NAME: Suede Windt GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Woman / She/Her AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 33 years old / August 18th HOMETOWN: Great Falls, MT TIME IN GREAT FALLS: 33 years on and off RESIDENCE: Downtown OCCUPATION: Musician, Horse Trainer on Willow Creek Ranch
BACKSTORY —
trigger warnings: parental neglect, mentions of substance abuse, gun violence.
dewy is the fragrant september morning you’re born in, rain hammering the windows the windows of hospital room. you’re born a miracle. a miracle. her miracle. you are but a precious petal, your mother’s whole world and then some. she doesn’t know what she would do without you ━ after all, she is but a lonely woman with no one to turn to, except for you. a mere babe, you are the only one she loves, the one she will pour her heart, her effort, her youth, the next however many years of her life into. she is your mother, and you are forever in her debt.
your name is suede. suede, sue. velvety and graceful. it fits you well, but it’s almost as cruel as the weight you carry on your shoulders. don’t run, you’ll trip and hurt yourself! don’t go out in the rain, you’ll catch a cold! oh, how you despise the cold. if only your lungs were a little stronger, a little less asthmatic. wouldn’t it be nice? but darling, you were trapped from the day you were born. if not by the overprotective hands of your mother, then by your own lungs, the pair of organs granting you life, the ones responsible for that first breath of air that caused you to cry out loud the moment you were brought into this world. home may be a prison, but your body is a cage. isn’t it terrible? doesn’t it make you mad?
you grow older and you’ll volunteer your time elsewhere so long as it means you no longer have to watch the rest of your life unfurl at your feet. so, you’re in the palm of your godmother for the summer. those days are all sawdust and early mornings. curious eyes peering over the stable doors. knees scraped from ill-fated attempts at climbing over the fence to the round pen in the summertime. life is good, if not a little solitary. and if you’re being honest, it matters precious little that you’re surrounded by nothing but treelines. not when everything you could possibly wish for is right there, within the confines of the ranch. the endless green grass, the bookshelves teeming with undiscovered adventures. a family never hardly had. but more than anything, it’s where the horses are.
it’s a big world, you discover, and there’s much to do if you want to be seen. if you cannot give yourself to horse training throughout the year, you find other ways to cope. you play silence like a game, withdrawn, loneliness spreading like an unruly vine. there’s a sense of desperation to your boredom, like you are waiting for something to happen. like you’ve always been waiting. bag packed, shoes tied.
salvation comes when you least expect it. it’s a girl, one you’ve seen around the halls at school. she hears your rapid breaths, your unspoken cries for help, and for once you feel heard. she offers you an understanding smile, a hand to hold, and the two of you sit there by the wall of the bathroom, dirty as it may be. you stay there, and she waits. waits until you’ve calmed down, until you can speak again. until you’re no longer bound by the chains of your anxieties.
sue is more becoming, she tells you. the nickname fits like a glove, and while some might hate the mere idea of it, repulsed by the shortening of a five-lettered surname, you are more than happy to welcome it. you’ll take the simplicity over pain any day. you have a friend ━ not one, more. four. you have people who talk to you, who may laugh at you but more often than not are laughing with you. not because of the dozens of different types of medication you carry in your bag (all selected by mother herself), but because you might have a sense of humor, and a spark you hadn’t noticed until now. you have people who will help you when you need it, so long as you manage to ask, but that’s a story for another day. in return, you will be there for them, because you can’t bear the thought of not returning the favor. these are your people now. suede never had that. sue belongs. you have people who care about you in ways your mother can’t. won’t. your home is a trap and your body is a cage, but when your friends are around, you can almost taste sweet freedom.
with you serving as the lead vocalist and sometimes bassist, you and your tight-wound collective of high school friends soon form a band. it is here that you find your family. infameous!. the name wasn’t your idea, but you don’t mind. you can picture yourself growing old with them, despite how unrealistic and silly it sounds, but wouldn’t it be nice? five old, grey heads watching the sunset a little over half a century from now, making music and laughing together? your newfound family in the band is your strength, your will. the group is more than you could ever ask for, and they’re what keeps you going. it’s perfect. the band made their claim to fame with their hit song ‘you’re just like me.’ and their popularity only grew upward from there.
if only you had known it wouldn’t be forever.
at the peak of your celebrity, the band had been touring up and down the east coast, and were on the cusp of releasing their first official album when tragedy struck. you were merely grazed, but two of your bandmates had been unfortunately slain at the hand of a self-professed fan. The last thing you can remember is the wailing of sirens.
summer breaks were always hard for you. you always missed your bandmates during those months; missed val’s ever capturing gaze and her cloud-like aura, delicate in ways vastly different from your sharp glass taken as fragility. missed river’s remarks and jokes that often annoyed you in the best of ways, so lively yet perhaps empty, much like yourself … but you’ll see them again, you’ll see them all again. perhaps that is why the news hit you harder than a splash of cold water to the face in the morning, and you find yourself in a state of shock. you don’t speak, you don’t move, but the pen you’d been holding drops from your hand, followed by the phone you once held to your ear. eyes stay focused on a barely noticeable, yellow-ish spot on the hospital walls you would surround yourself with through the summer. as if there was to be a summer at all.
it hurts. it claws up your throat and maims your flesh. it makes you want to scream, to grab the glass of water beside you and smash it into pieces, to break the first thing you can put your hands onto, but you don’t. it’s too much, and it’s hard to breathe, but it doesn’t matter. soon enough, you’re lying on the ground with your eyes closed, and the rest of the hospital staff rush to help their reliable intern, confused and distraught.
you come home for the first time in years and it’s nearly as if nothing changed. you don’t bother going home, but mom knows you’re back and you’ll do anything to bide your time in avoidance. so, you make the official move downtown and you’re back to work on the ranch. you’re always at work on the farm, where riding boots thick with mud ━ stand too worn to wear. they’d collect mulch as you treads through the field, your body relearns the lean of year of labor. and you drink too much nowadays, smoke too. anything to dull the pain, anything to forget the real reason why you’re here. there’s nothing to do other than that. it’s summer, and there's that sticky heat that haunts. that evening sweat that clings a white camisole dress to your frame. there’s something there. like there always has been. like there always will be.
Portrayed by ZOE KRAVITZ, written by KAY.