born under bad light.

❛ ⸻  BASICS.

full  name  : serena elise siu-yan wu.

nickname(s) : ren.

age  :  37.

gender, sexuality, + pronouns : cis woman, bisexual, + she / her.

date  of  birth  : november 18th, 1988.

zodiac : scorpio sun, capricorn moon, aries rising.

birthplace  :  toronto, ontario, canada.

positive traits : vigilant, resourceful, perceptive, tenacious, resilient, discerning.

negative traits : hypervigilant, evasive, obsessive, mistrustful, self - destructive, volatile.

language(s)  spoken  :  english, spanish, chinese, german, french, korean, conversational mandarin, tagalog.

hair  color  :  dark born, almost black

eye  colour  :  brown.

piercings  : ears, one cartilage piercing.

❛ ⸻  AT A GLANCE.

OLD BRUISES HIDDEN UNDER EXPENSIVE PERFUME. A BURNER PHONE BUZZING IN A LOCKED DRAWER. RAIN AGAINST A WINDSHIELD, A PACKED BAG IN THE TRUNK. RED BRAKE LIGHTS BLEEDING ACROSS WET PAVEMENT. A HAND HOVERING OVER A GUN SHE SWEARS SHE DOES NOT CARRY ANYMORE. SMOKE CAUGHT IN SILK. A PHOTOGRAPH FOLDED UNTIL THE EDGES GO SOFT. THE TASTE OF COPPER, SALTWATER, AND CHEAP WHISKEY. SLEEPING WITH ONE EYE OPEN. THE GHOST SHE NEVER STOPPED CHASING. THE KIND OF FIRE THAT DOES NOT ASK PERMISSION TO KEEP BURNING.

❛ ⸻  THE STORY.

trigger warnings: missing person, grief, death, violence, toxic relationship, criminal activity, accidental death, blood, obsession, paranoia / hyper-vigilance, survivor’s guilt, emotional manipulation, unresolved trauma.

serena wu was born in toronto, ontario, canada, but most of her life was shaped beneath the heat and salt air of palmview grove. when her family first moved to town, she felt like an interruption : too new, too observant, too aware of how easily everyone else seemed to belong. palmview was beautiful, but it was not immediately kind. it had its own rhythm, its own loyalties, its own quiet hierarchies, and serena spent her earliest years there learning how to watch before she spoke.

then she met her best friend, and after that, palmview changed. the town became less lonely, less impossible, less like somewhere she had been dropped and more like somewhere she might one day survive. the two of them grew up inseparable, the kind of girls who shared clothes, secrets, future plans, and the unspoken certainty that whatever came next, they would face it together.

university was supposed to be their escape hatch. they had plans. they had acceptance letters. they had a version of the future that existed beyond palmview’s gossip and golden coastlines.

two weeks before they were supposed to leave, serena’s best friend disappeared. no real goodbye. no body. no clean explanation. just absence.

the disappearance broke something in serena that never properly mended. while everyone around her tried to grieve, adjust, and eventually keep living, serena stayed fixed in the moment everything changed.

she did not go to university. she did not move on. instead, she started searching. at first, people called it grief. then denial. then obsession. days became weeks, weeks became months, and months turned into years. her parents worried themselves sick. friends drifted away because they could not keep following her into the same dark corners. palmview whispered that serena wu had let the mystery ruin her life.

maybe they were right.

but serena knew there was more to the story. she could feel it in every missing detail, every changed statement, every person who looked away too quickly when her best friend’s name came up. eventually, that search pulled her into the orbit of a charming, criminal-adjacent man with dangerous friends, dirty money, and just enough information to make her believe he knew something.

at first, serena told herself she was using him. getting close was strategy. asking the right questions at the right time. letting him think she trusted him because maybe, eventually, he would give something away.

but the deeper she went, the harder it became to leave.

he was not the kind of man who liked losing control. he kept her close with half-truths, threats dressed as concern, and reminders that she knew too much now. by the time serena realized how trapped she had become, she was no longer just a girl looking for answers. she was involved. useful. compromised. afraid.

the night everything changed, serena tried to leave him for good.

what happened between them has never been simple enough to explain. there was a fight. panic. a desperate attempt to get away. maybe she pushed him. maybe she grabbed something only meant to stop him. maybe the accident happened so quickly that by the time she understood what she had done, there was no undoing it. what mattered was this: he died, and serena survived. no one knows the true sort except for serena and the man.

palmview would have called that guilt.

serena called it the only reason she was still breathing.

she disappeared before his associates could come looking, before the police could decide what story made the most sense, before palmview could turn her into another cautionary tale.

for nearly a decade, she stayed away. far from home, she built a semi-life out of the very things that had once destroyed her: secrets, missing people, bad men, and stories no one wanted dragged into the light.

she became a private investigator, the kind who took ugly cases and worked odd hours, who knew how to find people who did not want to be found and how to disappear when necessary.

she never stopped looking for her best friend. not really.

three months ago, something brought serena back to palmview. an anonymous envelope. proof that her best friend may have been alive after the date everyone believed she vanished. there was a large chance someone was fucking with her, but it was enough to pull serena back into the town that made her, broke her, and still has not told her the truth.

now serena wu is back in palmview grove, older, sharper, and harder to read. officially, she is working as a private investigator. unofficially, she is reopening the wound everyone else tried to bury. some people remember the girl who lost everything. some remember the woman who ran. some still whisper about the dead boyfriend and the questions she never answered.

serena lets them whisper. she has survived worse than being misunderstood.

❛ ⸻   HEADCANONS.

she keeps a packed overnight bag in the trunk of her car. she tells herself it is for work emergencies, but it's been there for years.

she has a bad habit of doing background checks on people she starts caring about.

serena does not scare easily, but certain sounds can still set her off — a slammed door, tires on gravel, a phone ringing too late at night.

❛ ⸻  BASICS.

full  name  : vedette tatiana moroz.

nickname(s) : veda.

age  :  29.

gender, sexuality, + pronouns : cis woman, demisexual biromantic, + she / her.

date  of  birth  : july 19th,

zodiac : cancer sun, pisces moon, libra rising.

birthplace  :  palmview grove, florida.

positive traits : tender-souled, magnetic, loyal, intuitive, affectionate, emotionally generous.

negative traits : self-destructive, evasive, indulgent, fatalistic, impulsive , melancholic.

language(s)  spoken  :  english, ukrainian, spanish ( conversational ).

hair  color  :  dyed blonde.

eye  colour  :  blue - green.

piercings  : single lobe piercings, second lobe piercings, cartilage piercing.

❛ ⸻  AT A GLANCE.

CHAMPAGNE LEFT WARMING IN CRYSTAL FLUTES. BARE FEET ON MARBLE FLOORS AFTER MIDNIGHT. DESIGNER SUNGLASSES HIDING TEAR - BRIGHT EYES. THE PRETTIEST GIRL AT THE PARTY STANDING ALONE ON THE BALCONY. WHITE LINEN, GOLD JEWELRY, CHERRY LIP OIL, SMUDGED MASCARA. HANDWRITTEN APOLOGIES NEVER SENT. YACHT LIGHTS BLINKING ACROSS BLACK WATER. A LAUGH THAT SOUNDS EXPENSIVE UNTIL IT BREAKS. A HEART TOO SOFT FOR THE LIFE SHE WAS HANDED. THE LOST DAUGHTER, STILL WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO NOTICE SHE’S GONE.

❛ ⸻   THE STORY.

trigger warnings: mentions of emotional neglect, family conflict, mental illness / bipolar disorder, mental health stigma, self - destructive behaviour, alcohol, reckless behaviour, toxic relationships, abandonment, and family image control.

vedette was born into the kind of palmview grove family people liked to admire from a distance. the moroz's name carried weight along the coast ; not old enough to be historic, but wealthy enough to be respected, polished enough to be invited everywhere, and careful enough to make sure no scandal ever lasted longer than a weekend.

her parents built their life in coral cove with money, reputation, and an almost religious devotion to appearances. their home was beautiful, their parties were photographed, their daughter was dressed like a doll in white linen and gold jewelry before she was old enough to understand what it meant to be watched.

for most of her childhood, veda was treated less like a person and more like proof. proof that the moroz's had made it. proof that their family was perfect. proof that wealth could soften any ugliness hiding beneath the surface. she was expected to smile at charity galas, kiss cheeks at yacht club brunches, sit pretty through adult conversations, and never embarrass the family name.

her mother was loving in the way expensive things are cared for : gently, carefully, and always with the expectation that they remain pristine. her father was affectionate in public and distant in private, the kind of man who could charm a room but rarely knew what to say to his own daughter once the room emptied.

by the time veda was a teenager, everyone in palmview seemed to have an opinion about her. she was beautiful, privileged, sweet when she wanted to be, tragic when she wasn’t. she moved through palmview like a girl born beneath perfect sunlight, but inside, she always felt misplaced. her family home never felt like home so much as a showroom she happened to sleep in. rules were strict, emotions were inconvenient, and mistakes were handled quietly before anyone important could hear about them.

during those years, after a stretch of intense emotional highs, crushing lows, impulsive decisions, and moments where even veda didn’t recognize herself, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. the diagnosis should have offered language, support, and understanding, but in the moroz household, it became another thing to manage behind closed doors. her parents treated it less like part of their daughter’s reality and more like a threat to the family image, something to be controlled, softened, and never discussed too loudly.

so veda learned how to disappear without ever actually leaving ; into parties, into other people’s problems, into bad decisions dressed up as freedom.

high school made her into a local legend for all the wrong reasons. she was the girl everyone wanted at the party and whispered about the next morning. the girl crying barefoot outside a beach club, then laughing like nothing had happened five minutes later. the girl who could be devastatingly kind to a stranger and completely reckless with herself. veda had a talent for loving people who needed saving and mistaking chaos for devotion. she gave too much, trusted too quickly, and stayed too long, especially when someone made her feel seen in ways her family never had.

after one especially public spiral ( the kind palmview tried to bury but sunny shores talked about for weeks ) veda’s parents decided she needed “space,” though everyone knew that really meant distance from the family image. whether she left by choice or was quietly pushed out depends on who tells the story.

either way, she ended up in one of coral coves apartment complexes, close enough to the life she came from to still feel haunted by it, but far enough to pretend she was starting over. she tells people she wanted independence. sometimes that’s true. sometimes it feels more like exile.

now, veda exists somewhere between the girl palmview remembers and the woman she is trying to become. she still gets invited to yacht parties. she still knows which families are falling apart behind closed doors. she still wears designer sunglasses when she’s been crying and still has a habit of making self-destruction look beautiful. but there is more to her than the rumours. she is tender-souled, emotionally generous, and painfully loyal once she lets someone close. she notices when people are hurting because she knows what it feels like to be surrounded and unseen.

in palmview, vedette moroz is known as the lost daughter : the golden girl who wandered out of the life everyone thought she should want and never quite found where she belonged after. she is trying to build a self beyond the family name, beyond the whispers, beyond the aching belief that love has to hurt to be real. but palmview has a way of dragging everyone’s past back into the sunlight, and veda’s has never been as buried as she hoped.

❛ ⸻  HEADCANONS.

veda always wears jewelry, even when she’s dressed down. tiny gold hoops, delicate rings, a bracelet from a birthday she doesn’t like talking about. she has a habit of touching her necklaces when she’s anxious, like she’s checking to make sure she’s still there.

she is weirdly good at remembering people’s little preferences. how someone takes their coffee, what song they skipped once, what flowers they said they hated, the exact drink they ordered three summers ago. it makes her seem effortlessly thoughtful, but really, she just pays attention because she knows what it feels like when no one does.

her apartment looks prettier than she feels. white sheets, expensive candles, half-dead flowers she keeps meaning to throw away, sunglasses on the counter, unopened mail from her parents, and a closet full of clothes that belong to several different versions of herself.

veda is the friend who will show up at 2 a.m. without asking questions. she might be a mess in her own life, but when someone she loves is hurting, she becomes frighteningly focused. she’ll bring wine, fries, advil, a change of clothes, and absolutely no judgment.