'Sorry, Jericho,' Cassiopeia mumbled through pursed lips like a little child, her head dipping towards the floor as a muscle quivered in her smooth cheek. 'I had no idea what she meant to you.'
'She doesn't mean anything to me, Cassie,' the General sighed deeply, clicking his thorny nails together as his brow furrowed in on itself. 'Well, not now. Not yet.'
'Is she really your granddaughter?' the snake lady asked incredulously, her lemon-yellow eyes flickering up to Swain. 'Beatie's child? How do you know?'
'Vladimir,' he answered simply, scraping a hand through one last remaining band of his greying hair and tilting back in his gilt office chair. 'You know, something, Cassie - I was ready to slit that Demacian's throat as soon as we'd pulled any relevant information out of her, especially the split second I laid eyes on her. She's that damn fool Crownguard's daughter, alright,' he added bitterly, picking up his quill again and spattering up the desk with ink in his agitation. Cassiopeia gently peeled it out of his hand and placed it back down next to the note he had been hurriedly writing, but he did not protest. 'It's her spirit, though. Just like her mother. Sharp and cutting. The Demacians would call it foolishness. I would call it an asset.'
'She reminds you of her, so you couldn't bear seeing her hurt,' the snake lady murmured softly as the master tactician thawed out. 'I'm still sorry, by the way. For getting in the way of the family reunion.'
The General cackled briefly and, straining on his staff up to his feet, he surveyed the snake with a half-amused scowl. 'There's no family to unite. You make out as if I've gone soft in the head, Cassie.'
She smiled mischievously, sliding off the robust couch and then meeting the brusque man eye to eye. 'It's fine to go soft in the head, sire. Just make sure your heart doesn't follow.'
'There'll be no chance of that,' he added gruffly, frowning as the snake sidled up to him and planted a kiss on his stony cheek. 'Ugh. Stop that kissy nonsense, serpent.'
'You love it really,' Cassiopeia grinned, wiping off the butterfly mark of dark lipstick off his thin skin and then slithering back towards the door. 'By the way,' she started over her shoulder, her yellow eyes glittering excitedly, 'can I have the Ionian? For domestic purposes, of course.'
'Pah.' Swain harrumphed and turned back to his desk, fixing a pince-nez onto his bony nose and peering down again at the order he had been trying to sign off. 'I thought the Fleshing would be more appropriate for a warrior? He looks like he could break Viscero's record with those muscles.'
'He's too pretty to get mauled, though,' Cassiopeia whined, sticking out her bottom lip and yet being unable to contain the smile on her face. 'Trial shift? He's sooo hot…'
'I'll think about it. Go away now,' he dismissed her imperiously, ignoring her feminine giggle as she slipped out of his office. 'And go fetch Darius!' he thundered behind her.
Moments later, a solid knock rapped against the door and his right-hand man stepped in on his command. 'You wanted to see me, General?'
'Ah, yes, Darius. Perfect.' Swain looked down, his grey tongue resting loosely on his dry, thin lips as he concentrated before signing the parchment with a commanding swirl. 'Despatch this order to our Ironspike division. Tell them to stand down. We aren't going anywhere yet.'
'What?' the Hand of Noxus asked in surprise, his rugged face twisted in bewilderment. 'But Jericho…wouldn't it be better to attack the Demacians when security isn't on high alert?' the commander asked incredulously. 'Before the wedding?'
'Never mind that,' Swain dismissed sharply, waving his hand and shoving the stamped parchment roll into Darius' thickly gloved hand. He leant forward over the desk, his blood-red eyes glinting. 'I've got too much to think about right now. Let the men stand down – after I've talked things over with the Demacian girl, we can reconvene tomorrow night and decide on the best course of action.'
'Do you really think she's going to listen to you?' Darius asked sceptically, rubbing his bristled chin as he frowned down at the commander. 'What do you have to offer her?'
'Answers,' the General replied simply, thrusting the order towards the Hand of Noxus and waving his hand dismissively. 'Even if she doesn't yet know what her questions are. Carry on, Darius.'
Quinn's cracked lips curled up into the subtlest of smiles, and her deadened soul savoured the small quiver of energy that lit up her broken heart. But her daydream – for she was sure it was not reality, but the wildest desperation, which made her think Jarvan and Xin were coming for her– faltered as her eyes dropped to the healing acid burns on her arms, shining like red, coiled snakes under the thin white skin. She shook her throbbing head, confused at the dream she had just had, and rubbed the crick out of her neck. Her stomach cramped up with foreboding as her bleary eyes focussed; she was still in Noxus. This must be a prison cell, as she was curled up on a misshapen leather bunk framed by thick steel bars. Cassiopeia's assault was seared into her mind as painful tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes; she was thankful that she had passed out from the agony last night, as it would have been even worse to tolerate if her mind had been bent out of shape the same way her body had. Wetting her splitting lips with her pink tongue, she slowly pushed herself into a seated position and squinted through the darkness, before her heart nearly splattered from her chest as she realised she was not alone. Big duck-egg blue eyes widened as they met with hers, and a slender white arm slotted through the bars of her cell.
'Quinn. I thought I may never see you again.'
The ranger's mounting tears spilled over as she crawled forward and grabbed the maven's arm tightly, holding on fiercely as tightly as a sword to its sheath, and smooth fingers ran down Quinn's cheek to stem the tears. 'Hey, it's okay. Don't cry. Don't cry, my love.'
'Sona,' Quinn croaked in a broken gasp, clinging onto her elbow. 'Oh my God. You're alive.'
'Of course I am,' she confirmed softly, though her voice wavered as she patted the ranger's trembling shoulder. 'Takes more than Noxians to finish me off.'
Quinn snorted, ignoring the grotesque bubble that blew in her nose, and she released the maven to wipe it away before she sat staring at her, her amber eyes circled by red rings from her tears. 'How are you? Why haven't they released you? I feared the worst.'
'They're using me,' she said in a strange thick voice, emotionless on the surface but crackling with implications. 'I'm Ionian by birth, as you know, but living in Demacia has instilled some of its magic into me. That…that vampire has been extracting the magic from my blood to use in Noxian defences. They wanted Demacian magic, which is so rare to get hold of, because it's the next step. The next battle. The next stain against their name.'
'So how did they…?' Quinn began, but as agonising shadows swirled in the maven's narrowed eyes, she did not push her. 'I mean…I'm sorry, honey. I won't go there.'
'Maybe best if you don't. Not until I'm ready,' the maven laughed shakily, tugging gently on Quinn's hair and re-aligning it behind her shoulder. Her smooth face crinkled with worry as she surveyed the ranger. 'Are you alright? I know Cassiopeia-'
Quinn flinched at the name, her hand leaping instinctively to the scars on her arms, but she looked at Sona squarely in the eye. 'To borrow your phrase – takes more than Noxians to finish me off.'
Sona chuckled and caught hold of Quinn's hand, holding it firmly as she pulled her closer and then released her hand to tuck a small lock of hair behind the ranger's ear. 'We'll be okay, my lovely. Garen will dispatch the Dauntless Vanguard to come find us, surely?'
'They'll come for you. But not for me,' Quinn added sadly, swinging Sona's arms. 'I'm no longer a Demacian.'
'So the Vanguard went through with it?' the maven asked in hushed tones, her soft pastel eyes dilating wide. 'Bastards.'
'I know,' Quinn laughed harshly, a muscle trembling in her cheek. 'I have no international rights whatsoever now. The Noxians could finish me off tomorrow and no one would notice.'
'I would,' Sona mumbled, stroking the back of Quinn's scarred hand. 'Don't lose hope, love.'
'I'll let Swain take me,' the ranger concluded after a stressful pause. 'I'll let him be whatever he wants me to be. I'll do whatever's necessary to let you go free.'
'What? No!' Sona spluttered, throwing a panicked look to the resigned Demacian. 'No, Quinn, there's got to be another way. You can't let the Noxians take you. Swain'd never let you go if you're genuinely related. You'd be stuck here forever.'
'Then so be it,' she replied, numbed by the enormity of her decision. 'I'll speak to him about it, anyway. I'm owed an explanation, if anything else.'
'Well, whatever he says to you, remember you're a Demacian,' Sona responded firmly, wrapping one comforting hand around the ranger's boot. 'It's not where we come from that defines what we are – it's where we go that counts. And you belong home with us.'
'I think I always knew, though,' Quinn sighed. 'I always knew I didn't quite fit in. There's an edge to me, an impulsiveness and impetuousness that you won't find in a Demacian maiden. It's what made me a good soldier. It's also what made me a bad one.'
'But you have the heart of a Demacian,' Sona protested. 'You're kind and loyal and compassionate. And if- if by any sick twist of fate you are related to Swain…well, you have too beautiful a soul to not keep your Noxian traits in check. Don't lose hope, Quinn.'
'Lose it. It hurts less when it's gone.'
The ranger jolted at the rough, acerbic comment, turning away from Sona's creased eyes to stare through the shadows behind her. Her heart sank as she recognised Yasuo's tattered mane in the dimming light, ruffled with struggles and wildness as he sat hunched over in his cell. Two strong arms hugged his knees fiercely, his long nose grazing against one knee-cap.
'Yasuo…' Quinn whispered softly, shuffling over on her knees to the warrior and threading one arm through the bars. 'Are you okay? Have they done anything to you?'
He let out a harsh, dark bark of laughter, shifting away from her warm grasp. 'No. Not yet. I imagine they won't dawdle, though. A rogue Ionian's full of many useful secrets at this stage of the war. And, better yet, my death won't count as a war crime. I'm Swain's dream guy.'
'Maybe they won't do anything to you, though?' the ranger said hopefully, her hand withering as she withdrew it from the tense Yasuo. 'Maybe they'll see sense and let you out – you're no threat to them, you're not affiliated with the Ionian forc-'
'Oh, please, Quinn!' he snapped back, throwing a piercing look at her. 'Are you really that naïve? You saw what they did to the poor maven. Swain even likes Sona. Hell, he actually let her live! Well, exist. It isn't much of a life for her right now, is it?'
Then he turned his back fully away from Quinn, the silence crushing her chest as her eyes sombrely traced his vague outline in the darkness.
'I won't let them hurt you,' she said determinedly, trying not to let her voice tremble at the hurt of the warrior's fury. 'I'll pull whatever strings I have to.'
'Yes, because Sona is such a good example of how you keep others out of danger,' Yasuo muttered. 'I can see why the Demacians despaired of you. Can you not follow that foolish, girlish heart for one fucking second? If it were not for your indignant stupidity, we would not be in this situation.'
'I can't believe what I'm hearing,' Quinn replied coolly, still too stunned by the lash of his tongue to unleash the solidifying anger in her veins. 'Why would you even take me to Bilgewater in the first place, when we wanted to lie low? What was it Irelia said? Wherever you go, death always follows? How right she was. You took me into the bowels of hell.'
'Don't pin this one on me, kitten,' Yasuo muttered roughly, running his fingers through his tangled mane. 'If you had just an ounce of patience, we would have met up in Noxus no problem. We might have even saved Sona from this hell she now has to live with.'
'So you're blaming me for what happened to her?'
'Perhaps. We'll never know, now, will we? What difference we could have made.'
'Neither are you to blame for what happened to me!' Sona gasped hoarsely, fresh tears brewing under her closed eyelids. 'Yasuo, leave her be. She's been through enough.'
'She needn't have gone through it at all!' he hissed, his warm chocolate eyes darkening into fiery chunks of coal. 'I knew I shouldn't have let myself get mixed up with you, Quinn. Women are always more trouble than they're worth.'
'You shouldn't play with fire if you don't want to get burnt,' the ranger spat, matching his glare with her fiery amber gaze. 'Maybe if you spent more time focussing on your heart than your dick, you might get somewhere in life.'
Yasuo laughed, his hulking shoulders shaking as he slowly recovered from his amusement. 'So…I'm getting relationship advice from the Demacian virgin who has done nothing more than lust over a blue-blooded lothario that doesn't even want her. Good one.'
Embarrassment and fury flooded into Quinn's heated cheeks and before she knew what she was doing, she slapped his sneering face as hard as she could through the bars. Stunned, he jerked backwards as resentment and what looked like a flicker of remorse surged through his dark expression.
'Stop it…. stop it now, the pair of you! Please…' Sona mumbled in defeat, hanging her head sorrowfully. 'You'll wake the guards.'
'Good. I might get moved to a different cell,' Yasuo responded sardonically, rubbing at the rising pink smudge across his cheek as he tried to stare Quinn out, the latter still trembling.
'Don't, Yasuo,' Sona answered in a clipped tone. 'None of this helps us to escape.'
The ranger sucked in a deep breath, turning to Sona. 'It's not just him. I provoked him.' Quinn pressed her face through the bars, trying to grasp at his shoulder as her previous tears evaporated on her flushed cheekbones. 'I'm sorry, Yas…I didn't mean to hit you. I really didn't. I just got mad and-'
'Let go, Demacian!' he hissed under his breath, unwinding her hands from his neck and trying to stuff them back through the bars towards her. 'Leave me alone.'
'Yas…' she protested, straining against his resistance. 'Please, let us talk this through.'
He immediately turned around and unpicked her insistent grip from his robe. 'What is there to discuss?'
'Nothing. Just…I'm sorry,' she quivered, gazing painfully at his gritted jaw. 'You're right. This is all my fault. I was an idiot, a fucking idiot. This is all my fault.'
There was a short pause, before the warrior finally sighed and turned round.
'Come here,' Yasuo muttered, threading his arms through the bars to hold her against his left shoulder. 'Come on, Quinn. Don't get so worked up. You'll be fine.'
'But what if you're not?' she mumbled against his shoulder, pulling back to stare mournfully at him. 'What if the Noxians take you to the Fleshing?'
'Then that's what happens,' he muttered darkly, holding her closer. 'Lord knows I've cheated death more times that I should have. Maybe my number's finally up.'
'No!' she protested, rubbing her hands across his bare forearms. 'I can't let that happen.'
'You might have to.' They fell quiet for a moment, hearing nothing but their thrumming heartbeats and anxious breaths, until Yasuo broke the silence.
'I'm sorry, too,' he began sadly. 'I know you've been through hell and back, Quinn. I just – I'm so mad that I wasn't able to prevent this. That I couldn't protect you.'
'No, you have the right to be furious with me,' she responded quietly, her high voice muffled against his lithe frame. 'I shouldn't have gone without you. I didn't know what I was messing with. I'm the reason we could all die. I'm always the reason.'
'Hey, now,' Sona whispered to her soothingly. 'Don't think like that, Quinn. None of us envisioned this, and you know it. We take our own risks. You're not responsible for us all.'
'She's right, kitten,' the warrior added, sucking in a heavy breath. 'And we all underestimated the Noxians, as always. But we'll get 'em. You've got this.'
To his surprise, the ranger seized his wild mane and pulled his thin face up close to hers.
'Thank you,' she whispered quietly. Her eyes glowing with pain and intent, she kissed the warrior hard through the bars. Yasuo froze on the spot, surprised by her soft, warm lips grazing against his, and he gently tried to unwind her arms despite her persistence.
'I think I preferred the fighting,' Sona sighed, though her cheek twitched with amusement as she averted her eyes from the embrace. 'Seriously, break it up guys.'
'Ugh, please do. Separating you slimy bunch of rift scuttlers was not on my do-list.'
Katarina's irritated voice ripped the kiss apart, the echoing steps down the staircase raising hairs on the back of Quinn's neck. As the bloodthirsty redhead surveyed the ranger with her intense emerald-green eyes, a nerve prickled under the latter's eye and she felt as if she were drowning in the sound of her own blood pulsating against her ears. The ranger wondered why the infamous Katarina now looked apprehensive as she approached the prisoners, but any flickers of misgiving were soon replaced by a smooth killer's mask.
'You, Demacian,' she called out, pointing at Quinn as she spun a blade around her index finger. 'When you've finished making hybrid babies, the General would like to see you.'
'What about?' the ranger asked warily, eyeing the frantic blade in the Noxian's hand.
'I think you know,' she tutted, though the anxious gleam in her eyes betrayed the fact to Quinn that she too was in unfamiliar territory with Swain. 'Follow me, please.'
Quinn ignored Sona's pleading gaze before it could crumble her resolve, her arm sliding out of Yasuo's uncertain grasp as she followed the hot-headed assassin out of her opened cell.
'Is this related to Swain's bizarre notion that I'm his granddaughter?' the ranger asked in a pant, trying to keep up with Katarina's rapid stride. 'I mean, I'm glad he thinks that, as it saved me a date with death and your delightful sister… but he's talking nonsense, surely?'
'The General is a lot of things,' the blades-woman responded curtly. 'But he's never wrong. Consider yourself lucky that he made Cass reverse the magical scars she inflicted on you – he wouldn't have done that for anyone but family. Especially a pure Demacian.'
'But that's ridiculous!' Quinn spluttered, staring dumbfounded at Katarina. 'As you say, I'm pure Demacian. There is no way that I could be related to him, not in the slightest.'
'Hmm…' the Noxian assassin hummed, pausing to examine the wide-eyed ranger. 'Well, you sure do look like the daughter of a Crownguard, that's for sure. Tall, dark, athletic, toff's chin-'
'I do not have a toff's chin,' Quinn grumbled, and she was surprised to hear a titter slip from the assassin's crimson lips.
'Toff's chin,' Katarina insisted, unfamiliar humour glistening in her jewelled eyes. 'But your eyes…birdlike…golden…there's something in your blood line that doesn't add up. No pure Demacian would have eyes like that. You freaked my brother out in Piltover.'
Quinn fell silent briefly, her brawl with Talon churning in her head. She thought he had been startled by the odd clinking music that had reverberated around her as he had stooped to kill his prey, but now she knew that he must have been thrown off his guard by how her eyes metamorphosed into the bird's eyes of her mind-bind with Valor. Yet she had not been trying to connect to her avian friend in that moment, given that her mind had drawn a blank as she waited for her throat-gurgling death at Talon's hands. Before she could reflect further on the confusion surrounding her tussle with the Blade's Shadow, Katarina had steered her to a thick, panelled door. Rapping the brass knocker three times, a raspy reply caused the assassin to step back abruptly.
'I'll be back for you in an hour, ranger. Have fun. I'd probably not mention to your granddaddy that you were playing tonsil tennis with an Ionian just now.'
The ranger cursed at Katarina under her breath as she stepped into Swain's office once more, but was thankful for her silence on the matter. Straining her eyes under further candlelight as her hesitant footsteps clopped against the stone, she caught sight of the General smoking at his desk, offering a brief puff of the sweet substance to his bird before taking another drag. His shrivelled head had snapped up at the scrape of the door along the warped planks and he caught sight of Quinn. A toothy smile unfolded somewhat awkwardly on his face, the facial expression clearly unfamiliar to him as he leant on his magic staff to get a better look at the new arrival.
'Quinn! Sit down, my child,' he rattled, indicating a wicker chair plonked in front of his tattered wooden desk. 'I started to think that Rina had let you escape.'
'There's no chance of that, Swain,' she responded bitterly, though she took the proffered chair with a heavy flump. 'Guards door-to-door, bars framing my friends and myself. It's more trouble trying to escape than it's worth.'
'Glad to hear it!' the General wheezed, a chuckle sounding foreign on his pursed lips, 'although don't call me Swain. It's Jericho to you.' He stubbed out his sickly cigar on a nearby ashtray and cracked his knuckles, peering at the tensed ranger with a smile halfway to fondness. 'Now, Quinn. Where to start?'
'What – what do you mean?' she asked tersely, her golden eyes narrowing. 'I've nothing to share with you, if that's what you want. I'm not part of the Demacian army. I've no secrets to spill, and I wouldn't part with them if I did!'
'Baby steps!' Swain laughed, leaning back in his chair. 'Baby steps, my dear girl. I'm not interested in all that just yet, although I'm sure you'll come around to my way of thinking in the end. No, Quinn. I'm not interested in diplomacy, just this once. I'm interested in you.'
'Why?' the ranger asked guardedly, trying to avoid the luminescent red eyes that unsettled her soul to its very core. 'How am I interesting to you in any way?'
'Must I explain?' the General enquired, tilting his head to one side. 'The only female Demacian soldier on record? A survivor of both my assassins, the best in all of Noxus? And, most importantly – the fact you are my granddaughter? Plenty of food for thought.'
'There must be some mistake,' Quinn began, stiffening in her chair and grasping the General's desk. 'There's no way that you and I are family. I can assure you of that.'
'How?' Swain asked curiously, though a sneer danced in his reddened eyes as he surveyed the bold ranger. 'What proof do you have?'
'The fact that I have Demacian parents?' she responded incredulously, staring at the smug general in confusion. 'That I'm of pure Demacian descent? Is that not enough?'
'Your birth certificate?' Swain enquired, extending his hand out towards her.
'You're – you're not serious?' the ranger spluttered, withering away from his gnarled hand. 'I get captured at sea, on the run and penniless, and you think I happen to have my files on me?'
'You don't have them because you don't have them,' the arch-mage responded meaningfully, resting his bristled chin on his staff in amusement as one elderly eye-bag twitched. 'You've never seen your birth certificate, have you?'
'What's it to you?' she responded stiffly. 'Where I come from, most of the kids never saw their certificates because they couldn't even read.'
'Yes, yes, yes,' Swain said impatiently, waving his hand at her jolty reply, 'but most children don't look for their birth certificate because they know where they come from. A single, overworked mother, an abusive father, a happy, simple, peasant family – whatever the case may be, they didn't need to ask because they knew. But not you. You've never known.'
'I've never needed to know!' the range protested rowdily. 'I got everything I have from hard work and dedication. I didn't need Mama or Papa to put in a good word for me.'
'That's even more unusual in Demacian society, though, isn't it?' the High Commander interjected, stroking the bedraggled Beatrice as she perched on his shoulder. 'In the land of nepotism - Crownguards and Lightshields, diplomats and aristocrats - reputation and contacts are everything. In Demacia, everyone is aware of each other's heritage. And if there were not someone, somewhere, who had to prove your bloodlines – and, indeed, knew that your noble heritage could be exaggerated to overpower your Noxian descent - you wouldn't be in the Vanguard.' The Master Tactician leant forward suddenly. 'You are half Crownguard and half Swain, Quinn. I suggest you pick a side before it picks you.'
