John, with his desire for more children, eventually convinced Marek to foster children — somewhat unofficially at the time — but Dimitri was blessed and cursed with the companionship of foster brothers and sisters every so often, until they were eventually adopted out to other, hopefully loving, families. The result was that Dimitri was both an independent, lonely child, and one that developed a kind of affectionate yearning, the desire to be wanted, the desire to be needed. He took it very seriously to be everybody's big brother, to show them the ropes, to offer guidance where he could, even if, as he grew older, he started lacking in his own. Marek and John were always good parents, or tried to be — but their attention was often elsewhere, on fosters or work, and Dimitri was left to his own devices.

His own devices ended up with a committed passion to gymnastics, which he'd been doing as an extracurricular since he was tiny. He was a natural at it — a prodigy, he'd been called more times than he could count, plastered on local Bay papers every time he walked home from a nearby competition in first place. It wasn't even a question that it was what he'd do with his life. He was middling at best in school, getting by unnoticed for the most part, more popular when it came to sports — many of which he was skilled at, though his focus was entirely on gymnastics — and his school was progressive, with a strong gymnastics program, so he didn't end up as the butt of the joke very often.

Naturally, arrogance was the next step. Dimitri was good and he knew it. He was going to the Olympics, he was the next big star, he'd be a famous gymnast and he'd be loved by all. A famous coach in Baltimore wanted to train him one on one. He went. He excelled. He was going places. With that came popularity, and the desire to work harder and be better, and he did some drugs, just to help, obviously. He stopped, went cold turkey. He went to the Olympics. He made a small mistake, he lost his gold medal, and he lost it. Publicly. Very publicly, with the judges, on international television. He left, did more drugs, got into an altercation with a rival gymnast and accidentally — accidentally, really — fractured the guy's ankle.

Well, that was it. Dimitri was publicly disgraced, a humiliated failure and disaster, and with a record now thanks to that assault, and a substance abuse addiction, and — it didn't go well for a while, after that.

Eventually, Dimitri got himself back together. He re-entered society, and through some of daddy's connections managed to get some low level jobs reporting on gymnastics at a newspaper. He's infamous without meaning to me, a constant figure in gossip mags and followed by millions just to see what he might do next. From there he eventually ended up at SNTV as their Sports Reporter, and sometimes the guy who gets saddled with the gossip beat, if only due to the fact that Dimitri's not so arrogant anymore, and he still wants to be everybody's big brother, and a lifetime of ambition taught him how to get the story if he needs the story. It's not his passion and he's not quite sure what he's doing with his life, still — but to most people he sort of seems like he has it together. Sort of.