Work Text:
In that place, that institution, all he had seen was white. His world was full of white, white walls and white, white lab coats and pale, pale children whose bodies shone translucent under half-lit fluorescent bulbs. The doctors' smiles were forced, he knew that much; their skin stretched like plastic over their skulls and their white, white teeth gleamed under the harsh rays of artificial brightness. The building had all the sterile, orderly qualities of a hospital, but undertook itself to a completely different purpose. This was a place where wickedness hid itself behind clipboards and pens, a place where a handful of young, unfortunate souls stepped over the boundary of no return, a place of calm madness veiled behind the soft color of fresh snow.
When she spoke, his vision filled with a dull, pale yellow. Her words passed through his ears like early morning beams of light passed through a window; they did little to enhance the room, but they warmed one's skin comfortably from the inside out. He found himself fairly enjoying what little time he had with her; he was a boy who indulged himself by playing in the clear heat of summer, picking dandelions in the fields and listening to canaries singing in the trees. Her voice didn't glisten or pop or stand out, but oh, when she laughed, it burned as radiant as the sun.
When he (his partner in destruction, his companion, his best friend, even) spoke, every sight was tinged with blue. The color was gloomier than it should have been; it was dark like his hair, dark like his eyes, dark like his mind. The sound of that voice brought up the mental image of a rumbling, precarious storm, but he knew that he would much rather face the pelting rain than stay safely locked up indoors. The pigment reminded him of explosives, of the clacking of computer keys, of the muffled tick-tock of a clock or the countdown of a bomb, constantly reminding them of how much time they had left, and how quickly it was running out (they were both aware that they wouldn't make it past twenty, but after everything that had happened, they never really expected to in the first place). He had never dared to tell the other this, but when the older boy's voice took a different path, when his words were said with a slight smile or his tone held a certain warmth, it turned the color of the afternoon sky.
"The joker you guys are waving around isn't a toy. If you use that...I will never forgive you!" This was a surprise; it was the first time the police department had ever made a direct threat to them, the first time they dropped a bomb on Sphinx instead of the other way around. The investigator had spat out those sentences like an insult, and just as the video feed hurriedly flickered to black, he saw maroon beginning to creep into the corners of his eyes. The ruby hue that threatened to take over his senses was thick, and it was angry. To him, it looked like the message "VON" hastily scribbled out in paint, or the blood that they didn't have on their hands. For a second, he thought he could almost taste the sharp tang of iron on his tongue. This moment reminded him that they were doing something dangerous, something big. He wondered how many other people in his lifetime would make him see red.
"Are you going to destroy the whole world?” Her voice barely made it to him through the hum of the engine, and it sat heavily on the middle of his back, staining it the shade of the sunset. The multitude of colors that blurred before him were caused by a number of things; the glow of the headlights painted the night in vibrant gold, and the neon sparks of the city blended on either side, creating a man-made rainbow. From his peripheral vision, the lights from the buildings made the surroundings look like the galaxies had fallen onto Earth, the illumination coming from household windows twinkling like the stars overhead as they raced through the Milky Way. He laughed and laughed and laughed, and she joined in as well, the sound sparkling like silver bells next to his ear. She had asked if he was going to destroy the world, and with the wind whistling in his brain and the clandestine vastness of space dancing around him, he truly felt like he could.
In his final moments, the last thing he heard was the loud bang of a faraway gun, the last thing he felt was a bullet slicing through him as easily as it would the air, but the last thing he saw was the murky, sharp shock of cobalt screams.