Application for babylonwood
You better pray, pray, pray.'>
The Player
User Name/Nick: Jae
User LJ: N/A
AIM/IM: booglyboo145
E-mail: anjelsword at gmail dot com
Other Characters: Neal Caffrey, Karrin Murphy
If you're gonna go down to the crossroads,
You better pray, pray, pray.
If you're gonna go down to the crossroads,
Then you're gonna pay, pay, pay.
Child, you shouldn't go down to the crossroads,
Better stay away, way, way.
But if you go down to the crossroads,
Well, then, son, you'd better pray.
The Character
Character Name: Bela Talbot
Character Journal: sonotahunter
Canon: Supernatural
Age: 124, technically
From When?: Post-canon, after a span in hell of about 100 years, so probably mid-fourth season in the canonical timeline. She’s been offered the chance to serve as a crossroads demon. Escape from the pit, yes, but also complete loss of her humanity and becoming literally the thing that landed her in hell in the first place.
Abilities/Powers: One very humany human. Fantastic at gathering information, brokering deals, and thievery. She has talent with spirit-speaking, tarot and other kinds of divination, but other than that and skill with a handgun, she’s human through and through.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory
The clothes on her back. A pantsuit and blouse, plus nice shoes and clean underthings. They were conjured up for her meeting with the demon who made her offer.
Personality:
As Bobby puts it, Bela is “pretty friggin’ far from a Hunter”. She’s certainly not concerned with putting spirits to rest or lifting curses, unless it saves or benefits her directly--her interests tend specifically toward what can be gained from interaction with the supernatural world. From her perspective, almost every inhuman creature out there has something to offer, whether it’s an unexpected branch of clientele or a valuable set of incisors with unusual properties.
She kills if she must, but that stirs up bad blood and animosity that she’d rather not have to keep track of. Despite what the Winchesters might think, she prefers to make as few enemies as possible, instead acting as a force for neutrality. That may be, in fact, part of the reason she uses them so frequently--it’s far simpler to keep track of one pair of hunters who want your head on a platter than try to evade a dozen who have three dozen friends. That, and they seem uniquely capable of acquiring (and losing) valuable occult objects.
Her outlook on the world in general effects the way she interacts with the supernatural. Humans, monsters, etc--in the basest way, they’re all the same. She sees the worst in everything, human and otherwise. They’re animals, tethered by societal or personally-imposed restraints. Given the proper impetus, they’ll snap those bonds and go rabid. No one is above it, no one is beyond it. You just need to find the right barb to drive anyone into a frenzy.
Her perspective on the fringe-dwellers of society is unique. She doesn’t see them as monsters, or even as being ‘beneath’ humanity as a whole. For the most part, they’re a subset of the human race, branches of the same family. Those that aren’t are dealt with on their own terms and in their own way; she doesn’t look down on them, which makes many more willing to deal with her than they otherwise might be. Of course, she’s also not an idiot, so attempts to kill or cross her are met with appropriate, controlled violence. Those who know of her respect her, and those who don’t quickly learn to. Even if they dislike her, her skill is appreciated: the same goes for the humans who know her directly or by reputation. She’s damn good at what she does, dishonest or not, and that garners a certain amount of respect in supernatural circles. That said, she still reserves special hatred for demons almost across the board. She’ll work for them and with them, because of her situation--but also hates them for being forced into servitude in the first place.
She makes a point of being in the know--for someone who’s suffered abuse as she has, the only sure power she has is in knowing more than your opponents. It’s one of the reasons she got into divination, aside from natural talent. Politics is everything; a major component of politics is knowledge. Your adversary’s history, their tics, their habits; when she goes into business with someone, she goes in knowing exactly who she’s dealing with, if at all possible. She keeps up on the rumors and reputations of the supernatural world, and regularly consults her talking board to see who’s newly arrived on the other side--and why and how they got there.
Her relationship with persons of authority is twofold. If she can find someone who competes on her level, knows as much or more than she does, it creates a certain attachment with that person. She’ll test herself against them, test their own skills, and generally maintain some level of contact despite her mistrustful and independent nature. This is with those she respects, sees something of herself in--those she thinks might deal with her on an equal level.
It’s very different with those who treat her as an inferior, for whatever reason--lesser skills, questionable morals, what-have-you. If she is, in fact, outmatched, that’s one thing--and something she will work her ass off to remedy the situation and prove to her opponent that she’s both more skilled and more adaptable. However, if someone--a hunter, for example--tries to take the moral high-ground in dealings with her, she will break them down and shove their inadequacies in that person’s face until they either back down, move on or break. She refuses to be seen as a bad person, for the simple reason that all people are bad. She’s no different than anyone else. In those kinds of exchanges, anger becomes both a tool and a defense mechanism. She attempts to barb her opponent into acting in rage, proving her point and validating her belief that no one is above provocation, given the appropriate triggers.
As far as Sam and Dean are concerned, Bela would never admit it, but the Winchesters are her kind of people underneath. She would like to be part of a team--if she trusted anyone but the dead. She can see the value of other people--at least in terms of their skills. She know that some jobs are better worked with partners, and the fact that she goes to the Winchesters so regularly shows she knows their quality. But she also knows, as much as she might wish it were otherwise, they'll never look at her as anything more than a con artist and a thief. The interim between the times she sees them gives her the chance to entertain the idea that they might get over themselves, but it's driven home every time she does see them that they never will. She does genuinely like them, but they’re very like her father: she loved him, and he hurt her, and between every time he did it she let herself think that maybe he wouldn't hurt her again.
While Bela likes Dean more, she trusts Sam more. In Red Sky at Morning, it’s Sam who comes up with the plan to save Bela’s life, and while Dean goes along with his brother, he made it clear when she came looking for help that he couldn’t care less about saving her. Ultimately, it’s this attitude that probably keeps her from seeking the brothers’ help when the deadline for her contract looms. She wants the brothers to want her as part of their lives, and can’t express that in any clear way; it’s all tricks, banter and abuse, in the hope that they might invite her in. When Dean threatens to kill her after taking the colt, that ends any hope she had of that happening. She still cares about them, but she’ll keep her distance--until she needs to exploit them again.
Vulnerability isn’t something she likes to admit to, and even more rarely will she express it. It took being confronted with death in the most immediate terms for her to ask the brothers Winchester for assistance--when she thought she could get out of her deal on her own, she didn’t so much as admit to the fact she had a contract. Even during the conversation in Red Sky at Morning, her most vulnerable moments have a predatory edge, the promise that one wrong word will either break her down or get her hackles up and bristling. It’s only at the end of everything (in Time is On My Side), when she’s out of options and out of time, that she really breaks down. She’s been beaten, has no friends, no recourse, and is on her way to a horrible death and a span in hell that will end with her becoming one of the things she hates most in the world.
Attachment is, on its own, a form of vulnerability; she makes a show of not caring, of being brutal to the point of callousness even if it wounds her to be so. Attachment is a weapon as much as anything else. It takes the literal end of everything for her to cry, to admit to deeper feeling for anyone or anything, including herself. Even just before her time runs out, when Dean confronts her in her hotel room, she says of her parents and Dean himself: "They were lovely people. And I killed them. And I got rich, and I can't be bothered to give a damn. Just like I don't care what happens to you." Dean is arguably one of the people she cares about most in the world; he can keep up with her, in a sense, which is more than most people can do, and he also shares her own helpless position, trapped under a rapidly expiring contract with no real hope of escape. It hurts and scares her to think about that, so rather than admit it, she denies it to the point of breaking her own heart and alienating one of the few who might really understand her.
Physical intimacy offers many of the same hang-ups, plus the added anxiety of past sexual abuse. There’s deep, deep shame attached to it that’s difficult for her to think about at the best of times, let alone surmount. She projects a sexualized air almost as a means of self-defense, taking the figurative bull by the horns and battling her own fear. She likes flirting and is damn good at it, but when flirtation hits a certain point there’s expectation that both parties will put out. It’s either maintain appearances and do what’s expected (earning titles like slut, whore, slag, etc), or backpedal/break off (and be called a prude, a tease, an ice queen/cold bitch, etc). Sex is a tool for self-flagellation at the best of times, and unprotested rape at the worst. It’s a rare man that can get her not only to want sex but also enjoy it.
Idealism isn’t something Bela looks highly upon. In fact, she does just the opposite; she hates idealists, mostly because her contract curtails anything but the most fatalistic approach to the world, life, and its outcomes. It’s a particularly vindictive habit she has, trying to break the faithful and hopeful of their dreams. Hope makes her angry, because it’s the one thing she’s never had and can’t acquire through any means she knows of. She’ll go down struggling, but it’s the belief that she can be the best and conquer her opponents that drives her to fight, not the hope that she can overcome her difficulties. Hope implies that there’s an outside force influencing a person’s life toward a greater good. If there is a grander power influencing the world beyond the everyday supernatural, Bela wants nothing to do with it. It hasn’t shown hide nor hair of itself to her in all her life; it’s never helped her, never done anything for her. Everything she’s done, she’s done for herself or to herself. Hope, faith, etcetera--to her, they mean that a person doesn’t find themselves responsible for the outcomes of their own actions. That something will swoop in and make it all better despite all evidence to the contrary. That is something she absolutely refuses to accept.
Her time in hell hasn’t changed much of this--if anything it’s only carved in deeper her need for independence, isolation and control. She’s developed a tolerance for pain that is almost appalling as well as total distrust of her surroundings. Physical touch is a definite trigger for negative reactions, as the only physical contact she’s had for the past hundred years or so of her mental time line is torture of various kinds. She wanted to trust others before. Now she trusts no one, period. After being visited by familiar faces both through hallucinations and actual presence in hell alongside her and more often than not put through the wringer by them, even those she knew and had some inkling toward friendliness with have become potential enemies. Everyone is a monster waiting to show its teeth. When she realizes she can fight back now, she’ll probably try showing hers first.
History:
Bela Talbot was born Abby Foster, daughter of well-to-do, wealthy socialite parents. Their only child and the product of a long effort to have a baby, she was her parents’ prize. She was doted on from birth, so when her father started paying extra attention to her as she hit puberty, she didn’t think much of it at first. The first time he molested her, she was too shocked to do anything about it. When he came to her again, she went to her mother. The woman accused her of lying and slapped her, and Abby never told her mother about it again.
As the abuse continued, she started isolating herself. Her grades declined, her friends abandoned her, and she began to study divination and communication with the dead to ease her loneliness and exert some small control over her world. When her report cards came in her parents confronted her, discovered her divination tools, and forced her to see a therapist. Session after session, Abby would sit in silence as the woman tried to get her to talk. Eventually she stopped speaking to anyone and spent her time at home outside or in her room, waiting for her father to come to her again and using her talking board and tarot to communicate with the other side.
One day, as she sat on the swing set in her back yard, a little girl--slightly younger than Abby herself--came and joined her. She managed the one thing no one else had in weeks. She got Abby to talk. Abby, thinking the girl was from the house next door, slowly opened up to her, first about her divination, then about everything. She started to talk to her parents again; when they pressed her about the change in her behavior, she told them about the neighbor girl she’d met. Later, she overheard her parents discussing whether or not to commit her to a mental institution, as the house next door was unoccupied and had been so for some time.
When Bela confronted her ‘friend’, the girl readily admitted not only to not being a neighbor, but to not being human. She knew all about Abby and offered to end her father’s abuse and punish Abby’s mother for not believing her, with the condition that in ten years’ time, Abby would be with her forever. The girl accepted. A few weeks later, her parents died in a car accident and Abby inherited everything.
She finished school at seventeen and changed her name to Bela Talbot. She enrolled at Oxford, briefly, before becoming bored with the stingy, confining mainstream and--on the advice of a reading--began to educate herself in all things occult. Political and business-minded as she’d been raised, it didn’t take long for her to begin using her particular talents to amass a fortune and travel world-wide, gaining a reputation as a businesswoman and thief. It was thrilling. She thrived on the wealth and adrenaline, on being a necessity and last resort for so many people. For the first time in her life, she was the one holding all the metaphorical cards. She was the one with the power.
That particular fantasy got dashed when, at 22, she saw someone die in a hellhound attack. The demon present relished it, and laughed when it said that Bela’s time would come all too soon. Only two years remained before Bela’s own contract was up; she started to delve deeper into the occult, trying to find a way out. At the same time, she started brokering even more expensive, dangerous deals. Exhausting many of her resources overseas and deciding to head to the land where people did more killing of the supernatural than coexisting with it, she headed to America. There, she met the Winchesters. They struck her in a way few people did; she admired their skill, different though it was from her own, and took several opportunities to work alongside them--and screw them over. Affectionately so, really.
As her own deadline loomed, she drew further and further into herself, trusting everyone less and less and eventually in desperation summoning the demon she brokered the deal with ten years before. It told her there might be a way out, if she could get the gun the Winchesters had. The one that could supposedly kill anything. She did it with relative ease, and when she turned the gun over to the demon she thought was in charge, she was informed that the terms had changed. She had to kill the Winchesters. That was the only way out for her. She tried--but Dean, having found her earlier that day and felt her stealing his hotel receipt, knew she was coming and got out of town with Sam.
Her attempted assassination ended with a phone call to the Winchesters, where she confessed her motives and told them who held her contract--and Dean’s, hoping that the brothers might do what she couldn’t and find and kill the bitch. The clock struck midnight as she sat in their room, and the hellhounds found her there and tore her to pieces.
Then Hell happened. Years of torture and mind games perpetuated by ranks of higher-class demons who wanted nothing more than to share the pain of being locked away down below. Bela was never given the opportunity to become a torturer herself--frankly, she probably would have taken up the scalpel in a heartbeat, if it meant even a day off the rack. Only after about one hundred years (give or take a couple) did a demon come to her with an offer--after tidying her up and creating an illusory sitting room in a little-used corner of hell where they could meet. It was Crowley, and he gave her the chance to return to the surface and work for him as a Crossroads demon. Before she could give him her answer, she was dragged out of Hell and into the Wood.
First Person Sample:
A joke, was it? Let me think I have a chance, then take it away to make me desperate? The collected sadists of several thousand centuries and that’s the best you can do. I suppose next you’ll drop a metaphysical branch on my head and give my soul a concussion for this little hike.
Then fine, how’s this. No. Keep me here until I’ve lost my mind and all comprehension of the English language except for that one word, I don’t care.
No. Never. Nix.
Prose Sample: A bit of fic that I never finished, which is where her canonpoint idea came from. :C
“You do realize that was over one hundred years ago for me. Ancient history. If it’s supposed to barb--”
“Ten years, a hundred years, you’re still a murderous skank who killed her own parents for the lunch money.”
“Yes. And you boys killed yours. Incidentally, perhaps, but the point stands. And you, Dean, made the deal that drove your dear brother to the screaming desperation of parasitism on the creatures you hate most in the world, so congratulate yourself on that one, hero. I would suggest if you haven’t anything nice to say that you keep your mouth shut and direct your scorn elsewhere.”
The silence stretched between them in a thin line of outrage. Dean turned to the door.
“They’re not down below.” The sight of his back drove the words out of Bela before she felt them on her tongue.
He looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“Jo. Ellen.”
The boy--the man, really--bristled like a nettled rottweiler, turning to glare at her as though the look alone could exorcise her and send her flying back to the pit. “Don’t you even say their goddamn names you lying--”
“Are you even listening, you idiot?” Bela crossed her arms, leaning forward and speaking louder and slower for his apparent benefit. “They aren’t below.”
Dean’s glare went on, but he quieted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just thought you’d like to know, given how they died--” He growled a warning and she barreled on. “--given how they died, that their souls aren’t suffering in the grips of damnation. That’s all.”
Silence again. This time empty of threat. He stared at her like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. “So what’s the catch. Why are you telling me this.”
“No catch. No strings. I told you once that I dislike being indebted to anyone. Consider this a payment on an overdue bill.” She shrugged.
And again, that silence. Dean scratched the back of his neck, brows knit together as he inspected the ground between them. “How do you know they--”
“Aren’t there? How did I know that your brother sucked blood? That you’ve been tossed into the past and future so many times in the past few weeks you’re starting to resemble a human yo-yo? It’s a bit of a thing we demons have, Dean--it’s called intelligence. It means we like knowing what’s going on in the world around us.”
He took a step forward. “Bela--”
“I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve an appointment to keep. Must fill those two vacant slots in Hell somehow. Do take care.” She turned, stepping into the wall--
--and out, into her empty crossroads, into the quiet night.
She turned her face up to the cloudy sky. “Good G… Something,” she murmured. “I could use a drink.”
Special Notes: N/A
The Player
User Name/Nick: Jae
User LJ: N/A
AIM/IM: booglyboo145
E-mail: anjelsword at gmail dot com
Other Characters: Neal Caffrey, Karrin Murphy
If you're gonna go down to the crossroads,
You better pray, pray, pray.
If you're gonna go down to the crossroads,
Then you're gonna pay, pay, pay.
Child, you shouldn't go down to the crossroads,
Better stay away, way, way.
But if you go down to the crossroads,
Well, then, son, you'd better pray.
The Character
Character Name: Bela Talbot
Character Journal: sonotahunter
Canon: Supernatural
Age: 124, technically
From When?: Post-canon, after a span in hell of about 100 years, so probably mid-fourth season in the canonical timeline. She’s been offered the chance to serve as a crossroads demon. Escape from the pit, yes, but also complete loss of her humanity and becoming literally the thing that landed her in hell in the first place.
Abilities/Powers: One very humany human. Fantastic at gathering information, brokering deals, and thievery. She has talent with spirit-speaking, tarot and other kinds of divination, but other than that and skill with a handgun, she’s human through and through.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory
The clothes on her back. A pantsuit and blouse, plus nice shoes and clean underthings. They were conjured up for her meeting with the demon who made her offer.
Personality:
As Bobby puts it, Bela is “pretty friggin’ far from a Hunter”. She’s certainly not concerned with putting spirits to rest or lifting curses, unless it saves or benefits her directly--her interests tend specifically toward what can be gained from interaction with the supernatural world. From her perspective, almost every inhuman creature out there has something to offer, whether it’s an unexpected branch of clientele or a valuable set of incisors with unusual properties.
She kills if she must, but that stirs up bad blood and animosity that she’d rather not have to keep track of. Despite what the Winchesters might think, she prefers to make as few enemies as possible, instead acting as a force for neutrality. That may be, in fact, part of the reason she uses them so frequently--it’s far simpler to keep track of one pair of hunters who want your head on a platter than try to evade a dozen who have three dozen friends. That, and they seem uniquely capable of acquiring (and losing) valuable occult objects.
Her outlook on the world in general effects the way she interacts with the supernatural. Humans, monsters, etc--in the basest way, they’re all the same. She sees the worst in everything, human and otherwise. They’re animals, tethered by societal or personally-imposed restraints. Given the proper impetus, they’ll snap those bonds and go rabid. No one is above it, no one is beyond it. You just need to find the right barb to drive anyone into a frenzy.
Her perspective on the fringe-dwellers of society is unique. She doesn’t see them as monsters, or even as being ‘beneath’ humanity as a whole. For the most part, they’re a subset of the human race, branches of the same family. Those that aren’t are dealt with on their own terms and in their own way; she doesn’t look down on them, which makes many more willing to deal with her than they otherwise might be. Of course, she’s also not an idiot, so attempts to kill or cross her are met with appropriate, controlled violence. Those who know of her respect her, and those who don’t quickly learn to. Even if they dislike her, her skill is appreciated: the same goes for the humans who know her directly or by reputation. She’s damn good at what she does, dishonest or not, and that garners a certain amount of respect in supernatural circles. That said, she still reserves special hatred for demons almost across the board. She’ll work for them and with them, because of her situation--but also hates them for being forced into servitude in the first place.
She makes a point of being in the know--for someone who’s suffered abuse as she has, the only sure power she has is in knowing more than your opponents. It’s one of the reasons she got into divination, aside from natural talent. Politics is everything; a major component of politics is knowledge. Your adversary’s history, their tics, their habits; when she goes into business with someone, she goes in knowing exactly who she’s dealing with, if at all possible. She keeps up on the rumors and reputations of the supernatural world, and regularly consults her talking board to see who’s newly arrived on the other side--and why and how they got there.
Her relationship with persons of authority is twofold. If she can find someone who competes on her level, knows as much or more than she does, it creates a certain attachment with that person. She’ll test herself against them, test their own skills, and generally maintain some level of contact despite her mistrustful and independent nature. This is with those she respects, sees something of herself in--those she thinks might deal with her on an equal level.
It’s very different with those who treat her as an inferior, for whatever reason--lesser skills, questionable morals, what-have-you. If she is, in fact, outmatched, that’s one thing--and something she will work her ass off to remedy the situation and prove to her opponent that she’s both more skilled and more adaptable. However, if someone--a hunter, for example--tries to take the moral high-ground in dealings with her, she will break them down and shove their inadequacies in that person’s face until they either back down, move on or break. She refuses to be seen as a bad person, for the simple reason that all people are bad. She’s no different than anyone else. In those kinds of exchanges, anger becomes both a tool and a defense mechanism. She attempts to barb her opponent into acting in rage, proving her point and validating her belief that no one is above provocation, given the appropriate triggers.
As far as Sam and Dean are concerned, Bela would never admit it, but the Winchesters are her kind of people underneath. She would like to be part of a team--if she trusted anyone but the dead. She can see the value of other people--at least in terms of their skills. She know that some jobs are better worked with partners, and the fact that she goes to the Winchesters so regularly shows she knows their quality. But she also knows, as much as she might wish it were otherwise, they'll never look at her as anything more than a con artist and a thief. The interim between the times she sees them gives her the chance to entertain the idea that they might get over themselves, but it's driven home every time she does see them that they never will. She does genuinely like them, but they’re very like her father: she loved him, and he hurt her, and between every time he did it she let herself think that maybe he wouldn't hurt her again.
While Bela likes Dean more, she trusts Sam more. In Red Sky at Morning, it’s Sam who comes up with the plan to save Bela’s life, and while Dean goes along with his brother, he made it clear when she came looking for help that he couldn’t care less about saving her. Ultimately, it’s this attitude that probably keeps her from seeking the brothers’ help when the deadline for her contract looms. She wants the brothers to want her as part of their lives, and can’t express that in any clear way; it’s all tricks, banter and abuse, in the hope that they might invite her in. When Dean threatens to kill her after taking the colt, that ends any hope she had of that happening. She still cares about them, but she’ll keep her distance--until she needs to exploit them again.
Vulnerability isn’t something she likes to admit to, and even more rarely will she express it. It took being confronted with death in the most immediate terms for her to ask the brothers Winchester for assistance--when she thought she could get out of her deal on her own, she didn’t so much as admit to the fact she had a contract. Even during the conversation in Red Sky at Morning, her most vulnerable moments have a predatory edge, the promise that one wrong word will either break her down or get her hackles up and bristling. It’s only at the end of everything (in Time is On My Side), when she’s out of options and out of time, that she really breaks down. She’s been beaten, has no friends, no recourse, and is on her way to a horrible death and a span in hell that will end with her becoming one of the things she hates most in the world.
Attachment is, on its own, a form of vulnerability; she makes a show of not caring, of being brutal to the point of callousness even if it wounds her to be so. Attachment is a weapon as much as anything else. It takes the literal end of everything for her to cry, to admit to deeper feeling for anyone or anything, including herself. Even just before her time runs out, when Dean confronts her in her hotel room, she says of her parents and Dean himself: "They were lovely people. And I killed them. And I got rich, and I can't be bothered to give a damn. Just like I don't care what happens to you." Dean is arguably one of the people she cares about most in the world; he can keep up with her, in a sense, which is more than most people can do, and he also shares her own helpless position, trapped under a rapidly expiring contract with no real hope of escape. It hurts and scares her to think about that, so rather than admit it, she denies it to the point of breaking her own heart and alienating one of the few who might really understand her.
Physical intimacy offers many of the same hang-ups, plus the added anxiety of past sexual abuse. There’s deep, deep shame attached to it that’s difficult for her to think about at the best of times, let alone surmount. She projects a sexualized air almost as a means of self-defense, taking the figurative bull by the horns and battling her own fear. She likes flirting and is damn good at it, but when flirtation hits a certain point there’s expectation that both parties will put out. It’s either maintain appearances and do what’s expected (earning titles like slut, whore, slag, etc), or backpedal/break off (and be called a prude, a tease, an ice queen/cold bitch, etc). Sex is a tool for self-flagellation at the best of times, and unprotested rape at the worst. It’s a rare man that can get her not only to want sex but also enjoy it.
Idealism isn’t something Bela looks highly upon. In fact, she does just the opposite; she hates idealists, mostly because her contract curtails anything but the most fatalistic approach to the world, life, and its outcomes. It’s a particularly vindictive habit she has, trying to break the faithful and hopeful of their dreams. Hope makes her angry, because it’s the one thing she’s never had and can’t acquire through any means she knows of. She’ll go down struggling, but it’s the belief that she can be the best and conquer her opponents that drives her to fight, not the hope that she can overcome her difficulties. Hope implies that there’s an outside force influencing a person’s life toward a greater good. If there is a grander power influencing the world beyond the everyday supernatural, Bela wants nothing to do with it. It hasn’t shown hide nor hair of itself to her in all her life; it’s never helped her, never done anything for her. Everything she’s done, she’s done for herself or to herself. Hope, faith, etcetera--to her, they mean that a person doesn’t find themselves responsible for the outcomes of their own actions. That something will swoop in and make it all better despite all evidence to the contrary. That is something she absolutely refuses to accept.
Her time in hell hasn’t changed much of this--if anything it’s only carved in deeper her need for independence, isolation and control. She’s developed a tolerance for pain that is almost appalling as well as total distrust of her surroundings. Physical touch is a definite trigger for negative reactions, as the only physical contact she’s had for the past hundred years or so of her mental time line is torture of various kinds. She wanted to trust others before. Now she trusts no one, period. After being visited by familiar faces both through hallucinations and actual presence in hell alongside her and more often than not put through the wringer by them, even those she knew and had some inkling toward friendliness with have become potential enemies. Everyone is a monster waiting to show its teeth. When she realizes she can fight back now, she’ll probably try showing hers first.
History:
Bela Talbot was born Abby Foster, daughter of well-to-do, wealthy socialite parents. Their only child and the product of a long effort to have a baby, she was her parents’ prize. She was doted on from birth, so when her father started paying extra attention to her as she hit puberty, she didn’t think much of it at first. The first time he molested her, she was too shocked to do anything about it. When he came to her again, she went to her mother. The woman accused her of lying and slapped her, and Abby never told her mother about it again.
As the abuse continued, she started isolating herself. Her grades declined, her friends abandoned her, and she began to study divination and communication with the dead to ease her loneliness and exert some small control over her world. When her report cards came in her parents confronted her, discovered her divination tools, and forced her to see a therapist. Session after session, Abby would sit in silence as the woman tried to get her to talk. Eventually she stopped speaking to anyone and spent her time at home outside or in her room, waiting for her father to come to her again and using her talking board and tarot to communicate with the other side.
One day, as she sat on the swing set in her back yard, a little girl--slightly younger than Abby herself--came and joined her. She managed the one thing no one else had in weeks. She got Abby to talk. Abby, thinking the girl was from the house next door, slowly opened up to her, first about her divination, then about everything. She started to talk to her parents again; when they pressed her about the change in her behavior, she told them about the neighbor girl she’d met. Later, she overheard her parents discussing whether or not to commit her to a mental institution, as the house next door was unoccupied and had been so for some time.
When Bela confronted her ‘friend’, the girl readily admitted not only to not being a neighbor, but to not being human. She knew all about Abby and offered to end her father’s abuse and punish Abby’s mother for not believing her, with the condition that in ten years’ time, Abby would be with her forever. The girl accepted. A few weeks later, her parents died in a car accident and Abby inherited everything.
She finished school at seventeen and changed her name to Bela Talbot. She enrolled at Oxford, briefly, before becoming bored with the stingy, confining mainstream and--on the advice of a reading--began to educate herself in all things occult. Political and business-minded as she’d been raised, it didn’t take long for her to begin using her particular talents to amass a fortune and travel world-wide, gaining a reputation as a businesswoman and thief. It was thrilling. She thrived on the wealth and adrenaline, on being a necessity and last resort for so many people. For the first time in her life, she was the one holding all the metaphorical cards. She was the one with the power.
That particular fantasy got dashed when, at 22, she saw someone die in a hellhound attack. The demon present relished it, and laughed when it said that Bela’s time would come all too soon. Only two years remained before Bela’s own contract was up; she started to delve deeper into the occult, trying to find a way out. At the same time, she started brokering even more expensive, dangerous deals. Exhausting many of her resources overseas and deciding to head to the land where people did more killing of the supernatural than coexisting with it, she headed to America. There, she met the Winchesters. They struck her in a way few people did; she admired their skill, different though it was from her own, and took several opportunities to work alongside them--and screw them over. Affectionately so, really.
As her own deadline loomed, she drew further and further into herself, trusting everyone less and less and eventually in desperation summoning the demon she brokered the deal with ten years before. It told her there might be a way out, if she could get the gun the Winchesters had. The one that could supposedly kill anything. She did it with relative ease, and when she turned the gun over to the demon she thought was in charge, she was informed that the terms had changed. She had to kill the Winchesters. That was the only way out for her. She tried--but Dean, having found her earlier that day and felt her stealing his hotel receipt, knew she was coming and got out of town with Sam.
Her attempted assassination ended with a phone call to the Winchesters, where she confessed her motives and told them who held her contract--and Dean’s, hoping that the brothers might do what she couldn’t and find and kill the bitch. The clock struck midnight as she sat in their room, and the hellhounds found her there and tore her to pieces.
Then Hell happened. Years of torture and mind games perpetuated by ranks of higher-class demons who wanted nothing more than to share the pain of being locked away down below. Bela was never given the opportunity to become a torturer herself--frankly, she probably would have taken up the scalpel in a heartbeat, if it meant even a day off the rack. Only after about one hundred years (give or take a couple) did a demon come to her with an offer--after tidying her up and creating an illusory sitting room in a little-used corner of hell where they could meet. It was Crowley, and he gave her the chance to return to the surface and work for him as a Crossroads demon. Before she could give him her answer, she was dragged out of Hell and into the Wood.
First Person Sample:
A joke, was it? Let me think I have a chance, then take it away to make me desperate? The collected sadists of several thousand centuries and that’s the best you can do. I suppose next you’ll drop a metaphysical branch on my head and give my soul a concussion for this little hike.
Then fine, how’s this. No. Keep me here until I’ve lost my mind and all comprehension of the English language except for that one word, I don’t care.
No. Never. Nix.
Prose Sample: A bit of fic that I never finished, which is where her canonpoint idea came from. :C
“You do realize that was over one hundred years ago for me. Ancient history. If it’s supposed to barb--”
“Ten years, a hundred years, you’re still a murderous skank who killed her own parents for the lunch money.”
“Yes. And you boys killed yours. Incidentally, perhaps, but the point stands. And you, Dean, made the deal that drove your dear brother to the screaming desperation of parasitism on the creatures you hate most in the world, so congratulate yourself on that one, hero. I would suggest if you haven’t anything nice to say that you keep your mouth shut and direct your scorn elsewhere.”
The silence stretched between them in a thin line of outrage. Dean turned to the door.
“They’re not down below.” The sight of his back drove the words out of Bela before she felt them on her tongue.
He looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“Jo. Ellen.”
The boy--the man, really--bristled like a nettled rottweiler, turning to glare at her as though the look alone could exorcise her and send her flying back to the pit. “Don’t you even say their goddamn names you lying--”
“Are you even listening, you idiot?” Bela crossed her arms, leaning forward and speaking louder and slower for his apparent benefit. “They aren’t below.”
Dean’s glare went on, but he quieted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just thought you’d like to know, given how they died--” He growled a warning and she barreled on. “--given how they died, that their souls aren’t suffering in the grips of damnation. That’s all.”
Silence again. This time empty of threat. He stared at her like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. “So what’s the catch. Why are you telling me this.”
“No catch. No strings. I told you once that I dislike being indebted to anyone. Consider this a payment on an overdue bill.” She shrugged.
And again, that silence. Dean scratched the back of his neck, brows knit together as he inspected the ground between them. “How do you know they--”
“Aren’t there? How did I know that your brother sucked blood? That you’ve been tossed into the past and future so many times in the past few weeks you’re starting to resemble a human yo-yo? It’s a bit of a thing we demons have, Dean--it’s called intelligence. It means we like knowing what’s going on in the world around us.”
He took a step forward. “Bela--”
“I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve an appointment to keep. Must fill those two vacant slots in Hell somehow. Do take care.” She turned, stepping into the wall--
--and out, into her empty crossroads, into the quiet night.
She turned her face up to the cloudy sky. “Good G… Something,” she murmured. “I could use a drink.”
Special Notes: N/A