Lou
Information
Name	Lou
Gender	Nonbinary
Age	27ish
Height	5'2"
World	Western AU
Occupation	Doctor/Arsonist

Personality

Bastard

Appearance

BC (Before Croc) - Lou looks about like they do in their Blades incarnation - plainly but cleanly dressed, usually in earth tones and green. Even covered in desert dust, Lou clearly takes good care of their appearance. They look very out of place among their ragged band of outlaws, wearing a neat green waistcoat, spectacles, tailored trousers, and a bowler rather than leather chaps, a duster, and a wide-brimmed hat.

After Croc - Most immediately obvious is the state of Lou's face. A mass of gnarly scars from ragged knife wounds, including a Glasgow smile and a missing right ear. They're also missing several fingers - the index and pinky on their right hand and the ring finger on their left. They typically wear mechanical ivory prosthetics on at least the right index finger.

Having now lived the outlaw lifestyle as well, Lou dresses a little more in line with life on the road. They've lost the waistcoat and traded the bowler for a more appropriate wider brimmed hat, and their trousers now fit over a pair of practical riding boots rather than the dressy Brogues they started with.

Lou also now wears their hair longer, tied back with a ribbon. They still keep it clean and mostly tidy, but not meticulously styled the way they would have before.

Relationships

• Dom (The Bull) - Outlaw leader and half crossroads demon. Dom possesses both superhuman senses and the ability to enforce a deal or contract through supernatural means, as well as the ability to sniff out virtue and lies. They're slow to trust, but fiercely loyal once they do. Dom's relationship with Lou had a rocky start due to Lou's bastardly nature, but they'd eventually grow close and become romantically involved.
  • Dom and Cookie were already a long-time unit, having been in both a professional and romantic relationship for years before this.
• Cookie (Old Crow) - Outlaw leader, half...something, definitely. Cookie is a terrifyingly skilled sharpshooter, a practitioner of strange 'natural' medicine, and an empath. Cookie was quicker to bond with and trust Lou, in their own quiet way. They too would become romantically involved with Lou, probably sooner than Dom.
• Tabitha and the rest of the outlaw gang - Pals! A few of them definitely find Lou a little creepy, but for the most part Lou has a good relationship with the gang. Hard not to, when they've patched up bullet holes and broken bones in several of them.
• Croc - NEMESIS

Story

Lou was born to a French-speaking family in New England, though quickly orphaned and raised in a boarding school. Here, they found an education and eventually a wealthy sponsor, who saw their potential in the sciences and sent them to university. 

For a few years, Lou studied medicine and eventually experimental medicine at King's College, earning a position as a junior researcher and professor. Unfortunately, this is also when they started making enemies through ethical disputes around the use of exotic (read: low-magic) materials and chemical weapons research.

Around this time, Lou's sponsor stopped delivering (passed away?) and Lou found themself suddenly unsupported in addition to being embroiled in bitter department politics. They needed a new source of funding, and quickly.

Lou would find this source in the form of espionage, selling experimental notes and products to corporate bidders for a high price. This didn't last long before their resources and goodwill dried up and the corporate entities who had been so happy to buy illicit information from them were equally happy to sell them out. Stripped of their position and with a new appetite for revenge, Lou turned to crime.

It began as a burgeoning passion for small-time arson and vandalism, destroying what they couldn't steal from those who had wronged them. Lou's actions against the perceived corporate elite caught the attention of a group of idealists, and for a little while, Lou moonlighted as something of a terrorist. 

Unfortunately for them and their new gang, Lou's expertise with bomb-making wasn't quite as advertised, and a botched explosive detonated early. Lou narrowly escaped with their life, and fled the scene alone, believing the rest of their crew dead. They were mistaken, and the surviving crew members stood trial and hanged, and Lou found themself a wanted fugitive. Before news could spread too far, Lou gathered what they could of their stolen documents and supplies, and fled for the desert, a known haven for outlaws and fugitives.

Fresh off the train in the middle of nowhere Sonoran Desert, Lou took the first job they could find as a small-town doctor's assistant. It wasn't long before they grew bored, and began testing substances and unorthodox techniques on their patients, quickly earning themself a blacklist spot and a run out of town. 

Now desperate, Lou hid what was left of their stolen documents and signed up as a doctor with the first band of outlaws who came into town, rather boldly approaching them mid-holdup and offering their services in exchange for shelter. Baffled, but with a few wounded of their own, the outlaw gang's leaders (the Bull and the Old Crow) accepted, and Lou officially became an outlaw.

Being a city slicker, life between camp and horseback was something of an adjustment for Lou. They abhor dirt and were never accustomed to life out of doors or sleeping anywhere but a real bed. Guns terrify them and their survival skills are minimal book-learning at absolute best. They've never ridden a horse before, and it shows.

Early into Lou's tenure as gang doctor, the local bounty hunter Croc Odile's small posse catches up to the Crow and Bull. More interested in forcing the gang into town rather than attempt to take them out in the open, Croc directs her creepy sharpshooter Pollux to put a hole in the new doctor. Nothing lethal, but also nothing that can be treated without access to a proper doctor. One hole in their side later, this is Lou's first introduction to Croc's gang, and it doesn't exactly set them up for friendship.

Unbeknownst to Lou, Croc and the outlaws had something of a 'game' between them, though the outlaws aren't exactly cordial or enthusiastic players. Croc, being a bounty hunter but rather disliking lawmen, enjoys turning in bounties only to quietly ensure their safe getaway before they can face the noose. As long as they play along well enough and don't do anything too heinous, anyway.

Lou, being a city gangster for whom the consequences of getting caught by the law OR another gang were generally interrogation followed by death, didn't quite understand there was a game at all before it was too late. As far as they were concerned, they were playing for keeps.

So, many months later on, when Croc's gang was once again chasing them, Lou took a somewhat drastic measure to ensure their escape. They hucked a firebomb in Croc's direction, mainly intending to scare her horse and cut off her approach long enough to get away. They missed, hitting Croc squarely in the face instead. As they and the gang fled, Lou could only hope she died quickly.

This act of apparent callous violence (along with the not small amount of glee they'd shown in previous robberies, blowing up locomotives or terrorizing rival gangs) was too much for Dom (the Bull) who despite being a criminal had a sense of morality. Dom insisted Lou leave the gang, and find work elsewhere or leave the desert entirely. 

Not long after they'd found themself traveling alone again, Lou would be dismayed to discover firsthand that Croc had not, in fact, died. She survived, albeit horribly disfigured with wounds that seemingly would not heal, her face near completely burned away and hands burned to raw flesh. Croc, not about to pass up this opportunity for revenge, dragged Lou to the middle of the desert, hamstrung them, mutilating their face and hands with a knife, and left them to die of blood loss and exposure.

Out there, Lou had a lot of time to reflect on their situation. Half delirious from blood loss, half influenced by the weird subtle mysticism of the wilderness and whatever strange force had preserved Croc, Lou hallucinated their way through some portentous visions. It appeared to be a warning, urging them to end the cycle of revenge before Croc and her gang could massacre Lou's friends. Seeing these visions in no particular order, however, Lou could only interpret them as a warning to kill Croc as soon as possible.

The Bull and the Old Crow tracked Lou down, using their own mild supernatural abilities to locate them in the wide open desert. They took the half-dead doctor back in, though disagreeing for how long, and over the course of a long winter in hiding, nursed Lou back to health. 

Lou was much changed after this, clearly troubled by more than their traumatic experience. They'd already begun to doubt themself before all this, having never really developed a true friendship for anyone, and Dom's moral compass had begun to rub off on them somewhat. Lou had never really, truly cared about anyone before, and had developed feelings for both the outlaw leaders before their removal from the gang. From then on, Lou doubted their every impulse and action, and scrutinized their own worldview even as they planned Croc's death for what they thought was the good of their lovers. 

Lou's story culminates in their plans all coming together, but finding themself unable to deliver the killing blow to a defeated and defenseless Croc. Knowing it or not, by tossing their hated pistol aside and opting to make a deal instead - their assistance in healing Croc's still-raw wounds for her promise to leave their gang alone - Lou ended the cycle of revenge and satisfied whatever prophetic influence had its claws in them and Croc both. 

And that's the story of how I'm gay for revenge cycles and evil characters trying to redeem themselves because of love.

Trivia

• Absolutely terrified of guns, even one they're holding. The one they do own, as any old West outlaw must, stays wrapped in fabric, unloaded, and stowed deep in a secure pocket in their bag. They'd rather try their luck throwing rocks at an attacker than using that thing.
  • Lou's gun is an 1871 Colt Cloverleaf Model .41, a pocket-sized, four-cylinder revolver
• Lou has a love/hate relationship with their mule, who is simultaneously ultra-protective of them and takes great pleasure in their misfortune

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