The truth hidden within the lies

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redblood

redblood

Anxious Tomato Will Bite You!
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Historical, fantasy, magic, horror, supernatural, survival, vampires, demons, pirates, mutants, ghosts, romance (FxF, MxM, MxF) (Romance should be part of the plot and not the whole plot in itself), etc.
William felt the taste of blood in his mouth, he was at his breaking point. He fell towards the hard ground beneath him but were able to stop himself by gripping a tree. He sat down and leaned his back on the tree and just focused on his breathing.

The young man had been on the run from the law for weeks, but he hadn't done anything wrong. They just wouldn't listen to him. It all began in his family home where he lived with his mother, Emma, father, Arthur and his two brothers and three sisters, Charlie, Fred, Helen, Bessie and Clara. They lived in a mansion in a rich district. Everyone looked up to his father and the whole city they lived in depended on their family business. But then everything went wrong.

One night William heard a noise. He went up from the bed and tried to find where the noise had come from. It sounded like people were arguing from somewhere close and he walked towards the voices. He stopped outside a room and listened to the voices. One of them was his father, he was arguing with a voice William had heard before. He also heard his mothers voice. Soon the arguing turned to screaming, he had missed so much of the conversation so he had no idea what they were arguing about, from the little he had heard it was about money.

Then he heard a scream and he opened the door as fast as he could. What he saw took all the air out of his lungs. His father was stabbed in the heart by a man, a general, one of the kings most trusted generals. He had been at dinner many times in their house. William's mother noticed William and ran towards while telling him to run away. The general stopped her halfway and killed her.

William had first been turned to stone by the fear, but as his mother died by that man's sword he ran. Instead of running back up to warn his siblings he ran out from the house. The panic clouded his mind. First minutes later when he had stopped in the woods and could start thinking he started to realize what he had done. His sisters, and his brothers were still in the house. He couldn't go back, but he could keep running into town and get help.

As he looked back he saw the smoke, and it didn't take long for him to realize that his house had been put on fire. Had his siblings been able to get out? He didn't know. Later when he got into the village he saw a familiar horse, he was certain it was the generals horse. Soon after he noticed the general. He stalked the man for minutes before the man stopped to talk with some soldiers. They were searching after a criminal, a murderer. Him.

After that he didn't have any choice but to escape, they were out after him and it was his words against a generals. He could never win.

Now, weeks later, William was frozen and alone. He had gotten into a fight with some thieves just a couple of hours earlier, he had barely escaped. How would he be able to survive this on his own? Soon he let the darkness take over him and he fell asleep, he didn't have any dangerous wounds, he was simply exhausted. If he died, then it would be of hunger, exhaustion and cold.

I imagine he looks something like this with the hair and face, but with light brown hair instead of blue.
He isn't that muscular, but his not veeery thin and he is around 1,70 meters.
Len-Tsukimori-len-tsukimori-26086770-877-479.jpg
 
Shane stomped out the smouldering remains of his campfire using his metal and leather-clad foot. He had just finished packing up his camp after finishing the scanty rations he saved for when he couldn't catch any food.

He was one of the best trackers on his side of the ranks, and they employed him at once the moment a murderer mercilessly killed his family and ran off into the woods. He'd seen the house and its former inhabitants. The smoking debris and blackened bodies, some still intact enough to look human. They were all accounted for, parents and children. All except one.
It enraged him to know that the ruthless killer was still out there somewhere, endangering everyone who crossed his path.

He decided to direct his energy to going after him instead of fuming fruitlessly in the dirt. He took a deep breath, ran his gloved and gauntleted hand through his dark brown hair, picked up his few belongings and supplies, and continued down the relatively fresh tracks his trained eyes easily picked out from the surrounding earthen chaos.

He had been searching for a week now, tracking, winding, sniffing, trailing, sneaking. Whoever this man was, he wasn't very good at covering his trail. He'd been on this particular one for the past few days. It seemed that the man was slowing down, perhaps out of exhaustion or complacence. Whichever it was, he had no right to it.

At times he thought of giving up the chase, of going back and telling the boys back home he'd lost him, maybe sharing a cup of tea with the men who respected him so much. But he knew where his duty lay. He'd find him if it meant sacrificing every bit of his own comfort.

While he was busy contemplating his deep-running morals, his learned eyes failed to notice a particularly large obstacle right across the trail he followed. His foot caught on the folds of the thing's covering, that and his surprise making him lose his usually steadfast balance. His arms hit the dirt a split second before his face could, in a clatter of armour and stone. He propped himself up on his elbow and twisted around to look at what caused this embarrassing interlude to his thoughts.

It was a man.

And not just any man. A young man with a smooth face, worn clothes that look like it used to be very expensive, and a mop of messy light brown hair. His eyes were closed for the second, but he could bet that under the lids were eyes of subdued amber.

It was him.
 
"How could you?" Crying voices screamed at him in the dark. "You abandoned us." It felt as if his heart was stabbed after every word. The dark was all around him, shadows of the dead stalked around him. "You should have done something!" The voices was so familiar but at the same time not. It was the voices of his family members, but something in their voices were different. It was as if demons were holding their voices.

He tried to speak many times, but his voice didn't come out. The voices became louder and louder until he suddenly felt something falling over his legs and he got pulled out from the shadows.

It took some time for him to actually wake up. When he did he could see a man with dark brown hair in front of him. He was so tired so he could barely see any details in the man's face. Was it a thief again? One moment later when he woke up a bit more he shot his eyes open in surprise that there were another person in front of him. He hadn't meant to fall asleep in the middle of the trail like that. Even though he barely had any energy after the short nap he still forced himself up on his legs.

"I don't have any money or anything worthy of stealing." He said immediately. After only meeting thief's on his way he had become very paranoid over everyone he met.
 
At the moment he realized that he had found his target and pushed himself off the ground, Shane wanted to grab the young man and drag him back home to justice, maybe serving a little of it himself on the way, but he stopped his urge. Remember your briefing...
He put up his hands in a surrendering gesture and told the hunched figure in a soft, soothing tone, "Whoa, calm down. I'm not going to hurt you, and I don't want your money.... I - heh- stumbled into you while I was hunting for food and I wanted to help you." He reached out to help the cold-hearted killing bastard maintain his balance. He took his own canteen filled with fresh river water and put it up to the man's lips. "Here, drink up. You look like hell..."
 
At first William looked at the man as if he was mad. He didn't think that anyone would help a stranger in the woods, especially not since his own father had warned him for thief's and killers pretending to be in need in the woods and then attack the one trying to help them.

Soon after the man had told him that he did not want to harm the young man, William felt how he lost his balance. If the man hadn't helped him maintain his balance he would most likely have fallen.

As he drank the wonderful water his mind started to become clearer, he hadn't even realized how sore his throat had been because of dehydration before something helped him against the thirst. "Thank you sir." He said, his voice a bit raspy. "You might have saved my life. I'm in your debt. Though I doubt that I could ever repay it." He continued, maybe it had just been a bit of water, but without it he might not have made it for long.
 
Shane was more than a little surprised at the man he was now "helping". He had expected a rough, violent, aggressive sort of fellow, and this man seemed a little... innocent-looking? There was no other word for it. But he knew how appearances can be misleading. He himself got a lot of trouble with his superiors who thought he looked too soft for training, and now they were his equals, soon to be subordinates.

"We are not out of danger yet, stranger. Allow me to set up a small camp here, so we may eat, and we can set out to safety in the morning." He set the man down on a fallen tree trunk and began to bustle around to start a fire. It felt strange, setting up camp again so soon after packing up. His sleeping bag still smelled like his sleep and dried food.
 
William could barely believe his ears, this man was going to help him even more. He didn't think that he would ever meet a person like that. His thoughts had only given him the options of surviving on his own or die. Of course he weren't thinking about using that stranger to survive for a long time forward just because there was a chance to do so. But only for the night felt okay, especially since he missed the feeling of talking to a fellow human.

"Thank you." He repeated as the man was in the middle of putting up his camp. "My name is William." He then continued, not seeing any harm in giving his real name out to a stranger. He had been brought up to become honest, and because he was so isolated from the lower class people and never thought he would have to hide his identity he had become too naive to actually think of hiding himself behind an alias.
 
Shane nodded in his mind. I know your name, killer... He laid out his sleeping bag and set it near the fire. "Nice to meet you William. Here, you can rest where it's warm while I prepare the food." He sat down opposite the bag and took out some dried meat, nuts, and tea leaves. "My name's Shane. I hope you don't mind waiting."
 
William rose and walked the few steps to the sleeping bag. He didn't care to lie down carefully, instead he just let himself fall down on the ground that was a little bit softer thanks to the sleeping bag. The fire felt warm and he felt how he drifted into unconsciousness. But he forced himself to keep awake even though his mind wanted to sleep.

"I didn't think that I would eat anything at all today, so I don't mind waiting at all." He said with a small laughter in his voice.
 
Shane felt a twinge of pity when he heard that. He couldn't shake the thought that this man- this boy... looked so fragile and frightened- not at all what he expected from a cold-blooded killer. He tried to brush it off. The men back home did say he was a bit of a mother-goose when it came to rookies. This was different. It's a criminal.

The fire was warm now, and the food heated up quite nicely. The kettle where he put the tea was also steaming. "Time to eat, stranger."
 
William rose his eyebrows, though it wasn't effortless. "So when do a person stop being a stranger in your opinion?" He asked curiously before getting some of the food the man Shane had made for them. He had never eaten something that his family's cook or his mother hadn't made him. It was a whole new experience for him and he felt kind of excited, like a child on Christmas.

He took a bite and his face immediately shined up. It might not be as good as the food he got at home, but it was still good and much better than anything he had eaten during the last few weeks on the run. "This tastes delicious, you're great Shane." He praised the other man.
 
Shane turned his face away, hoping the firelight's glare concealed his discomfort. This mission went against so many of his principles, he realised. First, he had to dine with a convicted felon, then lead this person to a trap like a sneaky traitor, then there was the fact that the killer reminded him so much of a lost child for him to take care of. Nothing at all like he thought.

"He burned down his own house to conceal the crime!" A vision of the house, the smell of burnt wood and maybe... flesh... "He did it after killing everyone in the house!" The bodies, burnt and blackened, barely recognizable... "He didn't let anybody out alive!" A young girl's shriveled hand, clawing at the charred ground...

That's what they told him. That's what he saw. Somehow he had imagined the culprit to be a bit... tougher-looking, easier to hate...

He decided to ignore both of William's remarks. "You seem really weak. You should eat quickly and get some rest soon or you might not have the strength to set off tomorrow." With that he finished his last gulp of tea and curled up on the ground, silently giving William his bed for the night. He couldn't bear the thought of letting someone lie on the cold dirt while he lay in his sleeping bag, even a convicted felon.
 
William felt a bit bothered from Shane's behavior, mostly because something seemed to bothering Shane. It didn't seem like he wanted to talk to William, almost as if he ignored him. But he had saved him and it seemed like he intended to travel with him for a bit. Maybe just to make sure the young man got a good start. The man was full of mystery's, but William wouldn't have the energy to think about those during that night. He was way too tired.

After he had eaten he fell asleep almost immediately. If he hadn't been so exhausted he would definitely have told the man that he would sleep on the ground since it wasn't his sleeping bag, but that wasn't something he could think about in his exhaustion.

He slept through the night without waking up a single time. That was the first night in weeks that such a thing had happened. As he rose from the ground with a lot more energy than the day before he noticed the sleeping bag. At first he couldn't remember at all how he had gotten it or what had happened the other day, but then he remembered. Shane. He felt a bit embarrassed over his behavior, feeding on that man's food without saying thanks and even sleeping in the man's sleeping bag. That was not how he had been raised. On the other hand, he hadn't been raised to walking around in the forest and almost killing himself.
 
Shane was trained to be a light sleeper, so he awoke at the sound of William stirring in his sleeping bag. He sat up and saw that the other man was already awake. He also seemed a bit better. Not like the tired, vulnerable little boy of last night. Well, maybe.

"Good morning, stranger." He didn't feel like using names. It felt intrusive to him to use people's first names immediately. He rose and began preparing to pack up. He looked at the sun. "It's a little after 7; I suggest we get ready to head out soon. I'll lead you back someplace safe."

"Lead him back to us, and well take care of the rest, understood?" "Yes, sir!" "Excellent. We'll give you directions to the station we set up in a nearby village..."

"I live in a nearby village." He took out an empty bag and filled it with some of his supplies, which he handed to William. "This is yours."
 
It seemed like the man wouldn't stop calling him a stranger, which probably meant he wouldn't stick around for long. Would it be okay for him to call Shane by his name? Even if he did that would feel ridiculous when the other party would barely even look at him.

Maybe Shane thought he were an abandoned kid that gotten into trouble or something and that was why he helped him. Well, he were a kid that had gotten into trouble at least. But that depended on how you defined a kid. He acted like a kid a bit now and then, but he would soon turn eighteen so technically he was a man. In his mother's eyes he would forever be her little child, and in his fathers eyes he would be.... He wasn't certain himself what he was to his father. He wanted William to become a man, but he didn't think his father had been able to see him as a man yet. Now he would never be able to either.

"No thanks." He refused the bag that was offered to him. "I'm already indebted more than I could ever pay back to you. I can't burden you more by taking your supplies. But thank you for your concern and help." He said as politely as he could. If it hadn't been for those thief's the other day then he wouldn't have been in such a bad state so fast on his journey. He had been able to get some food, sadly some of it was stolen which he did regret. But that had been lost as he ran for his life. Now when he had some energy he was certain that he somehow would be able to get more food with his own power. If nothing else then he could always make a trap and catch an animal. His older brother had taught him that once.
 
Shane shrugged. "Very well, suit yourself." He slung the sack onto his back along with his other things. He wanted to get the journey over with as quickly as possible. "You don't have to refuse help you know. It's not a bad thing to need someone once in a while."
He had gone out on a limb when he said that. Maybe he was trying to help him with his issues, maybe he thought William's issues might not be what they think it was. Either way, he wanted to get things straight before it was over.

"So... where are you from? How'd you get the way you are?"
 
William thought a minute over what Shane had said, including his question and thought about ways to formulate his words.

"There's nothing wrong with accepting help, but you shouldn't overuse a persons kindness just because they offer you all the help they can give. Take what you need and not more, and always try to repay them. That's what my father used to say." He told the man. An unintentional sad smile appeared on his lips as he mentioned his father. The father he would never see again.

"I come from not that far away." He started to answer Shane's question. He rather not tell him exactly where from since he didn't know if that man knew about what had happened. "And the later question is kind of hard to answer since it depends on what you mean. Yesterday I was like that because some thief's tried to steal the little things I had, with great success I must say, but if you wonder how I ended up out here and almost got myself killed because I'm too naive to live out here then its a bit longer story." He said while trying his best to put some humor into his words just to ease the tension the man seemed to feel towards William.

"The short version is that my family died and I had nowhere to go, so I ended up out here while I tried to survive. If they hadn't died then I would be home now, eating my breakfast, complaining about my little sister being way too annoying, get scolded by my dad, teased by my big brother and big sister and then comforted by my other little sister. Instead I'm out here, and they're gone." He hadn't even realized how much he had talked before he stopped. He got disappointed when he stopped talking, because as he spoke he had imagined the breakfast, his family fight, his completely normal day, and it had felt so real. But then he woke up to reality, and what once was reality was now only memories and shadows.
 
Shane closed his eyes as the silence pervaded. If this boy is a criminal, he sure doesn't sound like it... He felt a sort of stiffness when he walked; he thought maybe because he felt how wrong the situation was in his bones. "I'm sorry.... We'd... better get going. We must get to town before nightfall to get you a place at the inn..." "... at this inn, where we'll be waiting for your arrival with the prisoner in hand. Here we will begin the rehabilitation process before sending him back to prison to face his crimes." "Understood, sir."

"Let's go."
 
It was a bit confusing that he hadn't been more emotional when talking about his family's death even though he hadn't gone in on the details. He thought that if he ever would talk about it he would start crying. Maybe it was because it just felt like a dream to him, it didn't feel like it had actually happened. Maybe even though he knew the truth he just hadn't accepted it yet. But that was for the best. He didn't want to start crying in front of a complete stranger named Shane.

William nodded and walked with Shane, even though he didn't want to accept anymore of Shane's help and simply wanted to leave to go his own way there was still one part of him that wanted to go with Shane for just a little while longer. Just so that he would have someone to talk to.

"So... What about you? Where do you come from? Any family waiting?" He asked with the hopes of hearing some good story about his life on a farm or about he and his wife or something. Just the smallest thing. But maybe he didn't have anything like that.
 
Shane opened his mouth, closed it again, and sighed. He wasn't sure what he was getting himself into. He decided to just give him half a true story and hope Friar Martin won't count it as a lie.

"I don't see my family much anymore. I chose a very... difficult job... far from home... and they've never tried to make contact since I left, so... I suppose you could say my work is my family." He was completely wrong for this job after all. Tracking was his specialty, and it came second nature to him. Retrieval and capture of a powerful target was like breathing. Delivering a package, whether dead or alive, was part of the most basic training.
But the questions. The deception. Luring a man to his doom. All wrong.

But especially the questions. He hadn't anticipated that the "hostage" would want to know who he was. And it shocked him that he wanted to answer... to tell the truth...

Remember your orders...

He looked over at the man beside him. "You look like you've been through a lot more than I have though."
 
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