Dedicated to LadyAireen for her unwavering love and support! Love you dearie(:
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The training attire was unisex, and consisted of a full-body suit with inbuilt compartments to store gadgetry and weapons, as well as a black armor made of iron which covered the vital organs. There were also calf-skin boots which came with it—soft enough to run in, but strong and durable enough to resist any damage. It was completely black, save for a few silver buttons which caught and glinted in the light.
Entering the practice room with her blade in one hand, Sara marveled at how enormous and well-equipped it was. Not only was it well-lit, with sunlight streaming through, it was also easily twenty times the size of her own room, with all sorts of complicated obstacle courses, weapons and targets arranged not only on the floor, but on the ceiling as well.
Seeing Louis waving at her from the far end of the room, in a brightly-lit corner by the window, she moved there, sitting down on the floor beside him.
“About just now…” he started, hesitating, “it was insensitive of me to ask such things. Please forgive me.”
Feeling a little sorry about the guilty look on his face, Sara shrugged, smiling kindly. “It was not your fault. I’m alright now.”
“I’m glad you are,” he said awkwardly, rubbing a hand over the overnight stubble on his face, and shifting backwards uncomfortably to put more space between them.
She diverted her attention to Maxon, who was training by himself. Swinging to and from elastic cords, he wielded his sword furiously mid-flight; slicing targets—malleable tin models of real people, with a rubber covering to act as skin—to ribbons, then repeatedly stabbing them in the eye and the heart, cutting clean, flashing arcs through the air.
Jumping down from the cords and throwing the sword aside, he threw punches and kicks at the targets around him, while bending the bodies of the models to unsightly angles, the creaking sounds of their unoiled hinges making Sara wince.
It appeared as though he attacked with a blind fury; there was no purpose or direction to it, only recklessness, and it was quite different from his usual self. What alarmed her was neither his skill nor his strength, but rather, the way he fought, mindless anger taking control of his body.
Then he turned around to face another target, and, meeting his eyes for a split second, Sara was horrified by how much hatred there was, blazing in them. They burned with a deep, dark, unsaid vengeance. Spinning to his side, he unleashed it yet again with the next vicious thrust of his sword, without even missing the target’s eye by a hair’s breadth.
She frowned worriedly. “Does he fight like that every time?” she questioned.
“What do you mean?” Louis asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I mean…” She ran a hand through her messy ponytail, struggling to come up with the words for it. “Ah, it’s nothing, I suppose.”
Hearing a sudden ferocious swiping of Maxon’s sword was, in Sara’s opinion, a welcome distraction from the slightly awkward moment earlier.
“Over here, we all have to wait for our turn when someone’s practicing. At other times, when the practice room is free, we do spar with each other,” Louis said, changing the subject very abruptly, while keeping his eyes fixedly on Maxon.
He must have known, but did not want to speak of it, Sara thought. In that case, it probably was not in her place to ask.
“The equipment here is rather advanced. There are tin models that you can practice on,” he introduced, calmly pointing at their ghastly remains. “And among sets of obstacles and lots of other items, there are targets you can aim at, using weapons like steel bars, whips, and our selection of swords. Though I see, you already have your own.”
“I named her!” she laughed lightly, showing him her blade. It was a good, sturdy one; though weary with age, its studded metallic handle chipping off, she’d gone through thick and thin, and through fights, tears, and bloodshed, with it. “She’s been with me for half of my life. Say hello to Annie!”
Stretching his legs out on the floor, he let out a loud guffaw. “Hello, Annie.”
“She looks forward to sparring with you,” said Sara, giggling. “Although… On a more serious note, can I ask something?”
“Of course.”
“I was just thinking about our futures. We, as the Plein—we believe in fighting for peace. But what happens after the war is over? Will the destruction still be there, or will everything be peaceful once again? What will happen of our world; of all the Marked?” she asked, resting her elbows on her knees.
Perhaps he did not know, as he seemed thoughtful for a long while.
But the mood seemed to have changed, for when she looked up at him, the light in his eyes had faded to nought, and the grim expression that it held seemed to carry a silent message that could not be explained. Outside the window, dark clouds loomed over the horizon, covering the sun as if it were an ominous grey haze, casting heavy shadows on the roughened contours of his face. For a moment, the room was eerily dark.
Shuddering, Sara shifted her gaze away, picking at the loose strings on her suit.
“I’m done,” came Maxon’s voice, echoing off the walls of the room; but her attention was no longer on him.
“To me, the outcome doesn’t matter,” Louis responded after a terse moment, his voice clipped and tight. “In the end, you will realize that there is only one thing that people live for. We live for ourselves. We live to fulfill our own lives, our own missions, and our own goals. We’re fighting for peace and a safe world to live in, but what meaning does everything hold, if we do not even have power of our own?”
He gathered his weapons and stood up, heading off to practice without a backward glance.
Gnawing on the inside of her cheeks as she watched Louis train, Sara mulled over what he had said.
We live for ourselves.
It was haunting.
That mere sentence latched itself onto the surface of her thoughts. She furrowed her eyebrows in concentration, trying to make head or tail of it. Granted, she did not think she agreed with him, but he made sense. It was human nature to love power, to chase it; to spend their whole lives in a mindless pursuit for it. After all, it was the very thing that had twisted and corrupted Lemuel, and turned his heart into a warped, empty well of nothingness.
Haunting, but true, she observed.
She only hoped that regardless of the result, whether good or bad, the Plein would stay together throughout it all. To have one’s own race torn apart by the same mindsets that ripped the world of the Marked apart, causing a massive war; that was simply foolish. Besides, the irony behind it all would be that while they were banding together to stop the war, there were people among them who were breaking up those very ties.
Louis swung his sword in circles, while thrusting a long wooden bar such that it never once grazed the sword. His fighting style was rather different from Maxon’s; she could see strategy and rational thinking, and his strokes were stronger and more powerful.
With a near-empty bottle of water in his hand, Maxon joined Sara on the floor. “How are you feeling?” he inquired, concern etched onto his face.
“Much better,” she replied, trying her best to give a grateful smile, though it did not quite reach her eyes. “Thank you.”
He shook his head in response, the corners of his lips tilting. Tousling his dark mop of hair, a wisp of it falling into his eyes, he cleared his throat, saying nothing more on the topic.
“You seem upset,” he observed. “It is about something else, is it not?”
She scuffed her boots against the maple flooring, in an attempt to relieve the growing awkwardness. “Well,” she hesitated. “Yes, about something Louis said.”
“You mean, during breakfast?” he asked cautiously, careful not to tread on the sensitive topic.
Remembering the hug he had given her, and how warm and comfortable his body had been against hers, her cheeks heated up uncomfortably.
“No—no. It was just now, when you were training. He mentioned something about…people living for themselves, because we live for power. Is that true, really?”
There was a moment of silence, the tendrils of a breeze from outside cooling her burning face. Taking the time to sort out her thoughts, she waited patiently.
“I suppose that is true,” he asserted thoughtfully. “People are not perfect, you see. Perhaps not everyone has such ambitions, but some people do.”
Nodding slowly, her eyebrows furrowed. “I suppose I can comprehend that.”