Title: Of Blank Canvases
Character(s): Megan Morse/Miss Martian
Words:1,385
Summary: The future was white, blindingly white, and Megan can think of a good description: the future was so bright she had to wear sunglasses.
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice.
Author's Note: In honor of Snowpocalypse. And the fact that I do not have school tomorrow. Cheers, and happy February. EDITED FEB. 3: Got her Martian and Earth ages mixed up. Fixed.
Of Blank Canvases
Megan liked the color white. It was nice, it was clean; it went well with her other favorite color, red. It was comforting. It reminded her of things she thought once dreamt of and now she finds that she dreams of them again. She cannot remember what she dreams, she thinks there might be voices and smells and sights, but all she can remember is white. Blinding white. And when Megan wakes up in the morning after these dreams, she feels rejuvenated for some reason or another. She had long since done away with trying to explain it. Sometimes, the Universe just gives.
White was the color of her comforter, the one that she snuggled nightly in, the one that was fuzzy and the one that gained static electricity over the course of the few nightly hours. Megan was always amused to wake up to find that her hair was almost, but not quite, standing on end because she liked to roll around in her sleep and her white fuzzy comforter just gained that static charge like nothing else. Megan had tried to think of an analogy but whenever she asked for help she got odd looks from her friends as to why she would do that. So Megan left that alone. But she always liked going to bed because her comforter, her warm, white comforter, was there to help her sleep and slip into those white-out dreams.
White was the color of untaintedness. White is clean, it is crisp, it is unblemished. It is perfect. White light is made up of all the other colors. White paint is on her ceilings and in her bathroom, where the shower is and Megan likes the shower. White is everywhere, in the clouds that float above Happy Harbor, and white is in Happy Harbor itself, on the caps of the waves that brush against the shore.
White is the color of her uniform; white, blue, and red. Her green skin makes an interesting contrast to her uniform, but she likes it because it makes the red and the white stand out even more. She has grown to love red, after all she comes from Mars and the red soil and the red landscape is home for her, but her love of white; she has always had it. On the few times that the sun truly shone on Mars, the light, the guiding light, was brilliantly white. It only brings fond memories for Megan.
Megan had seen pictures and video and read things about snow. She knew a few facts about snow: it was white, it came when it was cold (which for Earth was in the winter, for where she was located approximately early December to late March), it made driving very troublesome, and it allowed children play time, usually for snowmen, or snowball fights, or sledding, or snow angels, or no school. Megan thought that she would like the snow because it was white and it was cold (as a Martian, one must be very adept to the cold). She did not drive, so that did not bother her, though she was sure she could pick it up easily if she had too, though why she would give up flying, as Dick has suggested, is a complete and utter mystery, and Megan loved to play.
So, when the first big snowstorm of the season rolled around Happy Harbor, Megan was excited, if a little nervous. She did not want to be disappointed, because when she came to Earth snow was one of the first things she learned about and one the things she was most anxious and giddy to actually see and feel.
She woke up every morning and flew, because it was just something she did, a routine and a habit, and she could not even ponder thinking of giving it up. Megan woke up on that Tuesday morning and she was surprised to find that flying conditions were not all that great. Visibility was low and the wind was howling and it was snowing; not white-out conditions, but enough that she could see the flurries flying around. She was greatly confused, because the meteorologists had told her the night before that snow would not start falling until noon that day. She checked her watch. It was six, the time she normally flew, about forty minutes before sunrise. Megan shrugged and flew anyways, deciding to go up and not out, to go high and not to explore. She slowly glided up, gaining altitude. The cold air did not bother her, nor did the wind, even if she just had her uniform on. It wasn't until she was very high in the air did she realize that she was surrounded by white.
White-out conditions.
It was a blanket. She couldn't see anything else besides blowing snow. It was a light snow, snow that easily blew around, and Megan fell a few feet before she realized that she was completely and utterly surrounded.
She stayed up there for as long as she could before her conscience told her that she should really be getting down to the mountain. It was almost eight and her friends were just a little bit worried about her because she was usually the first one up, trying a new breakfast dish, ready to feed them all in time for early morning training. She had snow in her red hair and her green was just a little bit darker than normal, a normal reaction for her, and she was practically glowing.
What was her fascination with white? Wally asked when she got back, grinning like a fool and rambling on and on about the blasted color (his words, not hers) that humans took for granted.
What they obviously did not understand, what he obviously did not understand, what he took for granted, was the fact that white was new, it was unblemished, it was a blank canvas to start over, and Megan did not have it on Mars. It was an opportunity, one Megan had, literally, dreamed of.
On Mars, she only had red, and while she loved red, sometimes it was just a little too dark and sometimes Megan just wanted some light. Her past wasn't tainted, per se, it just wasn't clean. It was red, the future was white. Megan was sixteen on Mars but she had had her life pegged for years. But here, on Earth, she was a teenager, even though she was really forty. She was a teenager because she wasn't advanced like she was on Mars. Here she was average. She was a teenager, and a normal teenager would be doing homework at high school and looking at colleges and future careers, and she could do that, if she wished. She might. Or she might not. She could choose.
She didn't know. The future was white, blindingly white, and Megan can think of a good description: the future was so bright she had to wear sunglasses.
Megan had had all of that mapped out for her on Mars and here she didn't. On Earth, her future was blank. It was white. It was like fresh snow, blanketing the ground. It was fresh and no one else had tarnished it or touched it. No one else had scrawled upon it or had stained it besides Megan. She planned to keep it that way.
Here, she could remake herself in to a better Megan.
Earth was Megan's blank canvas. It was closer to the sun, which emitted that white light. Megan was closer to whiteness, to a blank canvas where she could paint herself anew. She was closer to a fresh start and new start, to make her life even better than it was. Because while on Mars it hadn't been bad it hadn't been great either. Not many people got a second chance, a second life. Not many people got that chance, not many people were lucky enough to have that chance.
Megan understood her luck and she did not take it for granted.
And Megan was reminded of that every time she woke up from her dream of white to a white comforter and put on her white uniform while watching the white clouds over Happy Harbor. Her new home and her new bright, white life.
love,
Azaria.