The club was too loud for mourning. Too bright for truth.
Red light pulsed overhead like a slow heartbeat, washing the dancers and tables in a seedy, constant dusk. The scent of cheap perfume tangled with cigarette smoke and stale liquor. Sweat beaded on the walls like condensation in hell. Bass thumped from speakers embedded into everything—walls, floors, bones—demanding bodies forget themselves.
Katherine Bishop looked like sin on a suicide timer.
She lounged in the corner booth like a queen waiting for her crown to rot. Black glitter traced the curve of her collarbone. Her lipstick was dark, slightly smeared from the rim of too many glasses. The kind of smudge no one dared to call messy.
A dancer passed by—latex, lashes, legs for miles. She winked. Kat winked back. Easy. Effortless. Like she wasn’t dying.
Kassadin sat across from her, hunched slightly forward, a glass of whiskey in front of him that hadn’t been touched since they sat down. His shoulders were too tense for the setting, his eyes tracking every twitch of her hand.
“Happy thirty-third!” Kat toasted, voice rasped from smoke, exhaustion, and whatever pills she’d swallowed in the bathroom. “Here’s to making it one more year.”
She raised her glass and smiled, too wide, teeth flashing in the low light.
“Though let’s be honest- this birthday’s more of a bonus round.”
Kass’s eyes flicked to her drink. The ice was melting faster than she was.
“How many of those have you had?” he asked, nodding toward the nearly empty bottle beside her.
“Not enough” she grinned, and it was all teeth again. “You know what they say. “Drink ‘til you forget your deals with the devil.”
And she meant it. She needed to forget.
Sixty-eight souls. Sixty-eight lives ended by her hand, her blade, her words. Some were cruel, twisted things, murderers, abusers, power hungry husks who’d made their own hell. But others? They hadn’t felt evil. Just… desperate.
She saw their faces when she closed her eyes.
So she kept her eyes open. Kept drinking. Kept dancing toward the next job with a smile and a laugh and another little red capsule that burned all the way down.
Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for the bottle again. Just a twitch. Barely visible. But Kass saw it.
He leaned forward, voice low, too quiet for the music.
“Kat” he said, “whatever it is, just tell me.”
She blinked. Something in his tone scraped against her.
“What, you want a confession? A breakdown? Maybe a group cry session with Cabal and a deck of tarot cards?”
She laughed. Too hard. Too loud. People looked, but she didn’t care.
“I’m fine, Kass. It’s our birthday. Let’s celebrate the fact I’m still breathing.”
Her eyes fluttered, glassy. The bottle slipped from her hand. Her whole body went rigid—
Then her back arched, violently, like something inside her had detonated.
The shot glass she’d been holding shattered in her hand. Crimson bloomed across her palm as shards sliced into her skin. Her breath hitched then stopped.
Her head rolled back, her body slumping sideways into the booth, glitter scattering like dust over her skin. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes still open, were unseeing.
Kass was up before anyone else in the club even noticed. The music throbbed. People laughed. A dancer flipped her hair in the background, unaware that someone had just dropped dead six feet away.
He skidded around the table, dropped to his knees beside her, one hand already checking her neck, her wrist- anything.
“Somebody call for help! Call Cabal!”
His voice cracked and shattered like glass against tile. The panic in it silenced the people around them faster than the bass ever could.
Kass gripped her bloodied hand, not caring about the cuts. Her fingers were slack in his. Her lips were turning blue.
He pressed his forehead to hers for one fractured second, rage and grief spilling into the space between them like smoke from a house fire.
Kass didn’t let go of her hand.
Even when the blood from her shattered glass had dried sticky on both their skin. Even when her lips stayed blue and her body cold and still. Even when the people in the club realized what had happened and began backing away, muttering prayers or curses or both.
The bouncers cleared the area. Someone cut the music, and in the sudden silence, all Kass could hear was the pounding of his own pulse in his ears—and the absence of hers.
He cradled her close now, crouched in the booth with her limp against his chest, her head tucked under his chin the way it used to be when she cried through nightmares as a kid.
Except now she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t doing anything.
“You’re not done yet.” he whispered, voice cracking. “You’ve still got—what, thirty-two more? You said a hundred, right? Sixty-eight so far.”
He tried to laugh. It came out hollow.
“You don’t get to quit halfway. Not now. Not when I. . . ”
He stopped. Couldn’t finish. His throat was raw.
“Don’t you do this to me, Kat.”
His tears were silent at first, then shaking.
He clenched his jaw to stop the sob from tearing loose, but it didn’t matter. It broke anyway, deep, guttural, ugly.
“We were gonna fix this” he choked out. “I was gonna figure it out. I just needed more time.”
A siren wailed in the distance. Not a city siren.
An alarm built into their fathers establishments. One that summoned their own people and told everyone inside to move along or become an enemy of the Bishop name.
Somebody must have called him. Probably one of the dancers. Maybe the bartender who saw the color drain from Kass’s face the second Kat fell.
He rocked with her, gently, numb fingers brushing the hair back from her face. Her makeup had started to smudge—mascara bleeding in thin streaks beneath her eyes. The glitter on her skin caught the ambient red light still glowing above them.
She looked like a goddess in mourning.
Or maybe a saint at rest.
But he knew better. He knew what she was. What she’d become.
“You carried sixty-eight souls” he whispered. “You carried every damn one.”
Another pause. Another breath. A long look at the sister who had broken herself on the weight of a promise.
The club was silent. No one dared speak. Not with that kind of grief in the air. Not with Kass Bishop—the Kass Bishop—rocking his dead twin like a child and whispering apologies into her hair.
The world held its breath.
A cold draft slipped under the walls, chilling even the sweat on Kass’s back.
The scent of mint, steel, and death coiled around the booth like smoke with memory.
Kass didn’t lift his head.
He felt the change. He didn’t need to look.
“Cabal’s here,” he said softly, voice hollow now.
His grip tightened just once around Kat’s limp fingers before he finally let them go.
@imthehottwin @mortesadversarius
areudirty
origamiaround
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
2087
