A/N: -sheepish- So, uh... hi, guys. It's been a while, huh? I am very sorry about that... Busy only barely begins to describe my life, so do forgive me for my extended silence. All this time, though, that I've been away, I've still been getting messages and reviews from people who keep managing to find this story. This is for you guys, my wonderful, absurdly patient readers. I'll do my best to keep writing (summer vacation is soon, so who knows, I might actually have time)... But for now, here's a chapter and I am so very sorry it's so late in coming.

Dim sunlight fights its way through the bars stretched across the prison window. It falls on one single spot of the cell's stone floor, illuminating the dust and grime and one dark stain that looks suspiciously like blood.

Celeste sits, silent and still as the sunlight itself at her lonely table, staring morosely at the empty mug before her. It has been weeks now that she has spent in this dingy cell, so much like the one in High Rock years ago, and it is becoming apparent that the Emperor does not care overmuch to review her case. More depressing than that however, is the fact that she's been here two weeks, three days, six hours and the fetching Dunmer in the cell across from her has not stopped talking.

"Let's see," he's saying now, apparently deigning to address her now for the first time since she's come here. "Pale skin… snotty expression… You must be a Breton. The masters of magicka, right?" He snorts. "You're nothing but a stuck-up harlot with cheap parlor tricks." She flinches at the word 'harlot', but does not argue. She doesn't say anything, for indeed the Bretons are the masters of magicka, and she's met more than a few mages in her time at the House. She's no master wizard, by any means, but as she opens her hand to look at flames dancing lazily in her palm, she thinks that if she's powerful enough to silence the Dunmer, she'll be satisfied.

"Go ahead," the Dunmer sneers, with only the faintest flicker of apprehension. "Try your magicka in here. Let's see you make those bars disappear." He pauses with a mock air of expectation, glancing around, and then testing the solidity of his own bars. "No?" A disappointed sigh. "What's the matter? Not so powerful now, are you Breton?" The thought seems to give him great personal joy. Celeste idly wonders if the whole Breton race managed to wrong him in some way, or if he just carries misanthropy around like a child's beloved toy.

"When I get out of here, Dunmer," she says quietly, extinguishing the flames in her hand. "I just might come back here to kill you." He pauses a moment, then throws his head back to laugh.

"You're not leaving this prison 'til they throw your body in the lake," he says. "Oh, that's right. You're going to die in here, Breton! You're going to die." The announcement lands lightly, and Celeste finds she can't quite bring herself to care that much.

"That does seem likely, doesn't it?" she murmurs absently. There were voices in the corridor. Was the dark elf telling the truth, she wonders. She folds her hands in front of her and closes her eyes, listening to the voices. Perhaps they were coming for her after all. Only, there seem like an awful lot of them.

"My sons, they're dead, aren't they?"

"We don't know that, Sire. The messenger only said they were attacked."

"No, they're dead. I know it."

"My job right now is to get you to safety."

Sire? The Emperor? Was he finally coming to...? But no… Celeste processes each piece of information the way her Sisters taught her to - slowly and carefully and searching for what might affect her. The Emperor's sons had been attacked; he was in danger, so why come through the prison? Celeste slowly opens her eyes and takes in the stone walls surrounding her.

Fleeing underground then.

"What's this prisoner doing here? This cell is supposed to be off limits!" An Imperial guardswoman she's never seen before stops outside her cell, casting an exasperated look at Moris, the guard who usually brings Celeste her meals (always with just a little extra bread and a smile on the days that she needs it most) and is most certainly the one who would be responsible for moving her to a different cell.

"Usual mix up with the watch, I-I…" The guardswoman shakes her head and cuts him off with a wave of her hand.

"Never mind that, just get this door open."

The Emperor is everything and nothing like she expects. He's old - she expected that - but she didn't expect him to look so...small. Tired. Resigned. There's something in the way he holds himself, the way he steps calmly into the cell… like he's prepared. Like he knows what is happening and why.

"You…" The sound of his voice, deep and low, heavy with the weight of so many years, jerks her attention to the fact that she's been staring at him rather rudely since he arrived.

"I've seen you," he breathes. "Come closer. Let me see your face." Celeste glances at the guards surrounding him, one of whom cautiously nods to her, and she steps closer into the light. The Emperor inhales sharply before something like peace settles over him.

"You are the one from my dreams." A ghost of a smile, and then a sigh. "Then the stars were right, and this is the day." For a fleeting moment, he sounds very small. "Gods give me strength."

"I'm sorry, sir," Celeste says slowly. "But I believe you are mistaking me for someone else. We have never met." A pause. "I am nobody." The Emperor's specter of a smile broadens.

"Hardly," he says. "Here I see you standing before me, flesh and bone. A very convincing disguise for a nobody." He sobers, suddenly. "But you are more important than you know. And you, and the whole of Tamriel, shall know this soon enough." Celeste doesn't miss the bewildered looks that the guards exchange and she takes a step back.

"I'm sorry," she says again, unsure of why she feels like she needs to apologize to this daft old man, but she feels as though she's failing him somehow by not being who he seems to desperately want her to be. "I'm not… I don't know who you think I am, sire, but I'm not her. I'm just…" A prisoner. A whore. A murderer. Nobody. The words pass soundlessly between them, but Celeste gets the feeling he knows. Knows and does not care.

"Why you are here and who you have been are not important," he murmurs, looking at her like he knows. "That is not what you will be remembered for." A panic that she cannot name, that same feeling of failing, rises in Celeste's throat.

"There's no one to remember me, my lord," she stammers. "I don't understand what you're saying." The Emperor smiles kindly and jerks his head towards her bed, which the guards have revealed to be a secret passage.

"I know, my dear girl. Know only that I need you to come with me now. I will have to ask something of you, and I am very sorry that it has to be you. I know now that I go to my death. But what path can be avoided whose end is fixed by the almighty gods?"

"He died in my arms." Celeste's voice was even, emotionless, but Vicente could see the anguish wavering in golden eyes, pain for the memory of a man she barely knew who condemned her to a quest she could not fail.

"Why you?" The words slipped out before he could swallow them back. Why does it always have to be you? Celeste shrugged and Vicente was surprised she could make such a nonchalant gesture when the fate of the world seemed to rest on her.

"It's not just me," she admitted, wincing as she tried to sit up. "I'm not the hero of this story. Not like Uriel made it seem. Martin is the hero. He's the Emperor to be. He will be the one who lights the Dragonfire and he will be the one that repels Dagon. I'm just here to… help him along."

"Do the dirty work, you mean," Vicente spat, suddenly resentful of the monk who sat surrounded safely by his books while Celeste walked into fire day after day. Celeste simply shook her head.

"Martin never knew his family, never knew his father. He didn't know who he was until I walked into his life and dropped it into his lap. He's been thrust into this just as I have. He has his part. I have mine. And truly, I would not want his job." Vicente sighed and shook his head.

"Perhaps," he murmured. "But forgive me, continue you with your story. Why did you choose to obey the old man?" Celeste pondered that a moment, her fingers picking idly at a loose thread in her blanket.

"A tongue shriller than all the music calls me," she said at last, smiling slightly as though at some private joke. "This is a life with a purpose, more than the Sisters could ever have offered me. But in truth, I never imagined my task would be what it has become. I believed I would have to deliver the amulet to Jauffre, I would perhaps help Uriel's son." She paused. "But then came Kvatch…"

For a moment, Vicente could see the fires of Oblivion reflected in the gold of her eyes. "Horrors beyond imagining. Dead bodies and dead souls and the evil of Dagon made flesh in the creatures that desecrated the city." Her eyes travelled across the empty space before her, back and forth, as if once again beholding the horrors of that day. "All those people, Vicente… They all died." Her voice shook. "All of them. For no reason. The Night Mother did not command it. They were not sent to the Void. It was just mindless, senseless carnage." Silence, for a moment, heavy with memory and regret.

"They call me the Hero of Kvatch, you know." A short, pained laugh. "I closed one door, only to see a hundred open all over Cyrodiil. They call me a Hero and all I do, day after day, is try to plug up holes and every time one is closed, another one bursts open, spewing Dagon's filth into the land. I'm just stalling. Waiting for Martin to save the day. This was - is - my purpose. Until the day I walk into one of those doors and I don't come out." Her eyes finally met Vicente's and suddenly she looked as young as she truly was. "But I'm scared. I don't know what happens to me if I die in that place and I'm scared. And despite all the promises of gods and men, I do not know what becomes of me at the end of this. What kind of hero is that?" Vicente reached out his hand and threaded his fingers with hers.

"A real one," he said, his voice low and urgent, as though if he didn't convince her now of her own importance that she might fade from him forever. "You are not made of ideas or hope, but flesh and blood and so much strength. And no matter what happens to you, I do not doubt you will be blessed. And I," he faltered. "I mean, we… the world is better for having you."

Celeste stared at him for a long moment, incomprehensible and silent. What must she think of him, he thought. Stumbling over his words like an idiot. He withdrew his hand slowly and leaned back in his chair, clearing his throat.

"There is still one thing I do not understand, though." Celeste raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue. "Why are you here? With all this responsibility laid upon you, why would you join the Brotherhood when we would only ask more blood of you?"

"A question of purpose," she said simply. "There was so much death and I needed it to mean something. And anyway, when I was in the House, I had heard whisperings of the Brotherhood. Assassins, not murderers...not whores. The people I killed were not victims, they were sacrifices. To a power far older than the ones threatening our world." She paused a moment. "And I think a part of me hopes that at the end of all this, Sithis will help us. All of us. And anyway." She smiled somewhat sheepishly. "This is what I'm good at. So when Lucien came for me, I jumped at the chance to serve. And here I am. And since, the Brotherhood has given me a home, which is something I have not had for a very long time." A shadow passed over her eyes and her smiled faded.

"But nothing lasts," she said, with a disturbing resignation. "Something has gone wrong. I can feel it. Things are going to change and that scares me too. There's a sickness in the Brotherhood. I hear it in whispers." Golden eyes like fire turned on his. "And you've heard it too. You feel it, perhaps more acutely than I do. Something's coming, isn't it, Vicente?"

Silence, stretching between them as it so often did, was heavy with the implication of itself. They were just whispers. Fragments of thought riding the wind. Ocheeva had forbidden him from speaking of it, but she was right. Something was wrong. They didn't know why and they were not sure who to blame, but something was changing. And of course, Celeste could feel it. Little more than a child, but so used to the weight of responsibility that she could feel it thrumming in the air. He felt guilty adding to it.

"Yes."