Wordsworth – Chapter 29 – Colors – 10

Amy is broken.

She keeps looking at the two molten women at her feet.

Just… looking.

“It’s not your fault,” Vicky whispers in support, still wrapped around her sister’s shoulders like she’s been since I came back with Armsmaster.

I should move.

I should get away from here, look for the next disaster area, help.

But that’s just me wanting to run away. Because what else have I ever done?

So I look straight at Amy. At the best healer in the world. At the best hope most of the victims have of ever regaining anything close to a normal life after having their crystallized limbs torn away, or a maddened loved one stab them, or their heads stretched and twisted in something that made Vista cry.

I look at the person who stood by my side after I begged her to take away my flesh and give it to another. The one who then healed me, strengthened me, bettered me.

And I Wonder.

Silver is slow to come out as too many muddled colors fight for supremacy over my body. As red gets dirtied with too many shades of blue for me to process. As flecks of green try to surface.

As gold is all but gone.

But she is Amy Dallon. Panacea. The girl who could reshape the world and refrains from doing so. The most powerful person I’ll ever meet, acting as the weakest. Hiding her true potential, even from herself.

Pretending to be less than she is.

I feel silver bridging the gap, casting gentle, elusive moonlight into corners of her being that she shies away from.

I feel red coming up at what I see.

It… It doesn’t fight silver but mingles with it, a metallic sheen washing over the burning mist, freezing it in place as my wonder and wrath become one, as every single thing of Amy I learn pushes me further into the cold corner of my mind amidst the raging storm.

I step around them. Around the two sisters and the man who should not be in this city anymore. The one cowardly fleeing from this… disaster.

“You finally see it, don’t you?” I whisper, just sharp enough for her to catch as I look at her wringing hands.

“Emma…?” Vicky asks.

“Gallant. Take her away. You know why,” I say.

“What? My sister—”

“Vicky… Listen to her. It’s an empath thing,” he says, not completely lying.

For once.

The blonde looks between the two of us, her arms tightening harder against the girl lost in fear and disgust. The healer who knows precisely why the dose makes the poison.

I don’t need silver to know that Vicky doesn’t want to obey. That she’s too much of a hero to leave her distressed sister behind. That the notion of ‘the greater good’ is the last thing on her mind when she sees something wrong.

When she sees her sister.

But she also trusts Dean.

Loves him.

And so, with a last tight hug and a whisper in Amy’s ear that I don’t catch, she steps away and lets her boyfriend lead her away.

I wait for them to be just far enough that the cries of the injured and dying muffle my words. And I step forward.

Bare arms, coated with just enough red as to make my touch feel feverish, on the verge of discomfort but still far from pain when I catch her cheeks between my hands and force her to look at me.

Into my eyes.

Into eyes gleaming with silver.

“Enough,” I say, as harsh as I am able.

“Emma, you—”

“Me. Me. You want to feel wretched and miserable? You want to feel like the worst mistake God ever made? You want to give up, curl into a ball of self-hatred, and pretend the world is not there anymore? I understand. Believe me, Amy; I, of all people, understand.”

Brown eyes with a single thread of gold waver, the fear clear for me to see, the need to look away, slap my hands off and run.

But she doesn’t.

And so red claims a bit more of me.

“Just… look at them,” she says, her eyes unwavering, but her voice leading me to the women locked in a grotesque embrace on the stretch of cracked street behind me. “Look at what I can do—”

“Do you want me to kill them?” I say.

“What—”

“Or to burn them. I can turn them into cinders and let the wind take them away, Amy. I can make it so there’s not a single trace of them left.”

Her eyes widen in shock and horror at the fierceness in my voice. At the absolute certainty that her power assures her I’m not lying.

That I can do what I just said.

And her hands clasp my wrists.

“Stop,” she says, every bit as fierce as I just was.

“Stop what? Isn’t that what you want? Or maybe you want me to go at it another way? Maybe you want me to stand over them and feel so much disgust at myself that their flesh rots away into a sludge, into a pool of caustic remains that devours their bones? Is there a particular way you’d want me to—”

“Stop!”

“Why?!”

“Because—you aren’t like this! You’re supposed to be fighting! To be better! To make up for—”

“I can’t. I can’t ever make up for what I did. That’s the whole point, Amy!”

“Says who?! Who—you can! You struggle, and you fight, and you keep pushing forward, reaching for—reaching…”

There are tears in her eyes.

And there’s enough indigo in me, enough of my urge to protect, that I can trace every single pore on the skin below her lids, calculate the precise trajectory that the tears will take when they spill over, the trace of gleaming wetness over scattered freckles.

That is, if I didn’t gently wipe those tears with my thumbs as I smiled at her with all the tenderness I could muster for a girl who had to fall into the trap of silver twice in her lifetime.

“Reaching for an impossible dream that was never my own,” I whisper, ending her line as I lean my forehead on hers, my eyes closed while I wait.

Wait for her hands to let go of my wrists. For her arms to hold me under mine. For the short girl to bury her face in the crook of my neck and shake as she tries to stifle her cries.

“It’s not all right,” I say. “It may never be. But you’re not what’s wrong with it.”

My hands go from her cheeks to the back of her head, and I struggle to stand as tall as she needs me to be as she denies my words with a slow shake of her head that rubs more tears on my uniform.

Maybe more than tears.

I suppress the puerile thought, the idea of Amy, of all people, leaking snot all over my clothes, and I let a wry smile come out as silver guides my words more than I let it a moment ago, when I indulged myself in too much of the spotlight.

“It’s not what you can do, Ames. It never is. The best of us can grab a gun and do an imitation of… this,” I say, my hand momentarily leaving frizzled curls to gesture at the horror we’re still in the middle of. “But most never do and never will. And only very few ever do something beyond inaction. Only too few ever go beyond everyday kindness.”

“Kindness… is also rare,” she protests, or at least as much as her drained strength lets her.

“No. No, it isn’t. It’s just that it’s easy to see when it isn’t there.”

She doesn’t say anything.

So I do it for her.

“Even if many miss it when it’s another suffering for it,” I say.

“This isn’t about my mother,” she immediately replies.

“I never said it was,” I answer.

And I can feel the glare.

And that’s enough. Just that mundane moment of intimacy, of almost banter, is enough for silver, red, and indigo to fade away. To leave me just Emma Barnes, struggling to be the emotional support the most powerful woman I’ll ever meet needs me to be.

I would say we’re doomed, but, really, when was that ever in question?

“You’re a smartass,” she mumbles.

“Sometimes,” I admit. “But I usually am just an ass.”

She snorts, the sound of joy and mockery a tad wetter than it should be, the thought of my uniform being smeared with snot no longer that funny now that I can’t burn it all away with a simple wave of red.

But my arms tighten around her.

“Can you undo it?” I ask, referring to the one thing Amy will never forgive herself for, her own Taylor to haunt her dreams.

Her breath halts, her body stiffens inside my hug.

And, after a pause that’s long enough that I have to quash the wave of yellow coming up at it…

“I think so,” she answers.

So I step back, smiling at her with something that is sad, proud, reassuring, and every single thing an amateur career in modeling lets me convey with just a look and a quirk of my lips.

Amy returns it. Clumsier, yet more genuine.

And then she drops to her knees and starts to work.

***

I stand over there long enough to see her get into a groove, going from mangled body to mundane injury fast enough that I don’t think she processes anything other than what she heals rather than who.

Two naked women are holding one another, almost as close as when they had shared a single body.

And I’m too much of a coward to reassure them.

Amy’s going at speed, the pile of critically injured steadily dwindling as Dean and Vicky team up to rescue anybody trapped. Colin is scanning the area with whatever it is that he’s using to make sure that no further traps lie in wait now that we’re securing this intersection and making it safe enough to be a rallying point for everyone fleeing the ongoing disasters that other heroes haven’t already taken care of.

Hannah is… Sitting on the sidewalk, her back against a building half-devoured by a crystal spire that she constantly looks at with something unreadable yet obvious in her uncovered eyes.

Her leg’s missing.

I… I know that it’s only temporary. That Amy will regrow it as soon as she has the time and resources. That Amy can regrow it without any issues whatsoever.

But there’s a child huddled to her side, disconsolately crying as his mother kneels by his side, exchanging glances and sparse words with Hannah that have enough gratitude on both sides that I can notice without any indigo.

And…

And Danny is there.

Before his debut, with a domino mask and stained, blue coveralls that I’m pretty sure no one in the image department has approved for him.

For Overseer.

I… I never imagined…

I never thought that was him.

I should have.

But he just glances my way, his face a mask of stone far more effective than the slim domino, and I can’t even bring myself to step toward the father of the girl I need to protect. To apologize or offer him whatever he wants from me.

I just…

Can’t.

So, instead, I turn and walk toward Colin.

“Where do you need me?” I ask.

“Under adult supervision at all times,” he grumbles without even lifting his gaze from the hologram hovering over his forearm.

I almost laugh. Really.

“Adults aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” I say with a poor attempt at a cheeky grin.

This time, he looks at me.

And, under the translucent blue visor, I can see his eyes. Concerned, worried, and too many things that I don’t deserve pointed my way while other people are suffering.

He sighs.

“We may need Gallant to act as area control, but most rioters have been trapped with containment foam. There’s no urgent need for you, Emma.”

“I can still do more. Just… I can move rubble, search for trapped victims. I—I think I may even have a probability control power if… I think I can… I can save someone if you let me—”

“You have saved many. A lot. You just saved Panacea while in the middle of a power psychosis, and I don’t think you realize just how badly things could’ve gotten if that had lasted even a few minutes more,” he says, tone final.

And I blink at him in confusion until I realize just what he’s implying, and my eyes widen.

“She… She wouldn’t have—no. No, please, don’t,” I say, thinking about Piggot, and S-class threat ratings, and shoot-on-sight orders, and about Amy with a bullet going right through her—

“I won’t,” he says, his gauntlet landing on my shoulder as indigo and yellow fight for dominance, both boiling in the pit of my stomach. “This will have consequences, but nothing you have to fear.”

I look up from the cracked pavement. From the traces of Vicky battering the street with maimed arms until Taylor brought her back to forceful calm and Dean carried her in his arms toward Amy, her wounds already healed before the last line of Invictus echoed all around me.

I find the translucent visor and the eyes behind it. The troubled eyes of a man who wants to help and doesn’t know how.

The man that I hugged as I cried against his armor when he came for me in a hospital room and told me that I was suicidal. Reckless. Banned from going out.

And that I was trying to be a hero.

I have to bite back something at the memory, swallowing the stinging ball of feelings pressing on my throat. Blinking my eyes clear under his attentive gaze.

“I am just wasting your time, aren’t I?” I say, gesturing at the glowing display and the streets around us.

“Never,” he says, his lips twisting into an unwilling smile before ruffling my hair.

I think to protest. To bat away the infantilizing gesture.

But I just smile at him, and—

And he goes very still.

“Armsmaster?” I say, already knowing something’s gone horribly wrong.

“Follow me,” he says, immediately turning around and walking to the emptiest corner of the intersection, the one next to the crashed bus I used as a vantage point mere moments ago.

When I follow him, I catch Hannah’s eyes.

She looks at me, pale as I’ve ever seen her, and doesn’t mouth a single word of encouragement or…

Anything.

She just stares, my worry overflowing from inside of me into a grey darker and deeper than that of muffled colors and emotions, my mind splintering into threads of thought that strive to reach a single clue about—

Danny stares at me.

Emotionless. Completely still.

And grey deepens.

***

“Sit down,” he says.

And I stare into his blue visor, trying to discern anything at all that can clue me in about—

His hand rests once again on my shoulder, gently pushing me down until I obey. Until I kneel on the ground, my uniform dirtied by powdered concrete as he follows me, taking a knee by my side, his eyes flickering across the display mounted on his arm until it turns into a flat screen.

There… There’s a circle of light cast over dark wooden boards, and a woman wearing a red gas mask standing in the middle of it.

“Gooood morning, Brockton Bay!” she says with an enthusiastic voice mangled by crackling static. “I’m your host, Bakuda, and the one responsible for the spectacle you have enjoyed since this morning. Some of you may be asking why, others how long can you live without a liver, but the important thing is that you all have questions! And curiosity is a good trait to have, you know? Or, well, not so good a trait when you’re overwhelmed by it due to one of my magnificent pieces of art blowing up near you while you stand on top of a building as you get hammered with the urge to find out just how it would feel to jump.

“But we must all make sacrifices in the name of science! In this case, I make the sacrifices, and I’ve chosen you all!”

I blink at the deranged woman begging to be turned into a suicide by cop statistic, then I look at Colin, trying to discern what this is all about.

He shakes his head.

“Just…” he looks lost for words, not knowing how to handle what I ask of him.

It doesn’t make the grey go away.

So, my splintered mind focuses on too many things at once. On Danny knowing that this is something that concerns me. On Hannah not knowing how to act. On Colin struggling to find the words.

On the madwoman.

The stage, or whatever it is, lights up behind her, tight beams of light converging on the revealed shape of something metallic and three times her height, with too many pieces for me to make sense of it.

Colin bites out a string of curses, though, so I assume it’s nothing good.

“You see, good science needs test trials, and you all have gone through every single one I needed. Each and every bombing across the city has let me gather enough data to fine-tune this baby behind me, and what does it do, you ask? Well, it, when triggered by anything—from me pushing a button to the monitor connected to my heartbeat reporting my sudden, unsporting death—will explode and make what you just went through seem like you just watched a very moving movie.

“All the emotion bombs you just suffered, the ones you barely survived? This is the finished product, with enough range to reach up to Boston—and won’t the Butcher be a spectacle if that happens—with enough intensity to make Simurgh bombs feel inadequate, and upgraded to be immune to the meddling countermeasures of inferior Tinkers such as Armsmaster. So, what does that mean for you all, average citizens?”

I look at Colin.

He doesn’t look back, his lips pale, thin, and trembling.

“It means that you all are the ABB’s bitches!” she says.

And grey connects the dots.

I almost fall back, only Colin’s arm keeping me steady, but there’s no time for me to do anything other than watch in disbelief as—

“You see, I’m the newest recruit, and when my boss was unfairly ganged upon by a whole—heh—gang and part of the Protectorate, I decided that we needed to send a message. The message is, of course, that all of you are going to go mad and then quickly die an agonizing death if you don’t accede to our demands.

“But I’m not an unfair woman. I’m, in fact, eager to show you all how outclassed you are.

“So here’s the challenge: Iridescent, Emma Barnes, needs to rescue her whole family before I turn them into part of my newest experiment.

“And my boss is free to do whatever he wants to do to stop her.”

More lights turn on.

Mom, Dad, and Anne are kneeling next to the bomb, tied and gagged.

And, at that very moment, a pillar of flames erupts to my left, reaching up to the sky from the direction of the E88 territory.

“Tick-tock, little hero. Time to show us what you are made of,” Bakuda says, a scalpel jumping up into her open hand. “And you better do so before I show everyone what daddy dearest is made of.”