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It was a lovely night. A late summer storm had come through earlier in the day, but that had been hours ago, and now everything was just cooler and smelling pleasantly fresh. The weather was what had made Pendour want to come out, and she had come over to the park with the community garden attached.

She told herself that she had wanted to see if the apples were ripening up nicely for fall, and she did feel happy when she found the trees and ran her fingers over their gnarled bark and saw the green fruits growing heavy under the leaves, but deep down she knew that it was not everything she had hoped for. The place was empty save for the plants. There were no people here.

Part of her maybe hoped that Enke would be here, and they could go take the apple seeds and plant them in space, or maybe someone else for her to learn a new side of things from.

She didn't hate the loneliness, not really, but meeting people was the point of coming out like this. Still, she took a few moments to stand with her eyes closed, to appreciate the sound of wind rustling branches and the cool breeze on her skin.

It was only when she felt the flicker of a dark aura that she stiffened and remembered that being alone could also be dangerous.

You are a silly idealist and you will die for this.

That was what almost every single person in this war had told Pendour. She had always nodded and said that it was okay. It was easy not to be scared of death or of getting hurt when the threats were just a theory talked over with friends. It was different here, when she was alone, or, well, when she was friendless in the dark but not alone, not alone at all.

The growl sent shivers through her bones.

Run. She needed to run. She couldn't turn her back, that was the problem with that, and the aura was so big, now that she thought about it, bigger than she'd thought, bigger than she'd felt before. She dug her heels into the gravel pathway and looked from bush to bush, shadow to shadow, anywhere someone could hide, anywhere the source might be.

There it was. There they were? While she couldn't quite make out details, they looked more like a human than like one of the youma, but something seemed off, very off. Then, with so much chaos in them, of course it would be.

"Oh," she said, "You're one of the broken ones, aren't you?" Under the fear, there was still something soft in her eyes. She took a shaky step forwards. "I'm so sorry."

After getting started, the next two steps came a little easier, although the crunch of Pendour's flats on the gravel echoed up loud as loud through her ears. Whatever was to come, she wanted to see his face. The shadows thickened, somehow, and the wrongness was still there, something off even about the shape of him, but she could make out yellow eyes and the outlines of his nose and mouth under his fanged mask. He seemed more human than not.

Still, his soul must have been very sick. She was not oblivious to the way that he was looking at her, or the Chaos that was coming off of him in waves, and she reached over slowly to fiddle with the pearls at her neck, her elbow resting over her starseed as some tiny way to protect it. At her full six feet, he was not so much taller than she was. Her fingers shook, but she looked back into his eyes.

"Yes," she said, even as he brought something up about her age, some insult, maybe, that she didn't quite understand. She wasn't young, not like that. She wasn't blind. "Maybe you think of it as a price paid, or something earned, even." Gev had told her a little of how the Negaverse groomed its people.

Something about his next question caught her harder, and she shivered. "I." Her voice faltered, too. "I don't know." It wasn't true. She thought of the Chaos eating at his heart, making him as wrong as he was, and she knew.

She swallowed again, and rubbed her thumb over her pearls. "If you want help, I can try."

He had not pounced. Whether he had a look in his eyes that made Pendour feel spiders crawling up her spine or no, whether he could snap her in half with one hand or no, he had not pounced. She stood on the ground just as she had before, unharmed. His questions were all that shook her. What sort of help? That seemed like something she still needed to learn. The answers that had been spoon-fed to her seemed shallow, now.

She swallowed, and then she crossed the last of the distance between them in one fluid movement until she stood nose to nose with him, closer than she should have been, even, maybe, if he had not been her enemy. Five feet would do nothing to protect her. She squinted at his face, trying to make out what she could, considering how dark it was. There was just enough light to see that something was off even with his skin itself. Her left hand was still locked across her chest but she reached out with her right, her fingers stopping just inches from his nose.

"Does it hurt?" she asked. It would be so much easier if it did. "I know someone who could heal that, I think."

No. This was something insidious, not something cured by one question from a page. Still, he was here, and asking questions instead of coming at her with weapons or magic. Maybe she was not the first to talk. Maybe there was hope. She rocked back on her heels, let her arm drop, and tilted her head in turn. "We could start with something else, though. Food, maybe?"

Making sure that people's basic needs were met was the place to start in other spheres.

Her face was an open book. Her eyes were gentle, soft as ever, even as she searched every inch of him that she could see, her gaze moving past his eyes to the wolf ears in his tousle of hair. Her jaw was tight, but it clenched tighter, then. She hoped against hope.

She was wrong, of course.

She saw it in his eyes for a split second. It wasn't the cruelty. That had been there. It was movement. Before she could do anything, it had reached his hands.

He grabbed her by the throat. They flew backwards. She tried to stumble, tried to find purchase in the ground but there was none. He threw her into something hard. She heard the thump of her body against bark before she felt the pain shoot up her back. Her arms went limp. She screamed. It wasn't loud, but the air had to get out of her lungs somehow.

There were a few coughs, too, before she peered back up at him with eyes that were harder now, and going red around the edges. She squirmed, then, not harshly, but wishing she was enough of a sea creature as the clothes implied, something that could slip through cracks in the coral away from predators' fangs.

The fear was worse, closing up her throat as much as the claws were, but she forced her heels down now that she could, forcing herself to stand tall. "I will not freely give you my life for your supper," she said.

Still, she did little to stop him from taking it.

Even as she spoke, she felt the fingers that she thought were already in a vicegrip go tighter and tighter still. The pressure alone squeezed tears out of her eyes. The lack of air took the edges of her vision, too.

He spoke. She wondered if she was meant to listen, with his clawed hands digging hard into her throat, which hurt, with his snarled breath in her face, with her vision blurred and dancing like the air over an old radiator, with his clear intent to leave her dead on the cold ground. Still, he held her there, and she had no choice but to hear him, hear him tell her that in so many words that she was being arrogant.

Well, she didn't pity him anymore.

I pledge my life and loyalty to Pendour, and to Neptune.

The familiar words came to her mind unbidden, and she tried to mouth them, even with no air.

I humbly request your aid, so that in turn I can give you mine.

But she had no voice to say them, and she could not feel the way her tiled cove called to her when she was face to face with yellow eyes and white as white teeth. The last of her hope shattered. Her thoughts turned instead to No. Please no. Please, as he raised a hand. His teeth were still the only part of him that she could see clearly- how sharp they were, how cruel.

It was the last thing she saw with two eyes.

She felt the claws ripping through her face. Did she scream? Her body tried to, choke hold or no, until her throat was raw, and she bucked and thrashed, no longer in any position to hold back her reflexes. Still, it was weak and short lived.

Between asphyxiation, pain, and the blood gushing from her ruined eye, she was quickly drifting towards unconsciousness.

There was a small eternity where she was beyond thought. She was in and out of consciousness. There was red and black and pain and that was all.

He let her go. The air came back. She gasped for it even as she quickly fell to her knees, then her elbows, then just the side of her face pressed into the dirt and a quickly forming pool of blood and fluids.

It hurt. It hurt and it hurt and it hurt and she was not dead.

She coughed. She coughed again. She gasped, then sucked in air through her teeth, then clenched her teeth tight as tight until it felt like they might break, because maybe that was the secret, that was what would stop this.

She was breathing and it hurt, so she was alive.

Why?

She was alert enough to turn her head, to glance in his direction as much as she could with one tear-swollen eye. This was some warning, even some sick message, maybe. She did not want this.

Still, this half alive moment was not when Pendour would learn to resist. When he asked for last words, she murmured "Thank you," and then curled up tight as she could in a ball.

She wished on any star or planet that could hear her that he would at least leave.