#but that doesn't mean she can't obfuscate or misdirect to serve her own needs just as well

[merge-conflict]

heartbreak & mask

heartbreak: Have they ever had a relationship that ended badly? Experienced some other kind of heartbreak? What happened?

Oh yes! Valentine was Abernathy's secret lover for about 8 years (including after she married) and then once Abernathy got her promotion she was cut off and kicked to the curb. Truthfully the timing was more of a convenient excuse– the two of them were starting to fight more often, Abernathy was growing paranoid that the relationship would harm her chances of further advancement, and she didn't want to give Valentine any favors to move up, even though without that sort of help no one in a corp gets promoted for merit or any other reason. Pathetically, Valentine was still very much in love with her and would have happily remained her dog, but uh. Could not.

Valentine did end up some kind of ally with Jenkins, even though she hated him. She was truly conflicted about her own desire to kill Abernathy (or at least hurt her), but was not at all enthusiastic about the way Jenkins sprung it on her. She's very skittish about expecting the people she loves to respect her, in some ways, and prefers not to talk about long-term plans.

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

Most definitely. She's got plenty of different kinds of masks she uses, although she prefers her performances to be subtle- it's always easier to remember what kind of lies or misdirection you're weaving if there's a bit of truth at the center. She edits her performance very carefully, choosing to play-up certain emotions or reactions she does have, in order to make concealing other ones easier. Her compulsive need to cater to her loved ones and superiors means she's doing this constantly, all of the time, with no small amount of effort involved keeping the web intact.

Even the people she's closest with only get to see her true, bare feelings from time to time. When she's too exhausted or pissed to play nice any more. But even then she's not exactly forthcoming so much as too tired to keep kicking up dust. The two people she is closest with are Goro and Johnny– the former used to predicting the weather by carefully weighing Saburo's vibes, and so gradually picks up on Valentine's tells based on experience. The latter has spent a long time in her head and still lugs around a lot of her memories, and so has some cheat codes, but he's also Johnny so he might know what she's feeling but totally miss the target on why.