#The White-Haired Girl | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

connan-l · 2 years ago

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Meandering Souls - Day 3: Door 3 - In the Shadows

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationship: Giselle & The White-Haired Girl, Giselle/The White-Haired Girl

Summary: Until their souls cross path once more in the boundless sphere of fate.

Michelle tries to know more about the mysterious head maid of the manor.

[A collection of unrelated one-shots for the @fata10thanni prompts:

Day 1: Door 1 - Mirror

Day 2: Door 2 - Gardening and Botany

Day 3: Door 3 - In the Shadows]

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: So fun fact, I’ve actually been wanting to write a one-shot similar to this one focused on Door 3!Michelle and the Maid, so I actually struggled writing this one because I didn’t want to use much of my initials ideas I had for the OS lol.

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The first time she’d met her, her face had been one of utter despair.

It had been very brief, but Michelle had distinctly seen it and couldn’t manage to forget it; it was welded into her mind, carved into her eyes. Even Jacopo, not the most astute when it came to the feelings of others, had clearly noticed her stricken expression with the way she felt him tense to her side.

Michelle couldn’t wrap her mind around why. She’d never met the woman before, she was sure of it, and all she had done was smile at her and greet her in the most polite way she could.

Her shaken expression had quickly disappeared before her face went back to a neutral one, buried under a facade of placidity, but Michelle could still plainly see the shine of pain glinting in her beautiful jade eyes.

She kept replaying the scene in her mind — trying to find the slightest details that could explain such a reaction; what Michelle could have possibly done to wrong her this much, but nothing came.

The oddity about this woman didn’t stop there, though.

When she decided to ask more about her, Jacopo simply gave her a bewildered look, as if that was a ridiculous thing to want to know.

“She’s just a maid,” he said. “All I know is that she was here at the manor before I even came.”

He didn’t know where she came from, didn’t know who she’d worked for before — he didn’t even know her name, in fact. Michelle felt completely flabbergasted at this, and asked him how he could not even want to know such basic things about his own employees. He just shrugged.

“She is just a maid.”

Apparently, to Jacopo, as long as she was doing her job nothing else mattered — and doing her job, she was particularly good at it.

Not a single servant worked as efficiently and meticulously as her, and half the time, Michelle thought she almost looked like a marionette who was being manipulated by a puppeteer from the shadows.

Maria also shared Jacopo’s thoughts. When Michelle asked her about the head maid, she had just laughed and waved her hand in a dismissive way; “She’s just some creepy lady, leave her be.”

She probably should have headed their advices. The servants of the house were only employees, and there was no need for the masters to take an interest in their personal lives. Surely, if the woman had never said a word to anyone about herself, not even her name, then it was because she didn’t want to — and getting intrusive about it against her wish would be quite rude.

But somehow, Michelle couldn’t just leave her be.

She found herself oddly captivated by her.

Her eyes followed the Maid around whenever she caught sight of her in a corridor, or when she would come to serves tea. Whenever their gazes crossed, the woman would smile at her, but her face was blank, her eyes empty. It made Michelle’s heart aches.

This woman made her uncomfortable, but more than anything she made her sad.

She could tell, behind the walls of placidity she hid behind, that she was in a lot of pain — and, for a reason Michelle couldn’t explain, she felt that somehow this was her fault.

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She woke up in the middle of the night when a thunderous noise broke into her room.

Cold and water violently spread throughout the bedchambers, and Michelle looked around with surprise. She realized all of this was coming from the window, which had brutally opened upon the strength of the storm raging outside; the wind and rain were so powerful it had forcibly unlocked it and made the curtains wildly flapping around.

Michelle instantly stood up and ran to the window; her long white hair flying all around her, getting wet and sticking to her skin because of the rain. She tried to get it closed as quickly as she could, but the wind was so violent that her frail arms could barely manages to grasp each sides.

Suddenly, a firmer, stronger hand seized the window from behind her.

“Let it go, Madam. You are going to hurt yourself.”

Michelle jumped in surprised, inadvertently doing as she was told, and realizing the person who’d just spoken to her was the black-haired maid. She hadn’t even heard her enter her room, though she supposed it wasn’t that surprising given how noisy the tempest was.

Despite her surprise, she actually listened to her and stepped aside, while the Maid cleared off the curtains and bravely faced the animated window with unyielding hands. It took her only a couple of seconds before being able to close it tightly and put a bar to keep it that way, under Michelle’s impressed eyes.

“Wow, you’re a lot stronger than you look!” She couldn’t help but exclaim in awe, and then felt herself blushing a little because of how childish she sounded.

The Maid didn’t seem to mind as she put the curtains back in place, and then turned towards her. She silently scrutinized her in a way that made Michelle blush even more, so she looked away.

“U-Um…”

“At the risk of sounding rude, Madam… you are all wet and disheveled. I believe it would be preferable for you to change clothes and dry your hair before going back to bed.”

“H-Huh? Oh, right…!”

Michelle was, indeed, quite ‘wet and disheveled’ — and it was putting it mildly. Her nightgown was not exactly drenched but pretty humid, and her long hair was all soaked and messy around her face and shoulders, sticking to her frame. She must have looked quite awful. Thank goodness her husband wasn’t around to behold such a sight.

Before she could say any more, the other woman turned around, headed towards her wardrobe, and in a handful of seconds she was already handing her a new gown. She asked her if she needed any help putting the dress on, but Michelle quickly refused; even though she was used to servants helping her out since she was a child, she’d never liked letting others doing simple tasks for her like that. So the Maid let her do as she pleased, but stayed in the room while she undressed, only turning her back to her to give her some intimacy — which, for some reason, made Michelle’s stomach tie into knots. She didn’t know why, but the other woman’s presence somehow rendered her very anxious.

Once she was done, she smiled at her, almost about to say that everything was fine now and she could go, but then she noticed a comb in the woman’s hand.

“You might not let me help dress you, but please at least allow me to rearrange your hair a little.”

Michelle’s first instinct was to tell her it wasn’t necessary. She was going back to bed, after all — so her hair was going to end up a mess either way. But somehow she felt unable to open her mouth once her eyes crossed the Maid’s.

There was something odd, in her gaze. Something almost begging.Yearning.

Michelle’s lip trembled; she looked away, then nodded, unable to sustain the other’s eyes.

Soon she found herself sitting in front of her mirror as the Maid was slowly, gently combing her humid white hair. Michelle couldn’t help but vaguely ponder how strange of a situation this was; here she was, in the middle of the night, getting pampered by the unsettling nameless head maid of the mansion while a tempest was hollering outside.

A part of her almost felt like she was doing something taboo or forbidden, like cheating on her husband.

The Maid delicately threaded her fingers into the strands, as if making sure she wouldn’t forget a single knot, and the gesture was so tender that something in Michelle’s chest broke like glass.

She was handling her like something terribly precious; a treasured doll, a cherished daughter. A lover.

Somehow, somewhere, the whole thing felt upsettingly familiar. As she looked up into the mirror, she had a strange feeling of déjà vu; and in the light of a thunder, she thought she almost saw the silhouette of a younger version of herself, all dressed up in a beautiful, old-fashioned golden and white dress.

She blinked, and the vision was gone, but the hundreds contradictory feelings filling her chest and clogging up her throat stayed.

“You, um,” she tried — she needed to speak, to break the silence, otherwise she felt like she was going to suffocate. “—Uh, what, what are you doing here at this time? I mean, it’s so late… were you not sleeping?”

For a long time, the Maid stayed quiet, and Michelle almost thought she was not going to answer her.

“I never sleep,” she finally said. “So usually, I am doing rounds in the manor. But then I heard noises in your room, and I got worried.”

“O-Oh… Is that so?”

Admittedly, she did often look tired, with her skin almost as pale as Michelle’s and her big black circles under her eyes. Still, hearing her say she had been worried about her sounded… nice.

“I apologize if I worried you…”

“Don’t. I am only doing my duty.”

“I know… But still, thank you. Not a lot of people… have been very kind to me before.”

For a brief moment, Michelle felt the comb still in her hair; but by the time she got to lift her head and look at the other woman in the mirror, any trace of surprise or shock had disappeared and she was back to doing her task.

“I-I mean, my parents were very nice to me. And now, well… I have Maria. She told me we were friends.” She laughed a little. “I’ve never had any friends before, you know? I might have been… quite lonely in my previous home. And then, of course, there’s my husband—”

She was pretty sure she felt the comb stop yet again, but she was so caught up in her own feelings that she couldn’t bring herself to get distracted by it.

She wasn’t sure why she felt so talkative all of a sudden, opening up to this strange woman she knew nothing about.

But for as unsettling as she could — there was something about her… that felt weirdly comfortable, too.

“Well… he has been… acting a little strangely towards me lately. Like he’s… avoiding me…”

Her hands tightened on her on thighs, and she barely noticed the deep breath the Maid took from behind her.

“Would you… Would you have some advice to spare? I… I’m afraid of losing him, and… I mean, I’m sorry if that is rude of me, but I heard some of the servants gossip about you… maybe being married—”

Her question was brusquely cut by a vivid pain that made her shriek. Something — someone — had abruptly pulled on her hair, in such a brutal way that had unmistakably meant to hurt, and Michelle jumped from her chair and turned around.

The black-haired, green-eyed woman stood there, in front of her, but in the darkness she was unable to gauge her expression. Only her jade eyes were shining under the candle and the moonlight; something so deeply intense and full of resentment that Michelle’s throat and heart dried up instantly.

In the Maid’s right hand was dandling a few of her white strands that she had clearly torn up from her head.

They stared at each other in silence, and then Michelle felt something she’d never felt for this woman until now: fear. In this instant, for a brief, terrifying second, she was certain she was about to kill her; in some strange hallucination, she could almost feel her cold hands around her throat, pressing and pressing her trachea until nothing of her was left.

But the Maid did nothing of the sort. Instead, she lowered her hands, and the intensity of her eyes diminished until it was back to her normal, perfectly neutral stance.

“If you want advice,” she said, voice eerily cold. “Then I can give one. Do not trust in love too much, Madam.”

With some strength she didn’t know she possessed, Michelle was able to open up her mouth, even though the entirety of her body was trembling. Because she felt that the Maid was telling her what Maria had recently started rambling about; you’re too good for that guy. Leave him! With your looks, you’ll have no trouble finding a new one who’ll treat you like a princess!

“But I love him.”

She said it out loud, a little desperately, a little like a prayer.

The maid didn’t budge. Her expression was of stone.

“Sometimes, love is not worth it.”

And then she simply turned around, with the comb and the hair and the candle, closing the door behind her.

Michelle stood there, all alone, in the dark — and for some reason she couldn’t fathom, tears rolled down her face.

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snaileer · 19 days ago

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I’m a Size Medium, Thanks.

Danny is irritated. No actually he is beyond irritated. He is annoyed, he is frustrated, he is…. He’s really fricking irritated and can’t be bothered to remember any more of Jazz’s SAT words.

He continues his glare out the window as he searches for his straw with his mouth.

He just- where is it- thinks it’s a stupid fricking-stupid ass milkshake-he shouldn’t have to basically-gah! Danny snaps his head down to find his suddenly missing straw, only to successfully poke it directly into his eye.

“Ow! Fricken-“ He groans, throwing his head back, and putting his hands to his face, “Mother-tucker, Holy Taming of A Shrew!” He pounds his free hand not cradling his eye on the table, trying not to make more of a scene. Of course, this utterly fails because it immediately tips over his milkshake glass with a clatter as it spills onto his pants, making him jump up with enough force to knock the table over and drop the milkshake glass the rest of the way to the floor.

Danny stares at it with blurry vision and a watery eye. He sighs, “At least-“

The glass shatters.

Danny sighs again, deeper. “Of course.”

He looks up at the restaurant around him. Noticing the many, many people staring at him.

Wonderful.

Danny grimaces, “Sorry, I so didn’t mean for that to happen, uh-“ Danny reaches to straighten the table, fumbling for a second before it stands upright, he steps away from it, “If there’s any way I can help or.. like fix it. I can pay for the cup..” a server comes over to him, “if you want..?”

The server’s dead eyes don’t waver as they silently place a wet floor sign over the spilled milkshake.

“Thanks.”

“Uh huh.”

The server walks away, leaving Danny to sigh all on his own. He leans over to grab his backpack from the booth, checking it over for milkshake before slinging it on his back, thankfully clean.

He makes it one step forward before he feels the floor go out from under him. Ah gravity. His greatest enemy. This is karma for all those times he’s ignored it, isn’t it?

The wind is knocked out of him when his back slams to the floor, cushioned by the dulcet sounds of his bag crunching against broken glass.

He looks up at the wet floor sign.

The man on the yellow plastic mocks him.

Danny sighs.

He curses his stupid luck.

He curses this stupid city.

Then he curses himself because he knows any of this stupid city’s curses end up affecting him anyways.

Danny gets to his feet, ignoring the feeling of milkshake on his hands and his… everywhere.

He trudges out of the diner without looking back. At least he’d already paid for it.

He grimaces at the milkshake handprint on the door, trying to wipe it away with his shirt and only succeeding in making it worse.

Danny catches the eyes of the server inside, staring at him, eyes progressively more annoyed.

Danny puts his hands up in surrender and backs away.

Directly into a person. Only his milkshake covered self prevents him from being hit with anything more than the man’s scathing glare.

He puts his hands back up and moves away to dodge everybody else on the sidewalk. Along with the occasional ghost. Visible only to him of course.

By the time he has managed to escape the sidewalks into an alley, he is certain there is a trail of slightly sticky businessmen behind him.

Danny crouches to swing his backpack down in front of him and take stock. Okay, he could put his sweatshirt on over it… but it would also get ruined… damn it.

Danny looks around, checking every inch of the alley for cameras and then backing himself into a corner just to be safe. The flicker of intangibility is barely noticeable except for the wet squelch of milkshake remnants dropping to the alley floor. Lovely.

And of course, the flash of every single Gotham ghost in the area becoming visible and almost tangible for a split second. Also… lovely. There’s a couple startled shouts on the street.

Maybe an alleyway was not the best place for that.

Danny slides his sweatshirt on over his shirt to at least pretend like he was covering a mess and then shimmies out of the alley while trying to make as little contact with ghosts as possible.

He’s almost completely certain he looks crazy as all get out if the stare he gets from a passerby means anything.

Of course… now he’s left glaring across the street again.

He can feel the Infini-Map burning a hole in his backpack. It said this was the next place a natural portal would open and get him back home.

It just didn’t say… when that portal would open.

But of course, it’ll be right in the middle of somebody’s store. Usually not an issue. Except again, this stupid city’s curses are attracted to his energy, so of course the store couldn’t be literally ANYTHING ELSE!

Danny glares at the stupid fricking sign and the stupid predictable pun and the stupid neon hand in the front window waving at him.

‘The Claire Witch Project: psychic, medium, and Claire-voyant’

Danny is on day three of simultaneously avoiding the entire building while remaining close enough he can be there when the portal forms.

He is dirty, tired, and running out of money. In short, Danny is starting to lose hope on this endeavor.

The worst part?

He has the perfect solution.

There’s a pathetic little piece of printer paper taped to the inside of the window.

‘Help wanted’

When he’d first gotten here, Danny had followed the infini-map all the way to this horrific city, seen the sign, and turned a quick 180. He’d rather die again thanks.

He’d smacked into two billboards just coming into the city, and there was literally no stars, why would he want to stay here till the portal opened when he could just find another?

Except.. Danny’s eye twitches dangerously as he thinks back on it- except there wasn’t another portal. This was it. For the foreseeable future, he either caught this portal or was stranded for whoever knows how much longer.

Danny sighs again and dreads his continued existence. He looks both ways on the street, takes a step forward, nearly gets run over, steps back, and turns for the nearest crosswalk.

Fine. He could follow rules if it meant increasing his chances of leaving.

He tries to hold in the sigh this time, he really does, he swears.

Not the one before he opens the shop door though, that sigh deserved freedom from his trials. It joins the myriad of whispy translucent shades lingering in the store. Because of course there was just enough spiritual energy in here for them to be visible to him.

“Hey there!” A girl in loose fitting colorful clothing appears from behind a corner, “I’m Claire! How can I help your life journey today?” He can see the way her bulky crystal hair accessories sway with her movements. What was he getting into here again?

Danny tries to ignore the incense shoving itself up his nose as he speaks, “Hey, I was…” He was really doing this huh? “Hoping that the help wanted position is still available?”

The girl looks him over as she moves to the back of the checkout counter. The clear observation makes him nervous, and he takes his hands out of his pockets to try and look marginally more… candidate-able.

“You have experience?”

“Sure d-“ He wants to throw up in his own mouth, ancients this is so cringe, just let him die, “Sure do!” He says through choked back vomit and false cheer, “I’m a…” -barf- “I’m a medium.”

“Oh don’t worry about that, you don’t need a uniform, I don’t need your size silly!”

Danny blinks. What? Also. What?

“Wait-I’m hired?”

Claire pauses from getting something from under the counter, “Didn’t I already say that?”

“Uh…” Danny’s eyes dart around the shop, “No?”

“Oh well, you are, you have the right vibes, don’t worry,” she slides a few papers onto the glass counter, and Danny is abruptly, horrifically reminded he has no legal documents to speak of here. He thinks. He hasn’t actually checked.

Crap.

“Of course, most of my clients pay in cash, so I’ll pay you in cash too just to make it easier, and any crystal sales I’ll just add to it. Sound good?”

“Sure?” Oh no, is this gonna be Danny’s first real job? “But I don’t know anything about crystals. I have a goth friend but she’s not into that stuff.”

Claire waves his comment away, “Oh no worries, I can leave a packet.”

Danny nods, “Thank- wait, sorry. Leave?”

Claire laughs, pulling out a bag from behind her counter, “Yes I leave for a trip in two days. Family things you know,”

Danny feels like his brain is being scrambled, “Oh, what, what happened? Is everything okay?”

Claire looks at him, blinking wide, “What? Why would anything have happened?”

“Because… you said, you were leaving for-“

“Just don’t want to get caught in a bad position, you know how it is.”

Some of the shades stir in the air, their misty movements twitching with agitation enough to draw his eye for a second.

“Right. Well I’m glad I came when I did then,” Danny says, because he still doesn’t want to be rude.

Claire smiles at him.

Danny pats his hands against his sides awkwardly, trying not to look up at the movement of the shades intertwined with incense smoke at the ceiling.

There’s a little jingle behind him, which he belatedly realizes is the door when Claire moves to greet them before he can even turn around.

“Ms. Jives! Wonderful to see you! How’s the goldfish?”

Ms. Jives turns out to be a slightly older woman, maybe early seventies with a cane but she looks good. The coffee brown hair is almost certainly a dye job but it frames her wrinkled face well.

“Oh Jim is lovely dear, much better this way, I bought him a new plant just the other day, he just loves it.”

“Good, here for your reading right?”

“I am! But you can finish up with your customer first if you need,” Ms. Jives says. Claire waves her concern away.

“No need, this is Danny, I just hired him, he has a similar mystical connection.”

“Oh that’s lovely,” Ms. Jives says as she passes by him, “Would you like to come with dear? Claire is going to do a reading for me.”

Danny grimaces, “Sure.”

In the end, by the time Ms. Jives makes it slowly to the back room, Danny is trying to think of where he’s gonna sleep tonight. He mostly zones out when Claire dims the lights and starts talking nonsense.

All he heard was “something something card, something something magician something reversed something something balance something something chihuahua.”

Ok, maybe he wasn’t listening. But he was trying to focus on not staring at the movement of the shades, and the incense was mega strong and Claire had some weird ass music playing. He’s almost certain she’s faking everything. Down to the atrociously bright bead earrings.

Danny sags when she finishes, all too happy to leave the weird little curtain covered room.

He stands in the front awkwardly while Ms. Jives pays, twiddling with the various crystals and trying to figure which ones are actually y’know.. mystical or whatever.

Answer? Surprisingly most of them. That he could tell, at least, but it’s not like he actually knows how to sense that out on purpose. He’s pretty sure a couple of the heart shaped rose quartzes are complete duds but what does he care.

He’s thoroughly bored by the time Claire calls him back over. Apparently to tell him that he’ll do a reading tomorrow.

“Tomorrow?!” Danny blurts, “Don’t you want to like- I don’t know, make sure I can- or like.. I don’t know, but tomorrow?”

Claire just smiles at him, “I believe you can handle it, trust me.”

‘Trust you? Lady, I just met you and you’ve been nothing but crazy the whole time!’ Danny wants to say, instead, he keeps his mouth shut and nods with what he’s sure is fear in his eyes.

Then she’s pressing something into his hands and when he looks down it’s a key. A key. There’s no way-

“So be here 9am sharp, Danny! You can open up and I’ll come in later!” Claire starts pushing him towards the door, “And Mr. Wayne should be waiting for you when you get here!”

Danny turns around to catch himself in the doorframe, “Mr who will be what now!? Wait, Ms. Claire, Ma’am- why-!” He stops to lower his volume and ask politely, “Why am I doing this? You don’t even know me,” Danny says, one leg still in the store.

Claire smiles, “Because the universe told me to silly! See you tomorrow! Here’s my number!” Then she slaps a sticky note to his chest with enough finality that Danny takes a step back. The door closes with a click and ring of the bell inside.

Danny stares at the door with his eye twitching for at least a minute.

What the hell did ‘the universe told me to’ even mean, you kook!?

Danny sighs and looks down at the sticky note, quickly inputting the number in his phone before something happens to it.

He’s barely hit save when he finally steps away from the shop front and…. is immediately drenched to the bone.

Because apparently it’d been pouring rain and he simply hadn’t noticed from under the awning.

He watches as blue ink slides off the sticky note in little sad face streaks.

Danny sighs.