Post by Ksenia Sakahrov on May 3, 2010 11:40:17 GMT -6
[/color]VALKYRIE,
CALIFORNIA
the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in?
and anger was the price that was paid, while
these faded dreams just screamed to bring them home[/font][/center]
WHEN THE OCEAN MET THE SKY ,[/color]
CHARACTER BASICS ,
you missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye[/color]
FULL NAME: ksenia hana sakahrov.[/font]
NICKNAMES: just ksenia is fine.
GENDER: female.
AGE: sixteen.
GRADE: eleven ; high school junior.
ART INTEREST: art - more specifically, rough sketching.
PLAYBY: candice accola.
YOUR BODY MAY BE GONE ,[/color]
CHARACTER APPEARANCE ,
i'm gonna carry you in my head, in my heart, in my soul[/color]
ETHNICITY: pure-blooded russian.[/font]
HAIR COLOR: see, the thing about the sakahrov family...no one knows anything. unlike her irish cousins, ksenia had never been brought up in any sort of hostile environment. on the contary, it was pretty damn boring. she was raised an average, everyday teenager. and like any average, everyday teenager, ksenia experimented with her appearance. while a natural blonde, she had gone from brown to red and back again. while not as effortlessly perfect as many people in her new home, she never thought it was difficult for her hair to look, well, bad. it's kind of hard for it to. as long as you don't do anything stupid or daring with it, there is no reason. when she was fifteen, she discovered a simple, easy cut that worked. it was easy, flexible; it just worked. taking a mere ten minutes in the morning these days, there is no visible future for crazy experimentation again. pretty, long and blonde. what else could you want?
EYE COLOR: now, what goes with pretty blonde hair? pretty blue eyes. like any good russian girl, ksenia was born with the famous combination. never before had anyone complimented her eyes; she never found anything overly interesting about them. everyone else in russia looked like she did. even when her family moved to america, they never attracted much attention. while placed evenly on her delicate face, ksenia was never rendered a person with stunning eyes. the windows to the soul? no...not really. they're pretty, easy to play up. it's just...fine that way.
HEIGHT: somewhere down the line, someone must have cheated. unlike the rest of her family, ksenia hadn't been born as a, say, amazonian. her entire life, she was spent being the shortest one in class. honestly, go to some far-off country and the average height for a female is six feet. what are the guys? seven feet. honestly. ksenia, on the other hand, grew up quickly. by thirteen, she was at five feet, seven inches. on a good day. since then, she hasn't grown at all. not up, not out. seems like she's done; doomed to be average height forever.
WEIGHT: with her missing genes of the stereotypical russian body, her physique goes right along with it. like everyone else, her weight has been known to fluxuate. but, like every other teenage girl, it's been hovering around the same numbers for several years now. calling her one hundred and fifteen pounds would be pushing it.
BODY TYPE: so, she isn't amazonian. no one would ever consider ksenia sakahrov a powerhouse. she isn't tall or muscular, not even sexy and curvaceous. just sort of...is. her outward appearance is pretty average, if you ask her. not one to be considered petite and flighty, she has always fallen somewhere in the middle. slender, but with enough curves to be considered a female? she never knew. her mentality is, hey life is short, eat dessert first. there are few restrictions when it comes to how ksenia treats her body. she likes to have fun with it. activity is at a high enough level to have some tone, low enough not to be enviable. falling somewhere in the middle, as always.
DISTINGUISHED FEATURES: if you had to ask her, ksenia sakahrov is a highly average-looking human being. there is nothing special or unique about her appearance. she's pretty. but isn't everyone? she's never had an exotic beauty. she's never been an odd-looking beauty. no, that all belonged to the irish half of her family. they were interesting looking. ksenia...she just looked like her parents. she got double ear piercings when she was like, eight. facinating. oh, well. on her sixteenth birthday - very first time she got drunk. gasp ! - every moron at her party decided to get some random sort of tattoo. when she woke up in the morning, she was greeted by a roughly designed swallow on the inside of her left wrist. well, let's say this - she was a good artist, even when highly intoxicated.
PERSONAL STYLE: it would be a lie to say ksenia sakahrov was not concerned with what others thought of her. nothing ever set that off; it just sort of happened. her parents were considered wrong-doing freaks back home in moscow. moving to a little town like keizer came with whispers and snooty trophy wives. it happened naturally. so, she never actually took the time to develop a real sense of a identity. and those with secure senses of identity often showcase it through their clothing choices, am i right? yes, indeed, you are. she always just sort of followed the crowd, paying vague attention to the runways across europe. occasionally, she showed up in something with dark, russian influences and a cold stare. that, you could say, was as close as she got to being herself. whatever is trendy, i suppose you could say.
OTHER: no...not really.
IN YOUR MOUTH, IN YOUR SOUL ,[/color]
CHARACTER PERSONALITY ,
the more we move ahead the more we're stuck in rewind[/color]
STRENGTHS: has recently matured a great deal , can distance herself from any situation , doesn't lie down , coming out on top , determination , finding out what she wants to know ,[/font]
WEAKNESSES: worried about what others think , likes to bounce around the real issue at first , not opening up , respect toward people , awkward ,
LIKES: feeling at home, staying in one place, simple lines, modern furniture, big windows, salt and pepper, not wearing socks, dark reds and purples, straight alcohol, shaved ice, little colored straws, metal music, black cats, walking under ladders, black and white, silence, heavy contrast, natural make-up, guitar hero, long walks, cloudy days, russia, reading history textbooks, laptops, sketching, abstracts, filtered water, trashy talk shows, late-night movies,
DISLIKES: people who dress their dogs up, small purses, moving around constantly, feeling uncomfortable, over-crowdedness, patterned couches, looking for a job, listening to lectures, pink, fruity cocktails, baggy pants, satin pyjamas, twilight, lame folk music, acoustic intrustments, hippies, pot-smokers, confrontation, petty high school drama, toe socks, flat shoes, staged comedy acts,
FLAWS: that's the problem, you know? up until recently, ksenia never would have assumed she had any flaws. being fat-headed and a teenager will do that to you. this harsh reality of her father's involvement with two very illegal, well, let's call them companies, was only what caused her to re-evaluate everything. just because you see the light doesn't mean that you change it. to this day, ksenia sakahrov is one very self-concious, herd-following indivudal. it takes a lot for her to stand on her own, to look like a freak in front of everybody. remember how she likes contrast. that would have to be in her own personality. while she rarely takes 'no' for an answer, her fear of being disliked has clouded her judgement more than once. back in keizer, she ditched her best friend because everyone else deemed her a social leper. she never asked questions during her childhood about her father and his mysterious phone calls and bruises, all because her mother never did. not told to, she would have anyway. but no one else seemed to notice, so she pretended not to as well. even once she found out, she never told anybody. why would she? more than anything, ksenia is a secret-keeper. absolutely everything personal is kept from people. petty gossip and silly little issues, sure, she'll sing like a bird. anything pertaining to actual information? you wouldn't think she would know. everyone simply assumes she's just another airheaded bimbo. well, that's fine. everyone else is one, too.
HABITS: that depends on what you define as a habit, my friend. you see, ksenia hana is in the middle of something of a transformation. she is teaching herself to become a much more refined version of her previous annoying, bubbly, petty little self. she's drawn strict borders around herself, rarely allowing herself to cross them. very calculating, very down to business. not that it often works. you see, ksenia has always been without any little habits like twirling her hair or giggling about nothing. i suppose not saying anything? more often than not, she is the one smiling happily at some juvenile act her friends just commited. she'll join in eventually, of course. but just won't be annoying about it.
SECRETS: hah. the basis of much of her personality is secrecy. since day one, ksenia has had trouble opening up to people. no, it's not a trust issue. she happens to have a decent amount of faith in the human race, thank you very much. as soon as she began to uncover any sort of important truth, she learned to keep it from people. she grew up in a household where you didn't share much. so it simply carried on into her later years. you know, her father, victor sakahrov, had to ruin everything. their life was perfectly fine until he decided to research his brother's extracurricular acitivities. it was why her family moved to america in the first place. unknown at present time, victor sakahrov got himself tied into both the russian and irish mafias. normally, that would be fine. a little dangerous, but they could live with that. getting involved with two completely different ones? not such a good idea. while no one knows what he really did, ksenia only recently discovered there were any familial ties to begin with. you just don't go around telling that to people. especially in valkyrie, where, apparently, the powerful mob families were at odds with one another. oh shit.
BEST MEMORY: to be honest, she couldn't think of one. her childhood, i suppose. before the shit hit the fan, the sakahrov family was living happily in downtown belgrade, serbia. they stayed out of the way of the wars, under the radar from the government. everything was perfect. there was this one time when she was like, five...it was a good day. her mother, stana, decided it was a fun family trip to go to the circus. that was fun. some clown made a balloon hat for her. to be honest, happy memories are in short supply these days. while not directly involved in anything, there has been heavy, unwritten, tension in the sakahrov household since she was ten. people just can't ignore it these days.
WORST MEMORY: has anyone ever told you that you're better off not knowing? but you want to anyway. you have to. you hate being out of the loop, and it would make you feel important. don't like, everyone is like that. ksenia? more than most. by the time she turned thirteen, she had noticed her father's uncharacteristic actions. he'd always been a very open, loving man. not the one who slips out from dinner, whispering into a mysterious new cell phone. or the one who arrives home at eleven-thirty, covered in fading, but very noticeable, bruises. she'd never been a stupid girl. her parents trusted her too much. shortly after her thirteenth birthday, she innocently slid into her father's empty study while they were out, i don't know, grocery shopping or something. discovering those files in his filing cabinet certainly was not what she expected. the blurred photographs of some poor girl's body, bleached clean, and her wide, dead eyes...it was an image that stained her mind. to this day, she never knew what it was for. she explored more, soon discovering he was involved with two different mafias. but that girl...that remained a mystery.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: it would be unfair to say that ksenia sakahrov's personality was finished. don't some dusty old textbooks say that a person is forever changing? that your character will never been the same one year to the next. okay sure, you have your base set of personality traits. but you change. experiences change people, seeing things makes you someone you never thought you could be. look at tony stark. at the beginning of the movie, he's stereotypical - immature, womanizing, witty as hell; all with a brilliant mind. he can buy a better environment, so let us destroy it with his badass weapons. and then he's kidnapped, forced to see his partner is a prick, and re-evaluates things while he slowly dies. then we come to the second iron man. the dude is still as charming, witty and immature as the first one, friends. wittier, even, because his banter is ten times better in the sequel. just sayin'. but the killing environment, self-richeous bastard thing is kind of gone. see what i mean? you are born a certain way, and only lame television writers can take that away. the events of your life make you a different person year-to-year. growing up, valuing things you never thought you would...that's all a part of the thing called life. ksenia sakahrov was born a certain way, but you can't say she's the same person she was at age ten, in serbia, or sixteen, in keizer. the events of her history redefined her, parring down certain aspects of herself until there are only a few prominent ones left.
but, to be honest, she didn't quite know what those few prominent traits were. miss ksenia here doesn't quite know a lot of things about herself at the moment. i guess you could say there are certain things on the horizon in store for her; events that will, undoubtably, alter ksenia herself. but that day is patiently lying in wait. what happens then is what is going to happen.
remember that bit about events shaping a person? well, i wasn't lying. it does. every well-rounded person out there has more than a few tragedies to account for themselves. why do you think people are all different? if every loud, obnoxious person lived the exact same life...well, that wouldn't be good. those loud, obnoxious people go through things. some of them tone it down, sharply humbled by seeing the harsh reality. others choose to live it up, buff and polish their arrogance for all the world to see. maybe when they see a harsh reality, they rebel against it, putting their most irritating foot forward. don't act so surprised; plenty of people do it. they're the most interesting to watch. the same could be said about the young sakahrov girl. see, from the day she was born, she was like any other happy little kid. she liked exploring, knowing the details of everything everyone else discarded as useless. she grew up liking people in general. she liked meeting them, she liked interacting them, she especially liked watching them. everyday humanity was so facinating, it was different from person to person, always changing. you know, if you quietly watch a person for a couple of days, the details of their private life become fighteningly public. within two hours of watching the people at her local coffee shop, ksenia had figured out who was there to hide from someone else, and who socialized there because they enjoyed the environment. you just follow your clues from there - people who hide, why? cheating on a spouse? fighting with a friend? to her, humans were a hell of a lot more intriguing than anything else. with the ability to act how and when they wanted, it was always an adventure. she developed her love for the human race in general at a young age, shortly after her discovery of the hidden facts and details between the lines. they adapted to one another, it worked.
even with her annoying need to know everything, ksenia grew up happy. her nosiness was often discarded as a love of gossip, which people learned to ignore. at the end of the day, that was the only flaw people ever had a problem with. well, i suppose that's okay, seeing as she could name endless lists of other peoples' flaws. she fit in during school, easily making friends. as a child, her toothy smile and 'hi, hey, what's up?' attitude attracted other happy-go-lucky types. at the time, she was too young to do any real damage. however, she as easily as she fit, it didn't take much for her to be labelled as 'weird'. now, don't go asking why that was. to this day, she has no faint idea. something about how she never had a real thought, about how she got distracted to easily. what can i say? kids are getting meaner even younger. and being mean in funny european languages stings just a much, so don't even ask. but, again, she was too young. her personality was too bright-eyed and raw to have any idea how to really do anything. once people ever got over her 'nosiness' and 'weirdness', she was a perfectly pleasant young lady. she always had someone to play with a recess, people always to sit with during lunch. and isn't that what is important during those fragile childhood years?
well, it's going to have to be, seeing as they shaped the person ksenia is today. see, her memories, while vague, carried on subconciously. on the odd day that someone thought she was weird, making some off comment about whatever...that stuck with her. she hated having people looking at her for the wrong reasons. still does. it just gets worse the older you get. by the time she turned twelve, ksenia had developed an actual fear of being hated. that weird kid at the back of the classroom? everyone always talked about them, even if they never did anything to hurt them. don't get her started on the brilliant, but solo, person who decides to debate with a teacher. unless that person has more friends than students at school, nothing but hurtful comments come their way. the teacher assigned too much homework because of you! we had to stay late! we didn't get time to do our own work! harmless ticks like that soon snowball into a string of torment, you know. catch attention once, and you're going to be in the black spotlight forever. she didn't want that. so, ksenia followed the crowd as she entered her teenage years. she dressed like everyone, talked like everyone. she never said much of her opinion, because that made you the black sheep. she liked being little white lamb, thanks.
but that was all then, during the first fifteen years of her life. even after ksenia discovered her father's dirty ties with the mafia, she was the sheep. even at home, no one encouraged her to show off her individuality. she stayed quiet, never saying more than she needed to. i guess you could say she got quieter after that unfortunate discovery. with the fear of what that file held...why, it stung in her brain for months, sharp as the day she first saw those photographs. she had unexpectedly been pushed into the fire, just peering around the corner into the chamber with the torture and the blood. she was wide-eyed and clammy for days. and, like everything in her life, she just got used to it. she still followed the crowd around school, she just smiled less, paid less attention. in previous years, she had been sharp-eared to the 'people who mattered'. maybe something they said could influence her, and she could have a turn. well that happened after her parents shifted from serbia all the way to keizer, georgia. culture shock. but the training she had given herself worked - she fit into keizer's nosy little lifestyle perfectly. she was cute, with a bubbly laugh and happy smile. everything about her was the typical small-town girl, save the funny accent. within only a couple of months, she rose through the highschool ranks into one of the girls who could actually say things. even then, she rarely said anything out of the handbook. even a mention of her family's dirty history and she could be the creepy loner. it didn't take much to have people turn on you in keizer. that much proved true during the first real test she was given. another event that would change ksenia. her best friend, the girl she could be real with, was the next leper because she was with child. the sign doesn't lie - don't enter keizer, because people there really don't like you. in a matter of days, ksenia found herself without carly - trust me, you know her - by her side. i mean, she could have easily said 'fuck you' to everyone, stood firmly by her friend's side. what did it matter? she was still the same person. but, alas, she didn't. ksenia, more than anyone, gave carly dirty looks the following months of her pregnancy. after awhile, she became accustomed to being the girl at the top of the social ladder. she just wanted it to stay that way.
it would have worked save for her father's increasingly noticeable actions. his oddities had been white noise to her for years. she hadn't even really thought of that murder file. ksenia had been perfectly content as the poster child for perfect small-town girl. her family had the money, she fit in the society perfectly. she didn't have an original thought that could label her as the next pariah. she was as interesting as a piece of dry toast. well, she was until everything changed again. to this day she didn't know what really happened, only that something was wrong. her father explained it to her on the plane from keizer to los angeles, while her mother was fast asleep. he would never have said anything otherwise. only that he was in trouble. she was smart enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together. trouble plus odd phone calls plus the awkward emergence of her extended family plus that dirty old file? all that equals something more important than small-town popularity. she did a lot of thinking on that quiet plane ride. she had always known more than she should have, definitely more than she let on. fitting in had been her number one priority, not sticking out from the crowd. but why try? it's not like she did, anyway. there were bigger things going on than the childish crap she had pulled back in keizer. it didn't even take a really ugly look at reality for her to know that. she had known it all along, in the back of her mind. she just chose to ignore it because things had been going so smoothly. if you're in a good place, are you really in a rush to change that? probably not.
i guess you could say she refined herself. the plane ride, the move, the weeks spent in their lonely house in california...she had nothing more to do than think. what was the point of acting like that? why did she really snub carly? she looked in the mirror disgusted. she had always thought those girls - so concerned with everything plastic - were so amusing to watch. when she was ten, she found them to be least interesting people she'd ever watched before. amusing, but not at all intruging. who wanted to be considered that? with the apparent trouble her father was in, it would be of much better use of her time to actually concentrate on that. if there was something wrong with him, maybe he couldn't hide it forever. and what if that day came, and ksenia was so concerned with...whatever, that she didn't even care? this was her family we're talking about. but she still knew more than she should have, and she still never told anyone. the longer she was around, the more she hid. that never changed. she didn't tell her parents about that file; she didn't tell carly she actually cared; she didn't even tell her dog that she would miss him once they took him to the vet to put him out of his misery. really nice, girl. now, just because of those events doesn't mean ksenia changed. her priorities changed, that's all. looking at the bigger picture, remembering things are bigger than she is. there is the juvenile fun from time-to-time, it's just more refined, more delicate. it's complicated.
AND WE'LL BOTH GROW OLD ,[/color]
CHARACTER HISTORY ,
well i don't know, i don't know, i don't know, i hope so[/color]
HOMETOWN: moscow, russia.[/size][/font]
PARENTS: victor sakahrov, FATHER. fifty-seven. stock broker/traitorous mob informant.
stana sakahrov, MOTHER. fifty-four. real estate agent.
SIBLINGS: - - -
OTHER: november connolly-sakahrov, COUSIN. nineteen. irish mobster/waitress.
river connolly-sakahrov, COUSIN. nineteen. irish mobster/bartender.
christian connolly-sakahrov, COUSIN. twenty-two. irish mobster/sous chef.
LIVING SITUATION: in valks with her parents, for now.
HISTORY: shit, please meet fan. fan, kindly introduce yourself to shit. everything went down the drain when the shit hit the fan. when he couldn't keep the secrets anymore; when things got too out of control. you don't want to mess with the powerful criminal types. they aren't generally too nice unless you're blood-related. he wasn't related, or blood. risking everything just to get some answers is dangerous. but doing it twice over is suicide. messing with the irish mafia is one thing. but getting the aloof, generally neutral, russians involved in your stupid mess? well, that's when the shit hit the fan. no one was ever supposed to find out, let alone his only child. everything was ruined because she was smarter than everyone else. no one ever asked any questions until she discovered that file in his study. no one was ever supposed to go into his study. do we not remember the very strict conversation shortly after her eighth birthday?
wait. what? i guess it would be best if i went back to when things started, long before the shit was even aware of the fan.
july thirteenth, 1992. nice day. a little bit cloudy, but the sun was shining through fiercely. it was warm out, with a nice chilly breeze to keep things in order. that was the day a key part of this mess was brought into the world. her name was ksenia, after her grandmother. nice lady who bakes cakes. ksenia hana. she thinks it's because hana kahovich could never look her father in the eyes again. but no one knows that. she was never supposed to know that. you see, it was because everything was so damn perfect. ksenia was born to victor and stana sakahrov as a happy little baby in moscow, russia. her father always said that he wanted her to be born in the motherland - it was where the rest of the family had been born. well, whatever. as soon as ksenia was old enough, her parents moved them back to belgrade, serbia, where they had established themselves a happy little life before moving back to moscow, shortly after stana got pregnant. it was a happy city, contrary to all of the chaos surrounding them. if you didn't pay much attention to the wars and the poverty, serbia was a perfectly nice place to live. beautiful scereny. excellent skiing. colorful history. she loved living there. victor and stana had always abided the law, staying under the radar of the government and the rebel forces. her life was good, uneventful. born to a successful stock broker and real estate agent, how could it not be? there was nothing suspicious about that. ksenia sakahrov, for much of her childhood, was raised in a comfortable environment in a happy little suburb in southern belgrade.
do i really need to go into detail? everything was fucking perfect. it was boring. think of your twisted, creepy american dream and put it in a weird language. same fucking thing. it would be a lie if she said her life was exciting in the first decade of her life. because it wasn't. the most interesting thing that happened was when her pet cat, slippers, ran away and she cried and the nice firemen who were driving by managed to find it in a tree somewhere. real exciting, right?
it was only after ksenia turned ten did the shit begin to realize just who the fan was. that was around the time her father began to change. he had always been a happy man, very warm and loving. he was her favorite parent. but we won't tell her lovely mother that. she's a nice woman, just a bit quiet. victor sakahrov, on the other hand, was playful and cheeky with his daughter. well, he was. until things got weird. he got a mysterious new cell phone - not the one the size of a car he had for work. it was small and black, with a weird sounding vibrate when it rung. he never answered it with the friendly 'hello' he did everything else. it was always a silence, a loss of color in the face, and a quick hang-up before excusing himself sloppily. stock brokers don't work past ten every night, do they? well, maybe the people who yelled at victor all day. but he didn't. he never did. while successful, he had never been wall street's shining star. but then, all of a sudden, he was out of the house until long past ksenia's bedtime. she sometimes heard him slip inside. he never poked his head in to say goodnight, either. sometimes, she would see the weird bruising on his arms. they were big, always in odd shapes. even at the young age of ten, she knew something weird was going on. a strange phone, funny bruises that he never showed anyone, and a strict new attitude? daddy was upset about something. but her mother never made any notion about it. if anything, she pretended things were more normal than they had been in years. were things ever not normal?
that was the weird thing. everyone and their mother's dog knew that victor sakahrov was different. even the neighbours. sometimes, she overheard mrs next door and sir across the street ( they were having an affair ) questioning her poor, poor mother about it. why wasn't victor ever around anymore? he seemed stressed. is everything okay? it's like someone died. more than once, someone she'd never met before showed up on their doorstep with a casserole. just because creepy people assumed her father was out of the picture, stana sakahrov's parenting skills were brought into question? while she worked full-time like any strong, independent-ish woman, she only had one child. who was ten. in school. with a brain. it wasn't like this was some crack house with the prostitute of a mother who lost her husband who was the low-level drug pusher. she didn't think so, anyway. irritating people she didn't know aside, everyone knew something was different. everyone was just assuming it was bad. i mean, she was too, but that's against the point. on the off day where people brought it up, everyone else was completely silent. except when rolling her eyes at her nosy neighbours, stana went on her daily life as it had been a year earlier. i guess that's okay. what about the, uhm, odd disappearances of your husband? see, just because they told everyone that nothing was wrong, didn't mean nothing was wrong. and that's what ksenia picked up on. she wasn't an airheaded ten year-old; she obviously sensed when her father wasn't around anymore. she could see he was a different person. just once, she tried to bring it up with her mother. if ksenia could see it, stana must know the details, right? who else would? that would have been a lovely concept, if stana hadn't snapped for her daughter to keep quiet. it happened once and once only. see, her mother was not an aggressive woman; just as warm and loving as the man she had married. after that one incident, she never raised her voice to ksenia. why? because ksenia was a good little girl and did was she was told - pretend nothing was wrong. that's what she assumed out of the snarky 'no answer', at least. well, whatever everyone else is doing.
and you all wonder why she does as everyone else does.
you know, ksenia was never a stand-out child. she was smart, but not the smartest. she was pretty, but not the prettiest. she could be rebellious, but definitely not the most rebellious. much of her was painfully average. good grades, just not the best. good deeds, but there were always better. she was nice; someone was always nicer. she tried to be a good little girl, yet someone always seemed to be able to beat her at that, too. it got a bit annoying, to be honest. but that isn't the point here. the point? the sakahrov family was exactly what you expected it to be: painfully average. now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. actually, she was more than willing to allow a little bit of boring after the introduction of 'new dad'. after a few weeks, ksenia silently accepted the fact, stored in her mental filing cabinet, and deemed it completely normal. for the first ten years of her life, her family was boring. then, for a month or two, things were tense and uncomfortable. her mother told her to stop wondering, so she did. mysterious phone calls and funny-shaped bruises became completely normal for victor sakahrov 2.0. seeing as no one was ever let on about the odd new addition to her father, the world continued to assume they were normal, good ol' folks. the only sakahrov child never lead on anything else was different. if anything, as she left elementary schoo, she got even more boring. this was the time in her life where the personalities began to sharpen, intensify on certain traits. well, for most twelve year-olds. just not for her. oh well. she could go along being cute little ksenia.
see, once she had accepted this new mysterious factor into her life, ksenia was back to normal. she didn't ask any weird questions, chose not to really pick up on anything out of the ordinary. all of this newness was ordinary, remember? for three solid years, it became second nature to never really see her father. he was perfectly plesant on the odd occasion they shared more than a two minute conversation, don't get me wrong. he was still her daddy, she was still his special little girl. any of that weird tension disappeared on the days he was actually in her life. it was just when he was absent for days and days things built up again. i won't lie, there is still that underlying tension in the sakahrov household. people are just picking up on it now, after more than seven years of not saying a damn thing. well, that is now, this is then. it was only when she turned thirteen did things take another interesting turn.
she wasn't supposed to have found it. she wasn't even looking. it was a simple conicidence that she finally discovered her father's dark web of secrets. it was a dark afternoon, the sun threatening to disappear far earlier than usual. the rain began spitting down as soon as her parents pulled out of their garage in the modestly-priced minivan her mother insisted on driving. they were going grocery shopping, i think. it was about time, seeing as there was no milk left. the clouds piled increasingly over the next half hour, continuing to hold out on its threat of a frisky storm. it was less than an hour later that the power went out, quickly accompanied by a crash of thunder as an explanation. thanks, mother nature. the only source of lighting being from a quickly-dying flashlight and the continuous flashes of lightning made it a little creepy. trapped alone in that big, empty house, ksenia had taken to exploring to pass the time. she never liked being in a storm alone. at least get her a cat for a little company, why don't you. "grocery shopping" for victor and stana sakahrov often meant finding distractions and coming home three or four hours later. maybe they needed a new couch or something this time. the last time both of her parents had gone, they had arrived back with a shiny new dishwasher. well, whatever. her parents were quirky. which is the exact reason she liked to explore their home. being the good little girl she had always been, ksenia had rarely taken to looking around her parents rooms - their bedroom, her mother's sewing room, even her father's very forbidden office. the door creaked as she nervously pushed it open. forbidden. right.
it was messy. she remembered that. but it was an organized messy. she didn't remember that. the discover of several old family photo albums made that forbidden aura quickly disappear. sitting on the dusty wooden floor, she easily spent forty-five minutes flipping through the old albums. apparently she had family actually living in ireland. cool. there were few photographs of her father's brother's family, but she could tell they were related. she shared the same blue eyes with her cousin november - weird name; and the same tooth smile as her twin brother, river - weirder name. they seemed nice, if a bit odd in their family photographs. no one ever really smiled a smile that reached their eyes. i guess that's what her father had been doing for over three years now. must run in the family. the biggest mistake came when she accidentally knocked over the candle she had haphazardly lit at the edge of his paper-strewn desk. silently cursing as the purple wax melted atop the aging wood, the then thirteen year-old stopped attempting to touch the burning wax when she noticed a file that had appeared from under the desk. she must have shifted it when she stumbled backward in order to save the candle holder. that crappy old flashlight was her only source of light as she picked up the mysterious yellow folder, leaning agains the wall as she innocently flipped through it. there were a lot of notes in a scribbly handwriting she didn't recognize. there were photographs, too. she dropped the folder in surprise when she first saw them, only pausing to hesitantly pick up the torn pictures. they were of a girl, barely a day over twenty-five. she was pretty, too, from what she could tell. there was no expression on her face, no life in her eyes. her entire face was too clean and pale to be considered normal. in the same scribbled writing, on the corner of the biggest photo, of the girl's entire lifeless body, was her name: hana kahovich. that sounded familiar. she vaguely remembered her father mentioning the name of a little girl, only slightly older than ksenia, several times during her childhood. her mother always told her that her middle name, hana, was because her father couldn't look at someone with that name anymore.
she had been executed. a quick, clean shot to the back of her neck in the middle of a cold, snowy night in downtown moscow. her body was then stripped, bleached clean, and re-dressed in different attire. they left a little imprint on the inside of her right hand, in the center of the palm. that was the only way anyone knew who it was, just not why. the authorities had their suspicions. but it's not like they could do anything. see, russia is nothing like the united states of america. to this day, it is a country stricken by a multi-decade long string of torture than left them in ruins. it will take an entire generation to recover from communism. especially during those times, russia was a dark country. for everyone. crime was high, run by criminals with higher agendas than your own. it's not like there was anything anyone could do. she was two days away from turning twenty-three.
she didn't tell anyone, didn't even bring it up. all she did was hastily shove the papers back into the folder after reading the few notes she could understand, then pushed it right back under the desk. she left the photo albums in a strewn on the floor, slammed the door to her father's study and didn't ever go back in there. she paced the halls of their large, lonely home in the dark until her parents returned home with, you guessed it, a pretty new leather couch. they forgot the milk. no one bothered to ask why she was clammy, they were too interested in their new couch. see, that was the thing about the sakahrov's. unless you made it obvious, they never assumed something was wrong. a bit dim, i suppose you could call her parents. either that, or too wound up with their own issues to really take notice of anyone else's. even her father's old oddities were white noise these days. they just got used to it. so, as long as she didn't throw the file at her father, causing a scene and demanding that he explain, no one ever took notice to ksenia's odd behavior that night. she locked herself in her bedroom the next day, using the power of google to put the pieces of the puzzle together. once you took everything into account, it didn't really take much to solve it. just a lot of lost trust and a sharp instinct to accept the obvious. who wants to admit that one of their parents is involved with the most dangerous set of criminals in the world?
she knew, she just didn't care. which would be a lie, but it sounded a lot better than knowing and being too afraid to ever tell anyone. it's not like anyone would believe her. what would you do if some little kid toddled up to you, claiming her father was in a tie of messes with not one, but two mafias? one alone is bad enough. you don't get involved with the mob unless you're born into it. okay well, to be fair, victor sakahrov had been given mafia ties the moment he was born. his brother, mikail, was born into the irish mafia. half-brother. whatever. he hadn't spoken a word to him until they were well into their twenties. their mother had given birth to mikail, named him, and ditched out of ireland before winding up married and happy in moscow. she found out, she just never did anything about it. what was there to do? one - she didn't want to get involved herself; and, two - it was her father's mess to be made. she didn't know the details. she didn't know what he did. she didn't even know how he went about doing it. she just knew he was in it. enough for her, not really enough to act upon it. besides, that would be just silly. see, ksenia had always liked knowing the details about everything. as a child, she spent more time examining the book than actually reading it. she had always, also, been selfish about it. what is more fun than telling someone you know the answer they desperately want, but not giving it to them? it's powerful, not to mention amusing. she was a secretive person, even as a child. it came with the silence that had darkened her family's doorstep when she turned ten. it was a warm, loving silence, but a silence nonetheless. she knew, and she really only began to care when her father told them they had to leave.
at fourteen, almost fifteen, there is little more important than trivial things - friends, shopping, allowances. childish, juvenile delights, she'd call them now. so, i can assume you would understand how it would feel when you're told to pack, you're leaving first thing in the morning? devestated. horrified. sickened. leave? now?! she finally got her locker the way she liked it! and cute boy number six from math class was just about to ask her to go to the movies! how dare they! her parents...those poor, cruel excuses for parents. okay, well, maybe it wasn't that bad. she was angry, of course. but when you know what she did? well, you begin to understand a little bit. she was having a nice, quiet dinner with her mother, in front of some old kung-fu movie, when her father barged in throught he front door, pale and sweating. weird. he wasn't supposed to be home for at least another hour or two. he was clutching the tiny little phone he always kept in his jacket's inside pocket. his face was wild-eyed, barely able to form coherent sentences. all she could understand was 'we have to go. now.' before her mother wordlessly pointed upstairs, indicating for ksenia to disappear. twenty minutes later, her mother appeared in her door frame, whispering to pack a few suitcases, they were leaving in the morning. leave everything else, they would get it later. well, that's nice. a few short weeks before her fifteenth birthday, the sakahrov family was on a red-eye flight from belgrade, serbia to the smallest, most insignificant town they had been able to locate on the map: keizer, oregan. oh, by the way, that's in the united states.
nothing would have happened if they had just shut the fuck up. she was never told what shit hit what fan. only that her father was in a hell of a lot of trouble. it wasn't worth the risk having family like that around. so they relocated - the keizer, oregon. sound familiar? it should. valkyrie's own sutton family is from there. now, nothing of interest happened in keizer. for all things saked, it was boring. ksenia grew into a lovely young lady. she was cute, blonde, perky - she fit in just fine. her parents were happy and stable, they fit into the bubble just perfectly. all's well, i guess. things are better when it's like that. whatever victor did to fuck everything up was forgotten. they turned into the perfect all-american family with funny accents.
i would be lying if i said anything happened while living in keizer. the most interesting thing was ksenia's lack of loyalty to her supposed best friend. not fun. but when your normally cheeky father drops his cell phone, looking paper white, and telling his wife they have to go the next morning? your bubble kind of gets burst. the connolly-skahrov clan were making waves. apparently people were pissed. no one ever told her anything. all ksenia knew was that she had better pack up her entire bedroom before three-thirty the next morning, or she was going to have to leave everything. they didn't even put the house up for sale. one morning, the entire sakahrov family mysterious disappeared onto an airplane going god knows where. welcome to a sudden emergence in life in valkyrie, california, miss.
COLLECTED MY BELONGINGS ,[/color]
ABOUT YOU AND FOR THE ADMINS ,
and i left the jail, well thanks for the time[/color]
YOUR NAME: asia the amazing goaltender.[/size][/font][/blockquote]
GENDER: half female, half alein.
AGE: eighteen years until i die.
RP EXPERIENCE: since the beginning of time.
OTHER CHARACTERS: the flingers.
ROLEPLAY EXAMPLE: the flames are being losers.credit: format by lainey, lyrics by modest mouse
