Etienne

"Misery was my element, and nothing but what was miserable could approach me."

Appearance

Physical: Etienne has a petite and delicate build with subtle curves. Due to her round face and large eyes, she’s often mistaken for younger than she actually is. Has a skin tone best described as porcelain, and burns and bruises easily. Self-harm scars cluster around her shoulders and hips, with heavier scarring at her throat. There are perpetual dark circles under her eyes. Her hair is a dark, nearly-black, brown, reaching her waist in loose waves with sideswept bangs that brush her eyebrows.

Clothing: Etienne favors an almost all-black wardrobe with occasional white accents. Most of her outfits pair oversized, billowy tops--thick sweaters, breezy blouses, baggy t-shirts--with form-fitting bottoms--bodycon skirts, ruffled shorts, short A-lines--and her aesthetic sense ranges from dark academia to mall goth. Almost always wears thick chokers to hide the scars on her neck. She maintains an extensive collection of circle lenses that she swaps out on the daily--her real eye color is pale gray.

Personality

Etienne projects two different impressions--false and genuine. These facets swap depending on situation and comfort. When attempting to win over someone, Etienne almost always defaults to the false persona. But her true, more awkward, desperate, and languid personality always lurks under the surface. She finds the fakery of her bubbly façade draining.

Her false impression is one that Etienne has manufactured to be lovable and sympathetic. The doe-eyed innocence, the easily-amused and even temper, and the adaptability. Etienne carefully manipulates and shifts minor aspects of her presented self to better gel with various types of people, maintaining the core traits of trustable and naive. 

In actuality, Etienne finds social interaction very stressful and feigning extrovertedness an immense strain. She’s naturally blunt, inexpressive and actually makes a conscious effort to suppress many of her genuine emotions for fear of her reactions coming across as awkward. Etienne is incredibly cautious, even cynical, when it comes to the world and other people. She can never accept that someone might show her generosity or offer close friendship. In her mind, people only show her goodwill to get something in exchange for it.

Etienne is desperate for affection and connections, but doubts she’s worth it and is terrified of rejection. She locks on to anyone who she believes reciprocates, but is always on the verge of driving herself away because of her own self-doubt. She adores all she considers her close friends, always looking for any opportunity for intimacy, but also genuinely believes that everyone is looking for an opportunity cast her aside. Her fear can sometimes turn to irritation, making her lash out and then immediately regret it.

Etienne is far more comfortable around those she’s close to. She has a sarcastic, deadpan sense of humor that only emerges when she doesn’t fear coming across as abrasive, and a far easier, more subdued demeanor. Around friends, she worries less about her odd interests and genuine opinions making her a target for gossip or ridicule. 

She’s always paranoid about her reputation and is grateful for people who let her forget about that anxiety.

Abilities and Peculiarities

Etienne is an immortal human, a dead sinner resurrected by Heaven to serve eternal penance on Earth. She can neither die nor be killed, but this is the single advantage that she has over the average human. Her immortality has done her no favors--she doesn’t have inhuman strength or stamina, she’s not immune to disease, and her body is still very much destructible. She still bleeds and bruises, her bones break just as easily as they did before. She has slightly accelerated healing, but it’s far from instantaneous. 

The Heaven-bestowed immortality stuck Etienne in stasis. She hasn’t changed in appearance or constitution since the day it was bestowed, nor can she. No wounds she receives will leave scars, and all flesh, bone, muscle, and limb she loses will eventually grow back. Theoretically, her entire body can regenerate from nearly nothing. The angelic magic that keeps her immortal sustains the condition that she must live on.

The reason for Etienne’s resurrection was her suicide--in the eyes of Heaven, in other words, a most heinous sin. All immortals are sinners, and their eternal life is not reward, but punishment. In return for, as the angels see it, spiting God, such sinners are denied access to the heavenly kingdom and must cleanse the Earth of the physical manifestations of sin known as blights.

Immortals cannot receive or request any explicit help from Heaven or angels. There is commonly an angel instructed to keep watch over a group of immortals to ensure that they’re doing their duty who can be contacted for information and council, but that’s it. The one other help an immortal is given is a low-level holy weapon, an earthly object blessed with an angel’s touch. Etienne’s is the knife she used to kill herself.

Past

Hometown: unknown town, France

Childhood: Etienne lived alone with her mother, Cosette Lachapelle, a malignant narcissist. Her mother treated Etienne as an extension of herself--a piece of property, a display doll, a blank slate to project any and all unfulfilled goals and desires onto. Any attempts to venture outside her mother’s box and make her own identity were swiftly and cruelly cut down. Much of Etienne’s childhood was spent isolated from other children, devoted to studies and extracurriculars on her mother’s command. Even when doing all her mother asked of her, though, Etienne found the woman’s approval ever out of reach.

Adolescence: Etienne used college as an excuse to move both out of the house and out of the country--as far from her mother as she could manage. Under the dual pressures of academics and coping with the aftermath of her mother’s abuse, however, she crumbled from the stress in her sophomore year. Seeing a permanent solution as her only option, she committed suicide halfway through the spring semester. However, she was denied even death. Gifted and cursed with agelessness and immortality by the hand of the angel of death, Etienne joined the ranks of revived sinners in an indefinite purgatory, tasked with cleansing the earth of physical monsters of sin.

Finances: upper-middle class

Present 

Current location: Calles Sagradas, California

Currently living with: N/A, lives alone

Current situation:  Currently, Etienne balances classes, coursework, and an internship at a local hospital with adapting to her newly-granted immortality. Given little other help other than her holy weapon and obtuse advice, she spends most evenings wandering the city and slaying whatever blight happens to cross her path. It’s through these nightly wanderings that she’s met much of her current social circle. Despite her protests, a few of them have even stepped in to help her with her job.

Finances: stable

Other

• Etienne’s name wasn’t truly meant to be “hers”--her mother had always intended to have a son. Etienne being born a girl was, in her mother’s eyes, her first disappointment.
  • Out of spite, Cosette still gave Etienne the name she had intended for her potential son. 
• Was raised Catholic, but never could find it in herself to be particularly devout
  • Her shaky and conflicted faith was ever more weakened by her death and her subsequent encounters with angels
• Knows human anatomy like the back of her hand due to being on a pre-med track.
  • She likes to think that she could easily incapacitate an attacker by slicing the important tendons if it ever came to self-defense. Has never had an opportunity to test this theory.
• Can survive and heal from anything--even things that would kill a mortal human. Any damage received in a day will be healed with the next sunrise.
  • This extends to broken bones, substance abuse, surface wounds, etc. If the damage is particularly heavy, though, she’ll sometimes feel residual pain the next day--almost like a sort of hangover.
  • As a rule, Etienne still likes to avoid injury where she can--she might be able to heal from anything, but she’ll still be hit with the brunt of the pain
• Fluent in both English and French
• Has a preference for strawberries bordering on obsession--will eat literally anything with them in it
  • One shelf of the fridge is devoted to strawberry ramune alone.
• Experiences recurring dreams about bleeding to death on her bathroom floor--essentially, flashbacks to her death
• Has a moderately sized following on social media, where she mainly posts outfit of the day photos and heavily edited “pastel aesthetic” shots of local scenery
  • Her username is septicsugar_