Chapter Text
He remembered running. Smoke thickened the air, screams cut through the heat, and fire clawed at the walls as he tore down the narrow street with his mother’s hand locked in his. She had told him not to let go, no matter what, her voice threading through the chaos like something to hold onto.
Then the blast hit. The ground tilted, a sound like the world tearing apart filled his ears, and when he came to, the street had vanished into dust and rubble. His mother was gone.
Lucien screamed until his voice broke, searched until his legs failed him, but the crowd swept him away, bodies surging in every direction. That was the last time he saw her. The only thing left was her voice, fading into the smoke, telling him to hold on.
He kept his hair long because she had loved it. "You look like your father, proud and strong," she used to say, her fingers threading through it. He told himself that if she ever found him again, she would know him by that. It was all he had left of her.
Until the soldiers came. He was thin as bone and starving, hiding in the wreck of a burned-out house when they found him. Too weak to fight, too young to matter, too desperate to run. They tied his wrists anyway, threw him into the back of a truck, and drove him somewhere that smelled of metal and chemicals.
The first thing they did was strip him. The second was cut his hair.
He fought then, wild and hopeless, teeth snapping at the hands that held him down. The shears rasped against his scalp, chunks of brown hair falling heavy to the floor. He tried to shout, but a hand crushed his jaw shut. His chest ached with a grief too fierce for words as everything his mother had loved in him dropped away strand by strand.
The soldiers laughed. “Look at this animal.” The scientists didn’t even look up.
Then came the experiments. Needles. Burns. Endless nights that blurred into days without meaning or mercy. His body twisted under their work until he barely knew what it was anymore. When it was finally over, he saw his reflection and did not recognize the face staring back.
White hair spilled to his shoulders, pale as bone. His eyes had turned red beneath it, sharp and cold.
Lucien raised a trembling hand to the hair, fingers brushing the strands that should have been hers to recognize. His throat closed, and for a long, aching moment, he hated himself for hoping she’d still know him at all.