Chapter Text
Carmelita wasn’t really the kind of person who thought about color.
Color was one of those things that was just another part of the world around her, like cars and buildings and trees. She gave as much thought to it as she did kitchen appliances; something mundane, something normal, something that could be a little more special than usual sometimes but, on the whole, existed in the background compared to everything else in her life.
One of her least favorite questions when it came to small talk - which was impressive, given how much she couldn’t stand small talk in the first place - was asking what her favorite color was. Even as a girl, she didn’t really have an answer. Yellow was nice, and so was orange, and green, but other colors were nice too. People would ask her the question and then look at her like she was stupid for saying she didn’t have a favorite color. Then they’d start asking follow-up questions like “why not?” or “are you colorblind?” or even “how can you find joy in life if you don’t appreciate the simple things?”
That last question had been asked at the annual Interpol New Year’s party by a newcomer; a purple tigress with sharp eyes and a condescending smirk who would become the bane of Carmelita’s existence barely two years later. But here, at that party, she had simply been another face in the crowd of new recruits all clamoring to make an impression on the higher ups.
The fox had been so done with the party, and the small talk, and the color thing as a whole, that she had finally snapped, “I dunno, it’s blue, I guess. Satisfied?” and promptly stalked off to find a drink.
After that, blue had become her go-to answer for just about everything. Asked what her favorite color was? Blue. Asked what she wanted her remodeled bathroom to be painted in? Blue. Asked what description she could give of the thief who had once again slipped through their fingers with only a calling card and an afterimage as proof of his crimes?
Blue.
She made the connection somewhere in Prague, faced with the threat of jail time and brainwashing and her entire life crumbling around her. She remembered so very clearly following Sly across rooftops while police sirens screamed through the streets below; the pounding of adrenaline in her ears and the ache of too-little oxygen in her lungs and the weariness of two weeks of mental torment in every line of her body as she kept her eyes locked on the blue sweater and ringed tail ahead of her.
It had been an unconscious thought, a sort of ‘huh’ realization that didn’t truly register until she was hunting the Cooper Gang down in Canada, chasing after that damn flash of blue as he lifted her keys right out of her back pocket. She had been irritated at herself for the association, but that association had stuck, and ultimately it was just a stupid answer to a stupid question, anyway.
And then, years later, long after Sly had faked his amnesia to be with her and she had called him out over that fake amnesia so they could finally be honest with each other, they had both sat down and gone through the list of every question they could think of. He had, of course, asked her what her favorite color was. She, already resigned to the reason behind her choice, had answered honestly.
He had chuckled and teased her for it, as expected, but what had thrown her for a loop was that he’d then replied, “me too.”
“Well, of course it is,” she had told him. “With how often you wear it, how could it not be?”
“Actually, I don’t wear it because it’s my favorite color. I wear it – or at least I started wearing it because it was my father’s color.” His smile had turned nostalgic at the corners, tinged with a scar that would never fully heal. “He had a blue sweater on the last night he was alive, and that’s the thing I remember most before…everything that followed.”
Carmelita had frowned at that, having a million follow-up questions but scared to drive him to silence. Even after all that time, it was a very rare thing that he talked about what he remembered of his lost family.
“So…why is blue your favorite color?” She had settled on in the end, because it was the safest.
Sly had given her a fond smile, so full of love that she thought her heart might stop. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m looking at the reason right now.”
And then, he had reached forward to brush curly, blue bangs out of her face.
Perhaps colors, Carmelita had found, were not so mundane after all.
At least…not the one that mattered most.