Soeki Halloway-Crowe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crowedthedead) wrote2015-09-27 05:10 am
crowedthedead) wrote2015-09-27 05:10 am
Entry tags:
character history
Soeki Halloway-Crowe is the product of an affair. His biological father is Nicodemus Theodore Crowe, a necromancer working as a doctor, who met his mother in the hospital waiting room when she brought her then four year old son Adam in to remove a rock he'd shoved up his nose. They began an affair that was explosive while it lasted, for about eight months of sneaking around together, and then fizzled out abruptly when Ellen Halloway decided that she wanted to stay with her husband. Nicodemus was devastated when she cut all ties with him, and she never told him that she was pregnant when she broke up with him. He wanted her to stay, wanted her to leave her husband, he had fallen hard and deep but it was never more than a little fun on the side for her.
The intention was to raise Soeki with her husband Calvin, after convincing him that the child is definitely his (she had no idea until Soeki was born) and never see Nicodemus again, but, well, Soeki took heavily after Nicodemus, and Calvin was not an idiot. Three years later, with things strained between them already, she died in a pretty mundane car accident. He grew up with Calvin and his half-brother Adam, never knowing the reason for his father's awkward distance and perceived favoritism toward Adam, who was an A+ scholar and star athlete all through school, much like Calvin had been. This resulted in a very bitter, angry at the world, emo-goth fifteen year old with a rather self-centered "why me?" world view. He saw himself as an outcast, friendless because "no one understands" instead of realizing that it was because that negative attitude and irritable sarcasm made him incredibly unlikable to his peers. He didn't fit in because he didn't try, didn't want to. He wanted to be accepted and loved for exactly who he was, despite being a giant dick with a persecution complex. He read a lot of books through his lonely childhood, everything from fantasy and spy novels to boring textbooks and fashion magazines in the supermarket, but horror books and movies were always his favorites, which... Well, that didn't help him make any friends. It just earned him new descriptors like 'creepy' and 'weird' and 'socially stunted'.
At fifteen, though, he met by chance a local homeschooled girl his age, named Ryelle Katsaros, when he nearly ran her over with the car he wasn't supposed to be driving. She was on the run from a vampire gone rogue that she wasn't supposed to be hunting. Needless to say, they hit it off right away, and despite the utter terror of the situation, Soeki and Ryelle managed to at least scare the vamp off (they hit it with his car). From there, they were instant best friends, and like impulsive teenagers are wont to do, she, equally friendless and kind of weird, introduced him to her world, a world of necromancy and the supernatural. They were constantly getting into trouble together from then on, because Ryelle wanted to take up her father Ailen's career as a full-fledged necromancer and exorcist, setting ghosts stuck in the Between to rest and banishing minor demons that slip through the barrier between Earth and Hell. Ailen never forbade her from following in his footsteps, but he thought, correctly, that fifteen was way too young for that bullshit. She and Soeki were enamored with the lifestyle, young and stupid and reckless, and parental supervision was... not good.
At sixteen, Soeki confided in Ryelle that he wished he could talk to his mother one more time. As a birthday present, she gathered up her dad's supplies, they drove out to the cemetery where Ellen was buried, and she summoned up the woman's ghost from the afterlife for a brief, but very telling conversation. You look just like your father, she had said. The truth came out that Soeki was not Calvin's child, and all at once, his world imploded and righted. He assumed that was the reason Calvin was always so distant with him, unable to relate to him. Soeki made Ryelle keep Ellen's spirit there in the Between until she gave up his biological father's name - Nicodemus Theodore Crowe, who Ryelle recognized as another well-respected necromancer. Her father's best friend, in fact.
A meeting was set up almost immediately after his mother's ghost was released. Soeki was angry at her for keeping that secret, for keeping him from his 'real' father, and all he wanted was to meet the man. Turned out, Nicodemus wanted to meet him too. Their reunion was emotionally charged, and Ellen was right - he looked like his bio dad, dark haired, brown eyed, tall and thin and pale. They got on like a house on fire because with Nicodemus, like with Ryelle, he didn't put up his usual walls. For once he felt happy, like he belonged (because he let himself, and was less of an ass). He also met his younger half-sister Eira Weston-Crowe, whose mother wasNicodemus's rebound after Ellen a prominent demon hunter, and though they fought and argued and called each other names, there was a sort of acceptance in the fact that they were both unbearable jerks and otherwise friendless.
Over the next two years, things were good. Soeki and Ryelle were best friends, and continued to get themselves in trouble along with Eira. He spent as much time with his "real" dad as he could, accompanying him to the hospital where he worked, reading all of his medical and necromancy textbooks when he couldn't spend time with the man himself. He poured himself into his new clan, and learned all the latent necromancy that he should have been learning throughout his childhood, the protection spells and reanimation spells, the banishing and wards. He also learned human anatomy and the skeletal system extensively, and he and Eira learned first aid and some basic field medicine from their dad, like suturing and setting broken bones. Soeki was given his own reanimate, the cleaned and preserved skeleton of one of his recent ancestors, and learned to use it to fight or perform dangerous tasks for him. He barely graduated highschool, to his father's disappointment, because nothing else really seemed to matter except this new life.
Nicodemus also tried to file for custody, armed with a DNA test and a fake story of how he found out. Soeki had pulled away from Calvin and Adam almost entirely, never seeing or never caring just how much he hurt them both with his selfish desire to be with his "real" family. Calvin eventually signed his parental rights over to Nicodemus because he wanted the boy to be happy, above all. This coincided with the death of Eira's mother at the hands of a stray demon, and they both moved in with their father, together.
Soeki was nineteen when his life did a 180 again. He and Ryelle were out on a routine exorcism, handling more and more now that they were older and wiser. They did everything right to get rid of the angry poltergeist, but at the last minute, it lodged itself in Ryelle's throat, cutting off her air. She suffocated, clawing at her throat, and Eira and Nicodemus found Soeki hours later, clutching her cold body and crying.
He closed himself off afterward, ignored his father's and sister's attempts to comfort him or get him out of the house for days. He retreated into books, the old, yellowed tomes of necromancy and demonology used most often as historical reference and not as guides, and much like Faust hundreds of years ago, he stumbled on what seemed like a miracle. Soeki stole Ryelle's body from the morgue and stole out to the cemetery with candles and salt, a ceremonial knife, and a set of finger bones from his kit. That night, he summoned a demon from Hell, not one small enough to escape through tiny holes in the barrier between but a full fledged, powerful demon with wicked golden eyes, who promised him exactly what he wanted. In exchange? The demon wanted to stay. Soeki, blinded by grief and desperation, agreed to the terms. "Rista" revived Ryelle with a drop of his blood to her dead, cold lips, and then immediately tore her apart. Soeki had granted him a ticket to Earth and had to watch his last hope to get his best friend back be torn asunder. Both their souls in that moment were damned to Hell.
Soeki scrambled to try and take control of the situation again. He couldn't break the terms, Rista hadn't promised to keep her alive, just bring her back, and so the contract was still valid and binding. He bound his own soul to that of the demon instead, tied limiting spells to the soul bond to keep him close and keep him from hurting humans. Rista couldn't kill him then, if he did he would be immediately banished back to Hell, but he delighted in causing Soeki and his family pain, physical or mental.
His father was furious. His sister was furious. But despite his admitted stupidity, they loved him, and tried to help him as much as they could, but Rista was Soeki's problem to deal with. They antagonized each other for months, walking a precipice between order and chaos, until the soul bond began to grow familiar. Those sorts of magic seep in, after all, and they taint and twist. He learned that first hand as he studied and tried to find a way to save her soul, the soul his actions damned. Eventually, he found the answer in Rista. The demon negotiated with an angel to return Ryelle's soul to Heaven in exchange for Soeki's promise never to banish him, should he find a way. Neither of them wanted the bond, it was cruel on them both, but it remained, and Rista remained on Earth.
After that, though, the antagonism began to fade. Soeki felt a misplaced sense of gratitude toward Rista for saving Ryelle for him, despite the fact that Rista damned them both, and Rista enjoyed being out of Hell, doing human things like eating real food and dancing. He even tagged along with Soeki and Eira (to Eira's utter disdain) when they did their usual work performing exorcisms and banishments - he enjoyed tearing up stray imps escaped from Hell or the occasional vampire giving them trouble. Soeki also started sleeping with the demon, which did not go over well with anyone, but it seemed to happen naturally, the both of them constantly in each other's presence and constantly linked by the bond. Then Nicodemus was taken by a nest of crazed, fundie vampires who believed themselves the true masters of Earth. This, obviously, was incredibly distressing to both siblings, and the nest was a strong one, rallied by a leader who, before he was turned, was a necromancer himself. Rista helped the siblings free their father, but he was captured in a circle by that vampire leader for his troubles. He made them leave with Nicodemus, and that night, he was tortured endlessly, expecting that to be the rest of his time here on Earth - but Soeki came back, by himself, as soon as he and his sister got their father to a hospital. It was an incredibly stupid plan but he freed Rista from the prison circle, and Rista wiped out the nest.
Injured and tired, they set the nest's base on fire and walked out together, arms slung around each other like friends.
From there, they grew to understand each other more, and while Soeki became a little more unhinged and reckless, Rista became a little more human. They continued their sexual relationship, and the demon grew possessive of his human and even mellowed out some to the rest of humanity. They had found common ground and grew used to each other, healthy or no. That doesn't mean the Crowe family ever really accepted Rista. Far from it, it was assumed that he just did what he did because of his soul bond with Soeki and the limiters placed on him. This wasn't the truth, at least not entirely, but it's hard to change minds about demons. Eventually, by the time Soeki was twenty-three, Rista, having seen the tension his presence caused in Soeki's family, let it slip to Nicodemus that the banishment contract only applied to necromancers, and Nicodemus had a witch friend.
Nicodemus and the witch broke the soul bond and banished Aristadas the next day, against Soeki's will, leaving a gaping hole in his soul where someone he was starting to care for used to be.
As he learned to live with, he learned to live without, accepting more help from his sister and father, growing as a person and even starting to realize his own selfishness to an extent. They never understood why losing Rista hurt him, but it left a wound that never fully healed. Soeki maintained the hope that Rista would escape Hell without his help and that they would be together without the power imbalances and the natural issues that come with a soul bond. Meanwhile, he and Eira, each other's only friend still, got themselves a shabby apartment and took some sketchy night classes in investigative work. They took on cases as private investigators (normal cases and "weird" cases both), and Soeki wrote books about his experiences that would never see the light of day. Eventually, Soeki even started to date again, but the OKCupid flings never really worked out, or filled the void that Rista left.
Rista never mentioned to Soeki, when he allowed his family to banish him, that he couldn't return to Earth on his own during Soeki's lifetime. For a demon as strong as him, it takes a while to get past the barrier. But he had a little help, not that he really planned on it; one day, a few stupid tryhard teenagers came by to Soeki and Eira's office with a joke case, general dicking around, and while the Crowe siblings were occupied getting rid of the little shits, one of the teens snuck off with one of Soeki's books - a demonology book on his display shelf, the one containing the summoning circle for Aristadas.
It was nightfall by the time Soeki figured out that his book had been stolen, and he tore off in a rush to retrieve it, seething and armed with an electric lantern and a baseball bat. They had just finished the summoning in the middle of the old cemetery, but their circle was shoddy, they didn't use salt to seal the demon inside, and they didn't have the magic to back it up. Aristadas, in a rage to be yanked back to Earth (being summoned can actually be quite painful), slaughtered two of the teenagers before he caught the echo of Soeki's soul approaching him. Their reunion took precedence, for as much as Soeki had fallen for Rista, Rista had fallen for him as well, at least as much as a demon can ever love a human. While Soeki felt horrible about the deaths, he and Rista covered them up, staged the bodies as a car wreck; the last teenager alive was scared mute and never talked. It was a testament to how, as Rista had changed, so had Soeki - he still considered himself empathetic toward humanity, but the deaths of two teenagers didn't register as deeply on his conscience as they should have.
With a twisted love between them and a dark secret, they went back to the apartment, recast the soul bond to keep Eira from killing Rista, and resumed their normal. Things from there were even a little better, with the demon making more of an effort not to antagonize Soeki's family and- well, his family still never understood, thought he had to recast the bond to restrain Rista as he did before, but. It was something.
The intention was to raise Soeki with her husband Calvin, after convincing him that the child is definitely his (she had no idea until Soeki was born) and never see Nicodemus again, but, well, Soeki took heavily after Nicodemus, and Calvin was not an idiot. Three years later, with things strained between them already, she died in a pretty mundane car accident. He grew up with Calvin and his half-brother Adam, never knowing the reason for his father's awkward distance and perceived favoritism toward Adam, who was an A+ scholar and star athlete all through school, much like Calvin had been. This resulted in a very bitter, angry at the world, emo-goth fifteen year old with a rather self-centered "why me?" world view. He saw himself as an outcast, friendless because "no one understands" instead of realizing that it was because that negative attitude and irritable sarcasm made him incredibly unlikable to his peers. He didn't fit in because he didn't try, didn't want to. He wanted to be accepted and loved for exactly who he was, despite being a giant dick with a persecution complex. He read a lot of books through his lonely childhood, everything from fantasy and spy novels to boring textbooks and fashion magazines in the supermarket, but horror books and movies were always his favorites, which... Well, that didn't help him make any friends. It just earned him new descriptors like 'creepy' and 'weird' and 'socially stunted'.
At fifteen, though, he met by chance a local homeschooled girl his age, named Ryelle Katsaros, when he nearly ran her over with the car he wasn't supposed to be driving. She was on the run from a vampire gone rogue that she wasn't supposed to be hunting. Needless to say, they hit it off right away, and despite the utter terror of the situation, Soeki and Ryelle managed to at least scare the vamp off (they hit it with his car). From there, they were instant best friends, and like impulsive teenagers are wont to do, she, equally friendless and kind of weird, introduced him to her world, a world of necromancy and the supernatural. They were constantly getting into trouble together from then on, because Ryelle wanted to take up her father Ailen's career as a full-fledged necromancer and exorcist, setting ghosts stuck in the Between to rest and banishing minor demons that slip through the barrier between Earth and Hell. Ailen never forbade her from following in his footsteps, but he thought, correctly, that fifteen was way too young for that bullshit. She and Soeki were enamored with the lifestyle, young and stupid and reckless, and parental supervision was... not good.
At sixteen, Soeki confided in Ryelle that he wished he could talk to his mother one more time. As a birthday present, she gathered up her dad's supplies, they drove out to the cemetery where Ellen was buried, and she summoned up the woman's ghost from the afterlife for a brief, but very telling conversation. You look just like your father, she had said. The truth came out that Soeki was not Calvin's child, and all at once, his world imploded and righted. He assumed that was the reason Calvin was always so distant with him, unable to relate to him. Soeki made Ryelle keep Ellen's spirit there in the Between until she gave up his biological father's name - Nicodemus Theodore Crowe, who Ryelle recognized as another well-respected necromancer. Her father's best friend, in fact.
A meeting was set up almost immediately after his mother's ghost was released. Soeki was angry at her for keeping that secret, for keeping him from his 'real' father, and all he wanted was to meet the man. Turned out, Nicodemus wanted to meet him too. Their reunion was emotionally charged, and Ellen was right - he looked like his bio dad, dark haired, brown eyed, tall and thin and pale. They got on like a house on fire because with Nicodemus, like with Ryelle, he didn't put up his usual walls. For once he felt happy, like he belonged (because he let himself, and was less of an ass). He also met his younger half-sister Eira Weston-Crowe, whose mother was
Over the next two years, things were good. Soeki and Ryelle were best friends, and continued to get themselves in trouble along with Eira. He spent as much time with his "real" dad as he could, accompanying him to the hospital where he worked, reading all of his medical and necromancy textbooks when he couldn't spend time with the man himself. He poured himself into his new clan, and learned all the latent necromancy that he should have been learning throughout his childhood, the protection spells and reanimation spells, the banishing and wards. He also learned human anatomy and the skeletal system extensively, and he and Eira learned first aid and some basic field medicine from their dad, like suturing and setting broken bones. Soeki was given his own reanimate, the cleaned and preserved skeleton of one of his recent ancestors, and learned to use it to fight or perform dangerous tasks for him. He barely graduated highschool, to his father's disappointment, because nothing else really seemed to matter except this new life.
Nicodemus also tried to file for custody, armed with a DNA test and a fake story of how he found out. Soeki had pulled away from Calvin and Adam almost entirely, never seeing or never caring just how much he hurt them both with his selfish desire to be with his "real" family. Calvin eventually signed his parental rights over to Nicodemus because he wanted the boy to be happy, above all. This coincided with the death of Eira's mother at the hands of a stray demon, and they both moved in with their father, together.
Soeki was nineteen when his life did a 180 again. He and Ryelle were out on a routine exorcism, handling more and more now that they were older and wiser. They did everything right to get rid of the angry poltergeist, but at the last minute, it lodged itself in Ryelle's throat, cutting off her air. She suffocated, clawing at her throat, and Eira and Nicodemus found Soeki hours later, clutching her cold body and crying.
He closed himself off afterward, ignored his father's and sister's attempts to comfort him or get him out of the house for days. He retreated into books, the old, yellowed tomes of necromancy and demonology used most often as historical reference and not as guides, and much like Faust hundreds of years ago, he stumbled on what seemed like a miracle. Soeki stole Ryelle's body from the morgue and stole out to the cemetery with candles and salt, a ceremonial knife, and a set of finger bones from his kit. That night, he summoned a demon from Hell, not one small enough to escape through tiny holes in the barrier between but a full fledged, powerful demon with wicked golden eyes, who promised him exactly what he wanted. In exchange? The demon wanted to stay. Soeki, blinded by grief and desperation, agreed to the terms. "Rista" revived Ryelle with a drop of his blood to her dead, cold lips, and then immediately tore her apart. Soeki had granted him a ticket to Earth and had to watch his last hope to get his best friend back be torn asunder. Both their souls in that moment were damned to Hell.
Soeki scrambled to try and take control of the situation again. He couldn't break the terms, Rista hadn't promised to keep her alive, just bring her back, and so the contract was still valid and binding. He bound his own soul to that of the demon instead, tied limiting spells to the soul bond to keep him close and keep him from hurting humans. Rista couldn't kill him then, if he did he would be immediately banished back to Hell, but he delighted in causing Soeki and his family pain, physical or mental.
His father was furious. His sister was furious. But despite his admitted stupidity, they loved him, and tried to help him as much as they could, but Rista was Soeki's problem to deal with. They antagonized each other for months, walking a precipice between order and chaos, until the soul bond began to grow familiar. Those sorts of magic seep in, after all, and they taint and twist. He learned that first hand as he studied and tried to find a way to save her soul, the soul his actions damned. Eventually, he found the answer in Rista. The demon negotiated with an angel to return Ryelle's soul to Heaven in exchange for Soeki's promise never to banish him, should he find a way. Neither of them wanted the bond, it was cruel on them both, but it remained, and Rista remained on Earth.
After that, though, the antagonism began to fade. Soeki felt a misplaced sense of gratitude toward Rista for saving Ryelle for him, despite the fact that Rista damned them both, and Rista enjoyed being out of Hell, doing human things like eating real food and dancing. He even tagged along with Soeki and Eira (to Eira's utter disdain) when they did their usual work performing exorcisms and banishments - he enjoyed tearing up stray imps escaped from Hell or the occasional vampire giving them trouble. Soeki also started sleeping with the demon, which did not go over well with anyone, but it seemed to happen naturally, the both of them constantly in each other's presence and constantly linked by the bond. Then Nicodemus was taken by a nest of crazed, fundie vampires who believed themselves the true masters of Earth. This, obviously, was incredibly distressing to both siblings, and the nest was a strong one, rallied by a leader who, before he was turned, was a necromancer himself. Rista helped the siblings free their father, but he was captured in a circle by that vampire leader for his troubles. He made them leave with Nicodemus, and that night, he was tortured endlessly, expecting that to be the rest of his time here on Earth - but Soeki came back, by himself, as soon as he and his sister got their father to a hospital. It was an incredibly stupid plan but he freed Rista from the prison circle, and Rista wiped out the nest.
Injured and tired, they set the nest's base on fire and walked out together, arms slung around each other like friends.
From there, they grew to understand each other more, and while Soeki became a little more unhinged and reckless, Rista became a little more human. They continued their sexual relationship, and the demon grew possessive of his human and even mellowed out some to the rest of humanity. They had found common ground and grew used to each other, healthy or no. That doesn't mean the Crowe family ever really accepted Rista. Far from it, it was assumed that he just did what he did because of his soul bond with Soeki and the limiters placed on him. This wasn't the truth, at least not entirely, but it's hard to change minds about demons. Eventually, by the time Soeki was twenty-three, Rista, having seen the tension his presence caused in Soeki's family, let it slip to Nicodemus that the banishment contract only applied to necromancers, and Nicodemus had a witch friend.
Nicodemus and the witch broke the soul bond and banished Aristadas the next day, against Soeki's will, leaving a gaping hole in his soul where someone he was starting to care for used to be.
As he learned to live with, he learned to live without, accepting more help from his sister and father, growing as a person and even starting to realize his own selfishness to an extent. They never understood why losing Rista hurt him, but it left a wound that never fully healed. Soeki maintained the hope that Rista would escape Hell without his help and that they would be together without the power imbalances and the natural issues that come with a soul bond. Meanwhile, he and Eira, each other's only friend still, got themselves a shabby apartment and took some sketchy night classes in investigative work. They took on cases as private investigators (normal cases and "weird" cases both), and Soeki wrote books about his experiences that would never see the light of day. Eventually, Soeki even started to date again, but the OKCupid flings never really worked out, or filled the void that Rista left.
Rista never mentioned to Soeki, when he allowed his family to banish him, that he couldn't return to Earth on his own during Soeki's lifetime. For a demon as strong as him, it takes a while to get past the barrier. But he had a little help, not that he really planned on it; one day, a few stupid tryhard teenagers came by to Soeki and Eira's office with a joke case, general dicking around, and while the Crowe siblings were occupied getting rid of the little shits, one of the teens snuck off with one of Soeki's books - a demonology book on his display shelf, the one containing the summoning circle for Aristadas.
It was nightfall by the time Soeki figured out that his book had been stolen, and he tore off in a rush to retrieve it, seething and armed with an electric lantern and a baseball bat. They had just finished the summoning in the middle of the old cemetery, but their circle was shoddy, they didn't use salt to seal the demon inside, and they didn't have the magic to back it up. Aristadas, in a rage to be yanked back to Earth (being summoned can actually be quite painful), slaughtered two of the teenagers before he caught the echo of Soeki's soul approaching him. Their reunion took precedence, for as much as Soeki had fallen for Rista, Rista had fallen for him as well, at least as much as a demon can ever love a human. While Soeki felt horrible about the deaths, he and Rista covered them up, staged the bodies as a car wreck; the last teenager alive was scared mute and never talked. It was a testament to how, as Rista had changed, so had Soeki - he still considered himself empathetic toward humanity, but the deaths of two teenagers didn't register as deeply on his conscience as they should have.
With a twisted love between them and a dark secret, they went back to the apartment, recast the soul bond to keep Eira from killing Rista, and resumed their normal. Things from there were even a little better, with the demon making more of an effort not to antagonize Soeki's family and- well, his family still never understood, thought he had to recast the bond to restrain Rista as he did before, but. It was something.