Some people just are born unlucky.
Lisbeth Melody DiMico, in this case, was born to Alma Sessions on a cold February 13th, 1987 - a Friday - in New York City. Her father, Christian DiMico, died weeks before she was born in a tragic airplane crash, leaving her mother to raise her alone, a task that would take a toll on both mother and daughter. Melody was always a bit of a difficult child - outspoken, argumentative, and defiant to a fault in almost everything she did.
Most of her adolescence and teen years were spent middling about. Though she was never truly a delinquent, Melody never shied away from trouble. It was good grades that kept her in her school's good graces, who were far more worried about the statistical success of their students than their actual success. She was often ready to challenge her teachers and the rules and combative with her mother, but at the end of the day she often managed to do well. It just took a lot of work to get there.
When she turned 18, Melody confronted her mom about her father, a topic that her mother had always been unwilling to delve into with her child. Despite it still being a sore spot so many years later pressed, and when her mother wouldn't budge, Melody walked out of her mother's home and out into the streets of New York on her own. To further defy her mother, she decided to take her father's family name of DiMico as her own instead of her mother's.
For the next year she drifted from house to house, using a cousin's apartment as a home base of sorts while she drifted from place to place, from friend to friend to boyfriend to girlfriend to even stranger's couches. Though never truly homeless - she had found work as a server at a local nightclub and always had a place to sleep indoors at night - her lifestyle was distinctly transient if stable.
It wouldn't last. Just a year later, she found herself out on an early November evening, attending a drug and music fueled basement party in Manhattan when the deafening roar of an explosion ripped across the venue. The Bomb ripped across Midtown, Manhattan, and trapped her in the basement of a collapsed club with over a dozen other party goers. It was here that she met Alison Lyde, and the two kept each other sane while they waited for rescue. By the time it came, the two had bonded inexorably, and Melody would finally find a permanent residence in Alison's expensive loft apartment.
Alison had a rebellious streak in her just as long as Melody's, and their similarities had a strong influence on her - Alison was also in a row with her mother, a wealthy New York business woman. The two were fast friends and faster lovers, coming to appreciate the perspectives the other offered on the world around them. Melody began to believe that her bad luck, which had started before her birth, was starting to turn around. The next few years spent with Alison were easy breezy, living the high life without a care in the world. Life was good.
It would take a few years for life and luck to catch up to Melody, but it did in a big way exactly four years later - November 8th, 2010. The riots forced them to evacuate their lavish home into the streets of New York, where they found only chaos and pain. While Melody wanted to find a place to hide away from the all consuming violence, Alison was determined to find a way to help people, and it was while trying to help one unfortunate person that the unthinkable happened. Caught in the crossfire of a sudden fit of gunfire, a bystander was shot and injured. Alison, unwilling to leave the person's side, forced Melody to help her carry the man to safety. Upon touching the man, however, the unthinkable happened: With a spark of light and a sheen in her eyes, Melody healed the man's wound…
…and at the same time, she suddenly found herself barely able to see, eyes clouded as if cataracts had almost instantly formed in her vision. In the following weeks, Melody's vision would quickly return to normal, and she discovered she had that night manifested an evolved ability that seemed to allow her to heal at the expense of her own bodily health. The effects were only temporary, but impactful nonetheless. This revelation led Melody to retreat back into herself - she had witnessed the chaos often unleashed upon healers. Despite Alison's insistence, she would not share her ability with others.
It was a strain on their relationship, but one that would not break their bond. Within a year, the pair would abruptly decide to marry in a private ceremony. The timing, as with many things in Melody's life, was poor. Within weeks of their union, a second Bomb rocked New York, while at the same time Cambridge fell, and within a month the opening shots of the second Civil War had been fired. Melody's inclination had been to flee, but Alison would have nothing of it. The both of them would find themselves caught up in the resistance forces by the beginning of 2012. Despite being resistant to the idea of being a medic while Alison took to more direct fighting, Melody suddenly found herself to be a soldier in an army fighting against a force that hated her kind.
The war was hard on Melody. Time and again, she was forced to make use of her ability. Almost every time the results were… different. Sometimes when she healed a person, the grass around her would die. Sometimes, she would fall ill. Another time, she healed her subject but found her touch had necrotised the skin at her point of contact, leaving it dead and black. Yet another time, she made use of her ability, only to find that she had simply - somehow - transferred the wound to herself. The volatile and unpredictable nature of her ability made her that much more unwilling to use it, but the worst was yet to come.
Just as the war was entering mid 2012, Melody and Alison were aiding in a raid on a DOEA camp when a sniper managed to single them out, putting a bullet into Alison. Though stopped before he could turn his sights on Melody, she distraughtly put everything into trying to heal her wife. But… nothing happened. She would later discover that whatever fueled her healing had gotten caught in a sort of feedback loop and simply… failed to work, leaving Alison to bleed out in Melody's arms.
The remaining months of the war were a blur. Melody spent most of her days in the field, carelessly going from firefight to firefight, and once the war ended with her still alive she vanished from the eye of almost everyone she knew. With her wife dead and the life she knew gone, she found solace in a bottle and in the solitude of the quiet New York Safe Zone once it opened. Once more, she returned to an almost transient lifestyle, drifting from place to place, from bar to bar, with no real purpose.
That changed when her wife's will finally found its way to her in early 2020. She had left her a substantial amount of money, with only one condition attached to it: Do good with what time she has left. For a bit, Melody was unsure what that would be. She wasn't sure what her life was anymore..
It was only in mid 2020 that she realised where she should be, with what she had seen and learned. And so, August 2020 brings her to the Bastion, and to Wolfhound, in the hopes of becoming a new member among their ranks. After all, best to work with what she knows best, and partying and drugs aren't going to get her anywhere this time.
