Tristan stopped at the edge of the mound, his shoulders stiff. He felt his temper stir again and balled his hands into fists in an attempt to keep it at bay.
"What would you know about it?" he asked Mace, struggling to keep his voice steady. He didn't know Mace, not really, and Mace certainly didn't know him. He wheeled around, his jaw set. "How on Shaman would you know what I'm better than? Or worse than?" It took a conscious effort not to look down at the sword. His eyes kept straying in that directly, completely unbidden. It was like it was talking to him, whispering, the grey steel of the blade the same shade as his father's eyes. How could Mace know when he wasn't even sure?

Tristan pointed down at the sword, and his hand trembled a little. He fought against it, trying to stiffen his wrist to stop the shaking.
"What do you know about that sword?" he asked Mace, his voice grew louder. "A routine, some oil and a whetstone isn't going to help!" Excalibur needed Arthur, and Tristan didn't even come close, not on his best day, and he'd almost forgotten what those felt like. He withdrew his hand and it fell limply at his side. His eyes finally won their battle and fixed on the sword. It lay between them like a line in the sand. Mace was delivering a choice, an ultimatum. You can choose to be your father's son or you can choose to fail. What kind of a choice was that? Mace was missing the point. Everyone was missing the fucking point.

"How do you know?" Tristan asked, crouching down. He couldn't make himself pick it up, couldn't bring himself to reach out and take hold of it, but somehow it managed to bring as much comfort as it did pain. "We weren't finished," Tristan muttered, more to the sword than to Mace. Tears welled in his eyes and mortified he tried to bite them back. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw started to ache. There were so many things Arthur still had to tell him, to show him, to teach him. There were so many things Tristan had always meant to ask him but had always put off. His father was still young. He glanced at Mace, was Mace older than his father? There had been so much time left.

Right up until there wasn't.

He was terrified of letting him down. Arthur had been his hero for as long as he could remember, and for so long it had just been the two of them. Gawain was gone, his mother was gone, it had been them against the world. The scariest thing of all was not being good enough. People were counting on him to lead them, to become his father and set the world back on its axis. But how could it ever get there without Arthur.

Tristan wasn't ready.

"I do though," he told Mace, finally raising his eyes from the ground. "I watched him. People didn't think I did because...well, I suppose because I was me." He bit his lip. He didn't feel angry anymore, just tired. "But I watched. He always had people around him, my mother, me, Grandmother, Aunt Cia..." Tristan trailed off, dropping the final two names, now too painful to say. "But when it came down to it, when he had to stop being a father and a son and a husband and just had to be a king, he was always alone. He'd change, just a little, if you knew him you could see it. It was in his face, his eyes, and I always wondered how he did it." Tristan held Mace's gaze, and then looked back down at Excalibur. "If I pick up that sword, and by some miracle I manage to be the person my father always thought I was..." He ran his finger over the blue gem in the pommel, clearing away the dew. "Then I have to pick that up too. And then he really will be gone."

Tristan