Work Text:
This shouldn’t have happened. She shouldn’t have let this happen!
The shadows clung to Don Quixote’s back like reeds that followed a swift breeze that fluttered them in its direction. This should have been a simple job, routine and mundane as far as an assassination went. The target was relatively low-profile, the setting ideal. Just a quick in-and-out where they could take out minimal people and be back to base before the blood-red moon had risen to its peak in the sky.
But now that moon had summited the sky, and its ruby light washed over a battlefield of carnage.
Everything had gone awry in what seemed only a matter of minutes. Gunfire, clashing blades, and yells of fury had filled the area. The three of them had become separated in the chaos, trying to stick to the shadows as they made their retreat to the arranged rendezvous spot.
Neither of them had arrived.
Against all regulations and training that Don Quixote had received in her years with the Shi, she returned to the site of the assassination. Official policy was that a downed assassin was a dead one. Whether they truly were or not didn’t matter. If they could not complete the kill and were caught, they were as useful to the Shi’s stealth missions as a corpse.
But then, if she were one who listened to stringently to the higher-ups, then she wouldn’t have climbed as high as she had in the organization, would she? No matter if people looked down on Section 5, she was still their Director and she had responsibility to their subordinates.
She searched for any signs of them. A stray strand of red hair, fragments that might have torn off of Heathcliff’s bandages that she’d applied herself to him earlier that night. Anything that might lead her to them. The skills of an assassin also lent well to the necessity of tracking and pursuit, and she willed for her experience to guide her true to her two targets.
It was only after a half hour’s speedy searching (too long, far too dangerously long for people who could be in danger for so long as they were out of her sight), that Don finally began to pick up the trail. Gouges in the walls the curve and depth of which were characteristic of Shi blades. Their ferocity denoted battle, and a ferocious one at that. The worry that she was trying to quash into the depths of her stomach began creeping up again, making Don Quixote’s throat burn as her breathing grew more ragged.
“Heathcliff! Ishmael! Art thou here?!” Making noise like this, calling out, was a terrible idea in any other circumstance. But she had no other choice in this moment. She paused, the balls of her feet tingling as she rested her weight atop them. Searching for any signs of their presence.
There. A small sound in the alley. A small grunt and the shuffling of bodies. Don Quixote gripped the hilt of her blade, readying herself for anything as she crept closer to their source.
She found it there, and her heart dropped from its place in her chest into an abyss so deep she was sure she’d never hear its beats again.
Ishmael was laid out on one side, clearly just on the cusp of unconsciousness. All the more merciful for it. The shakiness of her breathing and the blood matting down her hair told of great injuries even if she couldn’t see them at present. Heathcliff, beside her, looked even worse. He was laid face-up, and the sight of him was ghastly. One of his forearms was carved down to bone, a foot bent to an angle far beyond its healthy range of motion. His abdomen was the worst of it. His front was practically ripped open, flesh and bone so mangled it was as if the front of his body alone had been put to a meat grinder, leaving the rest of his bloodied self intact.
“… Great Wings…” Don Quixote could only mutter as she approached the two. She fell heavily to her knees between them, her breath only enough to murmur their names. “Young Heathcliff… Young Ishmael…”
Heathcliff winced, his teeth grit while he forced his eye open. Only one was covered by his hair, but it was so matted down with blood that Don Quixote had a sense that there would likely be nothing behind it were she to brush it back. And yet, the one which looked up at her still had enough life in it that it seemed to still hold a faint violet glow.
“Director… That you?” He squinted, as if trying to bring her into focus. “You alright?”
The absolute audacity of him, asking her that when he was ripped open like a child’s toy.
“Yes, Heathcliff. ‘Tis I…”
“Right… Told the lass you’d be comin’ back for us,” He coughed, one hand twitching to his front for all the use it would have. “Giant shite of a mess, innit. Would you believe they had booby traps laid out on top of it all? All it took is one tripped wire in the wrong place…” That would explain the state of the two of them. “Should see the ones who were chasin’ us, though… Bloody sight, it was.”
“Please speak no more, Heathcliff. You ought to conserve your strength.” Don Quixote turned to Ishmael, giving her a look-over. But to see her more clearly only made it that much clearer how grim this situation was. While she was more intact on the outside, the way Ishmael’s body shifted and crackled beneath the skin when moved told of much damage inside. Broken bones, possibly a punctured lung going by her rattling breathing. She turned to Heathcliff next, even though his damage was far more apparent and unpleasant to behold.
“Don’t… Don’t waste your time on that,” Heathcliff gasped. “Listen, I don’t… I don’t think ye’d be able to move both of us. Not with other people still moving ‘round. So… If you can, better take the lass and go while you can. I’d probably just bleed out before you could take me anywhere.”
As brave a statement as this was, Don Quixote knew that it wouldn’t be so simple. With the internal injuries Ishmael had, moving her was likely to damage her even further, possibly compromise her and shorten whatever life she had left in her if something moved the wrong way. And there was no way to transport either of them safely, let alone both.
Don Quixote bit her lip, panic and grief stalling her. Neither of them were dead yet, but they practically already were. So little time left. No way to move them. No way to help them.
“Director… Still there?” Heathcliff blinked, but his eye was much less focused. “Listen… None o’ this shite was your fault… Whole situation was mucked from the start… We followed you, and we’re here cause of shite luck… Nothin’ you could’ve done.”
Nothing she could do. Right. She couldn’t stand up to their superiors. She couldn’t run this mission safely. She couldn’t keep them together. Couldn’t help them escape. Couldn’t help them.
No matter what he said, this was her own fault. They were going to die, and every drop they were bleeding out in this dark, grimy alley was their fault.
She couldn’t save them.
But you could.
But… she could?
Don Quixote’s jaw tensed, a small pain pricking her lip as her tooth pierced the thin skin and into her flesh.
She tasted blood.
More blood for this alleyway. More blood to join theirs spilled uselessly about.
They will die, you be alone.
She was going to lose them. The taste and stench of blood were everywhere around her. Blood pulsed and rushed in her ears like a river after a storm, and Don Quixote dug her fingers into legs.
You will be alone, without friend or family or subordinate.
You will be alone unless…
She would be alone, unless…
She couldn’t feel the way her shoes loosened about her feet. How slowly air which had not touched her soles in so long now cooled the skin that was now burning like the rest of her. Not burning with heat, for she was as cold as the alley stones which were coagulating the blood around her. It was a burn that crept up her mouth and throat and clasped its icy claws around her heart.
You could save them.
She could save them.
You can give of your life to them and they will be by your side forever.
She could ensure their lives would not be cut short and that they’d continue to stand beside her.
If you wish to save them, then share with them your Gift.
If she wanted to save them, then she would have to damn them.
If you share your Thirst.
If she also made them Monsters.
Don Quixote slipped her hand under Heathcliff’s neck, lifting his head from the ground ever so slightly. But it was enough to make them cringe with pain.
“What’re you… I said to take her ‘n-”
Heathcliff forced his eye to crack open, and he found Don Quixote, her face hovering right above his own. Her mouth was open wide, panting hot air against his face like a winded beast. She was coming closer to him, the red moon reflecting off her eyes so that the wetness gathered at their edges seemed to glow with their own light.
Was that the moon causing that red glow in her eyes?
She lunged suddenly, and there was a sudden agony at his throat.
And then the light faded from Heathcliff’s vision, with the final vestiges remaining being a faint red glow before it all went to black.
--
“thcli… Heath… Heathcliff!”
Heathcliff startled awake, eyes going wide from the voice in his ear breaking through the veil of slumber. He sat up quickly, the memories of the past day flooding back to him as he did so. He cringed, ready to be punished for his foolish movement when he recalled how badly he was wounded.
But there was nothing.
Heathcliff looked down at himself with awe, hesitantly pawing at himself. But there was no wound, not a single nick in his skin or so much as an out of place drop of blood. His clothes were torn where he had been injured, but the skin beneath was whole. Not even any scars to speak of but for the ones he’d had for years.
“What the bloody…” Then he realized, someone had woken him up. A familiar voice who he remembered shouldn’t have been able to speak at all. “Ishmael! Are you alri-” Heathcliff turned to his side, and was stunned.
That was Ishmael sitting beside him… Or, was it? It was the same clothes, same hair, same freckles across her cheeks, same rope headband holding back her hair. But sitting here in the gloom which he wasn’t yet clear-headed enough to realize was their own HQ, there was something unmistakeably different from the Ishmael he knew who was looking at him with that odd expression of hesitance.
“The hell happened to your eyes?” Heathcliff blurted out. Ishmael, no, this surely was Ishmael, couldn’t be anyone else, even with those glowing red eyes staring back at him instead of the usual green... But whether she was or not, her brow furrowed at him with confusion.
“What’s happened to my… Why are your eyes like that? Why are they red?”
His?
“That’s a damn good question I hope you’d answer first, lass.”
“What are you…?” Ishmael put her hands to her own face, as if nudging at her own eyelids with her fingertips would do anything to let her see what her own eyelids. He didn’t even blame her for the behavior, as he was about ready to do anything to know what was going on.
Then, a small sound reached him. Must have reached the both of them, because they both turned their heads at the same time.
Don Quixote was there, pressing her face into her hands as she knelt a few feet away from them.
“Director?” Ishmael asked softly.
Don Quixote’s shoulders shook when she was addressed, and a breathy sound that could only have been a sob muffled into her hands.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her first words to them were these, chanting under her breath, like she was begging them without anything in particular to beg for.
“Director… The hell’s going on? What happened to us? What did-” He paused, realizing the question he was about to ask. ‘What did you do?’ Did he think that she had something to do with this? That their Director had somehow given the both of them glowing red eyes and miraculously healed their wounds. He wasn’t angry, or upset. To think he could be at her felt like it was the furthest emotion possible from him. But still, he had to know. “Director… Why are ya’ cryin?”
Don Quixote lifted her face from her hands, now a couple of translucent droplets falling from her face into her open palms. She lifted her head, finally facing the two of them.
And the deep ruby glow of her tear-filled eyes stirred a sorrow in the both of them as deep as their bones despite feeling like none of it was theirs.
“Please forgive me for what I’ve done to you.”