Chapter Text
Love.
Yor always thought it had to be pink.
Maybe it was because of those afternoons her parents sat at the porch watching the sun die behind the mountains and Mom would plant a kiss on her forehead: “I love you”, Yor would answer “I love you more”.
And she did. She loved them for more time than the War allowed them to love her.
Then there was Yuri with the same red eyes as hers, but with a white light hers had stopped shining when she'd been told — at that same porch even, touching her empty forehead — they were dead. And now Miss Anya's hair. So pink, love, it had to be pink.
They could give her all the love they had and still it wouldn't amount to how much she loved them: her little brother, the reason she started spilling red against white walls, and her daughter, (look, mom, dad, I did it) the reason she continued.
When she looked at flowers, she found love, no matter what colour they were; but she wasn't a flower, she was a thorn.
Maybe the true reason why they could never love the same was because she simply wasn't loveable, maybe she'd lost that ability when her first client lost his life. It wasn’t a quick death, she missed the right spot by more than three inches, so instead of immediately collapsing limbless on the floor, he was choking in his own blood, one hand on his neck, another towards her begging for mercy, she just kept staring, her erratic breathing matching his. Then he died, all red.
Oh, but why was she thinking about this now? All it did was make her want to drink more, and Loid was already looking at her with those concerned blue eyes.
And the wine was purple.
And love…
Ugh. This was all Camilla's fault.
Everything was fine, she was getting ready for Loid to pick her up at the City Hall so they could have a date, then her coworker had to say:
“Won't you put up a redder lipstick?”
“Uh-uh, what for?”
“To give your husband's lip some colour, of course.”
Kisses. Kisses were red, she knew. Just like those couples talking loudly in the bar — roses in hand, magenta dress and tie, purple marks across the necks… — were red.
People had told her time and time again she should find herself some red too.
And well, she did find Loid.
But that probably wasn't what they had meant at all.
But what had they meant anyway? This was all so confusing. A dance she wasn’t invited. Yor Thorn Blood was an alien, she didn’t belong… she didn’t….
“Yor!” his warm hand caught her “Please, be more careful”
Two faces.
Two eyes.
It felt like one soul, though. One soul and a bit more.
At some point, somehow (reality was just slipping her by) they got out to the snowy pavement, foam on concrete, the sky full of fairies and it made her want to fly with them, dance
“Yor, maybe slow down a bit, you might fall”
“But itsh too beauwiful"
His giggle (!!!) jingled through the cold night
And those blue eyes — so full of… could it be? Oh, could it be, really? —watching her.
“Yeah, beautiful”
They danced to the house after that, the stairs throwing them up to the door, even the cardboards were jumping.
“Evewytheen ish spinnin”
He guided her to the bathroom
“You should take a shower, Yor”
“If Roid finks so”
So she got into the bathroom.
Another version of her trapped inside the blurred glass welcomed her in, she could see the red of her eyes shining pink, in the middle of all this, the cold air.
She began to take off her dress when the world became all dark, she couldn't move her arms around and there was a weird softness against her nose, somehow she ended up falling and rolling in the darkness.
There was knock on the door
“Is everything alright?”
She tried to say yes and tell him not to worry but what came out instead was just a bunch of muffled mumbling
“Yor?” more mumbling “I'm coming in, okay?”
He opened the door
“Uh? How did you even…”
And so the darkness was lifted. It had been her dress the whole time, now the traitor was in Loid's hands.
He was looking away to the wall, away from her nudity. But there was no blush in his face.
“I’m fall if yew leabe me alone”
And so he looked at her. And so she looked at him.
Then helped her get into the bath. Cold porcelain in her toes. Both of her arms around his neck.
“I don’ wanna, itsh freezing.”
“It's not freezing, see?”
“So why ain't yew here wif me?”
And just like that, they were both in the bathtub, like two children.
Loid was slowly untangled her hair, always checking if it was hurting (as if he could ever hurt her), when he put on the shampoo, a hand went to her forehead to make sure the liquid wouldn't fall into her eyes, something she had never worried about before, in fact, she often ends up letting it slip into her orbs, then blinks red and quickly, because she's felt worse pains; he knows she felt worse pains, but he still cared, he didn't need to care, but he did.
And this could be called that, could it not?
“Lemme wash yeuws too”
“You don't need to”
“I wan’ to, i weally wan’ to.”
With a stubborn sigh he let her care his hair, and as she circled all those bubbles her mind float far away… far away back home.
Love.
love was her salvation
in the end of the day when she couldn't count how many lives she'd took, her only redemption was imagining miss anya grow up in a less dirty country, it was remembering how far this allowed yuri to go, it was to believe she could've saved them.
Love was also the only good thing she had to give as a mom who couldn't make her daughter an edible cake, a sister who couldn't hug her brother without hurting him, a wife who wasn't proper nor decent, love was all she had to offer.
She hoped he could see her love in the way she brushed his hair, how she tilted his head so the water wouldn't bother him, how she didn't comment about the little scars on his scalp.
It wasn't even like she needed him to love her back, she was quite content loving him alone, as long as she was allowed to keep doing it, as long as he was still there, and if she could be a bit greedy, if he was still there forever.
It probably wasn't even the right love to gift your husband, but it was her love, a colour that got lost between red and pink and something else, it was hers for him.
She was sure.
So she wanted him to know.
“I love you”
For a moment everything was quiet, even the colours quieted down to white, it felt as if only her and loid and those soap bubbles on his hair and on her hands existed.
But then he gave her an apologetic smile, almost pitiful one the sort you give a child when telling them they made a silly mistake.
“You're just drunk, Yor”
So he turned on the sink, drowning all the soap bubbles.