Agrippa
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Wordsworth – Chapter 12 – Colors 5
🕑 Added 2022-03-29 16:53:10 +0000 UTCThe docks are burning.
“Just call it in, Ems. That’s Lung on a rampage; there’s nothing you can do.”
Sophia’s voice comes from behind me, terse and severe, but far softer than it was mere moments ago. Before we heard the explosion.
I feel… something. I’m still not good enough at identifying all of my emotions, far too used to hiding them behind the always present rage, but there’s… an urge. Almost a longing.
There’s a pulse of amber, of the eagerness to jump into action, to rush through the streets and dance amid danger, every step one taken along a razor’s blade. And I know amber. I know it from training with the Wards, from the few worthwhile fights I’ve fought.
There’s the thrum of gold, the lone vein still carefully hidden inside my forearm. And I know hope, even if I don’t yet know what power it brings beyond making me able to stand seeing myself in the mirror, even if for a short while.
But… There’s also some kind of blue… No. Indigo. Indigo is swirling around me, spiraling up from my calves, along my thighs, reaching up to my chest.
And I… I want to…
Protect.
My eyes open wide, and I can see with far more detail than I should. I see how the haze of the Bay distorts the flames roaring up to the sky more than six blocks away, I see shadows over fire, silhouettes of men and monsters painted in light that’s not as bright as it could be, and I hear—
“Back off! We can—shit! Brian, cover Alec before he—”
The blonde girl whose voice I’ve learned to hate stops abruptly, not even screaming.
And red joins amber, gold, and indigo.
“Emma!” Sophia’s voice’s behind me, fading away as I leap, as the wind roars past me, as I rush to fight a dragon and save a damsel.
Taylor would be—
No. I’ve got no right.
The tarmac of the roof smolders as my feet dig into it, heat, strength, and speed damaging the old building, but I can’t stop, not now, not when—
Another jump. The reflexes of amber and the awareness of indigo let me roll in just the right way, along the right path, and I come up to my feet just in time to make the next one.
I overshoot, the next building too narrow for me to land on it at the speed I was going, and I’m falling, and I—
I remember. I remember Sophia above me, a bolt in her hand, ready to stab through my eye, ready to kill me, and I remember the sheer relief, the almost elation that it all would end, that I would just stop existing, stop feeling, stop having to deal with—
For a brief moment, cerulean blue washes completely over me, and I feel my body lightening, featherweight, almost floating.
I land on the street below, my fall barely disturbing a blackened piece of paper lying on the sidewalk.
I breathe. Just breathe, just center myself, trying to remember cerulean isn’t an option. That it’s meaningless, a waste, that I should use something else next time, because that’s not an emotion I want to flirt with, and I remember Anne loaning me her old theatre book, the one with Stanislavsky’s method, the one I devoured in a single night after I got home with a golden vein of hope that—
Hope.
Hope for Taylor.
The Taylor who wants to be a hero, who wants to be noble, who wants to help without compromising.
The Taylor who will murder Lung if I don’t get there in time.
Amber bursts forth, intense enough I can see the street around me light up as if with lamps shining through a calm sea made of gold.
And I run.
My shinbones tingle with every impact against the ground until I lean on the rage I feel at Lung taking something of Taylor’s away, until I remember Tattletale’s frantic instructions being cut off and her partners not even having the leeway to shout at her injury. Amber and red propel me, the streets blur, and I reach the fire.
And the dragon.
He’s tall, taller than I’ve ever seen him, and he’s throwing off one of Hellhound’s giant dogs, the mutt taking a piece of sliver-covered flesh with him as it bounces off a brick wall with a wet sound and a low whine.
Then the dog lies on its side, its chest slowly, tremulously deflating.
It’s a cliché. It’s stupid. It’s not even rational.
But I just saw Lung hurt a dog, and I guess I’m still too much of a stupid teenage girl who has no business getting into superpowered fights to feel anything but burning rage at the action.
So I jump at him, my fist cocked back with all the strength that rage grants me.
And he slaps me down.
Ah. Right. Super senses.
Like the ones I just lost with my little floating stunt.
“Hiiiro?” he asks through a muzzle that is no longer human enough.
Then he laughs.
Grue is half-lying against the wall to my back, just at the edge of my peripheral vision. His jacket is missing a sleeve, and his helmet is cracked.
He… I’m sorry. I truly, really, I’m sorry, but I don’t care enough about him to experience what I need, to get the power I have to—
“Angelica, kill,” Hellhound’s rough voice rasps out, her throat obviously injured, hurt, and another of her dogs jumps at Lung.
The villain—the monster turns away from me, too quick for his bulk, for his misshapen body, and I see the claws of his right hand spread as he—
I lean on amber and red, both intense enough to rival the flames around us, and I rush at him, my aura stretching into a searing bolt directed at the back of his knee.
He’s resistant to his own fire, and maybe to mine, but I think I can… Yes.
Lung has a trick. He can suddenly increase the intensity of the flames he throws around, heating them up quickly enough that they become explosions. But I am not a pyrokinetic. Maybe someday I will find an emotion that changes that, but now I’m not.
But the burning rage? The heat it generates? I can—should be able to control that.
And my bolts aren’t bolts, just pieces of my aura.
So I focus. I dive into my anger, let the images come to mind, let them burn and compound on each other. I first see Lung carelessly maiming a dog, but then I remember Piggot parading me around to cower Chris, and then I remember Sophia casually mentioning silencing Taylor, and then I—
‘This… It will give her the same powers I will have? No more, no less?’
‘It’s not an exact science, Miss Barnes, there’s always a risk involved. But, as far as we can ensure such a thing, the two vials have the same components. You will express them differently, but the abilities will be as equivalent as we can make them.’
‘Right. Right. So... that’s it, then. The last thing I wanted to know.’
‘Have you come to a decision, I take it?’
‘Yes. Do it.’
I burn.
The world around me fades, the rage so intense, so all-consuming, that my mind can’t contain anything else, that everything fades except the frantic beating of my heart and the strange cold flowing through my veins, that I—
There’s thunder around me, and I feel the pain it brings me.
And I use that to focus.
Lung’s lying on the floor, the lower half of his right leg just missing, and I’m inside a crater that tells me my desperate trick worked, that the surge of rage was enough to overheat the air enough to replicate the villain’s move. Enough that I see the remains of my communicator half-melted at my feet.
And Angelica is stunned, shaking her head, but alive and not gutted by a dragon’s claws, and that makes something light in my chest thrum, and I regain the vein of gold that I don’t know how to harness but that I desperately need.
I look around, and I see Hellhound kneeling beside the hurt dog, her hand on it as she tries to do whatever her power lets her do to save it. Grue’s still behind me, still unmoving, but I know he’s alive because there’s a patch of black covering a corner, and…
Tattletale.
She’s…
At the far end of the block, in the middle of an intersection with patches of burning asphalt.
Unmoving.
Burned.
No.
No, red won’t do, don’t think about it, don’t let that fester when you need something else, when you need…
I need to save her. I need to save her so Taylor won’t be hurt.
Indigo blooms, my senses sharpen, and I see her exposed, maimed back move. I see clear, transparent fluid flowing between the cracks of puckered flesh. I see blood welling on open wounds.
I see she lives.
And gold spreads over my arm.
I catch a glint of something on a shard of glass fallen near her unmoving form, and that lets me notice the stilling of wind at my back just in time to leap.
The ground below me bursts into flame, and I manage to turn around in mid-air to face Lung, to see flesh bubbling below his knee as he roars at me, his inhuman maw splitting into rows of teeth and tongues of flame—
I stretch my left arm away from me and cradle a glob of red before I pour my father’s face and everything it brings me on it, the explosion enough to abort the trajectory of my jump before Lung’s blast engulfs me. The rush of adrenaline is enough to bring me amber, and I roll across the ground with increased speed and indigo-fueled senses, but I don’t know what I can do to—
A bolt of shadow sinks into Lung’s neck, and he staggers.
I see her, Sophia, kneeling on the rooftop like that night we first met, like that night she decided I was enough of a fighter to be worth saving.
I feel a slight amount of pride, of joy, and then I realize it, and it sickens me—enough to bring a wave of viridian over my left arm and…
And…
That may just work.
I charge Lung, Angelica’s brutish form doing the same from another angle, and the dragon twists around, his new wings spreading to maybe shield any vital parts from either Sophia’s bolts or Angelica’s jaws.
But not from my left hand.
And so I touch him, and allow everything I hold back to flow.
I allow that first time I let Sophia push Taylor away, that first time I joined in.
I push what I did to Annette's silver flute, one of the few mementos of a woman who was almost a mother to me.
I push every insult, every careless cruelty, every deliberate injury until I feel like throwing up, until not even the red can shield me from the nausea, from the need to purge my insides of everything rotten inside me.
And Lung’s shape buckles.
He’s on his hands and knees, viridian washing over him as strongly as over me, and he’s throwing up, his jaws split as far as they will go as Angelica tears a chunk off his thigh and Sophia rains shadow wounds upon his back.
So I push.
I push being alone in my room, thinking about Taylor, about the way she looked, about the way she walked, she talked, after everything I took away from her. After she fought to regain even the smallest scrap.
I push the image of a guilty, confused, sick girl remembering her first crush and touching—
I throw up, the bile thick in my mouth.
And Lung shrinks as his scales fade beneath his skin.
I heave, the rough, boiling pavement scraping layers of skin off my palms, but this isn’t enough, because we have vanquished the dragon, but the damsel’s still dying.
And I don’t know how to heal; I just know who does.
So I push myself up. Because that’s what heroes do. And I’m not a hero, I’ll never be, but she is, she always was, and she deserves everything I have to go through to make sure she at least doesn’t lose yet another thing of hers.
I stumble, brush traces of bile off my mouth, and my knees almost give up, buckling beneath me, but I need to push, I need to—
“Ems! Ems, answer me!”
There’s a hand on my shoulder. It’s pulling me back.
I push forward.
“You can’t go on! You are burned, bleeding—”
The voice’s familiar. Someone I know, someone I met before the green gouged out my insides, and I…
There’s a wave of nausea, and the hand falls away as I hear gagging noises behind me.
And there’s nothing pulling me back, so I keep pushing forward.
And then there’s a broken girl beneath me.
I… I can’t touch her, not now, not with all the green covering me, so I need to—
Gleaming gold thrums, and I hear a dog whining. I turn around to see the injured animal trying to wag its monstrous tail as Hellhound kneels in front of it, her hand on its snout so tender and careful it takes me a moment to reconcile it with the brash, violent girl.
And I cry.
I just… I don’t know why it stabs me like that, why it’s something so unbearably sad, but it’s enough that the green fades as blue takes its place. Not strong enough to crack the ground beneath me, but…
But enough that I’m once more able to kneel down and take the injured girl in my arms.
I remember my training, the few actually useful classes I took as a prospective Ward, and I know a fireman’s carry would make her easier to carry, but I look down at Tattletale’s face, at the beauty marred by puckered, red, weeping flesh, and I can’t bring myself to do it.
So I reinforce my arms with the red the monster who inflicted those wounds on her brings me, and I steady my hold on her so that carrying her like this won’t be a problem, so that I will be able to—
To what?
Carry her across the entire city?
To Panacea, to the girl who hates villains, who thinks I despise the Undersiders and Wordsworth as much as I’ve said I do?
No, not the time. I don’t have the time to doubt myself, to doubt anything.
“Hellhound—” I start to say.
“Bitch,” she growls out.
I recoil for a moment before I remember that’s her preferred moniker, and I’ve been too caught up in PR lessons to properly address her.
Stupid.
“Bitch… Tattletale’s dying.”
She freezes.
“I need your help. To carry her.”
She looks back at me.
“Can’t. Angelica’s leg’s hurt.”
I look to the side, and the big dog is limping toward her mistress.
She has three dogs. Always has three dogs with her, so why isn’t she—oh.
Oh. I’m so sorry…
“I’ll do what I can,” I tell her, and she nods at me, her hand never straying from the hurt dog trying to lick the palm of his owner amid pained whines.
I could… call for support? No, my coms are melted slag at this point, and Sophia keeps having hers ‘malfunction.’
So I…
I need amber, for speed, and red, for strength.
But I’m so drained, so tired…
I stumble out of the intersection, away from the Undersiders’ line of sight, and I reinforce the red with the frustration at my own weakness. And then I start jogging.
Amy should be at Brockton Central tonight, but that’s on the other side of town. I need to reach somebody with a phone, somebody who hasn’t fled after Lung’s rampage, somebody willing to approach two parahumans in the middle of the night.
The Boardwalk. There are always stupid cape-tourists at the Boardwalk.
But I... I need to hurry.
And so I remember what little I digested from Anne’s book, the acting method, and I think about the fight—no, about the training session a month ago, when I was under Chris’ fire, dodging, and rolling, and twisting my body around impossibly near shots as Sophia got into position to cover me—
The amber surges, the world slowing down, gaining clarity. But a smidge of green taints it, and Tattletale’s face twists beneath her melted domino mask.
“Emma..?”
Her voice is rough, barely recognizable.
“You will be all right. I’m getting you to safety.”
One eye opens. The other doesn’t.
“It hurts, Emma. It hurts, because… you were never meant to… save people…”
That’s her power talking.
“You just… hurt. Hurt, and tear, and… and… taint…”
Don’t answer. She’s out of it. She’s reflexively lashing out. It’s like Vista getting distance after getting injured, or Sophia phasing out before falling unconscious.
Just a reflex.
So just keep thinking about electricity buzzing around you, keep thinking about the elation of a narrow dodge, about wind rushing past my face as I reached for cover—
“Taylor will always be better than you…”
I swallow.
“You are right; she will,” I finally answer.
And her mouth stretches into a smile that turns pained before reaching its full cruelty.
“She will… get it all back,” she continues.
“Yes.”
“And you’ll… you’ll never… touch her…”
It hurts. It hurts to hear.
And there’s another color, another one ready to burst forth, but I know it’s not one I can afford, so I focus on remembering ozone trails, on immersing myself in the sense memory of powdered concrete exploding around me as I joyfully—
“She loves me…” her voice is fading, the knife in it barely a whisper.
It still stabs deep.
“I know. That’s why I saved you,” I answer, not looking into her one lone eye.
She stills.
And quietens.
And I can only run.
***
I reach the Boardwalk covered in sweat and Tattletale’s blood, but she’s still breathing, still rasping out each pained lungful, and I see people roaming around, excitedly talking, and I remember why.
Because Taylor just made a mansion that never existed fall apart tonight.
And I should’ve gone there if I was to find parahuman assistance.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could I mess this—
“Iridiscent?” Victoria Dallon’s clear voice shakes me out of… whatever that was.
“Glory Girl?” I turn to her, and the two sisters are there, in civilian clothes, eating ice cream.
I sink to my knees.
“Iridiscent?! What the Hell—”
“Amy. Ames. Please. Save her.” I stretch my arms, red no longer in them, and the muscles tremble with strain and fatigue as I struggle not to drop the girl in them.
There’s a rush of motion, and the greatest healer in the world is by my side, her palm on my cheek.
“You are hurt. Horribly,” she says with a tone that’s almost her dry and detached one.
“Her. Do her first. Please.”
She looks at me, then down, and her eyes widen as she finally sees the extent of Tattletale’s wounds.
Then she almost backs away when she realizes who she is.
And I can’t hold her. Can’t grab her arm and force her to stay, because I’m still holding Tattletale, trying not to bring her even more pain. But Amy looks into my eyes. And stays.
And then she touches the blonde. And winces.
“I… She’s lost some mass—”
“Take it from me. I can eat as much as you need me to later.”
“She’s a villain, Emma—”
“She’s dying, Amy.”
Her fingers tense on my cheek, and she nods.
She grasps Tattletale’s hand and brings her to a tear on the side of my uniform, and, after barely a moment, I feel my thighs shrink, my legs becoming thin and gangly.
Like Taylor’s were.
And I feel the golden vein of hope thrum inside my forearm as I strain to hold back a burbling laugh.
Comments
Agrippa
Thanks! I just recovered from writing the chapter now. I really should stop diving into Emma's emotions just to see how I should write them, because she's exhausting, and acting lessons only take me so far. As to what happens next... Let's just say I have a clearer idea about the end of the fic than the middle of it.
Evilreadermaximum
Damn, just, damn. Had me on the edge of my seat with that one, and you continue to get me to root for Emma. Weird. Of course now I wonder how Taylor's goons react when she finds out Lisa is in custody, unless she's also in custody of course, that would probably change things. Unless Emma sets her loose after cause of the whole Taylor loves Lisa thing, so many delightful possibilities. Regardless I'm looking forward to however this turns out!
Agrippa
All right, that was tense to write. My shoulders are killing me, and I feel like I just wrote far more than the measly word count. I hope it was worth it, guys :)
