Wordsworth – Chapter 23 – Colors 8

Saying that Piggot is furious would be like saying I have some trouble managing my emotions: an understatement bordering on outright falsehood.

You know, like most of my life so far.

“I’ve been thinking,” the pale woman sitting in front of me says. “I’ve been trying to come up with some reason for you two to behave in such a way as to outright tell the entire world that I should get fired or transferred as far away from underage parahumans as the lack of a space program allows for without you two colluding or meaning to. I’ve really been trying to understand how and why two of the most cooperative Wards under my command just decided to destroy my career on live television. I haven’t, so far, managed to. Thus I humbly request your assistance on the subject.”

She looks at each of us in turn, at Dean and me, both sitting in front of her in the otherwise unremarkable room painted in lead grey and only decorated by a large mirror on my left side.

To my right, Dean’s hands, still covered by his armor gleaming under flickering fluorescent tubes, tighten on the metal armrests.

“With all due respect, Madam, is this an official interrogation?” he says with his unfailingly polite tone.

I admit to being mildly impressed.

Me, on the other hand? I am clamping down hard on everything.

On the Red trying to burst forth at the boy who just deprived me of the chance to tell the world everything I want to tell it. On the Amber, ecstatic at finally slipping the leash, even if only for a few seconds, that wants me to jump up and shout my defiance. Even on the Gold, wanting to burst forth at finally, finallymanaging to do something for Taylor, and not just because of me, but because I couldn’t stomach any more lies, any more—

“The fact you need to ask this makes me question whatever regard I still held your intelligence in, Stansfield,” Piggot says.

And I clamp down on the Yellow.

The one emotion I don’t dare allow myself. The one I don’t want to explore through my power, because it’s what led me down this path, down this constant reminder of how… how…

I remember. I remember the podium, looking into the cameras, feeling the Green well up at the mere idea of claiming any credit for taking down Lung when it was all for her. When I was just running away, forward, right into danger I didn’t know if I could overcome. When she was being a hero elsewhere because that’s who she is. When she was helping others when all I could do was make a vile man suffer.

I remember the disgust barely held at bay by Indigo’s clarity, by my purpose.

I remember the purpose shifting at the almost literal drop of a hat.

And I know I have been played.

“Then,” Dean says after a few seconds of tensely staring into Piggot’s receded eyes, “according to regulations—”

“Fuck regulations!” Piggot yells, standing up and throwing her chair back as she sways on her feet before leaning on the desk between us, the sturdy thing shaking despite being bolted to the concrete floor. “I am minutes away from being out of my post, and that’s only because the shitstorm is huge enough that nobody has the slightest clue how to navigate it to get at me and drown me in it! You just—you two fucking brats just murdered what was left of my career, are liable to get me sued into poverty, and outright killed if I can’t pay for my treatment. You two are going to answer my—”

“Amy,” I mutter, almost despite myself.

“What?!” sharp, bright eyes ask of me.

And I…

I Wonder.

I Wonder at the woman pulling herself up through sheer will, despite her failing body. Because Amy told me once what she saw at a mere touch of Piggot. The wrecked ruin of what used to be a fit fighter. I know she lives in constant agony, doing one of the hardest jobs in the country.

I know Emily Piggot suffers every day through a choice of her own, dwelling in pain she could avoid if she just decided to, if she wanted to turn away and ignore what was done to her to become somebody else. Yet she refuses any help in doing so.

How very Emma Barnes of you, Emily.

“Amy Dallon. Panacea. She will heal you,” I state with utter confidence.

But I’m not done.

I’m not done, because I can see the way her eyes narrow even further until only a keen sliver of azure remains pointed at me. I can see how she refuses my words, the very idea, and that’s because I do not wonder enough. Because I can feel the silver mist trying to circle around my wrist while I force myself to face this one woman’s most remarkable traits, but that’s not near enough for it to bring me the clarity I need from it, the bridge between us I felt with Amy when she stood by my side, and I just allowed Wonder to take over for the first time since I drank the awful, terrible poison that hasn’t killed me fast enough.

So.

I Wonder.

I Wonder at somebody who laid her life on the line. At somebody who saw the monsters threatening all of us and decided to be part of the wall against them. At somebody who was a heroin a way I will never be able to be, not with how tainted each of my actions are by what came before.

I Wonder at somebody working herself to an early grave, refusing to even acknowledge anything that would steer her away from her chosen path.

I Wonder at… at a sword trying to act as a scalpel. At a warrior trying to act like a general. At a fighter trying to get others to fight in her stead, to battle like she’s no longer able to, to be the heroes she fears they will never be by themselves. Because she has seen the face of fear, the despair of loss, because she understands just how broken we all are, all of us, vials or not, what powers do to our worlds, to…

I Wonder.

At a woman who should have been broken, who was broken.

And yet stands.

Silver shoots up my left arm, the line of mist now unbroken, no longer contained to a pale bracelet.

Dean looks at me with wide, almost fearful eyes.

And I stand up, my eyes in front of Piggot’s as I take her hand.

“What are you doing?” she growls, her muscles tight under my grasp, tendons standing out despite fat and skin swollen with poison-carrying liquids her body can no longer purge.

“It would be easy, wouldn’t it?” I tell her, allowing Silver to guide my words. “It would be so easy to take this as an excuse. To let yourself fail one last time as your body finally breaks down and allows you to rest.”

“Barnes, unhand me right now—”

“It would be the easy way out. The coward’s way out. And you haven’t taken it. Not after long, grueling years when no one would have blamed you. Not after everything that’s happened, everything you have withstood. Because you, Emily, are not a coward.”

“Iridescent—” Dean says, reaching up to my free hand, the one that isn’t tracing soothing circles over yielding flesh as my words sting and tear.

“I know cowardice. I know what it’s like to stare into the mirror and wonder how it would be to let it all end. I know how sweet the call of nothing is. I know what it takes to avoid it. To keep moving. To keep feeling.”

Her eyes are on mine, never wavering even as her lips thin further and the crease between her eyebrows deepens.

“I know…” I tell her, faking hesitation before a last plunge that I have been gearing to since the start of my speech. “I know what it’s like to drag it out. To refuse to acknowledge you are still walking toward it. To lie to yourself over and over as you come up with new excuses to refuse—”

She slaps me.

She isn’t in shape, but she outweighs me, and I wasn’t ready for it, or, at least, I hadn’t allowed myself to ready for it as Silver laid a script for me to follow, a path to connect with the older woman, to understand that which only Wonder can bring to the surface as I am fascinated by the story of pain and sacrifice etched on each of Emily Piggot’s wrinkles of anxiety and struggle.

So I stumble away from her, the back of my heel catching on the leg of the heavy metal chair behind me, and I trip before painfully falling down on my left side, cradling my cheek as I look up into hate and spite.

Then, without a single word, Emily Piggot walks around the desk bolted to the concrete floor I’m lying on and steps out of my life with a loud door slam.

“What did you just do?” Dean asks me with anxious eyes as he kneels by my side, his hands moving erratically as if not knowing whether to first address me lying down or my already swollen cheek.

“You tell me, Stansfield,” I say as I refuse his helping hand and shift on the floor, my exposed palms scraping against it in soothingly uncomfortable ways as I let go of the Wonder straining both my power and mind.

Because Piggot may be admirable in some ways, yes, but she’s still…

Piggot.

Dean waits for me to stand up on my own, getting to his feet at precisely the same speed I do, watching me for any unsteadiness, for any signs I’ll fall yet again.

And then he sighs.

“You saved her life,” he says.

And I nod.

“She will ask Amy. Or any of the healers on the Protectorate’s payroll, I don’t care which, but she will get herself healed. And so I’ll not have killed her with a careless outburst during a press release.”

Dean… snorts.

“You really believed that, did you?” he says with an easy smile that I find disconcerting.

“What do you mean?”

He sits back down and stares at my recently vacated chair in silent invitation until, finally, I do the same.

“Pension plans. Favors owed. Retirement accounts. Being a PRT Director is hard work, but it also pays well. Piggot being unable to pay for her dialysis is… unlikely, to say the least.”

I blink at him.

And he laughs.

It makes me want to blast him.

“You are a better person than you think, Emma.”

“You are a worse empath than you think, Stansfield.”

His smile turns bitter for just a moment, and then he nods.

“I am. I really, reallyam. Because I can… I see it. I see it all, the same colors you wield, drifting around everyone, every single day, and I know what they are feeling, but not why. I don’t… I can’t do what you just did. I can’t reach them, Emma, not like you can. Like seemingly everyone can without powers of any kind to guide them.”

I look at him, really look.

At the handsome, rich guy I would have gone for in another life, one where I still had my modeling career but did not hold onto the ghost of black hair and pale skin.

He snorts.

“I likely won’t see you again. I’ll be transferred, away from the Bay, from Vicky, from… from everybody I ever lied to. It will be nice to have a fresh start,” he says before staring at the mirror from which someone must still be keeping watch on us. “One without… debts.”

I close my eyes and keep a tight leash on Red.

“That easy, uh?” I tell him through gritted teeth.

“No. Never easy. It never was that,” he answers.

Then a heavy gauntlet drops atop a metal table, and Dean holds my hand with his bare one, something… something cool and soothing washing over me through the contact as his power meets mine for, if he’s right and truthful, the last time.

And so, yet again, Emma Barnes will be left behind.