Rivals

"I did," Brent told her.

She paused.

"I killed Dad," he mumbled.

She looked at the spike sticking out of the wreckage. Above her the ceiling was sagging and plaster dust spilled down like fine white rain. She'd really made a mess of the place. The darkness inside her, the dark wind of her anger, thrilled at the thought. It throbbed along with her heartbeat like thrash metal. Yeah, yeah, destroy the whole school! Kill your brother! Let's see how low you can go - let's see what you're really capable of, villain.

For a second, she froze. She could have sworn she heard something. A sort of metallic tapping sound. She looked up and around and saw nobody in the hallway. Except - yes - there. Over to her right, the hallway turned a sharp corner. Just at the edge of the corner she could see someone standing there, hiding. She couldn't see much of them - just some hair, a ponytail that stuck out past the edge of the wall.

It didn't matter. Nobody could stop her now. Brent had been the only real threat, and Brent - yes. Brent.

Kill Brent, the darkness whispered. Finish this. Make it all be over, now.

She hoisted him up, planning on finishing him off before he could say anything more. But it was too late.

"I opened that thing," he whispered. "I let the green fire out. I could have put the lid back on, before he got there. But I didn't. I was too scared."

She growled at him. She seethed inside. She couldn't do it.

"I killed Dad. I killed him. I killed Dad," he said, over and over. Like he wanted to make sure she heard it even over the noise in her head.

"Shut up!" she told him. She dropped him to the floor. He rolled over and curled into a ball. "That was a stupid accident. You had no idea what was happening. I did - I saw you both on fire. I could have grabbed him and pulled him clear, and maybe we could have saved him. I killed Dad! Don't you get it, you damned idiot? That's what this has all been about! I killed Dad!"

"I killed him," Brent muttered.

She kicked him, hard, to try to make him stop. But he just kept saying the same thing, over and over. Like a scratched CD flickering back and forth over a half second of really stupid music.

"Be quiet," she commanded. She willed herself to pick him up again. To point his head at the spiky piece of rebar.

Under her hands Brent's body was putting itself back together. Shattered bones were shifting under his clothes, knitting themselves back into one piece. He was healing all the damage she'd done. "I didn't do anything. I could have stopped it. I could have saved him but I didn't. I thought if I saved other people, if I helped people, it would make it better. It would make up for killing him. But look at us now. This isn't what he would have wanted. He didn't like it when we fought, back when it was just calling each other names. He wouldn't like this at all."

Maggie sighed. "He's dead, Brent. He can't see us now. He's in a grave somewhere and - "

"No," he told her.

"No what?"

"He isn't... buried. They - couldn't," he sighed. "They couldn't retrieve his body."

"What?" she demanded. She shoved the picture in her pocket. "What the hell? You mean Weathers just left him there?"

"I - I guess - "

Maggie roared and grabbed him, hauled him up off the floor and shoved his head toward the spike again. But she couldn't do it. She couldn't kill her own brother. A minute earlier things had been different. With the darkness surging inside of her, she could have done it without hesitation, without a second thought. But now...

She threw him down on the floor. "Brent," she said. "Brent!"

"Whuh - ?"

"We're done, Brent. This is over. Alright? We make a truce, right now. You leave me alone. You don't try to get up. And I won't kill you."

"I can't - I can't do that, Mags."

"Why the hell not?"

He shook his head. "You're out of control. You're hurting people. I can't - "

He stopped talking. He lifted his head and she saw his nose was back in the right place and his ear was whole again. He pushed himself up on one arm.

"Someone's coming," he said. "Hey! Whoever you are, get away!"

Maggie spun around to see what he was looking at. Instead she heard a clacking sound, a rhythmic clicking on the floor. Lucy Benez came around the corner, hobbling on her leg braces. She was crying.

"Please don't kill him," the crippled girl said.

Maggie stared at her.

"Lucy, get out of here," Brent shouted. He was healing so fast. In a second he would be standing up again, and the fight would start. Again.

"I have to do this!" Maggie said, even though she knew she couldn't. "If I don't kill him right now he's going to keep coming after me. He's going to send me to jail, and I'll never get out. Doesn't anyone understand? One of us has to die!"

One of us has to die, Maggie thought. Funny - why did she put it that way? Obviously, Brent had to die. So she could be free. She couldn't possibly have meant - anything else.

"Please," Lucy said. "I love him. Does that - does it mean anything?"

"Something," Maggie told her. There was an idea, a real thought growing in her head, struggling up through the clouds of darkness. A rational thought, for once. "Yeah. It means you'll make a great hostage."

Everyone stopped moving when she said that.

The darkness rose to a crescendo inside Maggie's head. She raced forward and grabbed the girl's arm. Lucy tried to fight her off but it was easy - effortless - to swat her other arm away. It wasn't like she could do any harm to Maggie.

Brent was the only one who could hurt her now. He was the only threat she had to deal with. She could just kill him, of course. She'd demonstrated that already. But there was another way to neutralize him, and it didn't entail taking on any more guilt. Well, maybe just a little more.

"I'm going to go now, Brent," she said, over her shoulder. "I'm taking Lucy with me. If you don't want her to get hurt, you'll let me go. If you want her to live, you won't follow me."

"Let me go," Lucy said, wobbling back and forth on her leg braces. Maggie ignored her and started walking toward the parking lot, toward her car.

Something resisted her. She looked back and saw Brent leaning up against the wall. He was holding Lucy's other arm. He didn't want her to take Lucy away.

Well, there was a solution for that, too. "Brent," she said, "I'm going to walk away now. I'm not going to stop. One of us really needs to let go of her. Otherwise this is going to be messy."

He had no choice. For once, she thought, he could know what that felt like, when you had no options left.

He let go.

She'd known he would. That was the problem with being the hero - everyone knew exactly what you would do in any given situation. When you were the villain, you were allowed to be surprising and spontaneous.

So she kicked the wall next to him, hard enough to send the whole second floor of the school sliding, crumbling, bouncing and pouring down on top of his head. He looked appropriately shocked as he threw his arms up to protect his head - but only for a moment, before he was completely buried in the debris that kept thundering down.

Lucy screamed as Maggie dragged her away.