introducing vesper quinn .
𓂅 * ⋆ 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 .
name : vesper quinn da silva. meaning : latin , " evening star ". nickname : vess , espie , morphling. age : thirty two. birthdate : year forty three att. gender identity : cisgender woman , she / her. orientation : bisexual , biromantic. place of birth : district six , panem. current residence : district thirteen , panem. occupation : victor of the fifty eighth hunger games , mentor & rebel.
𓂅 * ⋆ 𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 .
face claim : mia goth. height : 5'7". hair : naturally mousy brown , bleached a warm , honey blonde along with her eyebrows following the games, worn down with very little styling day-to-day. eyes : big and brown , sore but still inexplicably bright.
𓂅 * ⋆ 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 .
myers - briggs : tbc. zodiac sign : libra. temperament : sanguine - melancholic. moral alignment : chaotic good. traits : freethinking , melancholy , perverse , reclusive , sincere & volatile. song : maybe this time ( from cabaret ) by jessie buckley. pinterest : here.
𓂅 * ⋆ 𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘
tw : drug abuse , addiction , forced prostitution , murder , death + suicidal ideation.
they’ll say she was marked for sorrow from the beginning. too fragile, too precocious a girl for the cold, uncaring world the districts of panem are forced to endure. vesper quinn… or is it da silva? eldest daughter of a factory foreman and the bookkeeper with whom he began an affair (both with their own hushed up history of morphling addiction — what a self-fulfilling prophecy she’ll turn out to be), vesper was a girl who dreamt in soft watercolours, performed to music no one else could hear and found beauty in even the most mundane. named for a star, she’s nebulous as a child. a blithe but unnatural creature seemingly unaffected by the gloomy greyscale of the district to which she belongs, someone who took immense pride in the artistic pursuits she hoped would one day carry her away from six’s concrete cityscape. for when she wasn’t at school or working her job finishing paint jobs on capitol traincars and citizen’s automobiles, she’d be holed up in one of her hiding spots around the neighbourhood: the rooftop of their building, the decaying loft above her parents’ factory, the long-forgotten boxcars that had been left to rot in the railyard. vesper fashioned a studio out of each location and would spend hours upon end there, refining her art, teaching herself various styles of dance… performing to a crowd of ghosts. if nothing else, she could be a source of inspiration for her two younger siblings who were in desperate need of a parental figure after their mother walked out into the night following the birth of her youngest. their father burying himself in work and other vices to cope with the loss. though this was only the beginning of the quinn’s relationship with that particular feeling.
it’s on her second reaping day when vesper is just sixteen years old, stood in the square, fingers crossed behind her back, begging an entity she scarcely believes in to spare her, that her name is one of two called. it pours with rain in district six that day. indicative of the tears she sheds as her siblings come to bid her farewell, begging her to win so, she’ll be able to come home to them. it’s the beginning of a lifetime of jokes made at her expense too. japes about her weighing seventy pounds soaking wet are a dime a dozen. capitol citizens stuck callously dismissing her outright as images of the drenched, mousy brown girl from six play on their holos. she’s told not to take it personally, that it’s “par for the course” being from six (or any other outlier for that matter) but it’s hard not to, at her young age.
despite the cruelty, vesper is most earnest in her desire to survive the fifty-eighth hunger games. for her siblings, she feels she must. going as far as to surprise everyone in training by securing a score of seven and managing to endear herself to caesar flickerman’s wealthy audience as she tells him, bright-eyed, of her childhood dream to be an artiste in their fair city. having built a steady momentum, she’s something of a rising star now. a genuine sense of hope amongst the district six team that, for the second year in a row, they won’t be reduced to short-lived cannon fodder during the bloodbath as they so often are.
of course, their hope isn’t misplaced as paired with an arena that combined two varieties of wetlands, it lent itself (rather perfectly) to vesper’s deft and practical skill set. meaning that whilst other tributes fell victim to the elements or vast array of mutts released into the arena that year, vesper took to it with measured composure. unafraid to get her hands dirty, panem watched on in astonishment as the young, previously unassuming girl from district six utilised camouflage and hideaways to outmaneoveur and thus, outlast her fellow tributes. even as a day of acid rainfall wiped out five tributes in total, hiding out in a hollow tree with a dense thicket for cover kept six’s female tribute from harm. it was truly something to behold, tearful finale and all. for the games were not without heartbreak. vesper forced to take the lives of three inside their swamp of an arena. the blood, mud and sweat amalgamating on the freckled porcelain of her skin, congealing under dirty fingernails. it’s paint, she tells herself, just paint… her eventual victory dubbed “a masterpiece” in artful survival but one vesper will soon wish to see destroyed in every way something can be. the same way she will be.
that grime-ridden mess of a girl who emerges, sopping wet, from the marshland arena is to be done away with immediately. reinvented, they say… and that she is. vesper would reemerge in the capitol, wholly transformed. made up to be every bit the victor she is — scantily clad, bleach blonde with those pale brows to match, she’s told she’s desirable now. branded a hot commodity by those whose opinions matter most: a bright, glistening buzz about her as she becomes the muse rather than the artist for the first time in her life. it’s hard not to feel as though she’s floating outside herself, unrecognisable as she is but such new found notoriety opens doors. her siblings are looked after, tucked away in the safety of six’s victor’s village, her hopes and dreams within arm’s reach now… and all she’d had to do to achieve it was survive the slaughter of twenty three innocents. only, that wasn’t all. that was never all when it came to the beloved victors of panem and she learns as much from the viper they call president, his words of warning, offset by the scent of rose, concerning a star and how fast they fade and fall go unheard by vesper’s unsuspecting ears. unbeknownst to her, it’s interpreted as a refusal.
less than a week later, her younger brother is killed in what can only be described as a “freak accident” by officials who attend the scene. his short, still growing form so easily torn apart by the machinery he’s said to have been caught under. the sight alone causes vesper to crumble then and there. the morbid understanding of why it happened comes later… when she’s ultimately called back to the capitol and put to work as was always intended.
clients she’s thrust upon are spirited. new money. they eagerly introduce her to babylon. where the city’s seedier underbelly meets and amalgamates with the glamorous nightlife belonging to their upper echelon. it's home to debauchery of each and every variety, the thinkable and unthinkable with vesper its latest inductee. there’s a stage inside, a spotlight and it’s framed as a kindness. the promise of a girlhood dream come true, that she might just be able to salvage something of her victory. the rose-coloured naïveté her parents never had the heart nor guts to beat out of her coming back to bite one last time as she walks so willingly into the future she’s to be entrapped in. forced to perform nightly for frenzied crowds, introduced to morphling to ease the burden and she’s left no choice but to let them do so… indulging them. for she knows that if it goes far enough, they’ll leave her be. the capitol never did deal in spoiled goods and for a while, it actually feels nice. the high and its unfathomable weightlessness. pleasant even. numbing the pain, quelling the guilt, taking her far, far away from where she actually is — bound to this exploitative duty she’d never once asked for. but eventually, dependency catches up to her. addiction soon after. it goes further than vesper ever plans and before long, she can’t seem to face a day of her miserable life without the aid morphling provides.
framed as an out of control starlet, a rogue party girl… she’s pathetically dependable. they call, she comes. club appearance or client booking, she ends up in an unfamiliar bed at nights end all the same and the high she chases provides an attainable escape from the bleak reality of it all. even in her most drug fueled of hazes however, there are moments of startling clarity. nights when the effects aren’t as desired, when she still sees their leering faces, feels their ravenous hands clutching at her skirts or bare skin as they beg raucously for more. she’s all days old eye shadow by then, perpetual dark circles from having smudged her eyeliner or sobbed away her mascara. since the day she won the games, she’s never once felt clean. never looked it either, if you were to ask around. even as prep teams agonise over dressing her in the shiniest metallics they have on hand, year after year. judgement passes so freely in panem and people around her simply watch on, in horror and amusement, as she deteriorates before their very eyes. vesper deemed the car crash they’re unable to look away from.
inevitable, she’ll dread further loss all the same, watching from afar as her sister severs ties. their father dying with her by his side whilst she’s shut out — altogether breaking the heart of the little girl entombed in what remains of their elder sister and daughter. too pretty a girl to be left alone in the gutter though… it’s in the midst of addiction that she gains a brother in arms. with whom she feels less alone in the drug-induced hell they both inhabit as victors. joined by their affinity for morphling, the pair become something of a “dynamic duo” as the mentoring team from district six for the past two decades… give or take. the morphlings, they’re known as. the people of panem deride and demean them year in and year out, discrediting their ability to mentor in spite of how earnestly the pair always try for their tributes and it means they’re continually overlooked. disregarded as being lost causes who have little more to offer the capitolites than their bodies. it’s a humiliating persona to be chained to but it’s truthful, vesper thinks. slice her open, peel back the blemished skin and all you’d find there is rotten flesh.
she comes to despise being seen in such a way. in any way really and in a sense, they’re not. unproductive, the president calls them. passing over the morphlings time and time again and this blatant negligence on snow’s part soon attracts the attention of the rebellion no less. their cause providing the pair with a purpose outside of one another and the children they’re forced to grieve together as each games season rolls by, faster and faster every time it feels like. the rebels speak directly to that young girl trapped within vesper too. the one who could always see the sun through dark plumes of smoke and saw fit to paint a destiny all her own. before it was destroyed by the monster atop the throne of panem. their close proximity to his capitolite elite proves most useful over the years, making the two morphlings invaluable assets as they work together to gain and feed intel to those underground.
time flies but there’s little improvement. periods of recovery come and go, stints in which she feels she must get clean and she does… for a while. people in the district offer help. a cruel, bittersweet irony to be found in the fact that the games are when she’s at her most sober. always unable to detach herself fully from the severity the situation so often calls for. the third quarter quell is no different but there’s so much more at stake than the lives of her adult tributes. a nation on the brink of revolution and vesper, the fallen star she is, finds she might just be alight once more.
