<span style="color: #4000FF">His words, so beautiful, so potent, held her attention, held her focus solely on him. Not on his hurt this time, but seeing past the hurt, seeing through to the person that craved to come out. She saw through pain, through the shards of broken soul that most would get lost within, and saw to the person who didn't want to be hated, rejected.<br/><br/>Within him, she saw herself.<br/><br/>It wasn't as if she'd had that bad of a childhood, if she looked at the facts. Her family, while fragmented had become nothing but a memory through the years. Her mother had suffered a death by her father's hand, for reasons she was unsure. She could vaguely remember hearing him yelling about hypnosis or something, but she'd always thought it was some drunken stupor he'd found himself in, albeit a violent one. From there, she'd been bounced from her aunt's care to her grandmother's and ultimately ended up in foster care. Those she ended up with were rather nice, though her welcome was always worn out far too soon. She stopped caring who she ended up with and just wished for her eighteenth birthday to come faster.<br/><br/>From a young age, she knew she was somehow different. If not for the odd looks she'd get as her hair color changed from her dark brunette hair to a vibrant red, her eyes changing from their stormy grey to vibrant green...Then for how people reacted to her when she sang. She'd always been musically inclined, using it to soothe her soul when she got stressed. People had always responded to it, almost like they couldn't bear her to stop singing. Yet, as time went by, each move took another piece of her away, and singing no longer did much for her.<br/><br/>By the age of fifteen, she'd refused to sing, only spoke when spoken to. She'd fallen into herself and struggled to come back for years. When she finally reached eighteen, was free from the constraints foster care held, she did sing...as a gesture to help a homeless man earn some money. She found that, even temporarily, being able to sing for those that were as lost as her, made her feel a little less hopeless, kept hope for the world burning in her soul.<br/><br/>This was no exception. As his compliments resounded through her, a commodity appeared: a blush. She'd never blushed. Not once. She'd never had a need, as the compliments bestowed upon her were always in the aftermath of her songs. This time, they were spoken sincerely, not to appease some weird inner calling that her singing provoked, but rather stated as if it were known fact. The dying spark of life was so akin to her own, it was scary to her. It was one thing to feel her ember slowly dying out, but to see someone else's? She couldn't accept it. Wouldn't accept it.<br/><br/>The one thing she couldn't shake was her need to know more. His cryptic messages...It was like he wanted help, but couldn't bear the thought of asking for it outright. His last comment, about Beauty and the Beast (one of her favorite fairy tales growing up), she could no longer hold her silence.<br/><br/>"...Well, Nexoki...as I recall, the Beast was really a prince in disguise, unwillingly turned villain due to a spell..." Valencia started, her eyes looking into his with an imploring tenor. "He was thought to be a freak...a monster, but he wasn't. He was merely a man that was made to look otherwise, was unwanted. You're not a freak...Not in the slightest." Taking a step forward, to make up for the one he'd taken, she shook her head. "The darkness isn't all consuming...You've been trapped within it for so long, that you've forgotten what the light looks like..." Extending her hand to him in a gesture of kindness, a faint smile crossed her face, eyes kind. "For the longest time, I thought light was something only in fairy tales...but I've since seen the proof of it...within you. It's just having a hard time finding its way to the surface."<br/><br/>Letting out a shaky breath, she took another step forward, gaze dropping for a moment, before looking back up. "So...what do you say, Nex? Take a chance?"</span>