Hyacinth

Hyacinth b. September 1, 1330, is a character in the web serial Tin Soldier. She runs a boarding house at 217 Violena Street that caters to magic-users and social outcasts of all stripes. She is an ex-medic and she still practices medicine for the people in the neighborhood, on a pay-what-you-can basis. At the age of twelve, she took a misaimed piece of buckshot to the head during a hunting party. As a result, she became estranged from her family and she has a direct line from her brain to her mouth that she has learned to manage somewhat but still sometimes gets her into trouble. She is honest to a fault, due to the truth generally slipping out of her anyway, resourceful, sharp, and quick on her feet. She commands chaos, and thus the household in general, very well, but she is willing to fulfill a support position if someone else is capable of directing things better. She likes to fix things, and she can be a very caring person, but she also believes in percussive maintenance. She loves Mordecai, Erik, Ann and Milo, and Barnaby, but she is inclined to express her devotion by teasing them and bossing them around. She does pretty well at curtailing this tendency with Erik and Milo, as that kind of behavior hurts them the most. Barnaby and Mordecai hold up to it the best, and thus dealing with them is something of a relief.

Hyacinth was taught to work metal by her guardian, David Valentine, who was excellent at it. She is also excellent at it. Due to its basis in magic, metalwork can fix people as well as things, and as a medic she used metal to heal wounds and replace missing pieces. Metal is not a perfect material, and these repairs can often prove painful or less-functional or difficult to maintain. Still, Hyacinth is a great believer in kludges, and broken but alive is better than dead. She patched both Erik and Mordecai with metal, and both of these repairs were substandard and driven by necessity. Metalwork (like all other magical patches of living tissue) is difficult to adjust to, resulting in high fever and full-body pain – which can be longer and more intense depending on the material and the amount of it. Hyacinth is practiced and cool-headed at dealing with this, as well as most other medical emergencies.

She has a steel plate patching a hole in the left side of her skull. There is a scar on that side of her head which was also closed with metal, but it is hidden by her hair.

Description
Hyacinth gave up on her hair a long time ago. It is blonde with some gray, and liberally toasted due to the high heat resulting from metalworking. She wears it shoulder length and tied back in a ponytail to get it the hell out of the way, but she makes no attempt to condition it or cater to its needs. She is prone to clutching her hands in it and either pulling out the tie or letting it fall out. She has blue eyes, a slight tan, and a weary expression. She is skinny and of average height, about 5’6”, and doesn’t do a lot to fill out the top half of her dresses. Her dresses are ankle length with roomy skirts and what are meant to be tight bodices, usually of sturdy, cotton material, because they need to hold up to a lot of staining and rough treatment. She favors blues and grays. If she is going to be doing something that might set her on fire, she wears a leather apron, which is usually kept in the basement. Due to an incident during the Siege of San Rosille, she has her goggles on her at all times, if they’re not pushed back on her head she has them stowed in a pocket. They have round, amber lenses and a brown leather strap. She is not much bothered about slips or corsets or other foundation garments, beyond bloomers and stockings, which are both usually white. She wears cheap cloth shoes with glued-on rubber soles and no laces – in black and other dark colors because they don’t show the dirt. She eschews jewelry and all things metal – metal is for repairs, not decoration.

In the original concept of the household as two sets of people with each of the four classic temperaments, Hyacinth is a choleric. She is loud, volatile, self-assured and a natural leader. She relates to people by managing them, and tends to see each individual as a series of sequential fires that she will need to put out. This impairs her ability to have long term relationships of any kind, as she cannot fathom signing up to deal with a particular person’s bullshit for the rest of their lives. Hyacinth is a deserter, by nature and actual fact. She is in the habit of burning her past to the ground behind her and never looking back. She began when she left her family at the age of twelve. She left Barnaby to be a medic, she left her unit and set up shop in San Rosille during the siege. When the city broke up after the siege, she made no effort to keep contact with any of her friends or the people that sheltered in the house, and when her boarders leave, they are essentially dead to her. She has attached herself to the house at this point, rather than the people in it, and she tells herself she will put up with whoever happens to be in the house at the time, rather than caring about any particular person. She does care, but she can quit and move on if need be, she has done it before.

Despite what she likes to believe about herself, past experience and attachment does rear its ugly head. That Barnaby is currently living rent free in the attic says a lot about her ability to dissociate from people, although she never would have bothered about him again if she hadn’t seen him.

Hyacinth’s fondest wish is for everyone to listen to her. They don’t necessarily have to agree with her, they just need to shut up and stop screaming and running around long enough to parse what she’s saying and have a rational discussion about it. Or, if they would prefer to just do what she says, that is also an option. When reality conflicts with this, she dives in and starts shaking people and solving problems to the best of her ability anyway, and she is rarely bitter about being ignored when the emergency situation has passed. Irritated, yes, but she would not deny someone her skills just because they acted like an idiot previously. In her experience, most people are idiots.

Due to her life experiences, and also getting shot in the head, Hyacinth is a blunt, honest, sometimes even cruel person. She doesn’t pull punches, she doesn’t hide feelings, what you see is what you get. She can confabulate with the best of them, having been trained up by David, but it never occurs to her to apply that ability to obscuring the truth – it’s just telling stories. She conceals the truth only with great difficulty, and only when it is incredibly obvious to her that the truth is harmful. She and Mordecai engage in strenuous negotiation about how much Erik needs to be told, and she is willing to accept defeat, because Erik is easily bruised and she is often at sea with him. People who can tolerate a few light slams, like Barnaby and Mordecai and even the General are a lot easier for her to deal with. Mordecai’s emotional fragility at certain times both mystifies and frustrates her, as it does not function rationally or respond to simple fixing. That sometimes people need to be listened to and acknowledged without one immediately going for the tool box or the doctor bag is a new concept, and she is uncomfortable with it.

Hyacinth’s taste in music is best defined by what she will not listen to, which is anything off the album Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. It has a traumatic association for her and she has a violent reaction upon hearing it. Anything else is okay, but she can get a little teary-eyed over certain selections from Queen, and that makes her irritable.

Early Life
Hyacinth grew up on a large country estate with her mother and father, an older brother, a twin sister, and a lot of staff and extended family and society. She doesn’t remember it very well. It’s possible she still knows how to ride horses and which one is the shrimp fork, but she no longer cares. In the fall of her twelfth year, she was participating in a garden party during deer hunting season when she caught a piece of buckshot in her left temple. The wound was repaired by an eccentric gentleman who had been attending the party and who claimed his sole medical experience was having recently seen a fascinating exhibit of metallized human bodies in San Rosille.

The wound was healed, but the brain damage required a longer period of recovery. Hyacinth displayed a total lack of ability to meter her words and actions, a great deal of anger, an attraction to women and a hatred of clothing. Hyacinth’s family found this intolerable and were preparing to lodge her in an asylum when the eccentric gentleman put in another appearance and offered to take her off their hands.

Eight Years with a Bipolar Drag Queen
Hyacinth was introduced to the man who had saved her life and shipped off to live with him in short order. He called himself David Valentine, usually. He had a townhouse in San Rosille where he spent most of his time. He liked parties. He had some serious mental health issues, but he didn’t care about Hyacinth screaming at him or acting bizarre and he was willing to negotiate about the clothing. His best friend/hostage/enabler was a state augur named Barnaby Graham. Hyacinth was therefore plunged into a new living arrangement, while still recovering from the brain damage, with an unstable man who wore makeup and dresses and screamed a lot and frequently threatened to kill himself. Barnaby was the only person either of them could go to for rational assistance with the other one – although he wasn’t terribly good at providing it.

Hyacinth responded well to her first introduction to perpetual chaos. With a little acceptance and minimal interference, she healed and adapted. Even at twelve, she was frequently the smartest and most reasonable person in the room. She developed a flair for managing David and Barnaby, making excuses to the police about them, and doing whatever she wanted despite their inept attempts at parenting. She was allowed to wear trousers, drink gin and tonic, and hit on ladies, but David made continual attempts to fix her hair. He also taught her how to work metal and made sure she had access to food and a bed. All other support was sporadic at best, and most of the time, she was responsible for him.

Because of his financial circumstances, because of his divorce, because, ultimately, of David, Barnaby moved in with them when Hyacinth was sixteen. It didn’t change much. There were still parties and screaming and threats of suicide and self-harm, but now Hyacinth only had to go upstairs to get him instead of across town. They formed a bitter, sarcastic support network and put up with a lot from David, including Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road played at ear-bleeding volumes for hours on end.

When Hyacinth was twenty, David was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer, after having hidden the fact that he was in pain for some time. Barnaby talked him into trying to have it fixed with metalwork. This prolonged the pain and his lifespan for over a year, but that could not be called a positive thing. Hyacinth and Barnaby eventually assisted his demise with pills, and David’s tacit approval.

Heartbreaker
After David’s death, Hyacinth was left with Barnaby and they had all of David’s money and things to split between them. This included the house in San Rosille and the one in the country. They lived together, but they each coped in their own way. Barnaby was growing increasingly disconnected from reality and bizarre. Hyacinth engaged in a series of purposefully frivolous and dead-ended relationships with boys – all the easier to keep from getting emotionally attached.

During this period, Hyacinth’s father died. Barnaby and Hyacinth put in a visit... and announced during the reception that they they were reopening David’s country estate and throwing a huge party. They succeeded in siphoning off a good number of the guests. Hyacinth did not receive an inheritance, or any more contact with her family, which suits her fine.

When the conflict with Prokovia began to heat up, Hyacinth was aware that Barnaby would be called back into service as an augur. Rather than be left in an empty house, alone, with no responsibilities, Hyacinth preemptively dispensed with herself. She told Barnaby she had signed up to apply her metalworking skill as a medic and training would start in a week, and she took off on him before he could even process what happened. She made no attempt to maintain contact.

Nina
Hyacinth was assigned to a unit – alongside a dark blue-skinned innate magic-user called Nina. Nina was capable of calling gods, and strong enough to hold Auntie Enora. To keep Auntie Enora happy, she took a vow against killing things. She began a relationship with Nina, which started as mutual respect and friendship and got out of hand. When Hyacinth started to feel like some kind of lifelong commitment might be in the offing, she applied for a transfer. When she found out how long that was going to take, she packed up and left.

She went home, to San Rosille. All the way to David’s townhouse, in fact, where she found out that Barnaby had sold it, and the current occupants had no more idea where he was than she did.

The Siege
With the war closing in and no job and no money and no house, there was sufficient chaos for Hyacinth to immerse herself in. She commandeered an abandoned building in the bad part of town and began offering her services as a medic. Accepting payment in whatever people could give, including favors, she rapidly assembled a group of helpful companions and hangers on who were capable of basic home repair and finding supplies and assisting with surgery.

Hyacinth discovered Mordecai and Erik in a snowbank, in December, a little over a month after The Gray Wall came down and cut off the supplies. She had gone out looking for metal and she came back with more damaged people to take care of, and some brass buttons. She repaired Mordecai’s damaged lungs with the cheap gold locket he had hanging around his neck, so that he would be strong enough for her to walk him home.

In the final days of the siege, with the gas and bombing almost constant, a large shell crashed into the front room via the skylight and failed to detonate. Hyacinth took advantage of this momentary grace, little knowing how long it might last, ran over and disassembled the thing. She managed to flash-blind herself while doing it, but the shell failed to kill anyone and its metal was used to repair people. The house has had no skylight ever since and Hyacinth always carries her goggles.

Boarding House
At the end of the siege, many people fled the city and her improvised family broke up. Erik and Mordecai stayed, and Hyacinth decided to convert her emergency shelter and infirmary into a boarding house. In the early years, while the war was still on, many of the boarders were very brief and very weird. Who or whatever is in Room 101 showed up during this period, but Hyacinth does not know exactly when. Things started to settle down after the war ended. The General and her family came first, followed by Barnaby. Hyacinth noticed Barnaby from the window of a bus, standing on a street-corner and screaming at people. She dragged him home and after many weeks of more screaming, began to get some sanity out of him. Milo (and soon Ann) completed the ensemble. This current crop of boarders had been with her for about four years, as a unit, when Erik was injured in Canburry Square.

Another Kludge
One afternoon in late summer, Mordecai came home with a broken bond in his lung and a broken Erik in his arms and nothing but some tin cans and assorted trash to fix him with. As this was shortly after the in-universe version of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and Hyacinth had used up all the metal in the house on burned girls, she had to improvise. She managed to piece Erik back together, starting him on what she knew would be a long and painful road to recovery, and then she had to cope with the riot that Mordecai had also started.

Mordecai had done some serious damage to two young men who had been kicking Erik and laughing. Hyacinth bartered the repair of these young individuals for the safety of the household from the angry mob. She also stole enough gold from one of them to fix Mordecai’s lung. She poured enough liquor into Mordecai to keep him in bed for at least part of the recovery, and set about tending to people from the neighborhood who had been injured in the riot and were showing up at the house in droves. This required sending Maggie out to steal metal and waking the General up in the early AM to put out a fire that someone had started in the yard.

Damage Control
Hyacinth was pretty much in charge of Erik’s recovery, and she understood a lot of it from personal experience, and from her medical training. She was familiar with memory loss and aphasia and emotional lability – but not with gods bothering the sick person and later invading him and walking him around.

Much to her displeasure, Mordecai proved a fragile and unreliable ally. One morning, he ran out of the house for no rational reason and got himself arrested. She was also in charge of getting him bailed out, though she enlisted the General’s reluctant assistance. Her willingness to heal the two young men (boys, really) who had been kicking Erik proved more of an assistance, as they refused to identify Mordecai as their attacker. This was mainly due to the guilt and gratitude of one boy, John Green-Tara. Mordecai was released from custody in damaged condition, after which he became even less reliable, despite her attempts at repair.

Knowing Erik was going to require a new eye, Maggie preemptively stole her mother’s Imperial Medal of Honor and gave it to Hyacinth for the metal. After some negotiation (and a temper tantrum on the part of the General that Hyacinth was deliberately not present for) she accepted it and got Milo started on the design.

Sanaam visited in early winter and provided a valuable assist in getting Mordecai out of the bedroom and making Erik happy, but it didn’t last. Now entirely fed up with Mordecai, she provided him only minimal attention and refocused her efforts on Erik.

A New Eye
By the time she and Milo finished building Erik’s eye, Erik himself was much improved – able to take care of himself and communicate with them and sort out who they were, though still having difficulty with reading and writing. She considered him recovered enough to start learning how to use the eye and she did not bother to involve Mordecai. Erik expressed some reluctance, due to the eye being bright gold and weird-looking, so she told him a few stories about David, who had a gold nose, to make him feel better about it. This lasted up until he actually tried using the eye, at which point he decided he hated her and he didn’t need an eye, but she rode that out and told him he was going to learn to use it anyway.

As he got better at using his new eye, Erik began to see gods with it. He told Hyacinth, feeling she was the best and safest person to ask, and she advised him to ignore the gods when he saw them and not talk about being able to see them, especially not to his Uncle. During this conversation, the gods saw fit to enlighten Erik about certain upsetting aspects of Hyacinth’s own injury and how her parents dealt with it that she would rather have not shared.

Auntie Enora
Preparing to pry Mordecai out of his bed to brave another day, Hyacinth instead found him laid out with double pneumonia and rapidly adjusted her approach. She knew they would not take him at the hospital, due to him being an innate magic-user with a high fever, so her only option was to treat him at home. It was not going very well and she was preparing for the worst when Erik showed up in the kitchen with Auntie Enora – which was also not good, but in a different way.

Auntie Enora remained in Erik for two weeks, consuming nothing but black coffee and cigarettes and also depriving him of sleep. She set Mordecai right, directed Milo and Hyacinth in repairing his lungs a little better, threw one major fit about the lack of coffee service, made Hyacinth stand in the corner when she tried to sneak sugar into the coffee, and left only when Mordecai was recovered enough to take care of Erik – before Erik had deteriorated so much that he would need to go to the hospital.

When Erik returned, Hyacinth discovered how painfully out of her element she was with all the god stuff, even after knowing Nina. Mordecai took over, was unbelievably competent, got Erik fed and comforted and sleeping... and then had a total nervous breakdown that she was required to clean up. Something about Erik’s mother. Anyway, she gave him some tranquilizers and Auntie Enora had left him some medicine and that seemed to fix him.

Hyacinth took it upon herself, when Mordecai was not looking, to slap the hell out of Erik and impress upon him how he could kill himself calling gods and that his body could handle – at maximum! – three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food.

Key Posts
The Man, The Boy and The House – First Appearance

Atticus Finch on the Porch, Florence Nightengale in the Kitchen – Puts down an angry mob and fixes John and Edward

"Get That Thing Away From My Gigi!" - Rescues Mordecai from the police and meets John again.

Whaddya Get When You Cross Bowie, Brahe and Mercury? - Gives Erik his new eye, tells him about David.

The Visibles – Eriks tells her he can see gods, she tells him bout being hurt.

Our Song Has No Title – Life with David.

Fixing the Red Toaster – Repairs Mordecai’s lungs, again.