100 Blinks

011 Name

Even though the title has been passed to her son, she is still known as and called 'War'. No one knows her name anymore. This is just such a hazard of being the title.

She trades the mask for accenting powdered color and painted lips, the big roaring Warhorse for a smaller less-powerful model. She trades the armor and leathers for fine silks and jewels. She changes everything ... but her name.

She returns to the Citadel a woman without obligations, without alliances. Her son carries her previous loyalties, as all Wars have done in the past. She can only pledge fidelity to the child's father. She has political loyalties only to herself.

The factories and company are signed off to her eldest, Thaddius looks much older than when she left him. She's sure she looks older to him, as well, but it is in the way those eyes still light behind to see her again that betrays he has not forgotten her, in the least. Their reunion is small and intimate, missed embraces and reacquainting one another's presence to the other.

Greetings are given, verbal and non, before he asks, "What is your name?"

She almost tells him 'War'.

She almost gives him the name he has called her by for decades. The name she was forced to remember in place of the one bestowed her at her birth. She realizes it is the birthname he has requested. Thaddius has been respectful of her customs and titles for almost thirty years now. It is only fair, she concludes, that after all is said and done, he should know her name.

If only she could remember it herself.

Her jaw flounders halfway through the motion to tell him her title, that which is no longer her title. No noise is issued forth, but she can see by the way one brow quirks on his face that he knows she has forgotten. No; not forgotten. Simply replaced.

War minds are like bear traps; they hold memories and details no human being could ever remember. Just because it is locked away in the past does not mean she has forgotten it. It just means it is out of reach. He is patient as she thinks, processes. Searches her memory.

Everyone in the Reach, even outside her jurisdiction, calls her War.
Everyone in every cavern, every territory she has ever passed through calls her War.
In Babel, she is War. In Slagrock, she is War.

She knows it is in there, somewhere. She knows she has to trek through almost thirty-five, forty years of her life to find it. Everywhere she looks, everything she filters through. Her identity is not hers. Is she really so different now?

Who am I?

Every twisting corridor, every door opened in the mental space. Every window checked, all the dusty shelves scoured. Upstairs, downstairs, attics and basements in her mind. Boxes and trunks metaphorically rifled through. She takes a step back and it is evident on her face to him now.

She is beginning to panic. Everywhere she turns, everywhere she looks to. It's only War. It hits like a brick, the realization that she is not a human being. She is only a new face to a single entity and nothing more.

A copy, a clone.
Carefully bred, carefully honed.
A weapon, a figurehead.
Not a person.

She is only, forever and always, War.

She wants to cry, but can't. That was stripped from her and the panic in place of not remembering, digging through memories down to the last detail, replaces the actual need to weep. Trying to remember every voice, everyaspect of everyone she has ever had contact with.

Someone must have used it somewhere!

Almost like an answer, it hits. A peal, like a bell, on a rumbling and familiar voice. She hasn't heard that voice in so long.

Passed the very first addressing as War.
Passed all the beatings, all the training.
Passed Mama losing her mind, and her life, to the magnet.
She is watching the 'faeries' on the ceiling.

She points up to the ceiling in the entry hall. Above the crystal chandelier with its lights in full blaze, a faint breeze of displaced air wafting through open windows and jingling the crystal drops on the wrought iron frame above. Light reflections play through the faceted crystal, across the ceiling and walls and floor.
Papa is there, sitting on the stairs beneath the landing, that soft smile on his face as she cries, "Look, Papa! Faeries! The faeries are playing!"
He chuckles, low and warm. Pale eyes direct from the dancing lights to the little girl on the landing. The training has started, but it has not yet settled. She is still small and innocent, though that will be gone before the next year.
"And that is why you are Fae. You belong with the faeries, don't you."

The name rings in her ears, residual with that dangerously charming smile. It takes a single moment to process it, Thaddius actually looks slightly worried at the distressed silence that took hold for a while. It is a moment longer for her to mentally sound it out and prepare herself for it. It still sounds so foreign, like it belongs elsewhere, and not to her.

"Fae." She pauses, drawing abyssal blue eyes to his red-ringed jade to try and help solidify it. "Mein name ... ist Fae."

A subdued look of satisfaction crosses his face before he looks as though contemplating it. His lips move silently, committing it to memory, before he draws a reply.

"...'Fae Blakk' does have a certain ring to it."

He hobbles off, the metal cane clacking on the floor to mark his exit. Her surprise at the statement gives him enough of a headstart before she follows after him to ask what he meant exactly by it.

To be honest, she doesn't need an explanation. She just likes to hear him try to explain it.