A/N: This one was posted in LJ's "Crossovers100" in response to the prompt, "colorless," for my Logan/Tony (DA/NCIS) claim and as a drabble response for the prompt "frost,' but mostly as a birthday present for Mari83 (who, after all, originally provided the drabble-prompt). More in the pre-Dark Angel lives of cousins Tony DiNozzo & Logan Cale, circa 2002...
(And for those who PM'd me about pending fic – updates in the works, I promise!)
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Frost
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It covered everything.
Blades of grass, now stiff and whitened, turned from soft green tufts into small, rime-covered spears that crunched with each step, scraping at the stillness of the chilled, damp morning. It filled the air in small, staccato bursts from voices too distant for him to hear, their terse, grim words spoken only as needed by grey-faced men, ashen-faced women. It settled amid all the forms and shapes before him, all the images, across both moving, human forms and cold stone markers, playing no favorites. It underscored the scene before DiNozzo's eyes as being devoid of color, varied only by the place along the colorless spectrum each image fell, from black, to deep, mournful slate and all the way to the dingy grey-white of the overcast skies, blackened bare branches scraping across it.
There was no color:
Black hearse.
Black coats and umbrellas, black limousines and black shoes.
Black caskets. Two of them, gleaming; even their pewter fittings glinted in dull, stately gray.
No color... until he came close, through and around the people, to see, at the front of the crowd, the stubbornly brave face, pale and blinking, with its reddened nose and unnaturally flushed cheeks framing the green eyes glittering their anguish, all of his cousin's thirteen years working to 'be a man,' to be strong...
"Cuz..." DiNozzo choked, reaching out, touching cold wool coat and shivering body, feeling, in answer, cold hands grasping his topcoat desperately ... brushing the cold, wet, tear-streaked cheek as it sought to burrow into the comfort of his chest ... pulling close the shuddering, chilled form of his cousin as they both now fought not to give in to the pain...
And another reddened nose, and two more wetly glittering green eyes, brought their mournful, tragic color to the harsh and icy morning...
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