Behind Those Golden Eyes

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Tal rolled his eyes at her words. "Like I would dare." She would just follow his trail around the country and get into even –more- trouble then. At least if she was with him then no one would dare touch her. He would have to make some provisions for when he was out on a job but he was sure he could manage something. It was about then that what he, and she, were doing really sunk in. Many people were going to take her as the hole in his armor and he was going to have to be extra careful to make sure few people ever saw her at all.

"Ugh…this is going to be complicated." He only liked complicated when it involved a job. He sighed and reluctantly sat up. He went downstairs and told the now icy innkeeper to give Aisha a key to his room when she came in. That was followed by tears of joy by the innkeeper and Tal spending the next five minutes trying to pry the innkeeper off of him before escaping to his suite once again. He poked around in the other 2 rooms and left the door open to the one he thought she would probably like. At that point he decided he was done and was about to flop down on the couch when he realized it was round 2 time apparently.

He gave an annoyed sigh and turned around to point his sword at Xerxes. "Really father? I am too tired for this."

Xerxes smirked at his son. "Oh put that away we already know how that would end anyway." He continued on as if his son hadn't just given him a murderous look. "I just came to congratulate you on your reunion with Aisha." Tal, in a very teenage like move, simply rolled his eyes and dropped himself on the couch, proceeding to ignore the other man in the room. Xerxes chuckled. "And here I thought you were finally growing up."

"Go away father." Tal closed his eyes, determinedly trying to go to sleep. "And learn to use doors!" He let out a small sigh of relief as he was finally left alone, falling asleep almost instantly right there on the couch once there were no foreign presences in his room.
 
Aisha walked into the inn, and immediately headed for the stairs. "Catch" She heard a voice from her side and was able to see the flying keys just in time to take them, and clumsily drop them a second later. 'Smooth Aisha' She thought to herself as she picked them up.

"Tal told me to give them to you." The innkeeper explained. She smiled as she thanked him and tried to walk towards the stairs again, but the innkeeper fast tried to get some answer out of her. What happened, how did she convince Tal to talk with her, what exactly were they going to do alone in that room, etc. He seemed like a teenage girl, trying to get every inch of information and then spread it around everywhere.

"I would love to tell you everything, but Tal's waiting for me. He'll get irritated if I linger for too long." She lied with an awkward laugh in the end of her sentence. Then she hurried up the stairs and went back in. When she found Tal sleeping on the couch, she tried her best to not make a sound and sneaked into the room with an open door.

Her mind was finally starting to calm down after everything that had happened that day, and she felt slightly drowsy. Who would have thought she would have such an argument with Tal which would end in her leaving home and going with her assassinate childhood friend. What an odd day. Exhausted she laid down and closed her eyes, even so it did take her a while to fall asleep, but eventually she was dreaming.
 
Aisha had long since been relegated to the 'safe' category so Tal didn't as much as twitch when she came into the room. It was probably a good thing as well since Tal was terrifying grumpy when woke up. He slept solidly through the rest of the night and well into the morning before even thinking about getting up. For a second he was about to go on the attack before his conscious mind registered the other person in the suite as Aisha. "Oh…right." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. Now was not the time to be slow, he would have to be at his best from here on out.

He peeked into Aisha's room to make sure she was still asleep before sneaking out of the suite to go take care of a few things. He once again had to field a bunch of excited questions from the innkeeper but did eventually get the man to do his job. He arranged for breakfast to be sent up to his suite and left briefly to rent out another carriage. As he had told Aisha before he had no interest in leaving his chosen profession and he did have a job to do right now.

He returned a short while later and let himself into the suite. "Aisha, get up! You've got 20 minutes to eat and get ready and then we're going!"
 
Aisha yawned as she was woken up by a familiar voice. "Just five more minutes mom." She mumbled before her mind had started to remember where she was and whose voice it had belonged to. Once that came back to her she flung herself up in a sitting position. "Tal..." She exclaimed a bit surprised and embarrassed, her brain clearly didn't want to cooperate with her in the morning. "I'll be ready to leave in ten minutes if you forget what I just said." she told him as she got out of the bed. The last thing she wanted was to her jokes about such an embarrassing sleep talk. Though, she wasn't sure if Tal was the kind of person to actually care for such jokes. Actually most of the evidence pointed towards the opposite.
 
Tal didn't feel so bad about nearly jumping up and attacking Aisha when he first woke up after hearing her call him 'mom'. He smirked and chuckled, simply waiting for her to realize her mistake. "You think I want to wolf down my food that fast?" Tal snorted and started loading up his plate. After that little show yesterday he needed the energy. "Just don't do it again preferably. Or at least call me 'dad' so it's the right gender." He rolled his eyes and didn't care if he sounded like a sourpuss. He may wake up quickly but that didn't mean he wasn't a bit of a grumpy monster for the next two hours anyway.

He settled back down on the couch and chewed distractedly at his eggs, already planning how he would need to go about both doing his job and keeping Aisha at least somewhat safe. "Hmmm…how would you feel about dressing as a guy for this Aisha?"
 
"Fine, from now on I'll call you dad." Aisha teased him as she took a hairbrush out of her bag and tried to get her hair to lie down instead of flying around towards every direction. His next question caught her a bit off guard, and she stopped moving for some seconds. That was an odd request, she thought, still not realizing exactly how dangerous it might be to be around an assassin.

"Well I'm not opposed to it if it makes things easier." She answered slightly confused as she started to move the brush through her hair again, getting out the last tangles her hair had gotten itself into during the night. "Does that mean I can call you mom while I am dressed as a guy?" She then asked, going back to the his joke on the right gender.
 
Tal nodded to himself since Aisha couldn't see him from her room. He was intent enough upon planning that he didn't even register what Aisha said next. "Yeah, sure whatever." He looked down at his plate, which was disappearing at a furious rate considering he wasn't even trying. "Hmm, alright then. We'll stop by some shops along the way to get the kind of clothes you'll need. And probably a hat you can stuff all that hair in." He tilted his head considering. "And maybe something with your face…if they don't think you're a woman they'll probably think you're my boy-toy if we leave that as is and we'd be stuck in the same problem as having you be yourself." He was actually pretty good with make-up, though not for the same reasons as most of the population would think. He was a very distinctive personage, he had to be able to hide those characteristics sometimes.
 
She finished up fixing herself in the room as Tal spoke, and walked out to get her breakfast just as he finished his last sentence. "Well now I have some interesting... and disturbing images in my head." Aisha commented as she got herself her food. "If it's about the hair though, then it probably would be easier to just cut it off." She then mentioned before taking the first bite. It was first then she noticed how hungry she was. After everything that had happened the other day, she had completely forgotten to eat dinner. Or rather, she had been so emotional so she couldn't possibly have noticed how hungry she had been.

"If it's cut, then there's no risk for the hat to fall off and revealing the hair." She continued after she had swallowed. It also reduced the risk of tangled hair in the morning, but that was needles to say, and tall probably didn't care about that fact. She might not understand why Tal wanted her to hide her gender and identity, but she didn't doubt there was a good reason for it. If it had been later in the afternoon, then she probably would have asked him why, but there were no energy in her during early mornings to care about questions and arguments if it wasn't a life and death situation.
 
Tal paused in his eating to give her a surprised look. He hadn't expected her to agree to cut her hair so he hadn't even suggested it. Honestly he initially found the prospect a little disturbing but after he thought about it he decided that Aisha could probably pull off a short cut without too much problem. "Well we shall add that to the itinerary then." He finished up what was on his plate and set it on the table. "I'm going to get my stuff together, you better be ready by the time I get back out. If you're still hungry feel free to pack up the lot or I can pick you something else up later." It wasn't like he couldn't afford it or anything.

He left her there and went into his room, pulling out the bags that he had barely touched last night and set them on his bed to go through them. First he pulled out some new clothes and went into his bathroom to do a quick wash up. He put on another near identical set of black clothes and stuffed away his old set. With that done he made sure he could locate his makeup supplies quickly once they were done with shopping. "Alright." He picked up all his bags and threw them over his shoulder before heading out into the main room again. "You ready? We've got a lot to do and I'd rather be out of town before sundown." Without actually waiting to see if she was ready he headed for the door. "The carriage is waiting for us in front." He pushed his way out the door and headed downstairs to put away his bags and give the carriage driver his instructions.
 
Aisha did notice his surprised look, but she didn't comment on it. What was it with people and hair? 'Don't cut your hair, it looks so lovely' or 'What do you mean you want to cut off you hair? You're a girl.' was what she mainly heard when she had spoken off getting rid of the mess. When she had lived at home, her mother had threatened with throwing her out if she ever dared to cut it off. It was an empty threat of course, her father would never have accepted that. But she still hadn't been able to do it, since then she would have heard her mother nagging every day. Now, finally, she could get rid of those damn morning tangles, and for a good reason too, even though she didn't know exactly what Tal's reason was.

She were able to finish up just seconds before Tal suddenly came back into the room. "Timing." She said half surprised, half amused as she took her bag and ran after him. She waited for Tal to finish talking to the carriage driver before she approached him. "So, where exactly are we going?" She asked him curiously. Was he traveling without a goal, or did he have planned routs? There was so much she wanted to ask him about how he had lived during the years after he disappeared. But she forced herself to only sneak in a question now and then, she didn't want to make him angry or irritated when he could leave her in the middle of the road in nowhere's land. It was better to just come with the questions as they traveled and slowly build up the puzzle. Hopefully one day he would want to tell her everything without her asking.
 
Tal didn't bother responding to Aisha until they were both settled in the carriage. "Now or later? In town we'll be hitting all the usual suspects." He glanced over at her with an unreadable expression. "Once that is done we'll be heading to Aleien. Though we will ditch the carriage before we get there. Probably about one town over or so." He smiled mirthlessly. "I do hope you were ready to do some walking around. It isn't all lounging in the most luxurious inns in town." He paused and suddenly turned to her seriously. "That being said, from here on out you have to listen when I tell you do something. You insisted on following me around but you are about to fall head first into my world now." He wasn't sure if he was still trying to chase her off or not.

"Ah here we are." He murmured as they pulled up in front of a small discreet little shop that looked like it probably had a more unsavory clientele frequent it. "Don't worry, it isn't as bad as it looks." He chuckled and let himself out of the carriage, leaving the driver to do the chivalrous thing. Tal only bothered with that kind of thing when he was out to seduce someone. Otherwise you could almost always count on him being deliberately rude.

Once they were inside they found themselves surrounded by racks of clothes. A bell jingled in the back and a small looking man came out from the back, blinking in surprise as he recognized Tal. "Oh my, Taliesin! I haven't seen you in what? Four years?"

Tal glowered at him. "Not long enough. We need some new clothes for her." He pointed to Aisha. "Go for 'Average'. Average and loose, but nothing too raggedy because you can't look that out of place next to me." He made shooing motions at them both. "Go on." He didn't figure he needed to be involved in this.
 
At first she didn't think he would answer her, but once they were in the carriage he finally decided to tell her. It didn't surprise her that they were going to such a big city, for someone with his profession, a big city would be where he could find most work. She was still against what he did, but before she knew exactly why he did it, exactly what he did and how he chose his jobs, she wouldn't try to convince him to stop. For now she should stay as an observer until she knew more and could get a wider view of who Tal was now a days.

She nodded her head as he told her to do as he said. Aisha wanted to tell him that she would listen as long as it wasn't an unreasonable request, but with the serious tone he had she figured that he would only make her do what she had to do to survive.

The carriage stopped in front of a small shop, and Tal must have seen the look on her face because he told her pretty fast that it wasn't as bad as it looked. Or maybe he just understood that anyone from their part of town would think badly of a place looking like that. And it made her feel a bit ashamed. Her mother would have never gone into such a place, but her father told her to never judge a book by it's cover, which she just had done to the shop. Instead of waiting for the carriage driver to open the door for her, she just did it herself just a second after Tal. She might have to be ladylike and wait like a proper lady when in her mothers world, but now she were in Tal's world, so she better adapt.

The shop didn't look too awful on the inside, Aisha thought it would be worse. And the shop owner, or worker, she couldn't tell which, seemed friendly enough. The short man looked a bit funnily at her, as if she were some rare animal. She guessed even he knew that Tal usually were alone. At least he weren't like the innkeeper, he didn't care to ask her questions about it while helping her with the clothes.

He made her test many different items in such a rapid speed she soon became exhausted. He did everything to show that he took his job seriously, and he obviously wanted his customers to be happy. The question was if he did it because it was Tal's request, he could be quite scary after all, or if he were like that towards everyone. Eventually they find something he thought suited her, went good with Tal's clothes and hid what needed to be hidden.

The pants was dark and just enough baggy to hid the little curves she had. The shirt had been the bigger problem, but eventually they had found a greyish white shirt that fitted perfectly. If it hadn't been for the hair and her face, people could most likely mistake her for a young boy. "Please tell me this passes. I will die if I have to try out one more outfit." She told Tal as she and the little man went to him for his approval.
 
Tal had 'clocked out' while the two did their consulting. He knew the shop owner and trusted that he would get Aisha kitted out in exactly what he specified. He was not disappointed when he opened his eyes to see what Aisha had come out with. He looked it over closely, making a slow considering circle around her. He finished up with a pleased smile. "Yes, I think that will do the trick. Once your hair is short and I make your face a little less pretty that will at least leave everyone confused." Having thought on the matter some more he figured that was probably the best that he could hope for.

His reputation was working against him in this case. It was simply unheard of for him to have any kind of companion aside from the type that stayed for a night or two. "Maybe I should try to train you in some sword work as well..." He mostly said that to himself before shrugging with a sigh and turning to pay the store owner. "Come on." He walked past Aisha and actually held the door open to help her up into the carriage in his distraction. He settled across from her once she was in. "I'll take care of your hair and make up once we stop for the night."
 
Aisha let out a relieved sigh as Tal gave his consent. That meant it only would be a few minutes before she could rest in the carriage again. Shopping for clothes was probably the only thing that could drain all of her energy within the first five minutes. It had been a pain when her mother made forced her to test clothes, and it was a pain now too. At least it would take a while before she would have to try out a new outfit again. It wasn't like she didn't like clothes, she loved to wear dresses, skirts just like most girls she knew. It was just the shopping part she disliked.

"Once your hair is short and I make your face a little less pretty that will at least leave everyone confused." Tal said and Aisha felt her cheeks heat up. No one had called her pretty except for her dad. And Tal was the last person she expected to hear something like that from. "You think I'm pretty?" she asked mumbling with her head turned away, but at that point Tal was already mumbling something to himself.

"Come one." Tal said and passed her, to her surprise he actually opened the door for her. As they sat in front of each other she couldn't help but stare at him for the longest of time. "Are you possessed by something?" She asked eventually. "Don't tell me a gentleman spirit has taken over your body." Obviously she was joking, but she wanted to see if he himself noticed how odd he were in comparison to the day before, and all the other times after he first left the village.
 
It took Tal a second to come out of his thoughts enough to really process what she said. His first instinct was to say 'well yes, I am after all part demon'. He decided however that it would probably be best to not bring that up again and risk any more lectures. Instead he leaned his head back so his eyes shone out from under his bangs and smiled at her his possessive smile, the one he knew made pretty much anyone in the room swoon. "Well, even demons can have manners when properly persuaded." Flirting was a bit of a reflex for him at this point, it got him into a lot of places and he didn't even realize he was doing it half the time. Much like calling her pretty in the shop.
 
A blush spread from her cheeks all the way towards her ears. She wasn't used to men flirting with her, not even in the form of just a smile. Actually it had never happened before. Not a big surprise since Tal was the only guy she knew, except for her family members of course. Her eyes darted away from his face as fast as they could, and then it only took her seconds to realize how weird she acted.

"Y..You know, if you had acted like this every time you came to town, instead of being cold, then maybe people hadn't worried so much about you." She kind of tried to change the subject without being too obvious. Her eyes were all over the place, going from the seat to the carriage ceiling.
 
At this point Tal almost followed up with more of his classic maneuvers but he felt a little niggle of a warning in his brain and really thought about what he was doing. He was about to make a move on one of the rare people who were on his 'don't fuck around like that with' list. He let off another inward string of cursing, he was letting himself get sloppy and he could not afford it now that he had someone else traveling with him. Tal dropped the predator act and crossed his arms over his chest as he looked out the window. "Well too bad for everyone it wasn't worth wasting my time on." If they both just forgot the incident the better it would be.

Though…that was going to be a problem as well. Perhaps he could get her her own room instead of a suite? But then he would have more trouble protecting her. His mood soured at the thought. He didn't go after everything that moved but celibacy was not for him. Well, it's not like she had any say in that sort of thing anyway. She wanted to tag along and see how he lived now he might as well give her the full tour. "So how did you feel about learning some swordplay?" He asked as if his question to himself had been obvious to her earlier.
 
What an awkward moment she had gotten herself into. Maybe she had gotten a bit too comfortable around Tal, still thinking that he were like the kid she used to know. Even though she had told herself all the time that he had changed, the truth hadn't sunken in completely. Was she still trying to force her dream of Tal from her memories into reality? How would she be able to see the Tal as he was now if she never let go of his old self?

She were in such deep thoughts so she were close to missing his question. "Eh? Swordplay? When did you say anything about that?" She asked surprised. Had she missed something? "I don't mind, but isn't swords kind of heavy?" She had only held a sword once in her life, and that one she had barely been able to lift. She had been younger at the time and much weaker, but she doubted that if all swords were that heavy, she wouldn't be able to do much movement with it.
 
Tal gave her a blank stare, as if it should have been obvious when he mentioned teaching her sword play. He let that pass however to answer the bigger and more pertinent question though his answer was more to slowly unbuckle the blade from his belt rather than speak. He held it gently for a moment as if it were a close friend before tossing it (and its sheath) lightly over to her. "I would not have you try and swing such clumsy blades around." His sword was barely 3 pounds, maybe 5 with the sheath on it. "Those are for clanking Knights, so unskilled they need 50 pounds of metal to protect them and a sword that requires nothing more than some muscle and the ability to make an X." His tone was so scornful he was almost spitting, if he wasn't too dignified to do such a thing.

"That." He gestured towards his blade. "That is a real sword, which requires true skill and understanding of how the blades and a person's body works. With that, you can cut any of those useless brutes to pieces and with half the effort as well."
 
The sword was indeed much lighter than the one she had held in the past, it barely weighted anything in comparison. "Pieces?" She whimpered a bit worriedly as she looked up at him from the sword. "I think I pass on such a grotesque part... At least for as long as I can." She told him. He was way too comfortable with killing, and she was way too uncomfortable with it. Of course she wouldn't have anything against protecting herself, and if she had to kill someone to save herself then she would. She would feel really bad about it afterwards, but it would be a tad worse to actually die.

"I guess you've pissed off a lot of weird people since you left town then." She commented as she reached back the sword too him. It wasn't surprising that an assassin had enemies, what was surprising was that her childhood friend had them. It was something she hadn't even considered when she left home, now it seemed a bit too obvious. But there was no way she would turn away home. Not when she finally were in reach of her old friend.
 
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