"Gods, I wanted to die. Wanted it to be done and over." As though completely at her ease and utterly unaware of the gravity of her statement, she reached over to share scritches and pets between her dogs and the crow that was, even now, her near constant companion.

"Everything in me hurt. Everywhere. My soul didn't fit right in my skin. I couldn't explain to anyone what I felt, how I felt, what the hell was going on in my head, in my heart. I was, fuck."

She looked out over the courtyard gardens of Roan's in town Villa, watched as he and his ward, his Champion sparred with live steel, deadly grace and brutal strength. With her eyes distant, she forced herself to remember.

Pushed past the choke hold her pride kept on her throat, and spoke.

"I'd had my heart broken; fought in a war I was not nearly strong enough, skilled enough to take part in; died; been raised." She shared a wry look with her audience, as well as belly rubs and wing tickles.

"I kept trying, desperately in some places, to take hold of something, someone. Never the ones that wanted me no. That, wouldn't do. They cherished me, treated me better than I felt I deserved. Expected things out of me. Expected me to be, more than some pathetic, broken thing wallowing." The cursing laughter and hiss of pain from Ophidia's throat drew her attention back to the sparring grounds.

She nodded in approval when the woman's blade slipped through, just far enough past Roan's guard, to lay a thin line down his arm. Skin parting as blood flowed.

"I didn't, couldn't, wouldn't see that they were just, there. Offering support, offering to help me in anyway they could. And loving me. And, I hurt them, all of them. Broke their hearts, broke some of them. Did the same thing to them that'd been done to me." Some admissions were never easy, should never be easy to make. "I didn't outright, intentionally kill them. But, I may as well have.

"I had the boys, Dorian and William, and Bar, and I still couldn't pull my head all the way out and up. I couldn't... be right. I was always floundering, always sliding along that edge that keeps you up and lets you fall to pieces without caring who sees you. Kept trying to be friends with someone who couldn't figure out they didn't want to be my friend. Kept trying to matter to someone who couldn't admit I just flat out didn't matter to them."

There was a twist to her lips, not quite a smirk, not quite a smile, coupled with a short shrug. "Kept giving, they kept taking. Eventually, I had nothing left to give, so I finally gave up. Finally stopped kicking up a fuss and trying, and walked away like I should have the first time they treated me like a mushroom. And through all of this bullshit, Roan's dying. Roan's leaving me, and I can't go with."

Her breath caught, hitched in her throat at the first touch of the memory. "He's doing what he has to do to keep his Clan, his children safe, but he's leaving me behind. I hadn't even realized I loved him, that I was in love with him. Hadn't felt the fall, until he was going. And then I'm floundering again. Trying to hold my shit together even harder, keeping a tighter grip while I'm watching the man who means more to me than my own soul, my own potential, fade away."

She lifted her chin to indicate the session, the man there fit and toned and in the prime of his life wielding his sword with the skill and grace of a thousand lifetimes spent on the battlefield. The fatal art of killing and living evident in every movement, that perfect tension painted in every line of him.

"That man, fading to a husk, a shell, until there was almost nothing left in him of the man I'd first me at that damn Tavern. Tired, we'd spend days curled together in bed, just holding onto each other. Pretending." Whether or not she was aware of the tears that filled her eyes, tracked their salted progress across her cheeks, she didn't acknowledge them.

"I got, so good at pretending. So good that, for a while, I could pretend I wasn't shattered inside, broken apart and not healing. I could pretend that he wasn't going to go. That I wasn't going to loses him." The white bitch, Han-wi turned to nuzzle under the redneck's chin, to offer the shoulder Ohoda once had. The others crowded close, offering their comfort. The crow muttered, and began bill combing her hair.

"And in the end, it didn't matter. Didn't matter how much I pretended, how much I needed to make that pretend the truth. Duty won out, the safety and hells, life of his Clan, of his race, won out, and he left me behind. He went away, wouldn't even let me watch him go. Made me turn around, made me promise, and still set people to watch and make sure I wouldn't. Make sure I couldn't."

In her voice were echoes, shadows of the pain, the wrenching loss and numbing heart break. Echoes and shadows enough to drag someone down and drown them. Black tides of loss and pain seeming without end. A crushing weight of despair that no one, and nothing, could lift. That feel as though they might never be lifted again.

(There's a trigger warning on this, the final post for this part of Thorn's tale. Self-harm, and suicide the content.)

Here she paused, she had to. Had to stop and gather her courage to give voice to the rest. Had to hold tight to her nerve to finish the telling.

"I didn't realize how bad I was, I don't think I could. Or, maybe I could, I just wouldn't." Her laugh was a hushed, humorless thing when it pushed past her teeth and was scattered by the shaking of her head. "Gods know when I put effort into it I can ignore, anything."

Once more she took the bit between her teeth and ran with it, spilled the words she'd barely spoken to anyone, even herself.

"A bounty came up, big assed Black changing a goodly portion of wetland into a swamp for its fiefdom. Pushing humans, elves, animals, magical and not, pretty much everything, off and out. What wouldn't give ground, it spent hours killing. And it made damn sure the sounds carried to the rest so they'd learn and run and save it the trouble of handling them too.

"It was already old, damn old, and huge. Battle scarred and just, gnarly as fuck looking, before it moved in and it only got more so after. Human and elf and animal and dwarf and all manner of folk banding together trying to put it down, fighting for their land and lives back. And nothing." Briefly, viciously, she wished for a cigarette to make the telling easier, to give her fidgetting hands something to do with themselves.

"When it posted and the Hyena contacted me, I didn't think. Didn't hesitate, just jumped right in. --Didn't listen either. Didn't hear a damn thing he told me beyond what type it was, what the terrain was like, and where it was." When the boy's breath caught against the edge of a bitten off oath, she nodded and let a grim smile curve. He was catching on.

"I think, I honestly think, some part of me knew. Knew the way this was going to go down. And damned if I didn't run straight into it.

"Wasn't hard to track that big bastard through the swamp, hardest part was not sinkin' in the mires and muck and 'sands or pits. When I found him, gods.

"The Fear, it washed over me and turned my guts to water. My knees buckled and my spine went jelly, every bit of spit in my mouth dried up and I think I shit out my heart. Stopped thinking, brain completely shut off.

"Black as the space between the stars, his scales glittered like the promise of a nightmare, cracked and scarred here and there, thickened in the places he'd been hurt before and healed from it. The air was thick, thicker than even a dragon-grown swamp should be, with contempt and hate and, the metallic, ozone, maggot-ridden rancid-rank bitterness of a Black's acid.

"He's poking at me, literally and figuratively. How do I figure I'll succeed where so many others, full parties, had failed, I'm just a puny little human, yaddita-yaddita." The rude hand gesture she made ended with a thumb shifting over the side of her fist to 'cap it'.

And though they smirked, none laughed.

"I think he about swallowed his tongue when I got my shit together enough to drop through a Gate, come up under his belly, and split open a run of healing scales down through the meat.

"Lemme tell you, that fucker 's blood was damn near as caustic as his breath. Ate through the armor I was wearing, pretty damn fast even with the layers of protection on it. Then it started on me, so I got the hell out of there. Got out from under it as fast as I could." She hissed in frustration, and for the first time, shame, then.

"Got clear, and turned back. Turned to face it square on. Didn't even flinch when it drew back and drew in a deep breath. Howling and thrashing as it was, I could've gotten away, could've Gated out and let it weaken itself trying to keep its guts in.

"But I didn't." A long swallow of Pepsi was followed by an idle tracing of scar patterns along her left arm.

"I thought, seriously thought I just didn't dodge the stream fast enough. Gods know how long it takes for acid burns and damage to heal, nothing magic touches it, has to be natural." Quieter now, softer, as though she was speaking to herself.

"It wasn't until Orin told me the rub of it, told me the truth that I finally faced up to it." Thorn's eyes sought Roan's for a moment, caught the warmth and pride in those dark, liquid amber depths before skipping a glance at Ophidia, the girl, then locking onto Bar's.

"You see, even as far down as I was. As little will as I had left in me, as broken and hurting and done as I was. As desperate and empty and, gods the rage in me was so cold and brittle. As lost and afraid and, just, hollowed out and .." She lost the words as the memory's pain swamped her again. The black despair that made even the necessity of breathing too great a task to complete, the cold emptiness and leaden dread that weighed her down, all of it painted across every line of her.

"I wanted to die, to have it done and over with so I'd stop hurting and feeling and wishing and wanting and fucking needing so much he couldn't move me. It was easier to move a world three inches to the left, than it was to touch me at all.

"I think, when the acid hit me, because I don't remember, I think for a breath, I knew peace."