Pandora and I circled each other like two panthers in a cage. Only, not hunting, but hesitating.
Me, because she was armed. Her, because I wasn't.
"Please, don't resist... I don't want to hurt you..." Pandora's voice wavered.
"Then leave us! Walk away before it's too late!" I bluffed.
It made her worse and I didn't care. I kept pressing her.
"'Guardian Angel of the Earth?' You've come and dragged us all to hell. And for what?!"
"The Gimen... you are our enemies. The devil spawn. Masters of deception. We cannot trust a word you say--"
"Right. Come to our land. Tell us what we are, and then kill us. Heaven clearly smiles on you." I sneered.
"Listen! You cannot withstand me... I am trained, I am armed... and I bear the Assurance, the power of humans. Surrender, and I will use none of it..."
I flinched.
'She has them too?'
With that she could easily kill me. My saving grace was hoping she would pity me, and it only made me angrier.
"Looks like you have everything you need to kill me. All except the right."
"...I won't tell you again..."
I shrugged.
"Then don't..."
We then fell silent. The sound of her panicked breath interlaced with the distant screams and squelching of blood. Smoke and blood reeking. Another reason to regret opening the door.
Pandora's breath grew quieter. Sharper. Focused with an edge of fear. Seemed she had made up her mind. Or she was pretending to.
"You are leaving me no choice..."
"Then choose what you have left. See what happens!"
Our eyes locked. Hers were golden, yet dim, like a light had been crushed within them. Mine held no colour at all. Only resolve. Only thoughts of my brothers. Protecting them. I did not know how to kill. But I would learn.
With a feeble yell, she charged. Swinging her knife across my torso. I leapt back and it missed. I didn't know how.
Then I fought back. Lunging at her non-knife-bearing side. She drove the knife to my back. So I span low, to the arm holding it.
Snarling and wrestling her fingers off. She tried to shake her hands free. Groaning over tears. Four hands, one knife. Struggling awkwardly back and forth. I had a better hold. So she pushed me. Shoving me into our dinner table. My back atop it and my legs dangling off. My grip loosened.
I twisted, trying to wrench the knife from above her head. Thrusting a kick into her stomach. So soft it hurt to hurt her. She tumbled like a ragdoll, moaning. But she still had the knife.
As she got up, I bolted to the other side of the table. She flinched. Hesitating to chase me as I knew she would. With a wounded roar I launched a chair at her. She darted past, raising an arm. Before I knew it there were arrows flying from her wrist.
'A wristbow?'
I flipped the table over. Duckling swiftly behind it. Each arrow missed it anyway.
Pushing with my shoulder, I drove the table across the floor. Aiming to ram her in the legs while still hiding behind it.
She tried to run, nowhere to go. The table tripped her. Tumbling on the ground next to me. I pulled the knife from her as she winced in pain. She rolled, scrambling back to the door she had come from, and I chased her.
I thought she would open the door and retreat back to bring help, but she didn't. Instead she pressed against the wall, cowering from me. I tossed the knife aside and it clattered to the floor. I didn't need her dead, just gone.
My fist balled up charging at her with a final war cry. She flinched against the wall, protecting her head. And I punched the wall next to it. My fist went straight through.
I was about to scream at her when her tears streamed once again.
"Why are you crying? My mother is likely dead! And your people killed her! So why are you crying?!"
She made no move, only lowering her hands and turning toward me. Staring into my eyes, then away. My eyes, away. Her breath rattling on my neck as I truly waited for an answer.
I found something else completely.
Pandora put a hand to my chest. Then under my arm. Awkward and measured, yet warm, and soft. So soft.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I didn't want to come here... I didn't know you were only normal people..."
Her words collapsed me. My head hanging and my body crumbling in defeat. I retreated into her as she retreated into me.
I thought only of mother. Of everything I had seen. My heart had been ravaged. And Pandora's embrace was her apology. A chance for me to heal.
The wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong person. And yet it felt right. Logic failed to explain why she would hold a stranger, an enemy. But this was beyond logic. It was raging, and blind to it. It was 'passion.' I felt it for the first time. Albeit short-lived.
Pandora let go of me. The tears stopped falling.
"I'm sorry... about that... I just--"
"Just leave. Just go..." I murmured, not looking her in the eye.
"...Of course... I shall tell them I found nothing here."
Pandora gave me one final glance, slowly creaking open the door.
At that second, it was over. Not my grief, no. But the life I grieved over.
Another human crashed through the door.
He spotted me.
"THE PRINCESS FOUND ANOTHER!" he bellowed. Charging toward me.
The nightmare was just beginning.