MILAGRO “MILAI” ABOG FALCÓN. never take loving someone like me seriously. love is just a game. i just want to have fun. i dress up my locked heart in fancy dresses and shoes. they’re my friends in loneliness. when i fall asleep on the highway, halogen lights shine mysteriously. if a voice whispers that i’m a woman cold as ice, don’t worry! i'm just playing games. i know that's plastic love! dance to the plastic beat. another morning comes.
her friend’s tone makes the redhead stumble back just a bit , not out of fear but of surprise , yet that is soon made up for as a warm laugh escapes angel’s rose - colored lips . ❝ what is it , mi ? ❞ she keeps her voice calm , just in case the brunette needs some sort of reassurance or even a reminder that everything is okay ; then again , the redhead knew milai could be a little bit too much at times , and she suspected this was but another one of those situations . eventually , after hearing her explanation , angelina laughed & nodded her head , understanding where her friend was coming from . she did have a point , after all . ❝ yeah , the technique is a little weird … but it’s also relaxing if you let your thoughts disappear for a little while ! ❞ smoothing down the skirt of her dress , she thought for a moment on where would be a good place for them to go , but assumed it could be better to just ask milai what she wanted to do instead of a spa massage . ❝ i guess we could go somewhere , if it makes you more comfortable … however , i still think we should have a massage sometime , even if it’s in new york ! ❞ with a bright smile , she posed the question , ❝ what do you wanna do instead , mimi ? ❞
“you know i can’t ‘let my thoughts disappear for a while,’ ange,” milai protests. “it feels weird, okay?” when posed the question of where she wants to go instead, milai huffs, overwhelmed by her own ambivalence. on one hand, she’d like to take refuge in her old hobbies: stockpiling knowledge, eating some delivery food, saving idiots from serious injury. on the other, she’s also keen on trying things normal un-normal nyc posh girls do. in the end, she goes for the more pragmatic option. “i dunno, we’re all supposed to act like besties just taking a fun vacation to sweden, aren’t we? we should probably attend a party or whatever. the more we keep to ourselves, i feel like we kinda might as well be jiggling at a cemetery and singing, ‘don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious!’”
– THE LAST THING ESME WANTS IN SWEDEN IS A LECTURE. especially from a nurse who probably has plenty of rationale to back up her argument. “no thanks,” she quips flippantly, “if i wanted that, i’d ask. but instead, i think i’ll ask for another martini.” she doesn’t need one, but she prefers to be a little defiant, just for the fun of it.
when milai registers that it’s esme tipton, her demeanour shifts to something more cordial and sycophantic. “i’m sorry.” the skater may not think she’s the pinnacle of new york elite, but the combination of defiant self-possession and moneyed glamour is one to which milai aspires. “i’ve just had a bit of a rough day. so many people blowing up my facebook inbox, making me feel like i’m a piece of meat.... do you ever feel that way sometimes?” she asks, as casual-seeming as she can. “it’s just... i’m under a spotlight, but i still feel pretty lonely. like people don’t really care for me as a person.”
vienna’s mouth moves as if to defend herself, but she’s too caught off guard to say anything right away. so she reaches for her glass and takes a sip of water. “believe me,” she begins, holding up a hand to stop the other girl from going into the lesson she seems to have planned. “i’m the last person that needs that lecture. i feel like i’m usually the one that gives these talks. we may actually be the last two sober ones on this trip. now, does that make us responsible or boring?”
“it’s not like judgements of character from any of the untouchables have real value,” dismisses milai. “in short, i don’t care if they think it’s boring.” lowering her voice, she asks rhetorically, “you do remember we’re here for a reason, right?” they’re criminals with no right to look down on others. before she can get too curt, however, she offers a pastry. “want one?” but she does let herself continue a bit more. “i’m hardly a nun, am i? i do drink, but the extent to which the rest do can be objectively stupid at times.”
‘i’m not here to clean up everyone’s shit.’ or maybe: ‘damn it, the sanctum owes me a raise.’ these are the thoughts she wants to vocalise. instead, she grumbles, “if you’d like to learn about the various and abundant effects of alcohol on your body, i’d be happy to give you a tour or a refresher.” she doesn’t know yet if the other is actually intoxicated, but she’s seen the other untouchables wildly drunk so often and it tires her, as the medical expert who’s bound to make them not die from too much liquor. she’s not going to put up with that in sweden.
“ANGEL! ANGEL!” milai says, trying not to pant and sound shaken (not very successfully). she’s just been to the massage area of the manor’s spa, an early bird to her scheduled hang-out with angel (because she doesn’t have much else to do, although she won’t admit that she has “no life” by new york elite standards). “i know i should’ve expected this, but i can’t believe they actually do that.... they... they make you take off your clothes and then knead your body like you’re bread? they claim the practice produces ‘endorphins’ but i’m not feeling those endorphins right now. there isn’t any real empirical evidence that massage therapy helps with musculoskeletal pain anyway! let’s go somewhere else,” she requests, “please.” || @angelharrison.
HI everyone ! it’s me again, natalie (aka warren’s mun lol) here for my second muse / late addition, milai ! (that’s just her nickname tbh) her skeleton is asklepios, and yes, i know the gif is unexpectedly cheerful-looking, bUT YEAH PLS PLOT WITH HER. lengthy information under the “read more,” because that’s how i roll.
you’re not sure exactly what happened to your biological mother. you know her name was shaina abog falcón — “shaina,” a name meaning “beautiful,” which she apparently was; “abog,” a filipino surname meaning “dust,” to which she was reduced far too early in her short existence.
you know she was a nun. you’ve heard she was devout. why and how, then, did she get pregnant? your adoptive parents name you milagro, a spanish loan word meaning “miracle,” because that’s how shaina had convinced herself you came to be. through a miracle.
you were, naturally, too young to remember the actual circumstances of your birth. you have no way of verifying whether your mother had truly died from childbirth, as people tell you, or whether your biological father had something to do with it. your new parents never seem to be pleased at the mention of this unnamed american man who impregnated shaina before forsaking his fresh-born daughter.
despite all your incredulity, you’re not a fool. when your new parents recount the day of your birth and credit the fact that you’re alive to medicine, you believe them. they’re a pair of doctors — clarisa jamora, also from the philippines, and her american husband tommy whelan. free of charge, they’d helped extricate you from your mother’s womb after they got stationed in the philippines.
clarisa and tommy are perfectly nice, wholesome people. they treat you well and you consider them your parents, truly. but when you turn four years old, you let them know you don’t want either of their last names. somehow, you feel like you’re still connected to shaina. although you were never spiritual, it’s almost like you carry her soul within yourself.
everyone quickly realises you’re a prodigy. still at four years old, you’ve figured out how to open your parents’ heavily locked library unassisted and memorised chapters of a medical journal. they’re astounded.
the reception isn’t all positive, however. your classmates call you a show-off and exclude you from their circles. they find you abrasive and arrogant and don’t like it when you show them how to pronounce or spell your surnames, abog and falcón. you’re a nuisance. you’re not even pretty, all gangly underneath enormous spectacles and unkempt tangles of hair.
but your cognisance of reality stops you from ever attempting to fit in. even though it hurts you deeply, you know physical beauty isn’t important. you know grades aren’t important. you know politeness is a social construct often weaponised against creatures like you. unfortunately, your flair for existential rumination doesn’t sit well with the rest of the world. your teachers reprimand you for being incendiary. you’re “disruptive,” “radical,” sometimes even “mean” or “cold” to your peers. these peers think no higher of you either.
you’re an activist with hands who will save many lives in the future. you’re a proudly ugly, proudly angry, proudly antisocial bitch.
that is, until you’re not. in med school, you’re startled to witness the absence of clichés. the students seem to be friendlier and more easygoing, more mature and self-assured. they don’t really try hard to make anyone who they aren’t. and one thing you aren’t, it turns out, is ugly.
a schoolmate lends you a compact mirror. “look at yourself,” she cries in disbelief. so you look at yourself over and over until it sinks in that ugliness isn’t actually an integral part of your identity.
you’re beautiful. you don’t know how to live as a Pretty Girl, even if you are a very, very pretty girl. you lack the effortless charisma. you’re utterly untrained in the art of flirting. instead of attractive confidence, you have obdurate will and hostility.
so you remain who you were for a time. you graduate from university decorated with abundant scholarly merits. near the end of your first year as a nurse, however, you suffer from a gap in professionalism.
this gap occurs when you see him. you’ve never heard his name before. ivan humphries or something. but your blood boils when you see him. he’s had a stroke. you think, “good.” you hope he dies. he almost does.
of course, your superiors in the hospital don’t take this lightly, even though they believe you when you say the mistakes you made in helping treat him were sheer accidents. you don’t know what happened to you. your only religion is science, but it genuinely does feel like you’d been possessed by a malicious spirit.
thus, you seek refuge in a holy place — the sanctum. that’s what the name means, doesn’t it? but, again, you are not a fool. you know it’s a disingenuous, poisonous organisation. you join anyway. your destiny is to heal people. you can’t allow your career in medicine to be cut by one mistake.
as if by miracle, they fulfil your request. your singular, colossal mistake leaves not a single mark on your record. the memory appears to have been erased from your colleagues’ minds, though you figure they’ve probably just been induced to secrecy. your protection goes along with a hefty moral price, but at this point you no longer care. you’ve turned off your heart, which now only lights up at carnal pleasures and materialistic glamour.
BONUS DETAILS I COULDN’T QUITE FIT IN THERE
ivan was her biological father, and well-done if you successfully deduced it! :D despite her lack of concrete evidence, one of her quieter goals now is to afflict more harm upon him. it’s not a 100% rational spite (but it’s pretty damn justified). still, she’s going to try to do some dna testing or something before she’s going to really strike against him.
she has two surnames, because the philippines follows the spanish naming system. her nickname, “milai” (pronounced like “mii-laahy”), is more of a traditionally filipino diminutive. her first language is also not tagalog, but cebuano (from the visayas region in the philippines). “abog” is cebuano.
she’s bisexual af lol
congratulations if you made it this far! i’m not going to include wanted connections, because you probably know the drill and it would make this even longer ajfdsjfsf. PLS LIKE THIS OR MESSAGE ME IF YOU WANNA PLOT ESPECIALLY WITH THE EVENT GOING ON
