Alphabet ≫ Jarchie

Dichotomy II

Dichotomy— The one where Archie teaches Jughead to see color in a nonconventional way. Also see: Wow that took me a second to figure out.

☀︎☁︎☀︎

Jughead lost his light.

Deep blues, lively yellows, and glaring reds followed him home, tracing every confused, scared step and hugging every paranoid, overwhelmed turn. His eyes burned with urgency, blinking rapidly as if to escape what was unknown. His brain churned anxiously, digging into the deepest crooks of his mind to undercover an explanation to why the world was ablaze with saturation.

The walk home after receiving his newfound ability was unreal. He found himself stumbling over soft, green grass and staring in awe at a fluffy, periwinkle sky. Everything was different. The universe was in the heat of spring, blooming into colors Archie hadn't even got the chance to teach him about. There was so much to absorb, yet Jughead kept stumbling, tripping over his own unfamiliar feet and keeping his head down.

It was too much, everything was too much. What was real? What was fake? What did it mean? Why had this happened? Was this is a glitch? Was he a glitch? Who could he tell? Could he tell anyone?

Jughead wasn't sure how to handle it.

After a long journey home, a journey full of his fast, abnormal heartbeat and his quick, ragged breath, he spent a week locked inside of his room. He stared at grey walls, monotonous structures of familiarity that kept him from falling off the deep end. He traced his fingers along the bumpy surface, trying to ignore his peachy skin, and repeated the process over again.

Jughead wasn't sure what to do with this thing, this gift. Was it a gift? He'd thought of it that way at first, but now it felt more like a curse, an unnatural phenomenon he'd mistakenly took part in. For the first since he'd learned about color, he wanted no parts of it.

So there he sat, swamped, his senses overwhelmed and his brain overloaded.

He went into shock.

His mother was somewhat content with her son's sudden complacency. It was sociably normal to let his feet drag, normal to be solemn and grim. That's how the people on their side of the fence behaved, unmotivated and lifeless. He was around that age, she thought to herself. He had finally figured it out.

There was no point. There wasn't a point to anything.

The day Jughead finally crawled out of his room and outside of his familiar shack, it was evident that he wasn't the same. He walked with a slowness about him, as if there was no urgency or purpose behind his steps like he once believed. He kept his eyes trained on the ground, too afraid to look up and be thrown back into a spiral of hues and shades he didn't have the ability to comprehend.

Was ignorance bliss? Or was bliss ignorance?

Jughead furrowed his eyebrows, this look of confusion appearing so often that he figured it wasn't long until it was etched into his looks.

People whispered as he walked past, looking through him with glass eyes and cold expressions. It was a dramatic change that no one expected, but had cruelly hoped for.

It was bitter sweet.

Still, no one bothered to question it. They nodded as they watched Jughead walk through town in a trance, zombie-like and expressionless. They thought of how the boy used to run, his eyes examining and taking in every inch of the world as if it was his to look at. He used to smile, used to ramble a mile a minute.