His hand closes over her fist, pushes her backwards, his body brutal as it slams against her own, slams her into the wall. He twines the arm that meant to punish around his neck, yanks her legs up. She vises them around his hips. His mouth is hot and harsh on hers, her eyes are closed, her body open, and she thinks, all she has to do is tighten her arm around his throat.
The world around them is slow and sweet like molasses as she comes gasping his name: "Sark . . . Sark . . . Sark . . ."
Her life is ruled by time.
The seconds left to complete a mission before security systems go back online; the seconds left before her father's bug killer runs out; the seconds (hours, weeks, years) before SD-1 finds her out, or else she brings them down.
Back in school—middle school, high school—she used to watch the clock. Everyone does, of course, but she was always faster, smarter, more diligent—she was always done first. And the time would tick by slowly, slowly, slowly.
When his eyes met hers for the first time—time stopped. No—it only felt that way.
Adrenaline, her training told her. But it was something else.
It felt the way it felt her first mission, her first fight (the real kind, her life at stake, no pulled punches or training mats), when her breath, her opponent's, their movements, everything had been in sync. Like magic. It was exhilarating, hard, she'd been stretched to her limit.
The feeling hadn't lasted. After awhile, it'd been easy again, the world a half-step slower. Until him.
Sometimes she and Danny would go on walks at night, his fingers laced through hers, the world dark and quiet around them.
"Sydney, slow down," he'd always have to urge, amused, charmed, laughing at her haste.
The sex is good. The touch of skin on her skin, after—that's better. But best is how she never goes too fast for him. Fighting or fucking, he matches her. Strike for strike. Stroke for stroke.
That's why she's let this happen, she realizes. Their fights go on forever, stuck in their shared velocity, an even draw.
This way, they both win.
He strokes her hair; her head lays on his chest. The movements of his fingers are even, measured. Clinical. She imagines he'd like nothing more than to put her under a microscope. But he never once asks her why she is here.
Einstein's theory of relativity is this: The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion relative to one another.
What this means is that the laws of physics do not apply to them. Not, at least, as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
She remembers being a child, stumbling to keep up with her parents, her stubby child's legs ineffectual alongside their long-legged adult gait. The difference between her world and theirs was more than just space (their eyes so much higher, their world so much wider)—it was speed.
She feels sometimes now the way she imagines her parents must have felt when she was little. They kept secrets. Now, so can she.