Disclaimer: I do not own the world of KA or any of the characters therein.

Please read and review, but don't flame me. Please.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Outside, the sky is lit by flashes of lightning, there one second and gone the next. I always used to sit and watch it, back home. I can still hear my father demanding to know whether the horses had been brought in out of the rain that was spilling from the clouds. It amazing how similar the storm clouds look here from home. I always thought that they would look different in Britain. They are the same dark, swirling masses that flew over the plains at home.

I think about that place every day. The faces of my family are always hovering before my eyes or floating in my dreams. I can't tell any of the others about it. It's not one of those things that we talk about. If I were to talk about these things, it would only start the others along the same road. There is some, unwritten, unspoken agreement between us that we will not speak of these things. At least not yet. Not until our return home rises above the horizon.

I find it hard, sometimes. Especially after night has fallen and the others are asleep. There are too many dark, lonely hours to lay and brood. By the time I get to sleep each night I have relived my time with my parents, my brothers and my sister more times than I care to remember. The others tell me it isn't right to think of them so much, that it just makes it harder. They don't know how right they are. But I am not like Tristan and Gerent. I cannot turn my emotions on and off on command. Many are the days that I wish I could do that, but my mould has always been set, and it will not shift to make it what I want it to be.

The last words my father said to me were: "Home is where the heart is, boy. As long as this place is in your heart, it will be your home." I can't help but cling onto them. They give me comfort; I am not ashamed to say it. But it causes me pain, too. It is agony for my soul when I realise that each day I spend in a Roman fort, living beside them, doing what some distant Roman commands kills a little bit of home in my heart. Soon, I will have no home. Each day I spend here kills my heart, too. I have spent so long here already that I don't know if it would still be home to me if ever I managed to return. My family wouldn't recognise me, I probably wouldn't know who they were either.

Home is where the heart is.

I thought that once. But now… I don't know.

Home is where the heart is.

I wish it was.