Chapter Text
Kinich had long since forgotten the face of his mother. He remembered the edge of a smile, the ghostly impression of kindness, and the gentle trace of warm fingertips as they wiped tears off of his cheeks. He remembered the timbre of love, her tone of voice, and the careful words she chose whenever she spoke to him. She replaced cursed with cherished, hated with loved, and unwanted with precious. He remembered thinking about how young she looked when she cowered, how fierce she was when she fought, and how silent she fell when his father was around. He remembered loving her fiercely, with all his heart, because she was the only person who had ever shown him how to feel it at all.
He remembered her, but not as a person– he knew her as kind. He remembered her as gentle. He knew her as easily as he knew the wind, as he knew the mountains, as he knew the sky– but he couldn’t remember what she looked like. Her face was a blank space that would never again be filled; a void that sucked away everything he knew her as, all her comfort, all her warmth, all her kindness– until all that remained was the flickering visage of a stranger he’d never truly known.
Kinich remembered the face of his father. He remembered the hard lines of his face, the pallor of his skin, and the roughness of his palms as they grabbed at his wrists. He remembered the disgust lacing every word he spoke, the sound of hatred, and the poison of the words he said. He said Kinich like it was a curse, said son like an insult, and spoke to him like he was nothing more than an insect who had crawled unwanted into his house. He remembered thinking how terrifying he was when he yelled, how solid he was when he hit, and how loud he screamed when he was angry. He remembered hating him, wishing that he would just leave him alone, but loving him at the same time. Kinich had so much love to give, so much love leftover, and so no matter how hard his father hit him, no matter how much he hated him, at the end of the day, part of him was still hopeful– and that hope was the ultimate form of his love for his father.
He remembered him, and wished he didn’t. He knew him as angry. He remembered him as hateful. He knew him as easily as he knew pain, as he knew hunger, as he knew the cliffside– and he would never forget him, even if he tried. His face was immortalized in his dreams, in his nightmares, in every thought he had and every insult he heard. He remembered him during late nights, he remembered him when he passed by bars, he remembered him when people whispered to themselves, he remembered him whenever he saw mora, he remembered him when he saw his own reflection–
…
–Kinich did not look like his mother. He didn’t have her face, didn’t have her hair, didn’t have her voice or her dimples or her expressions. He had the sharp lines of his father, had his father’s nose, his father’s eyes, had his father’s face– and so when he passed by, even those who did not know him knew the blood from which he was born. They assumed him the man’s shadow, following a trail of uneven footprints as they stumbled down dirt roads and skittered down mountainsides. They looked into his eyes and saw the same green they’d seen before him, the same eyes that lied, the ones that gambled, the ones that hated.
“Keep your mora close to your chest,” they would say, “he’ll scam you out of it if you don’t.” Kinich never put in the effort to correct them; he knew it would make no difference. People would see what they wanted to see, would point fingers and utter their curses. He would always be the Scion of The Mountain, and never one of the Scions of the Canopy.
Kinich was the spitting image of his father, but he tried to have his mother’s smile. He tried to have her kindness, tried to reflect what little he remembered of her through his actions. He tried to have gentle hands that healed, he tried to have a kind voice that soothed, he tried to have a warm presence that comforted, he tried to–
–he tried to be anything but his father.
People stared. They always had and they always would. Kinich had just gotten used to the feeling of their eyes on his back, and he’d learned to tolerate the unease that prickled up his spine. They would always stare, and it felt like every day they had a new reason to justify it.
“The devil’s son,” came first, “with the curse marks to match.” It always came with a solid shove to his back.
“Abandoned by his mother,” was the second, “who could blame the woman? I would have run off too, if that wretched man was my partner and he was my son.” The older kids loved to mock him about that one.
“He killed his father,” the third was whispered like a ghost story, “did you know? The grave is off the side of the mountain. He’s only seven and he’s already a murderer.” And then he’d started bleeding for it– hits and shoves, bruises and cuts, words and insults, and nobody had ever offered him their hand, and nobody had ever stepped in to stop the bleeding–
Above all, the most common thing they said about him was that he was cursed. It was difficult to keep a child as ugly as him under wraps, though he knew his mother had tried. Three cursed scars, three raised marks, three reasons why he was undesired. They went to so many doctors who had promised to keep it confidential, and they did; the problem was his father, who blabbed almost as soon as he got his hands on a bottle of alcohol.
In time, the stories had died down a little, but the knowledge still stuck in the back of everyone’s mind. They stopped bringing up his mother, letting her memory run free from this place, but kept all their ideas about him and his father. It made him useful. It made people consider him for their contracts and their commissions. It made him expendable. He was no longer a child; he was a pair of hands to be set to work. He was the one they called when they needed something done, the errand boy, and the willing sacrifice. Kinich was fine with that because it meant a steady income and the building of his reputation as somebody reliable. He didn’t mind that his ostracization had culminated like this. He didn’t mind that people were ripping him down to a few core things and using that as a basis for who he was. What hurt was the knowledge that, in their eyes, he was no longer his mother’s son, but he would always be his father’s.
He was the boy under the microscope, analyzed and watched, his every move recorded in the Canopy’s next string of gossip. He was the boy who was always being looked at, the boy who people placed bets on, the boy who was no longer a kid, the boy who knew his way around weapons, the boy who nobody would miss, the boy who was given increasingly dangerous commissions, the ones that were further and further away from home–
(“Maybe he won’t come back this time,” somebody had whispered, “we’d all be better for it.”
.
.
.
“Nobody would grieve him anyway.”)
–until Chief Wayna came along and instilled that rule, the one that banned the delegation of dangerous jobs to those under eighteen. And Kinich couldn’t even be mad at him. Wayna’s watchful gaze had always been more out of concern than malice. He wasn’t like the rest of the scions. He was safer. Somebody had finally stepped in. Somebody cared about him.
(“What did you do that for? I’ve been doing those jobs well.”
“Kid, you’re fifteen. You’ve already been working too hard for your age, you don’t want to die that young, okay? Just– trust me.”
Kinich had no other choice.)
The blank face that lived in his memories of his mother was never replaced by another. It remained a blank void, untouchable, untraceable, and unknown. It remained static in his head, an image warped by time, a corpse that rotted and withered underneath his attention. Her hands never took on the form of another, her voice never gained shape, and her eyes never coloured in. She was a concept. She was a whisper. She was gone.
The face of his dad had taken on many forms. It had first been his father, all his jagged edges. It had briefly taken the shape of a traveller, with laughter lines. Then, it was faceless. And then it flickered between being nothing and being Wayna– but Kinich never let it linger on him for too long. He had never been good at being anybody’s son. Underneath it all was the image of his father anyway. There was no point in trying to escape from him– not when he carried his reputation, and especially not when he had his face.
Kinich had never once blamed his mother for her disappearance. Never once had he ever looked back on the little memories that he had of her and felt angry. And never once had he ever considered trying to find her again. On some level, he understood that he was the ghost from her past. He was the skeleton in her closet. He was the regret she’d always have, the nightmare she’d never stop dreaming of. Even if he couldn’t remember her face, he knew from her gentleness, from her kindness, from her love, that it hurt her just as much as it hurt him to leave. He knew from the faint memory of a curved smile and a soft lullaby that he would always be her son, and she would always be his mother.