𝖋𝖆𝖑𝖘𝖊 /𝔽𝔸ℂ𝔼

HE IS NOT HERE.

maeve shudders, as if even the thought of violence is too terrible to bear, and she looks across the table at a boy that does not exist. she offers him an outstretched hand, affection clear in her gaze. she waits for him to take it. perhaps she even believes that he will.

it is admirable, of course. it is a beautiful thing to hope against hoping. however, that does not change the ending. her efforts are still useless. she can wait for him all she likes. 

he is not here.

( perhaps, cyrus thinks to himself, he never was. )

//

maeve wants him kind, he knows. he can see it in the glitter of her eyes, the set of her mouth. she believes there is still goodness in him. or, at the very least, she believes there once was.

pity— either way, she is wrong.

his hands had not trembled when he reached for his knife, he wants to tell her, just so she will stop standing at the empty casket of a boy who had only ever existed in her mind, he would have slit grace daly’s throat if given the chance, he wants to say.

but when he opens his mouth, he freezes.  he says something far worse in its stead.

(she would turn from him if she knew the truth, he knows. he can not let her. )

“i am lucky,” he insists gently instead, as if he believes it, as if there is not a bullet wound in his leg, as if the skin underneath his collar is not littered with scrapes and bruises that ache at even the gentlest of touches. “but for more than just being alive,” he continues hesitantly, before matching her gaze with a fleeting tenderness he cannot really feel, “for- many things.”

he looks down quickly, before clearing his throat. 

“at least, i have no father to report to,” he laughs, “you should try it sometime. you can come home anyway you like at any hour.” he swipes a cookie from her plate and takes a bite, “and you can have all the cookies you want— there is no one to chastise you.”

He looks at her with a feeling she doesn’t recognize. It makes her heart quiet; it makes her stomach turn. She holds his gaze as if she can pin it still, hold it in her fingers and hold it high in the air to study it closely. Before she has the chance to name the feeling, it flees. Cyrus clears his throat, and Maeve forgets it ever happened.

All she has to remember it by is the arhythmic beat in her chest, as if it’s recovering from a lost memory. A nightmare she will never be able to recall.

“For many things — like what?” she asks. She remembers the boy who both bullied her and loved her; who could run with her as a friend one moment and laugh at her expense the next. She remembers not understanding him and she remembers feeling like he was an open book for her to memorize.

They were friends, some time ago; but Cyrus never once let her see the truth. He never once let her past the gates, when it’s all she’s never wanted.

“Come on, tell me,” she says, half whining and half teasing. “To be sitting across your best friend in the entire world, who also happens to be the most talented and beautiful woman in the universe?” She leans forward and tosses her curls in one dramatic sweep. “I’m listening.”

Maeve pouts in jest when he steals a cookie and covers her plate with her hands. “Hey! You have to ask, first. And I also need payment, thank you. One compliment per cookie.”

Her papa is the last thing she wants to talk to Cyrus about, but Maeve’s never been able to keep her secrets to herself for too long. Not with Cyrus, whose mischief has a way of charming her so completely. She takes a bite out of a cookie, a pensive expression resting on her face as she chews and considers how much she’ll tell him.

Finally, Maeve swallows and announces, “He hates me, I think.” She sighs and pushes the plate of cookies towards Cyrus; her appetite has faded at the thought of her fraught relationship with her father. “I barely see him, and the food I make him is almost always untouched. He’s been avoiding me for forever, and I just don’t get it. If he can do it, why can’t I? This was his life first, so how is he the one who’s mad? I should be the one who hates him, but I’m the one who was able to forgive him. It doesn’t make sense.”

the truth is- it is him 

““

he looks down, as if surprised by his offer. and, while there is something calculated about the way he has managed to humble himself so quickly, how exacting these admissions of vulnerability have been— for all that can be said against him, cyrus has always worn this kind of countenance well;  the regret (even if it is feigned) glittering in his downcast gaze, the ever-beckoning emptiness of his chest etching the hallows of his face sharper.

the silence turns his stomach. 

for as long as he has lived, cyrus has always known there to be something sick in the empty spaces in verona. it is practically the way of life in the city: wherever there are gaps in conversation, absences felt too keenly, discord is free to grow. 

surrounded by little more than several dozen unoccupied theater seats, cyrus finds no peace in the quiet of the multisala rivoli. though his gaze remains transfixed on the scenes of some movie nearly half a year out-of-date, his jaw is resolutely clenched as he keeps an eye on the exits. despite the relative calm, there is no mistaking the danger. once, not too long ago, the witches’ arcane operations had churned underneath the belly of the theater, set to poison the well of verona’s indulgence. and now that those have ceased— well, conflict blooms like a carrion flower wherever it finds a vacancy.  

“don’t be too disappointed, signora,” cyrus shoots genevieve an dogged grin, “hospital or not, you can still send me flowers and visit whenever you’d like.”

it was a lighthearted comment, but there was an ugly leer attached to the underside of it. while he had no real animosity towards genevieve (other than, of course, the requisite tribal antics that made her a montague and him a capulet), he was still on-guard, his injuries too fresh for him be any less. 

“you’ve missed half the film,” he said after a beat; his hands were still gripped tightly around his crutches, as if any second he might need to make an escape. “no worries though, it wasn’t anything interesting.”

One accepted the risk that, when they pledged themselves to the mafia, they might leave this Earth with unfinished business. What this meant for Verona was that ghosts lingered in every corner with a particular penchant for desolate buildings, those that used their appearance to conceal a sinister underbelly. Often these spirits were felt rather than seen, opting for the benefit of anonymity that had not been given in life, which left many who weren’t accustomed to them uncomfortable. Genevieve Zhang, however, was an exception; embracing the beings as the remnants of lost souls she had called friend. For her, their presence felt like a breath of fresh air in a stifled room.

Cyrus’ mood was palpable, the evident discomfort that manifested in the off-white knuckles that clung to metal crutches, but she didn’t acknowledge it. “Grazie per l’invito.” Genevieve quips, no lascivious edge to her words as there had been his. Had his quip been a pistol - locked and loaded - her was a training gun with no intent to do real damage. I heard you were hurt is what she wishes to say, but the words refuse to leave her either reticent or aware that it would make her seem foolish. In truth, she should have remained out of his life, some misguided part of her looked at him and saw the child in the pram coming through her front door. The same child that had gurgled happily when she had held him and tugged on her necklaces much to the dismay of Howard; Cyrus always had a taste for the finer things in life, even then.

Date: March 17th 2019. Time: Late afternoon. Place: Ospedale Borgo Roma Availability: Closed to @ohcoriolanus​

She enters his hospital room without invitation, without a knock - just as he goes to exit it. 

“No.” Vivianne blocks her son, closing the door swiftly behind her and leaning her weight against it, lest he should try to bypass her. It’s the fourth time she’s visited his room in less than twenty-four hours; once, he was sleeping, the other two times he’d peevishly denied her any answers. It’s a familiar routine where Cyrus is concerned; perhaps the only thing she’s really learned about him since he’s returned to Verona, stubbornly determined to remain.

Well, she’s equally determined to have this conversation.

“I see you’ve packed your things.” She remarks, surveying the crutches he’s leaning on and the duffel bag slung over one shoulder, that someone must’ve brought for him. Who? she can’t help but wonder reproachfully; who is he asking for help when he refuses to speak to his own mother?… “So you’ve been discharged… Good, then you can tell me what happened.” Her informants had told her he’d been shot, that he’d been brought to the hospital in the early hours of yesterday morning. But how it’d happened, and who was responsible, remains a mystery. Vivianne certainly doesn’t know. The last time she’d spoken to her son outside of Capulet Headquarters was in January, where she’d left him with a steely ultimatum over a cup of tea, and he’d left her with a kiss that still burned against her cheek.

Why had he done that?… Did he mean for it to unravel her; to scald her, even now? Was it a mocking brand, was it a weapon, was it a test he’d leveled against her? How many nights had she lost sleep looking for meaning in that action? Fearing what might have inspired it on the one hand - foolishly hopeful on the other?… How much of it had Cyrus intended?…

“ — Qui l'a fait?“ Who did it, she demands quietly, in their native tongue.

that morning, a blushing nurse had all but confessed it to him. they’d been on good terms last night when she’d administered his painkillers, but, when he’d awoken, she’d behaved strangely,  pacing his room for a minute too long, glancing shiftily in his direction.

“i’m not supposed to say,” she’d whispered.

it hadn’t mattered, in the end. with only a well-timed pout, her resolve caved in anyways. 

she’d gone for his hand, if cyrus remembers correctly. after she’d confessed, she’d wanted to be forgiven, wanted the assurance that she’d done the right thing. however, for once, cyrus could not find it in himself to tell that sort of lie. 

wanting was weakness, after all.

he’d had that beaten in him long before he’d left verona. it was the one thing he’d learned from his time with vivianne: to reach for anything with trembling hands, to ask before taking, to want--- was to be prepared for disappointment.

he’d no time for that.

-

of course then, he should’ve known. because vivianne —  well, she’d never had any time for that either. 

cyrus had always thought the illusion of choice made him beloved. he’d always prided himself on the ease at which his transgressions could be overlooked, how he’d convinced others into favors, freely given. but la capo bastone doesn’t seem to have the same priorities. she doesn’t knock as she barges into the room, uninvited. she even barricades the door behind her, shattering even the veneer of courtesy.

“you can tell me what happened,” she says... no, demands. 

“ — qui l'a fait?” she continues to cyrus’ dismay. with his silence, she’s only become more emboldened and, now, not only has she violated his space, her voice is far too cloying and familiar for the level of intimacy she’s earned. 

it’s all too much. 

“nothing happened,” he asserts forcefully (as if saying it aloud will make it true), “whatever happened was a price i am willing to pay for our people.”

(and while the admission of fealty is a transparent appeal catered to the woman who’d valued the capulets over everything, cyrus still does it better than most anyone else would. dark circles under his eyes ever-deepening, the ache of his wounded leg and bruised ribs returning with a vengeance now that the painkillers have worn off, cyrus wears loyalty like no one else, the tenacity (even if it is feigned) glittering in his downcast gaze, the ever-beckoning emptiness of his chest etching the hallows of his face sharper.)

She’s a member of no less than three shooting clubs in the area surrounding Verona. The TSN Verona is the local jaunt, within the city and perfect for when she doesn’t feel like practicing in the basement of the Carabinieri Headquarters. Tiro A Volo Trap Concaverde is where she goes for skeet shooting, lest she forget how quickly a target can move, and then there’s the TSN Sez. Caprino. This is where she goes to practice with her sniper rifle, where she can loose as many bullets as she’s made, where she can run and duck her way through obstacle courses and shoot at metal targets at her leisure. 

In the past decade she’s become a regular here, occasionally giving into the owner’s pleas for her to teach a women’s course when he teasingly threatens to give away her designated table in one of the far corners. They remember her at nineteen, practicing every day in the summer before dawn. They’d watched the Best Shot in Verona grow from a girl to a woman. She’s not ‘Du Pont’ here, nor is she ‘Katherine’. She’s not so soft as she allows what people she calls ‘family’ sees her. In this place, she’s Katarina: with her curled hair tied back in a loose ponytail and wearing a long-sleeved shirt and athletic pants with a tactical belt around her hips to hold her beretta and extra magazines (insane considering the warm weather, but she’s not here to be ogled at any more than she is regularly), knee on the seat of the bench as she stands, steadily feeding bullets into a magazine before she heads out for another round. 

as a loyal capulet and a member of the carabinieri, a woman of great accomplishment and little tolerance, katarina is perfect ... as an unwitting participant in cyrus’ grander plot. with only six hours in between bunny storming off, swearing that she’d never speak to him again, cyrus (god forbid) is still feeling rather vindictive. 

bunny will be furious when she finds out he’s even spoken to her sister while they’ve fallen out- and, while cyrus is certain it will all be smoothed over when he comes by in two days with a basket of fresh strawberries and a bottle of her favorite champagne, the idea of her stewing in her seat while they’re apart more than tickles him to the core.

“perdone, signorina dupont," cyrus waves a hand in the air as if to admit fault, though the grin on his face still seems decidedly unapologetic, “but i had to come by. the owner said that the best shot in Verona was in.”

he presses on, his voice mired in an arrogance that is more than half-teasing, “i wanted proof for myself and also, a shot at the title. i’ve only just returned to verona, you know- it seems unfair that the deciding was done when i wasn’t present.”

     @lavolumnia  /  kisses my muse gently

     On the floor in front of her sofa, his sketchbook is laid open to a blank page across his knee. That same blank page has been there for an hour, the tip of his pencil perched as if to draw his first line. His hand is starting to cramp from how long he’s been still, but he can’t quite get his mind to connect with his fingers. Cyrus had tired of his inattention a while ago and toddled off to find his mother. 

     She steps out of her bedroom, barefoot, her dress half-zipped, adjusting one fancy looking earring and trying not to knock Cyrus over, as he clings to her knee. Her hair and her makeup are carefully done, though it seems like if she lets herself get anymore stressed in the moment, she might puff up like a songbird. He closes his sketchbook and sets it off to the side, darting over to chase the boy off before casually reaching over and finishing the zip on her dress. “You look nice,” he laughs, as she turns to fix him with a glare, finally finished fussing with her earring. 

     “Empty flattery isn’t going to get me to leave you an extra twenty for dinner tonight, Battista.” He makes a half-hearted noise of protest, sweeping Cyrus into his arms and then trailing along behind her to the door. “Remember, I’ll be back by midnight, if anything happens–”

     “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get my entrails fed to me.” He laughs, adjusting his grip on the forty pounds of squirming child.

     She tucks her feet into a pair of kitten heels, and fixes him with a look. “No, if anything happens, just call me. Okay?” 

     “Yes, I have your phone number, and I would love nothing more than to interrupt your date with the rich weirdo.” Vivianne rolls her eyes at this, turning around and putting her hand on the doorknob. “Hey! Wait, aren’t you forgetting something?”

     She freezes, and then turns back to him, some of the stress creeping back into her features. “No? What would I be forgetting, I have everything–”

     Battista tips his head to Cyrus meaningfully. The boy is sucking on his sleeve, and he has to carefully pull his hand away from his face with a grimace at how tacky the fabric is. “Goodbye kiss?” 

     Her mouth goes flat, vibrant red pressed to thin lines. The look she gives him is so utterly flat that he thinks, just for a moment, she might snap at him, but after a moment of deliberation she tucks a dainty hand around the back of Cyrus’ head and kisses him on the temple. Battista grins, and then cringes when, with a smirk, she grabs him by the nape of the neck and presses a soft kiss to his cheek as well. Twin lipstick marks bestowed, Vivianne draws away as he splutters uselessly at her. “You, behave.” He’s not sure who the order is for.

the ones with single quotes aren’t mine, but the rest are. great story and fic prompts

reblog if you want your followers to send you a number and pairing to write a fic about

Gertrude had maintained a tentative caution regarding Coriolanus, like he were an animal that might be frightened in the face of sudden motion. The Sloane chapter in her life had been left unfinished, closed before she was ready to accept that it had come to an end, a million unwritten endings teased within blank pages. Memories that she had associated with the boy were tinged with the pain of loss and the grieving that followed. It could’ve been naive to harbour hope that might change, to brush away the footprints left in the sands of time and forge a new path of her own making.

Genevieve had wanted to know where he was, indulging in the need to satisfy an errant thought, the desire led to the action that found her waiting outside of Valerio Catullo Airport a handful of months ago. “Cyrus Sloane?” It had not necessitated an answer, she knew it was him, though her reason for being there did. “I’m a friend of your mother. Well… I was, she doesn’t like me much now.” Shoulders shrugged skyward, brushing off the weight of the feeling that accompanied her admission, head inclining to the passenger seat of the car; an unspoken invitation. He had disarmed her then, with the charming smile reminiscent of a younger Vivianne, his response came off-handed. Join the club, he had said.

Genevieve had extended an olive branch to the young man since that day - as she did for as many Capulets as her position would allow - hoping that the charred spot where the bough met the trunk went unnoticed. 

                                                                                ~

“Is this seat taken?” Genevieve is aware of the answer before it comes, moving to the chair before one is given, placing a couple of seats between them; a respectful distance. It didn’t seem necessary to smother their conversation between them when the rest of the theatre was empty, such was the way of Multisala Rivoli, the underutilised gem of Verona. “I’m surprised you managed to escape the hospital,” Unlike many of your colleagues. Her comment was meant to be light - a stone that skipped across the silent surface, ripples spreading outward from where it made contact - but it was hard to ignore the prominent undertone. I don’t care, the was what it said.

for as long as he has lived, cyrus has always known there to be something sick in the empty spaces in verona. it is practically the way of life in the city: wherever there are gaps in conversation, absences felt too keenly, discord is free to grow. 

surrounded by little more than several dozen unoccupied theater seats, cyrus finds no peace in the quiet of the multisala rivoli. though his gaze remains transfixed on the scenes of some movie nearly half a year out-of-date, his jaw is resolutely clenched as he keeps an eye on the exits. despite the relative calm, there is no mistaking the danger. once, not too long ago, the witches’ arcane operations had churned underneath the belly of the theater, set to poison the well of verona’s indulgence. and now that those have ceased--- well, conflict blooms like a carrion flower wherever it finds a vacancy.  

“don’t be too disappointed, signora,” cyrus shoots genevieve an dogged grin, “hospital or not, you can still send me flowers and visit whenever you’d like.”

it was a lighthearted comment, but there was an ugly leer attached to the underside of it. while he had no real animosity towards genevieve (other than, of course, the requisite tribal antics that made her a montague and him a capulet), he was still on-guard, his injuries too fresh for him be any less. 

ocean vuong, ‘prayer for the newly damned’