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dyanne
(last edited Nov 16, 2015 10:31PM)
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Jun 30, 2015 11:18AM
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Alias|| Liv, Ro, Cavanagh║ | Olivia Rowan Cavanagh | ║
Mutant Name|| L ᴜ ᴄ ᴋ
↔Sixteen | January 1st | Female | Bisexual↔
Face Claim||Katie Findlay
(view spoiler)
↔Dark Brown | Brown | 5’4” | 117 lbs↔
Naturally dark brown curls are usually straightened to rid her of that soft, younger, girlish look. Eyliner has become her best friend, accentuating, sharpening her brown eyes which may give off a deceptive warmth. Her complexion is unmarred, pale, her figure curved. She has two piercings: one right below her lower lip and one on her nose, but the presence of the piercings will fluctuate with her mood. She is not one to smile, but when she does, you're convinced for a moment that she is a star.
↔Six | Prodigalis | Amplifier | Three↔
Whether natural or mutant, Olivia has the rare ability to ehance/amplify any powers pre-existing in the people around her. Sit within a 15 foot radius of Liv, and you will find yourself surprised at your so-called "luck". The word luck brings the misconception that Liv automatically brings about good consequences, but that is not the case. She merely takes the talents you have and amplifies it. Threes, for a moment, can become like Fours, and if Olivia channels all her energy consciously towards you, for a short period of time, a Five, although it drains her, physically and mentally wearing her out. Usually, it's more subtle, although definitely present.
→P ᴇ ʀ s ᴏ ɴ ᴀ ʟ ɪ ᴛ ʏ
With such a power, Liv knows that there is a side of people, a side that wants to achieve greatness, that this lust overpowers humanity, allows them to take advantage of others, hurt, steal, lie, kill. Guilt is eclipsed by power, and power fueled even more by avarice. A cycle of dirty greed fueling dirty deeds which are covered by dirty lies. Because of this, Olivia has taken to observing rather than socializing and is consequently very good at watching without being watched.
She loathes society, loathes rules, but it is not a hipster act. It is not a desperate grab for attention. At first glance, it is clear enough that Olivia is tough, she is sinew and muscle and the curves steel into a dangerous resolve as she vandalizes buildings with anti-capitalist propaganda and mocks society for its sexism, its racism, its aversion to all who aren't heterosexual and its illusion of acceptance and justice. She loves the feeling of adrenaline pumping in her veins, the feeling of running, more specifically, running away, of critical, controversial statements and challenging what is normal for what is right.
Her sense of fun is in the thrill of the chase, or the thrill of evading capture. The pranks, the knowing smiles as people realize that to their horror, the girl who stayed in the shadows, the girl they underestimated and used, has a mind that is quick, sharp, with a ruthless blade which can so easily incapacitate. Chances are that you do not see the eyes watching and you do not hear the ears listening so intently, so when she lays down your secrets one by one on the table, you will sputter and try to retain what little dignity you have left by trying to remember Olivia's name. She may seem enigmatic, but her words are blunt and she will never sugarcoat anything for you. She can be brutal, but she is honest. She may keep things from you, give you nothing but a glare from hell when you ask, but it is never meant to hurt you.
She is fiercely loyal, but her loyalty is perhaps the hardest to earn, because use turns too often to abuse, and too many times there are ulterior motives, a gamble for personal gain involved in your association with her. It is only natural then, that this girl chooses to tell the truth to everyone, while trusting no one.→ Honest .......... Observant .......... Loyal
→ H ɪ s ᴛ ᴏ ʀ ʏRuthless .......... Closed-off .......... Cynical ←
|Wᴇ ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ɢᴇᴛ ᴛᴏ Cʜᴏᴏsᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Pᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ᴡᴇ Aʀᴇ.|
The Cavanaghs are a household name for those with any level of interest in the banking and stock market world. Richard Alastair Cavanagh III was no different from the rest. He used his family fortune, the vast array of resources he had, the tips and the tricks to make a mark, and by the time he was twenty-six, he was earning 20 million dollars a month. With money came the women and his wife, the formidable daughter of another blue-blooded Manhattan family could not satiate his needs, and so he found Tiffani, and while other women came and went, she stuck.
Imagine his surprise when he found she was pregnant, her refusal to abort, eyes filled with fairy-tale dreams of divorce and re-marriage and happy endings. By this time, he had already had three children with his wife. By this time, his entire reputation was on the line and words had become merely words. He gave her empty words but as the months past and she became just as jaded as he, money was enough to keep it quiet. Olivia was born into money. She could've flushed bucketfuls of 100 dollar bills down the toilet and it would've hardly made a dent.
Richard was not a stupid man, and he realized that when he visited Livvie, the rare moments he slipped away and found time for his mistress and his daughter, moments where he babysat Liv by turning the T.V. on as he worked on the couch next to her, his phone transactions were miraculously better, his trades and his investments reaped much more than usual, and his daughter's presence seemed to not only bring out his talents, but somehow enhance them. Livvie transformed into My Lucky Charm, and he slowly expanded out of his comfort zone, discreetly finding ways to bring her to his office, to important business meetings, smiling each time as his charisma grew, his transactions flourished, and his wealth skyrocketed.
That was when the media attacked. Richard's wife was aware of his mistress, but she had no idea of the millions he was investing in her and her child, and in one moment, scandal flashed onto magazines, newspapers, court trials were ordered, New York gathered hungrily to eat off of the juicy, sordid details of yet another "great" man's fall to ruin, but Richard was not scared. He looked at Olivia's big brown eyes, bought her twenty new dolls, the new DS, took her out to dinner, and told her, don't fail me now, my lucky charm. You hear me? You need your daddy's money and daddy needs your luck. She was eight.
She consciously tried to make herself lucky that day. She loved her father, loved how he showered her with kisses and gifts, and like most children, was blinded of the fact she was being used because of her ardent adoration. She tried so hard in that room where he was persecuted by his wife, but also by enemies and rivals and everyone who hated the name Cavanagh. Somehow, he came out unscathed and Olivia came out with a bloody nose for halfway through the trial, her energy drained and she collapsed onto the floor.
Throughout her elementary years, Olivia was popular at school. She had been "loved" or at least, well cared for, at home. People flocked to her, and she assumed that they loved her, that their loyalty lied in the fact that Olivia was a genuinely nice girl, that she cared deeply and fiercely and she was unafraid to speak up for what she believed in.
The day she got her letter from Equinox, she read the word mutant and thought, this isn't me. Eleven year old Olivia, reading again and again that her appeal laid not with her personality but with her power. The fact that the best soccer player on her team always scored the goals whenever Livvie was near. The fact that the smartest kid in the class always snagged a seat next to her on test day because he was bound to get one hundred percent. The fact Livvie was always at the front of the class because the teacher could teach that much better. Oh, god. They didn't even need Livvie. It wouldn't matter who she was so long as she kept on being what she was.
It took a few years, but she managed to break all the chains, to separate her character from her talent, to look with wary eyes and cynical heart, to cast off popularity for genuity. She doesn't look back. She does not regret it.
She lives with the knowledge that no matter how she was concieved, who her father is, who she was in the past, she is fully and irrevocably human. It's about time people started treating her like one.
→F ᴀ ᴍ ɪ ʟ ʏ
↔Richard Alastair Cavanagh||Father||Alive
↔Laurel "Tiffani" Marion Clarke||Mother||Alive
→ O ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ʀ
Alias|| Winslow║ | Ryden Lola Winslow | ║
Mutant Name|| G ᴇ ɴ ᴇ s ɪ s (view spoiler)
↔Sixteen | December 28th | Female | Pansexual↔
Face Claim||Kristen Stewart
(view spoiler)
↔Brown | Green/Blue | 5’9” | 115 lbs↔
Cat-like. It is a terrifying, razor-like, cold beauty that Winslow inhibits. Everything about her is sharp, from her cheekbones to her elbows and knees. She rarely smiles, but the rare occasions in which she does are usually done to accentuate her sardonicism. Seeing her angry eyes and smiling teeth can be, in all honesty, absolutely petrifying. She does not lack curvature, but more often than not it is hidden in the protrusions. Her hair has a natural, beach-like wave to it, and the color of hair changes with the seasons from dark brown to a more dark red/blonde color. Her eyes are accentuated with wings and cat-eyes created by a plethora of eyeliner and mascara. Other than that, her face stays relatively make-up free, although she is also quite fond of blood red lipstick. She is beautiful, cold, ethereal, but she also manages to make the hairs on your neck stand on end as she stares with piercing eyes like a tiger ready to pounce.
↔Six | Nativus | Light/Dark Manipulator | Four↔
It's rather simple. Winslow can create, manipulate, shape, and destroy light, claim ownership of the sense of sight, enhancing it or completely obliterating it. As a Four, she is incredibly powerful and adept at manipulating light, but excessive and incredibly strong usage can lead to fatigue, which explains the dark circles around Winslow's eyes every once in a while.
→P ᴇ ʀ s ᴏ ɴ ᴀ ʟ ɪ ᴛ ʏ
When people try to describe Winslow, more often than not, they end up using animalistic terms. Shark-like. Wolf-like. It comes with the fact that she is wild, that while her frame is piercing and her eyes usually expressionless, void, a trigger can lead to anger, and anger leads to a fire, a blaze of presence that creates a feral look that is definitely not human.
She is menacing. More often than not, she looks indifferent and overcome with boredom and the few friends she has are never quite sure when she is actually listening to them and when she is mocking them. When she talks, her voice always holds a level of antagonism, and 98% of the time her words are sardonic, sarcastic, sullen. She abhors dishonesty but is unafraid to throw lie after casual lie at you without batting an eyelash. She is intelligent, but her grades are nothing short of dismal because she does not try, and in most instances, she doesn't even attempt to go to class. Any human that has the capability to talk is someone she can pick a fight with, and she is almost constantly on probation for getting into fistfights with the entitled little brats who think they run the school.
She prefers the company of herself to anyone else. She lives in a world of her own thoughts, thoughts which become darker and darker as the night goes on, reaching blood red by the moments before dawn. She is fiercely independent. She is unafraid to show weakness, but she will get out of it on her own, thank you very much so save your hugs and sentimental statements. You do not understand the reason for her angry tears, and if you do, you know better than to comment on the ruined eyeliner.
She fluctuates from all emotion to no emotion in seconds. Her eyes blaze with fire as she throws punches which match the bite in her words quickly snap into a frost which seeps over everything and she runs, refusing to talk, refusing to listen. It is no facade. The fire and the ice, the dark and the light are all parts of Winslow which could not exist on their own. She is all and every extreme, but when the dark eclipses everything, do not think that this girl has forgotten light. The sarcastic, sharply built, scary Winslow is made up of darkness which everyone sees and a light which, ironically, is so difficult to pinpoint. You find her light when you follow her to the abandoned mall in the dead of the night and watch the light bloom, reflecting the lights in her eyes which give off a warmth that is not blue fire, which is not as quick to burn. You find her light when you enter her dorm room and find that almost every empty square inch on her wall is crammed with books, books she has not yet read and books she has read so many times that every single page has the same sharp, citric, strangely pleasant scent which also reeks off of the girl's clothes and hair. She is a girl who loves to read and hates to write. She has no time to express her own sentiments, or if she does, she finds the way in the long string of expletives she shouts at the poor soul who decided that feminism was to be treated like a joke. You find her light in the scrawny excuse of a kitten she finds in a dirty alleyway on a forbidden trip outside the academy and the way she cuddles it fiercely, refusing to let it die.
She is fierce, she is extreme, she is either all into it, or completely put off. Fire and ice, light and dark, she will give you light only to take it away and laugh, she will attack you to find the truth and when you tell her, she'll scoff and pretend to forget. She will never give in or give out, simply change her mind, and she will always find the way to bring out both the worst and the best within you. You will call her an enigma and she will blow smoke in your face and taunt you, asking then why don't you come and solve me? and it is said in the way that will keep you up all night, wondering whether it is love or hate that fuels her so.→ Intelligent .......... Dedicated .......... Independent
Unreadable .......... Volatile .......... Cruel ←
|I ᴍᴀʏ Dɪᴇ ʏᴏᴜɴɢ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴀᴛ Lᴇᴀsᴛ I'ʟʟ ᴅɪᴇ sᴍᴀʀᴛ.|
→ H ɪ s ᴛ ᴏ ʀ ʏ
Winslow was the product of poverty and lack of protection, the result of two highschoolers who had enough hope and reverence for life that they dealt with her cumbersome presence for nine months. When the pink mewling thing was born, it was birthed, named, and then promptly dropped off at the government foster-care department. Her mother lived with the assurance that she had done her job and had the stretch marks as proof.
Her first foster parents were people who looked at the word temporary as a safe haven, who took in children not out of love but of the extra money it provided and the fact that they could brag to their friends about how dutiful they were. They were to keep Winslow until she was two, but they broke the contract because of the fact that the lights would unfortunately turn off and refuse to come back on whenever Winslow cried. They were perplexed, but they were vapid, so they did not question it and merely sent in a complaint about unruly behavior and not signing up for such a brat and she was deposited into foster home number two.
Two became three, and three became seventy-six, as each set of parents decided she was too sullen, too angry, too much of everything. Ryden changed to Winslow with foster parents number twenty-seven. Four year old Winslow was asked without fail, every day: Wanna ride in your carseat, Ryden? and Winslow would always glare and refuse to get into the car for the next however so many minutes until, of course, she was dragged and buckled in. They withstood it for a month, and then she moved onto number twenty-eight. Mother number twenty-eight greeted Winslow with, How lovely to meet you, Ryden, to which Winslow replied, It's pronounced Winslow, and that was that.
Countless times spent running away. Countless times spent being caught and swinging legs in the hard plastic chair as policemen called and inquired and jabbed none too softly. Countless times getting into fistfights with boys at school who dared to kiss her. Countless times swinging legs in another hard plastic chair as a woman or man sternly reminded Winslow that knocking out two of Jack's teeth was not acceptable to society. Countless times where mysterious blackouts would fall upon the neighborhood whenever Winslow was overcome by anger. Countless time when yet again Winslow swung her legs in another hard plastic chair as foster parents explained that she was not what they were looking for.
Foster father seventy-one was a man who didn't like girls who said no, and so when Winslow refused to do as he said, he punched her in the face and she ended up with a black eye. In return, Winslow blinded him. She escaped going to Juvie because, well, who was to believe that blinding lights emanated from the girl's hand? Either way, it became harder and harder to find anyone willing to take the girl with sharp eyes and sharper tongue. But nine year old Winslow was in for a surprise when four eyes landed on her sharp blue/green ones and saw the wit, the light behind the dark hair. Seventy-six became Mom and Dad, slowly, but surely, as she found that the world was not devoid of love. She was far from the perfect daughter. They got a call at least once every three months about the girl who was sitting in front of the office with swollen knuckles. But sharp tongue stopped cutting as they won her trust and love, and they found that the method to winning Winslow's heart was simple enough.
It involved three things: time. acceptance. and books. Books. The art of escapism, of running away without stealing suitcases and confrontations from police, books mesmerized and unused dollhouses became bookcases until there was no more room so Winslow and her dad built wooden shelves which stored books upon books, stories upon stories, escape after escape, freedom after freedom. It was hard to know what was going on in the girl's mind, but sometimes, in the dark of the night, she would wake her parents up with a spectacular light show, and instead of screaming, they clapped and all three of them smiled in the dark, where no one could see.
The government had heard of the mysteriously blinded man by now, and they looked in to find that Winslow was exactly what they needed. Her thirteenth summer was one where she got a letter with her full name printed in block letters as they asked for her to come to the Academy. She refused, and so the men in black came, dropping a sizable amount of money in the bank account of her parents and dragging the screaming, biting, kicking, punching girl into the Mercedes.
Equinox could've been hell, and the girl, whose parents were normal, lower-middle class, plain folk found to her disgust that too many in her grade were wealthy, entitled little brats. She tried to run away countless times, became even more impetuous, using both words and fists to create boiling blood. What keeps her in check? As much as she hates to admit it, it is fear. She has been in trouble enough times to have a little idea of what happens to those who are too rebellious for the system's liking.
Her trips outside campus have gradually dwindled, but still, once a month, she runs outside the campus and doesn't stop until she reaches the payphone next to the sketchily located gas station next to the highway. Put in the quarters, wait until she hears the all too familiar voices of her parents, who do all the talking, telling her what's happening around town and what's not, embracing her with their voices as they fight over who talks first and talking too long and who gets to talk about this or that. Against her will, her hands glow and tears spill over as she is reminded yet again that as long as there are people who still love, life is not without hope.
→F ᴀ ᴍ ɪ ʟ ʏ
↔ Julia Grace Rittershofer||Adoptive Mother||Alive
↔ Conner John Rittershofer||Adoptive Father||Alive
→ O ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ʀ
↔ Ryden smokes. She knows it's terrible for her, but she stopped caring about her health a long time ago.
Alias|| Zane.║ | Zane Armitage McAlister | ║
Mutant Name|| P ᴀ ʀ ᴀ ᴅ ᴏ x
↔Seventeen | May 8th | Male | Heterosexual↔
Face Claim||Dylan O'Brien
(view spoiler)
↔Dark Brown | Brown | 6'1” | 160 lbs↔
Enough hair gel to make the hairs stand on end but not so much that it looks like he cares. Eyes which do not give off the "warmth" that other brown eyes do, just as unreadable as the rest of him. He is definitely not unpleasant to look at, but Zane is not your typical pretty-boy and there is something a little bit... savage to him that is contradicted by his easy, graceful confidence and upper Manhattan lilt. He is slim but never lanky, muscular but lean. Whatever qualms you may have about his soldier-like qualities will die down as soon as you see his smile, a charming, but genuine grin which slides on easily and is often accompanied by a laugh which completely disarms you and him both.
↔Seven | Prodigalis | Immunity | Three↔
For a Three, Zane's powers are incredibly strong. It is immunity, an impenetrable shield built around his mind which cannot be broken by telepaths, charmspeakers, clairvoyants, astral visioners, illusioners, possessors, and it gives him an odd sort of satisfaction to see the annoyance flicker on the faces of the Animus house as they realize that he is 100% immune 100% of the time. Along with all of Animus, he is unaffected by some of the Prodigalis as well, for instance, those with dynamokinesis or chaos manipulation, both of which deal with spiritual/mental forces. With much concentration, he can extend and hold this "force field" around ten others, but it is exhausting and in practice, too often has he ended up falling back onto the floor and losing consciousness.
→P ᴇ ʀ s ᴏ ɴ ᴀ ʟ ɪ ᴛ ʏ
There is the charm. But there is also the honesty. Clashing, opposing sides of Zane which roughen the polite, smooth, upper-class mannerisms. But he is confident with both, and so while many raise eyebrows, no one dares question him and everyone feels a grudging respect for the boy who simply doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks.
But that does not mean he doesn't think. He is thoughtful, he knows the potential words have and so, he treats them like weapons of mass destruction, his haphazardness making him forget too often as his words cut like knives without his realization that letters have become weapons for murder. He sees no shame in hiding who he is, and his sarcastic comments are not so much passive-aggressive defense mechanisms but merely the appreciation of irony and the darker side of humor. His words contradict his charm, but then again, he is the son of a Senator and like his father likes to remind him every phone call, Zane would be an amazing politician. But then again, Zane would be amazing in a lot of fields.
It is odd, seeing such a boy with such money, such charisma, surround himself with the outcasts and create his own little band of misfits, to separate himself from wealth and "class" and choose instead for genuinity, despite the costs. The costs are nothing compared to the gain, the gain of being fully at ease with who he is and not having to stand hushed whispers and strange looks as Zane writes lines upon lines of Allen Ginsberg and T.S. Eliot from memory in his beat up leather notebook, as he paces his floor at two a.m. because while his body feels like death his mind has never been more alive, as he rolls like a puppy on the grass and grins up at the stormy sky and thoroughly drenches every single inch of his body, once, twice, three times. Soaked and yet somehow still giving off heat he will give that same old grin and tell them that this is living.
His flaw lies in his carelessness. He is not indifferent, he just doesn't fully understand how much weight he can throw around, and his restless heart does not realize that some people need anchors, that his lilt, his charisma, his genuine astonishment that money isn't always a given is taken as condescension. His carelessness is what makes him so appealing to most-- he is not apt to worry, and if anxiety befalls him, he'll be the first to act, to bring thoughts into reality. He can seem so fearless because of the nonchalance, and he is unashamedly reckless, unashamedly pushing, always pushing to see where the next leap will bring him.
He is not always honest, but he is genuine. It is hard to understand him, yes, he seems to be a paradox of old and new, an old man in a boy's body or a boy's mind in an old man whose responsibilities weigh down visibly. He is both smooth and rough, constantly confident but also always a bit self-conscious, not of what people think but of what the world wants of him. He aspires to greatness that is not found in money or fame or looks but something otherwordly, and it's so hard to say whether he believes that he is wasting his life away or that he is the only one living it to the fullest.→ Thoughtful .......... Genuine .......... Charismatic
→ H ɪ s ᴛ ᴏ ʀ ʏCareless .......... Judgemental .......... Reckless ←|Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴛʜᴇ Pᴜʀsᴜᴇᴅ, ᴛʜᴇ Pᴜʀsᴜɪɴɢ, ᴛʜᴇ Bᴜsʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ Tɪʀᴇᴅ.|
Zane. An abnormal name. But a name that left an impression. That is why Senator McAlister chose such a name for his son, breaking the line of Jefferson Charles McAlisters and opting instead for something new. Something bold.
Years later, Jefferson Charles McAlister III would look at his son and nod to himself in a triumphant manner. The foresight Zane's father had possessed when choosing a name for his child was uncanny. Because Zane was no ordinary boy. He was his mother's dark, piercing eyes and his father's easy smile, the boy who wore Armani suits at five and shook hands with Senators, polite, serious, casting childishness aside for charm. He was the model child, a boy people cooed over and complimented and his parents were proud.
He was all his parents ever wanted in their child. He was fearless and adventurous and reckless enough that amusing dinner party anecdotes were created about that time that Zane did this or Zane did that, but he possessed enough maturity to either be discreet about his rebellious antics or choose against going too far. He was rebuked many, many times, but he was never looked upon with eyes of disappointment.
He was eight when he met Ellie. It was just another dinner party, he had brought his DS and his best smile, but when he found another person his age, he jumped at the opportunity and startled for a moment, charm slipping into confusion when the girl asked him quietly but thoughtfully with eyes much too old for her tiny frame if he was a zombie. There was an uncomfortable silence that fell around the room and her parents looked embarassedly away from their daughter before Zane replied that as far as he knew, he probably wasn't in a slightly sad tone (because every eight year old would like to be a zombie at some point) and the grown-ups laughed and all was right in the world again.
She was strange. But she was honest and animated and together, their imaginations stretched past infinity and into worlds that transformed guest rooms into far off islands in worlds undiscovered. Their parents became friends because of political alliances and Zane and Ellie became friends because they both knew how to dream. Ellie clung to him in a way that made him feel as if he were something more and a part of him saw the loneliness in the girl and perhaps that was what stopped him from completely losing interest in the art of escapism. He had become popular at school, his smile, his nonchalance had won him many friends and something told him that Ellie friends were not of the blue-blooded breed which Zane associated with.
When she suddenly left, there was no hole in his heart. He took her parents' words for face value, that she was now going to an all girls boarding school in Switzerland and that was that. He was not a boy to fret and he was still young, still arrogant, and so whatever sadness he felt was shaken off by the faces of equal charm and nonchalance that greeted him at school. At fourteen, his father looked at his son and gave a soft smile as they filled in application papers for the boarding school his father had gone to and his father's father had gone to, and in ninth grade, without someone to look up to, Zane discovered who he was.
He was not like the other smooth talkers and wealth-craved boys he associated himself with, and as he realized he had slipped into an act that disillusionized him, he found himself slipping from the mold and adopting a new crew. They were all young, all reckless, all craved something in life that was more than what the tangible provided so despite numerous differences, Zane rallied together a group of four other boys who ardently loved and admired him despite all of his flaws.
He found happiness at school, and he was always occupied with a new project, balancing adventure and schoolwork and girlfriends who were all wild and beautiful but never really more than that. He was too occupied to open the letters he recieved, letting them pile up as he exchanged witty remarks with his friends, had contests with his soccer team to see how many pizza slices they could stuff in their mouths in a minute, and made out with Aurelie or Cameron or some other intelligent, flighty, exquisite girl who was caught in the intrigue of Zane's incredibly strong eyebrow game. He was living, and adrenaline and belonging gave him a sort of comfort that eclipsed the cracks.
One day, the beginning of January in his seventeeth year, he recieved a letter followed by men coming for him and his stuff as he tried to process the word mutant in his brain. He was dropped off at Equinox to start over from scratch and he was, more than anything, completely bewildered. He does not understand why he is here. But he is determined to find out.
→F ᴀ ᴍ ɪ ʟ ʏ
↔ Jefferson Charles McAlister III||Father||Alive
↔ Ashlynn Marguerite McAlister||Mother||Alive
→ O ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ʀ
(view spoiler)[ VIVIAN HARPER LESLIE ]When Vivian was little, her parents used to call her Little Miss Sunshine, and for good reason. Sweet and unsuspecting, the three year old Viv was just that: sunshine, not too unusual a connection for a happy, blonde little toddler who scampered around the playground with limitless energy. But unlike other girls, Vivian never outgrew the moniker. Or perhaps, the sun never grew tired of her, for the girl never stopped shining.[ FBI Undercover Field Agent • Twenty-Three ]
She is a genuinely happy person, an optimist, a compassionate girl who wants to see big changes in the world, changes for the better. Always smiling, always laughing, and at times, yes, she can be taken lightly, just another young twenty-something who is the epitome of fun. But she scored a high-profile job with the FBI so young for a reason. She is incredibly intelligent, and she makes up for lack of experience with book smarts, street smarts, and sometimes, just her own intuition, which has yet to prove her wrong.
She is innocent, but she is not ignorant. She is unafraid to ignore social conventions and create her own set of rules, and perhaps this is what has preserved the youth and the joy in Vivian for all these years. Let's just hope it lasts.– Who says I can't be sexy and sweet and deadly?
(view spoiler)
•| ALEXEI IOANN RACHMANINOFF |•"loyalist co-leader"
[ – I'm not here to start a revolution. I can thank the Republic for doing that for me. • Twenty -Eight ]Twenty-one years ago, Valentin and Alexei hiked to the top of a "mountain" (a small hill, in actuality) and felt like gods gazing down at ants. When the sun set and the sky turned blood red, Valentin looked at Alexei with his impish smile and stated, quite proudly, my sister's going to rule all of this someday. Alex replied with a raise of his eyebrows, and what about you?
I'm going to protect my sister. And you're going to, as well.
Says who?
Says me, and I'm your prince, so you better listen.
That evening, both boys looked up at the stars and both took silent vows. One boy swore that his sister would never come to harm under his watch. The other swore that he would protect the boy that lay gazing up at the stars beside him. They both failed. Two weeks later, the bloodbath occurred. Irinushka disappeared. Valentin was taken captive. Alexei sobbed and muffled his screams on a stranger's jacket as his father was stoned in the town square and the people jeered and cheered, watching the man of 6 foot 4 turn to nothing but the cracking of bones and the gushing of blood.
His failure catalyzed his ambition. It catalyzed his charisma, his will to learn, his will to spy, his will to lead, to prove himself worthy. He is brilliant, schooled in academic, diplomatic, social, and physical constructs. Blessed with his father's stamina and speed, his mother's intelligence and diplomacy, and something else altogether. As he rose up in the ranks and the stakes grew higher, he only seemed to grow stronger.
Loyalists compare him to a god. They look at him and they find hope in his confident gaze and the determined set of his jawline. They do not notice the anger and grief still set in his eyes, sunken ships which lay at the bottom of his heart. They dismiss the face that has seemingly forgotten how to laugh and seldom smiles. Behind his ego, his courage, his brilliant mind, his biceps, the boy is governed by fear and doubt, like them all. Fear that he will look into the eyes of his former friend and see the failure written all over the other boy's eyes. Doubt of his worth, a worth that cannot truly be proven until he can hike to the top of the hill once more to tell the stars that he kept his promise.
(view spoiler)
•| KAROLEK MARKO SOKOLOV |•"the cafe co-owner"
[ – I admit that I am a klutz, but I like to think that I fall somewhat gracefully every once in a while. • Twenty -Two ]Karolek always jokes to his friends that he is the black sheep of the family, an introvert in a sea of extraverts, a boy made up of scraps and left-behind pieces. If Karolek truly were made up of leftovers, the sum of these parts come up to form a naturally shy, clumsy, sensitive boy with haphazard mannerisms that play along the threshold between charming and awkward. Which is why he is almost always behind office doors, in a spacious room where he is allowed to absentmindedly gaze at the empty space between picture frames for two hours straight before turning into a panicked mess and getting three hours worth of work done in less than thirty minutes.
He can seem rather reserved, smiling briefly but choosing to say little, preferring to stay silent, observing until a particularly witty comment or a funny story causes him to laugh aloud and forget his reservations as his face lights up and his eyes are filled with a presence that transcends words. Give him time, let him laugh, and you will soon find him babbling away about all and every topic as you stare in bewilderment at a boy whose first impression convinced you that he was most definitely mute.
His expertise lies with street smarts, and despite his goofy mannerisms and awkward endearments, he is level-headed and he deals with the world of common sense. Economical matters come easily to him and while he might not be the most graceful or verbose of businessmen, his eyes are atuned to the opportunities that lie in the world of logistics. He spends his time with his numbers and his own nebulous thoughts, laughing to himself as everyone else wonders what could possibly be so funny about a screen filled with stock investments.
(view spoiler)
•| KATERYNA ELVIRA VODOVATOVA |•"president of pravitel"The press can go fuck itself. Kateryna Vodovatova won the election fair and sqaure, and no matter how many times her opponents, the media, the entirity of the world tries to slither their way into the dirty laundry she must be repressing somewhere, they will never find it. Why?[ – I'll take care of it • Forty-Four ]Because President Vodovatova didn't cheat the system.She fought tooth and nail for this presidency, she overcame all and every obstacle, kept going when everything, and she means everything was drawn up against her, spent countless nights completely and utterly alone. If you have to give this woman something it's the admittance, however reluctant, that she does not back down. This was not some chance victory. Kateryna is determined to make a lasting impression. Not simply as a person, with her incredible charisma and charm, that smile and the graceful, lilting voice which can smoothly negotiate her way out of everything, but with her accomplishments. This is a new age which calls for new ideas.
Ideas which Kateryna will never be lacking. She is idealistic, but never enough to disillusionize. Each week, the ratings get higher as Kateryna's utilitarian methods skyrocket, as her iron fist of justice comes clamping down on those who oppress and glorifies the marginalized, as she continually breaks boundaries by chasing after corruption, wherever it may occur.
Kateryna is careful. She rose up out of poverty, out of sexism, out of corruption and deceit and murder, and now that she's out, she's determined to stay out. On her terms. Deception is a subtle art, and she knows how to play people well. She seems much kinder than the last president, especially to the royalty, favoring more towards those persuasive speeches, the charming smiles, the 'I want to be your friend. Don't you see? Together, we can shape a better world,' to physical torture. But do not doubt her ruthlessness. Do not test that mind, no doubt sharper than yours. She's not going to come down without a fight. Try and usurp her, and you will be murdered, a slow, painful death where all your dreams crumble before your eyes until all that is left is the ghost of a smile and echo of the wordsIt's better this way.
(view spoiler)[ – Remembering? What is there to remember? • Twenty -Five ]
•| OLESYA ESFIR DUBROVSKAYA |•"brainwash as needed"
There once was a girl who tried to wrap strips of her pretty white dress around her mother's wrists as blood and life gushed out of the woman who had given up all hope. Yet another casualty of the revolution. Soon afterwards, she was taken to a nice foster home and adopted by the men who took her to a room that was far too white to be real and it was here that they taught her the art of forgetting.
It is an unappreciated art, and Olesya does not know how adept she is at it as they train her mind to become nothing more than a blank slate. She feels pain, but she does not know why, sometimes she smiles, and then automatically scowls at the weakness she has flaunted. Pills and liquids and shocks at high voltage are administered and the girl is taught to obey, to train, to feel no emotion, to feel pleasure only in submission as they strip away every human layer, one after the other, leaving behind an empty shell of a girl who has forgotten what the sun looks like and does not remember what country she lives in.She is fighting for a cause, like everyone else. But the cause she is fighting for is not her own.
(view spoiler)(
It is an interesting question: what is it that you first notice upon looking at someone? For some it's their nose. For others, their hair. For Rosaline, it is her eyes, which are scarred with bitter memories and tidal waves of pain. Amidst the blue-blooded nobles and the shining silverware, Rosaline protrudes, a shard of glass piercing the surface.
Her story is simply the result of poverty. It is the result of a father who cared only for full pitchers of beer and not for the full bellies of his children, of a mother whose once beautiful figure was wasted away by nine babes, her will to live whittled away with each pink, screaming monster that was delivered. It was the story of a rent that only seemed to go up and luck that only seemed to go down. She was the fourth, and so she was nothing, just another hand trying to coax the unforgiving earth to yield a bit of food, another stomach which only knew how to grumble.
(view spoiler)The key to getting people to see what you want them to see is to first show them what they want to see. The fine art of being a con-man lies not in the presentation of yourself but in the ability to read the details, the fine print of the people in front of you. Know exactly where to tug to win their trust. Once trust is gained, they're yours. The delicate games of lies and trusts shattered completely when he found the academy. The walls were stripped bare of the slippery facades and he found himself confronted with who he really was, just another one of the decieved, not the deciever he thought himself to be. It was his chance to burn the masks and stop running from his own demons, his own dreams.[Dec • Eighteen • Male • Heterosexual • Con Artist • Brann]• Eirik Declan Wolff •
He didn't take it. His mask now lies in the winning smiles, the cheeky winks, the relaxed, carefree, not-so-subtly egotistical demeanor. The story goes that he's the son of some foreign duke. The story goes that the jagged scar at the base of his collarbone is a testement to his recklessly glamorous past. Let them devour the stories. One day, they might become something more than lies.
Rᴇᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀ ᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ Cᴇɴᴛᴜʀɪᴇs
♦♦♦Aragorn James Memini♦♦♦↛Aragorn
Of Sindarin origin, meaning either noble warrior or royal tree
↛James
Variant of Jacob: of Hebrew origin, meaning heel grasper, deceiver
↛Memini
Of Latin origin, from the Proto-Indo-European memón, meaning to remember or to think
Alias: Ari, Jamie, A.J., Memini
Age: 19
Birthday: September 25th
Zodiac: Libra
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Species: ½ Elvish, ¼ Human, ¼ Merfolk
Abilities attributed with species:
↣Increased lifespan and decreased rate of aging
↣Increased reflexes, speed, strength
↣Slight affinity for healing,
↣Increased wisdom and discernment
↣Ability to breath underwater
Kingdom: Diamonds
Role: Six
Occupation: Apprentice to a metalworker/jeweler
Appearance:
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green
Height: 6'1"
Weight: Approx. 130 lbs
Build: Slim and muscular♦♦♦♦♦
The first thing you notice about Aragorn are his startlingly green, nebulous eyes which sparkle with hundreds of different hues of emotion, lights in his iris flickering as if they were candles struggling to hold onto life in a strong gust of wind. The second thing you notice are his freckles. Never ending, seemingly dividing amongst themselves again and again, they are like stars- impossible to count and fascinating to look at. There is an artful, charming nature to Aragorn’s looks: to his angled jaw line, his exquisite eyes, his freckles, his always ruffled hair, his slightly crooked nose, and his slim, lean muscle, but he is nothing close to what one would call generically handsome. No, Aragorn is not handsome-- but he is a beautiful masterpiece of a different sort, and it’s impossible not to draw closer and take a second glance, to appreciate his tall, slim, yet steady form, his eyes always focused on a light not of the earth, his body almost always still, yet always alert, ready to move, ready to aim, ready to fire.
(view spoiler)
Personality:
There is a quiet sort of strength in Aragorn, which instills trust from those he meets. A serious straightforwardness which does not shy away from jagged corners and shameful truths. There are times when A.J. looks into your eyes and you swear he is piercing through the depths of your soul with the macrocosms in his eyes. He’ll give you a swift grin at your feeble jokes and a witty comment to show his appreciation at your tries but the smiles will rarely, if ever, reach his eyes.
He carries himself in a way so people take him for face value. They don’t pry into his life because it seems as if he’s got everything laid out on the table. Man of rather few words, polite, frank, strong. Unfazed by pretty much everything. Nothing is too much for him.
They’re lies. His demeanor, his smiles. If one saw him in his moments of solitude, he is usually completely still. So still, if you didn’t hear the nearly imperceptible inhales and exhales you’d think he was a statue. His body is crouched, muscles rippling, and intense concentration hovers in the air as he stares at some invisible prey. Watch him long enough and you’ll see the tears poisoning his cheeks, gathering up like cobwebs at the corners of his eyes, as he cries silently for a reason he cannot explain.
Aragorn feels too deeply. Do you see that thing, the thing that is moving, that feels, the indescribable shape on the floor that convulses to match the intensity, the inscrutability in his eyes? That there, is Aragorn’s heart, shielded only by glass. By the thin film of tears in his eyes. Aragorn’s heart cannot break. But the glass around it might.
He appreciates peace, he appreciates beauty, the beauty of both things created and things destroyed, and he appreciates the value of life. He treats people like people, and he cares, cares for both your joys and your sorrows. While he likes simplicity, and his firm character is attributed to strong morals, his world does not exist in black and white. The gray spectrum does not go unnoticed by Aragorn, and at nineteen, the boy is wiser than many ninety year old men.
Aragorn knows, better than anyone, how people hurt and how people can hurt. He knows about the monsters within him, which are much stronger and much realer than the ones in the fairy tales he tells when fixing the toys of the villagers’ children.
In the solitude, he is not afraid to be weak.
And that is why everyone sees him as strong.
Likes:
♦ Solitude
♦ Natural silence
♦ The dark
♦ The kind of companionship in which neither person has to talk and both are satisfied
♦ Building things, breaking thing, and putting things back together
♦ Knife throwing and archery
♦ Children
Dislikes:
♦ Dishonest men and women
♦ Being in an enclosed space with lots of people
♦ Freeloaders
♦ Hand-to-hand combat
♦ Nosy people
Strengths:
○ Any kind of fighting, whether long-distance, short-distance, hand-to-hand, etc.
○ Incredibly hard to deceive and incredibly good at deceiving/lying
○ Unafraid to stand up for the marginalized
○ Building or destroying basically anything
○ Agility
○ Wisdom
○ Compassion
Weaknesses:
○ Struggles with guilt
○ Fear of his own potential
○ Mistrust of people
○ Pain from his past
History:
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
(view spoiler)
It was hard to see hope when your father was a man who was already too old, too defeated, and you knew that if all the whispers were true, if you kept going down this steady descent to Hell, you would become the man you saw in front of you. Escaping being killed by killing. Escaping being stolen from by stealing. Most children grow up scared of the dark. But A.J. was taught that dark was safe. The shadows were where he lurked, where he could not be seen.
Jakob. His name used to be Jakob. He was the one who caused others to fall into the trap he had created for them, grabbing their heels and deceiving them until they willingly jumped into the pit themselves. His father was an elf who had been doing the same thing for a long, long time, too long for him to change his ways, even when he wanted to. His father had promised he would not teach the boy how to embrace the darkness, but one who is dark cannot show another light and because of this, the boy learned how to steal before he learned how to walk, and learned how to kill when the little boy across the street learned how to take his wooden blocks and build.
The boy’s name was Jakob but his father always called him Dec. Dec, short for Decipiatur. Deceiver. When he was born, the father contemplated killing him. Abandoning him. An assassin had no time to raise a child, and definitely not enough time to raise him properly. But the father, even after so many deaths gifted by the metal of his blade or the precision of his arrows, could not bring himself to leave the child with those startling green eyes, for he still possessed a heart. The shade was unique-- he had never seen it before, except on the rare occasions he ran into his own reflection. And in those eyes, he saw an expression he wore too often. These were the eyes that saw, out of the very corner, the image of a dead woman lying on the floor. A life paid for the life spared. The boy’s face wore an expression which said, This? I know this. I’ve done this too many times before.
The boy was not just the boy.
He was his boy.
And so the boy stayed.
He raised the child as best as he could, but before he knew it, he was teaching the boy how to steal. And then how to kill.
He was no longer just his son, he was his accomplice in crime, his partner, his right-hand man.
The elf had known solitude for 587 years. He had shrouded himself in the shame and loneliness of being a bastard, a con-man, a thief, an assassin, and he had succumbed to the eery silence of his home, where that was, long ago. The only sounds he had really known were the occasional screams and protestations of the demons in his own mind.
And now, he had another life, which first depended on him, and now, he depended on. The boy loved him, and he did not care that the man was the master of illusions, nor did he care that his father used other men, deceiving them before he could be deceived. For God’s sake, the boy did not even care that his father was a bastard, through and through. Those green eyes, which reminded him the first night he saw them that he was not the only one with the weight of the world crashing down on his shoulders revealed the language of trust, of friendship, of love. They were inseparable.
Against the hate of the world, a world that hated them but needed them, they not only survived. They thrived. They thrived against the hate, the hate rooted from the fear, fear of these men that looked like men and acted like men but couldn’t be men, for what men could possibly kill other men and feel no guilt? The world deceived itself into believing that Jakob and his father were no more than monsters lurking underneath the beds of children, figments of the insomniac’s imagination. They trusted the fallacy, the fallacy which told them men who lived too long in the shadows became a shadow themselves-- a wisp of darkness, nothing more.
They were wrong. The father and the son were alive, real, real men with real guilt. How did they escape it?
The answer: they didn’t.
They felt it alright. And some days it was crippling, and all the two could do was sit and stare at blank walls, asking why they still had hearts capable of feeling, capable of hurting because of the hurt they’d caused others.
But they kept going.
Father and son, they deceived together, they stole together, they killed together.
The motto: Never. look. back.
For fifteen years, Jakob lived that life of darkness, never doubting himself, and more importantly, never doubting his father. He was not overly trusting, but in him, from the blood of his whore of a mother, was the blood of men, of a race that clung desperately to companionship. The love for his father overcame all doubt, until one day.
One day, when he was quietly watching, once again in the shadows, bow and arrow in hand, waiting for the whispers to become reality, for the lord’s eldest son to appear, so he could swoop in like a bird and steal the man’s heart. 50,000 gold pieces were at stake. No one would suspect the small, skinny, freckled boy who was barely visible.
But Jakob, though an assassin, was still a boy, and for some reason, his mind wandered, and he missed the chance. The man appeared and disappeared before Dec could do anything. His first mistake in fifteen years. He had never had to come back home ashamed, never seen disappointment in his father’s eyes, which, while 587 years older than his, were so much like his own. He wasn’t planning to. He was fast, he was dark, and in his dirty clothes and large satchel which hid his weapons, he looked like any other small beggar boy on the street.
He was running, tracing the scent of the lord, which he had only caught a whiff of when he was taken from the behind. He was sure this was the end. Someone knew. Someone had found out. He suddenly became very still. There were more than a thousand ways to incapacitate the one who was holding onto him. There were more than five thousands ways to escape. But he would have to be patient.
Slowly, he turned around, and to his surprise, saw a woman, a woman who was once beautiful but whose beauty had faded, faded with time and with the burdens of life, which had cracked her back and blinded her eyes. A blind, woman who was also… dying. The woman’s hands were already nothing but skin and bone. She was still beautiful but now, she glowed with the aura of death. Skin translucent. Eyes hollow. Legs trembling.
“Aragorn…” she whispered, holding him close. Even in death, she smelled of something sweet, something warm. “My brave… my noble… my only warrior. Don’t forget your mamma. Don’t forget her.”
(view spoiler)
“Your mamma loves you very much, Aragorn. My brave, brave boy…”
Trapped in the woman’s embrace, Jakob learned that day what it meant to be human.
Being human meant one was cursed, cursed because they were not able to forget the dead faces which emerged in his sleep every once in a while, haunting him with their presence by the fading ink on parchment, a portrait which turned up every once in a while, or even simply by a queer image which was created by smoke on a windowpane.
The boy also realized he did not know his father’s name.
Fifteen years.
In his life of fifteen years, the boy was no closer to knowing who his father was than any other stranger on the street. He did not know his father’s name.
Or what it meant.
He knew his own name was Jakob, but he was also Dec, because they both meant the same thing. The deceiver. The deceiver was not brave. He was the furthest thing from brave.
Did he want that?
He did not know.
And because the boy was fifteen, because he did not know how to fight the war within him properly, he went and tracked down the lord and finished him.
But it wasn’t the same.
That night he went home and gave his father the 50,000 gold pieces, but also, also a look he had never given his father before.
A look of doubt.
And then, a question:
“What is your name?”
It started with a question, and it ended with two men standing, facing each other, on opposite sides of the room, each with a knife in hand. The question had not been answered. The boy looked at his father, who was looking at him the way an animal looks at its prey. Still, curious, deadly. He looked at his own form, which mirrored his father’s, and he could not take it anymore.
He could not take the fact that he was Dec, that he was Jakob.
He threw his knife and it drove into the wall behind his father, a mere inch away from the man’s face.
“I’m leaving.”
Silence.
And then… “No. Please. Stay.”
A plea. For the first time in his life, the boy saw emotion, desperation in the man’s eyes. The wisdom, the assurance, even when the man was fighting demons, even when he was dealing with guilt, had always been there, and it was what had strengthened Jakob. But now, now, it had lessened. Replaced with something else. Vulnerability.
This man, this man that he did not know, was his father.
And while he did not know the man, he still loved him.
So he stayed.
When he woke up in the morning, his father was gone.
He never came back.
The boy, like all boys, in this betrayal, in his hurt, tried to harden his heart.
Encase it in iron.
But he had spent his entire life destroying, so he did not know how to build, build a cast for his heart and the iron cracked.
For three years, he tried, tried pretending that he had never known his father, that he had never loved, and he kept on going, kept on stealing, objects, hearts, literal and figurative, it was all the same.
Never. look. back.
But on a night of a crescent moon which grinned and jested at the boy who had become so much like his father, knowing only solitude and the voices in his head, it changed. Like usual, the boy killed. But then, because he was tired, because there was no meaning, because the boy who he had poisoned was the same age as he, a four who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and heard things he was not supposed to hear, he stayed.
Stayed in the shadows, and looked. Looked back.
Grief. The grief of a mother when she sees her son, dead, mouth parted and eyes closed as if he were only sleeping but lips blue, heart quiet, hands cold, breaks the hearts of everyone around her.
What he learned that night: The living have to carry the weight of the dead on their shoulders.
How many had he killed? How many mothers had he broken by giving them another dead child to carry on their backs?
He swore that night was the last night.
The following day, he ripped to shreds his old identity.
Watched it burn.
And then he walked, walked to a village with nothing but the clothes on his back and a name. A name given to him by a woman who didn’t know him, but nonetheless told him she loved him.
A name which erased the name given to him by a man who he didn’t know, but nonetheless loved.
Aragorn.
Different name.
Same motto.
Never. Look. Back.
Family:
↣Father//Most likely alive//Name Unknown//606 years old
↣Mother//Deceased//Name Unknown//Age Unknown
Other:
Ode to Sleep||Twenty One Pilots
Run and Go||Twenty One Pilots
(view spoiler)
‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ seventeen • female • human ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧
Ella, known to all as Cinderella is an unquenchable flame, cinders never depreciating her beauty but perhaps adding to the light. What is left of her family sees the firecrackers of life as a challenge, deliberately seeking to heap the girl with blacks and blues, destroying the girl who was once innocent, who was once happy. But they have yet to snuff her out.
The story starts with death. The death of a mother, good and kind, whose fire of kindness never faded. Death catalyzed a daughter's vow to cherish the fire within her mother and root it in her own soul despite the grief thrusted upon her. The story ends with death. It ends with the death of a father, the death of the kindness of stepmothers and stepsisters, who hated the girl for her beauty. Ella became Cinderella and her ascent into the attic marked her as a dweller in the depths of hell as her life became synonymous with desolation and darkness. And yet for all the knives they threw and all the bruises and scars she recieved they could never carve out her will to live.
When does patience stop being a virtue? For over a year she has waited, toiling ceaslessly and without complaint (for the most part). For over a year she has learned how to become nothing more than a cloth doll for her stepmother to toss around. If not for the mice and birds which provide her with glimpses of good, she could very well have succumbed to death long ago. They are whittling her down; the girl who was once believed so strongly in bold acts of kindness is now full of fear. Every day, the lights in her eyes fade a little more. Every day, it takes a bit more for her to cling to the light and the romantic she once was.
But her resolve is still burning bright, clinging to kindness as she waits for a day when she will find the courage to let the fire consume, blazing through the pain and resurrecting a girl who is not made up of leftover cinders but a newly-birthed inferno of hope.
Name: Zabrina Alexis Jorden
Nickname: Jorden, Alex, Princess, That bitch
Age: 16
Birthday: April 17
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Appearance:
(view spoiler)
Hair: blonde
Eyes: blue
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 118 lbs
Build: slim yet curvy
Never will you catch Zabrina without make up. The carefully crafted, perfect facade never comes off around other people.
Talent:
Zabrina’s IQ is off the charts. Math is a joke, science is her playground. She can solve any equation, understand any mathematical hypothesis, and has memorized every postulate and theorem there is. Chemistry, physics, geology, ecology, meteorology, astronomy, biology, zoology, and botany are subjects she knows like the back of her hand. She has more information about any and all types of science than a college textbook and probably has had more scholarly articles published than math PhDs from Harvard. In the end, there is only one word to describe her: genius.
Effect of the drug:
As of now, it seems as if Zabrina never actually ingested the drug, as hard as that is to believe. In fact, it’s so hard to believe that the scientists are still testing, still searching, still scheming to try and understand why there are absolutely no traces of the drug in her system, no apparent side effects, nothing abnormal apart from the fact that they are potentially dealing with the smartest person in the world.
But that’s the thing. Zabrina is extremely abnormal, she’s just really, really, really good at hiding it. She will never tell anyone or show any sign that she wakes up at night overcome with a panic attack because she sees things, things that she’s not meant to see, things that make it impossible to tell whether she's dreaming or awake, things that distort reality, that cause her to wake up in random places far away from the academy. She refuses to believe she is hallucinating. She refuses to believe she needs help.
Because she’s normal. She’s fine.
Personality:
Let's be blunt: more often than not, Zabrina is a bitch. She had come to believe that a person's reputation is the equivalent of their life and she works to portray herself in a way that will make her look flawless, in a way that will make people jealous, that will get her on top. Everyone in the academy knows her name, not because she is a legitimate genius but because she's the queen bee of queen bees. She'll be sweet and nice to your face, leading you on only to stab you in the back. She knows how to wrap guys and girls alike around her finger, how to use her status in the school's hierarchy to use others.
But sometimes, she closes the door to her dorm room. She listens for absolute silence. And then she will take out the bottle of vodka she's been hiding in a little cabinet hidden behind her vanity mirror and drink until she can no longer feel anything. mascara-polluted tears will stream down her cheeks. She'll take out her blood red nail polish and paint her legs, her arms, her cheeks, her feet, and dance around naked to no music. Stumble into the bathroom, turn on the scalding hot water, watching it slowly fill up and then spill out of the tub which is so big, but not big enough. She'll dive in, waking up after God knows how long to the stench of vomit-laced lilac scented bath salts and bits of dried red floating in a pool of greenish-brown.
She'll clean it all up, leaving no trace that it ever happened, flawless once more. It's only then she'll sneak out with an ID which states her name is one that doesn't exist, slipping and sliding through the alleyways to find another bottle of vodka and a fresh supply of blood red nail polish.
Strengths:
~ All types of math
~ All types of science
~ Looking drop-dead gorgeous
~ Getting what she wants
~ Academic subjects in general
~ Keeping up the reputation
~ Is naturally good at almost everything
Weaknesses:
~ Being too obsessed with her reputation
~ Not caring about others unless she can use them in some way
~ Terrified of falling asleep
~ Hallucinates
~ Overall bitchiness
Likes:
~ Chemistry (although she'll never admit it)
~ Calculus (although she'll never admit it)
~ Make up
~ Fashion
~ Money
~ Beautiful things. Zabrina loves nature. Forests, deserts, waterfalls, mountains, any landscape that is organic, ancient, secluded, and untouched by man fills her heart with emotion which she normally completely ignores. She genuinely loves makeup because it makes her feel beautiful, like a princess, and she cherishes the golden flecks in green eyes, the dimple that pops up when someone smiles, the red glint of brown hair in the sun. But loving beauty is yet another weakness, a vulnerability she cannot afford, so she makes herself numb to it, forcing herself to become immune to the beauty in the world.
~ the close group of friends she has made to boost her popularity but now genuinely cares for and loves
Dislikes:
~ People in general but more specifically:
- Girls who don't wear makeup but really should
- Guys who aren't cute and smart and athletic
- People who are weird and proud of it
- People who are smart and proud of it (because who would want to be smart? Being seen as a nerd is a weakness, therefore it's another thing you have to hide)
- People who think they know it all
- Stupid people
- People who try to get her to like them by sucking up
- Basically any human being that breathes**
~ Dirt
~ Insects
~ Sleep
** Whether she genuinely dislikes people or just feels as if she should dislike them because it gives her an excuse to treat people like trash is unclear
History:
"I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and I asked the nurse right away whether it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned away my head and wept. “All right,” I said, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
“You see, I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so- the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated- God, I’m sophisticated!” - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Zabrina was born into a rich family which was, unsurprisingly, also an unhappy family. Born to a gold-digging mother and a workaholic father, Zabrina was the surprise child neither parent ever wanted. Oh, yes, she was cared for, what with a mother who dressed her in designer baby clothes and flaunted her to the other ladies in the neighborhood, resigning to the fact that she was no longer young and succumbing to the martyrdom of motherhood. Her father responded likewise, dutifully gave her the best of the best, using Zabrina’s existence as an excuse to work even harder, to become even more disconnected, while trying to keep up the reputation of a good father, signing her up for the local soccer and softball team, being present (glued to his laptop but nevertheless physically present) for all the games. When she started school, it was immediately apparent she was miles ahead of any other kindergartener in the class. She learned, understood and retained information a hundred times quicker than anyone else, and by the end of the year, she was smarter than her 52 year old teacher.
Zabrina's parents were dumbfounded. They hadn't asked for a daughter, and they definitely hadn't asked for a daughter that was a prodigy. In first grade, Zabrina enrolled at Williamson Academy, a private school for 'gifted and talented' students. By the time she hit 4th grade, Zabrina had stopped trying and kept up her grades by hacking into the school system and messing around: raising her grades, lowering those of people she didn't like, sending in complaints about certain teachers under the names of various parents to the head of the school, and leaking out the sordid private life of the dean.
As all this was happening, Zabrina's family life became more chaotic. Her parents fought constantly. Her father was away for days because of "work". Her mother ignored her daughter for days on end, choosing instead to surround herself with handsome young men who always stayed the night in the master bedroom.
Zabrina was never caught, but the scandal with the dean brought an end to the school and in fifth grade she was enrolled into a boarding school which was coincidentally located in the small town where the scientists had been testing (more on that later). There, she learned that grades and wits meant nothing if you weren't pretty, if you weren't desirable, if you weren't popular, if you didn't have status. Because of her long blonde hair and gray-blue eyes, a fellow 8th grader took the then 6th grade Zabrina under her wing and taught her things that teachers never did.
1) Guys don't like girls that are smarter than them.
2) Guys do like girls who are cute and sweet and who seem dependent and rather helpless.
3) Makeup can and will hide all your flaws.
4) It's all about reputation.
As Zabrina traversed in this foreign world, she learned to dumb it down, to hide her books about Quantum Mechanics and the Millennium Problems under pounds and pounds of unnecessary clothes and cosmetic products. She learned how to win people over but also how to put fear in their hearts, because when you had everything, people would try to ruin you, and the only way to keep that from happening was to emphasize the fact that you were more than capable of ruining everyone else's life.
The teachers were puzzled by this gorgeous girl who had such high admittance test scores but became more and more stupid as the years went on. Zabrina stopped turning in homework, bubbled in random answers for tests, and became more and more involved in the partying, gossiping, and backstabbing that took place in the school's social circles to the point where she was on the brink of expulsion. The administrators wondered if Zabrina was suffering from some sort of degenerative brain disorder.
And then, the people came. These people were rumored to be government agents (Part of the Illuminati, maybe?) who were planning to use the brightest and the best to take over the world- nameless faces with Armani suits who required that every student take loads upon loads of tests until they found the select few who satisfied their needs.
The students were placed under extremely isolated test conditions. People practiced in discerning lies from truths leered over the school while others emphasized again and again that those who cheated or lied would suffer the full wrath. The full wrath of what exactly was unknown, but the threat was intimidating enough as it was.
For the first time in 5 years, Zabrina tried. She used her full potential and absolutely blew away the scientists. Her IQ was too high to be humanly possible. Her cognitive and critical thinking skills were out of the world. She knew more about science and math than anyone else, had developed more hypotheses and theories than the science department of MIT. Under the shallow "mean girl" mask was a genius with a macrocosm of crazy, wild, brilliant ideas and a thirst for knowledge that could never be quenched.
Zabrina's parents (now divorced) were duly notified that her daughter had extraordinary talent and potential overall, but especially in the areas of math and science. They were then asked if their daughter could be transferred to the prestigious and extremely selective Ovalith Academy, which they happily complied to, relieved that they would no longer have to care for their daughter whilst worrying about her unnatural mental capacity.
Zabrina thrives in the academy, but she keeps her genius locked. The words keep drumming her head, wherever she goes, whoever she meets, whatever she does... It's all about reputation...
Family:
~ Mother: Angeline Vivian Curtis
~ Father: Nathaniel Harrison Jorden
►►►Cara Jeanne McCoy◄◄◄↛ Cara
Of Italian origin, meaning cherished and loved one
↛Jeanne
Female variant of the English John, meaning God is gracious
↛McCoy
Of Scottish origin, meaning son of Aodh (the Celtic deity for Fire)
Alias: Jeanie
Age: 16
Birthday: January 7, 1998
Zodiac: Capricorn
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Relationship Status: Single
Appearance:
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green
Height: 5’3”
Weight: 100 lbs
Build: Petite and feminine
Style:
Zooey Deschanel dresses with complementary cardigans. Pastel shades. Trench coats. Wool scarves. Ballet flats. Simple, white tops contrasting deep, warm-colored skirts. Simple, yet elegant is the look Cara strives for. She usually sweeps her hair into a messy bun to keep it out of the way. She adores jewelry, but in moderation. She loves attire from other time periods-- especially the '20s and '50s. Her outfits are always feminine, but never is lacking propriety.
(view spoiler)
Talent: Literature & History
People do not know what the words inhaling books means until they see Cara with her books. She not only reads, but retains every single page she has ever read. Her photographic memory is stunning, to say the least. Her reading speed is phenomenal. She does not discriminate with books: Cara will read anything and everything as long as it is good. She writes almost as furiously as she reads. A sloppy, almost illegible, yet beautiful cursive, filling up every blank sheet of paper she can find: scrawled in the edges of worksheets, in between the comics on the Sunday newspaper, on the hundreds upon hundreds of post-it notes she sticks upon her walls. Maybe as a byproduct of her love for reading, or a talent all in itself, Cara’s knowledge and comprehension about the past is astounding. Her talent provides for her much more than escape. Books, her writing, the past, all provide for Cara a wondrous, magical realm in which she can breathe, thrive, destroy, create, and and feel truly infinite.
Effect of the drug:
The post-it notes have to be just so. She reorganizes them time and time again, always striving, but never reaching perfection. That pen right there, on the table, must be exactly perpendicular to the table. Triangles exhaust her. Nothing in her sight can be triangular. When she enters her room, before she does anything else, she locks, then unlocks her door twice, just to make sure.
No one knows when Cara ingested the drug. But they can guess. It was probably sometime during her thirteenth year. Before the month preceding her fourteenth birthday, when she locked herself into her own room, refusing to let anyone in, refusing to eat, scattering the hundreds of books she had collected over the years and organizing them first according to size, then according to color, then length, and then word count. She wasn’t satisfied. They busted the door. Dragged her out. The doctor knew it as soon as she saw her, that wreck of a girl. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, they said. Sessions of therapy were scheduled, pills were administered. The oblong ones are to be cut into quarters and administered before breakfast, on an empty stomach, they said. The green ones are to be ingested at night, right before you brush your teeth. There are times when she is better. Lost in thought, or more likely, in a book, or her notebook, she simply forgets how much she abhors triangles, forgets about the sticky notes, the pens, the order that must be obtained.
But it is far from gone.
Personality:
Cara possesses a quiet sort of passion, the type which will spew forth when asked for, but otherwise stay hidden, behind the jacket of a book, the clever mask which is a spiral-bound notebook, hinting itself through the slanted cursive and smudged blue ink stains. She loses herself in symbols and metaphors, and then again in making sense out of nonsense. There is a reason for everything-- there is a reason why you are here. What are the likelihoods that you would turn up? In thousands of years of history, against all odds, that you would turn up? This can be no accident. She believes in this idea extremely firmly, and it is what makes her eyes light up like stars.
But Cara loves her words, her ideas more than she does the reality. This is what makes the stars rather distant, is what gives her an ethereal glow without quite emanating warmth. This is what gives her hints of awkwardness, what makes her duck her head, not quite meeting your eyes when she meets you. What causes her to stutter sometimes, to flounder and fudge the trillions upon trillions of beautiful words that orbit in her mind. It is only when someone discovers her passion that Cara can truly come alive, babbling like a babe who has finally solved the mystery of words, hands dancing, sometimes creating an invisible masterpiece in the air, in sync with the sounds coming out of her mouth, or more often, showing you the beauty of everything, of words, of life, of people from far away who her of you. Through scribbles on paper, she let's you glimpse into the universe in her mind. She may not look strong, but the grip on her pen is firm. Her hand is steady, and if you allow her to read you, study you, inhale you, she will claim you for her own, cherish you, and never let go.
Strengths:
↣ Anything literary (reading, writing, vocabulary prowess, etc.)
↣Historical events, figures, etc.
↣Photographic memory
↣Her quiet passion and determination
↣Appreciation for beauty
↣Loyalty
↣Creativity, wit, and general intelligence
↣Sense of humor
Weaknesses:
↣ Obsessive-compulsive disorder
↣Social awkwardness/Confusion on how to handle real social interactions
↣Prefers escapism to reality
↣Timidity when it comes to embracing change
↣Hate of disorder
↣Can seem distant and closed-off
Likes:
► Puns
►Good books
►Spiral notebooks
►Blue-ink pens
►The past
►Words
►The beauty of life
Dislikes:
► Disorder
►Bad books
►Uncertainty
►The fickleness and hypocrisy of humans
►Reality
History:
“It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
They all called her Jeanie. They named her Cara, but it always felt like a loose screw, and so she was Jeanie. Her father met her mother because there was an extremely long line for the meet-and-greet with a famous author at a bookstore in New York. They were both sitting on a curb, two strangers, saving spots for friends who were getting a bite to eat. Two years later, they were married.
It was always something they loved to tell her. What if one of them didn't like that author? What if one of their friends decided not to go to the cafe, so they weren't alone and lonely, dying for someone to talk to? What if they weren't sitting on the curb next to each other? There were so many things that could've gone awry. The chance of them meeting was so infinitely small, and yet, here they were. Here Cara and her two older brothers were. It was wondrous and beautiful. She was taught at a young age to never take human life for granted.
Her father was an eighth grade history teacher. Her mother was a psychologist. Every day, her father would come home and read the daily newspaper in his big leather chair. Cara would crawl into his lap and her father would read the book reviews out loud. It was her lullaby, and she'd fall asleep to rhythm of his baritone voice, rising and falling as he read.
Right before she turned two, she looked at the newspaper she was so accustomed to seeing and realized she could make sense of the words rippling from her father's mouth and how they corresponded to the symbols on the page. She followed along, and then read ahead, getting to the bottom of the page before asking- "Why does Mr. Johnston think that James Patterson is a unsophisticated, pretentious idiot?" She asked. Her father's eyes widened. He called for her mother, and they found the girl could read. Her pronunciation wasn't the best, but good Lord, the girl wasn't even two! They spun her around the living room, thanking God for giving them so brilliant a daughter.
Her parents did all a child prodigy could ask for. They nurtured her talent, cherished it, but warned her of the dangers of genius, taught her not to take it for granted, taught her humility, consideration, empathy. They took her to a library for the first time on her second birthday. It was her heaven on earth.
Both parents and both older brothers were avid readers (there was a nine-year age gap between Cara and her older twin brothers). Soon, they’d gone to every library used-book sale, scrounging the suburbs for yard sales and garage sales, amassing a large collection of books for the girl to devour. They built wrap-around-shelves all around her bedroom, created drawers to fit under her bed, all to store her precious books.
At age five, she was enrolled at The Hudson School for Gifted Youth, a school for prodigies like herself. While bright, she was no genius when it came to math or most of the sciences, but the history and English teachers treasured her, nurtured her. They were charmed by this pale, tiny girl with huge green eyes who knew entire passages of Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby, who had not only read but comprehended the symbolism, the metaphors, the vices and virtues of the characters. Her gentle nature helped her to make many friends. Her teachers guided and probed gently at her mental potential while her parents kept her moral and emotional compass in check.
She had a brilliant memory, no doubt. During holidays, Chris and Cameron would take their wee, six-year old sister, give her piece of paper with nonsense words written on it, set the timer for one minute. The timer would ring and they’d take the paper back. “What’d it say?” They’d ask, and she’d be able to recite every single word back to them, in order. When it came to pictures, she fell short, but her retention of words, of their arrangement and meaning, was phenomenal. Our Jeanie has photographic memory, the brothers would boast, and they’d swing Cara up onto their shoulders and dance around with her, babbling about fearful jabberwockies and bandersnatches to the girl, who laughed and laughed and laughed.
She began to write at four. By age eight, she’d won all the writing awards there were to win in the local suburbs of New York. She’d gotten her work published 23 times, she’d met a famous children’s author due to winning first place in some bookstore contest. In second grade, the girl mastered cursive. She refused to write in anything else. For her eighth birthday, her brothers bought her a beautiful pen. It was rumored to be one of the pens C.S. Lewis wrote with, although, of course, it really wasn’t. But whether it was the fancy that the creator of Narnia wrote with such an instrument or just the beauty of the pen itself, the girl fell in love. She wrote avidly. The fact she was left-handed, and her entire hand was blotched with blue ink that never quite washed off was nothing but a minor nuisance. She loved the way her smudged, messy cursive looked. She loved how she could spin worlds into existence merely by picking up a little stick and letting her hand dance and the ink float across the page, like music.
She published short stories in The New Yorker and Writer’s Digest. She was featured on ABC News for winning a 10,000 word story competition in which people twice her age were also competing. This 12 year old girl is a marvel, they exclaimed. They asked her, why do you write?
“Because words are beautiful, and I love beautiful things,” she replied.
Her mother and father shined with pride and joy. Her brothers whooped and teased about how they were siblings to the next J.K. Rowling.
When she was thirteen, she bloomed. She wrote more than ever before, she read more, her eyes sparkled with potential and creativity, the calluses on her fingers from rubbing against a pen so much and so often hardened even more as this girl read and wrote, then wrote and read. She gave a lecture to Columbia University history majors about the rise of Western civilization. She was featured on the news again, this time because she was invited to be one of the historians present for the restoration of a famous historical document. She went from memorizing chapters of books to memorizing entire books as a whole. There seemed to be no limit to her literary genius.
All the while, small signs began to appear of something else, a much darker, twisted force. It took her longer to get ready, because she was easily distracted by the configuration of sticky-notes on her wall. There was a triangular vase that had been sitting comfortably on the mantle above the fireplace for the longest time. Jeanie demanded it be removed, almost in tears, and puzzled, but caring more for their daughter’s well-being than the present they’d received from the mother’s boss, they got rid of it. Little things built up until the fateful day when Cara refused to come down for breakfast, to go to school, to come out at all. She stayed bolted in for three days. Three days of hoping that this was just “a phase”, that common sense would return and their Jeanie would come back.
It didn’t come.
When the girl came back from the hospital, she was Jeanie no longer. The screw had finally been driven into place. Cara. Her name was Cara. Cara J. McCoy.
Her letter came when she was fifteen and a half.
Her eyes were sad, but hopeful.
New place, new ideas.
New start.
Family:
↣ David Jonathon McCoy||Father||Alive
↣ Abigail Lauren McCoy||Mother||Alive
↣ Christopher Charles McCoy||Brother||Alive
↣ Cameron Victor McCoy||Brother||Alive
Other:
[Why do I run? Because I want to. Why do I love? Because I need to.]
Name: James Maverick Delacroix
Age: 17
Birthday: August 1
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Appearance:
Hair: dark brown
Eyes: brown
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 148 lbs
Build: slim and fit- quite muscular
Talent:
***Athletics: Running and Swimming***
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. - The Bible, Isaiah 40:31
James was built for speed. He may not look it, with his monkey face and unassuming build, but don’t let that fool you. He can run. He can swim. It’s necessary for him to constantly keep running, constantly keep swimming, constantly keep going, going somewhere, anywhere. Running and swimming are instinctive- they come as easy as breathing for James, and it baffles him how people become tired, weary, and faint after running/swimming for an extended period of time. He has the speed, he has the endurance, and he has the passion, the love that will fuel him to keep going, running and swimming like a madman long after the world stops turning.
Effect of the drug:
~Increased stamina and speed
~Insomnia
Personality:
He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry. ~The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
James admits to being crazy. He’s the one you’ll see outside in basketball shorts and a ragged old t-shirt, dancing and singing at the top of his lungs in the rain. He’s the one who’ll loiter around for four hours trying to solve a riddle, asking you for the 137th time what the stupid question was, sitting back to think before suddenly screaming and jumping up and down with frustration. The one who'll hike 2 hours to get to the top of a mountain, just so he can scream curse words and hear them echo at no one in particular. The one who'll steal the contents of your desk, one by one, just to see if you notice before putting them back, not quite how they were before. He’s the one who will sit quietly next to you on the porch, eyes closed, feeling the setting sun’s last rays, feeling the brokenness in your heart, the emptiness of your outstretched palms. He’ll sit next to you for eternity if he has to, not speaking, just being, loving, appreciating, comforting, healing.
He has the genuine compassion for those around him, the fierce loyalty, the ability to love, and along with it, the ability to forgive. He admits to being a hopeless romantic and an even more hopeless optimist, a fool who knows at times that he’s licked but does it anyway, someone who will always stick up for you, even when he knows you’re wrong. He’s a great believer in justice, but an even greater believer in mercy.
No, he’s not perfect. He is human, and so he too, is lonely, confused, and impatient. He has been hurt by things, hurt by people and the wounds have not yet healed. He tries to hide them, tries to cover them up, but they’re there nonetheless. He has yet to forgive the person who has made the scars in the first place. He tries, but he tries half-heartedly and it’s not enough to penetrate the walls he’s already built- walls of protection, but also of loneliness and anger and sorrow. He has a boyish pride, a bit of an ego, and an instinctive timidity. When hard times hit, when he gets hurt, his first impulse is to run away, to run as fast as he can, to swim across the ocean and live the rest of his life running and forgetting.
But he stays. As long as he has someone to love, someone to bolster up, someone to fight for, he stays and he will continue to stay. If James comes to you and gives you his love, when he comes knocking at your door with a yellow, smiley-face balloon and a goofy smile and hopeful eyes, I beg of you to accept it, and to accept him. Embrace him.
And for God’s sake, don’t let the balloon fly away.
Strengths:
~ Running- both speed and endurance
~ Swimming- both speed and endurance
~ Loyalty
~ Willingness to forgive
~ Acceptance of others
~ Kindness and compassion
~ Great sense of humor
Weaknesses:
~ Has a bit of an ego
~ Can become a bit clingy
~ Has been hurt and may accidentally close-off to people who trigger bad memories
~ Is also closed-off about his past
Likes:
~ Running & Swimming
~ Individuals
~ Life
~ Food (especially fruits and sweets of any kind. He’s also a worshipper of Nutella with graham crackers)
~ Animals
~ Balloons
~ Symbolism
~ Nature
~ Pranks
~ Heel Clicks
(view spoiler)
Dislikes:
~ Injustice
~ Close, confined spaces
~ Being bored
~ Pessimism
History:
“When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that.” ~The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
It was a truly perfect love story. Truly.
They met at an art convention in Amsterdam. She was 22, an Art History major, quirky, hard-to-get, a true manic pixie dream girl with soft green eyes, wild, loose strands of sun for hair, constellations of perfect freckles splattered across her face, like paint. He was 25, full of life and romance, brown eyes filled with hope in true love, a face filled with a love for fun, a love for life, a love for hope. They met, sparks flew, the connection was made, numbers exchanged, and a year later, the inevitable, the blissful, the beautiful marriage.
A year later, a boy was born. He was named after his father’s father, James, who had forgotten everything except the word “blue”. Three nights after his grandson was born, he closed his eyes, tried to remember how to breathe, but ended up forgetting that, too. The boy's mother made his middle name his own. Different. It was his mother’s favorite. To his mama, he was always “Mav”. To his father, he was “ ‘Lil Jamie.” He was the source of all their joy and he was the cause of all their pain.
There were three parts.
Part One: Featuring the Woman who Wore a Mask
She realized too quickly that the last thing she was suited to be was a mother. If anything, Mav was the little brother she never had. She loved him, but she did not love him the way mothers love their children. She was only twenty-four when he was born. Life was just beginning. But now, here was the little bundle of joy, the big brown eyes which would lead to her doom. Her friends left because, they, unlike her, still had a life. Her husband was oblivious to her loneliness. They stayed in Amsterdam. He was off teaching at a local university. The hours weren’t bad, but they were long enough. Long enough for her to feel so, completely alone, stuck to this adorable little parasite that was draining all her life away. The first seven months of his life, she couldn’t seem happier with the way things turned out. But it was all wrong. Beneath the mask, she was absolutely miserable.
Part Two: Featuring the Man who Still Believed
He was so in love with her that every parting moment made his heart ache. She was all he could think about, all he could talk about. This love was true. It was meant to last. He had the perfect life. A lovely wife with the most adorable, complacent child (although it was rather abnormal for a seven month old to crawl more quickly than he could walk). A small, cozy flat. And then, the announcement.
“I’m going back to work.”
Now, here was his flaw. After this flaw was revealed, it was pretty much over. He was old-fashioned. It doesn’t seem like a big flaw. And it really isn’t. It can be rather cute at times. But when you have a man who expects his wife to stay home and pull mom-duty 24/7 and a woman who wants freedom more than anything else, things go awry.
And of course, they did.
Part Three: Featuring the Woman who Takes Off Her Mask and the Man who Stops Believing
“What?” It started with that word. And then-- “No. Absolutely not.”
And then, they both opened their mouths.
Her: This is about Mav, isn’t it?
Him: What about Lil’ Jamie?
There was a fight. A dish was broken. A baby started crying. The details weren’t pleasant.
She backed down. She understood.
As soon as she backed down, he relaxed. He understood, too. All was good. A fight once in a while was healthy, so long as things went back to normal.
But they didn’t.
You see, they understood things very differently.
What he understood: She would stay.
What she understood: She would leave.
It took 5 years. Five years for her to finally get the guts.
But it happened. And she left with a huge gray Samsonite suitcase in one hand, a purse in the other, messenger bag slung across her shoulder.
That was that.
The final piece: a letter.
A letter which explained two things.
1) The mask was off.
2) She wasn’t coming back.
The boy was broken.
The day after she left, when it was clear she would never come back, he went outside and started to run. Once he started, he couldn’t stop.
But the boy’s casualties were minor compared to his father’s.
The man was crushed.
His heart, like most hearts, was made out of glass.
When she’d left, she’d thrown it against a concrete wall.
She’d gathered the shards, put on her stilettos, and grinded away until there was nothing left but dust.
And now, it was crushed, unfixable, laying there pitifully, with no one coming back to pick it up and make it all better.
He stopped believing.
Epilogue
The boy continued to run.
And the man continued to fall.
First, it was numbness.
And then, a cure: vodka.
And with the vodka came anger. With the vodka came sadness.
The father became something like his own father.
He forgot everything.
Lil’ Jamie became The Boy.
The Boy became Nothing.
The boy wasn’t allowed to say his middle name. He wasn’t allowed to say his mother’s name.
And it was here the boy promised himself that he would never, ever break someone. No, his purpose was to heal. His purpose was to catch the fallen and pick them up.
And his purpose was to run. To swim. To run, swim, run, swim, run, run, run until there was nothing left but a lunatic chasing the sun and being chased by the wind.
The boy was 11 when a letter came. No, not that letter. Another one. 6 years later, and the scent was still the same. The indecipherable cursive still… indecipherable.
But one thing was decipherable: This was something from the past. Something from his mother.
The man leapt up with a light in his eyes for the first time in years.
He read it.
And his face, well, his face became the embodiment of nothing.
What it said isn’t important.
No.
It was what came after.
The man was finished.
It was winter.
He was nothing.
He got out a rope and calmly tied it to the ceiling fan.
He got a block of ice from outside.
He got up on the block.
He took the other end of the rope and placed it around his neck.
He waited.
When the boy came home from school, back drenched with sweat from the 4 mile run home, he was confronted with a rather unpleasant smell.
And then, the sight.
Imagine, if you can, a blue-faced man with eyes of glass, hanging.
Beneath him is a puddle.
The boy screamed. He splashed into the puddle.
He gasped and cried and held the cold man up to his chest, whispering, shouting, begging, mumbling.
It was all for naught.
There were sirens. And there were people who said they knew what he was going through and wanted to help.
It was all a blur.
And then, she came. Green eyes. Sun-spun hair.
Glowing, beautiful, indecipherable.
Just like he’d always remembered.
But he wasn’t Mav anymore.
He wasn’t Lil’ Jamie.
He was James.
He couldn’t forgive those green eyes, so full of life, because in order to see those green eyes, a pair of brown ones had had to become nothing but glass.
The rest isn’t important.
He was one day short of 16 when his letter came.
He accepted. She also accepted.
He didn’t bother to say good-bye.
And then…
He ran.
Family:
- Mother
Other:
(view spoiler)
(view spoiler)
Emmaline's mother once noted that it was a pity that a girl with so beautiful a face, so honorable a name, so strong and charming a wit was born with the ambition of a man. In a world where women were taught to flaunt looks, not words, Lady Emmaline's fault was that she was unafraid to speak her mind.
Sharp-witted and wily she may be, but Emmaline is still innocent, still clinging to the motto: honor above all. It is true that she is ambitious, seeking knowledge to gain power, but she has not abandoned the hope that one can live with honor just as one can die with honor. Here is the girl living in contradictions: on the one hand, she pursues honor above all else, on the other, she will stop at nothing to win the game of thrones. Only fifteen and yet it is already clear that Emmaline Argall will not be one to fade into oblivion, to be forgotten. No, what is uncertain is in the matter of how she will be remembered and that is where the danger lies.
(view spoiler)
People have noted that Audrey, at first glance, is incredibly intimidating. They all find different excuses for why this might be, but in the end it has nothing to do with her height or her status and everything to do with the cold, piercing, deadly gaze which somehow convinces everyone that they are despicable human beings worthy of contempt, an annoyance to mankind. A pity that Audrey, of all people, posesses a resting bitchface for her persona could not prove more contradictory. She is a girl who loves to laugh, to pull pranks, to hitch up her skirts and play elaborate games of tag with the rest of her siblings down the most dilapidated staircases. Sure, she tries to contain herself in the public eye, reverting to frosty glares, graceful curtsies and tight-lipped smiles but the moment she leaves the court filled with strangers and finds herself around familiar faces, tight lips pull back to reveal a smile which melts away all the animosity, leaving behind warmth. It is true, she is not the best at expressing emotions, preferring to keep up an act of apathy, but do not let that decieve you into believing that she doesn't posess the capability to love.
Always a bit of a tomboy, Audrey insisted on learning how to defend herself, and even at such a young age, no one dared to deny the demands of a girl with eyes which could cut worse than knives. Thus began her training with the bow and arrow, an activity not well-suited for an eight-year-old who was even more restless than her brothers. It was the last option she would've resorted to but society gave it to her as her only option and so, begrudgingly, she practice and in time, focused willpower overcame flighty instincts and she excelled.
The sole ambition of Audrey Allaere is to do the things she loves with the people she loves, but she is learning day by day that life does not work favourably towards such ambitions. Especially now that she's married to Calum, the boy who proved that she was not, in fact, the worst case of bitchface that the world had to offer.
|When all of your flaws and all of my flaws are laid out one by one...|↛Emerson►►►|Emerson Dakota Argent|◄◄◄
Of German origin, meaning industrious ruler
↛Dakota
Of Sioux origin, meaning ally or friend
↛Argent
Derived from the Latin argentum, meaning silver or white metal
Alias: Em, Argent!
True Age: 16
Apparent Age: 15-18
Birthday: August 19th
Zodiac: Leo
Caste: Seven
Occupation: Construction Worker
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Appearance:
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 97 lbs
Build: Slim, muscular, but not without curves
There is a delicate beauty in Emerson that goes against the toughness in her eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and that very well may be true, for Emerson’s eyes are old eyes, eyes that have seen too much pain and have toughened, eyes of iron, absorbing the heat, the pain, but somehow staying cool. Rigid. Uncracked. It’s a contradiction to the rest of her face. The angular, cutting, but somehow delicate form of her cheekbones. She is slim, but she is muscular and strong, and despite the coolness, the ice in her eyes, she is still alive, still fire, and her voice flows like molten lava. Warm, fluid, hardening into rock too soon. She is not only beautiful, she is radiant. But don’t let that trick you. The pretty face is only that: a face, and if one treats her like her face is all that matters, the consequences will be dire.
(view spoiler)
Personality:
Emerson is not a girl one can categorize easily. Her posture is straight, like a soldier’s, and every single step is a step taken in confidence. But there are moments when you can catch her off guard, and doubt radiates in her form. She is tough, encased with metal, unbreakable, with her combat boots, her biting sense of humor, her sarcasm, her street smarts, her eyes that never miss anything. She sees you, although it’s not quite so clear if you see her. But she is human, and pain gets to her just like anyone else. As does love. And faith. The thing is, Em has grown up in a world of pain. She is a mess, a product of broken people trying to piece together a wooden puppet with the scraps and shards left over from their lives. Nothing seems to fit perfectly and there are so many loose ends, so many chips and cracks in her form. One might call her unpredictable, but Em is steady. She just doesn’t know how to wield her power-- her fingers made of wood and steel and glass. She hides them under gloves of iron, and people don’t know what to make of this girl-- a girl who is, in most aspects, perfectly nice, but also a jumble of contradictions. Jagged, rough edges melding with smooth, curved ones. In the end, she could be anyone, except for the light which emanates faintly. She has been corrupted and has corrupted, and yet, there are still sparks of innocence. She has grown up in a world bleak and desolate, and yet she hopes. She has lived so long in the dark and yet within her is a spark of light, light which flickers and wavers, but never ever completely goes out.|There's a hole in my soul, can you fill it? Can you fill it?|
Strengths:
↣ Fighting of any kind
↣ Laughing everything off
↣ Practical and pragmatic views of the world
↣ Common sense and wisdom beyond her years
↣ Powers of observation and judgment
↣ Independence
Weaknesses:
↣ Inability to let down her guard
↣ Bluntness
↣ Unpredictability and sudden tempestuous bursts of anger/sadness
↣ Can be insensitive/inconsiderate
↣ Pain from her past
Likes:
► Freedom
► Weapons (the physical (e.g. guns), the verbal (her sarcasm), the mental (the iron shield around her heart)
► Sarcasm and dark humor
► Proving people wrong
► Anything that will fulfill her sweet tooth
► Rain
► Bare feet
► Dancing (strangely enough)
► Running/pushing herself to her physical limit
Dislikes:
► Limitations
► Most authority figures
► Small talk
► Shoes
► Singing
► Arrogance
► Fakers and those driven by want for fame/money/reputation
► Sitting still/being inactive for extended periods of time
► Inequality (especially in the caste system)
► Nosy people who are too curious for their own goodHistory:Myers-Brigg Type: INTJ
“Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Her father was a guard at the palace. He was a guard until something, no one knows what, set him off, and his sanity started slipping away, bit by bit by bit. And then an attack. No one knows who, they just know it was a miracle, a miracle that the man managed to survive the explosion unharmed except for the loss of an arm. By this time, he’d had visions. Most people can feel their demons. But now, he not only felt them, he saw them. They were too real. He lost everything else too quickly all because of the current of lunacy and the lack of an arm.
He was soon an eight. It was a dark place, a place full of despair, of chaos, and a place where warmth of any kind was hard to come by. She came to him and offered him warmth and they lay there, huddled like animals, not even human. Nine months later, in the place of the dying, life emerged. She left him there, with that child, that pathetic, mewling parasite. But he stared into those eyes and saw for the first time in years with clarity. She did not belong to the dumpster. She belonged to him. He named her Emerson, because there had been a writer which he had once heard of from a Three, a writer whose words spoke of despair and of joy and rang with truth.
It was not a world meant for little girls. And so, as soon as she could walk, he taught her to fight. On good days, he taught her the letters, scrounged his way to buy old, tattered books, taught her to carve out letters in the dirt and watch them blow away when the wind blew in. He wrote her stories on the margins of these books, on scraps of newspaper, on the walls of their little shed, stories of the past, of humanity and hope. Most days, however, they woke up before the sun and he taught her that bloody knuckles are better than bloody noses, that steady hands lead to steady aim, and steady aim leads to steady shots.
Other little girls were obsessed with their dolls, or perhaps their music or their drawings or their books. Em embraced fighting. A scrawny, yet beautiful girl who still had an aura of innocence. Too many tried to take advantage of her. One by one, she fought them off, hoping that in the process, one day she’d be able to throw aside her father’s demons, deliver the final blow, the final shot, the final stab, and that the lapses of clarity would become permanent.
It didn’t happen. What did happen was this: by the time Em was twelve, no one dared mess with her. No one dared mess with her father, a huddling, miserable heap of a man who muttered to himself and refused to speak to anyone, who screamed and clawed and thrashed like a rabid animal. He recognized Em, her voice soothed him, and he became her child. She was the one who made sure his face was, if not clean, then at least respectable, that somehow, they had food, that their little shack stayed theirs, that there was a cot for him to lay his head when there was too much pain. Twelve was when she found the bottle, and they both drank themselves numb. Thirteen was when a man came in, grinned at her stupor, and rid her of every material possession, gave her a black eye and a broken nose and two broken ribs, but spared the life of her father. It was enough. Enough for her to keep going.
Fourteen was when her father started slowly, but surely treating her like everyone else, as if she were a stranger, as if she had claws and as if he were being attacked. The day came when he screamed bloody murder in pain and writhed on the floor. His mind was gone. There were too many voices, but no one was speaking out loud. He could see the demons, and they were telling him things even he couldn’t understand, and all he knew was that he was cursed, that they were all cursed, and he cried like a babe and lay there and writhed. She walked in and her heart broke and she grabbed her gun. Eyes closed, but she was never one to waste bullets. To miss a shot.
He was the only reason she had for staying. He had been her love, but he was not her hope. She had known already that that was long gone, that this world was not one that handed out miracles like blows in the stomach. She pawned off what she had, but she kept her revolver. A souvenir, for old time’s sake, and a practical one, too. She did what she could to rid herself of the traces of her past and she found a job as a construction worker. One caste up. It meant all the difference. Now, her name meant something. Now, she was living in a different kind of misery, yes, but the light in the people’s eyes still shone with humanity.
And then, news of the selection. She didn’t care. Honestly, she didn’t know why she even went in to get her picture taken, to sign up. Maybe, just maybe, it was the thought of her father, of his frame lying there pitifully and all the life that had gone wasted, her vow that her brokenness would never lead her down that path. Ambition shone in her eyes. There was no surprise when she was announced, only a newfound fire and hope.
She sold everything to buy a dress, a dress that was much too expensive, but beautiful, a dress that was unwieldy, but provided the layers for a secret pocket, sewn into the inseam. Everything went. Except the revolver. With the weight of the gun in her dress, she got on the train.|Look at the wonderful mess that we made...|
Family:
↣Mother||Unknown||Unknown status
↣Father||Carson Avery Argent||Deceased
Other:
Flaws||Bastille
|Sometimes the wire must tense for the note...|↛ Eden►►►|Eden Vendetta Lindquist|◄◄◄
Of Hebrew origin, meaning, delight, place of pleasure
↛Vendetta
Of Italian origin, meaning, revenge or blood feud
↛Lindquist
Of Swedish origin, meaning lime tree twig
Alias: Evey
True Age: 17
Apparent Age: 16-19
Birthday: November 5
Zodiac: Scorpio
Caste: Two
Occupation: Professional archer/part-time model
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Appearance:
Hair: Brown and naturally wavy/curly
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5’8”
Weight: 113 lbs
Build: Lean and lithe
(view spoiler)
Personality:
Eden turns heads when she walks into a room. She is warm, compassionate, easy-to-smile, someone you can always count on to laugh at your pathetic jokes. She is filled with confidence which never sours into vanity. She prefers to listen rather than to talk, and there is a quality in her which makes it easy to bare all. Maybe it’s because she looks like one who has nothing to hide. Even in her quiet moments she is always welcoming, always glowing, always open. But Eden’s pretty personality is the ice which submerges layers of complexity.
She is terrified of looking weak. Of being doubted, of feeling helpless. She doesn’t strive so much for freedom as for control over herself. She doesn’t mind locking herself up in a cage so long as she is clinging fiercely to the key.Her warmth and electricity can become mutilated, and Evey can be just as fueled by anger as she can by kindness. She has a hard time forgiving, forgiving her parents, forgiving her friends, and forgiving herself. Anger is planted and can easily take root in a wild, terrifying tree of infuriation if she doesn’t catch herself in time.
She gets along with many, but puts her trust in few. Eden trusts her gut-- that instantaneous connection, the underlying current that flows through when she first meets someone. She is faithful and tirelessly devoted to the ones she loves. If you manage to pierce through her soul, your pain will become her pain, she will become an eternal well of loyalty and affection, catching you off guard with a hug, squeezing you, inhaling you, letting the warmth rub off. The only thing she asks of her friends is for honesty. Betray her and she will cut you off, the mask of indifference never quite completely covering the disappointment and pain in her eyes.
In the core, Eden is made up of and fueled by compassion, by kindness. The pain of those around her hits her hard, and she will gladly lift the burden off your shoulders and carry the weight herself if she believes you are worth the pain.
Eden strives, strives to do good and be good, and even when betrayed, even when helpless, even when suffering and surrounded by suffering, she can look into the distance and see the faint light, and it is enough for her to keep on striving towards preserving that spark, however small, of goodness within her. Her essence is loyalty, strength, independence, confidence, all the things she fears she is not, and that is why even broken bones and broken words cannot stop her. Her shield will crack and not even her own hatred, her grudges, her anger, her fears can cage in the loyalty and love for those few precious people who provide her the light and the warmth.Strengths:|Carry your world… I’ll carry your world.|
↣ Archery
↣ Cautious sense of optimism
↣ Her compassion, kindness and warmth for others
↣ Natural confidence and grace
↣ Gymnastics
↣ Fiercely devoted to those she loves
↣ Independent and incredibly determined
Weaknesses:
↣ Can become blindsided with anger
↣ Naturally unforgiving nature
↣ Feels pain of those around her too strongly at times
↣ Fear of being weakness and helplessness
↣ Fear and hatred of losing control
↣ Want of personal privacy
↣ Is somewhat ignorant of the harsh reality of the lower castes
Likes:
► Archery
► Laughing
► Bad puns
► People (in general)
► Gymnastics and dance
► Moments of natural solitude
► Nature
► Dogs
► Justice and equality
► Idealism
► Friends/her mother
Dislikes:
► Dishonesty
► Fakers
► Situations where she feels helpless/weak/out of control
► Individuals who try to oppress her/control her
► Selfishly motivated individuals
► Paparazzi and the media in general
► NeedlesMyers-Brigg Type: ISFP
History:
“We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska
In the world of the military, the hunters, the fighters, the Lindquists were and are a family name. Since the dawn of Illea, they had been there, the best of the best, fighters who could not only outfight but also outwit their opponents. They were the high ranking generals, the heads of a latticework of spies which usurped the rebels within the country while extinguishing dangers that might’ve come from other countries.
Armitage Thomas Lindquist was no different, in fact, one might say that out of all the generations, he was the best. Surely the best hunter ever to live. He was a legend, the man, who, at 23, single-handedly led the colossal battle against both the Southern and Northern rebels, crushing both sides in full. He had become a celebrity, a household name, for both his fighting ability and also for his charming, good looks.
Her mother was Brooklyn Fitzgerald, yes, the Brooklyn Fitzgerald, the brown-haired, blue-eyed beauty of an actress, that tempestuous ball of talent, who was famous not only for her acting skills, but also for her string of lovers, her sharp blue eyes and her beautiful smiles, those pink lips which were not afraid to bash anyone and everyone, from the media to Illea itself.
It was an arranged marriage. An unhappy marriage. A marriage which was vehemently opposed on both parts, only agreed to because they both craved fame, both craved money, both craved insurance that their reputations, that their wealth would be preserved through this transaction. That was all it was, a transaction.
Eden Vendetta was born a year later. She was beautiful, radiant, like her mother. Neither of them had expected her. Neither of them wanted her. But now she was here. Her mother slowly, cautiously fell in love with the child with bright brown eyes and the most beautiful laugh in the world. Her father saw her as another burden, another reputation, a duty. The girl was on talk shows with her parents as soon as she learned how to talk coherently. She learned at a young age that in front of the cameras, the Lindquists were a happy family, a perfect family, while in reality, they were anything but.
The only outlet her father had, the only hope, was to train her, to help her embrace the name Lindquist. She received her first bow and arrow on her third birthday. The collection grew and so did her fame, the little seven year old who could shoot bull’s eyes every single time, even when they were moving, the little Lindquist who was living up to her father, paparazzi gushed. Was she planning to become the first female general of Illea?
Evey’s mother abhorred her father, and so she abhorred archery. She hated the name Eden, for that was the name of Eden’s great-grandmother, a woman Brooklyn had never met, but hated all the more, because she was the reason why she was chained down with so cold-hearted a man. Behind closed doors, they would scream at each other, break objects, assault each other with verbal and physical blows, blows being tossed from side to side, unrelenting. Hateful. Eden was trained to ignore such things.
Her mother was tempestuous and promiscuous, but she was a warm being who was unafraid to love. Because of her revulsion of the name Eden, Brooklyn started calling her daughter Evey, and pretty soon, Eden Lindquist became Evey Lindquist. To try to coax her out of archery, Brooklyn signed Evey up for gymnastics, a much more feminine sport. The media gushed and practically begged Evey to come to the talk shows and perform somersaults and balance beam and floor routines. This is one talented girl, they chittered on the gossip magazines.
In this world, Eden survived, learning to keep her mouth shut, to let her smiles and laughs, her archery, her vaults, do the talking. She was no fool, as much as they tried to hide it, she knew her parents were burying themselves alive in secrets, secrets from the media, secrets from each other, secrets from Eden, secrets from themselves. The lies exhausted Eden, every secret accidentally unsheathed was foul, pierced her like one of her arrows, left her feeling helpless. When she learned she was too tall for her to ever pursue a professional gymnastics career, she wordlessly took up modeling, due to the increasing pressure from her mother, her need to please the one person who truly loved her. To make up for losses, she trained harder and was rarely seen without a crossbow or a bow and arrow, so natural in her grip, such a fluid part it really seemed as if it were an extension of her arm.
Her parents fought about everything. Her mother was exhausted, the brightness in her blue eyes were fading and she was no longer young, her beauty was there, yes, but she could not compete with the fresh faces of the generation after her. Her father was colder than ever and no one knew when Brooklyn would snap, when she would fly into blind rage and throw dining chairs across the room, rip the chandelier out of the ceiling, slap Eden’s father across the face and look at him with such hatred.
He was proud of Eden and her talent for archery, the fact she competed internationally and struck a chord with everyone because of her raw talent, her terrifying precision. But he was proud of merely a shadow of Eden, the only part he appreciated was the talent itself, he tossed his daughter aside once the talk shows and competitions were over, preferring to delve into his work, to stay longer and longer at the palace, to avoid the dreaded contact with Evey’s mother.
When they heard Prince Percival was of age, it was the first time they were united about anything. Eden must compete, surely she would get in. Armitage Lindquist was great friends with King Philip, for his cold, stony facade was only extended towards the members of his own family. Brooklyn Lindquist was now a legend, a figure which the media loved to gossip about, to portray as both a beautiful heroine and a despicable villain, depending on the magazine edition. Brooklyn and Armitage both agreed it would be a great move politically, that it would secure the wealth and fame of both of them, set it in stone. Eden had no say in the matter, like always. But she was done being a puppet.
The moment they announced her name, when she realized she was leaving the home she had loved and hated, the only place she’d really ever known, she felt oddly triumphant. She was no longer her parents’. She was no longer a toy of the media, the prodigal archer of Illea. She was independent, she was in control. Eden was now the one who was grasping the keys, dealing the cards. She's determined to keep it that way.|Say oh, we’re about to explode|
Family:
↣ Armitage Thomas Lindquist||Father||Alive
↣ Brooklyn Audrey Fitzgerald Linquist||Mother||Alive
Other:
Atlas||Coldplay
►►►|Heather Saoirse Patenaude|◄◄◄
True Age: 18
Apparent Age: 16-19
Birthday: June 14
Caste: Five
Occupation: Ballerina/Cellist
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Appearance:
Hair: Dark brown; naturally curly
Eyes: Blue/green, depending on the lighting
Height: 5’5”
Weight: 110 lbs
Build: Slim, but has defined curves
(view spoiler)
Personality:
The only rules Heather follows are her own. She is not naturally defiant nor does she feel a strong sense of animosity towards authority, but she is bound by her own beliefs, her own rules, her own moral compass, and it is impossible for her to follow through on someone else’s laws when she must break her own. While she takes others’ opinions into account, if she feels as if she has a better solution, she is unafraid to defy orders, to disobey and break conformity, to dance to her own rhythm. She is incredibly stubborn, and a wee bit impulsive. Heather is incredibly intelligent, and her wit astounds, but she is not one to listen to her head when her heart is calling her towards a completely different direction.
She is not simple. Like all, Heather can be subject to change, and this includes her beliefs, although it takes an exhausting amount of time and effort to bring about such a change. She knows she is not always right, but she is also aware that others around her are not always right, and when dilemmas occur, she would rather stick with her own wrong ideas based on noble laws rather than risk wreaking havoc by trusting the judgement of others, especially when her heart jumps out, warning her of corruption and immorality. She has learned through time that trust is too easily broken, and she shields herself with a wall of sarcasm and wit, hints of rebellion and passive-aggression flowing from her veins. She is unafraid of challenge, but she is not unafraid of everything.
She has become unstable. In the face of loss, the fact that she cannot shield and protect those around her, those she loves, hits her all too hard. She realizes that who she is and what she stands for is all so tentative, and she also sees that there is no real way to know whether her beliefs are the right ones. She breaks down in tears in anger, in anguish, in confusion and loss and loneliness, but re-emerges, the faces of the dead burning too brightly in her mind, as she faces her new enemies, her new purpose, head on, to make sure, that at whatever cost, the deaths of her loves will not go unpaid for. That they will not die in vain.
Her beliefs are still there, her rules, the fact that she is more than willing to rebel, but she is now playing at a much more dangerous game. She is not so completely sure what or who she stands for anymore. And it makes her all the more dangerous.|I’m in a foreign state, my thoughts they slip away…|
Strengths:
↣ Intuition
↣ Wit/sarcasm
↣ Intelligence
↣ Independence
↣ Courage
↣ Loyalty
↣ Ambitious nature
↣ Strong morals compass/plays by her own rules
Weaknesses:
↣ Impulsiveness
↣ Stubborn nature
↣ Struggles with grief/PTSD
↣ Rebellious nature
↣ Aversion to trusting others
↣ Rude/blunt to those she dislikes
↣ Holds incredibly strong grudges
↣ Can hold strong prejudices towards some of the upper castes
Likes:
► Ballet
► Sarcasm
► Her Cello
► Her family
► Music
► Justice
► Equality/fair treatment
► Adrenaline rush
► Opportunities to rise
► Challenges
► Fire
Dislikes:
► The upper castes
► Fairy tales/misconceptions about “true love”
► Appearing like a “damsel in distress”
► The dark
► The cold
► Cowardice
► Long dresses/skirts
► Those who break her rulesMyers-Brigg Type: ESTP/ESFP
History:
“I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
She was the middle child, but never the easily forgotten child. She was the most curious out of the three, the one with the most bruises and cuts, the one who broke the mold of singers and pianists to dance because it was impossible for her to sit still for more than a minute at a time. Her younger brother was the one she fought the most with, the one she competed with, the result of one too many broken instruments, of scoldings and black eyes and fidgeting, waiting to be let out from the dreaded time out corner.
Her older sister was her love. She was delicate, fragile, beautiful. A songbird, living up to her name. Wren. She warbled and she loved fiercely and not even the terrible cough which seemed to possess her entire frame could make her relinquish the tenacity in which she held on to life. Heather was her protector. They were together, a duo, both on and off stage. The flower took care of the bird, and Heather was the one who held the spare inhaler, who knew exactly what pills needed to be administered, who tested the ice before letting her sister skate.
It was a backwards world, where the little became the big and the big became little. Their parents had died soon after Colfer was born, in some sort of freak accident, and they had always been raised by an aunt who was never too close to her sister anyways, who was barren, who was 10 years younger than her older sister, who was exuberant, scatter-brained, wonderful, but never meant for the role of a mother. Because of this, the three were loved, but seldom properly cared for. They had to learn how to discipline themselves. No one was there to warn them of what would happen if one stepped too close to the fire. They learned independence came with strings attached, and they held onto each other, shared the burdens, lived fiercely and loved fiercer still.
Wren embraced singing, she embraced the piano, her fingers lined up like army-men, never wavering, ricocheting of off the keys as her beautiful voice rang and flew freely. Heather lived to dance, to balance herself on the tips of her toes and leap, twirl, escape everything and move, move in sync with the music, with the audience, with herself. Colfer was the artist, and his arms became strong, his eyes sharp, as he chiseled away, chips of marble flying as he took off layers to unsheathe the masterpiece that lay hidden within. They sometimes struggled, for people were stingy and prices were always rising, but they loved what they did and they loved each other and that was enough.
In time, they all excelled. They were all booked for one too many shows, one too many pieces to finish by a certain deadline, sometimes forgot to breathe. But they were happy.
Life is cruel. Tragedy did not strike, it hit them all in the stomach with an axe and watched their insides spill out, messy, chaotic, a terrifying blob. Heather was 15. There was a Two who saw the promise in Wren and they had all been so happy for her. It was a 2 year contract. They were euphoric, euphoric until the day she came in with tears and terror in her eyes, with a bloody nose and a ripped contract, a contract which he had told her could only be fulfilled if she became his slave. She had refused, and now there was nothing but shame and a bloody nose.
That was what they told themselves. Nothing but shame and a bloody nose. They were wrong. Shame, a bloody nose, and… life. Her stomach grew as did the stares, they all refused to let her play, Heather yelled and fought, she begged lawyers, begged everyone, but no one would believe, believe the ghost of a Five and her crazy little sister. The Two, the benefactor, feigned ignorance, but when everyone had gone, a smooth, sick smile twisted itself onto his face and he did not forget to pinch the girls on the cheeks, to remind them of their place, of their inferiority, before he left.
It was 2 months until the baby was to be born. They were all tired, they were all suffering, but they had survived, every one of them, including Wren, that poor, beautiful wretch of a girl. 2 months before, there was too much blood, pools and pools of it, everywhere. Their aunt walked in and fainted, Colfer almost ran out, but Heather pushed him into the door, told him, whatever you do, Colfer, don’t you dare walk out the door, stay right next to Wren, Colfer, Colfer Ryland Patenaude, do you hear me?! She ran to the doctor with all her savings, everything, but he had heard the rumors and his eyes became cold, refused to treat her, to treat a whore, and left her, slamming the door in Heather’s face.
Wren died in her brother’s arms, but not before Heather got home, before she heard her sister’s incoherent words, her screams, the amount of raw pain, before Heather had blood everywhere, from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet from trying to do what she could to keep her sister alive. It’s a twisted world. Heather saved the baby, but not her sister, not the one who held her heart.
They moved out. Colfer, Heather, and Robin, the baby, the baby whose big brown eyes served as a promise, a promise made by Heather to hunt down those who had wronged her, who caused her sister to lose first her dignity, and then her life. Colfer was 17 when he got his letter that he had been drafted to fill the honorable duty of being a guard at the King’s palace. Heather signed up for a spot in the selection, determined to keep what was left of the family together.
She took Robin, paid all she had to ensure that a maid at the palace would keep her safe, that she would raise her like her own. Colfer promised to keep them both safe. When she was selected, relief and ambition were mixed into her eyes. She would be reunited with those she loved. It was a place of security, but also a place of power. Three years, and the fire had only grown.
She will not rest until justice is hers.
|In the moment we’re ten feet tall…|
Family:
↣ Lillian Flora Patenaude||Mother||Deceased
↣ Aedan John Patenaude||Father||Deceased
↣ Wren Alexa Patenaude||Sister||Deceased
↣ Colfer Ryland Patenaude||Brother||Alive
↣ Robin Hunter Patenaude||Niece||Alive
Other:
Wings||Birdy
[Charlie-Ricky-Maverick, whatever my name is, you are such an idiot!]
►►►|Maverick Charles Allday|◄◄◄
↛ Maverick
Of American origin, meaning independent, nonconformist
↛ Charles
Of French origin, meaning manly
↛ Allday
Alias: Ricky, Mav, Charlie
True Age: 16
Apparent Age: 15-17
Birthday: September 4th
Zodiac: Virgo
Caste: One
Occupation: N/A [making things explode?]
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Demisexual
Appearance:
Hair: Light brown and always slightly ruffled
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 150 lbs
Build: Lean and lanky
Charlie walks in a loose, uncoordinated manner, a manner which convinces you that at one point he is going to trip over his own feet and fall, and yet, contrary to your assumptions, he somehow manages to bound down the halls without toppling over. His eyes are sharp, brown, observant. He is Puck-- there is elvishness in his eyes, as well as youth, and from the moment you set your eyes on his bird’s nest mop of hair, his eyes which are always searching for the next great revelation of life, his lankiness, his boyishness, you can’t help but smile a little.
(view spoiler)
Personality:
Maverick is quite fond of grabbing his hair and gasping in wonder. He is fond of explosions, of what ifs, of untested waters and of the galaxies, the macrocosms undiscovered that are an arm’s length away, untouched upon because people fear change. Fear revelations. But that is what Ricky lives for. His is the mind of the scientist, but lacking of the mathematician. He is not logic, he is exploration, not bound by nonsensical patterns or rules but by the sheer drive to know, to learn, to see what happens when you mix the green liquid with the white powder, reemerging from his bedroom with scorched hair and a sheepish, but excited grin.
He seems to have two different personalities-- in court, in public, he is serious, his eyes observant, he does what he is asked and only a few see the electricity sparking in his eyes, few see little more than the boy who nods solemnly and gives soft smiles to those who come in need of aid, the boy who knows how to assume responsibility, or so it seems. But he catches them all off guard, stopping mid-sentence in the middle of a dinner anecdote and smacking himself upside the head, almost-yelling idiot! to himself, face breaking out in a mix of frustration and excitement at himself before continuing on. It is almost impossible for him to keep his hands still, when he talks, his arms move about with him, and there are many times he catches himself, places his hands firmly in his pockets, only to find them out again, dancing along with his words.
He is his own person. He abhors his status as One, as if it somehow makes him better than others, as if it gives him the privilege to order others about. He does not shy away from responsibility, but he does not embrace it. He is solitary, but it is not his choice. Responsibilities are tied to expectations, expectations to, once more, his status. One. The word says it all. He is one. He is alone. He is the lone vagabond, the hitchiker of the galaxies who is longing for not a place, but a person to call home, for more than trivial looks and trivial bows.
The boy knows loss. His eyes, so full of youth and electricity, can sometimes seem so old. He spends so long in his room, with his experiments, with his thoughts, he can become flustered by the expectations of proper social decorum, he can be rather oblivious at times, but he never underestimates the great joys and the great horrors that lie in the human soul. He is a lonely boy, a boy who is loved but only from afar. He is humorous, he can joke around, he insults those near and dear to him, as well as those not so near to him, his eyes are always sparking, sparking with ideas, with constellations of discoveries just waiting to be made, with wit and jest, and yet, see past all the flickers and there is just a bit of pain. He is a boy who knows how to be happy, even when he is sad, and he is not sure if he will understand such emotions, but as long as there is something still unknown to unearth, the sparks in his eyes will never go out completely.
Strengths:
↣ Incredibly bright and unafraid of discovery/change
↣ Is great at running away and hiding (thanks to the sheer amount of times he has gotten in trouble thanks to some “invention”)
↣ Loves deeply and fiercely-- will go great lengths to not only save the ones he loves, but to make them happy
↣ Endearing, if not completely normal, personality
↣ Knows when to be serious
↣ Incredibly sacrificial; he will always put the needs of others in front of his own pain
↣ Quite a good actor
Weaknesses:
↣ Is a lonely soul who not only sees the pain around him but feels it too deeply
↣ Curiosity can often end up in explosions and the setting off of a fire alarm every five minutes
↣ While not exactly awkward, is sometimes woefully oblivious of current popular culture, trends, manners can sometimes be too bold/old-fashioned/doesn’t exactly know how to handle himself in large crowds when in public; can suddenly forget manners completely and ramble about topics no one understands
↣ Will run away from those he loves when he is in pain; doesn’t know how to call for help; uses his solitude as a barrier
↣ Not exactly what you’d call practical; sees rules as suggestions
↣ While a good actor, if someone asks if he likes how they look, or if he liked the party, etc. etc. the truth will be etched in every corner of his face, completely eclipsing whatever lie he speaks
Likes:
► Science of all fields
► Discovering new things
► His loved ones
► Epiphany moments
► His bedroom/laboratory
► Learning
► Teaching
► Laughing with someone (as opposed to laughing at someone or being laughed at)
► Exploring anything and everything
► Breaking boundaries
Dislikes:
► Those who treat others as if they are superior
► The caste system
► Large parties; dinner parties in general
► Being confined/limited by others
► Being underestimated
► Those who have malicious thoughts, speak malicious words, do malicious actions towards those he cares about
► Social expectations
► Gossip
History:
“She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time. ”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
One might say there love was a fairy tale, that it was what every person could wish for, a happy ending. But both William and Echo knew that there had been too many tragedies in the middle, that their hurts had caused so many blows to those on the outside, that the ends could not justify the means. The ending was one of love but the story was one of loss. Their “happy” ending came at the price of too many tragic ones.
Maybe that was why both of them sheltered their son, the reason they cherished him so much, built a wall around him so he would know such pain, but in the process, did not know the joy. He felt loved, but always from afar. Echo and William took care to teach their child the consequences of rash actions, for they had committed one too many crimes of that sort. But Charlie was a child, and like most children he did not listen.
He was a rascal, fascinated with the whys and the hows of everything, driving his tutors mad, driving the cooks mad, driving his siblings mad, and yet, somehow coming out with only mild burns and more loved by all whom he exasperated. He had always been fascinated not only in discovering things, but creating things. At first, it came from spare nuts and bolts. And then, the Threes in the house took a liking to the small boy who asked so many questions and he was suddenly supplied with substances no six-year-old boy should ever come close to. By the Will and Echo found out, Charlie had somehow made a blowtorch. It was too late.
From that day on, the fire alarms went off at least 10 times per day, and Charlie would be pulled out, chased down with the same sheepish, mischievous expression, hair always singed but otherwise unharmed. They bought him microscopes and telescopes, trying to nurture his passion while preventing him from making everyone explode and he dug further and further into science, into the constellation of vital phenomena that was life, the wonder and the hope that was the living, and while he was never without cuts and bruises they were physical wounds. The couple had succeeded in shielding their child.
But they could not shield him from the loneliness that came in locking a child inside a mansion, no matter how big. And soon enough, the loneliness consumed the child and he didn’t forget the rules, but damned them, searching for a friend, an accomplice, someone who could pop the bubble he lived in. He found it in Ellie, in one of the maid’s daughters, a girl who came with her mother to work because her father, well, her father was a man who was not to be talked about. Oh, Ellie. In her auburn hair and freckles, freckles which reminded him of stars. It was something he pointed out to her once, that Y-shaped constellation on her right cheek, and she laughed, teasing him while touching it self-consciously. They were in love, but it was not romance. It was the love of friends, a fierce love which was borne out of a love for life, the universe and everything, and ended, ended because life is twisted, the universe complex, and everything crumbles, even the constellations that are larger than the sum of the stars that create them.
It ended because one day, Ellie’s mother was found in the broom closet with a man that was not Ellie’s father, and they were cast out. There was no mercy, laws were laws, Eights were Eights. He was fourteen, and although he knew, he had read many books and seen many people, maids, butlers, stable boys, cooks, beggars on the streets, it had not comprehended, for he, like all children, lacked a heart. It was what made him courageous, but it was also what blinded him to pain. When Ellie left, the veil was ripped away, a heart grew, and pain came crashing down. He was alone, but that was not what killed him so. It was the knowledge that he had known, that he had listened into the court hearing, but he had feigned indifference, he had pretended not to know, he had had the chance to save them, but because of his childishness, his ignorance, he had not seized it, and he had cursed them to their grave. He could blame the reason on many things, but the end result was the same, it did not change anything. He was to blame.
He ended up going out to find her, slipping out of the house and taking the train to the world of the Sevens, and then walking to the Eights. He left almost as soon as he arrived, the toothless, drunk, animalistic men and the women with dead eyes, wild hair, long nails terrifying him. Is this where Ellie had gone? Was she still alive? Was she dead? Or worse, had she turned into one of these monsters? He would never know. He came back, and people wondered where he had been, and his mother and father called him in to interrogate him but took one look at those old, old eyes and knew. Knew their son had been broken. That pain had taken hold. Loss. They embraced him, but did not say anything, because there were no words that could close the wound that would never completely heal.
He learned how to be happy once more, but the weight did not leave him. He embraced solitude, losing himself in his work, in his inventions, in discovering, in exploring, in seeing if this type of horseshoe would make the horse run faster or if this type of tractor would be more efficient. His parents allowed him to run free, and he made many friends, shared things, ranted and rambled, but he had learned, learned the weight that the living carry, and knew in his heart it would never leave him. His innocence had not been stolen, merely broken, shards of it still apparent, boyishness and youth still twinkling, but it was not what consumed the boy. Not anymore
Family:
↣ Echo Cassandra Allday||Mother||Alive
↣ William Carlock Allday||Father||Alive
↣ Sibling 1||Sister/Brother||Alive
↣ Sibling 2||Sister/Brother||Alive
Other:
►►►|Adrian Wyatt Wickenheiser|◄◄◄
↛ Adrian
Of Latin origin, meaning dark, black
↛ Wyatt
Of English origin, meaning brave in war
↛ Wickenheiser
Of German origin, a habitational name for someone from Wickenhaus in Württemberg.
Alias: WICK!, Wick, Wicky
(view spoiler)
True Age: 19
Apparent Age: 17-20
Birthday: August 8th
Zodiac: Leo
Caste: Two, formally Four
Occupation: Apprentice for Construction Manager
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Bisexual
Appearance:
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 170 lbs
Build: Slim muscle; incredibly fit
(view spoiler)
Personality:
Wick is not one to take things seriously. Curiosity always provides a good excuse to let the rules slide, and while he has the physical strength and incredible agility, in all honesty, he makes an extremely bad guard. He is not one to think with the unit. Routines bore him, as does the monotony of standing by doors and making sure little things keep in place. He is apt to daydreaming, but can be found even more in places where he’s not supposed to be.
He is sweet, boyish, and has touches of childish innocence for he has never been one to experience much emotional pain or loss. He does not fully understand the meaning of danger. Wick has always attracted the girls-- his puppy dog looks and beautiful smile coupled with his sweet, humorous, nonchalant nature creating a magnetic attraction to most girls within a 10 foot radius, but he has never been in love. When he realizes how much he truly loves someone, it creates an awkwardness, and uncertainty which is almost never present. He is incredibly loyal, his love is tenacious and fierce and unlike anything he’s ever felt before.
His is intelligent, but when it comes to planning, to street smarts, he is woefully oblivious. He is overly spontaneous, too relaxed, too lazy to deal with the future. He is bright, but intelligence can be eclipsed by the need to meddle with things. Under stress, under panic, he is a contradiction: at times he is calm, the one in the eye of the storm, seeing the chaos around him but not being affected, the saving grace, and yet, at other times, he himself is thrust into mass panic, turning into a mini-hurricane which blows the smallest of problems out of proportion.
He seems confident, but an inkling of affection can turn him into an awkward mess. He possesses a sweet smile which ensures that he almost always gets his way, but he is always confused over what it is that he wants. He is the furthest away from cruel, from ruthless, but he can be inconsiderate. Apathetic. His way of dealing with problems is to treat them like jokes. He is determined, his curiosity is fueled by his need to know, but it also proves itself in battle, by the fact that neither pain nor fear nor life nor death can stop him from doing what believes is right.
He does not look like one who is more than a puppy, a mess of jokes and curiosity and hands which are always messing with fire, but let the time come, and he will become a wolf. He will become the alpha, rising even further than you could ever imagine.
Strengths:
↣ Generally laid-back, easygoing attitude
↣ Loyalty/affection/tenacity to those he cares for
↣ Incredible determination when he sets his heart towards things
↣ Generally has a good sense of humor
↣ Fiercely independent
↣ Still has touches of childish youth/innocent
↣ Smart, but in a bookish-way
↣ Is a natural leader-- confident yet compassionate
↣ Calm and poised (sometimes) in the face of conflict
↣ A naturally optimistic/idealistic individual
Weaknesses:
↣ Overly curious
↣ Terrible at following orders
↣ Smart-mouths/defies/ignores authority
↣ Can be incredibly naive/oblivious
↣ Is terrible at making strategic plans
↣ Hopeless in his love-life, army-life, life in general
↣ If he genuinely loves you, he’ll turn into a ball of awkwardness
↣ Can be obliviously inconsiderate
↣ Little and/or Big things can seriously stress him out
↣ Little and/or Big things can make him overly excited
↣ Not what you’d call practical
Likes:
► Finding things out
► Laughing
► Running
► Dogs
► Loved ones
► Chocolate/Candy
Dislikes:
► Authority
► Being unable to get into things
► People who think they’re all that
► Crying
► Being injured/sick/physically debilitatedMyers-Brigg Type: ENFP
History:
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale and the Rose
Arya Wickenheiser had been a rebel once. She had a different name, which she buried deep within, swearing to forget. She grew up the daughter of an esteemed officer of the Northern rebels, taking on her mother’s profession as a nurse, spending most of the days at her home, which had turned into a sort of makeshift hospital for wounded soldiers. It was fate that one day, one such wounded soldier came in with a son, Jackson Wyatt, only two years older. He was a Southern rebel, while her family a Northern, but it was the time of alliances and the family begrudgingly took both in, for a little while. They became fast friends, scampering around the open fields, fighting with wooden swords, trying to tame the rogue bull that lived on the abandoned property next to Arya’s house. Two weeks later, his father healed, and he left.
At the hand of fate, they met again, almost 15 years later. They were both undercover, she pretending to be a Four, him a Three. They married out of necessity, an alliance, but also out of love. For three years they worked hand in hand, until one day, she felt that something was off, went to the doctor, and they found she was pregnant. He told her to abort. They had no time, they were doing so well as Threes, they had already set up the pretense that she was barren, that the reason they had been childless for three years in a place where most were expected to conceive. She refused. Life was life, and he resigned to the ferocious fire in her eyes. Nine months later, he was born. They both proclaimed it a miracle, although the public and the private proclaimed it so for vastly different reason. The public cried in wonder at the fact a barren woman had conceived. The private cried in wonder at the fact that baby had managed to survive, survive through a near abortion, brutal trainings, late-night outings in alleyways to listen in on conversations not meant to be heard.
When Adrian was born, Jackson suggested once more that they give him up. That they take him to a foster home, let him have a normal life, apart from the chaos and secrecy of being an undercover family, apart from expectations of loads and loads of training. If he stayed, they would have to find a way to make him useful. It wasn’t worth it. Both for them, and the child. Arya was furious. Normal? Useful? She’d make herself normal. She’d make herself useful. In blind fury, she left her husband, breaking it off, shutting him off, going back to her role as a Four with her son.
She became a restaurant owner, her pretty face winning her a contract with a local Two who favored international cuisine. She was a God-awful cook but she had a general’s blood. She demanded and expected nothing but the best from all her employees, but she treated each and every one of the with respect, with fairness, with honesty. It was a good match. Her restaurant thrived, as did Adrian. He was no longer Adrian Cecil Wyatt, he was Adrian Wyatt Wickenheiser. When he was two, he asked why didn’t have a daddy. She unflinchingly told him that his daddy had died in a terrible accident, without hesitation. She was too used to lying.
It didn’t help with the pain, so she lost herself in work. She built more restaurants, a franchise, an empire based on the little one on the corner of 42nd street. She made herself too busy to sit back and think. But she could not help herself from feeling. From feeling, guilt, pain, love, joy.
Little Wick thrived. He went to school, an awfully bright kid, all agreed, but not the best at staying on task. He was truant one too many times before he even knew that word existed, he got into fistfights with other boys, not because of some sense of righteousness or duty, but because it was fun to sit on top of another boy and throw dirt on his face, didn’t anyone understand that? His mother gave him jobs around the restaurant and quickly realized ceramic dishes and Wick were a very, very bad combination. She sent him out, telling him to play, and he’d come back from god knew where with stray dogs, adopting them all and feeding them scraps, leftovers, anything and everything.
By the time he reached ten, Wick had gotten in one too many scrapes for his mother to trust him to go anywhere on his own. As a punishment, she carted him off to a local construction company which had offerings for all ages-- Wick got a job handing out water to the workers. He was thrilled. He made a point of not handing but throwing water bottles to the employees from as far away as possible and they all delighted in this little rascal of a boy with bright brown eyes and scarred knees who made a game, a joke out of so mundane a task. The boss complained once but Wick countered that hey, he was getting the job done, and the boss found he could do nothing but shake his head and mumble something about keeping up the good work.
By the time Wick was fifteen, he had a reputation. He was not… persay, a bad boy, no he was too friendly, too goofy, too… Wick to be such a thing, but he would flirt with boys and girls alike, handing out his beautiful grins like candy canes on Christmas morning. Sixteen, he was promoted to actually working part-time as a construction worker (he made a race with the fellow men to see who could build the highest towers of rubble without having them topple down but somehow managed to get his workload done), he was doing surprisingly well at school (although he was suspected to be the one who pulled every. single. stupid. prank (all of which somehow involved the fire alarm).) and he had a girlfriend, who like him, knew how to be nonchalant, to have fun, to work quickly and play even more quickly.
Eighteen was the year he was promoted yet again, due to his compatibility with all the workers and his genuine good-charm. And yet, in February, things took a turn for the unexpected. A letter from the Illean government. He had been drafted. Arya’s face turned white at the news. She was tempted, so tempted, to tell him everything, every damn lie she had told him, to tell him to track down the king, the queen, the princesses and princes, kill them all. The blood, rebel blood, was still coursing through her veins. But she didn’t. She didn’t tell him that his father was alive and well, that he had visited two days before and that she had given him a picture of Wick, that his father was truly sorry, that he, too, was going to come to palace, but in a different manner, in an attack. All she did was hug her dear boy tight and whisper, be careful.
“Ma’am, you know I’m not one for following orders,” Wick retorted with a laugh and she smiled and shook her head only to look in surprise and see the tears in his eyes which he tried desperately to hide, hanging his head and looking at the floor. “I-I love you, Mom,” he whispered to the ground and they collided one last time, inhaling each other.
A week later, he was at the palace. It wasn’t long for him to start getting into all sorts of trouble.
But while he rarely followed through with his mother’s orders, he never forgot.
Be. Careful.
Careful of what?
Family:
↣ Arya Emilia Wickenheiser||Mother||Alive
↣ Jackson Elijah Wyatt||Father||Alive
Other:
Want to know who calls him Adrian? No one. He's always been Wick. Always has, always will be. (view spoiler)
(view spoiler)| W I L L A HARPER K A L U Z A | ───────────────────────────Take me anywhere, I don't care
────────────────────────── | seventeen • bisexual • scholarship |Willa has come to love only two things in her life:1 composing music with scratchy black pensMask of ice, it is apathy that rules her, a frigid air which separates her from the rest of the world. The cold, sarcastic humor which bites people when they're down, the well-practiced smirk, the snarl in her smile which ensures space, students sealed off from getting too close by an invisible force field as she walks to class, lowering their heads to escape being pierced with those clear, cold, unreadable gray-green eyes. From the moment Willa walked onto campus on the first day of school, Windsville, unused to people who did not fit into pretty boxes with matching descriptions, decided that Willa was a wild animal who was not to be provoked.
2 lighting said music on fire and feeling absolutely nothing
The girl's best friend is loneliness, but not of the silent kind. She believes that her talent does not lie in making noise, but simply releasing it, as if it were some caged animal needed to be let free. Her guitar, a present from a great-aunt who lives in America, is perhaps the only thing she gives a shit about. Everything else is dispensable, from the unpacked boxes in her room which she will inevitably throw away to her music, which she will destroy hours after creation, to her father's plethora of failed marriages. All temporary, all dispensable.
If Willa was called to describe herself, she would say she was a destructive creationist. If only it were that simple. What is Willa? Willa is an artist, she is, on some accounts, a genius, she is a person with a voice like a chorus of angels. But above all, Willa is a cynic, a girl who knows not of human love but far too much of human hate.
Love is a strange sort of fairytale, isn't it?
(view spoiler)| D A N T E CASSIAN B O U R G E O I S | ───────────────────────────
────────────────────────────────── | sixteen • bisexual • windsville |They call him crazy. He prefers dreamer, or, if he's in a particularly whimsical mood, magician. Sixteen years old, and Dante Cassian Bourgeois is still enveloped by innocence, by optimism, by wonder and romanticism and the belief of true love, the kind which causes you to stand outside a girl's house with a boombox blasting over your head.
Here's the thing: if it's breathing, Dante wants to be its friend. Extraverted doesn't even cover it. It doesn't matter who you are, he'll find a way to your soft spot. That's why he learned how to juggle. That's why he took parkour classes (extra incentive was added because the instructor was a Calvin Klein model). He's a genuinely happy person, and maybe it is because he's a white male from upper-class standings, the son of a successful (and incredibly eccentric) musician from a family of successful musicians and actors and talk show hosts since the turn of the 20th century. But one cannot discredit his natural charisma, a hypnotizing, infectious, good-natured persona which makes you want to join in, to catch whatever he has because there is no way that one human being could naturally harbor that much enthusiasm for living.
Dante believes in the extraordinary. He is a boy who runs on faith: in a world where so many know but so few believe, he's proud to call himself a believer. Dante believes in magic. Dante believes in true love. Dante believes that people are infinite, limitless in their energy, and it is this energy that he is so inexplicably drawn to, an energy that is, perhaps, the magic that Dante was searching for all along.
I go to seek a Great Perhaps
(view spoiler)───────────| J A C K S O N
───────────────────────────── | seventeen • bisexual • windsville |Jackson is blue-blooded, that is a fact no one can deny. Born into a family of French businessmen and politicians, every word he speaks, every cool, steady gaze, every article of clothing he wears is drowning in blue-blood, in the refined, confident airs of a family completely ignorant of the plights of the poor, born into the world of silver spoons and diamond rings, where everything that glitters is, in fact, made of gold.
And yet, Jackson's blood is unsettling. It does not flow smoothly, and it is not the royal blue that flows from his mother's veins, his father's veins. It is darker, more volatile, and there is something distinctly savage about the boy who is as unreadable as ink splotches on notecards. Perhaps it is in his smile, which gleams in a predatory way, or perhaps it is in his legendary contempt for every law set before him. It is a terrifying and beautiful sight to watch the boy crush the precepts and conventions of the world with the same, elegant finesse he does anything else, embellishing his anarchic ways with the same, beautiful, blue-blooded smile, cuff-links glinting in exultation before being devoured by the darkness.
He is not an outsider. He is on the inside, the leader of a faction of those that are both carefree and careless, perfecting the art of creative destruction, orchestrators of careful chaos. Blue blood stains lead back to the laugh of a boy who has nothing to live for and so has nothing to lose. The town speculates that there will come a day when blue blood morphs into black, gushing like ink from the veins of those who weren't careful enough. These premonitions do not scare Jackson. After all, it is only blood, however blue it seems.
‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ i began to understand why god died ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧
(view spoiler)| Z O O E Y CAMDYN G R A B O W S K I | ───────────────────────all I know is everybody loves me
───────────────────────── | sixteen • heterosexual • scholarship |Zooey's grandmother once said that there are two types of people in this world, the givers and the receivers. And you, Zooey, are the neediest out of all the receivers I've ever seen, she went on to say before scooping the girl up and showering her with kisses.
Call it being a receiver, call it charisma, call it extroversion, but none can deny that wherever Z. happens to be, one also finds a multitude of people giving for the girl who has only ever known how to receive. She seems to be made for the spotlight, for larger-than-life presences which explode far beyond a small British town. Perhaps that is why she lives for the annual talent shows where she beams and giggles when parents widen their eyes and whisper to each other, holy shit, that girl can sing. Her parents believe it is good practice for the fame that is surely within arm's reach in Zooey's future.
But Zooey doesn't sing for the future. She is fully present, her stage energy is not one drawn from ambition but from creativity. She has yet to learn that things that are created can so easily be destroyed, that those who give always want something in return, that words can be used as weapons. The girl who has only given thank yous has not discovered that speaking her mind can result in packages of broken hearts on her front step, that there is more to life than simply sitting back and smiling as the world hands you your dreams on a silver platter. Zooey knows that it takes more than a fun-loving personality and a sweet smile to win the game of life and that at some point, she'll have to start giving. But first, she'll have to stop taking the givers for granted.some people were just made to be in the spotlight
(view spoiler)| D A N I E L──────────────────────── | eighteen • heterosexual • scholarship |
Daniel Holzknecht is governed by a pragmatic outlook on life which always borders on pessimism, a don't get your hopes up perspective with bouts of self-deprecating humor and sarcasm sprinkled in. He doesn't think himself to be a superstitious person, and you would probably agree, that is, until he brings up the devils. He believes that Stathford is full of them and that they go out of their way to make his life hell. For example, the day of his fourteenth birthday, when his mother, who was dropping by for a visit, got killed by a drunk driver just two minutes away from his dad's house. Don't apologize; the devils are the ones to blame and you can shove your half-assed I'm sorrys down your throat. He doesn't want to be your latest new feature in a sob-story exhibition; this is just solid proof that he needs to leave this piece of shit town before the devils catch up to him again.───────────── if the devil calls again, tell him i'm not in ─────────────
That being said, the boy hasn't lost all hope. Hope came in the mailbox one day in the form of a letter, a letter written on paper which probably cost more than all the contents within Dan's refrigerator. Windsville wasn't just a gateway to bring Dan's dreams into reality, it was the way to laugh at the devils' faces, or perhaps, serenade them, because that's how he got into Windsville in the first place. That's right, you are looking at a band nerd, who, for the record, can play just about every single instrument in a full-sized symphony.
He doesn't go out of his way to make friends, but the cool, relaxed, sarcastic facade has won him a few. They'll be gone before long; after next year, Dan is planning on moving to London, far away from here, and he is taking with him the boy behind the paper walls he has haphazardly constructed, walls which you can clearly see through, if you take the time to look. Behold the hopeless romantic, the boy with a broken, but never empty heart. The glass might be half-empty, but he'll find a way to fill it till it overflows and laugh in spite of himself, and perhaps that will be the day the boy stops blaming himself for the devils within him.
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──────────────────────────── | sixteen • heterosexual • windsville |It is a truth universally acknowledged that every single teenager will be stigmatized in high school. Need proof? Look no further than the one, the only, Ava Jasmin Mendoza.
It's not that she's anything special. On the contrary, Ava is rather mediocre, a sweet, slightly clumsy, unhealthily organized girl who often attempts to be sassyand usually fails. That being said, do not underestimate Ava's potential to turn into a competitive, test-loving, valedictorian-contending teacher's pet. You know that girl who'll burst into tears when the teacher cancels the test? That's Ava. You'll find her spending the majority of her free-time re-organizing her study notecards, "rapping" along to horrifically vulgar hip-hop and breaking out into a victory dance session to the song Bohemian Rhapsody in order to celebrate the fact that she was the only student to score 100% on the math test. They label her as a nerd and she wears it with her head held high. After all, you have a far better chance of winning the nobel prize and becoming prime minister if you're intellectually capable.
But then there's the fact that she is a Mendoza; the rumors that her family is tied to the Italian mafia, the well-known fact that her father was found with a shitload of extremely illegal narcotics, bribing his way out of jail before rebuilding his empire through blackmailing all his connections. That's when the stigma hits her. Ava may be the daughter to the third richest man in Europe, but inheriting money also means she's inheriting infamy.
The thing that makes Ava stand out is not her money, her reputation, or god-forbid, the stigma around her name. Ava Mendoza was set apart merely by the fact that she is determined to break every boundary set before her. Tell her she isn't able to do something and she'll prove you wrong. Breaking the stigma is no different; c'mon now, how hard could it be?
────────────'cause we are the champions of the world─────────────
║ | Christopher Fitzgerald Hamilton III | ║Alias|| T ᴏ ᴘ ʜ ᴇ ʀ
↔Seventeen | Senior | Nerd Leader | Male | Bisexual↔The heir to a billionaire industry, Topher embodies the confidence and charisma one would expect from a family of blue-blooded Manhattan senators, each one more smooth and more slippery than the rest. He has the easy smile, the relaxed, confident air which borders on condescending but never quite crosses the threshold, but there is a fire in his eyes and the passion in which he embraces all things technology gives him a genuine, endearing nature which goes past the politeness and the charm. To the few who know him best, he is so much more than just another boy born into money, his genius status and Ivy-League acceptances, the girls which flirt as he confidently runs his fingers through his hair and flashes a mischievous grin to all who are willing to look.
He is not a sum of any of the perfect boy, the role he plays flawlessly, seamlessly ingrained into his personality. It is hard to remember that Topher, not Christopher Fitzgerald Hamilton III, is a completely different entity altogether. A boy that is awkward, shy, a lover of irony and British pop-culture, a boy whose smile and laugh emanate his love for goofing around, a klutz, a terrible jokester, a boy with crazy ideas and crazy dreams, an idealist, a hopeless romantic.
It all comes to nothing. For Hamiltons, it has never been about overcoming prejudices but merely keeping up the polite pretensions, and so he continues, covering his potential with his devilish good looks.
║ | Dominic Hunter Llewyelyn | ║
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↔Seventeen | Twelfth Grade | SLT Vice President | Male | Heteroromantic Bisexual↔He is known as the peacemaker, the one to break up fights, to act as judge, to keep the situation from becoming too tense and finding ways to end grudges, create compromise, and do his best to make sure past grievances have only minor effects on the present.
He is more quiet then one would expect, but when he pushes open the school doors with the determination etched in his clenched jaw, no one dares question his authority. He has worked his way up-- his role model is his mother, who went from living in a trailer park with an abusive husband to working three jobs simeltaneously while making sure her son was taken care of. They have the same dedicated, hard-working, ambitious resolve, and yet Dom is more than just ambitious.
He is a dreamer, a boy who writes fantastical stories and accidentally throws his pencil to the opposite end of the classroom out of excitement of the what ifs in this world. There is a difference between those who achieve great things and those are simply great people, and Dom is determined to be the latter.
║ | Margot Ryland Rossier | ║
↔Sixteen | Eleventh Grade | Dramatics Second | Female | Heterosexual↔
Being adopted, contrary to what people believe, has its repercussions, and Margot's is that she constantly feels as if she has to prove herself, prove that her upper-middle class life and her loving parents weren't given to her as just some stroke of luck. Flirtatious, intelligent, witty, beautiful, and incredibly talented, Margot wants to achieve greatness, and she wants to achieve it on her terms. The worst thing anyone can do is to cast pity on her, so she does her best to look invincible, even when she is crumbling apart.
Acting the part is actually the easiest part. Retaining her dreams, her ideals, her ambitions as she plays another person is what Margot struggles with. But struggle is not something Margot can tolerate. So the mask just becomes tighter and tighter, thicker and thicker, cement hardening, cracking, bit by bit by bit as she dons the stage as the perfect primadonna.
It is well known that perfection comes with a price too high to pay, but it seems someone forgot to tell Margot.
║ | Esther Sooyeon Choi | ║
↔Fifteen | Tenth Grade | Jocks | Female | Demisexual↔One can never tell if the sweet, innocent, adorable Esther is being serious, if she is Tinkerbell in an alternate universe, waiting to sprout wings and fly, tinkling bells of laughter trailing behind her. One can never tell if this is just an act, or her other face is.
Her game face, the side of her which shines with sweat and dedication, of extreme talent and extreme work paying off in the countless wins, whether it be tennis, volleyball, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, softball, track, or even dance. She is a girl who you naturally want to take under the crook of your arm, her bright eyes make you protective, her charm is not limited to merely her adorable face. But see her in the game and take note that this girl, no matter how sweet she acts, has the potential to be utterly terrifying.
║ | Jessica Finley Remington | ║
↔Seventeen | Eleventh Grade | Yearbook | Female | Heterosexual↔
It's not only that Jess is nice. It's that she's perfectly bland and so easy to overlook. Just another face in the crowd, background music that's so easy to tune out. And that's just how she wants to stay. Unnoticed. She definitely notices you. She's keen at observing, at being nosy without seeming nosy, and she'll smile and play meek at school only to go home and add layer after layer of obsessive information, every rumor, every line of gossip, every fact, big or small written down, begging to be told. Beware. Beware of the girl who wants to know. Know what? Know everything.
(view spoiler)[Rich • Seventeen • Male • Bisexual • Senior • SLT]• Aldrich Marcus Viller •
The rich in Aldrich is no joke. It is accentuated to the point where it's the only name he responds to. He's a devilishly good-looking pretentious little shit, and what's even worse is that he knows he's a devilishly good-looking pretentious little shit. Rich doesn't even cover it. Richie could give away millions, billions maybe, and have more than enough to comfortably live on. Of course, knowing Rich, that's probably the last thing he'd ever do.
What's in a reputation? Everything. And Rich, as self-absorbed and shitty as he is, knows the games of lying, of deceit, of playing the angel, the cologne, the blue eyes, the thoughtful gazes disillusionizing you from the asshole he is. If you want, take pity on the boy. Take pity on the boy who has been taught by society that those who have the money have power, taught that those seven deadly sins aren't deadly at all, but the elixir of life itself. Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, he's wrapped his little finger around them all. There may be a day when the boy will find that wits can only take you so far. A day when karma catches up and slaps him shitless.
But that day hasn't come yet. And it won't be coming anytime soon.
(view spoiler)When it comes to the John Adams High School superlatives, everyone knows who will win the title class clown, none other than the goofy, unashamedly Italian, effervescent, hellish, flirty, cocky, larger-than-life Leo Savignano. It's a name all have come to know, whether it's through seeing Mrs. Savignano scrawled with hearts drawn around on loose slips of notebook paper in the hallways or through hearing the hockey coach bellow SAVIGNANOOOOO at some point during the day for another dastardly, daring prank which has left everyone highly amused, except, of course, the victim.• Leonardo Dante Savignano •
[ Leo • Seventeen • Male • Pansexual • Senior • Jock ]
What do you need to know about Leo Savignano? That there are two things, only two, that he takes seriously.a)His little sister.Everything else falls away. This is a boy who does not care about making a fool out of himself, on the contrary, he revels in it. It is his delight to see cheeks stained with tears from laughing too hard. As the school's jester, he sees it his duty to turn you into a fool, and a happy fool at that.
b)Hockey.All agree that this is, no doubt, a noble duty.
(view spoiler)If Shiloh had a nickel for every single time someone reminded her that her surname was just one letter short of fuck or that it was pronounced like funk, you know, like the Uptown Funk sort of funk?, it would be pretty damn clear why these sort of "witty" comments result in a glare resemblent of the recently-reinstated planet Pluto: distant, cold, and undermining.• Shiloh Augustine Funck •
[ Lola • Sixteen • Female • Pansexual • Junior • Nerd ]
She abhors make-up. She embraces hipster glasses, obscure books meant purely for cover aesthetic, and the taste of cheap coffee to an extremist level. She prefers silence to everything except the sound of ocean waves, or maybe the soft, jazzy playlists at the local coffee shops. Many find her terse, cold, her gaze piercing, uncomfortable, as they recognize her genius and fail to recognize her personality, never looking past the frost settled in her eyes to see if any lights are on.
It's fine with Shiloh. Those who are worthy of her wit are those who are willing to accept that ice is so much more than mere coldness. It's true, Shiloh will probably never tell you her story. But give her time, and revere companionable silence, and it might be enough to compel her to write it for you.
(view spoiler)• Darcy Jane Vinter •[ Darcy Jane • Seventeen • Female • Bisexual • Junior • Dramatic ]
Energy. Pure, raw, beautiful energy. That is what Darcy Jane is. She is light, she is graceful, she is always exploding into laughter, into song, into dance, into dramatic soliloquy, and everyone sees that she is not just a dramatic but the dramatic, so alive, so young, the epitome of youth.
She emanates warmth and light even when she feels nothing. She tries her best to be the sun, to not resort to becoming a moon simply reflecting the greatness of others, but become the source of it all, of warmth, of light, of life as the broken shards of her heart try to remember what it means to beat without stuttering and as she comes home to pills and insults, an abuse of a different kind, the kind that you cannot just wait out by cowering in the corner.
She is radiant, she is loving and kind and her greatness, her light, the reason why people look at that forever smiling face and say, this girl, this girl is going to become something great is because she feels deeply and acutely and she knows the secrets of human souls, the source of its tears and also, of its laughter.
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Jake has always been a good kid. Straight A student, one of the best basketball and lacrosse players on campus, the kid who limits his drinks and refuses to smoke because how the hell are you supposed to play ball with a hangover and decreased lung capacity? The school says that he's just another one of those popular jocks and he rolls with it, using the label to hide the fact that he's struggling to keep his head above the surface, to scrape through so that he can go to a good college, get a good job, fulfill the American dream.
Perhaps it's the exclusivity of the label or perhaps it's the fact that lacrosse and basketball are mediocre compared to football but no one really knows anything about Jake Lichtenberg. They don't know that Jake's first name isn't actually Jacob, that Jake lives in a cramped, two-roomed apartment with a mother who's never home and a father who gambles their money away, that Jake's sarcastic witticisms are just a cover for the boy who doesn't actually want to be admitted to the UCs for his 42 inch vertical but because his home (if you can call it a home) is toxic. If he doesn't get out of there soon, he's not entirely sure how long he'll last before being pulled under like all the rest of them.
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Mason is less known for his superb football kicking abilities and more for his class-clown antics, a goofy persona heightened by his ability to throw shade at anyone and everyone. A signature smirk always at hand, Mason is never too far behind from saying something vulgar, sarcastic, or maybe both. He's not an asshole, but if you're not one who can handle having jokes made at your expense, take care not to get too close to Connor Mason.
It seems odd that the golden boy of Westerville and one of the inner crew football jocks could ever be so close, but Will and Mason were inseparable since the first day of third grade, when they were seated next to each other and Mason's fart jokes cemented an unbreakable friendship. Mason had always been more into sports, a mediocre student not because he was stupid but because he didn't try. Will, on the other hand, was the epitome of a nerd and yet through intense call of duty gaming sessions, camping trips and yet more crude jokes, their friendship only grew stronger. It never wavered, even when Will got that controlling girlfriend Mason never approved of and even when most of Will's friends (especially Liz Reed) hated Mason and most of Mason's friends hated Will. It was a friendship meant to last for eternity.
Except it didn't. Where was Mason May 1st? At the bonfire, of course. He had convinced Will to come, guilting him with the fact that Will had ditched the previous party thanks to Cameron and Mason had promised himself that he would get Will to loosen up, to forget about his controlling girlfriend, flash back to the good ol' days when Will wasn't so strung up about being the best. Will, who was always careful not to get too drunk forgot about his care when Mason goaded him into a beer pong match and then cheered on as Will valiently payed the loser's penalty by taking three shots of whiskey.
They tell him it's not his fault, but it is. It's completely his fault. You see, if Mason hadn't been there, Will would've never thought of taking more than one can of beer. If Mason hadn't been there, Will wouldn't even have considered going. Now, there's no Will and Mason. There's just Mason, the boy who keeps up the same old goofball, grinning, sarcastic act at school only to come home and howl in the shower because no childhood tales could've ever prepared him for the monsters of grief and guilt.
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Jackson, more commonly known as Jack, is a flexible force of nature: micro-managing himself so that each person he interacts with gets their own custom experience of his personality. Thanks to this, everyone likes Jack. Not just the nerds. Not just the jocks. Not just the guys or the girls or the theatre kids or the band nerds. Everyone likes Jack, but each person likes a different Jack.
He doesn't consider himself a poser, despite Myriam Sterling's accusations. Truth is, Jack simply has no idea who the hell he is, his interests spread so far out that it's impossible to slap a label on him, something extremely problematic for the rest of society. As a mode of survival, he learned the art of showing people the parts of himself that they wanted to see and nothing more. Yes, compartmentalizing his life comes with as many cons as it does pros, but it's the way he's used to living and so Jack has come to believe that it's the only way he can live.
If Corey was Louis's right-hand man, then Jack was Louis's left-hand, providing the role of designated driver whenever Kenzie couldn't, tutoring Louis to the best of his abilities, having his bro's back whenever someone made a lewd comment about Meghan. It's true, he could be a bit of an arrogant ass around the likes of the football crew, but those dick moments could be excused once you saw the Jack he was around the nerds, an animated, enthusiastic, witty intellectual or the Jack he was around other girls, where he never hesitated to lend a hand or open doors. So many people, all of whom received separate versions of Jack, were balanced so as not to stir conflict. This elaborate scale, so carefully set up, completely toppled on May 2nd. He came home from Santa Barbara that morning, placing first and second in all his track and field events, walking in with a rueful grin at the thought that he had contemplated skipping the meet so he could go to the bonfire party. The smile faded fast at the sight of his teary-eyed mother, who came with the news that Louis and Corey and Meghan had died along with three others.
For the first time in his life, Jack has no idea how to adjust. A mixture of relief, grief, and guilt build minute by minute as a newfound volatility threatens to consume him, because the scale's not tipped out of balance, it's completely shattered and Jackson doesn't know how much of the damage can be repaired.
