#bladesent

    Gangplank stood silently, thumb running over his cutlass’s hilt.

    It was what the assassin deserved, no doubt about it. Eventually, word would spread that someone had managed to kill one of Gangplank’s men. A slow, public death would ensure none dared try something so foolhardy ever again, but--

    He frowned.

    What would be the point? It would be satisfying to hear screams echo through the alley, sure, but Gangplank would learn nothing, lose a man and get only the tiniest modicum of pleasure in return. Anyone talented enough, stealthy enough to kill a man like Rourke and survive the process would know that he’d been tailed. He would be useless dead, and if someone was trying to wrench Bilgewater from Gangplank’s grip, he needed to know who.

     He lifted his hand off the cutlass.

     A man that skilled might be useful to have on his side, too.

     Abruptly, he took a step forward, moving out of the darkness and stopping before the assassin, eyes darting up and down to inspect him.

It’s sad that her first thought is not something warm, but ‘too little, too late’.

Lux hates the way it feels like an afterthought, and yet is still one of the most impactful things she’s ever heard. Talon had hardly said anything - to an outsider, it was nothing.

To Lux, it was validation to all of the hope she’d harbored for him. For them.

But her answer is a bitter, surprised laugh. “You tell me this now? You knew what you meant to me.”

A hundred times he’d told her he could not stay, or she couldn’t, and a hundred times she had denied him; now, with years of tense slinking around and unmet expectations, Lux had seen reality in light that was not rose colored.

She had told Talon what he already knew, and then this. The soft part of her exulted - the bigger, resentful part bared its teeth, because she could not stay, and he knew it.

| A MEETING? CERTAINLY | (NOT ACCEPTING.) 

--- “ Hm, loss.” She lets the word dance around her tongue for a moment, tasting the bittersweet meaning melded within it. Golden irises flicked away from Talon, as LeBlanc taps her fingers on the refined wood of the table that nurtured her half-filled wine glass. “Loss, loss, loss. “. The words drip from her lips silkily, drifting into the stream of her earthy lilt. 

She hums to herself, glancing at her manicured nails with exquisite attention to detail, almost certain she would find a minuscule chip there somewhere.”What is there to lose, Talon? When I have already claimed so much of what many think is beyond their imaginings. All of it and more even before your name was acknowledged in this world.”

LeBlanc sighs, letting herself dip into a sea of her own musings once more “It’s almost laughable to think I  am the one at loss here, Talon. Perhaps take another glance at a mirror.” She concludes.