ONE. he doesn’t smile. it’s not his fault, a grumpy adult, a fussy baby. it’s resting bitch face that verges on resting ‘going to murder everyone’ face, even if he’s the sort that safely transports spiders and rodents back outside. as a child his sister, vár, tried her best to lighten the mood. she told wonderful jokes, had a way with any sort of storytelling, but he was full of too many questions. why would the princess do that, why would a war lord do that, wheedling her down until vár gave up her attempts to instill váli with a lighter nature. didn’t work, wouldn’t suit him.
TWO. he’s got a black sense humor that plays too well into the unfortunate habit of laughing when he’s nervous. frayed nerves, the reason he most often smiles. the worst situations come often enough, someone else near tears and he’s teetering on the edge of hysterics. it happens in the later years more. when his hands shake and he’s so strung out on adrenaline that everything is moving too fast and too slow at the same time. a tie fighter pilot is married to an intelligence officer, the pilot dies in an exercise. váli, in his uniform, barely more than a boy and cloaked in black, his helmet tucked under his arm. the man cries when he’s told, and all váli focuses on is fighting back nervous hysteria, laughter in his chest.
THREE. she brings food when he’s upset. knows just what he likes and get extra portions or even surrenders her own. as a kid it manifests with vár smuggling out cookies and sweets from their occasional dessert, as an adult, even when she’s CAG and has more than her baby brother to worry about. there’s genuine love. they’re siblings. he doesn’t understand her, how she enjoys what he finds dangerous and tedious but when they’re sat in the hangar with a bag of chips between the two of them it’s almost like being children again. their age gap, large as it is, doesn’t matter so much now that she’s not practically raising him.
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