LOCKWOOD, caspian

[caspian lockwood]

Caspain Xavier Lockwood

name: Ash
age: Twenty-two
gender: Female
writing experience: I guess four/five years
how’d you find us?: Violet Hour
a favorite book: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
other character(s): Nada


name: Caspian Xavier Lockwood
age: Twenty three
citizen? upper or lower schooling?: Upper
previous residence: Guilford, England
eye color: Hazel
hair color: Dark brown
height: 6’1
distinguishing features: Two large curving scars on his left cheek, with a few on his chin, after being glassed (deservedly some might claim) in a pub.


four good personality traits

four bad personality traits

three quirks

important people

history

Tiresome things, histories are. Caspian would rather shrug out of his, a snake shedding it’s skin, moving away, lighter, fresher, bearing newly exposed skin without the traces of that inconvenience known as the past. He remains disdainful. However, he does have one, as much as he scoffs at them and turns his back on those years that have built up behind him. They weren’t so awful as you might imagine from his reaction, but he feels they weigh him down with expectation and preconceived notions of how he should ‘be’. Much better to be a blank slate, ready for the next tale to be told.

As it is, Caspian story begins in the usual, mundane way, with a boy and a girl, with the meeting of sperm and egg after ill advised and under educated fumbling under the covers while home alone, parents out of the house and blissfully unaware that their precious children are entering into the realm of adulthood, playing with forces they don’t quite understand the consequences of. In the end, it was short, painful, and rather disappointing for one Evelyn West, as she lay next to her boyfriend of six months, Jack Hopkins, and wondered if that was it. Where was the mind blowing feelings she had read about in books? The blown mind came later on, when she was hunched over the toilet, throwing up for the fourth morning in a row and realising that all was not entirely well. A trip to the doctors later, and at the tender age of sixteen, she was informed that she was ten weeks pregnant. The scandal. Abortion was considered and eventually discarded; whatever the effect on her own life, she could not take the one growing inside her. So instead, she bit the bullet, told her parents, her boyfriend, who promptly became her ex-boyfriend, but they should still be friends, he informed her earnestly.

So it was mostly alone that Evelyn weathered the unfortunate stigma of teenage pregnancy. Her parents were furious, but supportive in the end, while friends became increasingly absent over time. She concealed her condition for as long as she could, but her absence from all PE classes became somewhat conspicuous, not to mention a school uniform that was not designed to conceal the rapid growth of her stomach, straining treacherously over a shape that was hard to pass off as mere weight gain. Once again, Evelyn found that things were not as she was lead to believe in stories; sex was not an amazing experience and neither was pregnancy; she didn’t end up glowing and joyful, instead she grew to a disconcerting size, becoming heavy and lethargic by the time the nine month mark came around. With habitually bad time keeping, Caspian was two weeks late in arriving but was swift on leaving the delivery room, held only briefly by his mother before he was removed, ready to be taken away by his adoptive parents. Evelyn felt she was doing her bit by carrying him to full term, but she wasn’t going to raise a child; she wanted her own life back and so Caspian was adopted by Alistair and Zara Lockwood.

With two children of their own, Alistair and Zara were by no means struggling with their fertility, but Zara had previously attended a benefit for foster care charity and felt that they should ‘do their bit’ and adopt a child. Fostering had too many troubling possibilities, and so adopting a baby was the alternative that she presented to her husband. A hefty payment allowed them to by pass any difficulties, and soon they received the call that informed them Caspian had arrived in the world and was awaiting his new parents. For the first few weeks he was doted on, but eventually interest faded, and he was mostly looked after by a nanny, employed especially so that Zara would not have to give up too much of her time, and his siblings, who were old enough to appreciate a new brother, but not young enough to be overly jealous of the attention he received.

As with most children, Caspian craved the attention of his parents, and attempted to get in a variety of ways, stemming from full on tantrums to sweet gestures, like handing his mother clumps of flowers (usually weeds), wilting and mushed together in a tight fisted, warm grip. Mother’s Days, birthdays, Christmas, all came and went with cards and gifts clumsily made at school and proudly handed over. Unfortunately Caspian had yet to realise the audience he was playing to, and that his mother was not really the maternal type. She had married for money and the luxury of being able to do whatever she liked with her time, secure in the knowledge that she would have whatever she wanted from the deep, generous pockets of her husband. Children were a slightly unwelcome side effect of this lifestyle, something of an unspoken requirement from her husband and the general society they lived in. Raising the children herself was unthinkable, and she preferred to take only an occasional and fleeting interest in them, when they did something that she could boast about to the other mother’s or on the rare occasion she felt a deepening of maternal affection, enough to motivate her to spend some time with them. Zara had mixed feelings towards Caspian, appreciating that his inclusion in her family hadn’t required her to go through the rigours of pregnancy, but she found him frankly too much to handle and not really worth the time or money involved.

Over time, Caspian cottoned onto his mother’s distance and turned to the only defence he had; resentment. If she didn’t want him, he wouldn’t want her either. He could have turned to his father, perhaps, looked for affection there, but Alistair was rarely around, spending most of his time working in London. Maybe he could have looked to the multitude of childminders who kept the three siblings occupied, but Caspian chose a better route, the resentment for his mother spilling outwards into all areas of his life. Over time, he almost forgot why he did what he did, habit and enjoyment continuing to fuel the fires. Throughout primary school he was that kid who never did what they’re told, always the last to do what he was asked by the teacher and the first to start stirring up trouble with the other children. He was not a bully, exactly, more orientated to causing strife for the teachers, but he was something of a ring leader when it came to trouble, coercing the other children into joining in with him. Soon he became the child who no parent would invite to their son or daughter’s birthday party, aware that it would probably end in a full scale riot. Or a food fight. Caspian would prefer to remember them as riots.

As he entered into high school, his penchant for causing trouble remained the same. Now he had a wider audience and far more tricks to experiment with. More than once he was expelled and had to move schools, much to the disgust of his parents, who were made rather more resentful by the fact that he wasn’t what they considered to be their child. The adoption became something of a sticking point between the two of them. Their biological children were much more preferable, being somewhat less likely to get in trouble, unless Caspian happened to drag them into his schemes, which was slightly more frequent during their high school years. Despite being younger, Caspian was the more dominant child in the house, always the one to lead while the other two either followed or left him to it. Despite it all, Caspian did find solace in his relationship with his siblings, often the only allies he had in the world, which considering his expulsions from school and general trouble making was not surprising.

By age fifteen, Caspian had stretched his parents beyond the point they felt they could deal with him and decided that it was time to get him out of their hair properly. In discussion with her brother and his wife, Zara was pointed in the direction of a school in Paris where they had sent their own son, although for reasons more to do with his academic excellence than anything else. There was the first hurdle, Caspian’s achievements at school being somewhat limited to the most visits to the head teachers office in one term, but his teacher’s had always bandied around phrases like ‘obviously very intelligent’ and ‘tremendous potential’ usually preceding or following such terms as ‘if he would apply himself’ and ‘if he would spend as much time and energy on his work as he does on persuading the other children into re-enactment's of scenes from Braveheart’. However, luckily for Caspian, and in this instance, his mother, he had an uncanny ability to focus in the lead up to deadlines and exams, so that he was generally scoring on the higher end of the average scale. And then there was his great passion for all things technical, which managed to by pass his more mischievous tendencies and get him actually engaged and focused. Technology and sciences were his stronger subjects, but his tendency towards the theatrical meant that drama was another area in which he excelled. So it was that during the final two terms of that school year, Caspian was taken in hand by his parents, who employed a few tutors to help him along, pushing his grades up to a more acceptable level.

Caspian was rather pleased by this sudden burst of interest from his parents, deciding this meant that they had finally realised his genius. Of course, this presumption was knocked on it’s head and the real reasons were uncovered when that summer he was presented with an acceptance letter into Académie d'Ouvrard. His rising grades and shining letters of recommendation had helped him scrape under the wire and into the school. Impressed, Caspian was not. Enraged, humiliated hurt more accurately covered the range of emotions he was feeling. So it was an angry and once again resentful boy who bid farewell to his parents and siblings, and made the journey from Guilford to France. Determined not to give the school a chance, and to hate his parents forever, Caspian remained stubbornly angry and destructive for his first few weeks at the school, before he gradually began to soften towards the whole experience. Grudgingly he started to enjoy his time at the school, and his classmates, finding that he quite liked being far away from his parents. Natasha and Elliot he missed, but as they were both over eighteen now, and attending university themselves, they had the freedom to come and visit him, which they often did.

So for the last two years of high school, Caspian flourished. improving greatly in the eyes of his parents, as they only saw him during holidays and had the advantage of being able to say that their son was doing extremely well at his boarding school in France, thank you very much. During his time at the school, his interest in all things technical became focused on computers, and Caspian became fascinated by seeing how far he could push the technology. That wasn’t to say he suddenly became a model student, far from it, he was still making the occasional trip to the headmaster’s office, along with his share of detentions. There was the added distraction of discovering those teenage benchmarks of alcohol and sex, both of which he took to with enthusiasm. However, this relative of peace was not set to last, and it was in the summer of his eighteenth year that life decided to strike a crippling blow.

Having just graduated from the lower school, Caspian was set to attend the upper school, studying computer science at the start of the new year. For the summer, he and Elliot had decided to rent a car and travel around Europe for a few months, until both of them resumed their studies. Elliot had a passion for all the outdoorsy things that Caspian had developed a dislike for, but for the most part he managed to get into the spirit of things, enjoying the freedom of the open road and no commitments. Occasionally roughing it or embarking on a bit of cycling, hiking or even kayaking seemed like the right thing to do, in the spirit of adventure, and Caspian had never been one to shy away from that.

It was late afternoon about a month into their trip when Caspian and Elliot were hiking through hills in Italy, or more accurately, taking a break from hiking, to rest and enjoy the view before the headed back to the hostel they were staying in, knowing there was a night out being planned by the other travellers they had become friendly with in the few days they were in the hostel. They were laughing and joking, about what, Caspian could not tell you, but he can clearly recall grabbing Elliot’s water bottle and darting out of reach, teasingly moving to the edge of a steep drop. His brother ran after him, attempting to tackle him, but he slipped and tripped, and then he was gone, before Caspian even had a chance to gloat at how easy it was to evade Elliot’s grip. He dived forwards, grasping at thin air in an attempt to fight this horrifying turn of events, but his brother’s body continued to tumble down the incline until it came to a stop against a rocky ledge, red ooze of blood surging outwards from his still form.

Caspian gave no thought to practicalities as he plunged after his brother, following him down in a slightly more controlled manner, thought only slightly, with frequent slides and trips that had his heart racing. If he had stopped to think, he would have stayed at the top and phoned for help, but nothing else occurred to him beyond reaching his brother. He fell the last quarter of the distance, landing on his arm, with promptly snapped underneath him while his head rebounded off the ground. Adrenaline kept him from feeling it too badly to begin with, as he picked him self up and crawled to his brother’s side, but the rational part of him knew that there was nothing to be done. There was too much blood, he was lying too still. There was no pulse. Slow realisation came to him, as he sat down next to the the organic object that had once been his brother; he was stuck, with no way to contact anyone, no supplies, and no knowledge of how to survive. Grief for his brother would come later, after the initial shock had worn off. Perhaps he could have managed to climb back up, but he couldn’t leave Elliot, he didn’t want him to be alone on that hillside, waiting for rescue. So, afternoon turned to evening, followed by night and back to morning, before he was found, authorities notified by his and Elliot’s absence by friends at the hostel. That time for Caspian is little more than a blur. When it was present it seemed never ending, horrifying, but as it moved into past, his mind became mercifully blank, erasing it from his memories like a forgotten episode of an old TV show. Elliot slipped into past tense alongside that night but memories of him and that last fall remained.

Time begins again in the hospital, when Caspian was warmed and treated for his head injury and broken arm, before his parents were contacted to inform them of what had happened. The Lockwood’s boarded the next available plane, along with Natasha, to pick him up and arrange for transportation of Elliot’s body. They arrived, white faced and hollow eyed, to his bed side, mother and father distant and accusing while his sister held him tightly and sobbed into his hair. Later, the three of them went to see Elliot’s body, and returned, paler and more distraught. For Caspian, it was a strange experience, to see his removed, shallow mother show true emotion, seemingly shaken to her very core, and his absent father so very present now, full of grief and rage. There was no one to blame, in the end, but naturally there had to be someone who could have the weight of accusations laid on their shoulders, if only so they could convince themselves that this was not just the way life was. Someone had done this and that someone was Caspian. Their adopted son had killed their biological one. No, it wasn’t the most logical conclusion to come to, but logic rarely comes into play when loss and grief and guilt are so strongly evoked. The argument that followed was long and close to absurd, but lead to the revelation that he was adopted, along with the decision that he was no longer apart of the Lockwood family. They would have no more to do with him, emotionally or financially. His ally in all this, Natasha, made it clear she would remain in contact with him, but that she would not leave her parents side to stay with him. She did, however, leave him enough money to get back to England, if that was what he wanted.

So they left, taking Elliot’s body back with them and not long afterwards Caspian was discharged from hospital. It seemed as though the rug had been pulled out from underneath him, the loss of his brother, his family and the reveal that he was adopted, something so out of the blue that he struggled to even comprehend it. While it was true that he had always been somewhat different to his family, the possibility of adoption was not something that had occurred to him. The futile absurdity of it all almost paralysed Caspian. That a simple trip, which anywhere else would have lead to perhaps grazed palms and a bruised ego, in that location, under those circumstances had lead to a cracked skull and a heart no longer heating. And all of that had lead to the loss of his entire family, and a removal of the things he thought his world had been based on. He had very little to do now, and nowhere to go. There was no one to pay his tuition fees for uiversity, no family to go home to, only parents who had given him up at birth, an adoptive family who had disowned him and an empty space where his brother had been. For a short time, Caspian returned to the hostel he had stayed in, living off the money Natasha had given him, while he considered his future. The thought of seeking out his adoptive parents occurred to him, but he had neither the energy nor the desire to place himself at the mercy of anyone else.

Over time, his sense of shock and paralysis lifted, and he found a job working at a local bar and a room to stay in. Slowly, his life restarted, not as he had imagined at all before he set out travelling when the summer months had stretched invitingly ahead before he started a degree in something he was passionate about but it was something at least. He had learned valuable lessons too, about depending on other people, about trust and honesty. None of those were things he relied on, and so while he returned to his often mischievous, frequently charming self, on the outside, an edge of restraint remained when it came to interaction with other people, a harder, cooler sheen remaining determinedly below the surface. Caspian was prepared now, to be left alone, if that was what people intended. For the most part, however, he was fairly well liked with the clientèle and other staff, building up friendships and flirtations with those around him.

The flirtations part of that frequently got him into trouble, both with those he was flirting with, and those who were attached to who he was flirting with. One day, around two years after Elliot’s death, he found himself flirting with the wrong person in the wrong place and the brawl that followed of quite impressive proportions. Caspian found himself on the wrong end of a smashed bottle, the ‘wrong end’ being somewhat deliberately thrust into his face. The sheer amount of blood alone was dramatic enough, but the large number of stitches required to hold his cheek and chin together and the resulting scars which now mark his face, made the whole incident another anecdote to add to the growing list. Of course to begin with, Caspian was not impressed by the marring of his face, but in his own way he adapted to the new face in the mirror, and twisted the whole thing to his advantage, once he found that scars were an excellent pulling tool. Add in a dramatic story (more dramatic than being bottled in the face during a large fight in a bar that he had started, that is) and he’s away.

A month or so after that incident, Caspian decided to leave his job at the bar and began travelling around again, touching on many of the European countries and even venturing into Russia for a time, before he found himself meandering back towards Paris. Caspian was always claim that this was not intentional, that his journey just lead him back to the city, and in some ways that is true as he never made the definite decision to return, but he knew exactly where he was going. Once more, he ended up in bar work, renting another room and slipping back into much the same grooves that he had worn smooth in Italy. In the end it turned out to be quite fortuitous that he was there, as it allowed Natasha to re-establish contact with him, after close to two years of vague addresses and even vaguer postcards sent from a variety of locations. While he had been gone, she had tracked down his birth mother, and explained the situation to Evelyn, in the hopes that she might be prepared to reach out to her son. With a husband and family of her own, she was unwilling to disrupt her life by having too much contact with Caspian, but she agreed to pay his fees to attend university, giving him the education that his adoptive parents had denied him.

Although he would like to think that he was a better man, who would not accept hand outs, and would make his way based on his own merits, Caspian accepted the offer presented to him through his sister and there was only one place he wanted to return to. Bar work was getting old, after all, and the course he had been planning to attend had lingered at the back of his mind, an indication of another life that he had thought to be beyond his reach now. On top of that, he reasoned that his mother owed him something, for giving him up and to such shitty parents as well. So it was that at the age of twenty-two, after four years of wandering, Caspian found his way back to Académie d'Ouvrard.

if you could be anywhere, where would you be? “At the Aleph. Serious mind fuck.”

character’s play-by: Tobias Sørensen

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[headmaster.]

mercier
arcséne
alexia kingston, holly braur