Chapter Text
Sparrow thought it was a dream at first.
Every inch of her surroundings were smothered in a bright, blinding light as if she stood on the very surface of the sun itself. Bouncing off the walls that determining her surroundings would have been impossible. But this room…Sparrow would know this room as intimately as a spurned lover. As closely as a well-guarded secret. Even in the blinding glow she would know this cursed room like a childhood memory.
The Spire. The damn Spire. It reeks of Will. A scent she now knows off by heart from the way it slithers around her very being. Waiting to be let out like a caged dog. It smells like the start of a storm, wet and miserable and smokey. It lined the dusty shelves of Garth’s bookcases, to the pages in his books to the cracks in his tower’s brick and mortar. Yet here, in the magnum opus of Lucien Fairfax’s ambitions it smells like she’s in the eye of the storm.
It had been a long time since she stepped foot behind its walls. And if Sparrow could have her way, she’d never want to step foot here ever again. But since when did Sparrow ever get her way?
It felt as if The Spire was watching her. Welcoming her back like a life-long enemy with grinning teeth and a spiteful aura. If these walls could talk…they’d gleam and gloat of her suffering, her sacrifice.
Sparrow shivered then as a gust of wind suddenly flew past from seemingly nowhere.
She feels a horrible dread settle like whale-fall in her chest as her eyes scan a set of stairs. Slowly stalking each step upwards as if deep down she knew and feared who awaited at the top. She stood there motionless like some sort of guardian. Sparrow supposed that’s exactly what she was now. Draped in her usual baggy attire, a hood shrouding all by a few wisps of hair and two milky white eyes. Theresa always had a way of staring intently at you, even blind. Like your soul only existed for her viewing; her meticulous observations.
Sparrow thought long and hard about all the things she would say in this moment. She imagined herself screaming at the Seeress. Screaming her lungs raw for the hurt and betrayal she felt that day when Theresa cast her alone on the pier after she slew Lucien Fairfax. When the truth of Theresa’s role to play in all of this came to light. Sparrow had only felt alone, truly alone, twice in her life. And as she stood staring at the Spire from the pier at Oakfield. She felt like the little girl who had been cast from the window of Castle Fairfax all over again; without a home, without a loved one. And without purpose.
But at that exact moment, Sparrow was surprised to find her throat dry. Her hands, to her shock, shook violently at her sides. It was all too much to see the woman who raised her look at her with such…coldness.
“Theresa…”
The woman nods once.
“Hello, Little Sparrow,”
-----BLOODSTONE-----
Reaver tries and fails to understand just which part of “Until I return to kill you and take back what’s rightfully mine,” had been lost in translation. He had been rather confident that his feelings on the matter were quite clear. In print nevertheless! How could anyone be more clearer than that?!
No, no they simply must have endeared themselves to the idea of proving that there was something between their ears after all. As evident by the splatters on the wallpaper. An improvement really, Reaver thought. Considering it wasn’t his wallpaper. But all it did was prove to Reaver that whatever was between their ears, they were clearly not using it.
Reaver stands very much behind the walls of his Bloodstone Manor. Yes, he’d made the trek up the hill and upon finding the door still locked no matter how much he twisted his key promptly blasted the lock off. But it didn’t feel like his home. The architecture itself seemed to repress him. He felt like a stranger within his own home. The walls, the floorboards, the chandeliers, the furniture…nothing was the same as it was. He would never pick anything so bloody gaudy. The squatters had scrubbed every trace of him from this place.
They’d even blocked Reaver's Rear End. Filling it up with thick, hard concrete. Seriously, not every manor had a secret escape tunnel, and whichever fools would fill it to the brim were not worthy of it.
“So much for a raunchy home-coming,” He feels sorry for himself. And why should he not? Who else would?
Reaver blows the wisps of smoke from Dragonstomper. Casually stepping over the two bodies as he meanders the room miserably. For once in his life, Reaver feels utterly aimless. A ship navigating without the use of a compass. Which wasn’t just a metaphor, The Reaver II had been shipwrecked. Lost to the ocean on his journey back from Samarkand. And he’d dropped the damn compass when they hit the first rock on the deck.
Strangest thing it was. The sea was compliant - not obedient, no never obedient. A privateer might try to tame the ocean, but a pirate would never dream of it. Who’d want to? But she was smooth, carrying his beauty of a ship like the caress of a sappy lover. Then as soon as the rocky coats of Albion came into view - hell broke loose.
What was he to do then? No ship, barely a home, most of his men had died in the wreck...Five years in Samarkand, and it was like Albion had forgotten his name.
Oh, he’d make them remember. He’d carve the name Reaver into the forehead of every idiot if he had to-
“Reaver, sir-”
Reaver flinches. Flinches. Rounding on the fool with Dragonstomper so quickly the man nearly died of a heart attack then and there. His hands fly up quicker than a working girl’s skirt comes off, bottom lip quivering madly.
“Sorry, sir! Reaver, sir!”
Reaver felt inclined to shoot the man right then. If not simply for pleasure, then to at least save face. But he abolishes his impulses, just this once. To behave himself just long enough that he can get the intel he’d sent this scout out to gather in the first place.
“Spit it out boy. Or I might have to do away with the very notion of don’t shoot the messenger,”
That gets the man to talk quickly when Reaver doesn't entertain the idea of lowering Dragonstomper.
“Sorry, terribly sorry. It’s just that folks round here have sent for more o’ the guards! There’s a small company of ‘em comin’ up the hill. They heard the gunshots like. Before, folks woulda’ enjoyed it, right? Bit o’ fun for the kiddies-I mean who ‘dunt like public shootouts? But not these lot. These lot….well. It ain’t the same Bloodstone we left. Reaver, Sir,”
Damn right it wasn’t the same. Bloodstone had been bloody domesticated. No more ruffians mugging you on the streets, no more working lads and lasses begging to be on each elbow, no more street vendors selling you ‘miracle elixirs’…the charm of it all had been completely sucked dry. Now there were guards patrolling the streets. Mowed lawns. Rubbish in the bins. And less assassins. It was anti-human, dull, numbing…
“More guards, you say? Bah! Target practice won’t hurt,” He waves the gun teasingly at him. “Not that I need it,”
The little man’s eyes squint ever so slightly. A hint of defiance, perhaps? A bit of resentment? It makes the edges of Reaver’s lips twitch upwards. It’s delightful when their stubbornness can’t help but rear its ugly head….
“Guards won’t stop comin’. They told on you,” The man says sheepishly.
Reaver grins all the more. “Told on me? Dear boy, just who have they told on me to? The teacher? I’m positively shaking in my extremely fashionable boots!”
“They’ve sent word to the Queen,”
The smile, the gloating. It drops, dies and shrivels on his face. Reaver tilts his head, keening for a hint of deceit. If this was some typical Albionite joke he’d yet to find funny. When the punchline doesn’t punch, he lets out a raucous laugh.
“Since when was there a bloody queen?!”