Content Warnings: So there's nothing graphic but this is a retelling of the original game, which means it contains all the warnings initially present in Fata; you know, mentions of abuse, death, sexual assault, trans/homophobia, etc. With one particularity which is parent on child incest/sexual assault.
There is a house that sits beyond a dark, dense forest.
Like the world fading into view after a dream, that old mansion appears before You.
The house lives in perpetuity — an amalgam of myriad fates and generations.
You keep walking, reaching for the mansion — the place where You knows You must return to, until finally Your consciousness collapses.
"—Mistress."
It is the sound of a masculine that wake You up. There is the pattering of rain from somewhere, and the sound of a crackling fire, but the voice is what truly pull You back to reality.
The first thing You see is a pair of profound red eyes — as shiny and deep as ruby.
"Oh… You have finally awoken."
It is a man standing in front of You.
A tall man clothed in a dark purple outfit, with long, long white braided hair, as pure as snow. It is a very handsome man, but his eyes are as cold as ice, as empty as the sky, and there are no emotion on his face.
No smile, no warmth, nothing but a vacant gaze. It feels like looking at a corpse.
The man presents himself as the Butler, and calls you Mistress. His mistress, though You have no recollections of it — and his emotionless face seems to vacillate a little at the realization of Your amnesia; only for a brief moment, though.
He quickly recovers, then take You by the hand — his hand is as cold as everything else about him — and starts to led You through the corridors of the house.
He wants You to recovers Your memories, and tell starts to tell You three stories for that. Three tragedies, led by three men, all of them ending in blood and tears and despair. All of them linked by a single Black-Haired Girl, her life getting ruined in every iterations.
The stories and the three men and the Black-Haired Girl means nothing to You; not even when he starts to tell You the last one, the one supposedly about You.
You quickly realizes that the words of the painting You met earlier were right; You are not this Black-Haired Girl, and this is a fake tale.
None of this brings any memories, and the only thing that stick to You is the Butler.
You wonder why does his hand hold Yours so tightly feel so familiar, why does it feels so sad — like something You have yearned for centuries.
And then You take the decision, that regardless of what the Butler says, regardless of the Fourth Door's lies, regardless of the wicked sweet whispers in Your head — You have to reach the truth about Your identity and his.
You have to reclaim Yourself.
He went out of the carriage with heavy legs.
The coachman had kept quiet during the entire ride, and he didn't even allowed a glance at him before departing.
Not a word for the damned, Michel supposed. It made sense. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't let himself resent this man and his entire situation all the more.
He trotted down towards the house — the one where he was supposed to live in now, his new home — until he reached a door, then cautiously risked himself inside. The whole place seemed completely abandoned, and pretty dim; though it was mostly because of the dark sky hovering over their heads. He stepped inside what looked like a chapel, a creepy feeling coursing through him. Common sense would be that he try calling out to see if anyone would answer, but some sort of paranoia that he would attract something undesirable prevented him to do so — thus he simply kept wandering around and stopped in front of a stained glass.
Of course that the thing that greeted him first here was a representation of the archangel sharing his name. He felt like God was laughing at him.
"Who's there?"
A woman's voice caught him by surprise, and a silhouette slowly showed up in front of the stained glass.
It was a beautiful young woman — probably a few years younger than him — with very long and deep black hair. She was wearing a sophisticated, elegant red and green dress; the expansive type that might only belong to a noble lady — but the most prominent of her features were her big, gorgeous jade eyes that shined in the dark, making her feel almost surreal, inhuman.
She looked at him with surprise at first, then suspicion; clearly not expecting anyone to show up here. But if she had no idea of who he was, he actually did know her identity fairly well.
"You are Lady Giselle, the third child and only daughter of the Bollinger family, are you not?" She blinked at him in shock upon hearing her name, but he didn't let her ask anything before he continued: "I'm Michel. I… I am here to ask you for hospitality."
The woman tilted her head curiously. "Hospitality?"
"I was… sent away from the city. I was working for your family then got banned after… a mistake, so they asked me to take care you of you as your servant from now on to atone."
He didn't felt like beating around the bush and hurriedly explained the situation. He knew his fate was currently weighting into this lady's hands and that a single word of hers could mean his death, but he couldn't help the provocative tone he took regardless. He simply hoped the anger and resentment he held within wasn't as obvious as he felt.
"Banned?" She repeated finally, after a while. "What mistake? Why?"
"The reason matter not," he retorted dryly. "Are you accepting me or not?"
Maybe he shouldn't have said that. He truly should be more cautious with his tongue, and he could already see himself out, but — to his surprise, the lady didn't seem to take offense at this disrespect.
Instead, she smiled.
It was the strangest, most mesmerizing and off-putting smile he'd ever seen.
"…Well, I don't really like servants, but… if you were sent by my family, then there is not much I can do, I suppose. If you want to stay, then stay; I would only ask of you to please stay out of my lane. I can take care of myself and I don't need a government to look after my every moves. However… I feel the need to tell you that this house is particular."
Michel already knew what she was about to say before she even hinted at it. He'd heard the rumors, after all; as silly as he thought they were.
"The witch," he said before she could.
Giselle Bollinger smiled again, almost as if amused by his guess. "Oh, so you've heard. That's right, there's a witch living here. A cursed one."
She was still smiling, but in that moment, he sensed… something cold, almost threatening, in her voice. It made him feel defensive, and he glared at her instinctively.
"That witch… is me."
Lady Giselle was a bit of an oddball for a supposed noblewoman. Unlike what she'd declared the first time they met, it wasn't so much she 'didn't like' servants but moreso that she just didn't need them; she was taking care of everything around the house, be it the chores, cooking or cleaning with much more talent and care that he ever could — whereas he tended to only make a mess of his tasks.
"You're not very good at your job, are you?" She asked him the other day in the library while cleaning up the disorder he'd started when he'd knocked down a handful of books on the ground. "I don't want to be mean, but how did you even got employed as a servant?"
That was actually a good question. Truthfully, Michel had never been a very good servant, and he'd even only been hired more by chance than because he had any real skill at it. It was kind of a miracle he'd been able to hold that job until… everything else happened.
Still, that wasn't the only reason why Lady Giselle was weird. She was very different from any of the aristocratic women Michel had known up until now, including her own mother Lady Lydie and sister-in-law Lady Aimée. For once, she was surprisingly friendly. She wasn't specifically trying to seek him out and most of the time they barely saw each other at all, but she could be pretty talkative, even when he made a point to try to avoid her as much as possible. She only addressed him as if he was an equal and not someone of inferior statue. And, more than everything, she was always smiling.
At first it didn't strike him as odd, but after a few days he felt there was… definitely something suspicious and uncanny with her attitude. She wasn't particularly cheerful or dynamic and her eyes could sometimes feel kind of cold, but her smile persisted regardless; like a mask that nothing could take away no matter what happened. To be honest, it not only felt disturbing but was also actively starting to get on his nerves. He was starting to wish he could tear that eternal smile off her face himself. His own hostility and distaste of her also wasn't something he tried to dissimulate either, especially given he still had no idea why her family had even exiled her alone to this far away mansion for ten whole years in the first place.
Michel had never heard of her at all back at the main house. Neither her mother, father, brothers or sister-in-law peeped a word about her, and the only time he'd even learned of her existence was in that damn letter he'd gotten in the carriage.
"If you hate it that much here you can just leave, you know," she'd finally declared after a week of tenuous conversations and suspicious glares.
Michel stared at her with a bitter and angry look. Of course he would have already left if he could. What, did she thought he wanted to stay in this withered mansion alone with her instead of being with his mother and sister?
"I can't."
"Then why not try to brighten up a bit? If we're going to stay together, then we might as well try to make it bearable."
There was a bit of a sharp tone in her voice. It sounded almost like a threat.
But at the time, he didn't want to think too much about it, and simply ignored the warning.
The knife in her hand felt heavy.
It weighted in her palm uncomfortably and crisped her skin, as if trying to remind her of the horrible thing she'd just done.
"No need to feel guilty. You didn't do anything wrong, my dear," the voice of the witch resounded in her head. "It was only natural to try to chase off that suspicious man who was only trying to get dirt on your family."
She wished she could just trust what Morgana was saying. She wished she could stop feeling this remorseful. But the doubt was eating at her; his reaction when she'd confronted him… didn't seem like the one of a culpable person. His clear, afraid red eyes had been the ones of an innocent.
And furthermore… the one who'd told her that servant was trying to ruin the family had been none other than her father. Had she really fallen so low that she would just believe anything this vile man said? After… all he'd done to her?
She couldn't get rid of the guilt, not even after days and weeks passed. And then one day, a group of villagers came to angrily knock down the mansion's front door — among them being the white-haired servant with the red eyes. She could hear Morgana's snickers and 'I told you so' before she even opened her mouth.
Or at least that was what she thought, but things didn't end up that way. She stepped outside and undertook Morgana's identity to chase them off; pretending that she was the one who'd cursed her former servant and rendered his hair and eyes of such an odd color, which seemed to be enough to get them to run away.
Then they were just the two of them, and she glared at him; wanted to shout, and tear out his hair, and hit his chest in a way she hadn't felt in a long, long time — back then, she used to be a very emotional person like that. She used to laugh whenever she felt like it, smile as brightly as she could, yell as loud as she wanted and run around her mansion's beautiful garden while her big brothers would either roll their eyes or cheers enthusiastically — but it all stopped very abruptly right after she fell in love.
At that point, laughing and smiling and yelling as much as she could slowly became diluted, forbidden, as that girl and that man eat away her very own sense of identity little by little — until in the end it all disappeared for good when she got banned away in that decrepit mansion a decade ago, for sole company a poisonous witch as lonely and broken as she was.
Giselle now was only a shadow of the cheerful and optimistic young girl she'd once been, so even with the raw anger and feeling of injustice building up inside her, she did not shout. She simply glared down at the white-haired servant, blamed him, accused him, with words as sharp as knives that she'd probably inherited from Morgana unconsciously.
It did not seem like the man was going to reply at first. He took all of her anger in stride without reactions — until he finally straightened up in front of her, and his red eyes crossed hers.
That stopped her.
The only thing in those was a deep, endless emptiness; one that made her heart froze. Those were eyes that meant nothing mattered to him anymore. Eyes like her own.
But she hadn't had the time to truly ponder about that he instead, at the complete opposite of his usual calm and emotionless disposition, started yelling.
He had the same eyes as hers, but unlike her, he could still shout.
"Oh, so you hate me? Fine, because I hate you too! I am not the one who asked to come here! Who would ever want to come to such a place?! You think you know everything, but you know absolutely nothing about me! I brought the villagers here, true — but I've never intended to try to rob you or try to find dirt on you! All of this, I'd only just— I'd just…"
Suddenly, it seemed like all of his strength left him, and he just looked defeated.
"All of this — Your father is the one who banned me because he deemed my— my body unfit! He abused me — tortured me, with a knife like yours — and shunned me and sent me here! And now it's somehow supposed to be my fault?!"
And then suddenly it hit her. Oh, right.
A lot of things seemed to make sense now, even as her brain struggled to put all the pieces of the puzzle into place.
Why could she only notice that his eyes were so much like hers only now?
Had she been so blinded by her own pain that she had just been utterly unable to notice in how much pain that man had been in, exactly like her?
Michel's eyes were not crying but they shined a whole lot, his features stretched in pain and anger, and he was just so emotional and seemed to be feeling so many things at once that she could barely stand to look at him.
A part of her wanted to run away. But she knew that if she ran now, then she would never know the truth and everything would be lost.
So instead, she let him calm down a little, and slowly extended her hand towards him.
"I… I feel there's been… a misunderstanding, between us. Can you… Can you explain everything to me since the start?"
He seemed wary of her. She couldn't blame him. But after a while, he took her hand, and then he did just as she asked.
He told her about how he was from a family of merchants, constituted of his mother and older sister. That he was born with this unusual white hair and red eyes, and that for that reason he'd always been… shunned by most everyone except his family. At some point, he took the decision to leave to not be a burden on them, and it was only thanks to his sister that he was able to find a job in a noble household as a servant — the Bollinger family household. However, things went bad here as well as her father Antonin also ended up rejecting, then abusing him brutally for his appearance. He couldn't leave because of how much he needed this job and that his family would have suffered from that, until he was ultimately banned to the mansion with her.
Some things did not add to his story. He kept bringing up his white hair and red eyes as to why he ended up shunned, but somehow she could not wrap her mind as to why it would be enough reason to get him banned over to a mansion with a cursed woman and not just fired. Still, she felt that trying to push the issue would be a bad idea right now, and it wasn't like she didn't have secrets of her own as well.
By the time he finished explaining what had happened at the village, she had to herself find some more detailed justification as to her presence at the mansion, and as she didn't feel like talking about it she simply brushed it away with how she'd refused a demand in marriage and the man tried to pass her off for a witch. Which wasn't entirely wrong. Things got a bit more complicated when Morgana decided to show up and make a mess of things, and it seemed that now Michel simply thought she was slightly insane and hearing voices, but it was still not to the point where he was completely put off by her, which was a huge progression on their relationship.
"So you're… fine with staying?"
Michel raised his head towards her, staring at her strangely. "Isn't that obvious?"
"I mean, you just told me you thought I was crazy, and I did chase you out and threatened to kill you before…"
He seemed to actually ponder that. And then, he looked over at her — and almost giving her a heart attack, he actually smiled. A slight smile, for a very brief time, but a real one nonetheless.
"That's true. But you apologized. So I think… we can try to make our stay together bearable at least, like you've said before."
She stared at him in amazement, stunned for a while… then finally she smiled back at him.
Giselle had smiled a lot at Michel since he'd first arrived, but it was the first one that was actually real.
She hoped he could tell it was as well.
"I think that one is a good choice. Look, it's a story about a knight's quest. I thought you loved adventure, Mistress?"
"I do! But I've already read it, and it was kind of boring."
"Harsh."
He chuckled slightly, then went back at looking through the library. They'd taken the habit of reading books together in front of the fireplace. Lady Giselle was only getting one new book every month, so at some point they'd started going through the ones she'd already read — she said she didn't mind revisiting some of them, especially when she wasn't revisiting them alone.
Things had radically changed since Michel came back to the mansion. It had been almost five months now since they met, and it was… kind of incredible how well they managed to get along now. Lady Giselle's smiles stopping feeling creepy and threatening, and it seemed that as the days went by some warmth was getting back to her green eyes originally so cold. He was beginning to feel that, little by little, he was getting a better picture of her as a person — of the real person she was before going back in isolation all by herself for ten years.
They joked around and laughed out loud and played games and talked about all kinds of things even deep into the night.
And so, he gradually realized, that she was a person he quite liked and was starting to consider a friend.
Michel never really had any friends. He'd been close to his sister and mother, but the others in the city tended to find him asocial, and after what happened when he'd turned fourteen, well… people had just been actively avoiding him. So the feeling of suddenly coming across someone he became fond of felt really exhilarating, especially after everything he'd been through. He wondered — hoped — that Lady Giselle felt the same as well.
"Then, how about this one? Oh… It's actually about flowers. Do you like flowers, Mistress?"
Lady Giselle stepped forward, leaning her head towards him. "Hmm… I do, actually. My favorites are roses — red roses. We had— ah, well, you must already know, but we had a big garden with roses in it back at the mansion. Georges and I would always love playing around here."
"Oh… well…"
Lady Giselle arched an eyebrow. "What is it?"
"Er… Well, I'm sorry to tell you this, but in fact your father… teared down that rose garden. Your brothers protested against it, but…"
She stared at him with surprise, and then a strange emotion seemed to cross her face. He couldn't tell if it was sadness or anger or something akin to it. Lady Giselle hadn't gone into details about what had happened exactly between her father and herself, but it was pretty clear their relationship was bad. Given Michel only knew the man as a cruel and cold person, it wasn't surprising. He didn't know much about her mother and brothers either, but she seemed to still really love them even after having been without contact with them for ten years.
Suddenly, Lady Giselle shook her and smiled back at him. "Well! It doesn't matter anymore. Let's start that book!"
She took him by the hand, and dragged him on the couch in front of the fireplace, as it was their habit now. He generally was the one doing the reading — Lady Giselle would do it in some occasion, but most of the time she just loved to sit next to him and listen to him speak with this strange, relaxed look on her face. She'd been surprised at first to learn that a merchant's son was able to read, until he explained to her it was thanks to his older sister who'd started seeing a noble boy and who'd then teach him, which was also how he'd been able to get employed at the Bollinger house to start with.
As he was reading, he suddenly felt a weight on his shoulder, and looking back he noticed that Lady Giselle had rested her head on him. Her jade eyes were focused on the book, her long black hair falling beautifully around her, and there was this gentle, content smile on her face; one that seemed to say that she wouldn't care even if the world ended right now — one he'd come to cherish a lot more than he was even aware.
And, all of a sudden, he suddenly realized that it felt like he… belonged. Here by her side, with her smile, was where he was at home.
So he looked at her, smiled as well, and kept on reading.
In that moment, the idea to try to find something to pay her back and just make her happy crossed his mind; maybe a gift could be a good idea.
Michel had woken her up in the middle of the night to drag her outside.
His red eyes were shining with excitement, and it was such an unusual, endearing expression to see him with that she couldn't bring herself to be annoyed by being unexpectedly taken out of her bed way too early. So she followed him without a protest and a smile of her own on her face, the two of them trotting down in the garden.
What he'd so wanted to show her, find out, was a rose. A single red rose, blooming in the middle of the withered garden, like a miracle bestowed in the middle of this dead house. Giselle couldn't help but stare at it with a shocked expression — in her ten long years of living here, it had been the first time she'd seen anything being able to grow out there. She'd tried at the very start, when she hadn't been as weary of everything yet, but it had all been in vain.
"It's a present," Michel told her, a little bashfully, his eyes unable to meet her own. "For, um… well. Everything you've done for me."
"…I… haven't done anything," was the only thing Giselle could mutter as her eyes didn't leave the flower.
"You did."
She lifted her head, and this time, Michel met her eyes without hesitation. Seeing him like this — white hair shining under the moonlight, staring straight at her with this profound gaze as if she was the only person in the world — suddenly made her heart beat faster in her chest and she looked away, blushing furiously.
That's not right, she told herself. I can't feel that way. I need to stop feeling that way. Remember what happened last time.
But then she leaned in towards him by instinct, put the rose in his hair, and one thing leading to another she simply found herself in the chapel drawing him while he posed in front of her — despite how terrible she'd always been to trying learning how to draw from Georges.
Her heart wouldn't stop beating in her chest the entire time, her head got dizzy and maybe the moonlight was too strong, which is why she didn't even notice when the confession slipped past her lips — the one she'd desperately held inside for quite some time — and she'd barely noticed either when Michel got closer and their lips almost touched.
Bad memories then flooded in — about that man, and that girl, about the interminable nights, about the screams and the knife and the scars — but before she could step away, Michel did it first for her.
He pushed her away. This was so surprising to her that she almost tumbled back on the ground. When he realized what he'd done, his face crumbled — but she couldn't bear staying to hear him utter a single excuse, so before her mind could even comprehend it, she ran. Morgana's laughters resounded in her head, and whether they were real or phantasmed, she couldn't tell.
She was such an idiot. Of course she'd been aware she was falling for him, pretty deeply even — but she had taken the decision to keep it locked inside. Nothing good could ever come from her acting on her feelings — has she not already learned her lesson? — and now there was no way to ever rectify this. Even Michel had rejected her.
Or that was what she thought, until his voice called out to her and he joined her back in her room.
"Mistress! Mistress, wait—" He stopped, hovered around her; his hand seemed to want to take hers but resisted by fear of scaring her off. She barely could meet his eyes. "Th-That wasn't… Listen, I love you. P-Please look at me— I truly do."
She did look at him; and unfortunately, his eyes were lying. He even seemed about to cry.
"…Then why…"
"I love you. But, there's…" He hesitated one last time, bit his lip; then finally shook his head and stared straight at her, as if he'd made up his mind. "There's… something… you need to know about me. About my body. I…" He sighed, an apologetic expression his face. "I… lied to you. About the reason of my exile."
For a moment, there was a pang of hurt in her chest at this admission; but it quickly vanished at how much he clearly he regretted having lied to her, and the truth was that this was something she already knew.
It had been obvious to her that it couldn't have been just the white hair and red eyes that costed Michel her father's wrath and disgust — and sure enough, he confirmed it to her in a timid, almost ashamed voice, as they sat on the bed and he started to narrated his story — it felt very similar to when he first came back to the mansion when they'd spoke in front of the fireplace, but there was something more fragile, more intimate to it.
So he told her all about how he hadn't been born… as a 'normal' boy. So much, in fact, that he'd been raised as a girl for a good part of his childhood, because of how his body didn't have traditionally masculine attributes. When his body completely changed with puberty and he came out as himself, his mother and sister had been surprised but still eventually adapted to it; however that hadn't been the case for most everyone around them, and bad rumors started to spread. In the end Michel simply decided to leave his family for everyone's best interests and start anew elsewhere, getting his job at the Bollinger's household. However the rumors ended up catching up to him there too after a while, mostly because of Giselle's own brother's wife Aimée — her name making shiver — until it reached her father, and the rest she already knew.
He stopped talking, then looked at her. Waited. She wasn't sure what he expected. For her to chase him off, maybe; to reject him. It was a silly fear, of course — Giselle certainly was surprised about that new information; had probably expected everything but this, but in the end that didn't change who Michel was to her and how much she loved him.
"It'd be better if you chased him off," Morgana whispered, as vicious as always. "Don't fool yourself. After all, even you decided to accept him now, what would happen then? Have you forgotten how much more dirtier than him you are?"
Maybe she was. Maybe she'd do better to not answer his feelings. Lie; hurt him; have them go on their separate ways. But in this moment, looking at him in the eyes when he was so open and vulnerable with her, she couldn't bring herself to lie—
"I love you too. Your body doesn't matter to me; you're the man I fell in love with all the same."
—for once, just this one time, she wanted to believe.
She just had the time to see the tears well up in his eyes before she hugged him, tightly against her, her fingers running in his long white hair, unusually let down and falling on his shoulders.
They spent the major party of the night talking, and he insisted on showing her his body and his scars, and as she traced his pale skin she decided that yes, this was the right choice.
That this was where she belonged, at his side; that she could trust him; that the rest of the world could be damned.
She kept on believing for the next beautiful weeks they spent together as lovers in the mansion…
Until everything went crumbling down and she didn't hesitate to lock him in that tower, throwing a prayer to the witch, as the spears pierced her body and her last breath left her.
He couldn't believe her.
He refused to. Of course he did. The story of the cursed noblewoman Giselle and of the Black-Haired Girl Michelle that had been branded a witch had been his truth for so long; and yet she suddenly showed up for him after a thousands years, right in front of his eyes, and slowly extirpated all of dark secrets with her slender fingers, cruelly and with kind eyes.
Why now?
In this moment, he might've hated her.
But now that they were here, they couldn't go back; and as such he had no choice but to recount the Butler's Tale.
The tale of the pact he'd passed with the cursed witch Morgana against the promise of bringing back the love of his life to him; the tale of him aimlessly wandering in a dead, abandoned mansion; of having to bear witness to the tragedies of a pair of flaxen-haired siblings divided by selfishness, of a bloodthirsty man who forced him into doing the most unspeakable of things, of a couple in love getting teared apart because of a husband's ego and foolishness.
Of seeing the woman he loved more than life itself forgetting him, being taken away and broken apart at the seams by men who didn't deserve her, again and again and again.
He'd resented all of them; the three men and the Black-Haired Girl who'd bore her name — until the pain finally broke his very identity and Morgana took care of erasing the rest, leaving only the Butler.
Her hand stayed in his the entire time. Never once did she let it go; tightening her grip at every step of his story. Her jade eyes glittered with overwhelming sympathy and remorse and sadness — so many rich emotions, the same ones he'd been able to bring back to her after a year of shared smiles and complicity.
He couldn't bear to look at them now.
"Why now?" He whined, almost yelled. "Why coming back now? It would've been better if you had never come back!"
It would've been better if he'd stayed the Butler, the witch. The reality of being Michel, a lost man hunting after a shadow from centuries ago, just hurt much more than the dream. He tried to free his hand, but she refused to let go.
"I'm sorry. I know I'm much too late now," she said, her gaze intense, her voice bleeding with compassion but firm, not letting his escape. "But I'm here now, and I love you, and I don't believe you truly believe that. I cannot just let you locked up in that mansion. We have to get out of here together!"
"And what makes you think I even want that? What makes you think I even still loves you?"
Her features softened in an odd way; one he couldn't put a word on it to describe.
"I know you do. I know a love strong enough to last a thousands years wouldn't disappear like that."
And he hated her again — because she was right.
She was right, and he hated it, because she was finally, finally here; and he was too broken for her anymore.
"It doens't matter if you're not the same Michel you were all those years ago; I still love you all the same. I said it before, remember? Regardless of your body, regardless how much you've been hurt, how much you've change. I'll stay by your side, no matter what. I will not abandon you anymore like I did then. So, please…"
She grabbed both of his hands this time, stared straight into his eyes.
"Come back to me, Michel."
There was no way he could ever say no to this.
She wrapped her arms around him, and for the first time in a thousands years, he was home.
She was such an idiot.
Of course there was no way Morgana would ever simply let them get out of the mansion like that. She was a witch, after all. And sure enough, she took Michel again away from her, let her run through the manor encountering each of the house's masters and forced her to live through the girl's entire atrocious life story.
But even, she still hadn't expected her to actually coerce her into facing her very own past.
Before she'd even realized it, she was back to her child self; a short-haired, bright-eyed little girl who'd spent all of her days running away from her too-strict mother while her brothers covered for her. Georges was often eager to help her out, Didier less so; but she knew they always would have her back regardless. Of course, she'd still get scolded badly whenever she returned, about how improper her behavior was and that a young lady should never behave this way, but that did not matter to her.
Giselle never liked her life as a noble. Sure, she was aware there was no comparison with the peasants or people of the slums who struggled to eat everyday — but she still felt like she was suffocating most of the time. She was never good enough for her mother Lydie who'd spent her time critiquing her, and could never do any of the things she truly wanted. Even her getaways in the city were short-lived, and as she grew older and her mother grew even more preoccupied with getting her married, things got even worse. Needless to say, she didn't have good relationship with her; and she didn't have a nicer one with her father either. Antonin was a man who was barely there, and when he was, the air would become so thick at home barely anyone could breathe. Her father never talked to her, and as she'd started growing up, he suddenly started throwing odd looks at her. Once he'd stopped, stared at her from head to toe, then commented:
"You're truly almost an adult now, already looking so much like your mother."
Then left her as abruptly as he came.
She did have a few other friends here and there, among some other noble families or that she'd made during her times away from the mansion, but it was hard to maintain those when she was barely allowed to leave her bedroom without her mother getting angry. So in the end, the ones she could really spent the most time with were her brothers.
This changed entirely when Aimée suddenly started living with them. She was Georges' fiancée; a beautiful girl, elegant and kind, perfect in every way. All of her family loved her, and Giselle of course was no exception. Maybe, she slowly started to realize, she loved her a bit too much. Aimée would spent so much time with her, even moreso than with Georges, so maybe it was only to be expected she'd end up falling for her. Of course Giselle realized in some way it'd be wrong, but that day when she'd pressed her lips to hers it just felt right at that moment. She certainly hadn't expected Aimée, usually so sweet and composed, to push her away and show utter disgust towards her because of this; hadn't expected the way she'd quickly told her mother and how it'd spread throughout the whole mansion, even within the servants.
Before she could even comprehend it, her parents panicked at the idea of how such obscene rumors would tarnish the family's name and she was brusquely locked up.
That was when her life turned to hell. If she'd just stayed locked up in her room it would've been one thing — but two torturers would come to see her regularly. Aimée, coming almost every day under the pretense of feeding her and instead only having sick games and torturing her in all sorts of games, and the second… her father. At first, she didn't understand why he was here; he acted oddly, looked at her a few times, glanced at the door as if hesitating. Then, finally, he cupped her cheek; repeated to her much she looked like her mother, and then her mind just blanked. She was so shocked that her own father would dare to do such a thing, touch her in such way, that she barely tried to put up a fight at all, that her brain couldn't even register what happened until long after.
She felt her identity, her sanity slowly sleeping away; the girl named 'Giselle Bollinger' getting nibbled away little by little. The days seemed to go by all on their own, and she couldn't make the difference; couldn't tell how long she'd been in there. She felt so betrayed by everyone, and resented all of them. That is, until her brothers came knocking to her door, dragging her out while telling her how her father now intended to kill her, and left her all alone in that mansion, with only the witch — the skeleton, the fallen girl she'd awaken thanks to her own hatred and resentment. The one she tried her best to ignore, to discard after meeting Michel, up until she begged for her help before getting killed by her brother and crucified.
The same girl who was talking down to her even now in that distorted dimension.
She couldn't fight her with words. She couldn't bear to hear them. Reliving her past had exhausted her; the idea that Michel of all people had been a witness to it terrified her. She'd wanted to tell him, but not— not like that. Morgana giggled, and Giselle was almost about to follow her words when his voice stopped her.
"Don't listen to her!"
Arms wrapped around her from behind; white hair sliding on her scarred, bloody skin. All of her being relaxed at his touch, even despite the hurt and the fear and the dread; as if he was just a natural part of her.
"Giselle, I love you. She's wrong — don't do as she says. I know that you're stronger than that."
"I-I'm not," she managed to stutter. "I'm really not…"
"You are," he whispered, tenderly, comfortingly, in a way that put balm to her shattered heart. "You're the strongest, kindest woman I know. You're the person who saved me. Remember what you told me? All those years and just earlier; you love me as a man regardless of my body, regardless of what might have twisted me in those thousands years."
"…I did…"
"I am the same. I'll always love you all the same. So please… don't let go my hand."
Fingers grabbed hers. And as their surroundings collapsed, lips brushed hers, finally shaing their first kiss in a thousands years in the cursed mansion.
When the house's landscape reconstructed around her, putting her on top of the tower's staircase, Michel's hand was still in hers, as promised.
So the two of them faced together the last door, and opened it.
The house was slowly vanishing.
All of its walls and furniture decomposed in little white dust; the floor getting lost away in the oblivion. Nothing of what had been her house and prison and the most important place of her life and death stayed.
It was bittersweet, in a way. She would miss it.
The Black-Haired Girl who had shared her name was gone, and Morgana had left as well.
Giselle hadn't been able to save the girl's body, too late for her as she and the three men stepped inside the tower; but she was able to save her soul. They'd wandered throughout the halls together, freeing everyone including her brothers, before finally letting go of the girl herself.
She was now all alone. But it was all right; she didn't feel lonely, or sad, or scared.
She knew he would come for her.
She'd wait as long as necessary, just as he had for her.
She kept believing — even when finally he showed himself, and they both departed into their next life.
She kept believing even when she couldn't remember anything — and she kept believing when she finally remembered everything.
Only when she saw his silhouette from afar, his long white hair tied in a ponytail floating in the wind — only when he turned around and their eyes crossed and she knew he remembered too — only when his arms where around her, that finally, finally she stopped believing, because she knew they both didn't need to wait anymore.
Notes: So! This prompt was actually the one that interested me the most when I first saw it; honestly, kudos to whoever came up with it cause I genuinely think it's genius. It's a concept that would deserve to be explored in a full-on multi-chapters fic (which someone else already did actually!) but for now that OS is all you'll got from me lol. I am conscious that this is way too long and that I should've probably just focused only in some small parts of their lives, but I just got carried away a little orz. Honestly I don't really like it; in the end it really just feel like a rushed rehearse of the original story but with some little differences, and I kind of dislike reading this kind of AU where it feels too close to the original… I wanted to highlight the difference in development this would cause for both Michel and Giselle, but at the same time this isn't a personality swap so I still wanted to preserve their behavior, but in the end the result is really mixed.
I've hesitated to switch Giselle and Michel's biggest issue/trauma as well; aka the sexual assault and the TransnessTM. Intersex trans lady Giselle would've actually been pretty cool ngl lol, but in the end I decided to keep it like that because I didn't feel like tackling such an idea in what was supposed to be a short OS. I also felt that Michel being a sexual assault survivor as an intersex trans man had too much bad connotations that I didn't feel comfortable writing about, especially when the original story specifically avoided doing that, and I certainly would've feel weird to make him cis. Though I just hope that as result the incest and Giselle's father here assaulting her didn't felt too out of the blue or random…
At first I also wrote it with the idea of switching them keeping their original family; so Giselle's mom and sister would've been nobles and Michel's brothers and co. would've been merchants. But I kind of liked the idea of Michel having an actual loving, nice family constituted of women for once (which also would explain more easily why he comes out to Giselle so early on unlike in canon), and Giselle as Didier and Georges' little sister is kind of funny. Not that they have much of an impact in this in the end, but still.
Oh yeah, I briefly thought about swapping Morgana and Jacopo's roles as well, because that's actually something I'd joked around once a long time ago with some mutuals lmao, but well it was a Gischel story and Jacopo and Morgs don't have much of a role here either so I decided against it.
