Her home.

That was a laugh.

No matter what anyone said, she would struggle to see S'Hea as her home these days. Too much had happened. Too much had changed. No matter how she tried she never felt like anything more than an outsider, tolerated politely perhaps, but not truly wanted or needed. Deep inside emotions festered; pain, anger, grief, until she thought she might truly go mad. And what difference did it make? What difference did it truly make, how she felt?

None whatsoever.

There were days when she wanted to lash out, not to scream and shout, but to carve bloody lines in someone's flesh... her husband's flesh. To make him hurt. To make him bleed. There were days when even that didn't seem enough. Days when the only thing that would truly satisfy her would be to hear him scream as he was broken. It had been a long time since she had practiced torture, but in the darker parts of her soul she dreamed of taking slow and painful revenge for every tear she had been made to shed. She'd never admit it. It was easier to focus her anger on various members of the Alcarin family in public, and gods she'd kill them and enjoy it, but Ro... some days all she wanted was to slice him into bloody little pieces.

It had been something that had haunted her dreams even before, but now... now he was dead. Now she had to remain calm and controlled. Now she had to put her children first and deny her own feelings. Now she couldn't express how she really felt, because his death was noble, a sacrifice for the good of others. She missed him so much that some days it hurt just to breathe, and yet other days she just wanted to scream. How dare he? How dare he just give up like that? How dare he take the easy route out, one he had denied others more than once, and leave everyone else to clean up the mess he'd left behind? Two weeks. The longest two weeks of her life. Two weeks she should never have had to spend if a promise had been kept. It was true what they said... Khaless nau uss mzild taga dosstan. Trust no one more than yourself. You sure as hell couldn't trust anyone else.

"Interesting, seeing that look on the face of an elf". In the shadow of an archway that led beneath the stands to the Barracks stood a figure that was just a bit taller than six foot, though no more than a half-inch taller. He was of medium build, not heavily muscled, but still strongly built. Across his back were strapped two short swords and his form was clad in well worn black trousers, heavy boots and the breast plate and crimson shirt of the Black Guard. The person took two steps from the archway, then paused on the edge between darkness and light and dropped to a casual squat as he watched Silverthorn. Calloused and scarred fingers raked through the sand at his feet and glittering, moss green eyes watched as the grains ran through his fingers then slipped to the ground. His hand made a dismissive gesture once the sand was gone, which brought his arm, with its scarred wrist, into the sunlight, "Don't mind me. By all means, brood, rant, do whatever it is you came here to do. My turn with Sha'tris can wait."

"And what look would that be?" the elven woman bit out, ignoring his second comment, the expression in her jade eyes hard as they looked down at him. Daemonorel Ashev was not the person she would have chosen to find her here, something that applied to almost all of the Guard. The Blacks' opinion of elves was well known and had been little tempered by their Emperor's choice of wives. Clad in black leather trousers, a matching sleeveless top left her tanned arms bare, revealing a dagger strapped to the inside of her right wrist as well as the faint scars of three millennia of combat. For nearly her entire life Silverthorn had lived her life in the shadows; as mercenary, assassin and even vampire. As she stood on the sands she had never looked more like what she truly was, a predator. Beautiful in an exotic fashion perhaps, but more likely to kill you than kiss you. It was what was missing that told the most significant tale however, a faint line on her left hand the only indicator of where two gold and emerald bands had rested for so many years.

"Murder. Homicidal intentions... mixed with the unbalance and lust to carry them out. I forget from time to time though, Drow blood flows in your veins. Frustrating, isn't it?" A knowing, almost malicious grin pulled one corner of his mouth back as he slowly rose to his feet and canted his head to the side. He watched Silverthorn like one would watch a wild animal, a creature of fantastic beauty and ferocious nature. It was also a look that meant if she made the wrong move, he'd just as soon kill her for a trophy and not feel a trace of regret.

The raven-haired woman eyed the Black as he straightened, a similar expression in her own green gaze. Then her lips curled in a savage smile, "yes. Very." His move brought them almost eye to eye, just out of arms reach, as they watched each other like two duellists, waiting to see who would strike the first blow. "Something you would know all about I imagine."

Moss green eyes narrowed and seemed to grow slightly murky, "There's a lot of things I would know about, Silverthorn..." He paused before using her last name, "D'Riel... or is it Badb Catha once more?" he shrugged and started to walk past her. The First Captain was close enough his armoured shoulder brushed against hers and he paused, shoulder to shoulder with her, "Either way, there are a lot of things I know about how you feel, and why. I'd tell you, were you and I to simply sit down and compare notes over lunch, but you don't strike me as the sort to want to... chat... and you are wasting time. The Pit won't be vacant but another few hours and I have demons to exorcise. So, if you'll excuse me..."

"And if I said no?" Jade eyes met his in challenge, "after all, you're interrupting me, not the other way around. I could just tell you to fuck off." The cool words held an edge of deliberate provocation, the casualness with which the elf stood deceptive as adrenaline began to seep into her blood, a coiled tension creeping into her muscles. She was tired of playing nice, tired of pretending to be something she wasn't. She wasn't nice. She wasn't sweet or kind or gentle, and her patience with those who couldn't leave her alone was at an end. Her voice dropped to a malicious purr, "unless of course what you really want is to be a target for the homicidal intentions. Right now I'm not really all that concerned about who I kill."

"Silverthorn," Daemonorel's fingers slowly drew both the short swords at his back and the blades made a soft hissing sound of adamantine being released from their encasing of leather and steel, "I've been a target for those sort of intentions far more often in my life than most people, and I am not that all concerned about who you want to kill. Grief..." Daemonorel paused and turned slowly, "get used to it. You think its bad after a fortnight? Try dealing with it two millenia. If you're lucky," His words took on a slow drawl, one that was very deliberate, "really lucky? You'll find yourself in one of those pretty crystal prisons the S'Hean's like so well and if you're a complete coward, you'll find a way to get yourself there on your own. Just like Y'Roden D'Riel did."

Jade eyes narrowed as anger flared, burning with a cold flame. "You ought to be careful making judgements like that. They're likely to bite you in the ass," she bit out, closing the gap until there was barely a hairsbreadth between them. "One thing I am not, and have never been, is a coward. When I die it won't be because I've stepped into a pretty crystal prison, it will be because I met someone who was just that little bit quicker with a blade that I am." A wolfish smile curved her lips. "I haven't met that person yet."

"Oh, you have." There was a slight pressure at her ribs, the point of his left short sword pierced her sleeveless shirt slightly and pricked the flesh beneath and he leaned closer, close enough that she could hear his low tones, "You just haven't pissed me off bad enough yet to know any better." He leaned back and twisted the sword point lightly back and forth, drilling on her skin just enough to cause a slow, stinging burn of pain, "But you should be warned. I don't overlook ignorance often. In fact, it's usually what I look for in lunch." The sword was pulled back suddenly, "Now, why don't you go play somewhere else, little girl, and leave. me. alone."

A faint inhalation was the dark-haired elf's only response to the sting of pain. Taking a step back as the sword was removed, Silverthorn's jade eyes met moss green with a mocking light in their depths. "Little girl? Is that really the best you can do, Daemonorel? How... pitiful." Her dagger fell comfortably into her hand. "You're more of a fool than I thought you were if you underestimate someone because of their relative youth."

Iron-rich blood scented the air, a crimson line opening up across the Black's cheek as the dagger blade slashed upwards in a swift movement, "and underestimating this 'little girl' has caused the death of more than one person, old man."

A feral grin flickered across Daemonorel's face, which caused the fresh cut to bleed even more as his mouth curled up in something close to a snarl, "I had no idea your kind fight the urge to commit suicide when you grieve, Badb Catha. And I am not a man." The slow burn of the neat gash to his cheek began to trigger the Rage, and as the adrenaline began to swamp his brain and the oxygen tide his blood, his hands began to shake. Murky, moss green eyes lit from within as round, human pupils snapped to serpentine slits.

"Let me warn you, Arianne." The words came out as a low hiss, "I KNOW what you're looking for, and it. is. not. here."

The right blade slammed upward toward Silverthorn's ribs while his left blade swept across, even with her throat. She would have to block both blades or what she would find here was death.

Blade clattered against blade as the dark-haired elf brought the dagger up to block the blow to her throat even as another fell into her other hand, catching the sword swinging up towards her ribs near the hilt even as it started to skim across her torso. "You," she bit out, "know NOTHING about me, or what I'm looking for."

A sudden, hard push against both weapons allowed her to take half a step back, freeing her own blade to swing in towards his right wrist even as her other thrust straight towards the now draconic eyes.

Daemonorel's back bowed in a sharp curve as the blades whispered just before his eyes and his body dropped to the ground with a spray of sand and dust. Booted ankles hooked around Thorn's calves as his torso twisted and jerked her footing out from under her. The momentum of his rolling fall took him to his knees and his knuckles pushed him to his feet as he danced back then slowly turned his head side to side. There was a crackling of vertibrae, then then he eyed his wrist. The thick scarring there was sliced and blackred blood oozed from the thickened flesh and threatened to make his grip on the hilt of his short sword uncertain.

"You think I don't know?" The pace of his breathing had barely increased with the exertion of the fast moving attacks and defenses that has just occurred, "You think I don't KNOW the feeling of being in a waking dream, where you feel them there next to you, in bed, their breath on the back of your neck, only to turn over, and find yourself alone, again? You THINK I don't know what its like to be suspended over nothing, and want to just let go, to fade into nothing, yet be unable to?"

A low growl, of anger, or something else perhaps, rumbled in his chest, "You think I don't know what you look for in the bottom of a bottle or in the physical pain that for just a little while, eclipses the agony in your soul?"

"We are like creatures, you and I." Daemonorel's bleeding wrist tilted forward, and the point of the short sword aimed at Silverthorn, "we need the physical pain to sustain us, to remind us we're alive," his upper lip peeled back in a snarl, "to make us want to fight back." The Black Captain rolled his shoulders back, "Creatures like you and I don't die of old age, comfortably surrounded by family and friends. We don't make good kings and queens... simply because we need. the. pain."

The blade spun in his grip and made a low whoosh of steel in motion. Glowing moss green orbs settled on Silverthorn's jade eyes, "Because its all we have left."

"Because it is what we are, or at least what we have become." The raven-haired woman rose to her feet in a single fluid movement, "and I am very tired of pretending to be something I am not." A dagger rested in each hand with the comfort of long familiarity. Sand streaked her tanned skin and blood trickled in fine lines from the light cuts on her torso, but there was a fire in her eyes, an adrenaline charge burning through her blood that made her feel more alive than she had in weeks... or possibly years.

A feral smile curled her lips, "but if it is all I have left I should make the most of it, right?"

"Because it's what we were born to be," Daemonorel's arms spread wide in invitation of an attack from Silverthorn as his snarl turned to a malice-filled grin, "But count yourself lucky in one thing. Your grief and the reasons for it have set you free. Mine only locked the prison doors."

"If there is one thing this whole experience has taught me," the elven woman replied, "it is that the only person who can truly cage you is yourself. Oh you can tell yourself that it's someone else, that it's due to their decisions, their choices, but ultimately it's not. It's yourself. It doesn't matter whether it's out of love or grief or anger or some other reason entirely. In the end, the only person that is keeping you in that prison is yourself. Of course, breaking out can hurt like hell so the only person who can decide if it's worth the price is yourself as well."

Blades flashed in the sun as the daggers spun between her fingers, the light deliberately directed into his eyes mere moments before she closed the gap, one weapon slashing at his throat as the other drove upwards, seeking the flesh beneath the bottom of the breastplate. "So tell me, are you too much of a coward to unlock the doors, or do you like it there in your prison?"

Daemonorel's right blade swept up, meeting the blade aimed at his throat as his left wrist snapped the short sword in that hand down to block the stab aimed for the softer, unprotected flesh of his lower abdomen. As steel met steel, the lower sword rocked back, then slashed up. In its wake, a long gash was opened in Silverthorn's leather shirt, exposing a crimson cut that should have been deeper, had she not been a moving target and smart enough to stay so close a clean cut was near impossible. Already glowing eyes sparked a brighter color as a fresh wave of Rage began to wash through him and he stepped lightly back, forcing her to remain at armslength from him.

Which was right where he liked pretty much everyone.

"And you would know so much about prisons then?" Black hate and malice tainted every word as his eyes narrowed and fixed on her face. The elf before him was dangerously close to figuring him out, figuring out the prison was a far safer place to merely exist, rather than having to live

Pain spiked along nerve-endings already fired by adrenaline, the blood sticky and hot against her flesh even beneath the desert sun. "So, you don't know as much about me as you think you do, Daemonorel?" The elf rolled her shoulders in a deliberately casual fashion, ignoring the pain from the wound as much as she was able. "If we're two of a kind that gives me insights into you, as much as you into me... and you really don't like that, do you? They say it takes one to know one, First Captain. You might like to consider that some day when you're not drowning your sorrows at the bottom of a bottle."

Daemonorel's green eyes narrowed as he studied the elven woman before him, he DID know her, that was the problem, and it was something he had suspected since he'd first known of her, and had only been confirmed this day in the Pit. What had been a fishing expedition for him, a way of pushing and pulling at her until he found a weakness, had just exposed his own.

"Alright then," the blade in his bloody hand shifted as his changed his grip on the hilt to better hang on to it, "So, its a two way street." He shrugged as if he didn't care what she could discern about him, and began rebuilding the carefully laid walls around what he was really afraid of, what he was really like beneath the Rage and wrath, "Then you also know why I like where I am, and why I chose to stay there. You say its fear, I call it self-preservation. If you know so much about prisons, Arianne, then you know once you've lived in one long enough, that's the only life you know, or want."

The carefully built wall around his thoughts and soul was becoming more intact, and the Black Captain began to slowly pace around Silverthorn, there wouldn't be an opening, a clean shot to attack, she was too fast, to well trained for too long in her life to offer an easy mark. Good. This meant he'd have to work at doing more than minimal damage, this meant a challenge, and a challenge meant he could forget, for just a little while, the reasons he was driven to train day after day, every waking hour, until his body could go no further.

It meant for just a little while, he could feel something, even it was pain. At least there was some sensation, something to remind him he was alive and mortal. A quick step that came with no warning brought him within striking range with both blades, the attack in earnest now, not just a 'feeling' out of her strengths and weaknesses. Now, he put all the strength and Rage he had behind his blades, and poured all the years of sorrow and loneliness into the fire that raced through his soul and his veins.

Metal clashed against metal as sword met dagger again and again, the two fighters circling one another upon the sand, always looking for an opening, a chink in the armour. Blood fell in thick drops as first one, then the other, found a way through the defences, only to find themselves blocked from anything more than a glancing cut.

The world contracted until the only thing it seemed to contain was the flash of sunlight on steel, the sand beneath their feet, and the heat of the sun on their skin. Her heart beat loudly in her ears as the raven-haired elf found her abilities being stretched further than they had been in years. Adrenaline poured through her veins as the sheer exhilaration of walking the knife-edge between life and death, knowing that one false move could be your last, lit her feline-like gaze.

An overwhelming flood of Rage coursed through Daemonorel's blood, a chemical tide that deadened the pain, and drove him to push himself further, harder, than he had in the past. This moment, today, was the closest he'd come to truely living, in almost two thousand years. The sound of steel skirling along steel ground through the arena and echoed off empty stands as Silverthorn's dagger hooked the cross-guard of his blade, the one in his blood covered hand, and suddenly, the short short was jerked free of his grip and sailed across the sands to land in a spray of golden grains. His momentum was broken, his focus fragmented, and he couldn't adjust his motion quick enough to avoid the slash that came lightning fast from the same dagger that had just disarmed him and left his cheek and part of neck carved open and bleeding.

The pain of the cut finally began seeping through the haze of adrenaline and flood of oxygen in his blood, but too late he realised that same step that would have carried him into striking range with his now lost blade, also tangled his ankle around hers, and the pair of them went to the sands with a loud whooshing oof coming from Daemonorel. Near blind from the dirt that had been kicked up by the fall, the Black Captain's blood and dust caked fingers shot up, catching at her wrist as the dagger was brought down. As for the other blade?

Laughter, wild and dark welled up in Daemonorel's chest, "Well, are you going to use that, and leave me fit to be a eunuch in a harem, or spare my life?"

The tip dug in a little harder into one of the more sensitive parts of his anatomy. "Don't tempt me," she drawled, "besides, you could still be a live eunuch. Just a very bored one."

Her breathing rapid, the raven-haired elf moved the blade, planting her hand at the side of the dragon's head. Jade eyes met moss green as she tugged at the wrist held captive in his grasp. "Alternatively you could let my hand go and I could promise not to stab you. At least, not right now anyway." A wolfish smile curled her lips.

"I'm already bored, actually, but if its all the same to you, I'd rather hang on to those. Its... a matter of pride and all that." Daemonorel's laughter slowly died as he stared up at Silverthorn and his own harsh breathing slowed, then nearly stilled. A slow, gnawing sense of... unease... began to eat away at him. In an effort to expose her weaknesses, he'd exposed his own, and while he'd quickly rebuilt the barricades, the fact that Silverthorn was this close to him, physically and on a much more fundamental level, was creating a seeping drip of panic in his veins.

She was simply too close to him in many ways.

And the fact that his body wasn't reacting quite like he expected it too wasn't helping at all. Calloused and bloody fingers began unpeeling from around her wrist with a faintly sticky sound before he shoved her to the side and rolled to his hands and knees, then rose to his feet.

"You have a remarkable talent, Silverthorn." His voice was now devoid of the laughter and the passion of the fight he felt coursing though him not 60 seconds ago. Those emotions were being locked safely away, they were weaknesses, true passion and laughter had gotten Tia killed, had gotten him tortured and nearly killed not once, but twice in his life.

"Keep it away from me." He growled low as he stooped to pick up the sword he'd lost moments ago, "But, I do hope you lock the doors of your prison behind you, and throw away the keys. Otherwise, you'll find yourself begging to be let back in someday. Trust me."

Jade eyes narrowed, the elf rising to her feet in one lithe movement. "If you knew me as well as you claim you do, you would have realised I don't trust anybody. Ever," she said coolly. The dagger in her left hand was sheathed in a practiced gesture, the one in her right held with the casualness of long use. Her quick grin slashed across her face, "and I never beg. Enjoy your time in solitary, Daemonorel. You're going to be there for a damned long time."

The First Captain didn't bother resheathing his own blades. They were covered with sand and blood and needed to be cleaned... and apparently, sharpened better. He never said another word to Arianne Badb Catha, aside from a low, warning growl before turning his back on her and walking across the sands, leaving her to leave or stay as she saw fit.

Hours later, he'd showered, been apprised of the current status of the combined effort to reveal the true assassin who was behind the death of his father and two Silver Houses, and was slowly, thoughtfully, cleaning his short swords. His cut wrist was bandaged with clean white linen, his other wounds clean and open to the air and covered in a healing salve as he stood in his quarters in nothing more than a loose pair of dark crimson, near black flannel trousers.

It was here, in the silence of the late evening, he stared at the slice of his reflection in the first clean blade and ran his thumb deliberately across the razor edge, and watched as blood ran in fat black drops to the floor. It was here, that he was forced to admit what he was really afraid of. Moss green eyes slowly lifted from the warped reflection in the blade's adamantine surface to the fire in the hearth that was warding off the late spring chill which seeped into the late night air. Ss he stared into the dancing flames, he considered just what it was that had scared him so badly today.

She'd gotten too close. He'd felt something, even for just a glimmer of a laughing instant, other than pain. He was forced to admit he was tired of waking up alone, tired of existing in a place of wrath and Rage, but was too afraid to ever step beyond the comfort of his self-made prison.

It wasn't dying he was afraid of.

It was living.