Chapter Text
The banquet hall was filled with music and the excited chattering from various royals from the Silva family and nobles with connections to the family, they were all milling around in each others’ company. A pleasant facade to hide the reality of it being an excuse to purely talk and deal with business related to the Silvas.
Noelle stood as stiff as a board off to the side, hoping she would magically gain the ability to sink into the floor in order to escape this whole ordeal.
Don’t get her wrong, Noelle did love social events, whether it was fancy balls or large banquets. It was wonderful to not worry about the cold glares of everyone around her once in a while, to sink into the background instead of being broadcasted to everyone’s critiques and the scalding spotlight of Silva's Disgraced Fool. To just relax with the music flowing freely in the background and with some delicious platters piled high with various food. Normally, they were great to finally see a spark of the outside of the stifling walls of the castle. Normally, being the key word.
This was not one of those events where she could get away with sinking into the ballroom’s shadows and go unnoticed. No, instead she constantly had to watch her words, posture, manners, and desperately avoid stepping on any of the invisible eggshells laid in front of her, even if it meant dealing with the other guests’ snide comments and the obvious disdain for her presence in the social circles of high society.
Multiple eyes followed her as she slinked along the ballroom’s walls. It was nauseating. Whispers followed her with every step she took. Noelle knew how their gazes looked like the back of her hand, she didn’t dare look back on any of them, less she wished for the last remains of her soul would wither and die. Fool. Disgrace. A shame. Failure. She had heard it all before. If only it wasn’t an event exclusively for the Silva family, then at least Mimosa or Leopold would have been here to keep her company. Even Mimosa’s eccentric older brother, Kirsch, would have been a welcomed presence by her.
Noelle could barely wait for when this banquet would come to end for the night and she then could finally crawl under the covers of her warm bed.
It was late into the evening when the banquet finally finished up.
A heavy sigh left Noelle as she walked through the castle’s halls on her already aching feet. She felt exhausted. Had been for a long time.
“Well, look who’s crawling along the halls like a rat.”
Noelle froze in her tracks. Solid. Her head snapped upwards to stare with wide eyes at Solid and Nebra at the end of the hall. Since when have they been there? Was she really that lost in her own head that she was caught this badly off guard? Noelle couldn’t afford for that to happen. She needed to come back to her senses, she couldn’t afford to be caught off guard less she wished for the vipers to sink their fangs in.
“What did you expect, brother,” sneered Nebra.
Her feet stood rooted to the ground. Of course Solid and Nebra just had to corner her in the halls of the castle after the event had come to an end. In hindsight maybe she should have expected it, her older siblings had not bothered turning her into a laughing stock at the banquet after all and lately they had made it a habit to belittle her together. Noelle knew she should leave before this turned sour and nasty, but her feet refused to listen.
"A good point, dear sister, after all that thing is just a dark stain on our family’s name," spat Solid, the venom practically dripping with his words.
Noelle was aware she was the family disappointment, a failure amongst her peers. Still… It hurt to be so coarsely reminded of it and have it thrown in her face. A pressure was building up behind her eyes.
Nebra giggled behind her hand as she voiced her agreement with Solid.
A stain. They weren’t wrong. Noelle had no way of denying the claim. It was simply a true fact, she knew it as well as the fact that her hair shared the trademark silver color, and yet despite sharing their blood she was treated as anything but. It was a harsh truth she got reminded of everyday by everyone around her. The youngest sibling and the one to have killed their mother. Yet unable to do anything right. A failure and the darkness that dared intrude in their bright light like the night.
The night.
Noelle froze as an image popped into her head. The image of a figure clad in a hooded cloak as dark as the night and a purple mask popped to mind. His words rang in her head.
They are a crew of the darkness, those who had been cast aside by fate, by the gods and by their own people.
Those bearing these dark hearts are drawn to each other, they often find each other and discover bonds stronger than steel in those like them.
...and they will gladly welcome those who are the same.
Noelle stood in the halls of her home, her siblings’ taunting fading into the background as she became lost in her own thoughts. Normally, she wouldn't dare to space out when near them, but her feet were rooted to the ground and her gaze glued to her sandaled feet.
The coaxing voice of the storyteller spilling his tales with an intense, warm, fondness and gentleness of the people in his stories enraptured her. The tales of the people with darkness in a world that shunned them lured her in.
Her heart was beating out of her rib cage.
She supposed… Surely, it wouldn't hurt to try to at least find them to ask? Right?
"What's with the quiet, have you gone and forgotten your basic manners as well?" sneered Solid.
Noelle blinked down at her feet. The words of the storyteller echoed in her ears.
They will tell bedtime stories of the shadows clad in darkness, seeking out kin bearing the same darkness in their hearts.
He took each one of these broken, chaotic hooligans and these odd varieties of living beings. He took each and everyone and brought them home.
He shall make sure that this would always be their home. He shall welcome every newcomer with the warmth of a heart’s fire.
"Oh my, it would seem she has. You really are a lost cause and utterly hopeless, Noelle," taunted Nebra, her sickly sweet giggling following her words. "A true burden on the Silva name."
The words of the stranger hidden behind a mask screamed in her head.
The latter version of the tale will tell you of the broken coward’s journey of learning to fight, and shed his own jello spine. Tell you of the night he met the men whose hearts were filled to the brim with the dark.
She grew to love them all as family. Our birdie was a little bird no longer, for she had grown. Grown to accept the darkness manifested in her heart, grown thanks to the people of her own kind.
The stories about the people who found a family in each other.
Noelle turned her head up and towards her siblings. Their eyes filled with hatred and mocking smiles. They had always bullied her so, and refused to acknowledge her. Why would that change? Why did she keep hoping that it would ever change? She couldn’t. Not as she was currently.
"...Don't worry,” her voice was quiet as she spoke, yet it was steadier than it had ever been in years. “Neither of you will have to worry about me again."
A small smile had formed on her own lips, while the smiles on her older siblings faded in what she could only assume to be anger. Probably at how their words were deemed ineffective, if she had to guess.
Enough. With that she turned and left, her feet hurriedly walking towards her own room at the far back of the castle.
She would- no, she was actively making this choice.
Noelle didn’t stop the march to her room, even as her heart clenched painfully tight in her chest, and not even as fat, bitter tears spilled down her face.
Throwing open the door, she walked in, her thoughts racing a thousand miles a minute. She slumped down once inside, leaning against her closed door. Her racing thoughts never stopped even for a second, even as her broken sobs echoed in the empty silence of her bedroom.
She wept. Her whole body shaking with the force of her sobs, things would never change, not here in the place that was supposed to be home. She cried over those she never would catch up to, and mourned at the realisation that they would never give her a chance to grasp their hands, always keeping their backs turned.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. But she had made a decision, one she would see through to the end.
Noelle would never stand with her family on the same pedestal, on equal grounds, a stranger and a stain in her own and only known home. So maybe… just maybe... the people from tales of dark nights could be the ones to morph her into someone deserving of one.
It would be a stupidly impulsive choice, but she was the one deciding not to become or be what her family believed her to be, to prove them wrong and force them to acknowledge that. To acknowledge her. She would be the one to take her fate into her own hands.