a/n: Meant to be a series of loosely connected one-shots about the characters in Resonance of Fate. Too long to be drabbles, but not supposed to be a chaptered story either. Don't go looking for a plot; there isn't one. Rated "M" in case it needs to be.

Threads of Fate: The Beginning

"Let me get this straight," Vashyron said slowly. "You brought a girl home."

Scowling, Zephyr refused to meet his eyes.

"Not me. You." Feeling he needed still more clarification, Vashyron added, "Here."

"She didn't have any where else to go, okay?" muttered Zephyr.

"This isn't a hotel or a charity, Zephyr."

"Maybe she can cook or clean or something."

Or something, thought Vashyron with a smirk. The kid was sixteen, so it was about time his hormones kicked in. The sort of woman who would follow a teenaged boy home, however, gave him pause. It was probably the sort of woman he'd picked up on a routine basis, back before he had the kid on the premises cramping his style. "And here I thought I was the one always getting yelled at for being sexist."

"She's kinda in shock," Zephyr said. He was still in mutter mode; it was a little hard to understand him. "She tried to kill herself."

Vashyron's amusement vanished. "You brought some unstable broad here? Where we have guns laying around?"

Zephyr just looked at him. His sullen expression spoke volumes.

Yeah, the kid was probably right; neither of them were models of stability.

Sighing, Vashyron asked, "Where is she?"

"Spare room."

The "spare room" was a storage area, with an old closet filled with miscellanea and the world's mustiest mattress. Even if she was (as Vashyron suspected) a prostitute looking for a place to crash for a few days, it wasn't a nice place to put a woman.

Then again, this was a bachelor pad. It wasn't supposed to be a "nice place."

Standing up from the sofa, Vashyron strode to the closed back door. He rapped once before shoving the door open. He didn't see her at first, just her dress, a splash of white against the dark bedding. Her pale fingers were folded in her lap, pressed so tightly together he could see the indentations against her flesh. Her head was bent forward, long dark hair obscuring her features.

Skinny as hell. Probably a drug addict, then.

Raising her head, she gave him a wide-eyed glance. Vashyron was taken aback. From the way Zephyr was acting, that curious blend of resentful and protective, Vashyron had a feeling she was playing the delicate card. But she really did appear delicate, all haunted eyes and pale skin stretched too tightly across her face.

She also didn't appear any older than Zephyr. Vashyron's mouth tightened. He had been a soldier, he'd seen horrors, but there were few things more terrible than coming face-to-face with a child prostitute and realizing just how evil people really could be. The rough words he meant to speak, along the lines of one meal and you're back out, y'hear?, died unspoken in his throat. "Hey," he said instead.

Her gaze returned to her hands, haunted eyes once more hidden behind a fall of dark hair. "Hello."

Soft voice, high-pitched with youth, was she younger than Zephyr? Vashyron leaned one shoulder against the door, trying to make himself smaller in an attempt to go from intimidating to unassuming. "My roomie says you're looking for a place to stay."

"Well – not exactly. I just didn't have any place else to go."

That's what Zephyr said. Vashyron tried to think of any recent epidemics, along the lines of the one that wiped out Pateropolis. Those eyes had the look of someone who had survived something terrible. "He also said you tried to kill yourself."

The shadows on the back of her hands deepened as her fingertips dug in. Then she murmured again, "Not exactly."

"You accidentally tried to kill yourself? Suicide's a pretty purposeful act, usually."

"It wasn't—" she paused to consider her words before speaking, a hint of steel underlying her tone when she continued. "I wanted control over my own destiny. That's all."

For the barest instant he was back in Lucia, helpless against he-didn't-know-what as everyone fell around him. He blinked, and the strange girl came back into focus, sitting primly on the dusty mattress in their spare room.

Well, it was a spare room. And it wasn't like a slip of a thing like her would take up that much space.

"I don't suppose you can cook," said Vashyron.

She glanced up again, looking a little startled. "Um … I don't know. I've never tried."

Straightening up from his slouch in the doorway, Vashyron grinned at her. "Time for some new experiences, then."