(2022-08-21) Choices

Details

Author:	Jessa
Summary:	For last week's prompt, "Agree to Disagree". Ismene and Ivri, healer and assassin, debate the morality of killing.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Chain: Prompt Responses

+ Show additional content warnings

Blood. Blood everywhere.

Ismene hurried down the steps of the Cobalt Company’s headquarters. It was simply ridiculous that she’d left the house without even a single copper, but there you have it and she was hungry and her stomach had kept grumbling all throughout her last meeting which was very embarrassing but she kept thinking about the cheese and apples though oh of course she could have gone by the bank and she would have thought of it except she’d thought of the cheese first, you see.

She sighed and surveyed the selection of cheeses on the shelves. “What a morning,” she told the wedge of cheddar as she picked it up.

The cheddar had no reply.

Must not be that sharp, she thought. She would have to remember to share that joke with Ben later.

She turned and, smiling still, bumped into an assassin.

This was not, as it happened, an entirely unexpected occurrence in HQ, so it was only with momentary startle that Ismene stepped back and looked up. “Oh!” she said, then laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there. Which of course was the point, I’m sure! You lot are always just being places that you weren’t properly a moment before, aren’t you?”

“Ivrianna Barlowe,” he growled.

It was, she supposed, meant to be intimidating. “I most certainly am not,” she said, tossing her head a little. “I’m Ismene Hazan, and you may call me Lady Hazan for I do not like you all that much at the moment.”

A little wrinkle appeared between his dark eyes. “Er… no. I’m loo–”

Another assassin landed on top of him, driving him to the floor. On his way down, two slim stilettos slashed across his throat.

Ivrianna bounced free of the dying man, daggers pattering blood on the stone floor.

Ismene threw herself at the body, golden energy pulsing from her hands at her wordless cry of need and alarm and painful empathy.

“What the hell are you doing? That was a perfectly good ambush!”

“I’m healing him,” Ismene snapped back. “Obviously.”

“You do realize I meant to kill him. It’s not like ‘oops I slipped and accidentally opened his entire throat to the spine’.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have done it in front of a priestess then!”

With a tsk of annoyance, Ivri dropped into a chair and folded her arms over her chest. The daggers had vanished. “Well at least tie him up. Otherwise there’ll be a tremendous battle with lots of knives and poofing in and out and blood.”

The cuts were closed, but the loss of blood was still unmended. “I’m already doused in the stuff, and thank you very much for ruining one of my best business gowns,” Ismene said. “If you want him tied up, you do it. I’m busy.”

Another tsk signaled Ivri’s silent rise. “What is a ‘business gown’? That’s perfectly absurd.”

“Well I can’t go about in a tea frock, can I?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Obviously.”

Ivri levered the no-longer-dead assassin’s arms over his head, then stripped his hood away. Quick flips of her fingers braided thin strands of glittering threads around his wrists and into his hair.

“What is that?” Ismene asked.

“Some gnomish thing,” Ivri replied, bringing the thread around his throat and back to his wrists. “They make it from giant spider silk.”

“And you just walk around with it handy?”

“You don’t?” Ivri gave the as-yet-unconscious man’s head a pat, then shoved a glove in his mouth and covered the wad with his own hood, tying it for good measure.

“He’ll suffocate!” Ismene protested.

“I should be so lucky.” Ivri sat on the floor just outside the pool of blood. “And if he does, you are, as you so recently pointed out, a priestess.”

Satisfied that he wasn’t going to die (again) immediately, Ismene stood. Knowing it was futile didn’t stop her from attempting to push the worst of the blood off of her. “That doesn’t mean I’m here to clean up after your mess. Messes! So you’ll just clean up all this blood too.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Ivri looked up at her. “Out of curiosity, what are you going to do if I don’t?”

Ismene’s frown was a good deal angrier. “Is this what you do all day? Just go around falling on people and killing them for no good reason?”

“I beg your pardon, there was a very good reason! He was going to kill me, I just beat him to it.”

“You don’t know that,” Ismene said, planting bloody hands on her hips. “I hardly think he’d just wander around asking after you if he were going to kill you.”

“Trust me,” Ivri sighed. “He was going to kill me.”

“Even if he were, that’s still no excuse. He’s not some foreign spy or enemy combatant! Look at him, he’s clearly SI:7.”

Blank, incomprehending, Ivri looked at the other assassin. Then back up at Ismene. “What’s your point?”

Ismene’s sputter would normally have been the time when Ben would step in, but alas, he wasn’t here and she had to find actual words herself. “My point is you can’t just murder people!”

Ivri leaned back, her hands behind her to prop her up. “I can, actually. I’m quite good at it. I think you mean I shouldn’t.”

“You can’t. Legally! And even if you can, you still shouldn’t.”

“There is a time for it, you know. The place wasn’t my fault, it was his! Blessed Light, how have you seen as much as you have and still remained so naive?”

Annoyance turned to actual anger. “I am not naive,” Ismene said, quieter but just as firm. “I understand the necessity of killing, and I’ve done my share of it. I’ve even killed those who had no choice but to attack me, whether they wanted to or not, and I’ve mourned them where they dropped. I understand war, and battles, and death. Though you may not believe it, with your assassin’s smug superiority, I’ve probably seen more death than you have. The difference between us is that I’ve also saved lives, more than you ever could. Or ever will. You’re the one who’s just death, with no balance to you in the least.”

There was some satisfaction to be had in Ivri’s abrupt intake of breath, but the assassin wasn’t taken aback for long. She rose, an easy uncoiling of legs and arms that seemed improbably fluid. “If I am so much death,” she asked softly, her head tilting slowly, “then why are you so adamant that I cannot kill whomever I wish?”

Ismene wasn’t insensible to the threat, she just didn’t back away from it. “Because you didn’t have to kill him. You could have just stopped him. You chose, Ivrianna. You are capable of killing anyone, fine. But that means every time you kill, you choose it. And you can choose differently.”

Ivri shook her head a little. “It doesn’t always work that way,” she said, softer as well. “Leaving someone alive isn’t something you can just walk away from. When they live, there’s an entire cascade of ever-branching consequences, some of which involve even more death still. Sometimes the deaths of those we love or at least want to keep safe from harm. We kill some people to stop the flood of chaos and destruction that trails in their possibilities. Killing isn’t pretty, and it isn’t a thing to celebrate. It’s a solution. It’s the solution. It may come with consequences, but damn fewer than if you leave the wrong person alive.”

She nodded toward the bound assassin. “His possibilities are all negative, all grave, all full of blood and death. Alive, he’ll always be a threat. Dead, he’s just another body.”

“So you make him not a threat,” Ismene said. “You find out what he wants, you find a way to compromise. And if he won’t, then you make sure he knows that you’re too strong to fight so he goes away.”

“Bless us, you really are naive,” Ivri said. “Some people never go away. They keep coming. They come with reinforcements. They come when you’re asleep and you think everything is fine and you’re safe. How do you think Lordaeron fell? Or Stormwind? You stop them, Ismene. You stop them, hard and fast and final. Or they’ll bring your castle walls tumbling down around your ears and all you’ll be able to do is scream and die.”

“So it’s in retaliation for things that haven’t even happened yet?”

“It’s seeing the path they’ve taken, understanding the path they’re on, and stopping them before they take another step.”

“Like he was trying to stop you.”

“If you like. A war in microcosm, each of us trying to kill the other before they kill us.”

“And that’s why we’re still at war,” Ismene said. “People choosing to kill, every time. Choosing violence instead of being strong enough to choose otherwise. Seeing enemies as things to kill, instead of as people to stop. Blood doesn’t wash away blood, Ivrianna.”

They stood staring at each other, the blood-soaked healer and the assassin with clean hands.

“I’ll clean up the floor,” Ivri said.

“And the walls.”

“Fine.”

“What about him?” Ismene gestured toward the bound assassin.

“What about him?” Ivri asked. “It’s not that it wouldn’t be a fun afternoon seeing if you can heal him as fast as I can repeatedly kill him, but it does seem futile and I’m sure we’ve both better things to do. Though I would appreciate it if you’d give me a head start before you untie him.”

“Fine,” Ismene sighed. “Do I even want to know why an SI:7 assassin is tracking you in the first place?”

“Probably not,” Ivri said, picking up chairs that squelched as the legs pulled free of coagulating blood.

“Don’t you work for them?”

“I suppose that would depend on how you define it.”

Ismene blinked. “Do you report to them and they give you assignments?”

“Oh. That. Well, not as such,” Ivri said, fishing in the cabinets for cleaning supplies.

“You’re… You’re not with SI:7 anymore?” That didn’t make sense. Surely someone would have known. Wouldn’t they?

“Nope,” Ivri said cheerfully, shaking soapy water onto a cloth and using it to wipe down the chairs.

“So you’re not an assassin now?”

“Perish the thought!”

Realization bounced around her skull. “You mean you’re just out there killing people?!”

“All right, look, I know how it sounds, but really it just makes me a mercenary, right?”

“Captain Jocoza would never permit it! Sir Elohad would never permit it!”

With a drawn out ‘ugh’, Ivri stared at the ceiling. “You’re going to make a whole thing out of this, aren’t you? Fine, I’ll tell Jo. She’ll be fine with it, you’ll see.”

“She will not, especially since I happen to know you’re not taking assignments from us, either. You’re basically just a murderer!”

“Darling, I am not ‘basically’ anything.”

Unamused, Ismene stood firm. “You’ll tell Jo, or I will.”

Ivri flapped the bloody cloth in her hands. “Right now?”

Scowling, Ismene said, “Fine. By Monday.”

“Fine. Do you mind if I clean up a few gallons of blood now? Preferably before Oranna sees it and makes sad eyes at me.”

Which was as much as she was likely to get, so Ismene decided to take it. She turned toward her lunch, and stared at the blood-dappled cheese. “You ruined my lunch too, you know.”

Ivri flipped a coin toward Ismene, who fumbled it and let it fall.

Gold glittered in a pool of blood.

They didn’t speak again.