She's never seen colour.
She knew what colour was. She knew the sky was blue, the grass was green, a rose was red- that skin supposedly had colours as well. But to her, everything was shades of black and white; her world was permanently reduced to the ones found in old photographs. The sky was always an overcast grey. Grass, a myriad of a charcoal-y black. And a rose? Forget it. All its scarlet splendour was wasted on Caitlin's stubborn eyes, eyes that simply refused to see the world for all its glory.
But she just assumed it was normal. She never told anyone about it, not even her parents- she thought that the words red, blue, and yellow were used to simply differentiate the shades of grey.
And, like everything else she encountered, she learned them.
She learned them so well that about 90% of the time, her colour words were correct. Nothing was amiss. An inconvenient handicap for a girl who wanted to be a scientist, but she didn't see it as a handicap. It was just the way things were.
Until Barry came along.
It was slow, at first. She tried to ignore it, the way the grey was suddenly broken with sudden, soft hues of colour whenever he brushed past her in the lab. The way the buttons on the consoles glowed blue, yellow, red. How Dr. Well's shirt was a pastel green. How a snatch of blue sky, proper blue, could be seen out the window.
And it was beautiful.
But then he'd be on his way and the colours would shrink before her until there was nothing left, like they were seeping into a sponge that was robbing her of them.
Ever since that first touch, her eyes were hungry for the colours to return. She couldn't figure it at first. Had it been where she was standing? The position of the sun that day? It could've been the tide cycles, for all she knew. She grew increasingly frustrated as the days wore on; it was an experiment she couldn't pick apart, a word problem she couldn't understand.
What caused the colours?
It took her two weeks to figure it out.
She'd been taking a coffee break at the lab, sitting at her desk with the newspaper in front of her. Another meta-human on the loose. Of course, that wasn't what the papers were calling it- it was remarkable, really, how the newspaper could so accurately, yet inaccurately report the news. She'd been so engrossed in her reading that she didn't notice Barry come in, or hear the wheels of his rolling chair on the tile before he came bumping into her.
The greys suddenly drew down, replaced with colour as quickly as they disappeared, as though her vision were controlled by a dial and someone was turning it all the way up. A deluge of colors flushed before her eyes upon contact, blooming from the center of her vision before spreading to the edges. Her eyes widen at the smooth chrome surface of the desk, the sunlight streaming in through the window. She looked at Barry, who was grinning, saying something about the paper, leaning over to get a better look at the picture- she looked at the creamy complexion of his skin, the tinge of pink that colored it. Real colour, not the grey substitutes she'd been using all her life. The colours, which before had been faint, bland pastels, were screaming vibrant now, and there was an inexplicable ache under her ribs for more.
He's still talking about the picture when she finally speaks.
"Do you see it too?"
It's barely a whisper, as though she's afraid speaking too loudly might break the spell. He looks back at her quizzically, freezing her with gentle blue eyes that she's never been able to properly appreciate before. He runs a tongue over pink lips that exactly match the hue that slightly blankets his cheeks.
"What are you talking about?"
A/N: Inspired by a tumblr au prompt I saw, where someone sees in black and white unless they're touching their soulmate. This is also available on AO3 under rnadison.