River Tam

[River Tam]

RIVER TAM

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CORTEX RECORDS INCOMING....

Name: River Tam
Homeworld: Osiris
Birthdate: August 19, 2500
Current Age: 17
Gender: Female
Height: 5’6”
Weight: 120 lbs.
Alignment: Unaligned.
Rank: Passenger. (Fugitive)
Ship: Serenity
Position: None. (Reader)

Flags: Wanted: 200,000 bounty offered as a reward for information that leads to the live capture and return of River Tam. Further information is classified.

Personnel Records (History): River was born the youngest of two children to a well off family in the Alliance’s core worlds – Regan and Gabriel Tam were her parents, well respected, a physician and a scientist, her brother clever and loving. She was clearly a prodigy in many ways, a fact recognizable by an early age. While her brother was clever, she was brilliant, and though she doted on him and adored him, and he her, that did not stop her from correcting his work (and his textbooks). The two were almost inseperable, living in their own little world within the real world, and River was easily swept up in the love of science and logic and science and math and dance and gymnastics – there wasn’t a subject that didn’t fascinate her.

By the time that she was fourteen, she had completed all traditional schooling, and college courses, and had been entered into the graduate program for physics that she enjoyed but found ‘lacking’ in terms of presenting a challenge. When she was given the opportunity to attend a special Academy created by the Alliance, she practically leapt at the chance, eager to find any avenue that would broaden her horizons and the idea of a curriculum tailored specifically to her interests and intellect was too alluring to her to pass up. It was a decision that she would soon regret. Within only a few months of her arrival at the Academy, she requested a transfer, to return home to her family and her brother, finding the training regimens uncomfortable, the examinations more experimentations than medically appropriate testing, but her request was denied, coerced into believing that she would be better off if she stayed and saw the program through to the end. As the experiments became worse, and more invasive, she became more insistent, more desperate, the abilities that she’d struggled to reign in laid open, forced into a permanent ‘on’ switch and making it impossible for her to find any solace, or peace, filling her mind with thoughts and memories and images that were not her own.

It took another year for her to be able to get a message to her brother, a desperate coded attempt to beg for help, to beg him to save her. Another year passed, and her world spiraled down, her thoughts impossible to control, her hours filled with pain and screams and tests and fighting and lessons and strategy and questions and silence and chaos. It seemed a nightmare that would never end, until – it did. ’She always did like to dance.’ He had come for her, Simon, rescued her, swept her away, and into the darkness. She liked it in space, though the first weeks were disorienting – confusing, everything was bright and painful, confusing and crystal clear, and the time that it took her to adjust seemed longer than the crew were willing to give them, but by now it had become home away from home – away from the home that she wouldn’t be able to go back to, that Simon would never be able to return to, that she kept him from. She kept them all from so much, and they kept her here, safe and never safe, alone and never alone, hunted and protected. She’s come to love Serenity, the people on it, even though they frighten her… and she frightens them. She craves peace, some sense of self that isn’t filled with poisons and getting sick in Simon’s bed, but for now… this is what she has. It will get better. Eventually. She knows it will.

Psychological Review (Personality): River is a very damaged person when it comes to all things emotional or psychological. While she is still compassionate and loving as a standard, there is a great deal of trauma in her past that she is struggling to deal with – the abuse that she suffered at the hands of the Academy, and the guilt that she feels for what she has put Simon and the others through, and her sense of abandonment for the years that she spent in the Academy’s laboratories have created a very fractured personae.

To add to that the damage that she has suffered physically – she has had the amygdalae portio of her brain removed by the scientists at the Academy, making it virtually impossible for her to control the emotions that she feels – and thanks to her now amplified Reader and psychic abilities, she feels all of the emotions of those around her as well. She also has a tendency to hear things unsaid, to feel things, desires and wants of others, or to anticipate their moves before they’ve made them or even consciously considered them. She struggles to relate to people, while at the same time understanding them all too well, and the world around her seems a frightening place at times as she struggles to discern ‘reality’ from what she sees in her head.

She knows she is hunted, and that her presence on the ship is putting the others in danger, which she feels a great amount of guilt for, but the thought of returning to ‘that place’ is enough to send her devolving into seeming madness, with no signs of whatever sanity she might have mustered since then. She is ferociously protective, and in her own way, cares for and looks out for the best of the crew as she can.

Likes / Favorites:

*Space
*Dancing
*Cotton candy
*Puzzles that make sense
*Bare feet

Dislikes / Hates:

*Sleeping
*Needles
*Dreaming
*Being broken
*Reavers

Personal Quote:

River wasn’t dreaming. She never dreamed. Not real dreams. She didn’t know what this was. This was…. Undreaming. She was sleeping, and there were thoughts, and there were feelings and sensations, but they weren’t dreams. She was tossed about in the sensation of the tug and pull, the ebb and tide of the world around her -- the emotional eddy that batted her around, caught in the center of the storm but not the eye of it. She was not adjusted to them, they weren't things that could be adjusted to, they changed with each moment, each mood and thought of those caught around her, her own fears and frets and wants. They couldn't be adjusted, couldn't be regulated, no matter how much her brother tried, no matter how much pain the needles caused when they broke skin, chemicals and medicines and things that didn't belong on the inside trying to fix what couldn't be fixed.... She could feet it. Frustration, and rage, hot like embers on a campfire burning, trying to die but the wind just wouldn't let them, forcing oxygen into the compressed carbon, creating heat and fire where there shouldn't be. Fear and pain and heat and lust and sadness and loss, and grief and want, and greed and guilt… so much guilt.

It made her body shiver, on the inside, it set her heart to pounding and her throat to drying, and it pulled her in, her thoughts moving soundless like across the inner workings of Serenity. Lips brushed skin, flushing it. Fingers coaxed against curves and swells and creases, nooks and crannies, hideaways. Limbs shifted and moved at impossible angles. Faces bled, and shifted, falling away, blending one to the next, until it didn't -- until there was one, lingering, familiar, dark skinned, mocha, framed in sleek black hair, a stylus in hand – no, in her hand, the bleach white, bone white fabric of the tent, the too still air, the brown and black and white of faces laid bare. Colors faded, black to white, calm to desperation. ”There’s been no war here.” Guilt. So much guilt. And the absence of it. Cold steel, white rooms, pain and fire. Words, in her head, in her brain, in her heart, in her stomach and her muscles, twisting her into something that wasn’t her, wasn’t real, wasn’t dreaming, never dreaming. Never sleeping. Never awake. ”… we meant it for the best.” They made monsters. They made her.

Her body was aching, burning with tension. ”I’m a leaf on the wind –“ White faded to black, to gray, to crimson. She bolted upright, her hand clutching at her stomach and rib cage, sweat drenching her skin, leaving her shivering even in the ambient temperature of the passenger’s room which had been designated ‘hers’. Her hand pulled away, her gaze turning down, fingertips rubbing against each other, surprised somehow that they didn’t come away blossoming with red. No. No, it wouldn’t. Not her blood. Someone else’s. She curled inwards, her knees drawn up to her chest, her chin tucking down to her knees as she stared out into the hallway, letting the silence linger, drinking it in. Only it ever wasn’t really silent. She could hear the ship, the heart of Serenity, the breaths of her, the quiet drumming heartbeat that throbbed through her skin, and her shell and her frame. And even still, there were feet. People’s feet. Zoe’s, the emptiness of her other half stirring her from her sleep, drawing her upwards, drawing her to him, who had dreamed the dreams of flying and falling.

Others stirred. Others slept. Her brother slept, a restless but quiet sleep. He dreamed, of blue skies and green grass and laughter. She stirred, slipping from her cot, bare feet padding, drifting across the metal floor, past the divider and into the hall, and she let them lead her. To where, she wasn’t certain. Simply… somewhere other than here.

***History and Personality do not have to be overly long during the duration that the site is mostly invitation only; just enough to give the basic grasp of the character.[/justify]