nathan

SUBPAGES

general info

extra info

shrine

Ability

• his ability to manipulate light/shadow is inherited from his mother's father and was also used by his sister. it allows him to bend, move, and change areas that are heavy in light or shadow

  • for example, he can take the light from a lamp and move it elsewhere, lighting up a different area or dispersing the light throughout a room

  • although this example would look like he can turn the light on/off, he is only moving around the photons (?? whatever the light particles thingy is called) and he can't actually impact the flow of electricity to that lamp. a very small portion of light would still remain in the lamp's lightbulb and he wouldn't be able to take it away because his ability isn't strong enough to manipulate particles that tiny. his ability basically relies on optical illusions

  • as for shadows, he can do the same thing. he can move them around, lighten/darken an area by moving the particles around, and change the lighting and shadows on objects, as long as he doesn't exceed the amount of shadow/light that was there to begin with. shadow is harder as it sometimes depends on things such as sunlight, which is a lot stronger and therefore harder to manipulate

  • he cannot create or destroy light, only shift how it looks and where it goes

• he can also use his ability to manipulate how light and shadows are perceived. this he does a lot more often than simply moving light/shadows around. for example, he can change the colour of an orange and turn it green by changing the colour of the light particles. this is fairly easy for him to do as he only has to change the colour and not the density/placement

• he can also use light to turn things invisible. this is harder to master and he only got good at it when he was in his mid/late teens, after a lot of practice

• like cassius, his ability grants him an alternate form in which he can harness his gifts more easily. the creature he transforms into is a lot more ambiguous as his whole ability is about perception, and so it is constantly shifting forms. however, one would generally describe it as a black four-legged beast, sometimes resembling a bear and other times closer to a wolf, with white eyes and black, steam-like gas rising from its joints and facial features. it is important to note that since losing his arm in the car crash, the front left leg of his alternate form is much thinner and weaker, often shifting in and out of the steam that wisps off the rest of him

⚠️ Crash

• on his 16th birthday, nathan was in a car crash:

  • he was in his family's car with his mother and older sister, driving to go meet the rest of his family from his brother's extracurricular weekend activity. since it was his 16th birthday, he was now eligible to start driving and he had taken his test earlier that day and had passed, so now he was out for his first driving lesson

  • nathan was not 100% focused on the road while driving, distracted by petty arguments with his sister and the excitement of getting to drive on his birthday. his mother had told him to calm down a few times but it didn't work very well

  • he needed to make a left turn at an intersection, and, due to the fact that he wasn't fully focused and that it was his first time (legally) driving, didn't see a truck coming towards them until it was too late

  • it slammed into the right side of the car, killing nathan's sister almost immediately, and injuring nathan and his mother in the front row

  • nathan suffered several injuries: broken bones, fractured ribs, spine damage, concussion, organ damage, severe burns, some minor injuries, and most notably, the bones in his left arm so severely broken/crushed that it was no longer possible for the arm to regain function. it was surgically amputated shortly after the incident

  • nathan's mother died of her injuries on their way to the hospital. upon being hit by a literal truck, she suffered some pretty horrible injuries and had she survived, she probably would've been paralyzed or something anyway. she was unfortunate enough to have a slow and painful death

  • OH AND REMINDER THAT THIS ALL HAPPENED ON NATHANS BIRTHDAY BY THE WAY 😭

• after his mother and sister passed away, nathan blamed himself for the crash. and like.. as he should honestly because he was the one driving the car and who allowed himself to get distracted while driving. this is why you dont let 16 year olds drive guys!1!!!!!1!!1 he also felt guilty for bugging his mom + sister to leave early because if they had spared a few extra minutes instead of rushing out the door to do his driving lesson, they wouldn't have gotten caught up in the timing of what turned out to be an organized terrorist attack in that area and salem and cora wouldn't have died

• speaking of the terrorist attack, nathan had gotten a glimpse of the truck right before it hit them, and for a split second, had seen a flash of red hair inside the truck that actually turned out to be Keia's hair. the contrast between the bright red and the muted army green truck and the desaturated, grey day stood out to Nathan and haunted his dreams for a long while after. since he was the only witness to the crash, the police enlisted his help with finding the perpetrators, and Nathan grew increasingly frustrated when no one with red hair was arrested or found

• nathan's dad, although he tried to be understanding, took the news horribly. a childish part of himself resented nathan for being the one who survived the crash and not his wife. he also knew that nathan had been eager to pick him and nathan's brother sebastian up from seb's extracurricular early, which resulted in such awful timing at the intersection - "if you had just waited five minutes and let your mom get ready properly she would still be here" type thing. there were many many fights after that and nathan felt so so so so guilty

• nathan and his brother were allowed time off school after the crash to recover and attend the funerals, but had to go back after a few weeks. their grandparents (mother's parents) temporarily moved into the house in order to offer support and to grieve alongside the rest of them during that time

• although nathan didn't mind this and liked his grandparents, his relationship with his dad gradually started becoming worse. his dad started outright blaming him for the accident and they argued/fought regularly. they were never deliberately physical/abusive to one another but they often said nasty things to each other, and as things worsened, sometimes one or the other would throw/break things. so like they wouldn't go beating each other up or something but it's not like no damage was done

• because of the trauma of the car crash, his worsening relationship with his dad, and growing disconnect and isolation from the rest of his family, nathan started developing numerous bad habits. these included skipping school, drinking, staying out late, hanging out with shady people, self-harm/cutting, and gradually doing drugs. he also developed a disinterest in a lot of things that he used to enjoy, because of how much harder they were now that he only had one hand/arm to do them with. during this time he saw many doctors and was in the process of getting a prosthetic arm fitted (paid mainly through a government program), but it was so difficult to do anything with his hands anymore -- especially precision tasks, as nathan not only lost his arm, but his dominant arm as well

Life... derailment...? 💀

• by the end of the school year, nathan had skipped school so much that he wasn't able to graduate

  • he was in 11th grade at the time of the crash, but born late in the year (october). therefore he turned 16 right at the beginning of 11th grade, while most were already about to turn 17. he would only turn 17 after starting 12th

• because of skipping school so much and not meeting the requirements to graduate, he was put into summer school

  • when presented with this decision, his dad shrugged and stated that he was pretty impartial and frankly quite disinterested in what nathan did with his school life. by this time his dad was more or less indifferent to anything that happened to nathan. he was his son, but only by blood

  • (he did have his own stuff going on though. he kind of drank himself silly to cope with the guilt and was trying to wean himself off the alcohol. wasn't going great tbh)

• nathan ended up skipping summer school too, and when he wasn't able to skip, he made no effort to improve

• over the summer, nathan got into a big fight with his dad

  • by this time, his grandparents had moved back out again because his dad was struggling to keep the house due to struggling with his job because of grieving and stuff and also the middle class was finding it harder and harder to afford housing because of KAZS STUPID DAD WANTING MORE MONEY THAN HE KNOWS WHAT TO DO WITH and the grandparents didn't want to give his dad another thing to worry about

  • eventually, nathan's dad wasn't able to pay for the house/mortgage anymore and had to move out of it that summer and buy a smaller place with less room. him, nathan, and his brother could not all fit comfortably in that apartment so his grandparents offered to take his brother

    • his grandparents didn't want to take nathan as well since they weren't too sure if they could deal with him, plus nathan was old enough to take care of himself, unlike seb. they also didn't have room for more than one other person and his dad's apartment could fit the two of them anyways

  • so anyways the fight. one evening nathan came home late and his dad was still awake. he confronted him, asking where he was and all that and they got into a fight. eventually something got thrown and shattered a family photo, to which nathan's dad was like oh nah that's the last straw and responded by screaming at him to leave and never come back. nathan took his stuff (which was already packed because he had been contemplating running away for a while) and left, eventually having to call his grandparents to pick him up from a motel

• with his dad having kicked him out and his grandparents not having space for him, they ended up paying for nathan to go to a boarding school. his dad was made aware of this but claimed to not care and so nathan went to a boarding school

• he ended up having to retake eleventh grade at his new school, where he developed somewhat of a reputation. people either found him intimidating and didn't want to go near him, found him attractive and wanted to date him, or hated him and wanted nothing to do with him

At the beginning of his story, Nathan is in a relationship with a girl named Maria. Maria is 20 and he met her through a party. Unfortunately they have a very unstable relationship and they are constantly fighting. They are both afraid to break up with the other because they're afraid of ending up alone. Nathan doesn’t really love Maria and she doesn’t really love him back (or at least not any kind of healthy version of love), but he still has some sort of feelings for her. However he’s so used to their fights that when she says bad things about him it barely registers in his brain. He usually has some sort of equally bad thing to say about her in response. Maria hates Kaz, Nathan's roommate.

Nathan has a couple other close friends that run in the same circles as Maria: Reg and Jacob primarily. Reg, although he is Nathan's closest friend, is always high, which makes it hard for them to forge a deeper emotional bond. Still, they manage to connect over shared experiences and help each other through tough times. Jacob has too short of an attention span to hold a proper conversation. He's quite superficial and a bit of a flaky friend, but provides a bit of a safe space for Nathan as they are both queer (though Jacob has a lot of internalized homophobia and doesn't take his identity seriously). Nathan is also friends with Maria’s best friend Xinia, but Maria is weird about it because they slept together once before Nathan knew Maria.

Because of Nathan’s experience with the car crash, Nathan hates cars and vehicles and will avoid them as much as possible, even if that means walking an extra half hour. Even now, three years later, he will wake up from nightmares about the crash, and has truckloads (pun not intended) of unresolved trauma from it. He tends to keep weird sleeping hours to avoid the nightmares and often doesn’t sleep for long periods of time or takes pills to knock himself out.

⚠️ The bad habits he developed to initially deal with his situation have stuck with him throughout his life. He relies heavily on these unhealthy habits to cope with the trauma from the crash and to take his mind off of his problems. to him, drinking, skipping school, doing drugs, sleeping around, and self-harm (including several suicide attempts) are his way of “redirecting” the pain he feels, of feeling more in control of it (even though it only makes it worse), and his way of distracting himself from the thoughts that creep into his head if he’s left alone. He also can't shake the guilt of being the one driving when the whole thing went down, and doesn't believe he deserves to still be alive. Because of the self-harm and the attempts, Nathan is in and out of hospital a lot. He now hates the hospital because of all the bad memories and habits it’s connected to — going there always reminds him of the crash, of the injuries he suffered from it, and of his own bad habits that he can’t seem to break. He’ll avoid going as much as he can, even if it means suffering alone at home.