#me remembering the 7000 word fic i wrote practically over a weekend: wth pls come back to me

[tracybirds]

hello hello hello, I loved Fab Five Feb so much last year and I couldn’t resist taking part again this year! This is for John’s week, to go along with the prompt “mountains” <3 Thanks @gumnut-logic for putting this all together :D

Given it took two weeks to write this lil oneshot, it has very much not been proofread but that’s life for the moment :P now let’s see if I can coax Scott out to play :D

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There were colours you couldn’t see in space. Plenty you could, more than enough to break up the inky darkness of the universe.

Blues, of course, with a planet falling away beneath his footsteps, and bursts of red, white and blue that would remind him of summer fireworks if they weren’t so static and silent and familiar. Greens and browns blurred together from four hundred kilometres away.

It was beautiful even without the vibrant colours that accompanied life. Breath-taking even. He could look out across an entire world like a character in the movies of his childhood. He could spend a lifetime wondering about the people below.

But it was true that there were colours you couldn’t see. And John was starting to forget.

***

“Red’s warm and stuff, I don’t know,” said Alan. “Like a really hot fire. You know how the wood gets at the bottom.”

But that wasn’t right, John knew. Red was cold and distant and ancient, a remnant of the early universe. Red was the hazy image of the Pillars of Creation tacked to his childhood wall, the rust filled dirt caught in the cracks of his father’s space suit, the memory of life rushing away from his brother as the blood drained from his face.

Red was unforgiving.

And it had saved him time after time. John knew that he searched for red when he was scared, when he desperately needed his little brother to come for him. He’d see red in the end, or nothing at all.

***

Blue reminded him of Gordon and his irrepressible spark of life. He laughed when John brought it up one day.

“You know me and the sea – we’re full of life!”

That wasn’t quite what he’d meant, blue with its joy and peace and fondness for home. But he wasn’t wrong either – he only had to look down to see the bustling blue planet beneath him, teeming over with the life he saw in his brother.

“But I don’t know, John, blue’s always seemed pretty cold to me. And kinda sad too.”

John didn’t have much to say to that. He knew for Gordon that blue and the ocean occupied two disparate parts of his mind.

For most people, the Planet Earth was the ground they lived on, the solid certainty of brown dirt and green grass beneath their feet. For John, the Earth was the backdrop to his life. Beautifully, wonderfully, and undeniably blue.

Gordon grinned, sweeping his blue hair back with a blue hand, the blue light in his eyes transmitted through the hologram.

Blue was home.

***

“Orange? John, just look in a mirror.”

Scott wasn’t looking at him, rifling through a stack of papers as he spoke, and misses the scowl that settles on John’s face.

“I’m serious, Scott.”

He glances up at the projection that hovers above the solid oak desk.

“What’s this all about anyway? You wanna talk colours, go bug Virgil.”

“Scott, I just…”

He huffs and shakes his head.

“Never mind then.”

He only ever sees orange out of the corner of his eye after all.

***

“Oh, wow.”

Virgil cut himself off, the golden glow settling across his face. The rescue had been as uneventful as a rescue could be, and Scott was already halfway home, leaving Virgil to haul the gear from across the Atlantic all alone. Or rather, not quite alone.

Silence fell across the cockpit.

“John, you should see this.”

“What is it?”

“The sunlight falling across the mountains. It’s beautiful.”

John looked out, beyond the sterile holograms and the space junk that littered his view, catching a glimpse of the day-night terminator below as he soared overhead.

“You’re at the Andes now?”

“Yeah.”

John could hear the light in his brother’s voice, how it transformed his speech into wondrous awe at the sight of a sunset sky. From orbit though, it was a mere smudge across the face of the planet.

“Tell me.”

And he does.

He paints him a picture of soft pink clouds and tangerine skies. The dark grey wash of the mountains on the horizon, glowing a deep blush at their crowns. The bright light reflecting from the lakes below, burning a brilliant white that left John blinking back tears against a glare he couldn’t see until it died into shadow.

There were colours you couldn’t see in space. Sights unique to the planet below. But Virgil had made colours come to life and brought John back to their home to see them for as long as he could remember. And with his brother at his side, he was hard pressed to forget.