ADELAIDE HAWKINSI'm ready to suffer and ready to hope
Character Information Full Name: Adelaide Belle Hawkins (Lansing) Goes By: Adelaide, Addie, Ads (to Archer) Age: 23 Birth Date: January 2, 1996 Birth Place: Montgomery, TN Immunity Status: No Current Residence: The Dog Park Job: Madame Le Baby Sister Username:ABLansing officially ... babygirl on a second phone that Rodeo gave her.timshel
APPEARANCELooking for heaven
When Adelaide arrived in Austin with the Boston convoy, the end had been happening up north for quite some time and yet she didn't look the part of an apocalyptic survivor. 5’1 with a small feminine build, Adelaide’s idea of working out before all this was a leisurely stroll in the woods. Her style was as cozy and romantic as chic can be, and someone without much perception could have said she was a soft creature. They would have been neglecting to see the stubborn, steady toughness in her eyes, and the steel in her spine. Adelaide arrived in Austin with chin-length red hair, which has since grown out some. She has large gray eyes and full lips, a heart-shaped face with a stubborn chin, and a dimple in her left cheek. There is a spray of freckles across her nose, and though she doesn’t burn to a crisp immediately upon contact with sunlight, the caustic atmosphere in Austin is definitely not the best for her complexion. She can hide her strength if it proves convenient and appear quite the helpless little thing, but she can turn to ice when needed - and she looks like a totally different creature while wearing each one.
She has put on maybe the smallest bit of muscle since the start of the end of the world, but not a whole lot. Manual labor isn't so much a thing for the privileged few at the Capitol. Her bright hair is often down in waves or up in a long tail, and her formerly romantic/chic style has now morphed slightly towards functional, with button-up shirts and jeans. More than most people these days, though, there are still touches of something charming where she can manage it. She has a trusty pair of slightly worn, tick soled boots for times when she needs to be functional, but since arriving in Austin she really hasn't had to be out and about, especially not since her pregnancy. She is a rare site anywhere outside the Capitol Building. There is an air to her of ‘coziness’ despite the circumstances - an impression that she is going to make herself comfortable no matter the surroundings - and also an air of thoughtful melancholy. Her smiles when they come are cheeky, more sassy than sunny, and often wry. She is habitually chilly so the heat of Texas agrees with her, and she can often be found comfortable in long sleeves where others are sweltering in shorts.
Adelaide has a scar hidden in the crease below her lower lip - when she was three, she was running down the hall of the trailer toward her brother, when she tripped and her tooth went straight through. She does not have many scars otherwise, aside from a small chickenpox scar on her right forearm. There is a lace-patterned tattoo in white ink on her right shoulder, and if you look very closely you can catch that the design contains horseshoes here and there. It is her only tattoo.
PERSONALITYFound a devil in me
Adelaide is fueled by pride, loyalty, and a touch of selfishness. She was raised, as she would describe it, like a queen in a trash heap. She was a homey feminine type raised by criminals and thrill-seekers, cloistered like a crown jewel even while she watched their hard, rough lives unfold and shake her world over and over. With a mother who never was one like a viper in the background, sometimes comatose and other times raving, but always a burden.
Whether because of all this or despite it, Adelaide is a consummate survivor with a will of iron. Like a cat who always somehow finds its feet, Adelaide does what needs to be done in order to make it through. She isn’t physically strong or intimidating, but she is a very clever plotter who can smell trouble a mile away and through all of the times that her life has been in upheaval (zombies are certainly not the first) she always finds a way to make a position for herself first and foremost - and to rationalize the means of doing so. She is not by any stretch a cruel person, and does not take any pleasure in stepping on toes to get herself safe and established, but she doesn’t shy away from doing what needs to be done for her and her own. She is generally confident and unhesitating, but there are times when she wonders if she is a hypocrite to condemn the actions of her criminal brother; if she is just as bad as he is only in a different way.
Her inner circle is small and not easy to get into. Where she trusts and loves, she does so fiercely and to excess and the only real way to lose that trust and love is to leave her behind. The worst thing imaginable to Adelaide is the thought of being separated from those she cares for. Her loyalty arises only where it is earned. The bond of mother and daughter wasn't even enough to overcome this - Adelaide's affection is based on respect. She is pragmatic to a fault, and doesn’t see the point of loving someone on the simple basis of shared blood.
Adelaide is happiest when she has a place of her own and people she cares for deeply, but during times in her life when she can't have those people, she has a tendency to fill the void with Things. She doesn't have a lot of casual friends, having grown up with such a tight knit group that wasn't often open to outsiders, but if she picks out a kindred spirit in the crowd she has a way of claiming them right off and can be absolutely charming. Addie is very creative and enjoys making things that are beautiful and unique - she often wonders what her role should be now that those things are superfluous.
HISTORYBut it's always darkest before the dawn
• January 2, 1996: By the time Adelaide Hawkins was born, the little trailer in Tennessee had devolved into a bitter place without a father who ever showed up, without a mother who functioned. But Adelaide never knew a thing of wanting, never knew a moment without loving care. Her brother James, not yet ten years old, gave her everything he had and the pretty red-haired baby learned of love in an unconventional way. By the time her father was killed in 1998, Addie hardly noticed the difference. She called her brother "Jims" and he was her entire world.
• 1998-2003: Idyllic isn't quite the word for the early years of Adelaide's childhood after her daddy died, but that's how she remembers them. James, often with his best friend Ian - or Sarge as he was usually called - were devoted to the little girl, building her play houses and indulging all of her imaginative fancies. Sarge had always been a favorite, maybe because he and Rodeo were so close and he was always around, but maybe also because Adelaide had always liked knowing things other people didn't, and she happened to know from a very young age that there was a lot more to him than frowning muscles and a temper. She was a pet to their larger circle of friends, placed on a pedestal. Mama was someone to be wary of, but not yet prone to the erratic outbursts that would come later.
• June, 2003:When Adelaide was seven years old the bedrock of her world was badly shaken. Her brother was sent away for the first time, to a juvenile corrections facility on a horse ranch in Texas. She was an observant child, but had never had cause to ponder where the pretty things she had, the food they ate, the clothes she wore came from. But when Jims was taken away for stealing, she started to notice that her Mama didn't go to work like other Mamas, that things were a little different in their family. Adelaide's adoration for and loyalty to James at this point in her life were absolute, but she needed to make sure that this never happened again. When James returned at the end of the summer, Adelaide sat him down and gave him the sternest talking-to a seven-year-old ever gave. She made him promise he would never, ever leave her again and when he swore it, Adelaide believed his word was gold.
• 2003 - 2005: Ever creative, Adelaide took up needlepoint, and started making dolls. She also took to cooking and cleaning, making the trailer a homey place. She had a knack for all things cozy and beautiful, and as long as home was filled with the people she cared for most, she was happy.
• March, 2005 - September, 2007: What Adelaide had believed to be impossible happened, and her brother broke his word and got arrested - for real this time. Adelaide was mad as a hornet - mad at Rodeo for getting taken away, mad at her Mama for not picking herself up, mad at the friends of Rodeo's whose knees she had grown up sitting on at poker nights for trying to act like they were in charge of her. Except for Sarge, who had always been one of them, and who knew to soften her up with Skittles when he came by to check on her. There were nights that Mama ranted and raved about Rodeo, how he was just like his daddy and no good. There were nights where Mama sobbed over her baby boy. Adelaide, young as she was, didn't have a comforting word for her mother and found her repulsive, but she did defend her brother because underneath her hurt she still loved him more than anything else. By the time Rodeo returned nearing on her twelfth birthday Adelaide's anger had settled in to a hunk of ice in her little heart. He was as irresistible a character as ever though, and Adelaide had missed him terribly, and so eventually he won his way back in. She never had been able to resist him. But there was a seed of something in her heart that just couldn't quite trust it wouldn't happen again, and though she was too young to think it consciously at the time, if she couldn't trust him then her entire foundation was shaky.
• 2007 - 2012: With Rodeo back and forgiven, life went back to as normal as things got in Montgomery. True, there was money set aside where Mama couldn't find it for "if anything ever happened" but even stubborn Adelaide couldn't deny that was practical. She spent her free time largely at home, keeping things tidy and cooking, and she began to expand on her creative endeavors. Cake decorating was a favorite, and every birthday the boys had was celebrated with a masterpiece. Rodeo fixed up an old sea-green pickup for her, and she turned flea-market finds into treasures with her best friend Ruby. Aside from a stolen kiss here and there, she didn't date much - for one thing Rodeo and his friends' reputations scared off most of the local boys, and for another there was nobody around quite up to her standards. Mama got more and more erratic, and Adelaide had less and less patience for it.
• March, 2012: A deal gone bad in Austin pulled the rug right out from under Adelaide and showed her just how unreliable it all really was. Rodeo went to prison, for good. Sarge was in the hospital and then who-knew-where, and even if she knew she couldn't wait around for him to come save her. Nobody could save her but herself. She attended Rodeo's trials, sitting alone at the back of the courtroom with shoulders as stiff and brittle as glass for days, and on the day he was sentenced she met his eyes across the courtroom, filled with tears, and then she left without a word. Adelaide took the stash of emergency money, packed up her clothes, a few valuables and a scant few mementos, paid one of Rodeo's more convincible contacts to get her a fake ID, and she caught a Peter Pan bus north. The only goodbye for her mother was a note saying she was fine. She knew that if she hung around, if she had to watch her brother wait for his execution, she would never get past it. Rodeo had sealed his own fate despite her years of begging, and the only thing that Adelaide could do now was build up walls so high and thick that even memory couldn't get through. If there was a single crack in the armor, the whole thing would come down.
• 2012 - 2015: Adelaide finally stopped in Boston, where she stayed a couple of weeks in a dive motel and found a job decorating cakes at Rosie's Bakery. It wasn't long before she found a group of girls just a little older than she was who were renting out a room in their Inman Square apartment. The room was a crooked little glorified sunroom with no closet, but Adelaide turned it charming in days. She got back into the habit of turning everyday things beautiful, doing over all of her roommates bedrooms and posting the retro-romantic images to an online blog. She got hired here and there to theme parties or style rooms in wealthy people's houses, and was even eventually featured in a local magazine. She was by no means living large, but she was used to making do. She was often lonesome, never without the ache in her chest, and never talked about home or her history at all, rather a mysterious creature to those people she knew in Boston.
• November, 2014: Adelaide met Thomas Lansing when he hired her to do interior decorating in his new condo in downtown Boston. Thomas was immediately intrigued by her pretty melancholy and shrewd eyes, drawn to her air of unavailability and her blunt wry humor. Adelaide had met plenty of Nice Guys during her time in Boston, but Thomas wasn't that. He was a hard, determined, shrewd and unflinching man, 8 years older than Addie and a self-made lawyer on the rise in state politics. His father had been a welder who built skyscrapers, and there was an intense determination about Thomas to not only claw out of the working class, but to stand on top of it and have a look around.
There was something about his hard-bitten persona that Adelaide felt a connection to, having grown up with tough, take-charge men, and having a rather hard-headed view on things herself. She liked that his success was technically above board, and that he did what needed to be done. When he asked her to dinner, she said yes. When he asked her for more, she put him off. But they continued to date, and Adelaide could tell that Thomas liked the way she looked on his arm, liked her easy Southern manners that charmed his bosses, liked that she was far from clingy and sometimes difficult, and threw ridiculously good dinner parties that made him look fantastic.
• June, 2015: Adelaide and Thomas continued to see each other, as the world around them started to rapidly change. Strange stories from all corners of the globe started to pour into Boston. Government officials were sent abroad for aide meetings or talks with global leadership, and many never returned. Many resigned, retreating from the conflict to try and get safe with their families. Using these vacancies and his own ruthlessness as his wedge, Thomas moved up the ranks dizzyingly fast - with Adelaide alongside him.
When the first US cases of the virus were reported in Detroit and New York City, Thomas spearheaded the effort to establish one of the first government strongholds at Boston City Hall. The shelter began to stockpile goods, and would take in no civilians outside of government officials and their families. There were generators, and satellite connections for when the power inevitably went out. As the virus spread, more and more survival ideas were spreading with it, but there was so much denial that it could happen in the US that the first cities fell quickly, unprepared. Thomas had ideas as to how things ought to be run in Boston but the city was devolving too quickly and local figureheads resisted people like Thomas with a more 'for the greater good' approach.
Adelaide could see by now that though Thomas was a man who got things done, that was where his similarities to her home people ended. He didn't have the warmth, the heart of her boys from Montgomery underneath, and something was always missing - but that something was a connection that she hadn't felt since years ago in that little trailer in Montgomery, and she doubted she would ever have such a thing again. She doubted it mattered now, in the face of this new world's madness. Only safety and a good position seemed to matter now, and so she made her decision. On June 9th, 2015, Adelaide and Thomas were married by a Justice of the Peace at Boston City Hall. They started out living in the condo she had outfitted - Adelaide, Thomas, and Adelaide's dog Bogey - but moved into City Hall not long after as the city deteriorated.
• November, 2015: By now growing extremely anxious after the fate of her brother and others from home, and realizing that jail and estrangement were the least of her worries, Adelaide made the call that she hadn't in years. When she got through to the jail in Austin where her brother was housed, Adelaide was told that he didn't currently have phone privileges, but that the jail was secure. As far as anyone could tell her, Austin was so far uninfected. As the living dead started to close in and strangle Boston, Adelaide set to work convincing Thomas that south was the way to move. Ever with her ear to the ground about her brother's city, she heard about a man who was called The Mayor there, who was making moves that she had heard Thomas argue for - the banning of infected from a single hospital, among other unpopular ideas that actually made sense to Adelaide. She got Thomas in touch with The Mayor, and they began a correspondence.
• January, 2016: Adelaide had been planting the seeds that would lead them to Austin for months, but when Thomas proposed the idea to her, Adelaide merely conceded that it would probably be smart to be somewhere warm come winter. She didn't need the credit for the plan, just the results.
• May, 2016: It took a great deal of doing to gather the resources for a journey south - like-minded people were tapped to join them and add strength to their movement but they needed more. When a similar government enclave at the Old North Church was breached and nearly all those inside ended up dead or turned, additional resources suddenly presented themselves to those willing to take. Thomas was just such a man.
• June-August, 2016: A convoy slowly brought Adelaide and Thomas, Bogey, and a handful of like-minded men and women south toward the promise of a place with a vision like their own. An older man called Skinner, former military and retired CIA who had been instrumental in the plan for procuring military grade vehicles for the trip from nearby Hanscom Airforce Base, acted as Thomas' primary strategic counsel for getting the group through. He taught Adelaide a bit about using the Condor Kukri Machete she had picked out to defend herself, though Thomas thought the idea was unnecessary. Skinner found Adelaide to be a willing pupil, and also taught her the basics of knife-throwing as they came closer to Austin. She practiced diligently, and had a knack.
It wasn't quite the start they had hoped for in Austin. The convoy rolled into the city limits just hours before the CDC and Air Force began dumping their poison on the city that had finally started to see its share of the oncoming virus. But they were welcomed at the Capitol, and Thomas could see many of the things he and The Mayor had discussed already in place at the grand shelter. Their camaraderie picked up right where it left off. Skinner took up residence not far from Adelaide and Thomas, and retained a sort of majordomo role with Thomas though his personal feelings were always difficult to read.
• August, 2016: Adelaide had no time at all to get herself to her brother in jail before the clouds of deadly gas swarmed, outdone only by the dead. Adelaide discreetly sought word of her brother, but all her inquiries brought news that no one had survived in the jail. Certainly it seemed to Adelaide that even her survivor of a brother couldn't have fought off the gas and the undead from inside a cell. She retreated to their rooms inside of the Capitol Building to nurse her aching heart, while Thomas went to work as The Mayor's right hand man. She continued to keep her eyes and ears open, but in the beginning all signs pointed to her brother's demise.
• June, 2017: Adelaide had never intended to procreate. She had strong doubts about her mothering instincts before hell broke loose; afterward the idea seemed simply idiotic. Somehow, despite her best efforts, Adelaide found herself sitting Thomas down to inform him that the shelter's medic estimated she was six weeks along.
• August, 2017: An intriguing figure arose in the city of Austin, known to most only as the Dog King. The rumors of the frighteningly smart outlaw with a code - and a love for the ladies - gave Adelaide pause, but she never considered seriously that it might be her brother. To even allow the hope to enter would have ruined her. If she knew he was alive somewhere, then carrying on with Thomas, even in the most comfortable of situations, would have been misery. So she convinced herself there was just no possible way, and she just kept on going.
•February, 2018: Charles Thomas Lansing was born at 3:33am on February 27th at UMCB. Thomas took to fatherhood decently, excessively proud of the boy and excessively full of plans for him.
For her part, Adelaide didn't feel as if she took to motherhood like a duck to water, though many people told her she appeared to. A single look at the perfect blonde baby boy with those bright blue eyes was enough to twist Adelaide's insides into conflicted knots. What if he had that troublesome soul, what if he took her heart in his little fist and then left her, too? But he was there, and she couldn't help the fierce love that he inspired, and so Adelaide set out to be a mother - perhaps more daunted by that task than she was by the end of the world.