A/N: Slightly AU to original Valoran though not much change.
Will be multiple storylines, but mostly focusing on the Du Couteaus.
Rated T for possible adult themes and coarse language. Definitely will not be any lemons or smut-scenes because I just don't do that.
Please please review if you liked this story, or if you didn't. I appreciate ego-boosters and criticism alike.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story except maybe a few minor OCs. I'd totally love to though.
Enjoy!
[Talon]
He was dreaming.
The second Talon realized his surroundings he knew. It was not the first time his dreams have taken him here, for in the past few days he returns to this place whenever his eyes are closed, always in the same place, always the same scenario.
It was strange. He always slept lightly and dreamlessly, and even if occasional flashes of color or sound disturbed his rest, he tended to forget them before morning came. Never like how these dreams haunted him lately. Never before could he wake up remembering every detail, down to the scent, of something he experienced in his sleep.
But now, every night when he rested, he dreamt the same dream. He knew the dream from his memories, those that he thought he no longer had impression of but are now coming back to him in a different form.
And tonight it was no different.
In this dream he was little again, a child of ten or eleven, bruised and bloodied from fights in the streets over stolen coin but dressed in new clothing that was unfamiliar—and so finely tailored that it was uncomfortable as well—to the child of his past. Following the middle-aged man in front of him, a man whose face he never saw in the dreams but knew very well who it was, he slowly descended down several flights of stairs until the air was growing stale and a chilliness crept silently unto him.
It felt like a descent down to some unearthly place in every dream, with the stone-carved monstrous faces staring at him from the wall, and without any type of weapon at hand he felt afraid. It was silly, of course. He knew too well that idols can't hurt him in any way, unless he was careless enough to bruise himself on the hard rock that stuck out in menacing poses, but he was without his blades for the first time in years…and it made him feel vulnerable.
Stealing an unsure glance at the man who was leading him, he wondered if this person will attack him, and toyed around in his mind with the possibility.
Perhaps he could react fast enough to block one or two blows with his bare arms, but it would definitely hurt like hell. Or he could probably dodge and take the risk of being hit fatally if he failed. And then, if he could find a chance, it would be easy enough to snatch a weapon and fight back; he eyed the numerous knives and daggers that hung from the other man's belt and tries to mimic the motion of stealing one when his voice, stern and quiet whilst filled with a tone of authority, stopped the young Talon's thoughts.
"We're here."
He looked up to see the double oak doors, each covered with engraved runes, letters of the Noxian language and pictures displaying scenes of war, towering over him. They looked unbelievably heavy. Carefully he tilted his head in attempt to read the Noxian letters, but before his limited education allowed him to guess out the first line, they were opened, revealing the enormous room behind.
It was cold.
That was his immediate impression when he first set foot onto the training space below the Du Couteau mansion; it was mid-summer but the air felt like autumn winds, eerily cool, though not in a bad way.
Suspiciously he surveyed the space: racks and racks of weapons decorated the walls, human-shaped dummies made of wood or straw littered the floor or hung from the ceiling, and swerving lanterns lit the space, along with a tall row of barred windows on one side of the wall, reminding him of the prison he had to stay in once for being caught at stealing.
But if anything, this place was much, much gloomier than prison…he stared intensively at the dark marks on the smooth stone-paved floor, a shade of reddish-brown, forming shapes with irregular but curved edges.
It reminded him much of dry blood.
After being finished with observing the inanimate objects, which took him not too long, he turned his attention to the only other person in the room besides them: a girl with choppy red hair, slightly younger than he was, with sharp emerald eyes that shone like illuminated emerald stones. She was clad in boyish clothing—he had to check her delicate features several times to be sure that it was no boy because of this—and slashing furiously at a wooden figure that looked like it could fall to pieces any second with slender daggers in both hands. Her eyes were intensely focused on her target, sparing not the slightest attention for them, and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the man nodding in approval.
"Katarina."
She snapped her head immediately towards them upon hearing her name being voiced, and her body soon after. Still panting and drenched in sweat, she raised her weapons in a salute, one that he saw soldiers performing to their superiors, and greeted in a clear, ringing voice, "sir."
He saw her eyes flicker slightly to acknowledge his presence, but made no greeting to him, nor did she spare any of her attention on him.
"What is the creed of our family?" the person who led him here asked, in the same stern voice that he had grown to respect.
A slight look of questioning formed between her brows, but she answered obediently, "Never let the light expose your blade, and never let your heart submerge it."
"Good." the praise that came from this man seemed barely genuine; he could hear the layers of ice that covered it up plainly, though it seemed to light her face up entirely. Turning to him, the commanding voice continued, "heard it, Talon? From now on, I would expect you to live by it as well."
He pondered for a second on this so-called creed, and found it amusing enough that already he knew this through years of experience in the slums. Nonetheless he still repeated it quietly, tasting every syllable on his tongue, until the short sentence was imprinted precisely in his mind.
He nodded in silent reply, and could sense that the man was pleased.
The red-headed girl was staring openly at him now. Katarina, that was her name, wasn"t it? He wondered who she was; perhaps another apprentice under the training of the man, just like what he was going to be. She had a fierce look to her, the girl, and her gaze felt like it was searing through layers of his flesh. It burned.
He adverted his eyes and compared her to the girls he had seen in the slums, fighting over cheap, cracked jewelry, trying to pamper their bodies and faces for the favor of some unknown man with money in his pockets.
How pathetically different they were.
"I see you have been training hard." The man stated, his voice still devoid of much emotion though marked with a lack of the indifference that filled his tone when they conversed, "this is Talon. He is around your age and quite talented as you are. From now on you two will be training together. Talon, this is my daughter, Katarina."
So she was a girl of high birth then, instead of a slum child like him. Shouldn"t girls of her status be in silk dresses and wearing stupidly heavy necklaces instead of sticking knives in dummies? He wondered to himself silently but did not speak.
For a moment they just stood and surveyed each other, taking in every detail, and he was unsure of what to do. He wouldn't just walk forward and make a self-introduction; if they were to "train together", he felt pretty sure that meant they would be fighting against the other frequently, and it was never good for an enemy to know too much of him before they even clashed. Besides that, his options were pretty much limited to continue his stiff silent stance, with only a slight nod indicating a greeting of some sort.
Fortunately for him, she opened her mouth to speak first. But the voice that came out was not one fitting to her appearance—it was too mature, sharp and biting and with a raspy texture to it, a harsh order that dared him to refute. It was the voice of the Katarina he knew of more recent years, and coming from the wild-eyed child it seemed endlessly eerie.
"Run, Talon, run now. As far as you can…don't look back…go."
Suddenly the dream was broken. Faces and sound became contorted, twisting and morphing into unrecognizable beings, mingling with screams and sobs and the sound of blades scraping against each other, and the scent of blood came seeping out of his dream. Slowly but surely it spread, consuming every inch of space there was, until he felt entrapped and suffocating, and pain flared suddenly through his limbs. It was spiraling…uncontrollably…towards a nightmare.
And he woke.
Talon woke to a canopy of leaves that blocked most of the sky from view. Slightly confused, he lay still for several moments just sensing the air for danger, until finally his memories, distorted by the unsettling dream that came to him every night, swiftly pieced themselves together.
He propped himself up on one arm and turned to face the white-haired woman, who was carefully poking dry dead sticks into the flickering bonfire, the flames tinting her skin and hair a light shade of orange-red. Noticing his wake, she threw the last of the brittle leaves and wood into the fire, and spoke with a quiet voice.
"About time for your watch."
Nodding slightly he changed places with Riven in one quick, deft motion, and sat cross-legged in front of the well-tended flames, pulling his hood down further so to conceal his easily lighted face. Her rune sword lay silently at the side, between them, and the flickering light gave the broken blade a strange beauty of its own. Without much to do while keeping watch, he eventually took to marveling at this heavy weapon that he had no idea how she could wield with ease, the ragged broken surface that allowed light to bounce off in a dozen different directions, and the runes carved into it that glowed softly with a life of their own.
For the entire half-night of his vigil he could just sit and stare at her weapon. It reminded him, somehow, of the light blades that Katarina used, though these were not the least alike in usage or form. Absentmindedly his fingers traced the runes, cool to his touch and slightly shimmering before the fire.
In the same way both the sword and the slim blades of Du Couteau's were beautiful…beautiful in a deadly way that one would never fully understand until the edge of cold steel kisses skin and draws blood.
A sudden voice interrupted his thoughts. "You were dreaming, weren't you?"
He withdrew his hand that was resting on Riven's sword and turned to face her. The white-haired woman was supposed to be asleep, but instead he found himself staring eye to eye with her, with every single flickering flame perfectly reflected in her liquid fiery irises. She repeated herself again, as if seeing that her question wasn't quite clear, "just before you woke up for your watch, you were dreaming. Am I right?"
As reply, he gave a hard stare and shook his head once, a quick but certain motion, then returned his gaze to the cold sword that seemed to glare back at him.
"No, you were." She insisted with an air of annoyance that he has ever only known on Katarina before, "you were tossing and turning, very restlessly. I don't recall you sleeping like that while we lived together in the Crimson Elite."
Damn, what, did this woman stare at him all night when they were together in the same barracks, years ago? He cursed inwardly, pulling down the tip of his hood even further. Of course he didn't dream in that time. He never did until recently, until he was again running away like a gutter rat in a self-forced exile. But why would she know, or care, for that matter?
"I wasn't dreaming, Riven. It's not something that I do."
She eyed him with suspicion, as if tearing straight through his simple lie, and followed up with another question, "is it about the Lady Du Couteau?"
He made no reply at all this time, in fear that if he tries to think of an answer he may just snap right then and there. Riven was being like a child, poking around with his personal problems, and, if anything, he did and would not appreciate it. So instead he chose to stay silent, toying around quietly with the runes that decorated her sword.
Riven did not push further and soon fell asleep.
It felt like a long night to him, the first in many, as he mused in the familiar tranquility that settled around the fire. He was used to waiting in the darkness, and his patience was always plentiful, so it was not an uncomfortable condition for him to be in; but it was one that offered very little distractions to his mind, for there was no target to focus himself on and no danger to guard himself against, and the only thing that he could do was to allow his thoughts to roam on the queer dreams of late.
The dream, the one with himself becoming a child again and meeting Katarina for the first time, was also not a rare occasion lately. But it was the first time that her voice, the voice not of a girl but of a grown assassin, came to him in his dreams as well.
He finally seemed to realize that it was haunting him. The parting words that she left was like wisps of smoke that will never fade away from his mind, forever there, forever whispering in secret languages only understood by them and nobody else…like a shadow, like a ghost, he could not rid these words from himself.
It was haunting him.
"Run, Talon, just go."
She was haunting him.
"Never look back, never return. Please."
Katarina, the Sinister Blade of Noxus, was haunting him with every single memory that included her within.
"Run, Talon…or I will kill you."
A/N: I know this is a Talon/Kat fic and starting off with a Talon/Riven scene may not just be the best option, but trust me.
I generally try to keep my chapters long unless there's really not much to write about in one, and school isn't being too easy, so updates may be sparse. I'll try to maintain a steady pace though.
And I always try to not OOC as much as I can, so do tell me if you think I did, I'd very much appreciate that.