Ashetta’s eyes flickered down to the bird perched upon his hand, watched it crumple into a husk as the sound of his whistling replaced its song. What his words implied had a chill creeping up her spine, locking it into place as she watched him. Leaving her alive was an expression of gratitude. The raven-haired girl watched the remains of the bird thump lightly to the ground, and she swore her heart dropped with it, everything drowned out by the sound. His voice uttering her name broke through the muted sound of dread, and Ashe flashed her eyes back up at Attraes .
Her breath stalled as a grin slowly pulled the corners of his mouth up, and she didn’t know what it was about it that had her so frozen. Maybe it was the words he spoke as he pressed on that did it. She worked on her balance and stood straighter, taller, forced herself not to look down at her hands like there would really be gloves of sticky red over them. As if to punctuate his assessment of her, Ashe’s eyes never even flickered from his, even when dread coiled in her gut. ” … what could have been a rather...painful experience while you were out … “ She skipped over that with a wildly racing heart, unwilling to consider it yet. She focused herself on everything else he said, on every movement he made from where he sat.
How is it she had stumbled upon him? Following a wake of rot and decay - it didn’t quite surprise her that she had found a killer. But something about the way he spoke about it had inner hackles rising with wariness. Proud of the lives he’d taken … why did he take him? Who were they? A world they didn’t deserve. She wasn’t sure what to think of that or the casual way he talked about it, and she opened her mouth to tell him to clarify -
”Who...are...you Ashetta?”
The assassin’s hand left the tree, and she stood now on her own before the man she’d saved. Who was she? She might have snapped at him, hissed and asked what kind of fucking question that was, but she had asked him the very same. Ashetta refused to break his gaze, but she remained silent as her blood turned to ice. Who was she? Well… he was right in one thing about her - she could not deny that, would not. She saw the blood, the blank faces and glassed over eyes, the smell, the phantom gurgles and gasps and cries of death. Not just the ones who fell under her blades, but what of the ones she never meant to hurt? She had knowingly chosen to take lives, no matter what her mother said about her only being a child, she had still made that choice. Seven years old or seventeen, did it matter when the blood still looked the same on her hands every time?
”A killer is what I am,” she said as reached for the flask of water at her hip, never taking her eyes off of him as she pulled a short sip from it. ”Who I am..” She kept her eyes on him even as she replaced the flask back at her hip and stood on steadier legs. He had given her an honest answer it seemed. Certainly nothing clear, but she could feel the truth in what he said, she could see it. He was a killer, and a cold one. ”I’m no one. Nothing.” Ashe let silence lapse for a long moment as she regarded him, and she wondered for a moment what it was like: to not only accept what the atrocities she had commit, the people she hurt, but to take pride in it. But didn’t she already? Didn’t such a large part of her revel in the hunt, in the kill, the way her name had been feared by the masses? Didn’t she love getting away with a masterful kill, didn’t she learn to crave the rush of delivering death to the ones that actually deserved it?
It didn’t matter now. Did it ever? She was nothing, and if she stayed on track… everyone would forget her, and she could find her way out of this place, out into that bigger world. ”Why are you a killer, Attraes?” Ashetta asked, and her tone had lapsed into something far more academic.. Though her eyes sparked with recognition now, understanding the likeness between two predators.
ashetta
it's live or die my way.
|
