Work Text:
Tihocan let the doors close behind him as he marched into his apartment, excited and impatient, so unlike how he tried to present himself in public. But he simply couldn't help himself this time. Finally he got the money to buy what he had secretly wished for since he was a child.
Sure, there were bigger dreams, more important dreams, but those had seemed wholly impossible at that time, while this one had been only… half-impossible. Oh, now even his bigger dreams were tentatively moving into the realm of possibility. But this one, the semi-possible one from the start? It was self-indulgent and maybe even a little silly to yearn for so much, and the extraordinariness of it just showed how different his life was, despite what he needed to show out there in the proper society.
Because… this would have been something so easy and simple to acquire if he had parents. He wouldn't have to fight nail and tooth to get even where he was now, he wouldn't need to be nearly twenty-three years old to finally get his hands on something little children with his condition would receive from their parents as nothing more than an afterthought.
If only his parents had lived. If only he had had a family…
Tihocan frowned at the box in his hands as he now stood still in his front room, forlorn thoughts that had overtaken his initial excitement now chased away with irritation at himself. How ungrateful was he. He had a family. All the other orphans from the Southern Wall of Second Circle, the older ones who had raised him and the younger ones who he had helped raise, they were his family.
Tihocan walked slowly over to a greyish yellow upholstered bench by the left side of the room and sat down with a heaviness in his chest. He missed his family so much. He wished he could share this moment with them, but it was too risky to visit them nowadays, lest someone noticed him and put two and two together. He still visited them, of course, but rarely, with intense planning that took more effort than managing his busy schedule at the office.
He could wait. He could start planning his next visit and keep this box sealed until them.
Oh but he was so curious. He could be selfish for once, couldn't he? In the end, only he would benefit from this.
Tihocan bit his lip, unsure. But he knew he couldn't stay sitting here too long, conflicted as he was. Returning home – no, not home, just an apartment, his home was with his family – from work didn't mean the end of his work for today, he still had so much to do that had to be finished by tomorrow. And at any other time he wouldn't mind keeping himself busy with work from dawn to dusk – and sometimes even longer – but this… ah, this was not usual at all.
He stared for a little while longer at the box, taunting him and tempting him, until he finally gave up with a deep sigh. Trying not to feel too guilty about not waiting for the rest of his family to see, he cracked the lid open.
Inside was a slightly smaller box, metal and rounded, closer to the size of what was waiting in it. Tihocan pulled out the box – the case – and unlatched the clasp with a soft click. The top part moved up noiselessly by itself and the case revealed its contents.
It was… nothing unexpected. A rather standard design, the kind Tihocan had seen before worn by other people. But this one was his . His excitement was coming back in waves and he took the glasses in one hand, impatiently setting the case beside him and now with both free hands moved the glasses towards his face.
He hesitated for one last moment, this time – ironically – in anticipation, and then finally set them over his eyes.
Tihocan squinted a bit, trying to get used to the feel of the object on his face while his eyes tried to process… well, it didn't seem like much at first, but the longer he looked, looked around himself, up down, everywhere , the more he was noticing the differences. So many… so many differences… he couldn't have imagined ever before! Intellectually, he had known there were many more colours than those he had known, but knowing was one thing. Seeing though!
His vision was getting a bit blurry and he panicked for a short moment, thinking there was something wrong, only to realize the true reason and with a self-deprecating laugh removed his glasses so he could wipe the tears from his eyes.
And then they were on again. Oh, he wished to never ever take them off! The world looked… amazing! When any of his family would mention how sorry they were about his colour blindness, he had always laughed and said that the world is not a nice or pretty place and maybe his bleak vision was more truthful than most others'.
Tihocan walked over to the window so he could see the City of Atlantis stretching all the way to the horizon. The city wouldn't miraculously become better or fairer just because he could see it now as it was intended by its architects. So beautiful, so colourful… No, it wouldn't become better. But if it was at all possible, maybe it would make Tihocan even more motivated to fix it. To make it so that its beautiful appearance would be matched by the beauty of its people, instead of hiding their rotten, uncaring core, only caring about outer appearances and pretending so many people in need didn't exist. Those in power, and those wilfully ignorant, who never bothered to hide their true colours, the kind of colours Tihocan had always been able to see clearly.
He turned away from the window, once again inspecting his apartment. He glanced at the bench, a stray memory from the back of his mind offering him a voice of a salesman who described the bench as green. Right, he would need to match the names of all colours with their actual appearances. A job for another day, he supposed. He had still too much administrative work to do, so many proposals and complaints to go through.
He couldn't fix the country as simply as he could fix his eyesight, but his eyesight had always been good enough to see it had to be done. And these days he could. Even if just one colour at a time.