The forest around Quinn was so peaceful that it felt surreal to have Talon dying in her arms.
Quinn had fallen on her knees, and held Talon's head on her thighs with what little strength she had left. Her limbs were trembling so bad that she wouldn't have been able to hold a stick if she wanted to.
"Quinn! There's a boy left for dead in my kitchen, what the hell hap..." Vianna rushed to her side as fast as she could, her voice laced with worry.
The older woman stopped breathless when she finally came close the Demacian ranger and the man she held...
"Is that... Talon..." Vianna's voice quavered.
The Noxian assassin was unrecognizable. The bloodbath had left him drenched in red, sticking strands of darkened hair on his forehead and over his eyes. Quinn could only raise her head to Vianna and nod. The tears in the corners of her eyes were being fought over by grief and hope.
After a quick worried look to the younger woman, Vianna kneeled by Talon and rolled up her sleeves. Questions would be for later...
Her mouth was a tight thin line as she examined the state Talon was in. The large gash on his torso and stomach was profusely bleeding, and the odd shape of his ribs indicated a few of them had been broken.
"Can you... Do something..." Quinn choked out.
Vianna took in a deep breath.
"I'll save his life first... We'll see for the rest later."
Vianna put a strand of messy hair behind her ear and brought her taut hands over Talon's chest. He was still breathing, but had lost so much blood that it would only be a matter of time before it was too late. A faint, golden light emanated from her palms and went down to cover Talon's gaping wound. The blood stopped spurting out uncontrollably, and slowly stopped flowing as if it was freezing in place.
Vianna's eyes were closed, the considerable effort of magic making her sweat. Quinn tightly held Talon's hand and still supported the back of his head. Though she was on the verge of passing out, her body and mind fought to stay conscious.
A sharp breath found its way in Talon's lungs, and made his body jolt at once. Quinn's jaw was set so hard it started to hurt, but she refused to let his hand go when his muscles started having spasms. She then looked at Vianna, and was taken aback by the state of shock the woman was in.
"Will he... Will he live?" Quinn murmured.
"He will." Vianna blew out.
She marked a pause.
"My dear... Please forgive me..."
"What?!" Quinn's heartbeat had risen at this single sentence.
"His mental barriers... They've never been that low." Her voice was trembling.
"What are you trying to tell me?" Quinn was shaking too.
"I can not only pry into his mind... I can share it, too."
"You mean... You're asking me to come with you?!"
Quinn couldn't believe this was happening.
"This occasion will not come again."
"But he told you he didn't want you to do it anymore!" Quinn tried defending Talon. But the older woman was decided.
"I'll do it anyway, and you won't stop me." She raised her chin. "Don't you wish to know who your man really is?"
Quinn's quivering lips were unable to form words yet, but her mind was at war with itself. A part of her tried to find ways around it, but a single word floated above everything else: Betrayal.
It was nothing more, nothing less.
"Touch my shoulder if you change your mind. Quinn... Don't lose that chance to know the truth." Vianna's serious voice echoed in her ears.
The woman closed her eyes and put her old fingers on Talon's temples. Her breath was steady and calm, but her orbits behind her eyelids were moving as if she was in a dream.
Quinn looked at her blood-soaked lover, and shed a single tear. After all, her mother had always told her curiosity was a bad thing. Curiosity had killed Caleb.
Quinn felt like a ghost when she laid her timid hand on Vianna's shoulder. A sudden dizziness took hold of her, and the world started spinning.
When she started seeing again, she knew she had betrayed Talon.
A scrawny boy who wasn't more than ten years old was lying in a muddy paved street, his head on the ground. His clothes were ripped in all places, and his trembling form gave the impression that he couldn't get up. His revealed skin was covered with bruises, and a large one stood right above his eye.
Foul laughter erupted behind him. A group of four boys, older or at least taller than him, watched him and were amused by his painful state.
The boy seemed like he was about to faint... But when he opened his intact eye, a fiery amber glint shone in his iris. Almost instantly, one of the boys kicked him in the stomach.
"Get to sleep, bastard!" He spat.
The boy closed his eyes, pretending to fall into unconsciousness.
Quinn watched everything. The blurry world framing the memory didn't seem to exist enough to make her focus on anything else but the boy. Time felt slow. But the boy waited, and when the group finally left, he opened his eyes again and painfully supported himself on his elbows. He stared at where the group had left long after they were gone. His eyes were set aflame.
Rain fell on this moonless night.
The boys who had beaten the lonely one were huddled together under a porch that barely shielded them from the rain. Not at all from humidity. Their sleep was uneasy and uncomfortable. Even after what she had witnessed earlier, Quinn wanted to cover them with something warm.
She had almost not heard the light footsteps coming from the edge of the narrow street. The younger boy was there, completely drenched from the rain. A simple dark cloth masked his face up to the nose.
A faint glint in the darkness drew her eyes on the rusty blade that the boy was firmly holding. It looked like it would snap like a twig if he chose to break it in two.
The boy took his time, but didn't hesitate as he slit the throat of the sleeping figure that was the farthest from the rest of the group. He immediately clasped his hand over the mouth that desperately searched for air. The others barely stirred in their sleep as the blood pooled from the open throat and merged with the muddy rain.
Quinn looked away from this child murdering other children. Being in a memory made it difficult to know what her own body was experiencing, but she knew she cried.
The neverending rivers of blood in the night and muffled cries told her that the boy murdered the rest of the group without blinking.
After a long moment of silence only punctuated by the splattering of the rain, Quinn checked on the boy. He was sitting next to the corpses, still holding the blade with his shaking hand.
He was crying, too.
Quinn had stopped counting the murders. Over time, the boy had become a man. He was less scrawny, and his body was hardened like battered leather. His eyes remained the same though, and never wavered in front of their victims.
The fathers of the group of boys who had come for vengeance.
The leader of a band of thugs who wanted him dead.
A prostitute who had beaten him when she found him asleep in an empty bedroom.
Endless packs of stray dogs who fought over his food.
The captain of the guard in charge of the district.
And then... Had come the fight with the red-haired man.
Quinn had thought this opponent would have left him to die on the pavement, but he instead gave him the first choice of his life. She felt how impressed Talon had been by this incredible swordsman, and how, with the years, he had grown to respect him and consider him as a father figure.
He had never told him, though.
Marcus Du Couteau had always been hard with Talon. He had never showed him he cared, but Talon believed he did. Each mission was pure delight, and Talon took pride in the perfection of the executions.
He wasn't killing for survival anymore. He was killing for his master. Eliminating enemies on the path of someone greater than them.
One day, the General gave a new target to Talon. The daughter of a Noxian dignitary. Talon hadn't hesitated when he had introduced himself in the mansion, then in the bedroom of the woman.
Only then, when he found himself over her sleeping body in her bed, he saw that she was no woman... Not yet. She was probably fourteen, the traces of childhood still lingered on her face. Quinn felt the storm inside Talon's mind, his questioning of the killing. He usually never needed a reason and gladly killed for his master.
But there... He wanted to know why he had to kill this girl. The image of disappointment and disgust on the General's face came to his mind, and shook him to the core. He repeated himself that his father had his reasons to order her death. There had to be a reason.
Talon made it as quick and painless as possible. He had become such a master in the art of killing that he aimed for the soft skin under her armpit, straight to her heart. It had been brief, she hadn't even had the time to scream.
He went out of her room through the window, his heart full of silenced pain. Quinn could swear she saw something shine on his cheek as he left... But her own heart was bleeding.
Talon later had news that the murder of the dignitary's daughter started a war between two noble families from Noxus. She was betrothed to a young man of a noble family who would have inherited all the land around the Du Couteau domain. Later, the General had discovered that this family had plans to invade his domain...
This murder had probably saved the Du Couteau family. But sometimes, Talon thought of the young girl's peaceful face in his sleep.
Marcus Du Couteau's disappearance had left Talon hollow.
He had gone on the search like a lost soul in pain, feeling like he was nothing more than a ghost.
Was it grief he felt? Talon had never known which word to use to describe feelings he didn't even try to acknowledge. He always pushed these unpleasant sensations deep under his skin, where he hoped they would dissolve in the pile of bodies of his past.
The scarce signs of the General he had found had taken him to Ixtal... He had found traces of his father in ancient ruins, but there again, he was nowhere to be found. He seemed to have vanished from the world.
Talon had been back from these ruins when he had seen Quinn. He had hesitated in killing her... After all, it would have been easy. It would have been what his father would have wanted.
But when the scout had tried to shoot him, then had been knocked unconscious, Talon had thought of how vulnerable he had been as a boy when he had been beaten up in this dirty street. He had thought of how vulnerable the young girl he killed in her sleep had been. And how vulnerable he was now.
He would not blindly kill again.
A dark anger that didn't belong to her stirred Quinn from her contemplation of the memory. She was being pulled out of it, while walls fell one by one before her. Talon was not unconscious anymore.
When she came back to the present, Quinn was exhausted. Her limbs released the pain they had been keeping, and her overall weakness forced her to fall on her knees. Vianna was right next to her in a similar state, and both women looked at each other.
Vianna's lips formed a word: Sorry.
The man whose mind they had been intruding was sitting in an odd way, bent over his own wound like it was still bleeding. He was now wide awake, piercing Quinn with flaring eyes.
Quinn could barely speak, but managed to utter a word.
"Talon..." She weakly said.
Her lover didn't answer. He simply glared at her, still covered in blood, his eyebrows frowned and his nose scrunched up. He was disgusted, and angry.
"Like what you see?" His voice was deep and sharp like a knife.
"I... I'm sorry..." Quinn whispered.
"It's too late to be sorry."
"What I saw... It doesn't change anything for us! Talon..."
"Don't lie. Of course it does."
"I know you Talon. You're not..."
"The same?" He snickered acidly. "Ask this old hag, I'm not sure she agrees."
Vianna didn't pick up on the insult and stayed mute. Quinn trembled, but she tried to come by Talon's side. Talon held his hand up, stopping her.
They silently stayed like this for what felt like an eternity.
"I'm the one who should be sorry." Talon darkly said. "For thinking I could become someone else."
"B-But it doesn't matter!" Quinn started crying.
"It does!" Anger rose in his voice like a tidal wave. "Do you want to live like this? In a perpetual man hunt, hated and wanted dead by every single person in this world? Do you want to live everyday with a murderer? Do you want..." He choked on his words. "... Children with a murderer? DO YOU?" He panted, then spoke more coldly. "No... I'm not sure you want that."
Talon slowly stood up. He was still weak from the fight, but didn't bleed anymore thanks to Vianna.
"You... Keep her safe." He emptily asked the older woman. "Keep her away from me."
"What are you saying... T-Talon..." Quinn begged in tears.
She didn't notice Vianna walk up behind her and hold her wrists. She was too weak to break free, and Vianna was surprisingly strong. Talon looked at Quinn one last time, and started walking away.
"No! NO! LET ME GO!" She wailed like a child. Fighting against Vianna's grasp was useless. "Let me GO! TALON!"
He didn't stop at her screams. His silhouette disappeared into the thick woods, and behind Quinn's blurry tears. She cried until she had no strength left, and Vianna held her in her arms. The older woman stroked her hair, whispering empty comforting words.
Quinn was paralyzed by shock, her mind didn't seem to work anymore. She couldn't believe they had been nearly making love a few hours ago, and that now the Noxian assassin had left her...
It was all her fault. She had betrayed him.
[IMPORTANT: The story now has a cover ! It's been drawn by the amazingly talented Vy1k, aka kiwin_vy1k on Twitter. Here is the link to the full piece:
/kiwin_vy1k/status/1807759912535269592?t=XvLOrIOi-b2kII8SgsM9YA&s=19
These great news kinda lighten the mood of this darker chapter. As always, I hope you enjoyed it.]