Winter Rowley

[Winter Rowley]

TRIGGER WARNING
drug use and an overdose are described in several parts of this application, in detail, particularly in the personality and history sections.

The Basics

Name: Winter Jay Rowley¹
Nicknames: He goes by his surname, Rowley, exclusively, unless he is with family or someone he knows very well. He occasionally answered to Win or Winnie in childhood; after he reached adolescence, the constant association with Winnie the Pooh simply became too much to, well, bear².
Age: 24 (January 31, 1990)
Orientation: Pansexual
Desired Rank/Job: Local / Third Shift Employee at the Pilot Ridge SuperKwik Food & Fuel Mart
Powers: Shapeshifting. Rowley has the ability to transform into a fully-grown American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos). He is able to remain in crow form for up to an hour at a time, although he becomes noticeably fatigued after 30-45 minutes. He can spend up to three hours as a crow per day before his body becomes too exhausted to maintain a bird’s shape; generally, he is able to shift again after a good night’s sleep, although the process of shifting might be more painful than usual. Side effects include joint pain (particularly around the shoulders and arms), pain during shifting, fatigue, slight difficulties with depth perception, and a handful of peculiar crow mannerisms that have slowly but surely become fixtures of his human personality. He is unable to shift anything other than his own body (clothes, contacts, etc.) which can result in him being completely naked and half-blind at awkward places and/or times.
Play By: Ezra Miller

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¹ Rowley is pronounced RAOW-lee; the "row" rhymes with "cow."
² I am the worst.

The Details

Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Dark brown
Any Piercings? N/A
Any Tattoos? N/A
Any Scars? One notable scar on the inside of his right elbow, from an abscess that did not heal properly.
General Appearance:
Winter Rowley looks—in a word—tired.

It is most apparent in his face: his almond-shaped dark brown eyes are heavily lidded and frequently framed with red, although this does little to dull their intensity. Likewise, his hair, which is kept short and yet still manages to appear wildly unkempt at the best of times, is such a dark shade of brown that it is frequently mistaken for black unless it is seen under direct sunlight. Upon close examination, a small handful of premature silver flecks can be seen around his temples. His nose is angular, with a bridge that widens near the middle and ends with an upturned, distinctive point. His lips are naturally pink and constantly chapped. The chiseled prominence of his cheekbones causes his face to look more hollow than it truly is; like the wide, square strength of his jaw, they only serve to emphasize his thinness. His skin is warm in tone, although lack of sun exposure has made it pale with a subtle yellow cast. This frequently inspires well-meaning individuals to ask him if he is ill, which he finds (as he does so many things) highly annoying.

He is rather tall—6’1” at last measure—although the lazy, defensive hunch of his shoulders shortens him an inch or two. He is narrow in build and weighs exactly 155 pounds, with not even an ounce left over. His sense of “style” consists of the same worn black hooded sweatshirt paired with a dark-colored t-shirt and jeans, even in summer. Otherwise, he is generally seen in his work uniform—scuffed black shoes, black pants, and a black collared shirt with bright red detailing on the sleeves and a SuperKwik logo plastered on the front left side of his chest. He owns glasses (rounded rectangular lenses with delicate silver frames) but hardly ever wears them, preferring to use contacts instead.

His voice is a soft-spoken baritone, although he ensures that he is heard if he wants to be. He smells faintly of cigarette smoke all the time.

As a crow, Rowley is thin and sleek and covered in glossy, iridescent black feathers. He has beady black eyes, scaly black feet with talons a half-inch long, and a slightly curved black beak. He is easily distinguished from a raven by the fanned shape of his tail feathers, and has a wingspan of thirty-six inches.
Personality:
Rowley’s aloof, introverted nature can make him seem hard to approach, even at the best of times. He is intensely private, and is loath to share his thoughts in detail, even with people he knows well. Contrary to popular belief, he does enjoy listening; he is a good, attentive listener, although his default expression (an uninviting mix of exasperation, fatigue, and boredom) can dissuade some shy individuals from striking up a conversation with him at all.

Those precious few individuals who have become familiar with the person under that apathetic exterior—whether by willpower or by accident—will tell you, often emphatically, that Winter Rowley is highly intelligent. He has a mind like a diamond: rare and breathtaking and objectively impressive, full of hard edges and cold, brilliant fire. He is highly analytical, and excels at things that require him to plan many steps ahead, such as chess (which he has a deep fondness for). He is observant and experienced and very well-read. He has an insatiable desire to learn, which seems to be in direct opposition to his overwhelmingly poor history with formal education. Indeed, the idea that Rowley has any measure of intelligence surprises many people and positively infuriates others, for he does not outwardly display any intellectual motivation whatsoever. He seems to be permanently labeled by the rest of the world as an underachiever: someone who might have been extraordinary, if he’d had better grades and hadn’t participated in unabashedly delinquent behavior. In other words, “wasted potential”—a state-of-the-art creation that someone took great pains to design but carelessly forgot to fuel.

He is funny, in that particular way that only highly intelligent individuals can be. His wit, like his mind, is sharp, and he is a master of deadpan humor and well-timed, unexpected quips. It is one of the tentative ways by which he attempts to connect with other people, for he enjoys making them laugh; it serves as a much needed boost to his self-esteem, which hinges almost entirely on the opinion of others. He is driven in social situations by a quiet, desperate need to be accepted, although he resents this in himself even as he acts upon it, and would never admit to it out loud.

He is independent by necessity and, by that same token, spiteful and rebellious toward anyone or anything he perceives as a threat to his autonomy. He does not like to be told what to do, even if it is good advice; similarly, he tries to refrain from telling others what to do, for he finds unwelcome advice to be tasteless and annoying. The exceptions to this rule are substance abuse and underage smoking or drinking, which he will discourage at every turn. Otherwise, he prefers to let people discover their own path—just as he prefers to discover his—and will give his opinion on a matter only when asked (and even then, it is likely to be vague and ambivalent).

Despite the fact that he is often reluctant to intervene in matters that are not explicitly his own, he is fiercely protective of the people he loves. When he cares, he cares deeply, although it is the quiet sort of caring that does not need to announce itself in order to be genuine—it is acted rather than vocalized. This can cause some degree of confusion, for it is possible that Rowley will care for someone and they will be entirely unaware of the depth of his affection. Additionally, his low self-esteem causes him to be quick to resort to self-sacrifice; if he can find a way to take the fall for a person he cares about, he will almost always do so, for he believes that others find him so reprehensible already that no one will look twice.

Rowley’s ability, while not necessarily overwhelmingly spectacular or rare, has always been a natural and comfortable extension of his human personality. He shifts regularly, and identifies just as strongly with his crow form as he does with the form in which he was born. Over the years, a significant overlap of traits has developed. The most obvious of these is Rowley’s particular way of organizing things. Although he is not especially neat or hygienic, and might not appear at first glance to have any semblance of organization at all, he is highly meticulous about how his things are stored. Everything has a place, and those places are generally unexpected and mind-boggling; he frequently caches small objects in hollowed-out books, empty jars, and plastic containers from the local dollar store. No two important things are stored together, as a matter of security. This peculiarity also extends to his person, where he stores candies and acorns and coins and keys spread out over several pockets. As counterproductive as this may seem to the observer, it should be noted that Rowley hardly ever loses anything—truly, almost never—and is quite functional and happy in his methodical madness. Other symptoms of his “crowdom” include more subtle things, like the way he picks at his food, or the characteristic manner in which he tilts his head while he is deep in thought.

The final aspect of Winter Rowley, and also the one about which most people feel entitled to judge and gossip and speculate, is the substance use disorder he has struggled with for the better part of the past decade. While it cannot fairly or logically be claimed that chronic illnesses are personality traits, they do, inevitably, have effects on body and mind. So, too, did Rowley’s recreational use of prescription opioids grow into a mental and physical dependence that has controlled his life in several distinct periods and for years at a time. In his own mind, he believes that he is more likeable, more sociable, and far happier when he is on drugs. In his abstinence, he is moody, irritable, and anxious, for he craves drug-induced euphoria almost constantly, and finds that the reality of his life—his “wasted potential”—is nearly too overwhelming to bear. He is notably and irrationally defensive, and has been known to grossly overreact to insults and well-intentioned advice alike. Most importantly, though, he is sad, and tired, and scared—and simply desires to be normal, and happy, and well.

Your Vices

Likes:

1. Chess. Rowley is exceptional at chess, although he prefers to play it casually and not competitively. He enjoys teaching people to play, although this happens less and less—he doesn’t know too many people to teach. The time he spent in Chess Club remains his fondest memory of Hammel; nowadays, he only has his computer to play against.
   
2. Acorn caps. As a crow, Rowley discovered a penchant for acorns—or, more specifically, a penchant for pecking off their caps and storing them in his breast feathers. He keeps all of the caps in a glass jar on his bedside table, and would like to emphasize that this is not at all an obsessive behavior. Caching objects is part of a crow’s instinct (no, really)! He also enjoys acorn motifs as a human, and appreciates all manner of acorn-adorned decorations, although admittedly they do not provide him with the same pleasure that they do in crow form.
   
3. Junk food. He has absolutely no qualms about processed or inorganic food, and will put an alarming variety of things in his mouth. His favorite snack is potted meat and squeezy cheese on a saltine cracker. He also likes white sandwich bread, which he eats plain, and has even been known to eat bugs in human form (for shock value and, more commonly, money).
4. Pink. Oddly, people always assume that his favorite color is black, and never bother to ask.
5. Spring. Again, no one ever bothers to ask. Why does no one bother to ask? He is especially fond of roses that bloom in spring—pink ones—and will frequently hang out in bird form at the local park to enjoy the greenery. He also likes bumblebees; they are fun to chase, and are surprisingly delicious.
6. Architecture. He aspired to be an architectural engineer, but gave up this dream when he flunked out of community college after a single semester. Still, he loves to read magazines and books about architectural design, and knows a lot of obscure terms and facts.
7. Horror movies. The bloodier, the better. His favorite movie is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
8. The lake. It is his favorite place.
9. Classical music. He has an obscene amount of it on his iPod. He enjoys the older stuff, but he is especially fond of the contemporary classical movement. His favorite composer is Philip Glass.
10. Secrets. He keeps many of his own—too many, some would argue—but also loyally keeps the secrets of others. He is very curious, and enjoys knowing things that other people don’t know. He spends a lot of time in his crow form eavesdropping on innocent civilians.

Dislikes:

1. Cats. He’s been chased one time too many.
2. Squirrels. They don’t chase him—they’re just assholes.
3. Annoyingly pervasive crow myths. Go ahead, make a joke about shiny things. I dare you.
4. Holidays. Rowley is especially depressed by them, particularly holidays that focus around gift-giving and/or familial or romantic affection (Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas). His main coping mechanism is to sleep through them all and pretend that they do not exist. Christmas music makes him visibly agitated.
5. Work. He works third shift Monday through Friday, which means that he sees a lot of people who haven’t had their morning coffee yet. You probably wouldn’t like it, either.
6. Mirrors. He does not particularly like the way he looks.
7. Metaphobes. There aren’t many things in his life that Rowley can claim to be truly proud of, but if there are any at all, then being a meta-human is one of them. He is extraordinarily comfortable with his power, and has never questioned the ability of meta-humans to do good things in the world. People who do, in his opinion, are ignorant beyond toleration.
8. Hospitals. In the Winter Rowley Collegiate Dictionary, “hospital” is defined as “basically prison, but more expensive.”
9. Shopping. People are annoying. Shopping carts are annoying. Everything is expensive.
10. Driving. He is easily distracted, and prefers to walk (flying is faster, but he doesn't keep his clothes in shifted form, and he doesn't fancy the idea of being arrested for public indecency). He only got his license to appease his overbearing father.

Strengths:

1. Planning ahead. Rowley is highly logical, and always takes into consideration how things are related. This makes him very good at things that require intense forethought, like chess, puzzles, arguments, and scheduling. He isn’t one step ahead—he’s several. Like most things about him, it can be as infuriating as it is awe-inspiring.
2. Listening. He doesn’t give much away, but he doesn’t necessarily mind people who do. If the mood is right, he can offer pretty decent advice.
3. Hiding things. He possesses very detailed knowledge of the structural elements of buildings, and can be positively ingenious when it comes to storing things in unexpected places (or, sometimes, in plain sight). He has countless places where he stores small things like money, keepsakes, or sensitive information. If he doesn’t tell you where it is, you aren’t going to find it (or, if you do, it will be in quite an unexpected manner, and you will probably be confused and annoyed by the experience).
4. Giving directions. Lots of people know Pilot Ridge well, but only a select few have ever seen it from a bird’s perspective. He prides himself on knowing every nook and cranny of the town he calls home.
5. Writing. Despite a long history of miserable grades in English, Rowley is actually very articulate, and possesses a fine understanding of grammar and an impressively large vocabulary. He keeps a journal, although that’s a secret—it’s very well hidden.

Weaknesses:

1. Sharing. Rowley is very private, and he takes great offense at any intrusion into what he deems to be his “personal space.” He does not like people touching, using, or otherwise interacting with his things without his permission. Touching his person at any point without his permission is likewise forbidden. He prefers to sleep alone, eat alone, and work alone; extroverts should approach with caution.
2. Physical activity. He has terrible hand-eye coordination and tires easily. The most strenuous thing he does is walk, and even that is done slowly.
3. Cooking. If it can’t be microwaved, doesn’t come in a can, or doesn’t half an obscenely long shelf life, then Rowley can’t be bothered to eat it.
4. Spotting things from far away. He’s terribly near-sighted, and wears contacts to correct his vision. Like his clothing, the contacts don’t shift with him into crow form; he’s lost countless pairs of contacts by accidentally shifting while wearing them and being unable to find them afterward. He does own a pair of average-looking silver-rimmed glasses, but it’s very rare to catch him wearing them—he uses them almost exclusively for reading before bed. Thankfully, his crow form has much better vision.
   
5. Keeping his promises. He always means to, but things have a habit of getting away from him, and sometimes he bites off more than he can chew. Although one might think that he’s become inured to being written off as a disappointment, he still suffers guilt and anxiety every time. He genuinely never intends to break his word.

Fears:

1. Death. He’s stared it in the face right up close, and he didn’t like what he saw. Deep down, he’s afraid that this is his last chance to “straighten up and fly right.”
2. Small spaces. He is extremely claustrophobic; even larger spaces, like elevators, make him uncomfortable enough to take the stairs.
3. Inertia. He pretends to be comfortable with, and occasionally even proud of, his delinquent reputation; in reality, though, the criticism affects him harshly, and he has very low self-esteem as a result. Even more unsettling than the idea of death is the idea that his life won’t amount to anything at all. He is acutely aware of what other people deem his “wasted potential.”

Secret: After his “close call,” Rowley wrote a small, makeshift will. It contains his last wishes (to be cremated, and to have his ashes scattered by the Pilot Ridge lakefront) as well as a small note of apology to his family and friends and a list of several of his hiding places and account passwords. He keeps it in his wallet still, in preparation for what he believes is the inevitable.

Family Ties

Father: Archer Rowley (55) (Super Strength)
Mother: Vanessa Rowley (54) (Omnilingualism)
Siblings: Luna Rowley (17) (power not determined)
Any Other Important People: Zachary Bishop (high school friend, neighbor)

History

They’d tried to coax him to turn.

He’d been manipulated by “good hands.” Appeals to gravity were made in vain. A Chinese specialist had held a smoldering bunch of mugwort under his mother’s pinky toes. He was prodded and massaged and, occasionally, agitated. In the end, he didn’t move at all. He was, the doctor said, “determined to be backwards,” and he’d kicked the whole way. The screaming came later: on January 31st, 1990, Vanessa and Archer Rowley welcomed their newborn son, Winter Jay, into the world, feet first and with the aid of a scalpel and general anesthesia.

The Rowley family lived a quiet, comfortable life in Pilot Ridge, where Archer and Vanessa had settled after graduating from the Hammel Institute. They’d married right after high school and had wasted no time transitioning into easy, well-suited careers: he’d completed his law enforcement training, where his enhanced strength was put to frequent use; she got a business degree from the University of Vermont and went to work for an international trading company in nearby Burlington, sometimes using more than ten different languages in a single shift. They were young but attentive parents, and wanted for very little. They loved their son dearly, and he loved them, too.

Young Winter, known affectionately as Winnie by his parents and peers alike, was an introverted child with a tender heart. He was soft-spoken and tentative and—much to his father’s chagrin—displayed a predilection for sedentary hobbies and the color pink. His precocity made him awkward and socially distant; during the formative years of his life, he called his mother his best friend. She taught him to play chess, hoping to put his analytical mind to task. It worked: after a few brief explanations and much trial and error, Winter became so consumed by love for the game that even she could not win against him. Vanessa didn’t mind losing. She found her reward in the light of her son’s eyes, a peculiar and undeniably competitive fire that brought his confidence to the forefront.

Archer and Vanessa’s second child, Luna, was born in 1997, the summer before Winter started first grade. She became the apple of their father’s eye; even in infancy, she was cheerful and bright-eyed, and seemed in many ways to be all of the things that Winter was not. Despite his parents’ worries, though, he took her presence in stride. He was gentle and patient and protective, even as his father’s preference for his sister grated at his self-esteem. In his own mind, he took silent responsibility for being less lovable; it was only later, as he approached adolescence, that his hurt began to sour into resentment, crystal clear and corrosive like strong vinegar.

During the earlier years of his schooling, Winter was beloved by his teachers for his docile intelligence. His classmates, by contrast, seemed to dislike him instinctively for his silly nickname and pink glasses frames and even his book bag, which had been chosen based on its ability to hold his favorite chessboard and thus appeared two sizes too large for his slight, pale frame. They called him “Space Bags” and “Winnie the Fag.” They scoffed at him when he answered things correctly in class, but laughed at him when he was wrong. His mother went to his teachers with her concerns about bullying, but these meetings were largely unproductive. Children, they informed her, were simply—well—mean.

Winter’s father, a self-proclaimed man of action, attempted to solve the problem by forcing his son into a wide array of sports: soccer, touch football, karate, gymnastics. Winter failed at every single one. Even contemporary dance, which his father had suggested in a desperate attempt to appeal to his son’s “feminine side,” ended in misery in less than a month.

In the end, Winter’s so-called social salvation originated in his pituitary glands instead of the scheming minds of his parents. His power manifested on a brisk spring night in 2003 while he was trying to sneak out of the house. He never made it to the party that the popular boy in his class had dared him to go to—falling out of your bedroom window, becoming a crow, and landing naked in your mother’s flowerbed tended to throw a wrench in that sort of thing. What he gained, however, was far more valuable than a night of watching high school girls drink light beer from the safety of the farthest wall: at thirteen, he had the opportunity to reinvent himself.

The following morning, the admissions counselor at the Hammel Institute praised Winter for his determined enthusiasm. He replied by informing her that everyone called him Rowley—it was much cooler.

Over the course of the next couple of years, Rowley found that puberty had other perks, too; he was taller, for instance, with a deeper voice and a well-formed jawline. He’d traded his glasses for contacts, and had stopped wearing pink in favor of black and charcoal gray. He excelled at training his power, and made stellar grades on all of his tests, although his circle of friends was comprised of older and less academically gifted individuals who often encouraged him to skip class and smoke. It didn’t take much; Rowley found, much to the disdain of his parents, that he liked smoking and playing cards infinitely more than he liked sleeping through lectures about things that he already knew.

Rowley first met Grayson DeLaurey in detention, which in retrospect had less to do with fate and more to do with the fact that detention was the one place where Grayson DeLaurey could be found with any sort of regularity. He was two years older—seventeen to Rowley’s fifteen—but they had several mutual friends and compatible interests. They were both shapeshifters, too, although Rowley’s training was more advanced than Gray’s, and they preferred to talk about other things. They smoked, and laughed, and had long, rambling conversations while under the influence of marijuana. They listened to good music and watched scary movies. They spent a lot of time staring at nothing in particular; when that got boring, though, they tended to stare at each other, instead.

In early 2007, they kissed for the first time. It was a good kiss, considering, although this was never discussed between them. They didn’t talk about kissing; they simply kept doing it until it became habit, like the Marlboros they smoked on the sidewalk downtown, or the pills that Grayson kept in a wintergreen Altoids tin, which he popped open every now and then when Rowley complained that training had made him sore.

For all their closeness, Rowley and Gray’s apparent paradise of familiarity was not without its challenges. They were fundamentally different in many ways: where Gray was impulsive and excitable, Rowley was detail-obsessed and highly aware of potential disaster, which always seemed to be imminent when they were together. Tempestuous disagreements between the two boys often resulted in stubborn silences and snark-filled tiffs that could last for hours, days, or weeks. They broke up. They reconciled. They broke up again. By the end of 2008, Grayson had finally managed to graduate, and although they still saw each other frequently, their relationship seemed to bring about more harm than good.

Still, it persisted. Rowley found that he could ignore a lot of harm in exchange for brief moments of magic; while his academic standing and family relationships seemed to him unsalvageable at best, Grayson’s attention—whether positive or negative—was something he had come to depend on. They were in it together, until they were not: the tumultuous romance ended for good in May of 2009, when Rowley caught Gray with another boy at a house party. No words were exchanged—only a single, knowing look of heartbroken finality. They never spoke again.

Rowley bought a handful of pills on the way out. They lasted him three and a half days, and when they were gone, he bought more. He graduated from the Hammel Institute that July, at the age of 19, with a GPA of 2.0.

The months following his graduation were deceptively quiet. He was still living at his parents’ house, and by virtue of sheer proximity, his relationship with them began to improve. He taught Luna, then twelve, to play chess. For the first time in years, he seemed—and felt—emotionally present in his relationships. His parents bought him a car: a 2000 model Honda Accord, black, with two doors. He began to make other friends, and revisited his friendship with Zachary Bishop in particular, whose family had lived next door to the Rowleys since both boys were fifteen. He held a few part-time jobs, citing his desire to live alone, but all of his paychecks evaporated in a matter of days.

He didn’t mention the pills to anyone, and nobody ever asked. He felt good, and they weren’t a problem, until they were: in September, he resolved to quit “cold turkey,” only to discover that the process was very aptly named. He shivered and vomited and spent far more time inside of his bathroom than outside of it; worse than his four-day-long porcelain pilgrimage of abject suffering, though, was the fact that his physical dependence on opioids had been suddenly thrust under a microscopic lens by his parents, who had reacted to the news with a fervor that bordered on apoplexy. They rushed to put him into a program, and they didn’t seem particularly fussed about which; Rowley listened to his father discuss insurance with the director of a local outpatient program over the phone and thought to himself, with characteristic dryness, that he’d seen his parents ask more in-depth questions before buying a vacuum cleaner.

He went, though. It even helped, for a while: he listened to older individuals talk about The Twelve Traditions and The Twelve Steps, and learned to introduce himself as an addict, and found himself frequently discussing concepts like relapse and recovery and burning desire. By the time the holidays rolled around, he felt as though the Serenity Prayer had been etched into the front matter of his brain. Anyway, he was clean—ninety days, with the ugly key tag to prove it—and at the start of the new year, he completed his participation in the program and decided to enroll at Greenview Community College for the Spring 2010 semester. His parents paid for it, on the condition that he submitted to drug testing twice a month.

For that single semester, Winter Rowley was the picture of academic excellence. He made it all the way to finals week before failing a drug test; as promised, his parents withdrew their financial support and kicked him out of the house. He told people he’d flunked out of school, and everyone believed him. It was easier than admitting to himself that he’d ever had the potential to succeed, in the end.

For the next few years, he found himself living in tiny apartments and the basements of other people’s parents’ houses with a wide variety of personalities. They were friends from college, or friends of friends from college; they were in their early twenties, mostly, although occasionally someone over thirty would wander in (and, inevitably, out again). He slept on floors—a mattress on a floor, sometimes, if he was lucky—and became an expert on instant noodles of all kinds. He landed, and subsequently lost, jobs.

Like everyone around him, he used drugs. It was the one thing they had in common—it brought them together at the worst of times, like moths to flame. When he had a job, he preferred the pills; he crushed them up in handfuls and spread them in fat, powdery rows on the tabletop, which nobody ever used for eating anyway. When he didn’t have a job, he tried to cut back. He could go for hours at a time, sometimes, until his stomach started to cramp and the flesh on his arms started to prickle with invisible heat. The important part—he went to great lengths to convince himself—was that he was okay. The syringes were temporary, little plastic-and-metal bridges of street sludge that would carry him over to the other side of the tunnel, where he could be clean again. Or, at the very least, he could be cleaner.

Someday.

May 4th, 2014: it snuck up on him, as somedays are wont to do. He’d been dismissed from his latest job the previous morning, and had given all but five dollars of his last paycheck to his dealer the previous night. It was, admittedly, more than he usually spent; still, it had been a fair deal. Generous, even, which was a rare trait for a purveyor of prescription opioids. He woke up at noon, and worried the foil-wrapped patch between his fingertips until 12:15. He unwrapped it, and spent no less than ten minutes hunting down a pair of scissors so that he could cut it into strips. He arranged his handiwork in a very logical fashion on the table in front of him.

He made a bad decision. It had seemed smart at the time.

He did wake up again, although it was anyone’s guess as to what time it was. Pain o’clock. Twenty ‘til bile—seconds, that is. He was surrounded by people in periwinkle scrubs. He was dry heaving into an oxygen mask. His arms were covered in blood, presumably as a result of the everlasting hunt for a good vein. His fingertips were blue; the word cyanosis occurred to him, which was entirely useless except that it reminded him that his brain was still functioning and he was not dead. He probably should have been, but then, when had he ever done what he was supposed to do?

He spent seven days in inpatient treatment, tonguing the raw places on the insides of his cheeks where the strips of Fentanyl had been ripped out of his mouth and trying to look like he was happy to be alive. It was Zach who’d found him; Zachary Bishop, whom he hadn’t spoken to in months, whom he hadn’t had a reason to speak to because he only ever talked about drugs. Zachary Bishop, who, unlike the four other people who had seen him blue-lipped and comatose, had thought to call for the ambulance that saved his life.

Zach wasn’t his only visitor: he saw his sister, Luna, and his parents, and even his grandmother, who had flown in from Myrtle Beach. They hugged him. His mother kissed his forehead. His father barely spoke to him; he coped by using his wallet, instead. The hospital was paid. Paperwork was filed. Someone—he never found out who—went back to the syringe-littered apartment he’d been crashing in to recover his things.

He was discharged from Maddock General on May 11th, and his parents drove him directly to a residential treatment facility upstate. The main building was a stately white farmhouse with green shutters and a wraparound porch, where several white-painted rocking chairs were positioned on either side of the front door. Above the stairs, there was a sign that had been secured to the eaves with two lengths of weathered chain: YOU ARE NO LONGER ALONE.

He cried. The intake counselor, a short, portly blonde woman in her mid-50s with very kind eyes, rubbed at his shoulder blades through his black hooded sweatshirt until he hiccuped himself back to some semblance of outward emotional stability.

Rowley lived in that farmhouse for thirty days, having been systematically divested of his phone, his ancient laptop, his iPod, and a tiny, half-empty bottle of mouthwash he’d brought from the hospital, which had been found and discarded when his treatment team took a complete inventory of his suitcase. He woke up at six-thirty every morning and wiggled into bed by ten o’clock every night. He had therapy in groups, and therapy on his own, and went on therapeutic nature walks, and made therapeutic art. He gained ten pounds. He did not use his power—the facility, he was informed, was designed for both meta- and non-meta-human individuals, and the ability to turn into a crow at will was “not conducive to an environment of recovery.”

It was the longest he’d ever gone without shifting since his manifestation. Still, he swallowed his resentment; occasionally, he’d roll up his right sleeve and examine the scar on the inside of his elbow, tight and pink with newly-healed infection, just to remind himself that rebellion was a luxury that he could no longer afford.

Anyway, they’d let him keep the cigarettes.

He left residential treatment during the second week of June, trading the picturesque foothills of northern Vermont for a small room at a nondescript halfway house fifteen minutes outside of Pilot Ridge. He threw his phone into the lake and bought a new one, which came complete with a new phone number and a new contact list that included precious few individuals apart from his family. He respected his curfew, and made friends with his roommates—all addicts in recovery, like him—with whom he talked about things other than drugs. He got a job working third shift at the local convenience store, and managed to keep it.

At the end of his sixty day outpatient program, he began renting an upstairs room in a house near the community college, where he lived—and lives still—with a handful of bright-eyed students who are all younger than him.

He struggles, some days: he doesn’t sleep well, and his daily medications—fluoxetine, naltrexone hydrochloride—make him frequently uncomfortable. Long-term withdrawal saps his energy for days at a time. Still, he is clean, and attends all of his appointments on time, and tries to enjoy the little things.

In a little over a month, he will be twenty-five. He is no longer alone. And for now, that’s enough.

That’s enough.

Roleplay Example

*squirms*

What About You?

Name: Kelly
Age: 23
Experience: Long enough to know better
How Did You Find Us? RPG-D
Ready To Play? insert special word here

[Deleted]

Declined.

This application was not completed in two weeks, and therefore is being declined. Please PM a staff member to reopen it if you are still interested.

[Winter Rowley]

completion bump

sorry for any format weirdness

[Admin!]

Accepted!

You know what to do! Have fun!