Barbara was born in a large city far from any animal clans. She had a twin brother named Jamison, her only friend through all of childhood. As a child, she lived in a small drainage pipe, crammed in with her brother, father, and mother. Though things were fine between the two young Fawkeses, their parents were a different story. With a drunkard for a father and a whore of a mother, things were bound to get messy. The fights, both between the adults and between the children and their parents, were not uncommon, and they typically ended with a hurt twin, and, sometimes, them getting kicked out into the rain.

Jamison and Barbara got out when they could. They would roam the city, play in puddles, steal, you name it. Barbara was prone to picking fights, despite her slight figure and the odds stacked so high against her. There was something about it - a sort of rush - that made all the bruises and bloody noses worthwhile. At the end of a day, however, they were always forced to hurry home, the wrath they’d face if their parents did notice they were gone for so long far too frightening for them to be tempted to do anything else, even if the odds were that the two parents would never realize they were missing.

It went on like this for months - verbal and physical fights with parents and neighborhood kids alike, getting beat, being thrown out in the middle of the night -, wearing down on the twins’ spirits, until they were about seven or eight months old, when Barbara finally decided she’d had enough of it. With her brother, whose lovely soul did not belong in that godforsaken family,  far too kind to truly fight back, Barb had known she’d have to take matters into her own hands, and that, she had. On a night like any other night, with her parents out late drinking and selling drugs or whatever the fuck they did, Barbara had confronted her brother, told him to take a walk, that she’d meet him a little later. He’d been a bit confused, but he trusted her, of course, and followed her simple request. Hours, Barb had waited, a dull knife she’d found laying behind a trash bin in an alley clutched in her paw, until her parents stumbled, clearly intoxicated, into the damp pipe they called a home. They didn’t notice her, cream fur coated with mud and blending into the shadows as she waited for them to near. It was her mother who went first. One step too close, and the tiny tabby lunged, claws wrapping around the back of the almost-identical, though far larger, molly’s head as she sunk her blade into her throat as if cutting butter. One down.

Her father had been a bit of a more difficult target, considering his size and advantage of seeing her coming, but he was drunk, and had, she assumed, very little fighting experience, quite unlike his young daughter. He’d wrestled her to the floor and managed to take her blade and scrape it down her eye, but he was relying far too much on his brute force and far less on his strategy or position. She could recall his great weight falling upon her as she kicked one of his legs, positioned carelessly, weakly, out from beneath him. He’d come crashing down, easy, and in the process, had dropped her weapon. Half-blinded by blood, she had scrambled to grab her knife, and when she’d gotten a hold of it, she’d made sure he was staying down. She’d stabbed once. And again. And again. And again, and again, until her father was more gore and fur than man. Spat on him, she had, him and his partner, cursed their very existences.

The twins, already experienced in thievery, had had to take that to another level once their parents were gone, considering they had no source of income to trade with others for food. They'd made it, for a while, but it wasn't long before they started getting a little bit sloppy, and people had noticed- the right or wrong kind, she still didn't know, for next thing they knew, they'd become involved with the most prominent crime family in the city.

Barbara and Jamison had known just the kind of people their parents were, the people they were affiliated with. They’d acted like they didn’t, but it was pretty obvious. They hadn’t been in said families, no, but their names being known left room for opportunity for the Fawkes twins, and it was an opportunity Barb wasn’t going to pass up.

Of course, kids around the neighborhood knew them - or, at least, knew her -, and if they were going to start getting involved in these things, Barb decided, she’d need a new name. It’d taken a while, but eventually, she’d settled on Cherrywine. Nowhere near similar to her birthname, but she thought it was pretty defining of her personality and identity, anyway.

It hadn’t been hard to wiggle their way into the family, really. Jamison and Cherry were two young, unassuming people; it was doubtful cops would suspect them when it came to crime, which made them a huge asset. As time went on, Cherrywine’s affiliates higher up the hierarchy began dropping like flies. It wasn’t long - two or three months, maybe - until she, somehow, found herself a crime boss, with her twin brother as her right-hand man. It wasn’t like it wasn’t obvious what had happened, but the deaths had clearly been long, drawn out, and very, very graphic. No one was really interested in calling Cherrywine out, not after hearing the stories.

For months, Cherrywine and Jamison had sat on top of the world, a queen and her prince. It had been less so about the money, and more so about the power, for Cherry. Her affiliates were so easy to manipulate, like clay, if clay was a wall of muscle that could handle weapons. The entire city had known Cherry, known her name, her whole business, and some had certainly tried stopping her - some gangs, some groups of “justice-bringers”, some other families -, but that usually ended with all of them losing more members than she did. It was too easy, really. It’d all become a sort of game to her, seeing how much she could get away with, which had been her downfall. Things had been rather lowkey, at first. The drug and weapon trade was a rather popular business in her hometown, but she'd taken it beyond that. Rather than going off of any sort of logic or reasoning, Cherrywine had started, well, cherrypicking who to attack, and when. Of course, if one was to cross the family, they'd be punished accordingly, but simply avoiding them wasn't safe anymore. Somewhere, at some point, she'd taken it too far.

Maybe it was common sense for someone as big and important as her to not go out and do her own jobs, but what was she supposed to do, miss out on all the fun?

She’d gone in alone, to meet with a client whose pay was far overdue, but, of course, she’d had a few of her men, including her own brother, waiting outside in case things somehow went wrong. Even still, no one had really expected an attack, especially not one so eloquently planned and executed. Clearly, the city had had enough of Cherry’s reign over them, the vigilanties, the gangs, smaller drug dealers, even the civilians banding together for it. There had been a call of “Scatter!” from one member of the family when they realized what was going on, and Cherrywine’s blade had been drawn in moments, slashed across her “client”’s throat as she scrambled to escape the abandoned building, now surrounded by attackers. With no consideration of her brother or any friends she had made in the city or her group, Cherry was gone, made it out with only a few scratches on her, running as far as she could. Maybe she no longer had her power, but when it came down to it, she decided she’d rather have her life. She knew she’d be able to claw her way back up to the top one day, anyway, once she found a place to settle.

And that, she had. She stopped in Tanglewood, and then the Pitt, quietly observing those around her. As time passed, she even took back her old name, deciding it was not only safer, but also the only one she'd ever felt had truly suited her.