//i feel like i've never really gone into meaty depth about kepler's variety of issues on here somehow, but there are times where i want to crack him open like an egg for the thousandth time. cant sleep rn, so i'm turning him over like a hotdog on a stick. if i dont ramble forever i wont readmore this*
anyway when i imagine kepler as a young man in my head, he's faceless. something i harp on that is absolutely integral to his character is that he's never, ever been quite right in the head, he's always been just to the left of off. it's fun to debate with myself as to whether this is nature or nurture; the severity of the abuse he experienced physically and mentally during keystone years of being alive did not help what later happens to him nor the shit he does.
and it's funny because i've mentioned him as a teenager on here in an ask, but even then his face is like a scribble to me. and i think he wandered around feeling like this too, like a total background character - and he was. he grew up in pacifica. who would bother to save him when they have their own equally bad problems to handle? who would bother to save him that didnt want something in return? and that was fine. it really was fine, survival is survival and everyones miserable. and while it all lead up to him finding some kind of meaning in wanting to make a difference with joining the NCPD/getting tf outta dodge...
it's like the first time he felt like he EXISTED was sitting in a superior's squad car. like, full lunch break eating something and catching your reflection in the side mirror and realizing at 19/20 years old, you exist. you're a real person. you are a real person with real emotions and the first one that comes to mind is an anger so visceral you almost start laughing out loud. and it's silent in that car, save for the crinkle of sandwich wrappers, and all kepler wants to do is start laughing because he's so pissed off. over nothing. over everything. over having a face and being a real person.
and this is so jarringly upsetting he simply looks away from the mirror and pretends he never had the thought. it's a saturday night and streets will be busy, and he's on the clock. he has to be professional.
and i could talk a lot about kepler's mannerisms pre-city center, because they are VASTLY DIFFERENT from him in the maelstrom/out with the shiv. which is a given obviously but... he was so yes sir/no sir. he was military polite, he was quiet though mostly good-natured if reserved with his humor. he was not a good man - to stomach the NCPD and take the maxtac promotion after it, i feel there was things he would've had to turn a blind eye to that are likely reprehensible as hell.
i almost said he did his best to be one, but i don't know if that's true. i think he'd think so if he could remember more of those years. i dont think he did, though, and i think he was so focused on being a good machine and a good dog for his wife and militech that he didn't much care if the institutions he served were. well. what they are. he wanted to help people once. he took the most basic and direct path.
and now kepler's probably standing in the middle of the badlands somewhere hacking someone into pieces for their chrome to lowball it to a scav. which is cool, because at least when he catches his reflection in their cyberware, its seven pairs of eyes he can actually recognize.