Fury

War and Peace

War narrowed his eyes on Eva as she walked away from Baku. Her head high, her shoulders back and her step steady. I need him, they had been her final words spoken to him on her last visit.

She needed that pitiful human and yet here she was running back to him because - god forbid, she should sacrifice the human's fragile bones to starve the fire.

Folding his arms, he moved to block the entrance to the pit as she stopped in front of him.

"You and the dream weaver looked cosy." Towering over her short frame, he raised his eyebrow.

"That's really none of your business now, is it?" She muttered.

"Really? I seem to remember it being my business when you needed me to chase him from your dreams." And it'd be his business again, he and Baku were going to have a nice long chat later.

"Much has changed since then." Giving him a pointed stare, Eva mimicked his pose. The implication clear, she wasn't the only one who had changed.

"Indeed it has." Stepping back, he turned.

"Come on then, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can go about your business." He threw over his shoulder, catching her small flinch.

"We're going to the pit?"

"Yup."

"I thought we'd go to the woods like last time?"

"Nope." Not there, not anymore.

She fell silent as she followed him, he could feel her eyes burning into his back as they descended the stairs between the stalls.

Like a roman theatre, the seats were raised in levels and spanned out in a semi-circle, the stage - a small disk in the centre, sat sunken into the ground like a pit.

Below his men paused, each one asking the same question Eva was probably wondering. Why was she here?

Dismissing his men as he entered the ring, he watched Eva as she unbuttoned her coat, placing it over the raised guard used to keep the blood spatter from covering the audience.

She barely had time to find her feet and settle on the sands, before he rushed her. Bringing his knee into her gut and taking her legs from under her.

She hit the ground fast, heaving on dry air. 

"What the hell?" She sputtered between breaths. Turning on her side, she spat the blood from her mouth having bit her lip on the way down.

"Aww, don't tell me you've forgotten what a real fight looks like? How much do you hold back when you take him on? Does he know when you lay on your back for him, your faking it?"

She snarled, her fists clenching into the sand. "I don't fake anything, he isn't as weak as you think."

"No? Then why are you here? Why come to me?" He spat, pulling her up by her hair, he threw her back down. The barb had backfired, Had she really given herself to that human? Those words, those god awful words, I need him rang like a bell, over and over again.