Screaming Colour

Astrid saw the world in black and white. Everything was just somewhere along a greyscale parameter for her, devoid of all colour.

It took years for her family to realise; years and years of pointing out colours to her only for her to shrug and make a non-committed noise. She had no idea what they were talking about. Only her family seemed to care because, after all, Astrid had never seen the world in any other way. You can't miss what you've never had.

They didn't diagnose her with anything until she was twelve, at which point the doctors had flashed her mother knowing smiles, announcing "It's a soulmate charm."

At the time Astrid - who didn't care for romance or for any soulmate-talk, scowled. She stuck her bottom lip out, barely hiding the irritation on her face.

About one in five people were born with a soulmate charm. It could be anything; Astrid's mother had the first thing her husband said to her written across her arm from birth. She knew people from school who had timers on their wrists, counting down to the time they would meet their soulmate. They were a tricky thing, soulmates. For some people, they would know as soon as they met the other person. For others, they could know a person for years before their soulmate charm revealed itself.

There was something so sweet about that; the way a pair could look at each other after several years and say "Oh. It's you, after all," along with the realisation that they never wanted it to be anyone else.

"She'll start seeing in colour as soon as she meets her soulmate," one of the doctors said with an all too sweet smile.

Astrid's arms folded on her chest, her feet swinging and banging against the hospital bed. "Can I go now?" she said, jumping down off the bed and flipping her hair out of her face.

Astrid hadn't wanted to go to this silly hospital trip. She was happy to keep on with her little monochrome world, where everything was calm and grey and the same.

That was until she met Hiccup.

When she meets Hiccup a year later, they are both thirteen, and she's in a seriously pissed off mood.

Her bag had split on the way to school, her workbooks falling out into the mud, wrecking her homework for her first period class. Her teacher for that class had told her that it was no excuse and gave her detention, which was only made worse by the jeering of her classmates, laughing at the fact that the 'good girl' had just got a detention.

And now, there's a boy in her chair.

She slams her book down on the table. "That's my chair, new kid. Now move." Her teeth were gritted

The boy blinks up at her, gaping for a moment, frozen in place.

"Did I stutter?"

He mumbles an apology and picked up his books, shifting along to the next chair. When Astrid sits down she notices that he's watching her out of the corner of his eye, somewhat fearfully. She groans inwardly, realizing all at once how rude she had been, even for her.

"Sorry," she says, rubbing her hands across her eyes. "Bad day."

He shrugs, still kind of pale. "S'okay."

She attempts a smile, offering out her hand to shake. "I'm Astrid."

Astrid watches the way he stares at her hand, and she wonders if she had overstepped the line, if she'd gone too far to begin with and the damage had already been done.

But then he smiles, his face transforming as he takes her hand. "Hiccup. Nice to meet you."

She's fifteen when she first asks him the question that she had never asked anyone before.

They're best friends, closer than close could be. They are so alike; two sides of the same, sarcastic coin. Their nickname is double trouble, because they are partners in crime, troublemakers under their good student façade. They're taking on the world together, and everyone knows it.

They sit cross legged on Astrid's bed in the middle of the night, flicking their torches on and off in each other's faces, speaking in hushed tones and slamming cards down onto a deck – playing some sort of a game that neither of them really knew the rules for.

Astrid presses a card onto the pack.

"No, no, no," Hiccup says. "That's a red card. You can tell because of the hearts or the diamonds."

She grins. "I know, I was just testing you."

He flicks the card at her and she pouts, throwing her set at him, the two of them descending into hushed giggles. As they subside, Astrid looks up at him, her smiling fading ever so slightly.

"Hiccup, what are colours like?" she asks, after a silence.

Hiccup blinks, staring at her for a moment. "It's hard to explain," he says.

"Please try," she says. "Tell me what red is like."

He thinks for a moment and then takes her hands in his. "Red is like… it's like when your cheeks heat up, when you're too hot or embarrassed. It's like when you see someone that you like and your heart starts beating harder. Red is that feeling when you're angry – all that built up passion firing up inside you. It's the warm heat from candle flames when you pass your fingers through, the flame flickering around your skin."

His voice trails off, taking his hand away from Astrid to scratch the back of his head, his eyes cast away from her. When he looks back towards her, he expects her eyes to be sparkling as she laughs at him, but instead she's looking at him in intently, hanging on to every word.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "Not great explanations, really."

She breaks out into a smile – not a mocking one at all, but a genuinely happy one. "Tell me more," she says. "Tell me about blue."

Hiccup picks up the deck of cards from where it's been scattered across the bed, arranging it back into a neat pile, before shifting over to the other side of the bed. The two of them lie against the headboard, Astrid's head resting on Hiccup's shoulder.

"Blue…" he says, thinking. "Blue is calm. Blue is the feeling of sea air, a calm wind that mixes with a salty taste. It's that feeling when you're sad, kind of lost, kind of alone, but kind of okay at the same time? Blue is like floating away. It's like inner peace."

Astrid closes her eyes and thinks about summer afternoons, napping while sun streams through her open window. She thinks about the slow days, the pyjama days and the sleeping-until-three days. She thinks about Hiccup and his calm, comforting voice. She thinks yes, now she understands what blue really is.

And then she falls asleep on Hiccup's shoulder, who smiles down at her as he himself loses consciousness.

She's seventeen, and she can't get enough of Hiccup's explanations.

His way of describing colour made her world feel more real than it had ever been before. She was starting to see the world the way she imagined everybody else did, bursting with life and beauty.

It was also more frustrating. Hiccup's description had only made her so eager for something her twelve year old self had scoffed at – her soulmate.

She sits with Hiccup, fiddling with her fingers and staring into her lap. Hiccup watches her for a few minutes, concerned.

"What's up?" he says, after a while.

"I just want to meet him. Or her," she says, one hand pushing her fringe out of her eyes.

Hiccup studies Astrid carefully, chewing on his lip. He knew what she was talking about. He'd seen her over the years, her attitude to her sight changing from indifference to this burning curiosity and desperation. He'd done his best to help her, coming up with the best way of describing something almost impossible to hide. A part of him worries that she'll be disappointed when she finally gets to see colour, as if it isn't everything he cracked it up to be.

He reaches out and gently pulls Astrid's hand away from her face. "Everything has its time, Astrid," he says.

She sighs. It's not enough.

She's nineteen when everything changes.

The frustration in her has grown and grown, and she constantly asks Hiccup what different colours are like.

"What's green like?" she says, sitting up and resting her chin on the back of her chair.

Hiccup smiles at her fondly. "I've already told you," he says.

"Yes I knoooow," she whines. "But I want to know more. What is it really like?"

He thinks for a moment, tapping his pen on the desk before standing up.

"Come on," he says, offering out his hand to her.

She raises an eyebrow, looking between the hand and Hiccup's face, but she takes his hand and lets him lead her outside of the house, leaving their homework behind. They walk and they walk, arriving at the forest that stretches out behind the village.

"What are we doing here?" she says, looking around the place in confusion.

"Just follow me," he says, running off into the woods.

She speeds off after him. "Where are you going?" she yells, but keeps following him as he darts through the trees. They run and they run, dodging through ferns and bushes, until they're out, out, out of the trees into an open space, looking down onto the hills below.

"Do you feel it?" he says, his smile stretching all the way across his face. "The breeze? That's green. Do you smell the flowers? That's also green. You don't need to see colour to experience it. You can feel it."

His voice is wild and for the first time Astrid finds herself looking at Hiccup differently. She watches the way the wind blows through his hair, his eyes closed and his arms stretched out and all she can think about is the fact that her heart is beating.

She understands green now, a colour so full of life and wonder. She thinks about blue, the calm mixed with sadness, the summer breeze and the sea air. She remembers what Hiccup said to her all those years ago, and she can feel it, she knows what red is, and it's the way she feels about Hiccup, and she closes her eyes, picturing all of those colours in her mind.

Then she opens them.

She takes a step back.

"Astrid, are you okay?" Hiccup says, watching her dazed expression, his hands reaching out for her wrists so she doesn't fall over.

The whole place is bursting with colour for real, she's not just picturing it in her head, and she's actually seeing it for real. She stares up at the sky, a bright piercing blue, and she can only think about how Hiccup has downplayed everything. She spends her time gaping at everything, taking in every single object in her vision.

Then she realises the implications of this.

"It's you," she stutters.

"What?"

"Hiccup, I can see colour."

His eyes pop out of his head. "You what?"

"I can see colour."

He laughs out loud, pulling her into his arms and whipping her around in a circle, while she lets out a giggle that she just can't keep in. When he settles her down, Astrid grins, wrapping her arms around Hiccup.

"It's you," she says. "You're my soulmate. I should have known."

Hiccup smiles, pushing Astrid away gently, his hands on her shoulders.

"There's something I have to show you, Astrid," he says.

He pulls up the bottom of his shirt, revealing the words that are written across this lower abdomen that read 'That's my chair, new kid. Now move.' And Astrid knows what those words are the moment she sees them, because she said those words.

Astrid gasps and steps back. "You have a soulmate charm?!" she says, and then she looks up at him, incredulously. "You knew this whole time?!"

He gives her a guilty nod, and she punches him lightly in the arm. "You jerk," she says, but she can't keep the smile from her face.

She can't help the laugh that bubbles up in her, because Hiccup is her soulmate - the person who taught her how to see colour, the guy who showed her all the beauty in the world – is her soulmate and of course he is, it just makes so much sense.

It couldn't be more perfect.

She reaches up to kiss him, smiling into it. They hold each other close, and Astrid knows that his is only the beginning. He's still got so much more of life to show her.

And she can't wait.

THE END.