Chapter 33: Stains of Heresy.
Divinity is a continuous cutting motion.
Fire.
It's everywhere. It coils like a viper around the rafters. It oozes down the walls. It scorches your skin. It's in your eyes. It's in your lungs.
He's here.
The fire enwreathes his head. Its drops fall down from his fiery blade. He's smiling.
What does he want?
"This will be a message to all who earned their riches by exploitation. To all who oppose us. None are beyond accountability for their actions."
What has he done to Mom and Dad?
His smile sharpens.
"Don't worry. I'll be taking you to them momentarily."
Another drop of liquid fire splatters on the ground.
Kill him for what he has done.
Kill him.
KILL HIM.
Grasp the knife in your hands. Harder, until the handle begins to crack. Lower yourself to the ground, just as you were taught. Inhale deeply. Inhale until the fire burns away all fear and hesitation in your trembling hands. Breathe out.
Kill him.
Lunge across the basement quicker than even you can realize, aiming the knife for the throat.
Where did he go?
Pain.
The fire is in your side now. It protrudes from your body. Grip the knife harder.
Get off the floor.
He's not dead yet. Reach for the knife and kill-
Darius awoke with a start, his hand already digging into his left flank as a burning pain spread across it. On sheer instinct, before his cognition even had a chance to fully kick in, his chest expanded and he took deep and slow breaths, one after another, until the pain went from scorching to manageable, then went away entirely as the last vestiges of his nightmare released their clutches. Still operating mostly on auto-pilot, he pulled up his fatigues, digits tracing a ghastly laceration scar almost two fingers thick that started precisely left of the belly button, where it looped all the way around his side and stopped just short of the spine. Beyond being an unorthodox choice of aesthetic, to say the least, ever since his induction into Avatardom the damn thing had taken up a habit of hurting like Grimm on the rare occasions that Darius slept like regular people were supposed to, only to be woken up without fail by nightmares.
He leaned forward and hunched over, both hands propping up his head which weighed no less than a metric ton, and seemed to be of an appropriately dense material for such mundane proportions. His stream of consciousness resembled more a murky, overgrown creek that hadn't been tended to in ages, as it often was after such nights. In truth, he didn't even intend to sleep tonight, looking instead to get started with the work an incident like tonight's necessarily entailed as soon as Blake fell asleep. A single crystal of Dust would have lent him strength enough to get through every operative report, statement of engagement, identification of the two Bullheads he downed and the remaining miles of bureaucratic legwork that needed walking for the case to remain in one piece, as well as testimony to the cleanup team for archival and eventual expunging.
All that, however, fell apart the moment he sat down beside Blake's bed and her hand, so delicate and fragile, it seemed, came to rest on his neck. Before he could notice, a deep sleep came over him so quickly he couldn't so much as think to resist its coming.
He sighed.
Well, that's a couple more hours taken out of her time tomorrow.
So… how much of it have I wasted?
His right hand reached out to the cupboard next to him to grab hold of his scroll, but found only emptiness. Befuddled, Darius' head turned to look at the cupboard he managed to miss… only to realize that there was no cupboard to his side.
Nor was Blake's bed behind him.
Nor anything around him, really.
His confusion only grew as he rose to his feet, sweeping the space around him with still half-lidded eyes. For all intents and purposes, Darius was back in his trance, yet his physical condition and the events preceding and explaining said condition decisively refuted this possibility.
He squinted. In the distance, an aberration that was too consistent to be one of the tricks his eyes played on him, heavy as they felt, yet also clearly did not belong with the remaining landscape, attracted his attention. A single wisp of light. Something within Darius stirred, an unpleasant feeling tightening like a knot in his gut.
Obeying some primal instinct deep in his hindbrain, he tried to engage his aura. In a literal blink of an eye, his thoughts accelerated to their usual pace and his vision cleared as it revitalized him in a flash, a black shimmer running down his body.
The tiny light remained.
Striding at a brisk pace, Darius approached it in five seconds flat. Closer inspection revealed that the light was cast by a tiny candle, a flame so weak it could barely reach the stem, nevermind the sparring mat it was placed on.
It wasn't that Darius didn't recognize the scenery by now. But by the Dark as his witness, he truly did not want to.
This bodes poorly.
"You seem to have an affinity for making people rely on you," Darius said. Only his lips remained completely still.
He stepped closer to the candle as the blood running through his veins turned cold.
From beyond where the candle's timid flame could reach, a pair of steel grey eyes peered at him through the darkness.
"I'd wager it'd bum them out something fierce if you were to up and die on them all of a sudden."
It was him, alright. Or, rather, how he'd imagine he looked to Blake when he let loose at the dock. What little cadaverous skin the phantom showed was strewn with a fine web of cuts and incisions that radiated black light, while its face was a repulsive patchwork of black scars that barely even healed much like the one in his flank, a dark grin etched into its pale lips, cut in at least two places. Only the eyes gave the doppelganger any resemblance to the original, staring up at Darius with a mix of emotions he couldn't quite decipher no matter how intently he thought.
"Is that the intent?"
"What is the meaning of this?" Darius asked, narrowed eyes scanning for the first trace of hostile intent. "How are you here?"
"I'm not sure what kind of answer you're expecting," it shrugged, slightly shifting on the mat. "I know no more than you do. That being said, even you knew full well that mucking about with these sorts of memories wasn't going to be without consequences."
"Is this another dream, then?"
For a moment, the phantom looked around, eyes roaming across the vast blackness that surrounded them, before throwing Darius a highly meaningful look, eyebrow cocked.
"Seems unlikely. Come on, you should know by now what your dreams look like," it extended its arm, indicating a point across the candle. "If anything, this looks to be an opportunity. You did say you had much to consider, did you not?"
Darius paused.
"Will I remember this once I come to?"
"Can't see why you wouldn't," it shrugged again. "Bad as yesterday might have been, you seemed to come out of it without permanent damage to your faculties."
Darius paused again.
No more than ten seconds later, he approached the candle and sat down cross-legged in front of it, perfectly mirroring the pose of the phantom.
"Incredible," it chuckled briefly. "And all it took was one pretty girl. Truly, She wasn't exaggerating when She said you've spent far too long cooped up with the old geezer."
"It's strange for someone claiming to be every part of me to be so unimaginatively abrasive," Darius frowned. "Pray tell, which part of me delights in being such a jackass?"
"Only the self-loathing one," the phantom sneered. "The one with which you hate yourself for what you want."
Break their spirit.
"The one with which you push, push, push these wants away, going so far as to imagine there's some other, very-very unpleasant version of yourself you can blame for when you finally act on those desires. You know this, but let me spell it out for you: that part of you fed richly over the last seven years."
End their wickedness.
"But then again, you certainly got a lot of mileage out of this arrangement. You didn't maim and then rip Fenrir to howling little pieces because he was a vile piece of shit who killed people as casually as he breathed, you killed him because you were getting rabid. You didn't send his cronies right after him because the people from whom they make examples tended to die over an average minimum of seven days, you killed them because you got angry."
Take back what is mine.
The phantom loomed over the candlestick by now, the flickering flame casting shadows that circled in a macabre dance over its face, contorted hideously with rage and contempt.
"You didn't give those lawless, filthy, murderous White Fang scum a taste of their own violence because they dared get their disgusting claws over what was yours! No, you killed them because you 'couldn't control yourself'."
"Is that what I want, then?!" Darius roared, his hand shooting out to grab the apparition by the throat as he, too, lurched forward. "To break out in violence at every roadblock in life?! If you want to talk, then speak sense!"
He pushed, releasing the phantom from his grasp as it braced against the mat, settling down as well. He felt his hands tremble.
"Your strange insistence that this was something outside of your control is inscrutable," it spoke as it rubbed its bruised throat, periodically breaking out in a dry cough. "I didn't put those thoughts in your head. If anything, it's the opposite. Jog my memory: what did you think as you tore into them with your bare hands so their wounds couldn't be traced to your weapons? When you sank two full Bullheads into the harbor, dealing with the reinforcements immediately? When you singled out the one holding Blake at the very start? This was no 'outburst'," the phantom grinned, eyes locked on Darius' stupefied figure. "This was a masterclass in violence that no one could do quite like you."
In a placative gesture, it extended a hand towards him, hovering some distance above the candle.
"So, in a sense, that is what you want, yes. To live. To triumph over life's adversities and to protect those near you from them, using the skills you've spent so much time honing. You know. Regular people stuff."
This can't be right.
This...
"Truly outrageous, indeed," a quiet snicker echoed through the vacuous darkness. "Ambition never seen before. Any more and you might want to take someone along for the ride."
The dark grin etched seemingly permanently into its features grew predatory as the apparition bared its teeth.
"Oh wait."
"Leave her out of this!" at a moment's notice the darkness surrounding the two coiled around Darius' wrists like an angry viper as he clenched his fists.
"You jest, surely!" the phantom broke out in laughter, going so far as to clutch at its stomach as it struggled to stay upright. "That's mighty rich coming from you, who spent this entire damned semester clawing through to her!"
"She has nothing to do with this!"
"On the contrary, she has everything to do with this." Like water on a hot stove, its joviality evaporated without a trace at this rebuttal, and even its smile morphed into a scowl. "And if you want to make any progress and salvage this trainwreck of a night, you had best follow her advice, quit your angsting and pull yourself together already. She's not here to distract you, so do one of the few things you're good at and think!"
Whatever that damnable apparition was, however true its claim, it, if anything, most certainly had his rhetoric down to a tee, and every word from its mouth felt like nothing less than a full-strength gut punch to Darius, helpless to mount a rebuke.
Failing that, consequently, the only reasonable avenue of progress was to follow its advice.
Dispersing the black mist roiling around his hands by simply shaking his wrists, Darius adjusted his position, straightening out his back and relaxing his shoulders as he clasped them together. A ritual done countless times, ingrained down to muscle memory, his pathway to true ascension. Breath after breath, turmoil was squeezed out of his lungs as he breathed in deeply. His heartbeat slowed as silken coils wound around his heart, will triumphing over flesh. Step by step, tug by tug, a myriad invisible strings pulled his thoughts together, admittedly well and truly rattled and out of sorts after tonight, where all errant and unhelpful ones were culled under the merciless gaze of his mind's eye. If indeed there was introspection to be done tonight, it, like all disciplines, required a respectful degree of distancing from the subject.
The Avatar opened his eyes, and his gaze met the phantom's. For the first time, its repulsively smug demeanor seemed to have been shaken somewhat, and lest Darius deem himself a madman, he could swear he saw a hint of fear in its eyes.
"Curse you," it whispered. "How eagerly you-"
"Quit yapping," Darius spit out, a smirk forming at the edge of his lips in a perfect reflection of the one that he just wiped off the phantom's face. "Lest I be told by you, of all things, how to think."
He spared it no further attention, instead centering his eyes on the candle as his thoughts went back to the harbor, may it be damned a thousand times over. He remembered how he watched from the shadows, awaiting for Torchwick to make even the smallest mistake that would allow him to turn the tables on the sudden reinforcements and liberate Blake, yet found no window as there always was someone with a gun against her head. He watched how they manhandled her, their supposed sister-in-arms not so long ago, at the first whim of that man whose appearance and attitude sickened him to the very core, and the words of truth he thought - hoped, really - he'd all but forgotten over these long years resounded in his ears like the screeching gales of Atlesian winter, drowning out all other sound but the pounding of their terrified hearts. He felt these truths born of a single, sharp desire manifest into reality, new power spreading through his battered, nearly spent body, providing him with the opportunity he clamored for. He grasped it without hesitation, almost a hundred lives weighted, measured, and found wanting against but one in less than a heartbeat.
What was his takeaway, then?
Frustration, for one. A deep, niggling feeling so intense he had to consciously stop himself from ripping hairs from his head: an operation weeks in the planning, rendered all but a complete failure by happenstance and poor decisions! Forced decisions, certainly, but no better for it!
But all of that, of course, was a moot point. Wishful thinking at best. Things that happened, happened. Among those, but certainly not limited by: him letting a person of interest escape, knowingly putting a civilian in danger, slaughtering no less than sixty men.
And but one regret: that he'd put Blake in danger.
All conduct directly counter to what he as Avatar was to do.
"There's the rub, isn't it?" Darius' own voice reached him, causing him to shudder and cease his ponderings for the time being. A strange, irritating sensation spread across his forehead, and as he brought his hand up, he found it coated amply in his own cold sweat.
"Certainly, tonight could have gone better," the phantom continued, yet its tone was almost unrecognizable. Gone was the constant sneer, nor could he sense the contemptuous mockery to which he'd been treated through their entire conversation. If anything, his doppelganger appeared to be as puzzled as he was. "Yet I wonder exactly at what point you think the outcome would've tipped into the positive. You could have left Blake alone right after bringing her back from the edge of, let's not sugarcoat it, full blown hysteria, and hope you ditching her out of nowhere wouldn't cause a relapse. Better yet, you could've not gone after her altogether. Indeed, you could have remained in the academy the entire day, as originally intended."
The corner of its lips distended ever so slightly. It bade poorly, Darius sensed.
"Imagine coming back after, no doubt, a very productive weekend, only to be told that Blake's been missing the entire time and nobody has a clue where she might be."
Darius' breathing hitched, diaphragm seizing up against a sudden sharp sensation, as if he'd been spiked straight through the chest.
"This is… pure conjecture," he rasped, struggling desperately against the picture painted by the apparition and, indeed, countering solely to focus on something other than the proffered possibility. "We have no way of knowing how that situation would have developed without me."
"That is true," the phantom agreed with a shrug. "Yet instead we know exactly how it developed with us. What happened, happened. We were there every step of the way. In light of that, another question: where did you go wrong? Were your decisions, at the moment of you making them and without hindsight, wrong? Were they?"
If Darius could see himself right now - which, it could be argued, he could - he'd wager he was all but fuming from boiling frustration, the strain in his clenching jaw becoming almost painful and his blood pressure spiking to the point that his own limbs felt unresponsive. He knew exactly what the phantom had to say to this.
Because, much to his chagrin, it was what he had to say to this.
"No, they were not, damnit!" it growled, once more leaning forward dangerously close both to Darius and to the candle, its expression perfectly reflecting their, for once, shared attitude. "So then where does your ridiculous notion of conduct take offense?!"
"Sixty people! Sixty people, slaughtered without judge or jury! I barely even managed to convince Operations to concede use of Semblance!"
"That was before a company's worth of reinforcements and air support! Wilhelm himself would've been retroactively cleared for lethal force in that situation!" the phantom paused suddenly, bringing their uncivil shouting match to a grinding halt as it mulled over something. Its eyes narrowed as it looked at Darius. "Were he to survive the encounter in the first place. Magnanimous as it may be for you to claim sole responsibility, it wasn't your decision alone, now was it?"
Darius sighed, bracing himself. It was foolish to hope to avoid this topic in a conversation with, for all intents and purposes, himself, yet some part of him clung unto this hope up until the last second.
"You weren't exactly in an advantageous position after eating half a belt of minigun rounds," it quipped, tugging at the collar of its fatigues, a mirror match to what Darius wore, to reveal the edge of the same bruise that once spread across his entire torso, only to evaporate like mildew on a summer day. "Yet still you made a choice, and with a mere glimpse, were given means to make it reality."
His eyes drooped, for it was just so. Darius killed before. He killed for food. For shelter. For survival. Even in defense of someone else. It was rarely his own decision, and it was always a struggle. He would come out bruised, beaten, bloodied, always wondering if he had truly survived. And every time Death, his quiet stalker, claimed the one who lay still on the ground, it would look him up and down in appraisal, almost puzzled why he's not packing for the road, too, and haughtily wag its finger at him, scolding and reminding him that next time, it may well be him it would be taking along for the final journey.
In short, it could not have been more different to what happened tonight. There, amidst the flames and garish smoke, the truth of his situation became glaringly transparent to him: either he, through his inaction, leave Blake to the White Fang and Torchwick specifically, leaving him with otherwise limitless freedom of action, whether to retreat, further pursue his objective, or fetch reinforcements... or he kill every other person present.
It was in that single heartbeat, when he consigned almost a hundred souls to the Makers, that his decision was made known to his future victims in an act of what had to be Her very own providence: that they would die this night, and that Blake would not. Their very lives, like threads woven into creation itself, severed by Darius' own hands one after another.
They couldn't so much as touch me after that.
This…
Is this what She wanted to happen?
"I think it's safe to assume that their deaths weren't necessarily the end goal," his doppelganger mused. A lopsided smile crept its way back onto its features. "Though you're welcome to propose this theory to a debate with Lin if you really crave sensations never before felt."
Two voices rang out in the empty darkness, perfect echoes of one another, in a brief fit of mirthless laughter.
"Seriously, though," it continued matter-of-factly. "I imagine She didn't think you biting it in the middle of nowhere was conducive to Her plans."
Darius didn't speak up. What the phantom said made sense, certainly, yet…
If there was anything he could say with certainty about his patron, it was that She scarcely, if ever, missed out on an opportunity to teach him something. There was a lesson to be learned here.
"She's hardly one to shove answers in your face," the phantom nodded, grey eyes boring through him. "But this is as unsubtle as it gets, is it not?"
Darius nodded.
"This is only the beginning," he sighed, whispering the answer to himself. "More choices like this. More decisions that aren't wrong. More deaths for no reason other than 'I choose it thus'."
His head felt heavy enough to have its own gravitational pull, one that inexorably attracted the floor in its direction. He propped it up with unsteady hands, yet even that bore only marginal improvement. It was difficult to breathe.
"How do I even begin to explain this to Blake?" he gasped, a painful knot forming in his chest at the first mention of her name. "I... cannot possibly justify her further involvement."
"Oh, now we're having this talk," his stranger half chuckled, clearly not sharing his concerns. "'Fraid this train left the station a long time ago. As it stands, she seems perfectly willing to tag along of her own volition."
Its amusement mounted, and soon grew into full-blown laughter.
"No, but what a guy! You got yourself a girl practically throwing herself at you, and this is what you're concerned about!"
Darius frowned.
"I'm glad at least some of me derives enjoyment from this. I strongly doubt the Order will see it this way, though. They will demand that protocol be kept-"
"You can't be serious with this," the phantom dismissed him with a sneer. "You know full well that the Order can't demand jack shit from the Avatar. That's the whole point."
Interrupted mid-sentence, Darius stopped to ponder for a moment, and, with a defeated sigh, conceded the point. He knew this full well, indeed. Really, he only raised this counterpoint in vain hope of evading the alternative.
"Is this our angle, then?" he asked with no expectations for an answer, for it was self-evident. "Am I to use my authority as Avatar to avoid repercussions for a breach of protocol that I, as Avatar, should never have committed in the first place?"
The half-grin upon the phantom's disfigured face was his only response.
He shook his head.
"What better first step on my path, indeed," he surmised. "Where am I taking Blake? Where could it possibly end for me?.."
"If you've yet to figure that out after all this agonizing, then perhaps you did hit your head one too many times out there," the phantom stirred in its seat, leaning forward and bringing its hand above the candle. "It will only ever end exactly where you choose it to."
Its palm closed around the flickering light, plunging Darius into darkness.
And in a few moments, the familiar contours of Blake's infirmary cell came into his vision.
He remained motionless for a few seconds, still unsure if this was, perhaps, merely the next ring of his delirium, yet that suspicion scattered in the wind the instant he heard Blake's breathing right behind him, fast asleep. He stood up, orienting himself in total darkness as easily as he would in broad sunlight; a glance at his scroll told him he was out of it for less than two hours, not that he would be able to tell with his aura still active.
He made for the door, yet before he could so much as take a step, an unseen force far beyond his ken took hold of him, prompting him instead to turn around. Blake's hair was gathered neatly over her left shoulder, almost in the exact position she fell asleep in, and a small smile lay upon her lips as further reassurance of her peaceful rest.
His gaze fell upon her right arm. For a brief moment before he completely blacked out, he felt the warmth of her hand resting upon his cheek as he settled down beside her, yet now it hung limply from the side. Blake would definitely feel it in the morning.
Darius knelt down, still only nominally confident in the reality of events transpiring around him, and tentatively reached out his hand, stopping mere millimeters away from her palm. Even at a distance, he still felt the warmth radiating from it.
Hunters, by virtue of trade and necessity, were a fairly physical demographic, and trainees doubly so. Remaining a prude was a tall order when sharing living quarters with three people your age in peak physical condition and when no less than a third of your total interaction with said people involved full-contact sparring. Darius was afforded no exception, and he, too, drank his fill of physical affection in all its forms from his team. Blake's grabs and submissions bit into flesh like hungry vipers and stayed there, and her handshake was self-assured, if somewhat dainty.
The hands that gripped him with such desperation earlier tonight, one that he'd shuddered to take hold of right now, were nothing like that. For lack of a better comparison, it felt like handling porcelain - warm, living porcelain, so tender to the touch, soft as silk and thrice as vulnerable. Even now, as he slowly brought it to rest on her body, it took the sum total of his willpower to prevent a treacherous shaking in his own limbs, for it seemed that the slightest errant twitch would tear right through her skin and snap bones like paper.
Yet as he let go, Blake didn't even move a muscle.
Darius breathed out a long, silent sigh over the course of at least the next half minute, steadying his thoughts and making a mental note to hit a cold shower the moment he stepped out of the room. Once more taking out his scroll, he tapped out a brief note of warning, which he sent immediately to Blake's device. In the next heartbeat, Darius was nowhere to be seen as a trail of black smoke snaked its way past the closed door.
'DO NOT RESPOND TO MESSAGES FROM THE TEAM.
In fact, I'd suggest you turn off your scroll entirely once you read this message. We'll work out a unified response when I get back.
I'm afraid I'll be putting out fires for the better part of the day, but I promise you we'll be back at Beacon before sundown.
Doctor Flynt tells me you should be fit to be discharged first thing in the morning. If you're reading this by the time you got the all-clear from him, you'll have somebody waiting for you outside the cell. He's kindly agreed to show you around the parts of the compound you're cleared for. Primarily the library and training grounds. He'll answer any questions you have to the best of his ability. Please do not hound him too much.
Lunch is served at one o'clock in the canteen, but they'll deliver it to your cell if you just ask your escort.
I hope you rested well.'
Blake rubbed her leg, freshly liberated from its assorted restraints, as she gave the text upon her scroll another once-over. Thus far, events were unfolding in exact accordance with Darius' message. She was woken up by a kindly nurse bringing her breakfast at about half past nine; after the good doctor himself once more inspected her knee, no further measures were declared necessary beyond basic precautions, and she was left to her own devices in the very same cell. After a very brief field test, Blake, too, concluded that the leg performed quite to her satisfaction, beyond some light stiffness, unsurprisingly, but that could be taken care of in a myriad different ways.
In fact… What was that about the training grounds?
As if on cue, the sound of very light steps she couldn't attribute to anyone she'd met at this facility thus far reached her ears from beyond her door, only to stop right in front of it and knock on it thrice, an unfamiliar voice calling out:
"Um… Miss Blake?"
A very young voice, too, Blake noted with some perplexion.
"That's me. Come in."
The figure that emerged from behind the door only served to deepen Blake's perplexion that was slowly beginning to morph into downright confusion, if only in form of a question of who was meant to be watching whom. For starters, the boy timidly looking at her with his intensely green eyes was clearly younger than her - he had to be just barely older than Ruby, if even, she figured. Furthermore, though unremarkable in his choice of attire, his short hair was clearly dyed to appear straight black; as she looked closer, however, she could clearly see their color change ever-so-slightly as it approached the very roots to the exact same green that was in his eyes.
Indeed, her supposed escort seemed a very odd fit into this organization at first glance. Then again, with her sample size including a sum total of two persons, Blake had to admit that her view may be ever so slanted.
It occurred to her that, perhaps, the ice needed breaking. From what she could tell, the boy himself seemed nothing less than downright intimidated by her.
"...Hi," putting on her best approximation of a friendly smile, Blake figured it'd be best not to beat around the bush. "Darius told me he'd ask someone to show me around. Didn't seem to bother to tell me your name, though."
"...Right!" whether it was Darius' name or her attitude, the boy seemed to perk right up after that. "Yeah, I'm your guy, ma'am. I'm Erin. Well, Erin Verdant, if we're not on a first name basis, which I guess we are, but he didn't tell me your last name, so I guess-"
"Okay, slow down there," briefly chuckling to herself, Blake rose out of her bed and approached her new acquaintance, extending her hand. She still couldn't shake off the image of Ruby with neon green hair before her eyes, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, she supposed. "I'm Blake Belladonna, but 'Blake' will do just fine. Nice to meet you."
"Same!" with the initial awkwardness out of the way, the exchange went considerably smoother as Erin accepted the proffered limb and vigorously shook it. "It's an honor to meet an actual Hunter in person!"
That was new.
It occurred to Blake that for the last half a year or so her company consisted pretty much exclusively of aspiring Hunters like her. She was an equal to her peers, greenhorn freshman to her upperclassmen and, debatably, some of the teachers, and a friend to few, with minor variations depending on who you ask. To the greater world, however, there may well never have been a Blake Belladonna, dangerous terrorist of the White Fang. She was now a student at Beacon, a foremost institution beyond compare, and future Huntress, a status some worldly celebrities could only dream of. Those deferential words, the wonderment in that young boy's eyes… It was to be expected from those who only saw what she was now. It was what Blake counted on as she stepped foot upon the academy grounds, to shed the monstrous visage of her past and bury it far beyond light's reach.
...Right?
"...Thank you, that's… very flattering," she managed to intone some answer after a second. "I'm afraid that's a ways off, though. I'm barely through the first semester. Did… How much did he tell you about me?"
"Uh… not much beyond your name," the response came, a slightly longer pause than seemed natural to Blake, even considering the aloof appearance her watchman put up. "Unsurprisingly. Details of… whatever happened last night are way beyond my rank. That's for Ops and IntSec to sort out."
...Fair enough.
"But hey," Erin shrugged, seemingly not bothered by this arrangement whatsoever. "I guess that's also why he told me not to hold off answering any questions you got: can't run your mouth off about something important if you don't know anything, am I right?"
"And that suits you fine?" Blake asked, eyebrow curled. Such astounding nonchalance, if she were honest, felt like a breath of fresh air after the incessant gravitas of yesterday's events, but still.
"Ma'am, when the Avatar asks you to jump, you ask how high." It did not escape Blake's notice how the boy's eyes darted to look over his left shoulder for a fraction of a second at the mention of Darius' station. "And when he promises to get you off duty for a day in exchange for a personal favor, you don't dig for details."
That seemed to put an end to that conversation.
"So anyway," after a brief pause, her escort livened up once more. "Anything I can do for ya right this second? Any burning questions on your mind?"
Blake chuckled to herself ever so slightly. He and she, she sensed, would get along just fine.
"I'll get back to you on that," her gaze shifted off Erin and onto the door. "Right now, though, I don't suppose there's somewhere I could stretch my legs? Doctor's orders."
Once more, the young boy's eyes lit up with the same wonderment that felt so off to Blake when directed at her. She couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever get used to it, even if she should live long enough to see her tenure as a Huntress, should such a thing ever happen, come to an end. She wondered if this was something she had any right getting used to.
"There certainly is!" Erin chimed with enthusiasm as he turned right back around to grasp at the doorknob. "I went ahead and staked one of the training halls for our use beforehand 'cause I figured that'd come up. Do you mind if I join ya? Don't often get a chance to get a look at how Hunters proper train."
That was not exactly what Blake had in mind; going through the Beacon wringer on one leg and a half seemed unwise at best. But who could say 'no' to those eyes?
Training, despite Erin's express hopes, was largely uneventful, if nonetheless productive. Just as Doctor Flynt promised, her recovery was complete, and any remaining tension and stiffness flowed out of the aching muscles with her sweat and soaked into the matted floor. Indeed, the highlight of today's routine took place only once it reached its conclusion: in the empty locker room, where Blake discovered, with great surprise and equal relief, her outfit, mended and cleaned, awaiting her in pristine condition, together with her beloved Gambol Shroud, wiped clean of blood and soot and given a new coat of polish. That answered the question of exactly how she was going to explain to her teammates why her combat gear was soaked head to toe in blood, at the very least.
Yet as she once more donned her gear following a thorough soaking in the shower, finally feeling like she was in her own skin, it became clear an important detail was missing. Briefly poring over the memories of yesternight's events bore a clear but no less distressing answer: her bow, which she discarded at the very start of their incursion into the docks, was likely reduced to a small pile of ash in the ensuing Dust container explosion, and was thus, understandably, not present here. Blake ran a hand through her hair, stopping at the base of her top right ear, suddenly acutely aware of their exposure.
She sighed.
That's going to warrant an explanation to the girls.
At the current junction, however, that was an issue best left to future Blake. As it was, if her escort had any latent prejudices against her, he hid them with an aptitude of a true sociopath, seeming to care almost exclusively about the Hunter side of her. And frankly, could she have asked for more?
Well… maybe one more thing.
So about that library…
It was everything Blake could have hoped for and more. She had inferred from context clues that the headquarters had to be located underground, and the winding corridors connecting the larger facilities together in a labyrinthine arrangement of well-disguised support beams, partitions and bulkheads definitely indicated towards this being a relict of the Great War, albeit impeccably maintained and refurbished since. Understandably, squeezing her way through another bulkhead into by far the most spacious facility she'd seen here thus far was somewhat of a shock to her, though definitely a pleasant one. Informed by Erin that she was free to take her pick of the books excepting, of course, those in the restricted archives and that he'd take care of returning it once Blake departed, she had spent no less than a solid half hour meandering through the rows of towering bookshelves, with material spanning immense range of genres, time periods, and authors, some of whose names Blake had never even known, all of them arranged in an orderly fashion by alphabetical order and date.
Inexorably, as she eventually found herself ambling through the section containing historical literature, her eyes were suddenly drawn to a particular book penned by an author whose name meant nothing to her whatsoever entitled 'The Fiery End of the Golden Century', its subtitle reading 'A comprehensive account of the events preceding and leading up to Remnant's greatest conflict' as she tentatively pulled it out of the shelf. It was there that she realized exactly what gripped her attention: adorning both the cover and the spine of the book was a stylized depiction of a great winged beast, its splayed wings engulfed in flame. Only once in her recent memory did she remember seeing a crest like this one: etched in acid upon the blade of Ruby and Darius' collective gift to their teammate. Much to her consternation, the book came with a sudden recommendation from her escort, though timid and reserved.
"So-o-o… Anything else I can do for ya? We're serving lunch at about this time, can I get you something?"
Blake raised her head to look at Erin, putting down the book in her hand. The two had retired back to her cell, where she intended to spend the rest of her time waiting for Darius wholly consumed by this very intriguing book, and while she simply clambered back into her cot, her companion settled in the chair previously occupied by the good doctor Flynt and Darius himself. She pondered if the question truly was aimed at her, or merely served as a prompt.
"I'm feeling fine, actually. That said, are you actually asking me, or is it just that you can't leave me out of your sight and would like something to eat yourself? I'm not against going if it's the latter."
"Oh no-no-no, nothing like that!" she was reassured. "I made sure to load up beforehand. So… you're just going to read this here book, then?"
What a sociable little warden I was assigned.
I suppose I would be remiss not to make use of that.
"That was the plan," she shrugged, righting herself to face Erin. "But since you're so eager, I don't suppose I could take you up on your offer from earlier?"
"My offer?" his brows furrowed for a moment before realisation. "Oh, right, that. Yeah, of course! Shoot."
Her gaze fell once again upon the book.
"Do you frequent the library here?" After brief consideration, Blake elected to begin in a more roundabout way. "Or is it pure coincidence that I would pick something you just happened to have read?"
Though hardly showing it outwardly, she watched intently as Erin's eyes darted first to the subject of the conversation, then briefly to the door of her cell, just like when they first got acquainted. That alone was answer enough.
Her companion saw no reason to beat around the bush:
"Seems much less like a coincidence when you take into account that we both seem to be on a first-name basis with the-" Erin stumbled, mulling something over in his head. "...with Brother Darius. That is his family's crest, you know."
Always has to go back to him, does it not?
Then again, with everything he'd told me, I can't exactly be surprised about that.
"I do know. You got a history with him, then?"
"If you could call it that. I've met him exactly once before today. He rolled up to HQ some couple months back, we exchanged passphrases, then he dropped his name on me. Bit of a shocker, that was, but he seemed as ordinary a guy as anyone in the Order otherwise, so honestly what do I care?"
As ordinary as anyone… What a fascinating place this must be.
"He tell you why he decided to pay a visit?" she probed further.
"Sure did," Erin shuddered with a nervous snicker. "After he dropped the big reveal on me and Mel - she's from IT, you don't know her. He wanted an audience with our Chapter Master - guy in charge, basically. Neither of us were exactly inclined to poke any further after that."
Blake considered the new information presented before her. That Darius would reveal both his name and his station, all in a span of one, two conversations at most? Sure, there had to be something said for camaraderie: Blake, of all people, knew that feeling well, but something didn't sit right with her nonetheless.
"I admire your faith in people," she mused. "I didn't learn his full name until it was announced in front of a hundred or so people. There have been… terse words after that."
"I imagine there would be," Erin's eyes drifted slightly, stopping right about where her feline ears were. "In fact, I think he actually mentioned something along those lines in passing."
His gaze shifted again, clearly focused inwards as he seemed to go over that conversation once more.
"I get the feeling he really wanted to be honest with us," he intoned after a pause. "'No secrets between family', he told me."
Family…
Is that how he sees them?
"I never saw him after that visit," her companion continued in a somber, uncertain tone. "Until today, that is, when he approached me just as I was starting my daily routine. I'm… I'm not sure he even knows anyone personally in the Valean wing except me and Master Wilhelm. Certainly would explain why he would ask me."
It lined up, she thought. She never knew Darius to leave the academy grounds for longer than a few hours at a time, and those were almost exclusively supply runs for something that couldn't be readily acquired on campus.
"...He's killed a lot of people, hasn't he?"
Whatever train of thought Blake was following was derailed with all the grace of a Goliath trampling into said train, and these words had an effect equivalent to dumping a bucketful of ice all over her. As her eyes zeroed in on Erin, it was abundantly clear by his sunken shoulders and tensed neck that her chosen topic of conversation was quite stressful for him.
"...Excuse me?"
She winced internally as soon as the words left her lips. This came out much too harsh, too confrontational than she meant to be, no doubt to cover up her shock from such a sudden turnabout. Unfortunately, the damage was done already: recoiling from her voice, his posture went from tensed to shaking uncontrollably, and Blake could swear she heard his heartbeat redouble in intensity, pounding against his ribcage as he pleaded with her:
"I'm sorry! I overstepped, I know I wasn't meant to ask! Please don't tell him I said that!"
Blake couldn't exactly blame him for his fear.
With a sigh, she reached out to Erin, slightly ruffling his short hair in an attempt at reassurance.
"I'm sorry, too. I'm not actually angry at you. Just… caught off-guard."
"You're not going to tell him?" Erin asked timidly, frozen solid underneath her palm.
"I don't think he'd care either way," Blake shook her head, leaning back. "So you do know what happened, then."
"Only what's publicly available," her companion shook his, in turn. "Pictures have been circulating the net since early morning, and we still get reception here... despite being underground. News are speculating about a turf war between rival White Fang factions… but when you look at the pictures where two thirds of the image are censored just so they can show it on TV… and when the Avatar himself suddenly shows his face for the second time in two months and asks you to keep an eye on someone in the infirmary, and that someone turns out to be a Faunus… it gets you thinking, you know?"
"When you put it that way, I suppose it does," Blake admitted. "Are you wondering if I was with the White Fang?"
"...I don't think he'd ask me to watch you if you were our prisoner, but..."
"But you're wondering what happened?"
"Guess I am," Erin admitted, perhaps more to himself than to Blake. In an uncharacteristic, never before seen gesture, he drew a long, slow breath and exhaled equally slowly with his eyes anchored firmly in a spot somewhere beyond her, as if centering himself. As he straightened his posture to face her, the look in his eyes seemed oddly familiar to her. "If I may ask you… What were you to one another? How did you get dragged into this with him?"
Once the slight guttural turmoil brought about by the nature of the question settled, prototypical answers eventually began swirling around within Blake's cranium. Some were amusing to ponder. Some less so.
What were we to one another… Frankly, what weren't we?
Well, admittedly, a number of things, but that's not exactly the point of the question, now is it? Sure isn't.
"We're teammates," she arrived at an answer that caused minimal internal objections. "Have been for the last half a year. Friends, too… though for slightly less than that. As for the 'how'..."
She shook her head.
"It doesn't really matter. The long and short of it is that I'd gotten myself into a bad situation, and if it weren't for him, I don't think I would've gotten away with just a busted leg and a light scare." She paused and considered her final point. "Well, not so light, admittedly, but still."
An uneasy, heavy silence hung between the two as the unanswered question pressed down upon them.
"So..."
"Yes, Erin," Blake sighed. "He killed a lot of people. It was either them or me. Does that answer your question?" she asked, carefully measuring her tone.
"...For the most part," he nodded after a while.
"Only the most?" She felt her eyebrow curl.
"I don't get to make the call for the part that's left," Erin replied, his eyes still lowered. "We have procedures in place for a reason… limited as their applicability might be in his case."
Her expression unchanged, the Faunus kicked back, sidling deeper into her cot to lean against the wall.
"Do tell."
"Cleanup's always first," the elaboration came readily. Something told Blake this was among the questions Erin expected to be asked at one point or another. "We secure any evidence of the incident, file it away for what comes next. Remove any trace of our involvement. The turf war spin on the news? Probably seeded by us, too. Also… we get custody of any witnesses. Or as close as it gets without physical abduction. Also for later."
"Next, a trial is held," he continued after receiving a nod of affirmation from Blake. "Not too different from regular courts, really. Review evidence, verify testimonies, render judgement - standard fare. For Brother Darius, I can't imagine anyone below the Chapter Master himself presiding over the decision."
For a brief moment, Erin's explanation halted as cogs clicked away within his head, clearly attempting to get past some hurdle in his narration. In the end however, he could only shrug with a resigned sigh.
"Couldn't even begin to tell you what kind of ruling they could possibly levy, though. I made initiation barely two years ago, and it never occurred to me I'd have to get acquainted with our legal system so soon, nevermind the context. I'm sorry."
Adorable.
"That's more than I'd known five minutes ago. I'd say you're doing fine."
Contrary to her expectations, her reassurance did not help lift her companion's spirits. If anything, his expression only grew darker as concern distorted his features into a frown, and he scratched his chin in contemplation. An otherwise wholly inconspicuous gesture, if not for the fact that it all but mirrored the way that Darius performed it whenever matters required deliberation to a truly uncanny degree.
"...That's just the thing, though. That's the last step," he finally spoke. From his tone, Blake could tell it was no more pleasant than either of the previous two. "Accidentally witnessing our agent at work? Honestly not as uncommon as you'd think considering the circles we usually operate in. Actually knowingabout the organisation behind the agent? That's leagues apart, and not in a good way. We wouldn't have remained hidden for centuries if leak containment wasn't as big a deal as it is."
Blake had a very bad feeling about this.
"...How big, exactly?"
"...You're really limited in options if you wanna do worse," Erin admitted after a brief instance of hesitation. "It's either knowingly endangering innocent lives, or outright treason. And I'm pretty sure we've yet to convict anyone of the latter in our entire history. I'm fuzzy on the details, and I don't know how much he told you, but I think just you knowing what an Avatar is makes this the biggest leak in the last decade or something."
He shuddered.
"Frankly, I think half the reason why it's so harsh is what it takes to… secure those leaks."
On a hypothetical future occasion Blake would probably have to apologize for the suspicion against her warden. Shifting blame on witless grunts always evoked disdain in her. Yet right now something in the way Erin said 'secure' caused her eyes to snap towards Gambol Shroud propped against her bed completely of their own accord, and on pure instinct she leaned forward, putting some of the weight on her feet.
"Explain," she voiced her demand slowly, pupils contracted to a fine point as she bored through him with narrowed eyes.
Yet no answer came.
Beyond the door, a quiet clicking of heeled shoes, in a stride she didn't recognise, growing louder as they approached her cell.
Three knocks against the door.
"Miss Belladonna?"