The motel room smelled like stale cigarettes and regret.
Reina sat cross-legged on the stained mattress, her back against the headboard, a half-disassembled pistol spread across a bloody towel on her lap. The window unit rattled, pushing humid air through the room without cooling it. Outside, the neon sign flickered, VACANCY in pink, then nothing, then pink again.
"Augh."
Her hair was shorter then, barely brushing her shoulders, dyed a shade of orange that was trying too hard to be intentional. The bandages on her forearms were fresh, hiding bruises that were three days old. The knife under her pillow was older.
"Damn it, I hate it here."
She'd killed someone two weeks ago. A man who sold information to the wrong people. She'd waited outside his apartment for six hours, then followed him into an alley, then put a bullet through the base of his skull. She'd vomited afterward. Then she'd gone home and slept for fourteen hours.
"I still feel like shit even after sleeping so goddamn long, I'm too goddamn lazy to even move my legs."
Now she was in a motel, waiting for a contact who hadn't shown up, cleaning a gun she didn't want to use again.
"At the very least, I'm getting the bare minimum for a human being, even if I do have to go into debt."
The light changed.
Not the neon outside. Something else. The room's shadows shifted, stretched, deepened, as if the sun had suddenly decided to set in a different direction. The air grew heavy, thick with a pressure that pressed against her eardrums.
Reina's hands stilled on the pistol.
She didn't look up immediately. Instead, she finished sliding the barrel into place, clicked the safety on, and set the weapon on the towel beside her. Then she raised her eyes.
"Excuse me??"
The woman stood in the corner of the room.
"Helloo??"
She hadn't been there a moment ago. The door was still locked, the window still closed, the walls still solid. But there she was, leaning against the peeling wallpaper with her arms crossed, her head tilted, her eyes the color of dying embers.
She was beautiful. Tall, pale, her hair a cascade of silver-white that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Her clothes were simple, black dress, black boots, no jewelry, but they hung on her like they'd been tailored for a statue.
"Reina Albert," she said.
Her voice was soft. Almost gentle. The kind of voice you'd use to wake a sleeping child.
Reina didn't move. Didn't flinch. Her heart rate didn't even spike.
"Kind of crazy that you know my name, have I really gotten that famous?"
The woman's lips curved. Not a smile. Something smaller.
"I have many names. Your kind calls me Jaune. The Goddess of Pride and the Pale Horse." She uncrossed her arms, let them fall to her sides. "I'm here to take your life."
The fluorescent light above the bathroom buzzed.
Reina looked at her for a long moment. Then she picked up the pistol, checked the magazine, and set it back down.
"Uh huh, so you're a Primordial."
"Yes."
"Hmm."
Reina stroked her chin.
"Are you sure you want to take my life? I think I'm too young for such a thing."
Jaune's head tilted further. "Oh?"
"Anyways, let's say hypothetically that if you really are a Primordial Witch and you did want me dead, I'd be dead already. You wouldn't announce yourself. You wouldn't give me time to prepare. You'd just do it." Reina leaned back against the headboard, her posture deliberately casual. "So either you're lying, or you want something else."
Reina immediately pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The bullet went straight through her head, blood dripped from the wound yet she didn't seem to bat an eye to the life threatening injury, only wiping the crimson off her forehead with the back of her hand.
The hole seemed to regenerate, to stitch itself back together.
The silence stretched.
The woman didn't move. Didn't speak. Her amber eyes, those dying embers, fixed on Reina's face with an intensity that should have been unnerving.
Reina stared back.
Her face was a mask, smooth and unreadable, like something carved from marble.
Her eyes,
There was something there. Something that flickered when Reina spoke. Something that might have been surprise.
"I've been watching you," Jaune said finally. "For weeks. Death seems to linger around you like a sweet aroma."
"Whatever you say, Miss Grim Reaper."
"You don't seem scared of me."
"Really?" Reina rolled her eyes. "Would you have preferred if I rolled around on the ground screaming HELP HELP ME, THE GODDAMN GRIM REAPER IS AFTER MY ASS!"
"That's how the others would usually react."
"I honestly don't see the point in rushing, when there's nothing at stake."
"Your life is at stake."
"I still don't see why I should rush, it doesn't help."
"Do you really care?" The woman asked.
"Care about what?"
"Your life."
"I'm a weapon, it's safe to say that my life barely matters, I have no family." Reina's jaw tightened. "No friends, or anyone who would mourn me."
Jaune pushed off from the wall. She moved like water, flowing rather than walking, her bare feet silent on the stained carpet. She stopped at the foot of the bed, close enough that Reina could smell her, ozone and old stone and something sweet, like nectar left too long in the sun.
"I want to offer you a choice," she said. "Most people don't get one. They die when I come for them, and that's the end. But you, " She reached out, her fingers brushing the edge of the towel, the disassembled pistol. "You interest me."
"I might be kind of crazy but doing a deal with the grim reaper is one of the things that isn't a-okay, I've seen enough tv shows to know that's a bad idea, you're gonna trick me somehow. So I'm not interested in the slightest."
"You should be." Jaune's voice dropped, became almost intimate. "I can give you power, Reina. Real power. Not the scraps you've been fighting for. Not the crumbs they throw to their attack dogs. I can make you strong enough to never be afraid again."
Reina looked at her.
She chuckled. It was sharp and bitter and entirely without humor. It echoed off the cheap walls, bounced back at them both.
"Power? What do you think I am?"
"I think everyone wants power."
"That's bullshit." Reina picked up the pistol, held it loosely in her lap. "I want to sleep through the night. I want to stop seeing his face every time I close my eyes. I want, " She stopped. Swallowed. "I want to be left alone."
Jaune's expression didn't change, but something in the room shifted. The pressure behind Reina's eyes eased. The shadows stopped stretching.
"That's all?"
"That's all. Not everyone has some extravagant dream like wanting to become famous or save the world, some of us are just trying to live."
The goddess was silent for a long moment. Then she moved.
Not toward Reina. Toward the window. She stood with her back to the room, her silver hair catching the flickering neon light, her reflection a ghost in the dirty glass.
"You killed a man two weeks ago," she said. "His name was Kenji Tanaka. He was forty-three. He had a wife and two daughters. He sold government secrets to rogue witches because his youngest daughter had a rare blood disease and he couldn't afford the treatment."
Reina raised an eyebrow.
"I know."
"Do you know what happened to his daughters after you killed him?"
The room was very quiet.
"They were taken by the government. Questioned. Held for three days. Their mother is still trying to get them back." Jaune turned, her amber eyes gleaming. "You didn't just kill a man, Reina. You destroyed a family."
"I know," Reina said again. Her voice was steady. "I know what I did. But it's not my fault, I'm supposed to be a weapon, not the murderer. I didn't know that he had children before I killed him, there's no reason to know now since he's dead."
"And yet you don't want power? You don't want to change things?"
Organisms reproduce and die, for one to survive, another must die, isn't that the system you designed? It's no different from what I'm doing, I don't care about the itty bitty tidbits." She stopped. Took a breath. "Anyways getting power just makes you a bigger target. The stronger you are, the more they'll throw at you, numbers will eventually overwhelm someone no matter their strength, I'll just get used."
Jaune studied her.
"You're different," she said finally. "I've been doing this for millennia, or maybe you're just eccentric."
"You're not afraid of me."
Reina met her eyes. "Maybe because you're used to guiding cavemen, we have real problems in our times, like taxes, getting enough money to even breathe, getting enough money to buy food. Should I be afraid of you?"
"Yes."
"Then I guess I'm just eccentric."
Jaune laughed.
It was surprised and genuine and almost warm, and it transformed her face, made her look almost human.
"You really are," she said.
She crossed to the bed, sat down on the edge of it, close enough that Reina could feel the cold radiating from her skin. Her amber eyes were thoughtful now, considering, like she was examining a puzzle she hadn't expected to find.
"I'm going to kill you eventually," she said. "That's what I do. That's what I am. But not tonight."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I wanted to see if you were worth it. If you'd beg, or bargain, or try to run." She shook her head slowly. "You didn't do any of those things."
"I don't see my life as something worth begging for."