( APP ) psychobaby in space

[gowrong]

P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: demi
OOC Journal: demisms
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: 18+
Email + IM: inb4circlejerk
Characters Played at Ataraxion: n/a

C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Charlotte
Canon: The 100
Original or Alternate Universe: OU
Canon Point: 1x04, Murphy's Law — post-death
Number: 005 or 095

Setting: Here!
History:

The tragedy of being a side character is, no matter how awesome or awful, the character background is always painfully concise and aggressive exposited, usually in a moment of weakness or triumph. Much like Charlotte! Who rather forthcomingly cried about her past to anyone who would listen, from her leaders to the boy she'd stabbed in the neck and let bleed out. So more or less in her own words...

...Or rather, Clarke's words, for starters. I was born in space. They all were, all ~3,000 passengers of the Ark — the Earth-rotating collaborative mashup of 12 of the nations original space stations that banded together after a nuclear apocalypse on the ground in some unknown year — were born in space, and raised among the stars. They've space suits, space school ( Earth Science, technically ), space rations, and space laws, which are very strict and enforced with the heaviest punishment: death. Or at least, death is certain for all those under the age of majority, or all those under eighteen.

Any juvenile offender is sent to the Sky Box and reassessed on their eighteenth birthday, which is where Charlotte ends up after her parents commit some unspecified crime and are floated — put in an airlock and zoomed out into space, what a way to go — and she, presumably, watches as she has nightmares about it later in life. As is customary on the Ark, when a resident dies or is executed, their material possessions go to a redistribution center to be doled out to other inhabitants who might need it; clothes, technology, blankets, etc. And for some reason, the guard decided to play Repo-Man in front of the child of the people they just killed, and Charlotte kind of cracked. She assaulted one of the guards (woah there, aggressive manic baby) and was carted off to the Sky Box with the rest of the juvenile offenders.

She lives there for an unspecified numbers of months (years, maybe) before her crimes (and the failing life support onboard their grand space home, The Ark) makes her — and 99 of her fellow delinquents + one murderous wannabe-guard — expendable. They're all packed into a 100+ year old dropship with limited supplies and crappy mechanics, and sent down to Earth as a desperate attempt to both conserve oxygen for the law abiding citizens on The Ark, and to see if the ground is survivable again. Well, great news, it is! Bad news, the Council probably shouldn't have sent emotional, betrayed children down and then expected things to run smoothly.

EARTH KILLS

Charlotte first appears sleeping outside of the dropship homestead. 'Sleeping', because it's fitful and she screams "No!" several times over before Clarke kneels next to her and cautiously wakes her up. It's not that abnormal of an occurrence, Charlotte hardly seems surprised that she'd had another nightmare, but does look a bit abashed at having been discovered and subsequently comforted. Clarke tries to sooth her, reassuring that it's okay to be scared, and at first she huddles defensively with her knees drawn to her chest for faux comfort. But when the older girl settles next to her and offers to lend her an ear, Charlotte reluctantly (or not so reluctantly, she seems quite relieved to have someone ask how she's doing after a few years of trauma) divulges that she has the night terrors quite regularly, and that she dreams of her parents being executed. She can't quite put into words how she feels, and kind of chokes off in tears, but Clarke offers up that her own father had been floated too, which makes Charlotte look at her in a whole new light. A trusting light. She goes on to tell about how she'd been arrested — "I kinda lost it." — for assaulting that guard. "I can't say I blame you," Clarke tells her, before going on to try to convince her that being on Earth was a fresh start, a second chance, and a good way to try to get past all the hurt and painful events that had taken place on the Ark. Charlotte seems sort of skeptical, but also quite hopeful (who wouldn't want a fresh start, and to put all the pain in their past behind them?), and once the two of them are done chatting, she invites herself into Clarke's personal space for some long overdue cuddling and attention.

Jasper Jordan had been speared through the chest two episodes earlier, and while a band of merry 100'ers had tracked him down and saved him, he still lay dying in camp. Maybe housing him in their makeshift medical bay hadn't been the best idea, because the sounds from inside the grounded dropship seem to echo all throughout the camp. His dying wails seem to piss off a lot of people, and put them on edge because they remind them all of their mortality and the impending threat of the Grounders. And so Charlotte takes off into the woods after the band of hunters led by Bellamy Blake. She's not sneaky enough not to be noticed, and is almost speared herself when Bellamy turns and throws an axe into the tree next to her (wow, jumpy a little, Bells?). But Charlotte survives to weather the talking to that Bellamy and Atom try to give her, arguing with them when they try to send her back to camp because she's "a little girl".

And when she refuses to go back ( "I'm not little." ), Bellamy casually invites her to go hunting with them and gives her a knife.

But it's Earth. Earth kind of sucks, and everything goes wrong on Earth, so mid-hunt a poisonous fog (engineered as a biological weapon by the Mountain Men, which burns skin and blinds people, and presumably damages their insides as well, ouch) is released and the hunters have to scatter in an attempt to find shelter. Taking his role as resident big brother a little too seriously, Bellamy grabs Charlotte's arm while they try to outrun the yellow mist and finds them both a nice safe cave to wait out the storm in. It takes a while for the fog to disburse, and while Finn, Clarke and Wells are off having a drunken heart-to-heart in a buried 100 year old car, she and Bellamy nap.

Or try to nap, because Charlotte is once again awoken by night terrors. And once again, someone actually takes an interest in her personal state of being. But where Clarke tried to give her an optimistic outlook on their predicament, Bellamy gives her a course of action to follow to overcome her fears. He gave her the knife, and then gives her the mantra: "Screw you, I'm not afraid" to use to overcome her fears. And tells her to slay her demons, because then she'll be able to sleep. Which Charlotte takes (perhaps problematically seriously) to heart.

The mist clears, and when Charlotte and Bellamy climb out of their rocky sanctuary and go looking for other survivors, they find Atom, who had fallen and been badly burned by the mist. Charlotte finds him and starts screaming bloody murder, and when the dying boy begs Bellamy to kill him, she approaches to give him back his knife. She then watches from afar while Clarke appears and hums to Atom, petting his hair while she simultaneously stabs him in the throat and lets him bleed out.

Later, (she picks up John Murphy's knife from the ground and —) she finds Wells Jaha sitting on watch. He invites him to sit with her, and Charlotte sits down to tell him about her nightmares, how she has them every night. And in a gross misrepresentation of what Bellamy meant, when Charlotte "slays her demons", she stabs Wells in the throat. He reaches for her, and she panics, and also cuts off his fingers before sitting down to cry about how she sees his father's face in her dreams, then his when she wakes up, and how this was supposed to somehow make the nightmare end. She hums the same song Clarke had hummed to Atom, and rocks herself while he bleeds out.

MURPHY'S LAW

Then she goes about camp life like nothing's wrong. The 100 (96, really) are fortifying the walls for the impending Grounder attack that they all fear, and Charlotte is trying her best to pull her weight. She's little, and probably not that strong, but when Murphy starts picking on a boy who can't carry a heavy tree log and Bellamy asks her if she can pick up the slack, she starts to try. Bellamy rushes forward to assure her that he was only only kidding. And they smile at each other, and it's gross and the only real time you see Charlotte happy, cry about it.

Especially because next, they find Wells fingers and Murphy's discarded knife, and when Clarke confronts him about his initials on the blade and the blood of her best friend in front of the whole camp, a riot breaks out and the mass decides to beat and hang Murphy. Bellamy is swayed by the crowd and kicks the bucket out from under the other boy, and he strangles for a few long seconds before Finn comes running in and tells her to run. How he knows that she did it, we don't know, early episode inconsistencies, but maybe it's the crowd, or the choking boy, or Clarke screaming, or Bellamy's distress... But Charlotte is moved to object, to scream and tell the whole camp that Murphy didn't kill Wells, she did.

The kiddy gloves go on immediately. Bellamy, Finn and Clarke take her into the unofficial leaders tent for informal questioning instead of hanging her. Charlotte insists she was trying to slay her demons, like Bellamy told her, but that isn't what he meant and he looks rather appalled. Outside, Murphy is furious and calls for her to be brought out and strung up like he had been, but Charlotte begs for them not to let them hurt her. So Bellamy goes out to try to sue for peace, but that fails and Clarke and Finn escape out the back with Charlotte and make a run for it. They head to an old apocalypse bunker that Finn had discovered earlier, pursued by Murphy and his band of weird, murderous teenagers that want to kill a little girl in the name of justice. Wow, rude guys.

Before they get to the bunker, Charlotte makes the mistake of trying to hold Clarke's hand again, and Clarke snaps at her, trying to drive home the fact that she killed someone and that that wasn't okay, and that just because they saved her, she wasn't forgive. Which Charlotte seems to begin to get, and the tears and guilt starts up. Later that night, when Finn tucks her in and the two older kids start talking, she overhears them talking about what they were going to do, about how she was a murderer and a bigger threat than the grounders. Clarke mentions that there have to be consequences, and then Finn goes on to say that they have to figure something out before Murphy kills them for helping her. And since apparently Charlotte chose just then to grow a conscience, when her saviors fall asleep, she takes it upon herself to leave the bunker.

And she runs, mostly blind in the dark forest, but Bellamy finds her almost immediately and tries to have her run with him. But when Charlotte hears Murphy calling for her, she calls back, screaming for him to come find her, asks Bellamy to leave her and steadfastly refuses to accept his help, instead trying to run towards Murphy and his torches. So Bellamy throws her over his shoulder and runs despite her kicking and screaming.

And they run, lose ground, and eventually wind up on the edge of a cliff with the angry lynchmob right on their tail. Not that the terrible odds seem to inspire Bellamy to give up, but when Clarke and Finn catch up with them all and Murphy puts a knife to her throat, Charlotte's ready to turn herself over. It's only Bellamy physically holding her back that keeps her from going with Murphy. But since he won't let her go forward, and she won't let any of them die for her, she turns around.

And she throws herself off the edge of the cliff.

Personality:

I call her psychobaby for a reason.

But that reason aside, Charlotte is not a bad kid. She is not an awful, uncaring person who doesn't care about people; she is just a sad, sad kid who could probably use a lot of psychiatric help, and maybe just a few snuggles.

"IT'S JUST A DREAM!"

She has really deep rooted trauma centering around the execution of her mother and father, which she was presumably made to (or chose to, but why would you) watch before being returning to her room to watch her parents things be boxed up for redistribution. Being floated means your body is air-vacced into space, which is very sudden and scary (sucked into the great beyond, face twisted in some sort of silent scream), and shortly after witnessing her parents execution, Charlotte had a breakdown. While in her living quarters, she snapped and assaulted a guard who was gathering up her parents things. When she tells Clarke about her past, she says "they said I assaulted a guard" which suggests maybe she blacked out and doesn't remember the violent episode.

Upon being sentenced, Charlotte starts to have really intense, really frequent night terrors, and often wakes up from them screaming. Which probably isn't much of a problem when she's sleeping in a solitary, presumably soundproof jail cell every night — "sleeping", because she doesn't sleep well or often because of her bad dreams — but on the ground, her late night screaming attracts the attention of both Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake, who both try to wake her, only for her to embarrassedly either refuse to make eye contact with, or to apologize to. As if her trauma is unimportant, when before people (guards) probably just didn't care or (other delinquents) made fun of her.

Because he ordered the execution of her parents, and because he presumably hit the button that sent them flying out into space, all of her nightmares center around Chancellor Thelonious Jaha, and his likeness to his son, Wells Jaha — "I see his face, and when I wake up, I see yours, and the nightmare never ends," she tells him — eventually drives her to kill him, in an attempt to "slay her demons" and make her feel better, maybe let her sleep without having a nightmare. For once.

"IT'S OKAY TO BE SCARED."
"WHAT ARE YOU SCARED OF?
YOU KNOW WHAT, DOESN'T MATTER."

Imagine being woken up, restrained, having a strange bracelet with dull needles in it put on your wrist, being strapped into a 100+ year old space pod, and launched down to what you only know to be certain death because some long-ago crime made you expendable.

Scary, right?

Charlotte's a pretty scared little girl. She doesn't handle intense situations — like the redistribution of her parents belongings; like Jasper Jordan's dying groans echoing through camp — very well, and looks particularly petrified and sickened during the riot, and hanging of John Murphy that she practically caused by killing Wells Jaha. Even when she'd stabbed Wells, she'd screamed a little, and cried and fell backwards in the dirt, and had to hug her knees to her chest and hum to herself for comfort (which is a questionable means of self soothing in and of itself, psychobaby) while he bled out. Even when causing it, she doesn't handle death very well. It's a very skewed, gray area in her mind, and Clarke has to snap at her to try to impress the weight of taking another persons life.

While trapped in the cave by the acid fog, Bellamy tells her that "weakness is death, fear is death", and it's possible that killing people (Wells, then herself) is her strange, poorly thought out attempt to combat her fear of death. When Wells is bleeding out, she tells him that she "had to" do it, in order to be able to sleep, and maybe in order to not be weak anymore and controlled to her nightmares. She even runs away from Clarke and Finn in the bunker when they're trying to keep her safe, and tries to find Murphy in the dark forest even though she knows he's going to hang her; tries to confront death face on to get over it. But that does not pan out in her favor. No ones favor, actually, that was a pretty shitty night all around.

"I'M NOT LITTLE."

Psychobaby. Baby.

Charlotte is arguably the youngest person on the dropship sent to Earth. Both John Murphy and Atom call her "little girl" or "the little girl" (or "little bitch" for variety sake), and she's also visibly the shortest and most babyfaced among all of the 100 featured on screen. Bellamy can also carry her with ease over his shoulder, and run through a dark forest without tripping, so she's either particularly petite or he's particularly ripped.

Along with being the youngest offender Earth-side, she is also the most childish. Not in the typical, well adjusted manner of speaking, where she delights in sidewalk chalk and flowers, but in the 'wow, someone didn't hug that child enough'. Because, sure, her parents probably loved her a lot, and she probably loved them. But after their death, she was effectively locked up and treated as a prisoner; no one provided her council for her problems, or comfort for her nightmares. And Charlotte fell into a bit of a developmental rut.

She has very childish mannerisms: she wipes her face with her whole hand the way a toddler might, and curls into a ball and hugs her knees to her chest for comfort when she is upset. She craves comfort, enough so to let Clarke cuddle her when she wakes her up from her nightmare, even if the two had never spoken until then. And enough so to try to hold Clarke's hand when they escape camp post-Murphy Hanging, and when Clarke jerks away from her, Charlotte looks heartbroken.

"SLAY YOUR DEMONS, KID."

"You ever killed something before? Well, who knows. Maybe you're good at it."

That is not something you say to a child, Bellamy Blake. Especially an unstable little girl who you just had to lightly shake out of screaming nightmares. You also probably shouldn't give them a knife, but he also gives her a really good coping mechanism for whenever she was really scared, and that was to grip her knife and say loudly: "Screw you, I'm not afraid."

And maybe she's just enamored with the guy, or so starved for attention and comfort or any sort, but Charlotte takes his words very seriously to heart. This, however, just loops back around to her feeling like she "had to" kill Wells to make her demons go away and not be a scaredy cat anymore, which haha, no it sucked and now she's dead whoops.

"NOT AFTER WHAT I'VE DONE."

But before she dies, Charlotte makes some big steps emotionally. Namely, she grows a conscious and seems to adopt some of the self sacrificing mojo that Clarke and Bellamy practically ooze. Because she admits openly, in front of the whole camp, that Murphy didn't kill Wells, she did, instead of just staying quiet and letting him die for her actions.

And when she overhears Clarke and Finn talking about needing to smooth over the whole thing before the rampaging Murphy killed either of them for helping Charlotte, she takes it upon herself to sneak out from under their watchful eye and find Murphy to settle this for herself. When she encounters Bellamy and he tries to save her too, she snaps at him that she's "not your sister, stop helping me", because he already got cracked over the head with a log, and Murphy's violent vengeance wouldn't just be limited to Clarke and Finn.

And then, later, when Bellamy helps her anyway and they just end up on a cliff edge, with a knife to Clarke's throat, and the ultimatum that she either go with Murphy or Clarke dies, Charlotte takes it upon herself to jump off the cliff. Because she can't let anyone die for her, not after what she did.

Better late than never on the regret, right?

Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:

Charlotte is a tragically normal human being, with no supernatural powers and normal boring human squishiness/mortality.

She is really good at: crying, causing mass scale panic, feeling guilt but really delayed, jumping. She is moderately good at: killing people, lying, running away, self sacrificing, and dealing with her demons. And Charlotte is not so good at: handling pressure, doing the right thing, not dying. She might also be a little (a lot) emotionally unstable, and has pretty poor communication skills.

Inventory:

( 1 ) — tranquility issue jumpsuit
( 1 ) — tranquility issue communication device
( 1 ) — set of tranquility issue underclothes
( 1 ) — ratty old 3rd-generation hand-me-down jacket
( 1 ) — ratty old long sweatshirt (grey)
( 1 ) — ratty space pants & long stockings (black & dark brown)
( 1 ) — pair of shoes
( 1 ) — poorly made knife, yellow & black, initials j.m. carved into handle

Appearance:


( Izabela Vidovic in The 100 )
Charlotte is thirteen twelve, probably no taller than 5'1", with light brown hair that she usually keeps neatly french braided, and brown eyes. She, like the rest of her earth-bound companions, hasn't had the luxury of soap and shampoo in a long time, and had been wearing the same clothes for about two weeks before she died. She's a little and wee and a bit babyfaced, all-in-all a scary cutie.

Age: 12

AU Clarification: n/a

S A M P L E S
Log Sample:

Everyone'd lied about dying.

It's not tragically romantic, it's not relieving; jumping off the cliff had not been exhilarating, didn't sooth the deep seated guilt and self loathing that had been building up in her chest since she had shoved a rough-made blade into Wells Jaha's neck. Her life hadn't flashed before her eyes, either, but cold wind had whipped around her face, stinging her eyes and tearing at her hair; freezing any scream she might have tried to let out in her throat, and she falls silently. It's dark, and the bottom of the ravine is obscured by the thick fog that had settled across the forest in the damp evening, but not being able to see her impending doom — free falling into space, again, but this time without a dropship and no seatbelt to keep her from breaking her neck — didn't make this any better.

Time had slowed, but just enough for Charlotte to try to reason with herself, to justify that this was the best course of action, that she deserved to die. She'd killed someone, she couldn't come back from that. But even inside her head, the words ring sad and hollow.

And then she —

Doesn't remember hitting water. But she must have, because when her eyelids flutter and she regains some bleary form of consciousness, she's submerged in it. Light, and floating, and it's just like she'd always imagined swimming to be for about 0.5 seconds before Charlotte tries to breathe and realizes she can't. Not only because she's underwater, but because there's a breathing tube shoved down her windpipe. Her throat spasms at the sudden realization of the intrusion, and water floods her nose just as there's a faint beep, a ding, and the doors to her watery encasement slide open. The breathing tube is all but ripped from her throat by some unseen medical mechanism, and Charlotte tumbles onto the floor. For a split second, she's free falling again. But when she lands, she lands hard; bruises her knee in an attempt to catch herself, and her wrist smarts a little, but is definitely alive in this landing scenario.

Alive and cautiously, oh so cautiously picking herself up from the wet tiled floor. She pulls her knees to her chest, clinging to her shins in hopes of gleaning of faux comfort from how tightly she holds herself. A wet and goopy tank top clung uncomfortably to her torso, and the sudden chill that has Charlotte practically convulsing in a shiver serves as a painful reminder that she isn't at the bottom of some ravine. She's no where on Earth, for that matter, and that realization brings big, fat tears to her eyes.

She was pretty sure she died, and yet here she was. In space. Again. And alive. Again.

So maybe this ship was better than The Ark. Not only couple it apparently bring people back from the dead — and teleport them through time, space, everything — but maybe here, no one would have to know what she did.

Comms Sample:

( there are some big pluses to being born in space, raised in space, and surrounded by space-quality tech and space-quality tech geniuses all her life. the main plus being that, this? this tiny little smartphone wannabe is no big deal. they'd all had tablets and projectors for school on board the ark, even in the prison section, where their grades directly influenced the outcome of their reassessment at eighteen for reintegration with the rest of the population. it's no big ordeal, turning on the video function and pointing it at her face.

now, getting words out? that's a whole different problem. because charlotte has questions, a lot of them. she desperately (it shows in the crease of her brow, the pinch in the corner of her mouth, oh — and the tears welling in the corners of her eyes) wants to find a familiar face, but would really just settle for anyone who'd give her a hug and no ask why she has a poorly made knife in her belt with j.m. scratched into the handle.

she wets her lips before trying (and failing) to speak. )

I — ( am really scared, and want to cry, and want my mom and am gripping the comm too tight like that's going to offer some sort of faux comfort, and, and —

charlotte swallows, and her quivering lower lip pulls into a sharp, flat grimace. and she practically bites out: )

Screw you.

( aw yeah, communication at it's finest right here. )