It was pure luck that he'd been allowed out of the house. Ever since the prison break during the riots had set him free, the people around him had been especially cautious and they weren't without reason. If Chrysanthe hadn't been with him, sticking to his side like a burr, he might have tried to run. Part of their plot to keep him there and behaving had been not telling him where Olena was, only promising that once this last task was finished they would be reunited.

Hector had been kind, and Aimias, but in the weeks since he'd been free he kept mostly to himself. Chrysanthe of course had been the one to visit him the most, and he believed her when she told him Olena was safe and well. It was because of her testimony he hadn't run already. That and the various injuries from the riots and his time in the flyaki. And the amount of time it was taking him to gather his strength. The nutrition in the Athenian jail had not been ideal, and he was far thinner than he had been before he'd been taken. Indeed there was little about him that spoke to the gladiator, or the boy he'd been once. His dark blonde hair was long enough that it hung in his face, the beard he usually despised because of how thin it was had been allowed to grow in order to help conceal his identity.

The path from the Antonis house to the docks was as far as he was allowed to go, his feet carrying him along the quay out of habit. Before he'd found her again, before his freedom had been stolen and his world turned upside down, he had walked these tracks every day, searching for the people he had lost. He looked for Olena, her sisters, his brother, their friends. Anyone who might have been taken by the pirates who had destroyed everything. He shouldn't have bothered, none of them had been found in Athenia, he'd only managed to find Olena when he left the kingdom. Perhaps when they were reunited that's what they would do, travel to the other kingdoms to ask after their families.

Dima had been fading in and out of focus, blue eyes clearly elsewhere as he ran into the man on the docks. The sudden jolt and impact had him shooting back as if he'd been stung, gaze feral as his heart pounded and he moved to protect his friend even as he braced for a fight, another blow to land on him. What he saw instead was a man, taller than him but with features that were somehow off, part of him screaming in recognition that he'd long ago given up true hope of. What made him change from his defensive stance was not the man's familiar voice and laugh, it was the pendant hanging on a chain around his neck. Instinct that he should have listened to was overcome with a rage and sorrow he hadn't felt in combination in far too long.

Without a warning, the former gladiator lunged at the sailor who had steadied him, reaching for the pendant as if to yank it off his neck. He would know his mother's handiwork anywhere, and this bastard had stolen it, taken it from his only other blood that could have been alive.

"You thief.."