Post by Russell Tomas Espin on Aug 28, 2009 11:12:21 GMT 1
[/i][/font][/center]
Russell Tomas Espin17, male, straight (taken), half-blood, student.
The mask you wear is so pretty
Look at the smile, the eyes, the laugh
What would they do if you took it off?
Look at you
You put on this mask every day
You wear the shirt that covers the scars
You ask yourself "why do I hide?"
But only brush this off with a laugh and a smile
But go ahead
Fool everyone.
Just remember
You are only lying to yourself.
You know this isn't who you really are. [/font]
[/color]
the factfile[/font]
February 4, 17
Height:
5'11" 2/4 (So close to six feet...)
Build:
Not the most muscular thing ever but still the average teen build.
Wand:
Phoenix tail feather; willow; precisely eight inches
Best for Charms and Transfiguration but will deal well with some Dark Arts stuff. Springy but brittle at times and cannot cast a proper Banishing Charm for the life of itself. Painted with a black rose-vine design at the base to add a personal touch.
Patronus:
A silver rabbit. He's sweet and gentle but can make a speedy getaway if needed. Also he can think on his feet and has that strange ability to sense danger. The memory Tom thinks of is the day he fell in love with Jessica. Having a rather...neglectful childhood, knowing he has her gives him the feeling that he still has something to live for, having many times considered (and once attempted) suicide.
Boggart:
What do you think? Most of Tom's life centers around keeping Jessica as safe as possible from their father. Tom knows how violent he can be but Jessica doesn't, which is why he gets so scared when she goes away for the winter holidays. His worst fear is Jessica suffering the same fate he did. Seeing her hurt or scarred as badly as he is would kill him. And her ever finding out about his addiction....he is sure she'd leave him....
Dementor:
If attacked by a dementor, the worst memory he would relive is the first time his father attacked him. He had been drunk, of course, and Tom was only five. He was sitting in the corner in the dark when his father came towards him with the jagged, sharp, broken end of a shattered whiskey bottle. At first Tom had only stared at him curiously, then he was lying on the floor, sobbing and bleeding from three deep cuts on his left forearm, his right cheek and one on his side that had torn through his shirt. This memory haunts his mind and dreams and Tom would give anything to forget it, because he can still feel the pain whenever he catches a glimpse of the scars out of the corner of his eye.
Amortentia:
**The Ocean
**Fresh and dried apricots and mangoes
**Strawberries
**New books and parchment
**Burning wood
**Old books
**The forest after it's rained
Nicknames:
Nope. Everyone calls him by that shortened version of his middle name, Tomas. Jessica is the only one that can call him Russell and in a weird way its sort of a pet name. Anyone else though will probably be hit.
Clothing Style:
Nothing really fancy. Tom owns maybe one three pairs of (rather skinny) jeans and a t-shirt of every color you can imagine (only because he knows a tricky charm to change the color) , some with designs of his own on them. Cool and comfortable. Maybe a simple, solid colored pair of Converse hi-tops that go with whatever he's wearing. He never really goes much farther than this, and formal for him is a pair of cleaner jeans and some kind of dress shirt. (If you catch Tom in formal wear, bring a camera, because it's likely to never happen again). He's also a pretty big fan of black, hooded sweaters . (Sort of a security blanket. Tom loves to hide behind hoods because it covers the scars). Tom is also very much addicted to skinny jeans tighter than most girl's jeans. (Yes, he is straight).
[/font][/ul][/size]the biography
Mother: Allyson Espin
Father: Charley Espin
Siblings:
Jessica Espin, 15, Hufflepuff 5th year
Pets:
Not much of an animal-owning person. He has too much on his mind to take care of a pet. He wants an owl so he can talk to Jessica without waiting for her to send him something.
Pensieve:
((When I write histories, "as" is one of my favorite words, so bear with me on that one and sorry it's so long!))
Russell Tomas Espin was born into a supposedly perfect family. His father Charley and his mother Allyson were (seemingly) madly in love. Oh, how looks can be deceiving. Yes, they were in love, but, at the time of Tom's birth, Allyson was going through a state of severe depression and suicidal behavior after her mother died in a car accident. Tom was sent to live with his father as Allyson was in no state to take care of a baby, but here’s the thing about Charley: he’s an alcoholic, whiskey and vodka being favorite choices and an addiction that was skillfully hidden from Allyson.
For the first two years, Charley took good care of Tom. He, well, cared for him, taught him basic skills, read to him, things like that. Then Charley fell into his own hole of depression because of something that should have made any husband ecstatic: Allyson had another baby, and not a boy like he had hoped for, but a girl named Jessica Marie Aurora. He looked upon his new daughter with love when he was truly very let down. Tom and Jessica never met and because of her birth, Charley drank even more and this made him violent. When Tom was six, he had been standing in a corner, doing nothing in particular but letting his mind wander, when Charley, drunk of course, stumbled in Tom’s direction, the top portion of a shattered whiskey bottle in hand. Tom did not understand what was happening.
Before the young boy could do anything, he collapsed to the floor in agony as the glass ripped through his left arm, right leg and left side. The deep wounds bled relentlessly and fell as fast as his tears as Charley stumbled away, the blade-sharp end of the bottle shiny and dripping with blood. Since this, Tom only feared his father. Allyson never found out when she came to see him because Tom was too afraid to tell her as these sorts of attacks became more frequent, so he was forced to mature quickly. He taught himself reading and writing based on what Charley had, developing a strong passion for it and used it as an escape.
The injuries from the attacks made it difficult for him to do even the simplest tasks. Some, mostly on his arms, ran deep into veins, but others, like the ones on his legs, made it difficult to stand from the pain. He despised his father, not only because he was a drunk, but because of the way his life was. Tom had no way or power to stand up for himself because each time, he was beaten even more, resulting in sever but temporary back damage. The young, at this time eight, year old boy spent many nights crying alone often in the place his father had left him, the wounds often still bleeding heavily. By this time, Allyson had stopped visiting because she had no way to balance Tom and Jessica, but when she did, all she saw was a perfect father-son relationship, the scars covered just enough for Allyson to never suspect anything.
Just three years before Tom was due to attend Hogwarts, his magical abilities were really beginning to show in strange ways. To start off, Allyson never suspected anything because of him. Somehow, whenever she visited, she never paid any attention to even the most obvious scars and bruises, and Tom, by some unknown means, was almost always able to find just enough food to avoid starvation. And there were the rare nights when he was able to find shelter where his father could never find him, this being, of all places, the roof.
At night when Tom was sure his father was asleep (in other words, passed out drunk), he would sneak up to the top of the apartment that was barely holding together and stare up at the stars with hollow and dead eyes. When he was ten, he finally attempted suicide. On one of these nights, he stared at the ledge, so, so tempted to jump and, as the lines between right and wrong vanished, he stood and walked over to it. Eyes closed, he let the suffocating pain wash over him and felt himself just…fall. But the attempt failed. Miraculously unscathed except for the re-opening of a few wounds, he landed in a shrub two levels below. He couldn’t understand what had happened but that night, tears falling from hopeless and pleading eyes, he fell asleep with the realization that he had no way out.
The day Tom received his Hogwarts acceptance letter was the happiest day of his life. Finally, he could escape the living hell his life had become! In the dead of the night, he set off for London, what little he had stuffed in a small bag he'd found in the basement that had been a refuge and Tom found himself unafraid of the vast city. For weeks he, only eleven, lived on the streets, using his strange ability to always find food to his advantage, even though he had no way of controlling it and living off whatever he could find. Just a week before he was due to attend the school, he met a (slightly creepy, quite old) man that was willing to take Tom in. Of course he accepted. (You would too if you were an eleven year old living on the streets of London!) Tom never really considered him a friend, but he kept Tom alive, and told him that he could come back after Hogwarts.
When the boy left for the school, he knew how to get onto the platform just from observing other people. With only a small bag of a few clothes, books and the wand tucked safely behind his ear, he kept his head down as he walked onto the train. Tom chose a compartment that was the least crowded with people and sat down. The shy boy was sure people passing noticed how badly taken care of he was. His hair, which hung in front of his eyes as he tried to stay low-key, was dry, flat and stringy and a pale complexion only added to the air of sheer desperation and neglect that surrounded him. But this was all soon to change.
Within a couple of years, he began to come out a little more and discovered that, if you hide, than...people look at you how you want them to. And Tom did just this. Instead of the broken, traumatized boy he was on the first day, people saw him for the mask he wore and by his third year, nearly everyone across all houses knew his name. Everything went downhill about three months before his fourth year.
Remember that man Tom met before his first year? Well, Tom never left him. And before his fourth year, he introduced Tom to something that changed his life....possibly forever.
Just a day after Tom turned fourteen, he started shooting heroin.
For him, it was love the first time he did it and brought out a side of him he never knew existed. Somehow he became more aware of his party side, which is something he did almost every day, staying out until at least 3 AM. This life was his escape, and he found not only that he was able to be free, but a dealer inside Hogwarts. She was sweet, and asked for nothing in return as he became more and more addicted to the drug, overdosing at least once a week.
Halfway through is fifth year he met another girl named Jessica. Strangely, she had his last name...of course he though nothing of it. She was pretty, quiet, sweet and sensitive with almost every one of his interests. Within a year, they fell in love. Jessica had told her mother that she fell in love with a boy named Tom that, for some reason, had her last name; Allison freaked out but her attempts to break them apart were useless. By this time they were too deeply in love to even think about breaking up. The only thing the couple couldn't prevent was being split up for the holidays which, naturally, scared the shit out of Tom.
Over the years, the relationship grew stronger and after his fifth year, Tom left the man he had been staying with, old enough at that point to brave living with his father. Along with the relationship, his love of writing grew as well, using it as an escape, feeling like it was the only thing that he could trust completely and keeping it mostly secret from everyone but Jessica.
Life is never easy and everyone has a way of coping with it, let it be good, or let it be bad. The way Tom livesis an example of the fact that love isn't always the most powerful thing you can have but it is one of the things that keeps us from completely losing our minds and shows that fate may actually have a soft spot for our emotional sanity.
[/ul][/size] [/font]the inner workings
**WRITING (Poetry, songs, anything, really. It's his only true passion and the only thing he really, really truly believes in because he knows he's good at it).
**Roses (Tres romantique!)
**Coffee ( he knows he shouldn't be drinking coffee with the drugs he's on but you can lead a horse to water...)
**Caramel
**Chocolate
**Both of the two things above in his coffee. (He loves his mocha!)
**Talking to and helping people
**Reading (Books, poetry, anything....)
**MUSIC (its pretty much his life.)
**Photography (He loves to death to take random candid shots of his sister, but sometimes she is willing to do posed shots for a scrapbook which is, pathetically enough, dedicated to just her).
**Art--a love and talent that both he and his sister share
**Journaling (Tom's journal is, not only locked with a charm that only he can unlock, but he feels as if it's the only thing that he can trust completely).
**Fooling around on the piano--Jessica has tried to teach him many times but to no avail.
**Pot--Not really his favorite thing but still something he'll do if it's offered.
Dislikes:
**His dependence on drugs
**SPIDERS or any type of bug, for that matter
**Seeing anyone (especially, especially Jessica) hurt or in pain.
**Math.....
**Logic puzzles--though he's smart, puzzles just confuse him because his mind works slow(er) than it did before he started drugs.
**Egotistical people...a.k.a. every Slytherin he's ever met.
.Slytherins in general...or most of them anyway.
**Acid (a concoction of household chemicals that fuck up your brain). He tried them once and hated it. Lets just go ahead and say that Tom's first trip was a bad trip. He will NEVER touch hallucinogens again....He saw purple flamingos for almost 12 hours.
**Hallucinogens (why screw up your brain so early?)
**Dealing with the little voice of his addiction that screams at him to use in a tone that he can't drown out or ignore.
Quirks and Habits:
**Drugs, and relying on them to deal with depression.
**Denying help, even though he knows he needs it
**Poking at the bruises on his hands and arms out of nervousness and to cause himself pain.
**Becoming overprotective of those he loves (*cough* Jessica *cough* )
**Doodling in class instead of notes.
**Burning himself to cope with drug cravings when he can't get drugs. (Which is rare. Truly he does it to drown out the pain).
**Not sleeping....at all....chronic insomnia sucks.
**Wandering the grounds at night at the full moon.
**Not looking people in the eye when he talks to them. (In his opinion, it shows too much emotion).
Mirror of Erised:
Tom knows how violent his father can be, he has the scars to prove it. The one thing he wants more than anything is to keep Jessica as safe as he can from him. This is why Tom gets so scared and nervous when she goes away for the holidays. Besides this, another thing is love. Yes, he loves Jessica more than he can say, but his father, Tom's only real parental figure, never showed any sort of love toward him and his mother was a bit too busy to care much about him. To prove irony, he has a bruise on his lower back that takes the form of a heart. Looking into the mirror, Tom would probably see a warm smile from his father or maybe him without the whiskey or wine...seeing him sober.
In Depth Personality:
Though deeply traumatized and haunted by his past and a severely abusive father, Tom's personality is very sweet, gentle and hard not to like. He very easily hides his past because he has a way with doing it. Throughout all houses he is known and liked, but only know the mask he portrays. Underneath this happiness and perfection is a small boy that still recoils in fear at the mention of his father. No one really knows his past. Some know he was neglected and Tom tells others that see the scars they are from some sort of accident. The needle marks on his arms, however are difficult to cover for if they are seen, but he brushes it of with a witty joke or even just a smile. Even he isn't aware of the effect he has on people, but is told of it often.
Tom loves people, one thing that sets him apart from his sister. Tom is always going to various parties of various houses while Jessica studies, which she is fine with, but doesn't want him drinking. (Something he is more than happy to honor). Something that makes him who he is is his sense of humor, which has the ability to make even the most antisocial person laugh. He doesn't know how he does it, but it's one of the things that makes hims so hard not to like. Girls are attracted to him, and in his fourth year he became close friends with one of them. Over the summer, he got a letter from her telling him that she's fallen for him. It hurt Tom to turn her down but he had to. He loved Jessica too much.
Why is this? Why did the girl fall for him? Because its in his nature. He is very easy to talk to, kind, gentle, sweet, sensitive and caring. When you talk to him and tell him anything personal, he will keep it as if his life depended on it and relate to you in a way that you can understand. The only thing he wants is for people not to end up the way he did.
Seems perfect, right? The brightest people hide the darkest secrets. There are nights when he is alone, and everything will just...flood back. Every memory, every feeling comes back and suicidal thoughts begin to form. This is also often where his drug cravings come in, and also where he overdosed once. Deep inside, Tom is still the broken, deeply depressed and begging to get out of his own life. The mask he wears makes it hard to breathe, and when people try to get close to him, he recoils and tries to run away. The only one he is truly close to, the one that knows almost everything about him is...Jessica.
Tom's sister is his life, love, everything and he would do anything for her. It scares him like hell when she goes to visit their father for holidays because it would kill him to see her end up the way he did. He is extremely protective of her and will not let anything hurt her. She keeps him sane, tells him that there is at least one person that truly loves him and means more to him than he can say. On the outside, they are only the best of friends. No one knows about the true relationship because they are sure people will jump to conclusions.
[/ul][/size] [/font] behind the mask [/font]
Nikki Welsh
Experience:
'bout three-ish years. Other sites and a bit of admin.
Time Zone:
West Coast
How Did You Find Us?:[/color]
In the cupboard where we store bug sprays and repellents. (And maybe in Tom's drug box.....just kidding! Xp)
Play By:
Jackson Rathbone ((Jasper!!!))
Sample:[/size][/ul][/font]
Russ,
You've got ten feet of personal space around you. I take a step forward, you take one back. Why? Why don't you trust me? It's been almost three years now, and I still feel like I barely know you! I mean, I'm closer to you than I've been to anyone...but love, I have to know! You're hiding from me. You won't tell me where the scars are from, or why you spend so much time alone....or why you always have this.... blank look in your eyes. I love you so much....and, for some weird reason, I can't help but worry about you whenever we're separated for the holidays....
I really do miss you. It's been weeks now and Ihate falling asleep without you....Mom says she'll let me come back in a few days....
With a sigh, Tom slumped against the wall as he folded up his sister's last letter. But before he put it back in his pocket, he held it to his heart for a moment and whispered, "I miss you too, love. Stay strong for me."
For just a second he closed his eyes, feeling the cold night air rush over him, but at the same time, not feeling it at all and tried not to think too much about what he was about to do. Taking in a deep breath, he stood slowly, trying hard not to make any noise and walked (very quickly) to a crack in the wall somewhere near the entrance hall, slipping through it easily.
By his guess it was about 2 a.m., and in the silence of the early morning, he could hear his breathing, and his heart pound in his ears. Nervous? No. On guard, paranoid and alert? Yes. Like a shadow he moved through the halls and up almost two floors before coming to the reason he was out so late.
A box. A small, wooden box sitting by the door of an abandoned second floor classroom. Hands shaking, he picked up the box and was gone faster than you could blink.
Tom kept the box close as he ran back to his dorm. Of course no one was in the common room. Who would be at two in the morning but him? So he made little effort to be silent. Once inside his room, Tom sunk onto his bed and, with a deep breath, opened the box, the familiar feeling of anticipation making him shake even more.
