Prompt: That famous 'only being able to see colors when you meet your soulmate' AU.

Notes: Same setting, but none of the events in BH6 took place.

Birthday gift for ayinvui, because her favorite color is colorful.

(*)

There was something wrong with him; he was sure of it.

They had been educated, year after year, from Grade 2 all the way to their last year of High School, that they were a new generation; a generation that would not be able to see color until they met their soul mate. It was to prevent broken families, it was reiterated. It was to prevent wars, was the answer. It was to ensure the future, and so on and so forth. The moment that you saw someone in color, his Aunt Cass told him, was the one moment in your life you would never forget.

It would start out as a tiny detail; a bright dash of color against the stark gray, black and white dulcet tones of the environment. Then you would look at the person, see them clearly for the first time, and know what color the sky was; what color apples were, what color his own hands were. He lived for that moment; craved for it, waited for it.

He remembered when his friend, Wasabi, saw color for the first time in their sophomore year in high school. It was a sunny yellow, Wasabi had told him, and it was on his soul mate's bag; a bright yellow sun. For her, it was a bright red pen that he had decided to stick into his front chest pocket. Nothing was ever the same since.

He remembered when his little brother Hiro, of all people, saw color for the first time. "Tadashi," his then-thirteen year old brother had commented. "Please tell me you see that... That bright color, over there." It turned out to be a green sticker on a fellow bot-fighter that Hiro frequented fights with. The yellow happy sticker on Hiro's own robot was the first thing she had seen, as well.

And so Tadashi Hamada kept looking for colors. How he wanted to know what trees really looked like. He didn't even know the color of his own moped. The years passed by and Tadashi watched everyone around him suddenly fall in love. He knew they snickered behind his back; for sure he was mixing up color combinations wrong, a fact he became aware of when his college friend, Honey Lemon, so patiently spent two hours labelling his clothes and teaching him which ones went together. He didn't get it right all the time, and it was this obvious bout of color blindness that proved that he was still alone. He watched as his friends, relatives, and school mates all got that same 'Oh, my God' look in their eyes, and wondered when he would ever look like that.

Being alone was a painful thing.

Even his own brother had someone.

He was so sure that he had to get used to a gray world.

(*)

Her life was in shades of black and white, but she didn't mind. She received the same information everyone else did, but for some reason, she never felt the reason to search for colors. Her research showed that movies were originally purely in black and white; for her, black and white was a state of purity. A natural state, the primary state. She didn't care if she didn't know what color the sun was. As far as she was concerned, it only meant she didn't need to care about sunglasses. Food was still food, she knew it tasted the same for everyone. The color green wouldn't make her not like vegetables anymore; apples weren't going to taste better even if she knew if they were yellow, red, or green.

She had no siblings, her parents were basically non-existent, and her attitude towards finding her soul mate did not earn her any friends in school. This only solidified her theories; she could survive in a world of gray. She could cope; alone, if she had to. She had, after all, survived nearly eighteen years of it. A life without colors was fine. It matched her personality, anyway.

But you see, the thing with lonely people is that no matter how hard they try to tell themselves that they're okay, the harder it hits them when they realize that they aren't. When everyone else has the same, lovestruck look in their eyes, pairing off, grouping up, and looking at her with pity that's poorly masked with optimism (Awww, GoGo, I'm sure you'll find the right person for you!), you start to realize that maybe there is something to the whole love thing.

On a whim, she goes to the supermarket and buys a bottle of hair dye. She doesn't care what color it is, as long as it isn't black. She just needs to prove something - whether it's to other people, or to herself - that even she, a person who hasn't seen color yet, can add a bit of color to her life. At first, she's proud. People comment on the violet strip in her hair, saying how much it suits her, and 'where is the lucky guy?'. After coolly explaining that she just felt like giving herself a change, and no, she hasn't actually seen how good it looked on her, people stopped commenting on it.

Just like the rain, which starts off as slow trickle, the desire to know what colors look like, and what love feels like suddenly grows into a monsoon, an overwhelming typhoon of feelings. Her naturally apathetic face hides the desire to look at someone and finally see something. She searches, hopes, wonders...

When is it ever going to change?

(*)

College is dull; how he would have loved to study something with heart. Instead, he's stuck with studying mechanics, robotics, physics... And avoiding things all together that have color in them. When colors can't be avoided, he's the subject of practical jokes; his wires are supposed to be labelled for his benefit, but there are those immature jerks who like switching the black and red wires, and seeing his projects (literally) blow up in flames.

It seems fitting, he'd think to himself wryly, that his college course fits him. Of course put the guy who can't see color in a field that's pure science. How could he paint? How could he take meaningful pictures? How could he be a surgeon, when he wouldn't know the difference between the appendix and the liver? Of course, he'd probably be trained to tell the difference, because as far as he could tell, the liver was way bigger than the appendix -

But that's a different story.

Today's another day, another few classes to get through. Hoping that no one will switch up his liquid mercury and rubbing alcohol this time (it was a cruel, cruel world), and that maybe, just maybe, he could get through the day without blowing things up.

He walks through the grounds San Fransokyo Institute of Technology with Wasabi and Honey Lemon at his side, as they happily chatter about the project their professor assigned to them. He goes through his usual routine of looking at the throngs of people around him, and wondering what the color of their hair was, what the color of their bags were and other mundane things, when he sees it. A quick flash, a darting burst of color so sudden, he wonders if he's dreaming. As soon as it appears, it's gone, and he wonders if he was just hallucinating.

"Are you okay?" Honey Lemon asks Tadashi. Her friend has stopped in his tracks, and by the looks of him, he looks like he's seen a ghost. "Tadashi, what's the matter? You're so pale!"

"Did you..." he splutters. "Did you see that?"

"See what, dude?" Wasabi asks, backtracking. "Someone come back from the dead?"

"Purple," he gasps out, and it takes a while for them to understand.

"Oh, Tadashiiiii!" Honey Lemon squeals loudly, and gives him a crushing hug. "You... You..." she removes her glasses to wipe away a few tears. "You can see colors!"

"I don't know, maybe was just seeing things," he tries to explain, but as he does just that, he sees his friends slowly start to color in, as if someone were drawing on them with crayons. "Honey, you're a brunette!" he blurts out, and she giggles, albeit a bit tearfully.

Her glasses are pink, her headband is yellow, her clothes are in various hues of pink and orange. All of the sudden, her bubbly personality makes sense now, and it matches her. Wasabi is neat. His mint-green cardigan is smooth, unwrinkled, his pants a deep denim blue, his shoes a shiny brown. Tadashi tears his eyes away from his friends and desperately searches his surroundings for that bright dash of purple, but he can't find her anywhere.

"Yes, I guess you thought I was blonde?" she laughs. "Oh, where is she, Tadashi? You absolutely have to find her!"

"That's the thing," Tadashi admits, suddenly feeling his heart plummet down into his stomach. "That's all I saw; purple."

(*)

She was going insane.

Because there was no way that after she had completely convinced herself that she was going to grow up and die alone, that she was seeing colors. She had nearly fainted when she saw the logo of the San Fransokyo Ninjas brightly emblazoned in orange across a baseball hat, and she had immediately turned in the opposite direction before getting to see his face. What had pushed her away? The fear that maybe her expectations would be too much? The fear that she wouldn't like him, that they weren't compatible... The list went on and on.

It's happening, it's happening, it's happening, she repeated in her head, and she couldn't help but feel so... Light, as everything came into focus. That's what yellow looked like. That's what her shoes looked like. That was the color pink. And blue! And chartreuse. Her world, which had always been black and white to her, was slowly becoming techni-color.

Who was he? What was he like? All she had gotten from him was that he was tall, and was a baseball fan. She hadn't even seen his face. It scared her. Her soul mate. The one she was destined for. All that she had so vehemently been against for the first few years of her life, and he was only a few feet away from her. She didn't even know if he had seen her.

And it suddenly struck her - somewhere, in the throngs of all these people, someone had been like her his entire life. Going through the world without seeing colors, for the longest time. She didn't know if he had the same ideals as her, but she had a feeling he didn't. It had to be lonely for him, the same it was for her.

GoGo inhaled deeply, and turned around. She was through with ignoring these feelings.

(*)

"Are you sure it was purple?" Honey asked, as she stood on her tiptoes (even though she was wearing heels) to search the area for a 'dash of purple'. "Maybe you saw something else before that."

"Yeah, maybe you saw something brownish or something, but your attention was fixated on whatever purple thing you saw speeding by," Wasabi suggested, as he stared at everyone who passed by, making them uncomfortable.

"Guys, we have classes in a few minutes," Tadashi said weakly. "I appreciate your efforts but what if... What if it was just a fluke? What if I'm the only one who can see colors? What if I'm not her soul mate?" he asked, fearing the worst.

"Well, that's a possibility," Honey Lemon said slowly. "But I'm sure that's not the case."

"Yes, I'm sure the universe isn't that cruel," Wasabi quipped, and Honey elbowed him sharply in the side.

"Seriously, though. I mean, we can't miss Callaghan's class," Tadashi interjected.

"No. We are staying here," the brunette declared. "And we aren't leaving until you find her, or him, because..." she smiled at him. "We've been waiting for this moment, Tadashi... You, of all people, deserve to know her."

"Yeah, I agree," Wasabi joined in, an easy smile on his face. "Tadashi, you need to find her, okay?"

Tadashi sighed. "Okay. Thanks, guys." Then he turned around, thinking that this was already a lost cause.

(*)

She saw him. He was facing away from her, but she was sure it was him.

The orange letters on his cap spelled it all; it was him. He was tall, handsome, of Asian descent. Her cheeks were probably a dulled pink (ahhh, how comfortably she could think about colors, now). The way he was clutching at his bag was a sign that he was nervous; obviously, he had seen something, too. She breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn't a one-way thing. His friends seemed to be happier than he was, which was surprising and yet, funny. She wondered what he would say when he saw her. She wondered what he had noticed about her. She wondered if he even knew what he was looking for.

She stifled a gasp as he turned around, and caught her eyes.

(*)

His eyes travelled from the stripe of purple in her hair, down to her toes. He couldn't help it; this was her. This was his Iris, the source of colors in his life. She was small, but he knew that she was one of those people that didn't let her height become a weakness. She looked tough, cool, and yet... Vulnerable. He found his feet moving on their own, as he slowly walked towards her.

Her.

She was perfect.

"Tadashi, where are you... Oh." He heard Honey and Wasabi whisper behind him, and he was sure he had a nervous smile on his face. It was so long. It had been too long.

GoGo looks up at him, and suddenly she feels a sense of peace within her that's overwhelmingly soothing. What was she supposed to say? Was she supposed to say 'Hi' first? Did she introduce herself? What?

He stopped right in front of her, and he scratched the back of his head sheepishly. The spots of pink on his cheek are endearing, and she can't help but let one side of her mouth quirk up in a smirk.

"Hi," he said, their eyes meeting again. He smiles, and she thinks that it's a wonderful smile.

Her mouth tries to form coherent words. "Hey."

Tadashi can't think of what else to do, so he slowly reaches out his hand as a greeting. GoGo takes it, relishing the feel of her calloused hand in his smooth one. There are no other words that can be spoken, but they're fine with that.

They have all the time in the world.

(*)

This was. Awww. Fluffy. My first completely alternate universe! The setting is the same, but obviously not the same plot. I've seen this AU being done a lot by other authors for other fandoms but I have yet to see it be done in a Tomadashi fashion. I've always wanted to write this AU, but I never found the 'right' pair to write it with, if you know what I mean. I hope I did this AU justice!

I feel for bullied Tadashi. Being color blind can be a bitch. Poor, poor baby.

For those who were wondering what Tadashi meant by 'this was his Iris', Iris is the Greek goddess of the rainbow, so yeah.

Anyways, this is a birthday present for my dearest darling friend ayinvui, so if you could all sing her happy birthday in your heads and wish her all the happiness and Rose x Ten goodness in the world, I'm sure she'd be happy. xD

Thanks for reading!

/flies into a giant mound of birthday cakes/