#SYBELLE DARLINGTON / headcanon.

[stormlit]

sybelle does not like being surprised. anything intended to shock her, make her jump, pranks or surprise parties or haunted houses, all go down like a lead balloon. she will retreat into herself and her piano and block out the entire world; she finds it really difficult to not know what to expect, will not respond in the way she's "meant" to for pranks/surprise parties, and trying to scare her is a sure-fire way to trigger her trauma response.

similarly, she doesn't like being touched by most people, particularly when she can't see it coming; hugs from behind are the worst, but anything where she doesn't know someone's there until they're touching her she finds really triggering. in general she's not completely touch averse, but she's definitely not one for long hugs or extended cuddling, she gets really overstimulated by it and needs her space. exceptions to this are benji and armand, and only benji and armand, who do have permission to hold her hand or come sit close to her without asking, though both of them have a tendency to announce themselves in some way anyway.

[stormlit]

SYBELLE DARLINGTON. 20. human/vampire. present day. concert pianist from new york.

character background/info behind the cut for mentions of abuse & parental death.

piano prodigy whose career was managed by her older brother, fox (aka closely controlled in order to make her reliant on him, though she didn't realise this). she'd been rushing back from vacation with her whole family in order to get to a concert she was performing at carnegie hall, with a record company set to record it for her second album, when they got into a major car accident that killed both her parents.

sybelle shut down almost entirely. she didn't play the concert, she didn't leave the apartment, she didn't take care of herself. fox's abuse escalated from control to verbal, to minor physical and then extreme physical abuse. and sybelle dealt with it by playing the appassionata over and over again.

she was taken care of by her adoptive brother benji, a savvy 12 year old who became her protector and her voice, and she in turn protected him from fox. benji is her family. she would do anything for him.

fox is killed by armand who comes to nyc post-dubai*, drawn in by sybelle's playing and witnessing the abuse. both sybelle and benji think him some kind of angel. and when armand is near-death after being burned in the sun, they rescue him and bring him back to their apartment, they take care of him, bringing him a victim to feed on. sybelle in particular is fascinated by watching him hunt.

they become a family, almost just like that; armand considers them his kids, and sybelle thinks of him as a father. he sets up trusts for them, buys them clothes and anything they might want, takes them to symphonies and ballets. she loves him, is never scared of what he is, and they have a very special bond. armand almost lives in hiding with them, away from the turmoil of the vampire world/the wreckage of what he left in dubai.

sybelle and benji are both turned by marius, armand's maker, entirely without any of their consents; marius had been looking after them, briefly, and did it with the intention of keeping armand around, not caring even that benji is a child. armand is furious with marius for it.

honestly, very little changes? they hunt now, which sybelle takes to quickly and deftly, but they're still just a little family unit. she doesn't mind being a vampire, though she hates telepathic speech and people being in her head. she does, eventually play concerts again, though carnegie hall is far from her first choice, and she does put out more recordings and perform on livestreams, but success and fame isn't something sybelle has ever sought. most of the time she doesn't even care if anyone's listening to her play. she's fine if they do, but it's entirely unselfish; she just wants them to enjoy the beautiful music, which she didn't write.

if you're into classical music or attend concerts in new york, you may know her name, though.

sybelle is both autistic and suffers from long term brain injury. these don't just disappear once she's a vampire, though the severity of some of her dizzy and headache spells definitely lessen; there is no magic vampire cure. she's also traumatised, and has never properly worked through her grief over her parents or what her brother did to her. she doesn't care what people think of her, and she doesn't talk much; she will go an entire day without saying anything, or only to benji or armand, and she often feels like she's in a dream-like state.

she doesn't care about vampire politics in the slightest, but she's an observer, watching how things work with wide eyes. her first reaction is rarely fear, but morbid curiosity, and she has no real sense of danger. but she's more aware of what goes on in the world than it might seem, cares more than she should about atrocities while not being bothered by the nature of vampires eating people, and knows her own mind, even if it might seem she does not.

*obviously open to working with how armand writers want to play it, i'm very happy to write her in the 90s, but by default she's modernised to work with the show