forget this life, forget this universe
[nick / name]: Liz
[personal LJ name]: binow
[other characters currently played]: [Jean Paul Valley :: DC Comics :: allowtheangel]
[e-mail]: blackbirdclaw at yahoo dot ca
[AIM / messenger]: blackbirdclaw on AIM
[series]: Marvel Comics, Age of Apocalypse and Exiles
[character]: Clarice Ferguson, aka Blink
[character history / background]: Blink's history
[character abilities]: Besides being obviously non-human in appearance, Blink can teleport by manipulating space. She can teleport large groups simultaneously over great distances; once even to the moon from Earth's surface. She can teleport objects in whole or in part. She is also capable of focusing her ability into material crystalline javelins, which teleport whatever or whomever they touch. Her teleportation is marked by a 'blinking' sound, from which her codename comes.
[character personality]: Clarice is a whole human being, which is remarkable only because everything has been working against her becoming anything like that since she was born purple and pink and mutated all over. She has her problems like anyone else, and more than an average person, but where she could have collapsed Clarice has always found a way to endure. She's her foster father's daughter. Clarice isn't as rough around the edges as Sabretooth can be, but he passed on the will to carve a life out of any niche she can find. She became the leader by consensus of the Exiles because of this; she could react to new realities faster than anyone else on the team, most of the time. It helped that she's friendly and diplomatic, which she probably picked up from someone other than her Mr. Creed. The assertiveness that comes packaged with it is, again, something he taught her, just like throwing punches.
Clarice had a very close relationship with Victor Creed well into her adulthood, calling him 'Mr. Creed' or 'sir' and deferring to most of his decisions. The events surrounding the hunt for Proteus damaged this bond, and Blink is now treating him simply as an equal. She still cares for him greatly, and it's not much of a conincidence that her boyfriend would also be a blond alpha male. Clarice has a weakness for a type.
She has quite a few other weaknesses. Clarice never got around to going to the non-existent high schools in Apocalypse's America, and the patchwork education she did receive is grade school level at best. This prevents her from completely understanding the science and technology she often has to deal with; she's intelligent, but she's still not educated. She can be impulsive when she should be cautious, and rushes into things without always thinking them through as much as she really should. Her instincts are usually good, but not so good she should depend on them; something she still doesn't recognize as a problem. She's not exactly self-reflective, too caught up in the immediate situation (which, to be fair, is usually some kind of multidimensional crisis) to think about the way she acts and reacts. She's grounded and pragmatic at the expense of being personally insightful.
Clarice is likeable, which isn't really hurt by her flaws. She's reasonably extroverted and makes the first move in most of her relationships, platonic or otherwise.
Her boyfriend's recent possession and death shook Clarice. For a while, she was obsessed with finding and destroying Proteus, and when he was contained she fell into a brief depression. She was helped by meeting his team on his home world, and on the surface she seems to be coping fairly well, but she's just beginning to come to grips with it.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Blink comes from issue 84, after the X-Men of Mimic's home reality invited her to stay with them and before she returned to the Panoptichron.
[journal post]: [audio]
-just turn on- okay.
Where am I? I can't-
blink
-damn it.
Is this some kind of pocket dimension? Hello?
[third person / log sample]: Wolverine leaves Clarice alone in the kitchen at three in the morning with a cooling cup of hot chocolate; supposedly to smoke, but she's actually sure it's because he could tell she was just about to start crying. She can see why he and Cal were close.
She doesn't cry much. There's sand under her fingernails that scratches her skin when she rubs her closed eyes. She hasn't even had the chance to wash her hands since she got here, between all the questions and answers they've been throwing back and forth. It's kind of funny, and kind of not, that she's had debriefings that were easier than the interrogation she just went through. They - Cal's family - they want to know how this could have happened. She doesn't know how to tell them.
Cal died because he was tired and made a stupid promise I let him try to keep because I got sentimental, she could say, he died because I loved him too much and I gave him slack I didn't give anyone else. It's not true. She knows better than to blame herself, you don't blame yourself because it makes you worthless, eventually. All the guilt goes to your head, you quit, and Victor told her that a quitter is just another kind of traitor.
She sips her hot chocolate, as grainy and watered down as it is. Scott Summers is better at leading than he is at making drinks; she's not surprised. It was a nice gesture, anyway, and she thanked him. They're all still- it's not suspicion, she doesn't know if they still have that on this world, but they're trying to figure out if she's good enough for Cal. Even if it's a little late to disapprove she doesn't want to be...less than they expected. This little purple girl who stands out like a slap. It's not how she looks, and it is. It's the way she carries herself and the way she talks and feeling, for once, inadequate.
She would never be able to fit with these people, and it hurts to know that. They're heroes like she didn't grow up with and didn't become. People like Cal. She was too young for him, too uneducated, too morally- the word would be compromised, she thinks. Morally compromised. She's aware of her deficiencies. She didn't always use to be, and she's probably missing something now, but she knows those three things. They wouldn't have picked her for him, and she won't know if he would've ended up with her if she wasn't the only one available. That's okay, she can live with it.
Cal told her that he loved her, and he didn't lie very well. She doesn't have to believe it, but she wants to. So it works. And she's okay. She's not fine, not yet, but she's okay. She can let it hurt and she can keep going.
Wolverine - Logan - comes back in and sits across from her, and she nods at him.
"These cigars," he says, tapping the slim box on the table, "They're Cuban. Good. Your boy picked them up for me, don't know if I mentioned it."
Her boy. (She's never going to touch him again, they're never going to fight again, he's never going to get up like he was supposed to and she kept waiting because Cal wasn't supposed to be able to die and she doesn't want to remember how to do this without him.)
"I don't think you did." She stares at her hot chocolate between her pink hands and her bruised knuckles. "Feel like telling me about it?"