𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒔.

𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑾𝑰𝑫𝑶𝑾𝑴𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑹   ⸻   paz navarro cruz, 32, cyborg, the syndicate.

𝙸.  𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚜.

name.  wyatt bartholomew kincaide, jr.  aliases. holden graves.  birthday & age.  september 21st & 35.  birthplace.  lexington, kentucky.  species.  human.  gender & pronouns.  cis man & he/him.  orientation.  bisexual.  marital status.  divorced.  occupation.  smuggler, captain of the aces 'n' eights.  affiliation.  the dust runnners, the ashen legion. faceclaim.  brandon sklenar.  eye colour.  blue.  hair colour & style.  sandy brown, rugged, short-to-medium length.  height.  6’2”.  tattoos.  a former ashen legionary tattoo on upper right biceps, partially obscured by scarring.  piercings.  n/a.  scars.  burn scar on upper right biceps, three bullet wounds on torso in a diagonal left to right pattern, scarred knuckles, faint scar in left eyebrow.  clothing style.  frontier casual. long coat. cattleman hat.  signature scent.  old leather, sandalwood, faint tannins. moral alignment.  chaotic good.  mbti.  istp-a.  zodiac.  virgo.  enneagram. type 9 (the peacemaker).  temperament.  sanguine-choleric.  archetype.  the warrior.  primary virtue.  justice.  primary vice.  wrath.  strengths.  authentic, daring, just, practical, resourceful.  weaknesses.  cynical, haunted, impulsive, private, unapologetic.  tropes.  the ace, the anti-nihilist, badass longcoat, beware the nice ones, broken hero, combat pragmatist, the cynic, farm boy, the gadfly, the gunslinger, honor among thieves, the lancer, shell-shocked veteran, signature headgear, sole survivor, venturous smuggler.  character parallels.  han solo (star wars), malcolm reynolds (firefly), nathan drake (uncharted), raylan givens (justified), roy goode (godless), starbuck (battlestar galactica).   disorders.  undiagnosed ptsd.  allergies.  none.  sleeping habits.  sporadic. sleeps maybe three, four hours unbroken each night if he's lucky. catches a nap where he can to make up the difference.  eating habits.  a former soldier, he's learnt the value in eating quickly and whenever he can.   sociability.  prefers to linger on the edge of crowds, though is fine with one-on-one encounters. has a habit of talking around issues rather than addressing them directly.  addictions.  none.  alcohol use.  borderline. frequently used to self-medicate.  drug use.  none.  likes.  collecting books, flying, spending time with his daughter, live music, playing cards,  dislikes.  sweet food, mixing business with pleasure, the desert, talks about his past, regulations squashing the little folk.  fears.  the  loss  of  his  daughter,  being returned to the ashen legion.    habits.  chews the inside of his cheek while in thought, creases and folds pages instead of using a bookmark, leans with his wrist on his pistol.    weapon of choice.  10mm pistol, hunting knife.  weather.  X.  color.  X. beverage.  whiskey, neat. two fingers. food.  brahmin steak, medium rare. all the fixin's.  animal.  dog.  season .  late autumn.     mother.  winona  kincaide, née  graves.  father.  wyatt  kincaide, sr.  siblings.  n/a.  significant other.  _____ (ex-wife).  children.  temperance kincade (daughter).   

𝙸𝙸. 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍.

you came into this world the same way you intend to leave it: kicking and screaming. 

you weren’t called holden back then. that name, that facade, was something you would come by later in life. an act borne out of necessity. one designed to stave off that aforementioned departure from occurring prematurely. 

no, when you were born, you were named wyatt. wyatt kincaide. the junior to your father’s senior. his first and last gift. Perhaps it is foreshadowing your relationship to know that you would ultimately throw it aside. Wyatt Kincaide, sr. wasn’t an easy man to love. Lord knows your mother tried for decades without much in the way of success. They say hardship builds character, but they conveniently never tell you what sort of character actually comes about. He was a decent man, all the same. Not good, not great, but decent. the kind of man that put food on the table, a roof over your head and tried to objectively ignore your existence unless you happened to endanger one of the two. 

Your mother, though. Your mother was good woman. A great woman. Unlucky in love, certainly,  but a great woman all the same. She taught your letters and how and when to use them. Taught you to speak your mind and stand up for your convictions, no matter the cost, no matter the hell to pay. Truth, justice, courage. In hindsight, perhaps it was her fault you ended up the way you did. Why you thought you needed to fix what was broken with this world.

You were sixteen when the ashen legion came recruiting. Old enough to catch their eye, too young to know better. They filled your head with dreams of doing exactly what your mother taught you. That you’ll fight for what was right. What was necessary and just. If you were smart, if you’d really paid attention to what your mother tried to teach you, you’d have caught on that they really just wanted you to fight. An idealist stops a bullet just as sure as a pessimist. sadly, son, no one’s ever really accused you of being smart. Your name was already drying in their ledger before the second thoughts could form. That day was the last time you saw your mother. Last time you saw your father, too, though that don’t sting quite the same. 

It took you a year, maybe two, for the idealism to wear off. By that time, you’d seen enough that all the fancy lies and gilded propaganda of the recruiting officer had begun to ring hollow. the ashen legion wasn’t much better than a bandit group, leveraging numbers and weapons as a means to exert control over the hollers. Turns out unification is a fancy word for subjugation.  Fancy uniforms or no, the legion was just another boot searching for a neck. It didn’t really matter who it belonged to. If you were a good man, you might have sought to affect some change within their ranks. If you were a great man, you might have tried toppling them. But you were just a man, and barely that.

you spent another five years with them. seven in total; three short of the decade you’d been tricked into signing away. Seven years of fighting over dead stretches of irradiated dirt. Seven years of bleeding and being bled for a cause that meant nothing, amounted to nothing, and would have seen you return to much the same. Folk around you weren’t so lucky. You buried more than your fair share of friends and comrades in those very same stretches of dirt you’d end up quibbling over before the month was through. Not good folk, not great folk, but folk of the same ilk as you. Folk just looking to make do with the hand they’d been dealt. The hand the ashen legion had stacked against them.

You don’t know why you finally snapped, you just remember the sound of your heart hammering in your ears. Remember the officer’s face turning purple with an apoplectic rage you felt in your bones. The smell of cordite on the air as your pistol discharged once, twice, three times in rapid succession. And then twice more, because while your mother might have seen fit to teach you right from wrong, your father taught you to see things through. Few things in this wasteland get up after five rounds are put through it. And when the dust settled, you didn’t. 

Just as sure as that officer, wyatt Kincaide also died that day.

To commemorate the fact, you took the name Graves. Your mother’s surname. Holden from the grandfather you never met. Perhaps if you’d been given a bit more time, you’d have leant some more thought to it. Maybe you’d done a lot of things better. Couldn’t have done much worse. Should’ve put a few more down, or at least done it without so many witnesses to the fact. The privilege of hindsight.

You lost yourself on the road for a while. Or maybe you found yourself on it. Either way, you kept moving. Kept between the cracks of what is and what was, taking jobs if and where you could. Escort jobs, mostly. Convoys heading west and away from the purview of the legion. Some of the jobs might have been on the up and up, but you would be lying if you’d said it bothered you when they weren’t. Your mother’s ethics were one thing, but you can’t eat a figurative high horse. 

You started running shuttles out of colorado for a while. Earning your keep with a quick hand on the controls, an even quicker one on the big iron on your hip. Made a name for yourself amongst certain, less upstanding circles. Folk that didn’t mind looking past your nebulous history and saw the money you could make them. Called themselves Dust Runners. You supposed after a life in the ashes, a life in the dust wasn’t too far of a stretch.

𝙸𝙸𝙸. 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚜.

two signers ⸻ has been married once. divorced once, too.  He has few regrets, save for how it ended. If nothing else, it gave him a daughter, temperance. she’s six years old going on forty and too smart for her own good. he doesn’t see her nearly enough. That, he does regret.

valuable history ⸻ east of the rockies, there’s likely still a bounty out for one wyatt kincaide. the ashen legion aren’t known for playing nice with contractors, however. Or playing nice with anyone, really. good luck getting caps out of the ashen legion, padre.

an ungentleman and a scholar ⸻ thanks to his mother, he’s surprisingly well read for a farm boy from the former kentucky region. He has a habit of collecting books during his stopovers, amassing a small, highly flammable personal library in his quarters aboard the eights.

there's no serenity in the valley ⸻ while he is quick to play off his time with the ashen legion should it arise, those years still haunt him. the loss of his friends, his comrades, and what he did under their banner has left him with a degree of ptsd that he self-medicates with alcohol.

𝙸.  𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚜.

name.  maría de la paz navarro cruz.  aliases.  paz, asset #47, the widowmaker.  birthday & age.  unknown & 32 (presumed).  birthplace.  mexico (presumed).  species.  human (cyborg.)  gender & pronouns.  cis woman & she/her.  orientation.  pansexual.  marital status.  single.  occupation.  assassin-for-hire.  affiliation. herself, the syndicate.  faceclaim.  melissa barrera.  eye colour.  dark brown.  hair colour & style.  dark brown, wolf cut.  height.  5'8".  tattoos.  none (removed).  piercings.  both lobes, double helix.  scars.  none (removed).  augmentations.  near full body cybernetic replacement.  clothing style.  x.  signature scent.  cordite, spiced honey, jasmine with a hint of gun oil. moral alignment.  lawful evil.  mbti.  istp-a.  zodiac.  scorpio.  enneagram.  type 8 (the challenger).  temperament.  choleric-melancholic.  archetype.  the huntress.  primary virtue.  diligence.  primary vice.  wrath.  strengths.  diligent, direct, independent, observant, spontaneous.  weaknesses.  critical, impulsive, insensitive, unforgiving, vindictive.  tropes.  the ace, affably evil, ambiguously evil, beauty is bad, brain in a jar, covered in scars, dark action girl, the gadfly, friendly sniper, full-conversion cyborg, i just want to be free, improbable aiming skills, living weapon, meaningful name, single stroke battle, smoking is edgy.  character parallels.  amélie lacroix (overwatch), kusanagi motoko (s.a.c.), the salesman (sin city), song so mi (cyberpunk 2077), yelena belova (marvel).   disorders.  dissociative amnesia, monochromacy.  allergies.  none, save for perhaps an emp.  sleeping habits.  as a cyborg, her need for sleep is reduced somewhat. sleeps four-to-five hours every two days.  eating habits.  "consumes" a specially formulated nutrients packet via iv once a day.  sociability.  surprisingly social. enjoys blending in with the crowd, losing herself for a moment or two before resurfacing. enjoys teasing and pressing people's buttons to see how they'll react.  addictions.  none.  alcohol use.  rare.  drug use.  none.  likes.  desert flowers, smoking, tracking a quarry, puzzles, being challenged.  dislikes.  being reminded of what she is or more importantly what she isn't, her nutrient iv, being called 'widowmaker', taking orders.  fears.  losing herself to the machine, never regaining her memories, being outclassed.  habits.  clicks her tongue when irritated, flashes a lopsided smile when she thinks she's got the upper hand, cracks her joints before settling down for any length of time.  weapon of choice.  hécate II anti-materiel rifle.  weather.  scorching sunlight.  color.  storm grey.  beverage.  tick blood tequila margarita.  food.  unknown.  animal.  cat.  season.  height of summer.     mother.  milagros cruz de león.  father.  joaquín navarro marquez.  siblings.  ______ (older sibling), ______ (younger sibling).  significant other.  n/a.  children.  n/a.

𝙸𝙸. 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍.

this is the part where you would usually open up on your humble beginnings.  act one, scene one, our heroine takes the centre stage. cue the exposition. describe all the trials and tribulations you went through during those formative years you survived for better or worse. engage the audience, give them something to root for, something to invest in, something to compel them from one word to the next. everyone has a story to tell. 

or so you’d like to believe.

truth is, you’re not sure what yours is. not really. you know your name. maría  de  la  paz  navarro  cruz.. you know you were born somewhere south of what was once a border. know you had a mother, a father and two siblings. know you fell in with the wrong crowd at some point, for some reason, for some presumable return. know you did some bad things, sometimes to bad people, sometimes not so much, but you know you were good at it. real good at doing real bad. good enough, and bad enough, that you found a place within the syndicate. you were valued. you were needed. you were…

a multitude of things, you suppose.  at least, you hope. 

truth is, you don’t remember any of it. not really. a few scattered memories here, a few sights and sensations there. the feeling of your father’s hand wrapped around what was once yours. warm, safe, loved. the taste of your mother’s ill-fated attempts at cooking. bitter, sour, comfort. yet these memories - if you could even call them that - are more echoes than reality. residual fragments, misshapen puzzle pieces, parts of something that will perhaps never be whole. that’s something of a recurring theme when it comes to you. 

no, your life, for all intents and purposes, began with the procedure.

a life saving operation to, well… save your life, you suppose. what little was left of it, at any rate. by all accounts, after the accident there wasn’t much left of you period, let alone enough to be worth remembering. and what they did recover, they quickly discarded. paring the salvageable grey matter and nerve endings from the broken bone, mangled muscle and gnarled gristle that had spent the better part of two and a half decades making up paz navarro cruz. 

you did the math once. ninety percent. that’s how much of you they deemed expendable.  ninety. fucking. percent. conservatively. ninety percent that they cut away and threw to the crows. replacing muscle with nanoweave, bones with carbon titanium alloy, skin with something grown nightmarishly in a vat. synthetic blood for synthetic veins, pumped by an artificial heart for an artificial existence. no expense spared, top-of-the-line, all the bells and whistles (mercifully not literally) a girl could ask for.  you didn’t. ask, that is. you’re certain of that. you’re not certain of much, but you’re certain no one would’ve asked for… you don’t even want to label it. don’t even want to breathe that word into existence.  you went in a person, you came out something else. something less. something barely human. a product. a commodity. an investment. 

and you were just that: an investment. the syndicate didn’t spend money on you to see it wasted. they didn’t bring you back from the brink out of the goodness of their hearts. they certainly didn’t do it out of the goodness of yours. as with all things in this life, you were a transaction. one life spared so it could reap a dozen more. two dozen. three. perhaps a hundred, perhaps more. all investments need to see a decent return, after all. and every debt has its interest due. 

if you were a good person, maybe you would’ve found a way to refuse. found a way to spit in their face and tell them where they could shove that new halflife they’d forced upon you.

if you were a good person… fuck, maybe if you were a person … but you’re not. good. a person. take your pick, but you know deep down you were borderline on either even before the scalpels came out. no, you don’t know who you were, but you know enough. you know the crack of the rifle. know it feels more true to you than almost any part of your new artificial existence. know that another name, another hundred names, added to your ledger wouldn’t make much of a difference.

they invested in you for a reason, widowmaker. fine, you’ll play their game for now. bide your time. let them think you feel nothing but the recoil. you've always been patient. always known how to wait for your shot. put another face in the crosshairs for them, killer. sooner or later you'll turn it around on them.  

𝙸𝙸𝙸. 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚜.

a life filled with shades of grey   ⸻   literally. due to the particular design and function of her artificial eyes,  though she retains the concept and memory of colours, paz is utterly unable to perceive colour in the world around her. her world is black and white and varying blends of the two. probably a metaphor in there somewhere.   

a pack a day habit  ⸻  she smokes, though she doesn’t necessarily enjoy it anymore. the nicotine is filtered out by her body before it can even take effect. it is more comfort reflex, however. a way of connecting to the person she once was. a way of feeling human when she often feels anything but. at least it won’t kill her.  

stripped for parts ⸻  her actual estimate of ninety percent is fairly conservative. if she really did the math, she’d realise that ninety four, maybe as high as ninety five percent of her has been replaced by some form of synthetic or artificial component. her brain, parts of her spine and her adrenal system are most of what was retained, and even that was not without some degree of loss. there’s a reason she stopped carrying the ones.