Title: she wears red
Author: darkstar
Email: clone347@aol.com
Spoilers: requiem
Rating: pg
Classification: angst, angst, and more angst
Disclaimer: These are Carter's brain babies. They always will be, no matter what characterization booboos he makes in season eight. Since this isn't the time for that rant, let me just get on with the "I am making no money" thing and then we'll call it even. (Oh, and if you evil Fox executives are even thinking about suing me, keep in mind that I have an allergy to lawyers. I sneeze and then I accidentally hit the Deploy Weapons button and then it gets messy fast.)

summary: Sometimes she dreams of red.

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she wears red
by darkstar
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She remembers a time when she did not hate color, when she did not know any better, and sometimes she still dreams of what it felt like to wear red. You were the skin of a rose, the eyes of a ruby, a drop of blood racing ninety-seven miles an hour through hollow veins. You were the opposite of white and innocence, but miles upon miles away from the mourning and the shame of black. You were the nemesis of grey, weak souless grey that could never make up its mind whether it was dead or alive. In red, you knew you were alive. In red, you knew you were alive. This she remembers. Her first memories of red are fuzzy watercolor images of herself at age five, a freckled tomboy fussing because she had to wear a dress to Linda's party while Bill and Charlie could wear pants any time they liked. The dress was red, a sweet blush of sun-ripened raspberries. It had ruffles around the bottom and a big bow that got in the way when she tried to play tag. She hated that dress, but she loved the color. It made her feel like a little redbird, free and able at last to see what the earth looked like from the wind's point of view. As it turned out, they did not play tag at the party. She had told them all stories of birds and wind and magic until they decided to be a flock of cardinals, flying south the the winter. Bill laughed. He told her he had shot a cardinal before, but she knew he would never be able to shoot her, if she were a bird. She would have flown too far, too fast. She would have laughed at him, and that would have been the sound of red. The far, free laughter of the wind. At age five, she wore red and learned how to fly.

At sixteen, she had long forgotten flying and tag, but not the passion of red. On her first real date, she wore red, a deep crimson shade that matched the lipstick she borrowed from Missy, even though her mother said it made her look too old. She didn't care. She wanted to to be old, to discover what a kiss felt like, why the poets said it was magic when two hands met in darkness, and a thousand other questions. She wanted to see the world on the back of a Harley, to do nothing but ride from red sunset to red sunrise with the wind blowing her hair from her face while someone wrapped strong arms around her waist. Later on she would realize that she dreamed this because she never really lost the wish to fly, merely translated it to terms more befitting a girl ready to become a woman. Of course, that did not cross her mind then. That night she only thought of red, and it swept her away just like his eyes told her she swept him away. By the time he took her home, she had knew firsthand why poets sold their soul for a kiss. That is what red tasted like, so told herself as she lay restless in bed. Sticky-sweet-cherry-lip-gloss kisses mixed with a bit of fear that Bill would find out and tell her father. Something in her changed that night. She knew she was no longer a child.

At sixteen, she wore red and started to become a woman.

Twenty-one arrived, and by this time she had given up dreams of a Harley for textbooks filled with science and logic and the unchanging Absolutes of the universe. She had been a woman long enough for the novelty to wear off, but not long enough to get used to the weight it placed on her shoulders. The world had forgotten red. All around her the earth was white and cold with winter; all around her people scurried back and forth in their blacks and grays and browns, colors that spoke of no dreams and revealed no passions. She sensed her own passion dying, numbed by cold and stress and loneliness. It was then the dress had called to her from the dusty clearance rack of a store. It was cotton, a summer dress dyed a screaming red that had no place in the winter city. She paid thirteen dollars and fifty cents for it even though the cloth was too thin for the wind, even though the girls in her dorm told her she was crazy to be wearing a summer dress in January. She needed it just to remind her that spring was coming, that it hadn't died in the snow. And so she wore the dress through the winter, smiling every time a gust of wind slipped through the cloth to pull her skin into gooseflesh. It felt alive. It was what red felt like, a cold-hot wash of electrified nerves sweeping up and down your sprine, deep into your brain.

At twenty-one, she wore red and remembered how to live.

By the time she was introduced to the basement microcosm of the X-files, and its spooky-- yet unnervingly seductive-- demigod, she had given up red in favor of brown and blue and green and every other color that guaranteed success to a woman seeking to carve her way through a man's world. She wore clothes that fit the winter, and sensible shoes which demanded respect but revealed nothing about the woman she was underneath. He found that secret out in time, though, as layer by layer she was revealed to him. Sometimes the peeling process was gentle...a shared lunch in a cheap diner, a late-night debate over conflicting theories of little grey men, a laugh in the rain. Other times, it hurt....three months without memory, cancer that turned her into a living corpse, a casket filled with sand and the ghost of her only child. One by one she watched the colors disappear from her wardrobe. Blue was forsaken because she did not feel like flying, because the sky was too high, too cold. Evil things living behind it. Green was set aside because there was no peace in her live. Brown remained, but only because it was the color of iron, strong and brittle, which was all she was now. Iron. She avoided red at all cost because it reminded her that she was no longer the rose, no longer the redbird, or the girl on the back of the Harley. She was the woman with a barren womb and barren dreams and a piece of metal in her neck from a place even Lucifer would be afraid of. For many months, even years, she did not wear red. She did not feel alive.

Until one night-- a slow, satin midnight in late May-- when red candles flickered beside their bed, and the red blood was pumping fire through their veins, and she looked down to discover she had worn red again. For him. His eyes reminded her of everything the color ever stood for. Passion. Freedom. Living. Sunrise, sunset. Beginning, ending. Love. Three weeks later, he was gone.

Now she looks in the mirror and is always a little bit shocked when she finds a stranger with her face wearing black. It he color of shame and of mourning, like she already thinks herself his widow. Maybe she does. Maybe her heart senses he is dead and her mind just won't accept it. She is always a a little sad when she sees herself wearing gray, the color of weak, souless people, but she knows it fits her because her soul is somewhere far away, and without it, all of her is weak and cold. Sometimes she wears blue, because she wants to be close to the sky, if he is behind it. She wears green to pretend she is at peace. But not red. Not the daylight, at least. Yet there are times, late at night, when she burns the candles by her bed and digs the dusty satin out of her drawer, imagining she can still smell the jasmine incense and the wine. She runs her fingers across the material, waiting for the time when she will again be the rose, and he the black earth guarding her roots. When she will again be the redbird, and he the wind under her wings.

She waits, for the time when she will wear red again. For him.