Rated T
Words 691
Characters Crowe Altius (special guest appearance by Pelna Khara)
Summary Black is a Lucian color, not a Galahdian color. Crowe has some feelings about that.
Notes Really happy that I was able to find some time to get one more Crowe musings/headcanonish ficlet up for croweweek2019 @crowedeservesbetter (because she does, she so does deserve better, from myself included ;A;) So hereâs a little something following the âblackâ theme.
Black had always been her color.
But then, black was everyoneâs color. So said every billboard beaming across the Insomnian skyline. Black was the royal familyâs color, so it was therefore the color of every Lucian patriot with a trust fund to waste on social media trend-setting.
It used to be a sour point for Crowe, passing beneath the gates of Insomnia with something sheâd always owned, only to find it had never been hers. Black was a Lucian color. And she wasnât Lucian. What right did she have to take their colors, when the Galahdians were already taking so much else from Insomnia?
The Lucians walked around their gilded city, wearing their color, as if they were the ones in mourning. As if it had been Insomnia that lost something when Galahd was razed to the ground. As if she and the rest of her brothers were the ones intruding on their grief.
Sheâd hated these people when sheâd first moved in. Sheâd started to hate the color black. Sheâd started to hate a lot of the things she used to love about growing up in Galahd.
It took a harsh, startling look in the mirror one night to recognize that she was turning into a Lucian, nevertheless. Sheâd tried so hard to fit in, only to be rejected. It was only when that resentment of her failures turned inward that she realized sheâd been fitting in all along. She wanted to be a Lucian? Hating Galahd was a pretty damn good start.
She threw away all of her black clothes after that. They scared her too much. She was afraid of losing herself to the Insomnian machine, afraid of blending in with the snobbish shadows stalking the sidewalks. Galahd didnât deserve to be forgotten. Least of all by her.
Which was why she was so hesitant to like the uniform.
âWell, canât fault the King for his sense of style,â Pelna said.
His approval unknotted some of the nerves wound between each of the recruits as they combed through the new threads. It was the nicest suit of clothes any of them would have never been able to afford for themselves, even before taking refuge in a designer city without a dime to their names. The coats were durable, but malleable; stylish, yet strong â deceptively strong. It wasnât traditional armor of steel and leather, but there was something to it that felt like it could glance a blade just as well.
Crowe looked around the room at all the nervous faces, afraid to be the first one to try it on and seal their fate as a soldier of the Kingsglaive â afraid to fight for Lucis, as if they were one of them. She bit the inside of her mouth, afraid to become the people that hated her, too. But there was a power to this armor that no high rise Insomnian socialite would ever wear. This uniform was Lucian black, but it wasnât made for a Lucian.
The Kingsglaive was made for them. It was made for the outcasts, a flame for the forgotten to bear. Lucis would have to remember them once it was down to the Galahdians to keep them safe.
Black had always been her color. And this uniform was hers. The King himself had given it to her. No one could take that away from her again.
Crowe pulled on the mageâs cloak and habit over her shirt, shaking out the sleeves and shrugging it to fit upon her shoulders. Snug as a bug, the fabric felt like it molded to her shape, designed to shield every curve and crevice. She stretched her arms, twisted this way and that, testing how it conformed to each movement. It felt good.
And it looked good, too. She glanced in the nearby mirror, and she didnât think she looked like a Lucian at all. She looked like something else, something more powerful than the girl from Galahd and stronger than the refugee to Insomnia. She finally looked like herself.
âI like it,â she announced.
She looked better in black. And now, everyone was going to remember it.
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