EDIT: Plot bunny poll on profile now fixed!

MOAR EDIT: Sequel now posted.

Love:

In Which the Smuggler Tristan Mourns the Death of His Beloved Isolde, and Receives Comfort From Another Who Lost His True Love to Camelot; Namely, the Warlock Merlin

X

The rugged smuggler was speechless for a few seconds .Breathlessly, he turned to his silent companion and asked, "What is this place?"

Merlin smiled sadly, some kind of deep melancholy Tristan had glimpsed briefly in his eyes in swimming up to the surface of those usually cheerful blue orbs.

"This is the Lake of Avalon."

X

Tristan had been sceptical when Merlin had suggested that he lay Isolde to rest in a beautiful lake out in the forest. How Merlin had managed to make him capitulate, Tristan couldn't remember, but it didn't matter.

As soon as Merlin had led him from the treeline and onto the slight promontory curving outwards into the mirror-blue of the lake, he knew that the servant had been right.

This place, the Lake of Avalon no less, as Merlin claimed, was the most beautiful of all the sights that had graced Tristan's eyes. And as a smuggler and n'er-do-well, he'd seen many a pretty thing in his life.

The rare herbs with odd properties and odder colours that he carried in his wagon, useful only to the right people had nothing on the swelling greens of the ancient trees or the bright but not obtrusive stabs of colour that were the flowers clustered on the banks and curling up gnarled trunks.

There was no statue as perfectly sculpted as the pale twin peaks curving gracefully to snow-capped points above the trees, the only sign that there was a world beyond this clearing and the silent lake it sheltered.

No rare sapphires could match the waters of Avalon, blue and clear but strangely bottomless all at once, reflecting the sky from a distance but nothing up close, dark in its depths but somehow light and filled with life but without the sounds of mortal creatures scuttling around to shatter the ethereal peace of this place. Tristan was reminded oddly of Merlin's eyes when he looked at those waters.

Tristan had thought, as one usually does of their true love, that there would be no place of rest good enough for Isolde.

But Merlin had found somewhere worthy of the woman who had ensnared his heart and given him hers, right from their first meeting.

X

"It hurts. It will for a long time. Nothing can change that, and nothing anyone says will make it hurt any less. But at least you can visit her in a place as beautiful as she was to you."

Tristan took a deep breath, and let it out again, blowing out everything that had built up since Isolde had been taken from him. He couldn't simply let go of his love for her, steadily built up to something bright and overwhelming that left him with a spinning head after every kiss and shared smile, or his sadness, deep and slow and everything his love wasn't, but he could at least smile again, and try to move on.

So, for the first time in two days, Tristan cracked a smile.

"Are you saying she wasn't beautiful to you?"

For the first time since they'd set out on this solemn journey to the Gateway Waters, Merlin smiled as well.

"Your true love is more beautiful to you than anyone else."

With one last tear-glazed look at the lake, Merlin turned and trudged back to the trees, and life.

Tristan shuffled forwards to the shore, suddenly filled by a strange compulsion to look closely at that blue mirror that knew no ripple.

Even where the water met the land, he couldn't see the bottom, so unearthly was the blue of the lake. And as he watched, the waters darkened further still; quite suddenly, a face swam up from the depths.

Isolde.

His Isolde, dead and cold at the bottom of a lake but somehow still here, still warm and beautiful and where he could see her. The smuggler gasped for breath, unable to contain his laughter.

Beneath the water, Isolde smiled back, returning his laughter but without sound, and held up her palm, pressed to the surface as though it was a pane of glass. Tristan finally unfroze himself and placed his palm down on the surface, just brushing the water, as though plunging his whole hand in would disturb this wondrous illusion and take Isolde away from him forever.

Where his hand and hers touched, there was a warm tingle, without the pressure of loving contact; but it was enough.

She was dead, but she was here, a part of this place, and she always would be.

Beneath the water, Isolde's smile became smaller, more regretful, and she withdrew her hand. Beside her, a girl in a purple dress, with cherry red lips and dark hair appeared, placing a gentle hand on Isolde's shoulder.

The two women smiled at each other, each in perfect understanding with the other, and vanished.

Then the water cleared and was just water again, the bottom of the shallows clearly visible.

Tristan didn't realise he was crying until the first tear became a ripple and joined with the lake.

He stood and turned back to find Merlin staring at him with a haunting intensity that vanished as soon as he'd noticed it. Merlin smiled sadly, and disappeared into the trees.

Tristan got the feeling that Merlin knew exactly what Tristan had seen in the lake. Perhaps he even knew what miracle had shown him his Isolde, and the dark haired girl who Tristan now realised was the reason Merlin had understood his pain, the reason he knew exactly what Tristan was going through as the light faded from Isolde's eyes.

He hadn't stated that he too had loved and lost; he hadn't needed to. But there it was, proof in the water, in the form of a beautiful young woman cruelly ripped from the man who loved her.

Merlin hadn't spoken of her for a reason, and Tristan would respect that. He knew Merlin well enough now to know that Merlin always had a reason.

X

And then as they ambled back to Camelot in silence, a thought struck him, a sudden realisation that appeared in his mind with a blinding flash, one that almost had him laughing.

Tristan had heard many stories and legends during his time on the road; tales and myths and prophecies, some of them nonsense, some of them kicking his brain into thought.

The tale of Avalon, the Lake of Life and Death, the gateway to the spirit world, was the oldest; and as is often the case with such things, the least corrupted and altered by the passage of time and telling.

Avalon was a place glimpsed only when you stood on the knife's edge between life and death, teetering on the cliff of mortality; a place where magic was stronger than anywhere, even the fabled Isle of the Blessed, where lands beyond the mortal realm could be breached.

No mere man simply stumbled across Avalon.
Tristan couldn't resist asking.

"Merlin?"

"Hmm?"
"How did you find… Avalon?"

Merlin shrugged his non-committal shrug that – Tristan had noticed – signified he wasn't going to tell the full truth of the matter.

"Picking herbs."

Now that was a lie.
The legends stated quite clearly that no mortal could ever lay eyes upon the Lake of Avalon before their time on earth was over. Tristan was certain, absolutely certain, that the place Merlin had led him to was Avalon. So Tristan himself was breaking the rules by walking from the Lake of Life and Death with his life, but the real question was what did that make Merlin, who claimed to have stumbled upon it?

X

The next day, the path still fresh in his mind, Tristan set out to test a theory he'd developed quite suddenly in a flash of inspiration before laying down to sleep.

He'd done some thinking, partly to keep his mind off Isolde and partly out of habit; there was some part of Tristan that, when presented with a riddle or a question, would press him to investigate and find an answer. He loved riddles, loved picking them apart and finding every meaning, every scrap of information and titbit and hint, until he knew everything there was to know. It was what made him follow Arthur Pendragon; not just because Merlin could treat Isolde's wounds, but to find out why people like Merlin and Guinevere, paragons of various virtues in their own right, would diligently and happily follow a man so much more flawed than themselves.

In the end, he got the answer to that question, and as soon as he had shaken off the haze induced by the beauty of Avalon and the overwhelming sadness brought on by his last sighting of Isolde, he had found another.

Who is Merlin? What is he?

A man who could simply wander and stumble across the Lake of Avalon had to be something more.

Tristan intended to prove that theory.

So, carefully memorising every landmark as he went, the smuggler approached the place he knew Avalon to be – and found that he couldn't get to it.

Oh yes, it was definitely there. Tristan knew that if he craned his head just that bit higher he would glimpse jewel-blue waters, that if he brushed past that bush he would find a silence so great nothing could break it, but he simply couldn't get that bit higher or brush past that bush.

The Lake remained ahead of him, that silence and those waters hidden from his mortal eyes and ears, out of sight and out of reach.

X

So a week later, when Merlin was out picking herbs for Gaius to replenish his depleted stores, Tristan tagged along, feigning that he had forgotten how to get to the resting place of his beloved, and would Merlin please show him how to get there again.

The cheerful young man obliged, chattering inanely and stopping to pluck something medicinal from the forest floor every now and then, completely oblivious to Tristan's experiment.

And there it was. Both the lake, and confirmation.

Tristan was painfully aware of his own mortality, being a few years past the stage of life where 'sprightly' was an appropriate description. He was unable to find the lake without Merlin, who, it seemed, could come and go when he pleased.

Merlin wasn't mortal, Tristan concluded, not truly; maybe not immortal, and testing that theory was something best left to dark sorcerers with a fondness for blood soaked altars and runny candles. But he was something else entirely. A man and something more.

What that something was, Tristan could not say; but he had no plans to move on from Camelot any time soon, not while there was a roof over his head so long as he helped clean up. Maybe he could find a job in the city; settle down like he always planned to, minus the woman he loved.

Maybe, just maybe, if he stayed, he'd find out what made Merlin different from everyone else.

Because Merlin was a riddle.

And now that Isolde was gone, Tristan's great love was riddles.

FIN.

A/N; EDIT: SEQUEL NOW POSTED.

There. Boom. It is done. Thank you to all those who reviewed, and all those who favourited, alerted, or whatever; I am most pleased that you were pleased enough to do so.

Alas, this work of mine is now done and closed, so bid Loyalty, Cowardice, and Love farewell, and look out for anything else I send sailing down the Straits of Musedom.

Plot bunny poll now on profile! Please vote now, if it's no trouble.

Doc'