#gischelweek2022

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationship: Michel Bollinger/Giselle

Summary: So that he could keep on holding her hand for more than a millenium.

Michel Bollinger’s life is a very normal and boring one, except for his recurrent dreams of a maid with dead eyes he tries desperately to run away from.

Content Warning: Much like in Ending 2, there’s a suicide attempt at the end, but it’s only described very vaguely.

[@gischelweek Collections of unrelated one-shots for the Gischel Week prompts:

Day 1: Wedding Day

Day 2: Cooking/Baking Together

Day 3: Roleswap

Day 4: At the beach

Day 5: Proposal

Day 6: Bad End

Day 7: Domestic Family]

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: My favorite FataMoru bad endings are Ending 3 and Ending 5, so I was thinking about writing something about these at first, but in the end I decided to go with Ending 2 because I actually want to write something more detailed about these with fics on their own rather than as a one-shot prompt week. As a result I wasn’t super inspired by it though, so I hope it still feel satisfying enough lol.

I know in canon post-true ending, Michel’s modern family is completely different from his original one in the Middle Ages, but given in Ending 2 he didn’t get to come to terms with his past or with his brothers I thought it’d be interesting if he were to reincarnate with the same parents and siblings this time around (with maybe the exception of his brothers being a bit more supportive this time, especially Georges because of his former guilt?) Well, at least that’s how I wrote it here.

So anyway, this thus takes place during Ending 2, with spoilers for the entire main game.

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She is smiling.

The woman in his dream is always smiling.

She has very long braided black hair, surreal jade eyes, an old-fashion maid outfit — her hand is as cold as marble and she looks like a corpse, but she is always, perpetually smiling, like a picture, a statue stuck in place, forbidden to move with the flow of time.

Her grasp on him feel desperate, holding onto him so hard as if she’s afraid he’s going to slip away from her.

It had terrified him back then, but now, whenever he thinks about it, it only breaks his heart.

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He wakes up at the sound of his phone blaring next to his ears.

Every morning, he tells himself he really needs to change this awful alarm, and every time he forget to do it until it twists his eardrums all over again.

With difficulty, he rose from his bed, his hair getting all over his face — here, too, he often thinks about how he should just cut them off, but never end up doing it.

Maybe this is just his life’s philosophy at this point, honestly — thinking about how he should do stuff but then never doing them.

He has two missing calls from Georges on his phone, with whom he’s supposed to meet up with later on, but decides to ignores them and instead leisurely step inside his messy apartment’s bathroom.

He already knows he’s going to be late anyway — no need to hurry.

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Michel Bollinger’s life was a fairly normal one.

He was an engineer working for a company, lived in a small apartment in Paris, was single, didn’t really have any close friends but got along well with his coworkers and neighbors. He cut ties and was disinherited by his wealthy family when he was a teenager mostly because of his change in identity, and didn’t have any contact with them anymore with the exception of his brothers from times to times — but besides that, there was nothing much exceptional about him.

Michel Bollinger’s life was fine. Kind of boring, maybe, but it was not a bad life. His parents were shitty, but things have been better for his sanity since he stopped interacting with them — it could be worse.

He was a bit lonely, sometimes, but he just had to focus on his job and then it didn’t bother him that much.

Yes, his life was fine — or it should be, if it wasn’t for the deep emptiness he constantly felt afflicted with, and the absurd, surreal dreams he frequently woke up from.

He’s had those since he was a small child. They didn’t make much sense, and well, they’re dreams, right? It would be silly to try to get any meaning out of them either way.

That’s what he’d tell himself generally, but sometimes they’d just get a bit too vivid for his tastes, plaguing and infesting his mind like a leech, and he simply couldn’t get rid of them.

The most recurring one was when he’d find himself in a mansion. An old, ephemeral, decrepit mansion, in which he would wander around, all alone — until a maid would take him by the hand and they would wander together. When her hand grasped his, his heart instantly started aching — followed by a deep fear taking root in his heart.

But then sometimes he dreamed of a voice as sweet as honey and as sharp as a knife, of a white-haired girl, of a pair of siblings with golden hair, of a beast covered in blood or of a tanned businessman with arrogant eyes.

Sometimes the maid’s appearance would get blurry, and instead she reshaped into a young woman with short hair and a radiant smile.

Every times she appeared, something bloomed in his heart.

“Master,” she would say, and she would smile, and there was so much love in that smile that he wanted to cry.

He wanted to say her name.

But he can’t, and then he woke up, and he was back to his boring, normal, empty life.

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Michel sighed as he looked at his phone for the ninth times while sitting at a table in a café. It was almost six in the afternoon and Georges still wasn’t there.

They’d agreed to meet at five, and his idiot brother didn’t even bother to send him a text to apologize for being late. He should be used to it by now, but somehow he’s not. Michel doesn’t even know why he hasn’t left the café yet, or why he even accepted the offer at all. They rarely see each other anymore these days, and they are definitely not as close as when they were kids. Michel couldn’t even remember the last time he saw Didier.

It’s not as if he dislikes his brothers — in fact, he does love and owes them a whole lot. Unlike his parents, they’d come to accept him for who he was, and with the fallout he had with the family he would’ve been on the street with nothing if it had not been for Georges and Didier helping him out and finding him a place to stay at. But their relationship still became… a bit strained after all of this, and even when he could tell they tried to make an effort, there was like an invisible wall erected between them. Maybe some things were just irreparably damaged no matter how much you wanted or tried to fix them.

It was about fifteen minutes later that a man with dark wavy hair and an awkward smile burst inside the place and fell in the chair in front of Michel, grinning like a dumbass. He didn’t even have the decency to look sorry.

“Yo, Michel! You won’t believe what I got caught up into!”

“You’re probably right, and I’m also not interested in—”

“Now lemme tell ya, it was craaazy stuff! So y’see, I was in the street an’ that grandma walkin’ her dog—”

Michel sighed, knowing he had no choice but to have to hear Georges’ rambling until the end now. As usual with him, his story was utterly ridiculous, and only when he finally finished half an hour later did they start actually catching up with each other.

“Honestly, I never understood your career path,” Georges let out after inquiring about how his job was doing. “You should… I dunno, choose somethin’ more fun!”

“I’m not working to have fun, Georges,” Michel deadpanned.

The other man shrugged. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re boring.”

“At least I’m not the one who’s always broke asking Didier for money.”

“I-I don’t always asks him for money! And he’s the one who will inherit the most of Dad’s fortune, so it’s not like he can’t afford it. Anyway, let’s stop talkin’ ‘bout money! Ya just won’t believe the latest bullshit Aimée threw at me!”

Just saying her name managed to make Michel shudder, but he knew the topic was going to come up at some point so he might as well get it over with right now. Aimée was Georges’ ex-wife with whom he’s had two sons with. He’d divorced her a few years back, but the woman was an actual demon from hell who still to this day kept doing him all sorts of crass and had gotten full custody of their kids, which his brother desperately tried to get back in vain. So, she was effectively Georges’ ‘favorite’ topic whenever they saw each other, to Michel’s dismay as he also had far from good memories of the woman.

Still, he listened his brother complains about his demonic ex-wife until he finally sighed and asked a question Michel even less wanted to talk about.

“What ‘bout you then, little bro? Still no girlfriend?”

Michel snorted. “Of course not.”

“Why? You say this like it’s obvious, but c’mon! You’re almost thirty now, you don’t intend to spend the rest of your life all by yourself, yeah?”

Michel almost got the urge to reply ‘Why not?’ but he didn’t want to get into a fight with his brother so he instead simply deflected. His love life so far had been the extent of one girlfriend in high school that lasted a semester, one coworker he dated for a few months and another one whom he’d gone to take a drink with, with no further development. And, to be honest, it just… wasn’t something he was interest in or looking for.

It was odd, but there was… like something that prevented him from truly searching someone. Like a blockage; the idea instinctively rebutted him, and then a crippling feeling of guilt overwhelmed him. It was silly, he knew that, but well, as far as he was concerned he didn’t see any issue with not trying to pursue something that made him so intrinsically uncomfortable.

Even his feeling of loneliness and emptiness wasn’t enough to push him to find a partner. It didn’t feel like a lover would ever be able to truly fulfill what he was lacking, anyway.

Maybe there really was something wrong with him. Maybe he was just born broken.

Georges stared at him with what looked suspiciously like concern for a moment, and then he yet again rambled about some silly anecdote but Michel couldn’t bring himself to pay attention — when suddenly something caught his eyes and his heart stopped beating, freezing in his chest.

Long black hair flew just next to him; a glint of beautiful jade eyes sparkling to his right.

He stood up like by instinct, and ran through the café. Georges shrieked at his abrupt movement and then yelled his name, but Michel didn’t turn back; it was like everything around him had suddenly disappeared.

The only thing that mattered was the silhouette of the young woman who had just passed him by — his heart was beating so fast and his lungs were so tight and he knewher,he knew her, it had to be her, he had to say her name, she was—

“Gi—”

He grabbed her hand — the one he’d let go before, the one he’d failed — and the young woman turned around. Shocked green eyes stared back at him — and indeed, they were of the same emerald color he remembered them as. This was hair as black as ivory cascading behind her shoulders just like the one in his dreams.

But it wasn’t her.

Her features were different, her face more angular, her nose rounder. It wasn’t… wasn’t…

Who did he thought she was again?

“Um…?”

The woman stared at him strangely, cautiously; and suddenly the transient state Michel had found himself into vanished. He recalled he was in the middle of a café, that he’d just randomly grabbed a stranger, and that everyone was looking at him.

“W-Well, wow, real sorry ‘bout that, ma’am!” Georges suddenly popped up behind him, laughing nervously and making him let go of her hand forcefully. “My lil’ bro here’s been super tired lately, y’see, so sometimes he loses it a little. My bad, my bad!”

She look at the two of them weirdly, clearly debating if she should be more concerned about this, then finally decided to just ignore the whole thing and turned around without a word. Georges sighed before dragging Michel back to his seat.

“Hey, dude, what the hell was that? Is your head okay?”

Honestly, he wasn’t sure. Probably not.

Then again, he always felt like he’d never been very okay ever since he was a kid.

This empty spot in its heart seemed even wider than before.

Michel dreamed again, that night; of the same withered mansion, the same honeyed voice, and the same maid with jade eyes.

The one who didn’t want to let go of his hand.

The one he’d failed.

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“Michel? Were you daydreaming again?”

A giggle. A grasp on his hand.

“I swear, sometimes I feel like you just live in another dimension. I was asking you what you wanted for dinner tonight. You know we still have asparagus from last month, right?”

A sigh. She crossed her arms and pouted, looked at him impatiently.

“You do like asparagus, don’t you? It’s not parsley. Or carrots. …What do you mean, you ‘just don’t feel like eating it’?”

He doesn’t remember what he replied, but he remember the way she rolled her eyes at him exasperatedly, affectionately.

At this point in their relationship, she very rarely got annoyed at him without some hint of fondness in her gaze anymore; and he loved when she looked at him like that.

“Alright. Fine. Let’s do without the asparagus then. But if you don’t want to answer me, then I’ll just take the matter into my hands without letting you decide. You’re fine with this, right?”

She smiled mischievously at him, then stared, and then hesitated. Finally, she glanced right and left, looking a little shy, before tiptoeing on her feet and gently kissing his cheek.

“It’ll be a surprise, then.”

She smiled again, and her hand was still in his.

He knows he smiled back. He knows he didn’t want to let go.

He opens his mouth, and tries to say her name — but no sound comes out.

Then suddenly everything distorts around him, and the mansion take a darker turn.

It is the witch’s house now, and it is the maid in front of him, with the braided long hair and the empty eyes.

And she smiles at him again, but he cannot bear to stare back.

He cannot bear to see her like this.

She is too scary, too empty, too broken — and he doesn’t know who he is— but he knows someone is waiting for him and that’s not where he is meant to be— and this place is nauseous and suffocating and everything around him is so warped—

And so he let go of her hand, and desperately start running away from her.

After fumbling around in the dim corridors, his heart is beating fast with terror as he helplessly tries to open the large door of the mansion. When it finally does open, he barges outside, into the light, and her voice resounds in his mind, like an echo.

“Master! Please wait! You mustn’t go out there! Come back… quickly…!”

Looking behind his shoulder, she’s wavering like a mirage in the open door; reaching her hands out for him as he is already too far away.

Stuck in place inside the mansion, in the darkness. Like a statue.

She is not smiling anymore.

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The sky was gray.

It wasn’t raining yet, but with how heavy the clouds looked, Michel was certain it would soon enough.

He had just finished work, and had a missed call from Georges, and from Didier — a rare occurrence. But he is not in the mood to deal with either of them right now, so instead of attempting to answer to his family, he looked up at the sky, then stopped.

This was a sad day, and he felt even emptier than usual.

As he was just about to starts walking again, someone passed next to him.

Long white hair flying right next to his ear; a beautiful young girl, walking and gazing straight in front of her. She seemed too lost in her thoughts to pay him any mind, but Michel wasn’t, and he cannot help but stare at her in disbelief.

Because he knew her.

She’s just a teenager, and he has never seen her in his life — in this life — but he knew her. He knew that voice. He knew this pure white hair and ruby eyes that are just like his. He knew those gentle, soft features.

She has a fake red rose decorating her handbag. His heart stopped.

“Giselle.”

That wasn’t the young girl’s name, not her real one; but this was definitely the name he has been looking for all this time — suddenly coming back to him in a flash.

And as soon as the syllables escaped his lips, everything washed over to him.

The cursed mansion. The witch, Morgana. The cheerful, short-haired woman who barged into his life and made him feel alive again. How they met, hurt each other, fell in love. How he died, then came back a thousands years and three tragedies too late.

And then how he ran away from her just when she needed him the most.

His stomach turned, and alone with the overflowing memories and headache, he felt like he was going to throw up.

He abandoned her.

She was here, with him, right next to him, but he left her; he lost her, of his own volition.

Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he suddenly couldn’t breath, the only thing staying in his mind being that last moment he spent with the Maid — with Giselle — as she yelled after him while he ran, begging him to stay by her side, because he left her, left her, left her—

As if he’d just abruptly, finally woken up from a dream, his whole life suddenly made sense, and at the same time, nothing mattered anymore.

The way he lived those twenty-seven years in a nebulous bubble, as if unable to connect with anyone, with crippling unease and guilt that came from nowhere — from his sin — the dots connected very abruptly and hurts in an almost unbearable way.

And in the end he was just standing there in the middle of this street, and couldn’t understand what he was doing here.

He lost Giselle.

What was he doing, then, here all by himself? Without her? His family, his brothers, his work; none of it mattered without her. Not after what he did to her, condemning her to an eternity chained to this mansion.

His emotions were too staggering, and he never felt so much all at once; but one thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t stay there. That was simply unacceptable.

He needed to find her back — needed to get back to her, save her, somehow; by any means — but as his desperate mind tried to rack his memories for any ways to do this—

His eyes stopped on the road.

He didn’t know if he could find her. He didn’t know if he could fix his worst mistake.

But he needed to try. He couldn’t go on without trying to apologize to her — to save her, make sure she had a chance at being happy again.

So he prayed to a God he never believed in, prayed to a witch who had only ever wished but for his ruin, and turned around.

From the corner of his eyes, he distinguished the white-haired girl staring at him.

He could feel her gaze on him, her red eyes suddenly widening in horror as she realized his intent.

But he ignored her; even when she ran towards him, even when she tried to talk or screamed at him.

Nothing mattered to him anymore but the ghost of a broken woman he had left behind, and as he stepped on the road, he vanished into the void in a vain search of her.

Don’t forget, Gischel Week will begin tomorrow! ✨️

As I’ve said before, there are no particular rules for this week — you are pretty much free to do anything you want. However, here’s a few reminders:

• Obviously, no bigoted content/hate speech of any sort will be allowed.
• FataMoruin itself deal with a lot of mature themes and you’re free to explore that however you want in your works, but just be sure to warn/tag anything before posting it.
• NSFW/sexual contents are allowed, but same here, just be sure to appropriately warn/tag it so that others can avoid it if they want.
• The prompts for the week are here, but you’re not obligated to follow them if they don’t inspire you.
  
• Be sure to @ this account and/or tag #GischelWeek so that I can reblog it! If I haven’t seen it for some reason feel free to directly tell me as well.
• It’s also okay if you’re late for the week! I will reblog any post no matter how late it is.
  

Everyone is encouraged to join no matter your skill level or medium! So I just hope you all have fun!

The week will have prompts for each day, although you can choose whether you follow them or not! There’s no obligation and you can just do whatever inspire you.

You can suggest prompts for the week if you want to here on curiouscat: https://curiouscat.live/GischelWeek, or just directly submit them via the blog’s inbox.

After which the 7 most popular will then be chosen by a poll.

Please feel free to send as many suggestions as you would like!