01 - GRAY

District Six is never pretty; Indigo learned that years ago. Even in the height of summer, the sky is clogged with smog and the air feels gritty on her tongue whenever she breathes in. Whenever the sun peeks through the mottled gray mass of clouds and smoke, she considers it a miracle, even if it only lasts for a couple of moments. The sun makes everything glint and sparkle, and it makes her feel warm to see everything cast in a glowing golden light. It never lasts, of course, but when she's in the factory or huddling under the bed to hide from her father, she dreams of basking in One's vineyards or Four's beaches. She imagines seeing the sun everyday, the entire sky a sheet of robin's egg blue like she's seen in the cleaner Districts during the Reapings every year. She thinks she could die happy for one day with color and light and warmth, and the idea is only reinforced every morning when she wakes up to the bleak gray heavens that always press down on Six's crowded streets.

Today there's no hope for a glimpse of the sun. The factories are all still, which would usually mean the smog would thin and the sun would sneak out for a couple of moments, but thunderclouds are gathering on the horizon. As she walks down the dark gray asphalt roads with all the other parents and children, a soft drizzle starts to come down from the fleet of rumbling slate-colored clouds. People huddle under hoods, and a few richer people pull out plasticky umbrellas. Most people, Indigo included, just keep walking towards the city square as the rain starts to fall harder. Most people aren't rich enough to afford even a new pair of socks, not to mention an umbrella, and today is not a day to stall and wait for the rain to stop. Indigo herself doesn't care at all; she has no makeup for the rain to smudge, and she hasn't bothered to change out of her gray woollen factory uniform. Her childlike Reaping dress stopped fitting her two years ago, and they don't have enough money to buy a new one. She's taken out plenty of tesserae, even if it's not as much as others, and she doesn't want to be Reaped in a too-small dress that makes her look infantile when she's almost a young woman.

Soon the cracking cement tenements fall away as the waiting city center comes into view. Peacekeepers line the area, checking IDs and sending away anyone who isn't a parent or under the age of 18. They don't have room for the entire District to squeeze in here, and they don't want the roaming gangs to try anything when the eyes of the nation are on their smoggy metropolis. Indigo has seen how they portray Six on TV. They say it's a lovely urban paradise, focusing on the rich neighborhood full of red brick townhomes and sleek black cars that's guarded by a fleet of Peacekeepers. They ignore the miles of collapsing tenements brimming with drug dens and turf wars, where children starve and every face is creased with pain. The Reaping is the only time the entire nation sees all of Six, and the Capitol will not allow the other Districts to see how desolate and bleak life here has become in the forty years since the Dark Days.

A Peacekeeper absentmindedly checks her laminated ID card when Indigo walks up to him before pushing her towards the lines for the children to enter their pens. Capitol men and women with dyed skin and glossy wigs and shimmering tattoos wait at tables roped off by metal cords, waiting to check in the children who have a chance of meeting their deaths today. They look tired and repulsed at having to prick the fingers of grimy street rats, and Indigo wonders what they had to do to get stuck with such a lowly job. A woman with burgundy hair and faded leopard tattoos on her chest pricks her too hard, but Indigo says nothing, just sucking on her throbbing pointer finger as she shuffles into the sixteen year old pen.

She doesn't even look at the girls around her, most of whom have found a friend or acquaintance to chat with nervously as they wait for the Reaping to begin. Indigo left school at age thirteen to begin working on the assembly lines, which would be illegal in most Districts. In Six, they simply don't care. There's too many kids to round up who are at home high or running around with the gangs, and they always need another pair of hands in the factories. She doesn't have any friends her age, and talking to anyone as she waits for the Reaping to begin will just make her more nervous than she already is. Her name is in there nineteen times this year; her father got fired two months ago and her meager factory wages barely cover food for the both of them, not to mention the rent for their dingy apartment. She just huddles in the mass of teenage girls with their cheap makeup streaked by the rain, waiting silently for the Reaping to begin.

Within twenty minutes, the garishly colored Gorgana Saldez strides out onto the stage, beaming with teeth dyed mint-green as a nest of animatronic snakes hisses and stirs atop her head. Her accentuated curves, probably built underneath a surgeon's knife, are hugged tightly by a grayish green snakeskin dress, and her skin is dyed gray to imitate stone. It's something out of an ancient myth that the Capitol loves about a woman turning children to stone, but Indigo doesn't care to find out why this woman is dressed like a mythical monster. She just cares that her fingers, each bearing a massive six inch snakeskin nail, will be plucking out a slip from each of the two bowls on the stage in mere minutes.

Indigo stares at the snakeskin escort as the mayor speaks and the video about the Treaty of Treason drones on, not bothering to disguise her horror and worry now that the Reaping is so close. She's not as scared as she was when she was twelve or thirteen, but her name has never been in this many times and her heart won't stop throbbing no matter what she does. When she was little, she dreamed of leaving the District even if it was in the Hunger Games to get away from the fists of her father, but now she knows better. She'd rather be bruised from his punches than gutted by a Career's blade, and she'll be able to move into her own apartment in two years anyway. Indigo balls her hands into fists and squeezes her eyes shut as Gorgana strides to the lady's bowl and digs her hand agonizingly slowly into the sea of paper slips. She fishes one out, and as she takes far too long to unfold it, Indigo swears her heart might explode out of her chest.

"Indigo Arnett!" Gorgana wails into the square, her mint-green teeth glinting obscenely. Indigo knows why she dressed like an ancient monster now, because she really is a monster. She is the end of everything, and Indigo can't help but shake as she stares at the hissing snakes coiled around Gorgana's head and realizes she's going to die. It's really all over now.

She might not have any friends, but some of the girls at least know her name and recognize her from their earlier years of school. She hears their muffled sighs of relief and sees their looks of forced pity as she doesn't move, frozen in place, her eyes focused on the gray asphalt beneath her feet. She can't move, she can't go to the Capitol, she can't die! She was so close! She was finally free! She was finally going to be free!

A small wail erupts out of her throat as the Peacekeepers push into the sixteen year old pen and grab her by the arms. She considers kicking and struggling but instead just sags against the two uniformed officers, letting them drag her onto the stage. Gorgana gives her a disgusted look as she glides over to the boy's bowl, and it's all Indigo can do to keep from screaming and collapsing in front of the entire nation.

Tears trickle down her cheeks as a twig of a boy stumbles out of the fourteen year old section sobbing uncontrollably. Gorgana makes them shake hands with a sniff, and she can see the District sighing as a whole as they both wipe the tears from their eyes hopelessly. Again, two more of their children will be butchered within the opening minutes and be shipped home in wooden caskets. Again, they will have no hope that either of their children will come home alive.

She's seen the tribute graveyard on a school field trip, seen the rows of square gray headstones made by the Capitol that mark each child they've killed. It's all she can do to keep from wailing again as she's dragged inside the Justice Building, the gray sky and drizzling rain disappearing behind. For once in her life, she wishes she could see the gray sky just one more time. She wishes she could breathe in the ashen air and feel the warm rain on her skin because she knows she is never coming back to this place again unless it is sealed in a coffin.

It's raining on her Victory Tour when she returns to Six. The crowd stands close together underneath the gray storm clouds, crammed together to fit in the city center for their first Victor in almost fifteen years. Thunder rattles the city, but still more people push and shove their way into the square, all clamoring for one look at the girl they all dismissed as dead six months prior. Indigo looks through a window in the Justice Building at her people, who are waiting impatiently for her as the rain comes down harder. Her eyes skim over her speech again, the same speech she's said a dozen times with no inflection or energy, and she tosses the paper to the ground, turning back to the window. She stares at her people in their gray wool uniforms under the gray, cloudy skies, and she realizes she doesn't miss it here. Indigo missed this place, the girl who tossed and turned in her fluffy bed in the Capitol. She wept into her pillow when no one was around and wished to feel the smog in her lungs just one more time. However, she isn't really sure who Indigo is anymore, and she certainly doesn't feel the urge to cry in relief at the sight of the decomposing gray world outside. Instead, it just makes her feel even more lost within herself, lost within the haunted maze of her mind.

Gorgana pushes open the door to the room eagerly, telling her Victor with a cheery voice that it's time to go greet her adoring fans. Indigo looks at the silky gray and silver dress that hugs her too slim frame, knowing it could feed a dozen families for a month if she sold it. She looks in the mirror bolted to the wall, looks at the face layered in waterproof makeup that won't streak in the rain. She looks at her dark hair, piled in intricate braids and knots atop her head. She looks in her eyes, gray-blue and dead, dead like her mother, dead like the five children she murdered in the arena, dead like the girl she was before Gorgana called her name in the nearby square. She doesn't say anything for a long time until she stands up and shuffles out of the room without a word. Gorgana sighs as she follows her Victor out, accustomed to Indigo's oddities and unwilling to comment on them and agitate her on such an important day.

As the mayor gives a short speech in preparation for Indigo's appearance out on the stage, Gorgana fiddles with something in her bag and hands it to Indigo. The still fledgling Victor bites her lip as she stares at the dark gray umbrella for long, silent moments.

"We wouldn't want your beautiful hair and dress to get ruined!" Gorgana insists as Indigo stares in shock at the umbrella. "You've used one before, haven't you? They must have umbrellas here, at least?!"

"Look outside," is Indigo's only answer, gesturing out the window to where thousands of her fellow Sixes have crowded together in the rain. A precious few umbrellas are visible among the damp crowd that is murmuring in anticipation for her.

"Well," Gorgana sniffs, taking the umbrella from Indigo and tapping a button so it opens. "Just another one of the luxuries being a Victor affords you, no?"

"I appreciate it," Indigo says hollowly, not meeting Gorgana's eyes as she takes the umbrella from her painted hands. Her escort sniffs again but strides away after reminding Indigo of her talking points. The mayor finishes his speech to a smattering of applause outside, and she takes a deep breath to steel herself. Then Indigo pushes through the doors of the Justice Building to meet her people, feeling utterly empty as she stands underneath the slate-gray skies of the place she once called home.

A/N: Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed this. I had this idea to write a story about the female morphling based on colors, and I just couldn't stop myself from writing it. Each chapter will be based on a different color and feature one or two scenes of Indigo's life relating to that color. This is going to be nonlinear, so all the events are not going to be in order. I have about a third of them pre-written, and I think I'll be posting them about twice a week, so keep an eye out for more coming soon! I can't wait to hear what you guys have to say and I hope you can leave a review about this story!

Until Next Time,

Tracee