Series: Shades of Gray

Warnings: Season 1

Beta by wonderful mam711

Disclaimer: White Collar belongs to USA Network and Jeff Eastin. I'm just borrowing them for a moment.

Prison wasn't what he expected it to be.

It was boring. Annoyingly boring. The first months he spent on learning the ropes. Who to avoid, with whom to associate, who to pay... By the time he learned everything and ensured he was safe it was almost a year in.

His environment was gray and blank, just like his dreams. With the small exception of the orange jumpsuits. It didn't bother him, at first. This first year he didn't even notice it.

And Kate.

Beautiful Kate, who had been running from him for over a year, now visited him every week. The blue of her eyes sometimes flashed in his dreams.

Sometimes.

Somewhere in the middle of his second year they either changed the policies, or some crooked provider won the contract for the new jumpsuits. Before, they alternated between gray and orange every wash cycle. Now they'd stopped, leaving orange, only orange.

After a while of looking at orange every day without a break—the gray walls and the few dark navy blue guards' uniforms didn't count—the color started sweeping into his dreams. It was something he thought would never happen again.

Color. In his colorless dreams. Something other than gray, something other than the nightmarish red.

Something. Awful.

By the time he'd been in for two years, he saw orange all day and all night long. He was tired of orange.

With each week he looked forward to Kate's visit with more desperation for a break. A break in the boredom of one color. Her visits brought relief and changed the color of his dreams to light sky blue for one night, too short a night.

Then Kate said her goodbyes and that night his dreams were gray again, not blue.

For one night. He started plotting then. Again. Something he hadn't done for over three years.

Oh, he'd made plans to escape before, just after he was put in. But after a while he decided to sit this one out. Especially with Kate being there every week and not somewhere in the wind. It was nice to stay in one place for a while. Even if it was government sponsored, with bad coffee, no ties, and orange everywhere.

With the deal with the FBI in place, he hoped never to see orange again. Well, never was a very strong word, but not in the amounts he'd had to endure in prison.

That's why it hurt. Orange meant hurt for him, when Peter threatened, mentioned or just looked like he would put him back again.

Red meant fear.

Orange meant hurt.

Then the plane blew up and everything mixed.

And light sky blue got a new meaning: revenge.

The end