Every Shade of Autumn

The colour red suits her. Honestly, Evan thinks she'd look beautiful in any colour, but it's red that holds the power to draw his eye and holds his heart still for moments at a time and freezes the blood in his veins so solid that nothing but water is left to fall like warm stardust into his soul. He can't find an explanation; he's never been particularly fond of the colour before, but on her, it cloaks itself in something entirely new. Something small and pure and perfect, prayer candles adrift on a crushed sea of darkness. Beauty doesn't begin to cover it, words rendered meaningless by the power of her flames - with a single smile she drains them of life, steals away the heat from whatever vague sentences his mind is able to formulate with a startling ease of touch.

He closes his eyes and remembers.

He remembers autumn leaves, the day they first met. The world around him was both new and old, gentle storms of change shifting beneath the surface of six long, wasted years, but the leaves were still dying and seasons still changing around him and so she came to symbolise the fact that, whatever happens, life goes on around him. The woman with shimmering eyes and crisp red leaves caught in her hair, a beautiful smile that cut deeper than a blade ever could. That had been the moment he'd fallen in love. His heart had been so much wiser than his mind, holding the knowledge safe within its chambers as it waited for the signal to unlock itself once more and let his love fly free.

And so red became the signal. His soul embraced the autumn leaves and saw them again, woven into the soft red of her coat; his heart began to convulse, pounding against his ribs, sending forth a flood of realisation that left him saturated in emotion, bleeding the love he'd never wanted to feel from broken veins and a body shattered from the sweeping force of release. Drunk on the intoxication of every breath, every fear, a rising tide of paranoia, he made himself avoid her eyes and her smile as he became suddenly desperate to get away, hating himself, driven to insanity by the psychosis that clawed at his head and fed upon the broken pieces of crimson revelation.

Biding his time, he waited. Life carried on. Leaves died and seasons changed and every hour of every new day drew a little more pain from the dark realms of his secret love.

She blushed, cheeks flushing red from a fatal combination of cold and embarrassment, and it was so damn adorable that he found himself leaning in to kiss her before his mind had even thought to alert him to the action. Their lips touched and an electric surge set his skull alight; only then did he realise what it was he was doing he was doing, palms moulding tenderly to the contours of her face, eyes closing...and she was responding, body melting into his, her arms tightening around his waist as he gently rubbed his thumb across her burning skin. It took a while for them to pull apart, both breathless and reverent in the agonising beauty of the minutes that had just passed, but when they did the first thing he noticed was how her blush had deepened, how cute it was, making her seem innocent, almost childlike.

Then he realised that she was still pressed up against him, a ring of invisible scarlet fire holding them close together, and almost instantly his gaze was drawn back to her lips, the soft smile aching at the corners; a surge of affection overwhelmed him and he tilted her chin slightly upwards to kiss her again, any thoughts of her innocence vanquished completely with the animalistic hunger of her every movement.

Opening his eyes again, the memories pause for breath. He wants to tell her the truth. He wants to tell her everything. But he can't, he can't. The time is not yet right, his mind withdrawing, heart becoming colder still as it awaits release from its prison.

He turns a corner and sees red.

His entire body is hot and cold and numb, an unfeeling Arctic desert, his mind torn to mindlessness; he is agonised and angry and apathetic all at once, and doesn't know quite what to make of it. His heart wants to burst, lungs swelling up under the pressure of poison gas, as slowly, all too slowly, he forgets how to feel. And all the while Dylan just lies there on the floor, dressed in liquid autumn, each breath choking her a little more, an unnecessary reminder that every beat of her injured heart is bringing her closer to death.

He crouches on the floor beside her and finds he cannot speak, eternities blinding his thoughts, mocking his every charade, spitting in his face, a timeless assault. Breathe. Breathe. Say something. Even if it's just her name. Say something, dammit! "Dylan?"

Her shoulders are moving, chest rising and falling.

Her face is serene.

So calm.

So beautiful.

"Dylan, c'mon, talk to me. Answer me," he says, his voice a shattered whole that breaks altogether when it hits the final sentence, although he knows that whatever he tries, it's futile. He can't breathe, and there's nothing left to say. Even he, for all his genius intellect, doesn't have the power to wake the dead, something he's learnt through several long years of experience.

It's crushing him.

Tears sparkle in his eyes, more precious than diamonds, for sorrow is all he has left of her now. "Please...please wake up..."

Choking. Like a prayer.

And still, she remains silent. Her throat is torn open, her breathing now as shallow as the dark wounds are deep; there's no way she can survive this, and it's nothing short of a miracle she's alive to hear him say goodbye. The tears are now speckling his skin, a child's polka-dot pattern alive with the destruction of innocence, and blood corrodes hers, the birth of naiveté.

Rich. Hypnotic. Red.

The inane observation claws at his skin, tears what's left of him to shreds, a pain so tangible it laces his throat with decorative screams, slicing the air like a sword with six blades. The chains around him shrivel to ashes and he burns again, it hurts so fucking much, not red-hot but white-hot, melting his humanity to a pool of liquid bone. Now, confronted by a seething sea of red, darker than ever before, silent with a rage he cannot even begin to comprehend...now, he finally understands. Now he's ready to pull the trigger and see where the bullet lands.

"I love you," he says, the words he waited far too long to say.

That's the moment her heart stops beating.

She sighs, and suddenly, all movement is gone, her pulse faded, her soul gone, the last of the feeble light he sees crawling home to die; she's dead. A fleeting, fluid second, all it took to steal the life from her altogether, to take away everything that kept Evan himself alive. A second to leave him alone again, with blood on his clothes and lungs thick with sorrow, breathing in the chemical pain and praying for it to poison him, so he won't have to suffer the fury of this nameless demon any longer.

"Wake up, Weir. Talk to me. Talk to me, say something, say anything! Tell me you hate me if you want, I don't care, slap me, just...oh, fuck it, just show me you're okay! Please!"

He's alive.

"I need you. I love you. Please, Dylan, I...I don't think I can do this without you. Just open your eyes. Breathe. Just breathe for me,"

And she is dead.

"No...fuck, no, you can't...can't be..."

He's incomplete.

"You can't be dead!"

And she has come full circle.

"Dylan. Dylan!"

The silence is what kills him, more than anything.

"You're alive, you have to be alive!"

He is alive, but a life without Dylan is not a life he ever wants to live.

"I love you. I love you so much...I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was too late..."

He is alive, and he will do whatever it takes to change that. He will not live, not like this, every shade of autumn raining down across his soul, tearing along the lines left by scars he left behind.

"Goodbye,"

Yeah. Uh...sorry? This was written a while ago on Tumblr for DrawnToDarkness, and I recently rediscovered it and decided to rewrite it. Enjoy the angst! I have some other fics on Tumblr that I'm going to publish on here, too. But most of them aren't as bad as this, don't worry. I hope you liked it, and I'm honestly sorry for the feels. I just have a thing for killing off my favourite characters, what can I say?

- Disaster's Playfield.