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safely-in-vhagars-belly · 4 months

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The Song of Ice and Fire (DARK BOOKMOND X STARKREADER/OC)

Aemond (book) x Reader

🔷Summary: After getting kidnapped on your way to King's Landing, you end up in another time where you meet a dangerous prince.

🔷Author's note: Either hit or miss with this one

🔷Wordcount :6756

🔷Warnings: This is Bookmond because im a little too sad to write showaemond atm. Bookaemond is my deranged honeybee he can do nothing wrong. Ok almost nothing.

WARNINGS: Kidnapping, drugging, forced marriage and war crimes and aemond being a sexist little bitch. Also spankings.

Maybe it was for the best. You always dreamt of leaving the cold and quiet town of Winterfell behind. You dreamt of a bigger, exciting life. A life of tourneys, of exciting feasts, of noble men fighting for your hand. It should have been as simple as that.

Except it wasn’t.

Sansa, your sister is going to be the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Your father would be the hand of the king, one of the highest positions at court. You, Arya, and her will soon travel with him to King’s Landing.

Until something happened.

Something unexplainable.

And something terrible.

Lately, your dreams have been getting worse. From nightmares that you didn’t pay any mind to darker things, things you barely could keep to yourself. Nightmares and dreams filled with unexplainable things, unknown faces and the death rising and marching.

_____________

It is clear to you that your mind is simply toying with you. You are likely nervous for the future that awaits you. You are nervous for the suitors you’ll meet and that your life finally will begin. It will just be like all the romantic novels you read. It will be ball after ball and feast after feast.

Your dreams always start the same way. You are alone, surrounded by trees as big as towers, in the snowy woods. You hear the sound of the crispy snow as you set feet on it, moving in any direction, to find something. Home, you assume. The stars above your head are the only light to guide you, and it is unforgivably dark in the cold forest.

The cold winter winds pick up and toy with your hair, sending it in all directions. You never know why, but you always turn your head slightly sideways. You can’t control it. You don’t have a say. As a chestpiece moving over the board, you do as you are told by someone controlling you.

It is always a surprise to see the wall close by, no matter how many times you have dreamt this dream. The majestic tall, ancient structure that has been here long before you were born and will be there long after you have gone. Something about it tells you are not supposed to be here. You feel chills.

You had heard reasons why the wall was built. Wildlings, mostly. The Nightwatch was installed to guard the wall, to make sure no threat could climb over it. You know your brother, Jon, dreams of becoming a brave member of the Nightwatch. It is all the honor he will gain as a bastard anyway. You are the same as his twin sister. But your father kept your bastardy a secret.

But the most important reason why the wall was built was the threat of white walkers. Cold, icy and deadly soldiers of an army without needs and without a will, forced to march forever beyond the wall. And when you are all the way North, you can only go one way: South.

You knew it wasn’t true. You knew when your father told you about them, they weren’t real. But any Northern child grows up with the same tales. Creatures with eyes as blue as ice, that could freeze you in pure terror so they could easily squeeze your eyeballs out of your head, killing you. A fun tale in a tavern. But not in the castle.

You aren’t a foolish girl, no matter what the world tells you. You don’t believe those lies. You never did. You are not as brave as Arya perhaps or as pretty and polite as Sansa but you never believe in those ghost stories.

But here, in your dreams, beyond the wall and far away from your safe warm room at Winterfell, even someone as skeptical as you could understand why people believed those stories.

What would come next in your dreams was also always the same. You turn your head away from the wall. In the far distance, you can make out someone standing there, holding a lantern. The person is hooded, unrecognizable. But the person would always lift the lantern, and wave with it. Your eyes follow the movements, as the light of the lantern becomes brighter and brighter, shedding light over the forest, making the snow almost look like liquid gold.

It always seems so magical, as a scam shopkeepers tell their far too trusting clients before selling them magical rocks or potions. You know the hooded person never reveals themselves. You tried running at them, screaming, but you couldn’t move nor speak.

Then, you notice you are standing on something. A great lake, made of ice. Gone are the trees of the forest. Through the ice, you make out the skeleton of a human being. Someone from a long time ago. You watch the skeleton, wondering how long ago this person met their end, and how. And beneath the ice, poking halfway out of it, is a steel forged sword with a black handle. The tip of it is still in the ice, covered in a dark rusty coat of old blood. You notice your hands reach for the sword, picking it out of the ice.

The sword feels different than most swords. Lighter, better to wield. Safer. It feels like wielding one of your own arms. It feels safe, comfortable. Yours. Impossible. Ladies do not wield weapons. Not such obvious ones, at least. Ladies wield lies, poison, tricks, schemes.

You turn to the hooded figure, sword in hand, still standing on the ice, with the skeleton safely beneath your feet. The hooded figure is gone. As is the light. The world is once again covered in darkness. It is suffocating you, in a way.

Fear and anxiety fight inside of you, as you try to get off the ice. But you can’t move. Not anymore. It is not your body, anymore. You don’t have a say, anymore.

The sword is starting to hurt your inexperienced arms, and you try at all cost to drop the weapon. Your head snaps as you hear the sound of something you never heard before, but somehow you know exactly what it is. A dragon’s roar.

You never felt fear like that, as you look around the lake for any sign of a dragon. But instead you are met with a thin skeleton made of ice and rotting flesh that reaches out with their hands, trying to grab you. A white walker.

You scream.

But before he could grab you, drag you into the lake with him…

You wake up.

You sit straight up in your bed, clutching the sheets of your bed. Your heart is still beating and your fear hasn’t left your mind yet. You are glad to see you are in your rooms, at Winterfell. Several familiar stuffed animal toys glance back at you from their spots on high shelves, calming your troubled mind instantly. You are coming of age so put some of them away, but unlike Sansa, you could never throw them out.

You climb out of bed and prepare yourself for the exciting day ahead. The day your life will change forever. You just had no idea how much. And how terribly.

As always, Winterfell is busy. Servants go about their day, greeting you with nods or smiles as they carry in potatoes or walk around with freshly washed linen.

Your father and ‘’mother’’, brothers and sisters are already at the table, gathered for breakfast. They seem to have been waiting just for you. You greet them with a relieved smile. The food smells delicious and makes your stomach rumble in unladylike ways. You sit down on your chair and begin eating.

You can almost hear Lady Catalyn’s thoughts. Everyone seems to know it. This might be the final time you might all be together. This is goodbye, in a way. Jon will go to the wall, and you and your sisters to King’s Landing.

You grab an apple and begin biting down on it, while also making yourself a cup of nice honey tea. You can not wait to leave the boring North and the nightmares finally behind. The north is a boring and cold place. Nothing exciting ever happened. Your sister, Sansa, also looks more happy than usual. Normally, she is grumpy at this hour.

‘’Do we need to leave soon?’’ Arya mutters next to her, playing with a fork and a potato. Your parents share a look, and your father speaks to the youngest Lady of house Stark.

Even with their differences, their arguments and their fighting, you can see that Arya dreads the day that her and her would leave for the capital. She likely wants to remain here, in the cold North forever. Eddard speaks, smiling with pride and joy and you feel jealous of how easy Sansa will become the Queen. ‘’Sansa will be the Queen. I will become the hand of the King if all goes well. Perhaps you’ll like King’s Landing.’’ Arya’s brown eyes fill with worry at imaginary scenarios. She looks at her sister, who always was said to be prettiest and who always has focussed on how to be a lady. She imagined King’s Landing would be filled with Sansas.

‘’No, thank you.’’ she mutters. Yet she does not have a choice.

You begin eating the apple first. At that moment, Maester Luwin comes from the courtyard, bringing likely fresh news, plucked from a raven. He brings the news first to your parents, the Lord and Lady of Winterfell. ‘’Lady Lynantha is expected to be escorted to King’s Landing today. Her carriage is already here.’’ You drop your apple, distraught as all eyes are on you. ‘’Why aren't we traveling together?’’ You ask your father. He does not meet your eyes.

‘’I received a letter. A nobleman from King’s Landing, one of King Robert’s nephews, wishes to get to know you. It is of importance that you leave right away.’’ You know why. There are rumors you aren’t a true born Stark. That you are a bastard. Rumors that are likely true.

You understand. You are eager to leave, in a way. Lady Stark stands up from her seat. ‘’I wish you well, Lyantha.’’ You never liked her. She never liked you. But you do respect her. You nod, respectful as you make a final curtsy.

Luwin coughs, reminding you all that time is not on your side. You finally stand as well, excusing yourself as you mutter. ‘’I must pack for the journey-’’ You will need clothing, books, maybe jewelry.

‘’O, there is no need, truly.’’ An almost magical light voice rings out. A woman with raven dark hairs, a green gown with beautiful gold patterns stitched onto her skirt greets you with a curtsy. ‘’The Capital has everything you could need.’’ She assures you, a sweet but horrible hollow smile on her lips. The Lady makes a bow for her as well. ‘’I am Lady Alys Rivers. I have come to escort you to your Prince.’’ You know that Rivers is a last name used for bastards and commoners, and wonder silently how someone as Alys could have acquired such a position at the royal court. But you would never dare to voice that concern. Of course not. A prince, a title, it is almost too good to be true. ‘’A prince?’’ You ask, beaming with excitement. Sansa huffs, and you see Alys nod, almost a little too pleased with your excitement.

The woman smiles as if you two are long lost friends. ‘’A true born royal, a fierce skilled warrior and an intelligent man. Few are blessed in so many ways.’’ You are certain your smile only grows.

He sounds so charming.

So perfect.

So kind and gentle and gallant and strong.

‘’Very well.’’ You say. Your father is the first to hug you, whispering in your ear that you’ll always be a Stark, and his little girl. If you have trouble, you could write to him and he’d be there before you could blink with your eyes.

The Starks remain loyal and firmly rooted outside in the yard as the carriage slowly departs to the roads, leaving Winterfell behind. Such sorrow the Starks all share And such more sorrow they would share if they had known what would become of Lynantha.

–

The carriage is comfortable and to your liking. It is warm as a mother’s embrace and has soft pillows that make the long journey comfortable. You imagined you would stay at multiple ins down the King’s road. Lady Alys has been nothing but kind to you, offering you sweets and cake when the landscape and scenery outside of the window changed.

The lemon cakes you eat are heavy on your stomach, and soon you feel tired. Exhausted for some reason. It must be the weird nightmares that kept you up.

As a true future Princess, you try to stay awake in the carriage but the more she fight against the instinct to sleep, the more tired you become. Eventually, you fall asleep in the carriage.

This time you too dream of the strange sword, the strange lady with the Lantern and the wall. But you can hear a voice this time as well. ‘’Do not go to the wall! Return! You don’t know what you are unleashing!’’ You can not place the voice, and you assume it belongs to the lantern lady. But when you look at the normally covered lady, you see Alys instead, wearing the common cloak and dress, holding the same lantern. Her eyes are red and sinister, burning like hellfire and her smile spreads wider than it should.

Once again, you wake up panting and breathing heavily. Alys is still near you, calmly knitting. You had hoped if you left the North, the nightmares would end. ‘’Welcome back, my Princess.’’ Alys says as she finishes her knitwork. ‘’We are almost there. Just a bit longer.’’ And at that moment, you notice a familiar basket that is half covered with a blanket on the floor. You would recognize that basket everywhere. And to be in King’s Landing so fast….Something is wrong.

‘’You don’t work for the King do you?’’ You ask, your voice soft and trembling. ‘’You’re not taking me to King’s Landing.’’

Alys only smiles, putting her needles and knitting work away. ‘’Just sit tight. I need to bring you to him alive, he didn’t say in what state.’’ He? Who is he?

You have many more questions, but you are not stupid. That was a clear threat and an order to shut up and so you will.

The carriage finally approaches its final destination. And halts.

When you look outside, all you can see is darkness. And the ominous yet sparkling stars above the carriage. Just as in my dreams.

It feels much colder here. And that smell. The smell of iron and snow. Alys takes her time with putting her hood on, and as you had expected by now the hood had the same pattern as that of the Lantern lady. She smiles as she opens the door. You don’t know what she wants. But it can’t be good. And you are not coming with her.

You clings to the carriage instead, refusing to follow Alys. ‘’No! I’m not coming with you! Bring me back!’’ You demand.

Alys only chuckles and pulls harder, pulling you easily from the carriage as a flower being plucked. She puts you outside the carriage.

In the cold snow you take a good look at your surroundings, looking for any help or signs. And there it is. You turn around, as if you can already feel its presence. The looming tall wall of the North.

And you are clearly beyond it.

’Are you mad?!’’ you lash out at Alys. ‘’You have endangered us both! Who knows what’s out there.’’ Alys ignores you, shining her lantern around the ground, searching for something.

You rub your cold arms, regretting you didn’t bring a coat with you. The snow storm only grows worse and worse, as a storm unleashing upon a town.

You look back at the wall, before stumbling on something beneath your feet, buried in the cold snow. Just like in your dream. And just like in your dream it is the sword. For a moment, you think about picking it up and threatening Alys with it. You reach out to grab it. ‘’What did you find there?’’Alys’s voice rings out, closer to you than she was before. You try to pick the sword up, but Alys is faster. She has a strange smirk on her lips when you backed away from the now armed woman. ‘’Such a good girl, finding the sword. I’ll tell him that you found it.’’ There’s that ‘’him’’ again.

You become even more uncomfortable at her clearly condescending compliment, and for some reason she is more angry with you than before. Is it because you found the sword? And not her? ‘’Now come. He’s not known for his patience.’’ You look back at the Wall. Alys sighs, clearly annoyed. ‘’Or you can stay out here in the cold and freeze to death.’’ She adds, with a careless shrug. ‘’I don’t mind.’’ She is right. You know she is. And you hate her for it. You won’t survive out here on your own.

The two of you approach a lake that is somehow not frozen despite the cold. It is not the lake with the skeleton. You can tell. Red and green and black and yellow flowers grow around it too, and everything about it seems to confirm that this is nothing but just a dream. But you can’t wake up.

Alys grabs your arm, walking to the lake. You resist bravely but end up in the water regardless, yelping expecting cold, freezing water. But it does not feel cold. It does not feel warm. It does not feel anything, truly. It feels…soulless. Dead, in a way.

Alys and you approach the deeper part, where you can no longer stand. Before you can ask what is happening, she pushes you underwater. You gulp, as water fills your lungs, convinced you will die. You close your eyes and at the moment you have given up all hope, something beneath you seems to open, and you fall down.

—

Your body is drifting between both space and time for a while, until someone pulls you up by your hair, and out of the waters, back into the world of the living. You gasp for air, spitting out the water and cling to the ground, looking around you as you thank the gods you are alive.

You are still near a lake. Just not the one you nearly drowned in. You look at the skies, and it is day as well. How long have I been gone?

This lake has flowers in just green colors, and has ruined walls around it, likely belonging to a palace from a time long ago. You look around and notice your captor calmingly sitting next to you, making a crown out of flowers. She drops her crown the moment she sees you have awakened. You can only glare at her, too stunned for anything else.

You hiss at her, close to strangling her. She cackles. ‘’You’re finally awake. I was worried you didn’t survive our little magic trip.’’ You sit up, taking in more and more of your surroundings, the sun warming your wet clothing, as you look at the ruins of a castle and people passing you both.

You jump to your feet, ignoring your soaked clothing as you rush to a soldier. ‘’Hey, Hey! I need help! She abducted me!’’ You yell. The soldier takes one good look at you, before he sees Alys. Alys cracks her head sideways, causing bones to crack. That is all it takes for him to take off running.

You huff, in disbelief and anger. ‘’Craven!’’ You shout, as he rushes off. Next to you, Alys doubles over cackling once more. She finds this extremely funny, for some reason. She lays a hand on your arm, smiling at you.

You instantly shrug it off, disgusted. She doesn’t seem to even care, still smiling.

‘’Come. We are almost here.’’ She says. You can do two things. You can dive back into the lake, and likely drown, or you can come with this woman. Both aren’t smart things to do. Alys offers her hand again.

At that moment, you spot a nice, big rock, just a few steps away from you. Most people here don’t care for abuctuees. They won’t care for murder either, you think. No one would know. No one would judge. And no one would tell.

This woman is a threat to your safety. And so you grabbed the rock, and tried to get Alys on her back. The woman cackled again, much to your annoyance. You did manage to get her on her back, and raise the rock skyhigh, ready to deliver the deadly blow. Alys laughs, before spitting in your face. Disgusted and caught off guard, you drop the rock. ‘’It seems we need to watch ourselves around you.’’

‘’Come, we must not let him wait any longer.’’ There it is again.

You know you are going to regret going with Alys but you don’t have a say. Not anymore. ‘’Who is this him you speak of?’’ Perhaps the mysterious prince, her lover, or an enemy of Joffrey. It has to be.

Or, a Targaryen. You snort, in your head. The Targaryens had been defeated, like their dragons and their ancestors alike. They would not bother you or anyone else on the Westeros continent again.

‘’Your prince, of course.’’ There is something strange in her voice. Almost a scoff or an inside joke that you had yet to understand. However you perked up at hearing those words.

‘’The match my father arranged?’’ you ask. ‘’Is he here?’’ It couldn’t be. Could it? It would not explain the lake, the change of time, the wall, anything of it. But the thought that you soon would see your handsome prince again, gives you some hope.

Alys ignored you and did not confirm nor deny anything as the two of you walked to the castle gates. As you approach, you notice countless freshly dug graves. You gulp. You try to remember what castle this could possibly be.

And that’s when you see it. The ruins remind you of a more polished version of the castle of Harrenhall. The cursed castle and the castle where dragon fire still burns to this day. The walls look younger, time has not been as cruel as it has been now. The fire burns, as always.

The thing that scares you most, were the gates. Someone had put heads on the spikes, heads of people who all had their eyes wide open and full of terror of whatever killed them. A killer. A monster.

The smell makes you sick. And judging by their smell, they had been here quite a while. Alys doesn’t even bat a eye at the dead. But she did grab your right hand, dragging you inside of the castle.

The doors open the moment Alys approaches them, her head high as a true queen. You walk next to her, your thoughts spiraling.

You have just a moment to glance up at the banners decorating the outer walls. And you wish you hadn’t. An unfamiliar yet known sigil hangs there, proudly paraded by the wind and kept in place with pins. You would recognize the three headed dragon everywhere. The Targaryens. But how?

Yet this one looks different. Alys drags you in, the moment you finally draw the conclusion that this is the sigil of no other than King Aegon II. The gold and the green made that clear. But what are his banners doing here, nearly hundred years after his passing? Unless….

You already felt sick because of the dead outside the gate, and now you feel even worse as an irrational and terrible fear begins to form in your head. A fear so insane that it can’t be true, but how can you deny what is right in front of you? Have I truly….?

Alys drags you with her, into the castle halls and into the throne room. The door has no guards. You can hear someone playing with a blade, sharpening it. You feel shivers and cold, in your wet clothes.

Alys gives you a push in your back, sending you into the room on your own.

‘’I’ve brought you something.’’ She says, her smile barely containing her pride.

Whoever is there, they didn’t bother to open the curtains or to light candles. A truly terrifying conclusion.

You trip over your dress, and fall. You regained just enough balance to land on your knees, instead of flat on your face. You know whoever is waiting here, orchestrated this whole thing. And if your gut is right, you know who it is.

You laugh, quietly. You must be crazy, expecting an actual Targaryen prince to await you here. Stir crazy. But what other explanation is there? Why else bother with old banners, why else does the castle look better than it ever did in your time?

You glance up at the man sitting the throne, his legs calmly placed on the arms of the lavious throne he sits upon. He is indeed sharpening a catspaw dagger, and his lips have the faint impression of a smirk and a smile blended into one as he takes in your soaked clothing and angry glare. Alys opens some curtains.

And the moment you do see his face, it feels as a relief and a shock at once. Relief because you were right. But also a shock because how, how can you possibly be right?

You were treated as a silly little girl. You can only think of one reason why the banners were here, why the castle looked so good and why the dead were rotting above the gates. And this man’s face confirms it all.

In front of you, is no one else but Aemond Targaryen ‘’one eye’’ the Kinslayer of House Targaryen. You know him from the history books you have read. But those books barely mention him. Aside from his death and his atrocities at Harrenhal.

And yet, here he stands. In front of you, alive and well. He is a true Targaryen with sharp classic Valyrian features like piercing eyes, and very light, almost silver coloured hair.

He finally stopped sharpening his dagger, curiosity written all over his face as he takes you in, sitting on the floor, at his feet and glaring at him. He can’t help but smirk.

You glare. Whatever it was that is going on, it is all his doing. You can tell. And that prince Alys promised you would meet, that is him. A cruel joke on her behalf. You glare at her too. She simply makes another curtsy cackling once again.

Slowly, a smile creeps on his lips, amused by the audacity. ‘’I take it she was a smart lass and obeyed?’’ The question is aimed at Alys and you physically feel your stomach turn even worse by his words.

You had not been a ‘’smart lass’’. If anything, you had acted insanely dumb. You resisted, you tried to kill Alys. You tried to run. You tried to resist in every way possible and more.

You cross your arms, tired. Alys beams as she tells Aemond what has happened between the two of you, happy to see you punished by her Prince. ‘’She tried to kill me with a rock.’’

His face tilts, and although he tries to appear uninterested and cold, even a simple man could read the anger and murderous emotions in his eye. ‘’I will see to that she’s punished for that.’’ He promises his loyal servant. To that, Alys smiles.

Aemond smiles at you, in a condescending way. You glance between him and Alys, aware you are in trouble now. ‘’I am not yours to punish.’’ He is not your husband, nor your king or father. No one should decide what happens to you but you. Your voice doesn’t sound scared or angry. Just annoyed.

Aemond shifts his legs, angry at your carelessness and casual behaviour. He slams his hands on the arms of the throne, causing you to flince briefly. He stands up, and you finally see just how tall he truly is. And how fast he stands in front of you. He sinks to his knees, the green leather cracking. He clearly enjoys the way you flinch as he reaches out to touch your chin and your cheeks, feeling your soft delicate skin beneath his fingers. He finally bothers to address you. ‘’Of course you are, Little Wolfling. If you touch and damage something that is mine, you will be punished.’’ He reveals.

You understand finally that Alys is more than just his servant. They have a relationship. He loves her. And you tried to kill her. You must try to talk your way out of this. ‘’Your lady did not explain why I was taken from my home and lied to.’’ You hope he becomes more understanding of how terrifying all of this is for you.

Alys snorts and Aemond laughs. You curse quietly in your head. That was a failed attempt. ‘’As I ordered her. Alys obeys well and listens. You can learn a thing or two from her.’’ He tells you, finally getting up from the ground.

Somehow, that makes you angry. The idea that he now thinks you will help him as some spineless pet and roll over for him when he wishes so, it makes you so furious that you are close to pulling him back by his eyepatch to slam his head against the stone floor. You do not have the sword anymore.

You only have your clothes.

And …

Oh.

You patiently wait until his back is turned to your front, before sliding your shoe off and aiming at his head. You throw the shoe as hard as possible and it ends up hitting him perfectly on his head.

Confused, he turns around, looking for who dared to have hit him. When he notices you, smirking very proudly and missing one shoe, something changes. And you regret even blinking in his direction.

Prince Aemond storms back to you, as you can barely back away to escape him. He is faster and steps on your dress, trapping you easily. You feel the walls closing in and are truly in danger now. The Prince grabs you by your waist, lifting you to your feet and drags you to the throne. You try to break free of his grip, protesting. ‘’Let go of me!” You turn your head to look at Alys. Surely she has a say in this. But she only smiles.

Aemond let out a low chuckle as he sits down the throne, your body still in his grasp. He places you on his lap, as some disobedient little girl. He whispers in your ear, and your cheeks burn with shame. ‘’You laughed. Now it is my turn to laugh, Little Wolfling.’’ You let out an offended cry, struggling to get away from him as fast as possible.

He chuckles. ‘’I am not sure what they teach you in the North, but here, we are respectful to our princes.’’ He says, lecturing you. His cold hands feel the back of your dress, feeling the warm skin that it covered.

Until that moment, you had never been touched before. Instead of doing what you feared he would do, he picked out a different punishment. He does lift your skirts, but barely enough to touch you. Just to reach your small clothes but mostly your behind. And at that moment you know what he is planning. And you don’t want that. You try to escape again, kicking and slapping him.

Aemond grabs your hands, grinning. ‘’Calm down, Little Wolfling. It’s just a spanking. I’m sure you had plenty before.’’ Never.

Your parents did not believe that that was a healthy idea. ‘’No! Never!”’ You declare, angry. ‘’And you are not my father or my husband. You aren’t allowed to punish me.’’ You say, bravely.

He only scoffs, and his hand lands the first hard blow on your behind, causing you to cry out in pain. You squirm over his legs, fighting stronger and harder. He increases his grip, tightening it. ‘’Tis for the best you learn now, Little Wolfling. I don’t have time and the patience to do this every day.’’

The blows only increase, hurting your delicate skin. You did try to keep from crying and from complaining. You wouldn’t grand him that satisfaction. Not anymore.

It is true that you were disciplined in this way, yet your body betrayes you in the worst way imaginable.

You do not notice your arousal until it is too late. Your nipples are hardened and there is a wetness between your legs, growing.

You stop fighting. Perhaps in shock of your own betrayal, perhaps only to show the prince that he could stop what he was doing to you. Finally, he stops. But not before your behind is burning and a painful mess.

He helps correct your dress and covers you apprioartly as if nothing has happened. You are still in shock, and don’t move away from him at first. ‘’I hope I made myself clear to you both. You both will play nice to one another.’’ He tells both you and his lover.

Alys bristles. ‘’I am not the one picking up rocks and killing people.’’ But this time, Aemond has enough of her complaints.

He did all he could. ‘’The Wolf has been disciplined. I am sure my Little Wolfling will behave much better in the future.’’ You are forced to sit on his lap, as a prize he had won.

‘’Won’t you, Little Wolfling?’’ He whispers. He does not kiss you, but his lips come closer to your cheeks, and unwillingly you feel your cheeks burn bright as stars. He chuckles, amused. ‘’You can go now, Little Wolfling.’’ You almost look offended when he sends you away.

This madness needs to stop. ‘’I,’’ You catched your breath. ‘’I don’t understand a few things.’’ You say. You want the truth. Now. Before you offend him again somehow.

Aemond rolls his good eye, smirking. ‘’You are a woman. I imagine that happens to you a lot.’’ Even Alys glares at that comment but his royal highness does not see it.

You only blink, ignoring him. ‘’You are alive.’’ You say, cutting straight to the case. ‘’You were killed in a battle.’’ You don’t remember who killed him or with what or where but you are certain Aemond Targaryen died.

Aemond’s head perks up, listening eagerly to what you tell him. You can tell he is not listening, but he is eager. ‘’What am I doing here? Am I here to save the dragons?’’ You ask. ‘’Or to stop the civil war?’’ Not that you would even know how in the seven hells to do that, but that's another thing entirely.

That causes the head of the prince to snap to Alys, worry written across his face for the first time that you met him. Alys only makes a gesture with her head, and Aemond seems to calm down. He smirks, carelessly. ‘’Oh, don’t worry about the Dragons.’’ You never heard any Targaryen say that.

The dragons are their wolves. Their dragons are their war winners. You laugh, offended and still hurt. ‘’But, without dragons, I am sorry to tell you, your entire family will become ash and dust.’’ You even chuckle.

Aemond stands back up from the throne, raising his sword and pointing it at you, lashing out. ‘’You are a bold little girl, are you not? Perhaps my hand was too gentle.’’

You don’t even back down anymore. ‘’It’s the truth. Where I’m from, house Targaryen is dust. All thanks to you, your sister and your brother. Together, you caused the civil war and killed the dragons-’’ That is pushing it too far.

Aemond grabs you by your throat, choking you lightly to warm you of not accusing him of another thing. ‘’Silence.’’ He barks.

You obey, glaring. ‘’Good girl.’’ he smirks, mockingly. ‘’Now, I understand, you must be so excited to see a dragon, hmm? You can’t shut up about them.’’ He stops choking you, feeling your neck.‘’I suppose, there is truth in what you tell me. The dragons are long gone where you are from. But you are now here, with me.’’

‘’The story is written.’’ You say.

Aemond snorts, and there is something dangerous about his body language. ‘’The story is just beginning.’’

You have a terrible feeling. ‘’You see,’’ Aemond grabs hold of your left hand. ‘’I have some inside knowledge. You know how this will end. You will tell me how the dragons died out, and I will simply be always one step ahead of my enemy. I will be their worst nightmare, their downfall and the dagger that slashes their throat.’’ He grins, as you become truly terrified and even tremble.

‘’How will you stop your sister?’’ You whisper. But you fear you already saw it in your dream. ‘’How will you stop Queen Rhaenyra’s marching troops?’’ Your voice is a soft weak whisper.

Aemond leans in, leaving a soft kiss on your forehead. ‘’I heard a prophecy. The song of ice and fire. That is where you come in. You can help me find something, something very precious.’’ He chuckles.

The sword.

He wants to find the sword.

But why.

Unless…

‘’No.’’ You instantly say. ‘’You can’t.’’ You turn your head to Alys, watching her blank expression. She is fine with this. You watch as Aemond smirks in silence, confirming to you that he is planning to do the impossible. ‘’Aemond, you can’t.’’ You repeat.

Aemond’s grip only tightens. ‘’Think about it, little Wolfling. An army that never rests, never eats, never betrays me. An army that will help me conquer Westeros; An army of White Walkers. It is perfect.’’ He is insane.

‘’I won’t help you.’’ You remind him. ‘’You might as well send me back.’’

He ignores your protests. You can see his smirk and grin only grow, and you are reminded of Targaryens and their insanity. Their fire. Their blood. ‘’You will help me, little Wolfling. You will. Because if you do not, you will never see your family again. I have the means to send you back. And I will. After you have helped me.’’

You scoff, so you must help him do gods knows what so he can send you back to your own time? ‘’It doesn’t sound like I have a choice, do I?’’ Alys shakes her head. ‘’What will I need to do?’’ You ask Aemond, your head hanging in shame. How many will die because of you?

He lifts your chin, grinning. ‘’Now, now, don’t be so sad. To begin things, we must find the sword. And I want more information on how to better keep the dragons too.’’

You cannot do that. ‘’Dragons died centuries before I was born!’’ You don’t know anything about dragons. ‘’I don’t even know what they eat.’’ You almost whine.

‘’Meat. They eat meat.’’ Aemond says. ‘’Vhagar is right here with me. I will teach you about dragons, you will teach me what you know of the Dance and how it ended.’’ This all sounds like a horrible idea to you. ‘’And when the time comes, we must complete the prophecy of Ice and Fire.’’ That sounds vague.

But you want to see your family again. More than anything. So you hold out your hand, and wait for Aemond to shake it. He smiles, kissing it instead. He leans a little closer. ‘’I can’t wait until we are married. I always wanted a Valyrian wife, but you’ll do.’’ You laugh, thinking he is jesting. Until you see how Aemond is looking at you. Like you are some delicious cake he can’t wait to taste. He mirrors your smile, allowing you to be in denial as he makes his way to his lover, kissing her openly on her lips. You watch speechlessly as the two of them walk away, their chuckles and giggles mixing as they likely picture their new world together, with them for once atop of it, instead below.

You throw your head into your neck and try to process it all. What in the seven hells did you even become part of?

a/n

Ooh, i wasnt sure i even wanted to share this one.

But here he is xDDDD

Ok bye

let me know what you think

#hotd #hotd fanfiction #hotd fanfic #aemond targaryen #aemond #aemond one eye #hotd x reader #hotd x you #aemond x reader #aemond x you #aemond smut #aemond fic #aemond fanfiction #hotd x oc #aemond x oc #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x oc #Aemondsmut

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iwritenarrativesandstuff · 2 years

Note

yk ive been seeing people say like "oh fyodor COULDVE predicted chuuya snapping out of the vampire control, hes smart" and im like okay yeah that makes sense...but also like...i genuinely think fyodor is in over his head atm. like his speech about "utilizing" chuuya seems so.. .gloaty? arrogant? like, chuuya being able to crush the underside of a door and swimming in a water where you cant really swim in is impressive, but this is chuuya. you know, the guy who can stop bullets and launch them back with greater force, the guy who learned how to control his gravity is a precise manner so that his punches hit twice as hard, THE GUY WHO FOUGHT VERLAINE AND THE DRAGON FROM DEAD APPLE? like my guy is made out of titanium, and the thing he pulled in mersault is honest to god just basic stuff for him compared to what he's used to doing. fyodor calling skk's bond shallow and telling dazai, THE DAZAI, that he doesn't know how to use a gravity user is. one loaded statement. that aint it chief, hes going to get his ass bitten sooner or later.

if i was fyodor, i'd be watching my back.

Hey anon!

Yeah, see the thing about Fyodor's argument that Dazai should've known that a gravity manipulator can get out of a flooded room honestly has very little to do with the utilization of Chuuya's ability. It has everything to do with the vampire guard situated in advance to warn them, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. That's... not something Dazai probably (?) knew. Fyodor choosing to make that oversight (?) about their bond is uh... definitely a targeted choice.

Fyodor's specialty is hitting people where it really hurts. Remember that he first went for Kunikida, right? Because he wanted to break his idealistic spirit. And Cannibalism only works based off of the Agency's and Mafia's respective loyalties to their leaders, Fukuzawa and Mori - he was counting on loyalty to the leaders overcoming loyalty to their orders. So, it really seems like Fyodor regards bonds and emotions and loyalty and ideals as, well, weaknesses to exploit.

But as far as amazing feats Chuuya has performed, you're right, this is really not all that notable. Like I was saying, it's more important that there was already someone positioned in advance. It is weirdly gloaty and arrogant of Fyodor, then, to taunt Dazai with the idea that skk's bond is shallow, but I'll be honest, that actually makes me more nervous.

One of the flashbacks in chapter 101 shows the moment Chuuya saved Dazai in Dead Apple. Fyodor was present for those events and likely saw everything. He was the one who had the intent of forming the singularity dragon, something that Shibusawa did not predict would occur. He clearly has knowledge of singularities, perhaps better than most. Chuuya's true form of his ability is a singularity lifeform. Stormbringer confirms there are ways to counter and defeat singularities.

Conclusion: I am deathly terrified that Fyodor has a means of countering Corruption, and is purposely egging Dazai and Chuuya on.

I have no proof but most of the partnerships we built up throughout the series have been destroyed or separated or rendered ineffective by events in this and the last arc; the only one left is the Dazai-Chuuya one. Yeah. Fear.

But see, here's the thing. I'm still counting on it being Sigma or Chuuya to turn events around. Fyodor does seem to underestimate most people who are not on the same intellectual level as himself and Dazai. Sigma seems to be close to a turning point in his character. Chuuya has a history of throwing powerful enemies and allies completely off their game. I think they can do it. Really, I do.

Moreover, Fyodor commenting on how Dazai "isn't fit to use a gravity manipulator" is dead wrong because... Dazai doesn't use Chuuya's ability at all. Chuuya uses Chuuya's ability. Dazai doesn't tell Chuuya exactly what to do and how to do it. He makes a general plan or hints at a general plan and Chuuya adapts and fills in the gaps on his own. That's why they work! I will continue to shout this as long as I need to!!!

Much as I focus on Chuuya though, I do think Fyodor successfully pissed Dazai off, and I suspect... that's not going to turn out to be a good thing for him. This is Dazai's expression (or rather, lack of) the panel after Fyodor tells him he's "unfit to use gravity manipulation":

His face is completely shadowed.

...haha. Yikes.

Anyways, I rambled a bit here but I hope this was a satisfying response anon! There's really a lot of ways this could go so it's fun to theorize.

#thanks for the ask!#bsd #bsd spoilers #bsd chapter 105.5 #bsd dazai #bsd fyodor #bsd chuuya #soukoku #skk #storyrambles

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raphieeee · 8 months

Text

TW: parental neglect

Raph runs away.

It was when he and his brothers just turned fourteen and he had a big, big argument with his father. It started as it always did, Raph had woken up too late and got in trouble for not being at training on time, which meant he didn’t have a chance to eat, which meant he didn’t have a chance to feed Spike which stressed him out, so he was on edge. All it took after that was his father asking him to clean up after Mikey spilt something and Raph immediately protested, hating how unfair it was and how his little brother said nothing in his defence and just giggled.

Raph was never really angry at his brothers, frustrated and scared for them sure, but never angry. His father though? Raph was always angry at him.

Since the beginning of their training Splinter had pointed out how Raph was over emotional and prone to outburst and took it upon himself to make sure Raph was able to combat this and ‘be better’.

This meant praise was few and far between because Raph never learned to control his anger with things like Katas and punishments like no TV or extra training, the latter he actually enjoyed. Instead most praise was given to his brothers, who were already doing better at Raph in all the traits of a Ninja outside of strength and combat skis, but comapred to Raph’s inability to mediate and stay calm, his aggression and lust for winning, they practically glowed. It was so easy to compliment his brothers work when a bad example was right there next to them and unfortunately, Splinters desire for his son to be better than his brother of the past made it so he didn’t stop there.

Raph’s room was always scrutinised, his attachment to his toys and comics was criticised despite all his brothers being the same, his lack of manners was eating pointed out every night despite the fact that he was usually the only one to eat at the shitty little table int he kitchen.

It was no surprise that he ran. He had left letters to each of his brothers telling them he was running away but will always text them every night so they knew he was okay.

He hated not saying it in person and ignored their hundreds of text for the first day, messaging that he was okay at sunrise.

From there he was actually alright, he found a simple disguise, cut up a back back to out over his shell so it looked like he just had a full pack. He stole money, some food, but then found an old apartment that was empty that he could live in. He was close to the middle of the city, not close enough to his old home that he could be found, or far enough away to where he knew they would assume he would go. He got a job at his young age of fourteen purely cause his mutation made him look built like a grown teenager, and working in a garbage sorting place wasn’t that bad when you knew some of worst smells of mankind. No one asked about his preference to be concealed when he explained he had a deformity and the one guy who tried it warned others against it once his arm healed.

He started crime fighting after a week, saving lives and protecting innocents while still snagging a couple bucks from ATMs.

He started knitting, finding big needles and thick wool to work with. He sold some of his makes online, big fluffy blankets and pillow cases. He got a cat, googled how to care for them and got it vaccinated and cared for. Her name was Silk, reminding him bitterly of how he had left Spike behind in his rage to leave.

And every night he messaged his brothers, told them what he was doing. Eventually they stoped asking him to come home and instead asked about his cat who he’d sent a photo of. They talked about it, realised in their phone call how much happier Raphael sounded and relented. They called often, Donnie helping boost his online shop after he found out about it and ordering custom blankets in their four colours.

When the three decided to go out a fight crime, Raph became their guide. He didn’t lead, nor did he want to now that he realised how much he enjoyed helping people, but he navigated often and at times was able to call shots if Leo was in a good mood.

When his brothers got upset, they’d come stay with him. He didn’t like hearing about Splinter, but he could tell by the way the others talked about him that his father was living in regret and wanted to try fox their relationship, but Raph wasn’t ready for that.

At least, not at first. It’s when he turns eighteen and his best mate Casey tells him his own father was once like that but became better when Casey run away with his little sister for a week.

He’s not ready to forgive his father for his neglect and favouritism, not by a lot shot, yet he feels stronger in his mind and maybe, just maybe, his father is able to do it right he second time.

#tmnt 2012 #tmnt raphael #teenage mutant ninja turtles #2012 raphael #casey jones #raphael angst #splinter tmnt #splinter isn’t the best parent but he will learn #running away

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cubedmango · 11 months

Note

so this spiraled out of control, and this is me warning that my messages ahead are gonna get pretty long, so my apologies for clogging up your inbox with my ramblings as i do my best to answer your questions and stuff 😅 so basically: most toku are elaborate children's toy commercials, superhero shows, and shounen manga/anime but live-action (complete with the homoeroticism) rolled into one, although a good portion of its protagonists (especially in kamen rider, the franchise i'm most familiar with atm) are actually adults this time, albeit usually 20-something prettyboys (as to why, look up the odagiri effect if you haven't heard of it yet). and officially, toku isn't really a genre (stuff like godzilla are also considered toku), but many people outside of the jpn fandom basically treat it as such in the way they treat shounen, shoujo, seinen, josei, etc. so i guess it doesn't really matter anymore atp? (1/?)

(rest of ur asks under the cut!)

some toku are more adult-oriented, though those tend to be relegated to webseries and movies that aren't aired on tv, but again i'm not as familiar with that stuff rn. and you're right about the number of episodes - among the toku big 3 (kr, super sentai - aka the basis for power rangers, ultraman), kr and sentai seasons tend to be ~50 episodes while ultraman seasons are often around 25 instead. also all 3 of these air shows annually, but each is generally stand-alone albeit taking place in the same wider universe (mcu vibes except i think it's somewhat less annoying and with a less strict sense of having to make everything 'canon') and which can be loosely connected enough for them to have crossover movies every so often (though yeah, those tend to be not officially canon) (2/?)

among those big 3 as well, kr is definitely the go-to if you're interested in m/m subtext, whereas it's apparently less frequent (but definitely still present occasionally) in sentai and ultraman, especially as sentai in particular seems to be more big on the power of platonic friendship and family (not so sure on ultraman as that's the most unfamiliar series to me for now, though fwiw i think the template of the steel samurai in aa is relatively closer to ultraman than to the other big 2 franchises) (3/?)

as for what i'd recommend - i've actually only gotten into toku recently, but i'd say kr build (the season where inukai and akaso play the leads) is a pretty good place to start tbh! i haven't actually finished it myself, but i'm really enjoying it so far, and while i've heard it kinda stumbles in the latter third, it's generally agreed upon to be a solid season with a fairly cohesive plot and compelling characters (and the ending is kinda insane from what i know, but like mostly in a good way), and i agree so far as well. it's also one of the seasons specifically conceived as a callback to the very first kr shows in the showa era, so this way, you can get a pretty good sense of the original themes of kr even without watching said showa-era shows right away. and each kr season has its own themes too, with build's being focused on science and scientific principles, hence the protagonist here being a physicist (4/?)

build is also known for having a suspenseful thriller-like plot with a lot of twists and turns, so it's best to go in as blind as possible aside from like a cursory glance at its synopsis - basically don't follow my example, as i got spoiled for all the major plot twists and while i'm still liking the show and now focusing more on seeing how well-foreshadowed and built-up (ha) said twists have been so far, i definitely sometimes catch myself wishing i'd been a more unaware viewer from the start lol. and it's 49 episodes long (with some spin-off movies and a stageplay that, while not strictly necessary to watch due to either being not officially canon or not really relevant to the main plot, apparently do enhance the viewing experience and still tie in nicely to aspects of the main series and its character development), but due to the nature of its thriller-like story meant to hook viewers in, it might not actually take too long for you to finish (though i personally am taking it more slow and steady) (5/?)

as for the gay stuff, build is definitely worth checking out as the very originator of the life-changing phrase 'heated drama between men' (from this official promotional article www . toei . co . jp/tv/build/story/1210272_2766.html) and is also generally agreed to be one of the top kr shows (and the most recent one in years) to lay on extreme gay subtext (and again, that's saying something considering kr homoeroticism as a whole, and it's so palpable they've gotten many straight people and dudebro fans on reddit and twitter to also agree they're gay; other seasons with very heavy subtext between its 2 male leads that i can think of off the top of my head rn are ooo, blade, and ofc kuuga, the grandpa of all heisei kr shows) (6/?)

sento (the protagonist, played by inukai) and banjou (the deuteragonist, played by akaso) are considered iconic nowadays in helping elevate the primary x secondary rider partnership (bc going by those other mentioned extremely gay-coded relationships from previous seasons, none of them count as primary x secondary), and banjou by himself is often seen as redefining the secondary rider role (and also sento/banjou, or ryusen, is like peak m/m nerd x jock romance to me in general, and a fun bonus for me is even if it's yaoi, they both dress a lot like butch lesbians so in my mind they're kinda lesbian-adjacent to me, an actual lesbian). they're also really popular that they've gotten official couple's rings merch (based on their animal motifs of rabbit for sento and dragon for banjou), in the vein of narumitsu (and klapollo too if i'm not misremembering?), kawoshin, those guys from promare and code geass, etc (7/?)

speaking of aa again, i do think edgeworth would generally enjoy kr, gay subtext and all (the steel samurai probably contains heated drama between men too), and even though idk yet if kr and/or build would be his favorite toku shows as a whole, i definitely think he'd find himself relating to sento in many ways (they're both gay-coded identity crisis-having autistic guys with red in their color schemes, among some other similarities you'll discover along the way), but i think sento's relationship with misora (the main female character and his younger sister-ish figure) is overall more akin to phoenix and maya's than to edgeworth and franziska's. i don't think banjou and phoenix are that similar though, aside from being bi-coded blue-themed men associated with dragons, but edgeworth might still find a way to draw some parallels between his relationship with phoenix to the ryusen dynamic (8/?)

and while i can't guarantee build will make you feel as crazy (positive) as it's making me rn, i think you'll still like sento/banjou and the show itself... also, sento and banjou are pretty much the opposites personality-wise of inukai and akaso's characters in odt and cm (i also watched and enjoyed both shows prior to watching build, and yeah it's definitely a bit of a whiplash to see how different their respective characters are, though it does tickle me to imagine the possibility that the drama got so heated in build it inspired them to act in full-blown bls a few years later). like sento is an 'egotistical genius superhero' with a heart of gold whose arrogance is partly a facade and coping mechanism for his identity issues, and banjou is basically an adhd icon and ex-pro boxer (although lbr akaso doesn't really have a convincing enough physique for it, but well i can forgive it in the end because he's a great actor otherwise) who's very much an 'act/punch first, think later' type of dumbass but who's also a kind person at heart, albeit starting out as a bit of a selfish jerk whose (kinda understandably, in hindsight) distrustful nature makes him look out only mainly for himself and his small circle of loved ones, so i think it's nice to see both men's acting range (9/?)

anyway i'd say the love story (platonic or romantic, but well. it's really hard to read it as purely the former) between sento and banjou is truly at the heart of the show (like it's literally a story about building relationships) - in short, build is that "stop war start gay" graffitti meme. but for a better summary of what i do like overall about build that's also not very spoilery: www . tumblr . com/timetoddddavis/711997352927510528?source=share also i'm obsessed with this fmv so i must inflict it (positively) on every person i can (it's a bit spoilery but it's all out of context so it's not that big of a deal): youtu . be/-Gjzr5HmmfY?si=HUr8oZezqV_lIusZ (10/?)

(also even if you end up concluding that toku really isn't your cup of tea, you can at least maybe think of your experiences as a way to improve future aa headcanons and fics wrt its depiction of the steel samurai and company i guess?) this has gotten long enough that i'll stop here, but i did have some additional thoughts on build's female characters (sadly there's only a few of them, but they're treated well enough considered how men-centric kr generally is), how kr has actually and refreshingly also been dipping its toes into yuri(bait) recently, and the kinda morbidly funny anecdote about akaso thinking he might have gotten a crush on inukai on their first day of filming but it was actually heat stress affecting him, but i'll save those for another time if you're curious enough or are okay with me continuing to ramble. i really appreciate your time and attention, and thank you so much for entertaining me and my toku fixation :-) (11/11)

also toku fans have all made our jokes about the energy emanated by that classic 'heated drama between men' photobook image of inukai and akaso as sento and banjou but i'm also not kidding when i unironically think their posing in that picture perfectly encapsulates the characters' relationship by the end of the show... their relationship development from reluctant and kinda antagonistic allies to friends to beloved (and kinda codependent ngl but that just gives it more flavor to me, and also understandable given the circumstances of everything) partners really is a sight to behold <3

oh my god anon . thank u so much for the detailed explanation but also how long did these take u to type theres So Much Info Here ??? respect to ur fixation tho i dont think i would ever be so clear and coherent talking abt my blorbos afjdskfjkd

ANYWAY !!! u have def caught my interest w build (esp w the aa parallels and the rings mention i had no idea other franchises do it too) (also in the post u linked this line "it stars a silly little rabbit, the silly little rabbit has a death wish" i Need to understand the context behind that) so i might actually watch the first few eps and see if i enjoy it?? the chara dynamics sound rlly interesting already from ur descriptions so im curious abt how theyre in the show 👀 if theres any specific place/site ud recommend i watch id appreciate that too bc i have no idea where to look kfjdks

#oh and feel free to tell me abt the other stuff if ud like! female chara discussion most important thing ever to me even if idk them #(and the akaso thing ??????? oh my god i have to hear more about that rkjgkfdjgkfg)#gonna save the fmv for later in case i do decide to watch the whole show but ty for that too!!#my answer

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undertaker1827 · 3 years

Note

Ello! I apologize in advance if u have already written this or r busy atm!

If not though, I’d love to read some headcanons on Sebastian pining over his master/contractor (can b b4 his contract or a later one take it as u will!)

Tysm! Vry happy 2 c an active black butler imagines blog especially one with such quality writing 😤👏

Thank you very much! I haven’t written this before, and I certainly enjoyed writing it now! Here you go!

Masterlist

Sebastian had absolutely no intention of developing feelings for you in any capacity other than professional

After all, falling in love is such a human affliction

You summoned him, you knew what you wanted from him - though your plan admittedly lasted a little more into the long term than most humans’ - and he knew what he had to do

That was it

The only problem was, the demon realised quite early on that the little thing you’d summoned him for was going to take far longer than intended or than he had thought it would

That wasn’t a problem, he would be all the hungrier for his meal at the end of it

The problem appeared when he suddenly became aware of how often you were occupying his thoughts and filling his mind

They were not thoughts of tasks he would have to do the next day, or of anything he could do to speed up this long term plan of yours, but they were thoughts of you

Affectionate ones

Sebastian was left just standing there for a moment, in the kitchen at some ridiculous (by human standards, at least) time of night, trying to work out exactly how and when this had happened

You were his contractor, the person whose soul he was going to receive as a reward for suffering through the daily trials and tribulations of the mortal realm for a few years, not someone he should actually care about in the slightest

It was made all the more difficult by the fact that these emotions - if he dared use the term - hadn’t come on suddenly in a way that would suggest they might leave again just as quickly

No, they had built up gradually over a long period of time, gently even, in a manner that meant he hadn’t noticed them growing at all

Though, thinking back, he really should have sensed his own warning signs earlier on

He often allowed his gaze to linger on you when your back was turned, something you might have explained away as a hunter keeping an eye on his prize if you had noticed at all, but he knew that wasn’t the case

Sebastian often thought about you when he wasn’t beside you, wondered if there was anything you wanted that he could get for you, which led to him actively seeking you out and asking if you wanted tea, or something to eat

Come to think of it, he’d never done that for a contractor before unless they’d specifically asked him to

The demon sighed quietly through his nose and allowed his eyes to shut for just a moment, then carried on wiping down surfaces and organising plates and cutlery for tomorrow

He didn’t bother to try and convince himself out of having these feelings; he knew he was already in too deep and it wouldn’t do him any good to waste time on something so futile, so instead he just decided to ignore them

Only that didn’t work either

You clouded his mind even more now that he was trying not to think of you, and it was positively infuriating

That was, until one day, he decided enough was enough

Sebastian approached you with all of the confidence he could muster, a confession followed swiftly by an explanation present on his lips until -- he saw the look on your face

You knew

It was clear to him immediately that you’d know this entire time and just hadn’t said anything, choosing wait and see when he would finally come to you

You were grinning wildly and Sebastian couldn’t help but smirk as well, the ridiculousness of the situation remarkably amusing

Though, he supposed he found it a little easier to laugh when it turned out that you had feelings of the romantic variety for him as well

#kuroshitsuji sebastian x reader #black butler sebastian x reader #sebastian michaelis x reader #sebastian x reader #black butler sebastian #kuroshitsuji sebastian #sebastian michaelis #black butler #black butler x reader #kuroshitsuji #kuroshitsuji x reader #black butler reader inserts

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dark-rainbows · 3 years

Text

Author notes: Heya! this is just abit of the snippet of a fic I been coming up these past few days, dunno the title just yet but it is a Step!bro Jotaro x Step!sibling Reader fic, as I read some thirsts fics of some and got inspired to make my own.

Pairing: Step!Sibling reader x Big step!bro Jotaro

warning(s): Step sibling relationship, incest pretty much, mention of pinning (pretty much playing around atm), mention of feeling wetness, possessive! jotaro

ALSO!! this isnt the full fic (just want to clarify) the rest of it will be finished...hopefully soon? i dunno, but this is what I got at the moment, i hope it sounds interesting and ppl like it, thank you<3 and if you see any mistakes ill fix them alter in the finished fic ( and for the full fic ill have a illustrated picture for the story!)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s never easy being the younger sibling to Jotaro Kujo, or step-sibling that is.

Yes, even though you two weren’t connected by blood you still had to deal with the overprotectiveness of big bro jo.

You two first met each other when your father decided to take you over ms. Holly's home for dinner.

That's when you meant the infamous Jotaro kujo, locking eyes with him almost instantly by the entrance of the home. You were behind your father, clenching your light pink fluffy rabbit in your arms as he talked to your soon-to-be stepmother. A little scared of your new surroundings and unsure about entering the stranger's home, you stayed real close to your father. Jojo took notice and came up to you offering you a hand, which had holly and your father in shock by his odd nature of kindness towards someone new. You hesitated as you didn't know the boy at the time, his height and semi-built was a somewhat factor of your hesitation; he looks probably only two years older than you at most. But after some seconds you took his hand and slowly led inside step by step, he kept you close to him as you too made your way further inside the home.

Ms. Holly and your father would soon break up, but instead of your father taking you he left you there, just like he left ms. Holly. It broke you as he was the only person you knew, and jotaro saw that and faced the same thing with his father, which explains his closeness.

And ever since then jotaro has been very protective of you, even seeming to change his attitude towards people when you would come in circles. When teachers would have some trouble with him in

In their classrooms, they would call you in to ease him down, which surprisingly worked.

Of course, not everything between you two was always sunshine and kisses, you two had your fights. The ones where jotaro always, and you mean ALWAYS had you pinned to some bed while he climbed on top of you and watched you squirm and whine for him to release you; it would take him some time to finally do so, as it seemed he liked to see you whine out to him.

But, with years passing jotaro was becoming more and more unbearable And almost very possessive of you like...you belonged to him..and that you two were more than just step brother and step-sibling. The idea made you feel things, odd things that made your stomach turn but also made your lower half heat up and feel..wet.

You didn't mind being close to your big bro, your step bro..but there was something about him that made you feel things. Those feelings felt wrong but at the time they would feel something else.

It was probably the way he would stretch in the morning with his shirt off and you seeing all the muscles in his back-- or how deep and growly his voice sounded when he would wake up from his naps--- OR the way he would just look at you when your talking, just keeping his eyes on you and giving a soft smile during it. Your heart at those moments just beat faster, but strangely your inner thighs would feel hot and....weird.

Those feelings would happen again, but this time with another boy who didn't live under the same roof as you. A new boy at your school who’s name was hard for you to remember as you mostly paid attention to his lips and looks. You would BRAG about the new boy from school to your friends, your neighbors, even ms. Holly. But never jotaro...only because when you even seemed to bring him up he would just huff at the mention of him and walk off.

One day while at dinner, you brought up the schoolboy again and talked about how he looked at you and how he complimented your smell and looks for that day, you were getting flustered by the thought of memory. Ms. Holly kept gassing you up with the possibility of the boy liking you, but from across the table, there was another person who was not in tune with the conversation. Jotaro stayed almost completely quiet during your, what seemed, 30-minute talk about your crush.

He scoffed and dropped his fork and knife onto the plate. "I'm done," he said before leaving you and miss holly at the table just for him to escape into his room with heavy metal playing right after. It was normal for jotaro to do stuff like that, but he would at least put plates and utensils in the sink.

Ever since the boy been mentioned in the house he has been acting weird about it, even at school he would follow you around making sure you’re going to class and not trying to "sneak off" to go to see him.

It was annoying, and you were an adult...almost...but still annoying to know your stepbro was still treating you like you were a child again like you were that scared little girl that couldn't handle the world.

One day, when ms. Holly went out to get some groceries, you were setting up a study meet with the new boy at school. This was a great time as you can finally get to spend some alone time with your talked-about your crush. Especially since Jotaro was going out with his friends for next few hour, giving you enough time to close up and cozy and maybe even physical with your crush. As you were dashing around the house and cleaning up your room for your company, jotaro was in his room getting ready to leave. He heard you run across the hallway and even knocked over some things outside his door, he huffed at the sounds and after adjusting his hat for the fifth time he opened the door to find you holding up a bunch blankets in that were stored in miss. Holly's room in one arm, a big comfy body pillows in the other, and two large size of beer bottles, which were hidden so only jotaro could find them.

He looked at all the items that were in your possession and then stared at you, "Y/N, what are you doing?"

His deep and demanding voice stopped you in my our tracks, you turned and looked up at your older step brother, "...Uh...nothing, just..uh, stepping up a little study meet with a friend?" You lied as you tried to hide the two beer bottles out of jotaro's sight.

"A friend hm? Then why do you have beer, blankets and mom's bigass body pillows with ya?" He pointed.

"Well, of course the pillows are for us to get comfortable, and the blankets just in case it gets cold we can cover each other with them," you said ignoring the two beer bottles that were still in your hand.

"Okay. What about the beer," he folded his arms as he knew you didn’t have an answer for that one.

"Beer? Uh...well, the beer-" just as you were about to give the dumbest explanation why you had to beer bottles in your hand three Hard Knocks come about from your front door. You nearly dropped everything including the beer from the sound.

You turned your direction to the sound, "Shit! That must be him!" You cursed.

"Him?" Jotaro quirked an eyebrow, not expecting it to be a man, but he knew exactly who it may be from you slip of words.

"Ill get that," he said nearly bumping into you, making you almost drop the bottles and blankets.

#SB stories #jjba #jojo #jotaro kujo #jojo x reader #jotaro x you #big brother jotaro #little sibling reader

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azucanela · 4 years

Note

Okay so i'm feeling pretty bad atm because my best friend replaced me and i need some fluffy rn. How about hcs for the reader being coldly abandoned by their previous best friend. Believing she is alone, she falls to her knees and cries outside in the middle of the rain. A moment later, she glances over to see Bakugou, Kirishima and Shinsou behind them trying their best to cover her from the rain with their jacket. Thank you♡

COMFORTING YOU AFTER A FRIENDSHIP ENDS HEADCANNONS + SCENARIOS

[ft. bakugo katuski, kirishima ejirou, shinsou hitoshi]

SUMMARY: In which you are abandoned by your closest friend and are found by the boys.

WORD COUNT: 2.7k

WARNINGS: mentions of murder, mean friends, me being violent, y/n has those main character moments in the rain its nice,

A/N: bb im so sorry that they did that,,, please know that im here if you need anything and i will fight this person :D with your permission of course.

BAKUGOU KATSUKI

your so called friend ended up ditching you

im going to throw hands literally

you end up leaving the café you have been waiting for her in, near tears, and as if it can’t get any worse, you have no ride home, so naturally, you are now walking whilst trying to keep from crying

you’re about half a mile from UA, the hill is visible in the distance and you are very relieved because you just wanna cry in your bed

then it starts to rain

so yeah it did get worse

out of frustration and the built up sadness, you just kinda start crying, coming to a stop and falling to a seat at the side of the road

you felt so alone, the one person you thought would always be around he replaced you

clearly they didn’t feel the same

meanwhile, katuski is running with his jacket above his head, cursing out the skies

and then he spots someone crying in the rain, he initially thinks nothing of it, until he realizes its you

the girl who he “begrudgingly” helped study on weekends, the one who he was up until 2AM with, even though he slept like a grandpa

now he’s cursing for a different reason, he comes over to you

he is gonna wanna kill someone when he finds out and tbh you should let him but thats just me

in the past, people have abandoned him due to his personality, and though it hurt in the moment, he got over it pretty quickly

and tbh, most of the time he had a little squad of jerks following him around so he didn’t really care abt anyone else.

Staring at the text she’d just recieved, Y/N let out a shaky breath, trying to compose herself. Her so called best friend wasn’t coming, and would never be coming again. Apparently she had better things to do than hangout with some wannabe hero. Blinking away the tears, Y/N stood making her way to the exit of the shop, she stepped outside.

She was beginning to regret ever leaving the UA campus, because at this point she’d much rather be crying in bed rather than in public. Y/N was suddenly grateful that the café was relatively close as she speedily walked down the sidewalk.

The one person she thought would be there for her through everything, through all the pain and joy and anything in between, was gone. Great.

At least it couldn’t get worse than this, she decided as she saw the UA Campus in the distance, relief flooding her as her pace quickened.

Then she saw lightning in the distance, thunder rattling in the sky, Y/N couldn’t help but wince. As water began to poor over her she paused her steps, exhaling deeply as she looked up at the sky.

Then the tears began to fall, a hand coming to her mouth to quiet the sobs escaping her as she fell to the ground, seating herself at the side of the road, Y/N felt her body shake as she tried to force herself to even out her breathing.

Meanwhile, Katsuki was cursing out the skies, he’ been on his way back from visiting his parents when it began to pour. Immediately bringing his jacket over his body to try and shield himself from the brunt of the rain as he ran through the now empty streets. Save for one shaking person on the side of the road, causing him to raise a brow at, it was pouring rain and they were just sitting there?

He slowed temporarily to try and get a better understanding of what was going on, only to realize he recognized the person. Y/N. His classmate, the one he begrudgingly tutored on the weekend, the one he cursed out when she forgot to eat, the one who kept him up until 2AM even though his bedtime was normally 9PM.

Katsuki grimaced, coming up behind her with his jacket overhead to try and shield her from the rain as he spoke, “what the hell are you doing out right now? You’re gonna get sick.”

Y/N jumped at the sudden voice behind her, though she knew it was Katsuki, she turned to see he was holding his jacket over the two of them, the red of her eyes a dead giveaway that she’d been crying. She couldn’t bring herself to speak as she looked up at him in shock. What was he doing here?

Katsuki’s face fell as his eyes scanned her for injuries, “who did this to you?” He wasn’t the best when it came to comfort, and he feared that would show as he began to interrogate her.

Blinking Y/N realized what she must’ve looked like, trying to shake off the feelings she was experiencing she spoke, “we should go.” Wiping the water from her face, she moved to stand, and Katuski moved with her, his eyes still on her face.

“Hold this side of the jacket.” He ordered, and she did as she was told, bringing one hand up to the left side of the jacket, which was now soaked in water and doing little to help. This action provided Katsuki with a freehand to put on the small of her back and push her forward rather aggressively. He lead them to a small grocery store on the street, pushing the door open.

They were dripping wet, and looking up at Katsuki, who had returned to interrogating her, Y/N couldn’t help it when more tears leaked out of her eyes and she lunged forwards to tackle him in a hug.

He quickly shut up, body stiffening momentarily before he allowed his hands to wrap around her waist and return the hug. “Thank you,” she mumbled, burying her head in his chest.

Brows furrowed, Katsuki scoffed, “yeah, yeah. Whatever.” He turned to the view the rest of the store, “pick out some food, I’ll cook you something when we get back.”

Looking up at him, her mouth gaped open, “are you serious?”

“Did I stutter, you idiot?”

kirishima ejirou

okay so

kirishima definitely is gonna hound you with questions when he finds you crying

like he cannot allow his bb to cry

not that you know you are his bb but like

it would be unmanly of him to just leave you in such a state so he does his best to comfort you.

has likely never experienced something like this so he can’t really empathize with you but he’ll try

basically tries to make you smile and laugh the entire time you are upset

contemplates talking to the girls for help, but he doesn’t know if you want others involved

instead texts them how girls like to be treated when sad but in a very vague way and tries to pass it off as some obscure tik tok trend

they go along with it, thankfully, mina has a major obsesssion though so shes upset she didn’t know about this trend

thats how kirishima accidentally started a tik tok trend

will respectfully commit a murder

respectfully

i’ll help

least likely to acc go through with murder tho

he’s going to try his best

also goes the food route, based off his studies via the “tik tok trend” and he will gladly hold you

Exiting the convenience store with a plastic bag of candy in hand, Kirishima sighed. He’d been out longer than anticipated, and it was already getting dark. The grey clouds above signaling the possibility of rain, Kirishima grimaced, he needed to get back to UA quickly.

He’d intended to have a movie night with the rest of the Bakusquad that night, and maybe even invite Y/N. He’d been trying to work up the courage to finally ask her out, but it hadn’t been going well. He didn’t feel very manly each time he chickened out, and Kaminari’s teasing didn’t help at all, escaping him was the main reason Kirishima agreed to pick up the candy that day.

Sighing, Kirishima continued to walk, though the rain came faster, pouring down onto him as he groaned in annoyance, hoping that it wouldn’t damage his snacks as he pulled his jacket off to provide himself with some cover. Though it wasn’t very helpful, it was better than nothing.

He begins to speed up, jogging slightly when he notices someone on the curb, seated. Kirishima frowns, moving behind them and bringing his jacket over them, “hey, what are you doing?” Considering how much it was raining now, and the sound of the thunder overhead, he figured the storm that was coming would only get worse. Being outside was the worst idea. And as a hero in training, he simply couldn’t allow this action.

The mysterious person turns around, and Kirishima suddenly realizes its his classmate, his frown only deepening when he sees her swollen eyes. “Kirishima? She says, confusion clear in her tone as she looks up at him, eyes wide. They knew each other fairly well, though he could be shy at times, he was fun, and nice. And of course, rather respectful during all their interactions, she liked him.

Kirishima pauses before finding himself sitting beside her in the pouring rain and allowing the water to hit him as he lowered his jacket, pulling a candy bar from his bag. “What’s wrong?” He asked, extending the candy to her. Though it would likely react poorly should she open it and the candy came in contact with the rain, it was the thought that counted.

Y/N’s mouth gaped open as she smiled sadly at him, taking the candy bar from him, “thank you.” She whispered, “it doesn’t really matter anymore, though.” She looks up at the sky, water cascading down her face as she inahles deeply.

Suddenly, Kirishima’s hand is in hers, “it’s bothering you, so obviously it matters.” He tugs her hand to get her to stand up alongside him, “and it wouldn’t be very manly of me to leave a pretty lady out in the rain.”

A laugh escaped Y/N at this, “and I could never force a handsome man like yourself to stay out in rain.” Comes her reply, “let’s go.”

She wasn’t alone. Not while she had him.

shinsou hitoshi

WELL

definitely the best at comforting someone especially with something like this

feeds you sweets because food makes everything better, will be affectionate just for this instance because he knows you just want some love during this time

the best to talk to about it tbh, he’s very good at giving advice and listening to your problems

i feel like shinsou has probably experienced something similar in the past and he’s gonna understand what you are feeling

won’t try to make you open up but you’ll want to, he has a comforting presence

very calm about it, gently speaks with you and guides your actions, makes sure you take care of yourself if you are in a really bad place

once you’ve stopped crying he’ll ask you what happened and should you tell him he’ll honestly be VERY mad

like why would someone do that to an ANGEL like YOU???

is genuinely confused and potentially in a murderous mood

and he has the quirk to get away with it

wants to go off on this person though, desperately, and should he ever run into them they are going to get a piece of his mind

a really really mean piece of his mind

Shinsou frowned as he felt a droplet of water fall onto his head, realizing that rain would likely come soon, he picked up the pace of his walk. He’d been out at the bookstore, and was suddenly grateful that he hadn’t bought anything as he watched everyone in the shopping center begin to retreat to their cars and into shops.

He watched a lightning flashed in the distance, brows furrowing at the realization that a storm was coming when thunder accompanied the sight and pouring rain soon followed. UA wasn’t far, but he didn’t really want to have to run in the rain up the hill the school had been built upon.

Turning a corner, his eyes scanned the area in search of a shop he could wait out the storm in when they fell on the figure of someone seated in the rain, no umbrella or hood to protect them from the downfall, and their body shaking.

Then he recognized the hoodie. It was his actually, and he knew exactly who he’d lent it to.

Y/N L/N. The pretty girl in the hero course who’d threatened anyone who spoke poorly of him, defending his honor even though he never asked. She was always kind to him, even when they weren’t the closest of friends. Though that had changed, the pair now talking almost daily about a variety of things, something Shinsou was grateful for.

Questions flood his mind as he removes his jacket and brings it above him, going over to her, and when he’s close enough he can hear her small sobs, barely muffled by the palm of her hand. Shinsou can’t help but feel concerned as he brings his jacket above her to shield her from the rain, “hey, let’s go.” He mumbles gently.

Y/N looks up at him, her eyes red and puffy, and if it weren’t pouring Shinsou would’ve hugged her right there. “What are you doing?” When she’d simply collapsed in the rain, her emotions overwhelming her, she hadn’t assumed Shinsou would randomly appear.

“Getting you out of the rain.” Came his response, “come on, we can wait out the storm in the café.” Shinsou would’ve extended a hand had he not be preoccupied by holding up his jacket, which was now soaking through.

Sniffing, she nodded, “yeah, you’re right.” She stands, and he follows her movements, jacket never leaving her figure as the pair makes their way to the door of the café. Y/N pushes the door open, and they both enter, allowing him to finally put the jacket above his head down, though it started soaking onto the floor.

He threw it outside, much to Y/N’s shock, “I don’t wanna dirty the floor.” Shinsou explained nonchalantly, his purple hair sticking to his forehead. “Have you eaten?”

“Sorry about your hoodie.” She mumbled, at they moved out of the way of the entrance.

Raising a brow, he extended a hand, “that didn’t answer my question.”

Y/N’s brows furrowed as she looked to his hand, tilting her head in confusion as she placed her hand into his, Shinsou gave her a small smile before leading her to the line of the café as she replied, “no. I didn’t.”

His brows draw together as she looks at her, she seems resigned, quieter than normal. “How about a muffin then? Or maybe a cupcake?” He peers into the display window, squinting at the variety of foods. “I say cupcakes,” In his experience, sugary foods always made things better, to an extent at least.

Giving him a tight lipped smile, she nodded, “sure.” He was trying. It was better than nothing if she was honest. Considering the fact that her best friend had abandoned her today, it was a nice reminder, that she wasn’t alone. She had other people, regardless of what had happened.

Shinsou’s eyes met hers as he sighed, bringing his free hand to the back of his neck, “you wanna talk about it?” He knew they’d have to address it at some point, there was no denying that she had clearly been crying, something had upset her.

Shaking her head, Y/N pulled him closer using their joined hands and brought him into a hug, “not right now.” It was an oddly intimate moment, despite the fact that they were in public.

Regardless, he pulls her tightly against him, wrapping his arms around her protectively as he responds, “alright.

A/N: if anyone ever needs to talk or anything pls know im here! my dms are always open to anyone for anything :D

anyways, remember to sleep well, eat food, and drink water!

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itsyveinthesky · 3 years

Text

Refugee Crisis - New Details Shed Light on Lukashenko's Human Trafficking Network

Insiders reveal fresh details about Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko's inhumane smuggling system, comprised of a network of front companies that spreads to Syria, Turkey and Iraq, secret money transfers and the use of soldiers as traffickers.

-----

This is probably one of the most comprehensive articles on what’s going on at the Polish/Belarussian border atm and I urge everyone who is interested in the topic to read it.

If you know nothing about the topic at all I also urge you into looking what has been going on in Belarus in the last two years, the protests, the elections, the torture of dissidents, the forced landing of the RyanAir flight etc.

This is a very complex and unique situation and not comparable to the Mexico-USA border issues nor to the situation in 2015.

-----

Ahead of him, Mhamad can see barbed wire and then Polish soldiers. Their faces are covered and they are armed. When Mhamad looks back, he can see Belarusian soldiers. They, too, are wearing masks and carrying weapons. Whenever Mhamad or his children need to relieve themselves in the forest, they have to pass the men who have taken up positions behind them. Mhamad explains over the phone that the Belarusians give them precisely five minutes to do so. "Don’t run away,” they admonish. "We will find you!”

Mhamad, a married 40-year-old and father of three, isn't interested in running away. He wants to keep going. Mhamad fled the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, arriving in Minsk by plane via Dubai with his family in the hope of reaching the European Union and applying for asylum there - without having to risk his life crossing the Mediterranean. Now he’s stuck, trapped at the EU’s external border with his wife and three children. The youngest is less than two years old.

Around 4,000 refugees have been holding out for several days on the Belarusian side of the border fence near the Polish village of Kuźnica. They set off on foot last Monday, walking for miles along the M6 road toward the EU.

It was a march of desperation. Many have tried repeatedly in recent weeks to cross the border into Poland. And they say that Polish officials continually push them back – back into the hands of Belarusian security forces. They claim the Belarusians then take their possessions and force them along the fence, or they take them to other border areas.

Images from Polish military helicopters show the camp on the border. They show people seeking shelter in tents or lean-tos and lighting fires to stave off the cold. At night, the temperatures drop to below freezing. Mhamad sends photos of his shelter, which he built himself using metal parts, wire, green plastic and fir branches. He says the Red Cross has distributed bread, water and blankets - but his youngest child needs baby food.

As Mhamad speaks, the connection keeps breaking off. Loudspeaker announcements from the Polish border guards can be heard in the background. "Attention! Attention!” it screeches. "Crossing the border is legal only at border crossings." But the official border crossing was closed long ago.

At night, blue lights flicker across the border area. Mhamad constantly keeps guard and barely sleeps. He hopes that the people at the fence will remain peaceful, adding that a few tried to tear holes in the border fence and threw stones at Polish soldiers. "We don’t need a fight here – neither with the Poles nor the Belarusians,” Mhamad says. The Belarusian soldiers, he says, fired off warning shots when refugees tried to return to the highway.

For the past several months, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has been flying people in from Turkey and the Middle East. The European Union looked on for too long as the ruler in Minsk issued tourist visas to people willing to flee, thus expanding the new route to the West. Initially, the Belarusians drove them toward Lithuania, but now they are being funneled to the Polish border.

It appears that Lukashenko is retaliating against the EU and the tough sanctions imposed against his regime after the forced landing of a Ryanair passenger jet in May. And the refugees are the perfect tool. There’s nothing right now that creates a bigger panic in the EU than a few thousand asylum-seekers at a border crossing.

In his desire to ratchet up the pressure on Europe, Lukashenko has created a shameful system that now stretches as far as Syria, Iraq and Turkey. A team of DER SPIEGEL journalists spent several weeks reporting in Minsk, Istanbul and along the Polish border. The reporters evaluated flight data and visa documents, interviewed smugglers and middlemen who bring migrants to Belarus for the regime. Their research reveals a smuggling system against which the EU hasn’t yet found a remedy. Every day, hundreds of people land at the airport in Minsk; every day, more and more people push towards the border.

So far, the Polish government has primarily been using force to stop the asylum-seekers. Around 15,000 troops have been deployed along the border, backed up by border guards and then the police. The security forces deploy water cannons and pepper spray.

The EU now has the choice of leaving people to their own devices – or opening up the gates. At least 10 people are reported to have died in the border area in recent weeks. Human rights organizations have long been warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, and believe the death toll could rise into the dozens.

The people arrive as night falls. Young men in tattered sweaters. Fathers and mothers with babies in their arms. They carry everything they have with them in plastic bags or backpacks.

This is when the work begins for Ibrahim. He strolls through the marketplace in Istanbul’s Aksaray district, seemingly aimlessly. At some point, he stops in front of a café with an Arabic name. He recognizes his customers by the look on their faces, and gives them a brief wink.

Ibrahim, 34, fled the war in Syria to Turkey seven years ago. He says he tried twice to get to Greece, but failed both times. Now, he smuggles other people into Europe on behalf of, he says, Turkish mafia groups.

Ibrahim leads the way through a maze of alleys, past exchange offices, kebab stalls and hotels that charge by the hour before taking a seat in a tea garden. Before agreeing to an interview, he insisted that his real name not be mentioned. He doesn’t want his Turkish employers to know he’s talking to a journalist.

Aksaray has been a gathering place for smugglers and refugees for many years. Ibrahim says he used it as a staging ground to smuggle hundreds of people from here to the EU, almost always through Greece.

But the business has changed in recent months. After Greece sealed its borders with Turkey, there were few ways left for refugees to get through. But the route via Belarus to Poland has now opened up, and Ibrahim has adjusted his strategy. Instead of Greece, he is now increasingly sending asylum-seekers to Belarus. He says there have been just under a dozen since the summer, mainly Syrians and Iraqis who are trying to get to Europe. Some, he says, have been living in Turkey for several years, others have just arrived. Turkish aid organizations estimate that several thousand refugees have traveled from Turkey alone to Belarus.

Ibrahim created a series of Facebook and Telegram accounts under fake names, posing as a migrant and enthusing about the journey to the EU via Minsk, the capital of Belarus. "The easiest route to Germany,” reads one page. "To Berlin in five days,” reads another.

Ibrahim's strategy is to build trust. He messages back and forth with the migrants several times before arranging to meet them in Aksaray. He says that by then, the conversations are generally just about finalizing details. How much does the trip cost? When can we go? And where to?

If everything goes smoothly, Ibrahim refers his customers, in return for a commission, to a company disguised as a "travel agency” in Istanbul that in turn works with similar "travel agencies” in Minsk. The Belarusians issue the visas – and the Turks, Syrians, Iraqis and Lebanese handle the business locally. Since the summer, dozens of similar "travel agencies” have sprung up in Istanbul, in the northern Iraqi cities of Erbil and Dohuk, in Beirut, Lebanon, and in Damascus, Syria.

Ibrahim says the Turkish authorities are fully aware of the business, but still tolerate it. On the one hand, you have a mafia that is bribing the police. On the other, you have Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who wants to promote migration to the EU to keep the pressure up on the Europeans. Erdoğan actually did try to pressure the EU into making concessions in the Syria conflict as early as spring 2020 by busing migrants to the border with Greece. Now, Lukashenko is mimicking the tactic.

Initially, any company in Belarus was able to issue visas to migrants from Turkey and the Middle East. Since the end of September, though, only 12 companies have been permitted to do so. At least that’s what the smugglers say. Lukashenko’s regime apparently wants to ensure that it earns enough from the human-trafficking. Smugglers and refugees say the fee for a visa has risen from $1,200 to $1,700 to as much as $2,500, in addition to the cost of a plane ticket, which can be as much as $1,000 on Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to Minsk.

Ibrahim’s work is done once his clients reach Minsk. He says they have to organize the onward journey themselves.

Shimal, 36, sits with a lowered head on a bench in the center of Minsk. He’s from Dohuk in northern Iraq, and he doesn’t know where to take himself and his family. A few meters away, his wife is leaning against the façade of one of the buildings, seeking shelter from the cold wind that sweeps across the pavement. Their son and daughter, three- and five-years-old, kick an empty plastic bottle across a patch of grass.

Shimal had thought he would be in Germany with his family long ago. That’s what the smugglers back in his home country had promised him. But now he is sitting together with his wife and children on the streets of Minsk, without a valid visa or a place to get in out of the cold.

At the end of October, they weren’t the only ones stranded in Minsk. More refugees squat outside the Galleria shopping center. Most, like Shimal, are from Iraq, while others are from Syria.

Backpacks and sleeping bags are piled up on the floor around the migrants. If you try to talk to them for any length of time, men in athletic outfits crowd around and interrupt with provocative questions. Ultimately, they begin issuing threats that you'd better move along or "something will happen."

DER SPIEGEL was one of the last Western media outlets that was still able to work in Belarus at the end of October. Independent international media – as well as critical Belarusian media – are hardly welcome in the country any longer. Dictator Lukashenko has also had dozens of Belarusian journalists arrested.

The reporting now done at the refugee camp on the Polish border near the M6 comes primarily from representatives of the state media. They’re supposed to be documenting how badly Poland treats the thousands of refugees. The Kremlin has demonstratively backed Lukashenko, condemning the "harsh actions of the Polish side toward peaceful people.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has even called on the EU to provide aid to the Belarusian regime.

However, documents viewed by DER SPIEGEL show that it is the Lukashenko regime itself that set up the Belarus route. The state-run company Zentrkurort began issuing dozens of tourist visas to Iraqis in May. The company reports to Lukashenko’s presidential administration. A short time later, the government gradually transferred the visa business to private companies, including Oscartur in Minsk, which first organized entry permits in Iraq and then in Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries. Oscartur is also active in Syria now.

In Minsk, the companies accommodate the refugees mainly in hotels that also have links to Lukashenko’s presidential administration. It's a profitable business: It is estimated that there are currently around 15,000 asylum-seekers in Belarus.

And more people are arriving every day. A representative of FlyDubai reports 200 refugees a day on the airline’s flight from Dubai alone. One employee at the Minsk airport spoke of up to 400 new arrivals a day as early as October.

By now, there are likely to be many more. With the recent introduction of the winter timetable, there are now around 40 connections a week from cities in Turkey and the Middle East. Flights from Istanbul, Dubai, Beirut and now Damascus are all listed. Cham Wings regularly flies to Minsk from the Syrian capital – five times in the first week of November alone, as listed in the FlightRadar24 flight tracker lists.

The demand has become so great that the Belarusian Embassy in Damascus is temporarily no longer accepting visa applications – officially for "technical reasons.” Currently, 2,200 passports are being processed, according to a Facebook post.

The state-run Belarusian news agency Belta has reported that the government in Minsk is planning to add more international flights directly to regional cities in the country as well. Both Grodno and Brest, cities located near the EU border, have airports.

Shimal paid a total of $14,000 at a "travel agency” in Dohuk for himself and his family to fly from Istanbul to Minsk in addition to visas and lodging in a hotel. A friend had put him in contact with the right people. The trip consumed almost all of his savings, plus money from the sale of his minibus. "I’m ashamed that I let myself be deceived like this,” he says, adding that he doesn’t want to go to the border. It's "too dangerous," he says, "especially for the children.”

On the fifth floor of the Galleria shopping center in Minsk, the mood among refugees is tense. Older men walk around with mobile phones, and one is wearing a T-shirt with "Germany” emblazoned on it.

A man who introduces himself in fluent Russian as an Iraqi from Erbil accompanies three Kurds aged 18, 21 and 24 years old. He says he’s helping the men and that he’s been in Minsk for two months. He later admits that he is receiving money for his services. And where did he learn Russian? He went to college in Moscow and was married to a Russian woman, he explains. But he doesn’t want to say any more than that.

The shopping center is an important meeting place for refugees in Minsk. People warm up at one of the round tables next to cafés and a Chinese restaurant, eat fries and chicken from KFC and drink tea.

Some people who just arrived carry bags with sleeping mats, warm clothes and bright new orange sleeping bags with "-25 degrees Celsius” written on them. Others sleep with their heads on the table, with battered backpacks lying on the floor in front of them. They’re asylum-seekers who have already tried four or five times to reach Poland - unsuccessfully.

Many spend several days stuck in the border area until they find a way to get back to Minsk. The refugees often have to pay Belarusian officials hundreds of dollars to let them pass back through.

There are increasing reports of Belarusian security forces forcibly dragging migrants into cars and taking them farther north to the border with Lithuania. Some refugees claim that Lithuanian border guards deliberately used stun guns against them in order to drive them back.

In the meantime, the Belarusian authorities have switched to issuing only group visas with a few days’ validity for the "tourists” from the Middle East. The group visa for Shimal and his family was only valid for eight days. If the travel visa expires, they get kicked out of their hotels.

Those with Middle Eastern features now have to pay more than double for lodging, say Shimal and other refugees. Often, they end up handing over $20 or more per night for a bed in a crowded shared room in a run-down apartment or hostel. Many migrants, though, can’t even afford that and sleep in parks or on the streets of Minsk.

After significant hesitation, Shimal applied with the International Organization for Migration for a return trip to his homeland. And last Thursday, he flew back to Erbil via Dubai. He is afraid. He says he has been threatened because his family had a falling out with his wife’s family. Until the very end, he had hoped that Poland would change its approach and open its border. That outcome, though, still doesn’t appear likely.

It is shortly after 10 a.m. when Franek Sterczewski receives the geocode. He puts on his sunglasses and heads out on this Monday morning, off to the forest. A group of refugees has apparently spent more than two weeks stumbling through the area – which, with its bewildering maze of swamps, presents a greater danger than the border crossing itself.

A 33-year-old with a degree in architecture, Sterczewski went into politics in the hopes of improving Poland’s infrastructure. But ever since Belarus has been sending increasing numbers of people across the border, his focus has shifted to looking after refugees. This is his second trip to the border, and he is joining a group of activists to help those who have made it across into Poland. He is hoping that his presence will mean the people will be given an opportunity to apply for asylum.

The border between Poland and Belarus stretches for 400 kilometers (248 miles). Since August, there have been 30,000 attempts to illegally cross that frontier – far away from the well-guarded border crossings.

The Polish government declared a state of emergency for the region in early September, with the restricted area extending three kilometers from the border. Checkpoints are under military control, and only residents and security personnel are allowed in. Activists say it has become a lawless zone.

One video depicts what frequently happens out of sight of reporters and activists. Masked Polish and Belarusian border guards armed with automatic weapons stand face-to-face across the border. It is a tense standoff, and the two sides are filming each other. The Belarusians push asylum-seekers – men, women and children – over the border to the Polish side, where the Polish border guards refuse to let them through.

But even when groups of refugees make it far into Poland, they still aren’t safe. People have reported over and over again that they are brought back into the forest by Polish border guards and abandoned there.

Even parliamentarians like Sterczewski aren’t allowed into the restricted area. The migrants have to cross the strip either on their own or with the help of locals. Only then can Sterczewski provide his assistance to the exhausted, shivering asylum-seekers.

Sterczewski reaches his destination after one-and-a-half hours, his car turning onto a narrow country road that leads through the thick pine forest. Eight people from Somalia are crouched behind a leafless bush. They aren’t wearing any shoes, even though temperatures in the forest drop below zero at night.

One woman is lying on the ground, gasping for air in a panic. She is suffering from a heart problem, say her companions. The refugee activists who Sterczewski has called give them water, a couple of energy bars and slips of paper reading: "I want asylum in Poland.” The migrants say that they have already been forced back into Belarus by Polish border guards on seven occasions.

It takes about 30 minutes for the border guards to arrive. Four men climb out of the van and one of them strides over to the refugees. He has a round face and friendly-looking blue eyes that harden when he speaks to the asylum-seekers. "How did you get across the border? Illegally or legally?” he yells.

The refugees, sitting on the ground in front of him, stare and him and hesitantly lift their signs. "I want asylum in Poland,” says one of them. "Why didn’t you go to the border crossing where you could have entered Poland legally?” asks the border guard. Sterczewski intervenes: "They know that that is only possible in theory. The Belarusians push them across the border all over the place.” The border guard barks: "I’m asking them, not you.”

Those who have been examined are loaded up, either in the ambulance or in a military truck. The border officials say that the healthy ones are to be brought to a reception center for asylum-seekers. When two medical workers start leading one man toward the ambulance, his eyes fill with tears. "Please, I don’t want to go back,” he says. "I want asylum in Poland.”

When nobody is listening, the border guard says to Sterczewski: "These people are like rocks. The Belarusians throw them over, and we throw them back.”

The national-conservative Law and Justice party, which heads up the Polish government, is doing its best to pose as the guardians of Christendom. "The border is sacred,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Facebook early last week. The blood of an entire generation, he wrote, was spilled to defend it, and he accused Lukashenko of waging a "hybrid war” and using the migrants as weapons.

Members of the government have claimed in past comments to reporters that they have found animal pornos and jihadist materials on mobile phones belonging to the asylum-seekers. And Warsaw is planning on building a border wall that will allegedly cost 350 million euros. A model of the wall depicts metal bars over five meters tall topped with razor wire.

The government’s severe approach to the migrants is popular in Poland. In Brussels, meanwhile, many are concerned that it could represent a further erosion of refugee protections. Countries like Greece and Croatia, to be sure, have been conducting illegal pushbacks for the past several years – but most such activities have taken place largely out of the public eye.

Poland is among the first to have dared to legalize pushbacks, and it has been joined by other Eastern European countries. According to Polish law, border guards can decide for themselves if they allow migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum.

It is often the case that refugees are intercepted deep inside Poland, only to be brought back to the border. At that point, according to a German federal police officer, the Polish border guards cut a hole in the fence and push the people through back into Belarus. Polish border personnel have even begun keeping an official count of the "forced departures.”

Both European law and in the Geneva Refugee Convention hold that asylum-seekers who have made it into EU territory have the right to fair asylum proceedings. In Poland, however, this right to asylum has been severely curtailed. As a consequence, members of European Parliament from the Left Party, the Greens, the Socialists & Democrats and some Liberals have been demanding for weeks that infringement proceedings be launched.

The European Commission is examining the relevant laws in the Eastern European countries involved, but has yet to reach a decision. In principle, though, many in the EU welcome the approach being taken by the Polish government. Indeed, a debate has erupted in Brussels as to whether the EU should pay for the new fence on the Polish border.

Opposition politicians in Poland, NGOs and refugee activists are concerned that if the EU doesn’t act, the border could become a death trap in the winter. The swampy forests at the border are among the coldest regions in the country, with snow often piling up to depths of a meter or more and temperatures plunging to minus 20 degrees Celsius. Most migrants move at night, without flashlights, so as not to be intercepted by the border guards. Residents in the region are fully aware of the dangers, and some of them hang green lights on their homes at night as a signal to refugees that they are welcome.

Human rights organizations believe it is possible that some of the 10 people who have thus far died at the border had previously been pushed back into the forest by either Polish or Belarusian border guards. The true number of victims could be even higher. Migrants have reported seeing dead bodies in the border region, though such reports are impossible to verify.

Activists and politicians like Franek Sterczewski want to avoid additional victims, and are distributing extra clothes and power banks. The Polish parliamentarian never calls the official emergency number, fearful that the migrants could then be forced back across the border. And many of them want to travel onward to Germany anyway. Sometimes, the activists see the vans belonging to the human smugglers, who drive around in the border region near the restricted area.

Alaa Halabi, whose name has been changed for this article, is one of the men who drives such a van. DER SPIEGEL reached him by phone.

Halabi says he spent three years taking people from Greece to Austria or Germany. But when the borders were largely closed during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, he quit. There were suddenly too many checks and it grew too dangerous.

When he heard about the new route via Belarus, he says, he called his boss and offered to serve the new passage. Halabi says his boss has excellent connections to the Turkish mafia – and they have solid links to criminal groups in Europe. His boss, says Halabi, agreed, and since then he has again been working as a human smuggler, bringing people from Poland to Germany for $2,000. It takes him about 14 hours to get to the border.

The refugees send him their location, says Halabi, and deposit the money with an "insurance office” in Turkey. Halabi’s boss and the other middlemen work together with around five offices, and only those who deposit their money with an office they trust will be picked up. Once they do, he then calls somebody who knows people at the border, who can say if the refugees are in a safe location or not. Only then will he pick them up, Halabi says.

On the way to Germany, Halabi has to avoid the German federal police. Eight units patrol the German border with Poland, and they pay special attention to vans. They have managed to arrest several hundred human smugglers thus far. Halabi has a friend drive out in front to warn him of controls or roadblocks.

Halabi is only paid once he has brought the migrants to their destinations. They then give him a code with which he can claim the money deposited at the insurance office in Turkey.

That money transfer is the last in a long series of payments. If all goes well, the migrants exchange their savings for the opportunity to start a new life in Germany. But if it doesn’t, they find themselves trapped at the EU’s external border, struggling to survive.

#refugee crisis #migrant crisis #belarus #alexander lukashenko #poland #lithuania #europe #eu #turkey #lebanon #syria #human trafficking #hybrid warfare #russia

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ao3komorii · 4 years

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Behind the Blade’s Shadow (Talon/Reader)

Starting posting my league stories! I have 3 atm but plan on writing more, but wanted to post my Talon one first. May have taken some liberties with his personality since there’s not a lot of lore material available for Talon but I’m happy with how it came out. As well, just a warning that there is smut at the end of this one!

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Noxus was a place of power, a place where the strong rise up and carve their own paths, dooming the weak to cower in their shadows. Power is achieved in many ways, and the powerful always had a place in Noxus, provided that they were willing to defend themselves from those wanting to take them down and take their place.

You learned the realities of Noxus from an early age. Your parents were as ambitious as they came, both rising up in the ranks through their own strength and cunning. By the time you had been born, they had formed an alliance with General Du Couteau, securing themselves high ranking positions in the Noxian army. Their power was unquestioned, and the final piece of their empire was complete when you were born.

You were to be their successor; that expectation had been made clear to you since you were old enough to talk. You were their legacy, and every single thing you did would reflect back on them. You were to be a warrior, a leader worthy of carrying on the family legacy of strength and power.

It had always been a burden that you didn’t want to bear. It all started when your powers manifested; magic was seen as a great asset in Noxian society, a weapon that could be used to gain an advantage on the competition. But as soon as your parents’ excitement rose, it was snuffed out. Your magic could be mistaken by nobody in Noxus for power. The light blue glow that you channeled in your hands could heal wounds, but could not cause them.

Healers in Noxus did not bring prestige upon themselves. Warriors, leaders, mages… they could carve their own paths. Healers were used, but they served from the shadows. They were not to be seen, and were not worthy of the respect and admiration of the masses. Before you could begin to feel any curiosity and pride in your powers, you were instructed by your parents to hide your abilities. They would not be the parents of a lowly healer, that much was made clear to you at the age of eight.

There was so much pressure put on you that it became hard to take. Between combat lessons and lectures from your father about the qualities of a proper Noxian, you had no time to be like the other young girls you saw walk by outside from the view at your window. Your only free time in the day was when your parents finally decided that your wounds from practice were severe enough to end early, and you were sent to your room to heal your own wounds. They knew that you still used your powers, but it seemed to be a comfort to them that you did it hidden away in your room, away from the judging eyes of Noxian society.

When you turned ten, your parents added stealth training to your lessons, as assassins were becoming a larger presence in the ranks of the Noxian military. These were the only lessons that you looked forward to; your teacher was incredibly harsh and ruthless, but you put immediate use to your new stealth prowess by sneaking out of your house at night. What started as an attempt to test your skills turned into almost weekly trips into the city to satisfy your curiosities about the world outside the fortress that was your home.

The nighttime streets of Noxus posed little danger to you. There were always shady things going on, but nobody had any care for one lone child as long as you stayed out of their business. You were careful to be back before your parents noticed you were gone, as you had come to fear their ire more than anything.

What little pocket money you were given was spent on a small bakery that made sweet buns that your parents would never let you have otherwise. You knew they would be unhappy to hear that you were deviating from their plan for you, even a small infraction like sweet buns would likely earn you a verbal lashing or a day without food. Noxian tough love at its finest.

Your training that day had been especially hard; you were fairly certain that your teacher had broken some part of your arm, and those always took you forever to heal and left you feeling exhausted. If there were any day you needed a sweet bun, it was today. You waited only a few minutes after your parents left for a meeting to sneak out of your window. You normally would be more patient, but you wanted your sweet bun immediately. Your parents’ meetings with other Noxian officials usually ran for several hours, so you would have plenty of time to get to the bakery and back with them being none the wiser.

The streets were as busy as usual; Noxus came alive at night with activity. You had made this trip so many times that you could almost do it with your eyes closed. The small bakery was no more than a twenty minute walk from your house, ten if you ran the whole way there. You didn’t see many familiar faces on the way, but that was usual for Noxus. Not a lot of people who came out to play at night liked to openly flaunt their faces to the public while conducting shady dealings.

There was never a long line at the bakery, and today was no exception. The small, unassuming store never saw much late night traffic, which worked out for you as the owner would often give you an extra sweet bun as they would otherwise go bad overnight.

You greeted the owner meekly. As nice as she was, she was still a pureblood Noxian, built intimidatingly despite her profession. You were never sure if she liked you or not, because her face remained stony even as you watched her add two extra sweet buns to the bag before handing it to you. You smiled despite your nervousness; an extra two sweet buns was something to be excited about in your world right now.

The whole encounter had only taken a few minutes at most, and you were confident that you would make it home with plenty of time and have enough sweet buns for the next few days. You were so busy counting the buns that you were caught off guard by a brash laugh ringing out near you. You nearly dropped the bag of buns as you hurriedly backed up into an alley and peeked out to see your combat trainer walking along with several other men.

You couldn’t let him see you. There was no way that he wouldn’t report you to your parents if he caught you sneaking out. You waited for him to walk by the alley you were hiding in so you could run home, but as if fate was taunting you, him and his buddies came to a stop just beside where you were hiding.

Your brain went into panic mode. You had been doing well with your stealth lessons, but you had never managed to beat your trainer in combat. His battle instincts were hardened over time, and there was no way that you could sneak past him when he was mere feet from you. You would have to find another way home.

You didn’t give it another thought, slowly backing farther into the alleyway, your eyes on your teacher, terrified that he would suddenly notice you. But he was caught up with his companions, and your fears were unfounded. As soon as you got to the end of the alleyway, you turned and ran in whatever direction you felt might get you to your home.

The alleyways were all connected, and you found yourself in a maze of grungy walls. You didn’t know where you were or when you would find yourself on the streets again. You only felt like you could breathe when the next turn finally brought you out in the open air again. But with that came the realization that you were definitely lost. This was bad.

You felt tears prick at your eyes immediately. You had never been caught sneaking out before, but you knew your parents would not be forgiving. You stumbled forward, wiping your tears on your sleeve as you looked at your surroundings.

The area was barren; thick, grey stone walls of nearby buildings caged the area in. Your eyes were immediately drawn to a small bridge, one that had not seen water beneath it in a long time, as the soil beneath it looked thirsty and cracked. With how much trouble you had gone to in order to accidentally stumble upon this place, you had to assume that its location was lost to most, hidden by the swirling alleyways.

Clearly some people still found their way here, you assumed, as you noticed some blood on the ground that looked still somewhat fresh. You took another look around, but didn’t see anyone, so you felt that it was safe to proceed.

You were going to walk around the bridge until you noticed a glint of silver from beneath the bridge that drew your curiosity. You changed course, climbing down from the small ledge that separated the two sides connected by the bridge, taking a few steps forward only to fall on your back in shock as a figure rushed at you, their gleaming silver knife just missing the flesh of your chest.

You gasped in fear, holding the bag of sweet buns to your chest as your attacker emerged from the shadows of under the bridge. You were confused… he was just a boy. A boy no older than you were. He had shaggy brown hair, and was wearing a ragged-looking pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was torn and stained red on one sleeve, droplets of red falling from the fabric to the floor as he stared you down, knife still raised high. His eyes were both angry and afraid, and you found yourself more concerned for him than you were afraid of him.

He made no further movements toward you, which gave you a little more time to look at him. He was dirty, like he had slept outdoors for a month or longer. And his exposed arm not only gave you a look at the deep cut along his forearm, but also at how thin it was. What had you stumbled upon?

“Hey…” He flinched at the sound of your voice. “Do you want me to heal that?”

He looked wary and confused, but not like he would hurt you, so you stood up slowly, dusting yourself off. You took a step towards him, and he took one back in return. “Wait, please! I have healing magic and your arm looks like it really hurts!”

He glared at you, his brown eyes full of suspicion, but he didn’t move, staying still as a statue as you walked over to him and took his injured arm and held it gently. You could feel his eyes on you as you placed your paper bag on the floor, his eyes tracking your every movement. You gently ran a hand just above his wound, and watched as the blue glow swirled from your fingertips and began to mend his flesh, leaving not even a scratch behind when you were done.

“You…” he whispered, staring at his arm in awe.

You grinned sheepishly. “I’ve never healed someone else before.”

He put down his knife at last as he lifted his arm up to his face to look at it the second that you released your hold on him. He almost seemed to forget that you were there, and you reached down to pick up your bag of sweets. The crinkling of the paper bag drew his attention from his arm, and you had a brief mental war with yourself; you had been looking forward to the buns, but he was so thin, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that he was hungry.

With a bit of selfish reluctance that you pushed down, you held the bag out to him. He looked a little confused, so you reached into the bag and pulled out a bun. “I got some sweet buns… they’re really good!”

You held it out to him, plastering a grin on your face to try and seem less scary. It was such a silly thought; he’s the one with a knife and here you were trying not to scare him off. As a last attempt, you ripped a small piece from the bun and popped it in your mouth. You had really missed these, and if he didn’t want them, you would eat them yourself!

He snatched the bag so fast that you almost dropped it. You watched as he took a bun out of the bag and bit into it, devouring the whole thing in a matter of seconds. You giggled as you watched him eagerly eat a second bun as well.

You realized that you didn’t know his name, and readily introduced yourself, asking for his name in return. He stared at you, eyes flickering to the paper bag as he mumbled his reply.

“…Talon.”

“Nice to meet you, Talon!” you replied with a grin.

Your focus was then drawn to the skyline, the sun almost fully vanished from the sky. You had to get home before it was too late, but you still didn’t know the way. Maybe your new friend would know?

“Hey, Talon?” you asked. “Do you know how to get back to the main streets? I’m kinda lost and I have to get home before my parents get back.”

You could have sworn he looked a little sad as he nodded. “This way.”

He carefully set the bag of buns under the bridge, where you also saw a few trinkets and a threadbare blanket. You didn’t want to make him sad, so you didn’t bring up his dreary living arrangements, instead choosing to follow him over past the other side of the bridge and through a very narrow alleyway, barely wide enough for you to fit through.

It was a short walk, but the alley was too thin for most adults to get through, so you could see why the spot with the bridge was so isolated and empty. It had probably been built long ago, before all the other buildings had been here to close it off from the world’s notice. Gradually, more and more light began to filter into the dim alley path until you arrived on a street you were surprised to discover that you found to be familiar.

“I can get home from here!” you announced happily, and Talon only nodded in response.

He brushed past you, and you felt sad at the imminent loss of his company. You had no friends; the only kids your age you were ever around were your parents’ friends’ children, and all they cared about was showing off their combat prowess by giving you more bruises than you could count.

You grabbed Talon’s sleeve without thinking about what you wanted to say, which resulted in a short moment of silence. “Can I come see you again?”

He looked at you for a moment before turning his face away. “Do whatever you want.”

“Okay, then I’ll come and see you again soon!” you promised.

You were going to take his answer for a yes, and waved goodbye to him before dashing back onto the streets, keeping a careful eye out for your trainer as you hurried home.

Your heart was racing in your ears as you crawled back through your window, terrified that your parents had noticed your absence or your trainer had seen you. But as you sat on your bed for the next few hours with only your thoughts as company, you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Not that night, or the next day. You were hyper observant of the behavior of everyone around you, but noticed nothing unusual at all. After a few days, you were finally confident enough to say that you had not been caught.

As soon as your paranoia faded, curiosity took its place. You had never had a friend before, and the fact that he was a secret friend that your parents didn’t know about just made you more excited to see him again. You excitedly counted down the days until your parents would attend another meeting. You had so little to look forward to as of late, and the mysterious boy was just what you needed. A friend that wouldn’t judge you, or report your failings back to your parents. Part of you knew that you didn’t know Talon very well yet and he may end up being a jerk, but the bigger part of you was too excited to have a real friend to think of much else.

You began to visit Talon every chance you got. Your parents had been having lots of meetings lately, and you took every opportunity to go see your new friend. At first he seemed surprised to see you again, like he thought that you wouldn’t make good on your promise. He still didn’t talk much, but you did enough talking for the both of you, telling him about your life and your parents as he silently listened and ate the sweet buns that you always brought him. He never told you much about his life, but eventually he admitted that he didn’t have any parents, which you had suspected. You wondered about him, but didn’t want to make him feel bad, so you never pried. He would often have new cuts or scratches, which you happily healed for him. It felt good to be able to use your powers to help someone, even though your parents had forbidden it. You and Talon were secret friends, and nothing would keep you from seeing him.

In hindsight, you had been overconfident. You were stupid to think that a ten-year-old girl could keep such a big secret from parents that happened to be high ranking Noxian officials. You had been in your own little bubble for the few months that you had been seeing Talon for that you began to get sloppy covering your tracks. Your parents had noticed a shift in your personality, and unbeknownst to you had instructed your stealth teacher to follow you when you were alone.

You had seen Talon as usual before heading home, not knowing that it would be your last visit to your friend. You felt your blood freeze in your veins as you crawled into your window as you always did… only to find your parents standing in your room. The stern glares on their faces told you that something was wrong, and your stealth teacher entering the room sent you to your knees with fear as the assassin calmly gave your parents a report of all that you had done when you were out.

Your parents listened quietly, and your father’s solemn nod made you think that things might not be as bad as you thought until he opened his mouth. “Kill the boy.”

“No!” you wailed. “Don’t hurt him, please!”

“We cannot have you believing that associating with street orphans is acceptable behavior,” your mother added. “Not for a future general of Noxus like yourself.”

Scared tears ran down your cheeks as you pleaded desperately for Talon’s life. “I won’t see him again! Please don’t kill him! I’ll stay here and I won’t leave again!”

Your parents regarded you coldly, and you watched as a smug smile slowly grew on your mother’s face. “See that you don’t. That street urchin is a distraction, and you must have no distractions if you want to succeed.”

You were almost too scared to breathe. Did that mean that they wouldn’t have Talon killed? Even if it meant that you couldn’t see him anymore, you had to save him.

Your father sneered at you. “Stop snivelling. I will spare the boy, provided you do what you must for the future of Noxus. You must learn now to keep to your word or I will be forced to undertake measures to ensure that you do.”

You were so relieved that Talon would be okay that you didn’t think about what your father had meant until the next day when you came back to your room after sparring to find bars on your windows. Your door began to be locked whenever you were in it. You were truly a prisoner in your own home.

Your life became training and sleeping; every little kindness or happiness you had before was stripped away the moment you had been caught. At first, you wept for your lost friend, wondering how he was doing and if he missed you as much as you missed him. You had gone so long without friends, and to have the only one that you ever had ripped away from you took from you the last bit of fight that you possessed. You would be a good little possession and never disobey your parents again, although it wasn’t as if you had any choice in the matter now. Your life had always been in their hands and it was either obey or perish.

As the years went by, you stopped crying for Talon, as it had been so long that your time with him was a fading memory. You sometimes wondered what happened to him, but those times became few and far between. When you had reached adulthood, your parents finally eased some restrictions on you, but by then they had already broken you with years of harsh restrictions. You had no desire to leave your room, even if the door was unlocked.

The main difference now that you were no a longer a child was the political lectures really ramping up. You were forced to memorize names and faces of both ally and enemy to your parents. They would bring you along to lesser important functions and you were expected to have a response ready for anyone who conversed with you. You would be happy to stay home, but now that you were a picture of the perfect Noxian lady, your mother insisted on showing all of their hard work off.

You were starting to get restless with your sudden debut into Noxian social circles; it was painfully obvious to you that you had never socialized with anyone who hadn’t been paid by your parents. You were proper and knowledgeable, but never made any real connections. You didn’t know what to say to the people your age that truly enjoyed engaging in brutal violence for the sake of Noxus, and you certainly didn’t care to talk about which enemy of Noxus had been assassinated that week.

It was at your mother’s insistence that you finally reinstated the previously forbidden walks you had taken as a child, as your despondency to the world had long affected you at social functions you were dragged to. You supposed it would be impossible for her to do anything solely for your own benefit, but you had agreed after she had insisted that you would not be trailed on these walks. So there you were, at the age of twenty-four, taking your first walk alone outside in fourteen years.

You had been places with your parents, but you didn’t stop to enjoy the scenery, so it was a new experience for you. The city had changed and evolved since you had been kept indoors. Now that you had your own agency for the short time your mother had allotted for you to walk around, you found your feet taking you to that same alleyway you had gone through to see Talon so long ago. You knew you were being dumb, there was no way he was still there waiting for you. You had no idea if he was even still alive, the Noxian streets being as they were. But something inside you insisted that you had to see for yourself, but the alley was too thin for you to get through now that you were an adult.

The small alley may have stopped a less capable person, but you had nothing in your life to focus on but training, so scaling a building was nothing for you now. You knew there were people around you, but you would be up and over the building before any of them could stop you and question you on what you were doing.

You nimbly ran along the rooftop before scaling down the side of it to land right in front of the old bridge. You almost felt like you were ten years old again, coming to meet your friend. But that was so long ago, and hope had left you that day. You were simply here to satisfy your unrelenting curiosity, chasing after some closure.

You approached the bridge, some small part of you expecting to see the boy sitting there. But there was nobody and nothing. Not even Talon’s old dusty blanket. No sign that he had ever been here, although you knew that you hadn’t imagined him. You sat down where he used to be, losing yourself in your only recorded happy memories for a few minutes until you decided it was time to leave. Your mother would be expecting you, and there was nothing more for you here.

You began to notice a pattern with when you were being sent out on walks. Whenever you would come back, you would cross paths with associates of your parents who were just leaving. Without fail, your parents always seemed to have company over while you were gone.

Your parents had never hid their work away from you so obviously before, and had been bringing you with them to their strategic meetings before this pattern had started. So what had changed? What were they doing that they were trying to hide from you?

You knew it must be nothing good; your parents were endlessly ambitious, and this time, their plan must be something big. Something they couldn’t risk even their daughter knowing about. You were curious, but more than that, you began to worry. Were your parents getting in over their heads? They were tough, but they weren’t invulnerable.

You had to know what they were getting themselves into. But you knew that they would never tell you if you asked. You tried to brainstorm ideas as you walked around town the next time you had been sent out at your mother’s urging, but nothing was coming to mind. You did everything they asked of you, so why couldn’t they trust you with whatever they were planning?

The streets were too loud, and it was proving to be too much of a distraction for you to concentrate on your own thoughts. You decided to divert your path at the next alleyway, heading down the dingy path once you determined it to be vacant. Almost immediately, you noticed a change in the volume of the world around you; the raised voices and noises of society dulled the farther down the back alley you walked.

Even being in total silence did nothing for your current dilemma. What could you do to discover the truth without your parents finding out? Wracking your brain for ideas only ended up giving you the familiar tinges of pain that you knew would turn into a headache if you didn’t give yourself a break from thinking yourself to death.

You came to an abrupt stop as you noticed a figure slumped against a wall just ahead of you. Cursing yourself internally for not paying attention to your surroundings, you weighed your options. You could turn around and go right back where you had come from; one glance at the person told you that they didn’t even seem to have noticed you yet. They were likely a drunk or a vagrant, and you knew that your years of training meant that if you wanted to escape from them, then they wouldn’t be able to stop you.

But another part of you felt compelled by your mother’s lectures on pride. You shouldn’t be afraid to walk by one drunk passed out in an alleyway. You needed to hold your head up high and show this person that you were not a coward, nor someone to be messed with. You felt embarrassed when you realized you had gotten in your own head again, and a distinctly male groan from the person just ahead of you spurned your feet into action.

You would just walk right on past him, like it was no big deal. But you couldn’t help but scrutinize him as you got closer. You couldn’t see his face, as he wore a long blue hooded cape, the hood hanging down over his eyes. You were surprised to see the cape split into tails that were tipped with sharp blades, as well as the large blade strapped to his wrist and forearm. You knew then that the man wasn’t just a drunk in an alleyway, but the time it took to make that observation cost you dearly.

You took too long to realize the danger he truly posed, as before you could blink, you cried out as you were pushed against the wall behind you, the man’s blade at your neck.

“So eager to die,” a deep voice growled as you stared down at his blade, knowing that he only had to press it a little more into your neck to end your life.

Now that he was right in your face, and much taller than you, the hood did much less to obscure his face from your view. He was handsome, something that may have flustered you if you weren’t in mortal peril. His dark brown hair hung just above his eyes and was cut to his collar. His face was angular, his expression set in haughty intimidation, but something about his face called an almost-lost memory to the surface.

“Talon…” you spoke before you could think.

You were too preoccupied with the past. Now this man would think you were a basket case, and you didn’t think that would improve your chances of surviving this encounter. But you were surprised to see that man stumble back from you with a surprised huff. What had happened? Was there some new threat you would have to worry about on top of the assassin in front of you? Unless… could you dare to hope?

“…are you really Talon?” you asked softly, advancing on the man.

“My name is not your concern,” he growled back at you, and then you noticed the blood.

How had you missed it? There was a large tear in the front of his shirt, which revealed both lean stomach muscles as well as a horrible wound that was gushing blood. No wonder he had been slumped over like a drunk; it was a miracle that he could stand at all with a wound that bad. Just as fast as he had advanced on you, he was now trying to flee using whatever endurance he had left. But you knew that without treatment, he wouldn’t be able to make it very far. And whatever had happened to him, whatever he had become since you had last seen him, you weren’t willing to lose him so soon after you had found him again.

“Please don’t run!” you pleaded, hastily telling him your name in hopes that he would remember you. “You’re really hurt! Let me help you!”

He tried to back up further down the alleyway, but since he was injured, you were faster than he was now. He put his blade up to resist, but then his arm dropped by his side as he felt your healing magic connect with his deep wound. He stared into your eyes with an expression that you couldn’t read as his wound healed rapidly before your eyes, and then he was left with a bare patch of torso that showed no signs of injury at all. Before he could even begin to calculate a next move, you lunged at him, wrapping your arms tightly around him, his surprised grunt echoing in the empty alleyway.

“I didn’t think I would see you again!” you cried, allowing him to push you gently back and create some distance between the two of you.

He was careful not to hurt you, but his eyes were not the same shy boy you had known before. His expression was dark, clouded with the years of pain that you couldn’t even begin to decipher.

“Don’t get any closer to me. I’m not the weak child I once was,” he snarled, and the anger in his voice shattered what hope was still in your heart that maybe he had missed you too.

“Talon, please–” you began, inching closer to him, desperate to not lose him again.

He stared at you for a short moment, his gaze unwaveringly cold, before he turned and scaled the tall wall of the alley in the blink of an eye, and then he was gone.

You could have tried to follow him, but his rejection stung you fiercely. The only person in your life who you ever had a genuine connection with, and it turned out that he didn’t care at all. It had been so long, you told yourself, and he had grown up. He had no obligation to a girl he knew when he was ten, a girl he probably thought had abandoned him. He didn’t have to care about you and you knew that you shouldn’t have put those expectations in your head. Clearly the time you had spent together as children was only precious to you.

You were too stunned to cry as you turned and ran all the way home. Your abrupt entrance startled your parents, who had still been in a meeting with their associates, a bunch of documents spread out in front of them on the table. You rushed past them and to your room before your mother could yell at you, burying your face in your pillow as the tears finally came.

You were so stupid. That was the single thought that coursed through your mind that night and the entire next day. You had trouble focussing on anything else, and had paid the price in training when your teacher had almost dislocated your shoulder. You tried not to be upset, but giving up your secret hope that maybe Talon had been thinking about you all those years too was more than you could take right now. You needed a distraction.

Luckily for you, your parents were finally attending a meeting that wasn’t at your house that night. You had been curious about those papers they had in front of them, which would undoubtedly be kept in their study now. And with your father’s insistence that you stay behind and work on improving your earlier failures in combat, you had the perfect cover to do some snooping around. You bid them farewell with a smile you hoped didn’t look too eager for them to leave. They were none the wiser, and left the home at last, leaving you alone with your plan.

Their study was locked, which didn’t surprise you. But you had been trained in picking locks, even expensive and complicated locks such as this one. You just had to be patient and find the trick to this ones. Your steady hands paid off as you finally heard the click of the lock disengaging after several minutes of picking it.

You carefully hung the lock on the inside of the door as you stepped into the room. You had never been in here before, but it was certainly less exciting than the grand study you had imagined when you had pictured it in your head before. There were two large desks, as well as a simple table with a large map strewn across it. The most daunting part of the room was the sheer amount of papers laid across both desks and even spilling onto the floor.

You were confused; you had never known your parents to be anything but tidy and orderly, almost to a militant level. This level of disorder was so unusual that it was setting off your already frazzled nerves. You felt a deep sense of foreboding settle in your stomach as you bent down to pick up the papers that had fallen onto the floor.

Looking over the papers in your hands, you only had more questions instead of answers. You were looking at a list of meeting dates, as well as the names of those who attended the meetings, some of which you recognized as people you had been introduced to before. The names were generally the same under every meeting, but you couldn’t make any sense of what your parents needed the lists for.

You discarded the papers on the table, choosing instead to look over the map that was spread out over most of the table’s surface. It was an ordinary map of the city, but it had been dotted with arrows and a large circle drawn around the Noxian war command building in the center of the city. Was there something happening there? Could Noxus possibly be starting another war?

Feeling even more worried, you began to rifle through the papers on the desks, paying no mind as to how you would put everything back in its place when you were done. You were desperate for information, but the first few papers you looked at gave you no new insights. A breakdown of the defence budget, a summons for a meeting; you discarded papers left and right, looking for anything that stood out. Just as you were ready to toss a particularly wordy paper to the side, the name at the top of the page caught your eye.

General Du Couteau.

Reading over the document, you discovered that it was a report on the general’s daily activities. Why would your parents need this? It didn’t seem to be provided by the general himself, which meant that your parents had someone following the general’s movements and reporting them back. A quick glance at the bottom of the list told you that it extended to today, and the last note made your blood run cold.

Du Couteau will be in place at the war command building. Assassination will take no more than ten minutes.

The note was written in your father’s handwriting, unlike the foreign scrawl of the rest of the document. You couldn’t breathe; your parents planned to assassinate General Du Couteau, the leader of the Noxian army. Suddenly the scribbles on the map made sense. They had been plotting this for who knows how long, and it seemed like tonight was when they executed their plan.

You forced yourself to move, to sift through the remaining documents as fast as you could; you needed to know why they were doing this. Killing the head of the Noxian army was treason of the highest order; you knew that your parents were overly ambitious, but you never thought that they would plot to kill one of Noxus’ most high-ranking officials simply for their own gain. But the more documents you read, the more it became clear. Your parents were unsatisfied with their positions, deeply jealous of perceived favoritism from others towards Du Couteau, and were ready to do something about it. Tonight.

You had to stop them. This time their greed had brought them to a place where they might not be able to come back from, and you couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. The assassination was happening potentially any minute now, and you had to get to them before they made a choice they couldn’t take back.

You threw the papers back on the desk and turned around to sprint out of the room. You didn’t stop to change or grab any weapons, leaving the house and running towards the war command building in a pair of flimsy shoes and the short-sleeved black shirt and pants that you always trained in. Your feet were hurting, and you were sure that people were staring at you as you passed, but you couldn’t afford to pay any of that any mind.

As you got to the building, you could tell that something was already wrong. You had passed by here sometimes on your walks, and the place was always heavily guarded. But right now, you could see no guards, nobody outside the large building at all. It worked well for you now since you could pass through the gate and approach the heavy doors without any difficulty, but you knew that it was a bad sign for whatever was happening inside right now.

You pushed open the door and nearly fell, skidding to a stop by grasping onto the wall. Looking down, you realized what you had slipped in. The entryway was a bloody mess, and your shoes were now sticky and wet with the blood that ran from the corpses of several guards that lay on the floor.

You now understood what had happened to the guards outside, and the brutality was almost too much for you to bear. Throats ripped open, bones and organs visible, eyes still open, reflecting the shock and pain of their final moments. It was horrible, but you knew that they were too far gone for you to possibly save. You could not bring back the dead.

Things that you could not undo had already happened, and you knew that you had to move on. If you didn’t get to your parents soon, Noxus would lose its most valued general, and the entire country would be sent into a civil war. You steadied your feet, carefully stepping around the blood that flooded the floors and running farther into the building.

You encountered more guards the farther in you went, but they were all dead, just like the others. Whatever had happened here, the responsible parties had already moved on. As you got deeper into the building, you began to follow your ears. You could hear the sounds of a commotion, which gave you hope that you weren’t too late. You finally had a door in sight, and sprinted down the hallway to reach it as fast as possible.

Just as you were getting within reach of the door handle, a scream from within the room stilled your hand. The scream rang out with pain, but you recognized the sound of your mother’s voice anywhere. You forced your hand to move, throwing the door open and rushing inside.

You were too late, that much was clear to you. But not for the reason that you had thought.

It was a bloodbath. Bodies littered the floor, their blood covering the ground in a layer of red. You didn’t see Du Couteau anywhere, but you did see your mother as she fell to the ground, and you immediately recognized the deadly redhead behind her as she collected her knife from where it had been embedded in your mother’s back.

Your mother laid still on the ground, and made no movements or sounds. Your eyes were then drawn to the body that lay next to her… your father. They were both clearly dead. Even without looking at them, you knew that the deadly Katarina Du Couteau didn’t leave targets alive.

Now that you saw her here, you knew. It had all been a farce. General Du Couteau wasn’t here, and it was obvious that he had seen through your parents’ plan and sent his own assassins in to deal with the traitors. Your parents and their cohorts had never stood a chance.

You couldn’t help a gasp at watching your mother die before your eyes, a sound which you regretted the moment it brought Katarina’s attention to you. She twirled a dagger in her hand, the same dagger she had just killed your mother with, sending you a smirk that promised you that you were next.

Before you could blink, she had disappeared, and you were barely able to roll forward to avoid being stabbed in the back with her dagger. She slashed forward with a cry, and you scrambled to your feet to avoid the blow. Since she had appeared behind you, she had cut off your exit. There was very little chance of you getting past her and back out the door. You didn’t see any other living people in this room, which meant that she had singlehandedly executed everyone in here by herself. You knew immediately that this would likely be your tomb as well.

She was so fast, and it was all you could do to keep just ahead of her blades. But your dodging would not save you forever, and she was very obviously backing you into a corner. But you had no weapons, so you had no way to fight back and prevent her from caging you in. You were paralyzed with fear as your back hit the wall; you hadn’t even realized that you were that close to the wall to begin with.

Katarina’s dark laughter sent a shiver down your spine, and you could only watch as she raised her dagger, sauntering slowly over to you as she knew she had you trapped, and there was no need for her to rush. You couldn’t look at her anymore; if she was going to kill you, you just wanted it to be over with. You couldn’t make peace with this awful situation, but you could stand your ground here and not cry. You closed your eyes, breathing in and out as you waited for the impact of her dagger.

You heard her sneer, and braced yourself as best you could, until you heard Katarina let out a disgruntled cry as well as the clang of steel meeting steel. You obviously weren’t dead, so you opened your eyes to see why.

You could barely even see Katarina over the tall figure that stood between you and her. From how you had last parted, you didn’t think Talon wanted anything to do with you, but here he was, blocking Katarina’s dagger with his own blade. You didn’t know why he was here, but you were grateful for his help.

“You want to handle her yourself, Talon?” she asked him, and you felt numb as you realized that they were clearly on the same side. Why was he standing in the way right now then? Did he truly wish to kill you himself?

“Katarina…” Talon growled, and she rolled her eyes in response, sheathing her daggers.

She shrugged her shoulders in a manner that was too casual for being in a room full of people she had just killed. “Suit yourself. I’ve had enough of a workout today anyways.”

You both watched her go, and Talon didn’t turn around until she had left the room.

“Why are you here?”

The question startled you, and the anger in his voice made it hard for you to look at him. “My parents… I followed them here. They…”

He didn’t answer, and you finally looked at him. “Talon… you work for Du Couteau?”

He looked like he wanted to snarl at you again, but your saddened expression made him reconsider his answer. “…yes.”

The carnage around you devastated you, and as much as you wanted to grab onto Talon to remain afloat, he had shown no signs of warmth towards you. You couldn’t read him at all, and were scared to voice the thoughts in your head, scared to ask him if he was going to kill you in Katarina’s stead.

Talon turned away from you again, and you felt compelled to call out to him. “Wait!”

“Go home,” he replied sternly, and you got the impression that he was trying to put a wall between the two of you with his words. “You don’t need to get involved with me.”

“Talon!”

He didn’t reply, turning invisible before your eyes. You had no way to chase someone who was invisible, so you were forced to let him go. You just wished he would tell you why he was so desperate to pull as far away from you as he could.

You knew that you couldn’t stay in this room that smelled so strongly of blood that it was making you feel ill. You kept your eyes on the door, trying desperately not to look at the bodies of the dead, especially your parents. You should feel devastated at the loss of your parents, but you just felt sad. You had never held any great love for them, only respected them out of fear, and the notion that you would no longer be bound to their goals for you gave you a sense of freedom that you had never felt before.

They had aimed their ambitions too high, and the cost had been too great to bear. From what you knew of General Du Couteau, he was not a forgiving man. His ruthlessness and cunning had brought much to Noxus, but it also reflected back on his own people. Noxus stamps out the weak, and your parents were no exception. Their lust for power had made them an easy target for Du Couteau to flex his own power. You didn’t know what you would do now, but you couldn’t stay here. Especially if anyone decided to come back to make sure the job was done.

The way home was a blur. The moment you got home, you realized that you couldn’t recall the walk back at all. The house was silent, which somehow felt more oppressive than when your parents were here. You trudged back to your room, the blood on your shoes and pants leaving droplets behind you as you walked.

You tore your shoes and pants off before grabbing a cloth to scrub at the semi-dried blood on your calves and feet. You couldn’t recall when you had eaten last, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to have any desire to eat. All of your recent stress was collapsing upon you, and you laid down on your bed as you felt all of your energy leave you. You would worry about all of this tomorrow, because you couldn’t keep yourself conscious any longer.

You felt resolved the next morning; you knew what you wanted to do. You would try to talk to Talon one last time. You wanted him to tell you directly he hated you, that he wanted nothing to do with you, something. He had been sending you so many mixed signals that you wanted a straight answer for once. You would be hurt to hear him tell you that he didn’t care for you at all, but then you would know. Then you could stop deluding yourself and clinging to a fruitless hope.

Now that you knew he worked for Du Couteau, you had an idea of where you could find him. The Du Couteau estate was huge, and likely housed many members of the general’s faction, and you were hoping that included Talon. You had to give it one last try. Whatever happened today, your life in Noxus was over.

You knew that it would not be long before the news spread of your parents’ failed attempt on the general’s life, and as their kin, you knew a target would be on your head. You had maybe a full day at the most to grab what you could and flee Noxus before the general’s loyalists stormed your home to claim your head as a prize to present to the general.

You knew that to go to the Du Couteau compound was essentially walking into a den of hungry wolves, but getting one last chance to talk to Talon was worth it to you. You just hoped that it wouldn’t cost you your life.

You bathed and changed into something more presentable before you began to set aside everything you would need to leave this place behind forever. If you had as little time as you thought you did, it would help to have your things ready to grab and go as soon as you returned. You packed lightly for the short trip to the Du Couteau estate, bringing along a single dagger for protection but hoping that you wouldn’t need to use it.

You tried to calm yourself down during the walk over, but you couldn’t help feeling like you were walking to your own execution. You had no idea what would happen when you got there, but you intended to stick to your decision. You wanted to see Talon one last time, if only to say goodbye.

You approached the estate to find two burly guards talking amongst themselves, both garbed in Noxian military uniforms. They didn’t look approachable by any stretch of the imagination, but you didn’t have anything to lose. If they told you to leave, you likely wouldn’t be able to push it.

You forced yourself to at least put on a façade of confidence as you approached the men. You could tell that they were appraising you as you came obviously within their notice, assumedly assessing whether or not you were a threat. You hoped that you looked innocent enough, despite the dagger that you had hidden on your person.

“What’re ya here for?” one of the men asked as he stepped forward, arms crossed over his chest as he stared down at you.

Your mouth felt dry as you realized that you hadn’t really planned what you would say to them. You couldn’t just come out of the gate and say you were here to see an assassin who may or may not live here.

You were taking too long to answer, and the other man raised a hand to rest it on the hilt of the sword at his waist in a threatening manner. “If you don’t have business with the general, I will ask you only once to leave.”

“She has business with me,” a sultry voice rang out as a hand was placed on your shoulder from behind.

You looked back quickly to see Katarina Du Couteau standing behind you, brushing a loose strand of crimson hair out of her face with the hand that wasn’t on your shoulder. She didn’t return your startled glance, staring ahead at the guards with her eyebrow raised impatiently, lips curled downwards in a frown.

The guards’ posture became rigid immediately, and they almost tripped over themselves to open the gate for you. Katarina brushed past you and walked toward the gate, turning back and gesturing for you to follow her when she noticed that you were still frozen in place. You were just making all sorts of dangerous decisions today, but she didn’t seem to be posing a threat to you at the moment, so you followed her onto the grounds of the estate.

She didn’t head into the large building, instead leading you into a small garden at the side of the estate. You didn’t see anyone around, and you weren’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Katarina was a hard woman to read, and you were still trying to wrap your head around why she had helped you out with the guards in the first place.

“I really should kill you,” she said as she examined her nails, before her eyes snapped up to meet yours with a smirk on her lips. “But lucky for you, I’m enjoying seeing a little crack in Talon’s armor at last.”

“What do you mean?” you asked carefully, not wanting to provoke her into putting her initial statement into action.

“Don’t bother pretending,” she laughed. “I know Talon, and he doesn’t stick his neck out for anybody. But he protected you, and I want to know why.”

Her voice was light and conversational, a complete departure from yesterday when she had come at you with everything she had. You didn’t have to explain things to her, but her words gave you hope that maybe she would have some insight into why Talon was acting the way he was. And so you told her your story, probably more than you needed to, but it felt good to let someone in on your secrets. She listened with a thoughtful look on her face, and didn’t interrupt once, even as you described what you found in your parents’ office, and what had led up to you rushing to the war command hall the previous night.

“So he had a childhood sweetheart,” Katarina replied at last, looking smug.

“Um, I don’t think we were…” you trailed off, feeling yourself get flustered.

“That’s not what he thinks,” she refuted smoothly. “I have never seen him protect anyone weaker than him without being ordered to by my father.”

You flinched slightly at being called weak to your face, but Katarina didn’t seem to mean it as an insult, just a fact. It was the Noxian way to be brutally honest, and you couldn’t deny her assertion anyways. Even with all your training, you were a long ways off from the likes of her and Talon.

You were about to reply, but closed your mouth when you heard her click her tongue. You quickly noticed that it wasn’t directed at you; she was looking at a spot over your shoulder, and you turned your head back to see a man exiting the estate through the front doors.

“You should probably leave now,” she muttered lowly. “That’s one of my father’s advisors. He can never mind his own business.”

She began to walk back towards the gate, and you hastened to match her pace. If she didn’t like the guy, and she was on the same side as him, then you didn’t want to be anywhere near him.

As you approached the gate, Katarina signalled for the guards to let you through.

“I’ll tell Talon you came by,” she told you, sounding pleased with herself.

“Okay,” you told her, feeling unable to tell her of your immediate plans to leave Noxus as soon as you left here. As you waved goodbye to her and began your journey home, you decided that you would be willing to wait the rest of the day to see if you could see Talon. You could only hope that Katarina would be able to convince him to see you.

You weren’t sure what you had expected to happen, but having girl talk with Katarina Du Couteau was definitely not something you had expected. You took the time on your walk home to mull over her words. Talon was important to you; he had kept you company as a lonely child and protected you as an adult. But Katarina’s words had awoken something that you were embarrassed that you hadn’t even considered. All this time you had been telling yourself that you wanted to seek Talon out because he represented a happy moment to you as a child. But when you thought of him now, you saw his handsome profile in your mind, and felt the residual tingles on your skin that you felt whenever you heard his voice.

You were so in your head that your body was on autopilot, pushing open the door to your house and failing to notice that the door wasn’t locked. You only broke out of your thoughts when the door to the living room was closed right after you entered… but not by you.

You realized immediately that you were surrounded. A large man garbed in black stood behind you, blocking the door and forcing you to move towards the center of the room to get away from him. There was really nowhere for you to run, as there were at least fifteen men scattered around the room. They all seemed to defer to one man who stood facing you, his shoulders squared confidently. Looking around, you didn’t recognize a single one of them. You didn’t think Du Couteau would send his men after you so soon, but here you were. Though the men looked a little rougher than what you would expect of those who served under the general, so you weren’t sure what to make of the situation other than it was not good for you.

The leader stepped forward, and you were unnerved by the way his eyes roved over your body in a way that made you feel entirely too exposed. You wanted to back away from him, but with his lackey right behind you, that wasn’t an option either.

The leader grinned at your panic. “I’m here to honor our deal.”

“Deal?” you retorted. “I don’t even know you!”

“That ain’t my problem,” he replied dismissively. “We made a deal with your parents. We give ‘em the men and supplies, and they give us their precious daughter.”

“My parents are dead!” you said angrily, shocked and infuriated by your parents’ actions. “What they promised has nothing to do with me!”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, and you watched warily as the men around him began to slowly come towards you in an effort to fully cage you in. “I lost a lot of men in that plan of theirs. You got a lot of work to do for this exchange to have been worth my time.”

He wasn’t even listening to you, or he just didn’t care. And his lecherous gaze was sending unpleasant chills along your skin. Looking around, you saw very little ways out of this. Why couldn’t they have waited one more day, when you would have been long gone? Your only advantage would be that you knew your house better than they did.

You couldn’t fight them, not as outnumbered as you were. But you might have a chance to outrun them. Your parents had made this house their fortress, as it had very few weaknesses, but that also meant that there were very few escape routes for you. The men were still advancing slowly on you, and you hoped that you could use the element of surprise to get away from them. There was a small gap between two of the men that led to the stairs up, and you knew there was a window at the end of the long hallway. If you could get out of that window, you could use your speed to get away from them and out of the city. You would have to play this smart.

If you waited a second longer, you would lose your opportunity, so you dashed at the gap with everything you had. They clearly weren’t expecting that, and you were easily able to run to the stairs to a chorus of shouts from the group of men behind you. You heard the leader scream at his men to follow you, and then the air exploded with the sounds of many footsteps following you. But you knew that you were fast, so you continued running as fast as you could. The window was within your sight, and you couldn’t look back now. This was your only option for escape.

You clearly hadn’t thought things through fully as you stumbled with a scream as pain burst in your leg. You turned back to face your pursuers in shock, which was all the time they needed to shoot you again, this time the bullet impacted your chest, just above your heart, and the pain winded you. They were still pretty far behind you, but you couldn’t make it out of the window now, not as injured as you were. The pain was so intense that you could barely think, and you were running out of options.

You had one last option, you realized, as you noticed that you were right next to your parents’ safe room. It wasn’t an escape, but the lock on the room was incredibly tough to crack unless you knew the combination. The men continued to shoot at you, but you were able to punch the passcode in with shaking fingers and crack the door open just enough for you to slip in, the door shutting tightly behind you.

You fell to the floor immediately, the pain raging intensely. You cursed yourself for not noticing that they had guns. You were so close to escaping, and you had botched it. Your consciousness was fuzzy at best, and you knew that you didn’t have the concentration required to call upon your powers to heal yourself, not when it was all you could do to remain conscious. You heard the sounds of gunfire against the door, and the yelling and swearing of the men just outside the room, but it all faded to nothing as you watched blood run from your leg as you began to feel your consciousness drift farther away.

It had been an easy mission. For a trained assassin, his target had been sloppy. He was nothing but weaknesses, his defences so thin that Talon felt like he was felling an injured animal. The targets that were a challenge were always more satisfying, and this one had been a disappointment, both to Talon and likely to whoever had trained him in his mediocre skills.

Talon was silent as he returned to the Du Couteau estate. He didn’t often conduct assassinations in the daytime, usually preferring the cover of night, but he obeyed his orders. General Du Couteau was not a patient or forgiving man, and his orders were absolute. It was the life that Talon had lived for so long that he was used to it. But you were different; you didn’t choose the life of a ruthless assassin, and he had to keep you away from his world.

He never thought that he would see you again. When you had stopped coming to meet him at the bridge, he didn’t know what to think. Eventually, he had accepted that he was on his own and would stay that way. At least until he was defeated by Du Couteau and then joined his ranks.

The only things he knew about you were the bits and pieces that he remembered you telling him when you were children. You had been a brief ray of light in the pitch black of his world. Just like back then, you had healed him without asking for anything in return, which he had never experienced from anyone else in his life.

You were as pure of a soul as they came in Noxus, and Talon had never worked a legitimate job in his life. He had grown up on the streets, thieving and killing when he had to in order to survive. He couldn’t involve you in the danger he faced on a regular basis, and he had pushed you away at every turn to ensure that you stayed away. But he couldn’t figure out why you continued trying to get close to him. Even when he had admitted to being involved with Katarina, who had killed your parents, you had tried to reach out to him. And he had run like a coward.

Every time he thought about you, he felt frustrated. Why were you trying so hard to get close to him after all he had done? He wanted you as far away from this world as possible, even if it meant that you would be far from him as well. He would suppress the part of him from childhood that wanted to let you in and do what he had to do to keep you safe.

As usual, the guards opened the gates for Talon as soon as they saw him. He had a reputation, and both parties preferred if they didn’t have to interact. Not many people went out of their way to talk to him, not when he was one of the three most talented blademasters in the Du Couteau house, and certainly the least friendly.

His plan to head directly to his room was thwarted immediately by one of the few people who did talk to him, despite how little he cared to make casual conversation. Katarina stood just inside the gate, arms crossed and gaze locked on him as if she had been waiting for him to arrive, which was unusual for her unless her father had asked her to pass information on to him. The likelihood of receiving information from the general by way of his daughter was the sole reason his feet stopped in front of her.

She looked pleased with herself, and Talon knew that was a bad sign, especially when she opened her mouth. “Your girl was just here.”

Talon glared at her. Katarina didn’t need to say your name; they both knew who she was talking about. Talon was both impressed and irritated with your courage; coming directly to enemy territory to try and see him was a very dangerous decision. But at the same time, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would take to get you to understand that he wasn’t a good man, and certainly wasn’t worth all the danger he would add to your life just by being in it.

“You should go see her,” Katarina pressed. “She’ll never understand if you just keep acting like a jerk. If you’re not into her, then you’re leading her on by treating her like this.”

“This doesn’t concern you,” he snarled back, the anger clear in his voice. Why was she trying to get so involved in his personal life?

“It concerns her,” Katarina replied back. “What if she comes back here again, Talon? You were lucky I was here. Anyone else would have killed your little girlfriend on the spot.”

Sparks flew in the air between the two assassins. Katarina was grating on his nerves with her nosiness and refusal to back down. Talon was angry, but as little as he wanted to entertain this nonsense right now, at the back of his mind, he had to admit that she was right. He couldn’t let you keep trying to come to find him here. He needed to give you one last shove to keep you away from him. He felt his mood souring, but before he or Katarina could say anything further, their attention was drawn to a commotion at the front gate.

Talon and Katarina both turned to look as the gate opened and one of the house’s messengers rushed in. It was unusual to see the messengers be in such a rush, as there weren’t many emergencies occurring due to the general’s overprepared nature. The messenger was headed to the estate, but stopped in his tracks when he saw the two assassins staring right at him.

He bowed hastily, and Katarina rolled her eyes, prompting him to just spill his news instead of wasting further time. “I was sent to observe the traitors’ house for any movements.”

“…and?” Katarina implored him impatiently.

The man nodded his head too many times; it wasn’t unusual for people to be nervous in Katarina’s presence, but as soon as Talon had heard that it was related to your parents, he was ready to cut the man’s tongue out if he didn’t get on with it.

“There were suspicious movements by a group thought to be allied with the traitors. They broke the lock and entered the home just before the traitor’s daughter returned home. I suspected that they were regrouping their forces to plot against us again, but then I heard gunshots and a woman’s screams, so it seems they’ve turned on each other,” the man reported.

Talon’s ire turned to alarm as he heard the report. You had nothing to do with your parents’ treachery, so that could only mean that one of their disgruntled allies had decided to come after you for their failures. He didn’t have a complete idea of your combat abilities, but he doubted they would be enough for you to take out a group of armed men.

He didn’t spare a moment, immediately running at the estate’s wall and leaping over it, jumping from building to building as he rushed to get to your home as fast as possible. Talon hadn’t felt desperation like this in a long time; he always ensured that situations were under his control, but the thought of you in mortal peril had spurned his feet faster than his mind could keep up with. Here he had been trying not to involve you in his dangerous world, and yet danger had found you anyways. He felt no pity for the men that would soon die by his blade; he could almost feel the steel pulsing with hunger for their blood for even daring to be near you. He could only hope that he wouldn’t arrive too late.

Meanwhile, Katarina watched Talon disappear before turning to the flustered messenger without batting an eye. “No need to report this to my father. I’ll see him myself after we handle this.”

The messenger looked relieved to not have to report to the general himself, but that wasn’t Katarina’s concern. It would be much more convenient for Talon for her father to not hear information related to you. As the man left, Katarina smiled to herself; who did Talon think he was fooling with his uncaring façade? Him rushing immediately to your aid told her more about his true feelings than any of his words had.

But in her brief conversation with you, Katarina had found that she liked you. It was certainly more than dreary around here with all the serious men her father surrounded himself with, and she personally wouldn’t mind having you around again, especially if she got to see Talon acting all lovesick. Talon would likely need help if he wanted to rescue you quickly, so Katarina left the estate as well, following right behind her agitated fellow assassin.

She caught up to him just in time to watch him surveying the scene from the building next to your house. They could both see a group of well-muscled goons patrolling the first floor, but no sign of you.

“Do you think they killed her?” Katarina asked.

Talon’s worry wasn’t strong enough to overpower his battle sense. These men wouldn’t stay at the house if they had accomplished their goal already, which meant that you were likely still somewhere in the house. Talon didn’t need to say his thoughts out loud as Katarina could see the same thing he could.

“I’ll take care of the ones on the first floor,” Katarina asserted, and then they were off.

They both jumped in through an open window, and Katarina stopped to face the group of men. “Hope you boys are ready to dance.”

As Katarina jumped towards them, daggers at the ready, Talon used the distraction to turn invisible and run past them and to the upper level of the house. The sounds of the fighting going on downstairs began to fade, and Talon’s invisibility wore off as he emerged at the start of a long hallway. He didn’t see you anywhere, but zeroed in on several men beating against a door at the end of the hallway.

“Shoot it down if you have to!” one of the men screamed, his face red with fury. “That bitch can’t hide forever!”

“She won’t last long either way with those bullets we got in her!” another man replied with a loud laugh.

Talon didn’t wait a second longer after hearing the men’s words. He moved silently down the hallway, and the men were none the wiser until the sharp end of his blade met the flesh of the leader’s neck, and with one smooth movement, the man’s head had been removed and rolled a few feet down the hall before he could even scream. Blood spurted from his neck as his body fell to the floor, both of his companions screaming when they saw what the furious assassin had done to their boss.

They raised their guns to shoot at Talon, but he was faster, leaping through the men in an instant, the blades on his cape dicing their flesh at the same time he cleaved their heads off their necks to join their leader’s on the floor. Talon didn’t like to be messy, but he needed them dead as fast as possible, and no matter who these lowlifes were, there was no way for them to come back from decapitation.

But if what they had said was true, you didn’t have time to wait. He would have to get to you immediately.

You had been in and out of consciousness, half-feeling like you could hear your mother’s voice telling you to get up, but then realizing that the voice was just a hallucination that your delirious brain had created. By now, your blood had run down your clothes and pooled under you. You knew that you couldn’t lose much more, but that mattered less to you when you knew that you had no power to help yourself. At least you would die on your own terms, far enough from those men that you could die in peace, even if you were in horrendous pain.

You didn’t know how long you had been in the safe room for when the screaming started. You thought it was in your head at first, but the noises continued for a few seconds until it stopped and everything went quiet. You couldn’t heard the men’s voices or them pounding on the door. It seemed impossible to think that they had given up, but even if they did, you couldn’t stand up with your injuries. You were as good as dead.

You felt another wave of intense fatigue hit you just as you heard a new sound from outside the room… a shout of your name. You were willing to write it off until your name was called again, followed by a sound of something impacting the door. The voice sounded so familiar and comforting to you, but you couldn’t place why. It took one more shout of your name to finally put the pieces together in your fuzzy brain.

“Talon!” you cried out, surprised at how rough your voice sounded.

There was a short pause on the other side of the door. “Open the door!”

“I can’t…” you replied sadly. “I can barely–”

You were cut off by another wave of drowsiness, barely able to keep yourself awake this time, your heart pounding in your ears.

“Give me the code!” Talon growled back, sounding desperate.

How was he even here? You still felt like this was a cruel dream. Couldn’t you just die without your brain giving you false hope that you would see Talon one last time?

“The code!” he shouted, his words finally knocking enough sense into you that you were able to focus on listing the numbers to him.

As soon as you did, the door began to open. But you didn’t have the strength to keep your eyes open any longer, and you collapsed fully to the ground, your neck and the back of your head now laying in your own blood. You felt your head be lifted and placed in someone’s lap, gentle fingers brushing your hair from your face.

You forced your eyes to open and saw Talon’s face above you, his clothing stained with blood that didn’t seem to be his. His eyes were focussed on your face, and he stared at you with a gentleness in his eyes that you had never seen before. His mood notably picked up the moment he noticed you looking up at him.

“You need to heal yourself,” he told you sternly.

You shook your head weakly in response. “Can’t…. I can’t focus…”

Your eyes drifted closed again as you felt your body become more and more numb. You couldn’t hold on any longer. At least you had Talon here with you at the end…

Your eyes shot open with a short gasp against his lips as Talon kissed you. You felt like you had been electrocuted by the shock as his lips pressed harder against your own before pulling away at last.

“You’re awake now, aren’t you?” he pressed. “Heal yourself.”

“Talon, you–”

He ignored you. “Heal yourself!” he demanded, and your brain followed the command at last, calling to the power you didn’t think you could use right now.

You watched as the blue glow that you thought was out of your reach grew in your hand. You lacked the strength, so Talon grabbed your hand, bringing it to your chest and watching closely as the bullet was pushed out as your body repaired itself. When he was satisfied that your chest looked much better, he carefully bent you so your hand could reach your leg wound as well, your magic ejecting the other bullet from your skin as well.

The immediate alleviation of pain came as a huge relief, but you realized that using your powers while you were in such a state was beyond anything that your body could cope with. Before you could even warn Talon, you felt your limbs go slack and your head droop, unconsciousness taking you before you knew if Talon had caught you or not.

Katarina pocketed her daggers, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she sauntered upstairs after Talon. Those guys had been all muscle and no skill; she would almost have felt bad if she were a better person. But they were in the way, so they died. They were allied against her father anyways, so there was a likely chance she had just crossed an item off of her to-do list a little early.

Katarina encountered no one until she reached a long hallway, and it was immediately clear that Talon had been here. There were small pools of blood that led to three men, or what was left of them. Their heads had been sliced clean off of their necks and had rolled to various parts of the hallway. Katarina paid them no mind; the sight was no shock to a person like her. Once she got to the bodies, she noticed a door that was slid halfway open that caught her attention.

Walking silently up to the partially-open door, she was able to clearly see Talon kneeling on the floor with your body in his arms. Katarina placed a hand on the door, slowly opening it so she wouldn’t startle him as she entered the room.

“Is she dead?” Katarina didn’t bother to mince words.

Talon looked over at her before carefully standing up with you in his arms. “No. She healed herself in time, but she passed out from blood loss.”

“So you’re bringing her back with us?” Katarina pressed, turning back to leave the room, already assured of his answer before he could say it.

Talon didn’t reply, but followed her into the hall. Katarina began to open doors in the hall, leaving Talon to stare at her, unimpressed that she was wasting time with whatever she was doing.

Katarina caught his stare and raised an eyebrow in return as she walked into one of the rooms. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re both drenched in blood. Unless you want her to wear bloody clothing forever?”

Talon watched Katarina walk over to the bed to look through a bag that was laying there. She rifled through the bag for a few seconds before closing it again and slinging it over her shoulder.

“Looks like your girl was already packed. Guess she was planning to skip town if you didn’t come see her,” Katarina surmised.

“Are you finished?” Talon replied coldly, walking past the room and towards the front door, Katarina easily catching up to him.

“I’ll take this to your room,” she said, gesturing with her chin to the bag she carried. “You might want to take the long way back unless you want people to think you’re walking around with a dead body.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, heading through the door and back to the estate on her own. She was right; there was no way he could scale buildings while carrying you. He stuck to alleyways and less populated areas to not bring more attention to your situation, but he felt relieved that he could see your chest rise and fall slowly as he walked. You had come so close to death that he thought he wouldn’t be able to save you. Having you here in his arms, alive, had calmed his restless soul. His lust for blood sated with the deaths of your attackers.

He had been putting so much effort into pushing you away that he had left you alone and vulnerable. He could only hope that you hadn’t lost too much blood before you had healed your wounds. You were pale, much more than was healthy, but there wasn’t much he could do other than take you somewhere safe and hope that you would wake up.

The walk back was eventless; the few people to cross Talon’s path quickly backed up and fast walked in whatever direction they had come from. He was used to that behavior already, given his intimidating stature and ever-present glower. But he was forced to admit that he did look like some sort of crazed murderer as he carried you in his arms, both of you soaked in blood and leaving a trail on the ground behind him as he walked.

It was early in the evening when he arrived back at the estate, the setting sun falling behind him. Katarina must have warned the guards that he was coming, because they had made themselves scarce. Talon adjusted your body against his shoulder as he pushed the gate open with his other arm.

He took the usual way to his room, heading to a side entrance. Not many people were allowed to be on Du Couteau property, let alone live within the walls of the towering estate, so there was not likely to be anyone in his path. Talon’s room was even more secluded, in a wing where no one else resided, so he always had plenty of space to himself. General Du Couteau put a lot of faith in him, and rewarded his loyalty and skilled service. But even if the rooms in Talon’s wing of the estate were available, his reputation kept people away for fear of angering him.

Talon scoffed at the notion; he would not simply strike someone down for being on estate grounds, not without an order from the general. But he preferred the solitude his area of the estate offered, so the paranoia was convenient for him, especially now as he carried you into his room.

Katarina was looking out of the window, but turned to look at him as he entered. “Took you long enough. You can put her down and then wait outside.”

Talon glared at her, not understanding what she meant, and she laughed. “She needs her clothes changed, so unless you were planning on stripping her yourself…?”

Katarina didn’t need to finish her sentence to know that Talon had at last gotten her drift. Whereas normally he would have argued with her, he walked over to gently lay you on the bed, turning and walking a few paces away and crossing his arms, but not leaving the room.

“Suit yourself,” Katarina scoffed at the overprotective assassin as she began to remove your bloody clothing.

Talon kept his back to the scene, knowing that Katarina was getting a little too much enjoyment out of this. He listened to the sound of his bed creaking, as well as the sounds as different articles of your clothing hitting the floor as Katarina discarded them. It took her a few minutes, but eventually she instructed Talon that he could turn back around.

When he turned back, you were laying on top of the bed in a soft gray dress. Katarina was wiping blood from your forehead with a cloth, your body noticeably less bloody as well. There was still traces of blood in your hair, but it was no longer caked on your skin like dirt. Seeing you looking much cleaner made Talon realize just what a state he was in as well. The scent of blood clung to him, but he was so used to the smell that he was able to easily tune it out.

“She’ll have to bathe to get the rest of the blood off, but I did what I could for now,” Katarina said, leaving the bloody cloth on a table by the bed and making her way to the door. Always eager for the last word, she looked back at Talon when she was halfway out of the door. “Nobody comes by here, so you two can be as loud as you want.”

Katarina left, knowing she wouldn’t get a response from him, heading into the hallway and towards her own area of the estate. Talon began to remove his own blood-stained clothing as his thoughts drifted. Katarina seemed more than willing to keep you a secret, but even if the general knew about you, Talon doubted he would care. As long as he accomplished his missions, the general did not pry into his sparse personal life, and if keeping you here with him was Talon’s price for his service, the general would have no choice but to agree.

Talon did not even entertain the thought of allowing you to go back to your home when you woke up. Without your parents to protect you with their influence, you were incredibly vulnerable to the dregs of Noxian society. Deep within him, Talon wasn’t quite ready to admit that the larger reason for his decision was backed by his desire to keep you by his side.

Talon had never had the desire to be close to someone in a way other than professional respect. General Du Couteau had been the only person to ever defeat him in combat, and so he had agreed to serve under him to learn and improve his own skills. He had moved up from being a skilled thief to become one of the three strongest members of the house of Du Couteau. His time in the service of the general had taken him all over Runeterra to assassinate enemies of the general, and he had never found his life to be lacking, not until he met you again after all your years apart.

Having you here made him want things he had never wanted before. He selfishly, possessively wanted you. His cold demeanor had temporarily held him back from being consumed by his desires, but now that you were here with him, now that there was nothing holding him back from being with you, his emotions threatened to consume him. And while he could assume what you felt, he hadn’t heard it from your own lips… yet.

All he could do was wait and hope that you would recover. He approached the bed, pulling the collar of your dress down to look at your wound. There was only the slightest cut in your skin, not even enough to bleed. Looking at the wound on your leg, he found that it was the same. Katarina had wiped away most of the blood from your injuries, and it was a relief to Talon to see you no longer drowning in your own blood.

He had done all that he could for you at the moment, and so he covered your body with a blanket before leaving his room to do some training. There was no guarantee when you would wake up, but he was reassured that you were somewhere he could keep an eye on you from. Those thugs had been an unfortunate happening, but he would do much worse to anyone that dared to attack you from now on. Very few had ever survived an encounter with the blade’s shadow, and he had no mercy for those who got in his way.

You saw your mother and father. Somewhere in your mind, you knew that shouldn’t be possible; they were dead. You began to wonder if this meant that you were dead as well. The last thing that you remembered was Talon finding you in the safe room… and kissing you.

Your parents didn’t say anything, just stared at you, their faces slowly changing from healthy to gray and dead. You backed away from them as their eye sockets bled black and they stared at you with blame in their eyes. You wanted to run, but found that you couldn’t move. Their deathly figures got closer and closer, and you flinched, closing your eyes as they were almost upon you, but instead finding yourself embraced from behind, a familiar scent engulfing you.

You heard your name being called by his voice, soft in your ear. Talon…

You still couldn’t move, but you wanted so badly to turn around and see him. To kiss him again. To be by his side.

He had shown more care for you in the short amount of time with you than your parents had in your entire life. You felt overwhelmed with desire to see his face, to be able to hold him back. But this wasn’t real, and the ghostly touch against you wasn’t him. You had to wake yourself up. You had to see Talon again.

You realized that your eyes were closed, and your head felt clear. You opened your eyes at last to see soft light filtering in through a window and no shadowy figures around you. You didn’t recognize the room you found yourself in, but considering you weren’t shackled to the bed, you had to be somewhere safe.

You sat up in the bed, which caused a damp cloth on your forehead to fall into your lap. You picked it up, staring at the simple navy blue fabric that reminded you so much of Talon. Was it too much to hope that it was him who had brought you here?

Running a hand through your messy hair, you were disgusted to find flecks of dried blood on your fingers. As you wiped the specks of blood off on the cloth, your full situation came back to you. You were surprised that you were even alive with how severe your wounds had been. You had been prepared to die in that room, a casualty to the ambitions of your parents.

The door to the room opened as you had pulled back the blanket to look at your injures. You looked over to see Talon pushing the door open, wearing more casual clothing than you had seen him in before. He wore a simple pair of black pants and a dark blue shirt which stretched over the muscles of his arms in a way that made you nervously avert your eyes.

Talon paid your sudden shyness no mind, walking over to your bedside as soon as he noticed you were awake. You weren’t sure where to look, so you settled for staring at your hands as they rested in your lap. You noticed a spot of dried blood on one palm that you had missed and began to scrape it off with a fingernail. You were probably too focused on the task, and only stopped when Talon put a hand over yours to move your hands apart.

You looked up at him at last, and he only removed his hand from yours when you met his eyes. You had been so desperate to see him, but having him be by your bedside like this was making it hard for you to function, especially with how casually he was dressed. He was so effortlessly handsome, and here you were all dirty, your hair matted with blood and skin clammy from sleeping off your injuries. The thought sent your gaze downwards again as you began to feel self-conscious.

“How long was I asleep for?” You cringed at how dry and raspy your voice sounded.

“A week,” Talon answered, reaching down to tilt your chin up to face him when you didn’t reply to him. “Are you still in pain?”

“No,” you replied at last, the closeness of his face driving your heart rate up, especially considering you now knew how long you had been asleep for. You must look pretty bad right now, and that wasn’t even touching on how you must smell at the moment.

“Can… can I have a bath?” you asked, your voice coming out as more of a squeak.

Chancing a look at Talon’s face, he didn’t seem to be annoyed with you. In fact, he looked more relaxed than you had ever seen him. At your words, his hand drifted from your chin to brush gently over your tangled hair, and you desperately fought against the urge to shy away from his hand. The moment only lasted a few seconds, and you found yourself missing his touch as soon as he brought his hand back to his side.

Talon nodded, turning back to pick something up as you eased your way out of the bed, your balance a little shaky as you stared at his back. Now that it wasn’t covered by his hood, you had a proper opportunity to admire his hair; it looked much too nice to belong to someone as deadly as he was, and your fingers itched to run through it like he had done to yours. But you didn’t know where you stood with him right now, and feared he might pull away from you if you tried.

Your focus was then put on a small basket that was handed to you. Looking at it, you found what looked like various soaps and bathing oils, which was not something you imagined that Talon would have had lying around.

You looked at him in surprise, and he caught your train of thought immediately, giving you a stony look. “Katarina prepared those for you.”

You couldn’t help a giggle. “Sorry. I couldn’t help but imagine you bathing in roses when I saw this stuff.”

His lips twitched up in a smirk. “I see your wounds didn’t affect your brain. What a shame.”

Your mouth dropped open. Was he teasing you? Talon, one of the most deadly men in Noxus, had just implied that you were dumb.

His eyes glimmered with playfulness for a moment before he turned away, not giving you a chance to reply. Not that you could even think of a reply; his sudden teasing had taken the wind right out of your sails. You hadn’t expected that from him, and he had taken full advantage of that fact.

He turned his head to look back at you, and you took that as your cue to follow after him. He led you out of the room and to a room a few doors down, which turned out to be a bathroom. Talon closed the door behind you, and you waited a few seconds before undressing, realizing that there was no point in listening for his receding footsteps as he had clearly trained himself to move silently.

You turned the tap on, the warm water feeling heavenly on your skin as you sat down in the bath. It was very clear to you how much you needed this bath; as soon as you began to wash yourself, the water grew dirty from the grime and blood that covered your skin and hair. By the time you were done, the water was tinted a light red, which you quickly set to drain. You really didn’t need any more reminders of how gross you had felt prior to the bath.

Putting your clothing back on, you almost felt like a new person. It was an especially big relief that you could finally stop worrying about smelling bad on top of everything else you had to worry about right now.

It was a relief to you when Talon finally went to do some training later on that day. It had taken you some time, but over the day, you had come to a realization; he was definitely flirting with you. You had been hesitant to believe it at first, but over the course of the day, you could no longer have any doubts.

It had started with him being closer than usual, which was already new for you given how hard he had tried to flee from you over the past while. But now he seemed to take every opportunity available to him to sit near you while sharpening his blades, or brush a hand over your skin while checking your injuries. At first it could have been a coincidence, but you caught the ghost of a smirk on his face too many times for it to be innocent, which led you to accept that he was being like this on purpose. But he hadn’t mentioned the kiss, or tried to kiss you again, no matter how amicable you would be to a repeat of that moment.

You felt like a timid alley cat being offered a piece of fish; you wanted the reward so badly, but were scared to open yourself up and be vulnerable enough to take what you wanted from him. His behavior seemed to give you the impression that he would be open to the idea, but it was hard to work up the nerve, and you were just about reaching your breaking point.

You basically had to insist that he go train for a bit, if only to give your cheeks a break, as there was only so much blushing you could take before you felt your cheeks would burn off. You knew that you couldn’t fool him; he knew exactly why you were so determined that he go do some training, but had gone along with your request. If only you could figure out what to do about the sudden tension before he returned.

You couldn’t think of anything. If you confessed to him outright and he just stared at you, you didn’t think you could take it. But at the same time, you had to get some closure. You couldn’t take any more of Talon’s flirty gestures without knowing what you meant to him, what the kiss had meant to him. In the hour he was gone, the only course of action you could settle on was just asking him why he had kissed you. Then at least you could get an insight into his feelings without putting yourself too far out there.

You rehearsed what you would say again and again in your head, and even a few times out loud. Just as you were beginning to feel like you could do this, the door opened and Talon came in, discarding a few blades of varying sizes on the table, and you almost physically felt your nerve break. You felt his eyes on you immediately, and your rehearsed words fled quickly from your mind. How did you ever think that you could do this?

You couldn’t even move an inch from your seat on the bed, almost too scared to breathe. You couldn’t even look at him, and neglected to recall just how good he was at moving silently until he was right before you, his hand on your shoulder drawing you back into reality.

“Have you finished healing your wounds?” he asked, removing his hand when he knew he had your attention.

You looked down at your chest, pulling your dress back to look at the wound. You had entirely forgotten about it, but allowed the familiar blue glow of your powers to light in your hand as you began to heal the last of your wounds. You had healed them most of the way before, but with one more dose of your magic, they were gone as if you had never been injured at all. As you felt your leg fully heal as well, you looked over to Talon, your focus drawn to a thin cut on his cheek that you had only noticed now that he was so close to you.

Without really thinking about it, you reached a hand up to his face, trailing your fingers in a line down his cheek along the scratch. He kept his eyes on you, putting up no resistance to your touch. As you moved your hand back and his cut fully healed, the intimacy of the gesture finally hit you and you retracted your hand as if you had been burned. Talon remained where he was, and the closeness sent a nervous shiver down your spine.

You tried to even your breathing, hoping that would help you bolster your nerves. You had to know. You would just repeat that to yourself until you could make your mouth move.

“Talon…” You used every bit of your willpower to get the words out. “Why did you kiss me?”

You heard an exhale of breath that sounded suspiciously like laughter from the assassin. “I didn’t recall you being this dumb when we were children.”

“What?” you replied incredulously with a frown. “I was being serious, Talon!”

“So was I,” he replied coyly. “I didn’t think that loud girl I knew would grow up to be so naïve.”

What was he even saying? He was clearly trying to say something, but you were having trouble reading past the insults.

“So you’re not going to answer my question?” you asked with thinly veiled frustration.

He leaned down, his arms on either side of you caging you in. You had nowhere to run unless you were forced to put up with his smug smirk as he leaned down towards you, getting close enough to kiss you but holding himself back just enough for your lips not to touch. You couldn’t help but let your eyes flit to his lips, wary of the look in his eyes when he caught you staring.

“If you were paying attention, you would have your answer already,” he said, voice low and more seductive than you had ever heard him sound.

It was taking all you had to keep your eyes on his, especially with how close his lips got to yours with every word he said. You would only have to move an inch and then you would be kissing him again. And with him this close, you couldn’t help but think that maybe he wanted this too. In all the time you had known him, you hadn’t known him to do or say things he didn’t mean. He had been teasing you mercilessly all day, and you just wanted to believe that this meant something to him.

“Can you… kiss me again?” you whispered, closing your eyes as you were too nervous to look at his face.

There was a few seconds of silence, and you opened your eyes to see what was happening just in time to see Talon’s face close in on you, his lips connecting with yours as he used his weight to press you down on the bed. You had been too surprised to resist, but you readily welcomed the contact, your fingers gripping at his shoulders as you closed your eyes.

His movements overwhelmed you; before you could even process it, his hand slid over your breasts, fingers closing around one as you tried to keep up with his tongue. You squirmed under him, moving a hand up to finally get a feel of his hair now that you were fairly certain that he wouldn’t mind. You were just wearing a simple dress and a pair of underwear, but the closeness was heating up your body in a way that only removing the suddenly-too-warm clothing from your skin would alleviate.

It was futile to try and predict his movements; you jerked back from the kiss with a moan of his name as he pressed his fingers against your clit, fingers that you hadn’t even realized that he had snuck under your dress. As his hand slipped in your underwear, he took advantage of your exposed throat, leaving heated kisses on your neck. You found yourself fleetingly curious about where he had picked this up, but the thought disappeared as he pulled back to nibble at your ear with his teeth.

He removed his hands from you, leaning his lower body against yours and supporting his weight with his hands. His lips were still at your ear as you felt the hard press of his cock against your lower half.

“You still don’t know why?” he probed, grinding slowly against you, the friction not even close to enough for you right now. “I tried to keep you away from the way I live, the people I kill. But you were more persistent than I thought.”

“Talon…” you whispered, wishing he would just press a little harder, but he stayed frustratingly light and slow with each roll of his hips into yours.

“You chased after me, so now you can’t complain about what I do to you,” he growled in your ear, his words making you shudder with anticipation.

His fingers crept back under your dress, and you spread your legs as much as you could with him still on top of you to give him room. You blushed as you realized just how wet you were as Talon’s attention moved from your clit to press a finger inside you with ease.

You cried out at the intrusion, pulling his face down to yours so you could feel his tongue against yours again. He seemed more than happy to kiss you breathless as he added another finger, reaching so deep within you that it was making you curl your toes until they began to hurt. You felt like you could barely keep up with the kiss anymore, but Talon’s focus did not waver.

The cotton of his shirt began to brush uncomfortably against you, and you tugged at it, unable to verbalize your request due to how thoroughly he was kissing you. The tugging got his attention and he pulled back at last, looking all too pleased with himself, ripping his shirt off with one hand while the other continued to pump in and out of your pussy. With him now on his knees on the bed, you finally got a look at what was pressing against you earlier.

Talon’s cock was straining noticeably against his trousers, and the sight made your tongue dart out to nervously run along your lower lip. Talon caught you staring easily, and his fingers began to curl inside you, the sensation making you flutter your eyes closed with a moan. Only when you felt a noticeable draft did you realize that he had taken advantage of your distracted state to slide your underwear off completely and discard them on the floor.

You were warm, way too warm, and Talon allowed you to push his fingers away from you so you could sit up as best you could and shimmy your dress up your body. You felt somewhat shy, but you were so overheated at the moment that you couldn’t keep your dress on any longer if you didn’t want to spontaneously combust. It also didn’t hurt to watch Talon’s eyes hungrily follow your movements, and when you noticed him about to dive back against you, you held up a hand, deciding to be cheeky.

“Not until you take off your pants,” you said, staring at him with a challenge in your eyes.

Talon’s eyes looked dark as he reached towards the clasp of his pants, knowing he had your attention fully captured. He didn’t leave you waiting, discarding his pants quickly and leaving him as bare as you were.

He leaned back down, your faces almost touching. “When we do this, you’ll be mine. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” you replied breathlessly, and he took your legs in his hands, bringing them around his waist.

He needed no further convincing, and you felt the prod of his cock, which felt so much better without any layers of clothing in the way. You had no coherent words as he began to sink into you easily given you were so wet that he didn’t even need to go particularly slow. You arched your back with a gasp, your ears rewarded when Talon let out a quiet groan as he finally bottomed out.

Before you regained your composure, Talon was sliding out and rocking his hips back towards you, shattering what mental facilities you had left. You could do little more than grip at his arms and the bed sheets as you looked up at his dark eyes that were focussed on your own. You couldn’t stop yourself from moaning at the feeling, especially when he brushed his thumb just right against your clit, the resulting surge of building pleasure almost overwhelming you.

As you got more and more vocal, you began to notice how responsive he was to every little noise you made. Every moan or cry seemed to make him thrust into you a little harder than usual, and you decided that you wanted to hear him too. He had been largely silent so far, and you wanted to know that he was as affected by this as you were.

You began to roll your hips to meet his, squeezing your inner muscles every time he rocked back into you. Immediately, you noticed a stutter in his breath, and after a few repeats on your part, his eyes narrowed on your face, and he began to slow his pace as he leaned down towards you, his teeth grazing your ear.

“You think you’re getting away with that?” he growled, sending pleasant chills along your skin with his words. “You really are naïve.”

He pulled back from your ear to kiss you deeply at the same time he began to move at a much harsher pace, every movement sending jolts through you and a flush to your face as he began to hit on just the right spot. He was so close to you that his chest pressed against your breasts, the added friction driving you crazy. His hair was finally close enough for you to tug on, the resulting groan he let out only spurning you on to be rougher in return. You were both desperately close, but Talon’s brutal pace did not slow one bit. You made a brief mental note to tease him about his stamina later.

Talon came first, pulling his mouth from yours to bite at your neck as he stilled for only a moment before continuing at a gentler rhythm, his fingers playing with your clit as he bit and sucked at your neck. You tightened your grip on him, your nails biting into his back as he carried you through the waves of pleasure until you fell back on the bed, feeling boneless. Talon was quick to follow, pulling out of you and wrapping an arm around you to keep you close to him.

You brought your hand back to brush some hair away from your face, brows furrowing in confusion when you noticed blood under your nails. It only took you a second to make the connection, and you sat up, quickly looking over Talon’s shoulder at his back.

“Your back– I’m sorry!” you hastily apologized, seeing the thin streaks of blood that dotted his back from your scratches.

You frantically ignited your hand with blue and healed the shallow cuts on his back. You had been so panicked that you only realized afterwards that your position leaning over his back had put your breasts right in his face. You made eye contact with his blank stare, and almost fell off the bed as you pulled away in a hurry, only saved by his strong grip on your arm.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his face impassive but eyes betraying his mirth.

“I didn’t mean to–” you started, but cut yourself off with a cry as Talon used his grip on your arm to pull you forward to press his lips against yours.

You allowed him to lay you back down next to him as you kissed. You were fully distracted when he pulled back with a smirk.

“Did you really think I’m repulsed by your breasts?” he asked, and you could only answer him with embarrassed stammering.

“Do you need me to prove that I’m not?” he murmured, palming your breasts with his hands, his thumbs brushing over your nipples and making you shudder.

You couldn’t bring yourself to resist the insatiable assassin, kissing him as he flipped you on your back as his touches became rougher. You certainly wouldn’t be escaping him any time soon, and found yourself immensely grateful that there was nobody around to hear the two of you, because it was a while before Talon would let you rest.

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