Pink (Was the Colour of Our Souls) Chapter 1: Pink, a voltron: legendary defender fanfic

"A banquet?"

The Paladins of Voltron stood before me, bearing a variety of expressions. Hunk and Lance's eyes immediately lit up, grinning like children; Keith and Pidge merely looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders. Shiro was the only one who kept his eye contact with me, asking the question.

"Yes, a banquet," I confirmed. "Or, as you humans may more commonly call it, a f—"

"Party!" Hunk and Lance interrupted, high-fiving each other enthusiastically. Pidge joined in, shimming his way in-between the two other boys on the couch and cheering with them. Keith rolled his eyes in annoyance and Shiro chuckled.

"I was going to suggest a feast, but I suppose a party will do." I clasped my hands together in front of my hips. "We must celebrate our success in gaining the Arusians as an ally in our fight against Zarkon. As you know, we Alteans believe in spreading peace throughout the universe. My father loved to do so by holding interplanetary banquets and inviting guests to our castle. I would like to continue his tradition by holding one tonight in the castle. We will open the castle's doors for the Arusians who inhabit this planet and serve them Altean delicacies."

In a small gesture of solemness, Hunk, Lance, and Pidge exchanged their excited chatter for quiet nods. The two who didn't nod were Keith and Shiro.

"Princess," Shiro began, "I'm all for following in your father's footsteps, but we only just secured an alliance with the Arusians. Opening up the castle leaves us vulnerable to attacks from all around."

"Shiro's right," Keith agreed. He leaned forward in his spot on the lounge, his black fringe barely falling over his eyes. "Yesterday, we fought the Gladiator. The Galra already knows we're here. Who knows what could attack us next? We should build the castle's defences and train. We need to—"

Lance haphazardly interrupted Keith with a loud groan. "Keith? Chill! Like the princess said, it's tradition for Alteans to hold things like this. It'll be a great way to show that we're definitely on the Arusians' side!"

"We already did that by defending their village from the Gladiator; by not letting their people get crushed to death!"

"Far out, Keith; what's your problem?" Lance exchanged his tone of annoyance for mockery. "You know what you need? You need to take a chill pill."

"I'm extremely chi—"

"Keith. Lance. Calm down." A glance and sharp word of warning from Shiro immediately ceased the Paladins' bickering. Sometime during their quarrelling, they'd stood up from their places and butted heads again—literally. But after Shiro's short chastisement, they sat back down and crossed their arms, still glaring at each other. Pidge and Hunk were stifling laughs; they seemed to be willing to sit this one out.

I met Keith and Shiro's eyes. "If it's any consolation, Coran and Pidge have been working hard on improving the castle's defence systems, especially the particle barrier. And Shiro, if you're that uncomfortable with this, you can perform as many perimeter checks as you want." I paused. "I want you all to understand that I really want our first step as a team to be a welcoming, friendly one. As one of the only Alteans left, it would mean more to me than you could ever imagine."

I cast my eyes on Shiro, who listened to me intently. Despite his concerned eyes, he begrudgingly nodded. "If that's what you want, Princess, then alright." He ran his prosthetic hand through the white part of his hair, then stood up. "How long until the banquet…feast…thing?"

"We open the doors in about two vargas," I answered. When everyone looked at each other quizzically, I added, "That's around two of your Earth hours." I turned to Hunk. "Coran is currently in the kitchen, preparing our meals for tonight. If you'd like to help—"

"I'm not letting Coran cook everything tonight unless you want the Arusians to die from food poisoning!" he interrupted, running off to the castle's kitchen. "Seeya!"

Everyone in the room laughed; I joined in. The Paladins' general opinion on Coran's cooking was that it was certainly…questionable. That was most likely half due to Coran's cooking skills, and the other half due to Altean food tickling humans' acquired tastebuds.

After that, the rest of the team began to dissipate. Keith and Lance split into opposite directions (after childishly trying to get the last word in, of course) and Pidge went to his bedroom. Soon, it was only Shiro and I in the room. He was still standing and so was I.

I smiled at the ground. "Tonight should be fun. I'm looking forward to see all of the Arusians in the castle. Besides, it's only fair to let them see the inside of a castle that's been sitting on their planet for so long."

"That's true. But I still can't help but wonder when Zarkon will attack again," Shiro sighed. "I'll make sure to do perimeter checks all night, just in case."

I nodded. "Better safe than sorry. Thank you, Shiro." After a moment's pause, I began to toy with my hair using the tips of my fingers. To save face, I said, "I may as well tell the other Paladins that their dress code tonight is their suits," and began to walk off.

Surprisingly, Shiro followed me. "I can do that for you."

"What? No, there's no need for that."

"I insist," he smiled, falling in line with my steps. "You can go ahead and get ready for tonight."

The automatic metal doors of the room opened as we approached them. We walked into one of the castle's many hallways. "Get ready? What makes you think I need to get ready?"

My simple question seemed to take him off guard. "Oh—no, I didn't…" His voice trailed off, stuttering. He quickly recomposed himself. "I just thought that you might like to take a nap before the banquet tonight."

"A nap?" I laughed. He did, too. "You don't need to try and save yourself, Shiro. I'm already dressed as I'd like to be."

"I'm sorry, Princess," he muttered shyly. He rubbed his non-Galra hand on the back of his neck. "It's just—on Earth, many females prefer to spend a lot of time getting ready for parties. There's no problem with that, of course. I personally don't mind that." He looked down at the ground and rubbed his cheek. "Not at all…"

"Oh? Is that so?" I clasped my hands behind me. "Would you prefer me t—"

"No, no, Princess," he quickly sputtered, "I didn't mean to suggest anything. I believe that everyone should be able to dress the way they'd like." His voice was soft now, like he didn't want to upset me.

"Don't worry about offending me; in fact, I believe that, too."

"Just you, or did the rest of Altea believe in that?" Shiro couldn't help but ask.

"As far as I know, we all believed in free spirit and peace." I looked up at the metallic ceiling, smiling nostalgically. "We wanted to spread our levels of peace throughout the entire universe. We did not discriminate between one another because we saw no point to that. The only wars we participated in were interplanetary wars—and even then, we believed in mercy before murder." I glanced at Shiro, who was fully engaged in what I was saying. His dark, black eyes were interested, but there was a certain melancholy in them that I could not put my finger on.

"That's…that's amazing," he said finally. "Earth has a long history of civil wars—wars between its own people. It was often because of different beliefs or skin colours that they fought. Some ended in mass genocides because the leaders drove themselves into madness. They killed those who didn't fit their concept of perfection." My heart sank as he talked. He took a deep breath through his nose. "Even a century later, people still hate each other because of the way they dress or talk. If Earth was as peaceful as Altea, maybe humans would be nicer people."

I took a moment to gather my words. "A planet of constant warring within itself sounds absolutely horrible. And because of the way people dress? That's unbelievable. But…if Altea was a little like Earth, then maybe we would have been a little more prepared for the big Galra attack that wiped everyone out."

We stopped at the end of the hallway. "Princess, don't say that," Shiro said softly. He put his hand on my back and searched for my eyes, which had dropped to the ground. I held a hand to my chest. "Don't blame yourself. I know you do. It's not good for you."

"I'm trying, Shiro. I'm trying."

Shiro removed his hand from my back. We turned left into another hallway. A silence had fostered between us again, but this time, it wasn't uncomfortable to be around; in fact, it was quite enjoyable. Walking next to Shiro was therapeutic, in a way. Our arms brushed a few times, and although each time I quickly retracted, a part of me wondered what it would be like to constantly hold onto that warmth.

"Tell me something else about Altea," Shiro said gently. He looked at me inquisitively, eyebrows raised in interest. "Maybe about the clothing your people would wear."

"Well, lots of female Alteans liked to wear longs skirts and dresses like mine," I began. "Our clothing's staple colour was white: white for purity and peace. That's why your suits are white—because even when you're fighting, you're fighting for peace.

"My father instructed our family's dressmaker to use lots of blue and yellow in our clothing. There were yellow and gold accents in the details of our clothing, and many materials were dyed a royal blue—why, I never knew. Perhaps he liked those colours."

"I take it that you like blue and yellow, then," Shiro assumed.

"Yes…they're nice," I said waveringly.

"But?"

"But they don't compare to my favourite one."

Shiro cocked his head to the side, the white part of his fringe falling over his left eye. "Which is…"

"Pink!" I exclaimed, pointing to a stripe of baby pink on the bottom of my long dress. Shiro smiled widely, laughing. "What? What is it?"

Shiro held a fist to his mouth, grinning into it. "I—I don't know what I expected, but that definitely wasn't it."

I pouted, lightly putting my hands on my hips. "Why not? Is there something wrong with pink?"

"Absolutely not." Shiro calmed down, shaking his head. His eyes clouded over. "On Earth, pink is…the colour of femininity. Lots of little girls like pink because it reminds them of ballerinas and cupcakes and sparkles."

It was my turn to be confused. "Why was a gender placed on a colour? I don't understand."

Shiro shrugged. "It's just been that way for a very long time. But in the last century, lots of people have been rebelling against associating colour with gender. I'm sure if you asked nicely, the other boys in the team wouldn't care if you got them to wear a pink shirt."

I smiled. "Would you wear a pink shirt?"

"If you want, Princess."

I laughed, lightly elbowing his arm. "I like pink because there was not a lot of natural pink on Altea. That's also why I like mountain juniberries so much: their deep, pink colour is beautiful, and their scent is amazing in a morning breeze…" I took a deep breath through my nose as if I could smell the Altean flowers.

"They sound amazing, Princess." Shiro's tone was sincere. "Were there many plants on Altea?"

"A few—not as many as Arusia, of course," I explained. "The other plants were shades of blue or purple, but never pink. Lots of male Alteans picked flowers for their partner as gifts. It was incredibly heartwarming." I chuckled. "Of course, my father would never see it that anyone gifted me anything. He was very overprotective."

Shiro gave me a teasing look. "I'm sure he'd approve if Lance – or any one of the other paladins – gifted you flowers."

"Lance? Don't be ridiculous!" I laughed alongside Shiro. "If anyone was to be approved by my father, then it would be—"

I cut myself short. The mood suddenly grew tense.

"Who?" Shiro pried gently.

I swallowed thickly before saying, "It's not important."

I put on a fake smile, continuing to ignore the heavy beating in my chest that became present when we first started talking. Thankfully, Shiro didn't push me any further; if he did, the awkwardness would have spread throughout the entire castle.

We came to the end of the hallway and turned right into another one. Sometimes, the castle seemed like a giant maze. I couldn't begin to imagine what it must have been like for the new Paladins. In saying that, there have only been a few instances in which people have gotten lost in the castle. Despite only having lived in the castle for a couple of quintents, the five new residents have grasped the layout of the castle quite well—Shiro especially.

I had to break the silence somehow, so I asked, "Why did you laugh when I said I liked the colour pink?"

"I…didn't expect pink to be your favourite," he hesitantly explained. "I thought blue might be, but that's just because of your father's fashion choices." He looked at me and grinned lopsidedly. "Plus, you said it so excitedly that I couldn't do anything but laugh."

"Perhaps I was a little overenthusiastic about the cause," I admitted. Glancing at him again, his side profile struck me as stunning. His jawline was extremely prominent and his eyelashes were longer than any of the other paladins'. I cleared my throat. "What's your favourite colour, then?"

Shiro pondered this for a moment before saying, "I don't have one." He chuckled. "That's a bit boring, isn't it? But there are too many brilliant colours to choose from."

For a decisive team leader, he sure was indecisive. "That really is quite boring."

After a moment, Shiro said quietly, "You know what? No. My favourite colour is the same as yours: pink."

"Really?" I blinked in surprise. "That is…not what I expected."

"See? Not what you'd expect, right?"

I smiled, shaking my head. "Well then, why do you like pink? It can't be the mountain juniberries, so why?" I asked, genuinely intrigued.

Shiro's gaze dropped to the floor. He rubbed his cheek, side-eying me. Behind his hand, I saw a glimpse of pink. The large-bodied man actually managed to look small.

"It's actually a really cheesy reason. It's not something you'd expect from me, either. At least, that's what I've been told from people I've told before."

"Cheesy? What…what is cheese?"

Shiro snorted. "Cliché. Cheesy means cliché. Cheese is a type of food on Earth."

"Oh."

As Shiro laughed, I wondered how 'cheesy' his explanation could be. I gently nudged Shiro's arm, coercing him into admitting his explanation. As he died down, he pre-emptively apologised, saying, "I'm sorry for what you're about to hear."

"It can't be as cliché as you think it is."

Shiro sighed. "Back on Earth, my mum really liked romance novels. The really chee—cliché ones. When I was younger, I'd sometimes walk downstairs at night time when I couldn't sleep and find her sitting in front of our fireplace, wrapped in a blanket and re-reading one of the ones she knows like the back of her hand. She always looked so happy reading, even when she got to a sad part and started crying. No, happy isn't the word…'content' is. Yeah. She looked content.

"One night, I walked up to her in front of the fireplace. She was holding a notebook instead of a novel. It had a pink hardcover and had the words 'Letters to the Sky' written on it in black marker. She was holding a pen in her hand. I asked her what she was doing. She told me she was writing. I asked her if she was writing a book like the ones she always read. She said, "Kind of." I asked her if I could read it, but she said, "No; when you're older." So, I sat on the floor in front of her and watched her write.

"As she wrote, she began to cry. I asked her what was wrong; she said, "Nothing. Everything's okay." So I didn't ask her anything anymore.

"She eventually finished writing. When she did, she put her notebook and pen down on the table beside her and told me to sit on her lap. When I did, she hugged me close to her and put her chin on my head. She hugged me so tightly that I wondered if she was okay. She kissed the top of my head again and again. She said, "Shiro, I want you to know that everything I wrote in the book is true." Then she kissed me one more time and told me to go to bed.

"The following year, Mum died from breast cancer—a terminal illness that human women can get. I was twelve years old. I was…really sad. I felt broken, actually. But I found her notebook in my bedside drawer about a week after her funeral. On the inside cover of the book, she'd written a message to me, telling me to not read the notebook until I was eighteen. But I was a grieving kid, so of course I read it.

"The notebook was a collection of letters she wrote to future me, telling me how much she loved me and how proud she was of me. She used her writing as a coping mechanism to help her through her chemotherapy. She never told me about her cancer because she didn't want to destroy a kid who was eleven years old, so my aunt helped her hide it from me. She told me everything—her experiments with her sexuality, her first kiss, the music she liked, the books she liked. She recorded everything she remembered about her life in that notebook, all in the form of letters.

"The last letter was about the colour pink. She told me that when I was little, I'd planted pink flowers for her as a part of a school project. It took me weeks to grow them, but when they were fully in bloom, I gave them to her. She cried when I gave them to her. During her final days, she asked my aunt to buy her a bouquet of the same kind of flowers and put them in her hospital room. She told me that the last thing she wanted to see were those flowers because they reminded her of me.

"She wrote about what she thought the colour pink represented. It's a colour of femininity, yes—but it was also a colour of love. She said that it was the colour she thought of when she felt love. Throughout her life, she observed that pink was the colour people were drawn to when they were in love. People's cheeks went pink when they were in love. People drew pink hearts when they were in love. People bought pink rose quartz gems as gifts for the person they were in love with. People's lips went pink when they kissed the person they loved. People thought about pink when they were in love. Mum said she wanted me to know that she loved and she lost, and even though she wouldn't be there to see me grow up and fall in love and have my heart broken like she did, she wanted me to know that she liked whoever I would grow up to love because she knew I would make the right choice. I always did.

"Then, she said she named her notebook 'Letters to the Sky' because when she died and went to Heaven, she wanted to take these letters with her up into the sky and keep both me and her memories with her."

My heart was shattered. His story touched me. I felt like I was obligated to say something because he had spoken for so long, but I couldn't. I couldn't find any words that fully expressed what I wanted to say. It was only when I sniffed, trying to clear my nose that I realised I was crying. I tried to wipe away the mess on my face, but my tear-stained cheeks would tell everyone the story of how I cried listening to another person speak.

Shiro and I had stopped walking about ten seconds into his story. He stopped all the formal talk and spoke from his heart. The entire time, I watched him go through all the motions. His face contorted at some parts and he had to take breaks at others, but he got through it. There was pain in the both of his beautiful, black eyes, but the entire time, there was a hint of a smile on his lips.

His pink, pink lips.

"Why…why aren't you crying?" I asked slowly, sniffling. "Aren't you sad?"

Shiro smiled melancholily. "I was sad. I am sad—of course I am. Ever since Mum's death, I would spend my nights re-reading her notebook and blaming myself for not seeing that anything was wrong with her. It was my way of grieving. Sure, it wasn't healthy at the time, but I managed. Slowly, I began to read it every second day, then every week, then every month…Eventually, I read it only on the yearly anniversary of her death. Growing up past twelve was hard without Mum, but I think I did pretty well."

Shiro stood in front of me and held my face in his hand. He wiped away the rest of my tears from my cheeks with his free hand. My heart skipped a beat and legs felt like green space goo.

And, for a moment, I saw pink.

There was pink on Shiro's cheeks. His biological hand was pink from body warmth. His neck and ears were pink. When I looked into his eyes, I saw pink beyond them. When he pressed my chest against his, I felt pink spread to them. When he wrapped his arms around me and when I wrapped mine around him, I felt my heart grow pink.

But, most importantly, from the moment we touched, I knew that pink was the colour of our souls.

I initially went into writing this as a two-chapter series, but as soon as I finished this first chapter, I wondered if I should leave this as it is. The second chapter I was planning to write will now turn into a sequel should there be requests for it. It includes a spoiler for season three (which, honestly, was an amazing season! Let's all bond over it together!) so if I do get requests for it, I'll publish it a few weeks after today.

Author's Note: I initially went into writing this as a two-chapter series, but as soon as I finished this first chapter, I wondered if I should leave this as it is. The second chapter I was planning to write will now turn into a sequel should there be requests for it. It includes a spoiler for season three (which, honestly, was an amazing season! Let's all bond over it together!) so if I do get requests for it, I'll publish it a few weeks after today.

The Shallura content in this is very, very cliche, and Shiro's 'backstory' is also very, very cliche. The two may be out of character, so I deeply apologise for that. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed reading this!