I just have to say the more you post about firrine the more obsessed with him I become. He really did not stand out to me at first but he just occupies so much of my brain he facinates me, especially his relationship with some of the other characters I think it's so interesting.
In that vein, I was wondering about his relationship with nebetta during the alliance and after the war. Would they be closer than before or would he hold any resentment towards her for his childhood?
no bc this ask made me so excited bc literally!!! even i have days where im like 'there are so many more enigmatic or charismatic or funnier or angstier characters than him he's not really that special' but that truly is the tragedy of firinne abalaoi and it links directly to how his relationship with nebetta pans out.
as children, nebetta was his favourite sibling. as the eldest, she was the most assured and had already been introduced to high society; she was growing independence from her parents and it was only a matter of time before she married and got out of lochfall for good. because of this, she wasn't as nervous of her parents' wrath as her sisters (a theme even when she was younger), so she would risk going to see firinne. she'd give him fruits and talk to him about her day and her inventions and books she'd read and people she'd spoken to in the capital and she'd create this beautiful tapistry of a wild, affluent life of the successful noblewoman, and as a boy, firinne would listen enraptured. he practically WORSHIPPED his time with nebetta and he was very grateful to her. that's important. because now we get into firinne's psyche, and the fact that as a child and very much haunting his adulthood, firinne is convinced he is bad. he is The Bad Child and he is a monster like the creatures roaming the deserts and he is unwanted and there has to be a reason his wonderful mother threw him away and so the reason must lie with him. he hates himself so thoroughly that it doesnt even register, it just is. so he's grateful for anything he's given and he doesn't envy nebetta. to him, she's a hero from a book. she is The Good Child. he knows he can never be her, but he dreams of her life and wonders about her and admires her and holds her to this high standard. it's sad because it's a very warped version of what typically happens with a youngest sibling looking at the eldest, but they never got that normality.
when firinne is fourteen and turns vengeful, he's the angriest he's ever been. he finally admits his parents were the monsters and he needs to get away, but he holds onto nebetta for a few years longer. it takes time with the brotherhood and their unconditional love and support for him to realise nebetta wasn't as perfect as he realised. he knows she loved him and he can never truly hate her, but she didn't love him enough to help him and he realises that now, allows himself to resent it now. during the alliance, he's TERRIFIED of nebetta. he tries to play off as bitter and moody and he IS, he really really is because why did HE have to get the wiser gene? it was literal pot luck and it could have gone to nebetta, and would their parents have kept her if it had been her? would it make him feel better to know they wouldn't have? but beneath all that aggression there's also a little boy who hero-worshipped his big sister and still very much ties her to the only positivity he had in his childhood. he wants - needs - someone from his real family to still love him because he still desperately craves their approval despite all of the healing he did with the brotherhood. so when he first sees nebetta and he gets standoffish and stares her down and is ready to argue with that 'i have just as much right to be here as you do' just to get cut off when she hugs him? he crumbles and nebetta is sorry and she acknowledges that she didn't do enough while also pointing out that she was never the all-powerful hero he saw her as; she feared their parents too. she's just sorry that the thing she feared was meeting firinne's fate, and she let it stop her from rescuing him from it.
from that moment on they both realise they can build something again, something better than what they used to have. and that's what they do over tbos, and it becomes truer and truer and easier and easier.
when firinne loses faucis and nebetta loses darya not long after, they're both shoved into very similar times of their life, but they respond to it so fucking differently that it creates their first big rift since being reunited. because nebetta is The Good Child, and in the face of that gaping grief, she plants flowers and teaches kindness and quietly goes back to her duties and hobbies and she doesnt hide her face from the world no matter how much she wants to. her bad days are still so irrefutably harmless; she curls up in bed and refuses to come back until she feels better. and for a while firinne doesnt question it, doesnt wonder if nebetta's grief is just as furious despite looking so different to his, and it makes firinne defensive because nothing about his grief is soft. he lashes out and isolates and obsessively latches onto things and slips into depression and he hurts anyone who tries to help him and he throws things at the wall. this is what i meant when i said silverhall makes him respect nate, because nate is the only other person who let his grief be that ugly.
the quest features nebetta a lot as quite a nagging figure from firinne's povs. she's always checking on him and when she's not visiting she's writing to him and he starts to hate her for it, because he can hardly even hold a conversation without snapping at someone and she's good enough to do fucking admin right now. he feels like he did at lochfall in those last few days, when he was angry and bad and monsterous and alone. the quest and the third amagi gang are what pull him from his grief in the end, and when he expects nebetta to be angry with him for what he put her through, especially now he realises perhaps those letters and visits weren't as selfless as he thought; perhaps she was struggling just as much and needed her brother and he wasn't there, instead, nebetta welcomes him home with open arms and a smile.
like all siblings, it's complex and has good and bad days and they both are stubborn and righteous. firinne blames nebetta for things out of her control. nebetta cant help but be hurt by firinne's failings. but still, clumsily, they love each other for the rest of their lives.
