• We spotted Nathan Meiger around Toledo today, just another gear in the machine of the apocalypse. I heard he is a hunter for The Saints. I guess it fits, seeing as he’s known to be perceptive & resolute, as well as unstable & eccentric. They often have Twenty Years by Placebo in their head while they work. I wonder if they’re prepared for what’s coming?
┆ Info ┆ History ┆ Family ┆ Headcanons ┆ Wanted Connections ┆
Name: Nathan Meiger Age: Twenty-four Gender: Male Orientation: Homosexual Former profession: Freelance photographer Hometown: San Marino, California Camp: The Saints Role: Hunter +intelligent, +observant, +insightful, +creative, +open-minded -distracted, -sarcastic, -unpredictable, -guarded, -grey morality
Survival Skills:
Stubbornly refuses to die in some stupid way.
Willing to point out to others that they are doing something that will mean everyone dying in, again, some stupid way.
Very keen perception to details so finding/locating/foraging/scavenging is something he’ll do well.
Creative problem solving.
Is a native speaker/reader/writer of English and German, and has a working grasp of speaking/reading in French so he can translate for communication or read things in said languages.
Disadvantages:
Clumsy as hell at times.
Has a fairly strong fear of deep water/lakes/oceans that stems from an incident in childhood so he doesn't function well in situations that involve that.
Confrontational towards people he thinks are wrong even if they’re in charge.
Not always the best grasp of reality when he gets emotional/dissociates.
Can’t do several seemingly normal things; barely knows how to change a tire on a car much less how to fix one, the same lack of knowledge goes for most machines but he does learn quickly when taught, doesn’t know the first thing about planting things/growing anything.
Fairly addictive personality so he's still struggling for want of cigarettes, still very much misses his cell phone and a generally far easier life with vices he used to indulge.
[History]
┥when the world was still alive ┝
The ugliness of life is that it very rarely hands out good to people on simple faith alone, or that was at least how Nathan always saw it. Under the shadow of stark family expectations he grew up listening to harsh arguments between his mother and father, two people who could hardly seem to be in the same room for more than five minutes at a time so he never figured out how it was they managed to have four children together. The trouble of course was that his father had a rather strong determined streak that ran nearly to the level of cold-blooded and his mother found the man exhausting. While he was busy building an empire around the law firm he owned she was penning novels that climbed best seller lists and, somehow, two highly ambitious people could not have been worse for each other. Maybe they had been in love once, before children were underfoot and work hours ran late into the evenings, predating family trips dissolved into reasons to travel to opposite ends of the globe to find some space.
The divorce was no surprise to anyone. Even Nathan, only eight at the time, understood the tension well enough to know that rupture had been a long time coming. His mother left, taking along his younger sister and promising visits that fell to excuses and then phone calls, and finally nothing at all and shared holidays that never happened. His brothers may have fared better, better adjusted, or whatever the case might have been that made them less sensitive to the amount of animosity that settled into every corner of their large home like a layer of grime.
It didn’t ease much as time passed and growing up under his father’s scrutiny with only his older brother to serve as a damper from it and his younger, Corey, always underfoot left Nathan retreating from what felt like constant pressure. He wrapped sarcasm around himself like a wall and started to disconnect more and more from the world. Nothing much mattered because nothing was real; his friends were the sort who were fond of him because of his wallet, his interests in constant shift from a restless mind, his ambitions never measured up so he stopped trying to win the favor of a man he only saw long enough to be yelled at over whatever he had fallen short over during the day.
He struggled with the idea of leaving the moment he turned eighteen but that meant abandoning Corey alone in that house and while his brother never earned the sort of relentless verbal abuse their father was so fond of showering on him it wasn't a chance he wanted to take so he found a compromise of sorts in attending community college and living at home. It didn't go over well though, even when he graduated and started working as a freelance photographer around the area, not nearly good enough for his father but really that came as no surprise.
┥after the end ┝
Both he and Corey were spending a few weeks with their older brother at his Manhattan home when the world started to fall apart. During the point when communication was still active they tried to contact their father but once the virus had become more dangerous, once more began to break down, it was clear that nothing was going to remain stable for much longer. The argument over going returning to California or not became a tense one and Nathan refused, in some ways not wanting the truth and some guilty part of him knew it would have almost been a relief if the man were dead; either way he did not want to make the trip back when it was clear they would likely be stranded there once transportation finally stopped.
He was overruled though by his brothers, their determination to reunite the family overriding any of what Nathan thought was common sense, and so off they went. It was slightly easier than for some people, those were the days when money still had value and between the three of them they had it in excess thanks to the family fortune, but everything was falling apart around them and even that advantage was short-lived.
They made it over halfway before being separated, people were panicked and there was no real structure to anything left, so it came as no surprise when the airport they had been forced to stop in outside of Texas was in a state of disaster. It was in that chaos that Nathan had his first up close and personal encounter with the sort of vile creature the virus spawned when someone apparently infected died in flight. Once the creature escaped the cargo bay where it was being held there was no real stopping the death that followed. It was during the maelstrom right out of a horror movie that he lost track of his brothers, it wasn't until after escaping the airport that he came back across Corey in the company of a few stray survivors.
The decision shoved on him was not one Nathan wanted to make, knowing that continuing to search for his other brother meant risking being attacked but taking the option to leave with people they didn't know might mean never finding him again He did what he had to, Corey was only a kid, he had to protect him and there was safety in numbers.
The few months after were a blur, Nathan quickly discovered how ill-suited his life of excess had made him for survival. Thankfully he did have enough to offer in the form of being sharply attentive and excellent in spotting things often overlooked to keep both of them at least on the outskirts of the group. The peace was dissolving though, he saw it more and more each day, leadership became a point of tension that wouldn't resolve and it finally came down to arguments. Rather than stick around to watch the decay he left, Corey begrudgingly following, and set out to find stability elsewhere.
Time and again they moved from group to group, sometimes getting separated, other times being pushed out by either the group itself falling apart or Nathan's habit of questioning the actions of those in charge when their decisions seemed reckless. More often than not they spent weeks between on their own, aside from a mutt that Corey adopted along the way, never fully able to settle anywhere because Nathan was always uneasy.
It was not long into their third year after everything had crashed down around them that Nathan made the mistake of being talked into joining a group that had made their home in the abandoned warehouse district in New Orleans. Everything almost felt too ideal, too comfortable, but Corey made friends and it felt like maybe they had a home. With that feeling Nathan began to debate returning to the search for their other brother, lured into the idea that Corey was safe within the heavily guarded community that had been built. He didn't end up having to make a choice though, as most things do even that collapsed on itself.
The raid from another group was so unexpected that it caught everyone off guard, he had always known that it happened but still wasn't fully prepared for the idea of people killing each other rather than corpses.
During the bloodshed Nathan himself was injured and Corey was killed, shot by one of the intruders, and it wasn't until after they had left the destruction behind that Nathan found him. He was alone then, so entirely that he refused to remain behind with the other survivors and rebuild; the thought of living with the ghosts of those memories was more than he could stomach.
It took the better part of year of being on his own, at times barely surviving, for Nathan to come to terms with the fact that it was nearly impossible to continue to live that way. When he found The Saints he was, and still is, wary of the supposed safety promised there after seeing for himself how that can change in an instant. But, afraid he wouldn't last out much longer on his own, he volunteered as a Hunter, knowing that he had nothing useful to offer in farming or most of the other tasks around the camp, and has remained there for the better part of five months. He's still waiting for something to break, doesn't trust it to last, but for the time being it's really all he has.
[Family]
Mother Leah Meiger
Nathan has no real memory of his mother other than before the divorced was finalized. She didn’t attempt to stay in the area and the last he heard from her she was living somewhere in the Maine area but he really has no idea. What he does remember is confusing, a mix of her affection for her children and the chaos of her constant fighting with his father. Most of the family claim that Nathan’s emotional highs and lows being so intense are inherited from her. He really was too young to have more than fuzzy recollections of her. As it stands he has no idea if either she or his sister are still alive.
Father Jason Meiger (Deceased)
It isn’t that Nathan hated him, exactly, he just found him an overbearing misery to be around. The man had built his business from the ground up and as such always had high exceptions for his children and Nathan’s tendency to disconnect always put them at odds. Being the middle child out of the boys he was usually the one his father singled out and suffered a large share of his anger and sharp comments, his seeming lack of direction was another tense point between them that never settled well. Even Nathan’s sexuality was something that would have caused friction, if he had ever bothered to tell the man that he’s gay. He hasn’t come to terms fully with the idea of him likely being dead but it’s more from the guilt of feeling a sense of relief than not wanting to accept the possibility.
Siblings Corey Meiger (Deceased)
The youngest of the family, Corey was barely in his teens when the virus spread and life went all to hell. A fairly quiet kid, he was quick to stick close to his brothers, specifically Nathan because the two of them shared a tendency to be introverted. More of an optimist by nature, he was a bright spot to most people and Nathan's entire reason to stay focused and concentrate on keeping the both of them alive. It wasn't the virus of the monsters that snatched Corey, he had only turned eighteen a few months before being killed during a raid on the camp that he and Nathan had been living in for the better part of six months. It's something that Nathan still blames himself for, even now, more than a year after his death.
(Open connections)
Nathan has one older brothers and one younger sister still missing. His sister left his life when she was very small and likely she doesn’t remember any of them unless their mother made a point to tell her about the family. His brother he’s been on fairly good terms with even though they have different personalities. His brother specifically is the one he’s run to for support on occasion but the two tend to argue and have a difficult time seeing eye to eye on most things. As it stands he has no idea where he might be, having lost all contact with him shortly after the spread of virus when they were traveling back to meet their father and never made it that far. He assumes him to be dead but never had a chance to try to find out for himself.
┆ Info ┆ History ┆ Family ┆ Headcanons ┆ Wanted Connections ┆
