Drabble!
Less with the torture and more with the Nino.
She came apon them quietly. There was no shock at all. As time passed, people gradually got used to the pale, cheerful little girl with puppy-dog eyes.
At first she was a joke. Nobody, least of all the brothers Reed, could believe that Sonia (the Queen Bitch, they called her behind her back, although in those days she wasn't quite so bad) could have raised such a naive daughter.
Nino *believed* in the Fang. Her whole heart went into the organization; eventually they realized it was probably the most noble thing she'd ever been exposed to, and she devoted herself to it. She swore the oaths. Lloyd thought it was crazy, a little girl striking her palm with a dagger and vowing to uphold justice in the world at the cost of as many lives as necessary. Ursula laughed out loud during the ceremony but felt sorry afterwards and healed the scar.
Since not one among them wanted her working as an assasin, she became an errand girl. Not that the job didn't require some skill of its own. If she had inherited nothing else from her mother, no-one could best Nino at the mage arts. Soon she was a familar sight; a smile on her face, a huge tome dusty tome of magic at her side.
Once, laughingly, Linus called her the White Fang. The nickname stuck.
They didn't tell her when Nergal became the power behind the organization. They didn't tell her when Legault was ordered to kill Aisha, when Uhai was taken aside and told that he would obey Sonia directly if he knew what was good for him, when Jaffar went out at night and killed a wife or child to spread healthy respect among the nobility. They pretended, for Nino's sake, that the Fang was as it had always been.
Because really, that was part of the justice they were upholding.
She came apon them quietly. There was no shock at all. As time passed, people gradually got used to the pale, cheerful little girl with puppy-dog eyes.
At first she was a joke. Nobody, least of all the brothers Reed, could believe that Sonia (the Queen Bitch, they called her behind her back, although in those days she wasn't quite so bad) could have raised such a naive daughter.
Nino *believed* in the Fang. Her whole heart went into the organization; eventually they realized it was probably the most noble thing she'd ever been exposed to, and she devoted herself to it. She swore the oaths. Lloyd thought it was crazy, a little girl striking her palm with a dagger and vowing to uphold justice in the world at the cost of as many lives as necessary. Ursula laughed out loud during the ceremony but felt sorry afterwards and healed the scar.
Since not one among them wanted her working as an assasin, she became an errand girl. Not that the job didn't require some skill of its own. If she had inherited nothing else from her mother, no-one could best Nino at the mage arts. Soon she was a familar sight; a smile on her face, a huge tome dusty tome of magic at her side.
Once, laughingly, Linus called her the White Fang. The nickname stuck.
They didn't tell her when Nergal became the power behind the organization. They didn't tell her when Legault was ordered to kill Aisha, when Uhai was taken aside and told that he would obey Sonia directly if he knew what was good for him, when Jaffar went out at night and killed a wife or child to spread healthy respect among the nobility. They pretended, for Nino's sake, that the Fang was as it had always been.
Because really, that was part of the justice they were upholding.