NAME: IMOGEN ZHANG. AGE: THIRTY. GENDER: CISGENDER FEMALE. BLOOD STATUS: PUREBLOOD. EDUCATION: THE NATIONAL CHINESE ACADEMY FOR MAGIC. OCCUPATION: FREELANCE HIT WIZARD (HONORARY IWL,) INTERNATIONAL ESCORT TO HADLEY VALENTINE. WAND: UP TO PLAYER.
"I can't let him in--
you call me up and ask me how I've been,
I'll call your bluff and keep on telling you lies."
The first sound Imogen Zhang ever heard was a baby crying on her thirteenth birthday.
When Imogen was born she didn't cry-- she only stared. It became knowledge that the young girl couldn't hear anything, not even if they screamed in her ear, and that was due to a deal the Zhang's made with the Valentine family hundreds of years before. They told her all about it, that if the Zhang's ever produced a girl and didn't kill her at the same time the Valentine's produced a boy and didn't kill him, the two would be linked. The Zhang girl would live, deaf, until linked to the Valentine boy-- the Valentine boy would live, hearing, until linked to the Zhang girl. What the deal was, they didn't know; it was old family history, and only the need-to-knows were given to them. Imogen asked why her parents didn't kill her, and the two were quick to say they didn't have the heart-- unlike those before them in the Zhang family, they didn't see having a daughter as a curse.
And so she lived. She couldn't read people's lips, she didn't know how to speak, because she was born a deaf girl and that's how she would have to live her life. It wasn't much of a struggle to her, but simply normal-- in her eyes, people writing down what they wanted to say was normal. Being given audio assistance for movies when her family put her in muggle Mandarin classes was normal. Walking around with an CSL/ASL trained translator was, again, normal. People pitied her but Imogen could never pity herself for having to live with what she grew up with. Sometimes people got dealt different cards, and in her case, she got dealt one that forced her to focus on her other senses. While she couldn't hear, her sense of touch was strong. Her reflexes could be considered impeccable. Her vision was perfect and her sense of smell was a little too sensitive sometimes... But nothing necessarily 'supernatural'. Just fantastic.
Consequently, she became a very active member of the duelling class the Academy, one that even students years above her age wanted to learn from or defeat, and all signs seemed to point in the direction of becoming an auror with the Chinese Ministry. Whatever her career would be, though, wasn't something Imogen had decided yet; the young, well trained jokester was far more interested in a social life than in her studies, despite the archetype of a well disciplined Chinese student. She couldn't talk, but she could write a damn good joke, and it was easy to put pauses in between holding up papers for dramatic effect. In her third year, anyone that could see her writing on a board was surrounding her one day in the courtyard when Imogen paused-- she couldn't move. There was an unbearable pain pushing on her head, slowly moving down, and she felt like she couldn't breathe. Other students thought she was being cursed and many left to find professors, but those who stayed with her were around to hear her make her first noise.
A baby was crying, loud, as if it was inside her ear-- so loud, that it made Imogen release a bloodcurling scream.
That was the day Hadley Valentine was born, and she pretended she didn't notice once she realised it was the curse. She learned how to talk before he was old enough to have memory, switching between Mandarin and English all the time until she learned more languages-- and she realised he was learning through her, how to speak everything. There was a part of Imogen that wanted to learn how to break the consequence of the deal, because there was no way in hell she wanted to grow up with a boy in her head, but she knew that there were advantages. She, in fact, learrned to love the boy as if she had given birth to him-- from his birth, she had been with him. She loved from afar happily, ignorantly, because he was becoming a wonderful young man despite his rough areas for living. Her focus was less on socialising and more on her ever since he was born; at this point, she didn't even have friends.
It was Hadley's fourth year-- and her fifth year as a now-infamous Hit Wizard-- when her father pointed one thing out: one day, Hadley would go deaf. They wouldn't know when, but that was the curse of his birth. So she chose to speak to him, ending the charade of playing life off like she didn't know he existed. She didn't want to tell him anything, so she pretended she had no knowledge of how far back in time their family actually went; she pretended she had just gained the ability to see through his eyes, to hear him. Through their interaction they learned another part of their connection: she could make him move, whereas he could block her out. That's what scared her, the idea that one day, he could get rid of her and he would never know his fate. As soon as Imogen learned that the IWL would be entering Fantome if the deal with Reitseg didn't go through, she used her position as an honorary IWL working to get a spot among the IWL. She had no interest in the Reitseg case, for all schools had secrets to protect, but she knew that Reitseg was one school Hadley could move to. And so she prepared.
She told him he needed to take the REE's, and told him she would be there to help learn what was binding them, when in all actuality she was going to only work with him to find a way to break the bind. It would be possible to find a way to break it without knowing the deals details as ancient deals were very similar once upon a time, but Imogen knew she would need help. Her father, upon learning the news of her teaming up with the IWL in the papers once more, knew she was up to something-- when he finally got her to be honest, the man told her one thing: the only way to break the bind would be to kill one of them. And if that was the case, Imogen knew she would kill herself-- she wanted him to live, happily, with all his senses in check.
Imogen's waist-length, relaxed hair isn't what most people would expect a Hit Wizard to have, being always on the run, but the woman dresses in garments that have loose-ends, ties, and flowing bits anyway. One would expect sensible shoes to be on her feet, and yet, she's always in heels. Imogen contradicts every rule about clothing in the handbook for ways to succeed in the criminal justice world, but she does it all to make sure that she's comfortable in whatever she does. Her makeup is full of dramatic eyeliner wings and deep red lips, making her look even more terrifying than she already does with her default stoic expression-- though, if one was to ask her, she'd claim she needs all the help with looking intimidating due to her height. Standing at 5'0", she's not necessarily the type of woman that can look down at most of her victims when they're on their feet.
As soon as HADLEY VALENTINE became important to her he was all the girl could think about. People egan to say that she was losing her passion for her line of work around the time she was reminded the young boy would one day go blind-- and it's true. He's like a son to her, in a sense; she wants to coddle him and protect him from the world because from birth to present day, she's watched him grow. It was convenient to get a position as his International Escofrt in addition to her job stationing in Reitseg, to have an excuse for anyone seeing them talking-- an excuse that would allow her to speak to a boy she's cared about for so long, in person.
The Darling family is all too familiar to Imogen, who has taken down quite a few of them in her time-- but JAMES DARLING hardly flies over the radar. When she ran into James, the hatred was clear, and probably intensified when she wrote her off as nothing more than a pest but Imogen couldn't care less. She has no time for little girls trying to play pretend thief-queen, no matter how hard they're trying. If James tries anything, Imogen has no problem with shoving her into a cell with the rest of her wretched family.
DARIA HENSTRIDGE is a god damn pest, and when Imogen found out that he was being allowed out of his cage to become a criminal consultant for the Reitseg case, she was furious. Daria was an easy catch, but a quick one that provided her with a chase; whenever there was a chase, Imogen felt she wasn't doing her job. Now that she has to see Daria daily, she plans on being the one who shoves him back in a cell the moment he screws up.
FACECLAIM: CONSTANCE WU. SONG: PIERRE BY RYN. IMOGEN IS OPEN.
