#took a break from the angst | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flowersandskeletons526 · 23 days ago

Text

"Get Your Colors" - Warriors Concept Album fanfic

Woe! Fox and Rembrandt angst be upon ye!

Used this as my mind break from "Put Your Gloves Up" and now I'll get back to it. Part six of that will be out soon. Until then, enjoy!

Based on @alexihollis's post

----------

“I don’t get it,” said Fox as she leaned over Rembrandt’s shoulder.

Rembrandt paused, looking between the two oil pastel colors she held in her hands. “Don’t get what?” she asked.

“Why don’t you just get the sets?” Fox picked up a beginner’s box of pastels, a rainbow of simple colors, the ones children got when they were first learning to use them. Rembrandt, however, was not first learning to use them and did not need a kit. “Isn’t that cheaper? And you get all the colors.”

“They don’t have the colors I need.”

Fox grabbed a bigger box. “What about this one?”

“That one has too many colors. And it’s too expensive. Besides, I already have some of the colors I want so I’d rather just pick out the ones I don’t have by myself. I’m not paying for something I have at home.”

“But how do you know what colors you need?”

“I have a plan.”

“But-”

“Fox, do you trust that I know what I’m doing or not?”

“I know you know what you’re doing!” Fox huffed. “I’m just curious. Wait, why do you need four different greens?”

“Because the project I’m working on is a collection of monochromes.”

“What’s a monochrome?”

Rembrandt sighed. She loved Fox, truly, but when the younger girl asked if she could tag along on a trip to the art store, she was not expecting to give a seminar on terms and techniques. “Monochromes are pictures that only use different shades of one color. Usually it’s black and white but I think that’s boring,” she explained.

“Oh. Okay. Can I go look at the sketchbooks?”

“Sure. I’ll come find you.”

It didn’t take Rembrandt much longer to pick out her colors. Trying to balance all of them in her hands, she made her way through the cramped, quiet store to the aisle with the sketchbooks. Fox was not there. Rembrandt cursed under her breath. She hated when she wandered off like this. Walking down each aisle, pausing to look longingly at the nice, expensive spray paints in a locked case, she finally found Fox in the back corner of the store flipping through a book. Fox looked up as Rembrandt came to stand beside her.

“What did you find?” Rembrandt asked.

Fox showed her the cover. “It’s a guidebook to drawing comic book characters.”

Rembrandt looked at the book. She looked up at Fox, her eyes intensely focused on the book, gently thumbing the edge of the page. Rembrandt smirked. “Do you want it?”

Fox looked up, eyes wide as her expression brightened. “Really?”

“How much is it?”

“Six dollars. We don’t have the money, do we?”

“Let me check.” She picked out roughly a quarter of the oil pastels in her hands and discreetly slipped them into the inside pocket of Ajax’s leather jacket that she’d borrowed for the day. It was so loose on her that no one would notice if she hid a whole spray paint can in the pocket, let alone a few small sticks. She put a finger to her lips and smiled. “Yeah, we have the money.”

Fox broke out in a broad grin. Rembrandt made another shut up gesture, and Fox nodded and clutched the book to her chest. They paid for the art supplies and the book - minus the ones snuck into Rembrandt’s pocket - and headed home. Once they were a few blocks away, Fox leaned down and lowered her voice.

“How many did you swipe?”

“Four or five.”

“Nice.” Fox gasped. “Oh, shit! I don’t have any paper to draw on!”

“I have an extra little sketchbook you can take.”

“Are you sure?” Fox asked with another big smile.

“Yeah. It’s one I stole, anyway.” It actually wasn’t. She was planning on keeping it in her jacket so she could draw on the train without carrying her full sized sketchbook everywhere, but she could never say no to Fox when her face lit up like that.

When they arrived back at the apartment, Ajax was lying on the couch watching some thriller TV show. Fox sat at the kitchen table with her book while Rembrandt stood behind the couch. Ajax sat up as Rembrandt leaned down to give her a quick kiss. “How was the art store?”

“It was good,” Rembrandt said. “Got the colors I need and Fox got a book on how to draw comic book characters.”

Ajax glanced at Fox, engrossed in the book, and sat up further to whisper to Rembrandt. “Do we have money for that?”

“I mopped a couple oil pastels and that made up for it.”

“You gotta stop doing that before you get caught.”

“And if I do, I will talk my way out of it.”

“You’re dangerous.”

“You love it.”

“I do.” Ajax pulled Rembrandt close by her waist and peppered her face and neck with kisses. Rembrandt laughed, cupping Ajax’s face and planting a long, gentle kiss on her lips.

From the kitchen, Fox called, “Get a room!”

-----

Cowgirl fidgeted on Cleon’s couch. Rembrandt had had her sitting there for close to an hour, and, shockingly, she was almost out of things to say. Sitting in the armchair across from her, Rembrandt barely noticed. When she really got to working on a drawing, she could work through the night without realizing until Ajax woke up and gave her shit for not sleeping again.

Cowgirl groaned and threw her head back so Rembrandt would finally look up. “Girl, how long do I have to stay like this?” she whined.

“I’m still blocking colors,” said Rembrandt. “Calm down, I’m almost finished. I just need to get a few more shapes in and then I can do the details on my own.”

“Can I at least see it?”

“Not yet. And stop moving your hat. You change the shape of your hair when you do that.”

“None of your other drawings of me have taken this long.”

“This one is special.”

“Um, excuse me, all pictures of me are special.”

“This one’s a collection,” said Fox. Getting up from the table, she came up behind Rembrandt and put her arms around her shoulders. Rembrandt paused her drawing to squeeze Fox’s hand. “They’re monochromes. She’s doing them for all of us. We’re all different colors.”

“What color am I?” Cowgirl asked. Rembrandt lifted the royal purple oil pastel she was working with in response. “Why am I purple?”

“You feel purple,” Rembrandt said simply.

“The fuck does that even mean?”

“It means exactly what I said.” Rembrandt set aside her pastel. “Okay, I’m done.”

“Thank god.” Cowgirl stood up and stretched. “I need a drink.”

While Cowgirl headed into the kitchen, Fox reached out to touch the edge of the drawing, making sure she didn’t smudge anything. She rested her chin atop Rembrandt’s head. “Hey, what color am I?” she inquired.

“I haven’t figured it out yet.”

-----

Shouts and screams echoed behind them. The pounding footsteps of their pursuers like a horde of nightmares. Flashing lights and police sirens in the distance, more shots as the world devolved into chaos. Rembrandt ran faster than she ever had in her life. She barely felt the burn of her lungs and her muscles. She barely heard Swan and Cochise and Ajax shouting instructions behind her. All she could focus on was the path ahead and Fox running just as fast beside her.

Fox tripped. She fucking tripped. Rembrandt almost fell herself with how hard she backpedaled. She grabbed Fox’s arm, hauling her to her feet as panicked words tumbled from the younger girl’s lips.

“We’re dead!” she cried. “We’re fucking dead! When I woke up today, I didn’t think we could die!”

“Neither did I!”

Swan shouted behind them. “The cemetery! Go to the cemetery! Go!”

Rembrandt found herself hiding behind a tombstone, pressing her back against the cold, wet rock as she tried and failed to catch her breath. Fox knelt beside her and clung to her arm. A helicopter flew overhead as lights and blaring sirens passed the cemetery. Swan stood, looking around, and motioned for everyone to stand up. “Make sure we’re okay,” she said.

“This is a graveyard,” Rembrandt said pointedly, because Swan usually wasn’t one for dumb sentences but that was fucking stupid.

“Everybody make it?”

They’d all made it. All except Cleon. All except the best of them.

Rembrandt hadn’t been this terrified since before the Warriors found her. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely see through the rain and the tears she desperately tried to blink away.

“What are we gon’ do?” she whispered. Fox was right there echoing her. “What are we gon’ do?”

“We get back home alive.”

-----

Rembrandt sat on the floor behind the couch in her and Ajax’s apartment. Her, Ajax, and… Fox. It used to be home, it used to be home for the three of them. She still remembered how happy Fox was when they found an apartment and she got her own room for the first time in her life, no longer on Cleon’s couch or briefly sharing Swan’s room when they decided she couldn’t just stay in the living room anymore. She remembered how excited she was to decorate it with comic book posters and all the plushies she collected from carnival games on the boardwalk.

Hanging on the walls were the best of Rembrandt’s drawings of her. Fox loved to sit for portraits. She always said how pretty it made her feel. Even months after losing her, Rembrandt couldn’t bring herself to go into that room. Everything left of Fox was just sitting there collecting dust. Rembrandt couldn’t face that. All she could do was stare at the forever-closed door.

The front door to the apartment opened and shut. She flinched at the sharp thunk of the deadbolt, her mind throwing her back into an east village loft, sitting beside Fox on a couch, clinging to her hand and wondering how the hell she’d gotten into a situation like that.

“Baby, I’m home!” Ajax called. Rembrandt pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Ajax’s footsteps padded through the apartment, around the couch, and Rembrandt heard her sigh as she knelt beside her. Ajax touched her cheek, and she leaned into the contact. It was second nature at this point. “Why are you on the floor?”

Rembrandt jerked her head towards Fox’s bedroom door. Ajax exhaled sharply through her nose. Wordlessly, she sat on the floor beside Rembrandt and pulled her into her lap, holding tight as Rembrandt wrapped her arms around her neck and buried her face in the crook of her shoulder. She was so sick of crying but she couldn’t stop it, burning tears dripping down her face and soaking into Ajax’s shirt.

“I miss her,” she whispered.

“I know,” Ajax said. “I miss her, too.”

-----

“I don’t think Rembrandt likes me,” Mercy mumbled.

“What are you talking about?” Swan asked. “She likes you.”

Rembrandt overheard from the living room in Cleon and Swan’s apartment, which was also Mercy’s apartment now, too, she supposed. Everyone else was out at work or doing gang business and Ajax was still reluctant to leave Rembrandt alone given her mental state over the past months, so she sat with a blank sketchbook in Cleon’s living room until Ajax got back. She tried her best to ignore Swan and Mercy’s conversation but the walls were thin and she couldn’t tune it out.

“She looks at me like she wants me dead,” Mercy continued.

“It’s just resting bitch face. That’s how she looks at everyone she doesn’t know.”

Wow, Rembrandt thought. Thanks, Swan.

“Did she look at you like that?”

“No, but that was Rembrandt then. This is Rembrandt now, and she’s just… she’s getting used to you.”

“Everyone else did. Even Ajax doesn’t side eye me every time I walk into the room.”

“Are you mad?”

“No! No, I’m not mad. I just wanna know what I’m doing wrong.”

Rembrandt sank into the couch. She didn’t dislike Mercy and it hurt to know Mercy thought that but it just hurt so much to face her because-

“You’re… you remind her of Fox,” Swan said. “And I mean it in the best way! But Rembrandt just can’t-”

Rembrandt turned on the TV and cranked the volume until she couldn’t hear her own thoughts.

-----

Rembrandt stood over her desk in her and Ajax’s bedroom, rifling through her desk and sorting her sketchbooks and drawings. The books had begun to pile up around the room, her desk was running out of storage space, and the corner she designated for larger canvases and other projects had gone from a corner to an entire wall. Ajax hadn’t exactly asked her to clear out some of the pieces, but she always apologized profusely when she knocked over a stack of books or almost damaged a painting, so Rembrandt decided to whittle down her collection to just the best and most sentimental.

With her desk mostly sorted, she turned to the squat filing cabinet she kept beside it. In the bottom drawer, she discovered her collection of oil pastel portraits. She found it within herself to smile as she flipped through the stiff sheets of drawing paper. She’d finished most of them a long time ago, maybe missing a detail or two here and there, and there were some parts she could go back and touch up if she really wanted.

The first one she picked up was Ajax, her strong features highlighted in rich, deep reds, piercing eyes staring directly off the page.

There was Cochise in hunter green, a side profile, smiling softly.

Cowgirl in royal purple, adjusting the brim of her hat with a grin.

Swan’s calm, stoic face in dark night-sky blue.

A self portrait in sunshine yellow.

Cleon in gold. Rembrandt had had to do a lot of experimenting with colors on that one to make sure the palette didn’t look too similar to her own portrait. She’d used mod podge and gold glitter in the shadows of the piece to give it that extra bit of glow Cleon always seemed to carry with her.

Rembrandt’s heart sank when she got to the last drawing.

Fox, in bright Tiffany blue. Fox with a wide grin, Fox with her sparkling eyes staring back at Rembrandt, immortalized in such a fragile fucking medium that some of the details had already begun to disappear from just sitting in a drawer. Any light touch would smudge the pigment and Rembrandt would lose more and more of her because nothing could be permanent, none of it was permanent, she tried so hard to hold on but no matter what she was just going to lose her all over again-

Rembrandt screamed and swiped half of everything off her desk. Sketchbooks and pencils and paint cans crashed to the floor, and Rembrandt fell to her knees amidst the mess, unable to look at the portrait any longer.

When Ajax got home later, she found Rembrandt curled into a ball under her desk, still bawling her eyes out, covering her mouth to silence herself. Ajax spotted Fox’s drawing on the desk and didn’t ask what was wrong. She just sat a comfortable distance from Rembrandt and waited for her to come out. Rembrandt loved her for that.

-----

Rembrandt took a deep breath, shifting her backpack straps on her shoulders before knocking on the door to Cleon’s apartment. Mercy answered. Rembrandt knew she would. She’d planned for this, making sure to come over when she knew Mercy was home from work and Cleon and Swan had business to handle. She wanted this to just be for her and Mercy. She just… she needed it to be.

Mercy raised her eyebrows, visibly confused when she opened the door to find Rembrandt alone. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” said Rembrandt. “Can I come in?”

Mercy stepped aside hurriedly, as if she found it rude that she’d been keeping Rembrandt in the hall, even if she really wasn’t. Rembrandt took a few steps into the kitchen as Mercy closed the front door behind her.

“Is everything okay?” Mercy asked. “Cleon and Swan are out if you need to talk to them.”

“I know. I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

Rembrandt fidgeted. She took a deep breath. “Will you sit for a portrait?”

Mercy blinked, taken aback. “Um… when?”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“It’ll take two hours at most. Probably not even that long. Please?”

“Sure. Sure, okay.”

It took closer to three hours, despite Rembrandt’s best efforts. She had Mercy sit on the couch and let her put something on TV instead of having her sit in silence, even if Rembrandt would have preferred that. It took so long because she had to scrap the start of three different versions. It had been so long since she practiced this that she kept fucking up the gradients to the point where she had to take a break and go smoke with Mercy on the stoop to avoid screaming in frustration and forgetting the whole idea.

While trying to get the shape of Mercy’s bangs right, Rembrandt’s vision blurred. She jerked her head up just before the tears had a chance to fall on the drawing. She turned aside, scrubbing at her eyes with the hem of her sleeve, somehow managing to keep her breathing steady.

Mercy noticed and sat up straight. “Rembrandt?” she asked, just a little panicked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I’m okay,” Rembrandt assured her. “It’s… I don’t know. But I’m okay. Please just move back to where you were.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m okay.”

She didn’t need too much more time after that before she was satisfied with the result. Of course, she would look at it the next day and find a million things wrong with it, but she could correct or add or remove details after the fact. As she set her oil pastel aside, her fingertips stained with the pigment, she brushed her thumb along the very edge of the page. It left a miniscule cut behind, a bead of blood staining her skin. She had a momentary flash of panic but nothing got on the paper so it was okay. She wrapped her fingers over her thumb, squeezing until it throbbed, until the bleeding stopped and the stinging disappeared. Mercy, thankfully, did not notice that.

In her peripheral vision, Mercy shifted closer to her on the couch. “Can I see it?”

Rembrandt hesitated. Normally she didn’t share portraits until they were completely finished, but…

She sat beside Mercy and passed her the drawing. “Just don’t touch it. It smudges easily.”

Mercy grinned when she saw her portrait: head resting on her hand and tilted to the side, hair delicately swept behind her ear, eyes calm and gentle, the corner of her lips lifting in just the hint of a smirk. It was all done in the softest coral pink, almost ethereal in the light. She reached over to rest a hand on Rembrandt’s forearm without looking. Rembrandt thought she might cry.

“It’s amazing,” Mercy said with a light laugh. “I don’t think I’ve seen any of your work besides the graffiti before. I didn’t know you could do this.”

“The only medium I don’t work with is oil paint,” Rembrandt said. “Maybe if I win the lottery.”

“This looks like an oil painting. It’s like something out of a museum.”

“Thanks. It’s gonna be part of a project I never finished.”

Mercy turned to her. “What is it?”

“You’ll see it when I finish it.”

“Swan said you do that.”

“She knows me.” Rembrandt took a deep breath, her shoulders curling in as she met Mercy’s eyes. “I don’t hate you, you know.”

Mercy grimaced. “You heard that?”

“The walls are thin and you guys always talk right next to the door.”

“Noted.”

“For real, though. Look, I admit that I… I’m still getting used to you being here. You’re so much like her that it just throws me for a loop sometimes and I know Swan has told you I don’t like strangers and you’re really not one anymore but I…” Rembrandt’s voice broke. She turned away from Mercy, covering her mouth to keep quiet as she screwed her eyes shut. Was her heart really choosing right now to have a breakdown over this?

Mercy angled herself in and put an arm around Rembrandt. This very much broke the first rule of the “how to keep Rembrandt from freaking out” rulebook that Rembrandt knew Swan had set, but Rembrandt was glad she did it. She shifted closer, wrapping her arms loosely around Mercy’s waist as Mercy pulled her fully into a soft embrace.

Rembrandt closed her eyes and let the tears fall. Mercy didn’t say anything. She just held her.

-----

“Is it straight?” Swan asked.

Rembrandt stood back from the wall. Swan and Ajax stood on chairs, positioning a giant canvas while the other Warriors watched them. Behind Rembrandt, Mercy put her arms around her shoulders and watched over the top of the artist’s head.

“I think Swan’s side needs to come down a little bit,” said Cowgirl from where she sat in the arm chair.

“Cowgirl, you’re holding your head at a tilt,” Rembrandt said with a wave of her hand. “Ajax, let your side come down an inch. Wait, never mind, half an inch. Yes! There! You guys can let go of it.”

Swan and Ajax let go and got down off the chairs, stepping back to stand with the rest of the gang.

Now hung perfectly on the living room wall was a collage of all of Rembrandt’s monochrome portraits. They were lovingly cut out and carefully arranged together, with Fox front and center and the others supporting around her. Behind them was a detailed black-and-white background of the city, enough to fill the empty canvas but not distracting from the main subjects, everything pasted down and covered with sealant so nothing could ever damage the fragile pigments again.

All of the Warriors, immortalized.

Cleon crossed her arms and whistled. “Damn, Rem, this is some work. How long you been hiding this?”

“It wasn’t finished,” Rembrandt said simply. “Now it is. With all of us.”

Mercy held Rembrandt tighter.

#warriors musical #warriors concept album #writing #fanfic #rembrandt warriors #ajax warriors #cleon warriors #swan warriors #cowgirl warriors #fox warriors #mercy warriors #background remjax #took a break from angst to write more angst #and now I'm going back to writing the original angst

24 notes · View notes