Color Blind
By Blue Eyes At Night
Note: I am SO INCREDIBLY PLEASE that Tonks and Lupin are FINALLY together! I have no idea as to why but they're perfect together and after memorizing a few pages of Half Blood Prince and immersing myself in the delightful fanfictions of others, I have decided that I couldn't resist the temptation any longer!
Additional note for Checkmated: While I support R/H- and its about time they got around to dating each other- they are seldom primary targets. I, in accordance with the guidelines, will note to include them as a couple in fics but I am posting here to broaden my reader-base and receive feedback as to my style of writing as it is a career I am actively pursuing.
He had long since decided that pink was indeed her best color. Even if she had never made her hair that color, he would always associate it with her.
Pink was what little girls were made of. Pink was both flamboyant and reserved. It could be found in neons or pastels. It could be the pink of a baby's cheek or the artificial blush puffed onto a corpse to make it look like it was still alive.
Pink was the sheen on snow, it was the color of a perfect sunset.
Pink wasn't always cheerful, it could be dark. Red was a sullied pink, it was darker and meaner. Pink was the color of the full moon when there was a bloody circle around it. Pink was the tone of the scars that laid all over his body, testaments to a hard life with little sympathy to be found.
But, most profoundly, pink was the color of the Drooble's Best Blowing Gum that James and Sirius had once blown to twice the size of their head's in competition. Pink was the flush of Lily's face on her wedding day. Pink was the color that James and Sirius had refused to paint the baby's room because they were holding out for a boy.
Pink was many things that he couldn't see. It was untouchable at time. Pink was the color that wrapped around him when he remembered life before he was bitten and was held by his mother as she read him bedtimes stories.
Pink was watching Harry and Ginny blush and hold hands. It was watching Ron and Hermione bicker like an old married couple and knowing that one day, hopefully soon, they would make each other very happy (if a bit frustrated).
Pink was watching James become a father. It was watching Arthur and Molly's brood grow up one by one. Had he really been there when the infamous Weasley twins were born?
Pink was something he felt was unattainable to him anymore. Unattainable since the night he saw red.
Red. Now there was a color he was sick of. The only red he could ever stomach was the red beside the gold in the pattern that identified Gryffindor. Red was that damned circle that danced around the full moon, mocking him, reminding him of a time when all hell broke loose.
He was so young when it happened. It was snowy that night and the red blood from the bite stained everything around him. When he saw his mother's face he knew, as young and frightened as he had been, that there would be no more pink, fuzzy embraces goodnight.
Somehow the red had leaked into his happiness and stayed there.
Then there was always the black. Black was the midnight sky, it was the terrible void that he was lost in whenever the Beast took over. Black was messy squirrel's nest James called hair that had looked its best when James' body had been cleaned up for burial when it suddenly became uncommonly sleek.
Black was the shadow over Lily's face as the wreckage was pulled away from her body. Black was the emptiness of the crib as he dully remembered that Harry had gone. Black. Black, Sirius. Convicted of more then fourteen counts of murder. The Black who had been his friend.
Well, he was his friend at the end. And then the light that had radiated from him had fallen as dark as his name, and suddenly the sun seemed to eclipse and leave the world black.
Black and red were two colors Remus Lupin was used to. He was all to familiar with their cruelty and their many deceptive shades and secrets. He had once believed that he had sorted life into these two categories.
And then she came into his life and messed the whole system up. From the beginning she radiated the brightest, most vivid shade of pink. Her eyes shined with it, her smile shined with it and her face glowed a delightful shade of pink.
Yes, Nymphadora was the pinkest person in the world.
He tried to see in himself what she saw in him. To himself, he was like a Beast in the night, a red and black striped tiger on the prowl. He was dangerous but it was more then that. Lycanthropy doesn't just destroy your body, it doesn't just endanger you. It endangers everyone around you, threatening to turn the snow around them a dark shade of arterial red. So in rebellion, the world turns its back on you. Yet another solar eclipse.
Without the help of the world, he had turned old before his time by dealing with the anguish and the immense physical and mental toll of his disease all alone. Without the help of the world, he had managed to get by with odd-jobs that left barely enough food to feed him and barely enough clothing to clothe him.
Yes, he saw nothing but alternating shades of red and black. Even his own reflection in the mirror was chiseled out of gray lines as far as he could see.
But there was this fairy, this nymph that floated around his dreams surrounded by a pink light that had stared him right in the face and told him she loved him.
For one brief moment the world glowed from those three tiny words and then the clouds came overhead again.
"I'm too old for you. I'm too poor for you. Most importantly, I'm too dangerous for you to consider, Nymphadora." I'm too dark for you. Go and find a rainbow to fly through and leave the storm clouds for the crows.
He had hoped more then anything else that he could spare this one flicker of light in the darkness. That he could keep this ball of pink fire burning far from the icy abyss he had found a home in. The last thing that Remus J. Lupin had wanted was for Tonks to grow old before her time, for her to become destitute and disgusted with the monster she had once thought herself in love with. He wanted her to remain bright and young and happy…with someone equally bright and young and happy.
But he had rather the opposite effect. The pink light that he saw in Tonks began to fade. Slowly but surely, he was dragging her down into the abyss anyway.
It began with her hair. Once bubble-gum pink and flamboyantly spiked it was now a somber shade of brown and fell lamely against her face. Her eyes began to dull and she no longer smiled.
It went on for months, her slow descent into the tiger's jaws. Though she may have suspected otherwise, it killed him to see her so. Each day he prayed it was a long, ugly dream but he never woke from it to see that pink personality beaming at him.
It wasn't until the night Dumbledore died, when the world turned a shade of black so deep and dark Remus thought that he was blind, that he realized what he had done. In the hospital wing of Hogwarts his little pink Nymph clung to him desperately yelling that she loved him despite the fact that he was old and poor and a werewolf. She was nearly crying she was so hurt and sick with his refusal.
That night he found himself outside her apartment without realizing he had Apparated there at all. Inside she was sitting on a faded pink couch, huddled with her knees drawn up to her chest and her head resting on them, crying. Crying for Dumbledore, crying for Bill, crying for Harry and crying for him.
She looked up and saw him and just put her head back down, as if in defeat.
Looking at her, he asked her why she couldn't let him go.
"Because I love you." She said and for a moment she glowed in the brightest most vibrant shade of pink he ever beheld. For a moment the world was full of color and the sun was shining even in the middle of the darkest night.
And Remus Lupin, who was not a dumb man by any account, found that he had been the great dunce in the world. He must have been blind! No! Color blind!
Nymphadora Tonks was pink for many reasons but above them all she was pink because she was in love. When he had strived so hard to save her from the darkness around him, he couldn't see that the glow that came out of her wasn't going to be dampened by something as trivial as a sack of Galleons.
In that moment, he knew how to completely restore her to the sheen that suited her best. Rushing forward, he fell to his knees and pulled her face down to kiss her.
And in that moment, even Remus, veteran of the darkness, glowed in the world's most vivid of pinks.
Fin.
End note: its different but I liked writing it. I'm not sure whether or not you'll see more from me, One-shots I can manage but some of my faithful's have undoubtedly noticed that I am abysmal with updating real fics.
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