Chapter Text
The cold touch of the iron bars of her cage. The impenetrable stone faces surrounding her. Her world was entirely composed of constants, each sunlit day splashing the same gradient of colors on her walls, glimpses of the routines of the free witches through the windows predictable and expected, everyone and everything pulled along by an individual, inviolable red thread of fate. Vanessa imagined hers was suspended upwards above her, invisible, reaching infinitely up towards and past the ceiling, so thickly knotted that not even the sharpest blade could hope to cut it.
Even the appearances made by her so-called mother were written down in the same script. The occasional admonishment and reminder of her powerlessness came in a familiar pattern. She even found herself reciting the same tired lines along with her, and by her twentieth year she realized it did not matter that she knew she was only playing a part cast for her from the beginning of time - when the universe wrote her story, and all the stories that led up to it. There was nothing she would ever be able to do.
Then one day, a black bull of a man evaporated part of the walls entrapping her. She could hardly believe - no, she could hardly forgive this intrusion, this blaspheme against the script of fate. That life could be unpredictable, that another could cause such a cascade of events to interrupt her story. The sunlight had never felt so cold.
Vanessa had demanded an answer from him, of what to do now that she no longer had a script to go off of. And he refused. He planted a seed of choice, and as bitter as it was to accept, it would fruit into despair, but also hope; hatred, but also love.
Vanessa would realize only later that she would prefer this variety above all else. Death would be a welcome guest so long as it was invited by her hand.
As she stumbled through the hole into a new life, she could not take her eyes off of the man who blazed the path ahead of her. Her eyes took in the glow of his skin, the light that shone on his back, streaming off the gnarled bundles of blood vessels and the pigmented skin outlining them, gray and blue and radiant.
For the rest of her life, she willed to follow that hot star that walked the earth, the sun on Yami’s back, tattooed by fate on a man who refused to believe in such a thing.
---
She was suffocating, drowning. The thick fibers of her vines, no longer hers to control, knotted and furled away from her, their thorns dark and threatening. This was the end. Always, Charlotte had tried to carry herself with the utmost discipline and poise, yet her curse promised her powers would rage out of her control when she turned eighteen. This was why she had never been able to turn to anyone, to trust anyone but herself - this was her burden, hers alone to tame.
But, here she was suspended in midair, every fiber of her being stretched thin, helpless, lost. Her nightmare had become her reality. Having placed trust in no one but herself, her inability to find a solution was squeezing the life out of her and her world. This was the end.
A flurry of air rushed past her, felt like it threatened to rip apart the skin of her face as a bundle of thick fibers above her suddenly split apart and were released by the cold steel of a sword. For a moment, only her disciplined instincts kicked in, and all she could think of was how shameful it was for her to appear so weak, so unsightly.
She was startled by the truths her savior spoke. Charlotte did not have to live in isolation, constantly on guard, holding herself up to the highest standard - of bearing the weight of her entire world on her shoulders alone. And here was the living proof - the vines around her unleashed their suffocating hold on her reality so that she might yet live another day thanks to her friend, her hero, her knight in battered, leather armor.
The shame Charlotte felt at the realization that somebody had forced their way into her heart paled in comparison to the vigor it renewed in her. She did not have to be alone. She could trust and maybe even open up her heart (just a little).
A hot sensation of uncoiling spread in the center of her chest, where a small tattoo of a rose bud unfurled, blood and magic rippling through the veins under her skin. It would only continue to grow with time, with experience, as she opened herself up to and stopped hiding from the truth.
Yami attributed the burning in his back to a rash Charlotte’s thorny vines must have given him, and failed to notice how the tattooed rays of sunshine burst forth from the circled sun on his back, spreading and elongating. They would lighten over time, the thin blood vessels becoming iridescent as he continued to live his life fully, for himself - for the friends he loved so dearly.
---
The first impression Nozel has of the Black Bull’s witch is indifferent, bordering on mild disgust. Were he a younger man, he would have blushed at her shameless, lively bosom and the lust in her eyes, but he is twenty-nine. The time for ogling women has passed. He will continue to judge them for belonging in the Black Bulls, though. He internally shudders at the mischief and lewd carnage Vanessa’s demeanor suggests she frequents in.
The second impression he makes is of shock, bordering on hatred. He learns of her magic power through regaled tales - that she is gifted with the ability to change her reality at the most impossible of moments. She has reversed death, guaranteed success when failure has already come to pass. He recoils, agony curling up his spine. Why did fate not shine upon his family so kindly? If he had even a fraction of her thread magic, could his mother have been saved? What could that woman have done to deserve such a blessing - the power of the gods.
The third impression Nozel forms is grateful, if not revering. His heart stutters in his chest, threatens to stop at the news of Noelle in peril - that his dearest sibling, the daughter that is not his own but that his mother entrusted him with almost disappeared from his life in an instant, just as his mother did. He understands that the Black Bulls - that the witch Vanessa can take care of and look after Noelle, his charge, better than he has been, can, or will be able to.
In the privacy of his quarters, his trembling knees bring him down to the cold flagstones where he weeps. He cries for his mother, but he also cries for himself, wonders how capable of a captain, of a brother he really is now that he knows he cannot hold up the world - was never able to - to begin with.
They have only met in passing once or twice. He is embarrassed to admit that he has never introduced himself to her, that he only learned her name from the muttering of the common folk who would debase her character for her appearance and loose attitude. Nozel cannot deny he is still disturbed by how she carries herself - how she can appear to live her life so freely, picking up and plucking social ties so that they may play a note in harmony with her own strings. She is the embodiment of music to him, something that Nozel has always failed to grasp - improvisational, beautiful, harmonic, ever-changing and ethereal. He envies her for this.
But they will meet in the halls, gazes sweeping past each other at the larger congregations and debriefings for the Magic Knights. He does not allow his eyes to linger, but he wishes that the warmth in Vanessa might someday be directed at him. He makes a mental note that he must strike up a conversation one day. So he can thank her for saving his sister. For saving him.
Vanessa hurts inside, though none are privy to the reason why. She knows Yami is not a match for her. That his generosity and off-brand gallantry were never private things he gifted to her. Her fierce pride in her captain never wavers, but she silently squishes down dreams of what it might be like to have his arms wrapped around hers - protective, loving.
But she does not allow that to dampen her spirits. Her family is as close-knit as ever, her powers newly awakened and invigorated with each call to arms. There is hope yet, so long as she can stay with the people she loves, fighting for her kingdom, her home, her family. And there is hope yet when there is no shortage of beautiful men to view in the halls, with locks of silver and eyes of steel. She idly wonders if Noelle would let her tag along if she ever happened to visit her quirky family.
The bird Vanessa carries blood-inked in the skin of her shoulder blade spreads its wings for the first time. She remembers a village matchmaker telling her the bird resembled the species of a dove known to mate forever. She had scoffed at the idea, and attributed the changing form to her new magic and renewed sense of purpose in life. She would not discover for a long time that a Magic Knight captain’s shoulder carried the reverse image of her dove.