Lovely Hues | Fillie AU

Chapter One

September 1st 1947 started as a good day for twenty-eight year old Finn Wolfhard. Being the first day of September meant that autumn was upon him and it also meant that he had now been on the road for nine whole months. It didn't hurt that the sun was shining bright against the wide open road and the air was warm enough that he didn't need his sage bomber jacket. It also wasn't so warm that he was sweating buckets into his leather boots like so many of his days during the summer months. Suffice it to say, it was gearing up to be another great day of motorcycling down the country-side.

He had left his crumby, mold infested, and poorly lit apartment on the first of the year, setting off on a mission that meant more to him than he could really put into words to anyone who asked.

And people always asked.

Everywhere he stopped, people wanted to know what he was doing, where he was going, and why he was so far from home, riding solo on a motorcycle that had clearly seen action in the war. But that wasn't all people asked about. His Gibson strapped to his back had people asking if he was a famous musician, or at least an aspiring one.

He wasn't.

His camera, and his near-constant usage of said camera, made people ask if he was a photographer for some big paper, or magazine.

He wasn't.

"Something like that." was always his answer though. The confused, and calculating looks on people's faces had always made his lips crack onto a devious grin before riding off to the next stop on his trek.

He had spent almost two whole years mulling over the decision to leave Vancouver after he returned from the frontlines of the war. The things that happened to him wouldn't leave his mind. The images were like intruders that kept poking him and prodding him and reminding him of terrible things he wished to forget. It wasn't like Vancouver made it worse but the people there sure didn't make it better.

He didn't know where he wanted to go, but staying in Vancouver with all of its painful reminders of why he had no friends anymore wasn't something he wanted to do. Yet there he stayed. Week after week. Month after month.

It was seeing a rat pull up beside him on his sagging and ripped couch who then started nibbling on his new year's pizza he'd just bought himself that made him finally say "Enough is enough." and leave.

That rat. That hairy, grease stained, putrid vermin found it perfectly acceptable to eat alongside Finn, like an equal. And for a second, he felt about equal to that rat. A momentary, frightening reckoning of how far he had let his mental state deteriorate. After feeling the initial revulsion to feeling equal in standing to a rodent, he'd taken one last swig of beer and said "Well, you want it, you got it. The place is yours, little guy." and got to packing.

If that rat had the guts to do what he did—to crawl out from whatever hole in the wall he'd been hiding in and climb onto the couch then take a bite out of the pizza right in Finn's hand then, dammit, Finn would do what he'd wanted to as well. Ever since his boots hit the familiar Canadian soil two years ago, he'd had ideas of what he could do to make the changes in the world he sought. It was time to act on them.

Before the rest of Vancouver even woke up on January 1st, 1947, with last year's hangovers pummeling their heads that swam with honorable intentions for the new year, he was gone. Rumbling away on his motorcycle with only his rucksack, his guitar, his camera, and his life savings in tow. He left everything else behind. And everybody else too. He'd write to his brother and parents, but as for the rest of the people he'd known his whole life in Vancouver? Well, they could all go trip and fall down a well for all he cared. Before the war, he'd have thought differently, but no more. Some people didn't deserve real estate in his mind. But that's not something he chose to dwell on for long. The road was what he liked to focus on now.