#jofspades

 The young woman who had welcomed him to this corner of the Borderlands was vibrant, enigmatic. Cassiopeia, she said her name was, and she had immediately warned him not to call her that. 

What would he call her then? ‘Cass,’ she’d said, and before Vessel could point out that her full name was beautiful and powerful, Cass had taken his hand and showed her to her room, her workshop. 

Vessel could see her heart poured out in her paintings, each canvas an altar of worship.

He watched her paint for a while and then he asked her for paper and pen. Vessel sat down on the floor by the foot of her bed and started writing. He didn’t notice when she stopped painting and went to sit beside him, reading over his shoulder. He didn’t mind. 

The space between them disappeared at times. Vessel heard the whisper then, touch starved, but he quieted it down with the soft rustle of the page he was writing on. And then it happened, Cass leaned fully into him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.

Vessel tensed immediately, the words in his head no longer a whisper but a guttural cry. No one had been so familiar with him in a very long time. But her soft rhythmic breathing could only mean one thing. 

Cass had fallen asleep. 

So calm, so unperturbed. She didn’t seem to care about the mask, she didn’t seem to be afraid of him in the slightest. 

Like a winged insect to the proverbial flame. No, it could not be.

♤ Vessel had an uneventful childhood. His family wasn’t perfect, his father worked too much and his mother could be emotionally distant at times. Since he was often left to his own devices, Vessel developed a thirst for knowledge. He read every book he could get his hands on. 

♤ One thing his parents instilled in him was love for music. Vessel’s musical education is vast: piano lessons, guitar lessons, singing lessons. No matter how busy his father was, he never missed Vessel’s recitals. Everyone thought his angelic voice would change once he reached adolescence, but to their surprise, his voice only became more soulful, more powerful.

♤ When his parents fell into a coma after a car accident, Vessel became convinced he could reach out to them in that unconscious state. He traveled the world in search of experts who could teach him how to do that. Eight years later he succeeded.

♤ Vessel was working on the final stage of his project, how to wake the patients from that state when he got a call: his parents had been taken off life support. Vessel was enraged. Partly because of the loss of his family, but mostly because now he would never know if he would have been able to wake them.

♤ And then The Borderland incident happened.

♤ Since Vessel dedicated all his time to music and reading, he never paid much attention to developing his physicality. However, during his travels, he had to take on different jobs which made him realize he had a natural ability for tasks of strength, agility and speed. He channels the Jack of Spades, and wears the mask so players focus only on his voice.