Le Lapin is a fugitive from France who lives in the Reverend's church stable. He's a sharp-tongued thief and incorrigible flirt, best known by the saloon girls and the men who lose their coins to him. Most of his days are spent betting, playing FFF, or at the saloon piano. When alone, he writes on whatever he can find and fills pages with scribbled arguments, short stories, and letters he never sends. There's a certain effortlessness to the way he lives, as if nothing ever quite catches up to him. But sometimes, in the quieter moments, that ease begins to feel a little too deliberate...

Le Lapin was born in the spring of 1860 in a large city in coastal France; the illegitimate son of a prostitute. His father, a man he never knew, was rumored to have gone mad and shot himself, and his mother died of fever when he was young. He grew up and was raised by his older siblings in a cramped tenement along the port.

Restless, disruptive, and quick to fight, he was considered burdensome, and was sent to a religious boarding school outside the city. Despite struggling at first, he gradually adapted to its rigid structure. He was a surprsingly intelligent student, if sometimes disobedient and cocky. He formed a small circle of friends, who nicknamed him "Le Lapin" for how fast he could run and his big ears.

Just before he graduated, he dropped out to care for his younger sister who had fallen ill. Meanwhile, his eldest brother began spending money they didn't have on drink. He rarely came back home, leaving Le Lapin responsible for the household. After his sister's death, an argument broke out. His drunken brother insulted and taunted him for his wasted efforts. Knowing he was right, Le Lapin chocked him in anger until he turned blue. Panicked and alone, Le Lapin hid the body and fled. He reached the docks and hid aboard a merchant ship. However, by the time he woke, the vessel had already departed.

After being discovered, shortly before reaching New York, he escaped before authorities could take him. Terrified, he took himself a loose horse and pushed west for nearly half a year. Desperate for money, he eventually sold it and tried to head west by slipping onto a train, but a rail patrol dragged him down before it departed. He was locked up on a vagrancy charge, but managed to slip out and flee only a week later.

After escaping custody, he acquainted himself with a settler family making their way west on a wagon, who allowed him to ride along. The children spoke better English than their parents and taught him on the way. However, with his usefulness concluded after they reached the Dakotas, his paranoid frenzy continued, and he slipped away with one of their horses and continued west alone.

By late winter he reached the Montana Territory, hypothermic and exhaustion. He rode until his horse collapsed beneath him. He would likely have died there if not for a passing preacher, Reverend Glasseye, who found him and carried him to shelter.

Le Lapin never cared for his deceased parents, only his siblings mattered to him, regardless if they were only partially related. Though, he's never fully decided what to think of his brother. He knows that a man who raised him is dead by his hand, but some part of him believes he deserved it. And yet, he sometimes writes letters to him, as if nothing ever happened.

He doesn't think particularly well of people. Lying and cheating are tools he uses without much remorse. The one line he won't cross is stealing from anyone who looks worse off than him. He has worn his charm and humor for long enough that he's no longer sure what is underneath it. He doesn't really like the performance, but he is a pessimist by nature, and the world has made clear it prefers the version of him that makes it laugh. So that's the version it gets.

With the few people he allows close, he becomes more honest and more light-hearted. He still teases and still cuts, but the intention is different. When something genuine is called for he sets his facade down entirely, becoming dead-serious. His jokes occasionally become much darker than the moment calls for, surprising everyone but him. When genuine kindness surfaces in him it tends to catch him off guard as much as anyone else.

He is not a large man and knows it, but he doesn't doubt his own capacity for violence, and especially his fear of it. He keeps a knife tucked in his boot at all times. It is cleaned and sharpened daily, despite rarely using it outside of FFF. He refuses to admit he's paranoid, yet always keeps an eye on the doors and the men coming in.

He has a tendency to run from his past, keeping enough distance and enough noise between himself and it. What he wants, underneath everything, is to feel safe. To stop performing, to stop running, to be whoever is underneath all of it without the consequence of that being something he cannot afford.