I remember being four and entering my first day of preschool. I was terrified, but after fingerpainting with a couple of the other girls and playing house for a bit, I realized it wasn't so bad. Throughout the day, the teacher was gathering us one at a time to sit down a record information we would give answers to the same questions at the end of the year and see if anything had changed. When it was my turn, I was scared again, until she started asking questions.

With a sickeningly sweet voice and obviously fake smile, she sat me down and asked, "Jean, sweetie, what is your favorite color?"

It took me a long time to answer. It wasn't as if I hadn't known the colors. I knew all of the colors thanks to a great company called Crayola, but I'd never considered having a favorite. I also knew that most colors had what little kids think of as an opposite. My teacher had blue eyes that looked like they were deceptively on fire.

Being scared of her and wanting to escape her presence, I nearly shouted, "Yellow!"

"Why yellow, honey?"

It's the opposite of your eyes and..you. I'd thought. I'd really said, "The sun."

More questions had come and gone, and I'd spent the next few days stuck on that question. I'd asked my parents what theirs were. My mom's was purple, my father's blue, and my sister, Sara's, was orange.

In second grade, I was asked the question again, this time by a frightened new student at our school, who'd noticed that I was also excluded from the class, though for an entirely different reason, and had decided to sit with me. Her name was Annie Richardson.

I'd shrugged, "What's yours?"

"I like green," she'd smiled.

I nodded, thinking about it, "I like green, too."

"Your eyes are green."

"Your sweater is green."

"Grass is green."

"This weird piece of candy is green."

We'd looked at each other and laughed, and were instantly friends. Three years later, she would die, and I would hate that color.

When she died, I'd slipped into a coma with the emergence of my powers. Charles Xavier got me out of it when he became my mentor and I his first student. He brought me to his Institute, where I was when he brought in four other students, Henry McCoy, Warren Worthington III, Ororo Munroe, and Scott Summers.

I was always a very shy child, so when I came in, I was the same. I practically ran up to my designated bedroom, and slammed the door. When I was putting my clothes in the drawers and closet, Ororo came into my room and smiled at me. We stared at each other for a bit and she finally said, "I like your skirt."

It was a long and flowing maxi skirt, nothing special, but that was when black became my favorite color and Ororo became my best friend.

Over the years, those four friends still stayed in my heart even if their bodies moved far away. Colors shifted and disappeared for long periods of time, just like my emotions, but life progressed. When I was nineteen, and back at the Institute visiting, Scott came over to sit near me.

"What are you working on?"

"An essay on spontaneous mutation of genetic structures."

He'd made a face which made me giggle, "Sounds...fun."

I'd shoved the paper away, "Not really. What's up?"

"Uh, nothing. I was just...would you ever consider going out...with me...maybe?"

I'd looked up to where his eyes were and tried to gaze into their depths, but the ruby lenses stopped me. Not for the first time in my life, I began to hate the color red, "I'd love to."

I began falling in love with Scott and started a long relationship that would quickly become permanent. Still, I hated the color red. Red was the color of my hair, which I was bullied and outcast for as a child. Red was the color of the Annie's blood which spilled over the pavement where her body lay after she was hit by a speeding car. Red was the color of the lenses which stopped me from seeing my love's eyes. There was nothing good to be found in the color.

Or so I thought.

Ororo, Scott, and I were sent on a mission to recover a strange new mutant girl from Illinois before Magneto could. Her name was Katherine Pryde, though she prefers Kitty. Long story short, a fight ensued.

I was fighting Sabretooth with my telekinesis, barely, when I failed to notice a large piece of falling concrete, which would have crushed me. A beam saved it from doing so. It had come from Scott's eyes.

The beam was red.

A morning in the middle of a particularly rough school year, I awoke to a morning kiss and warm shower. When coming out of the shower, my love was gone, but in his spot lay a bouquet of beautiful roses and a promise of a meeting later that night, which resulted in our engagement.

The roses were red.

After we were married, in the years following, I became pregnant. It was a long few months, and they were treacherous. However, when I fell into labor, it was only a couple of hours later I was holding my baby girl, Rachel, in my tired arms with my beloved husband by my side. I kissed her soft hair and passed her off so I could sleep.

Her hair was red.

I realize now that my favorite color is also my least favorite. Red. It's astounding that so much meaning can be packed into something as simple as a color, but I also came to notice that nothing is ever really simple if you take a second to look.

It's midnight, I can't sleep, and felt like writing. This piece of whatever is what turned out. Please drop me a review as a reward for my lost rest! Thank you for reading!