Overview

Standing at 5'9 with a set of broad shoulders and clear and lean muscle, 21-year-old Mikhail is a closeted gay male with sharp edges such as jawline and cheekbones, bright green eyes with flecks of yellow in them, and incredibly fluffy and unkempt copper-red hair with natural blackish-brown streaks that appear more towards the roots---the strands lighten more towards the tips. His skin verges more towards pale than anything and rarely burns, despite his light complexion. Instead of burning, he gets covered in dark and large freckles that spread all over his nose, cheeks, shoulders, arms, pretty much everywhere. He also has a single dimple whenever he smiles. Due to him being accident-prone, he has numerous scars. There's one in his right eyebrow from when he hit his head as a child, a small scar on his foot from stepping on a rock in a pond, and pale splotches on his knees and palms from tripping on concrete. The worst area is his arms, where there are tons of crisscrossing scars from him falling out of trees, both in the past and the present. He grew up on a farm in America and in an area where everyone knew everyone; never moved anywhere. 

Personality

Mikhail's personality has gone through quite the change over the years before and after the incident. 

Past

Mikhail wasn't always spiteful and uncaring towards the world. Once upon a time, he was actually a sweetheart that took care of everyone he cared about and more. He'd stand by those that needed a shoulder to cry on or a hug. He'd laugh along with those that wanted to bathe in the good in the world. He'd constantly get into trouble with his smart mouth and mischief, but he'd always have a grin on his face. He loved the exhilaration of both play and work. He didn't have many friends, but he devoted himself fully to those he was particularly close to. He used to be selfless, loyal, and incredibly caring. He took the pain from the hurting and amplified the joy from the happy. He gave without question and never forcefully took. His patience had no end, and he didn't let failure stop him.

Present

While it might seem like Mikhail completely changed, a few of his old personality traits remained, if a bit altered. His patience level found a cap, but it became flexible depending on the situation. The cap only existed when he was being bothered. Remove that factor, it'd go back to being endless. He still doesn't let failure stop him, but that's because he's become spiteful and difficult to control. Being accident-prone hasn't changed one bit. He still cares and feels deeply, taking the burden off of people, but it's changed a bit. Argumentative when he wants to be, but he often doesn't find it worth his time. Now, he never does anything without seeing if it's either worth the effort and time or if he'll get something out of it. He's become a husk of who he used to be, feeling little and showing almost nothing. Only a few things can give him anything close to joy, the closest being contentment. Receiving and giving care, as well as general positivity, have become foreign concepts to him. 

Relationships

• Valka Snetkov - Mikhail's mother. They were both incredibly close, and Mikhail adored her. She was one of the few people he truly looked up to and admired. He cared about her and wanted to make her life as easy as possible, so the moment she allowed him, he took up any and all chores to try and ease the burden of being a single mother and owning a farm. She was born in and lived most of her life in Russia. Mikhail takes after her greatly in appearance. A 45-year-old woman of average height at 5'6 with a slim body and some muscle, but not a lot. Sharp cheekbones and a semi-soft jawline, angular face, and a soft nose. Jade green eyes with a happy sparkle to them almost all the time; wavy rust-red hair with some streaks of grey that falls to her hips and is usually done up in a braid or some other hairstyle that Mikhail did for her. Pale skin with thousands of freckles dotting her body, mostly around her nose and cheeks. Small dimples. She usually wears a pair of hoop earrings that Mikhail bought her.
• Tsezar Snetkov - Mikhail's father. He never met the man, and he has zero knowledge of and attachment to him. Born and lived in Russia, briefly lived in America, but soon died of a heart attack shortly after Valka got pregnant with Mikhail.
• Klavida Snetkov - Mikhail's older sister, who ended up being a miscarriage. Mikhail never met her, obviously and never really had any emotional attachment to her. However, Valka was devastated when she lost Klavida, and Mikhail sort of absorbed part of attachment from his mother, so he's always been vaguely upset about what became of his older sister.
• Konstantin Fraser - Mikhail's younger half-brother, who's just a year younger than him. Kostya was born female with the name Sofia, but always knew that he was trans. Mikhail was the first person he came out to, as the brothers were incredibly close growing up, with Mikhail being incredibly protective of his brother and also the most loving towards him. Kostya looks remarkably like his brother, which in turn means he heavily takes after his mother. Considered short at 5'5, lean build with no muscle. A very gay pansexual to add to the list of things to "be ashamed of," according to his father. High cheekbones, soft and round-ish cheeks, and sharp jawline. His owl-ish green eyes are a bright lime color, while his hair is slightly curly, but very fluffy, with a ginger coloring. His pale skin is absolutely covered in freckles varying in size and darkness, the most concentrated part being his face and shoulders. Two very deep dimples.
• Rowan Lane - Mikhail's childhood best friend. She was the only one that he really loved and favored out of all his friends. The two of them did almost everything together. Rowan was the second person that Mikhail admired and cared about with a burning passion. He had thought that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together. Perhaps, if Mikhail had been straight, the two of them would've ended up dating and eventually marrying. She was sweet and kind. Brash and possibly explosive from time to time, in a defensive way. She stood out anywhere she went. Fit with Mikhail because she was also sorta accident prone, though less so than him.
• Alan Lane - Rowan's father. Mikhail absolutely hates this man and wants nothing to do with him---well, that's a lie. He'd love to kill him.

Trauma

Rowan was Mikhail's best friend. She was this bright sun of his life, a neverending dream that barreled into his life and dragged him around wherever she went. Everything was perfect, his best friend was perfect---until it wasn't. 

It wasn't long after she started closing in on herself that Mikhail noticed that something was going on. He knew that her mother had died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. What he didn't know was that her father, left with a responsibility he wasn't ready for and without his wife, became angry and abusive. He noticed that she wasn't acting like herself, slowly becoming reserved and skittish. He tried prying, but he only got lies and "I'm fine, promise"s. He started to see bruises. She'd lie about where she got them. When he wanted to spend the night at her house, she'd lie about why he couldn't or shouldn't come over. He once confronted her father when she was away, and he lied in answer to every question he had to get him off of his back. Mikhail believed it all. They were a family in grief. Of course things weren't going to be the same for a while.

One day, when they were both sixteen, Rowan showed up at his door, bloody, broken, crying, and begging for help. He let her in, told her it would be okay. She told him everything, about the abuse, and desperately tried to beg for forgiveness for lying to him. He told her it was okay, that she was going to be okay. The next day, she died from internal bleeding. He watched her die, watched her take her last breath right next to him. They had shared his bed, had spent the night together one last time, and they exchanged their last "I love you"s that morning. Mikhail was never the same after that.

Habits:

• "Yes or No?" 
• Due to Rowan being abused, he's picked up the habit of asking "Yes or no?" when he's about to touch someone. If it's something like a pat on the shoulder or a small touch to let them know he's there, he'll straight up refuse to do it, instead either doing nothing or saying something to announce his presence. Anything else, like a hug, grabbing onto them, the works, he'll ask as he's reaching for them, then stop a safe distance away to wait for an answer.

• Touch
• Going along with that, just as he doesn't like touching people without permission, he doesn't like being touched either. He doesn't make this explicitly known, but someone could pick up on this by him repeatedly pulling (or attempting to pull) away from grasps. This is also why he doesn't like being taken care of after getting hurt, with the one exception being his mom---even then, however, he's still reluctant to let her patch him up. He prefers taking care of himself over being taken care of, no matter who it is.

• Drawing Emotion
• This one contains some extra information. Mikhail learned a lot from his mom. He adores her and wanted to learn everything he could from her, including basics like sewing and cooking. Rowan was also another female figure that he looked up to and admired. He learned something from her that he genuinely loved to do, drawing, but now it's got a painful association with it due to her being dead. He's incredibly skilled at drawing after years of practice and guidance from Rowan, but he doesn't like doing it now, even if he sometimes itches to pick up a pencil and draw. He's horrible at picking up emotion on a person's face, but that's because he learned how to do it through lines on a paper, the color of an eye, the tilt of the "camera," the density of the shadows and lights, the shine of a highlight. 

• Space
• Mikhail stands and sits away from people. It's not a huge distance away, but there's clear space between them when it's Mikhail providing that space. If someone else closes that gap, he won't move, but it's not his ideal choice. However, if someone either gets too close or he is in a mood where he's adamant about how much space he wants between him and someone, he'll move away and give a warning look.

• Look at Me
• He rarely looks at someone in the eye or even at their face. He sometimes does a quick glance or a brief facial expression, but he almost instantly looks down or over at something else. If the situation calls for it, he'll force himself to meet someone's gaze, but he'll be quick to drop it the moment he thinks it's 'acceptable' to do so. His default direction is down, at his hands, wrists, and arms, where he can see scars or play with the leather bands he wears around his wrists. The second default is up at the sky, particularly towards the sun, so that the burn of the light and heat can distract him from whatever he might be feeling, the situation he's in, or just his thoughts in general. The third default is at his surroundings.

• Lie to Me
• Mikhail absolutely loathes lying, both from himself and from others, for a couple of reasons---all centered around Rowan. His best friend lied to him for years about the abuse that she was going through, lying through her teeth and a smile that he foolishly believed. When he started to get suspicious and confronted Rowan's father, he, too, lied straight to Mikhail's face---and he believed him. And at the very end, when all the truths came pouring out of his sobbing and pleading friend, he lied to her by saying that it's going to be okay, that she was going to be okay. She ended up dying in the end, solidifying that reassurance as a blatant lie that he couldn't forgive himself for. After this incident, he started studying people for lies until he got exceptionally well at finding ticks that indicated that they were lying. If someone lied straight to his face, he'd throw all self-preservation instincts aside to make death threats, instantly getting pissed. 

• Threats
• He makes threats with a very serious face and tone, but won't go through with them. As could be concluded by his hesitance to even touch someone, as well as his experience with observing the effects of abuse, he would never actively seek to hurt someone. But, he works around that hesitance. When he's pissed or trying to get someone's undivided attention through violence, he'll throw the nearest soft and harmless item he can find, a pillow being a frequent favorite. All in all, his threats are meaningless unless he's given irrefutable reasons to go through with them, such as when he's threatening someone who is an abuser.

• Smiles
• Mikhail doesn't like smiling. That's it. He never fully smiles; it's usually very faint, and even then he's covering it up with his thumb until it goes away. To him, smiling is attached to Rowan, attached to all the memories he has of her when they were younger, attached to a person that will never smile again. Even his mother can't coax a true smile from him anymore. The only unobstructed smiles you'll ever see from him are not genuine---they are unfriendly, humorless, sarcastic. They aren't ones you want to see.

• Speak
• He doesn't like talking much. If someone asks him a question, he'll answer, but won't prompt further conversation. He can be described as quiet, but he's not the stereotypical "quiet guy" that people tend to think of with this description. Idle conversation isn't important to him. If he can get something out of it, then he might ask questions and poke and prod until he hits either what he wants or something the person wants to keep boxed in. Might is the keyword there. But even then, if he does choose to prompt conversation, his questions are straight forward and short.

• Comfort
• Mikhail isn't sympathetic and typically comforting when he's attempting to comfort someone. It's more like him being there to provide silent support and be something that can and will take the burden of a rant or personal issues without question or hesitation. Even if it's someone he just met, he'll be willing to sit there and listen, no matter how much he doesn't like comforting others due to his past experience with attempting to help someone. But, begrudging offer aside, the important thing is that he stays. He stays with them and doesn't stop them from spilling everything they want to let go of. He could easily walk away and demand that it isn't his problem to deal with, but he doesn't. He takes that burden for himself silently and becomes a pillar of strength for them, a way of grounding themselves to reality and escaping from their flood of emotions with his silent apathy.

• Hands
• He fidgets. A lot. His hands are more often than not doing something, whether that be playing with his wristbands, rubbing the scars on his arms, moving around as he talks, or playing with his own fingers. He also chews on his bands sometimes. Despite how expressive he might seem with his hands, however, that's just simple movements that he hardly thinks about. If he's greeting someone, saying goodbye, or indicating something such as more examples or the area around him, the most he'll do is a quick and dismissive flick of his fingers or a mocking two-finger salute (the latter reserved for farewells). Many of his gestures are dismissive, as he doesn't dwell on most issues for very long and would rather that be the same for the other person. 

• Promises
• Mikhail has a thing with promises. He doesn't like making promises because he's horrible at tying himself down to something. He hates it. Less freedom. But, if he does ever make a promise, he'll never break it. And as for people making promises to him, he forbids it. The chances of people being as devout to keeping promises as he is are too slim for him to risk, so he just avoids that disappointment and betrayal by just straight up forbidding it.

His Mental State:

Many of Mikhail's habits are comparable to habits obtained by someone who suffered from longstanding abuse. It could be said that he absorbed these habits from Rowan, as he was so intertwined with someone who was suffering from abuse, and then said habits cemented into him even more after the revelation of the abuse. However, there's more to Mikhail's mental state than even he sees or wants to acknowledge. 

PTSD

There's a set of criteria a person must meet before being diagnosed with PTSD.

A: Stressor - Exposure or threat of death, serious injury, or sexual violence

B: Intrusion Symptoms - The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced

C: Avoidance - Persistent effortful avoidance of distressing trauma-related reminders after the event 

D: Negative Alterations in Mood - Negative alterations in cognition and mood that began or worsened after the traumatic event

E: Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity - Trauma-related alterations in arousal and reactivity that began or worsened after the traumatic event

F: Duration - Persistence of symptoms in Criteria B, C, D, and E for more than one month.

G: Functional Significance - Significant symptom-related distress or impairment of different areas of life, such as social or occupational.

H: Exclusion - The disturbance is not due to medication, substance use, or other illness.

In order to be diagnosed with PTSD according to the DSM-5, you need to meet the following:

1. Criterion A
2. One symptom or more from Criterion B
3. One symptom or more from Criterion C
4. Two symptoms ore more from Criterion D
5. Two symptoms or more from Criterion E
6. Criterion F
7. Criterion G
8. Criterion H

Now to apply all of this information to Mikhail.

A: Stressor- Mikhail's stressor is a complicated combination of three out of the four stressors:

1. You directly experienced the event
• He experienced Rowan's death
2. You witnessed the event happen to someone else, in person 
• He caught Rowan's father beating her a few times, leading to his suspicions
3. You learned of a close relative or close friend who experienced an actual or threatened, accidental, or violent death. 
• He learned of Rowan's abuse. While it's not a death, it led to it and was quite a traumatic revelation to him.

B: Intrusion Symptoms - Mikhail's' intrusion symptoms include four of the five symptoms:

1. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive memories. 
• This typically happens when his mental guard is down, which isn't very often, or when something reminds him of Rowan.
2. Dissociative reactions, such as flashbacks, in which it feels like the experience is happening again. These may occur on a continuum ranging from brief episodes to complete loss of consciousness. 
• Flashbacks aren't often, but when they do happen he does briefly lose consciousness. 
3. Intense or prolonged distress after exposure to traumatic reminders.
• This is the most frequent symptom that he goes through in this category.
4. Marked physiological reactivity, such as increased heart rate, after exposure to traumatic reminders.
• This one is minor. He'll violently flinch when he's reminded of Rowan, though he tries to hide it when he's around others. 

C: Avoidance - Mikhail shows both methods of avoidance:

1. Avoidance of trauma-related thoughts or feelings.
• He shuts down feeling almost altogether, and he will shut down any thoughts that relate to Rowan in any way. In fact, he shuts down almost all thought when he starts to think about her.
2. Avoidance of trauma-related external reminders, such as people, places, conversations, activities, objects, or situations.
• He tries to avoid drawing, but it's difficult for him since he often wants to. He'll avoid any and all conversation that somehow relates back to her, smiling, lying, being touched by others, touching others, art-related items, and sunflowers are all off-limits. His bridge piercing reminds him of her, and he keeps saying that he'll remove it, but subconsciously he doesn't want to get rid of it, for the same reason he wants to---it reminds him of the friendship he and Rowan had.

D: Negative Alterations in Mood - Mikhail shows the three of the seven symptoms:

1. Persistent distorted blame of self or others for causing the traumatic event or for the resulting consequences.
• He blames himself for not picking up on Rowan's abuse sooner and not being able to help her in time before her death.
2. Markedly diminished interest in activities that used to be enjoyable.
• He used to enjoy going out on rides with Rowan (horses), sharing jokes and daily experiences, cloud-gazing, going for swims, laughing, talking, being in each other's company, and drawing. Now, he has little to no interest in them. The one exception is drawing, but that disinterest is replaced by a mixture of hate and contentment. 
3. Persistent inability to experience positive emotions, such as happiness, love, and joy. 
• He both shuts emotions out and has a hard time feeling things such as happiness, love, and joy. He's rarely in a positive mood. 

E: Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity - Mikhail shows four of the six symptoms:

1. Irritable or aggressive behavior
• When something triggers him and he's in a pissy mood, he'll throw things around, pace, pull at his hair, possibly hit things if it's safe to do so (aka not people, walls, breakable items. mainly trees). He'll completely close up and not let anyone in.
2. Self-destructive or reckless behavior
• He gets hurt. A lot. He'll climb trees and fall from them. He'll instigate fights with people without care for consequences (verbally). He doesn't care if he gets hurt, and if he does, he just washes off the blood, covers up the wounds somehow, and goes about his day. 
3. Feeling constantly "on guard" or like danger is lurking around every corner (hypervigilance)
• This, for him, is more subtle than the rest. He is on guard, but it's not the kind people might think of. His guard is more of a mental fortress instead of being on guard in the physical world. It's his mind he wants to protect and hide away, instead of himself.
4. Sleep disturbance
• He often wakes up in the middle of the night, whether that be from nightmares or simply waking up and not being able to go back to sleep. Takes either a few minutes up to a few hours to go back to sleep.

F: Duration - Mikhail has experienced these symptoms for a few years by now.

G: Functional Significance - Mikhail experiences symptom-related distress during his every-day life, and it greatly affects his social life and other aspects of his life.

H: Exclusion - Mikhail isolates himself every chance he gets.

With this overview, it's safe to say that Mikhail has PTSD. 

Suicidal Thoughts

With everything that's happened to him, it'd be reasonable to assume that Mikhail often has suicidal thoughts and has attempted it. However, it's a false assumption. Even with everything he's gone through, Mikhail still has the mental capacity to think and care about his mother. His older sister was a miscarriage, and that was devastating for his mother. With this, Mikhail swore to himself that she would never lose another child. This promise to himself has kept him from going that far into the gutter. 

It's also important to consider his self-imposed apathy. He's gone so long with locking up his emotions, burying them to the point of barely feeling anything, that he's near incapable of wanting to die at this point. Sure, he could hate himself for certain things, such as Rowan's death, but his apathy is so deep that it's a dull ache, a minor itch, not enough to try and kill himself over it. The closest he's come to being "suicidal" is his dismissive attitude towards getting hurt.

Apathy

After Rowan's death, Mikhail decided that feeling nothing was better than feeling everything at once. He completely closed in on himself, shutting everything and everyone out and learning how to shut off his emotions. With him being an empath, it was difficult, but he pushed through it and eventually learned how to feel nothing besides mild excuses for mostly negative emotions with dull amusement here and there. 

His apathy has, over the years, become bone-deep and greatly affected how he processes things and lives. He's still an empath, absorbing people's emotions and using that to help in his own way, as previously stated, but the apathy warps how he deals with it. He says that he doesn't feel anything anymore, that it doesn't affect him, but it does affect him, he's just not seeing it. It's slowly making him worse, mentally, but because of the apathy, there's no way for him to see that or even tell.

He's become unable to feel and express emotion the way that people normally do. This coping mechanism is incredibly unhealthy, and it's affected the way he functions greatly. Perhaps, if he were ever to get the help he needs, he could learn to open those emotions back up again. They'd be harsh, painful, terrifying, overwhelming. They'd be something he doesn't want to face anymore. But, but, if he could face it, he is still capable of feeling again. 

The downside is that he'll never be who he used to be. He'll never be playful and expressive again. He'll never be the sweetheart he used to be. He can feel again, but his expression of that is permanently twisted into observable apathy. He looks like he doesn't care, that he doesn't feel anything, but that's not true. He does feel, but he's gone so long not feeling that he can no longer show that outwardly. The only way to tell is to pay attention. He'll act subtly different towards certain things, whether that be towards a person he likes, a friend, an activity he enjoys, so on. It won't be obvious how he's feeling unless you know the tells he has.

Trivia

• His Russian nickname would be Misha (bear)
• Smells like honey and a faint hint of roses
• He loves flowers, climbing trees, and nature. His favorite flowers are white roses. They're pure, untainted. They remind him of when nothing in life was wrong, of his mother, who he sees as pure and innocent. White is a blank slate, neither good nor bad. Neutral. 
• He prefers being outside over being inside.
• The heat doesn't bother him, besides how much he doesn't like the freckles it ultimately creates.
• He's really, really good at drawing. His style is realistic. 
• He's also quite the cook.
• He can remember little details, offhanded remarks, and seemingly unimportant details. Whether or not he chooses to use them, however, depends on what it is and his general mood at the time.
• His bridge piercing has sentimental value. It reminds him of someone that was once incredibly important to him. It was a sign of their friendship, as they both got one together, and him getting rid of it would almost be like completely removing her from his life and betraying that friendship they once had, even if he's super fucking pissed at her for lying to him about everything.
• His mother made five leather bracelets for her first child, a daughter, which ended up being a miscarriage. When she had Mikhail, she gave him them instead for an unknown reason beyond "to comfort [him] and keep a piece of her near." Mikhail thought it was because of how fidgety he was. He promised her to never take them off, and he hasn't broken that promise to this day.
• Speaks some Russian. He's not completely fluent, but he can navigate through a conversation pretty easily. Learned it from his mother.
• Wears tank tops and jeans. He prefers no shirt and loathes shoes, but will wear them if he must. Beyond that, he's not too picky about clothes. 
  

Roleplay Extras

Servant Girl Friend

Overview: Carsyn Riley, 23, 5'9, Female

Appearance: [This](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/18/a0/07/18a00702701f06d8faebdad7efbb47fa.jpg). Wide, ice blue eyes verging on grey, short dirt brown hair with a slight wave to it, and a general sense of "I could try to style it but I don't want to." Thin and slim frame, skinny, almost unhealthily so but not quite yet. Her tongue is severed. Small nose, delicate but calloused fingers from constant labor, modestly plush lips, humble curves. Lightly tanned skin.

Background: Carsyn was chosen by a pretty wealthy Caelum and went about her duties carefully. She kept her head down and did everything she was told without complaint. However, one day she witnessed an illegal black-market exchange of human servants taking place between her owner and a colleague of his. Her owner saw her and later took her for punishment. As she was illiterate and couldn't even write down her alphabet (very little education), he simply took away her only means of communicating what she witnessed instead of killing her. She was useful, so he didn't want to lose that, and the punishment served as a warning for any other snooping "attempts," even if she hadn't meant to snoop. She doesn't know ASL, so she has no way of communicating beyond simple sounds and vague gestures. Her owner, in a way to get even more money than he already has, decided to rent her off to someone, which led to her being employed to Apelles for about a year as of now.

Extras

Personality: She's very sweet and innocent, still kind to the Caelum even though they've been cruel to her. Her hate list is non-existent and grudges don't last forever, but she never forgets anything. Very shy around people but affectionate towards people she cares about.

Mannerisms: Small smiles, twirls hair a lot, doesn't really hold eye-contact much, soft footsteps. She'll typically wait for an opening to interact with you, making herself known with small noises and standing in your view. However, if she really wants your attention, she kinda does a sort of hand flutter where she'll frantically tap you with both hands with a featherlight touch that's more air than touch that resembles butterflies over your skin. Will pet Mikhail's hair and pat his head, cheek kisses, and clings to arms like a koala.

Clothing: Bell bottoms, but not the jean type. She prefers the soft and stretchy materials, and none of them have loud colors or any sort of pattern. Loose shirts are a favorite. Any long sleeves are always longer than her hands so she can do paws. Knitted sweaters and leggings are also a frequent favorite, as long as the sweaters hang low around her thighs. Simple and cute dresses are also well-liked in warmer weather.

Trivia: 

• Thunder scares her, and by extension of that, loud noises that resemble the boom of thunder scare her. She'll typically hide, if she can, when there are storms during the day. During the night, she'll try to hum to herself while hiding under blankets, but if she knows someone well, she'll go to them for comfort. 
• All sweets are loved, so any dessert is appreciated and promptly devoured like a lady.
• Likes naps and pillows, and butterflies are very much adored.