When she was young, anyone who called Raspy by her real name got treated to a good old-fashioned thump on the head, as delivered by a tearful little girl. It was easier when she was young, because she cried often and covered her eyes. Bullies targeted the child daily, because before she would cry, she made them afraid somehow. A skinny little girl, pale and clumsy with a mop of shiny black hair, who offered no resistance to the kicks because part of her felt low, part of her felt sure that she deserved it. Even when she didn't hit them, even when the other children swooped down on her like overeager carrion-eaters, she felt, deep in her heart, that she would deserve her pain and bruises and cuts until she did something about the terrible sin that was affecting her.
A weird little kid, Raspy Flannigan, but she broke it to her mum, gently, that she needed to right some wrongs. Her mother, of course, looked down at the six-year-old who still held a wad of tissue to her little nose to stem a flow of blood, and laughed nervously. That she would be dealt such a child, who avidly watched the news and bit her nails bloody when disaster struck halfway around the world, was funny and disturbing to the woman. Her mother, after all, knew what the girl's father had been like.
When she grew up, Raspy Flannigan no longer resorted to childish violence when hurt. However, anytime anyone but her mother called her Rhapsody, she set a pair of cold blue eyes on them until they squirmed and sweated. Sometimes they cussed, and once a girl burst into noisy tears that made Raspy wish she'd just slapped the silly thing in the face.
Raspy didn't have to ever meet her father to know him; he'd left when he realized she'd be a girl and not an heir. She knew that she was his spittin' image, and that she sometimes acted just like him, but she also knew that her mother gave her more than an upbringing. Her mother felt and loved and was, far more than her father ever did, and Raspy knew that she took after her mother in that respect at least. "Humanity means reality," Mary Flannigan always said. "Humanity means being worth it, and what is humanity but love and feeling? Thought separates us from animals, but love separates us from demons. We're human. We're worth it."
Raspy agreed.