Zora Markova

Zora Markova is a 25 year old FBI agent living in Washington, DC. A former private investigator, and NYC inhabitant, she moved away from Brooklyn and her sometimes-boyfriend Kehoe after a traumatic experience with limbo.

Her playby is Naya Rivera.

Personality
Quite frankly, Zora Markova doesn't like you.

She cares fiercely for those who make it past the intital hurdle, but generally starts off most interactions expecting that you will somehow annoy her or otherwise make her life difficult. She's fairly brusque, and doesn't spare a lot of time for sugar coating things, or softening the blow--you'll always know where you stand with Zora, because she's never afraid to tell you. She's got an extremely sharp tongue, and rarely lets anything get in the way of expressing her opinion.

Generally, she seems to make friends entirely by accident, with much brighter, happier people who don't take no for an answer. It's not that she believes herself a particularly bad person, or somehow unworthy of friendship, it's just that she's not particularly nice most of the time, and unwilling to invest time into a relationship that might not be beneficial in some way.

She's nosy, and completely unable to let a mystery go without a thourough investigation. She doesn't think she's paranoid, but she does have a nasty habit of putting herself firmly in the midst of places she's not welcome. She has very high ideals about Justice--she'd probably do the job she's doing now, even if she wasn't getting paid, because she thinks it's the right thing to do. She doesn't lie, cheat or steal, and she's not about to let anyone else do it either.

History
Zora was born in Sozopol, Bulgaria, one half of a set of twins. She's two minutes older than her brother, Viktor, and hasn't let him forget it since they were children.

When she was thirteen, the Markov family moved to the United States, at the behest of one of her Uncles, who had made the move years prior. It took a little adjusting--the first year was difficult, attempting to learn enough English to attend a regular school. Viktor handled this best, with Zora a close second just due to sheer determination to not let Viktor be that much better at something than her.

When she was fourteen, her mother got breast cancer. When she was seventeen, after a long battle, her mother died. The death of her mother was devastating to the whole family, hitting her older brother, Lazar and her father the hardest. As if that wasn't enough to deal with, the family also went bankrupt due to medical bills, and her father was forced to sell his restaurant. Zora threw herself into her school work; the only way she was getting to college now was on a scholarship.

She was accepted to Columbia University for Mathematics on a full academic scholarship based on her marks alone. She was fully determined to take her degree and get a good job on Wall Street to help her family, until, entirely by accident, she tripped and found herself in the Private Investigating business. It was never, ever a job she'd considered before; however, it was a job that she turned out to be pretty good at.

With Tschiishkhile Kehoe
Temptous at best, borderline abusive at worst, Zora's relationship with Kehoe has been, quite against their will, somewhat defining for them both. It started out with the worst intentions, turned into something else without permission, somehow survived a traumatic Limbo experience (in which she married her projection of him--and had three kids.) three year separation, a forceful reuniting, a four month trip to Portugal and has only recently occasionally resembled something that people might actually want to get into. They work best in the bedroom, and are extremely reluctant to let that bleed over into anything else. She loves him fiercely, despite this--she just never says it, because he tends to get Weird.

With Lazar Markov
Lazar is Zora's older brother--since coming back from Limbo, they've had something of an odd relationship. He's older in body, but she's older in soul, and neither of them know quite what to do with that. Zora knows that Lazar tends to make bad life choices, but she also doesn't know what to do about that. She can't make him fix his life, although she would sometimes like to take him by the shoulders, shake him, and try. More recently, she hasn't seen him since she came home one night to find him sleeping with Nika Lombardi on her couch, and told him that she was done dealing with his problems. She meant Nika, but Lazar took it to mean all of his problems, and has stayed away ever since.

With Emily Kehoe
Emily Kehoe is one of those people that seems to magnetically attract people, just by sheer force of brightness, and Zora is no exception. Although she wasn't looking for a replacement for her own mother--and although Emily is not quite a replacement--Zora has long since come to think of Emily as her second mother, regardless of the status of her relationship with Kehoe.

With Ted Kohler
Fuck Ted Kohler.

With Lucas Hawkins
Zora met Lucas entirely by accident--he was dropping by to see Kehoe, who wasn't there, and Zora happened to be sleeping in his apartment. They went out for breakfast regardless, and have since developed a somewhat grudging (on Zora's end) friendship. Once, he took her skating. She didn't like it. She has no idea he robs banks illegally for a living

With Chase Robinson
Zora's problem with Chase Robinson begins and ends with the fact that he was involved with Emily Kehoe, and that she ended up going into Limbo on his behalf. Since the idea of losing someone in Limbo is about the most terrifying thing Zora can imagine, Chase immediately shot his way to the top of her shit list.