Sitting at a bench on the far eastern edge of a small park, away from the playground that formed the primary hub, a lone red-haired woman watched the cars passing by on the nearby road. Her eyes followed one in particular as it pulled into a simple, somewhat worn driveway of an equally simple, worn house. The occupants, a young couple with their toddler son, emerged to start hauling in groceries.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

The voice came from a beautiful woman with short brown hair who stood behind Gaia Sinclaire. To some, she was still known as Auriel. To others, she was Athena. But to those who had been a part of King Arthur’s world, she would forever be recognized as…

“Nimue,” Gaia announced softly, without turning her head. She had known that the Seosten woman would come to find her. It had been one day since she and the others had returned to Earth, and this conversation had been a long time coming.

Stepping around the bench, Athena gave a faint nod. “Morgan Le Fey.” Slowly, she turned to look toward the house that Gaia was still watching. “Do you know who lives there now?”

Nodding, Gaia replied in a quiet voice, “I’ve always known, ever since they rebuilt the village and then… added to it. I know who lives there. I know who their families are, where they end up going. I don’t know why. It’s not like the house is even in the exact same spot. The cottage that Arthur and I grew up in was further to the left and back a bit. They… when they rebuilt after everything that happened, there wasn’t anything left of the cottage. There wasn’t–” She stopped talking then, giving a slight shake of her head before announcing simply, “You did not come here to hear the history of this place and all of its occupants over the centuries.”

“Well,” Athena noted, “that depends. I came to get an idea of how you are now. Part of doing that may be to hear the history of what interests you. Particularly that house.”

Smiling very faintly, an almost imperceptible upturn of her lips, Gaia observed, “You want to know if I have changed since those days.”

“I know you have changed,” Athena gently corrected. “Perhaps more than even you know, by this point. After all, those days were quite a long time ago for someone without the Seosten memory. Details may have faded.”

“I remember everything that I did,” Gaia informed her, still not looking that way. She sat a bit stiffly, her mind focused more on the thoughts of those long-passed actions and battles than on this particular moment. “I remember every choice I made, every… word that I spoke to my brother.”

Athena was quiet for a moment before she took a seat on the bench beside the other woman. She looked toward the house in the distance before speaking softly. “He never stopped believing in you. He never stopped believing that you could change, that you could be good.” She glanced sidelong to Gaia and spoke again in an even softer voice. “He never stopped loving you. I want you to know that, without any doubt. He loved you every moment of every day. And he always believed that you could change.”

For the first time, Gaia turned to look at her. Her mouth opened, then shut. It took her a moment to find the right words. “I… was angry. I was always so angry back then. So–” Pausing, she corrected herself. “I am still angry. I simply… control it more now. I direct it, I channel it into my work. But in those days, I… embraced the anger. I thought that I could make the world better by force, that if I could just… destroy and kill all of my enemies, the world would be a paradise.”

“You began with noble intentions,” Athena murmured. “Of a sort. The men who burned the village, the ones Arthur insisted on taking back for a fair trial, they did deserve to die.”

“They also deserved a trial,” Gaia pointed out. “One that I was in no mood to give them. They were evil men and the ones who committed that… evil act deserved to be killed after they were judged. That was Arthur’s law, but I didn’t care. I wanted them dead right then and there. So I killed them. All of them. Even the ones who… probably weren’t directly involved. I killed them and that was the end of my relationship with my brother.”

“Not for him,” Athena corrected while shaking her head. “As I said, he never stopped believing that you could change. He believed in you forever.” She paused before taking a breath while looking directly to the other woman. “If he could see you right now, if he could see everything that you have done and made out of yourself, he would be so proud.”

The two women went silent then, both of them simply thinking about those days while staring at the house that sat on the land where Arthur and Morgana had grown up. Finally, after a couple of silent minutes, Athena asked, “Do you remember how proud he was when he found you that first time?”

A tiny smile touched Gaia’s face once more, as she gave a faint nod. “Yes. I remember when we first met as adults, when we realized who each other was and he… brought me back to the place he called Camelot. I remember meeting his wife, his friends, his… his people.” Her voice was a bit hoarse, the emotions associated with that time drawing damp tears to her eyes that she dared not blink away for the moment for fear of also blinking away the memories themselves.

Chuckling softly, Athena mused, “He took you in front of the entire congregation at supper. Made you stand there while he said, ‘This is my sister, Morgana’.”

“And I corrected him,” Gaia pointed out. “I said my name was Morgan le Fey. Morgan of the Fay. That was so important to me then, to be known by the name they gave me, not the name that our mother had given, not the–” She stopped, sighing. “One letter. It should not have mattered. But it did, and I corrected him in front of everyone.” A somewhat sad, almost bitter smile came then. “Perhaps he should have taken that as a sign.”

“He didn’t care about that,” Athena assured her. “He would gladly have called you anything you wanted. He was simply happy to have you there, happy to have his sister back.”

“And I was still angry,” Gaia noted in a soft voice that betrayed her inner shame. “I was angry that he left me behind all those years earlier. He promised to come back and never did. He left me to go back into the village, so he wasn’t there when…” Trailing off, she forced her mind away from that memory and sighed softly. “I was glad to see him, but I was also angry because… because he was off learning all about his new dragon powers while I was forced to be a servant to an evil man. All those years when I was… when I took myself out of that service, when I made a life for myself only for that to be taken away when those Orcs abducted me straight from my little shop, when I… all those years and he never found me. It wasn’t his fault, but part of me thought it was. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for me to turn on him when I did. Maybe that’s why I could wage war against my own brother, because in my mind, I still blamed him for taking so long to find me. And for choosing to run into a burning village rather than stay with me.”

Once more, both of them fell silent, remembering those days and everything that had come after. It was another several minutes before Athena spoke again. “When you were there, he was happier. You were–are his family. You and Chadwick, and he…”

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“We would not bring Chadwick into our world,” Gaia murmured. “He deserved to have a normal life. And he did. His descendants still survive to this day. I’ve seen a couple of them become Natural Heretics over the years, but none came to Crossroads.”

“My people would never allow that,” Athena agreed. “It would risk awakening Arthur. Particularly if any of Chadwick’s descendants happened to be the Key.”

Gaia shook her head. “I don’t believe they are. This… Key of Merlin, I’ve heard of it. Do your people believe that they’re a real person?”

“They are absolutely a real person,” Athena confirmed with a nod. “I believe some even know who it is, though I’ve never been able to find out for certain. The Key of Merlin will awaken Arthur when the time comes and his bones are all collected.”

Gaia took a moment then to watch the house once more, her eyes taking in the man as he stepped out to get something else from the car that had been forgotten. “I wouldn’t know where to begin searching for Arthur’s bones. I… I have looked, but whoever has them now has gone to great lengths to keep them hidden.”

Smiling at that, Athena nodded. “Yes, well, I imagine his wife would be greatly motivated to keep Arthur’s remains hidden. From my people and from you, given your history.”

That was enough to draw Gaia’s gaze to her, eyes widening fractionally. “She still lives?”

“We have not spoken in… a very long time,” Athena noted, “but so far as I know… I believe she is. It would take quite a lot to kill Guinevere. But one thing convinces me more than anything else that she still lives.” Waiting for Gaia to raise an eyebrow curiously, she continued, “My people believe she is dead. And knowing her as I do, my people’s belief that she is gone is almost a certain testimony that she is not. No, I believe she is remaining quiet, caring for Arthur’s remains, and waiting for the right time. Perhaps she is searching for the key as well.”

Both women thought about that for a moment, their minds lost in the idea of what Guinevere could have been doing through all the years that the Seosten had believed her to be dead.

“Arthur was very happy with her,” Gaia said then, thinking back to those days. “She challenged him, made him grow, brought him up to the level he needed to be. I remember when I met her. She… ahhh, she reached out to me at first. She tried to be my friend. But I think even then, she knew there was something wrong. She was trying to get to know me, trying to feel me out for the sake of her husband. And I… I think a part of me saw her as my replacement. I was jealous, in a way. It almost felt as though Arthur had stopped looking for me when he found her.”

Chuckling just a bit, Athena replied, “There is a much longer story as to how Arthur and Guinevere met. And believe me, they did not get along at first. You’re right, she did challenge him. In more than one way. When they sparred, it was a sight to behold, particularly after an argument.”

That made Gaia raise an eyebrow. “I could not imagine those two in a serious argument.”

“Oh, they did,” Athena informed her. “They went at one another quite a lot, in the beginning. Both of them always had strong opinions, and Guinevere wasn’t about to let Arthur’s power deter her from telling him when she thought he was being foolish. She was raised by Michael. That kind of power didn’t frighten or intimidate her.”

“I don’t believe I ever met Michael,” Gaia observed thoughtfully.

“I know you did not,” Athena confirmed. “Because you still live, even after making yourself an enemy in her.”

Wincing, Gaia looked away. “Yes, I made myself quite an enemy of Guinevere, and of the rest of them… the rest of you. I did a great many things that I will regret for the rest of my life.”

“And you have survived to make amends, and to change,” Athena pointed out. “You have become a teacher, Morgan le Fay. You have helped far more than you ever hurt, after all these centuries. All the students whose lives you touched, the children you helped to raise up to become far greater than they would have been. They matter.”

“I have not done nearly as much as I wish I could,” Gaia muttered a bit darkly, her eyes glancing away. “I did not know of your people until quite recently, did not know of the… extent of their influence. Because I could not be trusted with that information. Because I betrayed Arthur all those years ago. If I had not… if I had remained loyal and learned the truth with everyone.. If I had been there when the true war broke in earnest…”

“Perhaps things would have changed,” Athena agreed. “Perhaps you would have turned the tide with your power. Or,” she observed, “perhaps my people would have gone after you specifically, to eliminate you as a threat. And if they did that, you would not be here now. You would not have done as much as you have to help others, to teach others.” She met the woman’s gaze while noting, “That is, after all, why Lucifer ensured that you were sent through time to begin with.”

Gaia blinked twice at that. “That was… him? He’s the one who sent Bernlak and I to the future after…” She flinched, looking away as her voice dropped to a whisper, “after Mordred…”

“After your son was killed, yes.” Athena raised a hand, resting it on the woman’s shoulder gently. “I am sorry about him. And about what came later.”

“They brought his body back,” Gaia muttered in a voice that dripped with an anger that would never be quenched. “Your… Puriel. He used my son’s reformed body as a host to attack Arthur. Because he was related to Arthur. The blood magic, they–” She grimaced, snapping her gaze away to glare at the ground, tears forming once more. “They used my son’s body to destroy my brother. And I was not there to help either of them.”

Athena’s hand stayed on her shoulder, squeezing firmly. “Lucifer knew they would come after you. His seers saw it, so he ensured that you would survive in order to atone for your mistakes, by sending you several hundred years into the future, long past the loss of Arthur and fall of Camelot. Because winning the war is far more important than winning a battle. Lucifer understands how to play the long game, perhaps better than almost anyone I have known.”

Taking in a long breath before letting it out as she carefully put the memories of her son back in the mental box where she kept such treasured thoughts, Gaia finally spoke. “Camelot may have been broken apart after Arthur’s… loss, but I have a very strong feeling that your people will come to lament that they never quite finished the job.”

“Such as with Guinevere,” Athena observed, bringing their conversation back to where it had been.

“Yes,” Gaia agreed, “such as with Guinevere.” Another smile touched her face at that thought, and she straightened. “However it comes out, I’m certain that your people will regret giving her so much time to do whatever it is she is doing.”

“They will regret a great many things,” Athena agreed. “We will all make certain of that.”

“Yes, we will,” Gaia agreed, bringing her mind back to the present while turning to look to the other woman once more. “We will make them regret everything they’ve done. And what they have failed to do. That… is part of what I have asked for Sariel’s help with. She has been working on a certain… project with me. And we believe that you can help to finish it, now that all the pieces have been brought together.”

Curious, Athena asked, “A project? What sort of project have you been working on with Sariel?”

So Gaia told her. She explained what she had sent Asenath and the others to gather, and why. She told the Seosten woman what she intended to do with the piece of the Hangman’s rope and every other ingredient.

By the time she was done, Athena gave a soft whistle. “You understand what that will do.”

“Yes,” Gaia confirmed. “I do. But it needs to be done.”

Thoughtfully, Athena noted, “For something like that, you would need to include someone who is actually–”

Gaia nodded again. “Yes. She knows about it. And she is ready for what it will mean… when the time comes. She is completely aware. I’ve… made quite certain of that, before we agreed to push forward.”

“Then I will help you,” Athena agreed, after looking back to the house. “Yes, I will help you finish this project of yours. And I do hope that I will have the chance to see the looks on my people’s faces when you use it.”

With a slight chuckle, Gaia leaned back on the bench as she watched the house and thought back to the cottage that had been there before, and to the children who had played in front of it all those centuries ago. She thought of Chadwick and his chicken, of herself and Arthur playing with their stick-swords. She thought of everything that had come of their lives, memories playing out before her mind.

“Believe me,” she finally murmured almost silently, “there are many whose faces I wish to see when this spell is completed and used. Not only your people, but others. This whole thing has been a long time coming.

“And I, for one, cannot wait to see it through.”