( jacob scipio / cismale / he&him / heterosexual ) well, well, well… if it isn’t WILLIAM PERSAUD, the 35 year old PARAMEDIC, who is best known around town for COMING BACK TO TOWN ALMOST AS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. apparently they’ve been living in SOUTHPOINT for ELEVEN YEARS, and according to word on the street they are NEUTRAL. i’ve heard that they are quite STEADFAST & SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, and if their life had a theme song it would be BRIGHT EYES by LUA.
STATS:
Full Name: William Rohan Persaud
Nicknames: Will, Percy, idk
Character Age: 35
Siblings: N/A
Occupation: Paramedic at Sedona Fire Department
Birthday: March 4th, 1990 (Pisces)
Hometown: Sedona, AZ. Left when he was 19, came back 11 years ago.
tw: alcoholism, army, injuries, ptsd
The son of an Arizona native from Southside and a father who emigrated from Leguan Island, Guyana, in search of a better future in the eighties, Will grew up in a family that knew one thing: work hard and the rest will follow. Their dreams were simple: their small horse ranch to succeed and to live a happy life. And their dreams were true for a while, almost successful, until debt and lack of administration led them to losing everything. Will was only thirteen when they moved out of the one place he'd ever called home and moved into a tiny apartment in Southside. The debt and the loss weren't surprising but the way it completely consumed their family of three? That was unexpected. His mother - the horse trainer - became a shadow of who she was, and his father went on the road to be able to support them any way that he could.
In his teens, William had nothing to lose and it showed in the way he carried himself around town. When his friends and classmates were focusing on their future, he got lost in the wrong crowd and reckless behavior, including fights and a reputation for being a short fuse. There was a talent with music; rough around the edges and untouched due to his belief that all he'd known was let down after let down. He felt as if following his dreams was a waste of his time. Summer Sheridan entered his life, and he never knew what she saw in him. When he joined the army at nineteen years old, he did so with a 5-year plan that ended up looking nothing like he expected, a plan for them to have a way out.
Enlisting gave him a discipline he'd never really had before, but in a lot of ways William found a new part of himself with it. He became a Combat Medic - if you ask him, this was the very first thing that he was ever truly good at. He never stopped writing to Summer, even after breaking up, and any time he went on leave, the only place he went to was back to Sedona and back to her arms. Their love had, somehow, survived throughout years of distance and before his last deployment, they tied the knot. When he left home that day, Will never imagined that instead of the solution to their problems, he would come back as the problem.
An explosion while on duty left him with shrapnel scarring across his shoulder and left torso, and a partial hearing loss in his left ear. The physical damage was enough on its own but it was, ultimately, his psychological state that sent him back home. Though he dealt with the pain as best as he could at first, he eventually found refuge in a bottle. He couldn't handle the silence that he'd created, nor the memories from flooding his brain. Somehow he had become the very same person he had always feared to become and without realizing it, he was taking his wife down with him. It was a few months after, that Will realized he needed discipline again - a way to guide himself out. He became a paramedic at the local fire station.
That job was to blame for the longest stretches of times that he has been sober in the past eleven years. Stretches of time where he can feel the young man that left Sedona in search of a better life come out, the one with the bright smile, the kind eyes. But those times are more often shadowed by the lower moments; where instead of finding himself, he reaches for the darkness again, to hide, to forget. It has effected his life, his friendships, his marriage and his future in ways that he probably isn't even aware of yet. Every relapse is, silently, his own way of self-sabotaging. His life off the clock is entirely different to his life within the fire station - where he can hide that since his last relapse only a few months ago, his wife hasn't come back to the apartment they shared for their entire marriage, where he can hide that he has no idea of who he has been since he was a teenager. Sober for the past forty-something days, Will doesn't know where to start to rebuild himself and to break a cycle that has taken over his life; but he is focusing on rebuilding himself.
headcanons:
Recently adopted a 2-year-old chocolate Lab called Dolly
Plays guitar privately, hasn't really gotten better as it's mostly done as a hobby rather than an out
Has partial hearing loss in his left ear from the explosion overseas. Doesn't hide this, nor the scarring on his body but rarely ever talks about it
His clean periods have a tell: he starts running again. Early mornings, before his shift. His bad periods have a tell too, he feels looser, funnier, easier to be around.
He has been sober since mid-January. Forty-something days.
Still has every letter Summer sent him during the army years. They live in a box at the back of the closet he doesn’t open but has never been able to throw away.
Good in a crisis, calm with frightened people, the kind of colleague who remembers what’s going on in your life and asks about it later. Finds it easier to show up for other people than for himself.
Keeps his kit immaculate. Whatever else is falling apart, the equipment is always ready.
