Warnings: Spoilers for S1
First in "Shades of Gray" series
Beta by mam711
Everyone dreams. Some would assume Neal's dreams are three dimensional, 7.1 surround sound and multimillions of colors. They would assume especially when they learn he is an artist.
But they would be wrong. His dreams are black and white. Not the crisp black and white of comic books, more like in shades of gray. If you asked, he might tell you it's why his favorite medium is sketch with pencil or charcoal, not ink, not crayons (which he likes but will not, ever, be caught with), not watercolors or oils.
There were only a few occasions in his life when he saw color while dreaming.
He tried to forget the first time it happened, although he wasn't even sure it was the first time. It was somehow familiar.
He must have been a small kid. The angry man shouting and waving a gun was huge and scary, the ring of a phone much louder than normal and then an explosion of color.
It was also the first dream in which he could taste and smell something. Copper taste and smell mixed with everything covered in a red sticky substance. He woke each night sobbing silently in the makeshift bed, curling his small body into a tight ball to hide away. It took months for his dreams to clear, and each time someone beat him on the streets, each time he saw blood, his red nightmare returned.
He practically chose white collar crime because there was no violence, no guns and no blood. Well, at least in most cases; in others, he learned to run really fast.
For almost the next twenty years, it was the only situation where his dreams had color in them: when he saw blood. He was careful, filling his life with colors, tastes and sounds—rich experiences that allowed him to change his life from gray to colorful. But only in the real world. His dreams were still in shades of gray.
When Peter finally caught up with him and put him in prison, it never crossed his mind it would impact his dreams. It wasn't fast, but after the first two years, the only color he saw day and night long was orange. He was glad that Kate never liked it; her weekly visits brought relief and changed the color to light sky blue for one night each week.
When he broke out and Peter put him back, his biggest problem was not four more years itself; it was the constant string of orange. Life in white collar division wasn't bad; the dreams were back to their usual grays. But each of Peter's casual mentions of putting him back in prison created a ripple effect, orange spilling over his dreams.
The next time the colors, tastes and smells mixed was after the plane blew up.
For more than three months after, he was trapped in nightmares. Nightmares full of the red, orange and yellow colors of fire, the taste and smell of blood mixed with fuel, and the sound of his own scream.
The End