Age:Â 30
Affiliation: Famine
Rank: Virtue
Pronouns: she/her
FC: Summer Bishil
Status: Played by Becky
You are electric, deadly yet useful. Everything you do is carried out with simmering passion, a zap of palpable energy. You have no boundaries, are not constrained by the rules of those beneath you, the freedom to do as you please tasting sweet upon your tongue. The mundanity of normal life is a dull wasteland, much preferring to immerse yourself in the family’s back alley deals and empty car park meetings than the thought of an office job spent discussing the weather at the water cooler. Temptation lies in a smiled whisper, a taunting challenge, curious to know how far you can push people. Victory glints through dark eyes. You were made for this life.
You are often asked to sweet talk and bribe anyone Famine needs on side or, otherwise, make a mess of those who try to stand against you. It’s up to you to source new avenues for betting on, including spotting fresh boxing and horseracing talent to tempt into joining the crime family. Like a serpent with an apple, you lead them to sin.
Fearlessness comes naturally to you; smiles that should be sweet on a face like yours turn sharp and deadly. You like to surprise people. There’s satisfaction to be had in forging yourself into something unstoppable, a force of nature in your own right. Words are weapons, it has been said, but as good as you are at stringing together an insult you’d far sooner point a weapon in the face of those who displease you.
It’s been that way since you were young, getting too riled up in an argument with a boy two years above you who assumed you didn’t belong in a private school ( he was right, but not for the reason he’d picked -- your grades were awful and it took more than one bribe to keep your name on the register ). His mistake at spouting ignorance teaches you two things: one, always know who you’re picking a fight with and, two, never, never, underestimate someone you’ve pissed off. Self-righteous, an angry fist to his face had left your knuckles coated in his blood, dark and sticky like the oil your distant family pumps up from the ground. They’re old money; rich enough that even you, no longer brandishing the family name, still reap the benefits.
Your mum presses a lipstick-tinted kiss to the forehead of her half-wild daughter afterwards and calls you an angel of vengeance from behind a pair of designer sunglasses, sunning herself in the heat of an Indian summer. You beam, pleased by the praise. A hunger has taken root in the pit of your stomach, a realisation that being powerful and dangerous can get you where poor grades and a certain disregard for institutional rules could not. Pieces fall into place as they have been for the last few decades. An ineffable plan.
You’re raised on a Femenias-branded silver spoon. It’s no wonder, then, that when you’re offered an invitation to become involved in the family business by your uncle you jump at the chance. London breeds crime like it does rats and pigeons. Famine, you soon learn, is ingrained in the city’s underbelly the same way the brackish, sluggish water of the Thames exists between concrete blocks and archaic brick. You slip into it, embracing that side of yourself. That side of your family.
Dark eyes glint in the glow of a nearby streetlight, flashing a smile to distract from danger. Laughter echoes down alleyways and silence pools along cracks in the tarmac soon after, matching the rust-coloured criss-cross patterns that decorate your palm as soap and water cleanse you of tonight’s trouble. Time and time again, you prove yourself worthy of your place in Famine’s ranks.
There is something to be said, too, of the way you hold your place amongst your cousins, keeping a tight grip on each as though worried someone may rip them from your grasp. Tenderly, you wish to carry their hearts in your mouth to keep them from harm. To swallow them for the sake of knowing they will always be yours. Sharp teeth may sometimes rip at the tenderflesh but you would defend those who find a way to love you with your life.
Sometimes, though-- sometimes love is not enough. A lesson learnt unwillingly, despite the precarious situation you gladly put yourself in. The burning fire in your chest was certainly suffocated by a past lover but it was by no means extinguished. That there is both your blessing and your curse: an inability to let go.
Jessica Reyes. There are very few you would actively soften for but you have a soft spot for your youngest cousin and would allow them to preen and parade you as much as they like so long as it makes them smile.
Saint Warden. The peace treaty made finding a lover in one of War’s spawn a little less controversial and you did what you could to convince others it was tactical, a way to get information, as your heart grew ever-fonder. In the end, though, it didn’t matter.
Thomas Rivers. Previously, you were their Power and they your Virtue. But since their fall from grace, you rose to take on their role and have the absolute pleasure of now being the one in control.
