Edmund Daniels Percy—Eddie, to anyone who knew him—was born in London, into the kind of working-class life that rarely makes headlines. Nothing about his early years stood out. He went to public school, did well enough, kept his head down. On paper, he was just another kid. But paper doesn’t show absence. His parents were rarely home, gone more often than not, and Eddie learned early how to exist without anyone watching. He cooked for himself, kept himself in line, handled things quietly. Independence wasn’t something he earned—it was something he was left with. At first, that kind of freedom felt normal. Then, as he got older, it became something else. Boredom.

By the time he reached high school, Eddie had already figured out he was smarter than most of his classmates—but he buried it. There was no reward in standing out, no satisfaction in effort. School became routine. Home became routine. Everything blurred into something dull and predictable. Until the fire.

It started small, like most things do. Sitting around a fire pit with friends, Eddie found himself watching the flames instead of listening to the conversation. The way they moved, the way they fed, always reaching, always searching—it fascinated him. Fire wasn’t static. It was alive in a way nothing else around him felt. That curiosity stuck. He began experimenting in small ways—burning leaves, lighting bins, watching how flames reacted to different materials, different conditions. It wasn’t about destruction, not at first. It was about understanding. Control. Then he found the book.

He never said where it came from. But once he had it, everything changed. During long stretches of being home alone, Eddie studied it obsessively. It was filled with crude instructions, makeshift methods—things that felt dangerous, but achievable. That’s what drew him in. A rag soaked in alcohol. A bottle turned into something more. A gas can with a fuse. Simple things, “entry level” in his mind. He tested them, refined them, pushed a little further each time. Weeks turned into months. Curiosity turned into confidence. And then confidence turned into arrogance.

One winter night, with the cold pressing in and every window shut tight, Eddie tried something new. He stood over the gas stove, attempting to boil gasoline—trying to refine it, to make something more volatile. The fumes built slowly, invisibly, filling the apartment as his focus narrowed. By the time he noticed, it was too late. The dizziness hit first. Then the mistake. The liquid spilled—just a little—onto his shirt. A second later, a spark jumped.

Flame.

It caught instantly. Eddie reacted without thinking, tearing the burning fabric from his body and bolting out of the apartment. Behind him, the fire took hold, feeding on everything it could find. The building burned through the night. Windows shattered from the heat. Black smoke poured into the sky. Fire crews fought it for hours before it finally died down. In the end, it was written off as an accident—a tragic, freak incident. Eddie never corrected them. If anything, it left him with something new.

Excitement.

The investigation didn’t end with the fire.

At first, it seemed like it would—another accident in a long list of careless mistakes people made every winter. But something about it didn’t sit right with the authorities. Maybe it was the way the fire had spread. Maybe it was the intensity. Or maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, questions started getting asked. Eddie didn’t fold easily. He never had. But he was still just a kid, and kids make mistakes—not always in what they do, but in what they forget. Small details. Contradictions. Enough for someone to start digging deeper. It didn’t take long before suspicion turned into charges. They couldn’t prove everything—not the experiments, not the months leading up to it but they had enough to tie him to negligence. Reckless endangerment. Arson, they called it, even if they couldn’t fully prove intent.

Eddie barely reacted when they told him. The courtroom felt distant, like something happening to someone else. Voices blurred together. Faces meant nothing. The verdict came down, and with it, a sentence—not long enough to ruin a life, but long enough to change one. Youth detention. It was the first time Eddie truly lost control. Inside, there was no freedom. No quiet apartment. No late nights experimenting with whatever caught his interest. Everything was scheduled. Controlled. Watched. At first, he hated it.

The noise. The people. The constant tension humming beneath every interaction. But Eddie adapted the way he always did—quickly, quietly. He kept his head down, observed more than he spoke, learned the rhythm of the place. And when boredom crept back in—as it always did—he found new ways to occupy his mind Somewhere in that routine, he was given the option to write—to someone on the outside. A pen pal. Eddie didn’t think much of it at first, but he started anyway. Short letters. Blunt. Detached. Yet for reasons he never fully understood, he kept writing. The replies, when they came, were slower. Sometimes distant. Sometimes absent altogether. But they were enough. A small, inconsistent tether to something beyond the walls.

He never spoke about the fires. Not directly. But pieces of him slipped through the lines—his boredom, his restlessness, the way his mind never seemed to settle. And in return, he got just enough back to remind him there was still a world waiting. He replayed the fire over and over again. Not the fear. Not the chaos. The mechanics. What went wrong. What he could’ve done differently. How close he’d been to something… bigger. That thought stayed with him.

Time moved slowly inside, but it still moved. Weeks turned into months, and eventually, his sentence came to an end. The charges that couldn’t be fully proven began to unravel, softened by lack of evidence and technicalities. And just like that, he was released. No closure. No real consequences that stuck. Just freedom. Eddie stepped back out into the world carrying the same things he went in with—his boredom, his curiosity… and now, something else. Experience.
Freedom didn’t come with direction. Eddie returned to the same streets, the same routines—but something had shifted. The boredom was still there, but now it sat alongside something sharper. Restless. Searching. He drifted for a while.

The local crowd—the kind of people who “handled things” around the neighbourhood—pulled him in first. It was easy work, small jobs, nothing that held his attention for long. There was structure, sure, but it was shallow. Predictable. It didn’t last. One afternoon, more out of necessity than intention, Eddie rolled his battered 125cc bike into a small mechanic shop tucked away from the main road. The engine screamed more than it ran, barely pushing past sixty. The men inside took one look at it—and him—and laughed. Still, they let him in.

What started as a quick look-over turned into something else. Eddie stayed. Watched. Asked questions. Then stopped asking and started doing. He picked things up quickly—faster than they expected. Faster than he let on. The shop wasn’t just a shop. Not really. It took time for Eddie to understand what he’d stepped into. The people coming and going, the bikes that didn’t always have paperwork, the conversations that stopped when he got too close. It wasn’t just mechanics. It was a club. And without realising it, Eddie had begun drifting toward it.

At first, he wasn’t anything to them. Just a kid hanging around, fixing scrap, working on machines that had been written off and forgotten. They gave him the worst of it—bent frames, blown engines, things not worth saving. They told him if he could fix them, he could keep them. So he did. Piece by piece, he rebuilt what others discarded. It wasn’t perfect work, but it worked. And more importantly—it was his. For the first time in a long while, Eddie wasn’t bored. Not completely. The club noticed.

Maybe it was his consistency. Maybe it was luck. But since Eddie started showing up, the police pressure around the shop eased. Fewer visits. Fewer questions. It wasn’t enough to mean anything on its own—but in their world, patterns mattered. So they kept him around. Slowly, he was allowed closer. Not inside—not fully—but near enough. He tagged along on rides. Stood at the edge of conversations. Played pool in the background while the older members drank and talked business. They had rules for him. Strict ones.

If he was there, he stayed sober. No drinking. No getting involved in anything beyond his place. And Eddie followed them. Not out of respect—at least not at first—but because it gave him something he hadn’t had in a long time. A place. Time passed. Weeks. Months. And with time, the feeling came back. That itch. The same one that had followed him since school, since the fire, since everything. The sense that things were becoming too still again. Too predictable. He ignored it as long as he could. Until it came looking for him. His old crowd—the ones he’d drifted away from—found him at the shop one day. There weren’t many club members around. Bad timing. Worse luck. They didn’t talk much.
It started fast. A shove. Then another. Then fists. Boots. Eddie hit the ground hard, the air leaving his lungs as they laid into him. His nose broke first. Then something around his eye. The world blurred, dulled, but the pain stayed sharp. And then—Something switched. As they turned to leave, satisfied, Eddie moved. Not fast. Not clean. But deliberate.

He grabbed the nearest thing he could—a grease can—and drove a screwdriver into it, punching through metal. A rag followed, jammed into the opening. His hands worked without hesitation, like he’d done it a hundred times before. Because, in a way, he had. He lit it. The flame caught quick, small but alive, and without a second thought, Eddie threw it. The explosion wasn’t massive—but it didn’t need to be. It went off beside one of them, the force enough to drop him instantly. The rest hit the ground, hands over their ears, disoriented, screaming. Eddie staggered forward.

Blood in his vision. Breathing uneven. But focused. He found the leader, turned him over, pinned him as best he could. The screwdriver was still in his hand. The same one. The man struggled—weakly now. Eddie didn’t hesitate. One motion. One strike. And then nothing. Silence. The adrenaline faded as quickly as it came. The pain rushed back in all at once, overwhelming, crushing. Eddie collapsed beside them, the world slipping out from under him.
The club returned hours later. They found the shop in pieces. One dead. Several gone. And Eddie—barely breathing. Everything moved fast after that. Orders barked. Hands moving. Improvised splints. Anything to keep him stable. He was thrown into the back of a van and rushed to the hospital before questions could catch up to them. He survived. Barely. The damage stayed with him—his nose never healed right, his vision permanently altered, light cutting into his eyes sharper than it should. But he lived. And when he woke… things were different.

When Eddie finally left the hospital, he didn’t go home. Not really. There was no hesitation, no second thought—he went straight back to the clubhouse. The place still smelled faintly of oil, metal… and something burnt that no one had bothered to fully clean. His place.

The members were already there when he arrived. Some leaned against bikes, others stood in quiet conversation, but when Eddie walked in, things shifted. Conversations died down. Heads turned. No one said much. They didn’t need to. They escorted him in—not as an outsider anymore, but not quite as one of them either. Something in between. Something earned, whether they admitted it or not. Eddie didn’t stop to acknowledge it.

He walked straight past them, over to the bike he’d been working on before everything happened, and picked up a wrench. His hands shook slightly, his vision still off, light catching wrong in his eyes—but he worked anyway. Like nothing had changed. Like everything had. The Sergeant-at-Arms approached him carefully, watching, measuring. Eddie didn’t look up. Not until the man stepped too close. The wrench swung. Fast.

It missed—but only just. The SGT pulled back, more surprised than threatened. When he looked at Eddie properly, he saw it. Not anger. Not just that. Grief. Shock. Something breaking under the surface. Eddie swung again—but this time, he didn’t follow through. The SGT stepped in, closed the distance, and pulled him into a firm hold before the moment could spiral further. And just like that—Eddie broke.

All of it came out at once. The fight. The fire. The man he’d killed. The weight of it, finally catching up. He fought it at first, like he fought everything, but there was nowhere for it to go. So it collapsed. He dropped to the floor, shaking, breath uneven, the wrench clattering somewhere beside him. The SGT stayed with him, steady, silent, letting it pass without judgement. The rest of the club gave them space. That night, something unspoken settled in.

When Eddie woke the next morning, the light cut through his eyes like glass. He squinted, disoriented, until he realised he wasn’t alone. The clubhouse was alive—movement, voices, the low hum of engines somewhere outside. And draped over him—A kutte. Not a full patch. Not yet. A prospect vest. A whistle cut through the room, sharp and deliberate. Heads turned toward him, one by one. Some nodded. Some smirked. A few stepped over, giving him a firm pat on the shoulder as they passed. No ceremony. No speeches. Just acceptance. Eddie said nothing. He didn’t need to.

Prospect life wasn’t easy—but Eddie never expected it to be. He worked under the SGT, his sponsor, doing whatever was asked of him. The jobs weren’t glamorous. Cleaning. Running parts. Fixing bikes no one else wanted to touch. But that wasn’t where Eddie stood out. It was what they trusted him with when things needed to disappear. Scrap that couldn’t be traced. Evidence that needed to be gone. Situations that required… a certain kind of understanding. Eddie handled it. Alone, most of the time. The club would send him out with minimal instruction and expect results. And he delivered. Every time. Clean. Efficient. Quiet. They started calling it luck. Eddie knew better.

But even with purpose, the feeling never fully left him. That emptiness between jobs. The silence when no one was around. The moments where the clubhouse felt less like a home and more like something he was passing through. When he had work, he was focused. When he didn’t—His mind turned on him. Thoughts spiralled. Restlessness twisted into something heavier. Loneliness crept in, slow and suffocating. He didn’t talk about it. Didn’t show it. But it was there. Always there. And then, finally—Something changed.

On his twentieth birthday, Eddie was called into Church. No big announcement. No drawn-out ceremony. Just the President, the VP, the Chaplain… and the SGT. The door closed behind him. For a moment, it was quiet. Then the patch was placed in front of him. Simple. Final. Earned. Eddie looked at it for a second longer than most would—but when he picked it up, there was no hesitation. He was in. Fully. No longer on the edge. No longer “almost.” A member. The months that followed were where Eddie truly came into his own. He pushed further. Refined what he knew. Improvised what he didn’t. From crude pipe devices to more controlled methods, he built things that served the club’s needs—whatever those needs were. He became useful. More than that—Valuable. So when the call came from across the sea, asking for support, Eddie’s name was one of the first put forward. He didn’t argue. Didn’t question. He went.
The road suited Eddie. More than the clubhouse ever had. As a Nomad, there were no walls to sit inside, no long stretches of stillness waiting for something to happen. There was always movement. Always a destination, even if it changed by the day. Different charters. Different cities. Different problems. It kept his mind occupied. He handled business where it was needed—running jobs, supporting chapters, making himself useful in ways that didn’t always get spoken about. And along the way, he picked people up. Drifters. Prospects. Hang-arounds looking for something solid.

Eddie had an eye for them. Not the best of them—but the ones that fit. The ones who understood what it meant to belong to something like this. He’d bring them in, test them in his own quiet ways, then pass them off to whichever chapter suited them best. He never stayed long enough to watch what they became. Except once. One of them made it. Earned their patch. Got sent to a chapter out in Los Santos—a place that was always busy, always on the edge of something kicking off. Eddie followed. Not officially. Just… because.

He told himself it was to check in. To make sure things settled right. But the truth was simpler than that—he didn’t like leaving things unfinished. He didn’t like leaving people behind. He brought another prospect with him, one who’d had to leave their own chapter after things got too hot with Law Enforcement. Together, they landed in Los Santos and crashed on a familiar couch inside the compound. Temporary. That’s what it was supposed to be.
Los Santos didn’t stay quiet. It never did. Conflicts came and went, and Eddie threw himself into them the same way he did everything—completely. He worked, rode, handled whatever was put in front of him. But something else started creeping in. At first, it was nothing. A drink here and there. Something to take the edge off after long days, longer nights. Then more. Then stronger. Coke found its way in not long after. It helped, at least in the beginning. Kept him sharp. Kept him moving. Kept the thoughts from settling in too deep when things went quiet.

The club noticed. One of the members tried to pull him back, ease him off it before it got worse. But others didn’t care—or didn’t see it as a problem. If anything, they fed it. Encouraged it. Turned it into something normal. So Eddie leaned into it. Hard. It didn’t take long before it stopped being a choice. Drinking wasn’t occasional anymore—it was constant. Mornings blurred into nights. Lines became routine. His body, already worn from everything before, started to give in ways he couldn’t ignore. His breathing worsened. His nose—never properly healed—became a constant problem. But none of it slowed him down.

If anything, it pushed him further. Because slowing down meant thinking. And Eddie had learned a long time ago that thinking too much led somewhere he didn’t want to go. Eventually, even Los Santos wasn’t enough to hold him. He left. Slipped back into Nomad life without much warning, leaving behind the one person he’d followed there in the first place. No goodbye worth remembering. No real explanation. Just distance. And with distance—

He got worse. There were no limits anymore. No structure. No one close enough to call it out and mean something. Eddie drank at all hours, took whatever was in front of him, moved from place to place without much reason beyond not wanting to stay still. The road that once kept him steady now just gave him space to fall apart. It didn’t end with a bang. It ended with a choice. Or at least something close to one. After one too many internal conflicts—arguments that turned personal, lines that got crossed—Eddie walked away from the club.

You didn’t just leave. Not really. There were consequences. They made sure of that. The brand burned into his left shoulder marked it clearly enough. A permanent reminder of where he’d been—and what he wasn’t anymore. Dead to the club. Just like that. With nowhere else to go, Eddie drifted back to Los Santos. Not to the club. To what was left. An old friend—once a brother, now something else entirely—gave him a place to crash. A couch. A roof. Something temporary. Eddie filled the space the only way he knew how. With drink. One day blurred into the next until something unexpected cut through the noise—a letter. His pen pal.

Still out there. Still writing. Eddie laughed when he read it. Not because it was funny—but because it felt… unreal. Like something from another life. He wrote back the same way he lived now—messy, unfocused, the page practically soaked in alcohol. Then he left. No destination. No plan. Just movement. He ended up in an alley that night. Cold concrete. Distant noise. The kind of place no one asks questions about. Days turned into small jobs. Nothing major. Just enough to get by. Just enough to keep the drink coming.

Eventually, he met his pen pal. For a while, they lived together. Something close to stable—at least on the surface. But without the constant flood of alcohol, the withdrawals hit hard. Harder than he expected. The need crawled under his skin. Everything felt too loud. Too close. Too much. And Eddie—Eddie felt like a burden. Disconnected. Out of place. Like he didn’t belong in something that resembled normal. So he did what he always did. He left. Paleto was quiet. Too quiet for most people. But for Eddie, it was enough. Far enough away from everything he’d burned through. Far enough to disappear.

Paleto Bay is quiet in a way that unsettles most people. For Eddie, it’s… manageable.

The noise in his head never really stopped—but out here, it doesn’t have as much to compete with. No constant engines. No clubhouse chatter. No expectations pressing in from all sides. Just the wind, the distant sound of the ocean, and whatever thoughts decide to surface that day. He keeps to himself. Mostly. Eddie drifts between small, forgettable jobs—fixing engines, patching up bikes, doing mechanical work for people who don’t ask too many questions. It’s enough to get by. Enough to keep his hands busy. And that’s the important part. Because when his hands aren’t busy, his mind wanders. The drinking hasn’t stopped. Not completely. It comes in waves now—periods where he keeps it under control, followed by stretches where it takes over again. The same goes for everything else. He’s not as reckless as he was, but he’s far from clean. Just… functional. On the surface.

Physically, the damage lingers. His nose never set right, leaving his breathing uneven, especially when he’s run down. His vision is still off—one eye weaker than the other, both sensitive to light. He keeps a set of contacts on him, more out of habit than comfort, though he doesn’t always wear them. He doesn’t hide it. Not anymore. The brand on his shoulder is harder to ignore. He keeps it covered when he can, but it’s always there—a permanent reminder of the one place he managed to belong… and lose. Eddie doesn’t talk about the club. Not unless pushed. And even then, it’s short. Dismissive. Like it doesn’t matter. But it does.

Everything does. He still writes. Not often. Not consistently. But the habit never left him. The pen pal—one of the only things that carried through every version of his life—remains a quiet constant. Sometimes the letters sit unanswered for weeks. Sometimes longer. But he never fully lets it go. It’s one of the few connections he hasn’t burned. There are moments—rare, but real—where Eddie feels something close to calm. Usually when he’s working.

Usually when there’s heat involved. Not the chaos of before. Not the reckless kind. But controlled. Focused. A steady flame instead of an explosion. Something he can watch, understand, manage. Those moments don’t last. They never do. To most people, Eddie comes off distant. Hard to read. Not unfriendly—but not open either. He listens more than he speaks, watches more than he interacts. There’s a weight to him, something people notice without being able to name. Those who stick around long enough see more. The cracks.

The restlessness. The way he can’t sit still for too long without finding something—anything—to occupy himself. The edge in his temper when things get too quiet. The way his hands sometimes linger a second too long near a lighter, a spark, a source of heat. Like he’s remembering something. Or resisting it. Eddie isn’t looking for redemption. He wouldn’t know what to do with it if he found it. He’s not trying to rebuild what he lost, either. The club, the road, the life he had—it’s gone. He knows that. What he is doing…Is surviving. Day by day. Job by job. One distraction to the next. And somewhere beneath all of that—buried under habit, damage, and everything he’s done—That same curiosity still burns. Quieter now. But not gone.​