GASKARTH, Niall Cian

[Niall Cian Gaskarth]

NIALL CIAN GASKARTH

FULL NAME: Niall Cian Gaskarth
NICKNAMES: None
AGE: thirty four
GENDER: male
SEXUALITY: Straight
STATUS: Single
GROUP: Citizen
GRADE: N/A
MAJOR: N/A
JOB OCCUPATION: S.W.A.T. officer

HAIR: Short, dirty blonde. A bit of product through the top and he's good to go.
EYES: brown
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: A couple puckered spots in his left shoulder. A couple of shots missed his vest.
TATTOOS: S.W.A.T insignia, right side ribcage, Rangers insignia, right shoulder, Brody down his left side ribcage.
PIERCINGS: None.
PLAY-BY: Alex Russell!

LIKES: Baseball- Yankees all the way, hitting the gym, strong coffee, weightlifting, saving lives, dogs, Jack Daniels and Jameson, trips to Ikea, DIY, cold brews, kickboxing, cooking- especially barefoot, hitting the range, reading, turning his old house into a home, video games, the family bar, talking to his brother on rough days (at his grave, with a bottle of JD), patio season, cinnamon chai lattes, bartending
DISLIKES: Those rough days, balloons, crime procedurals, flat pillows, sleeping in, having to wear a tie, missing a gym session, failing at his job, reality television, black coffee, cats, being questioned over a clean shot, shirts at home, hospitals, vanilla milkshakes
FEARS: Waking up one day and finding out something else has happened to Leliana, rats, getting shot again
SECRETS: He won a gigantic pink unicorn at the county fair. He'd been trying for the dragon but the kid running the booth gave the last dragon to an adult and he was forced to take the unicorn. Even at six, he claimed he won it for his mom but it stayed in the play room and is still in his parent's house somewhere.
PERSONALITY: Niall was raised to be a strong individual, to stand up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves. He was taught to fight and cheer for the underdog. It was no wonder he grew up to be a soldier. A job he will carry with him for the rest of his life. Outside of work, Niall is a bit of a quirky man. He enjoys physical activity as well as spending endless hours reading. If hadn't gone into the military, he would have probably become an English teacher. He's a bright man who found his calling in protecting people. Most days, Niall would much rather hole up in the little library he'd created in his home within the first week of moving in. He's not one to take anything for granted, he's seen the horrors of war, though he came away from it all relatively unscathed. A nightmare here and there but he'd been one of the lucky ones and he is not opposed to sitting down with a shrink now and again to clear the mind. He is angry at the world, probably will be for a while but he's good at compartmentalising and keeps it all in check when he's on the job. He has to otherwise he'd probably kill every suspect brought in front of him! Cooking calms him just as much as those books of his or the kickboxing classes he takes three times a week. Cooking gives him something to do, a mess to make, which is how he prefers to cook. Organised chaos would probably best describe his home though he keeps his books in meticulous order, the rest is another story altogether.

MOTHER: Maureen Gaskarth & sixty.
FATHER: Hank Gaskarth & sixty-two.
SIBLINGS: Keir James Gaskarth & deceased.
OTHERS: Leliana Aria Gaskarth, thirty-one & Sister-in-law
Brody Daniel Gaskarth & Deceased.
PETS: Roxy and Hawkeye & Boxer Terriers!
HOMETOWN: Bronx, New York City, New York
HISTORY: Maureen and Hank met at a Yankees game of all places. Hank was sitting in the seat just in front of Maureen and caught the fly ball that just about hit her in the face. She thanked him for the save with a beer after the game. They got to talking and before they realised it, they'd closed the bar down. They exchanged numbers, Maureen not thinking anything would come of it but hoping it would nonetheless. Hank was a police officer and tracked her down the very next day on her campus. She thought he looked quite dapper in his policeman's blues and quickly agreed to a second date with him, or rather, the first date with him. Within two short years, they were happily married and living a good life in the Bronx. It wasn't the best neighbourhood but it was Hank's neighbourhood and he wasn't going to leave it just because it was rough. Maureen would take the subway into Manhattan every day for work and Hank would hit the streets. Sometimes dinner would be ready and sometimes it wouldn't but neither worried much about anything. About a year after they were married, Maureen surprised Hank with a huge family meal, a Sunday treat usually eaten at his parent's house. She couldn't wait for the dessert to tell them all that she was pregnant. Niall was born seven months and three days later, six days early.

Even as a small boy, he was curious and always getting into things. The very day he'd learned to crawl, he'd grabbed onto the blanket hanging off the couch and dropped his mother's novel on his head! She'd gotten up to answer the phone across the room and it all happened so fast. Instead of crying about it though, he laughed. It was only a paperback and a small one at that so not altogether heavy. His curiosity never left him. At four and a half, his parents brought home another little boy. He'd not put much thought into why his mommy was getting a big belly, cared more about his Legos and his picture books. When Maureen went into labour and to the hospital, Niall just thought he was having a sleepover with his grandparents, something he did often enough. The following years were filled with Maureen being worried not just about her husband but all three of her boys. Niall was climbing the trees in the back garden while Keir was trying to chase him around the garden. Niall was a bit of a devil, though he did protect his little brother. They were a few years apart in school but that never stopped Niall.

High school was when Niall started to come into his own. He joined the baseball team as well as the football team and found girls. He learned quickly the ways of sneaking a girl in and back out of the house again. He was sixteen when his mother got the call in the middle of the night. Hank had been promoted to detective ages beforehand, after solving a particularly gruesome triple murder. He had been working on another homicide case, a string of them, leading them all to conclude it was a serial killer. Hank was out on a stakeout. They'd found some clues leading them to a suspect and as all the evidence indicated, that night he should have hit again. In a way, he had, shooting up the undercover police car they'd been sitting in. Both men were rushed to the hospital though only Hank survived. It took a long time before he returned home. He had the option to return to duty but it would mean a lifetime of desk duty. Instead, he took a nice settlement from the whole thing and spent a little while sitting in a recliner, wondering what the hell he was going to do next. As it were, the idea came to him after an episode of his favourite show; Cheers. After talking it over with Maureen, who offered to do the accounting for the place, they agreed and set out to check out some places. Within eighteen months, Vics was open.

Niall enjoyed doing his homework in the bar, slipping behind it once in a while to get himself a soda as his father watched like a hawk. At eighteen, Niall sat down at the table and told his parents his plans. He was enlisting in the army. He had high hopes of finding a speciality, maybe even getting himself an education on the government's dime. He trained like nobody else, pushing himself to his limits and then beyond them. He figured out only a few weeks into basic that he wanted to try for the Rangers. It was an elite group of soldiers and he thought he had what he took to be one of them. He wasn't wrong and was accepted into the programme. The training was harder than anything he'd known beforehand but he was determined. Niall wanted to be an Army Ranger. He spent the next few years on special operations, doing things he hadn't actually known if he would be able to do. His confirmed kills list was longer than his arm but he tried not to think about it too much. It wouldn't do anyone any good to dwell on the things he couldn't take back. He returned home whenever he could, helped out behind the bar of Vics whenever he was in town. It was during one of these visits home that he met Keir's girlfriend at the time. She'd been sitting at the bar when he walked in from the back, loaded down with a tray of clean glasses. He flirted a little bit, asked what she was doing in a dive like Vics, though it was hardly a dive with its polished wood bar, slightly scarred but otherwise gleaming and it's surprisingly cosy atmosphere. Even when she said she was meeting her boyfriend, it hadn't clicked; not until Keir walked in and walked straight for them. He thought, naively, that he was there for Niall until Keir leaned down and gave the pretty brunette a kiss.

They were young and looked cute together, something Niall continuously teased his little brother about. It seemed like seconds after Niall returned to duty that Keir was telling him he wouldn't be in New York when he returned, that he was doing good in the world and that he would be moving on up the ranks, just in Chicago instead. Niall didn't know any of what was to come so he was proud of his baby brother, falling into the footsteps of their old man. Niall was twenty0-eight when he decided he was done serving his country. They'd gotten ten good years out of him and he wanted to see what else in the world he could do. He returned home to his childhood home, to his childhood bedroom, kept the way he'd left it when he was eighteen, like a shrine. He kicked around for a while, helped his old man out at the bar but it wasn't enough for him and after only two months of booting around, walked into the police academy. As he was a military man things were a little different for him. He still had to go through the steps of the academy but once he was out, he pretty much had his pick of assignments, which was not usually the case. He took to beat cop for a while, just long enough to get his certifications for SWAT and joined the team the second there was an opening. He had spent all of six months as a beat cop, helping out where he could, when he could. SWAT was where he'd wanted to be though, the second he'd walked through the doors and was given the list of options. He had all the training, more so than most of the guys there. He knew what was what, how to handle the situations, a fancy, scary looking gun. He was ready.

At six-thirty in the morning, he'd gotten the call about Keir. His father, having had to make that call himself, was in more control over his emotions and relayed the information to Niall about his brother. It was all a bit too much and Niall fell into an awkward spiral. He got up and did his job, put all his focus into it but when he was off the clock, he lost his days until he was needed on the job again. He didn't drink so much but he did just sit there and waste the hours away. He didn't eat, he wasn't sure he slept but he thought he might, sitting in that chair. They all went to Chicago, his family and Leliana's, to collect the bodies of Keir and Brody, bring Leliana back with them. It took him a while to get out of his funk and he probably would have taken longer if his CO hadn't taken him aside to talk. He suggested seeing the staff shrink and Niall didn't think it was a horrible idea. He didn't know how to feel about these feelings. He'd been trained to keep his emotions in check and normally, it was fine. But this was his brother and nephew. His poor sister-in-law was left to die on the floor of her own home's hallway, left knowing there was nothing she could do to save her baby boy or her husband. It was traumatic and Niall needed to figure himself out so he could be strong for the family.

He hadn't been able to get back for the trial but he wished he'd been there. Not to stop what happened but just to see it all happen. He would have liked seeing it and not just hearing about it. Life for him returned to some sort of normal. He didn't have Keir to call or text every day but Leliana was around again and he needed to be strong for her. She'd lost her family and he was as close as she had to them now in a way. When she moved into the apartment building across from his house, Niall had promised to watch out for her, make sure she got out a bit and interacted with the real world. He suggested she tag along for his kickboxing classes once in a while, forced her down to Vics for a couple drinks. He cooked her meals and told her to get her ass over to his place to eat. He hadn't exactly wasted away to nothing but it had been enough to have his teammates notice so he knew it was that much worse for Leliana. He didn't want her wasting away to nothing so he cooked and fed her. It's been four years and Niall has lost count of how many visits he's made to the graveyard, how many bottles of Jack he's shared with the granite stone there but he knows none of them should have ever happened.

YOUR ALIAS: Cali
RULE WORDS: I have these.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: In a music magazine.
SAMPLE:

I SHALL NOT PROVIDE A SAMPLE AT THIS TIME!

 

[Cali]