Wordsworth – Chapter 23 – Prisms 1

Danny Hebert – Those Who Failed

“Her name is Wordsworth,” Emma says on the laptop screen in front of me.

I take the mouse and rewind it.

“Her name is Wordsworth.”

No, it isn’t.

“Her name is Wordsworth.”

Her name is Taylor Hebert, and you know that, Emma.

I won’t let you take away even her name.

“Daniel?” Colin’s voice asks from the door to my office because, apparently, even knocking is now something the obstinate man considers optional.

“What?” I ask without turning around, barely realizing just how clenched my left fist is over the light gray desk set along the wall, perpendicular to the door.

“I… Thought you may want to talk,” he says.

I take a deep breath.

And push with my left foot against the worn carpet just enough to turn my swiveling chair toward him.

“You were wrong,” I tell him.

The bearded man almost flinches, his white button-up wrinkling as his shoulders scrunch, and I dofeel bad about it, but not bad enough to indulge his poorly disguised attempts at building the most pragmatic friendship in history.

“I am sorry, but… I do think you need to talk. If not with me, then—”

“With a therapist? One of those they force to rotate so we don’t ever develop a rapport with them? Do you even realize how utterly stupid this whole concept is, or has the Protectorate indoctrination really gotten to you?”

“I—”

“You. That’s right, it’s always about you—”

“Shut. Up,” he says.

And stands fully upright, the well-muscled, excellently trained man finally showing a hint of backbone to me.

Good. It’s been a while since I could vent.

I stand up, and the chair rolls away from me, steadily losing momentum until it clacks against the wall behind me. And I square off against Colin Wallis.

“Took you long enough,” I tell him.

“You are intractable,” he answers.

“My daughter was tortured into losing her sense of self, and when she recovered it, she decided she didn’t feel like living with me anymore. She then emotionally blackmailed me into joining the same organization her tormenter is employed in. What’s your excuse?”

He… stares.

His fists clench.

“I am a parahuman,” he says.

I raise a very unimpressed eyebrow. It, apparently, isn’t enough to stop him from talking.

“You think you have it bad? We all do. This isn’t a contest, Danny, and if it was, you would lose. You don’t know half the things the people here have gone through, and those are the ones sane enough to still want to be heroes.”

“Sane enough to still want to be heroes,” I repeat, faintly incredulous.

And then I laugh.

It’s… It’s bitter, yes, but also something long-delayed. Something that’s been brewing in my chest since Dauntless found me behind a pile of broken Empire soldiers and gave me her message. The one from Taylor. The one I don’t think she realized I could never deny, not anymore, not after… everything.

So I laugh. A disjointed, spasmodic thing that makes my jaw clench and my eyes narrow, and—

“Daniel?” Colin asks, taking a step forward.

And I swing at him.

He dodges back.

Somebody who’s never been in a real fight would think it’s a close thing, that I was fast enough to almost catch Armsmaster off guard.

They would be morons.

Because yes, I almost graze him, my fist flying right in front of his chin with all the power I can still get behind a right hook. But that’s not by necessity, but by design. Because he’s that much faster than me, that much better, that he can afford not to overcompensate, to stay in close so that his answering blow will—

Right in my fucking liver.

“You… held back…” I accuse him, trying not to drop to my knees as I hold my side and waves of agony wash through me.

“Of course I did,” he says.

And then Kurt’s shadow rises right behind him, right fist reared back for the kind of wild haymaker my frequent partner in parahuman crime would never dream to throw against somebody aware of the incoming attack.

Wordlessly, I betray one of my oldest friends by pointing with my chin behind Colin, who turns faster than any man I’ve ever fought, his head sliding out of the way as he pivots on his right foot and snaps his leading hand into a backfist that catches Kurt in the temple, the shadow dissolving after what could very well have been a killing blow.

Smug, flashy bastard.

“You need more control,” he says without facing me.

“You need to take that stick out of your ass,” I answer.

Very slowly, he turns back around.

His eyes are narrow.

Good.

“I’ve been told that you don’t appreciate me trying to force a friendship between us two,” he says.

“Yes. By me,” I answer.

“And other people whom I trust far more than a deadbeat alcoholic,” he says.

I… raise my eyebrow.

This could be good.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Oh. Because I’ve tried to be patient with you, Daniel Hebert, but there’s being patient, and there’s coddling. You want to make things up to the daughter who fled from you? Step. Up. Be the man she always hoped her father would be. Protect her.”

I once again bark out a peal of that ugly, bitter laugh.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s one of the most powerful capes around. She hardly needs protecting by me—”

And Colin Wallis, Armsmaster, one of the better fighters the Bay will ever see, grabs my shirt and slams my back against the wall.

He’s near me, his breath acrid like stale coffee, his eyes almost showing no pupil.

“You can’t be this stupid,” he says.

“I have it on good authority that I very well can be,” I say, remembering the one shadow I never want to come to my aid even as I desperately crave to see her once again.

“The world is falling apart. Endbringers keep destroying more and more of it, and what they don’t touch, the dominoes tumble. The heroes meant to stop them keep dyingstupid, senseless deaths against petty villains who don’t care what the rest of us suffer as long as they can enjoy what’s left of the ride, and youcould have a fucking beer with me and suddenly have a perfect duplicate of one of our best Tinkers, our best hopes, ready to join the fight.”

“That’s not how friendship works—”

“It fucking is. Do you think kids get best friends because they are fated or because they share a desk in one class? You can choose, Daniel, and you’re choosing to be an obstinate—”

“Every single day I’m here, it’s a struggle not to bash Emma’s head in. Every meeting preparing me for my public reveal makes me want to throw up. Every single one of you is an accomplice—”

He slaps me.

I work my tongue between my teeth, poking at the inside of my hurt cheek.

“Emma almost committed suicide fighting Lung to save the only known parahuman associates of your daughter. She destroyed any boost to her career she may have gotten out of it to clear your daughter’s name. Emma is a parahuman teenager who wants to be a hero badly enough to risk her life, because she no longer values it. And you? You are hiding here. If I had to choose who to bring with me to save Wordsworth, I wouldn’t even hesitate.”

I look at him.

At the angry man almost tearing my shirt’s buttons off as he keeps pushing me against the plain, dull wall of my office.

At one of the most powerful, experienced heroes in the world.

And I knee him in the groin.

He wheezes a pained gasp, his hands on me minutely loosening before tightening back again as he glares at me hatefully.

“Now,” I tell him, “I will have that beer.

His left eye twitches.

And he slugs me across the jaw.

Then we have that beer.

***

Sophia Hess Stops

“Her name is Wordsworth,” Emma says from my phone’s screen, sharp eyes looking straight at the camera in a way I know she could scarcely manage if she was trying to.

Because, in that moment? Emma looks…

Regal.

She isn’t confessing. She isn’t telling a shameful secret.

No, she’s making a proclamation and daring the world not to listen.

I press the button on the side of my phone that makes her solemn face fade to black before Dean makes a mockery of the moment, and I let it drop from my weak fingers on the sofa of the Ward’s common area.

Then I close my eyes and lean my head back over the armrest, the light of the fluorescent tubes above tinting the back of my eyelids in uncomfortable orange.

‘Her name is Wordsworth.’

That should be it, shouldn’t it? The snowball that starts off an investigation on just what the Hell Emma and I have been doing over months of harassing the Undersiders and their pet bookworm. That pulls at the thread and gets me thrown in juvie after destroying my probation.

This should be all I could care about right now. Because Emma may have made things difficult for herself, but she just destroyed me.

Instead…

‘I just want to be a hero, Sophia,’ the pale girl lying on a hospital bed told me, her sunken cheeks twisted in suffering I’ve never known as she tried to reach something she knew she never would. As she…

Damn it.

Damn it all.

“Oh, great. You,” Vista says as soon as the door slides open and the pipsqueak notices me on the sofa.

I think.

I open my eyes and glare at her, if only to confirm my assumption, but that only makes her scoff and walk toward the fridge behind the counter of the kitchen area.

She ignores me.

…

This would usually be a good thing.

But Vista… Doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that I’m screwed, that I’m days, if not hours, away from having to flee before I’m carted away.

She doesn’t know about an emaciated girl clinging to a single wish she will never see granted.

I close my eyes and worry at my lip, and Emma’s face as she was at that moment keeps haunting me. I keep seeing the sunken eyes, the thin lips, the skeletal hands grasping at white bedsheets.

The… The yearning.

And I… I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so badly as she did at that moment.

“Vista?” I say, opening my eyes and seeing the disgruntled girl shoot me a look over her shoulder, the light of the fridge framing her blonde hair with something paler.

She doesn’t answer, just looks at me angrily, probably stuck on Gallant’s own mess.

But she also doesn’t look away.

“Why… why did you want to be a hero?” I ask her.

And she looks at me like I just asked her the dumbest question she’s ever heard after being a veteran of a thousand meet and greets.

“Who wouldn’t want to?” she answers.

And, yet again, I’m faced with a young girl I don’t understand.

***

Amy Dallon Dreams

“They are going to take Dean away. I just know they are going to take Dean away, even if everything is Emma’s fault, and—”

I glare at my sister.

The one currently invading my bedroom, because she needs to vent, and I, apparently, am an excellent venting apparatus.

… No, I don’t really know what that means. I thought it would sound better before I finished the stupid line.

“Amy?” she asks, head tilted to the side in slight worry as she rests on top of my bed, seated Indian style, while I’m relegated to my chair.

“Is it?” I say.

“What?”

“Emma’s fault. I know she—”

“She defended a villain! In the middle of a press release! What could have—”

“I don’t know! I don’t know why… why are you looking at me like that?”

Vicky, glaring daggers at me, floats above the bed and flies over to me, still in her seating position as her hair streams behind her and the legs of her blue sports shorts bunch up to her pelvis, and—damn it.

“You do know,” she accuses me.

I do.

God, I do.

I do know why… why Emma did this. Why she threw away her career. Why she… sacrificed.

“Tell me,” Vicky, still narrow-eyed, still floating above my lap, bent over so her eyes are in front of me, demands.

And I…

For the first time in my life, I…

Refuse her.

“Patient confidentiality,” I say, trying to smile smugly.

Vicky blinks.

“That’s not—you’re not a doctor!”

“Honorary degree. It sure trumps college classes,” I tell her, finally saying out loud a rejoinder that’s been begging to be unleashed for months.

Vicky gasps, dramatically clutching her chest. Or, at least, the pink spaghetti top covering it—if barely.

“How dare you,” she says with overdramatic indignation that can’t hide the glint of humor.

Because she’s… Because she doesn’t know.

Because, to her, this is playful banter, the kind I’ve been too surly for since hormones kicked in, and I realized too many things I should never have realized about my beautiful, bright, often lightly dressed sister.

So I play along.

I let her believe the little lie as I join the back and forth, and I can see—feel her mood lifting with every exchange.

That’s what a good sister should do, isn’t it? Help the other one. Lend a shoulder and an ear when she has boyfriend trouble, even if that trouble may involve exile to another city.

And…

And I remember the girl on the hospital bed. The one I made stronger than she had been. The one I had made weaker before. The one who begged me to take her flesh and give it to another.

I remember…

‘And so the girl remembered. Remembered a dream somebody else once had. A worthy dream. A beautiful tale.

‘She would never reach it. It wasn’t her dream.

‘But… But she could follow it.’

…

Thank you for the dream, Emma.

***

Anne Barnes Hopes

“Her name is Wordsworth,” Emma says from the phone resting on my lap.

And I could cheer.

I… I have to hide in the toilet of what I think is actually a holding cell, no matter how much the guards have reassured me otherwise after my whole family was speedily taken from our home and to the PRT building. I have to hide, because Dad and Mom wouldn’t appreciate me being happy at Emma being shot down in live television.

They definitely didn’t appreciate it when we were watching it together.

And it’s just too tiresome to explain. That no, I am not happy at her being taken down by a Blaster power, even if she’s my little sister, and so I’ll always delight at her being taken down a peg or two, but at… at what came before.

At Emma looking straight up, defiant, without hesitation, finally being my sister once again and telling the world to go fuck itself with its stupid labels, that there was somebody else worth the attention, and that…

Taylor will not take this well.

She… She always was tooindependent, if that’s a thing, and I really think it is. Because she resented being helped if she perceived that as even the slightest bit controlling. Taylor wanted the world to be what she thought it should be, not the world to tell her what she should become, and…

And…

And I’m rambling inside my head, losing my mind, because my sister just made some very powerful enemies—some political, and some supervillains. And I’m hiding here from the second while guarded by the first, and I’m so damn proud of her I want to punch her stupid face in for worrying me for so long when she still had all this inside her, when she could have…

I am crying.

Because no, she isn’t done. She isn’t healed. Because I saw the way she looked when she fell down, and that took all the cheer out of my cry of joy at her slipping the leash and finally being who I thought she should be, but…

But Emma’s hurt. Hurt worse than Mom and Dad realize, and… And so is Taylor.

And, while not in the same way… Taylor always was a bit of a little sister to me.

But… But if the wreck that Emma was this past few months can… can sacrifice herself, can at least try to be noble even if in a misguided way…

Taylor was always the strongest of the two.

So I can hope, and that frightens me, but that’s all right, because what’s hope without a little fear? A little uncertainty that it will never come to pass?

As long as it’s just a little.

And as long as I can still believe that there’s a chance…

That my sisters will someday heal.

***

Bakuda Plots

“Her name is Wordsworth,” Iridescent says from the rig of monitors hanging from my workshop’s ceiling.

I smile.

I guess the mask covers it, but, really, some sacrifices must be made in the name of the mystique.

Still… There’s only one witness right now, so I guess I can indulge myself.

I swivel my chair to the right and look at the one man standing with his arms crossed in the far corner of the dark room littered with half-finished casings and discarded tools.

“Oni, are you pondering what I’m pondering?” I tell him with my deepest, most gravelly voice.

Of course, he only tilts his head and looks at me through his mask rather than answer as he should.

The Philistine.

But, well…

“What we do every night, Oni: try to take over the Bay!”

He rolls his eyes.

I don’t care.

Because I’ve got a ton of creative explosives to build and very little time to do it in.

After all, somebody already fired the opening shot.

… Hmmm, there’san idea. Thank you, Gallant. Your services are going to prove invaluable.