An old Italian was inside to wait on customers.

As I was paying him I saw that he was sad.

"You are sad," I said. "What is troubling you?"

"Yes," he said, "I am sad." Then he added

in the same monotone, not looking at me:

"My son left for the front today and I'll never see him again."

"Don't say that!" I said. "Of course, you will!"

"No," he answered. "I'll never see him again."

[During the Second World War . . .] (Charles Reznikoff)

ONE MONTH AGO...

There was a boy counting rocks on the hill.

He was bent over in thought, his face all scrunched up. The rocks had sharp edges, as was the nature of volcanic rock, and would've cut a careless youth's hands to ribbons. But this boy was different. Still at the lip of adolescence, his hands were already calloused at the palm and at the thumb.

He handled the rocks easily. He would pick them up and run the tip of his finger against the jagged edges, testing the durability of his flesh against the cutting edge. If the stone made a mark against his skin, he would put it into a smaller pile. Failing that, the little thing was thrown over his shoulder, discarded.

He was not a scholar. If he was, the thickened skin would be on the third and first fingers. He was not a musician either, as his fingers were not long and elegant enough. They were about as squat and hardy as he was, which was to say that he lacked the dexterity and finesse required to play anything. He was thickly built for his age, at a time when the rest of his peers were still slowly filling out. He had unruly black hair that tended to stick out, a nose that was too sharp to be considered as a handsome feature at the age of twelve, a square jaw and a mouth seemingly set in a thin-lipped frown.

Compared to the rest of his features, however, his eyes had some light in them; holding in their depths some hint that he was not purely made of muscle and not completely stupid. A woodcutter's son didn't have much by the way of words, but he had the advantage of street-smarts, which in Noxus was about as valuable as intelligence itself- given the right place and the right time.

Certainly, counting rocks was not a very fruitful endeavor, nor was it very smart to do so, but it was to the boy. Once he had gathered a sizable pile of the sharpest rocks he could find, he gathered them all up in his worn-down shirt and went down the hill like a demented apple picker whose fruits lay inside an apron. He did not skip, because that was simply too silly to do so and he felt that there was no point in skipping when one would lose the rocks one had worked so hard to find.

He walked past rows of dead trees whose spindly fingers reached for the heavens, past the barren land where a few unlucky farmers were trying to make do. His sandal-clad feet hit the beaten road with flat thumps. Five hundred seconds brought him over the deadly moat that encircled the city-state and into one of the less prosperous wards. The massive granite skull that was the seat of Noxian High Command loomed over the gates, seemingly watching the boy and his strange burden.

He moved through the crowd easily. His patched-up clothes and drab colors blended in with everyone else's. It wasn't often that anyone with colorful clothing ran through the streets of Noxus, except maybe in the more expensive and prosperous Wards. It was not because everyone in Noxus had to wear dark colors, or had rules on dying cloth a shade of black. It was simply because color, or rather the creation of dye, was expensive in Noxus.

Unlike in Demacia, where coloring plants and their bright dyes were so easily taken from the surrounding areas, the aforementioned plants refused to grow in Noxus. It was as if the very land itself would not allow it. Whatever color the ancestors could manage to coax from the land was what the Noxians of today settled with: red was made from the corpses of insects raised on the trees outside; yellow was boiled from a root; blue, never as bright as Demacian blue, was created from the ground remnants of a shrub; boiled lichens created a deep green, and black was scraped from deep within the earth, and then mixed with pitch.

It was a sign of wealth then, to have so many colors on one's person, but red was always more prestigious for the simple reason that insect corpses were harder to gather and grind up than it was to simply mix ochre with pitch. The deeper the shade of red and the closer it was to the color of blood, the more the cloth and therefore the resulting clothing, was valued. It was for this same reason that redheads, particularly those from the house of Du Couteau, are often thought of as lucky or blessed within Noxus- but that is a story for another time.

The boy's leggy stride, which was quite awkward by his standards due to an incessant spring in his step that no amount of practice was going to remove, brought him up a ramp and through a gate into Emerald Ward, one of the more affluent areas in Noxus. Situated close to the famed Ivory Ward market and a stone's throw from the high-walled, private residences of several Noxian politicians, the Ward was ideal for those who sought to see the wealthy and influential members of High Command, but did not have enough money to know the aforementioned politicians personally. It was an excellent location for namedroppers and people who had links to the darker side of Noxus, but the boy didn't know that. Not yet at least.

Here, his plain clothing earned a couple of stares, but then again this was Emerald Ward. When one is surrounded by guardsmen who worked for particularly influential men, a boy and his odd burden are easily ignored. He squeezed himself past a gate, creeping through alleyway after alleyway until he came to a walled residence. Dried branches covered the cracked wall; the fence atop it was made of cast-iron.

The house itself was manned by scowling gargoyles and gaping faces that expelled water during the rains. The roof was made of deep purple slate, layered on top of each other like a pinecone. Candlelight emanated from the numerous glass windows, the latter also being a luxury in a place where most of the populace lived underground.

The boy stared up at the walls for a moment, perhaps considering that climbing was not an option where the fence could easily impale him. Instead, he skirted around the walls until he found what he was looking for: a postern gate, rusted and overwhelmed by black thorny bushes from years of disuse. With practiced ease, the burly teenager ducked under the branches, never making a sound where the thorns bit into his flesh. Bleeding in some places, he laid a hand on the gate and planted his feet on the ground, pulling at it with all his might.

Contrary to its appearance, the gate swung open easily. He had been here before, oiling the hinges and coaxing movement from metal long inert. So it was clear that he had plannedthis far at least. Still holding his strange burden, he pushed his bulk past the small opening- a marvel, really- and landed in a fertilizer pile. Now, other people would've been bothered by that fact, because aside from the disgusting, gut-wrenching smell, the pile had maggot-ridden fruits and earthworms crawling this way and that. It did not bother the boy. He merely pulled a worm from his hair and set it down back into the soft earth.

He spread the rocks on the pile and took some time packing the sharp rocks in balls of moist earth. Once he had gathered a sizable amount, he looked up at a particular window, lifted his hand and then threw the sharpest rock in his arsenal that wasn't yet incorporated into a fertilizer missile.

Now, under normal circumstances, glass would be able to resist the missile. It was good Noxian glass, made from the black sand near the swamplands. Tempered right, it could resist an arrow or a bullet. However, this family was not that wealthy, and when they had the house built, the windows and its glass were the least of their worries. So when it was faced with a thrown, sharp volcanic rock, the glass was about as durable as paper. Needless to say, it broke, and the shards scattered everywhere.

Shouts emerged from the house. The boy was still in the fertilizer pile, holding onto the first of his disgusting missiles. When a head emerged at the windowsill, the boy squinted up at him. It was not until he saw blonde hair and a blue ribbon that he took aim and let loose. The pressed ball hit the blonde teenager right on the forehead. Decaying matter splattered everywhere, the sharp rock cut deep. The blonde let out a scream, his hand clapped to his bleeding face.

Other people came to the window now, and the boy fired away. If the sharp rocks didn't do their work, the decaying earth did. It wasn't long before he ran out of missiles. By then, the screaming had reached a fever-pitch in the house. The corner of the boy's thin lip quirked upward in a rare smile. He turned his back and would've escaped through the gate again, but at that moment, fate was not with him.

A hand closed on his collar and pulled him out of the heap. Disoriented, the boy's face settled into a snarl the moment he realized who had pulled him out. The blonde boy, his face bloody and his clothes stinking as much as his was, was screaming at him.

"You!" The blonde boy's fist, laden with a large ruby-studded ring, connected with his nose. There was a sharp crack and a river of red. The boy's teeth slipped, and he almost bit into his own tongue from the force. Shaking his head like a dog and raising his hands, he did his best to protect his face and head as the blows rained down.

The boy was used to being hit. It was a thing of life for someone less certain of their position in society. He stiffened his body and endured. The blonde boy was not used to giving punches. Soon enough, he screamed when he broke his own wrist on the black-haired youth's jaw.

The black-haired boy was covered in decaying leaves and dirt. As for war wounds, his nose was broken. He could taste his own blood on his tongue. Slowly, he lowered his hands, surveying his opponent. The blonde boy was still screaming at him, his hand in a disturbing angle. Tears were gathering at the corners of his eyes.

The black-haired boy drew his fist back and smashed the other child's face in.

"Tell me you don't deserve that," He sneered. It would've been an imposing, deciding statement- if only his voice didn't crack. Puberty was a bitch when one was trying to make an example of someone. "Go on."

"Fuck off. You're a whore's son, Darius." The blonde boy snapped. "And your fucking brother's a queer." His voice was also cracking, so it was almost comedic to listen to the both of them. They were two children trying to be adults, in a world where adults and children were about as similar as a bird was to a fish.

Darius spat in the blonde boy's eye, eliciting a scream. "Fuck you." He snarled out as he kicked the other boy in the groin for good measure. The other boy shrieked at a pitch too high for his voice as Darius jabbed a finger in the kid's direction. "If I fucking catch you talking shit about my family again, Adrian, I'm going to wipe the floor with your face and send your teeth to your own fucking father."

"Or else what?" Adrian, the youngest son of Maynard de Croix, managed to squeeze out a smile even though his entire frame shook with the shock of having his jewels kicked. Blood, tears and saliva pooled at the edges of his mouth- he made a disturbing sight. "You don't know who or what the hell you're dealing with. You don't know anything. You're just stupid street trash that can talk big and hit hard- fucking cannon fodder."

"I know exactly what I'm dealing with," Darius shot back- the very picture of childish bravado with his puffed out chest and bloody knuckles. "I'm dealing with a worthless fifth son who can't bite worth shit. Whatever you've got, I'll take it. Whatever shit you can dream up, I'll fucking top it, so bring it on."

If Adrian could've turned a darker shade of puce from his rage, he would have. As it was, he let out a ferocious hiss as he launched himself at the heavier boy. In his free hand, he gripped the volcanic rock that Darius had thrown at his face.

Adrian moved quickly. He was too fast for Darius to anticipate where he had to be to avoid the blow. Suddenly, there was heat over his left eye, and then a rush of warmth over his cheeks. Darius staggered back and clapped a hand over his face, making a disgruntled noise. It was as if a mouse had just prodded a lion with a needle. An annoying blow, one that only delayed the inevitable beating for Adrian, but it was still a blow nonetheless.

Grinning victoriously, the white of his eyes and teeth disturbingly visible under the black dirt and blood that covered his face, Adrian gripped the bloody rock in his fist. "I almost feel sorry for you. I'll make you fucking regret saying that to me- that fucking family you're so proud of? That little piece-of-shit hole in the ground you call a home? Hold on to it as long as you can, because I'm going to-"

Deciding that the other boy had talked enough, Darius kicked the other child in the face. By now, there was a great noise outside the walls. The constables were at the gates. Giving the squirming form one last kick in the ribs, Darius turned tail and fled. His hand was still clapped over his bleeding brow as Adrian's howls of pain filled his ears.

Far off into the future, an older Darius would think on Adrian's words and curse his younger self for being too stupid to think, for not considering what he had just done. But that is notnow.

Now was this: in a small culvert some distance away from the walled place where he beat Adrian de Croix's face in, Darius washed his face and gingerly probed at his broken nose. The bruises would heal, as they always did, but there was no way to hide the afternoon's latest acquisitions from his parents. At the very least, he didn't want to bother them with mending his nose, so Darius pulled out a wrapped up object from his pocket and set it on a nearby brick. It was a mirror- to be more precise, it was the shard of one.

It had come from a broken mirror he found a few weeks ago from a storm drain near Ivory Ward after a particularly nasty monsoon season. Despite having gone through hell, the mirror's faux gold frame was still beautiful to look at, and so he had given it to his mother so he could see her smile. He still kept the shard with him for two reasons: to look around corners with, and then to stab someone if they got on his bad side. He could've stabbed Adrian with the shard, but then again that would be cheating. The use of rocks was already a bit too cowardly for him, but then again, he had only planned to cause property damage and to stink up the other boy's bedroom with gobs of fertilizer.

Still, it was nice, Darius reflected, that I was able to pummel Adrian to bits. He had planned on delivering his message of 'leave my family alone' by defacing Adrian's front yard through the clever use of dog excrement and some lamp oil, but beating the hell out of the other boy in his own yard was fine too- even if he did get chewed out in the process.

He used the mirror shard now to squint at his reflection, and to take stock of his wounds. He had never been handsome- his father was best described as 'doughty' and his mother, as much as he loved her, was about as plain as the wallpaper on the walls in the noble houses she served in- so he never felt that his facial features was his best asset. Even with that preconception, the face that stared back at him was absolutely mortifying. The yellow and purple bruises on his cheeks and jaw were beginning to make themselves known. His lip had split and his nose was a smashed mess, but it was the great jagged slash over his brow, narrowly missing his eye, which made him reel back from his own reflection.

"Stupid." Darius muttered to himself as he soaked his shirt in some rainwater and dabbed at his face. It was an offense against hygiene, but he was made of sterner stuff. The twelve year old repeated the mantra over and over, wincing each and every time he pressed too hard. He ran his tongue over his teeth and the inside of his mouth and made dissatisfied noises under his breath when he tasted his own blood.

"Stupid," He repeated to himself, though this time the words came out slurred and heavy from his swollen lip. He looked up at the sky, at the rapidly sinking sun, and cursed under his breath. He was late. People were expecting him back home, and he still hadn't gotten the goat's cheese his mother had wanted him to get earlier that day.

Cursing to himself again, he wrapped up the shard in cloth and jammed it into his pocket. He stood up shakily and stumbled off to where he knew the night market would be starting in less than an hour. Regardless of his wounds, he had only one thing in his mind, the object that required his utmost attention as of the moment: goat's cheese.

Author's Note: It's a slow start- but then again I wanted to show how Darius was before. He knows his strengths and he sticks to them, and he doesn't hesitate to use it on other people when they piss him off- regardless of who they are. Typical bruiser.