4. Tertiary Colors

intermediate. blue-green. yellow-green, yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple


It's a month after her parents death that Hillary starts to go back to something akin to a routine.

She begins taking calls from her clients. She greets her friends when they come over. She makes her own breakfast and helps Kai with dinner. There are blueprints and textbooks and post-its on the kitchen counter again.

Her collection of paint is on every table top in her house, in every drawer he opens, in the medicine cabinets, on the window sills, under her bed - a true reflection of her state of mind; a highly saturated, highly textured, hazardous clutter.

And yet.

The dark angry brush strokes on the empty canvases littered all across her house are a little less sharp and a little less dark. Sometimes, there are even colors. Dull, neutral tints of their rather saturated origins - a clot of red-purple clay, a dark dusky sky, neither-bue-neither-purple shadowy figures.

Finally. Some colors. This is good. Isn't it? Tyson had asked when he was helping Kai clean up one day. Kai had thought to explain to him that the colors he sees have been deliberately dulled - they're mixed into neutral tints of their rather saturated, bright origins. But he had simply shrugged and said, She's trying.

The first few full sentences that come out of her mouth in weeks are a series of Thank you's followed by periodic gestures of appreciation.

I made us breakfast already. Come join me. She tells Ray one morning when he comes over - as has become routine. Can we watch a comedy tonight? I'm sick of Marvel. She tells Max and Kenny in the afternoon when they bring over another set of DVDs for her to skim through. Come with me to the new diner that's opened across the street, she asks Tyson over dinner one day.

Thank you for the funeral arrangements. She tells them over dinner at the Dojo one night. Thank you for staying with me at night. She squeezes Tyson's shoulder when they're watching TV one afternoon. Thank you for paying Mom and Dad's debts. She kisses Kai's shoulder in passing when they're doing the dishes after dinner.

And she means it. Kai knows she means it.

And he's grateful for whatever little warmth and light and color that she's finding in herself again because he's missed her so, so much.

But he still sees a stranger when he looks at her.

He still feels the numbness in her heart and the grief pouring out from her once-filled-with-life crimson orbs. He still feels it on his skin when she laces their fingers together on the couch. He senses it in the long-drawn out breaths she takes when she's hugging him in greeting or in goodbye. He notices it in the no-longer-lingering kisses she throws at the top of his head in passing.

There's still a lazy dullness in her gaze.

He searches her face for a sign of a smile, the curve of a lip, a small gleam in the corner of her eyes – and he finds none. There's no fire on her face when she hunches over the blueprints on the kitchen counter and there's no genuineness in her words when she talks to her clients.

The strokes on the empty canvases littered all across her house are a little less sharp and the paints she's using are a little less dark - but the pictures she's coming up with are abstract and shapeless and directionless.

As if they're treading down a long, long, long path but without a map.


The most concerning part about the recent changes in Hillary is that look in her eyes when she thinks he is not looking.

Only, he always has an eye on her out of habit now and he knows that look like it's an old favorite song - there's a puzzle that needs to be assembled.

For a few days, he simply watches her.

That look is there when she's playing with her food at the dinner table again and doesn't notice him counting her bites. It's there when she's next to him on her red-orange couch and he's pretending to watch the news but he's not. It's there when she thinks he can't see her face from the futon In the pale moonlight from the window of her bedroom.

And as he watches her, he's absolutely proud of her. She's attempting to recreate and glue back together whatever structures have broken in her head after the loss of her parents. And he's proud of her - for gluing her broken world, for restructuring the pieces, for putting them back in order so that she can get back on her feet.

He's proud of her for trying - but he also knows her enough to see when she's failing.

And it concerns him because she hates a puzzle disassembled.

So he asks her.

Exactly one month and twenty-one days after her parent's death, he finally gathers the courage to tread willingly into the dark, raging storm that's been consuming her.

She's sat next to him at the dinner table - and her brows are too furrowed and her pale-red lips are too pouty and she has taken only two of the fresh plums he'd brought for her.

"What is it that you're failing to fix, Hils?"

She shifts in her seat, knowing what he's asking. Her voice is a small whisper and she isn't looking at him when she answers.

"Nothing."

It's not nothing.

"Hillary." He draws out her name as if in a warning, telling her without words that he sees right through her, and that he's there.

When he meets her pleading gaze, he wants to ease her. He wants to say, You know I'm not going to judge you. He wants to plead too, Please talk to me. Instead, he brushes her shoulders with his own, and manages a small smile.

"Maybe I can help you put some pieces together."

She sighs at his persistence, silently chewing her food in contemplation. He almost thinks she's forgotten what he's asked and when he turns to her so he can press her (he doesn't want to), she placates him with a hand on his knee. She's leaning over just a little as if seeking comfort; her shoulders brush back with his, and her hair tingling his neck - as if she'll fall over if he isn't there to hold her.

So he tries to hold her.

He rests his palm on top of the hand on his knee, nudging her, and she finally starts.

"Nothing makes sense anymore, Kai." She's stabbing the red-purple fruit with the fork out of frustration and her voice is stronger than what he expected.

"They were supposed to be a part of my life for a really long time, and now they're gone. And there's all this …empty space in the next few decades where they were supposed to be. I don't have a father to walk me down the aisle anymore. I don't have a mother to turn to for advice when I have children of my own."

Her voice doesn't shake and there are no tears when she continues, but he squeezes her hand anyways.

"Mom was always talking about the recipes she wanted to teach me, but I kept thinking, 'Maybe after college' or 'Maybe when I move out.' Or 'Maybe another Friday.' As if I had all the time in the world."

She chuckles.

"And Dad? Kai, you know I'm awful with money and banks and property – he's the one who paid my mortgage and sorted my credit score and gave me advice on investments and stocks that I never took seriously because I thought I fucking had forever."

Suddenly, there are angry tears in her eyes.

There are angry tears in her eyes and Kai has to bury his face into her hair to hide his relief. Because behind all the grief and the confusion and numbness - there she is again. The Hillary Tatibana he knows and can recognize, someone familiar and angry and visible and bright, burning red on the spectrum.

She rests her head on his shoulder, Everything I've imagined my life to be is falling apart. He feels her hand squeeze his knees. They knew me better than anyone else. They understood me when I didn't understand myself. What will I do without them? He turns his chair just enough that he tugs at her waist and pulls her into an embrace, I feel like the ground underneath me is shaking.

There are no tears soaking his shirt but her voice is shakier than before because she's borderline hysterical now.

He can recognize the hysteria.

He cups her hands where they're shaking on his knees. Her breathing is labored.

"Nothing makes sense anymore." She repeats. "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where to go. I don't know who to turn to. I can't see straight anymore."

Try to calm down, first. He gently rubs her back in small circles, Take deep breaths. He lowers his voice to a whisper to soothe her, I can help you figure out the logistics of your finances when you're feeling better. He tilts her chin to look at her lost crimson eyes, Your Mom left a list of her recipes and heirlooms for you. I'll bring them over tomorrow. His heart jumps at her tiny little chuckle when he adds teasingly, We can bully Tyson to walk you down the aisle.

Soon enough, her breathing is lighter. Her shoulders are relaxed. She places some distance between them as if telling him that she can hold herself off without him now – he lets her.

He lets her compose herself next to him with his hand on hers and their shoulders touching and their breaths intermingling.

And then it's gone.

She squeezes her eyes shut in exasperation and when she's reopened them, the life and fire and hyperventilation and hysteria and familiarity has faded into numbness. Her bright-with-angry-tears orbs have faded back into their dull red again.

Her chair straightens and her shoulders stop touching his own and her hands on his knees tighten just a little before she pulls them back.

The sight tugs at his heart, and he feels a strange mixture of I'm proud of you and I'm concerned for you and I don't like seeing you in so much pain and come closer, please come closer

He wants to say so much to her. But he knows now is not the right time.

"Have some rice, Hils." He settles for a whispered command instead. And when she's looking at him in exasperation, he has to stop the urge to tease her. He spoons some rice off his own plate and holds it up for her to bite into.

"Come on. It's easier to keep down."

She does what he ask and it bothers him that there is no resistance (I can take care of myself, you know), no playful banter (Ah, the Great Kai Hiwatari, feeding us measly humans with his own hands?), no annoyed joke (Careful, Kai, your stalkers might hunt me down tomorrow morning for this).

That night, he stays.

He makes sure she's eaten enough and her doors are locked and she's tucked into bed that is not-too-warm-but-not-too-cold; just the way she likes it.

He stays the night and holds her hand from the futon on the floor again. And he prays to the gods to ease her pain because he doesn't know how long he can stand to see her like this.


It's three months and ten days after her parents death when he first notices the signs of her latest coping mechanism.

The same car in her driveway every other weekend. The occasional nights she excuses herself from their shared dinners because she's 'sleeping over at a friends'. Hillary at the coffee shop that they both love, presumably with a client, but there are no folders or designs or blueprints or cards of paint in between them and she's twirling her hair like she does when she's nervous –

The torn condom wrappers in the trash when he visits her Sunday evenings.

At first he finds its best to let her be – he knows of grief enough to realize avoidance is natural but it is also fleeting.

But in the weeks that follows, he sees the grief get a little too tumultuous and reckless and all-too-consuming.

He finds her slowly detaching from her life all over again. Their dinners and Sunday mornings together are less habitual now and she only visits the Dojo every alternate weekend. He's seeing in her driveway men who are philanderers by reputation – Johnny, Enrique, Oliver – and sometimes even men who he's never seen in the decade he's known her.

And when one Sunday morning he finds her coiled up on her couch with a cold compress pressed to her head and groaning when he opens the blinds to let the dull morning sunlight in or when he 'takes off his shoes too loud' – he finally lets her have it.

"How long are you going to keep this up."

He asks without a question, his voice low but serious. He sits on the coffee table in front of the red-orange couch where she's laying, gently taps away her hands from her flushed face to check for a fever: there isn't one.

"Always the gentleman, Kai." She mumbles back her voice low but there's a teasing smile, "Too hung-over for a lecture right now. Talk later. Please."

He takes her in; she looks exhausted and her lips are parched and she's barely-covered in a blue-green baggy T-shirt that he is so sure he'd lost in the laundry months ago.

But her eyes aren't bloodshot, and she's coherent enough to understand him, and judging by the bottle of aspirin and the half-empty pitcher of water on the table next to him, he thinks he's in his right to ignore her.

So, he ignores her.

"You're being reckless. This isn't good for you."

"Bite me."

He ignores her childish remark again, this time with a roll of his eye. He reaches out to pry her hand away from the compress she's lazily holding over her left eye. He holds it for her instead.

"You're not avoiding your pain, Hillary. You're losing yourself in it."

Despite her state, she manages to squint her eyes at him in annoyance.

"I'm not avoiding anything, Kai. I'm trying to feel something."

"What can you possibly find in the beds of strangers?"

"I don't know. Anything." She's fully aggravated now, tapping his hand out of the way. She sits up, grabbing her head as if it weighs more than the rest of her body - it probably does. "Anything but this goddamn loneliness."

"Fucking a stranger will not make you less lonely." He says pointedly, harshly. "You're looking for comfort in the beds of men who don't care for you."

Stop looking for comfort in the beds of men who don't care for you. Turn to me. I'm right here. I'm absolutely in love with you.

"Clearly." She scoffs.

By now, she's sat upright enough that there's space for him on the couch next to her. With a sigh, he takes it. He wraps an arm around her waist and lets her rest her heavy head on his shoulder.

"We're going to get you tested tomorrow." He says, holding the cold compress for her with his other hand, "You are not doing this anymore."

I was careful, is the only thing mumbles - and for the first time in a long while, he's grateful she doesn't protest.

They spend the rest of the day in front of the TV on her red-orange couch, in the middle of her cluttered living room, surrounded by a series of low-saturated hues of red and blue and green and yellow and purple on canvas littered all around them.

They spend the rest of the day in front of the TV and neither of them speak but sometimes she is tickling his shoulders with her nose and sometimes he is rubbing her waist with his thumb in gentle circles and sometimes she traces dull patterns on his thighs and sometimes he buries his head in her tangled hair -

By the end of the night, she falls fast asleep in his lap and he's way too comfortable and content and happy to bother moving either of them.


A/N:

Thank you so much for the response ? I'm still shocked people are reading what I thought to be a dead fandom lmao.

Edits/Story (1) exchanged the names of chapters 2 and 3 (2) added short descriptions/notes to every chapter so the theme is clear from the get go (3) fixed some grammar errors and inconsistencies in the flow in previous chapters

Interpretation Hint: the narration of the story between them isn't as important as the imagery is - the colors, furniture, food, clothes, touches, metaphors - all serve to paint a picture. It's an attempt at …visual narration of events if that's a thing.

(1) Kai's Touches: For example, the Kai's touches are a reflection or metaphor of his feelings of care, love, his fear or him missing her - he isn't saying it in the dialogues but he is offering himself in the monologues over and over in every way possible. Taking a place next to her, holding things for her, offering his shoulder to fall into, noticing all and any changes in her - they're also a part of the story as important as the dialogues are.

(2) the visuals : in the colors and textures of their surroundings, the changes in the same object (Hillary's eyes, her art) from one color to the other are also narration of the events and their feelings or states of mind. When all of this is done, the story line can be traced through a graph of visuals and colors.

So , here and there through each chapter there is a theme in the monologues that tells a different narration than the dialogues. Idk if that makes sense or w.e and tbh I'm still figuring it out myself.

Point being, there's a deeper meaning to every word and it's a part of the story being told - I just wanted to put it out there :)

Leave a review xoxo thanks everyone !