Good Psychology

Disclaimer...

So...the Round Table finds out That Little Thing about Merlin...and he had a really good defense, too! But then Camelot is attacked, everyone is mad and Merlin just needs to take his anger out on someone. BAMF!Merlin, crackfic, oneshot!

"Don't talk to me."

"!"

"Don't even look at me."

"!"

"In fact, don't even dare breathe in my presence. I am mad. I am furious. Fuming. Positively livid. Do you see the veins standing out on my neck?"

"Arthur!"

"Merlin, you are my servant and you will do as I say!"

Merlin glared. His eyes were burning into Arthur's back as the king rode in front of him through Camelot's halls. Arthur, as he had said, was very, very mad.

"Well I can't very well stop breathing, you can't just order me to -" Merlin protested. Arthur didn't listen.

"Merlin, you have MAGIC! I could VERY WELL order you to stop breathing, I could order someone else to make you stop breathing, but I'm not and I think I am handling this revelation very well so would you SHUT UP and let me THINK!"

Merlin shut up.

Arthur's words were a bit harsh, but then again, throwing goblets/pillows/insults/cats at Merlin on a daily basis wasn't exactly courteous either.

"I'm taking you to the Round Table," Arthur decided, thinking aloud. "We need to discuss this with the knights. And Gwen. And Gaius."

And despite Merlin really, really wanting to say something, he smartly decided to remain silent. He could not waver Arthur's decision now, not when Arthur used his Final Decision tone.

TimePassesAndStuffHappens

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Huh."

Percival, Gwaine, Leon, Gwen and Elyan were staring in shock. Their gazes were flitting from Arthur to Merlin as if watching a pinball on a pinball machine (though those wouldn't be invented for another 1000+ years, it was still a good comparison).

"Arthur, are you okay?" Leon ventured hesitantly, looking genuinely concerned for his king's mental state. "I don't know if you remember this, but you just declared that Merlin is a sorcerer..."

"I remember it perfectly," Arthur growled through gritted teeth. "I am not under an enchantment, or sleepwalking, or delusional, no one has slipped hallucinogens into my breakfast, though if anyone had slipped anything into my breakfast it would probably have been Merlin anyways because he brings me my breakfast and he is a bloody s-"

"I think he finally took my advice to visit the tavern," Gwaine insinuated to Elyan beside him in a loud whisper.

And Arthur blew up.

"I HAVE NOT BEEN DRINKING!" He yelled, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth in rabid fury. "I don't go to taverns!" Here, he (Arthur) pointed at him (Merlin). "He goes to taverns because he's a lazy -"

Merlin raised his hand innocuously. "Um, actually -"

Arthur garbled over him. "AAAAGHGHGHG!"

Gwaine looked a bit confused, too. "Listen, mate, I know that you have your moments of aphasia and everything but I honestly don't understand where you're getting all of this from..."

Gwen contributed too. "Arthur, Gwaine's right...maybe you should just calm down..."

At this point, Gaius, who had been sitting at the table silently, unnoticed to the rest of them, spoke up.

"Sire, I know Merlin as my ward, and I think that I would know if he had the ability to do -"

"Well, of course you would say that!" Arthur cut across Gaius. It occurred to him that maybe he subconsciously called this Round Table meeting for the sole purpose of interrupting and venting his frustration. Then it occurred to him that THIS behavior was likely not very kingly, and he probably should compose himself.

Breathe. In. Out.

"Okay," Arthur calmed down for a moment, still breathing heavily but no longer tomato-red in the face. "I'll give you one chance to explain yourself," he said, pointing at his soon-to-be-ex manservant. "I will not interrupt. You will tell me everything."

Merlin nodded once, and began talking at a rapid-fire pace as if worried if he hesitated any longer, Arthur would get mad and throw him in the dungeons with nothing more than a neckerchief and underwear.

"So a bunch of years ago my mother sent me to Camelot to find Gaius 'cause she was friends with him and when I got to Camelot Gaius fell off of a ledge and I saved him by -"

BANG.

At that moment, the worst possible moment, there was a loud noise from outside the room that cut Merlin off mid-sentence. And the strange thing was that Merlin, once being cut off, looked even madder than Arthur.

Percival, a man of few words, summed up what they were all thinking in only three.

"What the hell?"

Every single person at the Round Table (save for Gaius) stood up abruptly, looking out the hall where the noise had come from.

Another BANG.

"We're being attacked," Elyan voiced, though it sounded more of a question than a realization. "We should probably go and -"

BANG.

BANG.

BANGBANGBANGBANG...CRASH.

What Elyan thought that they should probably go and do was lost to the rest of the knights by the series of loud noises that were now unmistakably sounds of an attack. As one, the Knights of the Round Table jumped up and ran from the room. Gwen did, too, grabbing a dagger from the folds of her dress.

Which left Gaius and Merlin.

"I'm mad," Merlin said, shaking his head. "I'm really mad. I didn't even have a chance to explain myself."

And then he, too, was gone, leaving Gaius to wonder if the sounds of the world crashing down around them were really happening or if they were all in his head.

MoreTimePassesAndMoreStuffHappens

It turned out that the BANGing and CRASHing noises were bits of Camelot Castle's courtyard falling apart. People were screaming and running and tripping and narrowly avoiding bits of falling debris. It was chaos. And in the center of the chaos, rising above the stone walls, were five (floating) robed men and women.

Sorcerers and sorceresses.

Why was it always magic?

The doors of the courtyard locked themselves behind the knights when they arrived and it vaguely occurred to Arthur that this was bad and probably meant something important but he didn't really take any notice anyways.

It also meant that Merlin was locked out of the courtyard, but Arthur didn't really pay attention to that either.

It also meant that there were five evil sorcerers trying to kill them and they couldn't escape, but he wasn't really concerned.

MERLIN HAD MAGIC.

He'd found out earlier that day when he noticed his sorcerer using magic to clean horse poop and that was not a hallucination, because hallucinations didn't smell.

...He was pretty sure.

Nothing could smell like horse poop except for real, genuine poop from the rear end of a horse. Or a bescumbered Merlin.

Which proved it: Merlin was a sorcerer.

It came to his attention just then that Merlin was not, for this exact moment, his number one priority (no, closer to 1.5) and there were other sorcerers in the world who weren't quite as lazy and acquiescent as Merlin was, and several of them were trying to kill Arthur right now.

The king jumped to the left as a green blast shook the ground where he had been actively brooding a moment before, and then fell backwards pseudo-gracefully as a white blast shook the ground where he had jumped from the other blast.

Then again, from a purple blast, and again from another white one.

Are they all gunning for me? Arthur wondered briefly, before the cogent portion of his mind asserted that why, yes, yes, they probably were because he was the king and every threat on Camelot nowadays seemed to be, indirectly or not, intended to cripple/kill him.

Arthur mentally groaned as he dodged a blue. In his scramble for cover he didn't notice one of the walls of the courtyard being blasted in by a very irate Merlin, who stood in the rubble with smoke pouring from his ears.

...Literally?

Arthur, still not noticing Merlin, momentarily panicked as he found himself being singed by a white blast, and a red blast blocked his path as another white blast was zooming towards him and he couldn't dodge because -well, he didn't really know why, maybe because of panic -and he knew then that in a moment he would be no more than another pile of dust on the courtyard floor and that he was a king, dammit, kings didn't grow up to become piles of dust, and if he ever got out of this he was going to take Gwaine's daily advice and head for the tavern for a nice, long -

But his mental malarkey was cut off abruptly when the blast disappeared.

It didn't even touch him. He didn't even feel heat. It was as though...

And here, his eyes shifted suspiciously to his left, to fall on a familiar black haired, skinny figure.

...It was as though someone had stopped it.

His suspicions were confirmed when he peered more closely at Merlin and found that his eyes were glowing a bright, unnatural gold.

Merlin's eyes weren't normally gold, were they? Less gold, more...blue. Yes, definitely blue.

Merlin the Warlock stepped forward, still aureate-eyed, hand outstretched with some sort of white light sprouting from his palm. It was almost like a black hole...just not, well, black. Arthur found his eyes drawn to it.

Focus.

Not that he needed to. Merlin placed his entire body between Camelot's knights and citizens and the five sorcerers, shaking with fear (no, not fear...something a lot angrier than fear). When he spoke, his voice carried across the entire courtyard. No one could mistake his words.

"I am mad," Merlin told the sorcerers plainly. "I have had a bad day. I have been yelled at by my best friend, who seems to be mad at me for something that is not my fault -" Arthur had the vague impression that Merlin was referring to him, "-and you idiots interrupted me while I was getting around to explaining myself."

The sorcerers looked perplexed. They had stopped shooting for a moment to stare curiously at the livid serving boy before them, sparing glances at each other that clearly portrayed thoughts such as should we shoot him, or is he amusing enough to let live?

Merlin wasn't done.

"I have been stung, poisoned, breathed fire at, locked up, licked, tortured, cursed, stabbed, nearly executed, frozen, and that's just what I can say with one breath," Merlin growled, taking a breath in. "That's not even why I'm mad. I'm mad because people ignore me, I'm mad because I haven't gotten a word of thanks, and I'm mad because you bloody tyrants won't leave us alone!"

It was then that the sorcerers began shooting. Green, white, red, purple, and blue spells raced towards the lone sorcerer. With an expression akin to how Merlin would swat away a thrown bread roll (Arthur knew that expression well), Merlin's eyes shone gold again and all five jets of light evaporated into the air.

His eyes glowed a second time, and the sorcerers found themselves unable to perform magic.

His eyes glowed a third time, and the sorcerers found themselves unable to move.

With a fourth, they were lowered to the ground. A fifth, and all five sorcerers simply vanished, faster than the spells themselves had.

Long.

Pregnant.

Silence.

Merlin spun away from where the sorcerers had previously stood, and directed his gaze towards where the Round Table members huddled in a bemused clump.

"So," Merlin said, grinning merrily, "now that I've gotten my anger out, can I please explain myself?"