lose your soul

That’s pain he can’t work with. Vladimir’s features tense and twist into something agonized, and the grip he has on Talon’s face tenses before it slips off. He digs his fingers into his throat, and thinks about tearing it open, ripping every vein and artery and cord and piece of muscle out of it, dragging it all across the ground, stain the wood and the trees. He tries, he fucking tries, grabbing Talon’s wrist while he attempts to suffocate the life out of him.

“You—” he curses, twisting the wrist to pull the knife free. Vladimir heaves something thick with his own blood, feeling cool air rush over his agonizing wound, bones bare for the wind to gnaw on. He bends Talon’s wrist in such a way that he’s trying to snap it in half, but his focus is all on the magic he’s trying to summon out of him. The blood on his hand and in his ribs should do something, should thrum with life and morph into the blades he needs, grow in shape to reaching claws and dig into every orifice of Talon’s and start to burn him from the inside.

But the connection feels severed. Running his mind and thoughts over the blood, but it just runs out of him, dripping down his chest and staining his shirt. He feels human. He feels mortal. But he still hears the screams of his mentor and everyone before that, furious and demanding and crying for revenge. Vladimir’s teeth grit and he screams when he makes a fist and slams it into Talon’s cheek, where his blood stains his skin. Where is it. Work. WORK! WORK!

His skin tears and rips when he tries to force himself on to Talon with the knife in his wrist, driving it towards him. His hand slips, and the knife plunges itself, for just a moment, against his leaning shoulder. Power bleeds from him. He should be able to burn Talon from the fucking inside. He should be able to drop into the sanguine essence and feel himself heal, but—he can’t. He feels the pressure in his knees whenever he drops into the pool, but nothing happens. Nothing is happening. Nothing is fucking happening and he’s slamming his bleeding fists into Talon’s face because it’s the only thing he can fucking do.

Panic and hysteria and anger and revenge and bloodhunger and bloodlust and hatred and carnal, feral, inhuman instinct—

“I’m going to FUCKING KILL YOU!” Vladimir screams, clawing his nails down Talon’s face, over his eye, scratching deep. “WORTHLESS FUCKING CREATURE!”

Blood is smeared on his face, but it isn’t the first time; his victim is heaving and clawing at him and trying to break every bone in his body while being in so much pain they can barely move, but it isn’t the first time. Talon yanks the knife out of Vladimir’s chest and watches him bleed out, scream, curse, writhe. 

He waits with a stopped heart for the blood magic, but it doesn’t come. He waits with full lungs to be exploded from the inside out, but it doesn’t come. He waits to die, but it doesn’t come. Talon holds the knife in one trembling hand that suddenly is no longer trembling. 

For the first time in his life he can remember, Talon grins, splits his face in two with the kind of grim joy that he’s only seen on men like the one in front of him. 

“You can’t--,” he laughs, too, and that is also a first time, from all the way in the depths of his lungs, high pitched and keening. “You can’t use your magic! You can’t fucking use your magic!” 

Talon grips Vladimir’s shoulder with one hand to steady him, and drives the knife deep into his gut with the other.

“Try-- fucking-- killing me now!” Another thrust. “With no powers and no weapon and--,” Again. “No fucking upper hand!”

He stabs him, over and over, again and again and again and again and again and again, all in places that will hurt, but not kill him instantly. Talon is doing that on purpose. He wants Vladimir to suffer. It is not the method of an assassin, which is to kill quick and silently and leave as little a mess as possible. But he’s had enough of that. He’s had enough hiding, and quietness, and obedience. His eyes are wild and his grin in feral.

“What’s it fucking like?” Gripping Vladimir’s shirt at the shoulders, he heaves him close to his face. “Huh? To have no power? To be punished-- by those above you? To be at their fucking mercy?” Talon heaves in his own right, from tears he has been shedding since the beginning, but he’s not sad. Far from it. “Powerless and-- worthless and-- a fucking tool--,”

Finally, he thrusts the knife into the crook of Vladimir’s neck, and he watches his head loll, the telltale sign that someone has utterly lost consciousness or died.

Talon heaves once, twice.

It’s not enough.

Talon lays Vladimir’s corpse out on the ground, limbs splayed, and straddles his chest. With each stab he finds somewhere new and interesting to inflict his rage; his eyes, his throat, his hands. Talon considers ripping out his teeth and keeping them as a souvenir, or cutting off one of his fingers. Slice off a lock of hair. 

His smile comes back. It is far more vicious, and far less willing to play games or torment Talon like they’re children. He watches Talon retreat while he lifts his bleeding hand, watching the blood run down his finger and into his palm. It pools, for just a moment, before it slips down his wrist. The sleeve wrapped tight around his wrist becomes stained, white turned red. It hurts to bend his finger, but it’s a minor throbbing. Vladimir’s eyes roll back and he seems to sigh in deep content at the sensation.

“You’re fucking pathetic,” he snarls, low and deep. He opens his eyes to stare Talon down and grip his face with the bloody hand in one quick motion.  He pushes his arm forward, stiff and powerful, his wound burning at the contact of skin. Blood smears against Talon’s cheek, and sharp nails make curved lines on his face. The knife doesn’t fall far. Vladimir feels a familiar magic thrum in his fingertips, heating up with the blood he drags across Talon’s face. “You don’t have the fucking guts to make a decision for yourself.”

It’s just - warm. He doesn’t burn Talon’s skin like the blood should. Acid on the skin. Give it time. Who knows how long he’s truly been out. Maybe the essence of blood takes time to adjust. He grips Talon by his skull and digs his nails in, snarling through his teeth and nose. “Give me the fucking knife. I’ll give it back to you when you’re not such a pathetic excuse for an assassin.”

Oh. Oh, Gods, oh Gods, this is the Vladimir he’s heard so much about-- this is the Crimson Reaper, and he’s grinning an axe and he’s got Talon at his will and he’s going to die. Talon is going to die.

Talon closes his eyes and waits for it to come and-- it doesn’t. Death doesn’t come. Nothing comes, not even pain. He opens his eyes and Vladimir is still a teeth-baring predator so it must be coming soon-- maybe he’s waiting for the right moment. Trying to savor it. Going to make it last. Split Talon’s ribs open and kill him again and again and again until he actually allows him the pleasure of death. That’s what a hemomancer does. 

Give me the knife. And Talon almost does. But something-- something Vladimir said. He doesn’t know what it is. Something Vladimir said that is like wood splintering under pressure. A taut bowstring snapping. A man’s neck breaking. His eyes are wide, and terrified, and so very, very angry. 

He clicks his tongue and glares something potent. His curled lips lax and settle into a glower, like a lid placed on a simmering pot. There’s no anger - not yet, there’s nothing to curse him over, condemn Talon for defying - but Vladimir can feel the way his chest sinks down, relaxes, numbs to something unfortunately familiar. Formality. Fucking overrated. With a depressingly bare pointed finger, Vladimir pushes down on the blade with the hand once brushing with Talon’s worn skin. He pushes on the blade’s edge, hard.

Vladimir doesn’t flinch when he cuts his finger. The slit in his fingertip beads against the blade. He feels the cut, of course, but he doesn’t hear it, the silver slicing up into the soft pad of flesh, and then, blood begins to roll. A gentle current, a precious essence. Vladimir’s eyes carry the faded memory of what was an iris, and even a pupil, if you look close – and that’s all he’s allowing Talon, a terribly close examination of the Crimson Reaper.

“That better not be a threat, DuCouteau.” He pushes harder. The blade guides down, and the blood starts to run a little heavier down the flank of steel, now that it faces the ground. Vladimir feels it cut deeper. It hits bone. He’s used to it. He’s gone that deep before. “Put it away.”

Blood starts to drip on Talon’s boot. It’s not a threat, not really, just a fact; a fact he can and is willing to emphasize if necessary. Vladimir terrifies Talon, and if he attacks he will defend himself, but the consequences of doing so would be worse than anything Vladimir could do to him. The consequences would probably be things Vladimir can do to him.

Talon chokes on his breath, red-gold-red eyes still completely arrested by Vladimir’s completely blank ones. He slips the knife out of Vladimir’s hands, beginning to clean it on his sleeve.

The realisation takes hold slowly, seeps into his skin like sweat: Talon has the name of a weapon, something curved and sharp and made for tearing at flesh, and he holds himself like a knife. He hadn’t meant offence when he spoke of Raiden’s body as a weapon. He was simply speaking from experience.

Raiden strangles the urge to shudder, violently. “Talon,” he repeats, carefully in the same cadence as Talon used. Like it’s the most important word he’s ever said. “Talon. Okay. It’s nice to meet you. I can leave, if you want me to, or we can practice together or… Whatever you want. It’s your spot.”

Talon shakes his head so furiously it shocks him. Why is he being so fervent?

His chest twists in a strange way he can’t recognize-- or refuses to. “I don’t... know,” he starts. Picking the words he wants to say is like trying to solve a puzzle he’s never seen before, using tools that are utterly foreign to him. What do you say to someone who has you so utterly... frozen? “What I want... to do.”

The stranger is continuing to get on the Whaler’s nerves. They swell with indignation at his little comment about their “mistake”, but he’s right and they know it. Which makes it worse, honestly; no one wants to be lectured by someone who’d just thrown a knife at their face.

They’re preparing to rip into him—or maybe lose the niceties altogether and charge the bastard—when his face twists into a grimace and tells them, with total sincerity, that he threw the knife at them as a joke. The Whaler deflates entirely, staring at the man with newfound understanding.

This guy… has issues.

Void knows what kind, but he clearly didn’t expect them to react this poorly to his “joke”, so his upbringing probably wasn’t great. They sigh, heavily, and lean back against a tree.

“If my mistake was assuming there was no one else around,” They rub their forehead over their mask as they speak, feeling the beginnings of a headache. “then yours was assuming a stranger would take that little ‘joke’ of yours as anything other than a threat.” They manage to keep their tone away from mocking, but a note of exasperation sneaks through. 

They shrug, hopefully indicating their lack of hard feelings. “You’re fine, though. My apologies for being rude. I’m—” They hesitate, still wary of giving out the closest thing they have to a name. But they’re trying to offer an olive branch, and lying again wouldn’t be much of an offering. More like a dead twig than any kind of tree branch. “—The Whaler. Sorry for lying earlier.”

Talon hums distantly, nearly plucking the knife out again to twirl it around in his fingers. Maybe that isn’t the best idea in front of a guy who just thought he was trying to kill him, though.

“...Fair.” He doesn’t like admitting he’s wrong. He also doesn’t like being apologized to. It fills him with a strange sense of unease he can’t quite describe. Apologizing is something you do to someone you’ve wronged, or embarrassed, or shamed. The Whaler has done nothing but talk, and besides, Talon can’t decide any of those things. It isn’t his place.

Wow. They really are familiar.

“Before I heard that song, I didn’t have anything, either.” Eight swirls the CQ-80′s joystick around, the smooth glide catching in a few spots from when he’d dropped it a few times on the Metro. “Things just sort of…happened, once we all realised we weren’t under Octavio’s control anymore. We started sneaking out and trying new things, and then the really brave ones left, and eventually I did too. To somewhere where I could be truly happy without having to worry about being caught and brainwashed again.” 

Eight pauses to think about the point he’s trying to get to. How would Marina put this? Temeraire?

“…You’re starting from zero, right? You came from somewhere bad directly to here, with no stops between and no good memories to look back on.” Almost disturbingly like Eight’s situation in the Metro, but at least he’d had the promise of regaining his memories and getting to the surface to spur him forward. Even if it had all been a lie fed to him by a murderous telephone. “So what you do here is focus on making new memories. Happy ones. You don’t really have an idea of what you do or don’t like, so…try everything, I guess? Definitely listen to more music. Start paying attention to how foods taste…stuff like that.” He pauses again.

“I’m still working this out for myself, but I’ll help you as much as I can.”

Talon never expected anything like this to happen, but he supposes that if he did, he would have imagined something a lot bigger. Big voices, big movements, big tears, like the kind he sheds when he’s faced with something that seems so deeply wrong but in his gut he knows is the truth. But this is small, gentle, waves lapping up the shore of his mind, enveloping him, drowning. A quiet death-- or maybe not death at all. Something different. Something better.

He’s not crying, he doesn’t think, though he feels like he should be. He’s feeling something far too unfamiliar to be as calm as he is. 

♥

his, um… you know. his deal. the cyborg thing. i hate that i keep coming back to it but viktor (also technically a cyborg, which i’ve never actually specified but… anyway) was the first person he’d ever met who, when given the opportunity, did not use his skills for power or violence even when offered money or fame, so! the fact that talon looks at raiden and thinks of viktor, is like. A Whole Thing. also they’re both hot.

⊗

he’s like……… weird. he seems awkward in a way that is simultaneously familiar and wildly unfamiliar and talon cannot parse that and it frustrates him.

؟

I would kill you. ✧ I would physically hurt you. ✧ I would attack you unprovoked. ✧ I would manipulate you. ✧ I dislike you. ✧ You annoy me. ✧ You scare me. ✧ You intimidate me. ✧ I hope I intimidate you. ✧ I pity you. ✧ You disgust me. ✧ I hate you. ✧ I’m indifferent toward you. ✧ I’d like to get to know you better. ✧   I’d like to spend more time with you. ✧ I’d like to be friends with you. ✧  I’m unsure what to think of you. ✧ I’m unsure how I feel about you. ✧ You are my friend. ✧ You are my best friend. ✧ You are my mentor. ✧ I look up to you. ✧ I respect you. ✧ You are my hero. ✧ You inspire me. ✧ You are my enemy. ✧ You make me happy. ✧ I want to protect you. ✧ I would fight by your side. ✧ I consider you an equal. ✧ I think you are beneath me. ✧ I think you are above me. ✧ I would lie for you. ✧ I would lie to you. ✧ I would sleep with you. ✧ I would sleep by your side. ✧ I would hug you. ✧ I would kiss you. ✧ You are family to me. ✧ I would die for you. ✧ I would kill for you. ✧ I would trust you with my life. ✧ I would trust you with my most precious belonging. ✧ I would trust you with a secret. ✧ I would trust you with my biggest / darkest secret. ✧ I love you (platonically). ✧ I love you (romantically).

⊗

it’s less he dislikes this about them and more that he just doesn’t understand, but: the way they treat murder as a side hobby and not their primary goal. like, what. cannot relate.

؟

did they deserve it? they asked me to, but what had they done?

≠

For a moment, Eight wonders if Agent 3 ever hides in their cape like that.

“I’m not supposed to be either, but here we both are.” Eight takes the CQ-80 and turns it off, the holo-menu fizzling out into a few projected squiggles before fading into nothingness. A few birds at the edge of the clearing tentatively begin singing again. “Maybe you should try following Temeraire’s advice too? Not to be, uh. Rude, or anything, but the place you come from sort of seems as bad as where I’m from. Maybe trying to enjoy your time here might be…good for you?”

He flips the CQ-80 over in his hands, not quite looking at Talon as he speaks. He’s still not sure about this whole “being happy here” plan himself, and convincing someone else of it is…well. But something about Talon is reminding him of himself, even if the guy is a human. And older than him. And a little intense.

The last bits of warmness fade from Talon’s insides, and he’s left with that cold and hollow cavern he so dutifully carved out of himself all those years ago. The plum resting in his hands doesn’t look remotely appetizing at all anymore, but he finishes it, because you’ll catch him dead letting food go to waste. 

He doesn’t speak at all for several minutes. He doesn’t want to ever speak again, maybe, because saying something means he would have to acknowledge what Eight said. He considers just getting up and leaving, but he can’t do that, not after he’d offered to keep him company and accepted his food. Talon rolls the plum pit in his fingers, trying to force out a dreaded question.

The kind of laughter that knocks against your chest like beating fists threatens to continue to spill from his mouth, turning the bubbling joy wrapped around his tongue into rancorous hysteria. Talon is pulled back, the trigger of a gun, waiting for release, and it’s sending Vladimir to new heights, knowing that even then, he’s got him on edge for reasons beyond vigilance. The knives of Noxian courts are always like this, always bodyguards and assassins and personal guards who look ahead and let their terse words break on Vladimir’s voracious smile. Glass that catches everything, and throws it away.

Call it an overreaction on his behalf, maybe. He’s bothered Talon before, however rare. Periods when he’d have the DuCouteaus for dinner and he’d weave his way between the siblings, converse with the sisters and pass by the knife. But sitting in front of a dog’s cage is a lot different than sticking your fingers in. And something in the Ark’s got him breaking. Mountain air is thinner, so maybe it’s an effect like that.

Even so, Vladimir sighs, sharply. “That’s frustrating,” he says, arms slipping over his chest and slouching on his hip. He’s something like a snake, when he’s without the bulky coat and extravagant blade shaped fabric, and he coils around Talon, with a hand on his shoulder, and his other under his chin, bringing him to look right at him.

“Not even the Grand General? The General? Some gutter rat from the city?” Vladimir smiles, closed lip, sinister. Two fangs sit on his lip, and he glances down at the knife. He noticed immediately, when steel met the light and Talon threatened him. He won’t admit that he could have forgotten Talon’s expected etiquette. “You’re awfully brave to keep that out. Maybe you should put it away before someone gets hurt.”

The hands on his skin are a lightning strike, making Talon nearly jolt out of his skin. His immediate reaction to any physical contact is to run, fight, draw blood-- but this is Vladimir, the Crimson fucking Reaper, one of the few members of the Black Rose and in High Command’s back pocket. Talon’s heard stories. Vladimir could tear his heart out and eat it and laugh about it later with LeBlanc. Shoving away his touch would be a wise option, but avoiding angering him would be even wiser.

Not even the General. Not even someone who matters, who might be able to weave their way out of this mess. Not even Katarina, mind as sharp as her blades. Not even Cassiopeia, silver tongue with eyes to match. Just Talon. Just the knife.

The eye contact makes Talon burn from the inside. 

Your body is a weapon.

He’s told himself the same thing many times, and it’s true. He knows it, intellectually and physically, is reminded of it every time he has to look at the specifications of his frame on a computer screen described with the same terminology as a gun or a tank. But it stings to hear it said so flatly by a stranger, to be told out loud - your body is a weapon. They take weapons. Your body is not yours to own or to inhabit.

So this guy - Jesus, they haven’t even made introductions yet, have they? - will have to forgive him if he’s a bit more on edge now. “I guess you’re right,” Raiden says tersely. He holds one metal hand up to the sunlight, twists it this way and that until he has the petty satisfaction of seeing the stranger flinch from a flash of reflected light in his eyes. “Wish I knew how they did it, though.”

He lowers his hand when it starts feeling like it’s his again and attempts an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I didn’t even get your name, huh? I’m Raiden. They put me over in the Palilicium.”

Talon settles into his scarf. He doesn’t see the issue with stating the truth. When you’re augmented, you’re a threat. He isn’t himself, but he met someone, once, whose skill Noxus wanted to use to aid them in the Ionian invasion. He was dangerous. The Grand General wouldn’t have sought him out if he wasn’t. Talon looks at Raiden’s chest. He was dangerous, and...

“Ha!” Eight shouts, barely audible over the music. Talon’s trying to hide it, but there’s no mistaking the effects of the Inkantation. His memory of the first time he heard it is the most vivid one he has - the looks of confusion and alarm melting from the faces of his fellow Octarians, changing to joy as the melody overrode Octavio’s and set their minds free. The goggles hitting the floor one by one, cheers for the Squidbeak Splatoon rolling through the crowd like a wave.

Seeing someone else feel it for the first time makes his heart swell.

“I don’t believe you,” Eight sings, though he obliges and turns the song off. Talon’s face is roughly the same colour as his scarf-cape thingy now, and Eight is slightly concerned he might explode soon. All those emotions are a lot to handle. “Are you feeling happy now?”

Oh, thank the fucking Void, he actually did turn it off. He’s not used to be listened to. Talon yanks his scarf as far as it will go up his face, looking something like a puffed-up kitten with how nonthreateningly angry he looks. 

Hm. Well, this is a tad more severe than what they meant to provoke. Perhaps they could have been gentler in their teasing. They only meant to ruffle that prickly exterior, but he looks like a wounded animal, shaking, eyes unfocused and turned inwards on some private pain.

Their gaze on him is steady, inscrutable. They could have seen the signs, if they had cared to. He’s a raw wound, quietly bleeding out under the paper-thin veil of that sullen, jumpy demeanor. Their words sliced through that paper and carved right through to the bone, and now they’re stuck with the consequences.

They exhale slowly. No one has ever accused them of being good at handling vulnerable creatures.

(They can only be thankful he’s too far away for physical reassurance to be expected of them. Imagine if they had to give a hug.)

“So coming here has given you freedom. You just don’t know what to do with it yet.” Their voice is not exactly warm, but it is calm and steady. A rock that may be clung to in the storm. “That’s not the worst place to be in. You’re here now. No one is going to make you go back.”

That’s not the problem. That’s the problem Talon is going to have when his heart stops threatening to explode and his bones stop trying to vibrate out of his skin. That’s a problem for a week from now when he finally accepts the fact that for the first time in his life he’s thinking independently and feeling-- that he’s feeling.

So the Diplomat’s words don’t stick, like a thrown knife scarcely missing his neck and only slicing some hair instead of puncturing the jugular like it’s meant to. He crawls inside himself, or at least he tries to, digging the heels of his palms into his eyelids and jabbing his knees into his chest. He wishes he could fold in on himself completely, disappearing from reality entirely, and if he ever wakes up maybe he’ll be somewhere life makes sense, where he can always understand, where he doesn’t have to think.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? That will never happen. And he does think.

Talon shakes his head, but he doesn’t know what he’s disagreeing to. His mind is a collection of nerves and static and sun-bright colors, messy incomprehensible and impossible to string together into a sentence. Even breathing is hard. He pulls his hair so hard he thinks he might scalp himself.

The Whaler swears the man almost laughs, but he returns to his original blank expression so fast they might as well have imagined it. 

The air quotes sting, though they knew their new ‘friend’ wasn’t going to believe their sorry excuse for a lie. Understanding is one thing, having it pointed out to them by the person they’d intended to deceive is… very different. Very embarrassing.

“I’m— what?” The Whaler flounders for a response, completely flabbergasted by the man’s attitude. Oh, they’re tense? And the person who’d just thrown a knife at them wasn’t tense? He looks like a cornered rat, but they’re the tense one. Sure. Alright.

“Well, you… startled me.” they say, flatly. They’re not sure if this knife-happy stranger is totally oblivious or trying to get a rise out of them, but either way, antagonism isn’t likely to earn the Whaler anything other than another sharp object hurled at them. “Like I said, I thought I was alone.” And then he’d thrown a knife at them. Fucker. 

“You’re good with that,” the Whaler nods at the sheathed blade. “Hard to be accurate with kitchen knives. Though I have to admit”— they keep their tone light and casual as they speak, even as their common sense is drowned out by their hurt pride’s demand for blood—“when I saw you, I thought you’d just missed.” They chuckle lightly. “But even real throwing knives aren’t exactly practical. Maybe you should pick up a new hobby.” 

“First mistake,” says Talon. He finds himself mocking the stranger as if they were a mark, and he was seconds away from slitting their throat. It’s a kind of pseudo-humanity; when you’re a pawn for everyone else in a nation obsessed with power, you have to take whatever shred of power you can get. “Assuming you’re alone.”

Though of course, he wasn’t actually trying to kill this person. Not unless they start directly threatening his life, at least. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have. It was just...,” Talon’s face wrenches. “A joke.”