Fanfare

Taunts

The click of a gun. The press of cold metal against her forehead. She has barely opened her mouth, has been caught in the middle of drawing a breath, as these sensations overwhelm her. She freezes.

Narrowed, icy eyes sight down the barrel of the gun, snaring her to stillness. Her fingers, her muscles burn with the need to move, with the pressure of staying still. She smells the eternal char of the fire, the metal of the rifle, the crumbling decay of the building they stand on. A strand of her hair falls from her bun. She blinks. The eyes widen. "Trenna?"

The gun falls. As soon as it does, she takes a step back. Pierce lowers the gun to his side, the strap slung across his body holding it against him, his hand clicking the safety on and angling it at the ground, just in case. They eye each other warily, as if not sure what exactly should happen now. Pierce is the first to speak. "What are you doing here?" he asks. His expression is guarded, but his eyes are still a little wide as he stares at her. His voice has deepened, she notices. It's a little rough around the edges, as if it's a piece of wood that can be sanded down. But it's still him.

She takes a step closer and punches him in the face. 

She steps back as his head cracks to the side, loud in the relative quiet, shaking out her fingers, but they don't seem too sore; she knows how to punch. She watches him closely. He seems frozen, his head to the side where her hit took it. Body tense, fingers gripping his gun, he turns slowly to face her, features dark. "What the hell was that for?"

"Well what'd you expect? A hug?" She can feel her voice getting louder and controls it, lowers it. "You were 'dead' for three years, Pierce. What do you want me to do?"

She crosses her arms over her chest. His eyes are hard as he stares at her. The place she hit him is red. She can see the indents her knuckles left, slightly paler than the flush from her punch. He looks her over once, up and down, a quick and cursory glance, his gaze lingering on her pouch before flickering away as he turns. "Pretend you never saw me," he says. And then he turns and slips off the roof.

A little bewildered, she stands still for a moment before starting after him, outraged. He has no right to tell her to pretend. She has pretended for too long. Pretended that all this is worth it; taking care of her mother, waking up in the middle of the night because of nightmares, waking up to screaming that is sometimes not her own.

She jumps down, following him off the second small storefront. "What's that meant to mean? I can't just erase the fact that you're very much not dead from my mind."

"You can try," he says curtly.

"If I wanted to," she concedes.

"You should."

"But I don't."

He sighs quietly and says no more for a moment, striding down the street. Then he stops. "What do you want, Trenna?" Her name sounds odd on his tongue, as if she is a taste he would rather not have encountered. That's fine with her. She doesn't care if he never says her name again, so long as he tells her what she wants to know.

"I want to know why you did it." She doesn't need to explain what she means. He knows what she means.

"I can't tell you that."

"Can't or don't want to?"

"Can't," he snaps, spinning on his heel to face her.

"Give me a reason," she says, her hands curling into fists as she watches him, an adamant expression of outright stubbornness on her face, in the set of her body.

He thinks about this for a moment. She waits; a few minutes after years of waiting she can handle. "You're not one of us," he says, finally.

"A rebel?" She sneers as she says it, so the word sounds childish and stupid on her tongue. He doesn't respond. "Don't you get it, Pierce? We're all the same in this place. You are one of us, whether you like it or not. You always will be, as long as you're inside these walls. And we both know there's no way out." She never really believed it, she realises, until it came from her own mouth. She will grow old here, and she will die here, never leaving the flaming walls behind. It sets a sort of finality inside of her, like a weight on her heart. She realises that it was always there, she just never realised, never felt the weight of it. Now it feels as if she is beneath water and drowning, and she is too heavy to swim back to the surface, and she can do nothing but accept her fate, this condemnation that has been with her since birth.

Pierce looks at her, and she shifts uncomfortably. He blinks, cutting off his stare. "Come with me," he says. And then he turns and strides with a long gait down the street.

She starts after him. "Where?" He doesn't answer. She kicks at his foot as she walks and repeats the question. He glares down at her through narrowed, pale eyes that make her feel very small. She narrows her eyes back and stands tall to counter the feeling. He looks away.

"You never could do what was asked of you without talking, questioning everything," he says, staring resolutely ahead.

"Not submissive enough for you, Pierce? Isn't that the idea of a rebellion? Not being submissive?" She's pushing him. But that is what she means to do.

"We're not rebelling," he says shortly.

"Then what are you doing? Holding secret tea parties?"

His fingers stiffen on the gun across his chest. "You'll find out soon enough," he tells her.

She realises where he's taking her. What will they do to her? she wonders. They're rebels, outside the law. Obviously, she'd be walking into a bad situation. She very much doubts that the rebels will be hospitable. She stops. Pierce continues on with a brief glance over his shoulder. He raises an eyebrow. "Scared?" he asks. He looks back ahead and keeps walking. She pauses for a moment before following after him, her feet silent on the old, cracked road.