Chris - in my eyes
Mar. 11th, 2013 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caitriona_3 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mag7wrimoI thought I would share this. This is in the back of my mind when I write Chris...it is the pool I try and draw out of to keep his character unified whenever I have him show up. Sometimes I'm better than others.
Chris Larabee…
It’s his intensity that will catch you first. Others may ooze more charm while many will have better manners. You can find more compassion, more acceptance, more fun with others, but almost nobody will make you the center of his focus like he can. There’s a fire in his gaze that never dies. It may be banked, smoldering, but it is always there, always ready to flare up at need – it can warm or it can burn. Behind the fire is water – sorrow, a depth of it that pulls you in. You’ll want to make it right, to find a way to ease the depth of that sorrow before it drowns him.
Beyond his eyes, beyond the gaze, you find other elements. In his speed, both on the draw and in making decisions, in the ease of movement and the careful casualness of his stance, you find an almost contradictory figure.
For me, he is the wolf. His instinct and his intelligence walk hand in hand. While he has been a loner, it has been enforced upon him. He works at his best as part of a group, a family. His best work is done in a pack. His strongest instincts are to protect and to guide (even when he tries to fight it). He is good with weapons, especially guns, but outwitting an enemy is a strength as well. He can think on his feet and adapt his plans as needed.
Chris is the unity of the team. The others have their roles, but he’s the head, the leader, the only one who can forge this rather motley crew into a solid unit. It’s a respect and trust none of them have for any of the others. I know that sounds strange, but I don’t mean they don’t respect each other. There is definitely mutual respect, but they have a particular level of respect and trust for Chris the others can’t quite share. I think it’s an understanding that Chris understands them. He has a certain level of expectation for them to meet, but he won’t ask them for something he won’t give.
No one else can command the whole crew with quite the same level of ease. He knows their weaknesses, keeping watch on any of them drawing too close to it, and standing ready to haul them back – kicking and screaming if need be. He knows their strengths, and his ideas, his plans try to find the right combinations to maximize those powers while minimizing risk. He’s watchful, especially over anyone or anything he considers his.
I’m not saying he’s perfect. He’s got some serious triggers. Anger rides him with despair as its sidekick. The loss of his family has broken him, and he is unlikely to ever be completely whole. Sometimes I wonder if the links he’s forged with the other six are the only things that are keeping him alive. In addition to the loss itself, his very self has been hurt. Protecting the pack, guarding the family is part of his hardwiring, so this loss has hit him on several levels. He no longer completely trusts himself to fulfill what he sees as his primary vocation. This leads him to pulling away from the others from time to time – not because of them, even though he may hide himself behind excuses – but because he is afraid he will not be able to protect this pack any more than he protected his family. His tendency to turn to whiskey to drown memories, voices, the guilt…all of this has led to a man who was chasing the reaper when the group first came together. Now he backslides from time to time, and hits out at those who try and pull him back.
After their first mission together, it was the spark of fragile bonds and a deep seated set of personal ethics that held him together. The slight deepening and strengthening of those bonds kept him with the group. He has fought the bonds, not trusting himself to take care of a new pack, but he also can’t let it go. This is what he was born to do – to lead, to protect, a true battle leader/patriarch in the making. It is this part of him that inspires others to follow. He will be the head of the unit, the point of the sword; he is the blacksmith that forges them into something stronger as a whole than the sum of their parts. The tension in him comes from this juxtaposition – between their trust and everything his instincts are telling him on one side and his fear, his memories, and his guilt on the other.
Without him, the pack won’t balance; with him, they become more than they ever could be alone.
(Also, I think I managed about 800 words or so.)
Chris Larabee…
It’s his intensity that will catch you first. Others may ooze more charm while many will have better manners. You can find more compassion, more acceptance, more fun with others, but almost nobody will make you the center of his focus like he can. There’s a fire in his gaze that never dies. It may be banked, smoldering, but it is always there, always ready to flare up at need – it can warm or it can burn. Behind the fire is water – sorrow, a depth of it that pulls you in. You’ll want to make it right, to find a way to ease the depth of that sorrow before it drowns him.
Beyond his eyes, beyond the gaze, you find other elements. In his speed, both on the draw and in making decisions, in the ease of movement and the careful casualness of his stance, you find an almost contradictory figure.
For me, he is the wolf. His instinct and his intelligence walk hand in hand. While he has been a loner, it has been enforced upon him. He works at his best as part of a group, a family. His best work is done in a pack. His strongest instincts are to protect and to guide (even when he tries to fight it). He is good with weapons, especially guns, but outwitting an enemy is a strength as well. He can think on his feet and adapt his plans as needed.
Chris is the unity of the team. The others have their roles, but he’s the head, the leader, the only one who can forge this rather motley crew into a solid unit. It’s a respect and trust none of them have for any of the others. I know that sounds strange, but I don’t mean they don’t respect each other. There is definitely mutual respect, but they have a particular level of respect and trust for Chris the others can’t quite share. I think it’s an understanding that Chris understands them. He has a certain level of expectation for them to meet, but he won’t ask them for something he won’t give.
No one else can command the whole crew with quite the same level of ease. He knows their weaknesses, keeping watch on any of them drawing too close to it, and standing ready to haul them back – kicking and screaming if need be. He knows their strengths, and his ideas, his plans try to find the right combinations to maximize those powers while minimizing risk. He’s watchful, especially over anyone or anything he considers his.
I’m not saying he’s perfect. He’s got some serious triggers. Anger rides him with despair as its sidekick. The loss of his family has broken him, and he is unlikely to ever be completely whole. Sometimes I wonder if the links he’s forged with the other six are the only things that are keeping him alive. In addition to the loss itself, his very self has been hurt. Protecting the pack, guarding the family is part of his hardwiring, so this loss has hit him on several levels. He no longer completely trusts himself to fulfill what he sees as his primary vocation. This leads him to pulling away from the others from time to time – not because of them, even though he may hide himself behind excuses – but because he is afraid he will not be able to protect this pack any more than he protected his family. His tendency to turn to whiskey to drown memories, voices, the guilt…all of this has led to a man who was chasing the reaper when the group first came together. Now he backslides from time to time, and hits out at those who try and pull him back.
After their first mission together, it was the spark of fragile bonds and a deep seated set of personal ethics that held him together. The slight deepening and strengthening of those bonds kept him with the group. He has fought the bonds, not trusting himself to take care of a new pack, but he also can’t let it go. This is what he was born to do – to lead, to protect, a true battle leader/patriarch in the making. It is this part of him that inspires others to follow. He will be the head of the unit, the point of the sword; he is the blacksmith that forges them into something stronger as a whole than the sum of their parts. The tension in him comes from this juxtaposition – between their trust and everything his instincts are telling him on one side and his fear, his memories, and his guilt on the other.
Without him, the pack won’t balance; with him, they become more than they ever could be alone.
(Also, I think I managed about 800 words or so.)