MONTAGUE, sophia

[Sophia Montague]

sophia marie montague
twenty-five :: December 24th 1986
Lab technician in Morning Star Laboratories


A P P E A R A N C E

Eyes: Sophia's eyes are a gentle, cool grey. They're always bright and curious, searching everything for 'more'. In the right light they can appear murky blue-green, but because she spends most of her time in the bright lights of the labs or out in the sunshine, this effect rarely happens. Their shade means that any glare she might deliver is always bitingly cold.
Hair: Dark blonde with the faintest of sun-bleached streaks. It hangs to her shoulders in loose waves and curls. For work, she ties it back in a messy tail or bun and automatically shoves a pen through it if she needs to keep one on hand. The problem is, she usually forgets, spends an age finding another, only to rediscover the first one when she goes to put the second in her hair too. Outside of the lab her hair is always down and rarely styled.
Height: 5'7"
Build: She is quite skinny but not entirely shapeless. She is always on her feet and burns off so much energy during the day that she rarely fluctuates in weight. She tries to go to the gym when she gets the opportunity but usually ends up at home with a glass of wine instead, but she's still fairly toned from what exercise she does get. Plus, she doesn't mind the little rise her tummy has, especially after a huge meal. Her chest is fairly small and so most of her womanly figure depends on her hips and bottom, which curve moderately from her fairly tiny waist.
Style: Her dress sense could be called comfort-chic. Her wardrobe is split in two; formal, professional clothing and casual, weekend wear.
On the formal side she has a couple of skirt-suits, pastel coloured blouses, one or two pairs of pressed trousers and several fitted dresses. These she wears for work and while they’re not the most comfortable things in her wardrobe they do let her skin breathe.
On the casual side, she has an assortment of light, floaty, knee- or thigh-length dresses, oversized woollen sweaters and cardigans, strappy tops and a couple of pairs of skinny jeans. She prefers flats over heels, and hates having her ankles restricted so she doesn’t own a single pair of boots. Sandals and slip-ons are much more preferable.
Other: She has a dark mole on her top lip which has never really bothered her. Any self-consciousness about her face instead comes from her bone structure. She thinks her nose is too long and pointy and her jaw too soft.
Play By: Imogen Poots

P E R S O N A L I T Y

Strengths:
Intelligent – Sophia is exceptionally bright. She was homeschooled and studied under both of her parents who are Professors of Science and had completed her high school diploma at the age of thirteen and her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry before she finished her teenage years. This may seem impressive and while it’s not exactly something to be belittled, it’s easier to believe when you’re told how Sophia did little else but study for the first decade and a half of her life.
Warm & friendly – Most of her childhood was fairly unsocial, so when she did meet people on occasion she was always polite and as charming as a child could be. She carried this demeanour into her adult years and while she developed a bit of a wild streak after leaving home, she’s always just as friendly and pleasant as she used to be.
Positive and optimistic – She doesn’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but she does know how to make the most of a bad situation. She’ll be the first to smile after something goes wrong and the first to really believe that things can be fixed, too.
Mature and responsible – Hand-in-hand with her childhood of learning came a childhood of maturity. There were never many children around to play with and she just had her parents or other scientists and mathematicians to talk to. Conversation, as one can imagine, was never really suited for a child. As such she lost that part of her childhood and instead became a mature, responsible young lady.
Confident – While she never had other kids her own age to play with, she didn’t have them to keep her as meek as she should have been. She knew how to handle herself around adults of any mentality and when she left of the big wide world, her confident attitude came with her. She’s not conceited or vain, but she knows what she’s good at and tends to stick to that.
Weaknesses:
Undependable – Sophia can be trusted, but she can also be trusted to be late and to forget appointments and arrangements, birthdays and half of everyone on the shopping list. She should never be the one left to organise anything unless she’s being poked and prodded into action. It’s as though her inner alarm clock and calendar are running a bit slow, or someone forgot to turn the page over to the next month.
Forgetful – Everything has to be written down in lists. Shopping lists, reading lists, research lists, to-do lists... lists which quite often she forgets to take with her anyway. She wasn’t always like this. Sometimes she wonders why it’s the trivial things that she forgets, but she can remember most of her old research off the top of her head. It’s as though recent months haven’t managed to log themselves into her memory as well as her past has.
Passively argumentative – It’s rare that Sophia loses her temper or raises her voice. When caught in an argument she tends to stand there, arms folded across her chest, and waits her turn to speak. When she does speak, her few words are more cutting and abrasive than the other person’s rambling speech. Her parents taught her to never raise her voice unless she desperately needs to (for fear of disturbing their studies) and it’s a habit that has never really left her. Most people have never seen her get very angry.
Sarcastic – When someone annoys her or even when she’s bored and not really thinking about it, she becomes very sarcastic. It’s not something she intends on and sometimes her sense of dry humour is taken as a joke rather than a dig. It’s helped to split her co-workers down the middle; one half disliking her attitude, the other thinking she’s hilarious.
Can be innocent and shy – Again, because of her childhood she was pretty sheltered. When something catches her unaware and really shocks her, she loses all of her confidence and retires into herself. It takes a lot to do that though.
Can only speak French – Born and raised in Madagascar, she left the island and came straight to France. She’s never needed to study another language.
Suffers from mood swings and bad headaches – Ever since her treatments started, Sophia has been a different person to live with. Depending on the day the smallest thing can switch her mood, which is made worse by the migraines she suffers every couple of days. She knows it’s all side-effects of the chemicals running through her body, but it’s not clear that she really sees how huge her shift in temperament can be.
Likes:
Sunshine
Cities
Science, data, research, facts
Dirty jokes
Caffeine
Letting her hair down and being foolish
Tennis
Wine and a good book
Wine and something good on TV
Wine and good conversation
Wine
Good vegetarian food
Sugared orange zest
Dried fruit
Driving
Being naked. No really. She walks around her apartment in the nude and only gets dressed when she's going outside or someone comes to the door.
Dislikes:
Being drunk
Meat
Half of the people in her department
Feeling tied down
Having her feet touched
Monotony
People who are serious all the time
Habits:
Thinking she's answered a question when she just forgot to say it out loud.
Forgetting things if she doesn't write them down.
Holding her shoulder when she's feeling vulnerable.
Forgetting to brush her hair in the mornings - she carries a brush in her bag.
Biggest Secret:
The baby girl she gave up when she was 17.
Most Prized Possession:
Her research notes, books and thesis.
A long black, fitted coat she’s had for a long time.
Reputation:
The wild card in the laboratory. Sophia is known in her workplace for being the one to first come out with the dirty jokes or spontaneous reactions while still being considered quite lady-like. With those who first meet her she is polite and helpful, and tries to get on everyone's good side. However, if that doesn't happen she's rarely bothered by it.

T A I N T E D

Ability: Untainted ('cured' of Abalienation - The ability to temporarily absorb the memories, thoughts, and abilities of others via skin-to-skin contact. See below.)
Beliefs: Working in the labs Sophia hears a multitude of opinions and beliefs every day, but she’s always tried to keep her own mind about Tainted. Why? Because she used to be one. Her experiences weren’t the best and when she was invited to be part of an initial experimental ‘cure treatment’ for Tainted, she jumped at the chance. Her case is still in the research and study stage but she’s confident that she did the right thing. However, she does believe that not everyone’s experience of being Tainted is bad. She believes in equality and in giving the people the choice, if this ‘cure’ is in fact that.

B A C K G R O U N D

Place of Birth: Madagascar
Languages: French; sign language; about 5 words in English.
Family: Parents, Philippe and Rosaline.
Others of Note: Daughter, Violet, now eight years old, whom she gave up for adoption.
Pet(s): Nope
History:

My parents were already married and living in Madagascar when I was born. I don’t know if it was planned but I can’t imagine that it was. They were so busy with research and so focused on the lemurs that a baby would not have been optimal. Yes, lemurs. They studied – and still do – different species of lemurs. They work in different departments in the research center. My mother worked predominantly with mouse lemurs, trying to encourage breeding and my father’s study was more generalised. It was more about their habitat and how to preserve it.

They were always busy but they still made time for me. I had become a novelty for some of the other scientists and in a way, a mascot for the small research teams my parents spent most of their time with. In other ways, they all had a small part in taking care of me when my parents were extremely busy. I have pictures from my first and second birthdays of being surrounded by lots of adults, some even with their lab coats still on.

I think I was about three years old when my parents hired someone. We had been living in a nice but modest home and they realised that a helping hand would make a vast difference to our lives. They hired one person; a woman I called Lulu because I couldn’t pronounce her name. She was our maid, nanny and most important, my tutor. She taught me how to read before I was four, at five I could write. Once I could write I could do anything. Lulu believed that children were what you make of them and I have to agree with her. I absorbed elementary level education in two years, middle level in another three, and by the time I was thirteen I had my high school diploma.

Lulu left once she realised she could do no more for me, and my parents hired someone else. A twenty-two year old Science Education major called Bobby. He was a genius. My parents hired him to make a scientist of me but he could see more in me than they wanted to. He asked me what I wanted to learn, and I said something else. Anything else. So he made a deal with me. If I studied what he gave me he would teach me anything else I wanted to know. I picked sign language. Why? Because at first I wanted to find something that Bobby probably didn’t know already, and I had been right. But true to his word he taught me. He studied it himself and passed it on. I was almost like we were learning it together. Just for fun.

It drove my mother insane when I would sign conversations with Bobby in the middle of a crowded room, but at fourteen, annoying my parents was top of my priority list.

It wasn’t long before Bobby announced he had to move on. He had his own study to do to earn his Doctorate and Madagascar wasn’t giving him enough to complete it. It was two weeks before he left that he told my parents that he believed I needed to find somewhere to study properly. I was surprised at how easily they agreed. Their need for me to stay home came a close second to their appreciation of a good education and they told me I was going. I was stunned. But I was excited too. I’d never been off the island and I wanted so desperately to see the cities I’d read about in books and heard stories about.

I was fifteen when I left, under the wing of Bobby who promised my parents he would take me to France where he knew of a university that would give me a scholarship, even at that age.

I have no idea why they trusted him. I did too, at the start. He did a lot for me, had me enrol in the same university as he had a place in. He still looked after me, when he felt like it. I was foolish, and when he told me he loved me I believed him...

When I was sixteen, I fell pregnant. I knew he was scared, but not as much as I was. I couldn’t be pregnant. I couldn’t have been so stupid. He made me swear not to tell anyone until he figured things out. I didn’t realise what he wanted to figure out, though. It was while I was pregnant – about four months gone and just starting to show – I discovered that there was something wrong with me. Bobby and I had just had an argument but we made up, I made us some food and we’d sat down to watch a movie on TV in one of the common rooms. I was sitting right next to him and I reached for his hand. He moved away like he quite often did, but I had touched his hand...

It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room and the walls closed in and everything went white. When I could breathe again, when all the colour came back into my eyes... I knew. I knew everything. I knew all of his immediate thoughts, his immediate memories. It was like some had replaced parts of my brain with his. I had no idea what had happened but one thing I knew; Bobby wasn’t who I thought he was.

I looked at him then, really looked at him, and I could see it plain as day on his face. He didn’t want the baby. He barely wanted me anymore. He only sat there on that sofa with me so I wouldn’t go squealing to his friends. I was devastated. I felt sick, dizzy. I told him I wasn’t feeling good and that I needed to lay down. He told me to go back to mine because his room was off-limits. Something about a project he was working on that he didn’t want me to mess up.

I walked back to mine by myself. I was too shocked to cry and I didn’t sleep that night.

From then on things only got worse. I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore and he told me I didn’t have a choice. That the baby was his and if I tried to leave him I’d be doing it without the baby. I didn’t know what to do so I did the only thing I could. I told someone. I told everyone. Their 25 year old genius, Doctor-to-be, got a sixteen year old child pregnant. Not just any sixteen year old, but the one that marvelled professors and stunned fellow students.

I destroyed him.

And I’m glad.

He was expelled from the university and was pending a court case for sleeping with a minor, but he ran. I wasn’t surprised. He never was very brave.

I stayed in my courses as long as I could and I gave birth right in the lecture hall, on July 21st 2003. I was seventeen. Her name was Violet.

I knew it was going to be hard, but what made it unbearable was the fear. I was so afraid that Bobby was going to come back and take her that I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t keep her. So when I was almost eighteen and Violet was just three months old I decided put her up for adoption. I knew that someone would give her a better life than I could have, and she would be safe. I filled out the forms, I told people in the university that my parents were going to take care of her, and I carried her to the foster home in the city.

I know now that I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I was so scared that I would change my mind that I had to. When I was talking with the woman who was dealing with me I asked her to hold Violet while I used the bathroom.

I climbed out the window. And I ran. As soon as she was out of my arms I knew if I picked her up again I wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t face it. So I ran. It was all I could think of. I had the sense to take the papers with me and I tossed them in the trash down the street.

Then I shut down. I went into auto-pilot. I threw myself into my studies and did nothing else for well over a year. I lost my friends, lost everything but my studies, but that’s what I was good at. It was the one thing I could control and what made sense. I was nineteen when I graduated with my Bachelor of Science.

It was through a career day at the university that I heard of Sanglignee and Marseille and all of the work that went on there. I had been scouting for work when I shook hands with a very old looking man. I was wearing gloves right up to my elbows despite it being the height of summer and he asked why. I said I had a skin condition but the truth was I had figured out if I didn’t let my skin touch anyone else’s weird things didn’t happen. The man stared at me for a long while, and without warning he grabbed my bare elbow.

My first instinct was to panic, but the way he smiled then, shook my hand so sincerely, kept me on the spot. He told me that he knew of a place where they could use someone like me. I needed to know more but he told me he could only talk to me in private. We had coffee that afternoon and there told me everything.

He was once a founding member of a place called Morning Star Laboratories in Marseille. He told me of their work, their research and then told me how he knew what I was. He was gifted – Tainted – too, but that much I had learned when he touched my elbow. I told him that I didn’t like what I could do and he smiled. No, he grinned. And told me that was even better. That they were working on a cure.

I was on the next train to Marseille.

I worked with Morning Star Laboratories for a long time before we found what we believed to be a cure. I was on the team that helped create it and I demanded to be among the few to test it. It’s been three months since I haven’t had to wear those gloves and even for the minor side-effects, I’ve never been happier.


Present:
Sophia is content spending most of her hours working away trying to perfect the treatments she has become her own test subject for.

Future:
Soon she hopes the team will perfect it and will be able to market it to people like her, who desperately needed to be rid of their abnormality. She just needs to find a few more people willing to call themselves ‘test subjects’ first. Surprisingly, not many people want to.

O U T O F C H A R A C T E R

Name: Mews
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Location: Dublin, Ireland.
RP Experience: Hooo yeah.
Other Characters: Nona Byrne
RP Sample:
“They,” Orion repeated with a tiny nod. “The Grey Lady, the headmistress, the Head Boy patrols up here some nights and one time the oldest house elf I’ve ever seen came right up here, accused me of being born in a field, and slammed the door shut before I could ask what he meant.”

His smile, which had been as close to a grin as possible from the moment Keane banged through the door, eventually started to slip. When he didn’t talk and keep his mind constantly distracted it tended to wander back to that one thing that had been twisting his thoughts and feelings for quite a while; that one thing that happened to be standing just two feet from him now. The realisation didn’t help the matter at all and Orion’s smile had turned down in a nervous sort of frown quite quickly as soon as Keane’s eyes left him.

He had no idea what he was doing, what he was supposed to do or how to do it. He had come up here to figure out where his mind was, and had even told Charlie to leave him be for a few hours so he could think. But how was he supposed to think of anything now? Regardless of what it was he had to think about, Keane’s presence always made his brain slow down and malfunction. There was no way he was going to cope... unless he got rid of him.

As he watched Keane turn away with that slightly awkward shift in his gait that Orion always picked up on when it happened, he knew he didn’t want rid of him at all. In fact, he wanted the opposite. He’d figure everything out later. Right now he wanted to just hang out with his... friend. Spending time with Keane was one of his favourite pastimes, right up there with being picked on by Charlie.

“Assignment tomorrow?” he repeated quizzically, tucking the bow of his violin under his arm as he followed Keane towards the table. “We don’t even have-“ Orion caught himself before he had finished his sentence, his dark eyes slowly widening with comprehension. He stopped, six feet away from the table and dropped his bow back into his hand.

He was going to kill her. A vibrant blush crept into his cheeks and across his nose in a flash. He was going to beat her with her own broom. Not only did they not have an assignment due for Astronomy tomorrow, but they didn’t even have class! Did she really think neither he nor Keane would notice how obvious her scheming was? She did it deliberately. Orion had told her where he was going and that he wanted to be alone, and what did the little devil do? She sent Keane up after him. Orion took a long, low breath and watched the back of Keane’s head while he sifted through the papers. In the end, he decided to just not say anything about it.

He was relieved when Keane’s long fingers waved in the direction of his legs, and Orion actually looked down to see what he was indicating. His brain didn’t want to connect why the Gryffindor would possibly be saying his trousers were beautiful, but he spotted the red wood of his violin and his head shot back up with a smile.

Keane thought his music was beautiful.

Compliments about his playing weren’t that rare – it was about the only thing most peopledid compliment him on – but something about the way Keane said it made his chest swell with pride and pleasure. He didn’t consider that it wasn’t how the boy said it, but the fact that it was Keane in particular who said it, gave him such a rush.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” he answered ruefully, finally catching up to the desk and leaning the front of this thighs against the edge. He glanced sideways at Keane, whose arm was just a couple of inches from his own, and he fought the urge to grab it. No, not grab... touch. He was thankful that both of his hands were full, because that urge might have won.

“Who am I trying to fool,” he muttered, half playfully, half endearingly defeated. “This was about the only thing you didn’t know about me. And it’s not all that exciting.” His cheeks still felt warm, and he shrugged his shoulder, dropping his gaze to the stacks of charts and rolls of parchment that littered the desk. Idly, he prodded one precarious looking pile with the tip of his bow and knocked it over, mildly aware just how much he fiddled with the thing when his nerves were building.

“You know what? I have Charlie’s charts,” he offered somewhat loudly with a shake of his head, far too late to really be convincing. “I picked them up after class and I just didn’t tell her. I’ll give them back to her later.” He nodded, turning a hopefully convincing smile to the Gryffindor, where he added a sheepish shrug for good measure.