♙ 
Jude Shepherd ♙ Preferred Title: Witness
Mocking Title: Sacrificial lamb
Nicknames: Orphan boy / little orphan detective, reckless jackass, "luckiest luckless sonuvabitch", detective disgrace, grumpyface, lamby, sheepy, ears, livestock
Age: 29
Birthday: February 14th
Gender: Cis male.
Sexuality: Straight, with commitment issues. (Full on homosexual, in reality, but doesn't realize.)
Category: Citizen, villain by association.
Birth Place/Hometown: New York, America.
Occupation: Unemployed, ex-detective with the NYPD.
Race/Species: Personification of sacrifice, ex-human cursed with sheep features.
College Major: Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice.
Voicecanon: Here— though more masculine.
Skimming this character's powers is highly recommended if interacting with him.
Appearance Description
Jude is someone who looks intimidating at a first glance with his gruff disposition, but fluffier and cuddlier the more you take in. It's hard to miss all of his obvious, soft, and unthreatening sheep features. He's average in height at five foot ten, and has a thick body type. He was an outright beefy guy back when he was still a cop, but after leaving and with the mutations, got squishier and chubbier, not a sharp edge on him. His color scheme is exactly like a s'more, and most find this either delightful or tasty seeming.
He's dark skinned, with freckles all over. He has big, cute sheep ears, which are black, then a fuzzy white sheep tail that stops above his knees. His hair is thick and snuggly, like wool, with a curly texture, and two tone white and black colors-- and the white on top is like a toasted marshmallow. His eyes are a very warm, endearing brown, but also happen to have pupils that resemble crosses. A lot of his facial structure is rounder, now, as with his body. He has glasses, but his vision is acceptable enough even without them.
His personal clothing preferences value comfort over style. He wears layer upon layer of poofy jackets and sweaters in the winter, then breaks out the tank tops, t-shirts, and shorts in the summer. Most patterns are kept fairly subdued, but he does like some pop culture designs.
While Jude used to to have a solid, confident posture, he's kept to himself recently, avoiding personal contact with others and not taking up as much space. It tends to be something that attracts the immediate attention of predatory individuals. His default expression tends to be apathetic or moody.
Personality Description
If you were to summarize Jude in one word, it'd probably be 'sore'. He's grouchy, paranoid and sensitive from being exposed to the darkest parts of human nature-- an expert cynic. While parts of him have been watered down from his trauma, a strong aggression and passion is still buried in him. He's tortured by guilt and self loathing, but still has a lingering arrogance and sense of outrage. A lot of his anger is directly tied to insecurity, a dramatic defense mechanism.
He's been uncomfortable with his own personality after finding out a great deal of it was based from outside influence, unsure what he can claim as purely his own. Since having his powers fully emerge and transforming into a ridiculous sheep man, he's felt like even more of a stranger in his own skin. Often, Jude will show a quiet sort of curiosity towards his own actions and features, trying to reassess who he is and understand it, questioning if something is self chosen or how others view him alone.
In terms of the old personality that he retains many traits from, reassessment or not, Jude is a portrait of toxic masculinity, mixed with police sensibilities and a significant investment in being special. Jude is very intelligent and competitive, thriving with thrills, challenge, and any chance to prove himself. He's heavily attracted to people that are smart and socially distant, having fun with more meaningful interactions with them, discussions and games alike, and tends to unconsciously look to them for approval. The individuals Jude admires most also tend to have brains that work quite differently than other people's. Jude is and isn't like them.
He's exceptionally talented, passionate, and capable when he has the drive for it, to the point of being self absorbed and pushy, and it makes it a lot harder for him to relate to most, close friendships rare. He gets along with workaholics, men with masculine hobbies, women that are feminine but strong-willed, and those he thinks of as respectable citizens with acceptable ideals and steady lives. He doesn't like petty whiners nor obnoxiously weird sorts if they aren't witty-- any kind of loser, Jude snubs.
And while he has an easy time doing things with other masculine people, it can be a thin line. Alpha dog types that get too close to pushing Jude around or constantly outdoing him are seen as a threat, and he'll gladly fight them. In general, Jude takes badly to anyone who gets in his way and tells him what to do unless earning his respect-- and his respect is a strange, sometimes hypocritical or petty thing, subject to change or baffling exceptions to his own preferences.
Despite having a rough time relating to people, he can feel guilt and care for their wellbeing, and at his core, he's more emotional than he'd want to admit. This is what separates him from being exactly like who he's emulated in the past. Oh, he'll put up a gruff front and be a bit awkward, sure, but when Jude cares, he cares too damn much. Jude thinks goodness is valuable, as is a stable, successful community, and sometimes his intense standards are from a misplaced desire to have everyone at their best.
Currently, Jude is directionless and hurt, at a murky place in his life and confused on where he's ending up, how he's coping, what to ever do to feel okay. New parts of his personality are emerging, such as being more antisocial from his awareness of other's evils, drifting off in depression and boredom fueled disassociation, and intense wallowing. His pride mixes erratically with the suffering, meaning he can throw a self pity party one moment, then get self deprecating the next. As a strange thing to add in with the negatives, Jude has fluffy sheep traits sinking in, too, which definitely catch him off guard and he's not very adjusted to. It's a real clusterfuck. Jude is a clusterfuck. If you weren't to summarize Jude up with the word 'sore', it'd be 'clusterfuck', hands down.
Powers
Sacrificial Lamb
What Man Is Not Meant to Know
Nasty Secret Empathy, Mouth Sewn Shut / Hands Tied, Curse
Sacrificial Lamb
What Man Is Not Meant to Know
Nasty Secret Empathy, Mouth Sewn Shut / Hands Tied, Curse
Jude is cursed to recognize and intimately know the evil he comes in contact with. This only works when he's in someone's physical presence, and he has to bear this weight completely alone. This power can bypass mental defenses. He doesn't get everything at once! Big incidents first and flashes of things. Longer exposure to unpleasant things/people causes Jude to have deeper empathy for them and more guilt, feeling like he committed some of the acts himself and losing mental stability in the process.
Things like more exposure to a person, along with physical contact, will additionally give Jude clearer details on an event that may initially be fuzzy aside from the horror of it-- if he were to know someone committed a mass murder, names of victims might become apparent with time, their features, maybe even a slight sense of motivation if he were to get very close to the killer. If an unpleasant person or thing wants Jude to know what they've done or want to do, this whole process is streamlined.
If Jude starts trying to share someone's big nasty secrets gained through this method, he'll drop dead before he even opens his mouth. Since he can come back to life, this mostly serves as a forceful stop, and he'll get a sense of danger leading up to an attempt. This cannot be worked around-- no writing it down, using sign language for it, suggesting it through actions/expressions, and definitely no taking advantage of the power to gain the information organically-- while he can investigate someone, he's still held to the same secret-keeping standards. Jude is purely a witness, unable to ruin reputations.
There are a few exceptions to these firm rules.
- Public knowledge. Difference: If Jude were to be mugged very obviously in public and broad daylight, he could scream about it and try to get the mugger arrested all he wanted, because it's what anyone else would've seen and recognized as bad. VS If Jude were to be mugged in private, he wouldn't be able to draw any attention to it-- else he'd die before the attempt even began, and would only be easier to rob. If someone's being sneaky enough that most regular people wouldn't see it, Jude can't say anything about it.
- Petty matters. If Jude sees someone behaving like an ordinary asshole in private, fairly harmless and not truly evil, he's free to talk about it. If Jude thinks they're an asshole for obviously personal reasons, that's open too, and he can fight them for it. Things like intention and wording matters here.
- Behind the scenes. Difference: If someone is making threats or talking about hurting someone out loud, to Jude's face/in front of him and in the moment, he can fight them. As long as Jude doesn't purposefully try to get the attacker arrested or make any scene that would intentionally get them in trouble with others (that don't already know they're harmful, that is), he can try to fight back against them privately, by himself. VS If someone is thinking about/has a history of being harmful but doesn't make any move to do it in front of Jude, nor saying they will out loud/through hostile body language, he can't intervene. If showing up purposefully at what he knows (being there for a non-bullshitted personal and non-justice reason doesn't apply) is a future or ongoing crime scene, Jude cannot sabotage anything unless dragged into it by someone else-- he'll freeze up. This power basically isn't meant for easy prophetic heroism.
- Talking to the nasty secret havers themselves, and anyone else who already explicitly knows about that person's nasty secrets (this differs from easy general public knowledge). If alone with the questionable person themself, Jude can inform them that he's aware of what they've done, and discuss it freely.
- Danger perks. A very special exemption from his curse! If you've greatly harmed Jude in an active sense, he can tell you about other unpleasant things that are directly connected to him. This doesn't extend to the empathy at all, it only breaks some of Jude's silence on actions witnessed the old fashioned way, and allows him to talk about his own experience and trauma-- he still can't share anything that wasn't given, or that isn't related to him, and he has to talk about the information quietly. Difference: Jude can tell an antagonistic character that his cousin killed his parents and left him to die, that he was mugged, and that he listened to a villain purposefully monologue at his direction. VS Jude can't tell an antagonistic character what random, unshared dark secrets someone has. He also can't tell them if he witnessed a murder and it was unrelated to him (the victim wasn't anybody close to him, and the death wasn't his responsibility), nor any other unrelated shady hidden details, even if Jude picked it up through investigation/seeing it in person and not empathy.
- Quiet avoidance. He can subtly avoid the awful people he feels if he desires to, as long as it wouldn't intentionally imply they were evil on a larger scale to others.
- Vagueness. Jude can say he's had a rough life and imply, in a very nonspecific sense, that he's seen bad shit and continues to do so. He could tell anyone what his powers are, but it'd make his life harder than it already is (people breathing down his neck and trying to force loopholes, etc, which would get messy and likely leave Jude constantly dying and stressed), so he avoids that like the plague. He could also warn a loved one that they should be careful, because it wouldn't be suspicious, while he cannot warn a stranger if he thinks they're in danger.
Victim Complex
Attracts the Unpleasant, Keeps Them Invested
Attracts the Unpleasant, Keeps Them Invested
Jude is a prey animal and a sacrifice. It's only natural that those of darker leaning dispositions or habits would find him more alluring. Whatever usual evil someone partakes in, it'll be extra enjoyable to inflict on Jude. He leaves a longer lasting impression on unpleasant people than most as a toy that never loses his entertainment value. This starts mild, slight temptation and intrigue, Jude smelling especially good or seeming very easy to screw with (even if Jude doesn't fit with their usual preferences), then builds up with exposure to Jude and how much someone involves themself with/commits atrocities towards him.
Beneficially, this makes it tough for someone of a nasty disposition to permanently trap and leave Jude somewhere (AKA immortal-murdering him by burying him alive and never coming back, etc), they'd want to be actively playing with him. The rather obvious negative point is that this makes bad people try to go after Jude and hurt him repeatedly.
Purgatory
Immortality, After Death Regeneration
Immortality, After Death Regeneration
Jude has no supernatural healing factor whatsoever, but once killed, he can come back to life no matter how he died/what he lost. You can take away body parts from Jude and damage him pretty bad, but if you wear his body down to an intense degree, there will be a small speck that remains and can't be destroyed. If mutilated and broken down pretty badly, Jude will reform from whatever part of him is currently the biggest. Generally, this process will take five to ten minutes, but in cases where he tries to share dark secrets and has a heart attack, he'll only black out for a minute.
If something is in the way of the regeneration, Jude's regrowing body and magic will push at it gently at first, then grow more forceful to make space for him to fully exist again as time passes. After a day, Jude's magic may start to have a deteriorating effect on anything keeping him from reforming-- but the additional time taken to wear something away until he can pop back could take anywhere from a half hour to another few days. Once again, this can only kick in if he's already dead, and Jude can't regenerate until he's died.
Species Traits
Sheep
Jude was human, at one point, but his curse has led him to adapt more animalistic traits to himself. He has sheep ears and a tail, with a hair texture that feels similar to wool. He can't produce real wool, but meat is a different case, and he would taste like a mix between human and mutton. He can make very genuine baa-ing noises, and when angry, may attempt to headbutt first and ask questions later.Sheep
Sheep are a prey animal, and Jude is affected by a stronger capacity for fear and paranoia. Seeing other sheep soothes his nerves, and isolation causes stress. They're also highly domesticated and easily influenced-- Jude's aggression is from his previous human status, and takes conscious effort to keep up. Physical contact relaxes Jude. Contrary to sheep, Jude has a perfectly human tolerance for pain.
His senses are a mixed bag. Since he was nearsighted as a human, that trait remains, but his vision still improved and left his sight only mildly blurry without glasses. Nightvision is a weak point. His hearing and sense of smell are far more enhanced. Sheep are frightened by sudden loud noises, and will become more difficult to handle, but speaking in a quiet, calm voice can settle this down. Jude knows what predators smell like, along with some pheromones, water, and which food is better.
Jude naturally has a strong appetite and will often eat too much if allowed, while lack of appetite is a strong sign of sickness. Food is a good motivator for him, and being fed makes Jude friendlier and more comfortable. Sheep are herbivores and while he retains some ability to eat other things, too much food outside of his natural diet would make him sick. He enjoys salt a great deal, and does get cravings for it, usually remedying them with salt popsicles or french fries.
Biography
tw: dark themes, murder, manipulation, death, mental health issues and substance abuse
Jude was born into a fiercely passionate family of New York cops. There was never any question as to what he'd grow up to be, life path already set and stable, pride in the work and his parents loud and enthusiastic. His daily routine was a very peaceful one. When not being told mostly child-friendly police stories by his father, a highly respected detective, he was spending time with his mother, a reporter, or friends. As a young child, Jude had an easy social life, and was often looked up to by other kids (and adults) simply because of his parentage. Sometimes, he was babysat by his older cousin, a smart young man who taught Jude chess and shared in his dream of joining the police force.
When Jude was eight, things began to change for the worse, starting off with a bang. One late night, someone slipped into his home and murdered his parents. Jude managed to come out of this unscathed, as the killer was only interested in his mother and father, and left as soon as they'd hit the floor. The case had no leads. His parents had many enemies and it couldn't be narrowed down.
Jude was sent to live with his grandparents. His grandmother was sympathetic, trying to give Jude space and patience, while his grandfather was deeply angry and obsessed with figuring out who killed Jude's parents. It was a bad influence on Jude. Despite being afraid at first, he learned from his grandfather and adopted similar behaviors and mindsets, using it as an unhealthy coping method.
His new gruffness and hyperfocus put other children off from him. He acted condescending, arrogant, and would talk about dark things freely (then tell anyone who was uncomfortable to suck it up). He was called 'orphan boy', 'little orphan detective', and similar such mocking names. After losing so many friends and feeling a general disconnect from people thanks to his trauma, Jude was spending a lot of time with his cousin, more comfortable with him than either grandparent. His cousin had treated Jude's parents almost like his own, as his mother had left and his father was a distant workaholic. They could mourn together, and when Jude was around his cousin, he felt like he had a special friend he could always vent to, share secrets with, and be close with even when nobody else understood him.
His cousin saw potential in Jude, different from the expected potential his grandfather saw, or the disappointment that others saw. Jude's cousin thought he was smart and not quite like other people, sharing this as a praise, reinforcing the concept. He taught Jude how to think outside the box, to value exciting challenge and intelligence.The older boy promised Jude that if they both made homicide detective some day, they could solve the mystery and get justice for Jude's parents together, as a team. Jude idolized his cousin, cementing him an unshakable role model and best friend.
Jude went through school only settling further into this. He found that while people were ruffled by him in a personal sense, he was smart and bold with strong leadership qualities. He became assured that he was a force for the greater good and knew what was best for others, and that while they wouldn't like what he did in the moment, they'd benefit from it in the long run. He resembled his grandfather with tough love and toxic masculinity, unfamiliar in comparison to his parents. People told him he'd never live up to them, and it made him deeply angry. He wouldn't adjust his attitude for anyone quite yet, seeing it as a threat, but swore to still live up to his parents in his actions and committal to justice, even if not able to navigate more delicate areas.
After school, including college for a Criminal Justice degree, Jude was a full police officer by twenty-three years old, training and probationary period all finished. His grandparents were the proudest he'd ever seen them, more proud than they'd been in a long time. Jude's cousin had been homicide detective for a while by then, and was easily the one feeling the most pride, happy to welcome the man he thought of as a little brother into the force.
Despite his tendency for aggression, Jude was one to commit himself to the work he did, putting in as many hours as he could manage. He didn't have much of a social life, outside from the job, to get in the way. Or at least, none that lasted terribly long. Jude put being a cop first, no matter if he was at the station or at home. He went through a lot of failed relationships with women (they could never be his top priority, and hated the erratic schedule), leaving him rather touchy about romance. As long as they didn't get too close, Jude started to get along with coworkers, having fun with the nights out drinking and laughing at each other's cop stories, faring better in a group than he did when left alone and unchecked.
Office politics helped Jude out a great deal. Some of his superiors were people his parents and grandparents had been inviting over for dinners and parties since before Jude was born and through his life. While having a subtle hostility towards other men in positions of power, insecurity based, Jude could push that aside and focus on his passion for the work when talking to them. After four years of being an officer, he made detective. General assignment, of course. As much as he wished for it, Jude couldn't have any faster of a track to homicide, connections or not. He was antsy, but did find the detective status gave him a bigger ego boost, felt more fitting to his intelligence and heritage.
In his second year as a detective, it wasn't so much that everything went down the wrong path, more that it'd been heading that way for years, and things were all finally coming together. An eccentric serial killer started to mock the police, leaving behind dramatic and confusing crime scenes. Jude felt nothing but jealousy for anyone who could be more directly involved with the case, his restlessness at an all time high.
It wasn't hard to catch Jude's attention, with that in mind. His cousin let details slip when they were alone together, telling Jude about the serial killer and their baffling quirks-- enough for him to unconsciously form an obsession. He wanted to be heroic, to make an impression by bringing something overlooked to the table. And he was constantly looking for something to cling to, a bigger purpose, meaningful experiences and challenges to fill up the deep, empty hole in him. He started quietly looking for those quirks in everything he saw, no matter how unrelated an incident it was. For once, his looking didn't go to waste. Eventually, he found something. A clue. A challenge. An invitation. It was the same tone as the others, but Jude thought it had extra substance.
It could've been nothing, he told himself. A kid's joke, for example. There wasn't any need to waste anyone's time with a rookie detective's outlandish theories. If it was nothing, Jude wasn't going to embarass himself by publicly shouting that he had a brilliant new lead. This was a flimsy excuse, but it did the trick. Making excuses was a lovely downward spiral, for Jude. He was playing a real game with the killer, searching out special things in unassuming crime scenes, then piecing together the scattered details and hints to learn of another location, where it could be taken to the next step.
Jude and the mastermind kept up this dance for the span of that year, escalating as it went on. What began with tiny, teasing things and almost flirtatious interest moved up to secret puzzle setups on the weekend and eventually... risks. Ordinary people's lives to gamble with. If Jude solved puzzles or won challenges on time or impressively enough, they'd live. If he didn't, they'd die-- and they did, but Jude had more of a win streak than a loss streak.
His wins slowed, or changed tune, late in the year. Getting closer to hunting the killer down and finding out everything about them became prized over saving lives. It'd ultimately save more, Jude told himself. Nobody else can do this, he said. He had an opportunity of a lifetime that couldn't be wasted: the killer seemed to like him, and that meant there was more of a chance to slip and give him what he needed to take them down and catch everyone off guard with the victory. Jude was blind to the extent of his own gambling, and the fact that he was fully enabling these criminal acts by joining in on the killer's terms and never reporting it.
At the end of the year, the game came to a climax. The killer lured Jude to a hideout away from the city, and while he was expecting something big to go down, he never expected for it to go the way it did. When arriving at the base, it wasn't puzzle strewn or booby trapped like the last locations, and that alone set off alarm bells-- but Jude didn't turn back, he didn't stop, couldn't. Instead, he investigated every inch of the place, seeing where the puzzles he'd faced before had been created, finding the tools used for both elegant toys and slaughter. And finally, an office.
The office had a surveillance setup, and it had journals. Some of them were very old. The atmosphere felt too intimate, and Jude was a hundred percent certain he was walking into a trap. Even more ominously, he had a pressing concern that when he solved this mystery, he wouldn't like the truth. But his pride didn't allow him to back off or get help. This was it. He sat at the killer's desk, in their chair, and began to read-- starting from the oldest journal and working his way through to the present day.
It would've been impossible not to recognize his own cousin's handwriting. Jude sank deeper into the chair and lost himself in the man's story, told unfiltered. An unsupervised, bitter childhood, father treating him with shame after knocking up a prostitute. Jude's parents, a light in the dark, became the guardian figures that didn't try to hide him. But it'd been too late, father having kept him isolated for a few years, leaving him rather off. He was already fascinated with the human psyche and prodding at it, experimenting with how people reacted to him depending on how he acted, their behavior around dark things and shame. Jude's father caught the cousin's quirks, suspicious of little signs. He was incredibly bright and entirely restless, so Jude's father tried to offer distractions at first. Brain teasers, harmless pranks, books on a wide range of subjects. This appeared to work, but wasn't enough. It made him get creative, and his experimentation was far worse, growing into a sense of ambition.
He thought Jude's parents would look out for him no matter what, but they weren't going to. Jude's dad told the cousin that if he didn't stop soon, they'd have to bring other people into the matter and talk about larger consequences, he couldn't keep having them cover for him. The cousin considered this a huge betrayal and opted to, instead of changing himself, kill them so they couldn't tell anyone. He asked to meet with them in their home to talk things over together, sounding like nothing but the perfect remorseful young man they wanted him to be. The opposite of what he was.
Jude's cousin wrote that the night he went to take care of this, little eight year old Jude let him in through the back door personally, and he hesitated for just a second. Then, he told Jude that while he could watch and listen if he wanted, not to come out of his room. And he said to him... let's keep a secret between us, one that only the two of us know about. They were best friends, after all, weren't they?
He shot Jude's parents and left, after giving Jude a good pat on the head. And he'd taken a real risk, but it went his way. Jude had blocked it out, in complete denial of what he'd witnessed, and they only grew closer (he theorized this was due to Jude wanting to latch on to anything involved with his parents, and what'd happened-- and his cousin, of course, had both of these qualities). Jude's cousin knew he wasn't like him, but decided he could be. So eager to please, for any direction in a life newly without guidance. It wasn't difficult to take advantage of, especially when it seemed like Jude wanted that.
They both wanted something that meant a little more than the usual routine, Jude because of his trauma, and his cousin because of his nature. Jude's passion was impressive. His cousin really had seen potential in him. He saw future excitement and games-- he could shape Jude into the perfect hero to his villain. Then, in the end, Jude would surely never betray him. Not with how he was being groomed into this.
Jude read every journal, and was numb. When he shut the last one, it was painful, because he had nothing left to keep him from his own thoughts and any upcoming confrontation. The denial kept trying to return, but it couldn't. Blissful ignorance wasn't an option, this was what he'd chosen. On the last page of the last journal, there'd been directions for where to go next, deep in the hideout. And when he felt like he could stand, Jude headed there, knees and hands wobbly. What else could he do, but follow what his cousin pulled him into? It's what he'd always done. Everything he'd experienced was artificial. He was artificial. What was he, without this?
When he met with his cousin, he desperately wanted to be someone else. He wanted to be the real hero, for once. He didn't get much of a chance. As soon as it was clear Jude was looking to yell at his cousin, with fear in his eyes but clenched fists, the older man grappled with him, and ended up able to pretty anticlimactically inject him with sedative. When they fought, Jude couldn't bring himself to land any dangerous hits, nor use the gun he'd brought, holding onto the hope of bringing his cousin in without hurting him. Because he was family. Jude's best friend. His older brother, in spirit. Before he lost consciousness, he realized there were tears at his eyes, and wished his cousin had never seen him like that. But he was out of the frying pan and into the fire, crying the least of his worries.
Jude next woke up in a pit, with only a grate with light coming through it to illuminate anything. He didn't need the light, because the smell was overpowering, as was the feeling of corpses underneath him. Jude was a cop, and had seen a lot of shit, not to mention seeing his parents die, but this-- this was different. This was a new level of horrifying, very personal, and not something he was already desensitized to. Jude shook, he cried, he screamed, his heart felt like it was beating a million times a minute. His cousin peered down through the grate to talk to him. He told Jude that while some of the bodies in there were unrelated, a lot of them were his responsibility, his fault, the result of him arrogantly screwing around with a murderer and never even managing to apprehend that murderer in the end. The end couldn't excuse the means if it ended with you in the ground instead.
He left Jude there for a while. Only an hour or so, but it wasn't like Jude could tell. When he returned, he asked a simple question: What do you feel?
Guilt, Jude said. He had other answers. Fear. Shame. Self loathing. But they were all summed up in that single word. Guilt. He'd thrown away lives as pointless sacrifices, unneeded suffering, and that couldn't ever be taken back. There weren't any heroes here. Only a murderer and a pawn. His response seemed to disappoint his cousin.
I wanted this to last longer, his cousin sighed. I wanted you to be like me, or to see you take me down, and in the end... nobody wins our game. It was nice while it lasted, Jude. I'll be seeing you.
A joke, of course, because once Jude's cousin was gone, he didn't come back, abandoning the old hideout. Jude doesn't realize it, but he died for the first time in that pit, going into a despair so strong that his heart couldn't take it anymore, the stench of death and other unpleasant things only adding to the grave emotional stress. He woke up again a few days later, when the police arrived, tipped off by the killer himself. A flashlight shined down the hole, and Jude's eyes cracked open. He hardly registered he'd been out, sense of time off from being trapped. Once registering what was going on, Jude was in hysterics, hyperventilating and sobbing. There was a rush to get him out, and once he was, someone tried to ask him what'd happened.
Jude opened his mouth, the nastiest, thickest possible dread in his chest, crawling everywhere in his body, and 'blacked out'. For these few minutes he was technically dead, but 'dreamed' of unpleasant imagery and his cousin's face. He woke back up to someone trying to revive him, and tried to tell the other officers what happened again. This time, when he died, he was brought to an ambulance outside, then to the hospital and away from the carnage. But no matter how much distance he had from it, Jude couldn't escape the mental impact.
A lot of people tried to get Jude to talk. He had mandatory counseling, and it was established that he had a pretty severe case of PTSD. Working him through it was impossible, he couldn't and wouldn't speak on any deeper facts. While already taking time off, he officially left the force-- right after his cousin texted him anonymously, saying he was the 'luckiest luckless sonuvabitch' and laughing at him. Jude was alive, miraculously, but the state he was in now made it impossible for him to work anymore. He might have been alive, but his life was effectively over.
Jude left everything behind, a disappointment to his ex-coworkers (though nothing was clear, they suspected foul play in terms of Jude going after the killer alone, and it was easy to believe with his attitude, gaining him another nickname, 'detective disgrace'), unable to face his family, and drowning in the guilt, fearful of being around his cousin again and having to pretend things were the same between them.
Without work, his grandparents were sending him money for the basics, like rent and food, until he could get back on his feet. When Jude went out, he started knowing things about others that he never, ever wanted to know. At one point, he spat out that he knew a woman was cheating on her husband with several other men, right to her face. He was slapped for that. In another incident, he knew someone was a shoplifter. This was exciting, for a moment, and he tried to warn the store manager, but "blacked out" before he was able to speak. He got the point. Loose lips weren't acceptable.
It ended up making Jude more of a shut in than he'd already been. When he was exposed to people for very long, it was hard to breathe, their sins suffocating him. He was paranoid and overthought everything, fidgety, but-- he still didn't want to die, because he was terrified. He was scared to face his parents again, if there was an afterlife, or that he'd be heading straight to hell. Jude didn't want to be alive, and he didn't want to be dead, he just wanted to escape. He got a shittier apartment and used more money on painkillers than meals, losing his appetite and becoming addicted to finding relief the only way he knew how. It didn't take him long to overdose, accidentally killing himself. He didn't realize that he died here, either, memory fairly fuzzy on the event. But it did kick in the last of his new magic.
When Jude woke from this death, he'd started growing sheep features. This, predictably, freaked Jude the fuck out. He searched the internet for answers and made panicky phone calls to medical professionals. Scouts hunted him down for making such a fuss, and explained things to him.
The existance of the supernatural was only another big joke piled on everything else, so it didn't put him off, despite the eyebrow raising and general cynicism. Jude didn't have anywhere else to go. This was it, for him, as he was now. At least he could go outside without people pointing at his stupid sheep ears, this way. Jude wanted to try coping with existance away from his past-- there was a chance he'd heal better far, far away. He was bored and lonely, and still didn't want to die. If all went badly, maybe he could live in the woods, and he imagined magic painkillers were a whole lot fucking better than the ordinary sort.
He could try. It wasn't like he had anything to lose. Jude moved to Manta Carlos at the start of February, 2017, right on time for his upcoming birthday.
When Jude was eight, things began to change for the worse, starting off with a bang. One late night, someone slipped into his home and murdered his parents. Jude managed to come out of this unscathed, as the killer was only interested in his mother and father, and left as soon as they'd hit the floor. The case had no leads. His parents had many enemies and it couldn't be narrowed down.
Jude was sent to live with his grandparents. His grandmother was sympathetic, trying to give Jude space and patience, while his grandfather was deeply angry and obsessed with figuring out who killed Jude's parents. It was a bad influence on Jude. Despite being afraid at first, he learned from his grandfather and adopted similar behaviors and mindsets, using it as an unhealthy coping method.
His new gruffness and hyperfocus put other children off from him. He acted condescending, arrogant, and would talk about dark things freely (then tell anyone who was uncomfortable to suck it up). He was called 'orphan boy', 'little orphan detective', and similar such mocking names. After losing so many friends and feeling a general disconnect from people thanks to his trauma, Jude was spending a lot of time with his cousin, more comfortable with him than either grandparent. His cousin had treated Jude's parents almost like his own, as his mother had left and his father was a distant workaholic. They could mourn together, and when Jude was around his cousin, he felt like he had a special friend he could always vent to, share secrets with, and be close with even when nobody else understood him.
His cousin saw potential in Jude, different from the expected potential his grandfather saw, or the disappointment that others saw. Jude's cousin thought he was smart and not quite like other people, sharing this as a praise, reinforcing the concept. He taught Jude how to think outside the box, to value exciting challenge and intelligence.The older boy promised Jude that if they both made homicide detective some day, they could solve the mystery and get justice for Jude's parents together, as a team. Jude idolized his cousin, cementing him an unshakable role model and best friend.
Jude went through school only settling further into this. He found that while people were ruffled by him in a personal sense, he was smart and bold with strong leadership qualities. He became assured that he was a force for the greater good and knew what was best for others, and that while they wouldn't like what he did in the moment, they'd benefit from it in the long run. He resembled his grandfather with tough love and toxic masculinity, unfamiliar in comparison to his parents. People told him he'd never live up to them, and it made him deeply angry. He wouldn't adjust his attitude for anyone quite yet, seeing it as a threat, but swore to still live up to his parents in his actions and committal to justice, even if not able to navigate more delicate areas.
After school, including college for a Criminal Justice degree, Jude was a full police officer by twenty-three years old, training and probationary period all finished. His grandparents were the proudest he'd ever seen them, more proud than they'd been in a long time. Jude's cousin had been homicide detective for a while by then, and was easily the one feeling the most pride, happy to welcome the man he thought of as a little brother into the force.
Despite his tendency for aggression, Jude was one to commit himself to the work he did, putting in as many hours as he could manage. He didn't have much of a social life, outside from the job, to get in the way. Or at least, none that lasted terribly long. Jude put being a cop first, no matter if he was at the station or at home. He went through a lot of failed relationships with women (they could never be his top priority, and hated the erratic schedule), leaving him rather touchy about romance. As long as they didn't get too close, Jude started to get along with coworkers, having fun with the nights out drinking and laughing at each other's cop stories, faring better in a group than he did when left alone and unchecked.
Office politics helped Jude out a great deal. Some of his superiors were people his parents and grandparents had been inviting over for dinners and parties since before Jude was born and through his life. While having a subtle hostility towards other men in positions of power, insecurity based, Jude could push that aside and focus on his passion for the work when talking to them. After four years of being an officer, he made detective. General assignment, of course. As much as he wished for it, Jude couldn't have any faster of a track to homicide, connections or not. He was antsy, but did find the detective status gave him a bigger ego boost, felt more fitting to his intelligence and heritage.
In his second year as a detective, it wasn't so much that everything went down the wrong path, more that it'd been heading that way for years, and things were all finally coming together. An eccentric serial killer started to mock the police, leaving behind dramatic and confusing crime scenes. Jude felt nothing but jealousy for anyone who could be more directly involved with the case, his restlessness at an all time high.
It wasn't hard to catch Jude's attention, with that in mind. His cousin let details slip when they were alone together, telling Jude about the serial killer and their baffling quirks-- enough for him to unconsciously form an obsession. He wanted to be heroic, to make an impression by bringing something overlooked to the table. And he was constantly looking for something to cling to, a bigger purpose, meaningful experiences and challenges to fill up the deep, empty hole in him. He started quietly looking for those quirks in everything he saw, no matter how unrelated an incident it was. For once, his looking didn't go to waste. Eventually, he found something. A clue. A challenge. An invitation. It was the same tone as the others, but Jude thought it had extra substance.
It could've been nothing, he told himself. A kid's joke, for example. There wasn't any need to waste anyone's time with a rookie detective's outlandish theories. If it was nothing, Jude wasn't going to embarass himself by publicly shouting that he had a brilliant new lead. This was a flimsy excuse, but it did the trick. Making excuses was a lovely downward spiral, for Jude. He was playing a real game with the killer, searching out special things in unassuming crime scenes, then piecing together the scattered details and hints to learn of another location, where it could be taken to the next step.
Jude and the mastermind kept up this dance for the span of that year, escalating as it went on. What began with tiny, teasing things and almost flirtatious interest moved up to secret puzzle setups on the weekend and eventually... risks. Ordinary people's lives to gamble with. If Jude solved puzzles or won challenges on time or impressively enough, they'd live. If he didn't, they'd die-- and they did, but Jude had more of a win streak than a loss streak.
His wins slowed, or changed tune, late in the year. Getting closer to hunting the killer down and finding out everything about them became prized over saving lives. It'd ultimately save more, Jude told himself. Nobody else can do this, he said. He had an opportunity of a lifetime that couldn't be wasted: the killer seemed to like him, and that meant there was more of a chance to slip and give him what he needed to take them down and catch everyone off guard with the victory. Jude was blind to the extent of his own gambling, and the fact that he was fully enabling these criminal acts by joining in on the killer's terms and never reporting it.
At the end of the year, the game came to a climax. The killer lured Jude to a hideout away from the city, and while he was expecting something big to go down, he never expected for it to go the way it did. When arriving at the base, it wasn't puzzle strewn or booby trapped like the last locations, and that alone set off alarm bells-- but Jude didn't turn back, he didn't stop, couldn't. Instead, he investigated every inch of the place, seeing where the puzzles he'd faced before had been created, finding the tools used for both elegant toys and slaughter. And finally, an office.
The office had a surveillance setup, and it had journals. Some of them were very old. The atmosphere felt too intimate, and Jude was a hundred percent certain he was walking into a trap. Even more ominously, he had a pressing concern that when he solved this mystery, he wouldn't like the truth. But his pride didn't allow him to back off or get help. This was it. He sat at the killer's desk, in their chair, and began to read-- starting from the oldest journal and working his way through to the present day.
It would've been impossible not to recognize his own cousin's handwriting. Jude sank deeper into the chair and lost himself in the man's story, told unfiltered. An unsupervised, bitter childhood, father treating him with shame after knocking up a prostitute. Jude's parents, a light in the dark, became the guardian figures that didn't try to hide him. But it'd been too late, father having kept him isolated for a few years, leaving him rather off. He was already fascinated with the human psyche and prodding at it, experimenting with how people reacted to him depending on how he acted, their behavior around dark things and shame. Jude's father caught the cousin's quirks, suspicious of little signs. He was incredibly bright and entirely restless, so Jude's father tried to offer distractions at first. Brain teasers, harmless pranks, books on a wide range of subjects. This appeared to work, but wasn't enough. It made him get creative, and his experimentation was far worse, growing into a sense of ambition.
He thought Jude's parents would look out for him no matter what, but they weren't going to. Jude's dad told the cousin that if he didn't stop soon, they'd have to bring other people into the matter and talk about larger consequences, he couldn't keep having them cover for him. The cousin considered this a huge betrayal and opted to, instead of changing himself, kill them so they couldn't tell anyone. He asked to meet with them in their home to talk things over together, sounding like nothing but the perfect remorseful young man they wanted him to be. The opposite of what he was.
Jude's cousin wrote that the night he went to take care of this, little eight year old Jude let him in through the back door personally, and he hesitated for just a second. Then, he told Jude that while he could watch and listen if he wanted, not to come out of his room. And he said to him... let's keep a secret between us, one that only the two of us know about. They were best friends, after all, weren't they?
He shot Jude's parents and left, after giving Jude a good pat on the head. And he'd taken a real risk, but it went his way. Jude had blocked it out, in complete denial of what he'd witnessed, and they only grew closer (he theorized this was due to Jude wanting to latch on to anything involved with his parents, and what'd happened-- and his cousin, of course, had both of these qualities). Jude's cousin knew he wasn't like him, but decided he could be. So eager to please, for any direction in a life newly without guidance. It wasn't difficult to take advantage of, especially when it seemed like Jude wanted that.
They both wanted something that meant a little more than the usual routine, Jude because of his trauma, and his cousin because of his nature. Jude's passion was impressive. His cousin really had seen potential in him. He saw future excitement and games-- he could shape Jude into the perfect hero to his villain. Then, in the end, Jude would surely never betray him. Not with how he was being groomed into this.
Jude read every journal, and was numb. When he shut the last one, it was painful, because he had nothing left to keep him from his own thoughts and any upcoming confrontation. The denial kept trying to return, but it couldn't. Blissful ignorance wasn't an option, this was what he'd chosen. On the last page of the last journal, there'd been directions for where to go next, deep in the hideout. And when he felt like he could stand, Jude headed there, knees and hands wobbly. What else could he do, but follow what his cousin pulled him into? It's what he'd always done. Everything he'd experienced was artificial. He was artificial. What was he, without this?
When he met with his cousin, he desperately wanted to be someone else. He wanted to be the real hero, for once. He didn't get much of a chance. As soon as it was clear Jude was looking to yell at his cousin, with fear in his eyes but clenched fists, the older man grappled with him, and ended up able to pretty anticlimactically inject him with sedative. When they fought, Jude couldn't bring himself to land any dangerous hits, nor use the gun he'd brought, holding onto the hope of bringing his cousin in without hurting him. Because he was family. Jude's best friend. His older brother, in spirit. Before he lost consciousness, he realized there were tears at his eyes, and wished his cousin had never seen him like that. But he was out of the frying pan and into the fire, crying the least of his worries.
Jude next woke up in a pit, with only a grate with light coming through it to illuminate anything. He didn't need the light, because the smell was overpowering, as was the feeling of corpses underneath him. Jude was a cop, and had seen a lot of shit, not to mention seeing his parents die, but this-- this was different. This was a new level of horrifying, very personal, and not something he was already desensitized to. Jude shook, he cried, he screamed, his heart felt like it was beating a million times a minute. His cousin peered down through the grate to talk to him. He told Jude that while some of the bodies in there were unrelated, a lot of them were his responsibility, his fault, the result of him arrogantly screwing around with a murderer and never even managing to apprehend that murderer in the end. The end couldn't excuse the means if it ended with you in the ground instead.
He left Jude there for a while. Only an hour or so, but it wasn't like Jude could tell. When he returned, he asked a simple question: What do you feel?
Guilt, Jude said. He had other answers. Fear. Shame. Self loathing. But they were all summed up in that single word. Guilt. He'd thrown away lives as pointless sacrifices, unneeded suffering, and that couldn't ever be taken back. There weren't any heroes here. Only a murderer and a pawn. His response seemed to disappoint his cousin.
I wanted this to last longer, his cousin sighed. I wanted you to be like me, or to see you take me down, and in the end... nobody wins our game. It was nice while it lasted, Jude. I'll be seeing you.
A joke, of course, because once Jude's cousin was gone, he didn't come back, abandoning the old hideout. Jude doesn't realize it, but he died for the first time in that pit, going into a despair so strong that his heart couldn't take it anymore, the stench of death and other unpleasant things only adding to the grave emotional stress. He woke up again a few days later, when the police arrived, tipped off by the killer himself. A flashlight shined down the hole, and Jude's eyes cracked open. He hardly registered he'd been out, sense of time off from being trapped. Once registering what was going on, Jude was in hysterics, hyperventilating and sobbing. There was a rush to get him out, and once he was, someone tried to ask him what'd happened.
Jude opened his mouth, the nastiest, thickest possible dread in his chest, crawling everywhere in his body, and 'blacked out'. For these few minutes he was technically dead, but 'dreamed' of unpleasant imagery and his cousin's face. He woke back up to someone trying to revive him, and tried to tell the other officers what happened again. This time, when he died, he was brought to an ambulance outside, then to the hospital and away from the carnage. But no matter how much distance he had from it, Jude couldn't escape the mental impact.
A lot of people tried to get Jude to talk. He had mandatory counseling, and it was established that he had a pretty severe case of PTSD. Working him through it was impossible, he couldn't and wouldn't speak on any deeper facts. While already taking time off, he officially left the force-- right after his cousin texted him anonymously, saying he was the 'luckiest luckless sonuvabitch' and laughing at him. Jude was alive, miraculously, but the state he was in now made it impossible for him to work anymore. He might have been alive, but his life was effectively over.
Jude left everything behind, a disappointment to his ex-coworkers (though nothing was clear, they suspected foul play in terms of Jude going after the killer alone, and it was easy to believe with his attitude, gaining him another nickname, 'detective disgrace'), unable to face his family, and drowning in the guilt, fearful of being around his cousin again and having to pretend things were the same between them.
Without work, his grandparents were sending him money for the basics, like rent and food, until he could get back on his feet. When Jude went out, he started knowing things about others that he never, ever wanted to know. At one point, he spat out that he knew a woman was cheating on her husband with several other men, right to her face. He was slapped for that. In another incident, he knew someone was a shoplifter. This was exciting, for a moment, and he tried to warn the store manager, but "blacked out" before he was able to speak. He got the point. Loose lips weren't acceptable.
It ended up making Jude more of a shut in than he'd already been. When he was exposed to people for very long, it was hard to breathe, their sins suffocating him. He was paranoid and overthought everything, fidgety, but-- he still didn't want to die, because he was terrified. He was scared to face his parents again, if there was an afterlife, or that he'd be heading straight to hell. Jude didn't want to be alive, and he didn't want to be dead, he just wanted to escape. He got a shittier apartment and used more money on painkillers than meals, losing his appetite and becoming addicted to finding relief the only way he knew how. It didn't take him long to overdose, accidentally killing himself. He didn't realize that he died here, either, memory fairly fuzzy on the event. But it did kick in the last of his new magic.
When Jude woke from this death, he'd started growing sheep features. This, predictably, freaked Jude the fuck out. He searched the internet for answers and made panicky phone calls to medical professionals. Scouts hunted him down for making such a fuss, and explained things to him.
The existance of the supernatural was only another big joke piled on everything else, so it didn't put him off, despite the eyebrow raising and general cynicism. Jude didn't have anywhere else to go. This was it, for him, as he was now. At least he could go outside without people pointing at his stupid sheep ears, this way. Jude wanted to try coping with existance away from his past-- there was a chance he'd heal better far, far away. He was bored and lonely, and still didn't want to die. If all went badly, maybe he could live in the woods, and he imagined magic painkillers were a whole lot fucking better than the ordinary sort.
He could try. It wasn't like he had anything to lose. Jude moved to Manta Carlos at the start of February, 2017, right on time for his upcoming birthday.
Additional Information
Jude has post traumatic stress disorder, with a heavy dose of survivor's guilt and a side habit of painkiller abuse.