Thread: The Way I Am || Kveria/Altheras

Luke barely remembered his younger days in that big mansion he used to call home. He did remember his older brother though, he'd been nice enough to him, and life had been pretty good back then from what he could remember. Well, it had been good other than the constant arguing between their parents. One day, when he was about five, his mom had put him in the car, packed the trunk and backseat full of their things, and driven off. She had told him they were just going to stay in the city for a little while. That little while had turned out to be permanent, when she and his father had finally gotten a messy divorce. They had lived well enough off of the monthly child support checks. His mother had kept the small apartment in the city, and he had ended up going to school with the inner city kids. To keep him from being bullied so much at school because of his name, she had it changed to her maiden name before she enrolled him. Her ex husband's last name had always been associated with wealth and power, and that wasn't really a name you wanted to have in the slums. It would turn you into an outcast real quick and Luke hadn't needed any help there. He was one of only a handful of white kids, there were maybe twenty of them in the entire school. Aside from that, he was also a straight-A student and a total geek, which didn't make him many friends at all. Despite being an outcast in school, he had been a good kid. He went out of his way to help his mama with things, and he always did his homework and only ever got in trouble for 'fighting' when other kids would beat him up. He was an artist and intelligent, and he had dreams of doing something in the art field for a living. Things changed for him his senior year of high school though. His mother had been running some errands and was in a horrible car wreck. She was sent to the hospital where they tried to save her life, but in the end, she never regained consciousness, and she passed away. It was the hardest two weeks of Luke's life, sitting in the hospital with her, hoping that she would wake up, only to lose her anyway. She was the only family he'd really been close to. In the weeks after she passed, his grades slipped, and then when he turned eighteen, the child support checks stopped. He barely managed to graduate from high school, and once he was done with that he just had no motivation at all to seek out a worthwhile future for himself. He had started dressing in all black, ever since the day of the funeral, he just fell into a long depression, working a dead end job just to survive, with no real hope for himself. A few of the guys he worked with wanted to cheer him up, so they got him to hang out with them, and they all started partying together. At first it was just alcohol, but Luke, being depressed became an alcoholic pretty quickly. Being intoxicated numbed the pain of his loss and helped him cope, so he didn't really care that he was drunk every day. Eventually being drunk caused him to lose his job, so he moved in with one of the guys. They got into harder drugs together and he was hooked on them within a few weeks. To pay for his drugs the other guy made him be a drug mule, moving packages from big time dealers to the small time guys. He lived like this for a couple of years before he got caught in a sting operation. He'd tried to run when the cops showed up and they'd hurt him pretty badly taking him into custody. He'd been too high to be smart and quit struggling, so he'd ended up with a broken arm, dislocated shoulder, some pretty bad lacerations, and a concussion. His injuries plus the story of how he'd ended up doing what he was doing had looked really good in court. His public defender had felt that he was just a good kid who had been through hell. In the end, the judge agreed with him, and sentenced him to 1 year in a rehabilitation center designed to provide help with getting off of drugs and psychiatric counseling. So here he was, about three months past his twenty-first birthday, and he was finally going to get out of here and maybe be able to move on with his life. It was funny if he thought about it, he had been an alcoholic and drug addict, and quit them both all before it was even legal for him to drink. He was really excited to be getting out of this place, but at the same time really nervous. They had told him that he would have to stay with his brother, and he barely remembered him. He'd been at the funeral, he thought, but he hadn't really talked to him or anything. He had packed all of his clothes and meager belongings into one big cloth bag this morning, and had just been waiting until now. When the nurse came to get him, he picked up his bag and followed her out to the large meeting room. She opened the door for him, and gestured for him to go inside. He stepped in and looked at his brother for a moment, before he hesitantly approached him and sat down at the table. His hair was died a bright red, and his clothes were a little shabby, but he was clean and he looked healthy. Hey.... uh, it's good to see you?