ashe ubert. d2. fin.

It's on a slow Tuesday night that it happens, not a single patron in the dining room, so your parents let the waitress clock out early and go home. Your father comes out of the kitchen to wipe down the tables and your mother grabs the broom to sweep in preparation for the morning rush.

But you're only ten years old, hiding under one of the tables because you're playing tag and Cassie is "it" when the little bell above the door rings and a couple walks in together, arm in arm. Your mother turns to them first, about to tell them that the restaurant is closing for the night but she barely even gets the words out. When you peek out from under the tablecloth, you see one of them holding something that looks like a pen. But it's not.

They stab your mother and then your father when he rushes forward, and then they grab the cash in the register before bolting.

Everything's like a domino effect then. Cassie comes around the corner and then screams, which makes Trent thunder down the stairs from wherever he was hiding. You're out from under the table before you realize it, arms around your siblings and pushing them out of the room while the three of you shake.

The restaurant inevitably closes with no-one to manage it and you try your best to keep your siblings off the street. You try to find honest work, you really do, but no-one wants to hire a scraggly kid, freshly-orphaned and left with nothing. You resort to pick-pocketing, learning sleight of hand as you walk through the market in the morning, and you're small enough to get away with it most of the time. You just try to keep the imagine of Cassie and Trent in your mind, all alone and hungry where you left them to wait for you on the corner.

You hear about Lonato's through the grapevine. It's the biggest house on the block, a literal goldmine, and you know that there's a black market in Two for things like that.

It's an easy decision to break in.

You pick a quiet night to dash across his yard and climb in through one of the windows, unlocked, which doesn't make you hesitate as long as it probably should. You land in a study, and after your eyes adjust, you're a little taken aback. There's floor to ceiling bookshelves against the walls and a rug under your feet that looks at least a hundred years old. There's a desk across from the window that's probably oak or something fancy like that, and a paperweight sitting on it that you already know will fetch a pretty price. You grab the hunk of coloured glass and shove it into your jacket pocket before you can second guess the action.

But it's the thing beside the paperweight that really catches your attention. It's just a book, plain looking, but the cover is familiar and you can't quite place why until it hits you like a brick. You very distinctly your mother reading to you before bed, from a book of fairy tales she'd had since she was a kid herself. You pick it up against your better judgment, and the more you look at it, the more you're sure this is the same type of book. The words are a little confusing, and you can't quite pronounce the title when you try, but you'd spent most of your days helping your parents at the restaurant, so there was never really extra time for school or for learning anything that wasn't prepping vegetables or boiling water.

But anyways, the book is what gets you caught. Maybe if you had just ignored it and slipped back out the window, taking just one thing you're sure wouldn't have been missed, you would've gotten away just fine. But as you stand there and turn one of the pages, a light shines over your face. It's an instantaneous reaction, the way you freeze and look up - a deer in headlights.

But it's just an old man standing in the open doorway, flashlight in one hand and an ornamental longsword in the other, silk pyjamas still pressed perfectly even though he looks a little ruffled himself.

And this, you think, must be Lonato.

You expect to be thrown out at the very least, lashed and arrest at the very worst. But Lonato does neither. He looks at the book in your hands, and then at your face, then at the book again, and you try not to look so guilty.

It must work.

He asks for your name and you give it to him freely. It's one of the only things you have left, but you're not so afraid as to lose it. You know that's not how names work.

Lonato must recognize your last name, or it's the way your voice shakes when you say it. Either way, you're not quite sure, but you think your parents' deaths might've been put in the papers the week they died. The restaurant shutting down wasn't such as big a deal, it was a small place in a small part of the district, but a murder is a murder is a murder.

Whatever it is, Lonato's face softens, and then he lets you go.

You don't sell the paperweight.

You're back at Lonato's with Cassie and Trent before the week is even over, standing at his doorstep instead of his window this time, and the three of you get your first good meal in over a year. It becomes an unofficial thing after that, and you're not quite sure what to do in the face of such kindness, but you're not one to look a gifthorse in the mouth.

It becomes an official thing the next year, when Lonato slides three sets of adoption papers in front of you at breakfast and you start crying.

Your new step-brother, Christophe, is everything you've ever wanted to be. You know Trent thinks he's cool too. And the best part is that he's nice to you. To all three of you. After two years of being spit on in the street and running from angry shopkeepers, Christophe and Lonato both seem like saints.

The next three years of your life are beautiful ones. Lonato teaches you how to read properly and Christophe teaches you how to shoot rubber-tipped arrows with his bow. Cassie and Trent both start elementary school and you even get to take classes as well.

Things start looking up, and your life gets put back on track. You have a family that's both old and new, but still yours, and you only miss your parents when it rains.

And then

Christophe is executed on a Tuesday.

Rebel ties, the Peacekeepers announce to the square. Deep ones too.

You ask Lonato about it, once it's all done and over, but he doesn't say much. He just sits in his study and looks out the window, dismisses the claims as false, and so you leave him be with his thoughts.

You don't really think Christophe was a rebel. He was too kind for that, and all the stories of the rebellion you've heard are ghastly things, full of violence and suffering and you know your brother would've never had a part in something like that.

Lonato enrols you into the Officer's Academy shortly after, the same school Christophe graduated from, and you jump at the opportunity to finally show Lonato how much his support mean. You don't understand why he keeps taking so many chances on you, but you try your best not to let him down. You'll be the best you can be for your siblings and your parents. You'll honour Lonato, and you'll honour Christophe.