Tatiana Yovenko

the basics

full name ♦ Tatiana Natali Yovenko
nicknames ♦ Tati, Tanya, Anya... the list goes on. These are mostly used by her family.
age ♦ twenty-four
birthday ♦ 4/28/1995
occupation ♦ Patient at Monroeville Hospital
school ♦ Monroeville Hospital
species ♦ Human
ability/power ♦ Spirit Physiology
how the ability works ♦ Essentially, Tatiana can turn herself into a spirit, and use all the traits that are typically associated with one. When she concentrates hard enough, she can separate herself from her body, which will remain in a deep, trance-like sleep that is impossible to wake her from until she returns. Her default state is invisible, but she can also shift so that she can be seen, though she will always remain partially transparent and it will be incredibly obvious that she’s not actually standing there. When in her spirit form, Tatiana is not bound to the typical rules of physicality, and can walk through walls, hover, and disappear from sight at will. She can also possess people when the mood takes her, though that requires a lot of concentration and a modicum of knowledge about the person.

When she turns herself into a ghost, Tati’s body is left behind wherever she was at the time. This means that her body is incredibly vulnerable. Her spirit form will also not snap back to her body when she wants to shift back, she must go and find her body and phase back into it. As a result of this, if her body is moved, she must look for it if she wants to shift back. Additionally, when her spirit has left her body, she is essentially comatose. If she goes a few days without returning to her body and caring for typical needs, her body will begin to die.

There are a few limitations to her power. One of these is that she cannot use it if a power blocker is around, and when she is in a spirit form, there is a certain range around a powerblocker that she will simply not be able to be move past. It’s like there’s an invisible wall that she can’t push through. She also cannot possess anybody who cannot be possessed for any reason, be it a religious affiliation or anything else. Mediums can also see her, as well as any spirits that may be lingering around, because they recognize her energy as spiritual, even if it is a little… off from what it should be. She is also incredibly susceptible to those who can manipulate or destroy souls/spirits, and lives in constant fear that someone’s going to try to exorcise her. Burning sage will also keep her soul at bay, though this doesn’t bother her when she’s not in spirit form.

gender ♦ Cis female | she/her/hers
sexuality ♦ Unsure

the appearance

face claim ♦ Alina Kovalenko
height and weight ♦ 5’9.75” | 135 lbs
identifying features ♦ Tati has a single piercing in both earlobes, but the feature that most people notice first is the dead or otherwise vacant look in her eyes, as well as the thick Russian accent that she's never been able to shake.
overall appearance ♦ Despite her generally quiet demeanor, Tati is a pretty hard woman to miss. She's incredibly tall and rail thin, with long red hair that she almost always keeps down around her face in its natural waves. That being said, she's not above braiding it back when she knows she's about to spend a lot of time in her spirit form. Her green eyes seem devoid of any kind of life, and she seems to have an ability to avoid blinking longer than most people do, for reasons unknown. When it comes to her clothing, she is rather specific and has more expensive tastes than one might expect. While she's not exactly a slave to fashion, she does like to look nice, if only because she feels that it's more unsettling when she does weird things. She vastly prefers jeans to skirts or dresses, particularly in Monroeville, and tends to favor muted colors as opposed to bold ones. 

the personality

likes ♦
-Music
-Birds
-Cotton
-Her ability
-Figuring out how people work
-Russian food
-Her red hair
-Colder climates
-Sharks
dislikes ♦
-Pink things
-Chocolate
-Ill-fitting clothes
-Felt Material
-Jewelry
-Hot, stuffy climates
-People calling her “Red”
-Cutting her hair
-Strong scents
strengths ♦
-Manipulative
-Cunning
-Her innocent appearance
-Reading people
weaknesses ♦
-Emotionally vacant
-Cruel
-Mentions of her family
-Directions
dreams ♦
-To get out of Monroeville and find her way back to her family.
-To not have to return to her Earthly body.
fears ♦
-Losing the power to shift into a spirit at will.
-Never seeing her mother again.
overall personality ♦ Most people don't expect Tati to be the way that she is based on appearance alone. She's quiet, avoids a lot of social situations, and isn't exactly the best at making new friends. Most of the time, you can find her in her own room, because she's switched into spirit form and is going for a little exploration, or she's up on the roof, looking out over the grounds and looking more like a ghost than a person. When it comes to emotions, she believes that part of her brain is damaged, because the only things that she's felt with any kind of intensity in her life are anger and betrayal. It's not that she doesn't like people so much as it is that she doesn't really know how to interact with them, because she can't always predict their behavior and actions in spite of being good at reading people in general.

Most of Tati's social experiences in the past several years have occurred through therapy sessions, and even then she hasn't really engaged much. When she is in her spirit form, she's much more chatty, and not even she really knows why this is. The few friends that she has managed to make, she has a tendency to manipulate in order to get what she wants, though nobody is really sure what it is that she wants. All in all, she feels very out of touch with the world around her, and it's the people who make her feel like she actually belongs that she has a tendency to attach herself to. 

the history

father ♦ Petyr Yovenko, 54, loan adjuster
mother ♦ Anastasiya Yovenko, 50, unemployed
siblings ♦
-Alexei Yovenko, 30, brother
-Yekaterina Yovenko, 28, sister
-Nikolai Yovenko, 27, brother
-Konstantine Yovenko, 25, brother
important people ♦
-Margarita Sokolov
-Andrea Darling
hometown ♦ Born in Rostov, Russia. Grew up in scattered cities throughout Europe and the United States
overall history ♦ TRIGGER WARNING: This history contains themes of political unrest, death, and murder

Rostov, Russia: 1995-2006

June 8th, 2006 is a day that you have never forgotten. It begins like any other, with you rubbing the sleep from your eyes in your bed, in the room that you share with your sister. Everything looks the same: pale purple wallpaper, a smattering of your own artwork taped to the wall. Everything in its place. No, there's one thing missing; the smell of fried eggs and sausage wafting under the door from downstairs. "Katya?" You call out, looking for your big sister. There's no answer, and you crane your neck, looking around your room for a familiar shock of red hair, but there's nobody in the room. With a pit in your stomach, you push yourself out of bed and make your way towards the door, looking for some sign of  your family. There are vague noises from Alexei's room, but nothing that drew you towards the door. Instead, you make your way downstairs, memorizing the way that the wooden railing felt under her fingertips. When you step into the kitchen, the first thing you notice is your mother, sitting at the table, an expression that looks something like relief, fear, and sadness etched into the fine lines on her face. It's another sight that you'll never be able to forget. 

"Mama? Who is that?" The flurry of Russian words fall from your lips as you struggle to understand the scene before you. 

"A friend, malyshka." Your mother doesn't look at you, instead looking down at the table as she calls for your big brother, Alexei, to take you from the room. It isn't until all five of you are sitting in the boys' room, curled up next to your biggest brother, that you start to ask questions. 

"Alexei, what's going on? Why does Mama look so sad?" Your wide, green eyes provide all the coaxing necessary for Alexei to drop the protective barrier he always seems to have around you. 

"Remember last year? When we moved from the middle of the city out towards the edge of it? This is like that, except... instead of moving from one part of the city to the other, we're going to be moving from one side of the world to the other. That man isn't from Russia, he just works here, and Papa... he turned in a corrupt politician, someone who was hurting people, and is going to provide the evidence that they need to make sure that he stays locked away instead of being allowed to continue. He did the right thing, but now some people have found out, and they're really mad. So we have to leave so he can keep us safe." Your head spins to the time of the footfalls outside of Alexei's door, and when it opens, your papa is standing there, looking somber. He tells you and your siblings to come with him, that it's time to go, and you can't even collect your journal from its special place behind a loose baseboard before you, Alyosha, Katya, Kolya, and Kostya are being swept into a navy blue car with tinted windows. You have nothing but the shoes on your feet, the clothes on your back, and the memories of the past eleven years of your life as you drive away from the little corner lot that you had just begun to feel comfortable calling home. As you drive down the street, you can't help but turn and take one last look at the beautiful, cream colored house with a garden you helped plant. Silently, you vow that one day you'll have a home just like that one, with a garden you helped coax to life. 

Inverness, Scotland: 2006-2007

March 2nd, 2007 feels just like any other day. You wake up in the cramped room that you share with all four of your siblings, rubbing the sleep from your eyes as you huddle farther under your blanket, trying to avoid the damp chill that settled into the room overnight. Russia was cold, but the cold was dry and bitter, this cold is the kind that sinks to your bones and cannot be shaken, not even by the thickest blanket, the warmest fire, or the longest hug from a sibling that loves you. 

You have just started to settle into your life here, and your English is finally getting better after so many hours of practicing with your siblings. You're all struggling; you were taught English in primary school, but you had never quite practiced the precise way that your lips would have to move over the letters, or mastered the grammar. How could you? You were so young, and English was not like any other language you had ever heard. So, when you moved to Scotland, you practiced. You tried. Your accent isn't perfect, it's still marred by the thick layer of your Russian roots that no amount of practice seems to be able to eradicate. You push yourself to your feet and silently make your way across the room, opening the door and closing it quietly behind you. The last thing that you want is to wake your siblings when you can tell that they haven't been getting the sleep that they need. 

You make your way to the bathroom, splashing water over your face before staring into the mirror, staring at your unblinking green eyes. "Heart, hut, barn, bun, cart, cut." You press your lips together in frustration, not being able to tell the difference in sound between the two words. Heart sounds like hut in your foreign mouth, it marks you different. "Feet," good. "F. Fet." Bad. Better than saying "feet" when you're trying to say "fit", but still bad. "Read. Red." Still wrong. It should be rid. "Scene." You swallow, hard, staring at your haggard reflection in the mirror, willing for the foreign language to work even though it feels wrong in your mouth. Like it doesn't belong there. "Seen." No. It should be sin. Not that it matters, you have a feeling you won't be staying here long anyway. 

"Look." It's hard to erase an entire accent, but there's a part of you that still wants to try. The heavy Russian that coats your words like the honey is a dead giveaway that you don't belong. "Loop." Loop? Did you just... was that right? "Should. Shooed." You want to cheer, to hoop and holler because you can differentiate between two sounds that wouldn't have sounded any different if you said them a month before. "Book. Boot." Your glee causes your voice to rise in pitch, and if you're not careful, you'll wake the entire house. You leave the bathroom a moment later, whispering the last set of words under your breath like a trophy that you didn't even know you were competing for.

Montreal, Canada: 2007-2008

You step off the plan in Montreal holding your sister's hand, despite the fact that you're 12 and she's 16. On some level you know this is not how a girl your age should act, but you're scared. When you flew over the city, you had been surprised—Montreal was big and bustling in a different, much more urban way than any other city you had lived in before. It's crowded. It's dense. It smells like rot and day old fish. Your new house must have been nice, once, but it was important to escape attention. Your taste, even as a child, is expensive, so a rundown, clapboard house with decrepit shutters and a roof that looks like it was about to sink in on itself. The house itself had an Earthy smell to it that no amount of an air freshener would be able to touch. You hated it. This was no place to spend Katya's birthday. Not that it seems to bother anybody else. 

You sit next to Katya on a rickety and uncomfortable wooden bench. "Happy birthday. I just wish it was spent somewhere nicer." 

"I don't care, and neither should you. We're alive and together. That's what matters." There was something hard in your sister's eyes as she stared forward, and you purse your lips. 

"But you're 16 now! Didn't you want even a cake? Oh! Like the ones in the bakery down the road in Rostov, covered in icing and topped with candied violets and-" 

"Would you just stop?" Your sister's voice is sharp and grating. "You're talking about cake when we don't even know if we can stay here." Katya stands, staring down at you with judgement in her eyes, and you feel like it's your mother's best look coming alive on your sister's face. "You're so selfish, Tatiana." 

Before Katya can say anything else, you're moving, pushing past her with tears in your eyes and a bitter taste in your mouth. Your sister has always been a harsh person, but you were trying to help, and you had hoped that her birthday would have put her in a better mood than she usually was in lately. You should have known better. You were like fire personified, always lively and ready for anything, but your sister? She was like wood. Rigid and hard and stuck in her ways, even if she wasn't always right. Especially then, actually. You rush from the room, twisting through unfamiliar corridors until you've pushed open a door that leads to an overgrown backyard. Your parents had one rule, one cardinal rule, that none of you go anywhere on your own, and you have never broken it. But you need to get out of the house, to get away from your overbearing and unreasonable older sister. You don't go far, just a few blocks to make sure you get far enough away that you know you can't be seen just by someone poking their head out the door and looking for you. 

You look up, wanting to see the building that you've chosen as your refuge. The first thing that strikes you is the largeness of it, and then it's the Byzantine arches that peak so far above your head that it makes you dizzy to try to see the top of it. You don't have time to wander inside, because you hear the panicked voice of your mother, and the angry voice of your father as they see you at the same time. You're going to get in trouble for this, but still, the beautiful monolith stretching far above your head is what sticks in your mind. 

Westbrook, Maine, United States: 2008-2011

The first time that you notice something is different about you, you're 14 years old. You're relaxing, reading on a sleepy Saturday while most of your siblings are still asleep in their beds. Not that you know for sure, you're all finally in a place where you each have your own room. It's quiet, still, as if not even the wind dares to distract you from what you're doing. And yet, you are distracted. It's like there is an impulse, something just under your skin urging you to try something that seems impossible—something that is impossible. Still, you have to try it, just in case. You set your book to the side and lay back in your bed, closing your eyes and letting your arms fall to your side. For a moment, nothing happens. Even the soft 'tick, tick, tick' of the clock in the hallway seems to fall away as you press against the barrier between reality and something darker. Something older. Your eyes open, and you sit up, disappointed to see that nothing has changed. Reaching up, you move to run tour hand through your hair, but you see something in the periphery. A pale hand. Your pale hand, laying on your bed despite the fact that it should be in your hair. You leap off your bed and turn, everything coming in slow motion as you stare down at you laying there, with your eyes still closed.

"Wh- what?!" Confusion races through you, and you don't know what to do, or to think. You look down at yourself, but there's nothing there for you to see, and you have no idea what to even do next. "Mama!" You call out, but you aren't even sure if they can hear you, and you know for a fact they will probably not be able to see you. Biting down on your lip, you look over at your body, lying there so peacefully, so serenely. What do you even do? How do you get back? Are... Are you dead? The questions whirl around in your mind like a tornado, but you're coming up blank on the answers. You don't know what to think. You don't know what to do. 

"Tanya?" The soothing sound of your mother's voice hits you, and you turn to look at the doorway. Standing there, with wide eyes and looking directly at you, not your body on the bed, is your mother. 

"Mama... what's going on?" The Russian falls from your lips in a flurry, and it becomes apparent to the way that your mother is looking at you that she knows all too well what is happening. 

"Oh... malyshka, sit down, honey. I have a lot to tell you."

New Orleans, Louisiana, United States: 2011-Present

Margarita Sokolov is a girl with blonde, curly hair and blue eyes that you honestly hate. Her thick, Russian accent reminds you of home, and somehow makes her exotic when it had always been used like a weapon with you before. And yet, be it because of the Russian accent or the way that she actually makes an effort to talk to you, when you've been nothing if not reclusive in the past few years, you try to be her friend. Speaking Russian with her feels normal, natural even, and you're surprised to find that she actually has been to some of the places that you have been. Over time, you even come to confide in her your little trick: that you can leave your body behind and walk the Earth the way that a spirit can. 

"What? Can you show me?" You agree, even though you know that you're not supposed to, and shift out of your body to become one with the spirit world. You stand there, a pale and transparent image of your Earthly self, and Margarita gawks at you. "What else can you do?" 

"Walk through walls, fly, possess things if I concentrate hard enough." A note of pride slips into your voice, and Margarita hears it. 

"Can you travel with it? How far?" Her head tilts to the side. 

"I'm not really sure." You had never really thought about it, and so when Margarita suggests that you should try it, you agree without much of a second thought. You drift for an hour, and then two, before deciding that you should make your way back to the lake where you had left your friend and your body. When you get there, however, you notice two things: the dimming light of a setting sun, and the impression in the grass where your body used to be laying. 

For hours, you search for your friend and the body that she's stolen from you. You make your way through the reeds by the lake, you make your way to her home. It isn't until you think to search the little cottage that her family owns that you find her, sitting with your body thrown over the couch. You don't even think to ask questions, the moment you see her you feel like you're seeing red, and you're consumed with the desire to hurt her the way that she has hurt you. Already you can feel the hours of neglect, the way that your body has weathered its time without food or water, and it's starting to effect you in a way that you hadn't anticipated. So, you concentrate with all your might, and just as she's about to scream, you seize control of her body, turning her into a little puppet. 

Without thinking twice about it, you pick up your own body and set it gently by the entrance to a scum filled lake, before turning towards it and taking one step in, and then another. You hear something in the water, and you can see the shimmering eyes of the alligators that you are sure live here. A smile curls over your face as you take another step forward, feeling Margarita's skin begin to prickle with the fear and inevitability of what is about to happen to her. Another step, a swish of water coming towards you. 

You feel the alligator before hear it, locking its jaws around Margarita's torso, and that is the last thing that you allow yourself to feel as you release her body and float back to the shore, re-entering your own body. You stand by the shore, waiting until any sounds of thrashing cease, before you turn and walk back towards home. 

Eventually, you break and tell your mother. She will understand, you think, she was the one who told you about your power in the first place. She was the one who helped your siblings. Instead, there is only sorrow and fear in her eyes when you tell her that you had your friend fling herself to a group of hungry alligators. That night, the men in the white clothes come for you. You're screaming, trying to phase out of your body even as they try to take you away, but it doesn't work. That alone perplexes you; who are these people that you cannot change your form? Something sharp pinches the side of your neck, and the world goes dark before you can even think about it for any longer. 

When you wake up, you're in a sterile room, so white that it hurts your eyes and smelling faintly of bleach. It isn't until later that everything is explained to you. You're in a place called Monroeville, a hospital for those who can't control their powers, or for those who are dangerous. You ask which category you're in, but nobody explains it to you. That means you're in the second category. After a few days, they let you start to be around other people, once you've "acclimated". It's in the cafeteria, while you're staring at a pile of something that looks more artificial than real that you meet Andrea Darling. 

She's nice to you, she listens, and she doesn't recoil when you tell her what you've done. Unlike your mother, she understands why you were driven to do what you did, and the understanding alone makes you want to throw yourself into her arms and cry. 

Three years later, however, you're crying for a different reason. Andrea's been released, and you're saying your goodbyes, no matter how hard it is to choke them out. You cradle one of her sweaters in your arms, breathing in the scent of contraband tobacco and bubblegum, two things that don't sound like they should go together but somehow do. 

"I'll get out someday, soon. I promise. Then we can be together." The sentence is broken up by the tears that threaten to fill your throat. 

"Soon, we'll be together again soon." Andrea squeezes your hand, and leaves you behind, walking out into the free world. You keep repeating the words over and over in your mind, and you think that maybe, just maybe, you'll eventually stop hearing the dismissive tone that she uses. 

the role player

alias ♦ Sara
age ♦ 25
pronouns ♦ she/her
code ♦ ADMIN EDIT
other characters ♦ oh god so many I have a problem send help