Hello, lovies! I have somethings to say really fast before you read.

I'm not going to have a lot of update time until next week, which is why this is two days late. :( I have exams which means assloads of studying and one of my friends is graduating so I have to go to that. So basically, I have to disappoint everyone yet again b delaying updates.

Sorry for the rant. You can get on with your reading now. :D

"For everything it's worth, every breath I take still hurts. Maybe it's just the alcohol burning through my veins. But either way, I'll be missing you to death. And if I don't get out of this alive, just know I loved you back. But I don't owe you anything at all. It's just the look in your eyes, and the way your hair falls to the side. It's the hole in the wall where my fist went through. It's the scene that I made. Baby, I'm not your everything, and I'm, I'm never ever gonna be. You're in too deep to pull the strings. You bend and you break to find a better part of me. I'll be missing you to death, and if we don't get out of this alive, just know I loved you back."-Flight 409

*+*Arthur*+*

I ran my hand down my face as I had been doing frequently as of late. The man before me did not attempt to explain himself or even try to deny the claims against him. It was futile anyway. He'd spent more time being reprimanded by me in these last three weeks than he ever had in the past fourteen years.

"Tristan," I sighed, leaning my elbows onto the desk and making a steeple out of my fingers in front of my face, "again? I thought the time before was the last."

He kept his hands together behind his back, and shrugged carelessly, allowing no emotion to show outright. The plaits he'd adorned since being in the forest let more of his face show than he used to, but it didn't change the fact that he rarely had a discernible expression on it.

"You cannot keep doing this," I told him seriously. "Taking out your anger on Roman soldiers will not go unnoticed by higher authorities for long. If you keep hitting them, someone is going to demand more punishment."

He gave no indication that he cared, or even heard me. This became more common as time had passed. It wasn't like he was predictable before, but now he seemed likely to lash out at anyone who passed him. Even the other knights stepped lightly around him like they were scared of making his volatile temper spill over. It wouldn't really have surprised me if he'd started challenging the knights as well anymore. Especially Lancelot, who he clearly harbored an intense dislike for ever since he'd returned from the forest three weeks ago.

Roman soldiers seemed to be dealt the brunt of his rage. If any of them said even one word Tristan didn't like, he'd lay them flat. This was proven in the sixth man in two weeks that had come to me with complaints of Tristan's abuse. They didn't have to prove it, as their injuries were blatantly obvious: black eyes, broken noses and jaws, sprained wrists, painful-looking cuts, and even four dislocated toes. He wasn't trying to hide that he was fighting.

"I have to take action, or you'll be thrown in the stocks or flogged," I told him. "I am banning you from the tavern until further notice."

His eyes flashed for a moment, and I fixed him with a steely glare. "I'm doing this for your own good. Vanora knows, and will be informing the other workers. If you step foot in there, I will know and legal action will be taken against you."

His jaw clenched, but he nodded once. "Are we done?" he growled.

"No," I replied. "I need to speak to you on a personal note." I leaned back into my chair again, and let the sternness fall from my gaze. "I have never seen this sort of behavior from you before recent weeks. You have not told anyone what ails your mind, but that is typical. I think that I know what it is this time, though."

He opened his mouth to interrupt, but I held up my hand to stop him. "Let me finish. I want you to now that there was no way you could have prevented what happened back there. Too much was going on at once, and you could not have impeded the woman's death."

He regarded me carefully, like he was deciding how to phrase what he wanted to say. "I did not care about the woman. The problem is what ensued her death."

I nodded slowly. He didn't know it, but he'd just confirmed my suspicions: he had cared for the British girl. His eyes were suddenly cold, and I knew he'd realized what he'd done.

"If you need anything, I am here," I told him quietly. "You are a friend to me more than a reinforcement, and I believe you know that."

He nodded, and then left. I stayed in that chair, staring at the door he'd ecited through. Tristan would have been the last of my knights I would have expected to ever become this way over a woman. He was always collected and thoughtful, never allowing anything to break his concentration. That woman must have been an adaptable one to be able to deal with his erratic personality.

Since the meeting where Lancelot accused him of desertion, he'd distanced himself from the knights. He trained alone, and always had a table to himself in the tavern where he would watch and listen. Occasionally he could be found with a dagger, always the same one, clenched in his hand. He would just stare at it, sometimes running his thumb over the unfamiliar symbols on the blade and hilt. More often than not, he would wait for a soldier to slip up so he could have an excuse to hit them. I'd observed this behavior warily at first, not knowing what he would do. When he started to lash out, I'd been disappointed. I always thought he would be the one I wouldn't have to have that talk with.

Eventually he spent more and more time locked up in his room with the curtains drawn, only coming out in the early morning to scout if I asked or to train, and then at night when he went to the tavern. I figured now I would only see him if I woke before dawn.

Bors and Dagonet were the only ones besides me who tried to talk to him. Gawain was taking a he'll-come-around approach, Galahad was admittedly a bit afraid of his new attitude, and Lancelot didn't attempt to hide his detest for the man. I had done my best to avoid conflict with my knights, but it seemed like bringing Tristan back had only caused more. What an ironically bitter twist.

I knew that Tristan would not come to me if he needed anything like I'd told him to. He would never willingly accept help from anyone. All I could do now was follow Gawain's approach: give him time, and hope he'll get over the only woman who he's ever spared more than a glance or a night in the same bed.

Somehow, I doubted that this would pass quickly.

*+*Tristan*+*

After I left Arthur's, I went straight to the stables and sat down in the stall with Isolde. She and my hawk were fast becoming the only living things I could stand to be around for more than three seconds. Even Arthur was working my last nerve, and he was the last person I wanted to take my anger out on.

For three weeks I'd barely felt like a person. I ate, I slept, and I went about doing normal things. There was nothing to it though, no emotion or thought. I was a machine, just going through the motions of a real life without knowing what I was doing.

Isolde neighed, and bent down to look me in the eye. I handed her an apple that I'd had hidden in my tunic. She took it, and chomped it loudly, moving her head away from me. I patted her leg absentmindedly, my thoughts were miles away with the girl I'd left behind. There were more pressing things to think about now, like the fact that every day more and more troops stationed at the fort were called back to Rome. There had been suspicions before that Rome was withdrawing from Briton due to attacks from barbaric tribes weakening their armies. Now it seemed like more than rumor.

I didn't have enough space in my head to think about such pressing things when my mind was so often clouded with rage at what had occurred that last day in the woods. There wasn't a day that I didn't think of her. I'd received many wounds on the various battlefields of this godforsaken place, but never had I experienced such an excruciating feeling as this. My chest ached, the sound of her sobs echoed in my head, and I could always smell rain when I hovered in that place between sleeping and waking. She was in everything I did and in every corner of my mind. Why had I let her take over me like this?

The most pessimistic part of me wondered if she was dead. How could a living person haunt me so much? I hoped I was wrong. If I felt this way just because I caused her pain, I couldn't imagine how I would feel if it was my fault she was dead.

This was all so new, this whole "feeling" thing. Before I met her, my emotions were black and white: angry, disinterested, pain, amused. Now everything I felt seemed to explode like light from the sun. My anger was always rage, my pain was always agony, and my distaste was always burning hate. They were the only emotions I could feel anymore, and they were much harder to keep down. What happened to the in-between?

I rested my chin on my chest for a moment, and then rammed my head back into the stable wall. Isolde made an agitated sound, but I just closed my eyes against the headache I'd just caused myself.

I missed her. I hated it, but I did. When I thought back, I couldn't really distinguish the moment where she'd started to have an effect on me. It might have been when she told me what happened to her family. Maybe it was when she called me a coward in the stable. The most likely moment was when she wept in her sleep, begging the men in her dream not to hurt her, and then shuffled over to fix my stitches and fallen asleep holding my hand while she cried. There was something so broken about her that night, and all I wanted was to make sure she never felt that way again.

I don't know who I was kidding when I thought that if I brought her back to the Wall we wouldn't have ended up together. It was inevitable. It would have been me being mocked for being with one woman along with Bors, and it would have been me that always yearned to go home when we were on missions. I think I would have been able to handle all of that if it meant I knew she was safe.

I sounded like a woman. If anyone could hear my thoughts right now, my reputation as a ruthless killer would be completely soiled and people might actually try to socialize with me. I couldn't even bare the thought.

"So this is where you keep hiding."

I glared through my hair at Gawain, who leaning casually against Isolde's stall door, staring down at me with a bit of a smile. "I'm not one to judge, but this doesn't seem like a very sanitary hiding place."

"Don't you have a whore to busy yourself with?" I growled. He laughed, and let himself in, flopping down across from me on the opposite wall. I scowled at him.

"You deaf?" I snapped. "Get lost."

"Don't take the aggression out on me, man," he said boredly. "You know I am not that easy to bait."

I made an angry sound, and thought about stabbing him. Not fatally, just in the leg or the arm so he would go away. I was not in the mood for human company these days, not that I really had been before.

"I have something I need to tell you," he said, suddenly taking on a serious demeanor. "When we were looking for you…I was the one who kept trying to get Arthur to give up. I wanted to leave you."

My eyebrows rose, but I said nothing. He looked right in my eyes, unwavering, which was a feat not many could manage.

"It was not that I wanted you to die," he explained. "It was just that I…I did not know if it was possible for me to stand next to another grave." He took a deep breath, and his shoulders slumped. "I am tired of this life. I am sick of watching my brothers die, and I am ready to rid myself of the armor, the weapons, and this island. I thought you were dead, to be honest, and seeing your body would have made it all the more real. It was the opposite of wanting you dead, actually. I was not ready to let go of another friend."

His words surprised me, and I was the one to look away for once. Gawain had always been one of the knights who wasn't afraid to voice their opinions and let anything they felt loose, but he'd never said anything of this sort to me. Honestly, there were clear groupings with the knights. Arthur and Lancelot, Bors and Dagonet, and Gawain and Galahad. I was the lone one of the group, which was most likely the result of always having to scout ahead. I became accustomed to being by myself, and eventually preferred it to being around others. I never imagined that Gawain or any of the other knights really gave that much of a damn about me. I acknowledged that I was the disposable one.

I still had no idea what to say to him, so I just nodded slowly, letting him know that I understood why he'd wanted to leave me. He sighed, and leaned his head back against the stall.

"So…did you really bed the Briton girl?" he asked.

My eyes darted over his face, discerning his intention. He seemed genuinely curious, not mocking or like he was here to get information to pass onto Lancelot, who seemed to be against my every movement since I'd returned.

"No," I told him firmly. "My answer will not change no matter how many times I am asked."

He nodded. "It's just rather hard to believe. She was rather…comely."

He moved his eyebrows suggestively, and I ignored him. He didn't know the half of it.

"Did you realize that when Arthur was telling Galahad to slit her throat?" I deadpanned.

He scoffed. "The Woad told us she was insane, and she acted like it. She nearly cut me in half."

I smirked, imagining the look on Gawain's face at being attacked by a woman as small as her. That must have been a shocker.

"You loved her," he accused randomly. I went back to glaring.

"No."

"You're lying."

"I am not."

"You are!"

I stood up, and brushed the hay off my pants. "I am getting really tired of you," I spat, slamming the stall door behind me as I left.

"Don't run from your feelings, Tristan!" Gawain called after me, cackling like an old witch. I wished I'd just stabbed him.

I walked away towards the keep so I could stay in my room. I'd probably remain there for the rest of the day, as I was no longer allowed in the tavern. I knew I couldn't keep taking out my anger at myself on other soldiers anymore, and had no idea where to find an outlet now. Perhaps hunting would be a good idea.

I heard a screech from above, and just managed to put my arm out for my hawk to land on it. She stared at me knowingly, like she could sense the conflict in my head. I stroked the feathers on her breast, and spoke to her in quiet Sarmatian as I continued towards my room. The people in the streets eyed me warily because of the hawk on my arm, but mostly because of my new even more violent reputation. I was fast becoming infamous.

When I entered my room, I slumped into one of the chairs at the table, and the hawk leapt from my arm to stand on the edge, making an agitated sound.

"Hold on, hold on," I said, reaching behind me to pick up the remains of my lunch to feed her the meat from the stew. She ate it greedily, nearly taking my fingers off a few times. I watched her preen when she was finished, thoughtfully tapping my fingers on my knee.

She finally turned her attention back to me, and cawed again. I held out my arm, and she hopped onto it.

"Would you do something for me?" I asked her. "Would you check on her?"

She twittered in response, and rustled her wings. I took that as an agreement, and stood to unlatch my window.

"Do not let her see you," I said as she flew out of the window.

I watched until she was only a black speck in the sky, wishing that I could be closing the distance between me and Aderyn like she was.

So no Aderyn, but lots of Tristan, which is always nice. ;) He's a bit out of character in this, I know (and sincerely hate), but it was necessary. Anyway, the action starts in two chapters, I believe, so be prepared. ;D

Thanks everyone for the reviews and alerts! They really make my days brighter. Keep 'em coming, please and thank you! :D