“FUCKING BITCH! LET ME AT YOU! YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!... YOU’RE DEAD!”

The bride stepped outside into the stale hot morning air, feeling the sun blast into her eyes with such intensity that she thought they were going to burn out. The effect was heightened considerably since she had just been inside the dingy, run-down trailer. Sighing, she stepped down the mildewed, creaking stairs, and grit her teeth as she felt pain jolt through her foot each time it hit the dusty, sandy ground. Unlike most people, who would have collapsed and cried out the moment they had to even digest the fact that they had to walk over a dozen kilometers past mountainous sandy dunes to reach civilization, she sank into the pain gratefully, reveling in anything that would distract her from the hoarse screams and loud jarring crashes that echoed behind her inside the blood splattered trailer as she slowly limped away.

Elle Driver, one of the world’s most dangerous assassins – a woman at that – hit the ground with a soft thud as she felt the adrenaline drain all energy from her wasted, battered body. Her head lolled to the side, her face pressing into the tiny jagged shards of glass that had torn her hands moments before in the fury and hatred that had consumed her mind. It was all a blur now. Not that she could see anything. She felt like laughing, but a pitiful whimper escaped her cracked and bruised lips instead. She had been so set in destroying what life, what pride the Bride had left, and yet, without her eyes she was nothing. Her hands did not even fleetingly touch the one she has so desperately wanted to kill.

She barely had enough energy left to keep breathing, let alone try to get up; so she shifted her position as much as she could, each moment painfully aware of the throbbing, excruciating ache where her remaining eye had been moments before. Reaching up with hands covered in a thin layer of blood so it looked like she was wearing translucent crimson gloves, she gingerly felt her face and dimly registered the wetness – she was obviously bleeding copiously from her various injuries… none that she could really care about… except for the sight that was so unjustly robbed from her. Coward. She didn’t even have the guts to finish it…

Her fingers probed at the fabric of her eye patch, and she ripped it off angrily. She would’ve screamed had she been able to, but her throat was raw and it burned just like the rest of her drained body. She let her arms drop to her sides, trying to breathe deeply and stifle the soft keening that sounded so alien coming out of her own mouth – each time she tried to inhale, or exhale, her ribs seared with a cold fire, but it did not stop her; she was one of the world’s top assassins. Pain was an intimate companion of hers, though she had to admit, she had never felt it this close, or this deeply.

The bitter, dirty taste on her tongue – no doubt from having her head shoved down Budd’s toilet and the lingering sawdust drifting in clouds in the air. She could picture the Tyndall effect of the debris floating weightlessly, calmly, leisurely through the dilapidated trailer. She felt the warmth on her skin, and could picture the jets emitting strongly from the beautiful morning sun she could not see.

She spat in the effort to rid herself of the acrid taste, but coughed instead, feeling like the action was splitting her into two. Finally stopping, she brushed lank, wet hair out of her face, hissing as it dragged over her eyeless sockets, and frowning at the smell. It was disgusting… humiliating…

… Wrong.

She shouldn’t be the one lying here. She was supposed to be the one to walk away with the Hattori Hanzo sword… with victory… with her sight. She was supposed to be the one going back to Bill… not Bea. Never Bea.