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They say that orange is the color of insanity.
Alex supposes that makes sense, in an unfortunate way.
See, Alex has always been attracted to orange, following its pull like a religion. He surrounded himself with orange, from the desert sand spread across the horizon to the neon lights hanging from the bar window. Call him what you want, but Alex prides himself on knowing what he thinks, subconsciously or otherwise. He'd never been the most stable person, and never would be. The city around him was a testament to it. Despite this, he'd hoped when he was younger that he would shed his personality of orange (the rage, the brashness, the pride) and slip into a nice vibrant blue, a color of peace. He'd known even then, that it would take a miracle for that to happen, for his fire to turn to water. In the end, he made his goal a nice dusty red.
He'd achieved it.
He hated it.
When Alex thinks back, he guesses (knows) that his orange was brought to focus in the Essempi, highlighted when he'd found other people just as orange as him. Surrounded himself with them, even. That was when his orange started to become the ragerecklessangerCHAOS instead of the soft cream that was oh so easy to mistake for a kind and buttery yellow, a golden comfort.
He thinks it started with Schlatt, the bastard. Alex knew it wasn't the alcoholism that made the man he loved orange, knew the chaos the man exuded like the back of his hand. On the contrary, the alcohol numbed him, dulled his beautiful orange to a maroon, then a terrible blue. Johnathan had been hate, love, chaos, and sweet nothings the day they'd met, and Alex loved it. He loved the pain, the vicious love. He married that wonderful, wonderful insanity, only to be thrust back to reality with whiskey in his mouth.
With every glass Johnathan Schlatt consumed, his fire was doused from jumping flames, licking at curtains and tablecloths, to soft embers of bitterness, and then to ashes of a moment past. A lack of will infected the man, brought him to his knees. In the end, Alex had killed him, unable to see the man that once once so lively and dangerous reduced to a pastel blue, not even a facsimile of the vibrant orange he'd once been.
(Alex is not a kind man. He had never been kind. Soft, naïve, yes, but never kind. Despite this, he still looks back occasionally, and wonders what would have happened if he had restarted the heart that lay in his hands instead of feeling the slick blood and flesh slide down his throat. He does not regret it.)
Next was Wilbur Soot, formerly Minecraft. They had met during Alex's marriage to Johnathan, that point where Alex had just realized the direction his husband was headed. Both of their minds were high on alcohol and emotions, unfocused and raging, brought together by a mutual understanding of the color's rage. Their pairing didn't last long, barely a fling, but it was a peek into the mind of someone so vibrantly orange that Alex couldn't not follow. Johnathan's betrayal had already shifted his cream into a tangerine, but it was set alight with explosions.
Wilbur was an explosion of monumental kinds himself, there and all consuming and gone in a shockwave of sound and light. He left afterburns in Alex's retinas and smoldering rubble around him. A quote seared again and again into the minds of all described their relationship best, from the very start to the very end.
"It was never meant to be."
It was right, of course. Nothing was really "meant to be." Everything would fall, everything would crash and burn, return to the ashes from which they came in a glorious blaze of life. From a monument of olde, to a legacy of a dead man, to the leaf falling from a tree, they would all fall and be forgotten.
(Alex thinks that Wilbur forgot the good part, too focused on the end. He focused on the pointlessness of living and tried to defy the laws of the universe, to make his legacy eternal. He focused on the ashes and forgot the inferno. The sweet flames, caressing the sky with orange, yellow, and red, bringing light and purpose to a life of futility. Wilbur had forgotten life.)
Alex will forever be ashamed of what he did after Soot. Not because it wasn't thought through, but because it was meticulous and it worked.
By god, it worked.
After Soot, Alex turned his mind to the thought that maybe he was the problem, the reason that nothing lasted. He had not understood his color yet, didn't understand how nothing would last. He only knew what he'd seen, and that was his failure. The first was ended because he couldn't handle Johnathan's color change, and was left in the next in favour of a blown up country and a sword. He thought that, maybe, the people he picked went down in such sweet destruction because of his influence, that they would have been better had he been different.
So he tied himself down. Found two men who were soft and warm, vivid and bright. He coated himself in blue paint, a masquerade of a simpler man, a man he loathed. It had worked for a while, brought him a taste of stability and sunlight, a piece of life he thought that he would never experience. Of course, he couldn't quite tamp out the orange, couldn't reach the cerulean that he knew would work best with his fiancés, but settled at a navy. It had worked. He could stay this horrid shade of blue so long as his beloveds asked, so long as they stayed by his side. They did for a while, but just as Alex never was able to remove the orange completely from himself, he couldn't remove the orange from the people around him. It all came down to Sapnap.
Yes, he was the soft and warm orange of a sunrise, but orange nonetheless. Karl's purple could only hold off so much. A shiny new experience caught his eyes, made them gleam with the glory of founding a kingdom of peace and kindness. They followed each other, and left Alex behind covered in the dust of their relationship and a veneer of navy blue, nothing to offer to his beloveds and nothing they would take.
Alex moved to occupy his mind. Yes, the casino city had started as a gift to his beloveds, but it did not end that way.
He removed the navy paint a chip at a time, but all that time underneath blue had stained his orange into the color of bricks. He threw himself into the project he had started for the two, reclaiming it as his own. Alex fell into a dangerous pattern of monotony nothing could hope to sway then. His friends had helped as much as they could, but none were orange enough for his tastes. Well, there was one.
Floris "Fundy" Soot, the son of Wilbur Soot. He had left his father's side after his fall from grace, vowed to never return. Unfortunately for Fundy, he carried the same vibrant orange as his father in his soul, and the separation from such a vibrant source and into so much green and blue dulled him into dust most days. The only time Fundy jumped from the dust he had left himself as was when his father was mentioned, especially in reference to himself. So no, Fundy was much too soft, too desaturated to be of much help. The only person around Alex that was near as saturated as he needed was Charlie.
Charlie Slimecicle was an enigma, a color so very vibrant and encompassing, but so hard to describe. The closest Alex could describe was eldritch, a green so close to that of lichen and moss, but not. He was a color filled with warnings and history about life. Maybe he was why Alex figured out the rules of the universe. It would make sense. Slime wasn't exactly human, though nor was he a mob. No Charlie was a Being. An ancient deity, come to guide to lost if only they were resourceful enough to find him. Either way, Alex may have learned from Slime, but Charlie was simply not orange, not what Alex needed to be complete. After a while, Alex feared that nothing would bring the chaos he needed back into his life, that he would be left as a brick red forever.
Enter a ghost, but not the one that left blue handprints on anything he touched. A living ghost, vibrant orange and all. He walked into the city, head held high and demanding, and who was Alex to refuse? If Wilbur Soot couldn't bring back his vibrancy, nothing could. So Alexis Quackity, in all his rusty glory, went to talk to the walking flame of his past.
He went to talk to insanity.