Names… titles… they meant something. He kind of wished they didn’t, but as a Changeling, they meant even more than normal. You could swear by them. Invest emblems with their power. Invoke deals with things both concrete and insubstantial.

And he’d had many names given to him on the Battlefield. Brick, Seige, Ram. When he’d crossed back over to the mortal world, it had been a point of shame that they were the only names he could remember. That they were the things that defined him.

The Summer court had helped him. Let him know he could use the power those names gave him and use it to fight against Fairie as a soldier in with the Iron Spear. So he’d taken the name Ram and made it his own, as well as gaining the title of Dust Grunt.

And he’d thought that that was that. Occasionally people would rib him on his tendency to break things. Or that all he knew how to do was beat things to a pulp. And that hurt but in the end, he always remembered that he’d chosen his name and that what he did… who he was… had value.

It hadn’t been till Sacramento that he chose another name for practical purposes of things like getting hired and getting out of homelessness. Andrew S. Sarcacious. It had been almost more of a joke than anything. A. S. S. It hadn’t really meant anything.

Until people actually started using it. He became Andrew when they talked to him. When he was asked his name in mortal society.

Then he’d found out he was Tobias Morgan. Before the Battlefield and the horrors he’d witnessed he did in fact have another name. And it was dead. The fetch had killed it when he burned down his family home. With Andrew in it. He wasn’t sure if it was a quirk of fate or half remembered dreams. He hadn’t meant to be named after an abuser. HIS abuser. After all this time did it matter? Deep down, he felt it must. If Tobias was still in there… if he wanted Tobias to be in there… it mattered.

Then he’d chosen to become Michael Washburne. Well, his fetch had and then he killed Michael Washburne so that he could take his place. Except he wasn’t sure how. The name was a ghost that he wore like a sheet. Like Andrew had been. Would it eventually become him as well. He hoped so. He dreaded so.

He struggled with conflicting feelings. Tobias was dead by his fetch’s choices. Andrew was dead because of connections to a hurtful man. Ram was dead to take on other names. Michael was dead by his own hand. And it was Michael alone that got raised like Lazurus?

It didn’t seem fair somehow.

Names meant something. He NEEDED them to mean something.

After all, he chose his names.