wee it's a destiel fic

I was an outcast.

In a world where people saw the world in black and white until they met their soulmate, which, when that meeting happened, the world turned from shades of black and white into beautiful, luscious, glorious colors.

In this world, I was an outcast.

I was an outcast because I was born seeing colors. By the mere age of three, I was able to look into a mirror and note that my eyes were green. Green, the same color as the grass, as leaves in trees. My eyes, though, were a piercing green, a color that adults often stopped to marvel over. To the children, my eyes were simply another shade of grey, which was why my parents immediately took me into the hospital when I noticed that my eyes looked like the grass and the leaves outside.

There, in that hospital, I had been given a name different than my own: 1. 1, as in the first person ever to have been born seeing colors. The thing was, it hadn't been reported of anyone meeting their soulmate until they reached adulthood. No one - /ever/ - had met their soulmate before they turned eighteen. Sure, there were the cases of the "high school sweethearts", but, those people still hadn't seen color, hadn't /realized/ that they were soulmates until they reached the age of eighteen. So, for a three-year old to see color... It was unheard of. Especially when the only people I'd ever seen at that time had been the few doctors at my birth and my parents.

So, I had been taken from my home and placed into custody to be studied. I was poked at, prodded at, given written exams, thrown into different environments to see if I had some sort of alien - did these people really think that I was an alien? Answer: Yes. - reaction. When everything about me came up normal, fear spread throughout the building I was being kept in like wildfire. Since the world I lived in was one afraid of change, one that panicked greatly when people started seeing colors, meeting their soulmate, with people that the world didn't think they should be seeing colors with, one that locked me up and kept me hidden because I was a freak, a loner, an outcast.

Thankfully, the place I was kept in was nice. Some lady - she'd been around me for years and years, yet she had never once given me a name to call her - taught me, as if I was in school. So, I was smart. I mean, I didn't have anyone to compare my knowledge to, but, like, I considered myself smart. The lady told me I was two grade levels above the grade level people my age were supposed to be in. Some other lady cleaned my room for me. Some guy served me food. I assume I was treated like a royal only because they wanted to try to make-up for the millions of times I had been poked and prodded, for the fact that I was only allowed to see my family three times a year, for the fact that I had lived fourteen years of my life in this place, and, well, for the fact that I'd probably never get to leave this place.

That mindset - the mindset telling me that I'd live my whole life in here - changed when I met Castiel. Or, known better by everyone else here by 2. The second person that was like me, the second person that was born seeing colors. At first, I resented Castiel. He was my age. He was /my age/, yet he had gotten to live the first seventeen years of his life beyond these walls. When I learned that Castiel's parents had both died when he was two-years old in a car crash, and that his uncle - who had gotten custody of him and his older sister, Anna - was a horrible, awful drunk that liked to throw punches when he was under the influence. When Castiel had finally had enough of his uncle, he took Anna and they had run away. So, while I had been rotting away in here, Castiel and Anna had been struggling to get by, sleeping on sidewalks and eating food out of garbage cans. One day, after me and Castiel had become best friends, I bit my lips, wrung my hands, and asked him how he ended up here.

"I..." Castiel had gone pale, his bright blue eyes filling with tears. At the sight of my best friend looking as if he was about to cry, I put a hand on his shoulder and looked into those bright blue eyes, telling him that he didn't have to tell. I'd read enough books in my seventeen years to know that if someone looked as if they didn't want to talk about something, it wasn't a smart idea to push them. Castiel had shaken his head, saying, "N-no. It's, uh, fine. I don't mind telling you. You see..."

Castiel had trailed off into an hour long story, that was paused every few minutes while he curled into a small ball and sobbed. I had wrapped my arms around him, assuring him that I was there for him. When he had finished his story, - a depressing tale about how he hadn't known that seeing colors was virtually (me being the only exception) unheard of, so, one day when he and Anna had been watching the clouds, he'd made a remark about the blue sky, about how it matched the color of his eyes, about how it wasn't the color of Anna's eyes, that color was brown, and, Anna, who was five years older than Castiel, had freaked out and dragged her brother to the nearest hospital - I'd held him in my arms, stroking his hair as he cried, telling him how I completely understood what it felt like to be alone, and that I had a good idea of what being betrayed by a loved one felt like from all of the books I'd read, but, that, no, I couldn't really imagine how what he had gone through felt.

I pitied him, and he pitied me. Which, of course, lead to arguments. So, at one point, we had sat down, had a conversation, and decided that there would be no more pitying.

Today was a Tuesday. It was Christmas. Which meant that my parents would be coming to visit me, which meant that Castiel was going to have to once again wait all day for Anna to show up, only to be disappointed.

I slid out of my bed, drawing the blankets up around Castiel in hopes not to wake him up, and stalked over to the corner of our small room where the sink and mirror were. I gazed into my green eyes, trying to imagine myself laying outside under a tree with green leaves the green grass. I imagined Castiel next to me, our hands intertwined, our shoulders pressed together. I imagined myself making a comment about how his eyes matched the color of the sky, and him laughing that beautiful sound he laughs before telling me that my eyes matched the color of the grass. I imagined us buying a house, one with more than one room, and painting the walls the brightest colors we could find. I imagined us growing old together, sitting on our porch and bickering about which movie we should take our grandchildren to see at the dollar theater. I imagined him letting me win the argument, because, while he was stubborn, I was even more stubborn. And, standing there, looking at myself in the rusty, cracked mirror, was when I realized it. Was when I realized that it wasn't just a crazy coincidence that me and Castiel had the same birthday. Was when I realized that me and Castiel weren't freaks. We were exceptions. Exceptions to the rule that you had to be eighteen before you could see colors, before you could really and truly meet your soulmate. Because we had met ours on the day we had been born.

Castiel was my soulmate.

And, I wasn't even scared by that knowledge. I was... Overjoyed.

/

It was a Tuesday. It had been ten years since my revelation. The one that had me pouncing on Castiel and telling him my news, the one that had me kissing him fiercely and telling him that we weren't freaks. Castiel had smiled the widest smile I'd ever seen on him, his blue eyes shining with pure happiness. It had been a year from that day that our pleas to leave the building we'd been trapped in had been taken into consideration, and another year - in which the outside world had their debated about our unusual case and what it meant - before we were released, holding hands for the cameras that had been stationed outside of the building. It had been five more years until Castiel proposed to me, down on one knee with a nervous look in his eyes. I had wanted to laugh, had wanted to ask why he was nervous, but, instead, I had cried. There had been too much joy in me to keep myself composed. I hadn't even cared that I looked stupid, red eyes and a runny nose. I had never been happier. A year later, we got married. Anna showed up to the wedding. Castiel had panicked, telling me desperately and broken that he didn't know what to do. I had told him to talk to her. He did. And, to my relief, they reconciled. Both of us trembling with our happiness, we had gotten married and then flown to Paris for our honeymoon.

We were happy.

And, on this Tuesday, as I held Castiel tight in his sleep (he had fallen asleep on the couch after putting Samantha, our daughter, to bed), we were still happy.