A/N: I've decided to upload all my fics into a single account. eye of the beholder until let the walls break down were originally only uploaded to my AO3 account, callingthequits. Then I went back to my roots and thought, "Hey, why not post it on Fanfiction too?" so here I am.
Title comes from Miss Blue by Vincent, and yes, I know that Jack is a boy.
It basically starts with Aster being in a place where he was not supposed to be at the time. Like, you know, a frozen lake months before Easter.
At the time, he was on one of his Searches. Now, the Search, for those of you not E. Aster Bunnymund, is best described as the Miss Universe for colors. Except, you know, colors are colors and have no gender, so it's probably best described as Mister-or-Miss-Universe-who-actually-cares-all-of-you-are-colors. Deciding that it was too long and involved twelve hyphens more than necessary, Aster wisely decided to call it the Search. Which was very wise, of course.
Now, the Search, as we should be talking about by now, is when Aster decides that for some reason he has to look for new colors for his googies. As it is very tiring to look for new colors every year, as he used to, he decided (again) that he has to make it every decade or else. 'Or else' being an endless adventure about fifty years later on. He doesn't really enjoy wallowing about on a lost cause, so the choice had to be made.
(Which is why, when it was released, the 120 Color Crayon Box became Aster's Bible. He later blessed Crayola with an old Pooka song for gratitude, and that, kids, is why the company is so successful. However, that story arose about two centuries before this one, and as such these few sentences are confined in a parentheses.)
Anyway, the Search was, so far, unsuccessful. Then he came upon a frozen lake.
And gliding across said frozen lake was a young spirit with the whitest teeth Aster had ever seen.
That included Tooth's.
Which was, you know, wow.
Really wow.
So Aster stood there, transfixed, as the fairy-like teenager laughed and grinned and practically flew along the ice, with something that looked like a shepherd's crook covered with flowery ice designs and eyes closed. His brown cloak and old clothes were out of place; looking so dirty in contrast to his pale face and silvery hair. His deep-voiced laugh also came as a surprise. He thought the bloke's voice would be light and airy, like a snowflake.
Then the Pooka came to the most obvious conclusion last. He was looking at a winter spirit for possibly the first time in his life.
And he was happy.
From what Aster heard from Nick, they usually never even smiled at all.
He stared at the teenager until he stopped skating. Hidden behind a few trees, Aster waited. If you asked him why, he would not answer and instead glare at you until you ran away or spontaneously combusted.
He didn't know why he waited either.
But, as soon as he saw it, and he would deny this to his dying day, his breath caught in his throat.
The bloke opened his eyes, and they were looking right at Aster. He smiled, his impossibly blue eyes sparkling with mischief and content. Aster thought it was best described as every shade and hue of blue melded and shaped until it was simply best described as perfection and given to this lucky spirit.
It could have been a few seconds, years, all of eternity until he pulled away. All he knew, he was caught in those eyes until he wasn't, and he stared at the lush green of the Warren (the same color of his own eyes, forest green, but probably incomparable to ice blue) before he was staring at white and decided that he needed to see blue once more.
And then there was blue again. Wrong shade.
He tried again. Wrong shade.
And again. Wrong shade.
Again. Still the wrong shade.
Frustrated, Aster threw the brush and googie at the River of Color and decided to stop trying. He would never be able to replicate that shade if he tried, and he did. He tried four times, planned to try again the next day, and his golden rule was to stop trying after the third. It was his golden rule because if it wasn't made, he never would have stopped. Guardian of Hope, you know. But he never forgot that day. Mentally, he decreed the Search done. But...
He hoped he would find blue again, sometime. He didn't stop hoping that.