Sometimes I think too much about Serval and Aventurine.
The way I see it, Gepard is basically the complement of Aventurine. Gepard's family is still alive. Gepard is surrounded by friends he openly cares about and who care about him in return. The people from beyond the stars saved Gepard's civilization. Gepard walks the path of Preservation without hesitation, without other paths ever tugging at his soul.
But most of all there is Serval. Aventurine only knew his sister as his sister, his caretaker, his guardian. She was only a few years older than him when she became his primary caretaker and even with the help of the other clanswomen (assuming the Avgins have the same type of developing societies we do), the responsibility was likely all-consuming. From the little info we have on their childhood, Serval played a similar, though less overwhelming, role to Gepard. But he was able to watch Serval grow past that identity into one of her own, one that's bursting at the seams - researcher, mechanic, and punk-rocker.
I wonder how Aventurine would react upon meeting her, at this unabashedly punk-rock, sisterly woman who looks like him, like her. His sister is frozen in his memory as that brave adolescent girl who urges her brother away to safety in the rain with a smile. I wonder if he would go back over the scraps of memory he has of her, trying to imagine what she would look like as an adult, trying to extrapolate what she would pursue from the few times she's not in 'big-sister mode'. She told him quite a few bedtime stories about Avgin history, would she maybe become an archivist or Avgin historian? Or what about how she would listen to that rusty little radio in their tent while she did chores? Maybe she'd become a singer, like Robin? It's miserable to try, especially considering how few his memories of her have become. But it comforts him to think about how he would help her, the strings he could pull to make her dreams a reality even if they never would now. A world where he would be good for something.
Okay, back to Serval. The in-universe consensus is that getting Topaz was the best outcome for Jarilo-VI but what if it had been Aventurine instead, and now Serval has to deal with this obnoxious but not unkind youth who keeps visiting her workshop with offers to fund her research and whatever equipment needed for her band? Serval wouldn't particularly enjoy it (she'd probably think Aventurine was trying to court her, lol, and shut that down fast) but there's something about him that... endears to her. A glint of some kind of childish search for her approval in his eyes. Like lil' Geppie's eyes when he shows her one of his drawings - though Geppie had been a much better kid than this guy. So she somewhat tolerates having him around.
