Fanfare

Willpower

She lies on her back on her bed, staring up at the underside of her shelf.

Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. She turns the rock beneath her shelf off and on, off and on. She blinks and turns her head to the side, her arm lazily flopping over her stomach as she looks down. Pierce lies on the ground alongside her bed, stretched out along the length of her room. Arms crossed behind his head, he opens and closes his eyes with the blinking light. His chest rises and falls with each of his breaths, and his regulation t-shirt has pulled up slightly to show a smooth strip of flat stomach.

The light stop flickering and she swallows. Pierce seems to follow her eyes; a slight smirk curls his lip. He looks condescending, amused. She refuses to allow a blush to show on her cheeks, staring resolutely into his eyes instead. "Shouldn't I be trying this on other people's magic? You know, magic that's actually part of the person?"

His eyes flicker closed, agonisingly slow. "Alright," he says. "Try it on me."

"What?" Her voice is slightly panicked.

His lips curl. "Stop me from moving. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't kill me."

"That's confidence inspiring," she mumbles, sitting up and crossing her legs, back to the wall. She concentrates on him, lying on the floor. Which isn't hard to do; these days, Pierce has had no trouble occupying her thoughts. It's easier with his eyes closed, though, to look at him. With his eyes open, he's quite unsettling.

She takes deep breaths and lets him fill her thoughts. She imagines his magic as the watch around his wrist, the watch from the table filled with testing objects in the training room. She imagines it spinning, spinning, spinning.

You're not trying hard enough, a voice says in her head. She feels a body beside her, warm and towering. He has to duck his head low beneath the shelf from his position. Concentrate, he snaps, inside her head. Her breath shudders in and out of her body. She sees the watch in her mind, the hands moving quickly. She narrows her eyes, and they slow slightly. Better, but not good enough. He appears, with a slight delay, leaning back against the door. She forces the watch slower, slower. The hands tick, second by second, fighting against her. They push and they push but she pushes back and, finally, they stop. She holds them where they are and looks up; Pierce is in the same position as he was, by the door. But he leans forwards slightly, hands on his knees. He raises his eyes to her, and a slow grin transforms his face. "Good," he pants.

"Good?" Trenna asks, smiling and raising an eyebrow, incredulous that he's actually saying something vaguely positive and encouraging.

"Again," he says, straightening.

And it becomes a fight of wills. Pierce tries to move the hands, to make them tick. And, sometimes, he succeeds in pushing them forwards a second or two. But then Trenna forces them to stop. They're both so stubborn that this goes on for a while; she doesn't know how long. But it ends in both of them collapsed in their respective positions; Trenna on the bed and Pierce on the floor, the only sound in the room their hearts racing in their ears and their bodies pulling in panting breaths.

I thought I asked you not to kill me. Pierce's voice is slightly amused in her mind.

She rolls onto her side on the bed, looking down at him. "You're alive enough to talk, aren't you?"

This isn't technically talking.

"It's communicating," she says. "And that means you're alive." She moves her arm from beneath her so she can roll back over, but is too close to the edge. The sheets slip beneath her and she falls off the bed. She closes her eyes and waits for her face to hit the ground. The feeling of her nose being smashed against the concrete doesn't come; instead, she lands on top of something warm and solid. She opens her eyes slowly, horrified to find herself splayed across Pierce's chest.

He lifts his head and looks at her, his face blank. And then his mouth quirks. And he starts to laugh. The sound spreads through her like warm honey, bringing a smile to her face, melting her body. She laughs, too, and rolls off him, so she's lying on the ground beside him, his arm beneath her, his hand on her hip. Their laughter fills the room until it peters away and then there is just soft breathing.

"You shouldn't do that," she says, finally.

"What?"

"Laugh. It makes me think I like you." Pierce levers himself up on one arm and looks down at her.

"Is that a bad thing?" he asks.

"Yes. Because I only just finished convincing myself that I hate you."

"Hate?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "That's a pretty strong word."

"You were dead for three years," she points out.

"Hypothetically."

"It wasn't hypothetical to us," she tells him, avoiding his gaze.

"It wouldn't have been any better if I stayed," he murmurs.

"That's your opinion," she says quietly.

Pierce is silent. She wishes he'd move away from her, leave. She just wants to be by herself. She's always preferred solitude.

But he doesn't leave. He stays, looking down at her. "Can I fix it?" he asks.

She looks up at him. His breath is warm across her face and neck, stirring her hair. He carefully pulls his arm from beneath her body and uses it to hold himself up, his free hand brushing a lock of hair from her face. She can't respond to his question. She can't move, can't breathe. Her heart skips a beat in her chest. He searches her face for answers, but finds none.

Then, apparently noticing what he's doing, Pierce pulls away.

Trenna reaches up and curls her fingers around the back of his neck, stopping him. He freezes, his whole body tense as she pushes herself up on her elbow. She pauses, her forehead pressed against his, thinking. She searches her mind; what is she doing? She hates Pierce. Has hated him for the past three years. Yet he's centimetres away and she can't admit that she's drawn to him.

She shakes her head to clear it, moves her hand from his neck to his chest, determined to push him away and stop whatever it is that she started.

It's his heartbeat that decides her. Because she can't feel it in his chest. It's as if it's stopped beating altogether before it kicks in strong, pumping furiously against her palm. "How can we be a part of something that ruined out fathers?" she whispers.

His breath catches as she utters the question she's been holding back for so long. He leans back, taking her hand and pulling her with him, so that they're both sitting up, facing each other. He stares down at her fingers as if they're the most interesting things in the world, tracing the lines on her palm with his thumb. "It was a different world for us then, Trenna." His pale eyes are shadowed by his long lashes, and she turns off her magic so she can see the shadows they make on his skin. "The rebels didn't kill them. The Outsiders did." 

"What?" She is still as a statue, yet as wavering as a flower stem in the breeze. So when he glances up at her from beneath his lashes for a sliver of a second, his hand on hers is the only thing holding her up. She's sure that, would he push her, she'd crumple in on herself, disappear just as well as he does, only she'd be gone for good. There would be nothing left of her but a pile of clothes and the memory of darkness.

"They were inducted into the market." She opens her mouth. Closes it. Unable to process what he has told her. "Another part of my magic," he says softly, not looking at her now, "is that I can share memories."

"How?" she asks. Her mouth is dry. She licks her lips, and his eyes catch the movement.

"However you want," he whispers. And then she falls in on herself; her mind, her body, her heart, everything about her burning with a searing cold. She ceases to exist. She is nothing but the memory.