Ellen Bailey

Ellen Faline Bailey

Ellen's only real pet name is when Aera calls her "Mio Coure" which means "My Heart" in Italian

34

She/Her

Snow Haven Police Department - Detective

Human

July 6th

Anna Torv

5 FT 8 IN

Ellen has a lean, willowy build but surprising strength, a combination of growing up as a ballerina and her later career as a cop.

Hazel green that change between green and hazel gold/brown depending on the light

Blonde

Long (mid-back when down) & Straight

Good question, no I don't think so

Just earlobes

Her wardrobe is exclusively clothes that allow for easy movement; either they are skin-tight like leggings and camisoles or loose and free flowing like baggy tunics and skirts. She almost exclusively wears flats as well, as anything taller than a 1-inch wedge heel usually has her towering over others. She owns some slacks, one or two pairs of jeans, and a few slinky formal dresses, so she can dress up business or formal if she needs to, but for the most part she is all casual all the time.

She has never sustained any serious injuries over the course of either of her careers, besides breaking her nose twice. She does sometimes still have problems with her feet from dancing so much when she was young, but the worst of it has faded over the years.

She is 5 feet 8 inches in bare feet and can sometimes seem to be all legs, which she is proud to show off. A mixture of vanity and humility says that she believes she is good-looking (about a 6 out of 10), but would never openly admit that to anyone else except in jest.

Ellen is a person of contradictions. She was raised by fairly liberal parents and grew up wholly buried in the ballet theater atmosphere, so at heart she is carefree, dramatic, a hopeless romantic, never grew out of the phase of fairy tales and knights in shining armor, and sees the world through rose-tinted lenses. However, she saw enough darkness growing up on the streets of New York City that she eventually changed careers and went into life as a police officer. This gave her a moral compass, strict discipline, and an obligation to uphold the rules and laws of society in a way that often contradicts what she grew up with her whole life.

As a result, Ellen has split personas to still stay true to herself but deal with the stressful and contradictory nature of her job: her on-duty and off-duty personas. On duty she is commanding, a leader, who can catch and note most details. She is strict, stern, and no-nonsense, because she became a cop to improve the lives of citizens and criminals alike and that can take some tough love. She's still the good cop in a good cop/bad cop scenario. Ultimately her goal is to help people and make the world a better place, and she wants to make a difference in people's lives.

Her off duty persona is more true to who Ellen really is. She is bright, bubbly, a bit spacey and forgetful, and generally open and accepting of all things. She's constantly smiley with a flair for the dramatic and the melodrama, a social butterfly who is adventurous and loves to try new things. She chooses to see the good in everyone and sees the world in a good light, often purposefully ignoring something that would show otherwise.

While there is and will always be crossover between her work life and her personal life, Ellen does her best to keep them totally separate. Typically Ellen refuses to tell people who know her outside of work that she is a police officer; she can be emotionally sensitive and feels that people treat her differently because of her career. Her work relationships and her personal relationships rarely overlap or mix together.

• Ballet


• Coffee


• Wine


• soap operas


• Jane Austen novels


• pastel colors


• Rom-coms


• cats

• Cooking


• Gardening


• Crime


• Pessimism


• Realism


• horror movies


• extreme violence

Observation: From her many years on the force, Cop Ellen has honed a very sharp sense of observation. She can absorb crime scenes and reflect back on details with minute clarity, and will spot things others may miss. This does have an unfortunate side: one, it rarely translates over to civilian life (she couldn't tell you where her house keys ended up), and two, it means that crimes can affect her sharply, as she can't get a crime scene out of her head. When she gets in an observational mode, it can be hard to switch off.

Literal Strength: Ellen was blessed enough to suffer few injuries as a ballerina and then turned around and trained hard as a cop. She may be lean but she has a surprising amount of strength, located in her legs and arms. She can run and tackle a suspect with little effort.

Flexibility: In addition to her strength, despite not actively dancing ballet anymore, Ellen is still very flexible. While she needs a lot of stretching to get back into top form now compared to when she was younger, Ellen can still do things like bring her leg over her head or drop into the splits with ease.

Compassion/Emotion: Ellen is highly emotional and compassionate as a person, which can be very detrimental in her line of work. Crime affects her more strongly than the average person, and she is sensitive to how others see and perceive her. Which means cop hate can be difficult to deal with, as well as aggressive criminals and grieving families. She takes things far too personal in a profession that needs a degree of separation to it.

False Realities: Ellen tends to see the world through a rose-tinted lens of her own creation. It's mostly putting a constantly positive spin on reality, until someone comes along and aggressively tries to break it. She has a very romantic, optimistic view of how the world could be, and tries to push to make it that way. It's a big reason why she became a cop.

Crime: Ellen has always been vehemently against crime and criminal activity. Seeing the poverty and crime rates in NYC as a child awoke a humanitarian need to improve the world. Everyone deserves a second chance and crime should never be the solution to a problem. Her job is to stop it and prevent it, if possible. It would be easy to use that against her.

Ellen is biromantic but was, up until recently, a closeted bisexual woman who believed herself to be fully straight.

Ellen is a social butterfly and loves to make friends! She is definitely the bubbly, overly chatty type when off duty (and sometimes on, but she hates people knowing she's a cop because they always treat her differently), and she loves to discuss similar interests with people. She tends to go for her age range (late 20s-early 40s) for close friends, but if they click you can expect Ellen to cling to the new friendship.

Ellen has been a police officer for almost 15 years; there's bound to be all kinds of enemies from that alone. Plus, her brother James is in the Irish Mob; she doesn't know it, but a Bailey as a cop can be seen as a betrayal of the family. Ellen is easily wounded emotionally and is very against having enemies, trying her best to make everyone happy, so I would love some plots that bruise physically and emotionally.

Ellen is a hopeless romantic who has had many lovers over the years, but her only serious commitment was to Richard Mason, a defense attorney. They had a whirlwind romance that started with an engagement after only nine months of dating and the complete breakdown of their relationship six months later. She has not been in a serious relationship since, and she's only had sex about three times.

Pastel pink (a ballerina pink, if you will) and pastel green

Pancakes are her favorite food that she can cook herself without destroying anything or setting the kitchen on fire. I know her favorite-favorite food has been spoken about in canon (I think) but I don't remember and I'm too lazy to look. I could also have totally made that up and it hasn't been written down at which point, RIP.

Cat! Specifically I think it was a puma...? It was a big cat of some kind, again too lazy to look.

Ellen has a love/hate relationship with her career as a cop.

-insert angst here-

Ellen's immediate family consists of her father, Russell George Bailey, a retired accountant from New York City; her mother, Vivian Leigh Bailey, named after the actress and still a part time librarian; and her older brother James Bailey, a Wall Street accountant who followed in their father's footsteps and is two years older than Ellen.

They were never close to her father's side of the family and Ellen knows very little about them, but on her mother's side her maternal grandparents are deceased and she has a small handful of aunts, uncles, cousins, and distant relatives, none of whom she is close to.

Ellen has no idea of the deep secrets that run through her family. Her father is actually the youngest of six with the majority of her paternal family - grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc - having very deep and prolific ties to the Irish Mob. Her father abandoned the "family business" and fled to Wisconsin, where he met Ellen's mother.

Upon their move back to New York City for Ellen's ballet education, her brother James took back up the Irish Mob and is now a Quartermaster within its rank (the equivalent of the Mafia's Consigliere). The Wall Street accountant is just a cover story.

Unbeknownst to Ellen, James is also only her half brother. Vivian was already pregnant when she met Russell, and Russell agreed to raise the child as his own, knowing it wasn't actually his.

None so far, in this universe.

July 6th, 198X. She should be 35 or 36 at most as of 2021.

Addison, Wisconsin. She grew up there until the age of 10, at which point the family relocated to New York, New York for Ellen's ballet career. She grew up in NYC from 10-18, until she moved back in with her maternal grandparents in Addison to finish out her senior year and attend the local police academy. Because she spent more of her adolescence in NYC, Ellen always says she grew up there, rather than in Addison.

Snow Haven, Alaska

Ellen did NOT have a normal childhood education from the age of 10 onwards. She was enrolled in the School of American Ballet (SAB) which is a type of boarding school/private school set up that does not do classes the same way as any ordinary middle school or high school. Your ballet career is your primary focus, not school, and you are only required to meet any State requirements and complete enough coursework to receive a high school diploma upon graduation. Ellen, who was not particularly interested in academics anyway (already too involved with ballet), enrolled in the public school partnership program offered by the school but only did enough work to maintain a C+/B- average and never did anything extra, choosing instead to devote her energies to her dance studies.

This became a problem after she chose to stop her studies at SAB before the completion of the Spring program. She opted not to take her final exam, the audition for the New York Ballet, and transferred back to her hometown of Addison, Wisconsin to struggle through the remainder of her senior year of high school until she could graduate and attend the local police academy. She moved in with her maternal grandparents to do so, but was back out on her own at 19 having completed the program.

She does not have any form of higher education outside of any classes that have been provided or paid for over the years by the various precincts she's worked at. She is also not a good studier/note taker and only does average on any tests or exams as a result of a lack of focus on formal education. After failing the detective's exam twice previously, Ellen did not intend to take it again until the events that led to Bear River's destruction. After much work and studying, she passed the third time.

Meet Ellen! Ellen is my precious unaware human embroiled in a supernatural world she knows nothing about. She was once a ballerina, who started dancing at age 3 and attended the School of American Ballet from 10 until almost 18. Then she had a change of heart and completely changed careers to become a police officer instead. She bounced around between precincts, ended up in Helena, Montana for 8 years, and then transferred into Bear River and became lead officer on the serial killer case after her partner quit.

She was very recently "fired" from the precinct for sharing the case with outsiders and so took some time off to take and pass her detective exam, upon which she was offered a position in Snow Haven, Alaska. Ellen is so ready for a small resort town kind of lifestyle and has no idea the trouble that awaits the ignorant Human there...

(She has since gotten up to much more but there's a lot to update!)

Ellen knows absolutely nothing about the Bailey family's tie to the Irish Mafia, or that it was the reason she was born in the little town of Addison, Wisconsin, or that her brother isn't really her brother. For all Ellen knows, she was born into a happy, loving, supportive family. She looks back on her childhood with absolute fondness.

She did not have what most people would consider a normal childhood. She spent her life on the stage. From the time she was old enough to walk she wanted to dance, and she took to ballet like a fish takes to water. It was natural, it was her element. She would come home from preschool, change into a tutu, and dance through the house. She wore her leotard so much her mother could never wash it, and had to buy multiple pairs. Her room was done in pink and decorated with all sorts of ballerina decor.

By the time she was seven, her ballet teachers begged her parents to take Ellen to New York City, to audition for the School of American Ballet. She didn't know the Bailey reputation is what delayed them until she was ten. Being so close to the Family could mean trouble for them. Her father didn't break peacefully. There were severe risks involved in returning to New York City. In the end, they decided to take Ellen for the audition and she sailed with flying colors. She was offered to stay for the Winter Program on the spot. So they took the risk.

From then on, Ellen's life revolved around ballet. She had tutors for her general education, and the rest of the time she was at SAB. All the new friends she made in New York were friends she made on the stage. She was on a high-protein and vitamin diet, because she burned as many calories as a football player. She spent time at home to sleep, and rarely saw her brother, who had settled in New York in his own way. By the time she was 12 she took the subway on her own and had her path marked down from their little house to the School.

On this path she saw the real New York. Not the one you see on TV. She saw the good, and the bad, saw the poverty and the crime, and had a few scrapes with the wrong type of people when she was 15. And five years of seeing the same suffering over and over - and yet the same will for life... something changed in her. For the first time her life wasn't all-consumed by ballet. She knew when it came time for her audition into the New York City Ballet - which you only get one shot for - they wouldn't give her a contract. Her heart wasn't in it. Her heart was out on the streets of New York, helping those who deserved to be helped.

Of course, that little decision meant a total life overhaul. She had to go back to a public high school. She had to leave the world of ballet behind. And her family had uprooted to come here... not to mention having a Bailey as a police officer. But it wasn't as if her parents could stop her. The only requirement - the only thing her father seemed to have an opinion on for this whole ordeal - was that she could NOT attend the Police Academy or become a police officer in New York City. The city of cop killers, he said. She could train elsewhere and return to the city after a few years and some experience. Ellen readily agreed.

So, just shy of her 18th birthday, she withdrew from the School of American Ballet and moved back to Wisconsin to her maternal grandparents to graduate high school and enter the Police Academy.

Despite New York being the reason she joined the force, Ellen only spent five of her fifteen years in the Big Apple. The boys in blue couldn't help the way she wanted to help. She jumped from the small Addison PD to the NYPD, and from there jumped to two other precincts, including Albany PD until someone suggested a position in Helena PD in Helena, Montana.

She transferred to Helena when she was 26, and stayed for more than seven years. There, she met her best friend Jamison Holder, an investigative reporter, and had some heartbreak - a few boyfriends and a fast-track engagement when she was 29-going-on-30 to then-defense attorney Richard Mason, whom she dated for nine months and was engaged for six months before the relationship fell to pieces. They were together in total of a year and three months. She hasn't been in a serious relationship since.

Helena wasn't the small precinct she started out in, but it wasn't NYC either. It was comfortable. She could have settled down, made a life there. Retired when it came time and taught ballet for underprivileged children, which is what she planned to do. But it wasn't in the cards.

Jamison mentioned a murder in some small, secluded town to the north of Helena. Bear River. He planned on heading out to do some investigative reporting out there. It sparked Ellen's curiosity, and the longing for a small town precinct like the one in Addison she started out in. She put in for a transfer to their local precinct as well. Jamison had a project to finish up so she headed out to Bear River alone.

While there, the loneliness and the alienation got to her: even though Ellen was a pro at transfers, she had a hard time making friends in Bear River among her fellow officers. This loneliness eventually forced its way out through a meeting with one Aerallis Tithiros, an artist and a musician. The two absolutely clicked, but various circumstances prevented them from becoming close. What she didn't know was Aerallis was a Mage, and the murders Ellen was investigating involved an entire supernatural world she knew nothing about.

More happened in her time in Bear River than the entire time she had lived in Helena. Murder, mystery, heartache, and dealing with an increasingly angry and frantic public as the murders continued to escalate and go unsolved, Ellen's own beliefs began to unravel. Had she made a mistake over all these years? Did she really want to be a cop?

She stalled for time to make her decision as the murder investigation ramped to a fever-pitch and it felt like the whole town was out for blood. And... Ellen was unceremoniously let go from the BRPD. Abruptly and vehemently she was told that they had caught her sharing information of the case outside the precinct. In less than 24 hours her things from the precinct were packed and she was thrown out onto the street. She now had nothing to do and nowhere to go in Bear River, nothing tying her there.

She went back home to her parents and her brother in New York City, off work and without something to do for the first time since she was a teenager. Her parents insisted that she take this opportunity as a vacation, and while she might have agreed to that on the surface, on the side she decided she needed a bigger change: her detective exam.

Ellen had tried a couple times but struggled to pass the exam, so she took her time off work to really buckle down and study for the exam. And, after nearly a year of study... she passed! She was now able to take a new position as a police detective. But where would take her with the stain on her record?

Ellen was offered a position as detective in a small town all the way across the country in Snow Haven, Alaska. On the surface everything looked amazing. Small town police force but with a wide area to cover, wealthy resort town, hot springs... it sounded like a vacation assignment. And having been off work for a few years she was excited to jump back into the saddle.

Ellen was, for the majority of her life, an Unaware Human. She has recently become aware as of February on the FMRP timeline.

Ellen is a human with absolutely no special powers, abilities, or access to magic. She was actually wholly ignorant of the supernatural underground... and is so much of a disbeliever in things like magic that anything short of proof shoved into her face could be hand-waved or explained away. (And even then, sometimes proof can be dismissed.)

She was the only one in her family who was still unaware… and that was mostly by design. It was frustrating to those supernatural creatures in her life just how in the dark she is, given she often throws herself into the path of danger recklessly and unknowingly.