The elder assassin sat perched on the desk for a few minutes more, staring at the young man in the corner trying to look as non-threatening as possible. Albanos wasn't sure he'd ever been that young. Certainly not that he could remember, anyway. But the urge to swing a dagger at anything you perceived as a threat to your naive definition of love? That was a feeling he was intimately familiar with.

Those were the memories he couldn't get rid of if he tried, and all the gods knew that he had. He found himself almost endeared with the boy, a fact that certainly would have surprised Willam, whose own life was still flashing before his eyes. That particular mental presentation had made it to the comedy of errors that was his early teenage years, and he would be perfectly fine if Albanos killed him any moment now.

The sad truth was, in that one common feeling alone, that one brief flash of protectiveness, Albanos felt he had more of a connection with young Willam than he had with anyone else in time immemorial. He decided it was probably best to break the ice before the young man decided that taking his chances with the window and, in turn, gravity, was a better option than huddling in the corner, awaiting his doom.

"Well...greetings, Willam. My name is Albanos, and I welcome you to my old room."

Getting a polite greeting in place of a bolt to the head left Willam confused, his expression becoming that of a swimmer to whom a shark has just offered a ride back to shore. He ventured a grab at the proverbial dorsal fin.

"Listen, I knew it was your old room and all, we all know, they've never moved anyone back in here, but I didn't mean no disrespect or nothin', it's just that--"

"It's just that there aren't many places in a school full of sneaky bastards where you can go to get a true moment's peace, so you have to make do with what you can. I understand. Hell, I spent a great deal of my time here hanging out with the bats in the alarm belfry..."

He waited to see if subtlety registered on Willam. There was no reaction to speak of.

"I assume most of the students are probably afraid of this place? Considering all the stories they've told you about me?"

"Yeah, yeah, right. The other students say you prolly left booby traps all over it, nasty spikes and acids and poisons and the like."

"Do they now? Well, I wouldn't say they're all over the room, but if I were you, I wouldn't move much further to your left."

Willam leaped from the corner and plastered himself up against the wall to the right of the desk in a flailing tangle of limbs. Beneath his hood, Albanos's smile got wider. Had the display not involved quite so much squealing, it would have been very nearly impressive.

"That was a joke, son," Albanos informed the hyperventilating figure next to him. "If we're going to have a decent conversation, you are going to have to stop screaming and acting like I've got a weapon drawn on you. Why don't you have a seat on the bed, and we'll talk like men until your girl gets here." He could almost feel the temperature drop a degree or two.

"What happens when she gets here?" Willam asked with a very slight, but admirable, tinge of menace in his voice.

"Well then, she'll get to join in the conversation. I've already had you pinned to the ground. If you or anyone else were going to die tonight, I'd have taken care of it by now and been halfway to town to pick up some bread and cheese on my way out. I've never been much for toying with my prey."

A lie, but an effortless one.

"This is off-duty Albanos.. You don't get to have a chat with on-duty Albanos. At least not a pleasant one. So please, relax. Have a cigarette?"

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Albanos retrieved the last of his supply out of his cloak, palming it briefly before making it dance and spin between each of his fingers in what was meant to be a disarming gesture, finally ending outstretched towards his new friend. Willam flinched, reflexively, then gave the faintest shake of his head.

"No? Fine. So tell me, Mr. Willam. Why would I, three decades gone, still have spring-loaded spikes covered in acidic poison lying about?"

Willam began edging his way around the walls of the room, keeping his back pressed up against something at all times until he came to the bed. Even when the boy was moving to sit down, he was sure to keep his hands in plain sight and make no sudden movements. You just couldn't talk to some people.

"'Cause you didn't want no one touchin' all your hidden treasure," he volunteered, once gingerly settled on the creaking mattress, armadas of dust motes swirling up into the dim light.

Albanos blinked a few times while he thought about this, and then a few more times while he tried to work out if anyone else had ever taken the time to think about it.

"All my hidden treasure?"

"Aye, right enough, best assassin s'ever lived they say. You're bound to have a ton of treasure."

"And I would...keep it here, would I?"

"Well, maybe the stuff you gathered while you was a student, or right after you graduated. You mighta left it here thinkin' you could come back for it, before you got ban-"

The young man's mouth shut fast and hard, clicking shut audibly in the fashion of the imaginary traps he felt such fear of. Albanos wondered if the awkward silence that followed might eventually be broken by a search for the tip of the boy's tongue. Before he could tell him that it was alright, there was a strange sequence of knocks on the door.

Albanos recognized it as an old thief's code. He listened intently, following each series of taps to their conclusion, at which point he began going over it again in his mind, more than a little confused. He motioned that Willam should answer the door, still trying to work out if his translation could be correct.

Willam was uncertain as to whether he wanted to involve the girl on the other side in whatever it was he'd gotten himself into. Did he want her exposed to this madman of legend? He could shout a warning and let her get to safety. Sure, he might die, but it would be so that she could live! That'd show that pompous boyfriend of hers what true love was all about. It'd be just like in all those old stories, where the hero bravely--

Albanos, not entirely preoccupied with the knocking message, noticed a distinct lack of door answering in the room. Glancing up at Willam, he recognized the gleam in his eye and the slight, unsteady grin playing across his face. That was the look of a man working himself up to try and do something heroic.

He acted quickly to keep that from happening, as there was only one way for an assassin to deal with heroes, who are renowned for their inability to be reasoned with... The prospect of having to kill one, if not two of his prospective students was still not very attractive, neurotic as this particular individual may be.

Moving to the door before Willam could protest, Albanos began opening it. It was scarcely more than cracked before a hooded and cloaked figure barreled in and wrapped its arms around him, face buried in his chest, oblivious to the bed containing the intended object of its affection.

"I'm so sorry I was late, my love," said a muffled female voice. "I had to finish helping Katrina with her paralytic poisons homework. You know how bad she is at getting the proportions right."

"That was awfully nice of you." He felt her tense up, beginning to realize that the details were all wrong. "Wouldn't want anyone ending up in a coma because their partner didn't know how much nightwart to put into the mixture."

Willam could only watch, somewhere between manic amusement and sheer, abject terror, as paralyzed as one of Katrina's previous lab partners. He wasn't sure what was going to happen next, but he was almost certain it was going to involve something sharp.

The girl tumbled back and drew a silver dirk.

Albanos chuckled and threw back his hood.

Willam fainted.