It’s summer of 1981, Saint Petersburg, Russia, in a small apartment next to the Peter and Paul Fortress, Sophia gives birth to Artemis Avilov. Paul and Sophia are loving parents, they spend as much time as they can with him. His childhood is normal, happy, nothing out of the ordinary.
He goes to first grade when he is 6, and in about a week later his father gets a call to work in London, England. He takes the offer, it’s a raise and a better life for their son. They live in a small house near Wapping Gardens.

Artemis’ first grade is spend sitting near the teacher’s desk so he has help with his knowledge of English. He is excelling even at that young age. Quickly climbing to straight As and even helping other children with their assignments. His parents are proud and happy, his teachers are proud and happy, he makes friends quickly.

At 8 everything changes. He is invited to a birthday party, his first sleepover! He is excited for it, his parents are excited. Later he will recall his parents packing his pjs and a present for the birthday boy, he thinks his name was Julian. When the dark falls and most of the party is asleep Artemis wakes up in a cold sweat. He doesn’t remember the nightmare that caused it. Doesn’t quite remember asking Julian’s mom to call his parents to pick him up. He does remember them coming and picking him up however. He remembers sleepily telling them about the party and then he remembers being jostled up into the air as a truck runs a red light. He’ll learn in the hospital that his parents were dead on impact. He doesn’t quite remember the actual crash, hitting his head and passing out well before the car hit the ground.

Being left alone in a foreign country Artemis is placed in an orphanage at the age of 8.

He spends the next two years bouncing around different places before one day a man comes to his orphanage and “adopts” him. He calls himself Watari, and that’s how Artemis Avilov becomes A, Alternative.

He studies, he learns, he excels in his classes and he is the best. Over the next couple months all the other kids are removed from the orphanage and it slowly transforms into something else. Something that won’t hear a proper child laugher for years to come. There is one other kid who doesn’t leave. His name is L, they bond, in a strange way that orphaned kids do. L is a couple years older, weirder, and not at all a friend that A needs.

They bond a little too well.

Then one cold December morning in 1993 a boy shows up. A boy is given the letter B and A takes him under his wing in a way. The child sticks to A like glue, and A allows it. It feeds a little into his superiority complex. To be needed by someone is nice at first. Annoying later. The three of them explore together, go through puberty together, do things together that one of their ages should not do or go through.

He’ll look back at it with painful fondness years later when L starts leaving, when B starts spending his time in the attic hiding under L’s bed, when the walls of the house grow cold and distant and his brain full of thoughts.

A isn't sure when the descend started. Maybe it was when his grades started slipping, when he could barely keep up with B. It was burn out a therapist might say. A therapist might've said a lot of things if they saw one back then. There are a lot of factors that lead to September 1st 1999. There isn't just one button that was pressed to push that stool from under him. He only wished that someone other than B found him hanging that morning.

Artemis dies September 1st, 1999.

As a ghost, A was not half transparent or anything like that. He looked just like a normal person, maybe a bit more paler and didn’t breath or blink. But other than that he was just like anyone who is alive. He could allow people to touch him. He could walk and lead and lay on things. However he could also make people and things pass through him. That is not his default state, he has to think about it to make it happen. But about a month after his “awakening” he learned to do it easily.

Exactly a year after his death A woke up in the attic, trapped in his body. He left Wammy’s as soon as he could. He is pale, his veins on his wrists and his ribcage is easily seen. He bruises easily, and sometimes some spots of him will bruise for no reason and stay like that yellow-brown-green tint for about a week before disappearing. He does not grown, lose or gain weight, his hair and fingernails don’t grow anymore either past the state they were when he died. For some reason if cut they return to their previous state over time like any live human's would. He doesn’t need to sleep or eat or breath or blink either.

He can still get high, or drunk, or be dragged, and painkillers still work on him.

Now onto injury. He can be injured. He will remain conscious and feeling until there is a point where an alive human would die, then he will pass out until his body regenerates back to the state where a human would not die if they sustained those injures. So if he regenerates to the point where his arm is just missing but like his heart has grown back, he will wake up because of pain.