The Mediator #7: Battle

Summary: Involves Paul, Susannah, and the present rarity of mediators, as well as the invocation of an old, old tradition.
Author's Note: Written because I really disliked how the series ended. From the previous comment, you may thusly deduct that I do not own Meg Cabot's The Mediator. Spoiler-free, except for relative bits at the very end – nothing particularly integral to the plot. You may proceed.

Crit, as ever, is welcomed.

CHAPTER ONE

"Did you really think it was over, Suze?"

Let me tell you, straight up, that I'm not the bravest girl on the block. Not that I'm a total wimp or anything – I certainly don't scream when a spider comes into the room; you think arachnids have ears? – but there are some things that I really just can't stand.

Of course, after the dance, I hadn't really expected this to be counted among my problems.

"Paul?" I said politely – well, politely for me, anyway, which involves me not planting my new leather boot on his chest and demanding to know what he's up to – as I turned around. He's changed, I reminded myself. He's just another ordinary guy stalking around the school now. Nothing to be worried about. Although, to be truthful, if Paul qualified as 'normal', all the girls in school would probably die happily of cardiac arrests within the first few seconds of walking into their classes. Paul is incredibly good-looking; not just in the "boy next door" kind of way, but in a way that makes your stomach turn over and pretend it's a gymnast.

I knew from personal experience. Not that I wanted to, but hey, the truth.

He was grinning at me – which probably wasn't helping my tentative cred with Kelly (we'd established that I didn't want Paul, and that he was never going to get his sneaking fingers anywhere near me ever again, and she'd agreed to shut up about me) – and certainly wasn't doing anything good to my heartbeat. I'm going out with Jesse – and don't get me wrong, I think Jesse's a lot better than Paul – but it didn't prevent my heart from making wild, leaping gestures.

My heart is obviously a very fickle agent with its own exercise program.

"You wanted to say something?" I raised my eyebrows and tried to look as unwelcoming as possible. I mean, even if Paul had apologized, there was still something in me that just couldn't trust that smile. I had a ghost wandering around the park near the apartment when I was young, the grandmotherly type, who'd tell me about the old days when she'd still been alive. She would weed and take care of her garden, and it would have been like Eden, apparently, were it not for the weasels.

The moral of this story, she'd told me, was that I should never trust any animal with perfect teeth. I never really had the heart to explain to her that I'd seen a weasel by then, and 'perfect' was not on my list of adjectives to describe its jaws. I hadn't forgotten her advice, though; it was on the forefront of my mind, particularly when I was confronted with the specimens that would have probably brought her out in a rash of sharp gardening tools.

"I want to say a lot of things." Paul said pleasantly, breaking past my occupation with weasel teeth with his own smile. "But we may not have that much time to talk about it, so I guess I'll have to hurry. Unless you want to meet me for lunch…?" He cocked an eyebrow up questioningly before smiling – apparently my expression was very funny. I resisted the urge to punch him; Kelly Preston would have my head if I tried it, and our truce would fly out the window.

Which, I reminded myself, would be a Bad Thing, regardless of how good the memory of his crunching skull against my knuckles would feel.

"Just get on with it." I told him, and he sighed theatrically, placing his fingers over his chest.

"As you wish," he told me, and he smiled again – that brilliant, heartbreaking smile. "We'll start with a little history lesson. You should be used to those by now. Do you know why mediators are so rare?"

I made a big show about thinking about it – stroking an invisible beard, staring musingly at the ceiling, the whole shebang. He ignored it, still grinning rakishly as if he'd thought that I'd done something genuinely funny. Finally, I gave up. "I don't know," I said firmly, "and I don't really care. The Salem Witch Trials? The fact that people hate supernatural things and burned people like that in the past? Mediators have delicate minds and tend to suicide after they realize that they can see ghosts?"

"Wrong, wrong, and wrong." He said, smiling as though in sympathy with my mistakes. It would have been a lot more believable if he hadn't looked so amused at the same time. "Suze, didn't you learn anything from those lessons?"

"Nothing that I want to remember." I retorted. I'd learned some important things during those hours, yes, but they didn't make up for the fact that the majority of the time I'd spent with him supposedly studying had involved a lot more intimacy than you'd get in, say, my history class. "Get to the point already."

"And what makes you think that I'm not already at the point?" He inquired pleasantly. I gave him a Look, and he sighed again before continuing. "Mediators used to be very common, Suze – why else do you think people kept reporting ghosts all the time? They've died down quite a lot by now, though, and even if it's for some of the reasons that you've named, those still aren't the most important reasons."

I tried to be blasé about it. The sooner he got bored of whatever little game he was playing, the sooner I could get out of there and get to class. "I'd ask you what the reasons were," I drawled, "but you're probably going to tell me in a couple of seconds anyway, so I'll save my words for later." Why wasn't the bell ringing? And why was Paul acting like this when he'd been perfectly nice at the dance?

He'd apologized for everything, in fact, and I'd believed him. Not just because Jesse was there and it's hard not to believe in the best things when someone you love is around, but because he'd sounded truthful about it. And even though he can sound like anything he wants – again, knowledge through personal experience – and not have it cost him a thing, something had told me that what he was saying about it being a mistake, and that we should be friends, had been real.

Apparently I hadn't known him as well as I'd thought.

"The mediators," Paul said softly, "were usually self-possessed people with strong wills. They had to be, considering the hazards of their profession and everything that could go wrong if they didn't manage to get the ghosts to do what they wanted them to do."

"And what does that have to do with anything?" I played for time – for anything to keep him from getting to the main point. He was smiling roguishly now, and whatever he had to say when he got there could not be good.

I know, I know, delaying things doesn't prevent them from actually happening. Can I help it if I'm just a little optimistic?

He laughed, and the sound sent a chill up my spine. The kind of chill you couldn't just get by dumping a spider on my head. (Unless it was, you know, a tarantula or something.) "Don't you know what happens when you put so many self-possessed, determined individuals in a room, Suze?" He asked. His eyes shone with a private joke – one that I didn't really want to hear the punchline to. He went on without my answer – a complete change from the Paul of yesterday – and said, simply, "They don't get along. At all. Think about it; so many people who all believed in different things. And in the old days, belief was belief. It wasn't just something you did every Sunday, but was incorporated into every inch of your life until you couldn't sleep for being sick of your beliefs. It was something you could build on, something you could kill for."

I pictured a world full of Paul-Slater-type mediators, and shuddered. I didn't know if it was what he was thinking of, but the implications alone were giving me a bad feeling. A world full of Paul Slaters… Even if they managed to save the ghosts from themselves, I wasn't sure that they could save each other. "So you mean…"

"Mediator wars." He spoke the word softly, but his face seemed to light up at the very thought of it. "It seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it? The negotiators for peace, going to war. But of course, back then, the mediators were so numerous that the places had to be divided into territories. Crossing the boundaries of those territories meant that you risked the wrath of the other mediator, and all the powers at their disposal. There were a lot more disputes than there were territories, though, when I was studying them," he went on, "and eventually I realized. It didn't have anything to do with territory, but with honor, and what they felt had been infringed upon.

He quirked an eyebrow up, and I felt the dreading sensation again, fluttering at the base of my stomach. The bell had to be late – had to be. It was going to ring any second now, surely.

"There are traditional words to be said at the beginning of the declaration of a feud before it can be considered official; a match between only the challenger and the challenged." He said. "Shall I say them?"

"You're crazy." I snapped. "What's wrong with you? You were acting perfectly normal during the dance—"

"I was acting," he corrected me. "Period." He shrugged his shoulders in the lithe, graceful movement of a predator. "What can I say, Suze—" he flashed me a smile as bright as a knife's edge, "I have an addiction to happy endings. I just had to let you have your moment before I let the rest of the world come crashing down on you again. I'm not entirely selfish, you know."

I snorted loudly. The day Paul Slater did something that didn't relate, directly or not, towards his own well-being and happiness, would be the day I pulled off my new leather boots and ate them.

He looked hurt. "I'm not." He said, but so carelessly that I knew that he had to be joking. "But if you haven't noticed, it's over now, and I'm quite free to declare a war on you, Susannah Simon, until I am granted satisfaction and alleviation from the wound made upon my pride. Whether this satisfaction comes from negotiation or inflictions returned upon you has yet to be determined, and I name myself as open to either of them."

The words didn't sound like something Paul would say. They didn't sound like Paul at all for a moment, though I didn't understand why. Then, it suddenly dawned upon me: this was sort of the way ghosts sounded, only even more faded than they had been, as if the words had been twisted through translation and the whispers of spirits to become what it was now upon the cool and easy tongue of a teenager out for vengeance.

I stepped towards him, balling my fists. "Are you crazy?" I hissed. All thoughts of my appearance, of Kelly Preston and The Truce, and of the fact that close physical proximity before had always brought to mind intimacies between us, had vanished into thin air, leaving me with a fuming fury. "What are you declaring a war on me for?"

He smiled down at me beatifically, as if he thought himself a saint. "For pride." He said lightly. "For the sake of what you have inflicted upon me. Suze, do you really need reasons from me? I thought you'd marked me down as the villain of whatever little drama you imagine your life to be. Surely you don't want to complicate it by convincing yourself that I actually have a heart of any kind, do you?"

I lashed out at him with my fists, and he caught my hands, laughing as if it were a game between us.

"Suze," he murmured fondly, his fingers sliding neatly around my wrists in a shiveringly cool gesture. "you don't want to get in trouble with the teachers again, do you? You've been doing so well lately, too – and I should hate to be the reason that brings you down again."

"Let – go – of – me." I managed to grit out. Perfect start to a morning; have my reformed enemy turn out to be less reformed than he'd appeared to be. Then, proceed to have him declare a war on me; the kind of war that hasn't been fought for probably ages, ever since the mediator population started thinning out.

He smiled coolly. "Promise me that you won't try to kick me, punch me, anything like that for the rest of the day. I'll give you this first day to get used to what's happened."

"I'm not going to promise."

"Do you really want to go to class like this?" He asked, his eyes half-shuttered with amusement. "I can hold this all day long; I don't mind. I'm asking for your benefit."

"I promise." I managed to get out. As if this were some sort of cue, the bell rang. Paul glanced at it approvingly; apparently the schedule was working out for someone, even if that someone wasn't me. He released my hands, tipped my a casual nod as I rubbed them absentmindedly. His expression was just barely on this side of polite – and only because that veneer of politeness went with everything he did. It didn't mean anything any more than his constant smiles, his elegant way of moving, the smoothness of his kisses.

"I'll see you around then, Suze." And he walked away, leaving me behind as if he hadn't been the one to approach me in the first place.

I stared after him. In the morning I'd woken up quite comfortably, considering the fact that my alarm clock and I have something of an abusive relationship. I should have known that there was something waiting around the corner to make up for the fact that the alarm clock was being almost courteous.

I should have guessed.