A/N: Spoilers for the new season.
I'm trying a new thing. Kind of. Please don't castrate me. I love mean and crazy girls.
It's short, I know, but it caught my fancy.
Red was a colour that was simultaneously her family's legacy and a thing that was solely hers. She was the only Blossom that embraced it in this way. Red painted her lips and splashed against the white canvas of her clothes. White and red. White and red. An ocean of white. A splotch of red. Red was in her hair and painted her fingers and her toes. Red, the colour of pleasure and passion and pressure. Red.
Cheryl donned it like a shield. She wielded it like a weapon. It was protection and it was provocation. It was a promise and it was a lie. It made her bold when she'd only ever been in Jason's shadow. Bold when in reality, her family's achievements outshone everything she'd ever done. Bold when she wanted to retreat from the world and be someone smaller than her family envisioned.
It forced her to be someone she wasn't sure she liked, and she accepted that because if she was someone, she wasn't no one. She wasn't a nameless Blossom spawn.
Red.
It combatted even the oppressiveness that was the hospital. It helped Cheryl glide through the plain and oblique halls with pride. It held her up when she was all but falling down. Drowning in the colour, she didn't think about the rot that was her family, nor her mother's foolishness. She didn't think about how she'd go on. She just went.
And when Betty and Jughead caught her in the hallway, she thought of the colour, put on her best smile, and told them the story she'd spun in her head. Perhaps it was delivered a little apathetic. Perhaps she smiled too brightly at the end. Perhaps they knew she lied. Or maybe the dumbstruck expressions on their face just couldn't be helped. They were a product of their uncouth upbringing and didn't know how to respond when she told them of the travesty. The fire.
The Red.
Lunatic laughter almost bubbled out. She smothered it and did as she was supposed to. Saw her mother into surgery. Visited Mister Andrews after. Bestowed upon him the kiss of life Archie had given to her; it was only fair, after all, for if death would not have her, it would not take Mister Andrews, either. The Reaper's halls would be empty this night. Red painted his forehead and to Cheryl, the colour looked right.
It never left her alone.