#// ayyy shoutout to the-ravenous-flock for being so rad!

[noxian-rose]

 | EMPRESS LEBLANC BACKSTORY | WRITTEN WITH @the-ravenous-flock

"Evaine...?" The world goes quiet in moments. Her eyes betray a moment of apology. Everything resumes in a cacophony of noise, how men dying at his feet.  But his eyes cannot leave her frame, her staff raised to fight.  To take everything.  His age weighs him down as surely as his heart.  His staff falls from numb fingers.  The Grand General falls into his seat moments later.

"Kill any attempting resistance, we will rendezvous in the meeting room when the dust settles" She states to a group of her magi in the midst of pulling signature ethereal chains around the neck of a former commander.

LeBlanc merely observes the color wash from his pleading eyes without much of another word; her fingers letting go of the illusionary chain, only to turn around and find Jericho's eyes cemented to figure. Unblinking, still as the most stagnant waters as if frozen in the singular moment that had taken place before the sounds and people surrounding him had come to a halt in his eyes. Emilia shook her head and settled her attentions on the matter at hand, continuing forth with the rest of the others.

A stronger man would have fought back.  A wiser would have escaped to fight another day.  Jericho feels neither of these can apply anymore.  All his plans, all the sacrifices he'd made.  All for naught.  They had gone up in smoke, much like the flames sprouting from High Command itself.  His bones felt stiff, his muscles burned.  He'd not sustained any damage whatsoever, but he could not move.  Once more, his voice barely broke through the carnage, still disbelieving.  "Evaine...?".

His eyes could not pull away from the woman he'd loved.  The woman who had listened to him, in the dark of the night.

The woman who had stabbed him in the heart.

Despite the voice of reason that was her better self, she turned back to him; still not having moved in the heat of the moment. For a moment she thought she had hallucinated the voice that came from within the man slumped in his seat, utterly defeated by the vulnerability that was her presence.

How long had it been since she had last heard him utter her name so defeatedly? Certainly not the night before.

Emilia approached him once more, standing before her dearest raven with her porcelain visage and ever so smug smirk. Victory; the taste of the purest honey that she had long served him through the years without even the slightest sample. "Jericho, darling why must you look so terribly downtrodden? Is this not the victory we both yearned for so desperately since our youth?"

The voice before him taunted him, trying to get a rise out of him.  A younger Swain might have taken the bait. Swain was not a young man anymore.

The wine they had drank the night before, the way her laugh lit the night.  The way the moonlight played off her porcelain skin.  All this and more danced through his mind unbidden.  He could taste nothing but ash upon his lips.  Where she'd kissed him tenderly the night before, promising her live to him.

Despite priding himself as a tactician without equal, Swain could barely breathe, let alone think.  His eyes watched the remains of his men die by the score, falling to flame and spell and blade.  Yet, his eyes never left the spectre of the woman before him.

"I know better than to think Emilia would share any sort of power." The words echo to him, barely recognizing the words as his own.  The world flickers and warps, and he barely manages to stay conscious.  "Even in my wildest dreams, I would never have expected this.  Never would have believed it possible."

"But Evaine died years ago.  I now see that clearly.  I've merely been following the shadow of a ghost."

The mere spectacle of his crimson hues sitting still before her only served as a reminder of their actions the night before; his silence only magnifying the ache that lingered within her like venom, corroding away at the walls she had fortified Evaine in for years. She needed to leave, follow her army the way he had led the men and women of Noxus for decades without as much as a stutter in his stride. But her feet refused to comply with her desire, walking forward than backwards as she had so wished. Emilia knelt on the floor, her hands cupping his cheek the same way she had done when they shared a tender kiss, nevermore. "Jericho." She whispered "Is this not what you wanted?"

He barely manages to sit straight in his chair.  We're he to die now, he'd do it with his back straight.  And, even though he knows the woman he loved may as well have not existed, he still cannot bring himself to harm her face.  His eyes glaze over, a coldness setting in his chest.

"So then, Matron.  Make your final move."

He utters the challenge as a token.  He has no fight left.  He can't even tell, numb as he is that tears stream down his face.

Beatrice swoops in from the rafters, blood coating her once pristine feathers.  Most of is not hers.  She screams all the way, talons extended.  She cries for her master, fury incarnate.  Blood flows freely from anyone fool enough to fight her.  And then her many eyes catch Swain, and then her rage is tenfold.  A word of power is uttered "Harlot!"

Unholy flame streams forth from the devil bird, a mighty conflagration that shames the kindling produced by the Rose.  She dives for LeBlanc, harpy-like screeches issuing forth.

She is stopped by the hand of her master.

"No, Beatrice."

The flames die as quickly as they grew. Her hatred, however, still burns.  Six crimson eyes turn to the Deceiver.  They promise torment without end, and death a blessing. However, the Grand General awaits his own judgement all the same, tired old eyes barely registering the flowing tears.

"Play your final move, LeBlanc."

Tears. Tears that she had once remembered long before the game had truly begun. Tears that didn't even make their presence strong even when she had killed her own blood prior to becoming Matron. Glassy amber eyes shifting to the horrific sight that was Beatrice lurching for her without a hint of remorse evident; then Swain's hand halting the creature; a drop of blood from the bird's talons falling unto untouched cheek. LeBlanc draws away from him, ever unfeeling and composed  as her official title dropped from his lips like bile.

She stands from the ground silkily and continues "We do not fall short on deals as an organization, as you know. What you desire from us will be yours, your master will be kept well treated.  What say you?"

By this point, Swain has lost consciousness.  The  shock renders him cold, and dead to the world.

However, the bird scorched the wood it stands upon, protecting her master.  Words spill into the aether, a terrible sound.  Lesser men fall to the ground, bleeding from their ears.

"A gilded cage, then.  So be it.  Know this, Deceiver.  You will die alone in the dark, forgotten to the annals of time.  And my master will be the one to burn your Rose to ashes black as your namesake.  And, as you die, I will be there." As she speaks, Beatrice conjures a vision for LeBlanc.  An ebony throne.  A Rose in bloom. A war.  A child.  Then fire.  Pain.  Six burning eyes.  A field of corpses.  A golden staff shattering.  Screams.  Jericho walking away into the night.  As quickly as the images fly by, it ends in moments.

"You may hold onto Jericho for now, doll.  But he is mine.". With that, the bird disappears out the window, leaving a comatose old man behind.

She listened to Beatrice's words wordlessly and let the vision wash over her without as much as a blink of her eye; rather, a smirk took it's rightful place across her lips. The creature's words did nothing to unsettle her despite the intentions set. It would take more than a mere bird to bring her Rose to ashes, and she would make sure to secure the position of authority her organization had slid into before the inevitable death of her physical vessel.

Beatrice proposed a fitting challenge for a woman of her stature; and LeBlanc was not a woman to ignore such trials. If this was the way she wanted to play the game, so be it. She conjured her clone and ordered the duplicate to walk to Swain's unmoving body. LeBlanc grasped his  shoulders, moving him away from the chair while her clone took charge of his lower body. "We need to move him elsewhere. The Black Rose's sanctuary" Evaine stated. Her clone nodded and followed in her footsteps as they both moved out towards the underground headquarters.