#veraha

Based on "Hellelil and Hildebrand, The Meeting on the Turret Stairs" by Frederic William Burton (1864)

LORE DUMP TIME BABYYYYYY BUCKLE UP

TLDR: Vera has limited mobility and chronic pain as a result of the Zenos fight, and tore her shoulder dancing in m5

(skip the first paragraph if you don't wanna read about how injured she was)

EndWalker has Consequences! Vera got slightly more tanky(but mostly just more reckless) after fusing with Ardbert, but that was not enough to save her during the Zenos Trial. She had to heal herself through that fight. Heal a lot, and heal fast. She didn't have time to make sure she was doing it right, she just had to stay standing. She still barely made it out, and when she did her friends discovered that in addition to all her visible injuries were wounds that had stitched themselves together wrong. Bones fused at awkward angles. Extensive scar tissue that would inhibit the use of her muscles. When they got back to Sharlayan, well. She couldn't be fixed with magic, so things had to be reopened and set properly with surgery.

After that she spends most of her time split between Sharlayan and Gridania. (I am putting at LEAST a year in between EW & DT, maybe longer)

In Sharlayan she's getting physical therapy to try and keep as much of her range of motion as possible, but there were some places where the scarring was either too extensive or too deep to be fixed, so she can't get completely back to normal. She's lost some mobility and has lingering pains. She starts wearing compression wraps and braces to help with that [thank you @sae-mian for pointing out that her raid outfit looks like it has a knee brace. I can't unsee it so it's cannon now]

She also gets to spend time with G'raha while in Sharlayan <3. She tries her best to help with the Students stuff, and even to start learning medicine to make her healing safer and more effective, but... well, she's not an academic.

When she's back home in Gridania, she is working with E-Sumi to get her magic back to normal. The stone/aero -> glare/dia switch happened when she was overfilled with light. Now that she's back on the source, only pulling from one element upsets the aetherial balance so she has to retrain her magic. E-Sumi(dad) and Nira'sae(sibling) also have opinions on the state she came home in so you can rest assured she's being taken care of there too- and being prevented from doing anything stupid.

[While she was only warned against using too much healing magic on herself after this, the situation did solidly change her from a "keep the party at 100% hp all the time" healer to a "but did you die" healer. Specifically so she can do as much healing as possible in between fights to make sure it's done right.]

She did get mostly back to a healthy spot after EW. Cut back on her beauty routine(coping mechanism since HW), started dressing comfy again like she did before leaving the Shroud. The fact that she kept her new staff that happened to have a blade on it was a practical choice. It's a good quality weapon, and the last one snapped anyway! Don't mind the one saddle bag that's still dedicated to skincare that now has her old gear stashed in the bottom. It's for emergencies only! If you take them away she WILL have a panic attack but that's not important The appearance of The Dome is a valid emergency and the Scions are totally overreacting when she reverts back to her EW appearance and behavior overnight. She's fine.