The Assassins Guild

Chapter 4

Five years ago

Slowly we developed a strange friendship. Crow didn't like talking, so I did all the talking. All the time. We didn't hang together during lunch, or after classes, but whenever we were together we simply didn't want to get apart. Or at least that was how I felt it. I could tell him everything, from my private thoughts to my love for everything that lived, and Crow would only listen to me. We were fifteen. We should be going out in cheap dates to the movies or holding hands tentatively, but we were young assassins and there wasn't such a thing as flirting in our world. There was only fucking to reproduce, and I supposed it was a pleasure seeking thing, but assassins didn't do love, not even when we were young. I've seen Leah Mortensen and Diego Rayuela making out in the eraser room once. Other young assassins had started experimenting with sex in our school. I would hear their stories from time to time. Whenever I listened to the girls talking about making out with boys or kissing in the eraser room I vividly imagined it was Crow and me kissing. I would imagine the tallest boy in our school, with his black-haired head bend down to reach me and kiss me. I would imagine getting myself lost in his onyx eyes while he touched me softly, using that tenderness that he reserved only for me.

Nobody ever knew we were friends. Crow made sure of it. After we met in that cold, winter night I seek him out, trying to reinstate the fragile beginning of our friendship. It was the following morning after we met in the forest. I've been trying to hide my excitement about having my first friend from everyone to no avail. In our world showing weakness wasn't ever allowed. Caring for someone, showing affection or even just paying too much attention to someone could be interpreted as weakness. I knew this much, but the excitement of seeing Crow had morphed into something new and innocent, an untainted feeling of acceptation that bloomed inside me. He gave me wings. Crow has given me hope. If the best assassin of our generation has touched me with so much tenderness, then I could hope for a better future. A future in which I didn't have to hide from the world. A future in which I could be me, the girl who loved animals and hated to kill without a reason. I could be my own, because Crow had accepted me.

I should have known better.

I found Crow on my way to lunch. He was walking in my direction, passing by the hall while all the girls stopped whatever they were doing to look after him. Even then he imposed respect with every step he took. Boys feared him, girls wanted him, professors moved out of his way. A giant he was, tall and aloof, always dressed in black from head to toe. His black hair was covered in snowflakes, which made me frown. Had he been in the forest again? Walking in the cold? He was only wearing a long coat, no gloves, nor scarves or hats. Crow had to be freezing, but still he didn't show it. Crow passed me without even sparing me a glance and that's when I knew he would never make me a weakness. He would never make me weak by caring for me. A part of me wanted to love him more for caring for me. I've never had someone who cared much if I become an easy target for being their weakness. Another part of me hated him for not caring enough to fight the entire world for me.

An entire week passed by. I lost hope as fast as I've gained it. Crow would never look at me, nor seat close to me in our classes, neither talked to me. I felt dirty and unlovable, unwanted, just like my mother have always called me. And then something happened that changed my views on Crow once again. We had been receiving daily physical tortures for a month now. The logic behind getting tortured was simple. How could we possibly learn to inflict pain if we hadn't experimented it in our own flesh? The professors would torture our bodies however they seemed to please. They will burn us, hit us, cut us, drown us, whip us...the list was infinite. We couldn't ask them to stop, if we did then an extra minute will be added to our individual torturing session. An entire life of violence had prepared me for it. I didn't excel like Crow. He could receive any form of pain and own it. Crow wouldn't flinch like us, he wouldn't scream or whimper. Crow took the pain and hold on to it as if he couldn't feel it the same way we all did. At moments I thought he liked pain just because it made him feel something in the first place, as if whenever he wasn't in pain he couldn't feel anything else. He was ice. Emptiness and void. I wasn't like him, but I never asked them to stop either. There were some of us that have asked the professors to kill them, but I didn't give them that power. My family had done worse things to me, I was used to it.