fileskept

[fileskept]

paz, background.

LA VIDA ES DOLOR.  0-16 YEARS OLD.

you are not old enough to remember your parents when the nuns open the doors of their orphanage to take you in. you don’t know you are stepping into a cage yet, but you will learn.

you learn how to pray until your legs ache so badly you shake, from kneeling on the wooden step for hours, from hunger and thirst. you learn how to endure pain. you learn to kill. the nuns teach you (you think they were nuns, at least, to this day you are not sure who they were, exactly).

you are 12 when you make your first friend. she is pretty (you think about it often, you won’t understand why until much later). and she is kind to you. she is not like you: she is one of the regular orphans, not selected to become killers. she has plans to live with a nice family, become someone important and good, like a doctor or a scientist. you already have blood on your hands, you don’t know what any of that means. but you want her to be happy.

your friend leaves. a wealthy couple adopts her and you will never forget the smile on her face as you watched her leave in their car. by that point you know that no one will come to get you. but she is happy, she is happy, she is happy.

you are 16 when your heart breaks for the first time. your friend has been found dead in her nice house. she has been choked to death, violated in ways no god should allow. you try asking him why, but no one answers. you don’t believe her adoptive father’s lies. you think he did it. let me do it, you beg the nuns. let me kill him, you say, because it’s the only language you know for love. they don't allow it. la vida es dolor, child, forget about this and only use your knife when we tell you.

RISE LIKE A PHOENIX.  17-28 YEARS OLD.

forgetting is not so easy, even if the nuns try to burn this ache from your heart. the chance to run away comes like salvation, and you grasp at it with both hands. you kill for them for the last time one sunny afternoon in el paso, texas. after that, you disappear, you hitch hike all the way towards los angeles with no money or documents to your name. for the world you don’t exist. 

you start small, working in shady bars that don’t care about this, in even shadier and murkier car repair shops, you hang around criminals and gang members until someone tells you there’s real money to be made in killing for hire. you bristle, at first, because you just left that kind of life: but this time is different, this time you can choose your targets. 

you enter your first continental at the age of 21. from there, things change. you start earning enough money to avoid working low pay jobs. you buy fake documents and leave behind your old name, the one the orphanage gave you (angelica). you are a killer for hire, but you only kill the most despicable criminals, those who have abused children or women, who deal in human traffic. the ones who don't deserve any mercy.

you also start to embrace your sexuality and gender identity more and more. you become part of a community that advocates for queer and trans rights in los angeles. finally, you live for something that’s not just blood and survival, but also love and joy.

CALLATE MI AMOR.  29-CURRENT DAY.

an old trail for an old case resurfaces, a contact with a possible lead on a man, a shadow, a ghost. the person responsible for the murder of their first friend and love. paz gives chase for years but can never find him, uses every scrap of resource at their disposal to no avail.

until one day they get a location, as vague as they come. new york.

ARC 1.   paz is now living in an apartment in new york city. they have a monster to hunt down and a choice to make: the organization that trained them to kill since they were a child might have ties that run deeper than they thought, possibly even with the high table. will paz risk going after them? or will they let all that pain and trauma go?