[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]Recollections, Who Is Eleanor Black (Previous)[/b][/color]
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[hider=Charlie Martin]

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[i]“Look, I won’t let anyone tell me what I can’t do.”[/i]
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[sub]Charlotte “Charlie” Martin
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She/They   [b]|[/b]   22   [b]|[/b]   Afro-British  [b]|[/b]   5’6”  [b]|[/b]   189lb     
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Tireless
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[color=MediumSlateBlue]Skills & Talents[/color][/sub]
[i]"I ain’t naturally gifted, but hard work is a talent, right?”[/i]
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[sub][color=MediumSlateBlue][b]Hard Worker ⫻[/b][/color] Charlie’s strongest talent. She’s not naturally good at much but she works herself to the bone at anything she focuses on. She focuses all her energy into whatever it is and rarely gives up.

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]Keeping Calm  ⫻[/b][/color] As a nursing associate, training to be a full nurse, Charlie has dealt with her fair share of stress and emergencies. She can keep calm and focused in most situations. 

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]First Aid  ⫻[/b][/color] Charlie is trained in first aid, something she did as a teenager that’s handy for her job. 
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[/cell][cell][sub][color=MediumSlateBlue][b] Appearance[/b][/color][/sub]
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[i]"Try working twelve hour shifts without getting dark bags under your eyes."[/i]

[indent]Charlie would describe herself as average if asked. She’s downplaying her looks, but it’s difficult not to when she grew up with an objectively stunning mum. She stands just a bit taller than average, with a pear shaped body where most of her weight goes towards her hips and thighs. She’s fit thanks to a demanding job which has her on her feet most of the day, and healthier eating cause vegetables are just cheaper. 

Overall Charlie takes more after her dad than her mum, inheriting his coily hair and dark brown eyes. Her hair falls to her shoulders and she likes to style it in various ways - buns, half up half down, braids and protective hairstyles that she learned from her grandmother (but hasn’t had time to do in a while). When she’s not feeling like putting in the effort she’ll normally just pull it back into a simple ponytail or bun, especially for work. Her hair frames a soft, heart shaped face. She has thick, slightly darker lips and a wide, relatively undefined nose. Her dark eyes are always brimming with energy even though she has dark bags under them more often than not from lack of sleep. Her warm brown skin doesn’t have many marks, just a few scars here and there, and she only has the most basic of lobe piercings. 

Style wise, Charlie wears a variety of clothes. She isn’t afraid to show off some skin, often found in crop tops with skinny jeans or leggings. She wears a mixture of colours - sometimes more low key with just black and denim, sometimes brighter colours. She especially likes reds, yellows and oranges and owns a lot of patterned tops in those colours. She normally has at least a light coating of makeup on, putting in more effort with eyeliner and brighter lip colours when she has the time. 

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[/cell][/row][/table][sub][color=MediumSlateBlue][b] Psychology[/b][/color][/sub]
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[i]"Yeah, I worked night shift last night, should I be tired? But there’s so much to do, how can I just sleep?"[/i]

[INDENT][color=MediumSlateBlue][b]MAIN GOAL  ⫻[/b] [/color] Charlie’s main goal is to become a qualified nurse. Her secondary goal is to make enough to support herself and her dad so he can work less… but that’s much more far fetched.

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]PHILOSOPHY  ⫻[/b][/color] Charlie believes in hard work and not giving up - with enough effort you can get where you want to be, even if you don’t have the natural talent. Even if you have to push yourself past your limit you should to reach your goals.

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]SECRETS  ⫻[/b][/color] Her resentment towards her mum for leaving, and for her dad for being too stubborn to compromise. She’s resentful that her mum barely made an effort to see her, but she’s repressed the feeling so much she hardly even accepts it. She also struggles with inferiority towards her mum and her talents, something she’d never tell anyone. She also has a newly discovered fear of flying. 

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]SEXUALITY  ⫻[/b][/color] Pan. Charlie figured out her attraction isn’t really affected by gender in late highschool, and has gotten with various people. She hasn’t had a serious relationship, though.

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]FEARS  ⫻[/b][/color] Abandonment. Though she pretended everything was fine, Charlie felt abandoned by her mum at a young age. She clings onto the infrequent relationship they have left and fears it happening in other relationships.  

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]WHO IS ELEANOR BLACK TO YOU?  ⫻[/b][/color] Eleanor Black is Charlie’s mother. She is very much a hands off parent, and not the custodial one of Charlie . They saw each other about four times a year from when Charlie turned 5. Nonetheless, Charlie is very attached to her.

[color=MediumSlateBlue][b]FLAWS  ⫻[/b][/color] Charlie has a bad habit of completely ignoring her own needs in favour of others. Mostly just because she doesn’t pay attention to herself, and she’s gotten a bit used to it. She just sometimes kinda forgets to look after herself too. She is almost too hard working and just doesn’t know when to give herself a break. Her seemingly constant energy and socialness can often be annoying, especially to introverts. She can be a [i]lot[/i]. Also she tends to cover up her negative feelings, completely disregarding them and forcing herself to be positive about it all. She can also be pretty stubborn and headstrong.
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[color=MediumSlateBlue][sub][b] Backstory[/b][/sub][/color]
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[i]"Thought I had a pretty standard life till my mum fucking disappeared."[/i]

[indent]Charlie’s story starts with her parents - Eleanor Black and Andre Martin. They were opposites in many ways, with Eleanor being a loud, energetic artist and Andre a hard working nurse who liked to keep to himself. They met by chance when Eleanor ended up in the hospital where Andre worked in Newcastle. Their connection sparked instantly and they started dating a few weeks after Eleanor was discharged. 

Just over half a year later Eleanor found out she was pregnant. After fighting, crying and making up they decided to keep the baby and to marry - it seemed the best idea for their future, unborn child. That was how Charlie came into the world. At first life was happy, if not perfect. It was difficult for the newlyweds to support themselves and a new baby off just a nurse’s salary and what Eleanor made from selling art. But they made it work. 

It didn’t last. Charlie was only four when her parents started fighting every week, and five when they started the process of a divorce. Her mother didn’t want to be tied down to one place. She’d been in an artistic slump since Charlie was born and she needed to see the world to help with that. Andre stubbornly refused to move - Charlie was still young, and they’d built a life here. They were both too different. They didn’t get anywhere so they divorced. 

Eleanor moved out of their small home, staying in Newcastle for only a month before jetting away. Andre had full custody of Charlie at Eleanor’s request, though Eleanor had visiting rights. Young as she was, Charlie couldn’t understand why her mum was abandoning her. It didn’t take long for the happy memories of the three of them to seem like nothing more than a dream.

From then on Charlie saw her mum maybe four times a year at most, because Eleanor very quickly became an incredibly successful and prolific artist. She started school without her there to see her off. Her dad tried his hardest to take her from and to school, to fill in the shoes of two parents at once but it was difficult when his job had such long, awkwardly timed hours. There were weeks when she hardly saw him either, staying with her grandmother (his mother) who thankfully lived in the area. From then on she was self-sufficient because she saw how much her dad struggled. She resented, even hated, her mum for not being there.

The rest of Charlie’s childhood itself was relatively normal aside from the divorce, in her eyes. She went to school, got average grades and made a few alright friends. As she got older she pushed the resentment she had towards her mum deep down, somewhere she wouldn’t touch, and kept moving forward with her life. She just couldn’t hate her. Young as she was Charlie was very attached to her mum, and any anger she had about the situation was directed at her dad - the one always there.

Eleanor was there for some of Charlie’s important moments - when her exam grades came out, comforting Charlie over her first breakup, when she finished highschool. She just wasn’t there for all of them. But that was fine. Charlie had her dad after all. 

She looked forward to whenever her mum would visit, listening to her amazing tales about the places she’d visited and looking at her paintings in awe. Spending time with Eleanor was always fun, a breath of fresh air from the monotony of her life with a somewhat boring dad (that she loved much more than her mum). She had so much to talk about, telling Charlie about a world she hadn’t seen because they couldn’t afford to travel. Sometimes Eleanor would even talk about her hometown, a swamp filled place so different from the grey streets of Newcastle. Charlie would ask about her family too, but Eleanor would always sidestep the question. It wasn’t a pleasant place to visit, she said, but maybe I’ll take you one day.

Of course she didn’t, because Eleanor only spent a week at a time with Charlie before jetting off. Charlie continued through life and finished highschool. She applied for nursing courses at University, wanting to follow in her dad’s footsteps. He took her to all the university open days, helped with the forms and applications. When Charlie didn’t get into any because her grades weren’t good enough he comforted her. Eleanor just told her it wasn’t meant to be over the phone. She just didn’t have the talent.

Charlie didn’t believe that. She didn’t have the natural talent for what she wanted to do like Eleanor had, but she had the work ethic - her dad had taught her that, and the energy she’d inherited from Eleanor allowed her to push herself to work harder than ever. So she found an alternative route, getting a job as a nursing associate at the same hospital Andre worked at. It was hard, but rewarding. Charlie loved working with people.

At this point Charlie hadn’t seen Eleanor since she was in highschool - she’d almost given up on seeing her again, assuming her mum was just too busy with her burgeoning fame. When she got a text that Eleanor was visiting the UK in a month, and would be staying a few weeks, she was over the moon. She rushed to get a bit of time off work, helping Eleanor find a place to stay and planning what they could do. It had been almost two years since she’d last seen her… she couldn’t wait to hear all of Eleanor’s stories, to hug her and tell all her own. She hoped Eleanor was proud of her. 

When Charlie opened the door expecting her mum she found a stranger. She must have the wrong, Charlie thought, before the stranger greeted her as if they knew each other. The stranger didn’t even ask before walking right into her home, as if she’d been there plenty of times before. Charlie followed awkwardly, not sure whether to kick the woman out or call the police. But she found her dad talking to her amicably - Sophia was her name. A friend of his, then? But Charlie had never heard of or seen this woman and it wasn’t like Andre could just sneak someone into their house. Then he said something that completely confused her.

“Charlie, why don’t you get your mum a cup of tea?” 

What the fuck. Charlie was certain she was hallucinating, it must be from overworking and not sleeping. Her dad was here treating this Sophia - this stranger - as someone he knew well, and as her mum. Charlie had never seen this person before. She spent the next week feeling as if she wasn’t there, relieved when Sophia left. But with her leaving Charlie was left with a feeling of emptiness and disconcertment. Where was her real mum, Eleanor Black? How come her dad thought Sophia was her mum, and Sophia was somehow texting from Eleanor’s phone. 

In a fit of what felt like madness Charlie dug through her dads files for her birth certificate. It had two names on it - Andre Martin, and Sophia Blake. Then she turned to the internet, because her mum was a well known artist. But every single painting she’d done, every gallery and article about her, was attributed to Sophia. There wasn’t a sign of Eleanor Black anywhere. It was as if she’d just vanished and only Charlie remembered her. She’d never felt so unsettled. She tried talking to her dad, but all she got in return was concern that she wasn’t looking after herself. 

Even her dad, the man who had both loved and hated Eleanor, didn’t remember her.

Charlie tried to put it to the back of her mind for a couple of months, working as if nothing had happened and pretending everything was ok. But it was always at the back of her mind, a niggling fear and horrible feeling that her entire life had been a lie. It just didn’t make sense. She checked online semi-regularly just in case something new came up - and it did. A whole forum of people looking for her mum… Well, looking for someone called Eleanor Black. Everyone’s stories were wildly different. It was as if Eleanor had been so many different people… Charlie couldn’t quite believe it. Must be a prank. But she kept reading because there were similarities. The fact that Eleanor Black was from Quintin, Louisiana for one. Her mum had told her about that town, the place she was born, but had never given any details. 

If people were going to Quintin to find out what had happened, then she had to as well. 

She scraped together her savings, took long term leave from work and got on the next plane that got her as close to Quintin as possible.[/indent]


[sub][color=MediumSlateBlue][b] Paranormal-Abilities[/b][/color][/sub]
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[i]"Nah, you’re gonna have to show me proof of that. Magic ain’t real."[/i]

[indent]Charlie is blind.
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[sup][color=MediumSlateBlue][b] Other[/b][/color][/sup]
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[i]"I've always wanted to go to America, but I thought it would be with my mum, not like... this."[/i]

[indent]This was Charlie’s first time leaving the country, before the farthest she’d gone was London once. It was also her first time on a plane. She didn’t like the experience.[/INDENT]
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