Ratlines and Relics [OOC / OPEN]

[Luminesa]

This looks like a pretty incredible RP. I heard WWII and came running as fast as I could. My knowledge of post-WWII history is adequate, but if it's not enough I'll do what I can to keep-up. I've just read a bit of the OP and the rules, I hope I can get an app up.

[Luminesa]

Name: Merritt Bellamy

Age: 24

Gender: Female

Appearance: Merritt is a pretty, pale girl with freckles and long brown hair, which she wears generally in a bun or a braid of sorts. She is a little taller than average at 5'7", and a little skinny at 115lbs. She generally wears long overcoats to keep her slight figure warm, and also to protect herself from danger. She dresses prim, proper, and ladylike at all times, but due to the dangerous nature of the work she does, she avoids wearing form-fitting clothing outside of anything fancy. Not that she attends many fancy parties with her line of work.

Employment: Merritt is a nurse, and during WWII she was a field nurse. Now she is trying to find work.

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Personality: Merritt is a compassionate, hard-working, and practical individual. She has a keen eye for suffering, and her sense of responsibility drives her to take the hardest, most gruesome tasks. However, the stories of the rapes of Soviet and German women have frightened her, though she wants to be involved in the resurrection of Europe regardless of the dangers it presents to her. She is eager-to-please, which sometimes puts her at odds for what she knows must be done. After all, she knows from her medical training that patients do not always like what is done to make them feel better. She is intelligent, enjoys pouring over details, and brags of excellent note-taking skills.

Fears: Being a single mother whose husband died in the war, she fears her task of finding someone loving and sufficient to help her raise her daughter, Adalia. Despite the fact that her family is helping her to raise her daughter, however, she is worried that the workload she has taken will hurt the balance between her career and her motherhood, which she values dearly. She also fears being harmed like many of the women in Germany and Russia, and strives to make a safer world for both others and her daughter. She has nightmares about the death of her husband and older sister, and fears that her inability to get sleep will cause her to lose her job, thus putting her life at even worse risk.

Hobbies: Collecting stationary, writing letters, creating diaries, gardening, and reading.

Skills: Merritt is a good mother, nurse, and professional. She puts her daughter's needs before her own, regardless of how she feels after her four hours of sleep at night. Her note-taking, whether it is for charts or for her diaries, is one of her better skills all-around. As a nurse, she has a great attention to details, she is quick when it comes to finding solutions for medical emergencies, and she is cool under pressure. Due to the fact that her husband was in the Army and she is raising an infant daughter, she has some basic skills with a gun, and carries a pistol when in public.

Weaknesses: Merritt is eager-to-please, secretly a romantic, and sometimes slips into being a workaholic. She easily takes more than she can handle at times, which can cause for her to suffer breakdowns if she does not step away. She can't start a day without coffee.

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Birthplace: Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom.

Nationality: British

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Sexuality: Straight

Religion: Christianity, baptized Anglican.

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Education (if any): She attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, originally with the intent to graduate and become a teacher or a librarian.

Biography:

Born April 30th, 1921, Merritt was given her odd name due to both her father's desire for a son and her mother's belief that, after two miscarriages between her oldest child, Ruby, and Merritt, the new baby girl was a great accomplishment. Both parents, despite their differences, wanted their daughter to grow-up and to be a strong woman in the post-WW1 world. Merritt's childhood was fairly normal. With her parents being upper-middle-class, she went to a private, all-girls school and made a couple of friends, Mildred and Beth. She was also known for her stellar grades, her cute freckles, and her determination to get through university no matter what. Despite her father's skepticism about how she would be treated in a university, Merritt fought to be valedictorian of her class, and got a scholarship to Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University.

However, with the Second World War, everything changed. School went to the back-burner, as nurses were needed for the war front. Like many girls, Merritt decided to become a nurse, even though she was pained that she would have to put her university studies on hold. Her mother made their large home a hospital for wounded soldiers, and she, her eldest sister, and Merritt would all take care of them. While Merritt and her mother decided to remain in Oxfordshire, Ruby went to London to aid with the German threat impending. Merritt debated going with her, but decided that her mother needed her. In the back of her mind, she always wondered if she was afraid of letting go of her stable life, of her familiar surroundings, of the lovely gardens around her home and the beautiful views of Oxfordshire, to travel into the breaking heart of her beloved kingdom. Yet she stayed, and Ruby went. Their parting at the train station was the last time they would see each other.

On September 8th, 1940, Merritt's family received the worst news possible. With London decimated by the German bombings, much was destroyed, including a hospital in which Ruby was working. A friend of hers who had taken shelter reported that Ruby was killed while trying to move patients underground. The death of her beloved sister rocked her family and destroyed the fantasy that her family was safe from the scourge of the Nazis. Merritt, in particular, felt immense guilt, believing she could have saved her sister if only she had gone to London. Yet she knew she could not sit on this guilt, not when her mother suffered even worse pain over losing one of her only two children. She stayed with her mother to console her, putting aside her own suffering to aid her.

Despite all of the darkness that fell over the family in the months following this tragic loss, Merritt soon found a new light that had wandered into her life. Stephen Bellamy was a strapping, cheerful, handsome soldier, two years older than her, who had been wounded in Africa. From the moment she had taken care of his wounds and he had complimented her freckles, love bloomed. For some time, as Stephen recovered in Oxfordshire, Merritt found comfort in him, and he in her. His affinity for jokes and for flirting complimented her sometimes-too-serious nature, and despite the war, they talked of marriage. Stephen went overseas once again, returning in 1944 due to another wound to his shoulder. Fearing that she would never have the chance again, Merritt proposed to Stephen in a move that none but they expected. With the acceptance of her proposal, which was unusual for a woman at the time, Merritt and Stephen were married in a private chapel ceremony. Soon after the wedding, Merritt was pregnant, and Stephen had to return to the war front once more. He never promised that he would be home to see the baby, but asked her to write, as always. Their last kiss was as passionate as their first, and more tearful.

As with Ruby, another light was snuffed, tragically just before the war's end. Stephen was killed in the Battle of the Bulge, in what was praised as a sword to the stomach of the Nazi offensive. He was hit by a stray bullet, with his own assailant killed minutes later by Stephen's best friend, who wrote the letter letting the family know he had died. Merritt herself felt a stab-wound to the heart, as the love of her life was whisked away by Death's chilling embrace, never again to feel her own warmth in this life again. Yet several little lights came that brought relief more than consolation. Hitler committed suicide-on Merritt's twenty-fourth birthday, no less-and the war was over not long after his death. Then, on August 13th, 1945, Adalia Marie Bellamy was born, bringing a new joy into Merritt's life, the joy of motherhood, and the joy of giving her mournful mother a new granddaughter. Yet with this happiness came new stresses.

England would take many years to recover from the scars of its bombings, and news from Europe was even worse. Stephen's friend, Jordan, who returned from Germany at the war's end, reported the horrific sights of Germany, including the gruesome discoveries of the concentration camps, Bergen-Belsen in particular, and of its inhabitants. The stories pushed Merritt to remain a nurse, to change her career path and to put her energy into healing not only those effected around her, but also those in Europe at a greater scale. Wanting to live-up to her parents' desire for her to succeed, she decided to look for work, given she had no job after the war's end. Anything she could do to bring peace, to make sure her daughter never had to feel the tragedies she had endured. Anything to make sure her sister and husband's deaths were not in vain.

[Rudaslavia]

*cough* Bring this back. *cough*

I really wanted to see this lift off the ground.