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It starts off small for Purpled, a tiny bit of irritation of being called “Boy”, a bit of annoyance when someone mocks him with “Girl”. Every time someone uses those words as his “name”, he suppresses the urge to slap them, irritated and annoyed by the simple words.
He doesn’t get why he reacts in this way, maybe it was something about the long days of training pushing him to the edge, or maybe it was the discovery of the fact he didn’t have to stay within the identity assigned to him.
As he grows up, he learns of different identities from what he learned as a kid. He swears there’s a hundred at least, and Punz laughs saying that it’s easy to remember the most common ones. He says he uses he/him, and they/them, identifying as agender, not on the binary, like being non-binary. A different mercenary uses they/them pronouns instead of she/her or he/him, and says their non-binary, not identifiying as an girl or an boy. A village person uses she/he/they and says their genderfluid, their binary changes with what they feel comfortable with.
He learns there’s different ways to love a person, then the short way he learned about traditional fairy tales. Someone says they love no one, they don’t feel the butterflies in their stomach when they meet someone like you do when you fly in love, Im asexual, they said. Punz tells him there’s dozens of ways to love, Bisexual, Pansexual, Ace-spectrum, Lesbian, Gay, and tens of others that Purpled learns are places of opportunity to find himself.
When he trains, sometimes his mind wanders from the latest job, to the labels he learned about through the people around him. Sometimes he wonders if they/them would work for him, he ponders the question between punches to the punching bag, and arrows that pierce the mannequins body, if maybe one of those identities would work for him.
-
He looks in the mirror one day, after a job. A hard job, one that left him bloodied and bruised from the fight that had insured after the shot. His face is decorated with bandages and bruises, his hair rustled and sweaty from the heat and humidity. His arms shake, as they support his body on the weight of the sink in front of him.
He stares down at his bandaged shaking hands, and thinks to himself of the conversation Punz had with him once.
[ “Some people use they/them pronouns, even though they're commonly used as plural pronouns.”
“Why do they use they/them then?”
“For some people, they/them fit them better than she/her or he/him. Other times, people find that they/them fits them well with she/her or he/him.” ]
Purpled looks at himself in the mirror, bruised and bloodied, and says,
“Hi, My name is Purpled, and I use they/them pronouns”
He shakes his head slightly,
It rolled off the tongue surprisingly well.
Maybe those thoughts were something he should think through once more.
“I know Purpled ! They're really good bedwars players, and their sense of humor is amazing!”
He says in the mirror, They, They are. He knows it seems self-centered to be complimenting himself in the mirror, but the pure rush of joy he feels when he uses they, pushes his anxiety down.
It rolls off the tongue smoothly in a way Purpled didn’t expect, and they find themselves smiling happily at the revelation. His face’s bandages crinkle when the corners of his mouth lift up in a wide smile and for a moment he forget’s their body is in pain.
“I know them, their name is Purpled.”
Punz calls from down the stairs, “Purpled! Food’s here!”
Purpled looks at themselves in the mirror one more time, before running down the stairs for pizza night.
-
He discovers the exhilarating feeling of using they/them pronouns on himself, but something still doesn’t feel right. For one, he/him still fits them, but she/her feels icky, as if something’s not right or mistaken. he/they. he/they?
Purpled finds the chest full of paper scraps and half-used pens in the main room of the complex, and starts writing little sentences onto the papers while no one is around. Surprisingly, they’ve kept the little sheets of paper they handed out when they had asked the mercenaries to do ice-breakers.
He sits the paper onto a nearby barrel, it’s wood rough and bumpy, but still the only table in the room he could see in the dim light.
Hello, this is Purpled. He is a nice person. He is very good at fighting people. , it reads.
Purpled takes the pen and scribbles out the second he is, like it had angered him in some way to have existed. Then he writes a little they are on top of the second he is, before re-reading it again.
They are
Hello, this is Purpled. He is a
nice
person.
He is
very good at
fighting people.
It fits him like a glove, like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night is being wrapped around him.
He hears a creaking sound, a door to the room is being opened, and quickly shoves the pen into the box and the paper into his front pocket.
Another person enters the room, most likely looking for something to eat in the middle of the night, or to simply get away from the nightmares.
Act calm Purpled, don’t do anything stupid.
He gets up from his spot from squatting on the ground to standing up and starts walking over towards the door.
The person opens the fridge, the blue light shining through the room, and notices Purpled attempting to sneak towards the door. They shift over to grab something that had dropped onto the ground, and they say, “Purpled?”
Fuck, It’s Punz.
Purpled turns around slowly, spinning on his heel to come face to face with the sleep-deprived face of his brother, holding up his fallen slip of paper.
“Hi Punz. I thought you were back in the apartment?” Purpled said, anxiety about wait shit i wasn’t going to tell him yet, wait no, sky-rocketing through the roof irrationally.
Punz goes and takes out the jug of cold fruit tea in the fridge, dumping out some of it into a cup, before responding, “I was, nightmares were fucking annoying to deal with. What’ve you been doing?”
Purpled looks around the room, attempting to find the words on the walls to piece together his next sentence. As if they would be written on the walls, for him to use as flashcards.
“Testing out new pronouns….?” He mutters, rubbing his neck sheepishly. “he/they fits me well…”
In the dim light of the night seeping through the windows, Purpled could see Punz smile widely, wider than any smile Purpled has ever seen on his normally stoic brother.
“I guess we match now?” Punz says.
“I guess we do now.” Purpled replies, happy that the anxiety building up in him wasn’t going to be real.
Punz reaches for the ice-cream in the back of the fridge, and gets out two bowls, “Want some?”, and Purpled answers, “Sure.”
-
A few years down the line, Punz and Purpled will not be brothers anymore.
They will be enemies by default, and when the Red Banquet rolls by, Purpled sends a message to a still healing Punz that reads,
I guess we still match.