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[hearnospeakno]

Character Name: Nick Andros
Age: 22

Appearance: Nick looks like he could use about ten sandwiches or more at any given time. He has black hair that he doesn't style in any particular way and blue eyes. He's slightly shorter than average, and the combination of all of these things makes most people guess he's younger than he actually is.

He has a nice smile and projects calm, most of the time. Nick has a tendency to make things seem like they're going to work out, one way or another, or at least that he can be counted on to try to do the right thing. He looks at other people's faces more than most people do, and tends towards frank eye contact.

History:

Nick's life has been something of a shit draw from the start, to use language that Nick himself might. His father died in the same accident that likely caused his deaf-muteness, just to get things going, and left him with an impoverished, unprepared mother who had no idea how to handle her son's disabilities. This being the 1970's there just wasn't much of an easily reachable support system for her, and she did the best she could--until she died crossing the street when Nick was nine.

With no ability to read or write competently, Nick was left unable to communicate in the orphanage he ended up in. Most of his recollections from that time are deeply frustrated. When a fellow deaf-mute named Rudy Sparkman--an enormous, intimidating man--approached him, Nick took a smug, spiteful pride in scrawling obscenities at him. That changed when Rudy laughed and subsequently dragged Nick (kicking and not screaming) into the world of literacy. With Rudy's help Nick was able to adjust to his differences and accept them.

If not for the orphanage losing funding and shutting down when he was a teenager, Nick probably had a slightly brighter future ahead of him for a few years. He was more than smart enough for university or a licensed trade. The loss of yet another place he thought of as home was too much, though, and Nick ran away. He struggled to find legitimate, if badly paid, work, and tried to cobble together enough GED credits for a diploma. He was definitely not a vagrant--not by his definition, anyway.

Nick was twenty-two when the world ended, although like most people he didn't know the exact moment it happened. At the time he was distracted by getting the shit kicked out of him in Arkansas, ending up battered like a piece of roadkill and short two front teeth, plus his pay for his last week of work. The good old boys who attacked him took offense to Nick's snobby attitude; Nick took offense to the fact that they were assholes. Unfortunately for Nick, unconscious people can rarely testify in their own defense, so he ended up arrested by the local sheriff on suspicious of being up to no good purpose in town.

It wasn't long after Nick woke up that Sheriff John Baker changed his opinion on him. Believing Nick's story about being attacked and robbed, the two of them manage to see three of the four culprits imprisoned. It was around this time that people started to get sick. Enough people that Sheriff Baker deputized Nick for lack of other options to keep running the jail and caring for their prisoners.

As the world fell apart Nick watched people he'd come to like and respect die, while his prisoners lived on--and in frustration and compassion, Nick let them go when Sheriff Baker was past being able to care, so they'd have a chance at survival or death on their own terms. Nick was immune to the disease that people were now calling Captain Trips, a vicious and horrifically lethal form of the flu that was in the process of wiping out almost every living human being and many other species.

With nothing left for him in Arkansas, Nick headed north towards Hemingford Home, Nebraska, drawn by a strange recurring dream of a grandmotherly woman--and the ability to hear and speak in said dreams, although Nick had no idea what either of those things were like from personal experience.

On the way up through Oklahoma he met Tom Cullen, a mentally handicapped man unable to read. They did figure out enough communication for Nick to invite Tom with him, which was what counted. They continued on to Kansas, where they met Julie Lawry, a pretty, flirtatious girl who Nick immediately took a liking to because he was...still twenty-two, and she had sex with him. Unfortunately for Nick and Tom, Julie was also insecure and unstable. When Tom had an upset stomach and Nick offered him Pepto Bismol, Julie told Tom it was poison--a particularly vicious 'joke' to play, considering that a) Tom trusted her, like most people, instantly and b) Nick had no way of telling Tom it wasn't true. In a moment Nick isn't particularly proud of, he slapped Julie and ordered her to leave them at gunpoint.

On the other hand, Julie then proceeded to destroy their bikes and shoot at them, so no one really came off well in that encounter.

Once on the road and considering worse off, Nick and Tom were lucky enough (or fated enogh) to be picked up by someone else heading for Hemingford Home. Like most people, Nick was immediately impressed by Mother Abagail, the focus of the dreams that had guided them there. Impressed, but not convinced of her holiness. She was a sweet, generous woman, though, and Nick found an easy niche helping her.

Unintentionally, that niche spread and spread as Mother Abagail's survivors trekked up to Boulder, Colorado, and Nick found himself a community leader. Despite his age and inexperience, people respected and listened to him, and Nick turned out to be one of the brightest minds on what ended up becoming the Boulder Free Zone Committee. Nick, in turn, thrived when given the chance to live up to his potential.

Major spoilers for The Stand.

Personality:

Nick is a good kid.

That's a statement that needs deconstruction, because for one thing, not many people in his canon treat Nick like a kid. Despite his youth and technical lack of qualifications, Nick manages to project an air of being mature and steady enough to handle just about anything. It's important to keep in mind that Nick has had to grow up much faster than most people his age, with numerous strikes against him. A lot of his behavior is more certain than his peers, because he's had to function as an adult far longer than they have. Being a deaf-mute drifter who's still alive takes a certain amount of insane competency. Nick knows what he's doing, usually, and he carries himself with confidence and a degree of 'to hell with you, I know who I am and what I'm capable of'.

Goodness is another thing that should be talked about, because for one thing, goodness is not synonymous with niceness or kindness. Nick can be a steely-eyed hardass, if he needs to be, and he can be something of a thoughtless bastard when he isn't thinking--hitting Julie and threatening her with a gun was excessive, to understate things by some immensity of degrees. Being a 'good kid' doesn't mean that Nick always does the right thing. He's very much a product of a certain time, place, and situation, and because of that he has rather wide blind spots. Some things he gets away with because he has the benefit of getting to write what he wants to tell people who don't sign; he never blurts things out, so he can self-edit better.

Nick wants to be good, and he wants to make the world a more stable, safer place. Although he doesn't consciously think of it often, much of his behavior is tied to how unstable his life has been. Nick wants a home. He wants some kind of community to act as a proxy family. He wants the world to be more fair. It's not actually an immensely mature or well-examined motivation, but it's not selfish, either. Nick is one of those naturally giving types of people who don't really think about why they do the relatively selfless things they do. As far as Nick himself is concerned, he's not that big of a deal. He's just a guy. A smart guy, yes, and a hardworking one, but he isn't a pillar of the community or some kind of leader.

As far as relating to other people, Nick has varying levels of judgment. He immediately dislikes Harold, for example, but was briefly fooled by Julie. Nick isn't an idiot, but he does tend to see women less harshly, especially if they seem to like him. He likes people easily in general, as long as they aren't obviously either creepy or malevolent, and has a knack for getting along with almost anyone. Nick tries to be as fair-minded as possible, and with a little more experience he'll probably get better at not being mesmerized by pretty girls.

Nick's disabilities are something he doesn't spend much time feeling particularly down about. It can be occasionally frustrating, but by and large it's a part of himself Nick just accepts and accommodates for. His response to people mocking him over it tends to be frustration with a tinge of exasperation--it's not exactly the most original attempt to insult him, after all. It does hurt, but he's heard it enough that it doesn't make him seethe anymore. In general, the major effect of his conditions is that it makes him more sensitive to the needs of others. A great deal of what makes Nick such a good leader is that he gets people, in all their complex, damaged variety. He's especially protective of people who lack the means to defend themselves.

When things are less serious in his life Nick can be pretty funny, when he feels moved to be. The reason he's missing some teeth at the moment is that he's actually kind of a smartass. It's a subtle, low-key humor, but Nick is good at using neutral seeming straightforwardness to tell jokes. These days, he doesn't have much reason to be funny, but he does know how to.

So: Nick Andros is a good kid, which is a complicated, often imperfect thing to be. But he tries to be good, and he is something of a kid, so that short sentence will pretty much have to do.