A/N: I don't know why I wrote this or why I wrote it the way I did. In fact, I'm not even sure what this is. But…I guess my head just wont let me out of it. I think (again, don't ask me) that this is one of those evil type flashbacks. You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die? Well, I think this is what Tristan gets at the end of his life. Isolde was in the original legend, but since Tristan is different, so it she. And, I have no idea why it's written like this. It feels choppy and in the wrong tense to me but I just can't seem to do it any other way. Reviews not expected. Mostly because it feels too much like a half-a effort. Go figure.

Disclaimer: If I owned it, Tristan would have lived. He didn't. Guess who doesn't own it?

Isolde. Even the wind whispers her name to me. In the silence of the night, or the strained quiet before battle, when all others hear only their own breath and pounding hearts, I hear her name. It haunts me until there is never a time when I am without it.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

Isolde was the one who made me into who I am today. I know the others would disagree, they have never seen me any differently, but I know that she made me.

I came to this land, like all the others, because of who my grandfathers where, who they fought, who they killed. A slave bound by ancient glory.

She was a slave of a different kind though. She never knew her parents, and her history was a mystery even to her. One morning she found herself on the side of the road, blood crusted at the corner of her mouth, a knot on her head, and only a dim idea as to who she was.

We were still new to this country when I found her, but our newness was like hers in a strange way. But again my thoughts get ahead of me.

I was always quiet and I always found myself doing more tracking and reconnaissance than the others. I enjoyed being alone. Or rather, I hated being alone, as it were, but I felt more comfortable staying at the edges, knowing the others would save me if it came to that, but at the same time cutting myself out a bit from their intertwined lives and jokes. I was one of Arthur's knights without grouping myself in the midst living legends like Lancelot.

It was within our first years in this country when I was sent to find the numbers and weapons of a group of soldiers, who, like us, were serving for reasons other than desire. I wished, secretly and internally, that I wouldn't find them. I knew nothing of them, but they found themselves in the same position I did, slaves to another mans empire. I was willing to idolize their bravery in taking their lives back and question the morality of killing them.

Until I met them, that is.

It doesn't surprise me anymore that they caught me sneaking up on them. After all, they were experienced in the dangers of the land, and were expecting to be hunted down. It's no wonder that they detected me from a mile a way. The amazing thing is that I got away with my life.

With them pounding down the trail behind me, well-aimed arrows pursuing me even more closely, I fled. I can still remember cursing my own clumsiness, my horses vicious gait, the trees, the sky, the birds…anything I could think of. I was being hunted by the best, and we both knew it.

It surprised me then, when I saw a girl about my age at the side of the road. There were tears on her face, made cloudy by blood and dirt. It surprised me that I slowed my horse enough to pull her up behind me.

It surprised me that I could.

It surprised me that she didn't scream. It surprised me even more when she just sat behind me; my shoulders clenched tightly in her hands, surprised me that she introduced herself.

This was Isolde.

I don't know how long we continued that made dash; it seemed interminable and instant all at once. Somewhere in that instant era, her thin dirty hand came into my peripheral vision, pointing at a grove of trees on the right. I didn't even think to question it, occurring to me only later that there was no reason for her to help me or me to help her, for that mater.

But with out hesitation, I charged into those trees. There was a trail of sorts there but if she had not known it, I would not have seen it. The same went for my pursuers. They passed us by without even a glance at our unlikely cover.

That was the beginning of complicated friendship, that little grove. We stayed there until we saw the men return, weary and unsuccessful, hours later. Having gotten their entirety to chase me, I got better information on their strength than I ever could have lurking through the trees. In the end, we wiped them out.

I say that was the end, and if it was, then I have lived through more ends than I have a right to. My fighting is never at an end. I feared, at one time, that even in death I would be fighting. Isolde taught me in that as well.

She was a different sort of person. Like all the women I ever have and ever will meet, she seemed to like being saved but fully understood that she could save herself. Yet, there was something mysteriously deep and powerful about her that intrigued me without effort.

In that grove, we spoke to each other quietly, without pretence or witnesses. Again she introduced herself, seeming less sure of it this time, as if it were a question. I told her I was Tristan.

I watched as she tried the name out, tasting it, turning over with her tongue. Head cocked in puzzlement, she met my eyes directly. That was something I had never had anyone do. Not even Bors had yet met my gaze. "Do I know you?"

"No." I replied, feeling a supernatural shiver race down my spine. Her eyes were empty and full at the same time. She had a soul that looked back at me, but at the same time a strange desolateness there as well.

"I've never met you?"

"I…I don't think so." It was unlike me to be nervous, but her question seemed double edged. "I've never seen you before."

Her eyes slid from mine to the trees around us, drinking in the dark trees and icy patches as if they were previously undiscovered wonders. There was an almost child-like innocence to her search. "Where are we?"

"In the valley just south of the wall." I said, somewhat surprised. Was it not she who had known of this hollow in which we know sheltered? "The river is that way…" I pointed to my left, but I wasn't sure. "Or maybe it's there." I altered my indicator further beyond her shoulder. She looked both places and then told me it was to my right.

"How can you not know where you are one moment and then show me a river the next? How do you know where the river is? How did you even know to come to these trees?" I was indignant and it made my voice harsher than it should have been.

I was shocked to discover that she cowered away from me, that there were tears forming in her eyes. It was as though she were a different girl than the one who had ridden here with me.

"I don't know." She said. Her voice was small and she pulled her knees into her body even as her hand went to the back of her head. She winced.

I began to understand that she really didn't know. She wasn't even sure who she was, that's why it had mattered that I know her.

Before I could restrain myself, I was at her side assessing the damage. She looked at me mistrustfully, scooting away before dropping her eyes to my sword. She may not be sure of her identity, but she did know what a man with a sword was and what most of them would be moving to her side in an abandoned wood for. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that I wouldn't hurt her, because saying it meant that I could, if provoked. Instead I lay my weapons down and when I approached her again, she allowed me to remove her hand from her head.

Against her scalp and matted in her dark hair were dried crusts of blood. Beneath it I could feel a knot larger than she could have inflicted her self. Someone had found her before I had, and they hadn't been as neutral towards her as I was.

With my sleeve I wiped the blood from her nose and mouth, she even allowed me to pull her lips up and see that her teeth were intact. I asked her to move her hands, arms, feet, legs…anything I could think of that could have been broken. She seemed fine. But then there were the questions I dared not to ask. A girl, alone and weaponless…

"Are…are you hurt anywhere…else?" I struggled to find the right words and it showed.

She blushed and shook her head. After all, she knew herself well enough to know that she was in a relatively uninjured state.

Having set my mind at ease, and having nothing better to do until the men rode back to their camp, I set about finding the threads of her memory.

She'd said her name was Isolde. Who was her family? Where did they live? What did they do?

"I don't know. I don't even know if that is my name. But I woke up out on that road and I knew that I was cold and alone, that that wasn't were I belonged. I saw your horse come thundering down, and all I could think was 'maybe he can tell me where to go.' But I never expected that you would be so pursued or that I would go with you. When I saw you, I knew you were the rider I would rather had picked me up, not those…" She said a word I didn't recognize, but I didn't stop her to ask about it. "The name just came to me, just as though my tongue knew what to do better then I did."

So I found that she knew trees and nature better than she knew he name.

I would discover much more about her in the days that followed.