The stress of saving her classmates and the break down of her relationship with Jemma has pushed Pandora to the breaking point. And the corruption of the box isn't helping anything either. She's then offered a way out by the person she's worried abo...
Pandora and Jemma look into each other's eyes, Pandora with a knife in her side, slowly bleeding. It isn't long before Pandora starts to stumble a bit and Jemma pulls Pandora into her arms to hold her up. As Pandora starts to get weak, her eyes glow black, but this time The Box starts to glow black as well. Pandora's knees go weak and Jemma slowly helps her down to the floor for more stability. Eventually, the black light in Pandora is drawn out of her through the wound the knife has made, going back into The Box.
Jove comes in through the door rather suddenly. He and Strife look at each other.
"Damn it!" declares Strife rather angrily.
Before Jove can do anything, the black mist swirls around him again and he disappears. Waiting a few moments to make sure he's really gone, Jove then rushes over to Jemma and his daughter.
"Is she..." Jove begins to ask.
Pandora smiles at her father, "Hi dad."
He lets out a sigh of relief.
"You're okay." suggests Jove.
"Well... I wouldn't go... that far. I'm pretty sure I have a knife stuck in me." Pandora says getting weaker as she says it.
Jemma turns to Pandora's father, "We need to get her to the hospital."
Jove pulls out his phone, "Right... I'll call the paramedics."
* * *
Ulysses screams as he's cut into again. After a while, the pain goes away and he stops, breathing heavily to catch his breath and prepare for the next attack. But it never comes.
"What... what are we doing?" Paul asks, dropping the knife in his hands as he does.
"I... have no idea." responds Sarah, equally confused about what's going on.
It takes Ulysses a second to respond, "Well, it could be the blood loss talking, but I'm pretty sure you were torturing me.
"Oh my god, what have we done?" Nina then asks again.
Sarah and Nina rush to untie Ulysses frantically as Paul looks down at his hands with blood on them.
"I... I couldn't stop myself." Paul says, trying to come to terms with what's in front of him.
Ulysses coughs as his former captors manage to get him free.
"I know... it's all right." insists Ulysses.
The two formerly possessed ladies put Ulysses's arms over their shoulders, holding him up as they make their way out of the school basement. Paul doesn't follow right away, still looking at his hands.
"What did Pandora do to us?" Paul asks to no one in particular.
* * *
Tom is sitting at his desk, shuffling papers and organizing things somewhat absently. Strife appears in front of him suddenly.
Strife sighs, "I was so close. I planned everything perfectly. Tricking Pandora into giving me The Box and corrupting it. Letting her fall apart just enough to be taken over. I almost had my mother back and the world she always wanted. I had it."
"Except you didn't." points out Tom bluntly, "You failed rather spectacularly. But that's to be expected."
Strife gives him an angry look, "What the hell do you mean by that? I thought we were working together."
Tom doesn't look directly at him, focusing on his work.
"You thought that because I wanted you to. Because that's what an actual strategy looks like." Tom says, remaining calm, "Revenge is not a strategy. It's an impulse. You never really understood the difference."
Strife grumbles at the suggestion, "I almost won."
"The key word in that sentence being 'almost'." Tom offers, adding, "A real strategy wouldn't allow for any type of failure like you've achieved."
It takes Strife a second to answer.
"I'll just have to try again."
"No, you won't." insists Tom in response.
That has Strife angry, "Why not?"
"Because I'm taking over now," explains Tom, "and I can't have you getting in my way."
"In the way?"
Tom looks up at Strife finally, his eyes glowing white. Strife's eyes glow black and he starts to back away, grimacing in pain.
"Yes." declares Tom, the glow in his eyes getting intense.
Strife begins to have black mist surround him before turning into a black coloured spirit. Tom blows at the spirit and it goes off in the direction being blown, out of the school.
* * *
In Pandora's hospital room, Pandora is lying asleep in the bed, with Jemma leaning against it, sleeping herself. On the side table is The Box. The spirit of Strife enters the room without either of its occupants noticing. It makes its way to The Box and The Box glows a black light before the spirit is absorbed. Shortly after, Pandora stirs in her bed, waking Jemma up. Pandora isn't far behind, opening her eyes.
"Hi..." is all Jemma can say.
Pandora tries to smile but fails, "Hi..."
There's a silence between them.
"How are you feeling?" asks Jemma tentatively.
Pandora takes a deep breath before responding.
"Okay I guess." confesses Pandora, adding, "I mean, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel. I've never been stabbed before."
"Right... sorry..." responds Jemma as she looks down, "I've never really stabbed anyone before."
More silence.
"Well, I'm alive... unless that wasn't what you were going for." Pandora says.
Jemma looks up at her, concerned.
"What? No, I... I didn't... I wasn't trying to kill you." insists Jemma.
"I wouldn't blame you if you did. After the way I treated you, I pretty much deserved it." offers Pandora.
"I understand. I did the same to you." Jemma explains, "When I was possessed, I treated you like just another need to fulfill. A feeling I wanted to feel but I didn't care about anyone else's. Not even yours. I used you and your feelings like a toy. That was wrong."
"But what I did to you was so much worse. At least you managed to feel something. I didn't feel anything. I, couldn't feel anything. I spent so much time and energy caring about everyone else that all I really wanted was to stop. Stop caring about how other people were in pain and needed help. But no matter what I tried, I couldn't. Especially when..."
"No one cared about you." Jemma finishes.
Pandora nods at her.
"I kinda figured that one out." Jemma explains, "I think it's why that Strife guy kept us apart the way he did. He wanted you to feel alone. Like no one cared about you. He wanted you to have no one because that's what you wanted most. You wanted people to care about what you did."
"Mostly you." Pandora says.
Jemma looks at her with concern.
"More than anything, the person I wanted to see me was you. I think it's why I never went fully over the edge with it all. I didn't want to let go of the hope that at some point you'd see me for what I am. For what I wanted us to be." continues Pandora.
That has Jemma looking down again, not meeting Pandora's gaze.
"But... maybe I went too far." suggests Pandora.
Their eyes meet again with Jemma concerned.
"No... I mean... if anything, I went too far. I... I stabbed you." Jemma points out.
"How did you even know that stabbing me would work?" asks Pandora.
"I didn't."
Those words kinda hang in the air for awhile.
"You kept talking about how weak you used to be and how strong you were now and so I figured I had to weaken you to save you." explains Jemma, "It was mostly just a shot in the dark."
Pandora chuckles a little at that, "Or a stab in the dark."
Jemma laughs at the joke a little uneasily.
"Yeah... I'm still sorry about that."
"Well, I didn't really give you much of a choice. I had done so much to you that... like I said, I don't blame you. I tried to isolate you the way Strife isolated me. I took away your friends, your family, basically anyone who could've done anything to actually help you find any kind of hope or reason to keep going. I was trying to make you into a mirror image of me. That... was wrong." Pandora makes clear.
They don't say anything for a moment.
"Any word on him? Strife? I haven't had a chance to talk to my dad."
Jemma takes a deep breath, "No idea. He kinda just disappeared as soon as he saw what I did was working."
Pandora doesn't respond right away.
"So he's still out there somewhere. Probably planning some kind of revenge against me for saving you." suggests Jemma.
"I guess so." is Pandora's only real response, "There's no telling what he might do."
"And we barely survived this one." Jemma points out.
"True... but it's different this time." insists Pandora.
Their eyes meet as Jemma looks up at her, uncertain.
"What's different this time?" she asks.
Pandora holds out her hand to Jemma expectantly.
"Because we'll have each other this time."
There's a silence between them before Jemma smiles and takes Pandora's hand with her own. Both of them just look at each other for a while.
"Definitely." confirms Jemma as the hold gets firmer.
"Well that's good..." someone says from behind them.
They turn to see Ulysses in the doorway of the hospital room. He smiles at Pandora.
"U?" Jemma asks, confused.
Ulysses turns his focus Jemma, instantly becoming confused.
"Jem? What are you doing here?" questions Ulysses.
Jemma pulls her hand away from Pandora, taking hold of her bracelet and looks down at it. Pandora notices what Jemma's doing, looking between her and Ulysses, suddenly worried.
"Are you going to tell me who you are?" Pandora asks, clearly not happy.
"I told you we need to talk." he declares.
He brings one of his hands out and in it is what looks like The Box. As soon as it's visible to all of them, it starts to glow with a white light. Shortly after that, Pandora's Box glows a black light. Pandora goes back and forth between her Box and the one in Ulysses hands.
"Who the hell are you?"
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