A/N: Didn't realize this would end up so long, originally intended it as part of the next chapter but I'll have it stand alone instead. So... issa backstory chapter. And I do want to warn you, this chapter gets into some darker themes that might hit close to home for some readers.
Six years before Darkness Returns.
The boy's shabby shirt hung on slouched shoulders, oversized and stained three different colors. His cargo pants were dirtied and torn at each knee. A black mop covered half his face and fell to his shoulders, slumped like the canine tail trailing from his waist. White knuckles rose from plum bruises on the hands that wrung a steel pipe.
"You ready?" the skunk faunus opposing him asked, raising a pipe of his own. His black eyes sunk into the shadow the sun cast on his brow. His hair was pulled behind his ears into a thinning black ponytail, slick with oil. A once-white tank top only partially concealed his beer belly.
The boy nodded.
A backyard was their arena. What little grass remained was yellow or brown, dotted with beer cans and litter. A half-built and rusted away motorcycle sat in a scattering of car parts and steel scraps piled halfway up the chain link fence.
The skunk faunus jumped forward, slinging the rod down on the boy with both hands. The boy was half the man's size, but his elbows bent little underneath the blow. He held it off, then let a hand go to let the attack fall to his side. He spun, aiming an attack at his aggressor's ribs. It was blocked and cast back, leaving the boy open to a brutal whack across his jaw. As he staggered and yelped in pain, his opponent aimed a second attack for his shin.
With a ringing of steel the boy dropped to the ground, screaming, writhing, and clutching his leg.
"Oh come on, get up."
The boy rolled onto his knees, face red with the effort of holding back tears. His leg failed him, and he crumpled back to the ground.
"Can't believe my own son's this pathetic," the skunk faunus muttered, circling his son with a look of disgust.
"I... I can't. Dad, I ca-"
The skunk's face flashed with rage, and he drove his boot into the boy's ribs. "Noxis! If we were back in the old days, you'd be DEAD already!" His steel pipe crashed down on Noxis's back. "GET UP!"
A brittle screen door opened, revealing a small-framed woman with a mess of dark hair and a wolf's tail. "That's enough, Sullivan!" she shrieked. "Give him a break!"
"The Grimm wouldn't! Those... huntsman 'heroes' wouldn't! Why would I?" Sullivan shouted back.
She stuck her arms out with an incensed shake of the head. "Give it up! They're gone! Twenty years have passed. Noxis can live a normal life now, he doesn't have to do this!"
"And what's a 'normal life' now? Going to a desk job every day, working for a human?" he spat. "No! I had to fight to survive every day of my life in the White Fang. My son will be strong. If I have to break him to make him strong, I will!" He looked back to the woman in the doorway. "And if you don't butt out, YOU'RE NEXT."
"Again, with the White Fang? Twenty years, Sullivan!"
The velvet droplets in the sink mixed with running water, red becoming paler until Noxis saw them no more. He looked into the mirror. He met black eyes. Everyone said he had his father's eyes. He hated them. He ran his fingers over his split lip. Hot, and swollen. He still tasted blood.
From the next room, the muffled sound of an argument was punctuated by the sound of something striking, then his mother's screams.
Noxis's head sunk below his shoulders, and into his hands.
Four years before Darkness Returns.
"You have your father's eyes."
Those were the last words Noxis's mother said to him. She came into his room that stormy mid-Autumn night, as he lay with the covers tucked under his chin. They talked about the day. School. The weather. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then, she stood. She looked to him and left him with the words he hated most to hear.
"You have your father's eyes."
Noxis awoke to a slam at his bedroom door. With a second, louder bang it flew open. "WHERE IS SHE?" his father screamed, ripping Noxis's blankets off and seizing his shoulders. "SHE'S IN HERE, ISN'T SHE?"
"D-Dad, what- what the hell are you doing? Get out!"
Noxis's father plunged his struggling son's shoulder's down, back onto the springs of his threadbare mattress. He whipped the door aside to check behind it then stormed over to the closet, ripping its door off its tracks. "Your mom! She's gone! Are you hiding her in here?!"
"What? No. She probably went on a walk or something, leave me alone." Noxis turned back over, and heard his father's boots tramping clothes and anything else he had on the floor. He muttered under his breath in a frenzy, every couple of seconds flinging something onto the floor.
Noxis heard a heavy crash, and the string of his guitar snapping.
"SHE'S NOT IN HERE! GET OUT!"
The base of a trophy crashed into his cheek. The one from eight years before, when his little league team won the championship. "Don't you DARE shout at me!" his father snapped. He shook his head. "Oh, no. She's coming back," he muttered. He didn't close the door behind himself. "If she knows what's good for her, she's coming back."
Noxis had given up on sleep. Half an hour until his alarm, anyway. He made breakfast, and caught the bus for a schoolday that was as mundane as usual. A test came back. He made marks just above average, about as good as he could expect. He sat alone at lunch, always in the back hall next to the cafeteria, under a fluorescent light that had been dying all school year. The other kids annoyed him. And they didn't like him much, either. But being alone gave him time to think. And in that time, his mother came to mind.
Maybe she did leave. Noxis knew fear was the only thing keeping her in the house. She could have been plotting an escape for weeks, months, and finally did it.
When Noxis came back, he expected to see his mother preparing dinner in the kitchen across from the front door, her raven hair tied back and away from the steaming pot. But the house was dark, cold, empty. There was no spice, no aroma of simmering meat and vegetables to mask the stench of alcohol and cigarettes that had soaked into carpet and walls. His dad couldn't land a job. He'd probably gone out to look for her.
Only when a week had passed did it sink in that she wasn't coming back.
She had probably gone far away. To Menagerie, maybe.
Steam rose from the pot on the grimy stovetop, born from the water that had come to a full boil. The boy measured out a handful of noodles, checked back at the book he found stashed away under one of the counters, and put them in the pot to calm it slightly. He gingerly separated them with a fork as per the book's instructions. He sniffed twice, then leapt at the pan on opposing burner,
"Oh, damn it..." he muttered, assessing its contents. The chicken was charred, but maybe salvageable. The broccoli was burnt beyond recognition. He put the pan back down on a dead burner, raised his hands in exasperation, and slapped his spatula to the counter.
The sound was echoed by the front door bursting open. He paid little attention to the man that staggered in. Drunk off his ass again, no surprise.
His words slurred together into one bitter mess. "Damn them. And damn Tsuki! That bitch. Just up n' left. If she ever comes back, I swear I'll kill'er."
Noxis prodded the noodles deeper into the pot.
"Assholes at the bar cut me off. Told me I couldn' come back. That makes me mad. That makes me reeeal mad."
Noxis cracked half a smile, still not justifying the drunk with a glance his way. "...They don't want you either."
The words were spoken under his breath, but the sound of a chair being whipped across the ground told him it wasn't quiet enough. His head finally cocked to the side, locking dark eyes with the drunk that tore across the kitchen toward him.
Noxis hopped out of the way, the drunk careening into the cabinets with a slam and rattling of the pots and pans inside. He lunged at Noxis again who held him back with the chair that had been cast to the floor.
"You SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" his father screamed, spewing the stench of cheap liquor on his sour breath. "That bitch must've hated you too, if she left you here with me!"
The words met their mark. Noxis paused for a couple seconds with a still face, hearing them over again. He let himself be pushed back idly before putting them aside, and shoving his father with all the force he deserved.
The drunk cursed as he stumbled back toward the oven, but found Noxis's dinner. He grabbed the pot and flung it, washing Noxis with a wave of boiling water and steam.
Noxis screamed and staggered back, slipping on the pot's contents and falling into a scorching puddle. He wrenched off his soaked shirt, swiping water off his reddened skin and sinking away from the man who loomed above him. A knee landed in his gut, and a brutal fist cracked his nose and knocked his head into the hardwood floor. Another crossed his opposite cheek.
He felt an uncanny heat rise in his chest, as if the boiled water soaked through his skin and circled his heart and lungs. It grew hotter as his father raised another fist, a searing pain that left the punches and burns behind. He raised his arms to the third strike, and felt the burning energy burst through them.
Noxis heard a pop, and felt his dad's fist crumple on the wall of darkness protecting his arm. He shouted another curse, clutching his arm and pulling back with four fingers bent at awkward angles. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?!"
Noxis stood. He looked over the black static tracing his forearms. Grin widening, pain forgotten. "Do you know what this means?" he asked, intoxicated by the new power. His laugh forced wide eyes from his father. "You don't control me anymore. Go on, hit me! HIT ME AGAIN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!"
Three years before Darkness Returns.
Noxis left soon after that night. The night he unlocked his aura. The night he was truly born.
He had nowhere to go, nowhere to come back to. But a hardened soul and a spite in his heart that carried him onward. His head was shaved, so if he ever ran into his father near some back-alley pub he could get the jump on him before he even realized it was his own son. He lifted a bat from a sporting store to protect himself from the characters of Mistral's slums. Food to survive. Dust to sell for quick cash. Because according to some of the guys he talked to, stealing directly from the bank was a thing of the past. Those human-computers in neat clothing guarded each entrance, each counter, each safe. Try something, they would catch you. He started to see the things in front of larger businesses. Not just banks- any company that could afford them. Family-owned corner stores and the dust shops deepest in the slums became prime targets.
Gloved hands pulled a ski mask over the wolf's head. Just two holes, one for each dark eye.
The eyes of his father.
Noxis leaned near the shop's exit, waiting for the woman at the counter to leave. The shopkeeper handed over her bag of junk food and cigarettes, and she was on her way. She side-eyed Noxis on the way out, giving him a wide berth.
Once she rounded the corner, he took a deep breath and went inside. He had practiced it before. Keep your head down, away from cameras. Get to the counter, get what you need, get out.
"Hi... can I help you?" the old, rheumy-eyed shopkeep asked. His words were uneasy, probably because he addressed a man a full foot taller than him, dressed in all black, wearing a ski mask and brandishing a steel bat.
Noxis lifted the weapon to his shoulder and held out a bag. "Yeah. By putting all your cash in here."
"Ah... yes, yes..." the shopkeeper replied. His movements were infuriatingly slow, and Noxis stole a glance out the window as the shopkeep backed up half a step, and reached just below the counter.
When he looked back, the shopkeeper held something. Dark, sharply lined, and ominous. Cold steel in the shape of a gun; death given form. Noxis had seen them, heard them on the streets of Mistral before, but never had the tiny abyss pointed at his chest.
In a flash of pure instinct, Noxis swung the bat from over his shoulder. The shopkeeper yelped and his weapon clattered on the ground. Noxis glanced again out the window, then over the counter. The old man's eyes were frozen wide, the side of his forehead caved in and leaking with thick velvet. A had approached the wound. He gulped loudly, gasped for breath. And began to convulse.
"Oh shit." Noxis whispered. He already heard sirens. The customer he saw must have called the cops on her way out.
Lights flashed across the boarded up windows at one end of the block, screaming sirens echoing off cobblestone roads. Noxis took off the other direction, discarding his bat somewhere in the parking lot and his mask beyond that, never slowing. Two cars pulled into the lot. He heard tires peeling on the road, and the car's engine roaring up the street behind him.
His feet carried him faster, but he found another set of screeching tires blocking his path. The passengers' side door opened, more guns drawn. His sharp, irritated breath out caught the red and blue flashing in the darkness, and he put his hands on his head.
An officer from the car behind him wrenched Noxis's wrists into a pair of cold steel cuffs and sat him in a puddle on the sidewalk. Spikes poked out from his wrists and elbow. A lizard faunus, of some kind. What business did he have as a cop? Keeping the street safe for humans, throwing faunus in jail. Maybe he started out wanting to make the world a better place but didn't know how, and ended up just like the rest.
"Got anything to say for yourself, punk?" one of the officers spat. "Bludgeoning an eighty year old man for a bit of cash? That's low."
Noxis's cuffs were too tight. They reflected flashing lights.
"You're just lucky we got to the guy so quick," the faunus in blue grumbled. "He'll probably live. Assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery, rather than murder."
The first shook his head. "No. Your life's over now, asshole. You're gonna have a lot of time to think about what you just did."
The first night in a jail cell reminded Noxis of being back home. Cold floors, damp, stale air, and a numbing, pervasive low-level despair he couldn't shake. Sure the wall opposite his bed back home had band posters instead of iron bars, but the feeling was the same. His life was over. He'd be imprisoned for who knows how long, and have that hanging over him for the rest of his life.
He began to wonder if his life ever truly got started.
Just a day passed before who he figured as the head corrections officer came with a staunchly resigned look, and a ring of keys. When he opened Noxis's cell outside of recreational hours, without a plate of food, the faunus flashed a suspicious glance.
"Your brother's here."
"My... brother?" Noxis repeated, still not leaving his thin mattress.
"Yeah. Bailed you out. Lucky punk."
Noxis stood, stepping gingerly to the doorway and sizing up the guard, just in case it was some kind of trap or sick joke. He slid into the jail's provided slippers, but found his boots in the hands of a second officer just around the corner, who held his few belongings. He knew he was an only child. Couldn't be a half-brother, either, because he always wondered how his dad found one woman to sleep with him in the first place. Shame he didn't get his bat back from evidence, he might need it for whoever was waiting for him.
It was strange how much the man in the lobby could pass for a brother. Just a bit taller, though Noxis had to admit the stranger was stronger-built. His head hung below broad shoulders. He had a long, narrow face, pronounced hook nose, hair and eyes of the same pitch black. Instead of a wolf's tail, two massive black wings rested on his back. He had an undeniable aura of darkness about him- a controlled fury Noxis couldn't quite describe.
His "brother's" only greeting was a curt nod and hello.
"Here's all the paperwork," the grizzled man behind the counter grumbled; obviously not keen on letting Noxis free so soon. His pen made an angry circle on the paper. "Make sure you get him back before this date. He still needs to be sentenced."
"I understand," the winged man croaked. Even through the mask of feigned cordiality, his voice was like the cracking of ice. It made Noxis's tail bristle, and the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "Ever since his mom left, he's been acting out. He's a good kid, we just need to get things settled."
"Get 'em sorted out quick, then," the man at the counter quipped. "This 'good kid' is looking at ten years behind bars."
The night air was cold and heavy, but Noxis breathed in his freedom until his lungs couldn't take any more.
"Who are you? And how do you know that about my mother?" he questioned.
"You can call me Condor," the man said. "I'm... attuned to negative emotion. I can sense it. Elevate it, mould it."
"And why did you bail me out? You're not really my brother. You don't even know me."
"You're right, I'm not." The man continued walking. "But... you feel like the world, society, has wronged you in some way, don't you? I can feel it. You'll fight to your last breath to get back at it. I'm putting together a resistance group of sorts, of faunus who feel the same way. I need an eye into a certain huntsman academy in Vale. Far away from all this."
Noxis finally turned his head to the man, raised brow indicating his attention.
"Alright. Go on."