AMES, Briar Cheyenne

[briar cheyenne ames]

BRIAR CHEYENNE AMES

FULL NAME: Briar Cheyenne Ames.
NICKNAMES: Bri,
AGE: Twenty-five
GENDER: Female
SEXUALITY: Straight.
STATUS: Single
GROUP: Citizen.
GRADE: N/A.
MAJOR: N/A.
JOB OCCUPATION: Potter & Sculptor.

HAIR: Naturally she’s a blonde, but she does dye it darker sometimes since she feels like it’s less conspicuous when she’s a brunette. It’s on the longer side with a natural wave that she teases more when she’s going somewhere fancy.
EYES: Green.
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: The right side of her face, coming from her hairline, down her forehead, temple and off to her neck is a series of scars that she hides with her hair. There are burns on the top of her back. Others may be there, faint, but she doesn’t look at herself long enough to see them.
TATTOOS: None.
PIERCINGS: Just her ears once.
PLAY-BY: Elizabeth Olsen!

LIKES: dandelions, being up to her elbows in clay, Shinedown, sitting at her pottery wheel, having a bodyguard, running, secure buildings, starry nights, plush pillows, Japanese food, hypnotherapy, Netflix, speaking to people online, doing her laundry, cycling, Irish coffee, finishing a piece, chess, Thanksgiving, odd socks, spring cleaning, the smell of old books.
DISLIKES: running at night, feeling alone, open windows, nightmares, people seeing her scars, unplanned naps, discarded wet towels, lemon zest biscuits, feeling cold, sore feet, the silence, sirens, swimming pools, humid nights, key lime pie, her bodyguard having to interfere, sad books, people coming to her for advice, feeling selfish.
FEARS: Being kidnapped, losing mobility in her hands, other people’s feet..
SECRETS: She doesn’t consider her ordeal secret since it made primetime news, even if not everyone remembers or recognises her now. What is a secret though are the few lies she told in the aftermath. That her then bodyguard hadn’t been too lax in his post to notice what was happening. She also said that the youngest of the kidnappers had been nicer than he really was to her which saw him get a slightly relaxed prison sentence. Briar doesn’t know why she did either of these things, she just knows that she was so tired.
PERSONALITY: Briar is quiet and has a somewhat nervous disposition most of the time. She’s never recovered fully after the kidnapping. She’s wary of new people, and of the world in general now, but the one thing she never lost was her artistic side. Really it’s all she’s got left now and she’s at peace when she’s at her pottery wheel or up to her elbows in clay or sculpting. She still tries to be athletic like she used to be, but there are times when her anxiety gets the better of her. Her social life these days is mostly an online only existence since she can pretend to be someone else if she wants to, or she can keep people at a distance and be herself. Briar is scared easily, but she doesn’t want to stay that way. She’s clever, but held back by her fears these days. They dictate her life more than anything else and she hates it so much. She hates being reliant on her bodyguard, but the thought of being without him right now scares her even more than the thought of the monsters lurking in the city. She’s not in the least bit aggressive and can’t ever think of herself as a fighter, even if her dad did put her on self-defence classes after the kidnapping. The can of pepper spray in her bag is about as much as she could ever do herself. Briar is emotional and always has been. She can’t contain her emotions well, even if she’s not the best talker out there. When it comes to love, Briar has avoided it in recent years due to her baggage. She’s an old fashioned romantic though who likes a man who can make her smile with little things; like flowers and cute messages to start her day. She’s terrified to go back into the dating game just because of opening up and showing her scars – the physical, mental and emotional – to someone.

MOTHER: Connie Anne Ames, 52.
FATHER: Philip Kevin Ames, 56.
SIBLINGS: Grace Katrina Ames, 18.
OTHERS: Matt Scott Linford, 32, bodyguard.
PETS: Tweety – a canary!
HOMETOWN: Providence, Rhode Island.
HISTORY: Philip always wanted to be in a position of political power, and that didn’t change after he met Connie and they started their family. Connie was suited to being a politicians wife, and even more suited to being a governor’s wife when Philip was elected when Briar was eight. He won consecutive terms in the role, keeping the people of Rhode Island happy with the work he did, but it meant he was rarely around as often as his daughters would have liked him to be.

Briar wished there was more of her dad, but instead she was collected from school at the end of each day by a chauffeur who took her straight home, and Grace was subjected to the same when she was of school age, too. Their weekends saw them accompanied by hired bodyguards if they wanted to go anywhere and even family days out were usually a chance for photo ops or because it was time for these things, never a spontaneous trip to the park because the weather was nice and it was a Sunday. Philip was always focused on his work and doing what was best for the people who depended on him; people who could vote for him again.

Briar grew up quietly, but fairly popular. She kept her head down most of the time but she was the type of girl people just liked. Anyone she wanted to be close to were subject to background checks and vetting from the family security team. She was always artistic, but it was a local group where she started trying her hand at pottery, later moving on to play with sculpting where her art teacher gave her some encouragement to branch out in class from her usual sketches and paintings. When the time came to go to college, Briar opted to go to an art school in New York City.

Of course, her father insisted she go with a bodyguard. There had never been any successful attempts to harm any of the family, but there were always reports or near misses and he wasn’t going to risk someone getting to briar when she left home for the first time, especially since there was a lot of controversy in the office about him gaining his third term and the slander his opponent had thrown at him. Briar’s bodyguard was always several steps behind her, letting her live her life but keeping watch whenever some guy tried to turn the flirt on a little too much at the student hang outs or on the sports field. Briar had always been proud to run for her own health benefits and loved the feeling of the burn in her legs, when she was out jogging or cycling. Every morning she was out in the park running before classes started, and as always her bodyguard was behind her. She repeated the cycle in the evening and then dismissed him for the night when she locked and bolted her apartment door.

Until the night when her kidnappers struck. That night she knew her bodyguard wasn’t paying as much attention as he ought to. He had already mentioned a date the night before and she figured he was looking forward to her getting home and dismissing him at the end of her run. Still, Briar never expected anything to happen when she took the route she always took on a nicer day when the path through the trees wasn’t boggy or too muddy. One man jumped her and four more took care of her bodyguard who was further behind than he ought to have been. They bundled her into a van and drove for a long time after knocking her out when she tried to scream.
Briar came to and was tied to a burning hot radiator that had already started leaving the burns at the top of her back. The rest of the scars to the side of her face and neck came when she cried and begged. The men who took her wanted money, a lot of it, and it was national news that the daughter of Rhode Island’s governor had been kidnapped. They did the proof of life video, but one guy made sure to hurt her just enough in it that they could show how serious they were in their threats and message. For a week they held her captive, threatening to do unspeakable things to her even if her dad paid up with the ransom. Finally, what felt like an army of police and federal agents poured through the door and the men were taken and Briar rescued, though she was smaller, scarred and a wreck compared with the girl she had been a week earlier.

People expected so much from Briar. She had to give statements, answer questions, go through so much and she was just so tired. She couldn’t put the blame on her bodyguard, but he was moved on already. She didn’t know why she lied about the youngest kidnapper, but he had been the one who gave her water, who cleaned the blood from her face even if he gave her one of the scars that she was probably going to carry for life. The whole process was so exhausting that she dropped out of school and ended up spending her time hiding when she was in a courtroom or dealing with police and lawyers, or listening to her dad fretting over and over. She got a new bodyguard; Matt Linford who was her protection almost 24/7. She ended up moving back to a New York apartment and he had a room there, too with his own en suite and necessities so he could have some space without being too far from her should she freak out or need him at any moment.

Briar was never able to return to college. She never felt ready for it. Her life became dictated by fear and anxiety even with Matt around. The park was a huge trigger for her, and her apartment became a secure vault for the days when she was too scared to leave it. She focused instead on her art. Her dad paid for her to rent a small studio space not far from her apartment where she could sculpt and have a pottery wheel and kiln. Briar spent hours there and it was a haven for her to work in. At twenty-five, at least the courts and the media are out of her life now, but Briar still lives with the stress of the anxiety and the fear. She doesn’t have any real friends and her social life has become an online experience where she can hide behind a monitor and choose how much of herself she reveals. Briar longs to be over what happened, but the night still scares her, and the scars are not fading.

YOUR ALIAS: Kim.
RULE WORDS: kidnappedbykim.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: Under the wheels of a bus.
SAMPLE:

*insert lyrics here*

[kim]