Hues of a Colorless Rainbow [Rose ~ Calmasis] Ch.1

Rose Lalonde sat silently on one of the smooth plastic benches that sat by the entrance of the train station. Every few seconds, she would re-position herself on the uncomfortably hard seat, until her mother laid a firm hand on her shoulder, signaling that she stop.

Instead, Rose busied herself with her hands, twirling her thumbs around each other in her interlocked fists. Around and around they went, as though they were performing some mindlessly repetitive dance. She quickly grew bored of this, pulling her hands apart and crossing her legs instead, tapping one foot absentmindedly.

Roxy Lalonde looked disapprovingly at her daughter, but didn't say anything. Though Rose's sheer amount of excited energy unsettled Roxy, she was glad to see her daughter so happy. The poor girl had become so reserved lately, locking herself in her room for great lengths of time, standing a chair against her door so that it couldn't be opened.

Rose had been reading a lot more lately as well, which wasn't a bad thing, but her reading material wasn't exactly...normal...for someone her age. Not just this, but she had taken to reading the disturbing texts obsessively, as if silently worshiping its contents.

Roxy sighed to herself. Rose had once been such a happy girl, always smiling. Ever since her brother had left though, the poor child had assumed a much gloomier personality.

Currently, Rose sat still, her fists clenched firmly in her lap, desperately trying not to look up at the clock that hung on the wall a few feet from where she and her mother were sitting. Resolving to give in to a quick glance, she noted that it would still be another ten minutes or so until his train arrived. But she'd been waiting nearly a lifetime already, she could stand to wait a few minutes longer.

Rose stared straight, determined not to look at the clock again. She knew from experience how dangerous clock-watching could be.

In an attempt to take her mind off the reprehensible contraption, she tried to focus on the odd architecture of the building, inspecting its layout and design in almost a critical manner.

The building was tall and spacious, with metal beams laid across the ceiling high above. It was built so that if seen from an aerial view, it would look almost like a capital letter L. Currently, Rose sat where the bottom, shorter bit of the letter was located. There were windows everywhere, letting light in from above, the bright rays pooling in the center of the station. Four lines of tracks, electric wires strung taught above them, sat in the middle of the room.

Rose had only ever been on a train once, a few years ago for a school trip. She'd remembered going to a station like this, only this one was much larger. She smiled to herself at the memory of John refusing to board the tracks out of an irrational fear of being eaten by the train, having been made to believe this by Dave. Rose had finally persuaded her terrified friend by posing the question of how his dad had gotten to work everyday if the train truly did consume its passengers.

Reluctantly, John agreed to get on, and by the time they'd arrived at the next stop, he was grinning uncontrollably. One point for logical thinking and reasoning, zero for...whatever Dave thought he was doing by giving John an irrational fear of trains.

Rose dragged her gaze towards the far side of the tracks, its entrance much busier than the one next to her. She watched people walk in and out of the arched gate, busy people that moved swiftly, as though they were in some sort of hurry to get somewhere very important, and didn't have time for all of this nonsense.

There were families as well, young children clinging needily to their parents' hands as they were dragged through the station. Bright-eyed and naive, everything seemed new to them, and they would stop and point towards different commodities of the structure excitedly. Their parents would quickly quiet them, dragging them along towards one terminal or another.

Few people left the station; it was still too early for many trains to have arrived yet. Save the few that had been traveling diligently all night, breaking through the darkness with their sleek metal bodies, their headlights piercing beams of light into the thick cover of darkness.

Rose was finding it more and more difficult to keep herself occupied.

Unable to resist the nagging urge any longer, her eyes quickly darted in the direction of the clock. She refused to give the infuriating contraption complete submission by turning her head to face it.

She wasn't completely positive from the quick look she'd gotten, but only about five minutes had gone by. Rose groaned inwardly. This was taking forever.

She turned her gaze towards her mother without swiveling her neck, debating on whether to ask or not...

"Can I--?" She said, her eyes flicking back towards the opposite side of the station.

"Yes." Roxy said almost immediately, answering Rose's unspoken question with practiced ease.

Dammit. She'd known what Rose was going to say. She'd won this round. But her slight taste of the sweet juices of victory would be short-lived at best. Rose would not be outdone. She was simply, the best.

Standing up, she brushed her pitch black dress off, eliminating any particles of dirt or dust that had clung to her. She turned, giving her mother the biggest, sappiest looking smile of gratitude seen by the eyes of man, before walking quickly in the direction of the terminal where her brother was supposed to arrive.

As soon as Rose had turned the corner of the building, rendering her free of the sight of her mother, she broke into a run, a grin tearing across her face. An expression rarely harbored by the young teen, causing the muscles in her cheeks to feel weird and oddly strained. But that didn't matter, because finally after all these years, all those lonely years, she was going to see her dear brother again!

Rose couldn't even remember the last time she'd been this openly excited.

Her memories of before her brother left were happy ones. She wasn't like she was now, which is to say that she wasn't as careful about her show of emotion, and didn't traipse around in such dark clothes and makeup.

She'd always been so happy when he was around. He would always play whatever game she wanted to without interjection (even when that game was dress-up, a passion for Rose when she was younger. She supposed it mirrored her interest in fashion that she held today), genuinely being interested in whatever Rose wanted to do.

That was one thing she loved so much about her brother; that he had always been so interested in her, even when nobody else seemed to be.

A disturbing image of him and her, huddled in the corner of their shared room listening to the angry screams of their parents rose to mind, causing Rose to visibly shudder. She quickly pushed the unpleasant thought towards the back of her mind, determined to remain positive for when her brother arrived.

Rose, finally spotting terminal four, practically sprinted to the small cluster of poles and benches, earning her more than a few critical stares, but she didn't care. This was it, the one that her brother had outlined as his arrival point in his most recent letter.

It was a fun hobby of Rose's, exchanging letters with him. It was one of the only things that she looked forward to after leaving the world of school and friends in exchange for her boring home life. Sometimes, months or even a full year would go by before she'd receive a reply, and Rose would have to rack her brain to remember what she'd written in the first place. This in it of itself posed a much welcomed mental challenge, and Rose had thoroughly enjoyed her friendly banter with the male.

There weren't many others like her, intellectually speaking, and sometimes she'd feel more than a little lonely. But her brother was a perfect mental fit, his intellect almost matching her own. She greatly enjoyed having educated and complicated conversations with him, without having the receiving end looking utterly lost. Or, however that would be translated in letter form.

Though why he'd chosen to take the train, she had no clue. It would have been far more practical to travel by airplane rather than take a boat and train. A lot faster too.

But Rose didn't let this bother her. He had spent three years in Britain (not to mention all that time he'd spent on the west coast), and perhaps he had suffered this laps in judgment upon his desire to return home after so long.

There was a slight sound in the distance, of something very big moving very fast. The sound gradually increased in volume, until Rose could physically feel the floor vibrate. She looked over to see the sleek metal train slide into the station, its doors stopping inches from Rose's face.

In her eagerness, she hadn't realized how close she'd ventured to the edge of the terminal, and automatically took a few tentative steps back.

The automatic metal doors slid open, stopping with a click. Almost immediately, people began pouring out of the train and into the station. She jumped back in surprise at the sheer mass of passengers that had suddenly flooded towards her. Rose had to move around them, trying not to get hit by people too weary from traveling all night to pay attention properly.

She stood on her toes, looking over the heads of people in search of her brother. As more and more passengers exited the train, the crowd around Rose began to thin out, giving her a clearer view of the terminal around her. Yet she still hadn't caught sight of her brother.

She knew she hadn't missed him. The boy was a bit of an oddity among people, and not just in the complexity of his speech.

From what she remembered from her childhood, he had bright white hair, whiter even than Rose's pale blonde locks. It was due to a discoloration in his body's pigment. This same condition also caused his skin to appear an almost sickly shade of grey.

So far, no one had come even close to this description. Rose hadn't even seen anyone around his age pass by; just tired adults, their eyes blank and backs arched from the weight of fatigue.

She wasn't necessarily worried that her brother wouldn't be on the train. If he was anything like her, he'd be the last one to get off, not wanting to fight with the immense crowd of people. But Rose's heart dropped when the last person, an old man carrying a rather large brief case, climbed off the train, the doors sliding shut behind him.

Disappointment, and even a small sense of betrayal filled her.

Wondering if she had perhaps gotten wrong information somehow, Rose turned and began walking back towards the entrance, dragging her feet in disappointment at her brother's failure to arrive. Sullenly, she trudged through the crowds of passengers that had just gotten off, not feeling motivated enough to move against the mass of people.

The crowd was quiet, save a few talking in hushed tones, and one man who seemed to be getting very upset about something someone had said over the phone.

Suddenly, another sound broke through the silence, one causing a sharp pain to begin to form at the back of Rose's skull. Towards the front of the crowd, a bright, happy voice had begun babbling about something. No, due to the high frequency of the tone, chirping would be a better word to describe the incredibly obnoxious sound.

Rose instinctively pressed her two index fingers to her temples, wondering who's kid that could be up there, and desperately wishing that their parents would shut him up. She wasn't in the mood.

But to her dismay, the child didn't stop talking. The initial pain in Rose's head began to form into a full on headache.

She couldn't make out what he was saying, the boy was too far away for his words to come to anything but an incomprehensible slur. This, consequently, did not lower the level of annoyance in his voice, and if anything increased it.

Just when Rose was about to go up there and shut the kid up herself, she froze. Something about what he'd just said sounded oddly mundane. Some word, though she couldn't make out what or how she knew he'd said it, had sounded somehow...familiar. She slowly lowered her hands, letting them fall to her sides as she pricked her ears in an attempt to pick up on the familiarity.

Curiosity taking the place of the throbbing in her head, Rose pushed past a few grumbling people, trying to make out what the boy was saying. She was closer now, close enough to form the babble into comprehensible words, but she still couldn't see their owner. She was close enough so that she could hear his words, but just barely.

She got the impression that he was talking to a bunch of different people, but he communed with them as if they had been best friends their entire life.

"...if you do," Rose heard him say. The phrase made no sense to her, a strange sensation that she did not very much enjoy. She wormed her way through the crowd, desperately trying to make sense of the boy's objectives.

"Hi, can you tell me if you've seen--"

The rest of his sentence was cut off as Rose was jostled backwards, and out of hearing range.

What had the boy said? It sounded almost as if he were...looking for someone.

A tangled sense of dread and anxiety formed a knot at the base of Rose's chest.

Could he be...?

No.

Absolutely not.

This couldn't possibly be her brother, the intelligent, cool guy who had been sending her all those letters.

Could it?

No, this boy was far to unpractical, and way too...happy.

But something at the back of her mind told her that she was not wrong about her suspicions. She pushed the nagging fear aside, scrambling forward in a desperate attempt to confirm the untruthfulness of her hypothesis.

Finally, almost there. She could hear his voice now, clearer than before. He sounded young, but only about her age instead of the child she had initially thought he was. Closer, closer...

She could almost see him, almost hear each annunciation of each syllable.

Then she heard it. One word.

Rose stopped, her blood running cold. People had to push around her to get by, but she didn't care.

No.

Not possible.

Inconceivable.

The sense of dread that had slowly been growing in her chest rose to the back of her throat, and she tasted bile in her mouth as she saw a single figure pop out of the mass of people. He had a shock of white hair that looked desperately unkempt, and it kept falling in his eyes. He wore a bright green tailcoat paired with a faded red bow tie.

And his skin was completely grey.

He stood at the edge of the crowd, slowly growing smaller as they turned the corner of the station. A confused expression occupied his features.

<i.Please don't see me. Please don't see me. Please don't see me. Please please please don't let him see me.</i> She thought frantically, praying that this energetic boy wasn't her brother. But even she couldn't deny it any longer.

His eyes, faded white so that he almost looked blind, met her clear purple ones. His face lit up, any splinter of hope Rose had retained smashing to bits.

He ran towards her, waving his hand high in the air excitedly.

Rose couldn't move, couldn't breath. She couldn't force her legs to propel her away from the whole situation, no matter how bad she wanted them to. Her feet, cloaked in a pair of worn grey sneakers, refused to budge from their position on the smooth tile floor.

It was far too late now anyway. She couldn't get far now without him catching up to her.

He ran up, slowing his pace to a stop. His breaths came in ragged spurts from sprinting. This, of course, did not suppress the gigantic smile that was now stretched across his face.

"Rose! It's really you! I didn't recognize you at first, but now I'm sure of it! You are Rose, aren't you?" He said breathlessly, his tone filled with so much enthusiasm that Rose wanted to puke.

All she could do was nod, mechanically tipping her head down slightly. She looked into his eyes, which were practically bursting with positive energy. Rose unclenched her jaw, realizing that her whole body had stiffened when he'd run towards her.

Giving a half-hearted smile, Rose said simply "Hello. It's been a long time Calmasis."