Chapter Text
cacoethes
noun
an irresistible urge to do something inadvisable.
She now has a choice.
She can kill him, or she could let him live.
If he dies, the panic that will ensue will engulf the entire room. The tension will explode, a mushroom cloud of repressed emotions and this sort of chaos cannot be controlled. Chairs and tables will be overturned with screams. Frantic babblings that "he's dead, he's dead, he's dead and SHE killed him" will rise through the frenzy until every person is a radio tower, bouncing the message from one to the other again and again and again. Someone will be brave enough to climb up onto the stage and try to restrain her, or maybe even reason with her, but this isn't something that can be negotiated. He either is, or he isn't. And he is, so her accoster would have to die too. With two dead civilians to her name now, she could turn on the crowd now if she wants. She's already outted herself. If they're all dead no one can stop her from grabbing Marco and /running/. She could rain pretty shards of pale green glass and stain white linoleum red. List herself as Public Enemy #1, with a body count that would make hardened criminals balk, become the thing the government's been so horribly afraid of.
She could be infamous.
Or she could be rational, like she's always been. Irrationality and Mina L. Carolina have never mixed and for good reason - the cocktail it makes is toxic. She could drop the spiral of glass she's surrounded him in, let it shatter. Pull away and continue to say, "I'm the Conduit. I'm the seventh person on that list. I am," even though she's not. She is a Conduit, been one since the tender age of eight and for nine long years it had been her best-kept secret. So well kept even she forgot the truth; and if she can lie so well to herself she could lie to anyone else.
It nags her, however, the reminder that she's been saying this and nothing else ever since the paper was snatched from her hands. And that the spark of defiance is still in his eyes, even brighter now than before, and it's with a plummeting feeling she realizes he will not believe her. Not while he knows the truth, while it sits on his tongue just waiting for the perfect moment to be yelled to the world.
It's ironic, in a way. Marco's mother always said Conduits lived lives like sparklers. Bright, hot, and wild until they were burned out, either by themselves or the government gunning them down. Here she stands, on this auditorium stage with the sparklers for her life and Marco's lit and flinging fire for now - but they'll be burned out or snuffed out, and it's not a matter of if, but when.
She isn't going to live very long anymore - whatever life expectancy she had before has been cut in half (if she's lucky) - but this, to surrender at the age of seventeen and surrender her stepbrother at eighteen because Thomas Wagner won't let something die...
She won't have it.
So into the mixing glass the cocktail goes, and she pours it into Thomas, serves it with a pale green spike and it's a cocktail so potent it goes right through him.
(Though the chaos, she catches a glimpse of Marco hiding behind a row of chairs. She remembers not to hit him when she brings the glass shards down.)