Valerie "Val" Laurent
Name: Valerie “Val” Laurent
Age: 30
Community Job: Nurse/Part-Time Bartender
Reside in: Spacious apartment near the solar panel yard
How long have they been in Redwood?: 4 months
Gender: Cis Woman
Sexuality: Bisexual
Relationship Status: Single
Faceclaim: Indya Moore
Biography: (CW Child Abuse, Addiction)
Val’s early life wasn’t a happy one. She was born as “Chloe Harper” to her parents John and Catherine Harper. Her family seemed almost perfect from the outside, with John and Catherine being high school sweethearts who married almost as soon as they graduated and seemed to be going strong ever since. Except that it most certainly wasn’t as perfect as the Harper family tried to appear to be. John, a police officer, was an alcoholic. Chloe remembers often enough coming home from school to find her father passed out on the couch, bottle in hand. Her mother, Catherine, had become bitter with her marriage and taken to having affairs, none of which she bothered to hide from her daughter. Catherine ended up leaving John and Chloe without a trace when the girl was ten. This seemed to break their fragile household - John turned from a tired drunk into a belligerent, becoming verbally abusive towards his daughter, before escalating it.
Chloe doesn’t talk about what happened, but on one night, she knew she needed to get out. So, throwing what little belongings she could fit in her school backpack, Chloe left her home. The next few years were hard on her. She made her way to New York, changing her name from Chloe to Valerie to leave her past behind. When Val reached New York, she was broke, had no documents or a place to stay. Out of desperation, she quickly found herself taking on seedy jobs with people who had no interest in asking questions, before, finally, slipping into sex work.
Val doesn’t like to think about that time of her life. She worked the streets to survive, because she had no way out. Quickly, in order to cope with the stress of what was happening to her, she found herself drinking, which didn’t erase what was happening to her, but took the edge off of everything. She spent years living like this, working and drinking, hardly ever sleeping in a warm bed for more than a night at a time.
Val was sure she would have lived like this forever if a kind soul hadn’t taken pity on her. A former sex worker who had managed to leave the industry, they took Val in, to live in a communal house in Harlem. And while Val was still left with issues to battle, finally, at age 22, she found herself living in a somewhat stable home for the first time in years. Her life seemed to improve - her addiction was a constant issue, something she never quite managed to beat, but it got better with the help of her new found community. She even managed to start studying to become a registered nurse.
By the time the outbreak happened, she had been clean for about a year. Working in a hospital as a nurse in training, she found herself faced with the outbreak as it happened. Watching people not die when they should, coming back when they shouldn’t. Watching the infected lunge at her coworkers, anybody that came to near. Watching the hospital break down entirely, patients being airlifted, staff evacuated until there was nothing left.
Val’s commune broke apart just as quickly - people becoming infected, leaving for the countryside, few staying behind until they couldn’t handle it anymore. Val tried to cling onto the last bits of her home until she couldn’t - until raiders burned their house in Harlem down and Val was forced to flee.
She spent the next few years on the road. Her story isn’t special - she joined up with groups, watched people die, fought for her life when she needed to. Encountering Redwood was nothing more than pure luck - stumbling across the settlement after her most recent survivor group had disbanded. Redwood seemed like a godsend to her - just that some of the issues she brought from outside never quite left her. Not as much as she thought they did.
Headcanons:
She was treated as the baby of the commune she lived with, and despite her tough upbringing, sometimes acts a little spoiled because of it. She definitely has the habit of getting people to do what she wants by sweet-talking them (whether that actually works is a different story).
She loves gossip, and when she’s working the bar, she spends a lot of time trying to learn about the latest, juiciest rumors and spreading them around town.
Her dream when coming to New York was to become a model. She even went to a few castings during her first few weeks but, without documents, they could not really hire her.
Despite her sometimes (seemingly) spoiled and childish attitude, she is absolutely not squeamish when it comes to blood and gore (she can’t really afford to be, working as a nurse).
Ever since coming to Redwood, she has fallen back into her old patterns of addiction. She does her best to hide this, but she tends to sneak alcohol during her shifts.
