Or had something inside of me taken over?
"I don't know," I gasped out, lurching back.I'd missed five or six targets in a row.I swiped at my hair, shoving it off my forehead."Maybe?But I also –"
"Get back in it.Lockin, Sashen," Tam said, moving to stand behind me as he paused the simulation.He shoved me forward a little, forced me into position, and then tapped the simulation back on, and I tried to shove everything else from my mind.
I coiled the muscles of my shoulder, striking fast and hard.Quick bursts of energy, carefully calibrated.Dark target, hard hit.Pivot, light target, softer strike.Twist, turn, evaluate, jab.
Behind me, Tam grunted as I blasted through another rapid sequence of targets."Good," he said."One more round."
I could do that.There was respite here, and I fucking needed it.I hit the holographic targets, one after the other, until I couldn't think of anything but the shimmer of light, the heaving of my chest, the rapid thundering of my pulse.And then, when the final target exploded in a shower of blue sparks, I sank down to a crouch, gasping for breath, my head tipped forward to my knees.
And the thought uncoiled from deep in the back of my mind where it had been growing in the shadows: I hadn'tthoughtI wanted to kill the sephear, but I'd come here to learn to do just that.Maybe Ihadwanted to.Maybe I'dneededto, to show myself I could.To make myself feel strong, capable.Deadly.
What kind of person had to kill someone to feel safe?
My breaths tightened, and then I was wheezing, crouched on the cold gym floor, overcome by crashing waves of hot and cold.
"It's alright," Tam said from behind me."You did what you had to do."
"I didn'thaveto," I heaved.
"Sure you did.Who knows what they would have done next?It's better to hurt someone who's out for blood than stand around and wonder if they might go easy on you."And then, "They were probably a dick anyway."
In terms of words of comfort and reassurance, they were pretty shit – and yet they seemed to work anyway.I rocked back, sprawling out on my back and staring up at the ceiling overhead as Tam peered down at me, his hands on his hips.
"I don't fucking know, Tam," I said, really making myself feel how my lungs expanded beneath my ribs.Allowing the heat of exertion to flush my skin, almost like a warm bath."I just – I lost control.It was like I wasn't even there.It was like I got possessed."
Tam studied me, his body towering above mine."That can happen," he said slowly."It's like – that time you couldn't move, right?This is the other side, and trust me: it's better to split your knuckles without realizing than to have someone split your skull because you're not at home.It'salright.It's good.You're making progress."
"Yeah but –" I stopped, licking my lips, still sprawled out on the floor.It felt solid and certain beneath me, which was good: nothing else did, not really."What if I just – snap?What if it happens when it shouldn't?"I couldn't bring myself to say that there was something in me that must be wicked, something dark and dangerous and I was terrified that, now that it had been let out once, it might have grown a taste for freedom.
"There's an old gaanith saying," said Tam, blinking down at me as his spiny ears flared behind his head, haloing his silhouette like the fins of a fish, "that if you get trampled by a fairin, you've got to get right back in the killing pen.If you don't, the fear will keep you from the pens forever."
I blinked up at him."Huh."Was this agetting back on the horsesituation?"And what does that mean?"
"It means you can't let yourself get scared now.We've got to keep at it.We've got, what, a few weeks left?We'll keep training.The more you train, the more you're in control – but if you let the fear keep you out of the pens, then who knows what'll get trampled."
It didn't make much sense to me, but Tam seemed to know a lot more about it than I did.And what was the alternative – become pliant and passive if someone came for me again?And did itreallymatter if I lost control a little when I was being attacked?Didn't anyone who attacked me deserve whatever came their way?
"You should write a self-help book," I intoned."We can call it Tamcer Temahura's Terrible Takes.Alliteration really sells, you know."
Tam barked out a laugh."Oh, I know it does,Sashen Solarand his fuckingswords and slippers.You know how often I see those fucking ads?"
"If you don't want to see them," I said, grinning despite myself, "stop looking at naughty datafeeds.My manager says they'reverytargeted ads.I wonder: when you come, is it just dust these days?"
"I'm about to target your kidneys with my fists," Tam threatened merrily before he hauled me up, and then he had me explain the alleyway fight in detail, calling Elethenn over to help stand in for the sephear and, in painstaking detail, while I tried very hard to hold on to a semblance of good cheer instead of crying or panicking or having one of my little… moments, we sequenced out the whole thing.
"Good," Tam said after we'd finished.I stepped off Elethenn, who had gone to the ground to play the role of the sephear without so much as a glint of fear in his eye, which seemed honestly pretty unwise, and gave him my hand as he leapt to his feet again."Alright, we're going to go through it again and I'm going to pause every place you could have done something better, and then we'll try that.You have any ideas of your own,hero," he prodded Elethenn with his elbow, "you let me know."
We went through the attack again and again and again, and although it was Tam who offered most of the critiques, Elethenn paused a few times to make a gentle suggestion, each time wincing apologetically in my direction, as if it would hurt me to know I could have done better.Maybe it would have hurt someone else, but I was desperate for anything that might have put me more in control.Of the situation, of the fight, of myself.
Once we'd reviewed it enough times, Tam stepped back, tugging Elethenn with him.He leaned his mouth close to Elethenn's ear and muttered something to him.They'd already gotten the same weapons that the assailants had used and were equipped, and as they stepped away to the positions the sephear and the paledrian had been in when they'd trapped me in that alley, I felt my mouth go dry, my pulse pick up, and something an awful lot like terror start to curdle in my stomach.
I was aware, distantly, that my hands were shaking – but the only way out wasthrough.
After all, when Tam had pinned me repeatedly in the gym to make me work through what had happened with Grigor and Andiri, it had been awful but it had also fuckingworked.I was definitely better now.I'd gotten pinned by the attackers and I hadn't started crying or hyperventilating; I hadn't even gotten too panicked or hopeless until the end.And even then, I'd thought; I'd planned; I'd fucking foughtback.
My stare darted to Elethenn for a moment."Tam," I said then, looking at him as he sank into a lower stance, "if I, uh, have a… If I need a moment – I don't want – I don't –"
