BASICS
Faceclaim: Taylor Zakhar-Perez
Name: Ángel Benning-Flint
Age: 25
Gender: Cis Man
Home: District 13
Role: Technology Supervisor
Personality: Warm-hearted, stubborn, resilient, playful, outspoken, mischievous, inventive, idealistic, hyperactive
Song: Laura Palmer by Bastille
BIOGRAPHY
trigger warnings: illness, death, passive self harm
Ángel was a great choice of name for the Flint's first born. He was a babbling, bright, bouncing baby boy almost from his first breath. Curious too, which often got him into sticky situations as he began to toddle around. With big brown eyes rimmed by dark lashes and a shock of black hair, he looked much more like his father than his mother, but he loved both his parents equally and greatly. His mother was...Cool. At least that's how he described her as a young boy. She worked in weapons testing and was the soldier who got to play with all the newest toys, giving feedback to it's inventors. She would always ruffle his hair and tease him, making her feel more like a friend than a mother at times, but always knew when her baby boy just needed a patented Mom Hug. And his father was warm; big smiles, rough hands, booming laughter. He worked in the agro sector and always came home smelling of dirt, but had taught Ángel how to nurture things and let them grow, plants or otherwise.
Their family expanded soon after Ángel turned 9 when his baby sister, Fernanda, came into the picture, but he was already busy in both school and the required military training. What was he going to do with a slobbery baby, anyways? --- She grew on him, though, and he really began to love being an older brother. Now it was his turn to ruffle hair and tease, just like his mother had done to him. He still left the Mom Hugs to her though. He couldn't even bring himself to be annoyed with her when she began to follow him and his friends around as she got older, because he knew if he had an older sibling, he definitely would have done the same.
But then she was gone. They were all gone. Ángel was only 14 and his entire family were gone. A small wave of sickness had swept though 13, some sort of flu. Nearly every one survived, but the Benning-Flints were apart of a very exclusive, very unlucky group. Everyone else dealt with a very intense week of symptoms, but bounced back just as quickly as they had been struck down, Ángel included. But his mom, sister, and dad never bounced back, and within a week and a half, they were being taken out of their quarters in body bags by faceless medical workers in masks and breathing apparatuses. For a few hours, Ángel was left to sit in that room, his eyes looking over all the belongings of his family, wondering what would happen to them. Would they be redistributed? Would he see someone wearing his mother's jumpsuit that had a grease stain in the shape of a star that she couldn't get out no how many times she laundered it? Or maybe he'd meet someone with his father's shoes, with an odd wear on the sole from his awkward gait. Or perhaps, even worse, would he see the bear (one of the few toys the district could provide for it's youngest citizens) his sister used to hug when she had a bad dream in the arms of another child?
Eventually, someone came and got him, and when he asked them the question, they told him he didn't need to worry about that. But he continued to, always searching the clothing and items of others, waiting to recognize something. He wasn't sure why he had fixated on it, but he had. After being cleared by medical, he was eventually placed with another family, only able to take the very few items that were considered 'his' rather than property of 13. --- 14 is a hard age to parent even without any added difficulties, but when you take all the hormones and growing pains of a teen and mix it with such a traumatic event, troubled is the volatile result.
He had become an angry young man, filled with guilt and questions. Why them? Why not him? Why hadn't the medical team tried harder to save them? As expected, he lashed out, and began to use his training times as way to get out his aggression. The only issue is he wasn't ever very good at the physical training the district put it's kids through, and he ended up getting hurt more often than not. But for awhile, the pain of a bad punch or misplaced roundhouse on the bag was the only way to break him from the overwhelming numbness that he had slowly slipped into. Finally, after one too many trips to the medical unit, someone took notice. Ángel had taken to calling him 'the good doctor' when he had first started seeing him, trying his hand at condescension and bratty remarks, but eventually the nickname was no longer said accompanied by an eye roll. Eventually it was shortened just to 'doc' and it was said with affection. He saw the doc for two years, their last session right before he turned 17. And while he was no miracle worker, he had helped tremendously; Ángel saw a future again, even if it was one without his family. To this day, he and the doc are close.
In the years since, he dove deep into his interest for tech, not quite agile enough to follow into his mother's line of work, and too impatient for his father's, but finding a niche he excelled in all his own. His hyperactive mind had a way of solving problems in a somewhat chaotic, but overall effective way, making him great at trying to figure out complicated issues that tended to pop up when dealing with advanced technology. He also loved to invent, to let his brain get ahead of his hands, thinking of a 'cool idea' and letting the how's follow and fall into place later. --- His passion, and sometimes lack of a personal life, led him to rise through the ranks of the technology sector quickly, landing him the title of tech supervisor only weeks after turning 25.
As much as he loves the life he has worked so hard to be appreciative of, as he hears of more and more missions going topside, a small part of him craves the adventure and the changes that are being brought to 13 as the rebellion grows, and he's already trying to find a way to be apart of it all.
