Ajax Radziewicz

* Simple
* Collage

> "Collin was all I was thinking about. I thought I was saving him. Thought I was built to hurt people, and nothing else. And Collin’s been through enough pain. Whatever grief he’d have to deal with seemed like the lesser evil, or however you wanna put it. And it’s not that I don’t still think that I’m better at hurting people than at anything else. I just know, now, that Collin needs me. I was wrong."
> ― Jax to Todd
>
>

**Ajax Radziewicz**, better known as simply **Jax**, is an eighteen-year-old demigod currently living in the poor district of Shawrose City. He is a senior at Mythical High and is the younger brother of Anatolia Radziewicz and the boyfriend of Collin Harper. As a character, he is owned and portrayed by Lark.

## Description

### Appearance

He keeps his hair short. He buzzes it right down to his scalp, and when it starts getting close to an inch long, he buzzes it again. His hair is naturally of a dark brown, but it tends to look black because he keeps it so short. He gets incredibly anxious and uncomfortable once his hair starts growing past a certain length, and at that point, if the proper tools aren't available, he'll resort to either tearing his own hair out or trying to slice it off with a knife. This is because as long as he keeps his hair short, nobody can pull on it or use it against him ever again.

Jax can't grow facial hair. Not that he's tried very hard, and he's sure he could probably get something decent going on if he dedicated himself to it, but he's also unwilling to take the chance. It comes in patchy at best, usually, which is odd, because his father had a full, thick beard. The best Jax has ever been able to get was a very weak moustache and some equally weak sideburns.

He sometimes looks at himself in the mirror and muses that, had he been born fully human, he would have had brown eyes. But he was not, and so, he instead has the jeweled green-gold eyes of a snake, slitted and animalistic, and lining said eyes are the gold-green scales of a snake, and he knows that he should be proud of them, but he feels nothing. Not when he's seen too many people eyeing him up like he's something exotic, heard the very same word spilled from unwelcome, but paying lips. He doesn't hate the eyes; he hates that he can't hide them, keep them safe and sacred and secret from those who would defile them.

He has fangs, thin and pointed like a snake's, that can secrete venom at will.

In terms of frame, Jax has always been bony and thin, long-limbed and tall. Years of malnourishment have not done him very well, and he sometimes fears that his ribs will always be plainly outlined on the silhouette of his torso. Even so, he carries enough muscle in his arms to get him by in the scuffles that he often gets into, and he largely thanks his scrappy lifestyle for his ability to retain this bit of strength.

At the crest of the back of his neck, inching down to the top of his shoulder blades, is the delicate black-and-white inked image of an ambrosia flower. He has many small, insignificant scars, but two very prominent ones, slicing across each of his forearms from elbow to wrist, from his suicide attempt.

### Personality

Jax is an abrasive character. He is argumentative, confrontational and stubborn. He makes a point to get angry at things that do not deserve such a strong emotional response, and he has the eager fists to back each and every one of the challenges he makes. He doesn't hold back from voicing his opinions, either, no matter how controversial or insensitive they may be. On a very surface level, he comes across as an asshole who cares only about getting what he wants, regardless of what he has to do or who he has to hurt in order to achieve his goals. Furthermore, he does his best to make it explicitly clear that he needs no one's help or companionship. In fact, he violently pushes away most who would try to get close to him.

Beneath all of that, however, is a very softer side of Jax who cares about people very deeply. His walls are very thick due to the events that have transpired in his past, but beneath all of that, he fears being alone and sees himself as a protector of the people he does care about. He has a great deal of sympathy towards people who have lived similar experiences as him or who he sees potentially going down a similar path that he has. He pushes people away for fear of seeing himself hurt; he would rather hurt the other person first to spare himself the future pain.

## Abilities

* **Venomous Bite**: Jax has the ability to produce venom and inject it via his fangs in the form of a poisonous bite. The venom he produces is the equivalent to a king cobra's.
* **Snakeskin**: Jax can produce a skin-tight shield at will that glows green-gold and protects him from physical impact. The shield fades and breaks over time as it is damaged. Once the shield has been broken, it takes time to regenerate, and cannot be re-conjured immediately.

## Relationships

* Family
* Romance
* Friends

* Anatolia Radziewicz
* Jaromir Radziewicz
* Wadjet

She is the only one he can rely on. She comes through for him time and time again, and he will always be grateful to her for the ways in which she has stood by him over the years, regardless of the mistakes he made. He likes to think that he looks out for her just as much as she looks out for him, but he knows that she doesn't need his care nearly as much as he does hers. Sometimes, he even wishes she would leave him to his own devices and let him mess up more often.

Since his suicide attempt, Ana has been at once more distant and hovering closer than ever. Jax feels as though she doesn't remember the person that he is, anymore, and finds that she intrudes on his personal space when he doesn't want her to and leaves him alone when he would've enjoyed her company. He's almost relieved when he has the apartment to himself, because at least it means that he won't have to struggle to navigate this new dynamic with his sister for a few hours.

He doesn't remember very much of him. Or, rather, he chooses not to. The variety of positive childhood memories he has of him have since been tarnished by years of festering bitterness towards him for daring to leave Jax and Ana when they were so young and relied on him to take care of them. He would rather think of his father as an irredeemable villain rather than a man who was simply trying his best and happened to have made some poor decisions.

And yet, at times, he lets himself remember. His father, who loved history and mythology, and who spoke with a deep, sonorous voice, who had a heavy sort of chuckle that carried on the wind. How he looked up to this man for most of his youth, and how deeply and personally it hurt him when he had to leave his father's corpse behind to save himself.

He hates her. Despises her. Resents her. Blames her. Believes that if she were truly some goddess of protection, the things that happened to his family would not have occurred. Believes that if she were truly his mother, if she truly cared for him at all, then she would not have allowed him to suffer as he has in the years following his father's death.

But he knows. He knows she was there, the night he tried to end it all. He felt her influence on his body, felt her heal his cuts faster than he could reopen them, and it infuriates him, that the only moment she's ever outright shown that she cares about him was in a moment where he would have preferred she hadn't interfered at all rather than in the plethora of moments since his father's death where he cried and begged for her help, only to receive nothing. And he hates that it means nothing, in the end, that she ensured his survival, because she still isn't around, and he's still never met her, and he would've been more than content for her to never have helped him at all.

* Collin Harper
* Will Kowalski

When Jax first met Collin, he didn't think much of him. He was a good bit of fun, he thought. A light-hearted fling, no strings attached. A rebound. His breakup with Will was too fresh in his mind for him to consider the possibility of dating Collin on a more serious level. But then he did, inevitably, get attached. Collin was in a bad situation with his step-family, and Jax refused to stand by and watch. He assisted in getting Collin out of his abusive household, and they've been together ever since.

His feelings for Collin went unacknowledged for a prolonged period of time in which he refused to face the possibility that he might have come to care about someone other than Ana, someone who might leave him and hurt him, someone whom he might hurt in return. And he has hurt Collin, he thinks. And despite that, despite the many errors he's made over the course of their relationship, Collin has never hurt him, and he will never be able to concretely voice how much that means to him.

Over time, he has come to accept that Collin has carved out a place for himself in Jax's life, and though Jax is still not very good at trusting that people might come around intending to stay, he does trust that, at the very least, Collin is his to keep. He's still working, in many ways, on returning the favour.

There was a point in time where Jax and Will were inseparable. Will was Jax's first friend, when he arrived in Shawrose City. They were both thirteen, at the time, and Will was the first person other than Ana that Jax ever came to see as reliable. Even when Jax got busted for selling drugs and thrown into juvie when he was fourteen, Will was the only one of his friends who came to visit him consistently. When Jax got released from juvie, the two threw a private celebration that ended with the two of them quite drunk, Will so much so that he cried and confessed to Jax that he loved him and it had hurt, for them to be apart for so long.

That night, the two consummated their new relationship, and the day after, Jax convinced a friend of his to give him a tattoo: an ambrosia flower on his upper back, to quietly signify his love for Will. Their relationship went smoothly for the first year, but the second year, Will started nagging Jax about his behaviour and his illegal tendencies, urging him to change his habits and straighten himself out. Jax, however, wouldn't hear any of it, and the tension between the two rose and rose until it eventually snapped, and after a heated argument one morning before school, the two broke off their relationship.

* Todd Adamos
* Erica Montes
* Jezebel Willows
* Ephraim Willows

Todd is an obligation, to Jax. He has to meet with Todd after school so that they can talk about his feelings and the school can rest easy that they've done all they can to prevent Jax from attempting suicide again. Due to this, at first, Jax was very outwardly bitter and hostile towards Todd. To Jax, Todd's forced presence in his life was yet another poor, disingenuous demonstration of care for Jax when there were so many other moments when he feels he would've needed the help more.

But Todd isn't ultimately the villain. In fact, in a way, he, like Jax, is a victim, here. Both of them have been required to sit through this song and dance by a system that cares truly for neither one of them. And Jax couldn't blame Todd for that forever. Besides, he knew that it was for Collin's good, that he air out his childhood grievances with someone. Probably.

She's an asshole. He wonders, at times, if she learned that from him. Their friendship was largely one-sided, at first, with Erica pestering Jax to teach her how to fight properly again and again and again until he finally gave in, thinking it would make her leave him alone. And he was wrong. She stuck around, and for a time, they had a mutually beneficial relationship built on the idea of keeping each other in check, of reminding each other when they're being stupid. And then Jax broke up with Will, and he fell out of touch with Erica, becoming embroiled in a mess of his own making and leaving her in the dust.

She resents him. He knows that. He abandoned her, in a way, and he knows he should feel bad for it, but he can't quite bring himself to. He doesn't believe that Erica has ever truly needed him. He was someone that she wanted to be, he thinks, and that can't exactly be healthy, and in some ways, he blames himself for the type of person she's become, violent and reckless and impulsive. So he tells himself not to feel bad for letting her go, and he doesn't seek her out to make amends. He wouldn't want to make an even bigger mess.

He wouldn't necessarily call her a friend, really. She just sort of comes along with her brother, Ram, since they live together. Jax appreciates Jezebel for her sharp tongue and her willingness to tease at both him and Ram. Her wit is what makes her fun, to Jax, and is, perhaps, one of the core reasons why he feels so comfortable barging into their home without warning or announcing himself.

Jax hasn't seen her since his attempt, and is in no hurry to. Deep down, he fears that she'll judge him harshly for being so weak and vulnerable, and he'd rather spare himself that experience, even if it isn't guaranteed to happen.

Ephraim Willows is a lowlife and a druggie. Jax can appreciate that, in a person, mainly because those types of people rarely ask him about his personal life. Ram is a good bit of fun, and if he can nip a bit of booze from him when he visits him, then that's just a bonus. There is no real emotional depth to their relationship, and that's the way Jax likes it.

Following his suicide attempt, however, Jax has made no attempt to reach out to Ram again, mainly because he sees him as a walking personification of the life he's now realized he has to leave behind, if he's going to continue living. Until Ram corrects his behaviour and tendencies, Jax doesn't see himself visiting him anymore.

## Trivia

**Fun Facts**

* Jax and his sister's snake-like features could perhaps indicate naga or echidna blood in their ancestry, made manifest on their bodies due to the intermingling with the divine blood of Wadjet, a cobra goddess.

**Behind the Scenes**

* In the earliest scenes featuring Jax, his character is drastically different from the Jax that is known today. This is because his roleplayer, Lark, hadn't yet fully figured out his backstory and resulting personality.