"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."
"I know." Jaune stood, smoothed her dress, became the statue again. "But you don't want to die either, that's why I'm going to give you a head start."
Reina's eyes narrowed. "A head start on what?"
"On becoming what you're meant to be." The goddess moved toward the door, her footsteps silent, her presence already fading. "I'll come for you again, Reina Albert. When you're older. When you've grown into yourself. When you have something worth losing."
"That's impossible."
Jaune paused.
Reina stood. The pistol was in her hand, but her finger wasn't on the trigger. Her face was calm, her breathing steady, but something in her eyes had changed.
"You said you've been watching me. For weeks."
"Yes."
"Well that's weird, stalker behavior. Anyways, is this supposed to be a game? I'm rather good at them."
The goddess raised an eyebrow. "You think you can beat me?"
"Maybe." Reina's grip on the pistol tightened. "I think you're old as shit, and senile."
The room was very still.
Jaune stared at her. Reina stared back.
And then, slowly, the goddess smiled. Not the small, practiced expression from before. Something real. Something almost admiring.
"Maybe you will," she said. "Maybe you will."
She stepped through the door.
It didn't open. She just walked through it, like it wasn't there, like it had never been there, and then she was gone.
The shadows snapped back into place. The pressure behind Reina's eyes vanished. The neon sign outside resumed its normal flickering, and the window unit coughed back to life, pushing humid air through the room.
Reina stood there for a long moment, pistol in hand, heart finally beginning to race.
Then she sat down on the bed, laid the weapon on the towel beside her, and put her head in her hands.
Three months passed.
Reina didn't forget about Jaune. Couldn't forget. But she made herself forget.
Ignorance is bliss.
Life is meaningless and absurd.
There is no point in despairing, only running away from it.
Ignorance is bliss.
She took jobs that scared her, killed people who deserved it, and tried very hard not to think about what she was becoming.
The second time Jaune came.
It was winter. She was in a warehouse outside, waiting for a mark who never showed, when the lights flickered and the shadows stretched and the temperature dropped twenty degrees in a single breath.
Jaune stood in the center of the room, her silver hair glowing in the dim light, her amber eyes fixed on Reina's face.
"You're still alive," she said.
"Would you prefer if I had died?"
"I'm impressed." The goddess moved closer, her bare feet silent on the concrete floor. "Most people don't last three months."
"I told you that I'm eccentric."
Jaune stopped a few feet away, close enough to touch.
She raised her hand.
Reina didn't flinch. Didn't move. She stood with her arms at her sides, her face calm, her breathing steady, and watched as Jaune's fingers closed around her throat.
The goddess's skin was cold. So cold it burned. Reina felt the frost spreading across her neck, down her collarbone, into her chest. Her heart stuttered, restarted, stuttered again.
"I've come to take your life," Jaune said. "The payment for your sins."
"For being a tool? How unfair."
Reina's hand came up.
Not fast. Not slow. Just there, her fingers closing around Jaune's wrist, her thumb pressing against the goddess's pulse point. There was no mana in the touch. No spell. Just pressure, just anatomy, just the knowledge that even gods had nerves.
Jaune's eyes widened.
"You're mortal," Reina said. "Even if you can regenerate. You bleed. You feel pain. You can die if I completely destroy you."
"You think, "
"I know." Reina's grip tightened. "I couldn't really research about you, most of the information about you is rather vague or just completely made up, so I do what I would do best, you're standing in a room full of explosives."
Jaune's head turned slightly. Her amber eyes swept the warehouse, taking in the crates stacked against the walls, the wires running along the floor, the timer counting down on the far wall.
"Sixty seconds," Reina said. "Enough time for you to kill me and escape. But not enough time to do it cleanly. Not enough time to avoid the blast."
"You'd blow yourself up to stop me?"
"I think your vessel's life is worth more than mine."
Jaune looked at her.
The timer clicked down. Fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight.
"What point is that?"
Reina smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile. It was sharp and cold and entirely without fear.
"That I'm not afraid to die. And you are. You're going to spend a long long time finding a new host."
The silence stretched.
The timer clicked down. Forty seconds. Thirty-nine.
Jaune's hand loosened on Reina's throat.
"You're crazy," she murmured.
She stepped back.
The frost on Reina's neck melted. Her heart steadied. The shadows snapped back into place, and the lights flickered once, twice, then held.
"Aughh."
Jaune stood in the center of the warehouse, her arms crossed, her head tilted, her amber eyes gleaming with something that might have been respect.
"And if I'd called your bluff?"
"Then we'd both be dead." Reina shrugged. "But you didn't."
"No." Jaune's lips curved. "I didn't."
She turned, walked toward the far wall, and stepped through it like it wasn't there. The concrete rippled, parted, closed behind her.
Reina stood alone in the warehouse, her heart finally beginning to race, her hands finally beginning to shake.
Then she walked to the far wall, stopped the timer with three seconds left, and began dismantling the explosives.
The third time Jaune came, Reina was twenty-three.
She was in her apartment, a small place above a laundromat, with thin walls and a leaky faucet and a view of the alley where she'd killed her first mark. She was sitting on the floor, her back against the couch, a bottle of beer in her hand and a knife in her boot.
The lights didn't flicker.
The shadows didn't stretch.
The temperature didn't drop.
Jaune was just there, suddenly, sitting on the couch behind her, her silver hair loose around her shoulders, her amber eyes fixed on the back of Reina's head.
"You knew I was coming," she said.
"I knew you'd come eventually."
"You didn't set a trap."
"No." Reina took a sip of her beer. "I didn't."
"Why not?"
"I didn't think you'd come again."
The word hung in the air. Heavy. Honest.
Jaune was silent for a long moment.
"Is this a trick?"
"Maybe." Reina set the bottle down, leaned her head back against the couch, stared at the water stain on the ceiling. "But who knows?"
"You wish to die."
"No." Reina's voice was soft. "I never said something like that."
The goddess rose from the couch, moved around it, stood in front of Reina. Her bare feet were inches from Reina's boots. Her shadow fell across Reina's face.
"You could come with me," she said. "I could give you what you want. Power. Purpose. A reason to keep fighting."
"I don't want power."
"Then what do you want?"
Reina looked up at her.
"Don't ask me, I dunno either. Well if I had to choose then I want to be a parent, I want kids, maybe one or two."
The goddess's face was unreadable, but her eyes, those amber eyes that had watched civilizations rise and fall, were soft. Almost gentle.
Then she knelt, bringing herself level with Reina's face. Her hand came up, her fingers brushing Reina's cheek, cold against warm.
She leaned forward.
Pressed her lips to Reina's forehead.
The touch was cold, colder than ice, colder than death, but it didn't hurt. It felt like falling asleep. Like the moment before unconsciousness, when the world goes soft and distant and nothing matters anymore.
When Reina opened her eyes.
"What was that for?"
"Death by my hands were mercy for you. But if you choose to live on, then you'll die in the worst way possible."
Reina sat there for a long time, her hand pressed to her forehead, feeling the cold linger.
"Really?"
"You'll die from the hands that you love the most."
"Well I think you're wrong."