Emily is the most stunning sort of colour that Connor's ever seen in his life.

She is opal, the colour that is no colour and every colour at the same time. Trying to watch her colours for too long makes him a little dizzy, actually. Opal is almost every colour that there is, hues changing and rippling depending on how the light falls upon it, except that her light is her own emotions. She's always shimmering and glittering, but like every feeling she has is right there against her skin, just below the surface, yet somehow she can still hide behind a mask. But then again, Connor doesn't need to be able to read her expressions to know what she's feeling.

Opal is a pale, creamy off-white pearl colour, but when the angle changes, then sparks of brilliant colour will appear within its surfaces. People think that he's shy or something because he can hardly look at her for more than a few moments at a time; the reality is, he's trying to spare himself a headache. Emily is dazzling. Nobody can ever best Abby's emerald, but damned if Emily's opal isn't a fair second.

But what he finds most interesting about that opal is what it does to a certain Roman silver. When Emily approaches Matt, opal shimmering brightly, his own colours shiver despite themselves, and a deep magenta blush wells up from those deeply-hidden depths, tentatively interacting with hers and throwing off sparks of pale green and honey gold in mutual attraction. She is strong, independent, nobody's housewife or arm candy, he sees it in those flashes of lapis lazuli and oaken brown, but that only makes the magenta blush darken in Matt's colours. Connor likes her very much and hopes that she stays around, because if anyone could coax a smile out of the Roman silver man, it would be the woman carved out of opal.

When Ethan's oily darkness tries to steal her away from them, it is Matt that burns with so much scarlet Connor can barely see any of the silver underneath. When Emily leaves them, Connor aches to see the opalescent brilliance go, but it is Matt that grows morose and midnight blue in her absence. When she returns again, this time to stay, they all rejoice, but again, it is Matt's colours that burn brighter in her presence, and her opal blushes the same lovely fuchsia when she's around him, their colours intertwining to form a lovely garnet of mutual love identical to the garnet that he and Abby now share.

The man from the future, the woman from the past.

Connor loves this life.

A/N: now, going back, look at the first letter of every chapter, excluding "A Year Without Colour."