"I'm willing to do what I can. Is there any context," she pauses and remembers they're in the cafeteria "maybe we should talk about this somewhere more private..."

"...Yeah, probably. Don't want to make you late for your first day of classes, though." 

Larisa sighs, and turns to her brother, who is still hunched over his mostly-untouched plate. She reaches to take his hand. "Vanya, are you up for that silencing-spell of yours? It's fine if not..." 

Vanya shrugs and sings a few lines of something in Russian. He has a very good singing voice, though right now it's barely audible. 

The buzz of conversation from the rest of the cafeteria is suddenly oddly blurred and muted. 

"We can talk privately for a bit now," Larisa offers. "I - guess if you were willing to talk with him for longer at lunch, somewhere other than here, that would be great. But I can give you the basics now." 

(Having his sister talk about him like he's not there is an inevitable consequence of...refusing to engage with anyone...but Vanya still hates it and wishes she wouldn't.) 

"Alright," she turns to Vanya, "I don't know if you're up for explaining but if you are it would be good to hear from you. If you're not, I guess your sister can explain."

Vanya opens his mouth, and then closes it and curls into himself. He super cannot talk about this. He would really prefer no one ever talked about it ever again, but he knows Larisa is trying to help and it'll just upset her for no good reason if he yells at her to just LEAVE HIM ALONE. 

Larisa squeezes his hand. 

"What languages do you have?" she asks Ribo, quietly. "I'd feel better not, um, reminding him of it even more." 

Vanya ALSO wants this, but he still hates it when the others treat him like he's made of glass and might break if handled insufficiently gently. The fact that this is true only makes it worse. 

"It's fine," he mutters, thickly. 

"Mother and I were a bit isolated so I only have English, Mandarin and Lojban."

Larisa puts her arm around him. 

"I don't have the faintest idea what Lojban is, sorry, and we've both got Mandarin. Eh. So - last year there was a really big blowup between two of the India enclaves. I'm not going to say which because we've sort of all agreed it's best for it to be water under the bridge, you know... So I'll call them A and B. It started over something really stupid, but it - got really out of control. B poached a room from A - just shoved one of their juniors into the void. Trouble is, the dead kid had a twin brother, and he did not take it well in the slightest."

She hesitates, eyes resting on Ribo's face for a moment, before forging on. "And...he and Vanya were, um. Together. His main affinity was for - we called it emotional attunement, part of it was he could make paired artifacts to link two people, so they'd share emotions and a little bit of senses. He gave Vanya one, so he'd know if he were ever in a tight corner and needed rescuing -" 

And now she has to stop and swallow, hard, because she doesn't like reliving the story either. 

"Take all the time you need."

Larisa mostly just wants to get this over with. 

"Once he lost his brother, he - I guess he'd just been pushed too far? He...went maleficer. I think it wasn't the first time, but it was just a little, before, when he was a lot younger, and he'd reformed and quit it. But this time, he...he went after all the kids from the other enclave. All of them. The freshmen first. Just - one after another, broke into their rooms and drained the life out of them before they could fight back. Even took down one of the seniors and kept going. Then he - ran into a fight he couldn't win, I guess, but he messed up the girl pretty bad. After murdering the entire rest of her enclave. I don't think any of us thought she'd have a hope of graduating..." 

Larisa squeezes her eyes shut. "And Vanya experienced all of it. He went to try to, to stop him - but he wasn't in time, and then - the last fight nearly killed him, we think - we think he was draining mana from Vanya without even realizing it. We thought we were going to lose him. But - we traded off guarding him for almost a week - I took the nights, warded the hell out of his room and held off the mals - and eventually he woke up lucid. And he - he's gotten a lot better since then. I, I thought we could probably get him through to graduation, just - it's really hard..." 

"Do you, have flashbacks, that is, do you find yourself reliving that time and the associated feelings over and over again? If so it sounds like what's happening shares some similarity with PTSD and there are forms of therapy with very good results. The other thing that might help... if you still have both artifacts that made the link, is using them with someone you trust in small amounts and in a controlled environment."

Vanya unfreezes enough to give her a surprised look. 

"There's - a word for that?" he says, shakily and without making eye contact. 

Larisa squeezes him. 

"Yeah. That happens a lot. We don't have the artifacts," it is possible that this is because she instantly threw Vanya's into the void as soon as they put together what must have happened, "but - do you know how that kind of therapy works? Seems worth trying anything that might help, at this point." 

"PTSD is common among people who experience traumatic events. I expect it's something experienced by a significant fraction of Scholomance graduates. As for the therapy, I don't have formal training but the essence of it involves talking through the traumatizing events in a safe environment and working through the emotions so the memories feel safer and aren't at the forefront of your mind as often. For most people, it also involves working through any feelings of guilt they have. It's often the case that people blame themselves for what happened regardless of whether they had a chance to prevent them."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah– 

Having to talk about what happened, which implies having to THINK about what happened, sounds like the WORST THING IMAGINABLE and Vanya is now lowkey panicking about this. 

Larisa strokes his hair. "Hey. Shhh. It's okay. I'm right here." 

She looks back over at Ribo. Lowers her voice to scarcely above a whisper. "...Huh. Really? I - we mostly haven't talked about it at all, because - well, this happens." 

"Unfortunately, there isn't much therapy can do without talking about what happened. There are also drugs that can help somewhat, and as I said at the start I can cast a diagnostic spell that would let me recommend a specific drug."

"Hmm." Larisa is keeping an eye on the time, and aware that she is probably already doomed to be late to class, but at this point she's really not inclined to turn down any offers of help. "Um, I can spot you the mana for casting that spell right now, if you're willing?" 

Vanya is busy squeezing his eyes shut and pretending that he's not here. 

"Of course." She offers a gem studded bracelet, "So you can feel how much I have before I cast." then she whispers something in an unfamiliar language and then her eyes go distant as if she's looking at something that's not there for about twenty seconds. She also sags just a little. "Based on my analysis I think fluoxetine would work best for you. Any SSRI could work but probably not quite as well. You might also benefit from a mood stabilizer like  Lamotrigine. I'd recommend trying the SSRI first before combining them though." After she finishes talking she offers the bracelet again for a recharge.

"- Oh, good to know. I guess, uh, we'll try asking the school nurse if she has those? And - I need to go soon, but if you were up for keeping Vanya company for a bit...?" 

"Alright, I don't think it'll take me long to get to Mal Studies and I don't think the bell rang yet did it?"