A/N: Hey everyone! :)

This is my first fanfic, sort of a mix between Merlin, Frozen, and Coldplay's 'Paradise'. Enjoy!

This chapter focuses on Freya and her whole weird reincarnation thing- but no worries, Merlin will come :D

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin.

"When she was just a girl,
she expected the world.
But it flew away from her reach,
so she ran away in her sleep." - Coldplay's 'Paradise'

The girl had been dreaming for a long time.

How long exactly, she couldn't say, and what she'd dreamt of, she didn't know. But when she opened her eyes, she could tell how strange it was to do so, for she had not opened her eyes for a long time now.

"Three years."

The girl shivered at the foreign whisper. Three years. Three years since what? What happened? She tried to think, tried to remember, but her mind felt foggy, and her concentration shattered against the haze of confusion. Panicky now, she realized she couldn't even remember her name.

"Freya."

That voice again! She slowly raised her head, looking for the speaker.

"Hello?" she called, and was immediately consumed in a coughing fit. Her throat felt ... old. Worn. She swallowed and tried to speak again. "Freya .."

The girl hadn't spoken a word in three years, but the sound of that name felt right to her. She was lying on her back, her arms pressing against something warm and soft. Sand. She was on a beach, and she was alone. Sunlight beat down on her, warm and friendly. Slowly, Freya sat up, taking her time as her body adjusted to movement. Finally, she was able to get to her feet, albeit a bit shaky.

Freya turned around and found herself facing a small lake. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and somehow ... familiar. She knew this lake, she knew she knew this lake, but her memory seemed blocked. Frustrated, Freya frantically glanced around for a clue. There were trees where the sand ended and a lovely forest began, but it was dense and she couldn't see how deep it was.

"Where am I?" She said aloud, just to hear her own voice. It sounded rusty, like the hinges of an old door. The trees rudely ignored her question.

Freya sighed and turned back to admire the lake once more. It really was beautiful. She liked places like this, with a lake, and mountains in the background ... or at least, she thought she liked it.

She really couldn't remember.

Freya knew she hadn't always been here, on the shore of this beautiful lake. She had been sleeping, that was it. For a long time. I was dreaming, she thought. Now what had she been dreaming about? It had been important, she knew her dream had been why she woke up. What was it?

Suddenly, her memory focused so sharply she gasped and almost lost her balance. She closed her eyes as a memory poured over her, searing her mind.

A boy with raven black hair and skin like ivory, but the eyes of sapphire set on fire. He stands on a beach looking out at a lake framed by mountains. There are tears in his eyes but he stands firmly, a look of longing on his face mixed with resolve. "I'll see you in paradise," he says towards the lake towards her, before walking away. He doesn't look back.

Freya opened her eyes. She was kneeling before the lake, the same lake that boy had been standing by. She brought a hand to her face, wiping away the tears she hadn't known were there. That boy was so familiar, she felt her heart hammer merely at his appearance in her memory. He was important. Her revelation left her with more questions than answers.

"I know him," she said to the lake. She glared at its secretive crystal waters. "Who is he!"

"Your destiny".

That voice! It was in her head, she realized, but she couldn't stop herself from scanning the beach anyway. Still alone.

"Who are you?" she whispered, afraid now. This voice, it had to be magic. Her memory, blocked and frustrating as it was, allowed her a sudden coldness at the thought of magic, and hazy flashes of memories, cut into pieces and mixed together. Magic meant curses, magic meant rejection, magic meant that boy.

Wait.

She felt it in her heart, her soul, her deepest intuition that this boy was everything good in the world. But her murky memory provided her with the knowledge that magic was curses, magic was beasts at night; how could this boy have anything to do with magic?

The voice in her head seemed to be laughing. Freya shuddered. It was an ageless, genderless voice, hardly human. "He is your destiny. By death you have broken him, now restore him, that he may restore magic to Camelot."

Freya thought that the voice was being unfairly vague and philosophical. The words it spoke were loaded, and with each one came a blast of familiarity. Camelot. She felt like she should know what these words meant, but she struggled with one part.

"What do you mean 'my death'?" Freya breathed in deeply, loving the feeling. But something seemed wrong, something was missing. It was something in her heart, below the breaths, it felt ... different.

"You were slain by the hand of the Once and Future King while in the form of a beast."

Now the voice was being rather blunt about such a heavy revelation. Freya struggled to make sense of all of this; everything had been so confusing since she'd woken up.

She looked down at her dress and was pleasantly surprised to see a rather elegant gown, fit for a princess. Or a king's ward, she thought with sudden clarity. She tried to recall more, but the memory was vague and fleeting. Still, these were human clothes, real clothes. "But I'm alive."

"You once lived, you once died, and now you live again."

Freya was really starting to wish she'd stayed asleep.

"How could I have been dead?" she asked. She twisted her dark hair unconsciously in her confusion. "Why don't I remember dying? I was sleeping."

"The living never remember death."

"No..." Freya whispered. Her twisting had become urgent tugging, stretching her hair. The feeling in her heart that she'd felt earlier seemed to grow stronger and her insides felt harder where her heart should be. "But I was sleeping, I was dreaming."

"What did you dream about?"

Freya was silent before she answered the voice, not out loud, but with her thoughts. The voice probably already knew anyway; it seemed to know everything. 'I don't know... all I remember is that boy on the beach.' Was that really a dream? It had seemed so real.

"The dream of the dead is life."

Now it was all Freya could do not to cry again. She felt helpless, and as her anxiety grew her chest tightened, her heart grew heavy. She couldn't be dead, but at that moment she really didn't know who she had ever been, let alone what she was. "Please," she whispered to the empty beach. "Tell me who I am."

"Only you can do that."

"No I can't," Freya said desperately. "Please, I need my memories, I want to remember."

Silence. There was nothing but the sound of the wind through the trees, a lonely sound. The voice was gone. Freya closed her eyes and lied back down on the sand. The sun was still shining, but it reached no deeper than her skin and shed no light on her inner turmoil. She was lost, alone, and that was all she knew except that a boy with black hair and blue eyes would be waiting for her in paradise. Where was that?

Finally, after what felt like hours but could have been minutes or days for all Freya knew, the voice returned with a simple petition.

"Do you want to remember?"

And Freya breathed, "Yes."

It is one thing to lose a possession, it is another to lose all of your memory, in essence yourself. You don't even know it's lost until it's found because you can't remember ever having it. Freya had lost everything that made her Freya, her entire past, when she died on the beach of Avalon three years earlier.

But now she remembered.

The memories came in flashes, out of order and fighting for attention. She felt like she was falling, passing through each memory quickly as she descended into the depths of her recollections. It felt wonderful and terrible at the same time, the revelations refreshing but sharp, swirling around in her brain and cutting her with their edges. It hurt to remember, and she remembered what hurt.

She had been young, when she was cursed. She hadn't meant to kill the man, but his sorceress mother cared little for intentions. Freya was punished to walk the nights as a beast, her fate to kill until the day she died.

Well, she'd died now.

But as a younger girl, she had been forced to flee her home, everyone she'd ever loved, everything she'd ever known, to protect them from herself. She was rejected by the towns she passed through; her curse was a plague, affecting not only her but everyone she came into contact with. Even the druids made it clear she was not welcome, for they would not endanger the lives of their own people with the beast Freya became at night. She was dangerous. She was cursed. She was alone.

The witch-hunter had found her and brought her to Camelot. She was going to die, but all she could feel was resignation. It was better this way, safer for everyone. Everyone but her, anyway, but she no longer mattered. No one cared about the beast girl. That is, no one until Merlin came.

This was where the memories became brighter, softer, her brain not cut by their edges anymore but blinded by their intensity. Merlin had freed her, trusted her with his secret magic, and promised to protect her. Even if Freya had lived forever, she doubted she would have found anyone as kind and caring as Merlin. However, although he'd told her his secret, she could never tell him hers so she tried to run. This was where the memories became sharp again.

Freya remembered Prince Arthur, being cornered by him, then stabbed. She had felt pain, so intense and she had been... dying. For the first time since her curse, she found death unfair, now that she had found a reason to live in a certain smiling black-haired boy.

And even knowing her curse, as he laid her down on the beach at Lake Avalon, he had loved her, and it broke her heart. There was such goodness in Merlin, and she didn't want to miss out on it for the rest of his life. And yet, she had found herself slipping away, away from the beach, away from the world, unable to fight the pull of the darkness.

Then she had died, and dreamed of Merlin.

Freya finally opened her eyes. She was still lying on the sand, on the same beach where three years ago she had died in Merlin's arms. Her dreams had been filled with the same beach, the same boy, but different words. Merlin had never said 'I'll see you in paradise'.

The dream of the dead is life, The voice had said.

...Unless Merlin had said that after she'd died. Freya shuddered and stood up. The whole dying business was still confusing, but she couldn't help the happiness and excitement that filled her body as for the first time she fully appreciated being alive... again.

Somewhere on this earth, Freya thought, Merlin is walking the same planet I am. That thought was enough to split Freya's cracked and sore lips into the first smile of her second life.

"Do you remember?"

The voice was back. Freya's joy was so overpowering that she felt glad just to hear it. "I remember!" She shouted at the lake. The sun, which had begun to edge closer to the mountain peaks, seemed to understand her joy and beamed down on her. Everything was perfect.

But something was wrong.

Freya's blind happiness was swallowed suddenly by uncertainty. She didn't know, but she could feel it, that certain wrongness. It was the way she had felt as a beast those many years ago, cursed and unnatural. There was nothing wrong with the lake, with the beach, or even with the voice that she had originally been suspicious of. No, she knew this feeling. The wrongness was in her.

Freya shivered. The sun did not seem nearly as warm as it had earlier. Where it had before heated her skin she now felt the same strong feeling that had been tightening her chest. It was spreading. This felt like when she had been cursed to be a beast, but that had only been at night, and the sun was still shining at the moment. No this was different; as a beast, she had felt wild and savage, but this was not the same. This curse flowed through her, wrong and right at the same time.

"Death is not escaped without a price."

The voice seemed to sense her unease, it seemed to know what was wrong. "The beast in you is gone, slain by the Once and Future King. You are here to help Emrys, the one you call Merlin. You are the one destined to save him; he has been broken by your death, Cursed One. You must make him whole."

The Once and Future King had killed her? It took half a second for Freya to understand; she had been killed by Prince Arthur, and now she had to help him by helping Merlin. Merlin was broken? Freya's heart ached for the sweetest boy she'd ever known. Merlin didn't deserve to be hurt, and he was hurting over her. Freya couldn't help feeling guilty at causing him pain, but a part of her was secretly thrilled that he cared so deeply even after her death. Maybe this was their second chance at a happily ever after.

But something was still missing. People didn't just come back from the dead. Freya knew it, and she knew the voice knew it. The feeling that had been spreading through her body had gotten stronger.

The sun was no comfort to Freya any longer. It's warmth felt distant. Something wasn't right.

"A curse for a curse." The voice offered. Freya scowled.

"Please," Freya whispered into the wind. "Just tell me what's wrong with me."

"Playing with destiny always has a cost. Gone is the beast; welcome the frost." Any quality that made the voice human was now lost as it recited its cryptic answer. The voice seemed distant now, and Freya suddenly felt very aware of how strange it was, this voice. She may also have felt a little embarrassed for not questioning it sooner.

"Who are you?" She demanded. Her habitual distrust from her previous life placed all other worries on hold. She had been hurt before, and she would not let this strange voice hurt her again.

Still with an inhuman tone, the voice made a laugh sound otherworldly. "You could call me the voice of destiny, but you are the one who must live it. A great and terrible destiny indeed; you are the prophecy of the Cursed." And just as Freya's curiosity peaked at this, the voice continued to recite.

"Cursed by magic, beast to behold,

killed by the King, the curse was sold.

The bargain her life, the price not gold,

She walks again, a new curse to hold.

She walks again, Queen of the cold."

A curse for a curse. As the words echoed in her head, Freya found herself fighting tears. To suffer, to die, only to be cursed again? What a price for her life.

"You've a frozen heart, Cursed One. You live as ice lives in your heart. Your only hope is to find the one to melt it. The one who failed to save you once, now given a second chance to make themselves whole." If it was possible for a telepathic voice to whisper, that is exactly the tone it was using.

The sun's warmth no longer felt distant, but nonexistent. Freya closed her eyes as tears fell free. She had known it was too good to be true. She knew this was not what being alive felt like. Being alive meant a warm heart beat, and that was one thing Freya's frozen heart didn't have. Ice ran through her veins.

Freya looked out at the lake resolutely. She had to find Merlin. She had to help him become whole again; she didn't understand this new curse that ran through her whole body, but Merlin had accepted her even when she was a beast. She had faith in his kind nature, and though she was somehow supposed to help him, maybe he would help her too, to understand this new curse.

She turned on her heel and walked towards the forest, not looking back at the lake. She knew where she was going (to find Merlin, of course), but she didn't know how to, or in what direction Camelot lay. Through memories still shrouded in fog, she remembered vaguely that Merlin had brought her from the woods when she was dying, and this seemed as good a direction as any.

As the sun dipped below the mountains, she never saw its dying reflection in the now solid ice of the lake. Or the frost that covered her footprints as she set out to find her true love to break the frozen curse.

A/N: Phew! One chapter done. Is the voice a bit TOO awfully convenient? Feel free to tell me what you think or make some suggestions. The next chapter is going to be about Merlin, and will hopefully provide a bit more background. Thanks for reading! :)