As Ellen grew older, she showed far more of an interest in American culture than her heritage. Her grandmother's traditional ways would start to meet resistance with Ellie's progressivist views. She nearly gave the old woman a heart attack the first time she wanted to wear jeans to school like the other kids. But other than this not altogether atypical experience for native-born children of immigrants, Ellen's early years were fairly quiet. She was bright and got good grades without having to expend too much effort; she was popular with both her peers and her teachers; and her free time was largely filled with extracurricular activities and chores at home and at the store.
Her grandfather died when she was twelve, which came as quite a blow for her. She became a little more introverted then, having lost her main (and pretty much only) confidante. Still, she buried her feelings and bounced back quickly enough to surprise people, throwing herself into school and extracurricular activities to keep herself busy. However, her pain would manifest in her first attempts at "acting out".
Attending high school in the height of the punk revolution, Ellie began to fight back even more against the strict old-fashioned ways at home. She was never hardcore, but she even some of the more moderate elements were enough to shock the hell out of her conservative family when she began integrating punk elements into her wardrobe. Her parents refused to buy her new clothes, feeling she would only destroy them, so she started running errands in her neighbourhood for pocket money, and became quite adept at finding cool things in the thrift shops.
Getting older, she started to realize the wisdom of letting her family think she was unfailingly obedient, while doing the things she wanted to do once she was out of their sight. After leaving for school in the morning in modest sweaters and skirts, she would stop by a friend's house along the way. It was here that she kept her real wardrobe, and she would quickly change there into more age and era-appropriate clothing. On the way home, she would reverse the process.
With university, she expected some liberation. She was to be the first in her family to go, and it was considered a very auspicious occasion. Unfortunately, due a combination of financial limitations and her family's overprotectiveness, it was decided she would stay at home and attend NYU. This didn't go over entirely well with the quietly rebellious youth, who wanted nothing more than to put at least a state or two between herself and her family so that she could finally start living her life in earnest. But as usual, when push came to shove, she would not outright disobey her family, and she ended up doing exactly as they wished: living at home and commuting to the Washington Square Park campus.
While living off-campus didn't exactly put her into a minority at her urban school, her family maintained the same strict rules about curfew, and this did put a damper on her social life. Still, she was at least good at getting people to like her, and she managed to have friends and a social circle. She dated casually but there was nothing serious - even despite a few attempts by her grandmother to set her up with "appropriate" boys.
When she graduated, she was expected to return to work full time on the family business. She did so, although it was a secret frustration to her that her parents had apparently not expected her to do anything with her degree; her having it was merely a point of pride for them, and now she could resume leading the same simple, dull life as they had led.
Years went by with her just quietly and diligently working away, using her education to help her parents at least streamline and modernize the shop. She slowly exerted a subtle influence, convincing them to embrace the fact that they marketed primarily to those who wanted a taste of this exotic culture. Under her surreptitious guidance, the store began to flourish and even got mentioned in a few travel guides as a place to see while in Chinatown.
However, a grudging acceptance of this diverse clientele would not stop her family from completely freaking out when she fell in love with someone outside their culture: one of the regulars in the store, Joe McCann, a broker on Wall Street who had dropped wads of cash in their store as he tried to convert his uptown condo into an "authentic" Asian experience. Ellie saw no need to inform him how his authentic experience actually mixed pretty much every Asian culture pretty indiscriminately - and a few items she was fairly certain might have actually been Hawaiian in origin.
Still, despite his culture-blindness, he seemed an earnest, enthusiastic, and good-natured man. She probably should have known better than to expect honesty from someone who worked on Wall Street, but her sheltered upbringing had left her a little naive in some of the ways of the world. They fell in love. The courtship was long, especially since she spent the first year trying to keep it hidden from the family, which limited their time together to those moments she could slip away unnoticed.
Once she revealed the relationship to her parents and grandmother, things began to move more quickly. Within another six months, they were engaged. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of wedding planning that her ability began to show itself.
At first they were just little, vague flashes: visions of things she had no way of knowing about, and with no context, it took some time to figure out these events were actual unfolding as she viewed them. It was unpredictable when the flashes would happen, but they began to happen regularly and reliably enough for even the cynic in her to believe she actually was seeing the truth of things.
Joe was working late a lot of evenings, explaining that it was so that he could get a nice nest egg saved up for them before the big day. She actually believed him too - right up until some of her flashes started to suggest he wasn't so much working late as … working on one of the new receptionists.
Ellie was still not entirely confident in her abilities, or she would have accussed him outright. Still, things started to grow strained, of course, and the lies just kept compounding upon one another. Eventually, it became clear to Ellen that Joe didn't really love her. She was just another collectable to add to his authentic experience. Heartbroken, she dumped him without explanation, and turned a deaf ear to his excuses and lies.
She tried to return to working in the store, but the smug 'I told you so' attitude she was getting from her family was too much to bear, and a burgeoining and out-of-control power was taking a strain on her. After a few months, she left the shop and her family home and went on an extended trip about the Continental US. She had almost no money, but learned to become very practical and very good at looking out for and taking care of herself. She'd beg, borrow and steal, if that's what it took to see her next meal or her next bus ticket. It was extreme, but Ellen was so tired of not living her life, she was feeling like a bit of overkill at that point. And perhaps a recent reading of Kerouac influenced the decision as well.
It was during this time also that she really learned to use her ability, though she still couldn't entirely shake the feeling that she was simply going crazy. Knowing that something was "wrong" with her, she figured it the wisest course of action to keep quiet, lest they lock her away. Fortunately for her, the ability was fairly subtle, and keeping mostly to herself, it was easy to remain undetected.
Once she'd had a bit of time to heal and to come to grips with this freaky new ability of hers, she returned home. She would never fully explain to her family where she had been: she just apologized meekly and asked to return to her position at the store. Her grandmother, having taken the young woman's disappearance as a personal failing in raising her 'right', was not quick to forgive; but both of her parents welcomed Ellie back with open arms, relieved to see that she was all right.
She returned to her previous life, at least as much as possible. She was a even more detached now, and had less patience for people - of course, this was partly because she could see a little too much of them in her mind at times. Over the years, she began to dislike most people as a general rule. Still, pragmatic to a fault, she usually kept up a pleasant facade, finding that life was inordinately easier when people liked her and thought she liked them. Of course, like any good misanthrope, while she disliked people "out there", she could feel quite strongly about those few people who were close to her; perhaps all the more for their scarcity.
She was still leading this quiet existence in 2006, when the bomb went off in Kirby Plaza. Her family survived the actual blast, but her grandmother, now in her mid-80s, went into cardiac arrest at the shock of it, and in the ensuing chaos, failed to get to the hospital in time for anything to be done. It was a hard blow for Ellen to lose her grandmother. Despite the differences in opinion, and their often strained relationship, her grandmother had always been a constant fixture in her life, more than her parents, who tended to drift in and out of it due to working so many hours in the store.
Still, there were other things to deal with. Ellen's pragmatism and the skills she had learned on the road came in handy, and she more overtly stepped up to get her family through the crisis. Any moral compunctions that remained took a backseat to merely doing whatever needed to be done.
Ellie was still trying to deal with all the sudden changes in her life when there was a surprising announcement given by Nathan Patrelli. She was so busy merely trying to survive at that point that it did throw her for a bit of a loop. She tried to be even more discreet about her abilities from that point forward, and became very proficient at hiding them at the first sign of triggering. At least one plus came from it: she knew now what she was.
The store, of course, floundered. The tourist dollars weren't exactly pouring in anymore, even after the worst of the rebuilding had passed. Money grew tighter and they began looking at a very real possibility that they would lose everything. It was this grim outlook that led her father into some bad business decisions with a local Triad. Perhaps overestimating his own wiles, he took almost no time to get himself in right over his head.
Ellie wasn't supposed to even know, but she caught a rather vivid vision of one of these business meetings. A bright woman, it didn't take her too much poking around to figure out what had happened; and, of course, to take it upon herself to solve this problem.
Her solution was perhaps not the most conventional. She sought the protection of a rival Triad, but not overtly. Instead, she carefully and meticulously planned and finagled her way into the illustrious position of girlfriend to a moderate-ranking, if not too bright, member of the Flying Dragons. At first it was just a challenge, almost a game - a dangerous game, but Ellie couldn't help a sharp curiosity to see if she could pull it off.
She made herself everything that Chen Yi wanted in a woman, and helped to ensure that he fell fully and irrevocably in love with her. Of course, Chen Yi had a tendency to get himself into trouble, and Ellie did not expect that his good will towards her would automatically follow from the others without a little help. Without coming right out and telling him so, she convinced him to call upon the brotherhood oaths of the triad. He asked Tsang Hao-Tung swear to protect her where Chen Yi could not.
And that oath would be tested sooner than expected. Less than a year into the courtship of Ellie and Yi, he got himself killed in a triad turf-battle. Despite the fact that she'd always told herself that she was justusing the poor guy for her own means, Ellie was saddened by the loss and did grieve Yi. But that didn't stop her from promptly getting herself to Hao-Tung's side to remind him of his promise.
She had spent some time around Hao-Tung previously, and perhaps there had always been some attraction there, at least on her part, but the sagacious woman would never have risked her position as Chen Yi's girlfriend by acting upon it. Now alone, and actually emotionally vulnerable (or at least as vulnerable as she was ever likely to let herself become), a bond began to form - aided, of course, by her readiness to ingratiate herself to her new protector.
Figuring it had worked so well with Yi, she attempted to manipulate and seduce the widower. He was, however, several shades brighter than Yi had been, and saw through her rather quickly. He told her in no uncertain terms to knock it off with that, lest she find herself out in the streets. It came as a surprise for Ellie, who had always had an easy time manipulating up until now. It was sobering, but also rather intriguing, and it earned Hao-Tung a level of respect she had for no one else.
The store was still struggling badly, especially in the wake of her father's bad business dealings. Hao-Tung further managed to impress Ellie when he began to quietly funnel money into the shop to help keep it afloat. Of course, being a cynic, Ellen expected there to be some quid pro quo, so it came as further surprise when Hao-Tung didn't want anything in return. While perhaps not the first time in her life someone had given without expecting something in return, it was the first time Ellen was consciously aware of it, and this touched her more deeply than she'd care to admit.
With such petty games out of the way, and Ellie unable to keep hiding real emotions behind these attempts at manipulation, it left them clear to develop feelings for real. Considering the players, it is a very turbulent and tumultuous relationship, but a true one none-the-less. Of course, petty games or not, she is still sagacious, which is why she has opted not to tell Hao-Tung about her abilities.
She still prefers the quiet life, doing her best to keep her head down. When she isn't at Hao-Tung's side, she's at the family store, trying to keep it afloat by any means necessary. Still, she can't always resist the urge to find new challenges, which can result in stirring up some trouble. Of course, she's quite sure she'd never get herself into something she couldn't get herself out of.
