Sasha Ilyinichna Koslova
Age: 16
Appearance: At 5'7" with a slim build, Sasha's posture and restrained dress sense gives her the air of someone significantly older than her actual age. Despite her slim frame, she's deceptively strong, and rarely seems to show any outward stress; at least, not until she nods off at the first opportunity to rest.
Personality: Sasha is a peculiar and often disarming mixture of maturity and naivety, the telltale signs of a child who's had to grow up perhaps a little too fast. Though a little sharp-tongued and stubborn at turns, she's kind and perceptive, talking firmly and confidently to be heard and listened to and keeping an eye on anyone she feels 'responsible' for. Moreover, she seems quite comfortable talking to people much older than her, and more than comfortable in talking back to them like they're half her age if they talk down to her; her logic being that if you act like a child, you deserve to be spoken to like one. At the same time, however, she's still more than a little childish herself; thrust into a position of responsibility almost overnight, she hasn't yet had the chance to develop a strong sense of character judgement or a sense of her own limits. While she'll admonish others for being irresponsible or pushing themselves too far, she'll rarely if ever extend herself the same mindfulness, and her family's reliance on the kindness of friends and neighbours has numbed her sense of who can be taken at their word and who
shouldn't be.
Background: Sasha was born in a small rural town in Indiana, the oldest of three children born to a third generation Russian-American father and a local working-class mother. They met when he moved from the East Coast to work at a plant that a major steel manufacturer had opened there, and while they didn't plan to have Sasha, the surprise wasn't an unwelcome one; they married while she was pregnant and stayed together, managing to carve out a niche for themselves as their little family grew and became part of the community around them, a younger brother joining them four years later and a younger sister three years after that. Despite more or less living paycheck to paycheck, they did well enough for themselves, and Sasha grew up a happy and hard-working child alongside her parents and siblings.
Things didn't quite last, however. A slump in profits saw the plant procedurally lay off a number of workers, before outright closing up as the company behind it decided it was more trouble than it was worth to keep going. At first, it seemed as if this would just be a temporary bump in the road- both were still young and there was other work going in and around the town- but six years ago, when Sasha was ten, her mother was killed in a vehicular collision while commuting to a new job. Her father had already been struggling after the new accident, but now he was left as the sole carer for Sasha and her two siblings.
Despite her own grief and young age, Sasha did her best to support him and stepped up to take care of her younger brother and sister and the house. She'd always been a helpful girl, cooking on nights where her parents worked late and taking her siblings to school on mornings they were working early; now as her father was forced to look for work outside the town to support them and spend long spans of time away from home in the week, she picked those responsibilities up nearly full-time and picked up more besides. She didn't resent the arrangement, and the family's friends in the town pitched in when they could despite their own troubles, but it was clear to everyone but her that she wasn't dealing with things anywhere near as well as she claimed. Despite the brave face she was putting on, she was still far too young to be saddled with such a responsibility, and she was losing the opportunity to properly grow up instead of being forced there by circumstances beyond her control.
As of the present, things have stabilized a little. Her father is still rarely able to be at home, but her younger siblings are a little more able to take care of themselves. But Sasha still clings to her assumed role; perhaps she still finds stability in it as life moves on around her, or perhaps her sense of duty has just let her unable to want anything more out of life. Either way, she seems stuck between a childhood that never ended and an adulthood that began too soon, unknowingly counting down the days to an experience that'll change her life forever.
Partner: Labramon (Anastasia)Digivice G appearance: Perhaps due to her background, Sasha's Digivice G takes the form of a pair of welding goggles.
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