Colors of the Wind
Colors of the Wind | het!Sehun/Jongin (girl!Jongin) | 2k | PG | A story of how comfort and belonging can come from a scrawny boy who can't remember the names of his family members and go to a girl who was infected by snake venom in utero and was born blind.
A ribbon of a brilliant color floats over my head. It flutters in an imaginary breeze as I watch it disappear over the plain landscape my mind has made up. I do not know the colors, I cannot name them, so I enjoy the presence of seeing them although I cannot tell anyone else what I have experienced. Next a wave of a soft, jazzy color washes me away and I float in the sensations of water and silk combined. I smile, and maybe even laugh, as it comes to a stop and twirls me in a circle. I jump up to try and catch a deep, melancholy streak of light. My fingers graze the bottom, but as soon as they touch it, everything shatters.
It breaks into shards and flies at me, tearing into my skin like glass. Liquid the same shade as the brilliant ribbon seeps from my skin where I am cut, and I scream. More and more glass of all different colors and shapes come at me and cut me all over, as if they are punishing me for looking at them. I scream and yell, asking for it to stop, but it doesn't.
I try to run away, but a strand of a normally happy color, now it looks threatening, wraps itself around my waist and neck, strangling me as it holds me in place. Oxygen leaves my lungs, and when I cannot take it any longer, I feel a jolting sensation and I gasp for air as my eyes fly open and all I see is pure darkness. It takes me about fifteen seconds to remember.
I was born blind.
My mom was a Zoological surgeon and she was ejaculating venom from a rattlesnake when it thrashed out at her and bit her ribcage.
She did not know she was pregnant at the time. If she did, she would have gotten her assistant to do the procedure. She did not know terror until the doctor told her that I was most likely going to have birth defects, and then I was brought into the seemingly colorful and vibrant world without ever seeing my mother's face.
I must have been screaming this whole time, because my throat feels like I swallowed nails and I can hear my door opening and light footsteps rushing in. My blankets have wrapped themselves around me, and I feverishly grope for the person I know is there as sweat rolls down my back and glues my hair to my temples. I feel calloused hands grab mine and then my covers are loosened before I'm brought into a familiar embrace.
“It's all right, Jongina. I'm here,” Sehun says. I knew it was him all along, but sometimes I let him tell me because, for some odd reason, it makes him feel better. My arms wrap tighter around him as I calm down my breathing and fully come back into reality.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I live in a school for specially challenged children from ages six to eighteen. I've been here for about two years, having been brought here, with much force from my mother, when I was almost fifteen. She thought it was time for me to get “special treatment” when she found me in her art box squirting paint all over and screaming at the colors. I wasn't doing it on purpose, in fact, I was asleep. I don't remember anything of the instance, but everyone keeps telling me it happened so I have to act like I do.
It's not like it's miserable here, but I'd prefer to be in my own home, in a room in a house that just my mom and I live in; not in a dorm house where all of the students and faculty sleep. Sometimes it has its perks, though, because Sehun definitely would not be allowed to climb into my bed after I have nightmares and lull me back to sleep if my mom was in charge.
That's what he's doing now, and I scoot backwards until my back is against the wall and let him fill the space I have made. The psychologist I was forced to see says I have severe nightmare disorder. I don't think it took a professional to say that, but everyone “just wanted to be sure.” There's nothing to cure this disorder, so I do my best to make sure I'm calm before I go to sleep and everything's neat, but that does almost nothing. So I just let Sehun hold me and make him believe he's doing something to ease the terror.
I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heart beat in it's steady rhythm. It's calming, that he is stable, I guess. He's always comforting and helpful to me, always bringing me places and telling me what everything looks like when we enter a new scene. I don't know how he handles himself half of the time.
Sehun has some sort of funky amnesia. He got in a car accident when he was twelve and lost all of his family who was in the car: his little sister, his parents, and his aunt. He doesn't remember any of it, of course, because he lost all of his memory. He had to relearn his name and the date, and everything about him. Of course most amnesia aren't totally permanent, and his is no exception. Sometimes he'll remember flashes of the accident and violently convulse a couple of times in his seat. Then he clears his throat, wipes his eyes, and continues with his day. It's truly amazing.
He rubs circles on my damp back and whispers into my hair. He never asks what I dream about that scares me so much, and I like that. He wouldn't understand why it's so scary; colors rejecting him would just not make sense, confuse him. To me it's the whole sensation of being blind and not being able to truly see anyone, no matter how many times I run my hands over their features, trying to memorize them to give me a mental image. I don't know what I look like, and that sometimes hits me the worst.
I'm always told I'm beautiful, but why tell me that? It makes no difference to me what they think I look like, because I want to have my own opinion. It's difficult, looking in the mirror and seeing the same thing you see everywhere else: nothing.
I sigh onto his shirt and close my eyes. They're sore from crying and from exhaustion. “Sehun?” I whisper, my voice raw and my throat on fire.
“Hm?” he hums, and I can tell he's almost asleep.
We became friends the day I first came here. My mom and the principal told me to walk around the school and get accustomed to the school and it's hallways, so I did, reluctantly. I was using my wretched cane to feel around the halls and cursing my mother for leaving me alone when someone tripped over my cane and made me lose my balance too. I fell on top of him and we both started saying sorry at the same time. It was really embarrassing for me because I hated that cane, and for him I guess because he tripped over a blind girl's cane.
He then proceeded to give me a useless tour because he carried my cane and held my arm and I wasn't able to count our footsteps or anything. The gesture was as sweet as it was annoying, and then I got set up in a bedroom across the hall from his and our friendship blossomed. He showed me his favorite tree out in the courtyard and helped me feel comfortable in the small institute.
I didn't learn what happened to him from him; another deaf boy, Lu Han, told me. He drew characters on my hand to talk to me. I didn't ask him to, he just did it. I've never told Sehun that I know, I think he just figured out that I figured out. We just acknowledge that our disabilities are there, and then we try our best to forget about them. Of course the forgetting about it step is a lot easier for Sehun than it is for me.
My mom comes to visit me at holidays because she got a new boyfriend and a promotion at work and is overall having a great life. She doesn't have a lot of time for her vision impaired daughter, and I understand. It must not be easy for her to look at my unfocused, unseeing eyes and know it's her fault, so it's okay that she doesn't like to spend lots of time with me. She does call, and I guess that's good enough.
Sehun takes away the loneliness though. He is always there when I need him, and when we sit in the grass or lie in our beds, it's almost like I can see again.
“Thank you,” I say and wrap my arms around his skinny torso. No matter how much food I put onto his plate, he doesn't seem to gain any weight, and I'm stuck growing curves and full breasts while he remains a twig. He squeezes me tiredly and kisses my forehead.
“For what?”
I smile into his t-shirt. It would be useless to flick his forehead or tell him that he knows what, or list what he's done for me because he knows. He just lists it under friend stuff and doesn't think he needs to be thanked for anything he does for me. I shake my head and pull the covers up to my shoulders and take a deep breath.
My mom took me to Paris once. We went on a sight-seeing bus and tour and I don't think she noticed how much I was not having fun. How could she bring me so close to the famous Eiffel Tower, so that I could experience it in person, knowing that I couldn't see it and it would probably make me even more sad? But then again, she's never really paid much attention to my feelings so it's not her fault.
Sehun keeps telling me it's okay to be mad at my mom, and sometimes I get frustrated at him because he doesn't remember what it was like to have a mom so he can't say anything on the subject. Because no matter how much I'm mad at her, I can't ever hate her or blame her because I am who I am and it has nothing to do with her. I usually just shut him up when he starts talking about family because it's painful for both of us.
I curl up against him as he starts to snore quietly. I nuzzle my nose into his shirt and sigh in contentment. I open my eyes and look upward toward his face even though there's no point in doing so. Sometimes I just like to go through the motions of seeing, because the ten year old me still inside still wonders if maybe I pretend enough I'll be able to see something someday.
I still only see darkness, a void of nothingness stretching far in all directions, everywhere I look is just a new place it has conquered. I bring one of my hands up slowly to his face and gently feel the scar on his cheek and then down his chin and run my fingers over his plump lips. He stirs a little, and I snap my hand away and put it back at my side. I move my head down again and lie it on the pillow next to his chest again.
When I close my eyes, a wind of colors, shapes, and faces blows through my vision, but it's gone as soon as it appears.
a/n: here's what I come up with after reading fanfics at 1am while on facebook and falling asleep on my phone.
A ribbon of a brilliant color floats over my head. It flutters in an imaginary breeze as I watch it disappear over the plain landscape my mind has made up. I do not know the colors, I cannot name them, so I enjoy the presence of seeing them although I cannot tell anyone else what I have experienced. Next a wave of a soft, jazzy color washes me away and I float in the sensations of water and silk combined. I smile, and maybe even laugh, as it comes to a stop and twirls me in a circle. I jump up to try and catch a deep, melancholy streak of light. My fingers graze the bottom, but as soon as they touch it, everything shatters.
It breaks into shards and flies at me, tearing into my skin like glass. Liquid the same shade as the brilliant ribbon seeps from my skin where I am cut, and I scream. More and more glass of all different colors and shapes come at me and cut me all over, as if they are punishing me for looking at them. I scream and yell, asking for it to stop, but it doesn't.
I try to run away, but a strand of a normally happy color, now it looks threatening, wraps itself around my waist and neck, strangling me as it holds me in place. Oxygen leaves my lungs, and when I cannot take it any longer, I feel a jolting sensation and I gasp for air as my eyes fly open and all I see is pure darkness. It takes me about fifteen seconds to remember.
I was born blind.
My mom was a Zoological surgeon and she was ejaculating venom from a rattlesnake when it thrashed out at her and bit her ribcage.
She did not know she was pregnant at the time. If she did, she would have gotten her assistant to do the procedure. She did not know terror until the doctor told her that I was most likely going to have birth defects, and then I was brought into the seemingly colorful and vibrant world without ever seeing my mother's face.
I must have been screaming this whole time, because my throat feels like I swallowed nails and I can hear my door opening and light footsteps rushing in. My blankets have wrapped themselves around me, and I feverishly grope for the person I know is there as sweat rolls down my back and glues my hair to my temples. I feel calloused hands grab mine and then my covers are loosened before I'm brought into a familiar embrace.
“It's all right, Jongina. I'm here,” Sehun says. I knew it was him all along, but sometimes I let him tell me because, for some odd reason, it makes him feel better. My arms wrap tighter around him as I calm down my breathing and fully come back into reality.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I live in a school for specially challenged children from ages six to eighteen. I've been here for about two years, having been brought here, with much force from my mother, when I was almost fifteen. She thought it was time for me to get “special treatment” when she found me in her art box squirting paint all over and screaming at the colors. I wasn't doing it on purpose, in fact, I was asleep. I don't remember anything of the instance, but everyone keeps telling me it happened so I have to act like I do.
It's not like it's miserable here, but I'd prefer to be in my own home, in a room in a house that just my mom and I live in; not in a dorm house where all of the students and faculty sleep. Sometimes it has its perks, though, because Sehun definitely would not be allowed to climb into my bed after I have nightmares and lull me back to sleep if my mom was in charge.
That's what he's doing now, and I scoot backwards until my back is against the wall and let him fill the space I have made. The psychologist I was forced to see says I have severe nightmare disorder. I don't think it took a professional to say that, but everyone “just wanted to be sure.” There's nothing to cure this disorder, so I do my best to make sure I'm calm before I go to sleep and everything's neat, but that does almost nothing. So I just let Sehun hold me and make him believe he's doing something to ease the terror.
I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heart beat in it's steady rhythm. It's calming, that he is stable, I guess. He's always comforting and helpful to me, always bringing me places and telling me what everything looks like when we enter a new scene. I don't know how he handles himself half of the time.
Sehun has some sort of funky amnesia. He got in a car accident when he was twelve and lost all of his family who was in the car: his little sister, his parents, and his aunt. He doesn't remember any of it, of course, because he lost all of his memory. He had to relearn his name and the date, and everything about him. Of course most amnesia aren't totally permanent, and his is no exception. Sometimes he'll remember flashes of the accident and violently convulse a couple of times in his seat. Then he clears his throat, wipes his eyes, and continues with his day. It's truly amazing.
He rubs circles on my damp back and whispers into my hair. He never asks what I dream about that scares me so much, and I like that. He wouldn't understand why it's so scary; colors rejecting him would just not make sense, confuse him. To me it's the whole sensation of being blind and not being able to truly see anyone, no matter how many times I run my hands over their features, trying to memorize them to give me a mental image. I don't know what I look like, and that sometimes hits me the worst.
I'm always told I'm beautiful, but why tell me that? It makes no difference to me what they think I look like, because I want to have my own opinion. It's difficult, looking in the mirror and seeing the same thing you see everywhere else: nothing.
I sigh onto his shirt and close my eyes. They're sore from crying and from exhaustion. “Sehun?” I whisper, my voice raw and my throat on fire.
“Hm?” he hums, and I can tell he's almost asleep.
We became friends the day I first came here. My mom and the principal told me to walk around the school and get accustomed to the school and it's hallways, so I did, reluctantly. I was using my wretched cane to feel around the halls and cursing my mother for leaving me alone when someone tripped over my cane and made me lose my balance too. I fell on top of him and we both started saying sorry at the same time. It was really embarrassing for me because I hated that cane, and for him I guess because he tripped over a blind girl's cane.
He then proceeded to give me a useless tour because he carried my cane and held my arm and I wasn't able to count our footsteps or anything. The gesture was as sweet as it was annoying, and then I got set up in a bedroom across the hall from his and our friendship blossomed. He showed me his favorite tree out in the courtyard and helped me feel comfortable in the small institute.
I didn't learn what happened to him from him; another deaf boy, Lu Han, told me. He drew characters on my hand to talk to me. I didn't ask him to, he just did it. I've never told Sehun that I know, I think he just figured out that I figured out. We just acknowledge that our disabilities are there, and then we try our best to forget about them. Of course the forgetting about it step is a lot easier for Sehun than it is for me.
My mom comes to visit me at holidays because she got a new boyfriend and a promotion at work and is overall having a great life. She doesn't have a lot of time for her vision impaired daughter, and I understand. It must not be easy for her to look at my unfocused, unseeing eyes and know it's her fault, so it's okay that she doesn't like to spend lots of time with me. She does call, and I guess that's good enough.
Sehun takes away the loneliness though. He is always there when I need him, and when we sit in the grass or lie in our beds, it's almost like I can see again.
“Thank you,” I say and wrap my arms around his skinny torso. No matter how much food I put onto his plate, he doesn't seem to gain any weight, and I'm stuck growing curves and full breasts while he remains a twig. He squeezes me tiredly and kisses my forehead.
“For what?”
I smile into his t-shirt. It would be useless to flick his forehead or tell him that he knows what, or list what he's done for me because he knows. He just lists it under friend stuff and doesn't think he needs to be thanked for anything he does for me. I shake my head and pull the covers up to my shoulders and take a deep breath.
My mom took me to Paris once. We went on a sight-seeing bus and tour and I don't think she noticed how much I was not having fun. How could she bring me so close to the famous Eiffel Tower, so that I could experience it in person, knowing that I couldn't see it and it would probably make me even more sad? But then again, she's never really paid much attention to my feelings so it's not her fault.
Sehun keeps telling me it's okay to be mad at my mom, and sometimes I get frustrated at him because he doesn't remember what it was like to have a mom so he can't say anything on the subject. Because no matter how much I'm mad at her, I can't ever hate her or blame her because I am who I am and it has nothing to do with her. I usually just shut him up when he starts talking about family because it's painful for both of us.
I curl up against him as he starts to snore quietly. I nuzzle my nose into his shirt and sigh in contentment. I open my eyes and look upward toward his face even though there's no point in doing so. Sometimes I just like to go through the motions of seeing, because the ten year old me still inside still wonders if maybe I pretend enough I'll be able to see something someday.
I still only see darkness, a void of nothingness stretching far in all directions, everywhere I look is just a new place it has conquered. I bring one of my hands up slowly to his face and gently feel the scar on his cheek and then down his chin and run my fingers over his plump lips. He stirs a little, and I snap my hand away and put it back at my side. I move my head down again and lie it on the pillow next to his chest again.
When I close my eyes, a wind of colors, shapes, and faces blows through my vision, but it's gone as soon as it appears.
a/n: here's what I come up with after reading fanfics at 1am while on facebook and falling asleep on my phone.