Title: Death is not the Beginning
Author: Sailorneo
Summary: The reason why Mathayus made the deal with Anubis.
Chapter One:
In the second that Mathayus asked me how long the peace would last, I knew. I knew what he would become in seventeen short years' time. I knew he would make a deal with the god Anubis, and I knew that I would be the cause of it. Or rather, my death would be the cause of it.
I told him nothing of it, the one secret I kept from my husband in the sixteen years of our marriage. It was also the one secret that I kept from our children as well, though our eldest, Mariska, figured it out on her own three days before my death.
I had grown ill after the birth of our seventh daughter. I had only ever managed to give Mathayus daughters, but he did not hold it against me. With every day bringing me closer to my death, I grew weaker and weaker. Three days before my death—though at the time I did not know it was so close—Mariska came to me.
"Mother, I have had a terrible vision," she said.
"Of what, my daughter?" I asked her.
"I saw Father…He…He wasn't himself. He was driven to fight. He took many men from Gommorah and they all perished at battle or in the great sands of the desert."
Mariska sat on the floor by my bed and rested her head on the smooth silk sheets. "My daughter," I said to her. "I, too, have had this vision. And I know the cause of your father's descent into madness as well."
"What?" Mariska asked. "I will stop it. If it is a person, I will fight them. If it is not, I'll—I'll do something."
I smiled at my daughter. Mariska was most like her father of all of our daughters. She had been born a bare year after Mathayus took the throne, and he spoiled her. He taught her all that he knew of the arts of fighting.
"Mariska," I told her. "You cannot stop it. It will happen." She frowned and opened her mouth to object, but I said, "Go and find Jesup."
She grudgingly rose and left to find the boy. Jesup technically was no longer a boy, but now a man. Mathayus had taken him in off of the streets he had been found on. I knew, though I was sure Mathayus didn't, that Jesup and Mariska often frequented the streets of Gommorah. Mathayus would have been upset had he known, but there was no real harm in it.
Until Jesup had stolen Mathayus's blood rubies, all he had known was the street and Memnon's cruelty. After Mathayus became King, Jesup was thrust into the world of propriety and regality. Mariska despised it as well, so the two were a perfect match—and in more ways than one.
At Mariska's birth, I had seen her future. And not just her future as Mariska. For she would be reborn twice more, as would Jesup. And each time, each life, they would find each other.
Mariska soon returned with Jesup reluctantly in tow. "Here he is Mother."
"Sit," I told them. They did, and I continued. "You two will rule Gommorah after Mathayus is gone."
This statement brought about the immediate refusal that I had expected. "I wouldn't have her as a mate! Honest!" Jesup protested, reverting to the street slang we had cured him of.
"Mother!" Mariska said. "Jesup and I? Are you well?" She laughed, though it was a forced laugh.
I held up a hand. "Now, I know you two have been courting for nearly two years now. And I approve. Mathayus will not be King forever. And when he is gone, the two of you will take the throne and rule well."
It did happen that way. I died, leaving Mathayus heartbroken. I had been his world. He slowly began to retreat into himself, and revert back to how he had been before he rescued me from Memnon. And on the anniversary of my death, he left Gommorah in the search of honor and glory, taking many sons, brothers, and fathers with him.
Mariska was given the difficult task of telling her people what would occur. All would die, and Mathayus would make a deal with Anubis. She and Jesup ruled well together and had nearly as many children as Mathayus and me.
And after their deaths, they were reborn as Ramses II and Banafrit. Those lives didn't go as well as their first ones, but in the end they were together. They may not have married, but their children ruled Egypt.
And the third time they lived, they were Jonathan Carnahan and Elizabeth O'Connell, siblings to the reincarnation of Bomani—the leader of the Medjai—and Nefertiri.
Imhotep was wrong when he inscribed 'Death is only the beginning' on his sarcophagus. Birth is the first step in the journey, death is the second, and if you are very lucky, birth is also the third.
Author's Note: So I wrote this as a companion to a "Mummy" and "Mummy Returns" fic I'm working on. It does have Elizabeth O'Connell in it, and does refer to Jesup (at least, I think that's his name), Mariska, Cassandra, and Mathayus. (Granted...it's not out yet...) Hope you enjoyed!