Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fire.

The sky is fire. Blazing red on red, sunset, plagued with banners and blood. The juxtaposed cool of the encroaching night sweeps it’s deadly hand across the town -- the battlefield. But I do not feel cold. 

My sister’s fresh corpse still warms me from where she lays, smothering my chest. Her eyes, once so jovial, no longer spark. Dull, and glassy, they stare past my chin at a hard muddy earth. Her blood, warm where it touches her, has long since chilled, leaving my soaked sides in the unfortunate state of icy wetness. 

I try not to focus on the feeling, or on her, so all that left is the sky. The sky, and the screams of my neighbors, friends, customers. The screams of everyone I’ve ever known. The screams of traders on business from the larger cities of Demacia. Cries, for our king. Pleads, for the sparing of lives.

And then silence. And I’m left with the sky. Just the sky.

I don’t know how long it is before the tsunami of voices turns to tidal waves or the fires of our houses smolder out into ash, but I do know that throughout it all I don’t dare take a breath. I don’t blink. I don’t move. I lay there, my sister warming me, hiding me, protecting me. Because in death, that’s all she can do.

I wait as I can hear them spiking through still crawling bodies with swishing tips of swords. I wait as they chuckle and jest and split the bounty of our gold. I wait as they demand the cowering survivors to round up in the now demolished town square.

I wait, and I pray to the protector that they don’t find me for the fate they wish me is surely no worse than death.

My lungs scream but with the help of my sister’s corpse I force them to remain constricted. 

Don’t breathe.

Don’t blink.

Be dead.

Act dead.

I don’t breathe when a boot kicks by my head. I don’t blink when a face replaces the sun above me. My eyes don’t dare betray me with tears as I stare down the burly man whose metallic shoulder pads seem sharper than his sword. 

I only pray yet again, this time begging that he spare me from impalement. 

Be dead.

A smug grin spreads across his busted lips. With a chuckle, he kicks my head once again. Steel boots, yet not a sound leaves me.

“Hey!” He calls, eyes slipping off me as his head turns over a broad shoulder. “I’ve got a live one here.”

No!

Outed, adrenaline floods my veins, enough to give me the strength to shove my sister’s body from mine and leap to my feet. I stagger, but I sprint, just barely managing to not fall over. 

He’s chasing me. He has to be chasing me. He’s faster than me. I know that. There’s no way I’ll escape. But…

I keep running, eyes dry as the ash that I suck down with every breath of air. It coats my lungs but gritted teeth keeps back a cough.

I don’t hear footsteps. I don’t hear the clang of armor. I don’t hear shouts or threats. 

I brave a glance back to find the man, now joined by three others, laughing by my exposed hiding place. They watch me, intrigued, in the way you watch a monkey at a zoo. 

They know they can come get me. They know I won’t get far. They know, even if I run, I won’t make it out of here alive. 

They know they’ve already beaten me. So why try?

Determined to make them regret that assumption, I b-line for a stone pillar that once held the walls of a house. 

I can’t outrun them, but something tells me they can’t climb in that armor.

I jump about halfway up, my nails clawing at the stone. My feet connect but it’s almost not enough to keep me from slipping and sliding down the pillar to my certain death at their hands. 

The move surprises them enough to break their laughter and send them my way. They’ve slow, walking, but I still have a chance. 

I pull myself up, the muscles in my arms quivering beneath by body weight. A little higher. Just a little higher. 

I clamer up the beam, my kicking feet just barely out of reach of their overhead ax swings. The Higher I climb, the more I start to realize that there’s nothing stopping them from just knocking the post down.

My eyes lock onto a tree. I think I can make the jump from here. But then what? They’ll just tip that too.

I’m dead.

“Come down now and I’ll let you stay in once piece!” The man from before shouts, his ax raised high beside his sword, both chipping with dried blood.

“Die,” Another armored man beside him sneers, “or join the glory of Noxus!”

A choice.

Just like back then with my sister, I now have a choice. I can live, and be at the mercy of a ravenous empire that sees little worth to human life. Or I can die, in a land ruled by a king who may soon lose his throne to these barbarous men and women. 

With a swallow that does nothing to calm my assaulted throat, I shout back, with as much conviction as I can muster, “For the glory of Noxus.”

It’s enough to convince the hyenas to let me dismount from my pillar of stone. With a shove or two, they lead me to the town square where the rest of the survivors and soldiers are busy with a confrontation. 

My people kneel, most not by choice, between a border of soldiers and a woman as scarred as Kintsugi. The hyena’s and I approach from behind, cutting the woman’s speech short as we silently demand attention. 

Be brave.

I see a few familiar faces amongst the terrified herd, but no one I’d call a friend. No. Days for friends were long gone even before the Noxians showed up. For me, at least. 

The closest to that I had to that was an owner of sorts, a madam for the brothel I belong to. Belonged to. I wonder if my contract has a war clause?

The madam’s an older woman, one who sits at the very front of this group, and hard to miss with her deep black eyeliner and bright red lips. Wrinkles sag her moldy skin. She sneers, even through her fear, when she sees me approach, never one to smile. 

It’s somehow easier for me to turn my eyes to the apparent leader of this group than to keep them on her. Dark eyes immune to the staggering sight of death, the leader’s heavy glare weighs down on my very soul. 

She’s maybe ten years older than me, somewhere in her forties, and looks like she belongs on a battlefield, like she was born on one. Her defined muscles are almost comically larger than I’m used to, like someone’s taken a funhouse mirror distortion and turned it to reality. Her armor is wrapped with a deep crimson shawl, her arms free from the restraint of shoulder guards and bracers. To better swing a weapon, I suppose.

“This one,” the man that found me says, shoving me forward with a square boot to my back, “has already pledged her allegiance to Noxus.”

The militant woman scans me, head tilting, arms by her sides, she takes in every inch. Then, her eyes rest upon mine once more.

“Do not look so disheartened, child,” she says. “This is a day for celebration. Today, you will start to be judged not by your status, but by your strength.”

A booming hu-rah of agreement echoes from the wall of soldiers. My people all flinch. 

The leader turns back to the crowd, with a commanding voice that outside the circumstances might be one to send shivers down my spine and butterflies to my stomach.

“You will all be given this chance. Denounce your king, and join the strength of the empire. Or let us end your weak life.”

A man I recognize as the blacksmith of our town, rises from his seat. In a moment of true strength as I’ve ever seen it, he boldly declares his loyalty for our king and is consequently struck down by a soldier’s blade. His wife and child cry out as they’re sprayed with his blood. 

The soldier raises his weapon once again but before the hit lands the wife calls, “I’ll join you! I’ll join Noxus!”

The man halts and the leader grins. With a nod of her head, she signals the man to escort the woman and child to me, starting a group that swiftly grows. 

By the end of it all, only five of the townsfolk chose to die. The rest of us, were welcomed to our new nation and promised of opportunities to grow. Given, of course, that you had the strength to take them. 

Lined up, we are asked one by one what our job is. I start to panic as miners are told they’ll be shipped off and anyone with a job not deemed worthy is drafted to the infantry where they will surely die.

“And what service can you be to the empire?” The leader asks the man to my left. I’m next.

“I-I raise cattle on my farm.”

“Do you butcher the cattle yourself?”

He gulps. “N-No ma’am. They are dairy cows.”

She gives one of her soldiers a look and the man is taken away. Where? To his farm? To the military? She doesn't say. I don't want to guess. If he wasn’t good enough, then how will I possibly escape a life in service to the blade?

“Ah, our little defector.” She grins. 

Her eyes send me through a flurry of emotions, fear being one but hope being another. Hope to survive. Hope…to see that look again.

“What service can you offer me?”

It’s the first time she’s asked the question that way. To her. Not to the empire, no. What can I offer her.

My voice runs away, just when I need it most. 

Do I lie? If I say that I work in a brothel, it’s a coin flip what she’ll do with me. But if I lie, and lack the skills of the trade I mentioned, would that not be punishable? 

The answer, it turns out, isn’t mine to give.

“She’s a whore.” The madam scowls from my right. 

I swallow hard.
The leader hums, her lips pulling to a grin as one of her calloused hands lightly brushes my chin.

“Is that true?”

My voice comes back to aid me. “Yes.”

Her smile grows, a hungry dark smile, as her eyes glint with that look I know all too well. The look of a predator finding their prey. 

“I think you’ll make quite a nice toy for my journey back home. My bounty, for conquering this city.”

Where is home? Where will she be taking me? I can’t protest. I can’t refuse. 

This isn’t one of the choices I get to make.

Turning to her soldiers, her hand drops from my chin. “Take this one to my quarters and ready her for when I’m finished here. It’s been an awfully stressful day, and I could use a bit of relaxation.”

I’m dragged by both arms towards the temporary sea of red tent barracks, but not before hearing the fate of my madam.

“And you--?”

“Own that whore you’re taking.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. You own nothing. You are nothing. You are only what you are strong enough to take. I must ask, are you strong enough to take her from me?”

Silence.

“Welcome to Noxus.”

Chapter Text

I stand almost naked inside a crimson red tent, my clothing having been removed by too many hands. I’ve been washed and dried like a show pig before being stuffed into a burgundy silk robe that only falls to the middle of my thigh and hardly wraps around my mid section enough to cover my chest. Though, I suppose that’s the point.

Most of my clients at the brothel were miners or farmers. No one fancy, and primarily men. I’m in the dark here, thrusted into a jungle of unfamiliarity. I suppose I could try to escape, but I doubt I’d get far. So I wait. Not daring to sit, I stand right on the spot where they’d left me, like the good little show pig I am.

Alone, my mind wanders back to my sister, Esvele. 

“Why can’t you ever just listen to me?”

That had been the last thing I said to her before the barbarian lanced her through. 

She’d wanted to stay in the house; She’d wanted to hide. If we’d prayed, she’d said, the protectors, Kayle and Morgana, would save us. I wonder if that’s true.

I pushed her to flee. I dragged her from our home. 

And then I watched her die.

I don’t know why that brute didn’t kill me too. Perhaps I froze when she fell on me and he assumed me dead. Or maybe someone else caught his attention, someone stronger, someone who’d be a real challenge for him. 

Would things have been different if we’d stayed? Would Esvele still be alive? Would the divine protectors have actually come? Her faith was always so strong, just as our father’s was.

Why then, are they the ones who are dead?

My feet finally find the nerve the move, taking me to the edge of the bed where I kneel. Folding my hands together, I close my eyes and pray. 

“I honor you, protectors and call to you to save me now. I ask of you to guide my people, to rescue us from the war we didn’t want. Please, if you can hear me, know some of us still believe. We know there will be a day that you join us again in this realm and you’ll--”

“Your gods are weak.” The scarred woman’s casual tone sends a chill down my spine. “Where were they today? On the battlefield, there is no God, only strength.”

Silently, I unfold my hands and wait for an order, my eyes angled down, my back still to her. I wait calmly for an order, not wanting to join the mass grave I’m sure they’ve started to dig. Soon, the air once filled with the smell of muffins from the bakery will reak only of rot as my neighbors, as Esvele, get torn apart by crows and vultures.

“Help me undress,” the woman commands, and so I rise and do as I’m told.

Uncovering layers of deep scars and bruises of varying ages, my fingers absent-mindedly linger by her side where a set of three ridges tear across her treebark skin. They’re claw marks, just like the ones my father came home with the morning after his final hunt. 

I knew that day that he was taking too long. He’d said he was only checking the small game traps but it had been hours. Esvele had wanted to go out looking for him but I’d told her to wait. We were just finishing breakfast when he’d staggered through the door, half a rabbit slung over his shoulder, his chest pouring blood. He’d died of infection three days later. Maybe if I’d just listened to Esvele then, he’d still be alive.

My trance breaks when my hand is roughly yanked up to a breast. I’m not entirely sure what to do. I know what she wants, but a woman’s body is still new to me. Though, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I favored it.

“Do not be so nervous, child.” I’m told.

I’m pulled by the back of my neck into a kiss that’s more deep than it is rough. Finally, my fingers get to work, massaging her voluptuous chest. Satisfied with my action, she releases my hand and grabs my ass, squeezing like a boa constrictor through the thin fabric. 

I pinch her now hardened nipple between my index finger and tumb, pulling lightly. 

She pulls away from the kiss just enough to look me in the eyes, her breath ghosting my lips as she says, “Harder, girl. I won’t break.”

Nodding gently, I roll the sensitive spot between my fingers and tug harder. I’m rewarded with a moan. I toy with her more, my other hand moving to her other breast as she watches me, eyes full of hunger.

Cold.

A cold wet river drips down into my hand. It sticks between my fingers, thick and vile. My eyes sweep down to find red. Blood. A snake of blood, slithering down her neck, past her shoulder, to where it’s rolling down her tit and onto my hand. 

My stomach churns. I want to pull away. I want to vomit. I want to not be here. I want to be anywhere else.

Esvele.

Her dead eyes, staring at me as blood drips into the whites. Her cheeks losing color as I was forced to stare at her, unblinking, dead, as she grew heavier and stiffer with rigor mortis.

The screams, the flames, the pleas with soldiers to at least spare the children before little heads rolled in the dirt, tears still welled up in their cold quiet eyes. 

It’s like I can see it. I can still hear it. I can still smell the bodies, barbecued sulfur as they burned. It’s like I’m still there. Still dead. Still hiding. Still frozen and terrified. 

“It isn’t mine,” the woman says, “and it isn’t yours. Don’t mind it.”

My robe is plucked off of me and she pulls away to take in my every inch. I can practically feel her eyes where they sweep like wind across my body, lingering here and there at the parts I’ve hidden the most. It’s like she knows my insecurities and disregards them.

“You have a pretty body. Let’s see what you can do with it.”

Before I can react I’m shoved to my knees, hands dragging across the rug that covers solid dirt. A hand tangles in my hair and shakes my head savagely. 

“Tongue out,” she commands.

Still in recoil, it takes me a moment to register the request. When I do, I stick my tongue out, eyes rolled up to her own. She grins and pulls me forward into a sea of dark curls. I get the hint. 

I shove back the memories of just hours ago and start with a long lick from her core to her clit. Unsure of how to please a woman, I try what I imagine I’d like as I continue to lap at her folds. 

She grunts again and again, her fingers tightening in my hair. Every once in a while she lets out a deep rumbling moan. 

Voice the rasp growl of a beast, she demands, “my clit.”

So I focus on the sensitive bundle of nerves, flicking it with the very tip of my tongue once, twice, three times, before closing my lips around the area and sucking while my tongue continues to swirl in pressured circles. 

Her climax builds as she pushes me further into her, her hips shoving forward. I can’t breathe. I can’t move if I tried, barely able to fight her force enough to move my jaw. I have to make her cum before I end up passing out.

“Yes~” She groans. “Mm~ right there. Fuck! Yes! Pleasure me, whore!”

I drive her closer and closer to her edge until I can feel her muscles tense. I don’t dare pause as she cums hard through an orgasm. I keep my motions going, the pressure pulsing, until she pulls me away, dropping me to the ground as I gasp for air.

Oxygen feels foreign to me now, cold, as it nips down my throat. The room feels empty as she marches to her bed, laying down like a queen in her castle.

“Ah, the feeling of victory.”

I reach for my robe but she scolds me. 

“Keep it off. I like the view.”

Still catching my breath, I remain silent as I wait for my next command. My hands ball into fists atop my knees as I fold my legs underneath me. I try to look at her, but it’s like there’s a shield blocking me. A weight, that’s stomping my eyes into the ground.

For a while, there’s just silence. I begin to wonder if I’ll spend the night here, in this very spot, too afraid to move without being told.

Then, at last, she speaks. “Have you ever killed someone?”

The question catches me off guard. Beasts, yes. People? 

“Never,” I say, my voice anything but  my own.

“I’ve killed more than I can count,” she says simply. “I enjoy the sensation of a good fight.”

The thud of my heart beat pounds in my ears as her words linger in the air. More than she can count. Will I be next? When she returns to her home, will I just be another casualty? No. In Noxus they value strength. If I can take her, fight her, then I can live. 

But I can’t take her.

I can’t even move, my muscles fighting against me, terrified of what will happen if I gesture the wrong way or take the wrong step. I can’t even look at her, no matter how I try, scared that locking eyes will provoke her.

After a lull of silence in which she devours me with a sultry gaze of her own so heavy I can feel it on my skin, I hear the mattress springs creak with a shift of motion.

“Come lay down with me,” She instructs.

I do as I’m told, laying as far from her on the bed as I can. Anaconda arms pull me closer, pressing me tightly against stone hard abs, my head pinned to a surprisingly supple chest. 

“Tell me,” she says, “how did a thing like you get into this business? You don’t act at all like the other whores I’ve taken.”

Swallowing alerts me to how dry my mouth has become. I curse myself inwardly for yet another sign of fear. 

“How am I different?” I ask.

“For one thing you hardly look at me; there’s no flirtation in your eyes. You shrink into your body, rather than show it off. And your talents? Well you’ll do fine enough for my trip back home, but once I have other options…”

She’s not wrong. Truth be told, I’m no whore. But neither was Esvele.

“My sister,” I admit. Sucking in a breath, I force my eyes to meet hers as best they can. “She got in debt with the madam. Couldn’t pay it off.”

“So then why is your sister not the one in my bed?”

Because you killed her, you monster.

“Because I saved her. When she told me her trouble, I made a deal to work the brothel in return for forgiving her debt. I always had men flocking around me growing up, so the madam knew I’d fetch a higher price tag than Es-- than my sister. So she agreed.”

My response earns a hum and her grip on me tightens. After a moment she adds, “With that face, I’d probably have taken you anyway.”

It shouldn’t, but her confession sends a warmth to my cheeks that I cannot control. 

“Alright,” she says, releasing me, “go fetch some water. I’d like to take a bath. And cover up, that body is mine alone from now on.”

“Yes ma’am.”

***

I wake up unaware that I’ve fallen asleep. The bed is cold and empty beside me. A note and stack of clothing sits on the bench by its foot.

Wear this. Meet me.

Only a half helpful note, seeing as this camp was decently large and it had no instructions on where exactly to meet her. Still, I comply with the first half, finding myself in a pair of black slacks so oversized that I have to hold them up with one hand while I synch my belt with the other, an onyx top, or rather tube of fabric that I use as a top, and a long red sash that I wrap around my shoulders, hoping to cover a little more skin.

Ok, now for the finding her part.

It dawns on me now as I duck out of the tent into the bustling makeshift streets of the war camp that I don’t even know the warlord’s name. I suppose I could just ask to be pointed towards the ‘big scary lady with all the scars’, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over too well for me. So, with as much false confidence as I can muster, I head in the direction with the most foot traffic. 

I can’t help but feel like people are staring, though I know at most I’m only getting passing glances. I’m out of place here. My hands uncalloused, my eyes not yet numb to the violence I’ve seen. No armor. Yet no one seems to care. Perhaps they assume I’m just a new recruit.

Or, the thought hits me like a headbutting boar, or they know I’m a whore.

“If we can kill this so called ‘Golden Knight’, then the rest of their team should fall easily.”

“But with their crowd control, we won’t make it past the front lines.”

Two women debate inside a large red tent to my right. The first woman is a voice I’d recognize anywhere after yesterday, the second, unfamiliar yet equally commanding. I duck inside, only half sure that interrupting is the right idea.

The warlord glances at me with a smile, “Good, you’re awake,” then redirects her focus back down to a map on a table between her and the other woman, littered with red and blue pieces.  “Bring me some wine.”

I quickly find a pitcher of wine by the door and fill a glass as the woman I don’t know offers, “What if we send a small team to their camp before they get here to take him out? A sneak attack could give us the upper hand.”

“Yes, but once the alarm is sounded, how will the team make it back out?”

“I’ll send Samira. Once the Golden Knight is dead, I’m confident that she can take out the rest of them.”

“Indari, she’s reckless.”

“She’s the only one who can pull it off, Ambessa. You know that as well as I do...”

I hand the warlord, Ambessa, apparently, her wine, catching a glance at the map as I do so. If red is the Noxians, then it looks like the knights are camping out a couple miles north of our mines. And if they really are knights then…

“Why don’t you just play on their heart?” I ask foolishly. Realizing I’ve just spoken out of turn, I clamp my mouth shut and slink into my shoulders.

Both women look to me, each with a single brow raised.

“Explain,” the warlord says.

Not convinced yet that I’m out of trouble, I cautiously continue, “They expect you to play dirty. A sneak attack will be easily countered. But they’re knights. They swear oaths to put heart and valor above all else. You have townsfolk that are unhappy with their recruitment. Offer them a deal to help you make this play in exchange for staying in town.”

“And what play exactly, is it we’re talking about here?”

“The mine,” I say, gesturing to it on the map. “If we see an attack before it starts we’re supposed to group there and lose the invaders in the tunnels.”

“But you didn’t.”

“We didn’t see you before it was too late. But if we had, we’d have gone to the mines. Send some townsfolk to the camp, have them tell the knights about survivors too injured to move, hiding in the mines. If This Golden Knight guy goes, great. But if he stays, he’ll have to send some of his team, reducing his defenses which sounds like your concern. They’ll have to split because, well like I said, they expect you to sneak attack. Play on their heart; Give them innocents to save. Then just be sure to have a group of soldiers hiding in the mines for when they’re lead there. Another group goes into the camp and just like that you don’t have to fight them all at once.”

Ambessa and Indari exchange a look, quietly poking holes in my suggestion. My heart races, my knees shiver, everything in me says I should have kept my mouth shut.

What if it’s a bad plan?

Or worse, what if it works?

What if because of me honorable knights lose their lives to these savage armored beasts? The same ones who keep me hostage. Why am I helping them?

Why am I helping her?

“Alright,” Ambessa says, turning back to me. “We’ll go with your plan. And you’ll be the one to lead this ‘survivor’s’ facade.”

Like a shepherd, I’ll lead them to slaughter. May the Gods forgive me.

***

Tonight I do something unforgivable. 

I’ve been given a blade, something I doubt the others have. Maybe it’s to protect me, or maybe it’s simply a test. Will I use it? Or will I prove to Ambessa that I’m just as weak as she believes me to be? I won’t use it. I can’t.

A part of me keeps dragging back to the idea of turning the Noxians in. Something holds me back. Something keeps me obedient.

Is it fear?

Esvele’s face haunts me now, her smile, her laugh, the chaos that like an aura followed her always. I think about that day at the brothel, the real reason I wound up there. She never had any unsettled debts. No, what she possessed was far worse in the king’s eyes. She used it one time, one time and it wasn’t even on purpose, but the only witness knew what would happen if word got out.

What would these knights have done to my sister if they’d discovered that she could use magic?

Maybe that is what keeps me from siding with my homeland now.

Still, to lead a man to his death…

We arrive at the camp under light of both stars and our fading lantern to swords at our throats.

“We’re Demacians!” I squeal. The swords lower as the knights look over our tattered clothes. I’ve even been placed back in my rags for this, Esvele’s blood now dry and flaking off the front.

“How did you escape the invasion?” The closest knight asks, The blue cape of his silver armor tinted almost violet by the midnight shadows.

“We hid in the mines,” I lie, a little too easily. “The others, they’re too injured to move. They need help; It can’t wait until morning. Please. We saw your camp. We need your help.”

He and the man beside him trade looks and exchange a word or two about informing a higher up about us survivors. When the higher up comes, his golden armor tags him as the knight the Noxian’s fear.

He introduces himself as Ivan, unofficial leader of this rescue mission and asks us to lead him and two of his friends to the injured in the mines. The remaining six men would be staying here.

I hope taking only three will be enough.

We do as we’re told. No one peeps. No one breathes. We just lead the men to the mines where we find…

Nothing.

Where’s this other team? Where are the Noxians?

“You said there were injured,” Ivan questions, looking around. 

I trade looks with some of my fellow bait, reaching for an excuse but only finding obvious guilt and terror. Ivan and the other two knights could read my group as well as I could, like a bold title page we told them, silently, it was a trap.

Swords are drawn and we back up. My fingers twitch by my blade but I don’t dare pull it. 

He has a name.

He has a family, a job, a soul. 

He has a sword raised above a boy I’ve known since I was five years old.

“P-Please, we’re not Noxians, I swe-” The boy’s plea is cut off with a squishing gurgle sound as Ivan’s blade digs deep into the side of his neck, nearly slicing his head off his shoulders.

Warm sticky red exploded from the wound, painting the walls, the knights, and me. I’m starting to become too accustomed to being drenched in blood.

“We expected you to play dirty,” Ivan says, lips hitched in a smirk, “but this? You’re getting smarter.”

Two more of my group are struck down while I back so far into the cave wall I can feel the stone ripping at my skin. One woman tries to fight back but we’re unarmed. She quickly adds to the death toll.

I don’t understand. Where are the Noxians? 

Wait.

Oh.

I get it now. We’re the Noxians. We’re the ambush. 

This is our test.

No one else is left alive. At some point my knife has found it’s way to my hands but I can’t recall how or when. I stab it down towards a marred golden shoulder. My wrist is smacked with the dull side of a blade. He swings. I duck. He misses. Another knight moves to grab me but Ivan puts out a hand. He wants to kill me himself.

His sword raises.

This is it. I can only dodge for so long. I’m not a Noxian; I’m not a soldier. I can fight but I can’t win. Not alone. Not with this shitty ass blade.

I’m not a killer.

But they are.

A sudden streak of umber and red slashes through knight one’s neck, cartwheeling swiftly into a stabbing of knight two’s eye. My savior spins, jumping into the air as they do to both push their blade further and land a kick to Ivan’s jaw. All of this, in just half a second.

He turns, raising his blade and-

Bang!

A bullet right between his eyes.

Now still, my eyes can focus on the killer. She’s tall, maybe 5’10, with tanned skin and a long loose braid. Emerald eyes sparkle as she twirls her gun back to her holster with a cocky laugh.

“Lucky for you,” she tells the fallen knight, “the last thing you saw was me.”

“Are you from Noxus?” I ask.

The woman turns to me nonchalantly and raises an eyebrow. “Oh? Huh, I thought I saw him kill you.”

“He swung, but he missed.” All at once, I realize who this must be and why she’s here. “Samira, right?”

“Ah, my reputation precedes me.”

“Why didn’t you save the others?”

“I didn’t even mean to save you. It was simply my job to clean up if you all failed Ambessa’s test. I may have rushed things a little but, eh, I got bored just watching you die.”

So it was a test. A test I failed.

“C’mon,” the woman says, walking towards the exit, “You lived, meaning your warlord isn’t done with you yet.”

No. No, I think she’s far from done with me. I just wish I could be done with her.

Chapter Text

It’s been three weeks since the mines. Three weeks of travel, of naked massages, of hand feeding grapes. Three weeks, of being a trophy. It’s not that I am not thankful to have my primary duties be ones of lavishment rather than lust, it’s just that I can’t help but find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yes, there is the occasional night that I'll be called up on to pleasure her, to touch her in a much more sensual way, but it's hardly the nightly routine I'd expected it to be.

I’ve had dreams of Esvele almost every night since the attack. It was almost a month ago now, yet still I can see every drop of blood as clear as my shaking hands when I shoot awake. Crimson dewdrops, splattering my face, the grass, and the dirt. I can still feel it, warm and sticky, suffocating me. 

I’ve only woken Ambessa once with these dreams. I had nearly screamed when I woke up and my first instinct was to dart from the bed. 

I’ll never make that mistake again.

Now, on the nights I find myself awake or at the mercy of those horrors, I stay where she wants me: in her arms, under the heavy sheets. I watch her breathe and dream and sometimes that helps me calm my mustang of a heart. She’ll never admit it. I’ll never ask about it. But I think she has similar dreams most nights. I can see it in the scrunch of her face; I can feel it in the tightening of her grip. She’ll grunt and tense and pant and then, all at once, she’ll relax again as her mind ventures elsewhere. 

Currently, we’re stopped in a city one over from what she calls home. Out here on the balcony, she lounges naked in the hot tub while I knead out the tension in her muscular shoulders. Her many scars press like dull blades into my palms and fingertips, a sensation that fills me with a confusing chill. I shouldn’t enjoy my duties; I shouldn’t enjoy her. But, by the Gods, I do.

She hums as I rub out a knot, sipping her merlot. She smiles, eyes closed, and tilts her neck to aid me with a better angle. 

“I’m glad I found some use for you,” she says. “I was disappointed when such a pretty toy proved to be so unavailing with sex.”

I hesitate, only barely, but she notices it and laughs.

“Don’t tell me my whore is uncomfortable with the word sex,” she chuckles.

I wouldn’t say uncomfortable with it, but when she puts it so crassly. I focus on my work, answering only with the blush she doesn’t open her eyes to see.

“There’s a fight tonight at the Summoner’s Rift Arena,” she continues, taking another slow sip of her wine. “You will be accompanying me.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“‘Yes ma’am’,” she scoffs. “Is that all you say?”

“I’m not sure what else you want me to say.”

“How are you liking Noxus?” 

How does she expect me to answer that? Oh it’s great! I’ve always wanted to be a slave. Still, I know she requires a response, so I give one. 

“I’m thankful for it.”

It’s not a lie, though it feels like one. In a way, I am grateful. I could have died with Esvele but instead I’m in a penthouse suite, rubbing down a deceivingly radiant demon. It’s not where I’d like to be, but it’s far from where most of my village ended up. 

The images start to flash again, the ones of their cold pale faces. I shake them away for now but they’ll be back. They always come back.

“Thankful for it?” Ambessa questions, amused. She turns to look at me with a untrusting smirk.

“Yes.” I nod. “It let me live.”

“ I let you live.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She turns back to her wine with a sigh, finishing the glass and shooing my hands away from her.

“Fetch me some more,” she orders.

And so I do.

***

‘Home’ turns out to be the very heart of Noxus. Noxus Prime. The pulse of the city is black tar that smells like blood. You are a soldier, a fighter, a blacksmith, or a slave. To everyone, those four distinct titles are as apparent as clouds on a dark day or a tattoo across your forehead. Even if you made it in Noxus, that didn't guarantee that you could make it here. And I was outliving my usefulness.

There are three of them in the box but nine of us total. 

There is Ambessa, of course, taking up more space in her chair than is practical -- as if even when lounging she feels the need to remind everyone of the domination of which her presence is capable. Indari sits in a wheelchair beside her, legs crossed and head slanted on an opposite arm -- an ignoble yet dignified stance. I’d never seen a ‘battle wheelchair’ before her. I doubt I’ll ever see one again. Seems more tank than medical device with extra bullets strapped to the side. Then there is Samira, who doesn’t seem interested in sitting at all. She is perched rather dangerously on the ledge of our little stone viewing point, her legs and one arm reaching out towards the pit of The Fleshing Arena. So aptly named for the carnage held inside by warring Reckoners. All it would take was a single push and we'd be rid of her for good. Though, she'd probably win a fight down there after finding some way to survive the long fall. 

The non-noxians I’ve nicknamed after the trophies we were. I can tell from the state of their faces and bodies that they'd all been victims of this same unending war. Relentless is basically Noxus’s middle name -- us slaves, it's business card. So it is no surprise we are from all over. 

Bronze looks to be from Shurima. He is a tall lanky man with dusky skin and one end of a large cloth pavilion. Copper holds the other end. He is a yordle from who knows where and has to keep the pole of the thing over his head for who knows how long of a time. They both belong to Indari, who also owns Silver -- the small albino girl from Demacia who's back tattoo of the Winged Sisters is currently being used as a footstool by my warlord of, well not choice. That leaves Gold and Ribbon. One has a palm fan, another a tray of some clear mint reeking drink on ice. I've forgotten which one was which by this point after naming them. They're Ionian twins. Tall, muscled, brutal. Having them as servants doesn't just say something, it shouts it. The same way taming a drakehound does.

And me?

Where else would I be but on her lap. Outliving my usefulness, yes. I can feel her getting bored with me. Then there's that old threat about me only being for the journey home. But she isn't done with me yet. 

Yet.

Or so I hope.

I've learned what she likes and what she doesn't. I've learned, in other words, how to survive. In public, in places like the arena, I'm not to be too passive as to be a statue, but I shouldn't draw too much attention to myself either. Make myself pleasurable, but not known. A statement piece, like a nice silk shawl, that's all I have to be. And a shawl traces around her neck -- around her collarbones -- the way I do now with fingers far from practiced but very well trained. 

“Ah!” Samira sighs gleefully. “How I've missed the rush of a good fight in the Arena! I hear they're pulling Slade out for this one. He's always had a nice flair of style.”

“Lorcan will kill him,” Ambessa says simply. “I'm surprised no one has done so already.”

“Weak or no, he is fun to watch fight. Always a surprise in store.”

The surprise comes in the form of an Arena attendant with an apology. Slade, it would seem, is dead. Suicide an hour ago. They just found his body hanging in one of the labyrinths of rooms beneath the Arena. His face was blue and his muscle had been stripped off by those other fighters who were starved and craving protein. Noxus at its prime -- way to live up to a moniker. 

“So?” Ambessa says. “Present a back up challenger.”

“Against Lorcan?” The attendant laughs. “No, Ma’am. Sorry. Nobody is willing to risk losing a good Reckoner to him and with Slade gone the Arena owned fighters left are all too green. Can't afford to lose two lines of revenue tonight.”

The warlord thinks with a heavy hum. She never breaks the attendant's eyeline. Then she smiles. No -- smirks -- with the vicious fangs of a viper. Her words drip poison, but only to me. 

“Take this little rabbit.” I'm shoved off the safety of her aura before the sentence is concluded. “Her loss will be no loss of revenue for me.”

“Can it even fight?” The attendant asks.

“It strategizes. Was useful in a battle on my way home. Though its usefulness is now gone.”

“Alright.” A now amused man grabs my arm with a hand twice it's size. “It'll be a quick one then.”

“Wait--” I start.

“Shut up.” The man yanks me from the viewing box. 

I turn to see that vicious satisfaction of hers but it's not there. She's not even looking at me. She's sipping a drink, chatting with Indari she…she just uprooted my entire life -- again -- she's ended my life without a single thought! This isn't maliciousness -- it's just another day. All this time, I've been spinning my head around in circles, growing dizzy trying to keep up with what I think she wants or what I think she thinks but…this is the truth: she wants nothing from me. She doesn't see me. She doesn't care. I'm nothing. Not even a prize. No trophy -- just a hunk of metal to be smelted at the scrapyard. 

I didn't think I was anything special, certainly not human. Now, I don't think she sees anyone as human. As real. I'm not even a piece on the board.

This is where I die.

That's not self-pity, mind you. It's what the attendant says as he readies me for the fight. A rusty shield, a full blade, no armor. I'm still in sandals. I'm still in a thin robe too short to bend over in.

“When you're released,” the man says, fighting the frayed leather straps of my shield to affix them to my arm, “there'll be fanfare. For both of yas. Then a countdown and a gong. Don't fight him until you hear the gong, kapish?” 

He heads to the gate that connects this room to the dirt pit and marble walls of the Arena. He begins to fiddle with some controls and a jammed knob that I'm sure rises said gate and sends me to Kindred. 

“Now you're fresh meat,” he continues. “And he's been here a while. A real fan favourite, ya know? So to, er, spice it up, give the people what they paid for, it'll probably end in a kill. Fight well and long and be entertaining. When he beats you, then he'll wait for the officiator to give him the signal and that'll be curtain call. No shouting. No crying. No begging for mommy. It's unsportsmanlike. Got it?”

“What if I beat him?”

The guy just laughs. The knob finally shifts and the gate rises. 

“Good luck,” he says, shoving me forward, “have fun.”

I enter the pit, thoroughly unprepared.

Lorcan, as known by the crowd chanting his name, is a 6’5 brute with no armor, muscles the size of my head, and a war axe three times my height. He pumps up the crowd with a furry arm of dark brown hair. It's as furry as his broad chest. The chest of a bear. The face of one too. Meaty and bearded -- his dark eyes are more animal than man. He's nothing like the deer my father and I used to hunt. He's a grizzly and he's nine times more Noxian than I ever thought someone could be. 

He looks at me and half laughs. Making a show of throwing aside his axe, he cracks his knuckles. Then his neck. The crowd laughs with him. The gong dings.

He charges for me. I raise my shield. He busts right through it and sends my sword out of my hand from the reverberation of impact. With a flash of black, my head thuds against the ground. My shield arm presses against my diaphragm, smothering my breath as he pushes his weight into my only defense. 

My feet kick. I grab sand with my free hand and toss it willfully at his face. He laughs again, his hands stone pillars in the dirt beside my head. 

“You must be new to this,” he growls.

When he opens his muzzle I can see his canines. Like oversized tusks jutting forward out of his mouth. This is no bear. He's a boar. I've killed boar before. But they're dangerous when injured and his left arm sinks under a bit less pressure than his right one. 

With all my force and a squeak I wish was a shout, I shove my shield into the crook of his left elbow. He releases me with a hiss and for a moment I think I'm free! Then the cage of his arm comes back down as I'm rolling away. He lifts it again and sends his knuckles into my cheekbone with a flattering squish-crunch. The crowd cheers. My head spins. His arm comes back down beside my face.

His weight presses down against my stomach. I flail my hands weakly, clawing with broken nails at his face. He leans back, forcing all of the air out of me and grabs my hands. He leans back forward. I can breathe again but my arms are now pinned by my wrists into the dirt. His hooves wrap around me with almost hilarious ease. He could probably hold three of me down with one hand if he wanted to. 

I look at him. At the red Noxian sky. Back at him. I close my eyes only to find that those too are red on the inside. It's like Noxus has dug a hole deep within me and filled it all up with Reckoners and flags and blood. 

I can't slip to memories of Esvelle because everytime I try another fist brings the red. 

Our father…

A sharp cut to my eyebrow.

Our home…

Eyes watering into the red as my nose shifts the opposite direction as the rest of my face. 

Me…everything I was…everything I am…

Gone. With the swift left hook of Noxus. Gone. With the cheers of the crowd. With the blood and slips into my now open eyes, coating everything with a rose-shaded tint. 

I'm not sure I hear him at first over the ringing in my ears and the roar of the crowd. So when he says it again, I have to ask, however weakly, “what?”

“Go on,” he grumbles low -- to me, not his fans. “I'm fed enough.”

I cough, shaking free a tooth that lodges in the back of my throat. I cough again but no sound comes out. I try to take a breath but it only causes me to choke more. The cracked edge of the tooth tears into the meat of my throat, gripping at the edges of the tube to my lungs. A thorn covered shield blocking my airway. 

Lorcan punches me again with enough force that my entire torso snaps to that side. I cough. Hard. Enough to send the tooth flying. I catch my ragged breath. My tongue brushes the soft bloody pump where my left canine used to be. I spit but still my mouth continues to fill with the taste of iron. A taste I refuse to grow familiar with. 

“Do it,” Lorcan hushed again. “Now!”

It's the first Noxian order I follow with conscious decision. 

I go through those muttered steps I wasn't sure I heard.

Plant my feet. 

Hike my hips.

Wrap his left arm.

Push his right hip.

And roll.

I'm not sure why I'm surprised when I end up on top of him. Without any idea how to grapple, I back off, skittering on my hands and ass back to my sword. I grab it. Tight. Too tight. Blinking and spitting out blood while I continue to cough. 

Lorcan grins and cocks his head at me. Him finding his feet is what reminds me to find my own. I've got a sword, so he grabs his axe. We circle each other -- an injured boar; an injured rabbit. Both prey for the wolves howling above us. 

Kill! Kill! Kill!

The chant is said in many languages and isn't any more pleasant in any of them.

“Tell me,” Lorcan calls, his arms wide and goading, lifting that heft of metallic doom like it weighs no more than a broomstick. “What do they call you? I want to know what to put on my list of names.”

The crowd swoons and stomps at that remark. Must be his calling card. A list of those he's ended in the arena. 

I open my mouth to answer him but it all feels so foreign to me now. I am not who I was. Nothing about my life is the same. That girl -- that stubborn older sister -- she isn't here with me now. No. She died with Esvelle. She -- she was Demacian and I…I still can't shake this Noxian red from out of my eyes. 

The furthest back memory my mind can see to find right now is forty minutes ago when Ambessa offered me up for death. The way I'm twitching? The way my ears and my nose and my eyes all seem to be on a heightened edge  -- waiting for something to send me hopping off. My feet are ready to run. To jump. If he's a boar, then I know what I am. It's exactly what she called me.

“Rabbit,” I say. Then I laugh a little. “I’m a rabbit.”

He smirks and slides his eyes to the right before swinging left. I hop right and forward, avoiding his blow while landing one of my own into his calf. The sword doesn't cut. Of course it doesn't. It's dull and I'm weak.

Still, he grabs his ‘wound’. He gives me an approving look and then throws me across the arena via a the flat of his axe versus my chest. I suppose he can't let me win so obviously. 

We fight. He charges. I dodge. My cuts barely nick the hair off of him and his swings leave me more bruised than bloody (not one for using the blade of his weapon). 

I won't win like this. Even with his help. And the crowd will only watch us stalemate for so long. My eyes catch on the edge of my shield. Just the edge. 

He readies another swing, an overhead, and his eyes swipe left. 

I don't listen.

Tossing my sword aside, I widen my stance, dig my feet into the ground, and push both arms back beneath my shelf with stubborn might. His axe comes down, the bottom of his handle sticking out from his fist. I jam my shield between it and the heel of his hand.

Then, I hop.

I stand, jump, really, and shove all of my weight up and forward. His grip fails him as the weight of his hefty weapon slips through the small space between his curled fingers and his palm. I bring the shield back down right onto his face. He trips over his too-large feet  and I press my weight into his stomach this time. Though it's not enough to pin him, the shock aids me in keeping him down.

I bring the shield down with both arms. Again. And again. I shout. I roar. I smash the rusty dented edge into his tusks and his nose and his brow bone until it dents again. Then I rip it off of the straps that hold it to my arm and turn the point at the end of the now rolled up metal to his pulp of a face. Shield raised over my head, I'm about to bring it down when --

Boungggg

The shriek of the gong stops me. 

Between my own panting, the pounding of the pulse inside my head, and the ringing in my ears, I almost don't notice the crowd go silent. A beat passes. Then another. 

Is it over?

“Look…” Lorcan grumbles, soft and just for me.

Oh.

Oh!

That's right…the officiator…

I flit my head around, jerky and anxious, until my eyes finally settle on a man in a dark purple cloak lined with red. I have to squint to see him properly. He's old and he holds up a thumb halfway between up and down. Then his wrist shifts and the crowd goes wild.

“What is he doing?” Lorcan pants.

“Giving a thumbs up.” I say.

Lorcan laughs. He spits some blood. Then he laughs more.

“Get off of me,” Lorcan says. “Fights over and he wants me spared.”

***

“Well, well, the little rabbit is full of surprises--” I hardly realize I've decided to slap Ambessa until she stops talking. Her glare settles in from the goading praise. “Watch yourself, child.”

“You sent me as a sacrifice!” I hiss.

“And you survived. You are learning your strength. As am I.”

I try to slap her again but she catches my arm on a grip like iron. 

“You only get one free hit,” she warns. 

I yank free. Well, I yank and she lets me free of her own volition. 

“I won't fight again.”

“Yes you will.”

“I'll let them kill me. Have you lose your bets.”

“If that were true, I'd simply bet against you.”

“It is true.”

“No.” She stalks around me. A predator. A wolf. And I'm the bleeding rabbit she's going to finish off for dinner. “You posses what all mortals do: the desire to survive. You can try to swim to the bottom of the ocean, but you will float up to the surface the moment you stop kicking. You can try to hold your breath, but your lungs will eventually force you to gasp for air. Your body -- your very spirit -- is designed to keep you alive and fighting. So you may try to spite me in that arena, but you'll be fighting against yourself by doing so.” She stops. She howls in my ear, “you did good tonight, little rabbit. Quite a show. Allow me to reward you properly.”

As a popped balloon falls to the earth, so too does my energy fall into a desperate sort of puppy-dog pleading.

Coyly, I say (as if coyness has ever worked on her before), “my jaw was just broken in several different places. I'll be of no use to you tonight. And my nose is broken too, I'm pretty sure. It makes an awful sound when it moves. It'll distract you. I won't be at my best. You're home now. You should choose a better option.”

She chuckles low as the hand of hers that lifts the frayed hem of my robe. A firm hand on my bare ass, she orders, “Go. Sit and disrobe.”

Silently, with a tongue pressed to the still bleeding part of my gum that's missing a tooth, I follow the instructions. There's a bed for sitting so that's where I go. My palms lay flat on my thighs. I take a deep breath. Okay, Rabbit, be strong. When I'm convinced enough that pain eventually always yields to numbness, I turn my eyes to her.

She's still in her armor.

My question must hitch a ride on my face before I can ask it because she answers me right away.

“One of my favourite ways to celebrate a victory is with pleasure,” she explains, casually crossing the room. She reaches me and cracks a grin that quickly fades back into a mask of stoic strength. “You've had a fine victory tonight, little rabbit. Your first of many. Lie down.”

Lie…down?

I make it as far back as my elbows, keeping my head up. If she leaves my vision, I'm not convinced she won't kill me.

“Relax,” she orders, sinking to her knees.

Warm calloused hands press my knees apart. Involuntarily, my head falls back. My arms begin to shake. 

“It is a rare gift for one to get acquainted with my talents,” she says. “Enjoy this. And know it is because you found might on the battlefield today.”

Her tongue is hot and sudden. I'm betrayed by my own moan and my arms finally give out, leaving me flat against the bed. She reaches a hand up to my chest, the other resting around my thigh. Getting fucked by her is like the first break of silence after a long storm. The chaos is over, the danger still lurking, but damn…to revel in the now.

I reach down, then hesitate. Am I allowed to touch her? It's usually all I'm allowed. This whole thing is new. The prose she spells out with that tongue; The paintings she traces with those fingers. I can't tell if her hands are here to hold me softly against the bad world or to pin me down and keep me from flying off into the good world. 

My climax makes my decision for me. With a fistful of her hair, I ride it out, whining and moaning like I've caught my foot in a trap.

And haven't I?

When it's done, it is done. She wipes her mouth unceremoniously and again finds her feet. All the while I try to find my breath.

“I cannot tell if the swiftness of your climax proves your efficiency or mine,” she says. Then nods the thought off.

She turns for the door and I come to realize that this room is now my room and hers must be somewhere else in this grand museum of an estate.

“Wait,” I call.

She does but doesn't turn. 

Something in me climbs out of bed and takes her wrist. My other hand lays flat against her back. I don't want her. I've never wanted her. I don't even like her. And yet…

“Wouldn't you like a turn?” I ask.

“I thought your jaw was broken?”

“It's…healed enough.”

She uses one hand to free the other from me. Like plucking lint off a pair of slacks. 

“Let it heal some more. It is as you said; we are home now. I have many better options. You, my dear, should rest. You will fight in the arena again tomorrow.”

With that, she leaves. 

For the first time since my capture I am alone.

Alone.

Somehow missing her. Missing me.

A mirror catches this horrible blood-crusted face. The person in the reflection has swollen Noxian eyes and a shameful body slick with Noxian spit. As I put the reflection to rest -- in a real, actual bed -- my mind wanders to Ambessa’s final comments.

We are home.

We.

Chapter Text

When a caterpillar enters it’s chrysalis it’s body morphs slowly into either a butterfly or a moth. What I'm interested in however isn't what I'll be when I emerge from my chrysalis; Its the phases of change within it. The subtler, defining differences of the creature you are after change has been thrust upon you but you aren't yet in your final state of evolution. Most people you meet are in these in between phases. It's why when we do finally meet a butterfly or a moth -- people who get it -- who get themselves -- people like Samira and Ambessa -- we gravitate towards them. We can't help ourselves. 

My first change as a caterpillar was when Noxian blood was beat into my veins. A baptism of bruises and battle scars. I didn't know it then, but I think the night before that first fight will be the last time I ever cry. Sympathy. Vulnerability. It all feels so foreign now. My old life is gone from my memories -- replaced by a sheet of red that waves like a flag in the wind. And when I try to connect to those tender parts within myself that I used to revere with some significance -- the things I used to think were what made me human -- It's like I'm looking at them past a film of rippling water as I sink into the cool depths of a river. I can see the blurry deer drinking above me. The birds flying across a wavy sky. But they don't see me. Not where I lurk.

My second change was more overt. It came three fights in after a woman grabbed my hair. It would be easier, I thought, to cut it. So I did. Only, it wasn't my hair to cut. 

Ambessa had walked in on the aftermath (which, I'll admit, was a rather choppy layer of hair just long enough to pull back atop an undercut) and reacted as if I'd broken her brand new toy. In a way I suppose that's exactly what I did. She'd accosted me -- implied that my appearance was every bit as important to driving up bets as my fights. Hence why even now my ‘armor’ is about as impractical and revealing as the robe I wore in fight number one. At least this one covers my cleavage. 

I wanted to fight her. I'd wanted to shout at her. But all I could manage was a shaky “yes ma’am” and an aversion of my eyes. Don't let the night of fight one fool you; I am still terrified of her. Of what she might do to me. Of what she could do to me with the slightest wave of her hand. 

Yes ma’am, it turned out, was always the wrong answer.

Rather savagely she'd half knotted half tied up the longer part of my hair. Eventually she relented to a style that was ‘good enough for who it's for’ and let me go. But by that point I had decided I never wanted my hair pulled again. The next morning I woke up with a streak of white that still persists today.

My third change was a week into being a Reckoner. I was gaining some traction. Winning was good; Winning at the Fleshing Arena? Big splash for such a little fish. But soon they'd be pitting me against stronger less green Reckoners and for that I’d need to rely on more than survival instinct. 

“A fight is more than just a battle of brawn between two warriors,” my warlord had explained. I was too distracted by her wrist rolling around her pike handle to actually be paying attention to her words. To make sure I'd recall them, she'd made a swift determined strike forward, hovering the point just beneath the soft of my chin. “Are you listening, child?”

“Yes,” I said with a nod. Now I was.

“It is a conglomeration of everything that has come before the battlefield and every decision you make on it. A fight doesn't start when you pick up the sword; it begins when one of you first comes to the realization that a fight will be had. If you wish to survive, you must be the first to realize this.”

I've been training with her every day ever since and fighting almost every night. On my nights off I'm still at her beck and call of course but I've noticed that the more I win the more she seems to…respect me. Perhaps respect isn't the correct word, but it certainly feels like it. 

For one thing, she doesn't treat me like furniture anymore. I'm still not a person, mind you, but I'm more than just background noise. She glances at me when I'm serving her. She asks questions to me (though she never listens much to my answers). Everytime she speaks to me it's like she's searching for something; hoping for it. As to what she's searching for I've no idea. I try my best to respond but it always ends with that same disappointment glower. Sometimes a scoff. And then she leaves and I wonder what I did wrong.

I head to the arena a few hours before each fight. To prepare, she tells me, but it's really so that she can start pining for early bets. Even now, a month in, I'm not sure whether she puts money on me or against me or if she even bets at all. I sure make her plenty though, that's for certain. 

Today, I'm off wandering the maze of hallways beneath Fleshing (a nickname the other fighters and I have coined. Real original, I know). It's about the only time I get other than when I'm in the arena to be a solitary person rather than a slave. Rather than hers. So when I hear her voice coming from one of the rooms, I turn on the heels of my boots.

“It's a fair price.” The man’s voice was rubber on broken glass.

Ambessa laughed. “With the splash she's making here? She's worth twice that.”

She? Me, she?

I tune back in and lean into the wall by the door.

“Come on. You ain't into the Reckoner business. You're a battle kinda gal. Lemme take her off your hands. 2000 denarii. That's what we pay for the big guns on a win streak so it's more than fair.”

“Do you know, just this week alone I've been paid 500 denarii in betting fees?”

Ah yes, the price of gambling -- a percentage of every victorious bet goes to the Reckoner’s owner or Reckoner (for the few that are free) rather than to the better. I have no idea what a denarii is or how much it's worth, but 500 sounds like a lot. 

“What's she worth to ya?”

“I've told you already. 3000.” A pause. “Too rich for your blood I take it? Then it seems we are done here.”

Three-thousand. Five-hundred was a lot when it was what she'd won on me. Yet somehow three-thousand was too little when it was the price my life was worth to her. The price I was worth to her. 

Some people would flicker like a candle in an open window if told the value of their life. I refuse to be some people.

I march down to Lorcan’s room. Not officially his, but the hole he's claimed and decorated with his list of names and a sketch of the girl he's waiting for. 

Seven-thousand. 

That was Lorcan’s value. Only, his number wasn't currency. Seven-thousand kills his lanista had said, and he'd be free. At five-thousand-sixty-eight, he was only a few years away from seeing her again. Maribelle. He's never told me that's what she's called. Sometimes when he naps though, I hear him mutter her name. 

Lorcan was staring at her now but I have no qualms breaking apart the happy couple for a moment.

“What's a denarii?” I ask.

“Denarii’s a coin.” We never waste time asking whys and what-fors. Not when any night could be our last. Got to savor every minute. 

“How good of a coin?”

He shrugged. “Better than a saxum; Worse than an aureus.”

“What's my gear worth?” 

“Twelve saxum. That's just your armor, by the way. No one wants your shitty sword.”

For a moment I actually debate going naked into the arena, but then I think about what Ambessa will do to me later in retaliation if I do.  

“You may have something worth a denarii,” Lorcan says. “But I don't think you'll sell it.”

“I'll sell it. What is it?”

“You don't look the type.”

“Quit wasting my time, Lorcan.”

He chuckles. “Look, I got a bookie friend who says there have been offers for a private spar. Your warlord doesn't want to rent you out. Like I said, not the type.”

“I'm here for an hour after every match while she collects her winnings. What she doesn't know can't come down on me.”

“You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?”

“I may not come from a trained background, Lorcan, but I know what a spar is.”

“What is it?”

“A fight.”

He laughs.

“Fine. What is it then?”

“Prostitution. We got fans. They got needs. You have quite a little club forming already. They like that you kicked my ass. You're welcome for that, by the way.”

“Do I have to be good?”

“Nah. I ain't.”

Now it's my turn to laugh. “You know, it's like no matter what I do I always come back to being a whore. Set something up with your bookie. Don't tell Ambessa.”

“I'll charge you fair.”

“Women only. And I'm doing this once.”

“Way to break my heart.”

I smile. So does he.

Then I'm called to the arena.

My opponent is a mangled twisted tree branch sparse of leaves but not barren. He's missing one eye, half of an eyebrow, and all rigidity to his joints. Every bone in his body looks like it's been broken at least twice over yet and he shambles more than limps. His crutch is a trident. A calling card, I'm sure. 

At first, we clash weapons. But weapons are boring and tridents are scary. Too many holes to be poked from even one good hit. So I turn it to a grapple. Ambessa always tells me that's where my strengths lie in fighting anyways. I'm not strong enough to put power into a sword. I'm not fast enough to keep point control on a pike. But I'm ruthless with leverage and can pull a man’s shoulder from its socket nine different ways. Worst comes to worst, I can always play dirty when we're rolling in the sand. 

The gong clangs as I've got him in a choke hold. I release the pressure. My mind dances down the halls of the Arena. If I take the east gate back in, I can be to my client in five minutes. That gives me forty to earn my denarii and fifteen to get cleaned up and back to Ambessa. She'll be home the wiser, should there be no marks. Which there won't be. I'll have to be sure to lay down that rule. What other rules do I need?

The swelling of the crowd finally rises to a volume which I cannot ignore. 

What are they saying?

It's too gargled at first. A mess of different voices shouting at different volumes. But then all at once I catch it. A single word. 

Kill.

My eyes shoot to the officiator. To his downward thumb. 

A month and I've never been told to kill.

My chest feels empty and swollen. My toes grow a pulse along with my temples and my legs and arms refuse to relock.

This is a man. A human being. 

I'm back in the mines. Back to the Golden Knight. He was a man too. I didn't kill him but I watched him die after walking him to the slaughterhouse. People don't die like deer. They don't see it coming. Deer, they know before you shoot them that they've been caught. You can see it in their eyes. And when you miss their heart and have to take out a blade they don't fear you. Their big black eyes just patter softly -- knowing the inevitable has finally come. They've already resigned to death. Deer are natural born prey. They live their lives knowing they'll go to something bigger and stronger. 

But people…

People never think they're going to die. We are all predators in our minds. We all walk into fights afraid and a little bit arrogant. Even when you think you'll lose, your body fights to keep you alive. 

People are not deer. We are predators. We are more than predators. We are complex, emotional. We are stories lining the shelves of a world we've named and grown attached to. Deer don't know the ocean is the ocean and the blue-jay beside them has a name. Deer don't ponder gods or morality. Deer are driven by instinct -- by nature -- and people are far above it all.

I can kill a deer.

How do I kill a man?

The gong clangs again. Hurry up, it seems to say. I seize into tighter wrappings with my arms and legs. My forearms press into his trachea and my calves into his waist. 

I close my eyes.

A deer. I think. It's just a deer.

But deer don't whimper like he does.

Deer don't drop tears down onto my forearms.

Deer don't sound like this. They don't feel like this.

“Just shut up,” I hiss. I squeeze tighter. My jaw clenches. Between pruneish shut eyelids I feel warm liquid spring. “Shut up.”

At first, I wonder how he's crying onto my face and my arms at the same time. Then I realize I'm the one to blame for the drips down my cheek. That prompts me to adjust. To press the bone of my arm deeper into his neck. My eyes now open, yet still all I see is Noxian red.

I hold him past his death until I hear a crack and feel his head roll like a ball joint on a broken neck. I shove him off of me and rise. With a sniff, I make my way to the east gate.

***

That night, I learn about Nika. 

“Your coinage.” Lorcan passes me three small silver coins. 

“I thought you were getting me a denarii.”

“Those are denarii.”

I thumb one in my palm, flipping it from head side to tail side. On one side is a star of Noxus. The same as our flag. On the other, something that'd be amusing, was I in a humored mood.

“Why not a carnivore?” I ask.

“Rabbits are lucky and they run fast. Person who designed that coin thought that'd translate to the economy.”

“Hm.”

I hand the coins back to Lorcan who raises a furry brow. His tongue runs across one of his tusks.

“Bet these on me next week when I fight again. Take the winnings, and bet again.”

He doesn't protest, just tucks them away.

“C’mon,” He says.

I follow him to a room deep and dark within the depths of the Fleshing. Inside are about twenty Reckoners and forty pints of ale. We don't turn heads and I don't think we should.

Lorcan takes me to the very back of the room. He shoves a pint into my hand and then nudges my elbow when I try to drink.

“You have to lead it,” he says.

“Lead it?”

“The Nika.”

“What's all this for?”

“Twigs.”

I make a face that spells out ‘beats me’. 

“The wirey one. Your fight.”

Twigs.

He had a name.

“Is this a funeral?” I ask.

“It's a gathering.”

“I can't be here.” I shove the pint into Lorcan’s broad chest but he grabs my arm and keeps me pinned. 

“You have to lead it.”

“I killed him.” 

“Lead it.”

“I don't even know what you want me to do.”

“Lead it.”

“Lorcan--”

“Look, all you gotta do is raise your glass, and lead it.”

I pause. “What do I even say? I can't give a eulogy for a man I didn't know.”

He laughs. “Eulogies are for funerals.” He sighs and runs another tongue along his tusk. “Raise the pint, say Nika, and then drink.”

He doesn't let my arm go until my eyes tell him that I understand. With legs that sway and a breath that's held, I hold my pint up in the air.

Now I'm turning heads.

I bolster confidence enough to pretend I know what I'm doing. It's a battle cry as much as it's a word. “Nika.”

Every pint raises and everyone chugs a drink. Then they all grab another. Lorcan slaps me on the back and laughs, sipping an ale that has already gone to my head. His head is the least fuzzy thing about him.

“That was vile” I retch then hold my stomach.

He laughs more.

“What’s Nika mean?”

“Victory.”

***

“Your stance was weak,” Ambessa says casually. “That's why he was able to get you to the ground so quickly.”

And your neck is close to the hands itching to wring it, I want to say. Instead, I continue to unlace and remove her various segments of armor. 

Her eyes sit heavy on me so mine sit on the floor. 

“Yes ma’am,” I say.

She hums disapprovingly. Then, “meekness is not the prize you think it is, child.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“If you say yes ma’am once more, I will cut your tongue from your head.”

So I say nothing.

She lets out the sigh of a bull about to charge. Waving my hands off of her, she pulls the final piece of leather off of her herself, leaving her in only bindings and thin slacks. How easy it would be to pierce her heart now. 

It's funny, ever since I killed that man it's like I've been split in two. There's a part of my brain swirling in a dizzying rainbow blur of vomit and screams and prayers -- but then there's this other side of me. This darker side. It howls and grits my teeth and sees death everywhere around it -- just within my reach. It's as if I can't decide whether I'm angry with myself or disgusted. 

Ambessa regards me in the manner you regard a spider clinging to your wall -- that is to say, with little regard at all but without turning your back to it fully.

“Was that your first kill?” She asks.

“Y--” 

A glare makes her threat become a promise. 

I swallow, my eyes sweeping dust bunnies off the stone floor. “It was.”

“How does it feel?”

Wrong. Terrifying. Powerful. Commanding. Like someone's just handed me back the keys to my life but they're sharp and cut uncomfortably into my palms. 

I'm scared at how easy it was. I'm proud of how easy it was. Then I'm horrified and revolted by that pride.

“Fine. Like killing a deer.”

“Your father was a hunter, no?”

I bite back a flash of memory that threatens to break through the red. 

“My father is dead. So is his daughter. I am not Demacian anymore.”

Something in her gaze stirs. Like I'm tapping at that hook she's been waiting for me to bite. She's still searching, but she's on the edge of discovery. 

“Then who stands before me now?” 

“A Noxian, ma’am.”

Her interest fades, leaving me once again in the dark about what it is she hopes to find. 

Switching topics, she moves to a small pouch on her nightstand. She removes something and then crosses back to me.

“Turn around,” she orders. 

My brows knit together. My first starts to shake. I brave a look into her eyes but only for a second. She's unreadable. 

I turn around.

Something small, warm, and metallic falls between my collarbones. A chain slithers up past it around my neck. There's a soft click and then the clasp tickles my spine. 

I put a hand to the pendant, perplexed. 

“For your victory today,” she explains. 

Large strong hands guide me to a mirror. I watch my own face as it falls flush. Her eyes glint along with that smug smirk and my heart starts pumping sluggish tar in lieu of blood. My fingers and nose both twitch along the face of my namesake that’s embossed on the front of the coin.

“It's a denarii,” she says, her claws a great force on my shoulders. “Fitting for a little rabbit like you.” She moves closer to my ear, her voice hot as her breath. “You are winning your battles yet you are running from the larger war. You can keep hopping away blindly for now, but just know that the wolves will catch up to you eventually.” A pat on my shoulder and she leaves me alone with my reflection. “Goodnight, Rabbit.”

The door opens and I manage through grinding gears to move my feet out to the hall. As soon as the door shuts -- no -- as soon as I'm down the hall, around the corner, I finally take a breath. My heart beats double time and I sink against the wall. My hands clamp over my mouth, squeezing my cheeks and I shut my eyes against a suffocated scream. All that makes its way through is a high pitched peep that echoes more in my head than my ears. I scream again, biting down on my hand. Hard. My pulse beats with one repeated phrase:

She knows. She knows. She KNOWS.

I realize now that we are going to be fighting. I wasn't the first to realize this. She's known it for some time. But when the battle comes, I will be ready nonetheless.

Chapter Text

I'm bad with polearms. So why is it that as I redirect Ambessa’s strike I'm able to get a cheap shot with the butt of my weapon?

“That's unlike you,” I say, backing off.

“If every battle could be fought without taking a hit, there would be little fun in war.”

So…you want me to hit you again? I don't dare say it. Nor do I tell her how good it felt to hurt her. Not that she's showing any signs of pain. Or loss. In fact--

I'm on my ass, spear to my throat, before I can finish the thought.

Show off.

“I thought the fight was over,” I say.

“It is never over, so long as your enemy still holds a weapon.”

What if they're not breathing? Another question left to ponder alone in the vacuum of my mind. 

She has that look again. Like she's expecting something. I slide my eyes away and she scoffs. She releases me and I stand. Without aid, of course. Sportsmanship is too good for her; It's something left for the Arena.

“You're improving,” she says. It isn't a compliment but a statement of fact. A dark part of me stirs with a guilty hope that she may reward me for doing so. I punch that part of me hard across the jaw.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

A grumble and a shake of her head. I've once again said the wrong thing. 

“Today in the Arena you will play a different game than you are used to.”

I'd hardly call my fights a game. I stay silent, so she continues.

“There will be obstacles built in the Arena, more than you are used to. There will be many enemies. Think of it like a battlefield. Like a battlefield, there will be two sides. At one side, an empty flagpole and at the other a flag of Noxus. The objective is to move the flag from one side of the Arena to the other while staying alive.”

Sounds easy. What's the catch?

“The Reckoners in this fight will be well trained and well proven. They will be better than you in every way. Stronger. Smarter. More experienced.”

“Do you think I can win?”

“This game is not about winning. It's about survival.”

“Do you think I can survive?”

That look is back along with the edge of a grin. “I'm certainly looking forward to finding out.”

***

Lorcan is lacing up his boots when I find him. I put my hands on my hips, tapping my foot until it catches his attention.

“Yeah?” He asks with an amused sort of perplexion. 

“Are you fighting today?”

“Everyone is.”

“Good. You're a dead man.”

His eyes catch on my new accessory. I'm still not sure if I'm allowed to take it off.

“Oh,” he laughs. “That's clever.”

“She could have killed me, Lorcan. She still might!”

“You're the one who made the decision.”

“You're the one who snitched.”

“I was asked directly. She could have killed me too, you know.”

I hate that he's right. I hate that I don't hate him. I hate that I want to. I huff and cross my arms. My eyes scan the long list of names on his wall. 

“Team up.” He says.

I raise a brow, my eyes back on him.

“So you don't join that list.”

“It's that dangerous?”

He stands and shrugs. 

“Have you ever fought this before?”

With a laugh he gestures to himself as if to say ‘look who you're talking to’. I snort and roll my eyes. Then my face sinks with the pit growing in my stomach.

A burly hand sinks onto my shoulder. “A team.”

I know this new ‘game’ is a big deal when they feed us. An entire buffet of food. Meat -- real, hot meat! Vegetables steamed and boiled and baked. Spreads of every kind and fifty different types of bread and cheese. It's what we're used to serving, not having (save the few free fighters that make a living here) and Reckoners make great skeptics. 

Eventually (after an attendant eats a bit of everything to prove that it's not poisoned and a girl I've fought before makes the good point that poisoning us would be boring for them) we all dig in. It takes a lot to stop from stuffing myself, but I manage. If I'm too full, I'll be slow and tired during the fight. I try to share this wisdom with Lorcan but he ignores me and I'm not about to get between him and those pork ribs.

A fight starts when you realize you're going to be fighting. Right? So let's fight now.

I scan the room. Mostly those I recognize either from seeing them around or hearing their rumors. 

The big ones to avoid are going to be Kato the Arm and Shiraza the Blade -- a duo that's here by choice and never fights alone. A free for all like this is right up their alley. Kato is large and strong, but he's a puncher. So long as I keep range on him, I should be fine. Shiraza is a different story. She's wirey, tiny, and quick as lightning. But she keeps by him for the most part. So, again, avoid the big guy.

Besides them, there's Crixus. A peach-fured minotaur who cares little about winning and plenty about bloodshed. He's a wildcard. If it looks cool to attack Lorcan and I, he will. But if we seem boring? I think he'll leave us alone.

Mercy Stroke could be scary but I don't think this is her game. She's the rare stealthy Reckoner that doesn't boast about a vivacious lifestyle. I fought her once. Lost in less than two minutes. The entire arena filled with smoke and by the time she was out of it she was on me with razor sharp blades. Lorcan fought her the next day. No smoke for him but she mumbled something into her hand wraps and went entirely invisible. Took him down with pressure points and bare hand strikes. I think she comes from Ionia. I know little about Ionia except that it's people tend to be fiercely loyal to home. Yet, she's not a prisoner. She's one of the free.

Actually, Mercy Stroke could be good to have if the flag is our objective. I don't care about being the one to wave it across the Arena; I just don't want to die. If we back her up, she stands a better chance than anybody here of actually ending the game. 

I stand. Lorcan grabs my arm.

“Ow?” I question.

He gives me a scolding look. He must have seen me b-lining for the ninja. 

“Team up,” I say.

“No.”

“Yes.”

With a grunt, he pulls me back down to my chair. He releases my arm only to double fist some turkey legs.

“Too dangerous.” Hunks of food fly from his mouth as he speaks.

“I'd rather have danger on my side than against me.”

I stand and he grumbles with a shake of his head. Disapproval or no, he doesn't care enough to stop me.

“Mercy Stroke,” I greet.

She tilts shimmering purple eyes up my way. I didn't get a good look at her before. The smoke and all. Maybe that's why I only now realize that she's a teenager. A teenager who is about to cry. 

I smile softly and take a seat beside her. 

“Have you fought this game before?” I ask.

She shakes her head, her bottom lip pushed out and quivering. 

“Oh, you'll be alright. See my friend Lorcan over there? He's the boar looking man choking down an entire steak.” 

She looks and I snort like a pig. That doesn't earn me a smile, but it does give me her attention.

“Lorcan and I are teaming up. Keeping each other alive. What do you say to joining us?”

“But you're weak.” Her voice is deep and jaded. Her point stated as a simple stoic fact.

“I'm distracting. All you have to do is get the flag and all I have to do is take long enough to kill that you can cross the Arena.”

“Can you?”

“Against these guys? Hell no. But Lorcan and I together can. So. Team up?”

She takes a breath and nods. 

Good.

Only now I'll be worried about keeping her alive. No human should ever be murdered, but a child ? They shouldn't even be allowed to be here. She shouldn't. Yet, this is Noxus. So here she is.

***

More obstacles is right. It's a labyrinth above ground now just as it is below. I have to imagine it gives the crowd above us one heck of a view, however. 

As soon as the gong chimes, it's chaos.

Skirmish after skirmish breaks out. Mostly old enemies. 

A flash overtakes me. A flash of Esvelle. Of that soldier that killed her. I watch her eyes dull. I watch her fall. Her blood slips warm through my fingers as I--

Lorcan’s hand on my shoulder jolts me back to the present. How long I was gone, I don't know but I do know that three things have changed in the Arena.

Thing one: twelve Reckoners are dead.

Thing two: the fighting on one side of the arena has stopped.

Thing three: the reason the fighting stopped is because of the Goliath standing by the flag.

He wasn't at the buffet. Sorry, it wasn't at the buffet. Though it looks like it's had twelve buffets all its own already. What is that thing? Is it even human? 

A bulging sack of meat and fresh stitches the vile creature seems is a ripe blueberry one squish away from popping straight open. He has metal ribs. Metal claws. A metal lower jaw that affixes a mask over his nose and mouth. His eyes glow a dark yellow a similar shade to the pus leaking out of him.

That's no man. It's just the remains of one hoisted up on scarecrow limbs of science for one final act. A medley of heinous killers and murderous machinery. 

Yet it sure screams like a man when they stab it.

I could blink twice and still not miss the motion of his arm as he sweeps away three Reckoners like fruit flies. Still, all three snap as they hit the marble walls. They fall limp. I fall back.

“Surprise,” Lorcan comments.

It's his comment that reminds me I'm not alone. I glance around at the emptiness between us and the clashing men and women with something to prove. We've got our backs to a wall so at least that angle is covered but…

“Where's Mercy Stroke?” I ask.

He motions over his head like he's pulling up a hood. “Halfway to the flag by now. Backup plan?”

“That thing’ll kill her!”

“That thing will kill us . Backup plan; C’mon Rabbit!”

A woman rushes us with twin drakehounds. Lorcan grabs her head in one hand and smashes it repeatedly into the wall. With every squish-crunch Noxian red flashes through my memories. I shut my eyes and take a breath. I open them. 

“Numbers,” I say.

“What?” Lorcan grumbles. Blood matts into his chest fur as he wipes off his hand.

“We have numbers.”

He blinks. “What numbers?”

I hop forward, scanning the arena for something tall. Something centralized. Something…like that marble pillar.

“Rabbit!” Lorcan scolds. Then louder, “Rabbit!” 

As a minotaur charges my left, I sweep right. Two women fall into a grapple in front of me and I leap right over, staggering but not quite falling as I hit the ground. Lorcan still stands by the wall, chasing me with his eyes as he takes on one, two, five, seven people that notice he's now alone. He can handle it. I don't look back again.

I launch myself halfway up the height of the pillar, my nails digging into the subtle sandy cracks and grooves.

Another flash of red finds me, bringing a ring to my ears and a pain behind my eyes like someone's sawing my optic nerve with the bow of a fiddle. I grit my teeth and shake it away.

It's a battlefield.

That's what Ambessa had said. So fine. Let it be a proper one. Let there be sides.

I finally scramble to the top. It's small. My feet overhang on both sides and I don't dare stand up. I don't even let my hands stop gripping the edges. I don't know if I'll actually be able to catch myself if I fall but better safe than sorry. 

It's loud. Too loud. 

I shout, “Hey!” 

Nothing. Obviously. Who wants to listen to the crazy woman sitting on a -- what even is this? Just a piece of rubble?

I look behind me, back at the beast. He's got piles of corpses around him now. The flag, just to his back. On the other side of the Arena Reckoners are still fighting uselessly. No one is going to be touching that thing. We'll be purged of all good fighters. It doesn't make sense that our owners would…

Owners.

Fuck.

Fuck!

I glance around the crowd again, naming everyone I recognize.

Kato and Shiraza: free.

Crixus: free.

Mercy Stroke (wherever she is): free.

Ambessa…she's signed me up for death. Again.

There's Lorcan, whose owner is about to be redeployed, this older bearded guy with a limp that I'm lost on the name of, the tattooed girl who's been losing so badly that her owner has actually bet against her for the last two fights. 

It is a purge. It's a fucking slaughterhouse.

I shout again, “Reckoners!”

Nothing. 

Between the roar of the crowd and the moshing of fighters. I need silence. I need something startling. I need--

The big guy hurls a rock -- make that boulder -- over all of our heads with a mighty roar. It takes off the top corner of a viewing box, just barely missing the generals inside.

That'll do it.

Fuck.

I stand. I have to stand.

“Brothers!” I shout. I turn some heads. “Sisters!” I turn some more. I won't have their attention for long. I point to the flag, “That flag is our ticket to freedom. Without it, we can kill each other or wait for that thing to kill us. But we will all die! None of us can get past him alone. So together, show me your will to survive! Show me the strength there is in unity! In a batallion! In an army!”

A few of the try-hards roll their eyes. One or two laughs. But Lorcan raises a fist for me and turns to the others.

“An army!” He shouts. “We. Are soldiers!”

That they like to hear.

“Without each other,” I repeat, “we die. Now who's going to help me put that creature down?!”

I don't get everybody. But I get enough. Those that don't join rush for the flag. It distracts the big guy enough to give me time to think. I'm no general. But I've come up with a winning strategy once. Once.

“What's your plan?” Crixus calls. 

“Crixus, you're on this bullshit?” A slender woman, Antonina the Bully, scoffs.

“Hell yeah!” He jeers. “Gonna make a damn good show. I doubt any of them up there see it coming.”

The support spreads and for some even turns to an eagerness. A comradery. It won't last long.

Think.

“He's strong,” Lorcan says. “But--”

“Slow,” I finish for him. “Everyone that isn't ranged, grab a pole arm. A rock if you have to. Something you can throw or keep back with. Aim for tendons. Things that keep the body out together. Aim for those scars of his -- they look like they're popping. If he starts to move your way, back off. If those opposite you back off, move in.”

We separate into factions. No… legions . Somehow, I wind up at the back center doing the organizing. 

The crowd, no longer having their bloodlust quenched by that creature ripping people in half, murmurs tensely. I can't tell if they approve. I don't really care. But the others might.

“Ready?” I say, my hand flat by my hair.

I get various nods and grumbles but no absolute yes. It'll have to do. I move my hand down to gesture towards our opponent.

“Move in!” 

The circle we've created closes in, nobody attacking just yet. The creature sluggishly moves his big head to both sides. It seems confused. Nervous? Maybe nervous is hopeful thinking. 

Its left foot starts to twitch. I motion the front left group back. “Out!” With my other hand, I wave the back right in. “Now!” 

Pikes, speaks, halberds, whips, anything and everything that can reach him does and they even manage to nick his achilles tendon. 

She howls out in pain, turning his tower-sized body towards those that just provoked him. 

“Back right: out! Everyone else, in!” 

A poke here. A prod there.

It's not a very coordinated dance but it gets the crowd to cheer and actually starts to look like it might turn the tides of this thing. After a few waves of the waltz we get him to his knees. I have Reckoners climb onto his back and we pin him to the ground. At minute eight, chains tie his hands to some obstacles. At minute nine, Lorcan mounts the back of his large head and gives me a wink.

At minute ten Lorcan dies.

Maybe it's the threat of death. Maybe it's some secret backup plan from the Arena owners that made him. But something gives the creature a burst of strength that tears the chains right through the shrapnel keeping them locked.

“Scatter!” I call, too late for too many. 

Lorcan is the first to go. A mighty man meeting a less than noble death as he flies off into the crowd and splits his head on one of their concrete seats. I only know he's gone when I hear some young girl screeching enthusiastically, “Lorcan’s on the list!” 

Then goes Crixus. He doesn't scatter and gets squished in a fist twice as large as his head. 

Antonina, the old bearded man, the tattooed woman. All gone in a matter of seconds. 

The creature spins the chains around like blades of a fan. He's gaining more speed than a mammoth his size should be capable of the longer and longer he goes. I order everyone to duck but by this point they've lost any respect or hope they had over my command.

Squish.

Twack!

Crunch.

Thud!

There's an orchestra of ways people can sound when they die.

Red and pain. Red and pain. 

I can't see the battlefield of my hometown; I can't hear it; But still I know it's there. Lurking just out of frame like the wolf and lamb who shepherd us into death. 

Crash!

Stone shatters behind me as his chains whip lower, inches above my back. I cover my ears, my nose pinned to the dirt. 

The screaming.

I remember the screaming.

Now, here, there is none. Only shouts of anger and defiance.

Reckoners and sacrifices have nothing to fear from the end. They fight until the very last beat of their wardrum hearts. They are soldiers.

I only see it by chance. A slight shimmer in the invisible air by the flag. I'm convinced I'm hallucinating but then…then it moves.

Mercy Stroke. She has the flag!

“Mercy!” I shout. “Run!”

The Noxian banner bobs and weaves and bobs and weaves. A blazing trail of defiance. A cape strung to the collar of a cat. The aerial silks of an acrobat, bending and billowing through the air.

She's almost there. Five feet. Then the flag catches on the very last unhooked loop of the creature’s chains. 

Whoosh.

That's the sound the chains make above me. A low almost slow-motion whoosh.

They cross my vision once and Mercy Stroke appears from her shrouded state. Twice and she falls. A third and she twitches in a puddle of her own blood. A fourth and the flag falls to cover her body. A fifth, and the flag and body alike go still.

“Esvelle!” I cry. 

Everything doesn't go black. It goes crimson. I see what happens next like I'm watching some other monochromatic woman from the safety of the viewing box. 

She's not crying. She should be, but instead her throat rips with a bloody seething rage. Luck envelopes her as she b-lines for that flag -- that symbol of Noxus and of pride. The chains bounce off of one obstacle, one person, and seem to warp right out of the way just centimeters from even grazing her. They should hit her. She should trip with the half-crawled animalistic way she runs, no, hops across the Arena. But they don't. And she doesn't. She reaches the flag, collapses onto it, and tears it off of the Demacian mage who just wanted to stay inside their fucking home! Such a simple request.

As the flagpole slides into the stand, I'm thrown back into my body full force. That's when I remember that I'm not lucky.

I crumble beneath the cuts and broken bones. My vision spins, a full rainbow of color fading back in with a black vignette. Somewhere, a crowd cheers and chains stop whooshing. 

Slowly, I blink and look up at the officiator. He's not alone. A dark scarred figure stands by his side. His thumb twitches between up and down. My throbbing brain does the same. 

Thumbs down.

The crowd, for once, is on my side. They boo and jostle and complain. I don't hear any battles behind me but maybe I'm too distracted by that dark figure turning and walking away.

No.

No.

You don't get to be done with me. This time, I'll say the right thing. This time, I'll mean it.

I pull myself up to wobbly ankles. Leaning on the flag of Noxus, my fist rises in the air.

“Nika!” I shout.

A choir starts in a six part round from behind me. Growing in voices and spreading like a plague through rats, my soldiers and our fans shout alike, “Nika!”

I don't give any of them a passing look. I don't even blink. That dark figure stops. I shout again.

“Nika! Nika!” 

The crowd cheers with me.

The officiator turns to her. She turns but not to him. Even from here, I can feel those heavy eyes upon me. But no stone is going to weigh me down. I keep her thousand yard gaze.

“Nika.”

There's no need to shout. 

She hears me.

***

Mage healers exist, yet I've always been left to suffer. First from Demacia’s unfounded fear of the arcane and then from Ambessa’s cruelty. Now, thanks to the Arena, for the first time, I get to feel invigorated after doing something stupid. 

She doesn't walk me back home. She doesn't see me at all after my battle. I'm escorted by a bookie. Shoved inside with a kick in the ass. But I was going anyway.

She's not there to greet me. She's not anywhere I expect her. 

She's taking a fucking bath with a towel over her eyes.

“Ah, little rabbit, you've--”

A painful shout breaks out of me as I grab a fistful of hair from the back of her head and shove her forward into the water. 

There's a millisecond of shock before she twists my wrist, holding me in place with one hand and flipping me with a jerk of her shoulder. A claw yanks me by my throat, pinning my neck to the bottom of the tub as her free hand keeps control of that wrist I so stupidly gave her access to. 

Heavy howling breaths escape through her rising shoulders. She glares down at me through a blurry view. Hot water burns my lungs, slipping through the few thin tunnels that aren't being choked shut by her grip. Bubbles float up to her face then pop, rippling out like a black eye across those ugly scars. 

I trash. She doesn't flinch. My face tightens to rage more with every gargled attempt at a breath. I dig at her wrist. Her arms. My nails cut thin red lines into her elbow and tricep. Still, her hold only strengthens. 

I close my mouth. She closes her hand and those few tiny tunnels with it. Her eyebrows lift with a little jerk of her head. 

That fucking thick head of hers.

I ball the hand I still have control over into a fist and fake for her nose. It actually works and she doesn't expect it when I make a last minute switch to her stomach. 

In the half a second I have of a loose grip, I swing my legs over the arm of hers that's controlling my wrist, one ankle on the side of her neck and another along her shoulder. Both feet push towards the wall and into it she goes. Again. A third time. Mosaic tiles of the bathroom crumble and a trickle of blood drips from her temple. 

With a scoff turned growl, she lets go of my wrist and shoves my feet away. Fine by me. I use my new free hand to get a liver hit in. Funny thing about liver hits, they shut the body down for about thirty seconds. Want to guess who taught me that?

With a gasp, I find air. I spend about eight of my thirty seconds just gathering oxygen and sticking back my wet hair so that it's out of my eyes. Then I find her face and I shove her back against the edge of the tub, a thumb on either eye which she shuts with grit teeth. 

She paws at my hands, ripping one off only for me to swipe it right back into place. When she gets too feisty, I deck her once in the nose. I swear her eyelids are soldered together. I try to pry one open with my thumb nail. She responds with a growl that comes not from her throat but somewhere deep in her chest and lifts her head back enough to bite the heel of my hand. She kicks me back to the other side of the tub. Her calloused hand plans the side of my face and she gives me the same treatment I gave her earlier. On the seventh or eighth smash of my face against tile she feels me stop fighting. She gives me one more hit for good measure then drops her hands into the water, panting. 

I spit the blood that's dripping from my mouth and pant like a dog with her. Those stone eyes are on me. Mine are on her. 

With a sudden jolt of renewed energy, I shout and lunge for her throat. Both hands wrap as tight as they can -- strangling ivy vines around the trunk of a tree. 

She clicks her tongue and knees me in the stomach. Then she flips me off of her, out of the bath, and onto the floor. 

I can't tell if it's my heart or my lungs but something in my chest screams with pain and begs me to stop moving. 

The fuck does it know?

She rises cool and angry from the bath. Water serpents slither down her tall naked form. She takes sturdy steps over the edge of the tub and a few single drops of watered down crimson join the puddle growing at her feet. Her temple is the only thing that bleeds.

She wipes her wound with a thumb as she looks down on me. A look, as if I've finally given her whatever it was she was searching for.

I start to move but she steps on my head, pinning it down against the stone. From here, I have an ironic view of her from the vantage point I thought would be the only one I'd ever get.

Her expression is fierce and loathing. It's the look she gives her enemies on the battlefield. It's the look of a victorious general upon the loser. It's a look of respect.

Chapter Text

“Ow,” I complain, scrunching up my forehead. I press my tongue to the back of the gold tooth that has replaced the canine I lost to Lorcan.

Sturdy fingers still my recoiled face. Then the needle is back to pricking my eyebrow. It's on my right side. My correct side. As if this fresh scar is who I truly am and always was. I can feel the thread as it pulls through my skin. It tickles, somehow, more than it hurts. But it tickles on the inside. Somewhere I can't scratch.

I know mage healers and still Ambessa insists on stitches and setting broken bones. It's like she enjoys my pain. She probably does. Every suture is a punishment for a look I've given her or thought I've had too loud. I don't bite my tongue anymore. She dislikes my obedience almost as much as she dislikes my rebellion.

It is in the nature of all things to wish for freedom .

She said that to me once and yet when I catch a tone or brave a remark about not liking her orders her opinions on the matter seem to switch. 

It's not always with pain. In fact, it rarely is. It's a cunning sort of punishment. A scolding is a blessing, because at least then I know what I've done. Sometimes she'll just give me a look. That's when I have to live on edge. A week. Maybe two. I know the retaliation is on its way and I look for it behind every corner. When it finally comes, I always manage to still be surprised. Other times she'll say and do nothing for months on end. I won't even know I've done something wrong, until my life is uprooted and I find myself one v fiving a bunch of bruisers in Fleshing. Today, I'm getting stitches. Messy stitches that she pulls too taught and won't let me flinch away from. Though she's not the cause of this injury, she sure knows how to capitalize on an opportunity.

“That crystal lodged in your head was powerful ancient magic,” she hums covetously. “I can't help but wonder how a spellsword as low as your opponent got her hands on it.”

“Felt like any other rock she was sling-shotting at me,” I say. “But it made me get all stiff and cold. Frozen. Freljordian magics?”

“Possibly. If you had managed to procure it, we could tell for certain.”

“Sorry, I was busy getting my ass kicked.”

If there is one thing I've learned in my two years serving my warlord, it's her limits. Though they fluctuate, crass language and back-talk that wasn't personally sardonic was usually alright. Today, it elicits a small smile. Yesterday? An eye roll. 

She nods to a mirror on the wall. I rise with a sigh. Time to note the damage.

Shit. Two years and I look about twenty years older. What does that make each month with her? About three months off my life? Through my hair slither dozens of white apodous creatures, some worms, some snakes. Short, long, thin, thick. They crawl onto my head at night and never leave. 

Snow white veins branch out from the black line of stitches across my eyebrow -- a spiderweb that creeps into red eyes. They're the shade of red you get from arterial blood. That bright red that pompous blue-blooded theatre goers would say is too red for real blood. Who can blame them? Those who have only ever knicked a vein; Those who have never watched a man’s leg spurt neon colors to the beat of his pulse -- about a liter per minute. Depending on how deep you cut. 

“I think this one’s crooked,” I say, gesturing to one of Ambessa’s sloppy stitches. 

Ignoring me in that focused on me way only she is capable of, she crosses the room to my side. 

“You are beginning to resemble a little rabbit,” she says.

“I hope the red eyes don't lessen my…usefulness.”

“Oh child, you have nothing to fear in that regard.”

Her words send butterflies through my stomach. Or maybe they're maggots, devouring me from the inside.

“You should expect those duties to become more prominent than your gladiatorial ones in the coming months.”

I furrow my brows, “Wh--”

“You'll pop a stitch.”

I fix my face. “Why?”

“We are going to war. It is a good thing. I have missed the battlefield.”

“Why take me with you? You could leave me here. I could keep fighting. Passive income to spend when you return.”

“I would like to keep updated on the effects that crystal brings. Other than your change in eye color.”

“You say that as if you don't plan everything four steps in advance.”

“My plans are adaptable. The only leaders who fail are those unwilling to change.”

“And the meek.”

She laughs, “the meek don't become leaders at all.”

No. Not here they don't. 

“Will it be all the same raiders that burned down Mossburrow?” I ask.

She smiles and prods my choice of words, “a battle over land in your homeland demands a different set of tools than we are to deploy in Shurima.”

“Demacia is no home of mine.”

With that smile grows pride. Her fingers brush the bottom of my chin and she steps closer. When we stand like this, our eyes chained together, I always stir with a feeling akin to both rage and lust. It's like nothing is real except for us. She's no general. I'm no slave. She is nothing to be feared and I am a worthy enemy. When she touches me as she does now, I can just as easily push a blade into her eye as I can my tongue into her mouth. She knows it. She feels it too. That urge to both wrap those fingers around my throat and pin me to the bed. 

“On your knees, child,” she orders.

If it's with pleasure or contempt that I follow that  order, I'm unsure.

The madam once told me of a term for a specific type of client for who receiving pleasure and domination went hand in hand. They like to lead sex, she'd said, control it, but they prefer to receive rather than give. Authoritative, even on their backs. A power bottom, it's called. This is the perfect term for Ambessa. 

I've gotten particularly good at holding my breath. It would have come in handy in that bath way back when. She rides my face for several unrelenting minutes at a time, in as much control of her orgasm as she is of me. 

When she's finished (there is no we in the bedroom) she strips away her armor and drapes herself over a chaise longue. One leg dangles over the edge and another over the side. Her body is both magnetic and obscene. She's beautiful. There's no doubting that. But she's a vile woman who’s thrown me at death’s doorstep too many times to count. She's dangerous. To me, especially so. She's deadly. She cunning. She's evil and I'd do anything to wipe that smirk off of her face. 

She doesn't have to order me to touch her. I'm already begging to do so. 

I attack her breasts, running my tongue along a deep scar by her heart. Nipping, groping, kissing, devouring her very essence. She seizes one of my hands and forces the captive down to her clit. I know by now to use rough circles of pressure. When you have skin as thick as hers and a body so war torn, you must grow numb to a gentler sensation. For Ambessa, no part of her life can skirt by without strength.

When I fuck her, it's one of the only times I see a full spectrum of colors. Every moment, I am living in entirely. Sometimes it's only moments; Sometimes she uses me for hours. Tonight, on the eve of a war, I learn that her libido has no limits. It's just the thought of a battlefield alone and she keeps me up all night.

By the morning, my cheeks and ass bare matching red welts in the shape of a sizable hand. My jaw aches along with my scalp and tongue and arms. But the worst of it is my shameful core, desperate and quivering. It lies wet and ready -- pleading for her touch. How dare it betray me. How dare I enjoy this . Enjoy her. 

No one would guess she's a cuddler. Not all spooning and fluffy feelings, mind you, but when she finishes with a lover she'll keep at least a hand on them possessively until she's ready to leave the room. Today, it's an arm over my neck, pinning me with the perfect view of her close-eyed face. She's tired. Vulnerable. My hatred for her grows like a fire from my loins to my stomach and my chest. Flames lick at the soft pallet of my mouth. How easy it would be to put her to sleep permanently right now. Just a single blade.

My fingers itch to punch her. To choke her. To kill her. To touch her again. To be knuckle deep in her pussy.

With a sigh, she sits up. 

“You are improving,” she says, pulling on a red silk robe. “We depart at nine.”

She leaves me as she always does: alone in the bed, cold and concupiscent, laying in a puddle of cowardice and contrition.

***

The camp is set up the exact same way as the camp in Demacia. The same red tents. The same make-shift streets. The same torches and flags and banners. Like a theatre set, staged identically for a minutely different show every night. The only difference is that where Demacian grass once sprouted here and there, Shuriman sand now burns my sandaled feet. 

Walking through the camp now, we follow the same root I did the first morning I awoke beneath a Noxian sun. Only, rather than Ambessa and Indari, we meet a military captain whose family name is about established as his army is in these foreign lands. 

“Jericho Swain,” Ambessa greets with a bow. Well, as far as a Noxian will ever bow. I've seen them do this before, the generals, a half salute half bow all charade. 

“Ambessa Medarda,” the man greets back with the same sort of gesture. 

He's older than I thought he'd be yet younger too if that makes sense. He's about the same age as my warlord but less aged around the eyes. His slick raven hair falls from a falcon claw hairline in a pristine noble way over his shoulders and chest. He bears but a single white streak. Wish I could say the same. Something about him is familiar but I can't place what. His nose isn't quite a hook but it comes pretty close. He isn't a man who's seen much of war. No scars mar that pretty face, no dark circles or dulling to his eyes. I have but one thought when I see him.

He's a captain?

“It is my privilege to assist you in this battle,” my warlord lies. “With two families of such high regard involved, it is sure to make history books.”

“And I look forward to learning from you,” the captain lies back. “Sometimes a new vantage is the only advantage one needs. I do hope Grand General Darkwill gave you a copy of my plans to look over on your journey here.”

“He did. I made some…adjustments.”

“Adjustments?”

“Necessary ones. Though, only if you plan to win.”

This very much feels like a conversation I don't need to be a part of. My nerves must show because the captain's dark eyes slide over to me. He hums with a smile that's surprisingly gentle and warm. It's an aristocratic smile. A naive smile. Not fitting for a Reckoner let alone a soldier of his rank. 

“We can discuss the plans at dinner,” he says. “First, I'd like to speak with Rabbit.” 

He'd like to what?

He clasps his hands together and offers me the same sort of bow he just gave the woman that owns me. “Thank you so much for making the journey along with Ambessa. I've been wishing to speak with you ever since I heard about my commission.”

He what?

He waits for me to respond but I'm not sure one is allowed. I look to Ambessa. She's clearly irritated with him. I don't want her to be irritated with me. She catches me and I ask a silent question -- a request to be ordered. 

My permission to speak is quietly denied and she answers the captain in my stead, “Rabbit is a talented Reckoner with many fights under her belt. To have fans in such high places only further proves her skills in the Arena.”

The captain turns that patrician grin her way. Calmly, he says, “not a fan, colonel, an admirer. Why, I've caught almost every fight since her unusual win in the Munera.”

The Munera is the term for that ‘game’ Ambessa had tried to kill me in. The one where Lorcan died. 

Now I remember him. Far away, blurred by too many hits to my head, but I did see him there. How could I miss him? When it was his thumbs down that started my chant for Nika.

“Rabbit,” he makes a point to turn back to me and step just past my warlord. A mistake I'm surprised doesn't get his throat slit right here and now. “Your ability to rally a group as maverick, unfettered, and undisciplined as the Reckoners of the Fleshing Arena into a true battalion of soldiers is…marvelous. Unique and rare. To command them when you yourself were but a recruit among their ranks? Well I began to follow your career, as I mentioned. And when they gave me my command here as guerdon for turning in my treacherous parents, I wanted at once to enlist you. Though that opportunity only comes now, with the arrival of your mistress.”

He …what ?

“What are you implying, captain?” Ambessa asks slowly, a hiss to the title in her voice. 

Now he gives her his attention. After making her wait like my inferior. I'm sure that'll make things go his way.

“I wish to buy her freedom,” he says. “So that she may serve in my legion.” 

My heart thumps as heavy as the thumping legs of my namesake. My world turns to color and my future at once feels like free air before me. I find myself present and human for the first time in two years. It takes everything I have to not scream, instantly, ‘yes!’ at the top of my lungs. 

Because the choice isn't mine.

My owner examines him the way you might expect one to look over an ambitious salesman. Half of her holds contempt, the other a curiosity. For once, I can't fully read her. I'm not in her head. Maybe, I hope, that's just the first sign from the universe of my division from her. Of my freedom.

When she opens her mouth to speak, I can read the no on her lips before any sound is made.

“How much do I make you daily?” I interrupt. 

A furrowed pondering brow as she looks at me. Rather than a question, she gives an answer toned as one, “2000 denarii.”

“Two years ago you turned down an offer for that amount. Said I made 500 a day and that my value was 3000 denarii. That's six times the daily amount which, by all logic, makes me now worth 12000, is that right?”

She doesn't answer. I face the captain.

“I have 10000. I've been betting on myself. I should have more but I lost a few more times than I anticipated and I always all or nothing my bets. There's little point in risk if it's calculated,” I laugh a little, less from amusement and more in a failed attempt to soothe the heart attack brewing in my chest. “Two-thousand. The same amount that was denied two years ago. Isn't that poetic?”

He gives Ambessa another one of those smiles. “She is quick. And correct with her math.” 

He waits for an answer and she knows she can't give the one she wants. Or at least, she knows we want her to feel that way.

A beat. Then two. Then fangs slip from parted lips twitched up into a dangerous grin of her own. 

“This is Noxus,” she says simply. “No one worthy lives in chains. If Rabbit believes she is strong enough for her freedom, then let her take it from me.”

A fight. I was wondering when ours would finally be. She's had those jaws perched over my head for two long years. Now they've snapped, but I've been ready to run out of the way for just as long a time.

“First light then,” the captain says. “You can use the stretch of sand west of the praetorium.”

And that's where I'll meet her…as soon as I learn what a praetorium is.

She leaves the tent, expecting me to follow. But the captain holds me back with a talon to my shoulder. No. Not a talon. A kind hand of one human being resting on the shoulder of another. 

“It would be inequitable for only one of you to prepare before this fight,” the captain says. “Go. Rest. You must be tired after your lengthy trip. I'll send Rabbit back your way in a moment. After some council.”

With a growl, Ambessa allows it. 

It's not that I'm always by her side, but I'm rarely out of her expansive reach. Even now, I can feel her heavy eyes upon me. Her grip at my throat. My suffocating aura. Part of me worries this is an elaborate trick. Another part of me is hopeful that's what it is. Because then if I fail I won't really lose anything at all. My eyes remain in the thin red fabric of the tent’s door. A barrier between my world and hers.

“She expects you to play fairly,” the captain says, his voice a shade deeper and more calculated than previously. “But you aren't even playing the same game, are you? Tell me, have you noticed any changes since getting hit in the head with that pebble?”

***

We've had fights before but this is a battle. The principal one in the war for my autonomy. 

We round each other in the makeshift arena whose walls are made of shield bearing soldiers rather than marble. Two animals, both convinced they're stalking their prey.

In Runeterra, it's impossible to talk about death without first a mention of Kindred. The story goes that death itself got lonely and so it split into two halves. Those who embrace their final moments with acceptance get greeted by the lamb who shepherds them into the afterlife. But those who run? They get chased down mercilessly by the wolf. If caught, they're dragged kicking and screaming into whatever comes next.

The woman I was born died two years ago in Demacia. When I gaze at my reflection I see no part of her that remains but a corpse that's body parts have been borrowed and merged with me. Each fight I've had, each beating I've taken, I have been reborn -- baptized in blood and bruises. In other words, I have been embracing death every day of my life. It's a beautiful thing to die. To be reborn in a single moment as someone new. Someone stronger. Here, today, I will meet the lamb again and walk away with a vision an even deeper shade of red. Every human life is of ineffable value; To be a killer and still have strength -- to have humanity -- you must die as you deserve every fight and become someone new.

Ambessa, on the other hand, has been running for a long time. The aura of the wolf darkens her shadows -- it's unyielding hunt mirrored in her tight grasp of life. Losing a fight to her is death the same as it is to me. But she fears it. I don't know when she turned the wolf’s hunt around, but I do know that she's the one doing the chasing. She's entered it's pack. And now, she hunts me.

Death split itself into two opposite halves because it got lonely. When I win this fight and am a lamb free of my wolf, will I be reborn as only half of a person, I wonder? 

She makes the first strike. She lands it too. An opener of a bare-fist barrage. No weapons will be used here today. Only might. 

I weave beneath a swing, rounding behind her to kick her away by the back. It's taunting more than it's damage dealing. She doesn't appreciate the spectacle. But hey, she's the one who made me a Reckoner. What good would I be if I didn't make a fight entertaining?

We're back to stalking. I hop from foot to foot. Life energizes me like fresh spring water for one so desert locked they've forgotten it exists. 

“If you're going to beat me,” I say. “Make sure you kill me. Because I won't continue to live as your slave.”

“By my hand may be the only way that you ever truly die,” Ambessa says. “You're a lucky little rabbit.”

She throws a punch, I catch her arm. I snake my own arm around it and get a hit on her face. Only one though, as she forcefully grabs hold of my free fist and headbutts me back to stalk again. 

“You're wrong.” I shake out my hands. “You're full of cunning little ways to kill me without raising your fist and you've succeeded every time.”

A swing. A dodge. A counter. A block. Another swing. A hit. Another swing. Another hit. 

Our conversation continues with our…well, not a dance. No. Our fights are never dances. They're pits of hungry desperate animals competing for a single dirty scrap of bone.

“If I've killed you, then how are you here to continue vexing me?”

“Rabbits have a tendency to multiply. I am just a copy of a copy of a copy of a weak woman. Each time, reborn stronger.”

“The wolf is coming, little rabbit. Each death of yours has left a blood trail to follow.”

“Ambessa,” it's my first time saying her name, “we both know the wolf is already here.”

As we continue to clash, I turn my focus inwards to a chill hand gently caressing my brain. A side effect of that crystal. I craft a blizzard of thought creating the mirage of glacial time around me. Nothing is truly slowed, my thoughts not enhanced, but I can think and see everything around me in seconds. I have illusionary minutes of time to plot and plan my moves and to predict hers. It will only last until her next hit. Until I die again.

With every blow, I watch her slowly realize that something is off. She doesn't seem to place what it is but she knows just as I do that it stems from her being predictable. Not just to anyone, mind you. But to me. I've spent many lives dependent on reading her moods. Her objectives. The subtle signals from her body. Her voice. I am her slave. Her other half. The lamb to her slaughter. As long as we are bad for each other, we are uniquely whole. 

She finally lands a hit and I let her do it again. Twice. Three times. As blood spills into my eyes, I smile. A new curtain to fall on one life and shepherd me into another. A life, not as a slave, but as a soldier. A Noxian. Tried and true. Still tied to her, undoubtedly, as there is little chance the loathing and bloodlust we crave so dearly will ever cease between us, but this time we are bound by a single fated thread rather than a collar and a chain.

Equals. Halves of a whole.

Now on the ground, I turn my head to my captain who watches by the walls of our arena. It gives her access to my eye which I close against the pursuit of her thumb. A queer sort of wink to which my captain nods. 

Nevermore , he seems to say.

I turn back to Ambessa.

Plant my feet. 

Hike my hips.

Wrap her left arm.

Push her  right hip.

And roll.

I pin a wrist to the ground and pull her arm close to her body. My free arm becomes a board beneath her bent elbow and grasps my other wrist. I hike my shoulder, dislocating hers. She howls into a seething panting grin of both fury and amusement. A true warrior. 

She punches me with her other hand. I fist some sand and rub it into her eyes. She blinks it away without flinching and wraps my throat. She tries to hook one of my legs with hers but I'm a slippery little thing. She always wanted to bottom -- let her stay there. 

I beat on her. Again. And again. Her grip on my neck only grows tighter. Finally, it breaks, and I give that arm the same shoulder treatment as her other side. I throw in a few extra hits. But this isn't her death. No. I promised that to my captain. Besides, she'd just outrun it again.

I stand above her, exhausted, exalted, exhilarated, and free.

Chapter Text

The next day I'm sick. I wake up on a sleep mat -- my sleep mat -- with lips as dry as the sands outside. Every breath I take stops short of reaching my chest. I'm breathing, getting air, but I feel like it's just not hitting the right part of my lungs. If it could, then I'd be alright. To do that, to breathe like that, I need to breathe through my nose though and it's plugged. I try to sniff back the stuffy mucus blocking my air but it's stiff as a wall and only causes my head to ache.

Now that I've drawn my attention to it, my head doesn't stop aching. Neither does my chest. The left side, right on the side of my breast. Is it the cold? Or is it my heart? Stress can give you tumors. Or a heart attack. Maybe it's just shrapnel in my soul from that fight yesterday. Fragments of Ambessa.

That's it. That's why I'm sick now.

I think my body is ridding me of all the poison she's pumped into me these past two years. My spirit has been like my lungs -- like the part of them that I just can't get oxygen to. Only now, it's full of air and can finally exhale the toxins. 

I sit up slow and dull. The ache in my head becomes a pressure that threatens to pop me like the grapes I used to feed her. Come to think of it, that's something I'll never have to do again. In fact, today, I don't even have to wear that armor. Those robes. Anything I don't want to. 

But I haven't been Rabbit before. 

The Demacian…she's dead. Now I'm not just a Noxian but a soldier. What does a soldier even wear? What do I wear? What do I have to…

…wear.

I felt so safe, I didn't even think to check over the room. Last night I was tired. Lots of drinking and celebrating and comradery with my new fellow legionnaires. I don't remember when I passed out or where. It wasn't here. Focusing, I think I woke up at one point between them and now. The sun had not yet risen and the walls of the praetorium were a dark irony color. More like dried blood than the usual Noxian crimson. Someone with a deep regal voice spoke to me. Something blurry, about first nights being difficult and better rest away from hounds with questions. I went back to sleep after that.

I hope I haven't just traded one master for another.

No.

No, my mistress never would have left me a note. Not like the one resting, pristinely folded on monogrammed paper, by the side of my mat. 

Legionnaire,

Burgir, the on site armorer, will have something off-size but suitable for you. When we return to the city in a few months we will fit you for your own set with any accomodations you prefer. 

You seem ill. That is to be expected. For today, we will not see battle so you may wear whatever you wish. When you rise, come speak with me.

Your captain.

Whatever I wish. I get excited for a moment before I realize that I own nothing but what's on my back. There's no mirror in the tent. For a noble, Captain Jericho Swain isn't vain. What a nice difference already.

I can't change my clothes. Yet. So what can I control? 

I pull the long brown leather laces off my sandals. Guesstimating a center part, I finger comb my hair. It's getting long now and the undercut is far gone. It needs a wash something bad but I tell myself that an updo can cover that up for now. 

I pull the greasy locks into twin cone shaped buns, tangling in the leather laces here and there to hold. Some parts hang longer than others -- like white-striped curtains in long loops beneath the main structure. Others still fall half out of my criss-crossing and weaving of leather. But I decide it must look good enough. Certainly it's at the very least different from what it was. It's unique. And it's mine again.

I make my way to the armorer and I bring the note. I'm not sure why I do, I just do. I guess a part of me worries that he won't have heard about my freedom. That without this evidence that the captain himself has ordered me here, he'll call my old owner to reclaim me. 

“I was told to report to you,” I say in a voice I hope soldiers use. I hold out the letter. Just in case.

He doesn't even glance at it. Nor does he turn from his forge. 

The light of the smithing fire paints his face red but blue eyes pierce through it like stubborn icebergs before a rising sun. His hair and beard are both blonde and braided and his arms are decorated with tattoos of some cultural significance I'm not aware of. I know they're Freljordian symbols. I know that he's as frozen on the inside as his homeland. 

I take a few steps closer, eyeing his work. He's heating some metal and I won't even pretend to know what he's going to do with it next. It sure seems to take a while. A long while. My eyes trail to the stones of the forge. To the flames inside. 

Every part of the forge looks old but this encampment can't have been here that long. It's like pieces of an ancient forge were taken and then remortered together here in a sloppy careless fashion. The only stone in that lopsided dome of grey that is perfectly straight is bordered by smooth mortar flecked with gold and icebound blue. Engraved on that stone’s surface is the boxy figure of a minotaur with the horns of a ram. It's a weird looking minotaur. Even as a caricature, he has small round eyes and mammoth feet. He wears a blacksmith’s apron and holds a hammer over his mighty head. 

“Is that guy Freljordian too?” I ask.

The armorer makes a noise that would be a scoff had a scoff been smothered by a pillow. He pulls the metal from the forge and tosses it into some water. It hisses out steam before breaking into two with a distinct clinking noise. He leaves it and pulls hunks of shiny silver from a trunk. 

A helmet is tossed my way. One with a long red plume that mimics a feather boa. I catch it, but then a breastplate comes flying. One with sharp points and angled edges. Unlike the breastplates the knights of Demacia wear, it's all practicality -- brutality -- and not decorated in the slightest. Shin guards. Gauntlets. Both in the same style. 

“I'm running out of hands--” 

A cowl. Boots. Rope for tying on the underlayer that's apparently in a different trunk. 

“I'm beginning to understand why Ambessa left some of this shit off,” I say. “Honestly, I don't even know what half of it is. Any chance you could help me out?”

Leather and quilted fabric and layers and layers of some red cotton-y stuff piles by my feet. 

“Do I need everything?” I ask.

The armorer walks unflinching to the bucket of water he'd thrown the metal into and picks up one of the half pieces. He shakes it dry and shoves it into his forge. This time he only leaves it for seconds before pulling it out to beat it on an anvil.

“A hint would be nice.”

“He'll be of little use. His tongue’s been cut from his head.” Her voice clears my sinuses and I finally breathe to that desperate part of my lung. It doesn't last. 

“Looking to get your ass beat again? Leave me alone.”

It's a hard sell. What, with my shaking fists and stuck feet. The place between my shoulder blades pinches with tension and I can feel her muzzle ever so slightly open above my nape. I can't even find the courage to turn and say it to her face. 

“Careful, little rabbit.” Her voice is smooth and in rhythm with the blacksmith's hammer. “As an enlisted recruit, you should be wary in how you speak to a colonel.”

Fuck you.

I choke on the words. A pathetic cough bursts through my defenses. I can tell she enjoys it. Sickness. Ha! What a weak sign. 

Looking for anything to change the subject (seeing as I still can't move), I nod to the armorer. “Why did he lose his tongue?”

The man stops hammering. Back to the fire. At first, I think I've offended him but then he starts swinging away again.

“He’s a devout worshiper of the Freljordian forge god, Ornn,” she explains. She encroaches upon my peripheral vision but, just as she does, I keep my eyes forward. “He is also a talented mage. He can infuse weapons and armor with protective spells and enhancements. Since what we seek here is steeped in old magics, his particular talents have brought a value to his life.”

“And his tongue?” 

“He doesn't need it to forge. He does need it to utter prayer spells that could be used against us.”

“Could be.”

Neither of us speaks. We don't have anything to add. I kind of think she'll just walk away but that'd be too easy for her. No. I'm supposed to walk away. I'm supposed to yield this battle. To give her back some of the power and dignity that I stole from her yesterday. 

She doesn't deserve it.

My feet finally budge but only to turn her way and close the gap. I drop the armor I'm holding and gesture blankly. 

“How much of this do I actually need?” I ask.

“A soldier’s equipment comes standard. Over time, you will find your strengths and preferences and a unique quality to your silhouette will emerge.”

“I've fought more than a regular recruit. I know what I like.”

“You haven't been allowed to like much of anything.”

I hate how she says it. Simple. Factual. Emotionless. As if she's disconnected from it. As if it isn't her fault that I--!

I drag my attention down the armor, if only because seething through a stuffy nose only worsens my migraine. 

“If you need assistance putting it on, I'd be more than happy to help,” she offers superciliously. 

“I've had enough practice taking yours off that I should be able to handle it.”

The armorer pauses again. Bastard. But it's only to bring his metal back to the fire.

“What's he doing?” I snap.

“Forging a blade.”

“Why did he break the metal in half first?”

“To get further use from the rare material. That metal as you so call it is why we are here. An old battlefield, buried right beneath the sand dunes. The weapons and armor from which are linked to the legions of Azir.”

“Azir?”

She hums. “I'm afraid I have places I am needed. Good luck with that armor.” 

She leaves, hands behind her back folded neatly together. As if he shoulders weren't fucked yesterday. 

With a glance over said shoulder towards me (and a rather arrogant roll of it just because she can -- just because any injury I give to her she'll just be able to shrug off with no lasting effects) she comments, “I like what you've done with your hair. Those buns are like little rabbit ears. They match your coin.”

Remembering that I have it causes it to burn against the skin between my breasts. The skin her hands have so often caressed. I yank it off, breaking right through the chain. It's thrown into the sands with all that old armor, stomped even deeper by my boot. I make a big fuss of grunting and kicking up dust but she just walks away regardless. Cold as Freljordian ice.

When she's gone the armorer stops hammering. I sink to my knees, alternating between pants of ill air and suffocating while I lick my dry lips. 

For some reason I watch as I go digging through the sands for the denarii. I hold it in my hand until the armorer offers his. He looks slowly to his forge without so much as a twitch anywhere else on his face. Then the Demacian turned Noxian hands the coin off to the Freljordian turned Noxian and the two embrace the red together.

***

I have to be shown to my captain because he's nowhere I can find in the encampment. 

Visionary as he is, he's out in the sands, already planning not only where to dig but how best to fortify against the attack that disturbing such a once sacred place will call upon us.

“Rabbit,” he greets. He tilts his head, still smiling. “Is that a denarii on your breastplate?”

“Didn't want to lose it,” I say. I bow as best I can which is probably very poorly. He doesn't seem to mind. “Ambessa mentioned that we're standing on an old battleground fought by some guy named Azir.”

“You spoke with Ambessa?”

“She spoke with me. Who was Azir?”

The captain’s eyes twinkle with envy as he recalls the story, “A mortal Shuriman emperor of a far distant age who stood at the cusp of immortality. He was never meant to be a ruler. The youngest son in a family of many. As luck would have it, assassins struck one night while he was still a child and paved his way to the crown by killing every brother he had. They tried to kill him too, but he was saved by a boy who he'd name his brother and eventually have rule in an almost lockstep beside him. His hubris brought an end to his life before he could reach his final goal -- a solution to death itself. Though some say that he's been reborn. Others still, that he never died.”

“What do you believe?”

He stares up at the black shadow of birds circling the sky. “I believe that we are standing above dead soldiers holding the very weapons and armor Azir used when he was on the doorstep of a discovery grand enough to swing the tides of fate. Destiny marches, like any man. Let us hope it can be cut down the same.”

“You hope to cut down destiny itself?” I don't mean to laugh but I do. 

That he does not appreciate. His patrician expression sobers and his eyes fall back to me. 

“Apologies, sir,” I say, lowering my head. “It is just…I always thought battles were fought without goals other than to kill and conquer. To expand borders. To raid villages. This…plan of yours, it has merit. It has thought. Vision.”

“Vision is one pillar of strength. It is something Ambessa thinks she possesses but that she does not understand well enough to teach you. Stick by me, legionnaire, and you will learn what it takes to see opportunity where others only see sand.” He pauses. Then that smile is back -- a split in the corvid beak of his face. “Would you believe me if I told you that Azir’s named brother, the boy who saved him from the assassins, was his slave?”

I can't. It shows. For a moment my breath stops and I'm drawn to how dry the air has once again made my lips. I lick them then swallow. When I find one side of my nose can again draw in air, I close my mouth.

“The more time I spend here on the front lines,” my captain says, “the more I learn that everyone, those with and without Noxian blood in their veins and of every status, can be equal when judged purely by the merit of their strength. I wouldn't have thought that before my commission. A new angle can truly alter one’s entire battlefield. Go. Rest today and try not to spread that plague of yours through the troops. When you are well, you will assist with the digging and train.” He turns back to the dunes. Back to the invisible armies that he can already see approaching at every likely angle. “There will be a battle here before we are gone.”

“Thank you.” My voice is no voice at all. I clear my throat, blaming that for the struggle. “You saved my life and for that, I will forever aid your vision, captain.”

“You saved yourself. There was a door and you unlocked it. I merely reminded you there was a key.”

***

I continue to be isolated, quarantined, in the praetorium. The captain is awake at late hours, plotting by candlelight over a desk separated from my small part of the tent by a curtain. I watch his shadow like sheep. One tuck of hair behind an ear. Two dabs of a quill into an inkwell. Three shifts. Four twitches of his arm. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. 

By thirty-seven I'm about as far from sleep as I can imagine. My blanket is warm, lined with the pelt of a sheep, but the air around me is cold. So is the air inside me. I still can't breathe and if I lay on one side the other clears up but I can't for the life of me get both parts of my nose to be free so I'm forced to keep sucking air painfully past chapped lips. A long time ago I'd use beeswax and oil to resoften them. I don't have any beeswax though and the oil around here is only used for the lamps. 

I sit up and my head spins. I feel even colder, like invisible hands of that Freljordian god from the forge are hovering over me. There's too many people here. I've got too much space around me. 

The world is an open road -- the kind built by Noxus in the lands they conquer that cowards then use to flee and soldiers to march. It's spiraling, twisting, and turning. There are many street signs but they're all in a language that I don't know and don't wish to learn. I can see the battlefields that lie along these paths. When I start to envision them the way I believe the captain does I get four steps ahead and begin to feel dizzy. All the things I could be and right now all I feel I currently am is alone. I need everyone to go away. I need someone to hold me. Gods, that's juxtaposed. I don't know what I want, truly, other than out of this bed.

I slip out beneath the side of the tent. I don't know why I sneak. It's not like the captain can't just see my shadow disappear. I don't know yet if he'd have questions about why I'm wandering but even if he does I don't think I'd lie to him. Then again, isn't it always a lie if you're trying to explain the rationale behind something you don't fully understand yourself?

The moon is high and the tents all dark. The liveliness of the camp has become a cemetery in the darkness. Every soldier seems to be dead asleep with these little irony curtains popped up to mark their graves. Epithets in the form of turkey bones from dinner and discarded boots and armor wished them farewell and told their stories. How many slept here. How many there. You can tell how long someone has been asleep based on the layer of sand on the little mat outside their tent door. Some barracks had fresh dusty footprints, others a mess of a dozen ghosted tracks. I wouldn't want to be the final man in a tired tent. If you wake up the others, there's likely some agitation you'll have to face come morning. 

I stop before a grave marked by boots that have found a uniqueness to their silhouette. Boots that fight battles in a way with which I'm too familiar. 

I catch myself as I reach towards the flap of the tent.

What are you doing, Rabbit?

I pull back. Not entirely. Something won't let me pull back entirely. My fingers twitch. Those hands hanging around me feel both further away and more suffocating than ever. 

I should go back to my bed and sleep. Tomorrow, when the dead rise and I regain my senses, the space around me won't feel so foreign and I'll be able to avoid her properly again. 

I just about tear my feet away when I catch sight of it. A light on the horizon. It isn't dawn. 

I squint and the light swings softly side to side to side again. It's a flame. No. Two. Four. The lanterns grow brighter and larger against the dark of the night sky. Like stars falling to earth and getting closer to our camp.

I whip open the tent door and step one foot inside. A thin silver sliver of moonlight cuts like an extra scar across the colonel's face as she cracks open one eye.

“There's someone approaching the camp,” I say to interrupt her questions. 

All at once she's out of bed and wide awake. She storms to the path outside her tent and I follow. Her scowl threatens the horizon. Her eyes, flirting back and forth along the image. There's a group of them. Men, yes, but they're also carrying something. Something that leaves a big black shadow in the center of their formation. Flags hang beneath their light whose sigil is indiscernible. 

“Get the captain,” Ambessa orders. “If it's Shurima, they aren't attacking yet. Not while they signal their arrival so pompously.”

True. I can't imagine soldiers lighting their way into a sneak attack. 

I turn, stopping only because the man of the hour is already approaching behind me.

“Captain,” I bow. “Th--”

“Stand down, Rabbit.” The captain orders. He makes his way to a few paces before both of us. “You too, colonel. I was awaiting our visitor’s arrival. That's why I’m still awake at this hour.” He holds up a friendly wave to the incomers. 

Ambessa and I trade a look. I stand down. She's still ready to fight. When we turn back to the approaching strangers I think we both see the flags at the same time because her shoulders drop and her feet move together. First, there is shock. And why wouldn't there be? It's swiftly replaced with the anger of betrayal. 

I'd know those golden crosses and the diamonds they lie on anywhere. Medarda. As in, Ambessa Medarda. It's her family crest. She does not seem happy about a reunion. 

“Who did you bring here, Swain?” She asks, each word it's own individual point -- it's own dagger turned for his neck, awaiting the rare answer that doesn't get him slain. 

He doesn't respond. The noble dressed servants with banners stop at the edge of camp. The captain moves in greeting to the halfway point between them and us. While I don't originally intend to follow, I do only after Ambessa does. It's ingrained in me still to seek her silent permission. Even on the simplest of actions. 

A boy slips out of litter that's been lowered to the ground. Boy should be emphasized here because he has to be no older than fifteen or sixteen years old. He's well dressed in fine leather shoes and silks of red, white, and gold. Embroidery of gold and black accents his outfit and his short rows of braided hair. When he moves his eyes from his careful steps to our little welcome party I can see that his eyes are flecked with much the same colors. He has that same warmth and aristocratic air about him as the captain along with a jovial innocence any child should be entitled to. For a Noxian, I'm surprised how at ease and diplomatic he seems. How untouched he is by war. 

“Mother,” the boy greets cordially.

“Kino…” the surprise in her voice betrays her. “What are you doing here? What's the meaning of this? You should be back at home with your tutors -- with your sister.” 

“I requested his presence here,” the captain explains as calm and simply as one would discuss the weather. “When I heard that you were the colonel that Grand General Darkwill was sending to aid me, it got me thinking about your family name. Medarda. Such a talented bunch. I recalled a time at a gathering when your son talked down an argument between the heads of two esteemed houses that was surely going to end in a rather faux pas of a fight. When I wrote to Darkwill, thanking him for sending a woman of such esteem to me, I included this story and he had the brilliant idea to invite your son here as well. To help negotiate away from unnecessary battles with the local Shuriman people. Battles that, I assured him, would be very costly to both our time and the amount of labor we will have for digging up this precious material beneath us.”

I hear his translation as loud and clear as Ambessa does. He's here to keep a leash on you, colonel. To make sure that we're all on the same team and you don't do anything slippery to steal back Rabbit. A distraction and an insurance policy, all in one.

Welcome to the jungles of war. How does it feel to be the one who's leashed?

Chapter Text

A great big gigantic enormous huge other large synonym here wall cuts across the Shuriman desert. It has armed guards affixed every meter and a half along the top edge and catapult turrets every three or so. It's a special wall. A gift, really. One Ambessa built just for me. On one side, I sit getting sand under my nails as I dig away for dusty old skeletons. On the other side is Kino who I've glanced at approximately half a time since his arrival and that's counting the arrival itself. The colonel herself usually stands at the top of this wall, scowling down at my side, arm positioned to order an attack at my slightest encroachment. But today she's busy with the captain. 

A Shuriman scout was captured about half a mile east of camp last night and after a…persuasive several hours, they gave up some intel on an army in the next town over. So all morning while the rest of us dig up rocks Captain Swain and Colonel Medarda have gotten to cozily think up battle plans. Well, it's not the entire rest of us digging, of course. Remember the other side of that wall?

Yeah, the kid has his own tent and it's nicer than a military encampment should be. Which is good because he's a child and children shouldn't be at military encampments. I will die on this hill. He gets to read books and rest all day. A good little prisoner. Still, many of my fellow Legionnaires don't see it this way. They see him as pompous and separate -- they're jealous and that jealousy prompts them to provoke him every time mommy’s not around to scold them for it. He holds his head high. Giving him credit, he seems almost as noble and aristocratic as the captain himself. Dress him up in white and gold and I'd even believe you if you claimed he was Demacian. 

Of course he's not. And Noxians need to learn better.

Our legion rotates out with one of the colonel’s legions and I head straight for the water barrels. Deserts are hot. I don't care what they say about dry heat, it's still heat. 

The cool of my drink slithers past my lips down my throat. I feel it every inch to my stomach and sigh. How it stays cold I'll never know or care. It just does and that's all that matters.

I'm filling a second cup when I overhear the jostling. Sometimes soldiers fight each other. I've learned that in my three and a half days as one. It's never usually a big deal. Always interesting though. It brings me back to Fleshing (a place that has brought me surprising respect among my peers).

I weave through the huddled crowd circling the two.

Shit.

It's a legionnaire alright. I forget his name but he's been here the longest. Hand picked by Swain and from some pure-blooded Noxian family. They aren't a noble name, but they're well off. Merchants or advisors or something. He bears a shaved head of dark hair and the ever-bruised knuckles of a bully. 

The other opponent -- gods, maybe I shouldn't call him that -- has apparently crossed the wall. Grass is always greener on the other side but in this case he should have been alright with the yellowing.

“C’mon,” the soldier taunts, shoving the boy into a wall of those who just shove him back into the impending fight. “You've been resting all day. Didn't know wolves hibernated.”

“Damascus,” Kino says.

That's his name!

“Don't act like you know me, boy,” Damascus spits.

“You’re Damascus Frey, the son of Justin Frey: the Grand General’s minstrel and advisor. Our families have been friendly in the past. Whatever I've done to offend you, I'm sure that we can talk it out. There's no need for this foolish scuffling.” 

Oh boy. Are we sure I'm the one new to Noxus?

“Nah,” Damascus takes a stance. “It's time someone taught you the lessons your mother has failed to.”

We never find out what Kino was going to respond with because the soldier punches his nose in before he can open his mouth. The boy staggers back. I doubt he's never fought before. Though I also doubt he's ever been in a real fight. Ambessa would have him train, probably push for him to enlist in some sort of military. But his words? His clothes? His…is that even a stance? He's all diplomacy and it shows. 

Weak animals prey on ones even weaker than they are. The injured or the sick. They buff themselves with these false victories so that they can't brag around town about their strength. Most of them know they'd get their ass kicked in a real fight. Others don't and end up biting off more than they can chew one day. This might be Damascus’s one day.

Crunch!

Oof! Or not. 

Oh this is not looking good. He keeps trying to talk. Don't talk, kid -- fight .

Weave. No -- weave .

He finally resolves to fight but there's little use. He's a teenager and bruised already. Damascus is a soldier who eats twelve pounds of protein for breakfast each morning. 

She's not manning the wall at the moment.

You can see the moment Damascus realizes I've caught his fist. His expression shifts from brutal glee to confusion to vexation in a matter of seconds.

He shouts over my shoulder, “the wolf pup needs someone to come help him? Can't fight on his own?”

“I'm not helping,” I say.

I lower my block and the soldier pulls back into form. I turn to the competitor who is just now finding his feet from being knocked to the ground. The boy rubs a swollen jaw. His eyes flick from me to the soldier back to me. He's unsure if this will continue. I don't even think he's sure if he wants it to continue. I turn back to Damascus.

“This is a child. Children have no place on a battlefield.”

The arena of legionnaires around us laugh. I shoot them a glare and scold, “ Children are not soldiers. At least this one isn't. Not yet.”

“Didn't you fight children in the Arena?” A woman scoffs.

“Yes,” I smile politely. “And you'll notice they won every time.” The smile drops. I address both competitors. “This isn't a battle. This is a fight. There are rules to a fight. Both of you, take a step back.”

They do. One more skeptically then the other. I'd be skeptical too if some crazy lady I don’t know came to my defense. 

“Three rounds. Fists and kicks only. No head hits. No grapple. No hair pulling. When one man hits the wall of legionnaires or the ground, the round ends and we reset. Winner of the most rounds gets to claim a victory. A knockout also claims victory. Understand?”

“Oh,” Damascus grins, cracking his knuckles, “I understand.”

The boy nods and takes a perfectly practiced little sparring stance. “Got it.”

I'd pray for the gods to be with them but the gods are blind here.

I step back. 

“Round one.”

The kid lasts longer than I thought he would. Now that he's finally stopped talking his blocks aren't too shabby. He pulls his punches. He's never hit full force I assume. He's probably trained against people he cares about. People he doesn't want to hurt. There's a special sort of switch in your brain that you have to flip to fight ruthlessly -- without holding back -- his has never turned on. Without realizing it, he's trained to lose. To hold back. 

So of course he loses round one.

I call the round and offer a hand to pull him from the ground. He takes it and when he's up, I slap him on the shoulder with my hand that holds my water and look into eyes still glazed with innocence. 

“Your punches are weak,” I say quietly. “Keep blocking. Tire him out. Then quit holding back.” I step away, crossing my arms. “Round two.”

He lasts longer this time. Keeping to my advice for who knows why the wolf pup finds enough of his fangs to bust a tooth right out of Damascus’s handsome face. Then he's shoved -- not hit -- almost entirely into the wall of soldiers. He skids to a stop last minute and recovers into a roundhouse he hasn't used yet in this fight. It sends the legionnaire backwards. Not enough. They stalk each other and that's when the pup makes the mistake of howling instead of biting again.

“I'm sorry about your face,” he says it sincerely. 

Damascus senses sarcasm. Or maybe sincerity just pisses him off. He charges forward. The boy sinks his weight. Last minute, he steps to the side and the bully’s own energy has him falling right into the wall. Right into me. Right into my eye.

I gasp and turn my face. 

“Sorry Rabbit--” 

I cut him off with a deck to the nose and walk to the pup.

“Foul!” a legionnaire shouts. Others laugh.

While Damascus recovers, I give Kino a final bit of advice, “Good. Again. Less talking. This time, put him down.”

Back to my place in the wall. “Round three!”

I'd say they're even. It'd be a lie. Both fighters go all out but one of them has a stronger all in than the other. Eight seconds? That's respectable. 

I and a few other observers wince when the boy’s head bounces off the ground like an inflated ball. Others cheer or jeer. Damascus grins.

“Remember this,” the soldier taunts. Then his smile falters. His face twitches nervously. 

Noble boy isn't talking. He isn't moving.

One.

Two.

Shit.

Shit.

I'm dead. I'm real fucking dead.

I kneel by the kid’s side. Oh thank every God! There's a pulse. I dump my water on his face and he blinks awake with a whimper.

“You fought good,” I say, hiding my relief in my pounding chest rather than my voice. “Now go lick your wounds, wolf pup. And, just as a favor, don't tell your mother I was involved, yeah?”

“She is already aware,”  the woman who is apparently not planning strategies growls behind me. 

We're back to being dead.

“Mother--” the boy starts.

“Go,” she orders. “I trust you can find the medic. We will speak as soon as I am finished with this one.”

“C-Colonel--” gods I wish I didn’t stutter.

“Come.” 

Like a dog, I do. I follow her all the way to her tent and while I expect discipline I don't expect it when she slaps me as soon as we're inside.

“You don't get to lay hands on me anymore,” I spit.

“Then stop me.”

I wind back a fist. She catches my punch and pulls my arm forward. With a shove to the back of my shoulder, I'm on the ground. I glare up at her but it's shrimp in comparison to the shark swimming in her eyes.

“You may be free now, little rabbit but you are still a legionnaire. Don't ever interfere with my family again.”

“Why? We lived under the same roof for two years and I never met them. Now we share a battlefield and you're still afraid of our paths crossing. He's a soldier now.”

“And I'm his mother.”

“Yes, and I imagine you're rather tender with children, hm?”

“If you're attempting to imply that I don't care about my children then you fail to understand me on even the simplest level. My family is everything to me -- my strengths and my weaknesses.”

“He's been being targeted since day one here. You should have seen this fight coming. You should have stood up for him. You shouldn't have let Swain even keep him here.”

“You know nothing! I love that boy and his sister more than most can imagine.”

“I don't think you're capable of love.”

“I carried him in my belly. Suckled him at my bosom.”

“That's biology you're describing, not motherhood.”

Her response is more violence. With her anger taken out on me, she kneels. She takes my chin in warm sturdy fingers. Her callouses press my skin like familiar chaste kisses. When our eyes meet, those hovering icy hands go away. The space around us shrinks. An embrace of the universe. A cell in which I feel erroneously safe. I’ve come to realize just now how much I've missed her touch. How badly I long to kiss her. My fresh bruises scream for vengeance while my heart serenades an insalubrious whim. 

I need her. I see it now as those winding roads all converge and the path before me becomes as clear as any vision of the captain's. I hate her more than anything. Yet I can't be alone. 

Her thumb runs delicately along my cheekbone. 

“What a pity,” she says. “To ruin such a pretty face.”

“I'm sorry,” I say with a tender vibrating voice. “I…” I stop myself. I close my eyes.

No.

I imagine choking her. I imagine every version of me that she's killed forming a wall around us as we go three rounds. I imagine her breaking the rules of the fight. I imagine I do the same. 

She is a vile woman and I loathe her very breath. She'll never let me go and I'll never stop hurting. I am her hunt. But I am no prey. 

I swallow and open my eyes. Just like that, she's gone. 

As her hand pulls away, I grab her. Her wrist. The back of her neck. I pull our faces close. 

I'm warm again.

I kiss her. Not because I have to; Simply because I must.

Ironic, isn't it? The power to plan my moves in combat with as much time and forethought as I need, and yet I choose to kiss her so swiftly. So eagerly. 

She kisses me back, her strong arms wrapping around me. How dare she kiss me back.

There's something soft and warm around my heart that goes hard and blazing -- a coal that sinks deep into my chest. My kiss becomes rough and punishing. I bite down on her lip. Hard. As I pull away I tug and am rewarded with the poison of her blood.

She runs her tongue along her wound. Her eyes narrow. A fire burns across my face as she slaps me before pulling me in for more. 

I slip my tongue between her teeth and my hands up to her neck. My nails begin to cut into her jugular as my palms press into her neck. I growl into her mouth and shove her back. She must let me because there's no way I've pushed her. How dare she let me.

I lean all of my weight into my hands at her throat. First I feel the lack of air streaming past the corners of my mouth into hers. The chill of that subtle wind failing. Then I hear the swinish gruting of her choking. It causes me to kiss her with more of a passion and to press even harder.

I hope I kill her. I hope she stops me.

Her hand knots in my hair and with a suffocated roar she throws me into the legs of a sturdy mahogany table. 

She catches her breath. I catch mine. Her eyes close in on me. My heart gives a twitch.

She lunges for me. I put up my hands but they just get pinned between our breasts. Sitting on my lap, she yanks my hair violently, bashing my head against the table legs twice. Then our lips battle again. She doesn't let me go.

I manage to squirm an arm up to her hair. Just to see how she likes it. She doesn't and hauls me to my feet. I break the kiss, tuck in my knees, and kick her backwards. She lets go of me and staggers, holding her stomach. I sit on the table, panting. Cockily, I quirk a brow. She growls and grabs the first thing she can her hands on -- a sextant of solid gold -- and chucks it at me. A soft metal. That's how I know she cares. I throw an inkwell. She dodges it and it splatters against the walls of her tent -- like a ball thrown into a net. 

A beat.

Two.

I hop off the table and throw myself back into her arms, my lips hungry on hers. She tries to choke me. I stomp on her foot. She roughly pins me to a tall weapons rack. One of the blades on it nicks me between the shoulders. I hiss and sweep her leg. We're back on the ground.

Our arms wrestle as much as our mouths do. I try to pin her. She tries not to let me.

When my lungs begin to scream I finally yield, pulling back with a glare and sitting all of my weight into her stomach. 

“I'm going to kill you one day,” I tell her.

“Brave words, child. A pity you will not live long enough to regret them.”

When she tries again to kiss me, I place a hand softly on her chest in refusal. A refusal she respects. 

All at once I'm cold again. Those paths are back to a confusing myriad. 

If there's one thing I've learned in Noxus it's strength. I've failed guile here today. I've chased vision. Now I use all of my might to rise off of her. 

She's a predator. A wolf. And I'm just a little rabbit. It's time for me to hop along and just pray I don't leave a blood trail for her to follow. 

Not a word is spoken as I leave. It doesn't have to be. I can see the goading in her eyes already. She's gotten me back. If not on a leash, then in a heel nonetheless. I saw the trap and I still walked into the cage. She didn't shut the door to that cage but she doesn't have to. I've left now. I'll be back. But I've left. 

All this, it's what she's been waiting for. What she's searched for all this time. What she's pushed me into. Defiance. Strength. Will. She's been my superior officer since the beginning, hasn't she? Waiting to see if I was made of enough to keep her interest. 

Next time, I'll kill her. 

Chapter Text

“You will all be given this chance.” I promise the family cowering in the back room of the church of the Sunborn. In a way, their gods are Noxians already. Mere mortals who have been ascended through cunning, foresight, and determination (and the powerful ancient relic, the sun disk). “Denounce your king, and join the strength of the empire. Or let us end your weak life.”

My face is sober but I am scared. The spirit of the Demacian inside of me is scared. Her legs quiver the same as this family’s and her arms hold herself just the same as this mother clings to her two sons. She sees herself in them. No. She sees me. I am reflected in the tears that barrier the boys’ eyes, keeping me out of their souls but giving me a signal flare for their futures. I can see them as soldiers. I can see them as Reckoners. I can see them as slaves. But they will fight. I wonder, is this what Ambessa saw in me?

“We'll never join Noxus, you monsters!” The woman hisses.

Damascus's blade cuts shrilly through the air as he unsheathes it. I don't flinch. Blocking the Demacian’s ghost out of my head with a thick wall of red, I raise a hand through the thick silent air. All there is to hear is the crackling fires of buildings outside, the march of boots, and my voice.

“Kill the mother,” I say. “Let the boys make their own decision.”

She's dragged out of my view. Out into the red. Another weight to be added to my soul. To his credit, my fellow legionnaire leaves the young warriors who now hold each other where their mother is gone. I crouch down and one spits in the face of the Noxian who's brought this chaos to their doorstep. 

“Not afraid of monsters, little one?” I ask gently.

The one who spit hides his face in the other one's arms. The stronger boy speaks.

“You're not a monster,” he says. “You're just a soldier. An evil one!”

“On the contrary. A soldier turns off their heart. They kill so many that they start to see people as mere enemies. As numbers. Isn't that right, Damascus?” I don't turn.

“Yep,” the man sniffs toughly. 

“Kellin?” I address the second of the three soldiers who are with me.

“Yeah.”

“Feythella?”

“True as the sky is blue, Rabbit.”

“So you see?” I tell the boys. “I am no soldier. I see people. Humans. I know the weight of killing them. I know the pain it causes. I know how your mother just suffered in both fright and agony and how she worried I may do the same to you after she's gone. I know how it ripples to you boys and how your worlds have just been painted with the red of her blood. I know the owners of the shops she would frequent will never tell her good morning again. I know her family, her parents, will hear about our conquest here and wonder if she's alright. I know they will cry and scream and break when they hear that she is dead. I know each person on this planet is a joint in the web of some fate bound spider and that when we cut them out those vibrations are felt to the very edges of that web. I don't kill numbers. I don't have enemies. I see people -- humanity -- and then I kill them anyways. What does that make me, but a monster?”

The tough boy shrinks into his shoulders. The same ones he may one day use to swing an axe into my head. 

“Do you know what kills monsters?” I ask. “It's not night lit torches. It's not prayers. It's those strong enough to fight them.”

I watch as his eyes swirl with the sands of his desert. A dusty storm of razor sharp air tornadoing for me. I smile as he lunges and step out of the way. The other boy grabs hold of my leg. I nod to my fellow soldiers which ques Damascus to throw boy one over his shoulder, kicking and screaming. Kellin helps me peel off boy two who rages through falling tears and weak punches.

“I invite you to try again when you're older,” I say. “But to do so, you'll need to be alive. Think about that when the colonel asks for your decision.”

***

The city’s name is Nava, named so for an ancient Shuriman general Navirin who is long dead and forgotten. It's a three days march from our encampment which takes six days to reach when we're belly crawling through the desert under cover of night and sleeping behind dunes in the day. With over two thirds of the city’s defenses out fighting skeletons further south, we're able to seize the place, walls be damned, in just under four hours. 

Skeletons further south you say?

That would be the plan of our esteemed captain…or perhaps the plan of the colonel. I have a feeling they both had a hand in it but that it was likely the colonel who wrote out the invitation, sending it on her very first day before the scout was even captured. An invitation to Samira. 

See, Indari and Samira went through a military failure years back leaving Samira as a mercenary and Indari as a sort of mercenary pimp. When you don't want to waste soldiers, it's best to hire out. So in our case we left our camp with torches lit, banners flying high, and those skeletons we've been digging up clustered all over the place. Skeletons in red cloaks and helmets playing cards. Skeletons in rusty old armor and underlayers we're currently fending without digging for more skeletons in the dunes. Samira would have arrived yesterday meaning last night, under a cloak of darkness, the Shuriman forces near our camp would see thousands of shadowed figures all lined up for war. An assassin with a bit of a stylish flair would have killed a few of their captains before ducking off towards -- what's that? -- more Noxian forces flanking their other side? She'd escape and they'd be forced to retreat back to the walls of the nearest city because with those numbers against them there is no way they'd win. 

We don't have the numbers. Not really. Not without a necromancer anyways which we also don't have. So, as Ambessa gives her spiel to the future Noxians inside Nava and Swain leads a hand selected few through a careful collection and division of our newly captured resources, the rest of us dig. Again. This time, we dig a trench.

Here's the plan: 

When Samira rounds back the long way to camp, she'll take a horse up to us in the city. Seeing as the Shurimans are all foot soldiers, she'll make it back before they do and confirm that they're on their way and disorganized due to the whole killing their captains thing. When she arrives, we can assume the Shurimans are only hours behind and take our formation on the battlefield. 

Imagine, for simplicity, there is a large blank rectangle of sand. Now imagine that at the bottom end of that rectangle there is a large city with golden sandstone walls in a circular fashion. About twelve meters to the right of the center of those walls is a gate into the city. Far enough that our forces can block the entrance into it, but not so close as to offer a direct line from the attackers to the safety of the walls. At the edges of that rectangle hold mountains that block anything but a full frontal attack.

In front of the wall are our commanding officers along with the head of the captain’s family guard and Ambessa’s entire house guard unit. In front of them, about at the halfway point of that illusionary rectangle of battlefield, are an elite group of foot archers and gunmen. Their feet border the very edge of one of our trenches.

The trenches themselves span the entire width of the battlefield. They form a sort of open box shape. Almost like a smile but with many right angles. Bridges have been placed at the bottom of the sides of that open box and on the center of either flap of lid. Other than that, they are deep and unpassable. 

Lieutenant cavalry, the guys on horses who are actually worth something to Swain and Ambessa, sit in the corners of that open box on the enemy side of the trenches. Don't worry though! They have a long line of shield and plumbata skirmishers in front of them for protection. Those skirmishers are mostly the recruited from Nava. The disposable disloyal and disorganized group that would otherwise be a liability. Even with them, we are outnumbered two to one. 

Hiding behind the open flaps of the box shaped trench is the rest of the cavalry. Well, most of the rest of it. The captain’s family guard are hidden off to the left in the mountains along with Samira and Kino. Only one of those named two is here to fight. The other is just being hidden and he seems to know it as well as we do.

Speaking of Samira, when she arrives, we find our formations. Given my hunting experience I'm primed to be one of the foot archers. Last minute, the captain stops me from joining the line. 

“Change of plans,” he says. “Join the family guard on the left flank.”

“Does the colonel know of this reassignment?” I ask. She's the one who put me front and center with the archers.

“Why of course.” He grins. “Now go.”

I scramble up craggy red rocks ornamented by tumbleweeds and scrub plants until I find the small elite group. 

“I've been reassigned with you lot,” I say. “Captain’s orders.”

“Yeah, we were told,” a warm faced woman in black onyx armor tells me. She's on a horse. They all are. She holds the reigns to another and yet I don't realize it's supposed to be mine until she motions for me to take it.

“Would now be a horrible time to say that I don't know how to ride a horse?”

“Does Swain know you can't ride a horse?” 

“I don't think Swain really knows a lot about me at all.”

“She can ride with me,” Samira offers. Her black horse steps back and forth, ready to charge as haphazardly as she's known for doing. “I like having a support.”

“My father always warned me against duo queuing with the reckless,” I joke, but I take the offer.

The saddle isn't exactly sized for a duo but we make it work. I'm told to hold on so I do but there's little to grip. The edges of her armor are smooth, her waist small, her hips already being clung to by her weapons. If it were Ambessa I was riding with, I'd know exactly where to put my hands. 

On day one, nothing happens. We watch the enemy approach. We watch their formation.

They meet our skirmishers with some of their own backed by two lines of archers. Legions of battle mages and footmen square off the left and right flanks. If our cavalry are one little square of soldiers, their legions are two. 

We learn from the messenger that tells us to rest at ease that the commander of the Shuriman’s caught wise to our skeletons the further he ran without being chased. He knows we're alone here. He knows we're outnumbered. He's even sent our colonel a message: Draw me a bath. I'll be bathing in Nava come tomorrow morning.

“Send a response,” Kino says. 

“The colonel and the captain are forming a response as we speak,” the messenger says. “A bloody one. They plan to move the attack to the evening. We have oil for torches from the city but the Shuriman’s will be out of fuel.”

“Send them a letter before any bloodshed,” Kino urges. “Grand General Darkwill summoned me here to aid in avoidance of a battle. Let me at least try to talk them into a surrender.”

“You can give me the message. But I won’t run it to the enemy until the captain or the colonel order me to do so.”

The wolf pup thinks, putting the same amount of precision and planning into his words as his mother puts into her battle plans. “The better general is that who can give his tired men blessings for which they yearn. The first blessing is peace, as is agreed by all men who have even a small share of reason. The best general, therefore, is that one which is able to bring about peace from war.”

The boy's word buy us a night of peace but don't halt the war. By mid-morning, we get a response in the form of their left flank reigning a retreat. We don't take the bait. Our trenches are our defense. But we do ready. When they circle back over our bridge and the artificial choke points within the trench, our cavalry gallops back towards Nava’s walls. It draws their mages even further in. Ambessa, Swain, and the house guard close in to one side of the enemy. Mountains are to the other. Our small battalion circles to the back along with the lieutenant cavalry to the bottom left of the box trench, trapping them in a slaughter.

I jump off of Samira’s horse as quickly as I can. If that woman is insane then her beast needs to be locked up in an asylum. After I'm done fighting with my queasy stomach, I keep a careful eye on the kid. Between me and his mother, no one is getting close enough to engage him in combat. She won't approve, but she won't order me to stop either.

The few that slip away are chased down back across the bridge by our cavalry. The skirmishers duke it out in the middle lanes, aided by their archers and our archers. Meanwhile the lieutenant cavalry and us from the mountains merge. We follow our commanding officers and the Medarda house guard to the other side of the battlefield where half of the Shuriman battalions are engaged with our back foot cavalry and the other half is swiftly approaching to pin us between both groups. We split off. The Swain family guard go up the rectangle to meet the second lieutenant cavalry and the second Shuriman battalion cluster. While the Medarda house guard and our first lieutenant cavalry join the general cavalry and push that first stallion wave back into the mountains. I'm not too keen on leaving the child soldier to mommy and her guards alone but Samira and I count as Swain family guard today so I have no choice. Besides, the Medarda’s are the ones getting semi-sandwiched by the two groups of Shuriman mages and foot soldiers. I don't love the idea of being sandwiched. 

By the time the sun tucks behind the mountain crags, we are cleaning up our mess by finishing off living wounded and collecting our own dead. They may have outnumbered us two to one in men, but we outnumber them two to one in survivors. No wonder the horizon sky is painted with a bright Noxian red tonight.

***

Her favourite way to celebrate a victory is with pleasure. Maybe that's why I expect her to seek me out tonight. Only, she doesn't. Not even to scold me for sticking by Kino in the first wave of the attack. 

I find her accidentally. It's a small city, but still strange that I happen to turn this corner at this exact time. 

She's chatting up some effeminate boy in his early twenties. He's as skinny as he is pretty. His eyelids are painted with a gold shimmer and his dusky skin glows with moisture and hydration. My skin is cracked from being dry and has blood of allies and enemies alike drying in those cracks like the red cuts on a hot stone. My eyes are only shadowed by bags and the pale white of my scar.

Good. Let her be busy.

I walk past them without a glance. Still, she laughs with him as I pass. I can't help but feel like it's at my expense. Though that's petty and narcissistic, I'm aware.

It's strange. My first real battle as a soldier and I've nowhere to celebrate. No Nikas for the fallen like in Fleshing. No sex like in my enslavement. I'm left entirely to my own whims and free will. Those millions paths before me are criss-crossing again. I can't even begin to decide which one to follow.

That's when I'm attacked from behind. Well, at least that's what I first believe as an arm wraps my shoulders. Then the person the arm’s connected to catches up to my side and I relax.

“Rabbit!” Samira beams. “How ‘bout a drink, eh? I was just headed to the bar.”

“Anything for our damage carry,” I jest. 

Battle does not tire her. She pats me once on the shoulder before cartwheeling over to a sign hanging off a building. She jumps up and grabs the pole it's on, swinging around it once before letting go. She hits the ground with a forward roll turned back walkover. Then she shoots me a wink.

“Hurry up,” she says. “I thought rabbits were supposed to be quick.”

I do hope she doesn't think I'm going to join in her acrobatics routine. 

When we finally reach the bar, it's unsurprisingly full of legionnaires. Little groups spot the tables here and there. Some gamble, most drink, I b-line for the bartop, desperate for something hot and greasy. They never mention how hungry war makes you.

Samira joins me but not on a barstool. No, she steps one foot onto the stool to lift herself up on the counter where she sits unabashedly. Her toes spin the stool first right then left then right again in zestful half circles. 

“Two of--” she starts,

“Something bottled,” I finish for her. “Caps on.”

The current bartenders are the two young boys I captured a few days ago. Poison via a cleaning agent is too easy. I wonder if they'll kill me someday. If they try, I'll wish them luck. 

I open my bottle using a trick my old man taught me and the center of my palm. Samira just cuts hers off with her sword, taking a bit of bottle off with it. 

“Cheers,” I hold up my…beer? I take a sniff. Something hoppy. Ha! Fitting for a rabbit. 

After our first sips, I ponder, “you know someone told me once that the best way to celebrate a victory is with pleasure.”

“Was this person Ambessa Medarda, by chance?”

“It doesn't matter who it was. I'm just curious if you agree.”

“Eh, I'm the type of girl you have to buy a drink for before asking those kinds of questions.”

I raise my bottle, eyeing hers with amusement. “On me.”

“You're too kind.” She takes another swig. “Ah! So, Rabbit, you're about what, forty?”

My drink sinks down the wrong hole and I cough it back out. “Fuck you.”

“Older?”

“ Younger. I'm thirty-two.”

“If that's true, then why's your hair white?”

“I get a new streak for every soul I steal. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You lived in Noxus all twenty-two years?”

“Most of them. Born in Shurima, raised by Noxus. Maybe I'll die in Demacia to make things interesting, eh?”

“I did die in Demacia. Once. Can't say I recommend it.”

“You talk pretty good for a corpse.”

“More of a zombie.”

“Oh?”

“Or a vampire.”

“There have been rumors of a crimson circle of bloodsuckers living in the shadows of Noxus Prime.”

“You know, I think I've heard that too.”

We both laugh. If not from amusement, then at least from pity to the other’s attempt at a joke. 

I think maybe this is how I’ll like to celebrate my victories. A good drink and a friend to drink it with.

Samira chugs the rest of hers and hops off of the bar. She starts heading for the door.

“Going somewhere?” I call.

“It's on you, remember?”

“Not what I meant.”

“There's bound to be a tattoo artist in this city. And I've got a new adventure to memorialize.”

“You're getting a tattoo?” I chuckle.

“Want one?”

“Did you plan one?”

She wrinkles her nose like the word ‘plan’ alone is enough to bring on hay fever for her. “Eh, with the life I live I could die tomorrow. So why waste any time not thinking -- and living -- for today?”

And…I'm sold.

I chug my drink and we leave the bar together.

***

Samira continues a growing sleeve of Noxian script with as much artistic freedom given to the woman with the needle as she desires. I decide on a different kind of change to my look: three piercings. It was only going to be one until I'm goaded. An eyebrow bar through the center of my web of white scars. It's black metal with red gems on either end. And either side of my nose between which now drapes a black and silver chain. 

Another stage of my metamorphosis.

Chapter Text

We've kept the city for 28 days. In those 28 days, only four notable things have happened.

The first was on day two. That first morning we woke in beds rather than mats, surrounded by golden walls rather than red tents. A group was gathered to go back to the encampment and collect what we'd left behind. I didn't volunteer. Not much of a traveler. That little party, however, isn't the noteworthy event I’d like to mention. 

On that day I had a shadow shaped like a wolf. I avoided him when he attempted to corner me at a cafe for breakfast. I avoided him again when he followed Samira and I on our shopping trip (the red silks and black cotton pieces I bought for my off days should be noteworthy on their own). When Feythella and I met for tea that afternoon (a habit we share from our childhoods in Demacia) he finally got a word in. Seriously, who interrupts a woman while she's having tea?

“Rabbit,” Kino said, sitting down at our table. “I'm so glad I finally caught you.”

I gave Feythella a look which the redhead misread and took to mean ‘quickly! Excuse yourself and force me to talk to the kid you know I'm not allowed to be around!’ Well, she either misread it or she's just a bitch. Either way, the boy stayed put and she went to gather more biscuits.

“Does your mother know where you are right now?” I asked.

“She knows I'm getting tea with a friend.”

“Ah, so she doesn't know where I am. Got it.”

“I wished to thank you for the other week. I haven't had a chance yet.”

Thank me? I didn't do anything. I refused to look at him, sipping on my oolong and praying he'd just go away if ignored long enough.

He didn't. 

“I got into a fight -- and survived!” He laughed. When I continued being more interested with my thoughts of kicking Feythella’s ass for this than with his conversation, he still didn't get the hint. “My mother’s always wanted me to be a fighter. Truthfully, I know that I'm not good at it. Without you stepping in, I would have lost plenty sooner. Plenty harder too.”

Both true facts. Neither concerns me though. I began to wonder when and from which door Ambessa was going to enter. She always had the best timing. 

“Have you always been good in a fight?”

Feythella rounded the corner then. I waved to her with a smile. Please save me. She pretended to have forgotten the chocolate covered treats and slipped back away. So I was back to killing her in my mind. 

“Look, I know what you're doing. I get it. I'm not exactly…popular among the ranks. I know that speaking with me is likely dangerous for your reputation.”

You have no idea, pup.

“I just…well, it seems I'll be staying here for a while and other than my mother, who, let's face it is, well, my mother,” he chuckled a bit, “I don't have anyone to talk to. I was hoping there was a chance we could be friends.”

To which of course, I responded, “No. Get lost.”

His ego was not as fragile as I had hoped. Even when I stood up and began to walk away, he followed me with that rosy optimistic grin that was nailed to his face. 

“You told me my strikes were weak. I was thinking you could show me what you meant.”

Out the door I went. Out the door he followed.

“As a soldier, you surely have more combat experience than my old tutors back home. I don't love a fight, but I'd like to be more useful in one. In return, I can show you how to avoid them. You know, with words and diplomacy.”

“Look,” I snapped, turning on my heel. I was walking so fast that when I turned so suddenly we came nose to nose and he almost fell over. Looking at his little face I had to take a breath. I sighed and relaxed my shoulders, giving him the sincerity he was owed. “You seem like a good kid. Don't let your mother ruin you.”

“My mother’s harsh, but she says and does everything because she cares.”

“Not everything.”

He fell to a back foot, raising an eyebrow and narrowing his eyes somehow simultaneously as if he were accusing me of a horrid crime, “you speak as if you know her personally.”

“Intimately is the word I'd use.” Rabbit, come on. Not the audience for that joke. “You're not a fighter, pup. You said that yourself. That's great; You don't have to be. Your mother’s view of the world is divisive. Black and white. There's the strong and the weak. The strong fight and the weak die. The wolf goes hunting and the lamb rolls over and dies. The real world? It's got grey in it. You fall in that grey, okay? So don't try to be a soldier like me or like her. You're not one. You're just a pup so focus on reading poetry or playing latrones or whatever it is you do. And when you find what you enjoy, what you're good at, just focus on that, alright? That's where you'll find your strength.”

For a moment, I felt pretty top-tier at this kids thing. Then his admiring little grin fell back to that accusatory look and a smirk and he had to ruin it. 

“So…how exactly do you know my mother?”

It was my turn to laugh. “Don't tell her we talked.”

“Or that we're friends?”

“We're not friends.”

The second notable thing that happened came a fortnight later. Samira, Feythella, Damascus, and I were trading drinks for athletic competitions. Competitions, by the way, that would have the dead Demacian quivering in her boots but that I've surprised myself with. I'm still no strongman, but when I catch myself in a mirror I'm always a bit shocked to realize it's me. I've never had muscle. Not once in my life. Just under a month in the military and two years in Fleshing, and my muscles were more defined than I thought possible. Maybe it's the soldier's diet cutting the fat away that does it. Maybe that's why I just started seeing it around that fortnight in. But I had abs. I still have abs! And triceps! I know what a tricep is now!

Anyways, we were being stupid legionnaires off duty when we were suddenly placed on duty. That's because the captain walked in. He was telling everyone of his plans the next day but wanted to ask Samira and I individually about them. He pulled us aside and we tried to sober up as best we could. Well, I tried. Samira didn't really seem to care about decorum. 

“I will be taking my family guard to Rak’il, a city southeast of here, in two weeks time,” he'd said. “Ambessa’s legions will be returning to Noxus with her and my primary forces will be joining them. My plan requires a small loyal force and, if I may speak frankly, has not been run by our colonel nor our Grand General. If it succeeds, it will be a great surprise for Darkwill. A city he does not expect to capture.”

“If I may ask,” I said, “why not request Grand General Darkwill’s permission to attack?”

“There won't be an attack. Not if all goes well. I'm afraid I can say no further details other than this: I'd feel more confident in our imminent success if I were to have the two of you join me and my guard in Rak’il. Rabbit, you have not yet been officially assigned to my legion. You are extra, skilled, hands that won't be missed on the docket to tip Darkwill off. Samira, your reputation alone speaks for you. As does Indari. And so I ask.”

And so we both agreed. Samira more for the fun of a top secret mission and I to repay part of the debt I feel I owe to him for freeing me from Ambessa. Captain Swain could ask me to converge with a demon or charge balefully towards a warded Ionian temple and I’d do it. No questions asked. Hence why even now I have no further information on Rak’il.  I just know that tomorrow when Ambessa’s forces leave, Samira, the family guard, and I will all head southeast with our captain. 

The third thing was my realization which I'll combine with my plan because they'd happened almost together. Though I fought the thought, I couldn't pin it or suffocate it completely. Once it started to grow in my brain it was like a bubble, ever-expanding. 

We're going to be separated now. Possibly forever. I won't let her survive. It's time I follow through on my threats.

With that decision made, I come finally to the fourth thing. To now. To the night I kill Ambessa.

Nobody can know it was me, so I made an effort earlier tonight to be seen leaving the bar with Samira. She has a high tolerance and I made sure she exceeded it so she'll be asleep all night. Thanks to my -- well let's not call it stalking because she deserves it and stalking implies I care -- I know where she spends her nights. It's an upscale place of the only profitable profession for a city under siege: prostitution. Full circle. Only this time I'm not a citizen. I'm not a whore. I'm a soldier and a Noxian and a conqueror all the same! I am death and she cannot outrun me anymore.

There's no security. There doesn't need to be nor is there allowed to be. This is Noxian land now. Military police. Meaning, technically, I'm her protection as much as she's mine. We're both shit at that job.

I slip down a long hall of wooden floors and wooden walls. A row of sliding doors are to one side of me and windows as high up as the moon are on the other. No one other than a giant is going to see me through those windows, so I keep my eyes on the doors. Each is decorated by the escort inside. The one I'm looking for has gold shimmer akin to that wanton shit on his eyes. Dried flowers are pinned around the molding. Yellow sunflowers. Orange marigolds. Red pansies. You get the idea. Sunshine she doesn't deserve, even in its falsities.

There is no sound as I slide slowly -- slowly! -- open the door. On the threshold however, there is a creak. Of course there is a creak. I poke my head inside at the same speed as my rapid heart. If she is awake, I am to do it now. In the bed on the far left wall there are two figures and neither figure stirs. I pull my head back out, a turtle retreating into his shell but only because that's where turtles plot their snapping. 

I lower myself to a squat, careful that the dagger strapped to the back of my belt doesn't hit the floor. I loosen first my boots. Slowly, I loosen them and flinch with every soft shuffle of the leather slipping through embroidered holes. Then I remove them. My left foot first as it's the side of the point of my blade and thus more difficult to lean on. The boot squeaks as I remove it. A mouse can squeak. It could be a mouse. I poke my head back in. A still shadow embraces a tender young man. Good. That's good.

As I lean onto my sock-armored leg to remove my right shoe, the tip of that dagger catches on the wood floor. I adjust. I adjust again. No matter the angle it still catches. Fine.

I lean my upper body back into the frame of the door, jutting my hips forward so that my belly is more or less a flat table to press the metal buckle of my belt into. It muffles the sound of it unlocking. I press a finger into the little copper tube on the bar of the buckle that the belt it meant to roll against. This allows me to quietly pull my belt free, sheath and all, and set it aside. I slide my dagger out and set it atop the sheath before turning my attention back to my right boot. I fall back into a squat and remove it the same as I did the left.

I pick my dagger back up, rising to my full height in the doorway. I poke my head back in as my heart pleads somberly.

Run. Run. Run. Run.

Foot over foot I enter. I stick close to heavy furniture, hopeful that their weight will already snuff out any creaks that may disavail me. I pause. It's no use like this. It's too dark. 

I wait seven whole minutes for my eyes to adjust to the night. Not a breath I take fully in those seven minutes. Not a muscle do I twitch. The only sound is my pulse and the young boy’s soft snore. 

The first thing I see in the shadows is that I'm not alone. A wolf of black smoke paces the room around the edges -- just out of my view. It howls silently, a ghosted warning. A threat. But it's not a threat to me. No. He's been waiting for this moment too. Longer than I have. I meet the droll glow of his blue eyes and we come to an understanding. His hunt is almost at an end and I am his weapon. He isn't here for me tonight.

When I begin walking again I worry at first that I've grown impatient. 

Slow, Rabbit.

Each step takes thirty seconds to complete. Several perfect, silent, steps later I reach the boy’s side of the bed. My heart picks up. I can hear the wolf’s howl in my head as I place my hand to the prostitute's full lips and flat nose. He shoots awake with a sharp inhale that I block. I pull a finger off my dagger to press to my lips and all at once he's frozen. He doesn't kick long. I check my prey. She still slumbers. Her arm still drapes him and her other one lays motionless beneath her pillow. Back to the man. My eyes flicker off of the whites of his with a blue promise of the wolf and of the blue Demacian flag of the knights honor: I am not here for you.

When I'm sure he understands me, I let go. I nod and slowly he and I dance. He slips away from his partner and I cut in. It is perhaps the quickest thing I've done all night because he leads it. But it's not messy. She doesn't even notice that I'm the one she holds now.

Finally, I've come face to face with her. Blades of scars cut into her pillow off her face as shadows tuck her neck and shoulders away where the blanket doesn't quite reach. I count her breaths, gauging their regularity. I know her breathing better than battle plans -- better perhaps than my own reflection. They are slow and even. She is asleep. 

My dagger holds its breath as it sneaks over the dunes of the mattress and flat sheet. It mimics the belly crawl technique we used to surprise this city. Where we found golden walls it finds the cool umber of her neck. I hover it where I've always dreamed of putting it. It rides atop a shadow. A tail edge of the phantom wolf that wraps me like the fur stoles my mother always used to wear. 

This is the part where she wakes up. Only those eyes of hers stay closed. Her breathing, even. 

I tempt the blade further, closer. It's a centimeter off her neck. A millimeter. Its chill slender edge presses coolly, a chain on her marred shin. 

Still, she sleeps.

I kill her now. This is it. What I've wanted. What I've dreamt of a million times. My final chance before tomorrow she leaves and gets to continue her heinous life in Noxus Prime. 

I can no longer tell if the wolf is pushing me forward or holding me back or if it's doing something else entirely and merely an observer of what will become fact. Someone within me prays. A past life? Or perhaps a future one that I wish to have?

My breathing quickens. Short quick bursts from my mouth. It's almost orgasmic in nature -- that ridge you ride as you come crashing over the edge. Only, now it is aided by my anxiety. My hatred, the salt dissolving away in waters of fear. I begin to boil. Gritting my teeth, the wolf growls and I pull my blade back, choosing instead to shove her shoulder, roll her to her back, and wake her with a thin red collar of blood when my blade returns.

There's those open eyes. Those nubile odious eyes of noble gold. Like rusty aureus, still valuable despite the rough edges and wear, those eyes do tempt me -- bribe me -- even through their fury. She does not look afraid. Maybe she does not know to be. 

It's her fault that I've gotten this far. It's her fault that I'm a killer. A monster. This is what she's made me into. So now this is who she has to suffer.

One of her arms is pinned beneath her pillow still with the weight of her head and my bladeless hand pins the other. In the night, her languoring blood drips almost black beneath the edge of my blade. Black like venom. Like the blood of a demon. Like the truth -- the darkness -- seeping out of her. 

Naked like an animal -- like the animal she is -- that's how she'll die. But animals fear it when you put a blade to their neck. She only settles on an eventual glare.

“Congratulations,” she finally says, her voice the epithet on a tombstone. Her tombstone. “You've gotten further than most. What are you waiting for? Go on.”

Run. Run. Run. Run. 

My heart bleats like a cornered sheep -- like a pathetic little lamb -- as the wolf circles around us. Closer. Closer. I can hear the slick wet sounds of it pulling back the top lip of its snout to bare its fangs at me -- at her!

I grit my teeth. I clench my hand on the handle. Harder. Harder! It doesn't push any deeper into her throat. 

“Do it, Rabbit!” She shouts, sudden and harsh. 

I've always been good at following orders.

Keeping her pinned, I raise the blade high, reversing my grip. My eyes biting into hers, chipping my teeth on the rusty metal, I howl and stab deep into the wall above our heads. 

“That's…” my voice falls weak like the tears of my ego. It's the voice of a ghost that speaks. “...not my name. This…is not my body. You took everything from me!” The anger returns. The wolf snaps with its jaws and I shake her viciously. And she allows it! My hands stay on her but my posture falls. No square shoulders. No straight spine. She who speaks is broken and so am I. “My life is yours and I've taken it back but it feels cold and empty and dead in my hands. A songbird you kept in a cage that didn't know to fly south and died its first winter on its own. I want to hear it sing again. I want to live again. I don't own any part of myself anymore…” I'm not crying, but my voice quivers nonetheless.

She responds slowly. Each word is its own deliberate decision. Collected. Still. She says, “What is your name?”

Like hell I'd give it to her!

I soften as quickly as I've just hardened when I realize it's one thing that she doesn't own. One thing she let me keep. She isn't requesting it. She's proving a point. 

My name.

My grave. 

It's my own.

“I claim the changes that make you Rabbit,” she continues. “The things that make you Noxian. A Reckoner. A slave. Your strength is mine -- it is because of me. But the assassin at my throat now? That person’s life is one she’s created all on her own. This body is yours now. Your title, legionnaire or assassin, whichever you claim, was not my doing. Your choices are yours, little rabbit. What will it be? Will you pick up that blade and carve out my throat or will you join Captain Jericho Swain on his covert expedition?”

I don't have time to question how she knows about the captain's plans. I don't want to. I want to -- !

I grab the blade again and stab it down into the mattress, deep as it will go so that the dagger splits through a beam of the bedframe like bone and the handle pits around the edges of the hole like skin into torn muscle. 

I glare into her soul and the wolf feasts. 

“I've killed you now,” I hiss, my teeth together. “The woman who did all of that to me is dead along with the Demacian she took prisoner and the Reckoner she sent to a slaughter.”

“If you've killed me, who am I?”

“Someone beautiful.” 

My expression and body alike fall insensible. I take her face in my hands and I kiss the woman while the wolf is busy. 

She's tender today. Gentle. 

In Noxus there's a saying: Otium et Bellum . Leisure and War. The true duality within us all. I've seen her war and tonight, together, we find leisure. Otium.

Her hands slide under the black cotton top I've bought myself. They stop just under my breasts, running back and forth along my ribs as they wait for permission. I break our kiss to pull that shirt over my head. I pull her hands up to my chest and rejoin our lips. 

Our bodies -- our -- join in pleasure as my clothing is striped piece by piece away by my own hand. 

I kiss a trail down one side of her broad mercied neck. I curve over her shoulder as her hands explore every inch I've allowed her to borrow. My tongue finds a nipple and runs along it, earning me a gasp. Not a growl. Not a bark. A gasp. 

I spend as much time with her chest as I had planning my steps into this room -- this room which neither of us owns in which both of us can be guests. Then I trail down between her legs, following each scar as if it were a new road on a familiar map. 

I kiss the insides of either thigh before refocusing to where I know she wants me. She doesn't pull my hair. She doesn't wrap her legs around me to suffocate me. She keeps her arms over her eyes and her legs twitching beside me. She moans deeply as my tongue pushes her closer to her edge. Then my fingers join and her voice grows darker -- deeper. 

As she finishes, so does the feasting wolf. All at once a firm hand grabs me by the nape. She throws me into the headboard and flips to her hands and knees. Lurking just out of reach from me, she seizes my calves and tugs. With a swift jerk, I slide forward, my legs wrapping subconsciously around her middle. She grins down at me hungrily before kissing me rough and passionate but without the usual malice or violence our kisses entail.

I breathe into a relaxation, my arms tracing old battlelines on her back. Or perhaps those scars are tombstones in a graveyard of every life she's fought so hard to cling to. 

Her lips move to my neck. My collarbone. My breasts. She nips and bites and sucks and I lavish in every moment of it. I fork a hand into the curls of her hair, tugging slightly. 

For the second time since we've been hunting each other, she blesses me with an orgasm. I try my best to draw this one out, not sure if I'll get another and very sure that the one in my memories was far too cursory. Still, I cum quickly. Desperate for more, I begin to lift my torso under the assumption that if she's through with me I can at least continue touching her. 

Only, she shoves me down with one strong forearm across my chest. 

“Where do you think you're going, little rabbit?” She grins.

I shake my head apologetically.

“May I continue?”

“Yes.”

With that she's back between my legs. She licks a long flat tongue along my core and kisses my clit. Then she shoves her middle finger inside of me and I feel I might scream. I bite my lip instead as her free hand’s nails leave claw marks down my side. 

Her thrusts are harsh, sharp, and steady as a beating war drum. My eyes close and my head rolls off to the side. I moan and whine and it may be the first time I recognize my own voice in a long while.

“Look at me,” she commands.

I do, weakly, with lidded eyes behind a hand that holds my own hair. It lasts about until she gets a second finger in me. When I look away, she grabs the side of my jaw and forces me back to her. 

A ravenous beast with the shadow of the most resplendent woman I have ever seen grunts above me. Her fingers curl as they slide in and out of my wet pussy. When my climax reaches me again, I don't dare close my eyes. 

“May I--” she starts.

“No,” I pant. “But you may lay with me.”

Despite her disappointment, she lies down, allowing me to cuddle on her chest. Steady arms hold me close as her breath rises and falls quickly. She's not even close to tired yet but she is rather worked up. 

I place a kiss to her breastbone. When my ear falls to replace it, I listen close to the bragging heartbeat within Ambessa’s chest.

Alive. Alive. Alive. Alive.

I begin to trace some of her scars with my war hardened fingers. To my surprise, she begins to open them up for me.

“Kino’s sister is named Mel,” she says. “She is eight. She's smart, that one. Smarter than her brother even. She gives me trouble because when I look into her eyes I can see into her heart begging me not to make the hard decisions -- the necessary decisions -- to keep us alive. My children, my love for them is my greatest weakness but it is one I am glad to have. I would not change it for the world. Even when it is used against me, for that may be the hardest thing I ever have to endure. So, when times come like they have recently, and my children are called to battlefields to keep me in line…I am thankful that you stepped in to help one of them where I was not allowed. My hands are so often tied by the duty that I am proud to adore. That slave of mine you said is dead -- she was not the only one in chains.”

I kiss her breastbone again. Then her collarbone. I prop myself up on my arms as hers loosen around me and I kiss her cheek. Her lips. She kisses me back like she needs me. Like she wants me. Like she sees me and appreciates all that I am. 

When I lay back down, she holds me just a little bit tighter. 

Why must my thoughts wander? Why do things never work the way they do in stories? The way they're supposed to -- the way they must?

My blade is stowed in the bed. My vengeance, dead alongside the slaver within her -- fed to the wolf. He's completed his hunt. I've completed mine. We're free now. I'm free to not hate her -- to hold her -- to love her, even.

Yet something horrible still brews in my chest. It pounds off rhythm to my heart. Where compassion and desire count the numbers, this darker, deeper something counts the ands. It lurks, stalks, hunts, ready to sink teeth into prey. It's anxiety. It's loathing. It's a serpent slithering around my aorta, waiting to squeeze. 

I trace my fingers gently along her scars again but these very same fingers twitch to become sticky with her blood. 

I listen to her heart. That humble stocky brag. 

Alive. Alive. Alive. Alive.

That heart. That damned beating heart. The boa around my own constricts.

I was so fucking close.

Chapter Text

Rabbit died last night. For a single moment as I lie in that blurry numinous state between waking and dreaming I feel her corpse on top of my body. She weighs me down like a shield I didn't ask for. Her cool half-dried blood is still tacky on my sides, soaking through my shirt. My gaze fixes on the ceiling past her white streaks of hair. That dark vaulted wood with its complex criss-crossing of joists and rafters. The tongue of a fire demon licks at the edges of the walls while a shadow desperately clings to the very top center, its legs curled in towards its stomach to remain out of reach of the light. The only sound is my breath and that of the breath beside me. My own breath is slow and steady -- a soft, almost melancholy, whooshing of air. But the breathing beside me is hungry and bitter. The air it demands is sucked kicking and screaming into her lungs. No remorse. No fear of taking up space. No bodies crushing her chest.

As the fire demon grows weary and his tongue creeps down further and further the shadows come closer and crisper in my view. I take in a heavy breath, still hush and modest. I let it out and die and all at once I am reborn again as Rabbit. A new Rabbit. One strong enough to do what I was too weak for. 

I leave Ambessa’s bed just before the morning strikes. She reaches out in her slumber as I shift the mattress. I pause. I die again, breathing out the spirit of weakness within me. Then I go to my room at the building we've quartered and ready myself for breakfast.

***

Ambessa’s forces depart after breakfast. I try my best to avoid her -- to let her slip into the red wall of my memories -- but my feet betray me, walking me through the city to all the places she'll likely be. Still, when I find her exactly where I expect to (a tea shop with noble pastries far from the slop the rest of us entertain) I'm surprised. Vexation growls in a way that rattles my ribcage. Why does she have to be here? I bet it's to spite me. How dare she show her face near me as if I won't kill her the moment I get the chance. 

Her eyes catch on me over the top of a porcelain cup that looks almost like a toy in her hand. You're too delicate, I want to warn it, her grasp may be warm but it'll crush you in easy seconds. She sets it down on the garden table she's seated at, her eyes trailing with the steam. I wonder if she sweetens her drink with blood. 

“Change your mind?” She calls offhandedly over her shoulder. She hardly makes an effort to raise her voice. “Captain Swain will be disappointed.”

It's like watching a still pond and knowing that at the bottom lurks an alligator with his jaws drawn open. I decide to splash my way in. Scare him off and warn the fish. 

I storm to her table and hop up on the top of it. My weight sends the wire legs rocking for a moment. Light green liquid splashes out of the side of her cup as it runs through a little tap dance routine. Her drink’s recital is met with the applause of her fingers, holding it still in a calculated manner. Everything she does is calculated.

“I made a mistake last night,” I scowl.

If she's hurt by my words, she doesn't show it. “So long as your regrets aren't held as slander to my actions, I hardly care.”

“The only thing I regret is not taking you out!”

She grins with an amused little hum and sips her tea. As the cup comes back down to the table I beg it to ignore how tempting that embrace of her lips can be. “Such a romantic.”

“I--!” I choke on words, my face growing hot, which only makes me angrier. I smash a fist against the table, sending her tea into an encore of tap dance. “I meant with a blade!”

“We're back to this?”

“We never left it.”

“Then what was all that nonsense about killing that version of me that you hated?”

“I did kill you. I'll kill you again. I'll keep trying until it sticks.”

“Careful, little rabbit. Now you're trying my temper.”

I hate how calm she is. I hate how thrashing I am. To any bystander I'm the lunatic here. They can't see the truth! She's a villain -- a slaver and a warlord -- and I'm just… ugh !

I smash my fist against the table again, the metal top leaving an imprint of its pattern in my knuckles. This time when one hand holds her tea, the other grips my wrist like a garrotte.

“You'll spill my longjing,” she scolds. 

With a scoff I snatch my hand back from her. She lets me, the threat that's no longer in her hand is still in her eyes. Those damned heavy eyes. I'm looking forward to never seeing them again. 

“Last night’s Rabbit is dead,” I say, more steadily than anything else all morning. “Her memories have joined all the others behind the thick curtain of red in my mind. So whatever you wished to gain by being kind to her -- by fooling her into a trap of your false humanity -- you should forget it. I'm not gullible like she was. I would have slit your throat.”

I leave her with the lie. I remember everything perfectly. I remember those golden eyes fucking my own the same as her fingers were fucking me. I remember the emetic wetness of her tongue on my breast. I remember holding her, counting her scars, and I remember her words. Those, I believe, were the most vile things of all. For there is no more vile manipulation than the truth. 

I remember a realization Rabbit had once Ambessa was asleep. Those cold thoughts circling like sharks in the water around her brain were all at once docile, boiled like a delicacy, by the warmth of what swam up from her chest. She couldn't erase the thought because it wasn't a thought at all but a feeling. I remember how Rabbit realized last night that she was in love. I remember her being wrong. 

Love is a patient thing. It would have stolen that weaker version of Rabbit away eventually. So it's a good thing I'm here. It's a good thing I'm stronger. It's a good thing that I can see the poison she keeps feeding me. Noxus in general is like that. You get a choice to start. A drink: a single poison to down and die and restart anew. Only, you drink their poison once and you never stop coughing. 

“Leave some flowers on your grave for me,” Ambessa tosses easily behind her shoulder, not turning to face my retreat. “When you sent away my whore I would have been quite bored. It was kind of you to service me a replacement.”

A whore. Once again that's all I am to her.

Good. Because she's less than that to me.

With a sip of longjing, “Good luck with Rak’il.”

***

Her luck be damned, we walk right into the city. Greeted, even, by the firm gold-accented handshake of an advisor to the beylerbey (a governor of sorts for the city). 

“Captain Jericho Swain,” the man greets warmly, both hands wrapping one of our captain's own. “On behalf of Beylerbey Raklor, I wish to welcome you to Rak’il. If you or your family guardsmen require anything at all during your stay, you need only speak the word.”

“Ebin,” our captain grins patritiously, “My associates and I appreciate your hospitality. Surely, however, there is no need for such flattering between fellow noblemen.”

“Of course, Captain Swain, of course!”

“Jericho will do just fine, Ebin.”

“Yes, yes,” despite the permission the ornately decorated man still hesitates to say, “Jericho.”

We're shown to the Grand Palace -- a good three Nava’s worth of walking. 

Rak’il calls itself a city but I’d rather call it an island. The inside of its twenty meter tall walls are painted with murals of blue, green, and gold. Abstract representations of flora and water. Our tour guide explains this is to call homage to the oasis hot springs the city is built around. There are three primary districts each with subdivisions for housing, trading, and entertainment. 

The closest subdivision to the gate and furthest from the hot springs, Akce,  is nicer than any part of Noxus Prime I've seen (and I've seen a mansion, remember? Well, a version of me has). Ivy and pothos braid together into a tapestry of greenery along smooth sandstone walls. The roofs of the gold-white buildings are painted in varying shades of blue, purple, green, white, yellow, and pink. Almost every color there is other than red. That causes our motley crew of blood, black, and silver to earn more than our fair share of stares. They must have heard about Nava. Good. 

As the second subdivision, Para, embraces us, Akce suddenly looks like a slum. The buildings are larger and topped with some intricate air cooling system I recognize from Noxus. Though the one here is much more complex and artistic. Small bathhouses and ponds litter a road of cobbles and gemstones mortared together as if both were equally rubbish. A little girl breezes by us, chasing a cat that's better fed than half of our army. 

“This reminds me of home in our capital,” the captain sighs. 

Does it? Because I recall sleek marble and spiked architecture, not cozy corridors and canopies of both fabric and flora. Oh and there's no Fleshing Arena here either.

“A bit more sordid, however,” the captain muses. “Noxus Prime is the Pinnacle of what our nation is capable of achieving. It's difficult for foreign lands to live up to its successes. Without assistance, of course.”

I know his words hold some kind of cipher but I don't have the key. Instead, I turn my focus back to my surroundings as we enter the rich and final subdivision of Rak’il, Kurus. 

Magic. Gold. Culture. Mix these three words into an image and you'll be about a third of the way to imagining Kurus. The palace itself is solid gold. The entire upper division looks like it was cut from the Ixtali jungles of the east and pasted in here. It's surprisingly diverse with yordles, humans, and even vastaya -- an animal looking humanoid race of what I always believed was myth. Hovering orbs of magical light speckle the air like freckles on a motherly flaxen face. I'd say it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, if I hadn't seen Ambessa Medarda. 

The Demacian in me is struck instantly by the mages. Their free use of powers not fully understood. The Noxian in me is struck by something else. A distinct and utter lack of soldiers. I suppose it would explain why Rak’il, being only a month’s journey from Nava, never attacked us. Still, it's as strange as it is foolish to welcome a Noxian into your unguarded home. An entire band of them? Why does this feel like a trap?

I keep careful watch to those that pass us. If there is a cage waiting, I won't let it be for my captain. Not after all he's done for me.

We're stopped at a circular door five times larger than any door needs to be at the end of a hallway made of a mosaic floor -- a mural of the long dead general, Azir. The captain turns to us, hands behind his straight back, shoulders relaxed. 

“Rabbit, Corvus,” he addresses. “You remain out here.”

“Yes captain,” the head of his family guard, Corvus apparently, nods without protest. 

Remain outside? Is he serious? The Beylerbey, Raklor, is in there! That man could want his head! When I don't respond right away, his dark regal eyes press into me. He urges me silently to trust him and I do but that trust battles violently with the part of me I've quietly glued to his shield. 

I tear two words from the battlefield within me, “yes, captain.” Then he's off. Behind a closed door with Samira and the others.

Corvus stands at attention, pike in hand, to the right of the door so I take the left. I remember her from the battle. She's a tall woman, extraordinarily so. In fact, she'd dwarf even Ambessa in both height and muscle. The day we fought at Nava she was wearing a full suit of dark black armor and a helmet with a full face and a red plume. A dark knight that I mistook for a man until Samira explained later during our tattoo session who she was. The scar across her one blind eye, Samira had said, she got protecting the captain when he was a young man. Assassins were common in Noxus. Assassins wielding magic instead of blades even more so. Thus it's no wonder that corvus’s scar is a shiny black wound edged in a red that makes it look almost like it's still open. She's maybe ten years older than the captain but still in remarkable shape. Her grey hair is buzzed to a practical and dignified inch and a half. Her pale skin only makes the pink gloss on her lips all the more obvious. A slight touch of femininity to an otherwise brick wall of a woman. 

At some point during our post, I forget entirely about eavesdropping on Captain Swain’s meeting. I don't think Corvus ever even tried to listen in. All that leaves me, in lieu of the laser focused attention she's got on the empty hallway, is a game of I spy. 

I spy something golden. The solid gold brick on the Azir mosaic. 

I spy something magical. The purple flame of the torches and chandeliers. 

I spy something…oh now that is interesting. Without those gauntlets of hers, I find that the woman beneath the black knight wears a signet ring. A swirling spiral of blood drops -- or maybe tears. I prefer to imagine it's blood though. 

“Noradi?” I grin.

Corvus slides her eyes to me, but only for a moment before she's back to tracing the perimeter for the millionth time.

“Matriarch of the house,” Corvus says, matter of fact.

“Corvelle?” I realize. 

Her eyes find mine again along with the tug of a smile on those painted lips. This time her head turns. “To what house do you belong?”

“None now. But I was property of the Medarda’s until recently. Your little sister, Antonina, she used to visit Ambessa quite often. I think they were friends.”

“Property? Was that why the two of you were fighting?”

“You don't gossip much, do you? I thought everyone already knew.”

“I don't believe gossip. When you don't believe it, eventually people stop sharing it.”

“Or they stop sharing it because they start to gossip about you.”

“Trust me, they do.”

“Oh? Anything good?”

She snorts and turns back towards the hall. “For a time, they liked to rumor that my middle son was a child of the captain's.”

“Is he?”

She laughs, a surprisingly shrill chirping noise. 

“Alright, alright,” I chuckle. “I do have to ask though.”

“Why a matriarch of a noble house spends her life in servitude to a man who only recently was granted a military position?”

“Well, yes. Exactly that.”

“You've met him,” she shrugs simply. “Why are you here?”

Touché. I decide in this moment that I like Corvelle Noradi. She's practical. Dignified. Strong. Loyal. Everything a noble should be. That and she's funny as hell.

I can't help but feel between Noradi and Swain I really got the worst lot when it came to slavers. I can't imagine either of them treating me the way Ambessa did. Then again, I also can't imagine either of them ever holding me the way she does. The way I may never feel her holding me again. I wonder if a part of me knew that night that it would be the last time. That's the same part of me that misses her, I suppose. What a foolish part.

When the meeting is over, we’re posted queerly. Corvus is outside of the door to the captain’s room and I'm within it. If someone were to scale the smooth palace walls, they'd still have a time getting past the blue crystal bars on the window. I couldn't even shatter them. I tried. So why protection in here? And why was the rest of the family guard allowed to rest down the hall?

“So how was your meeting, Jerry?” I ask.

The captain steps out from behind a room divider with a scolding look. In his nightgown and sleep cap, he appears more of an old man than he should at his age. Like he's waiting up on a trio of ghosts to warn him of the danger of miserliness.

“Apologies, captain,” I smile. “I just figured if you're letting Shuriman’s drop titles and formalities, then you'd allow us to do so even more erratically.”

“I figured you'd be better trained after your time with Ambessa Medarda,” he says casually.

“The only thing she trained me in that I can imagine would be of any use to you is fighting. So why am I defending the inside of a room?”

“At nine o’clock the hall will be empty. At nine o’clock, you will rotate positions with Corvus. At nine o’ six, Ebin, the advisor from our tour, will walk by with the beylerbey. An hour after the sun rises, the duo will walk by again and this time, Corvus will be at the post in her armor.”

I can't wrap my head around the why. I don't want to ask and look foolish. So I simply nod like I understand and say, “very good, captain.”

This strange rotation of the guards continues night after night for three nights straight. I try to sleep when it's my turn to be on the inside of the captain’s door but I never can. I know, consciously, that I'm allowed to but then that fear grips my drifting mind every time and shakes me back to sanity. If I sleep and something happens to him, I'll never forgive myself. So, a proper post or not, I will honour it.

“Hey,” I brave softly on the fourth night, my head against the outside of the wood door. “Corvelle, you there?”

A light rap of armor and skull as she leans back on her side. “Yeah. All good out there?”

“Boring.”

I can hear the snort of her laugh before she suffocates it. “If you wake him up, we'll both be running laps around the palace tomorrow.”

“He doesn't strike me as the vindictive type. Not immediately anyways.”

“You're right. He'd keep it in his pocket like a favour. Cash it in when he needs us to do something really gruesome.”

“I don't think he needs favours for our obedience.”

“True. Why do think we're the ones being used for the diversion?”

I straighten up a bit. “Diversion?”

“Every night the beylerbey sees one guard switchover to another. Every morning, he sees a third.” She is unrecognizable in that armor. But what does that have to do with anything?

“So?”

In her silence I can tell she's laughing at me again, only inwardly this time.

“Don’t laugh,” I say. “Take pity on me. What's the plan here?”

“You'll find out tomorrow, Rabbit. Try to rest. It'll be a big morning.”

Well after that I definitely can't sleep. Not that Corvelle cares. When she starts to snore, I bump my elbow into the door. She snorts then sighs as she wakes up.

“Snoring,” I tell her.

“Thanks,” she says back.

Can't wake the captain from his beauty rest. 

When day breaks, the captain rises alongside it, stretching his broad shoulders. His black hair is swept against its roots, his nightcap having continued dozing on his pillow without him. He seems chipper for lack of a better world. Assured. Proud teetering on arrogant. He makes his way to the window, gazing out at the sun as he spreads his wings towards the horizon.

“A beautiful day,” he muses.

“Crovelle says it's a big morning,” I say somewhat quickly, despite my best attempts to hide the fact that the question has been burning the tip of my tongue all night. “When do we take the city?” 

My eager hands already hover by my blades, my nose twitching with the same energy that hops me from foot to foot. 

“If my plan worked,” he says without turning, “we already have.”

All at once I freeze. My hands fall to my sides. My eyebrow lifts nonchalant as my heart pangs with worry that I've let a crazed man stop me protecting him from himself.

“And if it didn't work?”

“Ah Rabbit, if the risk is calculated, there's no risk at all.”

He explains it to me while he dresses. As a nightgown is tossed atop the room divider, a new detail is tossed up with it. A shirt is pulled down, another bit of stately plotting is revealed to me. By the time he rounds back into my vision, with his long black coat draped around the shoulders of his equally black armor, I’m aware of his own. 

Nobody would care that guards leave their room if they assume they're switching posts. Three guards within three sightings sets that assumption. So, one by one, the others slipped out last night. Hour by hour. They went to addresses revealed by Ebin. Nobles, advisors, loyalists. Now all with quartered Noxians in their homes. Some were slain. Others converted but currently are being held in the privacy -- the secrecy -- of their self made prisons. Held somewhere Beylerbey Raklor could not see them.

Corvus and I follow the captain to that large open room with the ornate circular door. The one where, according the captain’s debriefing, they had met a few days prior to discuss the peaceful alliance of Noxian Nava and Shuriman Rak’il. 

“People will throw open their doors to you, so long as you lead with a talk of peace,” he had said, more to himself than to me. “Though, I imagine it would only continue to work if you did on occasion actually leave peacefully”

The heels of Captain Swain’s boots clink against the floor mosaic of Azir as if shaking the dead tyrant’s hand. When we enter, Ebin has the beylerbey on his knees and Samira and a member of the family guard has a family in their pajamas. There's a mother and three teenage boys. I realize quickly who the father must be. 

“Raklor,” the captain greets as if gliding into some soiree and not an execution. “Thank you for the hospitality. That room was much more comfortable than my encampment would have been. I assume Ebin has explained to you your situation?”

The once powerful man only bows his head. As much of a confirmation as the captain is getting.

“Wonderful.” The captain snaps at Samira and the guard she's with. “Take them to the library. If I send in Corvus or Rabbit, move to phase two.”

I can't kill children. He better send Corvus.

The captain continues, his stance that of a school teacher giving a lecture, not a man about to battle. “Your city’s use of mere wards and shield magics rather than soldiers to guard it is what has led to your downfall. Though that alone may not have been enough to allow me such a swift invasion, had it not been for your foolhardiness. A king already in check is easy to mate. Still, as a gift from one patrician to another, I will offer your family a life beyond your death. Noxus can be a hard place. I have learned that much, seen that much, in my time chatting with the recruits of my battlefield. For those without noble blood, strength is the only currency. Though monetary legs up are useful, nonetheless. If you surrender yourself to me and my blade, I will make your end swift and allow your family to keep what they already own. Their land, their bonds, their titles, their lives.” There's an especial hiss to that last one. “They will be Noxians, tried and true, but they will be better off than if you chosen to fight me. For that choice, I'll give the order to have one of their heads roll at random.”

If he gives me the order, it won't be random. I'll make an orphan again before I ever end a life just starting.

“They will be enslaved, put to work in mines or the front lines -- wherever I feel they will be of the most service. Now of course, Noxus isn't anything if it isn't fair. So they will have a chance to work their way up. But, it is as I said, the wheels of privilege are so easily oiled by aristocracy. And, do not fear, your children needn’t know their father was a weak coward. They will think it was duel to the death, I assure you.”

The broken man lays his forehead on the cool tile floor. A low bow beneath even the captain’s feet. 

“Please, Jericho,” he says, to his credit without tears or fear, “make it swift.”

Corvus hands the captain his blade, a family heirloom of the beylerbey that's spent more time on a wall these past decades than in a battlefield where it belongs. 

“I thank you for making this so easy, Raklor.”

It's a clean sharp cut. The man is dead as soon as his spinal cord is severed. The captain takes a single step back from the expanding puddle of blood. Can’t get his boots dirty. He gives Ebin a cursory glance and confirms the advisor's reward for loyalty. It seems the man’s ancestors had fought with the armies of Azir and he'd waited his whole fat noble life to do the same. He'd be a captain when ours moved up to colonel, so long as he survives being a legionnaire for now.

A part of me still can't register it. Our captain -- my captain -- literally took a city in his sleep. Let's see Ambessa do that. This day, my faith in him is cemented along with the loyalty he could already count on. I will never question his orders again. I will guard every empty room he asks me to. I will enter every secret mission and seemingly reckless one. He is everything I'd hoped he be in a leader, and as a lamb I know well how to follow.

For two years I follow him through Shurima as a legionnaire. After Dak’il, Grand General Darkwill’s respect was won and our legion numbers doubled. We take city after city, some even inviting us in once they hear it's Jericho Swain at the command. Whether it be fear or veneration that guides them, I'm not sure. I just know it impresses me every time and that his confidence only grows while his ego remains humble and fixed. 

I try to make myself useful as much as I can. He seems to enjoy my thoughts, often picking my brain about some thought puzzle or inviting me for a game of logic. Through him, I begin to learn what vision truly means…and I also learn how poor I am at latrones. I'm getting better. I think. He still doesn't let me win but our games are getting much longer. 

“You received a letter today,” the captain, now a colonel (the fastest climb of rank in recent Noxian history) says one night as we're forty minutes into a game that's either going to go his way or stalemate. I'd love a stalemate. 

“Quick trying to distract me, Jerry.” I only use that little quip of a nickname when he's being especially two-faced or evasive.

“Not there,” he criticizes my move. 

I put the piece back and think, looking over the board. I try to see it as he does, but the many roads of possibilities have my head starting to swirl.

“You should go,” he says.

“I'm thinking through my move. Be patient.”

“I mean whatever it is House Medarda has invited you to. Go.”

“You read my mail?”

“I saw the wax seal on it. I doubt it was Ambessa who sent you a letter.”

“You vulture,” I tease, half serious, my eyes still on the board. “Quit circling and just pick off a hunk of carcass already.”

“I would, but I can't tell just yet if it's a feast of peasant or a rotting deer.”

I sigh. “Kino sent it.”

“The wolf pup of Medarda? Ah, I recall the day you refereed a fight between him and legionnaire Damascus Frey. Given the month, I presume he's invited you to his birthday celebration?”

“So you did know it was a peasant.”

“I stand by my statement. You should go.” 

I move a piece.

“Not there,” he scolds again.

I move it back and pinch my brows. What does he see here that I cannot? 

“I’ll grant you leave for the party,” he says.

“That'd be very kind of you. If I was going.”

“The decision is yours, but it would be foolish to decline.”

“The deal was I never see her again.”

“With the forces General Medarda now commands,” Swain wasn't the only one moving up in rank, “I'm sure you'll run into her eventually.”

“Not in her cave. Not where she keeps her pack.”

I make my move. He doesn't critique me and instead just makes his counter right away. I take the bait of his trap. He punishes me. I reverse his punishment and we find ourselves three moves away from a stalemate.

“I can only advise you, Rabbit,” the colonel says on move one. “It is up to you if you take that advice. You have the leave papers already stamped, regardless.”

“I didn't request leave.” I make move two. “If I did, it'd hardly be to cut a slice of cake with some eighteen year old aristocrat.”

“It could be helpful to have a friend in the Medarda house, especially when you're trying to make a name for yourself here.” He places himself in the only spot he can. Game end. Stalemate. He rises from his chair, an empty glass in his hand, ready for more wine. “Strength should be the only thing that matters in Noxus. Yet, we hold parties.”

He leaves me with that. As I examine the board, debating what moves could have changed the outcome, my thoughts wander back to the wolf pup. Two years since we met and I haven't seen him. We didn't even talk much when he was around. The kid must be abhorrently lonely. Or maybe he just sees a move I don't. It sure would make his mother angry to have me there. That alone might be worth it, would she not force me to leave with a new scar. Maybe I could give her one instead. A nice little addition to her growing collection. 

At two years, I've been free of her just as long as I was indentured. Maybe that means I've changed. 

I find a way I could have beat Colonel Swain a half an hour ago. And I also find my answer to my wolf pup’s invite.

Chapter Text

I recall pondering once the social dynamics of Noxus Prime. I've survived it with slave tattooed across my forehead. I've survived it with Reckoner tattooed over that. Now, as I enter with the world soldier written in bolden capital letters, I learn for the first time what it means to thrive here. This is how Ambessa must have felt when we first returned to her home. Powerful. Important. Some people avert their eyes with reverence while others thank me with a bow or a nod of their head. Other soldiers salute me and I salute them back. Even as a legionnaire, I am one with the militaristic heart of Noxus -- my feet march in echo with its beat. 

On Colonel Swain’s recommendation, I check into a nice inn that has a private room and a private bath. I doubt I'll use either, only being here for the one night. Though, who knows? After dealing with Ambessa I may need a good bath -- if only to wash her blood off my skin. 

No, Rabbit. Be good. It'd hardly be a nice birthday gift if you killed Kino’s mother. Though it would be good for him in the long run…no. Bad Rabbit. Tonight, I'll be cordial. 

The kicker of the invite was that the wolf pup had requested two things: no fighting and no weapons. So, as I adjust the copper shoulder pins of my long red stola, I imagine as every other guest tonight will how best to hide a blade or two beneath it. I settled on sandals rather than boots, so any sort of ankle sheath will be useless. I've gone for a sleeveless option so a wrist holster is also out. There's a long v-shaped dip down my back but I'm pretty sure the pup would notice a back drawn blade even without it. 

The more I look at myself, the less I see a soldier. My hair up in messy cone buns, my makeup done with bright red lips and black dots around my eyes (for myself! Despite what Ambessa may assume upon seeing it). I don't look like I'm on a battlefield. Other than my defined biceps and the scars that dot here and there, I'd say I look like a noblewoman. 

I pull on my palla, a shimmering square of gold lace fabric that I kid myself into thinking will protect me as the night grows colder. If it wasn't lace, it'd be a great way to stow my blade.

Now I'm no sharpshooter, but I am just now realizing I have the perfect weapon for this outfit. A gift from Samira that she'd picked up on one of her many amazing adventures. I know I packed it. I don't own much so I pack everything. I head to my trunk and dig past the old blades I know I won't use again but can't bring myself to trade until my hands brush against the smooth gold handle of the single-shot. It's gold and opulent -- very Samira-esk. It's tiny, fueled by some magic I won't even attempt to understand rather than gunpowder and it shoots off magic too rather than lead. I'm not sure what kind of magic. Samira never told me. She just winked and said I'd find it useful. She was right, even if it took me a year to need it.

It's gun shaped but only as long and wide as two of my fingers. It has two little decorative swirls rounding the bottom of the handle and that's where I string a long gold chain. It falls between my breasts like a cool defense. I check the mirror from every angle. I have to be sure it's hidden completely. Front? Check. Side? Check after some adjusting. Front again? Check again. 

Okay, let's go play in a den of wolves. 

It's strange being let into the gates of the villa as though I wasn't trapped behind these very gates not long ago. Stranger still, when I'm led by an armored man (a part of the family guard, I believe) to the eastern part of the square of buildings. Though everything is connected by covered walkways, I was always forbidden to leave the western and northern sides of the property -- the slave quarters and Ambessa’s quarters, respectively. Now, I head east to where the children's spaces and the living spaces are. What a world. 

I hear the party before I see it. I made sure to get here a tad late. Not enough to be noticed making an entrance, but just enough that I can hopefully slip into a crowd -- a barrier -- of people if Ambessa starts to get too close. I take a deep breath before I enter. I'd like to take another but my pause already has the guard on edge. Cool it, friend. Wouldn't be the first time I've tried to assassinate her but it would be the dumbest. I'm smarter than attacking her here.

I head inside a large stone room with tall ceilings and many marble pillars. It's extravagant and the wax of the floor would have you think it's barely used, but I know better. Otium et Bellum, remember? The woman of this house lavishes in both equally. There is indeed a crowd but I do indeed draw attention despite it, if only because Kino is right by the door and comments immediately upon my arrival, “Rabbit!”

Shit.

The wolf pup wraps open arms around me in a hug that I only half return, one arm clapping his back chastely while my other shoulder angles my torso away just enough that he doesn't feel my weapon. Hopefully. 

“I'm so glad you could make it,” he says. 

“Thank you for having me,” I smile politely.

We break the hug, thankfully, and I subtly scan the room behind him while he chatters. 

“I was elated to receive your RSVP,” he says. “I must hear everything about your travels with Colonel Swain. Is it true that he's taken cities without battle?”

“Yes,” I confirm. “All of the time, actually.”

Where is she?

Generals. Nobles. Some of which I recognize. Most of which recognize me. Yet no sign of Ambessa anywhere. 

“You see? That's what I was just talking about with Captain Ophelia. If we can expand the way the Grand General desires, whilst avoiding bloodshed, isn't everyone left off the merrier?” 

“Well, bloodshed can't always be avoided.”

“No, of course not. But when it can be, it should. Ah, well, I'll allow you to mingle but catch up with me before the night is out. I'd love your opinions on a matter.”

“Yes, well, I'll be sure to find you later then. Happy birthday, pup.”

He starts to walk away but with a hand to his arm I stop him. For the first time all conversation I look at him. He's grown up but is still a child. His eyes say he's seen more of war than I wish he had in these two years. His beard says it's still not enough to compensate for a baby face and make him a man. His hair is styled differently. A faded cut that's longer on top and has a spiral design cut into the sides. I'm not the only one looking more noble than soldier today it would seem.

“Where's your mother?” I ask. Confusion pitches his face so I quickly add, “it's such a grand home she has. I'd love a tour.”

His expression brightens. He sides aside his glass of what better be sparkling juice. “That I can arrange. Follow me.”

Shit. Well, at least it lessens my chances of running into Ambessa.

The wolf pup is more than happy to prattle off the story of every arch and mural in this place. At hall two, I'm thinking he should be a historian. By hall three, I'm certain that he'll be a grand next head of the family. I can't say I'm as certain that his mother would agree. 

“Have you lived in Noxus Prime your entire life?” I ask as we glide past a tapestry of their family tree. It's almost larger than the wall. I wonder how they're going to fit another line on the bottom of it.

“Most of it. We moved here from a smaller stronghold when I was four, but I don't remember much of that place. Oh! Except for these peach trees. They were everywhere. An especially fruitful one nestled right up next to the house. We had some land then -- it was a much less urban estate -- so there was this long dirt path that led back to our home and you'd see that tree before anything else. I'd wait under it with a nanny on the days I knew my mother was coming home. I wanted to be the first thing she saw. I remember one particularly warm day, shortly before we moved, I waited up past lunch time. Protested the nanny trying to drag me in for at least a slice of bread. I wouldn't go. Not until I saw her. She came down the road dirty and beaten. It had been a long trek since the battlefield but still she looked like she'd just come off of it. She smiled as soon as she saw me and I swear she limped just a little bit less. I was so excited to see her -- threw myself at her legs. But then I felt the blood. I hadn't felt blood before. It was cold between my fingers and sticky. At the time I didn't know that meant it was close to fresh. ‘ it isn't mine, child,’ I recall her saying, ‘ and it isn't yours. Don't mind it.’ We sat under that peach tree together and when she discovered that I'd missed my lunch waiting up for her she picked peaches for us to share. And she fired the nanny.” He chuckles a bit at that last part as if everything before it hadn't just sent cold sticky near fresh blood to every vein in my body. I have a hard time envisioning such a maternal side to the woman who took me captive. 

I gaze up at the layers and layers of Medardas on the tapestry. How many of them had been mothers? I suppose a good half of them. Then again, there was a difference between being a mother and being a mom. I wonder about the dead Demacian's mother. Then I furrow my brows. I can't remember anything about her. I can't even remember if she had a mother at all. The more I try, the more I sink into a thick oozing pool of red plasma. If it troubles me that I can't recall, my body doesn't show it. That life is in the past now. That woman and her entire family are as dead as the Medardas at the top of the peach tree. 

A younger woman in an onyx gown approaches us with a bow and an apology written on her face.

“Mina,” Kino greets. “It's not like you to slip out of a party. Is everything alright?”

“Oh, I'll be back, don't you worry,” Mina says. “I just thought I should let you know that your friend Lucius has downed about half a barrel of mead and taken to streaking through the courtyard.”

“Not again,” the pup’s face falls. 

“He's drawing quite a crowd.”

“A part of me thinks he'd enjoy that.” He turns to me. “Apologies, but I'll have to cut this tour short. Do you remember the way back to the party?”

“I do,” I lie. “Though I hear there's a much more torrid event out in the courtyard.”

“If you have any mercy in your heart, legionnaire, you'll let poor Lucius live this down knowing that at least one face didn't bear witness to his naked arse.”

I chuckle, “the party it is.”

He ducks off at a rather rushed pace with Mina and I realize I don't remember if we were walking up or down this hall. No matter. I'm good at navigating. 

As I pass a few doors I definitely never saw on our tour, the air begins to taste of fresh peaches. The flavour tingles my tongue as my skin grows hot with a warm day. 

I hear a child’s voice and at first I think it's Kino in my drifting bit of daydream, but it's a bit mature for four years old and much too shrill for a little boy. 

“Now you'll be forced to accept my treaty,” the tiny voice touts. The crunch of a biscuit preludes a full mouth of, “your holdings and loyalty are mine!”

“Mr. Snuggles has objections to your treaty,” another voice says. I know that voice. It's smooth gravel and perfect articulation. Ambessa. Of course she's always lurking somewhere near wherever I happen to be.

“What?” The child says, biscuit now swallowed.

I follow the voices as the conversation continues.

“Mr. Snuggles is staging a coup.”

“Mom, stop!”

“Uh-oh. Looks like Fluffykins has joined him and is gifting her personal house guard for the attack.”

“ Mom! ”

I come to the flower petal and dried orange slice postered door of a child's bedroom. It's cracked open to reveal a war table at tea time. The powers in play? Ambessa Medarda in a modest red stola, Fluffykins the stuffed cat, Mr. Snuggles the bear, a council of dolls and animals, and a ten year old girl in pajamas with golden wire wrapping locks of her long curly hair.

“It doesn't work like that,” the little girl complains with a scowl that'd be so like her mother if it weren't for the slight pout of her bottom lip. “I've neutralized his military power.”

“Then why is there an army on your doorstep, Mel?”

“I-I don't know! Because you're a meanie?”

“Foreign aid, Mel.”

From behind Ambessa’s back comes the international ally of Mr. Snuggles and Fluffykins -- a lion with a yarn mane and round black buttons for eyes. The little girl gasps and reaches for the new toy but Ambessa holds it back.

“Ah, ah,” the mother clicks her tongue through a grin. Who truly gloats one upping a child? “First, you must cede your city to Mr. Snuggles’s coup. Then his foreign general can dock his ship and cuddle with you in bed tonight.”

“Mom! That's not fair!”

“That's war, dear.”

“Bessie,” I say, slipping into the room. 

I draw Ambessa’s glare like a blade but thankfully she doesn't draw a real one. What, she doesn't really believe I’d be stupid enough to call her that, does she?

“Is a famous general,” I continue. I pinch the toy lion’s nape between two fingers and Ambessa begrudgingly releases it. I bob it's fuzzy head side to side, dancing it closer to the little girl. “Which is why someone,” I blow a raspberry and tilt Bessie the lion’s head all the way to the side. Mel giggles. “Has poisoned her longjing tea. Without a general to lead them, Mr. Snuggles’s army falls apart. Fluffykins is overwhelmed. Her troops, disorganized. Your city guard easily quashes the scattered forces and imprisons the traitors.” I drop the lion into the girl’s lap. She hugs it close, that unavailing love between a child and a new toy stretching a smile across half her face. 

When she's done suffocating the lion, Mel turns back to her mother with determination. She points a tiny manicured finger her way and commands, “your life will be spared, despite your treason.”

Ambessa scoffs.

“Councilman Sparkledoggy and I refuse to stoop to your level.”

“I'll be off to the dungeons then,” Ambessa says, creeping slowly half off of her knees. “Plotting…my…revenge!” She lunges for the girl who shrieks. It turns swiftly to laughter as the general tickles her without mercy. 

After a few minutes of torture, Ambessa yeilds to the little councilor, picking her up in strong warrior arms, lion and all. As Mel catches her breath there's a yawn, making Ambessa the one to now chuckle.

“Sleep, child,” she says, tucking her daughter into bed. She kisses her forehead gently.

“I want to go to Kino’s party,” Mel whines, already half in a dream now that she's surrounded by her warm white covers and ten dozen pillows and stuffed toys. 

“Oh you don't want to mingle with those people. Trust me, there's better better company in here.” She lifts the lion so that it too kisses the child's forehead then snuggles it into the girl’s safe arms. “I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

“Promise?” 

“Promise.”

“Really really promise?”

Ambessa sits up straight as an arrow. Her fist by her heart, she bows in the same way she bowed to Colonel Swain that day two years ago. She says, “Mel Medarda you have my honour and my word. I will tell you everything about Kino’s party at breakfast tomorrow.”

Mel yawns, “you better.”

As she drifts to sleep, Ambessa adjusts the covers one last time and mutters, “sleep sound, little wolf.”

Door closed, room now around the corner, Ambessa finally feels far enough away to shout at me.

“I seem to remember telling you to stay away from my family, Rabbit.”

“Beautiful home,” I comment, my arms crossed as I lean into a stone wall painted red. “So glad Kino invited me. Got lost on our tour though. Somehow I wound up at a negotiation table for a foreign city.”

“I hope you got what you were looking for in that encounter, because if you ever so much as breathe in the direction of my child again, I will cut your head from your body and mount it above my fireplace.”

“A bit tense, aren't we, Ambessa?”

“I could use a massage. Tell me, are you as good with your hands as I recall?”

“Better. Not that you'll be finding out.”

Ambessa just grins. “Did you enjoy the food before your tour? I cooked some of it myself.”

“How desperate. You'd poison an entire party just to kill me?”

“Oh I assure you it's safe to eat. Delicious, even. One of my favourite delicacies.”

***

Rabbit.

Grilled rabbit with its legs ripped off and its meat cut down to the bone but a silver denarri coin still chained around its crispy stump neck.

“There you are,” Kino says, approaching behind me. “Should have known I’d find you by dinner.”

“I can't help but feel this is motivated,” I say, my plate as empty as my stomach is about to be. Panic swirls about in my chest, banging around like a loose marble against my heart and ribs. 

The pup howls low, “I didn't even think of it like that. Mother prepared it. It's rather good. People never expect her to be much of a cook, but when you're a legionnaire someone’s got to cook. As I'm sure you're already well aware. That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. This Colonel Swain, I was hoping to make a more formal introduction. We didn't get a chance to talk much the last time we met.”

He continues to babble about something or other. Meeting Swain. Picking his brain on the use of diplomacy rather than war. Something about requesting my stay in Noxus Prime as a tutor and bodyguard.

“Foreign powers see us as the villains right now. People here, they respect you -- revere you. You know they still request you fight at the Munera every year? You could do more good politically, here, than you can as a soldier on the front lines. You're no noble, but if you join our family guard you'll be associated with nobility enough for the other pure Noxians to ignore that fact. There's this one Reckoner starting to make a name, perhaps you've heard of him, Draven. People fall absolutely mad over anything he does. He spiked his hair last season and for a month -- a month! -- it was all the rage in fashion. Now imagine if Draven had urged peaceful alliances rather than seizing of militaries? Or used his celebrity status to--”

“I need some air.”

“I'll go with you.”

“No. Sorry, pup. I just…I don't feel quite right.”

I make it to the courtyard but the sky and bushes and walkways all blur together like watercolor beneath spilled tea. I toss a hand into the air, my palm smacking into a marble pillar. I use it to guide my butt to the ground. Maybe if I stare up long enough with my arms spread wide enough I can stop this world from spinning. Or, at the very least, I can medicate this impending heart attack.

Why was I so rude to her? So threatening? Of course this was a trap. Of course she hasn't let me go. Not really. No. The rabbit was a threat. I'm next to be grilled. And I've walked right in here -- into her den -- weaponless! 

No. Not weaponless. Not entirely. I yank the tiny magic gun from the chain, closing it between both palms. I take a breath but it sticks halfway. I take another. A heavy rock sits on my chest, pressing down so hard that I can't quite breathe. 

Of course I'm still afraid of her. I thought I was stronger than this but here I am, utter stone -- practically a statue to decorate this garden. 

The world stills enough for me to recognize the full moon. Somewhere off in the distance a wolf howls, leading the chorus of its pack. A prelude to footsteps. I hop into an attack blindly, taking the assassin to the shadowed ground and pinning them there along the thorny vines of some Noxian flower. 

My hands recognize her before my eyes adjust enough to see her. I knew it. She's come to try and kill me -- the alpha wolf herself.

With a growl, she twists my arm, pinning it against her side. A firm hand shoves my hips up and over my opposite shoulder so that I fall diagonal from where I was to the ground. She climbs on top of me but I fight her pin. I claw my nails across her face and kick my feet while I fumble with my gun in the other hand. Finally, I slip my finger around the trigger and bury the muzzle into her belly. I pull. It clicks. There's a flash of light and she hisses. 

Grabbing the barrel, she twists, breaking it free and breaking my trigger finger along with it. She gives the weapon a once over with a reeling face before tossing it aside. I punch her while she's distracted. She takes it, then with fury pins both of my arms. Her brows knead together almost impossibly closer. 

“Was that a lighter?” she scowls.

Embarrassingly, I think it was. A magical lighter. A flame spell.

“No weapons allowed,” I say, still writhing. “Couldn’t enter your den defenseless.”

She scoffs, amused. I spit in her face. Her amusement quickly fades. She grabs me by the collar and I cling to her wrists. She lifts me a good four inches off the ground before shoving me back. My head nearly splits against something hard and angular on the ground. A poorly placed rock perhaps? 

“If I wanted your spit on me,” she says. “We wouldn't be in the courtyard.”

“You can't kill me here. The party’s a few legs away. It'd be a shitty gift killing the pup’s friend on his birthday.”

She pauses, something choking in her throat. Then she laughs, those strong hands never even flinching to let me go. “If I wanted you dead, child, you would be.”

“You grilled rabbits!”

“I like to eat rabbits.”

“Not how I remember it.”

“I seem to remember you begging for my touch.” Her voice turns to mocking, “wouldn't you like a turn, Ambessa?” 

“Th-That’s not how I said it!”

She leans in close to my face, her breath a ghosted kiss across my lips, “You know, little rabbit, with my hands on the breast of your shirt, I can feel the effects the cold night air is having on your body.”

My heart stops beating. The wind stops blowing. The wolves stop howling. I raise my face to kiss her but she pulls away, laughing as the edges of her fists continue to brush against my nipple through the thin scratchy fabric of my stola. 

Now my heart beats again.

Drawing on the magic of the crystal once lodged in my head, I give myself ample time to rip her off of me. I stagger a few feet further into the courtyard, finding myself between statues of old dead Medarda generals whose names are surely pinned up in that peach tree tapestry. 

I see in glacial time her advancement towards me, already slow and stalking. She makes a move for a silver mambele held by a gravelly ancestor. It's half sickle, half axe, with spikes jutting out every so often in places you definitely don't want them if it's coming at you.

I, in turn, scan through the weapons, finding a khopesh that I'm sure the marble woman won't mind if I borrow. My freehand becomes a parry with a surprisingly sharp karambit. Must be a recent statue. 

Her grin says this is a game. Her first cut, which lands between my left shoulder and my breast says this is not. 

Despite the grunting and the clash of steel and iron it takes time for anyone to come bear witness to us. By the time they do, I've blocked her mambele with my khopesh whilst spinning my karambit past it to cut her face in a way I hope will leave a scar but I know wasn’t deep enough. She shoves out of our weapons lock to add a parallel cut beside one she gave me earlier below the knee. I swing high, above her ducked head and she attempts to take me to the ground. I kick up into the air, spinning to land behind her and cut into her back with my sword. She hisses and retaliates with one -- step back -- two -- step back -- three strikes that I evade. My back is to a tall bush now and her weapon is as raised as her battlecry.

“Stop!” The order comes from probably the only person she'd listen to.

Kino shoves past the crowd to push us apart. Way to spoil the fun, kid. 

“Mother, what are you doing?!” He scolds. 

“She attacked me!” Ambessa defends.

“With a lighter!” I scoff.

“And that justifies this ?” The wolf pup gestures to the mess of cuts I've made to her skin and clothes. 

I stick my tongue out at her from behind him.

“And you,” he turns to me. Uh-oh. “I'm sorry for my mother’s actions. I won't pretend to understand the history between you two, but I know that it is long and complicated. Still, I thought, I suppose wrongly, that whatever grudge she held against you would have faded over the years. I invited you to a party and now you look like you've just stepped off another battlefield. I'm so sorry, Rabbit.”

“Pup,” I say, shaking my head. “It's not your fault. It shouldn't be your duty to apologize for your mother’s actions. It was a lovely party. And it wouldn't be Noxian without a fight or two. If anything, I'm sorry for not following your rules.”

Ambessa, stubborn as she is, doesn't join in our apology tour. I don't think she believes she's done anything wrong. 

“You're bleeding,” Kino says. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” I laugh. “She's got weaker strikes than you. I'll be alright after I patch myself up.”

“There's a medical kit in the North Wing,” Ambessa dares to say. Fucking jerk. 

“Mother--” Kino starts.

Ambessa raises a hand, turning the lecturing around on him with stern eyes. “You go back to your party, Kino. I'll clean up the mess I've made.”

The wolf pup looks to me for permission of her aid. It's a look that I can tell pisses Ambessa off. I decide to piss her off even further by nodding him back to his party.

With a sigh, he gathers the crowd and starts ushering them back inside. “Alright, show’s over.”

I doubt the medical kit in her bedroom is the only one, but it's the one she chooses to use. The top of my stola has been unpinned, draping down my waist as a second layer of skirt. 

As an alcohol soaked cotton ball reaches for my chest cut, I smack her hand away. Her eyes sink into me like fangs. She tries again. I smack her away harder. 

“You upset Kino,” I scold.

“Spare me.” She rolls her dark golden eyes. “you’re the one that started the fight.”

“Some mother.”

The glass alcohol bottle is splashed up on my chest with a burning sort of sting. Liquid not only sears my cut but drizzles down like heavy rain onto the fabric by my legs.

“You know nothing!” She barks. “Do not dare accuse me of not caring for my children again.”

I snatch the bottle from her hand and douse a rag with it. Snarling, I press it to her dripping cheek wound. She hisses but lets me. When I pull the fabric away, the wound drips again. I double the rag over and wipe, lingering the same way my eyes do on hers.

In one eye I see a monster. A hunter. A wolf. Baring its teeth at me with a belly full of grilled rabbit. In the other, I see the buttons of a stuffed bear, grinning with an embroidered smile as it stages a coup armed with tickles. 

I press my lips against the bear’s but shove my thumb into the wound of the hunter. 

She bites my lip, her hands pulling my muscled back closer. She breaks the kiss to lick the cut she made from the top of my breast to a sensitive point above where my collar would be. When she kisses me again and my mouth floods with the taste of iron. I can't tell if it's my blood I'm tasting on her tongue or if it's her own seeping in from her still dripping cheek. They never talk about how much facial wounds bleed. I don't think I care either way.

She lifts me up, strong hands propped under my ass, my legs wrapped around her. As she attacks my neck with her teeth, I search her back for that final injury. I curl two fingers into it and she releases a deep lupine noise, sinking those teeth in so deep she might just get a nice chunk of rabbit for her troubles. 

I push back her shoulder and, with a tug, her jaws release me. I press my bloodied fingers against her lips, drawing a line down her chin. Then I kiss her again, my fingers knotted in her coily hair. 

We decorate the room with smashed picture frames, sideways tables, and finger paintings done in crimson. For hours she feasts on grilled rabbit and I wrap myself in a cloak made of a wolf's pelt. She stretches my wounds and I salt hers. 

By the end of it, we're both bloodier and sweatier than when we began. I've got a sticky red imprint of her hand on my stomach, now dried and flaking, between smears of what could be mine or hers. She's even worse off than I am, with her thighs so bit up she has no choice but to keep them apart. A piece of glass from a mirror we crashed into sticks up from her tender shoulder. I pluck it out like it's the toothpick on a garnish and toss it away. 

Naked bodies wrapped together, our clothing mere scraps somewhere on this mess of a floor, we both pant like the dogs we are. 

“I'm sore,” I comment, breaking our silence. 

She snorts. Then laughs. A wonderful thing. She embraces me closer, kissing me with the softness of a desert after a bloody steak dinner. I bury my head in the crook of her neck, somewhere I'd love to burrow into all winter long. 

“Tell me I've hurt you,” I say.

“It takes more than that to break me, little rabbit.”

“Kino’s going to be cross with us.”

She hums in thought. “We better bathe. The water is always hot here. Come, child.”

She stands, lifting me with her through the strength of a single arm. I punch against her shoulder. 

“I can walk,” I protest.

“Ah, but you'd want to put clothes on first.”

“Yes. Obviously, if we're going to walk the halls.”

“I'm afraid there's no time for that.”

She carries me to the door, a second arm coming under my knees. Despite my best wiggling, her grip is that of someone curling twin dumbbells and I'm not going anywhere.

“Let me down, you savage!” I hiss. I claw at the door frame as we pass it.

She laughs. “Are you even trying?”

“Ambessa!”

“Quit squirming, child. I may drop you on this hard floor.”

I switch from defense to offense, firing catapults of kisses into the wall of her neck. She groans unabashedly which must alert the bath slave of our impending arrival because I can hear the water start to flow through the pipes. 

When we reach the room, there's no pause. Ambessa carries us down the steps into the large sunken square of water. It's more pool than it is bath and it's steaming which feels very bittersweet on my hissing wounds. 

After washing, or rather, being washed, Ambessa lays against the edge of the tub, her arms out over the sides. Fresh stitches underline an old scar and young hands massage her rippling shoulders. Her head hangs back, closed eyes shielded from the ceiling by a hot towel.

Like a shark, I slither through the water to her, wrapping one hand to the front of her chest and allowing my lips to fall upon her ear. I nip harshly where I ripped her earring out earlier. She doesn't flinch. 

“I hate you,” I whisper. “But I can't seem to live without you, either.”

“I know,” is her only response. 

Chapter Text

Two years since Kino’s party and he still invites me to more birthdays. You think the pup would get the hint, or, you know, the giant glaring your mother wants to kill me sign I have hung and lit up above my head. It doesn't matter though. I'm not wasting brain space on Medardas anymore. Nope. The last time I interacted with one of them was when Ambessa sent me a stuffed wolf after the party two years ago. I sent it back. With its head cut off. I'm too busy replaying my last latrones match against the colonel in head to be wasting thought on wolves right now.

A move to my side of the board. A defense to block him. A turn to flank. A defense to the flank, leaving me open for another advance. I capture his piece. He moves the flank in. 

He moves the flank in!

But then how did he capture me? He was one square too far left to…he moved it. Two directions in a single turn. That's illegal! Ha! So you didn't win!

Oh, Jericho Swain you better have made a mistake. Can't catch you cheating now can I?

I turn quickly on my heel and hop back down to the colonel’s quartered room. Still Shuriman. Still all stone. He won't have gone to bed yet which means he'll be forced to hear my demands for a rematch.

“You old bastard,” I laugh as I open the door. “You cheated! You can't move both horizontally and vertically in the same…turn…”

He's not here. But blood is. 

My heart rattles my ribcage like it's a row of steel keeping the poor beast back from the tasty meat bags attending its circus. Easy now, let's not be hasty. Nerves won't serve me right now. Just, gather yourself Rabbit. Check if it's warm.

I kneel and poke the dark puddle gently with my fingers. The syrup ignites with my touch, a single ember blazing down the quick of blood on my hand to leave instead a petal that falls into no longer a puddle but a rose of a dark onyx color. Knowing I've seen it, the flower falls away into petals. They strike the floor, degrading into ash and then disappear. 

“Colonel Swain?” I call, standing on shaking legs. I force them still with a breath. 

I run through worst case scenarios in my mind. The window isn't open. It's locked. But if magic is at play here that won't mean a damn thing. Twelve minutes. That's the most I was gone for. Twelve minutes. Is that really probable that he could be gone? Taken? Dead, even? In twelve minutes?

No. 

He surely would be strong enough to fight a bit longer than that, wouldn't he?

The door. If they left through the door, there'd be signs of a scuffle by it. There aren't. But I know shit next to nothing about magic. In Demacia, everything is lined with Petricite -- a kind of anti-magic petrified wood. Mage seekers take those with unnatural powers and imprison or euthanize them. So in no life at any point have I actually had to study this. Other than when Cornelia, the mage of Swain’s House Guard told me that Petricite, astoundingly to the first ghost of my graveyard of a soul, doesn't actually dispel magic as Demacians believe it does. It stores it. So clearly I'm even further out of the loop here than I thought. Is teleportation a real thing mages can do? Can they kidnap someone through it?

My thoughts run full speed into a wall of noise as the clock ticks once sharply. A second. I realize I've been accidentally stuck in glacial time. It's only been a second since I called and he answers me with a deep cough from the adjoining bathroom.

I shoulder it open to find my colonel alive and, well, not well. His hair is more white than black now -- the stress of war -- but the red in it is new. Likely a result of holding it back while he coughs blood into the sink, washing it down with a pump of the handle. Behind him, a dead woman lies still in the tub. Her dark cloak is split open by a blade with a Noxian style handle. Her blue eyes stare glassily at the ceiling in a very similar way to how my red ones stare at him.

“Ah, Rabbit,” the colonel says with one of his aristocratic grins. “Good. Fetch a doctor, would you? I fear I've been poisoned.”

***

With the magical and, yes, according to the doctor, poisoned, wound on the colonel’s side sorted, my heart finally stops lashing at its cage. I take full deep breaths. I know this isn't over. But knowing he's alright for now makes it feel much easier to think. That was too damn close.

“I recognized the assassin through her disguise,” the colonel tells me and by proxy the doctor who is gathering back up his tools nearby. “Or rather, I recognized the symbol woven into the lace of her cloak.”

“A black--”

He holds up a hand. I let the words drop.

“My family was involved with the faction -- the cabal. It exists to further the clandestine interests of those who can weld the magics of the immortal basin. Mostly bored nobles like the one lying dead in my tub at the moment. What they hoped to achieve with my death, I can't be sure. My best guess is that one of them doesn't like what we're achieving here. Grand General Darkwill is growing more and more zealous and desperate for a means to extend his own life. It's spreading our armies too thin. He speaks of expanding into Ionia, something I've urged him to push back for at least a few years. I can understand how some may be, embittered, by his perceived hubris. How they might see me as an arm of it to lop off. All decisions have consequences. This I know well. Yet, we should fear the power which we cannot see.”

“I've never heard of this cabal before, but if they're mad at Darkwill let him be the one coughing up blood. If they're noble, like you said, then won't they care for Noxus? Won't they see that you're as much its vision as anybody?”

My colonel’s eyes soften. He nods with his smile but it quickly falls back into a serious contemplation. 

“One assassin will lead to others. Without you, Noxus fails. Allow me to track this organization down -- kill whatever branches it has in our Shuriman lands. I'll--”

“Rabbit,” his calm voice at once silences me, “insisting your aid isn't necessary. For some time now, I've been already debating asking something of you. I wasn’t sure it was a fair request, given your history with sworn servitude to those who've taken it rather than earned it. This duty, hunting assassins, it is one more suited for my house guard than a legionnaire. Of course, house guard is a much less glamorous track than a military career, however--”

“I've been sworn to you since you saved me -- gave me my life. My sovereignty. I owe no allegiances to Noxus or to my captain -- I owe it to you and you alone. Ambessa wasn't my choice of loyalty -- she was something forced upon me -- but worry not about what it's fair to ask me because that's the difference -- you asked. You are my choice -- mine alone. Anything you need, anything you request. I believe in you, Jericho Swain, not a colonel.”

I bow, hand to my heart, eyes bent low. 

“In that case, Rabbit, would you leave your legion for my house guard and help me follow a lead found on the corpse of this assassin?”

“Yes.”

***

With magic involved, it's easy to convince the Grand General that our side quest following a map we obtained through pure luck is prevalent to Noxus’s success. He doesn't need to know of the assassination attempt. He doesn't need to know our true motives here in this dark tunnel system. We wade through water as high as the middle of my thighs. Me, Corvus, the four others in the house guard, two soldiers that came with our backup, and the general whose legions wait outside. Any guesses as to which general Darkwill has sent to aid us? Well, whether it be him, fate, or some laughing demon that sent her, the answer, of course, is Ambessa Medarda.

“The flower should be right ahead,” Ambessa says, half of a whisper.

I mock her in my mind. Use a voice a little less perfect, by the gods. Haughty jerk. 

Her hair has more grey in it than the last time I saw her. She's almost caught up to me in that regard. Though, while I doubt I'll ever go fully white, she most certainly is going to reach full silver. Soon, too. I hate that it only makes her more alluring. Earlier, before we entered this dark cave, I noticed crows feet starting to stretch from her eyes. I wonder if she's noticed them too. Maybe I'll point them out when this is over. Make her insecure. Well, I'll try anyway. I don't think there's any way to truly fracture this woman’s ego. 

Slick walls covered with a slimy moss lead us to an even darker pit. The general raises a hand then folds it into a fist. We all stick our torches in the water. What’s rumored to lie here is near blind -- but it can see twitches of light in the thick shadow. Ambessa is the only one who keeps her torch lit and it's only so she can toss it into the space. 

It whizzes across damp air, illuminating a large dome room, before plopping into even deeper waters before it where it sinks and snuffs with a sizzle. Before the light completely goes, it highlights the white salamander skin of the cave dragon. It is as the Shuriman’s rumored. Eight heads with short spiked orange fans on either side, no arms, but claws for each set of feet that are found on broad shoulders behind each mouth. It's like a cluster of olms with fangs. It's also ten or twenty the size of an olm. That makes one long serpent neck about the size of one of me. Apparently these creatures are immortal. They're drawn to strong magics of the underground. One of the local mages we captured had even claimed they could photosynthesize magic to avoid eating for months on end. But when they were awakened, they grew ravenous. Their favourite dish? Raw bloody meat -- Like us.

The plan is to not wake it, hence the small force. What we're here for is a flower from the tree growing beneath its waters. With it Cornelia, clever little mage she is, can make an exchange with an old friend of Corvelle’s. It's magic for an armistice in the war of this mage cabal and our patriarch. The friend, of course, claims no actual connections to the organization. But, she also has a ‘good feeling' that there may indeed be a ceasefire if this trade is followed through on. So here we are. 

Oh and the Grand General? This flower has ties to healing greater than any spell that fights off even effects of age and that's all the man truly cares about. So, backup was gifted allowing us to blaze through the temple protecting this place without losing a single man. It was strangely Ixtali outside, for something this far north.

The roots of the tree wrap around the dragon’s basking rock like an upside down bonsai, the leaves and blossoms something one of us will have to dive for. I vote Ambessa. 

The general lights another torch and throws it in, her eyes scanning the soon to be battlefield, mapping it in her mind.

“Set yourselves before every other tunnel along that back wall,” she orders. Though hushed, it still holds weight. Superiority. Arrogance, if you ask me. “If it wakes up, light your torches and run. It will follow the light but the tunnels are too big for its shoulders. When each head is stuck separately, I'll cut them all off.”

It will heal, but not before we escape. Still, avoiding a fight at all is best. Any tiny part of these things we lop off will just grow into another carbon copy of it. Like a worm, splitting in two.

“Are you volunteering to swim?” I ask, trying my best not to smirk.

“The flower must be secured. To ensure the mission is completed, I'll do it myself. I certainly trust my own hands more than I trust yours. When I submerge, I'll swim back here and throw a torch into the water. Keep your eyes open and stick together as you leave. It will be easy to get lost.”

There's a quip about my hands sweetly rotting my teeth as it rolls about my mouth, but I resist the temptation to say it. She wants to swim with the amphibious dragon and its many rows of teeth? I won't be the one to goad her out of it.

The image of her in danger has my heart buzzing with excited little worker bees. Then I begin to imagine her resurfacing, water slicking back her hair and wetting her brow like sweat and those bees start to gather their honey somewhere crass. 

We were doing something here. Flowers. Dragons.

Wading by a tunnel!

Yes, focus on that and be grateful you're already wet below the waist. I raise my unlit torch over my head and pick a tunnel. 

It's as I'm one arm doggy-paddling past a throat I could stick both arms down as I'm swallowed whole that I realize rabbits and snakes don't really mix all that well. I also remember that this thing not waking up to kill me relies entirely on the gentleness and precision of Ambessa. I trust her precision. I'm not too keen on her gentleness, however. This thing detects magic. It feeds off of it. If it notices she's cut a flower off it's tree, it'll be ready for dinner. Actually, I like to think of myself more as a desert. Ambessa can be dinner. Maybe it'll dive first before killing us. That'd be sad, wouldn't it? Sorry Grand General Darkwill, she's gone. However, we all escaped with her sacrifice so who’s for a party? 

No. If it dives, we'll need a way to distract it off of her. If only because without that flower she's cutting, Swain dies too.

The dark in here is black as a rose, so I follow the wall with my fingers and take the long way around. Corvelle is in front of me, Cornelia at my six. There are eight of us and sixteen tunnels. When I reach a hole, I hold onto Corvelle’s shoulder in front of me. A delicate hand buzzing with heat that I guarantee isn't all-natural rests on my shoulder in turn. A little chain of toy soldiers all linked together in the dark. Or perhaps we're more like prisoners. Slaves. Marching towards somewhere we'll be bound. Let's hope our leader here guides us well. 

I can't see her, but the familiar slide of my hand against wet metal helps me keep my head cool. Of course she can swim in armor. I'm barely getting by with legs alone. When I feel her shoulder shift, I move my hand back to the wall that's reappeared beside me. The pattern continues.

Two.

Three.

At hole three I know we've lost another of our guard. Justix. Never caught his last name, but he's large and good on horseback. I remember that from the battle. Without him, we move a bit quicker. 

Four.

Five.

The trail behind me grows lighter as one of Ambessa’s men goes off to his personal corner of this hopefully not braindead plan.

Six.

Seven.

At seven, we lose her second man. If I were Demacian, I’d be praying to be made of Petricite right now. 

Eight.

Nine.

Another of the house guard. Felk Gunpowder. A sharpshooter with an eye as good as this big lizard’s magic sense. 

Ten.

Eleven.

There goes Cornelia. She squeezes my shoulder lightly as she leaves. The heat from her hand spreads all across my skin. Then all at once I'm cold again without her. 

Twelve.

Thirteen.

This is me. I have to wind my hand off of Corvelle like a robot with rusty gears. Nothing here feels natural. It's all mechanic. The counting. The waiting. The movements. I'm rigid and that's hardly a good thing before a fight. But there won't be a fight. Right, Ambessa?

I hate that I trust her. Even now, as I'm telling myself of all the ways she can trap us here there's a part of me longing for when this is over.

“That water was cold,” I'll say. 

She'll scoff at me and shake her head all amused. She'd say something back. Something insulting. Something to boil my blood and have me yearning for her bed. 

That's where we'll end up. Isn't it? Then morning will come and I'll regret it all. She won't even care. Just another free whore for her troubles here today. Maybe I'll actually do it this time. Actually kill her. Do I think myself that capable? After wading at the top of pitch black cave water with an endless bottom beside a many headed dragon, yes. Yes I do.

One of these thoughts calms me. Is it the one of her arms around my body or my hands around her throat? 

Half the time, I'm not sure if I'm alive because of this woman or in spite of her. Now is one of the rare times I know for sure that it's both.

I take a breath and Rabbit dies, my hand reaching out into the darkness to grasp familiar fleece. I stop kicking. My head slips beneath the water. It climbs into my eyes. Slithers onto my lips. I keep my torch held high but let it spill like acid down my nose. 

There is nothing to be scared of in death. If my body ends here, it is but a semicolon before a new stage. An epilogue before a back cover painted beautifully. My soul has gone many many times and it has always led me to something more interesting -- something I never thought I could do. There is strength in surrendering to that which none of us can control. No matter the plans we make, no matter how hard we fight, we all get assigned to be either poems or epics by luck alone.

Our most tender vulnerability is our tether to life. Like an umbilical cord, it must be cut one day. If we cling too long to it, it will only poison us. 

I'm ripped from the water by that woolen grasp. Reborn. Now that I've faced this death once, I can face it again without worry.

Though this water is freezing! Gods, Rabbit, now you have to sit here and shiver? What were you thinking? I warm myself with the thoughts of the embrace that's sure to come later tonight -- whether I want it to or not. Just as death is the fate of all those who live, she is the looming dread that haunts me. Everytime I embrace her it is the same as embracing another curtain of red blocked memories of a life no longer my own. I devour her like poison. Quickly. Before I lose my nerve.

I lose track of time in the waiting. Here in pure silence, pure darkness, it could be hours. Seconds. Minutes. None of it feels dull or boring. Every second I'm alive I am thankful. I get the idea to start counting my heartbeats to grasp the minutes but as I freeze they begin to slow and throw me off. I watch for her torch -- her light in the darkness. For a moment I worry that I'm watching the wrong way because everything is like I'm sitting in the center of a bottle of ink. Then I take a few shivering breaths and I'm alright again. No death this time. The poisons not flowing yet. I'm strong enough to face this without it. 

Finally, excitement comes to shatter still center of this shit storm. Only, it's not in the form of a light.

A half screetch half roar shoots out from the beast before us. As it heaves its heavy body off its rock, ripples push me to the ceiling. I miss lighting my torch because I don't expect to have to duck in a place so large. I barely manage to keep it dry.

“Torches! Now!” The order is howled louder than it needs to be.

Yeah yeah! I'm on it! Don't need the reminder of how to survive, thank you very much!

I miss again. The cave shakes around me as a head smashes into a too small hole. Dust and pebbles drip with water from my tunnel's ceiling. Ripples continue to bob me around like a seagull on the ocean and I'm trying my best to be just as unbothered as they are. My hands shake as the damn thing won't light again. Finally a wave sends me to the ceiling hard enough to do the lighting for me. 

I see three things right away.

Jaws coming towards me, open with twenty rows of sharp teeth and a serpent's split tongue.

A black metal arm two tunnels further down the line from me, floating in bloody water beside white amphibian shoulders stuck in a tunnel’s entrance. 

Ambessa, running away. 

No fucking way! 

Trapped with no way out, I paddle back deeper into my cavern. Teeth smash together just a centimeter from my face and the only thing that saves me is the luck of my arms flailing just out of the way and the force of the water torpedoing me into the top back corner of what is apparently very much not a tunnel but a walled off subsection of cave that I have no way to back out of.

Well, there is one way.

It strikes me as a stalactite strikes the part of my spine that keeps on my head. 

Death is always a way to escape living in terror.

Chapter Text

You posses what all mortals do: the desire to survive. 

Ambessa’s rough voice echoes through my unconscious purgatory over the slow hum of a far off wardrum. Ba…dum, it beats, long heavy thuds somewhere solitary. Pregnant pauses come between each beat, filled by memories of her words from lifetimes ago.

You can try to swim to the bottom of the ocean, but you will float up to the surface the moment you stop kicking. 

Bu…dum…

You can try to hold your breath, but your lungs will eventually force you to gasp for air. Your body -- your very spirit -- 

Ba…dum

Is designed to keep you alive and fighting.

Ba-dum.

My nose twitches awake with shaking foggy gasps of air. I find myself floating in the water of the cave. A dragon’s head struggles by my side, tired but twitching like a sick baby trying to roll over. Below me, somewhere in the expansive darkness, I know lies a drowned torch. But me, despite everything, I am alive. My body has kept me fighting.

At first, I start kicking but as my panic leads me closer to drowning than before, I calm myself down. Get a grip on my breaths. 

My toes and fingers feel numb and cold. The water isn't icy -- cold -- not icy, but I have no reference for how long I've been in it. 

My hair falls in a long wet mess to my neck and shoulders. When I rise my head from the water, the air nips at it and like a soaked blanket it becomes cold. I lower my head, face back to floating, and I begin to feel alright again. Something about the embrace of the still liquid void around me feels like a familiar pressure -- the arms, perhaps, of which I was dreaming. It helps to keep me calm.

Breathing. 

That should be my focus.

The slower and steadier I breathe, the less the dragon writhes beside me. It's stuck. It can't get closer. So I'm safe in that regard. 

I'm beyond a shiver, my tin elbows and knees in desperate need for oil. My fingers click slowly like gears when I move them and I can't stop my bottom lip from shaking.

Warmth.

If I can't get dry, I'll need at least warmth to survive. These cave dragons are amphibious creatures. Cold blooded. So somewhere there must be heat.

Cautiously, with a quiver trembling up and down from my chest to my jaw -- like ripples -- I make my way to the wall off the cavern. It's small. I slide my hand, kicking my feet with my head and hair laid back, from one side to the other in a count of forty-two seconds. I can see nothing, but I feel at the very end before the dragon’s head an arm with which I'm all too familiar. Only this time, I know what it's here for isn't to make me stronger.

I pull back my fingers, shivering out a, “Th-That's not the a-a-answer y-yet. J-Jist g-g-give me a m-m-m-moment to th-think.”

I can feel it's disappointment. I can hear it in the subtle growl of a wolf. Shadows on an already black surface shift just slightly. A wink of blue, I swear sparkles in my peripheral vision -- circling. Stalking. 

“Y-you are t-t-trying to help me. B-B-But it's n-not working. I J-Just need to…”

My words fall apart as the energy they take becomes too much to split with my shaking body. I close my eyes, leaning back to float more in the water. Despite my best attempts to be still, my muscles continue to twitch and shake and keep me alive. Moving generates heat.

The growl comes again. Lower. Patient. It's watching for now but it's not here to attack. It's better half wants to help me. I just don't know how.

There's still a way out of this. It isn't my permanent death. 

I close my eyes, dark replacing dark. But in my memories I can find the color red and it soothes me. I imagine it, warm, burning, taking over my veins. 

The dragon must have heat. The walls and ceiling are closed in. But underwater, it may find a den. 

I open my eyes. There's no need to tell the smoke around me. I can feel it's hope and guidance. 

You can try to swim to the bottom of the ocean, but you will float up to the surface the moment you stop kicking.

I take a deep breath forcing my chest still. I don't hold the air. I release it. I fade and for a moment I sink but then with a cough I begin again to shiver. I if I'm going to do this, I cannot simply succumb. My body and mind will fight me every step of the way not to sink. Not to venture where I could drown -- where it could likely all be colder. 

I take more air. I swallow. I dive beneath the surface. When I pray that I'm under the dragon’s head, I put out a hand. At first, I find nothing but cave water. It startles me, like trying to lean into a wall that's not there. But I cannot fall underwater. So I eventually find it's skin. It's smooth. Slick. I follow down both arms. Seeing nothing, I feel only it's struggle against rubble and rock. Sharp pointed edges bar it in like a cave. There's two that seem far enough apart for me to squeeze through but when I try, my arm only manages to get wedged in between them.

Admittedly, the panic sinks back in. All at once, as I realize I need air, a blade cuts through the night around me in the form of a sharp talon. It cuts across my bicep but it cuts the rock too. In its own terror, its own clinging to life, the dragon has inadvertently just saved mine.

I swim back to the surface with a gasp.

Once again, I can feel that arm being offered to me. A gentle mercy. A quick end. An embrace that my very bones crave. 

But theres this other part of me. This stubborn vengeful part of me that's as stuck within me as I am stuck within this cage. 

That part is very human. And it doesn't want to die.

“N-N-Not yet.” I say.

It's hurt by my words, that lamb in the darkness. It sits right stop the dragon’s head. Though I can't see it, I know that's where it sits. It's always at the edges of my vision. Always just out of sight. It's there to hold me when I'm too weak to continue. It's there to be the one who I roll over to when I know it's time to lose a fight. To take a hit. To lose my life to the red and be reborn, stronger. It's never alone.

Though foggy, I know there's always a wolf circling that lamb. It hides off in the edges of the edges. A breath ghosting the treeline. A pit of blue against an already blue sky. It gets closer when I'm with Ambessa. When I hold her, it finally stops growling. In her arms, the hunt ends. Because I'm captured? Or because I've escaped?

It's on a leash now. Because I'm right. Not yet. 

Not yet.

But soon.

The lamb isn't here for just me alone.

I place a hand to the head of the monster, right beside where I can feel the lamb calling me. A myriad whispering choir of names that feel both foreign yet familiar to me. All of the people I was. All of the people I can be. 

The ones that intrigue me most of my old lives are the ones I can barely remember. I am but fragments of corpses and ghosts haunting one scrap of soul that still clings to a battered body. I am no one. Yet I have the possibility to be anyone I need to be.

Fear keeps us alive. 

Death keeps us human.

At some point, the dragon stops moving. Stops fighting me. It too, has resolved to what it knows it cannot control. If we die, it's together. Silently. Calm and living. 

I climb a top it's large head. It's no warmer than the water but it's drier by a thin margin. 

I always know when to yield in a fight. When I need to be stronger. When I need to die.

It’s not time yet. I can keep fighting. I just need a nap before I do.

I don't know why it doesn't kill me.

The cold. The smash of a beast’s head to the stalactites that position right above my stomach, my neck, my eyes, wherever I can't see them. But it doesn't. 

Everytime I wake it's with a shiver or the pang of hunger in my stomach. 

Days, I think. 

How many days can one survive here?

I am not afraid. Not the entire time. Because I know two things for certain.

If it's time, the lamb is here and I will be safe as I go.

If it's not time, I'll find my way out and I'll get my revenge on Ambessa.

The longer I stay the less I think of her.

At first, while I struggled to find conscious thought outside of my sleep, one thing rang clear as a church bell in my cluttered mind: she had run. Abandoned us.

Does she even care about the people she's just killed? We aren't numbers. We aren't pawns in some game of chess. That's not to say we are bishops or rooks either. We are people. People. That's what she lacks -- vision. She is blind to the humanity of a battlefield. It isn't a game. Its lives. Real humanoid lives. And the fact that she's made it as high up as she has and still cannot see that just shows that the true flag of Noxus is painted in blue blood not red.

I think back to what little we know about the monster on which I've made my deathbed. It heals. It makes a clone copy of every part cut off. 

Like splitting a worm in two.

She didn't know that I’d be here. She didn't know that I'd joined Swain’s House Guard. Yet when she found out, it didn't make a difference in her plans. It wouldn't. My life? What was that worth if not at least one eighth of a weapon like this?

Eight heads.

Eight men.

It's funny that I didn't see it before.

The longer I stay, the more my thoughts stir to the abstract. Does darkness swirl with color if you stare at it long enough? Does cold eventually go numb? When you stop shivering, are you warm or has you body just simply given up?

The lamb doesn't take me. It offers it's hand and I accept but no. It doesn't take me yet. Just another time to be stronger. Just a new Rabbit to be replaced by. 

It offers that hand again now. It always does when it can feel my mind drifting away to the ease of melancholic content. 

“Your help…it's not working…” I take an especially slow shallow breath, longer than any of my lives have been. One hand drapes across my growling stomach while the other lies limp by my side.

“Is it dead?” I find myself asking.

I don't get an answer. It doesn't talk much, this figment of my mind. Is it even real? Is anything? Was anything?

Have I died?

I ponder that now as I lie in nothing, feeling not a thing but numbness and exhaustion. 

Not yet.

I will.

But I haven't.

All at once, something inside me pulls at my muscles like puppet strings and I roll off into the water. With a splash, I run a hand along an open split jaw. I cannot tell if the creature is colder or warmer than ever but it doesn't move.

I'm not sure when the idea struck me. I knew I was waiting but I didn't know for what. I wasn't aware of the plans this Rabbit had made before she was even born. Now, I embrace her, and I punch my way past broken teeth.

Death can always provide a new opportunity. But it isn't always our death that we need. Corpses pave a road only for the living.

Inside of the dragon is moist like the cave and it’s squishy. I've almost forgotten the feeling of squishy. I have to crawl on my belly like in the sands outside of Nava. I imagine the entrance of the cavern. Where it lay on the dragon’s head outside. I imagine it slipping past me as I wiggle against muscles once desperate to choke me down -- now stiff with rigor mortis. 

I use a fang to carve open a hole in the side of its throat. It takes time. I am nothing if not patient by now. It's blood is like a new water, cold as what surrounded me before but stickier. New. I like new things.

There's no light at the end of this fleshy tunnel. No reward for burrowing my hole. Yet, when I squirm my way through it, I fall into Wonderland none the less.

Not all of the heads are dead. If they were, it'd hardly be an immortal creature. 

I splash in waters free from the isolation of my cave, feeling along the wall.

One hole.

I brave the gap of stone solitary this time.

Two holes.

I come to another head. This one, writhing. I cut into it to find it's warm inside. Like a tongue pressing down on me, hot muscles choke against my crawling up the inside of it’s neck.  it bleeds a warm shower on top of me and when I kick through the teeth at its head, I feel steam.

Inside is Cornelia. Alive. Warm. Weakened and tired. She's been using all of her magic, pulling mana from the dying creature’s living head, to keep heat. I offer her my hand, the gentle shepherd of a lamb, to escape the dying and step into certain death of this monster’s jaws. 

We escape together into an ending neither of us expected at the start of all of this.

I go head to head to head to head eight times. Each cut, more rigid than the last and my muscles begin to grow stiffer and tender. I've been out of the water just long enough, laying on that things forehead, that I'd almost dried off. Now I'm wet again and it's colder than ever before.

We only find one other soul still kicking. An arm missing. A pulse, weak. Unconscious. Useless. But I wouldn't dare leave her behind.

Cornelia helps me and we carry Corvelle to the rock. We rest a moment. We don't risk a second one. Aa a chain, just as we were when we stood before those tunnels that would become our graves, we make our way to the exit. Until finally, we see a light.

I don't know when I stopped breathing, but I start again once we're outside. The warmth of the desert grew on us slowly as we dragged Corvelle through the final boughts of that cave system. My clothes still drip with water but the daytime sun boils it off. Heavy steam hisses from my cheeks and arms and hair. My body, but a shuffling corpse, gains a new heartbeat. There's movement. People. All a dizzying array of color and light that my eyes now find all too overbearing. 

I collapse into something hard, upholstered in leather, that questions my name, “Rabbit?” 

Then I'm back to only seeing black again.

***

Come on. Fight! You made it this far, so I know you are capable of it. 

Her voice is back. The wardrum beneath it beats stronger. 

Ba-dum.

There's a quake as she continues. A hiss at the vulnerability that quake alludes to.

If you want to kill me for what I've done. For the sacrifice I've made you yet again, you must fight. Stop running, little rabbit, and seize your life.

I wake up to red. At first I belive it to be a memory but then logic dictates that it's a tent because it dimples with the wind and my eyes are open.

Beside me a woman sleeps in a chair. She's someone I knew once. Someone I hated. That wolf, always hovering around her, howls off in the distance. I lean forward off the cot, my forearm lying limply across the front of her neck. As dead and emotionless as the corpse of the dragon’s long head. She wakes and lifts worried eyes to me, veiled with the dewey mourning shroud of relief. My arm sinks down to her chest, a meek hand half balled upon her breastbone, and my head crumples over into her lap. 

She folds in half to hold me, head and arms both sturdy as ever on my curved spine. She toughens with a grind of her teeth. 

“I am impressed, child,” she says. “Few would have survived that encounter. You were not meant to.” Her tone tilts towards that familiar goading. “Ah, but there's always next time to finally--”

“I'm done.” My voice is as foreign as these lands are to me. It's soft. A trainer blade that's not so much dull as it is simply not sharp -- having never been intended to hurt anyone in the first place. 

She releases me. I remain half wilted in her lap. When I touch her, I feel complete. I feel warm. Warmer than the sun had dried me into being. I feel whole and yet empty at the same time. 

With a shake -- a shiver -- I pull myself off of her, my spine still curling and gentle.

“I'm done with you,” I say.

She hums, amused, but I can tell that she senses something’s off. “Is that what we're going with? Well it certainly is a unique vendetta this time.”

“I'm done hating you.”

“So we're skipping to dinner then?” A scarred palm falls heavy on my hand. “You should rest. Or you'll never survive desert.”

“I'm done doing this half-lovers thing with you.”

Her hand pulls back. She laughs, her brows furrowing together as if she either doesn't understand what I'm saying or just plain doesn't want to. “So we're lovers now? Is that what you'd call our little game? No, Rabbit. We've never been lovers. Not even half of lovers. I fear you've hit your head in that cave.”

“Just…go away, Ambessa.” I stand. My legs hardly hold me and she grips my wrist. To steady me? To stop me? To drag me down? Who cares. No matter the reason, it feels like a scolding. “I’m done caring…I’m…” I turn back to her, my heart utterly empty. No anger. No resentment. No lust or any sort of desire. Nothing. And that nothing is as reflected in my eyes as her cannon barrage of thought flicking to thought is in her own. “Stay out of my life. My body floats, bloated and dead, in that cave. There is no grave for flowers. No soul left to reap vengeance on you. All of the Rabbits you've killed and eaten are gone. This one's just ordinary little bunny. It's got sour meat and it's already hopped away.”

I leave. She gets the last word in, but I don't hear it. Something akin to not believing me. To my indifference being null or a convoluted mask of some rageful plan. She pokes at me thinking she's poking some bear -- some warrior she can goad into a fight. But I'm just a bunny. So I twitch my nose and walk away.

***

“What do you mean you've released her?” I snap, my brows as knotted as the threads that make up yarn. 

“I have no use for cripples here,” Swain says simply. “Corvus will return to her home to heal and rest. Her eldest son, if he is wise, will continue as head of their household despite her return. Cornelia will take over as head of my House Guard.”

“She almost died for you!”

“I am aware and thankful for her sacrifice. Every move on the board plays a part in the larger game. Ambessa was able to procure both a flower to appease the assassins and a tip of that multiplying creature’s tail. Noxus is stronger than ever. Corvus’s loss has aided that.”

“That’s it? She's loyal to you for years and now you just throw her away?”

“Throw her away?” His face pinches down. He's not angry but disappointed in me. It's the same curious look he gives when I've not seen the obvious trap he's laid for me on a latrones board. “Not every asset must be used on the front lines. Tell me, does Indari fight with Samira on her missions?”

I huff as I think back to that battle wheel-chair of hers. Of the injuries that have only gotten worse the more she's pushed them. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Not because she can't.”

“Correct. Any creature can fight. Not all can fight well. Noxus demands those fighting here fight the best. Indari is skilled. She would survive a scrap with ease. But daily battles? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Her use is best served obtaining contracts for Samira. Samira, on the other hand, is often impetuous. Reckless. She would find little success procuring her own assignments. She could do it. She could not do it well. There are three pillars of strength, Rabbit. Just because you can no longer abide by one does not mean that you lose the others. The best of us, embrace all three. Might currently alludes Corvelle Noradi. Her right arm was her dominant one and her weapons require two hands to wield. She may find use to Noxus, but it is up to her to find it. All I can say for certain is that her use is not on my battlefield.”

I hate that he’s right. I hate that he has to be. A broken toy -- a weakness to be eradicated before an enemy catches whiff of it. I swear that will never be my fate. Shall I ever become a weakness to him, I pray he cut me out of his life before, like a wound, I go septic and lead to his demise. 

To have strength, we must confess what makes us weak. My weakness, perhaps above all others, is my devotion. I’m a knife in the back of the people I’ve managed to stick to. One stuck between their shoulder blades, somewhere they can’t reach. But at the end of my handle there is a shield. I’m buried in him. I’m buried in Ambessa. I am a burden only justified by how many hits I can take for them. When I finally fall out, my shield will be dented but they will continue on unscathed. 

I let out a breath I’m not aware that I’m holding. I take a seat at a side table and gesture for him to do the same.

“Latrones?” I ask.

He smiles and glides into his chair.

***

Three years later and Grand General Darkwill has us invading Ionia. Who knows why? Greed, most likely. Arrogance, perhaps, to support it. It’s not an invasion we succeed. Our casualties are many -- our injured, many more. Among those leave with scars enfeebling is the man who kneels, more weight on one knee than the other, at the crystal stairs of the temple I’ve just staggered my way into. 

I’ve got arrows in my shoulders. One in my side. Magic has bruised and battered by abdomen but still I made it here. To him. Of course I’ve seen him lose before, but never quite like this.

“Swain,” I cough, choking on smokey air.

He’s in a pissbaby mood. One glance at the ground and I realize why. Of all the blood here, little of it belonged to his enemy, now fled. No. Not fled. Gone. Left with his life mercied by her hand. She must have known when she’d done it that to a Noxian general, living through what he has is no mercy at all.

His left arm lies bodiless on the stairs beside him. One of his knees, shattered, leaving him lame. In these final years working under him, I’ve watched his hair burry deeper beneath a soft white sheet of permanent snow. Now, all at once, I watch his eyes do the same. Frosty. Padded. Lost behind a blizzard I can’t interpret. 

“Come on,” I say, heaving him up on a shoulder. He fights me, insisting against help, so I punch him in the liver. I guess it’s already been bruised because he winces rather pathetically. “Come on.”

Two weeks into Swain’s recovery, I’m offered a position as a general in Grand General Darkwill’s army. A replacement for the man I am honorbound to. I doubt it’s to spite him. I doubt the old madman of a grand ruler has enough sanity or clarity left in his diseased murky paranoid brain to spite anybody. I deny the post. Of course I do.

But Swain protests. 

“Take it, Rabbit,” he tells me from his bed. “You’ll make a fine general.”

“I don’t want it.” I shake my head.

“I am a captured piece no longer on the board. You must continue to play without me for now.”

“No. I refuse. I will stay by your side until I stalemate.”

“Then I order you. You will take the post, Rabbit, and you will follow the Grand Generals orders until I ask you for something different.”

I only take it because of the ‘until’ he promises. I’m always blind to his plans, but faithful none the less. In that moment, I doubt he truly had one. Now, he acts in slow accordance with a play very long and very detailed. Carefully constructed. Organized. 

He clings to Vision. Brings in the Might of a general named Darius. Accepts, somewhat reluctantly, the Guile of a woman he will only describe as pale that I know belongs to the cabal of the Black Rose. Then, together, over five meticulous years, The Visionary, The Hand, and The Faceless of Noxus become something known as the Trifarix.

Noxus as it stands today knows no kings and for that we are stronger. A council of three. The pillars of our united strength. Balancing each other and keeping in check any egos or agendas other than that of our grand nation. Our empire without an emperor. 

They’ll never have a more dedicated support than me. A lucky little rabbit. A general. A Noxian as pure and solid as the red of our flag.

Chapter Text

I sit at one side of a latrones board, my pieces all captured by a red demon hand. Across from me sits Jericho Swain, the man to whom I owe this life I'm living. If I'm still living. When the letters stopped coming I started holding my breath. No matter how few and far between, they had always been answered before as soon as they would arrive. Now, nearly suffocated in the silence lacking response, I've come to Noxus Prime. To the Triffarix. No. To him. Two years after his takeover. Everything, always in twos.

“Was that you I was playing?” I ask casually. “Or Raum?” 

The old man’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He doesn't like it when I address that demon directly. The one who, once a thriving keeper of secrets, has been forced into servitude to him by ways I never pretend to understand. I just know that when Raum came, the glowing red hand came too to replace his missing arm. Then there were the crows. Ravens. Whatever they are. Each with three glowing red eyes on either side of their heads. Little watch dogs. Perfect for gathering the information I require. 

“You didn't come all the way here just to lose a game of latrones, general,” Swain says slowly. His voice is deep, calculating, and Noble as always. But the years have brought a disillusioned gravel to it as well. “Not so easily. What's distracting you?”

“You know why I'm here.” 

“How would I? You have yet to enlighten me.”

“Kino Medarda.” Not a muscle I have twitches.

“What about him?”

“He hasn't answered my letters.”

“You send letters?”

As if he doesn't know everything in Noxus. 

“Occasionally,” I say. “Your spies don't tell you?” I nod to one of the crows. 

Swain smiles, rising from his chair to sprinkle birdseed along the windowsill.

“I have this bad feeling that something has happened to him,” I say. “I want to know what.”

“Why?”

“I'm asking as a friend. Not a general. C’mon, Jerry, you know you owe me for letting you win our last game.”

With a heavy sigh, Mr. Vision closes his eyes. His human hand goes to his temples to rub out a headache. I wait. Patiently. 

He moves to a bottle and pours me a glass of wine, getting one for himself as well. Then he sits back down at the latrones board and sets up for another match. I set my side of the board as well.

He takes a sip, ponders, then makes his opening move.

“Kino Medarda is dead,” he says.

I move my first piece. I'm not surprised. I figured as much when he didn't respond. Still, my heart sinks a little. Such a bright light -- now gone to this world. “Who?”

His turn. “Not how?”

“Your pale faced woman?”

“What makes you suspect her?”

“She’s usually the one killing off the nobles. He was a political leader here. One of our best. Can't imagine the Triffarix isn’t hobbling with him gone.”

“One bad knee doesn't stop a man from walking.”

“No.” I smile knowingly. “It does not.”

“Ask your next question.”

“Make your next move. It's been your turn for minutes now.”

He examines the board like a student doing a study. When he finally moves a piece, I take it. 

Continuing our chat, I say, “Ambessa?”

“Is that a question?”

“Sorry. Could you not hear the hitch of my voice at the end?” I repeat her name, the question in it emphasized.

“You're here with me. Your hands move steadily. So you've already exhausted all other avenues of locating her and you already knew the wolf pup of the Medarda clan was dead. Where do you think she'd go to lick her wounds?”

“If I knew, I wouldn't be playing latrones with you right now.”

“Wouldn't you?”

“She isn't in Piltover.”

“No.”

“She will be eventually. Right now, she's too scared to face her daughter. I'm betting she's doing some tracking. Sniffing down a blood trail.”

“So why are we playing then?”

“Quit being cryptic, Jerry.” 

I scold him with a glare. He greets it with a low chuckle. He takes my piece. Damn. I always fall for that one.

“Okay Rabbit, how about a deal then? As old friends.”

“I'm not letting you win again,” I tease.

“I've just won.”

What? I glance down at the board, my mind a flurry of possible next moves. Left. Right. Up. Down. Shit. He really has got me. In about twenty moves.

I pout like a child, pulling a foot up onto the chair and crossing my arms. A piece of white hair falls over my eyes from my buns and I blow it back out of my face. Stubbornly, it stays. I just can't win today.

Swain smiles, fingers folded together nearly. Like he's holding the secret keeper’s hand. 

“I’ll see what I can do about locating Ambessa Medarda,” he says. As if he doesn't already have tabs on her. “Though only if you tell me why you're interested in finding her.”

“Her son is dead.”

He gives me a look. A grin.

“Shut up.”

From the beak of a landing crow comes an envelope. A letter sealed with orange wax stamped by a standing bunny bearing a simplistic heart in the very center of its chest. 

If losing latrones felt awful. This feels worse. I'm beginning to believe this sinking feeling I've got isn't from Kino’s death at all.

“Return to sender,” he says, holding it out to be between two pale fingers. “Without being opened?” 

“Shut up!” I snatch the letter away. 

Alright, so maybe I’d reached out to Ambessa already. Maybe I'd offered my sympathies. Maybe even twice. Or, you know, four times. She kept sending them back the same way. When this final one didn't return to me, I knew she had left the city. 

Swain just laughs. Not a plotting Triffarix laugh. No. Just the simple at my expense chuckle of a goading friend. A very bad friend, I'm starting to believe. 

“Mors,” the bastard raven squakes. “You should go. The assassins are due any minute. It's how I know the Faceless cares.”

Rising, I tuck that bit of hair behind my ear and the letter away in the trash can. No further secrets to be gained from an aggressive where are you?  

“Send her my regards,” I wave on my way out.

Mors. Quite the city from what I've heard.

***

“Or you could choose not to tell me,” a cocky voice growls as articulate as ever. “The choice is yours alone, colonel .” 

Always the theatrics with her. Gods. 

I march right into the room without a care for the show I'm interrupting. Yeah, yeah, colonel that's got ties to someone or another all intimidated despite being surrounded by an entire legion he commands. A single wolf, toying with the body he doesn't realize is already a bone for her to chew on. The illusion of choice. The choice of illusions. Get a new routine. 

There's never not thought in her eyes and that doesn't change as she sees me. She does quick math in her head not just finding out where I came from but trying to add me into this current equation while keeping the same sum. That only works if I'm a zero. She knows I'm not.

Those thoughts change, those eyes wide, when I slap her across the face with an open hand.

“That's for making me track you down,” I scold.

I grab a fistful of her furry collar and yank her lips into mine. I can't tell if this is the squirming feeling of having missed her inside of my chest or simply a blade being twisted. 

“That's,” I say, “for being in one piece.”

I release her. Before she can say a word -- before she can retake control here -- question why now of all these years I've chosen to hop back into her life -- I turn and address the crowd. Not a bad group. Strong. Resilient. They've got scars and muscles. Even the colonel she's been batting around between her paws. She must have worked a long while to get him to the point he's at now. He's almost broken. Almost. How rude of me to interrupt such a sensitive moment.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I say, not at all sorry.

I turn back to the woman I came here for. My index finger pushes against her leather breastplate the same as my scowl does. 

“Ten minutes,” I tell her. “Finish up here and then join me on my ship. You have some explaining to do, general.”

I flick my finger up as I pull it off of her. My nail just slightly cuts beneath her square chin. Mm. I have to admit she wears these years apart well. Almost beautifully. Almost. 

I leave, slamming the doors behind me. I hope she returns to her coercion thinking of me. I deserve a thought or two in her head. I'm worth at least that much, if apparently not a return letter.

***

As soon as she enters the room my arms are around her. Half hug, half strangulation, I can hardly wrap my arms together around her vast muscle. Has she gotten even stronger? Is that possible? 

I pull away, my eyes only flitting to the burly mage man she's brought with her for a second. You needed backup to speak to me, Ambessa? Really? 

“I worried about you,” I hiss it like an insult. Then my face softens. “I'm so sorry about Kino.” Back to a glare. My emotions fluctuating by the second. “You should have told me! Why didn't you open my letters? I had to go to Swain to track you down. Swain!” 

Where I've been a shifting wind of blabber, Ambessa has been steady and still. Shoulders square, she growls angrily. She pushes my arms away with little effort, passing me to head straight for the teapot I've been heating.

Sure. Help yourself. Ungrateful jerk.

“Why are you here, Rabbit?” She asks, somehow addressing me whilst completely ignoring me.

“Oh I'm sorry.” The mage man follows me into the room, subtly thumbing glowing runes. Please. As if we're going to fight. “Thought I might find solidarity in you since we're both grieving your dead son. No. You're too busy on this little suicide mission of yours.”

The teacup she poured shatters in her closing fist. She turns to me, her eyes wide and howling. Boiled water must burn her hand but she doesn't show an ounce of caring.

“My son is not dead!” She snaps. “He is missing. Taken.”

“Oh, we're on that stage of grief then. Good. Anger comes after denial; you've always excelled at that bit.”

A cast iron teapot whizzes towards my head. I dodge it but as it hits the ship’s iron wall behind me, hot water splashes out onto the back of my neck. 

“Watch it,” I warn.

“After a decade of staying wisely out of my life,” she marches towards me, teeth grating and fists curled, “why did you chose now to reenter? Were you trying to ruin everything? That colonel is my best lead on finding Kino.”

“I've got a better lead. One on a good priced gravestone.”

“Take your ships and leave here, general.”

“Come home, Ambessa.”

That man -- her little shadow bodyguard (talk about paranoid) -- grips his runes even tighter. He looks at her the way I used to. The way that asks for her permission. She contemplates telling him to chop my head off but stops herself. Instead, she waves him away. “Go, Rictus. I can handle this one.”

He leaves with a loyal bow of his head. Good dog. Close the door behind you. He doesn't, so I'm left in an open cage with Ambessa. Makes it all the worse then that I don't chose to leave also.

“You didn't answer my letters,” I say.

“You didn't take that as a hint? I thought you were done with me.”

My face falls. A part of me wants to reach for her hand. To hug her again and to tell her about why I had started writing the pup in the first place. To tell her it was because I missed her. In a sick sick way, I missed her. I could never be done with her. Not truly. 

All of the years of unsent, burned, letters stuff themselves in the front of my mouth. Like a mailbox, overstuffed with useless paper. Every weak moment over wine. Every time I convinced myself I only needed her advice not her. No. Not her . Just what she could offer. An ally. A contact. We could be equals now, I told myself, generals facing the same war. The same battles.

I knew it wasn't true. It's why these words have waited so long. It's why they wait again now. 

The truth is, I'm absolutely fine without her. Yet, while need no longer draws me in, there's want to replace it. I don't need her. I'll never need her again. I want her. I want her in my life but I'm not sure she'll fit. So until this catalyst -- this loss -- I've continued to ignore her. Only now she's ignoring me and that just pisses me off.

“You need to hit something,” I say.

“I need to break something,” she seethes.

“Then break me.”

No protest as a fist connects with my jaw. It's enough force to send me to the side. A fistful of hair. A shove towards hot coals where the tea was warming earlier. My body becomes a speed bag for her anger. My ribs cracking and belly bruising to help her heal. To help her think straight.

“Do you feel better now?” I spit onto the floor, rubbing a tender side.

“No.” Not even close.

“Then hit me again.”

A firm leg to the side of my neck, kicking me over to a left hook. 

“Harder!” I order.

Fists on my expensive collar. The headbutt of a ram. Then a good old fashioned punch to the face.

“C’mon! This is how you're planning to fix things, right?!”

Forward kicked into a wall. Flipped so my face is crushed against metal with one hand while my arm is pulled out of place behind me. My shoulder whines as it trembles just short of falling out of the socket.

“No mercy! Kino’s dead! If fighting is going to bring him back then--!”

Wham !

The puissant slam of her fist against the wall sounds like thunder when it's so close to my ear. She still holds my arm bent behind me. Her grip is strong. But she doesn't pull my forearm up to finish the move. To dislocate my limb. No, she tries to strangle me instead with a vice around my wrist so tight it's shaking. 

Wet heavy stones of sorrow fall from her eyes onto my bare shoulders. 

I let her cry for a moment. Pinned but present. Before I take advantage of her distraction to twist my arm free. I turn around to face her -- this broken whimpering wolf who still holds hate, for the world, for me, behind her misty eyes -- and I put a hand to either side of her head. I touch our noses together, having to pull her head down. I close my eyes. Her hands hang like meat hooks off my sculpted forearms. 

When a sob, an actual audible sob, escapes her, her knees shatter. I follow her to the ground, shushing gently. My thumbs rock back and forth along zygoma. On one side, I brush a scar. Poor wolf. Still limping around with a throne in its paw as though it's not something I can so easily help to remove.

Her tears stop as soon as they came. Muscled back by practiced eyes. 

“I miss him too,” I say, without opening mine. “You are going to be okay. You already know that but they don't. So show everyone what you and I already are aware of: you are stronger than death, Ambessa Medarda.”

***

We eat our dinner silently. Her battleship, not mine. It's almost intimate. Romantic. The candles on the table. The carrot soup and sourdough bread with little bunny ears curling out the top of it. Just me, Ambessa, and the brick wall of a body guard that sits between us. How comforting. How cozy.

“More wine?” Ambessa offers.

I lift my glass and she, chivalrous as the noble she is, pours. Coming straight from the bottle I watched her open earlier, I take comfort in the lack of poison. 

I lean back and sip the posca. I can never seem to sit regular in chairs. Always one foot up or an arm around the back. Sometimes even sideways. But her, she sits like it's a throne. Lounging and deserving of the respect and space she takes in equal value. 

“How did you hear about Kino?” She asks me.

“He stopped responding to my letters,” I say.

“You wrote letters?”

“Sometimes. When I saw something that made me think of him. We were friends, despite you.”

Her demeanor shifts just slightly at my words. Were. We were friends. Because nothing with Kino can now include words like are or is. Present tense is reserved only for the present, and death has rendered him the past.

We continue on in silence but I wouldn't call it awkward. It's strange, seeing her now. Like no time has passed and yet everything has changed. She's no stranger to me. Not even close. I can still hear her moaning from the ghost of my eyes alone over her most sensitive spots. I still have a map of her body embedded in my muscle memory. I can tell you how many scars lie under that leather on her shoulder, barring any new ones. I can tell you how sensitive they are. Where she got them. Who's to blame. 

I can imagine her voice in a million different lines. I can hear what she says before she says it. I can feel her mannerisms before she makes them. I am hyper aware of her and yet I am more disconnected from her than ever. 

I couldn't tell you where she was last week. Last month. Last year. I can't tell you her favourite flower but I know her favourite tea. 

She's a reflection of somebody I used to know better than my own face. An older, sexier, reflection with whom I only share one piece of history. 

Kino Medarda. 

That little pup whose broken both of our calloused hearts.

“Do you,” I start, spooning the orange cream in my bowl, “remember Kino’s birthday party? When he was eighteen?”

“I will drown you in that soup.” She slurps her own loudly.

I smile anyways. It's a good memory. One of the few I still recall from that lifetime. 

“So what's the colonel made your hit list for?” I ask.

“I don't plan to kill him. I plan to use him to get closer to an organization he's a part of.”

“Mm. Black Rose, huh?”

She grips her knife, moving almost entirely past the bread to my side of the table with it. Then Rictus puts a firm but gentle hand on her arm and she pulls back and cuts a slice. I keep my eyes up, unblinking, head tilted into my spoon. I slurp my soup. Damned if I don't flutter my eyelids.

She glowers at me. Every torn chunk of that sourdough a bite into rabbit au vin. 

I toss my spoon aside with a clang, lifting my bowl to my lips. I chug down the entire sweet brown-sugar of the carrots in one long glug. With a satisfied hiss of release, I toss the orange stained dinner wear to the table again and place the spoon back inside. 

My gaze again finds Ambessa. She's stopped chewing. 

A beat.

Then two.

I'm not sure what we're saying and I don't think she knows either, but our eyes hold a council nonetheless.

“Leave us,” Ambessa orders her mage. 

He raises a brow and she confirms her dismissal of him without blinking, without looking away from me. 

“And tell Florian to go home. I won't be needing him tonight.”

That comment has Rictus here giving me pause. Then he just seems to accept it. Not his problem, I guess. The man leaves. I cock a brow, shrugging nonchalant.

“Florian?” I say. “A new play thing, I imagine? Flamboyant? Skinny? Possibly gay?”

She growls. She darkens. She lunges over the table.

Good.

I was just about to do the same. 

We meet in the middle atop a red tablecloth, spilled serving bowls, and cutlery. 

Our teeth clink together as we both have the wise idea to mash together open mouths. Feral as rabid dogs, we attack each other. Jaws on jaws, paws on shoulders. 

I rip off that stupid looking fur half cloak she's always wearing and send it into a serving bowl of soup. I replace it with my hand, her shoulder fitting into the curve of my palm like a key into a lock. What she unlocks in me? A burning caught between fury and passion that rages from my chest into my groin. 

I don't like to wear my armor inside a ship. I don't wear it much at all unless I'm on a battlefield. A separate person -- a monster -- lives there on Noxian drawn war lines. Here, I am just Rabbit. Here, I am softer. A woman. So I wear womanly things. Silk blouses. Brocade gowns. Cloaks and shawls of wool and lace. My current lace shawl joins Ambessa’s accessory in the soup. My expensive bodice ripped cleanly down the back seam -- the skin of a poor fluffy bunny -- revealing the muscles of the monster -- the soldier -- that lurks beneath the fabric. That is who she truly wants to touch.

I'd snap at her for ruining such a pretty thing, but the only words for this conversation are growls, barks, and howls. I bite harshly into her neck then roll my tongue along the bruise. She groans and it falls from her lips down past our bodies to the core of my desire. 

I pull myself up slightly. Reading my mind, her muscled thigh is between my legs when I settle back down. I grind my hips, riding her as she ravages my skin with kisses and sucks and nips. All the while I unlace her armor, something my fingers are very well practiced at. 

As I pull off her breastplate, she shoves me down into the table, onto my back. My hand falls into the squishy center of a half-cut loaf of bread. With a drag, I wash it and everything else above me aside. I lift my torso into her lapping tongue to do the same clearing of the space beneath me. Then I lay back down. My fingers curl into the tablecloth. She ventures lower. Lower. My stomach. 

Rip .

The newly exposed skin of my hip bones. 

Oh wolf, you've got to stop being so aggressive with my clothing. It's designer and imported!

When her lips press into my clit I let out a girlish sound. 

No.

This is for her tonight. And I know she's a true bottom.

I grab her hair and bring those perfect plush pillow lips up to my own. She allows me and we kiss something wild and passionate as one of my hands trails down the front of her pants. Circling her bundle of nerves earns me a whimper. Pressing down harsher than most would prefer earns me a moan and a slam of her fist into the table. As touchy as I remember, I see.

I sit up, my hand still working furiously against slick wet folds, curling up and down along the outside of her core. She sits with me and when we reach the vertex of our position, she starts to lean back and I crawl forward into her. This time it's she who does the table clearing. 

I kiss down her panting chest, listening to the deep growl within it. My touch turns light but still pressured enough for her to feel it though the armor she wears even when naked. Spend time with a nipple. Then the other. The predator becomes a writhing manic desperate mess beneath me. I grin, smiling into a bite of her nipple, and push my finger gently inside of her. 

She holds me with those strong scarred arms of hers. She pulls me down. Onto her. Into her. I trust rough and deep as I can, my fingers a wave that scrapes along inside her everytime I pull back out.

I continue until she breaks. Then I remove her pants -- in one piece for I know the value in even this cotton -- and I make her cum again. Everything I try to move my tongue down to get a taste of her, desperate claws hold me firmly up by her face. She wants to kiss my lips. She wants to bite them. She wants me here. With her. She doesn't want to be alone. So I don't leave her. Not for a second. 

When I know I can't take anymore (for she would and has gone all night before) I collapse onto her chest. My fingers rise over my head limply where she sucks them clean. Then they fall beside our bodies into a puddle of spilled posca. She holds me, hands on either side of my ass, firmly there but not squeezing.

For some time, we just breathe together. I twirl circles in that wine. She finds constellations in the soup splattered ceiling. Then, when the moment begins to feel more intimate than primal, I ask, “How about a bath?”

We wash up and head to bed. Her bed. 

I trace over her scars, she traces over my own, both of us in bright burgundy robes that do little to actually cover our naked bodies. I tell her of the shadows I see. Of the smokey wolf and the lamb always stalking in the traces of my vision. They showed up one day together and they've never left.

I tell her about the chimera of bodies that make up my own. The tapestry of woven souls puppeteering me around. I talk to her of death and rebirth and all the battles I've faced that she's missed. And of all the battles I've read about that she's claimed victory in.

“This version of me now,” I say, the trail end of some lost thought or story, “let me say it so that in the morning when this version of me is dead and I wish to kill you again you, at least, remember: I love you. Desperately, I love you, Ambessa Medarda. The wolf to my lamb.” I kiss a scar and one of her tender thumbs warms one of my bruises. My eyes absentmindedly trace the swirling dark corners of the room. The blue and white and black within them. “Those figures,” I say, almost whispering, “They're here now. Tell me you can see them.”

She turns a mighty head to the lamb -- to the smoke wolf that like a shawl wraps it in safety. 

“Yes,” she says. “I always can.”

The lamb tilts its head, seeing the weakness in me as much as I see it in myself at this moment. It offers the kind mercy of its hand. With a sideways kiss to Ambessa’s skin -- whatever part may be near my lips -- I reach out and take the fleece. The trepidation within me sighs. Releases. I breathe. I close my eyes. I am stronger than my love for her and her danger. 

What a grand thing it is, to be alive again.

Smiling, I roll off of her, my face to the opposite wall of the Kindred. I pull up the red covers and tuck my chin beneath them. To my back there is warm air, radiated with her heat but not her touch. I close my eyes, more ready for sleep then I have been in years.

“I'm going to kill you one day,” I muse wistfully. 

“You can try, little rabbit,” she sighs. She shifts on the mattress. “You can certainly try.”

She moves to hold me but I shrug her off. 

“Leave me alone, Ambessa,” I say, still smiling blissfully. “I'm trying to enjoy my new life.”

“This is my bed we're in.”

“Ah, so that's why it's so warm.”

***

The next few days we hunt together. She tracks the Black Rose cult and I shield her from its prickliest thorns. In the evenings we reminisce about Kino, the wolf pup that held a far greater part of her life than mine but who held a part of both of us much the same. Her heart is broken without him. The missing piece leaving shattered cutting edges. Over time, her blood will erode them and those edges will smooth. For now, I tend to the wounds every time she knicks herself on a corner.

At night, I love her. By the morning, I'm strong enough to remember who she is. She doesn't dare burden me with questions of why I spend my time here -- by her side. It's as if no time has passed between us at all in these years and yet as if we've spent the last decade lying just like this, arms around arms, soft kisses for hot calloused lips.

When it's time for her to continue her hunt, she takes only her pack. I don't know where's going next but I know it will be a long journey. Years before she braves Mel in Piltover. Months before she gets a new lead on what happened to Kino in Noxus. So for now, she is deployed one way and I am deployed another. Back to our separate battlefields. Our time for otium, our leisure, is over. As generals, bellum calls. It's back to fighting our war. To ignoring each other. To hating her. To tolerating her.

For the glory of Noxus!

Chapter Text

Five months after my little rabbit hole affair (there's a sex joke in there somewhere that I just can't find), I find myself in desperate need of some aid. Somehow my scouts had missed about twenty thousand troops in their count so we're set up in plain view of an Ionian monastery we can no longer hope to attack front on. They've seen us, even sent a delegate. A monk. It was a lovely conversation -- not long winded and metaphorical at all. Actually, that would be a great setup for a joke -- a Noxian General and an Ionian monk chat negotiations over tea. Who wins? Demacia. Because they're the ones who sold the tea. In other words, both me and Little Miss “ego does not accept truth” left that room empty handed. 

She wants me to fight. Well, she wants one of us to fight. Save the armies, she said, we'll spare you for five days and if you'd like to avoid losing your entire legion, let a Noxian show true honour by fighting one of us one on one. One loser taken prisoner or hundreds of lives lost. If their man loses, they'll cede the city. Or so they claim. If ours does, we are to retreat. Our man will be taken as hostage to ensure we do so he has to be of some acclaim. A captain or higher. Someone we'll miss.

This group, they're mages. It's a blind spot for me no matter how many lessons Swain gives me or books he aggressively requests that I read. I'm no Demacian; I understand magic has uses but I don't understand it enough to trust one of my bruisers against a battle mage. I've asked my own mages for advice on the matter and they've said the same thing: Ionian monks are scary; don't tempt them.

So I've been waiting. Here I wait still. Swain said I couldn't have any more troops at first. Then I begged. He said no at a higher level. I begged again. Pouted. And now good ol’ Jerry’s last letter promised to reroute a general bound for home my way. Whoever it is will likely be upset to be redeployed so immediately without a break. Their troops will be tired. Underfed. But good blood bags and canon fodder none the less. When their numbers get here, we'll have just five thousand less than the Ionians. I can work with five thousand.

“General,” one of my captains, a now loyal man that I'd caught spying on me a few years back for Shurima before he was Noxian, pokes his head into my tent. 

“Ravir,” I greet, smiling. “Please please please tell me our allied general and their forces have arrived?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” He says. What a phrase. How did it ever make Ambessa cross that I'd call her that? I love to hear it.

“I'd thank the gods, but Swain's done more. Are they weary from travel?”

“Yes. We've offered them dinner. They're eating now. Their general would like to speak with you, ma’am.”

“Yeah I'd expect them to. Good. Good! We can discuss battle plans. Send them in.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As he curls his head beneath the red curtain of the tent’s entrance, I add, “oh, Ravir!”

“Ma’am?”

“Who's the general?”

“Ambessa Medarda, ma’am.”

“Shoot me.”

“What?”

I pull a pistol from my desk drawer.

“Ma’am?” Ravir says, not without alarm.

“You've let a pack of wild ravenous dogs into my camp,” I scold. I shove him out of the doorway so that I can pass. “I've got to put one down.”

“M-Ma’am?!”

Ugh. Her troops’ manners are about as bad as her own. I mean seriously! To act like I needed aid? From her ? So cockily too. Just make yourself at home.

Ah. There she is. I aim with one eye closed. Cock it back. And…

Bang !

As the bullet whizzes by, slicing off the ends of her poof of hair, I realize I've never before seen her flinch. Not until now, that is. She looks like a startled little rabbit. One with a hand over its absolutely ringing ear. But when she turns to me with a glare, it's the wolvish snarl I'm used to. 

“Damn!” I shake my head, tossing the gun to Ravir. “He never was a good shot. A little to the right next time, Ravir.”

“Is this how you were trained to greet your fellow generals?” She says, a bit more than angry. Just a bit. 

“It's how you kill an old dog you don't want around anymore. All out of silver bullets though, I'm afraid. So really, you weren't in any danger at all, wolf .”

“My men have been marching for five months without reprieve. They were promised to go home. Rerouted because of your incessant begging to a man who for some foolish reason has decided to treat you like the golden child of Noxus. And you greet them -- greet me -- with violence? Hubris will be your downfall, child. A downfall that may just come today if you test me one more--”

“I missed, didn't I? Eat your fill then get out of my camp. I don't need your help.”

“Don’t you? The way General Swain told it, you were pleading for aid. Desperate. You made a grave misstep that should have already taken your life getting close to this monastery. Now that I see it for myself? I can't tell if I'm more impressed that you're still breathing or that he's sent us at all. What has stopped the monks from advancing on us?”

“Honour. A naive credence that this holy ground should remain untainted with blood.”

She laughs. “Then what stops your advance?”

A naive credence that I'll lose.

“Nothing. I've got it handled. Like I said, no need for you, general, or your men. Go home.”

“Outmanned by twenty thousand? A front on attack to a fortified monastery? We are already here, general ,” there's a hiss there. Of course there is. Jerk. “Why not put us to use?”

Because I don't like you! Because I like you too much. Because I'm already getting distracted by how tired round the eyes you look. Because I'm already imagining taking that pistol back and putting a bullet into those eyes. Because you're Ambessa Medarda and I'm Rabbit and I'm really not in the mood to be us right now.

“The monks have offered a fight. One of our men; One of theirs.”

She scoffs, almost laughing at me. 

“Oh I'm sorry. Have I amused you? If we win, they'll cede the place to us. No forces lost. No resources gone.”

“Even if they do, the fact that they've offered means they have a guaranteed way to beat you.”

“I know that. That's why we'll be cheating.”

“You will?” She doesn't wrestle her grin, just allowing it to suplex her face. “Please, enlighten me.”

“Don't patronize me.”

“I’m your aid. You must share your plan.”

“You're not my aid. I'm sending you home. Go.” I pick up a stick and toss it towards the border of camp. “Fetch!”

“I think I'll stay. Watch.” She pauses. Her smirk only grows. Can it get any bigger? “Who's your champion then, little rabbit?”

“I am.”

I am?

She laughs and goes to the cookpot for dinner. 

Don't ignore me! I was a Reckoner. I can be a fighter. Especially if -- when -- I cheat. Somehow. I'll figure it out. Kind of have to now. She's forced me too. 

As she tears into some bread, she breaks into another fit of laughter. Still amused, I suppose, at the idea of my noble sacrifice here. 

Oh that does it.

I snatch the gun away from my captain. Only this time, she hears me pull the hammer back.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” She growls. “Others have lost their heads for less.”

“Mine stills feels pretty well attached. You’ve never been able to kill me so permanently, but you’re free to try again.”

With a sigh and a wave of her hand I’m rushed from either side. That bodyguard of hers has my pistol hand firing towards the air in seconds. Another soldier pins my other arm before they both shove my shoulders down and I’m on my knees. I struggle but their grips are firm. Eventually Rictus bends my wrist so far that I’m forced to release my weapon. Cheater!

“This is a new one,” I say. “Can’t fight me yourself?”

“I don’t need to strain my wrist to crush an ant.” She stands, taking time to stretch first one arm across her body then the other. Her shoulders curve and roll with the motion, each muscle it’s own. I almost miss them when she turns but then I’m blessed with that lovely face of hers. Her confusing scowl.

She takes a few decisive steps my way. She crouches but not close enough to touch me. No. I am just barely out of her reach. If she were to extend an arm, the air between her fingers and my face would buzz with the touch of our auras but our skin would remain cold and lonely. She’s chosen this distance on purpose. She doesn’t want to get close to me. But it’s not from fear of injury. She simply doesn’t feel that she needs to.

In her eyes, I can hear the scolding. The arrogant goading about how her under-fed over-marched men have taken me down so easily. If they can, what’s going to stop the Ioanians? I can hear her lecture about my planning being pathetic. How I am pathetic. Yet out loud, she only says, “Fighting before a battle such as this is as childish and reckless as it is vain. Look around at these men. You are their general. You have to lead them. So give them something worth following. Tomorrow, you take on a fight that holds all of their futures on the line and tonight you insist on injuring yourself?” Her voice dips towards a low disappointment and that may hurt more than her anger ever has as she adds, “Look at you: Such wasted potential.”

I can’t meet her eyes after that. Not while they’re gold and I’m silver. No. Worse than that. Copper -- bronze even! I was a trophy to keep of a victory won but I wasn’t a very good one. Now, she’s absolutely right. I’m a general but I am no leader. I think myself free yet here I kneel, dirt on my knees, all because the moment she’s around I lose my head. Everytime. 

It’s her fault!

“If you didn’t anger me so badly,” I say, “I’d be able to think straight!”

She reels from my words. Her mouth opens but doesn’t have the words. She just shakes her head, furrowing her brows at me in disbelief. Anger me? She’s just eaten supper. The last time I saw her, I was in her bed. I’m the problem here -- at least in her mind. 

“What is it that you want Rabbit?” She asks harshly. “To kill me? To avoid me? For me to love you?” She chuckles. Then her face contorts back to that neutral powerful in-control look I’m so used to seeing. “Figure it out and then quit pestering me. Because this?” She casts a glance my way like I’m barely worth a glance at all. “This is starting to bore me.”

She’s always fed into my nemesis delusions so why stop now? Because she knows as well as I do that victory here depends on me. Because she, like I, knows to put Noxus first. Because she’s a leader and I’m still learning.

Fine.

Fine.

She must see this resolve on my face because I’m allowed to be released. Now who’s disappointed? I always so look forward to our fighting. I suppose there’s always tomorrow. After I beat that monk.

***

Are runes supposed to itch?

I asked Janis that (a mage in my legions known for spell shields and protection) and she never answered. Kind of wishing she did though because even with my bracer covering it the sensation is infuriating. Am I allergic to runes? Can you be?

I wear my usual battle attire. My first breastplate, still with that coin on the front. It’s battered to death and revived through a necromancy the smith advices against every time I have it repaired, but what do I care? I can take any hit that dents through it. My hips and shins are shielded by metal, just like my bracers, but my shoulders are free. Thick red leather pants tuck into my boots and by my side I carry one weapon -- a black metal shield. It has a point at the bottom of it and sharp blades around the edges. A chain unclips from the handle on the backside with the click of a button so I can whip it around like a flail for ranged targets. On the very front, facing the enemy, I’ve painted a red rabbit with a heart in it’s chest. Same as my seal. Same as the crest I’ve claimed as my own. Same as the crest that Swain’s laughed at but fuck him and his crows -- I’ve stuck with my theme; I even eat carrots for snacks sometimes. The bunny buns stay in for battle. The only time they ever come down is when I’m headed to bed.

Mostly, I lead the charge, tanking the hits for my teammates and giving orders from the frontline. My strategy is to keep them alive for as long as possible -- to see attacks glacially -- and to adjust to the battlefield swiftly. That strategy has kept my lives and others countless times. Only now I’m forced to fight alone. Thanks, Ambessa. 

I can take a hit. 

I can take many many hits. I can also give them. With this rune, I can even more. It’s a counterspell, Janis had said. To which I said “oh, a counterspell!” in a way that thankfully made her feel as though she had to explain further. She definitely did. What it does is reflect magic. Like a magnet with the same polarity. The spells catch each other, they bounce back, and both I and the Ioanian get about half the damage of the full attack. Magic resistance. Seems I’ve come full circle to Demacian petricite. Full circle too, I suppose, from that shield in Fleshing.

“Present your challenger,” I say, my arms wide as if requesting a cuddle. 

The monk from before smiles, a calm about her face like the buzzing of bees in a hive. You know they can sting, despite their promises not to. So you attack the nest. And they’re glad you’ve done so. Because they’ve been waiting days for this.

She turns and ushers a small figure onto the field. A cloaked monk that waddles more than they walk. A yordle, perhaps? The last time I fought with a yordle they were on my side -- a crazed man more chihuahua than fairy in his nature -- but damned if Kled didn’t help me win that day. Scrapy, yordles. Smart too. They live forever unless you kill them. It’s almost sad to remind them of that ‘unless’ -- to disillusion them to their own immortality. Time always stops somewhere. Kindred is waiting. Lurking. That’s how I know this fight won’t end with a prisoner like they’ve promised. But it won’t be my death. Not this time. Not yet. I’ve still got some making up to do with my least favourite general later. So long as she doesn’t cold shoulder me like she did for our fight.

No, Rabbit. Focus. Gods. Fucking Ambessa -- distracting me like the dog she is.

The yordle pulls down her hood. Only, she’s no yordle at all. My stance weakens. My shoulders drop. My nose twitches. All at once, I sober up and shake away my empathy. We need a monster right now, not a bunny. Yet…all these years and there’s one line I haven’t crossed.

We’re the bad guys? When the Ioanians are sending a child to fight for them?

“I didn’t think Noxians had reservations when it came to fighting children,” the head monk says.

We don’t. We shouldn’t. I do. No. She does. The dead Demacian buried in my bones. Her corpse has rotted, fertilizing the thorny vines of Noxus that now wrap my ribcage -- poking any who dare venture close to my rusty metal heart. Yet, churned dirt or thriving spirit or fresh carrion -- she’s still a part of this ecosystem inside me just as much as the weeds that are Ambessa and the bloody ravens that are Swain.

I close my eyes, hissing into the red that paints the back of my eyelids. I open them, breathing. Once. Twice. 

Damn it!

I don’t die. My heart still pounds. I plead. Lamb watches. But I don’t die. 

Fine then. I must be strong enough to surprise myself here. I clench  my trembling fist and curse it. I cannot look weak. Not in front of my men. Not in front of her.

Killing just went off the table.

No mercy; Even the mercy of death. 

“Make your move, child,” I say with a voice that haunts me as my own.

The little girl charges past me, daggers spinning in her trail. I bring up my shield, blocking them. There’s an opening -- her back to me -- I could butt her with the front of my block. But I don’t. She turns, grey eyes as sharp as steel yet vulnerable as a grey little wolf-pup. I step back, bracing for her next attack. They come in a flurry. Blades. Not spells. Not what I’ve prepared for. Shuriken and kunai alike dance together in the air. Then I realize where her magic lies. She’s directing them. Just like that woman who took Swain’s arm. She’s dancing through her attacks, knives like feathers in the wind. 

Then why does my shield work?

She attacks in a heavy barrage, leaping over me as I lean back. The slow illusion provided by my crystal hit all those years ago gives me the perfect time to whip out my chain. To take her to the ground. One slice from those edge blades and she’d be gone.

No.

Yes.

I reach for the button, I hover it, my finger twitching. I shut my eyes and reclose my fist around the handle, choosing instead to backroll over my shield and raise my hand. I’ll catch her. I’ll pin her. She can’t be heavy. She---

Thwack! Thud.

When I open my eyes, I realize what I’ve done. My off hand has the rune. Her blades are propelled with magic. Magic I’ve just send her way.

A kunai props like a tombstone in her eye, the bottom wide part of it’s blade too large to fit in the little hole of her skull. Blood falls like a tear from a tiny pink corner. The drop is fat -- fatter than her baby fat cheeks that it rolls down. 

I pant, shaking, pretending to no one’s delusion that it’s from the effort of the fight. I find my feet, turning to the head monk with the fury of an entire pack of rabid animals. I steele myself, finding my strength, and with burning dry eyes I growl, “You are lucky I don’t blaze your entire temple to the ground for making me do that.”

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t looked stunned. Not horrified. Noxus always gets to be the bad guy in history books but look at her. I know that face. That’s the face of apathy. The face Ambessa gave when they whisked me off the first time I was her sacrifice. I want nothing more than to rip it off of her bones and tan it for leather.

Then the drop of blood hits the ground. The grass. It waters the roots beneath the pretty Ioanian flowers. And I lose the fight.

It’s seconds. Moments. The monk prattles something off about guardian spirits -- about taking forms of children -- but all I know is that thing is not human. It is not a little girl. And it is not dead. 

It’s a radiant goliath of energy and stone -- it’s a glowing mammoth of plate armor ripped from the ground. When the monks said blood shouldn’t be spilled here -- they weren’t kidding. At least, maybe not the blood of their protector.

I order my men to step back. They take no issue with that and Ambessa’s men follow suit under an order of her own. I raise my rune-enhanced hand once again as a mossy blue fist comes my way. As those magnets of mana make contact, I fly backwards, my hand reaching out for death. I’m left on my own, however. In black. Not red. Black.

***

When I wake, it's to something cool and minty slithering past my lips like a cold bellied snake. I close my throat, rolling my tongue to the back of my mouth, and spit the liquid back at the person who dare poison me with it. My eyes are red but her bruise --this monk with the glass bottle - is no longer blue as the liquid heals it away. A potion. A healer. Well don't I feel like a jerk? Still, I keep a tight leash on my glare.

“Your men haven’t retreated,” the woman says calmly. She wipes the potion off her skin with a long white bell sleeve. 

The monk moves to offer me the bottle again. I turn my head away, lips tight as -- not the time for a crass joke, Rabbit. This is what I mean when I say she invades my mind. Distracts me. Who does Ambessa think she is? Gods. Apparently someone who doesn't retreat. After such a noble sacrifice too! She better not be planning an attack -- a rescue mission. Can you imagine?

The monk continues to talk. Something about needing to heal and treating my wounds and questions about what our plans are, but I don't listen. I take in my new battlefield here.

One of my arms is chained to a large stone pillar on which I lean my back. My other is numb -- a heavy invisible burden wrapped by white gauze and sticks that I believe is supposed to be a cast. My body is wrapped in pale green cotton masquerading as clothing. Monks call them robes. I call them too lazy to even hem a seam. I also call them perverts for undressing a lady while she's unconscious. There's no dirt on my skin that I can see. I think they bathed me too. Great. An extra reason to kill them.

The ground beneath me is soft. Sand. We're in the open air courtyard of the temple. Some sort of zen garden. There's a red bridge and circles of raked stones. The sky above me is red so I know it's either dusk or dawn. 

“Are you listening to me?” The woman asks.

I turn to her, red eyes peeking out from behind fallen snow streaked hair. “No.”

She pulls a face. She stands. “I hope your men are smarter than you are, general. They now know the price of spilling blood on this ground.”

***

I wake up again after the sun has fully set because of the simple fact that I can't sleep. Not now that I can feel my arm again. Whatever the monks gave me was good, but it wasn't permanent. I don't know what's broken for sure because the pain radiates through muscle, bone, and fat alike -- the whole thing from the middle of my bicep down to my fingers just a mosaic of shattered glass on which to cut myself. I can't see it either, due to the dressing. It throbs, each wave of pain pulsing out all the way to the borders of that mosaic. Like a heartbeat all its own.

I don't understand pain. If it's our brain’s way of telling us we're hurt, then it should shut up when we get the signal. Like, yes, I know I've broken something but I can't really fix that right now so leave me be, would you?

A mouse scurries somewhere in the distance. It squeaks. So does another. But then those squeaks start to echo -- a choir of sudden choked noises of a higher pitch. I come to realize they're human. Monks, dropping into sleep in the hallways. Almost as soon as I notice them falling, she enters the frame. Sturdy. Regal. A warrior in a stupid red half cloak and fur. She's taken to wearing a gaudy gold mask recently and I can't say I hate it but it does drip with arrogance.

Oh fuck me. 

Ambessa smirks a bit too cockily as she crouches and removes her battle mask. Jerk.

“I didn't need your help,” I say. “I had it handled.”

“Unchain yourself.” She motions casually.

Fuck her!

I roll my eyes and yield so that she does it for me. She rises, offering me a hand, and I take it but not because she's offered. I can stand on my own. I choose not to. Her palms are calloused and scarred and the pain in my arm makes me dizzy (that's the only sensation making me dizzy, for the record). 

“You're not getting a thank you,” I tell her, my hand lingering and her hand letting me linger.

“I don't expect one. I'm a dog, remember? Fetch is my favourite game. A reward in and of itself.”

“I’m not your prize, this time.”

“No. That would be this temple.”

“How did you get past their spirit guardian?”

“We didn't kill. The guardian was not raised in your fight until blood soiled their holy grounds. We worked the way the monks do -- silently, with precision.”

“You knocked them out.”

“Most of them. Some have broken necks.”

“Some better not mean the ones I need information from.”

She pauses, her brows kneading together.

“This is what happens when you don't share battle plans, general,” I say.

“I asked for your plans.”

“Then acted without regard to them. You could have read them before rescuing me.”

“Ah, so you confess to being rescued.”

“I confess that you get on my very last nerve. I can't wait to finally send you to a grave and be done with you.”

She pulls her hand away. Her mask returns to block my view of that equally golden face. A pity. She frowns at me from behind it, looking in a way I can't read. Why can't I read it? I can always read her. And why is she being so queer? We always threaten. We always insult. What, did I hurt her feelings? Like she has those. Like she's ever had those! Well…I suppose in some of the memories I keep she does. But those are not my memories. No. They're from lives ago. Different lives. Lives where she was just as cruel as she was kind. Yet, she was kind nonetheless -- even if it was almost never towards me. 

I scowl something fierce. I punch her with my good hand and she catches it only after taking the hit.

“That's enough,” she says. Sharp angular words. She means them. She means them.

I search her face again but with that shield over it I can't find what I'm looking for. She releases me without so much as a bruise to show for the effort of her grip. Then she turns and I watch her walk back into the battle -- away from our own.

***

I wait that night in the room I've taken in the temple. I wait for her to come fight me. To make up with me. I wait for what always happens when we find ourselves together. But it doesn't come.

I'm left with only her words to ponder.

What is it you want, Rabbit?  

This is starting to bore me.

Bore her. I bore her?! Sorry that my anger isn't good enough anymore. Sorry that I fall a bit lackluster over the years. She probably means I’ve grown too strong -- too threatening. It's not a fun little game anymore, is it? No. 

No.

You know what this means, Rabbit. You're as grown as she is. You were there, in some form, for all that's changed. 

Before Kino, we could be what we've always been. What we are. But after…

When we reunited five months ago, something changed.  I'm not sure that it was for the better but it was different nonetheless. Softer. Dare I say kinder. She's always tolerated me. This. Us. Perhaps I was too kind. Too nice. Maybe I shouldn't have been there. Maybe I shouldn't have acted like I cared.

Or maybe she'd be like this regardless. Maybe she can't handle any more uncertainty right now. Not knowing how he died. Not knowing exactly when. Just knowing that he was -- is -- gone now. She needs a guarantee. Something solid. A pillar to hold onto. A sun that will always rise. I can't be that so she's pushing me aside. Bookmarking me to be dealt with later. A distraction? A problem? 

What does she see in me?

I never thought I'd be asking that same question again. Yet, I ask it all the same, though now in quite a different manner. 

What do I see in me? 

What do I see in her?

Why does this bother me? Why don't I finish it? I know the answer. I don't like it, but I know. She knows as well -- a little rabbit told her once. She shouldn't care about what little rabbits say. They're liars. The whole lot of them.

I rise from my too soft monk bed. The potions are back and so is the numb void of my arm. I should rest. I should. But damn her for making me venture the halls instead.

I find her in a steam-filled back courtyard with someone else. A skinny man. Ionian. A prisoner who seems all too giddy to be just that. He's massaging her bare shoulders while she lounges in a hot spring.

“Get out,” I order him.

He has the audacity to check for her permission.

“Stay,” she tells him. Her eyes stay on me.

Oh? It's like that is it?

I pluck a knife from my boot and hold it, ready to throw. “Get. Out.” I repeat.

“You cannot spill blood here,” the warlord says. Ironic of her. Correct of her. But ironic too.

I throw the blade into the ground, inches from the man’s foot. Exactly where I aimed…more or less. He flinches. She doesn't. Typical. 

“You asked what I want,” I say. 

She raises a curious brow. Not fully invested in my words, but her interest piqued. Slightly. Only slightly. It matters desperately what I say next. 

“I want,” I pause. I swallow the words. My face softens. It's the timid twitching face of an animal looking into the eyes of someone to whom it knows its prey. “I need ,” I correct, “the touch of my wolf tonight.”

“A wolf belongs to no one.”

“You're wrong. A part of it always belongs to the lamb.”

Her rusty aureus eyes remain on me in that painfully vexing way I cannot interpret. Testing me against the weight of something I'm blind to. Then she waves her new toy off and orders, “get out.”

He does just that, if not with more than a little bit of disappointment. I exhale. I can finally inhale. This is how we work. This is how we're supposed to work. You don't want to fight me? That's okay. But gods be damned if I can't appeal to your lustful side.

She rises from the water, drips falling down familiar skin. I don't care if I seem desperate right now. It's been a long day and I meant what I said. I can chastise her for making me beg come the morning, but for now I'll do whatever she wants. I hate her. Gods I hate her. 

When she reaches me, I pull her instantly and violently into a kiss. She breaks it all too easily and I glare.

A ‘what the fuck’ almost leaves me, but I bite it back. Can't scare her off. What is this emotional switch, menopause?

“Your arm is shattered,” her voice, her eyes, every part of her is softer than it should be. She means it. Again, she means it. How dare she worry about me. How dare that worry send my heart skipping. I…I have butterflies in my stomach. I digest them.

“Then be gentle with me,” I say, my lips twitching towards a smile along with the twitching of my nose. 

I kiss her again. This time she lets me. Only, as my hand floats down a river of water on her heated side, she pulls away again. 

“Will you remember this tomorrow?” She asks.

What kind of a question?

“Maybe,” I say. I sigh. “My memories are a thick sheet of red. I try to imagine these other lives I've lived -- the things I've done -- yet all I see is nothing but red and then my head begins to hurt. To spin. You though, you've always had a way of permeating through sometimes. It's not everything. Every memory. Just lots of them. When you're nice to me, when we're like this, it's hard to imagine you could ever be cruel. So it's good then, that I can remember. For now…help me forget.”

She takes a heavy breath, as heavy as that gaze of hers and as the hands she’s laid gently on my hips. “Rabbit, before that cave, those years ago, I made a choice to sacrifice eight men for a weapon that has since led us to countless naval victories. I would do it again. Even if, at the time I made that decision, I was not yet aware that you would be one of the eight soldiers.”

“The eight sacrifices,” I hiss. If she is trying to make me hate her again, she’s doing a bang up job. 

“Of course you were a sacrifice. A sacrifice means that we lose something. Otherwise it's just a disposal of excess resources.”

Lose. The steam from the hot spring wraps me beneath my clothing. Red silken Noxian clothing. I couldn't stand the Ionian rags for long. I was a loss to her. I was worth losing. I can't tell if that's meant to be a compliment or an insult but it stirs my organs around just the same -- like the mashed up insides of a steamed dumpling.

“You were a difficult sacrifice to make,” she continues. One of her hands moves to my cheek where it fits perfectly -- a line of moss pressing the space between two cobblestones on a path. 

“Would you sacrifice me again now?”

“Yes. If I had to. No enemy or ally will stand in my way.”

“Stop.” I pull away. I throw a hand through my hair. It's loose and down and falls all about my shoulders messily. “I don't like hearing this, Ambessa. It's making me dizzy. Are you trying to piss me off?”

“I asked you what you wanted. I need to know your true answer which means you need to know mine. I won't keep doing this capricious -- these seasons with you. I don't have a place in my life for unpredictability right now.”

“Making amends, are we? You're making this sound like you're writing a suicide note. You're thinner. Slighter than when I last saw you. More tired around the eyes. You're not sleeping, are you? Are you?!”

“Of course I've been awake. My son is dead, Rabbit. These witches that took him invade my dreams. They hunt me as much as I'm hunting them. You know this.”

“No I don't! Other Rabbits do.”

“Enough of that. It's you, Rabbit.”

“No!”

“Yes,” she growls.

“No!” My hand knots in my hair like an old brush all worn out with bent bristles. My head throbs. My numb broken fingers fall fat and heavy to my temple. 

“I don't remember those lives,” I say, gnawing at the inside of my cheek. “But I remember you. Fragments of you.”

“What do you remember of me?”

“Hating you! Loving you…” I shut my eyes, a dam against the rising waters within them.

“Foolish little Rabbit--,” a hand tilts up my chin.

I shake her off and grapple her instead. A tight embrace that I'm not sure isn't meant to strangle her as much as it's meant to comfort me. 

“You asked what I want,” I say, my lips against her ear as I hold her tighter than my broken arm should allow. “I can't have what I want. Because I'm not strong enough to handle it. I have to be a weapon to survive this war. Weapons don't forgive. They kill. Who they're asked. When they're asked. They don't get stuck on things. Not the good ones. How do you do it? How do you face war while still holding onto love?”

I pull away but only so that I can see her face. That damned unreliable gorgeous beautiful punchable face of hers. It is the face of a monster with the soul of a caregiver. A warrior. A lover. Somehow both and neither. Somehow familiar yet lost to me. 

“The soul is strong where the heart is weak,” she says. So simply she says it. It slips off her tongue as easily as fact but I know it's just more venom meant to poison me. Her words always are. “Distractions create wounds that never close, but those I love are worth every scar.”

“It's more than distraction. It's worse.” I ball up a fist on her chest, my eyes as unable to meet her now as the Demacian’s eyes were on that very first day in Noxus. Then Rabbit returns and I use her iris as an ashtray for my cigarette glare. “What do you want, Ambessa? You keep asking me. Only fair I do the same. I can't read you. It's like I don't know you. So what is it? Why are you acting so off? Why all the questions? What are we doing here?”

“I want you to survive, little rabbit.”

I laugh. I don't mean to, but I laugh. “I can't do that.”

“I want you to remember this. Remember me. I want to know that the next time I see you, you'll be the same.”

“No. I have to die tonight. It's kind of my thing.”

“Why?” She snaps angrily.

“Because it just is.”

“Wrong. Why?”

“Fuck you!”

“Only if you answer me honestly. I'm bored of this. Bored of you. That spark you had is fading and I don't understand it. You're growing predictable. Lazy. You yield to death, not as a last resort, but out of desperation. You do not face your weaknesses, you ignore them. You push them into your memories behind a grand red curtain because you're too scared to embrace them. If you don't exploit your weaknesses, someone else will.”

“Someone else meaning you?”

She shoves me. 

There she is. My wolf. That angry glower. The stumble of my feet as I fall back. The pain in the shoulder of my bum arm. Welcome back, Ambessa. I sure missed you. I can tell this reappearance of the woman I know surprises the one I was just talking to. I can also tell that it's a welcome surprise because her grimace remains affixed to her face and her fists close at her naked sides.

“I am weak,” I spit. “Too weak to accept your half-assed apology. You want to better understand me? Hm? Because it seems you've gotten a bit discombobulated there. Truth is, I need to hate you. I need it. I need to hate you so that I can love you. Get it? What is my love without my hatred other than a lamb without a wolf? So I need the vengeance too. You see? I need the hunt.” I throw my arms in the air, wincing at the pain it causes me -- the pain she causes me. “I can't forgive you! If I forgive you, for all you've done, I…I can't handle…if I choose to love you, fully, to forgive you, then your death isn't mine anymore! It could happen at any time -- around any corner -- likely soon from the sorry state of your crusade against the Black Rose! I worry about you -- you big bad wolf -- and when I can't handle that worry I choose to hope for the worst instead. But if it's in my hands -- if I've called dibs on killing you -- then you're safe because I know that I'll always stow the blade. For now, at least. And that makes it safe to be vulnerable -- to be weak -- to let myself give into the fantasy of loving you at night because I know that until I kill you, I won't lose you. To hold you and kiss you and let you be someone whose loss would be a sacrifice. One I'm never willing to make. Not ever. Not until the morning comes and my loathing for you strengthens me once again -- shields you once again. I protect you -- us both -- with my hatred. Please. Please don't make me give it up. It…It would get lonely on its own, my love for you. A lonely grieving little lamb. So please, Ambessa,” I choke on tears I don't realize have started to drown me, “for the love of every god just hate me. I need you to hate me. And stop asking me stupid fucking questions like what it is I want.”

When I finally start to see her again it's because she's grabbed me. No. Not grabbed. She caresses either side of my face gently. Softly. Like I'm something she might break if she were to press too hard. Her lips find mine and I melt into those sturdy hands which become strong enough to hold me in an instant. Our kiss is slow and passionate -- it's the kiss of lovers. A kiss of lies. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so this kiss is worth a thousand pictures. A thousand thousand apologies drip off of her familiar warm lips into my face hot with steam and blush and tears. She dries my eyes with her thumbs as she dips her head down to my jaw. My neck. Her tongue slithers across my jugular without a threat of fangs. Her hands pull the dress off my shoulders, letting it drop to the ground in one piece.

Gracefully -- kindly -- she trails my body with worship. With value. Value I'm not worthy of. Value I don't want. Not from her. Value of more than she's ever threatened to sell me for. When her lips brush past my navel, those kisses threaten something I can't handle.

“What is this?” My voice quakes, meek and breathy. 

“A better apology,” she says, having missed apparently every other part of my reasoning why I can’t -- 

She kisses low on my stomach, just above the curl of hair between my legs. 

I push on her shoulders with the effort of pulled punches. My numb arm gives up rather soon but I stay strong with the other, gripping her tight.

“Stop,” I say.

She runs her tongue along my thigh. A kiss to my hipbone. 

“Stop it.” 

My other thigh gets the same treatment. The same adoration. My legs shake but I keep them together. 

My body becomes a shrine to her, my skin the steps upon which to lay gifts to the gods inside. She makes her way back up those steps to my lips again where she kisses me in a way far too soft that makes me swoon far too much. 

She pulls at my hand and my feet -- my stupid feet -- follow her and her embrace backwards until she starts to descend into the hot spring. Then I break our kiss and try my best to scold her, despite still holding those fingers I want so desperately.

“You aren't allowed to do this to me,” I say. “You aren't allowed to act like you care.”

“You need to hate me,” she says.

“I need you to hate me too!”

She growls and at once the wolf inside of her yanks me forward by that arm she so tenderly took. Our naked bodies fall flush together beneath steaming waters and my world at once is an infinity of colors -- a rainbow spectrum of hues but not the slightest hint of red. 

“You are an insane woman,” she barks. “I will never understand you.”

I glare at her, my good arm pinching umber skin between its nails. “You don't have to.”

She whines. A noise rumbles in her chest like an animal. My animal. She lunges for my throat, attacking it with her teeth. She leaves bruises and bitemarks and hickies. She burns the flowers away, the incense, the gifts -- she razes the entire temple to the ground with her calloused grip. Then she pulls back. She lets go of where she's started to choke me. She softens. Something almost morose catches in her eyes, glinting as she searches me for a wonder she cannot reach. For a battle plan that solves the issue of a front on attack with twenty thousand men less than the enemy. 

“No,” she says. Her voice, once a slap, now brushes back my hair. 

“Don't ‘no” me,” I hiss.

“I hate you.”

Her fist tugs at the piece of my heart that's gripped within it as it tries to rip off a big chunk. My expression sours even more and my hand finds its way to her clit beneath the water. 

She snatches it, pulling it to the surface like a flopping fish she's going to cook up and serve for dinner. 

“I hate you,” she repeats. She lifts me by my waist -- a far harder feat than she makes it appear to be -- and sets me on the edge of the spring. She lets my hand go but only to push apart my knees. “So why would I listen to your requests?”

“A-Ambessa--!” I blush despite myself, biting my tongue and nearly choking on whatever words were going to come next.

“I'm going to apologize whether you want me to or not,” she says. 

Her breath on my cunt is quickly replaced by her tongue. I nearly fall. I nearly die. By some miracle I stay sitting upright, my shattered arm bearing no weight and becoming a burden to my other one that has to struggle to hold me and my muscles up. 

“Q-Quit it!” I curse my stutter. I grind my teeth together as she continues to trace her name between my legs. “Be rough with me! Give me a reason to hate you again!”

I kick, splashing near boiling water in her hair and on her face. She catches my calves firm yet delicately and holds me still. No other part of me tries to move. No other part of me can. I'm being worshiped again. Treated like I'm worthy of a sacrifice. Like I'm worthy of a lot of things. Worthy of an orgasm at the very least. 

I try not to moan. Try. I fail quickly and when I start to feel my climax building she switches to whispered circles on my clit, pushing two fingers inside of me. It gives me more pleasure than I care to admit. More than I've had in years. Decades. I mean, in decades I've only ever truly made love to her. I've only ever wanted to when I've been around her. 

She drives me crazy. I hate her! I love her…I’m going to cum!

“Forgive me,” she orders. 

“N-No! Fuck you!”

“Survive me.”

“I-I don't…!” My threat turns to a whimper. My hips -- those traitors -- begin to match her steady careful thrusts.

“Now, Rabbit,” she demands. 

“Ambessa!” Her name becomes the only word I can muster as I reach my peak. 

She doesn't stop until I've crashed all the way down and when she does stop she cleans me with that tongue of hers. I'm not a mess to clean, a chore to be done, I'm part of a prayer -- an apology.

I pant, my poor hand giving out and sending me first to my elbow them to my back as my legs continue to hang over the edge of the hot spring to her mercy. She rubs my knees tenderly, kisses peppering the insides of my thighs. 

“Fuck,” I breathe. A hand flies over my face. “Fuck!” I hiss. I sit up. When I look at her, it's obvious. No matter how many hands I take -- how much I exhale -- my soul is glued inside my body tonight and for many night after. There is no dieing. There is no loathing. When I look at her now, like this, human and caring -- her lips slick with the remnants of a very very good apology -- I can't find it in me to do anything else. “I forgive you.” 

I take her face in my hands, the broken one begging to pulse with pain. As I lean in, she leans back. She scowls at me, a threat in her eyes and her words as she says, “don't kiss me if you don't mean it.”

I chuckle. I smile. I kiss her the way she deserves. I kiss her with the mercy of the lamb. My hunt is over. I've lost it. Yet I can't handle that loss and I know that as well as I know that she knows it too.

I slip back into the hot spring. My kiss pulls off of hers and I run my good thumb along her bottom lip. 

“Someone else could kill you now. I can't handle that yet. Promise me you won't die,” I say.

“I promise,” she lies.

She lies, but I believe her. I believe her because I want to. I choose to. I need to. It's easier to believe her. For all those same reasons, she's lied. Because I want her to. I choose for her to. I need her to. It's easier if she does.

“Don't say that you love me,” I tell her. “But don't say that you hate me either. I don't think I could handle one and the other may shatter more than just my arm.”

So instead of stating anything at all she asks a question, “I have a friend named Rabbit. A few, actually. Would you like to meet her?”

I nod. She carries me to a padded bench and rambles on about this infuriating perplexing tantalizing woman she knows. She tells me things, some of which I remember and others that surprise me but feel familiar all the same -- like a church in the distance that you used to attend or an unfamiliar voice calling your name in friendship. 

We spend hours like that, reading kisses and twirling hair as she tells me those stories. Those memories. Slowly the red curtain begins to lift and I watch a stage show of not lovers, not enemies, maybe friends? Of people. Two really messed up broken people who break each other even more but glue together in the other a mosaic of all they could have been. A sword from the sands and armies of Azir, like the one in her story that the blacksmith split in two -- that was those women. That was us. Is us. Weapons meant to clash but kept in a fight nonetheless even when held by separate warriors. Even when used in separate battles -- those two blades forged from one are connected in history deeper than the Shuriman dunes. Deeper than the cave with the eight headed dragon. Deeper than the mines where a now dead Demacian once replaced herself with someone who's reflection bordered a Noxian but who's spirit wasn't strong enough to make it to general.

I may not remember those lives entirely. But now I remember her. All of her. In full living color. Every bad thing and every good thing. I remember us. And I love us. I know it's crazy, after all that she's done, but I feel it despite myself. The spirit is strong where the heart is weak. 

“You are many things, little rabbit,” she says after it all. “Principal of all, you are alive. So survive until I see you next. I expect you to be here. You . No one else.”

“Alright,” I nod. I kiss into her palm. My nose twitches and I smile because that proves who I am -- a rabbit. Her rabbit. “Don't belong to me, Ambessa.”

She laughs, low, hearty, and clear. She kisses my lips. “A wolf belongs to no one. Not even the lamb.”

“But it grows lonely without the lamb, doesn't it?”

“Of course it does. That's how I know it will return.”

“When you return, when we're us again, when we're Kindred, I need you to promise me something.”

“I don't even promise my children things I can't keep to.”

“This one is easy.”

“Speak it then.”

I smile, my fingers twisting a curl as my eyes settle on hungry wolvish eyes opposite me. Such benign hunger. Yet so dangerous to a bunny. 

“When the wolf comes back, the rabbit will run away,” I say. “It doesn't want to be dinner. Rabbits are quick. Lucky. It's why they're on the denarii, did you know that? I've forgotten who told me that once, but I think he meant a lot to your old friend. When the rabbit runs away, you'll be left with just a woman to replace her. That woman will be vulnerable. Confused. Not good at all with navigating Noxus and wars. She'll be a general but a shit one who's been fighting for likely years all on her own without any death to comfort her. To strengthen her. When you meet her, promise me you won't break her. Not like you did the first time. Promise me you'll be kind.”

She thinks for a long time. A time long enough that it's almost like she has a crystal wound of her own on her head to slow it down. Her face doesn't shift. It remains stone. Marble. A statue of a warrior in a courtyard of a home where boys tell stories of peach trees and Noxian soldiers fight with old weapons and bathe off the blood of the other who they love to hate. Then she takes my hand off of her hair. She moves it to her lips. She studies me with her eyes and thinks again. 

She props herself up on an arm, pulling mine over her waist. She pushes white hair behind my bunny ears and her fingers dust the bottom of my jaw. She doesn't smile. She doesn't glare. She just stares at me. Stone. Marble. 

Finally, she says, “When the wolf returns and the rabbit runs away, the woman that remains will not be a stranger to me. I will be loyal to her, if she will be ready for my loyalty, and I will be kind in harsh ways and she will be stronger because of it. Because that is how we Medardas treat our own.”

That knife always twisting inside of me finally pulls free. My wound hits air. It stings as it heals. A cool minty potion washes over it, dropping from that look of hers as she searches for something. For once I know what it is she hopes to find. 

“She has a name her own, you know,” I say. “This woman you plan to have join your pack.”

“What is it?”

I grin,  a smirk if she's ever seen one, and I shake my head. “Ask her when you meet her.”

She nods. A promise. One I fear she'll keep. One I hope she will. 

She's gone in the morning, leaving for her delayed respite back home. But the bench is still warm when I visit it. I run my hand along the padding, every rabbit inside of me thumping along with the blood in my veins as I think about the next time I see her. No promises of where or when. No. We never have those. It will likely be years before we meet again. Years for me to prepare. For my weakness I've found in her to harden into strength the way her love for her children strengthens her. Years for me to ready -- to toughen up -- to gain the strength I need to love her without hate. She will be her. I will be me. Until we are both ready to be us again -- as timed by whatever fate decides. All held in the hands of a promise that when I'm ready to finally run, the woman I leave behind will be cared for. Even loved, if there's room for that in Ambessa Medarda’s rusty old patchwork heart.

I should know by now that she's a big fucking liar.

Chapter Text

It's been three years since I've seen her, but I'll be slow to forget those scars. One down her lip, cutting over the curve of her stupid chin. Check. One on her cheek -- the one that always pressed like a kiss into my palm when I'd hold her face. Check. All my opponent is missing now is one over his eyebrow. Then he'll match her. Then I can kill her. Kill him.

If only the arena goers would stop shouting his name. It makes it hard to daydream. To imagine it's someone else throwing axes into my shield. Someone else spinning a blade across my calf. Someone else gloating. Egging on the crowd. The chant gets worse when he joins in. Reckoners. Always so haughty. At least he has that in common with her.

“Draven! Draven! Draven!”

By the gods, shut up!

I swing out my shield on its chain. It just misses, and in his step back he throws another spinning boomerang axe my way. He catches it. Steps. Another throw. Catch. Step. Like a little dance routine I can only half block. 

Just one more cut. One more false scar. One more and I can smash his face in.

This is taking forever.

Fine. Kite me. I can tank it.

I march towards him, shield up like a legionnaire. A blade cuts across my bicep before bouncing back. He catches it. Another comes towards my face. I pull my shield down and catch it with my hands.

“This is where Draven shines!” The man with the shoelace moustache says. 

He pulls out another axe to replace the one I've taken, showing it off to the crowd before cupping his ear like he can't hear their incessant screeching. A woman (or blue jay, from the sound of it) close to the edge of the Arena falls unconscious from hyperventilation of her own making. I roll my eyes all the way back to my opponent. I throw his axe at him. Not my main weapon. He dodges it with an, “oh! Too slow!” 

He chuckles and sends two more axes my way. They both bounce off of my shield and he catches them. 

“Looks like Draven’s at it again,” he says. “He just can't stop winning! Oh but look at this folks, The Rabbit is scowling. Can she make a move to get his shutdown?”

I rush forward, shoving my shield. It knocks him to the ground but before I can raise it to get a hit he's back on his feet, leaving the point of my bottom edge only scarring the dirt of Fleshing.

“Oh-ho!” He cackles. “Guess not. Now, Draven, you're a a Draven expert. Indeed I am, Draven.” Gods, is this guy an arena announcer in his off time? Give it up or get a better gimmick. “Do you think that with Draven’s shining optimism and inspiring attitude, he'll be able to kill a little old lady? That's a great question, Draven. Let's see what the fans think.”

He turns to the crowd but I've no more patience for his theatrics. Each move I make is aided with a flash of a face. Her face.

I move back my arm. I see her smile. No. Smirk. Full of fangs.

I click the button to release my shield. She's furious. Looking down on me. Down at me. Her lip bleeds with a cut I've caused.

I toss my chain forward. She's dead. Pale gold in dull eyes. Lax lips. Sunken cheeks. She's gone! And so is my shield.

It wraps around Draven, teaching the young man why he shouldn't turn his back to his enemy. I yank on it, hopping off my position to leap towards him. He unwraps with a dizzying spin and the bladed edge of my shield comes once across his browline. Twice across his neck. And on the third hit, I just shove the pretty boy to the ground entirely. 

There she is. Finally reflected. His eyes widen just slightly and then he's gone. I can see her now. Fucking Ambessa.

This! Is for going to Piltover! 

This! Is for starting a vain war!

This! -- Draven won't stop talking so I knock in his teeth with my shield to shut him up -- this! Is for everything you've put me through!

You liar!

You asshole!

I miss the first gong. I catch the second but ignore it. Gong three is louder. Harsher. I finally stop. His face is left an abstract portrait of Ambessa Medarda's corpse, painted in pulpy reds. Huffing and puffing, I tear my eyes up to the officiator box. How dare they interrupt me. Swain is there.

Swain is there.

He raises his thumb up. No. Raum does. The demon that owns his left arm. The man is left only daring me with his eyes to continue. Daring me to test his patience even more. Why does he always have to get involved?

With a growl, I shove myself off of the groaning man and storm from the Arena grounds. Somehow, I don't feel better at all.

***

I find myself seated across from the last person I want a lecture from right now. We're at a latrones board, but we're not playing. Not this time. I sit with my arms knotted tighter than the laces of my boots. Swain stands, his fingers on the grey stone table and his eyes (and the eyes of about thirteen ravens around the room -- what a lucky number) on me. It's been about six minutes since my summons here. Six minutes and neither of us has said a word. A new record. 

Finally, Swain pulls words from his mouth like a spider pulls silk -- that is to say, directly out of his ass. “I've spoken with Darius.  Suffice to say he isn't happy with the state you've left his brother in.”

“I'm allowed to sign up for fights. Draven is too. The man’s a free fighter -- he chose to be in that arena same as I did. Darius has no right to hold a grievance with me.”

“Draven stopped fighting when he heard the gong.”

I shrug. “It was loud. His fans were chanting. I must have missed the first one.”

“And the second?”

I don't grace that with an answer.

“Why did you sign up to fight? You haven't been a Reckoner for decades.”

“I was hoping they'd pit me against a woman. I need to hit one.”

How feminist, Rabbit. Whatever. Who cares how it sounds? It's the truth. 

“I can trust that you seek a stand in for a specific woman,” Swain says knowingly.

I snap, slamming my fists on the table and leaning forward in my chair, “She’s fucking dead, Jerry! She's not coming back. She promised me she wouldn't die and then she killed herself in Piltover. She's a liar!”

“None of the reports I've received have had any mention of suicide.”

“She picked a fight with the Black Rose. Of course it's suicide. She was too stubborn to let go of her stupid fucking vendetta and too arrogant to admit that in her state, fighting a war in that city was foolish -- useless!  -- for simple vanity!” 

I have to say it was suicide out loud. I have to blame her. It has to be her fault. But deep down I know the truth. It rattles along my bones, the hammer on piano strings, plinking and plucking away at the most painful and shrill bits of my soul. The truth that it's my fault. That I killed her. That my forgiveness led to this. My hatred kept her safe. My loathing -- my desire to kill her…then she made me give it up. She forced me to. So it is her fault! But it's also mine. Because I believed her. I believed her and all of her promises and I lived this whole time only to be left alone regardless. Alone. And vulnerable. 

Lamb embraces those who embrace their own death. Wolf hunts down those who run from the end. Never one without the other. Lately, I've been left with only runners. I can't do the chasing. Not with tired legs such as mine. Not with this aching weary heart I lug around nor with the spear that pierces it.

Swain doesn't take my side. He doesn't give me empathy. Not with his words. Not with his inflection nor his expression. Nothing. I'm left with just the ravens to talk to. Cold, dead, three-eyed birds that I dare say are growing fat and lazy up here at Trifarix level.

“Darius has requested you be removed from the Teos campaign,” Swain says calmly.

I laugh. “I planned that campaign. He can't take me off of it.”

“As Hand of Noxus, he can. And I plan to give him my support on the matter.” He rises to his full imposing height and moves casually to a bird. He holds out his mortal hand and a sleek dark bundle of feathers hops onto his finger. “The Faceless came to speak with Darius and I today. Seems she too is troubled with your actions since word of Ambessa Medarda’s death has reached us.” As his arm moves towards his chest, the little bird twitches its inquisitive head left, then right. It leans down to nuzzle at the crook of his thumb. “Her fears stem from the belief that you were more loyal to a woman than you were to a nation. I told her that as a general yourself, you had no loyalties to those of high rank such as General Medarda. Only to Noxus.” A glint finds his eye as his pale face turns over a black cloaked shoulder to me. “I do hope I was correct.”

I furrow my brows and bring a fist to my heart. I bow, not in that halfways way nobles and generals often bow to each other, but with my head fully down, my eyes closed. Trusting. Loyal. 

I say, “Ambessa Medarda may have dragged me into this nation, but I am here for it now. Not for her.” I rise, my gaze on the beak of his raven -- it's eyes are, after all, his own, and his face is now fully turned away from me again. “If anything, The Faceless and The Hand are simply sensing my loyalty to you. Noxus is my home. It is my blood. I have bled for it and thus it has bled for me -- corrupted my veins and born in me someone stronger. Though within this Noxian heart of mine, there still pumps a bit of blood I save for the day it is needed by you.”

The bird seems pleased. The man doesn't stir an inch. 

“Noxian blood,” he says. “Yet The Hand and The Faceless raise concerns. Certainly, you understand the position this puts me in, as I have always been a supporter of your conquests. It reflects poorly on both of us when you fall out of line, Rabbit. So step back in.” He turns to me, the bird flying off past my head in a way that, yes, admittedly, makes me flinch. It exits out a window and the man is magically a meter closer to me than he was before. “You are not to fight in the Fleshing Arena, not any arena, again. In fact, do not fight at all unless the Trifarix instructs you to do so.”

“I--!”

“This is your Grand General speaking. Not your friend.”

I sugar his shit before I eat it, pretending it's a big bowl of ice cream he's offered up. Got cherries and whipped cream and everything. How kind of him. 

“Yes sir,” I crunch through grinding teeth. 

“When Mel Medarda arrives with her mother's corpse, you are not to engage with her in any way. She does not exist within your realm.”

“On that, you and her mother agree.”

Swain smiles. He takes a seat, adjusting his chair and motioning to the game board.

“Latrones?” He offers.

I smile too. Even if I only mean it for the friend, not the Grand General. “Only if you let me win.”

***

The ‘do not engage with Mel Medarda’ order lasts for three days after her arrival. On the fourth, she makes a foolish call to host an event she was warned against on the third. 

Noxians don't hold funerals. Not in the way Piltovians do. Especially not for those we know were executed by someone in our chain of command. The Black Rose wanted Ambessa Medarda dead. Hosting an open public funeral, an entire wake afterwards, eulogies, that is too much honour for a woman stripped of warrior status. Too much honour, even, for a warrior. Though, if nothing else other than a slap to the face, the funeral -- the insolent demonstration, silent protest towards the Medarda matriarch’s murder  -- did offer one golden opportunity. My chance to prove my loyalty to the Trifarix. Specifically, to The Faceless who, until recent events, I didn't even realize knew of me. I should have known. She knows all, well, most, of what happens in Noxus. She knows about this.

I've been told to shut it down. One more fight with Ambessa -- our final scuffle. Maybe this one will end like the others. End with me in her arms. Dead too, but for good this time. No. Unfortunately my weapons are words and words don't tend to get you killed so flagrantly. As flagrant as this display. 

Mel Medarda sure knows how to throw a party. And what is a funeral but a party? We're in a graveyard but you could tell me it was a pop up flower shop and I'd believe you. Did Ambessa even like flowers? I suppose I'll never know now. I suppose there's lots of things I'll never know about her. So many things she'll never know about me either.

It's strange to grieve for someone like her when you're someone like me. Am I even allowed? When I find myself calling her name in the night, who am I calling for? If it was a lover, I can grieve. I know how to grieve a lover. You move on, as they'd want you to, and you tell them goodbye and with the flowers by their tombstone you leave a small piece of your heart too. A friend? I've grieved many. You shove them behind a thick curtain of red in your mind and spend the rest of your life convincing yourself that they didn't really matter as much as they did. You keep their advice in your soul by where their handprint once held you. Mothers are apparently grieved with bouquets and large gatherings. I wouldn't know but I know a Demacian who might. Her mother died when she was young. Too young to remember, even if she was alive within me today. 

Ambessa. 

I don't know what we had -- what we were. I always told her I hated her, but I don't know what was more true -- that, or the kisses we'd share after battle. 

As I look around the crowd, all I can think about is how much she'd hate us for grieving and being all sappy. Good. I'm going to grieve longer then, just to spite her. 

General Rabbit shows up to stop this antagonistic -- this foolish -- display. But once I'm here, someone else comes too. Someone meant to keep a promise. Even if Ambessa was lying, I meant every word of what I told her. The wolf has returned. The dead Demacian, left waiting for her. I give her the glacial time as I enter the crowd. I give her the time for a eulogy uttered only to me and a growing pile of lifeless rotting rabbits. 

Looks like I finally hopped too far. I keep waiting for you to take a breath. To shoot awake, dig out of that grave, and start barking orders. This is all a trap you've laid for me. One I've sprung. So go on, attack me, Wolf. 

I was Noxian because of you. I was everything because of you. Whether that be a good or a bad thing, I'm not sure.

Why didn't you call for me?

We always called for each other when we needed it, didn't we? Or was that just me, calling for you? I hoped you listened. I hope you're listening now. You've manipulated me. Again. By the cruelty of your compassion. 

You were death. So how can you die? 

May there never be a single word I’ve missed hearing you say, nor a single inch of your skin I've never kissed. No. There's at least one word for certain I know I'll never hear. One word I've never given you. Well, I'm here to give it now. Only for you, my wolf. For, even with all your broken promises, I still believe quite naively that you'll keep the last one you made. The one to not break me. To ask me for my name. Alice. My name was Alice once. And then you named me Rabbit and I was born into a world of color for the very first time. I mattered. I was strong. I am strong. Strong enough to walk away from you now.

Farewell, but not goodbye. For with you goes a part of my soul. Rabbit or Alice? I'm not sure who's buried here. So perhaps a third name then. Lamb. For, with Kindred, there can never be one without the other, now can there?

I've turned eyes. As I should. A Noxian General in my long black wool coat. A beautiful woman with a rabbit foot dangling off one ear and red lips painted in a frown. My own eyes don't turn at all away from the pile of stones, a mountain with twin drakehounds flying as flags at its peak. Not until I breathe, and I finally let go. Dead again, after all these years of waiting. I'll thank her, at least, for returning. Even in a box.

I move my attention to the crowd. Haven't seen her in years but the reflection of that little girl and her wire wrapped curls beams in the eyes of the gold wrapped woman in the front row. She has the same fire -- the same bite -- in her expression that her mother always had. She's even dressed Noxian, in red and steel. And black of course. Always black when in mourning. 

Hands in my jacket pockets, I make my way to her, splitting the guests like a parting river around a stubborn rock. Paths of life move much the same.

“I've been sent on orders of the Trifarix to shut this down,” I say. “It's disrespectful.”

Mel Medarda stands toe to toe with me, her bark matching the bite I saw before, “you can inform the Trifarix that grieving is not illegal. Not even in Noxus. I've already lost my mother to them. I refuse to lose my patience as well.”

“Shut it down.”

Clockwork gears churn in her dark eyes. She studies me, searching. Her lips press to a subtle pout as her face softens. She pushes further. I'm not sure what she finds. Where she's looking. But she finds something and it mellows her just slightly. 

She thinks again while she answers me, tongue half on her words and half on the back of her teeth. “If you were her friend, you should join us. Share a few words.”

“I wasn't her friend,” I lie. “This is Noxus, pup. If you don't want me putting an end to this,” I take a step closer. Too close. Our noses nearly brush. “Stop me.”

She searches again. Then she punches. I can’t say I expected her to, but I did suggest it. It's a weak hit from a soft manicured hand and it reminds me all too much of her brother for comfort. I shove her back. So far back, in fact, that she trips over a loose stone at the base of the grave, nearly knocking the entire formation over. 

“Try again,” I growl.

Her jaw clenches. Feet plant. The training I know her mother insisted on kicks in and she turns her hips into a hit I let her land right against my cheekbone. 

“We're staying,” she says. She states. It's a fact.

My hand comes up to rub the mark and shield the bit of satisfaction bruising my lips. Feels good. I've missed the sting of a wolf bite. 

I reach past the wolf pup to pick up an extra stone. Weaving to her other side, I place it first to my lips and then on the grave’s pile. I nod. I wish I could salute.

“About time,” are the only words I can find to actually say. 

Then I walk away and leave them all to grieve.

When I return to the Trifarix it's to a furious illusion sent by The Faceless and a demon-armed general ready to wash his hands of me. I can feel the disappointment from the doorway. 

“What was that?” The Faceless hisses. “We gave you a simple assignment, General Rabbit. Now give us a reason your failure should not result in punishment.”

Look at where Ambessa’s pride got her. Let your grievance lie in her grave alongside her body.

I take a knee, saluting low. Respectful. To both of my commanders. 

“I was following another order,” I say. “One not to fight. Mel Medarda is a wolf. Wolves lash out and bite when they're hurting. I didn't see a way to continue shutting down the ceremony without getting into a physical altercation.” My voice turns from sterile to genuine when my eyes find their forms. Darius will still be angry with me, but I'll take two out of the three on my side. Because I need them now. More than ever before I need my nation. My country. My purpose. Noxus is the only piece of Ambessa I have left and it's the only thing Rabbit has ever lived for other than her. I can't throw it away from one doltish fight in Fleshing. “I apologize formally for my actions these past few weeks. Namely, for my disgraceful missteps here in Noxus Prime. Beyond that, I apologize further for causing you to question my loyalty to our home. To you. General Medarda’s death struck a chord with me that I handled poorly. I will not repeat my mistakes. I need Noxus. It's…it's all I have left to fight for. I need Noxus, but I want you. I want to fight for you again. I believe in you. I always have and until my final breath I always shall. So, please,” I bow again, my forehead cool against the marble floor, “allow me to fight. Make me your trusted weapon once more.”

They weigh my words but the truth in them is as open as my soul now. With the Faceless, I won't be her favourite toy but I'll be back in the chest beside the balls and the teddy bears. With Swain, good ol’ Jerry, little will change at all except his guilt over playing latrones with me will ease. He'll never thank me for swallowing my pride like this -- for making his life easier with Ms Black Rose and mystique. He doesn't have to. I'll know what he means when he starts letting me win.

***

“How is it that you got both my place in the Teos campaign and the choice of our activity for today?” I quirk a brow at Samira from behind the liquor she specifically advised me against drinking post-tattoo.

“I rubbed your lucky rabbit's foot,” she says, lurching forward to paw at my earring. She laughs as I swat her away. “That looks stupid, by the way.”

“Have you looked in a mirror recently? At least I don't do battle in a miniskirt and high heels.”

“Maybe you should! Gives the enemy something beautiful to look at before they die.” She takes my alcohol and offers herself a sip. “Speaking of admirers, it seems you have one.” She nods past my shoulder. 

I angle my glass of water (the only other beverage we've got between the two of us that has by default become mine) and play I spy in the reflection. I spy something…lupine.

“More like a stalker,” I say. I drink from the glass, letting her slip back into where she can't be seen and I can't be bothered. “You know her brother stalked me too once. I have this effect on wolves. They get attached to me. Can't help themselves.”

“It's that blood trail you leave,” Samira jokes. Then she wiggles her eyebrows, her lips pressed together all smug, and adds, “Or she smells that new tattoo on your hip.”

The tattoo is of a wolf chasing a rabbit. It curves down the curve of my hip bone. An endless chase. A part of me finds solace knowing that little rabbit is forever safe from its jaws. Another part of me sorrows for it. It will never know how warm and cozy a wolf’s mouth can be. A lovely place to nap. Like a hug with teeth.

“Shut up.”

She just laughs then stands. “I'm going to the bathroom. Try not to miss me while I'm gone.” 

I won't miss her at all so long as she leaves that drink. She doesn't. Reading my thoughts, she chugs it down with a wink. She makes a big show of sighing all satisfied. As she walks away she calls back at me, “drink that water. It's good for your ink.”

I decide fresh air might be better. I've never been a smoker, but I'm all for smoke breaks. There's something about the silence of a place just outside of chaos. Alleys behind bars. Outside stairs to the door of a packed theatre. These are the places I've always breathed the best.

After the funeral, I decided to cut my hair. Something needed to change and a part of it just felt too covered in her memory. Like they'd all leaked out of my head and greased up the ends. There were kisses tangled in those bunny buns. Wolf blood weaving through every lock. I could still feel her pulling it when I thought about her hands. I still can now, even with it all gone -- replaced by this white streaked bob and bangs (it's always bangs when you have a mental break, isn’t it?). I guess it's like phantom pain. Is it like phantom pain? I should ask Swain.

All of my pondering gets interrupted when a little wolf pup slinks into view beside me. She isn't covert. Doesn't know that she needs to be.

“General Rabbit,” she says.

“Mel Medarda,” I say. I don't look at her. I keep my eyes on a scan for birds. “If you're angry about the funeral, I suggest you drop the matter. Grudges against the Trifarix didn't end well for your mother.”

“How did you know my mother?”

“It's complicated. She wouldn't want you talking to me.”

“Good thing she isn't here then.”

“Grand General Swain doesn't want me talking to you.”

“Good thing he isn't here then.”

Half a laugh escapes me. I finally turn to her. “He's everywhere.”

She steps closer to me, those eyes so like her mother on my own, and says, “I have this power I have yet to fully understand but what little I do know about it is that it helps me to feel things. Feel what others feel. When you approached me at my mother’s funeral I felt that I had seen you before somewhere. Then I connected to your emotions and I remembered where. I didn't know your name then. I still know very little about you. But I know how you felt about my mother. I know you trusted her. And I know that if she let you into our home that night in my memories, then she trusted you too.” Something sharp and flat is pressed into my palm covertly. “If you're free to speak further, I believe I have something you might like to discuss. Meet me there.”

She turns to walk away, leaving me with a note -- a note! -- in my hand. 

“Hey!” I call. 

She pauses and turns to me, the gold on her skin dancing beneath the lamplight of the night. I hold up the little square of paper, not bothering to read it.

“I literally saw the Faceless just today,” I say. “Leader of the Black Rose? Whatever you're doing? Do it better.” I march up to her and force the paper back into her hand. “Don't write anything down that can be traced. Don't speak with leads you don't understand based on emotion alone. Noxus one oh one: operate in secret because everybody knows somebody that you don't want to know.”

“I am well versed in covert politics from my time in Piltover.”

“This isn't Piltover.”

“My mother treated it like Noxus, and look where that got her.”

I punch her then. I instantly regret it as the fangs of Ambessa’s ghost and the beak of one of Swain's spirit birds both gouge my arm. I can't help it. She just looks too much like her mother and she was pissing me off. 

Shit. 

My eyes catch on a trio of red ones between an oil slick of onyx feathers. There's only two reasons people would be standing as close as the wolf pup and I are now and I'm not supposed to be fighting. That leaves me with one option. I grab her by her reeling shoulders and pin her to the bar’s outer wall. My lips lean in towards her ear, my knee flush with the mortared stone between her legs. 

“The birds have eyes,” I whisper quickly, “and ears.”

She clocks the raven and so her hands come to my low back. She hushes to me, “Swain?”

I hum in confirmation. Ambessa’s ghost nearly breaks her tooth on my bones at this point. That image makes me smile just a bit. “Look, I'm banned from your home. You can't be seen coming to mine. Just this show enough is going to get me in trouble but I can play it off as being drunk and really missing your mother. There's a noble, Lord Vladimir, he's having a party tomorrow night and the ravens won't be able to get in. The Black Rose is sure to be crawling the place but his Crimson Circle of allies isn't too keen on them so they'll be minimal and there with an objective other than you. Vladimir will like what you did for your mother -- showing them up like that -- but he won't be able to tell you that directly. Make his acquaintance and get yourself an invite. We can talk there.”

“Won't there be a spy?”

I chuckle, “honey, I am the spy.”

I can feel the wariness in her hands. See it in her breathing. 

I pull out of her neck to drag my fingers beneath her chin. I tilt her eyes into mine and ask a silent question. She's an empath, right? Does it feel like I'm lying? Does it feel like I'm on your side?

She finds in me the resolve she needs. A confirmation told through only glances. I'll see her tomorrow. For now? Well I'm drunk, remember? I can't be the one to stop this. She shoves me back with a knee to my diaphragm. A damn powerful knee! Gods, I can't breathe. Can't cough either. She really is her mother’s daughter. 

The wolf pup storms off, leaving me to hold my stomach as my lungs spasm back into a rhythm I can tolerate. 

“So,” Samira gloats behind me in the apparently open door, “I'm guessing you didn't take my advice on the booze?”

I gag on fake vomit and give her the middle finger. She laughs.

***

How to describe a gathering at Lord Vladamir's mansion? Start with your usual Noxian architecture. Now date the inside back a millennia and add truly tacky curtains. Fill it to the brim with people under the age of twenty using blood magic and people over that age who look very uncomfortable and all bear family sigils of some kind. Now add Corvelle Noradi in the corner by the (punch?) bowl with her niece, Ophelia, who I believe I've met a total of once and who creeped me out. She has snow white hair and the expression of a teenage mean girl that you never quite stop getting unnerved by, no matter how old you get. 

I'm just about to brave the younger Noradi for the chance to speak with my old friend, but the host of the party catches me first. He's a man older than time with white hair and red eyes who definitely does not drink blood. He also knows who I am. He tries to press me on Swain in a casual indirect sort of way and I, with a bat of my eyelashes, give the answer I was instructed to: Swain is angry with me because I refused to apologize for my fight with Draven and I've been ignoring his orders to stay away from the Medarda family. The nobleman doesn't seem to fully buy my excuses, but he lets me free nonetheless as a familiar face catches his eye in the crowd. 

“The two of you must have a lot to talk about,” Corvelle says. “The loss of memories to a red curtain.”

I didn't notice her approach but I'm glad she did and even gladder Ophelia is way over by the (punch?) bowl. 

“Corvus!” I pull her into a tight hug that she tightens even more with her one arm. Laughing, she lifts me off the ground. Show off. “Put me down you goliath!”

She does but not without a question, “How’d you sneak past the snipers, little raven?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m that one’s escort. Told her mother these things get rowdy.”

It's funny. Years ago Corvelle would be the last person to go to for gossip. But after losing her arm in that cave, it's the way she's kept in Swain’s circle. Though at the fringes now, for the security of her position as a spy, she's still about as loyal to him as I am. Still, we never get to speak because up until recently I've been his golden child and she's been someone he ‘stopped associating with’. On paper anyways. If one good thing has come from Ambessa’s death, it's our reunion.

“Now that we're both perma-banned by Swain, we should catch a drink sometime.”

“As long as you don't try to kiss me outside of the bar.”

I cock my head for a moment, nose twitching in bemusement. 

“Mel Medarda?” She grins. “Really Rabbit, that's just plain gross. Didn't you know her when she was like ten?”

Unfortunately. Makes my cover story a bit more than awkward. Slightly illegal, actually. No wonder she kneed me so hard.

“I prefer the Corvelle that was bored by gossip,” I tease.

“Just, don't be too stupid, okay? We need you alive if I’m grabbing that drink later.”

“The wolf pup will hardly kill me.”

“Association with her might. That family is cursed, Rabbit. Pricked by a thorn they can't fish out of the wound. Just…be careful.”

She's just bitter about her arm. What Ambessa did in those caves. I get it. I'm bitter too about that day. “Will do. Thanks.” 

On that, the warning is thrown immediately away because the pup herself catches my attention across the room. I excuse myself from conversation. Suddenly I have to use the bathroom, you know? That's believable. Not by Corvus, but by someone who doesn't know me well. 

“Any chance the raven with you didn't pick up on that?” I ask.

“Rabbit,” there's prudence in her voice. 

I take her hand in my own and squeeze it gently. “I didn't see you by the punchbowl. You didn't see me go to the bathroom.”

With a sigh, she nods. Her eyes are still the color of concern, but the rest of her face has returned to stone. I thank her with a shake of the hand I'm holding before letting go and weaving away into the party. 

The pup and I meet by -- or rather, in the bathroom, as I’m swept inside before I can protest.

“The hallway would have worked just fine,” I say, arms crossed. “Could have watched for others easier there too.”

“Didn’t want to take a chance at you fake kissing me again,” the pup barks.

Okay, touche. 

“This is the part where you tell me your plan to tear down the Trifarix,” I say, “Black Rose and all, to rebuild a peaceful, political Noxus.”

“You say that as though being anti war is something to be ashamed of.”

“Ashamed? Not at all. Afraid of, however? Let’s say you fail. They’ll kill you. All for what, building a respectable legacy a top the iron and blood forged throne your mother has left you? You can knit as many cushions for that thing as you want, but the swords will still poke through. Furthermore, let’s say you succeed.” I sigh and lean against the door, arms still crossed. “I’m a weapon, pup. Most all of your allies will be. What use is a weapon after a war? We’ll only rust. Get bored. You can end our battles, sure. Give us new leadership. But you can’t end Noxus. This is what we’re built on -- it’s who we are.”

“Perhaps in my lifetime those issues can’t be solved. But one day they can be. I’ve spent much of my life fighting to fix problems beyond what I hold in my hands -- in my blood. I’m used to tough odds. Now, I’ve come to Noxus not to fix, or to change it, as you say, but to work on an issue closer to home. My mother’s entire identity was roped up in this nation and all of it’s skeletons. My grandfather’s identity, my brother’s…we may span the globe, but our family’s core is here in this bloody place full of death and carnage and war. I’m all that’s left of my family now. Of this branch of it. The rest of our clan have all been victimised by the same group. My mother died seeking revenge. But my mother ran.”

“Your mother was connected to wolf. Of course she ran. She was chased most of her life by death. But staying here, fighting The Faceless and her cult? They’ve been around much longer than you and I doubt you’ll get rid of them.”

“I don’t aim to be rid of them. I only aim to bring as much good as I can here -- stability. For my family. For the nation they, both in their unique ways, thought they could make a home in. My brother was doing good things here before they killed him. That’s what I’d like to do, after I take them down a peg.”

I laugh. Of course I laugh. It’s stupid. But it’s also exactly what I’d expect from her. She’s not her mother. No. She’s no lamb either. 

“Your mother ran. She called herself a wolf but she wasn’t. Wolf was the one doing the chasing. You…you’re chasing. She’d be proud of you. She’d call you an idiot, but she’d be proud.”

It was the pup’s turn to laugh, though subtle and morose. 

I gather myself. I gather all she’s told me into a big ball in my head and label it ‘Medarda Master Plan’. She wants to cement her place in Noxus; I wanted to do the very same once. She’s angry and hurting and grieving the way her mother was and she’s about to make all of the same mistakes yet, for some reason, I don’t feel worried like I did when Ambessa started all of this. Maybe it’s because of her eyes. Because of the hunt in them. Ambessa, that final time I saw her, she had almost turned to prey but Mel…My father was a hunter; I recognize a predator when I see one. Maybe I’m the idiot here because whatever allyship she wants to propose, I’m considering it.

“Why will you be different?” I ask. “Your mother lived, breathed, bled, and shat Noxus and she failed. What keeps your vengeance from becoming a leash to your grave?”

“Before I can tell you that, I need to be certain that I can trust you.”

“You can’t. I’m Swain’s golden child. Just yesterday, I pledged my loyalty to him and The Faceless. I’m literally at this party to sniff out traitors like you and gather their information. I may be pulled, semi-permanently, from the battlefield, but I’m still a Noxian general with personal legions under my control the size of your entire Piltovian army. You have a name, Mel Medarda, but I have connections, resources, a history here. So you can’t trust me, but you may well need me regardless.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about loyalties, general.” From her black sleeve she pulls a stack of letters wrapped together with twine. I recognize their broken orange seals and laugh again, shaking my head. She isn’t deterred by my amusement. “I found these in my brother’s home. He kept them all under the floorboards where the agents of the Black Rose wouldn’t find them.”

“What else was kept there?” I tease, making an obvious ‘I’m a spy, please give me all your information’ sort of face. 

“Information. And a note. He knew they were coming for him before they came. My mother saw my brother as a weakling -- as someone defenseless but his words,” she gestures to the letters I wrote -- the ones he apparently considered significant, “that was his weapon. He has allies here in Noxus. My mother has even more. You say I need your resources, general, that’s not true. I have my own. Yet, in his note, my brother wrote only one line to me directly -- not to our mother, not to whoever else he expected to find his stash -- to me.” She leaves me with that cliffhanger for a beat. Like she’s trying to convince herself that my sarcasm and threats are more miniscule than her brother’s note. Like it’s the first piece of information she’s given me so far that isn’t obvious to anyone who sees her presence here. She’s right. Everyone already assumes what else she’s told me. She continues, her voice lower, “ If something happens to mom, find Rabbit, he said. Imagine my surprise reading those words after meeting you at the funeral.”

He…he was a foolish child.

“My brother trusted you,” She says, smushing the letters into my chest where they burn a hole straight through to my heart. “My mother trusted you. There were very few things the two of them agreed on so if you were one, then that’s reason enough that I should trust you too.”

“Or it’s a common baleful thread between two people who died prematurely.”

She examines me. Not with her eyes, but her empathy. I can feel it now. It pokes and prods at my ego like Ambessa used to prod at my unbalanced stance when we’d spar. She dips mental fingers into my aura, digging past all of the red and black to where my heart lay -- whatever color that may be. She smiles proudly -- like she’s satisfied with herself -- like she’s just won a game I didn’t know we started playing.

“There’s something you’d like to see,” she says, “that I cannot show you here. I think you’ll find that it’s all you need to swear your loyalties to my cause.”

“Is it a bribe?”

“It’s hope.”

She’s learned her lesson about written messages so instead of a paper I get a hand in my palm. I open my mouth to scold her but then go dizzy for a moment. I rip my hand away and hold my throbbing head, the echoes of magic ringing through it. 

“What did you just do, witch?” I snap through a groan I can’t manage to suffocate.

“I put a shield around the part of you that I trust. Now The Faceless won’t be able to see it. In your letters to my brother you speak often of death -- of becoming a new person. I won’t pretend to fully grasp your philosophy, but I will stake a claim in that Rabbit that I’ve just shielded.”

The part of me that belongs to the Medardas? “That’s not a rabbit,” I chuckle, shaking my head. 

She doesn’t question me. 

“I will cover for you here. You are to leave scorned -- disgruntled at my rejections of you”

“Wait,” I say, putting up a hand. “I don’t like that cover story. It’s weird. Paints me in a bad light.”

“It explains why we disappeared together and why you’ll be leaving the party early alone.”

“Who says I’m leaving the party?”

“It also gives them no reason to believe we’re working together. You’ll accept this final rejection and be done with the Medardas forever, seeing as the only one left doesn’t care for you.”

“Hurtful. Also, we’re not working together, pup.”

“Good. Say that when Swain asks you. For now, on your way home, stop by the east wall. There’s kennels there -- you’ll get a pet to fill this void.”

“There’s no void.”

Something sharp gets handed to me. Point first, of course, to quite literally prove her point. I roll the object in my hand then have to laugh again. A signet ring. A Medarda signet ring. I try to hand it back but Mel won’t take it.

“Kino had an ally that worked the kennels,” she says, “a trustworthy man who wants an end to these battles…if only for the sake of the drake-hounds who get blown up on the front lines all too often. Gaius.”

I think it over. All of it. I think about how stupid she is giving me this. Giving me the name of an ally. The location of some secret that I could easily turn around and hand off to Swain -- to the Black Rose. I want to scold her. I want to mother her -- to teach her a lesson -- to prove my point by turning her in. But when I look at her all I can see is that little girl at the tea party holding trade deals beside counselor Sparkledoggy. That, and I see Ambessa. I see the soft side of her that would do anything -- kill anyone -- for her children. I see the woman I loved and only that. I see none of the slaver that took me nor the warlord I wished death upon for so long. 

Damn irritating wolves.

I laugh again, more at myself this time, because I know I’ve made my decision. She knew it minutes ago but I’m just now figuring it out. Smart little pup; She really has trapped a rabbit with that magic of hers.

So I walk to the kennels. I flash the ring at Gaius. I get lead to a basement. What I see there sends me to the dirt floor on my hands and knees. It has me crawling under the earth itself. A wolf. A lamb. A respite. Lamb’s respite.

Before Kindred lays a long flat mat stuffed with cotton and likely taken from a soldier’s kit. It’s covered with blankets and bordered with a glow as blue as wolf’s eyes. But when I look at him, he is not hunting. Nor is lamb readying her bow for a final blow. I haven’t seen death in some time. Now I know it was because they were busy. For, within that shitty makeshift bed, tucked in like an ill child, is Ambessa. She’s no corpse. Not rotted in the slightest. But she isn’t alive either. She does not breathe. She is not warm but neither is she cold. Every beat of her heart is her last. While within this zone, however, this halfway between the lamb and the wolf -- the white nothingness and the hunt of the shadows -- she cannot die. 

I kill the rabbit that knows and I send the other away back to the kennels. Alice stays here. Always. And Alice holds her hand, using the other to pointlessly smear tears beneath her sobbing eyes.

Through Ambessa, I've learned Might. Through Swain, Vision. Now, it seems the pup will be teaching me Guile. I will be stronger soon. Strong enough, even, that when this respite ends and she is back, the woman left standing in the rabbit’s place will be able to hold up this one lying here.

***

When the zone of neutrality lamb had blessed Ambessa with ends, Mel and I have already been busy for months. I’m lucky enough to be there when she wakes up. There’s magic that buzzes around her skin. Something cool and healing. I at once take back everything bad I’ve ever said about magic.

For a moment, I turn my attention to the figures always just out of view with a warning glare. Then, rather than saying or doing anything at all, they simply disappear. A new heartbeat calls them -- a new mark to usher into the afterlife. But not her. Not yet. Not the one they’ve chosen. 

My name isn’t the first noise that leaves her dry lips. No, that’s a groan. But it is the second. “Rabbit?”

I almost hold her. Can’t quite bring myself to give her the satisfaction, however.

“Rabbit died,” I say casually, unable to wrestle away my grin. “Her spirit will haunt alongside Jericho Swain and his ravens and pale faced Black Rose woman. Alice though is property of the Medardas.”

“Alice?” She’s confused on more than just my name. With her voice so hoarse it almost doesn’t sound like her at all. Though, that hardly matters. Simply watching her lips form the word sends me swooning. It makes everything I’ve sacrificed up till now worth it. 

“The woman the rabbit left behind when it ran,” I explain. I can’t hold back anymore. I need to touch her. To prove that she’s real. I brush some hair from her face but it’s definitely not enough so I kiss her cheek quickly. It’s getting warmer again already, her skin. I never knew a corpse could get warm again. “It's nice to meet you. I've been told you've promised not to break me.”

Ambessa tries to sit up. I try to keep her lying down. She tries harder than I do and so she sits up. Then presses a palm to her head as she realizes why she should start listening to me more.

“Where is Mel?” She growls. I can’t tell if she’s angry, worried, or both. Likely she’s feeling a mix of every emotion right about now.

“She’s upstairs with Gaius.”

Ambessa moves a move to stand. This time I try harder and keep her down, pinning her in an unforgiving grapple, hands above her head and my weight on her stomach. She glares at me and tries to speak but I don’t let her.

“You cannot leave this room,” I explain with a glare of my own. “They all think you're dead. When I say they all, I mean the crows do too. Congratulations,” My smile infects me once again. “You're a ghost reborn in a warrior’s body. I've got a lot of experience dying. I can help you through this new stage of life. Your daughter has a plan. She's a smart one. You’ll listen to her and you’ll follow her orders from now on.”

She shakes her head, gripping at the straws I’ve hovered but not quite grabbing any. Then, when her face is about as scrunched up as a prune, she finally snatches a single thread of what I’ve said. “We’re in Noxus. Mel is in Noxus?” She tries to shake me off but I know that move. She taught it to me. I counter, keeping her pinned. Her head scolds her for those efforts -- I can see the migraine growing in her golden eyes. 

“You’re staying here. Mel’s orders. I’ll go get her and bring her down to see you.”

“Mel cannot order me to do anything that--”

“I suggest you start respecting that little pup. She’s a full grown wolf now and she’s been very busy keeping your sorry ass a secret. I think you might even owe her gratitude. Do you know the words ‘thank you’? Let’s practice together.” I release one of her arms to squish her lips up like a fish ‘forming the words’. I giggle because she looks so harmless like that. She uses it as an opportunity to flip us around. Gods. Even scowling I’ve missed having her pin me. I’ve missed everything about her. I won’t let them kill her again. I’ll make them sorry they ever tried. With the new head of the Medarda’s help, of course.

“Enough, Rabbit,” Ambessa scolds. She lances her headache straight through, disposing of the weakness the way she always disposes of things. How unproductive. “You cannot keep me here like a prisoner. Do not forget the loyalties of my legions. The network of informants I possess. We lie at the epicenter of my power. They may be able to best me in Piltover. But not here.”

“Those legions,” A now familiar regal voice calls from the bottom of the basement stairs. Ambessa and I both turn to Mel with very different looks. Mine is a smile. Hers is caught somewhere between relief and terror. “They are mine now. As is your network. If you’d like to remain under my protection, I suggest you make yourself comfortable here, wolf. And please, get off of my spy.”

“No, no,” My smile turns smirk and I grab Ambessa’s collar, pulling her down as close as I dare with those fangs of hers. “By all means, stay where you are. I’ve missed the view from here.”

Ambessa’s eyes flit between me and Mel warily as the old dog comes to terms with her new reality. She’s no longer at the head of this pack. No longer an alpha. But don’t worry -- a wolf doesn’t just toss away those elder members. No. They keep them near the front of the pack, hidden just out of sight where they’re safe. And she will be safe. Even without my hatred to shield her. Because Mel Medarda has a much better shield than I ever had. Hers is even magic!

Rabbit lives on as someone Ambessa shouldn’t trust. A rival. An enemy. A general and spy loyal to Jericho Swain and the Trifarix. Yet, for the first time in decades, Alice is back. Revived. It turns out that that dead Demacian wasn’t dead at all, but sleeping in lamb’s respite from life. Now that she’s awake again, her heart is settled in Noxus. A spy for the Medardas. A strong lamb with her strong wolf. Never one, without the other.