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Peter Nureyev dies when he’s seventeen years old.
He dies in a red room on New Kinshasa. He dies together with his foster father, a thief who always showed his love in the only way he knew how: through deceit. He dies with that thief’s blood drying under his fingernails, having traded what he loves for that which he values.
He dies with a promise that is a threat and vanishes without a trace. And from that promise, from the blood staining the knife a teenage revolutionary had turned on his only family, the nameless thief is born.
“Peter Nureyev” dies that day, but no one knows it. He becomes something else: a symbol, a name whispered in awe by the poor and in fear by the rich. Peter Nureyev is a story of the hero who risked his life to make Brahma a better place, and he did so without spilling a drop of innocent blood. Peter Nureyev is the new patron saint of revolutionaries across the Outer Rim; the Guardian Angel of Brahma; the protector of the weak and the unfortunate; the savior and the defender and whatever other grandiose epithets the hopeful and the idealistic attach to his name.
Peter Nureyev is a legend. And legends, the nameless thief learns, are dead things.
But he is alive. Peter Nureyev is dead, and the nameless thief is alive. And he plans to stay that way. So he flees on the first shuttle off New Kinshasa, and hops and hides away on ships and trains, and sails past suns and synestias - and he doesn’t stop until the Outer Rim is but a distant dream.
And he never looks back.
Peter Nureyev was Brahman; the nameless thief has no home. He has no accent, no culture, no identifying idiosyncrasies. The nameless thief is a blank slate to be painted upon and then wiped clean again. He is Perseus Shah; Leon Prince; Duke Rose. He is Aiden King and Christopher Morales and Nikolai Yahontov. He is from Neptune and Susano-o and Asteroid XZ2B-21-Z. He speaks Solar and Rangian and half a dozen other Outer Rim and old Earth languages; he's an art collector and detective and tour guide; he's kind and he's cruel, he's quiet and he's loud, he's somber and he's sunny. He's any number of things he needs to be at any time.
And at the end of the day, he becomes no one again.
The one place the nameless thief is never from is Brahma. The one language he doesn't know is the one spoken in the shadow of a floating city. The one place he never visits is a planet far out in the Outer Rim, where orphans litter the streets and tyrants cover the skies. Those things exist only in the deepest corners of his mind, folded away into the furthest cabinets labeled "for future consideration", forgotten and covered in dust and cobwebs.
No one knows that the melody the nameless thief sometimes hums in the night is one heard on a sunny square decades in the past. No one knows that the words murmured in his sleep are echoes of an argument long unresolved, had in the belly of a beast built by people beyond brutality. No one knows that the nameless thief is, and always has been, just that: a sad little boy without a family, a soul, a purpose.
No one knows that the only thing the nameless thief has that is truly his… is a name.
The truth is this: where Peter Nureyev's tale began, the nameless thief had meant to end it. In that room so many light years ago, in the glow of a red light and with red blood on his hands, Peter Nureyev had tossed down his knife with a smile. He had raised his hands and bared his teeth because it was going to be the end of him and-- well, Peter Nureyev had never been anything if not dramatic. He had broken the first rule of thieving - all of the first rules of thieving, probably, because those no longer mattered with their inventor and enforcer dead at his feet, but Peter kept count anyway - and he had seized the future he always envisioned for Peter Nureyev.
I want everyone to know who I am. I want the wealthy to fear me and those in need to call for me. I'll make sure they never forget my name.
By this time tomorrow, they'll know. They'll all know the name Peter Nureyev.
Peter Nureyev had died in that room, in that blast of smoke, leaving behind no corpse but those he had killed and a legend to be whispered for years to come. And out had slipped the nameless thief: a kid who had destroyed everything he’d loved, a hollow husk fleeing the only home he'd ever known. A home he'd swear to never see again.
Peter Nureyev dies on Brahma so the nameless thief can live. That thief gives up all notions of notoriety and fantasies of fame and abandons everything to travel the stars. He sees the beauty of the world like no one has before and he hungers for more, always more, because he is no one and he has nothing and he always will have nothing - because if he has nothing, he cannot be tied down. With no past, no identity, no name, he is free to wander the galaxy and to disappear whenever trouble arises.
Because no one can catch what they cannot name.
He vows to never revive Peter Nureyev. He vows to never become someone again, because being someone means having limits, and he will not submit to shackles.
Until he does.
Handcuffs in a dusty apartment, snapped on his wrists while he was distracted by the taste of whiskey and the smug certainty of victory. A single moment when he couldn’t catch himself breaking yet another first rule of thieving - the first rule of life, really; never let a pretty face stop you from doing what you need to. No, not pretty; handsome. Rugged. With sharp eyes flaring with righteous indignance, jaw set in just the most adorable show of moral outrage.
A kingly mask shatters, rains sharp glass all around the thief - and every shard reflects a different man.
The detective prattles on, explains every beat of the thief’s plan like he had been there to see it. Lays it out like he's only just working it out himself, but they both know he's known for hours. Fine, so maybe it’s a little impressive. The nameless thief has met impressive people before. He’s been caught by impressive people before.
But he has never met a person he could not bribe, seduce, or coerce into letting him go.
The nameless thief makes a decision, then. No, less of a decision and more of a momentary madness; a note born from the strange feeling he’s had all day, ever since a martian private eye asked to be punched and refused to hit back. Ever since that private eye stared down the barrel of a gun without blinking and said I don’t think you’re a killer to the woman pointing it at him. A feeling that solidified when he watched that man bristle and burst at a woman almost as powerful as the thief’s friends. Unwavering in his principles and foolhardy in his compassion.
The nameless thief has never met anyone like Juno Steel. Someone so world-weary yet naive. Someone unwilling to condemn a child for killing her father in a fit of rage, refusing to blot out all the good he knew about her with the red staining her hands. Someone who wears his heart on his sleeve and looks at the carefully crafted persona of Rex Glass with such soft eyes and open attraction, who kisses like it’s going to be the last kiss he ever has… and who then turns the temptation down anyway, looking like a kicked puppy, because his morals demand it.
Juno Steel, who runs when he doesn’t need to, who stays when he shouldn’t, who readily threatens empresses and throws himself in the way of punches meant for others. Juno Steel, with bags under his eyes and a scar across his nose and a coat he hasn’t washed in a decade - Juno Steel, who takes the only shots that count, takes aim blindly and hits his target dead center.
Who are you?
Rex Glass shatters to the floor and leaves only the nameless thief. And standing there, in the cramped kitchen of a man he’d meant to use and discard, the mask that is the nameless thief cracks too. The cracks begin at his wrists, under the handcuffs slapped onto them not tight enough to actually hold him but he’s still wearing them and he’s not sure why-- Cracks. Thin fissures breaking out all over his well-worn disguise. They trickle down his hands to his fingertips and the shell flakes away; sheds like long overdue snakeskin.
The armor called the nameless thief peels away and Peter Nureyev draws a silent breath, his first in nearly two decades. He bleeds words onto a scrap of paper hidden behind his back, answers the question that freed him from that red room on a floating weapon, and then… allows himself to be walked away from the sharp-eyed sleuth, the heart he didn’t remember he had drumming in his ears.
The Angel of Brahma walks away from the man named after the goddess of protectors and leaves behind a gift he never meant to give anyone again: his name.