❝ the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive. ❞
CATEGORY: 4
FULL NAME: Selina Vale
AGENT NAME: DOMINO
DATE OF BIRTH: November 17, 1978
AGE: 43
GENDER: Cis woman
PRONOUNS: She/her
FACECLAIM: Rachel McAdams
well worn jeans and scuffed boots, fingers torn up by anxiety and leather jackets, the faint aroma of beer, a cigarette tucked behind her ear, a variety of knives hidden on her person at all times, a shoebox of postcards never sent, and makeup smudged glassy, weary eyes
TRIGGER WARNINGS: alcoholism, drugs, war, military
Growing up in Denver, Colorado life was cookie cutter and boring. Selina Vale grew up in a middle class family who were well liked in the neighborhood and community. She did well in school, played sports and was a star in soccer, was a spelling bee champion and was apart of various extra curricular activities through her childhood. All in all her parents had done their job well in raising a well rounded daughter who had all the promise in the world.
At eighteen Selina went off to university in Southern California. It has seemed the perfect fit for a young woman so bright and warm like the West Coast sun. Even more so when it came to getting involved in real world matters. Out in California Selina didn’t have to worry about keeping up the Vale image as much and for the first time in her life she got to enjoy what it meant to live for herself rather than constantly looking to achieve and please. She’d also fallen in love with a guy who would later prove she had been nothing but a one night stand and ended up pregnant. Rather than tell her family, she kept her condition a secret and gave the newborn son up for adoption shortly after birth. Selina hadn’t been ready to be a parent, especially when her views on family were still very traditional.
When the war happened she enlisted and despite being placed in intelligence Selina had demanded a combat position. At that time in her life she had been indoctrinated into the American scheme and her pride for her country was through the roof. It was until she was stationed over seas and doing tours through the war zones that her mind had begun to change. Through the military she had received extensive weapons and combat training. Ever the top student and athlete she excelled and was eventually placed into combat positions, though by then she wasn’t bleeding so red, white, and blue and struggled with the fact that she seemed to have a natural gift and inclination towards special ops and recognizance. It had worn on her and began to mess with her head. Selina was so separate from reality and her family and friends that the horrors of what she had seen and been apart of took their toll. She began to drink and do drugs, finding herself discharged following an incident where she was found in an opium den in Hong Kong.
It was exactly what she wanted yet there was a void in the absence of what she had been doing for more than a decade of her life. Despite her PTSD, which she has done her best to hide, some former military contact had gotten in touch with her and made Selina an offer to work as a mercenary. In saying yes, it was agreeing to something not so rigid and blindly following, but also completely in-tune with what she was used to. Being a mercenary was a chance to do better and use the special skills she possessed, and also paid quite a bit better. Unlike her tours with the US Military, Selina was all over the globe and realized pretty quickly that she wasn’t doing good in the world but was now a criminal. For whatever reason it didn’t bother her so much, the things she had learned up to that point in her life about existence had greyed the line between right and wrong. It was all about perspective and opinion.
When she wasn’t on a job, Selina was honing her skills. Knives were her obsession and specialty, which led her comrades to call her Kitana. In some ways, in the criminal underbelly of the world, she’d become something of a myth. Selina was comparable to Achilles with a sword, and like Homer’s legend she too wondered what it meant for her gift to be death. Over and over she shook off those questions and doubts, the way her conscience nagged at her and purpose questioned her actions when she’d see ghosts and hear the haunts of reckoning in her past. It was a fight with someone equally matched that brought Selina to the Numbers Agency. Though, she always had a feeling there was something more to it. That showdown had actually been a test, the first of many, and somehow she past their mental and emotional wellness tests. Or much like the military they tended to gloss over it when someone was on the edge. Especially when she passed anything physical and weapons related with flying colors.
It had felt good to Selina though to be considered an asset and to be apart of something that expected more out of her. By that she had to clean up her act, quit drinking and keep herself clean of drugs. She would have to find new ways to cope. For that, she had begun a long overdue investigation into whatever happened with her son, finding it alarming that there was no trace of him. Not even his birth. Selina rose up the ranks quickly, making her way into category four just a few years ago and up until recently had taken up a stance of not questioning authority. For once when moving through the agency Selina had decided to trust. It could have been a pattern from her past, the former militant that was still so ingrained into her making. But when she questioned a senior agent about her son and how she could go about finding him, Selina found herself shut out. Then a five agent had a public breakdown and it was troublesome how much she felt she could relate. Could she hide that or would she soon be disappeared as well?
A SECRET OF THEIRS: When she was 18 she put her son up for adoption and they were (unknowingly) taken in by the agency and raised in their program. She’s been on a quest to find what happened to her child.
