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Steph's in the Bar again, sprawled across a couch, reading.

It's a book on Arthurian History, and her eyes are a little glazed, but she's determined to get through it.

Don't ask why.

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"Oh, right, I getcha."

Curious eyeing.

"Dear old Dad?"

""And whan sir Mordred felte that he had hys dethys wounde he threste himselff with the myght that he had upp to the burre of kyng Arthurs speare, and ryght so he smote hys fadir, kynge Arthure..." Mordred quotes, lazily.

"I'm Arthur's bastard, by his half sister, Morgan le Fey."

"Oooh. That makes sense now."

Also sounds like a slightly less-than-pleasant death. Just a little.

"So when I get up to that bit in the book I'll know it's wrong."

Yeah, drowning to death in your own blood because your father had shoved a spear through your chest is slightly less-than-pleasant.

Slightly.

"The whole thing's a piece of crap. And, why are you reading it?"

Didn't the narration say not to ask that? Man, nobody listens to the narration any more. Poor emo narration.

"Just am," Steph says, a little shiftily. "Wanted to learn about history."

"So, you haven't run into my not'sons at all?"

"Your not'sons?" She tilts her head. "Melou and his twin are yours? Or, uh, not'yours?"

Confusing terminology whut.

"Could have been mine, if I married their mother and didn't get myself killed at nineteen."

"So we're talking parallel universes here, right?"

That's something she understands.

"Yeah. Their Mordred died about...five years ago for them."

"So that's why he's such a prick about destiny," Steph muses. "Makes more sense now."

A bitter smile. A father's bitterness, though he only really saw them for a month.

Didn't matter. The time, it doesn't matter. The fact that the toddling princes had called him 'tada' does, and always will.

"It'll kill 'em, too."

"And they won't lift a finger to fight it," Steph says, with a touch of grumpiness. "Melou was all 'you can't fight destiny!' which is, like, totally stupid."

"Well, you can't. Fighting will get you closer to it, which'll happen with them. They'll fight and fight and get hacked up for their troubles."

"I think you can fight destiny," Steph says. "I mean, if I'd never fought, I'd've ended up a druggie like my mom or a jerk like Dad. You don't have to do stuff just 'cos your parents did. But I couldn't get that into Melou's head."

"Steph, what do you think destiny is?"

"Uh... when you don't get a choice in what you have to do?"

"It means that no matter what you'll do, you'll end up doing something, being something. It's not following in your parents footsteps, or obeying what society expects you to do. It's something that you just do. Are. And you can't change it, no matter how much you might fight or try and avoid, it'll catch up with you."

"Melehan and Melou are going to die - not because they are blindly accepting something, but because they are going to fight."

Steph wrinkles her nose. "Mmm. I'll think about it. I don't like the idea, though. I mean, why bother, if it's not gonna make a difference?"

"Because to not fight would be to betray everything that they are, that their family is. They can't not fight anymore then I couldn't walk out on Arthur."

"Mmmm."

This is her not-convinced-but-agreeing-because-she's-been-in-enough-arguments-lately noise.

"Destiny, admittedly, sucks."

That gets a quick grin out of her. "Sure sounds like it."

He grins at her, and takes a drag of his cigarette.

"So, he pisses you off, just remember - he'll be all chopped up in a few years."

...less funny. She glances at him sideways.

"He's only my age."

Kids shouldn't get chopped up. It's not fair. Steph knows from experience.