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.
All her feelings tumbled around her. She drowned.
But she could not die, so she had to resurface again.
“Now that was silly of you.”
(Underneath his comment, the unspoken “are you all right?” that meant she was not. She never would be and he was the only one to ever truly understand that.)
“Aren’t you going?” she asked. Emil stared at her and she continued. “Might as well enjoy the free food. They might have real chocolates.”
That caused him to react. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
Coleen was content with feeling empty.
This was the feeling of fulfillment. She accomplished what she had set out to do. Of course she had not died, but that would have been too good for her. This way she got to see her world realized and her name smeared as far as she had been able to defile it. She would hear word of Ami through Emil’s lips and she would just live.
Not that she had a choice.
The numbness crept from her heart and into her limbs. Maybe she would never be able to do anything more active, she had never been good at that in the first place. Different than her will pushing her onward. She did not need a strong will. She could keep moving on because she could not feel.
Someone had once asked if she felt anything. Now she could truthfully say she did not.
Whoever had asked would never known. Coleen didn’t remember who had asked.
She had often thought that Emil would die when giving her his immortality. He hadn’t helped much with that impression, straight up telling Coleen that if she accepted it one day that he would die.
“Lots of people wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone to seal away immortality either, to keep someone from taking it,” Emil had commented. When had he first said that? Perhaps eight months before, shortly after her death.
Coleen wondered whether he only did this to keep an eye on her. It was not like he needed more of a life to live. While she reminded him constantly of things he should not do now that he wasn’t immortal, he reminded her more often of things that did not matter now that she was.
Maybe he did not want to live a normal life now. Maybe he waited for her to no longer need him.
Coleen would always need Emil. He was the beginning of the end of her numbness. She could feel it when she thought of him. The need of someone to know her, the real her, as only Emil ever had.
(There had been someone else who eventually had, but Coleen did not want to think of that person either.)
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.
Only after Emil’s eyes widened slightly in surprise did Coleen feel that her left eye was twitching. A muscle spasm she was unable to control. No, not that. A muscle spasm which meant her body felt something her mind hadn’t caught up to yet. Because despite realizing her reaction, Coleen did not feel like trying to deny it or bring any further attention to it.
She had been trying to not think of Lamar.
She had been trying not to think at all. After all, thinking was something that King Cole had done to ruin everything. And Coleen was not that person now. What was there to think about? It was not like she needed to rush it. She had an eternity to think.
Coleen would not pass this curse onto anyone.
Yet Alton had gotten to live to see Coleen betray him and everything he thought she had lived for. At least Lorene never realized what Coleen really was. At least she had that. A belief in a person who was not real. A Coleen she had imagined and not the one who had actually held her as she died. She had preferred that Coleen. Coleen was glad she thought she had died with that one.
Yet nothing about Emil was like either Alton or Lorene. It had been five months since she had died and Coleen realized there was nothing she could do about starting to reflect on everything that had happened over the last few years. She had pushed that through while going through her final steps, but now she didn’t have that distraction. She thought of Ami. She thought of Alton. She thought of Lorene.
There were more people than that, but Coleen tried to keep it to a minimum. Maybe just thinking about those three would keep her from thinking about the rest.
There was no amount of numbness that could keep everything out if she thought about all of them.
Coleen needed something to do.
She used to do this with Ami. When they were younger and she liked doing more with her hair than just letting it grow and grow around her shoulders and down her back. She considered that and moved her fingers more gently. Emil did not move, tolerating her actions.
It would be so easy to check on how Ami was doing. Turn on the television and watch as her sister looked over the restoration process. But that would require thinking about Ami and she was too busy feeling numb. If she thought about her, then Coleen would have to think about the taint they had grown up in the middle of. The taint Ami had grown up with. The taint was supposed to be dead now.
Yet here she was, having betrayed her own convictions. Here she was alive. She thought of the peace she had felt in Ami’s arms as she died. Right before she remembered she had fulfilled her promise to Emil and she would not stay dead.
A. A. MacConnell 