My first post in a long, long while, so let me know what you think. Rated to be safe.
His first memory is a swirl of red. His mother in the many soft layers of her hanfu, teaching him how to maintain balance and poise as she taught him to dance. He used to dream that she had once been an elegant palace dancer in the ancient days of China, at times wishing the dream had been reality. Her lessons had served him well later in life, though his father had scoffed at them. 'He will be a strong warrior,' his father had said, 'Not some weak dancer.'
His next memory was a swirl of pink. The vibrant red that had been his mother's life was diluted until it was just a pale comparison to the woman he had known, her graceful dance ended forever more. His father had grunted and let her lie in the tub, saying it was no less than she deserved for teaching his son her weak ways. He had watched him walk away from her cold, pale body and quietly cleaned her up until she at least resembled the woman she had once been. It was called suicide, but he knew better.
And then it was white, the harsh, unnatural white of mourning clothes. Western cultures, he would learn later in life, thought it the color of purity, but he would forever and always associate it with death. He would hate the color, though he wore it often, and as he stood as the only true mourner among the other attendees at his mother's funeral he vowed he would not become what his father wanted. He would not dance—no, that was too painful. But neither would he be a warrior.
It wouldn't be too much longer before he met another woman, another woman of such a vibrant red that he couldn't help but think of his mother even as she thought like his father. But she, too, would fade far too fast, going from red to pink to white just as his mother had before her, and he would take up the mantle as warrior—not for his father, but for her. He would be what she wanted him to be in her memory because he could not be what his mother had wanted him to be in hers.
But sometimes, when he was by himself and there was no one around to see, he would think back to his mother's lessons and let the memories he'd forced himself to forget, the memories in between the swirl of red and the swirl of pink, guide him closer to the boy he could never be.