Post by Impey on Nov 4, 2015 0:29:02 GMT
Valentin
"Val"
16 / Hench Tribe / Leonardo DiCaprio
Thanatos [Half-Brother], Daemon [Father - Deceased], Mika [Mother - Deceased]
Personality
Valentin is a cat who likes to hide his real self behind a figurative mask. He puts on an act with everyone that he meets. Even his friends don’t really know who the real Valentin is. To everyone who meets him, Valentin is a friendly, funny, confident and outgoing tom. Someone that most others would enjoy being around. Despite the fact that his acting skills are near perfect when he is wearing his ‘mask’ there are plenty who have been able to tell that the tom in front of them isn’t his true self. The most telltale sign that he is wearing his ‘mask’ is the look in his eyes. Though he can act circles around most others, he has never been able to show the correct emotion in his eyes to make his act completely perfect. Thankfully for him, most of the cats he has met in his life haven’t bothered to pay enough attention to notice this. The only cat who has ever gotten to see even a hint of the real Valentin is his older brother, Thanatos.
The real Valentin is almost the complete opposite of the fake he pretends to be. His low self esteem and confidence is one of the reasons he feels the need to hide the real Valentin. Having been sickly and physically weak for most of his life is one of the reasons his self esteem is so low. Seeing his brother, his hero, who was always in top physical shape and realizing he would never be like him because of his sickly body was a hard hit for him as a young kitten. From their his thoughts about himself became more and more negative until there was very little about himself that he could see in a positive light. The very few others who have managed to get close to him have tried repeatedly to point out his positive points, but they were always given a sarcastic response from the tom.
Along with his low self esteem, Valentin is a very untrusting tom. The only one who has his complete trust is his brother. In Valentin’s mind everyone is wearing a mask like he is. He believes that everyone, with the exception of Thanatos, is only looking out for themselves. That everyone who has ever tried to get close was only trying to use him for one reason or another. Even the few friends he has do not have his trust. If it wasn’t for the fact that Valentin believes friends are a necessity in life, he would likely not even bothering trying to be friends with anyone.
While Valentin refuses to believe anything about himself is positive, he does have a few positive sides to him. He is an intelligent tom, who enjoys learning different things. His brother has often found him taking different items apart in order to try to learn how they work. He has even attempted to create his own version of a few different things, including a small flashlight which he managed to make successfully from scratch. When he isn’t spending time with his brother or friends he can often be found with a human inventor he befriended. His friendship with this human is one of the few things he keeps secret from his brother.
Another more positive trait of Valentin is his bravery. That isn’t to say he has no fears. He has plenty of fears, but he never lets them control him. Even as a young tom he wouldn’t back down from something that frightened him, such as his father’s punishments. His bravery often stems from his need to protect his brother, something Thanatos has always done for him, but that isn’t always the case. Despite being able to stand up to his fears there are still times when his fears overcome him. These moments are usually caused when his own weaknesses are brought into play.
The last positive trait to mention about Valentin, is his kindness. While his willingness to do anything for his older brother is obvious his kindness extends towards others as well. He can’t sit back and watch when others are in need of help. There are plenty of times he has seen another cat in trouble and while he always tries to convince himself that he shouldn’t help them, that it would only cause more problems for himself in the end, he still can’t manage to turn a blind eye to it.
History
Life for Valentin began when his mother conceived him during one of her many lustful affairs with his father. There was no love between his parents. In fact they couldn’t exactly be called friends either. All they were to each other were acquaintances who satisfied each other’s physical needs. After finding out that his lover Mika had become pregnant after one of their many affairs, Valentin’s father, Daemon, invited her to move in with him though it was more out of obligation than anything else. On the day Valentin was born his father was unsurprisingly absent from his mother’s side. Instead she was surrounded by her queen friends who were eagerly awaiting the birth of Mika’s kitten. Their enthusiasm died when the kitten that was born turned out to be a boy instead of the girl that they had all been hoping for. Despite their loss of interest in the kitten, Mika’s friends helped her get home from the healer’s place. When Mika finally arrived back at the den she introduced her newly born kitten to Daemon. The older tom, however, barely acknowledged the kitten.
Growing up, Valentin spent very little time with either of his parents. His father was always off on some type of job for the Hench Tribe while his mother spent much of her time hanging out with her friends. Neither of his parents had much interest in the young kitten. Still he was treated far better by them than his older brother was, at least in the beginning. While his parents were out his older brother Thanatos was usually left in charge of watching him. Thanatos was surprisingly good with his younger brother and Valentin came to adore his brother more than anyone else. Though having his brother’s attention was more than enough to make him happy, the young kitten still yearned for his mother’s love and attention. Which is why he did not try to escape the rough treatment he was given whenever his mother and her friends did give him attention.
Unfortunately their rough games went a little too far one day. After being pushed particularly hard by his mother, the young kitten was greeted with intense pain in his paw after falling to the floor. His loud cries were ignored by everyone except his brother. Within a couple of minutes the pain had become too much for the kitten and he passed out. Upon waking up the next day he found himself in his bed with his paw carefully wrapped up. He did not understand why his mother suddenly disappeared one day until he was older and his father explained to him that Thanatos had killed his mother. Despite hearing such shocking news Valentin found that he was neither angry nor distraught over it. He had never been very close to his mother and had always been much closer to Thanatos. After getting the details of why Thanatos killed his mother since his father had failed to explain it to him, he found that it only made him love his brother more. He was not happy that Thanatos had killed someone, but was happy to know that Thanatos cared enough to protect him. After his mother’s death life changed drastically for Valentin. His father who usually ignored him was now beating him frequently, something he had never done before. It wasn’t until later on that he discovered that he was being beaten in order to punish Thanatos for making mistakes.
Unlike Thanatos, who was not allowed to leave the den except to go out on jobs for the tribe, Valentin was free to do as he pleased in his free time. During that time he would often go out and explore the city, making plenty of friends along the way. Much of his time spent with his friends involved the group of them getting into some type of mischief as most young cats their age tended to do. Despite spending a lot of his time with his friends, Valentin always made sure to make time for Thanatos whenever he could. He knew that Thanatos spent much of his time working hard for the Hench Tribe so that their father would find no reason to punish Valentin for Thanatos’s mistakes.
The first and only time Valentin had ever actually seen his brother kill someone was the day Thanatos killed their father and another tom. That day Valentin had woken up to discover that his brother had not come home the previous night after completing a job like he was supposed to. Though Valentin knew that he would be punished for his brother’s mistake he found that he was actually happy. His brother was never given time to do what he wanted and Valentin would gladly take a beating in order to let Thanatos take a break from his difficult life. The punishment his father had in mind, however, was not a beating. Valentin had been confused when he saw that his father had brought home a tom that he had never seen before. When he entered the room they were sitting in a shiver had run down the young tom’s back at the way the strange tom looked at him. Once his brother finally arrived home, the reason for the strange tom’s presence was revealed. Feeling that beating Valentin was no longer enough to punish Thanatos, their father had decided to give Valentin to the strange tom for the night. The confusion at their father’s words was clear on Thanatos’s face, but it was quickly replaced with fury when Valentin began screaming and crying as the strange tom and Daemon tried to drag him away.
The murder of both his father and the strange tom seemed to happen so quickly that the memory of it is mostly a blur to Valentin now. He does, however, remember clinging to his brother afterwards as he cried. When he awoke the next day he found that his brother was still holding him, though they were both now lying on the floor having fallen asleep there without realizing it the previous night. Though seeing his brother murder someone was shocking and a bit terrifying for the tom, he did not think badly of his brother. After their father’s death, Thanatos told Valentin that he was free to leave the tribe if he wanted to, but Valentin refused to leave his brother.
Notes
Valentin has been sickly for most of his life. Though it is not bad enough to keep him from doing most everyday things anything too strenuous, like a hard workout, will cause him to become very ill. When this happens he loses all of his strength and energy, and he ends up with a high fever. When this happens he usually has to rest for a couple of days before his fever will break and his strength will return to him. Another thing to know about Valentin is that he is attracted to toms and has no interest in queens other than as friends. He tends to keep this to himself knowing that many others look negatively upon this. If someone does find out and confront him about it, however, he won’t deny it. He sees no point in denying it once someone already knows.
