Chapter One: The Woman With The Purple Eyes & Sad Smile

Gauche Adalai had gone to town to spend his payday the way he always did: on Marie.

He didn't need, nor want, anything aside from the love and adoration of his sweet little sister. The only reason why payday even really mattered to him was because it was also the one day a month he got to see her. It would stand to reason that he should shower her with gifts to celebrate the special occasions, so paydays were just the best days to pick… if he had to pick one. Which he, very grudgingly, needed to do.

And this time, it would be perfect. He would make sure of it. He'd already done most of the work to make sure of things, in fact: Asta was out on a mission, so he didn't have go through the literally insane task of having to compete with the runt for Marie's loving attention during the precious little time he had with her. The old hag was still healing up after their fight with the Eye of The Midnight Sun. There was no one to keep him away from his beautiful little angel of a sister.

The fresh memories were almost enough to keep the day from being perfect… almost. Fortunately, with Marie's delicate little hand in his, there was absolutely nothing that could dull his shine. He'd gone straight to grab her from the church—even being positive that Asta was on a mission, it still wasn't enough to kill the paranoia that he'd show up to Marie being swung around by the meathead—and the two of them were on their way to the toy store. Marie's sweet little voice was like a song to him as she chattered on about the last month. Gauche had learned long ago how to filter things just a bit when his angel spoke to him; a church full of brats who got to spend every day with her, day in and day out, that didn't appreciate how lucky they were… it was enough to make Gauche violent.

"Big brother? Big brother, please, my hand!"

Gauche relaxed his hand immediately, looking down at Marie and feeling like he might die. "I'm so sorry, did I hurt you? Is your hand okay? Do you need—"

Marie's giggle cut him off and sent blood dripping down his chin in a steady stream from his nose. "It's okay, big brother," she said, looking up at him with those bright, warm honey eyes and a shining smile on her vibrant face. She slipped her little hand back into his and immediately went back to a story she was telling about visiting Sister Theresa, and Gauche slipped back into his haze of happiness. He didn't register anything but Marie, in fact, right up until they were inside the toy store, and she was suddenly tugging on his hand and pointing.

"Did you find something you like?" Gauche turned, expecting to see a toy that had caught his princess' eyes… and was startled to find a smiling woman, instead.

Now, Gauche had never had eyes for anyone but his sister. He was, in fact, very happy with the future that lay ahead of him: a future filled with showering his sister with anything and everything she could ever want and protecting her from any of the scum that would dare to come near her. He couldn't remember a time in his life where a woman, any woman, had ever been anything more than decidedly less-than. There was just no one like his Marie.

So when he met this woman's honey-coloured eyes, and took in her golden hair and radiant smile, Gauche was almost positive he'd died and gone to heaven. The only thing that could have brought him back down to earth—his sister—was still tugging on his hand and laughing excitedly.

"Isn't she pretty?" Marie was saying. It took Gauche a moment to understand that she was talking about the same woman that had knocked his consciousness clean out of his body. When he looked at Marie's face, she was beaming up at him in a way that made him need to press a handkerchief to his nose in a vain attempt to stop the gushing blood. Marie, barely noticing it after a lifetime of her brother's excessive nosebleeds, continued excitedly, "She's Marlin's sister!"

"Marco?" Gauche asked immediately, mopping the blood off his face and shoving the handkerchief back in his pocket. No matter how distracted he'd been for the second he'd turned, death itself couldn't distract him enough to not hone in on a boy's name coming from his pure little sister's mouth. It was bad enough that he had to deal with her saying Asta's name; he had no desire to add another name to the list he grudgingly had to allow because they made his sister happy.

Marie, oblivious to the sudden change in her brother, nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, Marlin, the new boy at the church! This is his sister!"

Gauche was never flustered. But there was something about this woman that made him…

"Hello," she said with a sweet smile, dipping her head a little in greeting. Gauche didn't know what it was—there was just something…

"Big brother!" Marie was saying excitedly, bouncing up and down. Vaguely, Gauche was aware that he was curiously… not jealous of the amount of attention his sweet Marie was giving this woman. Her eyes sparkling, Marie exclaimed, "Her name's Marie, too!"

And with that, little Marie let go of Gauche's hand and ran up to big Marie, who scooped her up with a laugh to hold on her hip. Even with the little girl almost half her size, Marie showed no sign of any sort of strain as she tapped Gauche's little sister lightly on the nose with a finger.

The world slowed down in that moment, and Gauche suddenly knew exactly why this woman—Marie—had caught his attention so thoroughly. The curly golden hair that fell around her shoulders, the vibrant smile on her face, even the simple pink dress she was wearing, and especially the bright purple eyes…

It was his sister. It was his precious little Marie… grown. Beautiful. Smiling at him.

Not his actual, child, blood sister.

"Hello," Marie pulled Gauche out of his mental stupor with a voice as sweet and smooth as velvet. She was still holding his little sister on her hip and seeing the two next to each other like that only shook Gauche even more. She… she could have been his sister's mother. A very, very young one, perhaps, but there was extremely little else that could be used offhand to explain the perfect sight he was seeing in front of him.

Since Gauche knew better than that, however, he was simply stunned into silence for another fraction of a second before shaking himself loose and holding a barely shaking hand out to the Marie he had just met. "Hello," he managed, his voice slightly strained. He coughed into his other hand lightly as she gripped his proffered hand lightly for a second before letting it go. Clearing his throat, Gauche tried again. "Hello, I'm my precious little Marie's doting older brother. My name's Gauche."

"Oh, I already know," Marie said sunnily. "Your little sister is such an angel; I've been so grateful that she's been so kind to my brother and me. We're new in town from a little village out in the Forsaken region, and…" This time it was her that seemed to be suddenly uncomfortable, her cheeks going pink as she cut herself off. With an awkward laugh she continued, her voice a little less carefree now, "Oh, I'm so sorry, no one needs to hear such a boring story, especially not a Magic Knight who is finally getting a day off to spend some time with his sister."

"Not at all," Gauche said immediately without thinking about it, and the look on his perfect little Marie's face as he said it would have made the impulse worth it… even if he didn't need the extra reassurance.

"Can we spend the day with her, too, big brother?" Marie asked excitedly, her thin arms wrapped around big Marie's shoulders. Gauche was almost taken aback at the fact that he didn't care that his Marie—his little sister that was too good for anyone or anything—was clinging to someone that wasn't him. In fact, it didn't do him any good at all to pretend that he didn't want to touch the woman in front of him, too… at least a little bit.

"Of course we can," Gauche smiled at his sister before looking at big Marie's face. "We were going to get some food after this. Would you like to come with us?"

Marie's face wavered; it was quick, but Gauche had much sharper sight than most. "Well…" she trailed off, her eyes darting down to the ground as she seemed to think. His little sister had just begun to bounce on her hip, in fact, chattering excitedly about how much fun they would have together when a loud slamming shook the store. Gauche barely noticed it… until it became clear that the reason behind it was the shop keeper slamming his office door, and he was stomping up to them after doing so. Gauche was more than accustomed to the man tripping over himself to get over to him and his sister… he was not, however, used to the look of fury on his face. Before Gauche had any time to get confused about the matter, however, the shopkeeper had shoved his face inches away from Marie's. She barely had the time to quickly place little Marie back on the ground so she could run to hide behind her brother's legs, fear written all over her face.

"I told you to get out of here!" The shopkeeper was screaming so loudly that the entire store—except for Gauche, his little sister, and the woman the man was shouting at—emptied immediately. No one else needed to be asked to go. The sudden evacuation of his shop only seemed to make the man more furious as he continued, spit flying all over the young woman's face, "We have no work for the likes of common outskirts trash like you, and I won't have you scaring off all my customers and harassing my best one!"

Marie wasn't particularly short, from what Gauche could tell, so it seemed rather obvious when she seemed to shrink in the face of the man's rage. "P-please—" she started, but the shopkeeper cut her off immediately.

"No! GET! OUT!"

"That's enough." Gauche's hand was on the man's shoulder before he could even think about what he was doing, but once he realized it, he wasn't sorry. Squeezing until he saw the shopkeeper wince, Gauche continued, "She's here with me. And we're leaving."

The shopkeeper looked at Gauche with wide eyes and blanched. "H-her?" he sputtered. His face was quickly going from bright red to a sickly shade of grey green. "Sir, she—"

"Did I ask you to say anything?" Gauche snapped, and the shopkeeper clamped his mouth shut immediately. Grabbing his sister's hand with his left hand and big Marie's hand with his right, he pulled them both out of the shop, calling back over his shoulder, "Just be grateful my angel of a sister is too pure to see your blood all over the floor."

"I… I don't know how to thank you."

The trio was sitting outside of a café across town, and even with his sweet little sister sitting in his lap and happily eating some ice cream, Gauche still could shake neither the rage at what had just happened nor the concern for the woman who hadn't made eye contact with him since it all had gone down. Those were, in fact, the first words she had spoken since Gauche had pulled her away from the toy shop.

"You have nothing to thank me for. I'm a Magic Knight, remember? That's what we're supposed to do." The words felt so weird coming out of his mouth, but the small smile that came to Marie's face made the uncharacteristic moment worth it. "Besides, my angel sister obviously likes you."

"Yeah!" Marie piped up, beaming up at the woman sitting across from them. Even if she didn't necessarily see the smile, big Marie's face seemed to soften into something that was… almost a smile.

"See?" Gauche wrapped both arms around his sister's tiny waist and squeezed until she giggled and asked him to stop. "I can't let anyone make my Marie sad, and that means I couldn't just let some asshole be terrible to you."

The bare trace of a smile that had been on her face vanished immediately at his words. Before Gauche could really process just how disappointed that made him, however, big Marie was saying softly, "No, he was right. I shouldn't have been in there; he had already told me that he didn't have any work for me." With clear effort, Marie brought her eyes up to meet, not Gauche's, but his little sister's. "I'm sorry that I scared you, sweetie. I promise to never put you in such a terrible position again."

"Why would you say that?" It came out far more harshly than he meant it to, and the immediate guilt Gauche felt when he saw the woman flinch away from him made him take a breath before trying again. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be… mean about it. I just don't understand why you think what happened back there was your fault. Even if he didn't have work for you, you have a right to be in the store. Wasn't there something in your hands when we first got there?" Now that he'd said it, Gauche knew it was true, too. He hadn't seen exactly what it was, and she must have put it down before picking his sister up, but he was certain that Marie had been looking at something before he and his sister had gotten there. "You weren't even there to look for work, were you?"

Marie laughed awkwardly, her hand going to the pendant at her throat to clutch at anxiously. "Oh, it was silly, anyway. My brother's birthday is just coming up, so I… I was going to see if there was any way I could maybe work out a payment plan of some sort so the shop would hold a gift for me until I could pay it off." With another awkward laugh and a pained looking smile on her face, Marie added, "It was a silly thought, obviously I shouldn't have expected any sort of special treatment."

Gauche didn't know what to say. What he did know was that he'd had trips to that store where he'd spent every coin he had and then assured that half of whatever they'd be getting over the next month would be held exclusively for him. He'd never even needed to pay any form of downpayment.

Gauche's hands, clasped together in front of his sister to hold her steady, clenched painfully together. It wasn't like he of all people needed to be told that money and status ran the world; it had just been a long time since he'd had to face the truth so uncomfortably himself. How long had it been since Captain Yami had pulled him out of the literal dirt and given him a Black Bulls robe to pull on instead of his prison uniform?

"You don't deserve to be talked to like that." Gauche was startled out of his thoughts by the very decisive tone of his little sister. She had forgone her ice cream and was looking intently at the woman sitting across from them who still hadn't brought her eyes back up to meet either of them. "That was really mean and you're so nice. People shouldn't be mean to you."

"My sister's right. If you want, I'm more than happy to make sure it never happens again." Gauche had meant it as a joke, but when she finally brought her eyes up to meet his, huge and surprised, he realized that he wasn't joking. If she wanted him to, he would make sure the shopkeeper who'd spoken so awfully to her, and scared his little sister so badly, would never speak like that to anyone ever again. If the man was lucky, he'd still be able to say anything at all by the end of it.

"You're being so nice to me," big Marie said quietly, her eyes dipping back down to the hands folded in her lap. "I can't thank you enough for handling that situation for me. I would never expect anything else from you, I'm a total stranger and I've already taken up too much of your time. You and Marie should go and enjoy the day, it's beautiful and I know the last time you got to see her was… challenging."

"No," Gauche said immediately, then stopped short, unsure of what to say next. Fortunately, his perfect little sister didn't need any extra prompting.

"You should come with us!" Marie was bouncing up and down, the last of her ice cream totally forgotten as she clapped her little hands. "Spend the day with us! She can, right, big brother? She can come, right?"

Gauche, for the first time in his entire life, actually smiled at the idea of sharing the time he had with his little sister with another living thing. "Of course she can, my sweet little sister," he answered. With a smile across the table, he added, "You see? Marie obviously wants you to come with us, and I can't let her be disappointed. Besides, it would make me doubly lucky to be with two Maries instead of one."

At that, the woman across from him laughed, and it seemed to soften every feature on her beautiful face. Gauche felt his heart lurch when her sunny eyes finally met his, a soft smile on her face. "If…" she said quietly, her tone hesitant. "If you're sure. I don't… I would love to spend some time with you both if you wouldn't mind, I'm sure that would be wonderful."

Gauche couldn't help the smile that spread immediately across his entire face, especially when Marie squealed in joy.

"Oh," big Marie added almost as an afterthought, her expression sheepish when she looked at him. "I've been so rude that I haven't even introduced myself properly yet. I'm Marie, but my full name is Mariela. It might make things a bit less complicated to know if we'll be spending the day together."

Gauche blinked, a bit surprised that he wasn't more disappointed that her name didn't match his little sisters exactly. What surprised him even more, however, was the fact that he was grateful for it. She was right—it would make things less complicated. Especially if they were going to be spending the amount of time together that Gauche was beginning to hope they would be after today.