[App] multiversal

[nolimitation]

Out of Character Information
Name: Aubrey
Username: mortalcity
Are you over the age of eighteen? Yes
Current characters in Baedal: N/A

In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Olivia Dunham
Username: nolimitation
Fandom: Fringe
Played By: Anna Torv
Icon: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/1120263/1142832

Canon Character Section
Physical Description:

Olivia's in her early thirties, tall at five-foot-eight with a lean, athletic build. She carries herself with an almost military bearing and a great deal of composure, giving her a presence that's quiet but impossible to ignore. She has long blonde hair, usually worn pulled back in a ponytail or braid, and green-hazel eyes. Her clothing is simple and professional, tending toward suits and trenchcoats in black, white, and gray, and even in casual settings, her choice of attire is usually fairly subdued.

Sexuality:

All of Olivia's past romantic relationships have been with men. She had a sexual and romantic relationship with her partner, John Scott, and later Peter Bishop; she's recently developed an attraction to Lincoln Lee, and there are a few past references to relationships with men. By contrast, the only experience she's had with women involved being psychically connected to another Cortexiphan subject while he had sex with a woman - and there's no denying she enjoyed it, but given the situation, it's hard to say if that was more her or Nick Lane. Overall, she's almost entirely straight, with a slim possibility she might be attracted to other women but not much chance of ever acting on it. She is extremely cautious in initiating relationships, and they tend to be with people she's worked closely with under extreme situations - knowing people have her back when the bullets are flying seems crucial to her trusting them enough to allow them into her bed.

History: Wikipedia; Fringepedia

Olivia grew up in Jacksonville, Florida - her father was stationed at the local military base, and was presumably a Marine. When she was very young - probably three or four - she was involved in trails for a drug called Cortexiphan, conducted at her daycare center. The drug was meant to unleash the potential in the human mind, to create soldiers for a coming war between parallel worlds. As a child, Olivia was the most talented of the Cortexiphan subjects, the one who learned how to cross between worlds (and the one to set the building on fire at least twice). When the trials and experiments were ended, she presumably had her memories of it erased or locked away, and she now remembers very little of her childhood before the age of eight or so.

Her father either died or left her mother at some point (probably died, considering the regard she still has for him - Olivia would have viewed his leaving as a betrayal, and she'd still resent him for that if that were the case), and by the time Olivia was seven, her mother had remarried. Her stepfather drank, and used to hit her when he was drunk. When she came to Walter to try to make him stop it, toward the end of the Cortexiphan trials, Walter threatened her stepfather if he ever hurt Olivia again. Her stepfather stopped hitting her after that, but turned his anger toward her mother that much more. One day, when he came back to the house, Olivia took the gun he kept in the nightstand and shot him with it, but didn't kill him - which she regrets. He recovered from his injuries and disappeared, and though they never saw him again, Olivia still gets a card from him every year on her birthday. As a result, she's... really not fond of her birthday. At all.

Her mother died when she was fourteen. She went to boarding school through high school, where she didn't have many friends - some of the other kids there referred to her as Han (as in Solo). She went to Northwestern University, joined the Marines, where she served as a special investigator for several years, and then joined the FBI.

Olivia was the interagency liaison on a task force assembled to investigate a mysterious plane crash. In the course of that investigation, her partner and lover, John Scott, was infected with an unknown contagion - the same contagion that killed everyone on the plane and caused it to crash. Trying to save him, Olivia pulled Walter Bishop - a man who can only be described as a mad scientist - out of a mental institute in the hope that he would be able to reverse the effect of the mysterious compound. He did, but soon after, Olivia discovered that Scott was a traitor, working for the same people who caused the plane crash. When she tried to capture Scott, he crashed his car and died in her arms.

At the end of that case, Olivia was recruited to Fringe Division, at the head of a small team consisting of Olivia, Walter Bishop, his son Peter Bishop, and junior agent Astrid Farnsworth. This team investigated a number of strange incidents referred to as "the Pattern", which they connected to a group called ZFT, who were preparing for a coming war between universes. (Sound familiar?) Slowly, Olivia learned about what had been done to her as a child, met other Cortexiphan trial subjects as they demonstrated unusual abilities, and discovered how the cracks between the two universes were created in the first place - it was Walter, decades ago, who had gone over to the other side to save Peter, and effectively set a war in motion.

When Peter was taken back to the parallel universe by the other Walter, Olivia, her Walter, and some of the other Cortexiphan test subjects crossed over to bring him back. They succeeded in recovering Peter, but just before they made it home, the alternate universe Olivia (Fauxlivia, for the sake of brevity) knocked Olivia out and took her place. Fauxlivia returned to Olivia's home universe with Peter and Walter, and Olivia was trapped in the alternate universe, where that universe's Fringe Division gave her Fauxlivia's memories and tried to convince her she was Fauxlivia. It worked, for a little while, but Olivia's memories and true personality gradually resurfaced, and she returned to her universe through the use of her abilities.

She returned to find her life turned upside down by Fauxlivia's actions while she was gone, but she slowly managed to put things back together, eventually developing a relationship with Peter. The Fringe cases kept coming, but things had begun to fall back into a comfortable routine - and then Walternate activated the doomsday machine on the other side, and their universe started falling apart. The only way to solve the problem was for Peter to climb into the Machine and take control of it, which he did... but rather than destroying the other universe like everyone expected, he built a bridge between the two so that they could solve their issues together.

Now stop, and rewind the past twenty-five years or so, because all of that? It either didn't happen or happened completely differently, thanks to a bunch of bald guys in suits called the Observers. They somehow exist at all points in time at once, and can cross between universes just as easily. Once upon a time, one of them saved Peter and Walter Bishop from drowning in a lake just after Walter kidnapped Peter from the other side. Then, just after Peter stepped out of the Machine, that Observer went back in time and let Peter die at the age of eight, thus erasing him from the timeline after that point.

In this altered reality, Olivia remembers the Cortexiphan trials - she ran away from them when she was nine, and never went back. She never told anyone about her stepfather's abuse, and thus it continued until she shot him... and in this timeline, she took that last shot and killed him.

When her mother died of cancer, rather than being put into foster care, Olivia and her sister were adopted by Nina Sharp, acting CEO of Massive Dynamic, the most powerful company in the world, and the protege of Walter's old lab partner, William Bell. Nina's reasons for this probably had a lot to do with the Cortexiphan trials and Olivia's potential, but she and Olivia grew extremely close, and Olivia now views her as the closest thing she has to a mother.

Olivia joined Fringe Division the same way as before, through John Scott's case, though in this timeline Walter was unable to cure him. Some cases in this timeline were the same; others happened differently, or not at all, and Fringe Division certainly exists in a more precarious position without the benefit of a few deals Peter made to protect them in the previous timeline. Though Olivia remembers the Cortexiphan trials, she hasn't been activated in this timeline, and has no idea she's still capable of using any of her abilities. Because there was no need to rescue Peter and thus no need to cross over to the other side, in this version of events, Fauxlivia actually kidnapped Olivia in order to take her place and manipulate Walter into building the Machine; it's unclear how Olivia managed to get back to her universe, but it's likely she had to steal some technology because she's unaware of her own natural ability to cross over.

Walternate activated the Machine in this timeline as well, but rather than destroying either universe, it somehow created a bridge between the two of them - and now we're back where we left off when Peter was erased. Both universes have reached an accord, now cooperating with each other in an attempt to stop the destruction of both their worlds, and a lot of the decay of reality seems to have slowed down since the creation of the bridge. However, since then, Olivia's been having dreams of a man she didn't recognize, and Walter started seeing him in reflections and hearing a voice asking for his help. When they both realized they were seeing the same man, they started trying to figure out who he was... an investigation which led to Peter reappearing in the same lake where he drowned as a boy, with all the memories of the previous timeline and very confused about what the hell is going on.

Peter's been around for a few months now. He, Walter and the Fringe team have been operating on the theory that he's from yet another alternate universe, and they've recently started trying to modify the Machine to return Peter to his proper universe. The problem is, there's no "proper universe" to go back to - just this one, which is his universe, just... without him in it. During a recent case that involved the two universes (or more likely the two timelines) merging, Olivia started regaining memories of the other timeline - slowly at first, and then all at once, leaving her with memories of two different lives. The memories of the previous timeline are considerably more real to her, and she believes wholeheartedly that that's who she is, a fact the rest of the team refused to accept, though she did manage to bring Peter around eventually.

Not long after she regained her memories of the previous timeline, she was kidnapped by a man named David Robert Jones, who wanted to activate her Cortexiphan abilities for some unknown purpose. At first, he tried torturing Nina to give Olivia the right emotional trigger - however, Olivia discovered that it wasn't her Nina, but a fake, and dropped the hint that she wouldn't be able to use her abilities unless Peter was threatened. Naturally, Jones then kidnapped Peter, and with his life in danger, she blew out the lights and generated her own personal lightning storm to get them out. Unfortunately, she didn't manage to take out either Jones or the alternate Nina, both of whom escaped to the other universe.

However, victory doesn't last long in Fringeverse. As soon as the danger was past, Peter dropped a bombshell on her: despite previously telling her he believed she was his Olivia, he'd changed his mind between then and finding her, and now believes his Olivia is back in his (probably nonexistent, much as he denies it) timeline waiting for him. He left her standing in the rain waiting for an ambulance... and that's about when Baedal stepped in.

Powers:

As a result of the Cortexiphan treatments, she has the potential to develop extraordinary abilities under the right circumstances. Theoretically, the abilities a Cortexiphan subject can develop are unlimited - that's the whole point of Cortexiphan - but in practice, they are tied to emotion and necessity. Usually, these abilities are triggered by stress, and in Olivia's case, by fear (especially for others) and feeling helpless. As a result, she can't use her abilities just because she wants to, or even under situations that are stressful and scary but basically normal for her (and in her job, with her life... her baseline for these emotions is pretty damn high) - she needs to be pushed nearly to the breaking point before they'll kick in.
Abilities she has exhibited thusfar in canon include:

• Telekinesis. One of the easiest abilities to access, especially as it seems to require a much lower threshold of stress than other abilities. In the canon timeline, she's turned out the lights in a lightbox (and sometimes she does odd things to lights when she's stressed even when she doesn't mean to), typed on a typewriter in another universe, and triggered a doomsday machine, all with her mind. In a future timeline, she's shown to have refined this ability to the point where she can catch and manipulate objects with fine control, even when she's completely calm.
  
• Seeing a "glimmer" around objects (and people) from other universes. Her most commonly used ability, and the first to kick in when she's really scared. This one works on... basically being sensitive to a kind of input most human brains aren't wired for - other universes have a different kind of energy from her own, and she picks up on that. It doesn't work on people from her own universe even when they're out of theirs, and it doesn't seem to work on objects from a parallel universe when they're actually in the universe where they belong - so nothing native to Baedal (mostly meaning things born or grown there) will have a glimmer, but all the outsiders not from her own universe would.
  
• Temporary super-hearing. Good enough that she could hear someone breathing underneath the house she's standing on the second floor of, and hear basically everything that was happening in every apartment in her building. It's also good enough that she can get overwhelmed by tiny noises like a fly moving around on a table, or the bubbles in her bath popping. Mostly manifested when she was in a constant state of post-traumatic stress, though there might have been one instance of it recently, in the parallel universe, when she heard a bomb ticking before it went off.
  
• Starting fires with her mind. Not only does she create fire, her body itself gives off heat - enough to be dangerous to anyone trying to touch or come too close to her for long after the actual incident. She's done this at least twice, both times when she was a child, both times when Walter (or Bell, but I'm guessing Walter) deliberately frightened her as part of an experiment. This seems to be her most extreme reaction to fear in circumstances where she feels like she can fight back - and therefore, it's incredibly unlikely to manifest as an adult, as now she has other ways to hurt people who threaten her and her friends.
  
• Jumping to a parallel universe, both with and without the help of other Cortexiphan subjects. It puts a lot of stress on her body and abilities, and it's the other side of the coin to her pyrokinesis - this is her most extreme reaction to fear when she's helpless, when she can't or doesn't want to fight back for some reason, when all she wants to do is run away. Walter theorized that this ability is tied to the unique combination of fear and love, rather than pure fear, and it would seem he's right... but the love part of the equation can come into play in unexpected ways; while she may use it to get back to the people she loves, she's also crossed over to escape a place where she should be loved and protected but was terrorized instead. This is obviously not going to function in Baedal, and Olivia's unlikely to try without knowing where she'd end up.
  
• Making it snow. In Florida, no less. The only one of her abilities tied to joy, and she's only used it once, as a child. Unlike the others, she initiated this one consciously and intentionally, and it's probably the best illustration of the possibilities of Cortexiphan - given the right emotional trigger, if she can imagine it, she can do it.

Talents/Abilities::

Olivia has a photographic memory, particularly effective when it comes to numbers, and seems to learn faster than the obvious person, with an innate gift for noticing patterns.
She is highly trained with handguns, though no the Olympic marksman her doppelganger is, and hand-to-hand combat, both of which she gets a great deal of practice with in the course of her job. She knows how to pick locks (and let's not examine whether an FBI agent should really be doing that), she's a fairly good artist, a very strong swimmer, and she speaks fluent German and Mandarin, as well as a little Arabic.

Personality:

A friend once described Olivia as haunted, like she's always trying to right some imaginary wrong. He was both correct, and far off the mark - haunted is a very accurate description for the way she's been shaped by her childhood, but the things she's spent her life trying to make up for are far from imaginary. Between being experimented on as a very small child, her stepfather's abuse, and the deaths of her parents when she was young, she's driven by a desire to make sure that others are protected from the kinds of things she's seen, while also determined to make sure that the people responsible are punished for it.

She's absolutely tenacious in the pursuit of justice, willing to follow a case to the bitter end no matter where it leads. She's not terribly interested in rules and regulations, or doing things by the book - she's much more invested in what's right, and she'll often take it as a personal offense when bureaucracy gets in her way. When she has a case or a job to do, she'll focus on it to the exclusion of almost everything else. It means she doesn't have much of a social life, and literally all her friends are also colleagues. On occasion, she'll run herself ragged trying to get the job done, often not sleeping for days, basically living on Scotch and M&Ms... Taking care of herself is not really her highest priority, or even something that crosses her mind all that much.

In the course of her job, Olivia is often more than a little reckless, throwing herself into dangerous situations with hardly a second thought for her own safety - if it's necessary, she'll do it, no matter what the danger. Fear isn't an emotion she's very familiar with anymore; during the Cortexiphan trials in her childhood, the researchers exploited her fear to tap into her abilities, and so she adapted by turning that fear into anger, which meant that they couldn't use her emotions for their purposes, and that gave her a way to fight back. However, it also means that she doesn't know how not to do that these days. When she's scared, it's usually only until she can find someone to blame for it and fight back against, and these days the only times she feels fear for her own sake are when she's absolutely helpless, when there's no chance of finding her own way out of the situation.

For many of the same reasons, Olivia deals oddly with emotions in general. She is deeply compassionate and empathetic, highly attuned to the emotions of those around her and often sympathizing with others even when she doesn't want to. However, when it comes to her own feelings, she has a tendency to repress and bottle things up. Olivia likes to think she can control her emotions to the point where they're just not a problem for her, that she can utilize emotions when they'll help her - like when she's on a case, when anger and sympathy help motivate her - and ignore them when they're not helpful. She ends up denying - even to herself - when she's not okay, and she walks straight into situations she knows are going to hurt her even when her friends try to stop her.

Actual connection with people - things like making friends, falling in love, even really trusting people - is not something she manages easily, which is a little surprising given her easy empathy for complete strangers. Again, it goes back to her childhood: the people she was supposed to be able to trust and who were supposed to protect her all too often left her, betrayed her, and hurt her and the people she cared about, a pattern which seems to have followed her into adulthood. She has a tendency to hold herself at a distance from others, cautious about and actually scared of forming real attachment in case it gets exploited somehow. However, once she does get close to someone, she lets them in completely and without reserve; she's willing to share everything with and do anything for the people she loves, and she expects the same in return.

Olivia is very direct when it comes to problems - while other people are debating the wisdom or safety of a course of action, she's the one to just go and do it, whether that course of action be drinking a flatworm smoothie or jumping off a cliff. She likes to talk through her problems out loud, with matters both professional and personal (when she can find someone she trusts enough with personal matters), and when she's having an issue with someone, she's not shy about it - she'll corner them and talk about it with them, whether they want to or not. She is extremely adaptable, resourceful, and good at making decisions on her feet and under fire, and if her first plan doesn't work, she's generally quick to find an alternative and make it work. If it takes doing things that might be considered wrong, like lying about what she has clearance for or is able to do, blackmailing people who might be helpful (sometimes with imaginary evidence), or letting a friend break a guy's hand to make him give them information... so be it. When she puts her mind to something, it will be done, and anyone who's known her for any length of time knows better than to doubt that.

That determination and self-reliance can be as dangerous to her as it is helpful. Her quick decisions, lack of fear, and utter focus on her work mean she runs into the line of fire (both literal and metaphorical) a lot, simply because she doesn't even pause to calculate the risks involved in a particular course of action, provided the only person at risk is to herself. While she's perfectly happy to accept help on a professional level, any concern or offers of help on a personal level are usually shaken off with a quick smile and an assurance that she's fine, honestly.

She's nearly incapable of admitting anything she sees as weakness, and she holds herself responsible for all the people she couldn't protect or save, all the terrible things that she couldn't prevent, and like Peter said, she is very much haunted by that. It's what sets her apart from other people, and despite being the thing that drives her, it's also what makes her profoundly lonely, makes her life harder and more painful than it ever had to be, and while she's happy to let everyone else lean on her, it means she can't let herself do the same with them. That one thing is the biggest difference between Olivia and her double in the alternate universe - in a way, Peter preferred that happier, less burdened version of Olivia, the one who didn't carry so many shadows in her eyes... and if she stops to consider it, Olivia actually thinks she might prefer her too.

At her core, Olivia believes she's... damaged somehow by her childhood, by the things Walter and William Bell did to her, and that most of the things that matter in her life are bound to be a little bit broken too - her family, her job, her relationships, everything. It's not something she really dwells on, just a background fact of her existence. It means that she tends not to trust anything that seems too right, that she sees all good things in her life as either temporary or something she has to fight constantly to keep... but it also means that she's quick to find her feet after terrible things happen, because she's done it so many times before. A life full of broken things means you don't give up on the things that fall apart - Olivia just picks up the pieces, fits them back together as best as she can, and does her best to carry on with what she has left.

Object:

A weird lightbox, used to activate Cortexiphan subjects' access to their abilities. The idea is to turn out all the lights on the box using only your mind.

Reason for playing:

Olivia's a really fun character for me to play, with a lot of different facets to play with. She's extremely guarded as a person, but also very compassionate and protective, and at this canonpoint I get to play with Olivia sorting out two different sets of memories, figuring out what's real for her. She's very familiar with horrible things happening to and around her, and with multiple universes, and she's the kind of person who really doesn't do well just sitting around, so a game with an overarching plot is a definite plus when it comes to her.

Gods:

Eliandre is unquestionably the most likely candidate. Olivia is dedicated to the pursuit of justice in a way that goes beyond the simple fact that it's her job. She believes in protecting those who need it, and making certain the guilty are caught and punished, and she will doggedly follow an investigation no matter where it leads... even when it hurts her. Gediron is also a possibility - Olivia was a military brat and is in many ways a soldier, she hates to lose, and never gives up.

Writing Samples
First-Person Network Post: Here!

Third-Person Arrival Post:

Olivia wakes slowly, with a half dozen random aches, a head that feels like it's full of cottonballs, and a killer migraine. This is not significantly different from the last time she woke up, except this time she's lying on the floor, not ziptied to a chair - and while the change in circumstances is a relief, she's not sure it's indicative of any real improvement in her situation. Whatever's going on, she was kidnapped. She knows she was kidnapped - that's the one thing she's certain of at the moment - and that's not likely to have changed.

She opens her eyes, immediately winces at the light in the room and the fresh stab of pain that comes with it, and rolls onto her side to climb to her feet. The room spins unpleasantly around her for several seconds, and her head starts pounding harder as her heartrate speeds up, but she manages to stay conscious this time. It takes her a few moments, just standing there waiting for the vertigo to fade, but eventually it does, enough that she can focus on her surroundings.

Once she does, her heart sinks. There's no mistaking that this is is a cell, somehow even less inviting than the one on Liberty Island on the Other Side. That one, at least, had a window.

One hand goes to her hip as she strides toward the door - unsurprisingly, though her holster's still there, her gun's gone. She supposes it wouldn't have done her much good right now anyway, and armed or not, she's in no mood to wait around for God knows how long until something happens. Olivia balls her hand into a fist and pounds on the door, standing to one side so that if it swings open suddenly it won't smack her in the face.

"Hello?" she shouts, her voice echoing in the empty room. "Is anyone out there?"

Third-Person Action Post:

[ For the record, this is not Olivia's most recent abduction, from which she will be arriving in Baedal. This is the Amberverse version of the Fauxliv swap, back in S3... Look, Olivia gets abducted a lot. :| ]

They surprise her just inside the door when she comes home, while her back's still turned to close the security chain. There's no time to react, no time to even turn around; the only warning she has is the faint scuffing sound of footsteps on carpet, and then someone grabs her by the hair and slams her head into the door, brutally efficient.

She goes limp, stunned by the impact. The hand tangled in her hair doesn't let go, but someone catches her before she falls, and lowers her almost gently, lying her on her side on the floor. Olivia barely registers it through the haze of throbbing pain and stars dancing behind her eyes. Voices murmur over her, strangely distant - both male, and both unfamiliar.

"I don't think she's out."

"It doesn't matter. She's not going anywhere."

She needs to move. She needs to get up now. Translating that thought to action is harder than it has any right to be. She cracks an eye to get her bearings: one man standing over her, the other somewhere out of her line of sight, but she can hear him crouched behind her. Damn it. On her best day, she probably couldn't take them both out before one or the other knocked her down again. Dazed and possibly concussed...

But they didn't take her gun, not yet, maybe trusting that the blow to the head would keep her from remembering it... and that gives her a chance, however slim. Olivia's always had a talent for beating the odds.