He thought the worst of himself. He didn't believe he was worth love or anything for that matter. People had made him despise his very being and when he was banished from his hometown and stripped of his wings they never grew back. He hated himself for being different, for not being a pure born Aera. Until he met Zayna.
Zayna was thousands of years old. Androids from her Timeline were all artifically kept alive humans and there was no longer any real unaltered human beings left. Nature and animals were mostly dead and extinct and Botanical Museums had the last of the Roses and beautiful flowers that she so yearned to see one last time. She would keep Holographic images of nature and birds all around her house and pretend that she's back in the old days when things were better. One day through coincidence or faith a Portal opened up in the middle of the Red District while she was crossing a red light and was about to get hit by a car. The cars and all people around her suddenly disappeared and it was just her in the pouring rain and a Bright Portal inside of which she could see fields of flowers and hear birds chirping. She thought to herself "Ah, so this is Heaven. I must be dead. That's wonderful!" As she took a step into this new world she didn't expect that she had shifted into a different Timeline and was still alive and well. And there she met him, Cinder.
Cinder thought that Zayna was even more strange than he was and that comforted him. She was fascinated by his horns and the fact he had no technological alterations whatsoever. She slowly saw the sadness looming over him and wanted to show him just how beautiful he really was inside and out...