She ran as fast as she could, tripping over chocolate and graham crackers buried in the ground. Her small feet were bare and quickly becoming scratched and bloodied by hidden rocks buried in the dirt.

Suddenly, she burst through the curtain of leaves and grass and dirt and hit the ground on the other side of the forest.

She fell on her knees, supporting her weight with both hands and crying into the soil.

Somewhere in the forest, her brother was dead.

~~~

"You going to have another pint, Ritter?"

She shook her head. Alcohol was her weakness, and she'd indulged far too much in it already. Pushing away the remnants of her drink, she swiveled on her barstool and looked at the soggy remnants of people who had nothing better to do at 4 PM on a Tuesday but sit in a seedy bar.

Why had she agreed to meet him here? Here, where even the air had a taste- rank and sour, like alcohol poured over a sweaty body. Which wasn't surprising, considering the amount of sweaty bodies drowning in alcohol. Disgusting. She had a weak stomach, and this wasn't helping. Surely assassins had better taste than this.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste, looking for him. Apparently he was thin and tall and resembled a beanstalk, but everyone here was short and squat. Rather like pumpkins and squashes. She grinned inwardly at the comparison, then let her frown show on her face as the bartender spoke again.

"C'mon, Ritter. It's on the house." He tried to slip one hand under her chin, but she slapped him away and stood.

"I know what you're trying to pull," she said, displaying the knife in her left hand. "I'm sixteen. Got it? Too young for you."

He put his hands in the air, a gesture of apparent surrender. "Don't know what you're talking about, ma'am."

She glared at him for one more instant, dissolving his carefree attitude, then turned away. If that stupid thin assassin wasn't showing at this bar, that was fine. She'd go walk the streets. His loss of money, after-

She bumped into something tall and thin and looked up.

"Hello, pretty lady," the barrier said, running a hand through its mess of brown hair.

"Pervert," she muttered, stepping around him.

"Assassin," he corrected, and she started.

"You're the guy?" she asked sceptically. Even with the good-sized dagger swinging at his side, the man was... Ordinary. On the small side, if you didn't look at his height. He looked agile, sure, but what did agile mean when you were facing off against someone with magic?

"Jonathan Blakely Stewart Spears," he said, dipping her a short bow.

"Jack," she said.

"Jonathan Blakely Stewart Spears," he corrected again. She put her knife to his throat and frowned.

"I'm not trying to wrap my mouth around that when I'm killing a witch, got it? It's Jack or you lose the gold."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Fine..."

She flipped one blonde braid over her shoulder and extended her hand. "Gretel."

"Fine, Gretel," he said, shaking her hand.

And thus, the deal was made. One dead witch for one hundred gold pieces.

~~~

Gretel spun her spoon through her cup of tea, lazily stirring it. A group of boys across the street was trying to ring a bell without a rope, climbing on each other's shoulders to reach it.
The shopowner left her store, wiping her hands on her apron, and the boys began to scatter until she yelled out, "Throw a stone at it, see if that works."

They returned and began tossing pebbles. The first one to hit laughed loudly at the tinny clanging that echoed through it, drowned in the noise of the busy street. The shopkeeper winked and returned to washing vegetables in her shop.

"So..." Jack began, calling Gretel's attention back to him. "You're telling me that this witch is in a forest."

"Yes."

"You don't know where in the forest."

"Yes."

"And she could murder us both."

"Yes."

"Cool," Jack remarked, tipping back his glass. "When do we start?"

They sat together outside a cafe, a hidden one out in a secluded part of town. Jack's presence tended to attract smallish crowds of women, which required them to find a table  hidden by leaves and behind a potted plant. Jack had complained at this, but Gretel insisted on privacy. After all, one never knows who might overhear you and tell a witch about your plans. One never knows.

"We start as soon as you teach me to fight witches." Gretel bit into an apple, inviting the sharp taste gratefully. Ever since the cottage, she'd hated sweets.

"Great." Jack mussed his hair and pointed to hers. "First off, those braids are both not styling and impractical. They're going to get in your way, reduce visibility, introduce all kinds of problems we don't-"

Gretel chopped off her hair at the chin in one swipe of her knife. The yellow strands unfurled from their tight weave and floated around each other in light wisps.

"What's next?" she asked to Jack's open mouth.

"I always thought women were attached to their hair," Jack blinked.

"Well, it grows out of our heads," Gretel said sharply. "What's next?"

"Uh...right, the clothing. You need some kind of shoes that don't have heels."

"I'm not wearing heels," Gretel rebutted, lifting one leg into his lap. "These are called combat boots for a reason, right?"

"Right," Jack said, somewhat lost for words. "Hey, where'd a little girl like you find th-"

Once again, he had her knife to his throat.

"Don't you ever call me little," she said through gritted teeth. "I was a little girl when my brother was murdered. I was a little girl when I swore I'd get him revenge. Today, I'm doing that. Today, I am a woman."

Jack swallowed. This one was going to be... interesting.

~~~

"You look pale," Jack remarked.

"I'm always pale," Gretel said, clutching her blade and gazing at the entrance to the forest without really seeing it.

"You look nervous," Jack remarked.

Gretel cursed and lurched off behind a tree. Jack rolled his eyes at the sound of retching.

"How old are you again?" Gretel asked, walking out of the forest and wiping her hand against her mouth.

"Twenty-two," Jack answered, rocking back and forth on his heels.

"Too old for a good luck kiss," Gretel said seriously, dropping her hands from the mess of her bangs.

"Maybe not too old," Jack said, leaning in, but Gretel pushed him back.

"Too old." And with that, she headed into the forest.

~~~

"This is it?" Jack asked greedily, surveying the graham-cracker cottage. "This is more candy than I've ever seen in my life!"

"Hey, twenty-two-year-old," Gretel said, frowning. "We're here to pound witch butt, not eat."

"Right, right," Jack said, still gaping. He followed her into the house, chipping off a corner of the doorway on the way in.

Gretel's hand shook slightly. Ten years later, entering this same cottage...

The same chocolate dining set. The same half-wall of sugar. The same rock candy flowers on the table, filling the room with artificial scent. Gretel swayed slightly on the spot.

"So where is this witch?" Jack asked. Gretel shot him a glare and entered further, holding a finger to her lips. They paused at the entrance to the kitchen, Gretel's boot stuck in a crack in the white chocolate marble floor. Jack gaped.

The witch wasn't excessively ugly or old. She held an aura of agelessness, as though something in the chocolate she was devouring messily kept her skin free of wrinkles and her hair silky and a deep blue-black. She turned slowly on the spot, revealing a mouth coated with chocolate and a deep burgundy. Gretel's eyes focused on the contents of the witch's plate and saw an arm, fingers curled in death, pink-painted nails still vibrant on the two fingers that remained.

The witch laughed loudly as Gretel slapped a hand to her mouth and fell to the ground in a sea of nausea. Jack glanced at her for a moment, then charged the witch, who merely laughed and blocked him with a round shield of purple magic. It pulsated slightly and pushed Jack into the wall, crushing him slowly. He cried out in pain, eyes watering, as he tried to push his knife into the shield to no avail.

"Gretel!" he yelled.

Gretel didn't move from her crouched position on the floor, vomiting noisily. She breathed deeply once, then choked and fell to the ground again.

"I can't- I can't help you, Jack," she groaned, falling onto her elbows. The cottage swam before her, colors mixing with the muzzy sounds of the witch's laughter. The shield began to nudge her slightly.

"I guess that's what I get for partnering with a little girl, right, Gretel? Right?" Jack yelled desperately, gasping.

"W-wrong..." Gretel pushed herself to her feet. "I'm not... a little girl anymore," she said, voice rising. "I am... a woman."

"All the more for me to eat," the witch said, shrugging her cloaked shoulders and spinning the colors of the shield. Gretel waited as the same hypnotizing indigo swirl passed her once... twice... three times.

Then she charged, screaming with the power of blood and revenge and a little girl's tears. Her force hit the shield and stuck instead of bouncing off, and she began to attack furiously, cutting gaping holes in the shield that closed in on themselves as fast as the witch could allow. But Gretel wasn't focused on puncturing the shield- yet.

"Get up!" she yelled to Jack.

"I'm being crushed, in case you hadn't noticed!" he screamed back.

"Not anymore, you're not!" she cried, and it was true- in the witch's efforts to heal the shield, it had shrunk, unable to expand any longer with the efforts of keeping itself alive. Jack flung himself at it, ripping it apart with his force, but their progress was slow, cut down by the witch's magic, though she was sweating with the effort now.

Suddenly, Jack stopped fighting. The witch laughed, certain she had defeated them, but Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a small packet of seeds, tossing them all onto the shield, and she screamed as the sprouts began to grow, devouring the purple globe of energy from the outside in until only a few green fuzzy things were left on the floor around her. The witch tore up the stairs, and Gretel chased after her with Jack at her heels.

"You'll never win!" the witch shrieked, flinging a glass jar at Gretel. It grew and trapped her like a butterfly, and she beat at the glass with bloody, tear-coated fists.

Jack tried to crack the glass desperately with his blade, but it cracked along one side at his efforts, and he stopped to dodge the tiny sprites of power the witch was creating. They surrounded him, tearing at his clothing, flying into his eyes, and nibbling at the edges of his face. He screamed in pain, swatting at them, and Gretel continued to pound at the glass.

"Gretel!" he shouted.

She shook her head, trying to think. To break an unbreakable sphere, you had to give up what made you strongest, but what made her strong? Her spirit? Jack calling her a little girl? She pounded the glass furiously in a vain effort to aid her thoughts.

No, that wasn't it.

After all, she'd come here not because of her spirit. Not because of anyone's taunts.

She came here for the one who made her strongest, and she had already given him up.

"Hansel!" she screamed, charging the glass, and it shattered into pieces, flying at the sprites and Jack and the witch and everything else in the cottage, causing the floor to dip several inches, graham cracker chunks cracking.

The witch tore a shard of glass out of her arm and flung it at Gretel, but Gretel ducked, letting it hit the wall behind her and stick. Then she ran at the witch, dodging sprites and pieces of a broken shield and glass shards still bouncing around the walls and lord knows what else to sink her blade into the witch's torso, just below her ribcage. The witch cried out, then groaned in an attempt to heal herself. Blood began seeping out of the wound, a deep burgundy laced with bright purple swirls. Gretel screamed and thrust the blade in again, puncturing the witch's lung until blood came out of her mouth and she choked on her own spells, sprites exploding in midair around Jack.

Jack dropped his blade, suddenly far too heavy for him to hold. Gretel slumped to the floor in front of him.

"Good job," he murmured, not entirely sure why she'd needed him to begin with. Oh, right, the shield. He'd helped with that. Right. Yes.

He managed to make his way towards her slowly, sitting cross-legged at her side.

"So, Gretel... I know you don't... eat sweet things, but... care to try?" He broke off a piece of chocolate from a chair lying on its side, fallen from the turbulence of battle. Gretel eyed it suspiciously, then dipped it in the witch's blood and ate it slowly. Suddenly, she coughed and practically fell into Jack's lap.

"Wow, that's... disgusting," she said foully, wiping at her mouth. Her eyes shone purple through their light blue, then returned to normal.

Jack looked curiously at her, then the body of the witch, slumped against the wall and still leaking blood. He broke off another chunk of chocolate and pressed it between a marshmallow from the ground and some graham cracker pieces, dipping it all into the blood pooling at his feet and staining his clothing. He ate it and had the same choking reaction as Gretel, then felt strangely powerful. He blinked at her dazedly.

"Your eyes look purple," she remarked, as though commenting on the weather. "Oh, never mind, they're brown again."

Jack raised an eyebrow at her curiously. "I wonder if I could..." He flexed his fingers slowly and managed to coat them in some kind of purple material. "God, that looks disgusting."

"I agree," Gretel said, blowing a purple bubble boredly.

"A witch and a warlock, huh?" Jack said, leaning against Gretel's back. "Sounds like the perfect pair."

"Get any ideas and I kill you," Gretel said, leaning back against him.

Jack shut up.