Consciousness came back to her slowly, like a trickle of water from a tap which was being slowly opened. Green eyes flickered open, head pounding something fierce, and that in itself gave her the answer as to where she was.

Not in the Elemental Nations.

She was in Arda still – still disappointingly alive, and Sakura could only wonder why. It had been the perfect opportunity that she'd given him. The perfect opportunity with which to end both of the torments they experienced. Sakura closed her eyes once more, scowling when her stomach rumbled. Her eyes cracked open again, nose twitching at the scent of food which originated from close by.

Ignoring the creaks and aches of her body, she sat up. Her gaze narrowed, a dark chuckle slipping from her lips when she realised exactly where she was. A cell. Though elves didn't do things by half measures, and the prison she was now in was so very fancy and carefully wrought. Delicate and pretty. Two of the things Sakura knew she hadn't been in a long while, and her heart ached at the thought that she never would be again. She flopped back against the mattress, closing her eyes as she mused on the topic of her new lodgings.

The door to her cell was wrought iron, woven like branches and looking far more like a fancy, tall, locked gate than the entrance to a prison, leading out to a corridor paved with darker grey brickwork. A sconce on the wall provided the small amount of light available, casting her new accommodation in a pale yellow glow offset only by the scant amount of moonlight flooding in through the thin, barred window at the top of the wall opposite.

"My," she muttered, feeling the bandages wrapped around her neck and her temples. "To show such care…" Another burst of laughter escaped her, and she wondered about why she was lying there atop a mattress comfortably.

Imprisonment wasn't supposed to be comfortable.

She was supposed to be suffering not just lying there comfortably. Yet she couldn't summon the energy to do anything other than lie there and gaze at the ceiling listlessly. She was supposed to be dead. She was supposed to be gone; her taint removed from that place of light and goodness. A sigh escaped her, and she snuggled into the horribly comfortable mattress, burying herself beneath the blankets she had been given for one reason or another. Rattling of metal links made her blink, the cool sensation of metal on skin making her smile then as she shifted one leg.

Sakura closed her eyes, letting exhaustion take her away from reality for a precious little while.

It wasn't enough.

She doubted it would ever be.

She was supposed to be dead and gone, and her death would be far better for both of their sakes. Sakura didn't know why he hadn't realised that much. He was probably far too kind. Sakura knew she didn't deserve a single ounce of that kindness.

Part of her wondered how long it would take for Glorfindel to realise that too.

If there was one good thing about imprisonment, besides the eerie comfortableness which she didn't deserve to experience in the slightest, then it would be the amount of time she had to run circles around in her own brain.

Or maybe that was a bad thing?

She could think on all of it. She could remember all of it: her deaths, her lives, her crimes, and the boy who might as well have started it all off with that speared hand of lightning.

It was the catalyst of it all.

A catalyst that, if she thought of all which she had done afterwards, she had ultimately deserved. The voice in the back of her head was mercifully silent in what Sakura could only determine to be agreement. Humming then, she rolled over onto her front, cuddling the pillow to her chest as she stared at the wall in front of her.

There were twelve cracks on its surface – she had counted; once, twice, thrice, and then she had lost track of the amount of times she had counted the shallow gouges.

It was all the entertainment she had, not that she deserved any entertainment.

"I think I miss you," she murmured, thinking of kind grey eyes and golden hair. "Not that I'll ever see you again," she continued, wanting to hear something other than the silence which haunted her day in and day out. A silence she undoubtedly deserved. A silence she really should have been used to. Many times in that second life of hers, she had languished in silence. Though, then again, she had been so obsessed with her precious father-master-creator, and forever thinking of ways to better please him had distracted her from the loneliness and silence.

Pathetic, the voice hissed, at the memory of how she had chased him, bowed to his every whim, worshiped him, and for what? She had learnt far too late that the love and acceptance she craved with her very bones were two things he would never be able to grant her. Not the way she wanted them. Not the way she needed them.

"He likes breaking things, did you not know?"

Sakura closed her eyes.

"Nothing pretty ever survives Angband."

She wasn't pretty anymore – if ever she had been such a thing, and her soulmate was so very lovely that it almost hurt to look upon him.

Her attention turned onto her hand, and she let the change wash over the skin there – eyes widening at the stinging throb in her ankle which brought her transformation up short. Sakura blinked, wondering why pain in her imprisonment was such a surprise to her.

It wasn't like she didn't deserve it.

She wondered if it was an odd form of torture – being kept out of the loop as to what would be her fate. She had thought that the looming prospect of death would bring nothing but peace and happiness to the cockles of her dead heart.

She was wrong.

It was back – that insidious feeling of hope and that fear which always lingered in the back of her head when she thought of the empty years which were all which could be waiting ahead of her. His kindness was the only reason she had been spared of the death she had so wanted only a matter of days before. It wasn't like he could actually care for her anymore, being that which she was. Now that it had all been revealed. As it always would have been.

Her heart was a fickle thing though, always wanting what it couldn't have, and Sakura could only bite her tongue and hate that which she had become. Maybe if she hadn't been such a horrific creature of death and ruin, then maybe there would have still been a chance.

She couldn't change the past though, no matter how much she longed to. Rather she could only close her eyes and wait on whatever fate would be decided for her to fall upon her like a blade on her neck. Sakura sighed softly, that same, empty tiredness coming to eat away at her as she lay there, staring at the small confines of her cell.

Why couldn't it all be over?

A sigh escaped her, eyes closing as she tried to find some sort of solace amidst it all. It would probably be too simple if it all came crashing down. Of course she needed to suffer. Her eyes cracked open, examining her cell then once more, not quite understanding how exactly she was suffering right then and there.

There was no physical pain. Only mental anguish as she thought on everything that she had done and a longing to feel something other than self-loathing and hatred. Though those sorts of emotions probably suited a dragon: dark, miserable, and ultimately belonging to a terrible creature.

Really, it was no wonder she couldn't really feel any other sort of emotions than that.

"You"—the familiar voice stirred her out of the daze she felt had been hanging over her for days—"are without a doubt the oddest dragon to ever exist, are you not?"

Sakura turned slowly, blinking languidly at the sight of her likely once-friend lingering in the door then, peering at her curiously through the wrought iron. Something wretched bubbled up in her chest at the thought that the elleth had ever thought her a friend. Dragons didn't do friends.

Yet she hadn't always been a dragon.

The thought made her heart ache and her head long for days long passed, ever reminded that she couldn't go back and magically change her actions to that very day. No. She had to live with them. And then die with them. Over and over again. Part of her only wondered when the cycle would stop – if it would ever stop. Part of her wondered if that was her agonising punishment in itself, seeing as how the elves weren't seemingly doing much on that front. Part of her wondered if they ever would.

"Met many dragons, have you?" Sakura wondered, tilting her head, acrid green eyes meeting the elven grey ones. Part of her wondered why she didn't see seething hatred and betrayal in that gaze, but then again, elves were probably good at concealing that. Unless they were the soulmate she had betrayed so very viciously and for her own greedy desires.

"Not in the flesh – I am a healer first and foremost," Noeneth replied. "But I am well learned of their natures and the many injuries they can cause."

A sneer pulled at her lips. "You think that reading about dragons makes you an expert?" Laughter escaped her, cold and cruel. So much like the dragon you are, the voice murmured in the back of her head. "Laughable."

"Well you can hardly say that there is another dragon who can shift skins as you do," she said levelly, and Sakura hated that unchanging stare. It should have shown some derision and scorn for that which she truly was. Yet Noeneth was simply staring at her as if it was another regular day. Sakura hated it. She could still remember the screams of that other elleth upon realising that which she was. "You are… unique, in that matter, are you not?" Noeneth asked, gazing at her still more curious than afraid as she should rightly have been. "Unless I should inform Lord Elrond to be on the lookout for any more dragons which wear a mortal skin?"

"Ha!" Sakura hissed. It was almost laughable that there would be others like her. She was the only one her so-called master had ever been able to make. He had come across her soul by chance, and he had taken it and the rage she still held after her death, and he had twisted it. Ever had he sought to make another one – a slight to Eru – yet he could not. "I guess I am unique," she muttered, staring at a spot on the wall behind her so-called friend. "Though that doesn't change the fact that I'm a dragon, or do you forget that fact, elf?"

"Dragon or no, you are still Lothien. You are still the one who protected Lord Glorfindel. You are still the one who brought him back to us whole and hale," she remarked, those grey eyes undaunted and unafraid of her – the mightiest dragon of the First Age. See how pathetic you've become, the voice hissed, and Sakura gritted her teeth. "Even if the rest of my kinfolk here see only that, I still remember the woman I spoke with for hours on end."

"But you forget… I am not a woman," Sakura spat, never able to forget that very fact herself. And she hated herself for it. She always would, because if she had actually been a woman, then maybe, just maybe, she would have had a chance. "I am a dragon," she hissed, letting her eyes shift, even as the metal wrapped around her ankle heated up and stung her for only shifting the tiniest part of her body. "A wretched, evil dragon whose hands are stained with the blood and ash of your kin…" She rose to her feet, ignoring the hiss of pain which escaped her as her burning ankle moved. Her bare feet echoed on the floor as she strode forwards, deliberate and threatening, the chain attached to her ankle going taunt a mere pace away from the door to her cell. "Never forget that, elf," she snarled, teeth bared in promise, hands curled around the bars which kept her there.

Fingers, soft and smooth, brushed against her skin, a hand cupping her cheek ever so gently. Sakura froze at the unexpected touch, acrid dragon eyes darting between that hand and those grey eyes which stared at her, fearless as ever. She believed that she wouldn't harm the other, and something churned in her gut at that thought. She was a horrid creature of ruin and destruction; a being made for war and famine; a being who should, by all rights, rip that hand away and mar its skin and prove that it was a foul beast. Yet she couldn't. Wouldn't. All because she wanted to be a good creature, not that it was a title she would ever be able to bear.

As if you could ever be good, the voice hissed.

She slapped the hand away, retreating from her once friend, something in her shaken to the very core. Because Noeneth could not know that – couldn't know that she didn't want to harm a single hair on an elf's pretty head. Nobody could. Nobody would. Otherwise they'd probably just imprison her forever and ever rather than killing her like they so needed to. Elves were far too kind.

Or maybe it was just because she was his soulmate and he hadn't made up his mind of what to do with her or what method to use to send her to her grave.

"You know," Noeneth said. "Tell me then, dear dragon… why does it sound more like you are trying to convince yourself of that fact?"

Sakura froze, fingers twitching and curling because that wasn't the truth. She didn't need to convince herself she was evil. She already knew of that fact. A burst of laughter escaped her, ever as humourless as it was in those days. "You know nothing of me, elf," she spat, turning away from the entrance to her cell and wrapping herself up in those blankets they had given her.

"I have treated many a patients," Noeneth continued, heedless of the fact that she most definitely had shown that she wanted that conversation to be over and done with. She preferred the agony of silence. That was what she deserved, after all. "And I have found that when one is hurt so very severely and perhaps for a rather long time, they tend to become rather brittle. They snap easily and lash out at others, whether in action or word…"

Her fingers twisted in the blankets, anger and something else rising up within her. "I'm not brittle!" she snarled. She was a dragon, and if there was one thing dragons weren't – it was fragile and brittle.

Noeneth merely hummed, and Sakura could just tell that she was smiling. Part of her wanted nothing more than to rip such a smile from her face. Dragon, the voice hissed at the thought, and shame flooded through her at the thought of ruining yet another's life. The only person there who was seemingly not afraid of her in spite of what she was.

Not even Glorfindel had come to see her.

Not that she even deserved the pleasure of his company.

Silence descended, soft and mellow, and Sakura felt her thoughts drift towards her soulmate then. She could still see the betrayal in his eyes. She still felt so confused and disappointed and hopeful about the fact he didn't kill her right there and then. Elladan had ruined it all. Her lip curled at the thought of Elrohir and his bothersome brother, though she supposed she couldn't blame him for his anger. Even if he'd ruined her atonement. Even if he'd given her some more godforsaken hope which just refused to be snuffed out. "How is he?" she murmured, grip on herself tightening at the blasted words which had escaped her before she could filter them. Dragons weren't supposed to care – not like that.

Yet she hadn't always been a dragon.

A hum of amusement emanated from behind her. "You do care," Noeneth murmured.

Sakura snarled, whipping her head around and out from under her blankets. "I don't!" she hissed, teeth bared.

Noeneth smiled, and Sakura turned back around, burying herself under her blankets once more. Pathetic, the voice said once more, and she could only languish in the stillness which followed. "Lord Glorfindel?" Noeneth questioned, answering then despite the non-answer Sakura gave to the prod for more information. "He has holed himself up in his rooms for quite a while now," she said, heedless of the way her stomach turned at that acknowledgement. "Though I believe he will likely come to visit you soon."

She swallowed at the thought of seeing him through those bars which kept her in. Sakura wondered if she would be able to look him in the eye when he did.

Who was she kidding?

She was a dragon, known for their deceptive abilities, and she had lied to his face once before all to make him despise her like he was supposed. He had also been supposed to act on those words and end her life – hopefully once and for all, but it was more likely she'd just wake up as a baby in the Elemental Nations once more. There was no point in hoping for a different end – of hoping she would have the final release of death.

It wasn't like she could ever see the ones she had loved in her first ever life. Her fingers crinkled the shirt she wore, clutching at the skin over her heart and the branching lightning-like white scars marring her skin there.

Proof that she hadn't been worthy of being loved – proof that she still wasn't worthy of being loved.

"Dragon."

The word sliced through her daydreams, and Sakura sat bolt upright on her mattress. She turned her head slowly, meeting those lovely silvery grey eyes which she still loved looking at. Even if there was no longer any adoration in their gaze. Instead, there was only confusion and hurt.

Sakura smiled, wondering if her end was coming, ignoring the confusing tangle of emotions tied up around the prospect of her death. "Elf," she greeted, turning to face him fully then, part of her eager, the other half of her dreading it all.

Her soulmate looked as lovely as ever, even as he stood there in all his golden glory, frowning and looking so terribly solemn as he opened his mouth. "I think it time we spoke…"