Chapter Text
Clarke, Earth-date: March 12th 2138
Tiny Clarke Griffin bounds through the Ark’s Alpha Station, scanning every individual she passes with intense focus. Her eyes are stretched wide open, straining her eyelids with the effort. She pauses at a corner in the hall and peers around it intently, like a hunter stalking prey.
“Nope!” she exclaims. “No one there! Maybe next time!” Clarke tugs insistently on her father’s hand, running down the corridor on her short legs. Every trip down the hall is a new chance. “Maybe next time!” she repeats after every corner she turns, every crowd she passes, every new person she encounters.
“It’ll happen when it happens,” her father tells her gently, squeezing her small hand in his. “Or it might never happen, and that’s okay too.”
“No it isn’t!” Clarke insists. “I want to see colour!”
She’s determined; she will find her colour-match. The idea thrills her. She expects at any moment to cross paths with the one who will make her vision spark to life. Clarke’s impatient for the moment when she’ll finally be near them. When she can see, at last, the Ark as it’s meant to be seen – in colour. While she waits to meet her match, Clarke has dedicated herself to memorizing what colour everything’s supposed to be. She’s learned that blood is red and her hair is yellow and trees are green. She would nod earnestly and try to understand when her mom explained the difference between orange and yellow.
She wants to be prepared, for when she needs them one day.
Soon enough, Clarke arrives at her destination, her father still firmly in tow. No colour sightings yet, but it’s only midday. Clarke stops in front of the grey bulkhead door and presses the intercom. “Wells!” she calls into the microphone. “It’s me!”
After a moment the door draws back to reveal Thelonious Jaha, huge and imposing in the doorway. “Clarke,” he says in his curt, not entirely unkind, way. Then, to her father, “Jake.” Jaha greets Clarke’s dad, high above Clarke’s head. Clarke ignores him, darting inside past Jaha’s legs.
Wells is sitting at a large metal table in the corner of the open living room, his dark head bent over some scrap metal. He’s folding a piece of wire with his hands, forming it into a shape.
“Hi!” Clarke says excitedly, grinning at her best friend. He looks up and grins back, dropping his work to the table.
“Hi!” Excitement shines all over Wells’ face. “I’ve got something for you.” Leaning across the table, Wells holds up a glass jar, full of pencils. From among the various shades of grey, white, and black, he pulls one out. It’s unmistakably new: the pencil’s much longer than Clarke’s normal stash, and it’s a shade of grey that she’s never seen before.
Clarke reaches the table in a quick bound and accepts the gift from Wells’ outstretched hand. She cradles the new pencil in her cupped palms, holding it up and inspecting it closely. “What colour is it?” she asks him. In the moments before he answers, the pencil could be anything. It might even be a colour Clarke has never heard of!
“It’s blue,” Wells tells her. Clarke’s disappointed. She already has a blue; she doesn’t need more than one blue. Wells, of course, understands her look immediately. “It’s not like the blue one you already have,” he insists. “This one’s different.”
Clarke inspects it even closer, holding it right up to her eye line. Maybe, if she tries really, really hard, she’ll be able to see the colour herself. “Different, how?” she asks, sceptical.
Wells laughs at her, and Clarke’s cheeks burn in frustration. “It’s just different,” he says. “The blue you already have…” he rifles through the glass jar and pulls it out. The pencil’s short and stubby from overuse. “This one,” he continues, holding up the old pencil, “is darker. It’s like the colour of the oceans on earth. The new one is lighter. It’s the colour of Earth’s sky. I thought you could use it when you draw pictures of the ground.”
Clarke holds up the old one and compares it to the beautiful new pencil. She supposes the old one does look darker. Slowly, a grin blooms across Clarke’s face. Sky. She can colour in the sky.
“I love it,” she tells Wells earnestly, throwing her arms around him. He hugs her back easily.
“Come on, then, let’s get to work!”
Clarke draws for hours while Wells picks up working on his little sculpture. Slowly, it takes the shape of a little animal. He uses screws for the body, bolts for paws, and the wire forms a little tail. It’s cute, Clarke tells him.
Every so often, Clarke leans over to Wells and asks him to check that the colours in her drawings look okay. Can horses be orange? How about red? No? What about yellow? Patiently, Wells would set down his sculpture and explain in great detail the differences between each one, lining up and sorting the coloured pencils. No, the red is too bright. Not green, try the brown instead. When she finally finishes, Clarke hands over the drawing to him triumphantly.
“Yeah,” Wells says, inspecting the scene she had sketched. “Looks good, Clarke.”
--
Clarke likes to refer to someone’s colour-match as their soulmate. She read the word in one of the ancient books they still have on board the Ark, from before the Earth was lost. For months she would talk loudly about what she’s going to do when she meets her soulmate and how she can’t wait to finally be able to see in colour. And that she’ll make sure never to leave that person’s side, because colour is going to be so amazing, she would never ever want to be without it. And what would they be like? Would he have a cute smile? Would she have freckles? Every week Clarke would imagine someone different, but she loved them all. Every time she loved them. And wouldn’t it just be awful if they didn’t see colour too? Wouldn’t that just be so embarrassing?
Eventually, her mother has to pull her aside – her grip tight on Clarke’s upper arms – and tell her sternly to stop.
“Can’t you see you’re hurting Wells?” Abby asks her.
Clarke hasn’t been able to see it. She’s always been jealous of her friend; it doesn’t seem fair that Wells has been able to see colour for as long as she’s known him, when she still can’t see any. Not even one. She always assumed that the colours could only be a good thing – why would talking about it hurt him? Doesn’t he want to see in colour?
The horrible, humiliating truth washes over her then, while Abby’s grip continues to dig into her arms. Understanding sags through her, followed swiftly by gut-churning shame and humiliation.
It’s the first time in her life that Clarke feels the cold sink of regret.
She never speaks of colour to Wells again.
--
A couple of months later, when Clarke is still too young to know better, she asks her mom when she knew that Dad was her colour-match. Abby isn’t even able to meet Clarke’s eye when she replies evasively that she can only see colour some of the time. The tone of her voice makes Clarke change the subject.
When, later that same day, her father tells her that he’s never seen in colour, Clarke vows never to bring it up with either of her parents again.
The truth is, no one else wants to hear about colour. So Clarke stops mentioning it entirely.
Bellamy, Earth-date August 23rd 2138
“Story! Story!”
Octavia, at only five years old, has a minimal ability to leave well enough alone. Bellamy, himself only ten, has a similarly poor ability to deny his little sister anything.
“One more, then bed,” he allows, sparing Octavia a gentle smile.
“Quiet, both of you,” their mother hisses from her table. She looks up briefly from the medical uniform she’s mending to fix them both with a stern glare. “Someone might be passing outside. Keep your voices down.”
Octavia gets that sad, confused look on her face that Bellamy is coming to recognize. “Why do the outside people hate noise so much?” she asks for what feels like the hundredth time.
Bellamy sighs and wraps his arms protectively around her tiny frame. Sooner, rather than later, he will need to explain the truth to her. She’s illegal, he would have to explain, pausing to define each word to her as he goes. If anyone apart from Bellamy and Mommy ever find out about her, bad things would happen. He doesn’t know how to explain ‘bad’ to her without explaining laws and death penalty and floating and one-child policy and even pregnancy. You’re special, he would say, because you’re my sister. They’re the only people in the whole world with siblings.
Bellamy has been planning what he would need to say for months. It will need to be him, of course. His mother would never do it, or if she did, it would come out wrong. It would be about punishment and secrets and lies. It would make Octavia feel like it was her fault. As though she asked to live under the floorboards.
“Don’t worry about them, O. Which story do you want?” Bellamy lifts her easily in his arms and deposits her down on his bed.
“The party one,” she exclaims.
“The party one again? I told that one yesterday!”
“The party one!” Octavia insists, grinning at him.
“Okay, okay.” Bellamy sits down on the bed beside her. He shuffles up on the bed until his back is pressed against the headboard. Octavia scurries over to him and lays her head on his knee, clutching the stuffed rabbit he made for her in one hand and Bellamy’s pillow in the other.
“Once, a long, long time ago,” Bellamy begins, “there was a placed called Italy, on Earth. It was a beautiful place. There was art and music and animals. The sun shone all day and everyone breathed fresh air. There were flowers in all the gardens and all the children learned to ride horses. But not everything in Italy was so happy. There were two families in Italy who didn’t like each other very much. They were called the Montagues and the Capulets, and they were always fighting. There was a girl in Italy called Juliet and a boy called Romeo. Juliet was a Capulet and Romeo was a Montague, so they were supposed to hate each other –”
“But they didn’t, did they?” Octavia asks, even though she must have already memorized the whole story, from how many times she’s demanded Bellamy tell it to her.
“You’re getting ahead!” Bellamy chastises her, ruffling her hair. “Anyway, Romeo was really sad because he wanted to fall in love, but he’d never met his colour-match. His friends who had were all really happy, because they could see how beautiful the world was, but he couldn’t and so he was sad about it. So to cheer him up his friends Benvolio and Mercutio convinced him to come to a party at the Capulet house, even though he wasn’t supposed to because he’s a Montague.”
“So he snuck in?”
“Yup, he wore a mask so no one could see him, and went to the party anyway. He knew it would be dangerous, because he was a Montague, and if he got caught he’d get in big trouble, but he really wanted to go.”
“That was brave,” Octavia says.
“Or it was really stupid,” Bellamy replies. “If he’d been caught he might not have felt so brave then.”
Octavia frowns at him. “But he wasn’t caught.”
“That’s right, he wasn’t. Instead, while he was at the party, the most amazing thing happened. He started to see in colour. First just a little bit, then all at once. It was like magic. And that’s when he saw her. Juliet was looking right at him, and as they walked towards each other, they knew for sure. They were matched to each other and they fell in love right on the spot. They danced and danced and danced all night. He was a little sad when he found out that she was a Capulet, but he loved her so much that he didn’t care. When the party was over, Romeo snuck back to Juliet’s window to talk to her more. He didn’t want to leave her side, because then he wouldn’t be able to see in colour anymore. She knew he was outside because she could see in colour too. Even though their parents were enemies, they decided to get married so that they never had to be apart.”
“But it goes wrong,” Octavia supplies.
“It goes a bit wrong. Romeo got into a fight with Juliet’s cousin and got banished from Italy. Juliet was sad, because she didn’t want Romeo to leave without her. And, Juliet’s dad wanted her to marry someone else. He didn’t care whether they were colour-matched or not. And Juliet was scared to tell him that she was matched to a Montague. So to escape, Juliet pretended to kill herself. When her family thought she was dead, then Romeo could come and get her and they could run away together. At first, Romeo thought that she was really dead and didn’t know she was faking. But when he arrived at her tomb, the colour came back when he got near her, so he knew that she was still alive. So he waited until she woke up, and they ran away together, happily ever after. Once their family found out the whole story, and that they were colour-matched, they finally agreed to end all their fighting. Because if fate wanted them to be together, then their families needed to respect it.”
“That’s a good story,” Octavia says against Bellamy’s knee.
“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees.
“Juliet should have just told her dad that she loved Romeo. He might have listened.”
“Maybe,” Bellamy says. “At least they made peace eventually.”
“Bell?” Octavia’s eyes slip close and her voice slurs with sleep. “What does colour look like?”
Bellamy cards his fingers through her hair. “I don’t know,” he says. “If I ever see it, I’ll describe it to you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. I’ll describe every last one of them, until it’s like you can see them yourself.”
“Will I ever meet my colour-match?”
“Maybe,” Bellamy’s heart constricts painfully against the lie. “Maybe one day.”
“That’s enough, Bellamy.” Their mother’s voice is crisp and hard and cuts through their peaceful bubble. “Bed now.”
“Can I sleep up here with you?” Octavia asks, burrowing closer to her brother.
“Not tonight.” Not ever, he doesn’t say. “Come on, O, let’s get you tucked in.”
He gently pushes her off him and stands to lift the loose metal floorboard open for her. She eyes it warily for a moment.
“I’m not afraid,” she mutters, clutching her stuffed rabbit to her chest. She climbs down into the hole and settles against the lumpy cushions. Bellamy holds the floorboard open for a moment and smiles down at her. “Night, O.”
As it does every night, Bellamy’s heart breaks when he closes the door of her tiny prison. Maybe, one day, things could be different.
Finn, Earth-date: October 13th 2138
The stack of biscuits wobbles precariously. A handful of them have been carefully piled, one on top of the other, into a small tower. Finn Collins splays out his tiny hands on either side of the stack, stabilizing them. With nimble fingers, he swipes another from the tray of a passing Ark Station worker and adds it delicately to the top of the pile.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the guard at the end of the mess hall. The guard is supposed to be monitoring the entire canteen, but for some reason he refuses to move more than ten paces from Finn. He stands, his large arms folded across his chest, watching Finn with narrowed eyes. It’s almost like this guard suspects him! Finn is offended. Where is the trust in this world? Carefully angling his body to hide the pile of stolen treats, Finn twists to look over his shoulder and meets the guard’s eye. He flashes the guard a toothy grin, the wide gap between his front teeth, where his baby teeth have fallen out, proudly on display. The guard seems satisfied that Finn is just a kid and doesn’t need permanent babysitting. He turns his back and starts to move across the room. Finn leaps at his opportunity. He grabs the biscuits, as many as he can hold in his small hands, folds them into the bottom of his shirt and makes a beeline for the exit.
Just as he crosses the threshold of the mess, he hears a shout behind him. “Hey! Kid! Come back here!”
Finn chances a look over his shoulder and spots the guard, beefy face twisted in anger, striding back towards him. Okay, Finn hikes up the bottom of his shirt, protecting the biscuits. Time to run.
Tiny feet race down the familiar halls of the Ark. Finn skids down a tightly packed corridor and weaves through the crowd, wending his way against the current of workers coming off shift and heading to the mess hall.
The guard is still yelling behind him. Don’t these people have anything better to do? Finn ducks down a small passageway and spots an air vent at the end of it. That will work. He kicks loose a corner of the paneling and slides through it. Once inside, he flattens himself against the wall of the vent. Chest heaving in sharp staccato breaths, he waits as the stomping of the guard’s boots move past him and continue down the hall.
Finn smiles to himself. Victory is sweet.
Still high on adrenaline, Finn slumps back for a moment against the warm metal of the air vent and takes in his new surroundings. He knows these vents are everywhere on the ship. So that must mean he can get anywhere through them.
Finn keeps an eye on the blue of his sleeve as he starts to crawl through the vent. At the first fork he reaches, he goes right. It takes a little while, but the colour gradually starts to fade from his jacket, so he backtracks and turns left instead. This time the blue gets brighter. He continues this way for some time. It’s a slow process, going first one direction, and then the other, as he lets his colour-sight guide him back home. Finally, he finds his destination. He peers through the slats in the vent, into familiar living quarters that are drenched in colour. Raven is here.
He kicks open the vent and drops down onto the metal floor.
Before he’s even stood up straight, a little hand wraps around his wrist and yanks him out from the centre of the living room and into a small closet.
“What are you doing here?” Raven’s familiar voice hisses in his ear.
Finn carefully unwraps and holds out the biscuits to her in response. She lets out a stifled noise of surprise and pleasure at the sight of them. Finn notices with a lurch of dread that she’s looking more ragged than usual today: her hair is lank and unwashed, her clothes smell, and a new tear is spreading across the left shoulder of her over-large green t-shirt, exposing her thin brown shoulder. But her eyes are bright and dancing with pleasure as she accepts one of the biscuits.
“How did you get these!?” She lifts the biscuit to her nose and breathes in the smell. It doesn’t smell good, in Finn’s opinion. All the food on the Ark tastes and smells the same - like dust and chemical. But Raven’s reaction fills Finn with pride.
He preens and winks at her. “I have my ways.”
Gingerly, Raven breaks up one of the biscuits and starts to eat it.
“I knew you were coming cause I could see everything get more colourful,” she tells him around a mouthful of food.
“Yeah I know!” Finn grins toothily at her. “That’s how I found your room through the vents. I just followed the colour on my sleeve!”
“Wow! That’s so handy.”
“Yeah. Colour is the best. I don’t understand how other people do anything without it.”
“I know me too!” She leans forward, “I feel sorry for them.”
“Same!”
Finn’s laugh is cut off by an abrupt noise from the living room. A crash like the shattering of glass cuts through their tiny haven. A moment later Finn can hear angry adult voices echoing from the next room. Raven shrinks at the sound.
“Is that your mom?”
“Yeah,” Raven whispers, “she has one of her friends visiting,” the way Raven says ‘friend’ sends a chill down Finn’s spine, but he doesn’t know why. “I’m supposed to stay in here.” Raven motions to the closet they are both crouching in.
“Hey, I’ll stay with you!”
Raven’s eyes brighten but her voice is small as she shrugs. “Okay. Only if you want to.”
She doesn’t say she wants him there, but Finn’s pretty sure she does. Well anyway, it’s nice and bright here, so he’ll stay.
Together they share another one of the biscuits.
Lexa, Earth-date: April 17th 2145
The first colour that Lexa kom Tri Kru ever sees is the red of her own blood. It gushes from a gash on her arm, staining her skin a dark maroon.
A cry of pain rips from Lexa’s lungs, but dies when she catches sight of the blood. She blinks at her arm for a moment, startled by this change in her world. She pays for her distraction. The enemy she was fighting breaks free of Lexa’s attack, landing a sharp blow to her abdomen in the process. Lexa doubles over as the wind is knocked from her.
Her keryon-ai might be somewhere in the battle, but there’s no time for such thoughts. Lexa stumbles back a pace, her boots scrambling for purchase on the mud of the battlefield. She snaps back to the fight at hand and lashes forward, cutting through her enemy’s defence with hard, brutal strokes. She cuts down the Azgeda warrior without sparing a thought to whether they’re her keryon-ai. Still, she can’t help the rush of relief as the Ice Nation warrior collapses, dead, but Lexa’s soul-sight remains.
“Leksa!” Anya’s shout cuts across the battlefield. Lexa looks up and finds her mentor rushing past to take on a pair of oncoming Ice Warriors. Anya lost her horse early in the battle, but is now gamely meeting her enemy on foot. Her braid whips in a high arc as she dives around the blade of an attacker. “Keep your head firmly on your shoulders, sha?” Anya shouts at Lexa, even as she parries and re-engages with the Ice Nation warrior she’s fighting.
Only Anya could manage to tell her off even in the midst of battle. Lexa ignores her. Everything, even Anya, looks so new – so entirely other. Her mentor and the sky above them and the mud beneath their feet and the trees and mountains and life all around them; every particle of the world has altered. The very battle blooms before her in more detail than she could have ever imagined. Lexa barely has the words to understand what’s happened to the world.
Her people call it keryon-ai – her soul-sight. But it’s more than that. It was like living all of her life in a shadow, and finally stepping out to feel the sun on her face. The colours had been there the whole time, she knows, but the reality is staggering. Like carrying a burden for miles and finally setting it down. Like falling into a dream, where the rules that bind them all to the earth no longer apply.
Lexa gazes across the field, her eyes roaming up to the brilliant sky, and down to the blood-soaked earth. As she looks across the field, her eyes lock on the most beautiful warrior she has ever seen. Their gazes meet and Lexa knows they’re matched; she has never been so sure of anything in her life. She recognizes her own astonished joy reflected in this woman. Her keryon-ai. Cautious, feeling suddenly like a child, Lexa steps forward, towards the warrior. With each step the colours of the earth sharpen. Lexa does not care that this woman bears the markings of the Ice Nation. She does not care that only a minute ago Lexa would have killed her where she stood. All that matters is the brilliant flush in her cheeks and warm colour in her eyes.
They’re standing before one another now, breathless and armed, as the battle continues to rage all around them. They’re enemies, but every bone in Lexa’s exhausted body tells her to protect this woman at all costs. She understands now why a keryon-ai is strength. She has never before felt so powerful.
“Hei,” Lexa says, her voice shaking. “Ai laik Leksa kom Tri Kru.” She holds out her hand to the warrior.
The Ice Nation warrior hesitates for a moment, then reaches forward and accepts Lexa’s am, gripping it tight. “Costia,” she replies, her voice rich and deep. “My name is Costia.”
Clarke, Earth-date: January 30th 2148
“Clarke?” Jackson calls to Clarke from across the Medical Bay. “Can you come help me for a minute?”
Clarke only came to Medical so she could have some lunch with her mom, but – as usual – she quickly found herself getting drawn into the fray. The Medical Bay is busy, and Abby had been called away within minutes of sitting down to lunch.
“Sure,” Clarke calls back, striding over to where Jackson’s inspecting a new patient.
There’s a young mechanic sitting up on Jackson’s operating table. She’s built like most mechanics: lean and toned, with upper body strength that Clarke can only dream of, and a half-crazed look in her eyes. Clarke figures all mechanics have to be at least halfway crazy to want to walk around in open space.
The mechanic has a piece of bandage strip held firmly to her forehead. Blood’s pouring fast and heavy from a head wound across her temple, the dark grey blood covering the slightly lighter grey of the mechanic’s skin. But the cut is shallow and looks like it would probably heal up without stitches.
“I’m fine,” the mechanic is saying as Clarke approaches. “Just a stray piece of shrapnel – I’ll watch for the recoil next time. I’m good to go–”
“So help me, Raven, if you do not sit down, I will strap you down,” Jackson says, more forceful than Clarke is used to hearing him.
“Clarke,” Jackson says, turning to her, “can you go pick up a new batch of bandages from the ration station? We’re nearly out here.”
“Okay,” Clarke says, turning from the Medical Bay and leaving the disgruntled mechanic behind.
Clarke has long-since stopped looking around every corner for her colour-match. Maybe one day she would find them, maybe not. Her dad never has, and he’s happy. And, Clarke thinks with a shudder, it’s certainly better than finding and losing them. Clarke never knew Wells’ mom – she died giving birth to Wells – but Thelonious always talked about the colour of her eyes. Clarke thinks it might be one of the last things he still remembers in colour.
For her part, Clarke’s convinced that colour-matches are overrated.
So, naturally, that’s when she sees her first flash of colour.
One of the designated hours for lunch is just finishing when Clarke arrives. The mess hall is swarming with people: the warm press of bodies on all sides, the shuffling of feet on the metal floor, the buzz of conversation. A wave of people are returning to their stations, catching Clarke like a fish swimming against the current. Clarke has to elbow her way through the tide of people moving in the opposite direction. She’s weaving through the crowd when it happens.
For a moment Clarke thinks she’s hallucinating. The sleeve of her shirt looks different. Pink, she realizes with a jolt. Her mother had told her the shirt was pink. As Clarke watches, half in horror and half in joy, the shade bursts to life: bright, vivid pink!
Clarke looks up, her eyes casting wildly around the room. The whole world has been lit on fire. Colours surge to life all around her, so sharp they knock the air from her lungs. No sooner have her eyes adjusted to the onslaught, than they start fading again. Clarke looks around frantically at the people passing by. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing? All she can see are the backs of retreating heads. Of all the colourful heads of hair, none turn. No one looks back at her, and in the space of a minute the whole ecstatic miracle is over. Her vision fades back to the familiar black and white, suddenly so much less than it ever seemed before. Whoever had been causing it must have continued down the corridor and out of sight. Clarke stands stock still for a moment, letting this sink in. They must not have seen what she did.
Her match must not be reciprocated.
Clarke returns to the Med Bay with the new ration of bandages and a sober attitude. She banishes the memory of that afternoon and vows never to tell anyone what she saw. Maybe, if no one knows what happened, she could pretend the whole stupid colour-match thing doesn’t exist at all.
Bellamy, Earth-date: January 30th 2148
A young man with slicked-back black hair and expressionless features is shuffling from his lunch break back to his janitorial duties in Factory Station. His eyes never lift from his own black boots as they tread across the grey metal of the station floor. He does not see the clothes of his fellow commuters as they shift into colour, he does not see his own skin brown in front of his eyes, and he does not see a desperate blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl scan the crowd behind him. All he sees is black on grey as he marches on.
Bellamy Blake has not given a single thought to colour-matches for well over a year. Without anyone to describe them to, he fails to see the point. He has no desire to see the world in any greater detail.