>> :// ACCESSING AGENT INFERNO…
GENDER AND PRONOUNS: Non-Binary, UTP
FACECLAIM: Dominic Sherwood
QUESTIONS. PROMPTS. TEASER.
The first mystery of your life is why your parents gave up on being a family before they even had one. You’re their second child, but you know from your brother that they’ve never been much of a mother and father. It takes you a long time to accept this. When you’re young you desperately try to earn their attention, drawing them family portraits and hanging your report cards on the fridge. Somehow, your report cards always go ignored and your family portraits end up in the trash. But it’s not all hopeless. Every time you’re left feeling less important than your parents’ work, your older brother is there to remind you what you’re worth. People on the outside are quick to judge him–a teenager adorning stick-and-poke tattoos and black eyes, who totes his kid sibling around on his motorcycle–but you know better. He teaches you everything you need to know about life: how to adjust to the worst of situations, how to defend yourself, how to be independent. The irony of it all is that you’re so dependent on him, you’re not sure who you’d be if you wound up alone.
The second, and biggest, mystery of your life doesn’t uncover itself until you’re twenty-two. Before that, though, your life is surprisingly calm. When you’re eighteen, you and your brother move to Chicago where you go to school and he works. The two of you live in a shoebox of an apartment, but you’re happy. Even with parents like yours, you’ve managed to maintain a semblance of normalcy: you made it through high school, you enjoy college, you have friends. The trouble comes after you’ve graduated. At age twenty-two, you wake up on a normal Tuesday morning to find your brother’s room a mess, his closet completely cleaned out. Sure that he’d never leave you, you file a missing persons report. The cops and your parents are quick to tell you what you can’t accept: he’s not lost. He just left. It’s a difficult truth that leaves you cold and empty. You always felt whole because your older brother told you you were, but now he’s gone. Now, you fill the void with violence and anger and anything else that fits.
It’s not long before you’ve become exactly what everyone thought your brother was: trouble. You drink every night, often starting bar fights for no good reason–and when you haven’t gotten your fill, you visit an underground fighting ring in the early hours of the morning. Your brother is–was–a fighter at heart, and he taught you everything he knew. You wonder now if he taught you to fight so you’d have a way to cope when he disappeared. If it was his intention to help you cope, he couldn’t have done a worse job. You drown in your own anger, you push away every friend you’ve ever made, and when your parents reach out for the first time in your life, you blame them for everything. Anything is better than blaming yourself. So, instead, you blame the world, and you carry yourself the way you wish you could feel: like you’re on top of the world, untouchable. When Hudson confronts you, you attribute their interest to this facade. And, without a second thought, you disappear and make yourself into the third great mystery of your life.
NANO. You’ll be the first to say it: they’re an easy target. Weak, defenseless–it’s almost too easy. You almost feel bad; in some universe, this might have been you. The empathy that still lives in you tells you they don’t deserve it. On the other hand, easing up on them would be extremely dissatisfying. After all, they’re the perfect outlet for your aggression, and they’re a lot more interactive than a punching bag.
FALCON. The two of you started as sparring partners, but he quickly turned into your biggest headache. He’s so annoyingly unafraid of you, and always so eager to fight. You’ve almost given up on being harsh to him. It’s too exhausting; he always counters you. You’d rather knock him out cold and take an extended lunch break.
HAZE. They’re just trying to be helpful. And you really wish they would stop. Something about them is so strangely familiar, so reminiscent of your brother–and it scares the hell out of you. Every time they try to protect you or steer you toward the right track, it becomes more unbearable. You can’t, won’t, let anyone but yourself make you feel important anymore. To avoid any possible mishap, you push them away the best way you know how: with acidic words and half-empty threats.
