Thar Shaddin

She didn't want to go to anyone for help. Had fought tooth and nail to do anything but. But with Jerial out on the mission for Saruna... Fay had no choice. Clarice was a handful with both her parents watching her, but she'd become too much for Fay to handle alone, and with these side-jobs becoming more and more frequent... she couldn't look after Clarice alone, no matter how well-behaved the child had been lately. Holding her daughter close to her, Fay moved through the night to the only person she could felt she could not only trust to keep her daughter safe, but to not allow her to go soft.

Saruna would watch her daughter, she knew, but she'd give the child the world if she could. Fay shifted the intelligent 3-year-old higher up on her waist, her own little cloak keeping her warm. A mini-Fay Jerial had called her lovingly. And it was true, though she held her fathers eyes and his gift for fire. When she shifted, she was a flaming fox, something that had petrified her mother at first. Now used to it, Fay no longer flinches when her daughter shifts involuntarily. A small head tucked itself under Fay's chin, forcing the tired woman to tilt her head to accommodate her daughter.

They'd been so happy to find out that they were with child, Fay recalled. Jerial had been so over-protective. She smiled, remembering how he'd refused to let her move much later into the pregnancy, even going so far as to refuse to leave the house except for emergencies. Then as Clarice grew, her father drifted. Unwillingly, of course, but he was in demand, as her mother was. The rebellion was growing in strength, and that left the phoenix and the fox in high demand.

"Mama, who are we visiting?" Clarice's voice drew Fay's attention back to the toddler, her strong grasp of speaking never failing to amaze her. "An old friend, and an old colleague. She'll help protect and train you, hopefully." "Will Papa come?" "I've sent him a letter, telling him where we went, my kit, so we shall see." "I miss Papa..." "So do I love, so do I..." Fay murmured before knocking on the familiar door and holding her breath.

Leni'd been exiled. That wasn't what anyone called it, planes no, but she wasn't some dumb kid. Too old, too slow, too much of a loose cannon. And after the debacle that'd been the Leviathan hunt, she was still seen as dangerous. She fingered the collar around her throat, and smiled, exhaling a stream of smoke from the blunt between her fingers. She watched it curl up towards the ceiling, marveling at the brief pattern it made in the air before it vanished.

The pain that tugged at old wounds, at old joints, went blessedly soft, and she closed her eyes in bliss. She wished she had another bottle, but Scrappy-bo had methodically seen to it that none of their stipend went towards alcohol. Leni had to be clever if she wanted to be properly soused up. Changers, she hated the feeling in her head when she was dry. It'd been a week since her last drink, and it made her restless.

They'd staked her out in the middle of assfuck nowhere, their big dog, where there wasn't much in the way of water or humidity for her to get into trouble with, with their ever faithful Scrap holding her leash, telling her no. Changers knew none of them had wanted the job. No one liked telling Leni no. She made sure of that.

There was a knock at the door, and she felt the smile drop away as if it'd never been there, her more customary grimace taking root in the lines that bracketed her mouth.

"Fuck off," she said from her rocking chair, not so far from the door, hand straying down to the dagger at her hip even as her eyes went to the crossbow set against the wall. Four seconds away, if she needed it. Four seconds might be too long.

Who gave a shit? The Society was waiting for her to die out here, their shameful exile. She took another drag, and hoped for death.

The girl on Fay's hip straitened at the blunt dismissal and stared at her mother with wide and terrified eyes. Fay simply smirked and opened the door. Knocking was only an act of politeness anyways. She stepped inside, a gloved hand tugging down her hood so Leni could see who the intruder was. "Now that's no way to greet an old friend, Leni. Besides, I have a favor to ask of you. That is, of course, if you have a wish to do something besides sit here and wait death's call."

Fay knew she was treading on dangerous grounds, baiting Leni like this, but she had no real option. The nice way wouldn't work, Leni would likely rip her to shreds. But if she baited her, chances are she might either take it, or kick Fay and Clarice out to the street... in which case the woman would go unwillingly to Saruna. AFTER she had words with her daughter.

By the time the door had opened and Fayane had stepped inside, Leni had the crossbow up, bolt ready and her finger on the trigger. Piss and moan all you wanted about Leni: she'd gotten her aim to be proper deadly over the years.

"Fuck. Scraps ain't -- "

But Fayane was talking over her. Leni figured the bitch had picked it up from the bastard Scraps some time ago, and she'd never been able t'make either put a cork in it. Her lips curled back, but she lowered the crossbow, set it back against the wall. She took five steps past Fayane and to the doorway, poking her head outside to look around before she splayed one hand against Fayane's back to push her futher in to her small home. Leni shut the door. Walked back to the blunt that'd dropped from her fingers to the floor in her haste. Twenty years ago, she woulda swung up that crossbow in style, kept the blunt between her fingers or clamped between her teeth. She'd been fast, then. Real fast.

Leni took another drag, and blew the smoke up to the ceiling. She looked at Clarice, then Fayane, then said in her smoked out, rough voice, "What, y'want me to kill something? Scraps ain't here. He's out gettin' grub." She eyed Fayane again, and went back to her rocking chair, turning it around. There she sat, slouching down low in it, booted feet spread wide as she propped her elbows up on the armrest, the hand with the blunt in it set to perch near to her mouth so she didn't have to move much to take a long inhalation.

"I want you to guard my daughter and possibly teach her some of your methods." Fay said it calmly. She was halfway to agreeing, but she could still back out, Fay knew. Silvery blue eyes, hard with ice, leveled into Leni's eyes. "I don't trust anyone else, not with Clarice. Saruna would protect her, but she'd let her go soft." Fay'd been training her daughter as her father had trained her - though she used more kind and loving tactics. The results, much to Fay's grim satisfaction, were much better than her fathers.

Clarice stared at Leni with unblinking silver eyes before adding her own two bishani. "I will be good for you, like I'm being good for Mama. I want to learn to kill like Mama does. I have fire." She added, holding up an now flaming hand. "I will kill anyone who hurts Mama and Papa, but I need to learn. I will be good and learn." She repeated, eyes unblinking and emotionless as she stared at Leni, hand still aflame.

"Saruna?" Leni snorted, "That old woman couldn't protect her garden from a fat hare." The scorn was obvious, and open; it was so thick in her that the only thing to disturb it was the sour way she sucked on the blunt and expelled the resulting smoke. Oh, Leni knew the villagers in Shim. She knew plenty of people in Marn, too. She made it a point to know what dangers might exist. Say what you wanted about Leni Fisher: she wouldn't go out without a good show for it. And that was the best, wasn't it?

"How old's the brat anyways? Look at that baby fat. Don't talk about shit you don't know, kid. You're too fucking young to start learning combat. Fuck," she eyed the flame, looked back up towards Fay. She was scowling, head tipped back against the headrest of the rocking chair. It creaked as she pushed herself back and forth, back and forth. "I don't got any magic t'do with flame. You know that," she said towards Fay, eyes narrowing, "so what d'you really want?"

"Protect her." Fay's voice was tired. "Clarissa, put that away." Her daughter obeyed. "She's turning 4 shortly. She's older than when my father trained me." Okay perhaps that was a lie, but she was keeping the training light and more as a game. She moved further inside and took a seat wearily, shifting Clarissa to sit on her lap, the girls eyes staring at the older, more grizzled woman before her. Leni and her mother had gone through a lot together, Clarissa knew. She also knew her mother wouldn't leave her alone with someone she didn't trust.

"If you don't think I don't know, or shouldn't know, then don't bother with that part. Mama has to kill some baddies and can't leave me alone, and Papa's killing more baddies. I'm too little to go with them. So I wanna train so I can go and keep them safe." Her voice was as serious as a 4-year-olds could be. Fay bowed her head to kiss her daughters silver hair, hugging her close and wishing she could raise her daughter normally. Let her lead a happy and painless life. But with the Rebellion and Theogios only knows what else... she couldn't leave her daughter defenseless. Not when her mother was an assassin guard. Fay looked up, her eyes pained.

"Just protect her. I'll pay you, obviously, and owe you a few favors." She managed a weak smile. "Maybe even a smuggled drink." She wouldn't offer something that dangerous unless she was desperate, and Changers she hoped Leni knew and saw that.

Maybe it was the tone of Fayane's voice that had Leni really scrutinizing her, even as she flicked ash away. "She's only four," Leni said, speaking over Clarice. It wasn't hard, the kid was polite. Leni'd been around a few babies, not many, but enough to know Clarice was well mannered for her age.

Leni'd been asked to do many things over her life. It was, she decided, pretty damn embarrassing to be down to babysitting over anything else. That was all that was left to her any more, besides brief hunting trips or the odd farmer or herdsman with a problem that usually turned out to be something horrifically mundane. Wolves, sometimes. Mostly stupid shit like burrowing rodents under their gardens, or something else that wasn't in the least dangerous to life and limb. Just bishani.

The ash fell in a clump to the floor, where she left it. Scraps played like he was some fucking housewife, and it pissed him off when she left the scattered remains of her snuffweed lying about, dirtying up his "clean floor" like he had some cause to play at some sort of bliss. Like she was his old mother still lingering about, waiting for death.

Leni leaned forward. "I do this for you, you get me a real fucking job, and keep Scraps' nose out of it. Hear? Now how long I gotta watch the brat?" She planted her elbows on her knees, one hand lifting to bring the shortened blunt up to her lips. She stared upwards at Fayane, expression unwavering.

Fay was nodding in agreement - she could give this woman what could potentially end up being her last request - when the second question dropped from her lips. Fay winced at the word 'brat' and Clarice glared. This would not go well... "Two weeks maximum. Either Jerial or I shall be back then, and hopefully able to care for her. This is my last job." She said, looking Leni in the eye, hoping the woman knew what she meant.

It was one of the most dangerous she'd been on. Assassination of multiple choice targets to set the city ablaze in fury. "I don't want to find you two here. We will meet in the hideout." Leni would know. She felt Clarice shift to stare at her, finally becoming scared. "Mama-?" "You do this, Leni, and I'll give everything I've got to getting you your old position back, if you want it that fucking bad. But you protect my daughter with your life." She stood and set her daughter down, crouching, silver eyes staring wide-eyed and terrified into the icey blue of her mothers. She knew that look. She HATED that look.

"You will behave for Leni, Clarice. I know she's a bit of a bitch compared to Nana Saruna, but she'll keep you safe. You listen, and you obey her without question, do you understand?" Clarice nodded, tears now streaming down her face. Fay's face softened a moment before she hugged her tightly. The look she gave Leni, though, was one of warning. "If I find her dead or harmed, I will personally hunt you down and kill you. I don't care if you're here on earth or on the fucking Astral Plane, I will make you suffer the slowest death I can conjure." Icey eyes stared into Leni's a moment before she stood, leaving her daughter silently sobbing, and turned on her heel, leaving with the sharp click of the door.
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She was all alone... Mama and Papa were helping the idiots in Marn, and now she was stuck with an unwilling caretaker. She'd leave and just fend for herself, but even the 4 year old knew she wouldn't last long. Hopefully Mama's patience lessons would help... She looked to Leni, grey eyes still glistening from the tears shed, but there was a steel behind them. "So... where do you want me to sleep?" She asked, her voice quiet.

"Two weeks?"

Leni had formed a basic plan to hide Clarice from Scraps. A day. Two at the most. The condition, the thought of something worth her time in a place where fucking idiots fought each other over the most stupid reasons, had her eyes glazing over. Things never got this way in Eyropa. People scrapped, sure, but the Emporer wasn't no fucker to take shit from his people. Marn was an anachronism in that way. Stupid little backwater. And despite the fighting, Leni wasn't some assassin. She refused to kill people.

Which meant what, she sat in her pretty little house with its pretty little maid and smoked her blunts and went on often fruitless hunting trips to the tune of Scraps' fucking laughter, and slowly wasted away.

"Hey," she said, when Fayane put Clarice down.

Two weeks.

"Hey!" She said, a little louder, as the brat started to cry. Crying wasn't part of the fucking deal. "Hey, I never said anything -- "

Fayane was fucking lecturing her now. Find her dead? Harmed? What the fuck --

"I didn't agree, you -- "

The door shut behind Fayane.

"Motherfucker," Leni spat the word at the door, stared at it, then sucked at the blunt as if she had some wasting disease and it held the cure if only she could breathe deeply enough. Then she turned to look down at the brat. She squatted in order to better look at the kid eye to eye.

"Lesson one, kid? You don't fucking cry over nothing. You want to cry, I'll give you a fucking reason. Got me?" Without waiting for an affirmative, Leni stood back up. She tried to ignore the pain in her knees, the pull across her back, and hid a wince with a grimace. "You'll sleep in the back room with me."

Four years old. Fucking four years old. The kid had barely learned how to not piss or shit herself, and Leni was expected to care for her for two weeks?

Scraps was going to kill her.

Clarice nodded and watched the woman straiten with something akin to interest. Mama trusted the woman, so she couldn't be all bad... right? The young girl looked around, shifting the pack on her back before looking back up at Leni. "Would it be easier if I just hid? You wouldn't even know I was here." She followed Leni like a lost puppy for a bit, still in her cloak and boots, wrinkling her nose at the smoke butts and garbage that hadn't been picked up yet.

Well... either way... Clarice was stuck here for a bit. The thought made her sad. No Mama to sing songs, no Papa to cuddle... she wanted to cry really bad, but didn't. Leni said no crying, and Mama said to obey Leni, so she would. Maybe, just maybe, she could make Leni resent Mama less? Not sure how to do this, Clarice simply decided she'd be seen but not heard - and only seen if she wanted to be seen.

So she set her bag at the end of Leni's bed and shifted, a small vixen standing in place of the girl. Silently she padded to her bag, her cloak in her teeth, and hopped atop it, dragging the material over her. Unseen, unheard, out of mind and worry for the poor miserable bat that had to watch her. Changers she hoped Mama or Papa would hurry... this place stank.

Kids were walking need. Leni had no use for 'em. Had never given thought to making any, not even when Spade had been alive and she'd been sure she'd follow him to and through both their deaths. Stupid thought, that, because that was then and this was now and there was no such thing as breakin' apart the past to suit the present. It was what it was. And without any evident need from the kid, she saw no reason to pay the kid any mind besides showin' her where to stow her stuff and where they'd be sleepin'.

Leni would've made the kid sleep on the floor rather than her own roll cushioned with sweet hay, but if there was a good reason Fayane had wanted her to watch the stupid kid, it was better if Leni was close at hand. If you were guarding something, shit wouldn't do you any good if you were a room and ten seconds too late. That was what fights boiled down to, after all: seconds. One of them fuckers could and would be the difference between you livin' and dyin', and the only life Leni'd ever fucked up on was the day Spade died.

She weren't gonna do it again.

Even if she hated bein' saddled with a damn kid.

Still, the resolve was wholly separate from the actual thing it surrounded, and as Leni carelessly discarded the shortened blunt out into the main room in order to make a new one, her attention was brought back to the kid. Shifters weirded Leni out, and she didn't much care for wild animals.

"No. No fuckin' way. You gonna stay here, you're gonna be a person, not some fucking animal," Leni said, scowling, as she retrieved the fat plate with its supplies stacked neatly atop, and eased herself onto one of two warped stools to start rolling. She was muttering about animals, and messes, and extra mouths.

Leni didn't like her as a fox? But she was smaller- bah whatever. Silently she shifted human again as she hopped off her bag, eyeing Leni a moment. Mama had said the woman would've been grumpy about certain things... thinking a moment, Clarice bent to retrieve a ouch she'd just remembered. Fay had said she'd be leaving in a hurry and to give this to her caretaker to lessen the burden, so Clarice did just that. She plopped the pouch of bishani on Leni's lap, her eyes cool.

"Mama said to give this to you, said it'd help." She said before moving back to the end of the bed. She braced her bag against the wall and curled up with her head against it, comfortable with this. She'd taken to sleeping on the floor at home anyways, not liking being in the air as she was in a bed. Her Papa had found this silly as she was half phoenix, but relented when he learned she could cast fire. Her Mama didn't fear heights either, so Clarice wondered where the dear stemmed from.

She said nothing to Leni, simply taking to her own thoughts, allowing childlike dreams to dance before her eyes. Maybe this really was Mama's last job? Maybe when they got home, things would be okay... and they could do the things she heard other children talking about, together. Like baking cookies and cakes! The thought thrilled her. Of course, she enjoyed Mama's little games of seek and kill, her little combat dances and everything else... but she wanted to just spend on night curled up between her parents and be read to. She dug into her pack a moment before pulling out the soft doll her Mama had made - in the shape of herself. For whenever you are afraid or simple miss me, my little kit. Cuddling it close, Clarice prepared herself to wait.

Leni took the pouch before it had the chance to fall onto her lap, knowing the rattle of coin even before Clarice had the chance to open her mouth. She opened it up, eyed it with a knowing smirk, and picked a few out that were then deposited about her body with practiced ease. The rest she left in the pouch, tying it about her belt. Money had a way of smoothing things out.

Leni rolled out several blunts, took out a case she kept in her jerkin, and put all but one away. She lit it off one of the simple lamps present in every room (windows with glass panes were expensive, and shuttered windows were dangerous, and the only shuttered windows they had were in the front room), and stared down at the kid.

Frames and mattresses to fill them with were a luxury Leni'd never seen the point of. Her sweet-hay stuffed bedroll had always been good enough for her, though it didn't rise far off the ground. It would be a little more crowded with the kid on there, but Leni wasn't willing to risk something bad happening because she was too grumpy to play it right. But planes, Leni didn't fuck up on a job unless she wanted to, and dealing with an enraged Fayane (or Jerial, for that matter) just seemed like too much effort. Besides, Leni didn't kill people. Not on purpose. She thought of Spade, and frowned, and settled in to wait for Scraps to come home.

Whatever home was.

Clarice didn't know she'd fallen asleep - hell hadn't thought she'd be able to - but she woke when a new voice entered the scene. She couldn't make out the conversation, nor did she care too. Mama trusted Leni, so she would trust the grumpy woman. Snuggling the doll closer, she dreamed of better times and of fantasies she doubted would come true.

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Fay raced across the land, half shifted and on all fours for maximum speed. Leni's house had been far enough from the carnage that would ensue that she would catch word long before the actual violence began. Saruna had agreed (reluctantly) that once this series of jobs was done, Fay could take a break and let Leni have a turn at the wheel. Too long the other woman had been saddled with half-assed jobs... Fay knew it drove her mad as it'd drive her mad.

For now, she thought as she lurched onto her hind legs to go into her hideout, she would play unwilling protector. She sat with the group that she had worked with over the years to get this rebellion started, her eyes harder and icier than ever. They shifted uncomfortably. "Right, who's my first blood?"