This one's a bit longer, but it felt necessary. It's not exactly that these colors are (or should be equated with) the characters from the show, but really are meant to approach them from a different point of view and give a chance to tell their stories, give them depth. At least, I hope….Thanks for the reviews, all! Posted right after writing so I hope there are no mistakes.
A Handful of Colors
Chapter Two: Pink
Like most any boy, Kimball Cho had grown up despising pink. Coming from a traditional family and having no sisters, he was always pushed to be the classic boy—never showing any weakness, constantly tough. It hadn't been a surprise (not to him, anyway) when he had rebelled against that strict, conventional upbringing and joined the gang.
Still, he rather thought that even if he hadn't been pushed that way, he still wouldn't have liked pink.
It was too feminine. Girly. Things that he definitely wasn't and never wanted to be associated with. There had never been the moment where he wore the pink cummerbund to coordinate with his nauseatingly high maintenance prom date.
As a teen, he went for years avoiding displays of weakness. After all, one moment of vulnerability in a gang and it could very well be the moment that would end everything. He became what was necessary. Cold. Ruthless. Tough. Emotionless. He appreciated the girls that showed street smarts, were cunning. No blond-haired, blue eyed cheerleaders in pink for him. He couldn't, wouldn't, waste his time.
And if it ever crossed his mind that he was at once old beyond his years and too young to know it, then he never let it show.
Until one day he saw all that pink could stand for.
He had seen many things on the streets. His parents would shudder at the idea that their son had coldly watched someone bleed out of a knife wound over a turf war. His teachers, wanting to believe that he was soft and needy under that tough-guy exterior, would be appalled if they knew that he aided in hustling kids who were so much weaker than he, who could easily be manipulated for money, for favors. For whatever the gang needed.
Leaning against the cold brick of the dilapidated building behind him, a teenage Cho watched a little girl skip down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road. Happily, she clutched a bright pink balloon. Idly, he wondered why a child around the age of six would be on these streets alone.
He didn't know until later that she had wandered away from her parents.
She was the classic little girl, one who must wile away the day with dreams of pink princesses and shining white ponies. Wearing pristine mary janes, blond hair in pigtails, purple and pink coat wrapped about her, she grinned up at her balloon.
And Cho wondered if he had ever felt so carefree. Wistfully, he stared at her expression, not quite recognizing this feeling inside of him.
A scuffle brought his attention down the road further, just feet ahead of where the girl was. His eyes narrowed. He recognized them. Drug dealers. The one thing he didn't touch, was careful to avoid. Those kind of vices only caused carelessness.
Even now, his memories of the next few moments were always in slow motion. A pulled gun. A shot echoing through the air. The ominous silence where there should have been the terrified scream of a small child. The deep red mingling with the light pink and purple of her coat.
Contrary to what everyone believed—his parents, teachers, cops—it wasn't juvie that turned him around, though he was thrown in there the very next day.
It was the sight of that pink balloon, floating up toward the sky, unaware of its fate. The foreboding and tragic sight of it snagging on a twisted wire at the top of the building and popping.
Fragments of pink rubber drifting down to the body of an innocent child who would never again know the light-hearted happiness that a simple pink balloon could bring.
And from then on, pink was no longer disgusting. Weak. But rather a soft kind of strong, one that could invade the most stalwart of gang-bangers and change them. Turn them.
As he sat at CBI headquarters looking out the window at the pink hues of the setting sun, he remembered that little girl and wondered who would believe that the color pink could make a man out of a boy, could turn a criminal into a crime fighter.
Could make him feel an emotion as human as sadness.
