"Restoring the Colours"
Author's Note: Based on this: post/84629573819/red-orca-pleasegodletmelive-owynsama
"Milan? For the summer?"
Nora grinned and practically bounced when she nodded her head.
Victor still looked at her quizzically. Why was she smiling at the prospect of going to what would surely be such a hot place? "But…Nora…how would be able to tolerate the immense heat?"
Nora still retained the wide, enthusiastic on her pale, pink lips that he had come to love so much ever since the world had burst into a frightening array of colours. "I'll just remind myself that I'll get to see the original 'Last Supper' in the end."
Now that was a real surprise for Victor. He hadn't expected that sort of enthusiasm for any kind of painting from anyone, even as he mentally bit his tongue and reminded himself that Nora was a dancer, of course she would love the other arts-
"The story was that the original 'Last Supper' was painted in 'Santa Maria delle Grazie' for the monastery's dining rooms. But because the painting was done on dry plaster as opposed to the traditional wet plaster for a fresco painting, the humidity from the monastery's kitchen started to damage it. Then Napoleon came around and the bombing damaged it even further, then several people tried- and failed- to restore it. Now, there's an old woman in Italy trying to properly restore it to its former glory."
Victor was unchallenged. There was no form of surprise, no usual raised eyebrows that most husbands would probably have given if their wives said that. No. He knew that underneath an already beautiful surface of ice blonde hair and glacier blue eyes lay an entire wealth of accumulated knowledge, that she only ever really seemed to tap into when she was with him, oddly enough. He turned to the laptop that lay on the dining table and sat down to type away a sort if travel schedule that he could talk over with Nora later. It was her trip after all."It is extremely unlikely that it will ever be restored to its former glory."
Nora's voice rang a few moments later. "I agree. It's a shame that we'll never see what it looked like when it was finished. But it's been through too much."
It's been through too much.
They went on that trip, in the end. They tolerated the heat and bright colours and when they finally looked upon it, Nora's eyes lit up so brightly that Victor could not have been more grateful that he could finally see every colour in the world and tightened his grip on her soft hand.
Now he had that same grip on her hand, still as soft as ever, because she weakly asked for it so.
The colours around were so painfully, agonising dull. Yes, they were becoming more and more vibrant, but that vibrancy was so frail and so easy to crush that even touching Nora frightened him, especially with his hand in a gauntlet that could turn every bone in that weak, flesh hand to dust if he willed it.
But he couldn't deny her his affection. Not when they had been together for 21 years, 10 months and 13 days. Not when they had spent 17 of them married and 11 of those married years in total bliss, admiring every single hue and shade of their new, beautiful world before it threatened to turn into those horrible shades of black-and-white. Not when she had weakly whispered into his ear if she could please hold his hand because she felt so lonely and afraid without him while she was still recovering.
Victor felt a delicate, familiar tug on his own hand and he instinctively obliged it, bending down and tilting his ear towards her sweet and now horribly pale mouth so that she could hear her voice. This tug was stronger than the last one and that alone flooded his chest with much-needed hope as he was pumping a combination of chemicals inside her body, fearing the day when he would get their fragile balance wrong and cure he at the price of destroying her already overworked kidneys.
"I…I'll fix..you. Victor. I'll…get your skin…back to normal."
Victor was shaking and his other hand had gripped the bedpost tightly to just make sure the sheer amount of sadness that was now flooding his chest didn't break the dam and overflow and he shook his head, tears in eyes.
He couldn't bear it if Nora threw away her life to save him: a monster. A damned creature from the Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno that had killed and stolen and hurt others to see this one beautiful, intelligent, compassionate woman given back to the world. No, she should go live her own life, create a new innovation that would change mankind for the better, laugh under the sun and restore the colours that the world so desperately needed.
He had become like the original 'Last Supper' now. He had been through too much and he could never be restored to what he was.
But she could. And she had.