Wordsworth – Chapter 2 – Colors 1

"It was an accident, Amy," I say for what feels like the hundredth time.

The sulky brunette looks at me, at Sophia still unconscious in my arms with her own bolt protruding from where an eye used to be, and arches an eyebrow that has been getting a workout since I managed to get her away from the hospital she was working in tonight.

Everybody knows Panacea. Panacea is the greatest healer in the world, the one who can fix anything that doesn't have to do with brains, that selflessly spends hours upon hours in hospitals, always refusing any kind of payment for her help. Everybody knows Panacea, the saint, the miracle-maker.

Very few people know Amy Dallon. And yes, there's a difference.

Quite a few of them, and none that play in my favor tonight.

"The Jason fangirl managed to get one of her own eyes shot off. By accident."

"It ricocheted. She was trying to show off a trick she'd been practicing. Now, are you done with your cross-examination bullshit and about to heal an [injured hero] or what?"

"Depends. Are you done lying to me [or what?]"

I would say Amy's smarter than people give her credit for. That it's only natural she sees through the very thin excuse I'm giving her. But that would be a lie.

Amy isn't smart. She isn't dumb, not really, but I've gotten to know what actual smart is like over the past few weeks, and Amy… isn't. She's a spiteful, suspicious, paranoid bitch, though. Which, in this case, works out to about the same result.

Except for one key thing.

"I… [fine]. You want to know the actual truth? We were doing an unsanctioned patrol," I reluctantly admit, my fingers roughly combing my hair back as I grunt in, not quite fake, exasperation.

My lilac hair.

"There you go! Was that so hard to admit?" she says, a mocking edge to each and every syllable. Because Amy doesn't like me that much, not with how close I am to Dean after… Well, the official excuse is that our powers synergize very well.

They do. They really, [really] do.

Which doesn't mean I can't use them without him.

So I focus on Sophia's body, on her warmth, the way her toned flesh yields under her weight and over my arms and hands.

The purple lightens. My strength weakens.

"[Yes]," I bite out the single sound, and Amy preens.

"Ah, but that's only because you've been stalling so much! See, if you rip it out all at once, like a Band-Aid, it would be so much easier on you, Ems. Like, for instance, if you told me who was it that stuck Stalker like a short-sighted matador." She looks pleased, certain that she has the upper hand.

Which she would have if she thought things through.

But she's not really thinking that much at the moment, is she?

"I…" My breath deepens, and I remember soft curves with water dripping down dark skin. The communal showers in Winslow a poor backdrop for the way Sophia looked, as if she was just getting ready for a Playboy by Dark recording session.

I suppress a grunt as my strength fades a bit more, almost to the level of a regular adult male.

The tips of my hair get a pink tone, but… not enough. It's not enough.

And so I hate myself a bit more as I think of Taylor walking. Just walking, just moving with the way her power dresses her, a grace to every motion I can't manage to imitate with all my training and rehearsals. And that skirt made of words flows around her swaying legs until she stands, unbowed, unbroken.

Completely unlike me.

She looks at me not with reproach or hurt, but with sheer disgust.

My heart quickens, my breathing gets shallower, and my hair turns almost completely neon pink as my strength becomes that of a teenage girl who was far too stupid to even consider—

"You?" Amy asks, prodding me to continue.

"We met the Undersiders," I grunt.

"[Again?]" And the eyebrow almost raises once more, but Amy's eyes drop to my chest as a slight blush spreads under her freckles.

Because I recognize a horny, lonely lesbian with a dark secret quite easily by now.

Not that hard to do: I only need to look in the mirror.

"I think the blonde bitch has it out for us. We weren't even in their territory, just trying to see if we could catch a few ABB dealers." And my performance may not be that convincing. My arguments are a bit shaky, and the excuse quite thin.

But Amy already thinks she has seen through my first attempt at deception, and she's not thinking clearly enough to wonder about a second layer.

I barely am, and I'm the one using the power.

"Tattletale being a spiteful bitch?" She chuckles. "Yeah, that checks out."

I kneel down, sighing with a bit of relief. Actual relief at shifting Sophia's weight and fake at Amy sympathizing.

She is just doing it because I have a nice set of tits and date-rape as a power setting. I feel no relief at procuring her collaboration, just… A bit drained, actually.

I don't like doing this to her.

But it won't be the worst thing I will have done when the night's over.

"So, what? Did the special needs villain manage to throw the arrow back or something?" she comments with joking cruelty as she lays a hand on Sophia's face and her bolt starts to slide out.

My hair flashes red, and I desperately try to hold back the reins of my power as I feel inhuman strength surge through me at the thought of smashing the bitch's head open against the hospital roof.

"I… Wordsworth didn't do anything." Deep breaths, Emma. Deep breaths.

"Oh? Discount Labyrinth just stood to the side while her teammates fought? Why doesn't that surprise me."

Warm skin after a walk through the woods, Taylor hugging me, whispering how much I mean to her, that we are sisters, that I will always be—

My hair flashes blue as something scratches the inside of my throat and my eyes burn with unshed tears.

The strength leaves, and I feel a weight in each of my limbs.

The floor beneath me cracks, slowly enough that Amy doesn't notice, too intent on feeling Sophia's body through her power.

"Don't tell Sophia, but…" I smile, pretending at familiarity, at the confidence between close friends that should still tug at her mind while she's primed to see me as all her darkest dreams come true. "It [really] was an accident. She was trying to shoot Grue through his darkness and didn't see what was behind it—the bolt ricocheted right off."

Amy looks at me in disbelief and then starts laughing.

"Oh God, that's just [precious]. You telling me Miss Badass herself, the personification of 'too good to be talking to you, scrubs,' managed to KO herself?"

"If you asked Sophia, I think she would say this just proves she's the only one good enough to take herself out." I smile a sharp grin with just the right amount of cruelty. The kind of grin—

['Nobody wants her here. She should kill herself and save us all the trouble.']

My hair pulses green, and Sophia shudders between my arms.

"Uh? That's weird…" Amy mutters, her eyes already unfocusing as she perceives—

[Fuck].

"What?" I don't have to fake the nervous edge to my voice. Rather, I have to tamp it down.

"It's like… I don't know. Did Sophia eat something bad or something?"

"She didn't," the fewer lies, the easier to cover them up. "Why? Don't tell me she's about to… you know?" I make a disgusted face and leave the details up to Amy's imagination.

She spends far too much time in a hospital not to have a honed one in this particular subject.

"Maybe… No, it looks like it's passed. Uh. Maybe I healed it without noticing?"

"If you can do that, you [definitely] need to take more breaks."

"Don't you start with that as well," she grumbles.

"Just because Dean says something, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea."

"Don't you start with [that] as well."

I let Sophia lie on the ground and raise my palms in a conciliatory gesture.

"Hey, not a fan of his busybody thing, but he means well."

"Then he can take his well-meaning—"

"Uh… What—Tay—"

"Sophia! Oh, good to see you up and about already. Try not to be a bitch and thank Amy this time, all right?" I say, notifying my partner in crime of the current circumstances as subtly as I can.

Which isn't much, but Amy's head is still swimming in a cocktail of hormones, so we manage to get a pass.

This time.

***

"So. The bitch's back," Sophia bites out.

We are sitting on the ledge of a roof. The building isn't very tall, but it's in the Boardwalk, so we are looking directly down at the black sea of Brockton Bay.

It's supposed to be a bit clearer by day. As long as you don't walk to the Boat Graveyard, it is.

At least the oil spills were contained…

"Hey, I'm talking to you," she nudges me with her elbow, maybe not as roughly as she would if she was actually annoyed.

I still have to resist the urge to push her off. Only the certainty that she would survive stops me.

"Yeah…" I sigh. "I don't know how Tattletale managed, but… we are going to be in trouble."

"You think? We could just… you know. Silence her."

Red washes over me. My hair, my clothes, my skin, my nails. Red's always the easiest. The one that can cover other colors.

It carries its terrible strength with it. The one that makes it so I can no longer afford to throw any tantrums.

This time, it doesn't leave.

"You did not just say that to me," I say to Sophia Hess with a growling voice I would have never dreamed I would ever use against her when I first met her.

She shifts on the ledge, directly staring at me.

"And if I did?"

I pause. Take a deep breath.

Red [surges].

"Sophia. Stop. Please."

"No, Ems, I don't think I will. Because it sounds like you just threatened me over Taylor [fucking Hebert—"]

My hand clamps around her throat, and, for a glorious second, I can feel it give way before she becomes smoke and whorls of her shape curl around my clenched fingers.

It only takes her a moment to solidify a solid three steps away from me, her hand on her neck, pained coughs rattling her mask.

"It wasn't a threat. It was a warning." I almost sound calm. I've heard there are burns so intense they confuse the skin, firing off pain and hot and cold.

That's what I feel. The awful cold of burning rage.

"Wh—"

She could say 'what.' 'Why.'

I stop her before she does. Because I don't know which of those would make me lose the last bit of my control.

"Stop. Stop and [listen."]

I stand up and walk to her. She looks up to me, at my uncovered, unmasked face, because what's the point when I'm a Case 53, even if by the slightest of margins? I can never turn my power off, have to live with my emotions flashing over and around me continually. Nobody can look at Iridiscent and not recognize Emma Barnes.

That's a shame I have to bear every day.

"I could [silence] you, Sophia. I could. Maybe you could kill me before I managed, but you know how unpredictable my power is. Maybe I will regenerate. Maybe I will explode. Maybe I will fade away like I never existed. We don't know."

I am rambling. The coldness of the rage is slipping, and I don't have much time before I lose control.

"We know what happens if I shoot you through your chest while you sleep, though. We know how many ways I have to find you and kill you before you realize it's too late to turn shadow—"

"Heh. Keep talking like that, Ems, I like seeing that—"

I shoot a red bolt that scorches the asphalt roofing just beside her knee. A lingering flame turns blue and yellow as it spews an awful smoke that burns in my nostrils.

"Shut. Up."

I look down at her. At the kneeling girl who once saved my life, at the one that I believed held me together as my whole world crumbled around me.

At the one that pushed me to reject Taylor.

She looks up. Doesn't speak, doesn't move.

But her chest moves up and down gently, her breathing steady and measured.

"I don't want to kill you, Sophia. Don't make me change my mind."

I just lied to my last remaining friend.

"Over Hebert. You would try to kill me over Hebert."

I can see her eyes through the slits in her mask. They aren't narrowed in anger, just…

"I wouldn't try."

Sophia throws her head back, and she laughs.

It's… I've never heard her laugh like this. Not so… unreserved. Free.

"I misjudged you two, didn't I?" she finally says, her words coming out with difficulty after laughing so hard and for so long.

The red recedes, and green takes over.

Once again, I feel the urge to throw up.

"You did," I say just so I can feel something come out of my mouth.

Then I turn around and, before the strength of my rage leaves me, jump to another building. Another roof.

Any other place that hasn't Sophia in it.

She's my last friend.

The last one I deserve.

And, just for that, I hate her so much more.

==================

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.

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