Patience
Trust.
It’s a complicated notion, one whose dictionary definition doesn’t always apply to it properly. Trust lets you move into the dangerous unknown, often on shaky foundations - foundations built on some assumption of understanding, security, and loyalty.
And how could Matt know you?
How could he assume he understood you enough to trust you?
Based on what - the fact that you knew how to stitch his physical wounds or that you’d read into his emotional ones?
Was it that you pursued violence in the name of some greater justice, regardless of whether your actions could be considered just on their own, in the same way that he undeniably did?
You drew the line at killing, at least.
If that’s all it takes for someone to be trustworthy, this world is seriously fucked.
You did understand, though, that trust in the world of after-hours “justice” is hard to find and even harder to measure.
But from Matt, it seemed to mean something more than alliance.
He trusts you.
And you told him you trust him, too - but do you really?
The statement wasn’t a lie; if it had been, he would have called you out on it, anyway.
To you, though, trust has always been rife with restrictions and complications, tainted with betrayal and rolled over repeatedly under some guise of change, of newness - of hope.
And, time and time again, that hope was dashed.
That trust was destroyed.
It started with your father, whom you trusted despite his painful indifference toward you. Life in his home had its fair share of ups and downs, but these were all within a tiny interval of change. Every experience was muted, ignorable - more emotional neglect than anything else.
Still, you expected more from him - expected more from your dad.
You were stolen, dragged from your home under a lightless sky, with no answer to your cries aside from a bag over your head and chains that dug roughly into your wrists. You fought day and night with battling voices of love and reason in your head - love, in believing your father would come for you, and reason willing you to accept that as much as you had been abducted, you’d been abandoned all the same.
Once you accepted that he didn’t care whether you were still alive, let alone where you were, that trust you had in your father finally died.
It was the reasonable conclusion after all his lack of search for you - his lack of effort in bringing his dear daughter home. In this new, perilous life of yours, that calculated, honest sense of reason had to win.
Love could kill you - but reason would let you live.
Months of unexplainable torture masked as “training” bled you even drier of any hope you’d once had. You were poked at, prodded, strapped to tables when you refused to behave, and beaten when you were compliant.
Learning to fight back took you longer than you thought they’d expected. In your childhood, you weren’t a fighter - you were taught to stay quiet, nondescript, out-of-the-way so as not to disturb your father in his work or in his consumption of single malt whiskey.
But, in this new, torturous place, running from confrontation in careful, sneaky silence wouldn’t help.
They’d only hit you harder.
Eventually, though - you swung back.
The first swing was terrifying.
Your main trainer - a tall, broad, dark-haired man with a bitter grin and a pointed, glassy glare - had just driven his fist into your gut for the fourth or fifth time. You stumbled back, weakly clutching at yourself while trying to heave oxygen back into your young, broken lungs. He almost laughed.
“That all you got?”
You clenched your jaw, refusing to submit to their demands, refusing to let yourself succumb to the violence they wished to draw from you.
“Making this easy for me, girl.”
His brows, dark and thick, burrowed low over his darker eyes, which drove more harshly into you than any one of his many jabs. He had scars beneath the outer corner of each eye, thin lines slightly lighter than the rest of his skin, stretching upwards from his cheekbones toward his temples. Since they didn’t ever give you their real names, you decided to call him Scarface - an easily-identifiable moniker based on some movie you recalled your father watching. You were too young to know or care what “Scarface” really meant, but in any case, the name worked.
You looked to the sides of the mat, pleading with your tired eyes for mercy, but receiving none. All the bystanders watched you as if you were some caged animal, some piece of meat being hunted - a meal for all of them to enjoy.
“We talked about this. I can only be so patient for so long. You don’t want any more needles in your neck, do you?” Scarface scorned you, every word bathed in steaming, filthy contempt. “Or maybe you like the way all that power makes you feel.”
No, you thought to yourself, feeling your face twist in anticipative terror. No. Please, God - no.
He grinned. “Now that one got you. Let’s see - you win this, and you get a day off. But I win,” he began, taking a slow stalk forward, his hulking upper body casting shadows over you, “and we up the dose.”
You shook your head desperately, your expression melting into anguish at the thought of such torture, and stepped backward - only to trip over the rising roots of all your nerves. You leaned back into another stumbling step and fell onto the mat with a grand thud.
Scarface only laughed.
“You think I care if you’re on the ground? You think I give a shit about your daddy?” As he stepped toward you, your body frozen with fear and acceptance of an imminent continuation of your suffering, the man’s furious gaze and frightening smile set your soul into flame.
“Think we both know he never gave a shit about you.”
You still didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe - entirely in a state of freeze.
Scarface reached you where you lay and stepped each foot on either side of your waist. The tower of him above you shot alarm through every vein, every corner, nook, and cranny of your mind, body, skin - even filtering through your sweat. He lowered closer to your level, one knee to the ground, one hand reaching out to your cheek. You stiffened and tried to pull away, but you couldn’t move; you were only able to shiver in disgust as his thick fingertips dragged from your brow down your cheek, wiping away a stray tear.
And the way he whispered your name was the most horrific part of it all.
Before you were Selena, before you were the Nightingale - you were still just you. This man took that, contorted it, morphed it into warped metal, shards of glass and oozing, rancid pools of toxic waste.
Every utterance of your name from his twisted lips made you wish you’d never been born, made you wish this name wasn’t yours.
You felt this in your core as Scarface said your name, whispered it like a hallowed secret when you both knew it would earn no devotion unless you gave it up.
His next whispers, though, drove fire down into your very soul.
“I bet your mother loved you even less,” he hissed, spitting the words at you like bullets. “You know - before you killed her.”
At that moment, your vision clouded at the edges.
Everything in the room grew dark, invisible, nonexistent.
All except for his narrowed, fuming eyes, his gaze of mockery, the grin you knew as a constant threat.
A broken shriek ripped from your lungs as you drove a hand up to claw it down his face - too fast for him to anticipate. You felt his skin tear under your jagged fingernails, felt blood and sweat collect beneath them. He grunted and swatted your hand away, just in time for your other hand to drive into his jaw.
You didn’t think. Didn’t feel.
Well - that wasn’t completely true.
You did feel something, something that electrified your nerves, sent flames licking down every vein with each quickened thump of your heart. You were tasting a hint of that one something you’d never truly known.
Power.
Only slightly fazed, the man grabbed your wrists and pinned them above your head - but you were far from finished.
You spat into his eyes and he blinked back, giving you just enough of a window to drive your knee up into his groin. At his groan, you did it again, and forced the other knee up just after the first. His grip on your wrists weakened, and you pulled your hands up to wrap them around his throat, squeezing upwards until you pressed against his jaw. Your still-young legs were small enough to move up through the space between his thighs, and, pulling them through, you wrapped them around his waist. With far less effort than anyone should expect, thirteen-year-old you flipped this grown man onto his back with an unceremonious smack.
You didn’t pause at that action, though.
Didn’t waste a second to marvel at your strength.
You released your nimble fingertips from his neck - flushed red from your biting grip - and punched him.
Hard.
One hand slid up the back of his head, roughly securing him by his hair so the other fist could ram into his jaw, his nose, his eyes.
Scarface struggled at first, thrashed and shook and fought at you from below, but you were so far above him, so deep into this new euphoria of power - the ecstasy of finally, finally, tasting the sensation of what it meant to be in control - that none of it fazed you.
Eventually, he stopped thrashing - but you didn’t.
You hit your tormentor until his eyes rolled back, until thick blood flowed from his nose, flowed from a new cut in his lower lip, shards of red glimmering from the claw marks you’d left across his skin.
Strong hands curled roughly around your arms, working to drag you away from Scarface, to stop you - and it took them quite some effort to do it, but they pulled you back.
The world around you was still unfocused. Blurry and bleary-eyed, your pupils were dilated to the highest level at this man, this enemy, lying still on the ground. Your legs dragged over his as you were hauled away, still thrashing, still furious.
Scarface coughed, sputtered, and tried to sit up - but the most he could do was curl onto his side. The guards at your side held you to attention, and you stood tall, breathing heavily, dripping from the sweat at your brow to the blood smeared over your knuckles.
As the man finally sat up, he eyed you pointedly, all the joking ridicule gone from his expression.
His eyes were just as glassily taunting, just as darkly threatening, but his grin was a thing of the past.
Slowly, Scarface got to his feet and - hiding a limp - walked toward you with slow strides.
Normally, you’d avoid his eyes.
This time, though, you stared him down.
He reached you, coming closer until you could smell his sweat, taste the blood still seeping from his wounds - the blood you’d drawn. You kept your eyes trained on him, worked to make them as silently threatening as his.
After a beat, Scarface snickered, sneered, and leaned down to speak as if you weren’t grown enough to understand him at his full height.
“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
You never trusted those captors. You did, however, learn how to coexist with them.
Dreaming of escape was a daily practice, but at a certain point, you decided that fighting back was crucial if you were actually going to survive. Following their rules was all you could do to stay alive, whether you agreed with what they told you or not.
Those torturous months shaped you into something both fearless and trust-opposed - and when the compound was raided by an enemy group, you almost didn’t go with them.
But an out was an out.
This new group cared for you for months. At first, as they helped you heal from your suffering and unpack your traumatic dip into violence, you felt safe.
You felt that warm, comfortable peace leak back into your psyche:
Trust.
But, as those months stretched into a year, you were drawn once more into something darker than you were ready for.
Slowly, conversations about what you were forced to do became ones about what you were capable of. The discussions of your trauma became lessons on how you could apply what you’d learned, leading to more lessons still on your captors - who they were, what they wanted, and, above all, how important it was to take them down.
You were drawn back into fighting more easily than a younger you would have liked to admit. Looking back now, it shocked you how much you’d aged from only thirteen to fourteen - how much your resolve had been destroyed and reconstructed into something new, different, alien.
An older man revealed himself to you at the year mark after you escaped from your first captors. He was drawn into the mat like all the others you’d fought, and you were - well, perplexed, to say the least.
They want me to beat up a blind guy?
You voiced your concerns, but he knocked the wind out of you before you could finish your first sentence.
In his few interactions with you, this man taught you many harsh lessons, shut you up many times over, and explained a number of supposedly irrefutable truths to you.
First, your original captors were the enemy, the epitome of all things dark and despicable in the world.
Second, this team you were now a part of would one day enter into some sort of war with said enemy.
And, the most shocking point of all - that, apparently, you would lead the charge.
You were too battered to care. All your suffering had left you too broken and tired to give a shit about some war you never asked to be a part of.
Besides - a fucking war? You’ve got to be kidding.
You fought him on it, but he fought you back, relentless and free of any consideration of what you'd already been through at your young age.
Simply refusing wasn’t an option, so you planned your escape.
Oh, trust.
Laughable.
Just another hope dashed.
You got out just a few weeks past your fifteenth birthday. After what could only be described as a treacherous escape and exhausting journey, you found yourself on a bus to New York City, paid for with some money you’d scrounged up along the way - by some methods of which you weren’t particularly proud. Manhattan wasn’t exactly the greatest place for homeless fifteen-year-olds, and it wasn’t long before some cops whisked you away with them - toward foster care.
This, though, was the first time in your life that you thought real luck actually looked your way.
Your foster family was loving, kind, giving, and compassionate - and they never asked anything of you but to accept their love. And, gradually, you learned to love them back - learned to trust them. Adopting a teenager is almost unheard of, but somehow, this family loved you enough for you to become the exception. They gave you a place where you could restart your life, leave behind the past of who you were, and move forward as someone with a real home, with a family - with not only trust, but love.
It was everything you could have ever asked for.
Thinking of them now, though, just drew bile up the back of your throat.
They abandoned you, too.
She abandoned you.
So much for love - so much for fucking trust.
And now - for Matt to claim that he trusted you?
It was different when you said it. Trust, to you, could be canceled out, rendered null, as changeable as the weather, more fragile than a leaf in the wind. It meant something, sure, but a part of you would always be preparing for the moment it would be rendered misplaced, wrongly calculated, improperly applied under some assumption that a person actually cared about you.
Hearing that someone else trusted you, though, after years of your ability to make choices being torn from you, your perspective so warped through all the abuse that you didn’t know whether you could ever truly trust yourself?
That drew up all sorts of emotional bullshit.
Because maybe, just maybe - you really were the person all these figures in your life claimed you were.
A fighter.
Warmongering.
Heartless.
Violent.
Cruel wherever necessary.
A weapon of the Hand, a weapon of the Chaste - it was all the same to you.
And, most heartbreakingly:
An ungrateful, abandoning, loveless daughter.
But, by saying he trusted you, Matt unknowingly told you that you were none of these things.
Or - he told you that, even if you were all of these things, he would follow your lead regardless.
That despite your weaknesses, flaws, faults - your voice was worthy of not only being heard, but being listened to.
Not to mention he said he loves the sound of it.
Still, you couldn’t just shake off those years of torment, years of your confidence and capability stripped bare and beaten until you were compliant. You’d been shaped and reshaped into the perfect soldier, young hands molded into talons of impenetrable steel, darker than the midnight sky.
Deep inside, you hardly trusted yourself; how could Matt possibly trust you?
It stewed feelings of affection and apprehension within you in equal measure, distracting you to no end, swirling haunted memories and horrible fears to the surface until your mind churned and sputtered with waves of inner turmoil.
After everything, it seemed the greatest war you had to lead was the one waging within your soul - you against you, pain against pain, the past against the present against the future. It was a war you couldn’t really lose, but could never truly win.
Ray kicked at you from under the table, and you shot your head up, skyrocketing back to earth from the cloud of your daydreams. You saw Janelle's expectant, icy eyes staring down at you and realized you had totally zoned out.
"Right, Selena?"
Ray's shoe knocked against your ankle once more. You nodded yes.
"Right. Of course."
Janelle nodded back at you and turned toward the rest of your colleagues seated around the boardroom's large table.
"That's why this team, this group of the most hardworking individuals our division has known in recent history, is handling the Velluchi case."
You reached for the pen and notepad in front of you and wrote out a note, sliding it just close enough to Ray so he could read it out of the corner of his eye:
What was that about?
After a beat, Ray grabbed his own pen and pad and scrawled out a response, moving his paper a bit further forward, more in your field of view:
Just a morale-boosting thing. You're good.
Head in the clouds today, O'Malley?
You bit back a smile and kicked at his foot under the table.
A while back, you and Ray had developed an emergency system of sorts, in the event that the two of you were seated together for a meeting and one of you zoned out. If the zoned-out person was posed a simple question, one nudge or kick or prod would mean they should say "yes," and a double-prod meant they should say "no." If both of you were zoned out or the question was complex, well, you'd have to improvise or take the loss - but it was a good failsafe wherever possible.
You both worked incredibly hard anyway, so it wasn't like you or Ray to zone out in a meeting. At this meeting, though, you were more than justified in doing so. It had been a long day - many loose ends to tie up in everyone's research, plus some miscommunication between Janelle and her higher-ups that she just had to fix before the meeting could begin. It hadn't started until 7:30pm - and, although meetings like this didn't usually take long, you were worried about the timing.
Your phone had buzzed twice in the last ten minutes, and you were almost without question that it was Matt, looking to make sure you were all set for the night ahead. You couldn't easily just take your phone out in the middle of a meeting - especially one led by Janelle - but this was getting to be a concern.
"So, as I've detailed in your case briefings," Janelle continued, striding slowly around the table as she spoke, "we're splitting into teams of four for each respective section of the work - two LOAs, two LTAs, to cover the grunt work and solidify leadership."
You glanced around the table at your coworkers. Dex sat pensive and relaxed, newly and officially minted in his Level One Agent status, his posture a bit straighter than it tended to be.
Trying to show how well he fits as a One, of course.
Murph seemed to have totally zoned out, which you were deeply grateful for. Indira and Blake were each dutifully taking notes, and the two other agents on the team - Beth and Maya - simply listened closely to Janelle's words. Tammy Hattley sat across from you, taking her own notes and glancing up at Janelle from time to time.
"One group will handle the older Velluchi generation - their political interests, motivations, and connections that have facilitated our current situation, and how their current status relates to Marcus Velluchi's fate. The other group will be working on the younger set, particularly their involvement with newer organizations and the associated complications they've entangled themselves in, including - of course - how this connects back to Marcus. In any case, however, we will all be part of preparation and execution for any field missions we take on."
Okay. Not a bad plan.
"So," Janelle reached the head of the table, flipping a page over from the top of a stack of papers. "The first group, tackling the family's background and its legacy into the present, will be Indira, Maya, Beth, and Blake."
You nodded, comfortable with the grouping. Those four always worked hard, and you had no doubt they'd do an excellent job with the assignment.
Plus, I get Ray!
But that peace was short-lived; your heart sank as you remembered who else was on your team.
"And in the next group, taking on the modern Velluchi clan and all their vices, we have Ray, Dex, Murph, and Selena."
Beneath the pleasant expression plastered over your face, you held back a groan.
Dex and Murph.
Just my luck.
As you considered this next step for a moment, you felt your phone buzz in your pocket for the third time.
Your jaw tightened, the blazer you wore feeling too close to your skin.
This is taking way too long.
"Janelle?" You offered, clearing your throat.
She turned to you at a leisurely pace, her matte-red lips pursing, eyes winged with black liner boring holes through your skin. It felt to you like her black-tinted lashes were wrapping their soft tendrils around your neck, only to squeeze harder than any rope or chain.
"I assume that - well, since we know the plan and know the groups, I mean-"
"You want to go home, Selena?" She purred, sarcasm edging her tone. Though yes, she did intimidate you on a certain level, your priority was not this meeting, nor was it her insufferable ego - whether she was your boss or not.
"I have some personal matters to attend to tonight, yeah."
Janelle nodded with an "ah," her lips staying parted through a breath, lifted as her eyebrows were. Tammy's brows raised at you in the same way, and you swore you caught Dex giving Murph a look from across the table. Your cheeks burned, but you had to try something.
Although your feelings about Matt's recent admission were complicated, to say the least - you couldn't leave him hanging.
Not for something as potentially monumental as this night.
And if you were going to be able to protect Jessica?
You had to get the hell out there - and soon.
"See, Ms. O'Malley, we all would like to get home to our… personal matters. But, we care about this world we're living in," Janelle stretched an arm out as if gesturing to this world she spoke of, "so here we stay until the job is done."
"Of course. You know I know that better than anyone. It's just that-"
Ray's foot bumped yours twice under the table as if telling you to shut. up.
"-I have a prior commitment tonight that I can't miss."
Janelle's high chuckle was haughty, edging on the cold side of a burn.
"Well," she turned to address the rest of the group as if you were some barely relevant cog compared to the rest of the machine. "One thing we can draw from this is that patience is of the utmost importance with a case as complex and intricate as this one." She drew her phone out from her pocket and, after a glance, gave a tired smirk. "8:15, ladies and gentlemen. Not exactly the latest night we've had."
That drew a laugh from everyone in the room but you.
The crane of Janelle's neck was serpent-like, slow and slithering as she turned her gaze back to you. She addressed you with a phrase you still didn't understand, the condescension of it provoking you like almost nothing else, her silver tongue blaring red.
"Remember your position, Selena."
You flicked your tongue out over your lips, shifting your jaw as Janelle turned back toward the table.
This bitch.
The meeting moved at a snail's pace. Tammy gave a long-overdue presentation on mission ethics, which had you kicking at Ray to make sure he didn't fall asleep. Even Indira, ever the over-achiever, had her boredom revealed on and off by fluttering eyes, and you didn't think you'd ever seen Dex yawn this much in one sitting.
You had your phone out under the table, just discreet enough for you to check it every few minutes - and, every few minutes, your anxiety doubled.
8:28pm.
8:39pm.
8:43pm.
Three - no, now four - missed calls from Matt.
You clenched your jaw.
If this doesn't end soon - fuck, I don't even care anymore. I'm bolting.
"And, to sum up," Tammy declared, setting her papers down on the table, "I'm sure you all know how crucial it is to ensure that every team member is adequately protected. We do whatever it takes, but always within reasonable limits of the health and safety of our coworkers."
The room nodded on a drained, sleepy autopilot, nearly past their own "reasonable limits" of this never-ending workday.
"So, on that note - you're free to go, guys."
You fought off an audible sigh.
Finally.
A quick goodbye to Ray and the rest of the room took you no time at all, and you were off, swooping away as fast as your flats would carry you. Your boots were tucked into your bag, but your suit was already under your work clothes. Although the heat was mildly uncomfortable, you decided it'd be best to keep your regular clothes on for as long as possible. Any association between the Nightingale and your motorcycle had to be kept to a minimum.
In any case, your priority was getting to Jessica's office.
Shit. And letting Matt know where the hell I've been.
In the elevator - alone, thank goodness - you dialed Matt's number.
No answer.
You tried again but to no avail. Matt was likely already caught up in something, or, at the very least, not wanting to get into a phone call while he was prepared to strike or infiltrate - or whatever it was that this night might require.
No matter.
You were on your way.
And - he said he trusted you, anyway, so he'd just have to trust that you'd be there.
Your eyes fluttered with a sigh that racked your lungs, mind flitting to the memory of Scarface's fists knocking the wind out of them.
Trusting a woman who barely trusts herself?
Who could just as easily have been a weapon for needless destruction as she is a weapon of the FBI - and a weapon of her own, for better or worse?
Bad judgment on his part.
You bit your lip, telling yourself your eyes were dry, despite how much you were blinking.
Wouldn't trust me if he knew who I really am.
If he knew what I'm capable of.
A shake of your head brought your senses back under control.
Not the time for emotional revelations.
Time to go to work.
Settle yourself.
Breathe.
Focus.
The second the elevator door opened, you soared through it, making a beeline through the underground parking space toward your motorcycle. You kicked off your flats and replaced them with your boots, tossing the shoes and the bag behind a pillar - you could just get them another day. Lastly, you double checked the sheath strung tightly around your waist, beneath your work shirt and blazer. It held some daytime necessities tonight - your apartment keys - as well as your mask, gloves, and the classic weight of your knives, sturdy and strong at your lower back.
Just in case.
In less than a minute, your helmet was on, and you were off, speeding into the thick of the night.
The city that never sleeps was wide awake, as always. Bright lights shone through nearly every window in colors from golden yellow to electric blue. These lights blurred beneath your helmet's dark tint and the whizz of your bike through the streets, curving sharp lefts and rights and shooting straight ahead with all the vigor of an arrow.
You smelled salt and exhaust, metal and meals and alcohol in the air, scents coiling from alleys to bar patios and storefronts. Restaurant patrons unknowingly clinked and cheered, groups of friends trailed sidewalks in loud and happily oblivious conversation, and the traffic held a steady rhythm of honks and whirrs and engine revs, echoing around you, even as you cut through it all.
Alias Investigations was just a few blocks away now. The small office space Jessica had secured for herself wasn't much, but it did the job - and it kept a hard line between her client interactions and her home life. In her industry, that line was crucial.
You knew she could protect herself, though. You knew all about her abilities, all about the remarkable strength she carried within her body - both physical and mental. She'd told you everything during your closer years.
Sometimes, you'd wondered whether Jessica would be a good confidante for your experiences with the Hand and the Chaste. At times, though, she'd prod into your childhood, and you'd clam up. Jessica respected that. Although it was good of her, you sometimes wished she'd pry further, just so you'd have that final push, that last excuse, to get it all off your chest.
But no.
Unsafe enough to draw her into things without knowing the backstory.
Not knowing could very well be what keeps her alive.
It's not always a choice between reason and love. Sometimes reason is love's consequence - the only option love will allow.
You were careening through the traffic, whizzing past cars and trucks and pedestrians - and, of course, the moment your speed hit a fever pitch, the next stoplights turned a blaring red.
Shit.
Not wanting to be pulled over at a time like this, you slowed to a stop. At the very least, it gave you a chance to check your phone.
8:59pm.
Cutting it real fucking close.
You willed the stoplight to change, visualized the forest green of wooded hills and the summer green of grassy valleys, held emerald - dark and sparkling - in your mind's eye.
The wait was excruciating, and the second the light shifted, you were off-
-but you barely made it past the intersection.
A chorus of thunderous booms resounded from around you. Cars stopped and swerved at the noise alone - and you skidded, pulling the bike to a desperate halt so you wouldn't end up ground against the pavement.
The skyline had gone from a deep, blackened navy to something scattered with blooming unravelings of vibrant orange and brilliant yellow. You had to squint to see; it was so bright. Scents and sensations of smoke and chaos grew in the biting air. The noise drove through your chest, echoing around your furiously-pounding heart.
Explosions?
Bombs?
That was their plan?
And, as you questioned this seemingly-outrageous event, it clicked.
Anatoly must be dead for a reason.
Must have fucked up somehow.
Maybe his murder wasn't the only response to whatever line he crossed.
Your nostrils flared. Because not only was this a message for the Russians - this was a message for Jessica.
And, in turn, a message for you.
Despite the stakes, something of sureness unfurled in your gut.
Must be pressing the right buttons.
You mounted your bike and soared forward, your grip clenched that much tighter with ferocious determination. You'd gotten under their skin, dug your nails in just enough so that their bloodstream scented the air around you. They were threatened, cornered, fighting back like some scared, desperate animal because you were on the right path - but you'd have to think about that later.
There would be other times to consider your wins.
Now - now you had to hold your own.