-1A/N It’s exam term so I’m so behind with everything. I haven’t even betaed this chapter yet, and am only posting now because I said I would and it’s here already :S Hope it’s okay - was quite a fun one to write, and it’s about time that Tae rears his ugly head.

Young Performer of the Year

Chime, two days until the Purge

Rhianne stuck out her chest and pouted at her own reflection, imagining what she’d look like when she collected her award with an intense happiness. Her hair was tightly styled, her makeup perfect, angelic but devilish at the same time; in her opinion, she certainly looked like a star.

It really would be better if I wasn't going to do all of this alone

She was trying to be subtle, but she wasn't very good at it.

"Don't worry, Rhianne, you won't be alone," Phin said rather stiffly, sipping at a mug of black coffee.

She looked at him hopefully, wondering whether she'd actually been able to sway him with her red bee-stung lips and glittering eyes. The fact that she'd made an effort to get dressed in front of him couldn't have done much harm either. Scandal! Was Phineas Brown actually a sexual being?

You're coming with me?

She was being optimistic - Phin was her complete opposite and probably always would be. Of course he wasn’t coming; every bit of excitement within her, every little bit of pride was represented by a great big apathy in Phin.

"No. But you won't be alone. Clarice will be there."

She glared at him.

You know, I won this award and you'd think that maybe you'd bother to come and see me take it and, I don't know, be a decent friend or something.

She paused dramatically, narrowing her eyes.

You kissed me the other day, Phin; I've still got the bruises to show it! You don't kiss someone you don't respect, Phin, and if you respected me, you'd come.

Phin took another, larger, sip of coffee. "You know that I had reasons for that kiss, Rhianne. Have you thought any more about the moral of that story, by the way?"

Rhianne scowled at him.

Don't be a pervert and look at naked people in showers?

Phin glared back at her, knives in his eyes, but his voice remained calm, dull, unimpressed. "I'm sorry, Rhianne, but there are more important things in this world than you. We have two days left, and I just can't afford to waste them by going to awards ceremonies. Besides, I've got to lay low now that we've had people around looking for me."

Rhianne sat on the floor with her chin in her hands. She smiled at him crookedly. Ever since she'd looked into the seductive curves and dark spaces of a gun at close range, she'd been more aware of what she was involved in and longed for more chases, more danger. While Phin would be perfectly happy hiding for the rest of his life, Rhianne needed to fight, and her whole life had taught her how to win.

Tell me about them.

"They said they were sent by Silu."

She noticed the way that he winced as he said the boy's name. He'd tried to cover it up by taking another gulp of coffee, but he couldn't fool her, and she didn't understand why he felt that he needed to anyway. So he had feelings for the boy; they'd known each other for four years, so that was hardly unexpected. That was the problem with Phin - he hid everything, and it was burning him slowly from the inside out.

"Little ginger guy and a tall tattooed woman with pink hair. Not exactly your average Church type, but that's exactly why we need to be suspicious of them."

Maybe they were sent by Silu.

He looked up at her sharply. "No."

Why not?

He took a while to reply. She could tell that his mind was aching, and longed to make it better, but had no idea how. "Her eyes," Phin muttered. "Really pale. I've seen them before and - and that guy was not on our side."

Eyes? You're throwing people away who could know whether Silu is dead because of eyes. Phin, that is paranoid, even for you.

He grunted.

Now do me up.

She stood up and smiled, throwing her head back to exaggerate the graceful curve of her long neck. He obediently tied the back of her dress up tightly, while Rhianne sucked in. She smiled, satisfied, when he was done and marvelled at her lovely reflection some more.

Well, if you're not going to come, then at least wish me luck!

He smiled slowly. "Good luck."

You too. Make that bitch remember everything that she did.

"I'll try."

Will you come and celebrate with me afterwards? We'll get drunk, you'll like it. You can bring her if you want. Maybe she'll be more open with a little drink inside her.

Phin finished his coffee and nodded. "Perhaps."

And then we'll kill her together, Phin. We'll scratch out her mind until there's nothing left. Both of us. Me and you. And it will be the most brilliant thing we've ever done together.

She reached out and held his hand tightly, crushing his fingers between hers until they turned purple. She kissed it, dropped it, and walked away, thinking about breaking Polka with a huge grin on her perfect face.

Rhianne's translator was a middle aged woman named Clarice who she'd already used on several occasions. Clarice was pleasant and forgettable, so that while people were listening to her calm, soothing voice, attention would still be on Rhianne, and that was what mattered.

"You're alone," Clarice commented, looking surprised. "So you're not bringing any guests at all? Didn't you tell them there's free champagne?"

Rhianne smiled and told Clarice politely that she was alone because she didn't need anyone else, and that the champagne was only free because all of the nominees were too young to drink it. It felt weird to be using sign language again, but she got back into the habit pretty quickly.

"Well, you look lovely," Clarice said, before taking a generous sip of champagne.

Rhianne eyed it jealously, before frowning at all of the people sitting at the surrounding tables who were beginning to look at her curiously. She told herself that they were looking because they were jealous of her looks and talent, but she knew the truth; she hadn't been working in over six months, and here she was now, as if she'd just clawed her way out of whichever puff of smoke she'd disappeared into.

Marc Jamies, a seventeen year old singer and pianist who adorned the posters of ten year olds worldwide, was sitting on the table next to her and being particularly wide eyed. Rhianne gave him a long, hard glare before she turned back to Clarice.

"They're annoying you."

Rhianne nodded.

"Do you want me to translate for you to talk to them?"

She shook her head; there were far too many of them and she had better things to do with her time. She sighed and grabbed a small pastry thing offered to her by a haughty-looking waiter. As she chewed down violently on the food, she thought that this wasn't exactly going the way she'd imagined.

By the time that the opening speeches had started, Marc Jamies and two of his people had moved over to their table, and Marc was making idle conversation as an excuse to get a better view.

"Well," Clarice had said, noticing Rhianne's disgruntled expression. "This table is empty..."

Marc Jamies had his short, dark hair perfectly styled, and was wearing more make up than she was. Rhianne stared at his pretty brown eyes, wanting to reach into his skull and pluck them out of it.

"Hey, you're that mute lion tamer, aren't you?"

Unfortunately, Clarice didn't accurately translate what Rhianne gestured next because that might have resulted in them both being chucked out.

"Yes," said Clarice.

Marc looked at her quizzically for a few seconds, but accepted what he was told.

"So, if you don't mind me asking, what have you been doing for the past year?"

"Six months," said Clarice.

Rhianne grabbed the bottle of champagne from Clarice, and poured herself a generous helping, before downing it and smiling. Marc looked shocked - yeah, because he was so bloody perfect.

"Rhianne has been travelling," Clarice said, pulling the bottle away from her and looking over her shoulder to check that none of the journalists around the place had caught sight of Rhianne's underage drinking. "She has been using her well earned money to see the world."

"I heard you had a breakdown," Marc said, wide-eyed. "That the stress of working in the animal pit drove you mad."

It was not that which drove me mad, Marc, Rhianne signed.

"That's only a vicious rumour spread by the people who are jealous of Rhianne's talents," said Clarice.

Marc looked Rhianne up and down slowly, drinking every single inch of her up. "I never believed them," he breathed. "You're a beautiful woman, Rhianne. Would you like to go out for a walk after this?"

A hand crept onto her shoulder, and she felt his warm fingers pressing against her bare back. Rhianne knew that Marc was the kind of guy who could have any cheap girl he desired. He was handsome and talented, and one of Sweet Magazine's top hunks of the year. Clarice coughed nervously.

"You don't want a walk," she said blankly, translating what Rhianne had signed in the most cold, emotionless way possible. She knew Rhianne far too well to have missed out on her meaning, but Clarice wasn't quite as fond of playing with fire as her employer was.

Marc caught Rhianne's meaning. This probably had something to do with the way that she was smiling at him cheekily, and had one hand lightly placed on his knee, her bright red nails garish against his dark trousers.

"And what do I want to do?"

Rhianne raised her eyebrows slightly, dimly aware of the way that the introductory speech for the first award - done, this year, by a prolific actress - had begun.

He lowered his voice. "A lion tamer, hey? Kinky. What would you do to me, Rhianne? How would you tame me?"

She gave Clarice a quick smile; the woman looked worried. "Rhianne," she said slowly. "There are photographers everywhere. Don't do anything rash."

As if she cared. She leant over towards Marc until her lips grazed his ear. She breathed heavily into it, moving her lips to form a whisper of words.

"I'll come into your room in the middle of the night, and I'll bite you. I'll bite you up into little pieces until there's none of you left, I'll cut you up so small that you'll be nothing but atoms in the air and blood in my mouth. Now shut up and leave me alone; I am not one of your cheap sluts."

Marc laughed nervously, and called her a tease. Both him and his people left the table within five minutes, so Rhianne considered it a victory. And when all of the glasses on Marc Jamies' table exploded at the moment the first award was given, that was a victory too.

Rhianne was getting better at making things go bang, and she was quite enjoying it.

Marc Jamies, of course, ended up with the award for "most fanciable male", and a load of other people Rhianne didn't care about had to go up and collect their awards before she was even nominated. She took a few more sneaky glasses of champagne while she was waiting and, as Clarice finished off the rest, her translator seemed to care less and less. By the time that the final award, Young Performer of the Year, was announced, Clarice had an arm around her neck and was pouring out a generous helping into her champagne flute. Rhianne had even started to scribble down a few words about the Stanley story by now in the notepad she bought everywhere with her, actually bored enough to consider searching for a moral.

Running water is a block.

She knew that. She’d known that since she was a child, although she’d never tell Phin, of course.

The police were blocked. But they weren’t wet.

Was that it? Was that the moral? Surely not; it was far too obvious, far too unremarkable.

Tae had known about the after deaths coming.

Tae was a psychic. A powerful psychic who no one knew about at that point - except for Linta, of course. If they, whoever they were, didn’t know they were being listened to, and communicated telepathically…well that wasn’t completely implausible. So they were psychic too? Obviously. The Church and Police had hundreds of trackers under their thumbs. Nothing interesting there.

Fire. Rhianne wrote. Fire? There had been something odd about Stanley’s burns, and something faintly familiar about their patterns. And a feeling. A tingling in the air. Something that reminded her of…herself? She didn’t understand this at all, but underlined the word twice.

"Ooh," Clarice slurred. "Darling, darling, it's your award; the cameras will be on you, love."

She grabbed Rhianne's glass and quickly hid it under the table, spilling some on her dark dress and laughing idiotically.

The presenters of the award were two lummoxes who travelled around the country, entertaining children. Molly and Joe were both unashamedly attractive, with scary, huge white smiles and achingly bright outfits.

"And so here is the award that you've all been waiting for: The Young Performer of the year," said Molly, her smiley face shining brightly. "The people nominated for this award have not only entertained us, but excited us, amazed us, inspired us."

"This award celebrates people who are both young, and performers," said Joe. Ha ha ha. Rhianne wouldn't have been so bitter if she hadn't known how much these morons were getting paid for this crap.

They then went through a list of nominees - actors, comedians, musicians, and a lion tamer named Rhianne who was going to win.

And she did win, as she knew that she would, and smiled graciously as all the other nominees clapped and pretended to be happy for her. She stood up and walked towards the stage, knowing how good she looked and feeling fabulous.

The stage was filled with lights and stupidly hot. Rhianne walked over to Joe and Molly, gave them each a delicate kiss on the cheek, and seized her award, feeling that old thrill of victory fill her up. She looked into the audience, grinning, and took a deep, shuddering breath as she tried her best to commit all of this to memory. This wasn't her first award, and it wouldn't be her last, but victory never grew ugly.

Propping up the award on the podium, she began to sign, with Clarice translating the generic speech she'd spent a whole five minutes writing. All the time, she stared at the audience, at each of their faces, absorbing their admiration.

"Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I was destined for greatness. I was destined to do amazing things, things that only I could do, things that no one else dared to do. It was always a great dream of mine to...to..."

Clarice looked at Rhianne expectantly, but the girl had stopped signing completely. She was staring, transfixed at the audience, a strange, confused smile on her face.

"Honey?" Clarice hissed. "It was always a great dream to what?"

Rhianne didn't reply. Among the various faces in the audience, she'd caught sight of one painted white. The red mouth and sad eyes were unmistakable - each clown had an individual, licensed design - but it couldn't be him.

She mouthed his name at him, but he didn't blink.

She decided to wrap up her speech quickly, her heart racing in her chest.

"Is it stage fright, love?" whispered Clarice.

She shook her head, and started signing again, her eyes never leaving the clown's face.

"It was always a great dream of mine to collect this award, and to bring my field into the attention of the public, so thank you. I'd like to thank my translator, Clarice and my ring master, and all of the people who voted for me to win this. Thanks."

And then everyone stood up and started clapping. Straining to keep her eyes on Tae, Rhianne raced down off the stage and into the crowd below. As people stood up to shake her hand and congratulate her, she pushed them aside and rushed forward.

She ran into the foyer. He was running through the door so she reached out with her mind, straining to stop him. Tae was stronger than her, and broke away easily, storming onto the winter street outside and leaving her oddly tired. She followed him out into the cold and was hit by biting wind and vicious, pelting snow. Moaning in frustration and panting heavily, she peered around for the man she hadn't seen since that time they'd played cards in Charlie's casino, the time he'd knocked her out unconscious for four weeks.

She couldn't see further than five feet in front of her own face and screamed silently in frustration, holding the award so tightly to her chest that bruises were sure to bloom there like roses.