VEGA, Ariadne Carmen

[ariadne carmen vega]

ARIADNE CARMEN VEGA

FULL NAME: Ariadne Carmen Vega.
NICKNAMES: Ari, Aria, Ria
AGE: twenty-six
GENDER: female
SEXUALITY: Straight.
STATUS: Single.
GROUP: Citizen.
GRADE: N/A.
MAJOR: N/A.
JOB OCCUPATION: SWAT Member.

HAIR: Brown, long, naturally curly. It’s often straightened and worn up as it’s easier for work that way.
EYES: Brown.
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: She has one on her foot from an accident involving dropping a glass when she was eleven.
TATTOOS: One small one on her rib. Foreign script that she doesn’t explain. It’s her secret.
PIERCINGS: Ears just once.
PLAY-BY: Adria Arjona!

LIKES: Dark chocolate, running, Pilates on her days off, cooking, spending time with her dad, Spanish food, visiting her family in Puerto Rico, white wine, strong rum, Netflix before bed, resistance bands, sandalwood, little black dresses, ghost stories, face masks, workout apps, making things interesting, playing pool, a good playlist, metallic nails, tropical scents.
DISLIKES: Romance novels, foaming hand soap, salmon, oversleeping, tassels, dry hair, macho men, sunburn, uncontrollable children, screaming parents, expensive presents that are only about the money, evil people, bullies, weekend construction, show offs, stiletto heels, overly sweet drinks, those short-tempered days.
FEARS: What would happen to her dad if something happened to her, cemeteries, snakes.
SECRETS: Ari cheated on a high school math test, but when the teacher pulled her up over it, the boy she got the answers from took the blame and claimed to be the cheater. He got a week’s worth of detention and she kept her A. He never did explain to her why he did it, though she asked countless times. She still thinks about it to this day, wondering what the hell it was all about.
PERSONALITY: Ariadne is fiercely independent, likes to prove she can do things for herself. However, she’s also compassionate enough that she will do things for others. In fact, her free time is often littered with favours to be filled and errands to run for her father. She’s athletic, finding sports a good way to burn off energy and any negative feelings that might cloud her mind; in her job they come too often and she can’t afford to let them stick around. She’s hardworking, feeling like she can’t just slack off because that would be disappointing her father and everything he had done for her. Ari understands the need for balance though, knowing that she needs that to be healthy and mentally well. She makes an effort to spend time on herself and her hobbies, especially with how taxing her job can be. She’s strong, sometimes forgetting that it is okay to let another person into her life and that she doesn’t have to be tough all the time. She enjoys a good challenge, and is forever pushing herself to run that next 10k faster or dismantle and reassemble her gear in a quicker time. Little things, but they make her day better when she achieves them. Ari has a short temper, but she does her best to keep control of it, and thinks the people who she calls friends already expect her little snappy comments when she’s in a bad mood or irritated. Ari is frugal preferring to save money where she can and not splurge too much on things that don’t really matter. That’s kind of a big deal for her in romantic relationships, too. She doesn’t want someone who will spend a small fortune of flowers that will only last half a week and jewellery that she’ll never wear. She prefers sentimentality in a relationship, choosing to be with someone who picks up on the little things and who will save the grand gestures for when they’ll mean the most to them both.

MOTHER: Maria Vega, deceased.
FATHER: Alejandro Miguel Vega, 54.
SIBLINGS: N/A.
OTHERS: N/A.
PETS: Isabella, Persian kitten!
HOMETOWN: Brooklyn, New York City.
HISTORY: Maria and Alejandro met in their native Puerto Rico when they were children, and they were inseparable their whole childhood. They married young, and ultimately came to New York chasing the promise of a better life. Maria was a doctor, and Alejandro a chemist. They loved their home, but they wanted more than their own upbringing for their future family. There was a lifestyle of corruption and temptation amidst the tropical island; Maria had lost a brother to it. Once settled in a modest apartment, they found themselves expecting their first child. Neither of them thought it would be their only child.

They were a happy trio, perfectly content for four years. Then it was a cold that came on after too many long shifts in the ER. It didn’t get any better, but worse. Maria knew well enough to know she needed to see another professional over her symptoms and the tests confirmed that her cold wasn’t just a cold. She had cancer. It had started somewhere in the nasopharyngeal region but had spread to her lymph nodes. They recommended an aggressive combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to attempt treatment. Over two years Ari watched her mother grow sicker, and have brief spells of good health where they could all go out as a family. Her father tried to explain what was happening to her, but when you’re so young you know that medicine is supposed to make a person better, so when mommy went for her medicine and came home to violently throw up it was confusing and scary. Unfortunately for Maria, her battle seemed to be one where she took two steps back for every step forward. Eventually she decided that she wanted no more treatment. She was knowledgeable enough to know that the cancer wasn’t being beaten. She didn’t want to waste away with chemo and have Ari’s remember her that way. It was a hard decision for Alejandro to accept from his wife, but ultimately he respected it. No one had ever been able to talk Maria out of something once her mind was set.

Ari lost her mother when she was seven years old. She had been taken out of school a lot for trips and days out, not realising that they were making memories before the chance would be gone forever. When Maria died Ari was given her locket, one she had worn since she herself was a little girl. For a while, Ari was lost and confused. Alejandro considered giving into pressure and going back home, but all Ari knew was New York and to throw her into another life would be far too much stress for a little girl. So they stayed in the city and slowly, piece by piece rebuilt their life. He went back to work, less hours now so that he was home for his daughter in the evenings. And Ari began to grow used to life without her mother. There were less dresses, more burnt dinners, but it became routine. It felt like a long time before they laughed again, but they did. Then soon after they danced around the living room with Ari standing on her dad’s feet. It wasn’t the same as before, but it was life and it was living and it was what Maria would have wanted for them both.

Alejandro never found another woman to settle down with. He tried dating again, but always ended things. “Your mother was my soulmate and you don’t replace your soulmate.” He’d tell Ari when she asked about the women he stopped calling. In a way, his romantic outlook made it so Ari wouldn’t settle. She wouldn’t be one of those girls who settled for a fumble in a backseat after the football game (though those did happen, just only with the right boys). She wanted the spark to be there, for there to be someone she could talk all night with when there was probably a million better things to be doing. Her dad’s stories of his romance in Puerto Rico inspired her to find her own love in the big bad world and hold onto it tight. She wasn’t afraid to meet some frogs along the way, but the point was that she had the hope so that she wouldn’t think some drunken mistake was the best decision on a college night out.

Ari made her way through sports. She had been encouraged to try her hand at them all by her dad who believed a physical outlet would be beneficial in the years to come. He was right. Being short tempered and having lost her mother when she was too young to really understand grief, Ari had moments when she felt like she could explode. Running helped, swimming helped and playing softball helped. In the end they also helped get her through college on an athletic scholarship. Her dad did have some money saved up for her going to school, but it wasn’t the fortune people seemed to imagine. Being a single parent, the money was tighter than most, even with an above average salary coming in. She studied physical therapy and minored in psychology. The day after graduation she joined the NYPD. Her father had hoped she would do something else, but much like her mother, Ari couldn’t be swayed once her mind was set to something.

She worked her ass off, made officer and then went for SWAT. Once there (giving her father even more grey hair) she became a staple member of the team, settling in with her other colleagues and figuring out how to balance work and play in the non-stop city. She moved back home after her dad had a minor car accident that saw him need a small operation on his knee. Doctors had been talking about doing something for years, but had kept putting it off since Alejandro insisted he could get around just fine. After that little bump though, the surgery was needed and he needed to be off his feet for a while before they could even look at starting physical therapy. Ari doesn’t mind though. It’s nice to hear him singing in the mornings when she’s made breakfast and he’s pretending like he cares about the stock market pages because she took sports.

YOUR ALIAS: Kim.
RULE WORDS: Kidnappedbykim.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: At the day spa.
SAMPLE:

Little did they…no.

[kim]