Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize and possibly not even the stuff you don't. It's a battle of wills and semantics with these folks that I have learned not to engage in.

A/N: Because I have been told these should be done more (Leraika), I present an epilogue of sorts.

Many, many years later…

Arthur watched the young woman bustling around the room with a smile. She was picking up various loose papers – reading each and sorting them neatly into piles. Not that it would matter since inevitably he would just mess up her system of organization and she would be back, giving him the exact same pointed stare that Kay had often given him when he felt Arthur needed to sit down, shut up and just behave.

He listened and held back a laugh when he heard her huff and watched her tuck a loose, sandy curl behind her ear while muttering about the disorganization all around her. She was indeed her father's daughter (if he could picture Kay with long hair) and though that made Arthur smile, it also made his heart hurt.

"Odella…" Arthur shook his head and chuckled when she glanced at him darkly. "Please…stop. The papers can wait." He motioned to a seat next to him and was relieved when, after looking from the papers in her hand to his face, she set down the stack and came to join him.

"How is it you can command a crew of Knights and an entire fort with ease yet keeping any organization of your papers eludes you?" Odella shook her head and laughed quietly as Arthur simply shrugged.

"I have found that papers do not heed commands as well as men." He laughed as did she, before he sobered himself and reached over to pat her hand. "I would like to give you something…well two somethings, actually." Rising slowly, Arthur walked to his desk and opened a drawer. Removing two small, sheathed daggers, he walked back and set them upon the tabletop that was between their seats.

Before she could stop herself, Odella was caressing the well-worn leather that wrapped the dagger she had not seen in so long. Tearful hazel eyes looked up from studying the piece in a silent question; when Arthur inclined his head, she picked the piece up and slid it from its protective covering.

"My father's boot dagger…"

"Yes. Your Uncle Bedwyr gave it to me long ago for safe keeping with the understanding that one day I would give it to you…" Arthur smiled tightly as he watched the girl turn it over in her hands; watched as her eyes closed when she gripped the handle and wondered if she tried to imagine Kay's hand wrapped around hers as he sometimes tried to imagine his own father's when he held Excalibur.

Kay's death had been hard on everyone, but especially on Laurel, his wife, and their young daughter, Odella. Though, inadvertently, it had provided a lesson for Arthur about the bonds of family – that blood was blood, even if the only relation was thru circumstance. He had observed the Knights absorb Kay's family into their own folds; they cared for and watched over both women but had been especially good at providing Odella with many "uncles" to turn to for guidance and protection through the years. Arthur had joined in and taught Odella to read, much as he thought Kay would have wanted…and she had responded by becoming a voracious reader – there had hardly been enough tomes in Arthur's entire library to satisfy her hunger; then Arthur had taught her to write and she had become his personal secretary…and file keeper/sorter/organizer.

He was snapped out of his memories when he saw the movement of her sheathing the dagger and setting it down, then moving her hand to rest upon the second. Hazel eyes studied him questioningly and he nodded as she deftly unsheathed that dagger.

"Uncle Lancelot…" She smiled softly as memories came to her. Uncle Lancelot had doted upon her as though she was his own daughter. The stories she heard – of wild, drunken escapades and hot-tempered arguments that oftentimes led to bloody fights – did not match with the uncle she so fiercely adored… All Odella knew was that whatever she needed, he provided…sometimes without her ever having to say a word.

Arthur watched Odella's eyes flutter closed as she remembered her dearest uncle. He recalled years gone by and the aftermath of that battle, including the return of many of the fort's inhabitants. His heart broke just as it had the day Odella had flown through the fort in search of her Uncle Lancelot only to have Uncle Gawain take her aside and gently break the news. She had wept but somehow found within a strength and compassion much the same as Kay had exhibited countless times so many years past.

She opened her eyes and, as with her father's dagger, sheathed her uncle's and placed it on the table. After a few moments, she gathered them in her hands and held them tightly to her chest. Arthur watched in confusion as she inclined her head and whispered to each dagger in turn before rising and setting them back into the drawer which he had removed them from. With a soft smile, she closed the drawer and nodded at Arthur.

"You keep them – as reminders of how far you have come and all you have learned. I have all I need of Da and Uncle Lancelot here…" She touched her heart with her index finger before making her way over to place a gentle kiss on her Uncle Arthur's messy curls and slip her hand onto his. "They were correct – you are a very good and wise man…albeit an extremely disorganized one…" And with that, Odella returned to her organizing as Arthur shook his head, thinking once again how very much like both her father and "uncle" she was indeed.