The Guide to the Protector (A HetaOni, 2ptalia and Female Reader Fanfiction)

|ChApTeR FoRtY oNe| Love-Hate

"Love me or hate me, both are in my favor. If you love me, I'll always be in your heart. If you hate me, I'll always be in your mind."

-William Shakespeare 

"People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each others' murder."

-Werner Herzog

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|Reader's POV|

Blood. It's one of the few ways two opposing adjectives are able to coexist within one another: beauty and horror. The variety of pretty shades blood can produce in a single organism is absolute exquisite. There's the dark, almost ebony maroon or even the bright red color that most are familiar with. On the other hand, when fresh blood sprouts up from a wound, most people would be terrified, depending especially on the area where the injury was inflicted as well as the size of the damage.

Since my head spun like I had been repetitively punched in the face, all I could think about blood. About its lush redness, its stickiness...

...Hold up, am I...laying in blood?

I shot up immediately upon realizing this, slapping a hand to my mouth. I took shaky, staggering steps back. The fluid's remnants seemed to be gripping at my skin, crawling, ghostly hands that were on their way to entering the afterlife.

Whose blood was this anyway? And most of all...

What was causing massacre?

I jumped at the sudden, harsh sound of a book that had been launched powerfully at the ground.

"I don't want this anymore!"

...Me? It was me?!

As the me in the memory threw her blade, it was almost like my heart got impaled along with one of the book's corners.

Everything else came as a blur. I was fixated on a select few phrases that stuck to me, which were, 'I don't want to kill anymore...no other way to use my so-called talents...revolting, sickening monster...'

"So either get my name out of that stupid contract or..."

My nails dug into my cheeks as I desperately tried to keep myself from crying out. What I wanted to say, I had no idea. But what did come out, even as a delicate, trembling whisper?

I suppose it was my memory self that triggered the sentence to appear in my mind. "I" held the sword so tightly that "my" knuckles went white, and when "I" raised my head stared in intense, sickening horror when I saw the insane look in "my" eyes.

"Or...I'll just kill you myself."

Every word came to my mouth as easily as the ABCs and that got me pretty scared. While "I" screamed my heart out, the words that left my lips were whispered in a hushed tone. 

"If you refuse to give me another option, I'll make my own.

I'll kill you. Fight fire with fire, as they say."

I looked at "myself", frowning deeply. From afar, "I" seemed like an invincible goddess, knees bent in a steady fighting stance. However, the blood, the darkness in "my" eyes...it was anything but cool. Judging from the blood soaked sword, I had been the one to kill all those people. Then that...that must mean...