Fluctuat nec Mergitur

Chapter 1

A/N: Words underlined are words spoken in French but written out in English. Same goes for Arabic, in bold.

*Max's POV*

I walked the street carefully, turning into a specific alley between two buildings, one abandoned. It curved behind the empty building, which was once a sub-par, small hotel. I followed it.

I opened the back door, stepping inside. The floor creaked horribly. Nothing new. The lighting was little more than mediocre and most floors remained in the dark most of the time. There is no bad part of the city, but this street is one of the more overcast ones and this hotel was right in the middle of it.

I shrugged off my leather jacket, walking through the dingy kitchen and up a set of noisy stairs to room 199. Other people live here; I mutually ignore them all. Some are my age and others are in their 20's. We all just need someplace to live. They come and go.

I don't own much; the men's leather jacket I am holding is the only outerwear article of clothing I possess. I have pair of black jeans and a white tee with a black star on it. I stole them. It wasn't hard. I don't have any other future.

I speak French. All the people I know do. Their (and my) English is poor. My parents taught me Romani and a little Arabic when I was very small because my mother spoke it. This old motel is in Paris, France. More specifically, I live in East Paris, the center of Parisian hell on earth. Concentrated poverty at its finest. You could sit outside and count rats like sheep.

I stand at 1.63 meters. I know that's not that tall. My hair is dark brown sort of wavy. My eyes are a similar dark shade of brown, flecked with gold. I've got a scar that runs diagonally through my left eyebrow, leaving a gap, and you can see it on my cheek too. It's from a dog bite when I was little. Scars from the same dog are on my upper right arm, where it tried to take a large piece out of a small kid. I don't like dogs.

I'm 16. That's it, that's about all I really care to tell. I don't have a family; both my parents are dead and I have no idea where my siblings are, if they're still alive. I barely remember any of my family at all, but I have nightmares and they are in them.

My ears aren't pieced; there's no use in that. I do have two tattoos, one on my inner left forearm, a black circle with a geometric mountain shape with stars. The other wraps around my right upper arm. It is two black bands, both perhaps a half inch thick. Black armbands have, in the past, been a symbol that the wearer is mourning the loss of a loved one. I've lost two pairs of parents. It seems fitting.

One of the very few things I know about my parents is that my mother was Romani, her parents immigrating to France when she was a teenager, and my father was a French Jew and his family has been for centuries. That's it. That's all I know. I have a photograph of my parents that has been in my possession ever since I can remember, for some reason.
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Anyway, they're both dead; I was four, maybe five, but I remember it well. I watched them die, shot to pieces. I watched their murder. I know this because I remember being taken away from my home. I do remember it, even if it is hazy. I remember screaming and crying and never seeing my siblings again. Who knows where they are.  I'll never know.

I tossed my jacket on my desk, which was made of faded, discolored wood. The walls were an awful off-white and none of the colors in the room went together. All the rooms were like this. There was no color scheme. This is where dreams go to die.

I sat in my bed and looked around at everything I didn't have. The blinds couldn't be raised without further destroying the mechanism and the door to the tiny, dysfunctional bathroom never stayed closed on its own. The bed I've been describing is a half-destroyed mattress on the floor. I never use my desk for anything. I don't own anything to put on it besides my jacket. If I had a house, I probably couldn't afford even the desk, much less the building itself.