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a natural-born killer

001.

Iolani was born to the city of Mirrorlight, born to the shadows, born to be a part of the darkest side of society, to a clan of assassins and bodyguards and informants and spies. Anything criminal and their clan most definitely has a hand in it. Their affiliation was bought only ever by money, their reputation ruthless, their name feared. She was born to kill, born to blood her teeth and hands, and Iolani did not disappoint. She never disappoints.[break]

002.

She had a favourite cousin when she was younger, four years older than her but they got along like a house on fire, causing chaos and mischief everywhere they went. He taught her stealth, he taught her to lie, he taught her to flirt and love, and he showed her a world outside the underworld in which she'd been firmly entrenched in. She loved him, more than her parents, more than her siblings, because he would spend time with her for the simple sake of spending time with her, and he'd see her in a way rarely anyone else would.[break]

003.

She was seven the first time she killed another human being, seven the first time she stabbed someone in the chest and had their blood splatter across her hands. It was in self-defence, a panicked and instinctive reaction to a fumbled attack in the dark, but when the lights switched on, all she could see was the red on her hands and the face of her favourite cousin staring at her with regret in his dying eyes.[break]

004.

She was eight the first time she killed someone in cold blood, the first time she looked someone in the eye and struck them down point blank. It was cold, it was calculated, and she knew exactly what she was doing, killing the traitor to their clan. She waited, afterwards, to feel sick, nauseous, to feel a flicker of guilt - anything.[break][break]

But there was nothing - only a vague sense of regret for a life that could have been, and the satisfaction of eliminating a threat to those she loves.[break]

005.

She was nine the first time she met her best friend, nine when she'd snuck out without accompaniment by a fellow clan member and befriended a charming civilian girl with copper-dark skin and the sky for eyes. Alessia had Iolani entranced, a moth drawn to the beautiful bright flame; she was Icarus with his waxen wings, Icarus who fell in love with the sun and burned for it. Although Iolani could never stay for long and Alessia knew nothing of the dark world residing mere meters from her innocent civilian life, theirs was a beautiful friendship, full of mischief and dark humour and a spark that burned so bright.[break]

006.

They were thirteen when they kissed for the first time, spark and fire translating to a passion that could eclipse the sun. They were like a star going supernova, dazzling and radiant and utterly captivating, luminous with the love they shared with entwined limbs and swollen lips. They were young, but Iolani was never truly a child and Alessia had always been too curious for her own good; they were drunk on the high of their infatuation and they believed they could be kings of the world.
Iolani didn't realise until much, much later that a supernova is just a tragically beautiful signal for the beginning of the end.[break]

007.

They were fifteen and still so in love, Iolani sneaking out what seemed to every night she could to visit her lover. It was a miracle that they'd managed to keep their relationship a secret for so long, a miracle that the seemingly omniscient eye of her criminal clan had never seen this liaison happening right under their nose - Iolani should have realised that miracles do not exist. She should have known better, but she was distracted, and that was what cost them, in the end.[break]

008.

There were whispers of unrest within the clan, whispers of budding dissatisfaction and dissent. There are always whispers, of course, but nothing ever happens. Nothing, until decades of buried tensions and grudges thought settled by weren't, not really, and alliances that weren't and the worst of circumstances collided together to form an amalgamation of chaos, teetering on the edge of collapse. Then the heir, the hope for the clan and the tenuous glue holding them together, was found assassinated.[break][break]

It was the spark for a civil war within their clan. Her clan was split into two, mothers against sons, father against daughters, siblings fighting on the opposite side of a struggle no one thought would ever really happen. Her blood family, against all odds, stuck together on one side, the ties that bind them together stronger than the forces tearing their wider family apart.[break][break]

But that wasn't a good thing in the end, not really. No one was spared - everyone chose a side or died - and her family had chosen a clear side. But Iolani, foolish Iolani who was Icarus who was that stupid stupid moth, decided to run away from the world she grew up in, from the world that is her birthright, from the world she lives and breathes and intrinsically belongs to, to be with the sun she loved.[break][break]

She told no one anything, nothing save for a whispered 'I love you' to her big brother the night she planned on leaving. Thirty minutes later, sneaking out the windows and avoiding the patrols she knew like the beat of her heart, she ran as fast as she could to the house of her light.[break][break]

She found Alessia all right.[break][break]

She found Alessia laid out on the bed they'd shared so many times, eyes closed and expression peaceful, ink-dark hair fanned out around her head like the wings of an angel. She could be sleeping. She looked like she was sleeping.[break][break]

She was as beautiful as ever even with the deceptively thin line of red marring the delicate skin of her throat.[break][break]

[break][break]

The stories never say what Icarus is without his sun. The sun can still burn brilliantly without Icarus, but Icarus is never mentioned without his sun, not after he falls in love. There is nothing about what happens if it is the sun that dies, if Icarus survives and his beloved dies instead.[break][break]

The reason is simple.[break][break]

There is no Icarus without the sun.[break]

009.

There was a note lain over Alessia's heart, written on a piece of paper too white for the message it contained. Two words written in bold, stark black: payback, and the unmistakable half-sun rising symbol of her family's enemies.[break][break]

She burned.[break][break]

Some people break quietly with the loss of their loved ones, while others painted the world red in their grief and rage. Iolani was both; she fractured along clean, predictable lines which were all the more tragic in their inevitability. Alessia was her love, her light, the guardian to her humanity - with her death, the leash which had always held the darkest monster inside Iolani back was abruptly cut.[break][break]

Over the following year, Iolani was single-handedly responsible for over half the deaths of the opposing side. Her hands were constantly bathed in blood, her name whispered with growing alarm, and even her family were beginning to be concerned about the sheer single-minded ruthlessness with which Iolani hunted down her enemies. Even to criminals such as them, to whom killing and murder were intrinsic parts of life, Iolani was going too far.[break][break]

On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Iolani set fire to the house to which she'd lured and barricaded in all her remaining targets. She watched it burn down to ashes and dust, watched her reason for living for the past two years go up in fire. She should have felt elated, should have felt viciously glad, triumphant, nauseous, sick - anything.[break][break]

She felt nothing.[break][break]

She felt drained.[break][break]

All this killing, all this bloodshed, all these years of hunting down her enemies - and Alessia was still dead.[break][break]

Nothing had changed.[break]

010.

Iolani vanished from the criminal underworld after that, without a single word or message to anyone, traceless even to the master spies and trackers. The only evidence that she even survived the fire she set was an account from a civilian about a figure completely covered with soot who had emerged from the wreckage with a scarf of brilliant red, grey eyes empty as if she were dead inside. "It is done," she had said simply, and proceeded to walk away into the gathering gloom, vanishing as if she were a ghost.[break]

011.

The next two years were quiet.[break][break]

Iolani set aside her ties to the underworld and instead travelled the world, roaming all over Salem and Sundial and occasionally even venturing into the wilderness itself. She toured cities. She camped in the wilderness. She climbed mountains. She drank at taverns. She took up painting, and sold her art for money. She listened to musicians, and tried her own hand at learning the cello. She tried to live, to discover herself, to love again.[break][break]

Slowly, she began to drag herself up from the bottom she'd hit.[break][break]

Perhaps it would have worked better if she had not caught wind of the news that her favourite brother had been assassinated.[break]

012.

Before anyone else could take revenge, Iolani hunted down the assassin responsible and killed her. That might have been the end of it had her mother not been killed soon after. Well, Iolani killed the person responsible for that as well. And she was offered another job, and another, and she just kept going, dragged back into the world she almost escaped.[break][break]

You can take the person out of the underworld, but you can't take the underworld out of the person. Not if you're born to the dark world.[break][break]

Iolani never stood a chance.[break][break]

Well, no, that's a lie.[break][break]

She did, once.[break]

013.

It was the little things that hammered in how trapped she was by her past, how much a taste of blood had sent her spiralling down again.[break][break]

Little things like a happy couple walking down a street, hand in hand. Little things like sky-eyed children laughing as they run into the day. Little things like a family reunited, the quiet contentment in civilian faces as they snatch moments together away from the dark and unforgiving world.[break][break]

She wants, longs for the simple lives of civilian people even as she hates them, and herself, for it. She hates the want that eats at her heart every time she looks around, hates herself for being weak enough to feel these emotions, hates the world for being such that she'll never be able to escape the merciless underworld to which she was born.[break][break]

She had begun to gather too many enemies again to hide peacefully in a civilian life, she has too many customers whose desperation might seek her out, she is too entrenched in blood and killing to know what to do with her hands otherwise; she is too alone without Alessia to lose herself in a sunshine world to which she does not belong.[break][break]

Iolani knows, and hates, and wants, and she takes job after job after job and hates herself a little more each time for destroying the lives of people who have what she cannot, and she hates herself even more for vindication that twists her insides as others are made to go through what she had to.[break]

000.

There is a coven in purple and black, a coven with roots far and deep with a name entrenched in history and old fear. She has known, she has known for a while now, but somehow, after too many visits and nights spent drinking at Sundial's famed Bell's Bar, there's an offer whispered in her ear, an offer made with a flirtatious smirk and fingers trailed against her skin, an offer that hints at breaking this cycle of blood and hatred she has trapped herself in.[break][break]

And she thinks-[break][break]

[break][break]

-what has she to lose?[break][break]

Iolani bares her teeth in a mockery of a smile and says yes.