She’d just been playing hide and seek with the girls. Felicity and Isabella had loved to play hide and seek with their sister-in-law. They thought it the greatest game in the world when they had to try and find the assassin that knew how to render herself invisible, laughter high and shrill when she leaped out at them. When she had to find them, she almost always let them believe she couldn’t locate them. This time… this time she had opened their bedroom door with a grin on her face.
Then the little apartment exploded.
She hadn’t been moved or effected, but the building crumbled and burned, and smoke hurt her eyes, filled her lungs. She stared at Felicity and Isabella… what was left of their small bodies, Scorched, red, and gleaming. Limbs missing. Skinless. Lifeless. Ashetta hadn’t been able to move, just staring at their bodies in their beds. She looked down at her shaking hands then, covered in blood, and.. A bloody knife in her hand. Then very suddenly.. Gloved hands reached around her, familiar and harsh hands. The soft leather slid under her shirt, grabbed ahold of her jaw just below her throat. She felt the cool wood of a mask brush her cheek, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of those bodies. She couldn’t leave them there, she couldn’t. A cruel and warped voice had hissed in her ear: ”Continue.”
Ashe had rolled out of bed trembling, gasping, sobbing, breaking... remaining silent, so as not to wake her peacefully sleeping husband. She barely made it outside the door of the ruined building they’d made their home in before she emptied her stomach to the ground. Again and again, she retched until she had nothing left.. Then she shifted. Then she ran. Her breath was ragged under the light of the full moon, and wolf was panting heavily as she moved on trembling limbs over the barren earth at a breakneck pace. Her face was drawn, tongue hanging from the side of parted jaws, and she swore her entire pelt was bristled. She didn’t exactly know where, not yet. Her heart was racing too wildly, and all she could do was work her limbs, driving this body forward and feeling every moment of it. Every push and pull of powerful hindquarters and strong shoulders, claws digging into dirt and stone, large lungs filling and expelling with every thrum of her paws. This body was strong. This body was hers.
It had been nearly ten minutes of an all-out sprint, and then another fifteen of bounding through the night in this unnatural, unfamiliar world. She wouldn’t have admit it to anyone… but the unfamiliarity was comforting. There were no ghosts waiting here, not yet. Only in her head. She wouldn’t wake Alistair, she didn’t want to be drawn back into bed, she couldn’t. She thought to find Ronin, but no, he’d been grievously wounded by that monster at the spire. She thought to go alone, to do something, anything, but she needed to move. Then.. then she found herself at someone else’s doorstep. She stood on four paws with trembling legs, looking up at the door.. And there was a light flickering within. She didn’t expect the crashing wave of relief, and Ashe shifted.
She knocked on the door three times, catching her breath as the cold, near freezing night air kissed sweat-slicked skin. She wore only a short sleeve dark shirt, black breeches, and the boots she’d yanked on before stumbling out the door.. But the cold didn’t bother her. As soon as the door swung open, Ashe flashed her brightest grin - maybe a little too big, a little too much for what the assassin normally displayed. It was Celosia she set her eyes upon. ”Hey!” she said in a voice far too chipper, as if showing up out of breath in the middle of the night were entirely normal. ”Hope I didn’t wake you. I, uh, just passing by, to the ruins, and uh.. You, uh, did you wanna come?” Gods, her words were a mess.
ashetta
it's live or die my way.
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