Biography of Samuel "Sam" Graham Hargrave
A huge thank you to @innkmarie for the incredibly cool commission illustration.
He was born into the family of a military commander, Graham Hargrave, who died when the boy was only six years old. His mother, Evelyn Thornton, abandoned Sam, leaving him in the care of his uncle, the younger brother of his late father, Donovan "Donny" Hargrave, because she had a son only to keep her fiance from cheating on business trips.
Sam can scarcely recall his father's face, yet he remembers the scent of tobacco and gun oil mingled with an expensive masculine cologne. He remembers the deep timbre of his voice and the vibration that rumbled through his broad chest when he laughed. He remembers the prickly mustache, the dry, warm palms, the strong hands that would toss him up into the air.
Sam believes his father was a good man and that he will surely come home one day, no matter how cruelly uncle Donny desecrates his memory, calling his older brother a bastard and a murderer. All Sam has left of his father are a pair of dog tags on a chain. At first he kept them hidden beneath a floorboard, then carried them in his pocket so as not to provoke his uncle, and later, after he ran away and learned that his father was a hero, he hung them around his own neck.
In his day, Graham had been the best epitome of an older brother, flawless in the eyes of their parents, a man who served in the military and defended his homeland. Donny, by contrast, had always been second, always not quite good enough. In the end, it was Graham who had advised Donny to marry a woman, Vanessa, who ultimately abandoned him for a lover. So Donny blames Graham for every misfortune, every failure of his own life. He himself has achieved nothing and now he is unofficial leader of a gang of renegades.
Donovan himself was far from thrilled with the burden of Sam being thrust upon him. His own wife had been secretly betraying him for years with a lover, bearing another man's daughter, a truth that only surfaced once Ashley had grown, when it became plain that she bore no resemblance to her "father" but looked strikingly like Julian Price, a colleague from her mother's workplace. In truth, no one would have blamed Vanessa for cheating. Donny is a difficult man, to put it mildly: a drunkard, a drug addict, a misogynist, and an abuser. In the end, merely to spite his ex-wife, Donny fought for and won custody of the adoptive daughter in court; though, to be fair, neither the woman nor her lover offered much resistance.
Ashley Hargrave is five years older than Sam. While they lived together, she practically replaced Sam's mother, but their relationship was as friendly as that of a brother and sister. They developed their own secret language of signs and signals, as Donny was often drunk and unpredictable. Ashley always stood up for her brother and was a heroic figure before his eyes. Their tight-knit defiance, however, infuriated Donny, the way these two foster children of his stood so resolutely against him. He not only threatened them with words but raised his hand to them regularly, and as for Ashley, he was already scheming to marry her off to the son of one of his drinking buddies. So when Ashley turned eighteen, she fled the house with the help of a friend. She couldn't take Sam with her, he was only thirteen, and by law it would have been considered kidnapping. She had no choice but to disappear without him.
Naturally, this left a deep mark on Sam. He had been betrayed by the one person closest to him, abandoned to be torn apart by the beast all alone. And although he understood why his sister had fled, he harbored a grudge against her for a very long time and learned to distrust people, especially those who treated him kindly. Sam is always waiting for the catch, the blow that follows the caress, the unspoken bargain of "you owe me." He believes nothing is ever given freely, has learned to fend for himself, and knows how to defend himself.
Sometimes, in a drunken haze, uncle Donny would pour his soul out to Sam, recounting just how utterly "perfect" Graham had been in every way, and how agonizing it was to live in his shadow. These moments of raw confession almost always ended in brutal beatings, as Donnie sought to regain a sense of power and control. This bred in Sam a deep-seated fear of other people's sincerity and of their monologues about life.
Sam has no memory of the world before the Fall. For him, fences crowned with razor wire, checks at outposts, the biomarker on his wrist, crowds of aggressive infected wandering the streets, the ever-present smell of smoke and the wail of sirens, all of this is simply normal. Ashley's stories of how "you could once just walk into a shopping mall and buy whatever you wanted" sound to him like fairy tales. He doesn't yearn for the old world, unlike the older generation, but simply accepts reality as a given.
Life at the heart of a gang taught Sam every dirty trick and ruthless method of survival. Donny saw no reason to wait for Sam to grow up. The moment the boy could hold a bat in his hands, they began taking him out on jobs. He smuggled contraband, stole, stood lookout, beat money out of his uncle's debtors, counted stock in the warehouse, unloaded trucks, passed messages between gang members, and constantly participated in local territorial squabbles
He despised uncle Donny and his cronies with every fibre of his being. But weakened by constant hunger and stress, he could never mount a real stand against grown men and besides, he had nowhere else to go. Yet even while working for Donny, Sam drew lines he wouldn't cross: he never struck a woman or a child, and when he came to collect debts, he never took the last of what someone had.
After the Fall, the local school wasn't so much a place to receive education as a safe place where children were taken while adults worked. Teachers were those who couldn't work physically, mostly the elderly and the crippled. Textbooks were scarce, treasured like relics. Sam attended elementary school only because Ashley had managed to get him enrolled there, hoping to shield him from their uncle's rages while she was away from the house. For Sam, school was simply a place where he could get a meal and where it was relatively safe, except for local squabbles between the children of hard workers, merchants, peacekeepers and bandits.
By the time he reached middle school, Sam was trying to juggle his studies with his work. In the mornings he would sit in class at the back desk, struggling to stay awake, and afterwards he would return home, pick up his bat, and head out to work almost on equal footing with the rest of the gang. The teachers knew who his uncle was and left the boy alone, fearing the consequences.
After Ashley fled, Donny turned utterly vicious. He needed someone on whom to vent his fury, and Sam was the only target left. It was then that Donny declared school a useless piece of shit and a relic of the past. For Sam himself, attending school grew increasingly dangerous, the older he got, the more fights he found himself in, the more recognizable his face became among his peers, and sooner or later he would bound to be cornered by a mob on school grounds.
And so Sam lost the one place where he could still be a child, where he could draw on the blackboard and count sticks of chalk in a box instead of counting bullets. The only place where he could have a chance to make friends outside the criminal world. The one place that still held the memory of Ashley, who used to pick him up after work and help him with his homework.
At eighteen, Sam is short, thin, but wiry, knows how to fight, and carries an army knife and a metal bat with him. He knows only basic mathematics, doesn't understand science, has hardly read books, but he knows how to read people, count money in his mind, navigate the city and survive in a post-apocalyptic city.
Years of chronic hunger have left him with an ingrained habit of hoarding food. Sam will instinctively slip crackers, dried meat, sugar into his pockets without even thinking. He may unconsciously steal food while visiting a potential ally, simply because it was in sight. He eats fast, barely chewing, having long ago learned that a meal can be taken away at any moment. In an unfamiliar place, he will always position himself with his back to the wall and his face to the exit, shielding his plate with an elbow. The surest way to earn his trust is to share food with him without commenting on it in any way.
Uncle Donny also has a familiar contact, an underground doctor who treats his men, and Sam as well, without attracting the attention of the peacekeepers. Ariel could have sent Sam and Ashley over to an orphanage, and that would have been the right decision, but he didn't do it because other people's family squabbles were none of his business. But thanks to him, Sam is still alive. So, although Sam hates Ariel for his inaction and fears him for his cunning and unpredictability, Sam is still grateful for his help.
Ariel taught him to treat his body like a piece of machinery, that needs to be repaired on the go. Sam can stitch his own wounds without painkillers, biting his belt; he knows how to bring down a fever, how to flush a stomach after poisoning, which herbs to collect and how to prepare them before use, and which antibiotics to take.
Sam had a bag packed in case of escape for a long time, and he had money hidden under the floorboard in the living room. So when uncle Donny came home drunk yet again and threw a bottle at the wall, showering Sam with smelly, sour beer, it was the last straw for both of them. The quarrel that broke out turned into a fight. Donny slashed Sam with a knife, leaving an ugly scar on his face. Sam grabbed a piece of broken glass with his bare hand and hit his uncle on the chest, leaving him with a long scar.
On the same day, Sam ran away from home and never returned, although the gang members were looking for him to teach him a lesson. The scar on the left side of his face is not merely a disfigurement; it is a brand, a black mark. Those who know Donny recognize at once whose "pup" he is. In criminal areas, some despise him for raising a hand against the man who took care of him, while others respect him for surviving and striking back. This often creates problems for Sam in moving around the city and forces him to avoid clusters of survivors and renegades bandits.
Depending on the AU, Sam can join the Renegades, Bernard Reed (godfather) and the "Waltz's Dogs", whose commander was Graham Hargrave; or to Vincent Waltz and Mia; or to the Peacekeepers and Rowe's 404 squad through Aiden, who helped him as a pilgrim; or to the survivors in the person of Frank Marwey and Lawan.
