quinn 'soap' wayne shepard

TW: Mentions of mental illness, child abuse, war, murder

Quinn grew up a wayward teenager. As a child, his parents went through a divorce and he was placed with his father due to his mother being admitted to a care center for severe mental illness. She had schizophrenia at a young age, and was the only thing keeping Quinn a warm, growing, loving person. Once they were separated, Quinn lived with his dad and his step family, where he was the oldest of two new siblings who had just been born. In this environment, Quinn's father was emotionally and physically toward him and showed a completely different personality to his step family. Regardless, Quinn still remained Quinn as best as he could during his teenage years; he got into trouble with the law a few times for petty thievery, trespassing. But he had fooled everyone around him that he was fine, portraying a "normal" teenager who was rowdy, fun, and had an optimistic outlook on life.

When Quinn turned 18, his father broke the news to him that he wasn't going to college due to all of his time spent in jail, but really, Quinn knew that his father prioritized his step siblings more. They had an enormous fight that ended in Quinn being kicked out of the house, but he preferred that over living with more years of torture. Besides, he knew deep down it was what his father had planned for him all along, now perfectly happy with his new family.

With nowhere else to turn to, Quinn enlisted in the military. There, he could take out his unresolved anger on others, and something in him shifted. He was no longer what everyone perceived of him, and instead revealed what he thought was his "true" self. Someone cold, blunt, and downright mean. There was a small group of soldiers who saw through this and decided to fight alongside him anyway, and they dubbed themselves the Reaper Squad. He was given the job of the scrubber: The last soldier through an area who made sure every target remained dead, however that meant. And because he was so apt at it, they dubbed him Soap.

And he has been going exclusively by Soap for more than two decades now, hardly anyone realizing his real name.

After he retired from the military, there wasn't much left for him when he came home. Wanting to stay as far away from his father as possible, he moved to New Mexico, living near one of his closest military friends. He earns a living by being a mercenary, completing jobs that earned him lots of cash for doing what he does best: killing. This is a secret of his, though, that none of the Reaper Squad knows. Otherwise, they wouldn't let him do it. But it's the only thing that gives him a sense of purpose.

Personality-wise, Soap has his walls completely up when you first meet him and is very slow to gain trust. He finds it's better this way; he doesn't need any more friends and he's the suffer-in-silence type. The Reaper Squad are the only ones who can get him to show some semblance of humanity. He'd do anything to protect them, and when he's around them, he reverts back to his fun-loving, rowdy, teenage self. But he's still a shell of that former self. What he doesn't realize is he often does selfless acts, and just hates when they're called out or put under a microscope. For instance, he took on the job of the scrubber because no one else wanted to, maybe out of fear. And Soap realized it was his way of protecting everyone else from any more trauma than they already had, so he carried that burden.