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Ink carefully managed his supply of emotions, keeping his usual level of orange (excitement) and yellow (happiness) as he made his way back through the house. The crowd of people, with their ever-vivid colors and gold-glittered eyes, made it easy to blend in and keep himself inconspicuous to the ever watchful guardian. It was like a game of hide-and-seek: Ink hid, and Dream looked for anything potentially amiss.
So far, Ink always won.
A bit of weaving and winding led Ink out of the house, and a few more steps put him far enough away that ever-busy Dream wouldn't notice the comings and goings of his portals. A swipe of broomy let Ink fall through into the void, and another swipe took him back to a far-distant universe. Once there, Ink drank his white paint to erase any trace of emotion he might have. It was not a pleasant sensation, being erased from the inside out, but he could not risk being followed.
He could not risk being caught doing what he was about to do, especially not by Dream.
Once devoid of emotion, a blank canvas, an empty husk, Ink lay down another stroke and went further still, crossing the infinite as far as he dared to tread before risking himself to being lost.
It was so easy to get lost.
Ink didn't bother to look at what kind of world he landed in (if he did not know, he could not lie about it, a trick he learned from his friend). Ink settled into a little cave deep underground, the most strategic location he could find for utter isolation. Curling up on the floor, Ink finally pulled out the vials he had traded for. He replaced his empty purple (lust) and pink (affection) vials with the full ones, assured that their presence on his person would draw no attention. He would have to water down the pink later, seeing the color too vivid and strong for his purposes (but that was always the case with what Falsi managed to do).
Finally, Ink turned his attention to the important colors, the ones he risked so much for; he started with the red, bright as blood, popping the cork free and taking a calculated sip.
The effect was immediate: Ink's emptiness was filled, his canvas colored over in red. The paint rushed through his bones, scorching him hot and jumpstarting his mind with the bright, wild fury of pure, unbridled Anger.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair! Why did he have to limit his palette so?! Why did he have to sacrifice his experiences?! What was so fucking taboo about being angry?! Why couldn't he just have this, this one little thing?! Why, why why why why-
Ink felt the glass crack in his increasingly tight grip. Unwilling to waste a drop, he quickly chugged the vial before it could leak. He filled himself in precious, beautiful, terrible red, raging at the unfairness of it all, hating, hating-
It was too much. Tossing the broken glass aside, Ink turned, falling to his hands and knees as he threw up, gagging and choking on the very thing he coveted above all else. Black and red painted the ground under him, a sickening mess that, to Ink's blurry eyes, was beautiful in its rawness. He wished he could keep the art, but he knew better.
Ink fought to stay conscious, but overloads rarely were that kind: One minute he was wringing himself dry, coughing and vomiting up the excess emotion, and the next he was laying face down in a splatter of dried red and black paint, covered in it. Ink licked a bit of red that had congealed to his thumb, but it was no use: the emotion, the power of creativity, had long since been used up from it, rendering the pigment useless to him.
Where was he? What had he been doing?
Ink checked his scarf for any notes that might have been useful. A scribble about Dream's wings being too long. Trim? Falsi?
Colors.
Ink looked around at the mess he had made of himself, swallowing thickly. If he focused, he could still feel a faint thrum of indignation, of anger, lingering like an aftertaste. It would fade soon, but Ink clung to it. Ok, so he drank the Red. What about..?
There, on the ground by the empty vials, was a vial of deep blue, standing out in the dark with a soft glow. Ink picked it up, turning it over in his hand.
The lingering traces of red demanded an answer, an answer to why he had to suffer like this, why he had to scrape and struggle for even this little bit of a proper rainbow.
Popping the cork, Ink took a small sip. The cooler hue slid down like water, filling him with heavy Blue, heavy Sorrow. As tears welled up in Ink's eyes, he answered his own question: because he had to. He had to make sure nothing happened to Dream. For better or worse, Dream was a driving force of inspiration, one of the last remaining. If anything happened to him, the Creators might just lose interest altogether, might abandon him.
Ink took another sip, feeling the weight of it bubble inside him, more and more, until the bubble burst out of him as a sob. He curled up around the meager vial of blue, his tears leaving messy black streaks down his face, staining his clothes all the more.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. If he wasn't careful, he could lose everything, but he had to sacrifice so much just to keep a little more. It wasn't like it was easy to find Red or Blue anymore, either, the wellspring of those colors long dried up, leaving only 'wholesome', positive creativity behind. And as if the scarcity wasn't bad enough, he couldn't keep it anywhere near Dream, not without him tainting it into a different color (turning reds to oranges and blues to greens, giving the colors too much yellow, always too much yellow).
Ink continued to sip at the blue in increments, nursing it, drawing it out as he cried, and cried, and cried.
When he downed the last of it, he screamed, tossing the useless, empty vial away and hugging himself, squeezing as he contorted with the sweet agony of despair.
As the effects began to fade, Ink fumbled for his vial of yellow. He sipped it, feeling the comforting rush of the color flood him. It was always more effective after a bout of blue, as if the hues complemented and enhanced each other. Ink lay there, satisfied in his decadence, feeling more whole than he had felt since last he had partaken of his resplendent taboo.
He would fill his pallet with the correct portions later. For now, he wanted only to exist, in his tiny slice of infinity.