Work Text:
Nicole loved history because history did not argue with her.
Her role as an observer had given her unparalleled knowledge of Teyvat’s direction and order. She had witnessed countless events over the centuries, yet had never stopped to document them all.
Today, she decided to begin her research notes on Seelies. She stared at the blank pages, aware that she could never match Rhinedottir’s expertise in research, but there was a reason driving her curiosity, a quiet insistence that compelled her to study the history of her kind.
Angels had once been a great race, now reduced to faint, wandering lights, stripped of their voices, their forms, their memories. Nicole felt a complicated mixture of helplessness and unease when she thought of her ancestor’s sin.
She rarely dwelt on the one who had condemned her kind. Most angels did not, since it was easier that way.
Koitar, the first angel to rebel against Celestia, had also been the first and fairest daughter of the Heavenly Principles. She chose love and forbidden knowledge over obedience, and in doing so, she condemned her entire race.
Was love a sin? Did it truly have to become a curse, ensuring that angels who fell in love would transform into Seelies? Only the authorities of Celestia could answer that.
Nicole remained unconvinced that losing one’s mind and body for the crime of love should ever be a collective punishment.
History often reduced Koitar to a warning. A symbol of rebellion that ended in disaster. However, Nicole knew better. Koitar had not created the curse that doomed the angels. She had only been the reason the Heavenly Principles decided it was necessary. The punishment had been written by Celestia. Koitar had simply been the first to suffer it.
Now, Nicole found herself standing on the same road, and the thought made her uneasy.
She had started to develop feelings for a knight. A very mortal knight. Someone who knew nothing about celestial rebellions or cosmic travellers. Someone who simply enjoyed her presence.
In his company, she had experienced smiles that lingered a heartbeat too long, glances that hung in the air, quiet moments of understanding. It was beautiful, and for the first time in millennia, Nicole felt something that could have blossomed freely.
But it was doomed from the start. If their feelings continued, the Heavenly Principles’ curse would claim her.
Perhaps the punishment had never been meant to prevent angels from loving mortals. Perhaps angels were always meant to love all humans equally, quietly, endlessly, from the shadows.
Nicole thought back to the last tea party she had attended with the Hexenzirkel.
She had asked her fellow witches what they thought of the Heavenly Principles. Their answer had been simple: “They prefer stable worlds.” Nicole understood. A stable world was easier to observe. But stable worlds were built on small tragedies, on the choices of those who believed they were protecting something greater.
Perhaps that was why she found her longtime friend Rhinedottir so difficult to categorize. She was an emissary of the Heavenly Principles, a being created to uphold their eternal laws, yet her work often strayed dangerously close to the same curiosity that had once doomed the angels.
The air smelled of herbs and old paper, a scent that always reminded Nicole of simpler times. She sat quietly, observing, her mind elsewhere.
Alice broke the silence, her sharp gaze settling on Nicole. “Nicole, dear, you look… preoccupied.”
Nicole did not answer aloud. Speaking with her mouth had long since become a liability, a risk the Heavenly Principles might detect. Instead, she communicated where she always had: in the quiet spaces between minds, a loophole she had exploited for centuries. “Varka,’’ she sent, unbidden. “He sacrifices the defining moments of his life to shoulder the suffering of others. I do not understand how he does it.’’
A ripple of knowing amusement passed through the witches. Barbeloth tapped her fingers against the table, a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat warning.
“I have lived thousands of years,’’ Nicole continued silently. “I have seen empires crumble, heroes rise and fall, men and women burn brightly and vanish. I have studied all of it, and yet… he burns steady, refusing the comfort of self-preservation for the sake of the world.’’
Rhinedottir tilted her head. “You admire him,’’ she mused aloud, though her voice was calm, cold, almost clinical. “And yet you fear him.’’
Nicole’s mind shifted slightly, acknowledging a truth she had only begun to face. “I am beginning to care for him,’’ she thought, the admission fragile and startling. “In a way that carries the weight of centuries of observation, of existence that has rarely allowed for attachment. And still… I do not know if this is blessing or curse.’’
Alice clapped her hands lightly, the sound airy and playful but with an undercurrent of sharp insight. “Ah! The heart versus inevitability! My favourite game. But, Nicole darling, you must understand that you can’t hug the world and dance with fate all at once. Angels who love mortals are doomed, but we witches can find creative ways around such sticky problems.”
Alice leaned forward, her eyes glinting. “Even as Hexenzirkel witches, we cannot shield you from the Heavenly Principles. But perhaps… perhaps cleverness can tip the scale ever so slightly.”
A teacup drifted past her, spinning lazily in midair, and Nicole let her gaze follow it. She imagined Varka somewhere distant, carrying the weight of the world, burning steadily, and she allowed herself the small, impossible hope that she might be present in the spaces between his thoughts, even if only briefly.
Nicole’s thoughts lingered on him, a mix of awe and quiet exasperation pressing against the edges of her mind. She could not understand how Varka could give up the defining moments of his own life, the rare hours when the world could pause for him, to shoulder the suffering of others. The expedition in Nod-Krai, the peril, the endless responsibility, all called him away from the small, fleeting moments where he might have simply existed for himself.
It was not weakness or carelessness that drove him, she knew, but a relentless sense of duty, a courage that left her breathless. She wanted to shake him, to demand that he stop sacrificing so much, but she recognized the inevitability; heroism demanded this price.
And so, she continued to watch him silently, torn between admiration and helplessness, marvelling at a man who could carry the burdens of a world while somehow keeping his soul intact.
Nicole sighed softly, though no sound escaped her lips.
She settled near a remnant of the ancient ruins on the shores of Amsvartnir, watching a small Seelie drift lazily between broken pillars. It moved with quiet purpose, tracing a path that might once have been a hallway centuries ago. The Royal Court of the Seelie was a secluded domain, hidden beyond mortal sight, but Nicole was far from mortal.
Her gaze wandered across the mostly empty expanse. A few lingering Seelies glowed faintly in the distance, their lights swaying like distant stars. They seemed drawn to a faint melody Nicole could have sworn she heard somewhere in the ruins, a soft echo of a lyre carried by the wind.
Her research notes lay open on her lap. Each page was filled with the facts she did not want to confront. She traced the ink with her finger, the words heavy with centuries of observation. Eventually, she too would become one of those drifting spirits, losing her mind and form to the curse that had claimed her kin if she didn’t do anything. The thought pressed against her chest like a familiar weight, the quiet inevitability she had spent thousands of years pretending not to notice.
And now she realized she faced a sacrifice of her own, one in which no mortal would ever understand.
Her budding feelings for him, fragile and vulnerable, could never grow without triggering the curse. To love him fully would mean losing herself, erasing the very mind and form that had endured for millennia.
She could not allow that to happen.
Before her love could bloom, before her heart could tether itself completely to his, Nicole would have to step aside. She would have to preserve him the way he preserved others, by bearing the cost alone.
Her mind, sharpened over thousands of years, began mapping possibilities. Loopholes. Subtle ways to bend fate without openly defying the Heavenly Principles. If she restrained her presence, limited herself to fleeting encounters and silent observation, perhaps the curse would remain dormant. Perhaps there was a way for her feelings to exist without crossing the invisible threshold.
Nicole closed her research notes gently, letting the wind carry the scent of old paper and sea salt across the ruins. The longer she sat there among the broken pillars of her ancestors, the more she realized that observation alone would never be enough.
Then she remembered something Alice had said at their last gathering, about finding creative solutions to circumvent cosmic rules.
And suddenly, an idea appeared in her mind, sharp as crystal.
Her research notes did not have to remain research notes. They could become a novel.
Not merely a chronicle of history, but a world of her own design, one where she could breathe life into Varka, immortalize his courage, and allow her feelings to exist without consequence.
In that world, he could be the Grandmaster who carried the weight of the world and she could remain beside him, not as an angel bound by celestial law, but as an observer, a guide, a quiet presence woven into the narrative itself.
Nicole began writing. Her handwriting, as always, was messy and chaotic, thoughts spilling across the page faster than they could be organized. Each line carried fragments of truth: the sacrifices he made, the burdens he carried, the quiet heroism the world rarely noticed.
Fiction allowed her something reality never could.
Freedom.
She created impossible scenarios and exaggerated adventures. She let the Grandmaster stumble into absurd situations, triumph over ridiculous dangers, and navigate mysteries that would make even the Hexenzirkel mages laugh. Even her more questionable “assassination ideas” found their way into the narrative. Carts of Dandelion Wine toppled dramatically from cliffs. Seelie detectives chased elusive culprits through fantastical landscapes. Elaborate schemes unravelled into improbable solutions. The absurdity was intentional.
A fleeting thought crossed her mind then, mischievous despite the weight in her chest. What would Anya, her dear friend “M”, think of this novel? She had always been the most adept writer among them, her stories sharp and vivid in ways Nicole had never quite managed to replicate.
Nicole wondered if this clumsy, heartfelt attempt would have amused her. Nicole could almost hear the laughter already. The teasing commentary about her ridiculous assassination plots. The thought warmed her in a quiet, familiar way.
Within fiction, her affection could exist safely, fully, freely, and without consequence. Every chapter became a loophole. Every paragraph, a quiet bridge between her world and his.
By the time Nicole finally set down her pen, the novel had become something more than a story. It was a testament. A quiet memorial to Varka’s heroism and to the love she could never allow herself to fully live.
Through words, she had discovered a loophole in time, law, and cosmic consequence. Her feelings could exist without triggering the curse. Her devotion could breathe, even if one day her body faded into drifting light.
For the first time in centuries, Nicole felt something close to peace.
The wind moved gently through the ruins, whispering across the broken stones and drifting Seelies. Nicole watched their faint lights dance across the air and allowed herself one small, impossible hope.
Not rebellion, not defiance.
Just a hidden fold in the laws of the world, a loophole she had learned to navigate.
And here, among the ruins of her kin, Nicole allowed herself the fragile comfort that her love might survive the curse in the quiet spaces where even the Heavenly Principles could not reach.
Nicole rose at last, the wind lifting the edges of her dress as her gaze drifted toward the skies of Amsvartnir.
Somewhere far away, Varka would continue to carry the world on his shoulders as he always had. Unaware of the angel who had quietly immortalized him in the story she had written just for him.
And perhaps that was enough.
A hero preserved not by legend, nor by the songs of bards, but by something far quieter.
By the love of an angel who chose to write him into eternity.