#windsought

            This is not the first time he has come.

            At first Ahri was skeptical, as she always is: his intrusion so near to her home was unwelcome, and was more than enough cause for concern. She would let the offerings the man laid out for her go completely untouched, left to be carted off by wildlife or taken by rot. She would watch him come and go when she could, concealed in the branches of a towering oak, and sometimes she would arrive and find the gifts already there, his brief visit long since passed.

            (  Once, after he had already left, Ahri curiously plucked up the fragrant stick he had left behind in the earth, still curling sweet - smelling smoke into the air. She liked it so much she kept it —  just once —  and the next time he returned he left behind an extra, tucked in among the fruits. That cowed her into not approaching again for a long while.  ) 

            Ahri feels a strange frustration prickle her skin. He gained nothing —  she had hoped remaining impassive would dissuade him from returning, but he did time and time again, seemingly unswayed. She watches this time from a high bough of the very same tree he kneels at —  closer than she has ever dared approach —  her tails picking up an irritated, jittery sway. Words swell in her chest and stifle at the barrier of her tongue. 

            ‘ Why do you come here ?  ’

            The fox blurts out her demand almost without thinking. She sees him freeze, notices every muscle go cold and still halfway through the motion of lighting the incense. His gaze tips back, and for a long moment their eyes meet, hers a burning gold gleam in the shadow of the great oak. Ahri drops to the forest floor nigh soundlessly, tails fanning out to retain her balance. She reaches down to the bowl with her eyes still not leaving his, poised tense like an animal readying flight or fight, and gently plucks free a white pear — the motion of rising it to her nose to smell is one slick with suspicion. She wonders if he means to make her ill with poison… but the fruit is so clean and fragrant it makes her mouth water.

            She does not indulge in a bite, but she does not throw away the fruit either. She lowers her hand, cradling it close to her chest.

x // accepting

   Ah - and just like that, Yasuo has cut right to the wilted edges of Akali’s loyalty. If he had been a free man in another time, if Akali had been as rigid as she once was, such a sentiment would have been a betrayal; thoughts of that nature were barred to ones who had tethered their souls to ideals like honor and duty.

   And now… now balance was subjective, integrity was lost, and the pair found themselves so far removed, so lost.

   “At first,” Akali agrees. “For me. You know how I was bound.”

   The samurais knew well of the Kinkou, as was the opposite true; the bond they made to their duties was life itself - it was unbreakable, it was everlasting, and it was never to be questioned. It was a sort of torture, then, an undoing, that Akali forced herself through so that she might - at the least - begin to think that her path may have curved somewhere dark.

   The first time is never the easiest; Akali’s initial disobedience, secretive and nearly ineffectual to all but her, brought back stinging, fuzzy memories of bruised, aching skin, the dusty smell of training mats, disappointed glares and expectations so high Akali could only reach the peak of them in her dreams. It had been drilled into her, time and painful time again, to serve. And not herself - never herself.

   But Yasuo was right - words were merely just that, and an entire country suffered at Akali’s indifference. Unwittingly, Shen and her mother had given her the strength to become more than a bystander to Ionia’s death.

   And Yasuo, tragic Yasuo, who had never come across the stars or called for Akali’s blade; the wrongfully shamed man still found it in himself to do, even when the world bade him differently.

   “But don’t you find it now to be the opposite? To act feels so easy as breathing. To continue the rhetoric that I restrained myself to for so long…”

   Traitorous. Wrong. Akali should shut her mouth, never speak again.

     “Yasuo--” Zed glances first at Yasuo, then at the phone in his hand, then back at Yasuo. 

     Yes, technically, if he picks up a quick takeaway bagel and coffee at a cafe somewhere, he can throw on a suit jacket and knot the tie in the cab out, but that doesn’t mean he wants to. It’s rare enough that he has a non-social obligation dragging him out of his flat, if he shows up with a wrinkled shirt and un-styled hair, he’ll give of a bad impression, potentially ruin this opportunity, and he needs to meet with this people again so that he can have continued access to the building, and good god it is hard to concentrate with Yasuo lounging and looking up at him like that.

      “If you would push off being a brat for just three, maybe four hours, this would be so much more entertaining for both of us, you realise.” Zed’s expression is stern, though he finds it difficult to maintain when staring at the smirk pulling at Yasuo’s lips.

     Zed shakes his head, giving a resigned sigh and touching his fingertips to Yasuo’s cheek. “Later. Find something to occupy yourself for a few hours, hm?” 

zed’s opinions on muses / accepting.

     “Do you really want to know?” It is an odd feeling to be faced with such a question as, ‘What do you think about me?’

     What does Zed think about anyone? Often far less polite things than he would ever dare speak, and sometimes, far more friendly things than typical for the Master of Shadows.

     If he wanted to share such opinions, he likely would have already done so.

     “You intrigue me.” True enough, and something Yasuo is likely to have guessed from the steadily-lessening number of guards that herald each of his appearances at Zed’s temple. “More than I expected you would. I hope for…”

     Ah, now this is something he is hesitant to reveal, but there is far more to be gained by the truth than another lie. Still, he pauses, reconsidering how best to say this. “I do not find myself opposed to your visits anymore. It is good to have someone I can talk to without all that the Order of Shadows is and all that I am hanging over my shoulders. Your presence here is not unwelcome, and if you’ve found yourself lacking shelter, I have many a spare room for those who need it.” 

     …

     “Yes. You are.” Though Zed may have had years and years of practise suppressing any movement, any thought that might reveal that the Master of Shadows is not as unshakeable as the aura he creates, Yasuo’s lackadaisical smile grates at Zed in a manner that makes him want to either send Yasuo sprinting out of his forest or simply strangle him now.  

@windsought​

“so you call it fun to be nearly arrested twice? i know you aren’t from here, so you don’t know what to fear, but that fine young woman that brought you in here could’ve split you into two in a blink of an eye, pal.” 

jayce has a half-smile on his lips as he regards the ionian despite his chastising words. they’ve first met in peculiar circumstances to put it lightly --- the man had been in some sort of high, as naked as it gets, with stolen propriety. the defender had gently let him off because in all truth, it looked like the man needed the stolen melon and there were far more grim cases for him to tend to, but now that vi had dragged him back to the department, piltover’s hero wondered briefly if he had made the wrong choice.

that is, until he learned from the pink-haired enforcer exactly what he had been arrested for; smoking at the wrong place. she had only brought him around herself because she remembered the man from the last incident and found it amusing enough that she should drag him back to his benefactor. 

needless to say, both jayce and caitlyn had rolled his eyes at the tale, but while the sheriff’s gesture was born out of annoyance, the inventor’s came from amusement. naturally, he tasked himself with discovering what made the foreigner so keen about getting himself into trouble and worse yet, the cheap, ridiculous sort.

now here they are, with both of them just outside the precinct after caitlyn had cleared the mysterious vagrant of his charges. 

"i suppose that after you’ve gone all of this trouble to catch my name, it’d be indelicate not to deliver, though really, you could’ve asked just about any citizen in this city and they’d know the answer,” and he is far more entertained than he has any right to be, arms crossed over his chest as he quirks an eyebrow at the shorter man. extending a gloved hand, his blue eyes glint with an undeniable hint of amusement.