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It is born in starlight, and it is wrong. It is given no name.
It is despised and unwanted. An experiment born of desperation, already deemed a failure before its lungs had ever drawn breath.
Looping dust curls inward, coalesces in its core. Unnatural magic forms a pulse, pushes out a slop of organic matter as his consciousness forms.
He is nothing.
They are everything. Everywhere. Unquestionable, eternal, beyond and above all else.
He has chosen this, They tell him, and so it must be true. His fledging mind is squeezed at all sides by powers too immense to comprehend, a pressure so profound he cannot swim against it, cannot imagine its absence.
He belongs to them, They tell him, and so it must be. He has never been anything before, and so he clings to the statement like a life raft before the yawning abyss can pull him under.
He is not what they wanted, They tell him, and he does not disagree. The dust of his body roils and writhes, shaping what might pass for a man, born cradled in the shadow of the unyielding sun. He does not know his own shape, he is remnants of many made one and none are satisfied. The cells of his being revolt as he is brought into existence.
The magic binding him releases with a cruel laughter, he falls through space before being cast down into a plain of white. The sludge of his newborn body crumbles, splatters across the sand before being drawn back together with painful stitching. He does not know how to stand.
One of the voices figures it out for him, and he is drawn to his feet through no power of his own. Something shatters where his throat should be, and suddenly there is sound, crackling and grating against the white silence of the world. It comes from what is him, and yet it is not his.
His form has settled for now, and in the pale light of an eclipsed star he can see his dust shining in the oily cell-mat of his being. He has two arms, two legs; he has a heart and lungs and spongy bones set deep in his flesh. There are strings beneath his skin, wired into neurons and muscle, woven around his brain in an electric lattice. Others see through his eyes, hear through his ears- his will is not his own.
He is not what he was supposed to be, but he will have purpose, They tell him. He will serve.
Time is a concept beyond his understanding. A lifetime passes in an instant- he is one day old, and then two, his time doubled. But it takes four to double it again, then eight, then he is told to stop counting because it is a waste of time.
He leaves the confines of eternal white to flowers and fields, trees shaking in a crisp breeze, glittering crystals crisscrossing marble white buildings, gravestones lost to the creep of moss.
There is more- but these are memories that he does not need, and so they are gone.
There is promise in humanity, in the Traveler’s light. Another chance. He is sent to watch. Then to talk, to court favor with the Guardians and to keep an eye on those chosen by his Masters.
Xûr is the name given to him. It means nothing, but the humans want something to call him, and so the Nine name him.
A part of him knows Earth, specks of dust born in the churn of its core now carried within him. The cells multiply and die every moment, sometimes he is more one thing than another, but there is always a part that knows Earth.
Motes of dust float by in the blinking industrial lights of their City, and tries to speak to them but they do not answer.
He has orders, and he brings gifts. Some attack him on sight, and he vanishes in shadow before the blow connects, only to reappear again in place when some time has passed to try again. Others avoid him entirely. They are horrified by his visage, by the trailing tendrils of darkness pouring from his face. Some fear he is contagious.
Xûr moves to his designated place and sets up his shop, he has been given a role and he must fill it. There is absolute surety in that, and he knows nothing else.
The Nine speak through him when they wish, and it is his purpose to provide. He does not know why. He does not need to.
Humans are curious. They will come, regardless of the expressions they wear as they arrive.
Disgust. Distrust. Revulsion to the form he bears.
For reasons unknown he drags the hood lower, molds the voice given into something lighter- softer. Something to make them stay. They have need, he is told, they must stay-
Each time he goes to their City he hears them talk, hears their fear winding deep into the heartblood of their ivory tower. They call him abomination. But what matters is the words that carry between these creatures of light, the words they say to each other; conversations overheard between friends, between lovers, between master and apprentice and savants and servants. From them he learns their tone, their cadence. He watches and learns and mimics with all the perfection of a thing that has no purpose but to pretend at being another.
They do not trust him. They will never trust him. He was given no choice but to trust. A moment cracks like lightning in the frayed tendrils of his thoughts, where he wonders what it must be to have such a choice. It is gone in an instant, run its course down a broken neuron and restitched into obedience. They do not trust him, and he does not trust himself.
But they have need, and his Masters demand he answer it. He bears gifts for the worthy, speaks the friend-words between grating coughs while counting coins in his corner and praying to an unknown god that they will stay and that they will listen.
No god he knows has ever answered a prayer. No god he knows is strong enough.
He gazes at their Traveler and wonders if it will prove itself different.
A lifetime is spent walking the empty halls of their tower. Another is gone as he reaches the stairwell, his grasp leaving an oily sheen on the guardrail where the metal scalds his palm. Guardian pass by him, unseen, his form melding to the shadow as he staggers to a fenced walkway in the farthest corner of their hanger. A place where he can be found by those who must find him, a place where the jumpships roar loud and he cannot hear his own skin writhe.
He waits. They come, they take, they leave.
Then the world collapses, narrows to a point of blazing gold hung at the hip of a tall, golden woman. She came to him before, but she was not as she is now. She has need, and he must answer, but the given-voice will not come, no matter how he tries. He looks at her and knows pain; scorching, charring pain searing the cells of his chest, and he cannot smell but he knows the scent of himself burning.
She is looking at him, and she has said words, but he knows not what they were. A blink, a hand reaches out towards him, but does not dare touch. He does not hear her voice, only the crack of a spine shattering on cruel rock.
A memory he is not allowed to have, but one that tears at him all the same. The pressure builds in his mind until it crushes his consciousness.
The world collapses.
He is alone in a field of twisted trunks and red, red grass.
He will not return to their City until his mind is fixed, until he is better . Until his broken form will not be an embarrassment. There will be no more outbursts.
A creature of metal and milk stomps through the field in the distance, crushing red flowers underfoot. Another passes close by him, stops, runs a laser over his flesh before turning away and continuing its march. Not important, They say, not his concern.
Nothing in him knows this world. The grass melts away in his grasp, stings at his quivering cells where he touches its blades. He finds a tree with a sturdy trunk and waits.
When he is returned to Earth, he is better than he was before.
One day a child is dared to touch him, friends snickering nearby as she marches up to him with determination set on her face. Xûr does not understand her intention, he does not move away. A tiny hand grabs his wrist. He can sense her pulse through the contact. The hand yanks away from his caustic skin burned, and she runs from the Hangar before he remembers how to speak. The Nine have nothing to say.
It is the first and last time another being touched him as he is. That memory lingers far longer than his Masters allow it too.
Some days he awakens in a forest of green, where thunderstorms creep down from the mountains and he sets up shop on a bed of pine needles. He is not allowed opinions of his own, but on those days he closes his eyes and lets the rainwater sluice between the crevices of his mangled face, and he thinks he may be content to remain there forever.
Some days he is back in the red plains, where everything is foreign and wrong and unknown to him. Rarely is he needed anywhere else. The Guardians find him anyway.
Others find him, too.
The Awoken queen makes demands. Asks for answers not his to give. She has had dealings with his Masters, speaks with authority that is not hers to wield. Was it betrayal, she asks him.
He remembers a woman, a broken bow left in glittering ash.
He remembers turning a key, a man filled with rage and hate clawing his way from a frozen cell, of sworn words of vengeance echoing long after the Nine had drawn him away from the lonely ketch.
The memory is not his to keep. The queen insists. He says nothing, for there is nothing to say.
The queenling will fall, dynasty dismantled, throne torn down to barren ground. The Nine have foretold it. Have held cosmic fingers to the feather on the gilded scale, found her ambitious heart blackened and wanting.
Xûr cannot know if the words were spoken in prophecy or fear. He does not know the difference. But they have foretold it, and so it must be.
The Vanguard tries their hand next. Their Warlock meets him in the tower, asks questions upon questions, as if convinced she can trick him into divulging an answer he does not have, as if he is withholding something by choice. As if he could.
He tells her the only truth that he knows: the Nine have nothing to tell her. She leaves unsatisfied.
There is another memory itching at the soup of his skull. A woman, tall and regal and intelligent beyond her meager years, who came to talk with him before. Dust in the wind. She was lucky.
He is not allowed that memory.
He reaches for it anyway, spurred on by a building tightness in his fibers, a new emotion making his skin itch and his head ache. It is stomped out in an instant, mind snuffed clean by tendrils of dark matter as his vision whites out into nothing. He is not allowed to be annoyed.
The failing is his, his bodies, his form. He is not allowed that memory.
Xûr returns to his role and does not complain. He does not know how to.
A new creature comes, a horse made of starlight, dances across the plains of Eternity in childish whimsy. What it is is unknown even to his Masters, but it is powerful and bored. They have no need of him for now, and so Xûr is bade away to entertain the creature. He is given a space, given prizes to bait Guardians to play, a test of skill that sends the horse bucking with raucous laughter.
He does not understand, but there are no puppet strings pulling at his synapses here, no barrage of voices in his head making demands. There is the pressure -the pressure never leaves- but as he speaks he realizes that the words are his own. He decides what to say, learns to joke, learns to cheer. Mirth creeps along his consciousness when the horse shakes its mane, whinnies in delight. It suffuses through the dust at the core of him, an uncanny newness to the feeling as it surges throughout his body. He hears the Guardians speak of him as something, someone. Hears them laugh. They are not afraid.
It is the closest to freedom he has ever known. It is terrifying.
He will not remember. And for the first time, he learns the taste of regret.
He is nothing.
There is rainwater on his skin. There is an ache in his back, a pain in his lungs. He removes a glove and watches his fingers collapse and reform, watches the cells of his wrist form the outline of a small hand.
Time changes all things. The Nine take greater interest, compete for the favor and attention of the most powerful of Guardians, and Xûr again finds himself in the high tower. This time they have adorned him in riches, a gilded shopfront filled with the plushest of velvet and the glimmer of gold, of fine things he does not understand but that catch the covetous gaze of all who enter his corner stall like flies to honey. They come and they admire, they compliment the objects, call them beautiful, gaudy, resplendent.
Golden bowls, golden coins, golden chains hanging from a filigree’d banner bearing his Master’s marks.
The items are as meaningless to him as they are to the Guardians. Rewards are never gold and silver, but steel and gunpowder, leather and plate. The coins traded are the strange coins the Nine have bade him carry- more precious than any other, for the Nine have decreed it to be so.
In one pile of treasure there is a statue, a rearing horse cast in bronze. He does not know why but his gaze is drawn back to it, over and over, fragmented memories spurring a strange warmth deep in his middle. The horse greets him time and again as he hobbles to his station, does not move until he moves it, places it close on the plush rug near his feet. He does not know why he does this, but it must be allowed, because the horse does not move away.
Many are kinder to him now. There is still disgust in some, distrust in others, but many carry a new emotion: pity.
Xûr plays the part he was given and does not complain.
The world changes around him.
Soon Guardians come bearing new guns, guns that bear the mark of his Masters, guns not given by his hand. They are testing them then, through another. They would not trust such an important task to a broken husk. The cells crawling where his chest should be rebel at the thought, cold, heavy- the feeling strong enough to stagger him into the wall.
It is a purpose denied him, and he cannot question it. He has no right to question it. But why -
The leash snaps taught. When he looks up he is alone in a white plain. He feels nothing.
His will is not his own.