Rosamond Capio
From DirtyWiki
Contents |
Out of Character
Rue's.
Basics
Name
Name: Rosamond Samantha Capio
Nickname(s): Roz, Sammi (from her father)
Maiden Name: Reeve
Dates
Birth Date: December 9, 1956
Marriage: 1980
Places
Birth Place: Calistoga, California, USA
Places of Residence: Calistoga, Stanford, Manhattan, Queens
Current Residence: Queens, New York, USA
Family
Parents: They have names!
Siblings: None.
Husband: Kendrick Capio
Children: Anna, Tess and Teddy
Education
School(s): Public school, Stanford University
Language(s): English
Occupation: Documents examiner
Physical Appearance
Height: 5'8"
Haircolor: Brown
Eye color: Brown
Description: Wavy dark brown hair that goes a few inches past her shoulders. Brown eyes. Strong features; thick eyebrows and a long nose. Has a hint of dimples when she smiles, which she hates. Five feet and eight inches tall, which she also hates, since her mother is a very short woman and now she can't wear her mother's clothes. Spent a while being very frail, but isn't anymore.
Also looks like she's in her late twenties, thanks to her husband, who is also forced to fix this for her every morning when she goes to work.
Personal Info
Extremely passionate about her work to a somewhat ridiculous degree; she really, really cares about the written word and all its meanings. To the point where she prefers to never speak over the phone. She'd rather you write her a letter, and if you won't do that, send her an email; if you won't do that, send her a text, but please don't call. The thing with her and letters and the written word is very intense. She'll understand you a lot better if she can read what you're saying (because maybe that way she can even read your mind!) unless you're standing there with her.
She's very fond of navy blue, plays the piano, and has a license to carry a gun but doesn't. Likes to laugh. Tries not to be the snob she grew up being, just a little bit.
Backstory
All of this will be longer and better written at a later date, I just want to get the bare details out there for now. Sorry so vague.
Rosamond was born to a pair of reasonably wealthy winery/vineyard owners in Calistoga, California in 1956. She grew up on the vineyard, which will get a name, I promise. Her parents are both viniculturists, but Rosamond never actually wanted to become one. That didn't bother them, and neither did her constant running outside and hiding amongst the grapes – they were tolerant people, and she did her best not to be difficult. Even if maybe a little bit she was.
Studying the Lindbergh trial in middle school was what first got her interested in disputed documents, document analysis and handwriting analysis. She knew graphology was fishy, but what went into writing, what of words and handwriting represented the person writing it – that caught her attention right off, and she was caught up in the idea of it. Both in the psychology of handwriting and in the use of writing and documents to solve mysteries, though it's more the mystery of the note itself that she found herself interested in. Rosamond never imagined herself much of an investigator, she just found in herself a love of words, putting words together, the way what words people wrote dictated things about them, and how the way the words were even written said things. From the Lindbergh trial she ended up reading about the Sylvia Hammond will dispute in 1898, followed by the 1956 kidnapping of Peter Weinberger. The two cases caught her interest even more, and she kept reading until she'd managed to immerse herself in the world of questioned documents: authenticating old historical notes, detecting fraud, figuring out identity based on wording and the way the ink hit the page.
She still believed graphology was fishy. She also knew she wanted to do this "documents examining" thing as something to make a life of, and stressed that in every college application she sent, after spending years of her life obsessing. She still learned about wine in the background, and her parents were supportive, even if they thought her strong, fervent obsession with handwriting a little strange. Eventually she ended up at Stanford, taking a confusing amalgam of classes that got her a self-formulated degree in handwriting. It's nice when schools let you design your own major – but that wasn't really the important part toward getting involved in the actual work. The important part was getting an apprenticeship, as that's how anyone got board-certified.
It was while she attended Stanford, though, that life got a little more interesting for Rosamond. During the second semester of her freshman year, Kendrick Capio's internship application got misdirected to Rosamond's Stanford address; she was fascinated by his precise writing and sent the résumé and letter back with a post-it asking for something more.
Mr. Capio,
My sincerest apologies for this; the bulky weight of this envelope is due to the fact that I'm returning the résumé you mistakenly sent me along with his note. The reason I'm returning it, as well as apologizing, is because of a simple case of misdirection, since I'm pretty sure you didn't mean for your résumé to go to a freshman at Stanford University, but I did get this addressed to R. Reeve (which is my name) and my Stanford, CA address. I don't really know what went wrong there, but if I had the address your résumé was originally intended for, I'd have sent it along.
Instead I'm returning it to you, with this, because I admit to being selfishly interested at this point. I'm a student of handwriting, so to speak, and now I'm curious more about what yours is like. If it sounds crazy you don't ever have to respond to me, but I've seen architects write before and I'd love to see more ... do you think maybe you could write a note back to me, just tell me a little bit about you? Like I said, if it's something that sounds too weird, don't worry about it. Most importantly is that you find out this never got to its intended address and you manage to resubmit it in time. I'd hate for you to miss out on an opportunity because I never informed you.
To her surprise, he actually wrote back, and they worked up a friendship. It was a friendship that transcended from letters to meetings, eventually, though these meetings were rare – the first one was almost a year after the letters began. That first meeting turned into a second, though, and a third – and yet it took them a while to realize that they were falling in love with each other. During the first year, before she and Kendrick met in person, Rosamond made what these days she calls a "bad dating choice" and was date-raped in his dorm room her third night out with the guy. This shocked her to the core, and she withdrew from everyone and everything; from her friends, her classes, and her letters.
That spurned Kendrick into eventually trying to call her, after three weeks of no mail at all (this was strange, as they each usually got a letter every three days or so). Rosamond didn't like telephones, had never liked telephones, and thus never had a telephone, so Kendrick's information search got her parents in Calistoga. That was how they found out, too.
This long letter-writing friendship continued on from 1975 to about 1977, when the relationship changed to that of lovers. They continued to be lovers at a distance throughout final years at university, and then Rosamond got a chance to do her apprenticeship at Manhattan's crime lab. Thrilled, she informed Kendrick during a summer visit that she'd be moving there to finish her education, if he didn't mind.
It turned out that she moved in with Elijah and Lee, Kendrick's grandparents. Who lived across the hall from him and his parents. Elijah owned the building but didn't have any other empty apartments, and all Rosamond really needed was a room. She was instantly adopted into the family -- it wasn't as if everyone didn't already know who she was.
They married in 1981 in a ceremony no one knows anything about, after an engagement no one knows about either, except that Rosamond's apprenticeship finished and she became a documents analyst officially, and that they got a home away from the rest of the Capio family out in Queens. Three years later, they had their first child; a matter, in that instance, of a fluke more than careful planning. But their daughter, Anna, was never really considered an accident, and the next, Theresa ("Tess"), four years later, was planned. When Tess was three, though, Kendrick and Rosamond got another surprise: their third child, Edward, named for Kendrick's father. Because of Kendrick's grandfather, "Edward" quickly became "Teddy." (He was born on August 30, like both of Kendrick's parents.)
While the kids were very young, Rosamond mostly worked out of the home, taking time away from the crime angle of her work to do authentications entirely in the private sector; for historians and the New York Public Library and private consultations. When Teddy was three, she returned to the NYPD. At three and six Teddy and Tess weren't all that interested in her work; Anna at ten always wanted to hear about the serial killers that didn't really exist most of the time (Anna was convinced there were serial killers all the time).
Rosamond started getting sick, slowly, beginning around age 38 (her kids were four, seven and eleven) but for the beginning of it paid her discomfort little to no heed. As the illness advanced, though, doctors became more and more mystified about what was happening to her. It was never all that severe, just inexplicable back and abdominal pain and little to no appetite. As time went by, Rosamond started to lose weight, very slowly.
Her illness took a back seat to her work most of the time, and then suddenly in 1996, Rosamond had a bit of a scare.
Her eldest child had sprouted wings.
Kendrick chose that as the time to tell her that he was, in fact, actually not human - Rosamond didn't take it well at all. She got very scared, and she took the kids, and she left. Anna felt like a freak; Teddy and Tess were quiet and likely silently hoping for wings of their own, like Anna and Daddy had. Rosamond had to deal with the fact her children, her husband, a lot of the people she counted as family weren't human ... and yet, she realized, she had taken those nonhuman children with her as she went back to Calistoga to stay with her parents a while.
The children hadn't lied to her, though.
Kendrick had. He'd kept something that serious from her all that time! And yet, as she stayed in the vineyard watching the children enjoy the time skipping school, spending time with her parents, she realized how much she loved him still. He may have written her a letter begging her to come home. After two weeks, she did.
And got sicker all the while.
He told her he could fix it - by making her immortal. Live forever, just like she would. She said she didn't want to take the chance of outliving her children - he said she wouldn't, she said she didn't like the idea. She was happy just as she was; forever was far too long. Her rejection was probably a mistake, because in the end it didn't matter. She got sicker and sicker, until, hospitalized, she finally got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
Terminal.
Rosamond went home with her family to die; she was comatose soon after settling back into her bed. As she wasted away, Kendrick wrapped around her, entirely, wings and all, and his heart broke. He began to get cold, lose the will to live, start to ice over --
Fifteen-year-old Anna scolded him. They needed him, she said. She was only fifteen; she couldn't handle an eleven-year-old and an eight-year-old. She already had to tell the third grader he didn't really see any ice there, and it was just Daddy being stupid. Anna swayed Kendrick out of his hopelessness; Kendrick refused to let Rosamond go, and made her immortal against her wishes.
For three days they waited. And at the end of the third day, Rosamond woke up, aware of Kendrick tickling her nose with a foot-long feather. She wasn't aware of the fact she looked about thirty; she found that out later.
She flipped.
But she healed.
She healed and went back to work at the NYPD, hailed as a medical miracle. People ran tests. Medical journals did interviews. The local news did a piece on her. Rosamond spent half the next year as a test subject and medical sensation; she was unsurprisingly pretty angry at Kendrick, but it faded eventually. Some doctors might still know who she is, but it largely faded.
Eventually, it all settled down. Anna went to college, followed by Tess (who remained living at home). Work settled down. The family moved between their home in Queens and the house Kendrick built in Fire Island. All the chaos was over.
(Or so they thought. Possibly until now.)
External Links
LJ (unused)
