Charlotte Rea Roth / 21 / Self Defense Instructor / West Hornsby / Resident / Bisexual Homoromantic / Dianna Agron
* Trigger warnings: Drug abuse, sexual assault
Birthday: 30th of December
Parents and relatives used to call her Charsh, but she now goes by her middle name, Rea (pronounced like Leah).
Mother left when she was very young, she lived with her drug addicted father (and his friends when he was in rehab).
Learned self defense as a teenager.
Realised she was (mostly) gay after a drunken hookup with a girl in high school.
Ran away from home when she was sixteen and lived on the streets and on the move for two years.
Works at a physical combat training centre and dreams of opening her own self defense school for women.
Rea Roth (also known as Charlotte or Charsh) was born and ‘raised’ in Villa Rica, Georgia, to a seventeen year old girl and her older boyfriend. When her mother’s parents found the broken tragedy that remained of their daughter, they whisked their teen away to Bible Camp and forbid her boyfriend and one year old daughter to see her ever again. Timothy Roth, a band member and drug addict, barely gave his daughter enough to eat and wrapped her in as many rags from around his friends’ houses as he could find. When he wasn’t as high as a kite, Timothy left baby Charlotte with his friends and relatives while he tried to make a living as a musical artist with his other drop-kick friends. He was in and out of rehab for practically his daughter’s entire childhood, never hearing word from or about Charlotte’s mother or the baby that he knew he put in her right before she left. He also never told Charlotte about her stolen little sibling.
As soon as she understood the word, Charsh was determined to be as different from her father as humanly possible. She excelled in her primary education, graduating elementary school near the top of the class – not the very top, because unlike that kid, she wasn’t fortunate enough to have a parent who quizzed her on multiplication and division every night before bed. Her father enrolled her in self defense classes when she was nine years old and she continued training at that school until she had completed all the levels available.
High school wasn’t as pleasant for Charlotte as she’d hoped. Boys flirted with her and girls envied her because she was intelligent and they considered her beautiful, with her blonde hair and narrow nose and slim build. She was asked out and went on more dates than she could count, but none of the boys ever really took her fancy. She watched romantic comedies with the other girls in her classes and, while she longed for someone to look at her the way Heath Ledger looked at Julia Stiles or Ewan McGregor at Nicole Kidman, when she looked around at the boys at her school, she turned her nose up in disgust. It was after a drunken hookup at a school dance in freshman year with the shy girl in her psychology class that Charlotte even realised that dating boys wasn’t repulsive because of them – it was because of her. For the rest of that school year, Charlotte stuck to that shy girl’s side. She fell in love with the idea of finally understanding love and that girl - with her brown ponytail and round glasses and plaid shirts and white sneakers and perfect grades - became something of an obsession. Her crush transferred to an elite academic school the following year, and Charlotte’s spirits were utterly crushed. Her own grades went downhill to the point where she forgot Pythagoras’ Theorem and as the other people in her classes grew more into themselves and their bodies, she decided that it was time for her own kind of dramatic change.
She cut her hair and dyed it bright pink, tattooed various parts of her body and pierced at least six holes in her ears and face. Ignoring the fact that she now, more than ever, looked like she was turning into her father, Charlotte refused to respond to her given name, deciding to go by her middle name instead – she thought Rea sounded more badass than Charlotte and definitely more than Charsh.
People and relationships became the new enemy, since it wasn’t like her father was much of a caregiver, nor was his fellow band member, James, who Rea sometimes spent weeks with when Timothy was attempting to rehabilitate himself. She was fifteen when she finished the self defense course, proud to have accomplished something in a way her father never did. People told her to pull her socks up, get her head back in the game, because she was a “smart kid” and she “shouldn’t throw her life away”. Well, fuck that. She was actually happy with herself and the way she turned out, all things considered. She wasn’t rude, she didn’t bully her classmates, she just hardly interacted with anyone and thus never had to worry about falling in love again or making a friend that could then later ruin her life. She only broke from that promise once, when a blushing, stuttering boy asked her for directions one day and she ended up in his bedroom three weeks later. Thankfully, she found herself unable to fall for him as well, which was more than a little relieving considering how great that night had been. This contentedness lasted for a few months, until James stumbled home drunk one night and found Rea watching television on the couch. He attacked her, touched her, tried to force his way inside her. But six years of self defense classes had not been for naught – Rea fought back, knocked the vile man unconscious and fled. That was the last straw.
Not only did she flee the house, she fled the state, packed her bag and hopped on a train or two or three until she ended up in Illinois. For over six months, she was on the move, paranoid that her father or her attacker would track her down somehow. She eventually burned all her old things – phone, clothing, license, notebooks, headbands, everything. Seventeen years old and on and off the streets for all that time, Rea learned how to put her fighting skills to the test time and time again. A homeless teenager apparently looked like an easy target for thieves and drunk, horny men – but she could defend herself and call the police while whoever had tried to attack her lay unconscious on the ground under her foot. And then she’d move alleyways again.
A small town in Colorado was where she decided to stop running, and ended up living there for two years, making her way from dumpster to dumpster until an open-minded old man spontaneously hired her as a cleaner at his restaurant. She didn’t need his pity, but dear god, she needed the money. As luck would have it, the manager’s daughter was around Rea’s age and, surprise surprise, she fell for her, too. Frustrated with herself, Rea hoped the job would keep her busy and her mind off the gorgeous girl who studied at the back table every afternoon. Then she found out this girl was gay and, of course, they ended up in the cleaning closet together every Friday after Rea’s late shift. When Rea heard wind of the restaurant closing and the family moving away, she broke. Again. Not only would that render her unemployed, but she didn’t think she would be able to withstand another tragic loss of love that never really was. So she fled again, this time to Texas. With only ten thousand dollars and her ex-lover’s left behind bracelet, Rea eventually found herself in the dirtier part of yet another town; Hornsby. There were no dishwashing jobs available, but she was pleased to find a gym with a need for a Self-Defense Instructor, where she was hired not too long after she’d settled in.
When she first arrived in Hornsby, she was on the East side, and knew immediately that this was not the place for her. She’d always been poor, struggling, enough food that she never went hungry, but not exactly the most comfortable conditions, either. Finding herself in a more appropriate part of town, Rea started out on the streets, but within a few weeks, she had herself an apartment - nothing spectacular, but good enough for her - and had located a gym where people wanted a class on self defense, a place not so different from the place she was taught back in Georgia. The owner was a reasonable person, so it didn’t take much more than a conversation and an interview before Rea was hired. She now trains younger students, which still remind her of herself when she began her own training. They aren’t exactly fond memories, but then again, she doesn’t have very many of those to begin with.
If there is a girl here who captures her heart and then leaves, Rea might very well lose her mind. Fuck love and fuck people in general, she says. She doesn’t actively try to make friends, nor is she actively rude or cruel to new people she meets. She likes to think of herself as cold, but not frightening, intimidating enough that people keep their distance and don’t ask too many questions, while still allowing herself enough decent human interaction to keep herself from drowning in loneliness when she gets back home in the dead of the night. Some days she needs to down half a bottle of whisky to feel like leaving her place in the morning. Some days she buys coffees for all the worse off people in her area and delivers them to everyone’s doors or doorways. It really depends on how she’s feeling, and she’s known to have some rather intense mood swings from time to time.
Rea doesn’t trust people easily. There are very few people who know more about her than just her name, workplace and a whole lot of surface relationship facts that they would have picked up in conversations, like the fact that she doesn’t have a favourite colour or that she takes her coffee black with one sugar. She dreams of one day opening her own self defense school for women, since she’s picked up a few tips and tricks along her way and she severely dislikes being told what to do and who to train by her manager. Of course, helping people is still helping people, but Rea prefers to do everything her own way. After all, it wasn’t like she was ever shown much help or guidance growing up, so she has no reason to believe that this person or anyone else would be different to the other people in her life who always came, bossed her around or messed with her heart and then left her behind, emptier than she was when she arrived. What didn’t kill her made her stronger, she likes to think, and she fully intends to continue getting stronger, because nothing and nobody was going to tear her down like that again.
