I'm writing a survival horror story that's a mixture between Bloodborne and The Last of Us. The story follows an emotionally distant woman and a physically disabled child as they trek through a world slowly being corrupted by some horrific cosmic entity.
Veronica (the emotionally distant woman in question) is cold and withdrawn. She suffers from PTSD induced by her turbulent childhood. The only way she knows how to cope is with violence and suffocating control. She's always been a curious person, but trauma distorted this passion into something she uses to predict and manipulate those around her. Only one person ever managed to sustain Veronica's torment and breach her defenses (let's call him Finn.) He was killed by the godlike entity not too long before the story begins.
Currently, Veronica's driving motivation is to reach the town in which the entity was first reported. She has an almost feral need to better understand this cosmic power because not knowing how it works saps away her control and leaves her panicky. This is a purely selfish motivation which is very in line with her character as almost everything she does is selfish, but I worry this isn't a relatable or potent enough motivation from the point of view of a reader.
Veronica does some horrible things (ex. almost shoots the kid she travels with since he's being used as a meat shield and murders a friendly group of scavengers for their supplies) that she justifies with this motivation. As the story progresses she begins to soften and her motivations change, but this doesn't happen until much further into the novel. I want Veronica to ride the line of redeemability but I'm scared this motivation will make it way too easy to hate her and reject any growth she shows later in the story as being undeserved.
I'm considering a different motivation where Finn and Veronica had promised each other that they would both try some of the native cuisine in the town where the entity was first reported. Since Finn's now dead I think it's a stronger motivation that more readers can get behind, but it doesn't mesh as well with her selfish nature and comes out of nowhere. Should I have both?