Work Text:
“What’s your favourite colour?”
It’s a common icebreaker question. The kind of question that was meant to fill in the silence. Something small to get to know someone new. Something innocent and minuscule that most people don’t think twice about answering. A tidbit of information most people already know about themselves.
However, Red is not like most people, so when Chloe asked her the question during a slow night in their dorm, she didn’t have an answer. She never had to think about it before, too focused on surviving Wonderland and its madness to stop and wonder about something so trivial.
Which is why, a couple days later, she is sitting in Auradon Prep’s art studio, blank canvas propped in front of her, brush heavy in her hand.
She has already laid down a base—wide, instinctive strokes that bleed into one another without a plan. The bristles drag softly across the canvas as she dips them into the first colour without thinking.
Red.
She freezes mid-stroke.
Red? No, it can’t be red—though she can see why people would assume that. Her name is Red, after all, and everything she owns has some shade of the colour—but that’s more due to it fitting her rather than her actually favouring it.
Her jaw tightens as she rinses the brush too roughly in the water jar, crimson clouds blooming and spiralling before disappearing down the drain.
No. Red is not her favourite colour.
The colour reminds her of the Wonderland from before. The scarlet armour of the soldiers that patrol every street. The cerise walls of the palace that served as her prison. The ruby roses in the courtyard her mother adored. It is the dye of the mandated uniform that each citizen of old Wonderland used to wear. It is the blood that stains the stones after each unreasonable beheading.
Her brush trembles as she drags it back over the canvas, the red smearing darker where it overlaps itself.
Red is the Queen of Hearts. Her pin-straight hair. Her large, lavish gowns. Her sharp, claw-like nails that Red has felt trail her jaw as the empress assesses her imperfect heir. It is the colour of lips that says she is proud of her for all the wrong reasons and is disappointed in her for being who she is. It is the shackles of control that she so desperately wished to escape.
No. Red is definitely not her favourite colour. In fact, it might be her least favourite.
Her chest tightens. She scrubs the red out with white, then more white, until the canvas is bruised pink and uneven.
Pink?
She stares at the colour for a moment, contemplating. Pink reminds her too much of a girl that was too kind for her own good. Reminds her of what could have been the first time around if not for a few stolen feathers and a poisoned cupcake. Pink is the sad look on the face of a kind girl as she listens to her talk about her mother.
“If I was your mum, I would’ve love to have a daughter who thinks for herself.”
She shakes her head to get rid of the memory. Of a hand’s caress that was so different from the tyrant the kind girl would become. A caress that Red has desperately craved as a child.
Pink is too close and too fragile of a colour to consider it to be hers.
She sets the brush down, exhales, then reaches deliberately for another jar.
Green.
She loads the brush carefully this time before adding a new section to the canvas, letting the green spread outward like something alive.
Green like the colour of the leaves that greeted her on the other side of the Rabbit Hole, so unlike the unnatural colours of Wonderland’s own flora. Green as in her first taste of Auradon—of freedom—that she had, no matter how short-lived it was thanks to her mother. Green as in the promise of spring after experiencing the long winter that is Wonderland under her mother’s rule.
The brush strokes grow sharper, more jagged.
Green like the girl who made her mother the way she was. Green like the tentacles that pushed and shoved and stretched, encompassing a kind girl that gave too much but received too little. Green like the night in the lagoon, the night she uncovered the plot that changed her mother for the worst. Green like the mist that prompted a sea witch desperate for revenge to seek after a forbidden book. Green like the image of the younger (kinder) version of her mother turning into a literal monster—a monster that didn’t leave after the curse had ran its course and the slighted sea witch was satisfied with her revenge.
Red shudders, the brush slipping from her fingers and leaving an ugly streak across the canvas.
No. It’s not green either.
She wipes her hands on her smock and reaches for another colour.
Orange.
The paint glows warm as she applies it, softer strokes this time, slower. The canvas brightens.
Orange is safe. Orange is good. Orange is the sunset in Auradon that steals her breath every time. Orange is the forest in autumn, the way Chloe’s eyes light up when she talks about it.
Orange is the workshop as Maddox works on his newest invention. Orange is the only space in Wonderland where she can be herself with no fear of repercussion. Orange is Maddox himself. Orange is the warmth of him as he hugs her. It is the warmth of his words as he tells her he cares. Orange is the only person that cared for her in that cards-forsaken empire of madness.
She pauses her strokes. Yes… maybe orange is her favourite, but something inside her tells her that orange is not it. So she shelves it and labels the colour as ‘favourable but not the one.’
The clock ticks loudly on the wall. Red startles, glancing up at the time. She gathers her things, thanks the art teacher, and leaves the studio behind.
The distance between the art classroom to the dorm building is not long, but it does pass across the courtyard where the orientation happened—a wide, open stretch of manicured stone and grass framed by ivy-covered walls. A marble fountain sits at its centre, water catching the light as it spills gently over carved figures, while neatly trimmed hedges and flowering trees soften the space.
The answer to the question strikes her then.
The place triggers a memory so vivid that she quickens her pace. She arrives at her dorm room in the record time and bursts through the door.
“Blue!”
Chloe looks up from polishing her sword, startled by the redhead’s sudden entrance. “What?”
Red grins as she plops down next to the girl. “My favourite colour—it’s blue.”
The other girl stares at her for a second, before a noticeable flush appears across her cheeks. “Oh.” She looks down at her sword, a small smile tugging on her lips. “I’m glad you figured it out."
Red hums in agreement, leaning back on the bed.
Of course it’s blue.
Blue like the sky the day she received the letter that changed her life. A sky so vast it made her chest ache, stretching endlessly above her with the promise of something more. A promise of escape. Of choice. Of a future that did not already have her ending written in blood and crowns.
Blue like the gleaming, magical waters of the Enchanted Lake—so clear it feels unreal, as if the world itself is holding its breath beneath the surface. The way the sunlight fractures into a thousand shimmering pieces when it hits the water. The way the lake reflects her back at herself, not as the Queen of Hearts’ daughter, not as an heir or a weapon, but simply as Red. It is her favourite place in Auradon because it is quiet, because nothing there asks anything of her.
Blue like the ink stains smeared across her hands and the front of her shirt when her pen exploded mid-sentence during a late-night study session in their dorm room. Blue splattered everywhere—on her notes, on the desk, on her skin—while Chloe stared for a heartbeat before dissolving into laughter, trying and failing to hide it behind her sleeve. The sound had startled something loose in Red’s chest then, light and unfamiliar, and she remembers thinking that maybe messes didn’t always have to mean punishment.
Blue like Ella.
Ella, who looked at her and didn’t flinch. Who saw straight through the sharp edges and recognized the scared girl and offered her something no one ever had before—a way out. Ella, who was so much like her in all the ways that mattered. Kind, even when it cost her. Strong, even when she was afraid. Persevering, even when the world seemed determined to grind her down. Blue like the courage it took to believe that things could be different and to act on it.
And blue like Chloe.
Her roommate. Her best friend. The one who meets her anger with patience, her silence with understanding. The one who made her believe—slowly, carefully—that she is not broken. That she is good. That she is enough. Blue like the calm that settles over her whenever Chloe is near, like exhaling after holding her breath for too long. Blue like safety. Like home.
“What about you?”
“What about me?
Honey-brown eyes open to look at the girl besides her. “What’s your favourite colour, Bluey?”
Chloe stills before letting out a small laugh. She turns to look at Red, a small smile playing at her lips, eyes crinkling just so.
“It’s brown.”