hugs to @captastra for putting this together (you can find the prompts here!)
my other entries: Day I | Day III | Day IV (nsfw) | Day VI | Day VII
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"I take it they decided you would soften me up for questioning."
Illario was in just as sorry a state as he had been when he was first thrown into this room, ironically similar to the one he had held Caterina in only a week prior. He sat on the floor against the wall, blood long dried and bruises yellowing. His hair tie was missing, leaving his unwashed hair to hang despondently in his face, and his stubble had grown to an unkempt degree that made his face itch instinctively. He hadn't been given a change of clothes yet either, if he was to be given any at all.
He had been kind enough to leave Caterina unshackled in her captivity, at the very least. Perhaps a foolish decision, on his part, given how things turned out. That same courtesy was not extended to him now, his right ankle shackled to a very solid chain that had been bolted into the floor, destroying the intricate tile work in the very center of the room to ensure it was properly reinforced. It was better than the manacles he had started in, but it was all undoubtedly just another show.
Another way to demoralize him. As if he needed it. He had already been thoroughly humiliated in front of every single House of the Antivan Crows.
Still, he couldn't bring himself to look up at his guest, for fear of the expression he'd find on that face. Instead, he merely waited for a response, dark eyes stuck on a point out of focus.
"They did," Cadfael's voice smoothly relented, eventually. "I told them to fuck themselves."
Illario huffed, leaning his head back against the wall. "Here for your own interrogation, then?"
Cadfael ignored the question in favor of another. "The very first time we met, you were already working with the Venatori, right? It wasn't enough to strike that first deal and be done with it, that isn't how they work. They kept you close for some time, enough for you to still find them valuable even after it came out Zara lied to you. At least enough for you to have them at your heels in the opera house."
He was picking at wounds that still weren't healed over with clinical precision. Illario wanted to be angry. He wanted to fight again until they both bled, just to feel something other than this bone-deep sorrow.
"Astute as ever, Rook."
Calling him that again was meant to hurt him back, just a little. Cadfael had admitted to him once that the nickname was starting to mean less to him, the more it became synonymous with the hero everyone expected him to be. It became impersonal. Anyone could call him Rook. Everyone did.
Nothing in the sound of his breathing or his voice betrayed if the hit landed. He pressed on as if nothing had been said. He was always good at keeping himself on track, if he wanted something badly enough.
"Then you had to have known how badly they wanted me dead. For my work in Tevinter. For my part in breaking Lucanis out. For everything else after that."
The assassin tilted his head curiously. "…I knew of this, yes."
"And yet somehow, they never ambushed me. Almost as if nobody ever tipped them off whenever I was here."
Illario lost his ability to breathe for a dreadful moment. It was true, he had kept his knowledge of Cadfael's whereabouts to himself just as closely as he kept his involvement with the Venatori from the rest of the Crows. But to admit to it was to admit to his own terrible weakness.
His whole life he had been told that to love was to expect tragedy. He used to think it was a terribly maudlin sentiment, but maybe there was truth to it after all. He loved his Grandmother so much that he grew to resent her for her cruelty. He loved his cousin so fiercely that he would rather seem him dead and at peace than caught in the crossfire of his ambitions and in turmoil. He didn't have the heart to kill either of them by his own hand, and they both returned with vengeance.
"I want to believe that it meant something to you." The familiar feeling of eyes boring into the side of his face still didn't make Illario turn. "But you're very convincing. Maybe Zara and I both fell for the same act."
He already knew that he had lost Cadfael when he chose his place at Lucanis' side over his. To fan at dead embers would waste both of their time. He forced his throat to work again.
"It was strictly business."
A beat of silence.
"I believe you."
It was the uncharacteristic absence of all emotion from his voice that finally made Illario look up in his direction.
Cadfael, in a halo of moonlight from the windowsill he leaned against with arms crossed, wasn't looking at him, but he could see his eyes all the same. Devoid of their fire, that beautiful, burning passion that had drawn him in the night they met.
Resignation did not suit him like the moonlight did.
"Lucanis will come to visit you again tomorrow." Cadfael pushed off the wall, never once glancing back. "Goodbye, Illario."
Before Illario's panic could catch up with him and make him say something, anything, the door was already closing behind Cadfael's retreating form. The shuffling footsteps from the other side of the wall were unsteady, at first, but they evened out as they grew more distant.
Illario was alone once more.
Truthfully, there was no greater torture that the Crows could subject him to than this: forcing him to sit alone with his heartbreak and acknowledge it for what it was.
What if the Douji never turned human? What if they met as destiny intended and, despite it all, still fell in love. But they don’t say anything about it, don’t really have much of a concern for it. There’ll be plenty of time for it later on, there’s no rush now. And they stall and wait and perhaps even forget that that was something they were supposed to do.
Time passes, and finally they decide that it’s time. But the individual before them isn’t quite what they remember. Maybe it’s the color of their eyes or perhaps the texture of their hair isn’t quite right. And it takes a moment for them to really register that he person before them isn’t even them. Perhaps it’s a child or grandchild, an almost spitting image of the one they once loved. They learn that the loved one is now gone, having grown and aged and finally departed from this life.
