I've been an idiot... I was meant to post this chapter yesterday. Fuck. Why did no one tell me? Hopefully, things will still make some sort of sense if I switch the chapters. I am a fucking idiot who is in a position that she didn't want to be again. Fuck!

'Cause I got time while she got freedom
'Cause when a heart breaks no it don't break even

Chapter 10

"I have just seen Merlin and he was acting really weird," Morgana said as she entered Arthur's flat.

"Really?"

"Yeah, he told me that there was one point that I would have waited a year for him before he asked why couldn't I couldn't have waited a couple of weeks for him. Or something like that."

There was a way that Arthur and Gwen looked at each other and she knew that something must have happened. Gwen jumped up off of the sofa and moved towards the bedroom.

"Gwen, no," Arthur said.

Gwen turned back. "Even if Morgana is our friend, she deserves to know. We know that he won't tell her. She needs to know the extent of it."

They were acting just as weirdly as Merlin was and she didn't know whether she wanted to know the extent of whatever was making them act weirdly.

"What did Merlin mean when he asked me why I couldn't have waited a couple of weeks?"

"What did you wait a year for him for?"

She didn't really like the question. She knew why Arthur was asking but she thought that the answer was sort of obvious.

"I will remind you that Merlin is a year and a half younger than me. Just because I was 16 and legally allowed to have sex, doesn't mean that Merlin was and whether he felt ready for that. I was prepared to give him the time. It was a different time and a different… frame of mind."

"I thought it was probably that." He sighed. "Look, I understand that your relationship with dad was breaking down but all you had to do was wait for Merlin to have done his exams. You didn't even have to do yours. You would know everything. If you had just spoken to Merlin, you would have known that he was completely up for spending his whole summer trying to find out whatever you felt like you had to run away to find out. For Christ sakes Morgana. He had saved the money and was constantly looking up train tickets and whether it would be cheaper just to buy a cheap car."

Morgana just about noticed Gwen and she didn't even see the scrapbook until Gwen dropped it onto the worktop.

"You moved it again."

"He almost found it again. I had to move it."

"What is that?" Morgana asked as she pointed towards it.

Gwen rested her arms on it. "If you had waited just a couple of weeks, you would know exactly what this was about. And before you ask, Merlin does know about this. He just believes that we threw it away or something like that. I had to keep it. I had put far too much work into it for it just to be thrown away." She opened it up and pushed it towards Morgana. "On the day of what would have been your last exam, Merlin had planned to take you the hill that he had taken you previously and propose to you."

Morgana had only got a couple of pages in before her attention was turned back to the only friend she had ever known.

"Merlin was going to propose."

"You never knew how much you meant to Merlin. He was already planning this perfect day for you. He had to kinda tell us what he was planning because he had to make sure that you would like what he thought you would like. He even asked Arthur for your hand rather than asking Uther because he knew how much your relationship with Uther had broken down. This was meant to be your wedding. This was all the ideas that we had. Merlin was hoping that you two could go and search for answers and then come back. He was going to tell you that Hunith was happy to have to live with them. And Hunith would have probably given her permission for Merlin to marry you at 16 but he was willing to wait until he was 18 to marry you."

If Morgana hadn't already felt guilty, she was definitely feeling it now.

"Morgana, you didn't see him," Arthur said. "You didn't see the way that he spent every waking moment trying to save up for the ring that he chose for you. You know Merlin. He is a proud man and wouldn't accept any of our help. You called him up and his world crashed around him. You disappear just before the exam period and you expected him just to get on with life. The worst part was you broke up with him. You cut all ties with London and you had no reason to come back. We watched as this bright kid who was taking his exams a year early fail all of his exams and be pulled back down into the year that he was meant to be in to have a second chance. When has Merlin ever failed an exam?"

"And that is why he isn't some doctor," Morgana whispered.

She was aware that the intercom had buzzed but she was too engrossed in the scrapbook to hear Merlin's voice and was confused when Gwen snatched the book off of her and threw it into the closest cupboard. It was only a few moments later that Merlin opened the door.

"How did it go?" Arthur asked.

Morgana could already tell that whatever he had done hadn't gone to plan and knew that he was disappointed by that. The shake of his head only confirmed that and Gwen walked up to him and threw her arms around him.

Morgana could only imagine that this is how it played out when she left. There was a way that Gwen hugged him and then Arthur walked over to comfort him further. She had obviously missed a lot.

Merlin cleared his throat. "I asked her but she said no. She didn't want to tie him down and she told me, again, that she doesn't really want me to see her any more. It just so happened that a few minutes later the doctor came and told us that it had finally spread to her brain and they have only given her a couple of weeks to live. I mean, I can understand. She doesn't want the last weeks of her life planning so quick wedding that will probably end up happening in the hospital anyway."

"Oh, Merlin," Gwen said.

There was a way that Merlin untangled himself from Gwen and walked over to the sofa, only stopping to take the small box out of his pocket and place in near to where Morgana was standing. Morgana knew that Merlin deserved the world. He deserved to have someone nice to settle down with. He just seemed to have all the bad luck.

"You have it, Arthur. I know that you will definitely have more luck than me."

It had drawn Morgana's attention off of Merlin for a moment and placed the thought in her head as to why Arthur and Gwen weren't married. They had been together for so long, she thought that Arthur would have just married Gwen, despite what Uther had to say. Maybe he hadn't grown the backbone that she thought he had.

"What are you going to do now?" Arthur asked.

"I will do what I have done for the past year, I will go and see her as often as I can, even if Freya doesn't want me to. I promised her that I would be there until the end and I am going to keep that promise."

Morgana could believe how out of place she felt but she didn't know how she was meant to leave.