All You Need is Me

Bianka Kaslana

"So Compassion then?"

"Always."

"It grows strong and fierce in you, like a cancer."

"I hope so."

"It will kill you in the end."

"I wouldn't die of anything else."

"You're going to die."

"...What?"

Durandal unconsciously uttered, the frankly out of nowhere statement catching her off-guard.

She lifted her head and turned to the source of the voice, where she found a girl sitting on top of a long medical bed, back arched forward as she forced her upper torso upright, leaving the lower half covered by the thin blanket. Her arms -wrapped in tight bandages with bruises visible through the thin layer of their gown- extended downwards, their palms planted against the mattress for support as they simply kept their eyes on Durandal.

That girl...was none other than her younger sister.

"Um...What did you say, Sirin?" the woman found herself asking, too surprised by the bold statement to properly process it.

"Tch."

This only earned a scowl on the other girl's face, her narrowed yellow-eyes broke away as she rolled her eyes, before lifting herself just a bit as she leaned to the side, her long silvery hair slithered along the bed with each movement.

"I said...you're going to die," she stated, again.

"Why would you think that?"

"Oh please, anyone with a pair of eyes and a heart can see. It's written all over your face," Sirin scoffed at the question, as if the very nature of it was insulting to her.

Maybe it was, Durandal had a hard time understanding Sirin, even when they were kids.

"You run away with a group of misfits, get into trouble and then along the way, you save someone or something like a hero in a fantasy tale. Who cares if it comes at the cost of your physical or mental well-being, it's just a story! And you know what that gets you? A coffin ten feet under."

"Is that...how you see it?"

"Is there any way else to see it?" The bed-ridden girl immediately retorted, a sentence so overwhelming with genuine hostility that even her older sister was taken aback.

Realizing that, the girl quickly calmed herself down, though a scowl was still clearly present on her face. She sighed, forcefully, gripping the sheets under her just a bit before continuing.

"Sooner than later, you're going to get yourself killed, and for what? To be a hero? Are you going to leave a massive mess for everyone else to clean up after you? Do you even have any idea how big that would even be? Or were you so busy running towards your own death that you never once bothered to stop and think?"

"Sirin..." Durandal uttered, her eyes traced over the other girl's furious expression.

It was odd, how quickly her younger sister was growing hostile to her again. She had thought that after what they had just gone through -the tight wrappings around Sirin's throat gleaming through the thin fabric of her gown being a physical reminder of that- that the girl had grown somewhat amicable towards her. At least, that's how she had shown Durandal just a day or two ago.

But now, it felt like all her progress had been reset, and the girl had gone straight back to treating her like a stranger. Or perhaps...

"...Sirin," she said again, her eyes trained onto the girl. "..What brought this on?"