elijah. • bodyclaim. • headcanons. • isms. • prompts. • threads.
Moans and groans fill the night sky, blunt nails scratch along the smooth surface of a car caught amidst a horde of infected. Screams from inside barely carry, they can barely be heard in the distance. But what's that in the distance? Is that PEDRO PASCAL? No way, that's ELIJAH J. ROJAS. The 47 year old CISMALE ( +HE/HIM) used to be US SPECIAL OPS GONE PRIVATE SECURITY. Since the outbreak, they've proven to be STRONG-WILLED & PROTECTIVE, but rumor has it they're also SHORT-TEMPERED & CALLOUS, which may pose a risk to the group. They appear to have taken the LEADER/RAIDER role within the group. Only time can tell if they succeed.
BASIC INFO
full name — Elijah Juan Rojas age — forty-seven (tba) gender — cis male, (he/ him/ his pronouns) orientation — homosexual occupation — former soldier (special ops) gone private security role in the group — leader/raider preferred weapon — m4a1 + assault knife clothing style/ armor — casual, functional, fitting, flannel
PHYSICAL INFO
face claim — Pedro Pascal hair — brown / eyes — brown height — five foot & eleven inches build — kinda like a T, broad af shoulders, muscled torso, slutty waist (it be thin ok) scars — a faint one across the bridge of his nose, another faint one down the left side of his cheek, a few on his back and chest, a circle on his thigh from a tracker he cut out and eight long/semi-long scarred stripes across his back - all huddled up randomly across his lower back tattoos — the date of when he signed up with the army because re-birthday, special ops insignia on his lower back to cover up scars, the us army insignia on his chest - left side above his ribcage piercings — he had a lip ring, but the us army forbid him to keep wearing it, so it’s a distant reminder, but also the reason he has no piercings special characteristics — he’s even more quiet and grumpy when he doesn’t get to throw punches for a while. sexual preference — bottom su.... switch, yeah that's what we meant
PERSONALITY
alignment — true neutral positive traits — protective, loyal, strong-willed negative traits — callous, short-tempered, stubborn hobbies — punching people + biters alike, cleaning his guns, being grumpy, taking unnecessarily long watch night shifts so he doesn't have to sleep
MEDICAL INFO
mental — ocd, ptsd, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (dmdd) physical — was hit by a shrapnel cluster after an explosion, but no lasting effects unless you can see inside his *beep* cheek phobias — claustrophobia, pistantrophia, light case of mysophobia eyesight — 20/20 dominant hand — left hand drug use — never alcohol use — never diet — health nut galore, though the end of the world says no diet for you
BACKGROUND
birthplace — san antonio, TX parents — Victoria Rojas (mother) & Ramon Ortega (step-father) siblings — single child education — high school graduate notable skills — very disciplined, impeccable aim with guns and hatchets, close combat, krav maga, determination to address everybody 30 and younger kid
BIO (child abuse tw, domestic abuse tw)
Love is more than a feeling - it’s a choice.
Everybody would have to make that choice for themselves, some daily - some weekly. Some decided to never choose at all, but Juan understood early on that his father had chosen not to love him. No, it wasn’t just that. He’d chosen to despise him, which weighed much heavier on a child’s heart than a simple lack of parental affection. But then again, love never really had been part of Ramon Ortega’s own personal little dictionary. Maybe once upon a time he felt something for Juan’s mother, but whatever that feeling had been - Juan doubted it’d been love even back then, it died when Victoria Reyes found out she was pregnant.
One would think both parents lived happily ever after when they found out God had blessed them with a child after years of trying, but no… not this time. Not Ramon and Victoria. The reason for that was … uncomfortable for all parties involved and yet somewhat amusing. Ramon was not a good man, never had been. Rumor had it he was born with a knife in his hands. Nonsense, but .. not untrue. He had no love in him, for nobody - probably not even himself. So when his wife announced she was six months pregnant, when Ramon had not set a foot out of jail in over two years, one might suspect … unfair play. It wasn’t .. that, per se, but it also was. Victoria hadn’t been happy with Ramon in years, had only stayed with him, because she was afraid of the repercussions if she tried to leave her violently abusive husband’s side, so when a handsome stranger began to give her attention and affection, who could blame her for falling for him? Right? Ramon sure did.
Juan was born at home, with only his mother and a friend nearby - the longest night Victoria ever had, but it all went well in the end. He was born healthy and as happy as a newborn babe could be - at least for a few months and it could’ve been even better than that, but despite Ramon’s rather vehement urging, she decided to raise her son herself instead of giving him up for adoption. She didn’t want him to get lost in the system. So close, yet so far. He knew that, in hindsight, she regretted her decision, but never quite found bravery within herself to admit as much - least of all in front of him. And Ramon? Oh, he made sure to let the boy that wasn’t his blood know he was merely tolerated in his own home. If even that.
Growing up and being told over and over again that you never should’ve been born, that you were wrong and that the world would be better off without you …. did quite a bit to a child’s psyche. Some would retreat, some would falter, some would hide within themselves. And then … there were those kids like Juan. Those who lashed out. At everything. Everybody. But most of all other kids, because they were right there. In kindergarten he was deemed a wild child, scolded and sent home with a letter for his loving parents, who - in response locked him in his room, or - when the caretakers demanded either of his parents come in for a chat, his closet. Ramon believed in violence, so that’s what Juan thought was a natural way to react to pretty much everything at all times.
Life didn’t get better in school. Not for a while at least. Ramon refused to accept Juan as his son, despite the obvious similarities in characteristics (the violence), his mother was too afraid to step in, so life continued as was, only that - with the boy growing older and therefore more violent in nature, Ramon decided it was time to discipline his son properly and teach him the respect he was lacking - according to him. Safe to say a belt, or fists did not fix Juan’s anger management issues. Neither did the School Therapist, though mostly because Juan refused to speak. He did so, generally. Be it in school, at home, anywhere. He wasn’t much of a talker, though, until he was expected to express himself in school .. nobody ever really noticed, or cared. Most of the boy’s life had been fantasy in his own mind, words weren’t needed for that. His mind .. was quite demanding in general, always running high, pondering every decision he made, wondering if it had been the right one after all.
Split lips, bruises.. he’d had plenty of those, but when he literally broke his hand on another kid’s face, authorities were alerted for the first time, but nothing came of it. It was written off as ADHD, a lack of impulse control and he’d have to see the Therapist once a week. None of that helped. Instead of going home after school, he’d spend the afternoons outside, wandering, stealing, picking fights until a fight picked him. He almost died that day, had laid for hours in a puddle of his own blood in some back alley, but woke up in a hospital bed.
Eight years old and he’d already seen the other side. With the abuse clear as day, child services stepped in and once released, he was taken out of his family and tossed into the system after all. Juan went from group homes to Camp for Bad Boys interchangeably until he was seventeen years old and refused to go by the name his mother gave him. Something else, he thought, felt more fitting - not even that, he just wanted something entirely unrelated to his upbringing. Still, without complete isolation and regular abuse, being away from home for an extended duration did wonders to his psyche, although he never quite made it out of that violent rage he grew up in.
The summer of his eighteen’s birthday, Elijah Juan Rojas was sent into the world to live life on his own. All of his life he’d been told what to do, what he was and wasn’t capable of and who he never would be. Now … for the first time he didn’t know what’d come next. And honestly, he.. didn’t like it. He knew he was only good at one thing, though. Fists and blood. Although, whatever rage-fueled smashing he’d called fighting as he grew up… didn’t cut it. It lacked pretty much everything, so .. mostly to satisfy his own need for perfection, but also to spite all those who wanted to see him fail, Ramon mostly, he enlisted in the US Army.
Fast forward to the end of that adventure. Safe to say the Army did him well. The discipline Ramon failed to teach him… came naturally in a controlled environment. Eli.. saw much during those years; death, blood, he experienced loss. He got the whole shebang, but made it out mostly unscathed himself. Physically anyway, but then again there wasn’t much more to mess with on that end. Back home, Eli found himself in a world he knew even less than before, but he found work in Security and .. he tried to live life as normally as possible.
Love is more than a feeling - it’s a choice.
Eli chose not to love, ever. He chose eternal solitude. Partially because he didn’t know how to love, but also because he knew that any child he might sire would grow up the way he did. Alone, lost, afraid, angry. And then he found out early on, suppressed or not, that he had absolutely zero interest in women. Eli knew he was better off alone. Happy? Overstatement, but he was content.
Life was simple, but of course Eli wasn’t allowed simple and easy. The Outbreak fucked everything up more than Eli ever could himself, which… was slightly amusing. Nothing and nobody held him in San Antonio, so when all Hell broke loose early on, Eli reconnected with his squad from the Army through a friend working in the same district as him. Matt had managed to get a signal out shortly before and they had an emergency meeting point in Atlanta. Turned out that the Prepper friends he used to chuckle at.. actually were in the right. The first week was the most difficult, the adjustment to go from society to … the Wild West.. was .. quite a lot to take in, even to Elijah, who spent most of his life giving absolutely no shits about the people around him. You never quite know how much you like something… until it’s gone.
Matt and him meant to meet up in Dallas, move on to Atlanta and up towards the coast, but when Elijah made it to their meeting point in Dallas, he found no sign of his fellow soldier. He held out for days, plundering apartments nearby to keep alive, moving in the shadows as best as he could, but Matt didn’t turn up and the other side of the line was dead. No response, no update ..no nothing. After a week, Elijah accepted that he was most likely the only one left from his division, which was okay. He would’ve survived on his own, probably, if not for a run-in with someone from the group holed up inside Dallas Morning News Headquarters. It’d been almost two months since and truthfully, he was glad he took their offer. When he joined them, they were barely five people and now? They were quite the group.
What even was anger management and what had it ever been good for in the first place?
That was his philosophy for the first few…. well, for a while. This new world they lived in definitely favored his wild side; the urge for blood and violence. He’d learned how to pace himself, how to bottle up the anger even when it felt impossible, but the will to go through with it was …not as strong as it should be. Although, with him growing more comfortable within the group and with his responsibility and duties picking up, Elijah found himself falling back into old habits; a structured schedule, healthy diet, workouts, practice and the like. A busy mind couldn’t stray from the righteous path. These people took him in, they opened their home to him and strangely enough, he was grateful they did, even if it hadn’t been the smoothest ride.
Unsocial as Eli was and always had been… he struggled at first. Never a man of many words, Eli was the silent observer. He knew he wanted to be a raider early on, eager to get out and get his hands dirty while providing food and supplies for camp. The ideal combination for a man like him. One thing, the group learned, could always be relied on. Elijah never returned empty-handed. Elijah was ..content within the group. Again, happy would be an overstatement, especially with the world in shambles, but …he was thriving. This was his world, in a way. A world in which violence was a given currency and he was the richest man on earth.
