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he gets injured quite often as a kid. his days are spent climbing trees and walls outside, moving around recklessly and falling off them. miraculously he had never broken a bone in his body as a kid, but every day he'd come home with a new scratch or a bruise, sometimes a deep open wound that would scar over eventually. most of his injuries scarred though, as he was an avid skin picker and never let his scabs heal properly no matter how much the housemaids and babysitters would slap his wrists when they saw him picking. one time, age 7, he falls out of a tree and nearly gives himself a concussion and his mother grounds him for a week from playing outside. she’s harsh on him, but it’s because she loves him, and through the dizziness of that day he can still remember her lips kissing his forehead and her hands rubbing his shoulders. that was probably the most attention she’d ever given him.
at 16 he gets his first dirtbike and his injuries start going from minor to major. he does a stunt, a stupid wheelie or whatever, and loses control over the bike. flies over the handlebar and nearly snaps his neck. he's rushed to the hospital and thankfully he's fine, though he's aware he could've well died right then and there. the thought drives him crazy. his step mother visits him once but only because she wants to leave a good impression on him. she doesn’t actually care and weeks later she’s replaced anyway. octavio misses his real mother.
escaping death becomes a sort of twisted hobby. anything to get people's attention on him, particularly his parents'. he'd drive his bike into busy traffic, do tricks while driving down the road in between multiple cars. record videos of crazy stunts that should kill him but don't because god doesn’t want to let him die. he drives under the influence of drugs and alcohol. gets drunk too much and high too often. it gets him some attention. he gains some fans online from his crazy stunt videos. his parents don’t care to notice though.
at 18 he gets the shit kicked out of him over owing somebody money that he forgot about. his parents question the bloody nose and the black eye but he just says it's another stunt. they don't pry. he wishes they would.
he tries to kill himself. drives fast and crashes the car purposefully into a wall, although the recent advancements in cars have made it near impossible to die from a car crash anymore. he tries to overdose. it sends him to the er just because a maid found him in his room unconscious just in time. he gets thrown into rehab. gets out and doesn't really care. jumps off a building and miraculously, somehow, survives with multiple major injuries but he’s fine. he never cries more than he does in the hospital room during his recovery. his parents don’t even visit him. his dad sends an assistant over to scold him. he can’t even make enough time to scold his own fucking son for trying to kill himself. he doesn’t care that octavio could’ve just died. he doesn’t care. why does he bother?
he has a plan. he's going to go out in a blaze of glory. beat the damn gauntlet record and kill himself in the process. it is perfect and stupid enough to work. all eyes on him in his final moment. that was bound to get somebody’s attention. 6 million followers was not enough, he wanted the whole world to be watching. and this was the best way to do it.
....
it doesn't work. the grenade blast blows off his legs and lands him in the hospital bed instead of his own grave. he has his limbs amputated and in a spur of desperation he calls ajay to help him, and surprisingly she does because she feels sorry for him.
thanks to the media’s coverage of his stunt, he gets offered a spot in the apex games and the second he gets his new legs attached he is out of the hospital and on a train home. his biggest injury buys him the opportunity of a lifetime.
his first injury as a legend isn't what he expects. he sees ajay in the apex complex, the day before his first game, and when she sees him she stands up from where she is sitting on the couch, walks over and slaps him in the face. "what the fuck are you doing here, silva?" she says.
i'm here to do what i was born to do.
his first death; it's pretty uneventful compared to every other death he experiences. but during his first game he makes the mistake of running down to bunker, ahead of his teammates, and gets trapped in a small room with caustic and his gas. he chokes to death. it's pretty lame if you ask him about it now so every time he’s asked he tells a different story and over-exaggerates. none of the legends interrupt to correct him. they seem to understand why he does what he does.
the feeling, however, the feeling of death is what really sells it. nothingness. absolute nothingness. nothing happens. it's somewhere in between complete darkness and bright light. but the starkest difference between sleep and death is the noise. there is no noise in death. in sleep, you can still hear and imagine things. death is completely different to that. for the first time ever, his mind is silent and still. no more buzzing, no more incoherent thoughts, no more uncontrollable emotions. nothing. it's a peacefulness no drug could offer him. he'd sell his soul to feel like that everyday.
and so he does. he dies over and over again. he dies for a living. for the entertainment of billions of people across the galaxy. it becomes addictive. dying makes his life worth living, it seems. finally he has found some sort of purpose. ajay says it’s killing him but he doesn’t care as long as his parents can watch.
he likes the attention.