a/n - word prompt: elite
"What's your name?"
The question surprised you, your fingers slipping from the wet gash across your shoulder. You fumbled with shredded cloth and skin and glared up at your executioner with narrowed eyes. Silence was intended to be your answer, but the shadowed figure towering over you seemed to take it as prompting.
"No one should die nameless," he said. A softness blunted the edges of his voice, a weapon itself that you've heard barking orders in battle, as sharp and fortified as the blades crossed over your throat.
It was something you should not hear. It was a tone reserved for those he didn't meet in battle. It was infuriating, and you felt ashamed to have it turned upon you.
"Your comrades are dead," the turtle repeated. It wasn't quite regret that softened him. "Each of them."
"Then I shall join them," you responded.
"Yes," the turtle said. "But they didn't get the chance to die as human beings. Maybe you can."
You wheezed, close to laughter.
"I have not been human in a long time."
The creature's face was all leathery scales and blue cloth and sharp, reptilian features; perhaps you were imagining the glint of humor cutting through the dark gray of his eyes.
"Neither have I," he said. "But I still have a name. Leonardo."
You remained silent. You knew the turtle's name. You knew all of their names. It made no difference; except, then, the blades disappeared from your throat, skillfully sliding over your collarbones without drawing even a thin line of blood. You looked on as Leonardo slid the katana into their sheaths.
"Don't come here again. Human, Elite - you'll die as you are."
And perhaps the real humor was that the gentleness was gone from the warning; only cold fact, a calculus at odds with the mercy of his gesture. He glanced to the street, to the lower level of the antique shop, warmly and sleepily lit in the dusk.
"But I hope you choose to live."
Then Leonardo vanished, and you thought of a time when he was the nameless wretch at your feet; and who, exactly, emerged from the building your late Master had hurled him into and lit ablaze.