"I'm not asking to be friends. I'm not asking for you to like me!" Vanessa wasn't going to back off, not this time. She often shrank back, stepped aside, whenever she tried to broach this with Josh, and their professional relationship had continued to suffer. She matched him step for step, putting a hand on his shoulder when they reached the top of the stairs. "But you don't have a choice in being on a team with me. I'm sorry you feel that way, and I'm sorry for what I did, but that doesn't make us not teammates. We have to work together to some degree. I can't just leave you alone." She didn't know how many ways she could word this! She was stumbling over words, repeating herself, and it was driving her insane.
After the contact, it was hard for her, with her sense of self-worth crippled further by the exchange of words, to keep her own form. She'd copied Josh before, mimicking and practicing Elixir's powers. She remembered killing a spider once on accident with his powers. She forced herself to focus, faltering in expression and words, to keep her own form, though a bit of her blue showed through with the effort, like her usual blue blushes.