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Title: many-faced, many-named
fandom: World of Darkness (Mage: The Awakening)
square: roleplay
word count: 562
summary: You are an androgyne of many faces, many names, all of (none of) them your own.
content notes: no standard notes apply: remembered (and predicted) transphobia directed at the narrator.
You've gone through names like water, most of them not yours or ever yours, just fleeting masks, the roles you play, discarded as soon as you have no use for them, thrown aside and picked up again only rarely, if at all. Your names are fewer, far fewer, and you change them, rearrange, trying to find one that almost suits you, because your names hang as heavy on you as your body does, and it's almost as impossible to find the quite-right name as it is to make your body's changes permanent.
(your first name wasn't your own, your mother gave that to you: your second was your teacher's, who chose for you without asking. He called you Sparrow, a timid little brown bird: it was a year and a day before you ever thought to want to change the name, but he had to die before you could. And then you were Kestrel, but Kestrel was a girl, and you never were: now you are La Arana, intimidating, mysterious, and creepy, even - especially- to the Guardians under your command, but even that name hangs not quite right)
You remember the name you wrote on the Watchtower, at least you remember it now: that name is yours but only yours, held close to your heart, a name no one else will ever know, that defines your true self more than any other name you've ever had. But a name that you cannot, will not share, lest it be used to shatter you, and layers and layers and layers, built up around and through yourself.
You spend more time being other people than you do being yourself, sink into other lives: it's easier that way than being yourself: too scared, too terrified, of people to ever interact, fighting your own body every day of your life, easier to just put on another mask, another skin, another life, layer on a disguise and a new personality and a history woven skillfully out of whole cloth and lies and possibly even a fragment of truth and be someone else, gather information and spin your webs, passing unseen and unheard.
(you avoid being yourself as much as you can, shed your skin for another: you're afraid of everyone, can't speak without stammering unless you layer on your androgynous spider mask, both so close and so far from your true heart, intimidate everyone around you first, push them off guard so they can't intimidate you until you're trembling inwardly and want to fall out of your skin. you don't look for acceptance, because for all that mages see the truth beneath the world, they're as human and unaccepting as any other. your own teacher couldn't, wouldn't, see or accept your truth, refused to ignore your girl skin in favor of what lay beneath, and you have no hope of anyone else not doing the same)
One, and then another, and then another: you've lost track by now how many masks you've worn, how many faces you've changed yours into with your own magic and the secrets you stole from the Princes of the Many Masks (stole and lived to use their own secrets against them, no matter how they want to kill you they can't find you to do it). You are an androgyne of many faces, many names, all of (none of) them your own.
fandom: World of Darkness (Mage: The Awakening)
square: roleplay
word count: 562
summary: You are an androgyne of many faces, many names, all of (none of) them your own.
content notes: no standard notes apply: remembered (and predicted) transphobia directed at the narrator.
You've gone through names like water, most of them not yours or ever yours, just fleeting masks, the roles you play, discarded as soon as you have no use for them, thrown aside and picked up again only rarely, if at all. Your names are fewer, far fewer, and you change them, rearrange, trying to find one that almost suits you, because your names hang as heavy on you as your body does, and it's almost as impossible to find the quite-right name as it is to make your body's changes permanent.
(your first name wasn't your own, your mother gave that to you: your second was your teacher's, who chose for you without asking. He called you Sparrow, a timid little brown bird: it was a year and a day before you ever thought to want to change the name, but he had to die before you could. And then you were Kestrel, but Kestrel was a girl, and you never were: now you are La Arana, intimidating, mysterious, and creepy, even - especially- to the Guardians under your command, but even that name hangs not quite right)
You remember the name you wrote on the Watchtower, at least you remember it now: that name is yours but only yours, held close to your heart, a name no one else will ever know, that defines your true self more than any other name you've ever had. But a name that you cannot, will not share, lest it be used to shatter you, and layers and layers and layers, built up around and through yourself.
You spend more time being other people than you do being yourself, sink into other lives: it's easier that way than being yourself: too scared, too terrified, of people to ever interact, fighting your own body every day of your life, easier to just put on another mask, another skin, another life, layer on a disguise and a new personality and a history woven skillfully out of whole cloth and lies and possibly even a fragment of truth and be someone else, gather information and spin your webs, passing unseen and unheard.
(you avoid being yourself as much as you can, shed your skin for another: you're afraid of everyone, can't speak without stammering unless you layer on your androgynous spider mask, both so close and so far from your true heart, intimidate everyone around you first, push them off guard so they can't intimidate you until you're trembling inwardly and want to fall out of your skin. you don't look for acceptance, because for all that mages see the truth beneath the world, they're as human and unaccepting as any other. your own teacher couldn't, wouldn't, see or accept your truth, refused to ignore your girl skin in favor of what lay beneath, and you have no hope of anyone else not doing the same)
One, and then another, and then another: you've lost track by now how many masks you've worn, how many faces you've changed yours into with your own magic and the secrets you stole from the Princes of the Many Masks (stole and lived to use their own secrets against them, no matter how they want to kill you they can't find you to do it). You are an androgyne of many faces, many names, all of (none of) them your own.
