The world froze for Taro Sakamoto.
Those words froze Taro Sakamoto.
Unbidden, his mind surged with memories, before they shifted, no longer from his point of view, but from that of the young lady in front of him.
As if to twist the knife in his guts deeper, even though he could see it play out in front of him, he still couldn't see when his image changed from that of a teacher to what she must've known him by all this time.
He could see, but he struggled to understand. All he could see in his memories was him as an assassin, nothing more, nothing less.
But then he locked his eyes with hers. And there the answer was.
It came as a new perspective, but slowly understanding unravelled.
In her eyes, he had been the only constant thing that was there. Not the assassins. Not the instructors. And not even her own father, Ra's al Ghul. Out of everyone and everything she had known on that island, he had been the only one who kept returning.
And only now, after a decade, could he understand a hint of what he had done to her after he left. It had been cruel. He hadn't known then. He had yet to understand the importance of familial connection at the time. But still, it had been cruel.
.
....
.
[POV: Talia al Ghul]
She watched as he froze at the utterance of her words. It wasn't just his hands that stopped, his breath and the movement of his eyes came to a cold halt. Even the tell of intent was gone from him.
For the first time in her life, she saw as her old teacher's guard crumbled. Not from ambushes or sneak attacks.... but from her words.
What she had never managed to accomplish in all her years under him, in all the spars they had, she had now done so. Not with the steel of a cold blade. Not with the deviousness of her cunning.
All it had taken were a few soft words.
Along with that realization came a thought, one that was first nature to her: She could deliver a fatal strike while his guard was still down.
She thought of it but her fingers seemed to have lost whatever strength they had over the blades in her hands.
She couldn't help but recall all those years that now seemed like a distant memory.
She had been a child, even worse a daughter, living under the legacy that was Ra's al Ghul. The Demon Head would not allow her disappointed birth remain a disappointment and so for as far back as her memory could go, all she could remember was punching and kicking at air until her child muscles ached.
Everything was so that she could be brought up as one deserving of her father's acknowledgement. So she could one day be called the Demon's proud heir.
Everything else was both fleeting and unimportant, that is until he came.
"My masters once told me that the bond between teacher and student lasts a lifetime. And also one of the hardest bonds to cut. Greet your teacher."
She hardly reached his waist at the time and he was hardly what anyone would call an adult. But age hardly mattered among assassins, skill and strength did.
Unlike her instructors who were replaced any time she advanced or failed in something, this particular one stayed.
Back then he hadn't been in charge of her combat training, only teaching her efficiency in killing, but that soon changed as she started advancing through her classes.
Starting with languages he taught her – Japanese, Chinese and Korean – he soon started teaching her body movements and how to interpret them. A year or two later and he was teaching her how to effectively switch between a series of weapons in the middle of combat.
Her instructors left. Her father, Ra's al Ghul, hardly came by to observe her training. Even her peers at the time slowly disappeared until it was only her in that big empty training hall.
"Half the key to staying calm in a fight is acknowledging that you'll get hurt. Half the key to surviving through a fight is getting used to being hurt." Those words resounded in her ears like the beating of a war drum.
"You can win a fight by getting hurt, but torture is different. Whether you survive or not matters little. You can only survive torture by how deeply you can understand pain. And that is what I'll be teaching you: Pain."
Hell followed through that year. Broken bones, broken fingers, blades stabbed into different parts of her body, searing burns, frigid cold, electrocution – he made sure to associate his name with hell. But yet he stayed.
Sometimes he'd break her bones or twist her muscles and then have her spar with him for hours through the pain, and then at the end of it he'd have her correct her bones and loosen her muscles. If she couldn't then she'd be with them for days until he was merciful enough to correct them.
She could remember crying silently in her room every single night for years but she'd return to that hall every morning and he'd always be there.
"Take this. It is an ornamental dagger so it's not very useful in battle. I made it myself as congratulations to you for going above the expectations I placed on you. From henceforth, you are officially my student."
That was the first time she'd gotten a gift. A golden engraved dagger with the Japanese inscription 'Always survive' written along its side.
And then came the missions. It was only at that moment that she understood the meaning of that dagger. Where other assassins died, she survived. Assassination attempts, both off and on the island, she always survived.
And slowly, she no longer hated those memories of pain. Instead she grew increasingly grateful to them. Where her peers and elders died or fell short, she triumphed. And through it all, he still remained.
So one day she went to him and said the words that would change everything.
"Teach me more."
And teach her he did. The pain resumed, greater than it did before, but she endured even better. She no longer cried in the dark nights, nor did she curse the memories of him and the pain he brought. She would go to that dark hall and he'd always be there.
She had been the one wanting to take that next step. The step that led to heights only her teacher and father, and only a scant few, stood.
He taught her resilience. He taught her resolve. He ran the full length of a katana through her and slowly pulled it out, she never screamed. She pushed for more. He told her to kill her friend, she did. And then she went ahead and killed every one of her peers she was the tiniest bit casual with.
He rewarded her. He taught her how to breathe and that had changed everything. Her teacher had taught her an exoteric technique that his masters had taught him.
And she yearned for more. And as deep as she yearned, and excelled, he taught.
Sometimes he'd be gone for weeks and months for missions or personal reasons, but he'd always return. And when he did, there'd always be something new to teach her. They would speak, he would teach, she would ask, he would listen.
She had kowtowed, knees firmly on the ground and her head pressed even deeper.
"Talia's greatest fortune is teacher choosing to teach her. Till Talia falls to a blade, teacher will always be her Master. Hopefully in her next life as well."
She bowed three times to him. She paid her utmost respect to the bond he had sired between them on that auspicious day he stepped into her training hall.
His arms were crossed as he looked down at her with those calm and piercing eyes behind round glasses.
"Hmm, so you want to learn more? I see no problems with that, but not right now. Before I will teach you anything else, you will have to master an aspect of your assassination."
He had stood up and beckoned for her to follow and she was right behind him, as dutiful and precise as she's always been. He had led her to her weapon's rack and pointed at the myriads of weapons hung on it, each she was intimately familiar with.
"You can be called many things, Talia. A prodigious assassin. A deadly assassin. An excellent assassin even, but that is it. All it shows is that you are good at the craft you've been taught. A disciple of assassination, not a master of it. To be a master assassin, you have to master an aspect of assassination. You know what you prefer more, choose it. Elevate it. Master it. Then, and only then, will I teach you something new. Something better."
That had been it. She had arrived before the steps and her teacher had told her how to take the first one.
If she could master an aspect of assassination, automatically her epithet would be known all over the world. In their world where your skill speaks loud of you, mastering a killing path would put her name, not at the same height, but at the same level as her teacher.
If The Assassin himself said she was ready to be called as he, then she would toil till her blood dried to prove that he was right.
And she would do it all – master a killing path, become a master assassin, gain both recognizable respect and epithet in the world of shadows – just so she could continue learning from him. The man that has always been there.
The resolve in her heart, long past had it been to gain Ra's al Ghul's acknowledgement that all that it held smouldering within was the desire to continue making him proud.
It would take years to master an aspect, and that would always be the easy path. Many spent their lives and wasted away without truly mastering one, but she would succeed where they failed. She wasn't blind to the nigh-impossibility of the task set before her, nor was she arrogant enough to believe it'd be easy – it wouldn't – but still she cared little.
First would be choosing an aspect to focus on for the years to come. Polish it to her perfected limit....and then she'd hunt down those who excelled at the same path she was about to thread on.
That was what she decided, and he had left her to it. They still sparred, and he still taught her, but never anything new.
And that was how it was until one day where he abruptly disappeared.
He had taught her the previous day to the mid of night, and when she went to their training hall he wasn't there. She thought nothing of it because he always went on missions without telling her.... She had thought that until she didn't. Until her father had called her.
He had specifically called her to his chambers for the first time in fifteen months and personally gave her the news that her teacher, Taro Sakamoto, had defied him and the League of Assassins by walking away.
"The Assassin has severed his ties with me, and by extension, the League of Assassins. He is no longer one of us, and as such, he is deemed your teacher no longer. Dismiss."
That had been Ra's words and she could remember leaving that dark room with great confusion in her heart and calm in her mind.
Her teacher taught her how to be a master assassin. Words couldn't shake her, no matter how cutting they were. He had left, and that was it.
'It hurts.'
She went back to that empty hall and began practicing. Nothing had changed. Her forms, her techniques, her weapons – she still had to perfect them. Nothing else mattered other than becoming a master assassin.
'It hurts.'
So she trained.
'It hurts.'
Her bones cracked. Her blood dried.
'Lies. He'd never leave. He always comes back.'
Days and weeks passed. Slowly and surely, she was confident enough to take out her first mark to further master her aspect. The years and decades to come will be arduous, but she'll succeed at the end. She'd master this path if it was the last thing she did.
'Lies. He'll come back. He promised to teach again when I become a master assassin. So he'll come back.'
Years passed, she had yet to master her killing path. A few short years wasn't enough to master an aspect that'll put your name out to the entire underworld. It had been so long that she couldn't even remember if the fight against her first mark had been an easy one or not. Time makes people forget these things.
But she could still remember that night, years years ago, where she once again cried silently in her room. And the nights that followed.
Because he never returned.
All those nights, slowly turning from days to weeks, to months, she silently cried herself to sleep because her teacher never returned.
Her father never returned.
.
....
.
He looked at her as she looked at him. Their eyes never strayed from each other's, and in them were things too heavy to fit into words.
But there was one thing they both shared in this instance; both were hurt. One by choices made, and the other by realization.
It was not the same but the feelings were there. Was that all that mattered? Maybe. Maybe not. They wouldn't know either way.
For Taro, the impact of everything was so tremendous that for the first time for as far as he could remember, the living myth known as The Assassin faltered.
He tried to speak but the words couldn't come. It also said a lot about how the current Taro differed from his past and younger self.
If this had been back then, his younger self would have simply dismissed her and found a way to kill that thought from her mind. He probably would have tripled her exercises for that day and would have left her with a quarter of her body's bones displaced.
Any word that came to his mouth tasted sour so all he could do was call her name.
"Talia...."
He didn't know how to react to her. All he had ever known her as, all she ever was to him, was his extremely talented and curious student. One who was so focused on assassination that nothing else mattered, except training and learning.
And now, all of a sudden he is confronted by his grown up student after almost thirteen years, all for her to rage at him and blindly challenge him to a death duel, which was mildly understandable, and out of nowhere indirectly called him her father. Or at least sometime or somewhere along the way, she had come to see him as one.
The fact that he was this shocked by her words also showed how human – soft and weak – he'd grown to be in the last decade.
"Talia..." What more could he say? Chastise her words? Chide her? Apologize to her? Or ignore her?
Talia's eyes scanned him and she gave him a hollow scoff, her eyes looked just like she sounded.
"Of course... After all these years and you still won't say a word. Why should I have expected anything else?" She slowly withdrew her blades, the will to fight leaving her. For the first time in thirteen years, she momentarily lost the strength to swing her blade.
"I..." Taro's mouth opened but no words came out, no words wanted to come out, so he forced one out regardless.
"I'm...sorry." He ended up apologizing. Why specifically? He had no idea. It was the only thing that tasted least sour in his mouth.
A spark of venom filled her eyes. "I don't need your apologies. I no longer need anything from you."
The two of them stood before the other, their thoughts and emotions too muddled for them to comfortably think through.
Talia moved first, stepping out of his way. "I won't bar your path any longer. Lady Shiva is expecting you."
Taro could only sigh at that. His priority hadn't changed but something about this particular situation rubbed him the wrong way. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to deal with it, or even what to say to make it a little....better?
He scratched the side of his head and glanced towards where Raven had silently stood all this while and nodded towards her.
"I'm sorry....little one." He apologized again, calling her by what he used to call her sometime ago. A very long time ago.
He was almost gone from the centre intersection when he heard her speaking.
"That girl," she had started, "is she your student?"
Taro hesitated, mulling the words, before replying. "Not exactly. It's a little...complicated."
"Then I pity her even more." Her words were cold and cutting but lacked a hostile edge because she said it not out of bitterness, but with clarity and certainty.
"Should she ever come to look up to you for even a fraction of how much I did then I pity her even more. She'd open her eyes one day and you'd be gone without a word."
She chuckled, a hoarse and empty thing. "Truly the mark of The Assassin. You'll mercilessly kill her everything in an instant, and then be gone in that very instant."
They both walked away in silence. He never replied to her, and she had no other words to say to him.
He silently followed behind Raven as she led him to their last obstacle, and the most hardest one for more reason than one.
Raven could tell that his mind was split in two and the part that wasn't focused on their current mission was wrecked with churning emotional thoughts. While she might not be able to read his mind or even his intent right now, she could tell that his brief confrontation with that woman shook him a bit. A bit higher than most things did.
But she did not ask about it. The whirlpool of emotions around them when they fought had been so complex and complicated that she would rather not touch it.
She had her own secrets, one she would only share if she wanted to and if she could trust who she was sharing it with. All she'd do was wait until Taro was ready to tell her what that had been about.
And then there were the woman's last words but she preferred not to think about it. She had more important things to worry about.
They had arrived in front of Lady Shiva's room.