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"The story of Icarus is one that I'm intimately familiar with."[ 21 | 5'9" | Polish | She/Her | 116 lbs ]
[Shame]
APPEARANCE
"Nie wszystko złoto, co się świeci."Since a young age, Andrea has been seen as developed beyond her years. She stands taller than many women and even some other boys at her age. She possesses long and naturally wavy bright blond hair that one would notice is well taken care of, thought it still appears a little bit brittle. Her features are further accentuated by hazel blue eyes and pale skin, which is often done up with with a few dabs of makeup so that her skin appears to possess an even tone without the underlying blood and veins creating pictures on it. Her complexion, otherwise, gives you the impression that she was quite the beauty - and though she still meets the conventional standards, there is something else present in her face that'd give away a history with struggle. Where perhaps she passed through a dark time in her life and is slowly coming back from it. Faintly noticeable, but ever-present bags sit under her eyes. Her skin is stretched tight over where there's bone and cartilage, and the pink of her lips appears dehydrated and bears a tired expression. She's always trying to mask it with a faint, kind smile that also tries to keep her mouth closed to hide the barely yellowed teeth, no longer the pearly whites they once were. No scars or freckles to speak of, but the puncture scars on her arms. She wears a little button nose on her heart-shaped face, the left nostril of which is adorned by a piercing with the littlest diamond you ever did see. She also has earring studs, one on each lobe. Other adornments includes a silver band on her left hand and red polish on her fingernails, giving it a clean looking guise, but closer inspection reveals that she picks at it. Perhaps the result of a nervous tick?
Her frame is petite and slender, bust measurement at 28E, and most of her height seems to come from her legs. She lacks enough upper strength to be even remotely threatening though, and while she can carry most of the stuff she'll ever need to carry, nobody will be asking her to do the lifting for them. Most of her workout routine is concerned about jogging and yoga, as it keeps her cardio up and figure right, but it doesn't do much more than that other than the mental therapy the exercises provide. Despite her efforts to maintain her health, her actual body still appears thin. Pronounced collarbones suggest, while perhaps naturally sharp, could not be so sharp that they exist the way they do without Andrea lacking some musculature. The same goes for other areas of her body - shoulders, hands, hips, knees, ankles, her cheekbones - no amount of exercise can allow her to gain weight if she lacks the appetite to fuel that activity. She is not so skinny that she appears anorexic, but she isn't packing any heat. She instead moves with the same sort of careful grace and caution as a cat would have.
When she speaks, she does so with a fairly heavy Polish accent - and it can be clearly seen that there are some pronunciations that she struggles with, such as the differences between sheep and ship, kiss and keys, lid and lead, to the point where they sound alike to one another. Andrea's method of speech is rather soft-spoken and gentle, doesn't quite project very much to cover distance or be heard over others (much to her chagrin). However, she is deliberate and thoughtful. She chooses her words carefully and considers what she has to say before she says it, as if weighing it in a scale in her mind.
Regardless of her body-type, she tends to avoid provocative clothes like the plague and so she is spared from sexualization at first glance. Typically, she is fitted with a black wool peacoat when she goes outdoors, buttoned all the way down, even on somewhat warm spring or autumn days, as it serves as something like a security blanket. Underneath, one of her favorite outfits is one that serves it purpose in both casual and professional environments. It could be any color of blouse tops, button-up or v-necked, it didn't matter - as long as they're long-sleeved. She often wears her top with a buckled strap going around her waist and it's usually tucked into a black laced pencil skirt, and is sometimes in different colors depending on the occasion - other lower garments may include formal pants, long skirts, and if she's relaxing at home or in a super casual environment, very billowly, loose, "feels-like-you're-wearing-nothing", comfortable skirts, dresses, etc. Underneath, she always has black leggings or yoga pants and she prefers to wear shoes or boots with thick cuban heels. Somewhere in her wardrobe are some jeans or other tougher clothes, but it isn't very often that she finds the day calling for that unless it's really cold. This might mean Andrea appears prude, but she tries her best to ignore those sentiments.
PSYCHOLOGY
"Is there anything you need? I'm happy to help."MAIN GOAL ⫻ At the end of the day, Andrea just wants to get better. She wants to be able to leave her shameful past behind her and make for herself a bright future that she can be proud of despite the awful things she has done whether that means fulfilling a fruitful career, graduating, or finishing some obscure, personal journey of significance and coming to terms with herself.
PHILOSOPHY ⫻ She clings to the Christian values she was raised with, but her faith has since shattered. She finds it hard to believe in a God or in any God who could love her, but the teachings of Christ are something she holds dear to her. They tell her that everyone is worth saving. They told her that when Jesus sat with pariahs and with the beggars and whores, the bastards - all of them. They were all deserving of love. She wants to believe there's still a chance for her, so she still carries on while trying to love thy neighbor, not to be the judge of a person's worth, and sharing what she has. She wants to believe that being kind and remaining true to herself is all it takes to show herself worthy of the life she was given.
SECRETS ⫻ Oh boy. Pretty much her entire history between high school and where she's at now. She probably wouldn't even mention her time at Yale, because that too would require an explanation. "Why come to Grand Ridge when you were at Yale?" So she just plays it like a transfer student. She also never shows off her arms, as they are always covered down to the wrists.
DESIRES ⫻ Honestly, her desires aren't that far off from her main goals. You could say that her short-term goals align fairly well with her long-term goals: focus on her studies, to be and to stay happy, and to ultimately find her place in the normal world once again. She wishes to fit in with her peers like she once did, and so far, she still feels like she's wearing sheep's clothing.
SEXUALITY ⫻ She isn't well informed about that range of sexual identities, so asking her personally wouldn't get you an answer, but she can be best described as grey-A (or grey-asexual). She doesn't normally experience sexual attraction to people or have a sex drive, if ever, but is still capable of feeling sexual arousal. If in the abnormal circumstance that she does, it's not ever strong enough for her to want to act on them.
FEARS ⫻ Relapsing is her biggest and greatest fear. Relapse, and everything else goes down with her.
REPUTATION ⫻ Virtually non-existent. As a girl from Poland who originally moved only to the east coast of the United States, there likely wasn't a single soul in Montana who knew who she was. What minor reputation she acquired for herself in her second week of school is just as one of the law majors whose also taking theater. She's quiet and reserved, and none of the townsfolk actually know her, but she always seems more than willing to help out the other students on campus. Andrea has shown herself to be an over-achiever once again, but she never does seem to talk about herself very often. In fact, her whole presence here is kind of a mystery.
PET PEEVES ⫻ She'd sooner shut down or dodge drama when she can, but she has been through too much and understands all too well what it's like being on the bottom rung to let it happen to other people, and certainly not to watch some elitist berate them for it. It's a passionate anger that makes her lose sight and perspective and it's embarrassing for her when it happens. She can also be a hypocrite sometimes, as she is the first one to give people her condolences and sympathy, but she hates pity. She could appreciate it when she was first admitted into rehab and was in dire need of help, but she's in recovery now and is trying to be on her way to being normal again. The last thing she wants now is people's pity.
QUIRKS ⫻ Andrea has the nervous tick of picking at her nails whenever shes anxious, nervous, upset, or uncomfortable, and she's aware of it - so she tries to avoid picking at her nails and clicking them together instead. Sometimes it works. Sometimes the tick is bad enough that she goes straight to picking at it. What's more, she seems kind of jumpy and is always looking around as if she's waiting for someone. If someone compliments her appearance in any capacity, she'll either tug at the bottom of her coat or other article of clothing, hug her arms, or nervously tug at the end of her hair if it happens to be down.
BACKSTORY
"Hey, it's okay. We all have old ghosts. There's nothing wrong with that."Andrea's story is one of a girl who was set up for success in every possible way, but lost everything. Growing up, Andrea was completely unaware of her own privileged life, and how lucky she has been for the majority of it. She was born to a Christian high-middle class family in Poland. They could afford good schools. Andrea was encouraged to take up painting, she learned how to drive, started working early, she learned, was raised to be faithful, and she learned English and French on top of her native language. Hard work carried her to be her high school's valedictorian. She had boyfriends, broke her heart a couple times, and moved on. All the while, she had multiple opportunities made available to her such as offers for placements in a couple different commercials by different producers with the help of her loving family.
Everything was essentially handed to her on a silver platter, and that is not to knock her own intelligence down, no. She was smart and balanced her early life out nigh perfectly. In the senior yearbook, was voted Most Likely to Succeed. Amidst all this fortune and the popularity she had in school, it didn't do much to alter her nature. She's naturally been a sweet-tempered and reasonable girl, if a bit naive of her place and the place of others in the world. She denied the existence of her privileges and good fortune and insisted that she has worked hard to earn what she has – which may be true to some degree, as she is no stranger to responsibility, but it's clear that a lot of things in her life has been handed to her on a silver platter, and she is currently on the beginning of a long road that's keen on not giving a single damn about "all the good things" she's accomplished. Right outside of high school, the world is very different.
Right out of high school, not even a legal adult yet, and Andrea already had high expectations of where she planned to go, but she was determined to smash those barriers. She wanted to travel to the United States to pursue law at Harvard, which was a massive undertaking on its own. At the same time, she also wanted to balance with it an acting career, which would help pay for the expenses. Then the heavy hand of reality squashed her Legally Blonde fantasies: despite valedictorian status and scholarships, Harvard never replied to her applications. She went down the list applying, and all the while also auditioning for acting gigs so that she wasn't wasting her time. Oxford? No. Cambridge? No. Stanford? No. She got only small gigs playing extras in commercials. Submitting submission after submission, at this point only waiting to see if one of the big colleges notice her, she eventually got acceptance at Yale University in the US. The university was prestigious in its own right, but it didn't make Andrea feel very special after being ignored so many times. Still, she persisted through Yale, where she sought to practice public law and become an attorney
Trying to balance her life became challenging when she was on her own in Yale. She survived her first year, but entering her second year of university, she was caught like a tight-rope between trying to survive, succeed in school, and salvaging an already drowning acting career. She was being stretched thin. She felt herself falling apart at the seams with her pushing herself far beyond what she was capable of. She refused to let go of acting and "come back to it later" and she had no family around to support her. They could give her money, but they couldn't give her more hours in the day. She was barely sleeping, always hungry, and she couldn't find any respite until one "concerned friend" wanted to give her something that'd help pick her up in no time, claiming that it was ten times better than coffee. Andrea was desperate and she didn't want to think about what it was, and it only struck her when it was too late after she ingested crystal meth.
The magnitude of the situation she found herself in was overwhelming, and she didn't want to accept that she did it. She tried to ignore it, but the addiction swooped in and snatched her up. It might have helped at first - it might have started like, "well, one more tiny hit couldn't hurt," but in no time at all her grades were already plummeting as this new addiction started taking over. She couldn't think of anything else. It got so bad that she ended up dropping out entirely. She couldn't support paying for college and her addiction at the same time. Any chance she had at landing good jobs in acting completely shriveled up. She had nearly no marketable skills and she practically turned homeless overnight. The drugs she took helped her to ignore everything and become numb for a few hours, but she didn't know what to do. She just knew she had to survive, and she was desperate... so she did what she could and sold her body on the streets of New Haven; occasionally hitching rides that eventually brought her to New York.
It was a vicious cycle. A vicious cycle that lasted only four months. In a mere four months, everything she wanted was taken. Everything she stood for was stripped. She didn't feel like the same person, she felt dirty and sinful and suicidal. Her faith was shattered, she was afraid, and what little money she made was just enough to feed her and fuel her addiction to meth and at some point, heroin fell into the mix. All throughout it, constantly daydreaming about the life she originally aimed for. In a mere four months, everything she used to be was dead. But as far as the governments were concerned, she was still a registered person. When she went missing, they went looking for her. When they finally found her, they only found a young drug-addicted girl. She didn't know why they chose to save her. They just as easily could have let her rot in a cell, but when they sent her to the New York Center for Rehabilitation, their first action was to detox her and put her in therapy programs.
It was agonizing. She couldn't imagine what it would have been like for a person doing this for multiple years, but whatever medicine they were pumping into her was burning her insides. Detox was a straight week of solid agony, pain, nighmares, hard breathing, sweating, and wringing out her insides, dropping every contaminated ounce of fluid in her body while she could thing of nothing else other than relapsing. Even in the end, when everything was pumped out of her body and the detoxification process was complete, the psychological damages remained. From the addiction, to the depression - what she has done to herself has traumatized her. She wanted nothing more than to punish herself, but the faculty insisted that it wasn't her fault. They promised her that they'd put her back on the road to recovery and assign her a particular therapist that might be able to help her through these motions. All she could do was cry tears of relief.
She has gotten healthier with each passing day and is finding new reasons to keep on smiling, each a step towards self-mastery. Her old nature is beginning to resurface, and her very sensitive history has gotten her into some personal conversations and relationships with the NYCR personnel and the other patients, endearing herself to many of the faculty as they become more familiar with one another. Though many of her darkest emotions are still buried along with the lingering urges of her old addictions, which has been the cause of a couple of scares that had her put on the facility's suicide watch-list, she is finding it easier to find hope in tomorrow and to accept herself and what she has been through. Still, she looks back on her life with regret, and if there was an opportunity to go back and make different decisions that didn't lead her down a path of suffering, to be normal, she'd take it in a heartbeat. Even if it meant never meeting the people she met in the NYCR... not that'd she ever tell them that.
When she began to approach the end of her time with the NYCR, they helped her try to get back into the world. She was encouraged to start in a family environment and to pursue something she wanted, so she decided to go back to school. Yale was no longer an option since she dropped out and would no way take her back in. However, there was still an option in Grand Ridge Academy in Farmer Hill, Montana. With their help, she transferred her college credits from Yale, found a scholarship that was willing to sponsor her, and got some financial aid for her since her contact with her parents has since been cut off. She was delivered to Montana, and was advised to keep in contact with one of the NYCD's associates in case of an emergency. She enrolled into the academy with a clean slate and seeks to pursue a major in General Law and a minor in Theater Arts. Now that she has a lot less on her plate, she feels better prepared to pursue the challenge. She just hopes that the stress doesn't drive her over the edge again.
SKILLS & TALENTS
"I put a lot of time into school, God forbid if I have nothing to show for it."[Scholarly] ⫻ Learning doesn't seem like much of a skill, but in actuality, it reflects the years of intensive study she's gone through at previous schools. Andrea is as sharp as they come. She naturally absorbs information like a sponge, but she combines that with extensive investigation and study techniques, and a student's discipline, latching onto new ideas and concepts with ease. Give her one night to study something; whether it be a subject, a crime scene, records - you name it - she'll give you a stack of her homework the next morning. It's little wonder that she's able to succeed as a Law major. Her knowledge of which would be quite useful if she's attempting to defend someone.
[Trilingual] ⫻ Andrea knows three languages, demonstrating a linguistic intelligence that suggests good listening, reading, discussion, and debate. Polish is actually her first language, but she can hold fluent conversations in both English and French.
[Acting] ⫻ All throughout her teenage and child life, she wanted to be an actress. While she never got gigs larger than some commercials, the likes of which would never be seen in America, the market in Poland isn't quite as big. As a theater kid in high school, and now taking Theater Arts classes in Grand Ridge, there's no doubt that Andrea has a knack for it. What's more, lying is a lot easier when you just think of it as acting, though that's not a skill that she would ever brag about. Honesty is the best policy, after all.
[Painting] ⫻ It isn't a skill that Andrea has had much time to practice lately, but it's a skill she possesses nonetheless. Her art is good enough that she could probably take commissions and get paid for them, but there is always room for improvement. Perhaps she will have more time to practice now...
[Empathy] ⫻ Andrea's fall from grace was an incredibly humbling experience for her to suffer. While she has always been a caring and sweet individual, her trials and tribulations granted her a perspective she had never even dreamed of before. As a result of having stepped foot in both worlds, her capacity to relate to other people and their struggles have been expanded. Now her loving nature can be utilized to a greater extent.
ABSTRACTION
"I wish that never happened."SIGIL & LOCATION ⫻ An hourglass with only a few grains of sand left in the upper bulb, which can be found on Andrea's upper left forearm.
ABSTRACTION ⫻ Temporal Rewind, the ability to briefly reverse time within a certain radius.
ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ Andrea's abstraction allows her to alter the temporal flow of the universe in a short (four meter) radius. Specifically, she causes time to flow backwards. She creates an effect field that wraps around everything which appears to be blurry, and surrounded in a blue tint. While under this effect, time rewinds backwards up to a maximum of around ten seconds. Objects, people, and Andrea, are restored back where they were ten seconds ago - the Awakened are immune to this effect, but they can perceive the changes in the flow of time. The Blind are none the wiser, and won't even notice the changes. Using this, Andrea is able to move herself out of danger, react to events that are going to happen, and her own wounds heal wounds that she has sustained. While the max is ten seconds, if she pushes herself, she can extend it to around thirty seconds.
IN THE PRESENCE OF THE MOUNTAIN ⫻ The mountain greatly enhances her rewinding ability, and allows her to rewind time up to around a minute and a half - and is capable of pushing it to three minutes. In addition, her range is goes up to nine meters.
AURA SENSING ⫻ Andrea is particularly sensitive to negative emotions and the threat of danger, whether it is sadness, guilt, shame, anger, trepidation, or even negative thoughts such as ill intention. Having suffered so greatly in her time, her awakening has allowed her to see the aura of such emotions. While she perceives the color of these auras differently, the aura of malicious or bloodthirsty intention is unique in that she can feel it coming before she can see the light-consuming and inky blackness of its aura.
LIMITS ⫻ Andrea is only able to affect time in a four meter radius, everything outside of it is immune to the temporal changes. She can reverse up to ten seconds without straining, and afterwards she requires a thirty second rest period before she can rewind time again (regardless of whether or not she's near the mountain). This recharge period is longer if she pushes herself past the limit. Awakened (and certain other supernatural beings) are completely immune to the changes, and are able to move freely while she changes time. Which can allow them to interrupt her.
WEAKNESSES ⫻ Andrea's abstraction doesn't exactly have any weaknesses. Using it a often takes a toll on her body. Excessive usage will cause nosebleeds, headaches, and may even knock her unconscious. Only other thing is that certain beings are immune to it's effects, and may negate it's main strength.
OTHER
"Pychy niedobry koniec bywa."
