Chapter 35

Warning/s:

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin.

A/N: These are all pre-written chapters and I need to start writing some more but there's too much schoolwork *cries*

Prompt: MamzelleHermy requested a sort of sequel to 'Captured': when Morgana takes Freya, she takes away her ability to bear children.

Merlin had to work late some nights, casting protective wards over the castle or something similar. Tonight was one of those nights, Freya had usually gone to bed by the time he had returned, so Merlin was surprised to see that their bed was still neatly made.

"Freya?" he called out uncertainly, wondering if she had curled up on an armchair with a book and lost track of time. Still, he didn't get any response from his wife, and he frowned as he bounded up the stairs to their library area.

It was possible that she had fallen asleep waiting up for him, so Merlin told himself to stop panicking and tried to force his heart to calm down.

She wasn't curled up in her favourite armchair, awake or asleep. Maybe she was in another chair, or sorting through a shelf. Merlin set off to explore the library for her, but she was nowhere to be found.

Frowning, Merlin searched the rest of his chambers; Freya was known to curl up in some quite unusual places to take a quick sleep. Explaining to Arthur that they couldn't hold a round table meeting because Freya was having a cat nap on top of the aforementioned table had been a memorable experience.

Half an hour had passed by the time that Merlin was satisfied he had combed his rooms. Now concerned about his wife, he marched from his room with a determined pace, his feet automatically taking him to Arthur's room.

He burst in without knocking, hoping that he and Gwen weren't 'busy', and asked loudly, "Have you seen Freya?"

Gwen, reading through some papers at the table, set them down and shook her head. "She was waiting in your rooms as far as I know," she replied with a hint of anxiety.

"Is she not there?" Arthur appeared, holding a dagger in one hand and a whetting stone in the other.

Merlin shook his head, his suspicions growing stronger. "I hoped she'd be here," he murmured.

Gwen and Arthur looked at each other in worry. It really wasn't like Freya to wander off, especially without leaving a note. She and Merlin were much too nervous about their relationship as it was, given everything they'd suffered through.

"Maybe she went to find you outside and you missed each other?" Arthur suggested.

Merlin let out a breath. Of course. That answer was so blindingly obvious. The relief must have shown on his face because Arthur asked (in annoyance and not affection, of course), "Did you really think that your adoring wife would go somewhere when she could be spending time with you?"

Merlin narrowed his eyes, about to make a come-back that would have been just as good as always, when Gwen interrupted. "Isn't there any kind of spell that you could use to locate her?"

Merlin hesitated. "Technically yes."

"I'm sending a 'but'."

"But it doesn't always work if your souls are too intertwined."

"Why not?" Arthur asked curiously.

Merlin rubbed his face as he tried to put the answer into terms that would make sense to those without magic. "The magic…it can't always identify the two separate souls, so I could end up locating both myself and Freya."

"Why is that not good?" Arthur picked up on Merlin's grim tone.

"If the spell picked two different people and locations, it wouldn't be able to cope and…simply put, the people and locations would implode from the spell's magic."

Gwen gulped. "Maybe not then," Arthur offered, his eyes wide.

"Perhaps not," Merlin agreed. He turned to go. "I'll go to check outside," he called over his shoulder.

But even after an hour-long trek around everywhere Freya could possibly be, and with the guards not letting anybody out of the citadel that night, Freya had well and truly vanished.

Sighing, Merlin headed back inside. He refused to allow his anxiety to overwhelm him, on the outside at least. His magic tended to get out of hand when he was anxious.

Merlin hurried back to the castle and headed back to their room; maybe she had gone to Gaius? She had been experiencing bouts of nausea recently, along with her ankles swelling at random intervals.

This thought was short-lived; at the foot of the stairs lay Freya, still but breathing. Merlin rushed to her prone form and took careful note of the dried blood on the edge of the last stair.

She woke almost immediately and, blinking blearily, felt her head. A patch of her hair had matted together with blood from a wound on her temple.

"What happened?" Merlin asked, carefully prodding at the lesion.

"Fell down the stairs," Freya mumbled, only just coherent. "Went to Gaius and…then…came back and slipped."

Merlin sighed in relief. A head wound he could fix easily; indeed, it was healed with just a few words. He picked up Freya gently, reaching out with his magic to check she had no further damage.

"Time to sleep," he said quietly. His wife made a small, purring noise in agreement as they arrived at their rooms.

He felt stupid for getting so worked up now; at least she had no lasting damage. There was just one thing that Merlin couldn't fathom: there was some kind of magic surrounding Freya, and not pleasant magic at that.

Merlin pondered on that when they were both in bed and Freya was asleep. He supposed that it could just be his own magic clouded around her, tainted by his worry. It was certainly the only explanation that made any sense to him.

Two months later

"Merlin?" Freya was standing in front of him, clutching a thick, leather-bound book.

"Mm?" He reached out and accepted the book, reading the cover: 'Magic of Fertility'.

"I've been looking for a spell that you will help me get pregnant for ages now, and I think I've found one." She flipped open to a page she had marked.

Merlin nodded. "I can do that," he said confidently, motioning for her to sit down next to him. "Did Gaius's fertility teas not help?"

Freya shook her head, then paused. "I thought they were working…that night I fell down the stairs, I had gone to Gaius and he thought I might be pregnant but he wasn't sure. I forgot to mention it and by the time I remembered, nothing had happened so I guess it was a false alarm."

"Did your moon cycle come back?" Merlin asked absent-mindedly, reading through the spell.

"I can't remember. I just stopped feeling sick and my stomach didn't grow."

Merlin nodded, placing his hands on Freya's lower stomach. He chanted the long spell under his breath, taking care to pronounce everything right. His eyes flashed gold, his magic surged out…and then stopped, like it just fizzled out. Merlin frowned and tried again, but the same thing happened.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure." The strange-feeling magic was back. "It's like there's something blocking it, a different kind of magic."

"What does that mean?" Freya asked, instant panic flooding into his tone.

"I don't know." Merlin worried at his lip. "I'll do a spell of reason, okay? To find out why it's not working."

At that, Freya calmed a little and sat back. Merlin focused his magic on her, storing it in his finger-tips, and then let it flood out and flow into Freya. One image came straight into his mind: Morgana.

He started back in surprise, wondering when the hell Morgana had become involved in anything to do with Freya. "When did you last see Morgana?" he asked urgently, gripping his wife's hands.

"What? Last year, when we fought against her and I was helping with the injured. Why?" she asked in alarm.

Merlin screwed up his eyes in lieu of answering. With a flash he remembered the same dark magic on the night she'd fallen, her lack of memory; he remembered thinking after the time that two hours was a long period to be knocked out for, considering the fairly minor head wound.

"Oh no," he whispered to himself. "Freya, the night you fell down those stairs, what do you remember?"

"Nothing, I was unconscious," Freya said, slowly and sounding both scared and suspicious.

"I'm going to do a memory relieving spell," he told her. "It will lift any blocks put on your mind."

At this, Freya began to panic again. "Why? What's been done to me?"

"Calm," Merlin intoned, seeing her breathing increase in speed and become more and more shallow. "It might not be anything bad, just something I had to check." Merlin hated having to lie to his wife; when Morgana was involved, things were rarely good.

Freya nodded, although a tear squeezed out from her eye when she blinked. Merlin kissed the top of her head as he gently pressed his fingertips against her temples. Concentrating, he searched through Freya's mind until he ran straight into a solid wall with a thump. He murmured a few words under his breath, his eyes flashed gold and the wall crumbled.

Freya's reaction was instant. She lurched forwards with an anguished cry and flung herself onto Merlin, shaking. "I…I remember."

"Remember?" Merlin asked urgently. "What do you remember?"

"Morgana. She…" Freya broke off with a tormented groan. "She stole it!"

"Stole what?" Merlin didn't really need to ask. With the dark magic and suspected pregnancy, Merlin thought that he could already guess. He felt his heart sink.

"My baby," Freya whispered, trembling. "Our baby. She…she took it and then she made it so…so that I could never have any more babies. Ever." She dissolved into tears, flinging her arms around her husband, who offered her silent support until she slipped into sleep, at first, restless, but then sweetened by her husband's magic.

It had been a week now since 'the incident', as Merlin had taken to calling it. Freya was still curled up in bed, barely drinking or eating. Merlin was able to ease her nightmares when she slept, but during her waking hours she would sob into her pillow, and no amount of comfort that Merlin gave her seemed to do any good.

When she slept, Merlin occupied his time with research. Flicking through pages of fertility spells as boring after a while, all of them just variations upon the same principal. Finally, in the last chapter of the ninth book, he had found what he was looking for.

He made sure Freya was deep in a dreamless sleep before he set off. This was the first time before he set off. This was the first time that he had emerged from his chambers in a week, and several servants stared in surprise. He ignored them in favour of getting to Gwen's chambers as quickly as his feet would carry him.

He made sure to knock and wait for her call before he came in, shutting the door behind himself.

"Merlin!" Gwen said, in obvious relief. She had a blonde-haired child perched on her lap, and her other two children attacked Merlin's legs. He reached down to ruffle their hair absent-mindedly, shooting Gwen a look that told her they needed to talk.

Luckily for him, Gwen understood and quickly sent her children to play on the other side of her room. Merlin, at her motion, sat down at the table with her and began speaking urgently. Once he had explained what had happened with Freya, and Gwen had recovered from the shock of it, he moved onto what he really needed to know.

"Be truthful Gwen – do you plan on having any more children?"

Gwen shook her head immediately. "I'm not going through all of that pain again," she said firmly. "And these three are a handful as it is."

Merlin smiled. So far, at least, this plan had potential. "I need to ask you a favour then."

Gwen was one step ahead of him. "Is there some kind of spell to give Freya my child-bearing ability?"

Merlin nodded. "It's painless, no side-effects, and I have enough magic to do it."

Gwen waved her hand at him. "Then what are you waiting for?"

Four months later

There was definitely something. She couldn't quite believe it. She couldn't allow herself to believe it.

But she had been having these bouts of nausea again and her stomach was swollen and she had been gaining weight steadily…

Trembling, she asked Merlin to check for her, expecting to have her hopes dashed. But they weren't.

"I don't know how you did it," Freya said in wonder. "But you did. I love you."

"I love you too," Merlin murmured, rubbing his hands on the new life they had created.

A/N: any prompts or reviews so I know people like me?