Desdemona "Desi" Lawrence

Desdemona "Desi" Rosaline Lawrence is the third child and only daughter of Senator Henry and Dr. Samantha Lawrence and the younger sister of Damian and Derek Lawrence. She is an actor and socialite who was notorious for her partying until the death of her brother Damian, when she decided to straighten out her life.

She fell in love with her brothers' business partner Eddie Dodson and felt immeasurably betrayed when it was revealed that he was responsible for Damian's death. Desi confronted Eddie at the LDE Warehouse on Fifth Street, and after a struggle, she was held at gunpoint by Eddie until she was saved by Ravenna Mitchell.

Early Life
Desi was born on April 14, 2208, six years after her brother Derek. Unlike her brothers, she had no interest in science; her focus in school was on the arts, specifically theater, which she decided early on that she wanted to pursue as a career. This was encouraged by her mother, who held a doctorate in Shakespeare Studies and had named her after two of the Bard's characters (Desdemona from Othello and Rosaline from Romeo & Juliet). She acted in several productions in high school, and during her sophomore year, she was cast as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth, which she and her mother only ever referred to as The Scottish Play. Her parents were killed in what Desi was told was a car accident on the play's opening night in May 2224.

Desi was scarred by the death of her parents, and she rebelled hard against the authority of her brother Damian, who moved back into their family's home to live with her as she finished high school. She resented him for trying to play the role of a parent when he'd never taken much of an interest in her previously. Still, he encouraged her passions and supported her love of acting, attending every show she performed in in college. In turn, she supported Damian, Derek, and their friend Eddie as their company, Lawrence-Dodson Enterprises, grew to prominence and became "America's leader in near-human androids." Desi had had a crush on Eddie since her teenage years, though she didn't act on it until much later.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater, Desi moved into her own apartment in Manhattan. She continued partying, as she'd done while living with Damian and in college, but now that she was old enough to drink, her reckless tendencies grew worse. She frequently appeared in tabloids as the daughter of a former senator and the sister of two famous robotics moguls who behaved badly in public.

July 2232
After a birthday party for Lila, the first LDE android (whom she considered like a sister), on July 4th at Eddie's home, Desi stayed when everyone else had gone home. She finally acted on her feelings for Eddie, who had also been hiding feelings for her, and the two slept together. Desi woke early in the morning and regretted this decision, fearing that her brothers would lose their trust in her and in Eddie if they found out and fearing the depth of her own feelings. She dressed quietly and tried to sneak out without a word, but Eddie woke and saw her. She apologized and told him they couldn't "do this." On July 24, Desi was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. The charges were later dropped after Damian's intervention, but both of Desi's brothers were out of state, and they sent Eddie to retrieve her from the police station. Things were awkward between the two of them; Eddie wanted to discuss what had happened on the night they had spent together, but Desi refused. She did, however, let slip a secret she'd been guarding: Damian's relationship with Ravenna Mitchell. Until this point, Desi had been the only one close to Damian who had known of their relationship, as Ravenna had been worried about how others would react, given her work as an assassin. Desi had only found out because she'd gone to visit Damian and had accidentally run into Ravenna in his home.

On July 25, Desi once again went out with her friends Marley and Lucy, this time traveling to a club where she was sought out by Damian. He seemed desperate to speak with her, but she was still angry with him for sending Eddie to collect her from the police station instead of coming home from his business trip to get her himself. She felt her brother’s work for LDE took precedence over her in his mind. She insisted that they could talk later and went off into the crowd with her friends.

The next morning, Damian’s body was found in the lobby of LDE’s Manhattan headquarters. Derek discovered him there with two gunshot wounds in his chest and called the police. As the police surveyed the building, Desi called Derek in his office. Though she didn’t admit this to him, she was overwhelmed by guilt for the way she had treated Damian the night before, and she blamed herself for his death. She asked if Derek wanted her to come to LDE, insisting that she wanted to help him, but he refused. Eddie came into the office, and when Desi heard him talking to Derek, she hurried to end the call. She then called Ravenna, fearing that she would do something rash—she’d heard stories about how Ravenna had left after she and Damian had graduated high school and how, since she’d become an assassin, she’d made a habit of disappearing. Ravenna agreed not to leave and said that she would find Desi soon and they could talk about Damian.

Later that day, Desi visited Derek’s apartment. He made her tea, saying that he remembered it “used to calm [her] down” when she was younger. She was dazed and told him that what had happened to Damian still didn’t seem real. Derek insisted that if he had come back from his own business trip sooner, he could have done something to prevent Damian’s death, and Desi snapped at him, telling him it wasn’t his fault. As they spoke, NYPD Captain Scott Ryder arrived at Derek’s apartment. He told the siblings that LDE’s security system had recorded Damian’s attack, and though Desi wasn’t certain she could handle watching the footage, when Derek insisted that he wanted to see it, she decided to stay with him and see it for herself. The video revealed that Lila had shot Damian, though her movements seemed jerky and forced and she looked distraught throughout the clip. Derek was devastated and said that Lila wasn’t capable of something so terrible. Desi pointed out that they had both witnessed it, and Derek stormed out to the balcony with the excuse of needing air.

Desi called Ravenna to her apartment that night to ask for her help. She asked Ravenna whether she would reconsider her retirement from the life of an assassin if Desi could tell her who had taken Damian from them. She attempted to make Ravenna promise that she wouldn’t kill the person she was sending her after, and when she revealed that Lila was the killer, Ravenna lost her temper. Desi begged her not to kill Lila but to find her, as no one had been able to reach her since the murder, and to bring her home so she could be held responsible for what she’d done to Damian. Desi feared that losing Lila too would destroy Derek. Ravenna agreed to try but said that even if she did kill Lila, she would deny that Desi had had any knowledge of her plan.

The following day, Desi went to lunch with Marley and Lucy, who noticed her distraction and tried to get her to discuss how she was feeling. Their conversation was cut short when Eddie, who had also been at the restaurant, approached Desi to talk. Marley and Lucy noticed the tension between Desi and Eddie and left them to speak alone, much to Desi’s frustration. She offered Eddie a seat at the table, and he said he wanted to see if she was all right. She tried to tell him that she was, but he saw through her and told her there was nothing wrong with allowing herself to hurt. She asked what he wanted from her, and he said he wanted her to stop pushing her way and let him be there for her because the thought of her pain killed him. He couldn’t believe she didn’t understand how he felt about her, and to show her, he kissed her. After a moment, Desi recalled how panicked she’d been the morning after they’d slept together and realized that she didn’t trust herself to make life-changing decisions at the moment. When Eddie called her by her nickname, she corrected him, insisting he use her full name and doing the same for him. He apologized, and she told him not to, attempting to redirect him to thinking about how he could help Derek by looking into the police investigation before hurrying out of the restaurant.

After Ravenna’s first failed attempt to apprehend Lila, Desi tried to persuade her to call off the search. Derek had been studying the security footage and had noticed the shadow of someone else in the background, and he was convinced that Lila wasn’t entirely at fault. Ravenna refused, and Desi’s feelings of guilt doubled. She’d not only refused to speak to her brother on the last night of his life, but she’d endangered Lila’s life without understanding everything that happened that night. She also feared that Derek would put himself in danger to protect Lila, as he’d said he was going to find her himself, and that if he got hurt, that would also be her fault.

Relationship With Eddie Dodson
Unable to stop thinking about her last conversation with Damian, she called Eddie and asked him to come over and talk through her worries with her. When he arrived, she explained her regrets about Damian, and Eddie insisted that her brother would’ve wanted her to forgive herself. Desi called Derek, hoping she could persuade him to call off his search for Lila, but she was too late—he had found her, and they were in his car together. Desi lost her temper, accusing him of protecting Lila from Ravenna. Derek snapped back at her and at Eddie, who had revealed Lila’s guilt to the media in a press conference earlier that day. Desi jumped to his defense, and Lila interjected, asking to speak to Desi herself. She explained that she had no memory of what had happened to Damian, but that if Desi was right about what she’d done, then Lila was sorrier than she could ever tell her. This got through to Desi, who considered how close she and Lila had once been and wanted to try to believe that Derek was right and that someone or something else had made Lila attack Damian. After the call, Eddie told Desi he was proud of the way she’d handled herself and that he would always be there when she needed him. She told him she didn’t deserve him, and after he explained why she was the only one he wanted to be with, she kissed him. The kiss grew heated, and Desi eventually broke it, telling Eddie they both needed rest. He said he would leave, and she told him she wanted him to stay, using the excuse that it was unsafe for him to drive so late. He slept on her living room sofa.

The next morning, she went with Eddie to LDE to keep him company while he worked. She left to get coffee, and on her way back in, she ran into Ben McNaire, President McNaire’s son and her father’s former attorney. He offered to help bring murder charges against Lila if it came to that. Desi returned to the conference room where she’d left Eddie and found that Derek had joined him. Her brother was surprised to see her and seemed suspicious of her motives for being at LDE, and she deflected by offering to help him with Damian’s funeral arrangements. Derek said he was glad he had both Desi’s and Eddie’s attention and asked them to understand that until they knew the truth of what had happened, no one needed to act further. He asked Desi to call off Ravenna, and though she had already tried and knew it was unlikely to work on the second attempt, she said she would try again. After Derek left, Desi asked Eddie whether they were doing the right thing by avoiding the topic of their relationship in front of him, and the two of them agreed that he didn’t need anything additional to worry about.

They went to lunch together after Eddie finished his work, and again, Desi ran into Ben McNaire. He was on his way out and had remembered that he’d forgotten to give her his card, and when he stopped at their table to do so, Desi caught sight of his secretary, a woman named Mia, who was watching Eddie too closely for her comfort. She grew jealous and commented on the way the woman had looked at him after Ben and Mia left, and Eddie laughed this off, stressing that he was only interested in Desi. He pulled a jewelry box out of his jacket and explained, when Desi half-jokingly asked whether she should worry, that he’d gotten her a diamond solitaire necklace for her last birthday but had hesitated to give it to her because it might reveal how he felt about her. When she asked exactly how he felt, he admitted that he loved her, and she told him that she loved him, too.

That evening, Desi went to see Ravenna at the house she’d shared with Damian—the same house where Desi had been raised. The paparazzi ambushed her outside, grilling her about everything from Damian’s case to her relationship with Eddie. Ravenna rushed her inside, and Desi tried again to persuade her to give up the search for Lila. Ravenna was offended by the suggestion, reminding Desi that she was the one who had hired her in the first place. She also commented on how quickly Desi had gone from caring about Damian to “running to his best friend’s bed.” Desi was furious. She stormed for the front door but stopped at the sight of a police officer walking toward the house. The man introduced himself as Detective Harry Masters, and he asked whether either woman had learned anything new that might help his case. He told Desi that Derek and Eddie should cooperate with his investigation and seemed suspicious of Ravenna’s relationship with Damian.

Later at her apartment, Desi changed out of the dress she’d worn out to eat, and Eddie said he felt overdressed in his suit. Desi retrieved a t-shirt of his from her bedroom and offered it to him; it had gotten mixed in with her things after she’d spent the night at his house at the beginning of July. Desi apologized for leaving the way she had after they had slept together, and though Eddie tried to insist that he understood, she admitted that she thought he deserved better than her and that she had been trying to avoid ruining things between them by keeping him at a distance. He told her she hadn’t ruined anything, and they kissed passionately.

Learning the Truth
The night of Damian’s visitation and public funeral service at LDE, Desi had a panic attack in the bathroom. She focused on the good things her brother did for her and the idea that she could start to repay him both by pulling herself together enough to speak and by reshaping her life—pulling away from the person she was ashamed of becoming and starting down a more responsible path. She listened to Derek’s and Eddie’s speeches and gave one herself, explaining how she wished she had expressed how much she’d appreciated Damian more often and how she understood now that instead of “[trying] to be [her] dad,” he had been trying to guide her from a place of more experience than she’d had. She ended by saying that she missed Damian and always would.

After the guests left the service, Desi snuck off into the building and to Damian’s office. Determined to see the full security video—the one in which Derek saw someone else with Lila the night of the murder—she used Damian’s login information to access a video with access restricted to the executive level. The computer told her the file had been edited but that it could locate the original, which Desi watched. This file continued after the clip the police showed her had ended, and when the person with Lila stepped forward, it was revealed to be Eddie, who told her she had done her part and ordered her to deactivate.

Desi crumbled at the sight of him. She knocked things off of Damian’s desk and ripped off the necklace that Eddie had given her, tossing it across the floor. She forced herself to stop crying long enough to call Eddie, asking him to meet with the excuse that she hadn’t been able to hold herself together after the service and needed to see him. He offered to come to her, but she insisted that she would find him. He told her that he was working at the LDE warehouse on Fifth Street. As Desi left the building, she retrieved the gun Damian had tried to shoot his way out with from the security desk on the first floor.

She spent the drive to the warehouse working go convince herself that she could kill the man she’d only just come to accept that she loved. When she arrived, she demanded he tell her why he had killed Damian. Eddie deflected, telling her he had no idea what she was talking about, but when she pointed the gun at him, started to panic. He tried to persuade her that her stress had gotten to her, and when he used her nickname, she shouted at him not to call her that. She demanded he tell her why, and after a few more moments of denial, Eddie cried out that Damian had been a threat to him. After Eddie had poured his life into LDE, Damian had wanted to punish him for every crime his creation had committed. Desi was confused and reminded Eddie that Lila wasn’t his creation. He started to correct her and explain that he was talking about Mia, but she cut him off, saying that Damian never would have hurt him. Eddie attempted to wrestle the gun away from her, Desi struggled to hold onto it. As they fought for the gun, it went off, and the momentum knocked them both through the window of the observation deck and toward the warehouse floor below.

Eddie hit the ground first, breaking Desi’s fall. Still, a vast amount of glass shards had embedded into her arms and legs from the window, and after falling almost three stories, she was disoriented and losing blood quickly. She forced herself to stand and took the gun with her as she ran off into the room. She hid behind shipping crates until Eddie found her, and she soon realized that the two of them weren’t alone in the warehouse. Derek, Lila, and Ravenna, having also discovered the truth, had come to find Eddie, and Lila was engaged in a fight with Mia. Desi tried to run to Derek and warn him that Eddie was with her, and Eddie knocked her to the ground, taking the gun in the process. He wrestled her to her feet and held the gun to her temple as he bargained with Derek, who was also armed, telling him that he would let Desi go if he was allowed to leave unharmed. Ravenna, who had separated from Derek, approached from another side and shot Eddie in the knee. He released his hold on Desi, who collapsed. Derek rushed to help her, and Mia hurried to stop Ravenna from killing Eddie, carrying him out of the warehouse.

The next morning, Desi attended Damian’s private burial with Derek, Lila, and Ravenna.

Appearances
* In the Shadows of the Mind podcast, Desi is played by Mandi Jourdan.
 * Lacrimosa (narrator)
 * Veritas (narrator)
 * Shadows of the Mind (short story collection)
 * "Broken"
 * "Fated" (narrator)
 * "Shattered" (mentioned)
 * "Trauma" (narrator)
 * "Duality" (narrator)
 * "Vessel"
 * "Goddess"
 * "Mother" (mentioned)
 * other short stories
 * "Inheritance" (mentioned)
 * Shadows of the Mind (podcast)*
 * "The Co-President" (narrator)
 * "Control"
 * "Until Proven Guilty" (narrator)
 * "Line of Fire"
 * "Proximity" (narrator)
 * "Surrender" (narrator)
 * "I'm You" (narrator)
 * "Lacrimosa" (narrator)
 * "Convergence" (narrator)