past:
Eclipse is a child born a hundred years after the world first ended by disease. The original pandemic has been aggressively combatted with bombing and left the majority of the world in ruin. The most violent of mutations, which resulted in rabid and dangerous behavior (zombies basically lol), have died out about two generations ago - and what that leaves is a brittle, warbound society. Most people in North, Central, and East Eurasia live inside the Zones, former Quarantine Zones, that have since turned into military dictatorships full of corruption, made to believe that there is no people outside the walls aside from scavengers and raiders; meanwhile, most actual raiders that exist are military troupes. Some Zones are allied up together, others are at war. A lot of land in Central Eurasia, former Russia, is completely unsafe to tread due to radiation left from atomic bombs that the USA dropped there before invading. Not all places are controlled with iron grip, though. There are wild communities and nomads who made the forests their own, people who forgot about most of technology and went back to neolithic styles of living - and then in South-Western Europe, around the Meditteranaean especially, the walls are closer to patrolled borders, where people can travel in and out as pleased, even if there's an ongoing civil war there due to the continued discrimination against specific groups of people and the alliance with the Central Zones that furthers discrimination and engagement in human rights violations.
Originally, Eclipse was born in Marseille, France, which is under fascist rule by the early twenty second century. Eva was the child of two resistance fighters, and lived in Marseille until she was six years old. Then, for political reasons, her parents had to flee - and while fleeing, her mother caught a non-exterminated variant of the deadly disease that still has no cure and thus runs rampant, and then died. After two years of scavenging amongst the ruins, Eva got separated from her father in an incident and was abducted by a group of sadistic cannibals with the intention of raping and then eating her. Before she got murdered (but not before any damage), the group fell victim to a bigger predator: David Jankauskas, banished ex-general from the Central Zones turned cannibal bandit, who led his Zone through one of the most recent wars at that point in time and was sent away due to the extensive torture he himself oversaw on prisoners of war. He killed all of the group, safe Eva, to take their supplies, and ate some of their flesh. Upon discovering the eight-year-old girl, he decided to take her with him, because he "was bored". In truth, he knew that he could probably still find her father (as this was a man he'd met days before finding the group) and simply decided to kidnap her instead, making it less noble than it might otherwise seem.
Within a few weeks, he went from being a meanly hostile captor trying to scare her to a father figure to her. With this, he soon began grooming her. He'd isolate her to make sure no other adults could influence her or be there as a support system, trying to avoid larger communities of people while wandering all throughout Europe. I could go into heavy detail about what sort of abuse she faced, but the truth is that David was both her captor and her father alike, and that she still has very complex feelings about him. On some days, he would teach her how to hunt and read her bedtime stories. Others, he'd drug her to induce psychosis and tell her she'd landed in Hell. Then on others, he'd signal to his friends to kidnap and torture her in various ways so he could rescue her so she would trust only him. He went through extensive methods to fuck with her, just because he could, because he knew no one could stop him; just to see what would happen. It left Eva cynical and confused, very conflicted and ashamed of just how deeply loyal she was to him on the rare occasion that others pointed out that their relationship was concerning (especially due to the sexual abuse that also took place; abuse that Eva didn't even realize was abuse until much later).
At the age of 13, David had to hide in one of the Zones to avoid military detection. So, he snuck himself and Eva into one of the Central Zones (St. Petersburg) to temporarily live there. Here, Eva came into contact with others her age for the very first time in years. Her neighbor was a girl born one year before her, Christine le Blanc, descendant of French immigrants. Due to both being French, and both being teenage girls with an interest in storytelling, the two grew very close very quickly. They spoke through walkietalkies late at night and exchanged coded messages for the fun of it. Eva didn't go to school, unlike Christine, but they spent most of the additional time together, whether it be at distance or closeby. They gave each other code names based on the literature Christine read (Eva reading plenty also, sharing reading as a hobby with David, but not having had as much time to do this when in the wild, unlike Christine). Christine and her school friendgroup had a running game of make believe wherein they were part of a secret organization, and Eva badly wanted to be part of it to feel she belonged somewhere. She never even met most of Christine's friends. When she started acquainting with one of them, Liana Vetrova, daughter of a military family who wanted herself to become a soldier, David got alarmed (afraid that this potential friendship would result in needless rebellion) and took Eva out of the Zone as quickly as he could. Eva first tried to run away then so she could go back to her friends. This was not successful. By this time, she was fifteen.
So, they continued traveling. This is already getting way too long, and I really don't feel like detailing the rest of what leads to this just yet, so I'll just put it as suit: by the time Eva is 17, she discovers that David has been abusing her. More specifically, she realizes he has been lying to her, which at that point in time, is much worse to her. She realizes a lot of the ways he's tricked her before and allowed other people to strategically hurt her to fuck with her head. Furious, she brews up a plan to escape. By this point in time, she is an excellent hunter and knows the forest well.
She convinces David to stay in St. Petersburg again, as the security is lowest there, and she wants to go to the same stores and the like again. So, they do. Then, she packs up her things, befriends a young soldier who agrees to sneak her out of the Zone (having snuck in for the distractions that the city provides, not with the intention of living there - she just needed the supplies and alliances she couldn't get in David's own territory, which is any forest he settled in). She barters for a car. Then, she escapes David by pouring boiling oil over his face when he's asleep and running.
Eva then lived in the wild on her own. David tracked her for two more years and left behind letters and the like in places he thought she was likely to look. However, he never quite managed to catch her, and at some point vanished completely from her life. She hunted. She took out some of her anger on rapists and slavers. She befriended people from wild communities. She met Liana Vetrova again, now a rogue soldier living in the wilderness after her own series of unfortunate events, and traveled with her for a while. She met up with Christine again. Eva soon began going by just Robin, part of her code name, Peter Robinson, and then eventually fully became Peter, taking on the identity of a man. He now lives in the forest, sometimes alone, sometimes not. He is sometimes a bandit, sometimes not. Sometimes a terrorist, sometimes not. Usually just a nomadic hunter.
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Leodh
