- Shards of Agony -
Lightning streaked across the roiling black clouds that covered the sky completely with their thick masses. Sharp, earsplitting thunder cracked out a moment after it passed, leaving rolling waves of rumbling bass in its wake. Rain lashed down in heavy sheets that fell so hard it sounded like a waterfall, while the wind screamed like a banshee wailing out its lament in the dark night. The storm was growing—and not just the one in the sky.
Angry voices shouted inside the warm, dry, two-story house that sat in the center of a large green yard surrounded by a white picket fence. The soft, cozy light coming from its windows pushed the darkness back from it and belied the storm brewing within as the storm raged without.
Louder shouts came from within the inviting house, sitting all alone on the street, isolated from the rest of the development around it by hundreds of yards in any direction and standing as if a sentinel in front of the thick forest behind it. They were almost screams now, and the sounds of crashing glass and breaking furniture interspaced them like sharp punctuation.
Lightning flashed again, this time brilliant green, and from the storm inside the house. A second later, its warm lights went dead, and darkness reigned within as well as without, while only silence competed with the sounds of lashing rain and windy howl. A minute later, lightning flared again, bright white across the sky, and in the rumbling of thunder green flared from the house's windows again and again, answering its sharper sister in the sky, while a lance of emerald fire burst through the once solid roof, rising high into the night in a spray of splintering wood and shingles.
Lines of emerald light slashed and danced like wildly erratic fireflies behind the once happy home's cold windows, moving frantically from room to room, before another lance of lightning flared, ripping through the back wall in a fiery blast before traveling further along to level dozens of trees in its path. Well lit by flaming wreckage and burning forest, the sliding patio window exploded outwards in a spray of shattering glass, sharp shards tearing at the two figures propelling through it, clenched together and struggling for dominance as they fell heavily to the ground and rolled far out into the backyard.
Breaking apart, the figures rolled away from one another and to their bare feet, taking up crouched, martial stances of readiness. All of their clothes were shredded and torn, mud and blood mixing brown and pink with the original colors as the driving rain saturated them almost instantly. Both were female, and both were beautiful in their own way. One was tall and pale, with long dark hair, and her hands blazed with a corona of pulsing green energy that hissed and crackled as the heavy rain fell on it. The other was nearly of a height with the first, more slender of frame and with dark red hair. She lacked energy surrounding any part of her, but her sharp green eyes blazed with an intensity equal to that which faced her. The rain washed away the evidence of tears streaming down both their faces equally.
With a screaming shout, the pale woman charged forwards, her blazing hands weaving in an intricate pattern as she struck out at the other woman, slashing through the rain with a furious pace. The second woman weathered the storm of blows as she weathered the storm of rain, turning them aside with a smooth, flowing grace. Once she fell into rhythm with her attacker the redhead launched her own furious counterassault, her rigid hands striking back and forcing the other woman to defend as well as attack.
Lightning slashed through the sky as the women's rigid, open hands slashed towards one another. Sensing an opening, the smaller woman lashed out with a clenched fist, striking the taller solidly in the jaw, but paid a heavy price as the other woman simultaneously buried a hard foot in her stomach, the thrusting leg launching her back several feet. Fortunately the redhead had caught the blow coming an instant before it had landed and tightened her strong abs to take the brunt of the blow.
Glaring at her attacker, the smaller woman screamed out; "I can't believe you're doing this Shego! I can't believe you're saying this! After all the pain you've caused me and my family, after losing my father because of you! How could you?"
Spitting out a gob of blood, the taller woman closed the distance between her and the smaller woman accusing her, once more going on the attack while shouting back; "Fuck you Possible! I didn't make you Gay and I didn't goddamn well do one god damn thing to make you lose your father! At least you still have a father instead of a fucking headstone, and a family that cares about you, you fucking hypocritical bitch!"
Both women began hammering blows from hand and foot towards one another, the lashing storm driving around them in fury equal to the crushing strikes they each barely turned aside time and time again. Even then a blow slipped through here and there, but neither woman gave the other the satisfaction of any reaction besides an occasional grunt over the damage adding up.
"How many nights over the years did I hold you while you cried and sobbed; 'oh Shego, why won't he just accept me for who I am?' while all the while you were slowly whittling away at me piece by piece? Now there's barely anything left inside of me of who I was; all I am now is what I pretend to be for you! I'm just a pale shadow all because you couldn't do the same fucking thing for me that you wanted him to do for you!"
"I just wanted you to do what's right Shego! You have so much power, so much skill; you can't just waste it the way you do!"
"No Possible, that's what you think is right! That's who you are! Not! Me!"
The redhead broke through the taller woman's guard and lashed out with a backfist across her face, following up with a thrust kick to her jaw that snapped her head back and sent her staggering. By the time the taller woman recovered, the redhead had landed nearly a dozen more blows to her arms and body, breaking a collarbone, several ribs, and the outside left forearm.
"Don't tell me what's right! Like you ever really supported me either with all your snide little remarks about being a hero! The way you'd sneer behind my back or look at me it was plain how you thought!"
"Yeah but that's all it was; the way I thought! I never tried to make you stop! Never tried to talk you out of it! I didn't hound you about taking the reward money you always passed up or how you could take some of the more lucrative jobs you never did! I kept my fucking mouth shut because I knew that was just the way you were! And I was right there by your side each and every time you went out, no matter how fucking stupid or inane I thought the job was! Because you were there!"
"Don't you fucking get it? I don't give a fuck about anyone else in this world but me and you! But you, you had to fucking rebuild me in your image; a good little soldier to follow you along as we saved the world for right and truth and justice and all the crap I don't give a fuck about!"
The brunette slipped her hands in between the redhead's defense and green lightning flashed once more, a concussive blast sending the smaller woman flying back nearly a hundred feet. She spun in the air cat-quick though, and landed crouched on hands & feet—but hitting so hard on the wet grass sent her limbs shooting out from under her, and she crashed into the sodden earth heavily.
A second blast of green lightning ripped through the dark night, and the smaller woman barely rolled aside as the ground where she had been sprawled erupted in a fountain of exploding dirt and stone. The flying debris stung her exposed skin and a rock slashed across her cheek, opening a deep cut there.
"I'm losing myself because of you Possible! I can't sleep, I can't breathe, I can't even think because I barely know who I am anymore!" the voice shouted out from the darkness, over the storm. "And I will not go quietly into the night anymore! Sex isn't enough! Love isn't enough! Even you aren't enough if it means I have to stop being me! The price is too high Possible! It's too high, and I won't pay it—I won't!"
"And if that means I have to lose you… then that's just the price I'll have to pay instead."
The lashing rains of the storm slowed and then, almost abruptly, came to a stop, leaving quiet in their wake. Heat lightning flashed across the clouds in a silent blue-white display, and the snap and crackle of charred, hissing wood from the drenched fires was the only sound besides the wind in the night. The chill breeze blew across the redhead as she lay on the grass, shivering and alone, covered in dirt and blood and the tattered remnants of her clothes, leaving her with only one thing remaining.
Pain.
