And we're back again with another instalment of Hannah's misadventures. I'm sure things are going to be totally fine moving forward. Right? Anyway, big thanks to BrambleStar14 for his special feature-more to come later?-and for beta reading for me along with Minaethiel. Another thank you to the new reviews/follows/favourites and for taking the time to check out this story. Let's see what Hannah and the guys get up to next!
Fault Lines
Written by TunelessLyric, ft. BrambleStar14
"I bet it gets lonely in heaven
Sometimes the devil's all you got
I bet it gets lonely in heaven
I bet that God is lost too"
-The Glorious Sons, 'Sometimes on a Sunday'
The next morning dawned bright. Light filtered down through the pines, shining on the remnants of the aggressive, brief rain the night before until the entire forest glittered. It was, Hannah couldn't help but think as she opened her eyes to the sparkling trees all around, beautiful.
And she felt good for the first time in over a month.
The other Phoenixes were beginning to stir, Phil in particular looking a little groggy. Hannah didn't pay that too much mind. Every single one of them had their tough nights from time to time. It was only unusual that she had slept soundly for once.
Breakfast had to wait until Aaron coaxed the fire back to life so they could boil water for their instant oatmeal. But it was the best-tasting goddamn instant oatmeal out of a vacuum package she remembered eating.
The team had camp packed away in record time, Shaw looking eager to get going, and Harper in no mood to hold the other man back. Geist headed off as usual, checking out the path ahead. Harper led the main group. Lucas and Shaw joked back and forth as usual. Hannah closed the file, fully expecting to be left to her own thoughts back there.
Instead, Phil dropped back to stroll along beside her. She didn't speak, simply nodded in acknowledgement as they fell into approximate step. They had been walking for ten minutes, winding between bushes and trees, before his head turned to watch her.
"Something I can help you with?" she finally asked, aware this was a conversation they were going to have eventually.
"Just wanted to see how you were doing after everything last night," he said lightly, eyes turning forward again.
She shrugged. "I feel fine." Really, her body didn't feel so heavy this morning.
They walked for another minute or so before Phil spoke again. "I'm sorry about what happened to Orange. Truly. They all sounded like they were good people."
"Yeah. They were. I'm going to miss them every day I have left." Her chin tipped up to look at the clear blue sky. "At least they're resting easy now."
He nodded. "You're looking pretty chipper this morning. Sleep well?"
"Better than you." Which was clearly an understatement. "You didn't wake me for my watch."
"Just one of those nights." There was a wry smile in his tone.
She got the feeling he wasn't talking about insomnia. "If I did something…?"
Phil looked down the slope to where Harper was helping Shaw across a creek. She didn't miss the hand reaching over the gap, or the steadying pat on the shoulder as the soldier made the easy jump. A blonde brow rose, hidden from everyone.
"I'm missing something," she said, watching the two men walk so closely that the backs of their hands brushed.
In response, Phil made an affirmative sound. "We didn't say anything before since they were pretty private about it."
Hannah heard the past tense loud and clear. As clear as the sight of the two men together. But it didn't make any sense after what she had seen last night. "I'm still confused. Why come unglued like that if he's happy and… satisfied?"
The idea of him and Harper. It tasted like the sludge they had dragged her out of. Like needles in her mouth. As if she had been upset to see him so cold to her all along.
"Jason's a little conflicted about some things," said Phil, drawing the words out thoughtfully. Diplomatically. "Honestly, more so after last night."
"He made his choices. He should learn to live with them." The words rang hollow, even to her. She didn't know what Shaw even was to her anymore. Teammate, that was easy. But personally? He had Harper. What did he need her for? "He chose Harper. Don't know what he expected might happen with me. And frankly, after the icy few weeks where he's avoided me as much as possible, I don't know why he thought I'd want to hold hands and sing songs around the campfire with him."
Hannah waited for a response. They reached the bottom of the hill and jumped over the creek. Started up the next gentle rise.
Then Phil said, "Jason didn't have an easy time joining the team. Some days I think he might still struggle with being here and how it happened. His Marine squad was captured by us. Harper took him on as his own special experiment."
She winced, only capable of imagining what lurked between the lines. Harper was the thing that went bump in the night to most of the UNSC. The Covvies were the first, frontline threat. But there would always be Harper, skulking through the darkness. "Pretty successful experiment, I see," she said at last.
"Seeing you might have shaken that up." Phil shrugged.
"I already told you. You would have done me a favour if you had put a bullet in my head instead. Walked by and left me where I belonged."
He stepped into her path and faced her. She had to crane her neck to match sightlines with his visor.
"You're one of us now, whether you wanted to be or not. Your actions affect all of us." There was no hint of any of his usual humour as he towered over her.
"Used to effectively lead a team of ODSTs, I get the picture," she answered, words clipped. "I told you last night, I owe all of you my life. That's something I'm going to repay. To each of you. And then your lives will go on like I was never here. I don't know where I'll go, but it'll be the far end of the galaxy from you guys if there're some Covvies for me to fight there."
He looked down at her for a long moment. Seemingly satisfied, the team second nodded once and moved aside to let her keep walking.
They trailed into the base at some distance from the others, but Lucas waved Hannah over as she entered the armoury.
"So that side project you brought to me?" he said, eyes bright with excitement. "Got you a location. Just waiting for the Boss to give us the green light from above."
She clapped him on the back. "Appreciate it, man." Her smile didn't touch her eyes.
Irons. They were going to drop by his current post and have a talk with him. Probably very soon. The very thought made her reach for the dormant clouds for support. A phantom breeze licked over her skin in instant reply.
Moving off, she left the Lucas to Shaw's teasing. Everything had changed between her and Shaw. She felt it, a jagged edge where there had once been a gravitational pull. No. That pull had been gone when she walked into the break room that first day out of the infirmary. There had been a blackened piece of charcoal, but now the end was snapped off. Buried under a foot of snow somewhere. There was a black glass headstone over it.
MIA.
Heading into the shower room down the hall, she heard his laughter at something Aaron said. Too loud. Forced. Fake.
Hannah turned the water on, cranking the heat all the way up. In her mind's eye, she was seeing Harper ruffling his hair. Holding out his hand as Shaw jumped the creek. The rage in Shaw's eyes as he growled at her over the fire.
It sent sparks of flame skittering through her blood. Frost chased each one, trying to hunt and smother them all.
She stepped into the steaming spray, fog already coating the floor and rising steadily. The scalding water turned her skin an angry red. Ice thrashed through her, meeting the high heat and making her shiver. Hands scrubbed through her short hair, making sure she was soaked through with the burning. Her breath came in short pants as her heart hammered against her climbing internal temperature.
Blind, she reached for the dial to cut the flow. Too much. It had cost her too much to cut him out of her. She wanted the ice to melt. To relinquish the body of the man she had thought she could…
No. A shake of her head as she grabbed for her towel. That road was closed. Had been since she had walked out of Errera those long months ago.
She gasped with the heat that refused to disperse. It roiled beneath her skin, heavy and hot. Too much for her. But at least she couldn't feel the ice anymore. Didn't want to feel it. Not being able to breathe was a fair trade as far as she was concerned.
Hands shoved deep into the pockets of her fatigues, Hannah went for a long, meandering walk through the base. Anything to get away from the team for a few hours. To let them handle the aftershocks however they could. To get away from Shaw and whatever she had done to him. Whatever he had forced her to do.
Steering clear of the barracks and gym and mess hall only left so much ground to cover. She didn't know what she might do if she ran into Harper before she fully processed what Phil had hinted at. All of the different things he had implied.
All of her regrets piled up on her at once. That light feeling from the morning was disappearing. Six souls were weighed against hers now. She didn't think she could handle that much longer. It was all she could do to instead focus on the seven lives that now counted against those souls. Could she buy each soul with one of those lives?
She found herself wandering semi-blindly down a line of holding cells. Almost all of them stood empty. Pristine. One wasn't.
A lean shape was curled in on itself in the bed, facing the wall. Her steps slowed even more. Blinking, she peered inside. Maybe the figure felt her eyes. Maybe it was simply time to roll over and stare at the other wall for a few hours. Either way, she got a look at a face.
"Fucking hell, Mark?" she breathed.
The figure sat up slowly, arm shaking as it laboured under his weight. Murky blue eyes narrowed. Red eyebrows knitted as the man frowned. He stared at her for a minute that neared infinite.
She willed him to remember. To forget. To blink slowly and lie back down to lose himself in the mind-numbing nothing at the core of each Marine in captivity. To shake his head in disbelief and smile in that effortlessly Shaw way he and his brother shared. To laugh and ask what the hell she was doing here, wearing Innie fatigues.
His eyes widened. "You."
She knew that rusted croak. That defeated and finished look stalking his eyes. Waiting. For the last sentence. There was nothing to say. She simply continued staring.
Mark swallowed, cleared his throat, and coughed. He tried again. "You're her." Hunted blue eyes fluttered shut and he frowned again. "Starlight."
"Lieutenant Hannah Steele." It came out as the barest whisper of sound. "ODST."
"What are you doing?"
He opened his eyes to stare through her.
"Well." Her throat was dry like his. She tried to work some moisture into it, but couldn't seem to work her lead tongue. "Kinda like you. They found me. Brought me back here. I…"
She was a goddamn coward. It was so simple. Just one sentence long. But it was so hard to admit to this frail shell of a man who had been so alive last time they had met.
"I'm one of theirs now. Like Jason."
Mark stirred, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. "How is he? Is he okay? Not being… hurt, is he?" A haunting shadow crept into his eyes.
The scars curling out from the sleeves and collar of Shaw's shirt immediately came to mind. Then the blank expression he turned her direction every time he had to acknowledge her.
"I don't know. I don't even recognize him now," she admitted after a long pause.
The prisoner's mouth tightened. Gaze sharpened. "I still do. He was still my brother when he came to visit before."
Hannah gnawed on her tongue, swallowing down against the sparks trying to climb higher in her chest. She had taken that warmth into herself in an attempt to drown the Blizzard. To remember who she had been that night in Errera. It brought too much back. Too much she had frozen away until the wounds healed more.
There was a chair against the wall across from the cell. She thought about it for a second before discarding the option. Instead she sat cross-legged on the floor, almost close enough to touch the reinforced glass door. Their eyes met again.
"I just—I can't lose anyone else, Mark."
At first he stayed in a huddled heap in the cot, just watching her. Evaluating. He was a Marine, whatever had happened to him since capture. A trained killer as much as the rest of her team was. As much as she was. He rose, padding near soundlessly in bare feet until he could sit with her, mirror her. His hands laced in his lap as he asked, "What happened to you two?"
She told him everything. It came pouring out like a released flood. Nothing was left out. From the way he had looked at her in the break room that first day to the lifeless way he addressed her now. Talking to Mark was easy. Maybe he just needed some stimulus. Maybe he was simply so starved for information about the younger Shaw.
When her explanation was done, Mark shook his head slowly. "You haven't lost him. Not really."
"Let me inform you about other developments." She dropped each word like a stone. "He has Harper now."
The news of his brother with the Innie didn't even raise a flicker of surprise or dismay. He shrugged. "Tell me you can look at them and expect it to last. He never forgot you, Starlight."
The nickname made her flinch. "It's Blizzard, actually."
"Is it?" His level blue gaze didn't waver.
"I really think they might have something. If they didn't before, last night changed that. They aren't hiding anything anymore."
She saw Harper's small reaches and brushes, even with the other Phoenixes watching the two of them. She couldn't remember it ever happening before last night. Just the competitive jockeying for position. Just the fact that their sparring was always more aggressive than anyone else's.
"Hannah, Jason's... he's angry. Not with you, really. Just with everything. He's always been angry, since he was ten. You were one of the few things that he found genuinely bright. I just... he's not got anything right now other than everything Harper's been encouraging. You've reminded him of how things might have gone. He's terrible at expressing his pain, really. He doesn't hate you, trust me."
At least he didn't call her that other thing this time.
She laid her hand flat against the glass separating them, staring through everything until she could see Hunter slithering down the sloppy bank of mud and bones to land in the filthy puddle again. "He climbed down into a pit of dead Covvies to help carry me out. I owe them all my life, but those two most of all. What do I do? What can I even do?"
"Just... be you, yeah? Whoever you are now, whoever he is, he'll still have nightmares. I can't tell you to be Hannah Steele and I won't tell you to wait for him. But I'd ask you not to give up on him. That hurts him more than any painful memories and it's not like I can help him anymore." He didn't sound bitter. Just resigned. He looked at the hand on his cell door for a moment before placing his against it. Mark's hand was so much larger than her own. So much like his brother's.
She snapped back like an elastic to the present. A dry smile twisted her lips. "Sometimes it hurts less to give up," she admitted.
"I didn't think that was you, Hannah. I'm not really overprotective of Jason, but I thought you were good for him. Is that who you are now?" His tone wasn't critical. He seemed to instead be assessing the woman before him. The Blizzard who had risen from the hole that should have been Hannah Steele's resting place.
She snorted. "You got that from one conversation with me? The three of us... we don't know anything about each other."
Long fingers curled against the glass. Whether because he wished he could squeeze her hand or to make a fist, she had no idea. His expression remained concerned for his younger brother. "Don't need to. Just saw the way you two looked at one another. You're an ODST. Thought that whole stubborn 'never give up' edge was your guys' speciality."
Her hand dropped away, unable to maintain that imagined contact.
"I'm not an ODST anymore. They're all gone. There's a point everyone reaches when it gets to be too much. You want to know what mine was?" she demanded, not giving him any time to reply. "Losing everyone and knowing I should have tried harder. Wanting to die with them, but not being given the chance. Seeing him denying we'd even met."
When Mark answered, his voice was softer. Quieter. With an equal weight to it that she heard in her own. "Take it from someone who's probably not leaving this cell alive, you've still got chances. I don't know how he's reacted to you. But I know he looked for you every day until we left. Every night. You weren't some passing fancy he took a brief liking to, Starlight."
Hannah didn't object to the name this time. She turned to lean back against the glass, too tired of holding herself up. "Tell me about yourself. About who you were."
They didn't know anything about each other. But they could change that.
She heard rustling. Turning her head, she found herself looking at Mark's back as he leaned against her.
He sighed slowly. "It's been just me and Jason for a long time now. We've always had each other, and that was fine. It's been my job to take care of him forever. I meant what I said that night we met, he and I had it made at Errera," he said quietly.
"We had an apartment in a good neighbourhood. I wonder if the UNSC is still paying rent on it while we're here."
She heard what he left to the silence. I'll probably never see it again.
"Jason always had a head for beats. I could see it in him the second we hit our first battlefield. It was like a dance to him. Maybe that's why he was always better than I was at it. He loved DJing so much that I hoped it would hold his attention when I enlisted." Mark let out a dry, weak chuckle. "We argued back and forth for weeks before he wore me down. He finally had me beat when he said he'd only get into worse trouble if I left him on Reach without supervision. Here I am in a cell I'm going to die in. There he is in Innie armour. This is why he wasn't allowed to stay on his own. Probably would have burned the city down trying to cook supper."
"That's all stuff about him. What about you, Mark?" she asked.
"Ah, I'm just the goody-two-shoes older brother who says no to all the fun stuff. There's a reason he and I are on the sides of this glass that we are, Starlight." He didn't say it unkindly. "I led for so long, expecting him to eventually make his own way. Just goes to show that younger brothers should always listen to their older brothers, yeah?"
"I never had blood siblings," said Hannah, matching his hush. "Only my ODST ones. But I think I get what you mean."
He didn't say anything in response. She didn't prod for anything further. Only when the floor had leached most of the heat from her body did she stand and watch him sit so very still.
"Thanks for the talk, Mark."
Twisting to look up at her, he said, "Take care of yourself, Starlight. Don't expect that connection he felt between you could have snapped so easily."
It sounded awfully like a final farewell. A chill from the concrete floor crept through Hannah.
"I'll be back," she promised.
He didn't look like he believed her. But he wanted to.
Hannah hurried to the barracks to throw on her workout clothes. She was due in the gym for mandatory training with Phoenix. The idea of getting sweaty again wasn't exactly appealing, but there wasn't a whole lot she could do. Thankfully, as she walked into the gym, Mike was already starting their warm up exercises. She didn't think she could stand around and make small talk with the others with the weight of blank blue eyes on her.
Once Mike waved them away to pair up for their first matches, Hannah turned to catch Geist's eye.
He met her halfway, posture deceptively loose. He hadn't said much since last night. Said nothing to her about it. And now, as she faced him, she was grateful. They would never be close—Geist wasn't close with many people as far as she could tell—but she counted him as one of her friends.
"Let's get this over with," she said, forcing brightness into her tone.
His mouth twitched at her self-deprecation. Practically howling with laughter for the stoic assassin.
Knowing they could wait hours if she didn't move first, Hannah threw a feint for his gut before pulling her fist back for a real punch. Geist deflected with one palm. His other hand struck her flat in the chest. Winded, she dropped like a ton of lead. He had a boot on her before she could even think, enough pressure to keep her down until he crouched over her, hand coming to rest lightly on her throat.
"All right, show-off," she wheezed, still fighting to relax air back into her lungs.
His touch melted away like shadows before the sun. He allowed another momentary show of mirth before strolling away to watch the bout between Lucas and Mike.
Hannah instead took her time getting back to her feet. That had gone surprisingly well, actually. He had gone for the deflection instead of flooring her right away. Maybe she really had caught him off guard with that feint.
Or perhaps he was playing with her.
Phil was next, still breathing heavily from his fight with Aaron. She squared up with him, letting the Phoenix second circle them a few times. Here was another who would wait for her first move. Some days she came out on top. Some days he bested her.
Today she started off with a leg sweep that he sidestepped. They closed, throwing a flurry of punches and blocks. Phil caught her arm, tugging her close. Arms locked around her neck and waist as he held her closer than a lover. With no room to thrash and her arms pinned to her sides, she brought her heel down on his instep. He swore softly and lifted her an inch from the floor. She struck out blindly for his knee and was rewarded when he squeezed her tighter, beginning to choke for real.
She tapped out, knowing she was beaten.
Setting her back on her feet, Phil shook his head slowly. "You're distracted," he said.
Hannah shrugged. "Can't be on my A game after last night."
There was no reason to lie about it. Not with Mark's words whirling through her head when she should have been focused on countermoves.
Phil simply nodded. "Refocus for tomorrow. Sounds like we're only here for a few days before we're off across the galaxy again."
A blonde brow lifted.
He tapped a finger to the side of his nose. "Don't ask me. You're the one with another revenge stop."
Irons. She couldn't help but feel a few pounds heavier at the thought.
Lucas replaced the Phoenix second. He had his humbler in hand today, turned down but still strong enough to double a soldier over at the slightest touch. Unlike her previous two opponents, Thorpe went straight for her, bringing his weapon back to poke at her chest.
Jerking aside, Hannah bought herself another second to figure out how to part the engineer from his toy. They closed again, her fending off swings of his electrified baton and jabs from his free hand, him facing a fellow underestimated fighter who knew nearly all of his tricks. Taking a page out of Phil's book, Hannah managed to grab hold of Lucas' wrist. She twisted sharply, delivering a sharp jab to his elbow.
Surprise all over his face, Lucas couldn't fight the reflex to drop his humbler. Hannah scooped it up, grinning as she gave it an experimental flick, the air humming dangerously around it. From there, she baited him with the chance of taking his weapon back, leaving a gap in her guard that he tried to use. She was only too happy to punish him for it by rapping his back with the humbler.
Lucas folded into a boneless heap on the floor. Hannah powered the weapon down and laid it on the floor for him.
Aaron was already waiting. He let her turn before letting loose with a quick series of blows.
Unlike the others, Aaron liked to talk while he sparred. Words fit into the ebb and flow of the fight.
"Good show last night," he said. Punch, kick, spin out of her reach.
She ducked, dodged, lunged. "Did you take notes?"
"That strike to his head was a good one. Messed up his inner ear, right?" He blocked. Answered with a haymaker she barely saw coming, pivoting to let it glance off.
"Good catch."
Hannah let him throw all he had at her for a while. Aaron was ferocious if his opponent couldn't match his speed. The small, lithe ex-ODST could.
"So," she began casually, countering a pair of jabs for her face with an elbow to his side, "anyone else on the team a little closer than brothers? Who's Phil seeing?"
Grinning, the pyro tried to tackle her to the ground. "Nobody," he said, too innocently.
Hannah let him pass her by, darting back at the last moment. She aimed a spinning kick at his chest. "You spoken for?"
"Really, Bliz, I'm flattered." His eyes flickered over to where Geist was attempting to pin Harper.
Now that was interesting.
With him distracted, not by the blond he most certainly wasn't seeing at midnight, but rather the stoic assassin, Hannah swept Aaron's legs out from under him. She plopped down on his chest, resting her chin in one hand, propped on his shoulder. "Good for you. At least somebody on this team knows what his name is."
Aaron just laughed. "That's a good trick. Guess that's what I get for running my mouth in front of you, yeah? You're smarter than everyone gives you credit for."
She flashed him a quick grin before offering a hand to help him up. He ruffled her hair before sauntering away to face off against his partner.
Harper took Aaron's place opposite her. "Well, Bliz," he said, green eyes sucking in the light around them, "you've been holding out on me in a lot of ways."
There was ice in her veins at the hard edge in his deceptively off-hand tone. There was no way he had seen everything last night and not put enough pieces together to figure it all out. He was much more clever than a lot of the UNSC thought. That he had evaded capture and execution for as long as he had was a testament to that.
She wondered how much of it Shaw had told him today.
"Let's just do this and move on," she ground out. "I've got other things to do today."
Harper shrugged carelessly. "You have one last field trip on tap. We're leaving in three days for it. By the time we get back, Allen thinks he'll have something else lined up for us. I want to see you in action—not just against some defenseless ONI agents."
Then he struck.
Accustomed to the team leader's preambles that turned to combat without warning, Hannah at least wasn't caught on her heels. Still, it was all she could do to protect her face and stay out of his reach. Like Geist, she had yet to triumph over Harper. He was too unpredictable. Harper didn't play by anyone's rules. Even his own.
His blows fell seemingly at random. He blocked attacks he should have countered. Countered attacks he should have dodged. And sometimes he took the hardest hits without positioning himself for any useful replies. It was a puzzle she was unable to read, let alone figure out.
Fighting him ended in the same way every time. Feeling worn out and battered, pinned to the floor while he stared dispassionately down into her eyes. Searching for something in her.
This time, he lingered a moment longer than usual, nodding to himself as if satisfied by what he read in her face.
Next she faced Mike. Hannah had taken a liking to him almost immediately. He was like a still pond, obscuring how deep he truly was. That calm front sometimes cracked in favour of a witty comeback to Aaron or Shaw, and he was genuinely a nice guy. She could only wonder how he had ended up on Harper's team of social misfits to begin with. What had driven him to ONI, or if it had only been his incredible skill as a marksman.
Hypothesizing about his past wasn't the exercise at hand, however.
Their bout dragged on for a long time. Hannah's limbs ached with fatigue as she threw herself at him again and again. The sniper's chest heaved as he stayed out of range, only closing when he felt sure of a successful strike. Fighting Mike was all about trying to trick him into convoluted traps. It was like playing chess. Today, she was too stubborn to admit defeat.
Finally, he tried to slip inside her guard. She caught him in the jaw with a sucker punch. Following up with a tackle before he recovered, he twisted to land on her. Ignoring the flare of pain as the breath rushed from her chest, Hannah wrapped her sluggish legs around his waist from behind. She looped her arms beneath his, lacing her fingers against the back of his head.
"A'ight, got me," he panted.
Both Phoenixes flopped back to catch their breath, limbs tangled together until they could pick themselves up again.
As he always did, Mike shook her hand and smiled. "Thanks," he said.
She returned the smile. "Any time," she answered, as she always did.
And that left one final round. Shoving away her dozen or so aches and scrapes, Hannah forced herself into combat focus. All that mattered was Hunter as he broke off from joking with Lucas. He had to pass Harper to reach Hannah. As he did, the blond turned to catch his gaze briefly. They nodded to each other.
She could feel the flames dancing in the air around him as Shaw neared. She couldn't help but curl protectively around the ice in the pit of her stomach. Dousing it earlier had been hard enough. Had hurt enough.
"We don't have to do this if you don't want to," she offered. She wondered who she was trying to protect. Him. Or herself.
That blank mask had snapped into place the moment his attention turned to her. "No," he said flatly, "we do."
"I went to see Mark," she said.
Nothing. No hint of recognition or guilt or anything. Just that closed expression and mute eyes that gave nothing away.
"Starlight, eh?" she asked. Anger would have been better than this. Hatred preferable.
Shaw just eased into his ready position, loose fists coming up to guard his face and elbows covering his chest.
"He said you—"
He stepped forward, putting his entire weight behind a right hook. Hannah backpedalled, her hands at her sides. A finger tapped on her thigh as Shaw advanced. He swung again, from the left instead. Another right hook followed. A step, turn and kick.
Hannah adjusted her tapping, discarding the first pattern. She dodged each strike. Her eyes flitted across his body language, searching for tells he masked so well.
Shaw's shoulder dropped as he stepped forward again. But he didn't lead with a thrown fist like it looked like. His hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of her shirt and dragging her to him.
She forced her body to stay relaxed, nearly limp. Her hand tapping on her leg instead of curling into a fist to defend herself.
He yanked her face down into a knee. Hannah retreated from her body, tricking herself into not feeling the impact. Focusing on his rhythm instead.
On Mark's words. It was like a dance to him.
Jason shoved her away, making her stagger with the force of it.
He stepped toward her again, each footfall landing with a tap on her thigh.
Got you.
Wiping the trickle of blood from her nose, Hannah was ready to block his next blow. And the next. And the next. He chased her across the gym as she weaved between exercise equipment. The rest of the sparring matches ended and six Phoenixes watched them climb over treadmills and around racks of weights.
Frustration shattered his perfect mask of indifference as Hannah leaned out of the way of yet another kick that would have put her flat on her ass. She grabbed his ankle and knee, shoving his leg higher into the air so she had the time to back away.
"We don't have to do this," she said again.
Something close to rage darkened his expression as they stood staring at each other.
She waited for him to come at her again, counting silently in sets of eight. Jason turned away, exposing his back to her.
Hannah let him go. As he walked away, she felt the pull between them. Like the gravity between two celestial bodies.
