Gift fic for my wonderful secret santa, tardis-in-the-sky.
I'm a sucker for soulmate AUs, any and all variations. I have a whole bunch of headcanons involving soulmate tattoos that I might some day write into a full fic. Or draw. In the meantime you can find them on my tumblr under the tag 'headcanons'.
~:~
and all my smiles are the same colour as you
Prompt: dark
When she was in her satellite…her prison, her home, Cress spent an inordinate amount of time looking up what a world that wasn't dark felt like. A life that wasn't variations of black, white, and creatively dull grey.
She read accounts of the amazing brilliance of colours, excited blog posts about first meetings, instant soulmate connections, everlasting love. She built up a dream in her head as she pulled that one favourite picture of the fine Captain Carswell Thorne and wondered if his grey eyes were blue or green or brown. She touched her face in the mirror and wonder if her eyes were blue or green or...oh how many other colours there were! Would, she wondered, would she know the answer if she met him?
A large part of her knew better.
And then there was the rest of her—skin and bones and hopeless hope.
.
When her satellite falls and gentle hands cut her hair, she orders herself not to cry as grey locks whisper down her back. She can't help but think the sky looks ugly in this hue as she tells him she loves him.
Trees, she decides look nice however. She likes trees, and she loves the feeling of the wind kissing her fevered cheeks. When he hugs her at the doctor's house, she nearly breaks. When he kisses her at the palace rooftop, she clutches his shirt so tight, she doesn't intend to let him go.
When Cinder asks her to pass the blue mug at breakfast, she can't help but cry.
.
Cress fiddles around with the ship computer, reading some of her old favourite articles even as she keeps telling herself she has to let go. She spends hours talking to Thorne, laughing with him, and tells herself she needs to learn to be okay with just this. She holds his hand, fingers twined against fingers, warm and safe and home and she counts all her breaths and tries not to ache so much.
Some days he looks at her so carefully, she starts to feel self conscious ,though he can't see her turning a dark shade of grey. His eyesight slowly starts to come back, bit by bit, piece by piece, moment by moment. He can't see anything properly yet. Just blobs and shapes, he says.
"You," he taps her nose lightly, "are a particularly pretty blob."
.
He takes her hands in his, holds them close like a prayer. What are they like? she wants to ask Cinder. What are colours like? I've read the sky is blue.
She hates slow moments like these. When the world feels like it's wrapped them in a coccon. When he holds her wordlessly and seems to be waring in his head with only her palm against his as his anchor.
She wants to rest her forehead against his. She wants to go back to her room and lock the door.
Against her better judgement, an intrusive thought nastily suggestes, what if she starts seeing colours now? But she doesn't see anything beyond the water in her eyes.
.
Waiting for his vision to clear, they sit side by side on matching crates, facing the largest set of windows in the ship. Today is the day, he says. He can feel it.
So she sits with him, though neither of the know when in today...how long will they have to wait? He traces idle patters at the back of her hand. A star, a heart, a squiggly nonsense something.
They fall asleep against each other, backs to the uncomfortable wall, hands twined, heads leaning close.
In his sleep he murmurs something like her name but she isn't awake to hear it.
.
When she wakes up, the stars behind the window look different.
Thorne's voice sounds raw when he speaks; vulnerable and rough. "Cress," he says in a near whisper. Her hand is still clutched in his. His thumb traces a star on her palm. A heart. A squiggly something. She shudders.
"I think I'm in love with you."
His eyes, she notices as her world tilts, are blue.
Bit narcissistic of me, but the title of this fic is a line from one of my poems that was accepted by Cicada Magazine a few months ago. Won't be published for a while though. They work about a year in advance for each issue and I've heard it'll be around eight months before I'm sent my contract, but oh gods, I'm just really, really happy to have been accepted. Still feels surreal to me.
Also, I'll unfortunately be gone from the fanfiction scene for a while. I've ventured into the deep, dark, scary world of original fiction, trying to write a book, and it's consuming all my time. I'll probably show up during Ship Weeks, but after that, I might not be around for a while. Apologies. I'll be back writing Cresswell as soon as I'm able again.
As always, thank you so much for all the feedback. They keep me alive and induce eighty percent of the unnatural whale noises I make daily, religiously.