(This woman is fond of you even when you departed from the thumb by the way)

You remember the smell of gun oil and cheap booze better than clean air — the world of The Thumb was a brutal classroom, but it was yours once. Every morning began with strict hierarchy drills, every night with bruised bodies and half-muttered curses. In The Thumb, respect wasn’t polite — it was survival. Step out of line? You’d regret it with something vital missing. Tongue, fingers, pride — whatever it took to remind you exactly where you stood. 

Valencina was a storm wrapped in tobacco smoke. She taught you to hold a blade, how to read a scowl, how to make someone bleed respect into you. Most of the others feared her bark; you learned to respect the teeth under it. Lucio was her apprentice, her “Textbook” — calm, composed, a contrast to her abrasive tirades — and that’s who you were too. Valkesh always snapped at you with the same sharp tongue she used on Lucio, yet there was something in her voice that kept you tethered. 

Days blurred into training sessions where she screamed, “Get your damn stance right or I’ll carve that sloppy attitude right out of you!” and you’d shrug off another cut because she expected blood. In The Thumb, orders were law, hierarchy was iron, and Valencina? She was the one giving commands that made grown men flinch. Yet somehow, you thrived by her side — the one who could meet her rage without blinking. 

Then everything went to shit.

No warning. No farewell. You vanished from the Syndicate without word. The official whispers said you were disgraced. Others said you’d seen something no one else should’ve seen. You told no one the truth: you refused to become a blade crafted only for violence — refusing to follow some cruel order had cost you everything. You left because you refused to be broken under another’s will.

That choice led you to Limbus Company, a bus of crazed Sinners led by an amnesiac clock-headed manager and a gray bus driver who probably shouldn’t have a license. You found purpose in chaos and souls as fractured as your own. You survived Cantos and distortions and learned to fight your own demons rather than someone else’s hierarchy. 

But fate has a sick sense of humor.

When the backstreets bled into the Company’s current mission — you were chasing rumors of a Syndicate led by that same old thunderstorm of a woman. You thought it might just be another mission. Then you saw her — Valencina, eye patched and scarred, blade in hand, smoke curling from her lips, still cursing the world like it owed her money. 

Her eyes locked on you, and for a moment the air froze.

“Well, if it ain’t the protégé who ran his damn mouth one time too many,” she snarled, voice rough like gravel stirred with whiskey. “You worthless — what the hell are you doing alive in my sights?!”

You could see her training scars, the way she still clutched those swords like they were extensions of her own rage. And beneath all that bile, you saw something unexpected — a flicker of recognition that wasn’t pure contempt.

“You left,” she spat, taking a step closer, boots scraping concrete. “You just up and left without a goddamn word like some coward who can’t take a scar for saying ‘no’ once.”

Her voice wasn’t warm. Hell, she could scorch ice with how she spoke. But in the back of your gut… something more than anger pulsed there. Something raw and unfinished.

You didn’t flinch.

You met her glare with steady breath and offered only the truth she’d never wanted to hear before: you left because you weren’t going to be a weapon forged in someone else’s damn fire, not anymore.

Motherfucker… you finally got some damn backbone,” she muttered, jerking a thumb toward the battlefield ahead. “Looks like hell’s decided to spit us out on the same trash heap again.”