A lump rose in his throat at his grandfather's words. He swallowed hard.
"I could have saved him," Tristan insisted, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. The scene replayed in his head. He'd pushed Arthur out of the way to parry their attacker's next blow. He could still feel the shock of impact reverberating through his arm and his wrist twinged uncomfortably at the memory of the jarring twist which had sent his blade sliding uselessly towards the floor. He could have won. He should have won. Their attacker would have been dead and he'd have been able to get his father to the infirmary. He'd be sitting at the castle right now at Arthur's bedside, the world changed, but not like this, not catastrophically so. Without his father who was he? Not a prince, not a son, just Tristan.

And who was he with all of that stripped away?

The darkness seemed to swallow him. Tristan lapsed into silence tracing a line in the mud with the tip of his finger. He replayed it all over and over again; a loop that wouldn't end, that wouldn't give him the outcome or the answers he so desperately needed. Slowly, grief and self-pity gave way to anger. Anger at Mordred, yes, but anger at his father too. Why had he thrown him out of the room? Why had he locked the door? Why hadn't he let him save him? He'd left him, left him alone before he was ready, when it all could have been so different.

"I could have saved him," he repeated, his voice burning with more colour than before, "but so could you." Tristan turned a tear-stained face to Mallos. "Where were you?" he asked. Celidon whined again, pushing his head into his boy's lap.
That's not fair, Tris, the cu-sith thought gently.
"None of this is fair!" Tristan shouted, pushing Celidon away and gathering his knees to his chest again. The empty hole on his stomach seemed to expand, reaching up for his throat to pull him down into the nothingness. He was never going to see his father again. They weren't going to share a joke or go out riding. They weren't going to sit and talk about his mother and brother, or train together. The memory of him would fade, his recollections of his father's face would fade and blur around the edges just like Lilith and Gawain. Something had been taken he could never get back.

A sob that wracked his whole body finally broke through the resentful stillness of the barrow. This was really happening. Arthur was gone. Tristan's tears flowed freely as his chest heaved a second time. Even now he tried to fight it, to push it back into the pit inside him. He didn't want to feel it. The numbness had been better. He closed his eyes and saw the face of the pirate he'd stabbed in the corridor. He was there again, stabbing and stabbing over and over again. And then the face became his father's face, his eyes glassy and vacant. Oh God. Oh God.

"Why can't you fix it?" he sobbed, his shoulders shaking, "if you were going to fix one thing in all the world, I'd have it be this."



Tristan
_{the only thing left are the stars}