Wenge - a very dark brown color and named after the wood of an endangered legume tree found in Africa, Millettia laurentii.
For the average person, the possibility of finding your soulmate was slim to none. Statistics said you had a better chance of marrying a prince or winning the lottery than finding the one you were meant to be with and seeing fully in color. Made sense; it was a great wide world out there, and the statistical chance of running into that singular person you were meant for even for the briefest amount of time seemed laughable. Like some cruel joke. Or, worse, entirely made up.
Made up by TV producers who wanted to sell movies and supported by paid actors who claimed they saw in color. This was a common conspiracy theory, but unlike the such that aliens built the pyramids or Elvis Presly was alive somewhere, a great number of people subscribed to this. It was the most numerous conspiracy theory group on Facebook; even higher than the Flat-Earthers.
Ideas such as 'green', 'blue', or 'pink' were mere phantom ideas to Betty; ideas from those who somehow beat the odds. It was like trying to describe a taste she'd never had or a smell she'd never come across. Just foriegn.
There were times when she was nearly sure she saw color. Throughout her childhood, she'd pass an area and there, on the slide, there would be a shine of silver. Not gray, silver. Or, in the parking lot, a fall leaf would be tinted with what she assumed to be orange, as though someone's fingers pressed into it for just the briefest of seconds and flung it back to the ground.
But it was never vibrant. Only ever a memory of a person, someone who passed by hours or even days ago. Like she was consistently chasing a spirit or a soul without a body.
The older she grew, the more Betty had half-convinced herself her mind was only playing tricks on her.
Most only ever saw in shades of gray, black, and white. This was the normal way of the world. Out of a class of 100 children, probably only one would ever come across the splashes of color, and another 100 of those 100 would ever truly see in full color. It was a lot about being at the right place at the right time.
Betty remembered being taught about soulmates. She was young, probably six and a half. Six months past seeing that first color green for the first time (but she'd still told nobody) and beginning to wonder if she imagined it, for she hadn't yet seen any other color again.
She was almost sure she'd dreamt it and that would somehow be better. At that age, nothing ever seemed to change, and- as far as Betty knew- this was just how the world was.
So she'd seen the shade of emerald. A fluke. A glitch. A rock in the proverbial stream. It didn't mean anything, or else she'd see more of it, right?
It was her father who set her straight.
"Some people can see in full color," He'd said, touching the strands of her hair, as though imagining what it was. She knew her dad couldn't see in color, and so she assumed the same of her mother, "But it's very rare, sweetie. If you're ever so lucky, you might start by seeing...glimpses. Wherever your soulmate has touched, you'll see that area in color. It will fade in time, less colorful meaning it's been a couple of hours since they touched that, or even days. And then, the first moment your eyes meet, you'll both see in color."
There was much more to it than that. He described that there were certain ailments that could afflict someone who had found their soulmate but was not with them.
"They're meant to be together, you see," Hal said, enclosing his fingers into a locked pair, "And it's unnatural for them to be apart once they've found each other."
"What sort of things happen?" Betty asked, squirming a bit on the big sofa across from her dad in his office, wondering if these awful things were going to happen to her.
"Well, if you were to find a soulmate, find them, and then not be in close contact with them...it could be a number of things. Sickness first. Headaches. Dizzyness. Like that."
Betty thought hard, "Like when I had the flu last year?" It was the only frame of reference she had.
"Like that, but worse."
At Betty's very serious, very morbid face, Hal gave a quiet laugh, "I wouldn't worry about it, sweetheart. Not to depress you, but in all likelihood, you'll never meet your soulmate and that's okay."
Until this point, Betty had been contemplating telling her father (who she preferred over her mother) about the green occurrence, but now, she knew she should keep it zipped. She didn't think her father would believe her anyway.
"Does that make things clearer?" Hal questioned.
Betty had no such idea of complex things, despite how he tried to explain it, no more than she understood other abstract thoughts like 'death' and 'liberty', but she nodded anyway. She wanted her dad to think of her as intelligent.
For a while, that was all she heard about it. And that was all she saw of it.
She was beginning to think the supermarket was just a fever dream conjured up from some deep part of her mind wishing and guessing what 'color' might look like.
Of course, as she got older, it was often a topic. Color. Soulmates. True love. Everyone giggled in the halls about it, whispering and spreading rumors and gossip about who could see color when they met with who. Most of it was rubbish. No one Betty knew saw in color, and she was almost starting to believe it was all fake and made up just for ratings or TV or capitalism. She still had moments out and about when she could swear that she saw a glimmer of green, a flash of fuchsia, or a blip of blue...but hell, what did she know?
Knowing what color was... was even stranger. It seemed to just be completely inherently buried knowledge, but a knowledge she weirdly possessed all the same. She would walk by a smudge that would be just off-kilter from the usual gray field of vision, recognize this was a color, and her brain would supply the name of it.
She'd turn her head and see a flash on the Town Sign, for example, and her mind would just vibrate and go 'oh, look at that Betty, teal', as though she'd been seeing teal all her life. Or, girls would point to notebooks and declare it to be blue and Betty's mind would rebel, knowing differently, and she'd be forced to laugh along with it. Even if she'd never seen that particular notebook with a remnant of some person somewhere that was her other half, she knew the hues and shades and knew it was likely a purple notebook.
And wasn't that a strange phenomenon?
Still, Betty kept her lips very tightly closed.
The older she got, the more the idea seemed to permeate into all of culture. All the most fantastic TV shows were about finding your soulmate and seeing in color, though only the viewers who had also found their soulmate could see the change from black and white to technicolor so that always seemed batty to Betty. The talk shows had couples who swooned over each other, talking about how they followed the traces until they found each other like it was a treasure hunt. The most popular celebrities were those who claimed to have found this inner, sacred truth of the universe.
No one talked about how rare it was to ever actually achieve this. Her father, sure, but most people acted like the average person had a chance.
The average person did not. Most people were not special.
There were people you could pay a lot of money to track down your soulmate. You could go on an app if you were lucky enough to see the flashes of color left behind, but that only worked if your soulmate was also logging their instances too. In all, the actual success stories for either option were nothing to write home about.
You just had to be...lucky.
But Betty did not consider herself lucky. On the nights she considered that perhaps she had a soulmate out there, she found herself torn between anger and despair. Anger, because she was nearly sure she was in love with Archie and that meant Archie was not her soulmate, and despair because she almost thought she'd spend the rest of her life only ever catching the remnants of her soulmate's touch like crumbs left scattered in the wind.
Betty was sixteen years old before she fully believed she had a soulmate.
It was even longer before she acknowledged it truly.
Somewhere, Betty had started to turn back around to the idea of true love. She used to scoff at the idea of it.
She hated that someone out there had chosen someone for her, without her knowledge, and it was just 'fated destiny' for the pair of them to work out. She thought about how unfair it was, and that if some god out there had truly done this, why didn't every get the same chance? Why weren't more people paired up? Did this mean that some people were unworthy of a perfect match?
It left Betty in some deep, depressing philosophical battles with herself.
Then...she'd started dating Jughead.
Jughead, who she hadn't meant to start to fall for. Jughead, her childhood friend. Jughead, with his wry grin and his gray beanie (which, she was pretty sure was actually, uninterestingly gray) and his murder stories.
There was a moment when she'd been dating him for a little bit when they were working on Jason's murder. Jughead handed her her coffee without her having to ask, as she turned back for it. Such a simple, generous, caring gesture that left her feeling like she'd been sucker-punched.
Suddenly, she couldn't stand to be in that room anymore.
"What's wrong?" Jughead asked, frowning as Betty shot upward.
"I just remembered...I have...Math…" She said, floundering helplessly for an excuse, though it sounded awful even as she said it.
"You okay?"
"I just need to get home," Betty said, gathering her things, "We'll pick this up tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah," Jughead said, brow pinching. Then, right as Betty was at the door, he paused her, "Wait, no. Did I do something?" He asked, his face hurt and his eyes soulful.
Betty sighed heavily, leaning in to kiss him, "No, no...nothing at all."
And that was part of the issue. But she could not tell him that, not yet.
"You sure?"
"I just need to do something at home, really," Betty said, her fingers itching at the door.
Jughead stepped back. "Call me later."
Betty hopped on the bus and her throat and stomach felt heavy the entire ride home. She felt like something was going to explode inside of her, eat her from the inside out. She purposely kept her head down, refusing to see any hints of color that might be unceremoniously splashed upon Riverdale for her to run into.
Her father was in his office.
"Betty...what are you…" He said, taking in her heaving breaths and watering eyes, "Is it the Jones boy? Betty, I swear I'll-,"
"Dad," Betty gasped, rolling her jacket and backpack off her shoulders onto the carpet, crawling onto the same couch where she'd learned about soulmates nearly a decade ago, "Is it possible that it's delayed?" Her voice quivered.
"Huh?"
"Seeing color on things your soulmate touches. That it's...that you might...that someone…" Betty couldn't find the words. She felt tears burn her throat and it was all she could do not to break into tears in front of her father, "Is it possible that color appears later or it takes a while or-,"
"Oh, Betty." There was a certain realization in his tone, "You don't see anything with Jughead, do you?"
Betty pressed her lips together, closing her eyes tightly. In that moment, where Jughead had predicted her thoughts before she'd even had them, she'd had the weirdest moment when she thought she might love him.
And then, it was like her insides rebelled. Something violently pushing her away from that idea, those words. And, even if she could love him, Betty could not pretend like color was just moments where her eyes were adjusting.
She was seeing color everywhere now.
And none of it were things Jughead was touching.
"I warned you," Hal said, "But it still hurts. It doesn't mean you can't fall in love with people, even if the world is still black and white around them. The world wouldn't exist if it weren't for people finding their own happiness. If you really like him...like him."
Her mother, who had always hated Jughead, would be appalled to hear her father say that, Betty thought. She laughed out loud, her emotions all over.
Her father got part of it, but not all of it.
She couldn't bring herself to admit the truth of it all. So, instead, Betty just inhaled. For someone who'd never seen color, yes, remaining with someone who also hadn't found a soulmate was easy.
Nothing in Betty's life was ever fucking simple, though, was it?
She wasn't sure how she could stay with Jughead, knowing deep down, that he...or she...her other half was out there.
As she closed her eyes, her father petting her hair, a rainbow of ghost-like handprints flashed across her vision.
She was staring to see color more frequently, more vibrantly around her in Riverdale. Which meant that she was indeed living in the same town, and the odds of that were astronomical. She had no idea who it was because they were never fresh touches of color, but they were increasing.
But Betty was happy with Juggie, wasn't she? And he seemed happy with her.
Despite everything screaming at her in her mind that this was going to end badly, Betty decided to say fuck it.
She'd never been very good at following rules set out by others. Especially not by some unseen sky god who decided who knows when that she was meant for someone else.
For years, she'd been analyzing the color as it appeared. Obsessing over it at night when the rest of her mind had begun to turn off. Thinking about it, all the time. But now? Now, Betty was pissed at the thought of color and was rather ready to entirely box it away to never think of it again.
Ah, life is hardly that easy. She was able to pin her consuming thoughts to the very back of her mental tack-board, left hanging to be touched at another moment. A lot of the time, she wasn't actively ruminating upon it anymore, but it didn't mean that she was left immune.
In the following weeks, she did have one sort of realization. One that left her both unnerved and anxious in different ways. She noticed that they seemed brightest and most common at the Drive-In. Every time that Jughead wanted to go down to that area, Betty was equally dreading and hoping that there would be more color somewhere for her to see.
And, a bigger part of Betty was worried that one of these days, she might actually run into her soulmate.
XXX
Jordan 'Sweet Pea' Karan didn't think much about soulmates growing up. At least, as far as anyone he associated with, this is what they assumed.
Because that aforementioned statement? Fucking lie.
But, come on. If you knew the shit Sweet Pea did, soulmates would cross your mind a lot too.
He knows that there's some part of him that's a bit mushy and soft, though he's not sure if it was always there or if it grew within him after learning about what color was. It's difficult not to find yourself having moments of romantic fancy when your breath is taken away by a flicker of forest green or a hint of heliotrope. He kept all these moments locked down though, far within him.
The average boy did not think of soulmates or feel their heart quicken when they walked near the barrier between that side and this side, hoping there would be some gift waiting for him there.
No siree, as far as his fellow Serpents knew… Sweet Pea could give less of a shit about soulmates.
He doubted there was anyone below the tracks that saw color. He'd eat his proverbial hat if even one could be produced. Happy shit, like finding your 'meant to be' weren't in the cards for the average Southsider.
Folks like him, scum of the earth trailer trash, didn't find love. That was as stupid as believing at any age that Santa Clause was real.
Most kids, once they learned that allegedly there was such a thing as color, quickly dismissed the very thought it could happen to them. It was like having three square meals, reliable transportation, or schools without stabbings every week...something that the Northside probably had, but they'd never even get close to.
No one even tried over here.
The only person that Sweet Pea knew that had any preoccupation out of the ordinary about it was Toni, who from her young age, declared she was going to find her soulmate. She set out to find out what she could about it, which was not much.
Sweet Pea never told anyone that he was seeing color. If he were to tell anyone, it would be her. Part of him thought that perhaps he was simply making it up after that first time. It was a full six months before he saw color again, and even after that, he thought maybe his mind was just being shitty.
He'd be minding his own business, stumbling around the streets of Riverdale, and he'd find himself upon a muted golden sheen, or a pinkish hue, or a soft baby blue. Moments that he almost missed, so faded that he often thought the drugs he was ferrying had someone gotten to him. Apparently acid made you see in color. Not that he'd ever had the urge strong enough to try it, thank you very much.
By the time he'd decided that no, he was one of those lucky son-of-a-gun's who might have a chance at something freaking good, he liked the fact it was his and his alone. By the time he even considered telling Toni, by about the point they hit their freshman year of high school, he felt like far too long had elapsed between discovery and now. To tell her after all these years would feel...wrong. And it's not as though he could prove it. People claimed all the time they saw color. There was one couple every year. Most times it was just for the Instagram likes.
And for the rare one person at his school that might...Sweet Pea shuddered to think. He liked being part of the Serpents and having people give him a wide berth. He'd become an overnight celebrity and fuck that. The only thing it would bring would be a headache.
Besides, until that prep at Riverdale High was murdered, he didn't think he'd ever come into any substantial contact with his soulmate.
It invaded every community in Riverdale and the surrounding towns like a toxin, seeping into the veins and working everyone up. The Serpents were right in the middle of that bullshit, or rather FP was, so it was hard to ignore it.
It must suck to die at 17, Sweet Pea considered.
By this point, he was a junior at Southside High and he thought about how he too was 17 and how easily it could have been him. How the odds were that it should have been him.
And about how somewhere out there, he had a soulmate.
No, no. Not 'just' somewhere. Riverdale.
Yeah, he'd come to the conclusion it was a prissy Northsider. The death of Jason Blossom had Serpents crossing the unspoken town border more often than ever before and it was hard not to see the traces of this girl or guy at every intersection, every corner store. It was in places he had no right to be, but every time he had reason to go over there, he would draw himself to those spaces, trying not to look stupid as he stared in awe at a fern sitting in a flower pot near a coffee shop where perhaps her skirt had brushed against the fronds.
But damn it, if people could see it...it was just so...green. The softest green he'd ever seen. The sort of green that made him feel...peaceful. And a bunch of other sappy shit.
There was only one time that Sweet Pea went over the border without cause. He couldn't help it. The colors were calling to him, and after things seemed like maybe they were going to normal out in the wake of the Blossom Conspiracy, his mind was fighting with itself about finding the person that made his life so colorful when he wasn't expecting it.
He followed the colors all through the picturesque downtown...through the bookstore, into a tea shop, out to the grocery store. Sweet Pea left his Serpent Jacket at home and since it was nearly snowing, it wasn't weird for him to cover his neck with a heavy knit scarf, courtesy of Toni's Christmas gift two years ago, a mangled tangle of knots that he wore to annoy her now, but had always secretly been warmed by the effort.
He didn't usually like this sort of feel, but he looked pretty average right now. Maybe a kid from out of town just checking out the digs. Someone who, maybe, could belong here.
He got all the way to a place that felt fairly suburban before he...he…
Well, goddamn, before he chickened out. If anyone ever found out, he'd say that he had realized what a waste of time it was. Or that he'd lost the tracks. Or that he'd been called away.
Truth, however?
He knew that if he followed the colors, which were growing stronger with each footstep, he'd come across whoever he was supposed to be with.
Life comes at you pretty fast. Living on the Southside teaches you that real quick. Things just come at you and bowl you over and keep you down, a knee on your chest. And you couldn't avoid it.
This? This he could.
He had the tickling feeling that he was outrunning fate and that this was breaking some cosmic law. But what did he care? He'd always been a rebel. As he turned back and resisted the urge to finish his quest, there was a certainty clinging to his mind.
This was going to catch up to him, eventually. Gone were the days he could almost ignore color, like a fly in his ear.
If anyone knew about his affliction, he'd bet them fifty bucks that by the time he graduated high school, he'd know who it was.
And he'd be damned if he didn't admit this thrilled him.
XXX
There had almost been a night, inadvertently, where they'd crossed paths. If Sweet Pea was honest, that was the catalyst that brought him to the North Side almost ready to track his soulmate down.
The Drive-In was a popular watering hole for the Serpents. FP loved that place. He'd say it had a lot of potential for other things, but everyone knew it was because his weird-ass son loved it so much. Sweet Pea had seen Jughead once or twice; the weirdo was always scowling and wearing that stupid hat. Sweet Pea didn't think anything of him, not really, so it didn't matter.
He liked the Drive-In fine. Fine enough anyway. It was nice sometimes to just zone out, watch a movie, and eat popcorn that was far too greasy. FP had some arrangement with the place, so Serpents got some free food out of it usually. The movies were so-so, but Sweet Pea had learned not to complain when you were given free shit.
FP paid the younger kids' way in. As in, high school and below. He knew most of them, even if they were lucky enough to get a job flipping burgers at the McDonalds in Greendale, were putting all of it toward expenses. And, even if kids like Sweet Pea got a little extra by ferrying on the side, he was saving that to do something someday. Buy a house, maybe. Not just a trailer, a real, honest-to-god house. It could be broken and drafty and nearly condemned as long as it was his that he paid for.
So yeah. Drive-Ins. They didn't suck completely.
He had to say, he was going to be pretty miffed when it closed. Where else would he spend his Friday nights, filing popcorn at Toni's hair and making dirty jokes with Fangs near the screen? Okay, they could do that anywhere, but it felt different, maybe better, to do it at the Drive-In.
It sorta blew this place was going down.
He'd never seen it so packed. He wondered why. Maybe it was a relic of an older time. Maybe people were uncomfortable with so many Serpents lingering. Maybe the owners had no idea how to market. Either way, it usually wasn't even half full. Tonight there was a line out the gate to get a spot.
It reminded him how much he sort of hated people. It pushed him and his friends near the back of the lot, far from the screen and farther from concessions.
Rich people always spat on places that the poor liked to congregate until suddenly it was nearly taken from them. He had a theory...Northsiders were like bratty children, who had hundreds of toys but would throw a fit at the first hint someone was about to grasp it away. But if it stayed open? He'd bet his meager savings that all of these people crowding the doors would forget about it again within three months.
Fuckers.
He'd just been minding his own business when he saw it. A bright splash of color on the wooden door leading to the projection room. Bright as in couldn't have been more than an hour old, showing him all the nuance of color within the wood grain-painted door, so many words swirling to his mind; oak, chestnut, umber, sienna...colors to describe the lapsing colors that tangled around each other in complicated rings.
"Fu…" He muttered, his heart leaping and chest constricting.
"What's up?" Toni flicked his ear.
"I…"
He nearly told her. He thought about it, about how nice it would be to have a friend leading him through it, now that he was faced with facts. The fact was that he was probably less than a mile away from his soulmate, the closest he reckoned they'd ever been. Feet, to be honest! Not even miles!
He, or she, was here.
"Nothing. Nothing at all." He snapped, drawing into himself.
He wasn't ready for this. Sure, it's not like God came down and gave warnings, oh no, you just stumbled into them, and BAM. Color everywhere.
Sweet Pea was unsure he wanted it all so suddenly.
"Okay, weirdo." Toni pushed a coke into his hands, dropping it easily.
Sweet Pea wished he could shove the color from his mind too, but alas.
His little mind just kept spinning. And running. And dragging him by the heart.
He found himself slinking away, curling around the side of the projection room. His fingers traced where his soulmate had left marks. From the with of the fingertips away from each other, he assumed it was a girl. Dainty, tiny fingerprints. His hands seemed to swallow hers.
And because apparently, he was a masochist but also a coward, he leaned against the door to the projection house, heart beating out of his chest, straining to hear.
And yes, there it was. During the dialogue of the film, there was the humming of two voices talking. One deeper, a man, and one female. He couldn't make out any of what the pair were saying, but his body seemed to vibrate as though to say, 'yes, you idiot, she's in there'!
It was the most beautiful torture.
He stayed there until a very furious-looking woman came stomping around, someone he knew he'd seen before but couldn't quite place.
"Find somewhere else to be," She snapped, waving a hand and giving a disgusted curl of her lip, noting exactly what sort of person he was in one swift glance.
He rolled his eyes and flipped her the bird. As soon as he saw her opening that door, knowing he might catch a glimpse…
He was out of there.
Remember, a coward.
Gone, shoving himself behind the snack stand, catching his breath, trying to shove his sorry ass out there to see what she looked like.
But his legs wouldn't do it and he exhausted his body. His legs crackled and he slumped against the dirt, swearing and slamming his fist against the concrete wall behind him. He wasn't going to see. He wasn't going to follow her footsteps in the dirt. He wasn't going to ask around to find out who had been in there.
And he sort of hated himself for it.