Title: Sarmatian Ladies
Author: Jmaria
Rating: PG-13 - R
Disclaimers/Spoilers: Joss owns the Buffy crew, Bruckheimer, Franzoni, & Fuqua own this incarnation of Arthur & his knights. A bit of Kassandra's backstory is borrowed from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Firebrand. It goes without saying that I do not own her stuff either.
Summary: Bringing him home again….
A/N: We're getting down to the last two chapters of SL. Dag is safe (sleeping, but safe), all of the knights are together again, and Morgana can finally be happy. Right?
A/N2: I know - I know. It took forever. I'm sorry. I actually have had the last two chapters mapped out on a piece of paper (which I normally don't do because then it kinda kills the story and urgency to write out of me) for the last year and a half. I know what's gonna happen in this, know where I have to take the story and characters, but dammit, they just wouldn't cooperate with me for the last eight months.
A/N3: This part is slightly smaller because it's chapter 17a. I broke it in two so that there was some proof that I actually have been working on this. Kay?

17a. This Is How It Was For Us

There might be a way yet. If she gave the mirror back to the sea, help would come, Laurel had said. She could open that road again.
- Under Camelot's Banner, Sarah Zettel

Outside Delphi
Two Hours Earlier

The little boy was held tightly to his mother's chest as she yanked his shaken father forward into the mock temple that the tourism bureau had fashioned years ago. Morgana couldn't let anything happen to them, and had hurriedly whisked them away from Europa's discovery. If the slippery little twit of a liaison learned of Morgana's son, she would most certainly direct her true master to them. Her stupid mistakes were jeopardizing sixteen hundred years of planning.

"I - I don't understand how - Morgan, what's going on?" Percy shook his head again, trying to focus on where he was and what had happened.

"Percy, give me like five minutes, all right? I promise I will explain everything then," Morgana murmured, holding her son tighter to her breast.

"You - you did something to us, to our son and to me -" Percy's hand clenched onto her arm tightly as he saw Morgana's glare directed on her.

"Percy, this isn't really the time for you to be catching up to speed. If he even gets wind that you and the child are alive - "

"All hell will literally break loose with his wrath," Kassandra interrupted them. "He would do to your love and your son what his former self had done to me and my first born child. My one and only son. What he did to your first son."

There was such pain in her words. Morgana's heart tore at that thought, and clutched tightly at her baby. Percy's hands tugged firmly on her, and she knew it was weak to lean back on him. Kassandra smiled sadly at them. It had three lifetimes to form this little family - three repetitious cycles of death and war and impossible love - one had already lived through this three times, and the other two had lived through this twice. Kassandra reached out to touch the soft skin of the little boy. He looked a little like her lost son and her brothers, this precious little child.

Apollo's curse on her had waned over the centuries, but not before he had stripped everything from her. Andros, her infant son, had been slaughtered months before her own death. Kassandra blinked away her tears as she heard Ismene and Pelagius enter behind her. Yes, they must protect this innocent little life from his soul's venomous father. She turned her gaze back to the younger Power. Morgana's eyes - those ever expressive orbs that she had surely inherited from her father - spoke her request before she even voiced it. That or Kassandra had become extremely well-versed in the art of reading people. She'd definitely had had the time to hone that skill.

"Mother, I implore you to protect them from him," Morgana begged. "I can't watch after them and -"

"Shh, my daughter. You have far to go to aid your knights, and the gods know we cannot let innocent blood be spilt. Give me the child."

Her grandson came to her arms easily, and Morgana gave her little boy to Kassandra despite Percy's unspoken protest. A sad smile crossed Kassandra's lips. It had been so long since she'd held a child. Her Andros had been torn from her too soon, and her daughters given safely over to her trusted handmaiden and their father respectively not long after they were born. The battle for Troy had long since ended by the time her daughters had been born, but the fear had long been ingrained in the former priestess turned Power. She'd had three short months with her daughters. Morganna had been sent to the east and to the Amazonian descendants of her grandmother's people, while Guinevere had gone north to their father and the Woads who would treat her as the high lady of Kassandra's father's people.

"You haven't time to let the red-haired witch work her magic, Morgana." Kassandra murmured softly against her grandson's head. "You're very loyal troop is losing ground quickly, and if the abomination gets his grips into the first knight, your plan will quickly unravel. Where the heart is left wanting soon the spirits fail."

"Mother, you could have easily have said 'or the past will again repeat itself'." Morgana grumbled.

"Yes, but then you would roll your eyes and ignore me as so many have in my past. We will explain it to the boy," Kassandra shifted the sleepy little boy in her arms as she looked between her daughter and the former knight. "Now go. He plots and pulls on old tricks to sway the oldest slayer."

"The pendant?" Morgana whispered. "I thought -"

"You assumed that he would let go of such a valuable trinket?"

"Excuse me - are you making any bloody sense?" Percy snapped, glancing between the mother of his child and her mother.

"Percy -" Morgana stopped at the look Kassandra gave her a look she was all too familiar with.

"It will all make sense in due time, my boy. Unfortunately Morgana hasn't the time to explain it more thoroughly to you. That chore is left to her aunt and I to handle."

"Morgan -"

"Percy I have to go. Kassandra will look after you and the baby. I have to go."

Morgana turned away from her love and her baby and went to do what she'd been brought back to do. It was time to right the wrongs she'd done in the past.

Harrington Hospice, 2005

Dawn took in every nuance of his face and of his body not realizing how much of him she'd missed and taken for granted when he'd been alive. She could hear the others in the room, talking quietly to each other. Faith stood at the doorway, her eyes drifting between the younger woman and the doctor hovering just outside the doorway with Arthur. Faith didn't like hospitals, and normally, neither did Dawn. The fact that doctor death dealer was pacing just outside their door wasn't easing the creepy feeling either woman was having at the moment. Boris stood beside her, torn between going to his old friend's side with Dawn or keeping Arthur's father out of the room. Arthur glanced back into the room every so often, but most of his attention was on his fuming father.

Boris had come over after a few minutes, his hands resting gently on her shoulders. Dawn smiled up at him, one hand clutching Dag's hand, the other resting on Boris' hand on her shoulder.

"He's safe now, little one. We've got him home again."

"Is he? He was seconds away from death, Boris. I almost lost him again."

"Hush now, we've got our boy back where he belongs. With his family, his woman and his babe," Boris kissed the top of her head. Dawn's lips quivered as she remembered the baby. The wrong baby. The liaisons' words shivered down her spin as she watched the sleeping man. Her child was Dagonet's baby, not this reincarnation of him. The child of a man long dead.

"How will he react?" Dawn whispered, the thought racing through her mind. "I mean, it's his baby, but it's not."

"If he's anything like our Dag was, he'll love it no matter what," Boris glanced up at Faith, not sure how to handle this. She gave him an equally confused look. She was just here to train 'em, she didn't know how this Dag would react to the announcement that Dawn was carrying the child of a man who'd been dead for well over sixteen hundred years.

"And will he still love me?" Dawn whimpered. She'd gotten his image back, but that wasn't the same thing as having the same man back. None of the knights were exactly like they had been back then. Not even Boris was the same man.

"D," Faith gently nudged Boris out of the way, and sat on the edge of the chair, her arm slipping around her. "He's gotta love you. You're smokin' hot, D. 'Sides, Boris was makin' out with his girl from the past within twenty minutes. He can't forget the love you shared, not if Gwen and Art and Boris and Jenna all remembered their love. No doubt they've got half a what you had with Dagonet."

"The tart speaks true enough," Boris winked at Faith, who only punched him lightly on the shoulder. Dawn gave the two of them a watery smile.

"Oh, Dag, I wish you would wake up," Dawn sighed heavily, her hand clasping his tightly. She whispered quietly for only him to here. "Even if you're not really you anymore, I still need you."

Outside in the hallway, old Dr. Kingston was fuming away at his son. Arthur glanced back over at his knights - that immediate knowledge of them being his brothers had come on stronger than he'd ever imagined with the arrival of Lancelot or Lanyon, or whatever he was going by in this day and age. It took all of Arthur's concentration to focus on his father's outraged blustering.

"Father, she is his fiancée. That man is his brother. We've found his family, I should think you'd be happy for them. And for yourself. You can finally retire and take mother on that holiday you kept pushing back."

"Of course I would be happy - if I was genuinely convinced that this man and woman are whom they claim to be," his father huffed.

"I vouched for them, Father," Arthur tried to shake away his confusion as he looked at his father. "I give you my word that they are who they say they are. I have seen - "

"It's not your word I need, boy," his father snapped, raking a hand through his hair. "Photo identification, a license, a certificate of birth, DNA screening -"

"What would they gain by claiming a man that doesn't belong to them?" Arthur cut his father off from his need for proof. "Someone has at last claimed a man we thought forgotten by the world. That in itself is a remarkable thing."

"If it proves to be true, then yes," Kingston, sr. huffed, "I suppose it would be rather remarkable." Remarkable if I'm not struck down by the frightening little Italian man's legion of henchmen for failing so utterly for not keeping my son away from this man.

"All of which I'd be more than happy to provide," a dark haired woman said from behind them. Arthur turned around in utter shock.

"Mor-" Arthur's entire body froze as the recognition hit him hard.

"Hush, now, Arthur dear. Let the grown-ups handle this," the woman dug through a large beaded bag and handed an ample supply of paper to Arthur's father. Arthur frowned at her. The paper was blank, as was the photo paper. She merely winked at him. His father fidgeted again.

"Dagonet Knight Haggarty, twenty-nine, younger adopted brother of Boris Haggarty. Engaged to one Dawn Marie Summers, twenty-one, currently the expectant mother of his unborn child. Both are employees of the IWC, a prominent philanthropic organization dedicated to helping underprivileged children and teens throughout the world. A watchdog organization. Here are their last three years tax records, in L.A., Rome, and most currently London." The woman paused for a breath as Lanyon burst through the doors behind her. The nurse Margaret and two guards were chasing after him. Lanyon paused, watching her curiously as she smiled. "I see you've already met the IWC's press correspondent?"

"And just who might you be, young lady?" Dr. Kingston blustered, shaking the papers rudely in her face.

All light and laughter went out of her eyes. She slapped his hand away from her face, shocking Arthur and Lanyon. An angry red welt formed on his hand as he shrank back from her, almost cowering behind his son. She pulled herself up to her full height. Arthur recognized the straightening of those same shoulders in a similar confrontation so many lifetimes ago.

"Morgana Fey Raven," Morgana snapped, an old power dripping from her words as she leveled a glare on the now shaken doctor. "You and your staff will now immediately prepare Mr. Haggarty to be moved to the location I will provide your staff. And you will take my name to your superior, and tell him that the Raven is not as weak as she was when we met last."

Arthur watched in shock as his father simply nodded and scurried away towards the nurses' station. Morgana simply let out a low breath. She looked at him for a brief moment, showing him the sorrow in her eyes. Then without another word, she entered Dagonet's room, waiting for the two former knights to follow her in.

The Village South of Hadrian's Wall, 467-468

As all things with the four Sarmatian women, the journey proved to be more difficult than they had originally planned. The year had turned in the five days it took for them to finally reach their destination. The last of the Roman troops had moved out, running for the safety of their mother country and fleeing the dangerous outposts of the empire. Such movement hindered the times when Morgana could safely lead her own small troop. Warrants and their images had surely been sent out to even the farthest reaches of the dwindling Empire.

They reached the village at Hadrian's Wall in the early morning hours of their sixth day of travel. The sun had barely peaked over the hills and already laborers' worked on the construction of a new building alongside the existing fort. New outbuilding had already been built in the village itself, and the heavy scent of fresh cut wood assaulted their senses. Other new comers to the village bustled in the faint early morning light, some out looking for work or going to work.

"The murmurings must be true," Viviane murmured to Morgana.

"What murmurings?" Elaine asked brusquely.

"Of Saxon scum laying waste to Briton," Isolde snapped, her paitience with the often-troublesome Lady Lion wearing thin. "This isle positively reeks with fear and hopelessness."

"Imagine what it would be like to see these once noble people without the shackles of the Roman and the death threats of the Saxon bearing down on them all at once," Viviane murmured. Leave it to Viviane to pity those in a less dire situation than she herself had been in less than a year ago.

"I imagine our men looked as depressing to them as they do to us," Morgana answered, drawing her hood closer round her face.

"Our men still bore the nobility of our people," Elaine sniffed, thinking of her own Lancelot.

"Yes, such noble slaves to Rome they made," Morgana couldn't hold her tongue any longer. Elaine's superiority was wearing thin on her own nerves. "Such noble fodder, to die for a now abandoned outpost."

"You will hold your tongue when you speak of such men, wench," a voice boomed from behind her.

Morgana turned to face the war-scarred man standing threateningly behind them. The set of his eyes seemed familiar, and the anger in his voice marked his lineage better than any stamp, seal or crest ever could. He was Sarmatian, of this there was no doubt. The wench and dozen children screaming and playing behind him were not. The woman was out of Briton, while the children obviously had been sired by a Sarmatian who prided himself a stud of sorts. Morgana had not hoped to confront one of her countrymen this way, but she had little choice in how the Gods deemed for this encounter to play out.

This was not the time for stooping and bowing to keep hidden. Indeed, they had little to fear with the Romans in a mad dash to free themselves of this unsavory territory. Morgana pulled the hood away from her face so the man could see the same features of their people that had been on his own face and the face of his children. He had answered her claim in the crude tongue of his new home, while her own claim had been in the tongue of her people. A thought crossed her mind.

"As such a victim of Rome as you have been, I've no doubt you too have felt my sentiment, brother," Morgana spoke slowly in the Sarmatian tongue. The red-haired woman beside him looked damned uncomfortable at her use of the foreign tongue.

"I ain't your brother, you little - "

"Bors, what'd she say?" the woman asked, clutching a bundle closer to her chest.

"What?" the man named Bors looked back at her. "Didn't you hear her clearly enough?"

"She spoke in tongues, Bors. I can barely understand the Woad tongue."

"I said that we have all been slaves to the damned Romans and have little to thank them for, Briton," Morgana said drolly, making sure that her accent was thicker than necessary. "For the broodmare of a Sarmatian, one would think you'd have picked up on his People's language."

"Raven - " Isolde warned from beneath her cloak's hood.

"Hush, Wolf," Morgana warned in Sarmatian, before switching back. "We seek the noble knight who led many of our brothers to their unnecessary deaths."

"Then you do not have far to go, my lady," A voice said from behind Bors' herd of children. A man tall and with the stance of an emperor or pope stood at the end of the herd of children. It was the man the Oracle had showed her, the man she had been sent to find. Two men stood beside him, weapons drawn. They bore the looks of the northern and western tribes of her people. None bore the looks of the eastern or southern tribes, the tribes marking the men they had sought for so many years.

And looking at them, Morgana knew the truth. She saw the deaths of the men they had sought. It was far fewer than seven of her countrymen that now lived at that bastard Hadrian's Wall. Three remained of a generation's worth of Sarmatian men. And none of those three were the three that the Sarmatian ladies had been purposely searching to find.

Lancelot and Tristan had not lived long enough to fully taste their freedom from Rome. Poor Dagonet, the gentle giant and protector, had not even had a glimpse of his freedom.

Summers Cottage, 2005

Buffy peered in through the darkened windows of the large cottage her sister, Faith, Vi, and Willow all now lived in with a half dozen strange men and woman who had some creepy past-life bond. Hurt and a bit of anger lanced through her as she thought about it. Dawn should be in London or better yet, Rome, working behind the scenes for the Council. Her little sister should not be pregnant and working for the damned Powers that Suck Beyond the Telling of it.

"Miss Summers? Is everything alright?" a woman asked, startling her. Buffy whirled around to face the newcomer. The tall dark haired woman gasped in her own shock. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, miss. I thought you were one of the family."

"Excuse me?" Buffy asked, puzzled at her comment.

"I thought you were one of the Summers sisters. But, looking at you close up I can see I was clearly mistaken."

"You weren't," Buffy snapped, the hurt and anger growing.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I had met all of the five sisters. They didn't mention a sixth sister."

"I'm the oldest. I'm Buffy Summers, and you are?"

"Oh! I'm Eugenia Mortimer. Well, this certainly explains everything."

"Huh?"

"I work at the post office you see, and this strange package came for a Buffy Summers. Naturally, I knew of Faith, Gwen, Vi, Dawn and Willow Summers, but I did not recall meeting a sister with the odd name," a chagrinned look passed over her delicate features. "Pardon for the insult."

"You were saying there was a package?" Buffy said coolly.

"Oh, yes," the younger woman appeared to be flustered. "Here's your package Miss Summers. We hardly ever get post from London, much less Italy. That's why I was convinced it was a prank, you see."

"Sure, whatever."

"Well, I best be off. Supper with the family and all. Can't keep my family waiting."

"Yeah. Thanks for dropping it off."

"Not a problem, you have a good evening Miss Summers."

Buffy waited until the woman left before actually taking a look at the package. It was the size of a ring box, and the address was her own in London. She smiled faintly. The Immortal was always sending her little trinkets in the mail, and they always arrived when she least expected them to.

Inside the box was a pale gold necklace that looked old but glittered as if it were brand new. Four glittering diamonds separated three dark pink stone roses all wound together by fine delicate gold strands. Buffy frowned slightly as she delicately ran a fingertip over the pendant. A unpleasant chill ran over her spine as she held the necklace. She glanced at her watch. Where the hell was everyone?

Over the hill, Europa watched as Buffy Summers stared down at the pendant that had once drawn the Lady Lion's broken heart over to the Lord of Death's side. She had not wanted this woman near her Lord, but even now Europa could not bend her master to her will. He did not wish to possess her as much as he wished to possess this soul. Three times he'd vied for her soul, and two times so far he had been rebuffed. He had possessed her body in each incarnation, but her heart and her soul still belonged to another man. It was a snub the Lord of Death could not and would not bear any longer.

Europa felt her own heart sink in guilt and pain as she turned to return to her lord. But she found she could not move with the ease she had before. She tried again, but still could not budge her form to her master's side. She looked frantically around her, searching out the source of her powerlessness. The answer came quickly enough.

"Oh, Europa, we are so disappointed in you," Ismene sighed from behind her. "We had put so much hope in you this time, and you have spat in our faces."