what is love?

“Why’re you here?”

Hiran resisted leaning into her familiar touch, tempted to SHATTER altogether ( could she feel his pain? Could she claw underneath his skin and steal it all away? ). He let out a shaky breath, his fingers curling around the glass of water. Had she not known the answer to her own cruel question? He was here because he was BROKEN. 

“Rafaella … I – ” 

                           I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the bomb. For the fight. For the Montagues.

“ – I’m so sorry.” 

    For some reason the apology did more to provoke her than soothe her. It brought to light all that had occurred between them when this space was supposed to be the one place where they deluded themselves into believing that no loyalty -- no responsibility, no problem  --  could touch them here. The tender expression was wiped away, hidden behind something far more distant, but far more easily donned. 

    “Shouldn’t it be I apologizing to you, Hiran? You’re the one who lost your boss, are you not? Mi dispiace.”

“Ah, but unfortunately we can’t have everything we like.” The mirth that crackled across his face matched hers. “That would be too easy.” The knowledge she yearned for was nothing more than an impossibility,  a dream that was destined to fracture and fizzle into nothingness, dissipating like the shadow and smoke that Orpheus had built himself out of. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, no eleventh hour revelation in which his closed book would open. He spared more thought for Rafaella Capulet than most others, that was true, but no amount of commonality or understanding would make him reveal even the smallest of secrets. But she wanted to know more, and that was promising, encouraging - it meant that she had seen the darkness that seeped from his veins where blood should have been, and that the abyss that darkness had unveiled was calling to her. “You want to stop.” Incredulous laughter bled from his lips, eyes narrowed by mocking creases. “And how would you like to live? In a nice villa by the sea, with a husband, and a dog, and some bambini running around with big, brown eyes who look at you and say ‘mamma, ti amo’?” He saw her clenched fist, then, and smiled at the ire his words had provoked. “How disappointingly naive.” A pause, then, “And to answer your question, no,” he leaned forward, resting both elbows on the table, “I haven’t.”

    “What you mean to say is, we your underlings can’t have what we like,” she corrected, gently prodding his hand. “But the king of thieves may take what he likes and give nothing back.” Rafaella could not find it in herself to fault him for it in the slightest. Instead, she wished that she had the void that he had in place of her heart. However, in the sporadic conversations she’s had with him she’s begun to doubt the existence of the void that all claim he has. No, there was something warm in the chasm of his chest, something beating faintly, but beating none the less. Was he not flesh and blood top? Subject to the most mundane of emotions, no matter how weakly they wove themselves into his being? Such wishings, longings perhaps, were smothered as he spoke, her lips pressing together as she turned her face away from him, his words needling her skin more effectively than any thorns could. But the mocking way in which he threw her words back at her face was a rather difficult thing for her to turn the other cheek too. She felt the color rush into her cheeks, her mouth opening for a withering retort -- then she felt it close slowly, leaning forward until her eyes were even with his. “Wrong.” She didn’t dare elaborate on how wrong he was. It was a truth that she believed too ugly to mar the conversation they were having. “You haven’t? Not even when you’ve had everything taken away from you?”

“Thank you.” Perhaps it hadn’t been intended as a compliment - although he suspected it might have been - but he was inclined to take it was one all the same. “And you know me just as well as you need to.” That was all anyone could ever hope for with him, all he would ever let anyone know. Orpheus Ahulani was a man of outlines, a shadow sketched out against a dark background on paper that was an inch away from tearing into pieces, and that was precisely how he liked it. He took the cigarette without a word, watching her with eyes that darkened fractionally as she diverted her gaze. Orpheus let out a sigh, so abrupt it was almost a hiss, and the corners of his mouth turned down around the cigarette, face cut up by something resembling distaste. He’d felt a stab of… what had it been? compassion?, but sympathy was just a little too much to ask of an empty chest cavity. “So what did you want, then, hm?” He fixed her with a piercing, cutting gaze, a look which carried with it the implication I thought I trained you better than that. “It must be hard, living with all that self-loathing.”

  Her lips quirked up, amusement written across her features and dancing in her eyes. “As well as I need to, but less than I would like to.” Didn’t everyone want to know a little more about the devil’s that whispered in their ear? The Capulet adviser was never one to entertain darker thoughts that left her blood singing, that called for her to feel the pulse of another’s beneath her fingers. She used to hate killing, eyes clouding with unshed tears as she watched the spark of life slip away. But now she was singing quite a different tune, one that might have been awakened by the man that sat across from her. Perhaps she gave him too much credit for coaxing her dark desires into the blazing light, for calling to her like a siren to a sailor -- he offered her nothing but death, yet she was helpless to refuse the melody of his song. “What did I want?” Her eyes met his evenly, her breath catching as the truth of her words stuttered to a halt somewhere in her throat. “I wanted to stop and I still do. Self-loathing has nothing to do with it. Haven’t you just wanted to stop, Orpheus? Haven’t you been pushed to that point where you feel as if -- as if --” she huffed, fingers curling into a fist. “I don’t loathe myself, I just don’t want to live like this anymore.”

Her voice broke him of all his deepest thoughts ( the ones that raged over the revelation of recent events, the downfall of Alvise, the BETRAYAL ). Hiran didn’t even have enough liquor left in the glass to swallow the sorrows away, he was stuck with them – stuck with GUILT and suspicion. Part of him wondered if she would punch him, the other part wanted to reverse the clock ( before the bombing, before it all shattered ). 

“You should be … resting.” He could remember that much of the fight, unsure of what to say. 

    Her chin rested in the palm of her hands as she watched him, eyes narrowing as she tried to gauge his level of inebriation. It was almost cruel, the way that she confronted him so casually -- as if she had not taken his heart in her fingers and torn it in two. Although, she might be giving herself too much credit. Perhaps there had been nothing there to begin with and she was simply filling her head and her heart with her own buried longings. Gently, she brushed his hair back, fingers trailing along the edges of his face. 

Date: February 26

Time:  11:43 PM

Location: hotel emelia’s bar

Status: closed to @h-godrej

    “One dry martini, please. Hold all other drinks for the gentleman next to me until he sobers up a bit.”

“Perhaps. But there are certainly better ways, but it’s pointless to dwell on what could have been. Isn’t it?” Roman did not move as her fingers threaded through his hair, the sensation at once soothing and unsettling. Why had she come? To finish what his father started? She would be dead before she would even wrap her fingers around his neck, and she was clever, too clever, to know it would never work. 

    She paused, head canting to the side as she studied his features. Was it so bad to dwell on what could have been? “Is it?” The question sounded more vulnerable than she intended, her fingers gently combing through his hair one last time. Color crept into her cheeks, a traitor to the embarrassment that she felt over the question. Now that her hands were still, they itched for something to do. So, she reached next to her and handed him a small, little bouquet of flowers. A bit worse for wear after the guards searched them for any foul play. “I could have been a Montague, you know. A good one.”

A simple shrug was the start of Regina’s response to the woman who sat before her. “No one can deny that, and there are likely people who know little of the bloodshed that mourn him. But, if we are the sworn enemies he saw us as, indifference towards his death would have been a sort of final revenge.” The strategy was simple, logical in her mind - she already felt such indifference, after all. But Regina had accepted that those she worked alongside did not shrug emotions off so easily, and were in fact driven by a much stronger force, some combination of hatred towards Montague and adoration for Capulet that went hand in hand, no matter which force lead the other. “True, though that’s not to say you couldn’t present ideas if you have any. It’s like we’re about to enter a cold war for philanthropy.”

    Even with indifference there was the matter of tradition. Tradition meant paying respects to one’s enemies -- and the Capulets prided themselves on tradition as well as righteousness. The Montagues likely would have spat upon the grave of Cosimo. Rafaella longed to spit on Damiano’s grave, but likely would be rebuked time and time again by Cosimo if she had. “Verona is built on tradition and tradition demands respect and reverence for the dead.” Pushing her bowl away, the Capulet adviser lifted her eyes towards Regina, regarding her with an even gaze that only betrayed her interest. “The problem is that Juliana needs to figure this out for herself. I can’t help her or else I’m more or less becoming her babysitter in these matters -- and that will make her look even weaker than she already seems.” She trailed a finger along the tables edge thoughtfully, lips pursed in contemplation. “We’re always in one sort of war or the other. What difference do the weapons make? Guns and drugs. Charities and community centers.”

There were words on the tip of his tongue, but the stolen cigarette turned them to nothing in his mouth. He let her take it with an almost inaudible laugh, equal parts impressed and amused by the boldness of one of the few people, people he could count on one hand, who could still surprise him. “Sycophant?” This time the laugh was louder. “You know me better than to accuse me of that.” He watched her smoke his cigarette, and was on the verge of asking for it back, when… Did I fight well? “You’re still alive, aren’t you-” he started to say, but then his eyebrows drew together and a flash of discontentment ghosted across his features, as though something - her question, her injuries, or something more inscrutable - had caused him some kind of consternation. “No,” he told her flatly, but the look in his eyes was soft, almost, and not unkind. “You could have done better.”

    “How well do I know you, Orpheus? You’re more cipher than man.”  Was it terrible of her, longing to figure him out? The mountains likely quaked whenever Orpheus Ahulani let loose his laughter. She wondered if people laughed with him because they considered his laugh infectious or if it was because their laughter was prodded along by fear. It was likely made up of both. But Rafaella? She laughed with him because she wanted to -- even if it made her ribs ache and her wounds stretch. The slow drag she stole from his cigarette placated some of that pain, but she almost choked when she heard the quiet of his voice, so different from the usual bravado that caught her in his thrall. This, however, this was twice as dangerous because she believed it. She believed in the quiet of his voice and the gentle way in which he met her eyes -- almost pityingly, but less contemptuous than that. Taking the cigarette from her lips, she placed it between his own, eyes meeting his before dipping away in...shame? “I don’t think I wanted to do better.”

Would that she could convince herself that there wasn’t the slightest hint of a smug tone in Rafaella’s voice - or was it supposed to be cutting? supposed to be some sort of commentary on the stark difference between them right now, physically and mentally? - but once it was heard, it was next to impossible to write it out of her mind. Despite the absolute absence of control that Juliana had over the entire thing: the exposition, the called meeting, the death, there was still an inordinate amount of guilt blossoming within her chest, stained with flecks of pain at the coldness that seemed to have become the norm for them these days. Odd to think that just a few months ago, they’d been laughing heartily and dancing together, hand in hand, at the masquerade. “That’s… I’m really glad to hear that,” she said, if only because she chalked off her words as an actual response on her well-being and not… whatever it was that was running through her mind right now, Juliana had lost the ability to even allow herself to assume. “With everything that happened, I didn’t really get to tell you, but you’d be glad to hear that my meeting with the Hwangs went well. It took a fair bit of convincing but they agreed to everything in the contract.” That would be a good place to end on, some good news to add to what seemed to be great news considering her apparent mood, but her words just kept spilling out. “Maybe that would make you less mad at me.”

    Her eyes remained on the giornale as she thumbed through the pages, glancing at the variety of headlines that each section offered. She paused as the world news headline gave cause for her eyes to linger -- bombings and heists in Russia were increasing. Wasn’t their new police chief from there or something? Perhaps it was purely coincidental, but she had long learned to never depend on coincidences to remain as such. Juliana’s voice broke her train of thought and she glanced up, brow arching as she waited for her cousin to say whatever it was that sat heavy on her mind. Did she want a gold star from Rafaella? Perhaps an affirmation of her confidence in the other? The dealings with the Hwangs were a boost, but they had enough money. They were rolling in it. What it came to at this point was winning the crowd -- and all they say in Juliana was a sheltered child who deemed herself too good to get her hands dirty by helping the downtrodden of the community. Roman had already staked his claim as the city’s savior, as their poster-child. He was a champion of the people now, his soup kitchen the talk of the town. But she merely went back to her food, nodding her congratulations. “Good job, Juliana. You got more money for us so now we’re absolutely swimming in it. What did they want in return?”

DATE: february 27th TIME: 08:40 LOCATION: phoenix and the turtle cafe OPEN

It was a rare day his gaze was upon a magazine rather than flitting about the cafe. Of course he never spent every day observing the lot that walked through the area, but the image of him reading was certainly a rare sight for those who didn’t know him. With feet propped on the chair beside him, body twisted so a hand could trace the sentences on the flimsy pages, one could say he appeared strangely comfortable where he was.

And you know, they’d be right.

What wasn’t comfortable, however, was someone approaching him when he was mid-sip. Their steps were much too loud to be marked as unnoticeable, and he rolled his eyes as he swallowed. How rude to attempt a conversation when he clearly wasn’t ready!

Keeping his head down, gaze still focused on the magazine, he asked, “What is it you want? I’m trying to catch up on my daily celebrity gossip.”

    “I want to bask in your ever-effusing glory, of course.” Rafaella stated blandly, hands on her hips as she surveyed the person in front of her. The cafe was in its prime business hours (when wasn’t it?) and the sitting arrangement options were few and far between. It was not as if she detested sitting next to people, but she usually got first pick because she was a Capulet. However, she was not one to deprive a business of its money and make them clear out a table for her...so she made do with what options she was given. 

    Sitting next to a stranger was much more preferable than sitting next to a man who she knew to be a rather handsy fellow. 

    “Budge up, now, we don’t have all do.” She ordered, not bothering to wait and taking the chair out from under his legs. Setting down her espresso and biscotti, she readied her seat and sat down. That was when she glanced up at the man, brow cocking in amusement. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Catherine’s gaze flits up in response to the softness in the adviser’s tone–hopeful for mere seconds until she realizes this isn’t the sort of gentleness to get caught up in, but the kind to be fearful of. How unnerving it is to hear such a powerful woman wishing that Maeve–her comrade–was dead. Something so permanent, something so definite, so cold–the whole idea shakes Cat to her core and she doesn’t bother to hide the discomfort that overtakes her face. She steeps in silence as the painfully beautiful storm in front of her–infused with not only her own threat but the threat of Volumnia as well–razes one of the people she holds closest to the ground. There’s nothing she can say to remedy Rafaella’s raging soul or take back what’s been said; all Cat can do is mutely sit and pray that she will be spared.

But her prayer falls on deaf ears, she realizes, as Rosaline turns her attention to Catherine and her faults. “I do see things as they are.” Surprisingly, the young soldier’s voice doesn’t quiver–a feat in itself, as she’s always been taught to be meek in the presence of a goddess. “And I know that some things are black-and-white, but I also know some are gray.” As much as she wants to barter with her superior and convince her that this instance is far more gray than black or white, she knows she cannot. However, she hopes it will at least cause some hesitation and open the door to possible reconsideration–anything to delay whatever will happen. Cat says nothing more on that subject, opting to respond to the latter half of her words with, “I’ve always realized that.” Ideals hold no place in the war.

The indifference in the shrug stings, but the Daly woman has dealt with far worse in the course of their conversation–that is, until she’s faced with the startling truth. “Yes, we’re at an understanding.” The response comes more quickly than she’d like, but the fear of loss overpowers her pride. Catherine sucks in a deep breath, regret already washing over her as she asks, “What can I do to prove myself?”

    Her fingers itch for something to do, whether it was drumming against her arm or tapping out an erratic beat against her thigh. She tried to approach Catherine from different angles yet none of them seemed to do quite the trick. Either she pressed too hard against the woman, which caused her to dig her heels in, or she was too gentle which led the other to believe that Rafaella might be swayed to her point of view. But this new tactic she was trying? Forcing the other into submission? It seemed to do the trick. For whatever reason, donning the mask of a villainous general was much more preferable to her than fighting to remain stalwart and true. Fear was a much easier weapon to brandish about than whatever she had been doing before. 

    Yet she still saw how Cat fought with her tongue, swallowing whatever words longed to spill from her lips. The little evangelical longed to make a believer out of Rafaella. But better people than her had tried -- and failed. Some more spectacularly than others. Cat was just another who was going to fall like wheat to a scythe when she finally realized that cruelty was not an option in Verona -- it was a necessity if one meant to survive. 

    The question tugged at Rafaella’s attention, tugging her out of the storm of thoughts that milled about in her mind. “What do you think you can do, Cordelia?” Leaning forward until she was level with the blonde, she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Think you can slide a blade against a Montague’s throat until you have them bleeding out like a pig? Maybe put a bullet between the eyes of an enemy so that you won’t end up in that position before they do?”

Date: February 29th

Time: 7:36 PM

Location: the ospedale

Status: closed to @romanmontague

    “There are worse ways to be passed a crown.” She sighed, making herself quite comfortable as she sat on the end of his bed and combed his hair back. She hoped the guards were watching. She hoped this scene was making their skin crawl.

It was fitting for the two women to be sitting across each other; while their injuries weren’t so fresh anymore following the exposition, they still sported evidence of a night soaked in chaos. Regina, of course, wouldn’t dare to compare her injuries to Rafaella’s, nor did she care to, but there was at least a pleasant air knowing one wouldn’t be looking at the other with such concern. “If you asked me, he should be no more than one of the forgotten obituaries stuck between the pages no one bothers to look at,” shrugged Regina, lifting a slowly-cooling cup of coffee to her lips. That would be the most satisfactory treatment for such a wicked man - treat him like his existence barely meant anything, like he was nothing close to the god he was painted to be in bold letters of the day’s headlines. “Historical, maybe, but it can’t be certain how kind history will be to Roman.” She thought little of the boy she once knew (she even thought little of him then), who had become the man shoved towards the Montague throne - she didn’t even flinch when he took a bullet of his own. “It seems like an invitation for our side to think bigger, if anything.”

    Rafaella cocked a brow at the other woman’s answer, opting instead for another prized spoonful of oatmeal. She chewed her food slowly, thoughtfully -- spoon swirling around her bowl absentmindedly. Did she think that Damiano’s death should be one of the many? His name hidden among the many that were blotted against white pages in fading black ink? No, to be forgotten by the city he had built was crueler than living in infamy with a name tainted in blood. “Hm,” she grunted noncommittally. “Perhaps. But no one can deny that he did a lot for the city -- even if that means drowning half of it in death.” Maybe that was the Montague in her that was speaking. Pressing her lips together, she dipped her head, eyes lowering in something that might have been shame were it not for the confusion that shadowed her face. “True, it is. But that must come from Juliana -- if I were to do something else, someone might think that I’m encroaching on the crown.”

Her hand over his heart did anything but calm the erratic beating. Priam didn’t like the weight of this conversation, the implication that she might not have died this time, but she could again soon, and she needed to get her affairs in order before that happened. It felt like giving up, even when he knew that wasn’t really the case. It was just the smart thing to do. Like realizing it was better that her eyes lowered in a way that made his heart sink a little. This was the smart path. This way, they couldn’t get hurt. Knowing that, though, didn’t keep him from smiling. “I know.”

Why, after all these years, it was still hard for him to say it back, he didn’t know. He reminded himself of how she looked after the fight, how still she was laying in that bed. Would he rather tell her then? “I know I don’t say it a lot, but…you know I love you, too, right?”

    The quiet that followed, the few seconds where she heard nothing but her own breath knotting itself in her throat, almost killed her. But there are worse ways to die than being gently rejected by the one you love. The mottled bruises and broken bones that she had suffered, the brutal executions and savage vengeance exacted were proof of that. All the same, Rafaella was one of those fools that lived in the moment when she was with him -- and in the moment she knew that there could be no worse ruin than this. Her fingers slowly curled into the fabric of his shirt, the movement deliberate, as if she could take the pain in her fist and dissipate it. From the both of them. “I know...”