Title: Synaesthesia
World: PokeSpe
Ship: Specialshipping
Summary: they're all at the mercy of the madhouse. specialshipping AU, slightly dark, mt silver! red.

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synaesthesia- the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body

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{"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.}

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The door creaks; at the sound, everyone turns.

It is their language for, welcome to eternal torture. But of course, the unfortunate newcomer won't know this, whoever he or she may be. They'd be wise to flee as soon as possible, before the brainwashing starts, but no one's ever escaped this place. They're all at the mercy of the madhouse.

And then she steps in.

His first thought is, a person like her shouldn't be here. He doesn't suffer from synesthesia, but this girl, she radiates colour like no one would believe. They'll break her so easily.

He doesn't know why, but the thought constricts his throat and steals his breath away. For the first time, he feels a stirring of irrational anger (and it burns a hot red).

The worst thing about it is, he can't do anything about what's to come. And that would hurt, but he can't feel pain any more.

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She ends up bunking next to him, and because he isn't one to talk, he simply stares at her, trying to figure out how she ended up here.

Someone so obviously colourful does not belong here, does not belong in this abode of blacks and greys. He doesn't think she notices, until she turns around and gazes right back at him wordlessly.

He can't look away- her eyes are kaleidoscopic.

"Why do you keep staring at me like that?" Because they don't ask for names here. He's pretty sure she can feel that every single one of the inmates have had their personalities drained from them. And names don't matter afterwards.

"Why are you here?" She doesn't know, but it's the first time he's spoken for more than a decade. He's one of the oldest of the people here, if they can still be called people at all.

She stares up at the ceiling after he asks, counting the cracks and turning the peeling paint into her own kind of constellation. "Synaesthesia," she replies finally, refusing to look at him.

He laughs bitterly.

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"R-Red?"

He turns wordlessly to her, eyebrows high. Somehow, he can't explain how, but he just knows it's him whom she's calling to. Maybe that was once his name, or nickname, back when he actually had a life.

"I-I'm sorry! It's just that- your aura- I don't know, you just look red," she apologises, said colour rushing to her cheeks. He can't find it in himself to explain that the colour looks so much better on her than on him- in fact, all colours look their best around her.

"It's okay." After all, red is the colour of passion. Much as he might have possessed it before, it has all gone now; he's just left with dull grey.

"I was just wondering... what is this place?"

He smiles hollowly. "Hell."

With a childish, naive, wondering expression, she turns to him, wide- eyed. "But we're not dead yet!"

"I am. They are," he says, gesturing to the room at large. He doesn't add the obvious, and you will be too when they're through with you.

"No." The firmness in her voice startles him. "Not all of them. Not you." She looks at him, searching, and nods. "Some of these people... are... They have no colour any more. But some of you still do," she glances around the room. "You're still red. That girl over there, she's blue. And that other guy... he's green. You all haven't given up. So I won't either."

She doesn't continue asking about the asylum, so he doesn't tell her. Some things are not meant to be known, or said in the creeping stillness of night.

But he thinks that her quiet courage is the most bright and beautiful of them all.

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From then on, she resists the treatments. They do everything they can to make her bend, to make her break, but it doesn't even seem to affect her. She doesn't even just seem neutral, in fact, she seems to bloom under the adversity.

Under contrary winds do the largest oaks grow, and diamonds are formed under pressure, they say. In that case, she is the most brilliant creature he's ever seen. Because her quiet fight under her small shell brings him an unspeakable hope, that maybe there'll be a chance that they can escape this depravity, after all. And hope is what mountains were built of.

Her aura has never burned more radiantly.

Of course, it doesn't last forever. Soon enough, blood purer than the white tiled floor stains it as she thrashes, her silent tears washing it away. Still, she refuses to make a sound of distress. He is proud. So, obviously, the scientists are not.

With every moment she staves off the pain, something that is building up gets closer to eruption. Things are about to happen- the downfall is imminent.

He wonders if they can survive the aftermath.

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Slowly, the strength that they've found in each other grows. Now that they know not everyone has been defeated by the nameless, countless tortures they've been put through, they have a cause to fight for and people to fight with them.

And he notices it slowly, too slowly; even (as nicknamed) Blue and Green find out before he does. But eventually he realises that he has a forbidden love to fight for, too. It just spurs him on even more.

Because, they are not supposed to fall in love, any one of them. It is the one downfall of the whole regime- those who fall in love become stronger for it, mentally. They are able to push away the effects of whatever the scientists have inflicted upon them, they are able to rebel.

They are able to cause a revolt, to uproot the entire scheme. Love is strong, love is dangerous, but powerful when used rightly.

Red doesn't need to be able to see colours to know that, before she arrived, he'd been right on the edge, teetering, ready to fall at any moment. And then, she'd saved him. She'd brought the colour back into his life.

No, he thinks, looking at her gentle, sleeping form at night. No, with her bright smile and her colours and her life, she's saved them all.

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"Let us go! Let us be free!" he shouts with a burst of his old passion, looking into the shadow- cloaked eyes of their captor. It was now or never, it was time to break free. He has never felt so light.

The man just laughs, summoning his underlings with one careless wave of his hand. Immediately, they are thrown into an unforgiving, metal cage, separated from each other by bars.

"Yellow!" he cries, for that is what he's come to call her, throwing himself against the barrier in- between them.

Bolts of electricity spark across his body, vibrant citrine like her name. What hurts more is her cry, although he refuses to give anyone the satisfaction of hearing his pain.

The three lackeys grin nevertheless. "No one makes it out of here, not alive at any rate," one of them says jeeringly, folding thick arms across his broad chest. The other two, a slender, black- haired girl and the head scientist, laugh and nod respectively, awaiting commands from their leader.

He would never forget those faces, although it was the one whom he couldn't see that would become the stuff of his nightmares.

"Hmm... You have willpower. A pity. I would have asked you to join us..." The mysterious man strokes his chin, scrutinising Red. He turns his head, looking at the other three in turn too. "And that offer extends to you three too. A great pity, that none of you will accept. You have obvious talent," he muses, enunciating eloquently, evenly, with so much indication (yet none at all) of what was to come.

"You know what to do." The muscled man pulls the two girls out easily, pushing them back into the torture chamber. And Red suddenly knows what's about to happen, even as he turns to Green with a haunted face. In his mind, he wonders if he blames or hates him.

Green refuses to look at him, instead staring stoically in front of him with unseeing eyes as screams split the air (and his heart, wide, wide, open).

"Love is dangerous, but powerful when used rightly. Wouldn't you agree?" Laughing elegantly, the man of darkness strides away, the shadows pooling at his feet.

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Each of them are beaten, brainwashed, starved, drugged, until day seems like night and night seems like night and everything seems like darkness. Of course, they hardly ever see each other anymore.

He only knows the others are alive by the screams running up and down the corridor all the time. He only knows he's alive by the pain running up and down his veins all the time. But soon, he won't be any more.

He doesn't need synaesthesia to know that his colour is draining out, fast. And so is hers- now, she only glows in shades of the sun, instead of the whole rainbow. They are running out of time.

But he still remembers the first time he saw her, looking like an apparition in dizzying hues of vibrant tints. He remembers how he had thought that someone like her did not belong in the asylum, because her life would've been snuffed out too quickly, like a candle in the wind.

He remembers why she's still not faded, and knows it's because he hasn't. So he musn't, or she will. Together, they will stay shining, and even if their flames have dwindled to but a mere ember, they will relight each other and themselves again.

After all, there cannot be darkness if there is no light to extinguish.

They aren't giving up, just waiting for a new generation of people to come and try to fight their way out. And when they do, they'll have an able army waiting for them.

No one's ever escaped this place, they're all at the mercy of the madhouse. But there's a reason why they still try.

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{"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."}