V ‖ shattered trust

The most daunting thing that stood between two people would never be all the unsaid words that were held in a pause, never passing through the open space. Instead, it was the fragility of trust that shattered two individuals while screaming brash soliloquies into vacuumed space, with only the hurt being plunged straight into each other's chest.

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SHANGHAI
December 
Location: Elysium, Styx

━━━━━━━━━━

"Calisthenics again?" Vivienne asked as she entered the gym through the doors.

"Yeah," I huffed, lowing my hips into a squat. Repeating it for ten times to complete the set, I moved on to suicide sprints, lunges and jumps. By the time all the sets were done, my entire body was drenched in sweat and dead tired with wobbling limbs.

"Iva, is something wrong?" Vivienne leaned close to my face, inspecting me.

"No."

"Don't ever think you could lie to me," she frowned as she moved towards the space right beside me and sat down. "You'd always exhaust yourself when something happened."

I hesitated for a moment but eventually allowed the words to leave me. "Viv, am I allowed to have a second chance?" I raised my arm and dropped them above my closed eyes, feeling all the vexation when I thought about Jax and that night.

"Why not?" she threw a question back, instead of answering mine.

"Someone like me—"

"Iva, dearest," Vivienne interrupted immediately, sighing. "It's been a long time."

A sudden rush of tears surfaced and I pressed my arm harder over my eyes, as though the pressure could prevent the tears from falling. Then, I felt Vivienne's hand on mine and she squeezed it lightly.

"You definitely deserve a second chance and I'm very sure that Sebastian would be happy for you," Vivienne said. "I would be, too."

We sat in silence for a long while before our braces vibrated and a message flashed in a short line of text.

We turned our heads at the same time to look at one another and the uncertainty was apparent in our expressions. Confused out of our minds, nothing crossed our minds that warranted a meeting with Harod. In Elysium, there are only two reasons that he would ever like to meet anyone: One, all hell had broke loose. Two, the rules had been broken.

Going through my mind and doing a mental check, I didn't recall receiving news of any unexplainable apocalyptic events that were wreaking havoc to the surface and neither had Vivienne nor I broke any of the rules. At that moment, our braces vibrated again and we glanced down.

I rolled my eyes and Vivienne let out a disgruntled groan. These are the days when we became fully aware of why Harod's the Guardian of Styx. Perhaps the Goddess of the River Styx had taken it out on him so much that he became the personification of hatred himself. As such, when he spent his time on the surface, he expressed his detestation on every other being through all his petty manners.

We quickly grabbed our things from the floor and started sprinting out of the door. In the fastest speed that our legs could possibly take us, we passed through all the hallways and tapped into several annoying security doors, which always took their time to open whenever someone's in a rush. When we finally arrived at his office's door, Harod clicked on the stopwatch and clapped his hands.

"2 minutes 59 seconds," he reported. "Amazing but there's always room for improvement."

Honestly, if I knew what Harod looked like, it's ascertained that I would paint a portrait of him and throw knives at it every single day. That being said, no one actually knew how they looked like. The Guardians were beings with undefined existence yet omnipresent. They kept everyone under their radar and there was simply no escaping from it. We knew nothing about the Guardians except for the fact that none of them is human.

I was still panting to catch my breath when both of us walked towards him. Vivienne was the first to break the pause between the three of us. "Why do you seek for us?"

"None of you was reported and remember, I always know," Harod swivelled his chair towards us and rested his elbows on the table while clasping his hands together. "Both of you were called in because Lethe had requested for your presences."

None of us said anything, taken aback by the sudden request when Lethe was mentioned specifically. If you think Styx wasn't bad enough, Lethe's on the level of egregious. It was the branch that housed the Elites, the best assassins among us, whose missions were to hunt high-class cacs and diabolos. On average, the lifespan of an assassin in every other Elysium branch was already short to begin with. Therefore, even if given a chance, I would never choose to go Lethe.

"No, thank you," I declined. Mainly, we pledge fealty to the branch we were adopted into and we have no obligations to satisfy the requests of other branches unless it was the official request by the Council, Adrasteia.

"The feeling's mutual," Vivienne nodded in agreement. "Harod, you should know better than to call us for such things."

"Well," Harod spoke slowly. "This request cannot be rejected."

"Why?" I asked curtly.

"As of today, you both are under the legislation of Lethe," he replied simply.

"You transferred us?" I spat, a wave of lethal anger simmered within me.

"Harod, seriously?" Vivienne bit through all her words and the irritation in her tone was clipped and cold.

"Above all my children here, my responsibility is to ensure what shouldn't walk on the surface stay underneath," he stated, almost indifferent towards our rage.

"Just why would you fucking agree to that transfer?" I demanded.

"I would never give my children away if I have the privilege to choose," he raised his voice slightly and the infuriation in his tone was noticeable.

"卧槽," Vivienne cussed, even though she was well aware that Harod hated it when we spew vulgarities in front of him.
(Translate: Fuck this.)

"Vivienne," Harod warned, obviously annoyed by our lack of elegance in language choices.

"What about Seth?" I couldn't be bothered by the tension between the other two because I just recalled a more pressing issue. Staring towards Harod, I swore, "I'm seriously going to murder you if—"

"Seth Raynard will be transferred altogether with both of you," he replied, patience ticking but we would never know when his limit would set off.

"Then, why isn't he here?"

"I have already kept him informed about his transfer. He mentioned that as long as there's the two of you, it wouldn't matter to him." Harod replied.

Exactly what Seth would say.

Then, the phone on Harod's desk shrilled. He picked up the handset and brought it to his ears. After a short pause, he said, "Bring him in."

Turning the chair to his side, he stood from his seat and mentioned to us, "Allow me to introduce the Elite who was sent to oversee the transfer process—"

We turned around, waiting impatiently to see who was coming through. The reinforced glass door slid open, and the man who appeared behind made me hold onto my breath. At this moment, time seemed to slow down and even though I couldn't seem to hear anything else from my surroundings, somewhere in the depths of my ears I think I heard the sound of my own heart shattering. I definitely recognised the person who stood at the door. 

"Jaxen Evrard." 

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in case you got confused, styx and lethe are different branches of elysium, the organisation.
(and yes, the guardians are not human)