Help is Always Given

Chapter 1

"Who are you?" The Doctor asks, knowing full well now who the old man was.

"I am Merlin," the man replies.

"Merlin??" The Doctor almost laughs the name. "If you were the real Merlin, you wouldn't be old. Merlin isn't supposed to age, so why are you a duttery old man?"

Merlin looks around and sees a small puddle left from the previous day's rain. He tells the Doctor to watch the puddle. It starts bubbling and steaming immediately and the Doctor hurries over to it and bends down. He touches it and quickly retracts his hand because the puddle is scorching hot. He stands up and looks at Merlin acceptingly.

Amy had been watching Merlin throughout the whole ordeal and she could've sworn his eyes turned gold just before the puddle started boiling.

"How did you do that?" Rory asks incredulously.

"I had a potion," Merlin explains, ignoring Rory's question. "It was meant to change me back. I lost the vile about a century and a half ago. I tried to re-make it but by then you could only find half the ingredients for it. I'm stuck like this." Merlin hangs his head as if ashamed and disappointed in himself for being stuck as an old man.

"Well," says the Doctor. He grins and puts his hands on Merlin's shoulders. "I can fix that." The Doctor winks and grabs Merlin's hand and dashes off into the dark alley to the TARDIS, Amy and Rory right on their heels.

When they get inside, Merlin doesn't seem at all phased by the bigger-on-the-inside ness. He just stands right where the Doctor put him and waits as he's told.

Amy leans closer to the Doctor, who's fiddling with some controls, and whispers, "Why does he act like it's perfectly normal for something to be bigger on the inside?"

The Doctor pauses his work and looks at her dumbfounded. "Because, Amy, he's just about as old as I am, you would expect he's seen a thing or two in his day."

Amy guesses the Doctor has a point.

"What exactly are you going to do to him?" Rory asks as circular beam envelopes Merlin where he's standing.

"I'm isolating him from the rest of the TARDIS and doing a simple reverse to make him look young again. Like the potion except without the potion. Very simple thing to do, shouldn't take more than... two minutes thirty seven seconds once I have everything set." The Doctor explains, never once looking up from pressing buttons and pulling levers and typing in instructions.

"Right. Yeah. Simple. Like the potion." Rory says, a little lost.

"Okay!" The Doctor says after a couple minutes. He puts his hand on a red button and says, "Geronimo!!"

He presses the button and the beam around Merlin immediately changes all different colors, spinning violently in a counter-clockwise motion. Amy, Rory, and the Doctor all look on with excitement, and a little curiosity.

After exactly two minutes and thirty seven seconds (Rory counted, but should've known better. The Doctor is always right.) it stops and the beam disappears.

Before them stands a tall, thin young man with short dark brown hair, high cheekbones, and extremely too big of clothes.

Both Amy and Rory stand still, wide eyed with shock. The Doctor, on the other hand, goes right up and does an inspection to make sure everything turned out right, which thankfully it did.

Merlin smacks his lips, looks at his hands and down at the rest of his body. "I miss my old clothes. They fit better."

Amy laughs and can't help but think yowzah in her head. The young man standing before them is most handsome. She feels a little guilty seeing as she's standing next to her husband, and she feels herself blush.

"Don't worry about that!" The Doctor points down one of the many corridors and says, "Fifth door on the left is the room you'll be staying in, and there's a surprise waiting for you!" With that the Doctor pushes Merlin down the corridor which he'd previously pointed towards.

"What're we gonna do with him now? We can't just keep him can we?" Asks Amy, hoping the excitement didn't show in her voice as she asked her second question.

"'Do with him?' We aren't going to do anything with him, but he won't be staying with us, at least not for too long. We're going to help him, Amy, like we always do. But we may need help ourselves." Says the Doctor.

Rory is surprised by this. "You?? You need help? Other than Amy and me? Or River?" The Doctor shakes his head when Rory says River's name. "... Then who?"

The Doctor smiles again and says, "A consulting detective." He pauses to push a few buttons and type in space-time coordinates. "The one and only." He pulls the lever and the TARDIS takes off.

Merlin comes running into the control room in his new, well, old clothes. The same clothes he always wore way back when he was a servant. The Doctor had even left a few scarves laid out on the bed for him. Panting slightly he asks, "What was that?"

"Oh nothing, just my ship taking off," the Doctor explains.

"Ship??" Merlin is shocked. This thing is a ship too? He thought it was more a fancy laboratory or something. "A ship? Like the kind of thing that goes across water?"

"No, no, don't be silly those kinds of ships are boring," laughs the Doctor. "This ship is much more exciting. It travels in space! We're currently in the vortex current. What you felt was my ship taking off and entering the current."

Merlin looks amazed, then he turns hesitant, as if he is dying to ask a question.

The Doctor knows what's on the young man's mind. "You want to ask if it travels in time too, don't you?"

Merlin takes a deep breath. "Does it?"

"Yes."

Merlin looks down at his feet to try and hide the tears. "Can... can you help me Doctor?... Help me save him?"

The Doctor doesn't answer right away, but when he does, it isn't what Merlin was expecting. "Yes."

Merlin looks up, eyes bright, a grin returning to his face.

"It's a fixed time, though," Merlin's grin vanishes when he hears the serenity in the Doctor's voice. "According to all records, Arthur dies by the lakeside... but he is the once and future king. A legend to be reborn in the future. And I think I know how." The Doctor smiles smugly.

Merlin looks up at the Doctor with wonder in his eyes. "How? You said it's a fixed time. I don't understand, doesn't that mean it can't be altered?"

"Time can be rewritten."

This makes Merlin so happy, Rory's afraid his smile will split his face in two.

"But we need more help," explains the Doctor, "and that's where we're headed."

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