FFM10: Beginnings
Vorce was a lot of things, but to no single person. He was a teddy bear, metaphorically speaking, shot up with more drugs than there are letters of the alphabet. He was a host, if by result or to begin with no one really knew. He had been the boy with two left feet and never shoes, and socks shoved down his throat. In pain or in fear, it must always be silent, he learned. Screaming was never an option- or rather, it was always the option that caused the most pain. Like most beings, Vorce shied away from all forms of abuse.
He had traveled the greater districts after his... fall from humanity. No one had taken his... counterpart well, if the various attempts of forced sex work or circus acts had been any sort of clue. Vorce had escaped, with a few more scars and a few less friends. Zero became a heavier burden, too much not to trigger but too much to be seen as.
A dancer- she had refused the name gypsy, calling it a slur against her people, and thrown an apple at him, had called his transformation startling. Vorce had done what most people didn't, he had admitted fault and begged to learn. She had held him like a child, and told him that he needed to find faith of some sort, not unlike her Devla. That his kind of internal evil wasn't something that would go away like he had always hoped. She had held him like a lover, with soft guiding hands. He had held the woman for months without learning her name.
Vorce still didn't know her name after the riots took her, and took to the road.That was where he was found, years later. A few more badges, a few more scars, too many scares.
A Djinn, who called herself Reyna, found him sleeping under a bridge, and she hadn't been kind. Not in the violent way, but in the way she dragged him by the collar to coffee shop and got him some proper food. Vorce didn't talk much, but he could listen well. That's what he did, in between bites of chocolate pancakes with syrup and hot sauce.
Reyna talked about each stranger that passed by the window, at least the ones she recognized. Vorce had never understood the need to fill silence, but her voice sounded nice. Comforting, even. Sometimes, she would stop long enough to enjoy a cup of coffee, or an apple. Vorce didn't know how long they had sat, only that she paid the tab when she was ready, and they parted ways.
He could remember her name, one of songs and royalty. It rolled off his tongue. He didn't have to bury her. He never told her his name.
It would be months before he was pulled out from behind a dumpster, this time in anger. His back hit a wall and Zero jumped to the forefront, more for the sake of safety than an actual fight. Zero was much different from his host, a nuisance at best.
Zero could never last very long, and destruction ended before the turn of the clock. Vorce had won out, thanks to an alley cat. This time, when she found him, it was raining and the cat had left him to seek shelter. Reyna was not alone, and he was too tired to fight her off.
Vorce resigned himself. Maybe, maybe this is what she had meant by faith.
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