NAME. Therese âTessaâ Hagen
AGE & BIRTH DATE. 30 & April 14th, 1991
GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She/Her
SPECIES. Werewolf
OCCUPATION. Bartender at Helâs Deep
FACE CLAIM. Hannah John-Kamen
( tw: death, child abuse ) Therese Hagen was born the middle child of three, and often felt overlooked because of it. She was the second daughter, when her parents longed for a son, and their disappointment was difficult to miss. At first she just thought thatâs what parents were like, the sort of stony disposition they always displayed towards her, the indifference about most things in her life. It wasnât until she was five years old and her younger brother came along, the little boy that they had always wanted, that Tessa began to realize there was a difference. She didnât understand it, why the baby received so much affection and attention, when no matter what she did, they barely paid her any mind. If she was good, she was ignored, and if she was bad, she was punished. It was how Tessa fell into the background of her own life, watching them dote on the child they always wanted while she seemed to be hardly more than a footnote in their family tree.Â
It would be a lie to say that she hadnât been resentful to grow up in that environment. But even so, Tessa never willfully intended anything to happen to her little brother, no matter what her parents mightâve believed. She was twelve years old at the time, and left to watch over him for an hour or so while the rest of the family was out of the house; her mother was still at work, her father had gone to the grocery store, and her elder sister had been at a friendâs house. She hadnât been paying attention, when he took his skates and went outside to the pond behind their house. It was late in the season, spring was ending and the ice was melting thin, but he was too young to understand that. By the time Tessa realized what had happened, he had already fallen through the ice.Â
If her parents were indifferent to her existence before, they were downright cold after her brotherâs death. Her father ended up leaving, packed up his things one day and walked out the front door, never to return and never to reach out again; her mother blamed Tessa for that, as well. If she had been watching her brother like she should have, he wouldnât have died, and their family would not have fractured. The Hagen matriarch turned to drinking in order to deal with her grief, but when she got drunk, she became cruel. Tessa was usually the outlet for her anger, being the person she held most at fault for their lives falling apart, and so she was the one who bore the brunt of her motherâs aggression. It was not unusual to see the teenage girl sporting bruises against her skin, but most were attributed to her wild nature by anyone who saw. When she couldnât fight back at home, she learnt how to throw a fist in the streets, and was known around their Norwegian neighborhood for ending up in fights.Â
It was at sixteen that she finally reached her breaking point. She had just finished lower secondary school, and her mother was in another drunken row. It was an act of self defense, pure instinct that had her lashing out, shoving her mother down the stairs when she tried to hit Tessa with the bottle in her hand. Before she had even realized what happened, her mother laid dead at the foot of the stairs, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Full of adrenaline and terrified of the idea that the police would find her at fault, Tessa hastily scrambled to throw a few things together and ran off into the night. That was the last she ever saw of her childhood home, or even the city in which she grew up.Â
She stayed in Norway, but traveled up the coastline, taking jobs here and there as she went. Her motherâs obituary had labeled her death accidental, a woman who had had too much to drink and fell down the stairs because of it, but even so Tessa never returned home. There was nothing left for her back there anyways, even if it didnât feel like there was too much for her out in the rest of the country either. She was never good at maintaining permanence, getting fired more often than not from a number of different jobs after only a handful of months. She learnt how to steal to survive, honed her fighting skills to be more than scrappy handwork, and look out for herself. It wasnât an easy life, but Tessa had never been meant for one of those to begin with. Her world went on that way for years, bouncing around from one place to the next, between cheap hotel rooms and overnight shelters, and sometimes even a park bench when nothing else was suitable.
It was one such evening when the direction of her life changed. It was a summer night, warm enough to not be too uncomfortable, and the moon shone brightly overhead as it reached itâs peak, giving Tessa a comfort. NaĂŻve to the world of the supernatural, she never expected the wolf to find her. The knife she kept in her boot came in handy, driving off the creature with a stab to the neck, but not before it had already bitten her. At first she shrugged it off, figuring herself lucky to be alive as she bandaged the wound herself. It didnât matter that she had started feeling a bit strange, the bite had healed and the clinic she went to said that while her temperature burned higher than normal, it wasnât in a range to be concerning. It wasnât until the next full moon that she finally figured out what had really happened to her.
Her first shift was confusing, and frightening, and painful. She doesnât really remember anything about it, aside from that, and waking up the next morning naked in the woods. Being a werewolf was a strange and difficult adjustment for Tessa to make, with no guidance from anyone to help with the transition. She ran nearly feral for several months, news reports of animal attacks surging in the area as each full moon would come and go. She was stronger, more agile, and more prone to getting into fights even outside of her wolf form. It mightâve ended badly for Tessa, had things continued on the way that they were. But instead, she was extended a lifeline, in the form of another werewolf arriving. Heâd left behind his pack in Greece to retire to the Lofoten Islands, only to find her young and wild, disturbing the local populace. It was Erik that took her under his wing, began to teach her about control and give her a warm place to stay where she had none. Though untrusting by nature, given her history, it was not an offering that Tessa could refuse. She needed help, and she knew it.
Things got better, after that. Though transitions were painful, she started learning how to maintain her consciousness even in wolf form, and shift outside of the turn of the moon. Erik stepped in to fill a place in Tessaâs life that she had never had before, a caring familial figure that wanted to see her thrive rather than just survive, and she grew to love him for it. It was at his suggestion that the pair traveled to Corinth Bay. It was where he had come from, some months before, and he wished to return to the city once more. There was a pack there that would be good for Tessa, to offer the support and security a young wolf would need, or so he said. While Norway was her home, there was ultimately nothing holding her there if Erik were to leave, and so in the end the decision to leave with him wasnât a very hard one at all. Though still rather new to the world of the supernatural, sheâs quick on her feet and learning to take it all in stride. What Corinth Bay offers is more than she couldâve possibly imagined, but so long as Erik intends to stay, then she will do the same.Â
+ spirited, flexible, candid
â impatient, careless, destructive
PLAYED BY ABBY. CST. She/Her.
