Wordsworth – Chapter 5 – Colors 2

I dodge to the right, my feet skidding on the floor as I dive behind the nearest concrete block, and the ground explodes in shards of cement along a line that follows my trajectory a split second too late, the penetrating smell of ozone signaling the nature of the bolts that just missed me.

Adrenaline pumps through my veins, or whatever it is that nowadays passes as that for me, and the light yellow with undercurrents of ever-present red grants me a speed I rarely have as I let myself thrill in the rush of combat.

I grab one of the bigger shards and throw it over my cover with as much strength as I currently hold. Normally, not something an opponent with power armor would be concerned with, but I'm far from normal at the best of times, and it's always easy to dip into the crimson strength the anger grants me when I'm fighting.

And Kid Win… Well, he tries.

But he has to try.

I hear a satisfying yelp that means he just managed to dodge but is still off-guard, so I rush to the next block, risking a straight line—

And a bolt of shadow flashes right in front of my eyes.

Sophia just shot me, and she missed by a timing of a fraction of a second.

Which means she doesn't have a handle on my current speed.

[Good].

I kick the ground hard enough it craters and leap along the trajectory of the bolt, straight to Shadow Stalker crouched on top of one of the blocks that dot the terrain.

I almost crash into her before she phases, and then I try to brake before I hit the block behind her, the skin of my palms feeling the rough material as it almost splits open. My arms are strong enough to stop me before I crunch my nose against it, but only barely.

And then Sophia kicks my legs from beneath me.

I tumble, up and down switching at a speed I can only keep up with because of the rapidly fading yellow that's being replaced by sheer red, by rage, and hate, and—

Sophia crouches on my chest. Something glints in her hand.

… She could kill me.

She could kill me, right now, and there's very little I could do to stop her.

The red washes away in a single wave, and only cerulean blue remains.

The… The calm, the [relief] surface, and I feel a lightness I haven't felt since I downed this accursed vial that will forever remain with me.

Without moving, without intending to, I feel my limbs leave the ground as if I am gently drifting up in a pool of water, the wavering sun greeting me with golden light turning into a glowing spiderweb along the crest of the small waves as my eyes finally open and the distorted sound beneath the water sings a lullaby.

Sophia's hand rushes down, the tip of the bolt in her grip glinting comfortingly.

The air shudders and the bolt sinks into the concrete beside my head.

I look at Sophia, and I think she can see the disappointment on my face.

"What the [fuck?!"]

"Vista! Language!"

"Carlos, don't fucking start with me, or I swear I'll make the toilet run away from you until you develop three extra bladders! What the Hell, you psycho?!"

There's a blur, and Vista is standing beside me.

She's never liked me. The fact that I was Sophia's friend in my civilian identity already a mark against me, and my taking attention from Dean away from her the death sentence of any possible relationship between us beyond mere coworkers.

Smart kid.

And she may have just saved my life.

Cerulean blue darkens, the lightening of my limbs reversed as they feel that much heavier, and I let them lie against the concrete beneath me that will start straining if I don't focus on—

Something hits both Sophia and me, throwing us in different directions, and focused calm replaces… that.

It's a light indigo, one that makes everything come into sharper focus.

That lets me act.

"Everything all right?" Dean asks as if he hadn't just blasted two teammates, and Vista looks at him like she can't believe he would say something so utterly trite after what she has just seen and done.

As I said: smart kid.

"Yes. We just got carried away by the exercise," I say, making the young girl turn her head toward me fast enough I'm sure part of it is her power assisting her.

She's a nightmare in hand to hand.

"Right," Sophia adds from where she's crouching.

Carlos looks between the two of us, and Chris keeps fidgeting, not knowing how to intervene or whether he should.

I'm just glad Dennis couldn't make it today.

"That's not acceptable," our nominal leader finally decides to say. Which, seeing as he's talking about the possible murder of a teammate in cold blood and with plenty of witnesses, doesn't quite seem to cut it.

"Relax, Carlos. Emma and I just like to play a bit rougher than you lot. Isn't that right, Ems?"

There's an edge of mirth to Sophia's question. A dare.

She's testing me, seeing how far I'll go to keep our shared secrets, to see if what I told her on that roof the other night holds any weight.

"Absolutely. Don't worry, I don't think we would slip like this with anyone else."

"I [am] the regenerating Brute on the team. I'd much rather you slipped up with me."

"Kinky," I wink at him.

He splutters. I'm not even using the pink, so that's just his overactive hormones doing the job for me. As usual.

The guy badly needs to get a girlfriend. That, or for Miss Militia to finally take some pity on him.

And Vista's making gagging noises.

As I said: smart kid.

"Well, if there isn't anything else…" I purposefully drift off, letting his embarrassment do the work for me. Carlos isn't eager to talk to me right now, not with the way a teenage boy's shyness works when prodded the right way.

And, thanks to Dean, I've got indigo's clarity, so it's quite a bit easier than usual to know what the right way is.

At his silence, I turn around and start walking to the edge of the training vault, a waste of taxes big enough to allow for fliers to do their thing in simulated combat yet mostly filled with dull, drab, grey concrete. Somebody could've assigned some funds to make it a more interesting environment.

After a few steps, a hurried set of metallic ones join me.

As expected.

Dean is… Not pushy. Not quite. But he's latched onto me, onto this favor Cauldron has saddled him with, in a way that makes me suspect the secret's been eating at him for years. To someone as usually honest and straightforward as he is, having to lie about his supposed trigger event to everyone around him, girlfriend included, must've been Hell.

I kinda get it, but it hasn't been my foremost concern for quite a while.

Not since black and white walked on high heels she never would've worn before, fishnets highlighting the slender curve of calves shifting with every swaying step—

I take a deep breath and feel a spark of shame taint the indigo as I fight off the pink.

Then we exit that training area, and Dean speaks.

"I won't let you kill yourself, Emma."

Another deep breath. It's always hard to keep a hold of the indigo, even if it should be self-reinforcing. Even if the clarity it brings me should make keeping myself calm a trivial exercise.

It doesn't. Instead, clarity brings awareness, and awareness brings self-hatred, and that always tries to be washed away by waves of red, the crimson that's always there, always waiting to surface, to [burn—]

"I am [not] about to commit suicide, Dean."

He looks at me. Really looks at me, in that way that I know gets past the first layer of my color and sees the chaotic mess swirling beneath the surface.

It's the closest I've been to having someone else see me naked since I changed.

I—part of me hates him for it. For the intrusion, the violation.

Another… Is glad. Glad somebody else knows the real ugliness behind Emma Barnes' perfect, crumbling façade.

"Letting Sophia kill you counts," he finally says.

"She wouldn't have done it," I immediately counter.

"I saw her, Emma."

"No. You saw a part of her. A snapshot. A moment. I know Sophia—better than anybody else does."

"The rage—"

"Is always there. Always waiting to lash out, to find a target. There's also the fear, always looking for a way out, for an angle to escape through. And then there's the pride, a hurt little thing desperately trying to convince her she has value. How wrong am I?"

His jaw clenches, and he meets my eyes.

I keep walking, and so he does.

"Not wrong," he finally admits. "Is that a Thinker—"

I bark an ugly laugh.

"It's called being a teenager with some people skills, Dean. How do you think I wrangled my way to the top of the popular pile?"

His eyes involuntarily dip as far as my neck before he gains enough self-control to look back at my eyes. Not even a cleavage shot, Stansfield? A girl's ego could get hurt by too much gallantry, you know?

"I'm not [that] hot, and neither am I that rich or famous. You and Victoria have it made, but most people need to work at this kind of thing," I finally say when it's clear he's too busy self-flagellating to keep up his end of the conversation.

"I… Sorry, I didn't mean to imply—"

"Drop it. It's not important." I immediately regret saying that.

"Right. Sophia—" Because now he's back on track.

"Sophia's my problem."

"Just like Taylor—"

I whirl around, and the last dredges of indigo burn away as I push his chest piece until he's nailed to the wall by arms strong enough to lift a car.

He looks into my eyes once again, and his own widen.

"[Yes]. Yes, Dean, Taylor is [my] problem. [Mine]." The words burn on my tongue, caressing my lips with flickering flame that's as metaphorical as physical.

"What—" He tries to struggle, the servos on his armor whining like a teenage boy who doesn't understand a message within a message.

"Don't bring her up. Don't talk about her. Don't even think about her if you can help it." I try not to push forward, not to leave an indentation on the metal that seems oh so pliable beneath my fingers.

"Emma, she's—"

"She's my fault. My sin. My burden. [Mine]. You don't have a right to—"

The red crumbles, and veins of blue beat through it as I remember—

Something explodes against my stomach, and I barely budge as the blue holds me in place, but then blue shifts to indigo and—

"Thank you," I tell him with a sore throat.

He looks at me, just looks, bewildered, on the verge of flinching away.

This is someone who put everything on the line to become a hero. Someone born in and of privilege who decided that the best he could do with it was to become a modern knight. Someone who is far more decent than almost anyone I know, and almost as heroic as Vista.

And he's afraid of me.

"… I'm sorry, Dean. I really am. But, please," I pause, unsure of how to continue, and I take a step back, letting him breathe a bit more easily. "Please, don't talk about Taylor. Just… don't."

He doesn't speak for quite a while, and when he does, he's cautious.

Can't blame him for that.

"Emma… You need to talk about this with someone. What you're feeling… it isn't normal. It's far too intense. I think your power is—"

I laugh.

I can't help it; I just laugh, on the verge of hysteria, indigo once more fleeing me as a swirl of colors bloom, none of them strong enough to define me at the moment.

"Dean… It isn't my power. It never was."

He looks at me with an edge of panic, but that's not what makes me turn around in disgust as viridian finally takes hold of me, and I walk away without another word.

No.

It's the pity I can't stand.

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This work is a repost of one of my first commissions, and one that I'm both grateful for and proud of. It can be found on QQ, SV, and AO3, and, of course, on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true), where the latest chapter will show up a week before it comes out for everyone else. It is currently 33 chapters and 94k words long and approaching its final arc at a good pace, so I hope you'll look forward to learning about Wordsworth's ending.

As I don't have access to Webnovel's "premium" features, the original italics in the text will be conveyed through the use of square brackets. I'm sorry about the inconvenience.

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