devana

Name: Amelie Devana Gericault

Age: 27

Gender: Female

Type: Dreamer

Appearance:

While she doesn’t fit the mental sterotype of a French beauty, Amelie is a beauty nonetheless, the sort to conjure up exotic comparisons of all kinds. A delicately rounded jawline accents fine cheekbones and full lips, all of them framing a pair of large, dark eyes that have stumbled many men with no intent to on her part. While she’s somewhat tall, it’s not overbearing and in fact just works to enhance the delicate nature of her frame.

Amelie is mildly curvacious but still slender, moving with a languid ease most of the time. She dresses just a step behind the current fashions, a mixture of frugality and cultures clashing, and most often has her nearly-black hair tied back in a bun or tail to expose the falling arc of her neckline and shoulders.

Personality:

‘Warm’ would be an apt single word for Amelie, as would ‘engaging’. She’s got a certain focus to her, a care in how she deals with others that speaks to a fairly deep sense of patience and a willingness to sacrifice on their behalf. Amelie is no fool, of course, and definitely possesses a hot streak when her good nature is misused, but she’s still bound to put up with more than most folks before that hot streak shows itself. There’s a wry humor to her in most cases, a certain weariness at times that comes from her work and the things she’s seen in it, but it rarely robs her of her smile.

Sexuality:

Bisexual (favors men)

City History:

Born in the Ukraine to a native mother and foreign-born father, Amelie has little to no memory of life in the Soviet states. She arrived into the world in the wake of Lenin’s October Revolution, a revolution that cost her mother her life in the waves of crackdowns on dissidents. Before she was old enough to walk, Amelie was whisked out of the country and back to her father’s native France.

Life in France was unglamorous for her, but never uncomfortable as she attended school and kept her father company all throughout adolescence. However, midway through her teen years, everything changed. Her father was bankrupt, and an offer of an arranged marriage in exchange for a long-term loan to him was one that he simply couldn’t pass up.

Amelie was just shy of seventeen when she married, her husband nearing forty, and for all the gaps in their ages? It wasn’t a bad relationship. He was a wealthy man, a financier, and never unkind to her wants or needs. He brought the measure of glamor to her life for a time, keeping Amelie in fine things that she didn’t ask for but wouldn’t refuse, funding her schooling, and only asking for a loyal wife in exchange. For a time, that wasn’t so hard to honor.

The war changed everything, as war does. Her husband’s stance was simple; they would stay away from revolutionaries, weather the storm, and build a future based on the winners. But Amelie wasn’t so passive, and this wasn’t a matter of simple patience seeing her through. It started with a walk back from a bookstore, when the cries of a man inside a clinic caught her ear.

Inside, there were so many of them that she couldn’t guess at which she’d heard, she only knew that she needed to help them. Amelie became a regular presence at that first clinic, quickly shifting her studies to medical classes to lend more help when she worked there. There was never an end of the needy, and every lesson that helped them helped her feel more like she could help her countrymen. Of course, that work was eventually the only smudge on the bond shared with her husband.

For ten years she’d been married, faithful, and devoted. Perhaps she hadn’t been madly in love with her husband, but he was a good man, and she cared for him. He gave her tokens of respect, never hurt her, but... it was convenience for both of them. She was his trophy, he was her foundation for comfortable living. And she’d never realized it until she found herself saving the lives of American soldiers, not to mention becoming enamored with one in ways she’d never been with her husband.

There was a young soldier, just a boy in so many ways, who became a more and more frequent face in the clinic. He was there for treatment first, then to bring rations to Amelie, then to keep watch with her, change bedsheets and bandages, run trash, and more. He was just there, giving the odd smile to her and talking about his home back in America, about his family. She didn’t know what it was that caught her, maybe his faith in her work, maybe his slavish routine that kept him checking in, but something in him did. And aside from one slip? Amelie could’ve pushed the connection away and stayed faithful. One slip was all it took.

It was a semi-innocent moment, and one she hadn’t expected to be witnessed, but when her husband saw Amelie sharing a prolonged goodbye kiss with a young American soldier she’d cared for? The context didn’t matter. The fact that she just wanted it once didn’t matter. He picked a side then and there, leveraging his financial backing to support the forces that now occupied France, the army that had created all of the wounded Amelie cared for. More, he had the clinic raided, the injured and doctors arrested and sent to work camps. He never raised a hand or even his voice to Amelie, but he didn’t have to.

He was supporting men like the ones her father spoke of, from his days in Russia. He was backing men like the ones who took her mother. That was enough to fuel a second betrayal, a scouring of her home as Amelie gathered her jewelry up, pilfered all the petty cash her husband had laying around, and vanished. She’d heard about America, of course; New York and Chicago, Hollywood and Eidolon. Only one of them had anyone she’d ever met living there, and that bare hope of a connection was good enough for Amelie to choose it as her destination.

It’s been just over a year now, and she’s managed to make a home for herself here. Her English is surprisingly decent, her jewelry fetched enough to still be paying her rent to this day, and she’s picked up in America where she left off in France. Founding the Wayward, the Sprawl’s free clinic and soup kitchen, has returned her back to a feeling of helpfulness that she was missing for too long. More than that, it’s created a roster of familiar faces to make her forget her father and lost husband. Now? It actually feels like home.

Special Skills and Abilities:

Amelie has extensive practice with field medicine, is fluent in French and English, and is an amazing cook.

Weaknesses:

Fugitive - It’s a low fear in her mind, but she knows her husband is still out there, possibly looking for her. She’s moved far and set up a life that garners little interest, but with the allies he’s made back in France? The resources he’d need to find her are definitely there, and one day she fears that he will.

Pacifist - Violence is a disgusting thing, and war a game that men play without a care. Amelie has seen far too much of it, held hands tight as men were operated on with little to no anasthesia, and it’s turned her away from ever supporting such courses. Amelie is utterly opposed to ever raising a hand in anger.

Naive - Even after a year, much of the dealings that happen in the city go right past Amelie. She’s never had to handle corrupt cops or warring mafia families, and as strange as it might sound? Living through the war made much more sense. While she’s not stupid, she is overly trusting of people when something feels like it might be a cultural difference.

Sympathetic - A hard-luck story is the fastest way to earn Amelie’s trust, and once it’s there she has a hard time believing that someone may have been using her. Amelie wants to see the best in all people, and her nurturing side tends to find her encouraging others with her own means.

Stubborn - Somehow, a well-off French lady convinced her husband to let her be a nurse in a bombed-out clinic. Somehow she managed to harangue customs agents and pawnbrokers in order to arrange her new life in America. More often than not, though, Amelie’s stubbornness over setting her mind on something gets her in trouble.

Strengths:

Confident - For any and all of her failings, Amelie has a deep confidence in herself. She knows she’s had many advantages over other women, both French and American, and has no problem admitting the advantage. When she decides to do something, it’s because she believes it to be within her grasp.

Soothing - A skill she’s learned from her time in the war zones, Amelie has a seemingly-innate way of setting someone’s mind at ease, getting them to let go of their problems for a while. Whether it’s a fine meal, medical care, a leisurely walk or a gentle massage, she knows how to smooth out the wrinkles of another person’s mind.

Family or Connections:

Roy Grady - Former patient and friend

Residence:

Amelie lives in a converted warehouse located in Grey Market that is set up into studio lofts.

Career:

Caregiver and cook at the Wayward, a local free clinic and soup kitchen.

PB: Mila Kunis