Note: I know I said that I wasn't going to post anything else before my multichapter, but this little fic just came out of nowhere. I had commented to Kori no Koibito that I loved one of the lines in one of her stories so much that I would steal it for myself if I was a less ethical person, and she asked what I would use it for. I didn't really know, but as I was thinking about it an idea took hold of me and wouldn't let me go until I wrote it down. She graciously told me that I could post this despite my blatant thievery, so here we are. I'll point out the line in question at the end of the fic.

And of course, I have to say a quick thank you to Kori no Koibito, because 1) I stole your fabulous line, 2) you were a good sport about it, 3) you kind of gave me the inspiration for this story, and 4) I never would have written this if you hadn't asked me what I'd do with your line, ha ha.

People said that it was curiosity that had opened Pandora's box.

Gray knew better.

Curiosity wasn't the only temptation, the only way to be fooled into opening the box.

Gray would know.

He had already opened his.

He wanted to blame the demon, to say that it was Deliora that had smashed his box into pieces and released the horrors inside, but deep down, he knew that was a lie. Maybe the demon had dented up his box a little, but Gray had been the one who had opened it.

Deliora had taken everything and left him empty and cold, and in his grief, in his desperate quest to fill the void the demon had left in his life, Gray had opened the box.

Oh, it had filled the void alright. It had filled the void with anger and hate and pain and bitterness and a desperate, stupid desire for revenge. And Gray had slammed the lid of the box back down before the last of the contents could escape, because with all the anger twisting around him and driving him on, what need did he have of something as silly and fragile as hope?

No, he hadn't been ready for the hope.

He had had the anger and the thirst for vengeance and, for a time, that had been enough. But the funny thing about Pandora's box was that opening it didn't only hurt the fool who had been stupid enough to lift the lid.

Gray had been so blinded by his own demons that he hadn't fully realized that they were leading him down a path to destruction. Worst of all, he hadn't realized that they were slowly wrapping themselves around the only people he had left, dragging them down with him.

Because it hadn't only been Gray who was hurt by what he let out of that box. His need for revenge had taken down Deliora, but it had taken Ur out along with it. His anger and hate had jumped ship and begun strangling Lyon as well.

In those last few moments before Ur had turned into ice and was gone, Gray had finally realized what he had done, had realized what opening that box had meant. And he had tried to fix it, he really had, but it had been far too late.

Once the box had been opened and the horrors had escaped, the damage could never truly be undone. Gray couldn't just stuff them back into the box and lock them in. No, they were out to stay. He could never be the person he had been before Deliora had come tearing into his life and goaded him into opening the box. That innocence and wonder and pure, childlike joy was gone for good, and it was never coming back. And although he could try taming some of the anger and pain, they would never completely go away.

Ur had tried to seal his darkness, but the truth was that nothing could seal his demons back in now. But he had thought that perhaps sealing was not such a bad idea, so he had sealed his box, had wrapped it in chains and layered it in ice so thick that he could feel the chill seeping into his soul. He had sealed up that box so tightly that he wasn't sure that he could open it up again.

Maybe it was silly. The demons weren't inside the box anymore—they had already escaped into the world and were tormenting him to this very day. But it had felt satisfying to know that the cause of all this trouble was sealed away.

Only, that had perhaps been just as foolish a decision as opening it in the first place had been, because although the demons had escaped, there was still something left in the box. And he had sealed it up so tightly that he wasn't sure that he could thaw it out and release the hope.

People said that it was a good thing to hold hope in your heart.

Gray knew better.

Your heart could hold all the hope in the world, but that hope would stay fragile and smothered unless you let it out to do its job.

Gray would know.

He had locked up his hope too tightly to let it out.

The truth was that he was perhaps too afraid to open the box again and release the hope. Not so much because he was still afraid of the box, but because he was afraid to hope again. Maybe the hope wasn't doing much good staying locked up in his heart, but Gray didn't think he could bear it if he released it only to watch it get crushed again.

The box offered it some protection against the world. At least if it was in the box, it couldn't be shattered into a million jagged pieces. But that was half a lie too, because the protection the box offered wasn't so much a healthy type of protection. It was as if the hope was a tiny flame and the box was a shelter that protected it from the wind and rain, but also smothered it slowly because there was no oxygen inside.

Gray logically knew that he should open the box and let out that hope. He knew it, but that didn't make it any easier. Sometimes he was too scared to even try. Sometimes he fought tooth and nail, but the seal he had put on the box was just too strong for him to break. And over time, he began fighting less and less. He was giving up, because he was losing hope—oh, the irony!—that he could manage to pry open the box at all.

Somewhere along the way he had lost the key, and he didn't know how to find it again.

Gray was Pandora and his heart was the box.

He had opened it in all the wrong places and then locked it up too tightly to let out what little was left to mend the damage he had done to himself. He had frozen his heart in a desperate bid to stop the pain, and now he couldn't find a way to thaw it out in time to revive what little hope he had left.

At first that hope beat its tiny wings furiously against the box as it tried to fight its way out, but over time its struggles began to weaken.

Slowly it began to wither and fade away.

And slowly,

ever so slowly,

it died.

Note: So, if you couldn't tell, the line I borrowed was "Gray was Pandora and his heart was the box", and I built this whole little fic around it. It's a modification of the line "I was Pandora and my heart was the box", from Kori no Koibito's story "Unrequited" ( s/11704345/1/Unrequited). I think it's a beautiful metaphor.