Here's the next chapter :) A little warning, this is darker than most of the chapters will be! It contains past!character death. So you've been warned :) REVVVIEWWW

Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin, even though I really really wish I did because Colin Morgan.

Chapter 3

Arthur: What's a dollophead.

Merlin: Two words?

The taxi driver pulled in front of his apartment and he paid him respectfully, sending a quick yeah back to Merlin before stepping out of the taxi and fishing out his keys. His phone buzzed with a response, but he refused to check it immediately, waiting until he greeted his dog, a five-year old Bernese Mountain Dog named George. He had been a gift from Morgana because she had said 'no one should ever live completely alone'. Arthur could not for the life of him figure out a good name so he had settled on something stupid like George.

"Wanna go out?" Arthur asked as if the dog could understand, but nevertheless George was wagging his tail and whining so Arthur hooked the leash on his collar and headed downstairs. Once he was standing in the middle of the apartment lawn, his dog making circles around him, he checked his phone.

Merlin: Arthur Pendragon

Arthur almost laughed, but then he remembered it was an insult. He shoved his phone in his pocket and thought about not texting back, because he honestly did hate this man. Less than he did when he first met him, but the man was still insufferable.

Merlin: I shuld thnk u 4 lunch tho

Arthur: You're a Pre-Med student. How do you not know how to spell?

Merlin: becuz this is a txt msg dollophead, not a term paper

Arthur laughed and started to type something back equally insulting when George spotted something interesting and took it off towards it, yanking Arthur towards it. The phone slipped through his fingers, flying through the air to land on the grass a few feet away from Arthur. "Fuck, George! Heel!"

George looked back at him with that stupid adorable face and let out a bark, "Hold up, I gotta find my phone."

When Arthur finally did find his phone, a few feet away, he almost had a panic attack because it was damp. He glanced down at his text messages and apparently he had accidently hit send before his phone had flew through the air.

Arthur: Well your text messages do noegge

Merlin: ?

Merlin: still drunk?

Arthur: No, idiot. My dog made me drop my phone

Merlin: u have a dog? u strike me as a cat person.

Arthur tugged George back up the steps and opened the door to his apartment. He released George, motioning for him to go play while he got himself a drink from the kitchen. He grabbed his laptop from the table and sat down on the couch, placing his phone on one side of him and the glass of water on the coffee table in front of him, opening his laptop to start on some work.

Arthur: A Bernese. Why on earth would I be a cat person?

Speaking of the devil, George jumped up on the couch beside him, made a quick circle before laying down with his head in Arthur's lap which had Arthur torn between petting him and telling him to get off.

Merlin: holy fuck me. I love that breed. And because ur a snob, anti-social, mean. Just like cats.

Arthur: Well I can only assume you have a headlouse as a pet then. Useless and irritating.

Merlin: actually asshole, I have a dog too. who has a headlouse as a pet?

He scratched behind George's ear while he opened up his email. He clicked down to a spreadsheet that had some of their potential new employees information on it and scanned through it, looking at their different qualifications to figure out who was best qualified for the job he had set up. God, he hated his job. But it paid the bills and that's what mattered.

Arthur: I never saw a dog there

Merlin: he was at my neighbor's. becuz of the party. He doesn't like a large group of ppl

Arthur: A socially inept dog. How fitting. It's probably something stupid like a poodle too, isn't it?

When he didn't hear back right away, Arthur set his phone down. He stared at his laptop for a good two minutes before he rolled his eyes and shut it because he wasn't going to get anything done at this rate anyways so why try. He lifted his feet onto the coffee table and reclined his head back, feeling George shift to be closer to him. He closed his eyes, just planning on resting for a few minutes before getting up to do something productive, but before he knew it, he drifted off.

Next thing he knew it was dark outside. He sat up, George already gone to sleep in their actual bed. Stretching and yawning simultaneously, he picked his phone up to check the time and his eyes almost bulged out of his head at the 2:36AM flashing at him from his screen. Of course, he had six unread text messages. Two were from his sister, one demanding to get coffee come Monday morning and the other telling him to open her latest email. One was from his father asking if he had finished organizing the reports. Another was from Gwaine, who appeared to be drunkenly thanking Arthur or "princess" for buying his lunch, once again. Who partied two nights back to back anyway? What were they, 21? And the last two were from Merlin. One said, actually a German Shepard thank you, and the next had a picture of said German Shepard.

In all honesty, the dog was actually pretty cute. It was a picture of him and Merlin laying on the couch. Merlin had his long legs stretched out on the length of the couch and he was wearing a white t-shirt and black sweatpants and the dog was quite literally laying on top of him with his head on Merlin's chest.

He didn't text back, didn't feel the need to, and instead stood to head towards his bedroom. George was already at the foot of the bed, curled up and sound asleep. Arthur stripped his shirt and pants, leaving him in only his boxers, and slipped underneath the covers. He was out before he knew it.

Merlin didn't get home until long after two in the morning, for the second night in a row he might add, but that was to be expected when you had a roommate like Gwaine. Kilgharrah was waiting on him right inside the door as Merlin hauled a very drunk Gwaine into the apartment.

"Move, boy. I gotta get good ol' uncle Gwaine to bed," He said as he kicked the door shut behind him, his arm on Gwaine's waist as Gwaine turned to him, a cheeky smile on his face and said, "Thanks for da help, mate."

Merlin nodded, giving him his best sunshine smile as they moved towards Gwaine's bedroom. Merlin groaned as he dropped Gwaine onto the bed, Gwaine immediately rolling onto his back and throwing an arm over his eyes.

"I'm just going to get you some water, okay?"

"She was good looking, wasn't she?" Gwaine said just as Merlin reached the door.

Merlin assumed he was speaking of the blonde with the huge eyes that had been hanging off his arm for the majority of the night, "Yeah, mate. She was."

"She was something, cute eyes," Gwaine said drunkenly as he propped himself up on his elbows to peer at Merlin, "Did I get her number?"

Before Merlin could even respond, he fell back on the bed, laughing to himself, "I'll call her tomorrow. Okay?"

Merlin smiled, "Okay."

He disappeared into the kitchen, patting Killi on the side as he went, and grabbed a bottle of water and two aspirin. By the time he got back to the bedroom, Gwaine was sound asleep, snoring as always. He set the objects on his nightstand, shot one last smile back at his friend before going to lock up the apartment.

Once he was in bed, he checked his phone one more time to see if Morgana or her evil, but stupidly handsome, brother had texted back. When he saw that neither of them had, he frowned. Of course, the last message he had sent to Morgana had been a simple okay :) so it was no surprise that she hadn't answered. He quickly pulled up a blank text to Morgana and started texting.

Merlin: Let's get dinner this week. On me. Sound good?

With that, he turned his phone off because tomorrow was Sunday and Sunday was made for sleeping.

He leaned his head back onto the pillow, Kilgharrah curled up at his feet. Closing his eyes, he thought back to this weekend and the two very interesting people that had come into it, well three if you count Leon, but Leon had left to return to his wife as soon as the clock had struck eleven.

If he was being honest with himself, both siblings were horribly attractive. Morgana was wonderful, if not a little intimidating, and she came on a bit strong, but Merlin had never had a problem with that before. There had been a moment at the club the night before where she had leaned up and pressed her mouth against his. He had had a slight anxiety attack over it because her brother was dancing less than five feet away and he was not about to deal with an overprotective brother. But when he had glanced over, Arthur had been dancing with some girl, his eyes fogged over in a drunken haze, so Merlin had let her continue kissing him. They were both drunk and it had felt good, but Merlin felt guilty. Arthur clearly didn't like him, didn't enjoy being around him, so he doubted Arthur wanted him dating his sister.

Nevertheless, after texting him and watching Arthur pay for lunch, Merlin had decided Arthur wasn't completely awful, even if he was an absolute prat. He was just a spoiled, famous, rich asshole that didn't know how to associate with normal people and really, he couldn't be blamed for that. Plus he was fun to banter with. So Merlin had hope that maybe Arthur wouldn't mind him dating Morgana because Morgana was pretty and had beautiful dark hair and green eyes.

Merlin smiled to himself before he passed out.

It was raining heavily, the roads were full of puddles and the sky was so black you couldn't even see five feet in front of you without headlights. It was really quite an awful night, weather-wise, but that didn't faze the two people driving home in it. One was smiling quite happily to herself, humming along to the radio and occasionally singing out loud, while the other just listened with a smile.

"May I hold youu as you fall to sleeep, when the world is closing in and you can't breathhheee," she was drumming one hand on her lap, the other clutched tightly his on top of the stick shift. She glanced over at him, just to watch him, to already find him staring at her, "What?"

"Nothing," he laughed, looking back at the road, "Just admiring you, that's all."

She laughed, throwing her head back in that wonderful way she always did, "You are such a cheeseball."

He smiled, squeezing her hand, "Only for you."

"Thank you for coming to my parents' tonight. They adore you, you know?" She was watching him and he occasionally glanced over to her.

"Well, who doesn't?"

She smiled and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek, her hand that held his engagement ring around his neck. He smiled at the feel of the metal against his skin, a reassurance of their commitment.

Then suddenly, Merlin was outside the car at the base of the hill, powerless to watch as the car started to lose traction and the driver struggled to correct it. He slammed his brakes on, the breaks locking, and his car now going into a full slide, turning sideways.

Merlin could only watch the two people's expressions, one angry and slightly panicked, the other's mouth open in a silent scream as they hit the ditch at such a right angle that the car flipped, landing on its side and rolling twice before landing right – side up. His legs were frozen, powerless to run.

A van suddenly pulled to the side of the road and two people scrambled out of the car. The driver, a man, was already running down the hill, screaming, "Michelle, call an ambulance!"

The woman was shaking, standing at the top of the hill with the phone pressed against her ear and her hand in front of her mouth. Merlin watched as the man, now at the bottom of the hill, shined his phone in the driver's side, the man's hazy blue eyes barely focused on him. The man stood back at the sight of those eyes, "Oh my gosh! Michelle, they're alive! They're alive!"

Michelle straightened up at that, still talking to the 9-1-1 operator, "Yes. They're alive, just badly injured I think. We saw them flip at least once. Keep talking to them? Okay," she covered the mouthpiece with a dainty hand, and yelled down to the man, "They said keep talking to them. Keep them awake. Don't let them fall asleep!"

The man nodded and Merlin watched as the driver struggled to make conversation with the man shining a light in his eye. At some point, the driver finally turned around to look at his passenger and suddenly a hysterical scream tore from his throat, just as an ambulance's sirens could be heard racing down the street.

The man was fighting now to keep the other man calm, and Merlin felt a small sob catch in his throat as he watched the driver tear at his seat belt, trying his best to claw across the seat to her, "Oh my god, no, wake up. Please wake up!"

Four paramedics raced down the ditch, carrying two stretchers as both a cop car and a fire truck pulled up next to them. One paramedic wrenched the door open, and suddenly Merlin found himself sitting in the driver's place, his head throbbing and his arm shooting white hot pain up and down his arm. He looked at the paramedic, a man with dark red hair and gentle, determined eyes, who was trying to restrain him. He yanked back, confused out of his mind, before he heard the passenger door being pried open and shouting voices. He looked over to his right and his heart stopped.

Her hair was tangled, bloody, and a giant gash had opened up on her forehead. Her head was slumped forward, until her chin rested on her chest. Small pieces of glass were embedded in different parts of her face and arms. One hand, that bore his grandmother's ring, was laying limply by the stick shift.

"Freya?" He called hoarsely, his voice cracking. And then the full effect of what happened hit him and he screamed, tears pricking his eyes as he realized what just happened, "Freya! Please someone help her, please! Freya! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god."

The paramedic was trying to put a neck brace on him, but Merlin pushed him away with what little strength he had and pulled himself out of the car. Somewhere he could hear a faint beeping, whether it be in his head or from the radio in the car, and he watched as the people carrying Freya's stretcher, with her strapped in already, a neck brace and oxygen mask in place, started to climb the hill. He tried to follow, but his strength left him, and he collapsed to his knees. The paramedic was behind him at once, holding him down and telling him to lay still. The beeping grew slower and slower.

"Freya! Please! I have to see her! Please let me go! Please!" He tried ripping away from the man's grip, but the hands stayed steady on his back. Michelle was standing at the top of the hill with the man that had rescued him, her face streaked in tears. The beeping was slower.

"Sir, you have to stay calm!"

Merlin yanked around to look at him, the beeping even slower than before, "Will she be okay!? Please, please tell me. She's my fiancée!"

"I can't know until we get you both to the hospital, sir. Now please, lay back."

The beeping slowed and there was a shaky breath that wasn't Merlin's or the paramedic's. And the beeping flat lined.

Merlin sat up, screaming as a sob tore from his throat. He hunched forward, ignoring Killi's whines, and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, desperately trying to calm himself. Always the same damn nightmare.

His bedroom light suddenly flickered on, Will standing in his doorway in nothing but sweatpants. He looked tired, but not upset, "Bad dream?"

Merlin nodded and a tear slipped down his cheek. He didn't mind crying in front of Will. Will had always been there for him and had seen him cry plenty of times. Will sank down into the mattress beside him, "What was it this time? Funeral, hospital or car crash? Or maybe even the one with the Muppets?"

Merlin tried his best to smile at Will's joke, but it didn't work and instead he nodded, "Car crash."

Will nodded, stroking behind Killi's ear absentmindedly, "I'm sorry, man."

Merlin nodded, and turned to look at Will, who was watching him intently, "it's been two years. Two years and I still can't forget it."

Will shook his head, placing a heavy hand on his friend's shoulder, "Things will get easier one day, brother. Now are you ready to go back to sleep or do you wanna stay up and play some Call of Duty?"

Merlin laughed, never feeling more thankful for his best friend than right now, "Definitely the second one."

Will smiled, standing up and fixing Merlin with his meanest look, "Just because you had a nightmare, don't think I'm going to go easy on you."

"Never."

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