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Rachel Duncan, Aldous decides, is blue. A flat expanse of sparkling blue ice in which any anomaly is easily seen and easily shattered. He always feels small when he’s with her, as if at any second she could snap her fingers and make him disappear, a tiny blip on her horizon gone forever. He doesn’t like this feeling, doesn’t like being small. He is above her, more important than, and so he puffs out his chest and stands tall next to the icy sculpture of a woman beside him. In the hierarchy of the Dyad, Aldous tells himself, he comes first.
He watches her fingers click-clack on the keyboard of her laptop, shining fingernails reflecting the bright screen. He wonders what it is she’s typing, and attempts to crane his neck subtly to look.
Subtlety is not Aldous’ strong suit, and observation is what Rachel is best at. Her eyes snap up at his movement, and as they narrow at him, he sinks lower into his seat, cowed. In his mind, he scolds himself for folding to her, and resolves to hold his ground next time. (God knows how many times he’s told himself that.) But Rachel is a cold blue, seemingly unfeeling, and it seems Aldous cannot question her when he feels the chill emanating from her blonde bob to her black heels.
He thinks, sometimes, of what could have been. Of what color Rachel would have been if he had left well enough alone. Susan had been warm, had been loving– at least, that’s what Aldous assumes from the cassettes Rachel keeps. He doesn’t remember much of Susan. Just the look of panic on her face and the fiery-smelling ash he scrubbed from his fingers.
Maybe if Susan was still alive, Rachel would not be so cold, so blue.
But then, Aldous thinks, blue can be hot, as well. Blue is the color of the hottest fires, the color that licks buildings and people until they crumble when the red end of the spectrum is not enough.
He sees that fire in Rachel sometimes, sees a monster rear its head in those shining eyes. The whole Cold Bitch, Proclone thing is a facade, Aldous knows. He should– he has one, too. But Rachel is less practiced, and sometimes she cracks and lets things in.
She let Sarah in, Aldous thinks to himself. He does not understand her fascination with Sarah above the others, above Cosima, his precious scientist. But no matter what he says to her, Rachel tracks the other woman like a hunter in awe of its prey: always watching, never touching. She would never actually touch Sarah, Aldous suspects, afraid of what might happen if she drew too close, if her obsession became a reality. Because Sarah would reject her.
Sarah, who is red-hot and burning, running, burning the ground as she runs, feet cracking the pavement to reveal molten lava just beneath the surface. Sarah and Rachel repel each other, but as Aldous watches them snarl and circle each other, he can’t help but picture them together, a blazing duo of purple, knocking down walls and storming whatever castles they needed.
Purple is the royalty of Rachel Duncan and the magic of Sarah Manning and the love of the two of them– because yes, they both love. Rachel just can’t show it.
Fire burns in many different ways, Aldous tells himself as he stares at Rachel, still on her laptop. Purple fire would be new, and that is the whole point. It would burn neither blue nor red, be neither aloof nor frantic. It would not destroy.
It would create.