Chapter One

Silence. Complete and utter silence. It pressed on Shay's ears as he crawled, catlike, through the small round window near the roof of the cottage, stepping onto the rafter in front of him. Turning, he peered out the window towards the water, past the tree he had used to climb up to this window. Even the lake was silent. Quietly, he pulled the window shut behind him, turning back towards the dark interior of the cottage and walking with his knees bent along the beam going across the room. When he was above a door, he stopped, looking down, and sat with his legs dangling beneath him.

Eyes on the door, Shay pulled a pair of long daggers from his sleeves, one held in each hand. They had no guards, and what moonlight there was in the cottage shone off the polished silver as he held them backhanded at his sides, hands on the beam on either side of him, shoulders hunched. He kept his eyes on the door below, remaining motionless, not moving a muscle as the sun crept up from the lake behind him.
Nothing happened for a long time, he just sat there.
At some point, he heard someone leave the cottage through the sliding door behind him. He remained unnoticed, though, and his target was still in the room he watched. Shay's problems did not lie in the unseen. Not for now.
Suddenly the doorknob turned, the door opened. Out stepped a young man in his early twenties, yawning and tugging the rope of his red robe around his waist. Shay did not move, except to keep his eyes on the man as he came underneath where Shay sat. It was that moment that Shay let himself fall backwards, handing for an instant from the beam before kicking off and flipping to land on his feet in front of the man in a graceful crouch.
He didn't give the man a chance to be surprised by this, sticking his leg out and sweeping the other's out from under him, causing him to fall flat on his face. Shay was on top of him in an instant, his knee on his back near his head, one hand grabbing his hair and tugging his head up, the other hand pressing the blade of the fancy dagger to his throat.
"You should have paid us, Jason," Shay said in his usual gravelly voice, void of emotion as his face was. Jason squirmed beneath Shay's hold, and he pressed the blade closer to the skin to quiet his movement.
"I couldn't!" the man gasped, going still. Shay's voice did not change when he answered.
"You're a wealthy man, Jason. Perhaps you should have sold this cottage?"
"I would have paid you, but my company-"
"What about it?" Shay interrupted, shifting slightly.
"I'm going bankrupt!" he answered in a high-pitched voice, fear influencing his ability to keep calm. Jason knew who Shay was, he knew Shay's rank in the Underground, and he knew how good at his job he really was.
"That still doesn't excuse your threats to our collector," Shay replied, bending downwards towards the other man's ear. "And you really did not need to hit her like you did. We were ready to negotiate payments."
"I couldn't just stand there and say I was missing payments with my wife and kid-"
"You should have thought of that beforehand." Shay tightened his grip on the blade, tugging back on Jason's head as he did so, and was ready to kill the man in one sweep of his arm. But something stopped him. He was not sure what. He just hesitated, tensed up, ready but motionless. Something told him not to.
"Daddy?" Shay's head shot up towards a dripping ten-year-old boy standing in the sliding door, hand on the glass at his side. He stared at the boy for an eternity until the child repeated his questioning towards his father. "Daddy, what's going on?"
"Henry, go to your room," Jason said in a tense voice.
"Who is that, dad? Are you okay?"
"Go to your room!" The boy stared at Shay, whose face had not changed in the least. It was still blank as it had ever been. It was a long moment until the young boy's eyes darted to look over Shay's shoulder, and the assassin turned to look and see what had caught the child's attention.
Shay was unsure what happened, but he was suddenly on the floor a few feet away from where Jason was scrambling to his feet. Pain shot through his head from his right eye, and he put a hand over that side of his face, only to pull it away and see his hand covered with blood from a wound he'd received, Shay could only assume, from the iron fire poker in the hands of Jason's wife Maria, who held it ready to defend herself, her wife, and her son.
Shay got to his feet quickly, swaying slightly, but he kept his hands up, holding his blades in his hands at a defensive stance. Jason came to his wife, and with a few whispered words he convinced her to release her makeshift weapon and hand it over to him.
"Go take Henry and leave," he said. "Get out of here, go somewhere safe, I'll come for you." The woman hesitated, but nodded, hurrying over and taking her boy by the hand and leading him out the way he had come in. Shay did not take his eyes off of Jason and the iron tool, shifting his feet to be in a better position. He had nothing to fear. Using an exercise he learned when he was small, he ignored the pain in his head for the moment. That would be dealt with later. Right now, he watched for Jason to move. As soon as he did, Shay would kill him. It would be simple.
And he did. He raised the weapon, bringing it down hard. Shay caught it in one hand, still holding the dagger - he would never drop those things in a fight if he could help it - ignoring the pain the collision with his palm created. Jason was open, and Shay had only to strike out with his other arm to fatally wound the debtor who so arrogantly thought he could attack an assassin as skilled as he.
Skill failed him. Shay failed. Hesitation. Why would he do this? He had never failed to kill a target in his life! In twenty seven years of life, he'd always been an assassin, or training to be one, but now.
Jason's knee came up and collided with Shay's abdomen, doubling him over with a cough, wind escaping his lungs with far too much speed. The fire poker came down on Shay's head, and he woke up with a small yelp.

--

He peered about the small motel room where he had lived for eight or nine months now, shaking visibly. Why did he always have that dream? It was worse than those conversations he had with that faceless voice in his own mind.
Lying back down on the messy bed, Shay stared to the side, across the room at the wall ahead of him where his small table and microwave sat in the corner. Past the night table. Past the gun that lay in the drawer. Past the wall itself into the parking lot and through to the other end of the rooms that were in this hotel.
He could see it in his mind. He could see everywhere. Anywhere he had been. He always knew where everything was. He wished he could take some of that knowledge out of his head, maybe that would help to make him a little more sane than he thought he was now. He brushed his hair back out of his face with one hand, out of icy blue eyes, away from the ugly scar that idiot woman had given him with that idiot poker.
Shay could remember waking up next to a dumpster, deep in an alleyway in the town closest to Jason's cottage. At least the fool had not killed him. He had to have known the wrath he would have received from the Assassin's guild. And Shay had also been lucky to be found by some Underground members, and not a member of the police force. He could only imagine what could have happened then.
He'd been bandaged up, and unable to see out of that eye for weeks. Luckily he hadn't lost his sight. It had been hard to stand in front of Jeffrey's desk to be hassled about his failure with his head throbbing like it was, unable to hardly stand the whole time. But he did it, and mostly ignored the lecture altogether.
Shay had not gone back since then.
Rolling over on the bed, he pulled the sheets closer as he shivered, squeezing his eyes shut tightly.
Why do you think about it?
Shay ignored the question of the voice that often invaded his mind, coming in and out of reality. Usually, it would stay in his dreams, but as of late it had been coming into his waking moments and haunting him. He still could not figure out most of what it asked, what it told him to do. Sometimes he asked questions of it, as well, and received cryptic answers. Once, it had informed him it was himself. Shay believed it to the extent that it was logical he was talking to himself in some subconscious form, but he also could not believe that he could be so..
He was unsure.
It was morning, and he supposed it was about time he got up. That did not mean he did it right away, though. He lay there several minutes more before turning back over again and sitting up, putting his bare feet over onto the floor. Reaching up a hand and feeling his chin, he decided that shaving was not needed today. That required energy, and Shay did not feel like spending too much. Maybe a shower, though. To wash away his troubles?
Nothing could do that.
He stood, and he went to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

--

Standing in the shower, with the warm water falling down his back and matting his hair to his face, Shay closed his eyes. He just let the warmth flow into his bones. He was not sure how long he stood there, but the water began to run chill and he decided he ought to get out. Each resident was only allowed their own tank of heated water, and they were large tanks. This brought him to believe he had been in there long enough.
Getting out, he dressed, throwing on a wrinkled t-shirt tucked into navy-blue pants that belonged in a formal office, not crumpled on the floor next to the little hamper he used, fabric wrinkled on his legs. But he had no care at all for this.
Sighing, he stepped out of the restroom, brushing his hair into a semblance of neatness, though of course that one bit covered his right eye. Hiding that ugly mark of failure that fouled his face. He stopped trying to tame his bangs after receiving that 'reward' for his job that day.
Passing the hall, he stopped, looking towards the door as someone outside knocked softly on the wood. He hesitated - always hesitating, these days - looking at the door for several minutes until whoever it was knocked again, a little more firmly, as if deciding that, yes, they wanted to be here. Shay pulled his navy blazer off the hook near the hall, tugging it on and checking for those daggers before stepping towards the door. He was always watchful. He never knew when a member of the Assassin's guild or the Hunter's guild would come for him. They did not like quitters, and after his failing, Shay had quit.
No one quit the Assassin's guild. Shay had killed enough quitters to know that.
Standing close to the door, Shay looked cautiously out the peephole, gazing to the outside world he so seldom visited. Outside was a woman, dark hair in a tail at the back of her head, looking up and down the rows of doors. He stared at her another minute until she raised her hand and knocked again. He knew her. Did he not? She was so familiar. But was it her?
Shay opened the door, undoing the pair of locks with nimble hands and turning the knob, cracking it just a little to look out. She looked back at him, deep green eyes settling onto his as he tried to decide if it was who he thought.
"Shay?" she asked in that familiar lilting voice, tilting her head in that familiar way.
"Kat?" Shay asked, voice hoarse, as if unused to talking. Indeed, he had had no human contact other than at the supermarket in months. "Katelyn?" The woman smiled, eyes lighting up, and Shay smiled for the first time in as long as he could remember, pulling the door open. "Come in, quickly, Kat," he said. She nodded, stepping inside, and Shay glanced out into the lot to make sure no one was watching. When he was sure, he closed the door and turned towards her as she peered around the room in the same fasion he himself would.
"Kat-" he started, and she looked at him with that smile. He almost cried, and he stepped over, throwing his arms around her neck and holding her close. She had to drop the coat and briefcase in her hand or stab him in the ribs, and when they fell she put her arms up around his waist as well. "They told me you were dead," he whispered in her ear. She laughed softly in return, and Shay had to take a steadying breath, hiding the tears in his eyes by kissing her on the top of the head, the smell of roses filling his senses. She always smelled of roses or some other flower. It was her.
"I know, Shay," she said softly, voice hardly above a whisper. "I know." Neither of them seemed to want to let go of the other, and Shay was content to hold her forever.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want to leave you behind, but Messe wouldn't let me stay. He practically dragged me with him." He shook his head. "I almost killed him for it when I heard you were." he stopped, laughing shortly. "But you're not."
"I know," she answered. "I'm alive, don't worry."
"Where were you?" he asked, finally straightening up and putting her at arm's length, staring into her face and taking in her features for the first time in what had to be two years.
"I had to leave a while, Shay," she said slowly, eyes downcast. "I wasn't safe around you, I couldn't stay in the Guild, I had no skill at all like the rest of you do." She shook her head.
"You didn't have to work with us."
"I know," she answered, shaking her head again. "But." She looked up at him, face so happy Shay just let it go when she said "I'm back now."
"Yeah," he answered, nodding. "You're back now."