Coleen was red.
Coleen realized she did not know whether she still thought of herself as Faith or not. It seemed to her that everything Faith had done that she liked was done by someone else. The Faith of now. When Faith did something she could not stand… (Lizzie Lizzie Elizabeth!)
Well, then it was Coleen. It was all Coleen.
She had been trying so hard not to think of Elizabeth.
Someone else had been her first and last friend. Emil therefore was not her friend. What he was… was the last thing she could cling to before he pushed her off into the wild seas. He was her last harbour. He was not safe (that had been Lorene) and he was not protecting her (that had been Alton). He just was.
Agon was just a game. It did not matter whether she had thought so or not back then. The truth was it had been created for a purpose, but now was only played for entertainment. The knight Lamar had used his Agon match against the Faith for his own amusement. Amusement and a way of determining the Faith’s character.
Emil finished setting everything up. He waited for her to choose her colour.
The white of Faith’s outfit, the white I fit myself into. The red of royalty, the red I forced myself into.
(The red of a certain warrior, a certain knight. The white of Faith once again.)
For the life of her, an immortal life that did not matter, she could not choose between white and red.
“It was always more about interaction than the game,” she finally said.
“That one game? Or all of them?”
Emil had caught on to something Coleen had not allowed herself to ever think about. She had liked to win. She had loved to win. Until the end, she had always wanted things to go her way. Even when everything fell apart. As things unravelled, as she would do was decide she wanted something else so she could still win.
Perhaps every game had been about Coleen trying to figure out something about her opponent. Her opponent: herself.
“It’s just a game.”
Emil didn’t look like he believed it. But it was true.
Emil had pulled out the Agon board he had bought and told her he actually knew how to play. Not only did he know how to play, he told her he thought a lot of her analogies with the game were rather stupid. As if Coleen was talking about putting the queen undefended ahead on the board.
“Good thing I was talking for morale,” she retorted. “Those analogies were never a real game of Agon.”
“Why don’t you admit you simply said those things to make your game more interesting? To give your opponent a chance to do something that might make you need to think.”
Coleen did not reply. Emil had said it out loud, so there was no point in admitting it.
“You should have told Lamar his move was illegal, rather than losing your temper.”
A. A. MacConnell 