Disclaimer: I do not own Forgotten Realms or any characters, lands, or items from the TSR world. They belong to their respective copyright holders..
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, violence, violent rape, damaged people behaving in dysfunctional ways. Mentions of child abuse.

Sweat dripped from his hair, ran down his forehead and stung his eyes. His shoulders burned from the weight of his sword and dagger, from this endless-seeming fight. Artemis Entreri was a man well-used to combat, to killing, to bloodshed. He would gladly have pitted his endurance against any opponent, be it man, elf or dwarf. What he was not and had never been was a soldier. The never-ending night filled with skirmish after skirmish was wearing him down in a way he had never experienced before.

His only consolation was that the ranger and the woman were as fatigued as he was. The cat had been summoned, fought until it was too worn and wounded to fight on, and the woman dismissed it again. As they hid in a narrow crack in the caves beyond Menzoberanzan, her hand on the bow shook with exhaustion; the drow's black skin ran with sweat. Against his will, Entreri's eyes tracked a bead of sweat down the graceful throat to where it disappeared under the cool steel armor.

Something had changed, and it disturbed him. Even exhausted as he was, he felt his pulse rate increase as he watched his dark companion. He felt unsettled, vulnerable. He wanted to slit that warm throat, see the hot spill of his blood, see the life die in his eyes; anything to feel safe again. He would do anything to not face this black uncertainty, these unnamable desires. Well, anything that would not result in dying here, alone in the underdark.

Drizzt's lavender eyes glanced from whatever he was watching for in the passageway outside their hiding hole, past the woman, and over to Entreri.

His eyes must have still been following that bead of sweat. His face must have betrayed something of his hatred, or the new turn his obsession with the ranger had taken, because he saw the drow's face flush with warmth at the sight of him, lips pulling back from his teeth in an expression that was not a smile.

"Did it please you?" he hissed. The woman glanced from Drizzt on her left to Entreri on her right, then flattened herself tight against the wall, getting as far out from between them as possible in the tightness of their hiding spot.

"Did what please me?" Entreri returned, his voice cold, hard, but not loud.

"Finding me like that. Defeated. Broken, used. Was it everything you had always dreamed?" his lip curled in a sneer, his fine brow furrowed in anger. Even in his pain, there was an awful beauty about him.

The taste of bile rose in Entreri's throat, the smell of that room was too fresh in his memory; the smell of that alley too clear, too real.

"No." His voice came out in a croak that embarrassed him. "No," he said again, this time under more control. He could see in the ranger's eyes that he did not believe. Without knowing why he was bothering, he found himself making words of explanation. "I wanted you defeated, yes, but by my hand, no other." Did I fear this from our first meeting? He had to ask himself. Did I want him even then? Was it just easier to hate him than ...

His hands ached to wrap themselves around that slender throat, to choke Drizzt until his soul fled. He felt ill. That room. That alley. The two images blurred, overlapped. A drow, surrounded by drow; a darkhaired human boy, surrounded by men that were urging each other on. Pain, blood. His, Drizzt's.

"But I didn't want you hurt like that. Never like that." He shook his head, trying to clear it. Lavender eyes narrowed, cutting into his soul. He felt like all his walls, all his masks, had been ripped away, like his secrets were written on his skin for the world to read.

But then the drow sneered at him again. "Usstan phlith dos." He hissed, and turned his back on his two companions, staring moodily back up the passage.

He had done this several times over the past day. Somehow he sensed the pursuit before they were overtaken. No matter how silent the drow trackers were, he knew they were there, and each time they were able to set some sort of surprise or ambush.

Silent shapes moved through the passage beyond the ranger; lean, large. They were cool to his darkvision, except for their drow riders. Half a dozen mounted lizards passed their hiding spot, their heads moving back and forth, their forked tongues flicking out to sense the air. Entreri thought they would continue on, that their exhausted trio would avoid this last fight, but then Drizzt was moving, leaping from hiding at the last in the troop, mismatched blades flashing through the air.

Silver arrows split the air, and then Entreri was in the fray also. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he would not long survive the ranger's death, and if he was not there to watch Drizzt's back, the ranger would die before this combat was finished.

The drow had always fought with his heart, with his love for his friends, his conviction that he was doing the right thing. Now he fought with his hatred, his anger. One by one he would engage the enemy. They once may have been matched, but in this state, he could easily have won a duel with the assassin. He seemed stronger, faster, more focused, than ever before. The problem was that he was too focused. He wanted to cut, to fight, to hurt. He fought like a man possessed, or a man sure that he did not want to live to see the next day.

Entreri's purpose had become to watch the drow's back, to guard his blind spots, to keep the enemy between them and catti-brie's deadly bow. Killing is so much easier than protecting, he sighed to himself as Drizzt slipped between a lizard and the wall, slicing its saddle-strap as he went by, sending its rider down in a tangle of leather. Before the hapless soldier could recover, Drizzt's straight blades had crossed beneath his chin, opening his throat from ear to ear.

A silver arrow slammed into another lizard. It went into a squirming spasm as it died, crushing its rider against the floor. Another approached, lizard snapping sharp teeth at him as the rider loaded a hand-held crossbow.

"Do'Urden!" Entreri hissed. From the corner of his eye he could see the ranger had rolled his latest kill onto his side, stabbing a dagger up between the front and back plates of the drow's armor. His long blades were not in his hands, and Entreri did not know where they had gone. Drizzt didn't even look up as the menacing creature scurried closer.

"Do'Urden!" Entreri raised his voice in desperation. He slashed at the lizard's eyes, and it slid a clear membrane over them to protect them. The rider leveled the crossbow at Drizzt's back and pulled the trigger.

"Drizzt!" Entreri shouted.

Reviewer request: Trying to show internal conflict is difficult. Did this chapter make sense?