Chapter Text
Stella Astros shone more brightly than any other Daywalker in the history of the sun, it was quickly agreed, and for whatever reason, she had decided to set her sights on Sunnyside’s hospital. She roamed amongst the nurses, volunteered at the blood drives (and at every other opportunity) and helped persuade her (rather influential) parents to donate large sums of money that greatly helped the Sunnyside Hospital’s funding.
No one was quite sure how, or why, or when it happened; all anyone knew was that by the time Commander Nexus Bright fell and his twenty-one-year-old son, Helios, who had been in the same battle, was rushed to the hospital in bad shape, it was Stella who entered his room after the worst was over.
“Want a look at your future leader?” grouched Helios, not bothering to open his eyes from where he lay in the hospital bed. His arm was in a sling, his leg in a cast, and he had bandages all along his sides.
Stella raised a brow, a basket of stickers and candy under her arm (she’d been visiting the Pediatric Wing). “Future leaders are elected,” she reminded him. “You’re just a favorite to win.”
As all the Brights had been - ever since their very first Commander had founded Sunnyside, centuries ago.
Helios cracked an eye open, surprised at the other Daywalker's bluntness. “I’m Helios Bright,” he introduced himself; Stella felt the name blaze to life along her wrist, where it had been written on her skin in invisible ink her entire life. A name that would only appear to Stella once she had met her soulmate, and they had introduced themselves to her.
“I’m Stella,” Stella curtsied. “Stella Astros.” On Helios’ skin, Stella’s name blazed to life.
One month later, it was official: Helios Bright had been elected the new Commander Bright of Sunnyside. Two months later, another announcement rocked Sunnyside: he was engaged to Stella Astros, whom nearly everyone in Sunnyside knew from their various trips to the hospital.
Soon, Stella - now Stella Bright - was visiting the hospital for a very different reason, smiling down at a swollen belly, one hand running over it before a slightly larger, more masculine hand, would encase hers. Her head would lift, and she would spot Helios, leaning down to kiss her - because that was who they were, alone in moments like these. When it was just their family.
They were just Stella and Helios.
Not the Commander of all of Sunnyside, and his wife, and their soon-to-be heir. Helios felt confident it was a boy, and Stella knew why: for the past several centuries, the firstborn Bright always had been a boy. Most of them had also been only children, including Helios. But she had a feeling about this one…an inkling at the back of her mind. She would smile a soft smile whenever Helios brought up the subject, because Stella had mother’s intuition…and her intuition was telling her that she would be having a daughter.
And soon, it came to fruition: Nova Bright was born on the sunniest day of the year, the spring solstice, six months after Shadyside had announced the birth of their heir: June 21st. There was not a cloud in the sky, and Stella smiled down at her daughter with joy in her eyes. She had her father’s blue eyes and blond hair (granted, they both had blond hair, but Stella’s was more of a dirty blonde where her father’s was golden) and clear blue eyes, just like Helios.
Her heart-shaped face, though, and her smile, and her nose - those were all Stella’s.
It did not faze Helios in the least that for the first time in centuries, the firstborn Bright was not a boy. He made the announcement like all other birth announcements had been made, without hesitation and without doubt. He planned his daughter’s training out for her like he would have planned his son’s, and Stella laughed, warning Helios not to put the carriage before the horse.
Nova grew, and in her mannerisms it became apparent that her attitude was completely her mother’s. She did everything with her entire being, her whole heart; and Stella was the same way, whilst Helios preferred to keep a part of himself guarded, as all Brights before him had done. As the bloodfruit shortage began to get more dire, and the vampire threat began to loom, Helios became more prone to frustration.
Stella began taking Nova to the hospital with her.
The staff were quickly endeared by Nova just like they were enamored with her mother, and they allowed her to play with some of the children in the Pediatrics Wing. One day, they passed the hallway no one wanted to go down, with dimmed lights and only one lone intern walking down the hallway.
“What’s down there?” Nova asked curiously at four years old, and then before Stella could stop her, she had torn out of her mother’s grip and taken off running.
“Nova!” Stella tried to call her back. “Nova, come back!”
Her cries fell on deaf ears, and Nova entered the Soulmate Wing. Almost immediately, she backed into her mother’s legs; Stella quickly picked her daughter up, holding her close. No one wanted to come into the Soulmate Wing; there were myths that the disease many people in it carried were contagious. Stella did not believe in those; for one thing, the people in the Soulmate Wing rarely suffered from a disease.
There was an elderly man in a soundproof room screaming in agony that Stella and her daughter could not hear; if Stella had to guess, his soulmate had died and he’d been left alive. His children, or some other relative, had probably put him in here so that someone would take care of him after the bond he’d had his entire life had snapped, or frayed, or…well, Stella didn’t know what it felt like.
In another room, a woman with a feral look in her eye was restrained, trapped to her hospital bed, and Stella quickly realized what had happened. It was rare, but it did happen sometimes: unrequited soulmate-ism, when someone was one person’s soulmate but, for whatever strange reason, it was not reciprocated.
In a third room, someone was clutching at their chest and howling in pain like they’d had their heart ripped out, and Stella sighed. This was the most common they saw in the Soulmate Wing, she would have to assume, because soulmates usually died together and unrequited soulmate-ism almost never happened. This person - for whatever reason - had been rejected by her soulmate, and while whoever her soulmate was would feel nothing, as they had instigated the rejection, this person would feel all of the devastation, the pain, the anger.
The Soulmate Wing had no visitors; no one wanted to see what had become of their friends, their family, who had been condemned to this part of the hospital. The staff were minimal; they did not have many patients, and almost no one wanted to work in the Soulmate Wing.
Stella left shakily, with Nova’s golden-haired head buried in her chest.
When Nova was eight, Stella found herself back in the hospital, this time receiving a diagnosis, a reason as to why she’d fainted in the middle of Nova’s gymnastics routine. It was not a good diagnosis, and Stella fought for two years, the final year almost completely from a hospital bed.
When she died at the hospital she had served at for so long, the Sunnyside Hospital changed its name. It was no longer just the Sunnyside Hospital.
It was the Stella Bright Memorial Hospital.
Violet Darkwood, Eldress of Shadyside, was infertile, completely unable to bear a child.
How could this be? she and her husband wondered on the way back to their fortress of a home, shared only with their servants and with her husband Vincent’s sister, Vanya Darkwood. No one knew of the diagnosis but the two of them and the doctor (sworn to secrecy) who had diagnosed her. Violet came from a prominent family that had always been able to reproduce exceptionally well (her mother had five siblings, for crying out loud).
And yet, after two years of trying and failing, they had decided to get a doctor’s opinion, and this was what the two vampires had walked away with. Long-dried streaks of tears could be visible on Violet’s tanned, now-frozen face. Elder Vincent Darkwood’s pale-toned jaw was clenched with anger for his wife, for their family.
It was Violet who began suggesting solutions.
“You could take a lover,” she said quietly. “No one would know it was not a legitimate child - ”
“I would know,” snarled Vincent sharply. “And you are my soulmate, I will not betray you like that - ”
“But it’s the Darkwood line, Vincent,” Violet pleaded. “We must find some way to help it continue. Perhaps your sister, Vanya?”
“Vanya does not have a soulmate,” Vincent reminded Violet. “Hers died before she could ever meet him.” Where the names of Daywalkers’ soulmates shone golden on their skin, and the names of vampires’ soulmates glowed crimson on theirs, when anyone’s soulmate died it was the same: their name faded to black and there was a sort of hollow, empty feeling inside that could never be replaced.
“But she could be a surrogate,” Violet attempted to convince Vincent.
“No,” Vincent shook his head decisively. “Any child I have will be mine and yours. And only mine and yours.”
And this was how Vincent happened upon the witch. She assured him she could easily take care of Violet’s infertility, but made it very clear that there would be a price to pay. Vincent told her he would pay it, a smile wide on his face.
Violet was less certain, but as the months passed and her stomach did indeed grow, and the doctors who examined it kept confirming that her child was healthy and strong, she became surer and surer. Perhaps this witch did have everything she’d been looking for.
Her son, Victor Darkwood, was born on December 21st, the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. It was an excellent omen for Shadyside.
And immediately after she had named her son, Violet’s own heartbeat faded, and she died where she lay, her child still in her now-limp arms. A midwife scooped Victor out, horrified, and everyone wondered what had happened: the birth had gone perfectly, Violet had been strong, Victor was strong; for a few moments everyone stared at Shadyside’s heir, as well, as though he too would fall limp and die.
The newborn simply gurgled, oblivious to the tragedy that had occurred.
Vincent knew exactly what had happened upon surveying the scene, and taking Victor with him, he went to confront the witch.
“I told you there would be a price to pay,” she told him, looking completely unsurprised to see the vampire there. “Tell me, what is your son’s name?”
“I told you I would pay it!” shouted Vincent. “Not my wife! You can do anything - bring her back! Bring her back!”
“It cannot be undone,” said the witch. “No one comes back from Death.”
“You killed her!”
“Or did you?” The witch’s gaze bored into Vincent Darkwood. “You set all this in motion. You were so insistent on having an heir born of hers and your own blood. And now you have your son.”
“Will you kill his soulmate, too?” snapped Vincent, a touch of madness coming into his eyes. “No, never mind that - you won’t touch him. You won’t ever go near my son.”
Before he died only a week later, succumbing to madness with every hour he lived that Violet, his soulmate, didn’t, Vincent had the village healer (who did so under threat of death) place a spell on Victor that would prevent him from finding his soulmate.
Vanya, the new Eldress after her brother’s death, was the first to realize the problem with this, the very first time she saw Victor trip and skin his knee and cry out in agony: Victor had no one who would subconsciously comfort him, no one to help take away the pain, to make it at least reasonable for the injury. He would feel everything, acutely and agonizingly, his soulmate unable to help. He was not safe, and he would not survive in Shadyside, not with the brewing war against Sunnyside.
She renovated a room in the dungeons for Victor, and kept him secured there from his eighth birthday, when he broke his arm and sobbed for hours and Vanya knew he could remain no longer in the outside world. His friends, Vera Nox and Vargas Nightshade, were more than welcome to visit Victor, but it was no longer safe for him in the outside world. It was too painful.
Unfortunately, Eldress Vanya underestimated her nephew’s determination. While he had a combination of his mother’s and father’s looks, Victor was just as strong-willed and stubborn as Vincent, with just as much compassion and empathy as his mother Violet. And more than anything, he had always wanted his freedom.
So one night when he was twelve, he managed to exit his cell - sorry, room - and sneak up and out, past the guards who were supposed to be making sure Victor didn’t do exactly that. His dungeon cell was not locked, but it was heavily guarded.
Victor had just managed to convince Vargas to spike those particular guards’ drinks with sleeping potion tonight.
He ran to Shadyside’s border, leapt through to the setting sun, and then ran, laughing through the neutral ground, until he tripped over his own feet, hit his head on a rock - that wasn’t there before - and fell down the cliffside, rolling until he came to a stop on a sunlit beach.
As he was so obviously a vampire, they brought him in for questioning, assuming he was simply unconscious and leaving him in a cell until he awakened. When he didn’t awaken, they thought perhaps he was attempting to trick him. When a full day had gone by, the medics were called, and they were informed that he was in a coma and how hadn’t they seen this earlier.
A week after Victor Darkwood (not that anyone knew that that was his name) arrived at the Stella Bright Memorial Hospital, he was transferred to the Soulmate Wing, as they had realized the reason he was in a coma was because pain affected him more than it did everyone else. When they’d looked into why, they had found the answer: someone had suppressed his soulmate connection, and only his soulmate could remedy that.