The Color Of A Tragedy (One shot)

The Color Of A Tragedy

The color of a hero - that’s what it was, right?

Red?

The color of bravery and happiness and horror, the color he couldn’t bear.

Red was the color he would wash down the sink when things got too bad, when he screwed up too much; it was the color that’d stained his sweatshirt on that summer day, that’d painted his mother and the floor underneath her a dark sickening hue; it was the flash of his eyes that had scared his aunt half to death and marked him as what maybe he had been all along; red was the color of a monster, and Ace thought it suited him quite well.

But red had a different shade, he discovered. Red was the color of the scarf she put on just for them, that she continued to put on day after day; it was the color of their eyes when they cried or yelled; it was the color of the picture that wouldn’t stop playing over and over and over in his mind, the color of her smile and her tears and her words; red was the color of a hero, and Ace thought maybe it didn’t really suit him after all.

It made him sick when he saw that bastard wearing it: a blinding red jacket thrown on in a lazy manner that made him look worse than he already would have. And when he saw the way he sweat, heard the way he stuttered, how his voice shook as if he had the right to be nervous for his own well-being after everything he’d done, he knew that he completely and honestly hated him. He was glad the bastard had stayed hauled up in his room those past years, and thought maybe he should’ve died there. Red was the color of a murderer, and for once Ace found someone else other than himself deserving of that title.

Red was the color of their story, the cause and solution of all their problems. Red was the color that haunted his dreams, the color he painted his mask in, the color he saw when he brought his fist up against an alley wall one night, coating his hand and flowing through his veins and he wanted it out of him. It was a color he loved and hated and cherished and never wanted to see again.

Red: the color of a hero, huh?

For him, red was the color of a curse.