Mere Sentiment

The man woke in a sea of wildflowers. 

  He didn't note how the wind blew the yellow petals against the grass. The whole field seeming a writhing mass of yellow stars in a green sky. The only thing he did notice was the blood on the flowers.

  His own blood.

  It was crusted on his head and hands.

  Worse, he didn't know what had happened.

  Panic made its customary appearance, and still nothing came to mind. His head was as empty as the blue sky. There was nothing. Nothing.

  His breath hissed out of his mouth. Must be the head wound. But he didn't know why he was sure of it.

  He stood up shakily. There didn't seem to be anything else to do. His head was attacked by fresh waves of agony.

  It was then that he heard the voices. Children's voices. He ran a hand through long, blood crusted hair.  

  "Hey!" He called, "Boys!

  The group of them turned towards him. Maybe they were curious about this man who seemed to have appeared out of the wildflowers. However, they were not curious enough to come any closer then a horselength once they saw the blood.

  "Where am I," It sounded more like a demand then a question.

  For perhaps the first time in history, a large group of boys were completely silent. 

  "Well?" There was something about his voice that required an answer.

  "... half a mile from Dearns," one boy finally responded.

  The man was quiet for a moment as he tried to deter panic from a second appearance. He didn't have the slightest idea where Dearns was. Not even a vague tickle in the back of his mind. 

  He caught himself raising his hand to his pounding forehead again. "Take me to this.... Dearns."

  And so they did. They might not have obeyed their parents, but strange men with bloody hands are a different matter.

 The boys abandoned the man just inside the city gates. But that was fine with him.

  His head was throbbing again. It seemed to be messing with his sense of direction, because either he was wandering around in circles, or he just felt like he was.

  And his head hurt so much.

  He considered trying to find help, but it didn't seem safe to until he found out what had happened. Maybe he had fallen from a horse, and maybe something more sinister had transpired. He didn't want to take a chance.

  Of course, his suspicions were not unfounded. He had no shoes or coat to speak of. His pockets were noticeably empty. He had nothing at all on him, except a plain black shirt and black trousers. They were of nice material, but they were cut like work cloths. 

  He was unable to form any definite conclusions from that. Did he have money? Why else would the material be so nice? And yet he was a tall man, and fit, which seemed to odd for a man with money. He suspected he was young, but could not prove without seeing his reflection. All in all, he was able to figure out less then nothing about himself.

  He was knocked --quiet literally-- out of his thoughts when a corner of a carriage bumped the side of his head.

  He was unable to keep himself from crying out as he fell to the ground.

  The carriage stopped. Through a haze, the man made out the shape of a woman. He heard voices, and could tell that people were moving around him, and then everything seemed to go dark.

  For the second time in as many days, the man woke up with no idea where he was. This time however, he knew how he got there. He could vaguely recall being put in a carriage, stumbling into a large house, a doctor...

  He sat up, and the pain in his head greeted him. But he still didn't know where he was. 

  He concluded that whoever had taken him in was very rich. The room itself seemed far too nice for him. It looked like a place lords slept, not... whatever he was. The furniture was expensive, and so was the decor, but what interested him the most was the mirror above the mantle.

  He slid his legs out of the large bed, and when he was sure he wasn't going to fall back down, he moved to look in the mirror.

  Two black eyes starred back at him. His face was like his body, long and thin with bony edges, his hair was like his cloths, long, black as pitch, and cut with only the faintest idea of style. His nose was crooked.

  The man turned and left both the mirror and the man he felt he should recognize as he exited the room.

  He told the first servant he saw to take him to the family.

  They were all eating breakfast when he entered.

  "Oh Mr...." The Lady trailed off as she realized he hadn't given a name, "We didn't expect you to be up and about so soon,"

  "But please," Her husband continued her thought, "come join us! We'll have the servants lay you another place." 

  The man froze for a moment then said lamely, "I don't have any money to pay you back, I'm sorry to--"

  "Oh nonsense!" the Lord said, "Just sit down and eat, we've taken care of everything."

  And so the man without a name was stuck. 

  The family introduced themselves as Lord and Lady Deaplin, their son being Gavon, and their daughter, Alaine. So, the nameless man sat down and ate breakfast with nobles.

  "The doctor said that you already had a head injury. When the carriage hit you, it made it worse."

  The man decided that in this state, there was no way for him to make a lie convincing, and was unsure why he felt compelled to lie in the first place. These people had been nothing but kind to him.

  "Yes," He answered, "I did. I expect that was why I was wandering in the middle of the road."

  "What happened?" Gavon asked.

  The man hesitated for a long moment, then finally admitted, "I have no idea. I can't remember anything before yesterday."

  That remark led to gasps and questions he couldn't answer, until the daughter, who he would later find out was the one who saved his life said, "Why don't we go into the village and see if anyone remembers who he is?"

  "That's a great idea Alaine!" Her brother was excited at this new prospect for adventure, but the man shut the feeling of excitement off before it could bloom into hope. The chances of finding a person who knew him in the size od Dearns...

  In the end, "It's worth a shot," was all he managed.

So after breakfast the strange man, Alaine, and Gavon started on their inquiries. They spent most of the next day doing it too. And the one after that.

  A week stretched on, with no sign that the man had ever existed.

  The day Gavon went on a hunting trip, the black eyed man and Alaine went back to the star-spangled field. They discovered nothing that the man hadn't already figured out himself.

  Their current hypothesis was that the man had been a traveler waylaid by the local highway men. Perhaps he had fought back, and been hit by a club and left to die. This would explain why nobody in Dearns knew who he was, as well as his lack of possessions. 

  But the man was unable to discover anything else. 

  Frustration was building up in him. This was a problem he didn't know how to solve, and he was beginning to learn that there was nothing that angered him more.

  He sat down in the flowers. There was no reason to do so, and this bothered him, but he forced himself to ignore it. He let himself slump further down, until he was looking up at the sky through yellow petals.

  Alaine's face appeared above him, her lips quirked in a smile. He found his mouth imitating her. There was something about her smile. Something so happy and beautiful that it forced his mouth into shapes it was unaccustomed to.

  And the fact that her smile was directed at him made him never want to let the grin leave his face. Her smile somehow made up for his lost memories. It made up for everything.

  Alaine sprawled herself into a different patch of grass, and let out a contented sigh.

  The man's smile grew.

  Some part of him yelled at him to stop. Stop this emotion before it began to cloud reason. She would marry a duke someday. He was just an interesting distraction. 

  And yet, he found that he didn't want to strangle the feeling. So what if nothing came of it? In that moment, under the warm sunlight, with a smiling girl and flowers, he was happy. Happier then he had ever been in his brief remembered past, and maybe even longer then that. 

  For the first time he allowed himself to admit that he actually cared about the Deaplins. So... why did he feel as if that was wrong?

  Somthing sterred at the back of his mind, and then spilled into his head.

  Kade's mother had always told him that his father had been a good man once. She said this after he spent all the money on drink. "There's still good in him," She'd say after he beat her. "Please don't hate him," after he beat Kade. 

Maybe if she hadn't loved him so much Kade would not have grown up with scars. Maybe if she had been more logical she would have run when the fire started in the house. She would have realized that her husband was past saving. If she hadn't been so emotional, Kade would have grown up with at least one parent. If she hadn't been so emotional Kade wouldn't have had to fight the other street boys to survive. If she hadn't been so emotional he wouldn't have been approached by the assassin's guild. If she hadn't been so emotional, he wouldn't have had to kill his own emotions as he killed other's enemies. If she hadn't been so emotional he would not have to come to Dearns. He wouldn't have been ambushed by highwaymen. He wouldn't have lost his memory. He wouldn't have his assignment now.

  He froze as the words played themselves over in his head. 

  "Someone wants to make Lord Deaplin an example."

  "So he's my mark?" Kade had asked

  "No, his daughter is."

  Kade sat up, the sun and flowers forgotten. He stared at the woman in the grass as if she had somehow morphed into a demon. But the problem was, she hadn't. She was the same beautiful girl she had always been, but more then that, she made him laugh. She was passionate, she cared about people. She was nothing like the icy women in the assasin guild. 

  She was happy.

  A dam broke inside of him, and the emotions he had been stifling for years burst out.

  Kade's first thought was No. I WILL NOT hurt her. I won't. I won't become my father.

  And then Kade became angry. He was furious. His father had found a woman who loved him so much she ran into a burning building to save him. Who loved him despite everything he had done to her. How had he hurt her? How was he so stupid that he couldn't understand what he had found?! In that moment Kade would have given everything for that, and his father had thrown his wife across the room.

  But all the emotion in the world can't change reality. 

  The guild would just send someone else after Alaine. 

  The black eyed man briefly entertained the notion of defending her. Fighting any other assassins that came for her, but he was not able to let emotion distort logic enough to believe that it would actually work. It was a fantasy. It was one thing to not kill the girl, it was quite another to risk his life to save her. Besides, he was relatively new to the guild. He wouldn't survive long. Alaine would still die, all he would achieve was his own death.

  And he didn't love Alaine. Not like his mother had loved his father. All that was between Kade and Alaine was mutual attraction. 

  But he thought of Lord Deaplin's face as he learned his daughter was dead. Murdered by the man he had been so kind to. Lady Deaplin. He remembered how his own mother had tried to protect him. She had done everything in her power, barring only leaving. What would have happened if Kade had died instead of his mother? 

    That didn't change the simple fact that he couldn't save Alaine. By order of the King, assassins must be hung. Kade couldn't tell Lord Deaplin who he was, couldn't explain why he had to protect his daughter. He doubted that the Lord would believe a letter.

  But Deaplin had been kind to him. No one had been kind to him since his mother. The man had nothing. He could have easily died in the gutter that night, but Deaplin had brought a doctor. Alaine may have saved his life. They had given him food and a bed and asked for nothing in return.

  Kade didn't think he had a heart, but something was being torn in pieces inside his chest.

  And still the fact stared him in the face. He couldn't save Alaine. She would die no mater what he did.

  His mother couldn't have saved her husband, but she risked everything to try anyway. And she had died for it. He was falling in the same trap.

  Kade didn't love Alaine. He knew that. How could he destroy everything for her? How could he destroy everything when he couldn't save her?

  There was only one answer to the problem. He had to kill Alaine.

  He had resisted questions for years now, but they had always lived right under the surface. If he couldn't kill one girl, it ment he had been wrong ato kill all the others. If he went down that path, he didn't think he'd ever be able to drown the silent screams out of his ears.

  Either he killed the target, got payed and went back to his life, or he didn't, she died anyway, and his death likely followed, penniless and mad.

  He had to kill her. 

  And the thing that couldn't have been a heart--shattered

  He gasped in pain, but mere sentiment couldn't actually hurt.

  He had to do it, but when he stood up, Alaine met his eyes.

  Mere sentiment. He told himself.

   But

   then

   she

   smiled.