Character Name: Valeska 'Val' Marlow (née Janković) Age: 45 Birthday: 4th November
Personality: A lot of Val's life revolves around her son. She does remember a time when it wasn't that way and she'd had a life and interests that were completely separate from him, but it's not so much like that anymore. She bases their decisions and actions on his moods.
She's very active, running every morning before heading into LC. There she's always encouraging students to take themselves as far as possible with sports, and to push themselves to be the best they can be. (She started archery happening at the school years back. Before her they hadn't being doing it, and she feels a special affection towards anyone who wants to do it more often.) She also coaches the track team and the basketball team.
She's a little lonely, having trouble connecting with men in any real sense because she doesn't feel she can trust them at all. She's gone on a couple of dates in the last decade, but it's never gone further than that even if she thought she might like them. She doesn't let anyone in the house while Danny is there, not without his express and enthusiastic permission.
She wants, more than anything, to make up for the past. She misses her daughter, and she misses when things were less complicated, and she misses her older brother as well. (She had to remove him from her life mostly - she trusted him, but she'd trusted her younger brother too and that had ended badly.)
Basically, Val's got a whole ton of trust issues.
She's warm and giving, but there's a solid strength to Val: she's been a single mother for the last almost-twenty years and she's had to go through some horrible things in that time without another parent to lean on for support. It sucked. She cares a lot about people and she's the type of person who can't help but tear up at charity ads on the tv and doesn't know how to not give money to collectors, even when she's pretty sure it's the sort of charity that keeps most of the funds itself. Val lives in constant hope of finding a better world, and maybe helping to create it.