"Colours"
An Artemis-Holly drabble. Holly POV. I enjoyed writing this, it was pretty fun. Since this is my first AF fic, I would appreciate feedback. My gosh, it's so short.
Soundtrack – Blue bird (Ayumi Hamasaki), Starry Heavens (day after tomorrow), Miss Love Tantei (W "Double You"), "Nanni Iwazu ni I LOVE YOU" (Morning Musume) And more, which I have forgotten.
Love to y'all, Icy-chan
I never meant to kiss you on the cheek that day. I never meant to smile like that, a certain warmth in my hazel eyes that hadn't been there for so long.
But I did, of course, and that was what made all the difference.
And I don't think you noticed, I don't think you could tell the difference, I don't think you could detect the faint pink staining the smooth #733D1A-colored skin of my face.
But you did stare into my eyes, if just for a moment. What had you been thinking, Artemis? What did you think as you looked down at me in that little moment where our eyes had met?
You had stared into one of your own eyes (or what was previously your own), and I had stared at one of mine (or what was previously mine). The dissonance between the two mismatched shades was stunning. It was so ugly, yet so beautiful. I had seen some people with heterochromia, but it had never been as shocking as the sight my eyes captured as they bored into your face. For those with heterochromia, both eyes where their own, even if different colours. For us, we held a stranger's eyes in one of your eyesockets. Not ours in any way.
As I stared into your eyes, my eyes reflected into yours for that brief moment, I tried to find a hex code for the two colors there. I ran through the codes I had memorised, trying to find a match, but there was no single shade that could capture that endless blue, the rich colour of the sky right after twilight, there was no single shade that could describe the mix of amber-brown-green that lay mixed imperfectly in the eye I had unintentionally given you as we had whirled, minds connected, through those endless eons of space-time, to... home.
I could never forget the shade of your skin (#F0D3A8, possibly?), lightly encased with shadow, as you smiled despite your fatigue before you had stepped away onto the coast, leaving a winding trail of grey ash, not at all out of place in that barren panorama across an empty coast
Eyes lost in a desolate landscape, my thoughts had wandered. Most of them were about you. His smile has changed so much, I remember thinking to myself. And it was true. Even that slight curving of your lips in that brief moment that I only thought I had seen – it was so much more than the smug, cold vampire-smile I had shuddered from the first time ours paths had crossed. This smile, however small, had been genuine. What else had I thought? I was not sure. Maybe I had thought about the time you, Juliet, and Butler had been mind-wiped. Some time before that, Foaly had asked me if I would not miss him.
I had lied when I said I would not miss you. Of course I lied. I hated you, of course—I hated your intelligence, your schemes, that easy, cold confidence of yours…And yet, I knew I would miss you. I missed you because I hated you. Because you were always a challenge, and that you were almost a friend. And I knew I shouldn't have missed you, of course. Your friendship should have meant nothing. You were a Mud Boy. You were one of those who had corrupted this planet! I should despise you, just as I despised legions of other mud men, right?
But we had been together through so much. Both of us know that, Artemis. Both of us will never forget it. You will never forget my (nonexistent) death, and I will never forget what you had (not) done to save me. (And yet, it had all happened, and it bound us together stronger than any ropes ever could.)
We would truly be part of each other, now. I smile to myself absently, gazing at my eyes in the reflection of a glass window. In body, and in soul.