Btw, friendly neighborhood reminder that Salome is actually disabled and kind of on the fragile side. Unless you're interacting with her in certain verses; like within the verses that are occupied by Luke and Loki, where she was healed of her injuries, or her verse with Sherlock where he dumped her at an ER and insisted she be give reconstructive surgery on her vertebrae and a new fusion system that causes less pain. Most people don't write characters with significant, life-impacting disability or tend to downplay it but Salome is definitely one of those sorts of characters. And I write her with that very much in mind.
Like I've said before, she is in chronic pain every day and though she laughs it off and seems really happy? It's really kind of a front. There are small ways to notice it, because if she's been working all day? You can see the mental exhaustion of having to deal with the pain written all over in how she carries herself. If there are walls nearby to her, too, and she's standing? She usually purposefully finds them, and it's because it straightens the muscles in her back and eases the pain for awhile. If you catch her without the majority of her clothes, she's still probably wearing a back brace. You can probably actually feel it through her clothes in some instances.
In case you haven't noticed why that is, which is fine, we're busy people: Salome was born very prematurely and with severe scoliosis. Which was literally so bad that she had to have a spinal fusion by the time she was seven. And given that the method for having that done kind of really sucked up until very recently? It mostly consists of harvesting bone from your hip or wherever else they can get it, and transplanting it into your spine to fuse it together. And then putting in a series of hooks and rods to hold it steady. Salome had this done, plus several other corrective surgeries, over the course of her life. That's why the scar down her back is, frankly, quite brutal to look at. And this means from the bottom of her neck to right before her lumbar region is fused together.
Which doesn't mean she can't get around, because Salome is clever as sin and figures out ways to garden and do all the other things she loves despite the whole... well, that. But at the same time, the rods in her back only have about a twenty year span before they start to rust and corrode, so she's feeling the impact of that on top of the fact that she was shoved down two flights of stairs when she was younger, and that she had several fractures in her back. That never really healed properly because of her fusion but also because she has a genetic tendency to over-heal muscle wounds. And repeated surgeries have resulted in a lot of overgrowth of scar tissue around her back and abdomen. I'd actually venture to say that most of her muscle there is probably severely fucked up.
Also, a lot of people who get the type of fusion she has (as opposed to modern ones which are apparently awesome?) Put a lot of pressure on the lower vertebrae in general, so they tend to degenerate very quickly over time. Pain gets worse because nerves are compressed, along with stenosis of the spine. Eventually people end up needing wheelchairs because walking is hard, and the pain is really quite severe. And this is usually by their 40's-50's but Salome was younger than the average, so in her near-30's, she's already getting some of the negatives.
So, if you throw her against something or onto the floor (particularly with her back facing whatever it is) or try to bend her over where she does not bend, you will hurt her quite significantly. And she'll probably want to kill you while she's screaming on the floor and probably also for a long time afterwards. And if you hit her with something in the back or she hits something else with her back as the bracer with ample force? She can and probably would fracture her spine again, but also probably break the rods in her back, given their age. Which would effectively paralyze her until she could go to the hospital and have surgery to repair her.
Just something important to keep in mind if you interact with her. And because I don't think I've ever clarified the details. :3
