#like on some level she’s probably logically aware of this but yk. insecurities.

[gothmiqote]

Also worth noting that she feels weirdly guilty about admitting any of this to the Scions?

The thing about Varha is that she just doesn’t talk about herself much at all. Like, she’s relatively open if you ask her something that’s presently relevant somehow, but she doesn’t ever volunteer information about her past unless really pressed for it somehow. The first time anyone picked up on this was a good few years into knowing her when the topic of name days came up & no one had any idea what hers was or even how old she was outside of a good guess.

(It’s actually not related to any sort of past tragedies or even the calamity. She just passively absorbed a distinct lack of importance when it came to her household, almost like everyone was too tired to really care all that much once the rest of her siblings were celebrated properly. When she hit the age where ‘friend’ parties were expected to take the place of family ones, she just kinda… stopped doing anything since most years she found herself without any real friends anyway. She knew people in her area and liked them enough, but no one ever ‘clicked’ with her in a way that mattered. Most name days after that were spent out of the house as much as possible, on the off chance one of her parents ever questioned her about it. She still found ways to enjoy it, she just had no desire to have a conversation about her plans. To this day, she still gets weird around the name day itself & is actually pretty uncomfortable with the idea that anyone wants to have any kind of celebration for her.)

And she knows it’s also not on her that the current family dynamic is what it is. It’s not like she chose hostility with her brother, and plenty of others lost people in the calamity. That doesn’t stop her from feeling somehow like she’s failed at something very important though. It seems like such a simple thing, for her to be on speaking term with her brother, but she isn’t and she’s afraid if she’s honest about that, then somehow his feelings about her will leech into other people. She’s got no idea what she would do if they started seeing her like he did (irritating, clingy, someone he’s happy to dismiss) but she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t cope well. She doesn’t want to feel like she’s holding her friends at a distance, but letting them see that part of her personal life feels like giving up a massive amount of control over her image. Her sister threw herself off the roof as a last resort and her only other living sibling can barely stand to be in the same room as her. It all feels extraordinarily pathetic and not at all the image she wants to project.

She needs these people to keep on liking her. She’s gotten too used to it now and doesn’t think she’s capable to going back to that quiet rejection. Not unlike a wounded animal who does its absolute best to avoid showing injury, Varha is desperate to keep her weak points under wraps just in case someone else decides to hate her for it. If it was enough of a reason for her own blood to abandon her when they should have been using each other for support, she’s got no reason to thing people outside of that wouldn’t also start to look at her with disgust.

Her confrontation with Rhaya’ra in Sharlayan was painful & unexpected, and while she should have just been focusing all her energy on saving the star, she keeps getting distracted by a past she never wanted to deal with again.

Varha keeps poking at me with more Family Lore TM as an explanation for why her current relationship with Rhaya’ra is Like That & it’s coming in the form of “actually Three of us survived the calamity physically but one is suspiciously Not Present Now & also she was definitely Rhaya’s favourite sister :)”

I don’t have a name for this sibling yet but she’s. Definitely not going to be making any present day appearances that’s for sure.