In Love and Diplomacy

Chapter Four: What Doesn't Kill You

"And they're askin' me if I can see the darkness down below,
And I know it's true, I say I do, when half the time I don't
Maybe I can't make what it may take to leave this thing behind
But I shut my eyes and cross each line"

- Mike Shinoda, "Make It Up As I Go"

Chapter Four

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I'd never been so aware of the progression of time – or the fragility of it. I'd never paid attention to how easy it was to lose track of it. To hear it. To run out of it.

I hadn't realized how short my time had been. How much of it I had to lose. I'd never known how easy it was to alter time's steady course. If someone laid their head on my chest, could they hear the slow tick of the clock inside of me? How it warned my time was running out?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Not even a full second had stood between me and a bullet. Not even an entire moment had stood as the shield between life and death. I'd been saved by a sliver of a whole. A fraction of a moment; the difference between living and...

Tick. Tick. Tick.

What if Sterling hadn't noticed? What if he'd tripped, or bumped into someone? What if his steps had been incrementally slower? Would I have been at the other end of the bullet instead of the marble floor?

Where did I begin to comprehend that? How? How did I come to terms with how close it'd been? How close I still was to the danger I'd only narrowly escaped?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Was that the ringing in my ears from the burst of a gun or the sound of my dwindling time?

We reached the edge of the foyer. Long halls branched off from either side of the entrance, leading to different wings of the house and flanking the stairs. We'd made our way to the west wing as we escaped from that perilous room.

Sterling slammed us against the wall as soon as we turned the corner, pulling me behind him. His body half-covered mine as we sunk to a low crouch. I couldn't breathe as I flattened my spine against the wallpaper. I couldn't think as I clutched Sterling's jacket like he'd desert me. His head never stopped moving and his arm was still flung out to keep me in place. It didn't make a difference. I wasn't going anywhere.

He peeked around the corner. The screams and shouts were becoming muffled and faint as the panicked masses threw themselves out the front doors. The stampede was loud. I couldn't hear it the way I was supposed to.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I made to stand when I saw the exits that'd been hurled open in desperate escape, but Sterling's arm pressed hard against me, forcing me back down.

"No," he mouthed. "Wait."

His eyes didn't wait for my response before they resumed their careful documentation of the room.

If I'd thought he was tightly coiled before, I'd been sorely mistaken. But it wasn't panic, I realized, that rolled off in unending waves from him, or even fear. It was an unfamiliar type of calm. The type of calmness that informed me he wasn't only aware of the direness of our situation, he was prepared for it. He was ready for it. He was familiar with it in a way I wasn't. A way I never wanted to be.

And yet, I couldn't fully decipher the look in his eye. It was a look of calm, yes, but it was also the look of a pent-up foal released to run – and running was what it was made for. The loosening of his reins was the tightening of a noose around my neck.