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Astrit would really appreciate it if you thought of him as your unfriendly neighborhood tough guy. He hails from the not-so-nice part of town, and to survive he does his best to cultivate an image that makes him seem to be too dangerous to mess with. To this end, he has been teaching himself how to fight in any way he can find--usually in ways involving the knife that he always carries with him for protection. He does not know, and he hopes not to have to find out, how he would fare if actually constrained to fight an adult (though, unbeknownst to himself, he would actually have a reasonable chance in a swordfight), but he is good at bluffing and at finagling his way out of tricky situations. He thinks he has seen everything there is to see in life, and because of it affects a rather cynical, world-weary manner that disappears rather quickly if he is offered something good to eat.

It is difficult, however, for him to balance the necessary violence of his life with his mile-wide but deeply buried idealistic streak. He is secretly the sort of boy who dreams of being called great and good, who would love to spend hours reading under a tree with a plate of cookies or to devote his days to accomplishing some amazing feat that everyone would love him for. If he could, he would jump at the chance to become a Narnian knight. Just being an ordinary schoolboy who didn't need to carry a weapon for self-defence would be fine by him, too, or so he imagines.

He has had to grow up rather quickly, having to balance his internal wishes with a rather demanding and dangerous environment. He knows he's not old enough to do everything alone, but he also knows he can't trust everyone he meets. For this reason, he's had to learn to pay close attention to people and to calculate his every move. He has to trust someone--but a lot depends on his being able to pick the right person to trust.

Deep beneath the tough act and all the calculations and even his peaceful dreams, the core of Astrit's being is a simple desire to be good. He has done a lot of things that went against what he believed was right, but even while he's trying to stay alive he wants desperately to keep something of human goodness about him. If he lost that, he would probably lose his mind.

-Food! Especially good food. Well, he is a growing boy. Astrit likes to eat well and often, and all the more because he doesn't actually get that much to eat very frequently.
-His own way. He likes having control over his own life, as most people do, and appreciates the chance all the more because this also doesn't come to him as often as it should.
-Peace and harmony. He would really love to be left alone to do his own little thing, but somehow this doesn't happen very much. As such, if you tell on him about this, he might have to kill you.
-Reading. He's smart and good at it, and it allows him to have a bit of freedom from responsibilities and expectations. It's like a window into his own mind sometimes, a place he can escape to think really hard about things that don't put so much pressure on him.
-Having skills. If he's good at a thing, then he gets a thrill from being able to accomplish it. There just isn't anything like knowing that you can try something and it works.
-The colors blue and gold. He just thinks they look really nice together for some reason.

-Being treated like a child. He really, really wants to keep up his tough exterior, and having that ignored incenses him.
-His own childishness. He wants to be mature and strong and competent--in fact, he needs to be if he's going to take care of himself--and it drives him batty that he can't exorcise his youth.
-Sudden loud noises. On account of having to be on guard so much in order to keep from getting hurt, he startles easily and is embarrassed by his own instinctive responses.
-All unpleasant surprises. Well, by definition nobody likes these, but he hates to be caught off-guard, he hates to be shocked because he was so much on his guard, and he really hates the unexpected dollops of misfortune that come his way much too often.
-Clinginess, in himself or others. He would like to be self-sufficient, thank you very much, and being treated like someone's comfort object (or, worse, catching himself doing the same) makes him mad.

-Harm coming to the people he cares about, especially harm for which he is at fault. He's lost many of the people who mattered to him, and now he is very protective of the few he still has. People he cares about getting hurt frightens him; them sustaining harm that he could have prevented terrifies him; the thought that he could cause them harm is worse than the both of the aforementioned combined.
-Having body parts stolen. When he was younger, his sister used to tell him horror stories about people back in the old country who woke up one day to find that they were short a few internal organs. The veracity of these stories is unknown, but he still has nightmares about that situation sometimes.
-Becoming a monster. This frightens him more than anything else in the world; he lives in the mortal terror that if he goes on much further, he will lose the goodness he has in his heart and become something less than human. He is desperate to prevent that from happening.

Astrit was born in a small country called Kosovo, to parents on either side of the tense ethnic divide in the area. He was given a name honoring both sides of his heritage, his first name Albanian, and for his last name a Serbian word for "leader." He strongly suspects that his parents originally had different last names, but also infers that their change of name was somehow related to their choice, shortly after he was born, to take the newborn Astrit and his mother's daughter from a previous marriage and flee to Britain. They settled in a less-than-pleasant area of London on account of having spent most of their money crossing Europe, but always said that they had made the better choice.

For about two or three years, everything worked out pretty well. It wasn't the safest possible place to live, but Astrit's parents both found jobs, his sister began school and did fairly well, and he himself learned such engaging skills as smiling, talking, crawling, walking, eating, and strewing anything left within his reach across the floor. Then his mother grew very ill very suddenly. One day she was perfectly well, the next she was feeling a little under the weather, and the next--before it even occurred to anyone that she should see a doctor--she was dead. Astrit was too young to understand what was happening, but his father and sister were quite naturally traumatized by the experience.

If the things Astrit's father said were any indication, raising two children as a single parent was an even tougher job than being one of those children, but the little family tried hard to make it work. And it did work, until shortly after Astrit started primary school, when his father was killed in an accident at work. After that, there was really no one left to raise the brother and sister except for each other, since they had no other family and no one noticed that they were orphaned.

How well did that work? Well, the two of them had the same school hours, and so while school was in they could trust that they were looked after by adults. After hours, though, they had to handle everything by themselves. Keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table was a struggle; they did not know where to go for help, and so resorted first to selling their parents' things wherever they could find someone to buy, and then to theft once they had nothing more of their own. Neither of them was happy with this arrangement, though, and so the sister began trying to find work for them to do. Work of the illegal variety was the easiest to get, especially since legal employers paid attention to such things as the Child Labour Laws, and it paid for their food as well as anything might.

When Astrit was twelve, he began fighting with his sister more often. She had taken a parental role in his life--the only parental figure he had--and now he resented that she was still laying down the law when she could, as he was beginning to reach that age of rebellion. One of their fights came just before she went to work one night.

She never came home. Two days later, a police officer investigating the murder of a young woman knocked on Astrit's door. His sister was dead--the only family he had left--but because of her death he had come to the attention of some people who could either help or hurt him greatly.

He still lives in the same neighborhood he grew up in, but he has a guardian now, and his former business associates know that he's being watched by people who wouldn't take kindly to an attempt to pull him back in. He wanted to get out, but the choice wasn't offered to him. What was offered was a decent education--in fact, he travels by train and foot to the same school attended by the younger members of certain politicians' families--and a promise of a clean slate if he made it through school. It wasn't the best possible deal, but Astrit jumped at the chance without knowing if he could have gotten a better one. This way would let him stay in familiar surroundings and possibly get out when he was old enough.

It could have been worse, it really could have.

{Rules Things
{My favorite color is pink}
{My favorite number is 19.}
{So there's a new clerk at the bakery. His first customer comes in and asks, "Do you have any bread?" The clerk shrugs and says, "Uhhh... I dunno." Incredulous, the customer storms out, vowing never to return. Then the manager comes in and instructs the clerk, "If someone asks you if we have any bread, you say, 'Yes, we have plenty.'"
Then another customer comes in and asks, "Do you have any bread?"
"Yes, we have plenty."
"How much does it cost?"
"Uhhh... I dunno."
"...I'm taking my business elsewhere."
Then the manager comes in and explains to the clerk, "If someone asks you how much the bread costs, say 'Five cents! Five cents only!'"
Another customer comes in: "Do you have any bread?"
"Yes, we have plenty."
"How much does it cost?"
"Five cents! Five cents only!"
"Is it fresh?"
"Uhhh... I dunno."
"Forget it, I want fresh bread."
The manager, getting a little impatient now, tells the clerk, "If someone asks you if the bread is fresh, you say, 'Yes! Very fresh!'"
The next customer comes by and wants to know, "Do you have any bread?"
"Yes, we have plenty!"
"How much does it cost?"
"Five cents! Five cents only!"
"Is it fresh?"
"Yes, very fresh!"
"Can I buy it?"
"Uhhh... I dunno."
"Are you kidding? I'm never coming here again!"
The manager comes in, very annoyed and incredulous, and informs the clerk through gritted teeth, "If someone asks you if they can BUY the bread, YOU SAY 'If you don't, someone else will!'"
Then a robber comes in and demands to know, "Do you have any money?"
The hapless clerk responds, "Yes, we have plenty!"
"How much?"
"Five cents! Five cents only!"
"Are you being fresh with me?!"
"Yes, very fresh!"
"DO YOU WANT ME TO KILL YOU?"
"If you don't, someone else will!"}
{(Oh, crap--I don't know any pickup lines; will my acknowledgment that that is what is expected suffice?)}