A/N: :D hope ya'll enjoy this. I've got a rough outline of what I want to do, but heh.. as always, it's a shot in the dark. And yeah, this is a part of the Alternate Realities group, which I completely forgot about putting at the top of it, because I'm a dumbass.

Chapter Two

There the tree stood among all the new growth. An old oak tree that in generations past had been a tree of great import; a king died underneath its branches. The greatest of kings. His funeral was a great one, but one celebrated only in legends. His reign had been a truly just one, but he was all too soon relegated to fairy tales and fables. How could humans forget something that had happened just a century or two past? Cuchulainn often wondered this and found himself constantly wondering if anyone would have celebrated dear "King Arthur" had they known she was really a woman who sacrificed much for her country.

Oh, Cuchulainn had heard much of her tales since her death. All the time he heard them from the people in the towns, children telling each other tales of knights in shining armor and maidens in distress, lovers comparing themselves to Lancelot and Gwenivere, he had heard them all. It pained him to no end to think that he had only known this great woman as her true self for one brief moment in her brief life. Much like him, she was a hero and celebrated as such through legend and myth, but she had not even truly touched the fruits of life like he had taken advantage of in his. It left a bitter taste in his mouth as he thought upon it under the old oak tree. Soon, all too soon, this tree would die and the sapling he watched grow would be the new oak tree that everyone would claim was the tree that King Arthur had died beneath.

And in heaven he could not find her spirit. He would often leave the warm embrace of his wife's arms to look for the poor young king. When he finally decided to ask a fellow spirit where he might find her, or if he had seen her, they would simply look at him quizzically and follow after a tall man of sorts who seemed to be ushering them to wherever they belonged. He could hardly ever find God, as well. Perhaps he was simply far too busy trying to keep order on his end to show up for formalities?

In the end, Cuchulainn gave up and finally started visiting the old tree once more. Its branches were twisted and ugly, its trunk was blackened in places and blown apart in others. The tree had been struck by lightning at some point, it seemed. Cuchulainn lay down on the grass under the tree and stared up at the green canopy over his head, remembering the days when he was alive and would lie down beneath a tree like this one in the afternoon sun. Those had been wonderful days, though sometimes they were hard to remember.

The sound of footsteps alerted him to a couple walking with a little girl beside them. Clearly she was their daughter and they were husband and wife. The girl, however, struck Cuchulainn deeply when he saw her face. It was Arturia's face, though much younger than he had seen it.

"Arturia, come along then. Don't dawdle," chided the mother. "And don't wander away! We need to stay on the path out of these old woods."

"Aye, they're teeming with spirits and fairies and little demons that'll come out and eat up a little girl like you!" said the father, grinning as Arturia giggled and held onto his hand. "That's a good girl."

"It's so hot today," said the mother. "We should get out of here quickly and find shade before we move on."

"We have shade now," said Arturia as she edged toward the oak tree Cuchulainn lay under. "See? There's a nice big tree there!"

"That's an old tree. A very old tree," commented her father as he stared up at it. He wasn't very tall and he had long brown curly hair on his head, though he was balding. His clothes were dirty and in need of repair. The wife and little Arturia were in the same state of dress. Clearly, these people were not very wealthy. "You know, Esther, perhaps little Arturia's right. Let's sit for a while."

Esther shot her husband a very nasty look. "Don't encourage her, James. We need to leave before bandits or worse comes blowing through here. I've heard that the great spirit of a hound appears around here and chases off people who he doesn't like."

"Nonsense, Esther. Let's get off our feet for a while. We could eat what we brought with us and it'll be better than forging ahead with nothing in our stomachs," said James.

Esther considered it a moment before they three sat where Cuchulainn had been, the latter having relocated up into the boughs of the old, gnarled tree. They pulled out simple food and ate slowly as the heat of the day was dispelled by the shade of the tree. Arturia, however, was constantly distracted by the tree. She kept looking up into the branches as though she saw something, which made her mother nervous. "Darling, please don't do that," she said.

"Mummy, there's a man up there," she said. "He's got blue hair and red eyes."

"James, we need to leave," said Esther.

Cuchulainn eyed Arturia and raised an eyebrow. Could she actually see him? Or did she remember seeing him before she died the last time. He moved down from the branches and crouched near Arturia, looking at her closely. "Can you see me?"

Arturia didn't look away from the branches. "He's up there," she said and then touched her shoulder. "And I'm hurt."

"What? Where did you hurt yourself, honey?" asked James.

"My shoulder hurts… so does my side," said Arturia. Esther looked her over and looked to James for confirmation that Arturia was perfectly fine before making her look away from the branches. "Ow!"

"That's for lying, Arturia, now stop pretending and eat your bread."

Cuchulainn smiled faintly as he watched them. No, Arturia couldn't see him, but she remembered quite clearly being skewered and bruised and seeing him when she was dying. At least it was nothing worse than that, otherwise he would actually be a bit worried.

"Too bad you can't even hear me," he said to her and ruffled her hair a bit. She blinked and looked around as he suddenly realized his folly.

"Something just touched my hair, mummy," she said. She looked straight at Cuchulainn as though she could see him and pointed toward him. "It was him!"

Esther blinked and looked to where her daughter pointed, but frowned when she saw nothing. Cuchulainn frowned and eyed Arturia. "Lass, if you're playing a game with me, then I suggest you stop it. Can you hear and see me?"

"I hear you," she said. "But… why can't I see you?"

James put a hand on Arturia's shoulder and shoved her down into a sitting position. "Sit down and please stop talking, Arturia."

"But the blue haired man is talking to me!" she said frantically. "Mr. Ghost! Are you still there?"

"How do you know it's me when you can't see me?" asked Cuchulainn with a frown.

"Because I remember you. Cu…Cullen?" She frowned deeply as she began to look a bit frustrated.

"This has gone on long enough, James. We need to stop her before someone passes through and thinks she's a witch or something!" said Esther, starting to become frantic.

Cuchulainn smirked faintly and leaned closer to Arturia's ear. "I've got a secret. Your parents can't hear me or see me because I don't want them to see me. If you're a good girl, you won't alert them to me and you won't get into trouble either. All right?" Arturia closed her mouth and nodded quickly. "Good," he said softly, "Then, when you're able to go alone I want you to visit this tree and I will come see you. All right?" He received an eager nod for that and sat back as she hurried gulped down her portion of the small meal packed and left with her parents.

When they walked away and finally disappeared out of the forest, Cuchulainn once more headed back to heaven. Clearly, Arturia was a prized spirit for she had almost immediately been sent back to Earth to be reborn, but why had she been born into a poor family? She was a leader, a natural one with a noble heart who sought only the best in the people around her. What use was a peasant life for such a woman?

Cuchulainn laid down beneath the branches of the oak tree and watched as squirrels passed by quickly through his ghostly legs. He had promised he would see Arturia again as he had promised to see her before. Perhaps she would not see him, but indeed she could at least speak with him and that was a welcome talent. She wasn't the same as before, but perhaps he could tell her the tales he had heard of her previous life to while away the time.

When he looked up expecting to see a little girl he found himself staring at a young woman instead, her hair pulled back in a braid and covered with a piece of cloth that he supposed had been white at one point in time. Arturia, however, held the same determined gaze that she had when he had first seen her; it was the look of a king.

"Hello," he said and sat up. "Please, sit beside me."

She coughed hard into a handkerchief and moved closer to the tree. "The priest said I'm sick because I come here and talk with the spirits. Is this true?"

"No," said Cuchulainn with a snort. "Sit, I'm not going to make you any sicker."

Arturia hesitated a moment and moved closer, sitting down next to him. "I can feel where you're sitting. It's cold there," she said.

"And you aren't afraid?"

"Should I be afraid of a soul?" she asked.

"No, you shouldn't. I'm not any different than you." He grinned and leaned back against the gnarled trunk of the tree. "How did you get sick?"

"I stayed out in these woods last week, hoping to see you again. You said I should come when I could travel alone and my father wanted me to go and try to attract a husband." She looked positively disgusted with this option before coughing hard into her handkerchief. "I don't want to look for a husband! Father keeps trying to make me marry these old men because they're rich, but I don't like them."

"Understandable," said Cuchulainn. "That cough sounds bad. You should see a healer about that."

"I've already been. I have been drinking that horrible tea mixture for a week already and I'm not getting any better." She coughed again and Cuchulainn could see a bit of blood coming up into the dirty cloth. She took it away and rubbed her face. She was sweating now and her face was pale from fear. "I'm dying, aren't I?"

"I can't answer that," he said softly. "All I can say is that this was the same place you died before… long ago in another life."

She turned sharply to look at him. "How do you know that?"

"Because I was there," he said, smiling faintly.

"The wounds in my shoulder and side?"

"Were from a battle on the hill. You bade your knight take your sword away to a lady on the lake and then died smiling up at me." He gazed at her a long moment and reached up to touch her cheek. "You need to go back before you get worse. I think coming out here makes it harder on you to get better."

"I don't care," she said in clear defiance. "I'm old enough to marry then I'm old enough to make some decisions on my own."

"You're a strip of a girl, little lioness," he said, chuckling, "but you're welcome to continue keeping me company for however long you feel you can stay."

She stood up and nodded to him, holding her head up high like the king he had seen in the past. "Then, let us meet again. Let us meet here so we may speak again about anything you want. I like talking to you." She smiled at him faintly, much like she had when she finally died. Cuchulainn's chest ached strangely before he nodded to her and realized she couldn't see him still.

"Aye, come and I'll see you," he said, grinning at her.

She smiled a bit more and then turned away, leaving him there to watch her walk back out of the forest toward the town he could faintly see in the distance. Perhaps the next time he saw her she would be well and married to a man, the way any girl would want to live.

It wasn't to be. He gazed down at her body and touched the cold skin of her cheek as her father, now much older with his hair growing white, dig a hole in the ground under the tree. A priest stood by and whispered over her clean white clad body as he made the sign of the cross over her. "May you rest in death the way you could not in life," he said softly.

Cuchulainn gazed at her and found his own heart drop away from his ghostly body. Once more he had come when she was either dead or dying. Mayhap he simply had a terrible sense of time?

"She died under this tree," said James softly. "She said she was going out to gather some wood for the cooking fire. She didn't return and… I assumed the worst. I went out looking for her and found her here under this tree, touching it with those little fingers of hers as though she had been speaking to it like an old friend."

"She had been touched with a sickness, friend," said the priest softly. "A sickness that couldn't be cured, but by the grace of God. In the end, I simply think it was her time to join Him in Heaven."

James gazed at his daughter's face as tears rolled over his thin cheeks. "My little girl," he said softly.

"Yes, and now she is with Esther and Jesus in Heaven. Let us pray for her soul to reach them and bury her. It will get dark soon and far worse than demons and spirits will come out here to rob us if we don't hurry us away," said the priest as he laid a steady hand on James' shoulder. James nodded and handed the priest a shovel before he leaned down and picked up Arturia's body and laid her there in the hole.

"No worries, men. That woman will come back again. I know it," said Cuchulainn as he watched. As they covered her with dirt he sang a lament for her, one full of the sorrow of her passing but the possible joy of seeing her once more. It seemed that the father and the priest could hear it as well, for they worked much faster than before, much easier.

"Let us away, my friend," said the priest as he looked up at the tree and touched its old gnarled trunk. "This tree is even weeping for her passing. Perhaps your Arturia had been its friend. Let us leave it to its grieving."

Cuchulainn would have laughed at the irony of a Christian priest claiming an old tree was weeping for the passing of a girl, but Cuchulainn knew too well that the tree was indeed sad she was gone again as was he. Instead, he stayed around until he felt a gentle hand touch his shoulder. There, he found the gentle face of his Emer gazing up at him and motioning for him to leave. Such a beautiful woman she was with her long dark hair and blue eyes, her slender form and graceful feminity that Cuchulainn could sometimes scarcely breathe around her.

"You've been coming here it seems," she said softly. "Perhaps you might tell me why one day."

"Perhaps," he said, smiling sadly at her. "But for now, I suppose we should head back where the dead belong."

"And perhaps you might be able to find the person you have witnessed the burial for," she said. She kissed him gently on his lips, lingering a moment before taking his hands and leaving with him through the veil between this world and the next.

"Indeed, perhaps I'll finally see her there," said Cuchulainn softly.