They say your whole life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die.

Your final moments are an encore for every memory you've ever had, from the most mundane to the most cherished. All your triumphs and victories… all your darkest secrets and deepest regrets… in the blink of an eye you relive them all over again, one final time.

That's what they say, anyway.

Up until tonight, Talon would have scoffed at that idea. He'd been forced to confront his own mortality on a daily basis so many times now. Hell, this was the third brush with death he'd experienced in the past four hours alone. Up until tonight, Talon would have claimed that it was all just a lie somebody had made up to make the whole thing seem more… poetic. The truth? There was no beauty in, nor meaning to, death. There was no great epiphany waiting for you on the other side either. Death came in one of two flavors: mercifully or brutally. You were lucky if you got to choose which one you would get to taste.

And all this nonsense about one's own life flashing before their eyes? Please. Even now, forced to stare down the business end of a throwing knife hurtling straight towards his head, Talon remained largely unconvinced. In the time it would take for his heart to pump one more round of freshly-oxygenated blood from his chest to his extremities, the ebon knife would have already hit him between the eyes, passing through his skull, through his brain and out the other side.

He'd be dead.

There was no time to evade either. His arm was pinned to the wall in such a way that made escape impossible. Perhaps if he could dislocate his shoulder, but even that would take some time… and time was one thing he had run out of tonight. Well… whatever. Talon was no stranger to death. He had quite literally grown up in, around, because of, and in spite of it. Indeed his earliest memory – waking up cold and alone in the sewers of Noxus, buried under a pile of rotting corpses – had set the tone for the next seven years of his life. What a terrible memory. Despite having done his utmost to erase it from his mind for good, Talon could still remember it… like it were only yesterday…

He awoke slowly at first, coughing, choking, and writhing in pain to a world dominated by swirling, torpid hues of faded blue-black and putrid green. His limbs were cold… so cold, senses numb to anything else but the feeling of suffocation. His eyes stung every time he cracked them open and his mouth felt like it was on fire, like a swarm of angry bees had invaded his throat on the way down to his lungs.

Was he… drowning?

The boy's eyes grew wide suddenly as he opened his mouth to scream, the sound quite literally drowned out by the stagnant, unmoving pool of filth his face was submerged in. For some reason he just couldn't lift his head out of the water, much less any other part of his body. There was something draped atop him… something bloated and heavy weighing him down, keeping him from rising out of the shallow pool that in just a few moments would likely become his permanent home; a watery grave.

He wanted to yell. He wanted to shout, to scream for his mother… and that was when the most terrifying thought took root in his mind, shoving every other lesser concern, fatal or otherwise, to the wayside. His flailing ceased, mouth closed, and his eyes began to roll into the back of his head. The boy couldn't remember… he just couldn't remember…

…if he even had a mother.

Talon opened his eyes again as the memory faded from his mind's eye, focusing instead on the point of the knife that was poised to prematurely end his life, the very tip of the blade as it just… hung there… in the air… unmoving? What the fuck? Time had seemingly slowed to a crawl. The knife oscillated very slowly now, floating ever forward through the darkness at little more than a snail's pace. For every inch it sailed in that straight line towards his head, another memory bubbled to the surface of his thoughts, another moment to relive. For better or worse, Talon's life was flashing before his eyes…

Heart pumping. Legs pounding. Lungs burning.

All this for a loaf of bread…

The dark-haired boy tore barefoot through the ramshackle corridors of the lower ward, mud-stained heels kicking up dust and grime with every step he took. He could still hear the commotion somewhere behind him… the indiscriminant yelling of that fat slob of a merchant he'd just robbed (not a threat), right alongside that of the squad of Noxian soldiers who'd happened to pass by just as he was committing the act (very most definitely a threat). Just my luck. Of course they would show up right then, why wouldn't they? Life had this funny habit of kicking you in the groin whenever your arms were busy trying to protect your neck. Oh well. If he was going down, at least he wasn't going to do it on an empty stomach. Tearing off a chunk of the stale hardtack with his teeth, the boy accelerated his pace and rounded one final corner to safety…

Dead end.

He cursed under his breath, frustration and desperation settling in. The walls were several stories high and there was no sewer grate in sight. Slowly he turned around to face his pursuers, golden gaze narrowed and free hand balled into a small, rough fist. There were tears in his eyes, but he wasn't crying. No, these were tears of determination. The men had rounded the final corner now and were heading his way. If they wanted a piece of him they would have to come and-

Just then, a slender hand parted the darkness behind him like a curtain. The shadows were rippling and a set of pale fingers clamped around his forearm to yank him backwards. For a moment he was falling… tumbling into nothingness… and then… the back of his head smacked against something so soft, he would have sworn it to be a pillow. Wrenching his arm free, the boy attempted to wheel about on his heels, only to trip and fall face first into a pair of ample, warbling breasts. The boy froze, his cheeks burning crimson as he craned his gaze upward. A young woman was smirking rather devilishly right back at him, shimmering violet tresses matched only in hue by the color of her vibrant, lupine eyes. Slowly she placed a finger against her own lips. "Don't worry dear," she whispered under her breath before offering the boy a wink. "They can't see us in here." Her smirk began to spread into a full on grin.

Morgana.

She was, without a doubt, the closest thing he had in this world to family. They had a strange relationship to be certain, but it worked; she was sort of like the older sister he'd never had, if by 'older sister' you were referring to somebody whose sole purpose in life revolved around teasing and frustrating you to no end, just to see how much of a rise they could get out of you. So yes, older sister.

Fucking Morgana.

He would regret not being able to see her face one last time, even though it was far too late for all that now. The knife was maybe four or five inches from his brow, his blurred vision unable to identify anything else but the growing tip of its blade glinting in the shadows. Slowly his eyes began to close again, irises flitting about as if he were about to enter a deep sleep. Perhaps there was still time for one last memory…

"…"

"…"

Nope.

His mind remained blank, little more than an unlit, empty cell of whitewashed brick and mortar. That was it. That was his life – death and larceny. Not a single seed sown that would outlast his own memory.

Well… whatever.

Morgana would miss him. Probably. Maybe.

And then, of course, there was Riven. Riven – the girl he'd only just met and yet some how, for some reason, he'd grown rather… attached to her. Such a paradox, that silver-haired little thing was. One minute she'd remind him of a timid, fragile bunny rabbit, in constant need of comfort and protection. And then in the next, a furious, roiling tidal wave, indiscriminately sweeping up everything in its wake.

Riven.

Bits and pieces of her essence flashed through his mind's eye. An image here, a voice there… effervescing fragments of her personality along with a seemingly uncontrollable torrent of pent-up emotion building behind each and every one of them. Her scent. Her smile. Her skin. Her tears. Her… life.

She still needed him.

His brow creased sharply, eyes remaining shut. For the first time in this, his miserably short existence, somebody was counting on Talon to live, not the other way around. Sure, Talon was used to holding the key to another's life in his hands, both figuratively and literally speaking. That was the very definition of a killer after all. But this… this was different. In order to even attempt to save her life, he'd first have to do something he had not done in a very, very long time; he'd have to realize the value of his own life.

I… can't die yet.

Talon's eyes snapped open suddenly, a pair of narrowed amber pools blazing a line of absolute concentration towards the incoming knife now a mere inch from his face. Ignoring the haze of pain dangling from every evanescent thought crowding his mind, Talon curled his opposite fingers around the hilt of the blade imbedded in his forearm and yanked one final time, with all the strength he could muster.

I'm not afraid of death…

With that last desperate attempt the blade holding him immobile came free, sending a jet of hot crimson spraying out of the freshly opened wound as it did so. Talon reacted instantly now. His grip tightened around the bloodied shiv and he swung upwards to bring it in line with the incoming knife. It all happened in the blink of an eye – tip met edge and the knife was deflected off course at the last possible moment, careening past Talon's head and clipping the edge of his earlobe as it lodged into the wall right next to him.

I just… can't die yet, either.

For the longest time he simply sat there on his knees unmoving, his breath coming in ragged, heavy pulses as another tiny rivulet of crimson trickled down his chin from the cut in his ear to join the rest. Slowly he struggled to his feet, grasping at the walls and groaning with every miniscule movement. His left arm was an utter mess, the wrist and fingers absolutely drenched in blood. Every time Talon placed it against the wall to steady himself, he left behind a scarlet handprint in its wake. He was tired… so damn tired. He just wanted to rest… but he couldn't. Not right now, and especially not like this.

Not while she still needed him.

Author's Notes: Wow, here we are at 11 chapters and nearly 13,000 views. I would like to extend a very warm thank you to everybody reading my story, especially those who took the time to comment, favorite, or follow. You guys really keep me going, and I take everything you say to heart. As you can also see I have updated also the cover art with a piece made by the very talented Yosukii, who is one of my favorite artists on DeviantArt. He's got a lot of great Talon/Riven art as well as other LoL-related stuff, so do check him out.

I've also recently started writing a new story, Force Majeure, that you can find on my author page, so check that one out as well. Be warned though, it -is- a lemon and is rated M, so only proceed if you're into that sort of thing ;) Anyway, we've still got a few chapters left for A Noxian Night before the big finale, so stay tuned!