Warnings: mental health issues, abuse, alcoholism, Mentions of depression and suicide.
I had this idea one time and I re-read the personal info on Alex on the Prototype wiki, getting the facts straight about his early life. It hit home quite hard and idk, I empathize and I wrote this. It's dark, but also happy I guess? Character development kinda thing.
Anyway, enjoy~
Once when Alex was a kid, he went to Disney Land with his mom and dad. He was very young and he faintly remembered ever going. It was apparently an expensive holiday and was the best one they had ever been on, according to his mom. Alex knew this because it was the only holiday they ever went on before his mom went away, then he lived with his second family, who were nice. They let him stay up an extra ten minutes just so he could finish watching his favorite TV Show.
He went on holiday loads of times with his second family. He remembered coming back from his fourth holiday and his second mom and second dad told him that he was going away and that they would visit him. They told him he was going to be with other kids who understood him and didn't have one family.
He never saw his second family again.
At his new home, all of the other boys hated him. They called him names and blamed him for things that weren't his fault. One time, the boy who didn't like him smashed a glass and blamed it on Alex. Alex was sent to his room and wasn't allowed to play. The other boys told him he would be just like his mom was go to jail. He didn't know what a jail was, but he hoped it was nice.
He was passed from family to family until he was sitting on his bed one day, staring at the floor. He was eight years old and had been thinking about punching a boy in his home, someone who he really didn't like. A woman who he didn't recognize came into his room and told him his mom was back and that she wanted to see him.
He remembers being ignorant and excited about seeing his mom. He hoped their life would be how it used to be. Baking, painting, going to the park on Sundays because that's when dad wasn't working.
Alex was taken to his new home sitting as far away from the woman, who told him about his mom, in the taxi. She kept smiling at him and he didn't like it. He wanted to put a bag over her face.
His mom was pale and sad when he saw her for the first time in four years. She said hello and wrapped her arms around his thin frame, stroking a hand through his hair. She stank of cigarette smoke.
Alex investigated the house, looking in each room with equal curiosity. Until he saw a pink room with a cot inside. His mom was beside him suddenly, urging him further into the room.
"Alex." She had said quietly, delicately. "This is your sister, Dana."
Alex had stared at the baby long and hard before deciding that it wasn't a threat. He had never seen a baby until that day. His mom let him hold Dana, teaching him that her head needed to be supported and that Alex needed to be gentle with her. He treated her as if she was a glass feather.
Dana had been learning how to crawl when Alex asked his mom a simple question.
"Where's dad?"
His mom had stopped washing the dishes and then continued, scrubbing at the plate harder than she needed to. "Gone."
"But where?" Alex had pushed.
"I don't care." She sounded angry. Alex never asked about his dad again.
On his ninth birthday, Alex's mom had tried to kill herself again. He had forgotten it was his birthday until he had called 911 and his mom apologized for ruining his birthday, then vomited onto the floor next to her bed.
Alex had covered Dana's ears from the sound of their mom vomiting, scared of her suffering the way he had suffered. His nights were spent with a pillow over his head, trying to smother out of the sound of retching. It was a frightening sound.
When his mom came back from hospital and his neighbor, who were forced to take care of Alex and Dana, went home, Alex was sitting on the step outside the back door. His mom came outside to smoke.
"You scare me when you take those pills." He had admitted. She was silent for a long time and Alex thought she wasn't going to reply. He was always ignored now.
"I know." She replied. Nothing more was said.
Dana was walking and talking now and had repeated four swear words. Their mom had not come home for three days and Alex had to ask the neighbors for milk. When they asked why, he said theirs had gone off.
When she finally came home, she smelled. Alex wanted to be angry at her but he couldn't find the courage. The second time she did it, Alex found the courage and was thrown against a door frame, dislocating his right shoulder. Dana had been screaming as he felt himself begin to lose consciousness.
He had woken up in a hospital, alone. Three days later, he was discharged with no questions asked. He went home and acted as normal. His mom was laying on the sofa, flicking through TV Channels and Dana had ran to him, jumping up at him and crying tears of happiness. He had promised to never leave her again. His mom snorted but nothing was said.
When Alex was fifteen, his mom barely came home at all. Alex's wages went towards food and supplies for Dana. She suffered from nightmares. The neighbors would take care of her while Alex was working. They rang him at work if his mom came home, meaning he barely got any calls.
Dana had once called him daddy and he had to sit her down and tell her why he didn't like that. He explained that he was her brother. She asked why he acted like her daddy and he didn't reply. He had wanted to say, "because our mom's a fucking ass" but he couldn't.
Him and his mom had grown further apart. She never looked at him when she decided to come home. She would only come home to vomit, change her clothes, and scream at Alex. He would never scream back, only to protect Dana. He wasn't going to be like his mom. His struggle was battling his angry outbursts, trying focus his fists on the wall instead of his mom.
Alex was working as many hours as he could manage at a young age. School had been forgotten about. He had finished school with straight A's but had no other plans for his future apart from making sure his little sister had someone to come home to. A grocery store could only pay him so much. His plan that he made when he was eleven was to pass his exams and move him and Dana away from that life. It had become more and more difficult to carry on studying with the responsibility of his sister and work. So he gave up. He had burned the plan in the back garden one night. He imagined it was his mom he was burning. Goosebumps raised on his skin at the sounds of her imaginary screams.
At seventeen, he finally snapped. His mom had come home smelling of alcohol and Alex had told Dana to go to her room, which was still pink. Their mom had stormed in, yelling about something. Alex taught himself not to listen. She would call him useless, worthless, stupid, good-for-nothing, piece of shit, the biggest mistake of her life. He stood outside of Dana's door, waiting for their mom to pass out.
She didn't.
She rounded on him, demanding to see her daughter. The best thing in her life, not like Alex who was a big mistake. She said she wished he had died inside her. He shoved her back, telling her to go to bed. Alex knew the neighbors could hear them but nobody dared to help. Their mom had pushed him and slammed his head against Dana's door, making his world go fuzzy. It wasn't the first time she had done this. She had done a lot worse, like the time she had strangled him. It was somewhat an adventure explaining the thick bruises around his neck to his teachers. He had been thirteen years old and had tried to stop his own mom from slitting her wrists.
His attention snapped back when he heard their mom calling for Dana again. Alex shot up from the carpet, blood running from his nose and staining his work shirt and grey hoodie. At that moment, he didn't care about the world spinning or the copper taste in his mouth, he shoved his mom down with all his force and screamed in her face. He screamed the loudest he could, throat ripping itself from the inside out.
"You're a pathetic waste of space." "You ruined my fucking life." "You made me this way." "I hate you." "I wish you would just fucking overdose." "Leave us the fuck alone." "I hate you." "I hate you." "I FUCKING HATE YOU!"
His lungs begged for oxygen when he was done and his mom was crying.
He loved every moment of it. He craved more of it.
Their mom had stumbled out of the house, yelling in the street that she had been attacked. Alex spat onto the carpet, feeling blood on his tongue and in his teeth. He rushed into Dana's room. She was under her bed, pillow over her head. When she had realized Alex standing in the doorway, she ran to him.
He had wanted to save her from that life. He realized at that point, he would happily take a thousand bullets for his little sister, as long as she didn't suffer like he had. Dana wasn't five years old anymore, asking why mommy smelled funny, why mommy was crying, why mommy wasn't home – she was old enough to know. She had seen enough to know.
Alex had developed an unhealthy hatred for everyone by the age of nineteen. He struggled to keep his mind on anything other than violence. He knew there was something wrong with him and he blamed his mom. Their mom had been taken back to jail for assault on a member of authority. He nor Dana were surprised.
Alex would threaten anybody that looked at him odd and would kick the shit out of anybody who spoke to him wrong. He had had enough experience with self defense to be confident enough to take on three men who had been looking at his sister one morning when he was walking her to school.
He had almost killed one of them. He craved that feeling. Every time he would fight, he imagined his mom standing in front of him. 'Come on you fucking skank.' He would breathe.
Even when he had decided to go to university, he stayed with his sister. When she had told him to move out, to get a place in a university dorm, he ignored her. Dana would complain that she wasn't a kid and he would always say, "I know." To him, she was still his little sister. He needed to know she would be okay without him.
At the age of twenty-four, their mom was released from jail. Dana had called him from her apartment that she had bought to convince Alex that she was stable enough to live.
"Mom's out."
"So?"
"Do you wanna go see her, maybe?"
"No." And he hung up. Dana would ask sometimes and it was always the same answer.
Dana had once tricked Alex into going to see their mom. She had taken him to a strange neighborhood which he had never been to and made him sit in a café which was full of strangers. They waited ten minutes and Alex wanted to leave. When their mom walked in, Alex got up to leave. Dana pulled him back down and begged him to stay.
He did it for Dana.
Their mom sat down, staring at them with sadness in her eyes. "You've grown." She had said to Alex. "You look just like your dad."
Alex had said nothing.
Dana began talking to their mom, asking general questions and their mom returned the questions. She wasn't interested. She never was. Alex wanted to jump over the table and pour boiling coffee on her face.
The talk turned into their mom crying and apologizing for how she had treated them. Alex finally looked at her and she placed a hand over his. He looked her straight in the eye and told her to go fuck herself.
Then he had left, never even glancing back.
Dana hadn't spoken to him for two weeks after that.
He was angry, still. At his mom, at his neighbors, and at himself mostly. He had once asked Dana why she had forgiven their mom. Dana had replied with, "because she's our mom."
Alex didn't understand. He never tried to. Didn't want to.
After everything their mom had done to him. The scars on his body that each tell a story of how fucked up she was. The cigarette burns on his back, the glass bottle scar on his forehead, the bruises that still felt like they were there after years of healing. Dana had never been hit. He was glad because he knew if their mom ever laid a finger on Dana, Alex would've been the one in a cell.
In a way, he wished he would've been put in a cell. Maybe then, Dana would have a better life than what she'd had. He'd opened up to her about this once, when she had pushed him to tell her why he hated their mom so much, apart from the obvious. He was twenty-six at that time.
When he'd finished talking, Dana was crying and he didn't like it. He pulled her into an embrace and told her to stop, begging her to stop. She had looked up at him with tears in her eyes, telling him that it wasn't his fault. He wished he could have believed her.
During that year, he set off to work at Gentek.
Five years passed with no contact to Dana. He had cut himself off from the world, focusing on exposing Gentek. Karen Parker was there through the months, trying to talk him out of his plan. He didn't listen. He'd forgotten the danger, forgotten how to feel anything. He went to Dana, knowing she would help him in more ways than he needed. He was at war with himself and Dana noticed the moment she opened her door to him.
Then he had released the virus and got shot down.
He was thirty-one now. Infected. Dead. Not even human; a living-dead virus. He wasn't supposed to feel, wasn't supposed to remember that part of his past. So why did he? Why was he reminiscing something so pointless? Why did he feel like a failure when looking Dana in the eyes? She wasn't his little sister. He wasn't her older brother.
To have a past like that; he wished he had forgotten it all.
Being a borderline sociopath at the age of fifteen was never easy but now he had an excuse. He was dead. He could do what he wanted, except he still felt. Killing a civilian, absorbing their memories, it did nothing to him.
But looking at Dana. Seeing her cry, laugh, smile – it hurt. Had he always felt like this? He didn't know. Couldn't remember.
What he knew, though, was that one day, he would make it up to her. Dana had been his world before this and she still was.