my childhood spat back out the monster that you see

• PLEASE BE WARNED: Helena's history involves many a tricky subject, including but not limited to abuse and self injury (images within). Spoilers for Orphan Black are also to follow.

( PLAYER INFO )
Player Name: Mal
Age: 23
Plurk: stagnation
Other characters played at Greyfields: N/A

( CHARACTER INFO )
Name: Helena
Canon: Orphan Black, a live-action television show
Canon Point: Mid-2.06, after she's been arrested.
Age: 30

Appearance:

Powers/Abilities/Physical Limitations:

+ JANIE'S GOT A GUN: Though Helena's biology is largely human and she's constrained to the pros and cons therein, she does have a few skills that rise above and beyond the average, including a keen awareness of a fight. She's accomplished at hand to hand combat, deft with a knife, and even has some casual long-range sniping in her arsenal. She's killed several of her own clones, transcontinentally, without being caught - Katja Obinger's body, in example, was only found due to Sarah's ineptitude.

+ PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOUSE TONIGHT: also some sweet dance moves

+ THE SECOND RULE IS DOUBLE TAP: There's also a small account of Helena's -- good fortune(?), or otherwise. She doesn't seem to die very easily. She survives, in canon, not only a length of rebar jammed pretty directly through her midriff, but also a gunshot wound to the chest. Whether this is (because of a medical condition) due to her backwards organs or just out of pure dumb luck, it's still something worthy of note.

Inventory:

• The clothes on her back:
  • One (1) red t-shirt with a unicorn on it
  • One (1) pair of grey and black striped skinny jeans
  • One (1) dark grey calf-length jacket
  • One (1) pair of brown cowboy boots
• One (1) kitchen knife, stolen
• An entire pocketful of pork rinds

History: Helena @ the Orphan Black wiki

Personality: (aka "this section comes with theme music")

COSIMA: Right. So. What do the cops know?
SARAH: She's a churchy psychopath — duh. It's personal, she's a loner, probably abused as a child.
COSIMA: Okay — the fish reads Christian, and crafted onto a weapon, a personal crusade.
SARAH: Great, a zealot.
COSIMA: You know, when I've seen this branded onto Maggie Chen, I'm thinking she's not a lone warrior. To extreme creationist types, we would be abominations. Like, not God's children, but Satan's.
SARAH: So, they hate us, and she's killing us, even though she's identical to us.
COSIMA: Well, but if you were a messed up abused loner whose faith compelled you to belong, and somebody that you trusted told you that this was the only way to redeem yourself in the eyes of God, I mean...
SARAH: Yeah, I might become an angry angel too.

It's easy to forget that Helena's, loosely speaking, a professional. Sunken eyes, frazzled hair and all, she's at first glance a very bizarre sort of creature. There's something very primitive about her down to her core, from how she eats to how she sits; it's almost converging on childlike. She has a taste for sweets (rewards of some sort, perhaps, an "I have done well" to a poorly constructed idea of 'good' versus 'bad') and a light and curious touch to everything that she does, but that's not to so soon forget she's made up of equal parts sugar and spice.

Helena wasn't necessarily raised a soldier but that's what she was carved into, crafted like a blade under the hands of Tomas and Maggie Chen after she was whisked away from her home in Ukraine at twelve. Maggie had a hand in creating these abominations, and while it's unbeknownst to Helena what changed her mind on the moral nuances of human cloning, it certainly had a hand in doing a number on her. Her and Tomas played a fun game called gaslighting. It was ingrained within her that she was the original of the clones, the "light" to their otherwise wretched natures, and she was systematically constructed into an assassin, adept in the likes of casing her sister targets and then killing them with her weapon of choice.

Her own psychological ailments played no help in the matter. There's definitely something... off about the girl, a few crucial pieces missing. The least that can be mentioned includes her lack of moral center and her disregard for empathetic reasoning. While her sister speaks of the difficulty in killing a person she can identify with on such a biological level, Helena kills her clones ruthlessly, showing no remorse for the "sheep" she has brought to proper pasture, nor much to the troublesome meddlers who might stand in her way. But not the meddling kids. If there's one flaw in that remorselessness, it's Helena's well-meaning demeanor towards children, a love that she doesn't quite understand and has so rarely been given the opportunity to truly know where to begin to express.

Well, until Sarah bloody Manning came along.

Helena has absolutely no idea that she's a twin - and neither does Sarah when they first meet - but she does feel a magnetism to Sarah, immediate upon discovering she's merely portraying Elizabeth Childs. She becomes a woman possessed, infatuated with this new breed of emotion she finds herself actually feeling for another person. Rather than kill Sarah, she gets to know her - she sifts through her life and gleans what information she can (bouncing on her bed, eating her food, sniffing her boyfriend's clothes, whatever it takes). Rather than kill Sarah, she becomes obsessed with the idea that they have a "connection" that won't allow them to kill each other, asking Sarah if she "feels it" too, only perpetuated by the fact that Sarah lets her go free even when injured - at gunpoint - under the nose of a cop. Rather than kill Sarah? She asks her out to lunch.

With this new attraction comes a whole new seed of doubt sown by Sarah, not necessarily in her mission but in what she's come to understand her whole life: Is she the original or is she not? It's a wavering subject, one on which she waxes and wanes on her uncertainty, generally depending on what Tomas tells her. What Tomas says, she listens to, for the most part. He feeds her, he bathes her, he cares for her, and he's also the one pressing the razor into her hand for her own messy breed of flagellation, penance. They're her angel wings, and she rejoices in the moment she's allowed to cut herself open again. It's her equivalent to love, so far as she's concerned, and all of it makes the Sarah situation a confounding one.

Despite everything, Helena keeps as capable as she can, much as she was trained. She understands humanity on a level enough to barter her way into many a situation - and it's not just the killing, it's grand theft motorbike and stealing her way into nightclubs without being caught, it's imitating her clone well enough to implicate a murder confession. Rudimentary self surgery. She maneuvers people like she would a hit, and all of it is just a game for her to tease and prod and play with. The world should work around her charade, and it's not really naivete but inexperience that leads that charge, maybe that same childishness as aforementioned. She's not suave, she lacks finesse (almost animalistic in her own movements), and she really does play her life almost like a game, with strict rules that she thinks she understands, that she thinks people are meant to follow.

Sheep, you see. She's just the wolf in their clothing.

Samples:

X SAMPLE ONE:

[ LINK ]

X SAMPLE TWO: PROMPT [TWO]

She steals into the mall at dawn before it's even opened, wary of the guards and with her messy (very noticeable) hair tamed beneath a hooded sweatshirt proclaiming a band she's never heard of. The message left behind made it very clear what she'd have to do, and true to her spirit, she has full plans to do it to her best. It's a contest, is it not? And she most certainly wants to come in first place.

It's not the only incentive. She's hungry - starved, in fact, and when her last meal was a can of cat food, she'd do most anything for a chance at something better. Her stomach gurgles unpleasantly as she leans up against one of the partitions in the middle of the aisle. "Soon," she murmurs to herself, a hand flat against her belly, and then she skitters off again, unseen.

She knows exactly where someone is sleeping on this night, if the store is where it's meant to be. They change sometimes, they switch and she can't keep her game plan solid at all times when this happens. That's uncomfortable for her. Luckily, this is one of the times she's comfortable. It's like a child looking into a candy store when she plants her face against the unbarred plane of glass into the store beyond. The fight will surely be difficult, as there are few without combative skills here, and the ones who don't keep companions, but it's a fight she's sure she can win.

They'll be sleeping, but they'll hear her coming. She's wary of the knife in her boot, but it won't be drawn until it's necessary. First, there may be traps, and she will evade as necessary, disable as necessary - this is her plan. They will be hazy from the morning that she's already shaken off, peripheral vision impaired; strike to temporal lobe should do nicely in a pinch. Once on the ground, a choke hold, suppressing the carotid artery until the patient sleeps, he will sleeeeeep very nicely.

Helena's smile spreads as her hands slide off the glass and she moves towards the doors. She's got this.

X SAMPLE THREE: PROMPT [ONE]

[ It's not in her nature to trust, and when she hears the voices trying to assuage her, she can feel every hair on her arms stand up.

She's still not quite awake yet; everything is hazed, confusing, she hears screams, she smells smoke and copper. What is happening? What is happening to me? She's on all fours still, trying to gain her bearings in whatever situation it is that she has on her. She's hyper aware of how unarmed she is, how unequipped she likely is with what's to come next. Hell, her hands are still handcuffed. ]

No - No, please - [ With a wave of her hands towards the barrier of tables, she gives a sloppy head shake, stumbling to her feet and looking out the windows of the store instead. Eyes wide, eyes ghostly wide. Her voice grows softer. ]

No, thank you.