iwallsmith's Journal

character sketches- to be determined
Braig : [X-Verse]

During Regina's junior year, her then boyfriend of a year told her a secret. He was a mutant, he said, and his ability was a terrifying one. His x-gene allowed him to manipulate people's minds directly- fabricating scenarios, sensations, and memories that he could trick others' minds into accepting as reality. Her trust in him broken, and afraid of his ability, Regina ran away to her aunt's house in a neighboring city, never wanting to see him again.

Believing he couldn't live without her, her boyfriend tracked her to her aunt's house. While he knew she could make her own decisions, he wanted to explain to her how being a mutant with his ability was something beyond his control, and that nothing would change his feelings toward her. Regina's aunt refused to let him inside the house, so he slept on the porch for days until Regina finally agreed to speak to him. The boyfriend eventually won her over, convincing her that he would never use his power against her or their family- as Regina was already planning to spend her life with him before he had told her of his x-gene.

By the end of their senior year, they decided that once they graduated and married, he would stay at home and raise their children while Regina followed her dream of working for the police force. Word of his ability spread far, however, and after their marriage- two months after graduation- officials from the Pentagon approached him with a deal. He would work for them, allowing them to tap and study his ability to help with a research program involving mutants as weapons, and they would support his family for the extent of his time with them. He refused, finding the thought of mutants being used as tools offensive. For several months, the Pentagon kept contacting him, even resorting to foiling his other attempts at securing a well-paying job. By the end of the year, Regina was pregnant with their first son, and money was growing short. Because of monetary concerns, Regina had to drop out of college, and when he realized their son would have to be well cared for, he finally accepted their deal with the added condition that he would only work for them for a single year. A year came and went, and with his family's money situation still unstable, he continued to work for them, using his ability on a daily basis and rarely returning home.

As their son grew older, a complication developed with his powers developed. The same x-gene quality that allowed him to influence other people’s minds began to deteriorate his own mind, and his personality slowly became unstable. While Regina was struggling to raise Braig on her own- usually calling upon her nearby family to help take care of him- she began to realize that her husband’s actions and emotions were slipping from his control. He spent most of his time away working with the Pentagon, but whenever he returned home, his emotions fluctuated rapidly. The soft-spoken, idealistic, intelligent man she had known was slowly becoming emotional and irrational.

By the time their family life turned violent, Braig was already five, and he took the responsibility upon himself to manage his father’s moods whenever he came home. Knowing little of the x-gene, Braig only understood that something was wrong with his father, and he thought he needed to protect his mother and himself. Despite the problems he dealt with, he admired his father for being strong enough to support them while his work with the government was slowly destroying him. Regina knew that if he stopped working for the Pentagon, her husband’s condition would lessen- as his ability would be used much less- but she also knew that until Braig grew older, they needed a source of income. As the years went by, she would later feel guilty for not forcing him to stop working, which would contribute to why she stayed with him long after he had grown significantly unstable.

Once Braig turned twelve, he began- illegally, although people allowed him to because of his charisma and personality- taking multiple jobs to keep his father from working as much. During his junior high years, Braig began using his ability more freely than he had while a child. He had tried to suppress his ability while around anyone other than his mother while a child, but he realized that being a mutant was part of who he was, so he told his father about his ability. Despite the severe changes in his father’s personality, the shared knowledge brought them close. Regina had always said that Braig was extremely similar in personality and appearance to the man she had married, so she always told Braig that his father had seen a part of his old self in Braig, and connected with him deeply because of it.

His freshman year of high school, his unique abilities drew the attentions of a local branch of mutants. In a then-untested attempt to control Braig’s ability, they began secretly injecting him with a specially-engineered virus that caused him to not remember large sections of immediate past events. At first, he was worried about his memory loss, but he was unaware of the injections, so thought that he was perhaps becoming ill. Things escalated, however, and during one of his memory losses, the entire school claimed that he had used his ability in front of them, only stopping from killing a girl because of a nearby teacher who had shot him. The sudden change from merely having memory lapses to having his entire school- which had adored him previously- thinking him dangerous and unstable left Braig uncertain and confused. His mother, not questioning whether the event had happened, took immediate action to protect her son.

While the community was thinking of locking Braig up, for being a dangerous mutant with extraordinary abilities, she contacted Charles Xavior and asked him to investigate the incident. He traveled to their city under her urgent request. After looking through Braig’s mind, searching through the lapses in memory, Xavior discovered that Braig had really attempted to kill someone, and he also realized that Braig truly had no recollection of the incident. He believed that Braig would do well if removed from the community- before they could retaliate against him- and took him to his school in New York to teach him how to control his abilities. Braig was by then terrified that he would do something similar again- not knowing that any outside forces were involved- and dedicatedly took to the training.

While he respected his father more than anyone else, except perhaps for his mother, the constant reminders that he closely resembles his father in looks, personality, and ideals, along with his possession of the x-gene, leave him afraid that he will someday turn out like his father. His fear of commitment- something most people would never believe he could have- has hindered many of his close relationships with the other students at the Institute. His immediate kinship with Axel fell apart for this reason- Braig feeling that he was growing too close to him, too quickly. The easy camaraderie he feels toward Axel is something Braig has always been suspicious of- because of his past with his father, he has never trusted easily, and doing so unsettles him. He tried his best to separate from Axel once the extent of his feeling toward the junior- and that he would be devastated if he ever lost him- became evident to him. Caring about someone so strongly after only a few months makes Braig feel out of control- and he dislikes not being able to control a part of his life.

His friendship with Dilan was steady, despite Dilan’s threatening Axel with guns and severe initial dislike of Even, until Xehanort felt Braig would be a threat to his relationship with Dilan. While Dilan was unaware of the situation, Xehanort began talking with Braig. Normally unaffected by Xehanort’s manipulations, the amnesiac caught Braig at a vulnerable time in his life- not yet separate from Axel, but feeling his relationship with the pyrokinetic was disappearing. Eventually, because of Xehanort, Braig began to believe that Dilan was choosing the older student over their friendship. His thoughts on the manner have been severely skewed because of Xehanort’s manipulations over the past month or so.

Feeling his entire, fragile world he had built around himself over the past months crumbling, Braig had another memory lapse after his excursion with Xehanort and Dilan to stalk their student teacher. The incident- frighteningly similar to what had happened to him before his transfer to the Institute- left Braig feeling that he had no one to talk to who would understand him. Dilan brushed off the incident with a flippancy that Braig would found endearing, if he hadn’t been so concerned with the memory lapse’s familiarity. He should have told Professor Xavior, but he feared the man would regret letting him come to the Institute, so he kept silent. Even’s relationship with Braig deepened at this time, as the stubborn, enigmatic blond insisted on acting as Braig’s physician to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Braig came to know Even as the one person who would listen to his concerns, and the spiraling affection he felt for the blond would climax in his asking Even to go to Homecoming with him.

Soon after that, Even lost his memory, and Braig found himself confronted with a hostile affront that he found hard to overcome. He felt like the one person he could always talk to- as he has always had a problem expressing himself to anyone- had been ripped from him. The prospect of a cure remained dismal as time passed. While he was friends with the new Even, the blond’s conscience-lacking behavior strongly began to remind him of Xehanort’s behavior, and Braig came to believe that his friendship with the intriguing blond was lost forever.

With his three strongest relationships struggling or vanished, Braig sank more into himself, not voicing his troubles or concerns for weeks. When he was considering asking Professor Xavior for a transfer, thinking living with three people who had fought over him and two that were still constantly bickering for similar reasons impossible to manage- and also being concern about losing control of his abilities and hurting someone again- something happened that kept Braig from leaving. Someone took an interest in him, and Braig gained a friend. While initially wary of the man because of his mental ability, which reminded Braig strongly in positive and negative ways of his father, Ansem’s charisma convinced Braig to give the college student a chance. Although he would never admit it, the idea of having someone more intelligent than himself gave Braig an opportunity to be himself, without worrying about acting unintelligent. Sharing his own opinions and thoughts was a nonissue in his friendship with the student teacher- Ansem could read his thoughts, and keeping things from the man seemed absurd because it was impossible.

One day, during Dilan’s sickness and memory regression, Braig had a moment of clarity when he realized how close he felt toward the older man. In an instinctually attempt to separate himself from growly too accustomed to something that reminded him too much of his father, he asked the telepath to leave his mind, and said it would probably be a good thing if he never contacted him in such a way again. Ansem abruptly stopped his slow befriending of the fifteen year old, and they haven’t really spoken in the three weeks following.

After seeing Dilan’s devotion to Myde and Xehanort- and still feeling the effects of Xehanort’s manipulations- Braig believes that Dilan would be better off if he were to cut himself out of the younger sophomore’s life. Dilan seems happier when he’s not around- or so Xehanort has led him to falsely believe- and Braig has been consciously attempting to separate himself from his former best friend because of that. Recently, against his better judgment, Braig and Axel agreed to try to be civil to each other again, as their feelings toward each other remain strong despite the forceful termination of their friendship weeks prior. While Braig feels pressure from this arrangement- despite the level of comfort begin around Axel again brings him- because of his lowered relationships with Even and Ansem, he has kept his reservations to himself. This arrangement, and the responsibility he feels toward Even's loss of memories, has kept him from asking Professor Xavior for a transfer, although his desperate train of thought had been slowed as a result of his previous friendship with his teacher and the young man's advice.