This is doubling as a gift fic for Berribex112 for being my 100th reviewer on Lies! She requested a romance fanfiction with the pairing Gerita so here it is! (Though I didn't put too much romance in. I apologize...)
Black White Grey
Grey skies.
But that's normal to most people some days.
Grey grass.
Is that normal?
White sun.
Getting weird yet?
Black eyes. They're all black.
What's red? Orange? Yellow? Green? Blue? They're all make-believe for Ludwig.
Ludwig Beilschmidt.
The towering figure with a huge build that frightens everyone without even speaking—not that he does much of that in the first place. His older brother (though it looks the other way around) is loved by everyone. He's so popular; always grinning like a fool. But a happy fool.
Ludwig wonders what it's like to be a fool.
With his pale blue eyes with dilated pupils that always look too patronizingly small, it's evident just by gazing at them that he's color blind. Ludwig reasons that it was better than being blind overall, but this doesn't stop him from yearning for the ability to differentiate red from blue.
But then again, to him, it's like never knowing what it's like to fly. You know it exists, because you see the birds soar above the clouds, but you really really want to feel the wind whispering through your hair. You see wings flapping and you can only watch them shrink smaller in the distance until they disappear.
School is a blur.
He's eighteen, a senior; it's his last year in school.
He doesn't detest school exactly… It was just always boring to him. Hazy if you will. Ludwig is a bright child, in contrary to his brother and all the rest of the children dumped into the mix. He does his homework as he was told; he eats his lunch as he was told; he participates in what he could.
If he was told.
One of the sports he actually enjoys to some extent is soccer. A soccer ball is easy. He sees it the same as everyone else. Black and white. At least this is what he assumed. He overheard excited conversations where they'd mention color; multiple times they said the soccer ball was black and white. This was one thing he could see like he wasn't broken.
"We have a new kid on the team," the coach says with a blow of his squeaky whistle.
The team looks up one at a time to look at the new team member. The coach continued to ramble on about who he was, what his position was, but everyone seemed pretty disinterested. He's got feet. He can kick. That's all they need to know.
A name is sputtered, but who cares about names?
The practice starts as usual, with the exception of pausing to explain to the newbie what he was supposed to do. The grass is damp and slippery from a rainfall a few hours earlier, and the coach claimed it helped them balance, so they still practiced that day.
Ludwig doesn't bother to look at anyone except the ball. The ball is the only thing that proves he's not too broken. That one of his pegs and clogs are in place and functioning right.
He strikes the sphere with his foot.
His eyes trail over the dampened blades of grey grass. He'd heard people say that grass was green. Everything looked the same to him, though. He didn't understand color at all and why it was so different for him. Some eye doctors said perhaps his eyes received too much UV rays when he was younger or that something was genetically wrong with him that gave him his electric-blue eyes.
"Beilschmidt, heads up!" a foreign shout.
But it comes a second too late. The soccer ball starts to sail through the air with little friction and slams into his forehead, pushing him back onto the ground. Ludwig reaches an oversized hand up to his head, feeling the grey mark it left with a wince.
"I'm so so so so sorry!" a boy runs up to him and crawls shamelessly over his large frame to stare into his eyes to make sure he hadn't injured the larger man.
Ludwig pries his eyes open to stare into a pair of grey eyes. Not black like the rest… Grey. Almost light and happy. He doesn't recognize his facial features, so Ludwig concludes that this is the new boy the coach introduced them to earlier.
"I'm fine," Ludwig replies gruffly.
Relief rains down on the dainty boy's features as he grins brightly.
White. Pure white.
"I'm Feliciano!" he chirps as he stands up and outstretches his palm.
"Ludwig," said man returns the gesture.
Feliciano is told to bring him to the clinic to get looked at. Ludwig looks rather embarrassed over the whole thing while Feliciano holds tightly onto his grin. The wind feels warmer around this odd boy. The chilly autumn breeze is now broken in shards. There is something about this boy's attitude. His smile that makes everything feel miraculously better. Better than swimming in the Pacific Ocean on the first day of summer. How frigid cold it is the day before, yet the next day something just snaps and the sun rebels, letting out its scorching hot rays.
Better than that.
Something about his laughter. His smile. His eyes that are an unusual shade of grey.
Before him, everything was so black and white. Plain and bland. Yet, there's something about him. And Ludwig can't place what it is for the life of him.
Not that it mattered anyways.
Ludwig looks at the boy a whole head shorter than him with curiosity falling from the edges of his icy eyes.
Ludwig looks at him, and he just knows. He knows this is the closest to color he'll ever have, and he loves it. He loves the radiance that comes crawling out of every orifice of this adorable boy. He loves the sunlight that seems to pass right through him and reflect off his eyes.
There is no black on this boy. Just white. Just grey. No black.
This is what it feels like to have color in your life to Ludwig.
His fingertips graze the fringe of the boy's hair.
"What color is it?" he asks numbly.
"My hair?" the boy's wondrous eyes wander into Ludwig's.
A simple nod suffices Feliciano.
"Why, it's brown of course! Some people say it's reddish brown. You know, like auburn. So I'm a little bit like a red-head! Like red squirrels! I love squirrels! My eyes are the same color aren't they? Some people say they are, some say they're darker than my hair," he rambles.
"It's pretty," Ludwig gazes at it closely. "I like it."
Feliciano stands still under his analyzing eyes.
"I like it. Red," Ludwig restates with a block-like voice.
Feliciano smiles impossibly brighter.
"I like your eyes! They're so blue!" he exclaims and leans forward.
Ludwig blinks.
"Blue," he says simply.
Is this like knowing the difference between red and blue?
Feliciano pulls his arm towards the clinic on the other side of campus. He laughs lightly at how Ludwig seems to stumble upon being dragged. Laughter as fresh as the pine trees.
If this isn't color, Ludwig doesn't know what is.
Everything else in the world is Black and White and Grey except for Feliciano.
You know when you haven't smiled for a real long time and suddenly, you feel a pinch in your cheeks? You feel like your face feels lighter? Like you just had World War Three with gravity and won? That's what it feels like to smile for the first time in eleven years.
That's how Ludwig feels.