Chapter 39: A Date [2]
"Yeah," Sylvia said. "It is."
She said it simply. She leaned forward slightly across the table, dropping her voice to sothing quieter. "Training alone gets... still. Too still, after a while." Her fingers moved along the rim of her cup. "I miss being around everyone." A small pause. "But joining the group right now cos with a problem."
Lucas leaned in slightly, matching her. "The amplifier."
She nodded, her eyes dropping to the cup. "Since I used it in the forest, it’s been harder to keep it settled. It reacts on its own sotis now, I don’t always feel it coming." She exhaled once. "If it activates during training and soone in the academy sees the marks..."
"The mask?" Lucas offered.
Sylvia shook her head slowly. "Once, maybe twice. But if I show up every session wearing a mask, people start asking questions I don’t have answers to. It draws more attention than it deflects." She looked at the table. "It’ll just make things worse."
Lucas was quiet for a mont. His fingers tapped lightly against the table, not impatiently, just thinking, the rhythm of it unconscious. His gaze went sowhere to the side briefly.
Then sothing settled in his expression.
"Then I’ll co to you," he said.
Sylvia looked up.
He scratched the back of his neck, the words coming out straightforwardly, without a lot of ceremony around them.
"I’ll tell the others I’ve been pushing too hard this week and need to ease off group training for a bit. It’s not even that far from the truth." He shrugged lightly. "And instead I’ll train with you. Wherever you’ve been going. That way you’re not alone, there’s nobody around to see anything, and we don’t have to figure out the mask situation."
He glanced at her.
"You don’t have to deal with all of this by yourself," he said, quieter now, like the thought had been there for a while and was only just finding words.
Sylvia looked at him.
Sothing shifted in her expression that she didn’t announce. She sat with it for a mont, the offer, the simplicity of it, the complete absence of anything complicated in the way he’d said it, like it was just the obvious thing and he’d said it because it was obvious.
And then, before she could stop it, the laugh ca.
Not loud. Not perford. Just a quiet, genuine thing that slipped out before she’d made a decision about it, and she turned her head slightly to the side like she was trying to put it sowhere.
Lucas blinked. "What?"
"Nothing." She was still smiling, the laughter settling into sothing softer.
"It’s clearly sothing, you’re—"
"It’s nothing," she said, and then looked at him properly, her chin resting lightly on her hand. The smile stayed. "You just sounded very natural saying that."
Lucas paused. "Natural how."
"Like an actual boyfriend," she said, "who noticed his girlfriend was dealing with sothing alone and decided to do sothing about it without making it a whole thing."
The words landed and Lucas felt his face do sothing involuntary. A warmth moved up the back of his neck that he had no chanism for stopping. "I — that’s not — I was just being practical—"
"I know."
"It wasn’t so kind of—"
"I know, Lucas."
"Then why are you smiling like that—"
"Because it was still nice," she said simply.
And that was sohow worse than if she’d teased him about it. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at his cup. Looked at the table. Did a brief survey of the cafeteria like the answer might be sowhere in the room.
’She’s never dated anyone,’ he thought, completely thrown. ’She said that. So then why does every single thing she says seem like she’s been doing this for years. How is that fair. How is any of this fair.’
Sylvia, for her part, had looked away, her gaze drifting to so neutral point to the side of him, her fingers curling slightly around her cup. The smile had settled into sothing quieter.
She hadn’t ant to say it like that. She’d been aware of it mid-sentence and said it anyway, which was its own strange thing to notice about herself.
Her chest felt lighter than usual in a way that was pleasant and slightly unsettling at the sa ti, like stepping onto ice and finding it solid but still not quite trusting it.
She didn’t examine it further.
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds.
Then Lucas looked at the table between them.
"So that’s settled then," he said, his voice finding its normal register again. "I’ll co train with you."
"Yes," Sylvia said.
*****
They walked out into the corridor a few minutes later, leaving the cafeteria noise behind them. The hallway was quieter than usual, most cadets still at lunch, the space almost empty, their footsteps the most significant sound.
Lucas fell into step beside her naturally, the way he had started doing over the last few weeks without either of them deciding it was a thing.
"New techniques for the tournant?" he asked, after a mont.
"Obviously," Sylvia said. "Everyone who’s watched
fight knows my patterns. If I walk in with the sa moves I’ve always used, I’m just handing them a manual." She looked ahead, her voice settling into its thinking quality. "Unpredictability is the only real advantage worth having when people have studied you."
Lucas nodded slowly. "Yeah. Fa’s got that cost. People pay attention to everything you do." He glanced at her briefly. "ans you have to keep evolving faster than they can catch up."
"Exactly."
They walked a few more steps. The corridor opened out slightly ahead, afternoon light falling across the floor from a high window.
"I’ll be there," Lucas said, not particularly loudly, just making it concrete. "From tomorrow. You won’t have to show up to an empty training ground anymore."
Sylvia’s steps slowed slightly.
It was small barely half a beat, but she slowed, and sothing in her expression did what it sotis did when sothing landed that she hadn’t been bracing for. The look of soone receiving sothing they’d told themselves they didn’t need and finding out they’d been wrong about that.
She looked at him.
He was walking just slightly ahead of her now, his posture easy, his eyes forward, without waiting to see what she’d do with it.
Sothing in her chest did the thing it had been doing more frequently lately. The light, slightly unsettling thing.
She didn’t think about it.
She just stepped forward, closing the small distance between them, and her hand found his arm without her deciding to let it, fingers wrapping around just above his elbow the way you reach for sothing solid when you’re moving and want to stay steady. Natural. Unhurried.
"Alright," she said quietly, walking beside him now. "Then you’re coming with ."
Lucas went completely still.
The warmth of it registered first, the closeness, the gentle pressure of her hand through his sleeve, the fact of her standing right there. His brain did a full stop. His next step almost didn’t happen.
"W-what are you—" He looked down at her, then at the corridor around them, then back at her. "There’s nobody here. Right now. There’s literally nobody around."
Sylvia blinked.
Looked up at him.
Looked at the empty corridor.
Looked at her own hand on his arm.
The realization arrived about two seconds after it should have. Her hand released. She stepped back once, not quickly enough to make it look like panic but quickly enough that they both knew. She turned slightly forward and away from him.
"Ah," she said. "Sorry. I thought there were people around."
She walked ahead. One step faster than before. Eyes forward.
Lucas stood in the corridor for a half second longer than he ant to.
Then his brain finished processing what had just happened and presented him with the full picture of it.
’She said she’s never dated anyone.’
She said that.
’THEN HOW DID SHE DO THAT LIKE IT WAS NOTHING.’
He ran a hand through his hair, sothing between confused and completely unequipped, and started walking after her.
Sylvia kept her eyes ahead. Her pace was slightly faster than it needed to be. Her fingers were doing sothing in her hand that she wasn’t paying attention to.
’What was I thinking,’ she thought, not for the first ti today.
Neither of them spoke. Neither of them looked at each other.
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