CHARACTER INFORMATION
face claim: Katie Cassidy
full name: Scarlett Braeden
nickname(s): Scarlett, Letty
pronouns & gender: She/her, cis woman
sexuality: bisexual
birth date: January 10th, 1981
birth place: Merrock, Maine
time in town: Most of her life
housing: Suburbs
occupation: brain surgeon at Merrock hospital
family: Ellie Braeden (niece)
personality: Scartett is is intelligent, compassionate and hard-working. She often describes herself as "dark and twisty" due to her negativity but also an emotionally complex person who is capable of empathizing with others when they're at their lowest points. Her single-mindedness makes her selfish, and most people would define her as arrogant careerist. She is suspicious and if she feels insecurity in herself they becomes depressed.
BACKGROUND / BIO
TW: CRIME, SUICIDE, CHEATING, DEATH, PATERNAL DEATH, FOSTER CARE
Born in Merrock, Maine, as the second child in the family of John and Irina Braeden. Her father met her mother, a Bulgarian emigrant, during her interview for a green card. Everyone thought this marriage was only for Irina’s visa, but there was a true love between them. Coming from a middle-class background, John’d put himself through business school and managed to became one of the biggest business man in the area. At the other side, Irina chose to be housewife, completely dedicated to the family and the children. Scarlett couldn’t give a concrete answer as to what her father did to make money, only that he did. As for her mother, Irina, she was a housewife of a rich man. She lunched with her elite neighbors, never washed her own dishes, and looked the other way when her father had an affair. Her clothes were always perfect, and she didn’t allow Scarlett or James, Scarlett’s bigger brother, to leave the house in anything worn or cheap.
Scarlett was only 12, when the life she knew fell apart. Somebody would say she barely remember but it was not true. She remembered everything from the last year of her father’s freedom and it was anything but. Dark cars followed her mother’s car when she left the Braeden’s kids at school and parked across the street of their house, the phones in her home made a clicking noise when she picked up the line, she had the feeling someone watched them all the time. And she was not wrong Braeden had funneled his funds through glorified Ponzi schemes - he’d given out insurance policies for homes, land, business, and property to unsuspecting victims, with no intention of paying them off but the Feds having a hard time nailing him for corruption and instead managed to imprison him for not paying his taxes. His accounts and property were frozen and his family fell apart. Irina, couldn’t handle the drop in status, took a bottle of pills with a pint of gin, and never woke up and Scarlett and James was put in foster care.
Years in the foster care was like a nightmare for Scarlett. At first she did everything to run away but soon her free spirit was broken. She felt betrayed by both her parents and she started hating everyone around her. She felt alone and her only close person was James. Being older James had the opportunity to leave the system a year later, when he turned 18 and after a year when he found a proper job he was able to take the custody of Scarlett and she left her foster family too. Realizing they could rely only on each other, Scarlett had to grew up faster - she became more serous, more concerned about her future and she didn’t allow herself doing stupid things, and it was not surprise when she managed to get a scholarship for the med school she dreamed about.
Years in the med school was like a therapy for Scarlett. She started to live again and she started to believe people again. There she found her first real friends and where she started to realize she was not guilty for her father’s crimes and for her mother’s death. She managed to return in Merrock with head held high where she started her internship in the local hospital.
Scarlett met her futute fiancee Alex on her brother’s wedding. She was 25 years old then and she felt in love with him immediately. His carefree made him look so dangerous and attractive. Scarlett had clung like glue to him. But Alex accepted her as a friend. Few years later he looked at her with different eyes and soon after they became a couple. They got engaged when she was 30 years old but their fairy tale didn’t last for long. Just few months before their wedding Alex’s ex-girlfriend showed up with a child she claimed was his. Tensions escalated and Scarlett broke off the engagement and left Merrock, believing she was doing Alex a favor by giving him the opportunity to start a family with his former mate.
Life away from Merrock and her brother was hard for Scarlett. She rented a really small apartment in New York near to the hospital where she started working. But the apartment was not important since she barely came home. She lived only for her work but things changed when she met Caroline - an photographer in famous magazine. They quickly felt in love and called themself a couple or at least were and weren’t one. They both had a big trust and insecurity problems, and the several affairs didn’t reflect well on their relationship, causing them to call it quits several times. But they reunited again, simply because when either of them tried to move on with a new relationship the other would show up and sabotage the effort, and after their last reunion they even got into an thoughtless marriage, hoping that would help their relationship but of course it didn’t worked this way. Just a few weeks later a call from Merrock changed everything. Scarlett found out her brother and his wife died in a car crash and she returned as quick as possible in her home town where she found she had to share a custody over her niece with her former fiancee Alex. To be the picture full, Caroline told Scarlett she had zero desire to move from New York and play a mother to a kid she didn’t even know which led to the couple’s split. In the middle of divorce, Scarlett moved back in Merock where she started work at the local hospital this time as a brain surgeon.