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The Cursed Druid Girl.

Merlin had very fond memories of the druid girl, Freya, who was cursed after she'd accidentally killed the son of a powerful sorceress who had cursed her into becoming a Bastet, a cursed human being who transformed into a giant black winged cat. When he had seen Freya the first time around, Merlin was presented with another sharp reminder of the evil Uther Pendragon had spread with the disease that was the Great Purge.

But seeing a girl his age in a cage….

Merlin had had a wake-up call that night when he had seen the cage, and when Freya had thrown herself at the bars of the cage, her dress tattered and dirty, her eyes wide and fearful. How could he not help her? Gaius was too scared to help the captured druid who'd been caught by a bounty hunter.

Not Merlin.

He had snuck out of the Court Physician's quarters, blasted the lock, and took her out. Merlin, looking back, later on, knew he had made a terrible mistake with taking Freya to a corridor and leaving her there. But there was no way he regretted taking food away from Arthur's plate, and he wished he had gotten Morgana's help.

Thinking of Morgana and Freya at the same time, and it was virtually impossible for Merlin to not compare the two. The two women had several things in common; both female, both powerful, both gifted in magic although Merlin didn't know just how powerful Freya had been prior to being tied into the Lake of Avalon until she became the Lady of the Lake he knew she was powerful during both instances, maybe close to the level of Mordred and Nimueh. Both Morgana and Freya had experienced the rampant prejudice from Uther and the Great Purge.

While Kilgharrah and Gaius might have had some good points, in later life Merlin would look back and he felt physically sick at how cowardly his attempts to just turn a blind eye to Morgans's plight and yet he had expended so much effort to help Freya.

He was a hypocrite, worse than Uther.

He had given Freya hopes and dreams, telling her he'd love to run away with her, have a life with strawberries growing nearby. Merlin had been so happy with the prospect since a part of him didn't want to be tied down to a destiny that he really didn't want.

Why would he care about the Once and Future King, or uniting Albion?

All Merlin had wanted was to make magic free again. He wanted the Five-Kingdoms to stop the persecution of magic, for Camelot to stop its genocidal massacre against sorcerers, druids, and creatures, destroying all trace of magical knowledge they came across as they went. But Merlin had gone along with the dragon's words because he was sure all of his efforts would pay off in the end.

But what angered Merlin the most, and he had destroyed a number of trees in his anger when he had sent Freya's boat off across the Lake of Avalon as the thought occurred to him, was how destiny and fate seemed determined to make him alone.

But he still had Morgana, or so he had thought at the time although he knew Uther's secret daughter faced an uncertain future. But no.

He had listened to Kilgharrah and Gaius instead of listening to his own common sense. After the mess with the Knights of Idiosholas and after Kilgharrah had been driven away after Merlin had come into his Dragonlord inheritance and discovered the voice that connected him and the dragon on a brotherly level. Merlin had sent a letter to his mother in Ealdor, using magic to quickly send the letter off with a rune to send the letter back to him so it wouldn't be lost and it wouldn't have taken so long. He needed his mother's wisdom. While Gaius had been wise over time, Merlin saw the exceptions of that wisdom.

His approach to Morgana was just to let her fall and Merlin had helped, while the Great Dragon had given in to hate. When he had sent his mother the full story of what had happened, what Kilgharrah and Gaius had suggested, and how he felt guilty for being so cowardly and giving in to his own insecurities when he could have ignored it and given Morgana the help she needed.

Hunith's reply was scathing. She told Merlin that Morgana was his friend, and she should have helped her. His mother had never really believed in prophecies and superstition like that, and she had always been sceptical about him tying his life into Arthur's until the prince had helped defend the village from those bandits. But what had really been scathing was how his mother had asked him how he could save and help Freya, and yet he had decided to leave a woman who was an even older friend behind.

Merlin still hadn't mustered the effort to reply.

It haunted him even now that he had helped Freya, whom he had barely known and he had continued to help her even before he knew what happened to her, and yet he had not helped Morgana.