Something Old, Something New

26

"Just got dizzy for a moment," Arthur said, waving Merlin off. 

"Are you sure? We've really got everything we need. We can head back if you need to rest." Arthur just shook his head.

"No. I'm fine Merlin. Honestly. Besides," he shot Merlin a gentle smile, "I'm enjoying myself."

"Oh," Merlin replied, ignoring how fast his heart had started beating. "Good. Thats...good." He and Arthur stared at each other, neither one breaking eye contact. 

"I'm glad you're here with me," Arthur suddenly blurted out. Merlin's mind, usually so quick to come up with a witty retort, seemed to have frozen entirely. He thought slapping himself across the face might look a bit odd, so he settled for screaming at himself in his own mind to stop being such a blithering idiot. 

"Good," he managed to repeat, and he thought he might just slap himself anyway.

"Yes. It is good." Arthur turned back to the mirror, head to one side and a calculating look on his face; Merlin had never seen his face look like that. 

Arthur took the brown leather jacket that was hanging over the changing room door and put it on. He smiled at Merlin in the mirror. 

"Modern clothes may not be particularly comfortable, but they sure beat armor." Then he laughed.

"I suppose that's true," Merlin said, chuckling a bit, more out of surprise than actual humor. He'd never seen Arthur like this. Sincere, and nice, and laughing so easily. It was good. So why did he feel so uneasy?

------------------

Freya bit the inside of her cheek in thought, music blaring through her headphones and not providing any of the comfort it usually did. She'd been staring at this picture for hours, since the images of important details on Emma Johnson's body had been sent in from the medical examiner.

It was really just a formality. If anything truly odd was on Emma's body, Freya was sure that Dr. Bailey would have caught it. An old grump he may have been, but he'd been doing his job for nearly thirty-five years, and he was good at it. 

But this was Emma Johnson, so Freya had decided that she'd better look over the images anyway. And now here she was, eyes locked on one of Emma's many tattoos.

It was newer than the rest. Had blood still been flowing through Emma's veins, Freya thought the skin around it would still be a little bit red. It was very small, hardly the size of a fingernail, and if it hadn't been the sole focus of the picture, Freya might not have even noticed it.

It was an arrow, but fairly stylized, and something about it set Freya's teeth on edge, much the same way she'd felt around Merlin after she'd seen his aura flare, but also completely different. Merlin's magic hadn't felt like this. She hadn't trusted it, but it had felt benevolent, there was no other way to describe it. 

Emma had been a witch, and an evil one at that, so it made sense she'd have some magical, and possibly evil, symbols on her body. It's not like it mattered. She was dead now. Her body was sitting in the morgue. She couldn't cause any more harm.

So why was Freya stuck here, barely hearing the music that was so loud it should have made her deaf years ago, staring at some tiny arrow tattoo?

Freya only realized how hard she'd been biting down in the inside of her cheek when the coppery taste of blood awakened her from her trancelike state. She took her phone out of her lab coat pocket and paused her music, fingers moving practically of their own volition to her contacts. 

She pressed down on a contact, and evenly spaced rings filled her ears. The phone rang for a long time, and she thought he might not answer.

"Freya, is something wrong? Is Iris okay?"

"What?" Freya asked. For a moment, she'd forgotten that Iris even existed. "Oh. Yeah, she's fine. Can you come to the station? I need you to take a look at something."

"Can it wait until tomorrow? I'm out with Arthur right now. He needed some proper clothing."

"Yeah. Course. It's probably nothing important. Just dotting all the i's and crossing the t's. You know how it is."

"Right. You and your perfect reports." Merlin laughed lightly. Freya did not return the levity. "I'll be in first thing tomorrow."

"Okay." She heard him hang up and dropped her phone mindlessly back into the pocket of her lab coat.

It's probably nothing important. 

Probably nothing at all, really. And no matter what, it could wait until the next day. What could possibly happen in a day?

Freya clicked the little 'x' on the screen, and the picture vanished, her computer background of her and Iris smiling at each other taking its place. Merlin had taken the picture before she and Iris had even gotten together. Freya had hardly even noticed her feelings and certainly hadn't acknowledged them, at the time of the picture. But looking at it now, there was so much love in her eyes, and it was mirrored perfectly in Iris's. She sighed, already feeling better.

Yeah. It could wait until tomorrow. Right now, she had a beautiful girlfriend to go home to.