⌜ CIS FEMALE, SHE / HER | the hearse by matt maeson, gryffindor, infp ⌟ ⏤ meet RYLIE NATALIA BARTON ; a TWENTY TWO year old who kind of resembles WILLA HOLLAND, don’t you think? she originally hailed from NEW YORK CITY where she lived with her parents, CLINT BARTON & NATASHA ROMANOFF ( MARVEL ), but word is that she’s been making strides to rejoin shield and finish her law degree this past year. she’s always been pretty AUDACIOUS & COMPASSIONATE, but has gotten way more CODEPENDENT & PRIDEFUL since she woke up. maybe her ability of WEAPON PROFICIENCY and power of INNATE COMBAT can help in taking down the dome. you can check out her stat page HERE& her pinterest board HERE.
i was a woman who thought only of dead things
( all the time ). i couldn’t HELP it.
part one of two : the backstory. ( trigger warnings for talk of death, drug / alcohol abuse.
born on july 21st, 1996, to clint barton & barbara morse. the youngest of three children, lewis and callum were five and nine respectively at the time of her birth.
her mother and brothers died in a house fire when she was just three months old ; the files concerning the accident are blacked out and encrypted, and the story given to rylie amounts to ‘your mother went missing in action.’
understandably, she’s always wanted to know more ; unfortunately, she’s never had the means in which to find anything out.
raised by clint. really loved, but vaguely overprotected. ‘aunt nat’ was in her life from minute one, essentially, a shoulder for clint to lean on and a motherly presence that rylie found she craved. in time, they got married. it never felt anything but natural.
she was raised alongside the rest of the next gen ; troy banner, dan rogers, calder thorson & phoebe stark. they were and remain the closest thing to siblings that rylie has ever had, and as the youngest, she got to annoy them endlessly and still be assured that whatever may have happened down the line, they would always have her back.
as a little girl, rylie’s dreams amounted to little more than being the prima balllerina of her company. if she couldn’t be that, she would have settled for being an award winning pianist. she was a remarkably ordinary little girl, the only thing completely out of the norm about her being the fact that her father had her trained from the time she could walk to use a weapon, and her stepmother had her taught well how to fight.
her time in school was... tough, to put it mildly. she was homeschooled at certain points, and moved around a lot for others. kids could be cruel, and rylie’s self esteem was never destined to be that good.
rylie’s lift changing can be pinpointed as the moment that shield enlisted her, along with the rest of the next gen. she was just a LITTLE KID - playing dress up in between recitals, saving the world before she’d ever really even lived in it. they were kids trained for war. how could any of them have ever been well adjusted?
she dropped out of ballet. she stopped attending her piano lessons. the only thing that mattered was working with her team. how stupid she feels, now, to have been so caught up in trying to be an adult that she forgot to have a childhood.
her friends meant EVERYTHING to her.
she started attending the same school as phoebe because the other girl made a strong case to clint for rylie, so she wouldn’t have to go through another year of torment. she didn’t just LOVE her. she wanted to be her. to compare to the beautiful and intelligent and utterly flawless phoebe stark was something that she always knew would be impossible, but tried to do, anyway.
troy was her BIG BROTHER. he still is. when she was scared of storms, he would stay awake and hold her through the night to help her through. they teased one another mercilessly, but at the end of the day, they always knew just how much they loved one another - it was all in good spirit, and at points, it was what both of them needed.
daniel, the voice of reason - not just for rylie, but for everyone. she always looked up to him, both as a leader and as a friend. he made good calls. he tried to do right by everyone. it wasn’t easy to do - and looking back, rylie hates how it all rested on his shoulders when he was just a KID - but he did it anyway.
and calder...- she’s always loved him, even when it was difficult. back then, it wasn’t. he was always a stoic, but how much he loved them all was evident. he was her training partner and best friend, always present, even when he didn’t know what to say, or do.
the five of them were like some kind of mismatched breakfast club, but no one in the world understood what it was like to grow up with heroes for parents as well as they did.
and then PHOEBE died. rylie was sixteen years old. the rest of them weren’t much older. loki attacked avengers tower while their parents were away on a mission, and she tried to protect calder ; it wasn’t anybody’s fault except loki’s that she fell that day, but they all shouldered the guilt regardless. rylie never was the same.
in the months after, rylie tried to numb the pain, the responsibility. she couldn’t sleep, so she took pills that were meant to help. when they didn’t, she took more. the subsequent overdose was swept under the carpet, the choice to send her to wda alongside the rest of the guys their way of trying to bring some life back to her, after. it was phoebe’s dream they were living, after all. maybe being there with them would help.
believe it or not : it DIDN’T. walt disney academy was living under the threat of the darkness at the time, and rylie was one of many students who fell victim. while on a mission with shield in late 2014, she was shot ; it was a horrible event that weakened rylie more than just in her resolve, and months later, the darkness took hold. under its influence, she hurt people that she didn’t know, and she hurt one’s that she did, too. her freedom was temporary, she and many other students were taken over once more, and troy saved the day by drawing out the good ; but enough had been enough.
rylie turned to alcohol. the rest was history. she drank to sleep. she drank to get herself through the day. she drank when she was happy, when she was achingly sad, when she was just trying to feel something. she would go on weekend benders that bled into the weeknights when the littlest inconvenience happened, and drunk, she made some truly horrible decisions with some truly terrible people. she kept hurting the people she loved. she kept ruining her relationships. it became a cycle, wash and repeat.
whatever she might have had with emmett wicks, a rock she leant on during the early darkness saga, was gone as quick as it came. rylie got too involved too quick with alexander kaligaris, with disastrous results. we know how unhealthy that particular relationship turned out.
shield suspended her from active duty in early 2017. she was over the legal limit to drive and still thought she could go on a mission for them, and she could have gotten her whole team killed. she didn’t, but it didn’t matter. they were right to do what they did, but rylie took it personally ; she lashed out. she made bad choices. she had lost the ONLY thing she really had left. her father wanted to pull her from school to try and help, and she point blank refused. it caused a rift between them, for understandable reasons. without her dad, without her family, without many of her friends - rylie just got worse.
in the summer of ‘17, the school suffered from an earthquake during prom. rylie took a hard fall, and the resulting head trauma damaged her eardrum. it wasn’t her father coming back to support her during the subsequent operation to try and fix it that gave rylie a wake up call. it was her pregnancy, discovered a few weeks later ; rylie always loved, and alex always left. one mistake from the two of them caused a bigger one that spooked her. rylie made the choice to have an abortion. she took control of her own life, for once, instead of allowing it spin even more out of control - and she started attending alcoholics anonymous, almost immediately after.
part two of two : what u missed on glee.
rylie has been sober for 21 months and counting. it’s as hard for me to believe it as it is for you all, i’m sure ; but she’s been doing BETTER. she’s been back training, brushing up on some old skills that she let get rusty. she’s healthy, too, the sallow look to her skin that everyone got accustomed to long gone. to say it was easy for her, or that she didn’t have moments of doubts, would be... totally incorrect. she’s just been fighting through.
she was one more bad month away from flunking out of her law degree, the last time y’all saw her ; but she’s picked up in the past year, really knuckling down to try and catch up, for one, and do better, for another. she’s still worried that she’s going to have to do an extra year, to finish, but she’s dedicated to doing so if she’s GOTTA.
her relationship with her father? fixed. clint has always put rylie above all else, and never would have even required the apologies she gave, really. likewise with the relationship she has with natasha. both of them forgive her for her weakness, though it’s unlikely that rylie ever will. we love on ( 1 ) girl with a guilt complex.
the one thing that ISN’T fixed is her hearing, at least not 100%. she has a loss of fifty nine db in her right ear, and that’s probably never going to change. it makes her and her father even more alike, though i’m sure clint would have rathered the similarities not be so much.
as of right now, she’s prepping for a hearing with the board of directors at shield on whether she should be reinstated as an active agent. she’s passed all of the physicals, and she’s been in therapy for about as long as she’s been sober, working through her issues. she’s still got miles to go, but they’re certainly optimistic. rylie moved past feeling hard done by a long time ago, and now she just... wants to be a part of the agency, again, in a way where she can actually be of help.
rules: pick songs that start with the letter it’s associated with. the songs don’t have to have a deep meaning for your character or even remind you of them, it’s just for fun!
tagged by: @reesesxpiece
R. retrograde - james blake
Y. you only call me when it’s raining out - gnash
L. love songs drug songs - x ambassadors
I. in the morning - razorlight
E. eye’s closed - halsey
N. no one’s here to sleep - naughty boy ft. dan smith
A. already home - a great big world
T. to build a home - the cinematic orchestra
A. as real as you and me - rihanna
L. let him go - birdy
I. i hate u i love u - gnash ft. olivia o’brien
A. au revoir - onerepublic
B. broken bones - kaleo
A. ass like that - eminem
R. rip to my youth - the neighbourhood
T. that would be enough - phillipa soo & lin-manuel miranda
O. oblivion - bastille
N. no more sad songs - little mix
tagging: everyone but for def @stephaniewindsor, @forrestfull-bailey & @jacks-onian bc im curious
Smoked a whole cigarette? 14
Ran away from home? never
Cussed? 12
Got in a fist fight? 10
Done drugs? 19
Tried alcohol? 16 -- didn’t drink again until 18
Got drunk? 18
Blacked out from drinking? 18
Drove a car? 14
Fell in love? 19 never
Had sex? 19
Lied? 6
Got a pet? never a pet of her own
Kissed a member of the opposite sex? 16
Kissed a member of the same sex? 17
Went on a date? never
Got a detention? 14
Got suspended from school? never
Stayed up all night? 5
Played truth or dare? 9
Had your first crush? 13 -- maybe younger
Got a job? 12
Hurt yourself on purpose? 17
Told off a teacher? never
Was the happiest ever? 12
Realised how much someone meant to you? 12
Lost someone? 17
Got expelled from school? never
Rylie’s favorite place on campus is the gardens. There’s a very specific place she goes, a stretch of green shaded by some trees, where she can set up targets at just the right distance and shoot some arrows for a few hours. Course, the gardens are relaxing enough even without that– when she needs a break, she tends to just go for a walk through them and clear her head– but archery has always helped her relax and calm down, so throwing the two together is ten times better.
7) Favorite spot in town
Everyone would probably assume that Rylie’s favorite place in town would be Muscles & Buscles, the local gym– after all, she tends to go there almost every second day. And, it is one of her favorite places. But her absolute favorite place has been Bay Lake, ever since the camping trip last year. There are bad memories attached to it– the darkness taking over Alex, hurting Ella, not being fast enough yet again– but Rylie finds it calming to walk through the surrounding forest, and even more calming just to watch the water, occasionally skipping stones. She doesn’t go here so much, only having visited a hand full of times since the trip, but it is her favorite.
8) My muse’s BroTP
Rylie x Phoebe lol I wanna say Rylie & Eliza? Since coming here, Liza’s this constant source of happiness for Ry. Like, right now she’s really down in herself and would probably spend all of her time moping, but Liza just being Liza manages to bring a smile to her face. I think she’s super grateful for that, so she values this friendship more than anything else. [But also like honestly Ry/her big bros and Rylie/Bailey and Rylie/Matt and literally all her friendships lbr]
9) Mun’s BroTP
I couldn’t even choose one if I tried? Like, roleplaying them all I know how much they mean to Rylie because I know how she works and how she’d be around strangers and whatever, but when she’s around her friends she’s eighty times happier and just idk how to explain it? Her friendships are really important and that makes me love them all I couldn’t choose
10) Ice Cream or Cake?
Cake, Rylie is a lover of cake (especially the cakes Eliza bakes let’s be honest)
