Name: Valentina Ximena Garcia Martinez (Goes by Valentina Martinez) Nicknames: Val, Tina, Ximena (by her dad and therefore she hates being called this, 10/10 do not recommend) Gender/Pronouns: She/Her Age: 33 Date of Birth: November 12 Zodiac: Scorpio Occupation: Bartender at Starlight Bar Current Neighborhood: Downtown LC How long have they been in town?: Born and raised in LC, she left at 17 and is now returning Witch Inherent Abilities: Astral projection, intangibility, duplication Position in the Coven: Member Coven Ability: Fire manipulation
BIOGRAPHY
Trigger Warnings: mental health,depression, PTSD, alcoholism, child neglect, reckless behaviour, immigration, disability
Bio:
Valentina's first moments earthside were meant to be her last, purple and unmoving as she lay on the wooden floor between her mother’s spread thighs. A stranger's home was hardly the place to deliver a baby, but Ximena Garcia’s mental state was about as low as it could get, and it was a miracle in itself that she made it out of the off-season snow storm and into shelter before the baby came. It seemed that the miracles didn’t stop there, because somehow, the kind woman who'd seen her stumbling out in the snow in her PJs used to be a nurse. The woman had ushered Ximena into her home just as she began crowning and coached the scared, confused first time mom through the birth.
Valentina's first moments earthside were meant to be her last.
Only they weren’t.
A shrill cry rang through the room. She’d escaped death for the first time at less than ten minutes old, and for the rest of her life, for better or for worse, that inexplicable luck would follow her.
Ximena's parents were immigrants to the United States from an impoverished part of Mexico, and when her father, the family breadwinner, passed away in a work-related accident, her family life took a turn for the worst. The oldest of six children, with a mother with disability, Ximena had to step into the role of head-of-the-household, and the pressures of it toll an irreparable toll to her mental and emotional health. The older she got, the worse her undiagnosed depression and PTSD became, and after her mother died, her siblings one by one cut ties with her and moved away as a result. Carlos on the other hand came from a long line of powerful and respected witches originating from a large metropolitan city in Mexico. They'd migrated to the United States decades ago, and had lived in Lunar Cove since its inception. He had an ideal upbringing, great education, great job. He was someone who’d never even given a second thought to the plight of the less fortunate. But after meeting Ximena at a party his friends had dragged him to, his worldview took a sharp turn, and his life’s purpose became wanting to save the woman he’d fallen madly in love with. In the months after they first started dating, he started slacking at work, missing shifts. He grew distant from his family and the Coven he used to be so greatly involved with. He became a different man, all in the name of love.
In the next two years, both his parents passed away, and whatever family he had left made the decision to leave Lunar Cove, and him, behind, returning to Mexico. The Coven had all but washed their hands of him by that point as well, so all he had left was Ximena, and all she had left was him.
To his credit, Carlos tried multiple times to get Ximena help, to get her on the medications she clearly needed. When the pregnancy test came back positive, Carlos really thought it could be a changing point in their lives. Only it wasn’t. The night she went into labour she’d left their home in the middle of a snow storm in a frightful episode. It was hardly the first time, he knew she’d be back eventually. And she was. Only she’d turned up on the doorstep with a stranger at her side, one who was holding a raggedy bundle of cloth against her chest. And before he could say anything more, the bundle started to wail.
Valentina's first year of life was a struggle for everyone involved. Even after she’d been cleared to come home from the hospital, she continued to be a fussy, irritable, unsettled infant. She didn’t eat well, she didn’t sleep well, and she was always crying. Ximena stuck around until two days before Valentina's first birthday, at which point she disappeared in the middle of the night without a word. It ruined Carlos. He spent days looking for her, days hoping she’d come back, but in the end neither Carlos nor Valentina ever saw Ximena again. A single father, now literally and figuratively, Carlos tried his best to cope and care for a young child, but inevitably he gave into the call of alcohol.
Valentina was nearly five before started to get the idea that her little family of two wasn’t normal. But it was all she knew. As time went on and Carlos continued to sink into his depression, Coven members would try to drop by, wanting to bring food or toys for Val, wanting to check up on them for her sake. And every time they were met with Carlos in a belligerent state, refusing to take the help and running them off. Carlos never put his hands on her, he’d never even raised his voice at her. He kept her clothed and fed and she had a roof over her head. But that was the extent of it.
The Sullivan’s lived a few doors down, Val didn’t know much about them other than the fact that the kids who lived there had both parents in the household and always seemed to be so happy when she caught them out and about. They had a son around her age, Jacob, she’d seen him at school, and it was obvious to her even as a child how different their lives were. The first time Emma Sullivan caught her peeking over the fence at the family having a barbeque in their driveway, she welcomed her over for a plate, and without any hesitation she gave an open invitation for Val to come over whenever she wanted, whether it was for a meal or she needed someone to talk to.
The next few years of Valentina's life were more of the same, a father overcome by his own grief and a young girl left to her own devices. Inevitably Valentina's worldview started to take a turn. She became more resentful of her situation, resentful of her father, resentful of her mother and honestly resentful of Lunar Cove as a whole. She didn’t feel like she belonged there, and often she’d fantasize about leaving altogether one day. By some miracle, perhaps because of that inexplicable luck that saved her at birth, what she lacked in family, she found in friendship.
Valentina first met Poppy Reed in grade school, when they found themselves assigned to sit next to one another. Bonded over their mutual dislike of Lunar Cove for their own respective reasons, Poppy and Val became best friends seemingly overnight. Whatever free time they had they spent together, more often than not up to some kind of mischief in town, dreaming about the day they’d be old enough to leave Lunar Cove in their rearview mirror. Soon another joined, Reese Hawthorne, making their duo a trio.
One after the other the girls started manifesting their inherent abilities, and Val was grateful for the closest people in her life because if it wasn’t for Poppy, Reese and Jake and the guidance their families provided, she would’ve had a hard time getting through it. They were the only family she knew and cared to have, and it was them she celebrated with once she finally became a member of the Coven herself.
Despite all the things she did have going for her in life, it always seemed that the sins of her parents would continue to haunt her. When she was around others she was an enigma, but when she came home at night she was just another sad, lonely girl. Combined with the hormones that came with teenhood, it was inevitable that she would start testing boundaries and acting out, especially when she never had much structure or discipline at home. She was known as something of a wild child around town, and it wasn’t uncommon for the townsfolk to come across her getting into some sort of mischief.
Unsurprisingly to most, as she later found out, Valentina and Jake started dating her freshman year of high school. They were young and dumb, hardly making the best decisions, especially on her part, but it was…nice. The toxicity must’ve been genetic, however, because they crashed and burned a few short years later, and she could acknowledge that that outcome was on her. Her mother taught her that people don’t stick around, and her father taught her that being left would ruin you, it didn’t make for a very healthy view of relationships.
In the aftermath Valentina just wanted things to go back to how they were when they were younger, and things seemed to be fine at first- but just a few weeks later Jake was already dating someone new, her dad started getting sick, liver failure, and everything was just getting to be a little too much. She subsequently dropped out a month into their senior year. Outwardly she was still the same Valentina, loud and outgoing, seemingly bulletproof despite everything. But inwardly she was becoming more and more unhappy with her life in Lunar Cove. Her best friends were the only things keeping her sane at that point, but there was only so much she could do, and eventually it got to the point where even Poppy and Reese weren't enough to keep her in LC.
Six months after she dropped out, Valentina asked Poppy and Reese to meet at their spot late at night, and she met them with a duffle bag tucked over her shoulder. She was leaving Lunar Cove. They’d always planned that they’d do it together some day, ride out of town side by side, but she just couldn’t wait any longer for that dream to come to pass. Come find me some day, it was a promise, and with a final embrace, Val disappeared in the night much like her mother had, without a trace.
For the next decade Valentina lived life like a true rolling stone, moving from one place to the next, leaving behind her a wake of chaos and broken hearts. She never ended up going back to school, but it was easy to find work as a dancer those first few years, later going back and forth between that and bartending, two jobs she excelled at and truly enjoyed. She grew into the kind of woman who was the life of the party, someone who enjoyed the thrill of being the center of attention and drew it naturally. Her habit of testing boundaries continued as she got older, the possibilities only expanding in adulthood. She partied and raved, travelled abroad with strangers on a whim, hitchhiked alone in the middle of nowhere, drugs, alcohol, sex, you name it, she did it. Whatever angel had been looking over her since her birth must’ve been exhausted, because it was a miracle she made it out of certain situations unscathed, even with her magic.
Val got into and out of relationships almost as if it were a sport, always making sure she was the one doing the leaving rather than being the one who was left. There were plenty of times her idea of ‘ending a relationship’ was disappearing in the middle of the night and moving to a different place entirely. It was a dangerous game considering some of the kinds of men and women she was associating with, and eventually it caught up to her. She’d been in Vancouver, BC for six months in the company of a rich, older married couple. It was a pretty good deal, she never paid for anything, she got to do whatever she wanted, the sex was great. She was having the time of her life. But inevitably she got bored, and when she tried to leave, she realized she might’ve finally messed with the wrong kind of people.
It wasn’t soon after that that Valentina found herself evaluating her life for the first time. She was nearly thirty-five and she was still living her life like a twenty-year-old, without a care in the world, not even for her own safety. It wasn’t like she wasn’t enjoying it, but she did wonder how much longer it could be sustained.
The only constant in her life since she’d left Lunar Cove nearly eighteen years ago were Poppy and Reese, the only people she’d bothered to keep in touch with. She knew Poppy and Reese were still in Lunar Cove, that Poppy was the new Supreme. And despite her apprehensiveness at returning to the only placed she’d ever called home, she felt like it was time. And so she packed her things up and made her way back to the town where it all began.
