You don't fully recognize that you're screaming until you've punched someone in the nose.

They recoil, hand loosening from your wrist as it falls free of touch. They have a hand below their nose as blood drips onto their hand. The way they look at you terrifies you. Angers you.

How dare they look at me that way! They attacked me!

You reach to your side for Falchion, slamming your hand into the bed out of desperation. Where is it, where is it?

"Gods damn, where is it?!"

You can't find it, so you look at them again with all the hate and terror you can muster. Run, you dastard. Run. You all but beg them to fear you. But they don't. They don't move. They don't attack you. They don't confront you. They stare at you with red eyes, confused, regretful, pitying.

Pitying.

You've rarely felt so patronized.

You lunge at them and fall on your face about two feet away from the bed.

As you hit the ground, you're fully awake. You're here.

And as it turns out you did not scrape the splinters from the floor.

Embarrassed and hurt in many ways, you lean up on both hands, looking at the cause of your agony. Panne.

"What?!"

She's standing near the box where you left Falchion, sporting more emotion than you imagined she even knew. She's astonished, regretful, curious, concerned, and above all, confused. That may be the part that gets you riled up the most. Confused? How dare she! She knew what she was doing! She knew better!

You stare at her with as much anger and betrayal as you feel until you can see and think better, and notice the same woman you left to sleep curled up in a ball last night, lips teasing at a smile. You hate that she saw who you are, what's left of you. That you could have hurt her. You're deeply, deeply ashamed.

"Why?" you plead. You barely notice you're crying, but you feel disgusting already.

She still doesn't know what to do in response to your shame. You hear her set something on the box atop Falchion that you cannot see. As she walks out of the room, she grazes your hair with her hand, fur cold from the blood.

"I could smell it," is all she says.

With that, she walks out of the room, but you haven't even begun to broach all of the things you want to shout at her, scream into her large and sensitive ears so she'll be terrified to ever violate you again as she did here, to trigger your panic, to blind your senses, to leave you so ugly disgusting, inelegant…

You wake up a few hours later and don't know what to stay.

You pull yourself up and face Falchion, still leaving it be. You're curious as to what's atop it. You're surprisingly lucid and emotionless considering where you were in your last waking moments. Your head is aching and you're shaking when you stand, but you're standing with only rudimentary thought in your head.

To be honest, you kind of prefer it.

You reach over Falchion and touch the bracelet from last night- now realizing that your wrist is bare. There's something comforting about it, because it's homemade, and because it's personal. You can't even remember when you got it, because you're repulsed by thinking of the past that far. Oftimes you forget it altogether, through harsh effort. You don't know why you have it, but there's just something nurturing about the way it fits your wrist so perfectly.

You hold it for a long time before you retire back to bed. Gods know you don't want to leave it for days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime.

You wake up at night and realize that you're going to have to face her. You pull the covers over your head. Gods, you want to sleep, sleep for ages and wake up back in a world that doesn't matter, but you're not the least bit tired. You're wide awake, with a burden that feels too heavy to lift, but too damaging to release.

You look at the bracelet on your arm, fur encompassing your wrist. The object of comfort and controversy. You stare at it, but you can't imagine why Panne felt the need to remove it from you. Is it because she sees no boundaries and doesn't follow niceties, or was it that urgent for her to do?

Why don't you know?

The reason seems obvious. Blindingly obvious. It's under the surface of your mind but you can't piece it together. You feel foolish, like a defining memory has escaped your mind- and you've blocked it from re-entering.

You groan, arm outstretched on the bed, captured by humanity. You can vaguely hear her breathe, but she's not asleep. She's awake, and she could be waiting for you.

Whatever it is, you best leave the bracelet on your bed.

She doesn't immediately look at you when you reach the main room. The fire in the small metal furnace is still going strong even as you've burnt the day away. She's still on the floor, crosslegged, watching the flames, a log slice next to her. She hasn't let the fire go out, and she isn't about to start now.

You don't know what to say, and feel wracked with guilt that you didn't make supper, and it's far too late now. You sit on the chair and face the fire yourself.

Neither of you talk for awhile. It's about ten minutes of trying to figure out how on Earth to explain yourself until she apologizes.

She doesn't look at you when she utters it. She sounds like she's trying to be toneless, but her voice is shaking, and you want to reach out and hold her hand, apologize profusely, and try to explain to her what you can't to yourself, because even if you don't know, she deserves to.

You know you shouldn't ask her why she apologized, because that much you think you know. But you still ask.

She looks up at the ceiling. "I feel it is obvious," she says defensively. "I startled you from your sleep. Apparently I was not as stealthy as I hoped."

You clasp your hands to your face, huffing into your palms. You can just let it go. You should just let it go. You've spent so long letting things go out and keeping them out, but as much as you hope you rest in a land far away from your troubles, you feel you're simply barricading them.

"Lady Panne," you breathe. "You and I both know that I wasn't simply startled awake."

She sighs, because she wishes she didn't know. Panne is easy to read. "I apologized," she insists. "Of my own volition, at that. Do you need to drag me through it?" That's what you expected- a defensive line of attack meant to guilt people from leaving wounds too close. Unfortunately, as remorseful as you are at pushing it upon her, she happened to take shelter with the most stubborn woman the world over.

"I did not intend to lecture you," you reply as politely as you can, but your bucking up indicates that it's getting less polite. "But as dense as I am, I know that you aren't telling the whole truth."

"Would you like to revisit that event?" she challenges you, boiling your blood as hot as the furnace. "It certainly seemed more painful for you than I. Is there something I am missing?"

You're losing your patience. "Hardly anything you've missed," you say, "but I've not either. And I know you're hardly telling the truth."

She looks at you, pained and low on temper.

"You pity me, don't you?"

"Absolutely not."

Her reply is immediate and she grips the log in front of her as though she's angry enough to break it in half. You're clearly stunned speechless, gawking at her as you lock gazes. She holds yours, incredulous and hurt, but as she sees you it drops into regret and sorrow.

You're babbling as fast as ever, near tears. "My apologies, Lady Panne. I am so, so sorry."

Finally her eyes close.

"You've made your point clear. Now leave me."

Even though this is your house, you comply, retreating back to your room. As you lay down, you bitterly remember that you set out to explain and apologize, and you did nothing but accuse her and fail to accept her apology.

You hear her breathing in the other room. It's labored, and she can't get it to settle. You want to go out there and apologize, to hug her and settle her breathing, to keep her from being as stressed and tumultuous as you. Her breathing barely settles before you fall asleep and stop hearing it entirely.