AN: A hundred years ago (actually, on May 2009), the next writing exercise was posted at the Superhero Muses community at LiveJournal. I wrote the first five parts of this, then spent the next seven years adding bits and pieces to it. Currently at ~16K words and still a WIP, its working title was Black + Blue = Red.

Write an exercise in which you repeatedly use two different colors. Describe these colors without naming them too often-and try to find effective synonyms for the colors without being too obvious about this disguise. How would two colors, appearing over and over again in different forms, affect the reaction of the reader?

01 [ Blue | ocean, cloudless, superhero ]

He slows down a little. More than just a little, actually - but compared to what he has to slow down for others it is nothing, relatively speaking. He thinks about counting seconds, but they are long long looooong, so he counts picoseconds instead. Then a blur flies by him, a sonic boom signaling the barrier of sound has been broken, and he grins. It's early in the morning, the sky is cloudless and they've agreed on a route exclusively over deep sea. He taps on the Speed Force, keeping a healthy distance from his self-imposed limits, but still, it is freedom, and as it pulses through his body he feels alive.

He has no problem whatsoever catching up with, then surpassing, the blue costumed superhero.

02 [ Black | shadows, fear, crime ]

It's dark outside, and Wally is usually not afraid of darkness, but that's part of the problem: he's Wally right now. It's late at night and he's been working non-stop for almost forty six hours, yet no complain has come out of his mouth all this time. Jokes, yes, plenty of them. Carefully constructed smartass one-lines that leave him open for taunting.

And he's been taunted. And it's been helpful. And now -

There's something in the shadows. He almost jumps, but doesn't. Immediate reaction is something he has painfully worked himself out of, when he's Wally. It makes being the Flash more incredibly liberating than anybody cares to know, but when you naturally move as fast as he does, being normal is no normal at all.

It is late, it is dark, and most of the public lights in his path are broken or burnt, he doesn't know. He'll definitely ask the Mayor for a box of light bulbs next morning, have them fixed in the blink of an eye. But there's tomorrow and there's right now, and right now he's seriously crept out. He could run run run and get out of this stupid place and be in his shoe-box-tiny but safe department, but he's not stupid.

Not when he's Wally, anyway. Or when he's Flash, either, because being stupid is not the same than acting stupid, and to be honest he acts stupid as both of them. Because, well, he's both of them, isn't he? But he's not -

Hell. There's definitely something hiding behind the corners, and Wally knows he's being an idiot; he's a superhero, for god's sake. But he's also Wally, and Wally is a forensic scientist that has been working non-stop around heavily burnt bodies for way too many hours, and as a police scientist he ought to be used to work with bodily substances and byproducts of gruesome crimes, but.

Too much, it's too much, and if he's going to be stupid at least he can be stupid without giving away his secret, so he pulls out one of his lifelines.

"Are you still at the Station?" he asks as soon as the call is answered, his voice not low enough to be called a whisper. But still.

"Just leaving. Did you change your mind?"

Wally snickers. The sound's not nice.

"Yeah. Kind of. Could you pick me up? I'm like, eight blocks to the north?"

"Jesus, Wally. Are you insane? Wait for me. Try not to get killed."

Wally looks at the screen, squinting at its brightness. Three minutes to three a.m. Eighty three percent of the incidents happened between midnight and five in the morning, ninety seven percent of the victims were males, all of them police officers. He's not an officer, not really, and the psycho was captured by Flash and Batman ten hours ago, thankfully before Agent Williams suffered more than an awful scare.

He shouldn't fear darkness. But still.

03 [ Blue | eyes, tropical storm, spandex ]

"I don't care what he thinks."

Flash smiles. He and Supergirl have a thing going on, but that thing is called friendship. She's too cute, her baby blues match nicely with the mostly blue side of the planet peaking behind her back, yet she's not for him.

"Of course you do. He'll become Lord-y when he knows."

She rolls her eyes and he gives her his brightest grin. Tropical storm Henri hasn't dissipated yet; he'll surely remain on duty call the next three days.

"No, I don't. And he won't kill you; you know why."

He runs around her ten times before she realizes what's going on, ruffles her hair just because he can, and then she has him pinned against the huge window span with one hand. She's not really angry: her eyes are still the color of her uniform, not shining with laser warnings. She looks even cuter with a frown in her face and her hair a pigeon's nest, but he doesn't laugh, choosing to use one of his sheepish smiles instead.

"You're only inviting me out to piss him off," he insists. They both know it is true, so it doesn't really matter when she doesn't agree with him out loud.

"I'll introduce you to Nightwing and Oracle's civil identities," she says, raising a pretty eyebrow. So you can piss off Batman, he hears between lines. Now, that's something.

She leaves after that, not waiting for his answer, with a mischievous smile that announces quite clearly that she knows she has him.

And she does, in a way, Flash thinks, while sparing one last look to the clouds, wind and water's potentially deadly mix down in Earth.