i was torn by the storms in my head, like a victim of fate, born to regret. still denied by the spirits of hell, a call to repent to the visions still standing in silence, like a shadow.
Yazmin didn't get along with the majority of the Stafford family. More accurately, the Staffords didn't approve of her. While she gave their son love, support, and rather ironically unquestionable loyalty it didn't change their mind. At first, it was something she had struggled to accept, but after years of dating Henry she had come to terms with knowing that she'd never get their approval. It sadly didn't make the thought of them thrilled that she was out of the picture any easier.
There's one person she had thought cared, though. Somebody who'd be her savior at Stafford family events. The outcast brother. The two had shared many evenings laughing over a glass of unnecessarily expensive wine — they would talk about everything from embarrassing family stories to singing, not forgetting Yazmin's perfect impression of the most prominent family members when she'd had little too much. Regardless of Henry, she had thought they were friends and struggled with the possibility of being wrong.
At first, Yazmin had thought that she was being irrational. It was no surprise that she struggled to grasp what was normal but as the week came to a close and a new one started it was clear that even despite their circumstances Finn was being distant. It's once again on her mind as she rests after gathering, looking over the group only to catch him fussing over the fire in the distance. She had told herself, just like at the wedding, to keep quiet but as the same thought crosses her mind she can feel her stomach churn.
Without much thought she decided now was as best as any. The stern walk over only made her leg hurt more and as she waits to be noticed, her weight shifting and arms folding, it only makes her more irritable.
"Finn." A brief pause. "What did he tell you?" There was no question as to who she was referring to and there was no question she was mad as she looks down with narrowed eyes. "Because I'm not the bad guy here. Look, I know he's your brother and all but I don't know what the fuck he told—" she cuts off at the sudden movement of him burning himself. Letting out an exasperated sigh, Yazmin knows she's being harsh to the wrong person and she hares it. After a few moments of reflection, she closes her eyes, and as they open again she starts to unfold one of her arms to reach out for his. "Let me see. I don't want to be blamed for burning your hand off too."
What had he expected? Finn didn't really know. Perhaps for her to keep her distance just the same? Confirmation that his assumptions were correct; he could rely on his instincts very well in many other facets of his life, so why would they fail him in social situations? However, what he didn't expect was her angry demand, wishing to know what Henry had told him about their relationship. He held his hand in his mouth, tongue pressed against the tender area of where the flames had licked skin — not enough to do any serious damage, but enough to leave the sting of lingering heat upon his nerves — with a vague perplexity on his features.
What had he expected? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't this. She cut herself off and Finn let her take his hand, brows furrowed as he scanned her face. "Of course you're not the bad guy," he mused, confusion clear in his voice. He didn't know why she thought he thought she would be, or what she thought Henry could have told him that would insinuate as much. Sometimes, people just broke up. Sometimes, people just didn't work, even if they'd seemed picture perfect before the fact.
Frankly, that scared the shit out of him period.
His mind was brought back to the pulsing sting in his hand, beating in time with the pumping of his heart, and for a moment, the situation was secondary to her worry, feigned or not. "I'm okay, it's okay, ain't serious," he assured her, but even as the words left him — 'okay' a word as natural from his mouth as carbon dioxide was — he didn't pull back his hand.
His head tilted. "Hal told me what happened. Or, I guess, that you broke up with each other. I j—" The words were smothered as though they'd hit a concrete wall. Instead, he cleared his throat, and a wry grin spread across his features, like an armour to cover up the impending vulnerability. "Y'know, you finally get to have some rest from Staffords on this beautiful beach. Who am I to rob that from you?"
The cool morning sand pricked the underside of his feet. Dry dust coated his skin uncomfortably, making his fingers twitch with the urge to scratch at it. The ocean water licked at the endless strip of white littered with the debris of the wreckage stretching before him like cracked teeth.
Kazuki slowed his pace. A shudder ran down his spine, feeling every scrape and nick burn with the memory of the crash. His strained shoulder pulsed with pain. He rolled it slowly, massaging it with nimble fingers to dispel the feeling. He needed a goddamn cigarette. And some lotion. And to find his stuff.
With urgency in his steps, Kazuki trekked on, fighting the resistance of the shifting sand while dancing around dangerous splinters, just narrowly avoiding having his foot sliced in half. "Holy fuck," he cursed with more vulgarity than seemed to match him, staring at a jagged piece of metal half buried in the sand. Too close.
His mind wouldn't stop. It felt like a buzzing, like lights too bright, a restlessness stuck in a room too small to move in, driven to slamming all that you are into the concrete to find peace and space to breathe. Finn couldn't think about how — or why — he survived when so many others didn't. His very first priority had been to make sure others were safe, just to push off the existential crisis and emotional turmoil of the events of the last— however many hours it had been.
Henry had been his first priority; if he had to survive his brother, Finn knew he would've lost his mind more than he already felt like he did in this moment. The confirmation of his brother's survival came with the confirmation of Yazmin's — this was fate, these were the Fates, but no, they didn't exist. Or did they? Focus. Right.
He'd scanned the beach — paradisaic, even despite the scattered wreckage, something travel agencies would use to market the virgin beaches of foreign countries, to consume by tourists they were marketed to. Every face was a stranger, harrowed, bruised, and bleeding to varying extents, perhaps a reflection of his own. Even now, hours after, he felt like throwing up, chest constricted as less and less faces were left for him to recognise.
And finally.
With singular purpose, Finn moved across the sand — his bag, which he'd found between the confirmation of his brother and hopefully-soon-to-be sister-in-law and this moment, dropped a few metres away to empty his arms. "Kaz." The name left his throat roughly almost at the same time as his hands yanked on the man's clothes to pull him into a tight hug.
Finn had been busy packing any essentials he'd think to need in the canvas duffle bag that had once been his carry-on. It looked worn — even before the crash — but it was still sturdy enough to serve its function, and in the situation they found themselves in today, he felt maybe there was something to fate, or the multiplicity of the Sisters. Continuing the last of his packing — not in the least the leather-bound travel journal he never went anywhere without — Finn cast a glance up at the young man addressing him from his crouched position.
"Memory is a fickle thing, kid," he shrugged, seconds away from returning his attention back to his bag when he paused, eyes moving over Scott's face. While he'd only known Scott for a handful of weeks — how long had it even been already? — Finn could already recognise a certain amount of tells, and the upset on the younger man's face was clear as day.
He sighed and sat back onto his heels, regarding him for a second longer. "Alright," he said finally, scratching his temple. "There's a way, just gonna take a sec." With that, Finn held his hand out expectantly.
Scott was resigned to the idea of needing to give up his photo of Eve. Finn's words made him pause, however, dark eyes widening slightly. "What way?" He stared at the outstretched hand. "Do I grab that or do I... give you the picture?"
He glanced at the photo again. His lips met the paper, brushing against it ever so slightly in a gentle kiss. "Here you go," he said, figuring that handing over the picture was a more logical response to his question. What use would Finn have for Scott's own hand? But he was nervous. What did he plan to do with it?
Finn gave him a snort, followed by a slight head tilt as he gave him a wry smile. "Yeah, man, I want to hold hands with you." Despite his words, he waited patiently for Scott to part with the photo, watching him go through his ritual. It came across to Finn as a sort of goodbye, which... perhaps he didn't understand it exactly, but he wasn't about to comment on it.
The moment the photo touched his hand, however, Finn dug into his bag and pulled out his leather-bound travel journal — how it had survived the crash, he didn't know, but honestly, he wasn't about to question it. He didn't believe in any higher powers, let alone a god, but small miracles such as would almost make him question this conviction.
He unwrapped it and pulled the pencil from where it was tucked in the spine. The edges of the pages were warped from water damage, but other than that, it was perfectly functional, the many notes and in-depth drawings of a variety of artefacts and a myriad of depictions of things he'd seen on his travels still in-tact. Flipping to an empty page, Finn put the photo on the other page and quickly wrote the girl's name in the corner of the page before shooting up a glance at Scott.
"Heard you're goin' with the other group," he stated, attention returning to the page and the picture, eyes moving back and forth in a trained manner as he started the sketch of Eve's countenance.
He'd been avoiding her since his brother had broken the news to him approximately a week and a half ago, after the initial shock of the goddamn plane crash on a fucking deserted island — or was it? — had worn off, at least for the majority of the survivors. It was something that was clearly deliberate on Finn's part, because you didn't accidentally avoid someone when you were stranded on a beach trying to get shit together to make it somewhat habitable as a group.
It wasn't even that he suddenly disliked Yazmin now that she and his brother had broken up. They shared a very solid history of mutual support and friendship, and that was exactly what made this so damn difficult. Quite frankly, Finn was paralysed by the possibilities and perhaps the implications. After all, regardless of whether she was Hal's girlfriend or not, they were friends. Very close friends, even — the fact that they'd met through their mutual connection to Hal became a very, very secondary fact to the one that was most important: they actually liked each other's company, and he'd helped her escape many a Stafford family event with the promise of alcohol, ancient stories, and the comfort of understanding.
And now... now the idea that it was all an illusion, a fact of situation and proximity, that whatever happened between Hal and Yaz somehow reflected on him as well. It was wildly irrational, he knew in his head, but that's not the organ that filled him to the very brim with dread and destructive rumination.
"I'll have the fire ready, will you calm?" he sighed at the next pair of legs that entered within his peripheral vision, having already batted away offers of help just a handful of minutes ago. Finn shot a vaguely annoyed glance up and, as though Boreas himself had descended upon him to root him to the ground, he froze, his eyes conveying the lingering annoyance with a mix of shock and surprise. The embers awoke and the sear of flesh on fire shook him from his paralysis.
With a hiss, Finn pulled his hand up and away from the licking heat, sticking the side of his hand into his mouth out of instinct. "Yazmin," he murmured around his hand, quickly getting up from his crouched position.
scott didn't look his best, a corollary of their current situation. but his photograph of eve remained spotless. he'd been fastidiously polishing it with whatever he could get his hands on for the task. the magazine he brought contained a picture of eve too, but it was small, and the flimsy, glossy pages were more likely to get damaged than the comparatively sturdier photograph.
after polishing, he slipped it back inside his wallet. but now he might have to give it up to finn. "um, is there no way you could just commit her face to memory?" he said, deeply reluctant to let the photo go. the younger man's face looked uncharacteristically solemn. not that he didn't trust finn to make an effort to keep the picture safe — but the key word was effort. they were all at the mercy of this strange, unpredictable place.
Finn had been busy packing any essentials he'd think to need in the canvas duffle bag that had once been his carry-on. It looked worn — even before the crash — but it was still sturdy enough to serve its function, and in the situation they found themselves in today, he felt maybe there was something to fate, or the multiplicity of the Sisters. Continuing the last of his packing — not in the least the leather-bound travel journal he never went anywhere without — Finn cast a glance up at the young man addressing him from his crouched position.
"Memory is a fickle thing, kid," he shrugged, seconds away from returning his attention back to his bag when he paused, eyes moving over Scott's face. While he'd only known Scott for a handful of weeks — how long had it even been already? — Finn could already recognise a certain amount of tells, and the upset on the younger man's face was clear as day.
He sighed and sat back onto his heels, regarding him for a second longer. "Alright," he said finally, scratching his temple. "There's a way, just gonna take a sec." With that, Finn held his hand out expectantly.
achilles, achilles, just put down the bottle, don't listen to what you've consumed. it's chaos, confusion, and wholly unworthy of feeding, and it's wholly untrue. you may feel no purpose nor a point for existing; it's all just conjecture and gloom. and there may not be meaning, so find one and seize it, do not waste yourself on this roof.
— introducing finn stafford • the wicked puzzleknot
𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧…
FULL NAME — finn aodhán stafford
NICKNAME(S) — finnán
BIRTH DATE — february 14
AGE — 33
GENDER — cis man
PRONOUNS — he+him
ORIENTATION — panromantic pansexual
𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧…
FACE CLAIM — boyd holbrook
HEIGHT — 6'1" / 185cm
HAIR & EYE COLOUR — blond & blue
RIGHT/LEFT-HANDED — ambidextrous
MARKS — a tattoo on the inside of his left forearm, "adventure." in typewriter font; scarred knuckles.
Whatever he hides, the surface makes something very clear upon first meeting; this man has trouble in his mind. It's the way the corners of his mouth inevitably always pull up into a mischievous grin, the way his eyes scan a room looking for a thread to pull. Finn keeps his unkempt and floppy blond hair relatively short, yet even when it's as short as it is, there's no taming it, having it stick out every which way no matter how often he might push a hand through it.
His manner of dress varies vastly, going from white t-shirt and flannel over top, torn jeans and worn boots when he isn't being purposeful, to slick and put-together when the situation calls for it. It betrays a lot of his personality; he knows all about etiquette and manners, and will wield it when it'll get him somewhere, but his default is blunt and to the point, not a diplomatic bone in his body.
𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐬…
✱ KNOWLEDGEABLE
If you ask Finn, he bullshitted together his PhD. As it is, he's not only a bookworm that will read books 80 kilometres per hour, he's also gifted with the natural skill of "connecting the dots". Generating new information by connecting two seemingly unrelated bits of data is how he subconsciously stays ahead in life.
✱ STUBBORN
If Finn doesn't want to do something, no twisting or turning will get him to do something. Once he's put his heels down, very few things — or rather people — can convince him to do anything or go anywhere against his will. Unfortunately this is usually employed to benefit others rather himself. Unless it's about opening up about his inner most feelings.
✱ CURIOUS
Curiosity is what has driven him to many ends of the earth in the past, and it hasn't stopped moving him since he was a wee child. Like a cat demanding to see what's on the other side of the door, if there's something that sparks Finn's interest or curiosity, no matter how reckless or dangerous, there's few forces in the world that may deter him from reaching the other side of that damn door, come what may.
✱ IMPATIENT
When you take curiosity, a sense of adventure, and a stunning case of lack of self-preservation, and mix them all together, you get Finn's brand of "fuck it". Yes, he can be reckless and negligent towards his own well-being, but he would argue in the carpe diem variety. After all, if you know what needs to happen to make anything happen, why sit around and talk about it?
✱ QUICK-WITTED
While he is quick with his words, Finn is even quicker with his mind. It doesn't take him very long to get the gist of a situation, a text, a person, and react upon it. It's not that he knows everything, rather than he knows how to find out everything. For Finn, his mind is a giant search engine that he only needs to input the relevant data to figure out an appropriate — albeit preliminary in a lot of cases — answer.
✱ ARGUMENTATIVE
Arguments are the whetstone of the mind, and o boy does he love keeping his sharp. While often he doesn't argue for argument sake, when you leave him bored and to his own devices, he will start shit just for the "thrill of the fight". Great when you're in a college room arguing theories with your classmates. Not as much when you're in a bar calling some drunk guys idiots.
When he was young, one could've been fooled to think that Finn was a reserved, introverted boy with burst of energy to him. Books are his escape, if not from the world, then from himself. You don't have to travel physically if you can travel mentally, and wishing you were someone else in the deep recesses of your mind is academic when you can simply be someone else for as long as there's another page to turn. If nothing else, books — any, really — are his lifeline to relative sanity.
✱ ART
Art museums of any kind make Finn feel a certain way, like putting a child in a candy store. Art was his in into history, and history is what his entire world revolves around. Don't get him started on the topic, however, because he will not stop and there has been times he has gotten quite heated over the morals of it — here's looking at you, British Museum.
✱ HISTORY
Not his first love, but definitely his true love. Finn got into it through movies, The Trojan Women at five years old, and eventually — realising there were whole books that contained more of the like — fiction and non-fictional books of historical accounts. By the time he was fifteen and he first saw The Lost Ark, he decided to also become a "professor of archaeology". In hindsight, the professor part was too boring, and nowadays he realises he prefers working in the field.
✱ LANGUAGES
Voracious reader as he is, a language barrier never stopped Finn. After his first foray into mythological fiction of the film kind, he discovered the Sword-and-Sandal series, made a few years before his birth — unfortunately all in Italian. It was his first proper solo venture into a foreign language, but certainly not his last. The world of linguistics opened up even more books for him to read, and through reading, he learned an astounding amount of languages, to the point where, at 33 years of age, he can now be considered a successful polyglot.
✱ PARKOUR
So this was largely by accident. Growing up, a way for Finn to get out of his head was by getting physical — climbing trees, running around, even getting into fights as a teenager. It didn't take too long for him to figure out that if he turned the environment into a puzzle for him to solve, he could keep his mind sharp and occupied with anything that wasn't rumination and ruin. So when sitting still and reading books wouldn't do, he'd go out into the world and he'd fling himself on and against and off anything he could find, pushing himself further and further.
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭…
• Finn was born in Swords, Ireland to a barely 19-year-old mother, shunned by her very Catholic family, struggling to make ends meet as a single mother with very little financial or emotional support.
• he was six years old when his mother packed everything they owned in a single suitcase and moved to the United States under promise of better days by an American man she'd met once in Dublin and had shared a two-week long intense romance with.
• a month after arriving there and living in his house, they broke up and she was kicked out along with her son; it wasn't long thereafter that both he and his mother ended up the hospital, where he survived — an event Finn still doesn't remember to this day and the details were never clear on — but she didn't.
• a stranded boy in critical condition without American nationality, it was by the grace of a doctor working there that he found a new family; before he was even discharged, he'd been adopted into the Stafford family.
• throughout his growing up, he showed promise and potential, a quick mind and an eager spirit that turned restless in his teenage years; although he was provided everything he needed to live in comfort, his parents were busy people, and the attention they did manage was unloaded on Hal, his older brother.
• there's never been resentment for this towards his brother, not now nor as he was growing. Finn loves his brother, the most consistent person he's known in his life, his role model, the shining beacon whom he placed upon a pedestal that can do no wrong in his eyes and to whom he can never live up to — if Hal said jump, Finn would ask him how high, something that no one else, not even their parents, have ever managed.
• how Finn graduated at 15 years of age is anyone's guess, with the trouble he frequently found himself in and his habit of bullshitting through every piece of homework that was assigned to him — even in college, his drive, passion, and interest, that some might call obsessive, saw him spending much of his free time, if he had any, in libraries.
• while he had outstanding grades, his track record in high school was troubled to say the least — but if your family is who they are, good colleges are easier to come by even if your behaviour left something to be desired; and thus, to occupy his time as much as he could with something that took his full interest, Finn went on to double major in archaeology and anthropology with a minor in classical history and ancient languages.
• ultimately, his PhD was in archaeology, and much of his professional life was spent travelling, which worked out just fine for him — being away from his family was sad, but nothing that could stop him from desperately keeping his mind away from the darkness that threatened to consume all he was any moment of any day.
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 & 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬…
✱ THE PLANE IS NOW BOARDING
Finn's reason for boarding the flight was partially because it had been a long time since he'd properly seen or spent any amount of time with Hal and Yazmin, between their mutual busy schedules, and partially because... well. He'd never been to Sydney, but he had it on good authority that there was a rabbit hole of a party that was happening in the city in the very near future that he very much wanted to slide down into.
✱ I'M GOING ON VACATION AND I'M BRINGING...
Research-minded and inquisitive, Finn still uses his creative analytical and problem-solving skills to... well, solve problems. For the most part, he's a generalist, knows a little about a lot, enough to make him dangerous, as they say. His PhD and general education has primed him to being able to solve puzzles with a lot of pieces missing, to see beyond the evidence you have into what the evidence could be. He knows the basics of camping, he knows how to fight and win, and he's a skilled polyglot — even in languages that are considered dead today.
𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬…
✱ GENERAL DEMEANOUR
Finn is outgoing and while he can be stubborn and a blunt prick, he's not necessarily hard to get along with. He is who he is unapologetically and there's very little about himself he'll hide from people. From the get-go, he'll treat everyone like an old acquaintance he hasn't spoken to in a long time, until he gets negative reactions. While he's not going to go out of his way to antagonise anyone, he'll also not stand for bullies — whether the target is him or another person.
✱ THE INNER CIRCLE
If you've managed to get into Finn's inner circle, you'll get to see a truer part of who he is, a vision of his personality with more clarity than what he presents to the general public. He's a man who'll go out of his way to make his friends and family happy, loyal to the bitter end, and willing to damn himself to protect others — he's not a stranger to dirtying his hands for the greater good, and if he can keep others from having to do the shit that needs to be done, then that what he'll do. Frankly, for his inner circle, he'd walk through fire without so much of a complaint.
✱ THE NINTH CIRCLE
It takes a lot to get on Finn's bad side — or, on the other hand, perhaps it doesn't. While Finn's morals can bend to accommodate situations that are complex and not so cut-and-dry, there are certain things he simply will not tolerate. A very dangerous thing Finn can do is to shut off all feelings and act, allowing him to walk straight into hell to strangle the devil himself, if he has to. Abusers, predators, exploiters, anyone who looks at another person and imagines an easy target or a victim will find themselves quickly on the receiving end of his unrelenting fist — until they stop moving or he does.
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