Face Claim: Inbar Lavi

Nikkie has black hair and dark brown eyes, and skin that is distinctly darker than most of her siblings. She doesn't currently have any tattoos or piercings, though she's been slowly considering a few, especially tattoos (like everything she does, she takes her time to decide these things). She does have three notable scars: one long one on her left leg from the time she fell down a flight of stairs her first year of college and gashed it open, a series of three puncture marks on her right shoulder blade from the time her father threw a beer bottle at one of her younger siblings and she got in the way, and one on the inside of her right elbow from when she got her arm broken and the bone poked through. She isn't sure how she feels about them.

Nikkie takes care of people. She wants to help people be the best people that they can be, which is a trait that serves her well with middle school students. Even as a young child, Nikkie was very protective towards her siblings, being willing to get in between them an their father, even though she knew that it had a chance of hurting if she did. As she's gotten older, she's gotten better at risk assessment, but the protective streak hasn't died down much.

Nikkie doesn't give up, maybe even sometimes when she should. On the other hand, it's mostly served her well when she's faced challenges in her life. She doesn't like telling her personal business to people, outside of those she is very very close to, mainly her twin, and even then. She is good at keeping secrets because of it.

Nikkie's early years were shaped in many ways by fear and anger. She didn't want to let her siblings get hurt, but she often felt helpless to help them, and knew that her mother felt similarly. Even after her mother left her father, she had a long long time where she was just very anxious about the possibility of him hurting them. Stubborness and her protective and caring streaks definitely helped her through because she was able to focus on helping others which distracted her from her own issues. She is the kind of person who often can't stand to stop and just spend time with herself though, and in school, she was always the person involved in what seemed like everything while also maintaining high grades. Sometimes, she gets kind of burned out, but she also just doesn't know what to do with herself if she isn't busy.

MOTHER
Name: Felicity Galford
Birth Year: 1969
Occupation: Social Worker
Feelings Toward: It's complicated. She resented her mother for not leaving their father sooner when she was young, though as she's gotten older, she's gotten a better grasp of the why behind that, and she doesn't blame her mother anymore. They care about a lot of the same people and a lot of the same things, but Nikkie has always felt like she had to carry some of what should have been her mother's responsibility far too young, and that rift has never quite healed. She loves her mom though, and is really proud of the person that she's become.

FATHER (estranged)
Name: Raymond Freeland
Birth Year: 1970
Occupation: Unemployed
Feelings Toward: Pure, unadulterated hatred. She has hated him for as long as she can remember, and when she was younger, she was also terrified of him. Now, as an adult, that fear has fed into the hating him, and there is nothing that he could do that would earn her forgiveness. She was very aware as a little kid that he didn't like that she didn't look anything like him, strongly favoring their mom's side of the family, and she took a lot of pride in that fact.

STEP-FATHER
Name: Anthony Galford
Birth Year: 1964
Occupation: Lawyer
Feelings Toward: Respect, but it's complicated. When her mom first started seeing her step-father, Nikkie was not ready for the idea of another dad. The first one had clearly been a mistake, and she wanted to feel safe. It took her a long time to feel safe around her step-father, but over time, he earned her respect and to a certain extent admiration. A big part of that was not pushing her to be closer to him than she was ready to be. They didn't really start to see eye to eye or get along until she was in high school though.

TWIN BROTHER
Name: Nick Freeland
Birth Year: June 17, 1990
Occupation: Unemployed / Freelance Artist
Feelings Toward: He's her twin. She loves him dearly, and in many ways, she's the only one allowed to point his flaws and mistakes out to him. She worries for him a lot, but also knows that he won't get better unless he's allowed to do it at his own pace and in his own way. She knows that the two of them remember their father the best, and just have really different ways of handling that trauma, but she has hope that things will get better for Nick as long as she is patient (stubborn) and caring and helps give him the support that he needs. She is very proud that he seems to be starting to move forward with his life again.

YOUNGER BROTHER
Name: Damion Lee Freeland
Birth Year: June 13, 1993
Occupation: Youth Advocate / Musician
Feelings Toward: She's proud of what he's chosen to do with his life, but they aren't the closest. In some ways she feels that they're the most similar of the siblings, and that that may be why they aren't as close to each other, neither of them needs that intensity of caring because they carry it themselves. She appreciates him being him though.

YOUNGER SISTER
Name: Allison Rose Freeland
Birth Year: June 13, 1993
Occupation: Yoga Instructor / Instagram Influencer
Feelings Toward: Aly is the sibling that Nikkie has the most fraught relationship with in some ways. She cares about her younger sister deeply, and in some ways, they love each other and get along, but she does not put up with the way Aly pushes people (especially Nick) to do things at the pace that Aly thinks is right as opposed to the one that works for them. She thinks that Aly could stand to think about what she says and how she says it a lot more than she does.

YOUNGEST SISTER
Name: Luna Gabrielle Freeland
Birth Year: May 2, 1995
Occupation: Dance Instructor
Feelings Toward: Intensely protective, deep caring and love. Nikkie remembers when Luna was born and thinking that Luna was single most important thing in the world to protect. Every time that life has been hard for Luna, she's tried to be there for her baby sister, though she's not sure that she's always been able to convey that in a way that makes sense to Luna. She probably feels the deepest connection to Luna after Nick of her siblings. They're the two that need a person like her in their lives the most, and she's bound and determined to be there to help them when they need her. She tries her best not to overwhelm Luna with her want to help though.

Nikkie's earliest memories were rather formative, in that they involved her twin younger brother and sister (Aly and Damion) being born, and her father screaming at her mother and them. Nikkie was overall a bright, advanced child from a very young age, starting to walk, talk, read, write, pretty much everything well in advance of the average for her age. Her father hated that it was the child who looked nothing like him who was the one "performing above standard." Even from when she was very young, Nikkie hated her father and how he treated her mother and her and her siblings. She just wanted to run away and never come back, and at the time, she didn't really understand why it wasn't an option, especially not when her mother would threaten or say that she should leave him, but then she didn't and didn't and didn't.



Nikkie felt very protective of her younger siblings. This became even more strong after Luna, the youngest child, was born. To four, nearly five year old Nikkie, Luna was the most precious, beautiful, fragile thing in the world when she first came home, and it made Nikkie terrified because she knew that her father could break her. One time, when her father was in one of his rages, not long after Luna was born, he threw his beer bottle at one of the younger children for being loud, and Nikkie got in between it and her sibling. She has a scar from that incident, and the resulting hospital visit was one of the tipping points for her mother finally leaving her father. The first time was just a long weekend with their grandparents, something that happened from time to time, and Nikkie always hoped that they'd stay. But that time, they went back.



Nikkie was terrified. She was too small to keep all her siblings safe, let alone keep herself safe, and she could tell that all of her siblings were scared at least to some extent. It didn't help that she had stitches in her shoulder blade, and they itched and hurt, and she wasn't supposed to be very active, which was hard for her in itself. Less than a month after they went back, her father started yelling at Nick for something, and Nikkie yelled back, resulting in the incident that left her with the second of the two scars caused by her father. In the grabbing and shaking that ensued, Nikkie ended up with her arm broken, and that time, when they went to their grandparents' place, they didn't come back.



This was the state that Nikkie started her first year of school in, right arm in a cast and sling, terrified of most adult men, and angry at the world and incredibly protective of her twin. She ended up being effectively left handed, though over the years she would develop the ability to use both hands almost equally well, because of starting school this way, but at school, Nikkie found a certain sense of balance again. It was something that she was good at, her teachers liked her, and she could prove that she was good at things. She especially liked to read, since it allowed her to escape to worlds where people like her had the power to change things. For most of elementary school, she carried a copy of Mathilda in her backpack at all times (and it's still one of her favorite books).



Nikkie wasn't ready for her mom to bring a new maybe dad into their lives when her mom started dating Anthony, but she cared enough about her mom, and her younger siblings who seemed happy about it, that she bit her tongue. But she watched him intently for any sign of maybe harming any of them. Slowly, very very slowly, he gained her trust. He tried to help each of the kids find opportunities that they cared about, he clearly respected their mom, and he made his work around helping kids and families in bad situations. She still took years to come to terms with him maybe being ok, but eventually, around the time she started high school, she was comfortable enough with him to see him as being how a dad should be. She has a lot of respect for the fact that he was incredibly patient with her through the entire time that it took her to decide that she was ready to be ok with him though.



As she got older, Nikkie seemed to thrive in school though, she did several sports, especially excelling at soccer while she was in high school, and doing that alongside track and cross country. She liked being outdoors and active because it took her mind off the stuff that she wasn't ready to grapple with. She also excelled in school, taking all advanced classes, including ever single AP that her high school had to offer (except for one of the three language options). She participated in school clubs and student government, and at home, she helped look after her younger siblings and do a lot of things to take care of the house.



She graduated high school as the valedictorian, with a full ride scholarship to Seattle University for their undergraduate education program, entering as a second semester sophomore from all her AP credits. Her first year away from living with her family was a train wreck. All of it came to a bit of a head when, at the end of her first finals week (where she aced all of her tests, the academics were never the train wreck), she saw someone who looked like her father (she's still not sure if it was actually him) and had a panic attack so bad that she passed out and fell down a flight of stairs, managing to do nothing worse than badly scrape her leg, though it did scar. The resulting hospital visit ended up getting her going to therapy though, where she was able to sort out a lot of things about herself, from learning to deal with the built up stress of C-PTSD and fear and anger, and also figuring out that she was a lesbian. She'd never given herself enough time to really think about these things when she was younger.



She slowed down a lot, grateful for the head start that all her high school AP classes had given her, and she still graduated on time, doing very very well, and went on to UW's masters in teaching program to become a middle school English teacher. She still didn't like not being busy, but she was a lot better at modulating it. She still goes to therapy regularly, still even seeing that same therapist, though she's pretty sure that the only sibling who knows that is her twin.



When all of the siblings started living together again, Nikkie had the start of a stable career, teaching at Cedar Beach Middle School, and she was excited about what the future held. She was also worried about Nick and how he hadn't come back out of the mess that had started to form of his life, but right then, the focus was a lot more on Luna and her tragedy. Nikkie was glad that she could be there for Luna and that she could help Luna start finding her way back out of the mess that happened to her life after Liam died. She just hoped that at some point, Nick would find a way out of his own mess too. (Part of the reason that she's often frustrated at Aly is that she sees her pushing their siblings in ways that worry her will make it worse, and also that the way that Aly doesn't watch out for people's feelings sometimes makes her wonder if Aly actually truly cares. Other times though, it's obvious, and she wonders why she doubted her younger sister.)



Nikkie is finally starting to be at a point in her life where there's more happiness in it than panic and fear, but she's not quite figured out what to do with that yet. She loves her job, and helping kids learn and grow, and she's definitely been active in making sure that her school has mental health resources to help kids who need it.

Fairly recently, Nikkie bought her own house with her twin, and they are now living separately from the rest of their siblings. Nikkie has found this a relief and also has been very pleased about how much it seems to have given Nick the chance to start improving and moving forward with his life again.

Hello! My name is Etienne!
I was born in 1989.
My pronouns are he/him.