Piper Weston

Piper was made to believe her worth hinged on her military career, and when she lived a traumatic experience in her brother's life-threatening injury. She was discharged, and aimless, began dating around to fill the emptiness. She had twins that she didn't want, and left them with their father. She met Coal and entered a turbulent relationship, which developed them both as people and eventually smoothed out. She had a daughter with him and reconnected with one of her sons, Harvey.

Full History

Piper was born to a couple of military nuts, with her triplet brothers Max and Isaac. It was drilled into them from the beginning that their worth was entirely tied to their profession and the glory and success they would find within the military. Her parents themselves were apparently discharged, though for what exactly they never specified. The family environment was very unfriendly. Their parents, as it happened, didn't believe in positive reinforcement, and instead encouraged competition between their children. Piper had three older siblings aside from Max and Isaac, and was on awful terms with all of them. Specifically, she and Pheobe (the oldest) were at each other's throats constantly, being the only two girls. However, when it came to Max and Isaac, they all got along very well. Despite how their parents discouraged it, they acted as a team, always had each other to lean on during difficulty, and it probably made their older siblings jealous. 

As they were all well and truly brainwashed by their parents, they joined the military as soon as they were able, leaving highschool in order to serve. A few years in and a war kicked up. Piper doesn't enjoy thinking about this time of her life, and in fact has difficulty recalling a lot of it. The important part was Isaac stepping on a landmine. She would consider that the worst day of her life. She saw him, torn apart by the blast, and she was convinced for days that he was dead, even as the medics did everything in their power. Isaac was sent back to a hospital and both his siblings insisted on coming with. After an excruciating day-or-so wait, they were finally informed that Isaac was alive, but out cold, and would most likely be paralyzed from the waist down. They were allowed to see him. Max only stepped into the room for moments, excused himself to the restroom, and then never came back.

Piper stayed with Isaac as he awoke, stuck around long enough to see him get discharged, and assumed their parents would take care of him after. She felt she had to go back to the war. Unfortunately, she failed the psych eval and was not allowed back. Too ashamed to face her parents, she ran away like a coward.

She tried to live a normal life best she could, but was severely maladjusted to civilian life. She constantly felt inadequate because of her jobs, even though she had an easy enough time getting into a career as a personal trainer. Her parents, in the meantime, were trying to get in contact with her, but she felt too guilty to reach out to them. As a distraction, she kicked up a relationship with a celebrity that was in the area, a football player named Chester Gavin. They had a shallow relationship that lasted a couple months, until the guy got himself into a scandal and she left him. Unfortunately, a few months after they'd broken up, she realized she was pregnant. A runner up for the worst day of her life. Piper never wanted kids. She hated kids. But she could not bring herself to abort, it would break at her conscience. For the majority of the pregnancy, she planned to put them up for adoption as soon as they were born. However, as time went on she stewed, convincing herself that this was all Gavin's fault and that he needed to pay for it. So instead, when the twins were born, she took them to Gavin herself and made sure he felt bad about it.

The weeks following she was eaten by an angry guilt, and she hated herself for it. She finally got back into contact with her parents, and while they were disappointed in her for getting discharged, they said her current career wasn't completely unacceptable. And so she was under their thumb once again, and would stay there for a long time more.

There was also a blip in here where she got tangentially involved in a murder case, and Max tried to frame her as the murderer. They already hated each other beforehand, but Piper somehow found room in her heart to hate him even more after this.

She slowly adjusted to living in the city over the course of a couple years, and while she dated around occasionally, she was often too aggressive and ended up pushing her partners away in bursts of anger. She was lonely. She longed to connect with someone. It was around this time she met Coal Weston. And this one, this one was different. She did still struggle to control her anger issues, and they fought just as much as she had with others before him, but this time he didn't leave at the first sign of trouble. Their relationship was very, very rocky in the beginning, but each became more and more invested in making it work. Coal was flexible, and smart, and deeply compassionate, and Piper felt that there would be no one else like him in her life. If she let this one go, she'd never be happy with anyone else again. 

They were on the verge of breaking up several times, regardless. Coal finally declared that he wanted to make an effort not to fight anymore. Piper agreed. She still messed up a lot, because Piper lashed out without thinking a lot, and even though there were still times of heartache, they got better. They really did. Because of Coal, Piper grew more empathetic and patient as a person. He made her truly happy. They got married, in what might have been the happiest day of Piper's life. She and Coal got a cozy apartment together and she continued doing good work as a trainer. Every once in a while she would poke her nose in whatever case he was working on and throw her two cents in. Sometimes, it would even help him out, and that sure felt good. She also ended up befriending Coal's coworker, Wyatt Keyes, making him something of a family friend. Things were just comfortable. 

One night, Wyatt called her and admitted that he'd been approached by her sons. The two she'd given away as babies. They showed up at her door that same night, and she exploded. Coal ducked out on her, which caused her to yell after him, and being thoroughly frustrated and distressed, she hardly said a sentence to the boys before slamming the door in their faces. When the emotion wore off, she realized what she'd done, and felt awful. She admitted to Coal that she did think about those kids sometimes and he encouraged her to try patch things up, so that's what she did. She successfully rebuilt a relationship with one of them, Harvey, but the other, Derrien, has never forgiven her. 

Both have had uncomfortable visits from each set of parents. After Piper's parents visited, it completely upended her happy ending. They made her ashamed to have the life she had, and showed clear disapproval of Coal, and it set back her progress on her emotional health significantly. She almost tried picking another fight, but Coal, with his endless patience, refused to feed into it, and instead talked her down and through what had happened. Long story short, they came to the decision that her parents were not good for her, and she decided to cut them out of her life once more. Not out of guilt this time, but out of clarity.

Later down the road, she became pregnant again, by mistake, again. She and Coal didn't really want kids, they talked about it, and decided to give the baby up for adoption. But as time went on, Coal seemed to change his mind. Piper was not convinced, and they had many emotional talks about what to do. In the end, it was decided that they would keep the baby, and as soon as Piper laid eyes on their newborn daughter she knew it was the right choice. They named her Kenna, and though neither of them would have thought it, having a kid made them both incredibly happy.

Piper also reconnected with Isaac, after learning they had Wyatt as a mutual friend. It was awkward, at first, because he seemed to feel she'd left him, but both of them were better people than they had been back then, both of them had gotten away from their parents. Through Isaac, she reconnected with Pheobe, who similarly had become much more relaxed and kind over the many years. Piper had never dreamed of having a big, happy family, per se, but... it's nice.