Alexander was born the elder of two twins to Lenora and Ward Walsh, a well known Ifirt family in Romulus. His life was fairly normal (as far as normal goes, especially in Romulus) at first. He learned to control his powers and exactly what they meant surrounded by a supportive family. Soon after he and his twin brother, Julian, had turned 15, their family left Romulus to go camping for the weekend. It was going to be a fun trip, it was going to be time for them all to have a change of scenery and spend time together. It only took less than a minute for their lives to change forever during that weekend. Xander had been tending to the fire with his father, listening to his brother and mother banter back and forth and then her sentence cut off and a shot rang out. He had looked up just in time to see her body crumple, another Ifrit standing behind her with a gun. It was an immediate response; Xander had charged him and attacked him himself even as the man managed to shoot her again. It was only after that that he finally succeeded disarming the gun but not before another shot got him in the shoulder. He hardly felt it, even as he proceeded to be beat badly before finally gaining the advantage. He was in a fit of rage, hardly even there at all, when he killed the man who had murdered their mother. It was only a minute after that that he had passed out himself.
Xander refused to use his powers to heal himself, instead determined to scar, to have a reminder for how he had failed to save his mother. He began to close himself off to everyone outside of their family, maintaining his friendly exterior but shutting off the personal details, the things that made everything feel dark. Their dad’s mental health dissolved quickly after their mother’s death, and the boys were forced to care for him and run the business as best as they could. When they graduated, Xander was furious to see that their dad hadn’t come, particularly knowing what it had meant to Julian. But when they got home, Julian went upstairs to find him before coming back down. Xander had gone upstairs himself then, fully prepared to yell at their dad, but had only found a body on the bed. Stricken and stunned, he allowed himself a few moments to panic, to feel it, to stare. But he didn’t break down, instead walking out of the room and calling 911.
After their dad died, Xander found himself struggling against the mentality that he had to take care of things, angry that he and his brother had been forced to grow up so fast and so young. He began to rely more on the parties he went to, fell into that lifestyle even more, even as he was helping run the auto shop and going to community college to study business. Every day felt like a struggle, but he refused to tell anyone, to seek help or to even admit his problems to himself. When they did come up, he got angry instead and would tell whoever had mentioned it to drop it. When he finished community college, he reluctantly left his brother and went to a university just two hours away, studying business so that he could better run the shop. When he returned, he took over the business side of things, allowing Julian to return to the mechanics part. After that, he joined in the mechanics when he found himself able to, but for the most part didn’t mind doing business even as he complained about it. He continued to party as a way to cope with everything he had seen and experienced, and acts as if he doesn’t have a care in the world in an attempt to convince himself of that very thing. Even as others tried to tell him that he needed to behave like an adult, he stayed set where he was, determined that he already grew up enough and he wanted to keep what irresponsibility he could have.
It was only recently that an accident occurred at the auto shop. Clark Vogel had been there overseeing handiwork when Xander’s trauma was triggered and he accidentally started a fire in what he thought was self defense. The fire consumed the shop and Clark succumbed to it even as Xander tried to save him but was pulled from the flames. Since then, he’s been even more closed off than normal. He doesn’t even go out to party, though he does drink and use weed inside the house, relying on others to get food and even his drugs and alcohol, only leaving when he has to. His depression got bad enough that it was one of the reasons that his father’s brother, Balthazar, came home to Romulus, but nothing has quite pulled him from his depression yet.
