SEMPER LIBER

Summary: A dying man's final request sends a young woman to a new life at Badon Hill. TristanOC.

Disclaimer & Author's Note: I like to think that Malory would have his legends of King Arthur belong to the ages, but I cannot lay claim to them nor to those responsible for the 2004 film by the same name. Thank you for reading, and enjoy!

A/N#2: Sorry for the delay. Graduate school is a bitch goddess. You'd think I'd have time to whip out one of these itty bitty chapters, but you'd be wrong. Also, I've known how this thing would end all along, and that's where we're headed. In the meantime, I'm a bit tired of it, and have another story in the works that I like much better at the moment. Which says nothing about either story and everything about the nature of the author. Enjoy!

Chapter 21: Tender

As far as Tristan was concerned, Lowri was not precocious: she was a monster. At the age of six months, she was quick enough to disappear into the other room in the time it took to put on his boots. She scraped her chubby hands and knees on the floor, hid under the board, and stuck her mother's loose lilac and lavender petals into her mouth until she choked. He considered the summer season a blessing: he wouldn't have dared light a fire anywhere in the infant's presence.

Tristan did not pause in his whittling as Lowri crawled across the floor in pursuit of the paper thin wood shavings littered at his feet. She pushed herself into a sitting position and pressed one chubby fist to the pink bow of her lips. She stared at him blankly.

"What?" He stilled his knife and smirked. "What do you want?"

Lowri slapped her hands against the ground and chirped a laugh.

Smiling slightly, Tristan bent his head back to his work. A wooden horse the size of his palm was taking shape in his hands, big enough that he wouldn't have to worry about his daughter shoving it into her mouth and choking on it. He couldn't help but notice that she wasn't watching the quick movements of his hands, but his face.

"What?" he repeated.

"She's not going to answer you any time soon," Cariad chuckled, closing the door on the mild summer rainstorm outside. She hung her light cloak over a chair and leaned in the doorway of the bedroom, smiling at the sight of Tristan sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of their daughter. The weather didn't bother him – he would have enjoyed sitting outside in the warm, light rain – but Lowri couldn't go with him, so he stayed inside.

Raising his head, Tristan arched an eyebrow at Cariad. "Doesn't mean I can't ask."

"Hm." Cariad crossed the room and bent down to lay a chaste kiss on his lips, then lifted Lowri easily from the floor. The baby squeaked and wrapped her fist around a lock of her mother's hair, placing it promptly in her mouth. Cariad gently pulled her hair loose. "And how is my baby girl?"

"She's not going to answer you any time soon," Tristan said without looking up. "I am well, by the way."

"I know," Cariad said lightly. She laid Lowri on her back on the bed against which Tristan sat. She grasped his chin in her hand and turned his face up towards hers. She brushed her thumb against the curved corner of his lips. "It is good to see you happy," she said softly.

Tristan reached up and pulled her lips down onto his. He held her there even after he ended the kiss, his forehead pressed against hers, eyes closed. "You have made me happy," he said, his words a gift he was learning to give more freely.

Cariad kissed him again, then stood up. She slipped onto the bed between her daughter and the wall. Brushing her hand over the infant's sparse, dark curls, she smiled. "You have made me happy," she echoed him, and when Tristan looked up he found dark eyes shining warmly and knew her words were for him.

Cariad closed her eyes with a sigh and drew Lowri close to her, looking forward to the soft warm sleep of a summer afternoon. The baby turned her face into her mother's shoulder, her tiny fist closing instinctively around the light fabric of Cariad's dress.

Tristan tore his gaze away from the family he had never dared to imagine and concentrated on the deceptively crude horse taking shape in his hands.

-

Cariad turned and grinned brightly, her skirts twisting around her ankles. With unbridled enthusiasm, she crossed the courtyard and wrapped her free arm around Tristan's neck, pulling him close. She pressed her happy smile into the curve of his neck. "You're back!"

A smile twitched onto Tristan's lips and disappeared before his fellows could see. His horse stood weary behind him, forgotten for the moment. "I was gone?" He tipped Cariad's face up and greeted her properly with a kiss. "I did not realize." He reached for Lowri, hard, heavy hands gentling instinctively as he lifted his daughter from Cariad's arms. It was no longer strange to hold life in his hands. How many years had he dispensed death, only to be rewarded with these wide brown eyes – his – full of trust and wonder?

"You have been gone for three days," Cariad insisted.

"If you say," he said, watching Lowri carefully. He frowned. "She's different." Meeting Lowri's inquisitive gaze, Tristan repeated, "You're different."

"Ma ma ma ma ma!" Lowri exclaimed.

Cariad pursed her lips, trying in vain to conceal her joy. "And proud of it," she said brightly.

Tristan's face was a mask of stone, but beneath his mind was racing. It suddenly occurred to him that this little person had begun the slow and obstacled path between being her mother's apendage and her own individual. Overwhelmed, Tristan placed Lowri back into her mother's arms. "I need to take care of the horse."

Cariad frowned, pressing a kiss to the baby's temple. "Tristan?"

He turned away, leading the ornery grey towards the stables. Behind him, Lowri chirped, "Da!" For the first time in thirteen years, for the first time since that first night away from home, Tristan felt tears sting at the back of his eyes.

He could hear Bors laughing.

-

"Lala," Lowri said, reaching out and flexing her hands.

Galahad took the one-year-old from her mother, wrapping the edge of his cloak around her tiny body. Cariad sat beside him, leaning her elbows on the table behind them. There weren't many soldiers here tonight. Half of Arthur's knights were in a Roman village four leagues south, at the request of the Roman noble who lived there. Most of Nevius's guard was dispatched to the eastern shore to escort a caravan of merchants crossing from Gaul to replace the keep's winter stores. Galahad, Gawain, Kay, and a handful of Roman infantry and guards kept to the fortress, lazily watching the cobblestones ice over and drinking too much in the meanwhile.

Cariad brushed Lowri's brown curls off her flushed cheeks, stroking her finger there tenderly. She sighed and looked across the tavern.

Galahad rubbed Lowri's back when she curled into his warmth, pressing her face against his shirt. "What's wrong?" he asked Cariad.

"I…" she began. She stopped and sighed again, then turned to face Galahad, trying to put the object of her frustration out of her sight, if not out of her mind. "Have I done something to anger Gawain?" she asked finally.

Before he could think to control his response, Galahad's eyes widened.

Cariad latched onto his reaction immediately. "What? What have I done?"

Galahad glanced quickly across the tavern to make sure Gawain wasn't watching – he was drinking with one of the Roman guards and taking the other man's money at cards – before he met his friend's demanding gaze. "You have done nothing to upset Gawain."

Cariad frowned. "Do not lie to me, Galahad. It doesn't suit you."

Shaking his head, Galahad looked down at Lowri, who was yawning, half-asleep in his lap. "He is… jealous," he said at last. He looked up quickly to gauge her reaction.

"Of me?" Cariad asked incredulously. "He…"

"Of Tristan," Galahad interrupted her sharply.

Cariad began to laugh, but the young knight's cold gaze stopped her short. "Gawain has earned his beautiful Sarmatian wife and family a thousand times over," she said gently. "And he will survive to meet them. I am sure of it."

Shaking his head, Galahad looked away. "No."

Cariad frowned. "You cannot be so pessimistic, Galahad. Not you." She could see him losing patience with her in the tight line of his jaw and the flush rising from the collar of his shirt.

"You women are so stupid," Galahad growled.

"Pardon?" Cariad glared at him in the flickering light of the tavern, the infant spurs of anger beginning to twine with her growing confusion.

Gawain chose that moment to look up from his game, his winner's grin half-drunk and half-obnoxious. Galahad raised one hand in greeting. The blond knight rose from his table and stole a tankard from Vanora, ignoring the sting of her slap on his shoulder as he passed. His eyes darkened a little at the sight of Lowri snuggled into Galahad's cloak, but the shadow was cast for only a moment.

The moment spoke an eternity. In Gawain's reaction, Cariad could see her own brief flash of sad horror, the cold spark of realization. The air between the three of them had stopped and become stagnant. Gawain looked angrily to Galahad, and in his moment of inattention, Cariad swooped her child out of the youngest knight's lap and fled the tavern.

Gawain grabbed Galahad by the collar, hauling him roughly to his feet. "What have you told her?" he seethed, masking an all too familiar ache with anger.

Galahad refused the fight. "I didn't tell her anything."

-

Amused, Gawain watched as the young Roman soldier measured the distance between himself and the post. Behind and to the left of the young man, Tristan crossed his arms over his chest and ducked his head slightly to hide a knowing smirk. The soldier took aim. His blade flew through the air and sank deep into the wood two inches below Tristan's. The scout accepted the young man's money without a word, then pulled his own blade from the post.

"You really should give them time to learn what they are getting into before you start taking their money," Gawain said with a loose grin.

"He challenged me," Tristan muttered, rejoining Gawain and Galahad had the table. He looked sharply to the youngest of them, then cast his eyes towards the table where Lancelot sat at dice with a pair of Roman soldiers and one of the young Britons from the fort.

Galahad scowled but removed himself with controlled haste.

Gawain regarded Tristan skeptically, saying nothing but watching as the other man's gaze rose from the table and traveled directly across the tavern to where Cariad stood filling a drink for Galahad. The well-intentioned idiot motioned towards their table, and with a teasing smirk, the girl lifted two mugs and made her way through the evening crowd.

Tristan spared her a smile as she approached, trading the drink for the trio of coins he'd just taken from the Roman. Cariad grinned, placing the second drink in front of Gawain without looking at him. "What have you done?"

He shrugged, forgetting for a moment why he'd looked to her in the first place, pleased to simply be looking at her. "Nothing untoward."

"Well, then."

Gawain reached for his drink, and her smile faltered for the briefest moment when his fingers brushed hers. She snatched her hand away and, without thinking, held it in front of her as if she'd been burned. Frustrated, Cariad nearly growled. She turned away from the table.

Before she'd taken two steps, Tristan's strong fingers closed around her wrist. He said nothing but met her eye blankly, searching. He found nothing there to fuel his anger – he hadn't expected he would – so he let her go, rubbing his thumb tenderly over the curve of her wrist as he pulled away.

"What the hell are you doing, Tristan?" Gawain barked. Cariad regarded him sharply, accusing and sad, before she turned to join Galahad at Lancelot's table.

As always, Tristan chose his words carefully. "She misses you," he said, voice dark and low. He turned to Gawain, open-faced.

"I do not know what you mean," Gawain said slowly.

"You do," Tristan answered with a calm he did not feel. "You are her friend."

Gawain stood. "Tristan…"

Tristan shook his head sharply, cutting off the other man's protest. He bit out each word as if striking them from stone. "Do not punish her on my account." Without another word, he took his ale and joined the mother of his child, who slipped her arm through his with a measure of affection meant to meet his characteristic stoicism without challenging it.