It was a brothel. Helios had never known any other word for it, nor remembered not knowing what the word meant. His mother had sex with men for money, and one of those transactions had resulted in an unexpected complication: him.
She was nice enough in her way, his mother; when she remembered he existed, she'd bring him a sweet or a small toy, at the end of the month after the Honeybee Inn took its cut from her pay. And a few of the other girls were nice to him too. Ultimately, though, they were too full of the life they lived to have any room in their hearts for the redhead, and Helios learned at an early age to take care of himself.
That meant earning his keep at the Inn, running supplies and loading endless piles of laundry 'til his little muscles ached; when he was older, that meant spying on the goings-on and reporting customers who broke the rules, or girls who took more than their share. Sometimes it meant keeping his mouth shut about what he saw, like the fat man everyone called "the Don" who broke a girl's arm when she wouldn't do his lieutenants for free. Always it meant staying out of sight; Midgar's laws about kids in brothels were firm, and anyway letting the customers see him tended to be bad for business. That part was easy for Helios. He used the back hallways and crept along everywhere he went, and by the time he was ten even his mother had forgotten he existed.
He'd imagined other ways to live, of course he had - a mother who knew him, maybe even a father, lessons in math and chocobos and maybe even a little patch of grass all his own, like the flower lady in the church he wasn't supposed to go in - but dismissed them as Not For Him until the word came out that AVALANCHE was looking for members. "Helios the ecoterrorist" had a ring to it that he liked; as he left the laundry on the floor and slipped out unnoticed toward Sector Seven, Helios determined that to escape his life, he would become the best warrior for the Planet there ever was.
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timeasmymeasure
And in retaliation...
Date: 2007-08-13 03:13 pm (UTC)She was nice enough in her way, his mother; when she remembered he existed, she'd bring him a sweet or a small toy, at the end of the month after the Honeybee Inn took its cut from her pay. And a few of the other girls were nice to him too. Ultimately, though, they were too full of the life they lived to have any room in their hearts for the redhead, and Helios learned at an early age to take care of himself.
That meant earning his keep at the Inn, running supplies and loading endless piles of laundry 'til his little muscles ached; when he was older, that meant spying on the goings-on and reporting customers who broke the rules, or girls who took more than their share. Sometimes it meant keeping his mouth shut about what he saw, like the fat man everyone called "the Don" who broke a girl's arm when she wouldn't do his lieutenants for free. Always it meant staying out of sight; Midgar's laws about kids in brothels were firm, and anyway letting the customers see him tended to be bad for business. That part was easy for Helios. He used the back hallways and crept along everywhere he went, and by the time he was ten even his mother had forgotten he existed.
He'd imagined other ways to live, of course he had - a mother who knew him, maybe even a father, lessons in math and chocobos and maybe even a little patch of grass all his own, like the flower lady in the church he wasn't supposed to go in - but dismissed them as Not For Him until the word came out that AVALANCHE was looking for members. "Helios the ecoterrorist" had a ring to it that he liked; as he left the laundry on the floor and slipped out unnoticed toward Sector Seven, Helios determined that to escape his life, he would become the best warrior for the Planet there ever was.