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: Because, sometimes even sisters have to decide if it's best to just part ways, or tighten the bonds that made them.
A/N: I can't remember if they buried or burned Tristan, so we're going with buried. Also, there is only one more part to this story.

18. Weight of the World

*****
How strange that he who'd told her he would die for nothing would now be willing to give his life for hers.
- Knight of Darkness, Kinley MacGregor
*****

*****
Summers Cottage, 2005
*****

Morgana looked over at the woman she'd helped bring to ruin over 1,600 years before. Still her heart hurt at the very sight of the girl. And that was what she was - a young girl who'd been drawn back into the life of these warriors. Morgana shook her head at that thought and took in the sight of them. Two of her fellow warriors were before her, giving her odd looks, and the men that had been destroyed by her enemies looked tense. Except for those who'd been long gone before she and small band had even arrived at the Roman fort. Trevor and Lanyon stared blankly at her, seeing and unseeing at the same time.

"Sister?" Dawn frowned back at her, her eyes going to Gwen's shocked face before flicking over to Arthur.

"Long story short," Morgana sighed, "Is that everything you know is wrong. But it is a tale I cannot share until all the knights are gathered, and the others as well. And definitely not until Dagonet is settled peacefully in his bed. There is something I need to speak to Dawn about alone. And I'll need that necklace from you, Buffy."

"Why? Everyone is freaking out about the Immortal's gift to me, and no one is bothering to explain to me why," the slayer's eyes narrowed suspiciously at her. "Who are you?"

"Morgana Raven. Morgan Le Fay. However you wish to word it, I am she. The great witch, the evil seductress, the incestuous bitch. I've heard them ten-fold over the centuries," Morgana shook her head, her dark curls hiding her eyes from sight. "The bed should be set up, gentlemen. In that back room over there."

She strode forward to Buffy's side, her hand outstretched for the necklace. Buffy reeled back, open hostility on her face. Morgana smiled softly, as if she knew the reason why Buffy distrusted her so much.

"I have made good on my promise, little lioness. He is restored to your side once again, be at peace."

Dawn frowned at this, watching as a serene look passed over Buffy's face. To be honest, she hadn't seen her sister look like that since Sunnydale had collapsed in on itself after they squashed the First.

"We should all rest. We'll discuss it on the morrow when all are finally in attendance."

Dawn expected some kind of outcry at this, but instead all of the knights and the women nodded. She seemed to be the only one actually freaking out a bit at the high-handedness of Morgana. She opened her mouth to say something, but caught the subtle wink the witch/Power sent her way.

"Come, they've settled him in," she nodded to the room the medical technicians were leaving.

"We'll talk tomorrow, Dawnie," Buffy murmured distractedly, following Faith from the room.

Dawn stared at her sister, baffled that Buffy had even shown up in the first place. She hurried after Morgana, not sure if she wanted to leave Dagonet undefended with the infamous woman for long.

"He's safe enough with me," Morgana replied as soon as the door was shut behind her. "I've spent sixteen hundred years keeping him safe for you. I'm not about to harm him in any way now that the two of you are reunited."

"What was that back there? They went from hostile to docile in three second flat."

"2.47 seconds, a new record for me, actually," Morgana smiled.

"What are you?" Dawn sat down quickly beside the still form of her lover.

"A Power, one of two children born of two Powers who hold court over all that has been and will be in our little corner of this dimension," Morgana sighed, sitting in a comfy looking rocker that Dawn had never seen before today.

"Huh?"

"You heard Gwen call me sister back in there, yes?"

"Yeah, but it didn't make any sense."

"We were not raised as sisters, Guinevere and I. We were in our forties and had become bitter enemies before we even learned of our kinship. We were fraternal twins."

"What? Then Merlin was your father?" Dawn shook her head.

"Yes. Obviously, you knew him as a powerless mortal and a leader of the Woads. He didn't come into his Powers until after his death, only five years after the Battle on Badon Hill."

"Five years?"

"He was killed alongside his granddaughter, Elspeth."

"Arthur's daughter," Dawn's hands clenched at her stomach. It would have destroyed Guinevere and Arthur to lose both an ally, father, and child. "I thought Arthur never had any children besides Mordred."

"Arthur fathered Guinevere's children. He never sired any legitimate male children with her. And before you even mention Mordred being my son, you already know that is untrue. Mordred was the bastard get of Uther, not Arthur."

"I don't understand," Dawn rubbed tiredly at her eyes.

"Rest, and all will be revealed."

*****
The Old Roman Fort, 468
*****

Morgana was determined to see her sisters through this. She could not let this final blow destroy them at any cost. Viviane was the nearest to her, and in truth the only sanity left to her. Isolde and Elaine were devastated with the loss. Already the once fierce warrior known as the Lady Wolf had drawn in on herself. Morgana squared her shoulders and addressed their leader once more.

"Have the rites been issued? The bodies properly set to rest?"

"I cannot answer that truthfully that they have, at least by your standards, Lady Raven," Arthur looked away, but only for a moment. "We buried Dagonet, at the bequest of his lady. Lancelot - he asked to be burned."

"And Tristan?"

"He was buried as well, as he had no care either way."

"He had no care, or you never cared to ask?" Morgana leveled her gaze on him.

"I never had conversations with my men on the matter of their untimely deaths. I only know of Lancelot's preference because he told me of it," Arthur's eyes flicked over to Elaine. "Your companion, she knew him well?"

"The three of us grew up together," Morgana nodded briefly. "They died free men?"

"Yes. All of them, of their own choosing."

"No man chooses his own death," Elaine's eyes burned brightly at she glared up at Arthur.

"Still your tongue, sister," Morgana hissed back at her. "We will wish to perform the rights for our fallen brothers. Viviane was trained to ease their spirits homewards."

"Then my men and I thank you for this gift," Arthur dipped his head in Viviane's direction. "Have you shelter for the night?"

"We have not."

"Jols," Arthur nodded to the fair-haired Briton that stood behind the Knights. "Please see that these ladies are given comfortable quarters for their stay."

*****
Summers Cottage
*****

Morgana stared blankly out as the sun crept up over the hills she remembered so well from her last venture here. Things had been amazingly complicated back then. The four of them had been running purely on fear and falsehoods. How much had they ruined their chances at happiness simply because they'd been stunningly uninformed? She glanced over her shoulder at the resting Dawn. She hadn't truly slept. She'd dozed, and now her eyes blinked open, the question forming on her lips.

"I was born on the cold road back to Sarmatia," Morgana said quietly, returning her eyes back to the rising sun. "My mother had been a camp follower of her generation's worth of warriors indebted to Rome's greed. At least, that is what my adoptive family always told me. I was an old woman before I realized who my mother truly was. She had followed warriors from the south to Hadrian's wall. I was raised as a Sarmatian woman, but I was never of Sarmatian blood. My father was Merlin, and my mother was called Cassia back then. Her true name was Kassandra.

Somewhere along the journey back to Sarmatia, my mother gave birth to Guinevere and myself. I never learned why she chose to journey to Sarmatia, and to be honest I never asked. Either way, it didn't matter. She never arrived and neither did my twin. She handed me to a warrior and took Guinevere away. The warrior took me in his possession, and he and his wife reared me as their own. Within a twelvemonth, their first child was born, a beautiful blonde girl they named Elaine."

Dawn sat up, her hand twining around Dagonet's. The younger woman didn't speak, and Morgana spared her a glance before smiling sadly and resuming her tail.

"Elaine and I grew up in the same village as Lancelot, and even as a girl, she pined dearly for him. Of course, I knew that he too would be taken by the Romans as our father and his own had been. They passed through our humble village every year, testing to see if the warriors had produced viable male heirs to take and train. It stung and it burned, and the injury of our peoples' loss was never allowed to heal over. That's what happens when an entire nation is oppressed, and none did it better than Rome.

It tore Elaine apart the year they came for Lancelot. She loved that boy so badly that it poisoned every other love she could have ever had. You see, the funny thing is that the storybooks got it wrong. It was never about Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur. And the girl of interest that they overlooked? It was always Elaine."

"What does this have to do with the knights? If it wasn't about the triangle, what was it about?" Dawn murmured.

"You've heard of the Trojan war?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Of all our illustrious couples here, who do you think is Helen?" Morgana said quietly, blinking in the oncoming sunlight.

"Gwen?"

"No, she was Andromache," Morgana smiled. "To Arthur's Hector."

"And you were Helen."

"Thank the gods, no. I did not feature in the first go-around. Neither did Dagonet. Neither did you. All of this has happened before. That is why it is happening again. Thousands of years, and they've still fucked it up," Morgana sighed. "Everyone in this house, and in that house over the hill have been reincarnated. Most of them are on their third and final time, Dawn. There's a child that needs to be conceived, and one of those pairs out there must do it before the next solstice."

"So all of this, reincarnation business is basically to get somebody pregnant?" Dawn frowned. "Uh, hello, you already got me knocked up."

"The child of Paris and Helen. The child that never got a chance to bring peace to two warring factions must be conceived," Morgana sighed. "Because if Mordred plants his seed within her, he will spawn the ultimate destroyer."

"Wait, isn't that what they call Connor?"

*****
Sarmatia, The Ruins, 468
*****

The small dark haired boy huddled in fear beneath the stones of the old Amazonian outpost. When he closed his eyes, he could see the brave lady warrior battling off the Roman scum. He was too small to understand what Roman scum meant, but he'd seen the elders spit and cross themselves oddly at the mention of them. Now he hid, as his nurse had instructed him to do whenever the scum should arrive. He stuck a thumb into his mouth and watched as a man in forgein armor shook his nurse.

"That witch did not pay you enough to die for her bastard!" her mean-eyed daughter screamed as she fought the guards. "Tell them where you hid that brat!"

"Shut your mouth, Katya," Nurse spat back at her.

"He's in the ruins, milord!" Katya screamed. "Take him and leave us in peace!"

"Lady Raven left a boy child with you?" the frightening man shook Nurse again.

"My daughter is ill. She speaks in tongues. She imagines a boy here. The Romans have taken our boys has payment for our insolence. We have no boys."

"Is that so?" He spun on Katya. "Then such illness must be struck out of the populace."

His blade jerked into Katya's stomach, and the child had to look away. Nurse didn't even flinch. There had been much discord between the two, but if she did not thank the Roman for ridding her of her daughter's illness, she'd suffer even worse.

"Thank you, milord, for sending her onwards to God," Nurse whispered.

"Oh, you'll thank me again in a moment. The Raven's son is hidden in the ruins."

"There is no child in the ruins, milord. My daughter was ill -"

"You see, the witch known as the Raven, stole my son from me, shortly after she cursed my future bride. She was heavy with my son and the Raven took my boy from his rightful mother's womb."

"No witchery could have accomplished that," Nurse spoke without thought.

"You have personal knowledge of such witchery."

"N-no."

"The Raven stole my son. And you wish to conceal my son from me. That, my dear woman is punishable by Death."

Without even cleaning his blade, he ripped it from Katya and plunged it into her mother's chest. Nurse grasped at the blade, tried desperately to knock it out, but as the life drained from her body so too did her motions. The child whimpered, tears slipping down his cheeks furiously as he watched his Nurse die protecting him.

"Search the Ruins. My son is hidden somewhere here. You two, burn these witches and clean my blade of their filth."

*****
Summers Cottage
*****

"And Mordred, is he real?"

"That bastard is more than real. He's the reason we've had three goes at this already," Morgana sighed.

"He's -"

"Helen's husband."

"So, he's not your kid?" Dawn asked quietly.

"No more than Arthur is my brother. But I do - did have a son by him," Morgana looked over at her. "His name was Andros, named for my long dead brother. Though, I did not know that when I named him that I was honoring the dead."

"You had Arthur's heir?"

"No. I had Mordred's heir," Morgana's voice shook. "That is what the myths got right. Mordred blamed me for the deaths of his three children - Jessamina, Felix and Tiberius. The girl and eldest boy he offered up to master vampires in exchange for finding Elaine. Tiberius - the boy died in his mother's womb. She'd been a noblewoman Mordred seduced for her money. Europa caused her to miscarry."

"The liaison, Europa?" Dawn gawked at her.

"She was the mother of Jessamina and Felix."

"I - I don't understand," Dawn pressed a hand more tightly to her abdomen. This talk of dead children was upsetting her.

"Mordred is much like I in the fact that he never left this realm, he wasn't reincarnated like the knights."

"He's a Power?"

"No. Mordred is the Immortal and he's been striving to poison Buffy against you from the very start."

"Because Buffy is Helen/Elaine," Dawn frowned. "Of course she is."

*****
The Old Roman Fort, 468
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Three days after their arrival, two of the Sarmatian ladies donned black mourning tunics as they sat upon the sad little hilltop cemetery their countrymen now rested in. Viviane, as acting priestess, wore the white gown of purification. Morgana did as well, to balance the numbers out. Isolde, of course, wore the black. As did the sobbing Elaine. She had not stopped for the last day. She either sobbed or glared at Morgana.

Viviane chanted, pouring water and earth atop each grave. At the conclusion, the two figures in white sat beside the too quiet Isolde. Elaine had wanted nothing to do with any of them. Isolde bade them to leave, needing to say her good-byes to betrothed in private.

"It's as if they are two different people," Viviane said quietly as they left the graveyard.

"Isolde will hold her anger and her pain within her breast for the rest of her life. That is her nature, it always has been," Morgana frowned.

"Do you fear it will make her lash out?"

"No. Isolde's anger will only be unleashed upon herself. No. I fear Elaine's more than I do Isolde's."

"Must you always look for the dark inside of Elaine?" Viviane sighed.

"Elaine has nothing to mourn! There was no understand between the two. They were but children! Isolde and Tristan were days away from their betrothal."

"Love can be very different for different people," Viviane argued. "And their pain can be as equally different."

"The pain they will bring on us, will be very different," Morgana insisted.

"You can't suggest -"

"Who will she hate the most, now that her beloved Lancelot is forever stripped of her?" Morgana silenced her.

"You."

"Yes. She's blamed me all along."

*****
Summers Cottage
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Morgana stared out at the sun. It was time. They all needed to know. Not just Dawn, not just her former sisters. And definitely not just the former knights. It had started once. It must truly start again. And yet…

"I'll leave you two alone for a few moments. Take as much time as you both need, and then come to us upon in the clearing."

"Both?"

"I can give you at least this. This is what you've so patiently waited for," Morgana smiled at her as she stood at the doorway. "There is someone I must fetch."

Dawn set her head down on Dag's chest, content to hear his heart beat steadily as Morgana slipped from the room. She could be content with this - he was alive. He was here. He was -

"Truly, I could not wait for her to leave us in peace if but for a moment," the chest beneath her cheek rumbled.

Dawn jerked upright, her mouth hanging open as the smile she so longed to see grinned up at her. Dag gently pushed himself upright and cupped her face in one giant hand. Her mouth quivered and her eyes blurred.

"Oh god, if this is just another weird dream she gave me, I'm gonna gank that Power," Dawn murmured.

"'Tis no dream, milady," Dag smiled brightly. "I am restored to you. And to our child."

"But they said -"

"Europa lies. A lot," Dag pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I would not put much stock into the lies she's spewed from her mouth."