Rain

Storyline:

"Gone From Daylight"

Extra:

Pain Conversion – Due to some rather severe emotional problems in her human life, Rain has developed the ability to convert physical pain into emotional pain. This conversion has an almost instantaneous ‘healing’ effect on her, completely erasing all wounds, scratches, bruises, and injuries. It is believed that this healing ability also acts internally. So any inner problems with organs or blood defects can also be restored. (With the exception of her heart, which once damaged for a vampire, cannot be fixed again) However, this physical healing does come at a hefty price. In doing so, her memories and problems come back to her full force. Past regrets and emotional turmoil intensify greatly depending on the severity of the wounds that she is healing. Small cuts and scratches will have a minor effect. A bad mood, or a melancholy disposition, that lasts for a few minutes to an hour. But the more damage she tries to correct, the more powerful the anger and sadness gets. Until, during certain outbursts, it can become too much for her to handle. During these periods, Rain has been known to ‘bleed herself out’, or frequently commit suicidal acts that would render her unconscious for long periods of time. It is the only way for her to escape the emotional pain while her body and mind find a way to balance themselves out again. These acts lead the others to believe that her extra, once activated, continues to operate until all of her physical injuries have been completely healed, even when she is unconscious. So her blood loss and pain is short-lived when cutting her wrists or causing herself bodily harm. However, she still loses quite a bit of her essence each and every time, meaning that Rain has to feed much more often than the rest of the members at the lot. While her extra can only be used to heal herself…she has practiced a great deal with Bryson’s extra, which allows her to take the wounds from others upon herself, and then trigger her own extra to repair the damage done. Always with the same negative consequences to follow.

Quote:

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up." – Jim Morrison

Profile:

Dark. Brooding. Standoffish. While all of the members of Bryson’s lot love and care for Rain dearly, they have been forced to do so from a distance. Mostly because of her unpredictable reactions to their affections. One night she may need a friendly embrace, the next she might push you down in the dirt, the next…she might stab you in the leg with a pocket knife. It is her sudden and often iron hearted approach to people in general that keep them at bay. But deep down, Rain is just as dependent on the validation and security of her family in darkness as anyone else.

Growing up in a home with her two parents and younger brother, Eugene, one would think that Rain’s outlook on life when she was still in daylight would have been a positive one. And for the beginning of her life, it was. Rain was surrounded by good friends and good times once she got to high school. She did have loving parents, but Rain had a spirit that was constantly seeking boundaries in her life. Boundaries that her loving parents never set for her. It’s hard to believe in the concept of parents being too understanding, but Rain’s rebellious nature caused her to act out in ways that she was secretly hoping would worry and aggravate her parents to the point of laying down some sort of definite ground rules in their household. A part of her wanted to be disciplined, limited, and punished for actions that her friends’ parents would find inexcusable. If only to prove to her that they cared. But as they worked harder and harder to give her more space to grow, her exploits got more and more out of control. Searching for conflict. Hoping to eventually run into a brick wall that she couldn’t get past. Her parent didn’t give her one.

The final straw came when Rain suffered a serious heartbreak after being betrayed by someone that she saw as one of her best friends. A boy that she was interested in was stolen from her, and her friend worked hard to turn the rest of the group against her. Outcasted from a life that she not only felt comfortable with, but one that had become her escape from everything else, she instantly became bitter, and began to withdraw more and more from the world around her.

Her attitudes soured as she tried to spare herself any further pain and heartache by scaring people away from her before they had a chance to get too close. This included her parents, who gave her ‘space’ to be alone….and her little brother, who idolized her but could never truly understand her. As she pushed more people away, the other kids in school began to make fun of her changing appearance. Her shaved hair, dyed different colors, a few piercings, an all-black wardrobe. Their treatment of her only fed her need for isolation. Even though the loneliness was eating her alive.

Unable to find anyone to talk to about her feelings, she found herself spending hours alone in her room with nothing but books to keep her company. It was one evening, when a particularly sharp page gave her a paper cut on the tip of her finger, that she discovered how much she almost enjoyed the pain of the wound. Instead of being emotionally ‘numb’ to the world of feelings, she was now being exposed to a type of pain that she could somewhat control. So…to relieve the pressure and sadness around her, she began to cut herself on an almost daily basis. To Rain, the physical pain was preferable to what she was dealing with before. It was the only thing strong enough to distract her from the pain of a broken heart. Physical pain could heal in time. She felt the sting for just a moment, and then it was over with. It didn’t linger like the other feelings did. It was a representation of what she wanted her true feelings to become. Cuts scabbed over. Blood could be washed away. Scars could be easily hidden. It was the escape she had been looking for. But in the end…it still wasn’t enough.

Without a serious reaction from her parents, even after seeing the marks on her arms and legs, Rain decided to take to the streets and ran away from home. It wasn’t that her parents didn’t care, but in their eyes she could do no wrong. It just wasn’t what she needed. Why stick around. It was her brother, Eugene, who was the smart one. He was the one with all the potential to truly be something special, in her eyes. Not her. He had all the opportunity in the world, what did she have?

Rain escaped to the streets where she found comfort in going from one party to another, blending into the background and hopefully finding a place to crash each night once everyone else had passed out. It was a ‘stranger’ at one of these parties that detected her pain…and he lured her into darkness. A young vampire, whose name she refuses to speak, even to this day. It appears that he vanished one evening, never to return. Had she been abandoned? Left for another vampire? Or was he dead? Rain never found got an answer. And even in darkness, it is the one wound in her heart that has been forever left open.

It wasn’t until she had spent another few months alone in darkness, that Bryson found her bleeding in an alley, her make up running as she was crying almost hysterically from her loss. Having just suffered a major loss of his own, Bryson reached out to her, and offered her a place to stay. She has been a part of the lot ever since.

While Rain has become a treasured part of their family, the only person that she has ever truly shared herself with was Taryn. Their strong connection seems to be the only one that she can put faith in. It was shortly after Taryn’s crossover that he secretly went back home to make sure that his little brother was ok. It was against the rules of the lot and Rain attempted to stop him, but he pleaded with her to assist in keeping it a secret. It was her sympathy for Taryn’s situation (after having left her own younger brother behind in daylight) that made her agree to help. It was that secret, and others, that bonded them together over the years. She may have even been infatuated with Taryn’s beauty at various times over the years, but she knows that it was not meant to be. Those feelings have since become something that she wants to avoid ever since Taryn gave his heart to Justin, moving further away from their once cherished connection. Rain does have some deep feelings for Bryson, but is still confused and afraid of them. Not knowing whether they exist because of her attraction to Bryson and his heart, or because he was the one who saved her from a life of loneliness and she’s just grateful. Or perhaps it’s just because Bryson has never been afraid to give her the rules and boundaries that she so longed to have at home that keeps her in such awe of him. But despite it all, she continues to run from those feelings…so afraid that she’ll find herself alone again.

Rain’s downfall is that she has purposely closed herself off to everyone and everything around her. She is desperately trying to convince herself that she’s better off being alone. Even though it makes her miserable, it’s become her only defense from what she believes will be an even more unbearable pain in the end. But, despite her efforts, her fortress walls are not as strong as she wants them to be. Whenever she feels the love and comfort of her colleagues creeping into her heart, when she feels herself getting too close to someone, or being too vulnerable…whenever her concern for her little brother or her feelings for Bryson begin to express themselves in ways beyond her rigid control…she’s quick to run away from them. She has been known to leave the lot completely, often for days at a time, without telling anyone where she’s gone.

She searches for places to hide in complete silence until the warm fuzzy feelings pass and she feels in command of her emotions again. Anyone attempting to invade her space during these private moments will find that she will react angrily, even ‘violently’, if that’s what it takes to keep them away. It’s something that she wrestles with every day of her life. And until she’s ready to choose definitively between a risky life of love and acceptance or a lonely life of solitude and safety, the others will never truly know where they stand with Rain, or what she’ll do to them if they ever get close enough to see her heart for what it truly is.