Leaf nicknamed him Red, for the band around his arm. He had hesitated to give his name - habit, a lifetime of knowing your family was just the wrong side of the law (didn't have the official badge, just did the job), mixed with unfamiliarity. He wasn't used to using the name on his dorm room door.
"That works, I suppose." He said, and successfully hid a smile behind scowling assessment. He scowled because Farris was there, and he knew the boy by reputation. A scrapper - well, fine. He could appreciate someone diving into fights to help others, it was his own life's work. But dragging untrained kids like Leaf along with him? That was carelessness.
It hadn't occurred to him that Jack hadn't asked Leaf to help. It hadn't occurred to him that Jack had learnt on the fly, a sword, a giant, no patient teacher rallying his defences. Neither of them knew about the cloak of luck that had let the boy survive to learn. Red would learn over jokes and teaching anecdotes about growing up the smallest of a rowdy band of brothers and cousins, about learning by getting into scrapes and tagging along. He'd leant alongside family too, but he had been taught with them as well.
Red was a useful name. Short, easily shouted when he was needed, descriptive. It was also close enough to Dread that he could be excused for twitching when the sea faring vigilantes were mentioned in class and he was taken unawares. Here was his common ground with Grey - they both had names that matched the colours around their arms, yes, but they also had names that sounded a just enough like the one they'd left behind that they'd remember it was theirs. Red didn't know this was something they shared - in itself another patch of commonality.
Mostly he figured they were only united by friendship with Jack and slight bewilderment at how much he chafed under the Academy. Red figured Farris wasn't a complete rookie pretty early on, but he didn't make the jump to the Giantkiller. That was a heavy tale, with a shadow longer even than Jack's, and he didn't exactly expect to meet a Legend teaching Guides and Sages (and the odd Mage) to throw a punch in a hayloft. He did think Jack would grow up to be a legend, though. It wasn't a surprise when Jack and his league went North. A worse strategist than Sarge would see the potential in Jack - in Rupert's careful dedication, Grey's wide eyes and devotion to these friends, Laney's efficient magic and perfect aim. It was a surprise when they saw Leaf's leadership and Red's fierce desire to teach and train, to place weapons in the hands of those who needed them, not just those who could afford them, and make sure those hands knew what to do.
Even before the Battle for Driftwood Island Red's hands had been stained with blood. Not from training bouts, bloody noses and accidental scrapes, but from pitched battle. He'd cleaned them off when the fighting was and considered carefully, weighed lives, and decided every time that innocent people deserved their lives more than Things bent on nothing but destruction, rabid monsters of the sea, humans who thought to prey on others. There were children disappearing into the mountains. There were children disappearing from the mountains too, packed into cabins on the Dread's ships with a fierce family ready to lift swords in their defence.
There was anger under his skin too, a righteous fury at anything that hurt those who had done nothing to deserve it. Some of the anger was at the Bureau, for deciding that anyone who couldn't afford to attend the Academy, or wasn't right for it, shouldn't be allowed to help. Anger and determination carried him to Rivertown. There was something here worth fighting to change, and he weighed his life against it and decided it was worth it. He left the sea and the Dreads for a life of pretending to be something a little different from his roots. He took in a name that he didn't usually use, one that was foreign even though it was his. He hesitated to tell anyone, so they gave him one that they thought fit.
Red thought about who he was and who he was deciding to be, about bloodstained hands and a gently burning anger that wanted to make the world better, and smiled wryly.
"That works, I suppose."