Firstly, I think Elyan's funeral might take place in a different lake. However, I had to have him in this XD So, if that is the case, this is a slightly AU fic in that it includes him.
Apologies for any OOC-ness. I'm hoping there's nothing too bad, but just in case...
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin, or any of the characters used in this fic. Also, the parts of episodes referred to- I don't own those, either.
It's terribly lonely. As much as she loves the Lake, she quickly learns that she'll have to grow used to being alone once again. At least she isn't living in perpetual fear any longer. For if anyone was to find her, and she doubts any mortal can, it's not like they can kill her; she's already dead.
You're used to the loneliness. She reminds herself. For almost half her life, she was without a friend.
Yet, back then, she didn't have the memory of a sweet young serving boy, selfless and unknowingly charming in most every way.
So she isn't as accustomed to the loneliness as she likes to pretend. But she'll go on doing so anyway, because it's the only way she might be happy here in Paradise.
She finds a puddle of water, held in a basin carved into a large grey rock. It takes some time, but eventually she remembers an old incantation from her days as a young druid girl.
It's only once the words are out of her mouth that she remembers it won't work; not unless water from the same source is in the hands of whomever she wishes to speak with. Sighing, she realises how tired she is; she has been awake for hours and hours, reciting spell after spell in the hopes of enchanting the puddle in the right way.
Exhausted, she sleeps on the forest floor, beside the basin. When she wakes, a familiar face will be staring back at her from within the puddle of water.
When a small raft washes up on the shores of her Paradise, Freya is cautious. She has been here a strange amount of time. Whilst day turns into night, it is always summer on this island, and she has no idea how much time has passed in the world beyond. Weeks? Months? Years? She has long since stopped counting the days.
Freya approaches the raft slowly, alert, ready to run should she have to.
Reminiscent of a wild deer, she reaches it and cranes her neck, trying to see what lies within; it is a man.
He has black hair, short enough to not be much of a nuisance in battle. Freya doesn't think she recognises him, or his fine black clothing. She does, however, notice he isn't breathing, and his eyes are closed. She lays a hand on his head, just to feel whether it is burned up or frozen, just so she may know whether he lives.
When his brown eyes burst open, and he takes a shuddering breath, she leaps backwards. Slowly, he sits up and looks around. Eventually, he catches sight of her.
"Where am I?" He asks her.
She thinks; where are they? "An island." She replies eventually. "Out in the Lake."
He nods and swings his legs round, standing on the ground beside his flower-littered raft and stretching his arms behind his back. "What's with all the apples?"
She glances over her shoulder, at the forest behind. Indeed, as he says, every tree within it bears either apples or the blossom that will later become them. She, too, noticed them a long while ago, but could never find a reason that there would be just apples. No acorns, no pine cones, no oranges or lemons. Just apples, the whole island over. In her boredom, she's looked several times.
"I'm Lancelot." He tries again.
"Freya." She replies, somewhat curtly.
They stand in awkward silence for a moment, before he walks past her into the forest behind, mumbling something to himself under his breath.
She stands on the shore, watches the water lap against the pebbles, and sighs. She won't follow 'Lancelot', for she is used to the loneliness now. She is content in her solitude. And she's a master at lying to herself.
The man that calls himself 'Lancelot' has been on the Island several days when Freya next bumps into him.
He is sat on a fallen log, eating one of the rosy red apples. It can't be because he's hungry; Freya hasn't felt the sharp pang of hunger in her stomach since she washed up here. Probably, the man is just bored and cannot find anything else to do. Clearly he doesn't have her ingenuity or patience.
"I know you're there." He looks over at her and smiles. "It's not like I'm going to eat you!"
Slowly, cautiously, she sits a little way along the log from him, eyeing him carefully.
'Lancelot' takes another bite of the apple, chewing slowly, thoughtfully. "How long have you been here?" He asks once he's swallowed his mouthful.
"I don't know." Freya replies, eyes fixed on her knees. "A long time, I think."
He sighs and twists the apple, watching the way light dances across the red skin, but not the white flesh within. "If he'd known I'd end up here, why didn't he send some food with me? As much as I like apples, I'm starting to grow sick of them."
"Who?" Freya asks, mostly just to strike up conversation, to keep the silence at bay. Though she'd never admit it, she misses talking.
"A man called Merlin." Her head snaps up, and she stares at the dark-haired knight sat beside her. He remains oblivious. "One of the bravest men I know, actually." Almost as though he can feel her gaze on him, 'Lancelot' turns to look at her. "What's the matter?"
"Merlin?" She repeats, weakly.
'Lancelot' nods. His mouth twitches slightly, as though he's trying not to smile. "Did you know him?"
Freya sighs and looks back at her knees. "You could say that." Suddenly filled with unbounded curiosity for the kindly serving boy's fate, she snaps her head back up, looking 'Lancelot' straight in the eye. "How is he?"
The dark-haired man chuckles, "He's fine."
With their friendship for Merlin in common, the pair talk for hours, and Freya wonders if she was right to distance herself from this 'Lancelot' fellow, when he seems ever so friendly.
If he was friends with Merlin, he can't be bad.
They become friends. With an island to themselves, they spend the days eating apples; chasing the tides out and running when they try to lap at their feet; and, when they're tired of activity, they lie on the shore and talk about any little thing that springs to mind.
Merlin's name crops up a lot, as do many Freya doesn't recognise. Lancelot reveals that he loves a beautiful woman called Gwen, who was also a servant, like Merlin, before she became engaged.
"She loves Arthur." He explains sadly. "And I would never consciously take the happiness she gets from that away." He does not expand on this.
It's a very different sort of 'friendship' to the one she had with Merlin, but she isn't complaining. It's so much better than being alone.
Freya and Lancelot are laughing at a joke the latter made, to do with apples and their abundance, when they reach the edge of the forest, the start of the shore.
There is a boat.
They cease their laughter and share a glance. Lancelot wordlessly tilts his head towards the little wooden rowboat, and Freya nods silently. Slowly, cautiously, the pair creep towards it.
The man inside it is dark-skinned, and dressed up in the chain-mail of a knight. Lancelot's face cracks in a wide smile.
"It's alright, Freya." He promises her. "It's just Elyan."
She raises an eyebrow. In all of Lancelot's stories about how Camelot has flourished beneath Arthur's rule in her absence, there are too many people she's never met for her to ever remember them all.
"He is Gwen's brother." Her friend explains, no doubt recognising her confused expression. She seems to be wearing it increasingly these days. "How do I wake him?"
Tentatively, Freya rests a hand on the dead man's forehead and whispers an incantation beneath her breath. His eyes fly open, and he bolts upright. Freya instinctively pulls her hand away and dashes backwards a few steps.
Lancelot laughs and lays a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Elyan, it's good to see you."
"Lancelot?" The man eyes him suspiciously. His wariness is replaced by confusion. "Where am I?"
"The Isle of Apples," Lancelot says with a grin, using the name he and Freya had invented for the island. "I take it you died?"
The man he calls 'Elyan' nods and clambers out of the boat. Spying Freya, who stands a little way away with her hands clasped before her stomach, he smiles warmly and holds out a hand.
"I'm Sir Elyan of Camelot." He introduces himself. "Who might you be?"
"Freya," She replies bluntly, though she takes his hand and shakes it anyway.
Elyan lowers his hand back down to his side and whirls round to face Lancelot, suddenly angry, as though just remembering something.
"You had my sister banished!" He shouts angrily.
"I was cursed." Lancelot tries to explain himself. "You know I would gladly suffer my own pain for Gwen's happiness; why would I be so careless unless under the influence of magic?"
Freya tries her hardest not to glare at him.
"I still don't believe you." Elyan decides, stalking off towards the forest. "Don't follow me!"
Lancelot shoots Freya a bewildered look, and she tries her very hardest to suppress her smile.
Not even twenty four hours have passed when Elyan comes trudging back to Lancelot and Freya, clearly bored and alone.
"Can I stay with you guys?" He asks weakly. "I can't find a single soul in this place."
Lancelot and Freya exchange a glance before the former turns to his old friend, a smirk on his face. "You have to apologise."
"No." Elyan says instantaneously.
"Then you can't stay with us." The other man concludes.
Elyan sighs with defeat. "I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier. Gwen and Arthur are happily married now, anyway, so… So I shouldn't be annoyed with you. If anything, her exile only made Arthur's feelings for her stronger."
Freya's sure her friend's smile grows more forced, but still it lingers on his face as he pats the space of pebbly beach beside him. "Sit with us, old friend."
Though she has less in common with him than she does Lancelot, Freya learns to get along with Elyan. He's friends with Lancelot, and that's good enough for her.
As the sun sets over the mountains, the trio sit on the pebbles and talk, watching the way the sunlight dances across the rippling lake water.
"As wonderful as this is," Lancelot says, shifting slightly in his place between Freya and Elyan, "It is nothing compared to her beauty." Freya knows exactly who he means by 'her', and she figures Elyan must too by the way he snorts back laughter.
"You sound so pathetically in love." He teases. "It's hilarious!"
Lancelot elbows him, which only serves to make him laugh harder. "Freya, you don't think I'm pathetic, do you?"
"Of course not." She replies, her eyes remaining transfixed on the waning sunlight and how it scatters over the water. "I think you're so very correct."
Lancelot grins mockingly at Elyan, whose laughter immediately ceases to be. He leans forward, so that he can see the skinny brunette around the knight sat between them. "Oh yeah?"
She nods.
"Don't tell me that you, too, are a love-sick puppy." He says, feigning annoyance. Really, his brown eyes are full of curiosity as he studies her blank expression.
Lancelot grins. "Sorry, Elyan, but I know for a fact that our Freya is in love." When Elyan raises an eyebrow at him, the noblest of knights hastily adds; "Not with me!"
"Do I know them?" Guinevere's brother asks. Lancelot nods. "Are they a knight?" This time, Lancelot shakes his head. "A prince?"
"Nope." The other man replies brightly.
"Come on!" Elyan groans. "He has to be of nobility; look at the clothes she's wearing." He gestures to the fine gown Freya wears, has worn ever since Merlin 'borrowed' it from Morgana's chambers on her behalf.
Lancelot is, by this point, laughing so hard that it's a struggle for him to breathe. Freya rolls her eyes and tears her gaze from the water, peering round the tall, dark-haired knight so that she may talk to the other.
"I am a druid." She replies bluntly. "At the man I love? They call him Merlin."
She relishes in the shocked expression on Elyan's face. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, which only serves to make Lancelot laugh so hard that he has to rest his head on his knees, which are drawn up against his chest.
"I knew he had to have a girl." Elyan voices eventually.
The sword seems to call her. She recognises its pull, for it is the only object she's ever encountered that seems so strongly bound to her. Slipping away from the two men, who continue their usual banter without realising her absence, Freya hurries to the shore and waits.
Eventually, she sees it; Excalibur. It comes hurtling through the air in a perfect arc, somersaulting repeatedly. Somehow, when she reaches up, she catches the handle with fail and does not slice her fingers off on the blade.
The boys do not question what the King's sword is doing in her hands, nor do they call her crazy when she finds a stone and stabs it inside, sealing it with magic so that no-one may ever remove it before its time.
Later that day, a fourth boat washes up on the shores of their island. This time, it bears the body of a man they all know; Freya, to look upon; Lancelot and Elyan, to die for.
"Tell me I'm seeing things." Elyan murmurs, rubbing his eyes, as Freya rests her hand on Arthur's forehead and whispers the same incantation which awoke Elyan.
He awakens, and furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "Who are you?" he asks her.
She steps back, just as Elyan and Lancelot walk over. Standing either side of her, they watch as their king blindly clambers out of the boat and looks up. He nearly falls over backwards in his shock.
"I'm dead." He declares.
"Yes." Lancelot confirms, smiling good-naturedly. "Yes, you are."