A/N: I just saw Tristan&Isolde for the first time today, and it sure won't be the last... so I don't really have a wonderful feel for the characters, but I figured I'd post this cause I just spewed it out when I got home from the movie. I know it's really short... but hey, I was just writing for me at first. Please tell me what you think!
Ocean
By CSIslave
Isolde stared out the castle window at the rolling waves of the ocean. Had it just been two mere hours ago that she had begged Tristan to return home? It seemed like several ages. Growing ever more restless, she fiddled with the hem of her sleeve. She had thought she'd known loneliness before… but now that she no longer had Tristan to tend to every day- no longer had Tristan to love every day- the loneliness was ten times more powerful. Looking up at the sky, it suddenly struck Isolde how childish her thoughts would sound to another person. Of course, no one had ever understood her in the way Tristan seemed to, save her mother. Tristan may have voiced the fact that he didn't think life was about love… but Isolde could tell from the look in his eyes… the look he got when he gazed upon her… that he did believe.
Blushing at the memories that came flooding back, Isolde placed her hand upon her hot cheek. What was it about Tristan that stirred her soul and made her feel alive in a way no one had succeeded in doing before? Isolde knew that the moment she had seen him, left for dead on the beach, that he wasn't like every other person in her life; believing only in their duty, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. Isolde was the opposite, feeling everything and anything, and she knew in that instant that Tristan would be the same.
She closed her eyes, trying not to let the tears fall. Her mind flooded with images… when she had found him, she had completely unrobed herself in order to keep him alive… and then later, found herself once more naked and vulnerable in front of him, although for a completely different reason. She couldn't help but smile as this memory brought itself forward. But these thoughts brought others… others that Isolde could not escape. Her arranged marriage had seemed awful before Tristan came… now, it seemed like a death penalty, looming over her.
Isolde had believed her whole life that love was what living was all about. Love, the most powerful emotion of all. At one point, it had occurred to Isolde that maybe she thought that way because she had never experienced love, and seeing as she was a Princess, probably never would. She had known since childhood what came with being a Princess… foremost in her mind, arranged marriage to a man she would never love. But in Isodle's young mind, the day when she would be given to someone seemed far away… she just kept shoving it aside in her mind. Then it had come… but along with it had come Tristan, blown in by luck and the rolling sea. Isolde knew she was fortunate to have found such a great love, but it seemed unfair to have to give it up so soon.
Isolde had known Tristan for so short a time, but she would never forget him. She had given herself to him, heart, mind, and body. He would stay with her forever, despite the vas gap between her body and his that was the ocean that had brought then so close together to begin with. That ocean had earned her love and hate. She stared back at it, letting herself become lost within the steady motion.