I am quite shocked to be back here.

I had planned to continue this, maybe making it through the rainbow, but...

Well, writing this second piece was a TOTAL BEATING. I am utterly disappointed with how it turned out and I feel it strays from the pattern set by the first far too much. Alas, it is what it is, and at least it is done. I doubt I will be making a third trip back (especially for yellow).

There is no particular order or universe to place these in. They come and go willy-nilly.

D: Not mine.

(Orange: enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation)

Sansa-stains

It was ruined, utterly ruined!

She slams the door to her chambers shut behind her...or rather, she intends to slam it, but it is quite a heavy door and she doesn't have the strength its weight requires for such an act. All the same, she feels her dire circumstances deserve more impact than the soft click she receives as it slides shut. The muted closing only serves to mock her fury further, and in retaliation for its treachery she turns and pounds on the door's smooth wooden surface with hands stained orange. Her fists come down hard and fast in a manner she knew was most unbecoming for a lady of her station, but in that moment she simply did not care.

Her sister threw fruit and no one cared. She acted no better than a wilding in the dwelling of the King, and everyone pretends otherwise, like she was somehow exempt from such rules. If they gave no regard for the loss of decorum, then why should she? Propriety or honor or any such things mattered not to her any longer, for her lovely morning had turned positively dreadful.

The dress and the day and her life, all of them, a complete disaster.

The dress though, especially. Such a lovely gown too, and so unlike any of the ones she had brought with her from the North. Her companions had said it was particularly pretty against the milky whiteness of her skin and the auburn sheen of her hair, a lovely contrast of cream and honey for all to behold. She looked the part of a princess, for certain, and surely the prince could not help but to fall in love with how beautiful she looked today. Oh, to think upon her sweet prince...how her heart trilled simply at the mention of him!

And now she would never know if it would have pleased him or not, when to please him was all she ever desired, because her sister had to go and ruin it!

She always ruined everything!

Dipping her hands into her wash basin, she began to pry the bits of rind from under her nails where they were embedded following her attempts to scrape the orange from her dress. As the water took on a faintly peach tint, her anger flared, and she was struck with an overwhelming desire to dump the basin over the perpetrator's head. Her Septa would say that she was much too old for childish notions, but she couldn't help the surge of desire that overtook her as she wondered once again if the grey-eyed wench was for true her sister.

For no two girls could possibly be so different as they, and in every possible way. Where she was fair and polite as a proper lady should be, the other was bore a darker complexion was as ill-mannered as though she had not been raised high-born. Not to mention that she thought lovely, her sister found boring and useless. Like dresses, for the younger of the two would probably prefer a pair of their brother's breeches and a dirty tunic to fine fabrics hanging in her wardrobe. She placed no value on lovely new dresses, even those that one received as a gift and didn't even get a chance to show to their betrothed because their infuriating sister ruined them with an orange!

Stupid orange, she thought, fingering the stain which stood in stark contrast to the ivory of the gown. Stupid sister, she felt, wishing she had a piece of fruit of her own to throw back. Stupid...oh, everything, she wanted to scream as she ripped the dress off of herself.

Jon-sunrise

He was alone as he watched the sky, dark and stained orange in the distance.

Sleep had not come to him that night, no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, bloodshot from the effort of refusing tears, and buried himself beneath his furs. His body was weary from exhaustion and his head felt heavy from the wine, but his mind would not be quieted. Thoughts came to him unbidden and he could not turn them away.

He had known that the King's arrival was sure to bring change for them all, that their realm's ruler would not leave his throne simply for want of his old friend's companionship, no matter how close they had been as boys. But when the truth of the visit was exposed he was blindsided by how quickly the news had changed everything. The strained matter of his own existence at the castle had always been on a shaky precipice, and the winds of change which His Grace brought with him from King's Landing left the bastard teetering precariously. He thought back to being made to sit separated from his siblings while they had supped this evening and felt the first bubblings of bitterness start to simmer once more within him at the memory. Bitterness, and yet guilt at feeling so, when he knew in truth that was his place. His brothers and youngest sister might forget at times that he was only a bastard, but he never could. And his seat that night only showed that the rest of the kingdom couldn't either.

But even despite the conflict of the two emotions ebbing and flowing within him, there was something else that lingered more heavily in the pit of his stomach which he knew to be the true cause of his unrest. Try as he might, he could not stop his thoughts from finding their way back to his Uncle and the words the two had exchanged, words that echoed endlessly in his head as he tried to block them out with the steady in and out of Ghost's breathing. It was too quiet in his chambers to find any real relief, though, and after what must have been hours it seemed pointless to continue trying to do what seemed impossible. Sick of lying abed with eyes that refused to stay closed and a weight in his heart he could not shake, he finally acquiesced. Dressing, he left his chambers silently to exchange warm stone for the early chill and orange sky of the outdoors.

He had meant what he told his Uncle. With every fiber of his being he had meant the words. He would never father another Snow, couldn't bear to put the name of a bastard on any son of his own. Ben had said he didn't understand, but his uncle was the one who couldn't grasp the truth behind the statement. A trueborn son, even the third of his house, would never bear the shame of being baseborn. His entire life had been spent in disgrace, and the Wall offered him the only chance he might ever have to be free of it.

And yet, as the light around him slowly changed, he felt the first tendrils of unease unfurl within him as streaks of orange painted the sky.

Darkness dissipating, he narrowed his eyes at the rising sun. Winter was coming, he felt it as surely as even in the frigid morning air. He might not have a house of his own, the words of his father's were as true to him as to any of his half-siblings, mayhaps more.

Let it come, for he would be at the wall to greet it.

Robb-shadows

He wasn't scared, not truly.

At least, that was what he said aloud, but his chin trembled a bit when he uttered the words, and he knew in his heart it to be a lie. He hoped the others couldn't tell in the dark though, for he was to be Lord of the castle when he was grown, and Lord's weren't scared of anything, or lie, either.

It was only a small tale, really, for though he was in fact frightened, it was only a little bit. It was dark and damp down in the crypts, the air stale and heavy with a sense of ill-boding that slithered over his skin like an eel. The sconces on the walls burned low from its weight, casting eerie shadows in dark corners and bathing the group of children huddled under their light with a muted glow which was stained orange. Unnatural, jaundiced shades illuminated their faces as they took in the shapes of the Starks who had come before them, exposing the fear they tried to mask for what it was.

He was less scared than his little sister, but that wasn't much to speak of. The wide-eyed girl who favored their mother so strongly was only six and scared of everything. She did not even try to pretend otherwise, and the slightest of sounds had sent her fleeing to his side only moments after they had entered. He felt rather like father when he put his arm around her trembling shoulders and whispered assuring words into her ear. It was a nice feeling, and he drew up his spine as buried her face into his tunic, unable to look upon the seated figures before them any longer. He kept his eyes glued to their stone faces though, for he felt another gaze heavy on him, daring his to falter.

For certain he was more scared than his father's ward, the elder boy who had proposed they come down here in the first place. It wasn't quite true to say that they were forbidden to visit the chambers underneath the castle, but he knew his mother would be displeased to learn of it. The Ironborn boy had teased him, saying that he would run crying to the lady at the first sign of a specter, but he had sworn upon the old gods that he would do no such thing. He wished he had not been so hasty to concede to the challenge now though, as orange-tinged light flickered over an ancestor in such a way that was most unsettling, and he hoped desperately it was only the glow of the flame making its eyes gleam so.

He could not be sure, though, about his half-brother. The dark-haired boy was as solemn as ever as they moved silently down the corridors, his features not betraying a single emotion as he gazed upon each face as resolutely as the next. While their sister's and his own hair gleamed like copper under the flame, the bastard's seemed to only deflect it, leaving him clothed in darkness as he stood to the side in the shadows as was his custom. Black suited him, and mayhaps he never looked quite as at home in the castle as when half-concealed by shadows.

But when he took a torch from the wall to pass to his brother, a slicker of gold passed over the other boy's face, and with it revealed the half-smile so rarely exposed to the light. It was gone in an instant, but he was certain the crypts were not half so frightening as they had been the moment before.

Arya-cats

She didn't think it had even seen her.

Quiet as a shadow and light as a feather in her work, she took sure, surreptitious steps on the balls of her feet as she made her way towards the ginger feline. It didn't so much as twitch a whisker at her approach, just sat there bathed in the muted sunlight, letting the warmth linger on its fur. Carelessly, it lifted a paw to its mouth and began to clean the dirt from between its toes, a smile breaking out on her own face as she drew closer and closer. She would surely have this one, she was close enough to see the stripes stained orange in its tabby coat. The same dust the cat removed from its own paw was scarcely disturbed beneath her feet as she moved with all the grace of a water dancer, never making even the smallest of sounds.

Surely, when she finally managed to complete the task he set before her, he would be proud of her. Upon capturing the cat she would return it to her dancing instructor, hissing and spitting at them both before he gave it a moment's glance and jerked his chin upward to consent her to release it. He would frown at her all the while, making some comment about the scratches she had acquired along the way or the length of time her conquest had taken her, but there would be something like a smile lurking in his eyes. Afterwards her skin would burn from the wounds and her body ache from new steps he had deemed her capable to learn, dips and turns and leaps that would improve her hunting. She would collapse into her pillows with exhaustion later, muscles twitching as she practiced even in her sleep.

Her dreams held a different partner to dance with, though.

Did he know how to twist into the darkness of shadows and make himself disappear? Would he have liked her to teach him? What would he say of the new way she handled her Needle, what of her dancing lessons? What else would he have shown her, in the lessons of his own she would have insisted he give her if they had remained at Winterfell?

He would have been proud of her, of that much she was certain. He would have laughed at the scratches on her hands but still helped her to bandage them with his gentle touch, promising not to tell her mother how she had come to receive them. He would have smiled at her, that secret little half-grin reserved for just her, his favorite, while he mussed her hair. He would have laughed at her, surely, but his laughter never hurt the way other people's did.

She longed for that laugh, so different from anyone else in their family that she wondered if he must have gotten it from his mother. It was not the sort of laugh that women should have though, and that made her yearn to take as her own all the more.

Advancing on the cat, orange as a pumpkin and lithe as the tigers in the stories Nan had told her as a babe, her heart beat faster, almost as though he was there watching her. She could imagined she could feel his eyes, as gray as her own, watching her solemnly as she crept along the wall. The cat realized her presence a split second too late, contorting itself in her grip violently with all the fury it knew. Blood ran from her hands as she clutched it to her, but she minded not.

All she could hear was that laugh, echoing in her ears.

Orange was the color of my high-school. I am prejudged to dislike it.