Matthias

The world's gone mad.

Matthias knows this because he knows her; her voice is a shiver down his spine, and her laughter is tires on asphalt. He passes from one surreal event to the next, lost to waking dreams and a vulnerably powerful mind that reveals the interconnectedness of all things. There are eyes in the darkness and whispers on the wind. A wallet picked up from the ground taunts him, flirting with a flash of twenties and condemning him for his greed; a dead man tells him how he died with smiles. He's seen men that aren't men and felt horror beyond measure when it's been his face looking back at him.

The world's gone mad, and Matthias is finally sane enough to admit it.

--

tl;dr madman, prophet, or eagle-eyed professional with a penchant for hoodoo theatrics. Matthias is decidedly not batshit, but he's arguably confused, even if his confusion walks arm-in-arm with clarity. He investigates, he intuits, he lets chance and destiny guide him. He connects trivially with anyone he meets, but that never seems to mean they connect back, and he's on temporary leave until cleared by a psych evaluation after a nervous breakdown during his last three-year case.

His story is known and bittersweet among certain academic, legal, and federal sorts. A young genius wunderkind who had a masters before he could drink, whose doctoral thesis on the connection between empathy and cruelty drew the eye of an FBI recruiter, a troubled man who, in the end, couldn't triumph over his personal demons and was given an out that let him save face.

Whatever happened to him? They don't know, and honestly, none of them care all that much.

Haunted eyes and sad smiles, handsome and forlorn; he's got that sun-kissed Mediterranean ancestry and dark hair, worn short and loose in lazy half-curled waves he only on occasion slicks back. This is a man meant to brood, stern-browed with a nose a shade too large, teeth immaculate and never seen. His face is marked by the crinkles of stress more than age, but despite the alcoholism he manages a healthy vigor, with the classic masculine profile of broad shoulders and tapered waist, heavy hands and a beard shorn close to follow the jaw and encircle the mouth. Caught in freeze frame, he has that look that screams personable, cool, mysterious; breathe life into the still image and his animating force is altogether more off-putting, prone to bouts of flicker-eyed hyperactivity and unbearably intense smoldering eye contact. He's fit but not graceful, forward but not smooth, and is almost always wearing a pine cologne so old-fashioned it's singlehandedly responsible for the dazzling appearances of silver in his beard.