climbed onto his own horse.

They were headed away from Camelot in a direction he hadn't yet been, down a broad, packed earth track that rose gradually through open fields, both cultivated and uncultivated. Dean had been taking up the rear, but after they'd been riding for a while, he nudged his horse until he was alongside Sam. His brother turned to him and smiled, the kind of uncomplicated happy smile Dean remembered from rare occasions in their youth, and Dean couldn't help grinning back. They watched Arthur and Merlin ahead of them—Arthur riding point with easy alertness, Merlin swaying a little with his horse's gait.

"It's weird, isn't it," Sam mused, "that he's going to be king someday, just based on who his father is? No elections, no job evaluations, no nothing."

"I don't know," Dean answered, "I think he'll make a good king."

"So legend tells us."

"No—I mean, he's trained for it his whole life. He's kinda rough around the edges now—cocky—but he seems like he takes his responsibilities seriously, cares about his people and all that."

Sam stared at him.

"I should've known you'd like living in a monarchy," he told Dean. "Clear hierarchies, everyone knows their place, everyone follows orders," he said, a sudden bite in his words.

"Oh, jeez, Sammy, don't start with that," Dean shot back, "not everything is about you and me and Dad. I'm just saying, if that's the way they do things here, I think he's going to make a good job of it."

Ahead of them, as if to belie Dean's confidence in his future dignity, Arthur had managed to snag Merlin's neck scarf, and was cantering in circles around him, waving it and throwing taunts. An exasperated Merlin grabbed for it futilely. Both young men were laughing.

"Hey Dean?" Sam had a wicked smile on his face now. "You don't think the prince and his servant are—you know?"

"What?" Dean asked. Sam wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Aww—Sam! It's the sixth century, for chrissakes."

"Prude. You think gay sex was invented in 1969? In my History of Sexuality of class Junior year…"

Dean flashed back to Merlin running his hands over Arthur after they'd killed the manticore, searching for injuries—then quickly thrust the image away again. He glared at Sam instead

"First of all: anyone who takes a sex history class in college is a pervert," Dean told him sternly, "Second of all—they're friends—they both need a friend, you know?

"Friends who keep huge secrets from each other."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Dean muttered, and looked sideways at his brother.

They rode on in silence.

::::::::::::::::::::::

They kept up a good pace through the morning, as the countryside gradually began to cant uphill at a steeper and steeper grade. At mid-day, they found a spot where several willows overhung a small brook, shared out some of the food they had brought, and—finally—caught a bit of sleep, sheltered by the trees from the heat of the day. Or, at least Dean, Sam and Merlin did. Arthur, Dean was pretty sure, kept watch.

The way in front of them was rougher and stonier when they set out again, the open fields turning into sparse, piney forest. The road narrowed, became more a trail, really, and an uneven one at that, studded with partially embedded rocks and tree roots. Their progress slowed, as the horses picked their way around the obstacles, their hooves slipping every so often on the rocks. All morning, they had passed numerous prosperous farms and cottages with well-kept kitchen gardens, but now these became more widely separated, and habitations they did see looked poorer and shabbier. Some of the dwellings were built so low to the ground that their eaves practically touched the earth. No decorative flowers graces these yards, just cabbage plants and turnip greens.

In the late afternoon, they passed one cottage—a hut really—that looked worse-off than any they had seen before. Weeds grew among the vegetable plants in front, and various tools and pots lay haphazardly in the yard. Even the door was slightly ajar.

For some reason, the cottage caught Arthur's attention, and he stopped in front of it.

"Something's wrong here," he said, when the rest of them caught up.

"Looks abandoned," said Sam.

"No," the prince replied, "they wouldn't have left those things behind," he pointed to the wheelbarrow lying on its side in the yard, a hoe beside it. "I'll check—just to make sure there's no foul play," he continued, dismounting and pushing open the flimsy gate in the stone fence ringing the building.

"Arthur, be careful," Merlin called. Arthur just threw him a please, what could hurt me? look over his shoulder and kept going towards the house. Shaking his head, Dean swung himself off his horse and followed.

The prince knocked gently on the unclosed door, and then knocked again when there was no answer. Finally, Dean leaned past him and pushed the door open.

Inside, the hut was a single room, with a dusty, unlit hearth against one wall. It was dark inside, and the close air stank of sweat and sickness. A rickety ladder in one corner suggested some kind of loft above. There was no furniture, but a rough blanket had been thrown over some straw mounded up near the cold hearth, and a few people-sized forms were huddled on it. One sat up suddenly, and Dean could see that it was a woman.

"Have mercy!" she cried, her voice weak, "whoever you are, we have nothing left for you to take."

"Ma'am," Dean said, "don't worry, we're not going to take anything from you. Are you in some kind of trouble? We'd like to help." His eyes had adjusted a bit to the light, and he could see that she looked terrible, gaunt with illness, eyes sunk deep into her face.

"Trouble, aye, trouble." She laughed weakly, and then her voice sharpened. "Trouble you should fly from. Go. Please go."

Arthur had come into the room, and he moved past Dean to open the shutters covering the window on the far wall. Afternoon sun poured into the hut, and in its light, Dean was able to see the woman's face more clearly. It was covered with small white, painful looking blisters—she looked like Sam had when he'd had chickenpox as a kid, only much, much worse. He heard Arthur's sharp intake of breath, and looked to him for explanation. Arthur had turned towards the door, however, where Merlin was just crossing the threshold.

"Merlin," Arthur said, voice flat, "turn around now. Go see to the horses." Merlin looked from Arthur to the woman on the floor, and clearly saw the same thing there as his master had, because he charged into the room anyway, and grabbed the prince's sleeve.

"Arthur, you can't stay here--"

"It's not for you to say whether I stay or go, Merlin," Arthur said, firmly pulling his arm away. Then his voice dropped, and he leaned close to his servant. Dean had to strain to catch his words. What he could hear sounded oddly formal, "It were a shame that a knight should know fear," Arthur was saying, "and a shame that a prince should withhold his hand when his people need help."

"Sire," Dean has rarely heard Merlin use the honorific, and it seemed to signal the severity of the situation. "You can't stay here," Merlin repeated, sounding a little desperate, "Your father will personally wring my neck if anything happens. Come back outside—and I'll—I'll deal with it, if you really think it needs dealing with."

"Merlin. See to the horses. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you." The prince and his servant exchanged a long, fierce look, while Dean watched, still bewildered. Finally, Merlin dropped his eyes and turned to go. Dean caught his elbow as he passed and hissed,

"What is it? What's going on?"

"Smallpox," Merlin said, and Dean went cold at the name of the disease, something from history books, from antique horror stories, "That woman is suffering from smallpox. Arthur is making me leave because he knows I have never had it."

"And he has?"

"No. But he feels his knightly honor is at stake, so there is no arguing with him," Merlin said bitterly. He pulled his arm away, and left the cabin, almost colliding with Sam, who had been hovering in the doorway.

"Dean?" Sam said questioningly.

"Sam," Dean said, rounding on him with a surge of atavistic protectiveness, "you too, go with Merlin, help him with—with stuff."

"What're you talking about?"

"This woman," Dean turned to look at her, and saw she had been watching their frantic exchanges, eyes glazed, no energy to be more than dully curious. He lowered his voice. "She has smallpox." Sam goggled for a moment, but quickly recovered.

"But we were vaccinated against that, when we were kids."

"Yeah, but who knows if that's going to work here, with the time warp shit and everything? Just get out of here, okay?"

"And you? You should leave too, if you think the vaccines aren't going to work."

"Nah—I can't leave him alone," Dean cocked his head towards Arthur, "who knows what he'll get up to?" he tried for a laugh, and then gave up, "Look, there's no point both of us risking it, and I'm already here. It'll probably be fine. Please, Sammy?" he begged, "Just go get us some water or something."

"He's a prince, Dean, I think he can take of his own goddamned self." Sam said scathingly. "You, on the other hand--." But Dean gave him another pleading look, and Sam relented. He rolled his eyes, muttered, "don't touch anything," and left.

The woman seemed to have mustered some strength, for she now said, in a clear voice,

"Kind sirs, if you truly wish to help, would one of you climb up and bring me news of what you find? Don't be afraid to tell me what you see, my heart's past breaking now."

"I'll go," Arthur said, before Dean could stop him, "see if you can get her to eat or drink something."

The prince moved to the ladder, but paused on the first rung, looking at a pile of blankets next to the woman on the floor, which Dean now realized must be another person, though it hadn't moved or made a sound since they'd come in. "Is that your husband?" the prince asked.

"Aye."

"Is he asleep?"

"Oh yes, these three hours gone."

"We'll try not to wake him," Dean said, in a voice he hoped was soothing, and didn't betray any of the panting anxiety he was beginning to feel about the situation.

"Ah no, that you will not, for he is dead," she said, something almost like a rueful smile playing across her ravaged face.

There was clearly nothing to eat in the hut, or any water either, and Dean felt useless. He crouched beside the woman and tried to make comforting faces, though a kind of shameful animal dread prevented him from touching her.

After a few moments, he heard the ladder creak. Arthur was coming down one-handed, using the other arm to hold something close to his chest. As he moved forward into the light coming through the window, Dean saw that he was carrying a young girl, somewhere between eight and twelve, but so thin and slight he couldn't tell her age with any certainty. She was barely conscious, clearly dying of the same disease that would soon make her an orphan.

Dean looked again at Arthur, and suddenly knew that he had misjudged him, or only understood the part of him that was familiar. He had assumed that Arthur's bravery, the courage he'd seen when they'd fought the manticore, was mostly an arrogance born of confidence. He was of royal birth and a gifted fighter, capable of holding his own against any adversary in battle. There was no reason for him to be scared of anything.

That was a kind of courage Dean recognized. How many times had he thrown himself into danger himself to save someone, or seen Sam or his father do the same thing, all of them sure that they were a match for anything the supernatural world could throw at them?

But there was no rescuing going on here. The future king was bearing death in his arms, so that a peasant mother might have the comfort of a final moment with her child. For all the creatures he'd hunted and all the gore he'd waded through, Dean wasn't sure he would have been able to do this: cradle the disease-ridden child of a stranger, without the protection of vaccines or disinfectants or rubber gloves. It was a kind of courage, a kind of honor, peculiar to this world, this time, where natural death was waiting in every nook and cranny. It was outside his experience, and despite himself, he blinked a bit in awe.

Arthur laid the child next to her mother, who caressed her and whispered endearments as best she could.

"Her sister--?" the woman breathed.

"She is at peace," Arthur said gently.

"I would not change it. There is nothing left for her here, and we will all be together soon."

Dean heard someone clear their throat in the doorway, and found Sam with a wine skin, some food, and a bucket of water. From the look on Sam's face, he could tell he had seen it all.

:::::::::::::::::::::::

The girl died first, as her mother keened her name in a thin, sweet voice. After that, the woman had refused any food or water, wanting, she said, nothing to impede her journey to rejoin her loved ones. The prince sat next to her, holding her hand, and played along as the woman confused him with her husband.

Dean made himself as useful as he could—built a fire in the dirty hearth, heated some water, scrounged some cloths to wet and lay across the sufferers' faces. Only gestures, he knew. Mostly, he just watched.

Sam and Merlin occasionally poked their heads in the door, passing them firewood and other supplies. Merlin gave them worried looks, and Sam favored Dean with the bitchy-to-the-point-of-outraged look that Dean knew signified deep concern.

"Where is your family, your friends, your neighbors?" Arthur asked the woman during one of her lucid intervals. "Why has no one helped you in your hour of need?"

"We are criminals, kind sir," the woman replied weakly, "did you not know?"

"We aren't from around here." Dean supplied.

"Ah," she said, "then you won't know the story."

"Tell us?" Dean asked, thinking it might distract her from the pain of her ruined body.

"'Tis not much to tell," she replied, her voice barely a whisper. "We lived in a better place once. Lower down, with rich fields. Our lord, whose land it was, planted fruit trees in one. And one night, someone, we know not who, cut those down. And so my husband was sent to gaol."

"But why?" Dean protested, "it wasn't your fault. And why would he be sent to jail for because someone had damaged your property?"

"No," the woman said, "the trees belonged to our lord, and he punished us for their loss."

"It was his right," Arthur said, his tone unreadable.

"Oh, aye," the woman agreed. "We did not dispute that. But what happened next is a familiar tale. We could not keep the farm without my husband's labor. And by the time he was released, we had come to live here, where we could barely grow enough to feed ourselves. Our neighbors shunned us as criminals and paupers—and who can blame them? Ah well," she trailed off, "it's all over now." She turned her face away from them.

Arthur bowed his head, lips pressed into a tight line and made no comment. Dean wondered if he was rethinking the privileges of rank. He didn't ask. The woman was right. It made no difference now.

:::::::::::::::::

By midnight, Dean and Arthur were alone with four corpses.

Dean had seen more than his share of death, but he had never seen anyone succumb to illness like that, their systems gradually shutting down. It was awful, and would have been worse, if the woman had seemed anything but happy that her suffering was ending and that she would soon find her family again. No trace of fear crossed her features, nor any tears. Arthur didn't cry either, though Dean sure as fuck wanted to, and had to bite the inside of his mouth hard several times trying not to totally lose it. The prince just held her in a steady gaze while she slipped gradually away. Whoever had said that the past was another country knew what they were talking about, Dean thought.

When it was over, Arthur pushed himself to his feet, scrubbed a hand over his eyes, and walked out to the fire Sam and Merlin had built in the weed-strewn yard, Dean trailing after him. Merlin stepped forward.

"Is it over? Are you both alright?"

Sam just thrust a stack of clean clothes at them, and said, "Strip."

"Aw, Sammy, I was beginning to wonder whether you still cared," Dean said, with a relieved bark of laughter.

Sam tossed him a cake of crude soap, and pointed. "There's a well just over there. Get those clothes off, I want to burn them. Then scrub down as hard as you can. I'm serious. I want several layers of skin gone."

"Yessir," Dean said, and saluted. Arthur snorted. But they trudged wearily to the well and followed Sam's orders.

:::::::::::::::::::::::

They camped in the kitchen garden, too weary to go further. Sam carefully laid salt lines while Dean watched. He was sure he wouldn't be able to sleep, after what he'd seen. But he was so exhausted he even forgot how much he hated camping, and crashed hard as soon as he lay down.

He woke with the nagging sense that there was something they had forgotten to do, and wasn't surprised to find Sam using one of the abandoned hoes to dig a shallow pit behind the hut. Still leery of infection, they wrapped the bodies in coarse blankets, and lowered them carefully into the communal grave.

::::::::::::::::::::::

They arrived at the Northern Fells soon after leaving the hut. Once they broke the cover of the pine trees, three high hills rose in front of them, each one slightly taller than the last. They were treeless, carpeted by short grass dotted with lichen and tiny flowers, traversed by a dusty, rock-bordered track.

They didn't look dangerous, Dean thought. They looked—well, pretty—in a barren, windswept, middle-of-fucking nowhere kind of way. Like a postcard you might send from the ends of the earth. So, okay, maybe pretty wasn't the right word. The sheer emptiness of the terrain, laid bare under a cloudless sky, was starkly beautiful. Maybe sublime. He rolled the word around in his mouth a bit.

Dean wasn't sure why robbers or bandits would patronize such a place, though—there didn't seem to be much to steal, or anyplace to hide. But Merlin explained that farmers from lower elevations grazed cattle and sheep there during the summer—flocks that would be vulnerable to gangs of rustlers. Since it was getting on for high summer now, gangs of criminals would be lurking in the crevices and small caves under the hills, waiting to pounce on unwary shepherds and other naïve travelers.

"Well, that's not us, is it?" Dean said, because it sounded like an old wives' tale designed to deter children from running away. But Merlin just shrugged, and continued looking worried.

It took them all of a not unpleasant day of riding to get over the first two peaks. The way was steep, but the road was clear and unobstructed. The air cooled considerably as they ascended, but the chill was a welcome respite from the June warmth.

They set up camp on the far side of the second hill, near a pile of stones that might have been a ruined building, some kind of monument, a grave, or something else entirely, for all Dean could tell. Merlin called it a cairn. If they could get past the third peak tomorrow, Arthur told them, they'd be close to the place Nimueh had described.

:::::::::::::::::::::

They took turns keeping watch, but the night passed peacefully enough. In the uncertain light just after dawn, they grabbed a hasty bite to eat, and set about breaking camp. Sam collected the pots and pans, Dean folded up the cloaks and blankets they had slept on, and Merlin started to saddle the horses, while Arthur watched him, teasing him about something or other.

Dean was just thinking how nice it must be to have a servant, when a group of men materialized out of the mist on the other side of the horses.

The bandits knew their stuff. They made some sharp, loud noises, cut the horses' reins, and slapped them hard. Freed and spooked, the horses barreled into Merlin and Arthur, knocking the dark-haired boy to the ground. Then they rocketed across the meager campsite, narrowly missing Sam where he knelt near the remains of the fire, and took off into the gloom.

The tricky early morning light made it impossible to tell just how many attackers there were—they'd timed the attack well in that regard. The bandits—four or five of them maybe--were scrambling for the bags and supplies scattered near the severed tether ropes. Not intimidated by their numbers, Arthur had drawn his sword and was advancing on them on them, shouting some pungent medieval swear words.

For a moment, Dean allowed himself to believe that the men were simply robbers.

Then he realized, with a horrified jolt, that the horses had broken the salt lines in their wild careen. Sure enough, out of the corner of his eye, he saw two heavily cloaked figures enter the scene. They showed no interest in the possible plunder. Instead, they headed straight for Sam.

He bellowed his brother's name. At the sound, one of the new figures turned towards him. It was too muffled in folds of cloth for him to be able to tell its gender, but even in the half-light, Dean could see that its eyes were wholly, impossibly black. It leered at him, as if he were no threat at all, not even worth speeding up for, and continued sauntering towards Sam.

Dean grabbed for his pack, lying next to the half-folded bedrolls, scrabbled in it 'til he found what he was looking for, launched himself at the demons.

"Hey, assholes," he yelled, and sprayed a stream of Camelot's finest holy water at them. Both screamed. While they were still distracted by the pain, Dean moved in on one of them with his iron knife. The thing resisted frantically, but the holy water had weakened it, and Dean was able to plunge his weapon into its heart with relative dispatch. It fell, a column of black smoke billowing out of its mouth, snaking across the white sky like an airplane trail.

It was only after he pulled away that he realized it had been holding a knife too: there was
a gash down his left forearm, blood sliding down his wrist and between his fingers.

The cut burned, but he had no time for that now, just wiped his palm on his pants leg, took a split second to re-evaluate the situation.

Arthur was dealing with the human bandits handily—all but one of them had already dropped their loot and turned tail. Merlin was still down, though, so a magical assist from that corner seemed unlikely. Sam, he was surprised to see, had neither run for cover nor rustled up some a weapon from the scattered packs. He'd simply risen to his feet, holding the iron cooking pot in front of him like a shield. Dean couldn't figure out what he was playing at—until the demon crossed some line of proximity, and Sam started to intone the first words of the exorcism ritual.

It was a brave play. Dean couldn't decide whether he felt proud or furious about it. The demon, however, simply laughed, and continued inexorably towards Sam.

Dean calculated the distances, calculated the odds, and then threw himself backwards, lunging wildly for the bow lying next to his pack, feeling one-handed for an arrow from the quiver beside it, desperately hoping he would choose the right sort.

Without pausing to examine it, he notched the arrow into the bow, sighted at the cloaked figure, and let the arrow fly, ignoring the searing pain that shot through his arm at the movement.

The arrow lodged itself neatly in the demon's back—a little wide of a heart shot. But it didn't matter because--thank fuck--he'd managed to grab one of the arrows he'd coated with salt back in the armory. The demon contorted, howling in agony as it futilely tried to grab the arrow in its back. It toppled over and another column of dark smoke shot up against the lightening sky.

:::::::::::::::

"You're bleeding." Dean jumped a bit when he realized Sam was standing right next to him. He hadn't realized he'd stayed still that long.

Sam took his bloodied hand, and then searched gently up his arm until he'd found the wound. "Nasty cut," he said.

"It's nothing," Dean replied, suddenly giddy with relief that they'd survived another round with the demons. He put on his thickest Monty Python accent, "It's only a flesh wound."

"Idiot," Sam said, but the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

::::::::::::::::

Arthur brought Merlin over to them, supporting some of his weight with a hand around his bicep. The boy was still sucking in ragged gulps of air

"He alright?" Dean asked.

"Just winded," Arthur replied, settling Merlin on one of the small piles of stones, and clapping him on the back, "he'll be fine in a moment." He looked Dean over, took in the blood, and the way he was cradling his left arm, and frowned. "You?" he asked.

"I'm good," Dean said.

Arthur looked skeptical, but nodded, "I'll go round up the horses," he said, "they won't have gone far." He walked a few paces and then turned back.

"Those weren't just robbers, were they?" he said reluctantly. Dean shook his head.

"Demons?" Arthur asked, like he really didn't want to know the answer.

"'Fraid so," Dean replied. The prince made a disgusted noise, and headed off into the brightening day.

Sam sat Dean down next to Merlin and peeled the layers of clothing away from the gash on his arm. It was almost four inches long, shallow, but with jagged, torn edges. It was still bleeding freely. Sam made a sour face.

"Dean, you know that knife was ten kinds of filthy," he said, a hint of suppressed panic in his voice, "and we don't have any hydrogen peroxide, or antibiotic ointment, or…"

"I know, Sammy," Dean cut him off, gently, "just do what you can, okay?"

Sam turned to Merlin. "You didn't happen to bring a needle and thread, did you?" he asked.

Merlin stared at him, and then nodded. "For mending," he said. He scrounged around in the scattered saddle bags until he found them. The needle was a bit thicker and rougher than they were used to, but the thread was silk, and very fine. Sam started the fire going, sterilized the needle in the flame, and put a pot of water on it to heat. "Keep pressure on that wound," he said to Dean, grimly. Dean rolled his eyes, but followed the advice.

Arthur was back with the horses before the water had boiled. Somehow he had managed to round up all four of them, even in the open terrain. The stern lines of his face, however, telegraphed his displeasure with their situation. He looked at Sam.

"Bind that up," he said tersely, gesturing towards Dean's arm, "we should ride out as soon as we can."

Sam looked at the prince impassively. "It's going to take a little while," he said, "I've got to clean it properly, and put in some stitches. And I'm not doing either without boiling some water first," he added.

"You can do that once we've put some distance between ourselves and this place," Arthur said, in a tone designed to squelch any opposition, "for all we know those blackguards will decide to come back and finish the job."

"No," Sam said bluntly, "we'll deal with it properly now, or we'll end up in a world of trouble down the line."

Shit, Dean thought blearily, recognizing the familiar tones of his brother's defiance. He should have seen something like this coming. Since they'd started this journey, Arthur had been telling them all what to do with the assurance of someone whose orders were never questioned. And up 'til now, Sam had been following his lead without comment, mainly because all the directions had all been about routes and weather conditions—things on which the prince was the clear authority.

But throw enough orders at Sam, and he was bound to crack at some point, especially if they concerned something on which he considered himself an expert: like Dean's wellbeing.

Arthur crossed his arms and stared up at Sam, not intimidated in the slightest by his height and bulk. "I know how these ruffians work," he said firmly, "and I think we would do better to depart at once."

Dean tried to pull himself together to intervene. "Yoohoo, guys," he called, "it is actually attached to me. And I think it'll be fine for a few hours. So--

"No, Dean," Sam said, rounding on him, "it won't—you're just going to loose more blood, and leave yourself more open to infection. We need to patch it up properly before we set off."

Arthur and Sam glared at each other—Sam clearly spoiling for a fight, Arthur mostly mystified that someone wouldn't do what he said.

Finally, to Dean's surprise, the prince relented. "Perhaps you're right," he said, a trace of some unidentifiable emotion in his voice. "See to your brother. I'll keep watch."

Perplexed by Arthur's sudden capitulation, Dean threw a "Christo" at him as he walked away.

But nothing happened.

tbc

Chapter Text

Two Boys from Kansas...7/7 (Merlin/SPN crossover fic--now COMPLETE)

Title: Two Boys from Kansas in King Uther's Court, 7/7
Rating: pg-13, gen
Word Count: ~6.6K this part, ~36K total (eep!)
Warnings: here with part one. Takes place S1 Merlin, S1 SPN. Also, some hurt!Dean in this section....
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit.

a/n: a huge thank you to calamitycrow for beta'ing the whole thing, along with sustained hand-holding, firm nudges to get the thing written, and assorted consults on things like Medieval wound care. You rock, bb!
a/n: a huge thank you also to anyone who's read part of this, or even *gulp* the whole thing. I never thought I'd actually write something this long, and while I wish it were better, it's been a blast, and an amazing learning experience, so, yeah, thank you!
ETA: beautiful banner by ala_tariel

Summary: The title pretty much says it all. And this:

"Thought we were doubling the watch tonight?" Dean said, after a minute.

"He nodded off." Arthur gestured towards Merlin, who was indeed fast asleep, propped against his saddle, head canted back and mouth open. "Not used to hard marches. I'll wake him in a bit."

The darkness, or the isolation, or maybe what they'd seen together in the smallpox hut, seemed to have released Arthur from the shell of brusque arrogance he usually wore, and Dean could hear the warmth in his voice when he spoke of Merlin—a rough, protective affection that rang a chord in his own chest.

Picture Credit by: ala_tariel

part one * part two * part three * part four * part five * part six *

Part Seven

It was a long day.

Sam had cleaned the gash on Dean's forearm with water and the last of the wine, then sewn it up with Merlin's silk thread and bandaged it with strips from the cleanest shirt they had between them. Stitches without painkillers hurt like hell, but it wasn't anything Dean hadn't lived through before, so he'd dug his nails into the palm of his other hand, and quietly swore a blue streak in Sam's general direction. Merlin had hovered over them, wincing sympathetically every time the needle went through Dean's skin, until Arthur cuffed him on the back of the head and shooed him away.

They spent most of the day climbing the last of the three hills that made up the Northern Fells, the horses taking tiny steps on the steep grade. The sun beat down on them out of a cloudless sky as they made their way up through the barren landscape. Every once in a while a flock of sheep or cows blocked their way for a few minutes until a shepherd and his dogs came to herd them off, bobbing his head politely. Other than that, the Fells were deserted—except for flies. Seemed like every few seconds a one decided to settle on Dean's nose or hand, and his horse twitched her ears and tail continuously—and didn't that just make him want to cry for the enclosed safety of Impala?

Sam and Arthur hadn't thawed out much towards each other since the morning, but they had somehow come to a silent agreement that Sam would take up the rear while Arthur continued to ride point, keeping Dean and Merlin between them. Dean would have protested, except he knew they were right—there was no way he could draw a bow with his arm like this if robbers—or worse—were to come at them again.

He gritted his teeth against the hot, uncomfortable boredom of the day. For the first time, the adrenaline wave he'd been riding since they'd arrived in Camelot started to drain away, and homesickness for 2005 washed over him. He missed his guns and his tape collection. He missed the ratty motel rooms where he'd spent most of his life; they'd been shabby and dirty, sure, but they'd had indoor plumbing, and hot showers, and automatic coffee machines. They'd had fucking air-conditioning, for chrissakes, he thought, feeling drops of sweat slide down his back. The sensation triggered a visceral memory of driving the Impala with the windows down, cool air rushing over his face and the engine purring beneath him. He blinked away the sweat stinging his eyes.

"Hey," Sam had ridden up close to him without his noticing, and handed him a waterskin. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Dean answered, pulling himself together and taking a long drink of water, "nothing a cold beer wouldn't cure."

Sam snorted, and swiped a fly off of Dean's forehead.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Between the relentless sun and the nagging pain of his arm, Dean was exhausted by the time they made camp that night. Sam had bound his arm close to his body with a makeshift sling, but the horse's gait on the packed earth path kept jarring the wound, the ache gradually spreading up his arm to his shoulder, then from to neck to jaw, until his head pounded in time with his pulse.

The long delay that morning and the steep climb meant that they had only just crested the third peak when the slow mid-summer dusk started to close in around them. They set up camp near another one of those stone cairns, this one with even more small piles of stones around it. They had a nice view into the fertile valley at the base of the hill, a gleaming river running through it, but preparing to sleep on an open hillside, after what had happened that morning, left Dean feeling exposed, vulnerable.

They made a fire only long enough to cook dinner, and then banked it, wary of drawing unwanted attention. The meal was mostly silent; they only exchanged enough words to decide that keeping watch in pairs was probably a good idea. Arthur and Merlin took the first stint, and Dean set up extra thick salt lines before rolling himself in his cloak next to Sam, using his saddle as a pillow. The night was warm, but the ground, under its sparse covering of grass, felt cold, untouched by the heat of the day.

He dozed off immediately, too tired to think, but an unlucky shift dragged his arm over a pebble or something and the resulting jolt of pain woke him up. After that, try as he might, he couldn't find a comfortable position for getting back to sleep. He gave up, finally, and pulled himself to his feet.

The moon shone brightly—even the grains of salt reflected its light, and Arthur's sword glinted like a beacon. The prince sat on a small boulder, weapon across his knees, watching the darkness. Dean padded over to crouch beside him.

"Everything alright?" Arthur asked.

"Can't sleep," Dean shrugged.

"Your wound aches?" A hint of sympathy crept into the prince's voice.

"It's fucking killing me."

Arthur had apparently picked up enough of Dean's native idiom to give a low bark of laughter at this. He got up and rummaged through the nearby saddlebags, finally pulling out a leather flask, smaller than the waterskins.

"Brandy," he said, holding it out, "for emergencies. Might take the edge off."

"Thanks." Dean took a long swallow. It was like rough apple schnapps, harsh and acidic; it burned its way down his throat. "Hits the spot," he half gasped. Arthur smiled.

"Thought we were doubling the watch tonight?" Dean said, after a minute.

"He nodded off." Arthur gestured towards Merlin, who was indeed fast asleep, propped against his saddle, head canted back and mouth open. "Not used to hard marches. I'll wake him in a bit."

The darkness, or the isolation, or maybe what they'd seen together in the smallpox hut seemed to have released Arthur from the shell of brusque arrogance he usually wore, and Dean could hear the warmth in his voice when he spoke of Merlin—a rough, protective affection that rang a chord in his own chest.

"And you are? Used to hard marches, I mean." Dean asked, pretty sure that kind of thing wasn't a typical part of the Crown Prince job description.

"As it happens, yes. My father thought I should train to be a warrior, not just a king." Dean cocked his head, hearing some half-remembered echo in Arthur's words, "So it wasn't just weapons training and horsemanship," the prince went on, "he made me do forced marches and survival training under adverse conditions, and so on and so forth."

"Yeah," Dean said, "sounds familiar."

"Does it?" Arthur said, too immersed in his own memories to really be curious, "He started taking me on campaigns with him when I was twelve. Made me fight with the foot soldiers sometimes, instead of the mounted knights. Camp with them too, afterwards. Thought it would make me a better leader if I could understand their experience of war."

"He was probably right."

"Oh, I think he was. Even if he wasn't, I enjoyed it. Any time I could get away from the hothouse politics of the court was fine with me. I've always been happier doing things than talking about them."

"Amen to that," Dean said, and took another pull of brandy. "Bet your mother wasn't too pleased about it, though."

"She was in no position to object. She died giving birth to me."

"Oh." Dean was silent for a moment—he hadn't known that. "I'm sorry, man. My mom died when I was four—when Sam was a baby. Growing up with just a dad—it's—I mean, our dad did right by us, don't get me wrong—whatever Sam has to say about it—but there're things you miss—"

"You have a brother, though." The loneliness and yearning in Arthur's voice shocked through Dean, "someone who's ready to come to blows over your well-being, and damn the consequences." Oh. That explained why Arthur had backed down earlier, let Sam have his way.

"Well," Dean admitted, "it is good to know that someone has your back."

"No, it's more than that," Arthur went on, voice unguarded in a way Dean suspected few people ever heard. "It's having someone who doesn't mostly view you as the key to a stable political future. Someone who's seen you at your worst and doesn't care. Someone who knows you better than your friends—"

"Yeah," Dean agreed, realizing as he spoke that the dark or the pain or the alcohol must be getting to him too. "We've had our differences, me and Sam, and we've been apart. But, yeah, I think I would have died a bunch of times, except I knew I had to stay alive for him."

He paused, then plunged on, suddenly wanting to reassure Arthur, remembering that for all his usual self-assurance, the prince was still younger than Sam. "But—look—that kind of thing—it's not only family. You know that, right?"

Dean's eyes strayed back to Merlin, his face slack with sleep, oblivious. But he couldn't bring himself to say more—not without sounding stupider than he already did, so he left it. He'd have to hope that Arthur knew what he meant.

They sat without speaking for a few minutes—staring into the buzzing night. After a while, Arthur put a firm hand between Dean's shoulder blades, urging him up.

"Try to rest now," he said, the sure commander again, not the lonely child of a widowed father, "We have a long road in the morning."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Dean slept heavily the rest of the night and woke slowly. Even before he opened his eyes, he could tell that the weather had changed. The air, which had been dry and fresh last night, now clung to him like a blanket, heavy with humidity. It wasn't cold, but he could feel the damp getting into his joints and muscles, making them ache.

Biting back a groan, Dean rolled himself to his feet, feeling like he'd been sleeping on a pile of rocks instead of next to one. His wounded forearm throbbed, felt swollen under the bandages.

The light was dim and gloomy, but it was certainly morning, and Dean could see that he was the last one up. Which meant—

"Hey," Dean called to Sam, who was puttering around next to a small fire "How come you didn't wake me to watch with you?"

"Good morning to you too, Sunshine," Sam replied.

"Sam—" Dean said warningly.

"Thought you needed the sleep," Sam answered, "Arthur said you were up in the night, looking a little worse for wear, and we decided—"

"We? We? Who's 'we' when he's at home?" Dean prodded, annoyed, because he hated even to think about that conversation. If Sam and Arthur at each other's throats was bad, the thought of Sam and Arthur ganging up to motherhen him was infinitely worse.

But Sam refused to be baited. He just rolled his eyes and steered Dean over to a rock by the fire, saying, "Lemme take a look at that cut."

There was no good in protesting, Dean could tell that, so he held out his arm and let Sam unwrap the bandages. The wound looked pretty much like he expected it would—nasty. The skin had puffed up bright red around the edges, and it was draining some kind of watery fluid.

Neither of them said anything. They could both see infection was probably setting in. Sam just reached out and pushed his fingers into the short, damp hair at Dean's temple, resting the heel of his hand on his forehead.

Sam's skin was cool and dry against his own, and Dean couldn't bring himself to bat it away. It felt like the only still point in a tilting world.

"You're a little warm," Sam said after a moment, brow pinching with worry, and Dean finally shrugged off the contact.

"Yeah?" he grumbled, "what're you going to do about it? Got some Tylenol squirreled away in one the saddlebags? Some Penicillin?"

"Wiseass," Sam returned, but without heat, "those stitches are gonna have to come out."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The sight of Sam sterilizing his knife in the open flame was enough to make Dean wish aloud for some more of the prince's brandy. Sam, of course, was all over that.

"Arthur has brandy? Why didn't I know that?" he demanded.

"I didn't know myself 'til last night," Dean said defensively.

"And of course you were drinking it instead of using it on the wound," Sam said accusingly. Dean shrugged. "Dumbass," Sam said, and stalked off in Arthur's general direction.

He came back momentarily with the brandy flask and a smaller, more finely made knife. After that, things descended into a blur of pain. Sam used the flame-heated knife to cut the stitches, drained the watery pus and blood from the cut, and irrigated the wound liberally with royal brandy that must have cost a fortune and burned like a sonofabitch. Dean mostly kept his eyes shut, wordlessly humming Metallica songs to distract himself.

"Well, it's not too bad. Yet." Sam muttered, like the voice of fucking doom.

Dean risked opening his eyes, and saw, to his annoyance, that Merlin was there too, watching the whole operation wide-eyed.

"Pity we don't have any maggots," the boy said sympathetically.

"What?" Sam and Dean said in unison.

"Maggots," Merlin repeated, like it was something everyone knew, "that's what Gaius uses—to clean out wounds that have started to go bad. They eat the infected flesh—" he made some helpful, if overly graphic, hand gestures.

"Okay, okay," Dean said quickly, feeling a little sick at the thought of putting live bugs into an open wound. "Thanks for that—we'll try to remember to bring some along next time."

Sam, he noticed, was looking intrigued, probably storing the information away for future Winchester Emergency Wound Care. Dean sincerely hoped they wouldn't run across any rotting animal carcasses before they made it back to the Age of Good Drugs—or he knew Sam was going to take the opportunity to experiment on him.

Merlin just pursed his lips and held out a steaming tin cup filled with something funky-smelling.

"What's that?" Dean asked suspiciously, "not bugs, right?"

"Willowbark tea," Merlin said earnestly, "Gaius gives it to people for pain and fever. Snagged some before we left—thought it might come in handy. Here." He pushed the cup at Dean.

"Look, no offense, but I don't think…" Dean started.

"Dean," Sam interrupted, "try it—willow contains—"

"Sam—" Dean was about to ask him how the hell he knew—whatever it was he knew---but decided that in this case it wasn't even worth the effort. He took the cup with his good hand, took a sip. And had to restrain himself from spitting it out again.

"Dude," he said, "that tastes like tree. Dead tree," he clarified, "Dead ass tree."

But two pairs of eyes were boring into him—blue and hazel—and it was like trying to stare down a whole fucking basket of puppies. So he knocked back the drink and gave them a toothy, mirthless grin.

"Good boy," Sam said, condescending bastard. Dean flipped him off.

As Sam was re-bandaging Dean's arm, Arthur came over. He looked at Sam over Dean's shoulder—since when had the two of them started exchanging looks?—and said, "Can he ride?"

"Yes, he can," Dean said, irritated, "I'm fine." And he pretty much was—wrung out from the bad night and the messed up arm, but he'd hunted in worse shape plenty of times.

"He'll be alright," Sam confirmed, "he's tougher than the pretty-boy exterior would lead you to believe."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;

The bark stuff was actually kind of effective. It numbed the wound, and eased his other aches and pains a bit. The only downside was that it made him a little woozy. He had to concentrate pretty hard on keeping a firm one-handed grip on the reins—and on keeping his eyes open.

They picked their way down the steep slope of last hill—patches of loose scree making the footing treacherous for the horses every once in a while—with the promise that once they reached the bottom, and crossed the river they could see looping its way through the flat fields below, they would be very near to the place Nimueh had told them about.

The day never really brightened much, the air so thick with moisture it might as well have been raining. Dean watched with dopey fascination as droplets of condensation formed on the reins and bridle straps.

Behind him, Sam and Merlin were engaged in a long, meandering discussion about life in the future. Bits of it floated past Dean, but he kept losing the thread. They seemed to have covered TV and the internal combustion engine, and were now onto Laundromats, Merlin bizarrely fascinated by tiny domestic details.

"There's really a device—a—a--machine--that will clean socks for you?" Merlin was saying, "roll them up and everything?"

"No," Sam replied, patiently, "no, you have to ball them up yourself—plus the dryer always loses a couple…"

"Oh," Merlin sounded disappointed, "Well, how about your shoes? Can you put your boots in there too?"

Dean lost track again. In fact, he must have come pretty close to falling asleep at the figurative wheel, because the next thing he knew Sam had his hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," he was saying, "You okay? You wanna take a break?"

"No," Dean shook his head to clear it, ignoring the wave of dizziness the movement produced, "sooner we get back to the land of coffee and antibiotics the better."

Sam held the waterskin to Dean's mouth so that he could drink without taking his hand off the reins. Then he palmed Dean's forehead again, frowning. "Okay," he said reluctantly, "I guess you'll make it a while longer."

They stopped to eat something once they reached the bottom, but didn't bother getting off the horses. Merlin offered to make Dean some more of the willowbark tea, but he declined. Something told him he was going to need all his wits about him before the end of the day, and a little pain, a little fever, seemed a small price to pay for shedding that wrapped-in-cotton-wool feeling, pleasant as it was.

Of course, as soon as they set off again towards the river fording the sorceress had told them to use, the rain began in earnest. In no time at all, everything Dean was wearing was soaked, sticking wetly to his skin. The air was still relatively warm, but he could feel himself getting chilled, tiny shivers starting to creep across his skin. He hunched in on himself, trying to preserve what body heat he could.

Focused on that, he didn't notice Arthur's approach until something warm and heavy settled around his shoulders. Arthur's riding cloak—the rich folds of fabric treated somehow to keep the rain out. He lifted his head to protest, met the prince's implacable gaze.

"Keep it," Arthur said tersely, "it's well oiled and you need the warmth."

Dean started to thank him, but Arthur was no longer looking at him. He was focused on something on the far side of the river. Dean squinted through the rain—and saw Nimueh, as impervious to the elements as ever, watching them.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

At least the fording was easy, the horses splashing stolidly through clear, shallow water. But Nimueh's face, when they reached her, was stony.

She looked them over with her usual disdain, then pointed through the rain and said, "The gateway is near." And sure enough, just at the edge of visibility, Dean could see a few grey smudges that might have been standing stones—only a mile or so off. "But using it may be more difficult than I feared."

"Care to enlighten us as to why?" Sam asked.

"Your enemies—those creatures who feed off the pain and shame of others--demons--" her voice thinned out in disgust, "they have reached it ahead of you."

"You mean--?" Arthur said.

"Yes," the sorceress replied, "They are already there, waiting. You will have to fight your way in." Her eyes raked over them again, betraying no confidence whatsoever in their ability to achieve this goal.

"You said you'd help us—" Merlin broke in accusingly.

"And I will," Nimueh assured him coldly, "this weather will be to our advantage—those hell-spawn have no respect for the powers of the earth. I should be able to hold them off long enough for you to get inside the circle. But—" she hesitated uncharacteristically.

"Just spit it out," Dean growled, exasperated by the big build-up.

She shot him a chilling look, but continued. "If I am preoccupied with fighting, I may not be able to perform the spell that will open the portal. One of you will have to do it." She looked at Merlin as she said it, and Dean tensed, remembering what an enormous risk it would be for Merlin to work magic in Arthur's presence.

Sam, thank goodness, noticed the direction of her gaze before Arthur did. "This spell," he asked, "do you have to be a sorcerer for it to work? Do you have to be magic?"

"No," she said, slightly puzzled, "the power lies in the words themselves, not in the speaker."

"Well then I can do it, I've had plenty of practice with things like that. Teach me the words." Sam looked at Arthur, "I'm not from here—so I won't be violating Camelot's laws by doing magic," he grinned ingratiatingly, "and with any luck, we'll be able to leave—so you won't have to worry about whether to punish me or not."

Arthur looked uneasy, but he nodded, and Sam turned back to Nimueh expectantly.

"Very well," she agreed, "I will teach you."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Sam, as Dean had had many occasions to be grateful for over the years, was a hellava quick study. He memorized the strange words Nimueh recited for him in record time, as their little group huddled under the scant shelter of a spreading poplar.

When the sorceress was satisfied, they tried to arrange themselves into some kind of battle formation. Dean gave Sam his bow, and the salt-tipped arrows—reluctantly admitting he wouldn't be able to wield them effectively in his present condition.

"You remember how to use these, right?" he asked worriedly.

"Yes," Sam rolled his eyes, "I was there too, y'know, for Dad's crazy archaic weapons drills."

"Well, they're coming in handy now, aren't they?" Dean told him sternly, "So quit snarking."

Arthur held his bow, sword ready at his hip, while Dean had to content himself with his familiar iron knife. It wouldn't be any use until they were basically hand-to-hand with the enemy party, which made him anxious, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. And Merlin--

Arthur had at first tried to convince him to stay behind. "You're useless in a fight," he'd said, bluntly. But Merlin had somehow convinced him that he'd be as vulnerable alone by the river as traveling with them. Finally, Arthur, obviously torn between concern and annoyance, had pressed a knife hilt into his hands. "Careful," he warned, "that thing's sharp."

Nimueh conjured an elegant white horse out of thin air, and placed herself in front, weaponless except for her magic. She was flanked by Dean and Sam on one side, Arthur and Merlin on the other.

"One more thing," Nimueh said, "there is an ancient magic on the circle, which should prevent the demons and their followers from entering it. Focus your energy on getting inside and beginning the spell, before they can find a way to reverse that magic."

Just before they set off, Merlin leaned in close to Dean, on the pretext of adjusting his sling, and whispered, "I'll use what magic I can, but I'd rather Arthur not see—can you--?"

"No worries, kiddo," Dean assured him, "I'll run interference for you."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Dean didn't know whether it was Nimueh's doing or not, but the wind picked up as soon as they started riding. Still, excitement at the prospect of a fight built up inside him, regardless of the rain lashing his face. It chased away the exhaustion that had been dogging him all day, pushed the pain of his throbbing arm to the edges of his consciousness. He felt surprisingly alert and ready. He pushed back the heavy riding cloak, and wrestled off the sling—he was going to need both hands free to deal with whatever was waiting for them.

They rode fast, and as they rode a heavy white mist rose out of the ground to meet them, spiraling around them in unnatural patterns. Its obviously magical origins freaked Dean out a little, but he was grateful for the cover.

The only bad thing was that the mist obscured who—or what—ever was waiting for them at the stone circle as surely as it cloaked the riders. So when the rough gray stones—each double the height of a man—broke into view, they were only about thirty yards away.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Eight or ten figures milled around the base of the stones, obviously awaiting their arrival. Human? Demon? No way of knowing at this distance. But they were clearly outnumbered, negating any advantage that the horses might have given them.

Without warning, Nimueh spurred her mount into a gallop, driving straight for the stone circle--the rest of them had no choice but to follow suit. The waiting figures peered through the mist, fumbling for their weapons. They seemed startled by the sound of hoof beats, and it occurred to Dean that Nimueh might have been using the mist to mask the noise of their approach as well.

Arthur, holding his seat with his knees, sent an arrow flying into the array of figures, catching one in the chest. Sam, to Dean's astonishment, did the same—he'd been telling the truth about remembering Dad's lessons, after all. Sam's arrow, too, met it mark. Thunder boomed overhead, and then a strangely accurate bolt of lightning took out two more of their opponents—Nimueh's contribution, Dean suspected.

A few spears arced through the air towards them, but clattered uselessly to the ground several yards away. Dean glanced around, but couldn't tell whether Nimueh or Merlin had stopped them.

Then, almost too quickly, they crashed into their opponents in a brutal tangle of arms and legs and weapons.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Dean brought his knife down sharply on the hands grabbing for his horse's reins and bridle, pulling him towards the ground. Get inside the circle, Nimueh had said, and so he concentrated on plowing through his opponents, rather than on definitively taking them out. Sam and Arthur were doing the same thing, Merlin lagging a little ways behind.

The sorceress seemed to have identified one of the demons, and was using her fireball mojo on it, unleashing a battery of tiny missiles, their flames hissing under the downpour. The demon deflected the assault easily, however—the two opposing forms of magic fighting their way to a standstill, just as they had done in Camelot.

There must have more of the enemy party than Dean had first estimated, because it seemed like every time he slashed one away, another set of grasping hands appeared, and he made no headway towards the stones. Finally, a lucky tug on his bad arm unseated him, and he had to fling both hands up to protect his head as he hit the ground and tried to dodge his horse's panicked hooves.

He held onto his weapon, though, and came up swinging, almost glad to back on his own two feet, relying on just his body and his knife.

Sam was on foot now, voluntarily or not, Dean couldn't tell. He did, however, see a powerfully built figure detaching itself from the throng and heading towards his brother.

Here we go again, Dean thought, and hurled himself in Sam's direction. This time, however, an entirely human force smashed into him from the right, knocking him over. The thug landed two sharp kicks in Dean's ribs, and then brought his foot down hard on Dean's bandaged left forearm.

For a moment—maybe two—everything disappeared into a red-tinged haze of pain. When his sight cleared, the first thing he noticed was the reason why the guy hadn't finished the job: he was lying a few feet away with one of Arthur's arrows in his throat, spouting blood. The prince himself, still mounted, was leaning over Dean, arm extended.

Sam, Dean thought wildly, even as he grunted his thanks for the rescue. He looked around anxiously. Amazingly, the field had hardly thinned at all—there were still so many fighters coming at them that he wondered for a dazed moment whether they were some kind of magical illusion put on by the demons. Arthur was keeping them at bay for the moment, sword in one hand while he hauled Dean to his feet with the other.

Through the press of bodies, Dean could see Nimueh still locked in stalemate with her demon, and then, over Arthur's shoulder, Sam and Merlin facing off against another—Merlin's hand outstretched, and his eyes piercing the fog like amber searchlights.

Dean stared, struggling to pluck a rational thought out of the whirlpool of pain and worry threatening to engulf him. Every instinct screamed at him to go to Sam--protect your brother--but he had promised Merlin he would try to distract Arthur if the boy had to use magic. And Merlin was using his magic to help Sam—drawing attention to what he was doing would deprive Sam of that aid. With an effort that felt almost physical, Dean decided that the wizard would be able to do more good for his brother than he could right now.

He threw himself back into the fight, maneuvering around Arthur's horse so that he was facing the spot where Sam and Merlin were battling the demon. This left the prince fending off the fighters coming at them from the other direction—and hopefully ensured that he would remain oblivious to the magical duel raging nearby.

Even Dean didn't have much attention to spare for them, as the demon-followers furiously attacked. He wrapped the cloak around this left arm as a kind of makeshift shield, and thrust and parried with his knife on sheer reflex. But those reflexes, ingrained through years of practice and study, held true, and he beat back all comers. Finally, finally, the endless stream of fighters seemed to let up. And almost simultaneously, he heard a strange, inhuman cry of pain, looked up to see a familiar, horrifying column of black smoke, stark against the white mist.

"Come on," he shouted at Arthur, pointing to Sam and Merlin, "Let's regroup and make a break for it."

Arthur nodded, reached down a hand, and pulled Dean onto the horse behind him. The prince jerked the reins so that the horse reared up, scattering the remaining fighters. Dean clung on for dear life as they made their way over to the others.

Sam's jacket was ripped, and there was a thin line of blood on Merlin's forehead, but they seemed otherwise unharmed.

"Merlin," Arthur barked—furious with relief, "I told you to stay out of the way—you have no business on a battlefield--you could have been hurt—hurt worse—" he gestured at Merlin's face.

But the boy just gave him a giddy smile and said, "I'm fine, Arthur."

Glancing back over the field, Dean saw that Nimueh was still trying to hold off her demon, the air around her crackling with static electricity. They should probably go back for her, he thought, having apparently been in the Middle Ages long enough to feel chivalrous, even to sorceresses.

But when she saw them, she only narrowed her eyes. "The circle, you clods," she hissed, "Go."

Arthur pointed his horse towards the nearest gap between the stones and barreled towards it, Sam and Merlin following in the path he cleared.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

And then they were through.

After the clamor of battle, the silence inside the circle of standing stones was almost palpable. Heavy and ancient, like the air in the eerie forest where they'd fought the manticore—only charged with something else too, an overlay of power.

Dean shivered, feeling the rain and wind again. The pain of his wounded arm flared back into life, along with a new ache in his ribs, and exhaustion washed over him. He unwound the cloak from his arm and shrugged it back over his shoulders.

Sam turned slowly, surveying the stones. He stopped in front of a particular configuration of rock that looked no different than the others to Dean's eyes

"This is it," he said, and with a here goes nothing face, he started to intone the words Nimueh had taught him.

Nothing happened for a moment. They stood, motionless, listening to Sam, unwilling to disturb whatever magic he was channeling with those strange phrases.

Then, the air between the stones seemed to thicken, curdle almost—pulling inward like the skin forming on heated milk. Under the force of the incantation, the thick patch of air darkened, until it seemed as if they were looking through a window into a strange, faraway night.

Sam let out a breath. "There," he said, sounding a little surprised that he had opened the portal, "it should hold like that for a few minutes." Merlin made a little noise of wonderment just as Arthur hurummpfed uneasily.

The four of them shifted awkwardly, not sure of the proper etiquette for saying good-bye in such situations.

"I know you must got back to your own time," Arthur finally began, a little stiffly, "But if you were ever to return, I—well, I would be honored to have both of you in my service."

It was on the tip of Dean's tongue to tell the prince that Winchesters didn't do service. But then he realized that there was a part of him that believed it would be a fine thing, a noble thing, to be one of Arthur's men in the glory that was—that would be—Camelot.

His head was swimming too much to be able to articulate all that, though, so he just ducked his chin and muttered his thanks.

Sam, always more surefooted about this kind of thing, took up the slack, "The honor is ours," he told Arthur, "We are very grateful for your help in getting us get home—we, uh, couldn't have made it without you. Sorry about the magic," he added.

Arthur inclined his head royally, but genuine warmth shone from his eyes.

Merlin just lunged at them, one arm around each of their necks, and hung on fiercely for a moment.

Then they walked through the window between the stones into blackness.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Dean was lying on something very hard, very cold, and weirdly sticky. His head, his ribs, his arm hurt like hell, and to make matters worse, someone was prodding him, none-too-gently, patting his chest and face.

"Shit," a voice said, "you're burning up. Wake up, man, okay? Talk to me."

He pried his eyes open. It was almost completely dark, but he could see Sam—of course it was Sam—leaning over him, face way too close and far too serious. "Ow," Dean managed, though it was an effort to get his tongue and lips to cooperate. Sam's expression lightened a little.

Then Dean noticed bars of pink and blue light bisecting the gloom behind his brother's head. He squinted, and the lines resolved themselves into neon letters: Cocktails, he read.

"It--it worked?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah, it worked. We're back." Sam suddenly broke into a huge, silly grin. "Right back in front of that skuzzy bar in Bridgeport. Middle of November again, too, by the feel of it. Just tell me where the keys are, and I'll get us the fuck out of here."

"Jacket pocket, right side," Dean said weakly, and felt Sam reach in and snag them.

And then Sam was levering him to his feet, murmuring, "Okay, then, here we go—easy now," and he tried to help, but his legs were like jelly, he was shaking with cold, and his eyes kept slipping shut.

But somehow Sam got them moving—five steps, ten, and then the door of the Impala creaked open. It was the most beautiful sound in the world. Sam lowered him onto the passenger seat, settled one of the old, smelly blankets from the trunk over him, and swung the door shut. He heard the click of the keys in the ignition, felt the thrum of the engine coming to life beneath them, its vibrations settling into his skin, soothing away some tension he hadn't even known was there.

He let himself slide out of consciousness.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

He surfaced again under harsh fluorescent lights.

He was lying on a gurney, groggy, but blissfully pain free. His left arm sported a new, clean, twenty-first century dressing, his right hand was connected to an IV tube. A hospital, then, though he had no real memory of how he'd gotten there. And he didn't seem to be in a room….He craned his head further, and found Sam sitting on the brown linoleum floor opposite him, knees bent, arms folded over something he was holding to his chest, apparently dozing.

"Hey," he rasped, and Sam started awake instantly, "how come I'm out in the hall?" he asked, as Sam uncoiled himself from the floor, produced a bottle of water from somewhere, and helped Dean up on one elbow to drink it.

"ER's jammed," his brother answered, "Rest of the hospital's full too. American health system's a mess--whaddaya gonna do?" Sam shrugged. "But you're good. They said they'd probably release you once you'd woken up, and finished the fluids and antibiotics." He gestured to the IV bag.

Okay, Dean was grateful for antibiotics, hallway or no hallway.

"What did you tell them, about the, uh, you know..?" he asked, knowing from long experience how difficult knife wounds were to explain.

Sam laughed. "That you go a little carried away with the jousting at the Renaissance Faire—refused to break character until the cut was positively festering."

"Well, I guess that's one way to put it," Dean huffed ruefully, but then a weird little surge of uncertainty coursed through him, and he said tentatively, "But that's not what really happened, right? I wasn't—you know—hallucinating?"

"Nah." Sam shook his head, and reached down for the thing he'd been holding when Dean woke up.

The rich folds of Arthur's riding cloak unfurled as he shook it out, its deep red color undimmed by the sterile light. Sam smiled at him over the top of it, face softening until he looked a lot like the small boy Dean used to read stories to in the backseat of the Impala.

"I'm glad we met them," Sam said quietly, "they weren't anything like they are in books. But then again, they kinda were, y'know?"

And Dean couldn't even give Sam shit for being a nerd, because this time, he was right.

the end