The Crux Enigma

Crux Enigma
BURDEN BEARER
Player: @Monocle Owl
Personal Data
Real Name:	Rosemarie Madden
Known Aliases:	The Crux Enigma
Species:	Human
Age:	21
Height:	5'4"
Weight:	114
Eye Color:	Emerald
Hair Color:	White (Previously Red)
Occupation:	Registered Hero; Student
Place of Birth:	Boston Massachusetts
Marital Status:	Dating Paul Ocean
Known Relatives:	Margaret Madden, Delilah Madden

Margaret Madden had been overcome by nervous excitement when she discovered she and her husband Neil were going to have their first child. It was true they hadn't been trying for a baby; they had wanted to wait at least another year or two into their marriage before they started, but the warmth Margaret had felt when she read results of her pregnancy test assured her that in her heart, she knew they were ready. Neil had been even happier, quickly losing himself to boyish laughter and showering her with hugs and kisses. They of course worried that they weren't financially stable enough to support a child, but a promotion at the company Neil worked meant they could move into a bigger apartment. Boston seemed to them like the ideal place to raise a child.

The hustle and bustle of urban life was all either of them had ever known. Margaret had met Neil during her first year at Boston University. She had deep brown chestnut hair and eyes to match. She was fiercely independent, striving to fulfill her dream of becoming an architect. She had first seen Neil in the French elective they both shared. He had brilliant red hair that shot up in every direction simply because it refused to be tamed and bewitching emerald eyes framed by his glasses. He was funny and charismatic, and she was shocked when he asked her out to dinner halfway through their first semester. They fell in love quickly, but the flame didn't burn out. Their relationship persevered through college until finally, two years after their graduation, Neil proposed.

They shared everything together, and regardless of what trials they faced or how many nights they spent arguing and reconciling, they knew they could handle everything together. Margaret's pregnancy was a breeze, something she always attributed to the loving support of her husband. Her friends and family were surprised by how easily Margaret handled the morning sickness, the swollen feet, and the aches and pains of carrying a child to term. In fact, it was almost strange how even the biggest things hardly seemed to dampen her spirits. Neil had braced himself for the worst mood swings New England had ever seen, but they simply didn't come.

Margaret awoke mid-afternoon on July 17th, 1990, and inexplicably knew it was the day her little girl would be born. She and Neil hadn't wanted to know the sex of the child, but she knew in her heart it was going to be a girl. She went through her day calmly, getting the house clean and making sure everything was in order. She spent the day relaxing and eating some of her favorite foods -- the things she knew she wouldn't have in her stay at the hospital, and waited for her husband to get home. The moment he stepped through the door, Margaret greeted him with a kiss and a smile, and the news that it was time.

The delivery was almost as effortless as the pregnancy itself had been. Margaret had opted for a natural childbirth, and although she had struggled, she was in a minimal amount of pain. The baby hadn't fared nearly as well. Her cries were filled with distress and pain as she twitched in the hands of the doctor, and a panic swept over the delivery room. After an overnight stint in intensive care, the Madden baby was found to be in perfect health. In what everyone assumed was guilt and fear, Margaret was hit by heavy postpartum, leading the hospital to keep her for the duration of their baby's stay. Rosemarie Madden left the hospital with her mother a week after her birth. The couple couldn't have been happier to be in the comfort of their cozy little apartment with their baby.

Margaret would later go on to profess that she had had it too easy when she was carrying Rosemarie, and that her daughter had been making up for lost time ever since.

Rosemarie's sixth birthday party was the last party her parents ever tried to throw for her. She had always been a troublesome child, moreso than most children her age. Her moods fluctuated from moment to moment in ways her parents couldn't predict. One moment she would be the happiest, bubbliest child either of them had ever met, and then a glassy look would cross over her eyes and she would inexplicably burst into tears. What was supposed to be a twelve week maternity leave for Margaret had turned into an extended stay. She didn't trust a nanny to take care of her newborn, and after fourteen weeks absent from work, she put her dreams on hold to pour all of her energy and attention into Rosemarie. To compensate, Neil had to work longer shifts at his accounting job at the law firm downtown. The first few years of being a stay at home mom were miserable for Margaret. Her independence was taken from her completely as she turned into one of those women who live to take care of their baby. All fantasies of returning to her job in a few years disappeared when Margaret found she was pregnant a second time. Her second pregnancy was far more difficult. Between Rose and the baby she was carrying, Margaret felt more stressed than ever. The moments where her Rosie seemed happy became few and far in-between. The more frustrated she got, the more frustrating her daughter became. It wasn't until Rosemarie was three that Margaret began to insist that something was wrong with her daughter.

Margaret's only consolation was that their second daughter, Delilah, was a quiet, angelic baby, and far easier to handle than Rosie. Though Rose's moodswings were troubling, they weren't as frightening as the moments Margaret would catch her eldest daughter staring off into space. She would sit on the floor for hours on end, almost entirely unresponsive to anything Margaret said or did. When she was paying attention to her surroundings, it was almost impossible to keep her attention. Margaret tried to attribute all of this to the fact that she was just a toddler. After all, she was remarkably intelligent for her age group, developing much faster than the rest of her peers. However that didn't wash away the unnerving way she would sometimes babble to herself when no one else was in the room. Neil assured Margaret that it was normal for children to have imaginary friends, but Margaret would shrug off his reassurances, silently growing to resent him. It wasn't his place to tell her what was and wasn't normal with her child. After all, he was hardly ever there.

He wasn't there on Rose's first day of preschool, watching her sit alone in the corner while all the other children played and learned to socialize. He wasn't there when Rose would have crying fits out of the blue, screaming bloody murder in the grocery store or walking down the street. He wasn't there when Rose was ostracized from her peers. He wasn't there for the meetings with her teachers or the playdates that became disasters. He only saw glimpses of his daughter's strange behavior. He was there on her sixth birthday, though, and the catastrophe that was her party helped push him into the decision to move their little family out of the city. That birthday party was the catalyst they needed to change, and it was the first time Rose spoke of the imaginary friend that would soon become the bane of Margaret's existence: Wally.

The Madden family uprooted and moved out to Marshfield, Massachusetts. It was a small, quiet town where everyone knew everyone, and news traveled fast. Neil continued making the commute into the city for his job, which meant Margaret was spending even more time alone trying to raise her children. Still, the hope that getting out of the busy city kept her spirits up. With fewer people and a quiet environment, the couple hoped that Rose would be able to relax and socialize. At first things improved; being away from such an overpopulated place seemed to be doing Rose some good, but many of her habits remained unchanged. She would still sometimes burst into tears for no reason, and rather than make friends with the neighborhood children, she would continue playing by herself, playing hopscotch doing puzzles with her imaginary friends. Disheartened by Rosemarie's lack of improvement, Margaret found herself pouring most of her attention into their previously neglected younger child. Rosie hardly seemed to notice the shift, still too lost in her own little world.

By the time Rose was seven, she was completely shut out by all of the kids in her year and on her block and the bullying was in full swing. Rose made no effort to hide the fact that she was different, often times expecting everyone to experience the world exactly as she did. The name calling had begun in Kindergarten. The other children graduated from insults to throwing mud clods, and from there they moved onto rocks. Most nights, Margaret received calls from the school and other parents saying that Rosemarie had started another fight. It became routine for them. She was dropped off at school early in the morning, and by the late afternoon she had been sent home again. Rose didn't understand that she wasn't like all of the other kids at first. Even when she had slowly come to realize they weren't the same, she fed into the after school specials and her father's encouragement to continue 'being herself.' Being herself usually ended with bruises and cuts, but she never felt completely unloved and alone. After all, she had Wally.

Rose was eight when she realized all of the friends her mother regarded as imaginary weren't imaginary at all; they were ghosts. They sought her out because she possessed the ability to see and feel beyond what most people could. She realized that the secrets she overheard; the words and pictures that filled her head and the feelings that overwhelmed her own weren't normal. Slowly, she learned to keep those secrets to herself, not comprehending why she was different or why people were so afraid of her for being different. She soon came to learn that being different meant something was wrong with her. After years of fighting with Neil over how to handle their daughter, Margaret finally convinced him to let them find psychiatric help. She was immediately diagnosed as schizophrenic, and spent the next five years numbed by antipsychotics, despite her father's quiet pleas for her to stop taking them.

It wasn't until high school that Rose stopped taking her medication. Everything that she had become so used to as a child jumped back into the foreground of her mind again. The powers that had been shackled and very nearly silenced took over, expanding and strengthening as though working overtime to make up for the set back in their development. Age and understanding made Rose more cautious about exposing her abilities to her peers. She did her best to shut out their invading thoughts, though she could never control what emotions she picked up on. Ghosts began to come back to her, just as they had when she was younger. She devoted her free time to helping them move. Sometimes it was simply a matter of finding out why and how they had died; other times she just needed to bring them closure and acceptance. Most of the ghosts that sought her out were just lost, forgetting who they had been in life and thus unable to move on. The worst of them were the ghosts that lusuted only for revenge. Rose's extreme empathic abilities put her into a unique position to help all of the ghosts that came to her, but there were still some that she couldn't help. They were her lost ghosts, and most of the time they remained by her side just for the company and comfort of being so close to someone who was still alive. Her ghosts helped keep her grounded in herself for the most part, but the lack of any living friends was beginning to eat away at Rose's confidence.

In what little there was of Rose's social life, one disaster led to another, and she soon came to fall into the wrong sort of crowd. They weren't delinquents by any means, but they invited Rose into a life of being high and lazing around. They accepted her and her oddities rather than shunning her like the rest of her school. Bitter over the conniving bullying that can only be mastered by teenage girls, Rose lost herself in marijuana, willingly drowning out the overwhelming voices and feelings that constantly assaulted her. Rose lived in bliss for a few short months, but she quickly came to regret letting herself get lost in the high.

On a quick trip to Boston to buy from their dealer and hopefully peddle to him some of her antipsychotics that she had stashed away, Rose found herself face to face with a creature unlike she had ever seen. Unbeknownst to her, a wraith had become attracted to the significant amount of psionic energy she gave off. It had been following her for years, waiting for her to be vulnerable before it struck. It hungered for her, seeking to devour her soul and add her strength to its energy. It set a trap for her, claiming the body of their dealer in order to corner and attack her. Rose was utterly defenseless, abandoned by her ghosts and unable to fight off the wraith. It began to eat away at her soul, taking her life force and making it its own. If it weren't for the powerful psychic that had been trying to track it, it would have succeeded in killing her. Instead, the attack left her shaken and hospitalized; scarred and blind in one eye. The wraith got away, but that attack became the turning point in Rose's life, and set her onto a course that would forever change who she was.

Rose's savior was a woman that introduced herself as Doctor Casey, and in a matter of moments she was able to tell Rose exactly what she was. She was a powerful clairvoyant; a Jill of all trades that was highly skilled in her abilities, and highly vulnerable because of them. She immediately corrected the misdiagnosis of schizophrenia, and initiated what would become a long road of recovery. Rose's record wasn't unscathed by the failed meeting with her dealer. The BPD couldn't ignore the pot that had been found on her person or the corpse of the small-time dealer after the wraith's attack. With the help of Doctor Casey, Rose's punishment consisted of mandatory community service at the local foodbank in Marshfield. Despite the circumstances surrounding the change in her life, Rose's father was ecstatic. For years he had insisted to Margaret that their eldest daughter was just special, and for years he had let his opinions on how to raise their child be drowned out. Margaret, still embittered by her struggles with Rose, was tougher to convince. Eventually she gave into the new diagnosis, but let Neil take charge of supporting their daughter and the new world that had been opened to her.

On July 9th, 2007 Neil's support was cut short. On the way to get Delilah from her friend's house after picking Rose up at the foodbank, the wraith struck again. Neil swerved to avoid the mass of dark energy that stood before them in the road, slamming on the breaks. They spun onto the side of the road, but for a few short seconds, they were both still okay. A twisted act of revenge drove the wraith to force itself into her father's body, displacing his spirit and taking over. Rose knew he was already dead and gone by the time she pulled him from the car, a sobbing hysterical mess. If it weren't for her ghosts, the wraith would have finally had her, and this time she wouldn't have put up a fight.

After the death of her father, Rose threw herself into exercising her abilities, focusing on growing stronger. She kept meeting with Doctor Casey, seeking to end the wraith once and for all. It was then that Doctor Casey told Rose she believed that Rose was more than what they had previously thought. She was a channel that was highly attuned to the people around her. She was a conduit of power, and if she trained in the right way, she would be able to channel the energy of the ghosts around her and transform it into a powerful force that was tangible to the real world. Armed with this knowledge and the help of fellow patient Jack West, Rose began to train.

Rose trained relentlessly, splitting her time between that and sessions with Doctor Casey. Well-armed to fight the wraith and reclaim the part of her it devoured, she eventually traveled back to Boston. A tense game of cat and mouse led her all across the city, culminating in a battle that nearly cost Rose her life again. She was victorious, but changed. The consequences of the wraith absorbing part of her were so significant, they could not be undone or forgotten.

With her father's murderer taken care of, Rose was able to turn her focus to her senior year of high school with the aims of doing well enough to live up to her father's last hopes for her. Her powers were too big for their town, he had said, and hoped she would attend a college for people who were just as special as her. Rose got into Paragon University, and when fall rolled around again, she moved to Rhode Island to pursue the future her father had dreamed of.

When Rose moved to Paragon, the culture shock was enough to make her head spin. She quickly adapted though, and began focusing on getting her degrees in Psychology and Forensic Science. With the loss of her father's income, Rose was was struggling to pay for school and make ends meet all on her own. Money had been saved up for school for her and Delilah, but it wasn't nearly enough to cover all four years. She had qualified for a small scholarship, but she still relied on numerous loans and getting money from FAFSA. Even with all that monetary help, it wasn't enough for Rose to really live on. Under the recommendation of her professors, Rose began working for the Steel Canyon PPD as a contractor. With her minor in Forensic Science, she was eligible for some brief internships that put her in a position where she could show off her talents. Rose went on to help the PPD with numerous cold cases and other mysteries of a stranger nature. For three years she relied on her wages as a contractor, but her Professors weren't done making recommendations to her. They suggested she apply for a hero license and help the living just as much as she tried to help the dead.

With their encouragement, Rose found the confidence to become a registered hero. She wasn't quite confident enough to strike out all on her own, so she decided to investigate various heroing groups that wouldn't mind taking her under their wing. Among all of them, The Reciprocators stood out the most. After applying, Rose was accepted within days. Her very first night as a member, they were all called into action to help find their fellow Reciprocator by the name of Sean Casus who had been missing for months. They were able to track him to Praetoria but when they found him, Rose's abilities were put to the test. His voice box had been surgically removed, and Rose found herself speaking for him for the duration of the night, and for several days after that until he could get a text to speech device.

From then on, Rose worked at a relentless pace. She nearly ran herself into the ground helping her fellow Reciprocators with their various problems. Legio, helped Rose adjust to life as a hero and all of the responsibilities she had signed up for. He became almost a mentor to her, and went out of his way to help her deal with the problems that going out on patrol brought her. The pace Rose had set for herself came to a screeching halt when the most significant moment of her fledgling career as a super hero brought everything to a standstill. Super villain Paul Ooshun had plans to destroy the world, plans that were thwarted by some of the Reciprocators. Locked in their containment room, the villain that was Ooshun was magically reverted to his former self, Paul Ocean. The monster still inhabited him though, and Rose took it upon herself to help Paul regain control of who he was. She worked literally round the clock to help rehabilitate him. That didn't stop Ooshun from hurting the girlfriend of fellow Reciprocator The Androgyne, Lia Bezerra. Paul was getting stronger every day, but they were running out of time. Rose threw together a hastily concocted plan that would trick Ooshun into thinking he was escaping in exchange for absorbing the toxin that was killing Lia. Despite some hiccups in the plan, Lia was healed and Paul ran to the isles to hide from everyone that was sure to be after him once they heard of his escape.

The two remained in contact, and with Rose's encouragement, Paul was able to contact a lawyer going by the moniker Steel Advocate in order to turn himself in. After a grueling trial, Paul was granted amnesty under the condition that he remain in the charge of an emerging group of well-known heroes. Paul joined the ranks of The Challengers, and since then Rose has remained his acting psychiatrist, although she is still in her final year of her undergrad. Rose's groundbreaking work with Paul has given her a lot of attention, both welcome and unwelcome in the psychiatry community. With the completion of her thesis, Rose had hoped she would find more time to resume patrol work. However as she completed her final year, she was promoted within the Reciprocators to Tertiary Tier, and found herself unable to continue as Paul's therapist. She underwent an ethical review, and all though she was ultimately banned from continuing furthering her degree for two years, she and Paul were able to become a couple in the public eye. In lieu of school, she focuses on her work as a hero and an officer of the Reciprocators.

To label Rosemarie as a psychic is erroneous. Her powers exceed her abilities to read and project the minds of others. She is most comfortable using the term empath but even that fails to encompass everything she does and everything she struggles with. Rose most often describes herself as a clairvoyant, simply because it is vague enough that it blankets over all of her abilities. However the most accurate term to describe Rose is to say she is a channel. She is a conduit for others that sees and feels what others feel. In a moment, she experiences what it is like to become them. The highly sensitive nature of her powers make her a force to be reckoned with, but they also serve to put her in extreme danger if she is not properly grounded.