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XIV breaths slowly as she keeps still in a crouch, peeking down into the inn's bedroom from the rafters. She keeps her thoughts carefully blank as she awaits the arrival of her mark – it's taken weeks for the dead to bring her the whisper of an opening on the heir-apparent of Radiant Kingdom. It's rare for the princess to leave her castle – at least in official capacity – and while the beauty of Princess Kairi is well known throughout the land, only her closest staff know the true face behind her mask of face paint… much to the irritation of XIV's superiors.
Saïx – her supervisor within the Thirteenth Guild – had only been dismissive when XIV had voiced confidence in her success and she burns to prove him wrong. What would a paper-pusher like him know about her capabilities, anyway?
She is one of the three most successful rogues currently working directly within the Guild's structure, after all… and XIII is specialised in thievery. VIII is still ahead of her in count of successful missions – assassinations or otherwise – but he was their mentor in the craft, so it is hardly fair to compare herself or XIII to his accomplishments.
Besides, there is no one else with her record of completed jobs per year… at least not since The Berserker stopped his active service for the Guild.
She holds her breath when the door is finally pushed open, a feminine looking figure slipping inside, turning back to whisper towards someone outside. XIV can't hear what is being said and the angle isn't right to read lips either, not from her position, but it doesn't really matter. It won't be relevant for the mission.
The woman closes the door with a weary sigh, pushing back the hood of her wool cloak to reveal red hair that falls just past her shoulders – it matches with the whispers of the dead that XIV has questioned about the Princess' looks. She drops down from the ceiling without a sound, one of her deep black twin daggers falling into her palm from inside her sleeve as she crosses the two steps that separate her from where her mark has started to sing, foreign words forming a pretty melody as she sits on a stool by the side of her bed and brushes out her hair.
There is no hesitation in XIV's swing when she thrusts down her dagger to drive it into the princess' heart from behind – if nothing else, she prefers to deal quick deaths to her marks; it makes communing with their souls a bit easier, if they don't suffer before crossing over – sure of her own deadly precision… and then gasps when her dagger passes through her target without leaving a mark, cutting into nothing at all.
Illusion magic, XIV realizes as she overbalances and falls forward, crashing through the Mislead double of her target. She manages to catch herself before knocking herself out on the stool or the ground, and uses the momentum of her fall to roll away, bringing up her dagger as she searches for the caster of the illusion.
"It seems we were indeed right to heed the warning we were given," a soft female voice notes out of XIV's blindspot – she sounds familiar enough to her ears… she's heard this woman speak at various court functions that she had scouted in preparation of this assignment. One glance over her shoulder is enough to confirm: it's one of the Princess' staff – the court's most favoured bard and musician.
"The Witch of Melodies…" XIV hisses as she spins around to face the target… or at least her target's stand-in. Her death may satisfy the Guild's need to make a statement to the Kingdom for now, at least.
The woman shrugs lightly, clearly unconcerned about the reveal of her identity, the second layer of her illusion falling away as she moves to reveal blonde hair framing her fair face.
"Surrender now, assassin," she says… orders, really. "Don't make your situation any worse than it already is."
Rather than reply, XIV surges forward, lips pressing together in spite of her attempts to keep her face blank. There are only so many illusions that a Bard can hide themselves behind, after all, even one as skilled as the Witch. Giving up on her mission has never been an option; not while she is able-bodied.
She is so focused on the blonde woman, on her intent to slash her dagger across her throat that she doesn't hear the arrow's whistle until it's too late; she only catches a glimpse of the glinting head just before it logs into her right shoulder from the corner of her eye. Only a sharp bite into her lower lip keeps her from screaming out loud as her grip around her weapon loosens and the dagger clatters against the ground while her left hand flies up to clutch at her injury.
A second later, when the first stab of pain fades, XIV can feel the numbness spreading through her body outwards from her right shoulder, and she curls her left hand fingers around the poisoned arrow's shaft immediately, digging her teeth further into the skin of her lip before she yanks it out and throws it aside. Grey spots dance across her vision when she turns towards the archer flanking her from the room's window. Even with his hood hiding his features… she knows exactly who is hiding behind the gear that would be quite reminiscent of her own assassination gear, if not for the brown, red and gold bands of fabric woven into his leathers.
"Of course…" she whispers hoarsely, baring her teeth in a disgusted snarl. "I should have known that you would show your face again… Imposter."
Her knees give out under her, as the Imposter steps down from the windowsill and walks towards her, her cheek bone colliding with the wooden floor… just before the void of unconsciousness claims her senses for good.
Awareness is slow to return to XIV – her thoughts weight as heavily as her limbs do. Instinct keeps her still; she has never been captured before – not like this, she's always been too good at her job for that. Nevertheless, the Guild had made her and XIII run through the paces, had forced them to simulate capture scenarios over and over again under the watchful eyes of IV and VI before she had first been allowed into the field.
The current usefulness of those lessons is only a small comfort. She counts her breaths before she carefully glances from under her eyelashes and twitches her fingers experimentally. Her hands are bound behind her back, her neck and shoulders stiff, but the ground beneath her is… not quite as hard as she would have expected? It's not a bed… but she may have been placed on a rug, she thinks?
A frown chases across her face for just a second when low voices filter into her awareness, muffled through the door, she thinks. She can't quite make out what they are saying – though she thinks one of them is the Princess' double. She should have known better than to trust the ease of this mission so far, even if intel gained from the spirits of the dead has never let her down before.
The door opens, soft light spilling into the room through the gap – and now XIV can make out the words that are being said.
"—wasn't your fault. They both miss you still. If they knew that you are–" the bard whispers, and XIV almost flinches when the Imposter – who else can it be, after all – interrupts her with a sharp laugh and answers with a voice that sounds almost like XIII. The tone of it is achingly familiar, even if it's not quite her brother's voice.
"I miss them too, Naminé… so much that it hurts . But I can't . As long as I haven't handled—" he cuts himself off there, and XIV can hear fabric shifting, softer cloth over leather by the sound of it. Is he fidgeting, maybe? "How can I even think of facing them right now? It's not my fault how things turned out, but… I need to make things right first either way. Until then… you won't tell, right? Not her, and not Riku either."
The bard draws in breath sharply – almost as though another objection is building in her throat – but then exhales slowly.
"…Of course not," she says. "You know that I won't interfere directly unless Her Highness is threatened."
"All right, good to know," the Imposter says, relief colouring his voice. "How about you get some rest, then? I'll take care of the assassin from here on out."
The bard murmurs a farewell, her steps fading away as the door swings fully open, closing again after the imposter steps inside.
XIV tries to keep absolutely still, but she can't help the way her shoulders grow tense from the threat moving in her blindspot. The responses gained from half a decade of constant training and missions for the Guild have kept her alive so far, too often to be easily turned off.
The Imposter waits for another moment until he starts talking though, his voice light as he notes: "You know, I never got to meet an actual assassin from the Thirteenth Guild so far. Lots of mid-to-low-level enforcers and such, but nobody who is actually specialised like you are."
XIV doesn't even try to disguise the angry tremble that shakes her limbs. For just a second, she lets herself feel the hot flash of rage in her veins before she soothes it to become cold as ice. Emotion won't help her get out of this situation.
"Not one for talk?" the Imposter asks idly, as he steps around her form and into her sight. Sky-blue eyes (deep and bright like—) glance down at her from beneath the shadow of his hood, sparkling with careless laughter and good-natured mischief on the surface… but XIV has known those eyes her whole life – has seen them in the mirror and in her brother's face – and she knows exactly what this particular look means.
Their eyes only ever weigh this heavy when they are sad.
"…I have nothing to say," she hisses, grimacing at the cotton dry feeling in her mouth and the way that her tongue feels glued to the roof of her mouth. "No matter how you torture me, I will not talk."
She'll resist as long as she can… and the moment that it's too much… well, her teeth are sharp enough. Hopefully she won't swallow her tongue when she bites it off.
The Imposter blinks down at her, head tilting faintly, "That's… fine, I guess? I'm… uh. Not going to torture you. I really just want to ask you a couple of questions that I hope you'll answer truthfully. And well, maybe I'll get you out of this country after that. The Kingdom of Union has a couple of prisons where you should do well."
Prisons where the Thirteenth Guild has little to no influence, XIV thinks to herself. She remembers II making some comments about how frustrated the patriarch was getting with their lack of presence in Union.
(She remembers VIII rolling his eyes as she and XIII watched him pack before his brand new long term mission that had assigned him to rectify just that.
"Hell knows why I always get the icky jobs," he had complained, tongue clicking before he had told them to watch out for each other. She can still feel the warmth of his fingers ruffling through her short black hair, the glance of playful indignation that she had shared with her brother in response. It feels like a hundred years ago.)
"I have nothing to say," she repeats, eyes narrowed to a glare. No matter how friendly the Imposter makes himself appear – she is not a traitor. If he wishes to think himself superior by refraining from spilling her blood, she'll readily exploit that weakness for herself.
"That's fine," the Imposter insists again, this time sounding much more confident in his words before he sits down before her, still on the rug that he's placed her on but far enough that she can see the glint of his eyes from under his hood.
"How to start…?" he wonders out loud, tapping his fingers against his chin. From anyone else XIV would have thought that to be a rhetorical question, but she has an inkling that he truly isn't sure how to start off this farce of an interrogation.
(Is this really the man that has been needling the Guild's operations with increasing success for the past two years?)
"…Have you ever heard about mirror children?" he finally asks, and XIV feels her body lock down with alarm, breath caught in her throat. How does he know–
"I'll take that as a yes," the Imposter continues without waiting for an actual answer… not that he would get one. Not on this, on one of the best kept secrets of the Guild, one that XIV wouldn't have the faintest clue about if she hadn't gone searching—
"I'm looking for the man that creates them. One of your wizards. He's a master of magical theory… and the application of the cold element. Have you ever met him?"
'Sure', XIV thinks as dread floods her veins. She sees IV regularly enough for check-ups, even if much less often now than in her early days… back when she hadn't known why IV had never been shy to announce her and XIII as his magnum opus. Why neither of them has ever had any memory of being younger than maybe twelve or thirteen summers. Why nobody in the Thirteenth Guild had ever been restrained in their opinion about just what they thought that XIII and she owed to their organization.
She doesn't voice any of that. No matter her origins… she won't break her loyalty to the Guild.
(If she leaves, if she breaks away from those people… where would she even go? Even if Saïx is unbearable at best of times, even if there are plenty of sneers to be endured… as long as she has VIII and XIII, it's going to be fine. She'll never leave them behind.)
The Imposter's shoulders slump more and more with every question he asks that goes unanswered, eyes focused on the ground before her instead of herself. He doesn't know how to deal with her silence, it seems. Finally, he exhales his frustration in a huff, head tilting back now.
"Maybe I'm going all wrong about this," he says after a moment. "I'm not giving you much reason to give me anything after all, right? Donald always keeps telling me that I really suck at talking to strangers."
He shifts a bit in his seat, his voice hitting a strange kind of tone – clearly he's imitating someone else now: "Sora, you gotta stop expecting people to do you favours when you just met them. Unlike you, the rest of the human species got a price on sharing their hearts. Give and take, be a little less generous with yourself—"
It's almost like looking in a mirror of herself, XVI thinks faintly – she takes a similar tone, when she's just with XIII after Saïx has been particularly nasty with his words. The Imposter – Sora – falls out of his imitation with another long exhaling breath, then turns his head down to meet her eyes.
"Look… how about I tell you a story?" he starts. "You don't have to say anything, not even when I'm done. Even if it would be really helpful if you did. Just listen… and then make your decision."
He says it as though she has much of a choice with her hands bound and the poison still weakening her system… but after that outburst, and the look in his eyes… she's curious. Just a little. It's not like she has anywhere better to be anyway… so after another moment she nods at him once.
"When…" Sora starts, voice breaking for just a second, before he goes on: "When I was a kid, my two best friends and I… we always dreamed of going to the capital. We grew up at the coast – small fishing village, with a couple of farms in the vicinity. Not a place where you can expect much adventure, so we swore that all three of us would go to the Radiant City and become knights for Her Highness."
He huffs a noise that could be a sob or a laugh, one hand running over his face and combing into his hair – the motion finally pushes away the hood that covers his head, revealing a brown mess of spikes. He looks so much like XIII when he's in a mood that it hurts.
"It… it didn't really work out like that," he says, like his lack of heavy armour and his reputation as a vigilante with a taste for meddling with Guild business aren’t speaking for themselves. He doesn't meet her eyes when he starts speaking again, his gaze turned far away.
"I was the last one to leave our home… just after I hit my tenth summer. I was all ready for training as a page. Riku… my best friend. He had already left and kept writing home about his training. About being primed for being trained as a wizard. I was pretty jealous about–"
He shakes his head sharply, as if to regain his focus.
"On the way to the capital, the Guild raided the trader family I was traveling with. I didn't know that then of course, only that we were being attacked by bad people and that if I didn't fight, I'd—"
No need to elaborate that, XIV thinks. She has seen the aftermath of enough Guild raids on traders, who didn't keep their end of their deal with the Guild or didn't pay the protection money that the Guild had issued them. Usually there isn't much left, aside from the trader themselves. The fact that Sora survived that raid…
"I don't… I don't remember much from right after that. Being cold, mostly. Never figured out why that is – if they kept me in stasis or something, or if– doesn't matter. I got away about two years later. Ran into the woods and– well. Managed to piece myself back together, mostly."
The huff from earlier – half laugh, half sob – escapes him again, as he continues to make a mess of his hair. Though maybe, like XIII, that's its default state anyway, XIV thinks absently, her heart aching faintly and something in her gut twisting… a feeling like she knows exactly where this is heading.
Sora steadies himself with a breath, blinking as he meets her eyes again for the first time in a while: "Wow. It's been a while since I told this to anyone, but I didn't think this was still getting to me like that."
Another slow breath, before he continues: "I didn't figure out what they did until a while ago. The Kingdom raided one of the Guild offices in the capital and I helped myself to some of the documents there. That's how I found out about the mirror children. That they are people that the Guild created using my… body? Soul? Spirit? No idea, I didn't get half of what the notes said, and Donald and Gyro really weren't all that clear on it either. Magical theory goes way over my head, really."
He shakes his head yet again, and when their eyes meet… he looks earnest. Like herself before VIII taught her how to hide her emotions away. Exactly like XIII, because he never really mastered that skill. He really does believe what he is saying; he just called her a person and he doesn't know, can't know just how much that means to her.
He can’t know how good it feels to be acknowledged outside of the small bubble of home that she created with XIII and VIII. It's enough to make her eyes sting with all the tears that she hasn't let drop in at very least three years.
"You are one of them, right?" he asks. "One of the mirror children they made from me."
And, in spite of all that XIV has sworn to herself and to the Guild… she nods.
"…Yes." she rasps confirmation, before pressing her lips together even as those tears finally escape. "Vexen only ever succeeded with two of us… but yes. He hasn't been able to find anyone compatible with the process since your escape."
Sora nods, then leans forward… and cuts away the ropes binding her hands. He shouldn't show her trust like that… but for all that her training tells her to attack… she can't. Not when she knows that he is the first person aside from XIII that hasn't lied to her yet. That probably never will.
"Not for the lack of trying," he says while she slowly draws herself up from where she lay. "According to those reports I got, they want to revive the project. Make more mirror children… ones that don't have any personality at all, and let them do their dirty work on an even larger scale."
XIV feels something in her freeze at those words… though she can't find it in herself to feel particularly surprised. The Guild has only ever thrived on efficiency in the upper ranks while punishing any freedom of thought of those they deem beneath them.
She and XIII… they have only ever been ranked members in name.
"What would you have me do?" she asks softly as she absently rubs feeling back into her hands.
"If the project is truly revived–" and there is no doubt about that, XIV knows the Guild only too well "–then IV will find a fitting candidate soon enough. And once he does… they'll probably have XIII and me train the new mirror children."
Right until the Guild replaces them with the very mirror children they trained anyway.
"Tell me where to find that wizard," Sora says, his hands clenching. "If we take him out of the picture, the project will be delayed… at the very least until we can dismantle the Guild for good."
Something about that wording…
"Take him– you can't possibly be planning to keep him alive, right?"
Sora can't possibly be that naive, XIV thinks numbly, not given his own experiences with the Guild.
"It's fine," he insists. "We'll lock him up in Union capital; I got a friend there who's close with Queen–"
XIV cuts him off with a sharp shake of her head. "You could lock me away there and it wouldn't matter to them… but not him. They'd get him out and then they'd find your connection in Union. It wouldn't end well for them."
She catches his eyes again, nails digging into her palms as she says: "The only way to stop any of the things that are bound to happen once IV finds his new template to pull mirrors from… is to kill him."
Sora flinches at her bluntness, gaze dropping to the rug. By the looks of him, she isn't the first person to tell him as much. Finally he sighs, running his hand over his face and through his hair again. "It's not like I don't know that. I do, I really do…"
He lets the sentence trail off and the look in his eyes… It's the same as XIII when they started training. There is a reason why there are only two assassins in the ranks, and not three. And… there could be none, XIV thinks, suddenly. If Vexen is gone, if she tells XIII the truth about their origin and pulls him out… maybe with Sora's help, they can reach Union and find VIII, and maybe then they’ll finally be…
It's only a half-formed hope. By all accounts, she shouldn't consider the notion for even a second. But, if Saïx has ever had a point in any of his biting censure towards her… it's her nature to be reckless.
"Let me do it," she says. "I know where to find IV and how to fight him. And in return…"
Sora looks at her, head tilted – and after his earlier rant about his own nature, XIV is confident enough. If they strike a bargain, he'll help her. He'll help her, even if they don't.
"In return… help me to get my brother out."
Sora studies her, sky-blue eyes piercing right down into her soul… right until his face breaks with a grin, brighter than she has ever seen, but still so familiar that it hurts.
"Consider it done," he says as he offers his hand to shake on their bargain – and she takes it without a second thought.
Later, XIV will find herself walking down away from the inn in the light of the breaking dawn.
She'll listen absently as Sora leads them towards the threshold that will lead them into the hidden city of the fey ("Queen Minnie is a great healer, she'll fix your shoulder in a second!").
She won't hesitate when she takes a moment to rip any tracking sigil out of her clothes and makes no comment when Sora promises her substitutes for them.
When Sora turns quieter and almost hesitant, head tilting as he asks if the Guild ever even gave her a name, she'll think back to those hazy early days of her existence that she had almost forgotten already… those days back when she and Roxas had really only had each other.
"…Xion." she tells him. "My name is Xion."
She will never be their number again.
--- Fin ---