Kate Austen (Lost)

[high activity]

wanted interactions: when it comes to Lost, only with Sawyer, Sayid, Claire, Jack, Juliet (if they are okay with my shipping choices) because I don't feel like building more relationships. Also open to all of Lost fantasywritten's muses. But also: crossovers. 

Open to ship with: James/Sawyer and, not automatically, Sayid from Lost, plus men from other shows.

This about can easily be adapted to shows I know just by changing years and locations. Every universe has soldiers, diners/inns, and some kind of police/authority.
At the end of this paragraph there are a couple of more fandom-specific details, because she's open to MODERN cop-drama-spy shows that I know (basically set after the 2000s), Marvel, DC, Shadow and Bone, Bridgerton, Turn: Washington Spies, Dragon Age, Lord of the Rings.

Born and raised in Iowa, canon Kate is the daughter of diner worker Diane, who is married to Sam Austen, Army Ranger and Gulf War Veteran. Diane got pregnant while Sam was still at war and her parents divorced early on, and Sam loves Kate like a daughter, even if he knows she's not his.
After that, Diane married an abusive alcoholic named Wayne Janssen, Kate's bio father (Kate and Waybe don't know they are related). Wayne treated her mother "like a dog", as Kate put it, and her mother kept taking his side; Kate suffered through that and through some very weird creepy advances from Wayne to her, until one day as an adult she found out Wayne is her biological father.
At that point, feeling like he's a part of her because of that biological bond, Kate decides she can't take it anymore and burns down the house with him in it and goes to her mother Diane to say goodbye. Her mother calls the police on her, still taking his side because "she loved him", and Kate goes on the run. She's a born criminal because she's always had to fend for herself, waiting for when she'd be able to run away.

She uses many fake names, cons and lies and commits at least one bank robbery to retrieve a toy plane that belonged to the man she loved and accidentally got killed while on the run from the police (she went to see her mother at the hospital because the man she loved, Tom, worked there and told Kate she was battling cancer. He chose to get in the car and was killed during the chase). Marshall Edward Mars is pretty much obsessed by her and finally captures her after she gets into another crash and "wastes" time saving the man who gave her up (he needed bounty money he needed to keep the house, and she's shown to be concerned about whether he got it or not afterwards).

Since the arrest happened in Australia, Mars has to take her on a plane with him to go back to the US. The plane crashes and the tvshow Lost happens, but unless you want to write with a Kate who went through Lost, they get on a plane that crashes and he dies while she runs, unless we write in an universe with no plans, in which case it's a carriage.

• Personality-wise, after being raised in such a toxic environment and living for years on the run as a fugitive, Kate lies almost automatically, hides things that don't need to be hidden (will put money aside in case she has to escape, won't tell people she's looking for a toy plane that has emotional importance for her), and generally keeps to herself. But she also instinctively tries to help people who are in trouble, is nice and polite to strangers when allowed to be by the situation.
  She's a romantic, doesn't have one night stands, and seems to be looking for a connection, clearly wants to be married and have a healthy and domestic life (she even marries a cop at one point and runs only when she thinks she may be pregnant, something that brings up all her fears about being like either of her biological parents), but at the same time will sabotage her relationships when given the chance. Evangeline Lilly, her actress, was specifically chosen because on top of being able to appear stony-faced and aggressive as needed, she also had the ability to appear extremely vulnerable, so canonically speaking your character is always allowed to notice that she's hurt, sad, or scared. She needs people who won't force her to share everything, someone who can be okay with the fact that she's the type of person who will keep a secret bank account just to be safe if things turn sour, while still giving everything she can to the romantic or platonic relationship.
  Canonically being a mother for Aaron, her friend Claire's son, is what gives her the stability she needs, maybe because it proves to her she's nothing like either of her parents and that she can be happy too.
  
  

Marvel: she's given the choice of either helping SHIELD or going to prison, and she picks the former even if she's always looking for a way out, because spending time with other people, with teams, could make her feel at home and it's terrifying. She's on their radar because Wayne was Hydra. She could easily be recruited by Coulson when he's rebuilding SHIELD if your character is from AoS or by Fury if your character is in the movies. She's meant to be used to identify other Hydra agents who worked with Wayne in the past, and if powers are needed because you think it would help justify her presence, she could have gained the ability to cause explosions.

Dc: she was in the DEO, trying to get away from her life best she could, when Wayne's beatings put her mother in the hospital. She took a break to go home and take care of her, and that's when push came to shove, she found out about Wayne being her real father and killed him. She's a fugitive but can be brought back to the DEO and be given a second chance due to the circumstances. 

Any kind of drama/police&spy show etc that I know (the Rookie, 911, Chuck, b99, Castle, more tba): she's kept as a criminal informant and works undercover too, which is why she's out of prison despite what she did. She's been asked to cooperate with your muse on cases involving criminals she's met before to justify her presence, because she wants to take them down too. May avoid prison entirely depending on how the trial goes, her behavior now and her willingness to cooperate, given that her lawyers are pushing for temporary insanity due to the abuse she and her mother were receiving (if you don't think it's possible for her to skip prison entirely, she could have spent a few years there and left for good conduct).

Bridgerton: She came from the US and told a powerful noblewoman, Lady Littleton, her story in a moment of weakness, obviously not admitting that she's the one who burned down her house to kill her father, and that she committed robberies afterwards to get the money to escape. She was taken under Lady Littletown's wing by her because the woman also had an abusive father, and a husband who left her to fend for herself, abandoning her and their daughter Claire short after Claire was born, and empathized with Kate. Claire got pregnant soon after she offered Kate a place, the baby running instead of taking responsibility, so Kate offered to pretend to be the "ruined" single mother in public as a way to pay them back, and decided to help raise baby Aaron, to give Claire the chance to look for a husband who will take her in and maybe accept the baby, Aaron, as some sort of adopted son, even if that means Kate will not only have a ruined reputation as a "single mother" but later on as a deadbeat one.
Which means that, for the first time in her life, Kate is stuck and will remain stuck for a while, until she either finds a husband despite everything, which is her only chance to have a life given the time period, or until she has the chance to run away after Claire is married. Kate is very skittish so the second seems most likely (though Aaron is very blonde, much like Claire and her mother, so up to the other writer how things go and if your muse suspects anything). Personally, if you write a Bridgerton, I'm a fan of the idea of Eloise (or Violet if you write Eloise) figuring out that Kate is not related to Aaron and slipping up with your muse. 

Turn: Washington Spies: if your muse is from the Washington's side, she's given safe haven by the Patriots as long as she uses her feminine wiles to keep gathering information, which is what got her to them in the first place (she was running from the authorities), but she is known to be not only a murderer but a robber. She refuses to actually sleep with men to get the intel, but she's pretty much given freedom (but no protection) to act as necessary to survive and to kill if she's retrieving stolen plans or locating/freeing captives. If your muse is from the King's side, she has been captured by Mars (from her canon), and she's being forced to go undercover under threat of prison, though she's planning to run unless she finds a protector. She can't run forever in historical times, unmarried and without money, so one way or another she'll have to find someone who can take care of her at least economically. 

Dragon Age: a rogue who will join the team for coin, making clear she could leave soon (but then she bonds with people and that's pretty much it for her), same past. There is a bounty on her, of course, but only in a few place where she's committed crimes because in most videogames there will be more important things to think about. Great aim, whether she shoots bullets or arrows, and can probably throw the equivalent of grenades and other fire traps if we callback to her backstory. 

Lord of the Rings: not much needs to be changed, except that she's probably escaping the king's man instead of the police because that's how most fantasy shows work. She's simply a human running from place to place, and for the sake of giving her a chance to interact with other characters, at some point she stole some important dark artifact, not knowing what it was, and was taken to Lady Galadriel by the elves who captured her in their territory; Galadriel saw her heart and decided the girl needed protection, not to be jailed, but the artifact, a cursed knife, needs to be destroyed or it will attract dark creatures to it. This can be the perfect excuse to have Kate travel with any elf, dwarf, human, hobbit or wizard who has either volunteered or was asked by Galadriel to get the knife destroyed (and possibly protect Kate). Kate wants to see this through even if the instinct to run is always there.

Firefly: nothing really needs to be changed except locations. She may get into Mal's Firefly because she paid for a quick ride away from a planet and get to stay because she risked her life to hide River from the Alliance, and I say this because it feels like the only reasonable excuse besides 'being loaded' (she's not) or knowing Mal personally from before that would give her the excuse to stay around the characters.

-I'd love to write Kate staying on the island with Aaron due to things going differently, and traveling to the past with the others, or just Kate going with them, no Aaron. Maybe she never got to the helicopter so Sawyer didn't either, they counted on reaching the ship later. Or Sawyer could not jump and go with her, back home with all the difficulties and awkwardness there. We can erase the jump to the past and they stay and live in the Others' houses.

Write other things happening, other encounters, wounds, situations, going off-canon, having her and Sawyer actually discuss how she feels about Jack (and maybe she goes stay with Claire again after they fight over the pregnancy scare instead of going back to Jack) (or she COULD be pregnant and terrified), or like I said explore her relationship with Sayid more, since there was something going on there in the first episodes and they kept being close (but could have been closer). 

With Sayid I'd love if things changed at any point and we developed their dynamic better, because there was something building up there in the first episodes (not necessarily romantic! But they both have a past, and they are both so much more dangerous than people thought at first glance, plus Sayid is a living lie detector and Kate is a living lie, and they can both get very vulnerable with people they care for), and we could change literally any point to make them interact more since I distanced her from Jack.