The core of Alison Hale's story really hinges on that classic ‘found family’ arc, but twisted with her constant, desperate need to protect them. She starts as this incredibly isolated, almost feral kid in 'The Iron Codex', surviving on sheer instinct and a deep-seated mistrust of everyone.
Her first real arc is about learning to lower those walls, letting the crew of the airship 'Whisper' in, which is beautifully painful because every act of trust feels like a physical risk to her. You see her clinging to old survival habits—hoarding food, sleeping with a knife—long after she's supposedly safe.
Then it pivots hard into a protector arc, but with a tragic flaw: she believes she's the only one who can protect them, which leads to her making unilateral, morally grey decisions. The ‘Coalridge Siege’ storyline where she nearly gets herself killed holding a bridge alone to give her friends time to escape is peak this—it’s not heroism, it’s a pathology. The later arcs question whether she’s actually become a liability to the very family she built.
That tension between her destructive independence and her yearning for connection is the engine of her entire journey. The art in the ‘Ghost in the Gears’ volume captures this perfectly, with her always drawn slightly apart from group shots, even in moments of celebration.