4-

 

A fact few professional criminals would share is that in a city like Vascun, petty theft just didn’t pay well enough to live off of. This resulted in many thieves with two jobs, which usually intermixed to form a single career. For example, a thief could get a job at a library, and pickpocket the occasional character engrossed in their book. A thief could go out and sell newspapers every morning, overcharging people who were too tired to notice the extra money the merchant slipped into their stash. Or, the most common reaction to the prominent poverty, a thief could become a wanderer, losing themselves in the decaying city streets and stumble into those who hate them, marked by their well-made clothing and orderly appearance. Many saw it as a sort of vengeance against the wealthy and well off of the city, faulting their victims for the thief’s creation.

 

Or, if one was so inclined, a thief could step up from petty theft and become infamous. One of these thieves was named Locke Morningside, although he was commonly called Specter (despite his own objections and obvious dislike for what he saw as a downright idiotic name) when referred to by reputation. At this stage, he didn’t have to pickpocket, didn’t have to break into random apartments, didn’t have to snatch at an old lady’s purse.

 

That didn’t stop him from doing it anyway, though.

 

And, as Locke ran away from the shrieking old woman who had very nearly knocked him unconscious with her bare fists, he decided that maybe he shouldn’t try any more thievery this week, since he seemed to have quite possibly the worst luck imaginable. No, he couldn’t pick that old woman across the way just STARING at them and making Locke nervous she’d have a heart attack. He went straight for the strappy leather shoes and golden wedding ring.

 

Really, he should have figured she’d made it this deep into the darker part of Vascun with her purse intact for a reason.

 

“CRETINOUS CROOK!” she hollered at him as Locke swept down another narrow alley, hopping over a chain fence with startling ease. As the links rattled against the metal, she stopped and jabbed a finger out at his smirking face. “You…you…BASTARD!”

 

“Oh, your words, they wound me so,” Locke deadpanned, a hand rising to hang melodramatically over his chest dramatically and trying not to smirk at the tortured look on her cultured face. And, as she huffed for another insult to hurl against him, Locke turned around and trotted down the alley, stuffing her shiny leather purse into his jacket at the same time and wondering why he’d even bothered with cheerfully purse snatching when he didn’t need to.

 

Damn it, but it was true. Last night’s dream had put him in a good mood, not to mention probably desensitized him to everyday insults. The bad side of this, however was his alter-self seemed to have a gift for turning well-meaning sentences into the dirtiest things, and as a result of spending the night in his presence Locke had developed a single section of his mind that seemed to do exactly that.

 

He let out a small sigh as he started back towards his apartment. Locke had a rather unorthodox sleep schedule- menial petty theft in the early morning, sleep through late morning and afternoon, and wake up as the sun set, only to take a two and a half hour nap around three in the morning.

 

But, fate just hated Locke that day, apparently, for after turning another corner, there stood the corpse, hands resting calmly in the pockets of his white coat and smiling quietly. This smile wasn’t so unnerving, though, a good-natured amusement showing through instead of that bizarre, unnamable emotion of the other.

 

“Locke,” he said, nodding his head politely. Locke noticed a new piece of clothing in the outfit- a strange leather contraption formed an X across his chest, a metal piece bonding the two straps together in the middle. It tweaked at his memory, but the thief couldn’t remember, whatever it was.

 

He ignored it. A frown growing on his lips, Locke’s arms crossed in front of his chest. “Corpse.”

 

The undead man chuckled, a hand reaching up to scratch at his scalp- a nervous gesture if Locke had ever seen one. “Heh…guess I kind of deserve that, not giving you my name.”

 

“And for nearly scaring me to death too,” Locke muttered.

 

“Well then.” Turquoise eyes smiled at him, and he bowed slightly at the waist, long white hair trailing down his back. “Hello. My name is Aidenai, and I’m your assassin for the morning,” he said, and raised back up, still smiling his real smile as Locke visibly tensed. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

 

“You’re the one he sent after me, then,” Locke stated, knowing the corpse- Aidenai, he amended- would know precisely who and what he was talking about. “That’s why you were in The Hidden Flute’s alley.”

 

Aidenai simply nodded, smile slipping slowly from his face.

 

Locke shoved his hands into his pockets with a snort. “Figures the only nice body in the city would be hired to kill me.”

 

Aidenai blinked, and the dirty Other-Locke portion of his brain snapped into snickering existence.

 

Locke blushed. “By nice I mean polite, and by body I mean dead body, like a corpse. You know that, right?” He glared. “You can stop grinning, you know!”

 

“You can stop blushing, too.” His head tilted to the side, a devious glint in the clear turquoise eyes. “I’ll quit when you do.”

 

“Damn it, just try to kill me already!” Locke snapped, and Aidenai’s grin was soon accompanied by a chuckle, light and humorous in the dim brick city.

 

“Who ever said I was here to kill you?”

 

Locke stared at him flatly. “Right. Then why are you, an assassin, standing here with me, exactly?”

 

Aidenai sighed, and the smile was gone, a calm, eerily natural blank mask taking its place. “Major General Grigorsen requested the services of myself and a thief known as Specter to search for Locke Morningside and bring him to Grigorsen’s home.” A slight smile, barely more than a quirk of his lips, broke through. “I have to say, that was rather confusing, since he was hiring his target to find itself. Well, either confusing or downright stupid.”

 

“It’s a good thing he has all the intelligence of your coat then,” Locke smirked, and the assassin actually POUTED, lower lip jutting out as he pulled his white duster around himself protectively.

 

“Hey, don’t underestimate this coat! It’s been through more than you could imagine.”

 

Locke smirked. “I can imagine a hell of a lot.”

 

“That’s good to know.” And this time, when Aidenai smiled, it was almost heartrendingly true, lending a light both subtle and brilliant to his features. “I’m glad.”

 

For a moment, all Locke could do was stare. It wasn’t right for anyone to have that kind of an expression and never get to use it. It wasn’t decent for someone like this to have to rid his coat of so much blood and dirt so many times. And it wasn’t right that the true smile was soon glazed over with the false one, or that he had to in the first place.

 

“Why the HELL are you an assassin?” Locke found himself shouting out before he’d even realized it, an anger he couldn’t even begin to try and understand growing inside him. “Why is someone like you getting jobs killing people for a living?”

 

Aidenai simply shrugged nonchalantly. “Why are you a thief when you’ve got a general looking out for you?”

 

Locke glared at him. “That’s DIFFERENT!”

 

“HOW?!” Aidenai exploded, eyes smoldering as his hands clenched and unclenched into fists. “You don’t know ANYTHING about me, and I don’t know anything about you, so just-” He stopped himself mid-rant, a small choking noise interrupting his words as his head hung down, white-silver hair obscuring his eyes.

 

“The only way for us to know each other is to talk, and I don’t think either of us really wants to do that,” Locke finally said, breaking the pained silence. “And-” He paused, and blinked wide eyes. “Wait a minute, what the hell is going on? Aren’t you supposed to be trying to kill me?”

 

“I’m supposed to take you to the General’s home,” Aidenai stated, and when he looked back up the same old soft, painful, flawlessly fake smile was back in place. “Alive.”

 

Trying not to growl, Locke pulled out a cigarette and had it lit in the time it took to place it between his lips, years of practice having the motion perfected. “So you’re going to try and ‘detain’ me then, eh?”

 

Aidenai shrugged. “Not really, no.”

 

Locke tilted his head to the side, taking a drag from his cigarette. “What’s that mean? He wants me alive and willing or something?”

 

The white-haired man chuckled, and started closing the gap between them with loose, easy steps. “I didn’t take the job. He’s looking for someone else to find you now, since the two best are unavailable.” Aidenai was right in front of him now, and Locke found his pulse speeding up, heart beating faster, and he still had no idea why the not-corpse did this to him EVERY time.

 

So fast Locke barely saw it, Aidenai grabbed the cigarette out of his mouth and ground it into the alley floor, smiling. “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s bad for you,” he said, grinning (and it was a TRUE grin, and Locke couldn’t help but be relieved at that) at Locke’s slack-jawed expression.  Aidenai let out a breath, and backed up again as maroon eyes alternated between staring and blinking at him.

 

“…I don’t understand you,” Locke muttered, and Aidenai laughed easily at that.

 

“Didn’t we already go through this?”

 

“That was BEFORE! Why the hell didn’t you take the job?! It’d be easy money for you-”

 

“Locke.” The voice was unshakeable, but not rude in its decisiveness. “Not all the worth of an action is found in the payback.” He shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “Plus I didn’t want to get blasted into a wall again. That kind of hurt.”

 

“Shit, you’re like some big dangerous assassin, but think like a kid,” Locke groaned.

 

Aidenai beamed at him. “Thank you!”

 

Locke snorted, hands returning to his pockets. “Whatever, corpse. Any idea who Grig’ll send after me now?”

 

“I’d bet on the second best thief and assassin in Vascun,” Aidenai said bluntly, and Locke actually had to work to not be both flattered and annoyed at the same time, because it probably was the truth, after all, and Other-Locke said not to make the other man explode regardless of how annoyingly obvious he was being.

 

“Well, thanks for that startling revelation,” Locke snapped. “Who’s the second-best assassin?”

 

Aidenai shrugged. “I don’t really know. I’ve only been here for a few months, after all, but I have some guesses.”

 

Locke waited for him to continue, but finally prompted him with, “And those options are…?”

 

“Something you don’t need to worry about,” Aidenai shrugged.

 

“Gee, that’s logical,” Locke snapped. “Why would I need to know the names of people who are going to try and KILL ME?!”

 

“Detain you,” Aidenai corrected, and Locke smacked a hand to his forehead. “And you don’t need to worry about them. I’ve got it covered.”

 

Maroon eyes blinked. “Huh?”

 

Aidenai chuckled, shaking his head (and all that glorious hair just swooshed about). “You take care of keeping thieves in line, I’ll take care of the assassins.”

 

“Listen, I don’t know where you’re from, but Vascun doesn’t have any kind of underground autocracy or something,” Locke growled. “It’s not structured in some easy-to-handle sort of system where I can just find someone to send out fucking LEGISLATION or something.”

 

Aidenai shrugged. “Well, I’m going to beat it into them. That seems to work pretty well.”

 

Locke stared at him. “Uh, yeah, guess that’d work.” He frowned. “WHY are you doing this again?”

 

And Aidenai just grinned at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Locke. I know you don’t want to tell me about this whole General Grigorsen thing, or anything else for that matter, but I still want to hear it.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” the thief grumbled, pulling out another cigarette. Before he could light it, though, the assassin had snatched it out of his fingers.

 

“Really, Locke. Going through all this trouble to keep yourself away from the general and you’re still trying to kill yourself?” Aidenai chided, tucking the unlit cigarette into a pocket.

 

Locke glared at him. “Bite me, bitch.”

 

Aidenai beamed. “Rain check? I have to go now, but I’ll be around. See you tomorrow.”

 

And then he was just…GONE, leaving Locke growling in the alleyway at the space Aidenai had previously occupied. He HATED when the bastard did stuff like this. Sure, he’d only known him for about a day, but the man was an annoyance that seemed to positively delight in Locke’s misfortune.

 

“You know what? I don’t care anymore,” Locke ranted, barely even realizing he was speaking out loud. Angry hands jammed another cigarette into his mouth. “Throw innuendos and confusion at me all you want! Confuse me until my brain explodes! See if I care! I’ll just go beat my will into other thieves now, how ‘bout? Oh, yes, a brilliant plan, especially the part where they’ll all TRY TO KILL ME!” That burning, shivering sensation was gathering around his clenched fists, the one that usually resulted in either very, very dead people or demolished buildings.

 

He forced himself to breathe in and out, in and out, trying to calm himself down. His eyes slid shut as he regulated his breathing, feeling his racing pulse return to normal, hearing nothing but his own heartbeat and feeling the air run through him. When the sensation of gathering power was finally gone and the ring had stopped searing his skin (he barely even noticed it nowadays, honestly), he allowed his eyes to open.

 

Wry purple eyes grinned at his own, and Locke groaned. “What do YOU want?”