Work Text:
Maria Campbell had a harsh, cruel life as a Light Mage. Her birth to her current state of being resided somewhere between ‘cruel and unusual’ and ‘childhood trauma’.
Her birth was a bastard’s birth. Her father was someone her mother had loved, this was without question nor doubt. Her father, though, held no love for her mother. He’d seduced her in a long game, played out over whole years; had known her mother even as a child. And he had coveted her since they were both eight and dreaming of being kings and knights and royalty.
He had taken her mother’s heart and slowly, carefully, in full view of her whole village – with no one lifting a single hand to do anything about it. anything! Not a person! – won her over to him. he had taken ten years of her mother’s life and tortured her slowly with visions of marriage and children and nobility. Bastard-born as he was, he was recognised as a minor lord of a minor house somewhere.
Her mother stood no chance, giving her whole self to this monster in human skin. And nine months later, as her mother was on the cusp of eighteen, Maria Campbell was born.
A bastard child by a bastard father that dropped both her and her mother in the nearest village without a word and vanished to never be seen again.
Maria didn’t hate much. She endured the abuse of her village and their rumours with a kind smile and stiff upper lip, head held higher than she knows they could ever dare to hold their own. She had endured beatings, ridicule, and violence, sabotage, and she could never hate the village that housed her and her mother; her poor, lonely, broken-hearted mother, the woman that took care of her until she no longer could.
Maria doesn’t hate much.
She hates nobility.
But she despises her father.
Maria has no idea how to feel about the quiet and sullen Katarina Claes, but the woman’s sudden kindness in helping her get used to the school’s scheduling and what is demanded of her by the nobility in terms of comportment makes her feel something warm and fuzzy.
It’s strange, she thinks. She doesn’t quite hate Katarina like she hates her noble friends.
She hates Geordo, his clear obsession a dangerous thing that grows by the second, his eyes darkening with unhinged thoughts and his mind clouded by deadly violence. She fears him, too, as much as she hates him and his need to be the spotlight of Katarina’s life.
She hates Mary, whose sexuality is on a display even her village whores would not touch. Those of the Red Light District in the nearby town showed better composition in their attempts at finding a customer than Mary did flirting with Katarina. And it was made worse by Katarina’s clear disinterest.
She hates Sophia, the bookworm albino using her shy exterior to her advantage, batting pretty eyes and swaying svelte hips to get her way when questioning doesn’t work. It almost impresses Maria, honestly, until she notices the girl has this dangerous glint in her eye whenever one of the other interferes with her flirtations. She reminds Maria of Geordo the most, and it sickens her.
She hates Keith, who sees everything she sees and has lingered around it longer than she has, but has done nothing to help his unknowing sister through what can only be described as the longest con in history.
They remind her of her father. And she despises her father. They play games with Katarina, tugging her heart this way and that and trying to gather all her attention for themselves and no one else. It has not escaped Maria’s notice that Katarina has no friends outside of her maid – who is several years older – and the nobles clinging to her every action. It makes Maria want to throw up, because she’s seeing miniature versions of her father fight and claw to gain the attention of a miniature version of her mother, only Katarina pays it no mind and that, in turn, leaves things more dangerous for herself.
She pities Katarina, more than anything else. She worries over her, she dotes on her, but she pities her more. She pities her ignorance, she pities her apathy, she pities her silence. And she loves her, too, though to a safer, healthier degree than the nobles do; Katarina is easy on the eyes, yes, but she is also wasting away in her own skin and willingly ignoring her slackening constitution. She exercises, though, and Maria knows the signs of depression; her own mother had it for almost a decade, so it is hardly laziness leading to her constitution being as it is. At least she tries.
Maria loves how Katarina fights to keep herself to herself even mired as she is in some unknown melancholy, and she adores the strength of will it must take to get up in the morning when she knows her own mother would have refused to get out of bed for anything.
And of course, Maria loves Katarina’s unexpectedly sweet kindness. How she will always speak up if a noble is abusive of power, how she will always ask her maid to gather things she has no need of, but Maria herself does. How she will always try to smile even if her severe expression ill suits one.
Maria hates nobles.
Maria despises her father.
And Maria pities and loves Katarina in equal measure, and vows to do anything she can to keep her safe from the snakes nipping her fingers and the jackals nipping her heels.
She readies the woven basket full of cakes and cookies of all kinds, locking eyes with the maid, Anne Shelley, and recognising the ally she has gained.
She smiles and laughs when it is desired, but plots and schemes with the maid when darkness falls and the nobles sleep.
“We need to help her. Those nobles…they’re not healthy for her,” says she.
“My Lady is not as ignorant to her plight as she would seem,” Anne retorts.
And with this new information, a plan is formed.