Where Home Lies

Chapter One: The Folly of Freedom

Disclaimer: If I owned King Arthur and his beautiful knights, Tristan would not be dead, and I would not feel the need to write this fiction. Anything you recognise as a movie line is just that...it does not belong to me. Savvy?

Author Note: I decided to write a fan fiction for my favorite character, Tristan, after I saw the movie for the second time. I think this fic will probably end up being 5 chapters or so...it'll be mainly from Tristan's perspective, and it will follow the movies events and exactly as possible. There are no made-up ships or anything, nor does Tristan or Dagonet or Lancelot survive[sorry girlies]. There will also probably be an epilogue. I apologise if some of my lines taken from the movie are not accurate[though I think they are pretty dang close]...this was the best I could remember, and no one has a transcript out yet! Enjoy, and PLEASE REVIEW...it makes me get happy tears.

We will go home, we will go home, we will go home, across the mountains . . .

Home. The images that the woman's lilting voice brought to his mind were few and vague. But he remembered enough. He knew that, unlike the other knights, there was no home for him now. His eyes lowered to the knife in his hand, the half-eaten apple in the other. Here was his place. What could he do with freedom?

But he didn't miss the expressions of his knights. Gawain, his eyes almost shut, struggling to remember a distant home. And Galahad, still a boy at heart, his eyelids shut tight to block out the world and see his own, a small smile playing over his lips. Bors, his mouth reciting the lyrics he knew so well, the lyrics that Tristan had often caught him whispering to himself., when the cold stars gazed down on his watch. Lancelot, his eyes hooded; always, he was difficult to read, his face an ocean in which contradicting emotions flitted carelessly over his features like tiny silver fish. Tristan's eyes settled on Dagonet last; Dagonet, who was struggling to keep his mechanical uncaring expression on his face, but who could not stop his eyes from shining.

They needed freedom in a way he was sure he could never understand. And it was because they had something to go back to; Tristan firmly believed that was all that motivated the drive for freedom, the image of something once had and lost. He could understand no other motivation, though he himself had not even that. His...his was long gone.

So when Arthur stepped forward, and spoke another's words in his strangled voice, Tristan was not hurt. He gouged at his apple, however, as he saw the actions of the other knights with lowered eyes. He witnessed betrayal glaze over Bors' eyes.

'Every knight here has laid his life on the line for you,' he spat at Arthur, who's remorse lay written plainly in his graven face. 'For you! And instead of freedom you want more blood? Our blood?!' His voice cracked with emotion in the cool night air, the lyrics to that fair, deceiving song dancing across his eyes. 'You think more of Roman blood than you do of ours?!'

'Bors, they are our orders,' Arthur began heavily, 'when we return, your freedom will be waiting for yo -'

'I'm a free man! I will choose my own fate!' Bors was not looking at Arthur now, nor was he directing his words at him. No, Bors shouted this to himself, and to any god that might be gazing on them now. Arthur fell into defeated silence.

Tristan observed all of this, meanwhile peeling his apple as though he cared not at all for the topic. But that was not the case. What he hated was the broken faces of his comrades, and the fact that that expression was never present on his own face, and that none of his knights would ever expect to see it on his face. He hated the innocence of these men, the same men he watched kill others mercilessly every day, the same men that dreamed a happy dream of green hills unstained by blood. Such a dream was foolish, and brought nothing but pain.

'Yeah yeah, we're all going to die someday,' Tristan spoke suddenly, surprising himself as much as the other knights. He lashed out at the emotions that coursed through him as he watched the disbelief in Galahad's face; he wished to lay that hurt bare, so that blessed insensitivity might fall on the boy. 'If it's death by a Saxon hand that frightens you,' he continued calmly, raising his eyes at last to look sharply at Galahad's expression, 'stay home.'

Galahad's eyes lept with dark light at these words, the resentment he had always harboured towards Tristan's cold manner surging forward before he could halt his rash words.

'Well if you're so eager to die...' the rest of Galahad's hot words were lost to Tristan. He had never been eager to die, surely. But what did he have but his craft? He held killing to be an art: to kill quickly, painlessly, silently. Few took it seriously, and even fewer thought it anything above blood lust. It was something Galahad had never understood.

No, he did not wish to die. He only wished to drive himself on, to build his unbreachable stone wall shelter up around himself, until perhaps he might forget his demons; until the images of his fellow knights, their eyes already looking homeward at something he would never taste again, might burn to ash.

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It was decided; only Galahad still railed against Arthur, Lancelot standing dejectedly off to one side, and so Tristan drifted away from the knights, as he always did.

Tarquin stood where Tristan had left him. He did not nicker in greeting, just as Tristan would not greet a friend with a shout of welcome. He was a sturdy horse, compact and strong on his clean, long limbs, which were dappled darkly.

'Hey...hey,' Tristan whispered softly, and offered him the remains of his apple. 'And where's Iseult gone off to, now?' The horse wuffled and stared steadily at his master with deep brown eyes. Shifting his saddle to rest by Tarquin's front hooves, Tristan settled his head against the scantly padded seat. He had no intention of falling asleep. He stared instead at the distant flame where Dagonet, Bors, Gawain and Galahad were seated. There were so sounds issuing from the group; all gazed at the jumping flames, the echoes of the song haunting them. Certainly, beds and shelter would have been provided to them, had they so wished it. But no one bothered to ask, for the knights sullen watchfulness spoke for itself: too long had they slept in the wild. Such untamed men could not easily find rest in a building, tonight least of all.

Tristan sighed, and forced his eyes shut. He might not sleep, but he would not watch the suffering - suffering that he could not comprehend - of his knights. It was times such as this that Tristan resented his otherness the most. He was not lonely. He had Iseult and Tarquin, and when had he needed anything more? He remembered those days long ago, before the boys had even become knights, when he, the silent, suffering one, had been singled out as the 'scout,' the lone wolf, the One Who Stood At The Edge. It was not something he had asked for, but none of the other knights knew what the cause of his silence was, and so he had slid inadvertently into the role that had ensnared him through all these years. Now he knew no other. His sensitive ears caught the crack of the fire, and some buried part of him longed for its warmth.

No. He was not lonely.

Please review, everyone! It would make me so, so happy! Huggles would be included!

-shakes fist- Or else...