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Confidence surrounds Kayn like a jagged mist, dripping off his arms as he runs a ten-toothed comb down his scalp. He grooms himself similar to a cat licking its paws with a litter of rats to its front. Only, he’s a tenth the size of his prey, not the other way around.
The azakana he stands upon squirms pathetically, having since met the ground with a colossal thud and bitter, wet squelches. Its more ear-grating verbalizations are lost to the scythe stuck between its pointed bars of teeth. In a similar sentiment, the scythe’s singular eye darts around in helpless frustration as it spats its invisible words. Kayn digs his heels into the scaly mass beneath him, unperturbed and smug, weight sending out a particularly hoarse whine into the air. Yone stares back at him in sick relief. The azakana he’s bound to stalks the veils of his dreams, the corners of his vision, its crooked smile the same pearl white as the unblinking eyes of a siren — but it never speaks. Does that add to its grotesque inhumanity, or make it a smidge more tolerable?
Kayn continues to rake through his black river of hair in thorough, downwards motions. It’s out of its usual braid. He’s been toying with it for the past… thirty minutes? Hour? Yone’s memory, dipped in its constant haze, can’t pin a time on the detail. Truly, as long as he isn’t getting in the way, Kayn can style, pin and dote over it however he likes. If the dislocated head of an azakana is the end result, Yone will have little more than an apathetic hum for a response.
“I’m proposing two things,” Kayn starts, voice oozing with that familiar, raspy entitlement. He points down to the quivering mass beneath him, “First, this one’s assured my victory. It was five to five, and now it’s six to five. You ought to up your game.”
The ember of annoyance Yone feels is smothered by something nebulously fond. He doesn’t enjoy Kayn’s teasing, per say, but it’s something to listen to; a big feat in the grey, wilting world of a man only half alive.
Yone doesn’t bother to ask where the score came from, nor how one competitively tallies a collaborative effort. “Even if this were a game, we are not yet finished.”
He darts his head around his deceptively peaceful surroundings. “There are more. There has to be more.”
“Second,” Kayn interjects before Yone says how he can hear them whisper and gurgle and sputter, “We are finished. At least for this next half hour.”
“Is there something pending? Is your master expecting your presence?”
Kayn shakes his head. “You stink. We stink. Hells, we’re probably scaring off countless azakana as we speak! Who’s to say they aren’t sensitive to unbearable musk?”
Yone blinks. Slowly, he drags his arm up and takes a huff of himself. He smells the usual layers of blood, sweat, and rankly sweet azakana innards.
“I do not—”
But Kayn has already slid down the azakana with his scythe in tow. He points in a direction and begins to walk in it. “See that pond over there? It should be big enough for the both of us.”
Yone looks. Purple-blue foliage of the forest they’re in frames a distant clearing. In which, a pond mirroring the dusk sky ripples languidly. As if it’s bidding goodbye to the setting sun with a watery smile.
Kayn looks over his shoulder. “Follow me, or don’t. Just make sure you can hold your own out there.”
On the edge of that teasing smirk is something Yone has learned to register as worry, but isn’t sure what for. Kayn’s presence would be a necessity if he could not fend for himself, not a nice addition. They are both aware of the fact. So why does he look at him like that?
No matter. Yone watches his raven mane get smaller and smaller, until it is but an oblong blotch in the distance. He then steps in the direction opposite of Kayn, and continues to search. For he knows that they are there, somewhere, somehow. Constituting to the crawling he feels against his arms and the low murmur that swarms his ears.
And so he walks with no real destination, trudging along his bones that move only because he has a single, thankless purpose. By his third loop around the forest, time subtly begins to lose its meaning. Has it been hours, or minutes?
Warped, impossible faces begin to flash across his mind, along with everything else azakana crudely mimic about the human body. Multicolored entrails contrast their lightless eyes. Their palms flaunt thick, tusk-like nails. Worst of all, their blood is a thick molasses that smears and sticks so utterly revoltingly. Often, it murks the narrow reflection his steel blade provides. A reflection that accomplishes what no mirror can: showing him that rainy day where, even with life fleeting just before his eyes, he was still more man than corpse.
Yone does not know when his thoughts drifted to warm, sunny evenings spent tending to sparring wounds while eating sugary dates under a hunched plum tree. He does not know when they visited Yasuo’s juvenile, tooth-missing smile, bandaged fingers and still too-big katana. He does not know when the sound of their classmates running around, sparring, chatting, all registered fondly in his foggy mind. He does not know, does not ask, but follows his thoughts as they bring him back to where he came.
Kayn’s azakana is still writhing where they left it. Yone takes the time to dispel it properly, piercing into its flesh with a curt thrust of his blade. It leaves the Earth with a relieved whine. Elated, almost, to be freed from its suffering.
A freshly manifested mask is its only remnant. It lands in Yone’s palm, its furrowed features that of defiant anger.
Eventually, Yone finds himself standing at the jagged edge of the pond. The water is bordered by square, obsidian stone. The stone juts out to form horizontal, layered seats. Kayn sits on top of one, not nearly as relaxed as he should be. His lower half is obscured, a tan blur beneath lazy waves. Meanwhile, the rest of him works at his hair with the same ten-toothed comb.
He whits as if there’s something wrong with it. As if it isn’t a weave of diamonds: glittering and untangled.
Yone’s next step is just barely audible. That is, blaring to any assassin worth their salt. Kayn’s head shoots up.
“If it means anything to you, I think it looks fine. Why fret over it?”
Kayn’s shoulders untense and his darkin hand retracts from its weapon counterpart. The alertness on his face wanes into something more exhausted. Odd. Wasn’t he bursting at the seams with energy?
Kayn pouts and looks to the side. “Why seek azakana in an empty forest?”
Yone hums, suddenly at an understanding.
He fiddles with the knots of his belt, bandaged fingers running over masks both old and new. They gently clatter to the floor, taking the tightness of his robe along with them. He bends in order to slide the garment off his legs properly, impartial to the warm gaze slithering up and down his form. It’s unsure yet bold; steady when it’s spanning across his chest, but shaky as it travels southwards. Of course, as soon as Yone happens to look back, Kayn gains a newfound interest in the shrub behind him. Those petals must hold the secrets to the universe.
When he’s finished undressing, Yone slips into the water. It’s just warm enough to be comfortable. The perfect respite to an otherwise humid evening.
“You — you bandage everything?”
Yone’s mouth is a straight line. “Yes.”
Kayn coughs into his fist. “Right.”
There is a small silence, awkward and stale. Kayn slowly goes back to combing already perfect hair, which prompts what Yone asks next.
“What plagues you?”
The question makes Kayn stop. Then start, only with puzzlement over his features; a furrowed brow that asks ‘What?’
“‘Plagues me?’ I feel fine. What, do I look ill?”
Yone shakes his head. “Hardly.”
Kayn squints. Yone rephrases. “It’s nonsensical, is it not? What makes me seek and makes you… comb.”
“Not at all.” Kayn tries to be casual in his denial. Yone feels its thorns all the same.
“You have been tending to it for hours.”
An hour to Yone is anyone’s guess. He strictly means the time between their separation and now. That isn’t clear to Kayn, however, who frowns at the word. As if it’s more accurate than intended.
“Quiet, you.” Kayn flicks his scythe in its amused eye, then looks back up. “There is a reason and it is… sound. And no, you are not privy to it.”
Yone leans against the pond edge. Water laps at his rib cage, unable to soak through the insoluble gauze his torso is wrapped in. “That’s a shame.”
Something in between distrust and disbelief finds Kayn’s voice. “You’re meddling. You never meddle.”
“I simply find myself in a contemplative mood,” Yone peers up at the still-setting sky, noting the birds flying overhead. He watches one perch on a nearby tree, rest, then leave. “I have a sensitivity to them, azakana. I am bound to one, so I hunt all others. It’s an ironic existence, but the only path.”
“To what?”
“To finding out exactly what I am, and how to move forward once I acquire that answer.” He points to his mask, then to Kayn’s darkin arm, “I presume you are on a similar journey?”
“Quite the opposite. I have no misgivings about my nature. Rhaast can chew away at my body for however long he likes — I will be the victor and nothing less.”
The scythe — Rhaast — must disagree. Soon, Kayn is busy threatening it with a dip in the pond. Their argument continues for a time. When Yone grows tired of watching it, he clears his throat.
“All of that to say, I grow… restless not just because I can sense them. It is part of it, but there are other reasons.” He closes his eyes, searching for memories, “In life, I was a pillar. The one holding everything together, even at the brink of collapse. I was stern, perhaps to a fault, but others leaned on me for it. Who better to trust than Yone, the one who had everything in order? Yone, who’d protect you from the gravest of odds?”
Interest piques in Kayn’s mismatched eyes. With his own eyes now open, Yone muses. “You enjoy hearing about my past, yes?” “With how elusive you are, can you blame me?”
Yone laughs through his nose. “I suppose not.”
Some distance away, a fox toys with a crumpled leaf, prying open the rigid, paper-like thing with its paw. In a similar sense, Yone sees Kayn soften ever so slightly. He continues with more incentive than before.
“There were days where I failed to be the valiant protector. Risky, unrelenting days where everyone by my side were injured or dead by sunset. It was occasional, at first. Then it became every other day. Then, eventually, my new reality. I dared not show it, but it ate me alive. Whittled at my spirit until I was unsure of what purpose I served, or if I even deserved one.”
He blinks and, for the briefest moment, he and Kayn are sitting in plains seared by the angry sun and bloodied by war. Flies flit over small hills of worn, desecrated bodies. No matter how disfigured their face may be, Yone always recognizes a classmate amid the rotting litters. They have no features to be disappointed with, but he feels it all the same.
Just behind Kayn, a figure stands along the horizon. He anchors the sun, the ground and, most importantly: the wind. When Yone reaches out to him, a faint “Brother,” on his tongue, the plains are gone.
There’s pain behind Kayn’s smile, “Noxus does that to everyone. Strip you of everything until there’s nothing left.”
“How did you…”
“What else would you be talking about?” he sighs, “Everyone speaks of the invasion with the same fatigue, like it lasted their entire lives. Sure felt like it.”
Yone raises a masked brow. Kayn doesn’t elaborate. “Anyway, you were saying?”
“I don’t have much else to add. Obligation follows my every move. Even if Ionia no longer knows my name, or only remembers me in passing memory, I will shield her however I can. Regardless of if my protection is but a small domino in her grander scheme.”
“How noble,” Kayn says, then speaks again before Yone can interject, “I’m serious. Of all things, I never praise people for their virtue. But, for what it’s worth Yone, you’re a good person.”
Yone sighs like a sliver of the monumental weight on his shoulders has been chipped off. He looks overhead again. No birds. “I hope so.”
Water tinkles and leaves rustle. Unlike before, the silence is comfortable. Yone spends it in better moments. Kayn fissures it with unsure glances and twiddling thumbs.
“Oh, what the hell.” he breaks it, finally settling on something, “Hey, Yone.”
“Mmn.” A mumble in response.
“Not a word to the deer about this. Or anyone for that matter. I’ll know, you know.”
Yone pinches his fingers together on one hand and slides them over his mouth. His lips are sealed. Even so, it takes Kayn a small while to begin. He whispers back and forth with Rhaast, whose input could be anything from mildly helpful to wildly disastrous. Yone waits as he always does, once again relieved to have complete domain over his own mind.
For the first time that evening, Kayn drops his comb.
Yone’s nod is encouraging, even if Kayn pretends it isn’t. “Take your time.”
And so, he trails back to the very beginning: a tiny house on the outskirts of Bloodcliffs, desolate in every sense of the word. “I’ve always liked it long. Not for any real reason, it just feels right. When Ma noticed she gave me these fancy pins, things we could barely afford, and I’d riot every time.” he chuckles, “I wasn’t a girl, I’d tell her, but kept them nonetheless. She was special, so the pins were special. And they ended up in my hair regardless, so it became special too.”
“Family has a way of doing that, don’t they? Giving significance to the tiniest of things.”
Kayn hums in agreement. “It was… magic back then. I hadn’t a fear in the world, save for whatever spider or rodent crawled its way into my room at night. Even on the days where we barely had a dot on our plates, I was content. Whole.”
“And then?” Yone must be waiting for the conjunction that explains everything; the scars, the pride. The hollow, difficult feeling he insists isn’t pain.
“And then, Noxus waged an ugly war.” Kayn sneers, “Unluckily for me, they weren’t stopping at adults for soldiers.”
“They enlisted children?” Yone gawks. It’s the closest thing to disbelief Kayn’s seen from him. Is he fortunate to have never made such a difficult choice, crossing blades with a child? Or unfortunate to have lost so much to territory-hungry fools instead?
“Orphans, they said, and that’s what confounds me. I was with her. It was my birthday, there was cake, dammit. They barged in right as I blew the candles. Pried me away no matter how much I thrashed, how hard I bit or how loudly she screamed.” his fingernails poke anxiously into his palms, “I saw the bastion for the first time that day. All the buildings teetered over me, like they’d fall and snuff out what little of me had endured. It’s a terrible thing to feel so small.”
The moon hangs in the place of the sun, casting a solemn glow across the earth. It angles perfectly over the pond, painting its occupants in a luminous ivory. In truth, Kayn prefers the sun. However, between the crisp eyes in the night sky and the joyful, amber wash of day, the former makes the better audience. Just this once.
“Beyond reprehensible. I am sorry for your loss.” The mask Yone refuses to (or can’t?) take off inhibits his expression, but Kayn knows he’s sincere. Still, his condolences sting like hot iron. Kayn isn’t something to feel sorry over. He wasn’t then, he isn’t now.
“Don’t be. I barely remember what she looks like.” The dejected hint in his words betrays him. He’s not still upset, is he? Over a woman with a missing face?
“Next thing I knew, I stood in a line that seemed to span the entire world. The children in front of me shuffled into this thrown-together room and left newly armored, but just as shaken. When it was my turn, I fought even before I realized they were going to raze it all off.” he says, “I kept fighting. I couldn’t stop fighting. Not until I reached a river a little south from here. By the time master found me, I’d already promised myself something: nobody was taking anything away from me anymore.”
He’d been outnumbered that foggy, rainy day. The rust of his sickle had started to bite into the meat of his palm, the least of the wounds already littered on his body. Figures towered all around, enveloped in the thickest mist, striking from every direction. Just as one thing gashed his already trembling legs, another bashed his aching back. Still, he could not, would not let up. Even as it became painfully evident that, lest his attackers all dropped dead, this misty, cruel eye-oh-nee-ah would be his tombstone.
Then, his attackers all dropped dead. For a good moment he was still in the motions of fighting, swinging at air that refused to clash back. He slowed, then stopped when his weeping foot mashed a warm hand. When he opened his eyes, standing out amid the fog and mist was one of many staunch, statuesque shadows. Each armored to the nines as if on a mission against the world itself.
His first words to Zed had been in a cave full of busy, injured Yànlèi. Even with his mind on the rations before him he was acutely aware of his lack of place.
Zed’s Noxian was rough and brief, rarely used outside of the dark alleys of war, let alone to coddle a child. “What else do you need?” he’d asked, pronunciation fairly off.
“A break,” Came Kayn’s voice through breadcrumbs and dried fish, hands in contact with something other than a weapon for the first time in ages.
Kayn concludes with a sigh half the weight of the entire world. If he wanted to, he could up and fly. “Maintaining it is a statement. Proof that they stole nothing more than an already impoverished childhood. Yes, I do get particular and it is silly, however— ”
“Let me braid it for you. Your hair.”
His mouth stays open for a moment too long, then closes slowly. “What?”
Yone takes maddeningly slow steps across the pond floor. The nonchalance Kayn has been trying to bolster finally crumbles, in ruins by the time a bandaged thumb finds the curve of his cheek. He swallows on a ball of nothing, savoring the cold sensation as it wracks a shiver down his spine.
How does Yone manage to be such a magnificent specter of the night? Moonlight that had once shone over them both equally now obeys his figure alone, emphasizing his lean stretches of pale muscle. Kayn wants to kick himself for ogling a second time, but who’s to fault him? Can you really, when the sharpness of his features pierces through your last reasonable thought? When he touches you with those sturdy hands that wield those sturdy blades that croak sturdy azakana; an infinite cycle of pure strength that is nothing short of breathtaking?
“Don’t tell me — you’re enamored by a man long dead? Oh, Kayn, you surprise me everyday!”
Kayn doesn’t bother to shut Rhaast up this time. Yone’s left eye is an enigmatic purple, a color so chillingly non-human. His right is a rich, original brown that swirls with both loss and nostalgia. Right now, that’s all that matters.
“My female peers often dragged me to help them style their hair, usually in the hopes I’d fancy them in return one day. Overtime, I became quite adept at it.” Yone threads through the hair near Kayn’s ear, “I have experience. You needn’t worry.”
“Uh. I guess I wouldn’t…” Kayn starts, then takes hold of Yone’s hand with a scowl once he realizes what this is, “No, no. You’re pitying me.”
Yone frowns. “You truly believe that?”
“I’m not a child, I don’t need help. Everyone lost something in that war. Don’t coddle me like I’m any different.”
“I think of you as quite capable, actually.”
“Enough to take care of myself, surely? Or does that lie beyond your expectations?”
“Kayn.”
“Yone.”
Yone sighs with the faintest hint of exasperation. He leans in, perhaps to better get the point across. Kayn has to battle with just how stunning he looks and how infuriated he himself feels.
“Has it crossed your mind that this dead man yearns for someone to talk to? That you do not need to prove everything to me, as if I belong to some omniscient jury?”
Kayn bites the inside of his cheek. The answer is no. It hasn’t.
“Sporadic as your company may be, I enjoy it. We are companions, Kayn. Friends. Allow me to do this for you.”
A silence spans, long and uncertain. Kayn keeps his eyes on the water. “I don’t like to style it while it’s wet. ‘Gets too messy.”
Something incredible happens. Yone smiles. “Then how about we dry off?”
“Even well into adulthood, he expected me to tie it for him. When I refused, either out of irritation or at the behest of another obligation, do you know what he would do?” Yone’s hands work in and out of raven threads, creating beautiful plaits out of what feels like silk.
Kayn sits on a square slab of rock, dangling his legs off the edge. His eyes are closed and his mind, even with Rhaast’s faint blabbering, is at relative peace; eased by the gentle kneading and tugging at his scalp. Really, the only thing preventing him from being fully comfortable is the wind biting at his bare skin. Yone doesn’t comment on whatever he can see. Part of Kayn wishes he would.
“Ball it all up and call it a day?”
“Yes, actually. How did you know?”
“I used to do it all the time. Before I realized I was practically begging for split ends, that is.”
“Yasuo never cared for appearances, much less split ends.” there’s a fondness to his voice, “He was… is truly a man of habit through and through.”
In his attempt to picture Yasuo in his head, Kayn ends up with a scruffier Yone. Still, he has the feeling that if they were to ever bump into eachother he’d know right away. “I hope he finds a path, wherever it may lead. We all deserve one, you know.”
“I suppose we do,” Yone stops for a moment to admit, “You grow wiser still.”
The night continues without much incident, its ambience brought together by the rustling of nature and a swishing comb. Pale blue has flooded the sky by the time Yone finishes, a color belonging to a slowly approaching day. They have no mirror, so Kayn uses the pond as a substitute. The waves, bumpy as they are, do not diminish the beauty of his reflection.
“It’s beautiful,” Kayn breathes, not entirely sure who he’s staring back at, “I just hope you know it’ll be ruined by this time tomorrow. And that’s if I can help it.”
Yone chuckles. “No worries. Savor it only for this moment, then.”
And so Kayn does, taking every chance to peek at the pond whilst the both of them don their clothes. It’s different from his usual style, feminine and elaborate where in places he’d make simple and practical. It doesn’t entirely suit him, but that’s part of the charm.
Kayn knows it's time to go when fatigue washes over him like an unending wave, dragging a yawn out of him and into the dwindling night. Meanwhile, Yone goes back to his usual self. That is to say his wall of distance returns, but only three quarters as sturdy as it was before.
“You’re leaving?” Kayn asks as Yone slips into the trees, chasing something so far away.
“The hunt continues,” Yone explains with that same, rare smile. Kayn stifles his disappointment in order to return the gesture.
“Bye, then. And thank you, Yone.”
“You’re very welcome,” he replies, already halfway gone.
Kayn stays in the clear for a time grappling with how weightless he feels, as if he could rival a feather. A fuzziness pervades his body, makes him warm all over and layers his thoughts with a dumb, light joy. Eventually, he heads for home as one of the many shadows of the fleeting night, phasing through anything and everything.
“Did you hear that?” a giddy grin spreads across his face, “He thinks I’m capable.”
Rhaast rolls his eye. “You revolt me.”
Under the maternal watch of the moon, Kayn laughs like he hasn’t a care in the world. "I try, Rhaast. I try."
