Part 5

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To Artemis, the misery of these days inside the cell helped mold them all together into one vast, never-ending day in jail waiting to be executed. He hardly slept now, and it did not matter to him. He was sitting in a strange limbo between life and death, and somehow fittingly, his only companion was his arch rival. He viewed them both as no more than ghosts, really. That was what lent to the strange, companionable atmosphere in the cell.

"What regrets do you have?" Artemis asked. He found a pebble in one pocket and threw it across the cell. It bounced, skittering and tapping. He watched it for a moment. "Now that you're going to die, I mean?"

"I'm not going to die," Drizzt protested.

"Then if you were," Artemis prompted smilingly. "What would you most regret?"

Drizzt seemed subdued at this question. "I think…I would most regret that I have not as yet kissed the woman I love."

Artemis raised an eyebrow. "That's an innocent regret. Don't you have anything else you want to unburden from your soul?"

Drizzt frowned, shaking his head. "I don't…I don't think it constructive to dwell on such things. They belong in the past."

"Isn't everything the past when you no longer have a future?"

Drizzt looked at him with a faintly incredulous expression. "What if you were to escape? Let me ask you that. Would you still be dwelling on things that have passed long ago?"

"Whether it is Jarlaxle's fault does not matter," Artemis said. The floor was bleakly familiar, every crack and stain, but he kept looking at it, a feeling of dread stealing over him. He didn't know what was going to happen to him at this admission or how he would be perceived. "The fact remains that since becoming his 'partner' and even more so since I have been discarded as no more meaningful than a tool, I cannot survive alone. I am incapable of caring for myself. A fire, and I touch it. A trap, and I walk into it." He closed his eyes. "I cannot bring myself to care. If I do not care at all about myself, then why should you insist on my living? A man who cannot care about his own wellbeing surely doesn't care about anyone else's."

"Jarlaxle is not capable of friendship," Drizzt said. A deep and burning emotion was in his lavender eyes. He put a hand on Artemis' shoulder. "That does not – has never meant – that you cannot be capable of friendship. You trusted him – and that is what friendship is. You cannot give up." Then he looked angry, but the anger was directed inwards, because he turned away. "I had given up on you. If I hadn't insisted on keeping you in your role as evil, all of this would never have happened. I could have stopped Jarlaxle's –"

"What responsibility of it is yours?" Artemis demanded, interrupting. "Are you my friend? Have you ever been? Is it your sole obligation to keep Jarlaxle from doing what Jarlaxle sees fit? Why are you bothering to squeeze even a drop of remorse from your hatred of me?"

"I can't sit by and let someone who needs my help go into the Abyss! My personal feelings are irrelevant! I would not be who I am if I allowed someone on the verge of redemption to dispose of themselves simply because they feel sorry for themselves," Drizzt spat.

Artemis stared at the drow ranger in surprise. "…Sorry for myself?"

Drizzt put on his most expressionless mask and crossed his arms. "What else do you call it when you're captured and sent off to die, and you hardly care because your life's been bad?"

Artemis stood up, clenching his fists. He'd reacted with instant humiliation and hesitance. He knew that Drizzt's words were true. He was tempted not to resign himself to his execution. Yet, how could Drizzt be so arrogant towards him? There was nowhere else for him to go, nothing else for him to do – no chances! Not even a single chance to do anything with his life, even if he kept it. "You…Do'Urden…for all that you are a drow, you have peoples' respect. I have no one's respect. You can live without the urge to throw yourself into a oblivion because you can never sink as low as I am."

He felt such cold anger, such vengeance and violence, that it made him numb. He couldn't contain the urge to let Drizzt know precisely whose life he was mocking as insignificant in its tortures. "Let me put this in perspective for you: You were beaten? I was raped. You were taught how to kill? I had to teach myself how to kill so that the predators in the desert didn't devour me when I was nine years old. You lived with a society full of hypocrisy? I lived in the streets, covered in mud and eating garbage to survive another day. When you came to the surface, you escaped. I ran away from home, to make myself a new life, and ended up the half-starved jackal of a thieves' guild! Don't talk to me about pain. If you lived in this much pain, you would have lost your mind or killed yourself long ago! I lived this layer of hell you escaped every day!"

He barely realized that he was yelling at the top of his lungs until his throat was raw and his eyes were burning with pain from holding back intense emotion. "You. Don't. Know. Me."

He stood there, in shocked silence, and realized for the first time since his ordeal that Calihye dying and Jarlaxle betraying him was on its own insignificant. It just happened to be the chain of events that finally put the last straw on the camel's back.

It was absurd how much he really had survived. He'd gotten through childhood abuse, running away from home, living on the streets, and being an assassin for thirty years…but when it came to his best friend betraying him and his only lover dying because she couldn't stand to be without him, that was too much.

The sheer ridiculousness of this made Artemis smile. For the first time, he felt he understood the cosmic joke that the gods had been setting up ever since he was born. He survived things no man or woman should ever have endured, and then when it came time to face two events ordinary people around him could have dealt with through mourning, he reached his breaking point.

He shook his head and sat down, grinning. He finally gave in to the ludicrousness of it all and felt it bubbling up in his chest. The cell room was filled with the halting sound of his own laughter.

Drizzt sat there with a paralyzed look on his face, as if he had stared down at a bottomless chasm and was still convinced he was falling over the edge when he was yanked back from the ledge.

Artemis wondered at how much his face was improved by that blank look.