LIONHEART

calina: and you should know that i'd never hurt your feelings intentionally, caro. it's just my job to be practical.

calina: are you Meant to? as in, is it a requirement to have a date? of course not, it's completely your choice. you can go solo if you wish.

calina: but if it's a choice you do make, if you could let management and pr know, that'd be 👌. that way we can crowd control the media if the photos get cozy at the event.

lawrence: I would say practical is no fun, but it'd be a bit pot and kettle.

lawrence: Okay. Good to know.

calina: lawrence.

calina: swans are way too large and surprisingly hostile to bring to the red carpet, don't be silly

calina: what's this all about?

lawrence: What if I was being serious? You'd be seriously hurting my feelings right now.

lawrence: Lucky for you, I'm playing.

calina: levka, hi

calina: logistics...worries me. if this has anything to do with your attire being see-through or having an entrance with white doves, i've already turned down those ideas from others on the roster...

lawrence: Actually, was thinking about swans.

lawrence: White doves are so 2008, don't you think?

lawrence: Hey!

I DON’T WANNA SELL MY SOUL.

Lawrence Vernon never wanted the spotlight, but he was both born in it and born for it. He managed to mostly stay out of the spotlight when he was younger, kept his acting digs to mainly school plays and making random shorts with his friends, but when your father was Alvise Vernon, there was no real way to say no, and he started going on actual casting calls as soon as he turned 17. He worked for two years on small time gigs, acting in two independent films and another studio-backed comedy film. In third year, he started to gain some traction after appearing in a critically acclaimed television show.

At 20 though, everything changed. 

He was naturally physically fit, and at 20 years old he got cast in a superhero movie about a man who was experimented on and turned into a super soldier. The film series grew in popularity world wide, and even now years after the series has come to an end, he is asked to attend cons to discuss the franchise. He loves the character he created there, and it exceptionally proud of the fact that he was able to touch so many lives in his 5 years playing a superhero.

He does not, however, miss the costume. 

All in, it took them 6 years to film the 5 movies that he appeared in for the franchise, and the majority of his personal wealth still stems from the success of the franchise. 

That said, since the conclusion of the franchise about 5 years ago now, Lawrence has appeared in a number of different films across genres, from comedies to romance to thrillers. He has a number of producing credits, and is currently working on a film that will be his first directorial credit. He has received a number of award nominations in his time after the superhero franchise, and won some important one’s as well, one for Best Male Lead and two others for Best Supporting Actor. 

I CONTROL MY DESTINY.

EX’S: Oh, the standard and beloved ex’s plot. The two dated, and we can debate between ourselves exactly why it ended, but knowing Lawrence he’s most likely wracked with some kind of guilt about the whole thing. Maybe your character cheated because he was so busy during filming the franchise that he just never had time to spare and your character gave up. Maybe your character asked him for something that he couldn’t give. Maybe he said something cruel in the heat of the moment, and that was it. We can discuss. 

CO-STARS/CO-WORKERS. I’m not sure about the superhero films, but he’s also starred in a number of critically acclaimed movies since the end of the franchise, and it’s more than possible that Lawrence could have struck up a friendship with your character during the filming of one of those. Maybe they snuck plates and plates away from the food service, stuffed their faces in his trailer while laughing endlessly. Maybe they played cards against humanity together for hours and hours on end. Who knows, but at some point they were on set together and they’ve been best friends ever since, even across thousands of miles and hours and hours of silence–they always come back to each other. 

La Purga had been both a blessing and a curse as all things were in Verona. The blessings had come and gone too quickly, leaving the rot of such temporary indulgence to linger on. Marcelo assumed both sides were scrambling to compensate for their losses and set-backs, trying to maneuver what could still be salvaged that had been damaged during the chaos. The Captain’s meeting was a way of considering those options; implementing what each had seen during their liberation into action that could benefit the Montagues. Marcelo had escaped with few consequences, those they loved the most unscathed, though their luck had done little to diffuse their ever present anger. Truthfully, Marcelo’s journey into Capulet territory that night had done little to satisfy their demand for reparations as initially intended. 

The moment they enter the room Lawrence’s words pummel them. Rafaella. Their jaw clenches as they close the door carefully behind them, brows pinching in response to their fellow captains urgency. “We can’t be bothered to say hello anymore, Lawrence?” they force a smile at the weak joke to hide the shred of discomfort, nearing to lean against the desk in favor of sitting at it, avoiding having to feel more constrained than they already did with the topic. “And it’s my help you need?” Marcelo asks, gaze taking in Lawrence’s state; one they understood well. One they could understand better were their stomach not pulled to their feet with his request.    

Lawrence can feel the weight like a world.

There’s a million things that he wants, a million things that it feels like he can’t have. He wants to run a blade across the neck of whoever dared to put a bullet in his father, is trembling with unsolved anger and confusion and frustration, can’t believe that it’s truly beginning to feel like he’s never going to get the answers that he and Odessa deserve. Every time there’s a twist in his side where Kat dug a knife in to his skin, he’s reminded of the bullet wound Rafaella left on his sisters skin, remembers patching her up and her having to help him--and it makes him see red. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Marc,” he says, canting his head to the side exasperatedly. He pushes away from his seat at the desk--needing movement, needing to clear his head, needing something to do with her hands. “Would you prefer I bow and say Your majesty, every time we see each other?” He inhales deeply, rolls his shoulders and paces a bit. “Of course it’s your help I need,” he says, rolling his eyes. I want everyone’s help, he thinks to himself. I need everyone to see her for what she is. 

Lawrence doesn’t offer an answer but his silence speaks volumes and, deep down, she thinks that, maybe, she’s known it all along. What frustrates her the most is not their father’s opinion of her but rather the fact she never truly realised the error of his judgement until it was too late to have a conversation with him about it. That she had been so dedicated, so blindly determined, to be the perfect daughter, she had effectively let herself down. A hundred and one what ifs make their home inside her head and chest. What if she had opened her eyes to the truth sooner rather than keeping her heart-shaped, rose-tinted sunglasses sat firmly on the bridge of her nose? What if she had tried to be a little bit more like Lawrence and a little bit less like the person Alvise had wanted her to be? What if she had dared, just once, to make herself heard and prove to their father that she was capable of more than she had shown him?

Retrospect was a funny, savagely bittersweet thing.

Concern flashes across her features at his refusal to pass the medical kit, only to be chased away by the way he beckons her closer. She needs no further persuasion, teeth pressed together as she gets to her feet and moves to sit beside him at the edge of the bath. Odessa is quiet, eyes fixed on a single finger-streak of blood smeared across the back of the door, attempting to ignore the sting of the wipe in Lawrence’s hand, blinking away the threat of tears. The name that slides from his tongue sends something cold through her body, manifesting in a shiver. Katarina. “She–” Silence is demanded by the palm of his hand and it’s obeyed; not because she should hold her tongue for him as she always has but because she wants him to speak. To shine a light in the dark. “Law. Being glad about getting stabbed is not– She could have– What if you had died?” There’s a nauseating acidic taste in the back of her throat, memory casting itself abruptly back to the night of their father’s murder. Of the police officer at the door. Of the way she had assumed it to be Lawrence who had met a heartbreaking fate. Fury gleams golden at the gall of Katarina to be the one to injure her brother, only to recall something that had been lost in the hurt and confusion of Alvise’s death. “She said you left her to come home. To me.”

Odessa gently presses down the wound dressing beneath her fingertips, momentarily unresponsive to Lawrence’s prompting. A name for a name was a fair deal but she was not like her sibling when it came to the truth. She knows as soon as she says anything that the rest of it will come spilling out, desperate to be heard. Taking his hand in her own, she stands up, pulling softly to get him to do the same. Reaching for the tap, she lets it run and moves his hand beneath the warm water, watching the blood wash from their skin. “Rafaella.” It takes more courage than it should to raise her chin and look at the mirror to catch his reflection, barely recognising the bloodstained image of her own features. “She hurt me because I lured her in and told her that I needed to see her.” No, that wasn’t it. Odessa wipes her face with the heel of her palm, droplets turning pink, terrified of what reaction her following confession would draw from Lawrence. “I stabbed her. Before she did anything. I stabbed her with a knife that Henry gave me because– I couldn’t stand the fact that she’s never been punished for leaving us. Instead, she got a new family and a position and happiness and we– what did we get for loyalty, Law? Papà was killed. You went missing. There’s a murderer out there who’s free.”

She turns to him with a frown of determination. “La Purga was about justice. That’s what I tried to get. For us.”

She said you left her to come home. To me.

It’s a truth that doesn’t hurt. 

He almost expects it to, and when she says it, he can’t reply right away, can’t bring himself to say something outright about how Odessa is right, that he did that. The moment the words leave her lips, he waits for the onslaught of heightened pain that always came with that moment, waits to feel his heart snap in two and the pieces of stone to crumble to dust--but it only keeps beating. The realization makes him inhale sharply, makes his eyebrows furrow together in a kind of aching hollowness, his body so unsure of what exactly to do without the pain that had carved so many holes in his chest. In every way, he understands that Odessa is right, and that Katarina du Pont putting a knife in his abdomen was an act of violence that would only beget more violence, but he can’t help the way it feels cathartic, feels like all of his emotional pain that he had no rights to finally coming to bear. It had been Lawrence who walked away from her when given the choice to stay forever; Lawrence who had waltzed back into her life and left again hours later after taking what he needed; Lawrence who had hurt her first. 

Maybe that didn’t mean he deserved death. 

But he deserved the pain. 

He still hasn’t replied to her when she extends her hand out to him and draws him up, helps him to a stand until both of their hands are running under the water. He listens carefully as he watches it swirl down the drain, stained pink by the blood soaking off of his and his sisters hands. It’s pointless, a part of him wants to say. There’s blood everywhere. 

But he doesn’t get the chance. 

Rafaella, she says, and Lawrence sees only red.

His eyes flick up only for half a moment, right at the same time that she does, and when their gazes meet in the mirror Lawrence has to do everything in his power to school his expression, to hide from her all the fury building in his battle-weary bones, fury that he doesn’t have the energy for, fury that will burn him away into ash. I couldn’t stand the fact that she’s never been punished for leaving us, she says, and Lawrence swears he will have Rafaella Delfini--no, Capulet, he reminds himself time and again. The Delfini you loved is dead and gone. When she goes on, Lawrence looks back down at his hands again, grabs more soap and scrubs at his skin until he can’t tell if it is red from the pressure or spilt blood anymore. When she turns towards him, Lawrence knows he isn’t going to like what she has to say next. La Purga was about justice. 

“No it wasn’t,” he says instinctively, regretting immediately speaking without forethought. He bites his the tip of his tongue for a second before going on. “It was about hunger.” He looks up from his hands then, bites the inside of his cheeks and does his best to keep his anger at Rafaella to a cool simmer, can’t risk Odessa mistaking it as anger with her. “The night was never about justice--that trial was supposed to be about justice, but it was just another thing the witches fucked. If it’s Rafaella’s blood you want, then it’s her blood you want; don’t apologize for that hunger. Don’t apologize for any of them.” He look away from her, turns the faucet off and frowns down at his hands for a moment before wiping them on Odessa’s hand towel--he’ll buy her new one’s later. He has to grip the edge of the sink, lean his weight against it in order to keep standing upright. 

Lawrence expects guilt. 

He expects to feel something, anything--it’s not the first life that he’s taken, but it’s the first one where the other party has been on their knees and defenseless save for the barbed words they threw at him. He expects to feel something in his chest break, but he doesn’t, and he wonders if maybe it’s because that thing inside of him he’d always called humanity had broken a long time ago, if maybe being born Alvise Vernon’s soldier of a son meant being born without any humanity in the first place. 

There is no heavy shame on his chest. 

There is no question about right and wrong. 

There is only the weight of expectation, slowly lifting off his shoulders. 

“How should be proceed, sir?” he says it to Damiano, but he means it to be answered by Roman in the same breath, knows that even though it’s Damiano who wears the crown at the moment, it’s Roman he bends his knee to now. 

A new king has been born.

The blow against his head hits harder than expected, with such force that it causes him to fade out for a few seconds. A few minutes? When his eyes lull shut, he’s on the cobblestone. Outside the library. Still within the grasp of Lawrence. But when he opens them again, he’s stumbling up marble stairs, blood drip, drip, dripping behind him as the dead weight of his leg is yanked up to the second floor. It all goes dark again, the rigorous movement undoubtedly causing him to lose blood far quicker than if he’d been left to bleed out in the street, but with adrenaline weaning, all that’s left for him his unconsciousness. 

A pitiful end to Faron’s existence, he’s tossed to the feet of his supposed King, the one he’s meant to bow before. The one he’s meant to serve, but instead of reverence, instead of begging for forgiveness, all he can do is laugh. A bellowing thing that consumes the silence of the room; if only he had the strength to fight back. Or the will to turn this situation around. 

Grab the gun, he tells himself, split lip gushing blood down his chin as he smiles up at the blurry figures across from him. Spin around and just grab it. He makes the plan silently, eyes never leaving Damiano’s, but still Faron presses his skull against the barrel of the gun behind him, if for no other reason than to gain it’s specific location. Shoot all three of them and walk out of here. You were born for this. You were made to survive. 

What is just?

“You did this,” the boy says, a finger pointed at his father. “You brought him here. This is on you.” 

He laughs again, for he is not wrong. Damiano was stupid enough to let a wolf into the lion’s den. Why should he be punished for a stupid man’s mistake? Regardless, Faron Vasiliev would stare down his Fate. 

“Do it,” says Roman. “Now. Or I will.”

“Finish it, Lawrence,” he snarls, turning back to look him right in the eye. “Follow orders like the good little golden boy you are.” 

There’s a king on his knees before him. 

The gravity of that isn’t lost on Lawrence. 

He watches his own chosen king and his heir fight in the way that only son and father know how, with a combination of eyes and words that almost breaks Lawrence to see. He remembers fighting with Alvise the same way, looking to the Vernon for guidance and assurance whenever he needed help deciding something, remembers looking at him with the same barbs in his words as Roman is using now whenever Alvise asked him to do something that he didn’t agree with. It was always the same kind of thing that made Lawrence’s stomach turn over, violence for the sake of justice, violence not just for the sake of violence but for the greater good. Lawrence watches Roman struggle with it now, remembers the look in his eyes when his best friend had told him that he gunned down Orpheus Ahulani in the streets for what he had done to To Tame A Soup. 

Lawrence sees the same anguish there now. 

He sees it, and understands. 

Do it, Roman says, and Lawrence levels his weapon, slows down his heart until he can no longer hear it beating in his ears, until it is the only thing that he can think about for its absence is so stark. Legacies are what make families great, boy. How many times had Alvise said those words to him? How many times has Lawrence thought back on those words and took them to heart, had to remind himself that everything he does is for the sake of his family--for the sake of his people? 

How many times has he forsaken himself to be the man his father needed?

Finish it, Lawrence, Faron says, and it’s the use of his real name rather than his mob name that makes Lawrence look away from his king, away from Roman, who he’s more sure than ever is the ruler that his father needs him to be. Absently, Lawrence is jealous that he can follow in his father’s footsteps so easily, slip on a crown that he was born for and have his father witness it. Follow orders like the good little golden boy you are. 

And the lion does just that. 

It’s quicker than maybe Faron deserves, he thinks, faster than it takes him to fully exhale the breath that he’d been holding. One moment, his finger is loose on the trigger, pointed straight into the center of Faron Vasilev’s forehead as the man spits vitriol at him, and the next his finger has shifted and a bullet has flown free. 

There’s blood soaking into the carpet. 

Legacies are what make families great. 

“She wasn’t meant to find out,” is all he can manage to snarl out as he lunges for the other’s throat, leather colliding with flesh in the most satisfying of ways, squeaking in a beautiful symphony as he tenses his hand around nothing more than a mistake in need of remedying. Just an ant scurrying around his shoes, and Faron has every intention of squashing it with the toe of his loafers, never to be heard from again. Shame on him for thinking Lawrence deserved a sliver of honor. For what purpose? To staunch the guilt, perhaps. To tamp down the monster killing him would have turned him into, the same one this confrontation had yanked to the surface, the hideous creature standing on the street chanting kill, kill, kill. 

He doesn’t feel it at first, the gunshot. Only hears it. Muffled by a silencer pressed against his patella. A few seconds pass as adrenaline pumps to every one of his limbs, fooling him into thinking he can press on, but when he goes to take another step, his leg crumbles beneath him. Faron cries out through gritted teeth, tongue mashed between his bit, blood beginning to spill out the sides of his mouth from the force. 

“Therein lies the difference between you and me, Vernon,” he turns his head, spits more blood onto the street, this time out of necessity to clear his mouth rather than disrespect, but he’ll take the happy coincidence as it splatters across the other’s shoes again. “I would take you with my bare hands.” He grunts as he tries to get back up, but there’s no use; his left leg his numb from the knee down, blood soaking into his slacks and pooling beneath him. 

Breathing heavy and ragged, he very clearly goes for the pistol strapped to his back, hoping he’s quicker than his adversary, even with a bullet lodged within his knee. “Let’s finish this, shall we?”

It’s strange, watching a king fall. 

Lawrence can tell that he hadn’t felt it right away, that Faron’s body hadn’t been able to process that kind of pain right away, that it had needed a moment to realize that this was the beginning of the end for it. When he cries out, crumbling to the ground, Lawrence can’t even get himself to feel the sick satisfaction of watching one of his enemies crumple to the ground, because for as much as he loathes the man before him now, as much as he worried about the man’s place here in Verona and how a king could reasonably become a soldier, for the fleeting time the pair of them have been Montagues, Lawrence would have laid down his life for him the same way that he would have laid down his life for any of the other soldiers in their battalion. That was what it meant to be a Montague; loyalty above all, and Faron had betrayed that in the highest degree. He doesn’t care when the man spits on his expensive sneakers, doesn’t care when he spits something at him about how he should use his bare hands, doesn’t care anymore that Faron thinks Lawrence is beneath him. 

Lawrence knows now that it’s not true. 

Let’s finish this, shall we?

It’s a foolish thing to say, as though Faron can’t help but make threats even as Death stands over Lawrence’s shoulders, watching on with glee and anticipation. Maybe he thought he was faster, maybe he thought he was stronger, but Lawrence has the upper hand and the second the Russian reaches behind his back Lawrence is stepping forward to flip the gun out of the other man’s hand, cracking it down to hit him with the butt of it right in his temple. 

“Let’s,” he replies. 

The other man is dazed and near-unconscious now, but adrenaline and anger course through Lawrence and when he reaches down to sling the other’s arm around his shoulder and wrap his own arm around Faron’s waist, it feels like there’s no effort involved. He is running on rage and revenge, on a thirst for blood and honor and for someone to understand. He darts through the front entrance to the library quickly, knowing that it’s meant to open to the public in an hour or so, and carries Faron over to the entrance to the Montague headquarters off to the side, hauls him up the winding staircase as quickly as he can. From there, the office is in his sights, and no amount of injury or tiredness could hold him back. 

He bursts through the entrance to Damiano’s office without knocking, registers for a second the look of anger on his boss’s face and the look of pure shock on Roman’s--who Lawrence hadn’t actually expected to be there. 

“What’s the meaning of this, Laertes?” Damiano’s says, eyebrows raised but voice still steady, a cool anger burning there Lawrence would be a fool to ignore. 

Lawrence dumps Faron unceremoniously on Damiano’s turkish rug, the gun he’d had pressed into the other man’s abdomen now pointed directly at his skull. “You wanted to know who put me in prison back in Russia, sir?” Lawrence says, eyes flicking away from Damiano to look at the man kneeling there, regaining consciousness. “Well, I found him.” 

Lawrence doesn’t curse, doesn’t call him names. 

He just explains. 

He goes over all the details, about how he’d gotten the names of the men who ran the prison, found the connection between Faron and the warden. He explains about how he’d gotten his own Russian connections to talk to the man, how he’d rolled as soon as more money was offered. He tells them that he confessed, that he had been proud to break rank this way, that he’d wanted Lawrence dead for his own personal vendetta, and at the end of it all, Lawrence looks Damiano hard in the eyes and says “I’ll do whatever you think is just, sir.” He swallows, mouth a hard line. “I just ask that whatever punishment you decide on, you let me carry it out.”

He’s a soldier, but this is blood he’s owed. 

Damiano considers Lawrence’s words for a moment, seems to take in everything that has been said, and then turns to his son. 

Faron has always been greedy, taking what he wants no matter the cost. Monetary or of a much, much heavier price, he doesn’t care as long as he gets it. And all he had wanted was for Lawrence to disappear. If there had been another way, but perhaps, he was right; a better man would have been able to kill him. Instead a selfish man did the only thing he could think of without the will to take this particular man’s life. Lock him up and throw away the key. Out of sight, out of mind. A problem and the solution. And he was supposed to do his part, to stay there, to rot on his own. Faron had only set the trap, and the little prick was meant to stay in it. He didn’t want this death on his hands, on his conscious—whatever was left of it at this point, all of which was tied to one woman. Of that he was positive. And it was the only reason Lawrence had any air left in his lungs or anger left in his blood. Because Faron had said so, or rather, had said no. 

He rolls his shoulders as he starts to pace back and forth in place. “неблагодарный кусок дерьма.” He turns about every so often as he speaks, emphasizing his words with a frantic point in the other’s direction. “You stand there because of her, you know,” Spine stilling, he turns stoic at the thought of Calina, statuesque in his posture, neck craning ever so slowly to bring his gaze up. “I couldn’t do that to her,” he mutters, lips barely moving. A loathsome truth resigned from a would-be King, and it forces up regret into the back of his throat, tension rising between his shoulder blades. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you—” he grinds his teeth, jaw clenched as he chokes out more poison-coated honesty, “—the way you look at her.”

Faron takes a few steps forward, tentative to close the distance as candor fills the space between them now, but he wants this done. Once and for all. “You’re right about one thing.” He swings hard, leather snapping harshly against the flesh of the other’s cheek, but he doesn’t stop. “I should have been able to kill you.” Another punch, another crack of knuckles to jaw. “Tell me, Золотой мальчик,” he stops only to clasp his hand around Lawrence’s throat, fingers tensing. “Are you ready to die?”

Something breaks in Lawrence then. 

This is because of Calina? he wants to ask, remembering the way only weeks earlier he had showed up at her door and cried tears of joy at the mere sight of her, at the knowledge that she had been whole and healthy. Lawrence can’t comprehend it, the rationale behind it, could never do anything like this to someone that he loved. He tried imagining it with Kat, tried to imagine sabotaging the relationships that she got into after him, but he’d never been able to stomach the idea of hurting someone like that. “What did you think she would do when she found out?” he asks instead, anger thick on his tongue as he watches the wolf prowl back and forth. He doesn’t lash out again, refuses to be the one showing his cards first, and instead baits the former king and waits and watches as he unravels, slipping into Russian. “Did you think it would make her love you more? Trust you? Did you think it’d be endearing?” His fists are clenched at his side now, and under his bicep he can feel the weight of his gun still. 

Alvise had always tried to teach him how to love violence, but Lawrence had never been able to understand bloodlust until this very moment. 

When Faron steps to him again, something sick and terrible and something Alvise would be proud of coils in his stomach, a hunger for everything that this city has taken from him and the opportunity to take some of it back standing right in front of him wearing leather gloves. He barely defends himself when Faron hits him again, fist meeting cheeksbones that have only just finally healed. I should have been able to kill you, he says, and Alvise’s voice rings through his head. Now he’ll never get the chance. It’s when Faron finally spits golden boy at him and wraps his hands around his throat that he smiles, a horrible thing that he’ll wish later he could take back, but he can’t deny himself the emotion in the moment.  

Are you ready to die?

“Are you?”

He’s right where Lawrence needs him now, pulled in close enough that Lawrence can smell the man’s cologne, the smell of iron and aftershave mixing in the air. In a flash, Lawrence has reached his right hand under his bomber jacket and unsheathed the gun with its silencer already attached, the bullet loosed just as quickly. People nearby might hear the sound, be able to recognize the sound a silenced bullet makes, but most people who had been in the street fled when the two men started fighting. Now it is just Lawrence, a condemned king, and the sun behind him.

Another hit and something rattles inside him, begging and screaming to be let free, to enact the exact same crack of bones it just received, and for the life of him, Faron can’t come up with a reason to hold back anymore. What facade was there to put on now? The truth had been dragged out from the darkness and thrown into the light, pulled from the dank cell he’d left it in and somehow, despite his best efforts and well-made plans, it crawled its way to freedom. 

“A better man would have seen it coming,” he grunts as he takes a step, then another, closing the distance between them with a hand clasped to the back of Lawrence’s neck. He yanks the captain forward until their foreheads are pressed together. 

“Remember when you said that to me? I do.” 

He grins now, sharp and without remorse for the pleasure this pain brings him, rearing his arm back only to send it forward into the other’s gut. Knuckles meet ribs and Faron inhales deeply, letting go of his grip to back away and marvel at his handiwork, though still not satisfied for its unfinished business that stands before him now. “If I wanted you dead, Vernon, you would be.” He spits again, this time on Lawrence’s shoes. “You will be. You earned it.” 

Lawrence has always been miraculous, been told since he was born that he was a blessing in his father’s life, a come again Alvise for the man himself to teach in the ways of being a Vernon. 

His entire life, he has been molded and shaped in his father’s image. He is a sun-haloed god, dripping gold, with a tongue like honey and blood like fire. He’s been marbled and marveled at, taught that the only name above the Vernons was that of their leaders, was that of the great and noble Montague, and that nothing could befall him unless he let it. Lawrence was taught the art of war, the strategy of a good battle, the way to win and the way to lose, and the way to make a win look like a loss. He has been taught the important of being able to throw a punch, but more importantly he was taught the value of being able to take one, and take this one he does. A fist to his ribs, right above the place where some months ago now Faron’s own men had made sure that blade met skin. A better man would have seen it coming, he says, and Lawrence remembers those moments before he saw the monster that’s before him now--no, worse, the moments where he saw the monster and loved him for that darkness, the moments where the bloodhound in his heart pulled taunt against the chains and wanted to just want. “A better man would have been able to kill me,” he says when Faron has released the back of his neck and landed a punch on his stomach. 

Rage. Its blinding, red hue is all Faron can see as his head snaps back from the impact, met quickly with annoyance as he’s shoved backwards stumbling. Not so much of a hard hit, but being taken by surprise had nearly knocked the wind out of him and he leans forward, bracing both hands against his knees to orient himself back to his surroundings. To focus in on the assault in front of him, warranted, perhaps, but he shouldn’t fucking know that. “Did I kill who?” He spits to the cobblestone, blood spattering out from where his teeth had split his own lip, painting the street between them in his own viscera, but something tells him it will only edge this foe along. The thought excites him; Faron will relish in spilling some of Lawrence’s blood, too. 

He’s bid his time long enough, so if this говешка wanted to start something, Faron intends to finish it—finally—once and for all. 

“I would have thought you knew me better than that, Vernon. I take pride in who I kill. If I’d killed your father, you’d know.” He wipes at his mouth with leather gloved hands before cracking his neck to relieve the tension, but the both of them knew the hard shock of an elbow to his jaw would require much more in reparations than a little pressure releasing. “You got off easy,” he grumbles, but it turns into more of a chuckle as he takes a step forward. “You’re standing here, aren’t you? Taking cheap shots at me.”

He watches with his chin held high and mighty while Faron wipes a gloved hand over the blood that’s spilling over his face now, and it does something to Lawrence’s stomach to see his blood spilt there, to see it pushed around his chin like some kind of impressionist piece of art that belongs on a wall in the Twelfth Night. Maybe it’s that Faron spits on Lawrence’s honor again that makes him snap, the line of retaliation that Faron might not even be aware is retaliation enough. It feels like a punch to his gut, that little turn of phrase that Faron uses as though it’s nothing. 

Taking cheap shots at me, he says, and Lawrence’s fist is lashing out again before he can even think about what he’s doing, right knuckles meeting Faron’s left cheekbone. 

“Cazzo si,” he spits. Fuck you. Every part of his body feels both like it is on fire and like he has been turned to stone, like he could weather any storm, like anything that comes his way would be the end of everything and a new beginning wrapped in one. “They’re not cheap when they’re earned.” If I’d killed your father, you’d know, he hears Faron saying in the back of his head again, the words ringing through his skull with the same ferocity as his anger. “All I’m hearing is that you’re merda at killing the people you need dead,” he says. “You wanted me dead, yet here I am.”

CAPITAL LIBRARY 20 NOV — 9:20 AM Montague territory / @oflaertes

“No, that doesn’t work for me. I paid for it, it should be here by now.” 

Voice tense and legs quick, Faron makes his way down the street with business on his brain—his own despite the brisk pace with which he heads toward his day job, that of emissary, of uselessness toward the Montagues. At least that’s how it feels as of late. Regardless of the territory he’s seized and the Capulets he’s formally introduced himself to with fists clenched and teeth bared, here he is in exactly the same place he started. And for what?

“VASILIEV!”

Four steps up to the library’s entrance, he halts immediately at the call of his name, vicious and filled with something like hate; it pricks along his arms, the excitement from such an address. From the notoriety of getting called out in the street. From carrying such a reputation as to be sought out like this. “I’ll call you back,” he mutters into the receiver before clicking end on the screen and slipping the phone into his jacket pocket. Spinning on his heel, a smile spreads along his mouth as the familiar face comes into view. “Vernon,” he says in return with a nod, far calmer than Lawrence’s voice had been. “Did you need something?”

It hits him like a ton of bricks. 

He is a feral thing, all uncontrolled anger and unbridled rage, everything in him working against the very foundations that he has tried to lay for the last three decades. He has always taught himself to be calm, to use words and machinations to beat his enemies--that the moves in this life of his were like pieces shuffling across a chess board, his fellow soldiers the other pieces with the Montague heir as the king. Maybe it’s the knowledge that Faron had tried to take out one of his fellow players that sends Lawrence spiraling, that little piece of the puzzle the thing that he will use to justify his rage in this moment, but even he knows that would be a lie. 

         Always, he says, and it sounds like a confession.

Like something he hadn’t anticipated saying, something that slipped over his tongue and past his teeth without his consent. But god, does it make her heart flutter twice as quickly to hear it, makes it swoon in her chest to know that no matter what happened, no matter where this city and it’s chaos took them, that he’d always find his way back to her. That he’d always be there – and that’s when she knew it was too late for her, because it’s exactly what she wanted to hear. After so many losses, Calina craved consistency. Now that he said he would, she had no choice but to believe him, hand over the power to break her should he not follow through, and she did it with a trembling palm, an imploring glint in her eye. Please, don’t let me down, Calina lets the silence beg him, because she never would.

She’d almost forgotten he spoke her mother tongue, and it pulls a touched little smile to her lips. It transports her to that night in St. Petersburg, the night they met, where she took his hand and knew he’d be trouble from the curl of his smile, caring not as her feet protested as they danced through the streets with the stars as their only audience, their laughter the only music, as he pointed to the moon and bestowed upon her a name that meant the same. But his injuries pull her from such wistful thoughts, his shoulders rising and falling too quickly beneath the gentle touch of her mouth. There was ‘too many to count,’ he said, and a miserable frown tugs at her lips. “I don’t like that,” she shakes his head, even as his fingertip curls in her hair, even as he sits here with a facade of wholeness while she knows he’s hurting, “I hate that they did this, that they hurt you.” Calina pauses, only to press further in curiosity, “Was it a Capulet? Do they look worse, tell me they do.” 

Shaking her head, the intensity of his searching gaze makes hers fall to her lap, makes a warmth creep up her neck as his hand curls around, unable to help as her body leans closer, inches nearer. “I’m fine, Levka. This is the worst of it,” she wiggles her fingers, showing scraped palms and chipped nail polish. 

I don’t like that, she says, and Lawrence can’t help the little smile that decorates his cheeks, can’t help the way his light eyes brighten at her words. They are so fierce, so sure, so absolute. It’s been a long time since he let anyone care about him this way, a long time since he let a person in enough for them to care this way about whether or not there was bruises decorating his skin. He can’t even remember the last one, thinks there was probably someone at some point in time after Kat who he let in too far, who he showed too much of himself before pulling away from them--perhaps they cared, but it hadn’t been because Lawrence wanted them to. This is different. 

Lawrence wants her. 

He wants every scary part of her, and finds himself unafraid to show her his. 

It’s her next words that make him grit his teeth. I hate that they did this, that they hurt you, Calina says, and Lawrence has to close his eyes for a moment grief heavy and uncomfortable in his throat, right there at the base of his neck threatening to suffocate him. “I hurt them first,” he says slowly, ambiguous. Calina isn’t even looking at the worst of his injuries, at the wound on his stomach that hasn’t had a chance to heal over. The purple and green decorating his clavicle he thinks might be from Easton Craven, or maybe one of the men he had to fight at Measure by Measure--but those aren’t the wounds worth talking about, and he knows it. “They were just getting even.”

She watches him stitch himself together and wishes wistfully that they could do the same with their hearts. That it would be that easy, to simply pick up thread and pull together the pieces until thoughts of their father turned fond rather than hauntingly painful. “Did he–” Odessa starts, musings merging into her continued need to distract them both from the bloody scene in which they sit, needle clattering against porcelain, her head swimming. “Was it that he thought I was weak?” She isn’t sure that Lawrence will know the answer but thinks that his expression will close off and walls will come rising up all the same. It doesn’t matter. She can’t drag her eyes away from his stab wound despite not wanting to look at it. All she can think about is being taught how to sew buttons onto shirts by an au pair, never how to mend lacerations. Nor how to make them.

That hasn’t stopped her from doing either tonight.

Her vision blurs as she takes in the sight of her brother leaning exhausted against wall tiles, his thanks meaning more to her than it likely should. How many times has she uttered those exact words to him? How few times has he ever found a reason to say them back, besides in response to trivial things like gifts in orange scented wrapping paper, her inability to help him only strengthened by Alvise? She wipes her cheeks but blood and tears make for fitting partners. “I’m not losing you too.” It’s a demand. It’s a promise. Her hand reaches for the cool edge of the tub to stand up but she falters at the spike of pain it causes, lowering herself back onto the bathroom floor. She may have succeeded in aiding Lawrence tonight but some things never change – she still needs him too.

“Law.” Her voice is quiet with concentration as she drops a shoulder strap of her dress and grits her teeth to peel cotton from the raw bullet-straight graze etched into her skin. What would have been difficult to stomach a few moments ago now looks superficial in comparison to her brother’s injury. “Please can you pass me the kit.” Flesh glistens red, ugly beneath artificial lights. Odessa swallows. She knows what Lawrence is going to ask before he says it. “Tell me who stabbed you,” she insists softly, worry written across her features concealing a deeper-seated fear of what he would say when she utters the truth about her night. “And then I’ll tell you who shot at me.”

The exhaustion is almost as blinding as the pain.

It settles into his bones like embers settling into ash, still burning him from the inside out but not quite so voraciously, not quite so terribly. Or perhaps he was wrong, and this way of burning was worse because he’d never see the end coming, would never be able to predict when his body was going to just give out and give into the heat. All he knows for certain right now though is that there’s too much blood on his hands and that Odessa just asked Was it that he thought I was weak? and that he needs to run an anti-bac wipe all over his hands before he can help his sister. He doesn’t know how to answer her question, just feels guilt and anger coil in the pit of his stomach at the truth he knows, the truth that he helped his father to live by for the past twenty-four years. 

It makes him sick and proud all in the same breath, and he knows that it’s his father’s ding that this is the way that he feels; two inherent parts of his soul fighting for dominance--the part of Lawrence that loves his sister and the part of Lawrence that loves his sister. He bites his tongue instead of responding, lets himself go on with the stiches instead of replying because he knows exactly what the truth is and he promised not to lie to her tonight but that he cannot tell her. Was it that he thought I was weak? He can’t tell her because the answer is yes. Through years and years, Alvise Vernon had conditioned his son into being a leader, into being someone worthy of being followed, clever enough to never need violence to get his way in this word but prepared to use it all the same--but his daughter. Alvise had conditioned his daughter into being docile, had taught her time and time again to be weak, to be small, made her depend on him and his son year after year, teaching his son at the same time that this was the way of the world. There was Lawrence and there was Odessa, and she was to be his biggest responsibility in this life; he was to protect her blood with his own, if it came to it. 

Lawrence is finally unlearning that, learning that she is responsible for herself,  much as he wants to be responsible for everything. Lawrence sees now that Alvise was wrong. 

But their father had never realized that. 

And he can’t bring himself to lie. 

So instead he reaches out to the med kit again, grabs at another packet of anti-bac wipes and runs them over his hands, the feeling of them burning the small cuts he has across all of his knuckles. More blood that doesn’t belong to him and yet--does. “No,” he says when she asks for the kit, instead puts his hand on his shoulder and tries to guide her towards him, pulls the side with the bullet wound closer to him as his other now almost-clean hand reaches for another packet of wipes from the kit. He tears them open, runs the stark white against her skin, and has to bite the inside of his cheek so that the anger stirring in the bottom of his stomach will continue to stay down. Tell me who stabbed you, she says, but Lawrence has his own question on the tip of his tongue--he can’t get it out before she’s speaking again, saying the thing he knows is only fair. 

God, she’d learned from Alvise anyways. 

Odessa wasn’t strong because of him, not like Lawrence was. 

She was strong in spite of him. 

It makes Lawrence smile--a small, broken-hearted thing, but a smile nonetheless. 

“It was Katarina du Pont.”