(requested by calligomiles) Dusk/Deepcolor (“I’m not worried about collateral damage”)
“Hey, Dusk.” The Doctor knocked on the painter’s door, hoping she hadn’t fucked off to one of her paintings. “I’ve got someone who’s been asking me to introduce you. She implied she’ll find a way to get to you anyway, but I’m insisting she follow some measure of etiquette for the moment…Isn’t that right, Deepcolor?”
As he said the Aegir’s name, the door to the god-fragment’s room was slammed open by its occupant. Behind her, the sun set on a lake filled with glowing sea creatures, a path of stepping stones leading from the door to an outcropping where she’d set up a canvas. “You’ve finally brought me someone interesting, then?”
“That’s a way to put it,” he muttered as he left the pair alone. He had stacks of papers to get back to, after all.
“You know who I am already?” Deepcolor, for her part, was barely containing herself. “Ha, that doesn’t happen very often. Did the tentacles give me away?”
Dusk glanced around the hall before beckoning her inside. “No use standing out here - the light will send the pond scum away.”
“Oh, sure…Wow. You painted this all into existence?” The artist found herself awed at the space around her.
“If you think of it that way.” The difference between reality and her work was scant at best, admittedly. “I brought this scene I saw elsewhere in the world to life here, in my room, to enjoy it anew.”
Interesting. “I’ve never seen anglers this close to the surface, but I guess that’s just artistic license at work- Hey, Reggie, don’t mess with them! Sorry, my assistants operate purely on touch, not much I can do about it.”
“Right, your ‘inklings.’”
“Inklings?” Deepcolor shook her head. “I use synthetics. Harvesting natural ink isn’t worth the trouble.”
The painter sighed as she began swirling her brush in midair. “‘Twas a figure of speech. Here, Reggie, something to play with while the adults are talking.”
“...Even those half-assed brush strokes were perfectly placed,” her guest muttered.
“It may be temporary, but there’s no point in settling for less when it comes to art.” Dusk debated refocusing on her easel, but she’d allowed this Aegir into her sanctum for a reason. Best to use the opportunity while she had it. “The Doctor said you would ‘find a way’ to see me even if I refused you at the door. What do you want to talk about?”
The Aegir’s tako-flaps [correct scientific term, humu-humu] flapped as the visitor finally lost her veneer of control. “Everyone knows you’re Rhodes Island’s other great artist; I want to know your colors.”
“Are you sure about that?” Behind her, the god-fragment’s hair began to hover in defiance of gravity.
“Do I look unsure to you?” Manic, perhaps, but definitely not unconfident. “The Doctor refused my invitation, but you understand. You’ve seen the world’s true colors, at least in part. Why hesitate?”
She readied her brush. “Because you’ve seen them before already, haven’t you?”
“...What do you mean?” Deepcolor’s excited teals began to change, passing through green and yellow on their way to crimson.
“I’m not accusing you of anything you didn’t do.” Dusk shrugged. “In a way, it’s flattering that someone tried to mimic my style. Almost like worship, if a mortal could bear to be worshiped.”
That was not a line that should’ve been crossed. “I come here to ask if you’d like to collaborate, and you accuse me of plagiarism?!”
“It’s not an accusation if the answer’s already known.” The painter dismissed the pond entirely, leaving them not in a Rhodes Island dorm, but a black-floored void.
“The audacity…the hubris…Exactly what I was searching for!” A second sudden shift in the visitor’s attitude muddled the water for the god-fragment as her tentacles began sketching more ‘assistants’ into reality. “Shocking saffron and aureolin avarice, yes, yes, yes!”
Dusk watched with growing fascination as both Aegir and assistants adopted the very yellow shades she was describing as ‘Dusk’s colors’. “Now you’re copying my colors for yourself, then?”
“I am not copying them; you are painting me with them…Mmmm…” The smile on her face was one of madness, pure and rapturous insanity.
“Interesting.” The painter’s brush began dripping yellow paint onto the floor, staining it even as it blossomed into flowers, growing out from the drips with greenery rising beneath them, in their creator’s wake as she approached Deepcolor. “Am I nothing but a palette for you?”
That seemed to break her out of her reverie somewhat, even as she also began to spill paint into the room; her yellows, in contrast, grew into strange geometric figures, helixes and spirals and irreplicable blueprints to unfathomable designs. “No, this is merely the surface, but I can’t help myself. So bright, so clear, so…intoxicating. Leave it to an artist to wear such saturated colors. What else to see, I wonder.”
“To the depths we go?” Simply at the mention of the word, their bright surroundings muted, withering under the atmospheres of unreal pressure filling the void around them.
“So willing.” Too enraptured to express her surprise, the Aegir simply immersed herself in the shades and hues now available to her, flooding blackness with the colors of the darkness she carried with her. “The Doctor refused my invitation. He said he ‘had to remain impartial,’ but his words dripped with disgust. Impartial? He’s chosen a side already.”
That much Dusk already knew. “Forget about him. He’s not what’s important right now.”
“You’re right…He isn’t.”
“It’s rare I find someone worthy to watch me paint.” The painter reached out to Deepcolor, caressing her hair with her free hand. She quivered. “I never expected to meet a canvas…You want me to paint you in my colors?”
Her sheer excitement left the artist unable to say more than a hushed, “Yes. Paint me, Dusk. Paint me in your colors as we bask in this trench.”
“Then paint you, I will.” With that, the god-fragment tossed away her brush - which was caught by Reggie, wriggling off to the side with its brethren, an unwitting audience to this affair - because for this particular work of art, she didn’t need a paintbrush.
She simply needed the Aegir in front of her.
-----
“Hey, Dusk, have you seen Dee-” The Doctor, a few days later, went back to Dusk’s quarters. She’d been the last to see the artist out and about. Today, the door opened much more sluggishly. “Everything alright? You seem even more out of it than usual.”
The painter waved her hand dismissively. “She’s been with me.”
“For a week? I thought you might have something in common, but…” He glanced behind her, saw the state of her room, and took a couple of wide-eyed steps back.
“Ah. You see it, then?” The god-fragment chuckled. “Truly a masterpiece, no?”
He took a deep breath. “Dusk, you can’t just keep another Operator hostage-”
“Hostage? Doctor, she asked to be painted in my colors, and so I did…and she painted me in turn…What a simpleton you are, turning her down.”
“S-simpleton?” The Doctor bristled at the insult. “If not wanting to end up like that makes me a simpleton, then I’ll gladly be the Mayor of Simpleton. She has duties to attend to - you do, too. Both of you, in my office, ASAP.”
The person he thought he was talking to shut the door in his face, smiling. “Innomi? The Doctor says he wants us in his ‘office’. Whatever that means.”
“I’ll bring my brush.” The Aegir drifted to the ground from her perch, her assistants dressing her mid-descent.
“If that’s what you want.” Dusk stole a kiss as her canvas’ foot touched the ground, sending a ripple of color through her. “As soon as he bores me, I’m leaving.”
Deepcolor simply smiled. “If he bores you, then we’ll simply make him more interesting.”
“Ah, now there’s an idea…”