Meredith (Highwater AU)

Basics

• Hair Dyed blue (cerulean), naturally black, cut very short into a messy pixie cut

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• Eyes Grey-Blue

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• Skin White

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• Height 6'0

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• Skinny

  Large
• Curvy

  Flat
• Boney

  Muscular
• Groomed

  Messy

Backstory

Born rather ironically as a noble amongst the other blue-bloods of the high-class district, Meredith was the rare spawn of a demon and a human, as her father, an Incubus, used magic to grant him and her mother the ability to have her at all. Her birth alone is considered a great taboo in Hell, however, which means despite her father’s high ranking in the human realm, the reason he stayed far from Hell’s grip was to escape the scrutiny he would have gotten just for returning with the knowledge that he’d produced a half-demon. Regardless, Lucien and Marjorie Owens did not go through the trouble required to even conceive a child of their blood with the intention of having a child to love and care for, they did it for the sake of having an heir, and so Meredith was born, meant to be a carbon copy of her parents not just in appearance, but in personality. But, of course, only one of those desires was met, and the other...well…

From the start, as soon as she could so much as speak, Meredith was a spitfire. Her parents were not affectionate people, not even with each other, and Meredith realised this rather quickly in her youth along with realising that it wasn’t exactly...normal once she noticed her peers getting treated much more like the children they were by their more caring parents. Instead of submitting to her parent’s desires like they wanted her to, to listen to their every word and to let them turn her into a cold husk just like they were, Meredith rebelled, commonly getting herself into trouble even before she’d reached her double-digits in age. She hated the lack of attention unless she was doing something they wanted her to do, the lack of affection, the refusal to let her even play with others in order to be a more “proper” definition of the lady they so desired her to be, so she fought back. Her parents certainly tried to quell her rebellion, to keep her contained (I’m not! Gonna go into it but they tried manipulating her), but nothing ever worked. Meredith wanted to follow her own path, to have control over her own life, but that simply was just not something her parents viewed as reasonable. It took Meredith overhearing her parents beginning to discuss the possibility of getting her a betrothed to finally realise there was no use staying where she was, knowing that her parents were only considering it so that they could find someone to “control” the daughter they weren’t able to control themselves. So, at thirteen, once everyone in the manor was asleep, Meredith, having spent little more than a few hours packing a small bag of necessities, climbed out of her room from the window and ran off into the night with little a plan of how she’d survive on the streets on her mind. She got the freedom she’d wanted, escaping the high-class district of Highwater and reaching the main village, but within a week was struggling to make it out on her own, out of food and hiding in alleys out of partial fear that her parents might have sent out people to find her. She’d cut her hair short within the week as a weak way to disguise her appearance, though there wasn’t much else she could do.

At the end of her first week away from her parents, weak from hunger, Meredith was approached by an older woman who’d spotted her creeping about the alleyways while out shopping. Hesitantly accepting her offer for shelter, knowing she had nothing else to lose, she followed the woman back to the tavern she ran on her own. The woman, Lorelei, fed the young girl while coaxing her to explain where she’d come from, and when Meredith hesitantly explained, fearing that the woman would cart her back to her parents, she was surprised when Lorelei seemed keener on helping her hide but eagerly allowed her to help. Lorelei allowed Meredith to live in the tavern, for a short time taking her in. Immensely grateful, Meredith offered to try and work for Lorelei to make it up to her, finding herself surprised when Lorelei refused, simply having done it as an act of kindness, something Meredith had been unused to considering the people she’d grown up around. For a month or so, Meredith lived in the tavern, but she felt bad, knowing well enough that she was costing the tavern-owner more money by being an extra person to care over, so she decided to find an ulterior option, which in turn led her to a street gang she’d overheard a few tavern-goers talking about. She was thirteen, after all, and knew well enough that getting a job or other lodging at her age outside of an orphanage would be much more difficult, and, besides, the idea of causing trouble enticed Meredith much more than a job like hunting or farming might have. And so, despite Lorelei’s concerns, Meredith joined the Razorbacks (known back then as The Cardozas, since back when she joined it was still just a street gang), getting a new home within that month, one she felt less guilty about inhabiting, despite the fact that she knew well enough what she’d be getting herself into by living there in the future.

It didn’t take long for Meredith to make friends, befriending two slightly older girls in particular; Adrien Ruel and the gang’s heir herself; Lucille Cardoza. They all grew close fast, especially Meredith and Lucille, the two’s similar personalities at the time melding together rather well. While Adrian was more the type to try and stop them from getting into trouble while also ending up getting herself dragged into it in the end, Meredith and Lucille were the ones to find trouble, or cause it if they so desired. It was joining The Cardozas that allowed Meredith to be the person she’d always wanted to be, causing trouble and playfully flirting with anyone she really wanted, back then not usually meaning anything from it. She had friends she could confide in, shocking considering the tendency to bottle things up she’d gotten due to how her parents had raised her, and a life she enjoyed despite the danger of it. From 13 to 17, Meredith spent four years of her life solidly happy and finally feeling as if she’d found her purpose, a place where she fit in. Things were good, or, well, they were until flirting with Lucille became less of a game later on.

See, another trait Meredith had unfortunately inherited from how her parents raised her was her difficulty in romance. For a long, long time, Meredith hadn’t been too sure if she could even feel it, not knowing for a good part of her childhood that friends could be affectionate with one another, let alone romantic partners. She never even saw her parents touch one another, after all, let alone speak to one another outside of their normally robotic tones of voice. So when the flirting Meredith always played off as a simple game, a joke of sorts, began to work, and Meredith began realising that she had feelings for her best friend, things got...a little complicated. Meredith was fifteen when she realised her feelings for her friend were more than platonic, and despite being nervous about even considering speaking up about them, she genuinely did feel as if she had some form of a chance. After all, they flirted often, spent time together, and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, so what was preventing their relationship from possibly evolving in the future? Well...multiple reasons.

One was the fact that Meredith refused to tell anyone about how she felt. Used to bottling her feelings up, Meredith might have vented or confided in Adrian or Lucille at times when she truly wanted their advice, but she was, in reality, terrible at opening up about anything. That included romantic feelings, especially when Meredith still wasn’t sure if she’d be good at being romantic thanks to her parents. Which was funny, since, by all means, not only was she a romantically inexperienced teenager, but she was also being affectionate with her friends already, she just had no way of knowing the difference between platonic and romantic affection. The other reason was...well...Lucille having feelings as well, just not for Meredith. And when Meredith found out about this and realised the person Lucille had been talking about wasn’t her, things grew rocky fast internally, not that she let anyone who wasn’t good at reading her ever notice. First off, her feelings didn’t fade as much as she tried to make them. For years, even when they’d faded substantially, they were always still there, flickering in the recesses of her heart. It made her feel terribly guilty, especially in the beginning when she found herself unconsciously growing jealous, and to try and distract herself (probably around...late 16 or 17) she began sleeping around as a way to not have to think about it, at least for a brief period of time. So started her trend of slipping out in the evenings or nights when she could, something that only continued after things only became worse less than a year later. And once she simply grew used to that, well, her prior hopes that she wouldn’t be like her parents and could experience the romance they seemingly couldn’t or didn’t want to experience slowly, but surely dissipated. Perhaps, she’d thought, she just wasn’t meant for it. After all, who could love something that couldn’t survive without frequent intimacy, right? Something stereotyped to not be capable of non-carnal love in the first place.

After the incident that resulted in Ludwig’s death occurred and Lucille slowly, but surely began shutting everyone around her (excluding Tess) out, and then after Meredith had to watch as the person she thought she knew completely began becoming more and more violent and cruel seemingly out of nowhere, Meredith couldn’t take it much more despite her attempts to sympathise with her friend, to understand why she was acting the way she was, and, to further hide any feelings, began tailing around with Amber, Lorelei’s daughter, in the village very often if she wasn’t busy doing her duties as Caporegime, considering the two had been friends since she’d first shown up there. So much so that when one soldier in The Razorbacks playfully teased her about having feelings for the smaller girl, and though she vehemently denied it at first, hating the presumption, she realised that by forcing herself to believe she did have feelings for her that, for a while, she’d be able to distract herself, she wouldn’t have to think about her tireless efforts to try and regain Lucille’s trust or about how her friendship with Adrian as well was slowly beginning to dissipate. So, coping in possibly the worst way possible, she allowed the rumours to continue and lied to herself. This did help in one thing, though, considering it helped Meredith try to feel some form of normalcy for a few years, during the final years of being a teenager. Or, well, it did until Amber’s ex decided to ruin everything.

At nineteen years old and at a high school party Meredith had no business being at (she’d tagged along with Amber to get in), while finally beginning to feel some sort of normalcy, beginning to finally experience, truly, what “normal” teenagers got to go through (You know, by normal meaning “teenagers who don’t have to beat people up for information or commit crimes as a job), things were ruined when she had to find out that her close friend’s boyfriend attempted to assault her, and upon getting her out of the party and to one of her parental figures (Gossamer), instead of heading home, Meredith, in an absolute blind rage, tracked him down and killed him herself. A part of her at the time, insisting she had to keep up with Lucille if she wanted any hope of rekindling anything with her, tried being brutal, tried being more violent than she was usually, though at the time, still unused to such brutal displays of violence, Meredith couldn’t get past breaking Drake’s fingers one-by-one before she couldn’t stomach it anymore, simply shooting him dead to get it over with. Despite knowing he had it coming, for days she couldn’t get the pain in his eyes out of her head, couldn’t, at the time, stomach who she’d started to become, though, of course, as work in the mafia got dirtier, as time passed, that too faded once she slowly but surely began growing more and more desensitised to it all. And as for her relationship with Lucille, though she did eventually manage to regain a form of civil friendship with the other woman, to the point where they were at least talking to one another and were playful with one another once more, she had no idea at the time of the distance that still sat between them, naively assuming things were back to normal again. Or, at least, close to normal.

Meredith’s facade of having feelings for Amber faded a few months after she met a new face in The Razorbacks, a full-blooded succubus named Vi. Around 21 at the time, she found herself befriending Vi rather quickly, the two’s similar personalities melding together rather well. So, of course, she had no issue bringing Vi along with her when she’d go out to spend time with Amber, introducing them and, unknowingly at the time, bringing them together. This, of course, bit her in the ass when only months later Vi went to Meredith for advice on how to ask Amber out, and, knowing it’d make them both happy, she, of course, offered what she could (though being romantically stunted made it difficult), and almost immediately, when any soldiers would ask about it, Meredith insisted that things simply didn’t work out with a shrug. Any condolences she got for it, however, only felt like she was being jabbed at with knives, both feeling guilty she’d let faked feelings continue for as long as they had while also having to once again face her actual feelings once again. But that was all kept bottled up, as was anything else that had troubled her for the prior six years. If only she knew, at the time, how unstable those bottles were getting. At 22, Rocky was brought into The Razorbacks, and, seeing a bit of herself in the child, Meredith grew to like her rather quickly, spending time with her if given the chance. That and her bumping into a certain beast in the woods on accident one night at 23, though that’s going into her current history.

Present Day

A bit before her 23rd birthday, Meredith met a beast named Niklenip in the forest while out drinking on her own, and she inevitably decided to bring it home with her, promising to get him a decent meal as well on the way. The two quickly befriended one another, Meredith enjoying their presence despite them likely externally looking like an odd duo, and their ability to work together was proven when Meredith helped Lucille and a few other Razorbacks have their revenge on Aether's group after they filed Rocky's horns in half, with Meredith, usually not as brutal as she makes herself out to be, being willing to severely mutilate the men before letting Niklenip eat both, a display of cruelty that, at nineteen, she likely would have grown sick over expressing. Though things seemed peaceful after that ordeal, the bottled up feelings she's kept under lock and key for the past 6+ years seemed to finally begin showing themselves, even if Meredith never truly wanted them to. It took an argument, a kidnapping, and Meredith and Lucille both nearly dying to finally push the two into attempting to repair what fragments of their past friendship were left, and with Meredith finally able to really move on, things, at the very least, seem the most stable they've been for the past six years, even if she still has work to do when it comes to broken bonds with certain others.