Details Details/Alya

this

**alma empática**

introduction

personality

history

minutiae

“**I empathise, but I don't sympathise. I feel, but I don't *feel*.**”

**Introduction**

**Name**

Natalia Valentina Torres
**Etymology**

▪ **Natalia** — Irish form of *Katherine*, which is from the Greek name Αικατερινη (*Aikaterine*).
▪ **Valentina** — Possibly derived from Gaelic *grán* meaning "grain" and it is often associated with *gráidh* "love".
▪ **Ó Cléirigh** — Means "descendant of the clerk" in Irish

**Nicknames**

Alya (family & close friends)
**Age**

29
**Birthday**

July 15
**Assigned sex**

Female
**Gender identity**

Female
**Orientations**

Bisexual/Biromantic
**Nationality**

Irish
**Ethnicity**

Irish
**Species**

Human [ Clairvoyant; clairsentience ]
**Marital status**

Alive / Single
**Face claim**

Sarah Bolger

**Personality**

Natalia is something of an enigma. As an empath, she is inhumanly sensitive to the emotions of other people around her. She never knew from which side of her family she got her powers from, but she essentially had no sort of training nor teachings about her capabilities. Everything was always trial and error for the girl ever since she was young. Because of that, Natalia doesn't know how to harness her powers nor does she know of her potentials. She doesn't know how to filter emotions of her own from other people and there are times when she would reflect others' emotions, leading her to be confused if what she's feeling at the moment was really her or just reflected from another person.
Despite that, Natalia has developed a sunny disposition. She likes helping people and making people, especially those she holds dear, as happy as she's able to. Natalia's pretty open to people as well, she's practically an open book. She technically doesn't keep secrets about herself, whatever important information she may have witheld (i.e her status as an empath) is just a product of "you didn't ask me so I didn't tell". But when it comes to the secrets of others, she's one of the safest vaults one can ask for. Others' secrets are safe with her.
The thing about Natalia is that no matter how kind she may be, it always goes down the drain whenever her survival is on the line. She genuinely likes helping people but to an extent. Natalia may be kind but she's not selfless to the core. Years of being in her biological parents' "care" has lead her to instinctively almost always choose 'flight' over 'fight'. This is why she hasn't told come out to her adoptive parents, she knew they would treat her differenty and maybe even throw her back to the streets.

**History**

Natalia Valentina Torres. She is the eldest of Karina Acevedo & Adrián Torres' five children but according to official papers, Karina only gave birth to four. Conclusion: Natalia Valentina Torres is adopted.
Nobody knows Natalia's real name nor her biological parents' names. She was just a small, starved girl found in a sack in the back of a pick-up truck by Katarina Torres. No adult was able to wheedle out some sort of backstory from Natalia, but she was willing to share to her ~~adoptive~~  siblings.
Her biological parents were poor. Very, very poor. She remembers her mother's face; tired, worn, bitter. She doesn't remember her father's, nor does she know his name. She knows she has siblings, but they were always kept from her. She remembers her mother's husband's face; angry and filled with hate. She remembers how they looked at her as if she was an abomination, something that should never have been born. Natalia supposes they were right. For one, she was proof of her mother's infidelity. For another, she was perceptive, too perceptive. She can time the exact moment someone's mood shifts, she can tell when a smile is trying to hide boiling fury, and she acts accordingly.
“Why battle darkness with darkness when you can chase it away with light?”
She runs from their house, a small, cramped, smelly place beneath a bridge, and climbs high to the busy street above. Then she waits. She waits for the anger, the hate, the bitterness to subside. Natalia knows those won't disappear, but she does know they shrink, and they shrink when she runs. No use threatening someone who isn't there.
Natalia goes back to her house, *she doesn't call it a home*, and no one greets her. A good sign, they've gone back to pretending she doesn't exist. The sun has set in the horizon. Once it rises again, it's another round of running from the flames. Amidst all of this, she smiles. She doesn't give them the satisfaction of breaking their biggest mistake.
Their fuses only last so long though. The next time she returned from the busy roads above, they were at the doorstep, waiting with a sack. They were unusually tranquil, almost glad.
“We found a way to finally get rid of you.”
She doesn't fight back, she wants to get away from here too.
Natalia doesn't know how long she had stayed curled up in that sack, but at least her parents were considerate enough to leave her some food and water *kindess wasn't a word suited for them*. But of course, it was only a matter of time before her situation becomes unbearable. She was only a child after all.
Found by a woman passing by just in time to hear her whimpers, Natalia likes to believe that being taken out from the darkness of the sack and into the bright light of Brazil symbolised a sort of "rebirth" for her.
Natalia decided she liked the woman holding her, the woman was overflowing with maternal love and worry. She knew the woman was asking her something, but Natalia couldn't understand her. Later on she would realise that it was because the woman was speaking an entire new language. From that point on, everything became too confusing for Natalia because of the sudden thrust into a new culture. The only way she was able to discern some things was through her unnatural perceptiveness. By piecing together whatever information she collected, Natalia was able to get the gist of everything; Katarina and her husband wanted to adopt her. Natalia saw this as the beginning of a newer, better life, so she agreed.
However, as years passed, it seems like her new parents weren't as perfect as she thought they were. Natalia saw how differently she was treated in contrast to her adoptive siblings. She was the only 'normal' one amongst them after all, something her parents often feel. But while Natalia couldn't stop her parents' treatment of her siblings, she did do her best to provide distractions whenever her parents' emotions spike dangerously, for both her parents and her siblings. She acts as a barrier between them. That was the least she could do, or so she makes herself think.
Now that they're in a new home in a whole new country, Natalia hopes that things will change for the better.

**Minutiae**

**Blood Status**

Half-Blood
**Boggart**

The car crash except Orla ends up dead as well
**Patronus/Animagus**

Honey badger / no Animagus
**Amortentia**

Sea breeze, lemon tarts, ink
**Exotic?**

Yes