Chapter 47

Jaye's eyebrow had reached the limits of his face, but higher he tried to push it still. Finally giving up on the feat that would have exceeded the confines of human capability, he placed his arms on the foot of the bed where he was leaning, staring quizzically at the two bound kids before them. He sighed cryptically.

'I've killed a lot of parents honey, you're going to have to be a bit more specific.' He said, staring pointedly at the faunus girl as she continued to glare at him. 'And don't bother trying to undo those ties behind your backs; they're not coming off unless they're cut.'

'Can I borrow some scissors?' Artemis asked, and Kamina sniggered. Jaye flashed a look of annoyance at the fox boy, scowling at the sassy girl.

'Nice try smartass. Now answer the question.' He crossed his arms again, tapping his fingers on his bicep, and the girl met his glare.

'You really don't remember, do you?' Apollo mumbled, glaring at Jaye through his bangs. 'That's how little it meant to you, isn't it? That's all we were to you; just a means to an end.' His face contorted in anger and contempt. 'You really are a monster.'

'Yes yes, I'm a monster, we've established that.' Jaye rolled his eyes once more. 'Spare me the cliched lines and answer the damned question.'

'Three years ago, on a winter's night, we found a boy lying on our doorstep.' Artemis said, her voice barely a whisper, and the room fell silent as she spoke. 'He was dressed in nothing but rags with bare feet, not a Lien to his name. Nor did he have one; he had no memories of who he was. All he remembered was wandering the streets for a long time, far longer than any child should have had to.'

'That sounds oddly familiar.' Indigo pondered, tapping her finger on her chin, and Kamina's ears twitched in realization.

'Dude.' He breathed, grabbing Jaye by the shoulders and whirling him towards his face. Jaye raised his eyebrow again at the fox boy who was currently staring him down with a bloody passion.

'What? Did you remember something?' He asked, eyebrow still raised, and Kamina shook his head.

'Nope, doesn't ring a single bell.' He said, face dead serious as he continued to stare into Jaye's soul. Jaye swatted at the fox boy's ears, cussing out the faunus bastard as he returned his attention to the two captives.

'Well get on with it. That sounds like half a dozen of my heists.' Jaye said, crossing his arms once more and punching the now laughing faunus boy in the gut. 'You're going to have to give more details. Like, you know, the targets for example?'

'Like I was saying before I was so RUDELY interrupted.' Artemis picked up again, Jaye raising an eyebrow at the sassy girl as she shifted herself into a more comfortable position. 'Apollo and I found him outside our door in the dead of winter, frozen and suffering, and our parents took him in without a second thought. We fed him, bathed him, gave him all the things he never had. Including a name; Matthias, which means blessing.' She raised her eyes to the boy, glaring at him with undisguised fury. 'We wondered if he would be the new addition to our family. We loved him.'

'He stayed with us for a week before it happened. He was older than us, around his teens, and we looked up to him as an older brother.' Apollo whispered, eyes glued to the floor. 'We didn't realize at the time that he was searching for something; something our parents' had that he needed. I guess he found it.'

'One night, a winter storm hit. The temperature dropped to freezing levels, and we woke in the middle of the night.' Artemis breathed, her eyes burning a hole into Jaye's. 'When we woke, Matthias was gone. In a panic, afraid he had slipped outside, we ran to our parents' room to wake them. When we reached the door, we realized it was ajar. We peeked through the gap, and what we saw has been burned into my memories since.'

'Matthias stood over them, holding a knife streaked with fresh blood, and our parents were dead on the floor. In his hand was a pouch, not one that I recognized, and he opened the window and jumped right out into the middle of the storm. He never even noticed we were there.' Apollo struggled to his feet, finally managing to drag himself onto his bound knees. 'Inside the room was a safe, one that we'd always been told not to touch. When we finally calmed down enough to notice, we realized that it had been cracked open, the lock frozen off, and whatever was inside was gone now.'

'Our parents weren't perfect. No one was. But they didn't deserve to die like that.' Artemis dragged herself to her knees, shoulder to shoulder with her brother. 'We swore on that day that we'd find you and kill you. We swore we'd avenge them.'

'After that day we were given to our relatives. After what had happened to us, our uncle and aunt wanted us to have nothing to do with the violence in the world, but we enrolled to a combat school immediately. After some years of training, they tried to pull us out, and we realized that it wasn't going to work.' The twins sat back down on their heels, and Jaye narrowed his eyes at them as they huddled together. 'We ran away from their home, living out on the streets for a while until someone picked us up, taught us how to be assassins, and accepted out desire for revenge. He was our master, and he gave us the power to fight for ourselves.'

'And we finally found you at the port going out of Patch. Like God had given us a chance to make things right. We'd trained entirely for this moment, and it was a heaven-sent gift. It was a blessing.' Artemis glared at the boy, and the three teammates glanced across each other at this revelation. 'Our master told us we'd probably find you there, and he was right.'

The three teammates glanced across each other once more, the worry evident in the air between them. Jaye turned his attention back to the twins as they continued to worm about in discomfort on the floor.

'Alright then, who's your master? Don't make me have to hurt you for that one.' He threatened, pulling a knife out of his jacket. 'You're only going to make things harder for yourself if you resist.'

'He never gave us his name.' Artemis spat, inching away from the raven-haired boy. 'We never needed him to. He would always contact us; and he trained us in a different place every time. It was strange, not to mention a little shady, but we needed what he had to offer.'

'Sounds like a standard Faction runner tactic.' Indigo crossed her arms. 'Train a few little ones out on the streets to be runners or information gatherers with no strings attached, to be disposed of whenever needed.'

It was a widely used, and very effective strategy. Regardless of the city, there were always kids living in the alleys and gutters. With poverty on the rise, there was no shortage of fresh meat to be trained as disposable runners. Trained away from any Faction facilities using money as an incentive, these kids with no families or ties to anyone were the perfect candidates to disappear at a moment's notice. Completely expendable, with low training costs, they were the perfect resource. And since they had no idea what their trainers' names were, let alone where the Faction quarters were, there were no loose ends to be had.

'Then again, it's nearly unheard of to train them to do assassinations. Typically, you're only given that kind of training once you prove that you're not expendable, like we did.' Jaye pointed out, crossing his arms. 'It doesn't add up; who would give them training like that out of the blue?'

'Guess that's something we're going to have to look into.' Kamina twitched his ears. 'What're we going to do with them in the meantime? We can hardly leave them here, and I'm getting sleepy.'

'I don't know.' Jaye sighed, scratching his head and glancing at the twins as they shifted on the floor. 'They're a risk if we just go to sleep, and they could prove to be a problem later on once we get to Haven. We can't afford to have them on our backs all day long.'

'We're right here you know.'

'Shut up, no one's talking to you.'

'You are now.'

'You're making me really want to kill you.'

'Go ahead. Wouldn't be your first.'

'Don't tempt me girlie.' Jaye glanced at the window, quietly pondering his options. 'Alright, let's chuck them in an alley tomorrow before we get on the ship.'

'Why don't you just kill us and be done with it? Two more lives would hardly make a difference on your conscience.' Artemis hissed at the boy, glaring daggers into his chest. 'It'll be a breeze. Just come on over here and do it.'

Jaye watched the two siblings with a blank look. Ignoring the fact that she was using a pretty standard interrogation tactic; goading your captor to come and try to kill you so you can get them within arm's reach, the more he looked at them the less he could bring himself to even consider killing them. When it came to Damian, or Torchwick, or any of the White Fang or Faction members, it had hardly mattered to him in the slightest what killing them would mean. In fact, he'd never really thought about what it meant to kill them until now. It was always just a factual thing to him; kill them and they won't come back to haunt you in the future. Tie up the loose ends and you won't get any snags. Just kill. Nothing more.

It made complete sense, never more so in this case. Kill the two kids with zero connections and remove them from the equation; nothing could make more sense in this situation. They'd never get caught, and by the time anyone discovered the bodies they'd be long gone, and they could never be traced back to three ghosts who didn't exist to anybody but themselves.

But even as he thought about killing them, about taking his blades and sliding them cleanly across their throats like he'd been taught, like he'd done hundreds of times before without a second thought, he was hit with an overwhelming feeling that what he was doing was wrong.

'No. I won't kill you.' He finally said, breathing a deep sigh out of his lungs and turning his eyes up to the ceiling. 'I won't kill.'

'What's that supposed to be, remorse?' The girl scoffed, rolling her eyes at the assassin. 'You've got so much blood on your hands, and you think you can wash it away?'

She had a point. With that much blood on him, it hardly mattered if a little more was spilled. But he was burning, burning hard where the eye could not see, and he could do little to put it out. But he could stop himself from burning anyone else around him. Blonde hair and a bombshell smile appeared once more before his eyes and steeled his resolve with a fiery touch. He couldn't kill them, he wouldn't, or he'd never be able to face the girl he saw when he closed his eyes.

He doubted he could kill anyone ever again.

'No. No I don't.' he finally said, sighing deeply and placing a hand on the girl's head. She threw it off with a snarl, and he gave her a long, quiet look. She balked a little as she met his gaze, staring incredulously at what was a nothing but a mask of pain and grief, and he let his hand fall to his side. 'Nothing I can do will make me clean. Sins can never be forgiven. But we're going to try.' He ran a hand across his face, turning back to his bed and throwing the twins a pair of pillows. 'Get some sleep, we'll let you go in the morning.'

He clambered into the bed, and Kamina volunteered to take watch. There were hardly a few more hours to sunrise, so the boy simply sat down next to the twins and ruffled the girl's ears. She snarled at him, and he laughed gently at her, placing his hand on the floor instead. He peered curiously at the girl, and she inched away from him quietly.

'You know, it's just the circumstances that we've been thrown in that made us as we are.' Kamina said, his voice barely a whisper. 'In another life, we could have been good friends.'

'I doubt it. You're annoying.'

'Everyone says that at first, but they all come around eventually.'

'Well it's not happening now.'

'Not yet.'

'Not ever.'

'I take that as a challenge.' Kamina declared, gesturing quietly at the boy now rolled up in his sheets. 'But I think you two would get along splendidly if not for everything that's happened to him.'

'He's killed countless people. He's rotten to the core.' She spat. 'His heart is darker than black.'

'No.' The fox boy shook his head, staring pointedly at the twins. 'No, he isn't. Not in the slightest. He always sealed himself off from it, pretending he's never been hurt by the things he's done. He should never have had to do the things he's done to survive. We should never have had to do these things. No one should have to. But someone must.' He turned his gaze back to the ceiling, a wistful smile on his face. 'But someone must. And it just so happened that those someone-s were us.'

'Of course you'd think so. Pretending your actions are justified by your circumstance. How many people have you killed? Just as many as him I'll bet.' The faunus girl scoffed, turning back to her brother and ignoring the fox boy. 'Those with hearts of darkness could never understand what it means to be hurt.'

'I wish I didn't. Then maybe I'd be able to live with myself a little better.' Kamina replied, giving the twins a slightly strained smile, and the girl raised a sarcastic eyebrow. Retrieving the pillows the boy had thrown to them, she huddled into the corner with Apollo, glaring fiercely at the fox boy who remained seated against the wall. Kamina shook his head, sighing deeply to himself, and watched the twins whose lives they'd turned upside down. Snuffing the guilt down into his stomach, he pressed his head to the wall, curling up against the it without a sound, watching the twins cradle each other to sleep, terrified of the world around them and the people in the room. All alone.

Jaye peered through his eyelids at the two in the corner, trying to push them out of his mind and his heart. But no matter what, he couldn't erase the fact that it was entirely his fault. That he had taken all they had and left them alone. Regardless of the past, he had decided to move forward, and that was what he was going to do. If that meant trying to forget the things he'd done and starting anew, then so be it.

Once more, his eyes drifted to the twins huddled in the corner, clearly terrified out of their minds, with no one else to depend on but each other. He told himself to forget them, throw them in the alley and move on with is life. But even still, he felt his eyes drawn to them once again, and a stab ran through his chest. He rolled over, fixing his eyes on the window in a vain attempt to distract himself, as every sound they made reminded him of his inescapable past lurking over his shoulder as he drifted off to sleep. Always there. Haunting.

There we go, that's the end of this chapter. I'm building up to something big later on before we move into volumes 5 and 6, so if it's been a little uneventful that's because this is the calm before the storm. Don't worry, we're finishing this arc soon, and we'll be back on the main storyline before you know it. It's hard to come up with original content, so I hope I've been doing fine so far. Thanks for the support guys, it means a lot to me. Especially with a lot of haters out there, but for those of you that are still here waiting patiently for my updates I really appreciate you guys haha.

Thanks.