Daniel "Cowboy Dan" Johnwayne || d2 || fin

district: 2
gender: male
age: 18
name: daniel "cowboy dan" wayne johnwayne

living family:
john johnwayne, father, 43
elya johnwayne, sister, 16
wayne johnwayne, uncle, 41
clint johnwayne, grandfather, 70
gracie johnwayne, step-grandmother, 32
bruce johnwayne, uncle, 14

No one can seem to agree on why they call him Cowboy. The origin stories vary — some suggest that he became Cowboy Dan at age seven, a little beefier of a child than the rest of those in his class; others maintain that it was his livewire personality that earned him the moniker. (After all, Maverick Dan lacks the right flow, and there weren't any punners advanced enough to craft Loose Dannon.) In truth, the first instance of Cowboy Dan being Cowboy Dan likely dates back to his early days, when little boys are all Cowboy to their pops, just as they are Champ and Sport and Tiger and Kiddo and anything but the names that their mothers gave them.

No one can seem to agree on why they call him Cowboy, but he sure as shit cemented it the day he branded the neighbor's kid with a hot poker.

He had his reasons for marking the other eleven-year-old his steer, but nobody ever managed to coax it out of the unapologetic tween. Some of the more generous rumors suggested that it was an honored gentlemen's agreement for lost wagers or lost fights; most rumors did agree that a lost fight was involved in one way or another, although honor seemed to have little to do with it. Though the matter was publicly settled by his pops and the branded's with a dismissive "boys will be boys" and followed up privately with John Johnwayne's stiff new belt, for a few months, neighborhood tensions ran high. (It didn't bother Dan in the slightest.)

Cowboy Dan managed to stay out of the spotlight for another handful of years – not for absence of mischief so much as the presence of more interesting events than his average brand of teenage cruelty. District Two's new victors coincided with Dan's newfound interest in alcohol, which was not particularly newsworthy in comparison.

Or, it wasn't until his sister lost her eye. For about a week after the fact, it was labeled an unfortunate training accident — but anyone who'd seen Elya spar prior to the incident would be hesitant to write it off as such. Add in the fact that her big brother wasn't, strictly speaking, known for his pacifism and obedience of the law and/or social norms, and Dan was hauled off for a public whipping, followed by six weeks in the detention center and relocation to his grandfather's house on the other side of town.

Not that it did anyone much good — Elya, the career with every bit of the dedication Cowboy Dan lacked, refused to accept that she needed depth perception to fight, and spent so much time redoubling her training efforts that she was scarcely back home to eat and sleep. And there were few lessons that Dan could learn from being punished for something he did not do that he hadn't learned in his first ten years of life.

A permanent scowl makes its home on Dan Johnwayne's hard face. He never shows his teeth — not during his rare smiles, not to growl — on account of the missing one in front. It isn't as though he feels self-conscious; rather, it is a chink in his wrought iron defense that he doesn't want to expose. Cowboy Dan doesn't care about pretty. He keeps his mouse brown hair short, out of his eyes and off of his brow. If it can't be grasped, it's not a vulnerability.

His ears, on the other hand, are a problem. They stick off the side of his head like enticing handles, just waiting to be torn off. In fact, Dan almost lost his left one to a particularly vicious career bitch a few years prior. It had been left dangling by a flap of cartilage for a few hours before he'd gotten back home to get it stitched up, but at least he'd popped her good in the nose for that one. Elya'd always been around to put him back together again, and his sister was eager for the practice.

His whole body was a lightly-tanned timeline of her progress, from the jagged, crudely stitched first attempt tracing one of his ribs to the thin line that framed his right eye. She'd given him that cut herself in a fair fight, joked that then they'd match. In an unfair match, Cowboy Dan always had the advantage — but ruthless as he was, he could never bring himself to fight dirty against his little sis.

She was the exception. Dan Johnwayne had no manners for anyone else — not for his elders, not for whomever he was throwing down with — and that meant he'd use anything to his advantage. The environment especially: nine times out of ten, Dan would have his back to the sun; he was known to kick dirt into his opponents' eyes, to force them to stumble over uneven ground. He'd yell to startle them, to berate them if he thought that would give him the advantage. There was not a single low blow that Cowboy Dan kept off limits; in dire straits, he was even known to bite.

He has always lacked a code. In District Two, this robs him of the element of surprise — after all, if it's common knowledge, it's to be expected of him — but does not rob him of the inherent advantages to no-holds-barred combat, which is enough reason to continue his reckless, ruthless charges into conflict.

The problem is that Cowboy Dan is completely unable to give a shit about anyone or anything that isn't directly associated with his well-being. He's selfish and self-centered, and never satisfied with what he's got. In his first year of school, during show-and-tell, he brought nothing in. Instead, he waited until last to present every other classmate's little treasure, freshly pilfered from their bags or forcefully ripped from their hands during recess. I'm presenting this today, he'd said, because it makes me happy to have what everyone else wants. And it makes me happy that you don't have it anymore.

When ordered to give them back, Dan began trying to swallow the trinkets so he wouldn't have to return them. All he'd managed to get down was the token of someone's tribute cousin — a ring with stamped with her family crest — and someone's house key. He was whooped pretty hard for that one, but Dan did not regret a thing. For a time, he kept the little treasures on his nightstand, a trophy case for his childhood conquests, but his indifference toward the pilfered objects grew quickly, and eventually they ended up in the bottom of a well.

Their ma died when he was 8. Suicide. And their pops, always distant and disinterested, grew every bit as cold as Dan. He didn't give a shit about either of them, except when they were doing something he didn't like — that was Dan more often than not, but Elya took her lumps from time the time, same as him. They'd stay with Uncle Wayne a few nights a week when they were younger, and he was fine usually. When they were small, Dan had always liked his goofy uncle — but he's a mean drunk, same as his brother, same as Dan. He's no surrogate father.

And Grandpa Clint is the worst of all the elders that Cowboy Dan is subjected to. A shrewd man, but also a manipulative asshole, Clint is always playing John and Wayne off each other, and often tries to do the same with Dan and Elya. It was Clint that insisted on separating the two after Elya's eye got cut out, suggesting that Elya was lying about what had happened in order to protect her brother. John wouldn't've cared who did what, but took the opportunity to get rid of his son for awhile.

When Dan was four, the silver-maned bastard knocked up some teenager, then married her. The resulting spawn is absolutely the bane of Dan's existence: spoiled and falsely arrogant, with a high and mighty opinion of himself. What's worse, he insists on calling himself Dan's uncle. While technically true, it suggests a that Bruce has some sort of authority over him that he could ever hope to achieve. Dan's the only one with that kind of power over Dan (and his sister's the only other one whose words are given any weight.) For the sake of his own sanity, Dan tries to ignore him to the very best of his ability. He may be reckless and impulsive, but he isn't stupid and knows however bad he beats "Uncle" Bruce, he'll be whooped double — and then turned in to the authorities with some lie attached, because who'd take the word of a kid with a record against an influential old man?

His revenge against Clint, against Bruce takes another form: he fucks Gracie from time to time instead. She's not actually his grandmother, after all, and she's young enough to be considered not wholly inappropriate for him. After, she gets kind of weird and religious, but sure enough, every handful of weeks, she still knocks on his door while Clint's out of the house. She's newly pregnant again, and fairly certain the child is Dan's. He doesn't care one way or the other about it, save for the fact that it's a nice fuck you to Clint, to Bruce.

While Cowboy Dan insists that he doesn't care about anything — and while that certainly appears to be the case — it isn't entirely true. How could he detest something he does not care about? And, as it turns out, Dan Johnwayne loathes quite a bit: his family, his district, his work in the quarries. Everything about his life. It is a sink-or-swim world and Dan only knows how to float.