Imagination Is Everything

Love Hurts

"So how are things?" Althea asked, sipping her hot java from her favourite Audrey Hepburn coffee mug. "Bad," I answered in a single word, ignoring the peppermint tea she had set out for me, Wilson Pickett's Mustang Sally playing in the background failing to calm my nerves. "How bad?" she quirked, sitting forward to meet everyone's eyes.

"Daffy and Aspen were murdered bad."
The mug that she had started lifting up to her lips stopped short, just inches away from her lips. Her hand then started trembling. "W-What?" she stuttered in a soft voice, sounding small and afraid. "They got rid of Agony and Despair. And now the balances are tipping tremendously," North explained to the tiny sprite who was now on full alert.

"Why...? W-Why would they do that?" "We don't know." "And what did you come to me for?" she asked. "We need your help, Al." "W-Why me?" She cautiously put the mug down. "I'm only going to pull all of you down, Ammo. I'm nothing special. There are loads of capable people out there more qualified for the job. You wanted Pandora's help right? Go ask her instead."

"Al, you are special. You are the bravest of the brave, The Protector of Bravery, Moonie used ta call ya, and probably still does now," I exasperated, my tone growing more determined than ever. "And we need all the help we can get, big or small. And you know that I'm not one ta ask fer help from others."

"We still have absolutely no clue who's behind all these attacks. And you have a very sharp mind, Al. Please tell me you'll help us," Tooth got up from her seat to hover over her with pleading eyes. "We're tryin' ta recruit as many people as possible. Because I know that we just not enough for this."

"How do you know then?" she asked meekly.

"I have my sources," I shrugged.

She remained silent for a moment, pondering over the offer.

"I wouldn't want to be an inconvenience for you."

Everyone looked at her hopefully, pleading with their eyes. We really needed all the help we could get.
"But I would hate it even more to just sit back and do nothing."
I grinned at her, she grinned back.
But her expression turned to a somewhat more serious expression.
"But I'm not the one who's hard to convince. It's Pandora you have to try to convince."
"Aw man. Does she really have to come too?" Jack groaned.
. . .
"C'mon, Pandora. We need all the help we can get," Jack trailed behind her as she briskly walked away. "No, way, Hosea," she relied coolly. "You can handle it yourselves just fine. You are the Guardians after all, no?"

"Andy," I grabbed her arm just as she was about the walk through the doors of her castle. "Look, I can't, alright?" she snapped, spinning around to glare into my eyes, shaking my hand off of her. I narrowed my eyes at her, my hazel eyes glaring into her eyes, her emotions were evident in her separate-coloured eyes. One amber, the other evergreen.

And both of them were filled with worry and anxiety.

"Look, what the hell does Cupid have to do with this?" she shot at me. "It has everything to do with it, Andy. Daffy and Aspen are already dead. We need all the help we can get," I shot back at her.

Her eyes widened at the news, her irises dilating and her lips forming the very first word of her already-prepared comeback. But she couldn't reply to something she didn't know. "That wasn't the way I wanted to break the news to you, but we really have no other choice," I softened my tone.

She stayed silent for a moment. "Why me?" she asked softly, furrowing her eyebrows. "'Cause you're trustworthy, Andy. You've helped a lot of people."

"You've helped me, Andy. And now I need your help again," I stared at her seriously.

She clenched her jaw, which made the beauty mark on the left side of her face, just above her lips, bounce.

"Something's wrong isn't it, Pandora," I said, the worry in her eyes was still there.
She kept silent.
"Pandora," I said in a harder voice.
"Where's Alric?"
. . .
"Andy, what happened to him?" I asked her as she gazes tearfully at her beloved. "I went to visit him. I had some time off, so I wanted to spend some time with him. But...I found him...like this..." she trailed off, tears already starting to prick her eyes. She clutched his pale hand as she sat beside him on one of the many guestroom beds in her castle.

"How long has he been like this?" Jack timidly asked. On a normal basis, they would be glaring at each other or just bickering to a point that could drive us all up a wall. But Andy was in no mood to bicker or fight. All she could think about was her beloved that was dying right in front of her eyes.

I know the feeling all too well.
"A week or so," she sniffed, trying to blink away her tears. But they only proceeded to trickle down her cheeks. "He hasn't woken up. But he keeps cursing in his sleep. I've never heard him so angry in a long time," she whimpered.

All of her defenses had come down on top of each other, crumbling to the ground bit by bit. She was breaking down in front of all of us, something she would never be caught doing. But here she was, bawling her eyes out for the love of her life, just as I had done for Bunnymund during my first few years of immortal life, before The Riot started. Only for her, she might not ever see him again.

She is considered lucky in a way. At least she didn't have to see the living version of a reenactment of a war that had killed millions or possibly billions of her own kind, walking around in perfect condition. At least she didn't have to be reminded of killing her partner since she would never kill Alric, not even with her life on the line.

Pandora, was almost the exact opposite of what most people thought she'd be like; she was tough, hotheaded and a hard one to crack. While Alric, whose specialty is Hatred and Resentment, was calm and collected, and only showed the more affectionate side of him to Andy. They were polar opposites, but they worked well with each other.

"Is there anything we can do to save him?" Andy whimpered at me with pleading eyes. She didn't want to accept the fact that she was never going to see him ever again. Once a spirit starts dying, all of their essence, their specialties, their abilities, their elements, slowly start to fade away. If that essence fades away, so do the belief of people in that particular element. Every memory of ever feeling the way they felt under the influence of the dying element would be forgotten, until Manny finds a suitable replacement. "We both know that there is no cure for death."

Tears streamed down her cheeks as Alric started to fade away, bit by bit in front of our very eyes. "No," Tooth, gasped. "Too many have died," North sadly shook his head. I held Andy as she screamed for it to stop, for him to reform and wake up from his eternal slumber, for her to wake up from this nightmare.

But it wasn't a nightmare.

Cupid and The Prince of Resentment.
Love and hate
Their love was eternal. They would continue to love each other, let it be that death would be the one that makes them part.

It was wishful thinking that our love would someday be as strong as theirs.

Me and Bunnymund.

But it would never be.

I would never let it go that far.

Not after the way I'd pushed him away that day.

I'm a completely asshole, pushing away everything we'd gotten back, savaged from the war and years of oblivion. After we'd remarked each other, too. It stung. It hurt.

"I love you, Pandora," he croaked out, his eyes squinting to look up at her before he completely disintegrated into nothing, leaving the bed unoccupied, except for Andy, who was crying uncontrollably into my shoulder.