One sentence description:
If you're curious as to whomst I'm picturing as each character, please refer to the 'cover pic' of their story. I'm shit at giving vivid physical descriptions -but I swear I'm trying to get better, I really am- so the cover photo being the OC in question (and maybe their pairing partner if I can figure out the finer points of graphic design just enough to slap a cover together) is what made most sense for me to do.
Ages & Backstory may have been toyed with here to make things fit and flow as cohesively as humanly possible. Sorry up front if this bothers anyone.
Leora Heyward is a character that would've been David Heyward (all my children) and Anna Devane's daughter. I just borrowed her and made her my own. She may or may not have been soarsed.*
General
Full Name: Leora Ruby Keller (Heyward) (Devane)
Reason for name: She was named in tribute of a relative.
Nickname: She typically goes by Ruby.
Reason for nickname: She just prefers her middle name to her first one, tbh.
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Place of Birth: Pine Valley, Pennsylvania
Birthday: February 26
Currently living in: Port Charles, New York
Species/Race: Human
Ethnicity: N/A
Blood Type: N/A
Occupation: Makeup Artist, both freelance and employed at Adele Corinthos salon.
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Social Status:N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Status: N/A
Appearance
Body Build: Petite / fit
Height: 5'3.5
Weight:N/A
Skin colour: Fair with warm undertone
Hair style: This changes with her mood, truth be told. Currently, she's rocking a chin length bob with some side swept bangs and her natural hair color.
Hair colour: Dark brown
Eye colour: Light brown
Distinguishing Features: Most people tend to notice her eyes, the freckles on the bridge of her nose or her lips.
Preferred Clothing: Leora's style is all over the place. She loves skinny jeans, heels or flats and a good leopard print, though.
Accessories: These ridiculously big hoop earrings, her tattoos ( inner forearm, just below her underarm, underboob, and right wrist). She's also not one to turn down dramatic winged eyeliner and bold red lipstick. She's very colorful.
Health
General health: Leora was born with phlebitis and it nearly killed her as an infant. She hasn't suffered any other serious health problems, however and if you don't know her well, you'd never realize she even had this.
Posture: It's slouchy. Anna's constantly reminding her to stand up straighter, lol.
Any physical illnesses?: Not currently, though she is at a greater risk for blood clots and the like due to the phlebitis I mentioned above.
Any mental illnesses?: Nope
Take drugs?: Nope
Smoke?: Nope. Her vice of choice is drinking, though she rarely does this.
Mental/Emotional State
Archetype: N/A
Mental age: She's got a bit of an older soul, so probably early 30's.
Act before thinking/Think before acting?: Act before thinking. YOLO is the motto she lives by.
Emotion-wise, generally: N/A
Conversation
Way of speaking: Soft drawl that sounds sleepy. She's another one of my babies who has mastered the whole '50's transatlantic accent', btw. She talks with her hands. A lot. Especially if she's excited. She's got a very loud and bubbly laugh.
Common conversation starter: It all depends. Either compliments or questions are what she tends to use most though.
Swears?: Bet your sweet ass. She's fluent in sailor with a heavy trucker dialect, especially when she's frustrated, upset, angry or excited.
Made-up words?: Sometimes, yeah (she's another one who stole Olivia's whole "people opener= knife" thing, lol)
Made-up language?: Nooope.
Likes/Dislikes
Likes:
Ice Nine Kills
Halloween
Horror movies
Spending time with her family and best friend Jenny Martin
Going out
Baking, especially brownies.
Volunteering at the animal shelter
Kids
Animals
Erotica novels and movies
Crushed ice
True red lipstick shades
Vanilla scented anything
Jameson / Titos / Pinnacle - yes, she enjoys some good booze. She's only 21.
Rollercoaster rides
Science fiction
The first snow of the year
Snakes
Cats
Dogs
Dislikes:
Uptight people
Long lines
Waiting when she knows what she wants.
Beating around the bush when she knows what she wants.
Cruelty of any kind
Bullies
Breaking a heel or a nail.
Waking up too early. It's for this reason she never sets early morning makeup consultations.
People who don't fight for what they want in life.
Strong burning odors
Clowns
Clingy types.
Pushy types.
Karen types.
Hobbies
Makeup artistry - she has a youtube channel and an Instagram where she posts looks and tutorials on how to do those looks, watching true crime or horror documentaries and movies, reading - particularly erotica she loves her a good filth fest, listening to music, baking, shopping, going out to parties / nightclubs, etc. She loves to jump off the pier and swim when it's hot enough. If it's summer, she's most often found at the nearest beach or lake swimming or tanning. She's just gotten into yoga and meditation and she's taking kickboxing lessons at the gym for self defense since she's not a huge fan of guns.
Habits
N/A
Strengths/Weaknesses
Strengths:
Confident
Honest
Loyal
Maternal
Nurturing
Romantic
Affectionate
Creative
Hard worker
Determined
Independent
Charming / Alluring
Good sense of humor
Empathetic
Strong sense of right and wrong
Protective
Family oriented
Weakness:
Impatient
Spontaneous
Often acts/speaks without thinking
Blunt
Petty
Forgetful
Slightly disorganized. She calls it 'organized chaos'.
Wears heart on sleeve / will fight for or protect anyone she deems worthy of it.
Bit of a flirt.
Mischievous.
Bossy
Not good at keeping things to herself. She hates secrets. And lies.
Skills/Abilities
Makeup artistry, cooking/baking, flexibility, intelligence and a very strong maternal instinct.
Education/Intelligence
Education: High school graduate. Cosmetology school graduate.
IQ: N/A
EQ: N/A
Secrets
David Heyward discovered that his daughter had been kidnapped and was the product of a black market adoption when Leora was 14, due to an accident she was in. David then proceeded to do what David does and turn the lives of her adoptive parents upside down. He also hid Leora from Anna and hid the truth about Anna from Leora.
Fears
Clowns
Small and tight spaces or being pinned and trapped beneath something.
Jump scares
That she'll never get to become a mother because of the defect she was born with, she was told that attempting to have children could be dangerous for her.
Being trapped in a burning house/room/vehicle.
Dreams/Goals
She's already working towards it. She does makeup and special effects for most of Dillon Quartermaine's movie projects.
Views/Opinions on...
Government: She ignores politics. She honestly hates when the topic turns to this because it's all anyone ever talks about. The system is fucked and rather than fix it, people prefer to bitch about it. Nothing will change in her opinion until we start actively forcing out some of these 'lifers' in Congress/Senate.
Religion: Spiritual.
Economy: Oh, it's bad. It's fucking horrible.
Technology: She lives and dies by it, but she kind of lowkey dislikes this fact.
Favourites
Food: Shrimp scampi, Spaghetti and garlic cheese sticks, mozzarella sticks and egg rolls. Any kind of chocolate or junk food, tbh.
Colour: Red or bright yellow.
Animal: Snake
Number: N/A
Holiday: Halloween
Season: Winter
Time of day: Sunset
Thing to watch: N/A
Movie: Nightmare on Elm Street, Princess Bride, 365 Days, Friday the 13th, The Shining
Show: True crime / paranormal documentaries.
Type of art: Makeup.
Genre of music: Hard rock / grunge / heavy metal
Genre of literature: Erotica / horror / thriller
Genre of shows: Documentaries
Genre of movies: Horror / Romance
History
Leora Devane Heyward was born on February 26th to parents David Heyward and Anna Devane in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania. She was a sickly newborn and spent most of her first 3 months in the NICU because doctors couldn't seem to figure out what was wrong with her. She nearly died a time or two before David and a fellow doctor he was mentoring figured out that Leora was suffering from phlebitis, a blood (vein) condition and that in the time it had taken them to really figure out what was happening, it had began to turn deadly. David acted fast -and against Anna's wishes, this will be important later, and performed a procedure that was still being tested and awaiting approval. The gamble worked and despite Anna and David's huge fight and subsequent breakup, the two were looking forward to bringing their daughter home at last. Sadly, this didn't happen.
Leora was taken from the nursery by a woman named Charlotte who was suffering from bipolar and during an episode, this woman -a patient in the same hospital, convinced herself that Leora was her daughter (She was hospitalized due to trauma surrounding a miscarriage three months prior that caused her to go off her meds / have a breakdown). Charlotte replaced Leora with another child that had passed away during the night from SIDS, swapping their bracelets, (similar to what happened with Lila in her backstory) and walked out of the hospital, hopping the first bus out of town to go and find her husband who had been the one to have her hospitalized in the first place before leaving town to go out on another tour of duty with the military.
Charlotte and Leora lived a life on the run for the first seven years of Leora's life, Charlotte being convinced that sooner or later, someone would realize what she'd done during her episode as she'd come to once she got herself back on medication. Leora's early years were hard, Charlotte would take spells throughout where she'd decide she 'didn't need' the medication and she'd go off. This resulted in Leora being taken out of the home on more than one occasion.
The final time Leora was removed from the home was when she was 8. She wound up placed in the care of a couple in the town outside of Pine Valley - Domino and Chandler Keller, along with a large group of other kids. The Kellers were the kind of family who didn't really believe in rules or consequences or doing any actual parenting and it was a well known fact amongst most people that the couple only fostered for the money they could get from the state. But given the lack of other foster families at the time, this is where Leora ended up.
Leora befriended Jenny Martin when they got put in the same class at school (the kids from Leora's town had to attend the school in Pine Valley) and the two were nearly as close as sisters. They literally did everything together -and still do, to this day. This bond between the two girls meant that Leora had a place she could escape to when things in the Keller household got too crazy and she needed space. Leora was picked on a lot as a child because she was thin and frail and she tended to wear hand-me-downs. Jenny was constantly standing up for Leora, just as Leora stood up for Jenny whenever she felt the need.
When Leora was 14, she was out joyriding with some older friends in one of their cars and this car was involved in an accident. Leora and two of the other teens inside the wrecked car were transported to Pine Valley General where Leora was admitted, unconscious. David was working on this particular night and something about the brunette in the ripped jeans and the loud leopard cardigan with the red tank top just felt familiar to him. At first, he brushed it off. But then a frantic teenage Jenny Martin rushed over and told him that she knew her best friend's medical history, that her best friend was at high risk for blood clots and she just wanted someone in the back to know this in case Ruby (as she was known at the time) needed surgery. David's interest was piqued at hearing this and he got Jenny to sit down and tell him everything she knew about her friend's medical history. Enough of it lined up with what he knew about Leora, the daughter he'd been led to believe was lost to him and after a routine blood test, the fact that Ruby's blood type was the same as Leora's had been was enough to convince David to take a sample of her DNA while she was out and in a private room for recovery and send it to a lab to have it tested against his own.
The results came back two weeks later. Ruby Keller was somehow Leora Devane Heyward, the daughter he thought he'd lost. And David was beyond furious. After he consulted with Tad (who was working as a lawyer by this time), it was decided that he needed to pursue a lawsuit. And he fully intended to until the Kellers explained how they'd wound up fostering her. It was revealed that her 'mother' Charlotte was bipolar and refused to take her meds, constantly placing Ruby (Leora) in danger. David did some further digging and connected the dots between the night before they were due to take Leora home from the hospital and a patient that he believed had been the woman to take Leora out of the nursery that night, swapping her with one of the children who'd passed away. When David went to confront the woman, he discovered that she'd taken her life in San Francisco shortly after Ruby (Leora) had been taken from her the very last time. David petitioned to take over guardianship of the young teen he now knew to be his daughter and at one point, Tad asked if he intended to tell Anna. David told him that he didn't know how. That he was trying to figure it all out. In other words, David was evasive, as usual. Tad kept at him about it over the years and on more than one occasion, he tried to track Anna down himself to do so. Leora was taken out of the Keller home and went home with David Heyward, and at first, things were more than a little rocky. You see, Leora was not used to living in a home with actual rules and boundaries, so at first, she was pushing and testing David as much as she could. David quickly realized that his daughter got every single bit of her mother's independent streak.
The two of them reached a point of civility over the next year, even though now and then, Leora would take the wild hair to push boundaries just for the hell of it. When she asked about her mother or for an explanation as to what happened and how she'd ended up with Charlotte in the first place, David told his version of the truth. He also told Leora that Anna wasn't the family type of woman to begin with, that she'd never be around enough to properly care for her daughter. Leora was hesitant to believe this, but she accepted it in favor of finally having the stability she craved at long last. It's safe to say David Heyward had his hands a little more than full during Leora's later teenage years. The two managed to make things work and even began to form a bit of a father daughter bond.
When Leora was 18 and graduating from high school, this is when Anna Devane learned the truth. In her search for her son Peter, she uncovered the fact that Leora was alive and David had been hiding her since he found her when she was 14. She showed up at the Comeback, where David and Leora were having a celebratory dinner to commemorate her graduating, and she unleashed every ounce of fury she possessed at the man.
Leora was shell-shocked, she sat back and let the fight happen, paying close attention to everything either party said. When it was over, she realized that her father may have mostly told the truth but he also omitted several things and outright lied when she'd asked him if he'd told her mother what happened and that she was alive. When the shock finally wore off, Leora fled the diner and wound up sleeping over at Tad and Krystal's for a night or two. When she was finally past the point where just hearing her father's voice invoked the urge to strangle the man, she returned to her father's home and quietly packed up everything she owned. After leaving David's, she decided to go ahead and go to Port Charles, where she'd be spending the next few months to begin with, working as makeup and hair on a movie set. She made her way to town and once she was there, she looked up her birth mother, Anna.
Anna and Leora began to form a tentative and clumsy bond. This bond grew in leaps and bounds and presently, it's the whole reason that Leora has chosen to make Port Charles her permanent home. She's also bonded with her half sister Robin and her half brother, Peter. She dotes on her niece Emma and she constantly pesters Peter, asking when he's going to make her an aunt too. She took a job at Adele Corinthos' salon when Adele opened the doors to it and currently, she is one of the main makeup artists working there. She also freelances and does makeup for formal events, etc on the side.
She hasn't spoken to her father in quite a few years and she doesn't intend to, either.
Personality
Please refer to strengths and weaknesses. Those sum her up so much better than I could even begin to attempt doing.
Relationships
Family: David Heyward and Anna Devane, parents - biological, Domino and Chandler Keller - adoptive -illegally, Robin Scorpio Drake, Peter August, Babe Carey and Marisa Tasker, Oliver Castillo - half siblings. Emma Scorpio Drake - niece
Love interest: Morgan Corinthos
Friends/Allies: Jenny Martin
Enemies: If she doesn't like you, she doesn't f–k with you.
Quotes
N/A
Trivia
N/A