Wordsworth – Chapter 28 – Colors – 9

“I… I can…” Vista says.

And then falls.

I shoot toward her, as fast as I can with the last dredges of Amber I can keep a hold of despite everything that surrounds me, everything that would make it so easy for Red to take over just so that blinding rage could cover up all the horror.

All the pained cries, muffled screams, desperate pleas.

All the blood.

I reach her.

She’s… exhausted. She’s been warping us from one crisis to the next, Gallant and I trying to do whatever it is that our versatile combination allows us to do.

I have lifted overturned cars. Molten an escape tunnel past wreckage. Found hidden threats.

Red. Red and Indigo.

And… And I know there’s so much more I could be doing, so many other emotions that a sane Emma Barnes could tap into to do more, to do what’s needed.

But I can barely catch the small, too-young hero before she falls off the building she has taken us to in our rapid deployment across the whole city.

“Gallant…” she says, not even fighting off my protective embrace like she should. “Just… I could be stronger. I know I could. Just give me a bit more, and I—”

“No,” Dean says, kneeling by her side, a gauntlet unsuited to his gentleness resting on the most veteran Ward’s forehead.

“I can. Just… a shot of courage? Willpower? Something, anything,” she pleads, her eyes finally opening and not even registering my presence as they swim behind an emerald visor to focus on the knight by her side.

Only his lips are visible.

But I realize he’s looking at me.

“Do it. Do it so she understands,” I say, knowing perfectly well what’s about to happen.

And he summons a ball of red light over his left palm, the one that isn’t futilely trying to reassure Vista. A red that I… that my power resonates with.

A different red from mine.

It’s… It’s somehow deeper, lacking a hint of orange, of flickering.

Because it’s not rage but the courage Vista asked for.

And, with as little an impact as he can manage, he shoots the girl in love with him. The one he can’t help but feel guilty about.

Because Dean Stansfield is, among many other things, a good person.

And at this very moment, I’m very glad that his transfer out of my city still hasn’t passed.

Vista lurches up in my arms, her body reflexively bending forward to protect her impacted abdomen, her eyes widening with pain and shock.

The vibrant, deep red shines across her body.

And then…

“That… That didn’t work,” she says.

I smile. The smile of a woman who knows all too well about things that should have worked and didn’t.

“Of course it didn’t. You’re already braver than all of us,” I say.

The eyes behind the green visor look at me, about to retort, to protest, to berate me.

And her shoulders slump.

“I should do more. I could do more,” she protests, almost like the child she should be, and, at the same time, not at all.

So I burst a pulse of Indigo, of the urge to protect, and check that there’s nobody in range to see what I’m about to do.

And then I take away Gallant’s gauntlet and lift Vista’s visor, her eyes having less issue finding mine without that obstacle over them before I lean down and kiss her forehead, then I smile at her with as much pride as I can muster, not even realizing what burst of color that rare emotion tints me with as I look at her.

“Your power… You have trouble using it with people in the way. They interfere with it, and they keep adding strain as they move and force you to redo things over and over. And you have been using it across panicked mobs without rest since we started, Vista. You have burned yourself out. There’s no shame in being human,” I say.

She tries to argue. I can see it on the stubborn set of her lips, on the glint of her eyes.

But then a flash of pain goes through, and she slumps in my arms.

“Stop wasting time with me,” she mutters. “Go.”

My smile is… wry.

But also genuine.

So I set the young hero against the balustrade of this rooftop garden she’s landed us on and set her visor down as her eyes close, and she tries to relax.

“Just for a while,” she says. “Just a moment to rest, you get it? Then I’m going back down. With you.”

My breath catches.

And I have to suppress something at Vista herself wanting to fight by my side.

***

“I can’t believe that worked,” Gallant says as I swerve around a plant slowly crawling across the street.

“People watch too many movies,” I answer through our radio headsets as I try as hard as I can to keep both Indigo and Amber going, seeing as I may be the only superheroine who needs superpowers to ride a damn motorbike.

“Confiscating a vehicle in the middle of an emergency. Of course the Wards would have the authority to do so,” he grumbles, apparently dissatisfied that the average Brocktonite isn’t perfectly aware of their rights.

How heroic of you, Stansfield. Maybe you could convince my father to do some pro bono work?

“Shut up and lead me to the next emergency,” I say, trusting him to keep doing what he’s been doing, localizing foci of perturbed emotions that will unerringly take us to where people are trapped, injured, or dying.

“Just keep going straight ahead—wait, left! Turn left!”

I twist the handlebars too abruptly, and only Amber lets me see the world tilt down as my confiscated bike swerves too abruptly, leaning hard and fast toward—

I get angry. Furious. At whoever is doing this, reducing my city to rubble, hurting so many others for no discernible reason.

And then at myself.

For being Emma Barnes and failing to be half the hero that Vista is.

It’s not the all-consuming anger I once felt when Sophia sent me a message with Chris aiming his guns at Taylor. Not even what I felt when fighting Lung.

But it’s enough.

Superheated air explodes under my outstretched hand, and the bike abruptly straightens up before leaning the other way, my enhanced reflexes just fast enough that I can course correct on time to avoid three cars crashed against one another.

Dean doesn’t say anything.

So there are no survivors.

It’s been a constant, steady erosion of my sanity, the way he just looks past the places where I would’ve looked for somebody to save, his silence telling me that we’re too late. That there’s nothing to do.

But he yelled. He yelled, ‘Left.’

And so I speed up.

***

It is pure chaos.

The road shakes before I even get in sight of the roaring crowd, and I have to brake just…

Just to take it in.

But as soon as I stop, Gallant jumps off, immediately running down the broad avenue and toward the riot around the crystal spire, his blasts flying from each hand, stunning the people he hits with torpor and—

And colors flare around them all at once, and they get back up.

I leap off the bike, the vehicle crashing to the ground behind me as I strive to hold onto the thrill of combat and discard any other connotations, yet again resorting to the techniques that I read in that acting book Anne got me, dwelling on the memory sense of ozone flaring up along with powdered concrete, my muscles joyously flexing as I kept dodging all of Chris’ shots.

I manage. Just well enough to reach Gallant before three bloodied people surrounded by an all too familiar red mist swing their improvised weapons at him.

Just well enough to tackle him to the ground, to cover his body with my own.

That’s when a chain whips across my entire back.

A line of agony flares up from hip to shoulder, the scream torn out of my throat as I lose all emotion except hurt, and fear, and—

Yellow flares.

My body looks translucid.

And my eyes widen because I know what’s about to happen. I know that fear will keep me away from the attacks. That I’m now intangible, or close enough. About as untouchable as Sophia.

But Gallant isn’t.

A man with just one hand is about to hit me with a wrench. A woman to stab me with a broken cane.

The street shakes below me, steady as a heartbeat.

And Gallant blasts me.

The concussive force passes through me, but the impact of the emotion remains, solid, deep blue washing across my whole body, taking yellow away as I dwell on a profound sadness with no cause that—

That makes me heavy. Heavy enough that my stretched hands sink into the asphalt.

And it makes me solid enough that the wrench bounces off me, and the sharp tip of the broken cane splinters into a cloud of slivers.

I… I breathe. Steadying myself, bringing up any memories that will reinforce the blue as Gallant acts, as he keeps shooting blasts of emotion to counteract the unnatural colors driving the people around us while I remember all the times I laid in my bed with a part of me trying not to keep replaying what I had done that day, what I had put Taylor’s ghost through, wishing I could stop, knowing that I could if only I was brave enough to face up to my mistakes, to tell the woman in a hat that no more, that I had done enough, more than enough, that there was no reason for me to keep hunting a girl with no mind of her own.

Dark blue deepens.

The asphalt cracks.

And Gallant blasts me again.

“Move!” he says, pointing me toward a place beyond the crystal spire, from where the thundering impacts that shake the street come from.

And, imbued with Amber, I leap.

My hand briefly rests on the shoulder of a heavyset man kneeling on the ground, weeping with radiant joy as pure violet flares around him, and I use him as a fulcrum to pivot my entire body, straightening up in mid-air to pass between a woman clad in turquoise mist, stuttering and stumbling, and a girl bearing silver who can’t look away from her.

I keep spinning, my hands touching down on the street just long enough for me to do a handspring and twist so that I land feet-first on the bald head of a man also consumed by red, smashing him to the ground, the shard of blood-stained glass in his hand shattering as he bellows in rage.

I roll forward before standing up, already running with all my momentum.

And then I reach past the crystal spire.

There’s a crater in the middle of the street, and howls of pained anger come from it in the pauses between the earth-shaking blows. A pile of unconscious bodies near the lip, still suffused with their own glowing colors.

And Armsmaster.

And Danny.

His shades stand by him, wrestling people to the floor as Hannah’s monochrome echo keeps using rubber bullets to keep at bay those who get past the crowd of…

Of people I once knew.

They… I don’t remember most of the names, if I ever learned them, but many of them are people who were just… there. Constant presences when I visited Taylor. Echoes of my childhood.

His friends.

My father isn’t among them.

And only now do I realize my Indigo taking Amber away, gifting me that insight I used to track Lung on that… that night.

Indigo, letting me catch all those details, seeing that neither Armsmaster nor Danny have any colors around them and that they are together, back to back, so they must be using something to block whatever it is that’s going on, whatever it is that makes Gallant’s struggles just a temporary—Gallant.

Dean!

I turn back and see him running toward me, blasting everyone who tries to block his way, taking advantage of the few openings I made for him in the riot.

The man I kicked to the ground lunges at him.

And I—

Distance. Wind. Obstacles.

I stamp my foot down, catching the edge of a small piece of rubble with the side of my boot, making it spin in the air, leaping straight into my palm-down, open right hand just as I rear it back to my left hip before, with the stone tucked between my thumb and forefinger, I whip it forward.

And let go.

Only Indigo lets me hear the whistle of the sailing projectile amid the screams, roars, weeping, and laughter of the riot.

It hits the very tip of the man’s chin, splitting the skin with a burst of blood, the impact vibrating across his skull, his eyes rolling back, his legs losing strength under him.

He falls behind Gallant, right in the path of a red woman with a crackling taser.

And Gallant avoids another grab with no help from me. Reaches me.

And keeps running straight toward the crater.

To the screaming voice that Indigo tells me belongs to Vicky.

I swallow back the bile. The thought of how her ruined hands must look now that I understand that the pauses are not between blows, but between powered blows, that she keeps hitting the bottom of the crater when her shield’s down.

I swallow the innate revulsion at wounds and misery and dwell on Indigo.

On my urge to protect.

But Red tints it.

So I leap with newfound fury and strength, high enough to get a bird’s eye view of everything already happening and what’s going to occur in mere moments if we don’t stop whatever this is.

“Iridiscent!” Colin’s voice reaches me as he spins his halberd around his body, taking down a gangly teenager who had neared the pile of unconscious—Amy.

Amy, lying still beside a woman—beside two women.

I tear my eyes away from the artistic, glittering tubes of pulsating flesh that melt the two women into a single being, from the grotesque display of something that can have only been the fruit of the orange mist clinging to the unconscious body of the greatest—

Not now.

I land atop a bus with its front wrapped around a lamppost and fail to remember whatever military hand sign he tried to teach me to signal that I’m waiting for his orders, so I just wave my left hand at him, hoping it will be enough to get the message across to the stubborn, by-the-book—

“Find the source! Find the source, and I’ll dismantle it!” he says.

My eyes swim around the maddened horde, a stab in my gut my only reaction to what Danny’s face turns into when he sees me before dismissing me as he turns to keep a watch on the people around him, a shade that it takes me a moment to realize is an out-of-armor Colin elbowing the side of the head of a girl that can’t be older than Missy.

I try. I pour as much Indigo as I’m able, dipping into it like I did when trying to save Tattletale, when trying to keep Taylor from losing anybody else, but there’s too much going on, and I must be missing something because I can’t see a pattern—

And then I see.

Her.

Taylor.

Standing on top of the building across from me in the intersection, on the very corner of its balustrade.

“Out of the night that covers me,” she says with a voice that resonates, that vibrates.

And waves of ink pour from her, rushing across the entirety of the scene, bathing us in darkness before the next verse even starts.

“Black as the pit from pole to pole,” she continues.

And I can only blame Indigo for…

‘This is stupid,’ I grumbled, my notebook with the still half-finished homework from our English class opened over her kitchen table.

‘Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s—’ she said, starting that line I had already heard one too many times, in too many tones with a varied amount of patience poured in.

‘It really, really does. What good is something to read that you can’t understand?’ I said, triumphantly crossing my arms and shooting a smug grin at a girl glaring at me in that way I always secretly enjoyed.

She kept it going until she deflated with a single sigh.

And then she took the textbook and started flipping it forward.

‘Taylor, that’s not where the homework—’

‘Shut up and let me—here.’

She was pointing at a short poem, one of the ones at the back of the book, with all the supplementary reading that we never actually did in class—nor out of it.

I kept my arms crossed, still patiently awaiting for her rebuttal to what I thought, at the time, to have been a perfectly good argument for me to diss the poetry homework and get her a bit riled up, hopefully leading to one of her entertaining rants so I could forget about schoolwork for long enough for my brain to refresh.

But Taylor, as uncooperative as ever, silently insisted on me reading the short poem.

It… It was good. Even back then, I knew that there was something special about it, even if I didn’t know what it was.

‘Okay, but this is easy to understand,’ I said, clinging to my argument. ‘There’s nothing hidden like in a damn riddle—’

‘He was dying,’ she said, her tone cutting, sharp.

But still gentle.

And it was enough for me to shut up and listen.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to hurt, to draw myself out of the memory. Out of everything that it brings from deep inside of me.

To staunch the flood of everything that a single verse can stir up.

The verses that shouldn’t stir.

Because the darkness, the impenetrable fog of ink that surrounds me, muffles everything but her steady voice, so similar yet so different from what she offered that one time, years ago, on that kitchen table.

How she read back then, so… so alien, the depths of emotion I hadn’t managed to tease out of the four stanzas on my own, Taylor’s voice becoming something from a fairytale as her words reshaped my mind.

As she made me fall in love with her.

So I clench my eyes shut and listen.

Listen to defiant words that are only barely above a whisper, the words of a man bludgeoned by fate, his head bloodied but unbowed.

Until she reaches the very end of it.

And I can’t help but murmur, my voice not joining hers but following it:

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

And so the last words from Invictus fade into the lifting darkness around me, bringing with them a sad serenity that remains as Taylor keeps focusing on those below her, straining her limits to keep her power flowing and stilling unnatural passions, only leaving behind the calm resolve, the defiance, of a man who endured tuberculosis, who had his leg sawn off, who had been dying since his late childhood but still, nonetheless, managed to become great.

Her words. Soothing all those around me.

But not me.

I alone am untouched, and I have to suppress the stab of pain to bring Indigo forth and locate what Colin asked of me, a brief burst of joyless Amber carrying me from the top of the bus to the street below so that I can guide the unnaturally composed man to where he needs to be.

And I can’t lift my eyes from his hands working with fascinating diligence over a device that kept exploding and reassembling itself, pulsing with coruscating colors that made mine shy away.

I can’t lift my eyes until Armsmaster dismantles the Tinker artifact and the mist of dancing words lifts.

And, when I do, Taylor’s no longer there.