A question about The Jester

[loaded_march]

shiny4love asked: What did Smith say to Merlin on the plane to Algiers that made him so pale and scared?


I had to go back and refresh my memory, but here is the part in The Jester where the team is on the plane to Algiers leading up to this scene, and Merlin's POV.



The chopper flight went from the base to a secure airfield, and the team disembarked the heli and marched straight on board a passenger plane. It was a smaller jet, with a fifty person capacity but only twenty-five seats, because some genius had torn out the last half of seats and replaced it with electronics separated only by a slim partition that Merlin confirmed was a special metallic technofibre mesh constructed like a Faraday cage but far more technologically sophisticated, meant to prevent whatever the Directory was doing on that side from interfering with flight operations on this side, while still maintaining a modicum of impenetrability.

The plane was as secure, electronics and information-wise, as they could build it, Bayard had told Arthur when they first boarded, the team scattering to claim the plush seats with personal television screens and a selection of the latest movies available for purview. The majority of the gear had been stowed in the cargo hold, but everyone kept their ready kit on them, which included weapons only by the grace of Bayard's nod, which infuriated the flight crew to no end.

Bayard took Arthur's arm and gestured he sit at the front with him, which curtailed Arthur's plan to slip in the seat next to Merlin, first to berate him for not letting people know where he was when he was needed, then to find out where he'd been if he wasn't in the supplies tent like Perceval had thought he was. Then, Arthur was going to ask him why he had to find out from someone else that Merlin's entire life was embroiled in the mystical and the mysterious and the downright strange, and couldn't he have mentioned it before Arthur looked like a pillock in front of Mister Smith?

Which wasn't to say that he had looked like a pillock in the first place; but he'd rather felt like one, not knowing what it was that Merlin got up to when no one was looking, what that text was that he read on his e-reader -- an e-reader that Arthur noted Merlin had brought along. The more he thought about it, waiting for the flight checks to complete, hollering over his shoulders for his men to settle down, watching as Bayard went out to the back to speak with some of the invisible technical crew, Arthur realized that the clues had all been there, but that he had never asked.

There had been more important things to talk about, Arthur argued -- and arguing with himself was a fruitless endeavour, because he knew all of his own counterarguments. Merlin had spent a lot of time with his Uncle -- had brought back answers to Arthur's questions that Merlin couldn't answer, had brought back books, had brought back sketches and drawings done by someone else's hand that were battle tactics with an added bit of spice. Merlin hadn't hidden anything, not exactly, but he hadn't volunteered anything either.

Arthur's fingers were digging in the imitation leather of his seat, noting only by chance that the airlock was closed, the flight crew were preparing for lift-off, and that the back door was shut, now, with Bayard working his way up the aisle.

Leon was sitting in the front of the other aisle, giving Arthur a nod. As Arthur's second, he intended on being close enough to overhear whatever it was that Bayard wanted to tell him, and he was clever enough not to look as if he was eavesdropping. Lance was midway in the group, Gwaine somewhere in the rear, and Merlin, damn him, was sitting off to the side, on the wings of the plane, his Box claiming the aisle seat while Merlin stared out the window, with the physical curl of someone who didn't want to be there.

Bayard paused next to Merlin, catching his attention by leaning in between the two rows, but whatever it was that Bayard told him, it left Merlin with a pale, greenish tint, and he looked as if he were going to be sick.





ooOOoo


Merlin didn't want to be on the plane. He didn't want to be doing anything remotely associated with the Directory, period. But his team was involved here, and Arthur had agreed to go, and well, it all seemed just that much more fucked up right now. If they were going after the Jester, he wasn't going to let his team do it alone.

He heard the plane's hatch slam shut, felt the clink and lock of the latch. It was the death kneel of too late to run.

A deep, steadying breath didn't help with his nerves, but at least knowing that he wasn't alone made things better.

Not by much.

The ground crew was pulling away from the plane; some guy in bright yellows and oranges was waving flashlight cones in an elaborate series of signals that looked almost as complicated as some of the gestures that Arthur and the rest of the team passed among each other when they were in the middle of a mission. Merlin watched them over the wing as the plane moved in a slow taxi across the tarmac, aware only a moment later that the dark shadow cast over him wasn't because Perceval had walked past, or one of the overhead lights had burned out, but because someone was looming over him.

Mister Smith.

Merlin only barely suppressed his startle.

Smith didn't make eye contact; he leaned down, craning his neck like a vulture, staring out the window. When he spoke, it was low and quiet and directed, and there was no way anyone else would hear him over the plane's grumbling or the chatter in the cabin.

"It's protocol to check someone's background before we work with them," Smith said. "You'll be interested to hear some of the things we found out about you, Lieutenant Emrys."

Every smart-ass, self-depreciating, entirely deflecting rejoinder that Merlin could have said at that moment died in his throat.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do, Merlin," Smith said.

Merlin swallowed hard. His stomach turned, suddenly sour and queasy. He barely noticed when Smith moved away and headed for the front of the plane to take its seat.

There was an air sickness bag in the pocket in front of him. He wondered if anyone would notice if he threw up before they made it in the air.