Tahereh Mafi

I am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me.
Fear will learn to fear me.

Kenji is silent a moment.
"Hey, um, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm looking for a friend of mine," he says. "Have you seen her ? She's a tiny little thing, cries a lot, spend to much time with her feelings-"
"Shut up, Kenji."
"Oh wait!" he says. "It is you."

"You deserve so much more than charity," he says, his chest heaving. "You deserve to live. You deserve to be alive."
He's staring at me, unblinking.
"Come back to life, love. I'll be here when you wake up."

I narrow my eyes, clench my fists. "It's not charity," I snap. "He cares about me - and I care about him !"
Warner nods, unimpressed. "You should get a dog, love. I hear they share much the same qualities."

But now I finally understand why he took such care with my wardrobe.
He wasn't trying to patronize me.
He was enjoying himself.
Aaron Warner Anderson, chief commander and regent of Sector 45, son of the supreme commander of the Reestablishment.
He has a soft spot for fashion.

"I am going to kill your father,"I say to him, "and I'm going to destroy The Reestablishment."
He's still smiling.
" I will."
"I know," he says.
"Then why are you laughing at me ?"
"I'm not," he says softly. "I'm only wondering," he says, "if you would like my help."

This time I am a force.
A deviation of human nature.
I am living, breathing proof that nature is officially screwed, afraid of what it's done, what it's become.
And I'm stronger. I'm angrier.
I'm ready to do something I'll definitely regret and this time I don't care. I'm done being nice. I'm done being nervous. I'm not afraid of anything anymore.
Mass chaos is in my future.

But he grins, so brilliantly, not even paying attention. "I love it when you say my name," he says. "I don't even know why."
"Warner isn't your name," I point out. "Your name is Aaron."
His smile is wide, so wide. "God, I love that."
"Your name?"
"Only when you say it."
"Aaron ? Or Warner ?"
His eyes close. He tilts his head back against the wall. Dimples.

His entire back is a map of pain.

"You can go to hell," Adam shouts at Warner.
"Just because I'm going to hell," Warner says, "doesn't mean you'll ever deserve her."

He has dimples.
He's easily the most beautiful thing i've ever seen.
And I wish I'd never seen it.

I konw that he is a tortured soul who, like me, never grew up with the warmth of friendship or love or peaceful coexistence. I know that his father is the leader of The Reestablishment and applauds his son's murders instead of condemning them and I know that Warner has no idea what it's like to be normal.

I want to trust but it scares the skin off my bones.

I look around.
At the ground.
At what I've done.
And I understand, for the first time, that I have the power to destroy everything.

I touch the material. Decide I should probably say something. "It's very ... comfortable."
"Sexy."
I look up.
He's shaking his head. "It's sexy as hell."
He steps forward. Slips me into his arms.
"I look like a gymnast," I mumble.
"No," he whispers, hot hot hot against my lips. "You look like a superhero."

"Possessive" is not a strong enough word for Warner.

I want to dance with the elements.
Warner grabs my hands. I turn around.
He's smiling.
"This," he says, gesturing to the cold gray world under our feet, "this makes you happy?"
I look around. I realize the courtyard is not quite a roof but somewhere between two buildings. I edge toward the ledge and can see dead land and naked trees and scattered compounds stretching on for miles. "Cold air smells so clean," I tell him. "Fresh. Brand-new. It's the most wonderful smell in the world."
His eyes look amused, troubled, interested and confused all at once.

I clench my jaw, not trusting myself to speak.
"At least i'm honest," he adds.
"You just agreed you'rea liar !"
He raises his eyesbrows. "At least I'm honest about being a liar."

I spend my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, throughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, of figment of imagination formed through fiction.

I'm breathing so hard my frame is shaking. "You want me to torture people for you?"
His face breaks into a brilliant smile. "That would be wonderful."