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<h1>bio</h1>
[p][u]Name:[/u] Lavinia Sokolovskaya
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[br][u]Nickname:[/u] Lav; also, nicknamed Shrike a/k/a Sorokoput by the press
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[br][u]Setting:[/u] 1980's Earth after a nuclear war
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[br][u]Location:[/u] Quarters of Project Watchman in Krasnodar Exclusion Zone, Russia. Placed in an old, once luxurious hotel, which lost most of its former glory, but is still one of the best quarters out there.
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[br][u]Historic Background:[/u] Following World War II, tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. didn't just simmer in a cold war...they exploded in conflict when the U.S.S.R. attacked the U.S. directly. In response, multiple nuclear warheads were dropped on every one of the U.S.S.R.'s major cities. Over the course of the next few decades, people started reporting strange happenings in the ruins of Russia's former hubs of habitation. Those areas were named "exclusion zones", or simply "zona" in Russian, surrounded by high security walls to try to minimize the spread of hazardous weather anomalies caused by extremely high radiation levels. The remnants of the government formed an organization dubbed Project Watchman. Some of the Watchmen are volunteers. Many are not. Convicted felons can be legally recruited if their talents for crime prove useful to the organization. Only the head of the Project has the authority to grant final approval to prisoners that catch the eye of the program recruiters. Misplaced talent can be reshaped into something useful. Blatant disregard for authority will get you shot.
[p]The Watchmen live in quarters at the border of their assigned zona, guarding the outer walls against bandits and dreaded mutants with unnatural abilities brought on by radiation and genetic manipulation. (A plot hatched by the distant Americans? An abandoned early version of Project Watchmen with less satisfying results? The truth is classified beyond belief. Even the Head Watchman has only bits and pieces.) Watchmen are also sent on missions inside the zona they guard, recovering scientific equipment and doing research on radiation reduction, as well as vigilantly seeking out and eliminating spies and threats to the restoration of the Motherland.
[p]Members of the Watchmen are told in no uncertain terms that to give yourself to the program is to commit for life. There is no backing out once the training has begun.
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[br][u]Likes:[/u] money, jewelry, pearls, gold, luxury, 1950's aesthetic, style and culture, house chores, spending time with nice people, older men, good manners, playing piano, reading
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[br][u]Despises:[/u] lack of manners, obnoxious, nosy or too arrogant people, being overly dramatic, bad food, pushy men
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[br][u]Areas of Expertise:[/u] Botany (special emphasis on poisonous plants), toxicology and chemistry, seduction
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[br][u]Weapon of Choice:[/u] Her main weapons are piano strings which she uses either as a garrote or as an improvised whip.
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[br][u]Lavinia's Back Story:[/u] Lav was born in Moldova. When she was barely 19, she met and fell in love with Feliks Zakharovich Sokolovsky. Despite being 15 years older and a businessman with a rather stark and serious nature, his elegance, reliability and courteous nature convinced her that this was the man she would marry. (In time, his lack of affection would encourage Lav to call him "Feliks Zakharovich" only.) Very soon after their meeting, Feliks bought a newly renovated inn in the middle of central Russia. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town, but close enough to a branch in the most traveled roads to draw enough business to keep the inn from closing.
[p]They never filled the room of their inn due to their location but they made a decent living. For months, Lav simply enjoyed doing the housekeeping, entertaining guests and tending bar; basic innkeeper's chores and work, stable and sustainable, and maybe not too fascinating for many people - but she really enjoyed her job. At least until that fatefull night when one of the clients tried to harass her, while Feliks Zakharovich was cutting wood outside. Panicked and cornered, she stabbed the pig with a small knife, meaning only to defend herself. Feliks wandered in as the blade was driven home, a mere flesh wound but enough to enrage a devoted husband. Blinded by fury, Feliks struck with his axe. Lav stared in shock, never before having witnessed such... things. But he, he had seen enough bloodshed, surviving the horrors of the war. He spoke calmly, instructing Lav in the art of hiding all traces of a murder.
[p]It was their first kill. It would not be their last.
[p]Lav got good at spotting targets. She was the classic 1950's housewife straight out of a sitcom, always knowing when to smile and how to dress in the sort of polka-dotted gowns that made her look like a little girl in the body of a woman. They started killing their guests for money - those rich, those single and alone, those good and easy targets no one would miss. Nobody could prove anything; Russia is huge and the roads are long and unsupervised. Lav had a talent for spiking drinks as she pretended to laugh at some joke already heard three times that day. Some guests she seduced, moving in close to drive home a blade or teasingly slip the garrote over a thick neck that would soon wheeze no more. Feliks was less creative. His trusty axe got the job done on those rare occasions when his charming wife's charms failed.
[p]There were plenty who spent an uneventful night at their inn but plenty more that were laid to rest in unmarked graves in the forest, filling the bellies of fish in the lake, or fertilizing the flower beds in a finely ground mulch they jokingly called "Lav's Special Blend".
[p]It took them years to make a mistake. The routine got a little [i]too[/i] routine. Lav suffered a bout of overconfidence. Feliks reacted too slowly and their almost-victim escaped with his life. They tried to escape but were run down by the dogs of war...quite literally.
[p]A few weeks of sweating in prison led to an offer...join the Project or put your lives in the hands of the court. The judge might be feeling generous and throw you into a cell to rot...or you might find yourselves facing the leering muzzles of the firing squad.
[p]It really wasn't much of a choice.
[p]Lav and Feliks Zakharovich were sent to separate quarters, with the possibility of exchanging letters from time to time.
[p]A few months after Lav's enrollment and arrival to the Krasnodar quarters, she met a man who was enrolled too, a Lithuanian called Linas Kazlauskas. It didn't take long for her to become quite charmed by him. She affectionately began to call him Linya. Within a few months, she left (or rather ghosted) her husband for Linya. He was nearly the polar opposite of Feliks...soft-hearted, cute and blessed with an excellent sense of humor. She would discover in time that his personality had its own flip side. Heavily abused as a child due to his mild autism spectrum disorder, which was neither understood nor accepted at that time, his trauma could trigger severe bouts of paranoia and mood swings. In his gloomiest state of mind, he could be stripped of almost all self-esteem and her best efforts could not raise him from the depths woe into which he'd fallen.
[p]Despite his flaws, Lav finds Linya cute and charming. Though more than friends, they are not in a true relationship due to Linya's struggles to understand the feelings of others and the intricacies of relationships.
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<div class="friendleft"><a href="/pets/PETNAME"><h1>STORY</h1></a>
[p]Lav suppressed a shudder as she crept up the narrow staircase. The stench of sweat and alcohol almost made her eyes water every time she followed, or some times guided one of their clients upstairs, much as every time nowadays when she was entering one of the run-down tenements that had been no hub for hygiene even when cleaning products were stocked on every shelf and even the poorest comrade could scrub the suspicious stains out of their everyday clothes because water was readily available, not rationed for only the most critical functions of human life.

[p]Back before the whole Project Watchman business. Back when being a housewife was her aspiration because the inn actually felt like home.

[p]When had she last enjoyed a proper bath, one with steaming water and real, perfumed soap? It didn't bear thinking about, especially now, in the middle of another kind of nowhere, only this one was a radioactive zone of alienation. She oncr used to be a little flighty. No, it was [i]not[/i]a woman thing, thank you [i]very[/i] much. It was a Lav thing...back in those more innocent days when she'd been just Lav. Back before she'd discovered her insatiable lust for wealth was matched only by her lust for the next kill.

[p]In the glory days, she could afford to let her mind wander as she shaped the crust for a pie. The summer berries were bright red, the color of the blood she scrubbed away oh-so-carefully after helping haul their latest victim to one of the favored burial grounds. Feliks Zakharovich never could make a clean kill. The loveable brute. He had been loveable. Once. She'd been so very young.

[p]Even when just climbing stairs, nowadays she'd fall into the proper breathing technique automatically. When Project Watchman gets done with you, every movement is the well-coordinated motion of a machine limb, every strike a flawless maneuver guaranteed to hit the target. Back in the day, all the breathing thing wasn't so obvious. She remembered lurking at the door of the room that wealthy client had rented, the familiar piano wires wrapped around her fingers, shoving the elegant wood inward with a feather-light touch.

[p]She needn't have bothered with the theatrics. Dimitrius Vostrokov was sprawled in the armchair. His snores were loud enough to not only wake the dead, but give them all a migraine. He was disgusting, a shameless slob with pit stains and spittle drying on his chin from one of the six spiked beers he'd recently consumed. She could have paraded in strumming a Balalaika and singing at the top of her lungs without drawing more than a nasal snort in response.

[p]He came awake suddenly when the strings were buried in the flesh of his neck. His curses were cut off by the demands of his lungs. His beefy red face was tinged blue when he collapsed to the carpet with a final expulsion of breath as she slackened her grip and stepped back. A new stench permeated the air, one Shrike had smelled many times but would never get used to. Maybe the carpet was not so good idea.

[p]Death is a messy business.

[p]But at least she was then free to simply return downstairs, have a proper bath, with a nice glass of wine keeping her company. Here, in the quarters, it wasn't so obvious. During the missions, out there in the zona, you couldn't just go away and head straight to your nice and welcoming tub to get a proper bath. You couldn't even just have a relaxing walk.

[p]There was always risk when one walked the streets, though it was slightly lowered in the more heavily inhabited neighborhoods. Mutants were kept from their lust for killing rampages only through the efforts of those Watchmen assigned to the walls. Their distorted bodies made them unpredictable in a fight where a third arm or acid-spewing eye might suddenly come into play. They were also notoriously hard to kill.

[p]Nearly as bad were the bandits. Fully human with zero desire to play nicely with the scraps of society that remained, they would steal bread out of your hand without a thought for the consequences. When you have nothing to lose and no one left to care for, the loss of a limb...or even a life...ceased to feel like too high a price to pay for an instant of satisfaction.

[p]On this night, the quarters were quiet, her superior was silent and she would use what little resting time she could grab between trainings and missions.

[p]The hotel had been the glory of Krasnodar many years ago, before its gold-plated walls were coated in dust and the crystal chandeliers dropped like so many snowflakes slapped to the dirt by a careless hand. The hotel's true name had no doubt been something majestic. Shrike once again called an inn her home, only this one could have comfortably slept half the country.

[p]She took the stairs to the first floor, knowing before she even tried the latch that Linya would be there.

[p]She hadn't been able to reach him, the last couple of days. She knew better than to press him when he was working his way through a mood. Trying to get close and making him feel stifled was a sure way to drive him further away. She went to the ice box, a rare luxury out there, and scooped out a pint of rare strawberry ice cream. A few mouthfuls of creamy pink paste and a glass of aromatic, jasmine tea were the closest to heaven one could hope to get, living on the outskirts of hell.

[p]Linya came to her, taking up the spoon and licking the last of the syrup with gusto before accidentally sticking it on the end of his nose. She laughed, wishing she could close the distance between them. It would only make Linya uncomfortable, maybe even send him back into the glooms. Sitting beside him, listening to his new ideas and weird revelations, this was her blissful moment between one potential catastrophe and the next.

[p]It wasn't much, but it gave her something to live for.
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<h1>credits</h1>
[p]Background written by [user=Stony] with organization and proofreading by [user=Pureflower]
[br]Story by [user=Pureflower] with some changes by [user=Stony]
[Br]Profile template by [user=Lea].
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