#character development challenge

Johnathan Klein Williams was a budding scientist, studying the effects of chemicals on the genetic makeup of humans. His ultimate goal was to cure the people of Zaun, a people who had been mutated and sickened by the waste pumped into their environment. He wanted to use his research to help people, to cure them of sickness, never to enable harm. But Cecilia Morticco wanted something different. Johnathan, despite his personal ethics, found her proposal fascinating. And so he began meeting her once every two weeks to discuss it.

Poor Johnathan fell hard. She was charming: beautiful, charismatic, and incredibly wealthy. And she loved him in return. His unfortunately low status — the son of Zaunite factory workers — despite his climb from the dark chasm, meant that they could never be together. Not when tied by the titanium binds of Piltoverian high society.

And God, he loved her. She was his Sun — everything amazing in the world was personified in his Cecilia. The smell of an open-air fruit market, the industrial beauty of Piltoverian architecture, golden overheard arches, the warmth of the sunlight on his Zaunite-pale skin. Everything, it seemed to him, revolved around Cecilia. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

Eventually, through his love and desire for her happiness, he agreed to begin proper research on her proposal. He began in his lab in Piltover, working on it after his normal workday, here and there, in bits and pieces. He would update Cecilia on his progress every time he saw her, informing her of advancements and setbacks, enjoying the way he could entrance her when he spoke about it, the look on her face that was otherwise near impossible to keep.

After only a quarter of a year of his life being lived like this, happy with the woman he loved, his world was rocked to the core. Cecilia, a beautiful young woman of a noble house and seemingly available, became the focus of Piltoverian society. What suitor would catch her eye, marry her, and take over the Morticco household after the death of her father? Her parents began inviting every suitor over in turn, and Cecilia was eventually engaged and subsequently married to a man of another noble household.

Johnathan flew into a rage after this discovery. He fled back to Zaun, setting up a lab there and devoting all his time to research on Cecilia’s proposal, hoping that enough work would win him her hand. After a few weeks, Cecilia located him, traveling down to his lab in Zaun for visits, calming her distraught lover. 

Then came the fateful day.

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“Johnathan?”

Cecilia gently pushed open the ajar lab door with her well-manicured hand. The inside of the lab was currently dimly lit, papers strewn across the steel tables, a single green lamp in the corner flickering. The cold lab had rock walls, as it was inset into the craggy cliffs of Zaun.

She stepped inside, shut the door behind her, leaving her in silence besides the soft hum of the centrifuge in the corner. She removed the hood of her roughly-woven cloak, her long blond hair reflecting the dim green lantern. There was a beam of bright, white light peeking out from behind the second door, and she slowly crept towards it. “Johnathan,” she called once more, a quaver in her voice this time.

She rapped on the door —one, two, three times— the clang of the metal echoing like thunder in the eerily silent room. She hesitated for a few moments before pushing it open as well.

Her eyes were blinded by the brightness of the lights, the white overheads blaring in contrast to the darkness of the room before. She scanned the room, left to right. An empty chair at a stark white desk, file cabinets upon file cabinets. And finally, in the corner, she spotted him. At the sight of his dark brown hair and sleeping face, all worry in her heart faded, and she was left with a smile on her face as she moved over to his resting chair.

“Johnathan, darling,” she called softly, bending over his sleeping form, caressing his cheek as she gently roused him from his dreams. “Johnathan, it’s your Cecilia, wake up love,” she said, as his eyes slowly blinked open. He looked at her, confused from the awakening. “Cecilia?” he questioned, rubbing his eyes from their drowsy state. 

Suddenly, his demeanor changed. “Cecilia!” he exclaimed, jumping out of his chair. Cecilia startled, shocked by the quick transition.

“Yes? What’s wrong?”

“Oh God Cecilia, nothing’s wrong, everything, in fact, is right for once, this is perfect, you’re going to be so excited,” he said, moving erratically between tables, searching his papers and charts. Cecilia stood deathly still, worried to the high heavens about his mental state, “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” she said timidly, observing his jerky movements. 

“Yes! Yes, I’m sure — oh, here it is — come — look!” he exclaimed, holding up a stack of papers as he moved towards her, a manic smile on his face. He moved to her side, flipping through the papers at sonic speeds. “I found it — the right combination, the right procedures — its possible, I did it, we can do it Cecile, we can make it happen,” he spluttered, setting the papers down on the table. He grabbed her by her shoulders. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“…are you saying what I think you are?” she replied slowly, hands gripping his pale wrists.

He looked her in her eyes, with the determined gleam she adored. “Yes, Cecilia. That’s exactly what I’m saying. We can do it. We can make your child — our child — superhuman. We can do it. I figured it out.”

Cecilia’s heart swelled with joy. She felt her eyes welling up, overcome with emotion. Her slender hands fell from Johnathan’s wrists, grabbing his jaw with unsuspected strength, her mouth meeting his in a forceful kiss, tears streaming down her rosy cheeks. Johnathan grasped the steel table for support, eyes wide open in surprise before falling closed, kissing the love of his life with equal passion.

They fell down into the chair he was sleeping in just minutes ago, the short, slender blonde straddling his lap. She quickly unbuttoned her cloak, allowing it to fall to the ground behind her, revealing and she bent back down, kissing his stubbly jaw while undoing the buttons on his lab coat, and then, his shirt. Johnathan inhaled, regaining his words, “Cecilia? What are you —“ she came up and kissed him on the mouth before going back down to his clavicle, “— what are you doing?”

She bent back again, undoing the buttons on the back of her velvet dress. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“But this is — this is our —“

“— Our first time together. I know.” She let her dress fall around her waist, and Johnathan lost all words.

That fateful night was the night Jinx was conceived.

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After that night, the treatment began. Every other week, she travelled down to Zaun, spread out on a table in her lover’s lab for the injections into the amniotic sac of their child. 

“He’s convinced it’s his, don’t worry,” she’d say, telling Johnathan of her new husband’s ignorance. He smiled at her, but burned with hatred and jealousy in his heart. But he kept it inside, administering her treatments without word of objection.

Towards the end of her pregnancy, on the day of the very last injection, Cecilia was unknowingly followed to the lab in Zaun. Her husband had grown suspicious, wondering with grim curiosity where his young, pregnant wife was disappearing to every two weeks. He donned an unsuspecting cloak and followed after her, through a Piltoverian market, into a hidden tunnel, down hundreds of stairs, and onto a five-foot wide ledge set away from the main city of Zaun. He followed the path, careful to avoid slipping and falling into the toxic water a hundred feet below. 

At the end of the dark path lied a single metal door set into the wall of rock. He opened the door as quietly as possible, and entered the room. Inside, was his wife, shutting her legs and turning to get off the table, helped by a man too close for his comfort.

The situation swiftly escalated. Cecilia was put on house arrest, and finally gave in to the growing love for her new husband and agreed to leave the child — a girl — with her father in Zaun. Johnathan was forbidden from entering Piltover, and suddenly found himself a single father, trapped in the slums of Zaun, unable to see the love of his life ever again.

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“Papa?” A single fluorescent pink eye peeked into the lab. After a few seconds without an answer, a slip of a girl entered. She was small even for her young age of five, long blue hair in a single braid falling down her back. 

“Papa? It’s me,” she said quietly, walking over to the figure hunched over the desk. She tugged on his sleeve, and suddenly, her drastically aged father turned to her. It was rare that she came out to the lab to see him, even though it was their home. She never was home, not as long as she could help it.

But that night, the Piltover police were searching Zaun for a wanted criminal, and she was frightened into returning to her residence. 

“You,” her father sneered, his eyes red and breath reeking. She cringed and took a step back. “What are you doing here?”

“The police are in Zaun right now Papa… Ekko told me that I should go home,” she said quietly.

Johnathan snorted. “Ekko this, Ekko that… that boy is all you ever talk about.”

He extended a hand and the little girl flinched back, expecting worse than the hard poke to the chest he gave her. It made her stumble further backwards.

“You’re a little jinx, that’s what you are. All you bring is bad luck. Bad luck… misfortune… everything you love will leave you eventually. That Ekko boy too. Little jinx,” he murmured, laying his head down on his desk, “little jinx…”

She went into the back room for the night.

—————————————————————————————————

The blue-haired little girl’s father died just the next day. At dusk she had brought him bread she’d managed to steal from a market, but instead found him in the same place she had left him that morning, a puddle of corrosive chemicals eating away at his body on the floor. She had screamed, the image burning into her mind the same as the chemical stench burning her lungs. She dropped the bread and ran from the lab, slamming the door behind her.

A secret. Something one does not want anyone else to know. Something to be kept from others.

Merlin secretly liked the rivalry with Mim. He enjoyed doing better than her. He loved one-upping her at every turn. He lived for it all. It always made him strive to do better. By beating Mim, he was also doing better than the previous versions of himself. He was becoming the best Merlin he could be (at least education wise). The competition always gave Merlin a goal, even when he felt lost. Beat Mim. That’s all he had to do.

The feeling of home. That warm feeling of safety and comfort. Of belonging.

Merlin first felt that feeling with his parents. They were his everything. Nourished his little mind, gave him every opportunity to go after anything he wanted to do. Never doubted his choice of books over sports.

After their death, that feeling went away.

The next time that feeling can along, it was because of Wart. He gave Merlin that same comfortable feeling. The familiar nice, warm safety. He belonged with Wart—with Authur Pendragon. Maybe not necessarily in a romantic way. Like they were different sides of the same coin. 

Despite Merlin being more on the scrawny and awkward side of things, he would do anything to keep Wart safe. A kidney was needed to keep him alive? Merlin would offer his. Wart ended up turning into a zombie? Merlin would forget about everything else and only focus on finding a cure. Merlin would even jump in front of a bullet for his friend. Human or potential zombie form. Wart was Wart to him. Always was and always will be.