Yue hit the ground, hard. Before he had a chance to get up, a steel toed shoe connected hard enough to his ribs that the force lifted him off the ground for a moment. Yue coughed, groaning as he gripped his side. He could hear heels clicking on the hardwood as they circled him, as someone clicked their tongue against their teeth.

"Hyyyypnos...~" Came a voice he had grown to loathe, mocking him in sing-song. "Why have you come home, when the job is not done?"

A hand grasped his hair, and roughly yanked his head up to force Yue to look up. Cole stared back at him, golden brown eyes gleaming with mischief and barely restrained rage.

"The boy still lives. You aren't going back on your word, are you?"

The boy. His mark. Barely an adult and already bearing the weight of an entire kingdom on his shoulders. Yue was supposed to kill him...but he didnt.

Yue grit his teeth. "...I'm not doing it."

Yue's face made contact with the hardwood again. He heard the crack before he felt the pain in his nose. His head came right back up again, and Cole's face was even closer to his.

"I'm sorry, i don't think I heard you with your face in the floor like that! Speak up, would you?"

"...I said, i'm not doing it."

Cole stared at him, before chuckling. He looked away, grazing his tongue over his teeth. "Yeah...i thought that's what you said."

Yue's face was slammed into the floor again. He let out a pained grunt as something else in his nose cracked again. Cole held his face down hard against the floor as he leaned in. Yue felt his hot breath against his ear.

"Need I remind you...you agreed to take the contract. And you know what breaking it means."

Yue huffed into the floor. He tasted blood.

"And i told you, i don't kill kids."

Yue's head was lifted off the ground again, neck craned back painfully to meet Cole's black eyes.

"That didn't seem to bother you before, when you saw the money killing the fledgling Kingdom Defender would reward you. I don't blame you for wanting to bend your morals for a payout like that. After all, it was more than enough to clear your debt with the guild, wasn't it? And pay off those classes your taking. Even then, you'd still have enough to set yourself up for a while. Life changing money...and all you have to do is take one more life. One more, and you'd be done with all of this. Isn't that what you wanted..?"

Of course it was. Yue wanted nothing more right now than to get better. The only thing that came close was how badly he wanted a fix to dull the pain. Clear his head, empty his mind. Lay on the couch and let the hours pass away pain free. Guilt free, until the drugs wore of and he had to get more. It had been, what...four months at this point, since his last hit of opiods and anything else he could get his hands on. And every day that passed, the need got worse. He wanted it, so badly. To just make everything go away for a while.

...But more than that, he wanted to get better. Really, get better. To be able to visit his mother and think about what she'd been up to instead of thinking about how much she had in her purse that he could steal for another fix. To be able to see his sister without her looking at him the way she used to look at their father, with terror and fury. Yue wanted to live, instead of just surviving. He didn't want to look in the mirror and see his father staring back at him again. And he didn't want that to come at the cost of anyone else's life, anymore. Least of all some poor kid sat on the floor of his bare apartment, in front of a store bought cupcake with a single candle lit atop it, needing to cry but being so exhausted emotionally that the tears just won't come.

Yue huffed, blood dripping from his mouth. All three eyes glared up at Cole, steady in his resolve. "...I won't do it. I'm not killing him."

The silence in the room was deafening. Cole stared at him, that smile still pulling at the corners of his mouth, but only barely. Yue waited for the inevitable. The punishment.

...Cole's smile widened. A chuckle came from his throat as he let go of Yue's hair and stood up again. "I see."

Yue barely had time to brace before Cole wound back and kicked Yue in the ribs as hard as he could with a loud crack. He was sent rolling backward again, gripping his stomach and groaning between clenched teeth. There was no time to recover, before a heel came down on his stomach and pushed all the air out of his lungs. Yue gasped, desperate to get any air. But there was no time. Cole leaned down and grabbed him by ther front of the shirt, pulling him up to his feet.

"You know, I was kind of hoping you would break the contract." He grinned. "Minos would scold me if i punished you without good reason. And i do so love making you bleed."

Yue could feel his feet meet the floor again, but only in time to try and steady himself before Cole took another swing at his jaw. He was kept from falling, but another fist came in swinging. And another. And another. Cole took great pleasure in beating the absolute hell out of him. And all the while, Cole mocked him; for his sobriety, for his sudden change of heart, for wasting his time on an education and family. His words dripped with venom from his fangs, and his claws tore into Yue's already tender flesh. Yue could try to resist, to protect his face and vital organs, but that wouldn't make Cole stop. Not for the better part of an hour. All there was to do was endure, until the trickster had worn himself out.

By the time Cole was finished with him, Yue was a crumpled bloody heap on the floor of his apartment. He coughed up blood, and held his sore body. Everything hurt. God, everything hurt. And Cole was just glowing with delight.

"Aww, does it hurt? Do you want something to take the edge off? I'm sure you do. I could get you some...if you begged me~"

He squatted down in front of Yue, gloating.

"You think sparing his life will change anything...but it won't. Someone else will take the contract and do what you couldn't. And you'll still be the same pathetic worm you were when you first came crawling on your belly to us. Letting him live today won't bring back all the lives you've taken up to this point. And it's not going to save the future lives we both know you're going to take, all for the sake of your new life." Cole sneered, sharp teeth poking out of his maw. "You are a killer. And you will never be able to change that. You can never be redeemed."

Punishment inflicted and satisfied with his work, Cole stood up again. He gave the triclops one last kick to the leg on his way out, gently closing the door behind him. Yue was left, groaning, broken and bleeding on the floor, too tired and hurting to do anything except breathe and try to keep his eyes open.

As he lay there, he thought back to the teenager he was supposed to kill that night. Just a kid, with an incredible responsibility on his shoulders, and a store bought cupcake with a single candle on it. A kid that Yue saw a lot of himself in. And if he had to do it over, he would still spare him. Not just because he was only a kid, alone on his birthday. Not only because he saw himself in that kid, broken and barely hanging on. But because he'd seen the kid on the news before, talking about the kind of hero he wanted to be and the kind of future for the kingdom he wanted to build. And there was a part of Yue, perhaps naively, who really wanted to believe him.