Broken Crown

"Would you be?" Marcella turns her head to look at him from where she sits at her vanity table, her hands pausing in dragging a brush through her hair. It's not something she's ever really thought about, him being jealous and it dawns on her that most of her friends are notoriously male. "You know that you're one of the few people I've ever had romantic feelings for, right?" It's almost less to him and more of a realization voiced out loud. Being a vampire, becoming something by nature so full of grace and natural beauty, had made her realize that she hadn't quite thought too much of herself as a witch. Surely no one would be into some feral swamp child and so she'd just rarely put herself out there. "You and maybe Gary Oldman as Dracula."

"Only if I had a reason to be." Ciro turned towards Marcella at her vanity. They were beating around the bush still about moving in together, but it seemed the natural course of action, all things considered. He wouldn't ask her to give up her home, not when the property was such a good investment, and he would always have his duties within the halls of the Amaranthus, so living close to his ancestral home was essential. But these details could be sorted out later; they had little but time ahead. Still playful, he added. "Which I don't think I do, in case that wasn't clear."

@ciroocasio Location: Amaranthus Home

Grayson had come home, and Ciro was relieved because, above all else, they were family; as the Amaranthus grew, he felt it was important to repair the previously burned bridges. "Neva Rosato," Ciro had opted to name the rosé after his mother, "it's made from grapes harvested from winter's mountains. The elves have made for exceptional partners. The chill makes it more of a liqueur," sweet and tart all at once. Incredibly decadent, but more than a few glasses would give anyone a headache, the perfect homage to his mother. "I have some other experiments on the horizon; there's a wide market for supernatural tinctures: blood wine has historically just been red with blood mixed into it, but Salvador and I have been developing methods that the vampire community will find more enticing." Ciro had a sharp mind for business; cleaning up his act was the least he could do in preparation for The End. Fortunately, it had stuck. "What about you, Grayson? Have you been to Amico's club at all? It's finally making money."

Okay was as good as yes. After further confirmation, Ciro reached forward and affectionately brushed some of Marcella's smoothed hair away from her features. It felt a tad ridiculous that it had taken them this long to see what was right in front of them, but in hindsight, a great deal had obscured the bigger picture. Too much of their nature was made up of rebelliousness, falling in love with the person you'd been arranged to be married with? The notion was ridiculous and bordered on defamatory, but here Ciro was, in love.

Wide eyed and being dipped, Marcella thanks her newfound grace for keeping a light hold on Ciro's shoulder at the confession. She is left blinking and her first instinct is to wave off such a thing. But she can't because they'd all but said it without words over and over. Smiling up at him, her free hand reaching for his face, she takes a breath she doesn't need to take. "I love you, too." The words feel foreign on her tongue, like her mouth is moving but someone else is speaking for her. The thing is she can picture herself in some long and lacy black gown, surrounded by candlelight and holding a bouquet of dark flowers. Ciro would lift the long, trailing veil from her face and she'd repeat those words. She just wished Zeke would be there to see it. But she knew he wanted her to be happy, seemed to be at his best when she was actively having a good time. And looking up at Ciro, at stroking a thumb across his cheek, she's happy. There's no family at her back that didn't support her, there's no threat of the Asphodel, there's a future here with him. "I love you and we're getting married." Righting herself upright, she lets it sink in and she takes his face in her hands and she kisses him again. There's nothing sweet about it, it's eager and it's passionate. It's the kiss she's really wanted to give him since he first stood there ranting in her living room.

"Excellent."Ciro appraised as he loosely threw his arm across the shoulders of the vampire; true to his nature, Ciro was a little drunk but only in the fashion where he was fun. Salvador was a relation of some degree to Marcella, separated by some variation through other mutual means; he was also a reliable employee with an unquestionable palette. It made him the ideal business partner, "We'll have to begin immediately; Bacchanalia's first feast day is only a couple months away, I want to be ready to premiere something by then." Given the current climate it might be an ice wine but they'd muddle with some processes to get the appropriate fermentation down.

She wants to just say it over and over. That he doesn't mean it, that it's a party, there's been drinking. It would be so easy to keep brushing it off. And she could, but despite how much she tries to push it all under the rug, she keeps coming back. There was a reason she'd called him that night, a reason she'd been thinking about him after all these years. Marcella stops shaking her head and her hands find either side of his face. Her mouth opens to speak but the words won't come out. It felt a bit like she was fighting fate, she had given up her magic, she had become something else entirely. That had been running away, she'd ran to what felt like the ends of the Earth and still he held her. "Okay." Tilting her face, she rests her forehead to his. He had a fair point, they were wasting time. They had already wasted so much. The crisis that he wasn't going to be around for all of her life could wait. At least long enough for her to press her lips to his this time. It's brief but it's a promise. "Okay." When she nods her nose brushes against his and the word, the acceptance, all starts to sink in slowly and then all at once. A hand smooths into his hair and she can't help but laugh just a little at the ridiculousness of it all. He has been here this whole time, a phonecall away, someone who really, truly understands her, someone who cares for her. "I'll marry you."

Okay was as good as yes. After further confirmation, Ciro reached forward and affectionately brushed some of Marcella's smoothed hair away from her features. It felt a tad ridiculous that it had taken them this long to see what was right in front of them, but in hindsight, a great deal had obscured the bigger picture. Too much of their nature was made up of rebelliousness, falling in love with the person you'd been arranged to be married with? The notion was ridiculous and bordered on defamatory, but here Ciro was, in love.

Pride came before the downfall and Hazal would feel the shame of her collapse in the morning, her heart ache and a cold lived from within that was only removed in moments of terrible realization that death had its grip and she had lost Ezekiel, heat flooded in with a swell of panic and she couldn't believe how many times she had held onto her house of cards desperately trying to rebuilt. She wouldn't release Amaranthus so easily with all the ghosts that live within.

So much had been lost, power, talent, friends, and family. It was a small token that the Amaranthus now had the chance to grow into something new that was still reminiscent of the old. Ciro had sat down next to her, and now he placed a hand on her shoulder; Hazal was like a sister to him in some ways. Now it felt so much like she was one of the few remnants of the family that Ciro had left, the other being Amico. Ciro couldn't say anything to her about grief that she didn't know already; loss and emptiness were comfortable friends now in this old house. They had the way forward laid clearly ahead of them, but that didn't stop Ciro's feet from feeling like lead every morning when he dragged himself out of bed. "Come on, we should get you back to bed."

closed starter for @ciroocasio location: amaranthus house note: theboysarebackintown.mp3

Oh, how a year could change things. Last January Ciro and Amico were in... Where were they again? Was that Japan or Amsterdam? It was hard to keep track, but he did remember they were balls-deep in an escort and having the time of their lives. Now they'd ended up back at the Amaranthus house, Ciro was basically a teacher and Amico was a business owner. "I'm not your secretary; I'm your benefactor: write that down yourself," Ciro said as he baked fully nude under a light he'd conjured that was akin in potency to a tanning bed. Naturally, he couldn't be wearing any clothes because then there'd be tan lines. Ciro lifted a lid and looked towards Amico, "It's a good idea, though." Drag was mainstream now, and Ciro loved that for them.

It seems like the apology kind of throws the witch for a loop and she gets that. It was such a strange thing to do, apologize for something she'd really meant. It hadn't been something she'd really thought about at the time, kissing him. It'd felt so natural, like something she was meant to do and standing there, she couldn't help but think that she would do it again. About how she kind of regretted not kissing him when he'd been drunk in her living room, bottle of wine in one hand, eyes staring at her tits as he talked about Rome. She remembered being a teenager and seeing him, knowing that she was promised to him. Petulant attitude and teenage rebellion aside, she remembered there'd been a brief 'what if' that she didn't think she could ever outright let go of. Because she had thought that maybe it was something she had deserved for all she'd been through in her life, a practical Amaranthus prince. Marcella would be lying if she said she hadn't thought of what their life could be together. And then he kisses her. He kisses her and she stands stock still at the shock of it all before she's thinking about the war and seeing him die, refusing her bite, and she kisses him back as if she could bring that man back to life, her hands finding the sides of his face. She kisses him because she had wanted to that night she'd called him from her kitchen, her back against her cabinets. But they part on his account and those two words have her desperately fighting to not just burst into a cloud of bats right then and there. "You don't mean that." He can't possibly, not after everything, not after everything she'd done.

"You know me better than that." Ciro's hand moved down to the small of Marcella's back, the other brushed affectionately through the long hair that fell past her shoulders. "You know I've never said anything I didn't mean, but this, this is something I've put a lot of thought towards." Logically, the two of them just made sense; they always had, even when denying what was right in front of them. "You need someone to stand by your side, as I do. You're immortal and going to live forever, but if I get to spend what mortal years I have with you, then I would count myself lucky. You and I make sense, Marcella. So if I only have a few decades to be your husband, I have no interest in wasting more time. Marry me."

"I'm adjusting." His shrug prompts one of her own and there's this thing there between them as she smokes his abandoned cigarette. The little stick between her fingers is somehow a daunting reminder that whatever is in it won't affect her anymore, but he is another story. Witches could live rich, wonderful lives, she knew that. And yet they were in Rome and there were statues erected to the casualties of war, casualties they knew. Marcella flicks ash onto the stone and this isn't unlike the last party they'd been to and she looks over at him and she can't just leave it alone. "I'm sorry I kissed you and ran away." It's rather blunt for the subject matter but it's honest. "I never got to tell you that."

At Christmas, you were supposed to tell the people who mattered to you just how much they mattered. Ciro could spend his life resenting Marcella for where her path had led her, or he could look beyond that, rise above, and be sensible. Naturally, he hadn't forgotten the feel of her lips on his or the absence he had felt after she had left. Truthfully, that precise moment before she'd left him there in the dust was something that he had replayed repeatedly. A record that Ciro had worn and scratched down until nothing was left. Marcella wasn't just out of his league because she had the best tits in the city by a mile; she was precious enough to him that he'd torch the town and all his beliefs if it meant he could walk by her side.

It was good to hear things about Ezekiel from other people's lips. As much as he had dug into his lost progeny's life before, it felt like it was just surface level. Considering the way the former witch had dug a hole in his chest, he felt like it was necessary to remember him as more than just what Ezekiel had shown him. The wine glass floated over to him and he would not have taken it if he did not smell the distinct blood that sat within it. Whose blood it was meant nothing to him so he indulged for the moment as Ciro spoke. The witch's name was familiar on several principles. One was the Amaranthus coven that he had looked into. Another was Ezekiel. The last was Marcella. He did not have to bring up the latter because he simply was not the type to meddle in that kind of thing. The wine glass was brought to his lips as the other spoke. Only when the witch had stopped speaking did he stop drinking.

Emotion clearly didn't look or feel natural on either of them. Yet it flowed just the same, at Ciro's words and then as the witch sat there and listened to Hakan's. He hoped a day would come when the witch could talk about the lost vampire and not just think about all the ways he'd failed Ezekiel. The boy had deserved better, and at every turn, it seemed he'd been let down in every way and in every regard save where his sire and progeny were concerned. That was both a blessing and a curse. "Likewise, the Amaranthus coven is open to you." Ciro paused for a moment; Ezekiel's room there had remained untouched for the most part. Memorabilia littered the walls from athletic competitions and human trophies that Ezekiel didn't understand. Some jersey that meant something. "I have a few albums from his days with us and some from before. I'll bring them by sometime." He raised his glass towards Hakan, parting, "He'd want the same for you. Try to have some fun. Until then."

She smiles softly at thought, that Zeke's all over the party. He truly is, from the diamond fangs to the Gucci Slides in the giftbags, the music. He'd have loved this and she thinks she'd seen Zeke at just about every event where she'd had to get dressed up. They always wound up gravitating towards one another and Marcella has to take a drag from Ciro's now abandoned cigarette to and distract herself from the fact that she wouldn't find Zeke in the crowd, not tonight. "How are you?" It feels like such a trivial and rhetorical question, loaded. It's not something she really has a right to, his business. But she is curious, she is rotting away at home most days but she is rooting for the Amaranthus now more than ever.

How indeed. Well, not well. Ciro had a hard time penning down just how he felt exactly. Busy was a good way of putting it, though it hardly seemed to encompass anything. He liked the feeling of abundant productivity; the business was doing well, the coven was flourishing, and really Ciro had nothing left to complain about. The losses had piled high over the last year, but he was still alive and that was something to hang onto. Ciro didn't offer much in the way of an answer, instead he just shrugged noncommittally as he looked back into the double doors to the party. "You?"

"Neva Amaranthus would be turning in her grave, it's true." Stalwart as she was when it came to their traditions and to old grudges, Ciro, Hazal, and this generation were resolved to push towards progress. Something new, a powerful force to be reckoned with still, the Amaranthus had been rebuilt. Different and better than before. Their mutual connection through the pluto bloodline made something about this feel inevitable, "and while she wouldn't be able to say it out loud, I think she'd be proud." One of their own had been turned by Salvador's own sire, he had a grave in their cemetery, and now this act of rebellion was Ciro's means of pay homage to the witch that he had failed so many years prior. He extended his hand towards the other, "So, is that a yes?" Perhaps in the past it was discouraged for marshals to cooperate on this level, they were to keep to their own, their businesses, their problems. Ciro hoped to change that, he and Salvador could begin something new together.