Remember Me (Noah x Reader)

Better Than Ever

I was in the practice room, dancing my heart out until the point I felt numb. I wasn't using the grace of Daniel or the impact of West, call it the explosiveness of Eldon mixed with my own burning sorrow. A style of my dancing I'd never touched ground with before. I'd normally use a mix of grace and unpredictability in my routines, but this was the best of all of it.

Before, my emotions in dance felt like it was just a candle flame. Warm and impactful. But in the light of Noah and Luke's betrayal, the candle had fallen over and started a wildfire, making my dancing all the more fierce and heavy-hitting. If someone else had gone through this, their dancing level would've dropped. But no, the anger, the rage and the despair made me better. I wanted to show both of them I was better than this. In our finale against Sweden, I was meant to be James's sister who's also in the dream with him. And there was a section where I taught him the swing ways while he taught me hip hop, which melded the styles together. I was going to dance like there was no tomorrow, and I will show not only Luke and Noah, I'll show the world that no matter how many times they try to bring me down, there's nothing in my way. I did a high Baryshnikov, tumbling onto the floor, circling my head before breathing just as 'Legends Never Die' finished. 

"I heard Riley talking to James." Ella piped up from the doorway. 

"Why are you here, Ella? Aren't you meant to be back in England? In that dustbin of a dance school?" 

"I heard about... that little guy and your ex. I couldn't imagine how you feel." I was shocked at Ella being genuinely nice for once. Flipping my hair over my shoulder, I snatched my water bottle and took an overly-aggressive sip. 

"Since when are you nice?" 

"When one of the people who don't deserve it get something they don't deserve. You didn't do anything. Therefore, it's an injustice to you." 

"Why are you talking to her, Ella?" Ella's snarky teammates had arrived, shooting me envious looks at my toned form. Ha, they could only dream of it. 

"Oh, wait, Marcy, she's the one who's boyfriend dumped her." The darker haired of the two snickered. 

"OMG, you're right." 

"Kate, Marcy, lay off her. Neither of you know what she's feeling right now." Ella retorted defiantly, coming to my aid. 

"Yeah. We don't know how it feels to be a loser." Kate smirked smugly.

"You're saying that to the team that just beat you. And the one who took the soloist title from you." I shot back, stepping forward.

"You only won because you had more prep time. Ella didn't. If you just performed that out of the blue, Ella would've mopped the floor with you." Marcy giggled rudely. 

"Actually, no. Riley didn't have enough prep time. That was Riley's solo. And if you're talking about mopping the floor, if we go into a freestyle battle right now, I think I'd be the winner." 

"As if. You're struggling to keep your life straight. That guy Luke should've left you a long time ago. You're pathetic." Enraged, I walked up to them, my blue eyes staring into their stormy grey and brown. 

"Tell that to the two-time Miss International Soloist." 

Banging both of their shoulders, I was stopped when they turned on some music, suddenly doing a unison dance routine. 

They were smirking as they did so, pushing me out of the room by doing walking pirouettes. Everyone saw that a dance battle was about to happen, so they scrambled for their phones. 

"Bring your best." They both said after doing an extension. Laughing, I walked away as the second-verse-part section started, but then turned and back flipped, doing a fan kick into a series of pirouettes, doing a tumbling Baryshnikov and then front walkover-ing to stand, swinging my foot up and grabbing it, bending sideways like clockwork until I reached 270 degrees, making the crowd gasp and clap. They mimicked, but couldn't reach as far, so tried acro to make up for it. 

Uh, huh, huh
What's wrong with being
What's wrong with being
What's wrong with being confident?

When the next 'What's wrong with being...' came along, I started doing ankle pirouettes again, getting lower every second until I stopped, cleanly sliding into the splits and giving a sweet smile. The crowd cheered and made neck-cutting motions with their hands. Eldon, West and James came to back me up, simultaneously high-fiving and starting a simultaneous routine, but then when the 'tonight' came, I broke off, mouthing the word and jumping backwards, where they had my back and caught me, flipping me over and back to a standing position, where we connected again to do our fire routine against their desperate attempt to win. I made deaf gestures to the crowd so they could cheer louder, the adrenaline fuelling me, so I rejoined James, Eldon and West. 

Uh, huh, yeah. 

So you say I'm complicated. 

I did the flips they did before to show them I could do it better, hitting them with the highest layout they'd ever seen. It was obvious by then that I'd won, so me and the boys dominated the floor. By the time the closing lines were building to the peak of the song, I was doing fouettés in their faces, before leaning down into an aerial, then another, and the fastest illusion into an aerial by the song ended. I gazed into their ashamed expressions with my own defiant one. I pulled a photo of the Miss International Soloist Trophy out from my sweat jacket, which the boys had taken off for me, waving it in their faces. 

"Here's a photo of the trophy." When they lifted their hand to take it, I snatched it out of their reach. "Kiss it goodbye." I walked away from them, spotting Noah in the crowd, looking towards me with a stunned expression. I ignored him, however, swinging the jacket over my shoulders. 

"Hayley, that was unreal." Eldon gushed. 

"The sass in that 'tonight' cracked me up, man." James cackled, high-fiving me. 

"Serves those English-people right. Not all of them are bad, like Chris Hemsworth." West grinned. 

"He's Australian, West." I chuckled, raising my eyebrows.

"What?! His British accent is so believable in Avengers!" 

"We all fall for it." Eldon snickered. 

"Eldon legit thought he was British when he saw the Avengers." James sniggered. 

"NO I DIDN'T!" 

"Did too!"