A cabin in the woods

Hecate ground her teeth to the sound of his laughter. Stop laughing! she screamed in thoughts, Shut the fuck up!. Her face was flushed; whether it was from the suggestion or from the fact she was growing furious was something she no longer paid much attention to.

She plucked him off the wall and threw him to the ground without warning using her own weight. She didn't give him the chance to retaliate, pinning him down with her legs on either side of his body and pummeling him to the face with punches and beating him down with her hands linked together. She muted out his musings whenever he spoke or laughed.

Her barrage soon ended and she grabbed him by the collar, pulling him close, "See here, 3817, I am under a lot of stress. And all of that is all. because. of you."

"Don't think" was a phrase all too foreign for Hecate. Thinking to her was second to breathing--there was never a moment she had to stop and think of her next moves and now someone dared to tell her to stop? So she ignored it. She ignored his words and slammed him down the ground in full force. Twice. "Don't give me that bullshit," she spoke quietly. "You. I'm not like you. I will not be like you."

Her gaze toward him remained sharp as it had been. "I'm not letting go of anything, Eden. I will do as I should and nothing you say can change that. You have no influence on me and you never will." If only she knew what she had gotten herself into, maybe she wouldn't have to eat those words.

Hecate realized her words only after she'd spoken them aloud, realizing the implications of having the idea even cross her mind. Had she been in denial about how she really thought about Eden? No, no. Of course not. It was her business to think about him — No. To think of a strategy to seize him. She glanced at the board that was left on it's own after her outburst — the days of putting it all together after their first encounter. When had that grown to size?

Hecate stilled at his touch, unmoving to the gesture for a moment before she swatted it away. "You're insane if you think that I'd ever imagined you and I in anything apart from being enemies," she said, though her voice was less forceful than before. "I am your reaper, and nothing more," she repeated the words, but somehow, it rung hollow to her ears.

He laughed a lot didn't he, Hecate noted. He's mocking me, she added. That was all that it was. He was laughing at how distraught she'd become since she started chasing after him. And why shouldn't he? She was designed for a job like this — search and detain was supposed to be her mastery as a peacekeeper and yet it took her longer than she had originally calculated. She had lost her touch.

At the mention of her board, she turned her gaze back to it, following the lines of the strings that crossed around it to notebook pages she'd pinned — one look on each one reminded her of their contents. The color seemed to rise back into her face as she recalled some pages that she'd pinned up, for the sake of collecting her findings in place. He'd seen all of it.

"I told you to keep your fantasies to yourself!" she insisted, backhanding him across his jaw. "You admitted that yourself and I just had the displeasure of knowing it and having it burned into my memories, you freak!"

For the third time, Hecate grabbed him by the collar, tugging him so close their that their breaths mixed as she spoke. "You don't know anything about me," she kept on in a whisper, as if saying it any louder would allow anyone to disprove it. It was bad enough she was already doubting it herself.

He was manipulating her thoughts, she told herself. Of course she needed to put everything she had on him there! Regardless if it was going to be of any obvious use. Every detail was key to something and she refused to believe otherwise.

Hecate gripped the fabric of his shirt tighter, her knuckles turned white, "I'm not giving in to anything; not you, not anything. I will make everything bow to my will and not any other way around."