The only son of a schoolteacher and a professor, Hagan grew up surrounded by learning of all kinds. Most of his young life was spent in Dublin, where he was constantly challenged and perhaps pushed as well. His father, Colin O'Sullivan was a well-respected and brilliant professor of physics at Trinity College. He was always encouraging Hagan to follow in his footsteps. Much to his father's dismay however, he found his son didn't have the knack for the high intellectual pursuits. Although the young Hagan showed strong language skills, he failed to grasp numerical concepts. In fact, he fared quite poorly in math and the sciences.
The frustrations of his father translated to disappointment for the young Hagan, who tried very hard to earn his father's approval. The inability of Professor O'Sullivan to talk to his son on a personal level drove a wedge between them and lent a certain bitterness to his son's character. He would always talk to Hagan as if he were either a colleague or a student - more the latter than the former. There was very little outward affection displayed, and Professor O'Sullivan was exceedingly poor at letting his son know when he -was- proud of him and his accomplishments, such as when he had his first short story published at the age of 16.
This inability of Colin O'Sullivan to express outward affection is what caused his parents to divorce when Hagan was fifteen. Mary O'Sullivan took her son and moved to Galway, where she got a job at the local primary school.
On a mostly subconscious level, Hagan blamed himself for his parent's separation and linked it with his inability to live up to the physicist's intellectual standards. The result was that he became sullen and stopped applying himself to even the schoolwork that he did apply himself to. The teachers in Galway did not inherit a promising humanities student from Dublin. They inherited a sullen, slacking teenager who seemed to have given up.
If it wasn't for a mistake in class scheduling, Hagan O'Sullivan may have never found his calling. He was assigned to a newly formed graphics class instead of history. In his sullen state, he never bothered to have it corrected.
For the young man whose whole academic life up until that point had been pushed towards the frustrating end of numbers and calculations, the logic and expression of graphic design appealed to him greatly. Although he had never done anything artistic beyond sketching in the margins of his notebook (too impractical, his father said) the trade seemed to click with him immediately. So it was natural that he would further his studies and he went on to attend the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
By the time he graduated, his head and his hands were trained in graphic design and he held a Bachelor of Design. He had come out of his shell personally as well, and had made friends with a handful of others who were similarly engaged. Hagan and his friends were bohemian in their outlook. Although most of their destinies involved working for ad companies, he was a design rebel of sorts, who would smoke and drink and then go home to create a logo for an oil or gas company or the packaging for some over-sugared snack.
After a few years at various firms in London and a year in Amsterdam, Hagan had developed a substantial portfolio and was directly responsible for the look of several small ad campaigns. It was during a graphic design conference in his hometown of Dublin that Hagan was approached by a large New York design firm called Schuster and Dale. Although he was reluctant to leave Europe, the pay they were offering was incredibly generous.
It didn't take long for New York to swallow the young designer whole. In addition to the freedom the money he was making gave him, he was constantly under pressure to perform to the strict standards of national and international campaigns. This lead to binge drinking and partying in between contracts to blow off steam. Maybe it was the vast quantities of wine. Maybe it was something in the air, but something strange was beginning to happen to him.
It was about 3 a.m after a particularly wild end-of-campaign bender. His friends were kind enough to make sure Hagan made it to the door of his building and he didn't remember how he managed to even -get- inside his apartment. An attempt was made to get to his bedroom, but he ended up collapsed on the floor, still conscious but unable to get up. As he lay there, he began to feel darkness creeping in around him. His mind addled by the massive amounts of alcohol could only comprehend it as unconsciousness swallowing him up.
If anyone were watching, they would have seen a much more alarming picture. Hagan -was- literally being swallowed up by shadows that seemed to creep from every corner of the room. Once the shadows engulfed him completely, panic set in. It was cold, very cold in the shadow's embrace. And although his eyes were open, he couldn't see a thing. Hagan was suddenly sobered and he sat up abruptly. The inky shadows pooled around him like puddles and prickled his skin with the chill of the darkness.
Hagan woke the next morning with a very clear sense of what had happened. Despite how drunk he was, he remained convinced that what happened was real. He found himself looking into shadows as he walked down the street. What's more, he started to feel an affinity with them.
He might have gone his entire life only experiencing a few more such incidents were it not for the explosion. Hagan happened to be out of the immediate fallout zone, but his apartment and everything he owned was wiped away. Once it became clear what had happened, Hagan wanted to return to Ireland as quickly as he could. But he had a contract with Schuster and Dale and for whatever reason, they weren't willing to release him. Their offices had not been affected and the company was connected to several international ad campaigns that still wanted their work completed.
So Hagan managed, with his company's assistance, to find a far less glamourours bachelor apartment. He was nonetheless grateful to have someplace to live at all. Things were grim but bearable for a time, until the announcement about the Evolved. In the time since the explosion, he had been more drawn to the shadows, but managed to ignore the sensation. He was unable to ignore the likely reality that he -was- one of those people. But when violence started to erupt, he felt something that he hadn't really felt since the disaster - anger. As an Irishman, he was keenly aware of the history of his ancestors. Repression, starvation, genocide. That anger fueled his connection to the shadows - not because of some metaphysical connection to physical darkness, but because of a desire to be empowered.
It took some time, but Hagan eventually began to control his powers and learn their full extent. It wasn't long before he started coming to the aid of those that had been attacked and to lash out at those who hoped to register and categorize those who were different. He surprised himself with this new anger, this new passion that seemed to have come from some place primal, beneath the veneer of the civilized graphic designer. He did not know how intoxicating the power had become and the fact that he had what felt like a righteous cause behind it only added fuel to the proverbial fire. At a deeper psychological level, it was also fueled by anger at his father and the historical injustices done to the Irish people.
It's a good thing his employers think the red under his fingernails is ink.
