Forgiveness

Author: archaeologist_d
Title: Forgiveness
Rating: G
Pairing/s: Merlin/Freya
Character/s: Merlin, Freya
Summary: Merlin remembers Freya and the life they could have had.
Warnings: angst, minor character death
Word Count: 275
Prompt: 314 -Tender
Author's Notes: none
Disclaimer: I do not own the BBC version of Merlin; It and Shine do. I am very respectfully borrowing them with no intent to profit. No money has changed hands. No copyright infringement is intended.
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It was quiet at the lake, the soft lapping of water against the shore, whispering, whispering. Merlin tried to listen harder, to hear the lyric of Freya’s voice in the sound, to catch her sweet words. But there was nothing there, not really, nothing but water and loneliness. She was gone and she wasn’t coming back.

He had tried so hard, tried to keep her from harm, but in the end, his powers were as weak as his resolve.
Determined to leave with her, it had all come to naught, their dreams of cows and mountains and a lake, their lives together brimming with happiness and magic, turning instead into blood and grief.

His powers had been useless against her wounds, and now he was alone, knowing that he was living a shadow’s life.  Unwanted, unloved, un-everything. He’d accepted Gaius’s claims that he was the greatest sorcerer ever to walk the earth, and it was a lie, a ridiculous falsehood, and Freya had died because of it.

He was nothing, he was nobody, and he had to accept that everything he had done, all the deaths and heartache, all the killings and torment and dishonour, had been for nothing.

Heart aching, with a loneliness so deep it seemed bottomless, Merlin couldn’t bring himself to get up, to put one foot forward and turn back to the life he’d known, to the destiny he’d accepted until Freya had opened his eyes.

So he sat there and listened to the water whispering accusations. He hoped that someday, somehow, somewhere beyond the lake’s edge, Freya would find a way to forgive him. Only then, he could live again.